"I don't quite see!" I confessed. "Because, that's a long time ago, and these oysters of Ostende——"

"Never saw Ostende!" he laughed. "They are a big bluff! We always have them when"—he bowed—"we entertain distinguished guests. The Germans used to print in their papers that we at Verdun could not hold out long, because we were eating rats. So we took to cutting a dash with our menus. We do not go into particulars and say that our oysters have kept themselves fresh in tins!"

"But the wild boar?" I persisted. "Does one tin wild boar?"

"One does not! One goes out and shoots it. Ma foi, it's a good adventure when the German guns are not asleep! The fruit? Ah, that is easy! It comes as the air we breathe. And for our bonbons, the famous sugared almonds of Verdun were not all destroyed when the factory blew up."

With this he handed me a dish of the delicious things. "The story is," he said, "that a certain Abbess brought the secret of making these almonds to Verdun. We have to thank Henry of Navarre for her. He had a pleasant way, when he wished to be rid of an old love with a compliment, of turning her into an Abbess. That time he made a lucky stroke for us."

At the end of luncheon we all drank healths, and nearly everyone made a speech except Mrs. Beckett. She only nodded and smiled, looking so ideal a little mother that she must have made even the highest officers homesick for their mamans.

Then we were led through a mysterious network of narrow passages and vaulted rooms, all lit with electric lamps, and striking cold and cellary. We saw the big hospital, not very busy just then, and the clean, empty operating theatre, and gnome-caverns where munitions were stored in vast, black pyramids. When there was nothing left to see in the citadel, our hosts asked if we would like to pay a visit to the trenches—old trenches which had once defended Thiaumont.

"I don't think my wife had better——" Mr. Beckett began; but the little old lady cut him short. "Yes, Father, I just had better! To-day, being among all these splendid brave soldiers has shown me that I'm weak—a spoiled child. I felt yesterday I'd been a coward. Now I know it! And I'm going to see those trenches."

I believe it was partly the powder and lip salve that made her so desperate!

Her husband yielded, meek as a lamb. Big men like Mr. Beckett always do to little women like Mrs. Beckett. But she bore it well. And when at last we bade good-bye to our glorious hosts, she said to me, "Molly, you tell them in French, that now I've met them I understand why the Germans could never pass!"



CHAPTER XVIII

Almost any place on earth would be an anti-climax the day after Verdun—but not Rheims!

Just at this moment (it mayn't be much more) Rheims is resting, like a brave victim on the rack who has tired his torturers by an obstinate silence. Only a few people are allowed to enter the town, save those who have lived there all along, and learned to think no more of German bombs than German sausages; and those favoured few must slip in and out almost between breaths. Any instant the torturing may begin again, when the Boches have bombs to spare for what they call "target practice"; for think, how near is Laon!—and we'd been warned that, even at the portals of the town, we might be turned back.

We had still another new French officer to take us to Rheims. (I am getting their faces a little mixed, like a composite picture, but I keep sacredly all their dear visiting-cards!) He was a captain, with a scarred but handsome face, and he complimented Mother Beckett and me on our "courage." This made Father Beckett visibly regret that he had brought us, though he had been assured that it was a "safe time." However, his was not the kind of regret which tempts a man to turn back: it only makes his upper lip look long.

I never saw Rheims in palmy days of peace. Now I wish I had seen it! But there was that lithograph of the cathedral by Gustave Simonau, the great Belgian artist, hanging above your desk, in the den, Padre. I used to study it when I should have been studying my lessons, fascinated by the splendid facade, the twin towers, the three "portals of the Trinity," the rose-window, the gallery of kings, the angels, the saints, the gargoyles and all the carved stone lace-work which the picture so wonderfully shows.

On the opposite side of the room was Simonau's Cathedral of Chartres, in a dark frame to match, and I remember your saying that Chartres was considered by some critics even finer than Rheims. The Cathedral of Chartres seemed a romantic monument of history to me, because it was built as a shrine for the "tunic of the Virgin"; but the Gothic Notre-Dame of Rheims appealed to my—perhaps prophetic—soul. Maybe I had a latent presentiment of how I should see the real cathedral, as la grande blessee of the greatest war of the world.

Anyhow, I always took a deep interest in Rheims from the day I first gaped, an open-mouthed child, at that beautiful drawing, and I was glad I'd forgotten none of its details, as we motored toward the martyr town. Usually there's Brian, who can tell the dear Becketts all they don't know and want to know, but this time they'd only me to depend upon. And when I think what a cruel fraud I am at heart, there's some consolation in serving them, even in small ways.

There's a wide plain that knows desolately what German bombardment means: there are gentle hills rising out of it, south and west (will grapes ever be sweet on those sad hillsides again?) and there's the little river Vesle that runs into the Aisne. There's the Canal of the Aisne and the Marne, too—oh, many wide waters and little streams, to breathe out mist, for Rheims is on the pleasant Ile-de-France. There was so much mist this autumn day that it hid from our eyes for a long time the tall form of the Cathedral which should dominate the plain for many miles; a thick, white mist like the sheet with which a sculptor veils his masterpiece until it's ready to face the world. As we drove on, and still saw no looming bulk, frozen fear pinched my heart, like horrid, ice-cold fingers. What if there'd been some new bombardment we hadn't had time to hear of, and the Cathedral were gone?

But I didn't speak my fear. I tried to cover it up by chattering about Rheims. Goodness knows there's a lot to chatter about! All that wonderful history, since Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi; and Charlemagne crowned, and Charles the VII, with Jeanne d'Arc looking on in bright armour, and various Capets, and enough other kings to name Notre-Dame of Rheims the "Cathedral of Coronations." I remembered something about the Gate of Mars, too—the oldest thing of all—which the Remi people put up in praise of Augustus Caesar when Agrippa brought his great new roads close to their capital. I think it had been called Durocoroturum up to that time—or some equally awful name, which you remember only because you expect to forget! I hardly dared tell the Becketts about the celebrated archiepiscopal palace where the kings used to be entertained by the archbishops (successors of Saint Remi) while the coronation ceremonies were going on: and the Salle du Tau with its wonderful hangings, its velvet-cushioned stone seats and carved, upright furniture, where the royal guests—in robes stiff with jewelled embroidery—had their banquets from plates of solid silver and gold. It seemed cruel to speak of splendours vanished forever, vanished like the holy oil of the sacred phial brought from heaven by a dove for the baptism of Clovis, and kept for the anointing of all those dead kings!

But it was just the time and place to talk about Attila—Attila the First, I mean, of whom, as I told you, I firmly believe the present "incumbent" to be the reincarnation. As Attila I. thought fit to put Rheims to the sword, Atilla II. is naturally impelled by the "spiral" to do his best from a distance, by destroying the Cathedral which wasn't begun in his predecessor's day. But what does he think, I wonder, about the prophecy? That in Rheims—scene of the first German defeat on the soil of Gaul—Germany's last defeat will be celebrated, with great rejoicing in the Cathedral she has tried to ruin?

Those words, "tried to ruin," I uttered rather feebly, holding forth to the Becketts, because we had passed a long dark line of trees before which—we'd been told—we ought to see the Cathedral rise triumphant against an empty background of sky. And still there was nothing!

Of course, I told myself, it must be the mist. But could mist be thick enough entirely to hide a great mountain of a cathedral from eyes drawing nearer every minute? Then, suddenly, my question was answered by the mist itself. I must have hypnotized it! A light wind, which we had thought was made by the motor, cut like the shears of Lachesis through the woolly white web. A gash of blue appeared and in the midst, floating as if it had died and gone to heaven, the Cathedral.

Yes, "died and gone to heaven!" That is just what has happened to Notre-Dame of Rheims. The body has been martyred, but the soul is left alive—beautiful, brave soul of the old stones of France!

"Oh!" went up from three voices in the motor-car. I think even our one-legged soldier-chauffeur emitted a grunt of joy; and Mother Beckett clasped her hands on her little thin breast, as if she were praying, such a wonderful sight it was, with the golden coronation of the noon-day sun on the towers. Our officer-guide, in his car ahead, looked back as if to say, "I told you so! They can't kill France, and Rheims is the very spirit and youth of France."

Not one of us spoke another word until we drove into the town, and began exclaiming with horror and rage at what Attila II has done to the streets.

The mist had fallen again, not white in the town, but a pale, sad gray, like a mantle of half-mourning. It hung over the spacious avenues and the once fine, now desolate, streets, which had been the pride of Rheims; it slipped serpent-like through what remained of old arcades: it draped the ancient Gate of Mars in the Place de la Republique as if to hide the cruel scars of the bombardment; it lay like soiled snow on the mountain of tumbled stone which had been the Rue St. Jacques; it curtained the "show street" of Rheims, the Rue de la Grue, almost as old as the Cathedral itself, which a Sieur de Coucy began in 1212; trickling gray as glacier waters over the fallen walls which artists had loved. It marbled with pale streaks the burned, black corpse of the once famous Maison des Laines; it clouded the marvellous old church of St. Remi, and when we came to the Cathedral—kept for the climax—it floated past the wounded statues on the great western facade like an army of spirits—spirits of all those watching saints whom the statues honoured.

