Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley Part 8

"Of course, we're not afraid for _ourselves_," said Mrs. Dalziel.

"We--we should want to be near Tony, whatever happened. It's of you we're thinking, Peggy. I don't know if we ought to have brought you to such a place. And I do wish Tony's father were with us, anyhow."

The nearer we came to El Paso, the more foreign and Mexican the country seemed, with its wild purple mountains billowing along the sunset sky of red and gold; its queer, Moorish-looking groups of brown huts, and its dark-skinned men in sombreros or huge straw hats with steeple crowns. It was quite a relief to draw into El Paso station where everything was suddenly modern and American, and comfortably normal again.

Tony had got off duty to come and meet us; and after the first "how-do-you-dos," his mother began bombarding him with questions. What had happened? What was likely to happen? Wouldn't it have been better to telegraph us not to come?

She and Milly both had the air of eagerly hoping that he might after all be able to sweep away their fears with a word or a laugh; but for once, Tony kept as solemn a face as the conformation of his benevolent Billiken features permitted.

"There's nothing at all to worry about, if you don't get silly and panicky," said he. "I did think of telegraphing, not because there's any real danger, but because I was afraid that when you got down here, if things hadn't cleared up, the newspaper 'extras' and the way they talk at the hotels might give you the jumps. I couldn't have wired till after you'd started, though, because there was nothing doing before that, worth a telegram. I thought it would scare you blue if you got a message delivered to you in the train saying better not come, or words to that effect; so it seemed best to let things rip. Now you're on the spot, you just keep your hair on, and don't believe anything you read or hear; then you'll be all right."

"My hair doesn't come off, dearest," objected Mrs. Dalziel mildly, which made us laugh; and that did everybody good.

"I bet Lady Peggy isn't afraid worth a cent," Tony remarked.

"Rather not!" said I. "I wouldn't go away--no, not if you set _mice_ at me! Even if Mrs. Dalziel and Milly went, I'd stay on and volunteer as a nurse. I can do first aid, and I don't mind the sight of blood if there isn't too much; though, of course, it would be better if it were a peaceful green or blue instead of that terrifying red."

Tony took us in a taxi to the Paso del Norte, a big hotel good enough for New York or London; and even in that short spin through the streets, we saw the newspaper "extras" being hawked about by yelling boys who waved the papers to show off their huge scarlet headlines. The marble entrance hall of the hotel was crowded with people who had just bought these extras, and were reading aloud t.i.t-bits of "scare" news to each other, or discussing the situation in groups. Some looked very Spanish, and Tony said they were refugees, from the heart of Mexico; but the women seemed to have had plenty of time to sort out and pack their prettiest clothes before they fled.

That night Eagle March was asked to dine with us at the hotel. He sat between Mrs. Dalziel and Milly, and more than once I caught his eyes resting on me thoughtfully, almost wistfully. I wondered if there were something that he was particularly anxious to say, but Milly kept him occupied even after dinner was over and we were having coffee in the hall. I was resigning myself to the idea that we shouldn't be given time for a word together, when out of the crowd appeared Major Vand.y.k.e. He was with friends, but escaped, and crossed the hall to shake hands with us. I noticed what stiff, grudging nods he and Eagle gave each other, just enough of a nod not to be a cut. Something disagreeable had evidently happened between them since they left us at Fort Alvarado; for in those days, no matter how they felt, they always kept up the pretence of being good enough friends.

When Major Vand.y.k.e had been civil to me and asked after my "people," he began telling Mrs. Dalziel and Milly things about the state of affairs in El Paso. "You may have come in for a small adventure, after all,"

said he. "We've had to warn the occupants of some of the tallest buildings in town that they may be called on to clear out at five minutes' notice, if we have trouble, for their houses would be in range of gunfire from both sides. But you'll be all right here at the hotel, whatever happens. We're strong enough to protect you."

He laughed, and I saw that he enjoyed teasing timid little Mrs. Dalziel.

I thought that haughty "we," constantly coming in, was characteristic of the man, and judging by the odd expression which just flickered lightly across Eagle's face, he was thinking the same thing. Tony joined boyishly in the conversation, to rea.s.sure his mother and Milly, and Eagle promptly seized the moment for a word with me.

"Any message?" he asked in a low voice. I shook my head.

"Oh, well," he said, "I'm mighty glad to see you, anyhow, little girl.

Lucky Tony! I'm rather jealous of him, you know. I'd got sort of in the habit of thinking I had the only claim."

I felt myself go scarlet. What a good thing one doesn't blush all colours of the rainbow!--for I had the sensation of a prism. "Tony Dalziel may be lucky," I stammered. "I hope he is. But his luck has nothing to do with me. Neither has he--except as a friend. That's quite understood between us."

"Oh, is it?" smiled Eagle. "I'm a selfish beast to be glad, but I am. I was feeling quite low in my mind and 'out of it' at dinner."

So the wistful looks had been for me! It seemed too good to be true, even to have so much place in Eagle's heart that he didn't want to lose me.

