Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley Part 20

The sky was faintly gray with coming dawn. I looked up, up into the pale dome, seeking with my eyes the great bird of evil that had laid its eggs of death. There it was, immensely high above the black, shadowy roofs and steeples of the hill and plain; a sinister shape, like all the German sausages in the world rolled into one; and hanging from it cars full of men reduced to the size of beetles by that great height.

The thing was almost directly overhead as I looked up, and it seemed that if it dropped a parting bomb as it sailed our poor little hospital must be struck. Yet I continued to stare, fascinated. Life and death were twin brother and sister, equally terrible and splendid.

"I wish I could have seen Eagle just once again," I heard myself thinking, as one hears the ticking of a watch under a pillow. But I felt a strange, throbbing eagerness to know quickly the great secret of what comes next after this world, with its seeming muddle of injustice and disappointment, its joys and broken aspirations. "Why! it was like this with me when we had our accident in the _Golden Eagle_!" I thought. And even as the remembrance flitted ghostlike through my brain, I saw tearing through the sky, far above the big bulk of the Zeppelin, a monoplane etched in black against the light of dawn.

I could hardly believe that it was really there. It must be an image called up by memory of that long-past moment, some strange illusion of an exalted mind: but the image persisted. Like a hawk it swept along the sky, coming from a direction opposite to that of the Zeppelin, as if to swoop upon it from above. I thought I heard shots. The great dirigible turned and sailed faster. I felt as if I were all eyes and pounding heart. Could the sight be real, this duel in the sky? Perhaps others watched it with me--I do not know. It seemed that I was alone on earth gazing at the incredible battle.

The Zeppelin made off, away from the town toward the fortifications, but the monoplane kept above it, despite the shots which spattered futilely.

Just as the dirigible pa.s.sed over the bridge, which hadn't yet been blown up, looking enormous, for it hung lower now, the monoplane--tiny in comparison--dived full upon it. With an explosion of gas from the huge cigar-shaped balloon, the dirigible dropped earthward, its bird enemy seeming to fall with it.

I gave a cry and covered my eyes with both hands.

I felt that I had been broken, crumpled up like a singed moth, burnt by the vivid flame of that awful sight. But arms caught me from behind, as I would have sunk to the floor with the roar of another explosion in my ears, each brick of the house quivering on another. A kind Belgian voice was soothing me: "_Pauvre enfant!_" and hands, strong, though womanly, would have pulled me away from the window to lay me down on some unoccupied bunk, if I had not struggled to keep my place. "No--no!" I stammered. "I'm not going to faint. I must see! I must!" And shaking off the nurse's protecting arms, I stared out toward an open s.p.a.ce away from the town, where a vast ma.s.s of wreckage blazed, turning the gray dawn red.

CHAPTER XVIII

"_Quel heros!_" rapturously sobbed the Belgian nurse who held me. "It is he who has saved the lives of all our poor wounded ones, and our lives, too. Did you not see the monster over our heads? It had to turn just in the nick of time. An instant more, and there would have been a bomb for us. Thank heaven! And thank the hero sent by heaven!"

It was a deed, I thought, worthy of Eagle March himself. The air scout who had accomplished it was his soul brother no matter what country had given him birth.

"Is it certain, do you think, that all those men in the Zeppelin died there together?" I gasped.

"Every man of them, yes, it is certain."

"But he--the man of the monoplane? He fell with them?"

"He fell, yes, my child. But he fell free of the Zeppelin. He is not in that fire cauldron there. Didn't you see the end of what happened?"

"No!" I said. "For a second I covered my eyes."

"Oh, it was all in that second! We thought he was lost, sacrificed for us; and even now it is most likely that he is dead. We saw the Zeppelin drop away from under the monoplane. Then came the flare of light, with the gas exploding and catching fire. But just before that, the monoplane was poised in the air for an instant above the great falling shape. It seemed to--do you call it 'plane' down? All that happened was so quick and sudden, and the aeroplane came to earth so fast we could not be sure of her fate. But if she fell, she fell free of the Zeppelin. We shall soon hear. The other hospitals in town are full already, except our little one, which has still room for a few. If any are saved from either of the wrecks, they will be brought here, unless we have filled up our beds meanwhile with people hurt by the Zeppelin bombs."

