Matching the new history on to the early mystery was like fitting in the lost bits of a jigsaw puzzle—bits which, when missing, left the picture void. Between Brian and the war correspondent the pattern came to life: but there's one piece in the middle which can never be restored. Only one person could supply that: a German officer, and he is no longer in this world.

Jack Curtis found the police dog, badly wounded, at a place near Paschendaele, where the Germans had temporary headquarters and had been driven out after a fierce struggle. One of the dog's legs was broken, and blood had dried on his glossy coat, but he "registered delight" (as moving picture people say) when he limped out of a half-ruined house to welcome the rush of British khaki. The few inhabitants who had lived in the village through the German occupation, knew the dog as "Siegfried," to which name he had obstinately refused to answer. His German master, a captain, whom he obeyed sullenly, always dragged him about in leash, as he never willingly kept at heel. Everyone wondered why the officer, who was far from lenient with his men, showed patience with the dog. But his orderly explained that Captain von Busche had picked up the starving animal weeks before, wandering about No Man's Land. The creature was valuable, and his dislike of the gray-green uniform had puzzled Von Busche. His failure to win the dog's affection piqued him, and in his blundering way he persevered. The people of the village were more successful. They made friends with "Siegfried," to Von Busche's annoyance; and a day or two before the hurried German retreat under bombardment, the dog was beaten for deserting his master to follow a little boy. The boy, too, was punished for his "impudence" in calling the dog. People were indignant, and there were secret murmurings about revenge.

That night, however, Fate took the matter in hand. Precisely what happened is the bit that must remain missing in the puzzle. The dog slept in the room with his master, in a house where several young officers lived close to headquarters. All of them had been out playing cards at a tavern. Von Busche returned earlier than the rest. He was seen in the street the worse for drink. He went into the house, and must have gone to his room, where the police dog had been shut up for hours in disgrace. A moment later there was a yell, then a gurgling shriek. The neighbours listened—and shrugged their shoulders. The parents of the child who had been beaten by Von Busche lived next door. They heard sounds of a scuffle; furniture falling; faint groans and deep growls. Lips dared not speak, but eyes met and said: "The dog's done what we couldn't do."

Silence had fallen long before Von Busche's fellow officers came home; such silence as that town knew, where bombardment ceased not by day or night. Before dawn, a bomb fell on the roof of the house, which till then had never been touched, and the officers all scuttled out to save themselves; all but Von Busche. Whether in the confusion he was forgotten, or whether it was thought he had not come home, no one could tell. He was not seen again till after the Germans had packed up in haste and decamped, which they did a few hours later, leaving the townsfolk to shelter in cellars. It was only when the British arrived, and Siegfried limped out from the battered house, that the dog's existence was recalled—and the sounds in the night. Then the house was searched, and Von Busche's body found, half buried under fallen tiles and plaster. There were wounds in his throat, however, not to be accounted for by the accident. The dog's broken leg was also a mystery. "I had the poor boy mended up by a jolly good surgeon," Jack Curtis finished his story. "He's as sound as ever now. He attached himself to me from the first, as if he knew he had to thank me for his cure, but he wasn't enthusiastic. I couldn't flatter myself that I was loved! I had the idea I wasn't what he wanted—that he'd like to tell me what he did want, and politely bid me good-bye forever."

"You don't know where Von Busche got hold of the dog, do you?" Brian asked.

"Only what his orderly told people, that it was in Flanders, close to some ruined, burnt-up chateau that he could hardly be forced to leave, though he was starving."

"I thought he'd get back there!" Brian said. "As for Von Busche—I wonder—but no! If it had been he the first time, would the dog have waited all those weeks for his revenge?"

"I don't understand," said the war correspondent.

"I don't myself," answered Brian. "But maybe the dog will manage to make me, some day. I was thinking—how I found him, tied to a table in a burning room. If Von Busche—— But anyhow, Sirius, you're no assassin! At worst, you're an avenger."

The dog leaped upon Brian at sound of the remembered name. Odd that three of his names, chosen by different men, should begin with "S"!

He's going to be an exciting passenger for the Becketts' car I foresee. But Brian can make him do anything, even to keeping quiet. And the trip can't go on a step without him now!

I felt that Jack Curtis had been hoping for a chance to speak with me alone—about Jim. But there was no such chance then. We were met by two of the British correspondents, and a French officer with a very high and ancient title, who was playing host (for France) to the newspaper men in this old chateau, once a convent. You see, the two cars had shot past as we walked; and by the time we reached the door preparations were being made for an impromptu party.

Never was a dinner so good, it seemed, and never was talk so absorbing. Some of it concerned an arch of honour or a statue to be placed over the spot where the first men of the American army fell in France: at Bethelmont; some concerned a road whose construction is being planned—a sacred road through Belgium and France, from the North Sea to Alsace; a road to lead pilgrims past villages and towns destroyed by Germany. This, according to the correspondents who were full of the idea, doesn't mean that the devastation isn't ultimately to be repaired. The proposal is, to leave in each martyred place a memorial for the eyes of coming generations: a ruined church; a burned chateau; the skeleton of an hotel de ville, or a wrecked factory; a mute appeal to all the world: "This was war, as the Germans made it. In the midst of peace, Remember!"

Beneath my interest in the talk ran an undercurrent of my own private thought, which was not of the future, but of the past. I'd begun to wonder why I had been afraid of Jack Curtis. Instead of dreading words with him alone, I wished for them now.

After dinner I had but a few minutes to wait. When I'd refused coffee, he, too, refused, and made an excuse to show me a room of which the correspondents were fond—a room full of old trophies of the forest hunt.

"Did you notice at dinner how I kept trying to get a good look at your left hand?" Curtis asked.

"No," I answered, "I didn't notice that."

"I'm glad. I was scared you'd think me cheeky. Yet I couldn't resist. I wanted to see whether Jim had given you the ring."

"The ring?" I echoed.

"The ring of our bet, the year before the war: the bet you knew about, that kept you two apart till Jim came over to France this second time."

"Yes—I knew about the bet," I said, "but not the ring. I—I haven't an engagement ring."

"Queer!" Jack Curtis puzzled out aloud. "It was a race between Jim and me which should get that ring at an antique shop, when we both heard of its history. He could afford to bid higher, so he secured it. Not that he was selfish! But he said he wanted the ring in case he met his ideal and got engaged to her. If he'd lost the bet the ring would have been mine. If he didn't give it to you, I wonder what's become of the thing? Perhaps his mother knows. Did she ever speak to you about Jim bringing home a quaint old ring from France, that time after his fever—a ring supposed to have belonged to the most beautiful woman of her day, the Italian Countess Castiglione, whom Louis Napoleon loved?"

"No," I said. "He can't have given the ring to his mother, or she would have told me about it, I'm sure. She's always talking of him."

"Perhaps it was stolen or lost," Curtis reflected. "Yet I don't feel as if that had happened, somehow! I trust my feelings a good deal—especially since this war, that's made us all a bit psychic—don't you?"

"I have too many feelings to trust half of them!" I tried to laugh.

"Have you ever had one, I wonder, like mine, about Jim? Dare I speak to you of this?"

"Why not?"

"Well—I wouldn't dare to his mother. Or even to the old man."

"You must speak now, please, Mr. Curtis, to me!"

"It's this; have you ever had the feeling that Jim may be alive?"

We were standing. I caught at the back of a chair. Things whirled for an instant. Then I gathered my wits together. "I haven't let myself feel it," I said. "And yet, in a way, I always feel it. I mean, I seem to feel—his thoughts round us. But that's because we speak and think of him almost every moment of the day, his father and mother and I. There can be no doubt—can there?"

"Others have come back from the dead since this war. Why not Jim Beckett?"

"They said they had—found his body."

"Oh, they said! Germans say a lot of things. But for the Lord's sake, Miss O'Malley, don't let's upset those poor old people with any such hope. I've only my feeling—and other people's stories of escape—to go upon. I spoke to you, because I guess you've got a strong soul, and can stand shocks. Besides, you told me I must speak. I had to obey."

"Thank you for obeying," I said. And just then someone came into the room.

* * * * *

Now, Padre, I have told you the great thing. What does it matter what happens to me, if only Jack Curtis's "feeling" comes true?



CHAPTER XXIII

It is two days since I wrote, Padre; and I have come back to Compiegne from a world of unnatural silence and desolation. Day before yesterday it was Roye and Nesle; the Chateau of Ham; Jussy, Chauny and Prince Eitel Friedrich's pavilion. To-morrow we hope to start for Soissons.

Yesterday we rested, because Mother Beckett had a shocking headache. (Oh, it was pathetic and funny, too, what she said when we slipped back into Compiegne at night! "Isn't it a comfort, Molly, to see a place again where there are whole houses?") After Soissons we shall return to Compiegne and then go to Amiens with several of the war correspondents, who have their own car. Women aren't allowed, as a rule, to see anything of the British front, but it's just possible that Father Beckett can get permission for his wife to venture within gazing distance. Of course, she can't—or thinks she can't—stir without me!

