"Yes. He was so real!"

"Well then, Mother darling, I guess the dream ought not to have been back home, but here, in this very house. For here's where Jim will come."

"Oh, I do feel that!" she agreed, trying to "camouflage" a tear with a smile. "Jim's with me all the time."

"Not yet," said Father Beckett, with a stolid gentleness. "Not yet. Not the real Jim. But he'll come."

"You mean, when Molly and I've finished putting out all his treasures in the den, just as he'd like to see them?"

"He might come before you get the den ready. He might come—any day now—even to-morrow." The gnarled brown hand smoothed the small, shrivelled white one with nervous strokes and passes.

"Father!" she sat up suddenly, straight and rigid among her cushions. "You've heard—you're trying to break something to me. Tell me right out. Jim's alive!"

She snatched her hand free, and bending forward, flung both arms round the old man's neck before he could answer. I sprang up to give them room. I thought they had forgotten me. But no. Out came Father Beckett's big hand to snatch my dress.

"This child got the news—a letter," he explained. "The boy was afraid of the shock for us. He thought she——"

"A shock of joy—why, that gives life—not death!" sobbed and laughed Mother Beckett. "But it was right to let Molly know first. She's more to him than we are now. Oh, Father—Father—our Jim's alive—alive! I think in my soul I knew it all the time. I never felt he was gone. He must have sent me thoughts. Dear ones, I want to pray. I want to thank God—now, this instant, before I hear more—before I read the letter. We three together—on our knees!"

Padre, when I was on my knees, with the thin little arm of Jim's mother thrilling my shoulder, my face hidden in the cushions, I could only say: "God, forgive!" and echo the thanksgiving of those two loving hearts. I didn't pray not to be punished. I almost want to be punished—since Brian is safe, and my punishment can't spoil his future.

* * * * *

The patriotic Becketts have given up the big gray car, now they've settled down at the Chateau d'Andelle: and our one-legged soldier-chauffeur has departed, to conduct a military motor. For the moment there's only the O'Farrell Red Cross taxi, not yet gone about its legitimate business; so it was Julian who took Father Beckett to the far-off railway station, to meet Jim Beckett the next day but one—Julian—of all people on earth!

Father Beckett begged me to be of the party, and Mother Beckett—too frail still for so long and cold a drive—piled up her persuasions. But I was firm. I didn't like going to meet trains, I said. It was prosaic. I was allowed to stop at home, therefore, with my dear little lady: the last time, I told myself, that she would ever love and "mother" me. Once Jim and I had settled our affairs in that "interview" I was ordered to wait for, I should be the black sheep, turned out of the fold.

There was just one reason why I'd have liked to be in the car to bring Jim back from the station. Knowing Julian-Puck, I was convinced that despite Father Beckett's presence he'd contrive a chance to thrust some entering wedge of mischief into Jim Beckett's head. Not that it was needed! If he'd read the first pages of Jim's letter—the secret pages—he would have known that. But the night the great news came to the chateau, he whispered into my ear: "You seem to be taking things easy. Sure you won't change your mind and bolt with me?—or do you count on your invincible charm, "ueber alles"?"

I didn't even answer. I merely looked. Perhaps he took it for a defiant look, though Heaven knows it wasn't. I was past defiance. In any case, such as the look was, it shut him up. And after that the brooding storm behind his eyes made me wonder (when I'd time to think of it) what coup he was meditating. There would never be a chance like the chance at the station before Jim had met me. Julian was sharp enough, dramatic enough to see that. I pictured him somehow corralling Jim for an instant, while Father Beckett carried on a conversation of signs with a worried porteuse. Julian would be able to do in an instant as much damage to a character as most men could do in an hour!

A little added disgust for me on Jim's part, however, what could it matter? I tried to argue. When a thing is already black, can it be painted blacker?

Still, I was foolish enough to wish that our good old one-legged soldier might have stayed to bring Jim home.

* * * * *

Mother Beckett would have compelled me to be with her at the open door to meet "our darling boy," but that I could not bear. It would be as trying for him as for me, and I had to spare him the ordeal at any price.

"Don't make me do that," I begged, with real tears in my voice. "I—I've set my heart on seeing Jim for the first time alone. He wants it too—I know he does."

She gazed at me for some long seconds, with the clear blue eyes which seemed—though only seemed!—to read my soul. In reality she saw quite another soul than mine. The darling crystallizes to radiant beauty all souls of those she loves, as objects are crystallized by frost, or by sparkling salt in a salt mine.

