face a world that could play such hideous tricks. It was bad enough
and thrice incredible to have rendered Laure’s brother impervious
to her every enchantment, but it was sheer wanton cruelty to have
made him utterly unworthy of any lady’s straying fancy--and alas,
alas, how fancy strayed! The bravest of all the fighting Carters
was badly frightened; the whole thing savoured of black magic. She,
who had flouted and flaunted every masculine heart that had been
laid at her feet since she had put on slippers, to have fallen,
victim to a laugh and a careless word! Why, she barely knew him,
he held so lightly aloof, courteous and smiling and indifferent;
it was hatefully obvious that he preferred his own society to any
that they could offer. He wouldn’t play--he wouldn’t work--he
wouldn’t even eat with them. Of course he had been in the hospital
for ages, but he had been out of it for ages, too, and it was
criminal folly to continue to pamper any one as he was pampered.
A man--a real _man_--would die of shame before he would permit
his sisters to give music lessons while he locked himself in his
room and laughed. Never was he with them, save for the brief hour
after _déjeuner_ when they drank their cups of black coffee under
the golden beech trees--and for that heavenly space after dinner
in the great salon, full of firelight and candlelight and falling
rose-leaves and music, with Madame de Lautrec stitching bright
flowers into her tapestry frame and Monsieur le Vicomte smiling
his courteous and tragic smile into the leaping fire in the carved
chimney, and the fresh young voices rising and falling about the
piano over which Laure bent her golden head--Diane’s silver music
lifting clearly, Laure’s soft contralto murmuring like far waters,
and Philippe singing as his troubadour ancestor might have sung,
fearless and true and shining--Fair caught her breath at the memory
of that ringing splendour, and then looked stern. It was ridiculous
to worship any one as the De Lautrecs worshipped their tall
Philippe and it was obviously highly demoralizing for him--highly.
Laure was the worst; it was as though she couldn’t bear to have him
out of her sight for a minute; if he rose to go--oh, if he even
stirred, she was at his side in a flash, her hand slipped into his,
all her white tranquillity shaken into some mysterious terror at
the thought that he might escape her again.
“No, no!” she would cry passionately when Fair rallied her with
flying laughter. “You do not know what you say, my Fair. I have no
courage left; none, none, I tell you. He is my life--and for four
years every morning, every night I made myself say: ‘You will not
see him again, you will not hear him again, you will not touch him
again. But you will be brave, you hear? You will be brave because
it is for France.’ Now France has no more need of my courage--and
that is very well, because I have no more to give her. It is all
gone. I will never be brave again.”
She was the only one that Philippe would suffer to come near him in
all the long hours that he spent behind those dark barred doors;
often, as Fair sped by on light feet, she could hear the murmur
of their voices, low and absorbed--shutting her out, thought Fair
forlornly, more than any lock on any door. What did they find to
talk about, hour after hour, blind and deaf to the world that lay
about them, golden under the October sun? What spell did Laure use
to bind him, what magic to dispel all the endless witchery that
Fair had spread before him, first carelessly, then startled into
wide-eyed consciousness and finally, during these last flying days,
driven to despairing prodigality? She bit her lip, blinking back
the treacherous tears fiercely. Some day--some day he should pay
for this indifference, and pay with interest. The loitering feet
paused again while their owner visualized, through the mist of
unwelcome tears, a contrite Philippe dragging himself to grovel
abjectly at her feet, begging for one small word of mercy and of
hope. The vivid countenance suddenly assumed an expression of
exquisite contentment.
“No, Philippe,” she would tell him, lightly but inflexibly, “no, my
poor boy, it would be sheer cruelty to mislead you. Never, under
any circumstances could I----”
“_Enfin!_” rang out a richly indignant voice. “Do you walk in your
sleep, my good goose? We wait and we wait until we are one half
frozen, and you arrive like the snail he was your little brother
and----”
“Oh, Laure, I _am_ sorry! Box my ears--no, hard--you tell her to
box them hard, Monsieur André!”
“I, Mademoiselle? But never--I think we are well repaid for our
vigil, hey, Raoul? Here is that very red mallet with which you will
beat us all. We take Bravo with us, Diane?”
Diane shook her curly head dubiously at the frantic police dog.
