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.
Presently, from between the open gates came a man in khaki, accompanied
by a tall, slim, and graceful dog. It was he, not the man, that caught
my eye and for an instant snatched my thought from Little Boy Jim
rescuing a rocking-horse at the risk of his life. He was a police dog
with the dignity of a prince and the lightness of a plume.
"Lovely creature!" I said to myself, as he and the khaki man swung
toward us down the road. And I wished that Brian could see him, for the
dog Brian loved and lost at the Front was a Belgian police dog.
Perhaps, Padre, Brian wrote you about his wonderful pet, that he thought
worthy to name after the dog-star Sirius. I've forgotten to ask if he
did write; but I seldom had a letter from him from the trenches that
didn't mention Sirius. Everyone seemed to adore the dog, which developed
into a regimental mascot. What his early history was can never be known:
but Brian rescued him from a burning château in Belgium, just as Jim
rescued the rocking-horse of Mother Beckett's nursery story, though with
rather more risk! It was a château where some hidden tragedy must have
been enacted, because the Germans took possession of it with the family
still there--such of the family as wasn't fighting: two young married
women, sisters, wives of brothers. But when the Germans ran before the
British, and fired the château as they went, not a creature living or
dead was left in the house--except the dog--and nothing has ever been
heard of the sisters.
The fire was raging so fiercely when Brian's regiment arrived that no
one would have ventured into the house if a dog hadn't been heard to
howl. You know how Brian loves dogs. When he found that the sound came
from a certain room on the ground floor, he determined to get in
somehow. Masses of ivy cloaked that side of the château. It was
beginning to crackle with fire that flamed out from other windows, but
Brian climbed the thick, rope-like stems, hundreds of years old, and
smashed his way through the window. The room was filling with smoke. The
dog's voice was choked. Brian's eyes streamed, but he wouldn't give up.
Only by crawling along the floor under the smoke curtain could he get at
the dog. Somebody had meant to murder the animal, for he had been
chained to the leg of a table.
Brian wrote that the dog realized his danger, and was grateful as a
human being to his rescuer. His worship of Brian was pathetic. He seemed
to care for no one else, though he was too fine a gentleman not to be
polite to all--all, that is, except Germans. They never dared let him
loose when prisoners were about. The sight of a gray-green uniform was
to that dog what a red rag is to a bull. For him some horror was
associated with it--a horror which must remain a mystery for us.
The day Brian lost his eyesight he lost Sirius. When he came back to
consciousness, only to learn that he was blind, his first thought was of
his friend. No one knew what had happened to the dog. The chances seemed
to be that the shell which had buried Brian had buried Sirius, too; but
Brian wouldn't believe this. Somehow the dog would have contrived to
escape. I had to promise that, whenever I happened to see a dark gray,
almost black Belgian police dog of beautiful shape, I would call
"Sirius" to see if he answered.
More than once since this trip began I've called "Sirius!" to police
dogs, not knowing whether they were Belgian, German, or Dutch, and they
have answered only with glances of superb scorn. This time I hesitated.
The mental picture I saw of myself--a vague young woman, seated in an
automobile stranded by the roadside, trying to lure away the dog of a
strange man--was disconcerting. While I debated whether to break my
promise or behave like a wild school girl, the animal paused in his
listless trot. He stopped, as if he'd been struck by an unseen bullet,
quivered all over, and shot past us like a torpedo. A minute later I
heard a tumultuous barking--a barking as if the gates of a dog's heaven
had suddenly opened.
I sprang up in the car, and turning round, knelt on the seat to see what
was going on behind us. Far away were Brian and Dierdre. And oh, Padre,
I can never dislike that girl again! I apologize for everything I ever
said against her. She saw that great police dog making for blind Brian.
And you know, a police dog can look formidable as a panther. She took no
time to think, though the idea might have sprung to her mind that the
creature was mad. She simply threw herself in front of Brian. It was an
offer of her life for his.
I could do nothing, of course. I was too far off. I'm not a screaming
girl, but I'm afraid I did give a shriek, for Mother Beckett started up,
and cried out: "What's the matter?"
I didn't answer her. I hardly heard. I forgot everyone except Brian and
that girl. It was only when the thing was over, and we were all talking
at once, that I realized how the others had shared my fright.
