"I must try to prove myself to be a worthy successor to the brave fellow," I said. "Don't you think, Sister Madeleine, that in one respect—my unkempt appearance—I shall not make a bad substitute?"
Walking back to me with her bouquet, she gave me a critical look and laughed. Certainly, no one at home would have recognized me as I now was, with my long beard and moustache and uncut hair. All at once her face became serious, and, without replying to my question, she said:—
"There is no reason why you should not start to-morrow. But don't do too much to begin with. Though I should like to have you here much longer, it would grieve me if that were the result of a relapse. You must get back your strength by degrees. And I fear you will need every ounce of it in the future. No; do rather too little than too much. I have no wish to hear that the Kommandatur at Charleroi, who, I understand, is showing great severity just now towards French prisoners, should decide that you have recovered sufficiently to be included in the next batch to be sent into Germany."
And with these significant words Sister Madeleine left me, to carry her flowers to the bedsides of her other patients, and, possibly, to allow me to reflect.
Was it not clear that, indirectly, she had indicated a means of escape? A feeling of quasi-loyalty towards those who had enabled her to nurse one of her countrymen back to health and strength prevented her from bluntly saying: "There is a tool-shed, in which you will find a suit of old clothes; disguise yourself in them and flee." But her meaning was plain. The key to freedom had been placed in my hands, and it was for me to use it.
V—"I PLAN TO ESCAPE DISGUISED AS THE GARDENER"
I began pottering about the hollyhocks and sunflowers and dahlias the very next morning, taking care to alternate my spells of gardening with fairly lengthy rests, on the principle laid down by Sister Madeleine. Not that they were altogether unnecessary in my still weak state. However, my strength returned with remarkable rapidity, after the first week of this light work, and every additional day found me more fit to carry out my plan, the details of which I had ample opportunity of working out. The garden was surrounded by a high wall of irregular construction, thus affording a foothold to a skilful climber, whose task could be made still easier if he chose—as I had determined to do—that portion of the enclosure which was masked by the tool-shed, between the back of which and the wall was a space of about a foot and a half, providing an additional support for one's body. My resemblance to Jean, the gardener, had, by the by, become more and more perfect, thanks to work with spade and hoe, and perhaps, at times, owing to rather too close contact with the soil. That it would be perfection itself when I had donned his garb, at the close of an afternoon's work just before turning-in time, I felt convinced.
There was another thing of which I was certain: that Sister Madeleine instinctively knew the day and hour I had fixed for my flight. For she was so unusually silent on that day in the last week of October, when, according to my calculations, there would be no moon until late in the night, she was so serious in her mien, and she left me with such suddenness after advising me to come in, "now that the sun had set and the evenings were getting chilly," that I felt sure she comprehended.
"Thank you, Sister Madeleine," I replied; and I could not refrain from adding, in the hope that she would grasp my double meaning: "You have always given me such good advice. I shall never forget your kindness. But before coming in I must put away my tools."