"It's true, I can't know," said Brian. "But a thought has come into my head. Shall I tell it to you?""Yes!" the Becketts answered in a breath. They gazed at him as if they fancied him inspired by their son's spirit. No wonder, perhaps! Brianhasan inspired look."Are you very rich?" he asked bluntly, as a child puts questions which grown-ups veil."We're rich in money," answered the old man. "But I guess I never quite realized till now, when we lost Jimmy, how poor you can be, when you're only rich in what the world can give.""I suppose you'll want to put up the finest monument for your son that money can buy," Brian went on, as though he had wandered from his subject. But I—knowing him, and his slow, dreamy way of getting to his goal—knew that he was not astray. He was following some star which we hadn't yet seen."We've had no time to think of a monument," said Mr. Beckett, with a choke in his voice. "Of course we would wish it, if it could be done. But Jim lies on German soil. We can't mark the place——""It doesn't much matter—to him—where his body lies," Brian went on. "Heis not in German soil, or in No Man's Land. Wouldn't he like to have a monument inEveryman's Land?""What do you mean?" breathed the little old lady. She realized now that blind Brian wasn't speaking idly."Well, you see, France and Belgium together will be Everyman's Land after the war, won't they?" Brian said."Every man who wants the world's true peace has fought in France and Belgium, if he could fight. Every man who has fought, and every man who wished to fight but couldn't, will want to see those lands that have been martyred and burned, when they have risen like the Phœnix out of their own ashes. That's why I call France and Belgium Everyman's Land. You say your Jim spent some of his happiest days there, and now he's given his life for the land he loved. Wouldn't you feel as if he went with you, if you made a pilgrimage from town to town he knew in their days of beauty—if you travelled and studied some scheme for helping to make each one beautiful again after the war? If you did this in his name and his honour, could he have a better memorial?""I guess God has let Jim speak through your lips, and tell us his wish," said Mr. Beckett. "What do you think, Jenny?""I think what you think," she echoed. "It's right the word should come to us from the brother of Jim's love."CHAPTER VIThat is the story, Padre, as far as it has gone. No sign from you, no look in your eyes, could show me myself in a meaner light than shines from the mirror of my conscience. If Jim hadn't loved me, it would be less shameful to trade on the trust of these kind people. I see that clearly! And I see how hateful it is to make Brian an innocent partner in the fraud.I'm taking advantage of one man who is dead, and another who is blind. And it is as though I were "betting on a certainty," because there's nobody alive who can come forward to tell the Becketts or Brian what I am. I'm safe,brutallysafe!You'll see from what I have written how Brian turned the scales. The plan he proposed developed in the Becketts' minds with a quickness that could happen only with Americans—and millionaires. Father Beckett sees and does things on the grand scale. Perhaps that's the secret of his success. He was a miner once, he has told Brian and me. Mrs. Beckett was a district school teacher in the Far West, where his fortune began. They married while he was still a poor man. But that's by the way! I want to tell you now of his present, not of his past: and the working out of our future from Brian's suggestion. Ten minutes after the planting of the seed a tree had grown up, and wasputting forth leaves and blossoms. Soon there will be fruit. And it will come into existenceripe! I suppose Americans are like that. They manage their affairs with mental intensive culture.The Becketts are prepared to love me for Jim's sake; but Brian they worship as a supernatural being. Mr. Beckett says he's saved them from themselves, and given them an incentive to live. It was only yesterday that they answered my S. O. S. call. Now, the immediate future is settled, for the four of us; settled for ustogether.Father Beckett is asking leave to travelen automobilethrough the liberated lands. In each town and village Jim's parents will decide on some work of charity or reconstruction in his memory, above all in places he knew and loved. They can identify these by the letters he wrote home from France before the war. His mother has kept every one. Through a presentiment of his death, or because she couldn't part from them, she has brought along a budget of Jim's letters from America. She carries them about in a little morocco hand-bag, as other women carry their jewels.The thought of Brian's plan is for the two old people like an infusion of blood in emptied veins. They say that they would never have thought of it themselves, and if they had, they would not have ventured to attempt it alone, ignorant of French as they are. But this is their generous way of making us feel indispensable! They tell us we are needed to "see them through"; that without our help and advice they would be lost. Every word of kindness is a new stab for me. Shall I grow callous as time goes on, and accept everything as though I really were what they callme—their "daughter"? Or—I begin to think of another alternative. I'll turn to it if I grow desperate.The bright spot in my darkness is the joyful change in the Becketts. They feel that they've regained their son; that Jim will be with them on their journey, and that they've a rendezvous with him at "hischâteau," when they reach the journey's end. They owe this happiness not to me, but to Brian. As for him, he has the air of calm content that used to enfold him when he packed his easel and knapsack for a tramp. Blindness isn't blindness for Brian. It's only another kind of sight."I shan't see the wreck and misery you others will have to see," he says. "Horrors don't exist any more for my eyes. I shall see the country in all its beauty as it was before the war. And who knows but I shall find my dog?" (Brian lost the most wonderful dog in the world when he was wounded.) He is always hoping to find it again!He doesn't feel that he accepts charity from the Becketts. He believes, with a kind of modest pride, that we're really indispensable. Afterward—when the tour is over—he thinks that "some other scheme will open." I think so too. The Becketts will propose it, to keep us with them. They will urge and argue, little dreaming how I drew them, with a grappling-hook resolve to become a barnacle on their ship!To-morrow we move to the Ritz. The Becketts insist. They want us near them for "consultations"! This morning the formal request was made to the French authorities, and sent to headquarters. On the fourth day the answer will come, and there's little doubt it will be "yes."Can I bear to go on deceiving Jim Beckett's father and mother, or—shall I take the other alternative? I must decide to-night.Since I wrote that last sentence I have been out, alone—to decide. Padre, it was in my mind never to come back.I walked a long, long way, to the Champs-Élysées. I was very tired, and I sat down—almost dropped down—on a seat under the high canopy of chestnut trees. I could not think, but I had a sense of expectation as if I were waiting for somebody who would tell me what to do. Paris in the autumn twilight was a dream of beauty. Suddenly the dream seemed to open, and draw me in. Some one far away, whom I had known and loved, wasdreaming me! What I should decide about the future, depended no longer on myself, but upon the dreamer. I didn't know who he was; but I knew I should learn by and by. It was he who would come walking along the road of his own dream, and take the vacant place by me on the seat.Being in the dream, I didn't belong to the wonderful, war-time Paris which was rushing and roaring around me. Military motors, and hugecamionsand ambulances were tearing up and down, over the gray-satin surface of asphalt which used to be sacred to private autos and gay little taxis bound for theatres and operas and balls. For every girl, or woman, or child, who passed, there were at least ten soldiers: French soldiers inbleu horizon, Serbians in gray, Britishers and a sprinkling of Americans in khaki. There was an undertone of music—a tune in the making—in the tramp, tramp, of the soldiers' feet, the rumble andwhirr of the cars-of-war, the voices of women, the laughing cries of children.I thought how simple it would be, to spring up and throw myself under one of the huge, rushingcamions: how easily the thing might be taken for an accident if I stage-managed it well. The Becketts would be angels to Brian when I was gone! But the dreamer of the dream would not let me stir hand or foot. He put a spell of stillness upon me; he shut me up in a transparent crystal box, while outside all the world moved about its own affairs.The mauve light of Paris nights filtered up from the gleaming asphalt, as if through a roof of clouded glass over a subterranean ballroom lit with blue and purple lanterns. Street lamps, darkly shaded for air-raids, trailed their white lights downward, long and straight, like first-communion veils. Distant trees and shrubs and statues began to retreat into the dusk, as if withdrawing from the sight of fevered human-folk to rest. Violet shadows rose in a tide, and poured through the gold-green tunnel of chestnut trees, as sea-water pours into a cave. And the shadow-sea had a voice like the whisper of waves. It said, "The dream is Jim Wyndham's dream." I felt him near me—still in the dream. The one I had waited for had come.I was free to move. The transparent box was broken.What the meaning of my impression was I don't know. But it must have a meaning, it was so strong and real. It has made me change my mind about—the other alternative. I want to live, and find my way back into that dream.CHAPTER VIIPadre, you were right. My greatest comfort, as of old, is in turning to you.I think you had a glimpse of the future when you left me that last message: "Write to me, in the old way, just as if I were alive and had gone on a long journey."When I lock my door, and get out this journal, it seems as if a second door—a door in the wall—opened, to show you smiling the good smile which made your face different from any other. I don't deserve the smile. Did I ever deserve it? Yet you gave it even when I was at my worst. Now it seems to say, "In spite of all, I won't turn my back on you. I haven't given you up."When I first began to write in this book (the purple-covered journal which was your last present to me), I meant just to relieve my heart by putting on paper, as if for you, the story of my wickedness. Now the story is told, I can't stop. I can't shut the door in the wall! I shall go on, and on. I shall tell you all that happens, all I feel, and see, and think. That must have been what you meant me to do.When Brian and I were away from home a million years ago, before the war, we wrote you every day, if only a few paragraphs, and posted our letters at the end of a week. You said those letters were your "magic carpet," on which you travelled with us. Poor Padre, you'd no time normoney for other travelling! You never saw France, till the war called you. And after a few bleak months, that other great call came. I shall write to you about France, and about myself, as I should have written if you were back at home.First—about myself! A few pages ago I said that there was no one alive who could prove me a liar, to the Becketts or Brian: that I was "safe—brutally safe." Well, I was mistaken. I amnotsafe. But I will go back to our start.Everyone warned the Becketts that they would get no automobile, no essence, and no chauffeur. Yet they got all three, as magically as Cinderella got her coach and four. The French authorities played fairy godmother, and waved a wand. Why not, when in return so much was to be done for France?The wand gave a permit for the whole front (counting in the American front!) from Lorraine to Flanders. It produced a big gray car, and a French soldier to drive it. The soldier has only one leg: but he can do more with that one than most men with two. Thus we set forth on the journey Brian planned, the Becketts so grateful—poor darlings—for our company, that it was hard to realize that I didn'tbelong.It was a queer thought that we should be taking the road to Germany—we, of all people: yet every road that leads east from Paris leads to Germany. And it was a wonderful thought, that we should be going to the Marne.Surely generations must pass before that name can be heard, even by children, without a thrill! We said it over and over in the car: "The Marne—the Marne! We shall see the Marne, this autumn of 1917."Meanwhile the road was a dream-road. It had the unnatural quietness of dreams. In days of peace it would have been choked with country carts bringing food to fill the wide-open mouth of Paris. Now, the way to the capital was silent and empty, save for gray military motors and lumbering armycamions. The cheap bowling alleys and jerry-built restaurants of the suburbs seemed under a spell of sleep. There were no men anywhere, except the very old, and boys of the "class" of next year. Women swept out the gloomy shops: women drove omnibuses: women hawked the morning papers. Outside Paris we were stopped by soldiers, appearing from sentry-boxes: our papers were scanned; almost reluctantly we were allowed to pass on, to the Secret Region of Crucifix Corner, which spying eyes must not see—the region of aeroplane hangars, endless hangars, lost among trees, and melting dimly into a dim horizon, their low, rounded roofs "camouflaged" in a confusion of splodged colours.There was so much to see—so much which was abnormal, and belonged to war—that we might have passed without glancing at a line of blue water, parallel with our road at a little distance, had not Brian said, "Have we come in sight of the Ourcq? We ought to be near it now. Don't you know, the men of the Marne say the men of the Ourcq did more than they to save Paris?"The Becketts had hardly heard of the Ourcq. As for me, I'd forgotten that part in the drama of September, 1914. I knew that there was an Ourcq—a canal, or a river, or both, with a bit of Paris sticking to its banks: knew it vaguely, as one knows and forgets that one's friends' faces have profiles. But Brian's words broughtback the whole story to my mind in a flash. I remembered how Von Kluck was trapped like a rat, in thecouloirof the Ourcq, by the genius of Gallieni, and the glorious coöperation of General Manoury and the dear British "contemptibles" under General French.It was a desperate adventure that—to try and take the Germans in the flank; and Gallieni's advisers told him there were not soldiers enough in his command to do it. "Then we'll do it with sailors!" he said. "But," urged an admiral, "my sailors are not trained to march.""They will march without being trained," said the defender of the capital. "I've been in China and Madagascar, I know what sailors can do on land.""Even so, there will not be enough men," answered the pessimists."We'll fill the gaps with the police," said the general, inspired perhaps by Sainte-Geneviève.So the deed was dared; and in a panic at sight of the mysteriously arriving troops, Von Kluck retreated from the Ourcq to the Aisne. It was when he heard how the trick had been played and won by sheer bravado, that he cried out in rage, "How could I count on such acoup? Not another military governor in a hundred would have risked throwing his whole force sixty kilometres from its base. How should I guess what a dare-devil fool Gallieni would turn out? But if Trochu, in '70, had been the same kind of a fool, we should never have got Paris!"Half the ghosts in history seemed to haunt this Route de Strasbourg, and to meet us as we passed. You know how you see the characters in a moving-picture play, and behind them the "fade ins" that show their life history,visions that change on the screen like patterns in a kaleidoscope? So on this meadow-bordered road, peaceful in the autumn sunlight, we saw with our minds' eyes the soldiers of 1914: behind them the soldiers of 1870: farther in the background Napoleon the Great with his men: and fading into the distance, processions of kings who had marched along the Marne, since the day Sainte-Geneviève ordered the gates of Paris to be shut in the face of Attila.Such a gay, gold-sequined blue-green ribbon of a river it