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I gained by my unselfishness (I did not want to go), for the Reverend Mother met me in the corridor and stood talking to me about Eileen O’Connor, and told me part of the girl’s story, which I found strange in its drama, though she left out the scene of greatest interest, as I heard later from Eileen herself.

The girl had come to Lille just before the war, as an art-mistress in an “École de Jeunes Filles” (her parents in Kensington had too big a family to keep them all), with lessons twice a week at the convent, and private pupils in her own rooms. She learned to speak French quickly and charmingly, and her gift of humour, her Irish frankness and comradeship made her popular among her pupils, so that she had many invitations to their homes and became well known in the best houses of Lille—mostly belonging to rich manufacturers. A commonplace story till then! But when the Germans occupied Lille this Irish girl became one of the chief characters in a drama that was exciting and fantastic to the point of melodrama. It was she who organised the Lille branch of a secret society of women, with a network all over northern France and Belgium—the world remembers Nurse Cavell at Brussels—for the escape of young civilians of military age and prisoners of war, combining that work (frightfully perilous) with espionage on German movements of troops and knowledge that might be of value to the Belgian Army, and through them to England and France. It was out of an old book of Jules Verne called “The Cryptogram” that she copied the cypher in which she wrote her messages (in invisible ink on linen handkerchiefs and rags), and she had an audacity of invention in numberless small tricks and plots which constantly broke through the meshes of the German network of military police.

“She had a contempt for their stupidity,” said the Reverend Mother. “Called them dunderheads, and one strange word of which I do not know the meaning—‘yobs’—and I trembled at the risks she took.”

She lived with one maid in two rooms on the ground floor of a house near the Jardin d’Eté, the rest of the house being used as the headquarters of the German Intelligence Section of the Northern District. All day long officers went in and out, and by day and night there were always sentries at the door. Yet it was there that was established also the headquarters of the Rescue Committee. It was on account of her Irish name and parentage that Eileen O’Connor was permitted to remain in the two rooms to the left of the courtyard, entered by a separate door. The German Kommandant was a man who firmly believed that the Irish nation was ready to break out into revolt against the English, and that all Irish—men and women—hated the British Empire as much as any Prussian. Eileen O’Connor played up to this idée fixe, saw the value of it as a wonderful means of camouflage, lent the Kommandant books on Irish history dealing with the injustice of England to Ireland (in which she firmly believed as a staunch Nationalist), and educated him so completely to the belief that she was anti-English (as she was in politics, though not in war) that he had no doubt of her.

Here the Reverend Mother made a remark which seemed to illuminate Eileen O’Connor’s story, as well as her own knowledge of human nature.

“The child has beautiful eyes and a most sweet grace. Irish history may not account for all.”

“This German Kommandant——” I asked, “what sort of a man was he?”

“For a German not altogether bad,” said the Reverend Mother. “Severe and ruthless, like them all, but polite when there was no occasion to be violent. He was of good family, as far as there are such things in Germany. A man of sixty.”

Eileen O’Connor, with German permission, continued her work as art-mistress at the École de Jeunes Filles. After six months she was permitted to receive private pupils in her two rooms on the ground floor of the Intelligence headquarters, in the same courtyard though not in the same building. Her pupils came with drawing-boards and paint-boxes. They were all girls with pig-tails and short frocks—not so young as they looked, because three or four at least, including the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt, were older than schoolgirls. They played the part perfectly, and the sentries smiled at them and said “Guten Tag, schönes Fräulein,” as each one passed. They were the committee of the Rescue Society:

Julienne de Quesnoy,

Marcelle Barbier,

Yvonne Marigny,

Marguérite Cléry, and Alice de Taffin, de Villers-Auxicourt.

Eileen O’Connor was the director and leading spirit. It seems to me astonishing that they should have arranged the cypher, practised it, written down military information gathered from German conversations and reported to them by servants and agents under the very noses of the German Intelligence officers, who could see into the sitting-room as they passed through French windows and saluted Eileen O’Connor and her young ladies if they happened to meet their eyes. It is more astonishing that, at different times, and one at a time, many fugitives (including five British soldiers who had escaped from the citadel) slept in the cellar beneath that room, changed into German uniforms belonging to men who had died at the convent hospital—the Reverend Mother did that part of the plot—and walked quietly out in the morning by an underground passage leading to the Jardin d’Eté. The passage had been anciently built but was blocked up at one end by Eileen O’Connor’s cellar, and she and the other women broke the wall, one brick at a time, until after three months the hole was made. Their finger-nails suffered in the process, and they were afraid that the roughness of their hands might be noticed by the officers, but in spite of German spectacles they saw nothing of that. Eileen O’Connor and her friends were in constant touch with the prisoners of the Citadel and smuggled food to them. That was easy. It was done by bribing the German sentries with tobacco and meat-pies. They were also in communication with other branches of the work in Belgium, so that fugitives were passed on from town to town, and house to house. Their success made them confident, after many horrible fears, and for a time they were lulled into a sense of security. That was rudely crashed when Eileen O’Connor, the young Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt, and Marcelle Barbier were arrested one morning in September of ’17, on a charge of espionage. They were put into separate cells of the civil prison, crowded with the vilest women of the slums and stews, and suffered something like torture because of the foul atmosphere, the lack of sanitation, and unspeakable abomination.

