Part 15

His companion rose to his feet, and his jaw stiffened ominously. He felt for his revolver-holster and adjusted his haversack.

"Tell the O.C. I've deserted," he said grimly. "I'm going up the line to join the first bunch that'll take me. There's some vermin up there that I reckon need exterminating."

Craighouse muttered something about discipline.

"To hell with discipline!" said Lieutenant Simpson, ex-mining engineer of Colorado. "I'm going----"

A corporal had halted before them and saluted. "O.C.'s compliments," he said tersely, "and the company is to go up the line as auxiliary infantry. Parade falling in now, sir. We move off in an hour."

When the officers reached their headquarters they found a scene of bustling activity. Gas-masks were being inspected, ammunition supplied, first-aid packages given out where they had been lost, rifles cleaned and inspected, and all the accouterments of war checked and shortages replaced.

Craighouse strode up to his section, ignoring the sergeant's salute. "We're going into this scrap," he said quietly, though his voice vibrated oddly, "and I want every mother's son of you to see red. There's a girl out on that road who is dying of fever, and its fear of the Hun that is driving her on, and before night she'll be lying dead by the side of the road. She's somebody's daughter--somebody's sister--and, by Heaven, we'll make the Hun pay for it! What do you say, you Yankee sons o' guns?"

They cheered him to the echo, and some of them swore, and some of them laughed (but the laugh had a cruel ring in it), and some of them felt the salt tears stinging their eyes--but every one saw red.

Craighouse slowly walked over to his hut to superintend the packing of his own things. In his heart was a great exaltation and a mad love for the men who looked to him for leadership. In the seclusion of his hut he did what he had not done for years. He knelt for a moment by the side of his kit and prayed that he might quit himself like a man.

There are moments in war when men's very souls are touched by a nobility, by a compassion, by a reverence that rises above all creeds. Out of the depths they have risen to heights supernal.

X

In a private ward at Abbeville an American officer lay in great pain, and tossed restlessly in a delirium of fever. A young woman in the uniform of a V.A.D. watched by his side, and, sponging his palms and forehead, sought to soothe him with a gentleness and a tenderness that a mother would show to her child. The man was badly wounded in chest and leg, and exposure had brought a fever to torment his sufferings. Once he sat up and glared wildly at her.

"Did the guns get away?" he cried. "Did they get away?"

"Hush!" she said softly. "You must not talk. You are very ill."

He sank back on the pillows and laughed. "There's a girl lying dead on the road," he said; "but there's a crowd of Huns this morning who are answering the roll-call in hell."

He was silent for several minutes, then frowned heavily. "Look here," he said sternly, "I wish you would stop driving nails into my knee. Who do you think I am--Hindenburg?"

He laughed again, then groaned, and great drops of perspiration stood out on his brow. The woman ministered to him with the gentle firmness of her sex that rises to its best when face to face with suffering. She smoothed his pillows and shifted his position so that he might not irritate his wounds; and, as if soothed by her presence, he sighed weakly and broke into a little negro melody:

"All dat I got on de whole plantation, All dat I got in de whole creation, In de big roun' worl' or de deep-blue skies, Is dat fat li'l feller wid his mammy's eyes, Li'l feller wid his mammy's eyes."

His voice was very low and soft. Then he suddenly sat up in bed and pointed past her. "Look!" he cried. "The cavalry! The cavalry! By Heaven, how they ride! Look at that officer! Great Scott! it's Oaklands!--Good old Oaklands!--Come on, men--one last fight!--Get those guns away--d' you hear? Get those guns away--_now_!"

Weak from the effort he had made, he sank back with a moan; and the woman stroked his brow, and kept back the tears which welled to her eyes. For half-an-hour he did not speak; then he went through the pantomime of lighting a cigarette.

"The reason I can't marry her," he said abruptly, "is the same reason that East is East and West is West. What can I offer her? She can't dress on two manuscripts a month; and, besides, she knows nothing of building bridges. If I made a great success I might come to her, but--as I am now--no--no." He solemnly shook his head and flicked the ash from the imaginary cigarette. "Can you picture Lady Dorothy in a pretty little cottage outside New York, helping me to write--my constant inspiration--the mother of my children? Can you picture her sharing my discouragements; telling me I can write if the whole world says I cannot; believing in me when I've lost belief in myself? Can you see her motoring into New York with me, and the two of us dining at Rector's to celebrate the acceptance of a play? Would she be happy in such a life? No--no--no; as Euclid says, it 'is absurd.' By the way, my dear fellow, you might shift the grand piano, will you? It is resting on my knee."