We took still another road to Noyon (one must pass through Noyon going toward the front, if one keeps Compiegne for one's headquarters) and the slaughter of trees was the wickedest we'd seen: a long avenue of kind giants murdered, and orchards on both sides of it. The Germans, it seems, had circular saws, worked by motors, on purpose to destroy the large trees in a hurry. They didn't protect their retreat by barring the road with the felled trunks. They left most of the martyrs standing, their trunks so nearly sawed through that a wind would have blown them down. The pursuing armies had to finish the destruction to protect themselves. Farms were exterminated all along the way; and little hamlets—nameless for us—were heaps of blackened brick and stone, mercifully strewn with flowers like old altars to an unforgotten god.

Roye was the first big place on our road. It used to be rich, and its 4,000 inhabitants traded in grain and sugar. How the very name brought back our last spring joy in reading news of the recapture! "Important Victory. Roye Retaken." It was grandly impressive in ruin, especially the old church of St. Pierre, whose immense, graceful windows used to be jewelled with ancient glass that people came from far away to see.

Jim had written his mother about that glass, consequently she would get out of the car to climb (with my help and her husband's) over a pile of fallen stones like a petrified cataract, which leads painfully up to the desecrated and pillaged high altar. I nearly sprained my ankle in getting to one of the windows, under which my eyes had caught the glint of a small, sparkling thing: but I had my reward, for the sparkling thing was a lovely bit of sapphire-blue glass from the robe of some saint, and the little lady was grateful for the gift as if it had been a real jewel—indeed, more grateful. "I'll keep it with my souvenirs of Jim," she said, "for his eyes have looked on it: and it's just the colour of yours which he loved. He'd be pleased that you found it for me." (Ah, if she knew! I can't help praying that she never may know, though such prayers from me are almost sacrilege.)

A little farther on—as the motor, not the crow, flies—we came to Nesle, or what once was Nesle. The ghost of the twelfth-century church looms in skeleton form above one more Pompeii among the many forced by the Germans upon France: but save for that towering relic of the past there's little left of this brave town of the Somme, which was historic before the thirteenth century. It gave its name to a famous fighting family of feudal days: and through the last heiress of the line—a beauty and a "catch"—a certain Seigneur de Nesle became Regent of France, in the second Crusade of Louis XII—"Saint Louis." Later ladies of the line became dear friends of another Louis, fifteenth of the name, who was never called saint. Not far from Nesle, Henry V of England crossed the Somme and won the Battle of Agincourt. But now, the greatest dramatic interest is concentrated in the cemetery!

We had heard of it at Compiegne and the wild things that had happened there: so after a look at the ruined church, and the once charming Place, we went straight to the town burial-place, and our unofficial guide was the oldest man I ever saw. He had lurked rather than lived, through months of German barbarity at Nesle, guarding a bag of money he'd hidden underground. An officer from Noyon was with us; but he had knowledge of the ancient man—a great character—and bade him tell us the tale of the graveyard. He obeyed with unction and with gestures like lightning as it flashes across a night sky. The looks his old eyes darted forth as he talked might have struck a live German dead.

"The animals! What do you think they did when they were masters here?" he snarled. "Ah, you do not know the Boches as we learned to know them, so you would never guess. They opened our tombs, the vaults of distinguished families of France. They broke the coffins and stole the rings from skeleton fingers. They left the bones of our ancestors, and of our friends whose living faces we could remember, scattered over the ground, as if to feed the dogs. In our empty coffins they placed their own dead. On the stone or marble of monuments they cut away the names of those whose sacred sleep they had disturbed. Instead, they inscribed the disgusting names of their Boche generals and colonels. Where they could not change the inscriptions they destroyed the tombstones and set up others. You will see them now. But wait—you have not heard all yet. Far from that! When the Tommies came to Nesle—your English Tommies—they did not like what the Boches had done to our cemetery. They said things—strong things! And while they were hot with anger they knocked the hideous new monuments about. They could not bear to see them mark the stolen graves. The little crosses that showed where simple soldiers lay, those they did not touch. It was only the officers' tombs they spoiled. I will show you what they did."

We let him hobble ahead of us into the graveyard. He led us past the long rows of low wooden crosses with German names on them, the crosses with British names—(good, sturdy British names: "Hardy," "Kemp," "Logan," "Wilding," planted among flowers of France)—and paused in the aristocratic corner of the city of the dead. Once, this had been the last earthly resting-place of old French families, or of the rich whose relatives could afford expensive monuments. But the war had changed all that. German names had replaced the ancient French ones on the vaults, as German corpses had replaced French bodies in the coffins. Stone and marble monuments had been recarved, or new ones raised. There were roughly cut figures of German colonels and majors and captains. This rearrangement was what the "Tommies" had "not liked." They liked it so little that they chopped off stone noses and faces; they threw red ink, brighter than blood, over carved German uniforms, and neatly chipped away the counterfeit presentment of iron crosses. In some cases, also, they purified the vaults of German bones and gave back in exchange such French ones as they found scattered. They wrote in large letters on tombstones, "Boch no bon," and other illiterate comments unflattering to the dead usurpers; all of which, our old man explained, mightily endeared the Atkinses to the returning inhabitants of Nesle.

"Those brave Tommies are gone now," he sighed, "but they left their dead in our care. You see those flowers on their graves? It is we who put them there, and the children tend them every day. If you come back next year, it will be the same. We shall not forget."

"A great statesman paid us a visit not long after Nesle was liberated," our officer guide took up the story. "He had heard what the Tommies did, and he was not quite sure if they were justified. 'After all, German or not German, a tomb is a tomb, and the dead are dead,' he argued. But when he saw the cemetery of another place not far away, where the bodies of Frenchmen—yes, and women and little babies!—still lay where Germans had thrown them in stealing their graves, the grand old man's blood rushed to his head. He was no longer uncertain if the Tommies were right. He was certain they had done well; and in his red rage he, with his own hands, tore down thirty of the lying tombstones."

Oh, the silence of these dead towns that the Germans have killed with bombs and burning! You know what it is like, Padre, because you have passed behind the veil and have knowledge beyond our dreaming: but to me it is a triste revelation. I never realized before what the words "dead silence" could mean. It is a silence you hear. It cries out as the loudest voice could not cry. It makes you listen—listen for the pleasant, homely sounds you've always associated with human habitations: the laughter of girls, the shouts of schoolboys, the friendly barking of dogs. But you listen in vain. You wonder if you are deaf—if other people are hearing what you cannot hear: and then you see on each face the same blank, listening look that must be on your own. I think a night at Chauny, or Jussy, might drive a weak woman mad. But—I haven't come to Chauny or Jussy yet! After Nesle we arrived at Ham, with its canal and its green, surrounding marshes.

Ham has ceased to be silent. There are some houses left, and to those houses people have come back. Shops have reopened, as at Noyon, where the French Government has advanced money to the business men. We drove into the town of Ham (what is left of it!) just as we were hating ourselves for being hungry. It is sordid and dreadful to be hungry in the midst of one's rage and grief and pity—to want to eat in a place like Ham, where one should wish to absorb nothing but history; yet our officer guide, who has helped make a good deal of history since 1914, seemed to think lunching quite as important as sightseeing. In a somewhat battered square, busy with reopening shops (some of them most quaint shops, with false hair as a favourite display!) was a hotel. The Germans had lived in it for months. They had bullied the very old, very vital landlady who welcomed us. Their boots had worn holes in the stair carpet, going up and down in a goose-step. Their elbows had polished the long table in the dining room, and—oh, horror!—their mouths had drunk beer from glasses in which the good wine of France was offered to us!

"Ah, but I have scrubbed the goblets since with a fortune's worth of soda," the woman volubly explained. "They are purified. If I could wash away as easily the memories behind my eyes and in my ears! Of them I cannot get rid. Whenever I see an automobile, yes, even the most innocent automobile, I live again through a certain scene! We had here at Ham an invalid woman, whose husband the Boches took out and shot. When she heard the news, she threw herself under one of their military cars and was killed. If a young girl passes my windows (alas, it is seldom! the Germans know why) I see once more a procession of girls lined up to send into slavery. God knows where they are now, those children! All we know is, that in this country there is not a girl left of an age between twelve and twenty, unless she was hidden or disguised when the Boches took their toll. If I hear a sound of bells, I see our people being herded into church—our old, old church, with its proud monuments!—so their houses might be burned before the Germans had to run. They stayed in the church for days and nights, waiting for the chateau to be blown up. What a suspense! No one knew if the great shock, when it came, might not kill everyone!"

As she exploded reminiscences, the old lady fed us with ham and omelette salted with tears. We had to eat, or hurt her feelings, but it was as if we swallowed the poor creature's emotion with our food, and the effect within was dynamic. I never had such a volcanic meal! Our French officer was the only calm one among us, but—he had been stationed in this liberated region for months. It's an old story for him.

