"I've never had a passenger seasick," said Eagle.
"And—you won't turn upside down, will you?"
"Of course not!"
"Well, then, I—I'll go."
On with the condemned cap!—I mean the leather helmet. Diana's paling beauty was blotted out. Wrapped in her fur-lined cloak, she was trembling all over. Her hands, which she held confidingly out for the thick mittens Captain March had got for her, shook like the last leaves on a frozen tree.
"Think you're fit for it, Di?" Father asked anxiously.
"Yes, indeed!" came hissing through the helmet. But I felt it was only the tonic of other women's envy which was keeping her up. I was envying her, too.
Captain March helped Di scramble into her perch. His hand was steady and strong. All his life and skill and manhood were for her. She was tenderly yet firmly strapped into place, and told how she was to hold on, and not to be afraid. There would be some noise, but she mustn't mind; and there was the little apparatus Captain March had invented, by which a passenger could communicate with the conductor. It was something like the bulb you squeeze in a motor car when you want the chauffeur to turn right or left or stop.
"Press once if you're sick of it, and want to come down," said Eagle. "Twice if you want to go higher. There's a whistle close to my ear, so sharp it cuts through the motor noise."
My heart beat almost as fast as if I were in the monoplane myself when Eagle was ready to start, looking like a twentieth-century, leather-masked Apollo starting out to drive his sun chariot up to the zenith and down the other side. The motor purred, and the propeller began to revolve. Diana, tense as a stretched violin string, was hanging on already, like grim death. The two mechanics held the tail of the impatient giant bird, and when Eagle raised one hand, they let go. For perhaps fifty yards theGolden Eagleran lightly over the turf on her bicycle wheels; then her master tilted the planes, and his namesake soared upward from the ground into the air.
As she went, through the noise she made I heard a shriek from the passenger. Diana's pride, which denied cowardice in the joy of being envied, was forgotten in the primitive emotion of fear. What my sister did I could not see, as the monoplane mounted so quickly; but almost at once I realized that she must have signalled her wish to descend, for theEagleceased to soar, dropped, and began gently gliding down. A moment later the great winged form was landing once more close to its own shed.
Father rushed to the rescue of his darling, and Captain March—out of his seat in a second—was unfastening the straps and anxiously extricating Diana from the passenger's perch. I couldn't help feeling ashamed before all the people—scornful or sympathetic, who were looking on—that my sister had shown herself a coward; but I was sorry for her, too. She had quite collapsed, and lay in Father's arms as Captain March unfastened her helmet. I wasn't mean enough to think of rejoicing because, in taking my place away, she had been tried and found wanting. Instead, I found myself really afraid that Captain March might despise the poor girl for the timidity which humiliated him as well as her. But I need not have worried. Pulling off the helmet in that clumsy way a man has with any sort of headgear, the wheel of braided hair Diana wore, wound over each ear in the Eastern fashion that came from "Kismet," was loosened, and a thick plait with an engaging wave at the end fell down on either side of her face. Standing, but supported in Father's arms, her head lay on his shoulder, her eyes closed, long curling lashes resting on marble cheeks. I had never seen her half so beautiful, and Captain March gazed at her as if he would gladly give his life for a reassuring smile.
"Shall I fetch a doctor?" he asked miserably. "There's sure to be one, somewhere around."
Before Father could answer, Di opened her eyes, and Captain March got the smile without paying the price.
"I—I'm all right," she breathed. "So sorry! I wasn't afraid, you know. It was myheart. It seemed to stop."
"Of course you weren't afraid," Eagle encouraged her. "I can never forgive myself for making you suffer."
Diana's smile graciously forgave the brutal fellow for his blundering, and she extricated herself from Father's arms, the colour slowly stealing back to her lips and cheeks. She shook her head a little, and the two braids, stuck full of tiny tortoise-shell hairpins, tumbled over her breast. Captain March nearly ate her up with his eyes, and then, through their windows, his soul might be seen worshipping, and begging the goddess's pardon on its knees.
"She's not strong," Father apologized. "It's my fault for letting her go up; I ought to have remembered her heart."
It's a great asset, a weak heart, for a person who has just made an exhibition of cowardice. Like charity, it covers a multitude of sins. I'd never before heard of Di's heart being weak; and at home, if there were a ball anywhere within twenty miles, she could always dance at it till morning. However, I was glad she'd thought of her heart in time, and saved the situation. It was an accommodating heart, for it came up smiling, when the petting Di got had satisfied her that she wasn't to be blamed for the fiasco.
"I think flying must be a wonderful experience for any one whose heart is quite right," she consoled Captain March. "It's a pity, for the credit of the family, you didn't take Peggy up first."
"I suppose she won't feel like going, after what has happened to you?" said he, remembering my existence.
"Oh, I do feel like it, more than ever," I exclaimed, "that is, if you don't mind risking another of us."
"I don't think we'd better trouble Captain March again," Father cut in. "He wouldn't like a second failure."
"He won't have one," I said. "My heart is as strong as a Gnome motor. Do let me go. It will give Di time to rest."
Whether that argument decided Father, or whether he really did hope I might reestablish the family credit for courage, I don't know; anyway, he made no further objections. The fur-lined cloak, helmet, and mittens were handed over to me. I crawled through the spider's web to the tiny throne vacated by its late queen, and was strapped in as Di had been. Not one qualm did I feel as I looked down over Eagle's leather-clad shoulder at the various instruments fixed on to what in an aeroplane corresponds, I suppose, to the dashboard of an earth-bound automobile: the revolution gauge, which Eagle had explained to us; the watch; the map to roll up on a frame, like a blind; the compass, the height indicator. I felt secure and happy in the thought that my courage would at least make my captain respect me. He had shown us how his invention enabled the monoplane to balance itself in meeting every gust of wind, or falling into an "air pocket," without any effort from the conductor. That assurance hadn't been enough for Di, Winged Victory, Goddess, and Huntress, but it was enough for humble Peggy. Besides, in the mood which had swept over me like a blinding flame of white fire, I didn't care what happened, provided it happened to Eagle March and me together. I should have liked him to aim straight for the sun, and never to come down again.
The last thing I said before we started was, "Go as high, please, as you would if you were alone. If I press the bulb, it will be twice, to fly higher."
Then came the starting of the motor, the wheeled run, and the leap into air. As we took wing, I could have sung for joy. I was so gloriously excited, I was hardly conscious of the noise of the engine. That helmeted head and the firm leather-clad shoulders beneath me seemed the head and shoulders of a god.
We circled over the enclosure. TheGolden Eaglehadn't risen very high yet, but I had a queer feeling of being no longer related to any one on earth. I was with my champion, a creature of another sphere. Intoxicated with joy, I pressed the bulb twice. I could not hear the shrill whistle, but the driver evidently heard, for in obedience we shot up—up—up! The height indicator showed that we had reached the height of five hundred feet. I pressed the bulb again twice over. Eagle began to steer the monoplane in immense circles. I felt I could almost see our corkscrew-track in the air, like twisted threads of gold on blue. The hangars in the fields of Hendon were toy sheds on a green-painted tray. Even the aerodrome was no more than a big rat trap. London spread itself out beneath us, a vast dark patch, like a fallen cloud. A shaft of sunlight set a golden dome on fire. It must have been St. Paul's. For the third time I gave the signal to mount. For the third time Eagle obeyed. I wondered if he liked me a little for sharing the confidence he had in his machine.