"Well, you must have a good and loving reason, I'm sure. And probably your love has taught you to know better than I can, what Jim would want you to do," she said. "It shall be just as you wish, dear. Only you must grant one little favour in return to please me. You are to wait for Jim in the den. When his Father and I have hugged and kissed him a few times, and made certain he's not one of my dreams, we'll lead him up to that door, and leave him outside. It shall be my hand that shuts the door when he's gone in. And I shan't tell him one word about the den. It shall be a surprise. But he won't notice a thing until—until you and he have been together for a while, I guess—not even the hobby-horse! He'll see nothing except you, Molly—you!"

I implored—I argued—in vain. The making of the den had been her inspiration. It was monstrous that I should have to greet her son there. The pleasure of the den-surprise would be for ever spoilt for Jim. But I couldn't explain that to his mother. I had to yield at last, tongue-tied and miserable beyond words.

I haven't described the den to you, Padre. I will do it now, in the pause, the hush, before the storm.

It's a quaint room, with a little round tower in each of the two front corners. One of these Mother Beckett has turned into a refuge for broken-down toys, all Jim's early favourites, which he'd never let her throw away: the famous spotted hobby-horse starred in the centre of the stage: oh, but a noble, red-nostrilled beast, whose eternal prance has something of the endless dignity of the Laocooen! The second tower is a miniature library, whose shelves are crowded with the pet books of Jim's boyhood—queer books, some of them, for a child to choose: "Byron," "Letters of Pliny," Plutarch's "Lives," Gibbon's "Rome," "Morte d'Arthur," Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," Kingsland's "Scientific Idealism," with several quite learned volumes of astronomy and geology, side by side with Gulliver and all kinds of travel and story-books which we have most of us adored. It was I who had the task of sorting and arranging this motley collection, and I can hardly tell you, Padre, how I loved doing it!

The room isn't large, so the ten or twelve pictures on the walls are not lost in a desert of bare spaces. These pictures, the toys, the books, tennis-rackets, golf-clubs and two lovely old Persian prayer-rugs are all of Jim's treasures brought to France. He must have been a boy of individual, independent nature, for it seems he disliked the idea of killing things for pleasure, and was never a hunter or even a fisherman. Consequently, there are no monster fish under glass, or rare birds or butterflies, or stuffed animals. He must have loved wild creatures though, for five of the beloved pictures are masterly oil-paintings by well-known artists, of lions and tigers and stags, chez eux, happy and at home, not being hunted, or standing agonized at bay. Oh, getting this den in order has taught me more about the real Jim than a girl can learn about a man in ordinary acquaintance in a year! But then I had a wonderful foundation to begin building upon: that day in the rose-arbour—the red-rose day of my life.

Well, when the car was expected back from the station, bringing Jim home to his mother, I went by her command to the den. Even that was better than having to meet him in the presence of those two dear souls who trusted and loved me only second to him. And yet everything in the den which had meant something in Jim's life, seemed to cry out at me, as I shut the door and stood alone with them—and my pounding heart—to wait.

I didn't know how to make the time pass. I was too restless to sit down. I wouldn't let myself look out of the window to see the car come along the drive. I dared not walk up and down like the caged thing I was, lest the floor should creak, for the tower-room—the den—is over the entrance-hall. I felt like a hunted animal—I, the one creature to whom Jim Beckett deliberately meant to be cruel! I, in this room which was a tribute to his kindness of heart, his faithfulness, his loyalty! But why should it not be so? I had no right to call upon these qualities of his.

The horn of the little Red Cross taxi! It must be turning in at the gate. How well I knew its gay, conceited tootle! An eighth of a mile, and the car would reach the house. Even the poor worn-out taxi couldn't be five minutes doing that!...

If I ran to the window between the towers I could see! No, I wouldn't; I couldn't. I should scream—or faint—or do something else idiotic, if I saw Jim Beckett getting out of the car, and his mother flying to meet him. I had never felt like this in my whole life—not in any suspense, not in any danger.

Instinctively I walked as far from the window as I could. I sought sanctuary under Brian's cathedral picture—the picture that had introduced me to Jim. Yes, sanctuary I sought, for in that room my brother's work was my one excuse to intrude!

By this time the car must have arrived. The front door must have flown open in welcome. Now Mother Beckett must be crying tears of joy in the arms of her son, Father Beckett gazing at the blessed sight, speechless with ecstasy!

What should I be doing at this moment, if I had yielded to their wish and stopped downstairs with them? Just how far would Jim have gone in keeping up the tragic farce? Would he have kissed me? Would he——?

