Nobody talked about anything except the feat of the foreign air scout. The roar of the cannon from the fort had ceased to make us jump; and it was better to chat about Monsieur Mars than to murmur in each other's ears, "How long before THEY slip round the forts and get into the town?" I made up my mind that whatever happened, nothing should tear me from Liege while Eagle March was there. And when Tony sent up word begging to see me on important business, in imagination I was defending Eagle's hospital cot (naturally with him in it!) against a troop of uhlans. In that mood, Tony's arguments about my going away made as much impression as the chirp of a sparrow on a man stone deaf in both ears.

"Wild horses, much less wild uhlans, couldn't drag me out of this place," I said, feeling as brave and firm as a story-book heroine, though to Tony I may have seemed obstinate as a mule. "What do you take me for, boy? Go comfortably away in a motor car to safety indeed, while Eagle March is here, lying at death's door? Or if he isn't at death's door, it's only because the angels slammed it in his face."

"Eagle March! What are you talking about?" Tony wanted to know, looking dazed. I had forgotten that there was no reason why he should have guessed the hero's identity, and I dashed into explanations. "Don't tell people yet," I said, "because he mayn't want it talked about, but he's the 'Monsieur Mars' who's been helping Belgium since the very first day of war. Why, they say he gave the warning that the Germans would cross the frontier. Isn't it like him? And how silly of us not to guess, the minute we heard the name of 'Mars!'"

"It never entered my head, though I've heard it a dozen times before this last feat," said Tony. "People were talking about other stunts Mars had done. But I supposed he was some French Johnny. Are you sure you're right? Sure it's March, I mean? It does seem a little too strange to be true, that he should turn up—or rather come down—here, of all places!"

"'Too strange not to be true,'" I quoted. "Strange things are the only things that happen in war, for a man like him—a man without a country. We might have known he would come to the rescue of Belgium! And I am sure I'm right, because I've seen him."

"Great Scott!" was all that Tony had to say for a minute. Then he went on in a changed and heavy tone: "I suppose you're nursing him?"

"No such luck!" I answered. "I'm not experienced enough. But I'm debating whether I might ask to see him, when he gets better, on the strength of old friendship. I don't think he'd mind my claiming acquaintance with 'Monsieur Mars.'"

"Mind? I guess not!" said Tony. "But how soon will he be better?"

"He'll be nearly well, they hope, in a few days."

"He'll have to be, by George, if he wants to get out of town with his monoplane before the Germans walk in. The Belgians are the heroes of Europe, but there aren't enough of 'em to hold out forever, and that's why you must go with us, Peggy, March or no March. He'd be the first one to tell you to clear out, if he had his wits about him."

"I dare say he would, but he hasn't got them yet," I replied calmly. "You don't really expect me to leave him, do you, Tony, after—after all I've confessed to you?"

"I expect you to see reason," Tony lamely persisted. "There's just one thing to do, and that is to scoot while there's a chance. If I were alone without the mater and Milly, I'd say let's hang on for a day or two longer and run the risk—though running it might make me overstay my leave. That would be nothing, though. I wouldn't think of myself in any way. But I can't let my mother and sister go without me to look after them as well as I'm able. I can't ask them to stop, and they wouldn't if I did, for they're wild to get away. Yet how can I let you stay here alone? March would be furious with you, if he came back to himself and found you hanging on."

I laughed. "He couldn't kill me!"

"The Germans could."

"In spite of the red cross, and my lovely cap and apron? Well, I'm not afraid. And Eagle will never know that I stopped for his sake when I might have gone. I'm not sure I shouldn't have stayed in any case."

"I'm sure you wouldn't, if I'd had to use force. But you see what a position you put me in, Peggy. How can I, a chap you don't care a snap for at heart, hope to drag you away from the one who's got it all? And yet, what am I to do if you refuse to come?"

"Dear Tony," I said quietly, "I do care lots of snaps for you, more than I ever did, I think. But—oh, I must say it!—'snaps' is just the poor little word that's appropriate compared to what I feel for Eagle. All I have and am is for him, though he doesn't want it, and will never know, I hope, what a fool his 'little friend' is over him."

In silence Tony received the blow I had to strike. He stood with his head down for a minute, while I ached with pity for him and for myself—though I hated myself, too, because I was hurting him.

"You must go with Mrs. Dalziel and Milly," I said, when he didn't speak. "It's the only way. I shall be safe enough—as safe as the other nurses. Who knows," and I laughed uneasily to break the barrier of restraint, "but Eagle will take me away in his monoplane? That would be a splendid solution of the difficulty, wouldn't it?" I spoke only in jest, but Tony accepted the idea half seriously.

"Yes, that's exactly what will happen, I expect," he said. "You'll go off with him. Anyhow, I've lost you! I see that. You could never put up with me after this experience. That's true, isn't it, Peggy?"

The same thought, put in a less brutal way, had been heavy in my heart since my glimpse of Eagle lying unconscious on the litter. I knew then that I was married to my love for him and that any other marriage would be worse than illegal.

I hesitated how to answer, but perhaps my silence spoke as clearly as words. "Don't look as if you'd just lost your last friend, my poor child," Tony said, in his good, warm way. "You haven't lost me, you know, though I've lost you. And you needn't look so guilty, either, as if you'd murdered me and buried me under the leaves! I was always expecting this thing to come, though I didn't foresee the way of it. If ever I felt tempted to believe our engagement was getting to be the real thing, why, I said to myself, 'Wait till she sees March again before you begin to be cocksure, my man.' Well, now you've seen him. And I guess you've seen in the same minute that our experiment has failed."

"I'm—afraid that's true, Tony!" I sighed. "I can't help it! It wouldn't be fair to you for us to go on as we are. I shall have to break my word to you, if I'm to be faithful to myself."

"You won't be breaking any old word!" he said. "It was never an iron-clad promise. I teased you till you agreed to try how the thing would work. It's been my fault all through, and now I'll take my medicine. Our engagement was never insured against war risks, and when I get back my senses I'm going to be glad you saw March before it was too late. I—brought you two together, sort of inadvertently, as you might say, didn't I? But, honest Injun, Peggy, I'd do the thing over again, knowing all I know. I only wish—yes, before the Lord I do wish—that good may come of it to you both."

"You're an angel, Tony, a real angel!" I almost sobbed. "But you needn't think that anything will 'come of it' in the way you mean, because it won't. I don't delude myself. I don't even hope. All the same, I must be true—to my own heart. And I beg of you to forgive me because I didn't know it well enough before."

"There isn't any question of forgiveness," said he, with his head up, and his nice Billiken face very pink. "I bless you—bless you for all you've been or done to me. And I wouldn't forget or undo anything if I could, you can bet your life on that. I think I could bear the whole business like a man, if I could stay right here and see you through. But—there's mater and Milly to think of—and the regiment. And—and—oh, well, life's just one damn thing after another!"

Mrs. Dalziel and Milly came and pleaded with me after that, and tried to frighten me into going with them; but, as Milly burst out desperately at last, I was "as hard as nails." Tony had told them nothing, I found, about the failure of our experiment or the identity of Monsieur Mars. I well understood why, and was grateful—grateful for that and for many things; most of all for bringing me to Belgium, and neither grudging nor regretting what he had done. So, as a lover, Tony went out of my life; but as a friend, he never can go.

I had no time to cry or feel lonely, or tell myself what a beast I'd been, after the three had reluctantly left me to my fate; for when I went back on duty after the good-byes, it was to find that I had been sent for to hasten to the principal ward. Monsieur Mars was being delirious in English, and the doctors and nurses understood too little of the language to know whether he were merely babbling or pouring forth important information.

There Eagle lay in his narrow, white bed, clean and pale, with his head swathed in bandages, a very different man from the grimy, bloodstained vision that had flashed on me a few hours before. The merest stranger who had ever seen Captain March would have deserved no credit for recognizing him now.

The nurses waited eagerly for me to translate his mutterings; but he only mumbled again and again, "It's all over, all over!"

If I could guess at a sad hidden meaning for the words, it was one which need not be handed on to others; and I proved so broken a reed as a translator that I expected to receive marching orders, right-about face. Strange to say, however, though his eyes were half closed and he seemed to see nothing, know nothing that went on around him, after I had spoken in a low tone to his nurse Eagle stopped muttering. For a moment he appeared to listen, and then with a deep sigh as if of relief from pain or some heavy anxiety, the half-open eyelids closed. The slight frown which had drawn his brows together slowly faded away. He had the air of being at rest.

"One would almost fancy," said the head nurse, who had been watching the scene, speaking thoughtfully when she had beckoned me away from the bedside, "that this brave monsieur recognized your voice, Mademoiselle."

Then I took heart of grace and did what I had told Tony I meant to do. I said that I had met Monsieur Mars in England and America. I had recognized him at once when the Red Cross men brought him into the hospital, but I had said nothing of this at the time, because I had felt that it would be considered unimportant.