“Who holds the leash; you, André? Last time he get loose, he bite
three sheep--three, before we catch him. You hear, monster?”
Fair and Bravo exchanged guilty glances.
“Well, but Diane, he pulled so; truly he did. He went so fast,
right over those hedges, and the leash cut through my mittens,
and----”
Laure and Diane yielded to outrageous laughter.
“Raoul, you should see them! Right over those sticking hedges they
go, Bravo ahead, big like three wolves, and Fair ’way behind at the
other end of the leash, so small like the little Red Riding Hood,
and so fast like she was flying! Oh, _bon Dieu_! I thought we die
laughing!”
“Very, very funny,” commented Fair bitterly. “Specially for me. How
are we going to-day?”
“How if we go across the little meadow to the Gates and home by the
Cœur d’Or? Too far, Raoul?”
“We will be back for lunch? _À la bonheur_--we go. Ah, well hit,
Mademoiselle. Straight like arrows, too!”
Fair raced after the red ball, her scarf flying behind her like a
banner, wings at her heels, stars in her eyes, tragedy forgotten.
Three more strokes like that would get her to the meadow--oh,
wonderful to be alive, to be swift and light and sure, to feel
the wind lifting your hair, and the sun warming your heart in a
world that was once more safe and kind. Dear world--dear France,
dear France, so kind to this small American--she absolved it
lavishly from its sins of cold water and bitter coffee; where
else in all the world could you find a game of the inspiring
simplicity of croquo-golf--a game whose sole equipment was a ball
and a mallet--whose sole object was to cover as much space in as
few strokes as possible? Where else could you find such comrades
to play it with, grave and eager as children, ardent-eyed and
laughing-lipped? She smote the ball again, her voice flying with it.
“Oh, Laure, as I live and breathe, it’s cleared the ditch!
‘Monsieur Charette hath said to all his peers,
Monsieur Charette hath said to all his peers,
Come, good sirs!
Now let us sally forth and whip these curs!’”
The exultant chant wavered for a moment as the proud possessor of
the ball cleared the ditch, too, and took up her triumphant lilt,
crescendo:
“‘Take up thy gun, my good Gregory!
Take up thy virgin of ivory--
Fill up thy drinking gourd right cheerily--
Our comrades have gone down
To fight for Paris Town!’”
André de Chartreuil swung up beside her, breathless and laughing.
Luck was with him; all the English that he had mastered as liaison
officer raced to the tip of his tongue.
“But what a child! How old are you, Mlle. Fairfax Carter?”
“Too old,” mourned Fairfax, shaking her bright head till the
curls danced in the sun. “Much, much too old--old enough to know
better.” She pounced on the half-buried ball with a small shriek of
excitement. “Ah ha, my little treasure, a mere turn of the wrist
and--bet I make the gate in four strokes.”
“Bet you do not,” replied André obligingly.
“Done; all the mushrooms that you find in Daudin’s meadow to--to
what?”
“To the very great privilege of kissing the tips of your fingers.”
Young De Chartreuil’s voice was carefully light.
“Monsieur André!” Fair, her mallet poised for the blow, paused long
enough to bestow a distracting glance through her lashes, oddly at
variance with her maternal tone. “You aren’t going to begin that
kind of thing, are you?” Her laughter rang out, gay and lovely and
mocking.
Young De Chartreuil smiled back at her--a not very convincing
smile. She was the most enchanting creature that he had ever met,
but her lack of discretion froze the marrow in his bones.
“Mademoiselle, one so charming is privileged to forget that one may
also be kind,” he remarked formally.
Fair stopped laughing. “Oh, nonsense!” she returned abruptly,
forgetting that one may also be polite. She hit viciously at the
ball, scowling after it more like a cross little boy than a lady of
Romance. “There--see what you made me do!” The astonished André met
her accusing gaze blankly.
“I, Mademoiselle?”
“Yes, sir, you.” The tone was unrelenting. “I’m a great deal
kinder than I have any business being,” she added darkly. “I
certainly am. Sooner or later every single one of you turn on me
like--like--vipers, and tell me that it’s not possible that I could
have been so everlastingly kind and patient and wonderful if I
hadn’t meant something by it. Goodness knows what you’d all like
me to do,” she murmured gloomily. “Make faces and bark like a dog
every time one of you comes near me, I s’pose. Where’s that ball? I
wish I were dead.”
