CHAPTER XIThinking things over in the night, I decided to wait until after breakfast before making up my mind to anything irrevocable. Breakfast being the appointed rendezvous, O'Farrell would then lay his cards on the table. If he slipped some up his sleeve, I must make it my business to spot the trick and its meaning for the Becketts.As I offered this sop to my conscience, I could almost hear O'Farrell saying, with one of his young laughs, "That's right. Set a thief to catch a thief!"At ten o'clock we were to start for Nancy via Commercy, so there would be little time to reflect, and to act on top of reflection; but my strait being desperate, I resolved to trust to luck; and to be first on the field of battle, I knocked at Brian's door at half-past eight.He was already dressed, and to look at his neat cravat and smoothly brushed hair no one would have guessed that his toilet had been made by a blind man. We had not yet exchanged opinions of the O'Farrell family, and I had come early to get his impressions. They were always as accurate and quickly built up as his sketches; but since he has been blind, he seems almost clairvoyant."What do you think of those two?" I asked. "Or rather, what do you think of the man? I know you have to judge by voices; and as the girl hardly opened her mouth you can't——""Queer thing—and I don't quite understand it myself," said Brian; "but I see Miss O'Farrell more clearly than her brother."He generally speaks of "seeing people," quite as a matter of course. It used to give me a sharp pain at my heart; but I begin to take his way for granted now. "There's something about O'Farrell that eludes me—slips away like quicksilver. One is charmed with his voice and his good looks——""Brian! Who told you he was good-looking?" I broke in.Brian laughed. "I told myself! His manner—so sure of his power to please—belongs to good looks. Besides, I've never known a tenor with any such quality of voice who hadn't magnificent eyes. Why they should go together is a mystery—but they do. Am I right about this chap?""Yes, you're right," I admitted. "But go on. I'm more interested in him than in his sister.""Are you? I've imagined her the more interesting—the more repaying—of the two. I see O'Farrell, not a bad fellow, but—notsure. I don't believe he's even sure of himself, whether he wants to be straight or crooked. How he turns out will depend—on circumstances, or perhaps on some woman. If he travels with us, he'll be a pleasant companion, there's no doubt. But——""But—what?""Well, we must always keep in mind that he's an actor. We mustn't take too seriously anything he says or does. And you, Molly—you must be more careful than the rest.""I! But I told you I'd never met him at St. Raphael. I never set eyes on him till last night.""I know. Yet I felt, when he 'set eyes' on you—oh, I don't know how to express what I felt! Only—if it had happened on the stage, there'd have been music for it in the orchestra.""Brian, how strange you are!" I almost gasped. "Ought we to let the man and his sister go on with us, if that's their aim? Their Red Cross flag may be camouflage, you know! Very likely they're adventurers, after the Beckett's money. We could advise Father and Mother Beck——""Let's follow a famous example, and 'wait and see'—if only for the girl's sake.""Oh, you think so well of her!""Not well, exactly," Brian hesitated. "I don't know what to think of her yet. But—I thinkabouther. I feel her, as I feel electricity before a thunderstorm bursts.""A thunderstorm expresses her!" I laughed. "I thought of that myself. She's sullen—brooding, dark as a cloud. Yet thetiniestthing! One could almost break her in two.""I held out my hand for good-night," Brian said. "She had to give hers, though I'm sure for some reason she didn't want to. It was small and—crushable, like a child's; and hot, as if she had fever.""She didn't want to take yours, because we're North of Ireland and she's a fierce Sinn Feiner," I explained. Luckily Brian did not ask how I'd picked up this piece of information! He was delighted with it, and chuckled. "So she's a Sinn Feiner! She's very pretty, isn't she?""In a cross-patch way. She looks ready to bite at a touch.""Poor child! Life must have gone hard with her. She's probably got a grouch, as the American boys over here say. We must try and do something to soften her down, and make her see things through rosier spectacles, if she and her brother join on to our party for a while.""Ye-es.""You don't like her, Molly?""Oh, I've hardly thought of her, dear. But you seem to have made up for that.""Thunderstormsmakeyou think about them. They electrify the atmosphere. I see this girl so distinctly somehow: little, white thing; big, gloomy eyes like storms in deep woods, and thin eyelids—you know, that transparent, flower-petal kind, where you fancy you see the iris looking through, like spirit eyes, always awake while the body's eyes sleep; and—and lots of dark hair without much colour—hair like smoke. I see her a suppressed volcano—but not extinct.""The day may come when we'll wish she were extinct. But really you've described her better than I could, though I stared quite a lot last night. Come along, dear. It's six minutes to nine. Let's trot down to breakfast."We trotted; but early as I'd meant to be, and early as we were, the O'Farrells and the Becketts were before us. How long they had been together I don't know, but they must have finished their first instalment of talk about Jim, for already they had got on to the subject of plans."Well, it will be noble of you to help us with supplies. The promise we've got from our American Red Cross man in Paris is limited," O'Farrell was saying in his voice to charm a statue off its pedestal, as we came in. Hesprang to shut the door for us, and gave me the look of a cherubic fox, as much as to say, "You see where we've got to! But it's all for the good cause. There's more than one person not as black as he's painted!""Molly's watch must be slow," said Brian. "She thought it was only six minutes to nine.""She's right. But it seems the big clock in the hall outside our door is fast," explained Father Beckett. "We heard it strike nine, so we hurried down. The same thing happened with Mr. and Miss O'Farrell."Another glance at me from the brilliant eyes! "Smart trick, eh?" they telegraphed. I had to turn away, or I should have laughed. Surely never before, on stage or in story—to say nothing of real life—was the villain and blackmailer a mischievous, schoolboy imp, who made his victims giggle at the very antics which caught them in his toils! But, come to think of it,Iam a villain, and next door to a blackmailer! Yet I always see myself (unless I stop to reflect on my sins) as a girl like other girls, even better-natured and more agreeable and intelligent than most. Perhaps, after all, villains don't run in types!I soon learned that Father and Mother Beckett were rejoicing in the acquisition of Jim's two friends as travelling companions. The celebrated snapshots were among the cards O'Farrell had kept up his sleeve. No doubt he'd waited to make sure of my attitude (though he appeared to take it for granted) before deciding what use to make of his best trumps. Seeing that I let slip my one and only chance of a denunciation-scene, he flung away his also, with an air of dashing chivalry which his sister and I alone were in a position to appreciate. For me it had been a case of"speak now, or forever after hold your peace." For him, a decision was not irrevocable, as he could denounce me later, and plead that I had been spared at first, through kindness of heart. But I did not stop to consider that detail. I saw the man and myself as accomplices, on an equal footing, each having given quarter to the other. As for the girl, I still thought of her hardly at all, in spite of Brian's words. She was an unknown quantity, which I would waste no time in studying, while the situation that opened bade me sharpen my wits.In the five or ten minutes before we joined them the Becketts had consented—or offered—to help finance the Red Cross crusade. To achieve this was worthy of the Irish-Italian's talents. But the little dining room was littered with samples of the travellers' goods: clothing for repatriated refugees, hospital supplies; papier-mâché splints, and even legs; shoes, stockings, medicines; soup-tablets, and chocolates. The O'Farrells might be doing evil, but good would apparently come from it for many. I could hardly advise the Becketts against giving money, even though I suspected that most of it would stick to O'Farrell's fingers—even though I knew that the hope of it consoled Signor Giulio di Napoli for leaving me in my safe niche. Yes, that was his consolation, I realized. And—there might be something more which I did not yet foresee. Still, being no better than he was, I was coward enough to hold my peace.This was the situation when we set out for Nancy, our big car running slowly, in order not to outpace the rickety Red Cross cab. We were not allowed by the military authorities to enter Toul, so our way took us throughdelightful old Commercy, birthplace of Madeleines. Of course the town had things to make it famous, long before the day of the shell-shaped cakelets which all true sons and daughters of France adore. Somebody founded it in the ninth century, when the bishops of Metz were the great overlords of its lords. It was a serious little city then, and Benedictine monks had a convent there in the Middle Ages. The fun began only with the building of the château, and the coming of the Polish Stanislas, the best loved and last Duke of Lorraine. He used to divide his years between Nancy, Lunéville, and Commercy; and once upon a time, in the third of these châteaux, thechefhad achère amienamed Madeleine. There was to be a fête, and the lover of Madeleine was racking his tired brain to invent some new dainty for it. "Ihave thought of something which can make you famous," announced the young woman, who was a budding genius as a cook. "But,mon cher, it is my secret. Even to you I will not give it for nothing. I will sell it at a price."Thecheffeigned indifference; but each moment counted. The Duke always paid in praise and gold for a successful new dish, especially a cake, for he was fond of sweets. When Madeleine boasted that her "inspiration" took the form of a cake, the man could resist no longer. The price asked was marriage—no less, and paid in advance! But it turned out not excessive. The feather-light, shell-shaped cakes were the success of the feast; and when Duke Stanislas heard their history, he insisted that they should be named Madeleines—"after their mother."Even in war days, "Madeleines de Commercy" is the first cry which greets the traveller entering town. Jim, itseems, had a charming habit of sending to his mother at home a specimen of the cake, or confiture, or bonbon, for which each place he visited abroad was famed. These things used to reach her in jars or boxes adorned with the coat-of-arms and photographs of the city concerned—a procession of surprises: and I think as she bought Madeleines of Commercy she moistened them with a few tears.I expected to find Nancy beautiful, since for so long it was the capital of proud Lorraine, but I hadn't guessed how beautiful or individual. Now I shall always in future see the details of each splendid square and park by shutting my eyes and calling the vision to come—as Brian does.We drove straight to the door of a fascinating, old-fashioned hotel in the most celebrated square of all, the Place Stanislas; but we didn't go in. We couldn't stolidly turn our backs upon the magic picture, lit by a sudden radiance of sunshine, for in another moment the fairy-like effect might fade. Yes, "fairy-like" is the word; and as our two cars drew up—like Dignity and Impudence—I had the feeling that we'd arrived in the capital of fairyland to visit the king and queen.It was I who described the scene to Brian: the eighteenth-century perfection of the buildings, each one harmoniously proportioned to suit the others; the town hall, with its wonderful clock; the palace; the theatre, and the rest of the happy architectural family reared by Duke Stanislas; each with its roof-decoration of carved stone vases, and graceful statues miraculously missed so far by German bombs; the lace-like filigree of wrought iron and gold on flag-hung balconies or gates; the gilded Arch of Triumphleading into the garden of the Place Carrière—a gorgeous glitter of decoration which won for Nancy heralias, "City of Golden Doors," and now has to be "camouflaged" for enemy aeroplanes. It was I who made the list of stage properties, but it was Brian who filled the stage with actors and actresses, in their proper parts.He called upon the bronze statue of Stanislas to come down from its high pedestal, and appear before us in flesh, happy to be Duke of Lorraine, after all the dethronings and abdications in Poland; a most respectable-looking monarch despite his adventures and disguises of the past. We saw him in a powdered perruque, on his way to the ducal palace, after some religious ceremony that had attracted crowds of loyal Catholic Lorrainers: beside him, his good wife of bourgeoise soul but romantic name, Catherine Opalinska, a comfortable woman, too large for the fashionablerobe à paniers; with the pair, their daughter Marie, proud of the fate foretold by a fortune-teller, that she should be queen of France; the Royal family, and the aristocrats of their northern court; the smart Polish officers in uniform; the pretty, coquettish women, and dark-faced musicians of Hungary; the Swedish philosophers, the long-haired Italian artists; and above all, the beautiful Marquise de Boufflers—rival of the Queen—with her little dogs and black pages; all these "belonged" to the sunlit picture, where our modern figures seemed out of place and time. The noble square, with its vast stretch of gray stone pavement—worn satin-smooth—its carved gray façades of palaces, picked out with gold, and its vista of copper beeches rose-red against a sky of pearl, had been designed as a sober background for the colour and fantasticfashion of the eighteenth century, whereas we and others like us but added an extra sober note.I noticed, as Brian sketched us his little picture of the past, that Dierdre O'Farrell gazed at him, as if at some legendary knight in whose reality she did not believe. It was the first time I had seen any change in the sullen face, but it was a change to interest rather than sympathy. She had the air of saying in her mind: "You look more like a St. George, stepped down from a stained-glass window, than an ordinary man of to-day. You seem to think about everyone else before yourself, and to see a lot more with your blind eyes than we see. You pretend to be happy, too, as if you wanted to set everybody a good example. But it's all a pose—a pose! I shall study you till I find you out, a trickster like the rest of us."I felt a sudden stab of dislike for the girl, for daring to put Brian on a level with herself—and me. I wanted to punish her somehow, wanted to make the little wretch pay for her impertinent suspicions. I pushed past her brusquely to stand between her and Brian. "Let's go into the hotel," I said. "It's more important just now to see what our rooms are like than to play with the ghosts of dukes."As if the slighted ghosts protested, there came a loud, reproachful wail out of space. Everyone started, and stared in all directions. Then the soberly clad, modern inhabitants of Nancy glanced skyward as they crossed the square of Stanislas. Nobody hurried, yet nobody stopped. Men, women, and children pursued their way at the same leisurely pace as before, except that their chins were raised. I realized then that the ghostly wail was the warning cry of a siren: "Take cover! Enemy aeroplanes sighted!" Butthere was the monotony of boredom in the voice, and in the air with which passers-by received the news."Oh, lord, here I go again!" the weary siren sighed."Third time to-day,mon Dieu!" grumbled a very old man to a very blasé porter, who dutifully shot out of the hotel to rescue our luggage, if not us, from possible though improbable danger. We let him haul in our bags, but remained glued to the pavement, utterly absorbed and fascinated, waiting for the show to begin.We had not long to wait! For an instant the pearl-pale zenith shone serenely void. Then, heralded by a droning noise as of giant bees, and a vicious spitting of shrapnel, high overhead sailed a wide-winged black bird, chased by four other birds bigger, because nearer earth. They soared, circling closer, closer—two mounting high, two flying low, and so passed westward, while the sky was spattered with shrapnel—long, white streaks falling slow and straight, like tail-feathers of a shot eagle.There was scant time to speak, or even draw an excited breath after the birds had disappeared, because they were back again, hovering so high that they were changed to insects.We ought to have scuttled into the hotel, but somehow we didn't move, although people in the square seemed suddenly to realize the wisdom of prudence. Some vanished into doorways, others walked faster—though not one of those haughty Lorrainers would condescend to run. Forgetful of ourselves, I was admiring their pride, when an angry voice made me jump."You pretend that everything you do, good or bad, is for your brother's sake, yet you let him risk his life—ablindman!