A few white clouds floated lazily beneath us, like snowy birds of an intolerable brightness and titanic size. Then they joined together in a glittering flock, and lost the semblance of birds. The mass became a sparkling silver sea, with here and there a dark gulf in it like a whirlpool. The air grew biting cold. I felt it press on me through the fur-lined coat Di had lent, like blocks of solid ice. But the strange sensation only exhilarated me the more. "I'm not a coward, I'm not a coward. I'm brave!" The words sang themselves in my head to the accompanying roar of the motor.
It was a glorious, dependable roar, but suddenly, in the midst of a spiral movement, I noticed a change in the sound. A gurgle—a choking stammer. A spray of petrol dashed across my goggles.
"Now—what?" The question asked itself in my soul. But there was no fear with it, only an awed realization that this might be the end of things, as I had known them, in a very little world low down and far away. "What does it matter?" the answer came. But Eagle had turned round in his seat, and was handing me a spanner. Now he was motioning to me. If he spoke, I couldn't hear a word. Yet I understood from the gestures of one mittened hand what he hoped I might be able to do. Somehow, even then, the driving force of thought in my brain was to please him, to show him that he hadn't relied on me in vain, rather than to save us both from threatening danger, though danger I saw there must be. I was determined that the corporal should not fail the captain.
The thing I had to do, as I seized the situation, was to turn the spanner on a loosened nut in the petrol pipe, to which Eagle pointed. Reaching up with my right hand, I steadied myself with the left, and touched something hot, horribly hot. There was an involuntary flinch of the nerves as the heat burned through the thick mittens I wore and scorched my fingers, but I didn't scream, I'm glad to say, or let go the spanner. I screwed and screwed at the union, with the nasty smell of burnt wool, and perhaps flesh, in my nostrils. Then there came the glorious sensation of success as the song of the motor took up its old refrain again. No more choking and spluttering, and it was I who had cured it.
I gave a little sob of thanksgiving, because I hadn't failed; and a voice seemed to whisper far, far down under the renewed song of the engine, "What if this is a prophecy? What if, after Diana has left him in the lurch, it should be given toyouto atone—to help or save him in some danger?"
The little voice was so strong, so clear, that I thrilled all over. What it said seemed to become part of an experience which I could never forget.
In the remaining six weeks of his leave, Eagle March made himself very popular in England. He secured a record for altitude, and flew upside down longer than any one else had at that time, two years ago, which is a whole age in the aeroplane world. He did other quaint tricks, too, that nobody had thought of or accomplished then, such as walking on a wing of the monoplane when she was in the air; and all the prettiest and smartest women in London were proud to meet him. He was invited everywhere, and people who pretended to know said that peeresses, married and unmarried, made violent love to Captain March. Naturally a girl like Di was enchanted to lead him about, tied to what would have been her apron strings if she'd been frumpish enough to wear such things. When it began to be said that Eagle March found excuses not to accept invitations unless Lord Ballyconal and Lady Di O'Malley might be expected to turn up, Father and Diana were asked by a great many hostesses who wouldn't have thought of them except as bait. Di realized this, even if Father were too proud or too conceited to do so, and she used Eagle in every way, for all he was worth. She liked him, too, better than she'd ever liked any man, perhaps, except her first love—the handsomest Irish boy you ever saw, whom she couldn't think of marrying because he'd no family and no money. But she was only seventeen then and Jerry Taylor was a mere subaltern. He died in India of enteric when Di was eighteen; and before Captain March came on the scene she had liked and flirted with at least a dozen others.
Besides, Eagle March was a very different "proposition," as they say in his country, from poor Jerry Taylor. There was no reason why she shouldn't think of marrying him if he wanted her, and he did want her desperately. A moderately intelligent bat could have seen that he was dying for my lovely sister. Anyhow,shesaw it, and I saw that she saw it, and that she was troubled as to which way to make up her mind. She didn't want to lose her golden eagle, with his brilliant plumage of fame and popularity, and the future fortune from his aunt. On the other hand, through Eagle, Di had met a number of desirable men, some moneyed, some titled; and she was a girl who would rather marry a rich nobody of the country she had known, than fly with a hero to a land she knew not. I used to notice in her soft, thoughtful eyes the "wait and see" policy.
As the time drew near for Eagle to go back to his regiment on the other side of the world, things grew exciting. I felt electricity in the atmosphere, though Diana didn't confide in me, and I had no idea what she meant to do. I couldn't bear to think of Eagle having to suffer, as he must suffer if she threw him over, for already I knew enough of him to know that, quiet as he was, he had very deep and sensitive feelings. I am too young, even now, after all I have lived through in the last year or two, to set myself up as a judge of character; yet I couldn't then help forming my own opinion of all those who came near me. I seemed to see under Eagle March's simple, half-humorous, calmly deliberate manner, flashes of inner fire. I thought his character was not really simple at all, but very complex. I don't mean in a deceitful way, far indeed from that; but I believed there was much in him which he did not yet know himself, about himself. I fancied that the Southern blood he had in his veins from one side of his family had made him high-strung and passionate, as well as daring, quick to think, and quick to act; and that his study was to hold this side of his nature in check. I felt sure that he was generous even to a fault, yet I was certain that, if driven to desperation, there might be a cruel streak which would make him a dangerous enemy unless some tide of love broke down the barrier of hardness in his soul. He was not hard at that time, however, and I didn't want my sister to be the one to make him so.
For this reason, I sometimes wished that she would marry him, and give him as much happiness as she had it in her to give. And yet, apart from my own feelings (they didn't count, for his losing Di would not give him to me), I couldn't believe that having her would really be for his happiness in the end. The two hadn't one idea or taste in common. But all I could do was to hope that, whatever happened, it would be forhisbest; because, you see, knowing him, and having that chevron of black and gold as a "reward of valour," had made me a nicer, less selfish girl than I had been before we met. Because I loved a soldier, I wanted to be a soldier, too! Hardly anything of the pert minx remained in me, I used to think sometimes, and comparatively little of the pig or cat. This was fortunate, because, when toward the last he confided in me, everything bad that was left in my composition longed to turn and rend Diana.
The way he did this made it all the harder for me not to desert the colours. He told me that ever since the day when I had been "such a little trump in the air, and maybe saved both our lives," I'd been more to him than any other female thing, except, of course, my sister. Something in Diana's weakness had appealed to him as much as my strength; and he loved her with a different love from the affection he gave me. I was his little sister, his brave little friend, and because I was so dear to him, he dared to ask me what chance he had with Diana. Did I think she tried to keep him from telling her what he felt, because she didn't care and wanted to save him pain, or was there just a possibility that she was only shy?
I could have given a bitter laugh to both questions, because the truthful, straight-out answer to one and the other was the same: "No!" Di loved to get proposals, and counted them up as if they were scalps, or those horrid little soft, boneless masks which head hunters collect. The only trouble was, that among the lot, she had never had one scalp worth the wearing, for a real live beauty, who needed only a bit of luck to be at the top of the world. As for her shyness, it was all in the tricks she played with her eyelashes and the way she curved her upper lip.
But I didn't laugh. I merely said I wasn't sure how Diana felt, as she never talked to me about such things. And I got for answer, spoken reflectively: "I suppose not. You're too much of a child."
He knew by this time that I was sixteen, instead of thirteen as he had thought at first; but what you're not much interested in makes little impression on your mind if you're a man and in love. For him I was a child, a nice sympathetic child. And such affection as he gave me, I lived upon, as if it had been the washings from a cup of the elixir of life.
For his sake, I studied Di more closely than ever, after that day, and soon I understood what she was driving at. She wanted to have her cake and eat it, too. And she got it. Any girl can manage this, if she is clever enough; and Di, though she isn't bookish or intellectual, is very, very clever in the way women have been clever since they emerged from cave life.
