“For a German not altogether bad,” said the Reverend Mother. “Severe and ruthless, like them all, but polite when there was no occasion to be violent. He was of good family, as far as there are such things in Germany. A man of sixty.”
Eileen O’Connor, with German permission, continued her work as art-mistress at the École de Jeunes Filles. After six months she was permitted to receive private pupils in her two rooms on the ground floor of the Intelligence headquarters, in the same courtyard though not in the same building. Her pupils came with drawing-boards and paint-boxes. They were all girls with pig-tails and short frocks—not so young as they looked, because three or four at least, including the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt, were older than schoolgirls. They played the part perfectly, and the sentries smiled at them and said “Guten Tag, schönes Fräulein,” as each one passed. They were the committee of the Rescue Society:
Julienne de Quesnoy,
Marcelle Barbier,
Yvonne Marigny,
Marguérite Cléry, and Alice de Taffin, de Villers-Auxicourt.
Eileen O’Connor was the director and leading spirit. It seems to me astonishing that they should have arranged the cypher, practised it, written down military information gathered from German conversations and reported to them by servants and agents under the very noses of the German Intelligence officers, who could see into the sitting-room as they passed through French windows and saluted Eileen O’Connor and her young ladies if they happened to meet their eyes. It is more astonishing that, at different times, and one at a time, many fugitives (including five British soldiers who had escaped from the citadel) slept in the cellar beneath that room, changed into German uniforms belonging to men who had died at the convent hospital—the Reverend Mother did that part of the plot—and walked quietly out in the morning by an underground passage leading to the Jardin d’Eté. The passage had been anciently built but was blocked up at one end by Eileen O’Connor’s cellar, and she and the other women broke the wall, one brick at a time, until after three months the hole was made. Their finger-nails suffered in the process, and they were afraid that the roughness of their hands might be noticed by the officers, but in spite of German spectacles they saw nothing of that. Eileen O’Connor and her friends were in constant touch with the prisoners of the Citadel and smuggled food to them. That was easy. It was done by bribing the German sentries with tobacco and meat-pies. They were also in communication with other branches of the work in Belgium, so that fugitives were passed on from town to town, and house to house. Their success made them confident, after many horrible fears, and for a time they were lulled into a sense of security. That was rudely crashed when Eileen O’Connor, the young Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt, and Marcelle Barbier were arrested one morning in September of ’17, on a charge of espionage. They were put into separate cells of the civil prison, crowded with the vilest women of the slums and stews, and suffered something like torture because of the foul atmosphere, the lack of sanitation, and unspeakable abomination.
“Only the spirit of Christian martyrdom could remain cheerful in such terrible conditions,” said the Reverend Mother. “Our dear Eileen was sustained by a great faith and wonderful gaiety. Her laughter, her jokes, her patience, her courage, were an inspiration even to the poor degraded women who were prisoners with her. They worshipped her. We, her friends, gave her up for lost, though we prayed unceasingly that she might escape death. Then she was brought to trial.”
She stood alone in the court. The young Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt had died in prison owing to the shock of her arrest and a weak heart. A weak heart, though so brave. Eileen was not allowed to see her on her death-bed, but she sent a message almost with her last breath. It was the one word “courage!” Mlle. Marcelle Barbier was released before the trial, for lack of direct evidence.
Eileen’s trial was famous in Lille. The court was crowded and the German military tribunal could not suppress the loud expressions of sympathy and admiration which greeted her, nor the angry murmurs which interrupted the prosecuting officer. She stood there, wonderfully calm, between two soldiers with fixed bayonets. She looked very young and innocent between her guards, and it is evident that her appearance made a favourable impression on the court. The President, after peering at her through his horn spectacles, was not so ferocious in his manner as usual when he bade her be seated.