Three Times and Out Part 5

The guards who brought us to Rossbach went straight back to Giessen, after handing us over to the guards there, and getting, no doubt, an official receipt for us, properly stamped and signed.

Rossbach has a new town and an old, and, the station being in the new town, we were led along the road to the old town, where the farming people live. It is an old village, with the houses, pig-pens, and cow-stables all together, and built so close that it would be quite possible to look out of the parlor window and see how the pigs are enjoying their evening meal or whether the cow has enough bedding.

There have been no improvements there for a hundred years, except that they have electric lighting everywhere, even in the pig-pens.

There were no lights in the streets, though, I noticed, and I saw afterwards that a street light would be a foolish extravagance, for the people go to bed at dark. They have the real idea of daylight-saving, and do not let any of it escape them.

The guards took us around to the houses, and we created considerable interest, for strangers are a sensation at Rossbach; and, besides, prisoners are cheap laborers, and the thrifty German farmer does not like to miss a bargain.

The little fellows were the first choice, for they looked easier to manage than those of us who were bigger. Clarke was taken by a woman whose husband was at the front, and who had five of as dirty children as I ever saw at one time. We asked one little boy his age, which he said was "funf," but we thought he must be older--no child could get as dirty as that in five years!

I was left until almost the last, and when a pleasant-looking old gentleman appeared upon the scene, I decided I would take a hand in the choosing, so I said, "I'll go with you."

I was afraid there might be another large family, all with colds in their heads, like the five which Clarke had drawn, waiting for me, so that prompted me to choose this benevolent-looking old grandfather.

The old man took me home with him to one of the best houses in the village, although there was not much difference between them. His house was made of plaster which had been whitewashed, and had in it a good-sized kitchen, where the family really lived, and an inner room which contained a large picture of the Royal Family, all in uniform, and very gorgeous uniforms, too. Even the young daughter had a uniform which looked warlike enough for a Lieutenant-Colonel's. There was also a desk in this room, where the father of the family--for the old man who brought me in was the grandfather--conducted his business. He was some sort of a clerk, probably the reeve of the munic.i.p.ality, and did not work on the farm at all. There was a fine home-made carpet on the floor, but the room was bare and cheerless, with low ceiling, and inclined to be dark.

When we entered the kitchen, the family greeted me cordially, and I sat down to dinner with them. There were three girls and one brother, who was a soldier and home on leave.

Bromley went to work for a farmer on the other side of the village, but I saw him each night, for we all went back to a large three-storied building, which may once have been a boarding-house, to sleep each night, the guard escorting us solemnly both to and from work each day. This was a very good arrangement for us, too, for we had to be through work and have our supper over by eight o'clock each night.

After our prison diet, the meals we had here were ample and almost epicurean. We had soup--the real thing--made from meat, with plenty of vegetables; coffee with milk, but no sugar; cheese, homemade but very good; meat, both beef and pork; eggs in abundance; but never any pastry; and lots of potatoes, boiled in their skins, and fried.

There were plenty of fruit-trees, too, in Rossbach, growing along the road, and, strange to say, unmolested by the youngsters. The trees appear to belong to the munic.i.p.ality, and the crop is sold by auction each year to the highest bidder. They are quite ornamental, too, standing in a straight row on each side of the road.

The farmers who lived in this village followed the oldest methods of farming I had ever seen, though I saw still more primitive methods in Hanover. Vegetables, particularly potatoes and mangels, were grown in abundance, and I saw small fields of stubble, though what the grain was I do not know. I saw a thres.h.i.+ng-machine drawn by a tractor going along the road, and one of the girls told me it was made in England.

The woman who had the farm next to the one I was on was a widow, her husband having been killed in the war, and she had no horses at all, and cultivated her tiny acres with a team of cows. It seems particularly consistent with German character to make cows work! They hate to see anything idle, and particularly of the female s.e.x.

Each morning we rode out to the field, for the farms are scattered over a wide area, and three-acre and five-acre fields are the average size. The field where we went to work digging potatoes was about a mile distant from the house, and when I say we rode, I mean the brother and I--the girls walked. I remonstrated at this arrangement, but the girls themselves seemed to be surprised that it should be questioned, and the surly young brother growled something at me which I knew was a reflection on my intelligence.

When we got into the field and began to dig potatoes, good, clear-skinned yellow ones, Lena Schmidt, one of the girls, who was a friend of the family, though not a relation, I think, began to ask me questions about Canada (they put the accent on the third syllable).

Lena had been to Sweden, so she told me proudly, and had picked up quite a few English words. She was a good-looking German girl, with a great head of yellow hair, done in braids around her head. The girls were all fairly good-looking though much tanned from outdoor work. Lena had heard women worked in the house, and not outside, in Canada--was it true?

