Part 9

"It was partly a spirit of bravado made me do it, and partly a desire to wrestle with truth. I cannot say how hard it was at first to endure their company, their incessant, meaningless profanity. I hated every one of them. To salute an officer in the street caused me such humiliation that I thought of desertion a dozen times. From my contempt of my fellow-soldiers to an understanding of their nobility has been a hard, cruel road to travel; but I have traveled it, and I think that somewhere on the road there is a cross whereon my pride was crucified. Vera, my prayer is no longer that of the Pharisee, but of the Publican. I was offered a commission; I was urged to join the signalers or the machine-gun section, because there I should find men more after my own stamp; but I refused--the memory of your words made me stick with the men I started with.

"I have found them crude, uneducated, unambitious, but true as steel, and asking no better reward for their heroism than that their 'missus and kids' will be looked after at home. I tell you, Vera, that when the war is over we shall have to realize that it is not only the consumptive and the imbecile that deserve care and thought. There is a grandeur, a manhood, in the ordinary, unlovely, unkempt man of the streets that our civilization has failed to bring out, but war has done it. So much has war given to us; so much has peace failed to give.

"Life has become a riddle to me, still fascinating, but fascinatingly puzzling. Perhaps I shall find the answer in No Man's Land.

"Good-bye, dear girl. Don't think from the tone of my letter that I have forgotten how to smile (this is where real humor is found, for humor was always a twin to tragedy). But I am forgetting how to scoff. I suppose, though, that I haven't changed beyond recognition, for I believe behind my back I am called 'The Duke.'

"Like my comrades, I have written to a loved one at home.

"I trust, Vera, that it is _au revoir_.

"DENNIS.

"D. O. Montague, Pte. No. 67,895, "Brindle's Battalion, C.E.F."

IX

"Four minutes!" A subaltern, who had reached the Brindle's Battalion only the night before, stood with his back to the parapet, his wrist turned so that he could study the face of his watch. Half-a-dozen rifles spat at the German trench opposite. The attack was to be a surprise, without preliminary artillery fire.

"Three minutes!" There was a slight catch in the lieutenant's voice as he watched the ominous course of the hand of his watch ticking off the seconds. Dennis Montague turned to look at him, wondering where he had seen him before, and idly conjecturing how he had earned that little splash of color on his breast.

A signaler looked up from his phone. "O.C. wants to know if everything is ready, sir."

"Two minutes! Has every man his gas-helmet, water-bottle, iron ration? Right. Tell the O.C. everything's O.K."

There was a coarse jest from a grizzled corporal; a few laughed nervously. A little chap, who had lied about his age, caught his breath in a sob he could not stifle. The young officer, who was beside him, reached out his hand and patted the lad's shoulder.

"One minute!" Every man crouched for the spring--there was a mumbled prayer--a curse--a laugh. Montague took a deep, quivering breath, and his trembling hand felt for the bayonet-stud to see that it was firm.

"Come on, Brindles! Give 'em hell!" The subaltern leaped to the parapet, stood silhouetted a moment against the dull, cloudy sky, and, without a word, fell back into the trench--a corpse. And in that moment Montague remembered him. He was the "decent enough fellow"--"lacking in initiative."

Cursing, shouting, laughing, the men scrambled over the breastwork, and were met by a torrent of machine-gun fire that swept through their ranks with pitiless accuracy.

"Something's wrong!" yelled Major Watson from the center. "They knew we were coming;" and he whirled around twice and dropped in his tracks. Montague leaped forward with a hoarse, inarticulate shout, when he felt a blow on his arm as though it had been struck by a red-hot iron. He fell, but rose immediately, madly excited, muttering words that meant nothing. The charge had stopped halfway, and all about him his comrades stood irresolute, desperate, unable to advance, determined not to retreat.

"Come on," shrieked the adjutant, "for God's sake!" And he fell, choking, vomiting blood, with a bullet in his throat.

Without an officer left, the men looked wildly about, the bullets spitting around them and taking their steady, merciless toll. With a great feeling of ecstasy, Montague staggered to the front.

"Steady, the Brindles!" he yelled hoarsely. "Shake out the line to the left--cold steel, Brindles! Come on!"

