The Prefet said that if we would go home with him and have tea in the garden (German aeroplanes permitting) he would tell us the tale of the Wandering Jew. We all accepted, save Dierdre, who began to stammer an excuse; but a look from her brother nipped it in the bud. He certainly has an influence over the girl, against which she struggles only at her strongest. To-day she looked pale and weak, and he could do what he liked with her.

He liked to make her take tea at the Prefet's, doubtless because he'd have felt bound to escort the invalid to her room, had she insisted on going there!

The story of the Wandering Jew would be a strange one, anywhere and anyhow. But it's more than strange to me, because it is linked with my past life. Still, I won't tell it from my point of view. I'll begin with the Prefet's version.

The "Wandering Jew" really is a Jew, of the best and most intellectual type. His name is Paul Herter. His father was a man of Metz, who had brought to German Lorraine a wife from Luneville. Paul is thirty-five now, so you see he wasn't born when the Metz part of Lorraine became German. His parents—French at heart—taught him secretly to love France, and hate German domination. As he grew up, Paul's ambition was to be a great surgeon. He wished to study, not in Germany, but in Paris and London. These hopes, however, were of the "stuff that dreams are made of," for when the father died, the boy had to work at anything he could get for a bare livelihood. It wasn't till he was over twenty-five that he'd scraped together money for the first step toward his career. He went to Paris: studied and starved; then to London. It was there I met him, but that bit of the story fits in later. He was thought well of at "Bart's," and everybody who knew him was surprised when suddenly he married one of the younger nurses, an English girl, and vanished with her from London. Presently the pair appeared in Metz, at the mother's house. Herter seemed sad and discouraged, uncertain of his future, and just at this time, through German Lorraine ran rumours of war "to begin when the harvests should be over." Paul and his mother took counsel. Both were French at heart. They determined to leave all they had in the world at Metz, rather than Paul should be called up to serve Prussia. The three contrived to cross the frontier. Paul offered himself to the Foreign Legion; his wife volunteered to nurse in a military hospital at Nancy; and Madame Herter, mere took refuge in her girlhood's home at Luneville, where her old father still lived.

Then came the rush of the Huns across the frontier. Paul's wife was killed by a Zeppelin bomb which wrecked her hospital. At Luneville the mother and grandfather perished in their own house, burned to the ground by order of the Bavarian colonel, Von Fosbender.

Paul Herter had not been in love with his wife. There was a mystery about the marriage, but her fate filled him with rage and horror. His mother he had adored, and the news of her martyrdom came near to driving him insane. In the madness of grief he vowed vengeance against all Bavarians who might fall into his hands.

He was fighting then in the Legion; but shortly after he was gravely wounded. His left foot had to be amputated; and from serving France as a soldier, he began to serve as a surgeon. He developed astonishing skill in throat and chest operations, succeeding in some which older and more experienced men refused to attempt. Months passed, and into his busy life had never come the wished-for chance of vengeance; but all who knew him knew that Herter's hatred of Bavarians was an obsession. He was not one who would forget; and when a lot of seriously wounded Bavarians came into the field-hospital where he was at work, the two young doctors under him looked one another in the eyes. Even the stretcher-bearers had heard of Herter's vow, but there was nothing to do save to bring in the stream of wounded, and trust the calm instinct of the surgeon to control the hot blood of the man. Still, the air was electric with suspense, and heavy with dread of some vague tragedy: disgrace for the hospital, ruin for Herter.

But the Jewish surgeon (he wasn't called "the Wandering Jew" in those days) caught the telepathic message of fear, and laughed grimly at what men were thinking of him. "You need not be afraid," he said to his assistants. "These canaille are sacred for me. They do not count as Bavarians."

Nevertheless, the young doctors would have tended the wounded prisoners themselves, leaving Herter to care for his countrymen alone. But one of the Bavarians was beyond their skill: a young lieutenant. His wound was precisely "Herter's specialty"—a bullet lodged in the heart, if he was to be saved, Herter alone could save him. Would Herter operate? He had only to say the case was hopeless, and refuse to waste upon it time needed for others.

Perhaps he knew what suspicion would dog him through life if he gave this verdict. At all events, he chose to operate. "Bring me the brute," he growled: and reluctantly the brute was brought—a very youthful brute, with a face of such angelic charm that even Herter was struck by it. He had steeled himself to get through a hateful job; but for him—like most men of his race—beauty held a strong appeal. Suddenly he wished to save the boy with the fair curly hair and arched dark brows. Here was a German—a Bavarian—who could have no vileness in him yet!

The surgeon got ready his instruments for the operation, which must be done quickly, if at all. The boy was unconscious, but every moment or two he broke out in convulsive delirium, giving answers to questions like a man talking in sleep. "Hilda! Hilda!" he cried again and again. "My Hilda, do not ask me that. Thou wouldst not love me if I told thee! Thou wouldst hate me forever!"

"What have you done that Hilda should hate you?" Paul enquired, as he waited for the anaesthetic. Ether was running short. The wounded had to take their turn that day.

"Luneville! Luneville!" shrieked the Bavarian.

Everyone heard the cry. The two young doctors, knowing Herter's history, turned sick. This was worse than their worst fears! But they could do nothing. To speak, to try to act, would be to insult the surgeon. They saw that he was ghastly pale. "What happened at Luneville?" he went on.

"Here is the ether," a voice spoke in haste. But Paul heard only the Bavarian.

"Oh, God, the old woman! Her face at the window. I can't forget. Hilda—she wouldn't come out. It wasn't my fault. The Colonel's orders. An old man, too. We saw them in the fire. We had to pass on. Hilda, forgive!"

"Was it a corner house of the Rue Princesse Marie?" asked Herter.

"Yes—yes, a corner house," groaned the boy of the beautiful face.

Herter gave a sign to the man who had brought the ether. A moment more, and the ravings of the Bavarian were silenced. The operation began.

The others had their hands full of their own work, yet with a kind of agonized clairvoyance they were conscious of all that Herter did. The same thought was in the minds of both young doctors. They exchanged impressions afterward. "He'll cut the boy's heart out and tread it underfoot!"

But never had the Jewish surgeon from Metz performed a major operation with more coolness or more perfect skill. Had he chosen to let his wrist tremble at the critical second, revenge would easily have been his. But awaiting the instant between one beat of the heart and another, he seized the shred of shrapnel lodged there, and closed up the throbbing breast. The boy would live. He had not only spared, but saved, the life of one who was perhaps his mother's murderer.

During the whole day he worked on untiringly and—it seemed—unmoved. Then, at the end of the last operation, he dropped as if he had been shot through the brain.

This was the beginning of a long, peculiar illness which no doctor who attended him could satisfactorily diagnose. He was constantly delirious, repeating the words of the Bavarian: "Hilda—Hilda!—the corner house—Rue Princesse Marie—Luneville!" and it was feared that, if he recovered, he would be insane. After many weeks, however, he came slowly back to himself—a changed self, but a sane self. Always odd in his appearance—very tall and dark and thin—he had wasted to a walking skeleton, and his black hair had turned snow-white. He had lost his self-confidence, and dreaded to take up work again lest he should fail in some delicate operation. Long leave was granted, and he was advised by doctors who were his friends to go south, to sunshine and peace. But Herter insisted that the one hope for ultimate cure was to stay in Lorraine. He took up his quarters in what was left of a house near the ruin of his mother's old home, in Luneville, but he was never there for long at a time. He was provided with a pass to go and come as he liked, being greatly respected and pitied at headquarters; and wherever there was an air raid, there speedily and mysteriously appeared Paul Herter among the victims.

His artificial foot did not prevent his riding a motor-bicycle, and on this he arrived, no matter at what hour of night or day, at any town within fifty miles of Luneville, when enemy airmen had been at work. He gave his services unpaid to poor and rich alike; and owing to the dearth of doctors not mobilized, the towns concerned welcomed him thankfully. All the surgeon's serene confidence in himself returned in these emergencies, and he was doing invaluable work. People were grateful, but the man's ways and looks were so strange, his restlessness so tragic, that they dubbed him "le Juif Errant."

Now, Padre, I have come to the right place to bring in my part of this story.

While I was training at "Bart's," I met a doctor named Paul Herter. Some of the girls used to call him the "German Jew" but we all knew that his Germanness was only an accident of fate, through a war before he was born, and that he was passionately French at heart. He was clever—a genius—but moody and queer, and striking to look at. He would have been ugly but for a pair of beautiful brown eyes, wistful sometimes as a dog's. One of our nurses was in love with him, but he used to keep out of her way when he could. He was said not to care for women, and I was a little flattered that a man so well thought of "at the top" should take notice of me. When I look back on myself, I seem to have been very young then!

