From Meaux our road (we were going to make Nancy our centre and stopping place) followed the windings of the green ribbon Marne to Chateau-Thierry, on the river's right bank. There's a rather thrilling ruin, that gave the town its name, and dominates it still—the ruin of a castle which Charles Martel built for a young King Thierry. The legend says that this boy differed from the wicked kings Thierry, sons and grandsons of the Frankish Clovis; that he wanted to be good, but "Fate" would not let him. Perhaps it's a judgment on those terrible Thierry kings, who left to their enemies only the earth round their habitations—"because it couldn't be carried away"—that the Germans have left ruins in Chateau-Thierry more cruel than those of the crumbling castle. In seven September days they added more monuments historiques than a thousand years had given the ancient Marne city.

Jim Beckett had written his mother all about the town, and sent postcard pictures of its pride, the fortress-like, fifteenth-century church with a vast tower set upon a height. He liked Chateau-Thierry because Jean de la Fontaine was born there, and called it "a peaceful-looking place, just right for the dear fable-maker, who was so child-like and sweet-natured, that he deserved always to be happy, instead of for ever in somebody's debt." A soldier having seen the wasted country at the front, might still describe Chateau-Thierry as a "peaceful-looking place." But it was the first glimpse the Becketts had had of war's abominable destruction. I took up nursing in the south of France before the Zeppelins made much visible impression on London; and as I volunteered for a "contagious" hospital, I've lived an isolated life far from all horrors save those in my own ward, and the few I saw when I went to nurse Brian. Perhaps it was well for us to begin with Chateau-Thierry, whose gaping wounds are not mortal, and to miss tragic Varreddes. Had Sermaize-les-Bains, which burst upon us later, been our first experience, the shock might have been too great for Mrs. Beckett. As it was, we worked slowly to the climax. Yet even so, we travelled on with a hideous mirage of broken homes, of intimacies brutally laid bare, floating between the landscape and our eyes. We could not get rid of this mirage, could not brush it away, though the country was friendly and fair of face as a child playing in a waterside meadow. The crudely new bridges that crossed the Marne were the only open confessions of what the river had suffered. But the Marne spirit had known wars enough to learn "how sweet it is to live, forgetting." With her bits of villages scattered like strewn flowers on her green flood, she floats in a dream of her adventurous past and the glorious future which she has helped to win for France.

It was hard to realize that the tiny island villages and hamlets on the level shores had seen the Germans come and go; that under the gray roofs—furry-soft as the backs of Maltese cats—hearts had beaten in agony of fear; that along the white road, with its double row of straight trees like an endless army on parade, weeping fugitives had fled.

We were not aiming to reach Nancy that night, so we paused at Epernay. The enemy behaved better there than in most Marne towns, perhaps because Wagner once lived in it, or, more likely, under the soothing influence of Epernay's champagne, which has warmed the cockles of men's hearts since a bishop of the ninth century made it famous by his praise. Nevertheless, there are ruins to see, for the town was bombarded by the Germans after they were turned out. All the quarter of the rich was laid waste: and the vast "Fabrique de Champagne" of Mercier, with its ornamental frieze of city names, is silent to this day, its proud facade of windows broken. Not a big building of the town, not a neighbouring chateau of a "Champagne baron" has a whole window-pane visible, though three years have rolled on since the cannonading did its work! Nowadays glass is as dear as diamonds in France, and harder to get.

Outside Champagnopolis, in the wide wooden village of hospital huts, a doctor told us a war ghost story. One night the Germans made a great haul of champagne, of a good year, in a castle near by. They had knocked off the heads of many bottles, naming each for a French general of yesterday or to-day, when some officer who knew more history than the rest remembered that Henri IV had taken Epernay in 1592. He named his bottle for Henri de Navarre, and harangued his comrades on the superiority of Wilhelm von Hohenzollern. As the speechmaker cracked the neck with his sword, the bottle burst in a thousand pieces, drenching everyone with wine. A bit of glass struck the electric lamp over the table, and out went the light. For an instant the room was black. Then a white ray flickered on the wall, as if thrown through the window by a searchlight. Out of its glimmer stepped a man, with a long, laughing face and a pointed beard. Round his neck was a high ruff. He wore a doublet of velvet, and shining silk hose. In his hand was a silver goblet, frothing over the top with champagne. "He drinks best who drinks last!" cried he in French, and flung the goblet at the face of him who named the bottle. At the same second there was a great explosion, and only one soldier escaped; he who told the story.

Think, Padre, it was near Chalons that Attila was defeated, and forced to fly from France for ever! I ought to say, Attila the first, since the self-named Attila II hasn't yet been beaten back beyond the Rhine.

We—you, and Brian and I—used to have excited arguments about reincarnation. You know now which of us was right! But I cling to the theory of the spiral, in evolution of the soul—the soul of a man or the soul of the world. It satisfies my sense of justice and my reason both, to believe that we must progress, being made for progression; but that we evolve upward slowly, with a spiral motion which brings us at certain periods, as we rise, directly above the last earth-phase in our evolution. If it's true, here, after nearly thirteen centuries, are the Huns overrunning Europe once more. Learned Huns, scientific Huns, but always Huns, repeating history on a higher scale, barbarously bent on pulling down the liberty of the world by the power of brute force. Again they're destined to be conquered as before, at a far bigger price. What will the next turn of their spiral bring, I wonder? A vast battle of intellect, perhaps, when wars of blood have been forgotten. And I wonder, too, where has Attila been, since he was beaten in this Champagne country of the Marne, and died two years later at his wedding-feast in Hungary!