By the mingled dawnlight and firelight we could see figures running to the fields where the wreck of the great dirigible and the heroic little monoplane had come down. But long before news arrived of the occupants'

fate we heard that none of the townsfolk had been injured by the explosion of the only two bombs which the Zeppelin had been given time to drop. Three or four buildings had suffered more or less, but fortunately they were shops, and n.o.body had been sleeping there. One bomb had fallen near a hospital, and Tony Dalziel, hearing a rumour that the "Annex" (as ours was called) had been struck, came rushing from the hotel close by to find out what had been my fate. When he saw the steep-roofed building untouched, and with lighted windows, he was relieved, but ventured to ask for me, and I ran down to speak with him at the foot of the stairs for a moment.

"Peggy! I just can't stand for this!" he groaned, and the tragedy in his voice contrasted so quaintly with his comic appearance, bareheaded, hair ruffled, and costume sketchy, that I felt rising symptoms of hysteria, which had to be controlled. "I must get you and the mater and Milly into safety somehow. To-night is the limit. Mater's more dead than alive, and Mill isn't much better."

"Don't worry about me, anyhow," I said. "You see, I don't much _care_ whether I'm dead or alive. That simplifies things a lot! I wouldn't go away now if I could."

"You _shall_ go, the first chance there is," insisted Tony, with new authority. "And it may come soon. There are some high-up Belgian officers at the hotel to-night. They came in an automobile not so big as ours, and it's broken down. If they can't get it right by to-morrow, when they want to go back to Brussels, where they came from, I'll make 'em a present of our car for the rest of the war, if they'll take us with them. You see, it's a serious matter with me. Things are getting worse here, and my leave'll soon be up. You don't think I'd go, and let you stay shut up in Liege with bombs falling all round you and perhaps on you?"

"Look!" I said, forgetting to answer, as I peered out through the open street door. "Here come some men with a litter. They're bringing it this way. Oh, Tony, if it should be the man of the monoplane! They think in the hospital that he fell with his machine clear of the Zeppelin, and may be alive."

Ahead of the slowly borne litter ran a youth with a Red Cross band on his arm. Seeing my nurse's cap and ap.r.o.n, all the uniform I had, he began speaking breathlessly in Belgian French. Had we a bed? Our nurses had sent word yesterday that if two or three were needed, we could supply them. He hoped they hadn't filled up since, as here was an urgent case: the aviator who had attacked the Zeppelin, and destroyed it by plunging on to its balloon at the risk of almost certain death. But he was not dead, and might live if he could have prompt surgical attendance and nursing.

"Yes, we can take him in," I said. "Everything is ready, and I'll run ahead of you to warn the staff."

"Tell them," the Red Cross man called after me, as, forgetful of Tony, I turned to fly, "tell them we think it is the British or American Monsieur Mars who did us such service, bringing news to the forts from over the German frontier two days ago."

I dashed on without stopping to answer or look back, for the litter was arriving; and it was not till I repeated the name, as I gave in my hurried report, that the sound of it on my own lips made my heart jump.

Monsieur Mars! Could it be.... The thought was too far-fetched.... I dared not harbour it.

My ward was on the top floor, where the least serious cases were treated, men who could be got upstairs without too much strain and suffering. On the ground floor one bed was free, as I knew, and it was into that ward I went to tell the news to the matron. Perhaps when my duty was done I did not hurry overmuch to return to my own less interesting post; and I was still in the princ.i.p.al ward when the canvas litter borne by four Red Cross men was carried in. Doctors and nurses pressed forward to meet it, and I flattened myself against the wall, sick with mingled fear and longing. Again I thought, _what if_ ...

The big room which a week ago had been the restaurant of our prosperous hotel annex was still lit by electric lamps fantastically unsuited to a hospital ward: chandeliers of sprawling gilt branches decorated with metallic imitations of mistletoe. The light of day outside was filtering in but dimly, yet it paled and made ghastly the yellowish glow of electricity. Even the doctors and nurses with their tired faces looked like ghosts, and the wounded soldiers in their narrow white cots seemed figures of dead men modelled in wax. Some of them opened their eyes, in deep violet hollows; others kept the lids down, caring for or conscious of nothing. The staff who received the litter, and the Red Cross men who brought it, spoke in low voices, but never in irritating whispers. The moving feet made only a faint pattering sound on the linoleum-covered floor, and the litter was set down noiselessly at the side of the one free bed in the ward. Near it stood a screen which only a few hours ago had hidden the death agony of a soldier. I looked at this and shuddered, thinking once again, "_What if it were he!_" and if the screen should be needed again for the same purpose.

Where I lurked, out of every one's way, yet close to the door, flat as a paper doll, against the wall which smelled of carbolic acid, n.o.body troubled about me. I was just one of the younger nurses, and none stopped to ask whether my place were there or upstairs in another ward.

"Oh G.o.d, if it be he, let him live!" I heard my soul praying.

