Of course we did like; so Dierdre and I each have a small, glistening gray stone, with a faint splash of red upon it. I would not sell mine for a pearl!

* * * * *

Father Beckett proposed to take his wife back to Paris; but while she rested after the fever, industriously she built up another plan. You remember, Padre, my telling you that the Becketts were negotiating for a chateau, before they arrived in France to visit their son? When they heard that Jim had fallen, they no longer cared to live in this chateau (which was to let, furnished), nevertheless, they felt bound in honour to stick to their bargain. Well, at Soissons, Mother Beckett had it "borne in upon her" that Jim would wish his father and mother to stay at the old house he had loved and coveted for himself.

"I can't go back across the sea and settle down at home while this war goes on!" she said. "Home just wouldn't be home. It's too far away from Jim. I don't mean from his body," she went on. "His body isn't Jim, I know! I've thought that out, and made myself realize the truth of it. But it's Jim's spirit I'm talking about, Father. I guess his soul—Jim himself—won't care to be flitting back and forth, crossing the ocean to visit us, while his friends are fighting in France and Belgium, to save the world. I know my boy well enough to be sure he's too strong to change much just because he is what some folks call 'dead'; and he'd like us to be near. Paris won't do for me. No city would. I'd be too restless there. Do, do let's go and live till the end of the war in Jim's chateau! That's what he's wanting. I feel it every minute."

I was in the room when she made this appeal to her husband, and I longed to put into their hearts the thought Jack Curtis had put into mine. But, of course, I dared not. It would have been cruel. Jack Curtis had nothing to go upon except his impression—the same impression I myself have at times, of Jim's vital presence in the midst of life. I have it often, though never quite so strongly as that night in Paris, when he would not let me kill myself.

It wasn't difficult to make Father Beckett consent to the new plan. He told me afterward that his own great wish was to find Jim's grave, when the end of the war would make search possible. Beckett interests were being safeguarded in America. They would not suffer much from his absence. Besides, business no longer seemed vitally important to him as of old. Money mattered little now that Jim was gone.

He would have abandoned his visit to the British front, since Mother Beckett could not have the glimpse half promised by the authorities. But she would not let him give it up. "Molly" would take good care of her. When she could move, we would all go to Amiens. There she and I could be safely left for a few days, while Brian and Father Beckett were at the front. As for Julian O'Farrell and Dierdre, at first it appeared as if the little lady had left them out of her calculations. But I might have known—knowing her—that she wouldn't do that for long.

She believed implicitly in their Red Cross mission, which, ever since the little car joined the big one, has been constantly aided with Beckett money and Beckett influence. Julian would, she supposed, wish to "carry on his good work," when our trip came to an end. But as he had no permission for the British front (he hadn't cared to make himself conspicuous to the British authorities by asking for it!) he and Dierdre might like to keep us two women company at Amiens. By the time we wanted to leave, Mother Beckett confidently expected "Jim's chateau" to be ready for occupation, and Dierdre must visit "us" there indefinitely, while her brother dutifully continued distributing supplies to hospitals and refugees. ("Us," according to Mother Beckett, meant Brian and me, Father Beckett and herself, for we now constituted the "family"!) Telegrams had given the Paris house-letting agency carte blanche for hasty preparations at the Chateau d'Andelle, where several old servants had been kept on as caretakers: and being a spoiled American millionairess, the little lady was confident that a week would see the house aired, warmed, staffed, and altogether habitable.

"You wouldn't object to having that poor little girl stay with us, would you, dear?" Mother Beckett asked me, patting my hand when she had revealed her ideas concerning the O'Farrells.

"Oh, no," I answered, looking straight into her inquiring eyes, and trying not to change colour. "But you shouldn't speak as if I had any right——"

"You have every right!" she cut me short. "Aren't you our daughter?"

"I love you and Father Beckett enough to be your daughter," I said. "But that gives me no right——"

"It does. Your love for us, and ours for you. I don't believe we could have lived through our sorrow if it hadn't been for you and Brian. He saved our reason by showing us what Jim would want us to do for the good of others. And he taught us what we couldn't seem to realize fully, through religion, that death doesn't count. Now, since I've been ill, I guess you've saved my life. And much as I want to see Jim, I want even more to live for Father. He needs me—and we both need you and Brian. You two belong to us, just as if you'd been given to us by Jim. We want to do what's best for you both. I thought, for Brian, it would be good perhaps to have Dierdre——"

"Perhaps," I murmured, when she paused.

"You're not sure? I wasn't at first. I mean, I wasn't sure she was good enough. But since the night when she threw herself in front of him to keep off the dog, I saw she cared. Maybe she didn't know it herself till then. But she's known ever since. You've only to see the way she looks at him. And she's growing more and more of a woman—Brian's influence, and the influence of her love—such a great influence, dear! It might be for his happiness, if——"

"I don't think Brian would marry Dierdre or any girl, unless his sight came back," I said. "He's often told me he wouldn't marry."

"Was that before he went to Paris with the O'Farrells? Things have been rather different since then—and a good deal different since the night we met Jack Curtis with Sirius."

"I know," I admitted. "But if Brian wanted to change his mind about marrying, he couldn't. Neither he nor Dierdre O'Farrell have a penny——"

"Brian's got as much as we have," the dear woman assured me.

"Do you think he'd take your money to marry on? No, dearest! Brian's very unworldly. So far, he hasn't worried about finances for the present. The future is different. If he doesn't get back his sight——"

"But he will—he must!" she urged. "That great specialist you saw in Paris gave him hope. And then there's the other one that your doctor friend recommended——."

"He's somewhere at the front. We can't get at him now."

"We'll get at him later," Mother Beckett persisted. "In the meantime—let's give those two hearts the chance to draw together, if it's best for them."

I could not go on objecting. One can't, for long, when that little angel of a woman wants a thing—she who never wants anything for herself, only for others! But I thought Fate might step between Brian and Dierdre—Fate, in the shape of Puck. I wasn't at all sure that Julian O'Farrell could be contented to leave his sister and continue his own wanderings. The Red Cross taxi had in truth been only a means to an end. I didn't fancy that his devotion to duty would carry him far from the Chateau d'Andelle while Dierdre was comfortably installed in it. Unless he were invited to embusquer himself there, in our society, I expected a crash. Which shows how little I knew my Julian!

When the plan was officially suggested to him, he agreed as if with enthusiasm. It was only when he'd consented to Dierdre's visit at the chateau on the other side of the Somme, and promised to drop in now and then himself on his way somewhere else, that he allowed himself a second thought. To attract attention to it, he started, ran his hand through his hair, and stopped in the middle of a sentence. "I am heaven's own fool!" he exclaimed.

Of course Father Beckett wanted to know why. (This was two days before we started for Amiens.) Julian "registered reluctance." Father Beckett persisted, and drew forth the information that Julian might have to cut short his career as a ministering Red Cross angel. "If it hadn't been for you," he said, "my funds and my supplies would have run short before this. You've helped me carry on. But I'm getting pretty close to the bone again now, I'm afraid. A bit closer and I shall have to settle down and give music lessons. That's all I'm fit for in future! And Dierdre wouldn't want me to set up housekeeping alone. While I'm on this Red Cross job it's all right, but——"

Of course Father Beckett broke in to say that there was no question of not carrying on. Money should be forthcoming for supplies as long as Julian felt inclined to drive the Red Cross taxi from one scene of desolation and distress to another. Holidays must be frequent, and all spent at the Chateau d'Andelle. Let the future decide itself!

So matters were settled—on the surface. Julian was ready to pose before an admiring audience as the self-sacrificing hero, giving all his time and energy to a noble cause. Only his sister and I knew that he was the villain of the piece, and for different reasons neither of us could explain the mistake about his role. He was sure of us both; impudently, aggravatingly, yet (I can't help it, Padre!) amusingly sure of me. He tried to "isolate" me, as if I'd been a microbe while we were still at Soissons, and again just after Father Beckett and Brian went away from Amiens in the big gray car. There was something, something very special that he wished to say to me, I could tell by his eyes. But I contrived to thwart him. I never left Mother Beckett for a moment!

The first day at Amiens it was easy to keep out of his way altogether, for I was nurse as well as friend, and my dear little invalid was worn out after the journey from Soissons. She asked nothing better than to stop in her room. The next day, however, exciting news acted upon her like a tonic. The Amiens address had been wired to Paris, and in addition to a mass of letters (mostly for Father Beckett) there was a telegram from the Chateau d'Andelle, despatched by an agency messenger, who had been sent to Normandy. All was going well. The house would be ready on the date named. Two large boxes from the Ritz had safely arrived by grande vitesse.

"Darling Jimmy's own things!" Mother Beckett explained to me. "Do you remember my telling you we'd brought over to France the treasures out of his den at home?"

I did remember. (Do I ever forget anything she says about Jim?)

"They were to be a surprise for him when he came to see us," his mother went on, tears misting the blueness of her eyes. "Not furniture, you know, but just the little things he loved best in his rooms: some he had when he was a child, and others when he was growing up—and the picture your brother painted. When we heard—the news—and knew we shouldn't see our boy again in this world, I couldn't bear to open the boxes—though I was longing to cry over his dear treasures. They've been stored at the Ritz ever since. But the first thing I asked Father to do when we decided the other day to live in Jim's chateau, after all—was to wire for the boxes to be sent there. I didn't suppose they'd arrive so soon—in war time. Dear me, I can hardly wait to start, now! I feel as strong as a girl."

To prove this—or because she was restless—she begged to be taken out in a cab to see the town, especially the cathedral, which Brian had told her was the largest in Europe except St. Peter's in Rome, St. Sophia in Constantinople, and something in Cologne which she didn't want to remember! Julian O'Farrell and his sister must go with us, of course. It wouldn't be kind to leave them to do their sightseeing alone. Besides, Julian was so good-natured, and said such funny things it would be pleasant to have his society.