Did he appear in our world again, in the form of some great, cruel general or king, or did his soul rest until it was reincarnated in the form that claims his name to-day?

I could scarcely concentrate upon Chalons, though it's a noble town, crowded with grand old buildings. My mind was busily travelling back, back into history, as Peter Ibbetson travelled in his prison-dreams. It didn't stop on its way to see the city capitulate to the Allies in 1814, just one hundred years before the great new meaning came into that word "allies." I ran past the brave fifteenth-century days, when the English used to attack Chalons-sur-Marne, hoping to keep their hold on France. I didn't even pause for Saint-Bernard, preaching the Crusade in the gorgeous presence of Louis VII and his knights. It was Attila who lured me down, down into his century, buried deep under the sands of Time. I heard the ring of George Meredith's words: "Attila, my Attila!" But I saw the wild warrior Attila, fighting in Champagne, not the dead man adjured by Ildico, his bride. I saw him "short, swarthy, broad-chested," in his crude armour, his large head, "early gray," lifted like a wolf's at bay. I saw his fierce, ugly face with its snub nose and little, deep-set eyes, flushed in the fury of defeat as he ordered the famous screen of chariots to be piled up between him and the Romano-Gauls. I saw him and his men profiting by the strange barrier, and the enemy's exhaustion, to escape beyond the Rhine, with eyes yearning toward the country they were to see no more.

History calls that battle "one of the decisive battles of the world," yet it lasted only a day, and engaged from a hundred and seventy-four thousand to three hundred thousand men. Oh, the spiral of battles has climbed high since then!

I think I should have had a presentiment of the war if I'd lived at Chalons, proud city of twenty-two bridges and the Canal Rhine-Marne. The water on stormy days must have whispered, "They are coming. Take care!"

At Vitry-le-Francois there is also that same sinister canal which leads from the Marne to the Rhine, the Rhine to the Marne. The name has a wicked sound in these days—Rhine-Marne; and at Vitry-le-Francois of all places. The men from over the Rhine destroyed as much as they had time to destroy of the charming old town planned by Francis I, and named for him. All the villages round about the new Huns broke to pieces, like the toy towns of children: Revigny, sprayed from hand pumps with petrol, and burnt to the ground: Sermaize-les-Bains, loved by Romans and Saracens, obliterated; women drowned in the river by laughing German soldiers, deep down under yellow water-lilies, which mark their resting place to-day: everywhere, through the fields and forests, low wooden crosses in the midst of little votive gardens, telling their silent tale.

Ah, but it is good that Mother Beckett saw Chateau-Thierry first, or she might have covered her eyes and begged to go back to Paris! Here all speaks of death and desolation, save the busy little hut-villages of the Quakers. The "Friends" quietly began their labour of love before the Battle of the Marne was ended, and they're "carrying on" still. The French translate them affectionately into "les Amis."

It was at Bar-le-Duc that I met disaster face to face in so strange a way that it needs a whole letter to tell you what happened.



CHAPTER VIII

There were so many things to see by the way, and so many thoughts to think about them, that Father Beckett and Brian decided on an all night stop at Bar-le-Duc. The town hadn't had an air raid for weeks, and it looked a port of peace. As well imagine enemy aeroplanes over the barley-sugar house of the witch in the enchanted forest, as over this comfortable home of jam-makers!

"Jim always asked for currant jam of Bar-le-Duc on his birthdays, ever since he was a little, little boy," Mrs. Beckett remembered aloud. "And even when he was grown up! But then, he wouldn't wait for birthdays. He wanted it every day for breakfast; and for tea at those grand New York hotels, where I wouldn't go without him, any sooner than in a lion's den. Oh, it will be nice to stay at Bar-le-Duc! If there's been a jam factory blown up, we'll help build it again, to please Jim."

Father Beckett was shrewdly of opinion that the jam factories could take care of themselves, which rather disappointed his wife. She was vaguely disappointed too, in Bar-le-Duc. I think she expected to smell a ravishing fragrance of Jim's favourite confiture as we entered the town. It had been a tiring day for her, with all our stops and sightseeing, and she had less appetite for history than for jam. We had passed through lovely country since Chalons, decorated with beautiful tall trees, high box hedges, and distant, rolling downs golden with grain and sunlight. Also, whenever our road drew near the railway, we'd caught exciting glimpses of long trains "camouflaged" in blurry greens and blues, to hide themselves from aeroplanes. Nevertheless, Mother Beckett had begun to droop. Her blue eyes hardly brightened to interest when Brian said we were in the famous region of the Meuse, part of the Austrian Empire in Charlemagne's day: that somewhere hereabout Wittekind, the enslaved Saxon, used to work "on the land," not dreaming of the kingly house of Capet he was to found for France, and that Bar-le-Duc itself would be our starting-point for Verdun, after Nancy and the "Lorraine Front."