When Milly turned to him, as she did almost instantly, for consolation after Major Vand.y.k.e's teasing, Eagle told her, while I listened, how very little, in his opinion, there was for any one to fear. It was true, of course, that the troops had come to El Paso for a purpose. Every one thought it had been served by frightening out of a certain faction of Mexicans such vague, secret hopes as they might foolishly have cherished. Now to be sure, the "scare act" was being read again, but the big field guns pointing across the river were in any case powerful enough to keep the peace. Captain March wanted to know if we would care to visit the camps next day. If so, he would help Dalziel arrange the visit. This suggestion saved Milly the trouble of hinting for it, and she was happy; but her happiness was destined to be short-lived. It was destroyed in the night by a band of vicious microbes with which she had been fighting a silent battle during the long journey to El Paso. They won, and kept her in bed with a pink nose and eyes overflowing with grief and influenza.

I n.o.bly offered to stay with her, but Mrs. Dalziel had a son as well as a daughter. She said we must go and take a look at Tony's tent, if we did nothing else; and perhaps it would have ended in our doing not much more if it hadn't been for Eagle.

El Paso was one of the most deliciously exciting places in America just then, and there were many things which I wanted far more to see than Tony Dalziel's tent. There was the town itself, with its broad streets and tall buildings (which made me shiver with the wildly absurd thought of their being smashed by silly rebel guns from across the river); its shady avenues of alluring bungalows, and its parks--all so gay and peaceful in the warm spring sunshine that the very suggestion of war within a thousand miles seemed fantastic melodrama, despite the shouting newspaper boys with a fearsome "extra" coming out every fifteen minutes.

There was new Fort Bliss, the cavalry post, and old Fort Bliss, famous, they told me, as long ago as the days of Indian warfare. There was the concentration camp where five thousand Mexicans were guarded by soldiers, and there were the camps of the reinforcing troops, artillery, cavalry, and infantry. I wanted to miss nothing, but when we had motored to old Fort Bliss down by the river and the smelting works, and seen the faded houses in temporary occupation of visiting officers; when we had spun out to new Fort Bliss to admire the smart quarters and barracks, and when we had trailed about a little in "Tony's camp," Mrs. Dalziel was tired. The sun was very hot, and she thought she ought to go home to poor Milly. Captain March, however, was certain that what I ought to do was to see his tent before deserting camp. He had something there which he particularly wished to show me. Tony volunteered to take his mother back to our hired automobile, waiting near the Zoo, and to return for me. I hoped that he might be away a long time, and looked forward to my few minutes alone with Eagle as to a taste of paradise, having no idea that those moments would be long enough to decide the fate of two men.

The camp was a neat, khaki-coloured town of canvas houses, big and little, seemingly countless rows of them, set in rough gra.s.s, and sandy earth of the same yellow brown as the tents. How the officers and men knew their narrow lanes and low-browed dwellings apart, I could not imagine, for they all bore the most remarkable family resemblance to one another in shape and feature, except those which boasted mosquito-net draperies to keep out the flies.

Among these more luxurious soldier houses was Eagle's. His tent, prepared for the day, consisted of a canvas wall with a wide-open s.p.a.ce all around, between it and the roof; and the whole internal economy was ingenuously open to public gaze. Not that it mattered, for everything was as neat as a model doll's house: the narrow bed, the pathetically meagre toilet arrangements, the one chair, the small trunk which was the sole wardrobe, and the ridiculous shaving mirror stuck up on a pole, above a miniature a.r.s.enal.

"I should think you'd cut yourself to pieces," said I, giggling impolitely as I stood on tiptoe, and peered into my own eyes in the tiny looking-gla.s.s. "There isn't room to see more than half a feature at a time. I've always been glad I wasn't a man, for two reasons: because I'd hate to have to shave, or to marry a woman. Both are horrid necessities."

"That depends on the razor--and the woman," laughed Eagle. "But as a matter of fact, I value that six-inch square of gla.s.s more than any of my other possessions. It's the thing I expressly wanted to show you.

Stand back a minute, Lady Vanity, and you'll see why."

I stood back. Eagle did something to the plain dark frame of the mirror, which had a gold rim inside. Then he pulled out the gla.s.s from the bottom, and there instead, framed in black and gold, was a photograph of Diana--a lovely photograph: just a head, lips faintly smiling, eyes gazing straight at you and saying in plain eye language, "I love you dearly."

I had never seen the photograph before, and seeing it now gave me a strange frightened feeling, as if I had found out something about Diana which I wasn't supposed to know. It was such an _intimate_ portrait, intended to be revealing, yet really concealing! I felt it was wicked of those beautiful eyes to say what they did not mean, or, perhaps, did not know how to mean; and for my critical stare, behind that "I love you,"

calculation hid, like the cold glint deep down in the jewel eyes of a Persian cat, when she doesn't want a mouse to guess that she knows it is there.

"Now you can understand why I'm glad to be a man," said Eagle, "in spite of--no, _because_ of--well, anyway one of the two 'necessities' you think so 'horrid,' my child. What glory to be chosen out of all the rest who love her by such a woman! And I hope she _is_ going to choose me. I don't believe she's the kind of girl to have a photograph like that taken expressly for a man, if she didn't feel a little of what the picture seems to say she feels, do you?"

