"March cross-examined me himself, about the distance he was from the guns when the orderly was supposed to come up; and the darkness of the night; and the nature of the ground for muffling the sound of footsteps. He didn't seem a bit disgusted or hurt with me because I could not do better for his case. He had a real friendly look in his eyes whenever they met mine; and I tell you, Peggy, I could have blubbed like a kid when I thought of it later, after I knew what the verdict was.

"Once I saw him cross glances with Vandyke, and if you won't think I'm getting sentimental on top of all the rest, I'll tell you I thought March's look was like a sword. Vandyke was yellow and bloodshot as if he'd had a bilious attack, and perhaps bile had been the trouble when he went on sick report and the case had to be delayed for him.

"The findings were considered in closed court. And now you must take this one bit of comfort to yourself, Peggy, in your trouble about your friend Captain March: things might have gone a lot harder for him than they did in such a serious case. Vandyke's accusation against him was mighty bad, and there was some evidence to support it. March didn't seem to use such weapons as he had to hit back with, quite as smartly as he might have done, though that was, no doubt, in his determination to keep your sister's name from coming into the affair. He did defend himself to the extent of saying he'd tried to save the situation by firing blank instead of shell; but that didn't help him much, for the whole point of the accusation against him was that he had had no right to fire at all. None of his witnesses could help him any more than I could, whereas Vandyke had several who took their oath to seeing him in the auto with his orderly, leaving old Fort Bliss at much about the time when March said Johnson came to him with the second verbal order. March could have been sentenced to imprisonment or chucked out of the army if the court had believed in his giving the order to fire the guns on his own responsibility out of sheer madness, or spite against Vandyke. As it was, they accepted the theory that he had been hoaxed by some one unknown, purporting to be the orderly of Major Vandyke, then acting as colonel. Owing to the comparative darkness of the night (luckily there wasn't a moon, only stars) it would have been possible for a nervous, jumpy man to mistake the identity of a person masquerading as another person. Now you know, and I know, and everybody who knows him knows March is the last fellow in the world to get nerves or jumps in any circumstances whatever. All the same, giving him credit for them on a night when a Mexican raid on the town had been predicted offered the court an excuse to let the accused down lightly. He was sentenced merely to 'severe censure for rashness and carelessness,' etc., etc. In sequence to this our Old Man—the colonel, I mean—has had to advise March to resign. That's part of the programme. And equally it is part of the programme that March should take the advice.

"Now, dear, I've told you the story as well or as badly as I can. Anyhow, you know as much as I do, and that is a good deal more than you ought to know, or others are likely to know. If you hear anything further, it will be from March himself.

"When the Mexican bees have settled down in their hive again, and we're back at Fort Alvarado, I'm going to have a good try for a month's leave or longer, so as to cross the blue with the mater and sis. Of course, entirely with the object of looking after them, and perhaps getting an invitation to Lady Di's wedding, and not a bit for the sake of seeing you or jogging your memory about a certain decision! Yours till the end of beyond, Billiken."

For a while, after I had read this long letter through, to the accompaniment of thunder, lightning, and rain, I sat with the four closely written sheets of paper in my hand, not thinking, only feeling. I could not console myself with "the one bit of comfort" which Tony waved under my eyes. Eagle March was a born soldier. He cared more for his career than for his life, and it had been taken from him. Though the world was not to know what he was accused of doing, all the world would know that he had left the army because his country no longer needed his services. And he owed this to his love for my sister! This was what Diana and I had brought upon the bravest and best man we should ever meet.

"What will he do? What will become of him?" I asked myself miserably; and the rain beating on the window seemed to give a desolating answer. But there was still the letter I had waited to read until I learned the best or worst from Tony. Perhaps that would tell me what I wished to know!



CHAPTER XIV

Eagle March's letter was characteristic. Though he must have felt as if he stood alone, at the jumping-off place of the world, he had more to say about me than of himself.

He had read in the El Paso papers that I was going to sail for England, and all the first part of his letter was concerned with "bon voyage." It was only in the last paragraph that he mentioned his own affairs. "You'll have heard already," he said, "of what has happened to me. I've had a blow, but I'm not going to lie down under it. There must be work for me somewhere, and when I've found it you'll hear from me again. Not until then though, for I'm rather hard hit, and might be inclined to grumble. But I shall think of you constantly, and I don't believe if I wrote a volume I could make you understand how much the thought will help. I shall wear it like armour."

Not a word of Diana. But I read between the lines. He was "rather hard hit." Just when he was facing an attack from the front she had stabbed him in the back. In one way, the letter was a bitter disappointment, for I had longed to be told Eagle's plans; yet in the hint that I should hear again when he had "found work," there was a thrill like that which comes with martial music. I was far from guessing then what that work would be, and how quickly and surprisingly he would find it; but vaguely I felt that there was only one kind of work worth Eagle March's while: soldier work.

Because I mustn't expect to hear, that did not prevent my writing from the ship. "This isn't 'good-bye,'" I said. "Always I'll be looking forward to great things for you. And (you may laugh, but I'm in earnest) I shall live in the hope of 'righting' you in the world's eyes. The day may come. I believe it will—the best day of my life."

When the Mauretania passed "Liberty" I sent back a last message by the statue to Eagle. "Till the day!" I said. But it was a pang to see the last of her. I went down to my stateroom and cried—oh! how I cried!

As if to flaunt the glorious difference between this summer and last, Father took a furnished house in Norfolk Street, Hyde Park, which was to let with the owner's servants. It was very rich looking, though the elaborate decorations reminded me of houses in moving-picture plays. Father was able to splurge, on Di's prospects; and probably Kitty Main contributed to the expense, for she and her maid came to stay with us. We began to be expensively gay; and I believe if any duke or earl who tangoed with Diana had offered himself for the dance of life, she would have thrown over Sidney Vandyke at the eleventh hour. But no one exciting showed signs of entangling himself permanently, and so, when Major Vandyke wired that the situation in Mexico permitted him to ask for leave, Di's engagement was announced in the Morning Post.

Soon after this, Sidney arrived with cartloads of luggage, which seemed to detach him from America forever. He had got long leave and intended to resign from the army at the end of it. He took up his quarters at the Savoy Hotel, but he was at our house morning, noon, and night; and though everybody who saw him for the first time said how handsome he was, it struck me from the minute we met that he had changed for the worse. He looked older and stouter, and black and white would no longer express him in a picture. A suffusion of red for the face, as well as for the lips under the black moustache, would have been needed. I wondered if he were drinking; and though, when he lunched or dined with us he was always careful (except with champagne, which he loved as a child loves sweets), he might be less cautious when out of Diana's sight.

At first I could hardly bear to sit down at the same table with Sidney Vandyke; but as time went on, I found an impish pleasure in watching him, in staring openly, as a baby stares. I had the satisfaction of feeling that he was disturbed by my gaze, and that he knew, even when not looking, that my eyes were on him. Sometimes in the midst of talk he would break down and forget what he had meant to say next. I affected him with a kind of aphasia, erasing the words he wanted from his brain. But otherwise my tactics were changed. I was no longer rude to my future brother-in-law. I wished to study him, and I didn't object to his knowing that I studied him.

A silent battle was being fought between us under a smooth surface of civility, and Sidney might easily have complained to Diana that my owl stare was "getting on his nerves," even though he could have brought no other complaint. If he had spoken to her she would have made some excuse to scratch me off her list of bridesmaids. I hoped she would, and save me trouble! But perhaps Sidney felt that I was yearning for him to "squeal," and resolved not to please me. In any case, nobody not in the secret of our hearts could have guessed that anything was wrong. And I had to play at spraining my ankle in order to escape being one of the eight.

It was well to be civil in word and deed, and "bide my time," but to be in at the death, and marry my sister to a man who'd stolen her from Eagle March and ruined him, was a different thing. I drew the line at that.

It's quite simple for a girl vowed to the conscientious life and no fibs to wrench her ankle, if she'll wear high heels. All she has to do when walking in the street is to look out for banana peel; or an apple paring may do at a pinch. She launches herself upon it, with a skating movement. Her foot turns, and the deed is done. She can in this way produce a "strain," if not a "sprain"; and only doctors know the difference. The difficult part comes in remembering to limp. I was so fearful of forgetting in some moment of excitement, that I took to wearing shoes which were not mates. They were actually incompatible. One had a Louis Quinze heel and the other had none at all; but my dresses by this time were so "grown up" and long that nobody noticed. Besides, though refusing to see a doctor, I stopped in bed for days, and hypnotically impressed the idea of a sprain on every one.

