Whenever one of Diana's workers collapsed with fatigue, she was given tea or something to eat, and allowed an interval's repose in Di's boudoir, which had become the temporary consulting-room of Madame Mesmerre. The tame clairvoyant was expressly forbidden to foretell anything depressing; if she could not get visions of husbands, sons, and lovers coming safely home, it was distinctly understood with Diana (who paid by the afternoon) that she mustn't have any visions at all. This arrangement, however, was a family secret, which Kitty betrayed to me in confidence. Every one said that Madame Mesmerre was wonderful, but I didn't consult her.
I don't understand much about sewing or other really useful things of that sort, but I've picked up enough (thanks to helping my poor friends at Ballyconal) to know that men's shirts ought to have armholes bigger than those for little boys, and that they shouldn't be as short as bibs, or as long as surplices. Even this small amount of knowledge made me unexpectedly useful at the guild, where every member seemed to have her own original conception of what shape a shirt ought to be, and what it should be made of. Even my brief apprenticeship with the Miss Splatchleys, to whom most kinds of domestic work was as easy as breathing, made these fashionable women's desperate efforts at doing good seem pathetic. I agreed to return whenever I could, but no one would promise to come and see the "Haven Home for Belgian Refugees." They were all too busy working, by day; and at night it was a duty to go to a theatre or music hall, because the performance was given for the benefit of some fund, or else somebody sang a patriotic song to encourage recruiting.
We grew busier and busier at "The Haven" as the days went by. Refugees poured in. There was hardly time to be sad or anxious in the daytime; but at night always, always, my brain ceased to feel like a brain, and became a battlefield, as before in Belgium. The horror and anguish of war poured into my soul as water pours into a leaking ship. The most dreadful thoughts could be warded off in the busy hours of the day; but in the night stillness they found me without defence, and I surrendered.
Those were the hours when it seemed to me impossible that any of the men I knew, and above all, Eagle March, could ever escape from the slaughter alive. The Miss Splatchleys said that I looked pale and thin, with blue shadows under my eyes, and begged me not to work so hard. But I could have worked twice as hard without realizing that I was tired, if some one who knew the future, as no crystal-gazer can know it, had told me that Eagle would come out of the war unharmed.
Even when there was scarcely time for a decent meal, there was time to read the war news. All night long I existed for the moment in the morning when the two papers which the Miss Splatchleys took in should arrive, and I could bolt the big headlines and secretly search for the name of "Monsieur Mars." Then, whether I found it or not, the same suspense had to be lived through till the afternoon, when the evening editions came out; and after that again until the hour for the "Last War Extra."
Often the name of Mars started up to my eyes from the closely printed columns and set my heart beating and my blood flying to my head. No one seemed to have identified him as Captain March, not even the British or American war correspondents who occasionally reported his exploits. Or if they did, they respected his wish to keep it secret.
"Mars, the Belgian Air Scout," he was generally called, for few journalists appeared to know that he was a foreigner who had offered his services to the brave little country. Wonderful, almost miraculous, feats were attributed to him. Sometimes they were denied; but usually they proved to be true.
One morning I read that he had made a daring flight of two hundred miles over German territory, had dropped bombs on an ammunition train, had been fired on, and returned to his base "somewhere in Flanders" with the wings of his machine riddled by ninety-eight bullets. Again he and Sorel (who had been at Liége when we were there) went reconnoitring over the great German fortress of Metz, hoping to destroy the Zeppelin sheds. Quickly they were detected, although nearly three thousand feet above the forts. Up came shots from high-angle guns, spattering around them like spray from a fountain; but they persevered, making for the direction of the drill ground. Then suddenly Mars' motor ceased to work. It seemed that all was over for him, and the task left for Sorel to finish alone. But Mars, said the papers, resolved not to give his life away for nothing. Sweeping down in a bold volplane he launched his bomb, and had abandoned himself for lost when suddenly the motor started again; whereupon he darted off defiantly, following Simon Sorel, who had thrown his bomb also, and escaped.
If this had been all, I might have borne it somehow in my pride of Eagle. But there was always something more. I read of his monoplane being struck by a fragment of bursting shell over the enemy's lines, and his volplaning with a disabled engine, to drop into safety and a French stone quarry with important information to give concerning the disposition of German forces. When Paris was threatened and almost despairing, Mars flew over the sad city letting fall leaflets with the inspiring message, "Prenez courage, tout va bien." Over Brussels also he maneuvered, dropping his leaflets, and while angry German soldiers took aim at him and his monoplane he "looped the loop" far above their noses. His cool remark after this exploit was said to have been: "These Germans do shoot badly!" He had more than one duel in the air with hostile war planes, having vowed with the Belgian airmen to ram all enemy aircraft whenever possible. There was a fearsome account to read, one morning, of his bringing down an aeroplane which had dropped bombs on the heads of French troops, helping out the wounded aviator and military observer, and then setting fire to their machine. In this adventure the Golden Eagle was injured, and another monoplane was lent the airman while his own was being put to rights. The "Elusive Mars," newspapers began to name him, because in the face of almost certain destruction he invariably escaped in the nick of time and within an inch of his life. At last, however, one October day of good news for the Allies, there was bad news for me. They had put it in big headlines on the most important page:
"Mars, the Belgian Airman, Caught at Last. While Reconnoitring His Machine is Disabled, and Falls in Enemy's Lines. He is Believed to be Wounded, and is Certainly a Prisoner."