Chapter VI: Part 6

"This is the year 1947. It was in 1917 that the United States went into war--thirty years ago. The fifth of June, 1917, was set, as you remember, for the registration of all men in the country over twenty-one and under thirty-one for the draft. I was twenty-three, living in this house with my father and mother, both dead before the war ended. Being outside of the city, the polling place where I was due to register was three miles off, at Hiawatha. I registered in the morning; the polls were open from seven A.M. to nine P.M. My mother drove me over, and the road was being mended, and, as happened in those days in the country, half a mile of it was almost impassable. There were no adjustable lift-roads invented then. We got through the ruts and stonework, but it was hard going, and we came home by a detour through the city rather than pass again that beastly half mile. That night was dark and stormy, with rain at intervals, and as we sat in this room, reading, the three of us--" The Judge paused and gazed a moment at the faces in the lamplight, at the chairs where his guests sat. It was as if he called back to their old environment for a moment the two familiar figures which had belonged here, which had gone out of his life. "We sat in this room, the three of us," he repeated, "and the butler came in.

"'If you please, sir, there's a young man here who wants to register,' he said.

"'Wants to register!' my father threw at him. 'What do you mean?'

"We all went outside, and there we found not one, but five boys, Russians. There was a munitions plant a mile back of us and the lads worked there, and had wakened to the necessity of registering at the last moment, being new in the country and with little English. They had directions to go to the same polling place as mint, Hiawatha, but had gotten lost, and, seeing our lights, brought up here. Hiawatha, as I said, is three miles away. It was eight-thirty and the polls closed at nine. We brought the youngsters inside, and I dashed to the garage for the car and piled the delighted lads into it and drove them across.

"At least I tried to. But when we came to the bad half mile the car rebelled at going the bit twice in a day, and the motor stalled. There we were--eight-forty-five P.M.--polls due to close at nine--a year's imprisonment for five well-meaning boys for neglecting to register. I was in despair. Then suddenly one of the boys saw a small red light ahead, the tail light of an automobile. We ran along and found a big car standing in front of a house. As we got there, out from the car stepped a woman with a lantern, and as the light swung upward I saw that she was tall and fair and young and very lovely. She stopped as the six of us loomed out of the darkness. I knew that a professor from the University in town had taken this house for the summer, but I don't know the people or their name. It was no time to be shy. I gave my name and stated the case.

"The girl looked at me. 'I've seen you,' she said. 'I know you are Mr. McLane. I'll drive you across. One moment, till I tell my mother.'

"She was in the house and out again without wasting a second, and as she flashed into the car I heard a gasp, and I turned and saw in the glare of the headlights as they sprang on one of my Russians, a gigantic youngster of six feet four or so, standing with his cap off and his head bent, as he might have stood before a shrine, staring at the spot where the girl had disappeared into the car. Then the engine purred and my squad tumbled in.

"We made the polls on the tap of nine. Afterwards we drove back to my car and among us, with the lantern, we got the motor running again, the girl helping efficiently. The big fellow, when we told her good-night, astonished me by dropping on his knees and kissing the edge of her skirt. But I put it down to Slavic temperament and took it casually. I've learned since what Russian depth of feeling means--and tenacity of purpose. There was one more incident. When I finally drove the lads up to their village the big chap, who spoke rather good English when he spoke at all, which was seldom, invited me to have some beer. I was tired and wanted to get home, so I didn't. Then the young giant excavated in his pocket and brought out a dollar bill.

"'You get beer tomorrow.' And when I laughed and shoved it back he flushed. 'Excuse--Mr. Sir,' he said. 'I make mistake.' Suddenly he drew himself up--about to the treetops, it looked, for he was a huge, a magnificent lad. He tossed out his arm to me. 'Some day,' he stated dramatically, 'I do two things. Some day I give Mr. Sir somethings more than dollar--and he will take. And--some day I marry--Miss Angel!'

"You may believe I was staggered. But I simply stuck out my fist and shook his and said: 'Good. No reason on earth why a fellow with the right stuff shouldn't get anywhere. It's a free country.' And the giant drew his black brows together and remarked slowly: 'All countries--world--is to be free. War will sweep up kings--and other--rubbish. I--shall be--a man.'

"Besides his impressive build, the boy had--had--" the Judge glanced at the Russian General, whose eyes glowed at the fire. "The boy had a remarkable face. It was cut like a granite hill, in sweeping masses. All strength. His eyes were coals. I went home thoughtful, and the Russian boy's intense face was in my mind for days, and I told myself many times that he not only would be, but already was, a man.

"Events quickstepped after that. I got to France within the year, and, as you remember, work was ready. It was perhaps eighteen months after that registration day, June fifth, which we keep so rightly now as one of our sacred days, that one morning I was in a fight. Our artillery had demoralized the enemy at a point and sent them running. There was one machine gun left working in the Hun trenches--doing a lot of damage. Suddenly it jammed. I was commanding my company, and I saw the chance, but also I saw a horrid mess of barbed wire. So I just ran forward a bit and up to the wire and started clipping, while that machine gun stayed jammed. Out of the corner of an eye I could see men rushing towards it in the German trench, and I knew I had only a moment before they got it firing again. Then, as I leaped far forward to reach a bit of entanglement, my foot slipped in a puddle and as I sprawled I saw our uniform and a dead American boy's face under me, and I fell headlong in his blood over him and into a bunch of wire. And couldn't get up. The wire held like the devil. I got more tied up at every pull. And my clippers had fallen from my hand and landed out of reach.

