"Well—well?" Milly urged him sharply. "Why don't you tell us?"

"I'm a bit out of breath," her brother excused himself. "I hiked over here pretty fast—borrowed a bicycle. Give me a second to get my wind back, sis."

But this was more than Milly could do. "Weren't you with the guns to-night?" she asked. "You said you were going to be."

"Did I say that? Well, I was. But—but the row you all heard had nothing to do with the guns, you know. At least, nothing directly. It was—the ammunition; an accident, you see. One of our chaps dropped a lighted match, and it set fire to part of our train of ammunition. Three shells burst, but—but nobody was hurt—except——"

"Except who?" Milly had to break in before Tony could go on. I said nothing at all. I only looked at him. But after that first glance he kept his eyes away from me, I believed purposely.

"Except an orderly of—one of the officers, and—oh, very slightly indeed—March. He's hardly hurt at all, but—you mustn't be surprised if you don't see him around for the next few days."

The blood rushed up to Milly's pale face, but she pressed her lips together almost viciously, and forced herself not to speak. Her green-gray eyes flashed out one distress signal, then seemed to shut it off deliberately and coldly.

"Captain March!" exclaimed kind Mrs. Dalziel, with real distress. "Oh, I'm so sorry that he should be hurt!"

"So are we all," Tony responded; and voice and face would have told me, if I hadn't guessed before, that he was either keeping back something of grave importance, or else carefully lying.

"Will he really be all right again in a few days?" the dear little lady went on.

"Er—perhaps not all right, but—nothing to worry about," said Tony, with lumbering cheerfulness. "He's in no danger of death, anyhow, that's one good thing."

"What about Major Vandyke?" I heard myself say; and even as the question came, I wondered why I should have thought of it in that connection. But somehow it would out, and only my subconscious self, far down in mysterious depths, knew the reason.

"Oh, Major Vandyke! Why, as it happens, he went over to the other side of the river in his motor car—on business."

A flame of suspicion in me was lit by that match.

"To Mexico!" I exclaimed. "But I was told only this very day, by Captain March, that no officer or soldier was allowed to cross the river on any pretext whatever."

"That was—is—so, in an ordinary way," Tony admitted, swallowing heavily again. "But you see that fearful row on the hill where the guns are might—must have set a hornet's nest buzzing over there. The chaps were likely to think we were potting at them—out of a clear sky, and—er—they might have begun potting back at us in a minute or two, in their excitement. So, to save the situation, Vandyke scooted across with only his orderly—who's his chauffeur, too—in his own car with some sort of white flag rigged up in a jiffy. I expect he'll get a lot of credit for that dash when the story—I mean the facts, are out."

"It was a brave thing to do!" cried Mrs. Dalziel, always delighted to praise any one. "He must have risked his life."

"Yes," said Tony, "no doubt of that. The Mexican bridge sentries might have fired on him in spite of the white flag. They—they did fire, I believe. But Vandyke's all right, anyhow."

"You speak as if some one wasn't." I heard myself talking, though I seemed not to have spoken the words deliberately.

"Only the orderly, poor chap. He was driving the car. I guess the sentries saw him before they saw the white flag."

"They shot him?"

"Yes, unfortunately they did." Tony's voice broke a little, and that struck me as odd; for he could not have had any personal interest, it seemed, in Major Vandyke's chauffeur-orderly.

"I hope they didn't kill the poor fellow?" purred Mrs. Dalziel.

"I don't think he's dead yet, mater, but I'm afraid he's past speaking. They got him in the lungs."

"Major Vandyke's come back, then," I said.

"Oh, yes, he was back in less than an hour, after a parley over there, explaining everything and making the Constitutionalists understand we weren't meaning them any harm. I didn't get leave to see you till just after he had brought his car and his wounded orderly over to this side again. And now, if your minds are calmed down, I'll be off. I've told you no secrets. Everything I've said the papers will repeat to-morrow. But all the same, please don't talk to any one about this business. Promise, mater, and Milly. And I guess I don't need to ask you, Lady Peggy. Now, good-bye. I'll see you as early as I can in the morning."

He kissed his mother, patted Milly on the arm, and gave my hand such a shake that I should have writhed if I had worn any rings. For once, instead of lingering, he had the air of being glad to escape from us, but on an impulse I followed him to the door and called him back just as he had reached the threshold.

"Tony!" I began. He turned with a start, and stopped. I had often been invited, but had never before consented, to call him Tony.

"I want to ask you something before you go," I said.

He gave me a queer, apprehensive look. "Please don't!"

"Then I'll tell you something, instead. There isn't one word of truth in your story about what happened. You've been making it all up."

"That's where you're mistaken," he contradicted me. "I haven't made it up."

"If not, somebody made it up for you, and you've been ordered to put the story round. This is what people are to believe, the version that the papers will be given. But it's no use giving it to me. I don't believe it. So there!"

"It's all I've got to say, and even you won't get a different word out of me," he said despairingly. "You always did have a wonderful imagination, Lady Peggy, but whatever you may think, for God's sake don't blab to any one else, unless to me; and I'd rather you wouldn't even to me. I tell you, I'm pretty near all in."

I let him go, but I made up my mind that I would not be put off with the story which papers and public were to get. I would know the truth, and exactly what had happened to Eagle March.



CHAPTER X

It was just as Tony had said it would be: the newspapers next day repeated his story. Very few clear details were given. The articles with their spread-eagle headlines concerned themselves more—for a wonder—with effect than cause. They told at length and dramatically how El Paso had been aroused in the dead of night by bomblike explosions which, many had taken for granted, came from the guns on the hill, repelling or revenging a raid from the other side. They told how the public had behaved, and described the relief felt when it had been definitely learned on good authority that the alarm was due to an accident with some ammunition. But about the accident itself there was what struck me as a singular reticence, considering the wild conjectures newspapers did not hesitate to print on other subjects. Their piece de resistance was the magnificent courage and presence of mind displayed by Major Sidney Vandyke of the —th Artillery, whose battery had been concerned in the incident.

I sent for all the El Paso papers, which were brought to me before I was up, very early in the morning; and I sat in bed studying, in one after the other of them, the version of last night's strange affair. Somehow, the general praise of Sidney Vandyke's exploit annoyed me intensely, as one is annoyed when an undeserving person is ignorantly lauded to the skies. I know that on the face of things I had no right to say that he was "undeserving," in this case; but that instinctive rebellion in me against Tony's story last night cried out against it now. "There's something queer under it all," I kept telling myself. "I must find out what it is, and I must know about Eagle."

Concerning Captain March, the papers had very little to say. They understood that he had been on the spot when the explosion had occurred, and that he had received slight injuries which would prevent him from carrying on his military duties for some time to come. All their attention was bestowed upon Major Vandyke, who had made himself the hero of what was called "El Paso's Big Night." Owing to the indisposition of the colonel, who had been struck down in the morning by a touch of the sun, Major Vandyke was temporarily in command. His private automobile, which had followed him from Alvarado to El Paso, had brought him from new Fort Bliss to old Fort Bliss on official business: and he was on his way back when, hearing sounds which resembled gunfire, he had stopped his chauffeur on the instant, and dashed on fast up the artillery hill, near which he happened to be. Fearing that the Mexicans—already restless, owing to the attitude of the United States at Vera Cruz and other places, and to the arrival of reinforcements along the Rio Grande—might misunderstand, and work some mad, irreparable mischief, Major Vandyke and his orderly had made a dash across the river. In spite of the white flag used to protect the car and its occupants, the sentinels on guard upon the Mexican side had fired at the sight of men in uniform, and the orderly had been shot. Otherwise, the errand so bravely undertaken had been crowned with success. The Mexicans, thinking they had been fired at, were about to discharge their own field guns, placed in a position of offence, in answer to the menace of the United States. Had Major Vandyke been five minutes later with his diplomatic intervention the word would have been given to fire, and one or more of El Paso's finest buildings might have been destroyed, perhaps with loss of life terrible to think of even now when the danger was past.

The next thing I did, having absorbed all the news I could get from the papers, was to write a letter to Eagle. I told him that I heard he had been hurt, and begged him to send me a line—or a word if he couldn't write—to say how he really was. I inquired if he were in hospital, and if it would be possible for me to see him. When I had finished, I rang and asked for a trustworthy messenger. By and by, a servant of the hotel arrived to do my errand, and I told him as clearly as I could what I wanted. He must go to the big camp near Fort Bliss and inquire for Captain March. I couldn't say whether the officer would be in his own tent or elsewhere, but, anyhow, he must be found. If he were too ill to answer even by word of mouth, the messenger mustn't come back until at least he had learned something about Captain March's condition.

