CHAPTER XV
ACROSS THE LINES
About half-past nine that night Lucy entered Miss Pearse’s bedroom and left a note on the little dressing-table. Miss Pearse did not come off duty till eleven, so there was time enough, Lucy thought. Then she returned to the hospital and stole into the dining-room. Elizabeth had finished her work there, and against the wall hung the apron the German woman would put on again at daybreak to begin her hard day’s labor. Lucy slipped another note into the pocket and turned back to the door with a heavy sigh. She had not the courage for farewells made without betraying her purpose, and to betray it meant to put an end to her plan. Her father’s answer would be instant prohibition; Elizabeth would certainly tell Colonel Gordon if Lucy confided in her, and even Michelle’s terrified persuasions she could not face just now. The hospital was filled with its usual stream of tireless workers. Lucy made her way unnoticed into the garden and out into the street.
She looked up at the sky with deep gratitude, for the moon was completely hidden behind dull, heavy clouds. A warm wind was blowing, with rain in its wake. It tossed Lucy’s hair about her face, and every gust brought down loose fragments of brick and stone from some crumbling wall near by. She longed for another talk with Captain Beattie, but she knew well enough that the young Englishman would never have told her what he did if he had for a moment guessed her purpose. She was puzzled to discover at that moment that all fear had left her. She did not realize that it was only submerged beneath a far greater fear—the dread of standing at that meadow road and watching her father go by into German captivity.
Her mind was but little excited as she walked quickly along the dark streets toward the west—the road to the supply depot. Her thoughts just then were all with her mother, that mother she had trusted in so entirely for guidance until these last few months, and to whom she could not turn now for help in her necessity. But even this thought of her was some comfort. Lucy felt dimly that her mother, did she know, would understand, in spite of fearing for her safety, that she could not stay helplessly in Château-Plessis, and leave her father to his fate. “If Captain Beattie’s knowledge can help the Allies, I must try to reach them,” she thought, without any further doubt or hesitation.
At the end of half a mile she came to a narrow street leading south, up a gentle slope. It was the one that she and Michelle had followed when they went to the stream below the château hill in search of clay for the convalescents. Lucy recognized it by the little church that stood at the corner, its pointed spire, still undamaged, showing faintly against the cloudy sky. She turned to the left up the street and stole cautiously along it. This was the part of town nearest the firing-line, and soldiers were likely to be met with. In the south, toward Montdidier, she could hear the guns faintly booming, but in front of Château-Plessis all was quiet enough. The street gradually rose higher, becoming a lane that opened out into woodland part way up the château hill.
It was nearly half a mile from the little church to where the lane ended, and Lucy’s cautious feet took some time to cover it. The moon was still hidden, for the storm-clouds had grown heavier. The wind, too, had increased, and when she came out on to the hill the pine branches were tossing furiously about, with a noise like dashing water. She paused for breath, after her quick climb up the slope, and peered ahead through the trees, and then back toward the town. The scattered houses along the street she had left were in darkness, for no unnecessary lights were permitted after eight o’clock. All around her was darkness, too, through which she could distinguish the black tree-trunks, the outline of the wooded hill in front of her, and the clouds scudding overhead. Her heart had begun to pound with exertion and excitement, and her mind wavered in its calm confidence. But her determination was as strong as ever. If she could not go on cool and fearless, she would do so trembling and afraid, but go on she must.
She drew a long breath and began climbing the hill, through the dense growth of pines. In a few minutes she came to the stream whose course she and Michelle had followed down to the clay bed at the foot of the slope. She could hear the water flowing swiftly over the stones close beside her, and shaping her course by it, she kept near the middle of the hill and before many moments reached the level ground above. Here she stopped, resting her hand on a swaying pine trunk and listening intently. No sound but the wind in the trees came to her ears. Thinking of Captain Beattie’s words, “Some nights I make it easily enough—others, I’m challenged at the second step,” she crept out of the wood to the edge of the wide open lawns behind the château.
The towers of the beautiful old building rose dimly against the sky about five hundred yards ahead, at the end of a broad avenue of pines. One tower had been destroyed by shell-fire, leaving only a crumbling ruin. Across the lawns she saw the broad, dark line that marked the trenches. Further on, the pine groves closed in again, covering the slopes of the hillside. To the right of the château Lucy caught sight of the little artificial lake, by the dull gleam reflected on its surface. Near the edge stood a summer-house, with slender marble columns. Her eyes lingered on it, trying to detach a dark shadow from the climbing roses that fell in a shower over the white columns. In a minute the shadow moved and became the figure of a German sentry. He strolled out to the border of the lake and raised his head toward the stormy sky. Lucy glanced quickly around her, suddenly cold in spite of the sultry heat before the storm. She felt surrounded, trapped, before she had even left the cover of the woods. That solitary sentry became a company of men searching for her with keen, merciless eyes. Furious at her own weakness, she looked around once more for reassurance. There were no other guards in sight. Anyway, she must go on. She crept back into the shadow of the pines and began circling the crest of the hill to the left, watching and listening with infinite caution. Of the trenches running across the lawns she had seen nothing but a dark line of sand-bag defenses. If there were men behind them they were invisible. She was following one of the pretty paths that wound through the wooded park of the château. In another moment she came upon felled pine trunks and heaped-up earth, over which she stumbled. Breathless with terror, she waited tensely for a challenge, but none came. Not a voice was heard, though before her she could now see the trench-line, a deep cut in the ground, with piled-up earth in front of it. She stole up to the very edge and looked down. A fallen pine trunk had been laid across as a foot-bridge. The complete lack of human voices or movement below told her that the trench was deserted.
But no answering hope or confidence sprang up within her. That lazy figure by the lake had not looked as if he had the entire hill to guard. If the trenches were empty the line was watched some other way. In her wary and suspicious advance Lucy put one foot on the slab of pine trunk that served as bridge, testing her foothold and staring across into the shadows. Just as she started forward a twig cracked beneath a heavy foot and a sentry came into view on the other side of the trench. Lucy had flung herself on the ground among the fallen boughs before the German had even time to turn his head. The wind sighing through the branches effectively drowned whatever slight noise she made. The sentry shifted his gun without a glance in her direction and passed up the line among the trees.
For five minutes Lucy lay there motionless, and at the end of that time the sentry returned along his beat. At his reappearance despair almost conquered Lucy’s terror. She knew she dared not venture across that “abandoned” line. In the darkness, on unknown ground, she stood little chance of passing undiscovered. To judge by the length of the soldier’s beat, at least a dozen sentries must be patrolling the woods about the castle. The lawns were easily watched from the summer-houses or from the château. For one desperate minute retreat suggested itself to Lucy’s mind. But self-reproach and anger mounted swifter than the thought took shape, and she knew that her purpose remained undaunted. All courage aside, she was as afraid to turn back as to go on; to make her way to the town again, confessing failure and facing the certainty of her father’s departure. As that realization swept over her, she crept up to a pine tree, and leaning against its base, searched feverishly for some way to go on.