For a moment Michelle was silent, for the struggle in her mind was too intense for words. But at the end of that short pause she spoke, and the hatred and suspicion had left her voice. Grief and anxiety alone remained as she said falteringly, “I will trust you, Elizabeth. You must forgive me that I could not before. I think I do so truly now.”
“Only time will show you that I am true,” replied Elizabeth, still with a little hurt accent in her voice, as though she felt Michelle’s conversation was not yet complete. “It is not for love of France that I have turned against my country. It is for love of Germany.”
“Michelle,” said Lucy, breaking in, fearful the new alliance would not withstand an argument, and wildly anxious to make use of Elizabeth’s help, “I’m going now, and—I’ll do all I can. You trust me, too.” She put her arms around Michelle’s neck, with all the warmth of her sympathy and understanding, and looked into her face. In her eyes she read unwilling consent, and no further objection came from her lips. “I’m going to tell her,” Lucy whispered, absolving herself from her promise. “I’ll come again as soon as I possibly can.”
The next moment she and Elizabeth were outside in the street, walking silently back in the direction of the hospital. Lucy gave a keen glance about her, and seeing only ruined desolation on both sides, quickly began telling Elizabeth the story of Armand’s coming, and of the miserable ill-luck that had prevented the delivery of Captain Beattie’s message. “Elizabeth, what Michelle didn’t want to tell you was that her brother is making his way out of the town now. Can’t you discover for us whether he gets safely out? They are in such awful uncertainty.”
“I will try, Miss Lucy,” Elizabeth promised. “Tell me how he looks, and to what regiment he pretends that he belongs.”
Lucy gave all the details she was able, and, as she spoke, the realization of her failure came over her again in a bitter flood of disappointment. “Oh, Elizabeth,” she groaned, feeling a desperate need of her old nurse’s comforting affection, “to think I should have such a chance and miss it! A chance we can never hope will come again.”
Elizabeth could not see Lucy unhappy and remain unmoved. Her dark eyes tenderly softened as she said, with a vain attempt at the consolation beyond her power to give, “Ach, dear Miss Lucy, be not so sad! Long ago when I was a child, there comes to our house a so kind old man, the friend of my father. When any of us children wished long for something he would say: ‘Remember the proverb: Many times your cake may to coal turn, but the last time come fair from the oven.’”
“I don’t want to hear your old German proverbs!” were the words that rose angrily to Lucy’s tongue. But she kept them back. Instead, after a little silence, she said very thoughtfully, a resolution, as yet vague and uncertain, waking to life behind her words, “I think the best proverb is one that an American made up: If you want a thing done, do it yourself.”