“Only the spirit of Christian martyrdom could remain cheerful in such terrible conditions,” said the Reverend Mother. “Our dear Eileen was sustained by a great faith and wonderful gaiety. Her laughter, her jokes, her patience, her courage, were an inspiration even to the poor degraded women who were prisoners with her. They worshipped her. We, her friends, gave her up for lost, though we prayed unceasingly that she might escape death. Then she was brought to trial.”

She stood alone in the court. The young Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt had died in prison owing to the shock of her arrest and a weak heart. A weak heart, though so brave. Eileen was not allowed to see her on her death-bed, but she sent a message almost with her last breath. It was the one word “courage!” Mlle. Marcelle Barbier was released before the trial, for lack of direct evidence.

Eileen’s trial was famous in Lille. The court was crowded and the German military tribunal could not suppress the loud expressions of sympathy and admiration which greeted her, nor the angry murmurs which interrupted the prosecuting officer. She stood there, wonderfully calm, between two soldiers with fixed bayonets. She looked very young and innocent between her guards, and it is evident that her appearance made a favourable impression on the court. The President, after peering at her through his horn spectacles, was not so ferocious in his manner as usual when he bade her be seated.

The evidence seemed very strong against her. “She is lost” was the belief of all her friends in court. One of the sentries at the Citadel, jealously savage because another man had received more tobacco than himself—on such a trivial thing did this girl’s life hang!—betrayed the system by which the women’s committee sent food to the French and English prisoners. He gave the names of three of the ladies and described Eileen O’Connor as the ringleader. The secret police watched her, and searched her rooms at night. They discovered the cypher and the key, a list of men who had escaped, and three German uniforms in a secret cupboard. They had been aided in their search by Lieutenant Franz von Kreuzenach of the Intelligence Bureau, who was the chief witness of the prosecution, and whose name was recommended to the Court for the vigilance and zeal he had shown in the detection of the conspiracy against the Army and the Fatherland. It was he who had found the secret cupboard and had solved the key to the cypher.

“We will take the lieutenant’s evidence in due course,” said the President. “Does that complete the indictment against this prisoner?”

Apart from a savage elaboration of evidence based upon the facts presented and a demand that the woman’s guilt, if the Court were satisfied thereon, should be punished by death, the preliminary indictment by the prosecution ended.

It was a terrible case, and during its revelations the people in court were stricken with dread and pity for the girl who was now sitting between the two soldiers. They were all staring at her, and some at least—the Reverend Mother among them—noticed with surprise that when the officer for the prosecution ended his speech she drew a deep breath, raised her head, as though some weight of fear had been lifted from her, and—laughed.

It was quite a merry laugh, with that full blackbird note of hers, and the sound of it caused a strange sensation in the court. The President blinked repeatedly, like an owl blinded by a ray of sunlight. He addressed the prisoner in heavy, barbarous French.

“You are charged with conspiracy against our German martial law. The punishment is death. It is no laughing matter, Fräulein.”

They were stern words, but there was a touch of pity in that last sentence.

“Ce n’est pas une affaire pour rire, Fräulein.”

Eileen O’Connor, said the Reverend Mother, who was to be called as a witness on her behalf, bowed in a gracious way to the President, but with a look of amusement that was amazing to the German officers assembled for her trial. Some of them scowled, but there were others, the younger men, who whispered, and smiled also with no attempt to disguise their admiration of such courage.

“Perhaps it was only I,” said the Reverend Mother, “who understood the child’s joyous relief which gave her this courage. I had waited with terrible dread for the announcement of the discovery of the secret passage. That it had been discovered I knew, for the German lieutenant, Franz von Kreuzenach, had come round to me and very sternly questioned me about a case of medicine which he had found there, stamped with the name of our convent.”

