Part 10

"Five kilometers and a little better," he soliloquized in English, "and a doubtful prospect of a meal.... Contrast that with what the gods offer here--a cosy fire, coffee, eggs and chips, I warrant, and the daintiest of little maids--to say nothing of a musical uncle with an amiable propensity for throwing visitors into the stream. By Jove, it is chilly.... Over in dear old England they'll be roasting nuts and telling ghost-stories to-night."

The fast-thickening shadows deepened into the blackness of an October night; the wind grew quieter, but there was a bite in the air that made him draw his fur collar about his ears.

"What excellent French the little lady uses," he went on. "I wonder who her parents were, and why the deuce she has to live with this ogre. And what eyes! Enough to make one invent new songs of Araby just to see them sparkle and soften.... One moment sad, another tender--and always lovely. Steady, the Air Force--you're becoming sentimental."

He looked at the battered machine and shook his head; a solitary raindrop lit on his face and slid down its surface like a tear.

A belated gust of wind smote his face and left it moist. He rose in a determined manner and adjusted his helmet.

"_Adieu_, my Camel!" He took a last survey of the machine. "The kitchen is calling to my appetite; a storm is brewing in the heavens; a pair of dark eyes is urging all the romance within me; so--mill-stream or no mill-stream--_mon oncle_, I come."

He squared his shoulders and, with the rather absurd long stride and the odd raising of the knee, made for the cottage door, from underneath which a faint glow of light was timidly emerging.

III

In response to his knock there was a roar from within, and the door opened enough to show the young lady in the doorway.

"Good evening," he said gravely. "I saw the light in here and decided to accept its kindly invitation."

She glanced over her shoulder; but the airman, gently putting her to one side, entered and looked serenely about the room, which appeared to be kitchen, dining-room, and parlor in one. Beside the stove he noticed the stooped figure of a man, whose huge black beard straggled over a suit of overalls that had once been dark blue, but had become a dirty white from constant association with flour.

"Good evening, monsieur." The airman handed his helmet to the girl and proceeded to unbutton his coat. The miller's blotched eyes rose sulkily to the visitor's face.

"What do you want here?" His voice was nasal and slovenly, and there was a hoarse growl in the words, as though his throat was parched and rusted.

"I am doing myself the honor of taking supper with you, monsieur." The airman's face was full of melancholy dignity as he divested himself of his coat.

The miller's mouth opened, and a rasping, deep snarl resonated disagreeably. "There is the village, five kilometers that way."

"Ah--but that is five kilometers too far."

"You cannot stay here"--the miller's voice rose angrily--"there is but food for two."

The Englishman tapped his pipe against his heel, and blew through it to ensure its being empty. "Then, monsieur," he said, "you must go hungry."

The Frenchman rose to his feet and brandished both arms above his head. "Go!" he bellowed, and swore an oath that comprised a reference to the sacred name of one dog and the sudden demise of the afore-mentioned ten thousand devils who, it appeared, rested heavily on his conscience.

"Mademoiselle"--the young man turned politely to the girl--"I apologize for this gentleman. Shall I throw him into the stream, or would a cleansing spoil his particular style of mottled beauty?"

The miller became eloquent. His language was threatening, blasphemous, and deafening. His whole ungainly body vibrated with a fury which, at certain moments, grew to such a pitch that he would raise his chin upwards until all that could be seen was a forest of beard, the while he emitted an unearthly roar that could have been clearly heard on the village road. The girl, who had been making preparations for supper, glanced timidly at him, but continued her work. The cat, slumbering by the stove, opened his eyes dreamily as if some sweet strain had come to his ears then settled to slumber once more.

And the whole room resounded and quivered to the hurricane of sound.

With an air of complete imperturbability, the intruding guest slowly backed towards the table and became engrossed in the task of refilling his pipe, though beneath the glow-worm eyebrows his eyes (which were very clear and blue, as though his excursions into the last free element of nature had blown all the dust and grime away) held the orator in a steady look.

"Fill your pipe?" he said cryptically, choosing a moment when his host was swelling up with a breath that promised to burst his ribs.