The crowns of the broken towers we could not see, but at that height the mist was gilded by the sun which sifted through so that each tower seemed to have its own faint golden halo.

"This effect comes often on these foggy autumn days, when the sun is high, about noontime," said our guide. "It's rather wonderful, isn't it? We have a priest-soldier invalided here now, who used to be of the service in the Cathedral, before he volunteered to fight. He has written some verses, which it seems came to him in a dream one night. Whether the world would think them fine I do not know, but at Rheims we like them. The idea is that Jeanne d'Arc has mobilized the souls of the saints who protect Rheims, to bless and console the Cathedral, which they were not permitted to save from outward ruin. It is she who gilds the mist on the towers with a prophecy of hope. As for the mist itself, according to the poet, it is no common fog. It is but the cloak worn by this army of saints to visit their cathedral, and bathe its wounds with their cool white hands, so that at last, when peace dawns, there shall be a spiritual beauty found in the old marred stones—a beauty they never had in their prime."

"I should like to see that soldier-priest!" said Father Beckett, when I had translated for him the officer's description of the poem. "Couldn't we meet him? What's his name?"

I passed on the questions to our captain of the scarred face. "The man's name is St. Pol," he told us. "You can see from that he comes of an old family. If it had been this day last week you could have met him. He would have been pleased. But—since then—alas! Mademoiselle, it is impossible that he should be seen. It would be too sad for you and your friends."

"He has been wounded in some bombardment?" I exclaimed.

"Not wounded—no. We don't think much of wounds. What has happened is sadder than wounds. Some day the man may recover. We hope so. But at present he—is out of everything, dead in life."

"What happened?" I gasped.

"Oh, it is quite a history!" said the Captain. "But it begins a long time ago, when the Germans came to Rheims in 1914. Perhaps it would fatigue you? Besides, you have to translate, which takes double the time. I might write out the story and send it, Mademoiselle, if you like. You and your friends are not as safe here as in your own houses, I do not disguise that from you! The Germans have let us rest these last few days. Yet who can tell when they may choose to wake us up with a bomb or two?"

"I don't think we're afraid," I said, and consulted the Becketts. The little old lady answered for both. She was stoutly sure they were not afraid! "We shouldn't deserve to be Jim's parents if we were—of a thing like that! You tell the Captain, Molly, we're getting used to bombs, and we want the story right here, on the spot!"

"C'est tres chic, ca!" remarked the Captain, eyeing the mite of a woman. He stood for a minute, his scarred face pale in the mist, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on a headless stone king. Then he began his story of the soldier-priest.

Monsieur le Cure de St. Pol was very young when the war began—almost as young as a cure can be. He did not think, at first, to become a soldier, for he hated war. But, indeed, in those early days he had no time to think at all. He only worked—worked, to help care for the wounded who were pouring into Rheims, toward the last of August, 1914. Many were brought into the Cathedral, where they lay on the floor, on beds of straw. The Cure's duty was among these. He had relations in Rheims—a family of cousins of the same name as his. They lived in a beautiful old house, one of the best in Rheims, with an ancient chapel in the garden. There was an invalid father, whose wife devoted her life to him, and a daughter—a very beautiful young girl just home from a convent-school the spring before the war broke out. There was a son, too—but naturally, he was away fighting.

This young girl, Liane de St. Pol, was one of many in Rheims who volunteered to help nurse the wounded. All girls brought up in convents have some skill in nursing, you know!

While she and the Cure were at work in the Cathedral, among the wounded men who came in were her own brother, a lieutenant, and his best friend, a captain of his regiment. Both were badly hurt—the St. Pol boy worse than his friend. Yet even for him there was hope—if he could have had the best of care—if he could have been taken home and lovingly nursed there. That was not possible. The surgeons had no time for house-to-house visits. He was operated on in the Cathedral, and as he lay between life and death, news came that the Germans were close to Rheims.

In haste the wounded were sent to Epernay—to save them from being made prisoners. But some could not go: Louis de St. Pol and his friend Captain Jean de Visgnes. De Visgnes might have been hidden in the St. Pol house but he would not leave the boy, who could not be moved so far. The Cure vowed to hide both, and he did hide them in a chapel of the Cathedral itself. On September 3, at evening, the first Germans rode into the town and took up their quarters in the Municipal Palace, where they forced the Mayor, a very old man, to live with them. It was a changed Rheims since the day before. The troops of the garrison had gone in the direction of Epernay, since there was no hope of defence. Many rich people had fled, taking what they could carry in automobiles or cabs. The poor feared a siege—or worse: they knew not what. The St. Pol family received into their house a number of women whose husbands were at the Front, and their babies. No one ventured out who could stay indoors. The city filled up with German soldiers, with the Kaiser's son, Prince August Wilhelm, at their head. They, too, had wounded. The Cathedral was put to use for them, and the Cure cared for the Boches as he had cared for the French. This gave him a chance, at night, to nurse his two friends. So dragged on seven days, which seemed seven years; and then rumours drifted in of a great German retreat, a mysterious failure in the midst of seeming victory. The Battle of the Marne was making itself felt. In rage and bewilderment the Germans poured out of Rheims, leaving only their wounded behind. The townspeople praised God, and thought their trial was over. But it was only just begun! On the 16th the bombardment opened. The Germans knew that their wounded still lay in the Cathedral, but they did not seem to care for men out of the fighting line. A rain of bombs fell in the town—one of the first wrecked the Red Cross ambulance—and many struck the Cathedral. Then came the night when the straw bedding blazed, and fire poured through the long naves, rising to the roof.

The Cure told afterward how wonderful the sight was with the jewelled windows lighting up for the last time, before the old glass burst with the shrill tinkle of a million crystal bells. He and Jean de Visgnes carried Louis de St. Pol out into the street, but the boy died before they reached his father's house, and De Visgnes had a dangerous relapse. It was on this night that the Cure made up his mind to volunteer, and soon he was at the Front. Nearly three years passed before he and De Visgnes met again, both en permission, travelling back to Rheims to pass their "perm." Jean was now engaged to Liane de St. Pol who, with her parents, had remained in the bombarded town, refusing to desert their poor protegees. The two planned to marry, after the war; but Liane had been struck by a flying fragment of shell, and wounded in the head. De Visgnes could bear the separation no longer. He made the girl promise to marry him at once—in the chapel of the old house, as she was still suffering, and forbidden to go out. His leave had been granted for the wedding, and the moment Liane was strong enough she and the old people would leave Rheims. Jean was to take them himself to his own home in Provence. The Cure was to marry his cousin to the man whose life he had saved.

Many children of the poor whom Liane had helped decorated the chapel with flowers, and though the wedding-day was one of fierce bombardment, no one dreamed of putting off the ceremony. No fine shops for women's dress were open in Rheims, but the bride wore her mother's wedding-gown and veil of old lace. None save the family were asked to the marriage, because it was dangerous to go from house to house; yet all Rheims loved Liane, and meant to wish happiness for bride and bridegroom as the chapel-bells chimed for their union. But the bells began and never finished. At the instant when Liane de St. Pol and Jean de Visgnes became man and wife a bomb fell on the chapel roof. The tiles collapsed like cards, and all the bridal party was killed as by a lightning stroke. Only the soldier-priest was spared. Strangely, he was not even touched. But horror had driven him mad. Since then he spoke only to rave of Liane and Jean; how beautiful they had looked, lying dead before the wrecked altar.

"The doctors say it is like a case of shell-shock," the Captain finished. "They think he'll recover. But at present, as I said—it is a sad affair. Sad for him—not for those who died together, suffering no pain. One of the Cure's favourite sayings used to be, they tell me, 'Death is not an end, but a beginning.'"

"You know him well?" I asked.

"Yes. I was stationed in Rheims before the war. I used to dance with Liane when she came home from school."

"Ah, if only her family hadn't stayed here till too late!" I cried.

The captain with the scarred face shrugged his shoulders. "Destiny!" he said. "Besides, the best people do not run away easily from the homes they love. Perhaps they have the feeling that, in a home which has always meant peace, nothing terrible can happen. Yet there's more in it than that—something more subtle which keeps them in the place where they have always lived: something, I think, that binds the spirits of us Frenchmen and women to the spirit of their own hearths—their own soil. Haven't you found that already, in other places you have visited in this journey of yours?"

"Yes," I answered, thinking of the old people I had seen at Vitrimont living in the granaries of their ruined houses, and strangely, unbelievably happy because they were "at home." "Yes, we have seen that in little villages of Lorraine."

"Then how much more at Rheims, under the shadow of Notre-Dame!" The scarred captain still gazed at the headless king, and faintly smiled.



