Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley Part 21

"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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 ap.r.o.n? 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 c.o.c.ksure, 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 d.a.m.n 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 ident.i.ty 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sistant 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d 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."