looked! Almost impudent in gaiety, as if it wished to forget and be happy. But souls and rivers never really forget. When they know what the Marne knows, they are gay only on the surface!It was at Meaux where we had our first close meeting with the Marne: Meaux, the city nearest Paris "on the Marne front," where the Germans came: and even after three years you can still see on the left bank of the river traces of trench—shallow, pathetic holes dug in wild haste. We might have missed them, we creatures with mere eyes, if Brian hadn't asked, "Can't you see the trenches?" Then we saw them, of course, half lost under rank grass, like dents in a green velvet cushion made by a sleeper who has long ago waked and walked away.From a distance the glistening gray roofs of Meaux were like a vast crowd of dark-winged doves; but as we ran into the town it opened out into dignified importance, able to live up to its thousand years of history. There was no work for the Becketts there, we thought, for the Germans had time to do little material harm to Meaux in 1914: and at first sight there seemed to be no need of alms. But Jim had loved Meaux. His mother took from her bluemorocco bag his letter describing the place, mentioning how he had met the bishop through a French friend."Do you think," she asked me timidly, "we might call on the bishop? Who knows but he remembers our Jimmy?""He's a famous bishop," said Brian. "I've heardpoilusfrom Meaux tell stories of how the Germans were forced to respect him, he was so brave and fine. He took the children of the town under his protection, and no harm came to one of them. There were postcard photographs going round early in the war, of the bishop surrounded by boys and girls—like a benevolent Pied Piper. It's kindness he's famous for, as well as courage, so I'm sure we may call."Near the beautiful old cathedral we passed a priest, and asked him where to find the bishop's house. "You need not go so far; here he comes," was the answer. We looked over our shoulders, almost guiltily, and there indeed he was. He had been in the cathedral with two French officers, and in another instant the trio would have turned a corner. Our look and the priest's gesture told the bishop that we were speaking of him. He paused, and Mr. Beckett jumped out of the stopped car, agile as a boy in his excitement."Oh, I forgot, I can't talk French! Mary, you must see me through!" he pleaded.I hurried to the rescue, and together we walked up to the bishop. Off came Mr. Beckett's hat; and both officers saluted us. One was a general, the other a colonel.If I'd had time to rehearse, I might have done myself some credit. As it was, I stammered out some sort of explanation and introduced Jim's father."I remember young Monsieur Beckett," the bishop said. "He was not one to be forgotten! Besides, he was generous to Meaux. He left a noble present for our poor. And now, you say, he has given his life for France? What is there I can do to prove our gratitude? You have come to Meaux because of his letters? Wait a few minutes, till these brave messieurs have gone, and I myself will show you the cathedral. Oh, you need not fear! It will be a pleasure."He was as good as his word, and better. Not only did he show the splendid Gothic cathedral, pride of the "fair Île-de-France," but the bishop's house as well. Bossuet had lived there, the most famous bishop Meaux had in the past. It was dramatic to enter his study, guided by the most famous bishop of the present; to see in such company the room where Bossuet penned his denunciation of the Protestants, and then the long avenue of yews where he used to walk in search of inspiration. We saw his tomb, too—in the cathedral (yes, I believe Brian saw it more clearly than we!), one of those grand tombs they gave prelates in the days of Louis XIV: and when the Becketts had followed Jim's example in generosity, we bade adieu to the—oh,everso much kindlier heir of the great controversialist. I'm afraid, to tell the truth, the little old lady cared more to know that her Jim's favourite cheese—Brie—was made in Meaux, than anything else in the town's history. Nevertheless, she listened with a charmed air to Brian's story of Meaux's great romance—as she listens to all Brian's stories. It was you, Padre, who told it to Brian, and to me, one winter night when we'd been reading about Gaston, de Foix, "Gaston leBel." Our talk of his exploits brought us to Meaux, at the time of the Jacquerie, in the twelfth century. The common people had revolted against the nobles who oppressed them, and all the Île-de-France—adorable name!—seethed with civil war. In Meaux was the Duchess of Orleans, with three hundred great ladies, most of them beautiful and young. The peasants besieged the Duchess there, and she and her lovely companions were put to sore straits, when suddenly arrived brave Gaston to save them. I don't quite know why he took the trouble to come so far, from his hill-castle near the Spanish frontier, but most likely he loved one of the shut-up ladies. Or perhaps it was simply for love of all womanhood, since Gaston was so chivalrous that Froissart said, "I never saw one like him of personage, nor of so fair form, nor so well made."From Meaux our road (we were going to make Nancy our centre and stopping place) followed the windings of the green ribbon Marne to Château-Thierry, on the river's right bank. There's a rather thrilling ruin, that gave the town its name, and dominates it still—the ruin of a castle which Charles Martel built for a young King Thierry. The legend says that this boy differed from the wicked kings Thierry, sons and grandsons of the Frankish Clovis; that he wanted to be good, but "Fate" would not let him. Perhaps it's a judgment on those terrible Thierry kings, who left to their enemies only the earth round their habitations—"because it couldn't be carried away"—that the Germans have left ruins in Château-Thierry more cruel than those of the crumbling castle. In seven September days they added moremonuments historiquesthan a thousand years had given the ancient Marne city.Jim Beckett had written his mother all about the town, and sent postcard pictures of its pride, the fortress-like, fifteenth-century church with a vast tower set upon a height. He liked Château-Thierry because Jean de la Fontaine was born there, and called it "a peaceful-looking place, just right for the dear fable-maker, who was so child-like and sweet-natured, that he deserved always to be happy, instead of for ever in somebody's debt." A soldier having seen the wasted country at the front, might still describe Château-Thierry as a "peaceful-looking place." But it was the first glimpse the Becketts had had of war's abominable destruction. I took up nursing in the south of France before the Zeppelins made much visible impression on London; and as I volunteered for a "contagious" hospital, I've lived an isolated life far from all horrors save those in my own ward, and the few I saw when I went to nurse Brian. Perhaps it was well for us to begin with Château-Thierry, whose gaping wounds are not mortal, and to miss tragic Varreddes. Had Sermaize-les-Bains, which burst upon us later, been our first experience, the shock might have been too great for Mrs. Beckett. As it was, we worked slowly to the climax. Yet even so, we travelled on with a hideous mirage of broken homes, of intimacies brutally laid bare, floating between the landscape and our eyes. We could not get rid of this mirage, could not brush it away, though the country was friendly and fair of face as a child playing in a waterside meadow. The crudely new bridges that crossed the Marne were the only open confessions of what the river had suffered. But the Marne spirit had known wars enough to learn "how sweet it is to live, forgetting." With her bits of villagesscattered like strewn flowers on her green flood, she floats in a dream of her adventurous past and the glorious future which she has helped to win for France.It was hard to realize that the tiny island villages and hamlets on the level shores had seen the Germans come and go; that under the gray roofs—furry-soft as the backs of Maltese cats—hearts had beaten in agony of fear; that along the white road, with its double row of straight trees like an endless army on parade, weeping fugitives had fled.We were not aiming to reach Nancy that night, so we paused at Épernay. The enemy behaved better there than in most Marne towns, perhaps because Wagner once lived in it, or, more likely, under the soothing influence of Épernay's champagne, which has warmed the cockles of men's hearts since a bishop of the ninth century made it famous by his praise. Nevertheless, there are ruins to see, for the town was bombarded by the Germans after they were turned out. All the quarter of the rich was laid waste: and the vast "Fabrique de Champagne" of Mercier, with its ornamental frieze of city names, is silent to this day, its proud façade of windows broken. Not a big building of the town, not a neighbouring château of a "Champagne baron" has a whole window-pane visible, though three years have rolled on since the cannonading did its work! Nowadays glass is as dear as diamonds in France, and harder to get.Outside Champagnopolis, in the wide wooden village of hospital huts, a doctor told us a war ghost story. One night the Germans made a great haul of champagne, of a good year, in a castle near by. They had knocked offthe heads of many bottles, naming each for a French general of yesterday or to-day, when some officer who knew more history than the rest remembered that Henri IV had taken Épernay in 1592. He named his bottle for Henri de Navarre, and harangued his comrades on the superiority of Wilhelm von Hohenzollern. As the speechmaker cracked the neck with his sword, the bottle burst in a thousand pieces, drenching everyone with wine. A bit of glass struck the electric lamp over the table, and out went the light. For an instant the room was black. Then a white ray flickered on the wall, as if thrown through the window by a searchlight. Out of its glimmer stepped a man, with a long, laughing face and a pointed beard. Round his neck was a high ruff. He wore a doublet of velvet, and shining silk hose. In his hand was a silver goblet, frothing over the top with champagne. "He drinks best who drinks last!" cried he in French, and flung the goblet at the face of him who named the bottle. At the same second there was a great explosion, and only one soldier escaped; he who told the story.Think, Padre, it was near Châlons that Attila was defeated, and forced to fly from France for ever! I ought to say, Attila the first, since the self-named Attila II hasn't yet been beaten back beyond the Rhine.We—you, and Brian and I—used to have excited arguments about reincarnation. You know now which of us was right! But I cling to the theory of the spiral, in evolution of the soul—the soul of a man or the soul of the world. It satisfies my sense of justice and my reason both, to believe that we must progress, being made for progression; but that we evolve upward slowly, with a spiralmotion which brings us at certain periods, as we rise, directly above the last earth-phase in our evolution. If it's true, here, after nearly thirteen centuries, are the Huns overrunning Europe once more. Learned Huns, scientific Huns, but always Huns, repeating history on a higher scale, barbarously bent on pulling down the liberty of the world by the power of brute force. Again they're destined to be conquered as before, at a far bigger price. What will the next turn of their spiral bring, I wonder? A vast battle of intellect, perhaps, when wars of blood have been forgotten. And I wonder, too, where has Attila been, since he was beaten in this Champagne country of the Marne, and died two years later at his wedding-feast in Hungary!Did he appear in our world again, in the form of some great, cruel general or king, or did his soul rest until it was reincarnated in the form that claims his name to-day?I could scarcely concentrate upon Châlons, though it's a noble town, crowded with grand old buildings. My mind was busily travelling back, back into history, as Peter Ibbetson travelled in his prison-dreams. It didn't stop on its way to see the city capitulate to the Allies in 1814, just one hundred years before the great new meaning came into that word "allies." I ran past the brave fifteenth-century days, when the English used to attack Châlons-sur-Marne, hoping to keep their hold on France. I didn't even pause for Saint-Bernard, preaching the Crusade in the gorgeous presence of Louis VII and his knights. It was Attila who lured me down, down into his century, buried deep under the sands of Time. I heard the ring of George Meredith's words: "Attila, my Attila!" ButI saw the wild warrior Attila, fighting in Champagne, not the dead man adjured by Ildico, his bride. I saw him "short, swarthy, broad-chested," in his crude armour, his large head, "early gray," lifted like a wolf's at bay. I saw his fierce, ugly face with its snub nose and little, deep-set eyes, flushed in the fury of defeat as he ordered the famous screen of chariots to be piled up between him and the Romano-Gauls. I saw him and his men profiting by the strange barrier, and the enemy's exhaustion, to escape beyond the Rhine, with eyes yearning toward the country they were to see no more.History calls that battle "one of the decisive battles of the world," yet it lasted only a day, and engaged from a hundred and seventy-four thousand to three hundred thousand men. Oh, the spiral of battles has climbed high since then!I think I should have had a presentiment of the war if I'd lived at Châlons, proud city of twenty-two bridges and the Canal Rhine-Marne. The water on stormy days must have whispered, "They are coming. Take care!"At Vitry-le-François there is also that same sinister canal which leads from the Marne to the Rhine, the Rhine to the Marne. The name has a wicked sound in these days—Rhine-Marne; and at Vitry-le-François of all places. The men from over the Rhine destroyed as much as they had time to destroy of the charming old town planned by Francis I, and named for him. All the villages round about the new Huns broke to pieces, like the toy towns of children: Revigny, sprayed from hand pumps with petrol, and burnt to the ground: Sermaize-les-Bains, loved by Romans and Saracens, obliterated; women drowned inthe river by laughing German soldiers, deep down under yellow water-lilies, which mark their resting place to-day: everywhere, through the fields and forests, low wooden crosses in the midst of little votive gardens, telling their silent tale.Ah, but it is good that Mother Beckett saw Château-Thierry first, or she might have covered her eyes and begged to go back to Paris! Here all speaks of death and desolation, save the busy little hut-villages of the Quakers. The "Friends" quietly began their labour of love before the Battle of the Marne was ended, and they're "carrying on" still. The French translate them affectionately into "les Amis."It was at Bar-le-Duc that I met disaster face to face in so strange a way that it needs a whole letter to tell you what happened.CHAPTER VIIIThere were so many things to see by the way, and so many thoughts to think about them, that Father Beckett and Brian decided on an all night stop at Bar-le-Duc. The town hadn't had an air raid for weeks, and it looked a port of peace. As well imagine enemy aeroplanes over the barley-sugar house of the witch in the enchanted forest, as over this comfortable home of jam-makers!"Jim always asked for currant jam of Bar-le-Duc on his birthdays, ever since he was a little, little boy," Mrs. Beckett remembered aloud. "And even when he was grown up! But then, he wouldn't wait for birthdays. He wanted it every day for breakfast; and for tea at those grand New York hotels, where I wouldn't go without him, any sooner than in a lion's den. Oh, it will be nice to stay at Bar-le-Duc! If there's been a jam factory blown up, we'll help build it again, to please Jim."Father Beckett was shrewdly of opinion that the jam factories could take care of themselves, which rather disappointed his wife. She was vaguely disappointed too, in Bar-le-Duc. I think she expected to smell a ravishing fragrance of Jim's favouriteconfitureas we entered the town. It had been a tiring day for her, with all our stops and sightseeing, and she had less appetite for history than for jam. We had passed through lovely country sinceChâlons, decorated with beautiful tall