After luncheon we staggered away to see the great sight of Ham, the fortress-chateau which has given it history and fame for centuries. The Germans blew up the citadel out of sheer spite, as the vast pink pile long ago ceased to be of military value. They wished to show their power by ruining the future of the town, which lived on its monument historique: but (as often happens with their "frightfulness") that object was just the one they failed in. I can't believe that the castle of Ham was as striking in its untouched magnificence as now in the rose-red splendour of its ruin!

To be sure, the guardians can never again show precisely where Joan of Arc was imprisoned, or the rooms where Louis Napoleon lived through his six years of captivity, or the little garden he used to cultivate, or the way he passed to escape over the drawbridge, dressed as a mason, with a plank on his shoulder. But the glorious old tower or donjon still stands, one hundred feet high and one hundred feet wide. German gunpowder was too weak to bring it down, and so perhaps the prophecy of the Comte de St. Pol, builder of the fortress, may be fulfilled—that while France stands, the tower of Ham's citadel will stand. Thousands more pilgrims will come in a year, after the war, to see what the Germans did and what they failed to do, than ever came in the mild, prosperous days before 1914, when Ham's best history was old. They will come and gaze at the massive bulk—red always as if reflecting sunset light—looming against the blue; they will peer down into dusky dungeons underground: and the new guardian (a mutilated soldier he'll be, perhaps, decorated with the croix de guerre) will tell them about the girl of Ham who lured a German officer to a death-trap in a secret oubliette, "where 'tis said his body lies to-day." Then they will stand under the celebrated old tree in the courtyard, unhurt by the explosion, and take photographs of the chateau the Germans have unwittingly made more beautiful than before.

"Mon mieux" was the motto St. Pol carved over the gateway; "Our worst" is the taunt the Germans have flung. But the combination of that best and worst is glorious to the eye.

From Ham we spun on to Jussy, along the new white road which is so amazing when one thinks that every yard of it had to be created out of chaos a few months ago. (They say that some sort of surface was given for the army to pass over in three days' work!) At Jussy we came close to the real front—closer than we've been yet, except when we went to the American trenches. The first line was only three miles away, and the place is under bombardment, but this was what our guide called a "quiet day," so there was only an occasional mumble and boom. The town was destroyed, wiped almost out of existence, save for heaps of rubble which might have been houses or hills. But there were things to be seen which would have made Jussy worth a long journey. It had been a prosperous place, with one of the biggest sugar refineries in France, and the wrecked usine was as terrible and thrilling as the moon seen through the biggest telescope in the world.

Not that it looked like the moon. It looked more like a futurist sketch, in red and brown, of the heart of a cyclone; or of the inside of a submarine that has rammed a skeleton ship on the stocks. But the sight gave me the same kind of icy shock I had when I first saw the moon's ravaged face through a huge telescope. You took me, Padre, so you'll remember.

If you came to Jussy, and didn't know about the war, you'd think you had stumbled into hell—or else that you were having a nightmare and couldn't wake up. I shall never forget a brobdingnagian boiler as big as a battle tank, that had reared itself on its hind-legs to peer through a cheval de frise of writhing girders—tortured girders like a vast wilderness of immense thorn bushes in a hopeless tangle, or a pit of bloodstained snakes. The walls of the usine have simply melted, and it's hard to realize that it as a building, put up by human hands for human uses, ever existed. There is a new Jussy, though, created since the German retreat; and seeing it, you couldn't help knowing that there was a war! The whole landscape is full of cannon, big and little and middle-sized. Queer mushroom buildings have sprung up, for officers' and soldiers' barracks and canteens. Narrow plank walks built high above mud-level—"duck boards," I think they're called—lead to the corrugated iron, tin, and wooden huts. There are aerodromes and aerodromes like a vast circus encampment, where there are not cannon; and the greenish canvas roofs give the only bit of colour, as far as the eye can see—unless one counts the soldiers' uniforms. All the rest is gray as the desert before a dust-storm. Even the sky, which had been blue and bright, was gray over Jussy, and the grayest of gray things were the immense "saucisses"—three or four of them—hanging low under the clouds like advertisements of titanic potatoes, haughtiest of war-time vegetables.

Dierdre O'Farrell inadvertently called the big bulks "saucissons," which amused our officer guide so much that he laughed to tears. The rest of us were able to raise only a faint smile, and we felt his disappointment at our lack of humour.

"Ah, but it is most funny!" he said. "I will tell everyone. In future they shall for us be 'saucissons' forever. I suppose it is not so funny for you, because the sight of these dead towns has made you sad. I am almost afraid to take you on to Chauny. You will be much sadder there. Chauny is the sight most pitiful of all. Would you perhaps wish to avoid it?"

"What about you, Mother?" Father Beckett wanted to know.

But Mother had no wish to avoid Chauny. She was not able to believe that anything could be sadder than Roye, or Nesle, or Ham, or more grim than Jussy.

"He doesn't want to take us to Chauny," Brian whispered to me. We were all grouped together near the cars, with Sirius, a quiet, happy dog. "He's trying to think up a new excuse to get out of it."

I glanced at our guide. It was like Brian to have guessed what we hadn't seen! Now I was on the alert, the clear-cut French face did look nonplussed; and a nervous brown hand was tugging at a smart black moustache.

"Is there any reason why you think it would be better for us not to go there?" I decided to ask frankly.

"It's getting rather late," he suggested, in his precise English. "You have also the Pavilion of Prince Eitel Fritz before you. If it grows too dark, you cannot see St. Quentin well, in the distance, and the glasses will be of no use for Soissons."

"But we're going to Soissons day after to-morrow!" said Father Beckett.

"And there'll be a moon presently," added Dierdre. She had heard of the ruined convent at Chauny and was determined not to miss it.

"Yes, there'll be a moon," reluctantly admitted Monsieur le Lieutenant.

"Is there still another reason?" I tried to help him.

"Well, yes, there is one, Mademoiselle," he blurted out. "I had meant not to mention it. But perhaps it is best to tell, and then you may all choose whether you go to Chauny or not. There is a certain risk at this time of day, or a little later. You know we are close to the front here, and enemy aeroplanes fly nearly every afternoon over Chauny toward dusk. They hope to catch some important personage, and they come expressly to 'spot' automobiles. The road through the ruined town is white and new, and the gray military cars in which we bring visitors to the front stand out clearly, especially as twilight falls. I'm afraid we have lingered too long in some of these places. If we were a party of men, I should say nothing, but with three ladies——"

"I can answer for all three, Monsieur," said Mother Beckett, with a pathetically defiant tilt of her small chin.

"My son, you know, was a soldier. We have come to this part of the world to see what we can do for the people in honour of his memory. So we mustn't leave Chauny out."

"Madame, there are no people there, for there are no houses. There are but a few soldiers with an anti-aircraft gun."

"We must see what can be done about building up some of the houses so the people can come back," persisted the old lady, with that gentle obstinacy of hers.

The French officer made no more objections; and knowing his wife, I suppose Father Beckett felt it useless to offer any. We started at once for Chauny: in fact, we flew along the road almost as fast—it seemed—as enemy aeroplanes could fly along the sky if they pursued. But we had a long respite still before twilight.



CHAPTER XXIV

Our guide was right. Chauny was sadder than the rest, because there had been more of beauty to ruin. And it was ruined cruelly, completely! Even Gerbeviller, in Lorraine, had been less sad than this—less sad because of Soeur Julie, and the quarter on the hill which her devotion saved; less sad, because of the American Red Cross reconstruction centre, for the fruit trees. Here there had been no Soeur Julie, no reconstruction centre yet. The Germans, when they knew they had to go, gave three weeks to their wrecking work. They sent off, neatly packed, all that was worth sending to Germany. They measured the cellars to see what quantity of explosives would be needed to blow up the houses. Then they blew them up, making their quarters meanwhile at a safe distance, in the convent. As for that convent—you will see what happened there when the Boches had no further use for it!

In happy days before the war, whose joys we took comfortably for granted, Chauny had several chateaux of beauty and charm. It had pretty houses and lots of fine shops and a park. It was proud of its mairie and church and great usine (now a sight of horror), and the newer parts of the town did honour to their architects. But—Chauny was on the direct road between Cologne and Paris. Nobody thought much about this fact then, except that it helped travel and so was good for the country. It is only now that one knows what a price Chauny paid for the advantage. Instead of a beautiful town there remains a heap of cinders, with here and there a wrecked facade of pitiful grace or broken dignity to tell where stood the proudest buildings.

The sky was empty of enemy 'planes; but our guide hurried us through the town, where the new road shone white in contrast with our cars; and having hidden the autos under a group of trees outside, led us on foot toward the convent. The approach was exquisite: a long, long avenue of architectural elms, arbour-like in shade, once the favourite evening promenade of Chauny. That tunnel of emerald and gold would have been an interlude of peace between two tragedies—tragedy of the town, tragedy of the convent—if the ground hadn't been strewn with torn papers, like leaves scattered by the wind: official records flung out of strong boxes by ruthless German hands, poor remnants no longer of value, and saved from destruction only by the kindly trees, friends of happy memories. "The Boches didn't take time to spoil this avenue," said our officer. "They liked it while they lived in the convent; and they left in a hurry."