She succeeded in keeping back a real proposal which she would have had to answer with a "yes" or "no"; but she hinted to Captain March that, if she could have just a little more time to think about it, with the glamour of his presence gone, she would probably realize that she couldn't be happy without him. Of course it would be a blow for poor, dear Bally if she married out of Ireland or England, but still—but still—only give her time to read her heart.
Eagle told me something of the scene between them, and of course, I saw exactly what Di was up to: but I caged all the wild cats in me, and said I was glad, ifhewere happy. Yes, indeed, I'd take care of Di for him, and write him how she looked and what she did, and use all my influence to make Father escort us both over to America as soon as possible. Di, it seemed, had also agreed to use her influence in bringing this result about. I couldn't tell at the time whether she had thrown the promise as a sop to keep Eagle quiet, or whether she really thought that she would like to go. All I knew was that, if she did use her influence—and Father could get hold of enough money—the thing was as good as done.
Eagle took his departure; and we, and lots of his new friends, went to Euston to see him off for Liverpool, Di, no doubt, secretly thinking that sort of public "good-bye" safer than a private one. As for our going to America, the scheme hung by a thread, as I guessed soon after Eagle's back was turned. A bird in the hand is always worth at least two in the bush, and Di's hand was ready. If the right bird could be palmed before the season's end, it would mean that nothing of Di except her wedding cards would sail across the sea. But as it turned out, home birds were wary, and we crept back to Ireland in time for the horse show with Diana empty handed, and Father with pockets cleaned out. It was then that Di seriously set her thoughts upon the new world—new worlds, it is said, being easier to conquer than old ones.
Father had two or three acquaintances in the diplomatic service at Washington. He hoped to squeeze invitations out of them; for in a country entirely populated by monotonous Misters and Mrs-es, with nothing more decorative than a colonel or a general or a judge, even a poor Irish earl isn't to be sneezed at. Di needn't be handicapped by every one remembering that her mother would have described herself as a "music 'all h'artist"; and several Americans living in New York had asked us to their houses.
At first it wasn't proposed to take me if the family went, and the thought of going through again what I had endured when seeing Di and Eagle March together, kept me from raising my voice in persuasion. It would be heartwearing to be left behind, never to know what was happening except from an occasional letter; but to be on the spot and see for myself would be heartbreaking. I wasn't quite sure which would be worse, so I left the decision to Fate; and as I said before, it was my Frenchified genius for doing hair which settled the matter. Di discussed it with Father frankly before me, and argued that not only was I cleverer than the average maid, but actually cheaper. "Besides," she finished, "Peggy dear would like to go, and she's not a bad little thing. Who knows but she might pick up something over there for herself?"
"A picker up of unconsidered trifles!" the scotched, not killed minx in me couldn't resist quoting, at the suggestion that I was welcome to Di's leavings if I could bag them. But neither Father nor Di was paying the slightest attention.
By superhuman efforts in borrowing, and perhaps begging (I wouldn't "put it past him"), and selling the portrait of our best-looking, worst-behaved ancestor, Father scraped up enough money to take us to America and have a little over for travelling expenses there. Further than that he did not look, for we should be living board free most of the time; and besides, something was almost sure to turn up. In December we sailed on a slow, cheap ship; and once on the other side, lived for six weeks, like the lord and ladies we were, upon friends Di had carefully collected, as if they were rare foreign stamps or postcards, in London during the past season. Most of these she had met through Eagle. She had a gorgeous time, and even I came in for plenty of fun; because it seems that a girl in America ceases to "flap" while she is still quite young. I was strictly reduced by my elders to "just sixteen," although my seventeenth birthday was upon me; but there were men in New York not above talking or tangoing with a girl of sixteen, and my hair, though only looped up flapper fashion, with a ribbon, was actually admired. I saw it in the newspapers—not the hair, but the admiration.
Never were people so hospitable as those kind ones in New York, and never were houses more beautiful or more luxurious than theirs. I had never seen anything quite like them at home: but it wasn't the luxury that stirred in my heart a wondering love for America. I began to feel it from the very moment when our cheap liner brought us into the harbour, and the Statue of Liberty (about which Eagle had told me) was suddenly unveiled to my eyes from behind a curtain of silver mist. The thrill warmed my blood, and I had the sensation of being at home, as if I were coming to stay with kinsfolk; a dim but deep conviction, that Ibelonged; that there was a place for me.
We were doing something from morning till night—or rather till the next morning; and the air was like a tonic to keep us up to the work of play. Luncheons and dinners and dances were given for Di, and she was written and talked about as the "Beautiful Lady Diana O'Malley"; but, though she had proposals, nothing better offered than Captain March, whose rich aunt, Mrs. Cabot, lived in New York, and proved to be the genuine article. Consequently, we turned our attention to Washington. Washington also turned its attention to us, and made itself agreeable to Father and Diana. Place and people were both fascinating; and we had five weeks more of dinners and dances, without the result we all knew in our secret souls we had come to get. The men who wanted Di, she didn't want, and vice versa. So at length we came to the last item marked on our programme: a visit to the fashionable Alvarado Springs, close to Fort Alvarado, in Arizona, where Captain March was stationed.
It was the end of March when we arrived at Alvarado, and the newspapers were thickly sprinkled with the name of the Mexican President Huerta, printed in big, black letters. A few weeks ago the name would have meant nothing to me, but I hadn't lived in vain in Washington for more than a month. If the name of a Mexican president or general who had done anything conspicuous during the past six years had been suddenly flung at my head (as in the children's game where they shout "Beast, Bird, Fish!" and you answer before the count of three), I could have told who he was, and whether the conspicuous deed had been good or bad.
At Alvarado we had thought to be past invitation zone, and Father had been fearfully hoarding his resources at the expense of his friends, to hold out against high charges at a big hotel. There was said to be a very big one indeed, at the Springs, with bills to match; but at the eleventh hour one of Father's devoted band of rich widows (the widows thoughtfully provided for him by deceased financiers) took a furnished cottage there and asked us to visit her. She was an unusually nice widow, whose husband had made a fortune through inventing gollywogs with different eyes from other gollywogs. The strain had given him a weak heart, and he had died. The widow's name was Mrs. Main, and Di shamelessly christened her the "Main Chance." She certainlywasours!
Mrs. Main, whom we'd met in New York, dashed off to Alvarado Springs a fortnight ahead of us, in time to get acquainted through letters of introduction with the highest-up officers at Fort Alvarado, and the wives of those who had any; also to put the furnished "cottage," as she called it (there must have been fifteen or twenty rooms), in order; and the night we arrived, after our long but utterly fascinating journey, she gave a dinner in honour of Father and Diana.
I had been tremendously interested in the whole trip from Washington to Arizona, and with the first glimpse I had of the romantic Springs I felt a thrilling sensation that it was a place where things were bound to happen. The hotel, as all who have heard of Alvarado must know, stands in the midst of a young forest, overlooking a canon that for colour is like a vast cup full of rainbows, and beyond the forest to the left is the garrison. From the higher stories of the hotel you can see the red roofs of the officers' quarters, and farther away the barracks and the big, bare drill ground, but from the wide verandas no houses are anywhere visible, except the colony of cottages built in Spanish fashion like the hotel itself, each having its own little garden with a flowery hedge. From the glorified cottage Mrs. Main had taken we could walk up to a dance at the hotel in five minutes.
I think Eagle would have liked to meet us at the railway station, but Di had plenty of excuses for not allowing that. He had met Mrs. Main, however, and in the afternoon he called. Father was out prospering round the little town, and visiting the smart club at which he had been put up as an honorary member. Di and our hostess (she made us call her Kitty, a sprightly name to which she struggled to live up to) were in the garden when Eagle came, but I happened to be in the drawing-room with a book, so I had about five minutes alone with him before Mrs. Main's black butler found the others.