"Follow the Duke!" roared a dozen voices; and they hurled themselves forward.

They hacked their way into the trench, but their triumph was short-lived. Things had gone badly on the left, and the signal to retire flashed along the line. With horrible blaspheming, the Brindles gave up their trench and started back for their own line. When he was half-way across a bullet struck Montague in the shoulder, then another in the thigh, and he sank to the ground unconscious.

When he awoke the moonlight was streaming over the stricken field. He bit his lip to keep from crying out at the sudden spasm of pain in his shoulder, and then something he saw almost stopped the beating of his heart. A figure was slowly crawling towards him, inch by inch, but steadily, ominously coming nearer with every moment. His left arm was helpless, and he tried to reach for his bayonet by turning over.

"Pard, are you dead?"

Never did sounds of sweetest music fall more gratefully on human ears than the words uttered by Private Waller on the night of October 16, 1916, on No Man's Land, Somewhere in France.

"Thank God!" cried Montague, his voice weak and quavering. "Waller--old--boy."

"Damn!" muttered Private Waller. The Germans, with customary fiendishness, were searching the ground with rifle-fire to prevent any attempt at rescue. "Are you much hurt, pard?"

"I'm used up pretty bad," Montague answered weakly, and in incorrect English. Things change in No Man's Land.

"I'm the third as has come after you," whispered Waller; "Sykes and Thompson got theirs."

"Coming--for me?" Montague's voice trailed off into a querulous sob.

"Sure--those of us as got back shook hands on it that we'd get the Duke back dead or alive."

Montague tried to speak, but only two scalding tears slowly trickled down his cheeks. He was weak from loss of blood, and he was learning a bitter lesson in the moonlight on the stricken field.

"I'll hoist you up as easy as I can," whispered Private Waller eagerly, "and I'll sort of crawl; and if they spot us, I'll let you down easy. Come on, pard."

Fifty yards--that was all--but fifty yards of unspeakable agony. The blood flowed again from Dennis's wounds and matted over Waller's hair. A dozen times he would have fainted, but he grit his teeth, and crawling, grasping, falling, Waller took him to the edge of the trench. And then a bullet caught the little man, and he dropped.

"Good-bye, pard," he said.

So died Private W. Waller, of His Majesty's Canadian Expeditionary Force.

X

Almost a year later, a one-armed man was walking along a quiet street in the northern suburbs of a great Canadian city. He paused at a pretty little cottage that nestled in a well-kept garden to speak to a young woman whose black dress was mute testimony to her tragic bereavement.

"'Ow can I ever thank you, Mr. Montague," she said, "for giving me this cottage and going guardian to little 'Arry? And your wife, too, is that kind and beautiful that after she comes--and she is in and out nearly hevery day--I feel as if an angel had been 'ere. Well, if here ain't little 'Arry with his face all dirty!"

A sturdy urchin stumbled forward, and in some way the one-armed man hoisted him to his shoulder.

"Hello, pard!" said Montague.

The little chap chuckled and pulled at his hat.

"I often wonders," said the little mother, "why you always calls him 'pard.' Bill used to call you his pard, but I knew all along you wasn't. You was a gentleman, Mr. Montague."

"Mrs. Waller," said Montague, and his voice was very low and soft, "I lay one night, wounded and dying, on No Man's Land. Your husband came for me, and he called me 'pard,' and he died for me. Perhaps you may understand a little of--what it means to me now."

Tears, bitter tears, the heritage of war. Mrs. Waller wept silently, and Montague's eyes looked past the garden, past the countryside, and saw neither trees nor houses, but a strip of land guarded by wire entanglements, and two lines of trenches where men lived, and laughed, and learned, and died.

* * * * *

A little later the same one-armed man stood at a gate that gave entrance to a splendid lawn. It was his home, and as he stood for a moment drinking in the calm and peace of Nature at sundown, a girl emerged from the house and came towards him with outstretched hands.

Wonderfully happy, maimed, but filled with deep content, Dennis Montague, the man who had scoffed, went forward to meet his wife, the girl who had had the courage to hurt the thing she loved. And the deepening rays of the setting sun spread a golden carpet for them to walk upon.

