Part 26 (1/2)
My convalescence was a marvel, I learned from young Dr. Raimbault, the surgeon from the chateau who came to see me every day. According to him, I was a patient in a hundred, in a thousand; he never wearied of admiring my const.i.tution, which he described by the various French equivalents of ”as hard as nails.” Not a set-back attended the course of my recovery. First, I sat propped up in bed; then I attained the dignity of an arm-chair; later, slowly and painfully, I began to drag myself about the room. But the day on which my physician's rapture burst all bounds was the great one when I crawled from the pavilion, gained a bench beneath the trees, and sat enthroned, glaring at my crutches. They were detestable implements; I longed to smash them. And they would, the doctor airily informed me, be my portion for three months.
To feel grumpy in such surroundings was certainly black ingrat.i.tude.
It was an idyllic place. My pavilion was a sort of Trianon, a Marie Antoinette bower, all flowers and gold. Fresh green woods grew about it; a lake stretched before it; swans dotted the water where trees were mirrored, and there were marble steps and bal.u.s.trades. Across this glittering expanse rose Raincy-la-Tour, proud and stately, with its formal gardens and its fountains and its Versailles-like front. In the afternoons I could see the wounded soldiers walking there or being pushed to and fro in wheel-chairs; legless and armless, some of them; wreckage of the mighty battle-fields; timely reminders, poor heroic fellows, that there were people in the world a great deal worse off than I.
Yet, instead of being thankful, I was profoundly wretched. I moped and sulked; I fell each day into a deeper, more consistent gloom. I tried grimly 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 though I 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 do so,--still I couldn't feel toward him as a man should feel toward his host; not in the least!
On three separate occasions Dunny motored up to Paris, bringing back as the fruits of his first excursion my baggage from the Ritz. I was clothed again, in my right mind; except for my swathed head, I looked highly civilized. The day when I had raced hither and yon, and fought an unbelievable battle in a dark hall, and insanely masqueraded first in a leather coat, then in a pale-blue uniform, seemed dim and far-off indeed.
”It was a nice has.h.i.+sh dream,” I told my mirrored image. ”But it wasn't real, 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 an old picture; you haven't brought down thirty German aeroplanes or thereabouts, and won every war medal the French can give and the name of Ace. No; you look like a--a correct bulldog; and winning an occasional polo cup is about your limit. Even if it hadn't been settled before you met her, you wouldn't have stood a chance.”
There were times when I prayed never to see Esme Falconer again. There were 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 an instant, a long way off. I could see that my despondency was driving Dunny to distraction. He evolved the theory that I was going into a decline.
Then came the afternoon that made history. I was sitting at my window.
The trees seemed specially green, the sky specially blue, the lake specially bright. I was feeling stronger and was glumly planning a move to Paris when I saw an automobile speed up the poplared walk toward Raincy-la-Tour.
Rip-snorting and chugging, the thing executed a curve before the chateau, and then, hugging the side of the lake, advanced, obviously toward my humble abode. My heart seemed to turn a somersault. I should have known that car if I had met it in Bagdad. It was a long blue motor, polished to the last notch, deeply cus.h.i.+oned, luxurious, poignantly familiar, the car, in short, that I had pursued to Bleau, and that later, in flat defiance of President Poincare or the Generalissimo of France, or whoever makes army rules and regulations, I had guided through the war zone to the castle of Prezelay.
As the chauffeur halted it near the pavilion, it disgorged three occupants, one of who, a young officer, slender of form and gracefully alert of movement, wore the dark-blue uniform of the French Flying Corps. I knew him only too well. It was Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier.
But the glance I gave him was most cursory; my attention was focused hungrily on the two ladies in the tonneau. They had risen and were divesting themselves in leisurely fas.h.i.+on of a most complicated arrangement of motor coats and veils.
From these swathing disguises there first emerged, as if from a chrysalis, a black-clad, distinguished-looking young woman whom I had never seen before. However, it was the second figure, the one in the rosy veils and the tan mantle, that was exciting me. Off came her wrappings, and I saw a girl in a white gown and a flowered hat--the loveliest girl on earth.
I did not stand on the order of my going. I rocked perilously, and my crutches made a furious clatter, but I was outside in a truly infinitesimal s.p.a.ce of time. Yes; there they were, chatting with Dunny, who had hurried to meet them. And at sight of me the Firefly of France ran forward with hands extended, greeting me as if I were his oldest friend, his brother, his dearest comrade in arms.
I took his hands and I pressed them with what show of warmth I could summon. It was as peasant as a bit of torture, but it had to be gone through. Then I stared past him toward the ladies, who were coming up with Dunny; and except for that girl in white, I saw nothing in all the world.
”Monsieur,” the duke was saying, ”I pay you my first visit. Only my weakness has prevented me from sooner welcoming to Raincy-la-Tour so honored 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 black hat 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 your friends in any need, even to the death, all those who bear the name of Raincy-la-Tour. Permit that I present you to my wife, who is of your country.”
”Jean's wife is my sister, Mr. Bayne,” Miss Falconer said.
CHAPTER XXVI
AN UNEXPECTED VISIT
I don't know what they thought of me, probably that I was crazy. For a good minute, a long sixty seconds, I simply stood and stared. The duke's blue uniform, his wife's black-gowned figure, and the white, radiant blur that was Miss Falconer revolved about me in spinning, starry circles. I gasped, put out a hand, fortunately encountered Dunny's shoulder, and, leaning heavily on that perplexed person, at last got back my intelligence and my breath.
”Won't you shake hands with me, Mr. Bayne?” smiled the d.u.c.h.ess of Raincy-la-Tour.
I was virtually sane again.
”I do hope,” I said, ”that you will forgive me. Not that I see the slightest reason why you should, I am sure. Life is too short to wipe out such a bad impression. I know how you'll remember me all your days; as an idiot with a head done up in layers of toweling, wobbling on two crutches and gaping at you like a fish.”
But the d.u.c.h.ess was still holding my hand in both of hers and smiling up at me from a pair of great, dark, tender eyes, the loveliest pair of eyes in the world, bar one. No, bar none, to be quite fair. The Firefly's wife, most people would have said, was more beautiful than her sister; but then, beauty is what pleases you, as some wise man remarked long ago.