"And now," said the blind man slowly, "you are trying to deceive _me_--you are both trying! Suzanne, why did you keep it from me that your hair had turned white with grief? Didn"t you know I"d love you more, for such a proof of love for me?"
"Indeed, I--oh, you mustn"t think----" she began to stammer. "I loved your dear eyes as you loved my hair. But I love it twice as much now.
I----"
He cut her short. "I don"t think. I _know_. _Cherie_, you need have had no fear. I shall worship you after this."
"She could never have been so lovely before. Her hair is like spun gla.s.s," Dierdre tried to atone. "People would turn to look at her in the street. Monsieur le Capitaine, you should be proud of such a beautiful wife."
"I am," the man answered, "proud of her beauty, more proud of her heart."
"But it is I who am proud!" the woman caught him up. "He has lost his dear eyes that all women admired, yet he has won honours such as few men have. What does it matter about my poor hair? You can see by the ribbons on his breast, Mademoiselle, what he is--what he has done for his country. You also, Monsieur, you see----"
"I don"t see, Madame, because I, too, am blind," said Brian. "But I feel--I feel that your husband has won something which means more than his eyes, more than all his honours and decorations: a great love."
"You are _blind_!" exclaimed the Frenchwoman. "I should never have guessed. Ah, Madame, it is I who must now ask your pardon! I called you "Mademoiselle." Already I had forgiven you what you said in error. But I did not understand, or the forgiveness would have been easier. Your first thought was for your husband--your blind husband--just as my thought always is and will be for mine! You wanted him to have a place by the fire. Your temper was in arms, not for yourself, but for him--his comfort. How well I understand now! Madame, you and I have the same cross laid upon us. But it"s a cross of honour. It is _le croix de guerre_!"
"I wish I had a right to it!" Dierdre broke out. "I haven"t, because he is not my husband. He doesn"t care for me--except maybe, as a friend.
But to atone to him for injustice, to punish myself for hurting _you_, I"ll confess something. I"d marry him to-morrow, blind as he is--perhaps _because_ he is blind!--and be happy and proud all my life--if he would have me. Only,--_I know he won"t_."
"My child! I care too much for you," Brian answered, after an instant of astonished silence, "far too much to take you at your word. Some men might--but not I! Monsieur le Capitaine here, and Madame, were husband and wife before their trouble came. That is different----"
"No!" cried the woman whose name was Suzanne. "It is not different. My husband"s the one man on earth for me. If we were not married--if he had lost his legs and arms as well as his eyes, I"d still want to be his wife--want it more than a kingdom."
"You hear, Monsieur," her husband said, laughing a little, and holding her close, with that perfect independence of onlookers which the French have when they"re thoroughly in love.
"I hear, Madame," said Brian. "But you, Monsieur le Capitaine--you would not have accepted the sacrifice----"
"I"m not sure I could have resisted," the Frenchman smiled.
"You love her!--that is why," Dierdre said. "My friend--doesn"t love me.
He never could. I"m not worthy. No one good could love me. If he knew the worst of me, he"d not even be my friend. And I suppose, after this, he won"t be. If, by and by, I"m not ashamed of myself for what I"ve said, he"ll be ashamed for me, because----"
"Don"t!" Brian stopped her. "You know I mustn"t let myself love you, Dierdre. And you don"t really love me. It"s only pity and some kind of repentance--for nothing at all--that you feel. But we"ll be greater friends than ever. I understand just why you spoke, and it"s going to help me a lot--like a strong tonic. You must have known it would. And if Monsieur and Madame have forgiven us----"
"Us? What have _you_ done? If they"ve forgiven me----"
"They have, indeed, forgiven," said the blind Frenchman. "They even thank you. If possible you"ve drawn them closer together than before."
Brian searched for Dierdre"s hand, and found it. "Let us go now, and leave them," he whispered.
So they went away, and Brian softly shut the door of the little _salon_.
"I _did_ mean every word I said!" the girl blurted out, turning upon him in the hall. "But--I shouldn"t have dared say it if I hadn"t been sure you didn"t care. And even if you did care--or could--your sister wouldn"t let you. She knows me exactly as I am."
"She _shall_ know you as you are--my true and brave little friend!"
Brian said.
He can find his way about wonderfully, even in a house with which he is merely making acquaintance: besides, Sirius was with him. But he felt an immense tenderness for Dierdre after that desperate confession. He didn"t wish the girl to fancy that he could get on without her just then, or that he thought she had any reason for running away from him.
He asked if she would take him to his room, so that he might rest there, alone, remembering an exquisite moment of his life.
"It"s wonderful to feel that for a beautiful girl like you--blind as I am, I am a _man_!" he said. "Thank you with all my heart--for everything."
"Who told you I was beautiful?" Dierdre flung the question at him.
"My sister Mary told me," Brian answered. "Besides--I felt it. A man does feel such things--perhaps all the more if he is blind."
"Your sister Mary?" the girl echoed. "She doesn"t think I"m beautiful.
Or if she does, it"s against her will."
"It won"t be, after this."
"Why not? You won"t tell her----"
"I"ll tell her to love you, and--to help me not to!"
It was just then they came to Brian"s door, and Dierdre fled, Sirius staring after her in dignified surprise.