"'It's good night for me,' I thought, and was aware of a sharp regret. To be killed because of a nasty bit of wire! I had wanted to do a lot of things yet. With that something leaped, and I saw clippers flashing close by. A big man was cutting me loose, dragging me out, setting me on my feet. Then the roar of an exploding shell; the man fell--fell into the wire from which he had just saved me. There was no time to consider that; somehow I was back and leading my men--and then we had the trenches.

"The rest of that day was confusion, but we won a mile of earthworks, and at night I remembered the incident of the wire and the man who rescued me. By a miracle I found him in the field hospital. His head was bandaged, for the bit of shell had scraped his cheek and jaw, but his eyes were safe, and something in the glance out of them was familiar. Yet I didn't know him till he drew me over and whispered painfully, for it hurt him to talk:

"'Yester--day I did--give Mr. Sir somethings more than dollar. And he did--take it.'

"Then I know the big young Russian of registration day who had tried to tip me. Bless him! I got him transferred to my command and--" the Judge hesitated a bit and glanced at his distinguished guest. One surmised embarrassment in telling the story of the General's humble compatriot.

The General rose to his feet and stood before the fire facing the handful of men. "I can continue this anecdote from the point that is more easily than my friend the Judge," spoke the General. "I was in the confidence of that countryman of mine. I know. It was so that after he had been thus slightly useful to my friend the Judge, who was the Captain McLane at that time--"

The Judge broke in with a shout of deep laughter worthy of a boy of eighteen. "He 'slightly obliged me by saving my life." The American, threw that into the Russian's smooth sentences. "I put that fact before the jury."

The four men listening laughed also, but the Russian held up a hand and went on gravely: "It was quite simple, that episode, and the man's pleasure. I knew him well. But what followed was not ordinary. The Captain McLane saw to it that the soldier had his chance. He became an officer. He went alive through the war, and at the end the Captain McLane made it possible that he should be educated. His career was a gift from the Captain McLane--from my friend the Judge to that man, who is now--" the finished sentence halted a mere second--"who is now a responsible person of Russia.

"And it is the incident of that sort, it is that incident itself which I know, which leads me to combat--" he turned with a deep bow--"the position of the Sena-torr that the great war did not make for democracy. Gentlemen, my compatriot was a peasant, a person of ignorance, yet with a desire of fulfilling his possibilities. He had been born in social chains and tied to most sordid life, beyond hope, in old Russia. To try to shake free he had gone to America. But it was that caldron of fire, the war, which freed him, which fused his life and the life of the Captain McLane, so different in opportunity, and burned from them all trivialities and put them, stark-naked of advantages and of drawbacks artificial, side by side, as two lives merely. It made them--brothers. One gave and the other took as brothers without thought of false pride. They came from the furnace men. Both. Which is democracy--a chance for a tree to grow, for a flame to burn, for a river to flow; a chance for a man to become a man and not rest a vegetable anchored to the earth as--Oh, God!--for many centuries the Russian mujiks have rested. It is that which I understand by democracy. Freedom of development for everything which wants to develop. It was the earthquake of war which broke chains, loosened dams, cleared the land for young forests. It was war which made Russia a republic, which threw down the kingships, which joined common men and princes as comrades. God bless that liberating war! God grant that never in all centuries may this poor planet have another! God save democracy--humanity! Does the Sena-torr yet believe that the great war retarded democracy?" The Russian's brilliant, smouldering eyes swept about, inquiring.

There was a hush in the peaceful, firelit, lamp-lit room. And with that, as of one impulse, led by the Senator, the five men broke into handclapping. Tears stood in eyes, faces were twisted with emotion; each of these men had seen what the thing was--war; each knew what a price humanity had paid for freedom. Out of the stirring of emotion, out of the visions of trenches and charges and blood and agony and heroism and unselfishness and steadfastness, the fighting parson, he who had bent, under fire, many a day over dying men who waited his voice to help them across the border--the parson led the little company from the intense moment to commonplace.

"You haven't quite finished the story, General. The boy promised to do two things. He did the first; he gave the Judge 'something more than a dollar,' and the Judge took it--his life. But he said also he was going to marry--what did he call her?--Miss Angel. How about that?"

The Russian General, standing on the hearthrug, appeared to draw himself up suddenly with an access of dignity, and the Judge's boyish big laugh broke into the silence, "Tell them, Michael," said the Judge. "You've gone so far with the fairy story that they have a right to know the crowning glory of it. Tell them."

And suddenly the men sitting about noticed with one accord what, listening to the General's voice, they had not thought about--that the Russian was uncommonly tall--six feet four perhaps; that his face was carved in sweeping lines like a granite hillside, and that an old, long scar stretched from the vivid eyes to the mouth. The men stared, startled with a sudden simultaneous thought. The Judge, watching, smiled. Slowly the General put his hand into the breast pocket of his evening coat; slowly he drew out a case of dark leather, tooled wonderfully, set with stones. He opened the case and looked down; the strong face changed as if a breeze and sunshine passed over a mountain. He glanced up at the men waiting.