"On the contrary, Mademoiselle," answered that adorable woman, "it is of the greatest importance. This heroic monsieur has saved us from death. If there is anything, little or big, which we can do for him in return, how gladly will we do it! Your voice has soothed him in his unconsciousness. Who knows what your presence may do when consciousness comes back? Why, it would be like throwing away an elixir to waste you after this in the ward above. You are from now on promoted as assistant nurse to our hero."

She was a stout, plain person, with bulgy eyes and a pink end to her nose, but I saw her as the most beautiful woman the world has ever produced.

I took up my new duties at once, trying not to act as if the moon were my footstool. All the rest of the day and far into the night Eagle lay as if asleep, with occasional fits of restlessness which, somehow, I could always soothe; and this state, though it seemed alarming to me, was approved by the doctor. It was better, he said, that after concussion the brain should have for a while repose in unconsciousness. The symptom was not good when the patient talked rationally too soon. But if monsieur should waken and show signs of wishing to ask questions, he must be answered clearly and quietly, if possible by the Demoiselle Irlandaise who would best be able to understand and satisfy him.

The Demoiselle Irlandaise was advised by the matron to take her repose early in the night, in order to be ready for such an emergency as monsieur the doctor suggested. But the demoiselle felt no need of repose. Sleep seemed some strange and foreign thing. She sat through the night watching the hero of Liege; and though guns boomed and were answered, and the nurses occasionally discussed beneath their breath what would happen to us all when the Germans came, never in her life had that Demoiselle Irlandaise felt so happy and so useful.

She had the reward of her vigil toward dawn, four-and-twenty hours almost to the minute after the Zeppelin and its crew had been brought down. Suddenly Eagle opened his eyes and fixed them on the nurse. At first he stared as if dazed by what he saw; then came a flash of recognition which changed to incredulity.

"I'm—dreaming you!" he whispered huskily.

I bent over him with an invalid's cup of liquid food prepared for this emergency, kept hot in a vacuum flask. "No you're not dreaming me," I cheerfully replied as I made him drink. "It's Peggy, taking care of you. Now go to sleep again. I'll still be here when you wake up next time."

"But——" he went on, staring round the room; "where am I? The horse kicked me, I remember; only that seems so long ago! I thought—a lot of things had happened since then. I hoped—but I suppose it's all a dream about—about——"

"Being in Belgium?" I prompted him, seeing his sharp anxiety. "That's not a dream, but true. You're Monsieur Mars, the hero of Liege, because you brought down the Zeppelin and the men who came to drop bombs on us. We're all grateful to you, and praying that you may get well soon."

"Thank God that it is true!" he sighed. "I wanted to do something. I'd have been disappointed to wake up and find I'd only dreamed after all—to find that I was back in London. I was afraid for a minute it was the day of—but it's all right now. How is it that you're here? It seems——"

"Oh, I just happened to be travelling in Belgium with the Dalziels when the war broke out, and we got caught. They've gone now, but I stayed. The nurses let me help them a little. I do the best I can. I told them I'd met you at home. But every one here calls you 'Monsieur Mars.' They know no other name."

"Don't let them know any other. Don't let any one know."

"I won't. You needn't worry! Now, will you sleep, please?—or they may think I'm doing you more harm than good."

"You do me the greatest good. I'll sleep, yes. But first—tell me one thing more; about the Golden Eagle. I planed down part of the way, but the motor'd stopped working. The last I remember is when I began to fall."

"The Eagle's safe," I assured him. "Hardly hurt at all; and there's a Belgian flying man in Liege to-day, Simon Sorel, who knows you. His mechanic is working on the Golden Eagle. She'll be ready for you when you're ready for her."

"That will be soon. Good man, Sorel!" he said, and closed his eyes. "Little Peggy!" I heard him muttering later. But three minutes afterward he had dropped into a natural sleep.

"Magnifique!" was the Belgian doctor's verdict in his next round, when Eagle had waked again, and had been attended by a nurse wiser and more experienced than I. There was little that I was allowed to do for him, but that little was a joy worth being born for; and I could have died of happiness to see how, when he was awake and fully conscious, his eyes followed me when I moved about. But it was better to live than to die just then, and I did live with all my might. I lived in every nerve and vein for those two days while "Monsieur Mars" was my patient. After the first twenty-four hours he insisted that he was well enough to be changed into the ward above, and leave his bed on the ground floor to some one more seriously injured. On the second day he sat up in a reclining chair, and announced that twelve hours more would see him out of hospital. Doctors and nurses protested that he would throw himself back into a fever, and the consequences might be serious; but as at that very time the danger of the town being taken was imminent, arguments for prudence lost their force. Toward evening on the third day Eagle, with his head and one hand still in bandages, was limping about the field where the Golden Eagle had been repaired; and when he came back it was to say that he thought he might get off at midnight with dispatches for the king in Brussels. He calmly announced this intention to me as I handed him an innocent cup of broth, better suited to a confirmed invalid than to a recovered aeronaut. But he quietly accepted the cup; and I saw by the look in his eyes that I was to expect the first real talk we had had together.

"What about your going with me, Peggy?" he asked, as simply as if he were proposing a short pleasure jaunt in a motor car. "You know, I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't think it honestly the safest thing for you. With luck we can make the trip in less than an hour, by air. Heaven knows how long it would take you by earth; and there's no one here, anyhow, to help smuggle you away if I go and leave you behind. I can't bear to do it! Besides, from Brussels, there's a good chance of your getting out with refugees, if you don't wait too long. And you can do as much good work in London as in Liege. What do you say?"

I wished that it might take us many hours to get to Brussels instead of less than one. But I didn't put the wish into words. I said only, yes, I would go; and many thanks.

"Good! That's settled then," said he.

"I must tell our matron," I hesitated. "I hope she won't think me a coward!"

Eagle smiled almost as he used to smile ages ago in London, when first we were friends, and he still thought of me as a "little girl." "Few people would call it a cowardly act for a young woman to fly out of a beleaguered town in a battered aeroplane with a battered airman, and I don't think your matron will be one of them. She'll thank you for what you've done here, and bid you God-speed. But don't go yet to tell her. I have some things to say to you. You'll be my passenger and 'observer' when I start to-night, but we'll have no chance to talk; and in these times we must face the fact that we may never have another chance this side of heaven."

The words went through me like a bayonet, for I knew too well how deadly true they were. I didn't try to contradict him, or talk about "hoping for the best"; for prattle of that sort seemed too futile. I only said, "Let's take this chance, then. I've plenty of time—hours yet. Stretch yourself out in the chaise longue and rest while we talk. I'll sit here by you on the window seat."

No one was very ill in this upper ward, which was kept for convalescents. Some of the men had been given cigarettes to smoke. Some were having their supper. It was generally known that Monsieur Mars and the Demoiselle Irlandaise had been friends in England; and the news having run round the wards that Monsieur Mars had practically discharged himself as a patient, we were allowed to talk in peace. Not an errand was found for me, not a nurse looked—or allowed us to see that she looked—our way.

"I didn't mean to remind you of my existence, you know, Peggy, till I had something to say about myself worth saying," Eagle began, speaking lightly, yet with a nervousness he couldn't quite hide. "I told you that in my last letter. But Providence has stage-managed things differently."

"Yes. We didn't expect to act together in a continental theatre, did we?" I was deliberately flippant. "But I'm glad to be in this great play with you, even in one scene, and such a little part!"

"Maybe the part seems little to you. It doesn't to me! You've helped me to get well twice as soon as I should have done among strangers. Heavens! But I was glad to see your little face! I'd have told you that first morning when I waked up what I'm going to tell you now, if you had let me then. Things were rather mixed in my brain. I thought I was in London, and you'd found me at a sort of nursing home I retired into for a couple of days to get patched up, after that—er—that little accident I had. I suppose you heard something of it at the time, though I don't think you were on the spot to see."

"Tony told me you were in church, and that it was you who stopped the horses when they started to run away," I said, without beating round the bush, for I thought he was bidding for my frankness on this sore subject.

"I hoped I might have passed unrecognized; but I feared that was too much to expect. I was tempted to break my resolution and write to you after all, explaining why I went to Lady Diana's wedding. But I stuck it out because—well, because it was a resolution. Silly maybe! all the same, I had it a good deal at heart to find a new place for myself in the world before I made a sign to any of my friends, even loyal Peggy. Besides, I had a safe sort of feeling you wouldn't misjudge me."

"I'm glad you felt that," I said. "Almost glad enough to be glad you didn't write. Though—I should have liked to hear."

"Well, I thought of you a lot, if I didn't write. And I couldn't help looking at you in church that day. I sent you wireless messages with my eyes once or twice, although I knew it would be best if you didn't get any of them."

"I believe I did get them. I seemed to know that some one was calling me."

"It wasn't a S. O. S. call!" Eagle smiled. "I found—well, I found that I wasn't in distress, or need of help. That's precisely why I went to St. George's, Peggy. I wanted to test myself. Did you think the reason might be that?"

"No! I thought of a dozen things it might be, but never that one!"