trees, high box hedges, and distant, rolling downs golden with grain and sunlight. Also, whenever our road drew near the railway, we'd caught exciting glimpses of long trains "camouflaged" in blurry greens and blues, to hide themselves from aeroplanes. Nevertheless, Mother Beckett had begun to droop. Her blue eyes hardly brightened to interest when Brian said we were in the famous region of the Meuse, part of the Austrian Empire in Charlemagne's day: that somewhere hereabout Wittekind, the enslaved Saxon, used to work "on the land," not dreaming of the kingly house of Capet he was to found for France, and that Bar-le-Duc itself would be our starting-point for Verdun, after Nancy and the "Lorraine Front."For her Bar-le-Duc had always represented jam, endless jam, loved by Jim, and talk of the dukes of Bar brought no thrill to Jim's mother. She cared more to see the two largest elms in France of which Jim had written, than any ruins of ducal dwellings or tombs of Lorraine princes, or even the house where Charles-Edouard the Pretender lived for years.Fortunately there was a decent hotel, vaguely open in the upper town on the hill, with a view over the small tributary river Ornain, on which the capital city of the Meuse is built. One saw the Rhine-Marne Canal, too, and the picturesque roofs of old fifteenth-century houses, huddled together in lower Bar-le-Duc, shut in among the vine-draped valleys of Champagne.As we left the car and went into the hotel (I lingering behind to help Brian) I noticed another car behind us. It was more like a taxi-cab than a brave, free-born automobile, but it had evidently come a long way, as it was covered with dust, and from its rather ramshackle roof waved a Red Cross flag.In the good days before the war I should have thought it the most natural thing on earth if a procession of twenty motors had trailed us. But war has put an end to joy-rides. Besides, since the outskirts of Paris, we had been in thezone de guerre, constantly stopped and stared at by sentinels. The only cars we passed, going east or west, were occupied by officers, or crowded withpoilus, therefore the shabby little taxi became of almost startling interest. I looked back, and saw that it was slowing down close behind our imposing auto, from which a few small pieces of luggage for the night were being removed.The Red Cross travellers were evidently impatient. They did not wait for our chauffeur to drive away. The conductor of the car jumped down and opened the door of his nondescript vehicle. I made out, under a thick coat of dust, that he wore khaki of some sort, and a cap of military shape which might be anything from British to Belgian. He gave a hand to a woman in the car—a woman in nurse's dress. A thick veil covered her face, but her figure was girlish. I noticed that she was extremely small and slim in her long, dust-dimmed blue cloak: a mere doll of a creature.The man's back was turned toward me as he aided the nurse; but suddenly he flung a glance over his shoulder, and stared straight at me, as if he had expected to find me there.He was rather short, and too squarely built for his age, which might be twenty-eight or thirty at most; but hisgreat dark eyes were splendid, so gorgeously bright and significant that they held mine for a second or two. This vexed me, and I turned away with as haughty an air as could be put on at an instant's notice.The hotel had no private sitting rooms, but the landlord offered Mr. Beckett for our use a smallsalle de lecture, adjoing hesalon public. There were folding doors between, for a wonder with a lock that worked. By the time we'd bathed, and dressed again, it was the hour for dinner, and Mr. Beckett suggested dining in our own "parlour," as he called it.The landlord himself brought a menu, which Mother Beckett accepted indifferently up to the entremets "omelette au rhum." This she wished changed for something—anything—made with Jim's favourite jam. "He would want us to eat it at Bar-le-Duc," she said, with her air of taking Jim's nearness and interest in our smallest acts for granted.So "omelette à la confiture de groseilles" was ordered; and just as we had come to the end of it and our meal, some one began to play the piano in the public drawing room next door. At the first touch, I recognized a master hand. The air was from Puccini's "La Tosca"—third act, and a moment later a man's voice caught it up—a voice of velvet, a voice of the heart—an Italian voice.We all stopped eating as if we'd been struck by a spell. We hardly breathed. The music had in it the honey of a million flowers distilled into a crystal cup. It was so sweet that it hurt—hurt horribly and deliciously, as only Italian music can hurt. Other men sing with their brains, with their souls, but Italians sing with their blood,their veins, the core of their hearts. Theyaretheir songs, as larks are.The voice brought Jim to me, and snatched him away again. It set him far off at a hopeless distance, across steep purple chasms of dreamland. It dragged my heart out, and then poured it full, full of an unknown elixir of life and love, which was mine, yet out of reach forever. It showed me my past hopes and future sorrows floating on the current of my own blood like ships of a secret argosy sailing through the night to some unknown goal. So now, when I have told you what it did to me, you will know that voice was like no voice I ever heard, except Caruso's. Itwaslike his—astonishingly like; and hardly had the last note of "Mario's" song of love and death dropped into silence when the singer began anew with one of Caruso's own Neapolitan folk-songs, "Mama Mia."I had forgotten Mother and Father Beckett—even Brian—everyone except my lost Jim Wyndham and myself. But suddenly a touch on my hand made me start. The little old lady's, small, cool fingers were on mine, "My daughter, what do the words mean?" she asked. "What is that boy saying to his mama?" Her eyes were blue lakes of unshed tears, for the thought of her son knocked at her heart."It isn't a boy who sings, dear," I said. "It's supposed to be a young man who tries to tell his mother all about his love, but it is too big for any words he can find. He says she must remember how she felt herself when she was in love, and then she will understand what's in his heart.""Oh, it's wonderful!" she whispered. "Howyoungitsounds! Can it be amansinging? It seems too beautiful for anything but a gramophone!"We broke out laughing, and the little lady blushed in shame. "I mean, it's like one of the great singers they make records of," she explained. "There, he's stopped. Oh, James, don't let him go! Wemusthear him again. Couldn't you go next door and thank him? Couldn't you beg him to sing some more?"An Englishman would sooner have died a painful death then obey; but, unabashed, the American husband flung wide open the folding doors.At the piano sat the short, square-built young man of the Red Cross taxi. Leaning with both elbows on the instrument stood the doll-like figure of his companion, the girl in nurse's dress. His back and her profile were turned our way, but at the sound of the opening door he wheeled on the stool, and both stared at Mr. Beckett. Also they stared past him at me. Why at me, and not the others, I could never have guessed then.Our little room was lit by red-shaded candles on the table, while thesalonadjoining blazed with electricity. As the doors opened, it was like the effect of a flashlight for a photograph. I saw that the man and the girl resembled each other in feature; nevertheless, there was a striking difference between the two. It wasn't only that he was squarely built, with a short throat, and a head shaped like Caruso's, whereas she was slight, with a small, high-held head on a slender neck. The chief difference lay in expression. The man—who now looked younger than I had thought—had a dark, laughing face, gay and defiant as a Neapolitan street boy. It might be evil, itmight be good. The girl, who could be no more than twenty, was sullen in her beauty as a thundercloud.The singer jumped up, and took a few steps forward, while the girl stood still and gloomed."I hope I didn't disturb you?" The question was asked of Mr. Beckett, and thrown lightly as a shuttlecock over the old man's head to us in the next room. It was asked in English, with a curiously winning accent, neither Italian nor Irish, but suggesting both."Disturbed!" Father Beckett explained that his errand was to beg for more music. "It's like being at the opera!" was the best compliment he had to give.The young man smiled as if a light had been turned on behind his eyes and his brilliant white teeth. "Delighted!" he said. "I can't sing properly nowadays—shell shock. I suppose I never shall again. But I do my best."He sat down once more at the piano, and without asking his audience to choose, began in a low voice an old, sweet, entirely banal and utterly heartbreaking ballad of Tosti's, with words by Christina Rossetti:"When I am dead, my dearest,Sing no sad songs for me,Plant thou no roses at my head,Nor shady cypress tree.Be the green grass above meWith showers and dewdrops wet,And if thou wilt, remember,And if thou wilt, forget.I shall not see the shadows,I shall not feel the rain;I shall not hear the nightingaleSing on as if in pain.And dreaming through the twilightThat does not rise nor set,Haply I may remember,And haply may forget."The words were of no great depth or worth, and the music was too intentionally heart-wringing to be sincerely fine, yet sung by that man's voice, the piano softly touched by his hands, the poor old song took my self-control and shivered it like thin glass. Tears burst from Mrs. Beckett's eyes, and she hid her face on my shoulder, sobbing beneath her breath: "Oh, Jim—Jim!"When the singer had finished he looked at her, not in surprise, but thoughtfully. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have sung that stuff, Mr. Beckett," he said. "But your son liked it at St. Raphael. We knew each other there, very well."As he spoke his eyes turned to me, deliberately, with meaning. There was a gentle, charming smile on his southern face, but I knew, as if he had told me in so many words, that my secret was his.Involuntarily I glanced at the girl. She had not moved. She stood as before, her elbows on the piano, her small face propped between her hands. But she, too, was looking at me. She had no expression whatever. Her eyes told as little as two shut windows with blinds drawn down. The fancy flashed through me that a judge might look thus waiting to hear the verdict of the jury in a murder case."These two have followed us on purpose to denounce me," I thought. Yet it seemed a stupidly melodramaticconclusion, like the climax of a chapter in an old-fashioned, sentimental story. Besides, the man—evidently the leader—had not at all the face of Nemesis. He looked a merry, happy-go-lucky Italian, only a little subdued at the moment by the pathos of his own nightingale voice and the memory of Jim Beckett. I was bewildered. My reason did not know what to make of him. But my instinct warned me of danger.Mother Beckett dried her eyes with one of her dainty handkerchiefs which always smell like lavender and grass pinks—her leitmotif in perfume. "You knew our Jim?" she exclaimed, choking back tears. "Why, then, perhaps you and Mary—Miss O'Malley——"What would have happened if she had finished her sentence I shall never know, for just then came a crash as if the house were falling. Window-glass shivered. The hotel shook as though in an earthquake. Out went the electric light, leaving only our candles aglow under red shades.Bar-le-Duc was in for an air raid.CHAPTER IXFor a moment we thought the house had been struck by a bomb, and were astonished that it stood. In the uproar of explosions and crashings and jinglings, the small silence of our room—with its gay chrysanthemums and shaded candles—was like that of a sheltered oasis in a desert storm.Not one of us uttered a sound. Father Beckett took his wife in his arms, and held her tight, her face hidden in his coat. Brian had not even got up from his chair by the table. He'd lighted a cigarette, and continued to smoke calmly, a half-smile on his face, as if the bombardment carried him back to life in the trenches. But the beautiful sightless eyes searched for what they could not see: and I knew that I was in his thoughts. I would have gone to him, after the first petrifying instant of surprise, but the singing-man stopped me. "Are you afraid?" I heard his voice close to my ear. Perhaps he shouted. But in the din it was as if he whispered."No!" I flung back. "Had you not better go and take care of your sister?"He laughed. "My sister! Look at her! Does she need taking care of?"The girl had come from the suddenly darkenedsaloninto our room. As he spoke, she walked to the table, helped herself to a cigarette from Brian's silver case whichlay open, and asked its owner for a light. It struck me that she did not realize his blindness.Certainly the young woman did not "need taking care of." Nor did I! Deliberately I turned my back upon the man; but he snatched at the end of a scarf I wore. "No one's looking," he said. "Take this—for your own sake." And he thrust into a little outside pocket of my dress a folded bit of paper. Then he let me go, stepping back to prevent my returning the note.For a second I hesitated, not knowing which of two evils to choose; but the woman who hesitates is inevitably lost. Before I could make up my mind, the door opened and the landlord appeared, apologizing for the raid as if it had been an accident of his kitchen. We must have no fear. All danger was over. The avion—only one!—had been chased out of our neighbourhood. The noise we heard now was merely shrapnel fired by anti-aircraft guns. We would not be disturbed again, that he'd guarantee from his experience!Mrs. Beckett emerged from her husband's coat. Mr. Beckett laughed, and patting his wife's shoulder, complimented her courage. "I'm not sure we haven't behaved pretty well for our first air raid," he said. "The rest of you were fine! But I suppose even you ladies have seen some of these shows before? As for you, Brian, my boy, you're a soldier. What we've been through must seem a summer shower to you. And you, sir"—he turned to the singing-man—"I think you mentioned you'd had shell shock——""Yes," the other answered quickly. "It cost me my voice.""Cost you your voice?" Father Beckett echoed. "If it was better than it is now, why, it must have been a marvel! We're ignorant in the music line, my wife and I, so if we ought to know who you are——"The young man laughed. "Oh, don't be afraid of hurting my feelings! If you were an Italian, or a Britisher—but an American! I sang in New York only part of last winter, and then I—came over here, like everyone else. My name is Julian O'Farrell, but my mother was an Italian of Naples, once a prima donna. She wished me to make my professional début as Giulio di Napoli."The name appeared to mean nothing for the Becketts, but instantly I knew who the man was, if little about him. I remembered reading of the sensation he created in London the summer that Brian and I tramped through France and Belgium. The next I heard was that he had "gone back" to Italy. I had of course supposed him to be an Italian. But now he boasted—or confessed—that he was an Irishman. Why, then, had he left England for Italy when the war broke out? Why had he been singing in New York after Italy joined the Allies? Above all, what had happened since, to put him on my track, with a Red Cross flag and a taxi-cab?These questions asked themselves in my head, while I could have counted "One—two—three." Meantime, Brian had spoken to the girl, and she had answered shortly, in words I could not hear, but with a sullen, doubtful look, like a small trapped creature that snaps at a friendly hand. The landlord was helping a white-faced waiter to clear a place on the table for a tray of coffee and liqueurs; andoutside the noise of shrapnel had died in the distance. The air-raid incident was closed. What next?"You'll both have coffee with us, won't you, Signor di Napoli—or Mr. O'Farrell? Or should I say Lieutenant or Captain?" Father Beckett was urging. "You were a friend of our son's, and my wife and I——""Plain Mister O'Farrell it is," the other broke in. "Thanks, it would be a pleasure to stay, but it's best to refuse, I'm sure, for my sister's sake. You see by her dress what her work has been, and she's on leave because she's tired out. She faints easily—and