CHAPTER XIX

Of course nothing did happen in Paris to break up the party. I might have known that nothing would. Nothing happened at all, except that I received a letter from Doctor Herter with the promised introduction to an oculist just now at the Front, and that I realized, after three days' absence, how Brian is improving. He has less the air of a beautiful soul, whose incarnation in a body is a mere accident, and more the look of a happy, handsome young man, with a certain spiritual radiance which makes him remarkable and somehow "disturbing," as the French say. If anything could stop the rats gnawing my conscience, it would be this blessed change. Brian is getting back health and strength. When I think what a short time ago it is that his life hung in the balance, this seems a miracle. I'm afraid I am glad—glad that I did the thing which has given him his chance. Besides, I love the Becketts. So does Brian. And they love us. It's difficult to remember that I've stolen their love. Surely, they're happier with us than they could have been without us? Brian's scheme for their visits to the liberated towns is doing good to them and to hundreds—even thousands—of people whom they intend to help.

All this is sophistry, no doubt, but oh, it's beguiling sophistry! It's so perfectly disguised that I seldom recognize it except at night when I lie awake, and it sits on my bed, without its becoming mask.

Being the Becketts' adviser-in-chief, and having his lungs full of ozone every day should be enough to account for Brian's improvement. Yet—well, I can't help thinking that he takes a lot more trouble than he need for Dierdre O'Farrell. Oh, not that he's in love! Such an idea is ridiculous, but he's interested and sorry for the girl, because she goes about with a chip on her shoulder, defying the world to knock it off. He won't admit that it's the fault of her outlook on the world, and that the poor old world isn't to blame at all.

What if he knew the truth about that brother and sister? Naturally I can't tell him, of all people on earth, and they take advantage of my handicap. They've used their time well, in my absence, when they had Brian to themselves. He had his doubts of Julian, but the creature has sung himself into my blind brother's heart. From what I hear, the three have spent most of their time at the piano in the private salon which the Becketts invited the O'Farrells to engage.

Now, as I write, we are making our headquarters in Compiegne, sleeping there, and sightseeing by day on what they call the "Noyon Front."

After Rheims and before Noyon we stopped three days in Paris instead of one, as we'd planned, for Mother Beckett was tired. She wouldn't confess it, but "Father" thought she looked pale. Strange if she had not, after such experiences and emotions! Sometimes, when I study the delicate old face, with blue hollows under kind, sweet eyes, I ask myself: "Will she be able to get through the task she's set herself?" But she is so quietly brave, not only in fatigue, but in danger, that I answer my own question: "Yes, she will do it somehow, on the reserve force that kept her up when Jim died."

The road from Paris, past Senlis, to Compiegne, was even more thrilling than the road to Nancy and beyond, for this was the way the Germans took in September, 1914, when they thought the capital was theirs to have and hold: "la route de l'Allemagne" it used to be called, but never will French lips give it that name again.

Just at first, running out of the city in early morning, things looked much the same as when starting for Nancy: the unnatural quiet of streets once crammed with busy traffic for feeding gay Paris; military motors of all sorts and sizes, instead of milk wagons and cartloads of colourful fruits; women working instead of men; children on their way to school, sedately talking of "papa au Front," instead of playing games. But outside the suburbs the real thrills began.

There were the toy-like fortifications of which Paris was proud in the 'fifties; there was the black tangle of barbed wire, and the trace of trenches (a mere depression on the earth's surface, as if a serpent had laid its heavy length on a great, green velvet cushion) with which Paris had hoped to delay the German wave. Only a little way on, we shot through the sleepy-looking village of Bourget where Napoleon stopped a few hours after Waterloo, rather than enter Paris by daylight; and Brian had a story of the place. A French soldier, a friend of his (nearly everyone he meets is Brian's friend!) who was born there, told him that on each anniversary the ghost of the "Little Corporal" appears, travel-stained and worn, on the road leading to Bourget. For many years his custom was to show himself for a second to some seeing eye, then vanish like a mirage of the desert. But since 1914 his way is different. He does not confine his visit to the hamlet of sad memories. He walks the country side, his hands behind him, his head bent as of old; or he rides a horse that is slightly lame, inspecting with thoughtful gaze the frenzied industries of war, war such as he—the war-genius—never saw in his visions of the future: the immense aerodromes, the bomb sheds, the wireless stations and observation towers, the giant "saucisses" resting under green canvas, ready to rise at dawn; and all the other astounding features of the landscape so peaceful in his day.

Even now parts of it are peaceful, often the very spots marked by history, where it seems as if each tree should be decorated by a Croix de Guerre. For instance, there was the place—a junction of roads—where the Uhlans with a glitter of helmets came proudly galloping toward Paris, and to their blank amazement and rage had to turn back. As we halted to take in the scene, it was mysterious as dreamland in the morning mist. Nothing moved save two teams of cream-coloured oxen, their moon-white sides dazzling behind a silver veil. The pale road stretched before us so straight and far that it seemed to descend from the sky like a waterfall. Only the trees had a martial look, like tall, dark soldiers drawn up in line for parade.

It was not till we plunged into forest depths that I said to myself: "We must be coming near Senlis!" For the very name "Senlis" fills the mind with forest pictures. No wonder, since it lies walled away from the outer world—like the Sleeping Beauty—by woods, and woods, and woods: the forests of Hallette, Chantilly, and Ermenonville, each as full of history as it is now of aromatic scents, and used to be of wild boars for kings to kill!

I think the best of the forest pictures has Henri de Navarre for its principal figure. Brian and I turned over the pages of our memory for the Becketts, who listened like children to fairy tales—or as we listened when you used to embroider history for us in those evening causeries in the dear old "den," Padre.

I dug up the story about Henri at twenty-one, married more than a year to beautiful, lively Marguerite de Valois, and enduring lazily the despotism of his mother-in-law. There in the old palace of the Louvre, he loitered the time away, practically a prisoner until the only friend he had with courage to speak out (Agrippa d'Aubigny) gave him a lecture. Agrippa lashed his master with the words "coward" and "sluggard," letting his faithful servants work for his interests while he remained the slave of a "wicked old witch." The Bearnais had been biding his time—"crouching to spring": but that slap in the face set him on fire. He could no longer wait for the right moment. He decided to make the first moment the right one. His quick brain mapped out a plan of escape in which the sole flaw was that he must leave behind his brilliant bride. With eight or ten of his greatest, most loyal gentlemen, he arranged to hunt in the forest of Senlis; and he had shown himself so biddable, so boyish, that at first even Catherine de Medicis did not suspect him. It was only when the party had set forth that the plot burst like a bomb, in Catherine's own boudoir, where she sat with her favourite son, vile Henri III of France.

Fervacques, one of the plotters, had stopped in Paris, feigning illness. The plan had been concocted in his rooms, and he but waited for Navarre's back to be turned to betray him. Marguerite laughed when she heard (perhaps she was in the secret), but Catherine said evil words, of which she knew a great many—especially in Italian. Orders were given for the gates of Paris to be shut (gates that in those days barred the road along which we now motored), but they were too late. Navarre and his hunters had passed through. Agrippa d'Aubigny was not among them. His part had been to watch the happenings of the Court, and join Navarre later in his own kingdom, but that hope was broken. Disguised as a mignon of Henri III, he slipped out of Paris on a fast horse, tore after the Bearnais and his equerries, and caught the cavalcade in the forest. "Thou art betrayed!" he cried.

"But not captured!" laughed Navarre.

In haste they substituted a new plot for the old. The young king was to pretend ignorance of the betrayal. He installed himself accordingly in the best lodgings of Senlis, talking loudly about hunting prospects, arranged to see a performance by travelling actors, and sent such a message back to Catherine and Henri that they believed Fervacques had fooled them.

By the time they'd waked to the truth, Navarre had ridden safely out of Senlis with his friends, bound for the kingdom on the Spanish border. Even then he was a man of big ambitions; so maybe he said to himself, looking back at Senlis: "I shall travel this road again, as king of France, to enter Paris in triumph." Anyhow, he was grateful to Senlis for saving him, and stayed there often, as Henri Quatre, flirting with pretty ladies, and inviting them to become abbesses when he tired of them.

Lots of things have happened in Senlis, because it's on the road to Paris, and for centuries has been getting into someone's way. Why, if it hadn't been for Senlis, William the Conqueror might never have conquered! You see, before William's day, Count Bernard of Senlis (who boasted himself a forty-second grandson or something of Charlemagne) quarrelled with King Louis IV of France. To spite him, Bernard adopted the baby son of William Longsword, Duke of Normandy, killed in battle; for Normandy was a "thorn in the eye" of France. Thanks to Bernard's help Normandy gained in riches and importance. By the time William, son of Robert the Devil and Arlette of Falaise, appeared on the scene, the dukedom was a power in the world, and William was able to dare his great enterprise.