This time André’s smile was clearly unforced.
“Oh, no one in the world is droll like you!” he stated with
conviction. “But no one. No, do not bark like a little dog--I
will be good, I swear.” He shrugged his shoulders philosophically.
“After all, if God had made you tender hearted you would spend your
days weeping for the ones you broke. So this way it is best, is it
not so?”
Fair beamed on him graciously. “Well, of course!” she assented
with conviction. “And I’m certainly thankful that you see it. If
you’d had about seventy-eight thousand soldiers spending their
every waking minute telling you that they’d fade away and die if
you weren’t kind to them, you’d see that the novelty of it would
wear off a little. Wear off a good deal.” She gave the ball a
rather perfunctory hit. After all, Fairfax Carter on the subject of
Fairfax Carter was more absorbing than any game ever invented. She
drew a deep breath and started off headlong on her favourite topic.
“It’s perfectly horrible being a girl--and it’s a million times
worse if you’re a--well, if you aren’t exactly revolting looking
and are what the dime novels call an heiress.”
“It must, indeed, be hard,” agreed young De Chartreuil consolingly.
Fair glanced at him suspiciously from the corner of her eye.
“You needn’t laugh, my dear boy--it most certainly is. I don’t
believe men care one little snip for your soul or--or your
intellect.”
“Oh, but surely!” protested De Chartreuil politely.
“No, sir,” maintained the complete cynic, giving another abstracted
hit at the ball. “Not a single, solitary one. Oh, bother--look
where it went then! How many strokes have you had? Four? _Four?_
I’ve had five, and look at the horrible thing now. What was I
talking about? Oh, proposals! I don’t believe in international
marriages, do you, Monsieur André?”
Monsieur André made a light and deprecating gesture. “I,
Mademoiselle? But I have had so few!”
“I do think foreigners are horribly frivolous!” murmured Fair to
the universe at large. “I’ve not had so many myself, but I can
still think they’re a bad idea. You couldn’t possibly help thinking
that they were pretty cold and calculating.”
“Could you not?” inquired one who had come very near being a cold
calculator in a freezing voice. “I, for one, try to look more
charitably on the pretty ladies who covet our poor coronets.”
Fair brushed this thrust aside with the obliviousness that made
her strength and her weakness once the engine of her attention
was racing along her one-track mind to the goal of her selection.
Humour, satire, impertinence, or indignation were signals
powerless to impede her progress when she was on her way; she
rushed by them heedlessly, recklessly indifferent to anything short
of a head-on collision.
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of the girls--who in the world wants a
little old coronet! Of course they’re nice if you’re _used_ to
them,” she added hastily. “But it was the men that I was thinking
of; you simply couldn’t be sure, not ever. You work, don’t you?”
“Alas, yes, Mademoiselle!” De Chartreuil abandoned resentment and
stood leaning on his mallet, laughing down at this incorrigible and
enchanting small barbarian.
“Monsieur André, why do you suppose that Monsieur de Lautrec
doesn’t work?”
“Philippe?” His voice was strange.
“Yes, Philippe--you didn’t suppose that I meant the Vicomte, did
you? This place keeps him busy from morning to night. Philippe,
of course.” Her voice was impatient, but there was a desperate
eagerness behind it that checked the quick words on De Chartreuil’s
tongue.
“Mademoiselle, for four years he worked day and night; he gave the
blood of his heart, the blood of his soul in work--would you grudge
him a little rest?”
“But, good heavens, he’s had years to rest,” cried Fair
despairingly. “He’s not going to rest until he dies, is he? You’re
not resting--Monsieur Raoul’s not resting--no one in the world has
a right to rest when there’s so much to do--no one!”
“For long, long after the war he did not leave the hospital,
Mademoiselle.”
“Well, wasn’t he resting there?” demanded his inquisitor fiercely.
“No,” replied the boy gravely. “No, he was not resting there, I
think.”
“What--what was the matter with him in the hospital?” asked Fair,
making her lips into a very straight line so that they wouldn’t
quiver.
“It was--what you call shell-shock.”