Just beyond the avenue lies the convent garden; and though it is autumn, when we stepped into that garden we stepped into an oasis of old-fashioned, fragrant flowers, guarded by delicate trees, gentle as the vanished Sisters and their flock of young girl pupils; sweet, small trees, bending low as if to shield the garden's breast from harm.

I wish when Chauny is rebuilt this convent might be left as a monument historique, for, ringed by its perfumed pleasance, it is a glimpse of "fairylands forlorn."

One half believes there must have been some fairy charm at work which kept the fire-breathing German dragon from laying this garden waste when he was forced out of his stolen lair in the convent! Little remains of the house, and in the rubbish heap of fallen walls and beams and plaster, narrow iron bedsteads, where nuns slept or young girls dreamed, perch timidly among stones and blackened bricks. But in the garden all is flowery peace: and the chapel, though ruined, is a strange vision of beauty framed in horror.

Not that the Germans were merciful there. They burned and blew up all that would burn or blow up. The roof fell, and heaped the floor with wreckage; but out of that wreckage, as out of a troubled sea, rise two figures: St. Joseph, and an almost life-size, painted statue of the Virgin. There the two stand firmly on their pedestals, their faces raised to God's roof of blue, which never fails. Because their eyes are lifted, they do not see the flotsam and jetsam of shattered stained glass, burnt woodwork, smashed benches, broken picture-frames and torn, rain-blurred portraits of lesser saints. They seem to think only of heaven.

Though I'm not a Catholic, the chapel gave me such a sense of sacredness and benediction that I felt I must be there alone, if only for a moment. So when our officer led the others out I stayed behind. A clear ray of late sunshine slanted through a broken window set high in a side wall, to stream full upon the face of the Virgin. Someone had crowned her with a wreath of fresh flowers, and had thrust a few white roses under the folded hands which seemed to clasp them lovingly, with a prayer for the peace of the world. The dazzling radiance brought face and figure to life; and it was as if a living woman had taken the statue's place on the pedestal. The effect was so startling that, if I were a Catholic, I might have believed in a miracle. Protestant as I am, I had the impulse to pray: but—(I don't know, Padre, if I have ever told you this)—I've not dared to pray properly since I first stole the Becketts' love for Brian and me. I've not dared, though never in my life have I so needed and longed for prayer.

This time I couldn't resist, unworthy as I am. The smile of peace and pardon on the statue's illumined face seemed to make all sin forgivable in this haunt of holy dreams. "God forgive me, and show me how to atone," I sent my plea skyward. Suddenly the conviction came that I should be shown a way of atonement, though it might be hard. I felt lighter of heart, and went on to pray that Jack Curtis's hope might be justified: that, no matter what happened to me, or even to Brian, Jim Beckett might be alive, in this world, and come back safely to his parents.

While I prayed, a sound disturbed the deep silence. It was a far-away sound, but quickly it grew louder and drew nearer: at first a buzzing as of all the bees in France mobilized in a bee-barrage. Then the buzzing became a roar. I knew directly what it was: enemy aeroplanes.

I could not see them yet, but they must be close. If they were flying very low, to search Chauny for visitors, I might be seen if I moved. Those in the garden were better off than I, for they were screened by the trees, but trying to join them I might attract attention to myself.

As I thought this, I wondered why I didn't decide upon the thing most likely to solve all my problems at once. If I were killed, Brian would grieve: but he had the Becketts to love and care for him, and—he had Dierdre: no use disguising that fact from my intelligence, after the episode of the dog! What a chance for me to disappear, having done for Brian all I could do! Oh, why didn't I add another prayer to my last, and beg God to let me die that minute?

I'll tell you why I did not pray this, Padre, and why, instead of trying to expose my life, I wished—almost unconsciously—to save it. I hardly realized why then, but I do realize now. It is different in these days from that night in Paris, when I wished I might be run over by a motor-car. At that time I should have been glad to die. Now I cling to life—not just because I'm young and strong, and people call me beautiful, but because I feel I must stay in the world to see what happens next.

I kept as still as a frightened mouse. I didn't move. I scarcely breathed. Presently an aeroplane sailed into sight directly overhead, and flying so low that I could make out its iron cross, exactly like photographs I'd seen. Whether the men in it could see me or not I can't tell; but if they could, perhaps they mistook me for one of the statues they knew existed in the ruined chapel, and thought I wasn't worth bombing.

In that case it was St. Joseph and the Virgin who protected me!

In a second the big bird of prey had swept on. I was sick with fear for a moment lest it should drop an "egg" on to the garden, and kill Brian or the Becketts, or the lieutenant who had wished to spare us this danger. Even the O'Farrells I didn't want hurt; and I was pleased to find out that about myself, because they are a far more constant danger for me than all the aeroplanes along the German front; and when I came face to face with realities in my own soul, I might have discovered a wicked desire for them to be out of the way at any price. But since Dierdre proved herself ready to die for Brian, I do admire if I don't like her. As for Julian—would it be possible, Padre, to miss a person you almost hate? Anyhow, when I tried to imagine how I should feel if I went back to the garden and saw him dead, I grew quite giddy and ill. How queer we are, we human things!

But no one was hurt. The whole party hid under the trees; and as the cars were also hidden at a distance, the German fliers turned tail, disappointed; besides, the anti-aircraft gun which we'd been told about, and had seen on our way to the convent, was potting away like mad, so it wasn't healthful for aeroplanes to linger merely "on spec."

Mother Beckett was pale and trembling a little, but she said that she had been too anxious about me, in my absence, to think of herself, which was perhaps a good thing. I noticed, when I joined them in the garden, after the roar had changed again to a buzz, that Dierdre stood close to Brian, and that his hand was on her shoulder, her hand on Sirius's beautiful head. Yet I felt too strangely happy to be jealous. I suppose it must have been through my prayer—or the answer to it.

* * * * *

When all was clear and the danger over (our guide said that the "birds" never made more than one tour of inspection in an afternoon) we started off again. Father Beckett suggested that his wife had better go home and rest, but she wouldn't hear of it. And when we reached a turning of the road which would lead us to Coucy-le Chateau, it was she who begged our lieutenant to let us run along that way, "just far enough for a glimpse, a tiny glimpse."

"My son wrote me it was the most wonderful old chateau in France," she pleaded. "I've got in my pocket now a snapshot he sent me."

The Frenchman couldn't resist. You know how charming the French are to old ladies. "It isn't as safe as—as the Bank of England!" he laughed. "Sometimes they keep this road rather hot. But to-day, I have told you, things are quiet all along. We will take what Madame calls a tiny glimpse."

Orders were given to our chauffeur. Brian was with the O'Farrells, coming on behind, and of course the Red Cross taxi followed at our heels like a faithful dachshund. Our big car flew swiftly, and the little one did its jolting best to keep up the pace, for time wouldn't wait for us—and these autumn days are cutting themselves short.

Presently we saw a thing which proved that the road was indeed "hot" sometimes: a neat, round shell-hole, which looked ominously new! We swung past it with a bump, and flashed into sight of a ruin which dwarfed all others we had seen—yes, dwarfed even cathedrals! A long line of ramparts rising from a high headland of gray-white chalk-ramparts crowned with broken, round towers, which the sun was painting with heraldic gold: the stump of a tremendous keep that reared its bulk like a giant in his death struggle, for a last look over his shield of shattered walls. This was what German malice had made of Coucy, pride of France, architectural masterpiece of feudal times!

"This is as far as I dare go!" our lieutenant said, with a brusque gesture which bade the chauffeur stop. But before the car turned, he gave us a moment to take in the picture of grandeur and unforgivable cruelty. Yes, unforgivable! for you know, Padre, there was no military motive in the destruction. The only object was to deprive France forever of the noblest of her castles, which has helped in the making of her history since a bishop of Rheims began to build it in 920.

"Roi ne suis Ne prince, ne duc, ne comte aussy. Je suys le Sire de Coucy."

The beautiful old boast in beautiful old French sang in my head as I gazed through tears at the new ruin of ancient grandeur.

Some of those haughty Sires de Coucy may have deserved to have their stronghold destroyed, for they seem—most of them—to have been as bad as they were vain. I remember there was one, in the days of Louis XII, who punished three little boys for killing a few rabbits in his park, by ordering the children to be hanged on the spot; and St. Louis was so angry on hearing of the crime that he wished to hang the Sire de Coucy on the same tree. There were others I've read of, just as wicked and high-handed: but their castle was not to blame for its master's crimes! Besides, the last of the proud Enguerrands and Thomases and Raouls, Seigneurs of the line, was son-in-law to Edward III of England; so all their sins were expiated long ago.