The vision was so blazing bright that I covered my eyes to shut it out. Not that I hated it. Oh no, I loved it too well!

So, for a while, I stood, my hands pressed over my eyes, my ears strained to catch distant sounds—yet wishing not to hear. Suddenly, close by, there came the click of a latch. My hands dropped like broken clock weights. I opened my eyes. Jim Beckett was in the room, and the door was shut.



CHAPTER XXXIII

I stared, fascinated. Here was Jim-of-the-rose-arbour, and a new Jim-of-the-war—a browner, thinner, sterner Jim, a Jim that looked at me with a look I could not read. It may have been cruel, but it was not cold, and it pierced like a hot sword-blade through my flesh into my soul.

"You—after all!" he said. The remembered voice I had so often heard in dreams, struck on my nerves like a hand on the strings of a harp. I felt the vibration thrill through me.

"Yes—it's I." The answer came in a whisper from dry lips. "I'm sorry!"

"What are you sorry for? Because you are you?"

"It wouldn't be—quite so horrible if—I'd been a stranger."

"You think not?"

"I—it seems as if I took advantage of—oh, that's just what I did! I'm not asking you to forgive me——"

"It isn't so much a question of forgiving, as putting things straight. We must put them straight——"

"I'll do whatever you wish," I promised. "Only—let me go soon."

"Are you afraid of me?" There was sharpness in his tone.

"Not afraid. I am—utterly humiliated."

"Why did you do this—thing? Let's have that out first."

"The thought came into my head when I was at my wits' end—for my brother. Not that that's an excuse!"

"I'm not worrying about excuses. It's explanations I need, I had my own theories—thinking it all over—and wondering—whether it would be you or a stranger I should find. The name was the one thing I had to go on: 'O'Malley' and its likeness to Ommalee. That was the way I heard your name pronounced, you know, when we met. I was coming back to see you and make sure. But I was laid up in Paris with an attack of typhoid. Perhaps Mother told you?"

"Yes. But please, let us not talk of that! There isn't much time. You'll have to go back to Fath—to Mr. and Mrs. Beckett. Tell me quickly what you want me to do."

"I was forgetting for a minute. You look very pale, Miss O'Malley. Hadn't you better sit down?"

"No, thank you. I like standing—where I am."

"Ah!" he gave a sudden exclamation. At last he had seen Brian's sketch. He had not noticed it, or any of the "den treasures," before. He had looked only at me.

"Why—it's the picture! And—Gee!"—his eyes travelled round the room—"all my dear old things! What a mother I've got!" He gazed about during a full minute of silence, then turned abruptly back to me. "You love her—don't you?"

"Who could help loving her?"

"And the dear old Governor—you're fond of him?"

"I should be even worse than I am, if I didn't adore them both. They have been—angels to me and my brother."

"I'm told that you and he have been something of the same sort to them."

"Oh, they would speak kindly of us, of course!—They're so noble, themselves, they judge——"

"It was another person who told me the particular thing I'm thinking of now."

"Another person? Doctor Paul, I suppose."

"You must guess again, Miss O'Malley."

"I can't think of any one else who would——"

"What about your friend, Mr. O'Farrell?"

"He's not my friend!" I cried. "Oh, I knew he'd somehow contrive a chance to talk to you alone, about me!"

"He certainly did. And what he said impressed me a good deal."

"Most likely it's untrue."

"Too likely! I'm very anxious to find out from headquarters if it's true or not."

"If you ask me, I'll answer honestly. I can't and won't lie to you."

"I'll take you at your word and ask you—in a minute. You may be angry when I do. But—it will save time. It'll clear up all my difficulties at one fell swoop."

"Why wait a minute, then?" I ventured, with faint bitterness, because his "difficulties" seemed so small compared with mine. He was in the right in everything. This was his home. The dear Becketts were his people. All the world was his.

"I wait a minute, because something has to be told you before I can ask you to answer any more questions. When I didn't know who or what my—er—official fiancee would turn out to be, this was the plan I made, to save my parents' feelings—and yours. I thought that, when we'd had the interview I asked you to give me, we could manage to quarrel, or discover that we didn't like each other as well as before. We could break off our engagement, and Father and Mother need never know—how it began."

"A very generous idea of yours!" I cried, the blood so hot in my cheeks that it forced tears to my eyes. "It had occurred to me, too, that for their sakes we might manage that way. Thank you, Mr. Beckett, for sparing me the pain—I deserve. I couldn't have dared hope for such a happy solution——"

"Couldn't you?"