But that was only one incident. Senlis was already an old, old town, and as much entitled to call itself a capital of France as was Paris. Not for nothing had the Gallo-Romans given it walls twenty feet high and thirteen feet thick! They could not have builded better had they meant to attract posterity's attention, and win for their strong city the admiration of kings. Clovis was the first king who fancied it, and settled there. But not a king who followed, till after the day of Henri Quatre, failed to live in the castle which Clovis began. Henry V of England married Bonny Kate in the chateau; Charles VIII of France and Maximilian of Austria signed a treaty within its walls; Francis I finished Notre-Dame of Senlis. The Duke of Bedford fought Joan of Arc there, and she was helped by the Marechal Rais, no other than Bluebeard; so "Sister Anne" must have gazed out from some neighbouring tower for the "cloud of dust in the distance." Somewhere in the vast encircling forests the Babes in the Wood were buried by the birds, while the wicked uncle reigned in their father's place at Senlis. In 1814 Prussian, Russian, and British soldiers marched through the town on their tramp to Paris. Cossacks and Highlanders were the "strangest sight" Senlis had ever seen, though it had seen many; but a hundred years later it was to see a stranger one yet.

If ever a place looked made for peace, that place is Senlis, on its bright little river Nonette—child of the Oise—and in its lovely valley. That was what I said as we slowed down on the outskirts: but ah, how the thought of peace broke as we drove along the "kings' highway"—the broad Rue de la Republique! In an instant the drama of September 2nd—eve of the Marne battle—sprang to our eyes and knocked at our hearts. We could smell the smoke, and see the flames, and hear the shots, the cries of grief and rage, the far-off thunder of bridges blown up by the retreating French army. Suddenly we knew how the people of Senlis had suffered that day, and—strangely, horribly—how the Germans had felt.

Senlis hadn't realized—wouldn't let itself realize—even during bombardment, what its fate might be. It had been spared, as an open town, in 1870; and since then, through long, prosperous years of peace a comfortable conviction had grown that only pleasant things could happen. Why, it was the place of pleasure, reaping a harvest of fame and money from its adventurous past! Tourists came from all the world over to put up at the Hotel du Grand Cerf, once the hunting lodge of kings. They came to loiter in narrow old streets whose very names were echoes of history; to study the ruins of the Roman arena and the ancient walls; to hunt in the forest, as royal men and ladies had hunted when stags and wild boar had been plentiful as foxes and rabbits; or to motor from one neighbouring chateau to another. Surely even Germans could not doom such a town to destruction. To be sure, some people did fly when a rabble of refugees from Compiegne poured past, hurrying south; and others fled from the bombardment when big guns, fired from Lucien Bonaparte's old village of Chamant, struck the cathedral. But many stayed for duty's sake, or because they believed obstinately that to their bit of the Ile-de-France no tragedy could come.

They didn't know yet that Von Kluck and his men were drunk with victory, and that flaming towns were for the German army bonfires of triumph. They didn't know that the Kaiser's dinner was ordered in Paris for a certain date, and that at all costs Paris must be cowed to a speedy peace, lest the dinner be delayed. "Frightfulness" was the word of command, and famous old Senlis was to serve as a lesson to Paris.

But somehow the German master of Senlis's heart weakened when the crucial moment came. He was at the Hotel du Grand Cerf, where a dinner was being prepared by scared servants for thirty German officers. The order was about to be signed when suddenly a cure, small and pale, but lion-brave, entered the room. How he got in no one knew! Surprise held the general tongue-tied for three seconds; and a French cure is capable of much eloquence in three seconds.

He gambled—if a cure may gamble!—on the chance of his man being Catholic—and he won. That is why (so they told us in the same room three years later) Senlis was struck with many sore wounds, but not exterminated; that is why only the Maire and a few citizens were murdered instead of all; that is why in some quarters of Senlis the people who have come back can still dream that nothing happened to their dear haunt of peace on September 2, 1914.

Even if Senlis had fallen utterly, before the Germans turned in their tracks, Paris would not have been "cowed." As it was, Paris and all France were roused to a redoubled fury of resistance by the fate of the Senlis "hostages." So these men did not die in vain.

The scars of Senlis are still unhealed. Whole streets are blackened heaps of ruin, and there are things that "make you see red," as Father Beckett growled. But the thing which left the clearest picture in my brain was a sight sweet as well as sad: a charming little chateau, ruined by fire, yet pathetically lovely in martyrdom; the green trellis still ornamenting its stained facade, a few autumn roses peeping with child-like curiosity into gaping window-eyes; a silent old gardener raking the one patch of lawn buried under blackened tiles and tumbled bricks. The man's figure was bent, yet I felt that there was hope as well as loyalty in his work. "They will come back home some day," was the expression of that faithful back.

In the exquisite beauty of the forest beyond Senlis there was still—for me—this note of hope. "Where beauty is, sadness cannot dwell for ever!" As we rushed along in the big car, the delicate gray trunks of clustering trees seemed to whirl round and round before our eyes, as in a votive dance of young priestesses. We saw bands of German prisoners toiling gnome-like in dim glades, but they didn't make us sad again. Au contraire! We found poetical justice in the thought that they, the cruel destroyers of trees, must chop wood and pile faggots from dawn to dusk.

So we came to Compiegne, where the French army has its headquarters in one of the most famous chateaux in the world.



CHAPTER XX

It took a mere glance (even if we hadn't known beforehand) to see that noble Compiegne craved no Beckett charity, no American adoption.

True, German officers lived for twelve riotous days in the palace, in 1914, selecting for home use many of its treasures, and German "non-coms." filled vans with rare antiques from the richest mansions; still, they had no time, or else no inclination, to disfigure the town. The most sensational souvenir of those days before the Marne battle is a couple of broken bridges across the Oise and Aisne, blown up by the French in the hour of their retreat. But that strange sight didn't break on our eyes as we entered Compiegne. We seemed to have been transported by white magic from mystic forest depths to be plumped down suddenly in a city square, in front of a large, classical palace. It's only the genie of motoring who can arrange these startling contrasts!

If we took Brian's advice, and "played" that our autos were old-fashioned coaches; if we looked through, instead of at, the dozen military cars lined up at the palace gates; if we changed a few details of the soldiers' uniforms, the gray chateau need not have been Army Headquarters in our fancy. For us, the Germans might cease from troubling and the war-weary be at rest, while we skipped back to any century we fancied.

Of course, Louis XV, son-in-law of our old friend Stanislas of Lorraine, built the chateau; and Napoleon the Great added a wing in honour of his second bride, Marie Louise. But why be hampered by details like that? Charles V built a castle at this old Roman Compendium, on the very spot where all those centuries later Louis XV erected his Grecian facades; and Henri of Navarre often came there, in his day. One of Henri's best romances he owed to Compiegne; and while we were having what was meant to be a hurried luncheon, Mother Beckett made Brian tell the story. You know Brian came to Compiegne before the war and painted in the palace park, where Napoleon I and Napoleon III used to give their fetes-champetres; and he says that the picture is clear as ever "behind his eyes."

Once upon a time, Henri was staying in the chateau, very bored because weather had spoiled the hunting. Suddenly appeared the "handsomest young man of Prance," the Duc de Bellegarde, Henri's equerry, who had been away on an adventure of love. Somehow, he'd contrived to meet Gabrielle d'Estrees, almost a child, but of dazzling beauty. She hid him for three days, and then, alas, a treacherous maid threatened to tell Gabrielle's father. Bellegarde had to be smuggled out of the family castle—a rope and a high window. The tale amused Henri; and the girl's portrait fired him. He couldn't forget; and later, having finished some business at Senlis (part of which concerned a lady) he laid a plan to cut Bellegarde out. When the Equerry begged leave from Compiegne to visit Gabrielle again, Henri consented, on condition that he might be the duke's companion.

Bellegarde had to agree; and Henri fell in love at sight with the golden hair, blue eyes, and rose-and-white skin of "Gaby." She preferred Bellegarde to the long-nosed king; but the Bearnais was never one to take "no" for an answer. He went from Compiegne again and again to the forbidden castle, in peril of his life from Guise and the League. After a wild adventure, in disguise as a peasant with a bundle of straw on his head, his daring captured the girl's fancy. She was his; and he was hers, writing sonnets to "Charmante Gabrielle," making Marguerite furious by giving to the new love his wife's own Abbey of St. Corneille, at Compiegne. (One can still see its ruins!)

I said we meant to eat quickly and go for an afternoon of sightseeing—for early to-morrow (I'm writing late at night) we're due at Noyon. But Brian remembered so many bits about Compiegne, that by tacit consent we lingered and listened. When he was here last, he did a sketch of Henri and Gabrielle hunting in the forest; "Gaby" pearl-fair in green satin, embroidered with silver; on her head the famous hat of velvet-like red taffetas, which cost Henri two hundred crowns. Perhaps she carried in her hand one of the handkerchiefs for which she paid what other women pay for dresses; but Brian's sketches are too "impressionist" to show handkerchiefs! Anyhow, her hand was in the king's, for that was her way of riding with her gray-clad lover; though when she went alone she rode boldly astride. Poor Henri couldn't say nay to the becoming green satin and red hat, though he was hard up in those days. After paying a bill of Gaby's, he asked his valet how many shirts and handkerchiefs he had. "A dozen shirts, torn," was the answer. "Handkerchiefs, five."

