In the remaining six weeks of his leave, Eagle March made himself very
popular in England. He secured a record for altitude, and flew upside
down longer than any one else had at that time, two years ago, which is
a whole age in the aeroplane world. He did other quaint tricks, too,
that nobody had thought of or accomplished then, such as walking on a
wing of the monoplane when she was in the air; and all the prettiest and
smartest women in London were proud to meet him. He was invited
everywhere, and people who pretended to know said that peeresses,
married and unmarried, made violent love to Captain March. Naturally a
girl like Di was enchanted to lead him about, tied to what would have
been her apron strings if she'd been frumpish enough to wear such
things. When it began to be said that Eagle March found excuses not to
accept invitations unless Lord Ballyconal and Lady Di O'Malley might be
expected to turn up, Father and Diana were asked by a great many
hostesses who wouldn't have thought of them except as bait. Di realized
this, even if Father were too proud or too conceited to do so, and she
used Eagle in every way, for all he was worth. She liked him, too,
better than she'd ever liked any man, perhaps, except her first
love--the handsomest Irish boy you ever saw, whom she couldn't think of
marrying because he'd no family and no money. But she was only seventeen
then and Jerry Taylor was a mere subaltern. He died in India of enteric
when Di was eighteen; and before Captain March came on the scene she had
liked and flirted with at least a dozen others.
Besides, Eagle March was a very different "proposition," as they say in
his country, from poor Jerry Taylor. There was no reason why she
shouldn't think of marrying him if he wanted her, and he did want her
desperately. A moderately intelligent bat could have seen that he was
dying for my lovely sister. Anyhow, _she_ saw it, and I saw that she saw
it, and that she was troubled as to which way to make up her mind. She
didn't want to lose her golden eagle, with his brilliant plumage of fame
and popularity, and the future fortune from his aunt. On the other hand,
through Eagle, Di had met a number of desirable men, some moneyed, some
titled; and she was a girl who would rather marry a rich nobody of the
country she had known, than fly with a hero to a land she knew not. I
used to notice in her soft, thoughtful eyes the "wait and see" policy.
As the time drew near for Eagle to go back to his regiment on the other
side of the world, things grew exciting. I felt electricity in the
atmosphere, though Diana didn't confide in me, and I had no idea what
she meant to do. I couldn't bear to think of Eagle having to suffer, as
he must suffer if she threw him over, for already I knew enough of him
to know that, quiet as he was, he had very deep and sensitive feelings.
I am too young, even now, after all I have lived through in the last
year or two, to set myself up as a judge of character; yet I couldn't
then help forming my own opinion of all those who came near me. I seemed
to see under Eagle March's simple, half-humorous, calmly deliberate
manner, flashes of inner fire. I thought his character was not really
simple at all, but very complex. I don't mean in a deceitful way, far
indeed from that; but I believed there was much in him which he did not
yet know himself, about himself. I fancied that the Southern blood he
had in his veins from one side of his family had made him high-strung
and passionate, as well as daring, quick to think, and quick to act; and
that his study was to hold this side of his nature in check. I felt sure
that he was generous even to a fault, yet I was certain that, if driven
to desperation, there might be a cruel streak which would make him a
dangerous enemy unless some tide of love broke down the barrier of
hardness in his soul. He was not hard at that time, however, and I
didn't want my sister to be the one to make him so.
For this reason, I sometimes wished that she would marry him, and give
him as much happiness as she had it in her to give. And yet, apart from
my own feelings (they didn't count, for his losing Di would not give him
to me), I couldn't believe that having her would really be for his
happiness in the end. The two hadn't one idea or taste in common. But
all I could do was to hope that, whatever happened, it would be for
_his_ best; because, you see, knowing him, and having that chevron of
black and gold as a "reward of valour," had made me a nicer, less
selfish girl than I had been before we met. Because I loved a soldier, I
wanted to be a soldier, too! Hardly anything of the pert minx remained
in me, I used to think sometimes, and comparatively little of the pig or
cat. This was fortunate, because, when toward the last he confided in
me, everything bad that was left in my composition longed to turn and
rend Diana.
