Everyman's Land Part 30

Bethune itself was a famous fortress once, full of history and legend: but isn't the whole country in its waste and ruin, like a torn historic banner, crusted with jewels--magic jewels, which cannot be stolen by enemy hands?

On the way to Ypres--crown and climax of the tour--the car pa.s.sed Lillers and Hazebrouck, places never to be forgotten by hearts that beat in the battles of Flanders. Then came the frontier at Steenwoorde; and they were actually in Belgium, pa.s.sing Poperinghe to Ypres, the most famous British battleground of the war.

When Brian was fighting, and when you were on earth, Padre, everyone talked about the "Ypres Salient." Now, though for soldiers Ypres will always be the "salient" since the battle of Wytschaete Ridge, the _material_ salient has vanished. Yet the same trenches exist, in the same gray waste which Brian used to paint in those haunting, impressionist war sketches of his that all London talked about, after the Regent Street exhibition that he didn't even try for leave to see!

The critics spoke of the mysterious, spiritual quality of his work, which gave "without sentimentality" picturesqueness to the sh.e.l.l-holes and mud, the shattered trees and wooden crosses, under eternally dreaming skies.

Well, Brian tells me that going back as a blind man to the old scenes, he had a strange, thrilling sense of _seeing_ them--seeing more clearly than before those effects of mysterious beauty, hovering with prophecy above the squalor of mud and blood, hovering and mingling as the faint light of dawn mingles, at a certain hour, with the shadows of night.

People used to call his talent a "blend of vision with reality." Now, all that is left him is "vision"--vision of the spirit. But with help--I used to think it would be _my_ help: now I realize it will be Dierdre's--who knows what extraordinary things my blind Brian may accomplish? His hope is so beautiful, and so strong, that it has lit an answering flame of hope in me.

He and I were in Ypres for a few days, just about the time I was wondering why "Jim Wyndham" didn't keep his promise to find me again.

It was in Ypres, I remember, that I came across the box of "_Coeurs d'Arras_" I'd brought with me. Opening it, I recalled the legend about a girl who has never loved, falling in love within a month after first eating an Arras Heart. It was then I said to myself, "Why, it has _come true_! I have fallen in love with Jim Wyndham--and _he has forgotten me_!"

Oh, Padre, how that pain comes back to me now, in the midst of the new pain, like the "core of the brilliance within the brilliance!" Which hurt is worse, to love a man, and believe oneself forgotten, or to love and know one has been loved, and then become unworthy? I can't be sure.

I can't even be sure that, if I could, I would go back to being the old self before I committed the one big sin of my life, which gave me Jim's father and mother, and the a.s.surance that _he had cared_. For a while, after Mother Beckett told me about Jim's love for "The Girl," in spite of my wickedness I glowed with a kind of happiness. I felt that, through all the years of my life--even when I grew old--Jim would be _mine_, young, handsome, gay, just as I had seen him on the Wonderful Day: that I could always run away from outside things and shut the gate of the garden on myself and Jim--that rose-garden on the border of Belgium.

Now, when I know--or almost know--that he will come back in the flesh to despise me, and that the gate of the garden will be forever shut--why, I shall be punished as perhaps no woman has ever been punished before.

Still--_still_ I can't be sure that I would escape, if I could, by going back to my old self!

It is writing of Belgium, and my days there with Brian while I still hoped to see Jim, that brings all these thoughts crowding so thickly to my mind, they seem to drip off my pen!

But what a different Ypres Father Beckett has now seen, and Brian _felt_, from that dear, pleasant Ypres into which we two drove in a cart, along a cobbled causeway as straight as a tight-drawn string!

Tourists who loved the blue, and yellow, and red bath-houses on the golden beach of Ostend, didn't worry to motor over the b.u.mpy road, through the Flemish plain to Ypres. The war was needed to bring its sad fame to "Wipers!" But Brian and I interrupted our walking tour with that cart, because we knew that the interminable causeway would take us deep into the inner quaintness of Flanders. We adored it all: and at every stopping-place on the twenty-mile road, I had the secret joy of whispering; "Perhaps it is _here_ that He will suddenly appear, and meet us!"

