Leerie Part 16

"I'm leaving--train to-night," Sheila hurried on. "No use putting it off; better sail as soon as the pa.s.sport's ready. There's just one thing more I want to say before I leave you."

Then Peter chuckled for the first time that day. "You can say it, of course, but if you think you're going to leave me behind, you're mistaken.

I wired the chief the day you told me. They need another correspondent over there. When it comes to pa.s.sports there is some advantage in not being a husband, after all. Well--are you glad?"

When Hennessy came upon them, a few minutes later, they looked so supremely happy and oblivious of the rest of the world that he was forced to stop. "Sure, ye might be the bride an' groom, afther all, by the looks of ye. What's come over ye all of a sudden?" And when Peter told him, and they both put their hands in Hennessy's in final parting, he shirred his lips and whistled forth evidence of a satisfied emotion to which he added a word of warning to Peter:

"I'm not envyin' ye, just the same, Mr. Brooks. Afore ye get her home again ye'll find the Irish say right, 'A woman's more throuble to look afther than a thorn in the foot or a goat fetched back from the fair!'"

Chapter VI

MONSIEUR SATAN

There had been nothing, perhaps, more radically changed by the rigors of war than Atlantic transportation. The thrills of pleasure and romance that attended the tourist in the days before the war had deepened to thrills of another timbre, while romance had become more epic than idyllic. The happy phrase of "going abroad" had given place to "going over" or "going across"; such a trifling difference in words, but the accompaniment comes in quite another key. It was no longer shouted in a care-free, happy-go-lucky fashion; it may have had a ring of suppressed exultation; but it was sure to be whispered with a quick intake of breath, and so often it came through teeth that were clenched.

The piers had changed their gala attire. The departure from this country for another was no longer a matter of mere rejoicing and congratulatory leave-taking. The gangways no longer swarmed with friends shouting, "Bon voyage!" There was no free voicing of antic.i.p.ation, no effervescing of good humor. The Spirit of Adventure was there, but he had changed his costume and his make-up. So had the good ships. Their black paint and white tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs were gone; gone were the gay red funnels; and in their stead were ma.s.sed the grays and blues, the greens and blacks of camouflage. The piers were deserted. A thin stream of travelers sifted in; there were a few officials and deckhands; and far outside, beyond hail of ship or sea or traveler, in a barbed-wire inclosure, guarded by military police, stood a few scattered, silent figures. They were the remnants war had left of the once-upon-a-time jocose band of waving, shouting friends.

All this Sheila O'Leary felt as she stood on the upper deck of a French liner with Peter Brooks and watched their fellow-pa.s.sengers board the ship. She was tingling from head to foot with almost as many emotions as there are ganglia in the nervous system. It was as if she had suddenly claimed the world for a patient and had laid fingers to its pulse for the first time. Eagerly, impatiently, she was waiting to count each successive beat until she should be able to read into the throbbing rhythm of it all a meaning for herself.

As Sheila thought in terms of her work, so Peter thought in terms of his.

It was all copy to him. Each group that followed another up the gangway carried the promise of a story to Peter. There were Red Cross nurses, canteen workers, a college unit for reconstruction work, a hospital unit, scores of detached American officers going over for the first time, scores of French and British returning, a few foreigners getting back to their respective countries, and hosts of non-descripts whose civilian clothes gave no hint of their missions. Last of all came a sudden, swift influx of celestial blue.

Peter smiled at them with antic.i.p.ation, "Look, Leerie, the Blue Devils of France! There ought to be the making of a good yarn."

But Sheila barely heard. The ma.s.s had captured her imagination on the instant with a dramatic intensity too overpowering to be denied.

Unconsciously she smiled. They were going back to fight again--to be wounded. Who knew--in a month she might be nursing some of them. The Blue Devils had reached the gangway; they were just below them when one looked up. Black eyes as unfathomable as forest pools looked into Sheila's quiet gray ones. For a moment there was almost a greeting flashed between them; as if they recognized something common to them both that lay in the past or the future. It was one of those gossamer threads of fate that a few glimpse rarely in their lives.

Peter saw, and was on the point of giving tongue to his astonishment when a voice from behind interrupted them: "The ship sails at ten; it lacks thirty seconds of that. There is the typical instance of the way these Devils obey their orders. Is it not so?"