The way he did this made it all the harder for me not to desert the
colours. He told me that ever since the day when I had been "such a
little trump in the air, and maybe saved both our lives," I'd been more
to him than any other female thing, except, of course, my sister.
Something in Diana's weakness had appealed to him as much as my
strength; and he loved her with a different love from the affection he
gave me. I was his little sister, his brave little friend, and because I
was so dear to him, he dared to ask me what chance he had with Diana.
Did I think she tried to keep him from telling her what he felt, because
she didn't care and wanted to save him pain, or was there just a
possibility that she was only shy?
I could have given a bitter laugh to both questions, because the
truthful, straight-out answer to one and the other was the same: "No!"
Di loved to get proposals, and counted them up as if they were scalps,
or those horrid little soft, boneless masks which head hunters collect.
The only trouble was, that among the lot, she had never had one scalp
worth the wearing, for a real live beauty, who needed only a bit of luck
to be at the top of the world. As for her shyness, it was all in the
tricks she played with her eyelashes and the way she curved her upper
lip.
But I didn't laugh. I merely said I wasn't sure how Diana felt, as she
never talked to me about such things. And I got for answer, spoken
reflectively: "I suppose not. You're too much of a child."
He knew by this time that I was sixteen, instead of thirteen as he had
thought at first; but what you're not much interested in makes little
impression on your mind if you're a man and in love. For him I was a
child, a nice sympathetic child. And such affection as he gave me, I
lived upon, as if it had been the washings from a cup of the elixir of
life.
For his sake, I studied Di more closely than ever, after that day, and
soon I understood what she was driving at. She wanted to have her cake
and eat it, too. And she got it. Any girl can manage this, if she is
clever enough; and Di, though she isn't bookish or intellectual, is
very, very clever in the way women have been clever since they emerged
from cave life.
She succeeded in keeping back a real proposal which she would have had
to answer with a "yes" or "no"; but she hinted to Captain March that, if
she could have just a little more time to think about it, with the
glamour of his presence gone, she would probably realize that she
couldn't be happy without him. Of course it would be a blow for poor,
dear Bally if she married out of Ireland or England, but still--but
still--only give her time to read her heart.
Eagle told me something of the scene between them, and of course, I saw
exactly what Di was up to: but I caged all the wild cats in me, and said
I was glad, if _he_ were happy. Yes, indeed, I'd take care of Di for
him, and write him how she looked and what she did, and use all my
influence to make Father escort us both over to America as soon as
possible. Di, it seemed, had also agreed to use her influence in
bringing this result about. I couldn't tell at the time whether she had
thrown the promise as a sop to keep Eagle quiet, or whether she really
thought that she would like to go. All I knew was that, if she did use
her influence--and Father could get hold of enough money--the thing was
as good as done.
Eagle took his departure; and we, and lots of his new friends, went to
Euston to see him off for Liverpool, Di, no doubt, secretly thinking
that sort of public "good-bye" safer than a private one. As for our
going to America, the scheme hung by a thread, as I guessed soon after
Eagle's back was turned. A bird in the hand is always worth at least two
in the bush, and Di's hand was ready. If the right bird could be palmed
before the season's end, it would mean that nothing of Di except her
wedding cards would sail across the sea. But as it turned out, home
birds were wary, and we crept back to Ireland in time for the horse show
with Diana empty handed, and Father with pockets cleaned out. It was
then that Di seriously set her thoughts upon the new world--new worlds,
it is said, being easier to conquer than old ones.
Father had two or three acquaintances in the diplomatic service at
Washington. He hoped to squeeze invitations out of them; for in a
country entirely populated by monotonous Misters and Mrs-es, with
nothing more decorative than a colonel or a general or a judge, even a
poor Irish earl isn't to be sneezed at. Di needn't be handicapped by
every one remembering that her mother would have described herself as a
"music 'all h'artist"; and several Americans living in New York had
asked us to their houses.
At first it wasn't proposed to take me if the family went, and the
thought of going through again what I had endured when seeing Di and
Eagle March together, kept me from raising my voice in persuasion. It
would be heartwearing to be left behind, never to know what was
happening except from an occasional letter; but to be on the spot and
see for myself would be heartbreaking. I wasn't quite sure which would
be worse, so I left the decision to Fate; and as I said before, it was
my Frenchified genius for doing hair which settled the matter. Di
discussed it with Father frankly before me, and argued that not only was
I cleverer than the average maid, but actually cheaper. "Besides," she
finished, "Peggy dear would like to go, and she's not a bad little
thing. Who knows but she might pick up something over there for
herself?"
"A picker up of unconsidered trifles!" the scotched, not killed minx in
me couldn't resist quoting, at the suggestion that I was welcome to Di's
leavings if I could bag them. But neither Father nor Di was paying the
slightest attention.
By superhuman efforts in borrowing, and perhaps begging (I wouldn't "put
it past him"), and selling the portrait of our best-looking,
worst-behaved ancestor, Father scraped up enough money to take us to
America and have a little over for travelling expenses there. Further
than that he did not look, for we should be living board free most of
the time; and besides, something was almost sure to turn up. In December
we sailed on a slow, cheap ship; and once on the other side, lived for
six weeks, like the lord and ladies we were, upon friends Di had
carefully collected, as if they were rare foreign stamps or postcards,
in London during the past season. Most of these she had met through
Eagle. She had a gorgeous time, and even I came in for plenty of fun;
because it seems that a girl in America ceases to "flap" while she is
still quite young. I was strictly reduced by my elders to "just
sixteen," although my seventeenth birthday was upon me; but there were
men in New York not above talking or tangoing with a girl of sixteen,
and my hair, though only looped up flapper fashion, with a ribbon, was
actually admired. I saw it in the newspapers--not the hair, but the
admiration.
Never were people so hospitable as those kind ones in New York, and
never were houses more beautiful or more luxurious than theirs. I had
never seen anything quite like them at home: but it wasn't the luxury
that stirred in my heart a wondering love for America. I began to feel
it from the very moment when our cheap liner brought us into the
harbour, and the Statue of Liberty (about which Eagle had told me) was
suddenly unveiled to my eyes from behind a curtain of silver mist. The
thrill warmed my blood, and I had the sensation of being at home, as if
I were coming to stay with kinsfolk; a dim but deep conviction, that I
_belonged_; that there was a place for me.
We were doing something from morning till night--or rather till the next
morning; and the air was like a tonic to keep us up to the work of play.
Luncheons and dinners and dances were given for Di, and she was written
and talked about as the "Beautiful Lady Diana O'Malley"; but, though she
had proposals, nothing better offered than Captain March, whose rich
aunt, Mrs. Cabot, lived in New York, and proved to be the genuine
article. Consequently, we turned our attention to Washington. Washington
also turned its attention to us, and made itself agreeable to Father and
Diana. Place and people were both fascinating; and we had five weeks
more of dinners and dances, without the result we all knew in our secret
souls we had come to get. The men who wanted Di, she didn't want, and
vice versa. So at length we came to the last item marked on our
programme: a visit to the fashionable Alvarado Springs, close to Fort
Alvarado, in Arizona, where Captain March was stationed.
It was the end of March when we arrived at Alvarado, and the newspapers
were thickly sprinkled with the name of the Mexican President Huerta,
printed in big, black letters. A few weeks ago the name would have meant
nothing to me, but I hadn't lived in vain in Washington for more than a
month. If the name of a Mexican president or general who had done
anything conspicuous during the past six years had been suddenly flung
at my head (as in the children's game where they shout "Beast, Bird,
Fish!" and you answer before the count of three), I could have told who
he was, and whether the conspicuous deed had been good or bad.
At Alvarado we had thought to be past invitation zone, and Father had
been fearfully hoarding his resources at the expense of his friends, to
hold out against high charges at a big hotel. There was said to be a
very big one indeed, at the Springs, with bills to match; but at the
eleventh hour one of Father's devoted band of rich widows (the widows
thoughtfully provided for him by deceased financiers) took a furnished
cottage there and asked us to visit her. She was an unusually nice
widow, whose husband had made a fortune through inventing gollywogs with
different eyes from other gollywogs. The strain had given him a weak
heart, and he had died. The widow's name was Mrs. Main, and Di
shamelessly christened her the "Main Chance." She certainly _was_ ours!