"It was the only motive that could have taken me there. I felt it gave me a right to go, even though—if people who knew how things had been saw me, they might—well, they might think me guilty of very bad taste. But I didn't mean to be seen. I wasn't asked to show a card. I walked in early and chose a place at the back of the church. I trusted to the crowd to hide me, and it did. Dalziel may have caught a glimpse of me between women's hats, but he couldn't have been sure if it hadn't been for that affair afterward. That was bad luck, in a way, although I was glad, if the accident had to happen, that I could be of use. However, it didn't affect the question of my being in church. And I must tell you about that. I didn't go to England for the purpose of making the experiment with myself. It was another reason which took me there. But being in England, I—tried it—tried it with success."

"You mean me to understand that—you didn't care?"

"Not exactly that! I'm not made of iron or marble. I didn't sit there in church without a qualm. But the feelings I had were not those I'd thought I must defend myself against. What I felt was—was no more and no less than a rage of hatred against that damned—forgive me, Peggy!—against that——"

"Damned villain, Sidney Vandyke," I fiercely finished the sentence as he had meant to end it.

"I can't pretend that that word wasn't the only one to express my feelings for him on his wedding day," Eagle admitted. "Not because he'd taken Diana from me, though. That's the strange part! I found it out while she was being married to Vandyke, and it was the thing I'd wanted to find out. In the relief, I ought to have forgiven him everything. But I didn't forgive. The ruin he'd wrought on my career overtopped everything else in my mind even at that minute. If some great power could have put me in Vandyke's place at the altar, and given Diana to me instead of to him, I would not have taken her—not even with her love. It seemed to me that what she would call her love wasn't worth the name of love, after—what had passed. It was only the memory of all I'd felt for her which hurt just then, so far as she was concerned. But for him—God, Peggy! to see him at the height of his hopes and ambitions made me mad to choke his life out! It does me good to confess this to you now, for you're the only one on earth to whom I'd speak."

"Yet, when you went out of church, you saved him from danger of death!" I said thoughtfully.

"That's just one of life's little ironies, isn't it?" Eagle laughed a low and bitter laugh. "It occurred to me afterward that I'd spoilt a good melodramatic plot. Hero secretly goes to church to see the woman who jilted him marry the villain to whom he owes his ruin. Villain is killed before his eyes on the way to the wedding reception. Big climax!"

"I think it was more dramatic," said I, "for the hero to save the villain's life."

"Too conventional. Obvious sort of thing!" sneered Eagle. "But I am conventional and obvious, I suppose. I did what I did simply because I couldn't help it, and I'd probably do it all over again. I'd have regretted it afterward, perhaps, if Di—if Lady Diana hadn't been in danger, too. I bear her no grudge."

"You're very noble," I said.

"It's not nobility. It's more like callousness. I freed myself from Lady Diana on her wedding day, or found that I was free. But if you could see into my soul when I think of Vandyke, you wouldn't call me 'noble.' I honestly pray for the day when I can remember him with indifference, and when I can say of what he did to me that good is born of evil. That's what I'm working for. But the time hasn't come yet. Maybe it will if I can manage to make myself of real use in this war. I've done nothing yet except a little scouting."

"Liege thinks differently, and so will all the world when it knows."

"I'm not working to reinstate myself in the world's eyes, but in my own—and most of all to help Belgium. There are things one does just for the thing itself. I have a fellow-feeling with a country suffering unjustly. After what I've gone through myself, I seem to owe her allegiance, as to a friend who understands. The moment this war cloud began to gather, I thought it would burst over Belgium, and I crossed the frontier from France with the Eagle, to offer my services. I'm glad now I failed in the hope that brought me over from America to England. I wanted to join Shackleton's Polar expedition, but he had no need of me."

"So that was why you came to England?"

"Yes. I told you it wasn't for the sole purpose of testing my feelings at St. George's Church. Being in London——"

"I understand. But, oh, Eagle! To think you would have gone away for years without bidding me good-bye!"

"You don't quite understand yet or you wouldn't say that." His eyes were wistful. "I was disgraced—put beyond the pale, down and out, unless I could work my way up again out of the mud. Mentally, I was a sick man. Now I see clearer. I'm on my way to get well in spite of scars. Life or death will cure me soon. It doesn't much matter which!"

It mattered to me—mattered so much that I could not speak.

* * * * *

A few hours later I had said good-bye to all my friends at the Liege hospital. Again I was a passenger of the Golden Eagle, flying through darkness as once I had flown through sunshine. Hidden by the night, we winged our way to Brussels safely and surely, and landed outside the town after forty minutes in the air—forty minutes which seemed to me worth as many years.

We came down in a farm field, safely but not silently, and waked the farmer, and his three sons not yet of soldier age. They ran out with rifles prepared for any emergency, but a few words of explanation warmed their hearts to welcome us.

I with my little bundle—my only luggage—was taken to the wife and mother, who exclaimed over me as if I had dropped from another planet, and gave me a bed for the rest of the night. One of the boys offered to guard the monoplane while Eagle went off on the bicycle of the other into town with dispatches from General Leman to the king.

In the morning "Monsieur Mars" came back with the news that a party of English ladies were starting for home in the care of a clergyman, and that he had asked if I might go with them. They had consented to take me, and I must be ready in twenty minutes. An automobile belonging to an officer would call for me at the farm. It came promptly, and in it Eagle and I had our last minutes alone together. We talked cheerfully; but I knew as well as he knew that the chances were ten to one against our ever meeting again on earth.



CHAPTER XX

I could not bear to go away to safety in England while Eagle stayed behind, daily risking his life. But he would not listen to my faltering hints that I should take up Red Cross work again in Brussels. "If you want to give me peace of mind, go," he said. So I argued no more, and smiled my best smile as we clasped hands for the last time. That was in the thronged railway station, where Eagle came to see me off and help our pilot parson steer his charges through the crowd. I was glad then that we had said our real good-bye alone.

It took us two days to get out of Belgium at that busy time of mobilization. We changed trains so often that we lost count, and frequently waited for hours at wayside places in pouring rain or broiling sun. We hadn't much to eat, but most of what we had we gave to refugees worse off than ourselves, or to tired, hungry soldiers. It was a hard, almost a terrible journey; but it gave me two friends, and carried me one stage farther on the strange road along which Fate was leading me blindfold.

The two friends were old maiden ladies, the sort of old maiden ladies Father and Di would have avoided like a pestilence if they had met them travelling on the Continent. They were twin sisters, exactly alike in figure and face. Their name was Splatchley; their looks were as repellent as their name; and their natures were angelic. They were tall and thin and sprawling, with corrugated iron foreheads, and grizzled hair which they crimped over it in little bunches. They had wistful, wondering brown eyes, like dogs' eyes (if you can imagine dogs wearing pince-nez!), the sort of noses manufactured by the gross to fit any face, and large stick-out teeth, which made you feel sure that no man would ever have kissed the poor ladies at any price. Their clothes and hats and shoes resembled French caricatures of British tourists, and they had a habit of talking together in a way to rasp the nerves. But to me they were adorable. All their lives they had lived in a country village, fussing happily over church work; but an uncle, who had made jam and lots of money, died, leaving everything to his nieces. Part of that "everything" was a large house in Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hampstead, in which, by the uncle's will, the Miss Splatchleys were obliged to live for nine months of the year. They had done their duty by it for the first nine months, and had then, with great excitement and some trepidation, started with a maid as old as themselves for their first trip abroad. They had just conscientiously worked, by the aid of Baedeker, from France into Belgium when the war broke out; and the heart-rending sights they saw among refugees inspired them with a brilliant and benevolent scheme. It occurred to them that their big house could be turned into a home for Belgian refugees, and they resolved to offer a thousand pounds toward the expense of bringing penniless people over to England. They could have their largest bedrooms altered into beehives of cubicles for single women, and stick little families of mothers and children into the smaller rooms.

"Parkins will help," they said, as we whiled away dreary hours of waiting in discussing over and over again their plans. And so saying they smiled square-toothed, affectionate smiles at the old woman who had been in their service since they were all three young together.

"But we must have at least a couple of nurses to help the poor, distracted mothers with the children, and, of course, there must be a second cook and another housemaid to make things comfortable," they went on. "We must try and think of some nice young girl, too, among our friends, who would give up her time to work with us. We're too old to make a success alone."

Then they ran over a list of the girls they knew, in town and country, but were able to suggest no one whom they both—Jane and Emma—could agree upon as suitable. While these two angels were busily racking their brains, I sat with a great idea developing in mine. I suppose I must have looked intelligent and eager while this was happening, for Miss Jane was moved to inquire if, by chance, I knew of anybody who would do? "A girl who is kind, and willing, and bright and strong, and rich enough to give up all her time for nothing," explained the dear old lady. "It's a very difficult combination, I know. And, anyhow, your friends wouldn't care to bother perhaps with such a middle-class institution as ours will be. There'll be hundreds of charities organized by princesses and duchesses, smart affairs that will do good on a grander scale than we can, and maybe get a little fun out of it, too. But you did look as if you had something on your mind to help us out with; so you must excuse me if I asked."