—out here in the street with bombs and shrapnel dropping every instant!"It was Dierdre O'Farrell who spoke, and we glared into each other's eyes like two Kilkenny cats—or a surprised Kilkenny cat and a spitfire Kilkenny kitten.A moment before, I had been longing to strike at her. Now it was she who struck at me; and it was too much, that it should be in defence of my own brother! The primitive fishwife within me rose to the surface. "Mind your own business!" I rudely flung at her: and slipping my arm under Brian's, in a voice of curdled cream begged him to come with me indoors.The others followed, and about three seconds later a bomb fell in front of the hotel. It was a "dud," and did not explode, but it made a hole in the pavement and sent a jet of splintered stone into the air.Perhaps the girl had saved us from death, or at least from disfiguring wounds, but I was in no mood to thank her for that. I wasgladI had been a fishwife, and I thought Brian lacked his usual discernment in attributing hidden qualities to such a person as Dierdre O'Farrell."Something's bound to break, if we don't part soon!" I told myself.CHAPTER XIINancy is one of "Jim's towns," as Mother and Father Beckett say. When, with Brian's help, they began mapping out their route, they decided to "give something worth while" to the place, and to all the ruined region round about, when they had learned what form would be best for their donation to take. Some friend in Paris gave them a letter to the Préfet, and we had not been in Nancy an hour when he and his wife called.I'd never met a real, live préfet. The word sounded stiff and official. When Mother Beckett tremulously asked me to act as interpreter, I dimly expected to meet two polite automata, as little human as creatures of flesh and blood can be. Instead, I saw a perfectly delightful pair of Parisians, with the warm, kind manner one thinks of as southern. They were frankly pleased that a millionaire's purse promised to open for Nancy. Monsieur le Préfet offered himself to the Becketts as guide on a sightseeing expedition next day, and Madame, the Préfet's wife, proposed to exhibit her two thousand children, old and young, refugees housed in what once had been barracks. "The Germans pretend to believe they are barracks still, full of soldiers, as an excuse for bombs," she said. "But you shall see! And if you wish—if you have time—we will take you to see also whatthe Boches have done to some of our other towns—ah, but beautiful towns, of an importance! Lunéville, and Gerbévillers, and more—many more. You should know what they are like before you go on to the Grande Couronne, where Nancy was saved in 1914."Of course the Becketts "wished." Of course they had time. "Molly, tell Mr. and Mrs. Préfet we've got more time than anything else!" said the old man eagerly. "Oh, and I guess we've got a little money, too, enough to spread around among those other places, as well as here. This is going to be something like what Jim would want at last!"When the Préfet and his wife rose to go, they invited not only the Becketts but Brian and me to dine at their house that night. Mother Beckett, on the point of accepting for us all, hesitated. The hesitation had to be explained: and the explanation was—the O'Farrells. I had hoped we might be spared them, but it was not to be. Our host and hostess, hearing of the travellers of the Red Cross, insisted that they must come, too. Mrs. Beckett was sure they would both be charmed, but as it turned out, she was only half right. Mr. O'Farrell was charmed. His sister had a headache, and intended to spend the evening in her room.Padre, if I wrote stories, I should like to write one with that préfet and his whole family for the heroes and heroines of it!There is a small son. There are five daughters, each prettier than the others, the youngest a tinyfilette, the eldest twenty at most; and the mother in looks an elder sister. When the war broke out they were living inParis, the father in some high political post: but he was by ancestry a man of Lorraine, and his first thought was to help defend the home of his forbears. The Meurthe-et-Moselle, with Nancy as its centre and capital, was a terrible danger zone, with the sword of the enemy pointed at its heart, but the lover of Lorraine asked to become préfet in place of a man about to leave, and his family rallied round him. There at Nancy, they have been ever since those days, through all the bombardments by Big Berthas and Taubes. When houses and hotels were being blown to bits by naval guns, thirty-five kilometres away, the daily life of the family went on as if in peace. As a man, the Préfet longed to send his wife and children far away. As a servant of France he thought best to let them stop, to "set an example of calmness." And if they had been bidden to go, they would still have stayed.The Préfet's house is one of the eighteenth-century palaces of the Place Stanislas; and in the story I'd like to write, I should put a description of their drawing room, and the scene after dinner that night.Imagine a background of decorative walls, adorned with magnificent portraits (one of the best is Stanislas, and better still is Louis XVI, a proud baby in the arms of a handsome mother); imagine beautiful Louis XV chairs, tables, and sofas scattered about, with the light of prism-hung chandeliers glinting on old brocades and tapestries: flowers everywhere, in Chinese bowls and tall vases; against this background a group of lovely girls multiplied by many mirrors into a large company; be-medalled officers in pale blue uniforms, handing coffee to the ladies, or taking from silver dishes carried by children the delicious macaroons which are to Nancy what Madeleines are to Commercy. Imagine long windows opening into a garden: rosy lamplight streaming out, silver moonlight streaming in; music; the wonderful voice of a man (Julian O'Farrell) singing the "Marseillaise," the "Star-Spangled Banner," and "Tipperary." Then into the midst of this breaking the tiresome whine of the siren."What? A fourth time to-day?" cries somebody. "These creatures will wear out their welcome if they're not careful!"A laugh follows, to drown the bark of shrapnel, and a general shrugging of the shoulders. But suddenly comes a cry thatla petite—the baby daughter of the house, sitting up in our honour—has run into the garden.The elder girls are not afraid for themselves, the great bombardments have given them a quiet contempt of mere Taubes. But for the little sister!—that is different. Instantly it seems that all the bombs Germany has ever made may be falling like iron rain on that curly head out there among the autumn lilies. Everybody rushes to the rescue: and there is the child, sweet as a cherub and cool as a cucumber, in the din. She stands on the lawn, chin in air, baby thumb on baby nose for the Taube caught in a silver web of searchlights."Sale oiseau!"her defiant cry shrills up. "Just like you, to come on my grown-up evening! But you shan't spoil it. No, sister, I don't want to go in. I came out to say good-night to the chickens and rabbits, and tell them not to be afraid."Behind the lilies and late roses and laurels is quite a menagerie of domestic animals, housed among growingpotatoes, beans, and tomatoes.C'est la guerre!But rabbits and chickens are robbed of their consolation; the baby is bundled into the house; and, once she is safe—safe as any one can be safe in bombarded Nancy!—nobody thinks about the air raid.Que voulez-vous?If one thought about these things, smiles a blonde girl in white, they might really get upon one's nerves, and that would never do!"It is this moonlight," she explains. "They will be back again once or twice to-night, perhaps. But the streets will be as full as ever ofpoilus en permission, walking with their sweethearts, in spite of the hateful things!"One makes one's adieux early in war times; but the moonlight was so wonderful on that Taube-ridden night that Brian said he felt it like a cool silver shower on his eyelids. "I believe I'm developing night-eyes!" he laughed to me, as we walked ahead of the Becketts and Julian O'Farrell, on our way across the gleaming square to our hotel. "Surely there won't be another raid for an hour or two? Let's take a walk. Let's go into the old town, and try to see some ghosts.""Yes, let's!" I echoed.I said good-night sweetly to the Becketts and stiffly to O'Farrell. Brian was equally cordial to all three, and I feared that O'Farrell might be encouraged to offer his company. But his self-assurance stopped short of that. He went meekly into the darkened hotel with the old couple, and I turned away triumphant, with my arm in Brian's.The clock of the Town Hall struck ten, chimed, waited for the church clock to approve and confirm, then repeated all that it had said and sung a minute before.We were going to look for ghosts of kings and dukes and queens; and like ghosts ourselves, we stepped from moonlit shores into pools of shadow, and back to moonlit shores again; past the golden Arch of Triumph, which Stanislas built in honour of his daughter's marriage with Louis XV; through the Carrière, where the tops of tall copper-beeches caught the light with dull red gleams, like the glow of a carbuncle; past the sleeping palace of Stanislas, into the old "nursery garden" of the Pepinière, to the sombre Porte de la Craffe whose two huge, pointed towers and great wall guard the old town of Duke René II.There we stopped, because of all places this dark corner was the place for Nancy's noblest ghost to walk, René the Romantic, friend of Americo Vespucius when Americo needed friends; René the painter, whose pictures still adorn old churches of Provence, where he was once a captive: René, whose memory never dies in Nancy, though his body died 500 years ago.What if he should rise from his tomb in the church of the Cordeliers, or come down off his little bronze horse in the Place St. Epvre as ghosts may by moonlight, to walk with his fair wife Isabella through the huddled streets of the old town, gazing at the wreckage made by the greatest war of history? What would he think of civilization, he who held his dukedom against the star warrior of the century, Charles the Bold? War was lawless enough in his day. When avenging a chancellor's murder, the Nancians hanged 100 Burgundian officers on a church tower for the besiegers outside the city wall to see. But the "noble Gauls" whom Julius Cæsar called "knights of chivalry," would have drawn the line then at showering bombs fromthe bay on women and children. We fancied, Brian and I, that after a walk round Nancy René and Isabella would retire, sadder and wiser ghosts, content to have finished their lives in gentler times than ours. Back into the shadows might they fade, to sleep again, and take up their old dream where the noise of twentieth-century shrapnel had snapped its thread. Their best dream must be, we thought, of their battle of Nancy: Charles the Bold on his black war-horse, surrounded by Burgundian barons in armour, shouting, and waving their banners with standards of ivory and gold; Charles of the dark locks, and brilliant eyes which all men feared and some women loved; Charles laughing with joy in the chance of open battle at last, utterly confident of its end, because the young duke—once his prisoner—had reinforced a small army with mercenaries, Swiss and Alsatians. At most René had 15,000 soldiers, and Charles believed his equal band of Burgundians worth ten times the paid northerners, as man to man.From the church tower where Charles's men had hung—where St. Epvre stands now—René could see the enemy troops assembling, headed by the Duke of Burgundy, in his glittering helmet adorned with its device of an open-jawed lion. He could even see the gorgeous tent whose tapestried magnificence spies had reported (a magnificence owned by Nancy's museum in our day!), and there seemed to his eyes no end to the defile of spears, of strange engines for scaling walls, and glittering battle-axes. One last prayer, a blessing by the pale priest, and young René's own turn to lead had come—a slight adversary for great Charles, but with a heart as bold! The trumpet blast ofLa Rivière, sounding the charge of Lorraine, went to his head like wine. He laughed when Herter's mountain men began to sing "Le taureau d'Uri" and "La vache d'Unterwald," to remind the proud Burgundian of his defeats at Granson and Morat. Then came the crash of armour against armour, blade against blade, and the day ended for Nancy according to René's prayers. The southerners fled and died; and two days later, René was gazing down at the drowned body of Charles the Bold, dragged out of a pond. Yes, a good dream for ghosts of the chivalrous age to retire into, and shut the door! But for us, in our throbbing flesh and blood, this present was worth suffering in for the glory of the future.There were other ghosts to meet in Nancy's old town of narrow streets where moonlight trickled in a narrow rill. Old, old ghosts, far older than the town as we saw it: Odebric of the eleventh century, who owned the strongest castle in France and the most beautiful wife, and fought the bishops of Metz and Treves together, because they did not approve of the lady; Henri VI of England riding through the walled city with his bride, Marguerite, by his side: ghostly funeral processions of dead dukes, whose strange, Oriental obsequies were famed throughout the world; younger and more splendid ghosts: Louis XIII and Richelieu entering in triumph when France had fought and won Lorraine, only to give it back by bargaining later; ghosts of stout German generals who, in 1871, had "bled the town white"; but greater than all ghosts, the noble reality of Foch and Castlenau, who saved Nancy in 1914, on the heights of La Grande Couronne.As we walked back to the new town, dazed a little by ourdeep plunge into the centuries, I heard my name called from across the street. "Miss O'Malley—wait, please! It's Julian O'Farrell. Have you seen my sister?"Brian and I stopped short, and O'Farrell joined us, panting and out of breath. "She's not with you?" he exclaimed. "I hoped she would be. I've been searching everywhere—she wasn't in the hotel when I got home, and it's close to midnight."CHAPTER XIIII felt unsympathetic, and wouldn't have cared if Miss Dierdre O'Farrell had flown off on a broomstick, or been kidnapped by a German aviator. My heart, however, was sure that nothing had happened and I suspected that her brother had trumped up an excuse to join us. It vexed me that Brian should show concern. If only he knew how the girl had looked at him a few hours ago!"Couldn't they tell you in the hotel at what time she went out?" he enquired.But no! According to O'Farrell, his sister had not been seen. He had found her door unlocked, the room empty, and her hat and coat missing. "She told me she was going to bed," he added. "But the bed hasn't been disturbed.""Nor need you be, I think," said I. "Perhaps your sister wants to frighten you. Children love that sort of thing. It draws attention to themselves. And sometimes they don't outgrow the fancy.""Especially Suffragettes and Sinn Feiners," O'Farrell played up to me, unoffended. "Still, as a brother of one, I'm bound to search, if it takes all night. A sister's a sister. And mine is quite a valuable asset." He tossed me this hint with a Puck-like air of a private understanding established between us. Yes, "Puck-like" describes him: a Puck at the same time merry and malicious, never to be counted upon!"I feel that Miss O'Farrell went out to take a walk because she was restless, and perhaps not very happy," Brian reproached us both. "Something may have happened—remember we're in the war zone.""No one in Nancy's likely to forget that!" said I, dully resenting his defence of the enemy. "Brushing bombs out of their back hair every ten minutes or so! And listen—don't you hear big guns booming now, along the front? The German lines are only sixteen kilometres from here."Brian didn't answer. His brain was pursuing Dierdre O'Farrell, groping after her through the night. "If she went out before that air raid, while we were at the Préfet's," he suggested, "she may have had to take refuge somewhere—she may have been hurt——""By Jove!" Puck broke in. "It scares me when you say that. You're a—a sort—ofprophet, you know! I must find out what hospitals there are——""We'll go with you to the hotel," Brian promised. "They'll know there about the hospitals. And if the Préfet's still up, he'll phone for us officially, I'm sure.""It's you who are the practical one, after all!" cried O'Farrell. And I guessed from a sudden uprush of Irish accent that his anxiety had grown sincere.We hurried home; Brian seeming almost to guide us, for without his instinct for the right way we would twice have taken a wrong turning. As we came into the Place Stanislas, still a pale oasis of moonlight, I saw standing in front of the hotel two figures, black as if cut out of velvet. One, that of a man, was singularly tall and thin, as a Mephistopheles of the stage. The other was that of a woman in a long cloak, small and slight as a child of fourteen. DierdreO'Farrell, of course! It could be no one else. But who was the man? A dim impression that the figure was vaguely familiar, or had been familiar long ago, teased my brain. But surely I could never have seen it before."Hurrah! There she is!" cried O'Farrell, "alive and on her pins!"At the sound of his voice, the velvet silhouettes stirred. They had turned to look at us, and a glint of moonlight made the two faces white and blank as masks. O'Farrell waved his hand, and I was obliged to quicken my steps to keep pace with Brian: "I suppose she got lost—serve her right!