There was one farmhouse on the way, where I longed to have him come. I wanted him so much that I almost _created_ him! I was listening every moment, and through every sound, for his car. It never came. But because I so wished the place to be a background for our meeting I can see the two large living-rooms of the old house, with the black-beamed ceilings, the Flemish stoves, the tall, carved sideboards and chests with armorial bearings, the deep window-seats that were flower-stands and work-tables combined, and the shelves of ancient pottery and gleaming, antique bra.s.s. There was a comfortable fragrance of new-baked bread, mingling with the spicy scent of gra.s.s-pinks, in that house: and the hostess who gave us luncheon--a young married woman--had a mild, sweet face, strongly resembling that of St. Genevieve of Brabant, as pictured in a coloured lithograph on the wall.

St. Genevieve's story is surely the most romantic, the most pathetic of any saint who ever deigned to tread on earth!--and her life and death might serve as an allegory of Belgium's martyrdom, poor Belgium, the little country whose patron she is. Since that day at the farmhouse on the road to Ypres, I've thought often of the gentle face with its forget-me-not eyes and golden hair; and of Golo the dark persecutor who--they say now--was a _real_ person and an ancestor of the Hohenzollerns through the first Duc de Baviere.

At Ypres, Brian painted for me a funny "imagination picture" imitating earliest Flemish work. It showed Ypres when there was no town save a few tiny houses and a triangular stronghold, with a turret at each corner, built on a little island in the river Yperlee. He named the picture "The Castle of the Three Strong Towers," and dated it in the year 900. A thousand years have pa.s.sed since then. Slowly, after much fighting (the British fought as hard to take Ypres once, as they fight to save it now), the town grew great and powerful, and became the capital of Flanders. The days of the rough earthen stockades and sharp thorn-bush defences of "Our Lady of the Enclosures" pa.s.sed on to the days of casemates and moats; and still on, to the days when the old fortifications could be turned into ornamental walks--days of quaintly beautiful architecture, such as Brian and I saw before the war, when we spent hours in the Grand' Place, admiring the wonderful Cloth Hall and the Spanish-looking Nieuwerck. The people of Ypres told us proudly that nothing in Bruges itself, or anywhere in Flanders, could compare with those n.o.ble buildings ma.s.sed together at the west end of the Grand'

Place, each stone of which represented so much wealth of the richest merchant kings of Europe.

And now, the work of those thousand busy years has crumbled in a few monstrous months, like the sand-houses of children when the tide comes in! What Father Beckett saw of Ypres after three years' bombardment, was not much more than that shown in Brian's picture, dated 900! A blackened wall or two and a heap of rubble where stood the _Halle des Drapiers_--pride of Ypres since the thirteenth century--its belfry, its statues, its carvings, its paintings, all vanished like the contours and colours of a sunset cloud. The cathedral is a skeleton. Hardly a pointed gable is left to tell where the quaint and prosperous houses once grouped cosily together. Ypres the town is a mourner draped in black with the stains of fire which killed its beauty and joy. But there is a glory that can never be killed, a glory above mere beauty, as a living soul is above the dead body whence it has risen. That glory is Ypres.

She is a ghost, but she is an inspiration, a name of names, a jewel worth dying for--"worth giving a man's eyes for," Brian says!

"Has your brother told you about the man we met at the Visitors'

Chateau?" asked Father Beckett, when between the two men--and my reminiscences--the story of the tour was finished with those last words of Brian's.

"No, I haven't told her yet," Brian answered for me.

My nerves jumped. I scarcely knew what I expected to hear. "Not Doctor Paul Herter?" I exclaimed--and was surprised to hear on my own lips the name so constantly in my mind.

"Well, that's queer she should speak of _him_, isn't it, Brian? How did you come to think of Herter?" Father Beckett wanted to know.

"_Was_ it he?" I insisted.

"No. But--you'd better tell her, Brian. I guess you'll have to."

"There isn't much to tell, really," Brian said. "It was only that oculist chap Herter told you about--Dr. Henri Chrevreuil. He's been working at the front, as you know: lately it's been the British front; and they'd taken him in at the chateau for a few days' rest. We met him there and talked of his friend--your friend, Molly--Doctor Paul."

"What did he say about your eyes?" Dierdre almost gasped. (I should not have ventured to put the question suddenly, and before people. I should have been too afraid of the answer. But her nickname is "_Dare!_") "He must have said something, or Mr. Beckett wouldn't have spoken so. He _did_ look at your eyes--didn't he? He would, for Herter's sake."

"Yes, he did look at them," Brian admitted. "He didn't say much."