Those who didn't know why I wouldn't for the world be bridesmaid to Diana sat by my bedside and sympathized, among others Mrs. Dalziel and Milly, who had followed us in time to have all the season's fun in London before the wedding. Tony hoped to get leave and arrive for "the great day." Afterward he and his mother and sister planned a motor tour through Belgium, and Luxemburg, and France, before the time when Tony must rejoin his regiment. I had a sneaking idea that they meant me to go, too; but at that moment—before other things had happened—I told myself that I would do nothing of the kind. I was homesick for Ireland and Ballyconal.

The date of Di's wedding wasn't definitely settled until after Sidney came. Then it was fixed for the ninth of July, and the bride and bridegroom were to have four weeks' motoring in the north of England. When the honeymoon was officially over they were to make country-house visits in Scotland for the shooting season. Sidney Vandyke boasted of being a crack shot, and Diana hoped to be proud of her American husband among British sportsmen.

Meanwhile they had some time before the wedding in which to find a town house, and choose furniture and things so that they might be "at home" in the autumn. I think Di really loved Sidney the day he consented to buy a house—a very expensive though small house—in Park Lane. She had set her heart upon Park Lane; for, you see, there was always something rootedly Victorian about Di; such as being convinced that Park Lane was the Mount Olympus of London, and that you couldn't be properly married except at St. George's. She was, and is, up-to-date only on the surface, in such details as clothes and hats, and tango, and the latest slang. Probably Di had never been so happy as in gathering together materials for her future frame; and if Sidney was chagrined because Father didn't offer to lend for the honeymoon our ancestral castle (to which he and Di had frequently alluded in America) he kept his feelings to himself. He would have been twice as much chagrined by the castle could he have seen it before Kitty Main got in her deadly work. The Trowbridges of Chicago would have rejoiced to tell him what it was really like.

I don't quite know why it is the fashion for brides to shut themselves up and not "go out" for days before the wedding; but perhaps they are supposed to pass their close time in prayer and maiden meditation, thanking heaven for what it has provided, and dwelling on the responsibilities of the future. Di spent her days in being fitted for frocks (goodness knew who would pay for them, unless Sidney, on ceasing to be a bridegroom and turning into a husband), receiving wedding presents, having photographs taken, and giving discreet interviews to journalists. She told the male ones what a heroic person Major Vandyke was; and to the female ones she showed her dresses. There wasn't an illustrated daily or weekly paper in London that didn't produce a picture of Sidney in uniform, looking dashing, and Di looking down, all modesty and eyelashes.

The last night she went out to anything big before the wedding was to a dinner at the Russian embassy; and though nothing which seemed to us sensationally interesting happened that night, something was led up to later. It came through Milly Dalziel, for whom Father and Di had contrived to get an invitation. She met Captain Count Stefan Stefanovitch, the military attache of the Russian Embassy.

There is something irresistible to some natures about a Russian count; and to Russian counts about American heiresses, particularly those with red hair. When the two had seen each other three times they were engaged, subject to the consent of the count's father. Everybody in that family was a count or countess, a delicious prospect for Milly when she wished to talk of her Russian relatives. Stefan was to stay and see Milly in her bridesmaid's dress; then he was going to make a dash for Petrograd (we called it St. Petersburg then!) armed with her photograph and substantial accounts of her father's bank balance, returning as soon as the consent was insured. There seemed to be something almost feudally old-fashioned about Russians, Milly thought, for a mere wire to her father had been considered adequate. But then, Tony Senior wasn't a count or a "vitch," or anything exciting like that.

It was after this dinner that I began to prowl for banana peel. I hadn't wanted to be premature; still, it was necessary to give some other girl time to get a bridesmaid's dress. Just then the only thing in London that anybody cared about was the Russian opera and ballet, and it occurred to Di that it would be original to clothe her eight attendant maidens in Leon Bakst designs. Most of the girls were pale blondes, whom she had chosen because they would form an effective contrast to herself; but they were very brave about the Bakst effects. The measure of their fingers had been taken, and they were expecting presents of rings beautiful enough to console them for worse disasters. Besides, Sidney had brought over from America a Captain Beatty to be his best man. He was rather rich and very good-looking.

During all this time of our new popularity I had heard nothing of Eagle March, except that he had turned his back on his native land after resigning from the army, and that various "ugly stories" were in circulation. It was even said that he had been bribed by Mexico with immense sums of money to betray his country. It was Tony who wrote me this, in answer to a question. But he knew no more than this gossip, not even when he arrived in London the day before Diana's wedding.

"For all I can tell," he said, when he had congratulated me on my limp, "March may have offered himself and his aeroplane to the Viceroy of India or the Sultan of Turkey or even the Emperor of Japan. There's only one thing certain about him: he'll have to be a soldier somewhere—somehow!"

"Blessed is the bride the sun shines on," they say, but the sun did not shine on Diana. The ninth of July dawned gray and blustering, with a queer rasping chill in the air like an autumn day slipped back in the calendar. I hated the thought of seeing Di married to Sidney Vandyke. It seemed like aiding and abetting the enemy, but unless I had another accident at the last minute, such as falling downstairs, I could see no way of stopping at home without a row.

What would Eagle want me to do? I asked myself. It was almost as if I could hear his voice saying, "Don't hurt Diana on such a day by stopping away from her wedding."

I decided to be there; and it was arranged for me to sit with Kitty Main, Mrs. Dalziel, and Tony. I didn't mind this, because Tony couldn't very well propose in church with "The voice that breathed o'er Eden" resounding to the roof.

The wedding was fixed for two o'clock at St. George's, Hanover Square; and if any were left in London who didn't know the hour and all other details, it must have been because they didn't read the halfpenny papers. It had even been announced that one of the bridegroom's many magnificent presents to the bride would be a high-powered Grayles-Grice car, in which Lady Diana Vandyke would drive from the church with her husband to the house of her father, for the wedding reception, and go on for the honeymoon tour afterward. This paragraph was truer than some of the others, but the day before the wedding the car hadn't yet been delivered by the makers. A frantic telegram from Sidney brought the assurance that he might count without fail on its arriving by ten o'clock next day at latest. The firm regretted deeply the unforeseen delay which had occurred owing to a strike, but the automobile had been shipped. Still Sidney and Diana were anxious.

Kitty and Mrs. Dalziel and Tony and I started rather late, for Kitty had superintended the bride's dressing. The other two came for us in a motor car, but Mrs. Dalziel had to stop for a look at Di. As for me, I'm not sure how I felt about my sister. She was so lovely in her lace and silver brocade gown, and her cap-veil, that my eyes clung to her, yet it was hateful that her beauty should be for Sidney Vandyke. My thoughts flew to Eagle, wherever he might be—at the other end of the world, perhaps—and I wondered if he knew what was happening in London.

Our places at church were at the front, in one of the pews reserved for the bride's relatives and intimate friends, so our being late didn't matter. But already the back part of the church was full, and the air heavy with the perfumes women wore, and the fragrance of roses and lilies which made the decorations. As we went in, a sense of suffocation gripped me. I felt as if I could easily faint, and I realized that the long strain on my nerves had begun to tell. I had a queer impression that I was only a body, and that my soul was far away looking for some one it could not find. I was glad when we were settled in our seats, but still the odour of the flowers oppressed me. I fancied that the brooding gloom of the day would end in a thunderstorm.

People were whispering and rustling in their seats, wondering if it were not almost the time for the bride music to begin. I had a jumpy sensation that somebody behind me must be staring, and strongly willing me to look round. Always I have been sensitive to that kind of influence, and often, too, I've tried to make others feel it. I kept turning my head, but could see no one who seemed to be taking an undue interest in me. Presently, however, I caught Tony's eyes, which fixed themselves on mine in an owlish stare.

"What makes you keep on twisting round like that?" he inquired in a stage whisper. "Are you looking for any one in particular?"

"No—o," I said, "but I have a funny sort of feeling as if some one were looking for me!"

"By Jove!" exclaimed Tony, and repressed himself at a glare from his mother. "I wonder if it's possible——" He stopped, and began carefully to smooth his silk hat which was poised on his knee.

"If what's possible?" I wanted to know, bending my head near to his, regardless of somebody's plume which grazed my eye.

"Oh—er, nothing much. Only just a silly idea of mine."

"Tell me, and let me judge whether it's silly or not. You're rousing my curiosity." And all the while I tingled with that almost irresistible desire to turn my head again. It was as if I were missing something very important.

"I'd rather not now," said Tony. "I'll tell you afterward."

Before I had time to wheedle the mystery out of him (as I felt confident I could) the "Wedding March" from Lohengrin struck up. Of course, Diana would have that! It went with St. George's and the rest of it: the "historic" thing.