"I am no Duke's brother," he said, smiling, suddenly radiant. "That is a mistake of the likeness of a name, which all the world makes. I am born a mujik of Russia. But you, sir," and he turned to the parson, "you wish an answer of 'Miss Angel,' as the big peasant boy called that lovely spirit, so far above him in that night, so far above him still, and yet, God be thanked, so close today! Yes? Then this is my answer." He held out the miniature set with jewels.

ROBINA'S DOLL

Massive, sprawling, uncertain writing, two sentences to the page; a violent slant in the second line, down right, balanced by a drastic lessening of the letters, up right, in the line underneath; spelling not as advised in the Century Dictionary--a letter from Robina, aged eight. Robina's Aunt Evelyn, sitting in her dress and cap of a Red Cross nurse in the big base hospital in Paris, read the wandering, painstaking, very unsuccessful literary effort, laughing, half-crying, and kissed it enthusiastically.

"The darling baby! She shall have her doll if it takes--" Aunt Evelyn stopped thoughtfully.

It would take something serious to buy and equip the doll that Robina, with eight-year-old definiteness, had specified. The girl in the Red Cross dress read the letter over.

"Dear Aunt Evelyn," began Robina and struck no snags so far. "I liked your postcard so much." (The facilis descensus to an averni of literature began with a swoop down here.) "Mother is wel. Fother is wel. The baby is wel. The dog has sevven kitens." (Robina robbed Peter to pay Paul habitually in her spelling.) "Fother sais they lukk like choklit eclares. I miss you, dere Aunt Evelyn, because I lov you sew. I hope Santa Claus wil bring me a doll. I want a very bigg bride doll with a vale and flours an a trunk of close, and all her under-close to buton and unboton and to have pink ribons run into. I don't want anythig sode on. Come home, Aunt Evelyn, becaus I miss you. But if the poor wundead soljers ned you then don't come. But as soone as you can come to yure loving own girl--ROBINA."

The dear angel! Every affectionate, labored word was from the warm little heart; Evelyn Bruce knew that. She sat, smiling, holding the paper against her, seeing a vision of the faraway, beloved child who wrote it. She saw the dancing, happy brown eyes and the shining, cropped head of pale golden brown, and the straight, strong little figure; she heard the merry, ready giggle and the soft, slow tones that were always full of love to her. Robina, her sister's child, her own god-daughter had been her close friend from babyhood, and between them there was a bond of understanding which made nothing of the difference in years. Darling little Robina! Such a good, unspoiled little girl, for all of the luxury and devotion that surrounded her!

But--there was a difficulty just there. Robina was unspoiled indeed, yet, as the children of the very rich, she was, even at eight, sophisticated in a baby way. She had been given too many grand dolls not to know just the sort she wanted. She did not know that what she wanted cost money, but she knew the points desired--and they did cost money. Aunt Evelyn had not much money.

"This one extravagant thing I will do," said Evelyn Bruce, "and I'll give up my trip to England next week, and I'll do it in style. Robina won't want dolls much longer and this time she's got to have her heart's desire."

Which was doubtless foolish, yet when one is separated by an ocean and a war from one's own, it is perhaps easier to be foolish for a child's face and a child's voice, and love sent across the sea. So Evelyn Bruce wrote a letter to her cousin in England saying that she could not come to her till after Christmas. Then she went out into Paris and ordered the doll, and reveled in the ordering, for a very gorgeous person indeed it was, and worthy to journey from Paris to a little American. It was to be ready in just two weeks, and Miss Bruce was to come in and look over the fine lady and her equipment as often as desired, before she started on her ocean voyage.

"It would simply break my heart if she were torpedoed."

Evelyn confided that, childlike, to the black-browed, stout Frenchwoman who took a personal interest in every "buton," and then she opened her bag and brought out Robina's photograph, standing, in a ruffled bonnet, her solemn West Highland White terrier dog in her arms, on the garden path of "Graystones" between tall foxgloves. And the Frenchwoman tossed up enraptured hands at the beauty of the little girl who was to get the doll, and did not miss the great, splendid house in the background, or the fact that the dog was of a "_chic_" variety.

The two weeks fled, every day full of the breathless life--and death--of a hospital in war-torn France. Every day the girl saw sights and heard sounds which it seemed difficult to see and hear and go on living, but she moved serene through such an environment, because she could help. Every day she gave all that was in her to the suffering boys who were carried, in a never-ending stream of stretchers, into the hospital. And the strength she gave flowed back to her endlessly from, she could not but believe it, the underlying source of all strength, which stretches beneath and about us all, and from which those who give greatly know how to draw.

Two or three times, during the two weeks, Evelyn had gone in to inspect the progress of Robina's doll, and spent a happy and light-hearted quarter of an hour with friendly Madame of the shop, deciding the color of the lady's party coat, and of the ribbons in her minute underclothes, and packing and repacking the trunk with enchanting fairy foolishnesses. Again and again she smiled to herself, in bed at night, going about her work in the long days, as she thought of the little girl's rapture over the many and carefully planned details. For, with all the presents showered on her, Robina's aunt knew that Robina had never had anything as perfect as this exquisite Paris doll and her trousseau.

The day came on which Evelyn was to make her final visit to "La Marquise," as Madame called the doll, and the nurse was needed in the hospital and could not go. But she telephoned Madame and made an appointment for tomorrow.

"'La Marquise' finds herself quite ready for the voyage," Madame spoke over the telephone. "She is all which there is of most lovely; Paris itself has never seen a so ravishing doll. I say it. We wait anxiously to greet Mademoiselle, I and La Marquise," Madame assured her. Evelyn, laughing with sheer pleasure, made an engagement for the next day, without fail, and went back to her work.

There was a badly wounded _poilu_ in her ward, whom the girl had come to know well. He was young, perhaps twenty-seven, and his warm brown eyes were full of a quality of gentleness which endeared him to everyone who came near him. He was very grateful, very uncomplaining, a simple-minded, honest, common, young peasant, with a charm uncommon. The unending bright courage with which he made light of cruel pain, was almost more than Evelyn, used as she was to brave men's pain, could bear. He could not get well--the doctors said that--and it seemed that he could not die.

"If Corporal Duplessis might die," Evelyn spoke to the surgeon.

He answered, considering: "I don't see what keeps him alive."

"I believe," said Evelyn, "there's something on his mind. He sighs constantly. Broken-heartedly. I believe he can't die until his mind is relieved."

"It may be that," agreed Dr. Norton. "You could help him if you could get him to tell you." And moved on to the next shattered thing that had been, so lately, a strong, buoyant boy.

Evelyn went back to Duplessis and bent over him and spoke cheerful words; he smiled up at her with quick French responsiveness, and then sighed the heavy, anxious sigh which had come to be part of him. With that the girl took his one good hand and stroked it. "If you could tell the American Sister what it is," she spoke softly, "that troubles your mind, perhaps I might help you. We Americans, you know," and she smiled at him, "we are wonderful people. We can do all sorts of magic--and I want to help you to rest, so much. I'd do anything to help you. Won't you tell me what it is that bothers?" Evelyn Bruce's voice was winning, and Duplessis' eyes rested on her affectionately.

"But how the Sister understands one!" he said. "It is true that there is a trouble. It hinders me to die"--and the heavy sigh swept out again. "It would be a luxury for me--dying. The pain is bad, at times. Yet the Sister knows I am glad to have it, for France. Ah, yes! But--if I might be released. Yet the thought of what I said to her keeps me from dying always."

"What you said 'to her,' corporal?" repeated Evelyn. "Can't you tell me what it was? I would try so hard to help you. I might perhaps."

"Who knows?" smiled the corporal, "It is true that Americans work magic. And the Sister is of a goodness! But yes. Yet the Sister may laugh at me, for it is a thing entirely childish, my trouble."

"I will not laugh at you, Corporal," said Evelyn, gravely, and felt something wring her heart.

"If--then--if the Sister will not think it foolish--I will tell." The Sister's answer was to stroke his fingers. "It is my child, my little girl," Duplessis began in his deep, weak tones. "It was to her I made the promise."

"What promise?" prompted Evelyn softly, as he stopped.

"One sees," the deep voice began again, "that when I told them goodbye, the mother and Marie my wife, and the _petite_, who has five years, then I started away, and would not look back, because I could not well bear it, Sister. And suddenly, as I strode to the street from our cottage, down the brick walk, where there are roses and also other flowers, on both sides--suddenly I heard a cry. And it was the voice of little Jeanne, the _petite_. I turned at that sound, for I could not help it, Sister, and between the flowers the little one came running, and as I bent she threw her arms about my neck and held me so tight, tight that I could not loosen the little hands, not without hurting her. 'I will not let you go--I will not let you go.' She cried that again and again. Till my heart was broken. But all the same, one had to go. One was due to join the comrades at the station, and the time was short. So that, immediately, I had a thought. 'My most dear,' I spoke to her. 'If thou wilt let me go, then I promise to send thee a great, beautiful doll, all in white, as a bride, like the cousin Annette at her wedding last week.' And then the clinging little hands loosened, and she said, wondering--for she is but a baby--'Wilt thou promise, my father?' And I said, 'Yes,' and kissed her quickly, and went away. So that now that I am wounded and am to die, that promise which I cannot keep to my _petite_, that promise hinders me to die."

The deep, sad voice stopped and the honest eyes of the peasant boy looked up at Evelyn, burning with the pain of his body and of his soul. And as Evelyn looked back, holding his hand and stroking it, it was as if the furnace of the soldier's pain melted together all the things she had ever cared to do. Yet it was a minute before she spoke.

"Corporal," she said, "your little girl shall have her doll, I will take it to her and tell her that her father sent it. Will you lie very still while I go and get the doll?"

The brown eyes looked up at her astounded, radiant, and the man caught the hem of her white veil and kissed it. "But the Americans--they do magic. You shall see, Sister, if I shall be still. I will not die before the Sister returns. It is a joy unheard of."

The girl ran out of the hospital and away into Paris, and burst upon Madame. Somehow she told the story in a few words, and Madame was crying as she laid "La Marquise" in a box.

"It is Mademoiselle who is an angel of the good God," she whispered, and kissed Evelyn unexpectedly on both cheeks.

Corporal Duplessis lay, waxen, starry-eyed, as the American Sister came back into the ward. His look was on her as she entered the far-away door, and he saw the box in her arms. The girl knelt and drew out the gorgeous plaything and stood it by the side of the still, bandaged figure. An expression as of amazed radiance came into the fast-dimming eyes--into those large, brown, childlike eyes which had seen so little of the gorgeousness of earth. His hand stirred a very little--enough, for Evelyn quickly moved the gleaming satin train of the doll under the groping fingers. The eyes lifted to Evelyn's face and the smile in them was that of a prisoner who suddenly sees the gate of his prison opened and the fields of home beyond. It mattered little, one may believe, to the welcoming hosts of heaven that the angel at the gate of release for the child-soul of Corporal Duplessis, the poilu, was only Robina's doll!

DUNDONALD'S DESTROYER

This is the year 1977. It will be objected that the episode I am going to tell, having happened in 1917, having been witnessed by twenty-odd thousand people, must have been, if true, for sixty years common property and an old tale. But when General Cochrane--who saved England at the end of the great war--told me the Kitchener incident of the story last year, sitting in the rose-garden of the White Hart Inn at Sonning-on-Thames, I had never heard of it.

I wonder why he told me. Probably, as is the case in most things which most people do, from a mixture of impulses. For one thing I am an American girl, with a fresher zest to hear tales of those titanic days than the people or the children of the people who lived through them. Also the great war of 1914 has stirred me since I was old enough to know about it, and I have read everything concerning it which I could lay hands on, and talked to everyone who had knowledge of it. Also, General Cochrane and I made friends from the first minute. I was a quite unimportant person of twenty-four years, he a magnificent hero of eighty, one of the proud figures of England; it made me a bit dizzy when I saw that he liked me. One feels, once in a long time, an unmistakable double pull, and knows that oneself and another are friends, and not age, color, race nor previous condition of servitude makes the slightest difference. To have that happen with a celebrity, a celebrity whom it would have been honor enough simply to meet, is quite dizzying. This was the way of it.

I was staying with my cousin Mildred Ward, an Atlanta girl who married Sir Cecil Ward, an English baronet of Oxfordshire. I reached Martin-Goring on a day in July just in time to dress for dinner. When I came down, a bit early, Milly looked me over and pronounced favorably.

"You're not so hard to look at," she pronounced. "It takes an American really to wear French clothes. I'm glad you're looking well tonight, because one of your heroes--Oh!"

She had floated inconsequently against a bookcase in a voyage along the big room, and a spray of wild roses from a vase on the shelf caught in her pretty gold hair.

"Oh--why does Middleton stick those catchy things up there?" she complained, separating the flowers from her hair, and I followed her eyes above the shelf.

"Why, that's a portrait of Kitchener--the old great Kitchener, isn't it?" I asked. "Did he belong to Cecil's people?"

"No," answered Milly, "only Cecil's grandfather and General Cochrane--or something--" her voice trailed. And then, "I've got somebody you'll be crazy about tonight, General Cochrane."

"General Cochrane?"

"Oh! You pretend to know about the great war and don't know General Cochrane, who saved England when the fleet was wrecked. Don't know him!"

"Oh!" I said again. "Know him? Know him! I know every breath, he drew. Only I couldn't believe my ears. The boy Donald Cochrane? It isn't true is it? How did you ever, ever--?"

"He lives five miles from us," said Milly, unconcernedly. "We see a lot of him. His wife was Cecil's great-aunt. She's dead now. His daughter is my best friend. 'The boy Donald Cochrane'!" She smiled a little. "He's no boy now. He's old. Even heroes do that--get old."

And with that the footman at the door announced "General Cochrane."

I stared away up at a very tall, soldierly old man with a jagged scar across his forehead. His wide-open, black-lashed gray eyes flashed a glance like a menace, like a sword, and then suddenly smiled as if the sun had jumped from a bank of storm-clouds. And I looked into those wonderful eyes and we were friends. As fast as that. Most people would think it nonsense, but it happened so. A few people will understand. He took me out to dinner, and it was as if no one else was at the table. I was aware only of the one heroic personality. At first I dared not speak of his history, and then, without planning or intention, my own voice astonished my own ears. I announced to him:

"You have been my hero since I was ten years old."

It was a marvelous thing he did, the lad of twenty, even considering that the secret was there at his hand, ready for him to use. The histories say that--that no matter if he did not invent the device, it was his ready wit which remembered it, and his persistence which forced the war department to use it. Yes, and his heroism which led the ship and all but gave his life. And when he had fulfilled his mission he stepped back into the place of a subaltern; he was modest, even embarrassed, at the great people who thronged to him. England was saved; that was all his affair; nothing, so the books say, could prod him into prominence--though he rose to be a General later--after that, after being the first man in England for those days. It was this personage with whom I had gone out to dinner, and to whom I dared make that sudden speech: "You have been my hero, General Cochrane, since I was ten years old."