what with the air raid—maybe you'll let us pay our respects before you leave to-morrow? Then we'll tell you all you want to know. Anyhow, we may be going on for some time in your direction. I saw by a Paris paper a few days ago you were making a tour of the Fronts, beginning at the Lorraine end."His eyes were on me as he spoke, bright with imp-like malice. He looked so like a mischievous schoolboy that it was hard to take him seriously. Yet everything warned me to do so, and his allusion to the Paris newspapers explained much. For the second time a reporter had caught Father Beckett, and got out of him the statement that "My dead son's fiancée, Miss Mary O'Malley, who's been nursing in a 'contagious' hospital near St. Raphael, will be with us: and her brother."So that was how the man had heard about me, and for some reason found it worth while to follow, waving the sword of Damocles! His note burned my pocket. AndIburned to know what it said. No doubt it would explain why he did not cut off my head at once, and have it over!"I think," he was going on, "that the sooner I can get this poor little girl" (a tap on his sister's shoulder) "to her room and to bed the better it will be."Any one apparently less likely to faint, or less in need of rest, than the "poor little girl" indicated, it would be difficult to find, I thought: but the kindly Becketts were the last creatures to be critical. They sympathized, and changed their invitation from after-dinner coffee to breakfast at nine. This was accepted by O'Farrell for himself and his sister, and taking the girl's arm, the ex-singer swept her off in a dramatic exit.When they had gone, it was Brian who asked me if I had known them in the south; and because no incentive could make me lie to Brian, I promptly answered "No." As I spoke, it occurred to me that now, if ever, was the moment when I might still succeed in spoking the wheel of Mr. and Miss O'Farrell before that wheel had time to crush me. I could throw doubt upon their good faith. I could hint that, if they had really been doing Red Cross or other work at St. Raphael, I should certainly have heard of them. But I held my peace—partly through qualms of conscience, partly through fear. Unless the man had proofs to bring of hisbona fideswhere Jim Beckett was concerned, he would scarcely have followed us to claim acquaintance with the parents and confound the alleged fiancée. That he had followed us on purpose I was sure. Not for a second did I believe that the arrival of the taxi-cab in our wake was a coincidence!We drank our coffee, talking of the raid and of the O'Farrells, and—as always—of Jim. Then Father Beckett noticed that his wife was pale. "She looks as if sheneeded bed a good sight more than that little girl did," he said in the simple, homely way I've learned to love.Presently we had all bidden each other good-night, even Brian and I. Then—in my own room—I was free to take that folded bit of paper from my pocket.CHAPTER XTo my surprise, there were only three lines, scribbled in pencil."Come to thesalonfor a talk when the rest of your party have gone to bed. I'll be waiting, and won't keep you long.""Impudent brute!" I said out aloud. But a moment later I had decided to keep the appointment and learn the worst. Needs must, when the devil drives!—if you're in the power of the devil. I was. And, alas! through my fault, so was Brian. After going so far, I could not afford to be thrown back without a struggle; and I went downstairs prepared to fight.It was not yet late; only a few minutes after ten o'clock; and though the Becketts and Brian were on the road to sleep, the hotel was awake, and even lively in its wakefulness. The door of the publicsalonstood open, and the electric light had come on again. At the table, in the centre of the room, sat Mr. Julian O'Farrell,aliasGiulio di Napoli, conspicuously interested in an illustrated paper. He jumped up at sight of me, and smiled a brilliant smile of welcome, but did not speak. A sudden, obstinate determination seized me to thwart him, if he meant to force the first move upon me. I bowed coolly, as one acknowledges the existence of an hotel acquaintance, and passing to the other end of the long table, picked up aJe Sais Toutof a date two years before the war.I did not sit down, but assumed the air of hovering for a moment on my way elsewhere. This manœuvre kept the enemy on his feet; and as the cheap but stately clock on the mantel ticked out second after second, I felt nervously inclined to laugh, despite the seriousness of my situation. I bit my lip hard to frighten away a smile that would have spoilt everything. "If it goes on like this for an hour," I said to myself, "I won't open my mouth!"Into the midst of this vow broke an explosion of laughter that made me start as if it announced a new bombardment. I looked up involuntarily, and met the dark Italian eyes sparkling with fun. "I beg your pardon!" the man gurgled. "I was wondering which is older, yourJe Sais Toutor myIllustration? Mine's the Christmas number of 1909.""Yours has the advantage in age," I replied, without a smile. "Mine goes back only to 1912.""Ah! I'm glad to score that one point," he said, still laughing. "Dear Miss O'Malley, won't you please sit down? I'm a lazy fellow, and I'm so tired of standing! Now, don't begin by being cross with me because I call you 'dear.' If you realized what I've done for you, and what I'm ready to do, you'd say I'd earnedthatright, to begin with!""I don't understand you at all, or why you should claim any right," I hedged. But I sat down, and he sank so heavily into an ancient, plush-covered chair that a spray of dust flew up from the cushions."I'm afraid I'm rather too fat!" he apologized. "But I always lose flesh motoring, so you'll see a change for the better, I hope—in a week or two. I expect our lines will becast in the same places for some time to come—if you're as wise as—as you are pretty. If not, I'm afraid you and Mr. O'Malley won't be long with our party. I say, you are gorgeous when you're in a rage! But why fly into a fury? You told me you didn't understand things. I'm doing my best to explain.""Then your best is very bad," I said."Sorry! I'll begin another way. Listen! I'm going to be perfectly frank. Why not? We're birds of a feather. And the pot can't call the kettle black. Maybe my similes are a bit mixed, but you'll excuse that, as we're both Irish. Why, my being Irish—and Italian—is an explanation of me in itself, if you'd take the trouble to study it. But look here! I don'twantyou to take any trouble. I don't want togiveyou any trouble. Now do you begin to see light?""No!" I threw at him."I don't believe you, dear girl. You malign your own wits. You pay yourself worse compliments than I'd let any one else do! But I promised not to keep you long. And if I break my promise it will be your fault—because you're not reasonable. You're the pot and I'm the kettle, because we're both tarred with the same brush. By the way,arepots and kettles blacked with tar? They look it. But that's a detail. My sister and I are just as dead broke and down and out as you and your brother are. I mean, as youwere, and as you may be again, if you make mistakes.""I'd rather not bring my brother into this discussion," I said. "He's too far above it—and us. You can do as you choose about your sister.""I can makeherdo asIchoose," he amended. "That'swhere my scheme came in, and where it still holds good. When I read the news of Pa and Ma Beckett arriving in Paris, it jumped into my head like a—like a——""Toad," I supplied the simile."I was leaving it to you," said he. "I thought you ought to know, for by a wonderful coincidence which should draw us together, the same great idea must have occurred to you—in the same way, and on the same day. I bet you the first hundred francs I get out of old Beckett that it was so!""Mr. O'Farrell, you're a Beast!" I cried."And you're a Beauty. So there we are, cast for opposite parts in the same play. Queer how it works out! Looks like the hand of Providence. Don't say what you want to say, or I shall be afraid you've been badly brought up. North of Ireland, I understand. We're South. Dierdre's a Sinn Feiner. You needn't expect mercy from her, unless I keep her down with a strong hand—the Hidden Hand. She hates you Northerners about ten times worse than she hates the Huns. Now you look as if you thought her namewasn'tDierdre! It is, because she took it. She takes a lot of things, when I've showed her how. For instance, photographs. She has several snapshots of Jim Beckett and me together. I have some of him and her. They're pretty strong cards (I don't mean a pun!) if we decide to use them. Don't you agree?""I neither agree nor disagree," I said, "for I understand you no better now than when you began.""You're like Mr. Justice What's-his-name, who's so innocent he never heard of the race course. Well, I must adapt myself to your child-like intelligence! I'll go backa bit to an earlier chapter in my career, the way novels and cinemas do, after they've given the public a good, bright opening. It was true, what I said about my voice. I've lost everything but my middle register. I had a fortune in my throat. At present I've got nothing but a warble fit for a small drawing room—and that, only by careful management. I knew months ago I could never sing again in opera. I was coining money in New York, and would be now—if they hadn't dug me out as a slacker—anembusqué—whatever you like to call it. I was a conscientious objector: that is, my conviction was it would be sinful to risk a bullet in a chest full of music, like mine—a treasure-chest. But the fools didn't see it in that light. They made America too hot to hold either Giulio di Napoli or Julian O'Farrell. I'm no coward—I swear to you I'm not, my dear girl! You've only to look me square in the face to see I'm not. I'm full of fire. But ever since I was a boy I've lived for my voice, and you can't die for your voice, like you can for your country. It goes—pop!—with you. I managed to convince the doctors that my heart was too jumpy for the trenches. I see digitalis in your eye, Miss Trained Nurse! It wasn't. It was strophantis. But theywouldset me to driving a motor ambulance—cold-hearted brutes! I got too near the front line one day—or rather the front line got too near me, and a shell hit my ambulance. The next thing I knew I was in hospital, and the first thing I thought of was my voice. A frog would have disowned it. I hoped for a while it might come right; but they sent me to St. Raphael for a sun cure, and—it didn't work. That was last spring. I'm as well as I ever was, except in my throat, and there the specialists say I neednever expect to be better. I'd change with your brother, Miss O'Malley. My God, I would. If I could lose my eyes and have my voice again—my voice!"His flippancy broke down on those words, with one sincere and tragic note that touched me through my contempt. Watching, he saw this, and catching at self-control, he caught also at the straw of sympathy within his reach."I wanted to die for a while," he went on. "But youth is strong, even when you're down on your luck—down at the deepest. My sister came to St. Raphael to be with me. It may seem queer to you, but I'm her idol. She's lost everything else—or rather she thinks she has, which is much the same—everything that made her life worth living. She wanted to be a singer. Her voice wasn't strong enough. She wanted to be an actress. She knew how to act, but—shecouldn't, Heaven knows why. She's got temperament enough, but she couldn't let herself out. You see what she's like! She failed in America, where she'd followed me against our mother's will. Mother died while we were there. Another blow! And a man Dierdre's been half engaged to was killed in Belgium. She didn't love him, but he was made of money. It would have been a big match! She took to nursing only after I was called up. You know in France a girl doesn't need much experience to get into a hospital. But poor little Dare wasn't more of a success at nursing than on the stage. Not enough self-confidence—too sensitive. People think she's always in the sulks—and so she is, these days. I'd been trying for six months' sick leave, and just got it when I read that stuff in the paper about Beckett being killed, and his parents hearing the news the day they arrived. Itstruck me like drama: things do. I was born dramatic—took it from my mother. The thought came to me, how dead easy 'twould be for some girl to pretend she'd been engaged to Beckett, and win her wily way to the hearts and pockets of the old birds. Next I thought: Why not Dierdre? And there wasn'tanyreason why not! I told her it would be good practice in acting. (She hasn't quite given up hope of the stage yet.) We started for Paris on the job; and then I read in a later copy of the same paper about the smart young lady who'd stepped in ahead of us. If old Beckett hadn't been bursting with pride in the heroic girl who'd got a medal for nursing infectious cases in a hospital near St. Raphael, I'd have given up the game for a bad job. I'd have taken it for granted that Jim and the fiancée had met before we met him at St. Raphael. But when the paper said they'd made acquaintance there, and gave your name and all, I knew you were on the same trail with us. You'd walked in ahead, that was the only difference. Andwehad the snapshots. We could call witnesses to swear that no nurse from your hospital had come near St. Raphael, and to swear that none of the chaps in the aviation school had ever come near them. Dierdre hadn't been keen at first, but once she was in, she didn't want to fail again; especially for a North of Ireland girl like you. She was ready to go on. But the newspaper gushed a good deal over your looks, you remember. My curiosity was roused. I was—sort of obsessed by the thought of you. I decided to see what your head was like to look at before chopping it off. And anyhow, you'd already started on your jaunt. Through a rich chap I knew in New York, who's over here helping theRed Cross, I got leave to carry supplies to the evacuated towns, provided I could find my own car. Well, I found it—such as it is. All I ask of it is not to break down till the Becketts have learned to love me as their dear, dead son's best friend. As for Dare—what she was to the dear dead son depends on you.""Depends on me?" I repeated."Depends on you. Dare's not a good Sunday-school girl, but she's good to her brother—as good as you are to yours, in her way. She'll do what I want. But the question is Willyou?"For a moment I did not speak. Then I asked, "What do you want?""Only a very little thing," he said. "To live and let live, that's all. Don't you try to queer my pitch, and I won't queer yours.""What is your pitch?" I asked.He laughed. "You're very non-committal, aren't you? But I like your pluck. You've never once admitted by word or look that you're caught. All the same, you know you are. You can't hurt me, and I can hurt you. Your word wouldn't stand against my proofs, if you put up a fight. You'd go down—and your brother with you. Oh, I don't think he's in it! The minute I saw his face I was sure he wasn't; and I guessed from yours that what you'd done was mostly or all for him. Now, dear Miss O'Malley, you know where you are with me. Isn't that enough for you? Can't you just be wise and promise to let me alone on my 'pitch,' whatever it is?""I won't have Mr. and Mrs. Beckett made fools of in any way."He burst out laughing. "That's good—fromyou! I give you leave to watch over their interests, if you let me take care of mine. Is it a bargain?"I did not answer. I was thinking—thinking furiously, when the landlord came to the door to put out the lights.O'Farrell sprang to his feet. "We're ready to go. We can leave the room free, can't we, Miss O'Malley?" he said in French.Somehow, I found myself getting up, and fading out of the room as if I'd been hypnotized. I walked straight to the foot of the stairs, then turned at bay to deliver some ultimatum—I scarcely knew what. But O'Farrell had cleverly accomplished a vanishing act, and there was nothing left for me to do save go to my own room.
"It's true, I can't know," said Brian. "But a thought has come into my head. Shall I tell it to you?"
"Yes!" the Becketts answered in a breath. They gazed at him as if they fancied him inspired by their son's spirit. No wonder, perhaps! Brianhasan inspired look.
"Are you very rich?" he asked bluntly, as a child puts questions which grown-ups veil.
