RUTH sank down upon the ground in a warm, sunny spot where the trees were more scant than they had been below. They were dense enough, however, to shield her from sight of anyone in the valley, while they permitted a view down the mountainside. Off to the west she could see a stretch of railroad; nearer she got a glimpse of a highway; she saw horsemen and several slower specks, which must be men on foot. Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch had arrived, Ruth believed, and Adler had started the pursuit after her. But as she thought of the maze of pathways through the forest she believed that she was safe for a while—unless a large number of the prisoners joined in the search and if Adler did not use dogs to track her.
But she could not make herself safer by farther aimless flight. Here seemed to be as secure a spot as she might find for the examination of the documents which she had procured; here was the place to plan. She laid out upon a rock the pages of von Forstner's report, and, placing the stencils, she studied them in series of three, as she had seen Adler do. These pages—those which Adler had read, together with those which she had kept concealed—told a plain, certain story. The Germans at the present moment were concerning themselves with the minutest details of events before the Reims-Soissons line of the allies; other sectors, in comparison, were disregarded; before Reims and Soissons the enemy were maturing their great attack!
Ruth, having read, gathered together the pages and sat in the sun gazing away over the Rhine to the west. The feeling of fate—the touch of destiny—which had exalted and transformed her upon that cold January morning in Chicago quickened her again. Something beyond herself originally had sent her into this tremendous adventure, throughout which she had followed instinct—chance—fate—whatever you called it—rather than any conscious scheme. At the outset she had responded simply to impulse to serve; to get into Germany—how, she did not know; to do there—what, she had not known. At different times she had formed plans, of course, many plans; but as she thought back upon them now they seemed to her to have contemplated only details, as though she had recognized her incapacity, by conscious plan, to attain this consummation.
For she realized that this was consummation. This which she already had gained, and gained through acts and chances which she could not have foreseen, was all—indeed, more than all—she could have hoped to obtain through the vague, delayed ordeals which her fancy had formed for her. She had nothing more to attempt here in the enemy's land than escape and return to the allied lines; she had no right, indeed, to attempt more; for anything additional which she could gain would be of such slight value, in comparison with what she now had, that it could not justify her in heaping hazard upon the risks which she must run in returning to the allied armies with the knowledge she possessed.
There was Gerry Hull, of course. He was in this land of the enemy somewhere—alive or dead. When she was entering Germany she had thought of herself as coming, somehow, to find and to aid him. But what she had gained meant that now she must abandon him.
She gazed toward the railroad and to the white streak of the road to Lauengratz, upon which, after a few minutes, a motor again passed; more horsemen appeared and more specks of walking men. But through the woods was silence; the axmen, whom she had heard before, began to fell other trees; and the steadiness of the sound brought Ruth reassurance. Whatever search was being made below had not yet disturbed the woodsmen near her. Yet she arose and crept a few hundred yards farther up the mountainside, and under heavier cover, before she dropped to the ground again.
She found herself more relaxed as the rowels of peril, which had goaded her mercilessly, ceased to incite fresh strength for farther flight. All her nerves and senses remained alert; but her body was exhausted and sore. She was hungry, too; and though nothing was farther from her thought than sleep, nevertheless she suffered the result not only of the strains of the morning, but also of her sleeplessness during the night. She was cold, having changed from her suit to a linen street dress which had been Cynthia Gail's, and she was without a hat; so she sought the sun once more and sat back to a tree and rested.
If recaptured—she thought of herself as having been captured by von Forstner—she recognized that she would be shot. Therefore her recapture with von Forstner's reports upon her could not make her fate worse; and in any case she determined to preserve them as proof to the French—if she ever regained access to the French—that the information which she bore was authentic. She did up the papers and the stencils together and secreted them under her clothing.
She tried to imagine what Adler and Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch—who undoubtedly was now saying to Adler a good deal more than the secretary had dreaded—would expect her to do so that she could choose the opposite course. The alternatives, obviously, were effort to reach the Swiss frontier and in some way elude the border guards or to make for the Alsace front, where the French and the Americans were fighting.
This second allured her powerfully; but, to attempt it, meant leaving this friendly cover of the Black Forest—which would hide her almost to the Swiss frontier—and crossing west to the Rhine and across to the Rhine Canal, and almost the whole way across Alsace to the Vosges Mountains, where the opposing trenches twisted. She knew that behind the German fighting front she would encounter a military zone of many miles, much more difficult to penetrate than the civilian zone bounding the soldier-sentineled barriers at the Swiss frontier. But, just beyond that zone in Alsace lay American battalions; above it would be flying American battleplanes.