"The Boches were jealous of our Coucy," said the Frenchman, with a sigh. "They have nothing to compare with it on their side of the Rhine. If they could have packed up the chateau and carted it across the frontier they would—if it had taken three years. As they couldn't do that, they did what Cardinal Mazarin wasn't able to do with his picked engineers; they blew it up with high explosives. But all they could steal they stole: carvings and historic furniture. You know there was a room the guardian used to show before the war—the room where Cesar de Bourbon was born, the son of Henri Quatre of Navarre and Gabrielle d'Estrees? That room the Boches emptied when they first came in August, 1914. Not a piece of rich tapestry, not a suit of armour, not even a chair, or a table, or lamp did they leave. Everything was sent to Germany. But we believe we shall get it all again some day. And now we must go, for the Boches shell this road whenever they think of it, or have nothing better to do!"

The signal was given. We turned and tore along the road by which we'd come, our backs feeling rather sensitive and exposed to chance German bombs, until we'd got round the corner to a "safe section." Our way led through a pitiful country of crippled trees to a curious round hill. A little castle or miniature fortress must have crowned it once, for the height was entirely circled by an ancient moat. On top of this green mound Prince Eitel Fritz built for himself the imitation shooting-lodge which was our goal and viewpoint. And, Padre, there can't be another such German-looking spot in martyred France as he has made of the insulted hillock!

I don't know how many fair young birch trees he sacrificed to build a summer-house for himself and his staff to drink beer in, and gaze over the country, at St. Quentin, at Soissons and a hundred conquered towns and villages! Now he's obliged to look from St. Quentin at the summer-house—and how we pray that it may not be for long!

Over one door of the building a pair of crossed swords carved heavily in wood form a stolid German decoration; and still more maddeningly German are the seats outside the house, made of cement and shaped like toadstools. In the sitting room are rough chairs, and a big table so stained with wine and beer that I could almost see the fat figures of the prince and his friends grouped round it, with cheers for "Wein, Weib, und Gesang."

Close down below us, in sloping green meadows, a lot of war-worn horses en permission were grazing peacefully. Our guide said that some were "Americans," and I fancied them dreaming of Kentucky grasslands, or the desert herbs of the Far West, which they will never taste again. Also I yearned sorrowfully over the weary creatures that had done their "bit" without any incentive, without much praise or glory, and that would presently go back to do it all over again, until they died or were finally disabled. I remembered a cavalry-man I nursed in our Hopital des Epidemies telling me how brave horses are. "The only trouble with them in battle," he said, "is when their riders are killed, to make them fall out of line. They will keep their places!"

Both Father Beckett and the French officer had field-glasses, but we hardly needed them for St. Quentin. Far away across a plain slowly turning from bright blue-green to dim green-blue in the twilight, we saw a dream town built of violet shadows—Marie Stuart's dowry town. Its purple roofs and the dominating towers of its great collegiate church were ethereal as a mirage, yet delicately clear, and so beautiful, rising from the river-bank, that I shuddered to think of the French guns, forced to break the heart of Faidherbe's brave city.

It was a time of day to call back the past, for in the falling dusk modern things and old things blended lovingly together. For all one could see of detail, nothing had changed much since the plain of Picardy was the great Merovingian centre of France, the gateway through which the English marched, and went away never to return until they came as friends. Still less had the scene changed since the brave days when Marguerite de Valois rode through Picardy with her band of lovely ladies and gallant gentlemen. It was summer when she travelled; but on just such an evening of blue twilight and silver moonshine might she have had her pretended carriage accident at Catelet, as an excuse to disappoint the Bishop of Cambrai, and meet the man best loved of all her lovers, Duc Henri de Guise. It was just then he had got the wound which gave him his scar and his nickname of "Le Balafre"; and she would have been all the more anxious not to miss her hero.

I thought of that adventure, because of the picture Brian painted of the Queen on her journey, the only one of his which has been hung in the Academy, you know, Padre; and I sat for Marguerite. Not that I'm her type at all, judging from portraits! However, I fancied myself intensely in the finished picture, and used to hope I should be recognized when I strolled into the Academy. But I never was.

Looking down over the plain of Picardy, I pretended to myself that I could see the Queen's procession: Marguerite (looking as much as possible like me!) in her gold and crystal coach, lined with rose-coloured Spanish velvet, jewel-broidered: the gentlemen outriders trying to stare through the thick panes obscured with designs and mottoes concerning the sun and its influence upon human fate; the high-born girls chattering to each other from their embroidered Spanish saddles, as they rode on white palfreys, trailing after the glittering coach; and the dust rising like smoke from wheels of jolting chariots which held the elder women of the Court.

Oh, those were great days, the days of Henry of Navarre and his naughty wife! But, after all, there wasn't as much chivalry and real romance in Picardy then, or in the time of St. Quentin himself, as war has brought back to it now. No deeds we can find in history equal the deeds of to-day!

* * * * *

We got lost going home, somehow taking the wrong road, straying into a wood, plunging and bumping down and down over fearful roads, and landing—by what might have been a bad accident—in a deep ravine almost too strange to be true.

Even our French officer couldn't make out what had happened to us, or whither we'd wandered, until we'd stopped, and our blaze of acetylene had lighted up a series of fantastic caverns in the rock (caverns improved up to date by German cement) and in front of that honeycombed gray wall a flat, grassy lawn that was a graveyard.

"Mon Dieu, c'est le Ravin de Bitry!" he cried. "Let us get out of it! I would never have brought you here of my own free will."

"But why—why?" I insisted. "It isn't the only graveyard we have seen, alas! and there are only French names on the little crosses."

"I know," he said. "After we chased the Germans out of this hole, we lived here ourselves, in their caves—and died here, as you see, Mademoiselle. But the place is haunted, and not by spirits of the dead—worse! Put on your hats again, Messieurs! The dead will forgive you. And, ladies, wrap veils over your faces. If it were not so late, you would already know why. But the noise of our autos, and the lights may stir up those ghosts!"

Then, in an instant, before the cars could turn, we did know why. Flies!... such flies as I had never seen ...nightmare flies. They rose from everywhere, in a thick black cloud, like the plague of Egypt. They were in thousands. They were big as bees. They dropped on us like a black jelly falling out of a mould. They sat all over us. It was only when our cars had swayed and stumbled up again, over that awful road, out of the haunted hole in the deep woods, and risen into fresh, moving air, that the horde deserted us. Julian O'Farrell had his hands bitten, and dear Mother Beckett was badly stung on the throat. Horrible!... I don't think I could have slept at night for thinking of the Ravin de Bitry, if we hadn't had such a refreshing run home that the impression of the lost, dark place was purified away.

Forest fragrance sprayed into our faces like perfume from a vaporizer. We seemed to pass through endless halls supported by white marble pillars, which were really spaces between trees, magically transformed by our blazing headlight. Always in front of us hovered an archway of frosted silver, moving as we moved, like a pale, elusive rainbow; and when we put on extra speed for a long, straight stretch, poplars carelessly spared by the Boches spouted up on either side of us like geysers. Then, suddenly, across a stretch of blackness palely shone Compiegne, as Venice shines across the dark lagoon.



CHAPTER XXV

Little did I think, Padre, to write you from Soissons! When last I spoke to you about it, we were gazing through field-glasses at the single tower of the cathedral, pointing out of purple shadows toward the evening star of hope. Then we lost ourselves in the Ravin de Bitry, and arrived thankfully at Compiegne two hours later than we had planned. We expected to have part of a day at Soissons, but—I told you of the dreadful flies in that ravine of death, and how Mother Beckett was stung on the throat. The next day she had a headache, but took aspirin, and pronounced herself well enough for the trip to Soissons. Father Beckett let her go, because he's in the habit of letting her do whatever she wants to do, fancying (and she fancies it, too) that he is master. You see, we thought it was only a fatigue-headache. Foolishly, we didn't connect it with the sting, for Julian O'Farrell was bitten, too, and didn't complain at all.

Well, we set out for Soissons yesterday morning (I write again at night) leaving all our luggage at the hotel in Compiegne. It was quite a safe and uneventful run, for the Germans stopped shelling Soissons temporarily some time ago, when they were obliged to devote their whole attention to other places. The road was good, and the day a dream of Indian summer, when war seemed more than ever out of place in such a world. If Mother Beckett looked ill, we didn't notice, because she wore her dust-veil. The same officer was with us who'd been our guide last time, and we felt like friends, as he explained, with those vivid gestures Frenchmen have, just how the Germans in September, 1914, marched from Laon upon Soissons—marched fast, singing, yelling, wild to take a city so important that the world would be impressed. Why, it would be—they thought—as if the whole Ile-de-France were in their grasp! The next step would be to Paris, goal of all Germanic invasions since Attila.

It's an engaging habit of Mother Beckett's to punctuate exciting stories like this with little soft sighs of sympathy: but the graphic war descriptions given by our lieutenant left her cold. Even when we came into the town, and began to go round it in the car, she was heavily silent, not an exclamation! And we ought to have realized that this was strange, because Soissons nowadays is a sight to strike the heart a hammer-blow.

