Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley Part 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

they mean 'no' and there ain't no goin' around it, or they prods you with one of them bayonets."

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

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

"Tell me--every word," I panted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Dalziel and Milly didn't appear till noon; but meanwhile I went down and talked to a great many people in the hotel, people whom I didn't know. After the excitement of the night, everybody chattered and exchanged impressions with everybody else, without stopping to think or care whether they had been introduced to each other. A few of the men had a vague idea that something was being "hushed up," but none could guess what it was, and n.o.body knew anything about Captain March.

Naturally I didn't tell what I had been told: that he was under arrest.

I trusted with all my heart that no one else had heard, or would hear, the story. And I prayed that it might not be true. To Milly I would not speak of him at all; for though she had apologized for yesterday, and "made friends" with me again, I knew that there was a cruel streak in her which would rejoice revengefully now, in any trouble that fell on Eagle. She would feel that it was a direct punishment sent by Fate for his indifference to her, and the way in which (for her own good) she had forced him to show it.

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

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

But it was the first move in my game. I hoped that after so much encouragement, he would make some excuse after dinner to get me to himself.

Scarcely a word was said during the meal concerning Captain March. Mrs.

Dalziel inquired about him; Tony with his mouth full answered indistinctly and hurriedly that he was "getting along all right"--as well as anybody could expect; and Milly viperishly turned the subject to Major Vand.y.k.e's exploit.

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

She adores heroes. She once told me so."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"There's a nice little sort of park," he suggested, "not too far away.

How would you like to walk there?"

I said I would like it, and as our "little sort of" park wasn't the park whence the procession would start, we had it practically to ourselves.

We found an empty seat and sat down side by side like a Tommy Atkins and his "girl" in Kensington Gardens.

The first thing that Tony did when we were anch.o.r.ed together there was to propose again, after an apology. I let him get it over, and then played the next p.a.w.n in my game.

CHAPTER XI

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

But--there's something that _does_ interfere!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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