On the walls of the room where we ate hung beautiful old engravings of Napoleon I in his daily life at the Chateau of Compiegne. Napoleon receiving honoured guests in the vast Galerie des Fetes, with its polished floor and long line of immense windows; Napoleon and his bride in the Salon des Dames d'Honneur, among the ladies of Marie Louise; Napoleon listening wistfully—thinking maybe of lost Josephine—to a damsel at the harp, in the Salon de Musique; Marie Louise smirking against a background of teinture chinoise; Napoleon observing a tapestry battle of stags in the Salle des Cerfs; Napoleon on the magnificent terrasse giving a garden party; Napoleon walking with his generals along the Avenue des Beaux Monts, in the park. But these pictures rather teased than pleased us, because in war days only the army enters palace or park.

Brian was luckier than the rest of us! He had been through the chateau and forgotten nothing. Best of all he had liked the bedchamber of Marie Antoinette, said to be haunted by her ghost, in hunting dress with a large hat and drooping plume. The Empress Eugenie, it seemed, had loved this room, and often entered it alone to dream of the past. Little could she have guessed then how near she would come to some such end as that fatal queen, second in beauty only to herself.

Even if Julian O'Farrell's significant glance hadn't called my attention to his sister, I should have noticed how Dierdre lost her sulky look in listening to Brian.

"He has something to say to me about those two when he gets a chance, and he wants me to know it now," I thought. But I pretended to be absorbed in stories of the Second Empire. For we sat on and on at the table, putting off our visit to the ancient timbered houses and the monument of Jeanne d'Arc, and all the other things which called us away from those hotel windows. It seemed as if the heart of Compiegne, past and present, were hidden just behind that gray facade of the palace across the square!

Of course, Jeanne was the "star" heroine of Compiegne, where she fought so bravely and was taken prisoner, and sold to the English by John of Luxembourg at a very cheap price. But, you know, she is the heroine of such lots of other places we have seen or will see, that we let her image fade for us behind the brilliant visions of Compiegne's pleasures.

As a rule, old history has the lure of romance in it, and makes modern history seem dull in contrast. But such a gorgeous novel could be written about Second Empire days of Compiegne (if only there were a Dumas to write it) that I do think this town is an exception.

Even "The Queen's Necklace" couldn't be more exciting than a story of Eugenie, with that "divinest beauty of all ages," the Castiglione, as her rival! I don't know how Dumas would begin it, but I would have the first scene at a house party of Louis Napoleon's, in the palace at Compiegne, after he had revived the old custom of the Royal Hunt: Napoleon, already falling in love, but hesitating, anxious to see how the Spanish girl would bear herself among the aristocratic charmers of the Court, whether she could hold her own as a huntress, as in a ballroom. I'd show her making a sensation by her horsemanship and beauty. Then I'd take her through the years, till the dazzling Florentine came to trouble her peace, the adored, yet disappointed divinity who cried, "If my mother had brought me to France instead of marrying me to Castiglione, an Italian, not a Spaniard, would have shared the throne with Napoleon, and there would have been no Franco-Prussian War!"

What a brilliant background Compiegne of those days would make for that pair, the beautiful young Empress and the more beautiful Countess!—Compiegne when the palace was crowded with the flower of Europe, when great princes and brave soldiers romped through children's games with lovely ladies, if rain spoiled the hunting; when Highland nobles brought their pipers, and everyone danced the wildest reels, if there were time to spare from private theatricals and tableaux vivants! I think I would make my story end, though, not there, but far away; the Castiglione lying dead, with youth and beauty gone, dressed by her last request in a certain gown she had worn on a certain night at Compiegne, never to be forgotten.

When at last we did go out to walk and see the wonderful timbered houses and the blown-up bridges, what I had expected to happen did happen: Julian O'Farrell contrived to separate me from the others.

"Haven't I been clever?" he asked, with his smile of a naughty child.

"So far as I know of you," I answered, "you are always clever."

"That's the first compliment you've ever paid me! Thanks all the same, though I'd be the opposite of clever if I thought you wanted me to be flattered. You're clever, too, so of course you know what I mean as well as I know myself. Perhaps you thought I was being clever on the sly. But I'm above that. Haven't I always showed you my cards, trumps and joker and all?"

"You've shown me how the knave can take a trick!"

He laughed. "History repeating itself! The Queen of Hearts, you remember—and the Knave of—Spades, wasn't it? I wish it were diamonds instead: but maybe his spade will dig up a few sparklers in the end. I've got a splendid plan brewing. But that isn't what I want to talk about just now. In fact, I don't want to talk about it—yet! You're not going to admit that you see the results of my cleverness, or that you'd understand them if you did see. So I'll just wave them under your darling nose."

It would have been absurd to say: "How dare you call my nose a darling?" so I said nothing at all.

"You saw it was a plot, getting Brian to go to Paris with us," he went on. "I saw that you saw it. But I wasn't sure and I'm not sure now, if you realized its design, as the villain of the piece would remark."

"You ought to know what he'd remark."

"I do, dear villainess! I was going to say, 'Sister Villainess,' but I wouldn't have you for a sister at any price. I've cast you for a different part. You may have imagined that Dare and I were just grabbing your brother to spite you, and show what we could do with him."

"I did imagine that!"

"Wrong! Guess again. Or no—you needn't. We may be interrupted any minute. To save time I'll explain my bag of tricks. Dare wasn't in on that hand of mine."

"Indeed?"

"You don't believe me? That shows you're no judge of character. Dare adores her Jule, and what he wants her to do she does; but I told you she was no actress. She can't act much better off the stage than on. I wouldn't trust her to create the part of the White Cat, let alone that of Wily Vivien. She gets along all right if she can just keep still and sulk and act the Stormy Petrel. I should have pulled her through on those lines if she'd been obliged to play Jim Beckett's broken-hearted fiancee. But to do the siren with your brother—no, she wouldn't be equal to that, even to please me: couldn't get it across the footlights. I had to win her to Brian as well as win Brian to me. I hope you don't mind my calling him by his Christian name? He says I may."

"Why did you want to win Miss O'Farrell to my brother?"

"You don't know? You'll have to go down a place lower in this class! She couldn't make Brian really like her, unless she liked him. At first—though I knew better—she stuck it out that Brian was only a kind of decoy duck for you with the Becketts——"

"Oh!"

"Please don't look at me as if you were biting a lemon. I didn't think so. And Dare doesn't now."

"How sweet of her!"

"She's turning sweet. That's partly what I was after. I wormed myself into your brother's affections, to entice him to Paris. I wanted Dare to learn that her instinct about him was right; her instinct was always defending him against what she thought was her reason and common sense. Now, she sees that he's genuine, and she's secretly letting herself go—admiring him and wondering at him to make up for her injustice."

"Are you telling all this to disarm me?"

"Not exactly. I'm telling you because I was sure you'd find out soon what's going on, and because I thought an open policy best. As it is, you can't say I haven't played fair from the word go."

"I wish," I cried out, "that the word was 'go'!"

"You're not very kind, my dear."

"Why should I be kind?"

"Because I'm the stick of your rocket. You can't soar without me. And because I love you such a lot."

"You!"

"Yes, I, me, Julian O'Farrell: Giulio di Napoli. Haven't I sacrificed my prospects and my sister's prospects rather than throw you to the lions? Didn't I waste those perfectly good snapshots? Didn't I sit tight, protecting you silently, letting you have all I'd expected to have for myself and Dare?"

I gasped. To speak was beyond my powers just then.

"I know what you'd like to say," Julian explained me to myself. "You'd love to say: 'The d—d cheek of the man! It's rich!' Well, it is rich. And I mean to be rich to match. That's in my plan. And so are you in it. Practically you are the plan. To carry it out calmly, without ructions and feathers flying, I put your brother and my sister in the way of falling in love. Dare didn't want to join the Beckett party and didn't want to stay with it. Now, she does want to stay. Brian distrusted me and was intrigued by Dare. Now, he gives me the benefit of the doubt. And he has no doubts of her—— That's a beautiful timbered house, isn't it, Mr. Beckett? Yes, I was just telling Miss O'Malley that this place seems to me the best one we've visited yet. I shall never forget it, or the circumstances of seeing it, shall you, Miss O'Malley? Don't you think, sir, she might let me call her 'Mary,' now we all know each other so well? I'm 'Julian' to her brother and he's 'Brian' to me."

"I certainly do think she might," said Father Beckett, with that slow, pleasant smile which Jim inherited from him.



CHAPTER XXI

It's late at night again—no, early to-morrow morning, just about the hour when to-morrow's war-bread is being baked by to-night's war-bakers. But it's good to burn the midnight electricity, because my body and brain are feeling electric.

We have had the most astonishing day!

Of course, I expected that, because we were going to Noyon, and I evacuated all unneeded thoughts and impressions (for instance, those concerning the O'Farrells) to make room for a crowd of new ones, as we did at the Hopital des Epidemies with convalescents, for an incoming batch of patients. But I didn't count on private, personal emotions—unless we blundered into an air raid somewhere!