I hadn't tried, as a well-regulated young girl would no doubt have tried, to "get over" being in love with Captain March. I had just simply said to myself that the kind of unhappiness which loving him made me suffer was better than any little wretched pretence at half-baked happiness I could hope for by putting him out of my mind. So I had basked in the painful luxury of thinking about him constantly, and dreaming dreams of how I might serve or sacrifice myself for him, and win his passionate gratitude. Consequently, when I raised my eyes from the Spanish novel I wanted to translate, and saw Eagle March come in at the door, I loved him a thousand times more than ever. I don't know if an unprejudiced person would call him actually handsome; but I thought there couldn't be on earth a man worth comparing with that brown-faced soldier.
He was glad to meet his "dear little pal" again, because of what he could get out of her about his loved one. He did hold back his eagerness long enough to rattle off, "Why, Peggy, you're growing up! By Jove, you're almost a woman, aren't you? and a pretty one, too—though you've kept your impish look, I'm glad to see!" But that was only the preface. As soon as he decently could, he turned the conversation to Diana. How was she? As beautiful as ever? Though of course she was! Did she ever speak of him? He'd passed sleepless nights after reading newspaper paragraphs which reported her on the eve of an engagement with this man or that—disgustingly rich, overfed brutes. Was there a grain of truth in any of the reports? No? Thank heaven! Well, then, perhaps there was a sporting chance for him after all!
"But, just like my luck," he went on, half laughing, "there's a chap here who's as formidable as any of them. A regular twelve-and-a-half-inch gun, latest make and improvements; his name's Vandyke; only a major; all the same he's got a pot of money. There's hardly a man in the army as rich as he is, if there's one. Soldiering means only fun for him. Most of us here are like me; or if they don't come from generations of soldiers as I do, they're in the service for a career. Vandyke will probably resign if he gets bored. He's dining at this house to-night. Notice him, and tell me what you think of him afterward, will you?"
"You're coming, too, aren't you?" I asked. "Mrs. Main—Kitty—said you were, and I was so glad."
"I should say I was coming!" he exclaimed. "Catch me giving Vandyke a clear field at the start, if heismy superior officer! You see, Vandyke——"
But on the name, as if it were her cue, Diana floated in, and Mrs. Main steamed in with her, through one of the long windows which opened on to the veranda. After that I ceased to exist.
Di wore white that night for the dinner party. A good deal of what Father was saving in hotel bills he put into clothes for her. It was a new dress, and sparkled all over like a moonlit lily crusted with dew. I had a fancy to put on the frock with roses on it, which I'd bought at Selfridge's so many months ago, with the money paid me by Eagle for my mother's lace. The dress was still alive, and on active service (though the roses began to look somewhat sat upon); and Eagle had never seen me in it. Not that he would notice me now! But I had a queer feeling of sentiment about the gown, and often I had told myself that never, never would I throw it away. I should have had a much queerer feeling if I'd known all that was yet to come of my first meeting with Eagle March in the Wardour Street curiosity shop.
Kitty Main had explained that it wasn't to be a big, tiresome dinner on our first night: merely a few people she thought dear Lord Ballyconal and Lady Di would like to meet, and "who would love to know them—little Peggy, too, of course!"—with a belated gasp of politeness for me.
There would be, besides ourselves, only Mr. and Mrs. Tony Dalziel of New York; their pretty daughter, Millicent, just out; their son, Lieutenant Dalziel—"Tony," too; Major Vandyke; and Captain March, who was already our friend.
The gossips did suggest, Kitty had gone on to hint, that Millicent Dalziel was rather throwing herself at Captain March's head (if an heiress could be said to throw herself at the head of a poor man); but of course, Milly wouldn't have a look in now, if dear Lady Di had any attention to spare for Eagleston March. Di, however, was to be taken in to dinner by Major Vandyke, and Millicent Dalziel by Captain March. It wasn't probable that Milly would give him much chance for talk with Lady Di, although he was to sit beside her. "Good little Peggy" would have young Tony, so nice for both of them! and dear Lord Ballyconal would be placed between his hostess and Mrs. Dalziel.
I ought to have had eyes only for my special prey, Lieutenant Dalziel; but whether I pleased or bored him seemed so comparatively unimportant, that before the guests began to arrive, I found my faculties preparing to concentrate elsewhere. Di hadn't mentioned the name of Major Vandyke while I did her hair, or melted and poured her into the sparkly frock, but I felt her consciousness of him in the air; and when his name was announced at the door of the "cottage" drawing-room, my heart gave a jump as if it wanted to peer over the high wall of the future.
He came before any of the others, so I had time to make a quick black-and-white study of him in my brain. I say black and white, because you would always think of Sidney Vandyke in black and white. An artist sketching him on the cover of a magazine would need no other colour to express the man, except—if he had it handy—a dash of red for the full lips under the black moustache.
"Major Vandyke!" the soft, drawling voice of Kitty's negro butler proclaimed him; and that was when my heart knocked its alarm. Kitty Main generally described people in superlatives, so I hadn't been excited when she remarked that Major Vandyke was the "best-looking man in the army." But this time, she seemed not to have exaggerated. There couldn't be a handsomer man in any army or out of it, and a horrid, sly little voice whispered to me: "What a splendid-looking couple he and Di would make!"
I was standing far in the background, at a window opposite the door, while the others were grouped together more in the foreground; and what I saw was a very tall man (so tall that he could dwarf Eagle March's five foot ten almost to insignificance), six foot two, perhaps, and—not stout yet, but showing signs that one day he might become so. I noticed that he held himself magnificently, his broad shoulders thrown back, his head up; and that he walked with a slight swagger, more like a cavalryman than an officer in the artillery. Perhaps it was the electric light which made his skin look as white as Diana's, without a touch of the tan that darkened Eagle March's fairer complexion; but the white was of a different quality, somehow, from Diana's. Hers is pearl white; his had the thick, untranslucent look which pale Jewish faces have. I didn't know then that Sidney Vandyke was of Hebrew blood, but afterward I heard that his mother had Spanish Jews for ancestors on one side, and that with her came most of the family money. He was in full dress uniform, which became him splendidly; and I had a glimpse of a rather large face, drawn with square, straight lines that gave it a relentless look; square white forehead; straight black brows; straight, short nose; large, squarely opened dark eyes, brilliant and self-confident; straight black moustache; thick, square red lips; square chin, and a full neck set on square shoulders. After that first glimpse I saw only the profile, for in meeting Kitty Main and being introduced to Di and Father, Major Vandyke had to turn half away from me. Even a profile, however, tells something; and when Major Vandyke began to talk to Di, bending down a little, I could see that he admired her very much, or else wanted to convey this impression to her mind.
Next came Eagle March, very slim and boyish in shape and size compared to Major Vandyke, though he can't be more than six years younger; and hardly had he time to greet his hostess and look wistfully at Di, when the Dalziels arrived, a party of four. I thought that the father and mother (a dear little, merry, round-faced couple, curiously like each other and like Billiken) looked too young and irresponsible to be parents of anything grown up; but perhaps they had married when they were almost children, for Lieutenant Dalziel, who was inches taller than his father, had the happy air of being twenty two or three, and Mrs. Main had said that the girl was "just out." Young Tony—nut-brown eyes, skin, and hair, clean shaven, smiling, with teeth white and even as kernels of American corn—was a glorified edition of his Billiken father. Miss Dalziel—Milly—was not a bit like any of the others, who had all been cut from the same pattern and painted with the same paint. She was even slimmer and smaller than I am; very fair, with a few freckles, and lots of blue veins at her temples. She had an obstinate pink button of a mouth; dimples, which she made come and go every minute by working the muscles of her cheeks; bright, fluffy red hair done high on her head, floating eyes of gray green, and blackened brows and lashes which, I suppose, had started life in red. She gave an effect of prettiness and of thinking herself prettier than she was, an opinion in which her dress-maker had backed her up.
