Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
THE FIREFLY OF FRANCE
by Marion Polk Angellotti
TO
THE MEMORY OF
THE HEROIC GUYNEMER
"THE ACE OF THE ACES"
PREPARER'S NOTE
This text was prepared from a 1918 edition, published by The Century Co., New York.
THE FIREFLY OF FRANCE
CHAPTER I
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
The restaurant of the Hotel St. Ives seems, as I look back on it, an oddspot to have served as stage wings for a melodrama, pure and simple. Yeta melodrama did begin there. No other word fits the case. The innsof the Middle Ages, which, I believe, reeked with trap-doors andcutthroats, pistols and poisoned daggers, offered nothing weirder thanmy experience, with its first scene set beneath this roof. The foodthere is superperfect, every luxury surrounds you, millionaires andtraveling princes are your fellow-guests. Still, sooner than passanother night there, I would sleep airily in Central Park, and if I hada friend seeking New York quarters, I would guide him toward some otherplace.
It was pure chance that sent me to the St. Ives for the night before mysteamer sailed. Closing the doors of my apartment the previous week andbidding good-bye to the servants who maintained me there in bachelorstate and comfort, I had accompanied my friend Dick Forrest on afarewell yacht cruise from which I returned to find the first two hotelsof my seeking packed from cellar to roof. But the third had a free room,and I took it without the ghost of a presentiment. What would or wouldnot have happened if I had not taken it is a thing I like to speculateon.
To begin with, I should in due course have joined an ambulance sectionsomewhere in France. I should not have gone hobbling on crutches for apainful three months or more. I should not have in my possessionfour shell fragments, carefully extracted by a French surgeon from myfortunately hard head. Nor should I have lived through the dreadfulmoment when that British officer at Gibraltar held up those papers,neatly folded and sealed and bound with bright, inappropriately cheerfulred tape, and with an icy eye demanded an explanation beyond human powerto afford.
All this would have been spared me. But, on the other hand, I could notnow look back to that dinner on the Turin-Paris _rapide_. I should neverhave seen that little, ruined French village, with guns booming in thedistance and the nearer sound of water running through tall reeds andover green stones and between great mossy trees. Indeed, my life wouldnow be, comparatively speaking, a cheerless desert, because I shouldnever have met the most beautiful--Well, all clouds have silver linings;some have golden ones with rainbow edges. No; I am not sorry I stoppedat the St. Ives; not in the least!
At any rate, there I was at eight o'clock of a Wednesday evening in arestaurant full of the usual lights and buzz and glitter, among womenin soft-hued gowns, and men in their hideous substitute for thesame. Across the table sat my one-time guardian, dear old PeterDunstan,--Dunny to me since the night when I first came to him, a verytearful, lonesome, small boy whose loneliness went away forever with hiswelcoming hug,--just arrived from home in Washington to eat a farewelldinner with me and to impress upon me for the hundredth time that I hadbetter not go.
"It's a wild-goose chase," he snapped, attacking his entree savagely.Heaven knows it was to prove so, even wilder than his dreams couldpaint; but if there were geese in it, myself included, there was also tobe a swan.
"You don't really mean that, Dunny," I said firmly, continuing mydinner. It was a good dinner; we had consulted over each item fromcocktails to liqueurs, and we are both distinctly fussy about food.
"I do mean it!" insisted my guardian. Dunny has the biggest heart in theworld, with a cayenne layer over it, and this layer is always thickestwhen I am bound for distant parts. "I mean every word of it, I tellyou, Dev." Dev, like Dunny, is a misnomer; my name is Devereux--DevereuxBayne. "Don't you risk your bones enough with the confounded games youplay? What's the use of hunting shells and shrapnel like a hero in amovie reel? We're not in this war yet, though we soon will be, praisethe Lord! And till we are, I believe in neutrality--upon my soul I do."
"Here's news, then!" I exclaimed. "I never heard of it before. Well,your new life begins too late, Dunny. You brought me up the other way.The modern system, you know, makes the parent or guardian responsiblefor the child. So thank yourself for my unneutral nature and for the warmedals I'm going to win!"
Muttering something about impertinence, he veered to another tack.
"If you must do it," he croaked, "why sail for Naples instead of forBordeaux? The Mediterranean is full of those pirate fellows. Youread the papers--the headlines anyway; you know it as well as I. It'ssuicide, no less! Those Huns sank the _San Pietro_ last week. I say,young man, are you listening? Do you hear what I'm telling you?"