"We're rich in money," answered the old man. "But I guess I never quite realized till now, when we lost Jimmy, how poor you can be, when you're only rich in what the world can give."
"I suppose you'll want to put up the finest monument for your son that money can buy," Brian went on, as though he had wandered from his subject. But I—knowing him, and his slow, dreamy way of getting to his goal—knew that he was not astray. He was following some star which we hadn't yet seen.
"We've had no time to think of a monument," said Mr. Beckett, with a choke in his voice. "Of course we would wish it, if it could be done. But Jim lies on German soil. We can't mark the place——"
"It doesn't much matter—to him—where his body lies," Brian went on. "Heis not in German soil, or in No Man's Land. Wouldn't he like to have a monument inEveryman's Land?"
"What do you mean?" breathed the little old lady. She realized now that blind Brian wasn't speaking idly.
"Well, you see, France and Belgium together will be Everyman's Land after the war, won't they?" Brian said.
"Every man who wants the world's true peace has fought in France and Belgium, if he could fight. Every man who has fought, and every man who wished to fight but couldn't, will want to see those lands that have been martyred and burned, when they have risen like the Phœnix out of their own ashes. That's why I call France and Belgium Everyman's Land. You say your Jim spent some of his happiest days there, and now he's given his life for the land he loved. Wouldn't you feel as if he went with you, if you made a pilgrimage from town to town he knew in their days of beauty—if you travelled and studied some scheme for helping to make each one beautiful again after the war? If you did this in his name and his honour, could he have a better memorial?"
"I guess God has let Jim speak through your lips, and tell us his wish," said Mr. Beckett. "What do you think, Jenny?"
"I think what you think," she echoed. "It's right the word should come to us from the brother of Jim's love."
That is the story, Padre, as far as it has gone. No sign from you, no look in your eyes, could show me myself in a meaner light than shines from the mirror of my conscience. If Jim hadn't loved me, it would be less shameful to trade on the trust of these kind people. I see that clearly! And I see how hateful it is to make Brian an innocent partner in the fraud.
I'm taking advantage of one man who is dead, and another who is blind. And it is as though I were "betting on a certainty," because there's nobody alive who can come forward to tell the Becketts or Brian what I am. I'm safe,brutallysafe!
You'll see from what I have written how Brian turned the scales. The plan he proposed developed in the Becketts' minds with a quickness that could happen only with Americans—and millionaires. Father Beckett sees and does things on the grand scale. Perhaps that's the secret of his success. He was a miner once, he has told Brian and me. Mrs. Beckett was a district school teacher in the Far West, where his fortune began. They married while he was still a poor man. But that's by the way! I want to tell you now of his present, not of his past: and the working out of our future from Brian's suggestion. Ten minutes after the planting of the seed a tree had grown up, and wasputting forth leaves and blossoms. Soon there will be fruit. And it will come into existenceripe! I suppose Americans are like that. They manage their affairs with mental intensive culture.
The Becketts are prepared to love me for Jim's sake; but Brian they worship as a supernatural being. Mr. Beckett says he's saved them from themselves, and given them an incentive to live. It was only yesterday that they answered my S. O. S. call. Now, the immediate future is settled, for the four of us; settled for ustogether.
Father Beckett is asking leave to travelen automobilethrough the liberated lands. In each town and village Jim's parents will decide on some work of charity or reconstruction in his memory, above all in places he knew and loved. They can identify these by the letters he wrote home from France before the war. His mother has kept every one. Through a presentiment of his death, or because she couldn't part from them, she has brought along a budget of Jim's letters from America. She carries them about in a little morocco hand-bag, as other women carry their jewels.
The thought of Brian's plan is for the two old people like an infusion of blood in emptied veins. They say that they would never have thought of it themselves, and if they had, they would not have ventured to attempt it alone, ignorant of French as they are. But this is their generous way of making us feel indispensable! They tell us we are needed to "see them through"; that without our help and advice they would be lost. Every word of kindness is a new stab for me. Shall I grow callous as time goes on, and accept everything as though I really were what they callme—their "daughter"? Or—I begin to think of another alternative. I'll turn to it if I grow desperate.
The bright spot in my darkness is the joyful change in the Becketts. They feel that they've regained their son; that Jim will be with them on their journey, and that they've a rendezvous with him at "hischâteau," when they reach the journey's end. They owe this happiness not to me, but to Brian. As for him, he has the air of calm content that used to enfold him when he packed his easel and knapsack for a tramp. Blindness isn't blindness for Brian. It's only another kind of sight.
"I shan't see the wreck and misery you others will have to see," he says. "Horrors don't exist any more for my eyes. I shall see the country in all its beauty as it was before the war. And who knows but I shall find my dog?" (Brian lost the most wonderful dog in the world when he was wounded.) He is always hoping to find it again!
He doesn't feel that he accepts charity from the Becketts. He believes, with a kind of modest pride, that we're really indispensable. Afterward—when the tour is over—he thinks that "some other scheme will open." I think so too. The Becketts will propose it, to keep us with them. They will urge and argue, little dreaming how I drew them, with a grappling-hook resolve to become a barnacle on their ship!
To-morrow we move to the Ritz. The Becketts insist. They want us near them for "consultations"! This morning the formal request was made to the French authorities, and sent to headquarters. On the fourth day the answer will come, and there's little doubt it will be "yes."
Can I bear to go on deceiving Jim Beckett's father and mother, or—shall I take the other alternative? I must decide to-night.
Since I wrote that last sentence I have been out, alone—to decide. Padre, it was in my mind never to come back.
I walked a long, long way, to the Champs-Élysées. I was very tired, and I sat down—almost dropped down—on a seat under the high canopy of chestnut trees. I could not think, but I had a sense of expectation as if I were waiting for somebody who would tell me what to do. Paris in the autumn twilight was a dream of beauty. Suddenly the dream seemed to open, and draw me in. Some one far away, whom I had known and loved, wasdreaming me! What I should decide about the future, depended no longer on myself, but upon the dreamer. I didn't know who he was; but I knew I should learn by and by. It was he who would come walking along the road of his own dream, and take the vacant place by me on the seat.
Being in the dream, I didn't belong to the wonderful, war-time Paris which was rushing and roaring around me. Military motors, and hugecamionsand ambulances were tearing up and down, over the gray-satin surface of asphalt which used to be sacred to private autos and gay little taxis bound for theatres and operas and balls. For every girl, or woman, or child, who passed, there were at least ten soldiers: French soldiers inbleu horizon, Serbians in gray, Britishers and a sprinkling of Americans in khaki. There was an undertone of music—a tune in the making—in the tramp, tramp, of the soldiers' feet, the rumble andwhirr of the cars-of-war, the voices of women, the laughing cries of children.
I thought how simple it would be, to spring up and throw myself under one of the huge, rushingcamions: how easily the thing might be taken for an accident if I stage-managed it well. The Becketts would be angels to Brian when I was gone! But the dreamer of the dream would not let me stir hand or foot. He put a spell of stillness upon me; he shut me up in a transparent crystal box, while outside all the world moved about its own affairs.
The mauve light of Paris nights filtered up from the gleaming asphalt, as if through a roof of clouded glass over a subterranean ballroom lit with blue and purple lanterns. Street lamps, darkly shaded for air-raids, trailed their white lights downward, long and straight, like first-communion veils. Distant trees and shrubs and statues began to retreat into the dusk, as if withdrawing from the sight of fevered human-folk to rest. Violet shadows rose in a tide, and poured through the gold-green tunnel of chestnut trees, as sea-water pours into a cave. And the shadow-sea had a voice like the whisper of waves. It said, "The dream is Jim Wyndham's dream." I felt him near me—still in the dream. The one I had waited for had come.
I was free to move. The transparent box was broken.
What the meaning of my impression was I don't know. But it must have a meaning, it was so strong and real. It has made me change my mind about—the other alternative. I want to live, and find my way back into that dream.
Padre, you were right. My greatest comfort, as of old, is in turning to you.
I think you had a glimpse of the future when you left me that last message: "Write to me, in the old way, just as if I were alive and had gone on a long journey."
When I lock my door, and get out this journal, it seems as if a second door—a door in the wall—opened, to show you smiling the good smile which made your face different from any other. I don't deserve the smile. Did I ever deserve it? Yet you gave it even when I was at my worst. Now it seems to say, "In spite of all, I won't turn my back on you. I haven't given you up."
When I first began to write in this book (the purple-covered journal which was your last present to me), I meant just to relieve my heart by putting on paper, as if for you, the story of my wickedness. Now the story is told, I can't stop. I can't shut the door in the wall! I shall go on, and on. I shall tell you all that happens, all I feel, and see, and think. That must have been what you meant me to do.
When Brian and I were away from home a million years ago, before the war, we wrote you every day, if only a few paragraphs, and posted our letters at the end of a week. You said those letters were your "magic carpet," on which you travelled with us. Poor Padre, you'd no time normoney for other travelling! You never saw France, till the war called you. And after a few bleak months, that other great call came. I shall write to you about France, and about myself, as I should have written if you were back at home.
First—about myself! A few pages ago I said that there was no one alive who could prove me a liar, to the Becketts or Brian: that I was "safe—brutally safe." Well, I was mistaken. I amnotsafe. But I will go back to our start.
Everyone warned the Becketts that they would get no automobile, no essence, and no chauffeur. Yet they got all three, as magically as Cinderella got her coach and four. The French authorities played fairy godmother, and waved a wand. Why not, when in return so much was to be done for France?
The wand gave a permit for the whole front (counting in the American front!) from Lorraine to Flanders. It produced a big gray car, and a French soldier to drive it. The soldier has only one leg: but he can do more with that one than most men with two. Thus we set forth on the journey Brian planned, the Becketts so grateful—poor darlings—for our company, that it was hard to realize that I didn'tbelong.
It was a queer thought that we should be taking the road to Germany—we, of all people: yet every road that leads east from Paris leads to Germany. And it was a wonderful thought, that we should be going to the Marne.
Surely generations must pass before that name can be heard, even by children, without a thrill! We said it over and over in the car: "The Marne—the Marne! We shall see the Marne, this autumn of 1917."
Meanwhile the road was a dream-road. It had the unnatural quietness of dreams. In days of peace it would have been choked with country carts bringing food to fill the wide-open mouth of Paris. Now, the way to the capital was silent and empty, save for gray military motors and lumbering armycamions. The cheap bowling alleys and jerry-built restaurants of the suburbs seemed under a spell of sleep. There were no men anywhere, except the very old, and boys of the "class" of next year. Women swept out the gloomy shops: women drove omnibuses: women hawked the morning papers. Outside Paris we were stopped by soldiers, appearing from sentry-boxes: our papers were scanned; almost reluctantly we were allowed to pass on, to the Secret Region of Crucifix Corner, which spying eyes must not see—the region of aeroplane hangars, endless hangars, lost among trees, and melting dimly into a dim horizon, their low, rounded roofs "camouflaged" in a confusion of splodged colours.
There was so much to see—so much which was abnormal, and belonged to war—that we might have passed without glancing at a line of blue water, parallel with our road at a little distance, had not Brian said, "Have we come in sight of the Ourcq? We ought to be near it now. Don't you know, the men of the Marne say the men of the Ourcq did more than they to save Paris?"
The Becketts had hardly heard of the Ourcq. As for me, I'd forgotten that part in the drama of September, 1914. I knew that there was an Ourcq—a canal, or a river, or both, with a bit of Paris sticking to its banks: knew it vaguely, as one knows and forgets that one's friends' faces have profiles. But Brian's words broughtback the whole story to my mind in a flash. I remembered how Von Kluck was trapped like a rat, in thecouloirof the Ourcq, by the genius of Gallieni, and the glorious coöperation of General Manoury and the dear British "contemptibles" under General French.
It was a desperate adventure that—to try and take the Germans in the flank; and Gallieni's advisers told him there were not soldiers enough in his command to do it. "Then we'll do it with sailors!" he said. "But," urged an admiral, "my sailors are not trained to march."
"They will march without being trained," said the defender of the capital. "I've been in China and Madagascar, I know what sailors can do on land."
"Even so, there will not be enough men," answered the pessimists.
"We'll fill the gaps with the police," said the general, inspired perhaps by Sainte-Geneviève.
So the deed was dared; and in a panic at sight of the mysteriously arriving troops, Von Kluck retreated from the Ourcq to the Aisne. It was when he heard how the trick had been played and won by sheer bravado, that he cried out in rage, "How could I count on such acoup? Not another military governor in a hundred would have risked throwing his whole force sixty kilometres from its base. How should I guess what a dare-devil fool Gallieni would turn out? But if Trochu, in '70, had been the same kind of a fool, we should never have got Paris!"
Half the ghosts in history seemed to haunt this Route de Strasbourg, and to meet us as we passed. You know how you see the characters in a moving-picture play, and behind them the "fade ins" that show their life history,visions that change on the screen like patterns in a kaleidoscope? So on this meadow-bordered road, peaceful in the autumn sunlight, we saw with our minds' eyes the soldiers of 1914: behind them the soldiers of 1870: farther in the background Napoleon the Great with his men: and fading into the distance, processions of kings who had marched along the Marne, since the day Sainte-Geneviève ordered the gates of Paris to be shut in the face of Attila.
Such a gay, gold-sequined blue-green ribbon of a river it looked! Almost impudent in gaiety, as if it wished to forget and be happy. But souls and rivers never really forget. When they know what the Marne knows, they are gay only on the surface!
It was at Meaux where we had our first close meeting with the Marne: Meaux, the city nearest Paris "on the Marne front," where the Germans came: and even after three years you can still see on the left bank of the river traces of trench—shallow, pathetic holes dug in wild haste. We might have missed them, we creatures with mere eyes, if Brian hadn't asked, "Can't you see the trenches?" Then we saw them, of course, half lost under rank grass, like dents in a green velvet cushion made by a sleeper who has long ago waked and walked away.
