The forest was even more lovable than before, a younger forest: fairy-like in beauty as a rainbow, in its splashed gold and red, and green and violet and orange of autumn. The violet was "atmosphere," but it was as much a part of the forest as the leaves, or the delicate trunks dim as ghosts in shadow, bright as organ-pipes where sun touched them. Out from the depths came sweet, mysterious breaths, and whispers like prophecies of peace. But to this region of romance there were sharp contrasts. Not even dreams have sharper ones! German trenches, chopped into blackened wastes that once were farmlands, and barbed wire wriggling like snake-skeletons across dreary fields.
We got out of our cars, and went into the trenches, thinking thoughts unspeakable. Long ago as the Germans had vanished, and every corner had been searched, our officer warned us not to pick up "souvenirs." Some infernal machine might have been missed in the search and nothing was to be trusted—no, not even a bit of innocent-looking lead pencil.
They were trenches made to live in, these! They had been walled with stones from ruined farmhouses. The "dug-outs" were super-dug-outs. We saw concealed cupolas for machine-guns, and "les officiers boches" had had a neat system of douches.
There was no need to worry that Brian might stumble or fall in the slippery labyrinths we travelled, for he had Dierdre O'Farrell as guide. I'm afraid I knew what it was to be jealous: and this new gnawing pain is perhaps meant to be one of my punishments. Of course it's no more than I deserve. But that Brian should be chosen as the instrument, all unknowingly, and happily—that hurts!
It was just as we were close to Compiègne, not twenty minutes (in motor talk) outside the town, that the "accident" happened.
CHAPTER XXII
At first it seemed an ordinary, commonplace accident. A loud report like a pistol shot: a flat tire down on our car: that was all.
We stopped, and the little taxi-cab, tagging on behind like a small dog after a big one, halted in sympathy. Julian O'Farrell jumped out to help Morel, our one-legged chauffeur, as he always does if anything happens, just to remind the Becketts how kind and indispensable he is. We knew that we should be hung up for a good twenty minutes, so the whole party, with the exception of Mother Beckett and me, deserted the cars. Brian was with Dierdre. He had no need of his sister; so I was free to stop with the little old lady, who whispered in my ear that she was tired.
Father Beckett and Julian watched Morel, giving him a word or a hand now and then. Dierdre and Brian sauntered away, deep in argument over Irish politics (it's come to that between them: and Dierdre actually listens to Brian!). Mother Beckett drifted into talk of Jim, as she loves to do with me, and I wandered, hand in hand with her, back into his childhood. Blue dusk was falling like a rain of dead violets—just that peculiar, faded blue; and as I was absorbed in the tale of a nursery fire (Jim, at six, playing the hero) I had no eyes for scenery. I was but vaguely aware that not far off loomed a gateway, adorned with a figure of the Virgin. A curving avenue led to shadowy, neglected lawns, dimly suggesting some faded romance of history.