Dr. Herter used to meet me, as if by accident, when I was off duty, and we went for long walks, talking French together; I enjoyed that! Besides, there was nothing the man didn't know. He was a kind of encyclopaedia of all the great musicians and artists of the world since the Middle Ages; and was so much older than I, that I didn't think about his falling in love. I knew I was pretty, and that beauty of all sorts was a cult with him. I supposed that he liked looking at me—and that his fancy would end there. But it didn't. There came a dreadful day when he accused me of encouraging him purposely, of leading him on to believe that I cared. This was a real shock. I was sorry—sorry! But he said such horrid things that I was hurt and angry, too. I said horrid things in my turn. This scene happened in the street. I asked him to leave me, and he did at once, without looking back. I can see him now, striding off in the twilight! No wonder the tall black silhouette in the Place Stanislas looked familiar. But the man is thinner now, and walks with a slight limp.

The next thing I heard of him after our break was that he'd married Nurse Norman (the one who was in love with him) and that they'd left England. Whether he'd married the girl in a rage against me, or because he was sorry for her (she'd just then fallen into deep disgrace, through giving a patient the wrong medicine), I didn't know. I can't say I didn't care, for I often thought of the man and wondered what had become of him, though I don't remember ever writing about him to you. He was but indirectly concerned with my life, and maybe it was in the back of my mind that I might get a scolding from you if I told you the tale.

The moment the name of "Paul Herter" was mentioned in that pleasant garden at Nancy, the whole episode of those old days at "Bart's" came back, and I guessed why the tall figure had darted away from Dierdre O'Farrell as we came in sight. He must have offered to see the girl safely home, after dressing her wound (probably at some chemist's), and she had told him about her fellow-travellers. Naturally my name sent him flying like a shot from a seventy-five! But I can't help hoping we may meet by accident. There's a halo round the man's head for me since I've heard that tragic story. Before, he was only a queer genius. Now, he's a hero. Will he turn away, I wonder, if I walk up to him and hold out my hand?

I am longing, for a double reason, to see Vitrimont and Gerbeviller and Luneville, since I've learned that at one of those places Paul Herter may appear.



CHAPTER XIV

We were three automobiles strong when we went out of Nancy, along what they call the "Luneville road." That was yesterday, as I write, and already it seems long ago! The third and biggest car belonged to the Prefet; gray and military looking, driven by a soldier in uniform; and this time Dierdre O'Farrell was with us. I was wondering if she went "under orders," or if she wished to see the sights we were to see—among them, perhaps, her elusive doctor!

We turned south, leaving town, and presently passed—at Dombasle—astonishingly huge salt-works, with rubble-heaps tall as minor pyramids. On each apex stood a thing like the form of a giant black woman in a waggling gas-mask and a helmet. I could have found out what these weird engines were, no doubt, but I preferred to remember them as mysterious monsters.

At a great, strange church of St. Nicolas, in the old town of St. Nicolas-du-Port, we stopped, because the Prefet's daughters had told us of a magic stone in the pavement which gives good fortune to those who set foot on it. Only when several of us were huddled together, with a foot each on the sacred spot, were we told that it meant marriage before the new year. If the spell works, Dierdre O'Farrell, Brian, and I will all be married in less than four months. But St. Nicolas is a false prophet where we are concerned. Brian and I will never marry. Even if poor Brian should fall head over ears in love, he wouldn't ask a girl to share his broken life: he has told me this. As for me, I can never love any man after Jim Beckett. The least penance I owe is to be faithful forever to his memory and my own falsehood!

St. Nicolas is the patron saint of the neighbourhood, so it's right that from his little town and his big church all the country round should open out to the eye, as if to do him homage.

From the hill of Leomont we could see to the south the far-off, famous Forest of Parroy; away to the north, the blue heights of La Grande Couronne, where the fate of Nancy was decided in 1914; to the west, a purple haze like a mourning wreath of violets hung over the valley of the Meurthe, and the tragic little tributary river Mortagne; beyond, we could picture with our mind's eyes the Moselle and the Meuse.

But Leomont was not a place where one could stand coldly thinking of horizons. It drew all thoughts to itself, and to the drama played out upon its miniature mountain. There was fought one of the fiercest and most heroic single battles of the war.

We had to desert the cars, and walk up a rough track to the ruined farmhouse which crowned the hill; a noble, fortified farmhouse that must have had the dignity of a chateau before the great fight which shattered its ancient walls. Now it has the dignity of a mausoleum. Long ago, in Roman days when Diana, Goddess of the Moon, was patron of Luneville and the country round, a temple of stone and marble in her honour and a soaring fountain crowned the high summit of Leomont, for all the world to see. Her influence is said to reign over the whole of Lorraine, from that day to this, St. Nicholas being her sole rival: and a prophecy has come down through the centuries that no evil may befall Diana's citadels, save in the "dark o' the moon," when the protectress is absent. Luneville was overrun in the "dark o' the moon"; and it was then also that the battle of Leomont was fought, ending in the vast cellars, where no man was left alive.

In these days of ours, it's a wonderful and romantic mountain, sacred as a monument forever, to the glory of the French soldiers who did not die in vain. The scarred face of the ruined house—its stones pitted by shrapnel as if by smallpox—gazes over Lorraine as the Sphinx gazes over the desert: calm, majestic, sad, yet triumphant. And under the shattered walls, among fallen buttresses and blackened stumps of oaks, are the graves of Leomont's heroes; graves everywhere, over the hillside; graves in the open; graves in sheltered corners where wild flowers have begun to grow; their tricolour cockades and wooden crosses mirrored in the blue of water-filled shell-holes; graves in the historic cellars, covered with a pall of darkness; graves along the slope of the hill, where old trenches have left ruts in the rank grass.

An unseen choir of bird-voices was singing the sweetest requiem ever sung for the dead; yet Leomont in its majestic loneliness saddened us, even the irrepressible Puck. We were sad and rather silent all the way to Vitrimont; and Vitrimont, at first glance, was a sight to make us sadder than any we had seen. There had been a Vitrimont, a happy little place, built of gray and rose-red stones; now, of those stones hardly one lies upon another, except in rubble heaps. And yet, Vitrimont isn't sad as others of the ruined towns are sad. It even cheered us, after Leomont, because a star of hope shines over the field of desolation—a star that has come out of the west. Some wonderful women of San Francisco decided to "adopt" Vitrimont, as one of the little places of France which had suffered most in the war. Two of them, Miss Polk and Miss Crocker—girls rather than women—gave themselves as well as their money to the work. In what remains of Vitrimont—what they are making of Vitrimont—they live like two fresh roses that have taken root in a pile of ashes. With a few books, a few bowls of flowers, pictures, and bits of bright chintz they have given charm to their poor rooms in the half-ruined house of a peasant. This has been their home for many months, from the time when they were the only creatures who shared Vitrimont with its ghosts: but now other homes are growing under their eyes and through their charity; thanks to them, the people of the destroyed village are trooping back, happy and hopeful. The church has been repaired (that was done first, "because it is God's house") with warm-coloured pink walls and neat decoration; and plans for the restoring of the whole village are being carried out, while the waiting inhabitants camp in a village of toy-like bungalows given by the French Government. I never saw such looks of worshipping love cast upon human beings as those of the people of Vitrimont for these two American girls. I'm sure they believe that Miss Crocker and Miss Polk are saints incarnated for their sakes by "la Sainte Vierge." One old man said as much!

He was so old that it seemed as if he could never have been young, yet he was whistling a toothless but patriotic whistle, over some bit of amateur-carpenter work, in front of a one-room bungalow. Inside, visible through the open door, was the paralyzed wife he had lately wheeled "home" to Vitrimont, in some kind of a cart. "Oh, yes, we are happy!" he stopped whistling to say. "We are fortunate, too. We think we have found the place where our street used to be, and these Angels—we do not call them Demoiselles, but Angels—from America are going to build us a new home in it. We have seen the plan. It is more beautiful than the old!"

Wherever we passed a house on the road to Luneville, and in town itself, as we came in, we saw notices—printed and written—to remind us that we were in the war-zone, if we forgot for an instant. "Logement militaire," or "Cave voutee, 200 places—400 places." Those hospitable cellars advertising their existence in air raids and bombardments must be a comforting sight for passers-by, now and then; but no siren wailed us a warning. We drove on in peace; and I—disappointed at Vitrimont—quietly kept watch for a tall, thin figure of a man with a slight limp. At any moment, I thought, I might see him, for at Luneville he lives—if he lives anywhere!

I was so eager and excited that I could hardly turn my mind to other things; but Brian, not knowing why I should be absent-minded, constantly asked questions about what we passed. Julian O'Farrell had exchanged his sister for Mr. and Mrs. Beckett, whom he had persuaded to take the short trip in his ramshackle taxi. His excuse was that Mother Beckett would deal out more wisely than Dierdre his Red Cross supplies to the returned refugees; so we had the girl with us; and I caught reproachful glances if I was slow in answering my blind brother. She herself suspects him as a poseur, yet she judges me careless of his needs—which I should find funny, if it didn't make me furious! Just to see what Dierdre would do, and perhaps to provoke her, sometimes I didn't answer at all, but left her to explain our surroundings to Brian. I hardly thought she would respond to the silent challenge, but almost ostentatiously she did.