This arrangement made it difficult for me to glue myself to Mother Beckett's side. Now and then she insisted upon getting out of the cab to try her strength, and Dierdre would obediently have taken her in tow, in order to hand me over to "Jule," if I hadn't been mulishly obstinate. I quite enjoyed manoeuvring to use my dear little invalid as a sort of standing barrage against enemy attacks, and even though Brian and I were parted for the first time since his blindness, I felt almost absurdly cheerful. It was so good to know that Mother Beckett was out of danger, and that it was I who had helped to drag her out! Besides, after all the stricken towns that have saddened our eyes, it was enlivening to be in one (as Mother Beckett said at Compiegne) with "whole houses." In contrast, good St. Firmin's ancient city looks almost as gay as Paris. Our hotel with its pleasant garden and the fine shops—(where it seems you can still buy every fascinating thing from newest jewellery and oldest curiosities, to Amiens' special "roc" chocolates)—the long, arboured boulevards, the cobbled streets, the quaint blue and pink houses of the suburbs, and the poplar-lined walk by the Somme, all, all have the friendliest air! Despite the crowds of soldiers in khaki and horizon blue who fill the streets and cafes, the place seems outside war. Even the stacked sandbags walling the west front and the side portals of the grandest cathedral in France suggest comfortable security rather than fear. The jackdaws and pigeons that used to be at home in the carvings, camp contentedly among the bags, or walk in the neglected grass where sleep the dead of long ago. I didn't want to remember just then, or let any one else remember, that twenty miles away were the trenches and thousands of the dead of to-day!

Never can Amiens have been such a kaleidoscope of colourful animation since Henri II of France and Edward VI of England signed the treaty of peace here, with trains of diplomatists and soldiers of church and state and dignified rejoicings!

It wasn't until we were inside the cathedral that I forgot my manoeuverings. The soft, rich light gave such a bizarre effect to the sandbags protecting the famous choir carvings, that I was all eyes for a moment: and during that moment Julian must have signed to his sister to decoy Mother Beckett away from me. When I hauled my soul down from the soaring arches as one strikes a flag, there was Puck at my side and there were Mother Beckett and Dierdre disappearing behind sandbag-hillocks, in the direction of the celebrated Cherub.

"I suppose you want me jolly well to understand," said Puck, smiling, "that even if your brother Brian and my sister Dare are fools over each other, you won't be fooled into forgiving a poor, broken-voiced Pierrot?"

"I've nothing to forgive you for, personally," I said. "Only——"

"Only, you don't want to be friends?"

"No, I don't want to be friends," I echoed. "Why can't you be content with being treated decently before people, instead of following me about, trying always to bring upon yourself——"

"A lamp might ask that question of a moth."

I laughed. "You're less like a moth than any creature I ever met!"

"You don't believe I'm sincere."

"Do moths specialize in sincerity in the insect world?"

"Yes," Puck said, more gravely than usual. "Come to think of it, that's just what they do. They risk their lives for the light they love. I 'follow you about,' as you put it, because I love you and want to persuade you that we're birds of a feather, made for each other by nature and fate and our mutual behaviour. We belong together in life."

"Do you really believe you can blackmail me into a partnership?" I turned at bay. "You must have seen that I wanted to keep out of your way——"

"Oh, I saw all right. You thought that I thought Amiens would be my great chance, and you made up your mind it shouldn't be if you could help it. Well, you won't be able to help it much longer, because I've got something you want, and you can't get it except through me."

"I doubt very much that I could want anything you have," I said.

"Give your imagination wings."

"You are always teasing me to guess things I don't care to guess!"

"Here comes Dierdre back with Mrs. Beckett so I won't worry you to guess. I've got a message from the Wandering Jew. Do you want it, or don't you?"



CHAPTER XXVIII

If Julian had suddenly popped down an apple on the top of my head, a la Gessler and the son of William Tell, and thereupon proceeded to shoot it off, I could have been no more amazed. For once he outflanked me, caught me completely off my guard! I saw by the impish gleam in his eye how delighted he was with himself.

"Yes or no, please; quick!" he fired the next volley as I stood speechless.

"Yes!" I gasped. "I do want the message—if it's for me. But why should he send word through you?"

"He didn't. I caught it as I might catch a homing carrier-pigeon. You know, my motto is 'All's fair in love and war.' In my case, both exist—your fault! Besides, what I did was for your good."

"What did you do—what did you dare to do?"

"Dare!" Puck mimicked my foolish fury. "'Dare' is such a melodramatic word from you to me. I can't tell you now what I did, or the message—no time. But I'm in as much of a hurry as you are. When can I see you alone?"

I hesitated, because it would be like him to cheat me with some trick, and chuckle at my rage. I couldn't see how a message from Paul Herter for me had reached Julian O'Farrell, unless he'd intercepted a letter. It seemed far more likely that Puck was romancing, yet I felt in my bones and heart and solar plexus that he wasn't! I simply had to know—and in a flurry, before Mother Beckett and Dierdre were upon us, I said, "This afternoon, at three, when Mrs. Beckett is having her nap. I'll meet you in the garden of the hotel."

Though I dash along with this story of mine, Padre, as if I went straight on describing the scene between Julian and me from beginning to end, without a break, it isn't really so. I've been interrupted more than once, and may be again; but I shall tell you everything that's happened since we came to Amiens, as if I wrote consecutively. You can understand better in that way, and help me with your strength and love, through your understanding, as I feel you do help, whenever I make you my confessions. Since I've begun to write you, as in old days when you were in the flesh, I've felt your advice come to me in electric flashes. I'm sure I don't just imagine this. It's real, dear Padre, and makes all the difference to me that a rope flung out over dark waters would make to a drowning man.

At three o'clock I was in the garden. It was cold, but I didn't care. Besides, I was too excited to feel the chill. I wanted to be out of doors because there would be people about, and no chance for Julian to try and kiss my hand—no vulgar temptation for me to box his ears!

He was already waiting, strolling up and down, smoking a cigarette which he threw away at sight of me. Evidently he'd decided on this occasion not to be frivolous!

I selected a seat safely commanded by many windows. "Now!" I said, sitting down close to one end of the bench.

Julian took the other end, but sat gazing straight at me without a word. There was an odd expression on his face. I didn't know how to read it, or to guess what was to come. But there was nothing Puckish about the enemy at that moment. He looked nervous—almost as if he were afraid. I thought of something you told me when I was quite small, Padre: how the Romans of old used to send packets of good news bound with laurel, or of bad news, tied with the plumes of ravens. I stared into Julian O'Farrell's stare, and wished that he'd stuck a green leaf or a black feather in his buttonhole to prepare my mind.

"Yes—now!" he echoed at last, as if he'd suddenly waked up to my challenge. "Well, a man blew into this hotel last night—a lame Frenchman with a face like a boiled ghost. I was writing an important telegram (I'll tell you about that later), when I heard this person ask the concierge if a Miss Mary O'Malley was staying in the house. That made me open my eyes—because he was of the lower bourgeois class, and hadn't the air of being—so to speak—in your set. It seemed as if 'twas up to me to tackle him; so I did. I introduced myself as a friend of Miss O'Malley's, travelling with her party. I explained that Miss O'Malley was taking care of an old lady who'd been ill and was tired after a long journey. I asked if he'd like to give a message. He said he would. But first he began to explain who he was: an Alsatian by birth, named Muller, corporal in an infantry regiment; been a prisoner in Germany, I forget how long—taken wounded; leg amputated; and fitted with artificial limb in a Boche hospital; just exchanged for a grand blesse Boche, and repatriated; been in Paris on important business, apparently with the War Office—sounded more exciting than he looked! After I'd prodded the chap tactfully, he came back to the subject of the message: asked me if I knew Doctor Paul Herter. I said I did know him. Herter mended up my sister after an air raid. I inquired politely where Herter was, but Muller evaded that question. He led me to suppose he'd seen Herter in Paris; but putting two and two together, I got a different idea—altogether different."

Julian paused on those words, and tried piercingly to read my thoughts. But I made my face expressionless as the front of a shut-up house, with "to let unfurnished" over the door.

"I expect you've guessed what my idea was, and I bet you know for a fact whether I was on the right track," he ventured.

"The only thing so far which I know for a fact," I said, "is that you had no right to talk to the man at all. You should have sent for me at once."

"You couldn't have come if I had. Dierdre had told me about five minutes before that you were putting Mrs. Beckett to bed, and giving her a massage treatment with a rub-down of alcohol."

"Why didn't you ask the man to wait?"

"I did ask him if he could wait, and he said he couldn't. He'd stopped at Amiens on purpose to deliver his message, and he had to catch a train on to Allonville, to where it seems his people have migrated."

"You asked him that because you hoped he couldn't wait—and if he could, you'd have found some reason for not letting me meet him. You thought you saw a way of getting a new hold over me!"

"Some such dramatic idea may have flitted through my head. I've often warned you, I am dramatic! I enjoy dramatizing life for myself and others! But honestly, he couldn't wait for you to finish with Mrs. Beckett. I know too well how devoted you are to think you'd have left the old lady before you'd soothed her off to sleep."

"Where is the message?" I snatched Julian back to the point.

"In my brain at present."

"You destroyed the letter?"