“Then,” I said, “this Franz von Kreuzenach must have suppressed some of the evidence. By what motive——”

The Reverend Mother interrupted me, putting her hand on my sleeve with a touch of protest.

“The good God works through strange instruments, and may touch the hardest heart with His grace. It was indeed a miracle.”

I would give much to have been in that court at Lille when Eileen O’Connor was permitted to question the German lieutenant who was the chief witness against her.

From what I have heard, not only from the Reverend Mother, but from other people of Lille who were present at the trial, she played with this German officer, making him look very foolish, ridiculing him in a merry, contemptuous way before the Court. Indeed he seemed strangely abashed before her.

“The cypher!... Have you ever been a schoolboy, or were you born a lieutenant in the German Army?”

Franz von Kreuzenach admitted that he had once been a boy—to the amusement of his brother-officers.

Had he ever read stories of adventure, fairy-tales, romances, or did he spend his childhood in the study of Nietzsche, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kant, Goethe, von Bernhardi, Karl Marx——

When she strung off these names—so incongruous in association—even the President permitted a slight smile to twist his thin hard mouth.

Franz von Kreuzenach said that he had read some fairy-tales and stories of adventure. Might he ask the gnädiges Fräulein——

“Yes,” said the President, “what has this to do with your case, Fräulein? I desire to give you full liberty in your defence but this is entirely irrelevant to the evidence.”

“It is my case!” cried Miss O’Connor. “Listen to the next question, Herr President. It is the key of my defence.”

Her next question caused laughter in court.

“I ask the Herr Lieutenant whether, as a boy, or a young man, he has read the romances of the French writer, Jules Verne?”

Franz von Kreuzenach looked abashed, and blushed like a schoolboy. His eyes fell before the challenging look of the Irish girl.

“I have read some novels by Jules Verne, in German translations.”

“Oh, in German translations—of course!” said Miss O’Connor. “German boys do not learn French very well.”

“Keep to the case,” said the President. “In Heaven’s name, Fräulein, what has this to do with your defence?”

She raised her hand, for patience, and said, “Herr President, my innocence will soon be clear.”

She demanded of the witness for the prosecution whether he had ever read the novel by Jules Verne called “The Cryptogram.” He said that he had read it only a few days ago. He had discovered it in her room.

Eileen O’Connor turned round eagerly to the President.

“I demand the production of that book.”

An orderly was sent to the lieutenant’s rooms to fetch it. It was clear that the President of the Court made a black mark against Franz von Kreuzenach for not having mentioned its discovery to the Court. As yet, however, he could not see the bearing of it on the case.

Then, with the book in her hand, Eileen O’Connor turned to the famous cryptogram, showed how it corresponded exactly with her own cypher, proved that the pieces of paper found in her rooms were copies of the Jules Verne cypher in the handwriting of her pupils.

“You see, Herr President!” she cried eagerly.

The President admitted that this was proved, but, as he asked, leaning forward in his chair, for what purpose had they copied out that cypher? Cyphers were dangerous things to write in time of war. Deadly things. Why did these ladies want to learn the cypher?

It was then that Eileen O’Connor was most brilliant. She described in a simple and girlish way how she and her pupils worked in their little room. While they copied freehand models, one of them read out to the others, books of romance, love, adventure, to forget the gloom of life and the tragedy of war. One of those books was Jules Verne’s “Cryptogram.” It had fascinated them. It had made them forget the misery of war. They were romantic girls, imaginative girls. Out of sheer merriment, to pass the hours, they had tried to work out the cypher. They had written love-letters to imaginary young men in those secret numbers. Here Eileen, smiling ironically, read out specimens of the letters that had been found.

“Come to the corner of the rue Esquermoise at 9:45. You will know me because I shall be wearing a blue bow in a black hat.”

That was the romantic imagination of the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt.

“When you see a lady standing outside the Jardin d’Eté, with a little brown dog, speak to her in French and say, ‘Comme il fait froid aujourd’hui, mademoiselle.’ If she answers, ‘Je ne vous comprends pas, monsieur,’ you will understand that she is to be trusted, and you must follow her.”

That was a romantic idea to which Eileen herself pleaded guilty.

“Herr President,” said Eileen, “you cannot put old heads on young shoulders, even in time of war. A party of girls will let their foolish little minds run upon ideas of love, even when the sound of guns is not far away. You, Herr President, will understand that perfectly.”

Perhaps there was something in the character of the President that made this a chance hit. All the German officers laughed, and the President shifted in his seat and flushed to the top of his bald, vulture-like head.