—and the beanpole has escorted her home," grumbled Puck; but as he spoke, the beanpole in question hurriedly made a gesture of salute, and stalked away with enormous strides. In an instant he was engulfed by a shadow-wave and his companion was left to meet us alone. I thought it would be like her to whisk into the hotel and vanish before we could arrive, but she did not. She stood still, with a fierce little air of defiance; and as we came near I saw that under the thrown-back cloak her left arm was in a white sling.Her brother saw it also. "Hullo, what have you been up to?" he wanted to know. "You've given us the scare of our lives!""Thank you," the girl said. "Please speak for yourself!""He may speak for us, too," Brian assured her. "We thought of the air raid. And even now, I don't feel as if we'd been wrong. Your voice sounds as if you were in pain. You've been hurt!""It's nothing at all," she answered shortly, but her tonesoftened slightly for Brian. Evenshehad her human side, it seemed. "A window splintered near where I was, and I got a few bits of glass in my arm. They're out now—every one. A doctor came, and looked after me. You see, Jule!" and she nodded her head at the sling. "Now I'm going in to bed. Good-night!""Wait, and let my sister help you," Brian proposed. "She's a splendid nurse. I know she'll be delighted.""Sweet of her!" sneered the girl. "ButI'ma trained nurse, too, and I can take care of myself. It's only my left arm that's hurt, and a scratch at that. I don't need any help from any one.""Was that man we saw the doctor who put you in your sling?" asked "Jule," in the blunt way brothers have of catching up their sisters."Yes, he was," she grudged."Why did he run away? Didn't he want to be thanked?""He did not. Besides——""Besides—what?""He particularly didn't wish to meet—one of our party. Now, I shan't say a word more about him. So you needn't ask questions. I'm tired. I want to go to bed."With this ultimatum, she bolted into the hotel, leaving the three of us speechless for a few seconds. I suppose each was wondering, "AmIthe one the doctor didn't want to meet?" Then I remembered my impression of having known that tall, thin figure long ago, and I was seized with certainty that the mysterious person had fled from me. At all events, I was sure Miss O'Farrell wished me to think so by way of being as aggravating as she possibly could."Well, I'mblessed!" Puck exploded."Are you?" I doubted. And I couldn't resist adding, "I thought your sister always did what you wanted?""In the end she does," he upheld his point. "But—just lately—she's bewitched! Some saint is needed to remove the ban."I thought the saint was only too near her hand! Whether that hand would scratch or strike I couldn't guess; but one gesture was as dangerous as the other.What with thinking of my own horridness and other people's, wondering about the shadow-man, and being roused by the usual early morning air raid, bed didn't mother me with its wonted calming influence. Excitement was a tonic for the next day, however; and a bath and coffee braced me for an expedition with the Préfet's wife and daughters, and the Becketts. They took us over the two hugecasernes, turned into homes of refuge for two thousand people from the invaded towns and villages of Lorraine: old couples, young women (of course the young men are fighting), and children. We saw the skilled embroiderers embroidering, and the unskilled making sandbags for the trenches; we saw the schools; and the big girls at work upon trousseaux for their future, or happily cooking in the kitchens. We saw the gardens where the refugees tended their own growing fruit and vegetables. We saw the church—once a gymnasium—and an immense cinema theatre, decorated by the ladies of Nancy, with the Préfet's wife and daughters at their head. On the way home we dropped into the biggest of Nancy's beautiful shops, to behold the work of last night's bombs. The whole skylight-roof had been smashed at dawn; but the glass hadbeen swept away, and pretty girls were selling pretty hats and frocks as if nothing had happened—except that the wind of heaven was blowing their hair across their smiling eyes.After luncheon at which Dierdre O'Farrell didn't appear, the Préfet took us to the streets which had suffered most from the big gun bombardment—fine old houses destroyed with a completeness of which the wickedest aeroplane bombs are incapable. "Any minute they may begin again," the Préfet said. "But sufficient for the day! We suffered so much in a few hours three years ago, that nothing which has happened to us since has counted. Nancy was saved for us, to have and hold. Wounded she might be, and we also. But she was saved. We could bear the rest."We made him tell us about those "few hours" of suffering: and this was the story. It was on the 7th of September, 1914, when the fate of Nancy hung in the balance. An immense horde of Germans came pouring along the Seille, crossing the river by four bridges: Chambley, Moncel, Brin, and Bioncourt. Everyone knew that the order was to take Nancy at any price, and open the town for the Kaiser to march in, triumphant, as did Louis XIII of France centuries ago. William was said to be waiting with 10,000 men of the Prussian Guard, in the wood of Morel, ready for his moment. Furiously the Germans worked to place their huge cannon on the hills of Doncourt, Bourthecourt, and Rozebois. Villages burned like card houses. Church bells tolled as their towers rocked and fell. Forests blazed, and a rain of bombs poured over the country from clouds of flame and smoke. Amancewas lost, and with it hope also; for beyond, the road lay open for a rush on Nancy, seemingly past the power of man to defend. Still, mandiddefend! If the French could hold out against ten times their number for a few hours, there was one chance in a thousand that reinforcements might arrive. After Velaine fell next day, and the defile between the two mountain-hills of Amance swarmed with yelling Uhlans, the French still held. They did not hope, but they fought. How they fought! And at the breaking point, as if by miracle, appeared the reinforcingtirailleurs."This," said the Préfet, "was only one episode in the greatest battle ever fought for Nancy, but it was the episode in which the town was saved."You know," he went on, "that Lorrainers have been ardent Catholics for centuries. In the Church of Bon-Secours there's a virgin which the people credit with miraculous power. Many soldiers in the worst of the fighting were sure of victory, because the virgin had promised that never should Nancy be taken again by any enemy whatever."It was late when we came back to the hotel, and while I was translating the Becketts' gratitude into French for the Préfet, the O'Farrells arrived from another direction. The brother looked pleased to see us; the sister looked distressed. I fancied that she had been forced or persuaded to point out the scene of last night's adventure, and was returning chastened from the visit. To introduce her to the Préfet was like introducing a dog as it strains at the leash, but Puck performed the rite, and explained her sling."Hurt in the air raid?" the Préfet echoed. "I hope, Mademoiselle, that you went to a good doctor. That he——""The doctor came to her on the spot," replied Puck, in his perfect French. "It seems you have doctors at Nancy who walk the streets, when there's a raid, wandering about to pick up jobs, and refusing payment."The Préfet laughed. "Can it be," he exclaimed, "that Mademoiselle has been treated by the Wandering Jew? Oh, not the original character, but an extraordinary fellow who has earned that name in our neighbourhood since the war.""Was that what he called himself?" O'Farrell turned to Dierdre. I guessed that Puck's public revelations were vengeance upon her for unanswered questions."He called himself nothing at all," the girl replied."Ah," said the Préfet, "then hewasthe Wandering Jew! Let me see—I think you are planning to go to Gerbéviller and Lunéville and Vitrimont to-morrow. Most likely you'll meet him at one of those places. And when you hear his story, you'll understand why he haunts the neighbourhood like a beneficent spirit.""But must we wait to hear the story? Please tell us now," I pleaded. "I'm so curious!"This was true. I burned with curiosity. Also, fatty degeneration of the heart prompted me to annoy Dierdre O'Farrell. To spiteme, she had refused to talk of the doctor. I was determined to hear all about him to spiteher. You see to what a low level I have fallen, dear Padre!The Préfet said that if we would go home with him andhave tea in the garden (German aeroplanes permitting) he would tell us the tale of the Wandering Jew. We all accepted, save Dierdre, who began to stammer an excuse; but a look from her brother nipped it in the bud. He certainly has an influence over the girl, against which she struggles only at her strongest. To-day she looked pale and weak, and he could do what he liked with her.He liked to make her take tea at the Préfet's, doubtless because he'd have felt bound to escort the invalid to her room, had she insisted on going there!The story of the Wandering Jew would be a strange one, anywhere and anyhow. But it's more than strange to me, because it is linked with my past life. Still, I won't tell it from my point of view. I'll begin with the Préfet's version.The "Wandering Jew" reallyisa Jew, of the best and most intellectual type. His name is Paul Herter. His father was a man of Metz, who had brought to German Lorraine a wife from Lunéville. Paul is thirty-five now, so you see he wasn't born when the Metz part of Lorraine became German. His parents—French at heart—taught him secretly to love France, and hate German domination. As he grew up, Paul's ambition was to be a great surgeon. He wished to study, not in Germany, but in Paris and London. These hopes, however, were of the "stuff that dreams are made of," for when the father died, the boy had to work at anything he could get for a bare livelihood. It wasn't till he was over twenty-five that he'd scraped together money for the first step toward his career. He went to Paris: studied and starved; then to London. It was there I met him, but that bit of the story fits in later.He was thought well of at "Bart's," and everybody who knew him was surprised when suddenly he married one of the younger nurses, an English girl, and vanished with her from London. Presently the pair appeared in Metz, at the mother's house. Herter seemed sad and discouraged, uncertain of his future, and just at this time, through German Lorraine ran rumours of war "to begin when the harvests should be over." Paul and his mother took counsel. Both were French at heart. They determined to leave all they had in the world at Metz, rather than Paul should be called up to serve Prussia. The three contrived to cross the frontier. Paul offered himself to the Foreign Legion; his wife volunteered to nurse in a military hospital at Nancy; and Madame Herter, mère took refuge in her girlhood's home at Lunéville, where her old father still lived.Then came the rush of the Huns across the frontier. Paul's wife was killed by a Zeppelin bomb which wrecked her hospital. At Lunéville the mother and grandfather perished in their own house, burned to the ground by order of the Bavarian colonel, Von Fosbender.Paul Herter had not been in love with his wife. There was a mystery about the marriage, but her fate filled him with rage and horror. His mother he had adored, and the news of her martyrdom came near to driving him insane. In the madness of grief he vowed vengeance against all Bavarians who might fall into his hands.He was fighting then in the Legion; but shortly after he was gravely wounded. His left foot had to be amputated; and from serving France as a soldier, he began to serve as a surgeon. He developed astonishing skill inthroat and chest operations, succeeding in some which older and more experienced men refused to attempt. Months passed, and into his busy life had never come the wished-for chance of vengeance; but all who knew him knew that Herter's hatred of Bavarians was an obsession. He was not one who would forget; and when a lot of seriously wounded Bavarians came into the field-hospital where he was at work, the two young doctors under him looked one another in the eyes. Even the stretcher-bearers had heard of Herter's vow, but there was nothing to do save to bring in the stream of wounded, and trust the calm instinct of the surgeon to control the hot blood of the man. Still, the air was electric with suspense, and heavy with dread of some vague tragedy: disgrace for the hospital, ruin for Herter.But the Jewish surgeon (he wasn't called "the Wandering Jew" in those days) caught the telepathic message of fear, and laughed grimly at what men were thinking of him. "You need not be afraid," he said to his assistants. "Thesecanailleare sacred for me. They do not count as Bavarians."Nevertheless, the young doctors would have tended the wounded prisoners themselves, leaving Herter to care for his countrymen alone. But one of the Bavarians was beyond their skill: a young lieutenant. His wound was precisely "Herter's specialty"—a bullet lodged in the heart, if he was to be saved, Herter alone could save him. Would Herter operate? He had only to say the case was hopeless, and refuse to waste upon it time needed for others.Perhaps he knew what suspicion would dog him through life if he gave this verdict. At all events, he chose tooperate. "Bring me the brute," he growled: and reluctantly the brute was brought—a very youthful brute, with a face of such angelic charm that even Herter was struck by it. He had steeled himself to get through a hateful job; but for him—like most men of his race—beauty held a strong appeal. Suddenly he wished to save the boy with the fair curly hair and arched dark brows. Here was a German—a Bavarian—who could have no vileness in him yet!The surgeon got ready his instruments for the operation, which must be done quickly, if at all. The boy was unconscious, but every moment or two he broke out in convulsive delirium, giving answers to questions like a man talking in sleep. "Hilda! Hilda!" he cried again and again. "My Hilda, do not ask me that. Thou wouldst not love me if I told thee! Thou wouldst hate me forever!""What have you done that Hilda should hate you?" Paul enquired, as he waited for the anæsthetic. Ether was running short. The wounded had to take their turn that day."Lunéville! Lunéville!" shrieked the Bavarian.Everyone heard the cry. The two young doctors, knowing Herter's history, turned sick. This was worse than their worst fears! But they could do nothing. To speak, to try to act, would be to insult the surgeon. They saw that he was ghastly pale. "What happened at Lunéville?" he went on."Here is the ether," a voice spoke in haste. But Paul heard only the Bavarian."Oh, God, the old woman! Her face at the window. I can't forget. Hilda—she wouldn't come out. It wasn'tmy fault. The Colonel's orders. An old man, too. We saw them in the fire. We had to pass on. Hilda, forgive!""Was it a corner house of the Rue Princesse Marie?" asked Herter."Yes—yes, a corner house," groaned the boy of the beautiful face.Herter gave a sign to the man who had brought the ether. A moment more, and the ravings of the Bavarian were silenced. The operation began.The others had their hands full of their own work, yet with a kind of agonized clairvoyance they were conscious of all that Herter did. The same thought was in the minds of both young doctors. They exchanged impressions afterward. "He'll cut the boy's heart out and tread it underfoot!"But never had the Jewish surgeon from Metz performed a major operation with more coolness or more perfect skill. Had he chosen to let his wrist tremble at the critical second, revenge would easily have been his. But awaiting the instant between one beat of the heart and another, he seized the shred of shrapnel lodged there, and closed up the throbbing breast. The boy would live. He had not only spared, but saved, the life of one who was perhaps his mother's murderer.During the whole day he worked on untiringly and—it seemed—unmoved. Then, at the end of the last operation, he dropped as if he had been shot through the brain.This was the beginning of a long, peculiar illness which no doctor who attended him could satisfactorily diagnose. He was constantly delirious, repeating the words of the Bavarian: "Hilda—Hilda!