She cried, "There's a castle!" when we came to the fine and rather staid chateau which Duke Stanislas loved, and where he died. She even tried to describe it for Brian, with faltering self-consciousness, and the old streets which once had been "brilliant as Versailles, full of Queen Marie's beautiful ladies." Now, they are gray and sad, even those streets which show no scars from the three weeks' martyrdom of German rule. Soldiers pass, on foot and in motors, yet it's hard to realize that before the war Luneville was one of the gayest, grandest garrison towns of France, rich and industrious, under Diana's special protection. Just because she was away in her moon-chariot, one dark and dreadful night, all has changed since then. But she'll come back, and bless her ancient place of Lunae Villa, in good time!

It was here, Brian reminded me, that they drew up the treaty which gave the Rhine frontier to France, after Napoleon won the Battle of Marengo. I wonder if the Germans remembered this in 1914 when they came?

We lunched at an hotel, in a restaurant crowded with French officers; and not a civilian there except ourselves. I was hoping that Paul Herter might come in, for the tragic Rue Princesse Marie is not far away—and even a Wandering Jew must eat! He did not come; but I almost forgot my new disappointment in hearing the French officers talk about Lorraine.

They were in the midst of a discussion when we came in, and when they had all bowed politely to us, they took up its thread where it had broken off. A colonel—a Lorrainer—was saying that out of the wealth of Lorraine (stolen wealth, he called it!) Germany had built up her fortune as a united nation, in a few years far exceeding the indemnity received in 1871. Germany had known that there were vast stores of iron; but the amazing riches in phosphorus ores had come to her as a surprise. If she had guessed, never would she have agreed to leave more than half the deposit on the French side of the frontier! Well enough for Prussian boasters to say that Germany's success was due to her own industry and supervirtue, or that her tariff schemes had worked wonders. But take away the provinces she tore from France, and she will be a Samson shorn! Take away Lorraine and the world will be rid once and for all of the German menace!

When we left Luneville there was still hope from Gerbeviller. Herter is often there, it seems. Besides, Gerbeviller was the principal end and aim of our day's excursion. Once no more than a pleasant town of quiet beauty on a pretty river, now it is a monument historique, the Pompeii of Lorraine.

As we arrived the sun clouded over suddenly, and the effect was almost theatrical. From gold the light had dimmed to silver. In the midst of the afternoon, we saw Gerbeviller as if by moonlight in the still silence of night. On the outskirts we forsook our three cars, and walked slowly through the dead town, awestruck and deeply thoughtful as if in a church where the body of some great man lay in state.

There was not a sound except, as at Leomont, the unseen choir of bird-voices; but their song emphasized the silence. In the pale light the shells of wrecked houses glimmered white, like things seen deep down under clear water. They were mysterious as daytime ghosts; and already a heartbreaking picturesqueness had taken possession of the streets, as an artist-decorator comes into an ugly room and mellows all its crudeness with his loving touch.

Gerbeviller's tragic little river Mortagne gleamed silver-bright beneath a torn lace of delicate white flowers that was like a veil flung off by a fugitive bride. It ran sparkling under the motionless wheel of a burned mill, and twinkled on—the one living thing the Germans left—to flow through the park of a ruined chateau.

When it was alive, that small chateau must have been gay and delightful as a castle in a fairy tale, pink and friendly among its pleasant trees; but even in its prime, rich with tapestries and splendid old paintings, which were its treasures, never could the place have been so beautiful as in death!

At a first glance—seen straight in front—the face of the house seems to live still, rosy with colour, gazing with immense blue eyes through a light green veil. But a second glance brings a shock to the heart. The face is a mask held up to hide a skull; the blue of the eyes is the open sky framed by glassless windows; the rosy colour is stained with dark streaks of smoke and flame; the chateau among its trees, and the chapel with its stopped clock and broken saints are skeletons.

Not even O'Farrell could talk. We were a silent procession in the midst of silence until we came at last to the one quarter of the town whose few houses had been spared to the courage of Gerbeviller's heroine, Soeur Julie.

Her street (but for her it would not exist) has perhaps a dozen houses intact, looking strangely bourgeois, almost out of place, so smugly whole where all else has perished. Yet it was a comfort to see them, and wonderful to see Soeur Julie.

We knocked at the door of the hospice, the cottage hospital which is famous because of her, its head and heart; and she herself let us in, for at that instant she had been in the act of starting out. I recognized her at once from the photographs which were in every illustrated paper at the time when, for her magnificent bravery and presence of mind, she was named Chevaliere of the Legion of Honour.

But with her first smile I saw that the pictures had done her crude injustice. They made of Soeur Julie an elderly woman in the dress of a nun; somewhat stout, rather large of feature. But the figure which met us in the narrow corridor had dignity and a noble strength. The smile of greeting lit deep eyes whose colour was that of brown topaz, and showed the kindly, humorous curves of a generous mouth. The flaring white headdress of the Order of Saint-Charles of Nancy framed a face so strong that I ceased to wonder how this woman had cowed a German horde; and it thrilled me to think that in this very doorway she had stood at bay, offering her black-robed body as a shield for the wounded soldiers and poor people she meant to save.

Even if we had not come from the Prefet, and with some of his family who were her admiring friends, I'm sure Soeur Julie would have welcomed the strangers. As it was she beamed with pleasure at the visit, and called a young nun to help place chairs for us all in the clean, bare reception room. By this time she must know that she is the heroine of Lorraine—her own Lorraine!—and that those who came to Gerbeviller come to see her; but she talked to us with the unself-consciousness of a child. It was only when she was begged to tell the tale of August 23, 1914, that she showed a faint sign of embarrassment. The blood flushed her brown face, and she hesitated how to begin, as if she would rather not begin at all, but once launched on the tide, she forgot everything except her story: she lived that time over again, and we lived it with her.

"What a day it was!" she sighed. "We knew what must happen, unless God willed to spare Gerbeviller by some miracle. Our town was in the German's way. Yet we prayed—we hoped. We hoped even after our army's defeat at Morhange. Then Luneville was taken. Our turn was near. We heard how terrible were the Bavarians under their general, Clauss. Our soldiers—poor, brave boys!—fought every step of the way to hold them back. They fought like lions. But they were so few! The Germans came in a gray wave of men. Our wounded were brought here to the hospice, as many as we could take—and more! Often there were three hundred. But when there was no hope to save the town, quick, with haste at night, they got the wounded away—ambulance after ambulance, cart after cart: all but a few; nineteen grands blesses, who could not be moved. They were here in this room where we sit. But ah, if you had seen us—we sisters—helping the commandant as best we could! We made ourselves carpenters. We took wooden shutters and doors from their hinges for stretchers. We split the wood with axes. We did not remember to be tired. We tore up our linen, and linen which others brought us. We tied the wounded boys on to the shutters. They never groaned. Sometimes they smiled. Ah, it was we who wept, to see them jolting off in rough country wagons, going we knew not where, or to what fate! All night we worked, and at dawn there were none left—except those nineteen I told you of. And that was the morning of the 23rd of August, hot and heavy—a weight upon our hearts and heads.

"Not only the wounded, but our defenders had gone. The army was in retreat. We had fifty-seven chasseurs left, ordered to keep the enemy back for five hours. They did it for eleven! From dawn till twilight they held the bridge outside the town, and fought behind barriers they had flung up in haste. Boys they were, but of a courage! They knew they were to die to save their comrades. They asked no better than to die hard. And they fought so well, the Germans believed there were thousands. Not till our boys had nearly all fallen did the enemy break through and swarm into the town. That was down at the other end from us, below the hill, but soon we heard fearful sounds—screams and shoutings, shots and loud explosions. They were burning the place street by street with that method of theirs! They fired the houses with pastilles their chemists have invented, and with petrol. The air was thick with smoke. We shut our windows to save the wounded from coughing. Soon we might all die together, but we would keep our boys from new sufferings while we could!

"Then at last the hour struck for us. One of our sisters, who had run to look at the red sky to see how near the fire came, cried out that Germans were pouring up the hill—four officers on horseback heading a troop of soldiers. I knew what that meant. I went quickly to the door to meet them. My knees felt as if they had broken under my weight. My heart was a great, cold, dead thing within me. My mouth was dry as if I had lost myself for days in the desert. I am not a small woman, yet it seemed that I was no bigger than a mouse under the stare of those big men who leaped off their horses, and made as if to pass me at the door. But I did not let them pass. I knew I could stop them long enough at least to kill me and then the sisters, one by one, before they reached our wounded! We backed slowly before them into the hall, the sisters and I, to stand guard before this room.

"'You are hiding Frenchmen here—French soldiers!' a giant of a captain bawled at me. Beside him was a lieutenant even more tall. They had swords in their hands, and they both pointed their weapons at me.

"'We have nineteen soldiers desperately wounded,' I said. 'There are no other men here.'

"'You are lying!' shouted the captain. He thought he could frighten me with his roar like a lion: but he did not seem to me so noble a beast.

"'You may come in and see for yourselves that I speak the truth,' I said. And think what it was for me, a woman of Lorraine, to bid a German enter her house! I did not let those two pass by me into this room. I came in first. While the lieutenant stood threatening our boys in their beds that he would shoot if they moved, the captain went round, tearing off the sheets, looking for firearms. In his hand was a strange knife, like a dagger which he had worn in his belt. One of our soldiers, too weak to open his lips, looked at the German, with a pair of great dark eyes that spoke scorn; and that look maddened the man with a sudden fury.