She came up the aisle, her hand on Father's arm.

"Oh, doesn't he look handsome?" murmured Kitty Main.

"He?" I murmured back.

"Lord Ballyconal. But dear Diana is wonderful, of course."

Her wondrousness was largely a tribute to Kitty, who had given the bride everything she had on, everything that was packed away in her trunks at home, or laid out ready to go away in.

It all passed off exactly like any other wedding on a grand scale, except that Tony, sitting by my side, drew a long breath when the bishop who was marrying Diana to Sidney Vandyke finished the conventional pause following "or else forever after hold his peace." I flashed another glance at Tony but he was looking more like an imperturbable Billiken than he had ever looked.

And so Di was married, and people whispered what a beautiful bride, and how good-looking the American bridegroom was, while she and Sidney were in the vestry signing their names in the book. Then, down the aisle they came, Di radiant, Major Vandyke flushed and brilliant eyed. "He looks as if he had just fought a successful engagement," I heard an American man in the pew behind say to his wife. Well, that was exactly what he had done. But whether according to the rules of war or not was another question. We let the crowd pour out of the church before us, and followed at leisure, I feeling more depressed than I should at a funeral. Automobiles and carriages were dashing up to the pavement to take people away, and dashing off again after an instant's pause, while throngs of the uninvited and curious pressed close on either side of the red carpet. Rain was falling, but the lookers-on appeared to care little. The people seemed more excited than usual at a wedding, we thought, especially after the passing of the bride; and Tony and I looked at each other questioningly with raised eyebrows as we caught a word here and there.

"Might 'ave been a tragedy!" "Pretty close call, that was." "If it hadn't been for that feller they'd both have been dead corpses now!" remarked the uninvited.

"What can have happened?" we asked each other, and I made Tony speak to the policeman who had shut us into our car.

"Bride's carriage, sir; but it was soon all right in the end," was the only answer we got, as the signal was given for our motor to move off and the next to come up.

"The bride's carriage!" Then the new automobile hadn't come, and there had been an accident at the church door.



CHAPTER XV

We dashed home to get news of Diana, and it was a relief to find everything decorous and apparently serene at the house. We were informed by a band of footmen, hired with powder and pomatum inclusive, for the occasion, that the bride had arrived safely. There was no stare of consternation or half-hidden horror on any face. But in the flower-decked drawing-room, with its effective marble pillars (Di and Father had taken the house on the strength of that drawing-room, so well designed for a wedding reception), the bride and bridegroom had not yet stationed themselves to smile and be congratulated, although guests had begun to arrive. Father, however, was there, at his best and reassuring everybody. Diana had been a "little upset by the fright, don't you know, and Vandyke was looking after her"; but it was nothing—nothing at all. She would be down presently.

"What is it, Father? What did happen?" I found a chance to whisper; but to my surprise he gave me for answer only a frown which seemed inexplicably to say, "Whatever it is, you'd better not ask! Don't pretend innocence, it doesn't suit you."

"Do find out something from somebody," I said hastily to Tony, and ran upstairs in search of Kitty Main, who, having deserted us to return home with Father, was nevertheless not to be found in the drawing-room. She was sure to know everything, I thought, and delighted to talk. But the first person I met was Sidney Vandyke in the act of closing Diana's door and coming out into the hall. Seeing me, a set and gloomy expression, most unsuitable to a bridegroom, changed to a look of actual fury. If I had been a small tame dog which had unexpectedly sprung up to bite him, he could not have glared more venomously.

Since he had come to London we had met almost every day, and when necessary I had been as dully polite as a book on etiquette. But only when necessary. At other times I had effaced myself; now, though I was keen for news of Di, I didn't care to get it from him, especially after that look. Never since the episode of the photograph in camp at El Paso had I of my own free will begun a conversation with Major Vandyke, and it was now my intention to wait until he was out of the way before going to Kitty or Diana. But when I would quietly have slid past the bridegroom in the corridor, he stopped me.

"You've always been the enemy," he said in a tone of repressed rage, subdued to reach my ears only, "but I did think you fought fair. I didn't expect you to hit me in the back—and strike your sister, too, on her wedding day. You're a cruel and cowardly little enemy, after all. And let me tell you this: neither of us will forgive you as long as we live."

I stared at him in amazement. "I don't know what you mean!"

"I shouldn't lie on top of the rest, if I were you," he sneered. "I forbid you to go to Di. She's borne enough. A little more, and she'd not be able to face those people downstairs."

"I tell you again, and I don't lie, because Eagle March himself taught me to speak the truth," I said, "that I've no idea what you're driving at. I have done nothing, except live. I don't know what's happened. I want to know."

"You shan't have the satisfaction of hearing anything from me!" Sidney flung the words at my head. Then he turned on his heel, and opened Diana's door again without knocking. I think he would have shut it in my face; but Kitty Main was ready to come out, and must have had her hand on the knob when it was snatched from her fingers.

"Oh, Major!" she exclaimed. "I was hurrying to call you back. Di thinks she's strong enough to go down now."

The door remained open, and I saw Di sitting on a sofa just opposite, with an empty champagne glass in her hand. Her white face and white figure in her wedding dress stood out like a wonderfully painted portrait against the fashionable black chintz wall-covering of the bedroom. Seeing her husband, she stood up and came forward, setting the wineglass on the table as she passed. "I'm all right now," she said, and then caught sight of me.

"Oh, cruel!" she reproached me. "Was it he who asked you not to tell, or was it your own thought?"

"He?" I echoed. "You all talk in riddles. You accuse me of something, and won't explain what it is."

"You must know!" Di exclaimed. "But I can't talk about it now, or I shall break down again. Thanks for the champagne, Sid. You were right; it did me good. Now we'll go."

She brushed past me in the corridor, her head turned away; and as I stared stupidly after her and Major Vandyke, suddenly my eyes fell on a small but conspicuous spot of red that marred the lustre of Di's silver train. It looked like a drop of blood.

When the two had gone, I pounced upon Mrs. Main. "For pity's sake, explain the mystery!"

"Oh, it was dreadful for a few minutes," she said. "There was nearly the most awful accident. Of course you came out too late to see. But—you do know who was in the church?—at least, I suppose he must have been there."

I started as if she had boxed my ears, for without telling, I knew all she meant. I remembered the odd feeling I had had of some one trying to call me, as if in a dream; and how I had looked behind me in vain. Tony, too, had been very strange. He had begun to say something and had stopped in haste. He had promised to explain later, but coming home I had forgotten to ask him. There had been the excitement about the supposed accident to Diana, and my thoughts had clung to that.

Now I realized that there was only one person who might have been at St. George's with my secret connivance, whose presence there Sidney Vandyke would furiously resent: Eagle March.

Kitty was looking at me curiously, almost appealingly, and I was vexed with myself for blushing. "I do not know," I answered steadily. "I might guess—but almost surely I should guess wrong. Tell me who, in all that crowd, it was worth Sidney's while to make this fuss about."

"Well," said Kitty, who being far from brave is easily abashed, "I'm not sure he was inside the church, but anyhow he was outside, because I saw him the instant before he seized the horses' heads. And then——"

"Seized the horses' heads? But who—who?"

"Captain March. Of course it was he who saved Diana and Major Vandyke. At least I think he deserves so much credit, and Di would think it, too, if she were left to herself. But Major Vandyke says the whole thing was arranged; that it was Captain March who planned—to—to——"

"He's sure to say something horrible. But begin at the beginning!"

"I can't now, dear," said Kitty nervously. "Di and Sidney will be so cross if I stay up here talking to you. I really must go down; but you're sure to hear everything."

I didn't insist, for I could not keep her against her will; and besides, it would be better to have the story from some one who could tell things more clearly. Down I flew to find Tony, whom I could trust to have commandeered some news for me by this time. Already the drawing-room was crammed with perfumed people and too fragrant flowers, and a babel of chatter. I should have had to knock fat old ladies and thin old gentlemen about like ninepins to sort out from among bonneted and bald pates the inconspicuous brown head I sought, and my search was checked constantly by well-meaning creatures who pined to tell me how pretty the wedding had been, or how much I had grown since they saw me last. Now and then, however, I picked up a wisp of information.

"What a close shave there was of a tragedy! But all's well that ends well," said Lady O'Harrel, a distant cousin of ours who had ignored the connection until it advertised itself in Norfolk Street and Park Lane. "Who was the man who seized the horses' heads when they bolted? I didn't see him myself, but I heard some one say he looked like a gentleman."

I answered as if I had the whole affair at my fingers' ends: "It was Captain March of the American army, the flying man who used to be so popular here last summer."