Tony Dalziel was jolly, and said so many quaint things in priceless slang that he kept me laughing; but I had eyes if not ears only for Di and Major Vandyke. "Say, he's rushing your sister, isn't he? Making a direct frontal attack—what?" remarked my neighbour, so it must have been conspicuous. One could see Major Vandyke consciously absorbing Diana, throwing over her head a veil of his own magnetism, as if to hide her in it from other men, and make her forget their existence.
As for Di, she behaved perfectly, if she wished to fascinate and tantalize a flirt, such as Sidney Vandyke was said to be. She let herself seem to fall under his spell, and then suddenly slipped gently away, turning to Captain March who sat at her other side. She would talk to him in a friendly, intimate way, in a low voice, with little happy outbursts of laughter over their reminiscences of a year ago; then, half apologetically, she would turn back to Vandyke again, raising and letting fall her eyelashes in a way entirely her own, which, somehow, gives the effect of a blush. It was Victorian, or Edwardian at latest, but much more useful than any substitute girls have invented since. That night began the battle which was to have so strange a finish.
I don't know if Major Vandyke was serious at first. Perhaps he wanted no more than a good flirtation with a pretty girl, one of the prettiest he had ever seen, and desperately loved by a brother officer. You see, he had probably heard already from Kitty Main, who told everything she knew and a great deal she didn't know, that Captain March was in love with Di, just as we heard from the same source that Major Vandyke was jealous of his junior because of flying exploits and honours. I think, though, that from the moment they met, Di never meant to let the man go free. She saw that he was flirting, and was angry that he should dare. This put her on her mettle; and Diana on her mettle was and ever will be formidable, because of her cleverness, which never lets the mettle show. She determined that Sidney Vandyke should fall in love—over ears and eyes in love—and he did. But she wasn't satisfied even with that. She couldn't bear to have Eagle March escape, and perhaps be snapped up by Milly Dalziel, who was sitting on the bank of the fishpond with her hook baited. Oh, it must have been an amusing little comedy for outsiders to watch; and I was an outsider in a way; but it didn't amuse me. I was sick at heart, and cross with Tony Dalziel, who wouldn't leave me alone or give me time to think things over.
This sort of maneuvering lasted for three weeks; then a bombshell fell in our midst. Two batteries of the —th Artillery were ordered immediately to El Paso, on the Mexican border, where a raid was apparently threatened. Major Vandyke and Captain March and Lieutenant Dalziel were all to go.
There was desolation at Alvarado Springs, in the hotel, and in the super-cottages. People—when I say people, I mean women—didn't come to Alvarado to drink the celebrated waters, or to admire the wonderful scenery. They came to play with the officers, and now the bravest and best (looking) were to be snatched from them. What had happened, or what might happen, was a mystery to mere civilians; but it was whispered about that possibly there might be real fighting at El Paso. There must have been, everybody said, something serious under the rumours of a threatened attack from across the Rio Grande, otherwise government would not be sending troops to reinforce the large garrison at Fort Bliss, or be offering to take women and children away from the river towns, in armoured trains if desired. Cavalry and infantry were moving south from other army posts, we heard, to guard the concentration camp of Mexican refugee prisoners at El Paso, and to beat back a rabble of invaders if need came.
The order reached Alvarado late in the afternoon, and the batteries were to leave by train at four o'clock the next morning. As it happened, Kitty Main, Father, Di, and I were all invited to a dance that evening at the house of an officer and his wife, Captain and Mrs. Kilburn; but when the news about the batteries going away began to flash from cottage to cottage we expected the party to be given up. Di looked rather blank when Mrs. Main flung the tidings at her, for Sidney Vandyke hadn't proposed yet. If the dance were abandoned, he might be too busy getting his men ready to see her before he left; and heaven alone knew when the batteries would come back. There might be fighting; there might at worst even be war with Mexico; and whatever happened, we couldn't stay on indefinitely at Alvarado. Kitty Main had taken the cottage and asked us to visit her only for six weeks. Besides, Alvarado would be desolate without our best friends and possible lovers.
I could see these thoughts developing and following on one another's heels in Diana's mind. But in my head there was nothing concrete enough to call a "thought." Feelings seemed to have raced upstairs from heart to brain, and driven ideas out of the house. They ran wildly round and round, saying to each other, "What if I never see him again? What if he should be killed?" But while we were in this state, Mrs. Kilburn telephoned to Kitty Main that she had decided to have her dance in spite of all. Her husband was not among those ordered away, and the officers who were going had arranged to spare time to look in for three or four dances in any case. Some of them might be very early, some very late, but there would be plenty of other men to go round; and Mrs. Kilburn suggested that we might "keep things up" long enough to see the soldiers off at dawn, before motoring back to the Springs, if that would interest Lady Diana and Lady Peggy O'Malley.
There was only one answer to this, and when we went over to Fort Alvarado for the dance we put on warmer cloaks than we should have worn ordinarily.
Mrs. Kilburn had brought her husband money; and as she loved gayety she had somehow got permission to build on to the captain's quarters a ballroom surrounded on three sides by a wide veranda. Consequently, a dance at the Kilburns' was worth going to always, and particularly on this moonlight night of April when the whole fort was humming with excitement. The officers who were ordered away had their hands full of work, yet the young ones managed to get off duty if only for a few minutes, long enough to snatch a dance or two with the girls they liked best, or to "sit out" with them on the veranda, where there were colonies of chairs, and garden seats, and hammocks.
Tony Dalziel was one of those who came early to the Kilburns'. He had asked me beforehand for six dances, and I had given him three. When he appeared it was just in time for the first, a two-step. The second would follow directly after, and the third I knew already, from a note sent me in haste, he would have to miss.
"Do you care for this?" he asked, out of breath with his hurry to dress and sprint over from the far-off line of bachelors' quarters. "If you don't, will you come outside and see the moon rise? It's going to be a great sight."
There is no poetry in a two-step, and if there were it would have been lost in hopping up and down with Tony, so I chose the moon. I thought the moon a perfectly safe object to gaze at with such a jolly young man, who made jokes at everything in the heavens or upon the earth; and unsuspectingly I went with him to a nook on the veranda screened off with tall plants from an adjacent hammock. It was a nook intended for two and no more. There were a great many nooks of that sort on Mrs. Kilburn's veranda. She specialized in flirtation architecture.
"Tell me about everything, please," I cheerfully began. "We haven't very long, have we?"
"That's the worst of it," said Tony, "and that's why I must be careful to tell you only the important things. There's just one that really interests me."
"What's that?" I asked eagerly. "I hope not that you expect fighting?"
"No such luck, I'm afraid. But I'm not worrying about that now. What I want to tell you is this." And to my stupefaction he shot a proposal at my head as if it came out of a field gun. I knew he liked me, and liked to be with me, but I couldn't associate the idea of anything so serious as marriage with Tony Dalziel. I gasped and said he couldn't mean it, but he assured me that he did, and a dictionary full of other assurances besides.
