Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley Part 22

"You do me the greatest good. I'll sleep, yes. But first--tell me one thing more; about the _Golden Eagle_. I planed down part of the way, but the motor'd stopped working. The last I remember is when I began to fall."

"The _Eagle's_ safe," I a.s.sured him. "Hardly hurt at all; and there's a Belgian flying man in Liege to-day, Simon Sorel, who knows you. His mechanic is working on the _Golden Eagle_. She'll be ready for you when you're ready for her."

"That will be soon. Good man, Sorel!" he said, and closed his eyes.

"Little Peggy!" I heard him muttering later. But three minutes afterward he had dropped into a natural sleep.

"Magnifique!" was the Belgian doctor's verdict in his next round, when Eagle had waked again, and had been attended by a nurse wiser and more experienced than I. There was little that I was allowed to do for him, but that little was a joy worth being born for; and I could have died of happiness to see how, when he was awake and fully conscious, his eyes followed me when I moved about. But it was better to live than to die just then, and I did live with all my might. I lived in every nerve and vein for those two days while "Monsieur Mars" was my patient. After the first twenty-four hours he insisted that he was well enough to be changed into the ward above, and leave his bed on the ground floor to some one more seriously injured. On the second day he sat up in a reclining chair, and announced that twelve hours more would see him out of hospital. Doctors and nurses protested that he would throw himself back into a fever, and the consequences might be serious; but as at that very time the danger of the town being taken was imminent, arguments for prudence lost their force. Toward evening on the third day Eagle, with his head and one hand still in bandages, was limping about the field where the _Golden Eagle_ had been repaired; and when he came back it was to say that he thought he might get off at midnight with dispatches for the king in Brussels. He calmly announced this intention to me as I handed him an innocent cup of broth, better suited to a confirmed invalid than to a recovered aeronaut. But he quietly accepted the cup; and I saw by the look in his eyes that I was to expect the first real talk we had had together.

"What about your going with me, Peggy?" he asked, as simply as if he were proposing a short pleasure jaunt in a motor car. "You know, I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't think it honestly the safest thing for you. With luck we can make the trip in less than an hour, by air. Heaven knows how long it would take you by earth; and there's no one here, anyhow, to help smuggle you away if I go and leave you behind. I can't bear to do it! Besides, from Brussels, there's a good chance of your getting out with refugees, if you don't wait too long. And you can do as much good work in London as in Liege. What do you say?"

I wished that it might take us many hours to get to Brussels instead of less than one. But I didn't put the wish into words. I said only, yes, I would go; and many thanks.

"Good! That's settled then," said he.

"I must tell our matron," I hesitated. "I _hope_ she won't think me a coward!"

Eagle smiled almost as he used to smile ages ago in London, when first we were friends, and he still thought of me as a "little girl." "Few people would call it a cowardly act for a young woman to fly out of a beleaguered town in a battered aeroplane with a battered airman, and I don't think your matron will be one of them. She'll thank you for what you've done here, and bid you G.o.d-speed. But don't go yet to tell her. I have some things to say to you. You'll be my pa.s.senger and 'observer'

when I start to-night, but we'll have no chance to talk; and in these times we must face the fact that we may never have another chance this side of heaven."

The words went through me like a bayonet, for I knew too well how deadly true they were. I didn't try to contradict him, or talk about "hoping for the best"; for prattle of that sort seemed too futile. I only said, "Let's take this chance, then. I've plenty of time--hours yet. Stretch yourself out in the _chaise longue_ and rest while we talk. I'll sit here by you on the window seat."

No one was very ill in this upper ward, which was kept for convalescents. Some of the men had been given cigarettes to smoke. Some were having their supper. It was generally known that Monsieur Mars and the Demoiselle Irlandaise had been friends in England; and the news having run round the wards that Monsieur Mars had practically discharged himself as a patient, we were allowed to talk in peace. Not an errand was found for me, not a nurse looked--or allowed us to see that she looked--our way.