You remember those authors we met once, who write together—the Sandersons—and how they said if they ever dared put a real incident in a book, people picked out that one as impossible? Well, this evening just past reminded me of the Sandersons. We spent it at the War Correspondents' Chateau, not far out of Compiegne: that is, we spent it there if it was real, and not a dream.

* * * * *

I am the only one in Mother Beckett's confidence—I mean, about her health. Even her husband doesn't know how this trip strains her endurance, physical and mental. Indeed, he's the very one who mustn't know. It's agreed between us that, if she feels hopelessly unfit for any excursion, I shall put on invalid airs and she will stop at home to keep me company. Thus will be avoided all danger of Father Beckett suspecting the weakness she hides. But you can imagine, Padre, knowing me as you do, how frightened I was to-day—our morning for Noyon—lest she should give the signal. I felt I simply couldn't bear to miss Noyon. No use telling myself I shall feel exactly the same about Soissons to-morrow, and Roye and Ham and Chauny and various others the day after. My reason couldn't detach itself at that instant from Noyon.

Our daily programme as now arranged is: Me to knock at Mother Beckett's door half an hour before starting-time. If she's fearing a collapse, she is to exclaim: "My child, how pale you are!" or some other criticism of my complexion. Then I'm to play up, replying: "I do feel under the weather." Whereupon it's easy for her to say: "You must stop in the hotel and rest. I'll stay with you."

To my joy, the greeting this morning was: "My dear, you look fresh as a rose!"

I didn't feel it; for you know I wrote late to you. And at last in bed, I disobeyed your advice about never worrying: I worried quite a lot over Brian and Dierdre O'Farrell; my having led him into a trap, when above all things I wanted his happiness and health. I could well have passed as pale: but I was so pleased with the secret signal that I braced up and bloomed again.

We had to start early, because there was a good deal to do in the day; and we were supposed to return early, too, for a rest, as there's the great adventure of Soissons before us to-morrow. The Correspondents' Chateau wasn't on our list: that was an accident, though now it seems as if the whole trip would have been worth while if only to lead up to that "accident!"

There were several ways we could have taken to Noyon, but we took the way by Dives and Lassigny. We shall have chances for other roads, because, to see various places we mean to visit, we shall go through Noyon again.

Once upon a time, before the Germans came, Dives had a lovely chateau, part of it very old, with a round turret under a tall pointed hat; the other part comparatively young—as young as the Renaissance—and all built of that pale, rose-pink colour which most chateaux of this forestland, and this Ile-de-France used to wear in happy days before they put on smoke-stained mourning.

Now, instead of its proud chateau, Dives has a ruin even more lovely, though infinitely sad.

As for Lassigny, it was battered to death: yet I think it was glad to die, because the Germans had turned it into a fortress, and they had to be shelled out by the French. Poor little Lassigny! It must have had what the French call "une beaute coquette," and the Germans, it seemed, were loth to leave. When they found that they must go, and in haste, they boiled with rage. Not only did they blow up all that was left in the village, but they blew up the trees of the surrounding orchards. They had not the excuse for this that they needed the trees to bar the way of the pursuing French army. Such trees as they felled across the road were the big trees of the forest. Their destruction of the young fruit trees was just a slaughter of innocents; and I've never hated war, Padre, as I hated it to-day—above all, German methods of making war. Even the countless graves on the battlefields do not look so sad as those acres of murdered trees: blown-up trees, chopped-down trees, trees gashed to death with axes, trees that strove with all the strength of Nature to live, putting forth leaves and blossoms as their life blood emptied from their veins.

The graves of dead soldiers do not, somehow, look utterly sad. Their little flags stir triumphantly in the breeze, as if waved by unseen hands. The caps that mark the mounds seem to be on the heads of men invisible, under the earth, standing at the salute, saying to those who pass: "There is no death! Keep up your hearts, and follow the example we have set." The souls of those who left their bodies on these battlefields march on, bearing torches that have lit the courage of the world, with a light that can never fail. But the poor trees, so dear to France, giving life as a mother gives milk to her child!—they died to serve no end save cruelty.

The sight of them made me furious, and I glared like a basilisk at any German prisoners we saw working along the good, newly made white road. On their green trousers were large letters, "P. G." for "Prisonnier de Guerre"; and I snapped out as we passed a group, "It needs only an I between the P and the G to make it perfect!"

One man must have heard, and understood English, for he glanced up with a start. I was sorry then, for it was like hitting a fallen enemy. As he had what would have seemed a good face if he'd been British or French, perhaps he was one of those who wrote home that the killing of trees in France "will be a shame to Germany till the end of time."

Only a few days ago Brian learned by heart a poem I read aloud, a poem called "Les Arbres Coupes," by Edmond Rostand. Teaching Brian, I found I had learned it myself.

Chacun de nos soldats eut son cri de souffrance Devant ces arbres morts qui jonchaient les terrains: "Les pechers!" criaient ceux de l'Ile-de-France; "Et les mirabelliers!" crierent les Lorrains.

Soldats bleus demeures paysans sous vos casques, Quels poings noueux et noirs vers le nord vous tendiez! "Les cerisiers!" criaient avec fureur les Basques; Et ceux du Rousillon criaient: "Les amandiers!"

Devant les arbres morts de l'Aisne ou de la Somme, Chacun se retrouva Breton ou Limousin. "Les pommiers!" criaient ceux du pays de la pomme; "Les vignes!" criaient ceux du pays raisin.

Ainsi vous disiez tous le climat dont vous etes, Devant ces arbres morts que vous consideriez, —Et moi, voyant tomber tant de jeunes poetes, Helas, combien de fois j'ai crie: "Les lauriers!"

I love it. Yet I don't quite agree with the beautiful turning at the end, because the laurels of the soldier-poets aren't really dead, nor can they ever die. Even some of the trees which the Boches meant to kill would not be conquered by Germans or death. Many of them, cut almost level with the ground, continued to live, spouting leaves close to earth as a fountain spouts water when its jet has been turned low. All the victims that could be saved have been saved by the French, carefully, scientifically bandaged like wounded soldiers: and the Becketts talked eagerly of giving money—much money—to American societies that, with the British, are aiding France to make her fair land bloom again. Mother Beckett became quite inventive and excited, planning to start "instruction farms," with a fund in honour of Jim. Seeds and slips and tools and teachers should all be imported from California. Oh, it would be wonderful! And how thankful she and Father were that they had Brian and Molly to help make the plan come true! I shouldn't have liked to catch Julian O'Farrell's eye just then.

All the way was haunted by the tragedy of trees, not only the tragedy of orchards, and of the roadside giants that once had shaded the straight avenues, but the martyrdom of trees in the great dark forests—oaks and elms and beeches. At first glance these woods, France's shield against her enemies—rose still and beautiful, like mystic abodes of peace, against the pale horizon. But a searching gaze showed how they had suffered. For every trio of living trees there seemed to be one corpse, shattered by bombs, or blasted by evil gas. The sight of them struck at the heart: yet they were heroes, as well as martyrs, I said to myself. They had truly died for France, to save France. And as I thought this, I knew that if I were a poet, beautiful words would come at my call, to clothe my fancy about the forests.

I wanted the right words so much that it was pain when they wouldn't answer my wish, for I seemed to hear only a faint, far-off echo of some fine strain of music, whose real notes I failed to catch.

Always forests have fascinated me; sweet, fairy-peopled groves of my native island, and emerald-lit beech woods of England. But I never felt the grand meaning of forests as I felt them to-day, in this ravaged and tortured land. I could have cried out to them: "Oh, you forests of France, what a part you've played in the history of wars! How wise and brave of you to stand in unbroken line, a rampart protecting your country's frontiers, through the ages. Forests, you are bands of soldiers, in armour of wood, and you, too, like your human brothers, have hearts that beat and veins that bleed for France! You are soldiers, and you are fortresses—Nature's fortresses stronger than all modern inventions. You are fortresses to fight in; you are shelters from air-pirates, you hide cannon; you give shelter to your fighting countrymen from rain and heat. You delay the enemy; you mislead him, you drive him back. When you die, deserted by the birds and all your hidden furred and feathered children, you give yourselves—give, give to the last! Your wood strengthens the trenches, or burns to warm the freezing poilus. Brave forests, pathetic forests! I hear you defy the enemy in your hour of death: Strike us, kill us. Still you shall never pass!"

We had felt that we knew something of the war-zone after Lorraine; but there the great battles had all been fought in 1914, when the world was young. Here, it seemed as if the earth must still be hot from the feet of retreating Germans.

The whole landscape was pitted with shell-holes, and spider-webbed with barbed wire. The three lines of French trenches we passed might, from their look, have been manned yesterday. Piled along the neat new road were bombs for aviators to drop; queer, fish-shaped things, and still queerer cages they had been in. There were long, low sheds for fodder. At each turn was the warning word, "Convois." The poor houses of such villages as continued to exist were numbered, for the first time in their humble lives, because they were needed for military lodgings. Notices in the German language were hardly effaced from walls of half-ruined buildings. They had been partly rubbed out, one could see, but the ugly German words survived, strong and black as a stain on one's past. Huge rounds of barbed wire which had been brought, and never used, were stacked by the roadside, and there were long lines of trench-furniture the enemy had had to abandon in flight, or leave in dug-outs: rough tables, chairs, rusty cooking-stoves, pots, pans, petrol tins, and broken dishes: even lamps, torn books, and a few particularly ugly blue vases for flowers. They must have been made in Germany, I knew!