He slued about with the menacing, shrapnel look, and it seemed that there might be an explosion of sharp-pointed small bullets over the dinner-table.

"Don't!" I begged. The sun came out; the artillery attack was over; he looked at me with boyish shyness.

"D'you know, when people say things like that I feel as if I were stealing," he told me confidentially. "Anybody else could have done all I did. In fact, it wasn't I at all," he finished.

"Not you? Who then? Weren't you the boy Donald Cochrane?"

"Yes," he said, and stopped as if he were considering it. "Yes," he said quietly in the clean-cut, terse English manner of speaking, "I suppose I was the boy Donald Cochrane." He gazed across the white lilacs and pink roses on the table as if dreaming a bit. Then he turned with a long breath. "My child," he said, "there is something about you which gives me back my youth, and--the freshness of a great experience. I thank you."

I gazed into those compelling eyes, gasping like a fish with too much oxygen, I felt myself, Virginia Fox, meshed in the fringes of historic days, stirred by the rushing mighty wind of that Great Experience. I was awestruck into silence. Just then Milly got up, and eight women flocked into the library.

I was good for nothing there, simply good for nothing at all. I tried to talk to the nice, sensible English women, and I could not. I knew Milly was displeased with me for not keeping up my end, but I was sodden with thrills. I had sat through a dinner next to General Cochrane, the Donald Cochrane who was the most dramatic figure of the world war of sixty years ago. It has always moved me to meet persons who even existed at that time. I look at them and think what intense living it must have meant to pick up a paper and read--as the news of the day, mind you--that Germany had entered Belgium, that King Albert was fighting in the trenches, that Von Kluck was within seventeen miles of Paris, that Von Kluck was retreating--think of the rapture of that--Paris saved!--that the Germans had taken Antwerp; that the _Lusitania_ was sunk; that Kitchener was drowned at sea! I wonder if the people who lived and went about their business in America in those days realized that they were having a stage-box for the greatest drama of history? I wonder. Terror and heroism and cruelty find self-sacrifice on a scale which had never been dreamed, which will never, God grant, need to be dreamed on this poor little racked planet again. Of course, there are plenty of those people alive yet, and I've talked to many and they remember it, all of them remember well, even those who were quite small. And it has stirred me simply to look into the eyes of such an one and consider that those eyes read such things as morning news. The great war has had a hold on me since I first heard of it, and I distinctly remember the day, from my father, at the age of seven.

"Can you remember when it happened, father?" I asked him. And then: "Can you remember when they drove old people out of their houses--and killed them?"

"Yes," said my father. And I burst into tears. And when I was not much older he told me about Donald Cochrane, the boy who saved England.

It was not strange to my own mind that I could not talk commonplaces now, when I had just spent an hour tailing to the man who had been that historic boy--the very Donald Cochrane. I could not talk commonplaces.

Milly's leisurely voice broke my meditation. "I'm sorry that my cousin, Virginia Fox, should have such bad manners, Lady Andover," she was drawling. "She was brought up to speak when spoken to, but I think it's the General who has hypnotized her. Virginia, did you know that Lady Andover asked you--" And I came to life.

"It was Miss Fox who hypnotized the General, I fancy," said Lady Andover most graciously, considering I had overlooked her existence a second before. "He had a word for no one else during dinner." I felt myself go scarlet; it had pleased the Marvelous Person, then, to like me a little, perhaps for the youth and enthusiasm in me.

With that the men straggled into the room and the tall grizzled head of my hero, his lined face conspicuous for the jagged, glorious scar, towered over the rest. I saw the vivid eyes flash about, and they met mine; I was staring at him, as I must, and my heart all but jumped out of me when he came straight to where I stood, my back against the bookcase.

"I was looking for you," he said simply.

Then he glanced over my head and his hand shot up in a manner of salute; I turned to see why. I was in front of the portrait of Lord Kitchener.

"Did you know him, General Cochrane?" I asked.

"Know him?" he demanded, and the gray glance plunged out at me from under the thick lashes.

"Don't do it," I pleaded, putting my hands over my eyes. "When you look at me so it's--bombs and bullets." The look softened, but the lean, wrinkled face did not smile.

"You asked if I knew Kitchener," he stated.

I spoke haltingly. "I didn't know. Ought I to have known?"

General Cochrane gazed down, all at once dreamy, as if he looked through me at something miles and æons away.

"No," he said. "There's no reason why you should. You have an uncommon knowledge of events of that time, an astonishing knowledge for a young thing, so that I forget you can't know--all of it." He stopped, as if considering. "It is because I am old that I have fancies," he went on slowly. "And you have understanding eyes. I have had a fancy this evening that you and I were meant to be friends; that a similarity of interests, a--a likeness--oh, hang it all!" burst out the General like a college boy. "I never could talk except straight and hot. I mean I've a feeling of a bond between us--you'll think me most presuming--"

I interrupted, breathless. "It's so," I whispered. "I felt it, only I'd not have dared--" and I choked.

Old General Cochrane frowned thoughtfully. "Curious," was what he said. "It's psychology of course, but I'm hanged if I know the explanation. However, since it's so, my child, I'm glad. A man as old as I makes few new friends. And a beautiful young woman--with a brain--and charm--and innocent eyes--and French clothes!"