"I know a girl who would like to help you," I said, "if you'd have her. She's willing and strong, though not at all kind, and perhaps not so very bright. She isn't rich, either, but poor as the churchiest mouse! Still, she'll gladly give up all her time if she may stay with you, because she has no home that she can properly call a home."

"We should want her to stay with us, of course!" they protested, both together, as usual. "But, if she isn't kind——"

"Perhaps she could learn to be kind! She would try hard," I said meekly. "Her name is Peggy O'Malley."

They thought I was joking at first; and when I'd made them understand that I was in dead earnest, they shook their heads and looked dubious, fearing it "wouldn't work."

"You see, my dear," Miss Emma explained, volubly assisted by Miss Jane, "you are the only earl's daughter, or indeed any member of the aristocracy—higher than a knight's family—we have ever met socially—if you can speak of this as 'socially'—being actually thrown together, in all senses of the word, whenever they're in too great a hurry to couple our train nicely, or when we fall out in a heap at some wayside place like this. We don't flatter ourselves that you'd be likely to select us for acquaintances if you were able to choose at this time; and you mightn't be pleased with our ways at home. We have kippers for breakfast sometimes, and always cold supper Sunday nights."

I assured them passionately that if Providence had made them both expressly for my taste, we couldn't be better suited to each other. As for being an "earl's daughter," said I, there was nothing in that except extra charges from dressmakers and hotels, and having things you had never done attributed to you in paragraphs of penny weeklies. Then I drew on all my funds of pathos, describing myself as unwanted and unloved. This did the trick! The twin angels took me to their hearts and promised me a place in their home and scheme. By the time we got on board the boat they had dropped my handle and were calling me "Peggy dear."

In London a crowd had come to the station expressly to welcome and cheer us returning wanderers. And London was not the same London we had left a few weeks ago. It was a city under a spell, a London of some strange dream, all the stranger because the only change was in the people. Later, it changed again, becoming almost gay and lively in outer appearance, but at this time the balance was not adjusted.

Soldiers and recruits were marching through the streets, which but for them and those who dazedly watched them were almost empty. Instead of the mad herds of motor omnibuses, which had gone charging up and down in "old days," a few moved sedately, with here an ancient horse bus unearthed from oblivion. Of the lively streams of taxis, blue and green and black and gray, the source seemed suddenly more than half to have dried up. Some melancholy four-wheelers and hansoms had made bold to steal out, and were finding customers. Little boys were playing soldiers in the middle of Pall Mall, no longer a maelstrom. There was no din of traffic to drown the frog-like music of their sixpenny drums and penny trumpets. Looking into the doorways of the biggest shops one saw nobody but the attendants, waiting to serve customers who were not there and would not come. Outside the little shops the proprietors were frankly standing, to wonder sadly what had happened to them and to London, and what worse thing was likely to happen next? They talked in low voices to each other, trying to smile or read the latest war edition of some newspaper.

Most of the people who were in the streets seemed to have come there to look at the soldiers or to read the papers, which they did regardless of bumping into all the others who were doing the same thing. Nobody appeared to think of buying anything, though the shopkeepers had already pathetically changed the aspect of their windows to suit altered circumstances. Instead of displaying lovely dresses, they showed rolls of khaki cloth, or linen, cotton, or flannel for shirts, and gray army blankets. Shoemakers had bundled away their attractive paste-buckled slippers, and put forward conspicuously thick-soled brown boots to which they drew the attention of officers and soldiers. Chemists had hung printed cards, advising the public to "Keep up Their Strength in War Time" by taking So and So's Tonic Wine. But no one cared. No one bought. There was a dazed look on most of the faces. If those who read newspapers cannoned into each other, instead of glaring or swearing they smiled mildly, wistfully, and perhaps fell into conversation about the war. One felt able to guess what all the millions in London and even in all England and Europe were talking about and thinking about at any given moment; yet it was strange to us who had come from the hot red heart of the war to see no other sign of it except this dreamlike silence which hid the pain of parting from those loved best.

Nobody came to meet me at the station, because, not knowing when I should succeed in arriving, I had not tried to wire; nor would a message have been likely to reach its destination if I had. The Miss Splatchleys took me home with them, as if I had been an adopted child; and it was from the appropriate address of "The Haven" that I telegraphed Father and Diana: "Reached London safely with friends who have asked me to visit them. Writing explanations."

Miss Jane and Miss Emma prophesied that "his lordship" would put down his foot on our plans, but they did not know him. I did. Having received my promised explanations, he was more genial on paper than he often took the trouble to be for "only Peggy."

He wrote from Di's new house in Park Lane, a letter eminently fitted to be read aloud, and to impress with his graciousness the middle classes personified by estimable if vulgar females labelled Splatchley. He had, it seemed, made inquiries about these ladies, and was in receipt of quite satisfactory references. I had his permission to visit them until further notice, and help in their good work, which he thoroughly approved in these early trying days when everybody was organizing something. Also, he was prepared to make me a small weekly allowance for personal expenses and charities. He enclosed a cheque for the first week. It was for two guineas.

Kitty added a postscript with a good many italics. She was so glad that I was safe after that terrible time when she and dear Ballyconal had been so worried about me, and would have been even more anxious if they had had any time to think of themselves. Of course, in the circumstances, she could quite understand that it would be awkward for me to accept Major Vandyke's hospitality, so perhaps things were best as they were, especially as I would be working for the good cause. But I must come and see them. Surely I could do that? And it would make talk if I did not. She was sure I would be interested in the sewing guild which Di had started. Everybody was starting a guild of some sort, but this was a very special one, consisting of the most top-wave swells. Not a woman on the list of workers whose name you couldn't find in Burke and Debrett!

Diana also wrote, not at all hurt that I hadn't accepted her invitation. Indeed, she seemed to have forgotten the episode, quite taking it for granted that I was disposed of with the Miss Splatchleys for some time to come. "Kitty and I will motor out to see you the first day we have a chance," she said, "if we can find Fitzjohn's Avenue. I never heard of it. But then, one doesn't hear of streets in Hampstead, I suppose, except in war, or crises like that, when we're all as democratic as saints. You might ask your friends for a subscription to buy shirt material for us to make up. I can get more workers than I need, but very little money, and we need a lot, especially as some of us have had no experience in sewing and we do waste rather a lot of material getting things wrong at first! Still, we are persevering, and you must come and see us at work cutting out and putting together garments for the wounded every afternoon in my drawing-room, where the decorations are all finished and immensely admired. We have tea, and I've engaged a palmist, who tells us what will happen to our friends at the front and how the war will end. She encourages us and keeps us up. Later we hope to get convalescent officers to tell us their experiences while we sew. Could you do any knitting for us? I remember you learnt from your nurse when you were a small child. I thought it so irritating of you, but it might come in useful now, if you remember the stitch. Some of us can crochet, but it seems that won't do for socks. A good many use worsted of a pretty colour which doesn't clash with their frocks; but as for me, I've thrown aside all vanity. Don't forget to ask the Miss Splatchleys for a cheque, as Bally says they're rich; and I do hope you haven't jilted poor Tony. He has gone, as of course you have heard, and the Dalziels don't know anything—I mean about you and T——I see them every day. Milly spoiled two shirts this afternoon, but her mother bought us some beautiful readymade ones instead, with tucked fronts."

Work was so real and so pressing with us at "The Haven" that I laughed at the picture of Diana's guild with its list of helpers from Debrett, its palmist, and its tea. Miss Jane and Miss Emma, however, said that it was my duty to go and see my family, as I was younger than they were, and it was not to be expected that they could get to me. The desired cheque I hadn't meant to mention, but in reading the funny part of the letter aloud one of Di's references to it fell out inadvertently, and the generous creatures caught it up. They were prepared to spend many hundreds of pounds in turning "The Haven" into a refuge, and in supporting the homeless Belgian women and children to whom they offered hospitality, but they couldn't allow my sister to ask in vain. I was given twenty guineas for the guild and told that I ought to take the cheque myself, for I would discover that "it was the busiest people who could always find time."

We were busy from six-thirty in the morning till ten-thirty at night, with indigestibly short intervals snatched for meals; but, as the two angels said, there was always time to do one more thing. On that principle I contrived to go to Diana's on one of her "afternoons," armed with the Splatchley cheque and my own knitting, strongly resolved not to drink any of Sidney Vandyke's tea or eat one of his horrid eclairs.

I was ushered into the house by two powdered footmen far too big for it. It is a small house for Park Lane, all up and down stairs; but the drawing-room is of good size; and when a bishop-like butler published my name at the door, I saw that the room was full of women, young, old, and middle-aged, seated at sewing-machines, or standing at long tables cutting out strange-looking shapes from hideous materials.

There were some quaint sights to be seen at "The Haven," rooms being partitioned off into cubicles; others being turned into dormitories, nurseries, or refectories for the refugees, who had already begun to arrive, before things were half ready to receive them. But Diana's smart new drawing-room in Park Lane presented a far more extraordinary study in contrasts than anything the middle-class "Haven" could show.