His voice trailed into silence, and he sank into a slumber. Twilight was throwing its cloak over the earth when he spoke again. His hand reached out, and she took it in both of hers.

"I thought I was dying," he murmured. "I think I should have died there--in that ditch--but Dorothy--Dorothy--was beside me.... She held my hand when everything went dark--she wept a little.... It was only a dream, I know; but I lived. She must never know I loved her--because----"

"Lawrence!" The word was low and stifled. "Lawrence"--that was all. Then she leaned over and kissed his lips.

_Galatea had come to life._

XI

The first darkening shadows of an August night crept over the lawns of Oaklands, and settled about the turrets of the house like a mist. Inside, in the music-room, a pale American officer was telling some story--a story that kept his listeners silent and made the distant cry of a hawk sound strangely eerie and loud. He had three auditors--an elderly man, who had an unlit cigarette in his fingers; a woman, with gray locks, who sat, motionless, with folded hands; and a young woman, whose brown hair was like gold, and in whose deep-blue eyes there was a mingled look of pain and love.

"We knew when dawn broke," went on the American, "that we were outflanked, and we tried to get the guns away; but the Huns saw our move, and came at us with bayonets. We formed a line in front of the guns, Scots and Englishmen, and the few of our fellows who were left, and we did our best to give the gunners a chance, but they were on us too soon. Everything looked over, when we heard the cavalry coming. God! how our men shouted as they saw the squadron--that is all there were--bear down on the Germans! Their officer seemed to bear a charmed life, for he thrust and cut like a demon, while his commands rang out above the whole shock and crash of the fight. The Germans fell back, and this officer wheeled about, shouting instructions for the guns and rallying his men. For the first time I saw his face as he rode up to me. It was your boy."

There was a deathly silence for a moment, unbroken by a sound from his hearers, though a solitary tear fell slowly on the older woman's cheek.

"We contrived to get the guns started back, and we retreated to a sunken road which gave us protection. It was on the way there that I was shot in the knee, but managed to keep up, when a shell lit between two guns and killed some of the horses. We had to leave them, and went on; but a few minutes later we heard a shout. The Germans were surging about the guns, and the little group of cavalry had turned and charged right into the center of them. I was hit again, and dropped; but Simpson, one of our officers from Colorado, led our men back to their assistance, and they fought till only Simpson and eight others were left. Then he fell dead beside the body of your lad who had led the cavalry."

There was a long silence, broken finally by the voice of the older woman. "I am glad that Douglas died bravely," she said, and her voice was low and calm, "and I am proud that he lies in France beside a very gallant American gentleman."

As if by mutual consent, every one rose, and the two women left the room together.

The old nobleman stood by the fireplace and gazed at the undulating lawns that showed from the windows in the deepening shroud of night. "It was good of you to tell us that," he said; "it will make my wife's sorrow more easy to bear." He walked slowly to a window and passed his hand wearily over his brow. "Sometime," he went on gently, "I must show you his room. We are keeping it just as it was."

Craighouse said nothing, but in his heart was a great understanding.

The first silver rays of the moon were dancing on the grass, when the earl spoke again. "It is hard for my wife," he said; "but she will be proud to know that she gave everything she had for--for England."

The American's heart sank. "Everything?" he stammered. "You mean----"

The older man's head was bowed with the simple dignity of his grief. "I have not told her yet," he said, "but I received an Admiralty message to-day that my second son's destroyer has gone down. He is reported 'missing.'"

XII

It was nearly an hour later, when Craighouse was wandering about the lawns in the glistening moonlight, that he heard the rustle of skirts behind him. It was Lady Dorothy, and her eyes were shining like twin-stars.

"I thought you would be here," she said. "It is a night that draws one to it."

"It is a night for memories," he said quietly. "What bitter-sweet things they have become since we had war!"

"Yes;" and she sighed.

For a little time they spoke of the sorrows and the tragedies of their world; they talked of Oaklands, which would pass from her family because there was no heir; they played on the minor chords of life, and in their voices the melancholy elegy for beautiful things that had died found expression in their hushed and murmuring tones.

But they were young, and in the heart of youth there is always Spring; and the witchery of a moonlight night was calling to it. The minor strains trembled into silence, and the melody of hearts that are young took its place. She had deep-blue eyes that were never meant for tears, and he had a nature that responded to the beauty of life as an Æolian harp to the moods of the wind.

As men and maids have done for generations, they talked of themselves. (A dangerous topic when the moon is making fairy-rings upon the grass.) They traced their friendship from his first visit, and lightly touched on the weary hours when she watched by his bedside in France. They laughed, they sighed, and once their fingers touched by accident, and he felt a thrill as the hot blood rushed to his cheeks. He experienced a sudden resentment against her wild-rose coloring, the marble fullness of her throat, and the luxury of silky, brown hair which held a vagrant moonbeam in a lingering caress. It was a protest of the brain to the senses against the allurement of beauty.