Ruth closed her eyes and seemed to see them; one was fighting as she had seen Gerry Hull fight that morning near Mirevaux. It was he and he was being shot down!
She started up, blinking in the sunlight. He had been shot down again, in truth. This was Germany; and he was in Germany; the enemy had him—von Forstner's boasting voice was saying it—dead or a prisoner. She shuddered and closed her eyes to see, again, Gerry Hull's face. She seemed to be looking up at him; he was in blue-gray—his French uniform. Palms and roses were behind him. They were in Mrs. Corliss' conservatory together, their first time alone.
"You're not like anyone else here," he was saying to her. "That's why I needed to see you again. . . . What is it, Cynthia Gail?" A queer, warm little thrill went through her; she seemed to be still looking up at him, his arms were about her now; he was carrying her. They were upon the Ribot and she was telling him that she would have gone into the sea to get anyone—anyone at all. Now, "Ruth—Ruth Alden!" he was saying. Her own name; and he liked to repeat it. "They shan't!" he was holding her so fiercely. "They shan't!" Now he kissed her hand. Her fingers of her other hand closed gently over the hand he had kissed; so, in the sunlight at the base of a tree high upon the mountainside above Lauengratz in the Black Forest of Baden, at last she fell asleep.
Not soundly nor for extended periods; a score of times she stirred and started up at sounds made by the breeze or at the passage of some small forest animal. Once a human footfall aroused her; and she was amazed to learn how delicate her hearing had been made by alarm when she discovered how distant the man was. He bore an ax; and evidently he was a Russian or perhaps a French captive; he passed upon a path far below without even looking up to where she hid in the trees. Nevertheless Ruth fled farther about the mountain before she dared rest again.
At nightfall she was awake and during the first hours of blackness she forced her way on in spite of the dismaying difficulties of wood travel in the dark. She fell repeatedly, even when she ventured upon a path, or she bruised herself upon boughs and stumbled into thickets. But she did not give up until the conviction came to her that she was hopelessly lost.
At best, she had been proceeding but blunderingly, attempting no particular course; merely endeavoring to keep to a definite direction. But now she did not know whether she had worked west of Lauengratz or had circled it to the east or south. She was cold, too; and hungry and quite exhausted. Twice she had crossed tiny brooks—or else the same brook twice—and she had cupped her hands to drink; thus, with nothing more than the cold mountain water to restore her, she lay down at last in a little hollow and slept.
The morning light gave her view over strange valleys with all the hills and mountain tops in new configuration. She stood up, stiff, and bruised, and weak; taking her direction from the sun, she started west, encountering cleared ground soon and a well-traveled road, which she dared not cross in the daylight. So she followed it north until a meeting road, with its cleared ground, halted her. At first she determined to wait until dark; but after a few hours of frightened waiting she risked the crossing in daylight and fled into the farther woods unseen. Again that afternoon she came into the open to cross a north and south road. Early in the evening she crossed a railroad, which she believed to be the road from Freiburg to Karlsruhe.
She had seen many men, women, and children that day, as upon the previous day, passing on the roads, or busy about houses, or working in fields, or in the woodlands. Most of the people were Germans; but many, undoubtedly, were military prisoners or deported civilians. She had avoided all alike, not daring to approach any house or any person, though now she had been forty-eight hours without food except for the "stimulant" and the accompanying biscuit which Adler had sent her.
That night, however, she found the shelter of a shed where was straw and at least a little more warmth than under the trees. Refuge there involved more risk, she knew; but she had reached almost the end of her strength; and, lying in the straw and covering herself with it, she slept dreamlessly at first, and then to reassuring, pleasant dreams. She was in a château—one of those white-gray, beautiful, undamaged buildings which she had seen far behind the battle lines in France; she was lying in a beautiful, soft bed, much like that which had been hers at Mrs. Mayhew's apartment upon the Avenue Kléber. Then all shifted to a great hospital ward, like that in which she had visited Charles Gail; but she was in the same beautiful bed and an attendant—a man—had come to take her pulse.
