"Why, I love you for loving him," I threw back at her. "That's what I think of you—and that's what I say."
I was sincere, Padre. Yet I don't see how they can ever marry, even if Brian should learn to love the girl enough. Neither one has a penny—and—Brian is blind. Who can tell if he will ever get his sight again? I wish Dierdre hadn't come into our lives in just the way she did come! I wish she weren't Julian O'Farrell's sister! I hope she won't be pricked by that queer conscience of hers to tell Brian any secrets which concern me as well as Julian and herself. And I hope—whatever happens!—that I shan't be mean enough to be jealous. But—with such a new, exciting "friendship" for Brian's prop, it seems as if, for me—Othello's occupation would be gone!
CHAPTER XXVII
We're at Amiens, where we came by way of Montdidier and Moreuil; and nearly two weeks have dragged or slipped away since I wrote last. Meanwhile a thousand things have happened. But I'll begin at the beginning and write on till I am called by Mother Beckett.
We stopped at Soissons three more days after I told you about Dierdre and Brian, and Captain Devot and his wife. Not only did they forgive Dierdre—those two—but they took her to their hearts, perhaps more for Brian's sake than her own. I was introduced to them, and they were kind to me, too. Of the blind man I have a beautiful souvenir. I must tell you about it, Padre!
The evening before we left Soissons (when the doctor had pronounced Mother Beckett well enough for a short journey) I had an hour in the stuffy little salon with Dierdre and Brian and the Devots. We sat round the fire—plenty of room for us all, in a close circle—and Captain Devot began to talk about his last battle on the Chemin des Dames. Suddenly he realized that the story was more than his wife could bear—for it was in that battle he lost his eyes! How he realized what she was enduring, I don't know, for she didn't speak, or even sigh, and Brian sat between them; so he couldn't have known she was trembling. It must have been some electric current of sympathy between the husband and wife, I suppose—a magnetic flash to which a blind man would be more sensitive than others. Anyhow, he suddenly stopped speaking of the fight, and told us instead about a dream he had the night before the battle—a dream where he saw the ladies for whom "The Ladies' Way" was made, go riding by, along the "Chemin des Dames."
"In silks and satins the ladies went
Where the breezes sighed and the poplars bent,
Taking the air of a Sunday morn
Midst the red of poppies and gold of corn—
Flowery ladies in gold brocades,
With negro pages and serving maids,
In scarlet coach or in gilt sedan,
With brooch and buckle and flounce and fan,
Patch and powder and trailing scent,
Under the trees the ladies went,
Lovely ladies that gleamed and glowed,
As they took the air of the Ladies' Road."
That verse came from Punch, not from Captain Devot. I happen to remember it because it struck my fancy when I read it, and added to the romance of the road made for Louis XV's daughters—daughters of France, where now so many sons of France have died for France! But the ladies of Captain Devot's dream were like that, travelling with a gorgeous cavalcade, and as they rode, they were listening to a song about the old Abbey of Vauclair on the plateau of the Craonne. When they came to a place where the poppies clustered thickest, the three princesses insisted on stopping—Princess Adelaide, Princess Sophia, Princess Victoire. They wished to gather the flowers to take with them to the Château de Bove, where they were going to visit their dame d'honneur, Madame de Narbonne, but their guards argued that already it was growing late: they had better hurry on. At this the girls laughed silvery laughter. What did time matter to them? This was their road, made and paved for their pleasure! They would not be hurried along it. No indeed; to show that time as well as the road was theirs, to do with as they liked, they would get down and make a chain of poppies long enough to stretch across the whole plateau before it dipped to the valley of the Aillette!
So, in Captain Devot's dream, the princesses descended, and they and all their pretty ladies began weaving a chain of poppies. As they wove, the flower-chain fell from their little white fingers and trailed along the ground in a crimson line. The sun dropped toward the west, and thunder began to roll: still they worked on! Their gentlemen-in-charge begged them to start again, and at last they rose up petulantly to go; but they had stayed too late. The storm burst. Lightning flashed; thunder roared; rain fell in torrents; and—strange to see—the poppy petals melted, so that the long chain of flowers turned to a liquid stream, red as a river of blood. The princesses were frightened and began to cry. Their tears fell into the crimson flood. Captain Devot, who seemed in his dream to be one of the ladies' attendants, jumped from his horse to pick up the princesses' tears, which turned into little, rattling stones as they fell. With that, he waked. The princesses were gone—"all but Victoire," he said, smiling, "she shall stay with us! The thunder was the thunder of German guns. The poppies were there—and the blood was there. So also were the stones that had been the princesses' tears. They lie all along the Chemin des Dames to this day. I gathered some for my wife, and if you like she will give a few to you, ladies—souvenirs of the Ladies' Way!"