For her Bar-le-Duc had always represented jam, endless jam, loved by Jim, and talk of the dukes of Bar brought no thrill to Jim's mother. She cared more to see the two largest elms in France of which Jim had written, than any ruins of ducal dwellings or tombs of Lorraine princes, or even the house where Charles-Edouard the Pretender lived for years.

Fortunately there was a decent hotel, vaguely open in the upper town on the hill, with a view over the small tributary river Ornain, on which the capital city of the Meuse is built. One saw the Rhine-Marne Canal, too, and the picturesque roofs of old fifteenth-century houses, huddled together in lower Bar-le-Duc, shut in among the vine-draped valleys of Champagne.

As we left the car and went into the hotel (I lingering behind to help Brian) I noticed another car behind us. It was more like a taxi-cab than a brave, free-born automobile, but it had evidently come a long way, as it was covered with dust, and from its rather ramshackle roof waved a Red Cross flag.

In the good days before the war I should have thought it the most natural thing on earth if a procession of twenty motors had trailed us. But war has put an end to joy-rides. Besides, since the outskirts of Paris, we had been in the zone de guerre, constantly stopped and stared at by sentinels. The only cars we passed, going east or west, were occupied by officers, or crowded with poilus, therefore the shabby little taxi became of almost startling interest. I looked back, and saw that it was slowing down close behind our imposing auto, from which a few small pieces of luggage for the night were being removed.

The Red Cross travellers were evidently impatient. They did not wait for our chauffeur to drive away. The conductor of the car jumped down and opened the door of his nondescript vehicle. I made out, under a thick coat of dust, that he wore khaki of some sort, and a cap of military shape which might be anything from British to Belgian. He gave a hand to a woman in the car—a woman in nurse's dress. A thick veil covered her face, but her figure was girlish. I noticed that she was extremely small and slim in her long, dust-dimmed blue cloak: a mere doll of a creature.

The man's back was turned toward me as he aided the nurse; but suddenly he flung a glance over his shoulder, and stared straight at me, as if he had expected to find me there.

He was rather short, and too squarely built for his age, which might be twenty-eight or thirty at most; but his great dark eyes were splendid, so gorgeously bright and significant that they held mine for a second or two. This vexed me, and I turned away with as haughty an air as could be put on at an instant's notice.

The hotel had no private sitting rooms, but the landlord offered Mr. Beckett for our use a small salle de lecture, adjourning the salon public. There were folding doors between, for a wonder with a lock that worked. By the time we'd bathed, and dressed again, it was the hour for dinner, and Mr. Beckett suggested dining in our own "parlour," as he called it.

The landlord himself brought a menu, which Mother Beckett accepted indifferently up to the entremets "omelette au rhum." This she wished changed for something—anything—made with Jim's favourite jam. "He would want us to eat it at Bar-le-Duc," she said, with her air of taking Jim's nearness and interest in our smallest acts for granted.

So "omelette a la confiture de groseilles" was ordered; and just as we had come to the end of it and our meal, some one began to play the piano in the public drawing room next door. At the first touch, I recognized a master hand. The air was from Puccini's "La Tosca"—third act, and a moment later a man's voice caught it up—a voice of velvet, a voice of the heart—an Italian voice.

We all stopped eating as if we'd been struck by a spell. We hardly breathed. The music had in it the honey of a million flowers distilled into a crystal cup. It was so sweet that it hurt—hurt horribly and deliciously, as only Italian music can hurt. Other men sing with their brains, with their souls, but Italians sing with their blood, their veins, the core of their hearts. They are their songs, as larks are.

The voice brought Jim to me, and snatched him away again. It set him far off at a hopeless distance, across steep purple chasms of dreamland. It dragged my heart out, and then poured it full, full of an unknown elixir of life and love, which was mine, yet out of reach forever. It showed me my past hopes and future sorrows floating on the current of my own blood like ships of a secret argosy sailing through the night to some unknown goal. So now, when I have told you what it did to me, you will know that voice was like no voice I ever heard, except Caruso's. It was like his—astonishingly like; and hardly had the last note of "Mario's" song of love and death dropped into silence when the singer began anew with one of Caruso's own Neapolitan folk-songs, "Mama Mia."

I had forgotten Mother and Father Beckett—even Brian—everyone except my lost Jim Wyndham and myself. But suddenly a touch on my hand made me start. The little old lady's, small, cool fingers were on mine, "My daughter, what do the words mean?" she asked. "What is that boy saying to his mama?" Her eyes were blue lakes of unshed tears, for the thought of her son knocked at her heart.

"It isn't a boy who sings, dear," I said. "It's supposed to be a young man who tries to tell his mother all about his love, but it is too big for any words he can find. He says she must remember how she felt herself when she was in love, and then she will understand what's in his heart."

"Oh, it's wonderful!" she whispered. "How young it sounds! Can it be a man singing? It seems too beautiful for anything but a gramophone!"