"'Coward, of a country of cowards! You and cattle like you have cut off the ears and torn out the eyes of our glorious Bavarians. I'll slit your throat to pay for that!'

"Ah, but this was too much—more than I could bear! I said 'No!' and I put my two hands—so—between the throat of that boy and the German knife."

When Soeur Julie came to this part of the tale, she made a beautiful, unconscious gesture, re-enacting the part she had played. I knew then how she had looked when she faced the Bavarian officer, and why he had not hacked those two work-worn but nobly shaped hands of hers, to get at the French chasseur's throat. She seemed the incarnate spirit of the mother-woman, whose selfless courage no brute who had known a mother could resist. And her "No!" rang out deep and clear as a warning tocsin. I felt that the wounded boy must have been as safe behind those hands and that "No!" as if a thick though transparent wall of glass had magically risen to protect him.

"All this time," Soeur Julie went on, gathering herself together after a moment. "All this time Germans led by non-commissioned officers were searching the hospice. But they found no hiding soldiers, because there were none such to find. And somehow that captain and his lieutenant did not touch our wounded ones. They had a look of shame and sullenness on their faces, as if they were angry with themselves for yielding their wicked will to an old woman. Yet they did yield, thank God! And then I got the captain's promise to spare the hospice—got it by saying we would care for his wounded as faithfully as we tended our own. I said, 'If you leave this house standing to take in your men, you must leave the whole street. If the buildings round us burn, we shall burn, too—and with us your German wounded. Will you give me your word that this whole quarter shall be safe?'

"The man did not answer. But he looked down at his boots. And I have always noticed that, when men of any nation look at their boots, it is that they are undecided. It was so with him. A few more arguments from me, and he said: 'It shall be as you ask.'

"Soon he must have been glad of his promise, for there were many German wounded, and we took them all in. Ah, this room, which you see so clean and white now, ran blood. We had to sweep blood into the hall, and so out at the front door, where at least it washed away the German footprints from our floor! For days we worked and did our best, even when we knew of the murders committed: innocent women with their little children. And the fifteen old men they shot for hostages. Oh, we did our best, though it was like acid eating our hearts. But our reward came the day the Germans had to gather up their wounded in wild haste, as the French commandant had gathered ours before the retreat. They fled, and our Frenchmen marched back—too late to save the town, but not too late to redeem its honour. And that is all my story."

As she finished with a smile half sad, half sweet, Soeur Julie looked over our heads at some one who had just come in—some one who had stood listening in silence, unheard and unseen by us. I turned mechanically, and my eyes met the eyes of Paul Herter, the "Wandering Jew."



CHAPTER XV

Dierdre O'Farrell and I were sitting side by side, our backs to the door, so it was only as we turned that Herter could have recognized us. He had no scruple in showing that I was the last person he wished to meet. One look was enough for him! His pale face—changed and aged since London—flushed a dark and violent red. Backing out into the hall he banged the door.

My ears tingled as if they had been boxed. I suppose I've been rather spoiled by men. Anyhow, not one ever before ran away at sight of me, as if I were Medusa. I'd been hoping that Doctor Paul and I might meet and make friends, so this was a blow: and it hurt a little that Dierdre O'Farrell should see me thus snubbed. I glanced at her; and her faint smile told that she understood.

Soeur Julie was bewildered for a second, but recovered herself to explain that Doctor Herter was eccentric and shy of strangers. He came often from Luneville to Gerbeviller to tend the poor, refusing payment, and was so good at heart that we must forgive his odd ways.

"Spurlos versnubt!" I heard Puck chuckling to himself; so he, too, was in the secret of the situation. I half expected him to pretend ingenuousness, and spring the tale of Dierdre's adventure with Herter on the company. But he preserved a discreet reticence, more for his own sake than mine or his sister's, of course. He's as lazy as he is impish, except when there's some special object to gain, and probably he wished to avoid the bother of explanations. As for Brian, his extreme sensitiveness is better than studied tact. I'm sure he felt magnetically that Dierdre O'Farrell shrank from a reference to her part in the night air raid. But his silence puzzled her, and I saw her studying him—more curiously than gratefully, I thought.

We had heard the end of Soeur Julie's story, and had no further excuse to keep her tied to the duties of hostess. When the Becketts had left something for the poor of the hospice, we bade the heroine of Gerbeviller farewell, and started out to regain our automobiles, Julian O'Farrell suddenly appearing at my side.

"Don't make an excuse that you must walk with your brother," he said. "He's all right with Dierdre; perhaps just as happy as with you! One does want a change from the best of sisters now and then."

"Mrs. Beckett——" I began.

"Mrs. Beckett is discussing with Mr. Beckett what they can do for Gerbeviller, and they'll ask your advice when they want it. No use worrying. They've boodle enough for all their charities, and for the shorn lambs, too."

"Do you call yourself a shorn lamb?" I sniffed.

"Certainly. Don't I look it? Good heavens, girl, you needn't basilisk me so, to see if I do! You glare as if I were some kind of abnormal beast eating with its eyes, or winking with its mouth."

"You do wink with your mouth," I said.

"You mean I lie? All romantic natures embroider truth. I have a romantic nature. It's growing more romantic every minute since I met you. I started this adventure for what I could get out of it. I'm going on to the end, bitter or sweet, for les beaux yeux of Mary O'Malley. I don't grudge you the Becketts' blessing, but I don't know why it shouldn't be bestowed on us both, with Dierdre and Brian in the background throwing flowers. You didn't love Jim Beckett, for the very good reason that you never met him: so, if you owe no more debts than those you owe his memory, you're luckier than——"

It was not I who cut his words short, though I was on the point of breaking in. Perhaps I should have flung at him the truth about Jim Beckett if something had not happened to snatch my thoughts from O'Farrell and his impudence. We had just passed the quarter of the town saved by Soeur Julie, when out from the gaping doorway of a ruined house stepped Paul Herter.

He came straight to me, ignoring my companion.

"I was waiting for you," he said. "Will you walk on a little way with me? There are things I should like to speak about."

All the hurt anger I had felt was gone like the shadow of a flitting cloud. "Oh, yes!" I exclaimed. "I shall be very, very glad."

Whether O'Farrell had the grace to drop behind, or whether I pushed ahead I don't know, but next moment Doctor Herter and I were pacing along, side by side, keeping well ahead of the others, in spite of his limp.

"I thought I never wanted to see you again, Mary O'Malley," he said; "but that glimpse I had, in the hospice, showed me my mistake. I couldn't stand it to be so near and let you go out of my life without a word—not after seeing your face."

"It makes me happy to hear that," I answered. "I was disappointed when you avoided me the other night, and—hurt to-day when you slammed the door."

"How did you know I avoided you? The girl promised to hold her tongue."

"She kept her promise. She was pleased to keep it, because she dislikes me. But I heard your name next day and understood. I—I heard other things, too. If you wouldn't be angry, I should like to tell you how I——"

"Don't tell me."

"I won't then. But I feel very strongly. And you will let me tell you how grieved I should have been, if—if that slammed door had been the end between us."

"The end between us was long ago."

"Not in my thoughts, for I never meant to hurt you. I never stopped being your friend, in spite of all the unkind, unjust things you said to me. I'm proud now that I had your friendship once, even if I haven't it now."

"You had everything there was in me—except friendship. Now, of that everything, only ashes are left. The fires have burnt out. You've heard what I suppose they call my story, so you know why. If those fires weren't dead, I shouldn't have dared trust myself to risk this talk with you. As it is—I let your eyes call me back. Not that they called consciously. It was the past that called——"

"They would have called consciously if you'd given them time!" I ventured to smile at him, with a look that asked for kindness. He did not smile back, but he did not frown. His deep-set eyes, in their hollow sockets, gazed at me as if they were memorizing each feature.

"You're lovelier than ever, Mary," he said. "There's something different about your face. You've suffered."

"My brother is blind."

"Ah! There's more than that."

"Yes."

"You loved the son of these rich people the girl told me about? She says you didn't love him, but she's wrong—isn't she?"

"She's wrong. She knows about things I've done, but nothing about what I think or feel. I did love Jim Beckett, Doctor Paul. You don't mind being called by the old name? I've learned how it hurts to love."

"That will do you no harm, Mary. I can speak with you about such things now, for the spirit of a dead woman stands between us. I didn't love her when she was alive. But if I hadn't married her and brought her to France she'd be living now. She died through me—and for me. I think of her with immense tenderness and—a kind of loyalty; a fierce loyalty. I don't know if you understand."

"Indeed I do! I almost envy her that brave death."

"We won't talk of her any more now," Herter said with a sigh. "I've a feeling she wouldn't like us to discuss her, together. She used to be—jealous of you, poor girl! There are other things I wanted to say. The first—but you've guessed it already!—is this: the minute I looked into your face, there in the hospice, I forgave you the pain you made me suffer. In the first shock of meeting your eyes, I didn't realize that I'd forgiven. It wasn't till I'd slammed the door that I knew."