—the corner house—Rue Princesse Marie—Lunéville!" and it was feared that, if he recovered, he would be insane. After many weeks, however, he came slowly back to himself—a changed self, but a sane self. Always odd in his appearance—very tall and dark and thin—he had wasted to a walking skeleton, and his black hair had turned snow-white. He had lost his self-confidence, and dreaded to take up work again lest he should fail in some delicate operation. Long leave was granted, and he was advised by doctors who were his friends to go south, to sunshine and peace. But Herter insisted that the one hope for ultimate cure was to stay in Lorraine. He took up his quarters in what was left of a house near the ruin of his mother's old home, in Lunéville, but he was never there for long at a time. He was provided with a pass to go and come as he liked, being greatly respected and pitied at headquarters; and wherever there was an air raid, there speedily and mysteriously appeared Paul Herter among the victims.His artificial foot did not prevent his riding a motor-bicycle, and on this he arrived, no matter at what hour of night or day, at any town within fifty miles of Lunéville, when enemy airmen had been at work. He gave his services unpaid to poor and rich alike; and owing to the dearth of doctors not mobilized, the towns concerned welcomed him thankfully. All the surgeon's serene confidence in himself returned in these emergencies, and he was doing invaluable work. People were grateful, but the man's ways and looks were so strange, his restlessness so tragic, that they dubbed him "le Juif Errant."Now, Padre, I have come to the right place to bring in my part of this story.While I was training at "Bart's," I met a doctor named Paul Herter. Some of the girls used to call him the "German Jew" but we all knew that his Germanness was only an accident of fate, through a war before he was born, and that he was passionately French at heart. He was clever—a genius—but moody and queer, and striking to look at. He would have been ugly but for a pair of beautiful brown eyes, wistful sometimes as a dog's. One of our nurses was in love with him, but he used to keep out of her way when he could. He was said not to care for women, and I was a little flattered that a man so well thought of "at the top" should take notice of me. When I look back on myself, I seem to have been very young then!Dr. Herter used to meet me, as if by accident, when I was off duty, and we went for long walks, talking French together; I enjoyed that! Besides, there was nothing the man didn't know. He was a kind of encyclopædia of all the great musicians and artists of the world since the Middle Ages; and was so much older than I, that I didn't think about his falling in love. I knew I was pretty, and that beauty of all sorts was a cult with him. I supposed that he liked looking at me—and that his fancy would end there. But it didn't. There came a dreadful day when he accused me of encouraging him purposely, of leading him on to believe that I cared. This was a real shock. I was sorry—sorry! But he said such horrid things that I was hurt and angry, too. I said horrid things in my turn. This scene happened in the street. I asked him to leave me, and he did at once, without looking back. I can see him now, striding off in the twilight! No wonder the tall black silhouette in thePlace Stanislas looked familiar. But the man is thinner now, and walks with a slight limp.The next thing I heard of him after our break was that he'd married Nurse Norman (the one who was in love with him) and that they'd left England. Whether he'd married the girl in a rage against me, or because he was sorry for her (she'd just then fallen into deep disgrace, through giving a patient the wrong medicine), I didn't know. I can't say I didn't care, for I often thought of the man and wondered what had become of him, though I don't remember ever writing about him to you. He was but indirectly concerned with my life, and maybe it was in the back of my mind that I might get a scolding from you if I told you the tale.The moment the name of "Paul Herter" was mentioned in that pleasant garden at Nancy, the whole episode of those old days at "Bart's" came back, and I guessed why the tall figure had darted away from Dierdre O'Farrell as we came in sight. He must have offered to see the girl safely home, after dressing her wound (probably at some chemist's), and she had told him about her fellow-travellers. Naturally my name sent him flying like a shot from a seventy-five! But I can't help hoping we may meet by accident. There's a halo round the man's head for me since I've heard that tragic story. Before, he was only a queer genius. Now, he's a hero. Will he turn away, I wonder, if I walk up to him and hold out my hand?I am longing, for a double reason, to see Vitrimont and Gerbéviller and Lunéville, since I've learned that at one of those places Paul Herter may appear.CHAPTER XIVWe were three automobiles strong when we went out of Nancy, along what they call the "Lunéville road." That was yesterday, as I write, and already it seems long ago! The third and biggest car belonged to the Préfet; gray and military looking, driven by a soldier in uniform; and this time Dierdre O'Farrell was with us. I was wondering if she went "under orders," or if she wished to see the sights we were to see—among them, perhaps, her elusive doctor!We turned south, leaving town, and presently passed—at Dombasle—astonishingly huge salt-works, with rubble-heaps tall as minor pyramids. On each apex stood a thing like the form of a giant black woman in a waggling gas-mask and a helmet. I could have found out what these weird engines were, no doubt, but I preferred to remember them as mysterious monsters.At a great, strange church of St. Nicolas, in the old town of St. Nicolas-du-Port, we stopped, because the Préfet's daughters had told us of a magic stone in the pavement which gives good fortune to those who set foot on it. Only when several of us were huddled together, with a foot each on the sacred spot, were we told that it meant marriage before the new year. If the spell works, Dierdre O'Farrell, Brian, and I will all be married in less than four months. But St. Nicolas is a false prophetwhere we are concerned. Brian and I will never marry. Even if poor Brian should fall head over ears in love, he wouldn't ask a girl to share his broken life: he has told me this. As for me, I can never love any man after Jim Beckett. The least penance I owe is to be faithful forever to his memory and my own falsehood!St. Nicolas is the patron saint of the neighbourhood, so it's right that from his little town and his big church all the country round should open out to the eye, as if to do him homage.From the hill of Léomont we could see to the south the far-off, famous Forest of Parroy; away to the north, the blue heights of La Grande Couronne, where the fate of Nancy was decided in 1914; to the west, a purple haze like a mourning wreath of violets hung over the valley of the Meurthe, and the tragic little tributary river Mortagne; beyond, we could picture with our mind's eyes the Moselle and the Meuse.But Léomont was not a place where one could stand coldly thinking of horizons. It drew all thoughts to itself, and to the drama played out upon its miniature mountain. There was fought one of the fiercest and most heroic single battles of the war.We had to desert the cars, and walk up a rough track to the ruined farmhouse which crowned the hill; a noble, fortified farmhouse that must have had the dignity of a château before the great fight which shattered its ancient walls. Now it has the dignity of a mausoleum. Long ago, in Roman days when Diana, Goddess of the Moon, was patron of Lunéville and the country round, a temple of stone and marble in her honour and a soaring fountaincrowned the high summit of Léomont, for all the world to see. Her influence is said to reign over the whole of Lorraine, from that day to this, St. Nicholas being her sole rival: and a prophecy has come down through the centuries that no evil may befall Diana's citadels, save in the "dark o' the moon," when the protectress is absent. Lunéville was overrun in the "dark o' the moon"; and it was then also that the battle of Léomont was fought, ending in the vast cellars, where no man was left alive.In these days of ours, it's a wonderful and romantic mountain, sacred as a monument forever, to the glory of the French soldiers who did not die in vain. The scarred face of the ruined house—its stones pitted by shrapnel as if by smallpox—gazes over Lorraine as the Sphinx gazes over the desert: calm, majestic, sad, yet triumphant. And under the shattered walls, among fallen buttresses and blackened stumps of oaks, are the graves of Léomont's heroes; graves everywhere, over the hillside; graves in the open; graves in sheltered corners where wild flowers have begun to grow; their tricolour cockades and wooden crosses mirrored in the blue of water-filled shell-holes; graves in the historic cellars, covered with a pall of darkness; graves along the slope of the hill, where old trenches have left ruts in the rank grass.An unseen choir of bird-voices was singing the sweetest requiem ever sung for the dead; yet Léomont in its majestic loneliness saddened us, even the irrepressible Puck. We were sad and rather silent all the way to Vitrimont; and Vitrimont, at first glance, was a sight to make us sadder than any we had seen. There had been a Vitrimont, a happy little place, built of gray and rose-red stones;now, of those stones hardly one lies upon another, except in rubble heaps. And yet, Vitrimont isn't sad as others of the ruined towns are sad. It even cheered us, after Léomont, because a star of hope shines over the field of desolation—a star that has come out of the west. Some wonderful women of San Francisco decided to "adopt" Vitrimont, as one of the little places of France which had suffered most in the war. Two of them, Miss Polk and Miss Crocker—girls rather than women—gave themselves as well as their money to the work. In what remains of Vitrimont—what they are making of Vitrimont—they live like two fresh roses that have taken root in a pile of ashes. With a few books, a few bowls of flowers, pictures, and bits of bright chintz they have given charm to their poor rooms in the half-ruined house of a peasant. This has been their home for many months, from the time when they were the only creatures who shared Vitrimont with its ghosts: but now other homes are growing under their eyes and through their charity; thanks to them, the people of the destroyed village are trooping back, happy and hopeful. The church has been repaired (that was done first, "because it is God's house") with warm-coloured pink walls and neat decoration; and plans for the restoring of the whole village are being carried out, while the waiting inhabitants camp in a village of toy-like bungalows given by the French Government. I never saw such looks of worshipping love cast upon human beings as those of the people of Vitrimont for these two American girls. I'm sure they believe that Miss Crocker and Miss Polk are saints incarnated for their sakes by "la Sainte Vierge." One old man said as much!He was so old that it seemed as if he could never havebeen young, yet he was whistling a toothless but patriotic whistle, over some bit of amateur-carpenter work, in front of a one-room bungalow. Inside, visible through the open door, was the paralyzed wife he had lately wheeled "home" to Vitrimont, in some kind of a cart. "Oh, yes, we are happy!" he stopped whistling to say. "We are fortunate, too. We think we have found the place where ourstreetused to be, and these Angels—we do not call them Demoiselles, but Angels—from America are going to build us a new home in it. We have seen the plan. It is more beautiful than the old!"Wherever we passed a house on the road to Lunéville, and in town itself, as we came in, we saw notices—printed and written—to remind us that we were in the war-zone, if we forgot for an instant. "Logement militaire," or "Cave voûtée, 200 places—400 places." Those hospitable cellars advertising their existence in air raids and bombardments must be a comforting sight for passers-by, now and then; but no siren wailed us a warning. We drove on in peace; and I—disappointed at Vitrimont—quietly kept watch for a tall, thin figure of a man with a slight limp. At any moment, I thought, I might see him, for at Lunéville he lives—if he lives anywhere!I was so eager and excited that I could hardly turn my mind to other things; but Brian, not knowing why I should be absent-minded, constantly asked questions about what we passed. Julian O'Farrell had exchanged his sister for Mr. and Mrs. Beckett, whom he had persuaded to take the short trip in his ramshackle taxi. His excuse was that Mother Beckett would deal out more wisely than Dierdre his Red Cross supplies to the returned refugees; so we hadthe girl with us; and I caught reproachful glances if I was slow in answering my blind brother. She herself suspects him as aposeur, yet she judges me careless of his needs—which I should find funny, if it didn't make me furious! Just to see what Dierdre would do, and perhaps to provoke her, sometimes I didn't answer at all, but left her to explain our surroundings to Brian. I hardly thought she would respond to the silent challenge, but almost ostentatiously she did.She cried, "There's a castle!" when we came to the fine and rather staid château which Duke Stanislas loved, and where he died. She even tried to describe it for Brian, with faltering self-consciousness, and the old streets which once had been "brilliant as Versailles, full of Queen Marie's beautiful ladies." Now, they are gray and sad, even those streets which show no scars from the three weeks' martyrdom of German rule. Soldiers pass, on foot and in motors, yet it's hard to realize that before the war Lunéville was one of the gayest, grandest garrison towns of France, rich and industrious, under Diana's special protection. Just because she was away in her moon-chariot, one dark and dreadful night, all has changed since then. But she'll come back, and bless her ancient place of Lunæ Villa, in good time!It was here, Brian reminded me, that they drew up the treaty which gave the Rhine frontier to France, after Napoleon won the Battle of Marengo. I wonder if the Germans remembered this in 1914 when they came?We lunched at an hotel, in a restaurant crowded with French officers; and not a civilian there except ourselves. I was hoping that Paul Herter might come in, for thetragic Rue Princesse Marie is not far away—and even a Wandering Jew must eat! He did not come; but I almost forgot my new disappointment in hearing the French officers talk about Lorraine.They were in the midst of a discussion when we came in, and when they had all bowed politely to us, they took up its thread where it had broken off. A colonel—a Lorrainer—was saying that out of the wealth of Lorraine (stolen wealth, he called it!) Germany had built up her fortune as a united nation, in a few years far exceeding the indemnity received in 1871. Germany had known that there were vast stores of iron; but the amazing riches in phosphorus ores had come to her as a surprise. If she had guessed, never would she have agreed to leave more than half the deposit on the French side of the frontier! Well enough for Prussian boasters to say that Germany's success was due to her own industry and supervirtue, or that her tariff schemes had worked wonders. But take away the provinces she tore from France, and she will be a Samson shorn! Take away Lorraine and the world will be rid once and for all of the German menace!When we left Lunéville there was still hope from Gerbéviller. Herter is often there, it seems. Besides, Gerbéviller was the principal end and aim of our day's excursion. Once no more than a pleasant town of quiet beauty on a pretty river, now it is amonument historique, the Pompeii of Lorraine.
Thinking things over in the night, I decided to wait until after breakfast before making up my mind to anything irrevocable. Breakfast being the appointed rendezvous, O'Farrell would then lay his cards on the table. If he slipped some up his sleeve, I must make it my business to spot the trick and its meaning for the Becketts.