I a.s.sured her it was true.

"But," said Lena, "what do they do in house--when bread is made and dish-wash?"

I told her our women read books and played the piano and made themselves pretty clothes and went visiting and had parties, and sometimes played cards.

Of course it was not all told as easily as this sounds.

I could see that Lena was deeply impressed, and so were the two others when she pa.s.sed it on. Then she began to question me again.

"Are there many women in Canada--women in every house--like here?"

I told her there were not nearly so many women in Canada as here; indeed, there were not enough to go around, and there were lots of men who could not get married for that reason.

When Lena pa.s.sed that on, excitement reigned, and German questions were hurled at me! I think the three girls were ready to leave home!

I gently reminded them of the war and the complications it had caused in the matter of travelling. They threw out their hands with a gesture of despair--there could be no Canada for them. "Fertig," they said--which is the word they use to mean "no chance," "no use to try further."

Lena, however, having travelled as far as Sweden, and knowing, therefore, something of the world's ways, was not altogether without hope.

"The war--will be some day done!" she said--and we let it go at that.

Lena began to teach me German, and used current events as the basis of instruction. Before the end of the first day I was handling sentences like this--"Herr Schmidt expects to have his young child christened in the church next Sunday at 2 o'clock, G.o.d willing."

Helene Romisch, the daughter of the house, had a mania for knowing every one's age, and put the question to me in the first ten minutes of our acquaintance. She had evidently remembered every answer she had ever received to her questions, for she told me the age of every one who pa.s.sed by on the road, and when there was no one pa.s.sing she gave me a list of the family connections of those who had gone, or those who were likely to go, with full details as to birthdays.

I think it was Eliza, the other girl, who could speak no English and had to use Lena as interpreter, who first broached the tender subject of matrimony.

Was I married?

I said, "No."

Then, after a few minutes' conference--

Had I a girl?

"No--I hadn't," I told them.

Then came a long and heated discussion, and Lena was hard put to it, with her scanty store of English words, and my recently acquired German, to frame such a delicate question. I thought I knew what it was going to be--but I did not raise a hand to help.

Why hadn't I a girl? Did I not like girls? or what?

I said I did like girls; that was not the reason. Then all three talked at once, and I knew a further explanation was going to be demanded if Lena's English could frame it. This is the form in which the question came:

"You have no girl, but you say you like girls; isn't it all right to have a girl?"

Then I told them it was quite a proper thing to have a girl; I had no objections at all; in fact, I might some day have a girl myself.

Then Lena opened her heart, seeing that I was not a woman-hater, and told me she had a beau in Sweden; but I gathered from her manner of telling it that his intentions were somewhat vague yet. Eliza had already admitted that she had a "fellow," and had shown me his picture. Helene made a bluff at having one, too, though she did not seem able to give names or dates. Then Lena, being the spokeswoman, told me she could get a girl for me, and that the young lady was going to come out to the potato digging. "She see you carry water--she like you," declared Lena. This was interesting, too, and I remembered that when I was carrying water from the town pump the first day I was there, I had seen a black-eyed young lady of about sixteen standing in the road, and when I pa.s.sed she had bade me "Good-day" in splendid English.

On Sat.u.r.day, f.a.n.n.y Hummel, for that was the black-eyed one's name, did come out. The three girls had a bad attack of giggles all the time f.a.n.n.y and I were talking, for f.a.n.n.y could speak a little English, having studied a year at Friedberg. She had a brother in the army who was an officer, and she told me he could speak English "perfect." As far as her English would go, she told me about Friedberg and her studies there, but when I tried to find out what she thought about the war, I found that f.a.n.n.y was a properly trained German girl, and didn't think in matters of this kind.

When the day's work was over, f.a.n.n.y and I walked back to town with the three girls following us in a state of partial collapse from giggles. That night, Lena wanted to know how things stood. Was f.a.n.n.y my girl? I was sorry to break up such a pleasant little romance, but was compelled to state with brutal frankness that f.a.n.n.y was not my girl!

I do not know how f.a.n.n.y received this report, which I presumed would be given to her the next day, for the next day was the one we had selected for our departure.

CHAPTER VII

THE ESCAPE

Sunday, October 3d, was the day we had chosen as our "going-away"

day. We did no work on Sundays, and so had a full day's rest.

Besides, we had a chance for a bath on Sunday, and knew we needed every advantage we could get, for it was a long way to Switzerland.

The day had been sunny and bright, but toward evening big, heavy clouds rolled up from the southwest, and the darkness came on early.