"There wasn't a letter. Oh, make grappling hooks of your lovely eyes if you like! You can't drag anything out of me that doesn't exist. Herter's message to you was verbal for safety. That was one thing set me thinking the men hadn't met in Paris. Muller admitted going to a bank to get your address. The people there didn't want to give it, but when he explained that it was important, and mentioned where he was going, they saw that he might have time to meet you at Amiens on his way home. So they told him where you were. Now, there's no good your being cross with me. What's done is done, and can't be undone. I acted for the best—my best; and in my opinion for your best. Listen! Here's the message, word for word. You'll see that a few hours' delay for me to think it over could make no difference to any one concerned. Paul Herter, from somewhere—but maybe not 'somewhere in France'—sends you a verbal greeting, because it was more sure of reaching you—not coming to grief en route. He reminds you that he asked for an address in case he had something of interest to communicate. He hoped to find the grave of a man you loved. Instead, he thinks he has found that there is no grave—that the man is above ground and well. He isn't sure yet whether he may be deceived by a likeness of names. But he's sure enough to say: 'Hope.' If he's right about the man, you may get further news almost any minute by way of Switzerland or somewhere neutral. That's all. Yet it's enough to show you what danger you're in. If Herter hadn't been practically certain, he wouldn't have sent any message. He'd have waited. Evidently you made him believe that you loved Jim Beckett, so he wanted to prepare your mind by degrees. I suppose he imagined a shock of joy might be dangerous. Well, you ought to thank Herter just the same for sparing you a worse sort of shock. And I thank him, too, for it gives me a great chance—the chance to save you. Mary, the time's come for you and me to fade off the Beckett scene—together."

I listened without interrupting him once: at first, because I was stunned, and a thousand thoughts beat dully against my brain without finding their way in, as gulls beat their wings against the lamp of a lighthouse; at last, because I wished to hear Julian O'Farrell to the very end before I answered. I fancied that in answering I could better marshal my own thoughts.

He misunderstood my silence—I expected him to do that, but I cared not at all—so, when he had paused and still I said nothing, he went on: "Of course I—for the best of reasons—know you didn't love Jim Beckett, and couldn't love him."

Hearing those words of his, suddenly I knew just what I wanted to say. I'd been like an amateur actress wild with stage fright, who'd forgotten her part till the right cue came. "There you're mistaken," I contradicted him. "I did love Jim Beckett."

Julian gave an excited, brutal laugh. "Tell that to the Marines, my child, not to yours truly! You never set eyes on Jim Beckett. He never went near your hospital. You never came near the training-camp. You seem to have forgotten that I was on the spot."

"I met him before the war," I said.

"What's that?" Julian didn't know whether to believe me or not, but his forehead flushed to the black line of his low-growing hair.

"I never told you, because there was no need to tell," I went on. "But it's true. I fell in love with Jim Beckett then, and—he cared for me."

For the first time I realized that Julian O'Farrell's "love" wasn't all pretence. His flush died, and left him pale with that sick, greenish-olive pallor which men of Latin blood have when they're near fainting. He opened his lips, but did not speak, because, I think, he could not. If I'd wanted revenge for what he made me suffer when he first thrust himself into my life, I had it then; but to my own surprise I felt no pleasure in striking him. Instead I felt vaguely sorry, though very distant from his plans and interests.

"You—you weren't engaged to Beckett, anyhow. I'm sure you weren't, or you'd have had nothing to worry about when Dierdre and I turned up," he faced me down.

"No, we weren't engaged," I admitted. "I—was just as much of a fraud as you meant Dierdre to be with Father and Mother Beckett. I've no excuse—except that it was for Brian's sake. But that's no excuse really, and Brian would despise me if he knew."

"There you are!" Julian burst out, with a relieved sigh, a more natural colour creeping back to his face. "If Jim Beckett let you go before the war without asking you to marry him, I'm afraid his love couldn't have been very deep—not deep enough to make him forgive you after all this time for deceiving his old father and mother the way you have. My God, no! In spite of your beauty, he'd have no mercy on you!"

"That's what I think," I said. "My having met him, and his loving me a little, makes what I've done more shameful than if I'd never met him at all."

"Then you see why you must get away as quick as you can!" urged Julian, his eyes lighting as he drew nearer to me on the garden bench. "Oh, wait, don't speak yet! Let me explain my plan. There's time still. You're thinking of Brian before yourself, maybe. But he's safe. The Becketts adore him. They say he 'saved their reason.' He makes the mysticism they're always groping for seem real as their daily bread. He puts local colour into the fourth dimension for them! They can never do without Brian again. All that's needed is for him to propose to Dierdre. I know—you think he won't, no matter how he feels. But he'll have missed her while he's away. She's a missable little thing to any one who likes her, and she can tempt him to speak out in spite of himself when he gets back. I'll see to it that she does. The Becketts will be enchanted. The old lady's a born match-maker. We can announce our engagement at the same time. While they think Jim's dead, they won't grudge your being happy with another man, especially with me. They're fond of me! And you're young. Your life's before you. They're too generous to stand in your way. They look on you as a daughter, and Brian as a son. They'll give each of you a handsome wedding present, and I don't doubt they'll ask Brian to live with them, or near them, if he's to be blind all his life. He'll have everything you wanted to win for him. Even when they get into communication with Jim, and find out the truth about you, why I bet anything they'll hide it from Brian to keep him happy! Meanwhile you and I will be in Paris, safely married. An offer came to me yesterday from Jean De Letzski—forwarded on. He's getting old. He wants me to take on some of his pupils, under his direction. I telegraphed back my acceptance. That's the wire I was sending when Herter's man turned up last night. There was a question last summer of my getting this chance with De Letzski, but I hardly dared hope. It's a great stroke of luck! In the end I shall stand in De Letzski's shoes, and be a rich man—almost as rich as if I'd kept my place as star tenor in opera. Even at the beginning you and I won't be poor. I count on a wedding gift from the Becketts to you of ten thousand dollars at least. The one way to save our reputations is to marry or die brilliantly. We choose the former. We can take a fine apartment. We'll entertain the most interesting set in Paris. With your looks and charm, and what's left of my voice, we——"

"Oh, stop!" I plunged into the torrent of his talk. "You are making me—sick. Do you really believe I'd accept money from Jim Beckett's parents, and—marry you?"

He stared, round-eyed and hurt, like a misunderstood child. "But," he blundered on, "don't you see it's the only thing you can do—anyhow, to marry me? If you won't accept money, why it's a pity and a waste, but I want you enough to snap you up without a franc. You must marry me, dear. Think what I gave up for you!"

I burst out laughing. "What you gave up for me!"

"Yes. Have you forgotten already? If I hadn't fallen in love with you at first sight, and sacrificed myself and Dierdre for your good, wouldn't my sister have been in your place now, and you and your brother Lord knows where—in prison as impostors, perhaps?"

"According to you, my place isn't a very enviable one at present," I said. "But I'd rather be in prison for life than married to you. What a vision—what a couple!"

"Oh, I know having you for my wife would be a good deal like going to heaven in a strong mustard plaster; but I'd stand the smart for the sake of the bliss. If you won't marry me and if you won't take money from the Becketts, what will become of you? That's what I want to know! You can't stay on with them. You daren't risk going to their Chateau d'Andelle, as things are turning out. Herter's certainly in Germany—ideal man for a spy! If he runs across Jim Beckett, as he's trying to do, he'll move heaven and earth to help him escape. He must have influence, and secret ways of working things. He may have got at Jim before this for all we can tell. Muller let it leak out that he left Herter—somewhere—a week ago. A lot can happen in a week—to a Wandering Jew. The ground's trembling under your feet. You'll have to skip without Brian, without money, without——"

"I shall not stir," I said. "I can't leave Mrs. Beckett, I won't leave her! The only way I can atone even a little bit, is to stop and take care of her while she needs me, no matter what happens. When she finds out, she won't want me any longer. Then I'll go. But not before."

We glared at each other like two fencers through the veil of falling dusk. Suddenly I sprang up from the bench, remembering that, at least, I could escape from Julian, if not from the sword of Damocles. But he caught my dress, and held me fast.

"What if I tell the old birds the whole story up to date?" he blustered. "I can, you know."

"You can. Please give me fair warning if you're going to—that's all I ask. I'll try to prepare Mrs. Beckett's mind to bear the shock. She's not very strong, but——"

"If I don't tell, it won't be because of her. It will be for you—always, everything, for you! But I haven't decided yet. I don't know what I shall do yet. I must think. You'll have to make the best of that compromise unless you change your mind."

"I shall not change my mind," I said.



CHAPTER XXIX

Later, Padre, when I'd broken away from Julian, I wondered if he had made up the whole story. The cruel trick would be impishly characteristic! But I went straight to the concierge to ask about Muller. He said that a man of that name had called the night before, inquiring for me, and had talked with "the Monsieur who looked like an Italian." This practically convinced me that Julian hadn't lied.

If only I could get direct advice from you! Do try to send me an inspiration of what to do for the best.

My first impulse was to give Mother Beckett a faint hint of hope. But I dared not run the risk. If Paul Herter proved to be mistaken, it would be for her like losing her son a second time, and the dear one's strength might not be equal to the strain. After thinking and unthinking all night, I decided to keep silent until our two men returned from the British front. Then, perhaps, I might tell Brian of the message from Doctor Paul, and ask his opinion about speaking to Father Beckett. As for myself, I resolved not to make any confession, unless it were certain that Jim lived. And I'm not sure, Padre, whether that decision was based on sheer, selfish cowardice, or whether I founded it partly on the arguments I presented to myself. I said in my mind: "If it's true that everything you did in the beginning was for Brian's good, why undo it all at the most critical hour of his life, when perhaps there may never be any reason to speak?" Also I said: "Why make it impossible for yourself to give Mother Beckett the care she needs, and can hardly do without yet? Every day counts with her now. Why not wait unless you hear again more definitely?"

The annoying part of a specious argument is that there's always some truth in it, and it seems like kind advice from wise friends!