Perhaps Brian recognized the dog's bark at a distance, for he says a
dog's voice is individual as a man's. Or his instinct--made magically
keen by his blindness--told him in a flash of inspiration what his eyes
couldn't see. Anyhow, he knew that Dierdre was in danger, and almost
flung her behind him. He was just in time to save her from being thrown
down by the dog, who hurled himself like a young avalanche at Brian. To
those who had no clue to the truth, it must have seemed that the animal
was mad. Julian, and Father Beckett, and the khaki man rushed to the
rescue, only to see the dog and Brian in each other's arms, the creature
licking Brian's face, laughing and crying at the same time--which you
know, Padre, a dog frantic with joy at sight of a long-lost master can
do perfectly well! It seems too melodramatic to be true, but it _is_
true: the dog was Sirius.
You'll think now that this is the "astonishing thing" which would--I
said--have made this whole trip worth while. But no: the thing I meant
has little or nothing to do with the finding of Sirius.
Even Mother Beckett could sit still no longer. She had to be helped out
of the car by me to join the group round Brian and the dog. She took my
arm, and I matched my steps to her tiny trot, though I pined to sprint!
We met Father Beckett coming back with apologies for his one minute of
forgetfulness. The first time in years, I should think, that he had
forgotten his wife for sixty whole seconds!
"It's like something in a story or a play," he panted, out of breath.
"This is Brian's lost dog. You've heard him talk of Sirius, my dear.
There can be no doubt it's the same animal! The man who thought he was
its master admits that. And _guess_ who he is--the man, not the dog."
Mother Beckett reminded her husband that never had she succeeded in a
guess. But she was saved trying by the arrival of the man in khaki who,
having abandoned his dog--or being abandoned by it--had followed Mr.
Beckett.
"Why, Jack _Curtis_!" gasped the little old lady. "It can't be you!"
"I guess it's nobody else," laughed a soldierly fellow, with the
blackest eyes and whitest teeth imaginable. "I'm doing the war for the
New York _Record_--staying here at the château of Royalieu with the
British correspondents for the French front."
I longed to get to Brian and be introduced to Sirius, but Mother Beckett
caught my arm. "Mary, dear," she cooed, "I'd like you and Mr. Curtis to
meet. Jack, this is Miss O'Malley, who would have been our Jim's wife if
he'd lived. And Mary, this is one of Jim's classmates at college; a very
good friend."
The khaki young man (American khaki) held out his hand and I put mine
into it. He stared at me--a pleasant, sympathetic, and not unadmiring
stare--peering nearsightedly through the twilight.
"So Jim found you again, after all?" he asked, in a quiet, low voice,
not utterly unlike Jim's own. Men of the same university do speak alike
all over the world.
"I--don't quite understand," I stammered. When any sudden question about
Jim is flung at me before his parents, I'm always a little scared!
"Jim and I had a bet," Mr. Curtis explained, "that he couldn't travel
_incog._, through Europe for a given length of time, in a big auto,
doing himself well everywhere, without his real name coming out. He won
the bet, but he told me--after he got over a bad dose of typhoid--that
he'd lost the only girl he'd ever loved or could love--lost her through
that da--that stupid bet. He described the girl. I guess there aren't
two of her on earth!"
"That's a mighty fine compliment, Molly!" said Father Beckett.
Just then Brian called, and I wasn't sorry, for I couldn't find the
right answer for the man who had separated Jim Beckett from me. It was
all I could do to get my breath.
"Why, of course, that's your brother! I might have known by the
likeness. Gee, but it's great about the dog! No wonder it despised the
name of 'Sherlock.' Rather a come-down from a star! There's a big story
in this. Your party will have to dine with us correspondents, and talk
things over. The crowd will be delighted. Say yes, Mrs. Beckett!"
I heard no more, for I was on my way to Brian. But by the time I'd
thanked Dierdre, been slightly snubbed by her, and successfully
presented to Sirius, it was settled that we should spend our evening at
Royalieu with the correspondents. The Beckett auto was ready, but the
dog's joy was too big for the biggest car, so Brian and I walked to the
château, and Jack Curtis with us, to exchange stories of _le grand chien
policier_, late "Sherlock."
