Nevshka! Is she still as charming as ever?
CHAPTER III
A BOTANIST IN THE ARGONNE
Of what comes of leaving important papers exposed I look and talk indiscreetly, and a man dies.
IN spite of my dreams and extreme self-satisfaction, I found the atmosphere of Gross Lichterfelde as drab and monotonous as ever it had been before my masquerade. Discipline sits lightly upon one who is accustomed to it solely, but to me, fresh from a glorious fortnight of intrigue and festivity, it was doubly galling. Yet there was one avenue of escape open to me that was denied my fellows, for I was required to pay a weekly visit to my tutor in the Wilhelmstrasse, there to continue my studies in the art of diplomatic intrigue.
It is a significant comment upon the life at Gross Lichterfelde that I could regard these visits as a kind of relaxation. Surely no drillmaster was ever so exacting as this tutor of mine. And yet, despite his dryness and the complete lack of cordiality in his manner, there was somewhere the gleam of romance about him. To me he seemed, in a strangely inappropriate way, an incarnation of one of those old masters of intrigue who had been my heroes in former days at home; and my imagination distorted him into a gigantic, shadowy being, mysterious, inflexible and potentially sinister.
,We studied history together that autumn; not the dull record of facts that was forced upon us at Gross Lichterfelde, but rather a history of glorious national achievement, of ambitions attained and enemies scattered a history that had the tone of prophecy. And I would sit there in the soft autumn sunlight viewing the Fatherland with new eyes; as a knight in shining armour, beset by foes, but ever triumphing over 4hem by virtue of his righteousness and strength of arm.
Then I would return to Gross Lichterfelde and its discipline.
Yet even at Gross Lichterfelde we contrived to amuse ourselves, chiefly by violating regulations. That is generally the result of walling any person inside a set of rules; his attention becomes centred on getting outside. American cadets at West Point, so I have been told, have their traditional list of devilries, maintained with admirable persistence in the face of severe penalties. At Gross Lichterfelde one proved his manliness by breaking bounds at least once a week to drink beer and flirt with maids none the less divine because they were hopelessly plebeian.
In the prevailing lawlessness I bore my share, and in the course of my escapades I formed an offensive and defensive alliance with a cadet of my own age against that common enemy of all our kind, the Commandant of the school. Willi von Heiden I will call my chum, because that was not his name. We became close friends. And through our friendship there came an event which I shall remember to my last day. It gave me a glimpse into the terrible pit of secret diplorhacy.
Often at the present I find myself living it over in my mind. If I have learned to take a lighter view of life than most men, my attitude dates from that time when a careless word of mine, spoken in innocence, condemned a man to death. I will try to tell very briefly how it came about.
The Christmas after my excursion to St. Petersburg I was invited by Willi von Heiden to visit him at his home. His father was a squireling of East Prussia, one of the Junkers. He had an estate in that rolling farm land between Goldap and Tilsit, which was the scene of countless adventures of Willi's boyhood.
Just before we left Gross Lichterfelde yes, even there they allow you a few days' vacation at Christmas Willi received a letter and came to me with a joyous face.
"Good news!" he cried, "we are sure to have a lively holiday. Brother Franz is getting a few days' leave too."
I had heard much of Willi's older brother, Franz. He was a young man in the middle twenties, an officer of a famous fighting regiment of foot, one of the Prussian Guards. Willi had dilated upon him in his conversation with me. Franz was his younger brother's hero. From all accounts Franz von Heiden was possessed of a mind of that rare sort which combines unremitting industry with cleverness. His future as a soldier seemed brilliant and assured.
"Where is Franz?" was Willi's first question when we reached home.
I shall be long forgetting my first impressions of the man. I had been looking for a dry, spectacled student, or a stiff young autocrat of the thoroughly Prussian type, which I, like many other Germans, thoroughly disliked and inwardly laughed at. Instead, I found another chum.
Franz was an engaging young man of slight build, but very vigorous and athletic. I found him frank, friendly, unassuming, apparently wholly care-free and full of quiet drollery. From his first greeting any prejudice that I might have formed from hearing my chum Willi chant his excellences was quite wiped away. And as the days passed I found myself drawn to seek Franz's company constantly. I have no doubt it flattered my vanity always awake since my exploit in St. Petersburg to find this older man treating me as a mental equal. It seemed to me that he differentiated between me and Willi, who was quite young in manner as well as years. At times the impulse was very strong in me to confide in Franz, to let him know that I was not a mere cadet, that I had been in Russia for my Government. Luckily for myself I suppressed that impulse luckily for me, but very unluckily for Lieutenant Franz von Heiden, as it turned out.
One sunny December morning we were all three going out rabbit shooting. While Willi counted out cartridges in the gun-room I went to summon Franz from the bedroom he was using as his study. It was characteristic of him that without any assumption of importance he gave a few hours to work early every morning, even while on leave. I found him intent upon some large sheets of paper, but he pushed them aside.
"Time to start now?" he asked. "Good! Wait a minute, while I dress." He stepped into the adjoining dressing-room.
And then, as if Fate had taken a hand in the moment's activities, I did a thing which I have never ceased to regret. Fate! Why not? What is the likelihood that by mere vague chance I, of all the cadets of Gross Lichterfelde, should have become Willi von Heiden's chum and shared his holidays? That by mere chance I should have been an inmate of his home when Franz was there, three days out of the whole year? That by mere chance I, with my precocious knowledge and thirst for yet more knowledge, should have entered his study when he was occupied with a particular task? Why did I not send the servant to call him? And why, instead of doing any one of the dozen other things I might have done while I was waiting for Franz to change his clothes, should I have stepped across and looked at the big sheets of paper on his table?
I did just that. I did it quite frankly and without a thought of prying. I saw that the sheets were small-scale maps. They were the maps of a fort, and the names upon them were written both in French and in German. The thrill of a great discovery shot all through me. It flashed upon me that I had heard Willi say that during the previous summer Franz had spent a long furlough in the Argonne section of France. He had been fishing and botanising so Willi had said. Indeed, only the night before Franz himself had told us stories of the sport there; and all his family had accepted the stories at their face value. So had I until that moment when I stood beside his desk and saw the plans of a French field fortress. Then I knew the truth. Lieutenant Franz von Heiden was doing important work so confidential that even his family must be kept in ignorance about it for the Intelligence Department of the German General Staff. Like me, he was entitled to the gloriously shameful name of spy!
If I had obeyed my natural impulse to rush into Franz's room and exchange fraternal greetings with this new colleague of the secret service, so romantically discovered, he might have saved himself. Instead, something made me play the innocent and be the innocent, too, as far as intent was concerned.
When Franz returned, dressed for the shoot, I was standing looking out of his window, and I said nothing about my discovery.
We had our rabbit shoot that day. We crowded all the fun and energy possible into it. It was our last day together, and by sundown I felt as close to Franz von Heiden as though he were my own brother. A few days later Willi and I went back to Gross Lichterfelde.