Anyhow, I did wait. Julian made no further appeal to me, and I felt sure that he said nothing to Dierdre. If he had taken her into his confidence, I should have known by her manner; because, from the shut-up, night-flower of a girl that she was, she has rather pathetically opened out for me into a daylight flower. All this since she came of her own free will and told me of the scene in the chill boarding house salon at Soissons. I used to think her as secret as the grave—and deeper. She used to make me "creep" as if a mouse ran over mine, by the way her eyes watched me: still as a cat's looking into the fire. If we had to shake hands, she used to present me with a limp little bunch of cold fingers, which made me long to ask what the deuce she wanted me to do with them? Now, because I'm Brian's sister, and because I'm human enough to love her love of him, the flower-part of her nature sheds perfume and distils honey for me: the cat-part purrs; the girl-part warms. The creature actually deigns to like me! It could not now conceal its anxiety for Brian and Brian's kith and kin, if it knew what Julian knows.

I waited until our last day at Amiens, and Father Beckett, Brian, and Sirius are back from the British front. Perhaps I forgot to tell you that Sirius went. He wasn't on the programme, but he knew somehow that his master was planning a separation, and refused to fall in with the scheme. He was discovered in the motor-car when it was ready to start, looking his best, his dear face parted in the middle with an irresistible, ingratiating smile. When Brian tried to put him out he flattened himself, and clung like a limpet. By Father Beckett's intercession, he was eventually taken, trusting to luck for toleration by the British Army. Of course he continued to smile upon all possible arbiters of his fate; and the drama of his history, combined with the pathos of his blind master who fought on these battlefields of Flanders, which now he cannot see, made Brian's Sirius and Sirius's Brian personae gratae everywhere.

"I should have been nobody and nothing without them!" modestly insisted the millionaire philanthropist for whom all the privileges of the trip had been granted.

To me, with the one thought, the one word "Jim—Jim—Jim!" repeating in my head it was strange, even irrelevant to hear Jim's unsuspecting father and my blind brother discoursing of their adventures.

We all assembled in Mother Beckett's sitting room to listen to the recital, she on a sofa, a rug over her feet, and on her transparent face an utterly absorbed, tense expression rather like a French spaniel trying to learn an English trick.

Father Beckett appointed Brian as spokesman, and then in his excitement broke in every instant with: "Don't forget this! Be sure to remember that! But so-and-so was the best!" Or he jumped up from his chair by the sofa, and dropped his wife's hand to point out something on the map, spread like a cloth over the whole top of a bridge-table.

It was his finger that sketched for our eyes the sharp triangle which the road-journey had formed: Amiens to Albert: Albert to Peronne: Peronne to Bapaume: Bapaume to Arras: Arras to Bethune, and so on to Ypres: his finger that reminded Brian of the first forest on the road—a forest full of working German prisoners.

At Pont-Noyelles, between Amiens and Albert, they were met by an officer who was to be their guide for that part of the British front which they were to visit. He was sent from headquarters, but hadn't been able to afford time for Amiens. However, Pont-Noyelles was the most interesting place between there and Albert. A tremendous battle was fought on that spot in '70, between the French under famous General Faidherbe and the Germans under Manteuffel—a perfect name for a German general of these days, if not of those! There were two monuments to commemorate the battle—one high on a hill above the village; and the officer guide (with the face of a boy and the grim experience of an Old Contemptible) was well up in their history. He turned out to be a friend of friends of Brian and knew the history of Sirius as well as that of all the war-wasted land. He and Brian, though they'd never met, had fought near each other it seemed, and he could describe for the blind eyes all the changes that had come upon the Somme country since Brian's "day." The roads which had been remade by the British over the shell-scarred and honeycombed surface of the land; the aerodromes; the training-camps; the tanks; the wonderful new railways for troops and ammunition: the bands of German prisoners docilely at work.

When the great gray car stopped, throbbing, at special view-points here and there, it was Brian who could listen for a lark's message of hope among the billowing downs, or draw in the tea-rose scent of earth from some brown field tilled by a woman. It was Father Beckett who saw the horrors of desolation—desolation more hideous even than on the French front; because, since the beginning, here had burned the hottest furnace of war: here had fallen a black, never-ceasing rain of bombardment, night and day, day and night, year after year.

It was the cherubic Old Contemptible who could tell each detail of war-history, when the car reached Albert. It was Brian who knew the ancient legend of the place, and the modern story of the spy, which, together, double the dramatic interest of the Bending Virgin. In the eleventh century a shepherd boy discovered, in a miraculous way, a statue of the Virgin. There was a far-off sound of music at night, when he was out in search of strayed sheep, and being young he forgot his errand in curiosity to learn whence came the mysterious chanting, accompanied by the silver notes of a flute. The boy wandered in the direction of the delicate sounds, and to his amazement found all the lost flock grazing round a statue which appeared to have risen from the earth. On that spot was built the basilica of Notre-Dame de Brebieres, which became a place of pilgrimage. The Virgin of the Shepherds was supposed to send her blessings far, far over the countryside, and her gilded image, with the baby Christ in her arms, was a flaming beacon at sunrise and sunset. Thus on her high tower the golden Lady stood when the war began. Albert was pitilessly bombarded, and with a startling accuracy which none could understand: yet the church itself, with its temptingly high tower, remained intact. Through October, 1914, the shining figure blazed against the sky, while houses fell in all quarters of the town: but on November 1st, three bombs struck the church. They were the first heavy drops of rain in a thunderstorm. The roof crashed in: and presently the pedestal of the Virgin received a shattering blow. This was on the very day when Albert discovered why for so long the church had been immune. A spy had been safely signalling from the tower, telling German gunners how and where to strike with the most damage to the town. When all the factories which gave wealth to Albert, and the best houses, had been methodically destroyed, the spy silently stole away: and the Virgin of the Shepherds then bent over, face down, to search for this black sheep of the fold. Ever since she with the sacred Child in her arms has hung thus suspended in pity and blessing over mountainous piles of wreckage which once composed the market-place. She will not crash to earth, Albert believes, till the war is over. But so loved is she in her posture of protection that the citizens propose to keep her in it for ever to commemorate the war-history of Albert, when Albert is rebuilt for future generations.

From there the gray car ran on almost due east to Peronne, out of the country of Surrey-like, Chiltern-like downs, into a strange marshy waste, where the river Somme expands into vast meres, swarming with many fish. It looked, Father Beckett said, "Like a bit of the world when God had just begun to create life out of chaos."

Poor Peronne! In its glorious days of feudal youth its fortress-castle was invincible. The walls were so thick that in days before gunpowder no assaults could hope to break through them. Down in its underground depths was a dungeon, where trapped enemy princes lay rotting and starving through weary years, never released save by death, unless tortured into signing shameful treaties. The very sound of the name, "Peronne," is an echo of history, as Brian says. Hardly a year-date in the Middle Ages could be pricked by a pin without touching some sensational event going on at that time at Peronne. I remember this from my schooldays; and more clearly still from "Quentin Durward," which I have promised to read aloud to Mother Beckett. I remember the Scottish monks who were established at Peronne in the reign of Clovis. I remember how Charles the Bold of Burgundy (who died outside Nancy's gates) imprisoned wicked Louis XI in a strong tower of the chateau, one of the four towers with conical roofs, like extinguishers of giant candles and kingly reputations! I remember best of all the heroine of Peronne, Catherine de Poix, "la belle Peronnaise," who broke with her own hand the standard of Charles's royal flag, in the siege of 1536, threw the bearer into the fosse, and saved the city.

When Wellington took the fortress in 1814, he did not desecrate or despoil the place: it was left for the Germans to do that, just a century later in the progress of civilization! My blood grew hot as I heard from our two men the story of what the new Vandals had done. Just for a moment I almost forgot the secret burning in my heart. The proud pile of historic stone brought to earth at last, like a soldier-king, felled by an axe in his old age: the statue of Catherine thrown from its pedestal, and replaced in mockery by a foolish manikin—this as a mean revenge for what she did to the standard-bearer, most of Charles's men in the siege being Germans, under Henry of Nassau.

"Toujours Francs-Peronnais Auront bon jour, Toujours et en tout temps Francs-Peronnais auront bon temps,"

the girls used to sing in old days as they wove the wonderful linens and tissues of Peronne, or embroidered banners of gorgeous colours to commemorate the saving of the Picard city by Catherine: as Brian repeated to Father Beckett wandering through the ruins redeemed last spring for France by the British. And though Brian's eyes could not see the rubbish-heap where once had soared the citadel he saw through the mystic veil of his blindness many things which others did not see.

It seems that above these marshy flats of the Somme, where the river has wandered away from the hills and disguised itself in shining lakes, gauzy mists always hover. Brian had seen them with bodily eyes, while he was a soldier. Now, with the eyes of his spirit he saw them again, gleaming with the delicate, indescribable colours which only blind eyes can call up to lighten darkness. He saw the fleecy clouds streaming over Peronne like a vast, transparent ghost-banner. He saw on their filmy folds, as if traced in blue and gold and royal purple, the ever famous scene on the walls when Catherine and her following beat back Nassau's men from the one breach where they might have captured the town. And this mystic banner of the spirit Germans can never capture or desecrate. It will wave over Peronne—what was Peronne, and what will again be Peronne—while the world goes on making history for free men.

After Peronne, Bapaume: the battered corpse of Bapaume, murdered in flame that reddened all the skies of Picardy before the British came to chase the Germans out!

In old times, when a place was destroyed the saying was, "Not one stone is left upon another." But in this war, destruction means an avalanche of stones upon each other. Bapaume as Father Beckett saw it, is a Herculaneum unexcavated. Beneath lie buried countless precious things, and still more precious memories; the feudal grandeur of the old chateau where Philippe-Auguste married proud Isabelle de Hainaut, with splendid ceremony as long ago as 1180: the broken glory of ancient ramparts, where modern lovers walked till the bugles of August 2, 1914, parted them for ever; the arcaded Town Hall, old as the domination of the Spaniards in Picardy; the sixteenth-century church of St. Nicolas with its quaint Byzantine Virgin of miracles: the statue of Faidherbe who beat back the German wave from Bapaume in 1871: all, all burned and battered, and mingled inextricably with debris of pitiful little homes, nobles' houses, rich shops and tiny boutiques, so that, when Bapaume rises from the dead, she will rise as one—even as France has risen.