Wattled screens against enemy fire still protected the road, and here and there was a "camouflage" canopy for a big gun. The roofs of beautiful old farmhouses were crushed in, as if tons of rock had fallen on them: and the moss which once had decked their ancient tiles with velvet had withered, turning a curious rust colour, like dried blood. Young trees with their throats cut were bandaged up with torn linen and bagging on which German printed words were dimly legible. It would have been a scene of unmitigated grimness, save for last summer's enterprising grass and flowers, which autumn, kinder than war, had not killed.

Late roses and early chrysanthemums grew in the gardens of broken, deserted cottages, as if the flowers yearned to comfort the wounded walls with soft caresses, innocent as the touch of children. On the burned facades of houses, trellised fruit-trees clung, some dead—mere black pencillings sketched on brick or plaster—but now and then one was living still, like a beautiful young Mazeppa, bound to a dead steed.

So we arrived at Noyon, less than two hours by car from Compiegne. The nearness of it to the heart of France struck me suddenly. I could hear the echo of sad voices curbing the optimists: "The Germans are still at Noyon!"

Well—they are not at Noyon now. They've been gone for many moons. Yet there's a look on the faces of the people in the town—a look when they come to the windows or doors of their houses, or when they hear a sudden noise in the street—which makes those moons seem never to have waned.

Washington has adopted Noyon, so the Becketts could not offer any great public charity, but they could sprinkle about a few private good deeds, in remembrance of Jim, who loved the place, as he loved all the Ile-de-France. One of Mother Beckett's most valued letters from "Jim-on-his-travels" (as she always says) is from Noyon, and she was so bent on reading it aloud to us, as we drove slowly—almost reverently—into the town, that she wouldn't look (I believe she even grudged our looking!) at the facade of the far-famed Hotel de Ville, until she'd come to the end of the last page. She seemed to think that to look up prematurely would be like wanting to see the stage before the curtain rose on the play!

I loved her for it—we all loved her—and obeyed as far as possible. But one couldn't shut one's eyes to the Stars and Stripes that flapped on the marvellously ornate front of the old building—flapped like the wings of the American Eagle that has flown across the Atlantic to help save France.

Jim—a son of the Eagle—who gave his life for this land and for liberty, would have felt proud of that flag, I think, if he could have seen it to-day: for because she is the adopted child of Washington, Noyon "stars" the emblem of her American mother. She hangs out no other flag—not even that of France—on the Hotel de Ville. Maybe she'll give her own colours a place there later, but at this moment the Star Spangled Banner floats alone in its glory.

No nice, normal-minded person could remember, or morbidly want to remember, the name unkindly given by Julius Caesar to Noyon, when he had besieged it. I can imagine even Charlemagne waving that cumbrous label impatiently aside, though Noyon mixed with Laon was his first capital. "Noviodunum Belgarum it may have been" (I dare say he said). "But I'm going to call it Noyon!"

He was crowned king of Austria in Noyon cathedral—an even older one than the cathedral of to-day, which the Germans have generously omitted to destroy, merely stealing all its treasures! But I feel sure he doesn't feel Austrian in these days, if he is looking down over the "Blessed Damosel's" shoulder, to see what's going on here below. He belonged really to the whole world. Why, didn't that fairy-story king, Haroun al Raschid, send him from Bagdad the "keys of the tomb of Christ," as Chief of the Christian World? They say his ghost haunts Noyon, and was always there whenever a king was crowned, or elected—as Hugh Capet was. Perhaps it may have been Charlemagne in the spirit who persuaded the Germans to their great retreat from the Noyon front this last spring of 1917!

Coming into the Place, and stopping in front of the Hotel de Ville, gave me the oddest sense of unreality, because, when we were in Paris the other day, I saw the scene in a moving picture: the first joyful entry of the French soldiers into the town, when the Germans had cleared out. I could hardly believe that I wasn't just a figure flickering across a screen, and that the film wouldn't hurry me along somewhere else, whether I wanted to go or not.

There were the venerable houses with the steep slate roofs, and singularly intelligent-looking windows, whose bright panes seemed to twinkle with knowledge of what they had seen during these dreadful eighteen months of German occupation. There were the odd, unfinished towers of the cruciform cathedral—quaint towers, topped with wood and pointed spirelets—soaring into the sky above the gray colony of clustered roofs. There was the cobbled pavement, glittering like masses of broken glass, after a shower of rain just past; and even more interesting than any of these was the fantastically carved facade of the Hotel de Ville, which has lured thousands of tourists to Noyon in days of peace. Who knows but they have been coming ever since 1532, when it was finished?

At first sight, we should never have guessed what Noyon had suffered from the Germans. It was only after wandering through the splendid old cathedral of Notre-Dame, stripped of everything worth stealing, and going from street to street (we paused a long time in the one where Calvin was born, a disagreeable, but I suppose useful, man!) that we began to realize the slow torture inflicted by the Germans. Of course, "lessons" had to be taught. Rebellious persons had to be "punished." Nothing but justice had been done upon the unjust by their just conquerors. And oh, how thorough and painstaking they were in its execution!

As they'd destroyed all surrounding cities and villages, they had to put the "evacuated" inhabitants somewhere (those they couldn't use as slaves to work in Germany), so they herded the people by the thousand into Noyon. That place had to be spared for the Germans themselves to live in, being bigger and more comfortable than others in the neighbourhood; so it was well to have as many of the conquered as possible interned under their own sharp eyes. Noyon was "home" to six thousand souls before the war. After the Germans marched in, it had to hold ten thousand. But a little more room in the houses was thriftily obtained by annexing all the furniture, even beds. Tables and chairs they took, too, and stoves, and cooking utensils, which left the houses conveniently empty, to be shared by families from Roye, and Nesle, and Ham, and Chauny—oh, so many other towns and hamlets, that one loses count in trying to remember!

How the people lived, they hardly know now, in looking back, some of them told us, as we walked about with a French officer who was our guide. Eighteen months of it! Summer wasn't quite so bad. One can always bear hardships when weather, at least, is kind. But the winters! It is those winters that scarcely bear thinking of, even now.

No lights were allowed after dark. All doors must be left open, for the German military police to walk in at any hour of the night, to see what mischief was brewing in the happy families caged together. There was no heating, and often no fire for cooking, consequently such food as there was had to be eaten cold. No nose must be shown out of doors unless with a special permit, so to speak, displayed on the end of it. Not that there was much incentive to go out, as all business was stopped, and all shops closed. Without "le Comite Americain," thousands would have starved, so it was lucky for Noyon that the United States was neutral then!

We spent hours seeing things, and talking to people—old people, and children, and soldiers—each one with a new side of the great story to tell, as if each had been weaving a few inches of some wonderful, historic piece of tapestry, small in itself, but essential to the pattern. Then we started for home—I mean Compiegne—by a different way; the way of Carlepont, named after Charlemagne, because it is supposed that he was born there.

The forest was even more lovable than before, a younger forest: fairy-like in beauty as a rainbow, in its splashed gold and red, and green and violet and orange of autumn. The violet was "atmosphere," but it was as much a part of the forest as the leaves, or the delicate trunks dim as ghosts in shadow, bright as organ-pipes where sun touched them. Out from the depths came sweet, mysterious breaths, and whispers like prophecies of peace. But to this region of romance there were sharp contrasts. Not even dreams have sharper ones! German trenches, chopped into blackened wastes that once were farmlands, and barbed wire wriggling like snake-skeletons across dreary fields.

We got out of our cars, and went into the trenches, thinking thoughts unspeakable. Long ago as the Germans had vanished, and every corner had been searched, our officer warned us not to pick up "souvenirs." Some infernal machine might have been missed in the search and nothing was to be trusted—no, not even a bit of innocent-looking lead pencil.

They were trenches made to live in, these! They had been walled with stones from ruined farmhouses. The "dug-outs" were super-dug-outs. We saw concealed cupolas for machine-guns, and "les officiers boches" had had a neat system of douches.

There was no need to worry that Brian might stumble or fall in the slippery labyrinths we travelled, for he had Dierdre O'Farrell as guide. I'm afraid I knew what it was to be jealous: and this new gnawing pain is perhaps meant to be one of my punishments. Of course it's no more than I deserve. But that Brian should be chosen as the instrument, all unknowingly, and happily—that hurts!

It was just as we were close to Compiegne, not twenty minutes (in motor talk) outside the town, that the "accident" happened.



CHAPTER XXII

At first it seemed an ordinary, commonplace accident. A loud report like a pistol shot: a flat tire down on our car: that was all.