The response was startling.

Exhausting the air from his lungs with the noise of steam escaping from an overcharged boiler, the miller rushed blindly forward, crouching so low that his beard against his discolored clothes suggested an ugly bush against a background of slushy snow.

With the precision of a guardsman forming fours, the airman took one pace to the rear with his left foot and one to the right with his right foot. This maneuver, successfully completed, placed the table between himself and his assailant, and, tilting it dexterously, he swiftly thrust that article of furniture forward, where it came into violent contact with the irate miller's knees and shins. With an indescribable howl the worthy man fell back in a paroxysm of agony, grasping his knees with both hands, and rocking to and fro like a demented dervish.

The airman bowed gravely to the girl. "I learned that," he said, "from a gentleman by name of Charlie Chaplin. If you can oblige me with a custard pie I shall hurl it at your uncle and thus complete the Chaplinesque method of discounting violence."

The young woman's brows puckered. The spectacle of her uncle's discomfiture had not disturbed her so much as this new kind of a person who could bow so courteously, whose eyes twinkled humorously, and whose words were full of gravity on the subject of custard pies. She came of a race that coordinated gestures and the play of features with speech; but this stranger of the air--_Sapristi!_

The moaning of the uncle grew less and his figure stopped its rocking; but his red, blotchy eyes looked furtively at the young man, biding their owner's time for a renewal of hostilities.

With an air of deep dejection the airman gazed at the unlovely spectacle, then, very slowly, unfastened his holster and drew a revolver.

"Monsieur," he said, "I offer peace. The alternative is--that I fill you full of holes--which would interfere with your singing. I intend to have supper here, because I saw hens outside. If they have given no eggs, we shall eat the hens themselves as a punishment. We are allies, you and I; let us be friends as well. Monsieur"--he struck a Napoleonic attitude--"_Vive l'Entente!_"

The swarthy face of the miller, who had retained his posture on the floor throughout, wrinkled hideously into a grin, which developed into a roaring laugh that set a solitary vase jingling.

With a doubtful air of appreciation, the airman surveyed him, his head inclining dubiously to one side. "Come, monsieur," he said, after the miller's unpleasant mirth had subsided, "you sit there--at the far end of the table; mademoiselle--when you have given us the supper things--here; and I, at this end. Just to show how completely I trust you, my host, I will keep my revolver beside my plate; and should it be necessary for me to blow your brains out during the meal, it will be with the very keenest regret that I lose a friend for whom I have acquired such an instantaneous and profound affection."

Thus the young lady with the guileless eyes, the youth who had descended from the clouds, and the stentorian miller with the painful knees, sat down together for their evening repast.

And the mill-stream, chuckling as it sportively tumbled over the chute, made a pleasant serenade.

IV

The airman glanced at his wrist-watch; it was half-past nine. The miller slept by the side of the stove, his chin crushing his beard against his chest. Louis also slept, having curled himself into a black, furry ball, apparently possessed of neither head nor tail. A clock brazenly stating the time to be five-thirty, ticked lazily as though finding itself four hours behind the correct hour, there was no chance of its ever catching up, and it only kept going because it was the sporting thing to do. Just over the clock a picture of Marshal Joffre gazed paternally on the quiet scene.

Seated at the table, which was covered by a geranium-colored cloth, the girl and the airman sat silent, while a shaded lamp lent a crimson glow through which her deep eyes gleamed, like the first stars of a summer evening.

To her romance had come.

She was no longer the miller's niece, but the girl who had seen the Fairy Prince. All the sighs, all the questionings, all the longings of her girlhood had culminated in this amazing adventure of a fair-haired knight who, descending from the clouds, had proceeded to terrorize her uncle who was feared for miles around. It was wonderful. And he was so droll, this young man; and his voice had a little soothing drop in it, at times, that left a fluttering echo in her heart.