Improbable Louis-Seize furniture was pushed back against white and gold and silk-panelled walls. Gilt-legged tables and chairs were piled with rolls of bleached and unbleached cotton, feverishly pink flannelette, and scarlet flannel; or littered with cut-out parts of garments, some of which (judging from the confusion and clamour about them) had got badly mixed. On the garland-embroidered curtains of primrose yellow silk were pinned placards announcing patriotic meetings of women who wished to assist or form recruiting agencies; or appeals from the Red Cross Society or the Prince of Wales' Fund. Rugs had been rolled up, and the polished parquet floor was strewn with shirt buttons, reels of cotton, and torn papers of pins. Scissors hid among scraps of waste material, and on request were searched for by very young girls whose apparent business was to supply the sewing-machines with cut-out and basted-up garments, to fold and stack the finished things according to kind, and to knit wildly at intervals on immense stockings with singularly long feet which clearly could suit no one but Santa Claus.

As, according to my stepmother, all the ladies of the guild were "top-wave swells," I'd expected to find the fair brigade of volunteers exquisitely dressed in the latest Paris fashions of "before the war." But no! They had invented a still later fashion of their own. It was to be frumpish. The smart thing for the women of Great Britain was to have their hair done plainly, with an angelic effect of putting patriotism before vanity, and having no time to spend on self. No money, either, to judge from their frocks! Where they had raked up their old clothes, I can't imagine. There were skirts and blouses in that transformed drawing-room in which, a few weeks ago, their wearers would not have gone out to burn down a church or to be dragged to prison. Still, I must say that most of the wearers contrived to look very distinguished, even those at the sewing-machines, who had got tousled as children do over unaccustomed schoolroom tasks. No one had on any jewellery except Kitty, Mrs. Dalziel, and Milly, and one or two others who were also evidently Americans not required to sacrifice everything for Great Britain's sake. They, with their pretty dresses, their rings and earrings and strings of large, glistening pearls, were like gay flowers in a kitchen garden.

Kitty, fat and fashionable, and Di, slim and elaborately frumpish, came to meet me with pajama legs in their hands. They didn't trouble to take off their thimbles, and I thought they seemed far from being ashamed of the needle pricks on their fingers.

A few of the girls I knew already, and some of the older women. All had heard from Di or from the Dalziels that I had been doing a little amateur work as a nurse in Belgium, but no one—not even Di herself—expressed curiosity as to details. They had so much to think of that interested them more; and I was thankful for the self-absorption of Kitty and Di which saved me from awkward questions as to how I had contrived to get out of Liege. It was simply taken for granted by my family that, according to my own written account, I had made the journey home with thoroughly reputable refugees. I felt sure that Tony had not given his mother and sister any indiscreet information about "Monsieur Mars." Neither did he appear to have told them that our engagement was definitely broken off. Their unsuspecting friendliness made me feel guilty, and I decided that I ought sooner or later to let them know the truth.

That day at Di's, however, they gave me no chance to speak, even if I'd had strength of mind to snatch it. Tony was safely on his way to America, travelling in the steerage, having given up his cabin to as many ladies as it could hold. He was admiringly mentioned, and then dismissed as a subject of conversation in favour of others more exciting to his family and closer at hand. Milly, while sewing spasmodically on a weirdly shaped shirt which could only be got on or off by a weirdly shaped man, talked about Stefan and produced a letter from him, which she cherished inside her blouse. He had been wounded, seriously though not dangerously, in Poland, and invalided home. It was not thought that he would be able to do any more fighting, and so when he was strong enough, he hoped to try and reach England in order that they might be married at once, if Milly would not mind taking an invalid for a husband. Apparently Milly did not mind in what condition she took her count provided she was sure of getting him. She was looking forward, if all went well, to becoming a Russian countess within a few weeks, for Stefan expected to arrive in a ship from Archangel along a sea route protected by the British navy. She had so little fear of anything going wrong that she was "encouraging dressmakers" by starting her trousseau, and had begun to study the Russian language as a surprise for her fiance. Mrs. Dalziel talked about Stefan, too, and how she would help nurse him back to health in a suite at the Savoy, when he and Milly were married. Meanwhile, mother and daughter were giving themselves up to good works, it seemed, whenever they had a minute to spare from their own affairs. Milly went three times a week to the Russian Embassy to sew for the Russians, and came twice a week to Diana's guild. Mrs. Dalziel had joined two committees got up by stranded Americans at the Savoy: one to supply money for moneyless millionaires, and the other to find clothes for clotheless millionairesses.

Whenever one of Diana's workers collapsed with fatigue, she was given tea or something to eat, and allowed an interval's repose in Di's boudoir, which had become the temporary consulting-room of Madame Mesmerre. The tame clairvoyant was expressly forbidden to foretell anything depressing; if she could not get visions of husbands, sons, and lovers coming safely home, it was distinctly understood with Diana (who paid by the afternoon) that she mustn't have any visions at all. This arrangement, however, was a family secret, which Kitty betrayed to me in confidence. Every one said that Madame Mesmerre was wonderful, but I didn't consult her.

I don't understand much about sewing or other really useful things of that sort, but I've picked up enough (thanks to helping my poor friends at Ballyconal) to know that men's shirts ought to have armholes bigger than those for little boys, and that they shouldn't be as short as bibs, or as long as surplices. Even this small amount of knowledge made me unexpectedly useful at the guild, where every member seemed to have her own original conception of what shape a shirt ought to be, and what it should be made of. Even my brief apprenticeship with the Miss Splatchleys, to whom most kinds of domestic work was as easy as breathing, made these fashionable women's desperate efforts at doing good seem pathetic. I agreed to return whenever I could, but no one would promise to come and see the "Haven Home for Belgian Refugees." They were all too busy working, by day; and at night it was a duty to go to a theatre or music hall, because the performance was given for the benefit of some fund, or else somebody sang a patriotic song to encourage recruiting.

We grew busier and busier at "The Haven" as the days went by. Refugees poured in. There was hardly time to be sad or anxious in the daytime; but at night always, always, my brain ceased to feel like a brain, and became a battlefield, as before in Belgium. The horror and anguish of war poured into my soul as water pours into a leaking ship. The most dreadful thoughts could be warded off in the busy hours of the day; but in the night stillness they found me without defence, and I surrendered.

Those were the hours when it seemed to me impossible that any of the men I knew, and above all, Eagle March, could ever escape from the slaughter alive. The Miss Splatchleys said that I looked pale and thin, with blue shadows under my eyes, and begged me not to work so hard. But I could have worked twice as hard without realizing that I was tired, if some one who knew the future, as no crystal-gazer can know it, had told me that Eagle would come out of the war unharmed.

Even when there was scarcely time for a decent meal, there was time to read the war news. All night long I existed for the moment in the morning when the two papers which the Miss Splatchleys took in should arrive, and I could bolt the big headlines and secretly search for the name of "Monsieur Mars." Then, whether I found it or not, the same suspense had to be lived through till the afternoon, when the evening editions came out; and after that again until the hour for the "Last War Extra."

Often the name of Mars started up to my eyes from the closely printed columns and set my heart beating and my blood flying to my head. No one seemed to have identified him as Captain March, not even the British or American war correspondents who occasionally reported his exploits. Or if they did, they respected his wish to keep it secret.

"Mars, the Belgian Air Scout," he was generally called, for few journalists appeared to know that he was a foreigner who had offered his services to the brave little country. Wonderful, almost miraculous, feats were attributed to him. Sometimes they were denied; but usually they proved to be true.

One morning I read that he had made a daring flight of two hundred miles over German territory, had dropped bombs on an ammunition train, had been fired on, and returned to his base "somewhere in Flanders" with the wings of his machine riddled by ninety-eight bullets. Again he and Sorel (who had been at Liege when we were there) went reconnoitring over the great German fortress of Metz, hoping to destroy the Zeppelin sheds. Quickly they were detected, although nearly three thousand feet above the forts. Up came shots from high-angle guns, spattering around them like spray from a fountain; but they persevered, making for the direction of the drill ground. Then suddenly Mars' motor ceased to work. It seemed that all was over for him, and the task left for Sorel to finish alone. But Mars, said the papers, resolved not to give his life away for nothing. Sweeping down in a bold volplane he launched his bomb, and had abandoned himself for lost when suddenly the motor started again; whereupon he darted off defiantly, following Simon Sorel, who had thrown his bomb also, and escaped.

If this had been all, I might have borne it somehow in my pride of Eagle. But there was always something more. I read of his monoplane being struck by a fragment of bursting shell over the enemy's lines, and his volplaning with a disabled engine, to drop into safety and a French stone quarry with important information to give concerning the disposition of German forces. When Paris was threatened and almost despairing, Mars flew over the sad city letting fall leaflets with the inspiring message, "Prenez courage, tout va bien." Over Brussels also he maneuvered, dropping his leaflets, and while angry German soldiers took aim at him and his monoplane he "looped the loop" far above their noses. His cool remark after this exploit was said to have been: "These Germans do shoot badly!" He had more than one duel in the air with hostile war planes, having vowed with the Belgian airmen to ram all enemy aircraft whenever possible. There was a fearsome account to read, one morning, of his bringing down an aeroplane which had dropped bombs on the heads of French troops, helping out the wounded aviator and military observer, and then setting fire to their machine. In this adventure the Golden Eagle was injured, and another monoplane was lent the airman while his own was being put to rights. The "Elusive Mars," newspapers began to name him, because in the face of almost certain destruction he invariably escaped in the nick of time and within an inch of his life. At last, however, one October day of good news for the Allies, there was bad news for me. They had put it in big headlines on the most important page:

"Mars, the Belgian Airman, Caught at Last. While Reconnoitring His Machine is Disabled, and Falls in Enemy's Lines. He is Believed to be Wounded, and is Certainly a Prisoner."