We broke out laughing, and the little lady blushed in shame. "I mean, it's like one of the great singers they make records of," she explained. "There, he's stopped. Oh, James, don't let him go! We must hear him again. Couldn't you go next door and thank him? Couldn't you beg him to sing some more?"

An Englishman would sooner have died a painful death then obey; but, unabashed, the American husband flung wide open the folding doors.

At the piano sat the short, square-built young man of the Red Cross taxi. Leaning with both elbows on the instrument stood the doll-like figure of his companion, the girl in nurse's dress. His back and her profile were turned our way, but at the sound of the opening door he wheeled on the stool, and both stared at Mr. Beckett. Also they stared past him at me. Why at me, and not the others, I could never have guessed then.

Our little room was lit by red-shaded candles on the table, while the salon adjoining blazed with electricity. As the doors opened, it was like the effect of a flashlight for a photograph. I saw that the man and the girl resembled each other in feature; nevertheless, there was a striking difference between the two. It wasn't only that he was squarely built, with a short throat, and a head shaped like Caruso's, whereas she was slight, with a small, high-held head on a slender neck. The chief difference lay in expression. The man—who now looked younger than I had thought—had a dark, laughing face, gay and defiant as a Neapolitan street boy. It might be evil, it might be good. The girl, who could be no more than twenty, was sullen in her beauty as a thundercloud.

The singer jumped up, and took a few steps forward, while the girl stood still and gloomed.

"I hope I didn't disturb you?" The question was asked of Mr. Beckett, and thrown lightly as a shuttlecock over the old man's head to us in the next room. It was asked in English, with a curiously winning accent, neither Italian nor Irish, but suggesting both.

"Disturbed!" Father Beckett explained that his errand was to beg for more music. "It's like being at the opera!" was the best compliment he had to give.

The young man smiled as if a light had been turned on behind his eyes and his brilliant white teeth. "Delighted!" he said. "I can't sing properly nowadays—shell shock. I suppose I never shall again. But I do my best."

He sat down once more at the piano, and without asking his audience to choose, began in a low voice an old, sweet, entirely banal and utterly heartbreaking ballad of Tosti's, with words by Christina Rossetti:

"When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me, Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree. Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet, And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on as if in pain. And dreaming through the twilight That does not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget."

The words were of no great depth or worth, and the music was too intentionally heart-wringing to be sincerely fine, yet sung by that man's voice, the piano softly touched by his hands, the poor old song took my self-control and shivered it like thin glass. Tears burst from Mrs. Beckett's eyes, and she hid her face on my shoulder, sobbing beneath her breath: "Oh, Jim—Jim!"

When the singer had finished he looked at her, not in surprise, but thoughtfully. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have sung that stuff, Mr. Beckett," he said. "But your son liked it at St. Raphael. We knew each other there, very well."

As he spoke his eyes turned to me, deliberately, with meaning. There was a gentle, charming smile on his southern face, but I knew, as if he had told me in so many words, that my secret was his.

Involuntarily I glanced at the girl. She had not moved. She stood as before, her elbows on the piano, her small face propped between her hands. But she, too, was looking at me. She had no expression whatever. Her eyes told as little as two shut windows with blinds drawn down. The fancy flashed through me that a judge might look thus waiting to hear the verdict of the jury in a murder case.

"These two have followed us on purpose to denounce me," I thought. Yet it seemed a stupidly melodramatic conclusion, like the climax of a chapter in an old-fashioned, sentimental story. Besides, the man—evidently the leader—had not at all the face of Nemesis. He looked a merry, happy-go-lucky Italian, only a little subdued at the moment by the pathos of his own nightingale voice and the memory of Jim Beckett. I was bewildered. My reason did not know what to make of him. But my instinct warned me of danger.

Mother Beckett dried her eyes with one of her dainty handkerchiefs which always smell like lavender and grass pinks—her leitmotif in perfume. "You knew our Jim?" she exclaimed, choking back tears. "Why, then, perhaps you and Mary—Miss O'Malley——"

What would have happened if she had finished her sentence I shall never know, for just then came a crash as if the house were falling. Window-glass shivered. The hotel shook as though in an earthquake. Out went the electric light, leaving only our candles aglow under red shades.

Bar-le-Duc was in for an air raid.



CHAPTER IX

For a moment we thought the house had been struck by a bomb, and were astonished that it stood. In the uproar of explosions and crashings and jinglings, the small silence of our room—with its gay chrysanthemums and shaded candles—was like that of a sheltered oasis in a desert storm.

Not one of us uttered a sound. Father Beckett took his wife in his arms, and held her tight, her face hidden in his coat. Brian had not even got up from his chair by the table. He'd lighted a cigarette, and continued to smoke calmly, a half-smile on his face, as if the bombardment carried him back to life in the trenches. But the beautiful sightless eyes searched for what they could not see: and I knew that I was in his thoughts. I would have gone to him, after the first petrifying instant of surprise, but the singing-man stopped me. "Are you afraid?" I heard his voice close to my ear. Perhaps he shouted. But in the din it was as if he whispered.

"No!" I flung back. "Had you not better go and take care of your sister?"