She had left the convent when ten years of age, on the death of her mother. Her father--but then gossip was never kind. He was an officer who had deserted his pretty little wife for another woman--or so rumor had it; and her mother had died, a flower stricken by a frost. The daughter had been taken by a relative, the owner of a lonely mill, and for six years had lived in solitude, her horizon of life limited to the adjacent village, her knowledge of women gained from the memory of a sad, yearning face, paler than the pillow on which it rested, and an occasional visit to the curé's sister. Of men she knew only her uncle and the few villagers that had not gone to fight for La Belle France.

From unquestioning childhood she had passed to that stage in a girl's life when the emotions leap past the brain, fretful of the latter's plodding pace. Her mind untutored, unsharpened by contact with other minds, left her the language and the reasonings of a child; but her imagination, feeding on the strange longings and dreams which permeated her life, pictured its own world where romance held sway over all the creatures that inhabited its realm.

It is the instinct of a little child to picture unreal things--the unconscious protest of immaturity against the commonplaceness of life. But with the education of to-day and the labyrinth of artificiality which characterizes modern living, the imaginativeness of childhood disappears, except in a few great minds who, retaining it, are hailed by the world as possessors of genius.

Unhampered (or unhelped, as the case may be) by association with the patchwork pattern of society, the miller's niece had retained her gift of imagination, without which the solitude and the monotony of her days would have been unendurable; until, blending it with the budding flower of womanhood, she found mystery in the moaning of the wind. While the sun danced upon the grass her spirit mingled with the sunlight; and when the moon exercised her suzerainty of the heavens the poetry in her soul thrilled to sweet dreams of lover's wooings (though her unreasoned rapture often ended in unreasoned tears upon the pillow).... She found melancholy in the coloring of an autumn leaf, and laughter in the music of the mill-stream.... There were smugglers' tales in a northeast gale, and fairy stories in a summer's shower.

The doctrine of pleasure so feverishly followed by her sisters to-day was unknown to her--as was its insidious reaction which comes to so many women, with the dulling of the perceptions, the blinding of eyes to the colors of life, the deadening of ears to the music of nature, until they cannot hear the subtle melody of happiness itself, so closely allied to the somber beauty of sorrow.

"Little one"--the aviator's voice was very soft, so that the ticking of the clock sounded clearly above it--"in a few minutes I must go. It is a dark night, and of necessity I must get to the village to-night, and be on my way before dawn."

Her eyes were hidden by her drooping eyelashes. "You will return--yes?" she asked, without looking up.

He smiled rather wistfully. "'When the red-breasted robins are nesting,'" he quoted slowly, "'I shall come.'"

The clock ticked wearily on.... A few drops of rain fell upon the roof.

"Monsieur"--the crimson in her cheeks deepened--"you must not smile; but it is in my book, here."

She took from the table _The Fairy Prince_, and handed it to him. He gazed at it with a seriousness he might have shown towards a book of Scottish theology.

"You know, monsieur"--she appeared deeply concerned in the design of the geranium table-cover--"I never leave the mill-house unless to attend mass, and sometimes--perhaps you would think so, too--it is very lonesome; no brother, no sister, just Louis and my uncle."

He nodded, and, with an air of abstraction, his brow wrinkled sympathetically, and his fingers strummed five-finger exercises on the table.

"It must be very dull," he said.

"But no, monsieur"--her eyes looked up in protest--"not dull--just lonesome."

He sustained an imaginary note with his little finger, frowned thoughtfully until his eyebrows almost obscured his eyes, then came down the scale with slow and measured pace.

"Well, little lady who is never dull, and what has all this to do with _The Fairy Prince_?"

"It is because I have no sisters, no friends, that--that I pretend. But you do not understand."

He played some chord with both hands.

"Very young people and very old ones pretend," he said, with dreamy sententiousness; "pretending is what makes them happy. But the Prince----?"

She smiled deprecatingly. "When I read, monsieur, I think that the girl--there is always a girl, is there not?" He nodded gravely. "I do not think it is she," she went on, "but myself; and when the book is finished, and she marries her lover, then I am happy ... and dream...."

"'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,'" he murmured, and trilled with his first and second fingers.

"So, monsieur," she continued, glancing shyly at him, "in that book----"

"There is a girl."

"Yes. And a Fairy Prince who was very handsome."