THE AIRY PRINCE

I

On a hillock that overlooked a mill-stream in Picardy, a girl of sixteen was lying, face downwards, reading a book. The noise of the water tumbling over the chute was a song to which her ears had grown accustomed, but more than once she looked up as the October wind rose and fell in a chromatic whine. A dark, thickening cloud crept sullenly towards the earth, throwing its shadow on her book.

She gazed up at it and sighed.

A black cat, his green eyes glowing suspiciously in the fading light, stalked from the mill-house and furtively watched a wanton leaf that was flirting hilariously with the autumn breeze, until, still coquetting, it was caught by the stream and carried to destruction.

The cat's teeth showed for a moment in a sinister grin. Cautiously measuring each step, he climbed to the top of the hillock, crouched suspiciously as a blade of grass moved in the wind, then scampered boldly up to the girl and settled ostentatiously upon the open pages of the book, for a siesta.

"_Tiens!_" The girl started, laughingly caught the offender by the ear, and pulled him to one side. "Louis, you have very bad manners," she said, speaking in French. "You come so, without asking permission, and you go to sleep on _The Fairy Prince_. Wake up, Louis! To you I am speaking."

The cat opened his eyes, bent them on her with a reproving look, and slowly closed them once more.

"Louis! Wake up--listen! I will read to you _The Fairy Prince_, and if you go to sleep I'll have you gr-r-r-r-ound into black flour. See there now!"

Louis scratched his ear with a hind paw, rubbed his nose with a fore one, sneezed, opened his eyes to their widest, and generally indicated that he was thoroughly awake--in fact, was not likely ever to sleep again in this world. His little mistress gathered her shawl more tightly about her shoulders, and, crossing one foot over the other, shifted her position to secure the acme of comfort.

"Now then, my friend, attention! This is all about a little girl--like me, Louis, only she was pretty. Tell me, Louis, am I pretty, eh? Stop yawning when I ask you a question. You sleep almost all day and all night, and when you do wake up--you yawn. Pouf! Such laziness! So--this is the story. This little girl, she lived like me in a house away, ever so far away, from everything, and she was very unhappy. You understand, Louis, she was _so_ lonesome. And every night she would cry herself to sleep--as I do sometimes, because--because----Wake up, you wicked cat!"

The feline culprit stretched his paws and sat up rigidly, like a slumbering worshiper in church who has been detected in the act, but tries to indicate that he has merely been lost in contemplation of the preacher's theme. The girl frowned at Louis, and, laughing gaily, rubbed her cheek against his head.

Her laugh had hardly ended when, as her ear caught the note of melancholy in the wind, she looked up, and her face, which had hovered a moment before between a frown and a smile, was shadowed by a musing expression that left her eyes dreamy and her lips drooping in the slightest and most sensitive of curves. Her dark hair, rippling into curls, fell back from a forehead whose fullness and whiteness added to the spiritual innocence of her countenance. Without being faultless, her face had an elusive mobility of expression that altered with each mood as swiftly as the surface of a pool lying exposed to the caprices of an April morning.

"Is it not a pretty story, Louis?" Of a sudden the filmy dreaminess of her eyes had lifted, and their dark-brown depths sparkled with life. "I am so glad at the convent they made me learn to read. But it is dreadfully difficult, my friend--there are such big words, you see. Well, Louis, this little girl went one day for a walk to the top of a hill--but you shall hear exactly how it is."

She carefully found the place in the book, and, with a finger following each line in case she should miss any of it, proceeded to read in that ecstatic and unreal style of voice inevitable to young people when uttering other thoughts than their own.

"'... Reaching the top of the hill, the most beautiful little girl in the world, whose eyes were brighter than stars, and whose lips were redder than the heart of a rose' (like me, Louis--yes?) 'sat down on a fallen tree and started to sing a song which she had learned from a solitary shepherd near her home.'--It does not say, Louis, but I think, perhaps, the music goes like this:

"'Maman, dites moi ce qu'on sent quand on aime. Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment? Je suis tout le jour dans une peine extrême, Et la nuit, je ne sais comment. Si quelqu'un près....