I didn't repeat that I had not purposely done anything which needed forgiveness. I only looked at him with all the kindness and pity in my heart, and waited until he should go on.

"The second thing I wanted to say is, that just the one look told me you weren't happy and gay as you used to be. When I'd shut the door, I could still see you clearly, as if I had the power to look through the wood. I said to myself, that girl's eyes have got the sadness of the whole world in them. They seem as if they were begging for help, and didn't know where on earth it was coming from. Was that a true impression? I waited to ask you this, even more than to see you again."

"It is true," I confessed. "There's only this difference between my feelings and your impression of them. I know there's no help on earth for me. Such help as there is, I get from another place. Do you remember how I used to talk about the dear Padre who was our guardian—my brother's and mine—and how I told him nearly everything good and bad that I thought or did? Well, he went to the front as a chaplain and he has been killed. But I go on writing him letters, exactly as if he could give me advice and comfort, or scold me in the old way."

"What about your brother? The girl—Miss O'Farrell she called herself, I think—said he was with you on this journey. And to-day I recognized him at Soeur Julie's, from his likeness to you. I shouldn't have guessed he was blind. He has a beautiful face. Do you get no comfort from him?"

"Much comfort from his presence and love," I said. "But I try to keep him happy. I don't bother him with my troubles. I won't even let him talk of them. They're taboo."

"I wish I could help you!" Herter exclaimed.

"Your wish is a help."

"Ah, but I'd like to give more than that! I'm going away—that's the third thing I wanted to tell you. A little while ago I was glad to be going (so far as it's in me, nowadays, to be glad of anything) because I—I've been given a sort of—mission. Since we've had this talk, I'd put off going if I could. But I can't. Is your brother's case past cure?"

"It's not absolutely hopeless. Doctor Paul, this is a confidence! It's to try and cure him that I'm with the Becketts. He doesn't know—and I can't explain more to you. But a specialist in Paris ordered Brian a life in the open air, and as much pleasure and interest as possible. You see, it's the optic nerve that was paralyzed in a strange way by shell shock. Some day Brian's sight may—just possibly may—come back all of a sudden."

"Ah, that's interesting. I'm not an oculist, but I know one or two of the best men, who have made great reputations since this war. Who was your specialist in Paris?"

I told him.

"A good man," he pronounced, "but I have a friend who is better. I'll write you a letter to him. You can send it if you choose. That's one service I can do for you, Mary. It may prove a big one. But I wish there were something else—something for you, yourself. Maybe there will be one day. Who can tell? If that day comes, I shan't be found wanting or forgetful."

"It's worth a lot to have met you and had this talk," I said. "It's been like a warm fire to cold hands. I do hope, dear Doctor Paul, that you're not going on a dangerous mission?"

He laughed—the quaint laugh I remembered, like a crackling of dry brushwood. "No more danger for me in it than there is for a bit of toasted cheese in a rat-trap."

"What a queer comparison!" I said. "It sounds as if you were going to be a bait to deceive a rat."

"Multiply the singular into the plural, and your quick wit has deciphered my parable."

"I'm afraid my wit doesn't deserve the compliment. I can't imagine what your mission really is. Unless——"

"Unless—what? No! Don't let us go any further. Because I mustn't tell you more, even if you should happen to guess. I've told you almost too much already. But confidence for confidence. You gave me one. Consider that I've confided something to you in return. There's just a millionth chance that my mission—whatever it is—may make me of use to you. Give me an address that will find you always, and then—I must be going. I have to return to the hospice and see some patients. No need to write the directions. Better not, in fact. I shall have no difficulty in remembering anything that concerns you, even the most complicated address."

"It's not complicated," I laughed; and gave him the name of the Paris bankers in whose care the Becketts allow Brian and me to have letters sent—Morgan Harjes.

He repeated the address after me, and then stopped, holding out his hand. "That's all," he said abruptly. "I shall be glad, whatever happens, that I waited, and had this talk with you. Good-bye."

"Good-bye—and good luck in the mission," I echoed.

He pressed my hand so hard that it hurt, and with one last look turned away. He did not go far, however, but stopped on his way back to ask Dierdre O'Farrell about her arm. She and Brian (Puck had joined the Becketts) were only a few paces behind me, and pausing involuntarily I heard what was said. It was easy to see that Dierdre wished me to hear her part.

"My arm is going on very well," she informed her benefactor. "I thank you again for your kindness in attending to it. But I don't think it was kind to order me to keep a secret, and then give it away yourself. You made me seem an—ungracious pig and a fool. I shouldn't mind that, if it did you good, in return for the good you've done me. But since it was for nothing——"

"I apologize," Herter broke in. "I meant what I said then. But a power outside myself was too strong for me. Maybe it will be the same for you some day. Meanwhile, don't make the mistake I made: don't do other people an injustice."

Leaving Dierdre at bay between anger and amazement, he stared with professional eagerness into Brian's sightless eyes, and stalked off toward the hospice.



CHAPTER XVI

Since I wrote you last, Padre, I have been in the trenches—real, live trenches, not the faded, half-filled-up ghosts of trenches where men fought long ago. I had to give my word not to tell or write any one just where these trenches are, so I won't put details in black and white, even in pages which are only for you and me. I keep this book that you gave me in my hand-bag, and no eyes but mine see it—unless, dear Padre, you come and look over my shoulder while I scribble, as I often feel you do! Still—something might happen: an automobile accident; or the bag might be lost or stolen, though it's not a gorgeously attractive one, like that in which Mother Beckett carries Jim's letters.

It was the day after Luneville and Gerbeviller. We started out once again from Nancy, no matter in which direction, but along a wonderful road. Not that the scenery was beautiful. We didn't so much as think of scenery. The thrill was in the passing show, and later in the "camouflage." We were going to be given a glimpse of the Front which the communiques (when they mention it at all nowadays) speak of as calm. Its alleged "calmness" gave us non-combatants our chance to pay it a visit; but many wires had been pulled to get us there, and we had dwindled to a trio, consisting of Father Beckett, Brian, and me. Mother Beckett is not made for trenches, even the calmest, and there was no permission for the occupants of the Red Cross taxi, who are not officially of our party. They have their own police pass for the war-zone, but all special plums are for the Becketts, shared by the O'Malleys; and this visit to the trenches was an extra-special superplum.

All along the way, coming and going, tearing to meet us, or leaving us behind, splashed with gray mud after a night of rain, motor-lorries sped. They carried munitions or food to the front, or brought back tired soldiers bound for a place of rest, and their roofs were marvellously "camouflaged" in a blend of blue and green paint splotched with red. For aeroplanes they must have looked, in their processions, like drifting mist over meadowland. Shooting in and out among them, like slim gray swordfish in a school of porpoise, were military cars crowded with smart officers who saluted the lieutenant escorting us, and stared in surprise at sight of a woman. A sprinkling of these officers were Americans, and they would have astonished us more than we astonished them had we not known that we should see Americans. They were to be, indeed, the "feature" of the great show; and though Mr. Beckett was calm in manner to match the Front, I knew from his face that he was deeply moved by the thought of seeing "boys from home" fighting for France as his dead son had fought.

At each small village we saw soldiers who had been sent to the "back of the Front" for a few days' change from the trenches. They lounged on long wooden benches before humble houses where they had logement; they sat at tables borrowed from kitchens, earnestly engaged at dominoes or manille, or they played boules in narrow grass alleys beside the muddy road. For them we had packed all vacant space in the auto with a cargo of cigarettes; and white teeth flashed and blue arms waved in gratitude as we went by. I think Father Beckett was happier than he had been since we left Paris.

At last we came to a part of the road that was "camouflaged" with a screen of branches fixed into wire. There was no great need of it in these days, our lieutenant explained, but Heaven knew when it might be urgently wanted again: perhaps to-morrow! And this was where we said "au revoir" to our car. She was wheeled out of the way on to a strip of damp grass, under a convenient group of trees where no prowling enemy plane might "spot" her; and we set out to walk for a short distance to what had once been a farmhouse. Now, what was left of it had another use. A board walk (well above the mud), which led to the new, unpainted door, was guarded by sentinels, and explanations were given and papers shown before a rather elderly French captain appeared to greet us. Arrangements had been made for our reception, but we had to be identified; and when all was done we were given a good welcome. Also we were given helmets, and I was vain enough to fancy I had never worn a more becoming hat.

Besides our own escort—the lieutenant who had brought us from Nancy—we had a captain and a lieutenant to guide us into the "calmness" of the trenches (the captain and a lieutenant for Mr. Beckett and Brian, the other lieutenant for me) and one would have thought that they had never before seen a woman in or out of a helmet! Down in a deep cellar-like hole, which they called "l'anti-chambre," all three officers coached Father Beckett and me in trench manners. As for Brian, it was clear to them that he was no stranger to trench life, and their treatment of him was perfect. They made no fuss, as tactless folk do over blind men; but, while feigning to regard him as one of themselves, they slily watched and protected his movements as a proud mother might the first steps of a child.