"I'll pay you very well," I said, trying to give the effect of a budding female millionaire.

As soon as the man had gone, I bathed and dressed quickly, in order to be ready if he brought back word that I might be allowed to see Eagle. I didn't care whether I had breakfast or not; but time dragged on, and nothing happened. For the sake of making dull moments pass, I rang for coffee and a roll. It was early still, and Mrs. Dalziel and Milly were doubtless trying to make up for their disturbed night by taking an extra rest.

The tray appeared, and I ate and drank what the choking in my throat would let me swallow, but there was no sign yet of the messenger. I calculated how long it ought to take him to reach the camp on the bicycle he had mentioned; how long to do the errand; how long to return; and still there was nearly an hour unaccounted for. I was so restless and miserable that I could have shrieked. I walked up and down the little white-and-green room as if it were a cage, but soon all my strength had gone from me. I sat on the window seat, staring out as I had stared in the night, hoping now to catch sight of a man on a bicycle.

At last, when I had begun to feel shut in, and only half alive, like the Lady of Shalott, as though nothing could ever happen in my life again, I jumped up at the sound of a knock on the door. It was the messenger. My heart bounded when he took from his pocket a letter, but only to fall at seeing a hotel envelope with my own handwriting on it.

"I'm sorry, miss," the man said, "but I couldn't get to Captain March. I went everywhere and tried asking a lot of folks, but couldn't find out nothing. They wouldn't let me into the camp, even, much less to the gentleman's tent, so I can't tell you whether he's there or not. I did my best, but the army's different from civil life. When they say 'no' they mean 'no' and there ain't no goin' around it, or they prods you with one of them bayonets."

"Surely you haven't come back without any news?" I cried. "You must have heard something!"

"Not a thing at the camp, except what I've just told you, miss," the messenger persisted. "I hung around, and whenever I seen some chap going in, if I could get him to speak I asked questions till they begun to take me for one of them newspaper guys. It was only when I seen the stunt was no good I chucked it and come back with your letter. There's just one thing I did hear, but not in camp. 'Twas outside the hotel, as I stopped my wheel. I met an old soldier from the Fort I'd been acquainted with a good long time—fact is, he's engaged to my sister. I asked him if he'd heard about Captain March being wounded. And he said—only I don't know as I ought to tell you what he said——"

"Tell me—every word," I panted.

"Well, then, if it's every word you want, miss, he said it was all damn nonsense about March being wounded, that something big was up, and he's under arrest."

Under arrest! The words struck like bullets. Just for a second everything swam before my eyes, and I was afraid that I was going to do the most idiotic thing a woman can do—faint. You see, I had had no sleep and wasn't quite at my best. But I pulled myself together, and in my ears my voice sounded only a little sharp, as I asked the messenger if his soldier friend had given him any further information.

"Not he! Shut up tight as a clam," was the answer. "I don't believe he knowed anything else."

There was nothing more to be got from that quarter, so I paid the man and let him go. Then I tried to think how I could hope to probe to the bottom of the mystery, since mystery there certainly was. It seemed to me that, since I wasn't able to reach Eagle by letter, my one chance lay in Tony. His manner, and the admissions he had inadvertently dropped last night, had told me that he had some knowledge of the truth, which was to be hidden from the public. He had refused to be pumped, and I respected him for his refusal; but I wasn't the public. Whatever the secret might be, I would keep it. All I wanted to do was to help Captain March if he could be helped; for I was sure all through to my soul that, if he had been arrested, it was through some terrible mistake or cruel injustice. It was wicked of me, perhaps, deliberately to make a tool of poor Tony's love for me, but I tried to justify myself in deciding to do so by saying that no harm could come to him through it, or evil to any one.

"I'll wheedle the truth out of Tony," I thought again.

I dared not write and beg him to come and see me, for after our parting last night he would suspect what I wanted and have time to steel himself against me before we met. Nor could I go to the camp and try to find him there, for I—a young girl—wouldn't be admitted alone even if I were desperate enough to think of attempting such a wild adventure. If I persuaded Mrs. Dalziel to take me, and we had the luck to see Tony, I shouldn't have a moment with him alone, whereas the process of "wheedling" might take many minutes.

The only thing to do was to wait, and that was the hardest task ever given me. I shall not forget that day even if I live to be an old woman; and looking back on it now over the months which have passed since—months which seem longer than all the rest of my life put together—I believe that my very character took on some change in those hours, as metal is changed if you throw it on to the fire. I felt for the first time that I was a woman, with all the childishness burnt out of me; and I was glad, for I might have to do battle with those who were older and wiser than I.

Mrs. Dalziel and Milly didn't appear till noon; but meanwhile I went down and talked to a great many people in the hotel, people whom I didn't know. After the excitement of the night, everybody chattered and exchanged impressions with everybody else, without stopping to think or care whether they had been introduced to each other. A few of the men had a vague idea that something was being "hushed up," but none could guess what it was, and nobody knew anything about Captain March. Naturally I didn't tell what I had been told: that he was under arrest. I trusted with all my heart that no one else had heard, or would hear, the story. And I prayed that it might not be true. To Milly I would not speak of him at all; for though she had apologized for yesterday, and "made friends" with me again, I knew that there was a cruel streak in her which would rejoice revengefully now, in any trouble that fell on Eagle. She would feel that it was a direct punishment sent by Fate for his indifference to her, and the way in which (for her own good) she had forced him to show it.

We had been engaged for a short motor run with Tony in the afternoon, but I was more disappointed than surprised when he sent a hurried note to his mother saying that there was so much business to do he couldn't get off. He might not even be able to dine. We were not to wait, but he would turn up in time for dinner at seven-thirty if he could. In any case, he would come in for a while later.

I had an evening dress Di had given me after she had tired of it, which I had altered for myself, and Tony particularly liked it. I put it on for dinner that night. Tony did manage to come, bearing an offering—flowers for all three of us. I saw that he noticed the frock, and with a little meaning smile at him, I tucked one of his roses down into the neck. He flushed up at that, poor boy, all over his nice Billiken face, and I felt like every cat in Christendom rolled into one. But it was the first move in my game. I hoped that after so much encouragement, he would make some excuse after dinner to get me to himself.

Scarcely a word was said during the meal concerning Captain March. Mrs. Dalziel inquired about him; Tony with his mouth full answered indistinctly and hurriedly that he was "getting along all right"—as well as anybody could expect; and Milly viperishly turned the subject to Major Vandyke's exploit.

"He'll be a greater popular hero now than Captain March ever was," she remarked with an elaborately impersonal air. "The first thing we know, Peggy, we shall hear that Lady Di is engaged to him; don't you think? She adores heroes. She once told me so."

"What a romance that would be!" beamed nice Mrs. Dalziel, who never saw under the surface of anything. But I was grateful to her for breaking in, and saving me the necessity of an answer to Milly's questions. If I had replied truthfully, I should have had to say that it was exactly what I did think. Whatever the secret of the night might turn out to be, I felt sure that Sidney Vandyke had made a desperate bid to win Diana away from Eagle March. And with pangs of sharp remorse I remembered those angry words of mine which had perhaps spurred him to the effort.

Neither Mrs. Dalziel nor Milly appeared to have any suspicions that the origin of the night alarm was not precisely what the newspapers reported; that simplified things for Tony, as far as they were concerned; and I was careful not to fling at him a single embarrassing question. As dinner went on he lost the worried look he had brought with him, a look that was a misfit for his merry personality. He glanced often with a rather pathetic wistfulness at me, which I read very easily and shamefacedly; and at last he broke out with information concerning a torchlight procession that would set forth from one of the parks of El Paso. Of course I knew what this remark was leading up to! He'd heard people say, he went on, that there was going to be quite a good impromptu show, celebrating the end of the "scare"; for it was generally felt that Major Vandyke's diplomatic dash had cleared the air of danger; and if there had ever been any real peril it was past now, once and for all. Would we like to go out and see the sight?

Promptly Milly answered for her mother and herself. They would not like to go out and see the sight. If there was anything worth the trouble of looking at, probably it could be seen from the hotel windows.

"But what about you, Lady Peggy?" Tony asked.

"I'd love to go with you," I answered.

I put on a long cloak, the one I had worn to see "our" battery off at Fort Alvarado railway station, and Tony and I sallied forth together. It was not till we were safely in the street that he told me we were early for the procession. "Never mind," said I. "It's lovely to be out in the blue night. We'll just stroll through quiet streets, where there won't be a crowd to bother us, until it's time to go and gaze at the torches."