He laughed. "My sister! Look at her! Does she need taking care of?"

The girl had come from the suddenly darkened salon into our room. As he spoke, she walked to the table, helped herself to a cigarette from Brian's silver case which lay open, and asked its owner for a light. It struck me that she did not realize his blindness.

Certainly the young woman did not "need taking care of." Nor did I! Deliberately I turned my back upon the man; but he snatched at the end of a scarf I wore. "No one's looking," he said. "Take this—for your own sake." And he thrust into a little outside pocket of my dress a folded bit of paper. Then he let me go, stepping back to prevent my returning the note.

For a second I hesitated, not knowing which of two evils to choose; but the woman who hesitates is inevitably lost. Before I could make up my mind, the door opened and the landlord appeared, apologizing for the raid as if it had been an accident of his kitchen. We must have no fear. All danger was over. The avion—only one!—had been chased out of our neighbourhood. The noise we heard now was merely shrapnel fired by anti-aircraft guns. We would not be disturbed again, that he'd guarantee from his experience!

Mrs. Beckett emerged from her husband's coat. Mr. Beckett laughed, and patting his wife's shoulder, complimented her courage. "I'm not sure we haven't behaved pretty well for our first air raid," he said. "The rest of you were fine! But I suppose even you ladies have seen some of these shows before? As for you, Brian, my boy, you're a soldier. What we've been through must seem a summer shower to you. And you, sir"—he turned to the singing-man—"I think you mentioned you'd had shell shock——"

"Yes," the other answered quickly. "It cost me my voice."

"Cost you your voice?" Father Beckett echoed. "If it was better than it is now, why, it must have been a marvel! We're ignorant in the music line, my wife and I, so if we ought to know who you are——"

The young man laughed. "Oh, don't be afraid of hurting my feelings! If you were an Italian, or a Britisher—but an American! I sang in New York only part of last winter, and then I—came over here, like everyone else. My name is Julian O'Farrell, but my mother was an Italian of Naples, once a prima donna. She wished me to make my professional debut as Giulio di Napoli."

The name appeared to mean nothing for the Becketts, but instantly I knew who the man was, if little about him. I remembered reading of the sensation he created in London the summer that Brian and I tramped through France and Belgium. The next I heard was that he had "gone back" to Italy. I had of course supposed him to be an Italian. But now he boasted—or confessed—that he was an Irishman. Why, then, had he left England for Italy when the war broke out? Why had he been singing in New York after Italy joined the Allies? Above all, what had happened since, to put him on my track, with a Red Cross flag and a taxi-cab?

These questions asked themselves in my head, while I could have counted "One—two—three." Meantime, Brian had spoken to the girl, and she had answered shortly, in words I could not hear, but with a sullen, doubtful look, like a small trapped creature that snaps at a friendly hand. The landlord was helping a white-faced waiter to clear a place on the table for a tray of coffee and liqueurs; and outside the noise of shrapnel had died in the distance. The air-raid incident was closed. What next?

"You'll both have coffee with us, won't you, Signor di Napoli—or Mr. O'Farrell? Or should I say Lieutenant or Captain?" Father Beckett was urging. "You were a friend of our son's, and my wife and I——"

"Plain Mister O'Farrell it is," the other broke in. "Thanks, it would be a pleasure to stay, but it's best to refuse, I'm sure, for my sister's sake. You see by her dress what her work has been, and she's on leave because she's tired out. She faints easily—and what with the air raid—maybe you'll let us pay our respects before you leave to-morrow? Then we'll tell you all you want to know. Anyhow, we may be going on for some time in your direction. I saw by a Paris paper a few days ago you were making a tour of the Fronts, beginning at the Lorraine end."

His eyes were on me as he spoke, bright with imp-like malice. He looked so like a mischievous schoolboy that it was hard to take him seriously. Yet everything warned me to do so, and his allusion to the Paris newspapers explained much. For the second time a reporter had caught Father Beckett, and got out of him the statement that "My dead son's fiancee, Miss Mary O'Malley, who's been nursing in a 'contagious' hospital near St. Raphael, will be with us: and her brother."

So that was how the man had heard about me, and for some reason found it worth while to follow, waving the sword of Damocles! His note burned my pocket. And I burned to know what it said. No doubt it would explain why he did not cut off my head at once, and have it over!

"I think," he was going on, "that the sooner I can get this poor little girl" (a tap on his sister's shoulder) "to her room and to bed the better it will be."

Any one apparently less likely to faint, or less in need of rest, than the "poor little girl" indicated, it would be difficult to find, I thought: but the kindly Becketts were the last creatures to be critical. They sympathized, and changed their invitation from after-dinner coffee to breakfast at nine. This was accepted by O'Farrell for himself and his sister, and taking the girl's arm, the ex-singer swept her off in a dramatic exit.