Perhaps, if I had not seen Eagle March and fallen in love with him once and forever, I might have thought twice before saying "No" to Tony, if only for the pride of being engaged sooner than Di, and when I wasn't yet eighteen. Tony Dalziel was what all women call "such a dear!" and, besides, he had—or would have—plenty of money, a consideration in our family. I could imagine what a rage Father would be in with me if he knew what I was doing at that moment, calmly refusing a heaven-sent opportunity. But Eagle March, though he was not for me, made all the difference, and put my heart into a convent where it was now undergoing its novitiate. I let the opportunity slip, and told Tony how sorry I was to hurt him. But he wasn't inclined to take that for an answer. He wanted to know if I wouldn't "leave it open," in case anything happened to make me change my mind. I warned him that, so far as I could see, I would never change it; but if an "optimist will op"—as Tony remarked—what can you do? You can't prevent his opping, and rather than hear an irrevocable word he bade me good-bye while I protested. This was in the midst of what should have been his second dance, and I didn't feel equal to going indoors again directly after that scene, even to tango. I asked Tony to leave me where I was, to gather up my wits, and when he had darted away I sat quite still for a few minutes. I had no engagement until the time for my one dance with Eagle March should come; and as Tony hadn't given me much chance for gazing at the "great sight" he had brought me out to see, I tried to cool my brain with moonlight. But I had forgotten all about the hammock on the other side of the flower screen. I remembered it only when I heard footsteps, and a creaking of chairs as some one—or rather some two—sat down.
"Good gracious!" I said to myself. "Nowwhat shall I do?" For as the pair came to a halt they went on with their conversation, which had evidently reached a critical point. I recognized the man's voice, and as it was that of Eagle March, I knew as well as if I had already seen her that the girl must be Diana. I knew also that she would never forgive me if I popped out at this moment, like the wrong figure on a barometer. Nothing on earth would make her believe that I hadn't been "spying"; for though Di didn't realize how much and in what way I cared for Eagle, she often teased me about being jealous because my great "chum" had forsaken me for her. If at any time she could call him away from me by a glance or a smile, it amused her to do so; and she would believe I was "revenging" myself, in the best way I could, on this their last night.
I had half jumped up from the low seat which Tony had shared with me; but on second thoughts I sat down again.
"She won't let him say much," I thought, "so there'll be nothing to overhear. Anyhow, I can stop my ears, if worst comes to worst." But before I had time to resolve on this precaution, I heard Eagle say, "If it wasn't for the money, I shouldn't feel I had the right——"
The rest was silence, for I kept my resolution and refused to catch another syllable; yet those words had set me thinking hard. If Eagle were telling Di that he was now certain to come in for his aunt's fortune, she might look upon him as a bird in the hand, whereas a notorious flirt like Major Vandyke might be worth no more than two in the bush with the saltcellar empty.
I struggled to find consolation by reminding myself that, if Di did marry Eagle, she might make him happy, provided there were enough money for everything she wanted, and if he were willing to cut the army for her sake and live mostly in England. She wasn't an ill-natured or sharp-tongued girl when things went as she wished, I reflected, and if he were content to sacrifice his career for love of her, they might get on very well together. But—whatdesolatingwords to use in connection with Eagle March—"get on well together!" He wasn't one to be satisfied with mere contentment, where he had hoped for rapture.
I sat with my ears stopped, until suddenly the two began speaking in a much louder tone; and a third voice, that of a man, joined the conversation. Then I decided that I might come back to life again; and as I let my tired arms drop, I became aware that the newcomer was Sidney Vandyke. He was telling Di that this was his dance, and that he had been looking for her everywhere.
"I heard Kilburn mention that the Old Man had sent for you, March, and I know they're on your scent," he announced.
"In that case, I may not see you again, Lady Diana," Eagle said.
"Peggy and I are going with Mrs. Kilburn and a lot of others to wave to you for good luck, when you start," answered Di, rather nervously, I thought.
"I'm glad. We shall have a last glimpse of you all," replied Eagle. "But I'm afraid I shan't get a word with you then. So I'll bid you good-bye now!"
He spoke in quite a matter-of-fact way; but I, who knew every tone of his voice, guessed what it covered; and I could almost feel the pressure of his hand as it clasped Di's, with Major Vandyke mercilessly looking on. I wondered whether she had been cruel or kind.
In a moment he was gone; and with a stab of pain I realized that, if the colonel had sent for him, he must miss out his dance with me. Would he even remember it? Would he scribble me a line of farewell? I longed to run out and catch him before he went, if only for a word, but I dared not dash past Di, and give her the shock of learning that I had been within three yards of her all the time. Again I was trapped, unless Di and Major Vandyke should go indoors to dance; but no sooner was Eagle March out of earshot than Vandyke asked Di to stay.
"Of course we've known all along that we might get marching orders," he said, and there was no harm in my hearing that. "It's a surprise only to those outside. The adjutant has been fussing over stores and ammunition, and target practice has been a confounded bore. All the same, at the end the move's been sprung on us, just when we'd forgotten to expect it. I feel as if I'd wasted a lot of precious time one way or another, but it isn't too late yet, Lady Di, if you——"
I stopped up my ears again so effectively that I heard no more, and a few minutes later was flabbergasted when Diana and he suddenly broke upon me from behind the screen of plants.
My first thought was that Di had suspected my presence there, and had wanted to pounce; but she gave a jump and a cry of surprise as she saw me sitting bolt upright on the bench, with my fingers stuffed into my ears.
"Goodgracious, Peg!" she gasped. "How long have you been here?"
"Ever since beforeyoucame," I answered. I might have put it differently by telling tales, and so serving Eagle March's cause, perhaps; but no matter how thoroughly I disapproved of her, I couldn't give my own sister away. "I didn't like to come out, you see, for fear you mightn't like it; but I haven't heard anything you've said, ifthatinterests you to know."
"I don't care whether you've heard or not," said Di, trying to speak playfully, but unable to keep sharpness out of her tone. "Major Vandyke thought this was a nicer seat than the hammock to rest in, so he brought me to it. Of course, we'd no idea any one was—washidinghere!"
"Well, there won't be any one, now I'm free to move," I snapped. "I'm only too thankful to have a chance to get back to the ballroom. You've made me miss a dance."
"We'vemade you? I like that!" gurgled Di. But I waited for no more. I skipped away toward the nearest long window without looking round, and was just in time to meet my partner in search of me, the partner after Eagle March, and a brother officer of his. "Our dance," said he, "and here's something March asked me to hand you. He's been called away."
The "something" was a leaf torn out of a notebook and neatly folded into a cocked hat. It was rather appropriate that Eagle's good-bye to me should come in this form, because I had given him the notebook for a birthday present only the week before. I'd saved up my pennies to get a good one, and have his initials in silver fastened on to the khaki-coloured morocco cover. The paper of the book itself and the refills were also khaki coloured to match the cover, with lines in very faint blue. I had wanted my little gift to be as distinctive as possible, and had taken a great deal of pains to choose a notebook different from all others, little dreaming what was fated to hang on the difference.
Quietly but carefully I undid the paper cocked hat and read the few pencilled words: "So disappointed, dear little friend, not to have my dance with you, but I'm called back to work. Congratulate me.I've got almost the promise I wanted.The next best thing, anyhow. Farewell for a while. Write to me to El Paso like the good girl you are. I shall look for you at the train to-morrow morning early, though we may not have a chance to speak. Yours ever, E. M."
I folded up the note and tucked it into the neck of my dress. Then I danced. And all the rest of the evening I danced. Yet I thought only of one thing: the half-veiled confidence Eagle had given me. Apparently Di had said something calculated to send him away happy. But Major Vandyke had looked far from sad when he walked into the ballroom with Di, after theirtête-à-têteon the veranda in my deserted nook. I felt something was wrong, and determined to have it out with Diana the minute I could get her alone. My chance came sooner than I expected, for just before supper she tore her frock and wanted me to run up with her to the dressing-room and mend it. "A maid will make an awful mess of the thing," she said, "but you'll know what to do, and it'll take only a few minutes."