"But what--_what_?"

"He said: 'Wait, and--see.'"

"And see!" Dierdre echoed.

The same thought was in all our minds. As I gazed mutely at Brian, he gave me the most beautiful smile of his life. He must have felt that I was looking at him, or he would not so have smiled. Let Jim hate and--punish me when he comes back, and drive me out of Paradise!

Wherever I may go, there will be the reflection of that smile and the thought behind it. How can I be unhappy, if Brian need only wait, to see?

CHAPTER x.x.x

Padre, my mind is like a thermometer exposed every minute to a different temperature, but always high or low--never normal.

To tell, or not to tell, Father Beckett what the man I didn't see said about Jim--or rather, what Julian O'Farrell said that he said! This has been the constant question; but the thermometer invariably flies up or down, far from the answer-point.

When our men came back to Amiens, I almost hoped that Puck would do his worst--carry out his threat and "give me away" to Father Beckett. In that case I should at least have been relieved from responsibility. But Puck didn't. In my heart I had known all along that he would not.

If I could have felt for a whole minute at a time that it would be fair to wake hopes which mightn't be fulfilled, out would have burst the secret. But whenever I'd screwed up my courage to speak, Something would remind me: "Herter sent word that there might be a message from Switzerland. Better wait till it comes, for he wasn't sure of his facts.

He may have been misled." Or, when I'd decided _not_ to speak, another Something would say: "Jim is alive. You _know_ he is alive! Herter is helping him to escape. Don't let these dear old people suffer a minute longer than they need."

But--well--so far I have waited. A week has pa.s.sed since I wrote at Amiens. We have arrived at Jim's chateau--the little, quaint, old Chateau d'Andelle, with thick stone walls, black-beamed ceilings, and amusing towers, set in the midst of an enchanted forest of Normandy. No wonder he fell in love with the place before the war, and wanted to live there! It must have seemed an impossible dream at the time, for the owners (the chateau has been in the same family for generations) had money in those days, and wouldn't have let their home to strangers. The war has made all the difference. They couldn't afford to keep up the place, and were eager to let. Beckett money is a boon to them, so everyone is satisfied. The agents in Paris secured two or three extra servants to help the old pair left in the house as caretakers; and there is a jewel of a maid for Mother Beckett--a Belgian refugette. I shall give her some training as a nurse, and by and by I shall be able to fade away in peace. Already I'm beginning to prepare my dear lady's mind for a parting. I talk of my hospital work, and drop hints that I'm only on leave--that Brian's hopes and Father Beckett's splendid new-born plan for him, will permit me to take up duty again soon.

The plan developed on the trip: but I'm sure the first inspiration came from Mother Beckett. While she was ill, she did nothing but lie and think of things to do for other people. And she was determined to make it possible for Brian to have a love story of his own, provided he wanted one. It only needed Father Beckett's practical brain and unlimited purse to turn her vague suggestion into a full-grown plan. A whole block of buildings on the outskirts of Paris, let as apartment houses, is to be bought by Mr. Beckett, for the use of blinded soldiers.

Already his agents have got the refusal of the property for him; and with a few changes such as knocking down inner walls and putting in doors where doors don't exist, the houses will become one big mansion, to accommodate five or six hundred men. Each will have his own bedroom or cubicle. There'll be a gymnasium, with a Swedish instructor, and every trade or profession in which a blind man could possibly engage will be taught by experts. There will be a big dining hall with a musicians' gallery, and a theatre. The library will be supplied with quant.i.ties of books for the blind. There'll be a garden where the men will be taught to grow flowers and vegetables. They will have a resident doctor, and two superintendents. One of these two will himself be a blind man taught by his own experience how to teach others. Of course, Padre, you know that this blind teacher is already chosen, and that the whole scheme centers round him!

In a way Brian realizes that, if it were not for him, it would never have been thought of. In a way. But--it is _his_ way. He doesn't torture himself, as I probably should in his place, by thinking: "All these immense sums of money being spent as an excuse to provide for me in life! Ought I to let it be done? Ought I to accept?"

Brian's way is not that. He says: "Now I understand why I lost my eyesight, and it's worth it a thousand times. This wonderful chance is to be given me to help others, as I never could have helped if I hadn't been blind. If sight comes back, I shall know what it is to be blind, and I can give counsel and courage to others. I am glad, glad to be blind. It's a privilege and a mission. Even if I never see again, except with my spirit's eyes, I shall still be glad!"