When they had gone, it was Brian who asked me if I had known them in the south; and because no incentive could make me lie to Brian, I promptly answered "No." As I spoke, it occurred to me that now, if ever, was the moment when I might still succeed in spoking the wheel of Mr. and Miss O'Farrell before that wheel had time to crush me. I could throw doubt upon their good faith. I could hint that, if they had really been doing Red Cross or other work at St. Raphael, I should certainly have heard of them. But I held my peace—partly through qualms of conscience, partly through fear. Unless the man had proofs to bring of his bona fides where Jim Beckett was concerned, he would scarcely have followed us to claim acquaintance with the parents and confound the alleged fiancee. That he had followed us on purpose I was sure. Not for a second did I believe that the arrival of the taxi-cab in our wake was a coincidence!

We drank our coffee, talking of the raid and of the O'Farrells, and—as always—of Jim. Then Father Beckett noticed that his wife was pale. "She looks as if she needed bed a good sight more than that little girl did," he said in the simple, homely way I've learned to love.

Presently we had all bidden each other good-night, even Brian and I. Then—in my own room—I was free to take that folded bit of paper from my pocket.



CHAPTER X

To my surprise, there were only three lines, scribbled in pencil.

"Come to the salon for a talk when the rest of your party have gone to bed. I'll be waiting, and won't keep you long."

"Impudent brute!" I said out aloud. But a moment later I had decided to keep the appointment and learn the worst. Needs must, when the devil drives!—if you're in the power of the devil. I was. And, alas! through my fault, so was Brian. After going so far, I could not afford to be thrown back without a struggle; and I went downstairs prepared to fight.

It was not yet late; only a few minutes after ten o'clock; and though the Becketts and Brian were on the road to sleep, the hotel was awake, and even lively in its wakefulness. The door of the public salon stood open, and the electric light had come on again. At the table, in the centre of the room, sat Mr. Julian O'Farrell, alias Giulio di Napoli, conspicuously interested in an illustrated paper. He jumped up at sight of me, and smiled a brilliant smile of welcome, but did not speak. A sudden, obstinate determination seized me to thwart him, if he meant to force the first move upon me. I bowed coolly, as one acknowledges the existence of an hotel acquaintance, and passing to the other end of the long table, picked up a Je Sais Tout of a date two years before the war.

I did not sit down, but assumed the air of hovering for a moment on my way elsewhere. This manoeuvre kept the enemy on his feet; and as the cheap but stately clock on the mantel ticked out second after second, I felt nervously inclined to laugh, despite the seriousness of my situation. I bit my lip hard to frighten away a smile that would have spoilt everything. "If it goes on like this for an hour," I said to myself, "I won't open my mouth!"

Into the midst of this vow broke an explosion of laughter that made me start as if it announced a new bombardment. I looked up involuntarily, and met the dark Italian eyes sparkling with fun. "I beg your pardon!" the man gurgled. "I was wondering which is older, your Je Sais Tout or my Illustration? Mine's the Christmas number of 1909."

"Yours has the advantage in age," I replied, without a smile. "Mine goes back only to 1912."

"Ah! I'm glad to score that one point," he said, still laughing. "Dear Miss O'Malley, won't you please sit down? I'm a lazy fellow, and I'm so tired of standing! Now, don't begin by being cross with me because I call you 'dear.' If you realized what I've done for you, and what I'm ready to do, you'd say I'd earned that right, to begin with!"

"I don't understand you at all, or why you should claim any right," I hedged. But I sat down, and he sank so heavily into an ancient, plush-covered chair that a spray of dust flew up from the cushions.

"I'm afraid I'm rather too fat!" he apologized. "But I always lose flesh motoring, so you'll see a change for the better, I hope—in a week or two. I expect our lines will be cast in the same places for some time to come—if you're as wise as—as you are pretty. If not, I'm afraid you and Mr. O'Malley won't be long with our party. I say, you are gorgeous when you're in a rage! But why fly into a fury? You told me you didn't understand things. I'm doing my best to explain."

"Then your best is very bad," I said.

"Sorry! I'll begin another way. Listen! I'm going to be perfectly frank. Why not? We're birds of a feather. And the pot can't call the kettle black. Maybe my similes are a bit mixed, but you'll excuse that, as we're both Irish. Why, my being Irish—and Italian—is an explanation of me in itself, if you'd take the trouble to study it. But look here! I don't want you to take any trouble. I don't want to give you any trouble. Now do you begin to see light?"

"No!" I threw at him.

"I don't believe you, dear girl. You malign your own wits. You pay yourself worse compliments than I'd let any one else do! But I promised not to keep you long. And if I break my promise it will be your fault—because you're not reasonable. You're the pot and I'm the kettle, because we're both tarred with the same brush. By the way, are pots and kettles blacked with tar? They look it. But that's a detail. My sister and I are just as dead broke and down and out as you and your brother are. I mean, as you were, and as you may be again, if you make mistakes."

"I'd rather not bring my brother into this discussion," I said. "He's too far above it—and us. You can do as you choose about your sister."

"I can make her do as I choose," he amended. "That's where my scheme came in, and where it still holds good. When I read the news of Pa and Ma Beckett arriving in Paris, it jumped into my head like a—like a——"

"Toad," I supplied the simile.

"I was leaving it to you," said he. "I thought you ought to know, for by a wonderful coincidence which should draw us together, the same great idea must have occurred to you—in the same way, and on the same day. I bet you the first hundred francs I get out of old Beckett that it was so!"