It was true that my gaze had wandered near the close of his harangue.I like to look at my guardian; the fine old chap, with his height andstraightness, his bright blue eyes and proud silver head, is a sight forsore eyes, as they say. But just then I had glimpsed something that waseven better worth seeing. I am not impressionable, but I must confessthat I was impressed by this girl.
She sat far down the room from me. Only her back was visible and asomewhat blurred side-view reflected in the mirror on the wall. Even somuch was, however, more than welcome, including as it did a smooth whiteneck, a small shell-like ear, and a mass of warm, crinkly, red-brownhair. She wore a rose-colored gown, I noticed, cut low, with a string ofpearls; and her sole escort was a staid, elderly, precise being, ratherof the trusted family-lawyer type.
"I haven't missed a word, Dunny," I assured my vis-a-vis. "I was justwondering if Huns and pirates had quite a neutral sound. You know I haveto go via Rome to spend a week with Jack Herriott. He has been pesteringme for a good two years--ever since he's been secretary there."
Grumbling unintelligible things, my guardian sampled his Chablis; and I,crumbling bread, lazily wishing I could get a front view of the girl inrose-color, filled the pause by rambling on.
"Duty calls me," I declared. "You see, I was born in France. Shabbytreatment on my parents' part I've always thought it; if they hadhurried home before the event I might have been President and declaredwar here instead of hunting one across the seas. In that case, Dunny,I should have heeded your plea and stayed; but since I'm ineligible forchief executive, why linger on this side?"
He scowled blackly.
"I'll tell you what it is, my boy," he accused, with lifted forefinger."You like to pose--that's what is the matter with you! You like to actstolid, matter-of-fact, correct; you want to sit in your ambulance andsmoke cigarettes indifferently and raise your eyebrows superciliouslywhen shrapnel bursts round. And it's all very well now; it lookspicturesque; it looks good form, very. But how old are you, eh, Dev?Twenty-eight is it? Twenty-nine?"
"You should know--none better--that I am thirty," I responded. "Haven'tyou remembered each anniversary since I was five, beginning with ahobby-horse and working up through knives and rifles and ponies to thelatest thing in cars?"
Dunny lowered his accusing finger and tapped it on the cloth.
"Thirty," he repeated fatefully. "All right, Dev. Strong and fit as anox, and a crack polo-player and a fair shot and boxer and not bad withboats and cars and horses and pretty well off, too. So when you lookbored, it's picturesque; but wait! Wait ten years, till you take onflesh, and the doctor puts you on diet, and you stop hunting chances tokill yourself, but play golf like me. Then, my boy, when you look stolidyou won't be romantic. You'll be stodgy, my boy. That's what you'll be!"
Of all words in the dictionary there is surely none worse than this one.The suggestions of stodginess are appalling, including, even at best,hints of overweight, gene
ral uninterestingness, and a disposition to sitat home in smoking-jacket and slippers after one's evening meal. As myguardian suggested, my first youth was over. I held up both my hands intoken that I asked for grace.
"_Kamerad_!" I begged pathetically. "Come, Dunny, let's be sociable.After all, you know, it's my last evening; and if you call me suchnames, you will be sorry when I am gone. By the way, speaking ofHuns--it was you, the neutral, who mentioned them,--does it strike youthere are quite a few of them on the staff of this hotel? I hope theywon't poison me. Look at the head waiter, look at half the waitersround, and see that blond-haired, blue-eyed menial. Do you think he sawhis first daylight in these United States?"
The menial in question was a uniformed bellboy winding in and out amongtables and paging some elusive guest. As he approached, his chant grewplainer.
"Mr. Bayne," he was droning. "Room four hundred and three."
I raised a hand in summons, and he paused beside my seat.
"Telephone call for you, sir," he informed me.
With a word to my guardian, I pushed my chair back and crossed the room.But at the door I found my path barred by the _maitre d'hotel_, who, atthe sight of my progress, had sprung forward, like an arrow from a bow.
"Excuse me, sir. You're not leaving, are you?" The man was actuallybreathing hard. Deferential as his bearing was, I saw no cause for theinquiry, and with some amusement and more annoyance, I wondered if hesuspected me of slipping out to evade my bill.
"No," I said, staring him up and down; "I'm not!" I passed down the hallto the entrance of the telephone booths. Glancing back, I could seehim still standing there gazing after me; his face, I thought, wore arelieved expression as he saw whither I was bound.
The queer incident left my mind as I secluded myself, got my connection,and heard across the wire the indignant accents of Dick Forrest, myformer college chum. Upon leaving his yacht that morning, I had promisedhim a certain power of attorney--Dick is a lawyer and is called agood one, though I can never quite credit it--and he now demanded inunjudicial heat why it had not been sent round.