She stirred, it had become so real; she could feel gentle, but firm, and very real fingers upon her wrist. Now a man's voice spoke, in French and soothingly. "It is well, Mademoiselle, I do not mean harm to you. I am only Antoine Fayal, a Frenchman from Amagne in the department of Ardennes, Mademoiselle. I"
Opening her eyes, Ruth saw a thin, hollow-cheeked, dark-haired man of middle age in the rags of blouse and trousers which had been, once, a French peasant's attire. He quickly withdrew his hand, which had been upon Ruth's wrist; and his bloodless lips smiled respectfully and reassuringly.
"I am French, Mademoiselle," he begged in a whisper. "Believe me! One of the deported; a prisoner. My duty here, a woodsman! Happening by here, Mademoiselle, I discovered you; but I alone! No one else. You will pardon; but you were so white; you barely breathed. I did not believe you dead, Mademoiselle; but faint, perhaps. So I sought to ascertain!"
"I thank you!" Ruth whispered back, feeling for her papers. "Where are we?"
"This is part of the estate of Graf von Weddingen, Mademoiselle. We are very close to the Rhine. You are" he coughed and altered his question before completing it. "It may be in my power to aid you, Mademoiselle?"
"I am an American," Ruth said.
"Yes, Mademoiselle."
"I have been trying to reach Alsace and the French and American lines."
"You have done well so far, Mademoiselle," Fayal said respectfully.
"How do you know?"
"I know that at noon yesterday, Mademoiselle, you were twenty kilometers away. The whole countryside has been warned to find you; but you have come these twenty, kilometers in spite of them."
He coughed and checked himself, a little guiltily, as she startled. "That is, Mademoiselle, if you are that American lady who had accompanied Hauptmann von Forstner."
"I am that one," Ruth admitted.
"Then, Mademoiselle, come immediately with me! No moment is to be lost!"
He went to the door of the shed and gazed cautiously about. Ruth arose and began brushing the straw from herself; sleep had restored her nerves, but not her strength, she found. She swayed when she stepped. She was completely at the mercy of this man, as she must have been in the power of whoever found her. But she did not distrust Fayal. His emaciation, his cough, and, more than those, his manner—the manner of a man who had been suffering indignities without letting himself become servile; and together with that, his concern and respect for a woman—seemed to Ruth beyond counterfeit.
"You require food, of course, Mademoiselle!" Fayal exclaimed in dismay. "And I have none!"
"I can follow you," Ruth assured.
"Then now, Mademoiselle!"
He stepped from the shed, and, motioning to her to imitate him, he slipped into the trees to the right. Evidently he considered her danger great; the peril to him, if caught aiding one who was attempting escape, must be as positive as her own; but the Frenchman was disregardful of that. He gained a gully, and, returning, aided her in descending. Someone approached. "Lie flat!" Fayal whispered. She obeyed; and, while she lay, she heard German voices shouting and the sounds of search.
When they had moved far away, Fayal led her to a dugout entrance, concealed by brush and with last year's leaves scattered before it.
"Keep well back in there, Mademoiselle; until I come again for you!"
She went into a low and dark but fairly dry cavern under the hillside. She heard Fayal tossing about leaves to hide the entrance as before. Soon he was gone.
Many times during the day Ruth heard people passing through the woods. Once she was sure that a group of men were engaged in a search; but they failed to find the cavern. Only late in the afternoon someone, who stepped quickly and lightly—a child or a slight, active woman—ran close past the brush before the entrance, and, without halting, tossed a bundle into the bush.
Ruth had been obeying Fayal's injunction to stay well back in the cavern; now, venturing to the bush, she found a paper package, within which was a chunk of blackish, hard bread and two boiled turnips. She thought, as she saw this food, that it had been Fayal's perhaps; at least, it had been the ration of some prisoner or deported captive as ill fed, probably, as he. But she was ravenous; this had been given her, however little it could have been spared by the donor. She ate it all and was stronger.
Fayal did not return that day; but during the night someone visited the cavern, for, when morning came, she found food.
At night Fayal returned, and when he guided her out of the woods across fields and farms, she realized how essential were the precautions he had enjoined. He guided her half the night, and brought her to another concealment, where another French refugee took her in charge.
She had become a passenger, she found, upon one of the "underground railways" in operation to conduct escaped prisoners across the frontiers; Fayal, having brought her safely over his section, said his adieu.
"The next German attack is to come upon the French on the front between Reims and Soissons, remember, Fayal," Ruth enjoined upon the man when parting with him. "If I fail to get through, you must try to send the word."
"Yes, Mademoiselle. But you must not fail. Good fortune, Mademoiselle, adieu!"