As I offered this sop to my conscience, I could almost hear O'Farrell saying, with one of his young laughs, "That's right. Set a thief to catch a thief!"
At ten o'clock we were to start for Nancy via Commercy, so there would be little time to reflect, and to act on top of reflection; but my strait being desperate, I resolved to trust to luck; and to be first on the field of battle, I knocked at Brian's door at half-past eight.
He was already dressed, and to look at his neat cravat and smoothly brushed hair no one would have guessed that his toilet had been made by a blind man. We had not yet exchanged opinions of the O'Farrell family, and I had come early to get his impressions. They were always as accurate and quickly built up as his sketches; but since he has been blind, he seems almost clairvoyant.
"What do you think of those two?" I asked. "Or rather, what do you think of the man? I know you have to judge by voices; and as the girl hardly opened her mouth you can't——"
"Queer thing—and I don't quite understand it myself," said Brian; "but I see Miss O'Farrell more clearly than her brother."
He generally speaks of "seeing people," quite as a matter of course. It used to give me a sharp pain at my heart; but I begin to take his way for granted now. "There's something about O'Farrell that eludes me—slips away like quicksilver. One is charmed with his voice and his good looks——"
"Brian! Who told you he was good-looking?" I broke in.
Brian laughed. "I told myself! His manner—so sure of his power to please—belongs to good looks. Besides, I've never known a tenor with any such quality of voice who hadn't magnificent eyes. Why they should go together is a mystery—but they do. Am I right about this chap?"
"Yes, you're right," I admitted. "But go on. I'm more interested in him than in his sister."
"Are you? I've imagined her the more interesting—the more repaying—of the two. I see O'Farrell, not a bad fellow, but—notsure. I don't believe he's even sure of himself, whether he wants to be straight or crooked. How he turns out will depend—on circumstances, or perhaps on some woman. If he travels with us, he'll be a pleasant companion, there's no doubt. But——"
"But—what?"
"Well, we must always keep in mind that he's an actor. We mustn't take too seriously anything he says or does. And you, Molly—you must be more careful than the rest."
"I! But I told you I'd never met him at St. Raphael. I never set eyes on him till last night."
"I know. Yet I felt, when he 'set eyes' on you—oh, I don't know how to express what I felt! Only—if it had happened on the stage, there'd have been music for it in the orchestra."
"Brian, how strange you are!" I almost gasped. "Ought we to let the man and his sister go on with us, if that's their aim? Their Red Cross flag may be camouflage, you know! Very likely they're adventurers, after the Beckett's money. We could advise Father and Mother Beck——"
"Let's follow a famous example, and 'wait and see'—if only for the girl's sake."
"Oh, you think so well of her!"
"Not well, exactly," Brian hesitated. "I don't know what to think of her yet. But—I thinkabouther. I feel her, as I feel electricity before a thunderstorm bursts."
"A thunderstorm expresses her!" I laughed. "I thought of that myself. She's sullen—brooding, dark as a cloud. Yet thetiniestthing! One could almost break her in two."
"I held out my hand for good-night," Brian said. "She had to give hers, though I'm sure for some reason she didn't want to. It was small and—crushable, like a child's; and hot, as if she had fever."
"She didn't want to take yours, because we're North of Ireland and she's a fierce Sinn Feiner," I explained. Luckily Brian did not ask how I'd picked up this piece of information! He was delighted with it, and chuckled. "So she's a Sinn Feiner! She's very pretty, isn't she?"
"In a cross-patch way. She looks ready to bite at a touch."
"Poor child! Life must have gone hard with her. She's probably got a grouch, as the American boys over here say. We must try and do something to soften her down, and make her see things through rosier spectacles, if she and her brother join on to our party for a while."
"Ye-es."
"You don't like her, Molly?"
"Oh, I've hardly thought of her, dear. But you seem to have made up for that."
"Thunderstormsmakeyou think about them. They electrify the atmosphere. I see this girl so distinctly somehow: little, white thing; big, gloomy eyes like storms in deep woods, and thin eyelids—you know, that transparent, flower-petal kind, where you fancy you see the iris looking through, like spirit eyes, always awake while the body's eyes sleep; and—and lots of dark hair without much colour—hair like smoke. I see her a suppressed volcano—but not extinct."
"The day may come when we'll wish she were extinct. But really you've described her better than I could, though I stared quite a lot last night. Come along, dear. It's six minutes to nine. Let's trot down to breakfast."
We trotted; but early as I'd meant to be, and early as we were, the O'Farrells and the Becketts were before us. How long they had been together I don't know, but they must have finished their first instalment of talk about Jim, for already they had got on to the subject of plans.
"Well, it will be noble of you to help us with supplies. The promise we've got from our American Red Cross man in Paris is limited," O'Farrell was saying in his voice to charm a statue off its pedestal, as we came in. Hesprang to shut the door for us, and gave me the look of a cherubic fox, as much as to say, "You see where we've got to! But it's all for the good cause. There's more than one person not as black as he's painted!"
"Molly's watch must be slow," said Brian. "She thought it was only six minutes to nine."
"She's right. But it seems the big clock in the hall outside our door is fast," explained Father Beckett. "We heard it strike nine, so we hurried down. The same thing happened with Mr. and Miss O'Farrell."
Another glance at me from the brilliant eyes! "Smart trick, eh?" they telegraphed. I had to turn away, or I should have laughed. Surely never before, on stage or in story—to say nothing of real life—was the villain and blackmailer a mischievous, schoolboy imp, who made his victims giggle at the very antics which caught them in his toils! But, come to think of it,Iam a villain, and next door to a blackmailer! Yet I always see myself (unless I stop to reflect on my sins) as a girl like other girls, even better-natured and more agreeable and intelligent than most. Perhaps, after all, villains don't run in types!
I soon learned that Father and Mother Beckett were rejoicing in the acquisition of Jim's two friends as travelling companions. The celebrated snapshots were among the cards O'Farrell had kept up his sleeve. No doubt he'd waited to make sure of my attitude (though he appeared to take it for granted) before deciding what use to make of his best trumps. Seeing that I let slip my one and only chance of a denunciation-scene, he flung away his also, with an air of dashing chivalry which his sister and I alone were in a position to appreciate. For me it had been a case of"speak now, or forever after hold your peace." For him, a decision was not irrevocable, as he could denounce me later, and plead that I had been spared at first, through kindness of heart. But I did not stop to consider that detail. I saw the man and myself as accomplices, on an equal footing, each having given quarter to the other. As for the girl, I still thought of her hardly at all, in spite of Brian's words. She was an unknown quantity, which I would waste no time in studying, while the situation that opened bade me sharpen my wits.
In the five or ten minutes before we joined them the Becketts had consented—or offered—to help finance the Red Cross crusade. To achieve this was worthy of the Irish-Italian's talents. But the little dining room was littered with samples of the travellers' goods: clothing for repatriated refugees, hospital supplies; papier-mâché splints, and even legs; shoes, stockings, medicines; soup-tablets, and chocolates. The O'Farrells might be doing evil, but good would apparently come from it for many. I could hardly advise the Becketts against giving money, even though I suspected that most of it would stick to O'Farrell's fingers—even though I knew that the hope of it consoled Signor Giulio di Napoli for leaving me in my safe niche. Yes, that was his consolation, I realized. And—there might be something more which I did not yet foresee. Still, being no better than he was, I was coward enough to hold my peace.
This was the situation when we set out for Nancy, our big car running slowly, in order not to outpace the rickety Red Cross cab. We were not allowed by the military authorities to enter Toul, so our way took us throughdelightful old Commercy, birthplace of Madeleines. Of course the town had things to make it famous, long before the day of the shell-shaped cakelets which all true sons and daughters of France adore. Somebody founded it in the ninth century, when the bishops of Metz were the great overlords of its lords. It was a serious little city then, and Benedictine monks had a convent there in the Middle Ages. The fun began only with the building of the château, and the coming of the Polish Stanislas, the best loved and last Duke of Lorraine. He used to divide his years between Nancy, Lunéville, and Commercy; and once upon a time, in the third of these châteaux, thechefhad achère amienamed Madeleine. There was to be a fête, and the lover of Madeleine was racking his tired brain to invent some new dainty for it. "Ihave thought of something which can make you famous," announced the young woman, who was a budding genius as a cook. "But,mon cher, it is my secret. Even to you I will not give it for nothing. I will sell it at a price."
Thecheffeigned indifference; but each moment counted. The Duke always paid in praise and gold for a successful new dish, especially a cake, for he was fond of sweets. When Madeleine boasted that her "inspiration" took the form of a cake, the man could resist no longer. The price asked was marriage—no less, and paid in advance! But it turned out not excessive. The feather-light, shell-shaped cakes were the success of the feast; and when Duke Stanislas heard their history, he insisted that they should be named Madeleines—"after their mother."
Even in war days, "Madeleines de Commercy" is the first cry which greets the traveller entering town. Jim, itseems, had a charming habit of sending to his mother at home a specimen of the cake, or confiture, or bonbon, for which each place he visited abroad was famed. These things used to reach her in jars or boxes adorned with the coat-of-arms and photographs of the city concerned—a procession of surprises: and I think as she bought Madeleines of Commercy she moistened them with a few tears.
I expected to find Nancy beautiful, since for so long it was the capital of proud Lorraine, but I hadn't guessed how beautiful or individual. Now I shall always in future see the details of each splendid square and park by shutting my eyes and calling the vision to come—as Brian does.
We drove straight to the door of a fascinating, old-fashioned hotel in the most celebrated square of all, the Place Stanislas; but we didn't go in. We couldn't stolidly turn our backs upon the magic picture, lit by a sudden radiance of sunshine, for in another moment the fairy-like effect might fade. Yes, "fairy-like" is the word; and as our two cars drew up—like Dignity and Impudence—I had the feeling that we'd arrived in the capital of fairyland to visit the king and queen.
It was I who described the scene to Brian: the eighteenth-century perfection of the buildings, each one harmoniously proportioned to suit the others; the town hall, with its wonderful clock; the palace; the theatre, and the rest of the happy architectural family reared by Duke Stanislas; each with its roof-decoration of carved stone vases, and graceful statues miraculously missed so far by German bombs; the lace-like filigree of wrought iron and gold on flag-hung balconies or gates; the gilded Arch of Triumphleading into the garden of the Place Carrière—a gorgeous glitter of decoration which won for Nancy heralias, "City of Golden Doors," and now has to be "camouflaged" for enemy aeroplanes. It was I who made the list of stage properties, but it was Brian who filled the stage with actors and actresses, in their proper parts.
He called upon the bronze statue of Stanislas to come down from its high pedestal, and appear before us in flesh, happy to be Duke of Lorraine, after all the dethronings and abdications in Poland; a most respectable-looking monarch despite his adventures and disguises of the past. We saw him in a powdered perruque, on his way to the ducal palace, after some religious ceremony that had attracted crowds of loyal Catholic Lorrainers: beside him, his good wife of bourgeoise soul but romantic name, Catherine Opalinska, a comfortable woman, too large for the fashionablerobe à paniers; with the pair, their daughter Marie, proud of the fate foretold by a fortune-teller, that she should be queen of France; the Royal family, and the aristocrats of their northern court; the smart Polish officers in uniform; the pretty, coquettish women, and dark-faced musicians of Hungary; the Swedish philosophers, the long-haired Italian artists; and above all, the beautiful Marquise de Boufflers—rival of the Queen—with her little dogs and black pages; all these "belonged" to the sunlit picture, where our modern figures seemed out of place and time. The noble square, with its vast stretch of gray stone pavement—worn satin-smooth—its carved gray façades of palaces, picked out with gold, and its vista of copper beeches rose-red against a sky of pearl, had been designed as a sober background for the colour and fantasticfashion of the eighteenth century, whereas we and others like us but added an extra sober note.
I noticed, as Brian sketched us his little picture of the past, that Dierdre O'Farrell gazed at him, as if at some legendary knight in whose reality she did not believe. It was the first time I had seen any change in the sullen face, but it was a change to interest rather than sympathy. She had the air of saying in her mind: "You look more like a St. George, stepped down from a stained-glass window, than an ordinary man of to-day. You seem to think about everyone else before yourself, and to see a lot more with your blind eyes than we see. You pretend to be happy, too, as if you wanted to set everybody a good example. But it's all a pose—a pose! I shall study you till I find you out, a trickster like the rest of us."
I felt a sudden stab of dislike for the girl, for daring to put Brian on a level with herself—and me. I wanted to punish her somehow, wanted to make the little wretch pay for her impertinent suspicions. I pushed past her brusquely to stand between her and Brian. "Let's go into the hotel," I said. "It's more important just now to see what our rooms are like than to play with the ghosts of dukes."
As if the slighted ghosts protested, there came a loud, reproachful wail out of space. Everyone started, and stared in all directions. Then the soberly clad, modern inhabitants of Nancy glanced skyward as they crossed the square of Stanislas. Nobody hurried, yet nobody stopped. Men, women, and children pursued their way at the same leisurely pace as before, except that their chins were raised. I realized then that the ghostly wail was the warning cry of a siren: "Take cover! Enemy aeroplanes sighted!" Butthere was the monotony of boredom in the voice, and in the air with which passers-by received the news.
"Oh, lord, here I go again!" the weary siren sighed.
"Third time to-day,mon Dieu!" grumbled a very old man to a very blasé porter, who dutifully shot out of the hotel to rescue our luggage, if not us, from possible though improbable danger. We let him haul in our bags, but remained glued to the pavement, utterly absorbed and fascinated, waiting for the show to begin.
We had not long to wait! For an instant the pearl-pale zenith shone serenely void. Then, heralded by a droning noise as of giant bees, and a vicious spitting of shrapnel, high overhead sailed a wide-winged black bird, chased by four other birds bigger, because nearer earth. They soared, circling closer, closer—two mounting high, two flying low, and so passed westward, while the sky was spattered with shrapnel—long, white streaks falling slow and straight, like tail-feathers of a shot eagle.
There was scant time to speak, or even draw an excited breath after the birds had disappeared, because they were back again, hovering so high that they were changed to insects.
We ought to have scuttled into the hotel, but somehow we didn't move, although people in the square seemed suddenly to realize the wisdom of prudence. Some vanished into doorways, others walked faster—though not one of those haughty Lorrainers would condescend to run. Forgetful of ourselves, I was admiring their pride, when an angry voice made me jump.