He doesn't worry at all because carrying out the plan will cost Father Beckett one or more of his millions. What is money for, except to be spent? What pleasure is like spending to do good? He finds it quite natural that Father Beckett wants to do this thing; and though he's immensely grateful, he takes it blithely for granted that the benefactor should be happy and proud.

Travelling back from Ypres to Amiens they seem to have settled all the details between them, though they told us their adventures before even mentioning the Plan. Brian is to be guide, philosopher, and friend to the inmates and students of the James Wyndham Beckett College for the Blind. Also he is to give lectures on art and various other subjects. If he can learn to paint his blind impressions (as he believes he can, with Dierdre's promised help) he will be able to teach other blind artists to follow his example. And he is to have a salary for his services--not the big one Father Beckett wished: Brian wouldn't hear of that--but enough to live on. And Dierdre and Julian are offered official positions and salaries too. It's suggested that they should take a flat near by the College, within easy walking distance. Dierdre is to entertain the blind men with recitations, and teach the art of reciting to those who wish to learn. Julian is to sing and play for the men in the house-theatre, once or twice a week, as he can spare time from his work with De Letzski.

Also he will give one lesson a week in singing and voice production.

Both the O'Farrells are to be well paid (no trouble in persuading Julian to accept generous proposals for himself and his sister; for him the labourer is indeed worthy of his hire): and with American dash and money the scheme is expected to be in working order by next June. It's now well into November. But after seeing how other schemes have worked, and how this Chateau d'Andelle business has been rushed through, I have the most sublime faith in Beckett miracles.

They are astonishing, these Becketts! Father, the simplest, kindest man, with the air of liking his fireside better than any adventure: Mother, a slip of a creature--"a flower in a vase to be kept by her menfolk on a high shelf," as I told myself when I first saw her. Yet what adventures they have had, and what they have accomplished since the day Brian proposed this pilgrimage, two months ago! Not a town on our route that, after the war won't have cause to bless them and the son in whose name their good works have been done--cause to bless Beckett kindness, Beckett money for generations in the future! Yet now they have added this most ambitious plan of all to the list, and I know it will be carried out to perfection.

You see now, Padre, from what I've told you, how easy it is being made for me to slip out of this circle. Brian, beaming with happiness, and on the point of opening his heart to Dierdre's almost worshipping love: Mother Beckett slowly getting back a measure of frail, flower-like health, in this lovely place which she calls Jim's: Father Beckett more at ease about her, and intensely interested in his scheme: the small, neat Belgian refugette likely to prove at least a ministering mouse if not a ministering angel: above all, hope if not certainty that Jim will one day return--not only in spirit but in body--to his chateau and his family. If I am needed anywhere on earth, it isn't here, but down in the south at my poor Hopital des epidemies. Would it be cowardly in me to fly, as soon as I've persuaded the Becketts to spare me, and throw the responsibility I haven't dared decide to take, upon my brave, blind Brian?

Ah, I don't mean telling him about myself and my sins. I shouldn't have the courage for that, I fear! I mean, shall I tell him about Doctor Paul's message--or _supposed_ message? It has just occurred to me that I might do this, and let Brian decide whether Father Beckett ought to know, even if no further news comes through Switzerland. You see, if I were gone, and Jim came, I could trust the new Dierdre to do her best for me with Brian. He could never respect me, never love me in the old way--but he might forgive, because of Dierdre herself--and because of the great Plan. Hasn't my wickedness given them both to him?

Writing all this to you has done me good, Padre. I see more clearly ahead. I shall decide before morning what to do. I feel I _shall_ this time! And I think it a good idea to speak to Brian. He will agree, though he doesn't know my secret need to escape, that it's right for me to take up hospital work again. But, Padre, I can't go--I _won't_ go--until I've helped Mother Beckett arrange Jim's treasures in the room to be called his "den." She has been living for that, striving to grow strong enough for that. And I--oh, Padre!--I want to be the one to unpack his things and to touch each one with my hands. I want to leave something of myself in that room where, if he's dead, his spirit will surely come: where, if he lives, his body will come. If I leave behind me thoughts of love, won't they linger between those walls like the scent of roses in a vase? Mayn't those thoughts influence Jim Beckett not to detest me as I deserve?