"Mr. O'Farrell, you're a Beast!" I cried.

"And you're a Beauty. So there we are, cast for opposite parts in the same play. Queer how it works out! Looks like the hand of Providence. Don't say what you want to say, or I shall be afraid you've been badly brought up. North of Ireland, I understand. We're South. Dierdre's a Sinn Feiner. You needn't expect mercy from her, unless I keep her down with a strong hand—the Hidden Hand. She hates you Northerners about ten times worse than she hates the Huns. Now you look as if you thought her name wasn't Dierdre! It is, because she took it. She takes a lot of things, when I've showed her how. For instance, photographs. She has several snapshots of Jim Beckett and me together. I have some of him and her. They're pretty strong cards (I don't mean a pun!) if we decide to use them. Don't you agree?"

"I neither agree nor disagree," I said, "for I understand you no better now than when you began."

"You're like Mr. Justice What's-his-name, who's so innocent he never heard of the race course. Well, I must adapt myself to your child-like intelligence! I'll go back a bit to an earlier chapter in my career, the way novels and cinemas do, after they've given the public a good, bright opening. It was true, what I said about my voice. I've lost everything but my middle register. I had a fortune in my throat. At present I've got nothing but a warble fit for a small drawing room—and that, only by careful management. I knew months ago I could never sing again in opera. I was coining money in New York, and would be now—if they hadn't dug me out as a slacker—an embusque—whatever you like to call it. I was a conscientious objector: that is, my conviction was it would be sinful to risk a bullet in a chest full of music, like mine—a treasure-chest. But the fools didn't see it in that light. They made America too hot to hold either Giulio di Napoli or Julian O'Farrell. I'm no coward—I swear to you I'm not, my dear girl! You've only to look me square in the face to see I'm not. I'm full of fire. But ever since I was a boy I've lived for my voice, and you can't die for your voice, like you can for your country. It goes—pop!—with you. I managed to convince the doctors that my heart was too jumpy for the trenches. I see digitalis in your eye, Miss Trained Nurse! It wasn't. It was strophantis. But they would set me to driving a motor ambulance—cold-hearted brutes! I got too near the front line one day—or rather the front line got too near me, and a shell hit my ambulance. The next thing I knew I was in hospital, and the first thing I thought of was my voice. A frog would have disowned it. I hoped for a while it might come right; but they sent me to St. Raphael for a sun cure, and—it didn't work. That was last spring. I'm as well as I ever was, except in my throat, and there the specialists say I need never expect to be better. I'd change with your brother, Miss O'Malley. My God, I would. If I could lose my eyes and have my voice again—my voice!"

His flippancy broke down on those words, with one sincere and tragic note that touched me through my contempt. Watching, he saw this, and catching at self-control, he caught also at the straw of sympathy within his reach.

"I wanted to die for a while," he went on. "But youth is strong, even when you're down on your luck—down at the deepest. My sister came to St. Raphael to be with me. It may seem queer to you, but I'm her idol. She's lost everything else—or rather she thinks she has, which is much the same—everything that made her life worth living. She wanted to be a singer. Her voice wasn't strong enough. She wanted to be an actress. She knew how to act, but—she couldn't, Heaven knows why. She's got temperament enough, but she couldn't let herself out. You see what she's like! She failed in America, where she'd followed me against our mother's will. Mother died while we were there. Another blow! And a man Dierdre's been half engaged to was killed in Belgium. She didn't love him, but he was made of money. It would have been a big match! She took to nursing only after I was called up. You know in France a girl doesn't need much experience to get into a hospital. But poor little Dare wasn't more of a success at nursing than on the stage. Not enough self-confidence—too sensitive. People think she's always in the sulks—and so she is, these days. I'd been trying for six months' sick leave, and just got it when I read that stuff in the paper about Beckett being killed, and his parents hearing the news the day they arrived. It struck me like drama: things do. I was born dramatic—took it from my mother. The thought came to me, how dead easy 'twould be for some girl to pretend she'd been engaged to Beckett, and win her wily way to the hearts and pockets of the old birds. Next I thought: Why not Dierdre? And there wasn't any reason why not! I told her it would be good practice in acting. (She hasn't quite given up hope of the stage yet.) We started for Paris on the job; and then I read in a later copy of the same paper about the smart young lady who'd stepped in ahead of us. If old Beckett hadn't been bursting with pride in the heroic girl who'd got a medal for nursing infectious cases in a hospital near St. Raphael, I'd have given up the game for a bad job. I'd have taken it for granted that Jim and the fiancee had met before we met him at St. Raphael. But when the paper said they'd made acquaintance there, and gave your name and all, I knew you were on the same trail with us. You'd walked in ahead, that was the only difference. And we had the snapshots. We could call witnesses to swear that no nurse from your hospital had come near St. Raphael, and to swear that none of the chaps in the aviation school had ever come near them. Dierdre hadn't been keen at first, but once she was in, she didn't want to fail again; especially for a North of Ireland girl like you. She was ready to go on. But the newspaper gushed a good deal over your looks, you remember. My curiosity was roused. I was—sort of obsessed by the thought of you. I decided to see what your head was like to look at before chopping it off. And anyhow, you'd already started on your jaunt. Through a rich chap I knew in New York, who's over here helping the Red Cross, I got leave to carry supplies to the evacuated towns, provided I could find my own car. Well, I found it—such as it is. All I ask of it is not to break down till the Becketts have learned to love me as their dear, dead son's best friend. As for Dare—what she was to the dear dead son depends on you."

