"_Quel héros!_" rapturously sobbed the Belgian nurse who held me. "It is
he who has saved the lives of all our poor wounded ones, and our lives,
too. Did you not see the monster over our heads? It had to turn just in
the nick of time. An instant more, and there would have been a bomb for
us. Thank heaven! And thank the hero sent by heaven!"
It was a deed, I thought, worthy of Eagle March himself. The air scout
who had accomplished it was his soul brother no matter what country had
given him birth.
"Is it certain, do you think, that all those men in the Zeppelin died
there together?" I gasped.
"Every man of them, yes, it is certain."
"But he--the man of the monoplane? He fell with them?"
"He fell, yes, my child. But he fell free of the Zeppelin. He is not in
that fire cauldron there. Didn't you see the end of what happened?"
"No!" I said. "For a second I covered my eyes."
"Oh, it was all in that second! We thought he was lost, sacrificed for
us; and even now it is most likely that he is dead. We saw the Zeppelin
drop away from under the monoplane. Then came the flare of light, with
the gas exploding and catching fire. But just before that, the monoplane
was poised in the air for an instant above the great falling shape. It
seemed to--do you call it 'plane' down? All that happened was so quick
and sudden, and the aeroplane came to earth so fast we could not be sure
of her fate. But if she fell, she fell free of the Zeppelin. We shall
soon hear. The other hospitals in town are full already, except our
little one, which has still room for a few. If any are saved from either
of the wrecks, they will be brought here, unless we have filled up our
beds meanwhile with people hurt by the Zeppelin bombs."
By the mingled dawnlight and firelight we could see figures running to
the fields where the wreck of the great dirigible and the heroic little
monoplane had come down. But long before news arrived of the occupants'
fate we heard that none of the townsfolk had been injured by the
explosion of the only two bombs which the Zeppelin had been given time
to drop. Three or four buildings had suffered more or less, but
fortunately they were shops, and nobody had been sleeping there. One
bomb had fallen near a hospital, and Tony Dalziel, hearing a rumour that
the "Annex" (as ours was called) had been struck, came rushing from the
hotel close by to find out what had been my fate. When he saw the
steep-roofed building untouched, and with lighted windows, he was
relieved, but ventured to ask for me, and I ran down to speak with him
at the foot of the stairs for a moment.
"Peggy! I just can't stand for this!" he groaned, and the tragedy in his
voice contrasted so quaintly with his comic appearance, bareheaded, hair
ruffled, and costume sketchy, that I felt rising symptoms of hysteria,
which had to be controlled. "I must get you and the mater and Milly into
safety somehow. To-night is the limit. Mater's more dead than alive, and
Mill isn't much better."
"Don't worry about me, anyhow," I said. "You see, I don't much _care_
whether I'm dead or alive. That simplifies things a lot! I wouldn't go
away now if I could."
"You _shall_ go, the first chance there is," insisted Tony, with new
authority. "And it may come soon. There are some high-up Belgian
officers at the hotel to-night. They came in an automobile not so big as
ours, and it's broken down. If they can't get it right by to-morrow,
when they want to go back to Brussels, where they came from, I'll make
'em a present of our car for the rest of the war, if they'll take us
with them. You see, it's a serious matter with me. Things are getting
worse here, and my leave'll soon be up. You don't think I'd go, and let
you stay shut up in Liége with bombs falling all round you and perhaps
on you?"
"Look!" I said, forgetting to answer, as I peered out through the open
street door. "Here come some men with a litter. They're bringing it this
way. Oh, Tony, if it should be the man of the monoplane! They think in
the hospital that he fell with his machine clear of the Zeppelin, and
may be alive."
Ahead of the slowly borne litter ran a youth with a Red Cross band on
his arm. Seeing my nurse's cap and apron, all the uniform I had, he
began speaking breathlessly in Belgian French. Had we a bed? Our nurses
had sent word yesterday that if two or three were needed, we could
supply them. He hoped they hadn't filled up since, as here was an urgent
case: the aviator who had attacked the Zeppelin, and destroyed it by
plunging on to its balloon at the risk of almost certain death. But he
was not dead, and might live if he could have prompt surgical attendance
and nursing.
"Yes, we can take him in," I said. "Everything is ready, and I'll run
ahead of you to warn the staff."
"Tell them," the Red Cross man called after me, as, forgetful of Tony, I
turned to fly, "tell them we think it is the British or American
Monsieur Mars who did us such service, bringing news to the forts from
over the German frontier two days ago."