Mrs. Main, whom we'd met in New York, dashed off to Alvarado Springs a
fortnight ahead of us, in time to get acquainted through letters of
introduction with the highest-up officers at Fort Alvarado, and the
wives of those who had any; also to put the furnished "cottage," as she
called it (there must have been fifteen or twenty rooms), in order; and
the night we arrived, after our long but utterly fascinating journey,
she gave a dinner in honour of Father and Diana.
I had been tremendously interested in the whole trip from Washington to
Arizona, and with the first glimpse I had of the romantic Springs I felt
a thrilling sensation that it was a place where things were bound to
happen. The hotel, as all who have heard of Alvarado must know, stands
in the midst of a young forest, overlooking a canon that for colour is
like a vast cup full of rainbows, and beyond the forest to the left is
the garrison. From the higher stories of the hotel you can see the red
roofs of the officers' quarters, and farther away the barracks and the
big, bare drill ground, but from the wide verandas no houses are
anywhere visible, except the colony of cottages built in Spanish fashion
like the hotel itself, each having its own little garden with a flowery
hedge. From the glorified cottage Mrs. Main had taken we could walk up
to a dance at the hotel in five minutes.
I think Eagle would have liked to meet us at the railway station, but Di
had plenty of excuses for not allowing that. He had met Mrs. Main,
however, and in the afternoon he called. Father was out prospering round
the little town, and visiting the smart club at which he had been put up
as an honorary member. Di and our hostess (she made us call her Kitty, a
sprightly name to which she struggled to live up to) were in the garden
when Eagle came, but I happened to be in the drawing-room with a book,
so I had about five minutes alone with him before Mrs. Main's black
butler found the others.
I hadn't tried, as a well-regulated young girl would no doubt have
tried, to "get over" being in love with Captain March. I had just simply
said to myself that the kind of unhappiness which loving him made me
suffer was better than any little wretched pretence at half-baked
happiness I could hope for by putting him out of my mind. So I had
basked in the painful luxury of thinking about him constantly, and
dreaming dreams of how I might serve or sacrifice myself for him, and
win his passionate gratitude. Consequently, when I raised my eyes from
the Spanish novel I wanted to translate, and saw Eagle March come in at
the door, I loved him a thousand times more than ever. I don't know if
an unprejudiced person would call him actually handsome; but I thought
there couldn't be on earth a man worth comparing with that brown-faced
soldier.
He was glad to meet his "dear little pal" again, because of what he
could get out of her about his loved one. He did hold back his eagerness
long enough to rattle off, "Why, Peggy, you're growing up! By Jove,
you're almost a woman, aren't you? and a pretty one, too--though you've
kept your impish look, I'm glad to see!" But that was only the preface.
As soon as he decently could, he turned the conversation to Diana. How
was she? As beautiful as ever? Though of course she was! Did she ever
speak of him? He'd passed sleepless nights after reading newspaper
paragraphs which reported her on the eve of an engagement with this man
or that--disgustingly rich, overfed brutes. Was there a grain of truth
in any of the reports? No? Thank heaven! Well, then, perhaps there was a
sporting chance for him after all!
"But, just like my luck," he went on, half laughing, "there's
a chap here who's as formidable as any of them. A regular
twelve-and-a-half-inch gun, latest make and improvements; his name's
Vandyke; only a major; all the same he's got a pot of money. There's
hardly a man in the army as rich as he is, if there's one. Soldiering
means only fun for him. Most of us here are like me; or if they don't
come from generations of soldiers as I do, they're in the service for a
career. Vandyke will probably resign if he gets bored. He's dining at
this house to-night. Notice him, and tell me what you think of him
afterward, will you?"
"You're coming, too, aren't you?" I asked. "Mrs. Main--Kitty--said you
were, and I was so glad."
"I should say I was coming!" he exclaimed. "Catch me giving Vandyke a
clear field at the start, if he _is_ my superior officer! You see,
Vandyke----"
But on the name, as if it were her cue, Diana floated in, and Mrs. Main
steamed in with her, through one of the long windows which opened on to
the veranda. After that I ceased to exist.