"'And just then she saw a handsome cavalier approaching on foot.' (Is it not exciting, Louis?) 'He was tall and young, and was the bravest soldier in all France. He was so brave and handsome that every one called him "The Fairy Prince"'--Listen, Louis, to the wind."

The lowering clouds threw black shadows over the fields; the hurrying water of the mill-stream turned the color of ink as it made, shudderingly, for the fall of the chute. Through the ominous rise and fall of the October wind came the sound of an aeroplane in the clouds, to be lost a moment later in a boisterous rush of wind that swept the girl's tresses.

"Come, Louis, under my shawl--so! It is cold, is it not? As soon as we finish this part of the story, we shall go in by the stove and work until bed-time, then.... Do you ever dream, Louis?"

The black cat opened one green eye and closed it with the solemnity of an all-understanding wink.

"I often dream, my cat"--again the wistfulness lingered about her face--"and always it is of the world that is past the village.... Is it that I must stay here and never, never, see that world but when I dream? _Voyons_--what has all this to do with the Fairy Prince? I continue, Louis: 'As soon as the handsome cavalier saw the loveliest little girl in all the country, he came towards her....'"

The droning sound grew louder. She looked up and watched the dark billows of clouds hovering over the fields, when, suddenly, through the heavy, underhanging mist, an aeroplane appeared, descended swiftly towards the earth, straightened out its course, and soared into the clouds again.

She could hear the whirring of the machine as it circled round and round, like an angry hornet outside its nest that has been entered by an invader. The sound of the engine grew increasingly loud; again the mists parted as foam from the prow of a ship, and again the aeroplane swooped towards the earth. She could almost make out the features of the helmeted occupant, when, with a deafening roar, the machine checked its downward flight, and rose once more until the clouds took it to their bosom and hid it from sight.

"Louis!" Her voice shook. "I am frightened. Louis, we will go in and pray to the Virgin, you and I. It may be an _Allemand_, and, so 'tis said, they eat little girls--and black cats too."

The whir-r of the engines grew angry with intensity, then fainter as the machine rose to a greater height. Suddenly the droning ceased. The tumbling waters of the chute seemed insistently loud, as though jealous of the brawling monster that had dared to challenge its incessant song. The girl had just stooped to resume her book when, above the whining breeze, there was a sound like that of a saw-mill she had once heard in Étrun--but it came from the air--far over by the village road.

With a catch of her breath, she saw the aeroplane pierce the mists once more, and realized that it was pointing towards her as it descended. Rising to her feet, she pressed her hand against her mouth to keep from screaming, while ominously, noiselessly (but for an occasional hum such as wires give on a frosty night), the giant bird sped lower and nearer.

"Louis!" she cried. "Louis!"

Weak with terror, she grasped for the cat, to find that that ungallant protector had bolted ingloriously to the mill-house. Unable to move, she watched the monster as it touched the earth, bounded lightly, felt the ground a second time, and staggered unevenly over a rise in the ground. There was a final Wagnerian crescendo of the engines, and the aeroplane stopped, motionless, less than fifty yards from her.

The aviator climbed from the pilot's seat and looked about with a puzzled air. He was dressed in a leather coat which reached to the top of his riding-boots, and his head was encased in a leather helmet. Raising his goggles, he looked toward the mill-house, and, for the first time, caught sight of the girl.

For a moment he hesitated, then made towards her, taking an extraordinary length of pace for one of his medium build, and raising his knees, as a bather will do when wading through surf. He paused, irresolute, about five yards from her, saluted, unbuckled a strap, and removed his helmet with a carelessness that left his generous supply of light-brown hair standing straight up like the quills of a porcupine. His face was rather long, and, except for his eyes, which twinkled humorously, bore a look of exaggerated solemnity. Constant exposure to the sun had tanned his face a vigorous brown, but his moustache and eyebrows, which were of a size, appeared to have completely faded, and stood out, glow-worm-like, against the background of tan.

For a full minute they gazed at each other, the girl with parted lips and heightened color, the new-comer's gravity slowly giving way to the good-humored persistence of his light-blue eyes, until with a smile he ran his fingers through his rumpled hair.

"Phew!" he said.

With something between a sob and an exclamation of delight, she clapped her hands together twice, "_Ciel!_" she cried, "but I am so happy!"