We stopped, and the little taxi-cab, tagging on behind like a small dog after a big one, halted in sympathy. Julian O'Farrell jumped out to help Morel, our one-legged chauffeur, as he always does if anything happens, just to remind the Becketts how kind and indispensable he is. We knew that we should be hung up for a good twenty minutes, so the whole party, with the exception of Mother Beckett and me, deserted the cars. Brian was with Dierdre. He had no need of his sister; so I was free to stop with the little old lady, who whispered in my ear that she was tired.

Father Beckett and Julian watched Morel, giving him a word or a hand now and then. Dierdre and Brian sauntered away, deep in argument over Irish politics (it's come to that between them: and Dierdre actually listens to Brian!). Mother Beckett drifted into talk of Jim, as she loves to do with me, and I wandered, hand in hand with her, back into his childhood. Blue dusk was falling like a rain of dead violets—just that peculiar, faded blue; and as I was absorbed in the tale of a nursery fire (Jim, at six, playing the hero) I had no eyes for scenery. I was but vaguely aware that not far off loomed a gateway, adorned with a figure of the Virgin. A curving avenue led to shadowy, neglected lawns, dimly suggesting some faded romance of history.

Presently, from between the open gates came a man in khaki, accompanied by a tall, slim, and graceful dog. It was he, not the man, that caught my eye and for an instant snatched my thought from Little Boy Jim rescuing a rocking-horse at the risk of his life. He was a police dog with the dignity of a prince and the lightness of a plume.

"Lovely creature!" I said to myself, as he and the khaki man swung toward us down the road. And I wished that Brian could see him, for the dog Brian loved and lost at the Front was a Belgian police dog.

Perhaps, Padre, Brian wrote you about his wonderful pet, that he thought worthy to name after the dog-star Sirius. I've forgotten to ask if he did write; but I seldom had a letter from him from the trenches that didn't mention Sirius. Everyone seemed to adore the dog, which developed into a regimental mascot. What his early history was can never be known: but Brian rescued him from a burning chateau in Belgium, just as Jim rescued the rocking-horse of Mother Beckett's nursery story, though with rather more risk! It was a chateau where some hidden tragedy must have been enacted, because the Germans took possession of it with the family still there—such of the family as wasn't fighting: two young married women, sisters, wives of brothers. But when the Germans ran before the British, and fired the chateau as they went, not a creature living or dead was left in the house—except the dog—and nothing has ever been heard of the sisters.

The fire was raging so fiercely when Brian's regiment arrived that no one would have ventured into the house if a dog hadn't been heard to howl. You know how Brian loves dogs. When he found that the sound came from a certain room on the ground floor, he determined to get in somehow. Masses of ivy cloaked that side of the chateau. It was beginning to crackle with fire that flamed out from other windows, but Brian climbed the thick, rope-like stems, hundreds of years old, and smashed his way through the window. The room was filling with smoke. The dog's voice was choked. Brian's eyes streamed, but he wouldn't give up. Only by crawling along the floor under the smoke curtain could he get at the dog. Somebody had meant to murder the animal, for he had been chained to the leg of a table.

Brian wrote that the dog realized his danger, and was grateful as a human being to his rescuer. His worship of Brian was pathetic. He seemed to care for no one else, though he was too fine a gentleman not to be polite to all—all, that is, except Germans. They never dared let him loose when prisoners were about. The sight of a gray-green uniform was to that dog what a red rag is to a bull. For him some horror was associated with it—a horror which must remain a mystery for us.

The day Brian lost his eyesight he lost Sirius. When he came back to consciousness, only to learn that he was blind, his first thought was of his friend. No one knew what had happened to the dog. The chances seemed to be that the shell which had buried Brian had buried Sirius, too; but Brian wouldn't believe this. Somehow the dog would have contrived to escape. I had to promise that, whenever I happened to see a dark gray, almost black Belgian police dog of beautiful shape, I would call "Sirius" to see if he answered.

More than once since this trip began I've called "Sirius!" to police dogs, not knowing whether they were Belgian, German, or Dutch, and they have answered only with glances of superb scorn. This time I hesitated. The mental picture I saw of myself—a vague young woman, seated in an automobile stranded by the roadside, trying to lure away the dog of a strange man—was disconcerting. While I debated whether to break my promise or behave like a wild school girl, the animal paused in his listless trot. He stopped, as if he'd been struck by an unseen bullet, quivered all over, and shot past us like a torpedo. A minute later I heard a tumultuous barking—a barking as if the gates of a dog's heaven had suddenly opened.

I sprang up in the car, and turning round, knelt on the seat to see what was going on behind us. Far away were Brian and Dierdre. And oh, Padre, I can never dislike that girl again! I apologize for everything I ever said against her. She saw that great police dog making for blind Brian. And you know, a police dog can look formidable as a panther. She took no time to think, though the idea might have sprung to her mind that the creature was mad. She simply threw herself in front of Brian. It was an offer of her life for his.

I could do nothing, of course. I was too far off. I'm not a screaming girl, but I'm afraid I did give a shriek, for Mother Beckett started up, and cried out: "What's the matter?"

I didn't answer her. I hardly heard. I forgot everyone except Brian and that girl. It was only when the thing was over, and we were all talking at once, that I realized how the others had shared my fright.

Perhaps Brian recognized the dog's bark at a distance, for he says a dog's voice is individual as a man's. Or his instinct—made magically keen by his blindness—told him in a flash of inspiration what his eyes couldn't see. Anyhow, he knew that Dierdre was in danger, and almost flung her behind him. He was just in time to save her from being thrown down by the dog, who hurled himself like a young avalanche at Brian. To those who had no clue to the truth, it must have seemed that the animal was mad. Julian, and Father Beckett, and the khaki man rushed to the rescue, only to see the dog and Brian in each other's arms, the creature licking Brian's face, laughing and crying at the same time—which you know, Padre, a dog frantic with joy at sight of a long-lost master can do perfectly well! It seems too melodramatic to be true, but it is true: the dog was Sirius.

You'll think now that this is the "astonishing thing" which would—I said—have made this whole trip worth while. But no: the thing I meant has little or nothing to do with the finding of Sirius.

Even Mother Beckett could sit still no longer. She had to be helped out of the car by me to join the group round Brian and the dog. She took my arm, and I matched my steps to her tiny trot, though I pined to sprint! We met Father Beckett coming back with apologies for his one minute of forgetfulness. The first time in years, I should think, that he had forgotten his wife for sixty whole seconds!

"It's like something in a story or a play," he panted, out of breath. "This is Brian's lost dog. You've heard him talk of Sirius, my dear. There can be no doubt it's the same animal! The man who thought he was its master admits that. And guess who he is—the man, not the dog."

Mother Beckett reminded her husband that never had she succeeded in a guess. But she was saved trying by the arrival of the man in khaki who, having abandoned his dog—or being abandoned by it—had followed Mr. Beckett.

"Why, Jack Curtis!" gasped the little old lady. "It can't be you!"

"I guess it's nobody else," laughed a soldierly fellow, with the blackest eyes and whitest teeth imaginable. "I'm doing the war for the New York Record—staying here at the chateau of Royalieu with the British correspondents for the French front."

I longed to get to Brian and be introduced to Sirius, but Mother Beckett caught my arm. "Mary, dear," she cooed, "I'd like you and Mr. Curtis to meet. Jack, this is Miss O'Malley, who would have been our Jim's wife if he'd lived. And Mary, this is one of Jim's classmates at college; a very good friend."

The khaki young man (American khaki) held out his hand and I put mine into it. He stared at me—a pleasant, sympathetic, and not unadmiring stare—peering nearsightedly through the twilight.

"So Jim found you again, after all?" he asked, in a quiet, low voice, not utterly unlike Jim's own. Men of the same university do speak alike all over the world.

"I—don't quite understand," I stammered. When any sudden question about Jim is flung at me before his parents, I'm always a little scared!

"Jim and I had a bet," Mr. Curtis explained, "that he couldn't travel incog., through Europe for a given length of time, in a big auto, doing himself well everywhere, without his real name coming out. He won the bet, but he told me—after he got over a bad dose of typhoid—that he'd lost the only girl he'd ever loved or could love—lost her through that da—that stupid bet. He described the girl. I guess there aren't two of her on earth!"

"That's a mighty fine compliment, Molly!" said Father Beckett.

Just then Brian called, and I wasn't sorry, for I couldn't find the right answer for the man who had separated Jim Beckett from me. It was all I could do to get my breath.

"Why, of course, that's your brother! I might have known by the likeness. Gee, but it's great about the dog! No wonder it despised the name of 'Sherlock.' Rather a come-down from a star! There's a big story in this. Your party will have to dine with us correspondents, and talk things over. The crowd will be delighted. Say yes, Mrs. Beckett!"

I heard no more, for I was on my way to Brian. But by the time I'd thanked Dierdre, been slightly snubbed by her, and successfully presented to Sirius, it was settled that we should spend our evening at Royalieu with the correspondents. The Beckett auto was ready, but the dog's joy was too big for the biggest car, so Brian and I walked to the chateau, and Jack Curtis with us, to exchange stories of le grand chien policier, late "Sherlock."