Nurses leaned over the long dark form on the litter, whose face I could not see, because where I stood only the top of the head was visible, a head thickly covered with short rumpled hair, which might be blond or brown when the blood stains were washed off. The bending figures quickly, skilfully cut away the stained and blackened clothing, and when it was the surgeon's turn to examine and perhaps to operate, some one noticed the intruder. The head nurse came to me and laid a hand on my shoulder. "My child, it was you who brought us the word just now!" she said kindly, her eyes on my pallid face. "But you must go to your own duties. This is a great honour we have, to care for the hero who has saved us. It must be our turn to save him. Go tell the news in the upper wards, that we hope for the best, the very best. Say to the doctors that it is indeed Monsieur Mars. They will know the name. They will have heard of him, and what he did for Liege only the other day."

"I'll go, but _one_ instant first, I implore you, nurse!" I pleaded. "I think--it may be--that Monsieur Mars is an old friend of mine. I beg you to let me have a glimpse of his face!"

She looked at me and hesitated; but my imploring eyes, which suddenly spouted tears, decided her kind heart in my favour. "One glance, then; but control yourself," she said. And taking me round the waist, she led me quickly across the room. "Mademoiselle, our young British a.s.sistant thinks she knows the patient," the matron announced. "Make way for her, an instant. Then she will go to her own ward."

Some one pushed me forward, at the same time holding me firmly lest I should collapse. One fleeting glance was vouchsafed me of a form covered with a sheet, and a blackened, blood-smeared face, with half-closed eyes whose whites showed under the lids, and on whose lips was some strange semblance of a happy smile. To those who did not know him well, or love him beyond all the world, that marred face might have been unrecognizable in its mask of dirt and blood. But nothing could disguise it from me. Monsieur Mars, the wounded hero of Liege, and Captain Eagle March, late of the American army, were one and the same.

I didn't faint, but I don't remember anything else till I found myself sitting on a chair in my own ward. The nurses were having morning coffee. One of them gave me a cup. If I hadn't been a nurse myself, with patients to think of, I should have dropped it and burst out crying. But instead, I drank the coffee; and a moment later went back to the bedside of the man I had been tending before leave was granted me to see Tony.

"You look as if you'd met the ghost of some one you love," said the nurse who had been keeping my place.

But he was not a ghost. Not yet--not yet!

CHAPTER XIX

Tidings of the new hero of Liege floated up to our ward within the hour.

There was slight concussion of the brain; there were scalp wounds which had had to be st.i.tched up; and there were many bruises; but the surgeons reported no bones broken, and complete recovery only a matter of days.

Even the monoplane itself, we heard, was singularly little damaged. All this would have appeared miraculous, and the pious Belgians would have attributed it to direct intervention of the Blessed Virgin, had not the wrecked dirigible on examination told a silent story of the air scout's cleverness as well as his daring. Before swooping on the Zeppelin from above, he had apparently discharged bombs of his own on the balloon, which had burst before the monoplane dashed down on to it, and the great bulk had fallen away from under, without carrying the lighter machine to destruction. The theory which awaited corroboration from the aviator was that he had begun to plane down, despite some damage, and had actually fallen but a short distance, striking earth a hundred yards away from the wrecked dirigible.

n.o.body talked about anything except the feat of the foreign air scout.

The roar of the cannon from the fort had ceased to make us jump; and it was better to chat about Monsieur Mars than to murmur in each other's ears, "How long before _THEY_ slip round the forts and get into the town?" I made up my mind that whatever happened, nothing should tear me from Liege while Eagle March was there. And when Tony sent up word begging to see me on important business, in imagination I was defending Eagle's hospital cot (naturally with him in it!) against a troop of uhlans. In that mood, Tony's arguments about my going away made as much impression as the chirp of a sparrow on a man stone deaf in both ears.

"Wild horses, much less wild uhlans, couldn't drag me out of this place," I said, feeling as brave and firm as a story-book heroine, though to Tony I may have seemed obstinate as a mule. "What do you take me for, boy? Go comfortably away in a motor car to safety indeed, while Eagle March is here, lying at death's door? Or if he isn't at death's door, it's only because the angels slammed it in his face."

"Eagle March! What are you talking about?" Tony wanted to know, looking dazed. I had forgotten that there was no reason why he should have guessed the hero's ident.i.ty, and I dashed into explanations. "Don't tell people yet," I said, "because he mayn't want it talked about, but he's the 'Monsieur Mars' who's been helping Belgium since the very first day of war. Why, they say _he_ gave the warning that the Germans would cross the frontier. Isn't it _like_ him? And how silly of us not to guess, the minute we heard the name of 'Mars!'"