The mill-stream had ceased to shudder and had resumed its song.... With an air of furtive preoccupation, Louis emerged from concealment and proceeded towards them after the manner of an unpopular Mexican President walking down the main street of an unfriendly city.... The darkening shadows blended with the early approach of night.... And her heart was beating wildly, joyously.

Adventure had come to the lonely mill-house in Picardy--and, after all, one is not always sixteen.

II

"Will you please tell me where I am?" The young man spoke in French with ease, but more than a trace of an English accent.

"This is my uncle's mill."

"Of course. And that road?----"

"But the village road, monsieur--what else?"

"And, Mademoiselle Elusive, what village may it be?"

"'Tis where the church is, monsieur; and every Sunday I go there to mass."

The pilot produced a pipe and, extracting a pouch, proceeded to fill it with tobacco.

"I am lost," he said complacently. "My compass was shot away, and the clouds are hanging too low for me to follow any landmarks."

He looked about at the steadily thickening twilight. "How far is it to the village?" he asked.

"Five kilometers--and a little better."

"The Devil!" He made a screen from the wind with the flap of his coat, and lighting his pipe, puffed it with evident satisfaction. "I shall have to leave the old 'bus' here. As a matter of fact, she's so nearly 'napoo' that I rather expected to come riding home on one plane, like the old woman with the broom. But, mademoiselle----"

"Monsieur?"

"I am very tired and distinctly hungry, and I know of a mill-house with a cosy fire in the kitchen, where a pretty little fairy that----"

"There is no fairy--only Louis."

"And who the deuce may he be?"

"The cat--_le voici!_"

He surveyed the feline with an air of tolerant gravity. "Do you think Louis may object if I remain for supper?"

"Ah--but no!" She laughed gaily, but a look of doubt changed the expression of her features in a moment. "But my uncle--he never has any one in the house. For many years I have lived alone with him. Only when the curé comes, perhaps once a month, does any one visit the mill. My uncle is very surly, a perfect bear, and often he gets drunk as well."

The young man raised his absurdly light eyebrows. "A pleasant relative, mademoiselle. And, pray, what is his grievance against his fellowmen?"

"I know not, monsieur. All week he works alone, except when he takes the flour to sell, but on Sundays he always goes to church and leads the chanting. He was taught Latin by his father, who was a gravedigger in Paris and learned it from the tombstones. So on Sundays my uncle, from his seat in the chancel, performs the chants in such a terrible voice that almost always some children scream with terror, and once Madame La Comtesse fainted."

The aviator relit his pipe, which had gone out, but did not remove his eyes from hers.

"Once," went on the girl, plucking a blade of grass and making a knot with it about her finger, "two villagers, Simon Barit and Armand Cartier, were requested by the curé, who is very small and weak, to tell my uncle to sing no more. Ah monsieur, it was terrible!"

"Yes?"

"My uncle he is a very strong man; he threw Simon Barit into the stream, and the other he chased almost to the village."

"And so, like the mill-stream, he goes on forever?"

"Ah, yes, monsieur, like the war--forever. Listen!"

A great voice, sonorous as that of the fabled giant calling for his evening meal of an Englishman, rent the air. The October wind seemed to quiver to its lowest note, and the water racing over the chute was quieter than it had been for hours.

"I must go, monsieur. It is his supper he wants."

"And may I not come too?"

"Ah--but no! I am frightened."

"Of me?"

She raised her wide brown eyes to his, and her eyelashes, which so jealously guarded those guileless depths, parted grudgingly, revealing to him their full beauty.... Another roar shattered the air, and she laid her hand upon his wrist. "You must not come," she said earnestly. "He would throw you into the stream."

His melancholy face gave way to a boyish grin. "If he did, mademoiselle, my ghost would haunt him forever. All night it would sing outside his window--and, in truth, my singing is no less terrible than his."

There was another roar, followed by a reference to the untimely decease of ten thousand devils.

Without a word, she reached for her book, and, throwing her shawl over her left shoulder, hurried away. The aviator watched her girlish figure with its unconscious grace, then, turning about, he strolled to the machine, and, sitting on the side of the fuselage, surveyed its bullet-punctured carcass.