"Dear me!" breathed Lady O'Harrel, who had two sons of her own in the British army. "Fancy! Why, I heard Gerald speaking of him only the other day. He heard that Captain March had been cashiered for something or other so dreadful it couldn't be spoken of. The story's going the rounds of London now. I'm not sure Gerald didn't get it from your brother-in-law the night he asked Major Vandyke to dine at the Rag. How strange Captain March should have been the one to save them!"

"He was not cashiered," I passionately protested. "He did nothing dreadful. It was——" I stopped myself on the verge of saying that it was Sidney Vandyke himself who deserved to bear the shame he would thrust on another. But there are some things you cannot do! One of these is to inform a guest at your sister's wedding that the bridegroom is a villain. I had to choke back my rage against Sidney at its hottest, like Vesuvius swallowing its own lava, and resolve to fight the battle of Eagle March only on the lines of noblesse oblige—the lines on which he would choose to fight, no matter what the provocative.

At last I unearthed Tony, talking to the prettiest bridesmaid. But because she was the prettiest, and other men were glad to snap her up, I disentangled Tony with ease. "I've been dying for you!" I said.

"I don't flatter myself too much on that," he replied. "It's my story you want. Well, I've been busy putting things together, and I guess it's only the two ends of the jig-saw that are missing now. I warn you, Peggy, I don't know how Eagle March got into church, or where from, or what became of him at the end."

"Perhaps I shall hear from him," I said; yet I spoke mechanically and with little hope. I felt that the time Eagle had fixed for our meeting was not yet.

"Perhaps you will," echoed Tony. "He may want to explain, when he knows you know he was there, why he turned up at Lady Di's wedding: that it wasn't just vulgar curiosity, or the wish to give her a start that made him do it."

"He wouldn't need to explain to you, or me, or any one who knew him," I answered. "That goes without saying. Whatever his reason was, it was good. But are you sure he was in the church?"

"Well, you remember when I asked why you kept turning your head, and you told me it was because you felt some one 'looking for you?'"

"Yes! And you said 'By Jove! I wonder if it's possible——' Then you shut up like an oyster."

"I thought it wouldn't do to go further, then, and excite you for nothing, maybe. I did promise to tell you afterward, but coming here we had the accident to talk about, and you forgot——"

"Never mind excuses. Tell me now. Had you seen him?"

"I wasn't quite sure—thought I might have made a mistake. Away back near the door as we came in I caught sight of a chap who reminded me of March. But I never saw him before in London togs, you know, and it was dark in the church, with all that rain coming down outside. I couldn't tell for certain, it seemed so dashed improbable that he should be there. Even if he was in London, he wouldn't have been likely to get a card——"

"A card, indeed! Do you think any one with eyes in his head would ask Eagle March to show a card?"

"Well, anyhow," Tony defended himself, "why should he want to poke his nose in there? I judged him by the way I should feel, supposing it was you being spliced to some other fellow. I'd sooner be at the North or South Pole than have to watch it done, unless I could bounce out with an impediment why you shouldn't lawfully be joined together."

"I can think of reasons why a man might—might steel himself to see a woman he'd loved married to another man," I said; though in truth, I couldn't see distinctly, and I wondered if the day would come when the mystery of Eagle's presence at Diana's wedding would clear itself up. There was just one thing I could count on, though! It would never be from my trying to find out, but only when, and if, Eagle wished me to know. Meanwhile, I trusted him as always, and hardly needed to be told that the man in the back seat at St. George's hadn't flaunted himself in a conspicuous position.

"He was wedged in between two women's hats," Tony went on. "I'd never have spotted him, if I hadn't been rubber-necking at the crowd, sort of counting scalps. That's not done by brides and grooms in our class of life, so March might have felt as safe as a hermit crab, as far as giving the willies to Lady Di or Vandyke was concerned. But just when I was rubbering, he happened to shove his head forward between hats to squint at you."

"Oh, Tony!" I couldn't help breaking in. "He was looking at me?"

"That's the way it struck me. But the ladies with the hats were after the same thing, so they closed their ranks in front of March's nose, and swamped him. That's why I didn't get the chance to make sure whether it was he or his double. I rubbered some more, to see, but there was only a massed formation of hats where the face had been. There's nothing like hatpins to drive a man to the wall."

I shivered a little with the same electric thrill which had passed through me in church. What a soulless thing I had been not to know, despite a barrier of a hundred hats, by instinct whose eyes had called mine. But Tony was going mildly on.

"That's all, about the church," he said. "March must have been one of the first to get out, or he wouldn't have been on the stage in time for the next act. Sounds like a kind of melodrama now, doesn't it? Act one, scene one, inside St. George's, Hanover Square; the wedding. Scene two, outside the church door. Only, in a melodrama, the bridegroom would be the hero, and the other fellow the villain. There's no villain in this play."

"Oh, isn't there?" I sneered. "We won't argue the question, though. I suppose the new motor car didn't come after all, as I hear things about runaway horses."

"Then you have heard already? What's the good of my repeating——"

"No—no! I've heard scarcely anything. I depended on you. I was sure you wouldn't fail me."

That encouraged Tony, and soon I knew what he knew. He had been pumping Captain Beatty, and had learned from him how, before leaving the Savoy for St. George's, Sidney had received a wire from his chauffeur. It said that the Grayles-Grice had safely arrived by a later train than promised, but that something was wrong with the motor. Better not depend on the car for church, though it would be pretty sure to be all right to go away in after the reception. This was a blow to Sidney, because he had grown quite superstitious on the subject of reaching the house from St. George's. He had told Captain Beatty about repeated dreams of a bomb startling a pair of horses. And a Bond Street clairvoyant had seen in her crystal a picture of him and a woman in white driving away from a church in a black-draped hearse. Captain Beatty had mentioned casually to Tony that Vandyke used to have as good nerves as the next man, but that he'd got "jumpy" lately, and Beatty wondered whether it was like that with all fellows who were going to be married.

The only thing to do had been to order a motor or carriage to come to St. George's for the bride and bridegroom. Di, appealed to by telephone, preferred a carriage. A smart-looking one had been sent accordingly, but the horses were fresh and had begun to dance impatiently even before Diana and Sidney came out of the church. The thin little coachman had difficulty in holding them in when it thundered. By the time Di and her husband appeared, the pair were prancing on their hind legs, and the crowd on the pavement waiting for the bridal couple were pushing nervously back, out of the way of threatening hoofs. Di had hesitated for an instant, but the coachman had assured Major Vandyke that the horses were only "playing a bit," and were as gentle as lambs. They'd come down to business the minute they were allowed to start. So Sidney had put Diana into the carriage and was in the act of getting in himself, when a man on a motor cycle suddenly tore round the corner into Hanover Square with the noise of ten thousand demons. That was the "limit" for the horses, said Tony. They bolted, with Di shrieking and trying to pull her husband into the brougham, Sidney clinging ignominiously to the door, and to a strap inside.

The policeman and another man or two ran forward, but the screaming of Diana and dozens of women on the pavement frightened the creatures more and more. The coachman lost control; the policeman was kicked, and stumbled back; the others couldn't get to the horses, which were bolting across the street; and in another minute the bridegroom would certainly have been flung down, if a man just out of church hadn't made a dash to the rescue. The next thing any one knew, he was hanging on to the animals' heads like grim death, and bringing them down from their hind feet on to all fours again. He was dragged a few yards before a couple of policemen could get to his side; but meanwhile, as he clung to the horses, like a brake on their speed, the brougham steadied itself, Sidney contrived to crawl inside and bang the door shut, for his own protection and Di's. It all happened in a minute; and as the hatless man held on to the horses' heads, Captain Beatty in great astonishment recognized him as Captain March. It was Eagle who stopped the horses; but as the two policemen sprang to his aid, and staggering back he let go his hold, he must have been kicked by one of the beasts. What Captain Beatty did see was Eagle's forehead streaming with blood, and when the rescuer had hurried away, insisting that the wound was of no importance, the bride was helped out of the carriage by the bridegroom and into a closed motor car which some one hastily offered. In the street where it had all happened was a stain of blood, Captain March's no doubt; but in the excitement of changing the bride from one vehicle to the other he had time to vanish as completely as if he'd wrapped himself in an invisible cloak.

"Just as well, too, considering who he was, and who he's saved," Tony finished ungrammatically. "It would have been mighty awkward for all parties if he'd fallen down in a faint, and Lord Ballyconal out of gratitude had had to put him up here, where the wedding party's going on. Or even if he'd been all right, but coralled by the crowd, the bride would have been called upon to address him as 'my preserver'—what? Can't you see Vandyke obliged to shower blessings on March for saving both their lives?"