I suppose men's ignorance of what she is at heart is a Providence-given suit of chain armour for every woman. But I wasn't myself sure enough yet of what Di might decide to do, to try and disturb Eagle's happy confidence in her. So, instead of answering his questions, I asked him one: "_Did_ she have that photograph taken expressly for you?"

"Yes," Eagle answered triumphantly. "I don't think she'd mind my repeating to her own sister that she told me so, or that there's only this one copy, and she gave orders to have the negative destroyed."

He had hardly got these words out of his mouth when we heard footsteps, and Major Vand.y.k.e stopped suddenly in front of the doorway. In an instant, Eagle had unhooked the frame from the pole, and holding the face of the portrait toward his breast, quietly slipped the mirror into its place again, as, with _sang-froid_ apparently unruffled, he called out: "Hullo, Vand.y.k.e! Have you come to see Lady Peggy or me?"

"I didn't know Lady Peggy was here. I was only pa.s.sing by, on my way to the colonel's," explained Vand.y.k.e. "But seeing her, I thought I might be allowed to stop and say 'how do you do?'"

He spoke rather brusquely, but it was impossible to tell from his tone whether it covered anger or expressed only the coolness which had grown up between him and Captain March. As I shook hands with Major Vand.y.k.e, I was asking myself anxiously if he could have seen the photograph in pa.s.sing? If not--and it did seem as if Eagle's head and mine ought to have hidden it from him--our tell-tale words would have meant nothing to his intelligence, even if he had overheard them as he came. If, however, he had s.n.a.t.c.hed a glimpse of Diana's face, and at the same time caught what Eagle said, I was afraid there might be trouble. Provided it were only for Di, I didn't much care, because she thoroughly deserved to have trouble, and it would give her a lesson; but something warned my instinct that the consequences might spread and spread until others suffered, as a ring forever widens in smooth water when the tiniest pebble is thrown.

CHAPTER VIII

We were still skirmishing on the outskirts of conversation--What did I think of a soldier's out-of-door quarters? Why hadn't any one yet shown me the great sight, the concentration camp? when Tony Dalziel came hurrying up, to take me back to his mother and the motor. His arrival seemed to bring relief from strain. It was like a brisk breeze blowing away the brooding clouds that stifle the atmosphere before a thunderstorm. I dreaded to go and leave those two men together; but when Major Vand.y.k.e suggested walking with us to the car, and asking Mrs.

Dalziel about Milly, my heart felt lighter. We stopped only long enough with Eagle to arrange a visit to the concentration camp for next morning, if Milly were better, and then Vand.y.k.e, Tony, and I started off.

For the first two or three minutes the major walked along in silence; but when we were well out of sight of Eagle March's tent he interrupted some sentence of Tony's ruthlessly. I don't think he was even aware that the other was speaking.

"See here, Tony, old man, will you do me a favour?" he asked in his nicest manner. "There's a book in my tent I promised to give Lady Peggy, to read aloud to Miss Dalziel--a jolly good story! I forgot to bring it out when I came, and I don't want to go back now if I can help it, because a party of bores are being shown round in that direction, awful people I've escaped from. You don't know them, so they can't hurt you.

Will you, like a dear chap, cut off and grab the book? It's on the table; you can't miss it; purple cover."

Tony obligingly "cut," and I waited, breathless, for what was to come, knowing now without being told that Sidney Vand.y.k.e had seen the photograph. He had not promised me a book, nor mentioned one.

I had only a few seconds to wait. "Is it true that your sister gave March the picture he has in his tent?" he demanded, rather than asked.

I gasped, doubtful whether it would be wise to bring things to a crisis, or better to try and keep them simmering. But an instant's reflection told me that to shilly-shally with the man in this mood would make what was already bad far worse. "Yes, she gave it to him, of course," I replied. "I think you must have overheard him say so."

I really didn't mean to put emphasis on the offending word, but Major Vand.y.k.e suspected it. Perhaps the cap fitted!

"I wasn't eavesdropping," he said. "I happened to hear. That's a very different thing from overhearing. And I have a right to ask you as Diana's sister, Diana herself not being on the spot, to give me an explanation, as I'm sure she would if she were here. Because I have the duplicate of that photo. She told me she'd had it taken for me, and the negative destroyed. I considered it sacred. I would have shown it to n.o.body."

"I am n.o.body," said I, "n.o.body except Captain March's friend, to whom he tells things he wouldn't tell to others. He had the best of reasons to believe I was in Diana's confidence, as well as his. And as for the photograph, it's as sacred to him as it could be to you, Major Vand.y.k.e.

You might realize that from the clever way he has thought of to hide it; and no person who wasn't absolutely _prying_ could have recognized it in pa.s.sing by his tent. He knew that very well, or he wouldn't have uncovered the picture for even a second."

"If you were a man, you wouldn't dare say such a thing as that to me, Lady Peggy."