"There's a nice little sort of park," he suggested, "not too far away. How would you like to walk there?"

I said I would like it, and as our "little sort of" park wasn't the park whence the procession would start, we had it practically to ourselves. We found an empty seat and sat down side by side like a Tommy Atkins and his "girl" in Kensington Gardens.

The first thing that Tony did when we were anchored together there was to propose again, after an apology. I let him get it over, and then played the next pawn in my game.



CHAPTER XI

"Tony dear," I said softly, when he had finished, "I like you better than any man I know, except one; and that one thinks of me as his good little sister, so you needn't be afraid of his interference. But—there's something that does interfere!"

"What is it?" he eagerly wanted to know.

"It is—that you don't really love me."

He stared at me through the deepening dusk. "Don't love you? Good Lord, Lady Peggy, I'm a fool about you! Any dough-head can see that."

"Ah, but I'm not a dough-head. I know you don't love me. You proved that last night."

"For the life of me, I can't think what you mean. I I told you I'd try to be your friend, but you knew what that meant! Don't keep me in suspense."

"You've hurt my feelings dreadfully. I've been brooding over it all day."

"I—hurt your feelings? Why, you ought to know I wouldn't for the world——"

"But you did. You refused to trust me. There can be no love without trust."

"I'd trust you with my life. I can't to save myself guess what you're driving at——" He stopped suddenly. My meaning had dawned on him in that instant.

"Now you've guessed, haven't you?" I asked, when for a few seconds, which I counted with heartbeats, he had sat tensely silent.

"Maybe I have. But see here, Peggy, you aren't holding that against me, are you? It wouldn't be fair. I'd trust you with anything of my own; but when it comes to other people's business—official business——"

"Did you ever hear the lines, 'Trust me not at all, or all in all?'" I continued to torture him. "It was Tennyson who made Vivien say those words to Merlin. She was deceiving him, and meant to ruin him when she'd wormed out his secret; for that reason, it isn't a very appropriate quotation. But, otherwise, it's particularly so. If you trusted me for yourself, you'd trust me for others, too. It's the same thing—or else it's nothing. I'm not like Vivien. I don't mean to deceive you, or ruin you, or anything horrid. And I couldn't if I would!"

"You don't need to tell me that," said Tony, very miserable, and making me miserable as well. "I know you're true blue—the truest and bluest—but there are some things I've got no right to do, even for you, Peggy. I'd cut my tongue out to please you, I do believe I would, but to use it in a dishonourable way for your sake is dif——"

"There! I told you you didn't love me!" I reproached him. "You accuse me now of wanting you to do something dishonourable. I don't want you to! I can't see that it would be dishonourable to put me out of suspense about a dear friend like Captain March, a man who's in love with my sister, and wants to marry her, as you surely know. But that settles everything between us, of course. To be perfectly honest with you, Tony, I must say that I'm not certain, even if you did what I have asked, that I'd be able to do what you ask—love you, except as a friend. I've said before that I couldn't. But I might have changed my mind in future, for all I know, if——"

"If!" echoed Tony. "That's a darned cruel way to put it!" And he looked so much like the nicest Billiken ever seen on earth that I really did love him, though not quite in the way he wanted.

"No doubt I am cruel as well as dishonourable," I replied frigidly. "So now you can easily stop loving me, can't you?"

"No, I can't," he said. "See here, Peggy, what can I say or do to make things right? I think you're the kindest and dearest and most honourable girl whoever lived, and I——"

"Prove it then!" I cried. And I laid my hands on his.

"How? What can I do?"

"Tell me the whole truth about what happened last night. Oh—I'm not trying to bribe you! I don't promise if you do tell, that I'll love you, or marry you, or anything important of that sort. All I promise is to be so grateful, so glad, that—who knows how I may feel to you afterward? And anyhow, I'll let you kiss me, this very night—on my cheek."

"You will? Yet—you say you're not bribing me! You couldn't offer me a much bigger bribe. Why, Peggy, I'd be happy just to die—after getting a kiss from you—even on your cheek!" and he laughed at himself forlornly.

"You're a dear boy, Tony," I said, crushed with remorse. "The kiss won't be a bribe, either. It will be a token of—of—I hardly know what. But partly of gratitude, the deepest gratitude, if you can trust me enough to believe I'll be true."

"I do believe that, indeed I do believe it, forever. And—and—by Jove! I will tell you," he broke out, with a kind of breathless gasp. "You're too strong for me, Peggy. You've got me! But after all, there's no such great harm in telling, now. It's different from last night. Then I didn't know—nobody knew, I suppose—what the upshot of certain things might be. As it's turned out, some of the story will have to be known. Not all—but the part you want to know most."

"Tell me that," I pleaded.

"You swear you'll never breathe anything I say to you?"

"I swear I never will, until you give me leave."

"Well, then, those three explosions you heard last night weren't explosions at all. They were shots from our field guns. But I'll tell you what happened exactly—both sides of the story."

"Both sides? How is it there are two?"

"Well, there's March's side, and——"

"And—what other one?"

"And Major Vandyke's side."

"I knew it!" I cried out sharply. "I knew that man would try to ruin Eagle. I should like to shoot him with one of those very guns."

"Peggy, you mustn't talk like that," Tony warned me. "If you do, I can't go on."

"Forgive me," I said, and let him hold my hand, happy for a moment in the belief that he was soothing me.

"You know—you've heard, I guess, that Vandyke was in command last night, because the colonel had a touch of the sun? But that isn't the right way to begin my story. I'm hanged if I know how to begin it! We were up there on the hill with the guns, on guard; I mean I was, and the men. And March came along, and strolled off again a little way with his field glasses. Maybe thirty or forty yards distant, he was. I wasn't noticing anything—felt rather sleepy, and was trying all I knew to keep awake. I was in charge of the guns, you see. I guess I was thinking about you. I generally am. Anyhow, the first thing I knew, March hurried back. He seemed queer and excited, and stood still a minute as if he was struck all of a heap. Then to my amazement he rapped out an order to load and fire number one and number two guns, aiming at a spot just beyond the bridge. But before we'd had time to do more than gasp—I and the gunners—he changed his order, and commanded us to fire blank. Lord, that was a relief—though even blank would be bad enough for the lot of us if it turned out that March had gone suddenly mad. You fire blank for a salute, you know: but Mexico wasn't likely to take it as a compliment! Luckily we'd some rounds of blank, served out to us in case we might need to send a scare and not a peppering across the river. There was nothing for it but to obey orders, though I couldn't help thinking about 'The Charge of the Light Brigade,' when every one knew that some one had blundered. March shouted out, 'Go slow!' And you bet we did go slow! It seemed as if he must be off his head—or somebody else was—for so far as we could tell—and it was a fairly clear night—there wasn't a sign of trouble on the other side of the river.

"We'd only fired the three shots, when Major Vandyke pounced on us, ordered us to stop, and wanted to know what the devil and all his angels March was up to. 'Carrying out your orders,' said March. 'That's a da——' but what's the use of repeating to you, Peggy, what they said to each other? The principal thing is, Vandyke denied having given any order to fire, and cursed March for all he was worth. Said he might be the cause of bringing us and Mexico to grips over the incident. Then he dashed off in his automobile, which was waiting for him under the hill (he'd been in it, you know, or he couldn't have got to the spot so soon); you must have read that in the papers; and so much of their story was true. Whatever you may think of Vandyke, Peggy, that was man's size work! He took his life in his hands, the way the Mexicans must have been buzzing in their wasp's nest over there, after the hot water we'd thrown on it."

"It was the sort of thing he'd love to do," I said implacably. "The theatrical thing. He must have known, too, that the man driving the car was the one in greater danger. But he didn't drive!"

"He never does drive. He didn't just funk it at that one time; it's his habit. I've always heard him say he hated to drive a car. Too lazy! Anyhow, there was the very dickens to pay. Before leaving the hill for his dash across the river he'd told March to consider himself under arrest——"

"How dared he?" I fiercely wanted to know. "That wasn't his business."

"Oh, yes it was! He's March's superior officer. Besides any officer has the right, if—but I won't worry your head with military rules and regulations! What you want to know is, how this affects Captain March, don't you?"

"Yes, that's the great thing to me," I admitted. "Tony, will it ruin him?"

"It's early days to say as much as that, yet. It all depends on the result of the court-martial."

"Will he be court-martialled?"

"Of course. There's nothing else for it. It's a question which of those two men can establish his case, and a court-martial will have to decide between them. But, I'm afraid, Peggy, it will go against March. The circumstances were so very queer, and Vandyke's denial of giving any order at all is so strong. Besides, it would be such a mad, improbable thing for him to give such an order, as there was no danger of attack. He'd have no motive."