"No. I——"

"Well, I'm hoping for an even happier one—a lot happier. But of course it depends on what you say to Mr. O'Farrell's—accusation."

"He—made an accusation?"

"Listen, and tell me what you'd call it. He said you told him at Amiens, when he asked you to marry him, that—you loved me."

"Oh!"

"Is it true?"

"Yes, I did tell him that——"

"I mean, is it true that you've loved me?"

"Mr. Beckett, after all, you are cruel! You're punishing me very hard."

"I don't wish to 'punish you hard'—or at all. Why am I 'cruel,' simply asking if it's true that you've loved me? Of course, when Mother told you of my fever, and what I'd said of this cathedral picture, she told you that I was dead in love with 'the Girl,' as I called you, and just about crazy because I'd lost her. Why shouldn't you have loved me a little bit—say, the hundredth part as much as I loved you? I'm not a monster, am I? And we both had exactly the same length of time to fall in love—whole hours on end. Cruel or not cruel, I've got to know. Was it the truth you told the O'Farrell man?"

I could not speak. I didn't try to speak. I looked up at him. It must have been some such look as the Princess gave St. George when he appeared at the last minute, to rescue her from the dragon. The tears I'd been holding back splashed over my cheeks. Jim gave a low cry of pity—or love (it sounded like love) as he saw them; and the next thing, he was kissing them away. I was in his arms so closely held that my breath was crushed out of my lungs. I wanted to sob. But how can you sob without breath? I could only let him kiss me on cheeks, and eyes, and mouth, and kiss him back again, with eager haste, lest I should wake up to find he had loved me for a fleeting instant, in a divine dream.

When he let me breathe for a second, I gasped that, of course, it couldn't be true, this wonderful thing that was happening?

"I've dreamed of you—a hundred times," I stammered. "Waking dreams—sleeping dreams. They've seemed as real—almost as real—as this."

"Did I kiss you like this, in the dreams?"

"Sometimes. But not in the realest ones. It never seemed real that you could care, in spite of all—that you'd forgive me, if you should come back——"

"Did you want me to come?"

"Oh, 'want' isn't the word to express it!"

"Even though you dreaded—being found out!"

"That didn't count, against having you alive, and knowing you were in the world—if only for your parents' sake. I wanted them to be happy, more than I wanted anything for myself except Brian's good. I had you for my own, in my dreams, while you were dead, and I expected to lose you if you were alive. But——"

"You really expected that?"

"Oh, indeed, yes!"

"Although you knew from Mother how I'd loved you, and searched for you?"

"You thought I was good—then."

"I think so now."

"But you can't! You know what a wicked, wicked wretch I was! Why, when you came into this room and looked at me, I saw how you felt! And your letter——"

"Don't you understand, I was testing you? If you hadn't cared for me, what you did might have been—(only 'might', mind you, for what man can judge a girl's heart?) what you did to my people might have been cruel and calculating. I had to find out the truth of things, before letting myself go. The letter was written to let a stranger see—if you turned out to be a stranger—what to expect. But O'Farrell made me sure in a minute, that the girl here must be my Girl. After that, I'd only to see you—to ask if he told the truth—to watch your face—your precious, beautiful face! I thought of it and pictured it. But I never thought of those tears! Forgive me, my darling, for making them come. If you'll let me love you all your life, they shall be the last I'll ever cause."

I laughed, and cried a little more, at the same time. "What a word from you to me—'Forgive'!"

"Well, it's more suitable than from you to me, because there's nothing you could do that I wouldn't forgive before you did it, or even be sure it was just the one right thing to do. My Girl—my lost, found love—do you suppose it was of your own accord you came to my people and said you belonged to me? No. It was the Great Power that's in us all, which made you do what you did—the Power they call Providence. You understand now what I meant, when I said that one question from me and an answer from you, would smooth away all my difficulties at once? Bless that O'Farrell fellow!"

I'd never thought to bless Julian O'Farrell, but now I willingly agreed. Sometimes, dimly, I had divined latent goodness in him, as one divines vague, lovely shapes floating under dark depths of water. And he had said once that love for me was bringing out qualities he hadn't credited himself with possessing. I had taken that as one of Puck's pleasantries! But I knew the true inwardness of him now, as I had learned to know the true inwardness of Dierdre. Julian had had his chance to hurt me with his rival. He had used it instead to do me good. He had laughed the other day, "Well, I'll always be something to you anyhow, if only a brother-in-law." But now, he would be more than that, even if he went out of my life, and I never saw him again.