"And yet, how awful that he should go without a word of thanks—go wounded and bleeding!" The thought made me choke.

"I guess March is a bit like a sick cat that way," said Tony dryly. "He'd rather crawl off and get well alone than be bothered by sympathy, even yours, my child. That's like him. And like him to save the very man who's spoilt his life. But blest if I can see that being there in church was like him, no matter what you say! Anyhow, it was a blamed good thing for every one concerned that he just dropped from heaven like manna in the nick of time, and then was absorbed back into clouds again, blood and all."

"Diana's dress must have been baptized in that blood," I muttered, for my own benefit, but Tony caught me up. "Gee whiz! did she get her gown spattered with it?"

"A drop or two on her silver train. Poetic justice! The blood had been spilt for her."

"Dashed bad luck to get it on her wedding dress, though, I've heard superstitious folks say—but what rotten nonsense to talk like this to you! Of course, there's nothing in it."

"I'm not sure how Di would feel if she knew. But I feel as if a drop of Eagle March's blood would be like the blood of the prince in a fairy story I used to love. Just the faintest smear of it brought fortune for the heroine and all her family," I said. "Di doesn't know. I didn't tell what I saw. And would you believe this, Tony? My noble brother-in-law pretends to believe that Eagle got up the whole scene, like a plot in that melodrama you were talking about. I suppose he'd like Di to think that Eagle bribed the livery people to send nervous horses and a weak coachman, and that he hired a motor cyclist to swing round the corner on a cue at the right instant, in order that he himself might play the gallant hero. Rather elaborate! But that shows how a man judges another by what he would do in his place! Isn't it a proof that the El Paso affair was a plot—a plot Sidney accuses Eagle of revenging in this wild way?"

"That's quite a neat suggestion," said Tony, smiling an "indulge-the-poor-child" smile which made me want to box his ears—though not hard. "I don't think you need be afraid, though," he hurried on, to calm me. "Vandyke won't openly accuse March of anything more, I guess, unless in the bosom of his family where it won't do much harm. If he dealt out any 'plot' talk of that sort, he'd make himself a laughing-stock, and he wouldn't stand for that. He'll just try to forget the whole business, and help other folks to forget—cut it out."

"It will be better for him!" I said, as fiercely as a small dog growling in the kennel of a big one. "But Di and Sidney, too, both accuse me of being in the 'plot.' They say I knew Eagle was in England, and secretly invited him to the wedding. I haven't even heard from him since we came back from America."

"Haven't you?" Tony's face brightened. "Well, I shall never cease wondering what brought March to the church, till I know—which may be never. Unless you tell me when you hear."

"If I hear!"

"I guess you're sure to sooner or later. He must know now that he was recognized. No use hiding his head in the sand! He'll want to explain why he—er—well, sort of intruded."

"No, he wouldn't need to explain," I reiterated. "What's the use of friendship, if it doesn't understand and take things for granted? And—if Eagle never writes, I shall know he doesn't want me to seek him. So I won't do that, even though he has been hurt for us, and maybe is suffering."

"You're a soldier," Tony complimented me. "March would be just the man to appreciate that if he could hear you now."

"I believe he would understand me as I understand him," I said. "Still it is hard not to know if he's badly hurt."

"By the way he shot through the crowd like a streak of greased lightning, I should say it wasn't fatal," Tony cheered me. "But if you'd like to have me do a bit of secret service work and 'phone to a few hotels or hospitals——"

I shook my head decidedly. "I know the hotel where he goes," I said. "I shan't send. I think if he were very badly wounded, he would let me know. He'd trust me to stand between him and—the others. Now—let's go and see Di cut her wedding cake. You can have a piece to dream on if you like."

"No good!" said Tony. "I always dream of you anyhow, when I dream at all—except when I eat welsh rabbit: then I dream of the devil." But he went with me like a lamb, and we spoke no more of Captain March.



CHAPTER XVI

I think if Sidney Vandyke had never taken the trouble actually to hate me, he exerted himself to that extent on his wedding day.

I kept my distance when the others gave the bride and bridegroom a send-off of waving hands and showering rice as they skimmed away in the Grayles-Grice car (ready at last); but I'd caught a wandering glance or two meanwhile from my new brother-in-law, and thanked my stars that Heaven hadn't made me some poor private soldier under his command. Di turned her cheek with the look of a martyred saint when I was supposed to kiss her good-bye; and altogether I fancied that I should not be urged to visit in Park Lane when the happy pair came back in the autumn. I intended to be at Ballyconal then; but a thousand things were fated to change my scheme and the schemes of all the other unsuspecting mice in England and Europe.

The first thing—oh, such a small thing compared to those that were to follow—which happened after Di's marriage was an announcement from Father. He had proposed to Mrs. Main, and she had been "good enough to accept him." That was his formal way of breaking the news to me, for we had been on official terms only for some days following the wedding; though to his darling Di he would probably have put it "Look here, girl, she's jumped at me! Hurrah! The luck of Ballyconal's come right side up again!" And Di would have congratulated dear old Bally, reminding him that third times were always successful.

Of course, whenever I stopped to think of it, I had told myself that this announcement was bound to come, and to come soon. But my head had been full as a hive of bees with other thoughts; and besides, I hadn't realized how I should feel the blow when it fell.

Vaguely, I'd taken it for granted that life would go on for me as before. I liked Kitty, and she didn't dislike me, though, of course, Di had been brilliantly her favourite. I had told myself that Kitty and Father would trot off somewhere and leave me free at Ballyconal to hibernate in some neglected corner, while the place was glorified into a stately British home for an American millionairess. Then (I had gone on dimly planning) they would return in state, and Kitty would be duly honoured by a picturesque welcome from the hastily cleaned up tenants. After that, nobody would take much notice of little Peggy. I should be tacitly permitted to play among my books, and the peasants I loved the best, for whose sake I had been trying to learn the art of nursing.

Father's way of telling his news, however, showed me the truth about myself. I didn't feel in the least related to him; and I decided to use the month before their return from the wedding journey in finding some other way of spending my life. I couldn't make a "crowd" in that "company" of two!

I was nice to Father and charming to Kitty, and all the time I was polishing my brain as if it were the genie's lamp, and summoning the genie to bring me inspiration. I couldn't be a governess on the strength of languages alone. Not knowing the multiplication table, having to do hasty sums on my fingers, and being ignorant of principal rivers, boundaries, and all dates except that of Waterloo, was too big a handicap; and in sheer poverty of invention I seemed to be driven back to Billiken, that god of "things as they ought to be." Perhaps it was fate that I had been invited by Mrs. Dalziel to a "boy and girl" theatre party the very night when I had to congratulate Father, and wish wishes for Kitty which short of a miracle couldn't come true.

It was only two days after Di's wedding, but already that event seemed long ago. No news had come from Eagle, and he was referred to in London newspapers as "the modest stranger" who had disappeared after saving the lives of the bride and bridegroom, "leaving no trace except a little blood shed in their service." The dinner at the Savoy and the boy and girl party at the theatre afterward were given, no doubt, more in honour of "Milly's count" (who was starting for Petrograd next morning) than for me; but I was made to feel myself a guest of importance; and at the St. James I had Tony next to me. There had been no chance to pour out my news at dinner, but now it came and I seized it instantly. Tony was always nice and sympathetic to tell things to! He actually listened and seemed interested, which I've noticed that few people do except in their own affairs. But the next minute I was sorry I'd spoken, for he proposed again immediately. I might have known he would! "You see, your whole family's bound to marry Americans, so I might as well be the one for you," he said. "If you don't take me, Mrs. Main will produce a nephew of hers. I know him—poisonous blighter—and he'll be shoved down your throat, sure as fate. He's some homelier than me, if possible."

I laughed. "Dear Tony! You're much too good to be a refuge for the destitute."

"Depends on the destitute," said he. "I'd love to be a sort of asylum or young ladies' home for you. Do take me this time, and have done with it once and for all."

"It wouldn't be done with," I reminded him. "That's the worst of it."

"It might be the best of it, if I played my cards right. You know, Peggy, not very long ago as the bird of time flies, you said you liked me better than any other fellow. Has my stock gone down, or stands it where it did?"

"Where it did, or even a point or two higher," I assured him. "But, dear Tony, I'm afraid even that isn't high enough for—for marriage, and fearfully serious things like that, though lovely for a dance or the theatre. Besides, I didn't say exactly what you think I said."

"About liking me better than other men? Oh, I know you made one exception. 'Tisn't jolly likely I'd forget! But you said the One Exception didn't count. I haven't forgotten that either. He looked on you as his sister or his maiden aunt."