Of the halting places on this pilgrimage along the British front, I should best have liked to be with Brian and Father Beckett at Arras. Brian and I were there together you know, Padre, on that happy-go-lucky tramping tour of ours—not long before I met Jim. We both loved Arras, Brian and I, and spent a week there in the most fascinating of ancient hotels. It had been a palace; and I had a huge room, big enough for the bedchamber of a princess (princesses should always have bedchambers, never mere bedrooms!) with long windows draped like the walls and stiff old furniture, in yellow satin. I was frightened when an aged servant with the air of a pontiff ushered me in; for Brian and I were travelling "on the cheap." But Arras, though delicious in its quaint charm, never attracted hordes of ordinary tourists. Consequently one could have yellow satin hangings without being beggared.

Oh, how happy we were in that hotel, and in the adorable old town! While Brian painted in the Grande Place and the Petite Place, and sketched the Abbey of St. Waast (who brought Christianity to that part of the world) I wandered alone. I used to stand every evening till my neck ached, staring up at the beautiful belfry, to watch the swallows chase each other back and forth among the bells, whose peal was music of fairyland. And I never tired of wandering through the arcades under the tall old Flemish houses with their overhanging upper storeys, or peeping into the arcades' cool shadows, from the middle of the sunlit squares.

There were some delightful shops in those arcades, where they sold antique Flemish furniture, queer old pictures showing Arras in her proud, treaty-making days (you know what a great place she was for treaty-making!) and lovely faded tapestries said to be "genuinely" of the time when no one mentioned a piece of tapestry save as an "arras." But the shop I haunted was a cake-shop. It was called "Au Coeur d'Arras," because the famous speciality of Arras was a heart-shaped cake; but I wasn't lured there so much by the charm of les coeurs as by that of the person who sold them.

I dare say I described her to you in letters, or when I got back to England after that trip. The most wonderful old lady who ever lived! She didn't welcome her customers at all. She just sat and knitted. She had an architectural sort of face, framed with a crust of snow—I mean, a frilled cap! And if one furtively stared, she looked at one down her nose, and made one feel cheap and small as if one had snored, or hiccupped out aloud in a cathedral! But it seems I won her esteem by enquiring if "les coeurs d'Arras" had a history. Nobody else had ever shown enough intelligence to care! So she gave me the history of the cakes, and of everything else in Arras; also, before we went away, she escorted Brian and me into a marvellous cellar beneath her shop. It went down three storeys and had fireplaces and a well! The earth under La Grande Place was honeycombed with such souterrains, she said. They'd once been quarries, in days so old as to be forgotten—quarries of "tender stone" (what a nice expression!), and the people of Arras had cemented and made them habitable in case of bombardment. They must have been useful in 1914!

As for the cakes, they were invented by an abbess who was sent to Spain. Before reluctantly departing, she gave the recipe to her successor, saying she "left her heart in Arras." According to the legend (the old shop-lady assured me) a girl who had never loved was certain to fall in love within a month after first eating a Heart of Arras. Well, Padre, I ate almost a hundred hearts, and less than a month after I met Jim!

You may believe that I asked Brian and Father Beckett a dozen questions at once about dear Arras. But alas, alas! all the answers were sad.

The beautiful belfry? Only a phantom remaining. The Hotel de Ville? Smashed. La Grande Place—La Petite Place? Stone quarries above ground as well as below, the old Flemish facades crumbled like sheets of barley sugar. The arcades? Ruined. The charming old shops? Vanished. The seller of Hearts? Dead. But the Hearts—they still existed! The children of Arras who have come back "since the worst was over" (that is their way of putting it!) would not feel that life was life without the Arras Hearts. Besides, Arras without the Hearts would be like the Altar of the Vestal Virgins without the ever-burning lamp. So they are still baked, and still eaten, those brave little Hearts of Arras—and Brian asked Father Beckett to bring me a box.

They bought it of a cousin of my old woman, an ancient man who had lurked in a cellar during the whole of the bombardment. He said that all Arras knew, in September, 1914, how the Kaiser had vowed to march into the town in triumph, and how, when he found the place as hard to take "as quicksilver is to grasp," he revenged himself by destroying its best-beloved treasures. He must have rejoiced that July day of 1915, when Wolff's Agency was able to announce at last, that the Abbey of St. Waast and its museum were in flames!

As the gray car bumped on to Bethune, Vimy Ridge floated blue in the far distance, to the right of the road, and Father Beckett and Brian took off their hats to it. Still farther away, and out of sight lay Lens, in German possession, but practically encircled by the British. The Old Contemptible had been there, and described the town as having scarcely a roof left, but being an "ant heap" of Boches, who swarm in underground shelters bristling with machine guns. Between Lens and the road stood the celebrated Colonne de Conde, showing where the prince won his great victory over Spain; and farther on, within gun-sound distance though out of sight, lay Loos, on the Canal de l'Haute Deule. Who thinks nowadays of its powerful Cistercian Abbey, that dominated the country round? Who thinks twice, when travelling this Appian Way which Germany has given France, of any history which began or ended before the year 1914?

Bethune they found still existing as a town. It has been bombarded often but not utterly destroyed, and from there they ran out four miles to Festubert, because the little that the Germans have left of the thirteenth-century church and village, burns with an eternal flame of interest.

Bethune itself was a famous fortress once, full of history and legend: but isn't the whole country in its waste and ruin, like a torn historic banner, crusted with jewels—magic jewels, which cannot be stolen by enemy hands?

On the way to Ypres—crown and climax of the tour—the car passed Lillers and Hazebrouck, places never to be forgotten by hearts that beat in the battles of Flanders. Then came the frontier at Steenwoorde; and they were actually in Belgium, passing Poperinghe to Ypres, the most famous British battleground of the war.

When Brian was fighting, and when you were on earth, Padre, everyone talked about the "Ypres Salient." Now, though for soldiers Ypres will always be the "salient" since the battle of Wytschaete Ridge, the material salient has vanished. Yet the same trenches exist, in the same gray waste which Brian used to paint in those haunting, impressionist war sketches of his that all London talked about, after the Regent Street exhibition that he didn't even try for leave to see! The critics spoke of the mysterious, spiritual quality of his work, which gave "without sentimentality" picturesqueness to the shell-holes and mud, the shattered trees and wooden crosses, under eternally dreaming skies.

Well, Brian tells me that going back as a blind man to the old scenes, he had a strange, thrilling sense of seeing them—seeing more clearly than before those effects of mysterious beauty, hovering with prophecy above the squalor of mud and blood, hovering and mingling as the faint light of dawn mingles, at a certain hour, with the shadows of night. People used to call his talent a "blend of vision with reality." Now, all that is left him is "vision"—vision of the spirit. But with help—I used to think it would be my help: now I realize it will be Dierdre's—who knows what extraordinary things my blind Brian may accomplish? His hope is so beautiful, and so strong, that it has lit an answering flame of hope in me.

He and I were in Ypres for a few days, just about the time I was wondering why "Jim Wyndham" didn't keep his promise to find me again. It was in Ypres, I remember, that I came across the box of "Coeurs d'Arras" I'd brought with me. Opening it, I recalled the legend about a girl who has never loved, falling in love within a month after first eating an Arras Heart. It was then I said to myself, "Why, it has come true! I have fallen in love with Jim Wyndham—and he has forgotten me!"

Oh, Padre, how that pain comes back to me now, in the midst of the new pain, like the "core of the brilliance within the brilliance!" Which hurt is worse, to love a man, and believe oneself forgotten, or to love and know one has been loved, and then become unworthy? I can't be sure. I can't even be sure that, if I could, I would go back to being the old self before I committed the one big sin of my life, which gave me Jim's father and mother, and the assurance that he had cared. For a while, after Mother Beckett told me about Jim's love for "The Girl," in spite of my wickedness I glowed with a kind of happiness. I felt that, through all the years of my life—even when I grew old—Jim would be mine, young, handsome, gay, just as I had seen him on the Wonderful Day: that I could always run away from outside things and shut the gate of the garden on myself and Jim—that rose-garden on the border of Belgium. Now, when I know—or almost know—that he will come back in the flesh to despise me, and that the gate of the garden will be forever shut—why, I shall be punished as perhaps no woman has ever been punished before. Still—still I can't be sure that I would escape, if I could, by going back to my old self!

It is writing of Belgium, and my days there with Brian while I still hoped to see Jim, that brings all these thoughts crowding so thickly to my mind, they seem to drip off my pen!

But what a different Ypres Father Beckett has now seen, and Brian felt, from that dear, pleasant Ypres into which we two drove in a cart, along a cobbled causeway as straight as a tight-drawn string! Tourists who loved the blue, and yellow, and red bath-houses on the golden beach of Ostend, didn't worry to motor over the bumpy road, through the Flemish plain to Ypres. The war was needed to bring its sad fame to "Wipers!" But Brian and I interrupted our walking tour with that cart, because we knew that the interminable causeway would take us deep into the inner quaintness of Flanders. We adored it all: and at every stopping-place on the twenty-mile road, I had the secret joy of whispering; "Perhaps it is here that He will suddenly appear, and meet us!"

There was one farmhouse on the way, where I longed to have him come. I wanted him so much that I almost created him! I was listening every moment, and through every sound, for his car. It never came. But because I so wished the place to be a background for our meeting I can see the two large living-rooms of the old house, with the black-beamed ceilings, the Flemish stoves, the tall, carved sideboards and chests with armorial bearings, the deep window-seats that were flower-stands and work-tables combined, and the shelves of ancient pottery and gleaming, antique brass. There was a comfortable fragrance of new-baked bread, mingling with the spicy scent of grass-pinks, in that house: and the hostess who gave us luncheon—a young married woman—had a mild, sweet face, strongly resembling that of St. Genevieve of Brabant, as pictured in a coloured lithograph on the wall.