Matching the new history on to the early mystery was like fitting in the
lost bits of a jigsaw puzzle--bits which, when missing, left the picture
void. Between Brian and the war correspondent the pattern came to life:
but there's one piece in the middle which can never be restored. Only
one person could supply that: a German officer, and he is no longer in
this world.
Jack Curtis found the police dog, badly wounded, at a place near
Paschendaele, where the Germans had temporary headquarters and had been
driven out after a fierce struggle. One of the dog's legs was broken,
and blood had dried on his glossy coat, but he "registered delight" (as
moving picture people say) when he limped out of a half-ruined house to
welcome the rush of British khaki. The few inhabitants who had lived in
the village through the German occupation, knew the dog as "Siegfried,"
to which name he had obstinately refused to answer. His German master, a
captain, whom he obeyed sullenly, always dragged him about in leash, as
he never willingly kept at heel. Everyone wondered why the officer, who
was far from lenient with his men, showed patience with the dog. But his
orderly explained that Captain von Busche had picked up the starving
animal weeks before, wandering about No Man's Land. The creature was
valuable, and his dislike of the gray-green uniform had puzzled Von
Busche. His failure to win the dog's affection piqued him, and in his
blundering way he persevered. The people of the village were more
successful. They made friends with "Siegfried," to Von Busche's
annoyance; and a day or two before the hurried German retreat under
bombardment, the dog was beaten for deserting his master to follow a
little boy. The boy, too, was punished for his "impudence" in calling
the dog. People were indignant, and there were secret murmurings about
revenge.
That night, however, Fate took the matter in hand. Precisely what
happened is the bit that must remain missing in the puzzle. The dog
slept in the room with his master, in a house where several young
officers lived close to headquarters. All of them had been out playing
cards at a tavern. Von Busche returned earlier than the rest. He was
seen in the street the worse for drink. He went into the house, and must
have gone to his room, where the police dog had been shut up for hours
in disgrace. A moment later there was a yell, then a gurgling shriek.
The neighbours listened--and shrugged their shoulders. The parents of
the child who had been beaten by Von Busche lived next door. They heard
sounds of a scuffle; furniture falling; faint groans and deep growls.
Lips dared not speak, but eyes met and said: "The dog's done what we
couldn't do."
Silence had fallen long before Von Busche's fellow officers came home;
such silence as that town knew, where bombardment ceased not by day or
night. Before dawn, a bomb fell on the roof of the house, which till
then had never been touched, and the officers all scuttled out to save
themselves; all but Von Busche. Whether in the confusion he was
forgotten, or whether it was thought he had not come home, no one could
tell. He was not seen again till after the Germans had packed up in
haste and decamped, which they did a few hours later, leaving the
townsfolk to shelter in cellars. It was only when the British arrived,
and Siegfried limped out from the battered house, that the dog's
existence was recalled--and the sounds in the night. Then the house was
searched, and Von Busche's body found, half buried under fallen tiles
and plaster. There were wounds in his throat, however, not to be
accounted for by the accident. The dog's broken leg was also a mystery.
"I had the poor boy mended up by a jolly good surgeon," Jack Curtis
finished his story. "He's as sound as ever now. He attached himself to
me from the first, as if he knew he had to thank me for his cure, but he
wasn't enthusiastic. I couldn't flatter myself that I was loved! I had
the idea I wasn't what he wanted--that he'd like to tell me what he
_did_ want, and politely bid me good-bye forever."
"You don't know where Von Busche got hold of the dog, do you?" Brian
asked.
"Only what his orderly told people, that it was in Flanders, close to
some ruined, burnt-up château that he could hardly be forced to leave,
though he was starving."
"I thought he'd get back there!" Brian said. "As for Von Busche--I
wonder--but no! If it had been he the first time, would the dog have
waited all those weeks for his revenge?"
"I don't understand," said the war correspondent.
"I don't myself," answered Brian. "But maybe the dog will manage to make
me, some day. I was thinking--how I found him, tied to a table in a
burning room. If Von Busche---- But anyhow, Sirius, you're no assassin!
At worst, you're an avenger."
The dog leaped upon Brian at sound of the remembered name. Odd that
three of his names, chosen by different men, should begin with "S"!
He's going to be an exciting passenger for the Becketts' car I foresee.
But Brian can make him do anything, even to keeping quiet. And the trip
can't go on a step without him now!