"You pretend that everything you do, good or bad, is for your brother's sake, yet you let him risk his life—ablindman!—out here in the street with bombs and shrapnel dropping every instant!"
It was Dierdre O'Farrell who spoke, and we glared into each other's eyes like two Kilkenny cats—or a surprised Kilkenny cat and a spitfire Kilkenny kitten.
A moment before, I had been longing to strike at her. Now it was she who struck at me; and it was too much, that it should be in defence of my own brother! The primitive fishwife within me rose to the surface. "Mind your own business!" I rudely flung at her: and slipping my arm under Brian's, in a voice of curdled cream begged him to come with me indoors.
The others followed, and about three seconds later a bomb fell in front of the hotel. It was a "dud," and did not explode, but it made a hole in the pavement and sent a jet of splintered stone into the air.
Perhaps the girl had saved us from death, or at least from disfiguring wounds, but I was in no mood to thank her for that. I wasgladI had been a fishwife, and I thought Brian lacked his usual discernment in attributing hidden qualities to such a person as Dierdre O'Farrell.
"Something's bound to break, if we don't part soon!" I told myself.
Nancy is one of "Jim's towns," as Mother and Father Beckett say. When, with Brian's help, they began mapping out their route, they decided to "give something worth while" to the place, and to all the ruined region round about, when they had learned what form would be best for their donation to take. Some friend in Paris gave them a letter to the Préfet, and we had not been in Nancy an hour when he and his wife called.
I'd never met a real, live préfet. The word sounded stiff and official. When Mother Beckett tremulously asked me to act as interpreter, I dimly expected to meet two polite automata, as little human as creatures of flesh and blood can be. Instead, I saw a perfectly delightful pair of Parisians, with the warm, kind manner one thinks of as southern. They were frankly pleased that a millionaire's purse promised to open for Nancy. Monsieur le Préfet offered himself to the Becketts as guide on a sightseeing expedition next day, and Madame, the Préfet's wife, proposed to exhibit her two thousand children, old and young, refugees housed in what once had been barracks. "The Germans pretend to believe they are barracks still, full of soldiers, as an excuse for bombs," she said. "But you shall see! And if you wish—if you have time—we will take you to see also whatthe Boches have done to some of our other towns—ah, but beautiful towns, of an importance! Lunéville, and Gerbévillers, and more—many more. You should know what they are like before you go on to the Grande Couronne, where Nancy was saved in 1914."
Of course the Becketts "wished." Of course they had time. "Molly, tell Mr. and Mrs. Préfet we've got more time than anything else!" said the old man eagerly. "Oh, and I guess we've got a little money, too, enough to spread around among those other places, as well as here. This is going to be something like what Jim would want at last!"
When the Préfet and his wife rose to go, they invited not only the Becketts but Brian and me to dine at their house that night. Mother Beckett, on the point of accepting for us all, hesitated. The hesitation had to be explained: and the explanation was—the O'Farrells. I had hoped we might be spared them, but it was not to be. Our host and hostess, hearing of the travellers of the Red Cross, insisted that they must come, too. Mrs. Beckett was sure they would both be charmed, but as it turned out, she was only half right. Mr. O'Farrell was charmed. His sister had a headache, and intended to spend the evening in her room.
Padre, if I wrote stories, I should like to write one with that préfet and his whole family for the heroes and heroines of it!
There is a small son. There are five daughters, each prettier than the others, the youngest a tinyfilette, the eldest twenty at most; and the mother in looks an elder sister. When the war broke out they were living inParis, the father in some high political post: but he was by ancestry a man of Lorraine, and his first thought was to help defend the home of his forbears. The Meurthe-et-Moselle, with Nancy as its centre and capital, was a terrible danger zone, with the sword of the enemy pointed at its heart, but the lover of Lorraine asked to become préfet in place of a man about to leave, and his family rallied round him. There at Nancy, they have been ever since those days, through all the bombardments by Big Berthas and Taubes. When houses and hotels were being blown to bits by naval guns, thirty-five kilometres away, the daily life of the family went on as if in peace. As a man, the Préfet longed to send his wife and children far away. As a servant of France he thought best to let them stop, to "set an example of calmness." And if they had been bidden to go, they would still have stayed.
The Préfet's house is one of the eighteenth-century palaces of the Place Stanislas; and in the story I'd like to write, I should put a description of their drawing room, and the scene after dinner that night.
Imagine a background of decorative walls, adorned with magnificent portraits (one of the best is Stanislas, and better still is Louis XVI, a proud baby in the arms of a handsome mother); imagine beautiful Louis XV chairs, tables, and sofas scattered about, with the light of prism-hung chandeliers glinting on old brocades and tapestries: flowers everywhere, in Chinese bowls and tall vases; against this background a group of lovely girls multiplied by many mirrors into a large company; be-medalled officers in pale blue uniforms, handing coffee to the ladies, or taking from silver dishes carried by children the delicious macaroons which are to Nancy what Madeleines are to Commercy. Imagine long windows opening into a garden: rosy lamplight streaming out, silver moonlight streaming in; music; the wonderful voice of a man (Julian O'Farrell) singing the "Marseillaise," the "Star-Spangled Banner," and "Tipperary." Then into the midst of this breaking the tiresome whine of the siren.
"What? A fourth time to-day?" cries somebody. "These creatures will wear out their welcome if they're not careful!"
A laugh follows, to drown the bark of shrapnel, and a general shrugging of the shoulders. But suddenly comes a cry thatla petite—the baby daughter of the house, sitting up in our honour—has run into the garden.
The elder girls are not afraid for themselves, the great bombardments have given them a quiet contempt of mere Taubes. But for the little sister!—that is different. Instantly it seems that all the bombs Germany has ever made may be falling like iron rain on that curly head out there among the autumn lilies. Everybody rushes to the rescue: and there is the child, sweet as a cherub and cool as a cucumber, in the din. She stands on the lawn, chin in air, baby thumb on baby nose for the Taube caught in a silver web of searchlights.
"Sale oiseau!"her defiant cry shrills up. "Just like you, to come on my grown-up evening! But you shan't spoil it. No, sister, I don't want to go in. I came out to say good-night to the chickens and rabbits, and tell them not to be afraid."
Behind the lilies and late roses and laurels is quite a menagerie of domestic animals, housed among growingpotatoes, beans, and tomatoes.C'est la guerre!But rabbits and chickens are robbed of their consolation; the baby is bundled into the house; and, once she is safe—safe as any one can be safe in bombarded Nancy!—nobody thinks about the air raid.Que voulez-vous?If one thought about these things, smiles a blonde girl in white, they might really get upon one's nerves, and that would never do!
"It is this moonlight," she explains. "They will be back again once or twice to-night, perhaps. But the streets will be as full as ever ofpoilus en permission, walking with their sweethearts, in spite of the hateful things!"
One makes one's adieux early in war times; but the moonlight was so wonderful on that Taube-ridden night that Brian said he felt it like a cool silver shower on his eyelids. "I believe I'm developing night-eyes!" he laughed to me, as we walked ahead of the Becketts and Julian O'Farrell, on our way across the gleaming square to our hotel. "Surely there won't be another raid for an hour or two? Let's take a walk. Let's go into the old town, and try to see some ghosts."
"Yes, let's!" I echoed.
I said good-night sweetly to the Becketts and stiffly to O'Farrell. Brian was equally cordial to all three, and I feared that O'Farrell might be encouraged to offer his company. But his self-assurance stopped short of that. He went meekly into the darkened hotel with the old couple, and I turned away triumphant, with my arm in Brian's.
The clock of the Town Hall struck ten, chimed, waited for the church clock to approve and confirm, then repeated all that it had said and sung a minute before.
We were going to look for ghosts of kings and dukes and queens; and like ghosts ourselves, we stepped from moonlit shores into pools of shadow, and back to moonlit shores again; past the golden Arch of Triumph, which Stanislas built in honour of his daughter's marriage with Louis XV; through the Carrière, where the tops of tall copper-beeches caught the light with dull red gleams, like the glow of a carbuncle; past the sleeping palace of Stanislas, into the old "nursery garden" of the Pepinière, to the sombre Porte de la Craffe whose two huge, pointed towers and great wall guard the old town of Duke René II.
There we stopped, because of all places this dark corner was the place for Nancy's noblest ghost to walk, René the Romantic, friend of Americo Vespucius when Americo needed friends; René the painter, whose pictures still adorn old churches of Provence, where he was once a captive: René, whose memory never dies in Nancy, though his body died 500 years ago.
What if he should rise from his tomb in the church of the Cordeliers, or come down off his little bronze horse in the Place St. Epvre as ghosts may by moonlight, to walk with his fair wife Isabella through the huddled streets of the old town, gazing at the wreckage made by the greatest war of history? What would he think of civilization, he who held his dukedom against the star warrior of the century, Charles the Bold? War was lawless enough in his day. When avenging a chancellor's murder, the Nancians hanged 100 Burgundian officers on a church tower for the besiegers outside the city wall to see. But the "noble Gauls" whom Julius Cæsar called "knights of chivalry," would have drawn the line then at showering bombs fromthe bay on women and children. We fancied, Brian and I, that after a walk round Nancy René and Isabella would retire, sadder and wiser ghosts, content to have finished their lives in gentler times than ours. Back into the shadows might they fade, to sleep again, and take up their old dream where the noise of twentieth-century shrapnel had snapped its thread. Their best dream must be, we thought, of their battle of Nancy: Charles the Bold on his black war-horse, surrounded by Burgundian barons in armour, shouting, and waving their banners with standards of ivory and gold; Charles of the dark locks, and brilliant eyes which all men feared and some women loved; Charles laughing with joy in the chance of open battle at last, utterly confident of its end, because the young duke—once his prisoner—had reinforced a small army with mercenaries, Swiss and Alsatians. At most René had 15,000 soldiers, and Charles believed his equal band of Burgundians worth ten times the paid northerners, as man to man.
From the church tower where Charles's men had hung—where St. Epvre stands now—René could see the enemy troops assembling, headed by the Duke of Burgundy, in his glittering helmet adorned with its device of an open-jawed lion. He could even see the gorgeous tent whose tapestried magnificence spies had reported (a magnificence owned by Nancy's museum in our day!), and there seemed to his eyes no end to the defile of spears, of strange engines for scaling walls, and glittering battle-axes. One last prayer, a blessing by the pale priest, and young René's own turn to lead had come—a slight adversary for great Charles, but with a heart as bold! The trumpet blast ofLa Rivière, sounding the charge of Lorraine, went to his head like wine. He laughed when Herter's mountain men began to sing "Le taureau d'Uri" and "La vache d'Unterwald," to remind the proud Burgundian of his defeats at Granson and Morat. Then came the crash of armour against armour, blade against blade, and the day ended for Nancy according to René's prayers. The southerners fled and died; and two days later, René was gazing down at the drowned body of Charles the Bold, dragged out of a pond. Yes, a good dream for ghosts of the chivalrous age to retire into, and shut the door! But for us, in our throbbing flesh and blood, this present was worth suffering in for the glory of the future.
There were other ghosts to meet in Nancy's old town of narrow streets where moonlight trickled in a narrow rill. Old, old ghosts, far older than the town as we saw it: Odebric of the eleventh century, who owned the strongest castle in France and the most beautiful wife, and fought the bishops of Metz and Treves together, because they did not approve of the lady; Henri VI of England riding through the walled city with his bride, Marguerite, by his side: ghostly funeral processions of dead dukes, whose strange, Oriental obsequies were famed throughout the world; younger and more splendid ghosts: Louis XIII and Richelieu entering in triumph when France had fought and won Lorraine, only to give it back by bargaining later; ghosts of stout German generals who, in 1871, had "bled the town white"; but greater than all ghosts, the noble reality of Foch and Castlenau, who saved Nancy in 1914, on the heights of La Grande Couronne.
As we walked back to the new town, dazed a little by ourdeep plunge into the centuries, I heard my name called from across the street. "Miss O'Malley—wait, please! It's Julian O'Farrell. Have you seen my sister?"
Brian and I stopped short, and O'Farrell joined us, panting and out of breath. "She's not with you?" he exclaimed. "I hoped she would be. I've been searching everywhere—she wasn't in the hotel when I got home, and it's close to midnight."
I felt unsympathetic, and wouldn't have cared if Miss Dierdre O'Farrell had flown off on a broomstick, or been kidnapped by a German aviator. My heart, however, was sure that nothing had happened and I suspected that her brother had trumped up an excuse to join us. It vexed me that Brian should show concern. If only he knew how the girl had looked at him a few hours ago!
"Couldn't they tell you in the hotel at what time she went out?" he enquired.
But no! According to O'Farrell, his sister had not been seen. He had found her door unlocked, the room empty, and her hat and coat missing. "She told me she was going to bed," he added. "But the bed hasn't been disturbed."
"Nor need you be, I think," said I. "Perhaps your sister wants to frighten you. Children love that sort of thing. It draws attention to themselves. And sometimes they don't outgrow the fancy."
"Especially Suffragettes and Sinn Feiners," O'Farrell played up to me, unoffended. "Still, as a brother of one, I'm bound to search, if it takes all night. A sister's a sister. And mine is quite a valuable asset." He tossed me this hint with a Puck-like air of a private understanding established between us. Yes, "Puck-like" describes him: a Puck at the same time merry and malicious, never to be counted upon!
"I feel that Miss O'Farrell went out to take a walk because she was restless, and perhaps not very happy," Brian reproached us both. "Something may have happened—remember we're in the war zone."
"No one in Nancy's likely to forget that!" said I, dully resenting his defence of the enemy. "Brushing bombs out of their back hair every ten minutes or so! And listen—don't you hear big guns booming now, along the front? The German lines are only sixteen kilometres from here."
Brian didn't answer. His brain was pursuing Dierdre O'Farrell, groping after her through the night. "If she went out before that air raid, while we were at the Préfet's," he suggested, "she may have had to take refuge somewhere—she may have been hurt——"
"By Jove!" Puck broke in. "It scares me when you say that. You're a—a sort—ofprophet, you know! I must find out what hospitals there are——"
"We'll go with you to the hotel," Brian promised. "They'll know there about the hospitals. And if the Préfet's still up, he'll phone for us officially, I'm sure."