"We must never meet again," he said severely.

"You are right," she answered wistfully, and something like a smile lurked mischievously in the corners of her mouth. The moon plays havoc with men, but lends great discernment to the daughters of earth.

Another half-hour passed, full of words that meant so little and silences that meant so much. Then, with a quick contraction of his shoulders and a deepening frown, he turned and faced her squarely.

"I came to your home," he said, "to gather material for satire. I found it in your parents--in your brothers--in you. In my room are ten completed articles which I am going to send to New York. They are my impressions of the English. They will be published as the psychology of England studied under the microscope of a satirist."

"And I form one of your satirical studies?"

"Yes. I referred to you as Galatea, and to myself as Pygmalion. You supply the feminine interest which is so necessary. I pictured you as a statue amidst stifling conventionality, and I was the artist who tried to bring you to life."

"With what success?"

He thrust his hands into his pockets, and his shoulders drooped listlessly. "The artist," he said, "fell in love with her the moment the marble became human. He was a fool."

"I am so sorry," she said gently; and for a brief moment--a very brief moment--her hand rested in his. Whereupon the moon was constrained to disappear behind a cloud to hide her smile. "And what happened to her?"

"Oh," he said, "being a woman, she decided to torture Pygmalion. She came out on the lawn at night with him, and, by the music of her voice and the charm of her beauty, inflicted an hour's exquisite pain. I am like a man," he said, with an abrupt descent from the impersonal, "who knows that on the morrow he will be stricken with blindness, and is looking for the last time on a sunset." Whereupon Captain Craighouse sighed like the classic furnace, and Lady Dorothy Oaklands smiled again, though her eyes were glistening with a mysterious dew. "To-morrow morning," he went on, "the sculptor, sometimes known as Don Quixote, is going away to forget about the statue. It is the only thing he can do."

Her eyes were lowered to the ground. "The woman--Galatea," she murmured--"she just forgets, I suppose?"

"Women forget easily," he said, and thought he spoke the truth.

"Listen," she said, and her voice was so soft that he could just make out the half-whispered words; "let me tell you the real story of Pygmalion and Galatea. When the marble became life, she loved the artist who had created her soul. But he didn't return her love; it had been an experiment with him. So the woman in her froze and died, and Galatea became a statue again."

He caught her hands in his, and his eyes flashed like brilliants. "Dorothy!" he cried, "you are not jesting? You are not just--cruel?"

She said nothing; but, oh, what eloquence sometimes lies in a woman's silence! Then did Captain Craighouse of New York say many things which would look absurd in the cold medium of print, but which sounded like sweet music to his companion on that moonlight August night. He likened her to a motif that remained in his life as a melody that haunts the memory. He told her he would scale the heights of fame to cast its laurels at her feet.

"You stupid boy," she laughed caressingly; "as if anything you could ever do would be finer than just this--that you are fighting for your country!"

In some mysterious way his hands reached her shoulders; and in an equally inexplicable manner she was suddenly in his arms, and her hot cheek was against his.

"Lawrence dear," she murmured, "Galatea only knew one thing about Pygmalion--that he had brought her into being, and so she loved him. That was all."

And the moon, feeling that her evening had been a complete success, disappeared behind a cloud, and stayed there.

XIII

A raw wind from the sea swept against the mammoth building of the _New York Monthly Journal_. The editor of that famous publication crossed to the rattling window and looked at Broadway, far beneath. A few drops of rain mingled with the dust that eddied about in little whirlpools of wind.

In his hand he held a long letter from Craighouse, and, after a pause, he re-read the ending.

... "And so I crept downstairs in the early morning and built a fire of my articles, in a grate. I am sorry to have failed you; but, if one would ridicule England, first let him go to the sea and watch the men that go out in ships--and the men that never come back from the sea. If he would scoff at the simple folk of England, first let him stop at a farm I saw, where an old man of seventy is toiling in the fields, that the King's horses and men may be fed; while his four sons sleep in France. If he would laugh at the old families of England, let him come to the old homes where every son went without a murmur, and where, too often, the last one fell beside his brothers, because England had called for men.

"If he would make the mothers of England a study for satire, first he should mock the woman at the foot of the Cross, for her love and their love, her grief and their grief, are one."

Like gnomes, the people on Broadway hurried on in an endless, diverging torrent of humanity.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Blower of Bubbles, by Arthur Beverley Baxter