"He would have a motive," I broke in. "I can prove that. Will they let a woman bear witness for a prisoner in a military court-martial?"

"I suppose your evidence could be taken, if they were certain it had an important bearing on the case. But I don't see how that could have, Peggy. This isn't women's business, it's men's."

"And devils'," I finished for him. "We won't argue now whether my evidence could be important or not. Tell me both sides of the story you were speaking of, first Captain March's, then Major Vandyke's."

"Well, March says that while he was strolling about, at a short distance from the guns, looking through his field glasses at a fire he could see on the other side of the river, he saw a chap in khaki hurry up the hill, wheeling a bicycle. As soon as the fellow came near enough to make out his features, March says he recognized Vandyke's orderly, a man who's been the major's soldier servant for a good length of time. This orderly, according to March, brought a verbal order from Vandyke as acting colonel, to begin firing number one and number two guns, and keep them in action until further notice, aiming at a spot just beyond one of the bridges on the Mexican side. March said he was so astounded at getting such an order, he thought there must be some awful mistake, and before obeying he wanted to have it on paper. So he took the risk of any danger from delay in case the order was really all right, and scribbled a few lines to Vandyke on a leaf torn out of his notebook——"

"A leaf torn out of his notebook!" I couldn't help echoing. "Perhaps it was the one I gave him."

"Shouldn't wonder!" Tony went on, stolidly. "He says he repeated in writing the command he'd just received, and begged Vandyke, if it was correct, to confirm him in the same way. The messenger dashed off, leaving March wondering like thunder what it all meant: whether there was some fearful mistake, or whether there was a big crisis, and no time for written orders. He could see, of course, that it might be possible, and that Vandyke had ordered only those two guns to be fired just to scare the Mexicans off from playing any trick they were at. The spot he was to aim at suggested that explanation, for not much harm ought to be done with a few shots directed that way. Not much of what you might call 'material harm' I mean. But there was no end to the harm such an incident could do, if there'd been nothing to provoke it. You see the situation as March says he saw it, don't you?"

"Yes, I see. But what happened after that?"

"According to March, the orderly was back again in next to no time. March had stopped where he was, waiting for him, as he didn't want to give the snap away to me and the men till the last minute. And he was hoping against hope, till he got the return message. It was verbal again, in spite of his written request, and mighty peremptory, ordering him to obey without any more nonsense. That's March's story. Not seeing a way to get out of it, yet realizing the awful consequences should there be anything wrong, March was going to pass on the order to load and fire when he suddenly thought he'd compromise by firing blank only. You see he was in an awful fix anyway, had to make an instant decision, and did what he thought best at the moment, though in giving that order to fire blank he was already disobeying the orders of his superior officer. Vandyke's version is that he never sent any orders whatever. That his orderly was with him in his car, and had never left it for a minute. That March must have been deceived by some trick of resemblance—a sort of 'Captain of Kopenick' (if you know that story); getting off a hoax on him, a deadly hoax, meant to upset the whole situation between the United States and Mexico. He says March ought to have known better than to obey a verbal order when the thing was so serious, and that he was something worse than an ass to mistake a stranger for Johnson, the orderly, whose face March knew almost as well as his own. There's where Vandyke scores an extra point against March. It would be very unusual to send a verbal order."

"That's why Eagle doubted it," I argued breathlessly. "Could he have refused to obey the acting colonel, when the order was repeated?"

"That's the question. It's too big for me," Tony said with a sigh. "It's for the court-martial to settle. There are no witnesses who can be of much use on either side, so far as I can see. Johnson was wounded in the lungs last night, you know, crossing the bridge in Vandyke's car, and never so much as squeaked again. He's dead now, so Vandyke has to depend on his own word alone; but everybody who knows about the business seems to think that probabilities are with him. His story is that he knew nothing of what was going on till he heard the guns at work. Luckily he was near by in his car, as you've heard a dozen times, and dashed up to the rescue."

"What about the message Eagle wrote in his notebook?"

"There's only his own word to prove it was ever written. Naturally there's no trace of it."

"But you," I persisted, "you and your men who were in charge of the guns; can't any of you bear witness for Captain March—that you saw Major Vandyke's orderly?"

"Unfortunately for March, no, not a man Jack of us," said Tony. "If he'd been close to us at the time, we must have seen and recognized anybody who came and spoke to him. But I told you he'd strolled off. It wasn't our business to watch him, and nobody was watching. A man on foot wheeling a bicycle doesn't make much noise; and a khaki uniform is just about the colour of the ground, on that yellow hill. There was no moon, only stars, which means no black shadow. I shall be called on as a witness for the defence, of course, worse luck—but I'm afraid I can't say anything to help March. I wish to the Lord I could! I'm dashed if it isn't the other way round. If I'm not mighty careful, I may do him harm instead of good."

"You'd like to do him good, wouldn't you?" I pleaded.

"You bet your life I would, Peggy. March is just about the finest chap I ever met, and most people think the same of him. But what can I do?"

"I can't see," I said, "but I may, when things grow clearer. They must grow clearer! You for one believe Eagle's word, don't you, Tony? You believe it was Major Vandyke's orderly who came to him?"

As I asked this question, I stared through the twilight into Tony's face, trying to read it even as he tried not to let it be read. He looked wretchedly uneasy, and rather obstinate. "I can't say I'm sure of that," he replied. "I'm sure some one came to him, and I'm sure March thought it was Vandyke's orderly. That's as far as I can go."

"Even when I've told you that I know there's a motive for Major Vandyke's wanting to injure him, ruin him in his career if he can?"

"You seem to think Vandyke's a regular sort of villain out of melodrama," said Tony, with an uncomfortable laugh. "I guess you don't know men very well yet, Peggy—except in novels and plays—when it comes down to bedrock. They're not much like that in real life, as far as I've ever seen. They never go round plotting to ruin other chaps' careers, even when they don't happen to get along very well with 'em."

"You're not so very old. You haven't had much more experience of life than I have," I taunted him.

Tony laughed. "Haven't I? That's all you know. You're a child, a little baby-child, compared to me. I may be young, but anyhow, I'm a man, and I've lived among men since I left West Point two years ago—even if you don't count cadets as men. Vandyke's no angel, and he and March have been doing a bit of the cat-and-dog act in a quiet way lately. But it's pretty far-fetched to accuse Vandyke of hatching up a plot to wipe March off the map, especially when it meant risking his own life and sacrificing his orderly, who was devoted to him—a fellow he valued a whole lot——"

"Ah!" I broke in. "So the orderly was 'devoted to him!' I wonder if the court-martial will remember that fact for what it's worth?"

"For what it's worth, yes. I guess it can be trusted to do just that. But what there is will be likely to tell in Vandyke's favour, I guess, not against him. Johnson had good reasons for being devoted to the major. The chap got consumption, and was in a bad way—would have had to say good-bye to an army life—if Vandyke hadn't paid for his cure in one of the best sanatoria in America, and used influence to keep his job open for him, too. Nothing very black in that record, eh?"

"Major Vandyke's the kind of person to pay high for anything he really wants himself," I said. "He must have badly wanted this Johnson man for something or other."

"Johnson was born a sort of gentleman, but hadn't the art of getting along in life, although he was pretty near being a genius at mathematics as well as mechanics, and could do stunts in several languages, like you. No shame to Vandyke to make use of the man's gifts. He must have been jolly useful—too useful to waste."

"It won't make me love you better, Tony," I remarked with deliberate injustice (for there are moods when any girl must feel a horrid satisfaction in being unjust), "if you go on praising Major Vandyke to the skies. Does it matter why the orderly was devoted to him, or he to the orderly? The thing of importance is the tie between them. The more devoted the man was, the more willing he would be to go to any lengths for Major Vandyke."

"Oh, if you want to put it that way," Tony hedged. "But it's a girl's notion, like the motive you attribute to Vandyke."

"How do you know what motive I mean?" I shot at him. "I haven't told you!"

"'I may be an ass, but I'm not a silly ass,'" quoted Tony. "I've guessed."

"What have you guessed?"

"Oh, about Vandyke and March both being in love with Lady Diana. All the owliest owls are on to that. First time Vandyke was ever caught for keeps, the fellows say. But it would only do harm to March to bring anything of that sort up in this business, to say nothing of the bad taste, and how mad he'd be, and the unpleasantness for Lady Diana and—and all your family."

"It wouldn't be agreeable, I know," I admitted. "But anything to save Eagle, no matter how we sacrifice ourselves."

