The Light Heart (44 page)

Johnny was waiting on the platform at Lausanne, and took her to the new Cecil Hotel where she was to break the journey for a day’s rest before they went on together to Zurich. And during that time they were to work out what could be done about Rosalind and line up the queries and possibilities resulting from her long, mysterious silence.

Johnny kissed Phoebe without asking permission, and said she didn’t look like a survivor, and it was a little while before she could induce him to put his mind on the reason for her being in Lausanne. When he finally consented to listen to
Rosalind’s story he was at once caught up in its implications and regarded her as another Andromeda to be rescued from dragons. He jotted down the facts in his pocket notebook in cryptic pencilled memoranda as they talked—had she received the letters Phoebe kept on sending, and if so why hadn’t she sent out replies, even after she was told to send them through the American Embassy since the other routes had apparently failed?—why hadn’t she communicated with England as other people now contrived to do, through neutral channels in Sweden and Holland?—had Conrad left her at the mercy of his relatives at Heidersdorf and were they stopping her letters?—what had become of Gibson?—had Conrad seen
Phoebe’s book and was he so angry he had forbidden any further association between his wife and her American friend?—where
was
Conrad
?—and if he was away at the front, as he ought to be, couldn’t Rosalind slip away for a few days, as far as Zurich, for a brief meeting?

They decided to say that Phoebe had come to Switzerland for the Red Cross, and not solely to see Rosalind, not to make too much of it, not to show undue anxiety, and being in Switzerland Phoebe would naturally hope that Rosalind could come and visit her—just for a few days—before her return to England; not having had a letter from Rosalind recently, she had asked Johnny to jog her up and remind her of her old friends. America was still neutral, much as Johnny deplored it. And Germany earnestly desired the good opinion of America still, and was polite to the American Press in Berlin. Johnny’s visit would be an opportunity for Conrad to show an American that a woman married to a German was not a slave. It was a chance for him to show magnanimity, even if the book had annoyed him….

Sometimes their arguments looked thin and futile,
sometimes
it seemed that only a tyrannical Prussian could find fault with them. When they were all neatly marshalled in the
notebook
and all the queries had been raised and all the possibilities thought of, Johnny gazed at it a while, memorizing it line by
line, and then he tore the pages out of the notebook and held a match to them before he and Phoebe took the train to Zurich. Phoebe said Good-bye to him there, and settled in at the Hotel Baur au Lac to await his return with what patience she could find.

Johnny could not go charging up to the
Schloss
at
Heidersdorf
and demand an account of its chatelaine, though. He had to go all the way to Berlin and arrange with the American Ambassador to accompany one of the tours of inspection which were made periodically by the Embassy secretaries to
prisoner-of
-war camps scattered over Germany. He had accompanied more than one of these tours before now. And there was a camp, still unvisited, conveniently near the
Schloss,
so that from there he might reasonably motor over to pay a call on the dear friend of his boss, who had asked him to present his family’s compliments to Her Serene Highness if ever he was in the neighbourhood.

It was therefore on a warm morning in August that Johnny borrowed from the tactfully disinterested secretary the car with the American emblem and followed the steep, winding drive which climbed to the
Schloss
on its crag, drew up with a confident flourish on the gravel sweep, mounted the wide stone steps and presented his card to a surprised and doubtful footman in powder and knee breeches. He was admitted to the great hall, with its palms and mirrors and statues and crystal chandeliers, and left there on an unwelcoming bench while the footman carried his card away on a salver.

U
PSTAIRS
, in Rosalind’s pink and silver sitting-room which had been recently redecorated as a birthday gift, Conrad was making a scene. But this time Rosalind knew exactly how the quarrel had got started, having screwed herself up through a sleepless night to re-open the subject which was sure to
precipitate
it—the prisoners’ camp at Halkenwitz near-by. What made
any reference on her part to the camp especially precarious just now was that the Emperor had come to Eastern Headquarters near Breslau and would be a visitor at the
Schloss
for dinner and the night, and tomorrow morning Conrad as one of his ADC’s was to leave again with him for a tour of the Eastern Front.