Of course the place isn't older than Rheims. It's of the same time and the same significance. But its face looks older in ruin—such features as haven't been battered out of shape. There's the wonderful St. Jean-des-Vignes, which should have interested the little lady, because the great namesake of her family St. Thomas a Beckett, lived there, when it was one of Soissons' four famous abbeys. There's the church of St. Leger, and the grand old gates of St. Medard, to say nothing of the cathedral itself. And then there's the history, which goes back to the Suessiones who owned twelve towns, and had a king whose power carried across the sea, all the way to Britain. If Mother Beckett doesn't know much about history, she loves being in the midst of it, and hearing talk of it. But when our Frenchman told us a story of her latest favourite, King Clovis, she had the air of being asleep behind her thick blue veil. It was quite a good story, too, about a gold vase and a bishop. The gold vase had been stolen in the sack of the churches, after the battle of Soissons, when Roman rule was ended in France. St. Remi begged Clovis to give the vase back. But the booty was being divided, and the soldier who had the vase refused to surrender it to a mere monarch. "You'll get what your luck brings you, like the rest of us!" said he, striking the vase so hard with his battle-axe that it was dented, and its beauty spoiled. Clovis swallowed the insult, that being the day of soldiers, not of kings: but he didn't forget; and he kept watch upon the man. A year later, to the day, the excuse he'd waited for came. The soldier's armour was dirty, on review; Clovis had the right as a general to reproach and punish him, so snatching the man's battle-axe, the king crushed in the soldier's head. "I do to you with the same weapon what you did to the gold vase at Soissons!" he said.

It wasn't until we had seen everything, and had spent over an hour looking at the martyred cathedral, from every point of view, inside and out, that Mother Beckett confessed her suffering. "Oh, Molly!" she gasped, leaning on my arm, "I'm so glad there's only one tower, and not two! That is, I'm glad, as it was always like that."

"Why," I exclaimed, "how odd of you, dearest! I know it's considered one of the best cathedrals in France, though it isn't a museum of sculpture, like Rheims. But the single tower worries me, it looks so unfinished. I'm not glad there's only one!"

"You would be if you felt like I do," she moaned. "If there was another tower, we'd have to spend double time looking at it, and in five minutes more I should have to faint! Oh no, I've stood everything so far, not to disappoint any one, but I couldn't see another tower!"

With that, she did faint, or nearly, then came to herself, and apologized for bothering us! Father Beckett hardly spoke, but his face was gray-white with fear, and he held the fragile creature in his arms as if she were his last link with the life of this world.

We got her back into the car; and the man who had shown us the cathedral said that there was an hotel within five minutes' motoring distance. It was not first rate, he explained, but officers messed there and occasionally wives and mothers of officers stayed there. He thought we might be taken in and made fairly comfortable; and to be sure we didn't miss the house, he rode on the step of the car, to show us the way.

It was a sad way, for we had to pass hillocks of plaster and stone which had once been streets, but we had eyes only for Mother Beckett's face, Father Beckett and I: and even Brian seemed to look at her. Sirius, too, for he would not go into the Red Cross taxi with the others! Brian, whom in most things the dog obeys with a pathetic eagerness, couldn't get him to do that: and when I said, "Oh, his eyes are tragic. He thinks you're going to send him away, never to see you again!" Brian didn't insist. So the dog sat squeezed in among us, knowing perfectly well that we were anxious about the little lady who patted him so often, and unpatriotically saved him lumps of sugar. He licked her small fingers, clasped by her husband, and attracting Mother Beckett's attention perhaps kept her from fainting again.

Well, we got to the hotel, which was really more of a pension than an hotel, and Madame Bornier, the elderly woman in deep mourning who was la patronne, was kind and helpful. Her best room had been made ready for the wife of an officer just coming out of hospital, but there would be time to prepare another. Our dear invalid was carried upstairs in her husband's arms, and I put her to bed while a doctor was sent for. Of course, we had no permission to spend a night at Soissons, but I began to foresee that we should have to stay unless we were turned out by the military authorities.

When the doctor came—a medecin major fetched from a hospital by our officer-guide—he said that Madame was suffering from malarial symptoms; she must have been poisoned. So then of course we remembered the sting on her throat. He examined it, looked rather grave, and warned Father Beckett that Madame sa femme would not be able to travel that day. She had a high temperature, and at best must have a day or two of repose, with no food save a little boiled milk.

Soissons seemed the last place in France to hope for milk of any description, but the doctor promised it from the hospital if it couldn't be got elsewhere, and added with pride that Soissons was not without resources. "When the Germans came three years ago," he said, "most of the inhabitants had fled, taking what they could carry. Only seven hundred souls were left, out of fifteen thousand, but many have come back: we have more than two thousand now, and some of them behaved like heroes and heroines. Oh yes, we may almost say that life goes on normally! You shall have all the milk you need for Madame."

When she had taken some medicine, and smiled at him, Father Beckett left his wife in my care, and rushed off to arrange about permission to stop. The medecin major and our officer-guide were useful. After telephoning from the military hospital to headquarters, everything was arranged; and we were authorized to remain in Soissons, at our own risk and peril. Madame Bornier prepared rooms for us all; but there weren't enough to go round, so Brian and Julian O'Farrell were put together, and Dierdre and I! She, by the way, is in bed at this moment, whether asleep or not I don't know; but if not she is pretending. Her lashes are very long, and she looks prettier than I ever saw her look before. But that may be because I like her better. I told you, that after what she did for Brian I could never dislike that girl again: but there has been another incident since then, about which I will tell you to-morrow. You know, I'm not easily tired, but this is our second night at Soissons. I sat up all last night with Mother Beckett, and oh, how glad I was, Padre, that Fate had forced me to train as a nurse! I've been glad—thankful—ever since the war: but this is the first time my gladness has been so personal. Brian's illness was in hospital. I could do nothing for him. But you can hardly think what it has meant to me, to know that I've been of real use to this dear woman, that I've been able to spare her suffering. Before, I had no right to her love. I'd stolen it. Now, maybe I am beginning to earn a little of the affection which she and Father Beckett give me.

I was all "keyed up" when I began to write to you to-night, Padre; but I was supposed to spend my three hours "off" in sleep. One hour is gone. Even if I can't sleep, I shall pass the other two trying to rest, in my narrow bed, which is close to Dierdre's.



CHAPTER XXVI

This is the next day. Mother Beckett is better, and I've been praised by the medecin major for my nursing. We've got our luggage from Compiegne, and may be here for days. We shall miss the pleasure of travelling to Amiens with the war correspondents, who must go without us, and we women will get no glimpse of the British front!

Now I'm going to tell you about the incident which has made me almost love Dierdre O'Farrell—a miracle, it would have seemed two weeks ago, when my best mental pet name for her was "little cat!"

When I wrote last night, I mentioned that the room Mother Beckett has in this little hotel had been intended for the wife of a French officer coming out of hospital. Another room was prepared for that lady, and it happened to be the one next door to Mother Beckett's. Through the thin partition wall I heard voices, a man's and a woman's, talking in French. I couldn't make out the words—in fact, I tried not to!—but the woman's tones were soft and sweet as the coo of a dove. I pictured her beautiful and young, and I was sure from her way of speaking that she adored her husband. The two come into my story presently, but I think it should begin with a walk that Brian and Dierdre (and Sirius, of course) took together.

With me shut up in Mother Beckett's room, my blind brother and Julian O'Farrell's sister were thrown more closely together even than before. I'm sure Julian saw to that, eliminating himself as he couldn't do when travelling all three in the Red Cross taxi! Perhaps Dierdre and Brian had never been alone in each other's company so long; and Brian found the chance he'd wished for, to get at the real girl, behind her sulky "camouflage."

He has repeated the whole conversation to me, because he wanted me to know Dierdre as he has learned to know her; and I shall write everything down as I remember it, though the words mayn't be precisely right. Never was there any one like Brian for drawing out confidences from shut-up souls (except you, Padre!) if he chooses to open his own soul, for that end; and apparently he thought it worth while in the case of Dierdre. He began by telling her things about himself—his old hopes and ambitions and the change in them since his blindness. He confessed to the girl (as he confessed to me long ago) how at first he wished desperately to die, because life without eyesight wasn't life. He has so loved colour, and beauty, and success in his work had been so close, that he felt he couldn't endure blindness.

"I came near being a coward," he said. "A man who puts an end to his life because he's afraid to face it is a coward. So I tried to see if I could readjust the balance. I fell back on my imagination—and it saved me. Imagination was always my best friend! It took me by the hand and led me into a garden—a secret sort of garden that belongs to the blind, and to no one else. It's the place where the spirits of colour and the spirits of flowers live—the spirit of music, too—and all sorts of beautiful strange things which people who've never been blind can't see—or even hear. They're not 'things,' exactly. They're more like the reality behind the things: God's thoughts of things as they should be, before He created them; artists' thoughts of their pictures; musicians' thoughts of their compositions—all better than the things resulting from the thoughts. Nothing in the outside world is as wonderful as what grows in that garden! I couldn't go on being unhappy there. Nobody could—once he'd found the way in."