But Dierdre herself came to me at once, and told me everything, with a kind of proud defiance.
"I _do_ love your brother," she boasted. "I _would_ marry him if he"d have me. I don"t care what you think of me, or what you say!"
"Why, I love you for loving him," I threw back at her. "That"s what I think of you--and that"s what I say."
I was sincere, Padre. Yet I don"t see how they can ever marry, even if Brian should learn to love the girl enough. Neither one has a penny--and--_Brian is blind_. Who can tell if he will ever get his sight again? I wish Dierdre hadn"t come into our lives in just the way she did come! I wish she weren"t Julian O"Farrell"s sister! I hope she won"t be p.r.i.c.ked by that queer conscience of hers to tell Brian any secrets which concern me as well as Julian and herself. And I hope--whatever happens!--that I shan"t be mean enough to be jealous. But--with such a new, exciting "friendship" for Brian"s prop, it seems as if, for me--Oth.e.l.lo"s occupation would be gone!
CHAPTER XXVII
We"re at Amiens, where we came by way of Montdidier and Moreuil; and nearly two weeks have dragged or slipped away since I wrote last.
Meanwhile a thousand things have happened. But I"ll begin at the beginning and write on till I am called by Mother Beckett.
We stopped at Soissons three more days after I told you about Dierdre and Brian, and Captain Devot and his wife. Not only did they forgive Dierdre--those two--but they took her to their hearts, perhaps more for Brian"s sake than her own. I was introduced to them, and they were kind to me, too. Of the blind man I have a beautiful souvenir. I must tell you about it, Padre!
The evening before we left Soissons (when the doctor had p.r.o.nounced Mother Beckett well enough for a short journey) I had an hour in the stuffy little _salon_ with Dierdre and Brian and the Devots. We sat round the fire--plenty of room for us all, in a close circle--and Captain Devot began to talk about his last battle on the Chemin des Dames. Suddenly he realized that the story was more than his wife could bear--for it was in that battle he lost his eyes! How he realized what she was enduring, I don"t know, for she didn"t speak, or even sigh, and Brian sat between them; so he couldn"t have known she was trembling. It must have been some electric current of sympathy between the husband and wife, I suppose--a magnetic flash to which a blind man would be more sensitive than others. Anyhow, he suddenly stopped speaking of the fight, and told us instead about a dream he had the night before the battle--a dream where he saw the ladies for whom "The Ladies" Way" was made, go riding by, along the "Chemin des Dames."
"In silks and satins the ladies went Where the breezes sighed and the poplars bent, Taking the air of a Sunday morn Midst the red of poppies and gold of corn-- Flowery ladies in gold brocades, With negro pages and serving maids, In scarlet coach or in gilt sedan, With brooch and buckle and flounce and fan, Patch and powder and trailing scent, Under the trees the ladies went, Lovely ladies that gleamed and glowed, As they took the air of the Ladies" Road."
That verse came from _Punch_, not from Captain Devot. I happen to remember it because it struck my fancy when I read it, and added to the romance of the road made for Louis XV"s daughters--daughters of France, where now so many sons of France have died for France! But the ladies of Captain Devot"s dream were like that, travelling with a gorgeous cavalcade, and as they rode, they were listening to a song about the old Abbey of Vauclair on the plateau of the Craonne. When they came to a place where the poppies cl.u.s.tered thickest, the three princesses insisted on stopping--Princess Adelaide, Princess Sophia, Princess Victoire. They wished to gather the flowers to take with them to the Chateau de Bove, where they were going to visit their _dame d"honneur_, Madame de Narbonne, but their guards argued that already it was growing late: they had better hurry on. At this the girls laughed silvery laughter. What did time matter to them? This was _their_ road, made and paved for their pleasure! They would not be hurried along it. No indeed; to show that time as well as the road was theirs, to do with as they liked, they would get down and make a chain of poppies long enough to stretch across the whole plateau before it dipped to the valley of the Aillette!
So, in Captain Devot"s dream, the princesses descended, and they and all their pretty ladies began weaving a chain of poppies. As they wove, the flower-chain fell from their little white fingers and trailed along the ground in a crimson line. The sun dropped toward the west, and thunder began to roll: still they worked on! Their gentlemen-in-charge begged them to start again, and at last they rose up petulantly to go; but they had stayed too late. The storm burst. Lightning flashed; thunder roared; rain fell in torrents; and--strange to see--the poppy petals melted, so that the long chain of flowers turned to a liquid stream, red as a river of blood. The princesses were frightened and began to cry. Their tears fell into the crimson flood. Captain Devot, who seemed in his dream to be one of the ladies" attendants, jumped from his horse to pick up the princesses" tears, which turned into little, rattling stones as they fell. With that, he waked. The princesses were gone--"all but _Victoire_," he said, smiling, "she shall stay with us! The thunder was the thunder of German guns. The poppies were there--and the blood was there. So also were the stones that had been the princesses" tears. They lie all along the Chemin des Dames to this day. I gathered some for my wife, and if you like she will give a few to you, ladies--souvenirs of the Ladies" Way!"
Of course we did like; so Dierdre and I each have a small, glistening gray stone, with a faint splash of red upon it. I would not sell mine for a pearl!