"Like me?"

"It does not say, monsieur."

"Ah!"

"But I think so," she said earnestly, "for he was the handsomest man in all France."

"It said nothing of England?"

"No, monsieur, only France."

He nodded with great dignity, and motioned her to proceed. She leaned forward with her elbows on the table, and rested her chin on her interlocked fingers.

"To-day I was reading it to Louis," she said, "when, just at the moment that they met--_vous voilà!_--you came. Monsieur," she said naïvely, "are you a fairy prince?"

He considered, with head characteristically on one side.

"N-no," he said, "I cannot claim that, but----"

"Ah, yes?" Her face lit up with delighted anticipation.

"I am a prince of the air." He struck an attitude and held it.

"Oh!" Her lips parted in ecstasy and her cheeks, which had been crimson, became scarlet. "You--are really a prince?"

"Of the air, mademoiselle." He folded his arms and tilted his chair back. His face was still grave, but his voice had a sense of distance in it, and his light eyes widened as though they saw the world his words were picturing. "My kingdom is greater than all the kingdoms of the earth, and when I ride, my steed with wings takes me towards the stars. For sport I play with clouds and race the wind; at night the moon gives me light; and when I travel there are no mountains to climb, no lakes to cross. I go faster than the swiftest horse, and ride from villages to cities, out into the country, and over the sea with a steed that never tires."

"But, monsieur," she cried, "this is wonderful!"

He looked frankly into her eyes. "It _is_ wonderful," he said.

For a few minutes neither spoke, and the soft symphony of raindrops played through the quietness of the night.

"Your Majesty," she said timorously, "are you very brave? You understand," she hurried on as a slight blush darkened the tan of his cheeks, "in fairy books the prince always fights a dragon or a wicked giant."

"Don't uncles count?"

She made a pretty _moue_.

"As a matter of fact," he said slowly, "there was a wicked Emperor--a blustering popinjay with a madman's vanity--who decreed that all the world should be his slaves, and sent his armies into France and Belgium to enforce his will. My brothers heard of this, and came from countries and dominions thousands of miles away. Across great continents of water they sailed, and, with their brothers from the little Islands of the North Sea, came to France...."

"Your voice is very sad," she said tenderly. Her nature, that knew every mood of a summer breeze, had caught the inflection of his words, understanding by their tone what the vagueness of his words hid from her mind.

"So many have died," he said, looking away from her. "Almost every day some one rides out into the sunlight to his death, young, brave, and smiling.... Mademoiselle, it is wonderful how they smile."

Tick--tick--tick.

For more than a minute neither spoke, then, with a smile that was strangely boyish, he squared his shoulders and ran his fingers through his rumpled hair.

"Ha!" he laughed; "what fancies get into a scatter-brain like mine when the rain's a-pattering on the roof. If you will allow me, little Pippa, I shall smoke."

"Little Peepa?" she laughed delightedly.

"Pippa," he assented, puffing smoke as he lighted the pipe. "I think I shall call you that. You see, according to her biographer, Mr. Browning, she worked in the silk-mills all the year, but one day she had to herself, from dawn to midnight, and so as to enjoy it to the full she--well, she pretended, like you."

"But that is droll," she said eagerly, "for every Easter after Sunday, my uncle, who is fatigued from so much chanting in the church, always goes to Boulogne and becomes drunk for one whole day. On Wednesday he returns. These six years he has done it always the same; and on the Tuesday it is wonderful. I am alone with Louis, and we ask all the people in our books to visit us."

A sudden gleam of excitement lit his eyes.

"The Tuesday after Easter?"

"Always it is so."

"Pippa," he said--but checked the remainder of his words. He placed the pipe in his mouth and ran five-finger exercises at a terrific speed.

"Pippa," he said again, then, ceasing his display of virtuosity, leaned back and gazed at her from beneath his eyebrows. "Next spring, on the Tuesday after Easter, I will come for you."

She caught her breath deliriously.

"Beyond the village road," he went on, speaking slowly and distinctly, "I saw a big pasture-field at the top of the hill. Be there as the sun is just above the horizon, and I will come in an aeroplane."