From a distance the glistening gray roofs of Meaux were like a vast crowd of dark-winged doves; but as we ran into the town it opened out into dignified importance, able to live up to its thousand years of history. There was no work for the Becketts there, we thought, for the Germans had time to do little material harm to Meaux in 1914: and at first sight there seemed to be no need of alms. But Jim had loved Meaux. His mother took from her bluemorocco bag his letter describing the place, mentioning how he had met the bishop through a French friend.
"Do you think," she asked me timidly, "we might call on the bishop? Who knows but he remembers our Jimmy?"
"He's a famous bishop," said Brian. "I've heardpoilusfrom Meaux tell stories of how the Germans were forced to respect him, he was so brave and fine. He took the children of the town under his protection, and no harm came to one of them. There were postcard photographs going round early in the war, of the bishop surrounded by boys and girls—like a benevolent Pied Piper. It's kindness he's famous for, as well as courage, so I'm sure we may call."
Near the beautiful old cathedral we passed a priest, and asked him where to find the bishop's house. "You need not go so far; here he comes," was the answer. We looked over our shoulders, almost guiltily, and there indeed he was. He had been in the cathedral with two French officers, and in another instant the trio would have turned a corner. Our look and the priest's gesture told the bishop that we were speaking of him. He paused, and Mr. Beckett jumped out of the stopped car, agile as a boy in his excitement.
"Oh, I forgot, I can't talk French! Mary, you must see me through!" he pleaded.
I hurried to the rescue, and together we walked up to the bishop. Off came Mr. Beckett's hat; and both officers saluted us. One was a general, the other a colonel.
If I'd had time to rehearse, I might have done myself some credit. As it was, I stammered out some sort of explanation and introduced Jim's father.
"I remember young Monsieur Beckett," the bishop said. "He was not one to be forgotten! Besides, he was generous to Meaux. He left a noble present for our poor. And now, you say, he has given his life for France? What is there I can do to prove our gratitude? You have come to Meaux because of his letters? Wait a few minutes, till these brave messieurs have gone, and I myself will show you the cathedral. Oh, you need not fear! It will be a pleasure."
He was as good as his word, and better. Not only did he show the splendid Gothic cathedral, pride of the "fair Île-de-France," but the bishop's house as well. Bossuet had lived there, the most famous bishop Meaux had in the past. It was dramatic to enter his study, guided by the most famous bishop of the present; to see in such company the room where Bossuet penned his denunciation of the Protestants, and then the long avenue of yews where he used to walk in search of inspiration. We saw his tomb, too—in the cathedral (yes, I believe Brian saw it more clearly than we!), one of those grand tombs they gave prelates in the days of Louis XIV: and when the Becketts had followed Jim's example in generosity, we bade adieu to the—oh,everso much kindlier heir of the great controversialist. I'm afraid, to tell the truth, the little old lady cared more to know that her Jim's favourite cheese—Brie—was made in Meaux, than anything else in the town's history. Nevertheless, she listened with a charmed air to Brian's story of Meaux's great romance—as she listens to all Brian's stories. It was you, Padre, who told it to Brian, and to me, one winter night when we'd been reading about Gaston, de Foix, "Gaston leBel." Our talk of his exploits brought us to Meaux, at the time of the Jacquerie, in the twelfth century. The common people had revolted against the nobles who oppressed them, and all the Île-de-France—adorable name!—seethed with civil war. In Meaux was the Duchess of Orleans, with three hundred great ladies, most of them beautiful and young. The peasants besieged the Duchess there, and she and her lovely companions were put to sore straits, when suddenly arrived brave Gaston to save them. I don't quite know why he took the trouble to come so far, from his hill-castle near the Spanish frontier, but most likely he loved one of the shut-up ladies. Or perhaps it was simply for love of all womanhood, since Gaston was so chivalrous that Froissart said, "I never saw one like him of personage, nor of so fair form, nor so well made."
From Meaux our road (we were going to make Nancy our centre and stopping place) followed the windings of the green ribbon Marne to Château-Thierry, on the river's right bank. There's a rather thrilling ruin, that gave the town its name, and dominates it still—the ruin of a castle which Charles Martel built for a young King Thierry. The legend says that this boy differed from the wicked kings Thierry, sons and grandsons of the Frankish Clovis; that he wanted to be good, but "Fate" would not let him. Perhaps it's a judgment on those terrible Thierry kings, who left to their enemies only the earth round their habitations—"because it couldn't be carried away"—that the Germans have left ruins in Château-Thierry more cruel than those of the crumbling castle. In seven September days they added moremonuments historiquesthan a thousand years had given the ancient Marne city.
Jim Beckett had written his mother all about the town, and sent postcard pictures of its pride, the fortress-like, fifteenth-century church with a vast tower set upon a height. He liked Château-Thierry because Jean de la Fontaine was born there, and called it "a peaceful-looking place, just right for the dear fable-maker, who was so child-like and sweet-natured, that he deserved always to be happy, instead of for ever in somebody's debt." A soldier having seen the wasted country at the front, might still describe Château-Thierry as a "peaceful-looking place." But it was the first glimpse the Becketts had had of war's abominable destruction. I took up nursing in the south of France before the Zeppelins made much visible impression on London; and as I volunteered for a "contagious" hospital, I've lived an isolated life far from all horrors save those in my own ward, and the few I saw when I went to nurse Brian. Perhaps it was well for us to begin with Château-Thierry, whose gaping wounds are not mortal, and to miss tragic Varreddes. Had Sermaize-les-Bains, which burst upon us later, been our first experience, the shock might have been too great for Mrs. Beckett. As it was, we worked slowly to the climax. Yet even so, we travelled on with a hideous mirage of broken homes, of intimacies brutally laid bare, floating between the landscape and our eyes. We could not get rid of this mirage, could not brush it away, though the country was friendly and fair of face as a child playing in a waterside meadow. The crudely new bridges that crossed the Marne were the only open confessions of what the river had suffered. But the Marne spirit had known wars enough to learn "how sweet it is to live, forgetting." With her bits of villagesscattered like strewn flowers on her green flood, she floats in a dream of her adventurous past and the glorious future which she has helped to win for France.
It was hard to realize that the tiny island villages and hamlets on the level shores had seen the Germans come and go; that under the gray roofs—furry-soft as the backs of Maltese cats—hearts had beaten in agony of fear; that along the white road, with its double row of straight trees like an endless army on parade, weeping fugitives had fled.
We were not aiming to reach Nancy that night, so we paused at Épernay. The enemy behaved better there than in most Marne towns, perhaps because Wagner once lived in it, or, more likely, under the soothing influence of Épernay's champagne, which has warmed the cockles of men's hearts since a bishop of the ninth century made it famous by his praise. Nevertheless, there are ruins to see, for the town was bombarded by the Germans after they were turned out. All the quarter of the rich was laid waste: and the vast "Fabrique de Champagne" of Mercier, with its ornamental frieze of city names, is silent to this day, its proud façade of windows broken. Not a big building of the town, not a neighbouring château of a "Champagne baron" has a whole window-pane visible, though three years have rolled on since the cannonading did its work! Nowadays glass is as dear as diamonds in France, and harder to get.
Outside Champagnopolis, in the wide wooden village of hospital huts, a doctor told us a war ghost story. One night the Germans made a great haul of champagne, of a good year, in a castle near by. They had knocked offthe heads of many bottles, naming each for a French general of yesterday or to-day, when some officer who knew more history than the rest remembered that Henri IV had taken Épernay in 1592. He named his bottle for Henri de Navarre, and harangued his comrades on the superiority of Wilhelm von Hohenzollern. As the speechmaker cracked the neck with his sword, the bottle burst in a thousand pieces, drenching everyone with wine. A bit of glass struck the electric lamp over the table, and out went the light. For an instant the room was black. Then a white ray flickered on the wall, as if thrown through the window by a searchlight. Out of its glimmer stepped a man, with a long, laughing face and a pointed beard. Round his neck was a high ruff. He wore a doublet of velvet, and shining silk hose. In his hand was a silver goblet, frothing over the top with champagne. "He drinks best who drinks last!" cried he in French, and flung the goblet at the face of him who named the bottle. At the same second there was a great explosion, and only one soldier escaped; he who told the story.
Think, Padre, it was near Châlons that Attila was defeated, and forced to fly from France for ever! I ought to say, Attila the first, since the self-named Attila II hasn't yet been beaten back beyond the Rhine.
We—you, and Brian and I—used to have excited arguments about reincarnation. You know now which of us was right! But I cling to the theory of the spiral, in evolution of the soul—the soul of a man or the soul of the world. It satisfies my sense of justice and my reason both, to believe that we must progress, being made for progression; but that we evolve upward slowly, with a spiralmotion which brings us at certain periods, as we rise, directly above the last earth-phase in our evolution. If it's true, here, after nearly thirteen centuries, are the Huns overrunning Europe once more. Learned Huns, scientific Huns, but always Huns, repeating history on a higher scale, barbarously bent on pulling down the liberty of the world by the power of brute force. Again they're destined to be conquered as before, at a far bigger price. What will the next turn of their spiral bring, I wonder? A vast battle of intellect, perhaps, when wars of blood have been forgotten. And I wonder, too, where has Attila been, since he was beaten in this Champagne country of the Marne, and died two years later at his wedding-feast in Hungary!
Did he appear in our world again, in the form of some great, cruel general or king, or did his soul rest until it was reincarnated in the form that claims his name to-day?
I could scarcely concentrate upon Châlons, though it's a noble town, crowded with grand old buildings. My mind was busily travelling back, back into history, as Peter Ibbetson travelled in his prison-dreams. It didn't stop on its way to see the city capitulate to the Allies in 1814, just one hundred years before the great new meaning came into that word "allies." I ran past the brave fifteenth-century days, when the English used to attack Châlons-sur-Marne, hoping to keep their hold on France. I didn't even pause for Saint-Bernard, preaching the Crusade in the gorgeous presence of Louis VII and his knights. It was Attila who lured me down, down into his century, buried deep under the sands of Time. I heard the ring of George Meredith's words: "Attila, my Attila!" ButI saw the wild warrior Attila, fighting in Champagne, not the dead man adjured by Ildico, his bride. I saw him "short, swarthy, broad-chested," in his crude armour, his large head, "early gray," lifted like a wolf's at bay. I saw his fierce, ugly face with its snub nose and little, deep-set eyes, flushed in the fury of defeat as he ordered the famous screen of chariots to be piled up between him and the Romano-Gauls. I saw him and his men profiting by the strange barrier, and the enemy's exhaustion, to escape beyond the Rhine, with eyes yearning toward the country they were to see no more.
History calls that battle "one of the decisive battles of the world," yet it lasted only a day, and engaged from a hundred and seventy-four thousand to three hundred thousand men. Oh, the spiral of battles has climbed high since then!
I think I should have had a presentiment of the war if I'd lived at Châlons, proud city of twenty-two bridges and the Canal Rhine-Marne. The water on stormy days must have whispered, "They are coming. Take care!"
At Vitry-le-François there is also that same sinister canal which leads from the Marne to the Rhine, the Rhine to the Marne. The name has a wicked sound in these days—Rhine-Marne; and at Vitry-le-François of all places. The men from over the Rhine destroyed as much as they had time to destroy of the charming old town planned by Francis I, and named for him. All the villages round about the new Huns broke to pieces, like the toy towns of children: Revigny, sprayed from hand pumps with petrol, and burnt to the ground: Sermaize-les-Bains, loved by Romans and Saracens, obliterated; women drowned inthe river by laughing German soldiers, deep down under yellow water-lilies, which mark their resting place to-day: everywhere, through the fields and forests, low wooden crosses in the midst of little votive gardens, telling their silent tale.
Ah, but it is good that Mother Beckett saw Château-Thierry first, or she might have covered her eyes and begged to go back to Paris! Here all speaks of death and desolation, save the busy little hut-villages of the Quakers. The "Friends" quietly began their labour of love before the Battle of the Marne was ended, and they're "carrying on" still. The French translate them affectionately into "les Amis."
It was at Bar-le-Duc that I met disaster face to face in so strange a way that it needs a whole letter to tell you what happened.
There were so many things to see by the way, and so many thoughts to think about them, that Father Beckett and Brian decided on an all night stop at Bar-le-Duc. The town hadn't had an air raid for weeks, and it looked a port of peace. As well imagine enemy aeroplanes over the barley-sugar house of the witch in the enchanted forest, as over this comfortable home of jam-makers!
"Jim always asked for currant jam of Bar-le-Duc on his birthdays, ever since he was a little, little boy," Mrs. Beckett remembered aloud. "And even when he was grown up! But then, he wouldn't wait for birthdays. He wanted it every day for breakfast; and for tea at those grand New York hotels, where I wouldn't go without him, any sooner than in a lion's den. Oh, it will be nice to stay at Bar-le-Duc! If there's been a jam factory blown up, we'll help build it again, to please Jim."
Father Beckett was shrewdly of opinion that the jam factories could take care of themselves, which rather disappointed his wife. She was vaguely disappointed too, in Bar-le-Duc. I think she expected to smell a ravishing fragrance of Jim's favouriteconfitureas we entered the town. It had been a tiring day for her, with all our stops and sightseeing, and she had less appetite for history than for jam. We had passed through lovely country sinceChâlons, decorated with beautiful tall trees, high box hedges, and distant, rolling downs golden with grain and sunlight. Also, whenever our road drew near the railway, we'd caught exciting glimpses of long trains "camouflaged" in blurry greens and blues, to hide themselves from aeroplanes. Nevertheless, Mother Beckett had begun to droop. Her blue eyes hardly brightened to interest when Brian said we were in the famous region of the Meuse, part of the Austrian Empire in Charlemagne's day: that somewhere hereabout Wittekind, the enslaved Saxon, used to work "on the land," not dreaming of the kingly house of Capet he was to found for France, and that Bar-le-Duc itself would be our starting-point for Verdun, after Nancy and the "Lorraine Front."