"Bless O'Farrell. Bless Providence. Bless you. Bless me. Bless everybody and everything!" Jim was going on, joyfully exploding, still clasping me in his arms; for we clung as if to let each other go might be to lose one another forever! "How happy Mother dear—and the good old Governor are going to be! They absolutely adore you!"

"Did they say so?"

"They did. And almost hustled me into this room to meet you. I'm glad the best thing in my life has come to me here, among all the odds and ends of my childhood and youth, that I call my treasures! Of course Mother planned it specially that you should welcome me here."

"Yes, the darling! But it seemed to me a terrible plan. I thought you'd hate me so, I'd spoil the surprise of the room for you."

Those words were uttered with the last breath he let me draw for some time. But oh, Padre, if it had been my last on earth, how well worth while it would have been to live just till that minute, and no longer! I am so happy! I don't know how I am going to deserve this forgiveness, this deliverance, this joy!

"Even if I'd found a strange girl looking after my parents and saving their lives and winning their love, it would have been pretty difficult to chuck her," Jim was laughing. "You, on this side of the door, waiting to face the ogre Me, couldn't have felt much worse than I felt on my side, not knowing what I should see—or do. Darling, one more kiss for my people's sake, one more for myself, and then I must take you to them. It's not fair to keep them waiting any longer. But no—first I must put a ring on the Girl's finger—as I hoped to do long ago. You remember—the ring of my bet, that almost made me lose you? I told you about it, didn't I, on our day together, when I thought I should come back in two weeks?"

"You told me you hoped not to lose a thing you wanted. You didn't say it was a ring. But at Royalieu—the newspaper correspondents' chateau near Compiegne—we came across a friend of yours, the one you made the bet with——"

"Jack Curtis!"

"Yes. He told me about the ring. And he was sure you were alive."

"Good old Jack! Well, now I'm going to slip that magic ring on your darling finger—the 'engaged' finger."

"But where is it?"

"The finger? Just now on the back of my neck, which it's making throb—like a star!... Oh, the ring? That's in the hobby-horse which I see over there, as large as life. At least, it's in him unless, unlike a leopard, he's changed his spots."

Jim wouldn't let me go, but drew me with him, our arms interlaced, to the tower end of the room where the hobby-horse he had once rescued from fire endlessly pranced. "This used to be my bank, when I was a little chap," he said. "Like a magpie, I always hid the things I valued most in a hole I made under the third smudge to the left, on Spot Cash's breast. 'Spot Cash' is the old boy's name, you know! When I won the bet and took the ring home, I had a fancy to keep it in this hidie hole, for luck, till I could find the Girl. Mother knew. She was with me at the time. But I was half ashamed of myself for my childishness, and asked her not to tell—not even the Governor. I shouldn't wonder if that was why it occurred to her to pack up my treasures for France. Maybe she had a prophetic soul, and thought, if I found the Girl, I should want to lay my hand on the ring. Here it is, safe and sound."

As he spoke, he had somehow contrived to extract a particularly black smudge from the region of the hobby-horse's heart. It came out with a block of wood underneath, and left a gap which gave Spot Cash the effect of having suffered an operation. At the back of the cavity a second hole, leading downward, had been burrowed in the softish wood; and in this reposed a screwed-up wad of tissue paper. Jim hooked the tiny packet out with a finger, opened the paper as casually as though it enclosed a pebble, and brought to the light (which found and flashed to the depths of a large blue diamond) a quaintly fashioned ring of greenish gold.

"This belonged to the most beautiful woman of a day that's past," Jim said. "Now, it's for the most beautiful woman of a better day and a still grander to-morrow. May I wish it on your finger—with the greatest wish in the world?"

I gave him my hand—for the ring, and for all time.

One more moment in his arms, and he opened the door, to take "his Girl" to Father and Mother Beckett.

Somewhere in the distance Julian O'Farrell was singing, as he had sung on the first night we met, Mario's heartbreaking song in "La Tosca"—the song on the roof, at dawn. Always in remembering Julian I must remember Mario's love and sacrifice! I knew that he meant it should be so with me.

The voice was the voice of love itself, such love as mine for Jim, as Jim's for me, which can never die. It made me sad and happy at the same time. But, as Jim and I paused at the door to listen, hand in hand, the music changed. Julian began to sing something new and strangely beautiful—a song he has composed, and dedicated to Brian. I was sad no longer, for this is a song of courage and triumph. He calls it: "Everyman's Land."

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK