CHAPTER XXV
AT RAINCY-LA-TOUR
When I opened my eyes it was with a peculiarly reluctant feeling, formy eyelids were so heavy that they seemed to weigh a ton. My head wasunspeakably groggy, and I had quite lost my memory. I couldn't,if suddenly interrogated, have replied with one intelligent bit ofinformation about myself, not even with my name.
Flat on my back I was lying, gazing up at what, surprisingly, seemed tobe a ceiling festooned with garlands of roses and painted with ladiesand cavaliers, idling about a stretch of greensward, decidedly inthe Watteau style. Where was I? What had happened to make me feel sohelpless? It reminded me of an episode of my childhood, a day when mypony had fallen and rolled upon me, and I had been carried home with twocrushed ribs and a broken arm.
Coming out at that time from the influence of the ether, I had foundDunny at my bedside. If only he were here now! I looked round. Why,there he was, sitting in a brocaded chair by the window, his dear oldsilver head thrown back, dozing beyond a doubt.
To see him gave me a warm, comforted, homelike feeling. Nor did itsurprise me, but my surroundings did. The room, a veritable Louis Quinzejewel in its paneling, carving, and gilding, might have come directfrom Versailles by parcel post; my bed was garlanded and curtained inrose-color. Where I had gone to sleep last night I couldn't remember;but it hadn't, I was obstinately sure, been here.
What ailed me, anyhow? I began a series of cautious experiments,designed to discover the trouble. My arms were weak and of a strange,flabby limpness, but they moved. So did my left leg; but when I came tothe right one I was baffled. It wouldn't stir; it was heavily encased insomething. Good heavens! now I knew! It was in a plaster cast.
The shock of the discovery taught me something further, namely, that myhead was liable to excruciating little throbs of pain. I raised a handto it. My forehead was swathed in bandages, like a turbaned Turk's.Oh, to be sure, in the castle at Prezelay, as we were retreating up thestaircase, Schwartzmann had fired at me; but, then, hadn't that been apin prick, the merest scratch?
The name Prezelay served as a key to solve the puzzle. The wholefantastic, incredible chain of happenings came back to me in a rush;the gray car, the inn, the murder, the night in the castle,Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier.
"Dunny!" I heard myself quavering in a voice utterly unlike my own.
The figure in the chair started up and hurried toward me, and thenDunny's hands were holding my hands, his eyes looking into mine.
"There, Dev, there! Take it easy," the familiar voice was soothing me."Hold on to me, my boy, You are safe now. You're all right!"
My safety, however, seemed of small importance for the time being.
"Dunny," I implored, "listen! You have got to find out for me about agirl. How am I to tell you, though? If I start the story, you'll thinkI'm raving."
"I know all about it, Dev," my guardian reassured me. "I've seen MissFalconer. She's absolutely safe."
If that were so, I could relax, and I did with fervent thankfulness. Notfor long, however; my brain had begun to work.
"See here! I want to know who has been playing football with me," was mynext demand, which Dunny answered obligingly, if with a slightly dubiousface.
"That French doctor, nice young chap, said you weren't to talk," hemuttered, "but if I were in your place I'd want to know a few thingsmyself. It was this way, Dev. A fragment of a shell struck you--"
"A fragment!" I raised weak eyebrows. "I know better. Twenty shells atleast, and whole!"
"--and didn't strike your Teuton friends," he charged on, suddenlypurple of visage. "It was a true German shell, my boy, the devil lookingafter his own. The man in the seat with you was cut up a bit; the othertwo were thrown clear of the motor. If you hadn't already given thealarm, they would probably have got off scot-free. As it was, the Frenchheld a drumhead court martial a little later, and all three of thefellows--well, you can fill in the rest."
I was silent for a minute while a picture rose before me: a dank, graydawn; a firing-squad, and Franz von Blenheim's dark, grim face. Nodoubt he had died bravely; but I could not pity him; I had too clear arecollection of the hall at Prezelay.
"As for you," Dunny was continuing, "you seem to have puzzledthem finely. There you were in a French uniform, at your last gaspapparently, and with an American passport, that you seem to have clungto through thick and thin, inside your coat. They took a chance on you,though, because you had made them a present of the Franz vonBlenheim; and by the next day, thanks to Miss Falconer and the Duke ofRaincy-la-Tour, you were being looked for all over France.
"So that's how it stands. You're at Raincy-la-Tour now, at the duke'schateau. The place has been a hospital ever since the war began. Onlyyou're not with the other wounded. You are--well--a rather specialpatient in the pavilion across the lake; and you're by way of being ahero. The day I landed, the first paper I saw shrieked at me how you hadtracked the kaiser's star agent and outwitted him and handed him over tojustice."
"The deuce it did!" I exclaimed. "You must have been puffed up withpride."
My guardian's jaw set itself rigidly. "I was too busy," was his grimanswer. "You see, the end of the statement said there was no hope thatyou could survive. And when I got here I found you with fever, delirium,one leg shot up, four bits of shell in your head, a fine case of brainconcussion. That was nearly three weeks ago, and it seems more likethree years!"
An idea, at this point, made me fix a searching gaze on him.
"By the way," I asked accusingly, "how did you happen to arrive soopportunely on this side? It seemed as natural as possible to findyou settled here waiting for my eyes to open; but on second thoughts Isuppose you didn't fly?"
He looked extraordinarily embarrassed.
"Why," he growled at length, "I had business. I got a cablegram soonafter you left New York. The thing was confoundedly inconvenient, but Ihad no choice about it."
"Dunny," I said weakly, but sternly, "you didn't bring me up to tellwhoppers, not bare-faced ones like that, anyhow, that wouldn't deceivethe veriest child. What earthly business could you have over here inwar-time? Own up, now, and take your medicine like a man."
His guilty air was sufficient answer.
"Well, Dev," he acknowledged, "it was your cable. That Gibraltar messwas a nasty one, and I didn't like its looks. I'm getting old, andyou're all I've got; so I took a passport and caught the _Rochambeau_.Not, of course, that I doubted your ability to take care of yourself, myboy--"
"Didn't you? You might have," I admitted with some ruefulness, "ifyou had known I was bucking both the Allied governments and the pickedtalent of the Central powers. It was too much. I was riding for a fall,and I got it. But I don't mind saying, Dunny, I'm infernally glad youcame."
He wiped his eyes.
"Well, you go to sleep now," he counseled gruffly. "You've got to getwell in a hurry; there's work for you to do! All sorts of things havebeen happening since that _obus_ knocked you out. Just a week ago, forinstance, the President went before Congress and--"
"What's that you say? Not war?"
"Yes, war, young man! We're in it at last, up to our necks; in it withmen and ships and munitions and foodstuffs and everything else wehave to help with, praise the Lord! You'll fight beneath the Stars andStripes, instead of under the Tricolor. I say, Dev, that's positivelythe last word I'll utter. You've got to rest!"
In a weak, quavering fashion, but with sincere enthusiasm, I tried tocelebrate by singing a few bars of the "Star-Spangled Banner" and alittle of the "Marseillaise." Dunny was right, however; the conversationhad exhausted me. In the midst of my patriotic demonstration I fellasleep.
My convalescence was a marvel, I learned from young Dr. Raimbault, thesurgeon from the chateau who came to see me every day. According tohim, I was a patient in a hundred, in a thousand; he never weariedof admiring my constitution, which he described by the various Frenchequivalents of "as hard as nails." Not a set-back attended the course ofmy recovery. First, I sat propped u
p in bed; then I attained the dignityof an arm-chair; later, slowly and painfully, I began to drag myselfabout the room. But the day on which my physician's rapture burst allbounds was the great one when I crawled from the pavilion, gained abench beneath the trees, and sat enthroned, glaring at my crutches. Theywere detestable implements; I longed to smash them. And they would, thedoctor airily informed me, be my portion for three months.
To feel grumpy in such surroundings was certainly black ingratitude.It was an idyllic place. My pavilion was a sort of Trianon, a MarieAntoinette bower, all flowers and gold. Fresh green woods grew aboutit; a lake stretched before it; swans dotted the water where treeswere mirrored, and there were marble steps and balustrades. Across thisglittering expanse rose Raincy-la-Tour, proud and stately, with itsformal gardens and its fountains and its Versailles-like front. Inthe afternoons I could see the wounded soldiers walking there or beingpushed to and fro in wheel-chairs; legless and armless, some of them;wreckage of the mighty battle-fields; timely reminders, poor heroicfellows, that there were people in the world a great deal worse off thanI.
Yet, instead of being thankful, I was profoundly wretched. I moped andsulked; I fell each day into a deeper, more consistent gloom. I triedgrimly to regain my strength, with a view to seeking other quarters.While I stayed here I was the guest of the Firefly of France; and thoughI admired him,--I should have been a cad, a quitter, a poor loser,everything I had ever held anathema in days gone by, not to doso,--still I couldn't feel toward him as a man should feel toward hishost; not in the least!
On three separate occasions Dunny motored up to Paris, bringing backas the fruits of his first excursion my baggage from the Ritz. I wasclothed again, in my right mind; except for my swathed head, I lookedhighly civilized. The day when I had raced hither and yon, and fought anunbelievable battle in a dark hall, and insanely masqueraded first ina leather coat, then in a pale-blue uniform, seemed dim and far-offindeed.
"It was a nice hashish dream," I told my mirrored image. "But it wasn'treal, my lad, for a moment; such things don't happen to folks like you.You're not the romantic type; you don't look like some one in anold picture; you haven't brought down thirty German aeroplanes orthereabouts, and won every war medal the French can give and the name ofAce. No; you look like a--a correct bulldog; and winning an occasionalpolo cup is about your limit. Even if it hadn't been settled before youmet her, you wouldn't have stood a chance."
There were times when I prayed never to see Esme Falconer again. Therewere other times when I knew I would drag myself round the world--yes,on my crutches!--if at the end of the journey I could see her for aninstant, a long way off. I could see that my despondency was drivingDunny to distraction. He evolved the theory that I was going into adecline.
Then came the afternoon that made history. I was sitting at my window.The trees seemed specially green, the sky specially blue, the lakespecially bright. I was feeling stronger and was glumly planning a moveto Paris when I saw an automobile speed up the poplared walk towardRaincy-la-Tour.
Rip-snorting and chugging, the thing executed a curve before thechateau, and then, hugging the side of the lake, advanced, obviouslytoward my humble abode. My heart seemed to turn a somersault. I shouldhave known that car if I had met it in Bagdad. It was a long blue motor,polished to the last notch, deeply cushioned, luxurious, poignantlyfamiliar, the car, in short, that I had pursued to Bleau, and thatlater, in flat defiance of President Poincare or the Generalissimoof France, or whoever makes army rules and regulations, I had guidedthrough the war zone to the castle of Prezelay.
As the chauffeur halted it near the pavilion, it disgorged threeoccupants, one of who, a young officer, slender of form and gracefullyalert of movement, wore the dark-blue uniform of the French FlyingCorps. I knew him only too well. It was Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier.But the glance I gave him was most cursory; my attention was focusedhungrily on the two ladies in the tonneau. They had risen and weredivesting themselves in leisurely fashion of a most complicatedarrangement of motor coats and veils.
From these swathing disguises there first emerged, as if from achrysalis, a black-clad, distinguished-looking young woman whom I hadnever seen before. However, it was the second figure, the one in therosy veils and the tan mantle, that was exciting me. Off came herwrappings, and I saw a girl in a white gown and a flowered hat--theloveliest girl on earth.
I did not stand on the order of my going. I rocked perilously, andmy crutches made a furious clatter, but I was outside in a trulyinfinitesimal space of time. Yes; there they were, chatting with Dunny,who had hurried to meet them. And at sight of me the Firefly of Franceran forward with hands extended, greeting me as if I were his oldestfriend, his brother, his dearest comrade in arms.
I took his hands and I pressed them with what show of warmth I couldsummon. It was as peasant as a bit of torture, but it had to be gonethrough. Then I stared past him toward the ladies, who were coming upwith Dunny; and except for that girl in white, I saw nothing in all theworld.
"Monsieur," the duke was saying, "I pay you my first visit. Only myweakness has prevented me from sooner welcoming to Raincy-la-Tour sohonored a guest."
He turned to the lady who stood beside Miss Falconer, a slender,dark-eyed, gracious young woman wearing a simple black gown and a blackhat and a string of pearls.
"Here is another," said the Firefly, "who has come to welcome you. Oh,yes, Monsieur, you must know, and you must count henceforth as yourfriends in any need, even to the death, all those who bear the name ofRaincy-la-Tour. Permit that I present you to my wife, who is of yourcountry."
"Jean's wife is my sister, Mr. Bayne," Miss Falconer said.