All she had done, in a final effort before Conrad’s departure for an indefinite period of time, was to ask him once more for permission to visit the prisoners with little presents of
newspapers
, books, and tobacco—for
all
the prisoners, she kept repeating anxiously, as all nationalities were represented there, Russians, French, and British. It wasn’t just that she wanted to pamper her own countrymen.
All
the prisoners needed little extras, and she would distribute them fairly, and it was part of the duty of the Red Cross, whose uniform she was entitled to wear, to alleviate suffering wherever it was.

“They do not suffer!” snapped Conrad. “They are well housed in a brick building which was once a factory. They are dry and fed and it is summer and they cannot be cold. What more can they ask?”

“But, Conny—”

“Kindly do not bring this matter up while the Emperor is here to-night. It would be extremely tactless. And I have told you before that I wish you to discontinue your Red Cross work. It only upsets you.”

Rosalind was silent, while her mind went back unwillingly to the autumn day nearly a year ago at the station at
Halkenwitz
when the British prisoners arrived—she had never dared tell Conny why it had upset her so—not the real reason. She had been there on the platform with other women in Red Cross uniforms and brassards, because the train had been
announced
to contain German wounded on their way to a mountain spa which was converted into a hospital for officers. The Red Cross women went along the train handing up mugs of coffee and meat sandwiches to the wounded, and Rosalind was nearing the end of her car and just turning back when she
was paralyzed by a voice calling distinctly in English for water.

She stared along the train to the car beyond the one she was serving—it was a cattle truck. She went towards it, unbelieving—it was fill! of
British prisoners, many of them wounded, packed in so many to the space that the men could not lie down comfortably. The floor was covered with filth and there was a dreadful stench even in the cool mountain air outside.

With a gasp of horror she reached back to her trolley and snatched up a double handful of sandwiches and hurried towards the door of the cattle truck, which some German officials were also approaching. They did not recognize her, and one of them said roughly, “Not here,
gnädige
Frau,
can’t you see that these are prisoners?”

“But they’re hungry just like the rest—they want water—some of them are wounded—”

“At the camp they will be fed,” he answered, barring her way.

“But it’s nearly a mile to the camp. How will they get there?”

“They will walk.”

“Haven’t you any motor lorries?”

“For
prisoners?”
He glanced at her sharply, with disapproval and curiosity, for her German was still not very good.

“But they’re not
able!
”
she cried, and stood holding the sandwiches and watching helplessly while the khaki-clad men, caked with dried mud, unshaven, hollow-eyed, many with bloodstained, dirty bandages, some incapable of standing unless supported by their comrades, some with improvised crutches and canes, were spilling out of the cattle-truck in obedience to commands bawled at them in German by a beastly-looking officer who carried a riding-crop and tapped his polished boot with it while he waited for the pathetic crew to emerge.

Word had spread through the town of the arrival of prisoners, and a crowd was gathering, mostly women and children, hostile, jeering, shouting insults and derision. The Red Cross women stood in the front rank empty-handed, making no effort to reach those who most needed their help. Someone in
the mob threw a small rock and it struck one of the wounded Englishmen on the shoulder and he reeled, and a roar went up—a roar of amusement and satisfaction mixed. Other small missiles began to pelt in on the prisoners—handfuls of cinders, bits of brickbat, even eggs and potatoes from rifled
market-baskets
—thrown with good aim amid loud shouts of laughter and self-congratulation.

The camp officials meanwhile were knocking and herding the prisoners into a rough column for the march to the camp, and they began to move forward slowly, by necessity towards the crowd, which parted grudgingly before them, so that they were menaced from both sides. A few of the men looked back at their tormentors defiantly, none of them answered, none flinched, most of them seemed entirely unaware, helping each other along, exchanging a few inaudible words among
themselves
, ignoring their surroundings as completely as if they had been alone.