St. Genevieve's story is surely the most romantic, the most pathetic of any saint who ever deigned to tread on earth!—and her life and death might serve as an allegory of Belgium's martyrdom, poor Belgium, the little country whose patron she is. Since that day at the farmhouse on the road to Ypres, I've thought often of the gentle face with its forget-me-not eyes and golden hair; and of Golo the dark persecutor who—they say now—was a real person and an ancestor of the Hohenzollerns through the first Duc de Baviere.

At Ypres, Brian painted for me a funny "imagination picture" imitating earliest Flemish work. It showed Ypres when there was no town save a few tiny houses and a triangular stronghold, with a turret at each corner, built on a little island in the river Yperlee. He named the picture "The Castle of the Three Strong Towers," and dated it in the year 900. A thousand years have passed since then. Slowly, after much fighting (the British fought as hard to take Ypres once, as they fight to save it now), the town grew great and powerful, and became the capital of Flanders. The days of the rough earthen stockades and sharp thorn-bush defences of "Our Lady of the Enclosures" passed on to the days of casemates and moats; and still on, to the days when the old fortifications could be turned into ornamental walks—days of quaintly beautiful architecture, such as Brian and I saw before the war, when we spent hours in the Grand' Place, admiring the wonderful Cloth Hall and the Spanish-looking Nieuwerck. The people of Ypres told us proudly that nothing in Bruges itself, or anywhere in Flanders, could compare with those noble buildings massed together at the west end of the Grand' Place, each stone of which represented so much wealth of the richest merchant kings of Europe.

And now, the work of those thousand busy years has crumbled in a few monstrous months, like the sand-houses of children when the tide comes in! What Father Beckett saw of Ypres after three years' bombardment, was not much more than that shown in Brian's picture, dated 900! A blackened wall or two and a heap of rubble where stood the Halle des Drapiers—pride of Ypres since the thirteenth century—its belfry, its statues, its carvings, its paintings, all vanished like the contours and colours of a sunset cloud. The cathedral is a skeleton. Hardly a pointed gable is left to tell where the quaint and prosperous houses once grouped cosily together. Ypres the town is a mourner draped in black with the stains of fire which killed its beauty and joy. But there is a glory that can never be killed, a glory above mere beauty, as a living soul is above the dead body whence it has risen. That glory is Ypres. She is a ghost, but she is an inspiration, a name of names, a jewel worth dying for—"worth giving a man's eyes for," Brian says!

"Has your brother told you about the man we met at the Visitors' Chateau?" asked Father Beckett, when between the two men—and my reminiscences—the story of the tour was finished with those last words of Brian's.

"No, I haven't told her yet," Brian answered for me.

My nerves jumped. I scarcely knew what I expected to hear. "Not Doctor Paul Herter?" I exclaimed—and was surprised to hear on my own lips the name so constantly in my mind.

"Well, that's queer she should speak of him, isn't it, Brian? How did you come to think of Herter?" Father Beckett wanted to know.

"Was it he?" I insisted.

"No. But—you'd better tell her, Brian. I guess you'll have to."

"There isn't much to tell, really," Brian said. "It was only that oculist chap Herter told you about—Dr. Henri Chrevreuil. He's been working at the front, as you know: lately it's been the British front; and they'd taken him in at the chateau for a few days' rest. We met him there and talked of his friend—your friend, Molly—Doctor Paul."

"What did he say about your eyes?" Dierdre almost gasped. (I should not have ventured to put the question suddenly, and before people. I should have been too afraid of the answer. But her nickname is "Dare!") "He must have said something, or Mr. Beckett wouldn't have spoken so. He did look at your eyes—didn't he? He would, for Herter's sake."

"Yes, he did look at them," Brian admitted. "He didn't say much."

"But what—what?"

"He said: 'Wait, and—see.'"

"And see!" Dierdre echoed.

The same thought was in all our minds. As I gazed mutely at Brian, he gave me the most beautiful smile of his life. He must have felt that I was looking at him, or he would not so have smiled. Let Jim hate and—punish me when he comes back, and drive me out of Paradise! Wherever I may go, there will be the reflection of that smile and the thought behind it. How can I be unhappy, if Brian need only wait, to see?



CHAPTER XXX

Padre, my mind is like a thermometer exposed every minute to a different temperature, but always high or low—never normal.

To tell, or not to tell, Father Beckett what the man I didn't see said about Jim—or rather, what Julian O'Farrell said that he said! This has been the constant question; but the thermometer invariably flies up or down, far from the answer-point.

When our men came back to Amiens, I almost hoped that Puck would do his worst—carry out his threat and "give me away" to Father Beckett. In that case I should at least have been relieved from responsibility. But Puck didn't. In my heart I had known all along that he would not.

If I could have felt for a whole minute at a time that it would be fair to wake hopes which mightn't be fulfilled, out would have burst the secret. But whenever I'd screwed up my courage to speak, Something would remind me: "Herter sent word that there might be a message from Switzerland. Better wait till it comes, for he wasn't sure of his facts. He may have been misled." Or, when I'd decided not to speak, another Something would say: "Jim is alive. You know he is alive! Herter is helping him to escape. Don't let these dear old people suffer a minute longer than they need."

But—well—so far I have waited. A week has passed since I wrote at Amiens. We have arrived at Jim's chateau—the little, quaint, old Chateau d'Andelle, with thick stone walls, black-beamed ceilings, and amusing towers, set in the midst of an enchanted forest of Normandy. No wonder he fell in love with the place before the war, and wanted to live there! It must have seemed an impossible dream at the time, for the owners (the chateau has been in the same family for generations) had money in those days, and wouldn't have let their home to strangers. The war has made all the difference. They couldn't afford to keep up the place, and were eager to let. Beckett money is a boon to them, so everyone is satisfied. The agents in Paris secured two or three extra servants to help the old pair left in the house as caretakers; and there is a jewel of a maid for Mother Beckett—a Belgian refugette. I shall give her some training as a nurse, and by and by I shall be able to fade away in peace. Already I'm beginning to prepare my dear lady's mind for a parting. I talk of my hospital work, and drop hints that I'm only on leave—that Brian's hopes and Father Beckett's splendid new-born plan for him, will permit me to take up duty again soon.

The plan developed on the trip: but I'm sure the first inspiration came from Mother Beckett. While she was ill, she did nothing but lie and think of things to do for other people. And she was determined to make it possible for Brian to have a love story of his own, provided he wanted one. It only needed Father Beckett's practical brain and unlimited purse to turn her vague suggestion into a full-grown plan. A whole block of buildings on the outskirts of Paris, let as apartment houses, is to be bought by Mr. Beckett, for the use of blinded soldiers. Already his agents have got the refusal of the property for him; and with a few changes such as knocking down inner walls and putting in doors where doors don't exist, the houses will become one big mansion, to accommodate five or six hundred men. Each will have his own bedroom or cubicle. There'll be a gymnasium, with a Swedish instructor, and every trade or profession in which a blind man could possibly engage will be taught by experts. There will be a big dining hall with a musicians' gallery, and a theatre. The library will be supplied with quantities of books for the blind. There'll be a garden where the men will be taught to grow flowers and vegetables. They will have a resident doctor, and two superintendents. One of these two will himself be a blind man taught by his own experience how to teach others. Of course, Padre, you know that this blind teacher is already chosen, and that the whole scheme centers round him!

In a way Brian realizes that, if it were not for him, it would never have been thought of. In a way. But—it is his way. He doesn't torture himself, as I probably should in his place, by thinking: "All these immense sums of money being spent as an excuse to provide for me in life! Ought I to let it be done? Ought I to accept?"

Brian's way is not that. He says: "Now I understand why I lost my eyesight, and it's worth it a thousand times. This wonderful chance is to be given me to help others, as I never could have helped if I hadn't been blind. If sight comes back, I shall know what it is to be blind, and I can give counsel and courage to others. I am glad, glad to be blind. It's a privilege and a mission. Even if I never see again, except with my spirit's eyes, I shall still be glad!"

He doesn't worry at all because carrying out the plan will cost Father Beckett one or more of his millions. What is money for, except to be spent? What pleasure is like spending to do good? He finds it quite natural that Father Beckett wants to do this thing; and though he's immensely grateful, he takes it blithely for granted that the benefactor should be happy and proud.

Travelling back from Ypres to Amiens they seem to have settled all the details between them, though they told us their adventures before even mentioning the Plan. Brian is to be guide, philosopher, and friend to the inmates and students of the James Wyndham Beckett College for the Blind. Also he is to give lectures on art and various other subjects. If he can learn to paint his blind impressions (as he believes he can, with Dierdre's promised help) he will be able to teach other blind artists to follow his example. And he is to have a salary for his services—not the big one Father Beckett wished: Brian wouldn't hear of that—but enough to live on. And Dierdre and Julian are offered official positions and salaries too. It's suggested that they should take a flat near by the College, within easy walking distance. Dierdre is to entertain the blind men with recitations, and teach the art of reciting to those who wish to learn. Julian is to sing and play for the men in the house-theatre, once or twice a week, as he can spare time from his work with De Letzski. Also he will give one lesson a week in singing and voice production.

Both the O'Farrells are to be well paid (no trouble in persuading Julian to accept generous proposals for himself and his sister; for him the labourer is indeed worthy of his hire): and with American dash and money the scheme is expected to be in working order by next June. It's now well into November. But after seeing how other schemes have worked, and how this Chateau d'Andelle business has been rushed through, I have the most sublime faith in Beckett miracles.

They are astonishing, these Becketts! Father, the simplest, kindest man, with the air of liking his fireside better than any adventure: Mother, a slip of a creature—"a flower in a vase to be kept by her menfolk on a high shelf," as I told myself when I first saw her. Yet what adventures they have had, and what they have accomplished since the day Brian proposed this pilgrimage, two months ago! Not a town on our route that, after the war won't have cause to bless them and the son in whose name their good works have been done—cause to bless Beckett kindness, Beckett money for generations in the future! Yet now they have added this most ambitious plan of all to the list, and I know it will be carried out to perfection.