Di wore white that night for the dinner party. A good deal of what
Father was saving in hotel bills he put into clothes for her. It was a
new dress, and sparkled all over like a moonlit lily crusted with dew. I
had a fancy to put on the frock with roses on it, which I'd bought at
Selfridge's so many months ago, with the money paid me by Eagle for my
mother's lace. The dress was still alive, and on active service (though
the roses began to look somewhat sat upon); and Eagle had never seen me
in it. Not that he would notice me now! But I had a queer feeling of
sentiment about the gown, and often I had told myself that never, never
would I throw it away. I should have had a much queerer feeling if I'd
known all that was yet to come of my first meeting with Eagle March in
the Wardour Street curiosity shop.
Kitty Main had explained that it wasn't to be a big, tiresome dinner on
our first night: merely a few people she thought dear Lord Ballyconal
and Lady Di would like to meet, and "who would love to know them--little
Peggy, too, of course!"--with a belated gasp of politeness for me.
There would be, besides ourselves, only Mr. and Mrs. Tony Dalziel of New
York; their pretty daughter, Millicent, just out; their son, Lieutenant
Dalziel--"Tony," too; Major Vandyke; and Captain March, who was already
our friend.
The gossips did suggest, Kitty had gone on to hint, that Millicent
Dalziel was rather throwing herself at Captain March's head (if an
heiress could be said to throw herself at the head of a poor man); but
of course, Milly wouldn't have a look in now, if dear Lady Di had any
attention to spare for Eagleston March. Di, however, was to be taken in
to dinner by Major Vandyke, and Millicent Dalziel by Captain March. It
wasn't probable that Milly would give him much chance for talk with Lady
Di, although he was to sit beside her. "Good little Peggy" would have
young Tony, so nice for both of them! and dear Lord Ballyconal would be
placed between his hostess and Mrs. Dalziel.
I ought to have had eyes only for my special prey, Lieutenant Dalziel;
but whether I pleased or bored him seemed so comparatively unimportant,
that before the guests began to arrive, I found my faculties preparing
to concentrate elsewhere. Di hadn't mentioned the name of Major Vandyke
while I did her hair, or melted and poured her into the sparkly frock,
but I felt her consciousness of him in the air; and when his name was
announced at the door of the "cottage" drawing-room, my heart gave a
jump as if it wanted to peer over the high wall of the future.
He came before any of the others, so I had time to make a quick
black-and-white study of him in my brain. I say black and white, because
you would always think of Sidney Vandyke in black and white. An artist
sketching him on the cover of a magazine would need no other colour to
express the man, except--if he had it handy--a dash of red for the full
lips under the black moustache.
"Major Vandyke!" the soft, drawling voice of Kitty's negro butler
proclaimed him; and that was when my heart knocked its alarm. Kitty Main
generally described people in superlatives, so I hadn't been excited
when she remarked that Major Vandyke was the "best-looking man in the
army." But this time, she seemed not to have exaggerated. There couldn't
be a handsomer man in any army or out of it, and a horrid, sly little
voice whispered to me: "What a splendid-looking couple he and Di would
make!"
I was standing far in the background, at a window opposite the door,
while the others were grouped together more in the foreground; and what
I saw was a very tall man (so tall that he could dwarf Eagle March's
five foot ten almost to insignificance), six foot two, perhaps, and--not
stout yet, but showing signs that one day he might become so. I noticed
that he held himself magnificently, his broad shoulders thrown back, his
head up; and that he walked with a slight swagger, more like a
cavalryman than an officer in the artillery. Perhaps it was the electric
light which made his skin look as white as Diana's, without a touch of
the tan that darkened Eagle March's fairer complexion; but the white was
of a different quality, somehow, from Diana's. Hers is pearl white; his
had the thick, untranslucent look which pale Jewish faces have. I didn't
know then that Sidney Vandyke was of Hebrew blood, but afterward I heard
that his mother had Spanish Jews for ancestors on one side, and that
with her came most of the family money. He was in full dress uniform,
which became him splendidly; and I had a glimpse of a rather large face,
drawn with square, straight lines that gave it a relentless look; square
white forehead; straight black brows; straight, short nose; large,
squarely opened dark eyes, brilliant and self-confident; straight black
moustache; thick, square red lips; square chin, and a full neck set on
square shoulders. After that first glimpse I saw only the profile, for
in meeting Kitty Main and being introduced to Di and Father, Major
Vandyke had to turn half away from me. Even a profile, however, tells
something; and when Major Vandyke began to talk to Di, bending down a
little, I could see that he admired her very much, or else wanted to
convey this impression to her mind.