"Good heavens, man," I cut in remorsefully, "I forgot it! The thingis in my room now. Where are you? That's all right. You'll have it bymessenger within ten minutes." Hastily rehooking the receiver, I boltedfrom my booth.
In the restaurant door against a background of paneled walls the _maitred'hotel_ still stood, as if watching for my return. I sprang into anelevator just about to start its ascent, and saw his mouth fall open andhis feet bring him several quick steps forward.
"The man is crazy," I told myself with conviction as I shot up fourstories in as many seconds and was deposited in my hall.
There was no one at the desk where the floor clerk usually kept vigil,gossiping affably with such employees as passed. The place seemeddeserted; no doubt all the guests were downstairs. Treading lightly onthe thick carpet, I went down the hall to Room four hundred and three,and found the door ajar and a light visible inside.
My bed, I supposed, was being turned down. I swung the door open, andhalted in my tracks. With his back to me, bent over a wide-open trunkthat I had left locked, was a man.
Stepping inside, I closed the door quietly, meanwhile scrutinizing myunconscious visitor from head to foot. He wore no hotel insignia--wasneither porter, waiter, nor valet.
"Well, how about it? Anything there suit you?" I inquired affably, withmy back against the door.
Exclaiming gutturally, he whisked about and faced me where I stood quiteprepared for a rough-and-tumble. Instead of a typical housebreaker offiction, I saw a pale, rabbit-like, decent-appearing little soul. Hewas neatly dressed; he seemed unarmed save for a great ring of assortedkeys; and his manner was as propitiatory and mild-eyed as that of anymouse. There must be some mistake. He was some sober mechanic, not arobber. But on the other hand, he looked ready to faint with fright.
"_Mein Gott_!" he murmured in a sort of fishlike gasp.
This illuminating remark was my first clue.
"Ah! _Mein Herr_ is German?" I inquired, not stirring from my place.
The demand wrought an instant change in him--he drew himself up, perhapsto five feet five.
"Vat you got against the Germans?" he asked me, almost with menace. Itwas the voice of a fanatic intoning "Die Wacht am Rhein"--of a zealotspeaking for the whole embattled _Vaterland_.
The situation was becoming farcical.
"Nothing in the world, I assure you," I replied. "They are a simple,kindly people. They are musical. They have given the world Schiller,Goethe, the famous _Kultur_, and a new conception of the possibilitiesof war. But I think they should have kept out of Belgium, and I feel thesame way about my room--and don't you try to pull a pistol or I may feelmore strongly still."
"I ain't got no pistol, _nein_," declared my visitor, sulkily. Hisresentment had already left him; he had shrunk back to five feet three.
"Well, I have, but I'll worry along without it," I remarked, witha glance at the nearest bag. As targets, I don't regard myfellow-creatures with great enthusiasm and, moreover, I could easilyhave made two of this mousy champion of a warlike race. Illogically,I was feeling that to bully him was sheer brutality. Besides this, mydinner was not being improved by the delay.
"Look here," I said amiably, "I can't see that you've taken anything.Speak up lively now; I'll give you just one chance. If you care to tellme how you got through a locked door and what you were after, I'll letyou go. I'm off to the firing line, and it may bring me luck!"
Hope glimmered in his eyes. In broken English, with a childlikeingenuousness of demeanor, he informed me that he was a first-classlocksmith--first-glass he called it--who had been sent by the managementto open a reluctant trunk. He had entered my room, I was led to infer,by a mistake.
"I go now, _ja_?" he concluded, as postscript to the likely tale.
"The devil you do! Do you take me for an utter fool?" I asked, excusablynettled, and stepping to the telephone, I took the receiver from itshook.
"Give me the manager's office, please," I requested, watching myvisitor. "Is this the manager? This is Mr. Bayne speaking, Room fourhundred and three. I've found a man investigating my trunk--a foreigner,a German." An exclamation from the manager, and from the listeningtelephone-girl a shriek! "Yes; I have him. Yes; of course I can holdhim. Send up your house detective and be quick! My dinner is spoiling--"
The receiver dropped from my hand and clattered against the wall. Thelittle German, suddenly galvanized, had leaped away from the trunk, nottoward me and the door beyond me, but toward the electric switch. Hisfingers found and turned it, plunging the room into the darkness of thegrave. Taken unaware, I barred his path to the hall, only to hear himfling up the window across the room. Against the faint square of lightthus revealed, I saw him hang poised a moment. Then with a desperatenoise, a moan of mixed resolve and terror, he disappeared.