"I don't somehow hear Lady Di echoing that, though I agree with you. Only there's more in the thing than you seem to see, because you keep your eyes fixed on one spot. If Lady Diana's engaged to Major Vandyke, then he'd have no incentive to strike at another man who was gone on her. It would be the other way round. The chap who had lost her would be the one, if any, to be up to melodramatic stunts. It might be said about March that he risked trouble for himself, for the pleasure of having a smack at Vandyke; putting the blame on him for a mad order to fire off guns at the good little Mexicans, for instance, do you see?"

I did see, and seeing, suffered a sharp stab of disappointment. Tony had taken my one weapon out of my hands. He was right. I had been wrong, while thinking myself cleverer than he. "There must be some other way of clearing Eagle," I said desperately.

"I hope so, with my whole heart; although I've always had a sneaking admiration for Vandyke, too. He's such a dashed fine-looking chap, a credit to the army, and all that. To clear March—really clear him, without leaving a stain of carelessness even—means to ruin Vandyke. For March can't be made white as snow without Vandyke being proved a liar, and—by Jove, yes, a traitor to his country!"

"That's what he must be proved," I said.

"It'll be a tough proposition. As I see it, there's no proof."

"It must be found."

"That's easy to say. But if there's any, it ought to be found by the court."

"When will the trial come on?" I asked.

"In a few days. I don't know yet just when."

"In the meantime, Eagle is under arrest?"

"Yes. It's sickening."

"Aren't his friends—I mean among the officers—indignant?"

"They're mighty sorry, all broken up, and don't know what to think. But, of course, Major Vandyke's got a good many friends, too. As for the Fort Bliss officers, they're so wild about the whole business that I'm afraid they're a bit prejudiced against March—those of them who don't know him personally. You see, there was an awful row on the hill after the firing—but I didn't mean to tell you about that——"

"Why not, as I know the rest? I suppose some of them arrived——"

"I should say they did arrive! That's too slow a word. The noise shot 'em out of their blessed beds—those of 'em who had gone to bed—and brought the others out of any old place they happened to be in: club, hotel, friends' houses. The first thing we knew, we had the General Commanding on us. They know some language, those grand old Johnnies! Poor March! He was up against it, I can tell you. His worst enemy would have been sorry for him."

"Fiends! What did they do?" I gasped.

"It wasn't so much what they did as what they said. But I shan't give you details, Peggy, so don't try and worm 'em out of me. It'll only waste our valuable time. March was under arrest—that's enough. I suppose he ought to be grateful that it's been 'judged expedient'—that's the phrase—never to let the story in its full enormity leak out. Vandyke was so smart at apologies and explanations in that Mexican dash of his last night, and the part he played appealed such a lot to the chaps over there, who're nothing if they're not sensational, that it's hoped the incident won't have any serious international results at all. The great thing is to keep the business forever from the public on both sides of the Rio Grande. Luckily most people had the willies so badly after the first shot that they couldn't swear what sort of noise they had heard. It's a hard job, too, for an amateur to tell what direction a sound comes from, when his eyes haven't helped his ears. If Vandyke hadn't put a stop to any danger of return shots, the fat would have been in the fire for us. Thanks to him, that story of an explosion among the ammunition could pass muster. As for March's alleged 'wound,' that tale's to get him out of his social engagements, without stirring up talk. But it won't be believed in for long. The court-martial findings can be kept secret, but not the fact of its taking place. It's to be put round that March was accused of gross carelessness, and causing the 'accident' that occurred. So now you see, Peggy, your keeping dark about what I've told you to-night is all for March's good. If he's found guilty——"

"What then?" I breathed. "What will be the sentence?"

"Why, as the affair has to be hushed up forever he can't be 'chucked.' He'll probably be 'given permission to resign.' And then he will resign. And nobody outside will ever know why. Those inside will think he's jolly well in luck to be let down so easy considering all ... what?"

"I didn't speak," I whispered.

"Why, Peggy, you're crying!"

I couldn't answer. I only bent down my head lest he should see my face.

"I felt from the first I oughtn't to have told you," growled Tony. "Now I'm sure. Don't take it so hard, dear. Something may turn up we can't think of, and March get off scot free. Who knows? Anyhow, he's nothing but your friend. And your sister isn't likely to marry him now. I shouldn't be surprised if she's engaged to Vandyke already."

"It wasn't settled between them," I said, swallowing my tears. "Only I thought she liked Eagle better, and that if he'd plenty of money—but it's all over. No hope since this thing has happened!"

"Would you like to have her marry March?" Tony wanted to know.

"I'm—not sure! But it will be too dreadful if she marries Major Vandyke after what he has done. Why do you say you 'shouldn't wonder' if they're engaged already? And a little while ago, too, you said 'if Lady Di is engaged to Vandyke.' Di can't have heard yet that there's any reason why—why the most disloyal coward should drop Eagle March."

"There are such things as telegrams. And the big California papers must have got hold of the story printed in El Paso this morning. They're sure to have correspondents here. I bet Lady Di had Vandyke as a hero served up to her with her coffee at breakfast to-day. Wouldn't she wire and congratulate him? Wouldn't he wire back to her, and strike while the iron was hot, to get her promise? That's what I'd do if I were in his place."

"I never thought——" I began; but no more words would come. I felt broken. It seemed to me that I could look ahead and see the whole future.

I let my hand lie in Tony's, and he stroked it gently, not speaking or trying to make me speak. Silence was the only balm just then, if balm there was, and a loud burst of music not far off struck on my brain like the blow of a hammer.

We had forgotten all about the torchlight procession which we had come out to see. But—by and by—Tony did not forget his kiss.



CHAPTER XII

If I could, without betraying Tony, I should have written to Eagle that night, telling him just a hundredth part of what I thought and felt. But I was bound by my word to "keep dark" what I had heard, even from Eagle himself, unless some day Tony set me free to speak. I must seem to know and believe what the public knew and believed, no more. But I did write cautiously, saying how grieved I was if he suffered, how I should think of him every hour, and how I wished that some way might be arranged for me to see him by and by. Could it be managed? I asked. And I posted the letter before I went to bed, tired to the heart and more miserable than I had ever been in my life.

The next morning, before I was out of my room, a telegram was brought to the door. It was from Di, and said, "Am engaged to Major Vandyke. He will probably call and tell you the news himself, but thought I should like you to know first from me. Please be nice to him for my sake. I am very happy. What a hero he is! Write me all about what happened."

This was a long, expensive message to lavish on me; but Diana's days of economy were over, and this was the first sign of the change.

I boiled with anger against her, and should have liked to send some of my emotions over the telegraph wire, but that would have been a childish way to strike. Besides, I knew in my heart that I was a little unjust. Di had treated Eagle shamefully, there was no doubt of that. But there was one thing in her favour: she was not conscious of betraying Eagle March in the hour of danger, for she knew about him only what the papers said: that he had been wounded in an accident. It was Major Vandyke's great exploit which had weighed down the scales in his favour, or influenced Diana, anyhow, to throw Eagle over definitely, and announce her engagement to the "hero." I telegraphed back, "Don't make it public till you've heard from me. You may change your mind." I followed the wire with a letter, in which I assured Di that Major Vandyke had committed a crime against Eagle March. Perhaps it would be found out, and then she would be very sorry that she had promised to marry such a man. I dared not hope much from my protest, however; so, two days later, I wasn't surprised to hear that Di was disgusted as well as hurt by my "wicked prejudice against Sidney." "You never liked him," she said, "but I didn't think you would go so far as to accuse him of crimes. If it weren't so silly, it would be horrible. As it is, I can't help laughing; but all the same, be careful what you say to other people. If you speak against Sidney to strangers, you can't do him any harm, but you will do yourself a great deal, and Captain March, too. Sidney has written me a long letter telling me the whole history of that Thursday night. It has just come. Of course, I can repeat to nobody what he wrote. It was strictly confidential, though I suppose the truth is bound to leak out, more or less, in future. Judging from your hints, I suppose you, too, have heard something—probably from Tony Dalziel (whom I hope, by the way, you are treating better than you did, as you're never likely to get another such chance). Naturally you believe the other side. But after the court-martial there won't be any 'other side.'"

There was just one consolation in the next few days: a letter that came to me from Eagle. He said not a word that any one mightn't have read, and told me nothing about himself, except that he was "getting along very well" and I mustn't spend a sad minute over him. But he added: "Your thought of me, and your unfailing friendship, are more to me than I can express. I feel that nothing can rob me of them, and now and always they will be for me like a comforting fire, at which I can warm myself when days are cold and dark. I count on you, my little Peggy girl, and I know I shan't count in vain, even though I have to say that it's impossible for us to meet now, or for some time to come. Write to me when you feel like it. I shall be more than glad of your letters."