"Oh, not his maiden aunt!" I moaned. "I could bear anything but that. And—and I'm afraid, after all, he does count—just in my mind, you know, not in any other way. But he's there and I can't—can't put him out. I'm afraid I don't want to."

"Gee! That's a bad prospect for me," said Tony with a big sigh, luckily not audible over the orchestra which was loudly playing between acts "You made me love you, I didn't want to do it!" with variations. "But see here, Peggy, it's just the same with me about you. I can't put you out of my mind, and I don't mean to. There you are! What are we going to do about this? Your best man won't come and play in your backyard, and my best girl won't put her nose in mine. You'll always be my best girl, because you're the best girl there is. So here's an idea: suppose I don't ask to be best with you, and don't whine to be on the ground floor or anything conceited? Couldn't you spare me a third-story back bedroom in your heart's house? Just sort of lend it to me, you know. I'd promise to turn out if you couldn't get along with me as a boarder when you've given me a fair trial. Of course, though, dear, I don't want to nag at you if there's a grain of chance that the best man—the real tenant of the house—will ever come to his right senses!"

"His right senses!" I almost laughed. "Why, Tony, for him to like me—in that way—would be to lose them. You don't know who he is."

Tony was silent.

"Or—do you? Have you been guessing?"

"Mayn't have guessed right," grumbled Billiken evasively. And then I knew that he knew the poor little secret I had thought to keep.

"I think you have guessed right," I said. "Don't look as if you were afraid you'd hurt me. You haven't. I don't much mind your knowing. And that's the greatest compliment I could pay you. It's Eagle March, of course."

With that the orchestra stopped dead as if on purpose to eavesdrop, and I had made a present of the name to the whole audience. But luckily that was all I had given. Any girl may yell any man's name, just as any cat may look at any king. All the same my cheeks were hot throughout the next act, during which I pretended to be passionately absorbed in the play. The minute it was over and forced silence at an end, Tony boldly said, "I knew it must be March, all the time. Not that you showed it!" he hurried to add. "You're too good plucked an infant for that! And I'm sure he never twigged. Not he! He's not that kind. It was only because you saw a lot of him, that I thought so; and a girl who wouldn't fall head over ears in love with March, if he was always underfoot, wouldn't have wit enough to know which side her bread was buttered. See?"

I laughed again more than before, for Tony when he meant to be intensely serious was generally funny. "Poor me!" I said. "There was no butter on my bread, nor any jam. I'm a fool to go on eating it bare and stale! Imagine a man who loved Di anticlimaxing over to me!"

"I can't imagine any man not beginning and ending with you," said Tony stoutly, and I shouldn't have been a human girl if his loyal admiration hadn't pleased me. "But I suppose you're a better judge of March than I am," he went on, "and so, if his name's not down on the programme, won't you write mine there—to be figurative again? Scribble it in pencil if you like, not in ink. Then you can easily rub it out if you get tired of seeing it always under your eyes."

"What do you mean?" I asked, really puzzled by his allegories.

"Why, be engaged to me on the instalment plan. Stop payment whenever you want to. Agreement to be drawn up that way. All these weeks you've been trying, according to promise, haven't you, to like me enough to be engaged? Now, instead, try being engaged, and see whether you can like me enough to strike a fast bargain by and by. You might come along to Belgium with mater and Milly and me—they're dying to have you. Milly wants to bore you talking about her Russian—and we'll see such a lot of each other, travelling, that you'll know your own mind by the time my leave's up. Think, if I could take you back to God's own country with me as my—no, I won't say the word. I see it shocks you."

"It does," I said. "And even if I did what you ask, which would be nice for me, but not fair to you, nothing would induce me to—to——"

"Marry?"

"Yes, so soon. I'm too—young. Unless I loved you perfectly. Then I'd marry you if I were eight instead of eighteen."

"I wouldn't marry you! Must draw the line somewhere. But if you really think it would be nice, why not do it? I think it's fair, and I'm the judge. Say yes, quick, before that darned orchestra stops again. You shan't be married till you like, even if I have to wait as long as Jacob did for Rachel. Not that I know how long that was. Say yes——"

"Yes, then!" I shouted over an appalling blast of instruments. And Tony squeezed my hand.

That is how I happened to start for Belgium with Mrs. Dalziel and Milly, the day after Father's quiet wedding with Kitty Main, and the day before Austria delivered her ultimatum to Servia.



CHAPTER XVII

Not being politicians or war prophets, but only tourists, we didn't realize what a flame would sweep over Europe on the winds of fury from this one far-off fiery spark. Tony read us out the news at breakfast in a hotel at Bruges: "Austria's Ultimatum to Servia"; whereupon we went on drinking our coffee and eating our crisp rolls as if nothing had happened.

"Dear me, what a pity!" sighed Mrs. Dalziel absently. She was thinking of our sight-seeing expedition for which we were already late. Milly remarked that somebody was always throwing an ultimatum at somebody else's head, and asked for jam. Tony said intelligently that it was just what he had expected, after the murder of the archduke and the duchess, and looked at his watch. As for me, it did shoot through my mind that Russia might have something to say if Servia were attacked; and I thought that if I were Milly I should have a qualm of anxiety about my captain-count. But I didn't wish to worry her with such a remote suggestion, and our war conversation ended there. None of us bothered seriously with the papers for the next day or two. Sight-seeing in Belgium seemed to us the last thing on earth which could possibly connect itself with an ultimatum, or even a declaration of war on Servia. We went from Bruges to Ghent, from Ghent to Antwerp, from Antwerp to Brussels, from Brussels to Namur, to Louvain, and Spa, and so at last arrived at Liege. The next item on our programme was a run into Luxemburg, which was to finish our trip; and in a few days more Tony was to leave us to catch his ship for home, as his holiday was over. He had been behaving so well that I minded being engaged less than I'd expected; and it was nice to be petted by Milly and Mrs. Dalziel and loaded with presents. It was the first time in my life that I had experienced anything of the sort, for I had always been the one who didn't matter, at home. Each place we visited seemed more beautiful than the last, and I was trying hard to say to myself, "This is happiness, or all you can expect to know. Make the most of it, and be a sensible Peggy!"

It was late on the night of Wednesday, July 29th, when we arrived at quaint old Liege; and though we knew that Austria had declared war, and that all the great powers were muttering thunderously, it didn't seem as if anything devastating would really happen. That was much too bad to be true, and everything seemed so peaceful and comfortable. Hotel keepers smiled and said that the war scare was sure to blow over as it had blown over time after time in the past. We met other people gayly touring like ourselves. They all appeared to be easy in their minds and free from care, so we followed their pleasant example; and the sun shone on us, and Belgium seemed the prettiest and most pacific of all countries, basking under a cloudless sky.

"Telegram for you, dear," Mrs. Dalziel said to Milly as she sorted the post handed to her by the man in the hotel bureau at Liege. Then she dealt out envelopes to Tony and me, and we were rather sleepily busied with them when Milly gave a gasp. "Oh, Mamma, he's got to fight!" she squealed.

"He—who?" questioned Mrs. Dalziel dazedly in the midst of deciphering a closely written and crossed page of thin foreign paper.

"Stefan!" Milly choked on the name. "Oh, it's awful! His father has consented to his marrying me all right, but of course he'll go and—and be killed now, and I shall never see him again! I'm the unluckiest girl that ever lived. And just when I thought everything was going to be so splendid."

I heard her wailing as I finished my letter, which was from Di: the first she had written me. It had gone to Brussels and been forwarded from there to Liege. "Sidney and I are rushing back to London as fast as the car will take us," she wrote. "This war news is terrible. Any minute we may hear that England's mixed up in the business. There's no more fun motoring about the country in this suspense; and if there's war, all the house parties we were asked to in Scotland are sure to be given up. We want to be where we can have news every minute, and will hurry up the decorators so we can get into our house, even if things are at sixes and sevens there. From what I hear, everybody will be congregating in London to be in the heart of things. It makes me sick to think of all my lovely clothes! If there's war, nobody will be wearing anything. All the nicest men will be away at the front. Isn't it sickening? Luckily, Sidney won't have to fight, as America's not involved. But I don't want to go over there and have people at home calling me a coward, to sneak away from under the Zeppelins and things the Germans will be sending over. I want to do what everybody else does, though Heaven alone knows yet what that will be. I expect Bally and Kitty will come back from Harrogate, where poor dear Bally is celebrating his honeymoon by taking a strict cure, and I hear Kitty is doing mud baths to reduce her flesh. They wire that there isn't one waiter out of sixty left in their hotel—all were Germans; so you see what that means. And Kitty's maid had hysterics this morning because war's to be declared on her country, and because the hotel chambermaids are all turned into waitresses, and she had to make Bally's and Kitty's beds. One realizes that war will be horrible for all classes. Your life won't be safe on the Continent, you know, and you'd better persuade Mrs. D. to bring you back immediately. Though you've been so horrid to Sidney, he'll overlook it in this crisis, for my sake, when even Ulsterites and Nationalists are forgiving each other. Father and Kitty will have to stay with us when they arrive, as the Norfolk Street house is given up; and you must of course come, too. You can be our guest till you and Tony are married, if you don't want your engagement to last too long."