On we went from the antichambre into a long mouldy passage dug deep into the earth. It was the link between trenches; and now and then a sentinel popped out from behind a queer barrier built up as a protection against "les eclats d'obus." "This is the way the wounded come back," said one of the lieutenants, "when there are any wounded. Just now (or you would not be here, Mademoiselle) there is"—he finished in English—"nothing doing."

I laughed. "Who taught you that?"

"You will see," he replied, making a nice little mystery. "You will see who taught it to me—and then some!"

That was a beautiful ending for the sentence, and his American accent was perfect, even if the meaning of the poor man's quotation was a little uncertain!

We turned several times, and I had begun to think of the Minotaur's labyrinth, when the passage knotted itself into a low-roofed room, open at both ends, save for bomb screens, with a trench leading dismally off from an opposite doorway. "When is a door not a door?" was a conundrum of my childhood, and I think the answer was: "When it's ajar." But nowadays there is a better replique: A door is not a door when it's a dug-out. It is then a hole, kept from falling in upon itself by a log of wood or anything handy. This time, the "anything handy" seemed to be part of an old wheelbarrow, and on top were some sandbags. In the room, which was four times as long as it was broad, and twelve times longer than high, a few vague soldier-forms crouched over a meal on the floor, their tablecloth being a Paris newspaper. They scrambled to their feet, but could not stand upright, and to see their stooping salute to stooping officers in the smoky twilight, was like a vision in a dark, convex mirror.

As we wound our way past the screen at the far end of the cellar dining-room, my lieutenant explained the method in placing each pare-eclat, as he called the screen. "You see, Mademoiselle, if a bomb happened to break through and kill us, the screen would save the men beyond," he said; then, remembering with a start that he was talking to a woman, he hurried to add: "Oh, but we shall not be killed. Have no fear. There's nothing of that sort on our programme to-day—at least, not where we shall take you."

"Do I look as if I were afraid?" I asked.

"No, you look very brave, Mademoiselle," he flattered me. "I'm sure it is more than the helmet which gives you that look. I believe, if you were allowed you would go on past the safety zone."

"Where does the safety zone end?" I curiously questioned.

"It is different on different days. If you had come yesterday, you could have had a good long promenade. Indeed that was what we hoped, when we arranged to entertain your party. But unfortunately the gentlemen in the opposing trenches discovered that Les Sammies had arrived on our secteur. They wanted to give them a reception, and so—your walk has to be shortened, Mademoiselle."

Suddenly I felt sick. I had the sensation Soeur Julie described herself as feeling when she met the giant German officers. But it was not fear. "Do you mean—while we're here, safe—like tourists on a pleasure jaunt," I stammered, "that American soldiers are being killed—in the trenches close by? It's horrible! I can't——"

"Il ne faut pas se faire de la bile, as our poilus say, when they mean 'Don't worry,' Mademoiselle," the lieutenant soothed me. "If there were any killing along this secteur you would hear the guns boom, n'est-ce-pas? You had not stopped to think of that. There was a little affair at dawn, I don't conceal it from you. A surprise—a coup de main against the Americans the Boches intended. They thought, as all has been quiet on our Front for so long, we should expect nothing. But the surprise didn't work. They got as good as they sent, and no one on our side was killed. That I swear to you, Mademoiselle! There were a few wounded, yes, but no fatalities. The trouble is that now things have begun to move, they may not sit still for long, and we cannot take risks with our visitors. The mountain must come to Mahomet. That is, les Sammies must call upon you, instead of you upon them. The reception room is chez nous Francais. It is ready, and you will see it in a moment."

Almost as he spoke we came to a dug-out of far more imposing architecture than the hole between trenches which we had seen. We had to stoop to go in, but once in we could stand upright, even Brian, who towered several inches above the other men. The place was lighted with many guttering candles, and tears sprang to my eyes at the pathos of the decorations. Needless to explain that the French and American flags which draped the dark walls were there in our honour! Also there were a Colonel, a table, benches, chairs, some glasses, and one precious bottle of champagne, enough for a large company to sip, if not to drink, each other's health. Hardly had we been introduced to the decorations, including the Colonel, when the Americans began to arrive, three young officers and two who had hardened into warlike middle age. It was heart-warming to see them meet Mr. Beckett, and their chivalric niceness to Brian and me was somehow different from any other niceness I remember—except Jim's.

Not that one of the men looked like Jim, or had a voice like his: yet, when they spoke, and smiled, and shook hands, I seemed to see Jim standing behind them, smiling as he had smiled at me on our one day together. I seemed to hear his voice in an undertone, as if it mingled with theirs, and I wondered if Jim's father had the same almost supernatural impression that his son had come into the dug-out room with that little band of his countrymen.

It is strange how a woman can be homesick for a man she has known only one day; but she can—she can—for a Jim Beckett! He was so vital, so central in life, known even for a day, that after his going the world is a background from which his figure has been cut out, leaving a blank place. These jolly, brave American soldier-men made me want so desperately to see Jim that I wished a bomb would drop in—just a small bomb, touching only me, and whisking me away to the place where he is. In body he could not forgive me, of course, for what I've done; but in spirit he might forgive my spirit if it travelled a long way to see his!

I am almost sure that the Americans did bring Jim back to Father Beckett, as to me, for though he was cheerful, and even made jokes to show that he mustn't be treated as a mourner, there was one piteous sign of emotion which no self-control could hide. I saw his throat work—the throat of an old man—his "Adam's apple" going convulsively up and down like a tossed ball in a fountain jet. Then, lest I should sob while his eyes were dry, I looked away.

We all had champagne out of the marvellous bottle which had been hoarded during long months in case of "a great occasion," and we economized sips but not healths. We drank to each one of the Allies in turn, and to a victorious peace. Then the officers—French and American—began telling us trench tales—no grim stories, only those at which we could laugh. One was what an American captain called a "peach"; but it was a Frenchman who told it: the American contingent have had no such adventures yet.

The thing happened some time ago, before the "liveliness" died down along this secteur. One spring day, in a rainy fog like a gray curtain, a strange pair of legs appeared, prowling alongside a French trench. They were not French legs; but instantly two pairs of French arms darted out under the stage-drop of fog to jerk them in. Down came a feldwebel on top of them, squealing desolately "Kamerad!" He squealed many more guttural utterances, but not one of the soldiers in blue helmets, who soon swarmed round him, could understand a word he said. "Why the crowd?" wondered the Captain of the company, appearing from a near-by dug-out. The queer quarry was dragged to the officer's feet, and fortunately the Captain, an Alsatian, had enough German for a catechism.

"What were you doing close to our lines?" he demanded.

"Oh, Herr Captain, I did not know they were your lines. I thought they were ours. In our trench we are hungry, very hungry. I thought in the mist I could safely go a little way and seek for some potatoes. Where we are they say there was once a fine potato field. Not long ago, one of our men came back with half a dozen beauties. Ah, they were good! I was empty enough to risk anything, Herr Captain. But I had no luck. And, worse still, the fog led me astray. Spare my life, sir!"

"We will spare you what is worth more than a little thing like your life," said the Captain. "We'll spare you some of our good food, to show you that we French do not have to gnaw our finger-nails, like you miserable Boches. Men, take this animal away and feed it!"

The men obeyed, enjoying the joke. The dazed Kamerad was stuffed with sardines, meat, bread, and butter (of which he had forgotten the existence), delicious cheese, and chocolates. At last the magic meal was topped off with smoking hot black coffee, a thimbleful of brandy, and—a cigar! Tobacco and cognac may have been cheap, but they made the feldwebel feel as if he had died and gone to heaven.

When he had eaten till his belt was tight for the first time in many moons, back he was hustled to the Captain.

"Well—you have had something better than potatoes? Bon! Now, out of this, quicker than you came! Your mother may admire your face, but we others, we have seen enough of it."

"But, Herr Captain," pleaded the poor wretch, loth to be banished from Paradise, "I am your prisoner."

"Not at all," coolly replied the officer. "We can't be bothered with a single prisoner. What is one flea on a blanket? Another time, if we come across you again with enough of your comrades to make the game worth while, why then, perhaps we may give ourselves the pain of keeping you. You've seen that we have enough food to feed your whole trench, and never miss it."

Away flew the German over the top, head over heels, not unassisted: and after they had laughed awhile, his hosts and foes forgot him. But not so could he forget them. That night, after dark, he came trotting back with fifteen friends, all crying "Kamerad!" eager to deliver themselves up to captivity for the flesh-pots of Egypt.

"But—we're not to go without a glimpse of the Sammies, are we?" I asked, when stories and champagne were finished.

The "Sammies'" officers laughed. "The boys don't love that name, you know! But it sticks like a burr. It's harder to get rid of than the Boches. As for seeing them—(the boys, not the Boches!) well——" And a consultation followed.