I had no heart to rejoice in the tidings which made the rest of my world happy that day. And for many days afterward—days each one of which seemed a lifetime of suspense—there was no other news of Eagle March. I felt as if the future were a very long, dim corridor, in whose chill twilight I groped, my eyes straining toward the distance.

So a month dragged itself away, and then came news at last.



CHAPTER XXI

"Escape of the gallant Mars," were the words that seized my eyes as I opened the front door of "The Haven" to snatch the morning papers. Rain was pouring down, but I halted in the porch to read, oblivious of the rivulet that streamed over my hair. "Mars, the elusive" had been true to his name once more. It was an almost miraculous story, or would have seemed so in less stirring times than these, which are teaching us that brave men can do anything they set their minds to do. Mars, with a few English prisoners, and some Russians from General Rennenkampf's force captured in East Prussia, had been sent to work in the fields outside a little German town in Alsace. Several of these, among them Mars, had been wounded and in hospital together, but were turned out as cured the moment they were strong enough to wield a scythe. Led by Mars, a young Russian officer and a private in a Highland regiment had escaped from the gang of prisoners by crawling for a long distance through tall ranks of grain. They had hidden themselves among the stacks, and at night had continued their progress in the direction—they hoped—of the French frontier. Next morning they were given shelter by a farmer's wife whose sympathies were with France. She provided them with disguises, but they ventured to move only at night. At the end of four nights' travel they came upon French soldiers advancing into Alsace, and made themselves known, but not until they had been fired on as spies. Mars and the Russian had both been wounded, and were in a French field hospital at the time the newspaper account of their adventures went to press. Neither were badly hurt, but they were extremely weak from lack of food and loss of blood, to say nothing of old wounds scarcely healed when they had started on their dash for freedom. The Russian officer (said to be a nephew of Prince Sanzanow, Russia's ambassador to England) considered that he owed his life to the aviator; and it was believed that when the two were able to move they would be brought to a private convalescent home in London, financed by the Russian ambassadress and other great ladies.

I was so happy for the rest of the day that, as I could tell no one what was in my heart, I sang to myself, under my breath, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary." Eagle was alive and safe after all my black fears, and I felt sure that if he came to England I should meet him. He could not say now that he had done nothing "worth while." I thought, too, that he would see the time had come at last to let the world know that "Monsieur Mars" and Captain Eagleston March were one. I longed for the day of revelation. It seemed to me that it would be a great day. I could hardly wait for it to arrive; but a fortnight passed and the papers had no more to say of "Mars, the elusive."

Meanwhile, the world had been busily making history for its future generations, and momentous things had been happening to almost every one I knew, except myself and my own immediate circle. Since I had first met Milly at Diana's many weeks ago, and had been shown the letter from Stefan, he had actually arrived in England from Archangel, whence gossip said two hundred and fifty thousand other Russians had been mysteriously shipped to north Britain. Alas for romance! those Russian hordes were imaginary, but there was no doubt that Milly Dalziel's Russian had appeared in flesh and blood—though with only enough of either to keep body and soul together. They had been married a few days after Count Stefan Stefanovitch had arrived—a picturesque wedding performed with all formalities by a Russian priest, while the bridegroom lay propped up in bed, in that suite at the Savoy of which Mrs. Dalziel had talked, no guests present except the bride's mother and father (Tony Senior having obediently dashed across the ocean) and the Russian ambassador with his wife.

At the time I was not unselfish enough to interest myself profoundly in Milly's marriage, for my mind was filled with thoughts of Eagle March, and I could not forget how Milly, snubbed by him for her own good, had let her supposed love for Eagle turn into bitter spite. I didn't believe that a girl who had so lately cared for a man like Eagle March could really have been caught in a rebound of heart by Stefan Stefanovitch. I had seen Stefan no more than once or twice, when he was military attache at the Russian Embassy, but that was often enough for me to know some of his limitations. In looks and manner he compared poorly with Eagle, to my mind. I was inclined to think that without his counthood Milly would have had no use for him, or he for her without her money. This spoilt the romance of the affair in my eyes, and I had no premonition of what Milly's Russian relationships were soon to mean for me.

When she had been married a little more than a fortnight and before any further news had come out concerning the "Elusive Mars" and his companion, I was told one day by Miss Jane that I was called for at the telephone. I left a roomful of baby Belgians, for whom I was playing nursemaid, to run to the 'phone, and was stabbed with disappointment to hear Diana's voice. You see, every rap of the postman, every b-b-bur-r-r of the telephone bell, might mean the longed-for message from Eagle which always I hoped for, even expected!

"Hello, Peggy!" said Di. "I've got a piece of good news for you."

My heart gave a silly leap and then sat down again; because she would be the last person in the world to give me news of Eagle March.

"What is it?" I asked, without interest.

"Princess Sanzanow hasn't forgotten you, and sends you a special message."

(Princess Sanzanow is the wife of the Russian ambassador.)

"She's giving quite an informal dinner," Di went on, "getting it up almost on the spur of the moment, because the doctor says that Stefan is well enough to go out, and the affair is really for him and Milly. I don't think there'll be many there except ourselves, for the princess is asking every one verbally. That's why she sends you a message instead of a card. It is to say that she has always admired 'la petite Lady Peggy,' and now more than ever. I happened to tell her about your Liege experience, and your work for the Belgians. She particularly wants me to bring you to dinner with her and the prince to-morrow night. You'll come, of course?"

"Oh, I don't know if I can!" I hesitated. "There's so much to do here, and, anyhow, I haven't a frock. Miss Jane and Miss Emma bought me lots of nice things when they bought their own, for, of course, they lost their luggage, too. But we never so much as thought of evening dresses. I'd forgotten their existence!"

"But you must go," Di persisted. "The trunk you stored at Norfolk Street for Ballyconal has been brought here with Father's and Kitty's things. Celestine can take the measurements of some frock or other you've packed away there, and I'll go out and choose a pretty model gown, ready to wear, for a present to you. Shoes and gloves you can get yourself, I suppose? If you'll come here early to dress, Celestine can take tucks and change hooks in next to no time, if necessary. I accepted for you; and it will be horribly rude to the Princess if you refuse now, for no reason at all."

* * * * *

I could have found or invented a reason, if I hadn't remembered in a sudden flash that Monsieur Mars' companion in flight was supposed to be a nephew of Prince Sanzanow. If I went to the Embassy I might hear news. I was willing to do almost anything for that hope, even to dressing at Sidney Vandyke's house, and continuing the armed truce in his automobile to our destination. But I drew the line at accepting a frock bought with his money.

"Why, yes, I'd forgotten the trunk I packed up with winter things for Ballyconal," I answered. "There's that white chiffon velvet gown, made over from yours, which I wore in New York last spring before the weather turned hot. Do you remember? It will do beautifully for to-morrow night. I'm sure it's as good as ever, so you needn't buy me anything; many thanks. And I'm so glad you spoke of the trunk. I'll have it brought up here afterward. It's small and won't take up much room. There are lots of things in it I can spare for our Belgian women."

"Very well, as you like," said Di. "That white velvet was quite nice, and will be all right if it is not full of beggar's creases. You can have the little trunk put on the luggage carrier of the car to-morrow night when we send you back to Fitzjohn's Avenue. It will save the trouble of getting Carter Paterson or some one else to call here for it. And that reminds me: one of the things I wanted to say to you was this: you were asking Bally if he had any old clothes to spare you for your Belgian women's husbands. Well, Kitty has found a few, but there are a whole heap of Sidney's things you can have if you want them. Masses of luggage have just arrived from America: boxes of books and rugs, and trunks full of clothing packed up and sent after him by his soldier-servant when Sid definitely decided to resign and live over here. All the clothes are a bit out of date now, or Sidney thinks so, and there are some army things he never wants to see any more. Anyhow, he has collected quantities of new clothes, and if you would like the American things for your men proteges, you're welcome to them."

It went against the grain with me to accept even this favour from the enemy; but I reflected hastily that I had no right to refuse what would do good to others. After all, it was nothing to me, and Sidney could not help realizing that, if he heard of the transaction. I thanked Di again, and said I should be glad of anything she had to give, as the destitution among the men of the Belgian refugees was as pitiful as among the women. "We shall be thankful to get the collection out of the house," answered Diana. "Sid's man unpacked the boxes and, of course, was free to choose what he wanted for himself, but he's such a little monkey, none of the clothes would fit him. I remembered you and your poor people, which I do think was rather sweet of me, as I have such crowds of things to do every moment; so I told Sykes to spread the lot out in that empty room we haven't furnished yet, directly over mine. I mean to have it turned into a kind of 'den' for Sid, so the sooner we can sweep away the boxes and mess generally, the better. Suppose you look in after the dinner at the Embassy to-morrow night, and pick out what you fancy. Sykes can dump everything into an empty trunk for you, and it can be put with yours on the back of the Grayles-Grice for you to cart off to Hampstead."

