“I’ll do anything,” said Lucy quickly.
“Our hospital garments are falling into rags, and no one has any time to mend them. Elizabeth has been helping, but I am going to send her for Mère Breton’s supplies this morning while you stay here and sew in her stead.”
Miss Pearse had heard all about Lucy’s adventure of the day before, and did not wish her sent on the same errand again, until the Germans should have their own interpreters, or officers who spoke the barbarous English tongue. In any case, Elizabeth could serve their purpose. Lucy had also told Miss Pearse of the years the German woman had spent with the Gordon family, and of the never-to-be-forgotten service she had rendered them. Miss Pearse had shown both interest and sympathy, wondering much, like Lucy, at the strange chance of war which had brought these two old friends together, on such hard terms for friendship. Like Colonel Gordon, she warned Lucy repeatedly against speaking unguardedly before her old nurse. “She is the most German person I ever saw,” she said with conviction. “She has all their good qualities, so I shouldn’t be surprised if she had some of their bad ones. Anyway, you may be sure her husband could make her try to worm out information about the troops. You don’t know what trifling little facts they can make use of. Don’t answer any questions about what troops were in the town, or anything like that.”
“She hasn’t asked me any,” said Lucy. “She has been here herself since the last German occupation, anyhow. But I’ll be careful.”
She was thinking over these warnings as she sat, half an hour later, by the narrow windows of the nurses’ room, mending long rips and tears in pillow-cases and pajamas. Outside the window the German sentry paced the little garden by the budding rose-bushes and crumbling walls, and within the hospital the workers continued their never-ending task. While she meditated, Elizabeth came out from the side door into the garden, carrying two baskets on her arms, and with a nod to the sentry passed quickly out through the ruined gate.
She could have obtained Brêlet’s company and assistance, but she had started off alone with her big baskets. Lucy, as she looked after her, thought she guessed why. The little German woman suspected that the poilu would have gone with her most unwillingly.
Outside the gate Elizabeth turned east through the same deserted streets which led toward the cottages in the lanes and to the meadows beyond the town. She walked quickly, for the supplies were urgently needed. Besides, she had worked so hard all her life that active occupation had become second nature to her. Bob had once said, “Elizabeth never sits down to rest—only to work more easily that way.” She found a path among the broken stone with patient care, for her shoes were old and gave little protection to her feet. Once she stopped to exchange a word with a German sentry during a lull in the firing. When she neared the edge of the town she was challenged by the guard in front of the Headquarters building, but her German tongue and written permission won her ready passage. At the border of the meadow stood a little improvised shack, put up to accommodate a guard and a field telephone, in case of any alarm from this side of the town. In front of it a corporal was idly walking about, stopping to stare at Elizabeth as she hurried by. She called out a good-morning to him, which he answered with the inquiry:
“Where are you going, Frau, to fill those big baskets?”
Elizabeth nodded over toward Mère Breton’s cottage, hidden behind its little grove of apple and plum trees, of which many were reduced to blackened and leafless trunks. The cottage itself had been twice struck, but the sturdy old Frenchwoman refused to abandon it, and in the deadly rain and thunder of bursting shells had gone on cultivating her garden, and coaxing her frightened hens to eat and fatten for the wounded poilus in the hospitals. Now she feared they would nearly all go down German throats, but Lucy had the day before tried her best, in her halting French, to convince Mère Breton that only by feeding the Boches could their own people expect a share.
Elizabeth looked up at the blue, cloud-flecked sky, away from the shattered trees of the wood in front, as she crossed the meadow. Her eyes, always anxious and watchful these days, felt a relief in turning from the scarred earth to the untroubled heavens. But this war is not only on the earth, as she realized with a swift start, when out from behind the clouds darted two flying specks which hung poised above the meadow, the sun just touching their tiny wings. She hurried on, reached Mère Breton’s house, and found the old woman in the garden among her cabbages. Elizabeth did not know a word of French, but she held out the hospital baskets with a pleasant nod and smile to cover the deficiency of language. Mère Breton’s sharp blue eyes, from beneath her white cap, gave the German woman a look of bitter hostility, quite untouched by the smile, which faded from Elizabeth’s lips unanswered. Mère Breton took the baskets, trudged off to fill them, and presently returned them in silence. Her thoughts were as plain as though she had spoken. She knew that not an egg nor a fowl would go to her poilus with a Boche for messenger. Elizabeth nodded good-bye without attempting any further friendly advances, and started on her hot walk back, this time weighed down with a heavy load. She looked quickly up at the sky again as she came out from beneath the trees, for the noise of an airplane was now distinctly heard as it circled not more than half a mile above her head. As she stared up, squinting in the sunlight, the machine dived suddenly and flew around the meadow, hardly two hundred yards above the earth.