The trenches beyond our dug-out drawing room could not be guaranteed "safe as the Bank of England" for non-combatants that day, and no one wanted to be responsible for our venturing farther. Still, if we couldn't go to the boys, a "bunch" of the boys could come to us. A lieutenant dashed away, and presently returned with six of the tallest, brownest, best-looking young men I ever saw. Their khaki and their beautiful new helmets were so like British khaki and helmets that I shouldn't have been expert enough to recognize them as American. But somehow the merest amateur would never have mistaken those boys for their British brothers. I can't tell where the difference lay. All I can say is that it was there. Were their jaws squarer? No, it couldn't have been that, for British jaws are firm enough, and have need to be, Heaven knows! Were their chins more prominent? But millions of British chins are prominent. My brain collapsed in the strain after comparisons, abandoned the effort and drank in a draught of rich, ripe American slang as a glorious pick-me-up. No wonder the French officers in liaison have caught the new "code." The coming of those brown boys with their bright and glittering teeth and witty words made up to us for miles of trenches we hadn't seen. Gee, but they were bully! Oh, boy! Get hep to that!



CHAPTER XVII

Father Beckett must have suffered dark hours of reaction after seeing those soldier-sons of American fathers, if there had been time to think. But we flashed back to Nancy in haste, for a late dinner and adieux to our friends. Brian and I snatched the story of our day's adventure from his mouth for Mother Beckett; and luckily he was too tired to give her a new version. I heard in the morning that he had slept through an air raid!

I, too, was tired, and for the same reason: but I could not sleep. Waking dreams marched through my mind—dreams of Jim as he must have looked in khaki, dreams which made an air raid more or less seem unimportant. As the clocks of Nancy told the hours, I was in a mood for the first time since Gerbeviller to puzzle out the meaning of Paul Herter's parable.

What had he meant by saying that his mission would be no more dangerous than a rat-trap for a bit of toasted cheese?

I had exclaimed, "That sounds as if you were to bait the trap!" but he had not encouraged me to guess. And there had been so much else to think of, just then! His offer of introductions to specialists for Brian had appealed to me more than a vague suggestion of service to myself "some day."

But now, through the darkness of night, a ray like a searchlight struck clear upon his cryptic hint.

Somehow, Herter hoped to get across the frontier into Germany! His question, whether I had loved Jim Beckett, was not an idle one. He had not asked it through mere curiosity, or because he was jealous of the dead. His idea was that, if I had deeply cared for Jim, I should be glad to know how he had died, and where his body lay. Germany was the one place where the mystery could be solved. I realized suddenly that Doctor Paul expected "some day" to be in a position to solve it.

"He's going into Germany as a spy," I said to myself. "He's a man of German Lorraine. German is his native language. Legally he's a German subject. He'll only have to pretend that he was caught by accident in France when the war broke out—and that at last he has escaped. All that may be easy if there are no spies to give him away—to tell what he's been doing in France since 1914. The trouble will be when he wants to come back."

I wished that I could have seen the man again, to have bidden him a better farewell, to have told him I'd pray for his success. But now it was too late. Already he must have set off on his "mission," and we were to start in the morning for Verdun.

The thought of Verdun alone was enough to keep me awake for the rest of the night, to say nothing of air raids and speculations about Doctor Paul. It seemed almost too strange to be true that we were to see Verdun—Verdun, where month after month beat the heart of the world.

The O'Farrells had not got permission for Verdun, nor for Rheims, where we of the great gray car were going next. Still more than our glimpse of the trenches were these two places "extra special." The brother and sister were to start with us from Nancy, but we (the Becketts, Brian, and I) were to part from them at Bar-le-Duc, where we would be met by an officer from Verdun. Two days later, we were to meet again at Paris, and continue—as Puck impudently put it—"our role of ministering angels," along the Noyon front and beyond.

This programme was settled when—through influence at Nancy—Father Beckett's passes for four had been extended to Verdun and Rheims. I breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of two more days without the O'Farrells; and all that's Irish in me trusted to luck that "something might happen" to part us forever. Why not? The Red Cross taxi might break down (it looked ready to shake to pieces any minute!). Dierdre might be taken ill (no marble statue could be paler!). Or the pair might be arrested by the military police as dangerous spies. (Really, I wouldn't "put it past" them!). But my secret hopes were rudely jangled with my first sight of Brian on the Verdun morning.

"Molly, I hope you won't mind," he said, "but I've promised O'Farrell to go with them and meet you in Paris to-morrow night. I've already spoken to Mr. Beckett and he approves."

"This comes of my being ten minutes late!" I almost—not quite—cried aloud. I'd hardly closed my eyes all night, but had fallen into a doze at dawn and overslept myself. Meanwhile the O'Farrell faction had got in its deadly work!

I was angry and disgusted, yet—as usual where that devil of a Puck was concerned—I had the impulse to laugh. It was as if he'd put his finger to his nose and chuckled in impish glee: "You hope to get rid of us, do you, you minx? Well, I'll show you!" But I should be playing his game if I lost my temper.

"Why do the O'Farrells want you to go with them?" I "camouflaged" my rage.

"It's Julian who wants me," explained the dear boy. (Oh, it had come to Christian names!) "It seems Miss O'Farrell has taken it into her head that none of us likes her, and that we've arranged this way to get rid of them both—letting them down easily and making some excuse not to start again together from Paris. O'Farrell thought if I'd offer to go with them and sit in the back of the car while he drove I could persuade her——"

"Well, I don't envy any one the task of persuading that girl to believe a thing she doesn't wish to believe," I exploded. "My private opinion is, though, that her brother's sister needs no persuading. The two of them want to show me that they have power——"

Brian broke in with a laugh. "My child, you see things through a magnifying glass! Is your blind brother a prize worth squabbling over? I can be of use to the Becketts, it's true, when we travel without a military escort, or with one young officer who knows more about seventy-fives than about the romance of history. I can tell them what I've read and what I've seen. But at Verdun you'll be in the society of generals; and at Rheims of as many dignitaries as haven't been bombarded out of town. The Becketts don't need me. Perhaps Miss O'Farrell does."

"Perhaps!" I repeated.

Brian can see twice as much as those who have eyes, but he would not see my sarcasm. Just then, however, Mrs. Beckett joined us in the hall of the hotel, where we stood ready to start—all having breakfasted in our own rooms. She guessed from my face that I was not pleased with Brian's plan.

"My dear, I'd go myself with poor little Dierdre O'Farrell instead of Brian!" she said. "Verdun isn't one of Jim's towns. Rheims is—but I'd have sacrificed it. There can't be much left there to see. Only—two whole days! Father and I haven't been parted so long in our lives since we were married. I thought yesterday, when you were away in those trenches, what a coward I'd been not to insist on going, and what if I never saw Father again! I hope you don't think I'm too selfish!"

Poor darling, selfish to travel in her own car with her own husband! I just gave her a look to show what I felt; but after that I could no longer object to parting with Brian. Puck had got his way, and I could see by the light in his annoyingly beautiful eyes how exquisitely he enjoyed the situation. Brian and Brian's kitbag were transferred to the Red Cross taxi, there and then, to save delay for us and the officer who would meet us, in case the wretched car should get a panne, en route to Bar-le-Duc. As a matter of fact, that is what happened; or at all events when our big, reliable motor purred with us into Bar-le-Duc, the O'Farrells were nowhere to be seen.

Our officer—another lieutenant—had arrived in a little Ford; and as we were invited to lunch in the citadel of Verdun we could not wait. I felt sure the demon Puck had managed to be late on purpose, so that my Verdun day might be spoiled by anxiety for Brian. Thus he would kill two birds with one stone: show how little I gained by the enemy's absence, and punish me for not letting him make love!

The road to Verdun was a wonderful prelude. After three years' Titanic battling, how could there be a road at all? I had had vague visions of an earthly turmoil, a wilderness of shell-holes where once had gleamed rich meadows and vineyards, with little villages set jewel-like among them, and the visions were true. But through the war-worn desert always the road unrolled—the brave white road. Heaven alone could tell the deeds of valour which had achieved the impossible, making and remaking that road! It should have some great poem all to itself, I thought; a poem called "The Road to Verdun." And the poem should be set to music. I could almost hear the lilt of the verses as our car slipped through the tangle of motor camions and gun-carriages on the way thither. As for the music, I could really hear that without flight of fancy: a deep, rolling undertone of heavy wheels, of jolting guns, of pulsing engines, like a million beating hearts; and out of its muffled bass rising the lighter music of men's voices: soldiers singing; soldiers going to the front, who shouted gaily to soldiers going to repose; soldiers laughing; soldier-music that no hardship or suffering could subdue.

We had seen such processions before, but none so endless as this, going both ways, as far as the eye could reach. We had seen no such tremendous parks of artillery and aviation by the roadside, no such store of shells for big guns and little guns, no such pyramids of grenades for trenches and aeroplanes. We were engulfed in war, swallowed up in war. It was thrilling beyond words.

But all the road flashed bright with thrills. There was a thrill at "le Bois de Regrets," forest of dark regret for the Prussians of 1792, where the French turned them back—the forest which Goethe saw: a thrill more keen for the pointing sign, "Metz, 47 kilometres," which reminded us that less than thirty miles separated us from the great German stronghold, yet—"on ne passera pas!" And the deepest thrill of all at the words of our guide: "Voila la porte de Verdun! Nous y sommes."