The voice savored of France. Sheila and Peter turned together to find a little man, with a small, pleasant face, topped with s.h.a.ggy brown hair, and dabs of mustache and beard placed like a colon under his nose. His shrug was the conclusive evidence of his nationality.

"Well, thirty seconds is enough," laughed Sheila. "Time is as precious as food, gold, or gunpowder these days. Why waste it?"

"And men," supplemented the little man. "Perhaps, mad'moiselle already knows Bertrand Fauchet, the young captain who pa.s.sed below?"

Sheila shook her head.

The little man rubbed his hands together in keen enjoyment. "Ah, there is a man; but they are all men. The Boches have named them well. They fight like demons, then they rest and play like children until their turn comes to fight again. And Fauchet--he is a devil of a devil, possessed of a thousand lives. Mad'moiselle would adore him."

Sheila's demure chin tilted mutinously, "But I don't like devils, even blue ones."

"Ah, you do not understand. C'est la guerre. We must lock away in our hearts all the pity, all the tenderness, as we hide our jewels and our treasures and mask our cathedrals. If we did not they would all be destroyed and we would go quite mad." He smiled whimsically at Sheila, as one smiles at a child who fails to comprehend. "Wait--wait till mad'moiselle sees France. Then--" He finished with a shrug and left them.

They were in midstream when they saw the little man again. He came hurrying toward them with both hands outstretched to Peter. "It is Mr.

Brooks. I did not know when I was speaking with you and mad'moiselle before. They told me at the office of your paper that you would be sailing to-day. May I present Jacques Marchand of the _Figaro_, a fellow-journalist?" and he made a profound bow which included Sheila.

Peter introduced the girl beside him and the little man looked at her with whetted interest and a twinkle of suppressed humor. "You women of America, you come like battalions of good angels to nurse our devils. Eh bien, before the sun goes down you shall meet your first one. Au 'voir till then."

They were in the stern, watching the last of the sun in their wake as it turned myriads of whirring wings to iridescent gold, when the little man found them again. This time he was not alone. Close upon his heels came the captain of the Blue Devils; and again the black eyes met Sheila's when they were still a man's length apart.

"Mad'moiselle," said Jacques Marchand, "I have brought, as I promised--Monsieur Satan--Mad'moiselle O'Leary. Look him well over; you will see he has not the horns or cloven feet, nevertheless--mais, voila."

The captain was blushing like a very bashful little boy; he was smiling as navely as an infant. Sheila guessed at his age and placed it not far from twenty. Who had ever conceived of a boy-Mephistopheles? It was absurd. A genuine diabolical personage had no right to a pre-middle age; for him all years prior to forty should not exist. And here was undeniably a boy, whose very bashfulness and navete bore witness that he had not entirely grown up. So Sheila smiled back upon him with the frankness and abandon one feels so safe in bestowing upon youth.

"This paper-man, he likes to be what you call funny. It pays him well, and he must keep, what you say, his feet in. But I do not like always his little jokes. I will make a new introduce so. Bertrand Fauchet, capitaine Cha.s.seurs Alpins, very much at your service, ma'am'selle." The soldier bowed with solemnity. It was evident he felt his dignity had been trampled on and resented it.

The little man of the _Figaro_ wagged a forefinger at him. "Ah, tata, garcon. Remember, I am your G.o.dfather in the battalion. It is I that give you the name. Three years ago in the Cafe des Alcazar I call you Monsieur Satan, and it stick. You cannot rub it off; you cannot make France forget it; and when you come back so fierce--so terrific from the fighting at Troyes where you get the Croix de Guerre it is not for Capitaine Fauchet the men shout--non. It is for Monsieur Satan they shout, for the devil of a Blue Devil. Eh, mon ami?" And he laid a loving arm across the other's shoulder.

During the crossing the four met often; the journalist always kindly and loquacious, Monsieur Satan always shy. Sometimes he joined Sheila alone for an after-dinner promenade. It was always at that hour when the day was fading into a luminous twilight that told of stars to come, and they tramped the decks in a strange, companionable silence. It was plain that Monsieur Satan did not wish to talk, and Sheila gave him freely the silence he craved. Once he stopped and looked over the railing, hard at the sea horizon.