“Shell-shock? That’s horrible--oh, don’t I know! Those
hospitals--like a nightmare--worse than a nightmare----” She swept
it far from her with a resolute gesture. “It’s no good thinking
about it; you have to forget! And Heaven knows that he’s over it
now; Heaven knows that now he isn’t suffering from any breakdown.
I’ve never seen him look even serious for two minutes at a time--I
don’t believe that he has the faintest idea of what seriousness
means. It’s all very well to have a sense of humour; I have a
perfectly wonderful sense of humour myself when I’m not thinking
of something more important--but it’s ridiculous to think that
that’s all there is to it!” She hit the ball a reckless blow that
sent it flying far across the tawny meadow, and turned to young
De Chartreuil a lovely little countenance on fire with righteous
indignation and angry distress. “A real man would know that life
ought to be more than just laughing half the day--and singing half
the night--and looking the way the heroes in the moving pictures
ought to look--and chatter-boxing away in his room for hours and
hours and hours!” Bitter resentment at this unpalatable memory sent
the colour flying higher in her cheeks, and she swung off after the
red ball at a furious scamper. “And by Glory, I’m going to tell him
so!” she announced tempestuously over her shoulder to the astounded
André. He sprang forward, galvanized into instant action.
“Mademoiselle--Mademoiselle, wait, I beg you. You jest, of course,
but----”
“Indeed I do not jest, of course,” retorted Fair hotly. “I don’t
jest one little bit. Why in the world shouldn’t I tell him?”
“There are, I should think, one thousand reasons why,” he replied
sharply. “Must I give you the thousand and first, and assure you
that always, always, all the days that you live, it would be to you
a very deep regret?”
“It certainly would not,” replied his unimpressed audience flatly.
Any one who attempted to frighten Fair out of any undertaking
whatever was making a vital strategic error, but André de
Chartreuil was too young and too thoroughly outraged to indulge in
strategy.
“Mademoiselle, but this is madness----”
“Monsieur, but this is impertinence.” Fair’s chin was tilted
at an angle that implied that battle, murder, and sudden death
would be child’s play to her from then on. This--this little
_whipper-snapper_ of a French infant who had basely pretended to be
at her feet, suddenly rising up and dictating a course of conduct
to her--to _her_! Well, it simply proved what she had always
maintained. You couldn’t trust a foreigner--you couldn’t, not ever.
“For what you call impertinence, forgive me.” The tone was far from
repentant, and Fair waited stiffly for further developments. “My
poor English renders me clumsy--grant me, I pray, patience.”
Very poor English, thought Fair sternly; it might mean anything.
Grant him patience indeed! She had precious little patience to
spare for any one this morning, as he would discover to his cost.
“Philippe, he is like no one else!” Young De Chartreuil made a
gesture of impotent despair, his careful English suddenly turned
traitor. “You do not see it, but he is like no one else, I tell
you. I who was his sous-officier--his how you call it, his
under-officer--ah, no matter--he was my captain for three years,
and I know, you hear me, I know.”
“Heaven knows I hear you,” Fair assured him with ominous calm. “I
should think that they could hear you in Paris!”
“Well, then, I tell you that we, his men, we who followed him, we
would have given the blood out of our hearts for him to shine his
boots with--we knew him, we. You know why they call him Philippe le
Gai?”
“I know that there’s some story about an old troubadour called
Philippe le Gai----”
“About a very great soldier who was also a very great singer,
Mademoiselle, long years ago in Provence. Philippe is of his race;
one of those who meet Death itself with a song. That other Philippe
died eight hundred years ago, and they say that he died singing.
And we--we who followed this Philippe and gave to him our souls--we
know that he could face worse than death--and still sing.”
“There isn’t the slightest necessity of making a curtain speech
to me about courage,” replied the last of the fighting Carters,
and the velvet voice rang as cold and hard as drawn steel. “I know
quite a good deal about it, thank you. I may not have had any old
ancestor that went rampaging around singing songs about how gay
and brave and wonderful he was, but I had three great-uncles and
a grandfather who were killed in the Civil War and a brother who
was killed in the Spanish War, and--and a father----” Her voice
failed her, but she swallowed hard and pushed on relentlessly:
“And a father who died for his country just as much as any of
them, because he went right on working for it when he _knew_
that it would kill him--and who didn’t even let me know that he
was dying, because I couldn’t help him, and he thought that I
might help America, and I was the only one of the Carters left to
fight for America. And I kept on fighting, even though it just
about killed me, too; I went into Germany with my men, because I
knew that he wouldn’t think the war was over until we got what
we fought for--until we _really_ got it--and I’d be there yet if
it hadn’t been for those idiotic doctors. Nervous breakdown! For
gracious sakes, I’d like to hear what they’d say if one of their
old colonels started to have a nervous breakdown. This isn’t any
kind of a world to sit and twirl your thumbs and pet your nerves
in--and I can’t see that singing about it makes it much nobler--or
laughing, either.”