I felt that Jack Curtis had been hoping for a chance to speak with me
alone--about Jim. But there was no such chance then. We were met by two
of the British correspondents, and a French officer with a very high and
ancient title, who was playing host (for France) to the newspaper men in
this old château, once a convent. You see, the two cars had shot past as
we walked; and by the time we reached the door preparations were being
made for an impromptu party.
Never was a dinner so good, it seemed, and never was talk so absorbing.
Some of it concerned an arch of honour or a statue to be placed over the
spot where the first men of the American army fell in France: at
Bethelmont; some concerned a road whose construction is being planned--a
sacred road through Belgium and France, from the North Sea to Alsace; a
road to lead pilgrims past villages and towns destroyed by Germany.
This, according to the correspondents who were full of the idea, doesn't
mean that the devastation isn't ultimately to be repaired. The proposal
is, to leave in each martyred place a memorial for the eyes of coming
generations: a ruined church; a burned château; the skeleton of an
_hôtel de ville_, or a wrecked factory; a mute appeal to all the world:
"This was war, as the Germans made it. In the midst of peace,
Remember!"
Beneath my interest in the talk ran an undercurrent of my own private
thought, which was not of the future, but of the past. I'd begun to
wonder why I had been afraid of Jack Curtis. Instead of dreading words
with him alone, I wished for them now.
After dinner I had but a few minutes to wait. When I'd refused coffee,
he, too, refused, and made an excuse to show me a room of which the
correspondents were fond--a room full of old trophies of the forest
hunt.
"Did you notice at dinner how I kept trying to get a good look at your
left hand?" Curtis asked.
"No," I answered, "I didn't notice that."
"I'm glad. I was scared you'd think me cheeky. Yet I couldn't resist. I
wanted to see whether Jim had given you _the_ ring."
"The ring?" I echoed.
"The ring of our bet, the year before the war: the bet you knew about,
that kept you two apart till Jim came over to France this second time."
"Yes--I knew about the bet," I said, "but not the ring. I--I haven't an
engagement ring."
"Queer!" Jack Curtis puzzled out aloud. "It was a race between Jim and
me which should get that ring at an antique shop, when we both heard of
its history. He could afford to bid higher, so he secured it. Not that
he was selfish! But he said he wanted the ring in case he met his ideal
and got engaged to her. If he'd lost the bet the ring would have been
mine. If he didn't give it to you, I wonder what's become of the thing?
Perhaps his mother knows. Did she ever speak to you about Jim bringing
home a quaint old ring from France, that time after his fever--a ring
supposed to have belonged to the most beautiful woman of her day, the
Italian Countess Castiglione, whom Louis Napoleon loved?"
"No," I said. "He can't have given the ring to his mother, or she would
have told me about it, I'm sure. She's always talking of him."
"Perhaps it was stolen or lost," Curtis reflected. "Yet I don't feel as
if that had happened, somehow! I trust my feelings a good
deal--especially since this war, that's made us all a bit psychic--don't
you?"
"I have too many feelings to trust half of them!" I tried to laugh.
"Have you ever had one, I wonder, like mine, about Jim? Dare I speak to
you of this?"
"Why not?"
"Well--I wouldn't dare to his mother. Or even to the old man."
"You _must_ speak now, please, Mr. Curtis, to me!"
"It's this; have you ever had the feeling that Jim may be alive?"
We were standing. I caught at the back of a chair. Things whirled for an
instant. Then I gathered my wits together. "I haven't let myself feel
it," I said. "And yet, in a way, I _always_ feel it. I mean, I seem to
feel--his thoughts round us. But that's because we speak and think of
him almost every moment of the day, his father and mother and I. There
can be no doubt--can there?"
"Others have come back from the dead since this war. Why not Jim
Beckett?"
"They said they had--found his body."
"Oh, they _said_! Germans say a lot of things. But for the Lord's sake,
Miss O'Malley, don't let's upset those poor old people with any such
hope. I've only my feeling--and other people's stories of escape--to go
upon. I spoke to you, because I guess you've got a strong soul, and can
stand shocks. Besides, you told me I must speak. I had to obey."
"Thank you for obeying," I said. And just then someone came into the
room.
* * * * *
Now, Padre, I have told you the _great thing_. What does it matter what
happens to me, if only Jack Curtis's "feeling" comes true?