From time to time Renée and Mr. Everett had received cards from Renée's guardian--but this was a fat envelope! Aunt Pen reached eagerly for it and turned it over and over in her fingers. Whereupon Pat nodded to Renée, as much as to say: "The plot thickens! The mystery clears!"
"What fun to have it come on a nasty, rainy day like this!" she declared aloud. "Let's take it to the Eyrie and read it very slowly so's to make it last a long time!"
"Renée may want to read her own letter by herself, Pat," laughed Aunt Pen, looking as happy as though the letter had come straight to her.
"Oh, no, please! Let's do what Pat says! And you read it, aloud, Aunt Pen!"
So the fat envelope was carried to the Eyrie and Aunt Pen sat down in the one sound chair while Pat and Renée stretched out on the floor at her feet. And as Aunt Pen began to read no one minded the rain beating in torrents against the Eyrie windows!
"My dear little girl and all her good friends, the Everetts," the letter began. "Because I am confined by an inconsiderate doctor to a very small bed in a very big room in what, in the sixteenth century, used to be a monastery and is now one of the best of the American base hospitals--though I wish the window was bigger so it could let in a little more sunshine to warm these ancient walls--I have time at last to write to you a real letter. Since I returned from God's country I have been continually on the jump. I got back to the boys just in time to fire one last shot at the Jerrys, though it was a waste of good honest steel, for they were running faster than even a bullet could go. After the armistice they sent us almost directly up to the Rhine. Somehow, now that I've got the time to write, and a fairly good pen, I can't seem to find the words that will describe to you just how we men felt when we knew we were there--at the old Rhine--the way we'd talked and sung about back in the training camp. Things were not tedious--not for a moment--and we were as busy as ever and constantly on the alert that Jerry didn't slip anything over us. And then just when I was getting used to the eternal rain and mud and the Germanness of everything--and good honest, sheets, too, on a regular old grandmother's feather bed--I was ordered back with a detachment to Le Mans.
"And now, Renée, I must tell you a little story. It is about a poor French soldier I found in one of the many small villages not far from Valenciennes. We were going back in lorries, one had broken down and that held us up for a couple of hours. Some of us were prowling around for souvenirs. (By the way I am sending a German helmet to you by mail. Turn it upside down, fill it with earth and plant flowers in it--that'll redeem it.) To go back to my story--I happened upon a very old man digging in a strip of a back yard that looked the way one of our streets home look when they're paving it and putting sewers through--it was back of what had been a cottage only the roof and two of the walls were gone. I asked him for a drink and he took me to the one room that was whole to give me some of the wine which--he told me proudly--he had hidden months before, and there I found his very old wife and a young French soldier. The Frenchman would not talk to me at all, just stared and shrank away as though he was frightened. I shall never forget how the poor fellow looked, a bag of bones, hollowed eyes that burned in his white face and an empty sleeve. The old man told me the boy's story, then, and with the knowledge of French I have picked up I was able to put it together. He had been released from a German prison, he had had to walk back with other French prisoners, but because he had had his arm amputated in the prison and had had a long run of fever and was half starved he had not been able to keep up with the others and had dropped behind. The old peasant had found him lying by the road, raving in delirium. There had been a nasty wound on his forehead, too, as though back in the prison camp some Jerry had struck him over the head. The old couple had taken him in and for weeks and weeks had nursed him as best they could, keeping him alive with their precious wine. His fever had gone, the wound had healed, his strength had begun to slowly return, but he could not remember one single thing of what had happened nor tell who he was--that blow had wiped everything out of his mind! He was like a little child. But the shock of seeing me started something working in his brain; he stared and stared, after a little he got up his courage to feel of my face and of my uniform--and then of his own uniform--or the rags and tatters of what had been a good French uniform, and I think at that moment blessed memory began to return!
"To make a long story short I just took him along on the lorry to Paris and put him in a hospital there under expert care and now he's as sane as he ever was and says he can remember the German doctor who struck him and wants to go back and find him! But I told him that a higher Justice was going to settle all those scores and that he was going back to America with me--when I go. That is why I am telling you the story; I know your kind little heart that is part French will find pity and affection for this poor fellow who has suffered so much that little girls like you might go on living happy safe lives in a good world, and you will be kind to him when I bring him home with me.
"Home--Renée, it seems so funny for me to think of a home! I used to dream of having one but I have found out some dreams don't come true, and since then I've just wandered from one country to another building bridges and railroads and such things. But I feel tired now and I think when I go back I'll fix over an old house I own in a little town up in the Adirondack mountains, and we'll go there and we'll be happy, or at least I promise I'll see that you are happy. And we'll keep the French soldier I've adopted as long as he will stay, won't we?
"When I was in Paris I went down and spent a whole day with Susette and Gabriel. They are well, Gabriel's rheumatism is better, and he declares it is the slippers you sent him--he wears them all the time. They are happy getting their garden ready, and the florists in Paris are placing more orders for violets than before the war. Prosperity shines in every wrinkle in Susette's face. She pointed out to me where she has hung the Stars and Stripes alongside of the Tri-color and told me that I must tell you. Your picture was in a place of honor on the shelf under the Madonna and there was over it a tiny wreath of waxed snowdrops which Susette says she made herself. I looked at the picture and I said to myself: 'Bill Allan, that big girl with the very nice eyes is your ward, given into your care by the bravest lad you ever knew--see that you live up to the charge with the best that's in you!' That was the vow I made in front of your picture, Renée.