Turning off the road, we stopped our car and the little Ford to look up and worship. There it rose before us, ancient pile of gray stones, altar of history and triumph, Verodunum of Rome, city of warlike, almost royal bishops and rich burghers: town of treaties, sacked by Barbarians; owned and given up by Germans; seized by Prussians when the French had spiked their guns in 1870; and now forever a monument to the immortal manhood of France!

Perhaps it was the mist in my eyes, but at first sight Verdun did not look ruined, as I saw it towering up to its citadel in massive strength and stern dignity. The old houses on the slope stood shoulder to shoulder and back to back, like massed men fighting their last stand. It was only when we had started on again, and passing through the gate had slipped into the sorrowful intimacy of the streets, that Verdun let us see her glorious rags and scars.

You would think that one devastated town would be much like another to look at save for size. But no! I am learning that each has some arresting claim of its own to sacred remembrance. Nancy has had big buildings knocked down like card houses by occasional bombardment of great guns. Sermaize, Gerbeviller, Vitrimont and twenty other places we have seen were thoroughly looted by the Germans and then burned, street by street. But Verdun has been bombarded every day for weeks and months and years. The town is a royal skeleton, erect and on its feet, its jewelled sceptre damaged, but still grasped in a fleshless hand. The Germans have never got near enough to steal!

"You see," said the smart young captain who had come out to meet us at the gate and take us to the citadel, "you see, nothing has been touched in these houses since the owners had to go. When they return from their places of refuge far away, they will find everything as they left it—that is, as the Boche guns have left it."

Only too easy was it to see! In some of the streets whole rows of houses had had their fronts torn off. The rooms within were like stage-settings for some tragic play. Sheets and blankets trailed from beds where sleepers had waked in fright. Doors of wardrobes gaped to show dresses dangling forlornly, like Bluebeard's murdered brides. Dinner-tables were set out for meals never to be finished, save by rats. Family portraits of comfortable old faces smiling under broken glass hung awry on pink or blue papered walls. Half-made shirts and petticoats were still caught by the needle in broken sewing-machines. Dropped books and baskets of knitting lay on bright carpets snowed under by fallen plaster. Vases of dead flowers stood on mantelpieces, ghostly stems and shrivelled brown leaves reflected in gilt-framed mirrors. I could hardly bear to look! It was like being shown by a hard-hearted surgeon the beating of a brain through the sawed hole in a man's skull. If one could have crawled through the crust of lava at Pompeii, a year after the eruption, one might have felt somewhat as at Verdun now!

On a broken terrace, once a beloved evening promenade, our two cars paused. We got out and gazed down, down over the River Meuse, from a high vantage-point where a few months ago, we should have been blown to bits, in five minutes. Our two officers pointed out in the misty autumn landscape spots where some of the fiercest and most famous fights had been. How the names they rattled off brought back anxious nights and mornings when our first and only thoughts had been the communiques! "Desperate battle on the Meuse." "Splendid stand at Douaumont." "New attack on Morthomme." But nothing we saw helped out our imaginings. There was just a vast stretch of desolation where vinelands once had poured their perfume to the sun. The forts protecting Verdun were as invisible as fairyland, I said. "As invisible as hell!" one of our guides amended. And then to me, in a low voice unheard by pale and trembling Mother Beckett, he added, "If Nature did not work to make ugly things invisible, we could not let you come here, Mademoiselle. See how high the grass has grown in the plain down there! In summer it is full of poppies, red as the blood that feeds their roots. And it is only the grasses and the poppies that hide the bones of men we've never yet put underground. Nature has been one of our chief sextons, here at Verdun. I wish you could have seen the poppies a few months ago, mixed with blue marguerites and cornflowers—that we call 'bluets.' We used to say that our dead were lying in state under the tricolour flag of France. But I have made you sad, Mademoiselle. Je regrette! We must take you quickly to the citadel. Our general will not let you be sad there."

We turned from the view over the Meuse and walked away in silence. I thought I had never heard so loud, so thunderously echoing, a silence in my life.

Oh, no, it was not sad in the citadel! It was, on the contrary, very gay, of a gaiety so gallant and so pathetic that it brought a lump to the throat when there should have been a laugh on the lips. But the lump had to be swallowed, or our hosts' feelings would be hurt. They didn't want watery-eyed, full-throated guests at a luncheon worthy of bright smiles and keen appetites!

* * * * *

The first thing that happened to Mother Beckett and me in the famous fortress was to be shown into a room decorated as a ladies' boudoir. All had been done, we were told almost timidly, in our honour, even the frescoes on the walls, painted in record time by a young lieutenant, who was an artist; and the officers hoped that they had forgotten nothing we might need. We could both have cried, if we hadn't feared to spoil our eyes and redden our noses! But even if we'd not been strong enough to stifle our tears, there was everything at hand to repair their ravages. And all this in a place where the Revolution had sent fourteen lovely ladies to the guillotine for servilely begging the King of Prussia to spare Verdun.

The lieutenant who met us at Bar-le-Duc had rushed there in advance of us, in order to shop with frantic haste. A long list must have been compiled after "mature deliberation"—as they say in courts-martial—otherwise any normal young man would have missed out something. In the tiny, subterranean room (not much larger than a cell) a stick of incense burned. The cot-bed of some hospitable captain or major disguised itself as a couch, under a brand-new silk table-cover with the price-mark still attached, and several small sofa cushions, also ticketed. A deal table had been painted green and spread with a lace-edged tea-cloth, on which were proudly displayed a galaxy of fittings from a dressing-bag, the best, no doubt, that poor bombarded Bar-le-Duc could produce in war time. There were ivory-backed hair and clothes brushes; a comb; bottles filled with white face-wash and perfume; a manicure-set, with pink salve and nail-powder; a tray decked out with every size of hairpin; a cushion bristling with pins of many-coloured heads; boxes of rouge, a hare's-foot to put it on with; face-powder in several tints; swan's-down puffs; black pencils for the eyebrows and blue for the eyelids; sweet-smelling soap—a dazzling and heavily fragrant collection.

"Oh, my dear, what did they think of us?" gasped Mother Beckett. "What a shame the poor lambs should have wasted all their money and trouble!"

"It mustn't be wasted!" said I. "Think how disappointed they'd be if they came in here afterward and found we hadn't touched a thing!"

"But——" she protested.

"You wouldn't hurt the feelings of the saviours of France? I'm going to make us both up! And there's no time to waste. They've given us fifteen minutes' grace before lunch. For the honour of womanhood we mustn't be late!"

I sat her down in the only chair. I dusted her pure little face with pearl-powder and the faintest soupcon of rouge. I rubbed on her sweet lips just the suspicion of pink, liked by an elderly grande dame francaise, who has not yet "abdicated." I then made myself up more seriously: a blue shadow on the lids, a raven touch on the lashes; a flick of the hare's-foot under my eyes and on my ear-tips: an extra coat of pink and a brilliant (most injurious!) varnish on the nails. Then, with a dash of Rose Ambree for my companion's blouse and Nuits d'Orient for mine, we sallied forth scented like a harem, to do honour to our hosts.

Luncheon was in a vast cavern of a vaulted banqueting-hall, in the deepest heart of that citadel, where for eleven years Napoleon kept his weary English prisoners. Electric lights showed us a table adorned with fresh flowers (where they'd come from was a miracle, but soon we were to see other miracles still more miraculous), French, British, and American flags, and pyramids of fruit. The Rose Ambree and Nuits d'Orient filled the whole vast salle, and pleased the officers, I was sure. They bowed and smiled and paid us compliments, their many medals glittered in the light, and their uniforms were resplendent against the cold background of the walls. I wished that, instead of one girl, I had been a dozen! But I did my best and so did Mother Beckett, who brightened into a charming second youth, the youth of a happy mother surrounded by a band of sons.

The lumps that had been in our throats had to be choked sternly down, for not to do justice to that meal would be worse than leaving the rouge and powder boxes unopened! The menu need not have put a palace to shame. In the citadel of Verdun it seemed as if it must have been evolved by rubbing Aladdin's lamp, and I said so as I read it over:

Huitres d'Ostende Bisque d'Ecrevisses Sanglier roti Puree de Pommes de Terre Soufflee de Chocolat Fruits Bonbons

"Oh, we've never been hungry at Verdun, even when things were at their liveliest," said the officer sitting next to me. "Providence provided for us in a strange way. I will tell you how. Before the civil population went away, or expected to go, there was talk of a long siege. The shopkeepers thought they would be intelligent and sent to Paris for all sorts of food. Oh, not only the grocers and butchers! Everyone. You would have laughed to see the jewellers showing hams in their windows instead of diamonds and pearls and gold purses, and the piles of preserved meat and fruit tins at the perfumers! The confectioners ordered stores of sugar and the wine merchants restocked their cellars. Then things began to happen. Houses were bombed, and people hustled out in a hurry. You have seen some of those houses! The place was getting too hot; and the order came for evacuation. Not much could be taken away. Transport was difficult in those days! All the good food had to be left behind, and we thought it would be a pity to waste it. Our chief bought the lot at a reasonable price—merchants were thankful to sell. So you see we did not need Aladdin's lamp."