"It must be hard finding the way in!" Dierdre said.

"It is at first—alone, without help. That's why, if I can, I want to help my fellow blind men to get there."

"Only men? Not women, too?"

"I've never met a blind woman. Probably I never shall."

"You're talking to one this minute! When I'm with you, I always feel as if I were blind, and you could see."

"You're unjust to yourself."

"No, but I'm unjust to you—I mean, I have been. I must tell you before we go on, because you're too kind, too generous. I'm blind about lots of things, but I do see that, now. I see how good you are. I used to think you were too good to be true—that you must be a poseur. I was always waiting for the time when you'd give yourself away—when you'd show yourself on the same level with my brother and me."

"But I am on the same level."

"Don't say it! I don't feel that horrid, bitter wish now. I'm glad you're higher than we are. It makes me better to look up to the place where you are. But I wish I could get nearer."

"You are very near. We're friends, aren't we? You don't really mind because I'm from the North and you from the South, and because we don't quite agree about politics?"

"I'd forgotten about politics between you and me! But there are other distances. Do take me into your garden. You say it belongs only to blind people; but if I am blind—with a different kind of blindness, and worse—can't I get there with you? I need such a garden, dreadfully. I'm so disappointed in life."

"Tell me how you're unhappy, and how you've been disappointed," said Brian. "Then perhaps we can find the right flowers to cure you, in the garden."

So she told him what Julian had told me: about trying to get on the stage, and not succeeding, and realizing that she couldn't act; feeling that there was no vocation, no place for her anywhere. To comfort the girl, Brian opened the gate of his garden of the blind, and gave her its secrets, as he has given them to me. He explained to her his trick of "seeing across far spaces," with the eyes of his mind, and heart: saying aloud, to himself, names of glorious places—"Athens—Rome—Venice," and going there in the airship of imagination; calling up visions of rose-sunset light on the yellowing marble of the Acropolis, or moonlight in the Pincian gardens, with great umbrella-pines like blots of ink on steel, or the opal colours shimmering deep down, under the surface of the Grand Canal. He made Dierdre understand his way of "listening to a landscape," knowing by the voice of the wind what trees it touched; the buzz of olive leaves bunched like hives of silver bees against the blue; the sea-murmur of pines; the skeleton swish of palms; the gay, dancing rustle of poplars. And he showed her how he gathered beauty and colour from words, which made pictures in his brain.

"I never thought of all these things when I could see pictures with my eyes—and paint them with my hands," he said. And perhaps he gave a sigh for the past, which touched Dierdre's heart as the wind, in his fancy, touched the trees. "Couldn't you use your old knowledge, and learn to paint without seeing?" she asked. "You might have a line for the horizon, and with someone to mix your colours under your directions—someone who'd tell you where to find the reds, where the greens, and so on, someone to warn you if you went wrong. You might make wonderful effects."

"I've thought of that," said Brian. "I've hoped—it might be. Sometime, when this trip is over, I may ask my sister's help——"

"Oh, your sister's!" Dierdre broke in. "But she may marry. Or she may go back to nursing again. I wish I could help you. It would make me happy. It would be helping myself, more than you! And we could begin soon. I could buy you paints from a list you'd give me. If we succeeded, you could surprise your sister and the Becketts. It would be splendid."

Brian agreed that it would be splendid, but he said that his sister must be "in" it, too. He wouldn't have secrets from her, even for the pleasure of a surprise.

"She won't let me help you," Dierdre said. "She'll want to do everything for you herself."

Brian assured the girl that she was mistaken about his sister. "She's mistaken about you, too," he added. "You'll see! Molly'll be grateful to you for inventing such a plan for me. She'll want you to be the one to carry it out."

No argument of his could convince the girl, however. They came back to the hotel at last, after a walk by the river, closer friends than before, but Dierdre depressed, if no longer sulky. She seemed in a strange, tense mood, as though there were more she wished to say—if she dared.

Dusk was falling (this was evening of the day we arrived, you must realize, Padre) and Brian admitted that he was tired. He'd taken no such walk since he came out of hospital, weeks and weeks ago.

"Let's go and sit in the salon, to rest a few minutes and finish our talk," he proposed. "We're almost sure to have the room to ourselves."

But for once Brian's intuition was at fault. There were two persons in the little salon, a lady writing letters at a desk by the window, and a French officer who had drawn the one easy chair in the room in front of a small wood fire. This fire had evidently not existed long, as the room was cold, with the grim, damp chill of a place seldom occupied or opened to the air.

As Dierdre led Brian in, the lady at the desk glanced up at the newcomers, and the officer in the big chair turned his head. The woman was young and very remarkable looking, with the pearl-pale skin of a true Parisian, large dark eyes under clearly sketched black brows, and masses of prematurely white hair.

For a second, Dierdre thought this beautiful hair must be blonde, as the woman could not be more than twenty-eight; but the light from the window fell full upon the silver ripples, blanching them to dazzling whiteness.

"What a lovely creature," the girl thought. "What can have happened to turn her hair white?"

As for the man, Dierdre took an instant dislike to him, for his selfishness. His face was burned a deep, ruddy brown, and his eyes, lit by the red glow of the fire, were bright with a black, bead-like brightness. They stared so directly, so unblinkingly at Brian, that Dierdre was vexed. She was his chosen friend, his confidante, his champion now! Not even Sirius could be more fiercely devoted than she, who had to atone for her past injustice. She was angry that blind Brian should be thus coldly stared at, and that a man in better health than he should calmly sprawl in the best chair, screening the fire.

By this time, Padre, you will have learned enough about Dierdre O'Farrell to know what her temper is! She forgot that a stranger might not realize Brian's blindness at first sight in a room where the dusk was creeping in, and she spoke sharply, in her almost perfect French.

"There's quite a nice fire," she said, "and I should have thought there was room for everybody to enjoy it, but it seems there's only enough for one! We'd better try the salle a manger, instead, I suppose."

Brian, puzzled, paused at the door, his hand on Sirius's head, Dierdre standing in front of them both like a ruffled sparrow.

The French officer straightened up in his chair with an astonished look, but did not rise. It was the woman by the window (Dierdre had not connected her with the man by the fire) who sprang to her feet. "Mademoiselle," she said quietly, in a voice of exquisite sweetness, "my husband would be the first one in the world to move, and give his place to others, if he had known that he was monopolizing the fire. But he did not know. It was I who placed him there. Those eyes of his which look so bright are made of crystal. He lost his sight at the Chemin des Dames."

As she spoke, choking on the last words, the woman with white hair crossed the room swiftly, and caught the hand of her husband, which was stretched out as if groping for hers. He stumbled to his feet, and she stood defending him like a gentle creature of the woods at bay.

Perhaps at no other moment of her life would Dierdre O'Farrell have been struck with such poignant repentance. That she, who had just been shown the secret, inner heart of one blind man, should deliberately wound another, seemed more than she could bear, and live.

Brian remained silent, partly because he was still confused, and partly to give Dierdre the chance to speak, which he felt instinctively she would wish to seize.

She took a step forward, then stopped, with a sob, shamed tears stinging her eyes. "Will you forgive me?" she begged. "I would rather have died than hurt a blind man, or—or any one who loves a blind man. Lately I've been finding out how sacred blindness is. I ought to have guessed, Madame, that you were with him—that you were his wife. I ought to have known that only a great grief could have turned your wonderful hair white—you, so young——"

"Her hair white!" cried the blind officer. "No, I'll not believe it. Suzanne, tell this lady she's mistaken. I remember, in some lights, it was the palest gold, almost silver—your beautiful hair that I fell in love with——"

His voice broke. No one answered. There fell a dead silence, and Dierdre had time to realize what she had done. She had been cruel as the grave! She had accused a helpless blind man of selfishness; and not content with that, on top of all she had given away the secret that a brave woman's love had hidden.

"Suzanne—you don't speak!"

"Oh!" the trembling woman tried to laugh. "Of course, Mademoiselle is mistaken. That goes without saying."

"Yes—I—of course," Dierdre echoed. "It was the light—deceived me."

"And now," said the blind man slowly, "you are trying to deceive me—you are both trying! Suzanne, why did you keep it from me that your hair had turned white with grief? Didn't you know I'd love you more, for such a proof of love for me?"

"Indeed, I—oh, you mustn't think——" she began to stammer. "I loved your dear eyes as you loved my hair. But I love it twice as much now. I——"

He cut her short. "I don't think. I know. Cherie, you need have had no fear. I shall worship you after this."

"She could never have been so lovely before. Her hair is like spun glass," Dierdre tried to atone. "People would turn to look at her in the street. Monsieur le Capitaine, you should be proud of such a beautiful wife."

"I am," the man answered, "proud of her beauty, more proud of her heart."