I knew that if I wished to make sure of the booty, I had better take Di at her word, for as likely as not she would change her mind in a day or two, and offer the things to somebody else. I replied that I thought her plan a very good one, and I would carry it out exactly as she proposed.

The next evening I went early to Park Lane, in order to unearth the white velvet frock from the old trunk packed for Ireland, and dress myself in it when it was found. Talking to Kitty and Di delayed me for a few minutes, however, so that I had no time to waste when I ran up to the shuttered room where my little trunk, as well as Sidney's things from America, were in temporary storage. No one could be spared to help me, as Di's maid and Kitty's had already begun to lay out their mistresses' things for dinner. But I have been used all my life to looking after myself. I didn't in the least mind grubbing on my knees to unlock the box, finding the dress I wanted, and unwrapping it from layers of tissue paper. As I stood up to shake the frock, and examine anxiously as to its condition by the light of the electric lamp, which I had switched on for the purpose, I saw many suits of Sidney Vandyke's clothes neatly folded by Sykes, his valet, and piled on tables and boxes.

It was too late then to look at the things before dressing, but I cast an appraising glance in their direction, and my eyes lit upon what seemed to be a khaki uniform, bundled ignominiously between a suit of evening clothes and a crimson dressing-gown.

"Fancy his not having sentiment enough to keep his army things!" I thought scornfully. "But, of course, he was never a real soldier at heart, or he wouldn't have resigned, at his age, to be lazy and please Diana! How different from——" But I wouldn't let myself even think Eagle's name in that connection.

Fortunately I had packed away the white chiffon velvet with unusual care (for me), and there were few creases in the soft folds which wouldn't disappear eventually when I had put the frock on. As I dressed in a far corner of Di's room (well out of her way and that of her maid, Celestine, and managing my toilet operations as best I could with a small hand glass) my thoughts would fly back to that old khaki uniform upstairs. I wondered if it were one Sidney had worn in camp in Texas days when his jealous rage was piling up against Eagle. It seemed to me that there must be an evil influence hanging about those clothes of his; and I was still thinking this when Major Vandyke, Father, Diana, and Kitty and I were bunched together, a rather silent party, in Di's big, roomy town car, spinning from Park Lane to the Russian Embassy with Kitchener's "night lights" fanning long white arms across the sky of unnaturally darkened London.

As it was supposed to be a small, informal dinner, we arrived promptly on the hour; and when Princess Sanzanow—a beautiful, tall woman, with the mysterious, sad eyes of the Slav people—had greeted us, she said that four of her guests had still to arrive: Count and Countess Stefanovitch, and two others whose presence was to be the surprise of the evening. "I will tell you only this," she laughed, in her pretty English, when Di pretended to be wildly curious; "like Stefan they have both come back from the front, and they are the most exciting heroes! I won't dream of spoiling my great coup by letting you guess their names until they are announced; but this you shall know, dear Lady Diana: my two 'surprises' are to have the honour of taking you and our bride in to dinner. All the other women will be envying you both."

Di was pleased and interested. She realized that our hostess meant to pay her, as well as Milly, a great compliment; for those "other women" of whom the princess spoke were important socially, and charming in themselves. What she had called a "small, informal dinner" would be made up of twenty-two guests; and the informality would consist in the innovation of having small tables.

The princess introduced me to a very young youth, her son, who had been away at Eton when I had visited at the embassy before. He began at once to air his grievance of lacking a year of the age when a man can be allowed to serve his country; and I was sympathizing with him because he was not fighting when Milly and her husband were announced. She was looking prettier than I had ever seen her, with quite new airs and graces of a married woman and a countess; and Stefan, though extremely plain of face and insignificant of figure, was interesting because of his experiences, his limp, and his right arm in a black silk sling.

Milly seemed to think that she and her husband were the guests of the evening and apologized in a high voice for being late, but the princess reassured her.

"We have still two more to come. Our two surprises," and she was going on to excite Milly's curiosity as she had Diana's, when the magnificent Russian butler, who looked as if he had stepped from some medieval picture, cried aloud two names:

"Major Baron Skobeleff; Captain March."



CHAPTER XXII

My blood so flew to my head that for a second or two I was giddy, and saw nothing through the rain of sparks which hung like a veil before my eyes. But in an instant I came to myself, wrenched back to a clear vision of things by sheer necessity to act. Somebody would have to do something, if the situation were not to ruin the princess's whole evening; and after all he had suffered, whatever happened, Eagle March must be saved from the pain of public humiliation. Yet who was to do anything? Who was to save him?

Only a few persons knew that to arrange a meeting between Sidney Vandyke, Diana, Milly, and Captain Eagleston March, was about as tactful as to invite the King of Belgium to dine with the German Kaiser. Only a few persons knew, and those most concerned were the very ones who would do least to shield Eagle's feelings.

The princess began gayly to explain that here was her great "surprise" at last: the two heroes of whose classic escape the whole world had heard. The "Elusive Mars," as he had been called, was in reality Captain March, who had refused to make use any longer of his nom de guerre. But in the midst of explanations, as she would gently have led Eagle toward Diana (oh, horror! she had evidently planned to send these two in to dinner together!), suddenly she realized that some freezing spell had turned her principal guests to figures of ice.

Eagle, struck with deadly pallor under the brown mask sun and wind had given him, stiffened involuntarily and held back. Sidney had gone crimson, and then yellow-white; Diana—with a shocked face drained of colour—looked ready to faint; while Milly, in all her new pride of importance, flung up her head and stared insultingly. This transformation had taken place with the announcement of the officers' names; and it took Prince and Princess Sanzanow no longer than is needed in the counting one—two—three to notice it. Living all their lives in an atmosphere of diplomacy as they did, even their great tact and presence of mind failed for a few dismal seconds to cope with the emergency, it being so utterly unforeseen, and such a blow to them that their cherished "surprise" should be not only a dead failure but a brutal catastrophe.

They must have realized in a flash that these people whom they had brought together were bitter enemies. They must, in a rush of emotion, have blamed themselves and each other for not finding out in time what perhaps they might have suspected or known without telling had they not been foreigners and comparative strangers in London society. As a matter of fact, they could not have known unless they had catechized Americans, which it would never have occurred to them to do; but no doubt the thought came to their minds, and they must have cursed their "inspiration" for that "pleasant surprise."

I saw Princess Sanzanow's eyes appeal in despair to her husband. But the situation was too complicated even for him to solve in a second, for the worst was yet to come. Thinking to compliment Di, and honour the man who had brought their nephew out of captivity, they had arranged that Captain March should take Lady Diana Vandyke in to dinner. The expression on her face and the stiffening of his muscles had shown this plan to be impossible, to say nothing of Major Vandyke's mad-bull glare. Now, at an instant's warning, there would have to be a general post, and changing of partners; and the most desperate difficulty of all must have lain in the princess's complete ignorance of the facts. She stood there among the company she had invited to meet each other as if blindfolded, not knowing which ones, or how many, were affected by the vendetta.

I saw and divined this between two heartbeats, for I was one of those who knew the undercurrents hidden from strangers; and in such moments one thinks quickly. Of all the guests, I was the least important, and the youngest except the Sanzanow boy; yet I felt that I was the only person present who could or would act in time. I made up my mind to risk seeming rude or shockingly bold. There was just one thing I could think of to do, and I did it.

Into the midst of that brief, freezing pause, I plunged. Almost running forward, I held out both hands to Eagle. "Oh, dear Princess!" I gasped. "We are the best and oldest friends, Captain March and I. We've known each other since—since I was a child; and we met in Belgium when he was 'Monsieur Mars.'"

Eagle grasped my hands so tightly that I should have had to cry out if I had worn rings, and Princess Sanzanow gave me such a look of touching gratitude that I was sure I had been lucky enough to do the right thing. "Oh, I am so glad!" she breathed. "Then, if you are great friends, you will want to go in to dinner together, and I must let you do so."

She had the air of having just been saved from drowning; and I was the straw which had thrust itself out in the nick of time for her to catch. Having accomplished my mission as a straw, I gave my attention wholly to Eagle, but though I tried not to notice, I was dimly conscious, all the same, of what was going on around me. I saw Major Skobeleff, the young Russian officer whose escape Eagle had aided—Prince Sanzanow's nephew—talking to Milly; and noticed that Stefan Stefanovitch had been given to Di as a substitute for Captain March. Somehow or other the princess juggled her guests about so that three minutes after the crash, when dinner was announced, all could "set to partners" without confusion. There was a French duchess—a refugee from Paris—present, whom the prince had to take in, and the princess had the duke. That arrangement couldn't be upset; and the only quite ridiculous effect of the whirlwind was to give young Prince Paul to a widow old enough to be his grandmother.