You see now, Padre, from what I've told you, how easy it is being made for me to slip out of this circle. Brian, beaming with happiness, and on the point of opening his heart to Dierdre's almost worshipping love: Mother Beckett slowly getting back a measure of frail, flower-like health, in this lovely place which she calls Jim's: Father Beckett more at ease about her, and intensely interested in his scheme: the small, neat Belgian refugette likely to prove at least a ministering mouse if not a ministering angel: above all, hope if not certainty that Jim will one day return—not only in spirit but in body—to his chateau and his family. If I am needed anywhere on earth, it isn't here, but down in the south at my poor Hopital des Epidemies. Would it be cowardly in me to fly, as soon as I've persuaded the Becketts to spare me, and throw the responsibility I haven't dared decide to take, upon my brave, blind Brian?

Ah, I don't mean telling him about myself and my sins. I shouldn't have the courage for that, I fear! I mean, shall I tell him about Doctor Paul's message—or supposed message? It has just occurred to me that I might do this, and let Brian decide whether Father Beckett ought to know, even if no further news comes through Switzerland. You see, if I were gone, and Jim came, I could trust the new Dierdre to do her best for me with Brian. He could never respect me, never love me in the old way—but he might forgive, because of Dierdre herself—and because of the great Plan. Hasn't my wickedness given them both to him?

Writing all this to you has done me good, Padre. I see more clearly ahead. I shall decide before morning what to do. I feel I shall this time! And I think it a good idea to speak to Brian. He will agree, though he doesn't know my secret need to escape, that it's right for me to take up hospital work again. But, Padre, I can't go—I won't go—until I've helped Mother Beckett arrange Jim's treasures in the room to be called his "den." She has been living for that, striving to grow strong enough for that. And I—oh, Padre!—I want to be the one to unpack his things and to touch each one with my hands. I want to leave something of myself in that room where, if he's dead, his spirit will surely come: where, if he lives, his body will come. If I leave behind me thoughts of love, won't they linger between those walls like the scent of roses in a vase? Mayn't those thoughts influence Jim Beckett not to detest me as I deserve?



CHAPTER XXXI

Five days later.

I did talk to Brian, Padre, and he said, better wait and give the letter from Switzerland a fair chance to arrive, before telling Father Beckett about Doctor Paul's messenger at Amiens.

Now I have had a letter, but not from Switzerland. I shall fold it up between the pages of this book of my confessions. I believe you will read it, Padre.

It came to-day. It explains itself. The envelope, postmarked Paris, was addressed to me in typewriting. If Mother Beckett had not had a slight relapse from working too hard in the den, I might perhaps have been gone before the letter came. Then it would have had to be forwarded. It's better that I stayed. You will see why. But—oh, Padre, Padre!

THE LETTER

"MISS O'MALLEY,

"Once I met a lady whose name, as I understood it, was not unlike yours now, given me by Doctor Paul Herter. I cannot think that you and she are one. That lady, I'd swear, would be incapable of—let me say, placing herself in a false position.

"Though you will not recognize my handwriting, I've said enough for you to guess that James Wyndham Beckett is your correspondent. I have had the address typed because, for my parents' sake and to spare them distress, it seems that you and I must reach some understanding before I venture to let them know that I'm alive.

"If you are worthy to be called 'friend' by such a man as Paul Herter, you will wish to atone for certain conduct, by carrying out the request I make now. I must trust you to do so. But first let me relieve my mind of any fear for yourself. I have not contradicted the story you told Herter about our engagement. What I shall say to my parents when I meet them, as I hope soon to do, depends upon circumstances. Till you and I have had a private conversation, you will oblige me by letting things remain as they are. I have strong reasons for this wish. One of them—the only one I need explain now, is that it will seem natural to them I should write to my fiancee—a young, strong girl able to bear the shock of a great surprise—asking her to break the news gently and tactfully to my father and mother. I do ask you to do this. How to do it I must leave to you. But when you've told my parents that I'm alive, that I've escaped, that I'm in Paris with Herter, that as soon as my official business of reporting myself is finished, I'll get leave, you may put into their hands the following pages of this letter. They will not think it strange that the girl I am engaged to should keep the first part for her own eyes. Thus, without your being compromised, they will learn my adventures without having to wait until I come. But there's just room enough left on this first sheet to reiterate that, when Herter found me, and gave me the somewhat disconcerting news of my engagement to his friend, a Miss O'Malley travelling with my parents, I—simply listened. Rather than excite his suspicions I did not even yield to curiosity, and try to draw out a description. I could not be sure then that I should ever see you, or my people, for escape was difficult and there were more chances against than for my getting out of Germany alive. Now, in all human certainty I shall arrive at the Chateau d'Andelle (I got the address at the bank), and you owe it to me to remain on the spot till we can thrash out our affair together. I will begin on a new sheet the story of the last few months since my capture. You must forgive me if it bores you. In reality it is for my parents, when you have prepared their minds, and I don't think it will bore them....

"We came a bad cropper. I was thrown clear of the machine, but knew nothing until I waked up, feeling like a bag of broken bones. It was night, and I saw a huge fountain of red flame and a lot of dark figures like silhouettes moving between it and me. That brought me out of my stupor. I knew my plane must have taken fire as it crashed down, and I was pretty sure the silhouettes were Germans. I looked around for my observer, and called to him in a low voice, hoping the Bosch wouldn't hear, over the noise of the fire. Nobody answered. Later I found out that the poor chap had been caught under the car. I pray he died before the flames reached him!

"As I got my wits back, I planned to try and hide myself under some bushes I could see not far off, till the coast was clear; but I couldn't move. I seemed to be thoroughly smashed up, and began to think it was the end of things ici-bas for me. After a while I must have fainted. By and by I had a dream of jolting along through a blazing desert, on the back of a lame camel. It was rather fierce, that jolting! It shook me out of my faint, and when I opened my eyes it was to find myself on a stretcher carried by fellows in German gray. They took me to a field hospital, and I guessed by the look of things that it was close to the first lines. It made me sick to think how near I must be to our own front—yet so far!

"Well, I won't be long-winded about what happened next. I can go into details when we meet. It turned out that I had a leg, an arm, and some ribs smashed. The Bosch surgeon wasn't half bad, as Bosches go, but he was a bit brusque. I heard him say right out to the anaesthetist, it seemed a pity to waste good ether on me, as there wasn't one chance in five to save my life. Still, I'd be an experiment! Before I went off under the stuff I told them who I was, for I'd heard they were sometimes fairly decent to enemy aviators, and I hoped to get a message through to my people. I was feeling as stupid as an owl, but I did think I saw a change come over the men's faces when they heard my name. Later, putting two and two together, I concluded that Germany was just the kind of business nation to know all about the dear old Governor. I might have realized that, out of sheer spite against the United States for bursting into the war, they'd enjoy letting a man of James Beckett Senior's importance go on believing his son was dead. I bet they put my name over the grave of my poor, burned pal, Hank Lee! It would be the thoroughgoing sort of thing they do, when they make up their minds to create an impression.

"I didn't die, though! Spite for spite, I got well. But it took some time. One of my lungs had been damaged a bit by a broken rib, and the doctors prescribed an open-air cure, after I'd begun to crawl again. I was put with a lot of T. B.'s, if you know what that means, in a camp hospital. Not far off was a huge 'camouflaged' aerodrome and a village of hangars. I heard that flying men were being trained there. I used to think I'd give my head to get to the place, but I never hoped to do it—till Herter came.

"Now I will tell you how he came—which I can freely do, as we are both safe in Paris, having come from somewhere near Compiegne. One of the first things Herter said about you was that you must have guessed where he was going, and more or less for what purpose. For that purpose he was the ideal man: a Lorrainer of Germanized Lorraine; German his native tongue—(though he hates it)—and clever as Machiavelli. He "escaped" from France into Germany, told a tale about killing a French sentry and creeping across No Man's Land at night, in order to get to the German lines. It was a big risk, but Herter is as brave and resourceful a man as I ever met. He got the Bosches to believe that he was badly ill in Paris when the war broke out and couldn't slip away, otherwise he'd have sprung to do his loyal duty to the Fatherland. He persuaded them that his lot being cast in France for the time, he'd resolved to serve Germany by spying, until he could somehow bolt across the frontier. He spun a specious tale about pretending to the French to have French sympathies, and winning the confidence of high-up men, by serving as a surgeon on several fronts. To prove his German patriotism he had notes to show, realistically made on thin silk paper, and hidden inside the lining of his coat.

"Herter's mission in Boschland isn't my business or yours; but I'm allowed to say that it was concerned with aeroplanes. There was something he had to find out, and he has found it out, or he wouldn't be back on this side of the lines. Because he hoped to be among German flying-men, he hinted to you that he might be able to do you some service. It occurred to him that he might learn where my grave was and let you know. Nothing further was in his thoughts then—or until he happened to draw out a piece of unexpected information in a roundabout way.

"His trick of getting across to the flying-men was smart, like all his tricks. The valuable (?) notes he'd brought into Germany mostly concerned new French and American inventions in that line. That was his 'speciality.' And when he had handed the notes over with explanations, he continued his programme by asking for a job as surgeon in a field hospital. (You see, he hoped to get back to France before the worthlessness of his notes was discovered.) When he'd proved his qualifications, he got his job like a shot. They were only too glad of his services. Pretending to have been in American training-camps, it was easy to bring up my name in a casual way. Laughing that rather sinister laugh of his, which you will remember, Herter told a couple of flying chaps he had promised a girl to find Jim Beckett's grave. One of the fellows laughed too, and made a remark which set Herter thinking. Later, he was able to refer to the subject again, and learned enough to suspect that there was something fishy about the Bosch announcement of my death and burial. He tells me that, at this point, he was able to send you a verbal message by a consumptive prisoner about to be repatriated. Whether you got that message or not who knows?