"It's you who are the practical one, after all!" cried O'Farrell. And I guessed from a sudden uprush of Irish accent that his anxiety had grown sincere.
We hurried home; Brian seeming almost to guide us, for without his instinct for the right way we would twice have taken a wrong turning. As we came into the Place Stanislas, still a pale oasis of moonlight, I saw standing in front of the hotel two figures, black as if cut out of velvet. One, that of a man, was singularly tall and thin, as a Mephistopheles of the stage. The other was that of a woman in a long cloak, small and slight as a child of fourteen. DierdreO'Farrell, of course! It could be no one else. But who was the man? A dim impression that the figure was vaguely familiar, or had been familiar long ago, teased my brain. But surely I could never have seen it before.
"Hurrah! There she is!" cried O'Farrell, "alive and on her pins!"
At the sound of his voice, the velvet silhouettes stirred. They had turned to look at us, and a glint of moonlight made the two faces white and blank as masks. O'Farrell waved his hand, and I was obliged to quicken my steps to keep pace with Brian: "I suppose she got lost—serve her right!—and the beanpole has escorted her home," grumbled Puck; but as he spoke, the beanpole in question hurriedly made a gesture of salute, and stalked away with enormous strides. In an instant he was engulfed by a shadow-wave and his companion was left to meet us alone. I thought it would be like her to whisk into the hotel and vanish before we could arrive, but she did not. She stood still, with a fierce little air of defiance; and as we came near I saw that under the thrown-back cloak her left arm was in a white sling.
Her brother saw it also. "Hullo, what have you been up to?" he wanted to know. "You've given us the scare of our lives!"
"Thank you," the girl said. "Please speak for yourself!"
"He may speak for us, too," Brian assured her. "We thought of the air raid. And even now, I don't feel as if we'd been wrong. Your voice sounds as if you were in pain. You've been hurt!"
"It's nothing at all," she answered shortly, but her tonesoftened slightly for Brian. Evenshehad her human side, it seemed. "A window splintered near where I was, and I got a few bits of glass in my arm. They're out now—every one. A doctor came, and looked after me. You see, Jule!" and she nodded her head at the sling. "Now I'm going in to bed. Good-night!"
"Wait, and let my sister help you," Brian proposed. "She's a splendid nurse. I know she'll be delighted."
"Sweet of her!" sneered the girl. "ButI'ma trained nurse, too, and I can take care of myself. It's only my left arm that's hurt, and a scratch at that. I don't need any help from any one."
"Was that man we saw the doctor who put you in your sling?" asked "Jule," in the blunt way brothers have of catching up their sisters.
"Yes, he was," she grudged.
"Why did he run away? Didn't he want to be thanked?"
"He did not. Besides——"
"Besides—what?"
"He particularly didn't wish to meet—one of our party. Now, I shan't say a word more about him. So you needn't ask questions. I'm tired. I want to go to bed."
With this ultimatum, she bolted into the hotel, leaving the three of us speechless for a few seconds. I suppose each was wondering, "AmIthe one the doctor didn't want to meet?" Then I remembered my impression of having known that tall, thin figure long ago, and I was seized with certainty that the mysterious person had fled from me. At all events, I was sure Miss O'Farrell wished me to think so by way of being as aggravating as she possibly could.
"Well, I'mblessed!" Puck exploded.
"Are you?" I doubted. And I couldn't resist adding, "I thought your sister always did what you wanted?"
"In the end she does," he upheld his point. "But—just lately—she's bewitched! Some saint is needed to remove the ban."
I thought the saint was only too near her hand! Whether that hand would scratch or strike I couldn't guess; but one gesture was as dangerous as the other.
What with thinking of my own horridness and other people's, wondering about the shadow-man, and being roused by the usual early morning air raid, bed didn't mother me with its wonted calming influence. Excitement was a tonic for the next day, however; and a bath and coffee braced me for an expedition with the Préfet's wife and daughters, and the Becketts. They took us over the two hugecasernes, turned into homes of refuge for two thousand people from the invaded towns and villages of Lorraine: old couples, young women (of course the young men are fighting), and children. We saw the skilled embroiderers embroidering, and the unskilled making sandbags for the trenches; we saw the schools; and the big girls at work upon trousseaux for their future, or happily cooking in the kitchens. We saw the gardens where the refugees tended their own growing fruit and vegetables. We saw the church—once a gymnasium—and an immense cinema theatre, decorated by the ladies of Nancy, with the Préfet's wife and daughters at their head. On the way home we dropped into the biggest of Nancy's beautiful shops, to behold the work of last night's bombs. The whole skylight-roof had been smashed at dawn; but the glass hadbeen swept away, and pretty girls were selling pretty hats and frocks as if nothing had happened—except that the wind of heaven was blowing their hair across their smiling eyes.
After luncheon at which Dierdre O'Farrell didn't appear, the Préfet took us to the streets which had suffered most from the big gun bombardment—fine old houses destroyed with a completeness of which the wickedest aeroplane bombs are incapable. "Any minute they may begin again," the Préfet said. "But sufficient for the day! We suffered so much in a few hours three years ago, that nothing which has happened to us since has counted. Nancy was saved for us, to have and hold. Wounded she might be, and we also. But she was saved. We could bear the rest."
We made him tell us about those "few hours" of suffering: and this was the story. It was on the 7th of September, 1914, when the fate of Nancy hung in the balance. An immense horde of Germans came pouring along the Seille, crossing the river by four bridges: Chambley, Moncel, Brin, and Bioncourt. Everyone knew that the order was to take Nancy at any price, and open the town for the Kaiser to march in, triumphant, as did Louis XIII of France centuries ago. William was said to be waiting with 10,000 men of the Prussian Guard, in the wood of Morel, ready for his moment. Furiously the Germans worked to place their huge cannon on the hills of Doncourt, Bourthecourt, and Rozebois. Villages burned like card houses. Church bells tolled as their towers rocked and fell. Forests blazed, and a rain of bombs poured over the country from clouds of flame and smoke. Amancewas lost, and with it hope also; for beyond, the road lay open for a rush on Nancy, seemingly past the power of man to defend. Still, mandiddefend! If the French could hold out against ten times their number for a few hours, there was one chance in a thousand that reinforcements might arrive. After Velaine fell next day, and the defile between the two mountain-hills of Amance swarmed with yelling Uhlans, the French still held. They did not hope, but they fought. How they fought! And at the breaking point, as if by miracle, appeared the reinforcingtirailleurs.
"This," said the Préfet, "was only one episode in the greatest battle ever fought for Nancy, but it was the episode in which the town was saved.
"You know," he went on, "that Lorrainers have been ardent Catholics for centuries. In the Church of Bon-Secours there's a virgin which the people credit with miraculous power. Many soldiers in the worst of the fighting were sure of victory, because the virgin had promised that never should Nancy be taken again by any enemy whatever."
It was late when we came back to the hotel, and while I was translating the Becketts' gratitude into French for the Préfet, the O'Farrells arrived from another direction. The brother looked pleased to see us; the sister looked distressed. I fancied that she had been forced or persuaded to point out the scene of last night's adventure, and was returning chastened from the visit. To introduce her to the Préfet was like introducing a dog as it strains at the leash, but Puck performed the rite, and explained her sling.
"Hurt in the air raid?" the Préfet echoed. "I hope, Mademoiselle, that you went to a good doctor. That he——"
"The doctor came to her on the spot," replied Puck, in his perfect French. "It seems you have doctors at Nancy who walk the streets, when there's a raid, wandering about to pick up jobs, and refusing payment."
The Préfet laughed. "Can it be," he exclaimed, "that Mademoiselle has been treated by the Wandering Jew? Oh, not the original character, but an extraordinary fellow who has earned that name in our neighbourhood since the war."
"Was that what he called himself?" O'Farrell turned to Dierdre. I guessed that Puck's public revelations were vengeance upon her for unanswered questions.
"He called himself nothing at all," the girl replied.
"Ah," said the Préfet, "then hewasthe Wandering Jew! Let me see—I think you are planning to go to Gerbéviller and Lunéville and Vitrimont to-morrow. Most likely you'll meet him at one of those places. And when you hear his story, you'll understand why he haunts the neighbourhood like a beneficent spirit."
"But must we wait to hear the story? Please tell us now," I pleaded. "I'm so curious!"
This was true. I burned with curiosity. Also, fatty degeneration of the heart prompted me to annoy Dierdre O'Farrell. To spiteme, she had refused to talk of the doctor. I was determined to hear all about him to spiteher. You see to what a low level I have fallen, dear Padre!
The Préfet said that if we would go home with him andhave tea in the garden (German aeroplanes permitting) he would tell us the tale of the Wandering Jew. We all accepted, save Dierdre, who began to stammer an excuse; but a look from her brother nipped it in the bud. He certainly has an influence over the girl, against which she struggles only at her strongest. To-day she looked pale and weak, and he could do what he liked with her.
He liked to make her take tea at the Préfet's, doubtless because he'd have felt bound to escort the invalid to her room, had she insisted on going there!
The story of the Wandering Jew would be a strange one, anywhere and anyhow. But it's more than strange to me, because it is linked with my past life. Still, I won't tell it from my point of view. I'll begin with the Préfet's version.
The "Wandering Jew" reallyisa Jew, of the best and most intellectual type. His name is Paul Herter. His father was a man of Metz, who had brought to German Lorraine a wife from Lunéville. Paul is thirty-five now, so you see he wasn't born when the Metz part of Lorraine became German. His parents—French at heart—taught him secretly to love France, and hate German domination. As he grew up, Paul's ambition was to be a great surgeon. He wished to study, not in Germany, but in Paris and London. These hopes, however, were of the "stuff that dreams are made of," for when the father died, the boy had to work at anything he could get for a bare livelihood. It wasn't till he was over twenty-five that he'd scraped together money for the first step toward his career. He went to Paris: studied and starved; then to London. It was there I met him, but that bit of the story fits in later.He was thought well of at "Bart's," and everybody who knew him was surprised when suddenly he married one of the younger nurses, an English girl, and vanished with her from London. Presently the pair appeared in Metz, at the mother's house. Herter seemed sad and discouraged, uncertain of his future, and just at this time, through German Lorraine ran rumours of war "to begin when the harvests should be over." Paul and his mother took counsel. Both were French at heart. They determined to leave all they had in the world at Metz, rather than Paul should be called up to serve Prussia. The three contrived to cross the frontier. Paul offered himself to the Foreign Legion; his wife volunteered to nurse in a military hospital at Nancy; and Madame Herter, mère took refuge in her girlhood's home at Lunéville, where her old father still lived.
Then came the rush of the Huns across the frontier. Paul's wife was killed by a Zeppelin bomb which wrecked her hospital. At Lunéville the mother and grandfather perished in their own house, burned to the ground by order of the Bavarian colonel, Von Fosbender.
Paul Herter had not been in love with his wife. There was a mystery about the marriage, but her fate filled him with rage and horror. His mother he had adored, and the news of her martyrdom came near to driving him insane. In the madness of grief he vowed vengeance against all Bavarians who might fall into his hands.
He was fighting then in the Legion; but shortly after he was gravely wounded. His left foot had to be amputated; and from serving France as a soldier, he began to serve as a surgeon. He developed astonishing skill inthroat and chest operations, succeeding in some which older and more experienced men refused to attempt. Months passed, and into his busy life had never come the wished-for chance of vengeance; but all who knew him knew that Herter's hatred of Bavarians was an obsession. He was not one who would forget; and when a lot of seriously wounded Bavarians came into the field-hospital where he was at work, the two young doctors under him looked one another in the eyes. Even the stretcher-bearers had heard of Herter's vow, but there was nothing to do save to bring in the stream of wounded, and trust the calm instinct of the surgeon to control the hot blood of the man. Still, the air was electric with suspense, and heavy with dread of some vague tragedy: disgrace for the hospital, ruin for Herter.
But the Jewish surgeon (he wasn't called "the Wandering Jew" in those days) caught the telepathic message of fear, and laughed grimly at what men were thinking of him. "You need not be afraid," he said to his assistants. "Thesecanailleare sacred for me. They do not count as Bavarians."
Nevertheless, the young doctors would have tended the wounded prisoners themselves, leaving Herter to care for his countrymen alone. But one of the Bavarians was beyond their skill: a young lieutenant. His wound was precisely "Herter's specialty"—a bullet lodged in the heart, if he was to be saved, Herter alone could save him. Would Herter operate? He had only to say the case was hopeless, and refuse to waste upon it time needed for others.
Perhaps he knew what suspicion would dog him through life if he gave this verdict. At all events, he chose tooperate. "Bring me the brute," he growled: and reluctantly the brute was brought—a very youthful brute, with a face of such angelic charm that even Herter was struck by it. He had steeled himself to get through a hateful job; but for him—like most men of his race—beauty held a strong appeal. Suddenly he wished to save the boy with the fair curly hair and arched dark brows. Here was a German—a Bavarian—who could have no vileness in him yet!
The surgeon got ready his instruments for the operation, which must be done quickly, if at all. The boy was unconscious, but every moment or two he broke out in convulsive delirium, giving answers to questions like a man talking in sleep. "Hilda! Hilda!" he cried again and again. "My Hilda, do not ask me that. Thou wouldst not love me if I told thee! Thou wouldst hate me forever!"
"What have you done that Hilda should hate you?" Paul enquired, as he waited for the anæsthetic. Ether was running short. The wounded had to take their turn that day.
"Lunéville! Lunéville!" shrieked the Bavarian.
Everyone heard the cry. The two young doctors, knowing Herter's history, turned sick. This was worse than their worst fears! But they could do nothing. To speak, to try to act, would be to insult the surgeon. They saw that he was ghastly pale. "What happened at Lunéville?" he went on.
"Here is the ether," a voice spoke in haste. But Paul heard only the Bavarian.
"Oh, God, the old woman! Her face at the window. I can't forget. Hilda—she wouldn't come out. It wasn'tmy fault. The Colonel's orders. An old man, too. We saw them in the fire. We had to pass on. Hilda, forgive!"
"Was it a corner house of the Rue Princesse Marie?" asked Herter.
"Yes—yes, a corner house," groaned the boy of the beautiful face.