"I didn't mean to remind you of my existence, you know, Peggy, till I had something to say about myself worth saying," Eagle began, speaking lightly, yet with a nervousness he couldn't quite hide. "I told you that in my last letter. But Providence has stage-managed things differently."

"Yes. We didn't expect to act together in a continental theatre, did we?" I was deliberately flippant. "But I'm glad to be in this great play with you, even in one scene, and such a little part!"

"Maybe the part seems little to you. It doesn't to me! You've helped me to get well twice as soon as I should have done among strangers.

Heavens! But I was glad to see your little face! I'd have told you that first morning when I waked up what I'm going to tell you now, if you had let me then. Things were rather mixed in my brain. I thought I was in London, and you'd found me at a sort of nursing home I retired into for a couple of days to get patched up, after that--er--that little accident I had. I suppose you heard something of it at the time, though I don't think you were on the spot to see."

"Tony told me you were in church, and that it was you who stopped the horses when they started to run away," I said, without beating round the bush, for I thought he was bidding for my frankness on this sore subject.

"I hoped I might have pa.s.sed unrecognized; but I feared that was too much to expect. I was tempted to break my resolution and write to you after all, explaining why I went to Lady Diana's wedding. But I stuck it out because--well, because it _was_ a resolution. Silly maybe! all the same, I had it a good deal at heart to find a new place for myself in the world before I made a sign to any of my friends, even loyal Peggy.

Besides, I had a safe sort of feeling you wouldn't misjudge me."

"I'm glad you felt that," I said. "Almost glad enough to be glad you didn't write. Though--I should have liked to hear."

"Well, I thought of you a lot, if I didn't write. And I couldn't help looking at you in church that day. I sent you wireless messages with my eyes once or twice, although I knew it would be best if you didn't get any of them."

"I believe I did get them. I seemed to know that some one was calling me."

"It wasn't a S. O. S. call!" Eagle smiled. "I found--well, I found that I wasn't in distress, or need of help. That's precisely why I went to St. George's, Peggy. I wanted to test myself. Did you think the reason might be that?"

"No! I thought of a dozen things it might be, but never that one!"

"It was the only motive that could have taken me there. I felt it gave me a right to go, even though--if people who knew how things had been saw me, they might--well, they might think me guilty of very bad taste.

But I didn't mean to be seen. I wasn't asked to show a card. I walked in early and chose a place at the back of the church. I trusted to the crowd to hide me, and it did. Dalziel may have caught a glimpse of me between women's hats, but he couldn't have been sure if it hadn't been for that affair afterward. That was bad luck, in a way, although I was glad, if the accident had to happen, that I could be of use. However, it didn't affect the question of my being in church. And I must tell you about that. I didn't go to England for the purpose of making the experiment with myself. It was another reason which took me there. But being in England, I--tried it--tried it with success."

"You mean me to understand that--you _didn't care_?"

"Not exactly that! I'm not made of iron or marble. I didn't sit there in church without a qualm. But the feelings I had were not those I'd thought I must defend myself against. What I felt was--was no more and no less than a rage of hatred against that d.a.m.ned--forgive me, Peggy!--against that----"

"d.a.m.ned villain, Sidney Vand.y.k.e," I fiercely finished the sentence as he had meant to end it.

"I can't pretend that that word wasn't the only one to express my feelings for him on his wedding day," Eagle admitted. "Not because he'd taken Diana from me, though. That's the strange part! I found it out while she was being married to Vand.y.k.e, and it was the thing I'd wanted to find out. In the relief, I ought to have forgiven him everything. But I didn't forgive. The ruin he'd wrought on my career overtopped everything else in my mind even at that minute. If some great power could have put me in Vand.y.k.e's place at the altar, and given Diana to me instead of to him, I would not have taken her--not even with her love.

