I gathered from Harding’s vague, disjointed sentences that Brand was falling into the clutches of a German hussy. He had seen them together at the Opera—they had met as if by accident—and one evening he had seen them together down by the Rhine outside Cologne. He was bound to admit the girl was remarkably good-looking, and that made her all the more dangerous. He hated to mention this, as it seemed like scandal-mongering about “one of the best,” but he was frightfully disturbed by the thought that Brand, of all men, should fall a victim to the wiles of a “lady Hun.” He knew Brand’s people at home—Sir Amyas Brand, the Member of Parliament, and his mother, who was a daughter of the Harringtons. They would be enormously “hipped” if Wickham were to do anything foolish. It was only because he knew that I was Wickham’s best chum that he told me these things, in the strictest confidence. A word of warning from me might save old Brand from getting into a horrible mess—“and all that.”
I pooh-poohed Harding’s fears, but when I left him to go to my own billet I pondered over his words, and knew that there was truth in them.
There was no doubt to my mind that Brand was in love with Elsa von Kreuzenach. At least, he was going through some queer emotional phase connected with her entry into his life, and he was not happy about it, though it excited him. The very day after Harding spoke to me on the subject I was, involuntarily, a spy upon Brand and Fräulein Elsa on a journey when we were fellow-travellers, though they were utterly unaware of my presence. It was in one of the long electric trams which go without a stop from Cologne to Bonn. I did not see Brand until I had taken my seat in the small first-class smoking-car. Several middle-class Germans were there, and I was wedged between two of them in a corner. Brand and a girl whom I guessed to be Elsa von Kreuzenach were on the opposite seat, but farthest away from me, and screened a little by a German lady with a large feathered hat. If Brand had looked round the compartment he would have seen me at once, and I waited to nod to him, but never once did he glance my way, but turned slightly sideways towards the girl, so that I only saw his profile. Her face was in the same way turned a little to him, and I could see every shade of expression which revealed her moods as she talked, and the varying light in her eyes. She was certainly a pretty thing, exquisite, even, in delicacy of colour and fineness of feature, with that “spun-gold” hair of hers; though I thought (remembering Dr. Small’s words) that she had a worn and fragile look which robbed her of the final touch of beauty. For some time they exchanged only a few words now and then, which I could not hear, and I was reading a book when I heard Brand say in his clear, rather harsh voice:
“Will your people be anxious about you?”
The girl answered in a low voice. I glanced up and saw that she was smiling, not at Brand, but at the countryside which seemed to travel past us as the tram went on its way. It was the smile of a girl to whom life meant something good just then.
Brand spoke again.
“I should hate to let your mother think that I have been disloyal to her confidence. Don’t let this friendship of ours be spoilt by secrecy. I am not afraid of it!”
He laughed in a way that was strange to me. There was a note of joy in it. It was a boy’s laugh, and Brand had gone beyond boyhood in the war. I saw one or two of the Germans look up at him curiously, and then stare at the girl, not in a friendly way. She was unconscious of their gaze, though a wave of colour swept her face. For a second she laid her hand on Brand’s brown fist, and it was a quick caress.
“Our friendship is good!” she said.
She spoke these words very softly, in almost a whisper, but I heard them in spite of the rattle of the tramcar and the guttural argument of two Germans next to me. Those were the only words I heard her say on that journey to Bonn, and after that Brand talked very little, and then only commonplace remarks about the time and the scenery. But what I had heard was revealing, and I was disturbed, for Brand’s sake.