I hardly knew whether I most wanted to laugh or cry over that letter. All I did know was that nothing would induce me to stay with Diana and Sidney Vandyke. I would even rather be married, if worst came to worst; but though Tony and I were playing at being engaged, the thought of actually marrying him was like jumping over a precipice. I wasn't ready for the precipice yet, and must avoid it if I could.

I folded up the letter and kept its news and its suggestions to myself. I sympathized with Milly; and hoped that, after all, even if Russia and Austria and Servia and Germany flew in each others' faces, it might be possible for England and France and Italy to keep the peace. Di was always inclined to exaggerate, and probably she was glad of any excuse by this time to put an end to a motoring tete-a-tete with Sidney.

I went to bed and tried to believe that I had had a bad dream, but next morning I was still dreaming it. The papers told us how the Stock Exchange in London had closed, which seemed like hearing that England had suddenly gone under the sea. Belgrade was being bombarded. The Germans as well as Russians were mobilizing furiously. King George had telegraphed to the Czar, but before his message had time to reach Petrograd, the Kaiser had declared war on Russia. Belgium had begun mobilizing too, and only just in time. Trains were wanted for the soldiers. Frightened tourists clamoured in vain to get away. Even those who had automobiles could hardly move along the roads, and many chauffeurs were called to their colours. Ours was French, and went off at a moment's notice, with just time for a polite "Adieu, peut-etre pour toujours." Tony hated everything mechanical except rifles and revolvers, and had never learned to drive a car; Belgian chauffeurs had something better to do than help travellers out of trouble; so there we were!

It seemed only another phase of the dream from which we could not wake, when glittering hordes of German cavalry, the Kaiser's beloved uhlans, were said to be clanking over the frontier to violate the neutrality of Belgium, and we heard that Great Britain had declared war on Germany. I would have given anything to be back in England then, not because I was afraid of what might happen in Belgium, but because my blood was hot with pride of my country, and I wanted to be there to see the spirit of the people rise. There was little time to think, however, for Liege was seething with excitement. Fugitives began to pour into the town, with children and bundles in queer little carts drawn by dogs. Soldiers bade their families good-bye in the streets, and marched or rode off in clouds of dust. Wounded men were brought from the frontier, and an annex of our old-fashioned, dormer-windowed hotel was hastily turned into a hospital. Red Cross nurses appeared from somewhere, and several women among the penned-up tourists volunteered to help. Mrs. Dalziel could do nothing, because she had collapsed with fear, and was sure that she was in for nervous prostration. Milly had her mother to care for; but I was free, and thanks to my work in Ballyconal, I knew something about first aid. Ever since I met Eagle and he had given me the old cadet chevron, which I carried with me everywhere, I had grown more and more keen on learning to do what I could for others, and war talk in Texas had prompted me to buy books on nursing.

I mentioned this as a personal recommendation; the real nurses smiled. But they accepted my services as a probationer, strong and willing, and glad to do what she was told, even to scrub floors with disinfectant fluid.

"You'll spoil you hands," said Milly.

I laughed.

Almost at once after this began the bombardment of the forts at Liege; and all day long and most of the night we were deafened with the boom of great guns across the river. It was a relief to be allowed to watch through the dark hours beside soldiers whose wounds were not serious enough to need expert care that I could not give. Even if I had been in bed I should not have slept. I felt as if my brain were part of the battlefield where armies marched and fought. My heartbeats were the drums. We grew used to the firing of cannon. It seemed a part of everyday life. It was hard to remember after the first that each "boom!" meant lives ended in violence. Perhaps if we had remembered we should have gone mad.

Suddenly, on the third day, just at dawn, came a new sound, a great whirring like a thousand racing automobiles, and then two loud explosions, one after the other, different from the roar of cannon or the shots from the field guns that night at El Paso. The whole building shook as if it must fall, and wounded men who had slept restlessly through the thunder from the forts waked with a wild start. My charge, a Belgian boy of nineteen whose arms had been amputated, shivered and then relapsed into stoical calm as the house ceased to shake. "Zeppelin," he said, in a quiet voice. "They have dropped bombs."

It seemed that two must have fallen and burst close by, the noise had been so ear-shattering. Up from the street below our windows came a clamour of voices, shrill and sharp, which cut through the constant whirr of the giant motor. Near the head of the bed was an open window, and mechanically, rather than of my own free will, I leaned far out, as some of the professional nurses were leaning from other windows.

"You might get a bomb on your head," said my soldier, in his tired voice. But I did not draw back. I was surprised to find that I was not afraid. It seemed just then ridiculous, puny, to care about one's self. I was awe-struck rather than terrified, realizing with a solemnity I had never known that the next minute might be the last on earth for all of us in that dimly lit room of narrow beds.

The sky was faintly gray with coming dawn. I looked up, up into the pale dome, seeking with my eyes the great bird of evil that had laid its eggs of death. There it was, immensely high above the black, shadowy roofs and steeples of the hill and plain; a sinister shape, like all the German sausages in the world rolled into one; and hanging from it cars full of men reduced to the size of beetles by that great height.

The thing was almost directly overhead as I looked up, and it seemed that if it dropped a parting bomb as it sailed our poor little hospital must be struck. Yet I continued to stare, fascinated. Life and death were twin brother and sister, equally terrible and splendid.

"I wish I could have seen Eagle just once again," I heard myself thinking, as one hears the ticking of a watch under a pillow. But I felt a strange, throbbing eagerness to know quickly the great secret of what comes next after this world, with its seeming muddle of injustice and disappointment, its joys and broken aspirations. "Why! it was like this with me when we had our accident in the Golden Eagle!" I thought. And even as the remembrance flitted ghostlike through my brain, I saw tearing through the sky, far above the big bulk of the Zeppelin, a monoplane etched in black against the light of dawn.

I could hardly believe that it was really there. It must be an image called up by memory of that long-past moment, some strange illusion of an exalted mind: but the image persisted. Like a hawk it swept along the sky, coming from a direction opposite to that of the Zeppelin, as if to swoop upon it from above. I thought I heard shots. The great dirigible turned and sailed faster. I felt as if I were all eyes and pounding heart. Could the sight be real, this duel in the sky? Perhaps others watched it with me—I do not know. It seemed that I was alone on earth gazing at the incredible battle.

The Zeppelin made off, away from the town toward the fortifications, but the monoplane kept above it, despite the shots which spattered futilely. Just as the dirigible passed over the bridge, which hadn't yet been blown up, looking enormous, for it hung lower now, the monoplane—tiny in comparison—dived full upon it. With an explosion of gas from the huge cigar-shaped balloon, the dirigible dropped earthward, its bird enemy seeming to fall with it.

I gave a cry and covered my eyes with both hands.

* * * * *

I felt that I had been broken, crumpled up like a singed moth, burnt by the vivid flame of that awful sight. But arms caught me from behind, as I would have sunk to the floor with the roar of another explosion in my ears, each brick of the house quivering on another. A kind Belgian voice was soothing me: "Pauvre enfant!" and hands, strong, though womanly, would have pulled me away from the window to lay me down on some unoccupied bunk, if I had not struggled to keep my place. "No—no!" I stammered. "I'm not going to faint. I must see! I must!" And shaking off the nurse's protecting arms, I stared out toward an open space away from the town, where a vast mass of wreckage blazed, turning the gray dawn red.



CHAPTER XVIII

"Quel heros!" rapturously sobbed the Belgian nurse who held me. "It is he who has saved the lives of all our poor wounded ones, and our lives, too. Did you not see the monster over our heads? It had to turn just in the nick of time. An instant more, and there would have been a bomb for us. Thank heaven! And thank the hero sent by heaven!"

It was a deed, I thought, worthy of Eagle March himself. The air scout who had accomplished it was his soul brother no matter what country had given him birth.

"Is it certain, do you think, that all those men in the Zeppelin died there together?" I gasped.

"Every man of them, yes, it is certain."

"But he—the man of the monoplane? He fell with them?"

"He fell, yes, my child. But he fell free of the Zeppelin. He is not in that fire cauldron there. Didn't you see the end of what happened?"