One may guess if I tried to stop this description. I could have listened all night. With that:

"'Did I know Kitchener!' the child asked," reflected the General, and threw back his splendid head and laughed. I stared up, my heart pumping. Then, "Well, rather. Why, little Miss Fox--" and he stopped. "I've a mind to tell the child a fairy-story," he said. "A true fairy-story which is so extraordinary that few have been found to believe it, even of those who saw it happen."

He halted again.

"Tell me!"

General Coehrane looked about the roomful of people and tossed out his hand. "In this mob?" he objected. "It's too long a story in any case. But why shouldn't you and I have a séance, to let a garrulous old fellow talk about his youth?" he demanded in his lordly way. "Why not come out on the river in my boat? They'll let you play about with an octogenarian, won't they?"

"I'll come," I answered the General eagerly.

"Very good. Tomorrow. Oh, by George, no. That confounded Prime Minister comes down to me tomorrow. I detest old men," said General Cochrane. "Well, then, the day after?"

The Thames was a picture-book river that day, gay with row-boats and punts and launches, yet serene for all its gaiety; slipping between grassy banks under immemorial trees with the air of a private stream wandering, protected, through an estate. The English have the gift above other nations of producing an atmosphere of leisure and seclusion, and surely there is no little river on earth so used and so unabused as the Thames. Of all the craft abroad that bright afternoon, General Cochrane's white launch with its gold line above the water and its gleaming brass trimmings was far and away the prettiest, and I was bursting with pride as we passed the rank and file on the stream and they looked at us admiringly. To be alive on such a day in England was something; to be afloat on the silvery Thames was enchantment; to be in that lovely boat with General Cochrane, the boy Donald Cochrane, was a rapture not to be believed without one's head reeling. Yet here it was happening, the thing I should look back upon fifty, sixty years from now, an old gray woman, and tell my grandchildren as the most interesting event of my life. It was happening, and I was enjoying every second, and not in the least awed into misery, as is often the case with great moments. For the old officer was as perfect a playmate as any good-for-nothing young subaltern in England, and that is putting it strongly.

"Wouldn't it be nicer to land at Sonning and have our tea there?" he suggested. We were dropping through the lock just higher than the village; the wet, mossy walls were rising above us on both sides and the tops of the lock-keeper's gorgeous pink snapdragons were rapidly going out of sight. My host went on: "There's rather a nice rose-garden, and it's on the river, and the plum-cake's good. What do you think, that or on board?"

"The rose-garden," I decided.

Sonning is a village cut out of a book and pasted on the earth. It can't be true, it's so pretty. And the little White Hart Inn is adorable.

"Is it really three hundred years old?" I asked. "The standard roses look like an illustration out of 'Alice in Wonderland.' Yes, please--tea in the White Hart garden."

The old General heaved a sigh. "Thank Heaven," he said. "I was most awfully anxious for fear you'd say on the boat, and I didn't order any."

We slipped under an arch of the ancient red bridge and were at the landing. I remember the scene as we stood on shore and looked down the shining way of the river, the tall grasses bending on either side like green fur stroked by the breeze; I remember the trim sea-wall and velvet lawn, and the low, long house with leaded windows of the place next the inn. A house-boat was moored to the shore below, white, with scarlet geraniums flowing the length of the upper deck, and willow chairs and tables; people were having tea up there; muslin curtains blew from the portholes below. Some Americans went past with two enormous Scotch deer-hound puppies on leash. "Be quiet, Jock," one of them said, and the big, gentle-faced beast turned on her with a giant, caressing bound, the last touch of beauty in the beautiful, quiet scene.

It was early, so that we took the table which pleased us, one set a bit aside against a ten-foot hedge, and guarded by a tall bush of tea-roses. A plump maid hurried across the lawn and spread a cloth on our table and waited, smiling, as if seeing us had simply made her day perfect. And the General gave the orders.

"The plum-cake is going to be wonderful," I said then, "and I'm hungry as a bear for tea. But the best thing I've been promised this afternoon is a fairy-story."

The shrapnel look flashed, keen and bright and afire, but I looked back steadily, not afraid. I knew what sunlight was going to break; and it broke.

"D'you know," said he, "I'm really quite mad to talk about myself. Men always are. You've heard the little tale of the man who said, 'Let's have a garden-party. Let's go out on the lawn and talk about me'? One becomes a frightful bore quite easily. So that I've made rules--I don't hector people about--about things I've been concerned with. As to the incident I said I'd tell you, that would be quite impossible to tell to--well, practically anyone."

My circulatory system did a prance; he could tell it practically to no one, yet he was going to tell it to me! I instantly said that. "But you're going to tell it to me?" I was anxious.

"Child, you flatter well," said the Marvelous Person, who had brought me picnicking. "It's the American touch; there's a way with American women quite irresistible."

"Oh--American women!" I remonstrated.

"Yes, indeed. They're delightful--you're witches, every mother's daughter of you. But you--ah--that's different, now. You and I, as we decided long ago, on day before yesterday, have a bond. I can't help the conviction that you're the hundred-thousandth person. You have understanding eyes. If I were a young man--And yet it's not just that; it's something a bit rarer. Moreover, they tell me there's a chap back in America."