If I had written when I felt like it, I should seldom have had a pen out of my hand; yet it was hard to write. There was so little I dared, so much I wished, to say. And I couldn't mention Diana. I wondered whether she had broken to him in a letter the news of her engagement, or whether she had left it for him to discover by accident. I felt that he ought to be told, but I couldn't bear to be the one to deal the blow, so I hedged when I wrote to him next, asking, "Have you heard from D... lately?"

He answered the question briefly by the next post "Yes, I heard from her on Saturday." That was all. No comment, no word as to his feelings. But he had let me see how he loved her. He could not help knowing that I would understand what losing her meant to him—and losing her to Major Vandyke, at such a time and in such a way. Looking back at events, I calculated that the blow had fallen on Eagle before he answered my letter, and this gave a more pathetic meaning to the lines which I intended always to keep.

Except for the knowledge that, powerless as I was, he valued me, there was no brightness in my days. Major Vandyke did have the effrontery to come and see me, as Di had thought he would, and I had thought he wouldn't. He took me at a disadvantage by walking up to me in the hall of the hotel, where I stood reading a note from Tony. Warned by a flash of my eyes as I looked up at the sound of his voice, saying, "How do you do?" he went on hastily: "Don't let's have a scene, please, for Diana's sake, if not for your own. I know how you feel, so you needn't go to the length of telling me, or even cutting me, before people. If I hadn't been sure you were too much of a little lady to make yourself conspicuous in public, in spite of your feelings, I shouldn't have risked surprising you like this. I was pretty sure if I didn't catch you unawares you would refuse to see me. So I had to take some risk, for I particularly want to speak to you."

"I don't share your desire," I said stiffly. "You were perfectly right in thinking I shouldn't have seen you if you had given me the chance to refuse. It's like you, not to have given it. But you're right, too, when you take it for granted that I won't make a scene. If it could do the the slightest good, though, to any one concerned, I would!"

He smiled, a pale, unpleasant smile. "No doubt. You'd be capable of anything. Here's the situation: I'm going to marry your sister, and though you've tried your best to stop me, you can't."

"I wonder any man, even you, should want Diana after the way she's behaved," I said sullenly.

"Thanks for that expressive 'even.' Your weapons are pretty sharp, little lady! But you're a child, and you're Diana's sister, so I bear no malice. I'm the sort of man, it happens, who doesn't stop to bother much about the way a very beautiful girl 'behaves' to another fellow. I love Diana, and I'd take her across that other fellow's dead body if she'd just stabbed him."

"She has stabbed Captain March, though not mortally, I hope," said I. "But she has behaved as badly to you as to him, in a way."

"You mean the affair of the photograph, I suppose," Major Vandyke remarked calmly. "She has explained that. Not that I asked her to. All I did was to put into a letter the story of that little scene in which you were mixed up in March's tent. She answered voluntarily that March must have bribed the photographer to sell him a copy, though the man had been given strict instructions to print only one—for me. March had begged her for a picture, when he heard from Mrs. Main that she'd been sitting for that fellow, who's supposed to be a great artist; and Di put him off in some laughing way. I was pretty certain, when I noticed there was no signature on the portrait March had, that he'd not got the photograph from Diana herself. No doubt he thought all fair in love or war."

"You judge him by yourself," I said. "But never mind! I shan't ask you not to believe Di, but to believe your own common sense. Think—or pretend to think what you like."

"I shall," he assured me; "that's a great principle of mine! As a general rule it makes for happiness and success. But we're getting away from my object in speaking to you, when I know you're wishing me in kingdom come."

"Not there," said I. He laughed out aloud, and anybody looking at us might have imagined us the best of friends.

"What a little devil you are! Where did you inherit it from?"

"From French chocolate, perhaps," said I. "What is it you want with me, Major Vandyke? Tell me, and get it over."

"I want to know exactly what it is in me that you dislike so much?"

"Only everything."

"That's a large order, and not very explicit. Would you have disliked me if I hadn't interfered with—a—er—a person more to your taste; in other words, with Captain Eagleston March?"

"Oh, of course, if you hadn't been jealous of him, I might have thought better of your character. But then, you wouldn't have been you."

"D'you know," drawled Major Vandyke, "I've a sort of idea that it was Captain March who was jealous of me!"

"It isn't in him to be jealous, in the way you mean. But you've asked why I dislike you, and you interrupted me before I could finish. 'Dislike' is a very small word for what I feel. I loathe you, because you've done your best to ruin him. There are some things I know. Partly, I blame myself because of what I said to you about Di in camp. Perhaps—just perhaps—you mightn't have done what you have done if I'd held my tongue. That's why, if I've had a hand in pulling Eagle March down, I'd cut it off, and the other one, too, if I could have a hand in lifting him up."

"Sounds complicated—and Irish!" sneered Vandyke. "In your country a man is presumed to be innocent until he's proved guilty; yet you accuse me of guilt on no proof whatever. Evidently you've wormed things out of Tony Dalziel, and drawn your own conclusions to suit yourself. So like a woman! But my conscience is clear as crystal. Personal feeling has had nothing to do with my actions. Every man will give me credit for that. I'm sorry for March. He's either insane with jealousy, or he's allowed himself to be tricked. Privately, not publicly, of course, I'm inclined to believe in the former theory; and I think most people would agree with me if they knew all the circumstances——"

"As you put them!"

"Let's go back to my object in inflicting myself upon you to-night, Lady Peggy. Eagleston March is the god of your idolatry. Let's take that for granted. He's bound to suffer. He brought it on himself, whatever you—a child—may think to the contrary. Do you want to make him suffer more or less?"

"Is it necessary to answer?" I asked.

"Hardly. But I have to impress upon you that it's partly in those hands of yours, which you would 'cut off' for him. The full immensity of his guilt need never come out. It's not intended that it should come out. Still, if you are going to treat me like the dirt under your feet—the man who will soon be your sister's husband—and kick up a scandal, I shan't lie still. I'm not a saint. If you mean to fight against me with Diana, or anybody else, or even set people talking by your behaviour, by Jove! I'll hit back. I shan't take much trouble to do my part in keeping the secret."

"You're bound to keep it, aren't you?" I suggested. "Government doesn't want it to come out."

"That's the attitude at present. But when relations have been definitely and permanently smoothed over between the United States and Mexico, it won't so much matter except for March himself. In any case, I shan't let the cat out of the bag. I'm not such a blunderer! But I tell you frankly, I can influence others to keep the secret after the time limit's up—or I can refrain from using influence. Which shall it be? Is it peace or war between us?"

I stopped to think for a moment, and then I answered, "It's an armed truce."

We have all heard quite a lot about the mouse who saved a lion. But it was only one mouse out of a world crammed full of mice. I never heard, in the whole history of mice, since those which Cain and Abel maybe had for pets, of another mouse capable of saving any animal whatever, even itself. Still, there remains that one heroic and intelligent mouse. When Sidney Vandyke had left me to "think things over," I envied it with passion, feeling that I was not even of the mouse tribe. I felt more like a fly, if you can imagine a fly cursed with a human heart, who loves an eagle that has been shot in the wing and caged, and the cage set down on the seashore when the night tide is coming in. What could such a fly do but cling sadly to the cage and buzz and let the great rush of water drown it with the eagle? Even that fly seemed more fortunate than I was, as I pictured it to myself. For it was privileged to rest on the eagle's cage. I could not be near my wounded eagle!

Five days after that awful Thursday night a letter from Di told me that her engagement had "changed all her plans." "Sidney" was very impatient, and wanted to be married soon. The moment his work was over at El Paso he would get long leave, and possibly he might make up his mind to resign from the army. That was what she wanted him to do; and when she had him with her, she knew that she could persuade him, for he wasn't really "very keen" on soldiering, and she must live in England, at least half the year round. This part was for the future to decide; but in any case there would be the long leave. It would give time for the wedding and the honeymoon. She had set her heart on being married at St. George's, for it was the "historic" thing to do. And there was the trousseau. Kitty Main insisted on giving it to her for a wedding present; which was rather a weight off one's mind, as America had cost something in spite of everybody's being so hospitable and good. Kitty would go to Paris with her, and help to choose the things, which would be nicer than having just a sum down, and going alone. So they—Di and Kitty and Father—had all decided to cut out the rest of the visits arranged and "make for home." California had been great fun, and Di wished she might stop longer, but one couldn't have one's cake and eat it, too. Being married was her cake. This was her mistake. As I have said before, she had always had both.

