The officer’s face cleared, and he stepped over the door into the tonneau.
“I am at your service, sir,” he said. “First you must rest a little, and have some clean clothes, and a bath and food. I can see that you have had a hard time. Then we will set out.”
An hour later, more comfortable in body than it had seemed possible he could ever be again, Stewart lay back among the deep cushions of a high-powered car, which whizzed southward along a pleasant road. He did not know his destination. He had not inquired, and indeed he did not care. But had he known Belgium, he would have recognized Landen and Ramillies; he would have known that those high white cliffs ahead bordered the Meuse; he would have seen that this pinnacled town they were approaching was Namur.
The car was stopped at the city gate by a sentry, and taken to the town-hall, where the chauffeur’s papers were examined and verified. Then they were off again, across the placid river and straight southward, close beside its western bank. Stewart had never seen a more beautiful country. The other shore was closed in by towering rugged cliffs, with a white villa here and there squeezed in between wall and water or perched on a high ledge. Sometimes the cliffs gave back to make room for a tiny, red-roofed village; again they were riven by great fissures or pitted with yawning chasms.
Evening came, and still the car sped southward. There were no evidences here of war. As the calm stars came out one by one, Stewart could have fancied that it was all a dream, but for that dull agony of the spirit which he felt would never leave him—and for that strand of lustrous hair which now lay warm above his heart—and which, alas! was all he had of her!
Yes—there were the two letters which rustled under his fingers as he thrust them into his pocket. He had looked at them more than once during the afternoon, delighting to handle them because they had been hers, imagining that he could detect on them the faint aroma of her presence. He had turned them over and over, had slipped out the sheets of closely-written paper, and read them through and through, hoping for some clew to the identity of the woman he had lost. It was an added anguish that he did not even know her name!
The letters did not help him. They contained nothing but innocent, careless, light-hearted, impersonal gossip, written apparently by one young woman to another. “My dear cousin,” they were addressed, and Stewart could have wept at the irony which denied him even her first name. They were in English—excellent English—a little stiff, perhaps—just such English as she had spoken—and the envelopes bore the superscription, “Mrs. Bradford Stewart, Spa, Belgium.” But so far as he could see they had nothing to do with her—they were just a part of the elaborate plot in which he had been entangled.
But what secret could they contain? A code? If so, it was very perfect, for nothing could be more simple, more direct, more unaffected than the letters themselves. A swift doubt swept over him. Perhaps, once in the presence of the general, he would find that he had played the fool—that there was nothing in these letters.
And yet a woman had risked her life for them. Face to face with death, she had made him swear to deliver them. Well, he would keep his oath!
He was still very tired, and at last he lay back among the cushions and closed his eyes and tried to sleep.