We had the dressing-room to ourselves, for Mrs. Kilburn's French maid, who was in charge, had slipped away, probably for a sly peep at the dancing. When I had Di at my mercy, holding her by a trail of gold fringe, I opened fire.
"Are you engaged to Eagle March?" I flashed out.
"Certainly not," Di flashed back. "What makes you think such a thing? You said you didn't hear——" In haste she cut her sentence short, realizing how she had given herself away. She would have gone on quickly, but I broke in.
"You ask what makes me think such a thing when I told you that I didn't hear a word of your talk. Which shows that if Ihadheard, Imighthave thought of it. Well, I did not hear, but, all the same, I think."
"You needn't, then," she assured me. "If I'm engaged to any one, it is to Sidney Vandyke. But I tell you as much as that, only to prove there's nothing between me and Captain March. It's in strict confidence, and you must be sure and keep the secret, Peg, till I'm ready to have it come out. Nothing's to be said until this Mexican bother is over. Can you make the fringe look right?"
"Yes, if you give me time," I answered. "But, Di, I won't have you playing tricks with Eagle March. I simply won't stand it!"
"It's horrid of you to suggest that I would do such a thing," Diana protested virtuously.
"Pooh!" said I, secure in my knowledge that she dared not move. "I know you pretty well, Di, and although you can be quite a darling when you like, you'd do anything—anything whatever, that was for your own interests, no matter how much it hurt others. You'd better tell me the truth, because I'm sure to find out; and if you mean to hurt or deceive Eagle March I'll stop you from doing it, I don't care how much it may cost me or you, or any one else but him."
"If ever there was a thorough littlepig, it's you, Peggy," said Di.
"Thorough pigs seem to run in our family," I ruthlessly retorted. "But they're intelligent animals, and this one has rooted up something already. I believe you've practically promised to marryboththese men, and persuaded them to keep the secret, so you can have time to decide which one will be the better to take, in the end."
"You make me out a perfect wretch," Di moaned piteously, peering over her shoulder to see how the repairs were getting on.
"So you are! A beautiful one, but a wretch. You like them both, Eagle and Major Vandyke. You like Eagle because he's so popular and such a hero as an airman; and you like Major Vandyke because he's awfully good looking and awfully rich and an awful flirt. You were worried to death for fear he wouldn't propose, and I'd have known to-night, from the change in your face, even if you hadn't told me, that he had spoken at last. But Eagle spoke, too, and you sent him away happy. I know that; though the only other thing I do know for certain, is that you think now he's sure to get his aunt's money."
"It's not such a tremendous lot, anyhow," Di gave herself away again. "He won't have more than two or three hundred thousand dollars at the most. If only it werepounds! Every one says Sidney Vandyke has a million. He's one of the few very rich men in the American army."
"But he can't fly, and he can't invent things, and he'll never be the man in any career that Eagle will," I reminded her. "You know this as well as I do. That's why you're waiting. Don't you think you'd better explain your true state of mind to me, if you don't want me to work against you?"
"You're a cat as well as a pig, you little horror!"
"What a museum combination! Don't twitch, or the fringe will go crooked. Is Eagle's rich aunt likely to die?"
"Well, yes, she is," Diana admitted. "She's very old, you know. She's had a third stroke of paralysis. If Eagle could have got leave he would have gone to her, but that was out of the question as things are."
"Did he tell you about her, or was it some one else who gave you the news?"
"It was some one else, of course. Naturally I wanted to make sure, so I—sympathized with him on his aunt's illness. He had only just heard about it, himself. He's always been fond of her, and he said he couldn't have had the heart to come to a dance, if it hadn't been his last night, and the only way to see me before he left for Texas. But he told me that Mrs. Cabot's death would make him comparatively a rich man. Those were the words he used. I don't think he's sure how much he'll get. It was from Kitty I heard what Mrs. Cabot is likely to leave."
"And as 'likely' isn't the same as 'certain,' you're hanging fire till she's dead," I explained Diana to herself.
"You make me out heaps worse than I am," she reproached me. "If I haven't given an absolutely definite answer to Eagle March or Sidney Vandyke, it's—it's—because of this expedition they're both going on. They may get some chance to distinguish themselves. You're such a practical little person that you can't realize the romantic sort of feeling I have about such things. If I marry a man who isn't of my own country, I should like him to be a great hero, whom every one would read about and admire. I've told each of them to work, and do his best for my sake."
"There'll probably be no opportunity for anything heroic in such an expedition as this," said I, living up to the reputation—ill-deserved—for practicality, which Di wished to thrust on me in contrast with herself.
"That's what they both said," she agreed, "but one never knows."
"And so you get a story-book-heroine excuse to wait!"
"Little viper!"
"The cat-pig-viper won't sting unless you force it to," I guaranteed. "There! Your dress is all right again."
"You could have finished five minutes ago, if you hadn't been determined to lecture me. Thanks, all the same. You have your uses, though they're not always sweet, like those of adversity."
We went our separate ways with the men who were waiting to take us in to supper; and we didn't come together again till the dance was over, and every one but the party specially asked to stay had gone home. We heard the bugles sounding reveille; then presently the beat of drums and the rumble of the field guns going to the station. When Captain Kilburn announced that the entrainment was well under way, we started in his big limousine, shivering a little in evening cloaks flung on hastily over low-necked dresses. We waited till the platform was clear of the great mass of khaki-clad young men, and then timidly appeared, to stare through the dusk of early morning in search of friends. Ours wasn't the only party engaged in that business. Others were there; and swathed figures of girls and women, in rich-coloured cloaks over pale-tinted ball gowns, glimmered in the dawn like a row of tall flowers crowding along the edge of a garden path. My eyes were trying to find Eagle March when Tony Dalziel spoke by my shoulder, and made me jump. "I've just a minute," he said when I turned. "I want to ask you if you'll forget you turned me down last night, and be friends again. I will if you will.Willyou?"
"Yes," I returned gladly, shaking hands. "I'm so glad you've realized that you were silly to feel about me like that. Why you or any manshould, I can't think!"
"Can't you? That's because you haven't seen yourself, or heard yourself, and don't know what a quaint, darling sort of girl you are. But never mind. Let it go at that. We'll be friends. And promise, if my mother and Milly ask you to do something for them, you will."
"Anything I possibly can," I warmly answered. "Good-bye! Good luck!"
He was off. I meant to follow him with my eyes and wave to him when he looked out of his window in the train. But before he appeared again, I caught sight of Eagle March on a car platform, and forgot Tony, just as Eagle had forgotten me. Behind Eagle's slight figure towered massively Major Vandyke's splendid bulk; and as I waved my handkerchief to Eagle, while the train slid slowly out, I was vaguely aware of Diana's outstretched arm and a butterfly flutter of something white and small. Eagle's eyes went past me to her, though his smile was for me also; and Di was able deftly to kill her two birds with one stone, at the last. Her farewell look and gesture did equally well for both, yet each could take it wholly to himself.
The next night I had a dreadful dream about Eagle March. Somehow or other, he had been condemned to death by Major Vandyke (who had unbecomingly turned into a judge) and Eagle was to be executed unless I could arrive in time to save him, armed with a reprieve or pardon—I didn't quite know which—that I had got from Washington. I waked up crying out, because a hand had been stretched forth through darkness to clutch my shoulder, and prevent me from getting to El Paso until too late. Even then, when I was wide awake, the dream had been so horribly vivid that I couldn't persuade myself it wasn't true. I had always laughed at superstitious people who believed in dreams, yet I couldn't clear my mind of this one, or keep from asking myself in a panic, "What if it's a warning?" It seemed that after all such things might mysteriously be.