"No!" I said. "For a second I covered my eyes."

"Oh, it was all in that second! We thought he was lost, sacrificed for us; and even now it is most likely that he is dead. We saw the Zeppelin drop away from under the monoplane. Then came the flare of light, with the gas exploding and catching fire. But just before that, the monoplane was poised in the air for an instant above the great falling shape. It seemed to—do you call it 'plane' down? All that happened was so quick and sudden, and the aeroplane came to earth so fast we could not be sure of her fate. But if she fell, she fell free of the Zeppelin. We shall soon hear. The other hospitals in town are full already, except our little one, which has still room for a few. If any are saved from either of the wrecks, they will be brought here, unless we have filled up our beds meanwhile with people hurt by the Zeppelin bombs."

By the mingled dawnlight and firelight we could see figures running to the fields where the wreck of the great dirigible and the heroic little monoplane had come down. But long before news arrived of the occupants' fate we heard that none of the townsfolk had been injured by the explosion of the only two bombs which the Zeppelin had been given time to drop. Three or four buildings had suffered more or less, but fortunately they were shops, and nobody had been sleeping there. One bomb had fallen near a hospital, and Tony Dalziel, hearing a rumour that the "Annex" (as ours was called) had been struck, came rushing from the hotel close by to find out what had been my fate. When he saw the steep-roofed building untouched, and with lighted windows, he was relieved, but ventured to ask for me, and I ran down to speak with him at the foot of the stairs for a moment.

"Peggy! I just can't stand for this!" he groaned, and the tragedy in his voice contrasted so quaintly with his comic appearance, bareheaded, hair ruffled, and costume sketchy, that I felt rising symptoms of hysteria, which had to be controlled. "I must get you and the mater and Milly into safety somehow. To-night is the limit. Mater's more dead than alive, and Mill isn't much better."

"Don't worry about me, anyhow," I said. "You see, I don't much care whether I'm dead or alive. That simplifies things a lot! I wouldn't go away now if I could."

"You shall go, the first chance there is," insisted Tony, with new authority. "And it may come soon. There are some high-up Belgian officers at the hotel to-night. They came in an automobile not so big as ours, and it's broken down. If they can't get it right by to-morrow, when they want to go back to Brussels, where they came from, I'll make 'em a present of our car for the rest of the war, if they'll take us with them. You see, it's a serious matter with me. Things are getting worse here, and my leave'll soon be up. You don't think I'd go, and let you stay shut up in Liege with bombs falling all round you and perhaps on you?"

"Look!" I said, forgetting to answer, as I peered out through the open street door. "Here come some men with a litter. They're bringing it this way. Oh, Tony, if it should be the man of the monoplane! They think in the hospital that he fell with his machine clear of the Zeppelin, and may be alive."

Ahead of the slowly borne litter ran a youth with a Red Cross band on his arm. Seeing my nurse's cap and apron, all the uniform I had, he began speaking breathlessly in Belgian French. Had we a bed? Our nurses had sent word yesterday that if two or three were needed, we could supply them. He hoped they hadn't filled up since, as here was an urgent case: the aviator who had attacked the Zeppelin, and destroyed it by plunging on to its balloon at the risk of almost certain death. But he was not dead, and might live if he could have prompt surgical attendance and nursing.

"Yes, we can take him in," I said. "Everything is ready, and I'll run ahead of you to warn the staff."

"Tell them," the Red Cross man called after me, as, forgetful of Tony, I turned to fly, "tell them we think it is the British or American Monsieur Mars who did us such service, bringing news to the forts from over the German frontier two days ago."

I dashed on without stopping to answer or look back, for the litter was arriving; and it was not till I repeated the name, as I gave in my hurried report, that the sound of it on my own lips made my heart jump. Monsieur Mars! Could it be.... The thought was too far-fetched.... I dared not harbour it.

My ward was on the top floor, where the least serious cases were treated, men who could be got upstairs without too much strain and suffering. On the ground floor one bed was free, as I knew, and it was into that ward I went to tell the news to the matron. Perhaps when my duty was done I did not hurry overmuch to return to my own less interesting post; and I was still in the principal ward when the canvas litter borne by four Red Cross men was carried in. Doctors and nurses pressed forward to meet it, and I flattened myself against the wall, sick with mingled fear and longing. Again I thought, what if ...

The big room which a week ago had been the restaurant of our prosperous hotel annex was still lit by electric lamps fantastically unsuited to a hospital ward: chandeliers of sprawling gilt branches decorated with metallic imitations of mistletoe. The light of day outside was filtering in but dimly, yet it paled and made ghastly the yellowish glow of electricity. Even the doctors and nurses with their tired faces looked like ghosts, and the wounded soldiers in their narrow white cots seemed figures of dead men modelled in wax. Some of them opened their eyes, in deep violet hollows; others kept the lids down, caring for or conscious of nothing. The staff who received the litter, and the Red Cross men who brought it, spoke in low voices, but never in irritating whispers. The moving feet made only a faint pattering sound on the linoleum-covered floor, and the litter was set down noiselessly at the side of the one free bed in the ward. Near it stood a screen which only a few hours ago had hidden the death agony of a soldier. I looked at this and shuddered, thinking once again, "What if it were he!" and if the screen should be needed again for the same purpose.

Where I lurked, out of every one's way, yet close to the door, flat as a paper doll, against the wall which smelled of carbolic acid, nobody troubled about me. I was just one of the younger nurses, and none stopped to ask whether my place were there or upstairs in another ward.

"Oh God, if it be he, let him live!" I heard my soul praying.

Nurses leaned over the long dark form on the litter, whose face I could not see, because where I stood only the top of the head was visible, a head thickly covered with short rumpled hair, which might be blond or brown when the blood stains were washed off. The bending figures quickly, skilfully cut away the stained and blackened clothing, and when it was the surgeon's turn to examine and perhaps to operate, some one noticed the intruder. The head nurse came to me and laid a hand on my shoulder. "My child, it was you who brought us the word just now!" she said kindly, her eyes on my pallid face. "But you must go to your own duties. This is a great honour we have, to care for the hero who has saved us. It must be our turn to save him. Go tell the news in the upper wards, that we hope for the best, the very best. Say to the doctors that it is indeed Monsieur Mars. They will know the name. They will have heard of him, and what he did for Liege only the other day."

"I'll go, but one instant first, I implore you, nurse!" I pleaded. "I think—it may be—that Monsieur Mars is an old friend of mine. I beg you to let me have a glimpse of his face!"

She looked at me and hesitated; but my imploring eyes, which suddenly spouted tears, decided her kind heart in my favour. "One glance, then; but control yourself," she said. And taking me round the waist, she led me quickly across the room. "Mademoiselle, our young British assistant thinks she knows the patient," the matron announced. "Make way for her, an instant. Then she will go to her own ward."

Some one pushed me forward, at the same time holding me firmly lest I should collapse. One fleeting glance was vouchsafed me of a form covered with a sheet, and a blackened, blood-smeared face, with half-closed eyes whose whites showed under the lids, and on whose lips was some strange semblance of a happy smile. To those who did not know him well, or love him beyond all the world, that marred face might have been unrecognizable in its mask of dirt and blood. But nothing could disguise it from me. Monsieur Mars, the wounded hero of Liege, and Captain Eagle March, late of the American army, were one and the same.

* * * * *

I didn't faint, but I don't remember anything else till I found myself sitting on a chair in my own ward. The nurses were having morning coffee. One of them gave me a cup. If I hadn't been a nurse myself, with patients to think of, I should have dropped it and burst out crying. But instead, I drank the coffee; and a moment later went back to the bedside of the man I had been tending before leave was granted me to see Tony.

"You look as if you'd met the ghost of some one you love," said the nurse who had been keeping my place.

But he was not a ghost. Not yet—not yet!



CHAPTER XIX

Tidings of the new hero of Liege floated up to our ward within the hour. There was slight concussion of the brain; there were scalp wounds which had had to be stitched up; and there were many bruises; but the surgeons reported no bones broken, and complete recovery only a matter of days. Even the monoplane itself, we heard, was singularly little damaged. All this would have appeared miraculous, and the pious Belgians would have attributed it to direct intervention of the Blessed Virgin, had not the wrecked dirigible on examination told a silent story of the air scout's cleverness as well as his daring. Before swooping on the Zeppelin from above, he had apparently discharged bombs of his own on the balloon, which had burst before the monoplane dashed down on to it, and the great bulk had fallen away from under, without carrying the lighter machine to destruction. The theory which awaited corroboration from the aviator was that he had begun to plane down, despite some damage, and had actually fallen but a short distance, striking earth a hundred yards away from the wrecked dirigible.