"Good fortune, Fayal; a thousand thanks again; and—adieu!"
Her new conductor led her on a few more miles that night; she laid up during the day; at night proceeded under a new guide.
So she passed on from hiding place to hiding place, sometimes lying for days at a time—terrible, torturing delays, during which she dreamed of the Germans advancing over all that Reims-Soissons front and sweeping over the French armies as they had overwhelmed the British in Picardy. And she—she, if she might go on, could prevent them! Many times during the endless hours she lay alone waiting for her guide who did not appear, she crept out from her concealment, determined to force on; but always she learned the futility of attempting to procced alone.
She was following her sixth guide after Fayal, and it was upon the eleventh evening after her escape from Lauengratz, when suddenly she heard a rough challenge; German soldiers appeared across the path; others leaped up from the right and left; yet others were behind.
Her guide instantly recognized that he had led her into a trap; and he fought, wildly, to try to save her. She fought, too. But they bayoneted him, and, upon their bayonets, they bore him back upon her. A soldier seized her; overpowered her, brutally, and she struggled no longer with hope to fight free, but only to destroy the papers which she still carried. So they pinioned her arms; they half stripped her in searching her; they took her papers, and leaving her guide dead upon the ground, they hurried her with them to their commandant.
This officer instantly suspected her identity. For, in spite of her eleven nights of flight, she was not yet seventy miles from Lauengratz. Disposition of her evidently had been predetermined, pending her recapture; for the officer, after examining her again, dispatched her to a railroad train, under guard. They put her in manacles and, boarding a north-bound train, they took her to a town the name of which she could not learn. From the station they marched her to what appeared to be an old castle, where they at once confined her, alone, in a stone-walled cell.
It possessed a solitary, narrow slit of a window, high up under the ceiling; it boasted for furniture a cot, a chair and bowls. The Germans relieved her of the manacles when they led her into this cell. Not long after she was left alone, light streaked in through the slit of a window; a hand, opening a panel in her door, thrust in a dipper of soup and a chunk of bread.
Ruth received the food, consumed it, and sank down upon her pallet. Her great venture thus had come to an end; her life was forfeit; and by all that she had dared and done, she had accomplished—nothing.
No; more than nothing. She had caused the arrest of De Trevenac and those taken with him; she had aided at least a little in the frightful labors of the retreat from Mirevaux. She had saved the life of Gerry Hull!
She never before had permitted herself to think that she had saved Gerry; without her he might have been able to free himself from under his machine. But now she let herself believe.
This gave her a share in the battles which he had fought over the advancing enemy lines. Yes; she had accomplished more than nothing. Yet how much less than she had dreamed! And all of her dream—or most of it—might actually have come true! She had possessed the German plan; indeed, she still possessed the knowledge of the front of the next assault and something of the detail of the enemy operations! She had committed it, verbally, to Fayal and to others of her guides; so it was possible that it might yet reach the allied lines. But she realized that, even though Fayal or one of the others sent the word through, it must completely lack authority; it must reach the French as merely a rumor—a trick of the enemy, perhaps; it could not be heeded.
She sat up with muscles all through her tugging taut. It seemed that with her frantic strength, with her bare hands she must rend those stones and escape, not to save herself, but to return to the allied lines and tell them what she knew. But the coldness of the stones, when she touched them, shocked her to realizations.
Tomorrow—or perhaps even today—the enemy might take her out and kill her. And while death—her individual, personal annihilation—had become a matter of amazingly small account, yet the recognition that with death must come withdrawal, perhaps, even from knowledge of how the battle was going upon that line where the fate of all the world was at stake, where Britons and French fought as she had seen them fight, and where, at last, America was arriving—that crushed her down to her pallet and with despair quite overwhelmed her.
So she set herself to thinking of Gerry. He was alive, perhaps; a prisoner, therefore, and to be returned some day when the war was over, to marry Lady Agnes, while she . . . . Ruth did not shudder when she thought of herself dead.
Perhaps Gerry was dead; then she would be going at once to join him. And if they merely took her out and shot her today, or tomorrow, or some day soon, without doing anything more to her than that, she might find Gerry and rejoin him, much as she had been when he had known her and—yes—liked her. Without having suffered indignity, that was. These cold stones seemed at least to assure her of this. So she lay and thought of him while the slit of light crept slowly from left to right as the sun swung to the west and she listened for the step of those who would come to her cell.