"Did you ever think, ma'am'selle," he said, softly, "how the great ocean shows nothing of the war? The underneath may be choked with sunken ships, the murdered ships, but the ocean has no scars. It is not like our sorrowful France--all scars. So--I find it good to look at this and forget. Perhaps, some day, a peace like this will come to the heart of Bertrand Fauchet. Qui savez?"

And another time, when he was wishing her good night, he added: "Dormez bien--sans songes, ma'am'selle. The dreams, they are bad."

But generally he left her with just a pressure of the hand and an "_Au 'voir_." And yet there was always in his voice a suppressed grat.i.tude as for a gift.

When Peter was alone with him he tried to draw him out and got nothing for his pains. The story he had scented on their day of embarkation had undoubtedly left no trail. When he aired his disappointment good-naturedly to Sheila she only laughed at him.

"If you want a story go to some of the other devils; we'll never know more of Monsieur Satan till Fate turns interlocutor."

"Well, he's certainly the most slumbering devil I ever saw. If that's the worst French soil can propagate, it's hard to believe the Germans they tackle get much of an inferno."

In spite of his skepticism, however, Peter had an unexpected glimpse into that inferno the day before they landed. For thirty-six hours they had been running through the danger zone with life-boats loose on their davits, life-belts ready for adjustment, and nerves tense. Then the tension had suddenly relaxed, everybody talked with everybody else, displaying a lack of restraint that bordered on intimacy. Peter and Sheila were strolling an almost deserted deck toward a group amidships. As they neared it they saw it was dominated by two princ.i.p.al figures--one a professional philanthropist with more sentiment than judgment, and the other Monsieur Satan. The philanthropist was talking in what Peter termed an "open-throttle voice."

"But you don't mean you would ever harm a defenseless prisoner, Captain Fauchet? Of course you would never allow your men to kill a fallen enemy or one supplicating mercy."

"Supplicating mercy--bah!" The mouth that could smile so boyishly had a diabolical twist, the eyes blazed like h.e.l.l-fires, as Peter said afterward. "There is only the one Boche that is safe, madame--the dead Boche. When we find them wriggling I teach my men to make them safe--quickly!" The lips smiled sardonically. Monsieur Satan was a boy no longer; in some inexplicable fashion he had come into full possession of that Mephistophelian middle-age.

But the lady philanthropist had neither the eyes to see nor the intelligence to understand. Instead she clumsily parried with invisible forces. "Of course you don't mean that, Captain Fauchet. You are just making believe you are a wicked man. I believe you are trying to stuff me, as our American slang puts it. Now if a wounded German came running toward you crying Kamerad--"

"Sacrebleu! Oui, madame, once I listen to that Kamerad. But now--jamais!

When they call it with their lying tongues I shout them back 'Kamerad to h.e.l.l!' and I zigeuille." The right hand made a swift, subtle twist with a deep thrust. It took little imagination to guess what it was supposed to be holding. For a second Monsieur Satan's eyes still continued to blaze at the woman before him; then he tossed back his head, plunged through the crowd, and was gone.

"A devil of a Blue Devil," quoted Peter under his breath. "Our friend, Monsieur Marchand, was not indulging in hyperbole after all."

Sheila watched him go and said nothing.

That twilight, when Monsieur Satan joined her, he looked as harmless as ever, only a trifle more bashful. "Perhaps ma'am'selle will care no longer to promenade with the wicked man. N'est ce pas?"

"A brave man," corrected Sheila, and she looked straight into the black eyes. "A brave man who has given himself body and soul to France."

"Body and soul. Oui, ma'am'selle. But listen--there is something--" His face changed in a breath, the eyes were blazing again, the mouth had turned as sinister as his _nom de guerre_ signified. But something in Sheila's eyes checked him. He put out a hand unconsciously and laid it on her as though to steady himself. "Non, ma'am'selle. One need not tell everything. You will see enough--enough."

When they landed, his good-bys to her were curiously brief. He held her hand a second as if he would have said a great deal; then with a quick "_Au 'voir_" he flung it from him and was down the gangway. But with Peter it was different. He found him alone and vouchsafed him for the first time what might have been called conversation.