Clutching the sandwiches, Rosalind worked her way to the edge of the crowd and began thrusting the food at the men as they went by, until she was angrily swept aside by the officer, who knocked the last sandwich out of the hands of the prisoner with his riding-crop so that the bread and meat were ground beneath the marching feet. “But these are
my
men!” screamed Rosalind, so beside herself that she spoke in English. “You can’t
do
this to my people—it’s not
civilized
—”

A small boy ran out from the fringes and hooked his foot around a cane and pulled, so that the man who leaned on it fell heavily, and the crowd brayed with brutal laughter as at the antics of a clown. Before he could rise Rosalind was on her knees beside him, lifting his head to wipe away the dirt and blood where his face had struck the cinders, sobbing like a child with rage and terror, and crying out to him, “This is an outrage, I don’t know what’s got into them, I shall report it to my husb—
Charles!
” He lay there beside the track, helpless and bleeding—she threw her arms around him, holding his head against her breast. “Charles,
darling
, I’ll get you out of
this, I swear I will, don’t you worry, my darling, I’ll get you exchanged, I’ll make them send you home—”

Hands gripped her shoulders from behind, dragging her up, other hands, those of his comrades, took Charles from her.

“
Prinzessin,
I must beg you not to interfere—”

“
Prinzessin,
if His Highness knew—!”

The weary, wavering column passed on. Charles, supported between two of his friends, one of them having recovered the cane, did not look back. She was never even sure if he had been aware of who she was. She stood, held on either side by her shocked associates of the German Red Cross, tears streaming down her face, until they led her away through an unfriendly mutter of
“die
Engländerin,”
and put her into the motor and sent her home to Heidersdorf in disgrace.

Conrad was away at the time, but he had heard all about it, of course—except that he still did not know she had seen Charles at Halkenwitz. She had written him a letter, all
tear-blotted
and frantic, when she reached home, all about the exchange and how they must let Charles’s people know at once where he was—and then she tore it up. Almost too late, she had known better. After that she cherished some idea of getting into the camp herself, and finding out what conditions were like there, and seeing for herself how Charles was. But that was forbidden.

She was wondering now what would happen if she came right out with it after all, and said it was on account of Charles that she wanted to go to Halkenwitz camp. Well, what could Conny do? Charles couldn’t be worse off than he was. Conny might even get him exchanged in order to hush her up….

But Conrad broke their angry silence before she did.

“Anyway, you will doubtless lose interest in the Halkenwitz camp when I tell you that your friend Laverham is no longer there,” he said, and for a moment she was speechless.

“H-how did you know—” she began.

“That he was there? Not from you, I admit! Three men escaped from the camp yesterday. He was one of them.”

“Escaped—?”

“He will be caught, of course, and given solitary
confinement
in a common jail. They always are.”

“You won’t—have him shot?” she whispered.

“I’d like to. He is a very dangerous man.”

“Charles?”
She tried to laugh. ‘He’s wounded—he’s
unarmed
—”

“He is a British agent,” said Conrad bluntly. “Did you know that?” His eyes raked her face.

“B-but he’s just a soldier—”

“To the contrary. He spent a great deal of time here before the war began. Snooping for his damned War Office!”

“I—never thought—”

“So that is the kind of friends you have,” he said, with a genuine Prussian sneer. “
Spies!
Kindly don’t mention the escape of prisoners before the Emperor to-night. He would be very displeased. I want things to go as well as possible. Your mere presence here makes things difficult enough. Fortunately he has always had a weakness for you, even though you are an Englishwoman.”

“Yes, I know,” she murmured. “You used to have a
weakness
too. But the war has changed all that, hasn’t it. I’ve become an enemy to you.”

“It need not be that way,” he said coldly. “I have told you a hundred times, if you will give up your obstinate English ways and learn to love Germany as your Fatherland—”

“I see very little about Germany to love these days,” she said quietly. “Conny, why won’t you let me go home?”