"And, your Majesty, you will take me to your kingdom?"

"For one day, Pippa, to the great city of London--the city that is open to all who possess a golden key. We shall return by the stars at night."

"Then"--her voice shook, and the brilliancy of her eyes was softened by sudden tears, as the rays of an August sun are sometimes tempered by a shower, "then--at last--I am to see the world--boys and girls and palaces and----"

"To say nothing of prunes and potentates."

"Oh, but, your Majesty, it is too wonderful. I am certain it will not come true."

He rose and quietly placed his chair against the wall. "Pippa," he said, "there are only two things that could prevent it. One, if there is a storm and--the other----" he shook his head impatiently.

The girl took down a work-basket, and after searching its contents extracted a tiny trinket.

"You mean," she said, stepping lightly over to him, "that you might go to join your brothers--those who smiled so bravely?"

"We never know, Pippa," he answered.

She reached for the lapel of his coat and pinned the little keepsake on it. "'Tis a black cat," she said. "I saw it in the village store, so small and funny, like Louis. It is a gift from little Pippa, who will pray to the Virgin every night that her Prince may not be killed--unless----"

He looked at the little mascot, which dangled above a couple of ribbons.

"Unless?" he said.

For a moment there was a flash in her eyes and a sudden crimson flush in her cheeks that startled him. For the first time in her life she felt the instinct of a tigress; that strange fusion of passion and timidity that comes to women of her kind when it seems they may lose the object of their love.

"Unless he--forgets." The words were spoken between lips that hardly moved.

"By the sacred bones of my ancestors," he said, with a sort of sincere grandiloquence, "I promise to come. So that I shall always think of you, my Pippa, I will paint a black cat upon the machine, and woe to the Hun who dares to singe its whiskers!"

A few minutes later, the heavily coated figure of an aviator was plowing its way through a drizzling rain, along a dark and solitary road. His pace was extraordinarily long for his height, and he appeared to be stepping over a perpetual array of obstacles at least one foot high.

By a casement window a girl, with hair like the dusk, stood gazing towards the road that was hidden in darkness. Silently and motionless she watched the melancholy drops of rain as they fell upon the glass, until, unconsciously, her lips parted and she sang, very softly, the little song taught to the maiden in the story by the lonely shepherd:

"Maman, dites moi ce qu'on sent quand on aime. Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment?"

She paused in the improvised melody, and repeated the words slowly.

"Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment?"

And then the little mistress of the mill laid herself upon her bed and wept profusely; but whether it was because she was happy or because she was sorrowful, let those explain who understand the psychology of a woman's tears.

Downstairs, Louis and the miller slept profoundly.

V

It was several months later that an airman emerged from his hut into the chilly air of an April night that was lingering grudgingly over its last hour of darkness. There was a sullen rumble of guns borne on a restless breeze that stirred the long grass of the fields and set the leaves in the trees whispering and quivering. The drone could be heard of a lonely aeroplane returning from its night-ride over the enemy lines.... Above the distant roll of the artillery, one gun stood out like a pizzicato note on a giant bass violin.

The airman passed the silent aerodrome, and, with difficulty accustoming himself to the darkness, made out the shadow of a machine in the adjoining field. He heard the sigh of cylinders sucking in the petrol as the mechanics warmed the machine, and walked over to it. For a moment he spoke to the men before climbing into the pilot's seat. There followed the incisive monotone of the flier's incantation between himself and the non-commissioned officer.

"Petrol on: switch off."

"Petrol on: switch off."

"Contact."

"Contact."

The propellers were swung into action, hesitated for a moment, then wheezily subsided.

The incantation was repeated; the propeller blades coughed, and leaped into a deafening roar. The mechanics sprang aside, and the machine, stumbling forward for a few yards, turned into the wind. There was a sudden acceleration of the propeller, a crescendo from the engines, and the machine made swiftly across the field, rising as it attained flying speed, and disappearing into the night.

A few moments later its light was mixing with the dulling stars, and the drone of its engine could be heard only at the whim of the breeze.