Next came Eagle March, very slim and boyish in shape and size compared
to Major Vandyke, though he can't be more than six years younger; and
hardly had he time to greet his hostess and look wistfully at Di, when
the Dalziels arrived, a party of four. I thought that the father and
mother (a dear little, merry, round-faced couple, curiously like each
other and like Billiken) looked too young and irresponsible to be
parents of anything grown up; but perhaps they had married when they
were almost children, for Lieutenant Dalziel, who was inches taller than
his father, had the happy air of being twenty two or three, and Mrs.
Main had said that the girl was "just out." Young Tony--nut-brown eyes,
skin, and hair, clean shaven, smiling, with teeth white and even as
kernels of American corn--was a glorified edition of his Billiken
father. Miss Dalziel--Milly--was not a bit like any of the others, who
had all been cut from the same pattern and painted with the same paint.
She was even slimmer and smaller than I am; very fair, with a few
freckles, and lots of blue veins at her temples. She had an obstinate
pink button of a mouth; dimples, which she made come and go every minute
by working the muscles of her cheeks; bright, fluffy red hair done high
on her head, floating eyes of gray green, and blackened brows and lashes
which, I suppose, had started life in red. She gave an effect of
prettiness and of thinking herself prettier than she was, an opinion in
which her dress-maker had backed her up.
Tony Dalziel was jolly, and said so many quaint things in priceless
slang that he kept me laughing; but I had eyes if not ears only for Di
and Major Vandyke. "Say, he's rushing your sister, isn't he? Making a
direct frontal attack--what?" remarked my neighbour, so it must have
been conspicuous. One could see Major Vandyke consciously absorbing
Diana, throwing over her head a veil of his own magnetism, as if to hide
her in it from other men, and make her forget their existence.
As for Di, she behaved perfectly, if she wished to fascinate and
tantalize a flirt, such as Sidney Vandyke was said to be. She let
herself seem to fall under his spell, and then suddenly slipped gently
away, turning to Captain March who sat at her other side. She would talk
to him in a friendly, intimate way, in a low voice, with little happy
outbursts of laughter over their reminiscences of a year ago; then, half
apologetically, she would turn back to Vandyke again, raising and
letting fall her eyelashes in a way entirely her own, which, somehow,
gives the effect of a blush. It was Victorian, or Edwardian at latest,
but much more useful than any substitute girls have invented since. That
night began the battle which was to have so strange a finish.
I don't know if Major Vandyke was serious at first. Perhaps he wanted no
more than a good flirtation with a pretty girl, one of the prettiest he
had ever seen, and desperately loved by a brother officer. You see, he
had probably heard already from Kitty Main, who told everything she knew
and a great deal she didn't know, that Captain March was in love with
Di, just as we heard from the same source that Major Vandyke was jealous
of his junior because of flying exploits and honours. I think, though,
that from the moment they met, Di never meant to let the man go free.
She saw that he was flirting, and was angry that he should dare. This
put her on her mettle; and Diana on her mettle was and ever will be
formidable, because of her cleverness, which never lets the mettle show.
She determined that Sidney Vandyke should fall in love--over ears and
eyes in love--and he did. But she wasn't satisfied even with that. She
couldn't bear to have Eagle March escape, and perhaps be snapped up by
Milly Dalziel, who was sitting on the bank of the fishpond with her hook
baited. Oh, it must have been an amusing little comedy for outsiders to
watch; and I was an outsider in a way; but it didn't amuse me. I was
sick at heart, and cross with Tony Dalziel, who wouldn't leave me alone
or give me time to think things over.
This sort of maneuvering lasted for three weeks; then a bombshell fell
in our midst. Two batteries of the --th Artillery were ordered
immediately to El Paso, on the Mexican border, where a raid was
apparently threatened. Major Vandyke and Captain March and Lieutenant
Dalziel were all to go.