Alvarado Springs was as dull as a convent after the officers we liked best had gone from the fort, and Kitty proposed subletting her cottage to an invalid who, for a wonder, had really come to the place for nothing but to take the cure. This rare creature was distressed by the noises of the hotel, and was willing to pay more than Kitty had paid, for the remaining few weeks of Mrs. Main's tenancy. Our hostess was enchanted with the idea, clapped her fat, dimpled hands like a little girl, and proposed to "blow" the money (this was slang she had delightedly picked up from Father) on a motor tour to California. She had no car of her own, but she could hire one, with a chauffeur we had often taken for short runs, and at Los Angeles, Riverside, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and other places, she had friends who would shower invitations. The trip would take from two to six weeks, according to our own desire. Then, when we were tired of motoring and country-house visiting, the car would be sent home, and we could have the fun of going East together by the "Limited," which, Kitty said, was one of the most wonderful trains in the world.
This was the proposal, and it suited Father and Di very well. Each had a reason for wishing to prolong the tour in America, if it could be done "on the cheap." Di, of course, wanted to see Major Vandyke or Captain March—whichever she decided to take in the end—and settle her affairs definitely before going home to prepare for the wedding. As to Father, I began to ask myself about this time if he seriously thought of making our "Main Chance" a countess, and counting her dollars into his own pockets. In any case; travelling luxuriously in a land where poor Irish earls weighed as well in the balance as a rich English variety, was better than vegetating at Ballyconal or economizing in London; so he smiled upon the plan, and I was the one obstacle. The only comfortable car that Mrs. Main could get at short notice, was ideal for five, counting a chauffeur and a maid, but close quarters for six. I couldn't be put permanently with the chauffeur; and, besides, Kitty's looks were of the sort that depend upon a maid. "Dear little Peggy must just squeeze in somehow," was her verdict, although Di would temporarily have done without my services rather than be cramped, if I could have been disposed of elsewhere. She and Father put their heads together, and I had begun to feel in my bones that an invitation for me from Mrs. Kilburn was to be hinted at, when Mrs. Dalziel came to the rescue.
Her husband had gone back to New York long ago, and she and Milly had been wondering ever since Tony's orders came, whether it might be feasible to follow him to El Paso, and "see what was doing there." He had now wired that all the women of the neighbourhood had refused to leave the men; that the "scare" was dying down; that it looked as if the imported troops would have nothing more exciting to do than guard the concentration camp; and there was a gorgeous hotel in the town, full of rich Spanish refugees, men who were celebrities, and women who were beauties. Mrs. Dalziel had accordingly decided to venture; and Milly would enjoy the trip immensely, if Father would let me go with them as their guest. The eyes of my family lighted at this hope of liberation, and I suddenly understood what Tony's last words to me had meant. This washisplan; but I wanted so violently to go to El Paso and was so violently wanted to go by Father and Di, that I didn't stop to debate whether or no it was right to say yes. I simply said it, and—hang the consequences!
Di bade me an affectionate farewell, with a plaintive reminder that a girl not likely to be proposed to every day might do worse than Tony Dalziel. I, in turn, reminded her that any knavish juggling with Captain March's faith would be dealt with severely by me; and so we parted, she to go her way to Californiaen automobile, I to go mine to Texas by Santa Fé trains.
I was grateful to Mrs. Dalziel and Milly for taking me, though I couldn't help seeing that it was not for mybeaux yeuxthey had asked me to be their guest. I was a handle, or cat's-paw; but I preferred the part of usefulness to my hostesses to being carted about by them as an expensive luxury. Mrs. Dalziel really wanted me for Tony, who had never been denied anything short of the moon that he cried for. Milly wanted people to think that she wanted me for Tony, in order to have an invincible, ironproof excuse for the rush to El Paso, which her friends of the cat tribe might attribute to a different motive. She had been rather depressed at Alvarado, but began to bubble over with wild spirits the moment we were off for El Paso. She said that this would be the great adventure of our lives, and she was only sorry all danger along the border was over, as we shouldn't get the chance to show how brave we were.
It was an interesting journey, every stage of it; and at Las Cruces and after, we began to realize how close we were to old Mexico. Only the river ran between us and that mysterious, ancient land, as far removed in thought from the United States as though it were an annex of Egypt. Here and there, too, the Rio Grande (which I'd thought of geographically as a vast stream, wide as a lake) was a mere water serpent, writhing in its shallow bed of mud. This, we heard our fellow passengers say, explained the late danger of a raid. It would be as "easy as falling off a log" for a party of ill-advised Mexicans to make a dash across the river, and already there had been small private expeditions of cattle stealers. Staring out of the windows at little adobe villages, their huddled houses turned from brown to cubes of gold by the afternoon sun, we listened to all sorts of disquieting gossip. According to the travellers, who talked loudly to each other across the car, the "scare" was suddenly on again. Some more Federals had escaped the Constitutionalist soldiers, and got into Del Rio, where they had been protected by American soldiers, and there had been some shooting from one side of the river to the other. Carranza was threatening reprisals; no one seemed to know what Villa's attitude would be. A few American women who had little children had decided after all to go north. At Las Cruces and El Paso you could no longer buy a Browning, or arms of any kind. All had been snapped up. Las Cruces men, remembering that the militia was composed of Mexicans, had begun giving their wives lessons in target practice. At El Paso there was the peril of the Mexican population to be faced in case of attack from across the river; to say nothing of the thousand Mexicans employed in the smelting works down on the flats, and the five thousand refugees in the concentration camp, if they should mutiny and get out of control.
Poor Mrs. Dalziel drooped more and more piteously as this ball of gossip was tossed from one side of the car to the other, and Milly's ever white face grew so pale that her freckles stood out conspicuously. She ceased to exclaim with excitement over the cowboys galloping along the road on the United States side of the river, or to count the automobiles and the great alfalfa barns near small stations where black-veiled Mexican women waved sad farewells to weedy, olive-faced youths, perhaps going to the "war."
"Of course, we're not afraid forourselves," said Mrs. Dalziel. "We—we should want to be near Tony, whatever happened. It's of you we're thinking, Peggy. I don't know if we ought to have brought you to such a place. And I do wish Tony's father were with us, anyhow."
The nearer we came to El Paso, the more foreign and Mexican the country seemed, with its wild purple mountains billowing along the sunset sky of red and gold; its queer, Moorish-looking groups of brown huts, and its dark-skinned men in sombreros or huge straw hats with steeple crowns. It was quite a relief to draw into El Paso station where everything was suddenly modern and American, and comfortably normal again.
Tony had got off duty to come and meet us; and after the first "how-do-you-dos," his mother began bombarding him with questions. What had happened? What was likely to happen? Wouldn't it have been better to telegraph us not to come?
She and Milly both had the air of eagerly hoping that he might after all be able to sweep away their fears with a word or a laugh; but for once, Tony kept as solemn a face as the conformation of his benevolent Billiken features permitted.
"There's nothing at all to worry about, if you don't get silly and panicky," said he. "I did think of telegraphing, not because there's any real danger, but because I was afraid that when you got down here, if things hadn't cleared up, the newspaper 'extras' and the way they talk at the hotels might give you the jumps. I couldn't have wired till after you'd started, though, because there was nothing doing before that, worth a telegram. I thought it would scare you blue if you got a message delivered to you in the train saying better not come, or words to that effect; so it seemed best to let things rip. Now you're on the spot, you just keep your hair on, and don't believe anything you read or hear; then you'll be all right."