For her Bar-le-Duc had always represented jam, endless jam, loved by Jim, and talk of the dukes of Bar brought no thrill to Jim's mother. She cared more to see the two largest elms in France of which Jim had written, than any ruins of ducal dwellings or tombs of Lorraine princes, or even the house where Charles-Edouard the Pretender lived for years.
Fortunately there was a decent hotel, vaguely open in the upper town on the hill, with a view over the small tributary river Ornain, on which the capital city of the Meuse is built. One saw the Rhine-Marne Canal, too, and the picturesque roofs of old fifteenth-century houses, huddled together in lower Bar-le-Duc, shut in among the vine-draped valleys of Champagne.
As we left the car and went into the hotel (I lingering behind to help Brian) I noticed another car behind us. It was more like a taxi-cab than a brave, free-born automobile, but it had evidently come a long way, as it was covered with dust, and from its rather ramshackle roof waved a Red Cross flag.
In the good days before the war I should have thought it the most natural thing on earth if a procession of twenty motors had trailed us. But war has put an end to joy-rides. Besides, since the outskirts of Paris, we had been in thezone de guerre, constantly stopped and stared at by sentinels. The only cars we passed, going east or west, were occupied by officers, or crowded withpoilus, therefore the shabby little taxi became of almost startling interest. I looked back, and saw that it was slowing down close behind our imposing auto, from which a few small pieces of luggage for the night were being removed.
The Red Cross travellers were evidently impatient. They did not wait for our chauffeur to drive away. The conductor of the car jumped down and opened the door of his nondescript vehicle. I made out, under a thick coat of dust, that he wore khaki of some sort, and a cap of military shape which might be anything from British to Belgian. He gave a hand to a woman in the car—a woman in nurse's dress. A thick veil covered her face, but her figure was girlish. I noticed that she was extremely small and slim in her long, dust-dimmed blue cloak: a mere doll of a creature.
The man's back was turned toward me as he aided the nurse; but suddenly he flung a glance over his shoulder, and stared straight at me, as if he had expected to find me there.
He was rather short, and too squarely built for his age, which might be twenty-eight or thirty at most; but hisgreat dark eyes were splendid, so gorgeously bright and significant that they held mine for a second or two. This vexed me, and I turned away with as haughty an air as could be put on at an instant's notice.
The hotel had no private sitting rooms, but the landlord offered Mr. Beckett for our use a smallsalle de lecture, adjoing hesalon public. There were folding doors between, for a wonder with a lock that worked. By the time we'd bathed, and dressed again, it was the hour for dinner, and Mr. Beckett suggested dining in our own "parlour," as he called it.
The landlord himself brought a menu, which Mother Beckett accepted indifferently up to the entremets "omelette au rhum." This she wished changed for something—anything—made with Jim's favourite jam. "He would want us to eat it at Bar-le-Duc," she said, with her air of taking Jim's nearness and interest in our smallest acts for granted.
So "omelette à la confiture de groseilles" was ordered; and just as we had come to the end of it and our meal, some one began to play the piano in the public drawing room next door. At the first touch, I recognized a master hand. The air was from Puccini's "La Tosca"—third act, and a moment later a man's voice caught it up—a voice of velvet, a voice of the heart—an Italian voice.
We all stopped eating as if we'd been struck by a spell. We hardly breathed. The music had in it the honey of a million flowers distilled into a crystal cup. It was so sweet that it hurt—hurt horribly and deliciously, as only Italian music can hurt. Other men sing with their brains, with their souls, but Italians sing with their blood,their veins, the core of their hearts. Theyaretheir songs, as larks are.
The voice brought Jim to me, and snatched him away again. It set him far off at a hopeless distance, across steep purple chasms of dreamland. It dragged my heart out, and then poured it full, full of an unknown elixir of life and love, which was mine, yet out of reach forever. It showed me my past hopes and future sorrows floating on the current of my own blood like ships of a secret argosy sailing through the night to some unknown goal. So now, when I have told you what it did to me, you will know that voice was like no voice I ever heard, except Caruso's. Itwaslike his—astonishingly like; and hardly had the last note of "Mario's" song of love and death dropped into silence when the singer began anew with one of Caruso's own Neapolitan folk-songs, "Mama Mia."
I had forgotten Mother and Father Beckett—even Brian—everyone except my lost Jim Wyndham and myself. But suddenly a touch on my hand made me start. The little old lady's, small, cool fingers were on mine, "My daughter, what do the words mean?" she asked. "What is that boy saying to his mama?" Her eyes were blue lakes of unshed tears, for the thought of her son knocked at her heart.
"It isn't a boy who sings, dear," I said. "It's supposed to be a young man who tries to tell his mother all about his love, but it is too big for any words he can find. He says she must remember how she felt herself when she was in love, and then she will understand what's in his heart."
"Oh, it's wonderful!" she whispered. "Howyoungitsounds! Can it be amansinging? It seems too beautiful for anything but a gramophone!"
We broke out laughing, and the little lady blushed in shame. "I mean, it's like one of the great singers they make records of," she explained. "There, he's stopped. Oh, James, don't let him go! Wemusthear him again. Couldn't you go next door and thank him? Couldn't you beg him to sing some more?"
An Englishman would sooner have died a painful death then obey; but, unabashed, the American husband flung wide open the folding doors.
At the piano sat the short, square-built young man of the Red Cross taxi. Leaning with both elbows on the instrument stood the doll-like figure of his companion, the girl in nurse's dress. His back and her profile were turned our way, but at the sound of the opening door he wheeled on the stool, and both stared at Mr. Beckett. Also they stared past him at me. Why at me, and not the others, I could never have guessed then.
Our little room was lit by red-shaded candles on the table, while thesalonadjoining blazed with electricity. As the doors opened, it was like the effect of a flashlight for a photograph. I saw that the man and the girl resembled each other in feature; nevertheless, there was a striking difference between the two. It wasn't only that he was squarely built, with a short throat, and a head shaped like Caruso's, whereas she was slight, with a small, high-held head on a slender neck. The chief difference lay in expression. The man—who now looked younger than I had thought—had a dark, laughing face, gay and defiant as a Neapolitan street boy. It might be evil, itmight be good. The girl, who could be no more than twenty, was sullen in her beauty as a thundercloud.
The singer jumped up, and took a few steps forward, while the girl stood still and gloomed.
"I hope I didn't disturb you?" The question was asked of Mr. Beckett, and thrown lightly as a shuttlecock over the old man's head to us in the next room. It was asked in English, with a curiously winning accent, neither Italian nor Irish, but suggesting both.
"Disturbed!" Father Beckett explained that his errand was to beg for more music. "It's like being at the opera!" was the best compliment he had to give.
The young man smiled as if a light had been turned on behind his eyes and his brilliant white teeth. "Delighted!" he said. "I can't sing properly nowadays—shell shock. I suppose I never shall again. But I do my best."
He sat down once more at the piano, and without asking his audience to choose, began in a low voice an old, sweet, entirely banal and utterly heartbreaking ballad of Tosti's, with words by Christina Rossetti:
"When I am dead, my dearest,Sing no sad songs for me,Plant thou no roses at my head,Nor shady cypress tree.Be the green grass above meWith showers and dewdrops wet,And if thou wilt, remember,And if thou wilt, forget.I shall not see the shadows,I shall not feel the rain;I shall not hear the nightingaleSing on as if in pain.And dreaming through the twilightThat does not rise nor set,Haply I may remember,And haply may forget."
"When I am dead, my dearest,Sing no sad songs for me,Plant thou no roses at my head,Nor shady cypress tree.Be the green grass above meWith showers and dewdrops wet,And if thou wilt, remember,And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,I shall not feel the rain;I shall not hear the nightingaleSing on as if in pain.And dreaming through the twilightThat does not rise nor set,Haply I may remember,And haply may forget."
The words were of no great depth or worth, and the music was too intentionally heart-wringing to be sincerely fine, yet sung by that man's voice, the piano softly touched by his hands, the poor old song took my self-control and shivered it like thin glass. Tears burst from Mrs. Beckett's eyes, and she hid her face on my shoulder, sobbing beneath her breath: "Oh, Jim—Jim!"
When the singer had finished he looked at her, not in surprise, but thoughtfully. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have sung that stuff, Mr. Beckett," he said. "But your son liked it at St. Raphael. We knew each other there, very well."
As he spoke his eyes turned to me, deliberately, with meaning. There was a gentle, charming smile on his southern face, but I knew, as if he had told me in so many words, that my secret was his.
Involuntarily I glanced at the girl. She had not moved. She stood as before, her elbows on the piano, her small face propped between her hands. But she, too, was looking at me. She had no expression whatever. Her eyes told as little as two shut windows with blinds drawn down. The fancy flashed through me that a judge might look thus waiting to hear the verdict of the jury in a murder case.
"These two have followed us on purpose to denounce me," I thought. Yet it seemed a stupidly melodramaticconclusion, like the climax of a chapter in an old-fashioned, sentimental story. Besides, the man—evidently the leader—had not at all the face of Nemesis. He looked a merry, happy-go-lucky Italian, only a little subdued at the moment by the pathos of his own nightingale voice and the memory of Jim Beckett. I was bewildered. My reason did not know what to make of him. But my instinct warned me of danger.
Mother Beckett dried her eyes with one of her dainty handkerchiefs which always smell like lavender and grass pinks—her leitmotif in perfume. "You knew our Jim?" she exclaimed, choking back tears. "Why, then, perhaps you and Mary—Miss O'Malley——"
What would have happened if she had finished her sentence I shall never know, for just then came a crash as if the house were falling. Window-glass shivered. The hotel shook as though in an earthquake. Out went the electric light, leaving only our candles aglow under red shades.
Bar-le-Duc was in for an air raid.
For a moment we thought the house had been struck by a bomb, and were astonished that it stood. In the uproar of explosions and crashings and jinglings, the small silence of our room—with its gay chrysanthemums and shaded candles—was like that of a sheltered oasis in a desert storm.
Not one of us uttered a sound. Father Beckett took his wife in his arms, and held her tight, her face hidden in his coat. Brian had not even got up from his chair by the table. He'd lighted a cigarette, and continued to smoke calmly, a half-smile on his face, as if the bombardment carried him back to life in the trenches. But the beautiful sightless eyes searched for what they could not see: and I knew that I was in his thoughts. I would have gone to him, after the first petrifying instant of surprise, but the singing-man stopped me. "Are you afraid?" I heard his voice close to my ear. Perhaps he shouted. But in the din it was as if he whispered.
"No!" I flung back. "Had you not better go and take care of your sister?"
He laughed. "My sister! Look at her! Does she need taking care of?"
The girl had come from the suddenly darkenedsaloninto our room. As he spoke, she walked to the table, helped herself to a cigarette from Brian's silver case whichlay open, and asked its owner for a light. It struck me that she did not realize his blindness.
Certainly the young woman did not "need taking care of." Nor did I! Deliberately I turned my back upon the man; but he snatched at the end of a scarf I wore. "No one's looking," he said. "Take this—for your own sake." And he thrust into a little outside pocket of my dress a folded bit of paper. Then he let me go, stepping back to prevent my returning the note.
For a second I hesitated, not knowing which of two evils to choose; but the woman who hesitates is inevitably lost. Before I could make up my mind, the door opened and the landlord appeared, apologizing for the raid as if it had been an accident of his kitchen. We must have no fear. All danger was over. The avion—only one!—had been chased out of our neighbourhood. The noise we heard now was merely shrapnel fired by anti-aircraft guns. We would not be disturbed again, that he'd guarantee from his experience!
Mrs. Beckett emerged from her husband's coat. Mr. Beckett laughed, and patting his wife's shoulder, complimented her courage. "I'm not sure we haven't behaved pretty well for our first air raid," he said. "The rest of you were fine! But I suppose even you ladies have seen some of these shows before? As for you, Brian, my boy, you're a soldier. What we've been through must seem a summer shower to you. And you, sir"—he turned to the singing-man—"I think you mentioned you'd had shell shock——"
"Yes," the other answered quickly. "It cost me my voice."
"Cost you your voice?" Father Beckett echoed. "If it was better than it is now, why, it must have been a marvel! We're ignorant in the music line, my wife and I, so if we ought to know who you are——"
The young man laughed. "Oh, don't be afraid of hurting my feelings! If you were an Italian, or a Britisher—but an American! I sang in New York only part of last winter, and then I—came over here, like everyone else. My name is Julian O'Farrell, but my mother was an Italian of Naples, once a prima donna. She wished me to make my professional début as Giulio di Napoli."
The name appeared to mean nothing for the Becketts, but instantly I knew who the man was, if little about him. I remembered reading of the sensation he created in London the summer that Brian and I tramped through France and Belgium. The next I heard was that he had "gone back" to Italy. I had of course supposed him to be an Italian. But now he boasted—or confessed—that he was an Irishman. Why, then, had he left England for Italy when the war broke out? Why had he been singing in New York after Italy joined the Allies? Above all, what had happened since, to put him on my track, with a Red Cross flag and a taxi-cab?
These questions asked themselves in my head, while I could have counted "One—two—three." Meantime, Brian had spoken to the girl, and she had answered shortly, in words I could not hear, but with a sullen, doubtful look, like a small trapped creature that snaps at a friendly hand. The landlord was helping a white-faced waiter to clear a place on the table for a tray of coffee and liqueurs; andoutside the noise of shrapnel had died in the distance. The air-raid incident was closed. What next?
"You'll both have coffee with us, won't you, Signor di Napoli—or Mr. O'Farrell? Or should I say Lieutenant or Captain?" Father Beckett was urging. "You were a friend of our son's, and my wife and I——"
"Plain Mister O'Farrell it is," the other broke in. "Thanks, it would be a pleasure to stay, but it's best to refuse, I'm sure, for my sister's sake. You see by her dress what her work has been, and she's on leave because she's tired out. She faints easily—and what with the air raid—maybe you'll let us pay our respects before you leave to-morrow? Then we'll tell you all you want to know. Anyhow, we may be going on for some time in your direction. I saw by a Paris paper a few days ago you were making a tour of the Fronts, beginning at the Lorraine end."