It seemed to me that what she would call her love wasn't worth the name of love, after--what had pa.s.sed. It was only the memory of all I'd felt for her which hurt just then, so far as she was concerned. But for him--G.o.d, Peggy! to see him at the height of his hopes and ambitions made me mad to choke his life out! It does me good to confess this to you now, for you're the only one on earth to whom I'd speak."

"Yet, when you went out of church, you saved him from danger of death!"

I said thoughtfully.

"That's just one of life's little ironies, isn't it?" Eagle laughed a low and bitter laugh. "It occurred to me afterward that I'd spoilt a good melodramatic plot. Hero secretly goes to church to see the woman who jilted him marry the villain to whom he owes his ruin. Villain is killed before his eyes on the way to the wedding reception. Big climax!"

"I think it was more dramatic," said I, "for the hero to save the villain's life."

"Too conventional. Obvious sort of thing!" sneered Eagle. "But I _am_ conventional and obvious, I suppose. I did what I did simply because I couldn't help it, and I'd probably do it all over again. I'd have regretted it afterward, perhaps, if Di--if Lady Diana hadn't been in danger, too. I bear her no grudge."

"You're very n.o.ble," I said.

"It's not n.o.bility. It's more like callousness. I freed myself from Lady Diana on her wedding day, or found that I was free. But if you could see into my soul when I think of Vand.y.k.e, you wouldn't call me 'n.o.ble.' I honestly pray for the day when I can remember him with indifference, and when I can say of what he did to me that good is born of evil. That's what I'm working for. But the time hasn't come yet. Maybe it will if I can manage to make myself of real use in this war. I've done nothing yet except a little scouting."

"Liege thinks differently, and so will all the world when it knows."

"I'm not working to reinstate myself in the world's eyes, but in my own--and most of all to help Belgium. There are things one does just for the thing itself. I have a fellow-feeling with a country suffering unjustly. After what I've gone through myself, I seem to owe her allegiance, as to a friend who understands. The moment this war cloud began to gather, I thought it would burst over Belgium, and I crossed the frontier from France with the _Eagle_, to offer my services. I'm glad now I failed in the hope that brought me over from America to England. I wanted to join Shackleton's Polar expedition, but he had no need of me."

"So that was why you came to England?"

"Yes. I told you it wasn't for the sole purpose of testing my feelings at St. George's Church. Being in London----"

"I understand. But, oh, Eagle! To _think_ you would have gone away for years without bidding me good-bye!"

"You don't quite understand yet or you wouldn't say that." His eyes were wistful. "I was disgraced--put beyond the pale, down and out, unless I could work my way up again out of the mud. Mentally, I was a sick man.

Now I see clearer. I'm on my way to get well in spite of scars. Life or death will cure me soon. It doesn't much matter which!"

It mattered to me--mattered so much that I could not speak.

A few hours later I had said good-bye to all my friends at the Liege hospital. Again I was a pa.s.senger of the _Golden Eagle_, flying through darkness as once I had flown through sunshine. Hidden by the night, we winged our way to Brussels safely and surely, and landed outside the town after forty minutes in the air--forty minutes which seemed to me worth as many years.

We came down in a farm field, safely but not silently, and waked the farmer, and his three sons not yet of soldier age. They ran out with rifles prepared for any emergency, but a few words of explanation warmed their hearts to welcome us.

I with my little bundle--my only luggage--was taken to the wife and mother, who exclaimed over me as if I had dropped from another planet, and gave me a bed for the rest of the night. One of the boys offered to guard the monoplane while Eagle went off on the bicycle of the other into town with dispatches from General Leman to the king.

In the morning "Monsieur Mars" came back with the news that a party of English ladies were starting for home in the care of a clergyman, and that he had asked if I might go with them. They had consented to take me, and I must be ready in twenty minutes. An automobile belonging to an officer would call for me at the farm. It came promptly, and in it Eagle and I had our last minutes alone together. We talked cheerfully; but I knew as well as he knew that the chances were ten to one against our ever meeting again on earth.

CHAPTER XX