"But it is I who am proud!" the woman caught him up. "He has lost his dear eyes that all women admired, yet he has won honours such as few men have. What does it matter about my poor hair? You can see by the ribbons on his breast, Mademoiselle, what he is—what he has done for his country. You also, Monsieur, you see——"

"I don't see, Madame, because I, too, am blind," said Brian. "But I feel—I feel that your husband has won something which means more than his eyes, more than all his honours and decorations: a great love."

"You are blind!" exclaimed the Frenchwoman. "I should never have guessed. Ah, Madame, it is I who must now ask your pardon! I called you 'Mademoiselle.' Already I had forgiven you what you said in error. But I did not understand, or the forgiveness would have been easier. Your first thought was for your husband—your blind husband—just as my thought always is and will be for mine! You wanted him to have a place by the fire. Your temper was in arms, not for yourself, but for him—his comfort. How well I understand now! Madame, you and I have the same cross laid upon us. But it's a cross of honour. It is le croix de guerre!"

"I wish I had a right to it!" Dierdre broke out. "I haven't, because he is not my husband. He doesn't care for me—except maybe, as a friend. But to atone to him for injustice, to punish myself for hurting you, I'll confess something. I'd marry him to-morrow, blind as he is—perhaps because he is blind!—and be happy and proud all my life—if he would have me. Only,—I know he won't."

"My child! I care too much for you," Brian answered, after an instant of astonished silence, "far too much to take you at your word. Some men might—but not I! Monsieur le Capitaine here, and Madame, were husband and wife before their trouble came. That is different——"

"No!" cried the woman whose name was Suzanne. "It is not different. My husband's the one man on earth for me. If we were not married—if he had lost his legs and arms as well as his eyes, I'd still want to be his wife—want it more than a kingdom."

"You hear, Monsieur," her husband said, laughing a little, and holding her close, with that perfect independence of onlookers which the French have when they're thoroughly in love.

"I hear, Madame," said Brian. "But you, Monsieur le Capitaine—you would not have accepted the sacrifice——"

"I'm not sure I could have resisted," the Frenchman smiled.

"You love her!—that is why," Dierdre said. "My friend—doesn't love me. He never could. I'm not worthy. No one good could love me. If he knew the worst of me, he'd not even be my friend. And I suppose, after this, he won't be. If, by and by, I'm not ashamed of myself for what I've said, he'll be ashamed for me, because——"

"Don't!" Brian stopped her. "You know I mustn't let myself love you, Dierdre. And you don't really love me. It's only pity and some kind of repentance—for nothing at all—that you feel. But we'll be greater friends than ever. I understand just why you spoke, and it's going to help me a lot—like a strong tonic. You must have known it would. And if Monsieur and Madame have forgiven us——"

"Us? What have you done? If they've forgiven me——"

"They have, indeed, forgiven," said the blind Frenchman. "They even thank you. If possible you've drawn them closer together than before."

Brian searched for Dierdre's hand, and found it. "Let us go now, and leave them," he whispered.

So they went away, and Brian softly shut the door of the little salon.

"I did mean every word I said!" the girl blurted out, turning upon him in the hall. "But—I shouldn't have dared say it if I hadn't been sure you didn't care. And even if you did care—or could—your sister wouldn't let you. She knows me exactly as I am."

"She shall know you as you are—my true and brave little friend!" Brian said.

He can find his way about wonderfully, even in a house with which he is merely making acquaintance: besides, Sirius was with him. But he felt an immense tenderness for Dierdre after that desperate confession. He didn't wish the girl to fancy that he could get on without her just then, or that he thought she had any reason for running away from him. He asked if she would take him to his room, so that he might rest there, alone, remembering an exquisite moment of his life.

"It's wonderful to feel that for a beautiful girl like you—blind as I am, I am a man!" he said. "Thank you with all my heart—for everything."

"Who told you I was beautiful?" Dierdre flung the question at him.

"My sister Mary told me," Brian answered. "Besides—I felt it. A man does feel such things—perhaps all the more if he is blind."

"Your sister Mary?" the girl echoed. "She doesn't think I'm beautiful. Or if she does, it's against her will."

"It won't be, after this."

"Why not? You won't tell her——"

"I'll tell her to love you, and—to help me not to!"

It was just then they came to Brian's door, and Dierdre fled, Sirius staring after her in dignified surprise.

But Dierdre herself came to me at once, and told me everything, with a kind of proud defiance.

"I do love your brother," she boasted. "I would marry him if he'd have me. I don't care what you think of me, or what you say!"

"Why, I love you for loving him," I threw back at her. "That's what I think of you—and that's what I say."

I was sincere, Padre. Yet I don't see how they can ever marry, even if Brian should learn to love the girl enough. Neither one has a penny—and—Brian is blind. Who can tell if he will ever get his sight again? I wish Dierdre hadn't come into our lives in just the way she did come! I wish she weren't Julian O'Farrell's sister! I hope she won't be pricked by that queer conscience of hers to tell Brian any secrets which concern me as well as Julian and herself. And I hope—whatever happens!—that I shan't be mean enough to be jealous. But—with such a new, exciting "friendship" for Brian's prop, it seems as if, for me—Othello's occupation would be gone!



CHAPTER XXVII

We're at Amiens, where we came by way of Montdidier and Moreuil; and nearly two weeks have dragged or slipped away since I wrote last. Meanwhile a thousand things have happened. But I'll begin at the beginning and write on till I am called by Mother Beckett.

We stopped at Soissons three more days after I told you about Dierdre and Brian, and Captain Devot and his wife. Not only did they forgive Dierdre—those two—but they took her to their hearts, perhaps more for Brian's sake than her own. I was introduced to them, and they were kind to me, too. Of the blind man I have a beautiful souvenir. I must tell you about it, Padre!

The evening before we left Soissons (when the doctor had pronounced Mother Beckett well enough for a short journey) I had an hour in the stuffy little salon with Dierdre and Brian and the Devots. We sat round the fire—plenty of room for us all, in a close circle—and Captain Devot began to talk about his last battle on the Chemin des Dames. Suddenly he realized that the story was more than his wife could bear—for it was in that battle he lost his eyes! How he realized what she was enduring, I don't know, for she didn't speak, or even sigh, and Brian sat between them; so he couldn't have known she was trembling. It must have been some electric current of sympathy between the husband and wife, I suppose—a magnetic flash to which a blind man would be more sensitive than others. Anyhow, he suddenly stopped speaking of the fight, and told us instead about a dream he had the night before the battle—a dream where he saw the ladies for whom "The Ladies' Way" was made, go riding by, along the "Chemin des Dames."

"In silks and satins the ladies went Where the breezes sighed and the poplars bent, Taking the air of a Sunday morn Midst the red of poppies and gold of corn— Flowery ladies in gold brocades, With negro pages and serving maids, In scarlet coach or in gilt sedan, With brooch and buckle and flounce and fan, Patch and powder and trailing scent, Under the trees the ladies went, Lovely ladies that gleamed and glowed, As they took the air of the Ladies' Road."

That verse came from Punch, not from Captain Devot. I happen to remember it because it struck my fancy when I read it, and added to the romance of the road made for Louis XV's daughters—daughters of France, where now so many sons of France have died for France! But the ladies of Captain Devot's dream were like that, travelling with a gorgeous cavalcade, and as they rode, they were listening to a song about the old Abbey of Vauclair on the plateau of the Craonne. When they came to a place where the poppies clustered thickest, the three princesses insisted on stopping—Princess Adelaide, Princess Sophia, Princess Victoire. They wished to gather the flowers to take with them to the Chateau de Bove, where they were going to visit their dame d'honneur, Madame de Narbonne, but their guards argued that already it was growing late: they had better hurry on. At this the girls laughed silvery laughter. What did time matter to them? This was their road, made and paved for their pleasure! They would not be hurried along it. No indeed; to show that time as well as the road was theirs, to do with as they liked, they would get down and make a chain of poppies long enough to stretch across the whole plateau before it dipped to the valley of the Aillette!

So, in Captain Devot's dream, the princesses descended, and they and all their pretty ladies began weaving a chain of poppies. As they wove, the flower-chain fell from their little white fingers and trailed along the ground in a crimson line. The sun dropped toward the west, and thunder began to roll: still they worked on! Their gentlemen-in-charge begged them to start again, and at last they rose up petulantly to go; but they had stayed too late. The storm burst. Lightning flashed; thunder roared; rain fell in torrents; and—strange to see—the poppy petals melted, so that the long chain of flowers turned to a liquid stream, red as a river of blood. The princesses were frightened and began to cry. Their tears fell into the crimson flood. Captain Devot, who seemed in his dream to be one of the ladies' attendants, jumped from his horse to pick up the princesses' tears, which turned into little, rattling stones as they fell. With that, he waked. The princesses were gone—"all but Victoire," he said, smiling, "she shall stay with us! The thunder was the thunder of German guns. The poppies were there—and the blood was there. So also were the stones that had been the princesses' tears. They lie all along the Chemin des Dames to this day. I gathered some for my wife, and if you like she will give a few to you, ladies—souvenirs of the Ladies' Way!"