I had rushed into talk with Eagle before we stopped shaking hands; but he had not been able to answer the call of conventionality so soon; and it was not till after we were seated at table that he could control himself to speak. On his other side was Prince Paul's elderly dinner companion. On my other side was the new military attache who had taken the count's place in the Embassy, a man past the soldiering age; and as he had Madame Pavlova to talk to, for him I did not exist. Eagle and I could speak to each other as if we were alone together in a forest haunted with far-off voices.

"What a fool I was to come here!" he said. "I ought to have known."

"Don't be sorry," I whispered. "Think how glad I am to see you. And there's no reason—no reason in the world—why you should wish to keep out of their way. You have nothing to be ashamed of—but very proud."

"I am glad to see you again," he answered. "Don't imagine I'm not! But I meant to see you, anyhow. I've known for weeks where you were. I made that kind old parson who piloted you home promise to wire to an address I gave, when you got safely back to England. And afterward he wrote to tell me what fine work you were doing. This is the first time I've been out anywhere except for an invalid crawl or two. It's only three days since we left the nursing home in Fitzroy Square, where Prince and Princess Sanzanow visited us several times. Skobeleff is their nephew, you know. They asked us both to stay with them, and Skobeleff is being moved here by his servant to-night; but I made an excuse not to come—said it would hurt the feelings of an old friend who had offered to lend me his chambers in Whitehall Court to finish getting well in. The Sanzanows wouldn't take a refusal for dinner this evening, though. It made no difference my telling them who I really am, March instead of Mars. I thought they were sure to know something of my story. They said, when I tried to cry off, that it was going to be a small dinner—just a few friends who would like to meet Skobeleff and me, so I let myself be persuaded. This is the result!"

As we spoke together, the conversation around us murmured vaguely in my ears. I heard it without listening, as one can hear an undertone of murmuring sea beneath all other sounds. People were talking of the one inevitable subject, the war, with variations; the New Patriotism which has made the Tory Lion and the Liberal Lamb lie down together in peace, side by side, paying each other compliments; the good-girl tactics of the suffragettes; the surprising slump in murders and every sort of crime; possible raids of Zeppelins; and the amusingly persistent legend of Russians in France; the same things which were being discussed at that very moment, no doubt, in every household high and low, from one end of Great Britain to the other, but always new and ever interesting, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. I glanced at Di and Major Vandyke and Milly, to see how they were bearing themselves, and I was not pleased with what I saw.

The princess had distributed her guests at three small tables, and, of course, had separated Di and Sidney. I had to crane my head round a floral monoplane, which was our centrepiece, to catch sight of them at their separate tables; and even so, I had but a glimpse now and then of a profile. But the expression of those profiles, and the earnest, confidential way in which they turned toward their neighbours, convinced me that they were not talking war-talk. Milly faced me where I sat, and though the tables were lit by amber-shaded wax candles which gave an ivory effect to the women's complexions, the primrose light could not subdue Milly's colour. As a rule, she was rather pale, but to-night cheeks and ears were flushed deep rose colour. She looked excited and childishly angry, her greenish-gray eyes dilated and her lips pouting. Had she not been conscious of her new honours as a married woman and a countess, I don't think she would have dared display her feelings at a dinner-party of so much importance. Once or twice she stared with narrowed gaze across the room at Eagle March, then turned to one of her two companions in such a way as almost to advertise the fact that she was speaking of him. She would make little impression, I thought, on Major Skobeleff if she tried to prejudice him against Eagle; but it might be different with the man on her other side, who knew nothing of Captain March save what she had to tell; and even Skobeleff—though surely he would not believe evil of his comrade—could not help remembering. I could imagine Milly whispering: "What an awful faux pas for the princess to have brought Major Vandyke and Captain March together in her house, where they can't get away from one another for hours, without being rude to her and the prince! Why, the man was such an enemy of Major Vandyke's that he actually betrayed his country in the hope of ruining his superior officer. It's a long story, but I can tell it to you if you like. Captain March had to leave the United States army in the most dreadful disgrace!"

She looked so like a spiteful, green-eyed cat, that I seemed to hear the words hissed out; and as the man whose ear approached her lips was one of the famous gossips of London, I could imagine, too, how the story would spread and grow. Milly would certainly tell Prince and Princess Sanzanow, also, before she went home, what a dreadful thing they had done in asking "that notorious Captain March" to be their guest, and especially to meet Major and Lady Diana Vandyke. Sidney, too, if he could pile anything more on the injuries of the past, would be sure to do his best.

As I thought these thoughts my cheeks began to burn even more hotly than Milly's. I had been questioning Eagle about his adventures, and he had been answering in the laconic way most brave men have when teased to talk of themselves; but for a minute, keen though I was, I lost the thread of narrative I had begun eagerly drawing out. This was when I met Milly's eyes and flung a challenge from mine to hers. "Dare to hurt him with your lying tongue, and somehow, surely as you live, I'll make you repent. Don't dream that my affection for Tony can stand between you and me," was the warning I sent.

Silently we defied each other in the savage and primitive way which we female human things have merely modernized, not modified, since the days of Lilith up to the days of suffragettes. I was asking myself what punishment I could devise and inflict, if necessary, to fit Milly's crime, and how I—so small and powerless—could dig myself into a defensive trench between Eagle and Sidney Vandyke, when I realized that Eagle's eyes were studying my flushed face. They were sad eyes, yet there was a faint glint of laughter in them.

"You little fighter!" he said. "You never throw down the cudgels you've taken up in my defence."

"No, and never will!" I answered, defiance in my voice even for him, because my blood had been set on fire and the flame would not die down.

"You're very young!" he said, with a faint sigh. "So young that you haven't learnt not to hurl yourself against stone walls. Learn the lesson from me, child. Public opinion is a stone wall, the thickest and highest in the world. The tiny bubble of my reputation was wafted against it by an evil wind, and burst forever. If I was fool enough once to hope that I could mend it, I know now that I was mistaken. Broken bubbles are like Humpty Dumpty: they can't be put together again; and I don't mean to break my head in the place where the bubble burst, or let you break yours."

"We shan't break our heads," said I. "We'll break other people's wicked heads, that deserve to be broken; and they're aching hard already with sheer rage, because you've made a beautiful new bubble for yourself, ever so much bigger and brighter than the old one they tried to burst. Only tried, because they may find that it didn't smash when it seemed to! Then if the old bubble is saved, there'll be two, solid as crystal and brilliant as rainbows—boomerang bubbles—that will come blowing back to break the brutes who wanted to burst them!"

Captain March laughed out aloud, and I saw Sidney turn involuntarily with a slight, nervous start, as if he fancied that the laugh must be directed against him. "Irish Peggy, you're inimitable!" said Eagle. "Look out for your metaphors, or you'll be turning my bubble into a bull!"

"Hang metaphors!" I retorted. "I wish I could turn the bubble into a bull, not an Irish, but a wild one, and set it at two or three people. Perhaps I shall yet! And what has made you suddenly change your mind, Eagle? At Liege, in hospital, you told me how you hated Sidney Vandyke and felt as if you could choke his life out."

"I haven't changed my mind," he said. "I hate Vandyke now as I hated him then, more if possible. That's not Christian, but I can't help it, or else I don't try to help it; I'm not sure which. If by killing Vandyke I could get back what he took from me, I should do my best to kill him. But I am just cool enough, where he is concerned, to realize that I can't help myself by hurting him; rather the contrary. That's where we come to the stone wall. So I'm not going to smash what he has left of my head on the stones he piled up against me. To do that would be giving the enemy great satisfaction, wouldn't it?"

"Perhaps!" I had to agree with a sigh.

"But if the circumstances ever change in my favour," Eagle went on, his pleasant face hardening into grimness, "and I can get revenge without putting myself in the wrong, God help Vandyke!"

"I hope He won't help him, when that time comes!" I exclaimed. "And I believe it will come. Something often tells me so—tells me that I——"

"That you—what?" Eagle prompted me as I broke off.

"That I shall have some hand in the—the retribution, whatever it may be. It's what I always pray for."

Eagle gazed straight at me, with eyes which had changed sadly since the day they first met mine in the Wardour Street shop. I had thought them full of romance and dreams then. Their look was harder and older now, the look of a man who has been down very near to the gates of hell, and by desperate fighting has battled his way up the heights again, but not so high as to forget the red glare that singed his eyeballs. My heart ached, because it seemed impossible that the peace of dreams and romance could ever come back. I was glad—glad, that Eagle's heart hadn't softened toward Sidney Vandyke, who was as bitterly his enemy to-night as ever; but I was sorrowful because the beautiful youth of a man's soul had been scorched in the furnace fire.

"I can't bear to think your friendship for me should harden or embitter you, Peggy," Eagle said. "Nothing is worth that! I oughtn't to talk to you as I've been talking now. I shan't again. Forgive me, and forget. Help me to forget! Forgetfulness is the best thing that can happen to me now. I realize that in my sensible moments. But it's hard to be sensible always."