Jeanne’s brain for a moment or two was in a whirl—Embassies and Prefectures of Police!
“Madame, to do this, you must love him very much.”
“I loved him so much—I hope you will understand me—my French I know is terrible—but I loved him so much that until he came home wounded we were fiancés.”
Jeanne drew a short breath. “I felt it, madame. An English gentleman of great estate would naturally marry an English lady of his own social class. That is why, madame, I acted as I have done.”
Then something of what Jeanne really was became obvious to Peggy. Lady or no lady, in the conventional British sense, Jeanne appealed to her, in her quiet dignity and restraint, as a type of Frenchwoman whom she had never met before. She suddenly conceived an enormous respect for Jeanne. Also for Phineas McPhail, whose eulogistic character sketch she had accepted with feminine reservations subconsciously derisive.
“My dear,” she said. “Vous êtes digne de toute dame anglaise!”—which wasn’t an elegant way of putting it in the French tongue—-but Jeanne, with her odd smile of the lips, showed that she understood her meaning; she had served her apprenticeship in the interpretation of Anglo-Gallic. “But I want to tell you. Doggie and I were engaged. A family matter. Then, when he came home wounded—you know how—I found that I loved some one—aimais d’amour, as you say—and he found the same. I loved the man whom I married. He loved you. He confessed it. We parted more affectionate friends than we had ever been. I married. He searched for you. My husband has been killed. Doggie, although wounded, is alive. That is why I am here.”
They were sitting in a corner of the ante-room, and before them passed a continuous stream of the busy life of the war, civilians, officers, badged workers, elderly orderlies in pathetic bits of uniform that might have dated from 1870, wheeling packages in and out, groups talking of the business of the organization, here and there a blue-vested young lieutenant and a blue-overalled packer, talking—it did not need God to know of what. But neither of the two women heeded this multitude.
Jeanne said: “Madame, I am profoundly moved by what you have told me. If I show little emotion, it is because I have suffered greatly from the war. One learns self-restraint, madame, or one goes mad. But as you have spoken to me in your noble English frankness—I have only to confess that I love Doggie with all my heart, with all my soul——” With her two clenched hands she smote her breast—and Peggy noted it was the first gesture that she had made. “I feel the infinite need, madame—you will understand me—to care for him, to protect him——”
Peggy raised a beautifully gloved hand.
“Protect him?” she interrupted. “Why, hasn’t he shown himself to be a hero?”