The possession of those German uniforms was also explained in the prettiest way by Eileen O’Connor. They were uniforms belonging to three handsome young German soldiers who had died in hospital. They had kept them to return to their mothers after the war, those poor German mothers who were weeping for their sons.... This part of her defence touched the German officers deeply. One of them had tears in his eyes.

The list of escaped fugitives was harder to explain, but again an Irish imagination succeeded in giving it an innocent significance. It had been compiled by a prisoner in the Citadel and given to Eileen as a proof that his own hope of escape was not in vain, though she had warned him of the fearful risk. “The poor man gave me the list in sheer simplicity, and in innocence I kept it.”

Simply and touchingly she admitted her guilt in smuggling food to French and British prisoners and to German sentries, and claimed that her fault was only against military regulations, but in humanity was justified.

“I am Irish,” she said. “I have in my heart the remembrance of English crimes to Ireland—old, unforgettable crimes that still cry out for the justice and the liberty which are denied my country.”

Some of the younger German officers shook their heads approvingly. They liked this Irish hatred of England. It was according to their text-books.

“But,” said the Irish girl, “the sufferings of English prisoners—you know here of their misery, their hunger, their weakness in that Citadel where many have died and are dying—stirred my compassion as a woman to whom all cruelty is tragic, and all suffering of men a call to that mother-love which is in the spirit of all their womanhood, as you know by your German women—as I hope you know. Because they were starved I tried to get them food, as I would to starving dogs or any poor creatures caught in the trap of war, or of men’s sport. To that I confess guilty, with gladness in my guilt.”

The Reverend Mother, standing there in the whitewashed corridor of the convent, in the flickering light of an oil lantern which gleamed on the white ruff round her neck and the silver cross on her breast, though her face was shadowed in the cavern of her black headdress, repeated this speech of Eileen O’Connor as though in hearing it first she had learnt it by heart.

“The child was divinely inspired, monsieur. Our Lady stood by her side, prompting her. I am sure of that.”

The trial lengthened out, until it was late in the evening when the Judge summed up. He spoke again of the gravity of the accusation, the dread punishment that must befall the prisoner if her guilt were proved, the weight of evidence against her. For a time he seemed to press her guilt heavily, and the Court was gloomy. The German officers looked grave. One thing happened in the course of his speech which affected the audience profoundly. It was when he spoke of the romantic explanation that had been offered by the prisoner regarding the secret cypher.

“This lady,” he said, “asks me to believe that she and her companions were playing a simple girlish game of make-believe. Writing imaginary letters to mythical persons. Were these young ladies—nay, is she—herself—so lacking in woman’s charm that she has no living man to love her and needs must write fictitious notes to nonexistent men?”

The President said these words with portentous solemnity. Perhaps only a German could have spoken them. He paused and blinked at the German officers below him. Suddenly into the silence of the court came a ripple of laughter, clear and full of most mirthful significance.

Eileen O’Connor’s laugh bewitched the crowded court and there was a roar of laughter in which all the officers joined. By that laugh more even than by her general gaiety, her courage and eloquence, she won her life.

“I said a decade of the rosary to our Blessed Lady,” said the Reverend Mother, “and thanked God that this dear child’s life would not be taken. I was certain that those men would not condemn her to death. She was acquitted on the charge of espionage, and sentenced to two weeks’ imprisonment for smuggling food to prisoners, by a verdict of seven against three. Only when she left the court did she fall into so deep a swoon that for a little while we thought her dead.”

The Reverend Mother had told her story well. She held me in a deep strained interest. It was rather to myself than to her that I spoke the words which were my comment at the end of this narrative.

“How splendid!... But I am puzzled about that German lieutenant, Franz von Kreuzenach. He kept the real evidence back.”

“That,” said the Reverend Mother solemnly, “was a great mystery and a miracle.”

Wickham Brand joined us in the passage, with Eileen O’Connor by his side.

“Not gone yet?” said Wickham.

“I have been listening to the tale of a woman’s courage,” I said, and when Eileen gave me her hand, I raised it to my lips, in the French style, though not in gallantry.

“Reverend Mother,” she said, “has been exalting me to the Seventh Heaven of her dear heart.”

On my way back to Brand’s mess I told him all I had heard about Eileen’s trial, and I remember his enthusiasm.

“Fine! Thank heaven there are women like that in this blood-soaked world. It saves one from absolute despair.”

He made no comment about the suppression of evidence, which was a puzzle to me.

We parted with a “So long, old man,” outside his headquarters, and I did not see him until a few days later.