"Depends on me?" I repeated.

"Depends on you. Dare's not a good Sunday-school girl, but she's good to her brother—as good as you are to yours, in her way. She'll do what I want. But the question is Will you?"

For a moment I did not speak. Then I asked, "What do you want?"

"Only a very little thing," he said. "To live and let live, that's all. Don't you try to queer my pitch, and I won't queer yours."

"What is your pitch?" I asked.

He laughed. "You're very non-committal, aren't you? But I like your pluck. You've never once admitted by word or look that you're caught. All the same, you know you are. You can't hurt me, and I can hurt you. Your word wouldn't stand against my proofs, if you put up a fight. You'd go down—and your brother with you. Oh, I don't think he's in it! The minute I saw his face I was sure he wasn't; and I guessed from yours that what you'd done was mostly or all for him. Now, dear Miss O'Malley, you know where you are with me. Isn't that enough for you? Can't you just be wise and promise to let me alone on my 'pitch,' whatever it is?"

"I won't have Mr. and Mrs. Beckett made fools of in any way."

He burst out laughing. "That's good—from you! I give you leave to watch over their interests, if you let me take care of mine. Is it a bargain?"

I did not answer. I was thinking—thinking furiously, when the landlord came to the door to put out the lights.

O'Farrell sprang to his feet. "We're ready to go. We can leave the room free, can't we, Miss O'Malley?" he said in French.

Somehow, I found myself getting up, and fading out of the room as if I'd been hypnotized. I walked straight to the foot of the stairs, then turned at bay to deliver some ultimatum—I scarcely knew what. But O'Farrell had cleverly accomplished a vanishing act, and there was nothing left for me to do save go to my own room.



CHAPTER XI

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—not sure. 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 think about her. 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 the tiniest thing! 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."

"Thunderstorms make you 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. He sprang 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, I am 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-mache 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 through delightful 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 chateau, and the coming of the Polish Stanislas, the best loved and last Duke of Lorraine. He used to divide his years between Nancy, Luneville, and Commercy; and once upon a time, in the third of these chateaux, the chef had a chere amie named Madeleine. There was to be a fete, and the lover of Madeleine was racking his tired brain to invent some new dainty for it. "I have 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."

The chef feigned 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, it seems, 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 Triumph leading into the garden of the Place Carriere—a gorgeous glitter of decoration which won for Nancy her alias, "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 fashionable robe a 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 facades 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 fantastic fashion 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!" But there 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 blase 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—a blind man!—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 was glad I 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 XII

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 Prefet, and we had not been in Nancy an hour when he and his wife called.

I'd never met a real, live prefet. 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 Prefet offered himself to the Becketts as guide on a sightseeing expedition next day, and Madame, the Prefet'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 what the Boches have done to some of our other towns—ah, but beautiful towns, of an importance! Luneville, and Gerbevillers, 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. Prefet 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 Prefet 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 prefet 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 tiny filette, the eldest twenty at most; and the mother in looks an elder sister. When the war broke out they were living in Paris, 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 prefet 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 Prefet 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 Prefet'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 that la 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 growing potatoes, 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 of poilus 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 Carriere, 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 Pepiniere, to the sombre Porte de la Craffe whose two huge, pointed towers and great wall guard the old town of Duke Rene II.

There we stopped, because of all places this dark corner was the place for Nancy's noblest ghost to walk, Rene the Romantic, friend of Americo Vespucius when Americo needed friends; Rene the painter, whose pictures still adorn old churches of Provence, where he was once a captive: Rene, 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 Caesar called "knights of chivalry," would have drawn the line then at showering bombs from the bay on women and children. We fancied, Brian and I, that after a walk round Nancy Rene 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 Rene 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—Rene 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 Rene's own turn to lead had come—a slight adversary for great Charles, but with a heart as bold! The trumpet blast of La Riviere, 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 Rene's prayers. The southerners fled and died; and two days later, Rene 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 our deep 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 XIII

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 Prefet'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—of prophet, 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 Prefet'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. Dierdre O'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 tone softened slightly for Brian. Even she had 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. "But I'm a 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, "Am I the 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'm blessed!" 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 Prefet's wife and daughters, and the Becketts. They took us over the two huge casernes, 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 Prefet'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 had been 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 Prefet 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 Prefet 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. Amance was 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, man did defend! 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 reinforcing tirailleurs.

"This," said the Prefet, "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 Prefet, 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 Prefet 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 Prefet 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 Prefet 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 Prefet, "then he was the Wandering Jew! Let me see—I think you are planning to go to Gerbeviller and Luneville 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 spite me, she had refused to talk of the doctor. I was determined to hear all about him to spite her. You see to what a low level I have fallen, dear Padre!