"Yes," I owned. "There is a chap." And I persisted: "I'm to have a fairy-story?"

The black-lashed gaze narrowed as it traveled across the velvet turf and the tall roses, down the path of the quiet river. He had a fine head, thick-thatched and grizzled, not white; his nose was of the straight, short English type, slightly chopped up at the end--a good-looking nose; his mouth was wide and not chiseled, yet sensitive as well as strong; the jaw was powerful and the chin square with a marked dimple in it; there was also color, the claret and honey of English tanned complexions. Of course his eyes, with the exaggeratedly thick and long black lashes, were the wonderful part of him, but there is no describing the eyes. It was the look from them, probably, which made General Cochrane's face remarkable. I suppose it was partly that compelling look which had brought about his career. He was six feet four, lean and military, full of presence, altogether a conspicuously beautiful old lion in a land where every third man is beautiful.

"What are you looking munitions-of-war at, General, down the innocent little Thames River? You must be seeing around corners, past Wargrave, as far as Henley."

"I didn't see the Thames River," he shot at me in his masterful way. "I was looking at things past, and people dead and gone. We ancients do that. I saw London streets and crowds; I read the posters which told that Kitchener was drowned at sea, and then I saw, a year later, England in panic; I saw an almighty meeting in Trafalgar Square and I heard speeches which burned my ears--men urging Englishmen to surrender England and make terms with the Huns. Good God!" His fist came down on the rattling little iron table.

"My blood boils now when I remember. Child," he demanded, "I can't see why your alluring ways should have set me talking. Fancy, I've never told this tale but twice, and I'm holding forth to a little alien whom I haven't known two days, a young ne'er-do-well not born till forty years after the tale happened!"

"What difference does that make?" I asked. "Age means nothing to real people. And we've known each other since--since we hunted pterodactyls together, pre-historically. Only--I hate bats," I objected to my own arrangement. I went on: "If you knew how I want to hear! It's the most wonderful thing in my life, this afternoon--you."

"I know you are honest," he said. "Different from the ruck. I knew that the moment I saw you."

"Then," I prodded, "do begin with the posters about Lord Kitchener."

"But that's not the beginning," he protested. "You'll spoil it all," he said.

"Oh, no, then! Begin at the beginning. I didn't know. I wanted to get you started."

The gray eyes dreamed down the placid river water.

"The beginning was before I was born. It began when Kitchener, a young general, picked up a marauding party of black rascals on his way to Khartoum. They had a captive, a white girl, a lady. They had murdered her father and mother and young brother. The father was newly appointed Colonel of a regiment, traveling to his post with his family. The Arabs were saving the girl for their devilish head chieftain. Kitchener had the lot executed, and sent for the girl. She was--"

The old man's hand lifted to his head and he took off his hat and laid it on the ground.

"I cannot speak of that girl without uncovering," he said, quietly. "She was my mother." There was an electrical silence. I knew enough to know that no words fitted here. The old officer went on: "She was one of the wonderful people. What she seemed to think of, after the horrors she had gone through, was not herself or her suffering, but only to show her gratitude. It was a long journey--weeks--through that land of hell, while she was in Kitchener's hands, and not once did she lose courage. The Sirdar told me that it was having an angel in camp--she held that rough soldiery in the hollow of her hand. She told Kitchener her story, and after that she would not talk of herself. You've heard that he never had a love affair? That's wrong. He was in love then, and for the rest of his life, with my mother."

I gasped. The shrapnel eyes menaced me.

"She could not speak of herself, d'you see? It was salvation to think only of others, so that she'd not told him that she was engaged to my father. Love from any other was the last thing she was thinking of. After what had happened she was living from one breath to another and she dared not consider her own affairs. The night before they reached Cairo, Kitchener asked her to marry him. He was over forty then; she was nineteen. She told him of her engagement, of course--told him also that it might be she would never marry at all; a life of her own and happiness seemed impossible now. She might go into a sisterhood. Work for others was what she must have. Then, unexpectedly, my father was at Cairo to meet her, and Kitchener went to him and told him. From that on the two men were close friends. My people were not married till five years later, and when I came to be baptized General Kitchener was godfather. All my young days I was used to seeing him about the house at intervals, as if he belonged to us. I remember his eyes following my mother. Tall and slight she was, with a haunted look, from what she'd seen; she moved softly, spoke softly. It was no secret from the two, my father and mother, that he loved her always. Yet, so loyal, so crystal he was that my father had never one moment of jealousy. On the contrary they were like brothers. Then they died--my father and mother. The two almost together. I came into Kitchener's hands, Lord Kitchener by then. When he met me in London, a long lad of seventeen, he held my fingers a second and looked hard at me.

"'You're very like her, Donald,' he said. And held on. And said it again. 'Your mother's double. I'd know you for her boy if I caught one look of your eyes, anywhere,' he said. 'Her boy.'--Well--what? Do I want more tea? Of course, I do."

For the smiling plump maid had long ago brought the steaming stuff, the bread and butter and jam and plum cake, I had officiated and General Cochrane had been absorbing his tea as an Englishman does, automatically, while he talked.