Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley Part 12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How? What can I do?"

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

And anyhow, I'll let you kiss me, this very night--on my cheek."

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

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

"I do believe that, indeed I do believe it, forever. And--and--by Jove!

I _will_ tell you," he broke out, with a kind of breathless gasp.

"You're too strong for me, Peggy. You've _got_ me! But after all, there's no such great harm in telling, now. It's different from last night. Then I didn't know--n.o.body knew, I suppose--what the upshot of certain things might be. As it's turned out, some of the story will have to be known. Not all--but the part you want to know most."

"Tell me that," I pleaded.

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

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

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

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

"Well, there's March's side, and----"

"And--what other one?"

"And Major Vand.y.k.e's side."

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

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

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

"You know--you've heard, I guess, that Vand.y.k.e was in command last night, because the colonel had a touch of the sun? But that isn't the right way to begin my story. I'm hanged if I know how to begin it! We were up there on the hill with the guns, on guard; I mean I was, and the men. And March came along, and strolled off again a little way with his field gla.s.ses. Maybe thirty or forty yards distant, he was. I wasn't noticing anything--felt rather sleepy, and was trying all I knew to keep awake. I was in charge of the guns, you see. I guess I was thinking about you. I generally am. Anyhow, the first thing I knew, March hurried back. He seemed queer and excited, and stood still a minute as if he was struck all of a heap. Then to my amazement he rapped out an order to load and fire number one and number two guns, aiming at a spot just beyond the bridge. But before we'd had time to do more than gasp--I and the gunners--he changed his order, and commanded us to fire blank. Lord, that was a relief--though even blank would be bad enough for the lot of us if it turned out that March had gone suddenly mad. You fire blank for a salute, you know: but Mexico wasn't likely to take it as a compliment!

Luckily we'd some rounds of blank, served out to us in case we might need to send a scare and not a peppering across the river. There was nothing for it but to obey orders, though I couldn't help thinking about 'The Charge of the Light Brigade,' when every one knew that some one had blundered. March shouted out, 'Go slow!' And you bet we did go slow! It seemed as if he must be off his head--or somebody else was--for so far as we could tell--and it was a fairly clear night--there wasn't a sign of trouble on the other side of the river.

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

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

"He never does drive. He didn't just funk it at that one time; it's his habit. I've always heard him say he hated to drive a car. Too lazy!

Anyhow, there was the very d.i.c.kens to pay. Before leaving the hill for his dash across the river he'd told March to consider himself under arrest----"

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

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

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

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

"Will he be court-martialled?"

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

He'd have no motive."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"According to March, the orderly was back again in next to no time.

March had stopped where he was, waiting for him, as he didn't want to give the snap away to me and the men till the last minute. And he was hoping against hope, till he got the return message. It was verbal again, in spite of his written request, and mighty peremptory, ordering him to obey without any more nonsense. That's March's story. Not seeing a way to get out of it, yet realizing the awful consequences should there be anything wrong, March was going to pa.s.s on the order to load and fire when he suddenly thought he'd compromise by firing blank only.

You see he was in an awful fix anyway, had to make an instant decision, and did what he thought best at the moment, though in giving that order to fire blank he was already disobeying the orders of his superior officer. Vand.y.k.e's version is that he never sent any orders whatever.

That his orderly was with him in his car, and had never left it for a minute. That March must have been deceived by some trick of resemblance--a sort of 'Captain of Kopenick' (if you know that story); getting off a hoax on him, a deadly hoax, meant to upset the whole situation between the United States and Mexico. He says March ought to have known better than to obey a verbal order when the thing was so serious, and that he was something worse than an a.s.s to mistake a stranger for Johnson, the orderly, whose face March knew almost as well as his own. There's where Vand.y.k.e scores an extra point against March.

It would be very unusual to send a verbal order."

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

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

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