"His idea was to send another (in a way he won't explain even to me) when he'd picked up further news. But as things turned out, there was no time. Besides, it wasn't necessary. It looked hopeful that we might be our own carrier pigeons, or else—cease to exist.

"What happened was that Herter heard I was alive and in a hospital not far behind the lines. Just at this time he had got hold of the very secret he'd come to seek. The sooner he could make a dash for home the better: but if possible, he wished to take me with him. He had the impression that to do so would please his friend Miss O'Malley! How it was to be worked he didn't see until an odd sort of American bombing machine fell, between an aerodrome it had attempted to destroy, and Herter's hospital. They knew it was American, only because of its two occupants, both killed. The machine was considerably smashed up, but experts found traces of something amazingly novel, which they couldn't understand. Herter was called to the scene, because he had pretended to be up in the latest American flying 'stunts.' The minute he saw the wreckage an inspiration jumped into his head.

"He confessed himself puzzled by the mysterious details, thought them important, and said: 'It seems to me this resembles the engine and wings of the James Beckett invention I heard so much about. But I didn't know it was far enough ahead yet to be in use. A pity the inventor was killed. He might have come in handy.

"Well, they put those words in their pipes and smoked them—knowing, of course, that I was very much alive and almost within a stone's throw.

"I had always pretended not to understand German: thought ignorance of the language might serve my plans some day or other. The chap they sent to fetch me dropped a few words to a doctor in my hearing. And so, though I wasn't told where I was being taken or why I was to go, I'd about caught on to the fact that I was supposed to have invented the plans for a new bombing biplane. That made me wonder if a friend was at work under the rose: and I was ready for anything when I got to the scene of the smash.

"Fortunately, none of the Bosches on the spot could speak English fluently, and I appeared more of a fool at French than German. Herter—entirely trusted by his German pals—was told off to talk English with me; and a flash of his eye said, here was the friend! It was only a flash, and I couldn't be sure, but it put me on the qui vive. I noticed that in asking me the question he was told to ask, he emphasized certain words which needed no emphasis, and spoke them slowly, with a look that made me determine to fix each one in my mind. This I did, and putting them together when I got the chance, I made out, 'I want to get you home. Say you invented this model, and could put the thing in working trim.'

"That was a big order! If I said it and could keep my word, would it be a patriotic job to present the enemy with a perfectly good machine, of a new make, in the place of a wreck they didn't understand? This was my first thought. But the second reminded me of a sentence I'd constructed with some of the emphasized words; 'I want to get you home.' How did he expect to get me home—if not by air?

"With that I caught a glimpse of the plan, as one sometimes catches sight of the earth through a break in massed clouds when flying. If the man meant to help me, I would help him. If he turned out a fraud, the Germans shouldn't profit by his treachery I'd stop that game at the last moment, if I died for it!

"You will know nothing about the new and curious bombing biplane of super-speed invented by Leroy Harman of Galbraith, Texas. But Father knows as much as any one not an expert in aeronautics can know. When the Government wouldn't believe in Harman, Father financed him by my advice. I left home for France before the trial machine that was to convince officialdom had come into being; and I didn't even know whether it had made good. But the minute I saw what lay on the ground, surrounded by a ring of Germans, I said to myself; 'Good old Leroy!'

"I'd seen so much of his plans that they remained printed on my brain, and I could—if I would—set that biplane on its wings again almost as easily as if I had invented it.

"Odd that the Bosches and I both trusted Herter, seeing he must be false to one side or other! But he's that sort of man. And I always take a tip from my own instinct before listening to my reason. Maybe that's why I didn't do badly in my brief career as a flier. Anyhow, I played up to Herter; and I got the job of superintending the reconstruction of poor Harman's damaged machine. It was a lovely job for a prisoner, though they watched me as a German cat would watch an Allied mouse. Herter was nearly always on the spot, however, for he'd made himself responsible for me. Also, he'd offered to pump me about what was best in the air world on my side of the water: how many aeroplanes of different sorts America could turn out in six months, etc. We contrived a cypher on diagrams I made. It was a clever one, but the credit was Herter's.

"The Bosches were waiting impatiently for my work to be done, in order to try out the machine, and if satisfactory, spawn a brood of their own on the same model. I was equally impatient. I hoped to fly off with the biplane before they had time to copy it!

"A wounded Ace of theirs, Anton Hupfer, was for ever hanging round. He was to take up the 'plane when it was ready. But Herter industriously chummed with him, and not for nothing. To Herter was due the 'discovery' of the inventor; and as he boasted experience in flying, he asked the privilege of being Hupfer's companion on the trial trip.

"The success of this trip would depend even more on the machine's worth as a bomber than on her speed and climbing qualities. It was, therefore, to be undertaken at night, with a full complement of real bombs to drop upon headquarters at Compiegne. Herter had suggested this. Daylight wouldn't have suited for a start.

"An hour before the appointed time he dashed in upon Hupfer to confide that a sudden suspicion concerning me was troubling him. He had noticed a queer expression on my face as I gave the engine a last look over! If I had done some obscure damage to this so new type of machine, the mechanics might not detect its nature. Herter didn't wish to harm me, if his suspicion was unfounded, he explained, but he proposed a drastic proof of my good faith. I was to be hauled out of bed, and hurried without warning to look at the biplane in her hangar. The mechanics were to be sent outside, there to wait for a signal to open the doors: this to avoid gossip if I was honest after all. Hupfer was to spring it on me that he'd decided to take me up instead of Herter. My face was to be watched as this news was flung at me. If I showed the slightest trace of uneasiness, it would be a sign that I had played a trick and feared to fall its victim. In that case the 'third degree' was to be applied until I owned up, and could be haled away for punishment.

"There was just time to carry out this programme, and Hupfer fell for it. Herter had put me wise beforehand, and I knew what to expect. His real plan was to stand behind Hupfer, the Bosch Ace, and bash him on the head with a spanner, while his (Hupfer's) whole attention was fixed on me. We would then undress the fellow. I would take his clothes, and we'd put him into mine. Hupfer's body (stunned, not dead, we hoped) we would lay behind a pile of petrol tins. I acting as pilot, would trust to my disguise and the darkness of night not to be spotted when the two mechanics threw open the hangar doors.

"Everything happened as we'd arranged, without a hitch—again, all credit to Herter! When we'd hidden the limp Ace, trussed up in my prison rig, Herter yelled to the waiting men, in a good imitation of Hupfer's voice. We ran smoothly out of the hangar, and were given a fine send off. How soon the Bosches found out how they'd been spoofed, I don't know. It couldn't have been long though, as my prison guard was in attendance. The great thing was, we went up in grand style. Otherwise—but we needn't now think of the 'otherwise'!

"Our next danger lay in taking the wrong direction, getting farther back in Boschland instead of over the frontier. I kept my wits, fortunately, so that turned out all right. Still, there remained the chance of being shot down by the French, and blown with our own bombs into kingdom come. But, by good luck it was a clear night. No excuse for getting lost! And when I was sure we were well over the French lines, I planed down to alight in a field.

"The alert was out for us, of course, and a fierce barrage put up, but I flew high till I was ready for a dive. We'd hardly landed, when the poilus swarmed like bees, but that was what we wanted. You must imagine the scene that followed, till I can tell you by word of mouth!

"I shall have made my report, and have been given leave to start for a visit to my family by to-morrow I hope.

"Yours till the end,

"JIM."

"Yours till the end!" Rather a smart, cynical way of winding up those "exhibition pages" was it not, Padre? The secret translation of that signature is: "Yours, you brute, till I can get rid of you with least damage to my parents' susceptibilities!"

I shall obey, and wait for the interview. It's like waiting to be shot at dawn!



CHAPTER XXXII

I persuaded Brian to tell Father Beckett. I wasn't worthy. But the dear old man came straight to me, transfigured, to make me go with him to his wife, even before he had finished reading the letter.

"You must come," he said—and when Father Beckett says "must," in a certain tone, one does. It's then that the resemblance, more in expression than feature, between him and his son shines out like a light. "It will save mother the trouble of asking for you," he went on, dragging me joyously with him, his arm round my waist. "She'd do that, first thing, sure! Why, do you suppose we forget Jim's as much to you as to us? Haven't you shown us that, every day since we met?"

What answer could I give? I gave none.

Mother Beckett had been lying down for the afternoon nap which by my orders she takes every day. She'd just waked, and was sitting up on the lounge, when her husband softly opened the door to peep in. The only light was firelight, leaping in an open grate.

"Come in, come in!" she greeted us in her silver tinkle of a voice. "Oh, you didn't disturb me. I was awake. I thought I'd ring for tea. But I didn't after all. I'd had such a beautiful dream, I hated to come out of it."

"I bet it was a dream about Jim!" said Father Beckett. He drew me into the room, and the little lady pulled me down beside her on the wide, cushiony lounge. Her husband's special arm-chair was close by, but he didn't subside into it as usual at this cosy hour of the afternoon. Instead, he knelt stiffly down on one knee, and took the tiny, ringed hand held out to him. "You wouldn't think a dream beautiful, unless Jim was in it!"

"Yes I would, if you were in it, dear," she reproached him. "Or Molly. But Jim was in this dream. I saw him as plainly as I see you both. He walked in at the door, the way he used to do at home, saying: 'Hello, Mother, I've been looking for you everywhere!' You know, Father how you and Jimmy used to feel injured if you called me and I couldn't be found in a minute. In this dream though, we didn't seem to be back home. I wasn't sure where we were: only—I was sure——" She stopped, with a catch in her voice. But Father Beckett took up the sentence where she let it drop. "Sure of Jim?"