I dashed on without stopping to answer or look back, for the litter was
arriving; and it was not till I repeated the name, as I gave in my
hurried report, that the sound of it on my own lips made my heart jump.
Monsieur Mars! Could it be.... The thought was too far-fetched.... I
dared not harbour it.
My ward was on the top floor, where the least serious cases were
treated, men who could be got upstairs without too much strain and
suffering. On the ground floor one bed was free, as I knew, and it was
into that ward I went to tell the news to the matron. Perhaps when my
duty was done I did not hurry overmuch to return to my own less
interesting post; and I was still in the principal ward when the canvas
litter borne by four Red Cross men was carried in. Doctors and nurses
pressed forward to meet it, and I flattened myself against the wall,
sick with mingled fear and longing. Again I thought, _what if_ ...
The big room which a week ago had been the restaurant of our prosperous
hotel annex was still lit by electric lamps fantastically unsuited to a
hospital ward: chandeliers of sprawling gilt branches decorated with
metallic imitations of mistletoe. The light of day outside was filtering
in but dimly, yet it paled and made ghastly the yellowish glow of
electricity. Even the doctors and nurses with their tired faces looked
like ghosts, and the wounded soldiers in their narrow white cots seemed
figures of dead men modelled in wax. Some of them opened their eyes, in
deep violet hollows; others kept the lids down, caring for or conscious
of nothing. The staff who received the litter, and the Red Cross men who
brought it, spoke in low voices, but never in irritating whispers. The
moving feet made only a faint pattering sound on the linoleum-covered
floor, and the litter was set down noiselessly at the side of the one
free bed in the ward. Near it stood a screen which only a few hours ago
had hidden the death agony of a soldier. I looked at this and shuddered,
thinking once again, "_What if it were he!_" and if the screen should be
needed again for the same purpose.
Where I lurked, out of every one's way, yet close to the door, flat as a
paper doll, against the wall which smelled of carbolic acid, nobody
troubled about me. I was just one of the younger nurses, and none
stopped to ask whether my place were there or upstairs in another ward.
"Oh God, if it be he, let him live!" I heard my soul praying.
Nurses leaned over the long dark form on the litter, whose face I could
not see, because where I stood only the top of the head was visible, a
head thickly covered with short rumpled hair, which might be blond or
brown when the blood stains were washed off. The bending figures
quickly, skilfully cut away the stained and blackened clothing, and when
it was the surgeon's turn to examine and perhaps to operate, some one
noticed the intruder. The head nurse came to me and laid a hand on my
shoulder. "My child, it was you who brought us the word just now!" she
said kindly, her eyes on my pallid face. "But you must go to your own
duties. This is a great honour we have, to care for the hero who has
saved us. It must be our turn to save him. Go tell the news in the upper
wards, that we hope for the best, the very best. Say to the doctors that
it is indeed Monsieur Mars. They will know the name. They will have
heard of him, and what he did for Liége only the other day."
"I'll go, but _one_ instant first, I implore you, nurse!" I pleaded. "I
think--it may be--that Monsieur Mars is an old friend of mine. I beg you
to let me have a glimpse of his face!"
She looked at me and hesitated; but my imploring eyes, which suddenly
spouted tears, decided her kind heart in my favour. "One glance, then;
but control yourself," she said. And taking me round the waist, she led
me quickly across the room. "Mademoiselle, our young British assistant
thinks she knows the patient," the matron announced. "Make way for her,
an instant. Then she will go to her own ward."
Some one pushed me forward, at the same time holding me firmly lest I
should collapse. One fleeting glance was vouchsafed me of a form covered
with a sheet, and a blackened, blood-smeared face, with half-closed eyes
whose whites showed under the lids, and on whose lips was some strange
semblance of a happy smile. To those who did not know him well, or love
him beyond all the world, that marred face might have been
unrecognizable in its mask of dirt and blood. But nothing could disguise
it from me. Monsieur Mars, the wounded hero of Liége, and Captain Eagle
March, late of the American army, were one and the same.
* * * * *
I didn't faint, but I don't remember anything else till I found myself
sitting on a chair in my own ward. The nurses were having morning
coffee. One of them gave me a cup. If I hadn't been a nurse myself, with
patients to think of, I should have dropped it and burst out crying. But
instead, I drank the coffee; and a moment later went back to the bedside
of the man I had been tending before leave was granted me to see Tony.
"You look as if you'd met the ghost of some one you love," said the
nurse who had been keeping my place.
But he was not a ghost. Not yet--not yet!