His eyes were on me as he spoke, bright with imp-like malice. He looked so like a mischievous schoolboy that it was hard to take him seriously. Yet everything warned me to do so, and his allusion to the Paris newspapers explained much. For the second time a reporter had caught Father Beckett, and got out of him the statement that "My dead son's fiancée, Miss Mary O'Malley, who's been nursing in a 'contagious' hospital near St. Raphael, will be with us: and her brother."
So that was how the man had heard about me, and for some reason found it worth while to follow, waving the sword of Damocles! His note burned my pocket. AndIburned to know what it said. No doubt it would explain why he did not cut off my head at once, and have it over!
"I think," he was going on, "that the sooner I can get this poor little girl" (a tap on his sister's shoulder) "to her room and to bed the better it will be."
Any one apparently less likely to faint, or less in need of rest, than the "poor little girl" indicated, it would be difficult to find, I thought: but the kindly Becketts were the last creatures to be critical. They sympathized, and changed their invitation from after-dinner coffee to breakfast at nine. This was accepted by O'Farrell for himself and his sister, and taking the girl's arm, the ex-singer swept her off in a dramatic exit.
When they had gone, it was Brian who asked me if I had known them in the south; and because no incentive could make me lie to Brian, I promptly answered "No." As I spoke, it occurred to me that now, if ever, was the moment when I might still succeed in spoking the wheel of Mr. and Miss O'Farrell before that wheel had time to crush me. I could throw doubt upon their good faith. I could hint that, if they had really been doing Red Cross or other work at St. Raphael, I should certainly have heard of them. But I held my peace—partly through qualms of conscience, partly through fear. Unless the man had proofs to bring of hisbona fideswhere Jim Beckett was concerned, he would scarcely have followed us to claim acquaintance with the parents and confound the alleged fiancée. That he had followed us on purpose I was sure. Not for a second did I believe that the arrival of the taxi-cab in our wake was a coincidence!
We drank our coffee, talking of the raid and of the O'Farrells, and—as always—of Jim. Then Father Beckett noticed that his wife was pale. "She looks as if sheneeded bed a good sight more than that little girl did," he said in the simple, homely way I've learned to love.
Presently we had all bidden each other good-night, even Brian and I. Then—in my own room—I was free to take that folded bit of paper from my pocket.
To my surprise, there were only three lines, scribbled in pencil.
"Come to thesalonfor a talk when the rest of your party have gone to bed. I'll be waiting, and won't keep you long."
"Impudent brute!" I said out aloud. But a moment later I had decided to keep the appointment and learn the worst. Needs must, when the devil drives!—if you're in the power of the devil. I was. And, alas! through my fault, so was Brian. After going so far, I could not afford to be thrown back without a struggle; and I went downstairs prepared to fight.
It was not yet late; only a few minutes after ten o'clock; and though the Becketts and Brian were on the road to sleep, the hotel was awake, and even lively in its wakefulness. The door of the publicsalonstood open, and the electric light had come on again. At the table, in the centre of the room, sat Mr. Julian O'Farrell,aliasGiulio di Napoli, conspicuously interested in an illustrated paper. He jumped up at sight of me, and smiled a brilliant smile of welcome, but did not speak. A sudden, obstinate determination seized me to thwart him, if he meant to force the first move upon me. I bowed coolly, as one acknowledges the existence of an hotel acquaintance, and passing to the other end of the long table, picked up aJe Sais Toutof a date two years before the war.
I did not sit down, but assumed the air of hovering for a moment on my way elsewhere. This manœuvre kept the enemy on his feet; and as the cheap but stately clock on the mantel ticked out second after second, I felt nervously inclined to laugh, despite the seriousness of my situation. I bit my lip hard to frighten away a smile that would have spoilt everything. "If it goes on like this for an hour," I said to myself, "I won't open my mouth!"
Into the midst of this vow broke an explosion of laughter that made me start as if it announced a new bombardment. I looked up involuntarily, and met the dark Italian eyes sparkling with fun. "I beg your pardon!" the man gurgled. "I was wondering which is older, yourJe Sais Toutor myIllustration? Mine's the Christmas number of 1909."
"Yours has the advantage in age," I replied, without a smile. "Mine goes back only to 1912."
"Ah! I'm glad to score that one point," he said, still laughing. "Dear Miss O'Malley, won't you please sit down? I'm a lazy fellow, and I'm so tired of standing! Now, don't begin by being cross with me because I call you 'dear.' If you realized what I've done for you, and what I'm ready to do, you'd say I'd earnedthatright, to begin with!"
"I don't understand you at all, or why you should claim any right," I hedged. But I sat down, and he sank so heavily into an ancient, plush-covered chair that a spray of dust flew up from the cushions.
"I'm afraid I'm rather too fat!" he apologized. "But I always lose flesh motoring, so you'll see a change for the better, I hope—in a week or two. I expect our lines will becast in the same places for some time to come—if you're as wise as—as you are pretty. If not, I'm afraid you and Mr. O'Malley won't be long with our party. I say, you are gorgeous when you're in a rage! But why fly into a fury? You told me you didn't understand things. I'm doing my best to explain."
"Then your best is very bad," I said.
"Sorry! I'll begin another way. Listen! I'm going to be perfectly frank. Why not? We're birds of a feather. And the pot can't call the kettle black. Maybe my similes are a bit mixed, but you'll excuse that, as we're both Irish. Why, my being Irish—and Italian—is an explanation of me in itself, if you'd take the trouble to study it. But look here! I don'twantyou to take any trouble. I don't want togiveyou any trouble. Now do you begin to see light?"
"No!" I threw at him.
"I don't believe you, dear girl. You malign your own wits. You pay yourself worse compliments than I'd let any one else do! But I promised not to keep you long. And if I break my promise it will be your fault—because you're not reasonable. You're the pot and I'm the kettle, because we're both tarred with the same brush. By the way,arepots and kettles blacked with tar? They look it. But that's a detail. My sister and I are just as dead broke and down and out as you and your brother are. I mean, as youwere, and as you may be again, if you make mistakes."
"I'd rather not bring my brother into this discussion," I said. "He's too far above it—and us. You can do as you choose about your sister."
"I can makeherdo asIchoose," he amended. "That'swhere my scheme came in, and where it still holds good. When I read the news of Pa and Ma Beckett arriving in Paris, it jumped into my head like a—like a——"
"Toad," I supplied the simile.
"I was leaving it to you," said he. "I thought you ought to know, for by a wonderful coincidence which should draw us together, the same great idea must have occurred to you—in the same way, and on the same day. I bet you the first hundred francs I get out of old Beckett that it was so!"
"Mr. O'Farrell, you're a Beast!" I cried.
"And you're a Beauty. So there we are, cast for opposite parts in the same play. Queer how it works out! Looks like the hand of Providence. Don't say what you want to say, or I shall be afraid you've been badly brought up. North of Ireland, I understand. We're South. Dierdre's a Sinn Feiner. You needn't expect mercy from her, unless I keep her down with a strong hand—the Hidden Hand. She hates you Northerners about ten times worse than she hates the Huns. Now you look as if you thought her namewasn'tDierdre! It is, because she took it. She takes a lot of things, when I've showed her how. For instance, photographs. She has several snapshots of Jim Beckett and me together. I have some of him and her. They're pretty strong cards (I don't mean a pun!) if we decide to use them. Don't you agree?"
"I neither agree nor disagree," I said, "for I understand you no better now than when you began."
"You're like Mr. Justice What's-his-name, who's so innocent he never heard of the race course. Well, I must adapt myself to your child-like intelligence! I'll go backa bit to an earlier chapter in my career, the way novels and cinemas do, after they've given the public a good, bright opening. It was true, what I said about my voice. I've lost everything but my middle register. I had a fortune in my throat. At present I've got nothing but a warble fit for a small drawing room—and that, only by careful management. I knew months ago I could never sing again in opera. I was coining money in New York, and would be now—if they hadn't dug me out as a slacker—anembusqué—whatever you like to call it. I was a conscientious objector: that is, my conviction was it would be sinful to risk a bullet in a chest full of music, like mine—a treasure-chest. But the fools didn't see it in that light. They made America too hot to hold either Giulio di Napoli or Julian O'Farrell. I'm no coward—I swear to you I'm not, my dear girl! You've only to look me square in the face to see I'm not. I'm full of fire. But ever since I was a boy I've lived for my voice, and you can't die for your voice, like you can for your country. It goes—pop!—with you. I managed to convince the doctors that my heart was too jumpy for the trenches. I see digitalis in your eye, Miss Trained Nurse! It wasn't. It was strophantis. But theywouldset me to driving a motor ambulance—cold-hearted brutes! I got too near the front line one day—or rather the front line got too near me, and a shell hit my ambulance. The next thing I knew I was in hospital, and the first thing I thought of was my voice. A frog would have disowned it. I hoped for a while it might come right; but they sent me to St. Raphael for a sun cure, and—it didn't work. That was last spring. I'm as well as I ever was, except in my throat, and there the specialists say I neednever expect to be better. I'd change with your brother, Miss O'Malley. My God, I would. If I could lose my eyes and have my voice again—my voice!"
His flippancy broke down on those words, with one sincere and tragic note that touched me through my contempt. Watching, he saw this, and catching at self-control, he caught also at the straw of sympathy within his reach.
"I wanted to die for a while," he went on. "But youth is strong, even when you're down on your luck—down at the deepest. My sister came to St. Raphael to be with me. It may seem queer to you, but I'm her idol. She's lost everything else—or rather she thinks she has, which is much the same—everything that made her life worth living. She wanted to be a singer. Her voice wasn't strong enough. She wanted to be an actress. She knew how to act, but—shecouldn't, Heaven knows why. She's got temperament enough, but she couldn't let herself out. You see what she's like! She failed in America, where she'd followed me against our mother's will. Mother died while we were there. Another blow! And a man Dierdre's been half engaged to was killed in Belgium. She didn't love him, but he was made of money. It would have been a big match! She took to nursing only after I was called up. You know in France a girl doesn't need much experience to get into a hospital. But poor little Dare wasn't more of a success at nursing than on the stage. Not enough self-confidence—too sensitive. People think she's always in the sulks—and so she is, these days. I'd been trying for six months' sick leave, and just got it when I read that stuff in the paper about Beckett being killed, and his parents hearing the news the day they arrived. Itstruck me like drama: things do. I was born dramatic—took it from my mother. The thought came to me, how dead easy 'twould be for some girl to pretend she'd been engaged to Beckett, and win her wily way to the hearts and pockets of the old birds. Next I thought: Why not Dierdre? And there wasn'tanyreason why not! I told her it would be good practice in acting. (She hasn't quite given up hope of the stage yet.) We started for Paris on the job; and then I read in a later copy of the same paper about the smart young lady who'd stepped in ahead of us. If old Beckett hadn't been bursting with pride in the heroic girl who'd got a medal for nursing infectious cases in a hospital near St. Raphael, I'd have given up the game for a bad job. I'd have taken it for granted that Jim and the fiancée had met before we met him at St. Raphael. But when the paper said they'd made acquaintance there, and gave your name and all, I knew you were on the same trail with us. You'd walked in ahead, that was the only difference. Andwehad the snapshots. We could call witnesses to swear that no nurse from your hospital had come near St. Raphael, and to swear that none of the chaps in the aviation school had ever come near them. Dierdre hadn't been keen at first, but once she was in, she didn't want to fail again; especially for a North of Ireland girl like you. She was ready to go on. But the newspaper gushed a good deal over your looks, you remember. My curiosity was roused. I was—sort of obsessed by the thought of you. I decided to see what your head was like to look at before chopping it off. And anyhow, you'd already started on your jaunt. Through a rich chap I knew in New York, who's over here helping theRed Cross, I got leave to carry supplies to the evacuated towns, provided I could find my own car. Well, I found it—such as it is. All I ask of it is not to break down till the Becketts have learned to love me as their dear, dead son's best friend. As for Dare—what she was to the dear dead son depends on you."
"Depends on me?" I repeated.
"Depends on you. Dare's not a good Sunday-school girl, but she's good to her brother—as good as you are to yours, in her way. She'll do what I want. But the question is Willyou?"
For a moment I did not speak. Then I asked, "What do you want?"
"Only a very little thing," he said. "To live and let live, that's all. Don't you try to queer my pitch, and I won't queer yours."
"What is your pitch?" I asked.
He laughed. "You're very non-committal, aren't you? But I like your pluck. You've never once admitted by word or look that you're caught. All the same, you know you are. You can't hurt me, and I can hurt you. Your word wouldn't stand against my proofs, if you put up a fight. You'd go down—and your brother with you. Oh, I don't think he's in it! The minute I saw his face I was sure he wasn't; and I guessed from yours that what you'd done was mostly or all for him. Now, dear Miss O'Malley, you know where you are with me. Isn't that enough for you? Can't you just be wise and promise to let me alone on my 'pitch,' whatever it is?"
"I won't have Mr. and Mrs. Beckett made fools of in any way."
He burst out laughing. "That's good—fromyou! I give you leave to watch over their interests, if you let me take care of mine. Is it a bargain?"
I did not answer. I was thinking—thinking furiously, when the landlord came to the door to put out the lights.
O'Farrell sprang to his feet. "We're ready to go. We can leave the room free, can't we, Miss O'Malley?" he said in French.
Somehow, I found myself getting up, and fading out of the room as if I'd been hypnotized. I walked straight to the foot of the stairs, then turned at bay to deliver some ultimatum—I scarcely knew what. But O'Farrell had cleverly accomplished a vanishing act, and there was nothing left for me to do save go to my own room.