Major Vandyke's "work in El Paso" was to bear witness against Eagle March in the court-martial which would come on almost at once. And I was to go away without hearing the verdict or seeing Eagle after all was over.

* * * * *

Di had written to Mrs. Dalziel, too, it appeared, and Milly was only too glad of an excuse to escape from the the place where Captain March's society had been the first and only attraction for her.

"Now that Tony's time is so dreadfully taken up," she said to her mother, "he can't give us any fun, or have any fun with us himself, so we might as well go away. Let's, dear! Let's clear out to-morrow, and take Peggy to meet Lady Di and the others at Albuquerque, where we can get into the 'Limited' and join them."

"I don't know what Tony will say!" wavered Mrs. Dalziel, who was finding El Paso rather hot in those days, for plump people. She looked at me. So did Milly. Then Milly laughed. "No good pretending we've got cotton wool over our eyes," she exclaimed. "Can't you make up your mind to take my poor, dear little brother, Peggy, and put him out of his misery?"

"Tony and I understand each other already," I said.

"Do you? Oh, I'm so glad, so pleased," they both cried together. And I had to explain in a violent hurry, before I had been caressed under false pretences, that there are understandings and understandings. Tony's and mine was the kind of understanding which left us both perfectly free; the kind of understanding where you didn't make up your mind, but just waited to see whether it made itself up.

"Isn't there anything between you and the poor boy, then?" implored the boy's mother.

"Only—a kiss," I said. "One—on a cheek. My cheek."

"Well, that's something," she sighed. "At least, it was when I was a girl."

It was not much to me, though it might have been to a better regulated flapper. I couldn't dwell on such trifles as kisses. I thought only of the coming court-martial.



CHAPTER XIII

The "understanding" remained in statu quo (whatever that means; the expression was his) between Tony and me, when Mrs. Dalziel and Milly and I turned our backs on El Paso. We had a night at Albuquerque, which made me homesick for past days, because the hotel where we stopped had the name of Alvarado. I hadn't known that I was happy at the Springs, but in looking back it seemed as though I must have been without a care.

Milly and her mother bought wonderful Indian curios and gorgeous Mexican opals and silver spoons set with turquoises at Albuquerque, and Milly was almost feverishly gay; but I guessed that at heart, if she had an organ worth the name, she was nearly as wretched as I. For she had failed; and she had let the venom of her spite poison her nature, trying to tell herself that she rejoiced because of Eagle's misfortunes, and that it was very good, as things turned out, to be free of him and his fate. No one can really be happy with such poison in the veins, and there can't possibly be deep-down, soul-satisfying enjoyment from revelling in another's misfortunes. Underneath my fury, when Milly said little veiled, spiteful things about Captain March, was pity for her, the kind of pity you have for an irritable invalid who snaps.

When Father and Mrs. Main and Diana (Di in great beauty) came to Albuquerque on the "Limited," and we three took up our quarters in staterooms on board, Milly Dalziel and Di struck up a great friendship, almost as if they were new acquaintances who had just been introduced and fallen in love with each other's unexpectedly charming qualities. This was quite funny, because Milly had found it hard work to be civil to Di at Alvarado Springs, and Di had been rather contemptuously amused at Milly's badly disguised jealousy. Now, with Eagle March eliminated from the scheme of life for both of them, each discovered that the other was a delightful creature.

Milly accounted to me for her change of mind by exclaiming: "I do think Lady Di has got heaps prettier since she went to California, don't you? And she's just as sweet as she's pretty. Perhaps it's being engaged to the man she loves that has made the difference. And no wonder, with such a gorgeous lover as Major Vandyke! He's something to be proud of—even for a beauty and a 'swell' like your sister."

Di accounted for the change in her mind by saying to me: "I don't know what you've done to that Dalziel girl, Peggy, but you seem to have made her all over. She used to be a thorough-paced cat. Now she's quite a darling, and if you're ever sensible enough to marry Tony, I shall love to have such a fascinating sister-in-law. I've asked her to be one of my bridesmaids."

I suppose changing your mind often is a good, clean thing for your soul, just as changing your clothes is for your body.

We had a few hours to flash round Chicago in a motor car, seeing pretty, young-looking parks, and a great lake like the sea with wonderful buildings along its shore, and a sky like a painting by Turner. I was bitterly disappointed not to get the telegram Tony had promised to send, addressed to the Blackstone Hotel, where it had been arranged beforehand that we should lunch and dine. The court-martial was to have been held on the eighth day after Eagle March's arrest, the day before our arrival in Chicago, and meanwhile I had lived only for the telegram. My impatience to know the worst—or best—had been like a flame in my blood and brain. When it was time to take the fast train to New York in the evening, and no telegram had come, it seemed as if that flame gave a devouring leap, and then went out, leaving my body a burnt-up shell.

The next morning we were in New York, where Mr. Dalziel met his wife and Milly. I hoped that he might have read some news of El Paso in the morning papers, and that he would spring it upon us in the railway station where we paused, being charming and affectionate to each other, and making plans to meet again before our party sailed. I couldn't have questioned him to save my life, any more than I could have cried out in fearful nightmares which I remembered, when the earth was about to swallow me up, or a mountain fall on to my head. Surely, I thought, if there were news about the court-martial it would be interesting enough to the Dalziel family for the man to mention it, if only because Tony was to be a witness in the case! But the affair might have been more remote from us all than a destructive tidal wave in China, judging by Mr. Dalziel's oblivion of it. He and Father talked about our luck in grabbing cabins at short notice on the Mauretania; his wife and Mrs. Main discussed getting seats for that night at D'Annunzio's great moving-picture play, which had come on at a theatre in New York; his daughter and Diana chatted about the earliest date when Milly could persuade her mother to sail for England. I longed to scream at them, "Oh, you hard, unfeeling wretches!" But instead I stood outwardly patient, a good, well-behaved young girl with a little mincing smile on my face. Only the smile was frozen so hard you could have knocked it off with a hammer.

We were going to Kitty Main's flat, which she called her "apartment," and the Dalziels were going to their house, but it was not to be a regular parting. We were to dine with them (somehow the idea was borne in upon me that dear Mrs. Dalziel wanted naughty, shilly-shallying Peggy to see what lovely surroundings might be hers as Tony's wife); all of us were to lunch next day at Delmonico's, as Kitty's guests; the Dalziels were to motor us over to Long Island for a glimpse of their country place there; and they were to see us off on the Mauretania. But that would not be until five days had passed. Meanwhile, there would be time for telegrams and even letters from El Paso.

At last, after all the noisy planning of things to do, the two parties contrived to tear themselves from one another, and we got away from the wonderful station in Mrs. Main's motor car, which had come to meet us—a most impressive motor car which needed only a coronet or at worst a crest, on its door. Perhaps, however, judging from present signs, that lack might be supplied later.

Her "apartment" was in a marvellously ornate sky-scraper; a huge brown block like a plum cake for a Titan tea party, which would have made Buckingham Palace or any other royal residence in Europe look a toy. It was in the highest story, according to Kitty the most desirable, because you had all the air there and none of the noise; just like living on a mountain, with a lift to the top. I wondered what she would think of poor old Ballyconal, when she came to see it!

The first thing I did was to wire my temporary address to Tony, and hate myself because I hadn't done it before. Until I met Father and Di I didn't know where we were to stay in New York, for everything had been settled through letters and telegrams, with as little useful information as possible. If I had remembered in Chicago that Tony had no idea where I would be in New York, there need have been no more delay in my getting the news. But something seemed to be strangely wrong at his end of the line, for even when there had been time for him to get my telegram and send another, no answer came. Nothing arrived for Di, either; but apparently she was expecting no wire. She must have had some human curiosity, if not anxiety, to know the fate of a man who had been as much to her as Eagle March had been; but she was thinking of his trial, I suppose, entirely from Sidney Vandyke's point of view, and she had no uneasiness as to the result for Sidney. As for the papers, though I quite cleverly managed to find other things than football news, I could discover nothing about the court-martial on Captain March. I had to tell myself that perhaps they didn't put such affairs in newspapers, for I was too ignorant to think of trying to hunt up the army and navy official journals.

We had been three days in New York in great heat, which Kitty took pains to tell us was most unseasonable, when one morning a thunderstorm accompanied by terrific wind came up, preventing us from going out as we had intended. Kitty's floor at the top of the building, with its steel supports, actually gave the effect of swaying in the blast like an overgrown spear of wheat, a phenomenon Kitty took as a matter of course. So we Britishers had to do the same, no matter how we felt, to show that we were as brave as Americans. In the midst of the storm the postman's ring sounded reassuringly, as if to say that we were not cut off from earth; and a calm maid, used to hanging on insectlike by her antennae to the top grain on the wheat stalk, quietly presented a silver tray with letters to her mistress.

