Brand and I looked absurdly embarrassed. Of course we had guessed, but this open confession was startling, and there was something repulsive in the idea to both of us who had come through the war-zone into Lille, and had seen the hatred of the people for the German race, and the fate of Pierre Nesle’s sister.
Eileen O’Connor told us that part of her story which the Reverend Mother had left out. It explained the “miracle” that had saved this girl’s life, though, as the Reverend Mother said, perhaps the grace of God was in it as well. Who knows?
Franz von Kreuzenach was one of the intelligence officers whose headquarters were in that courtyard. After service in the trenches with an infantry battalion he had been stationed since 1915 at Lille until almost the end. He had a lieutenant’s rank, but was Baron in private life, belonging to an old family in Bonn. Not a Prussian, therefore, but a Rhinelander, and without the Prussian arrogance of manner. Just before the war he had been at Oxford—Brasenose College—and spoke English perfectly, and loved England with a strange, deep, unconcealed sentiment.
“Loved England?——” exclaimed Brand at this part of Eileen’s tale.
“Why not?” asked Eileen. “I’m Irish, but I love England, in spite of all her faults and all my grievances! Who can help loving England that has lived with her people?”
This Lieutenant von Kreuzenach was two months in Lille before he spoke a word with Eileen. She passed him often in the courtyard and always he saluted her with great deference. She fancied she noticed a kind of wistfulness in his eyes, as though he would have liked to talk to her. He had blue eyes, sad sometimes, she noticed, and a clean-cut face, rather delicate and pale.
One day she dropped a pile of books in the yard all of a heap as he was passing, and he said, “Allow me,” and helped to pick them up. One of the books was “Puck of Pook’s Hill,” by Kipling, and he smiled as he turned over a page or two.
“I love that book,” he said in perfect English. “There’s so much of the spirit of old England in it. History, too. That’s fine about the Roman wall, where the officers go pig-sticking.”
Eileen O’Connor asked him if he were half English—perhaps he had an English mother?—but he shook his head and said he was wholly German—echt Deutsch.
He hesitated for a moment as though he wanted to continue the conversation, but then saluted and passed on.