Herter gave a sign to the man who had brought the ether. A moment more, and the ravings of the Bavarian were silenced. The operation began.
The others had their hands full of their own work, yet with a kind of agonized clairvoyance they were conscious of all that Herter did. The same thought was in the minds of both young doctors. They exchanged impressions afterward. "He'll cut the boy's heart out and tread it underfoot!"
But never had the Jewish surgeon from Metz performed a major operation with more coolness or more perfect skill. Had he chosen to let his wrist tremble at the critical second, revenge would easily have been his. But awaiting the instant between one beat of the heart and another, he seized the shred of shrapnel lodged there, and closed up the throbbing breast. The boy would live. He had not only spared, but saved, the life of one who was perhaps his mother's murderer.
During the whole day he worked on untiringly and—it seemed—unmoved. Then, at the end of the last operation, he dropped as if he had been shot through the brain.
This was the beginning of a long, peculiar illness which no doctor who attended him could satisfactorily diagnose. He was constantly delirious, repeating the words of the Bavarian: "Hilda—Hilda!—the corner house—Rue Princesse Marie—Lunéville!" and it was feared that, if he recovered, he would be insane. After many weeks, however, he came slowly back to himself—a changed self, but a sane self. Always odd in his appearance—very tall and dark and thin—he had wasted to a walking skeleton, and his black hair had turned snow-white. He had lost his self-confidence, and dreaded to take up work again lest he should fail in some delicate operation. Long leave was granted, and he was advised by doctors who were his friends to go south, to sunshine and peace. But Herter insisted that the one hope for ultimate cure was to stay in Lorraine. He took up his quarters in what was left of a house near the ruin of his mother's old home, in Lunéville, but he was never there for long at a time. He was provided with a pass to go and come as he liked, being greatly respected and pitied at headquarters; and wherever there was an air raid, there speedily and mysteriously appeared Paul Herter among the victims.
His artificial foot did not prevent his riding a motor-bicycle, and on this he arrived, no matter at what hour of night or day, at any town within fifty miles of Lunéville, when enemy airmen had been at work. He gave his services unpaid to poor and rich alike; and owing to the dearth of doctors not mobilized, the towns concerned welcomed him thankfully. All the surgeon's serene confidence in himself returned in these emergencies, and he was doing invaluable work. People were grateful, but the man's ways and looks were so strange, his restlessness so tragic, that they dubbed him "le Juif Errant."
Now, Padre, I have come to the right place to bring in my part of this story.
While I was training at "Bart's," I met a doctor named Paul Herter. Some of the girls used to call him the "German Jew" but we all knew that his Germanness was only an accident of fate, through a war before he was born, and that he was passionately French at heart. He was clever—a genius—but moody and queer, and striking to look at. He would have been ugly but for a pair of beautiful brown eyes, wistful sometimes as a dog's. One of our nurses was in love with him, but he used to keep out of her way when he could. He was said not to care for women, and I was a little flattered that a man so well thought of "at the top" should take notice of me. When I look back on myself, I seem to have been very young then!
Dr. Herter used to meet me, as if by accident, when I was off duty, and we went for long walks, talking French together; I enjoyed that! Besides, there was nothing the man didn't know. He was a kind of encyclopædia of all the great musicians and artists of the world since the Middle Ages; and was so much older than I, that I didn't think about his falling in love. I knew I was pretty, and that beauty of all sorts was a cult with him. I supposed that he liked looking at me—and that his fancy would end there. But it didn't. There came a dreadful day when he accused me of encouraging him purposely, of leading him on to believe that I cared. This was a real shock. I was sorry—sorry! But he said such horrid things that I was hurt and angry, too. I said horrid things in my turn. This scene happened in the street. I asked him to leave me, and he did at once, without looking back. I can see him now, striding off in the twilight! No wonder the tall black silhouette in thePlace Stanislas looked familiar. But the man is thinner now, and walks with a slight limp.
The next thing I heard of him after our break was that he'd married Nurse Norman (the one who was in love with him) and that they'd left England. Whether he'd married the girl in a rage against me, or because he was sorry for her (she'd just then fallen into deep disgrace, through giving a patient the wrong medicine), I didn't know. I can't say I didn't care, for I often thought of the man and wondered what had become of him, though I don't remember ever writing about him to you. He was but indirectly concerned with my life, and maybe it was in the back of my mind that I might get a scolding from you if I told you the tale.
The moment the name of "Paul Herter" was mentioned in that pleasant garden at Nancy, the whole episode of those old days at "Bart's" came back, and I guessed why the tall figure had darted away from Dierdre O'Farrell as we came in sight. He must have offered to see the girl safely home, after dressing her wound (probably at some chemist's), and she had told him about her fellow-travellers. Naturally my name sent him flying like a shot from a seventy-five! But I can't help hoping we may meet by accident. There's a halo round the man's head for me since I've heard that tragic story. Before, he was only a queer genius. Now, he's a hero. Will he turn away, I wonder, if I walk up to him and hold out my hand?
I am longing, for a double reason, to see Vitrimont and Gerbéviller and Lunéville, since I've learned that at one of those places Paul Herter may appear.
We were three automobiles strong when we went out of Nancy, along what they call the "Lunéville road." That was yesterday, as I write, and already it seems long ago! The third and biggest car belonged to the Préfet; gray and military looking, driven by a soldier in uniform; and this time Dierdre O'Farrell was with us. I was wondering if she went "under orders," or if she wished to see the sights we were to see—among them, perhaps, her elusive doctor!
We turned south, leaving town, and presently passed—at Dombasle—astonishingly huge salt-works, with rubble-heaps tall as minor pyramids. On each apex stood a thing like the form of a giant black woman in a waggling gas-mask and a helmet. I could have found out what these weird engines were, no doubt, but I preferred to remember them as mysterious monsters.
At a great, strange church of St. Nicolas, in the old town of St. Nicolas-du-Port, we stopped, because the Préfet's daughters had told us of a magic stone in the pavement which gives good fortune to those who set foot on it. Only when several of us were huddled together, with a foot each on the sacred spot, were we told that it meant marriage before the new year. If the spell works, Dierdre O'Farrell, Brian, and I will all be married in less than four months. But St. Nicolas is a false prophetwhere we are concerned. Brian and I will never marry. Even if poor Brian should fall head over ears in love, he wouldn't ask a girl to share his broken life: he has told me this. As for me, I can never love any man after Jim Beckett. The least penance I owe is to be faithful forever to his memory and my own falsehood!
St. Nicolas is the patron saint of the neighbourhood, so it's right that from his little town and his big church all the country round should open out to the eye, as if to do him homage.
From the hill of Léomont we could see to the south the far-off, famous Forest of Parroy; away to the north, the blue heights of La Grande Couronne, where the fate of Nancy was decided in 1914; to the west, a purple haze like a mourning wreath of violets hung over the valley of the Meurthe, and the tragic little tributary river Mortagne; beyond, we could picture with our mind's eyes the Moselle and the Meuse.
But Léomont was not a place where one could stand coldly thinking of horizons. It drew all thoughts to itself, and to the drama played out upon its miniature mountain. There was fought one of the fiercest and most heroic single battles of the war.
We had to desert the cars, and walk up a rough track to the ruined farmhouse which crowned the hill; a noble, fortified farmhouse that must have had the dignity of a château before the great fight which shattered its ancient walls. Now it has the dignity of a mausoleum. Long ago, in Roman days when Diana, Goddess of the Moon, was patron of Lunéville and the country round, a temple of stone and marble in her honour and a soaring fountaincrowned the high summit of Léomont, for all the world to see. Her influence is said to reign over the whole of Lorraine, from that day to this, St. Nicholas being her sole rival: and a prophecy has come down through the centuries that no evil may befall Diana's citadels, save in the "dark o' the moon," when the protectress is absent. Lunéville was overrun in the "dark o' the moon"; and it was then also that the battle of Léomont was fought, ending in the vast cellars, where no man was left alive.
In these days of ours, it's a wonderful and romantic mountain, sacred as a monument forever, to the glory of the French soldiers who did not die in vain. The scarred face of the ruined house—its stones pitted by shrapnel as if by smallpox—gazes over Lorraine as the Sphinx gazes over the desert: calm, majestic, sad, yet triumphant. And under the shattered walls, among fallen buttresses and blackened stumps of oaks, are the graves of Léomont's heroes; graves everywhere, over the hillside; graves in the open; graves in sheltered corners where wild flowers have begun to grow; their tricolour cockades and wooden crosses mirrored in the blue of water-filled shell-holes; graves in the historic cellars, covered with a pall of darkness; graves along the slope of the hill, where old trenches have left ruts in the rank grass.
An unseen choir of bird-voices was singing the sweetest requiem ever sung for the dead; yet Léomont in its majestic loneliness saddened us, even the irrepressible Puck. We were sad and rather silent all the way to Vitrimont; and Vitrimont, at first glance, was a sight to make us sadder than any we had seen. There had been a Vitrimont, a happy little place, built of gray and rose-red stones;now, of those stones hardly one lies upon another, except in rubble heaps. And yet, Vitrimont isn't sad as others of the ruined towns are sad. It even cheered us, after Léomont, because a star of hope shines over the field of desolation—a star that has come out of the west. Some wonderful women of San Francisco decided to "adopt" Vitrimont, as one of the little places of France which had suffered most in the war. Two of them, Miss Polk and Miss Crocker—girls rather than women—gave themselves as well as their money to the work. In what remains of Vitrimont—what they are making of Vitrimont—they live like two fresh roses that have taken root in a pile of ashes. With a few books, a few bowls of flowers, pictures, and bits of bright chintz they have given charm to their poor rooms in the half-ruined house of a peasant. This has been their home for many months, from the time when they were the only creatures who shared Vitrimont with its ghosts: but now other homes are growing under their eyes and through their charity; thanks to them, the people of the destroyed village are trooping back, happy and hopeful. The church has been repaired (that was done first, "because it is God's house") with warm-coloured pink walls and neat decoration; and plans for the restoring of the whole village are being carried out, while the waiting inhabitants camp in a village of toy-like bungalows given by the French Government. I never saw such looks of worshipping love cast upon human beings as those of the people of Vitrimont for these two American girls. I'm sure they believe that Miss Crocker and Miss Polk are saints incarnated for their sakes by "la Sainte Vierge." One old man said as much!
He was so old that it seemed as if he could never havebeen young, yet he was whistling a toothless but patriotic whistle, over some bit of amateur-carpenter work, in front of a one-room bungalow. Inside, visible through the open door, was the paralyzed wife he had lately wheeled "home" to Vitrimont, in some kind of a cart. "Oh, yes, we are happy!" he stopped whistling to say. "We are fortunate, too. We think we have found the place where ourstreetused to be, and these Angels—we do not call them Demoiselles, but Angels—from America are going to build us a new home in it. We have seen the plan. It is more beautiful than the old!"
Wherever we passed a house on the road to Lunéville, and in town itself, as we came in, we saw notices—printed and written—to remind us that we were in the war-zone, if we forgot for an instant. "Logement militaire," or "Cave voûtée, 200 places—400 places." Those hospitable cellars advertising their existence in air raids and bombardments must be a comforting sight for passers-by, now and then; but no siren wailed us a warning. We drove on in peace; and I—disappointed at Vitrimont—quietly kept watch for a tall, thin figure of a man with a slight limp. At any moment, I thought, I might see him, for at Lunéville he lives—if he lives anywhere!
I was so eager and excited that I could hardly turn my mind to other things; but Brian, not knowing why I should be absent-minded, constantly asked questions about what we passed. Julian O'Farrell had exchanged his sister for Mr. and Mrs. Beckett, whom he had persuaded to take the short trip in his ramshackle taxi. His excuse was that Mother Beckett would deal out more wisely than Dierdre his Red Cross supplies to the returned refugees; so we hadthe girl with us; and I caught reproachful glances if I was slow in answering my blind brother. She herself suspects him as aposeur, yet she judges me careless of his needs—which I should find funny, if it didn't make me furious! Just to see what Dierdre would do, and perhaps to provoke her, sometimes I didn't answer at all, but left her to explain our surroundings to Brian. I hardly thought she would respond to the silent challenge, but almost ostentatiously she did.
She cried, "There's a castle!" when we came to the fine and rather staid château which Duke Stanislas loved, and where he died. She even tried to describe it for Brian, with faltering self-consciousness, and the old streets which once had been "brilliant as Versailles, full of Queen Marie's beautiful ladies." Now, they are gray and sad, even those streets which show no scars from the three weeks' martyrdom of German rule. Soldiers pass, on foot and in motors, yet it's hard to realize that before the war Lunéville was one of the gayest, grandest garrison towns of France, rich and industrious, under Diana's special protection. Just because she was away in her moon-chariot, one dark and dreadful night, all has changed since then. But she'll come back, and bless her ancient place of Lunæ Villa, in good time!
It was here, Brian reminded me, that they drew up the treaty which gave the Rhine frontier to France, after Napoleon won the Battle of Marengo. I wonder if the Germans remembered this in 1914 when they came?
We lunched at an hotel, in a restaurant crowded with French officers; and not a civilian there except ourselves. I was hoping that Paul Herter might come in, for thetragic Rue Princesse Marie is not far away—and even a Wandering Jew must eat! He did not come; but I almost forgot my new disappointment in hearing the French officers talk about Lorraine.
They were in the midst of a discussion when we came in, and when they had all bowed politely to us, they took up its thread where it had broken off. A colonel—a Lorrainer—was saying that out of the wealth of Lorraine (stolen wealth, he called it!) Germany had built up her fortune as a united nation, in a few years far exceeding the indemnity received in 1871. Germany had known that there were vast stores of iron; but the amazing riches in phosphorus ores had come to her as a surprise. If she had guessed, never would she have agreed to leave more than half the deposit on the French side of the frontier! Well enough for Prussian boasters to say that Germany's success was due to her own industry and supervirtue, or that her tariff schemes had worked wonders. But take away the provinces she tore from France, and she will be a Samson shorn! Take away Lorraine and the world will be rid once and for all of the German menace!
When we left Lunéville there was still hope from Gerbéviller. Herter is often there, it seems. Besides, Gerbéviller was the principal end and aim of our day's excursion. Once no more than a pleasant town of quiet beauty on a pretty river, now it is amonument historique, the Pompeii of Lorraine.