"One for dear Diana," Kitty announced, picking up a large purple-sealed and monogrammed envelope, such as Sidney Vandyke had made peculiarly his own. And I had only time for a heartbeat before she added, "Two for little Peggy!"

I never much relished being patronized as "little Peggy" by my would-be stepmother, but she might safely have called me anything from a pterodactyl to a hippopotamus just then. I had caught a glimpse of the uppermost envelope of the two as she doled the letters out. In a flash I knew that Eagle March had written to me.

Just to save the scarlet flag my cheeks flung out from Father's stare, I pretended great interest in the other envelope. It had been addressed to me by Tony.

"My letter is from Sidney. I thought I should have one from him to-day," said Di, with the brazen boldness of the legitimately engaged girl who has a right to expose her feelings. "Now he'll tell me, perhaps, when he will be able to get leave and follow us."

She proceeded to tear open the envelope in the ruthless violating way of which I could never be guilty except with a soulless circular. A letter from a lover, or a friend, full of thoughts and touched by a dear hand, is too sacred for such usage. Fearing from Di's expression that she would be capable of reading aloud choice selections from Major Vandyke's version of events, I simply couldn't stay to risk hearing them. I jumped up and fled with my two prizes.

Locked safely in my room, delicately I cut the edge of Eagle's envelope. I was on the point of drawing out the letter, which appeared to be meagrely thin, when something within me seemed to faint. Reading what he had to say, I should know in a very few words, I was sure, the fate to which he looked forward. There would be no working up, no preamble, to prepare my mind. I wasn't strong enough to bear it. I should have to take Tony's letter first, like a dose of sal volatile.

"Dear, dear Peggy," my benevolent Billiken addressed me, and as I read, the thunder rolled like the far-away drums of Fort Alvarado or El Paso. "This is my first real letter to you, for I don't count notes; and I wish it could be a better one. I'm afraid you must be pretty mad about not getting a telegram at Chicago, or anyhow at Mrs. Main's, when you'd taken all the trouble to wire me your address. But it was intimated to all of us concerned that we weren't to telegraph news about you know what to our families or friends, and that we were even to be discreet about our letters. I've been so indiscreet with you on that subject already, on a never-to-be-forgotten night, however, that the latter bit of fatherly instruction doesn't hold good in my case. Only, before telling you what I have to tell, I'll just take the liberty of reminding you once again of your promise to keep mum till Gabriel's trumpet sounds—or till I take off the embargo (is that the way to spell it, I wonder, and what exactly does it mean?). As matters look at present, one thing is liable to happen about the same time as the other. Well, now I'm going to tell you news of the court-martial as best I can. I'm no great shakes at telling things, you know. Vandyke was 'seedy' (as you say in your truly British fashion) the day appointed for the trial, and as he was the principal witness it had to be put off for twenty-four hours. You'd have thought it would be March, if anybody, who was on the sick list, wouldn't you? But he was all right in health. I don't know what was the matter with Vandyke, except that I happened to hear our old Doc say he had a temperature way up in C. Maybe it was stage fright. I felt like that myself—queer all over when the time came, as a fellow does when he's just going to be seasick.

"The court-martial was what you call a 'field-general court-martial,' which can be convened when forces are on active service, as of course we are now (though we've had nothing very active to do, except on a certain night none of us will forget, and on Army Day when we all marched and sweated to give the populace an impressive show). A field general court-martial can try cases just as grave as a general court-martial can, and its proceedings are conducted with more secrecy. It consists of not less than three officers, none of them under the rank of captain, but the president of the court may be a general officer, a colonel, or lieutenant-colonel. In this case, which was considered very important, both on account of March's fine record and the necessary secrecy that had to be maintained, we had the general commanding the Fort for president, and the other two officers of the court were a colonel and a major. I don't think you met either of them when you were here, so their names wouldn't interest you.

"The courtroom was just a plain ordinary room in the barracks at Fort Bliss; but there wasn't a map or copy of 'rules and regulations' hanging on the yellowish white walls that I can't see now, whenever I shut my eyes. I guess they were all photographed on my 'mental retina,' as the writing folks say. The three officers were in full uniform, to do honour to the case, and of course there wasn't a man present dressed in 'cits.' All were army chaps, even to the headquarters clerk who took notes of the proceedings, the orderly who kept the door, and the witnesses. There weren't many of those. I was one of the principal witnesses and you've heard from me before how little I had to say.

"March, who as prisoner had to be formally conducted in by an officer, had a seat on the left of the judges' table, and his friend, Major Dell, sat beside him. If you could have been a fly on that beastly wall, looking down at your hero, I guess you'd have been proud of the way he held himself. If he'd been brought there to receive a medal of honour instead of to be tried for a big, insane sort of offence calculated to bring about international complications he couldn't have had a prouder bearing. And he wasn't even pale. He looked just brown and calm and natural. I had to confess to when you asked me a point-blank question that night in the park, that I was all muddled up in my mind about his conduct in ordering the gunfire. I didn't know whether he'd gone off his chump, or been fooled, or what. But I can tell you one thing: I felt proud of him as a man and as my superior officer when I saw the way he bore himself for his trial. I don't know now the rights of the matter any more than I did then, in spite of the court's findings; but something tells me—as girls say—that March wasn't to blame. There's a black mystery in this, and I don't see how it's ever going to be cleared up, as things are. But to go back to the court-martial.

"March was accused by the prosecutor of having fired without orders three charges from field guns into a country living at peace with the United States, to the detriment of its inhabitants and property, and to the imminent peril of disturbing international relations. He could have objected legally to any of the judges and stated his objections. But he didn't object to them, nor to the shorthand-writer, whom he had a right to throw out if he could show reasons for thinking that the man was likely to be partial in his notes of the proceedings.

"Of course, I as a mere witness wasn't present all the time; but I know what took place, because I've heard some of it from different quarters. I know that when 'the court had been duly sworn, the accused was arraigned,' which means that the president read out the charges against March, and asked him whether he pleaded guilty or not guilty. Can't you just hear March answering steadily in that pleasant, quiet voice of his: 'Not guilty!' The next thing to follow was the prosecutor's address, outlining the case against the prisoner, and mentioning the witnesses he meant to summon. Then he called the evidence for the prosecution, and that's where, as I've heard from other witnesses, those present got their first big surprise.

"Naturally there'd been no end of whispering among those in the know before the court met; and it was discussed whether or not March would bring into his defence the state of feeling between Vandyke and himself. Some thought he would be justified in doing so, and quixotic not to, as the bad blood between them, and the cause of it (I hope you don't mind my saying this?) was already a sort of open secret. Others argued that if the ill-feeling were once lugged in, the name of the lady concerned and other details would certainly be dragged into the case through inquiries which would have to be made; and that March wasn't the man to run such a risk even if it were likely to do him any good. The surprise of the court came when Vandyke accused March of giving the order for firing the guns without authority, but deliberately putting the responsibility on him—Vandyke—with the object of ruining him. Did you ever know the like of that?

"From one way of looking at the thing, it was a jolly smart way for Vandyke to turn the tables, because it would take all the wind out of March's sails, in case he meant to accuse Vandyke of the same intention toward him. I don't suppose there ever was such a queer case between officers as this one; both men highly placed and popular in the service and society.

"I believe March brought out his notebook in evidence (the khaki-coloured one with his monogram on it in silver, which I'd often seen, and which you say you gave him) to show the newly torn-out leaf; and his friend, Major Dell, who was his classmate at West Point (you've seen him here; fine-looking cavalry chap), suggested that the page underneath should be examined with a magnifying glass for the impression of writing on the missing page with a blunt pencil which had borne heavily on the paper. No words could be definitely made out, even with the magnifier, and even if they could have been, I'm afraid that wouldn't have made much difference in the case. March had had the notebook in his possession after the gunfiring, you see, and could easily have written what he liked and then torn out the leaf.

"Vandyke's orderly being dead, there was no evidence as to the part he had played for either side; but I suppose he would have been a witness for the prosecution, so his disappearance off the scene was perhaps a good thing for March. I was called for the defence, but nothing I had to say was of any good. I felt that; and being keen to serve March's interest if I could with truth, put such a strain on me to be careful of each word that you could have knocked me down with a feather after I was released. When my evidence was read over (they always do that to every witness before he leaves the court) it seemed to me I'd given the most rotten answers every time; but I couldn't have made them any better if I'd tried to explain them away, or amend them as I should have had the right to do; so I let them go as they were.