“There are many things, perhaps, that you cannot see,” commented
young De Chartreuil, and at the tone in his voice there was one
thing that Fair did see, and that was red.
“Well, I can see this,” she cried in a voice shaken with sheer
fury, “I can see that it’s possible to be just as much of a slacker
after the war as during it.”
“Mademoiselle!”
“In America men _work_,” stormed Fair. “They----”
“In America you save your generosity for your own faults, it
seems.” He raised a commanding hand, and Fair stood voiceless,
literally transfixed with rage. “No, wait, I beg you; I have not
yet finished. Perhaps in your great country you forget that work
is the means--that it is not the end; no, no, believe me, it is
not the end. It is also not very wise to condemn utterly that
which may differ only in kind, not in degree. To you courage may
be a dark and stern thing--a duty--but to some--to one at least,
Mademoiselle--it is a shining and gay and splendid gift; it is a
joy.”
“Are you through with your lessons for the day?” asked Fair icily.
“Because if you are, I’m going!” She whirled the red mallet about
her head like a battle-axe, and sent it spinning far from her after
the neglected ball. “Good-bye--I’m off. Tell the others I twisted
my ankle--got a headache--tell them any old lie you think of----”
“But, Mademoiselle, you cannot----”
Fairfax Carter halted for a moment in her tumultuous progress,
the wind whipping her leaf-brown skirts about her and sending the
bright curls flying about the reckless, stubborn little face.
“Can’t I?” she called back defiantly. “Can’t I? Well, wait and see!
I’m going to tell your precious Philippe de Lautrec just exactly
what I think of a hero who spends his life resting on his laurels
while his sisters work their fingers to the bone--and you and Foch
and the Archangel Gabriel can’t stop me, so I’d advise you to stick
to croquo-golf. Good-bye!”
She was gone in a brilliant whirl of flying skirts and scarf
and hair. Young De Chartreuil watched her disappearing down the
long hill that led past Daudin’s farm to the far gate of the
château with an expression in which dismay was tempered by a grim
satisfaction. After a moment he shrugged his shoulders briefly,
retrieved the scarlet ball and mallet, and set off slowly toward
the sounds of distant laughter that marked the other players. Well,
let her go; she was richly in need of a lesson, that lovely little
demon! And to think that for a moment he had dreamed--ah, name of
Heaven, what an escape!----
Fair, in the meantime, raced lightly on her chosen way. She was in
a towering rage at De Chartreuil for his presumptuous insolence,
and in an even more towering rage at herself for the effect that it
had had on her. Even immature reflection revealed the unmistakable
fact that she had behaved a good deal more like a fish-wife than
the traditional great lady. About the only things that she had
failed to do were boxing his ears and screaming at the top of her
lungs. And she had felt terribly--oh, but terribly--like doing
both of them. No, it was all very well to have a temper, but it
was a bad strategic error to lose it. Possession is nine points
of the law, especially with tempers. Fortunately, the hateful De
Chartreuil child had been even worse than she. He had looked at
one time as though it would have been pure ecstasy to throttle the
life out of her--the time that she had got in that neat thrust
about peace-time slackers. Well, she was on her way to tell one of
them exactly what she thought of him as fast as her stubby brown
boots would carry her. She wrenched impatiently at the iron latch
on the great north gate--it yielded with an unexpectedness that
nearly threw her off her feet, and she heard it clang to behind
her as she raced up the long alley of lime trees that led to the
stone terrace. If she were lucky, she might find the object of her
righteous wrath basking there in the sunlight, without so much as
a book in his graceless hands, dreaming away the hours, his dark
face turned to the golden fields of his inheritance. She had found
him there before--and, yes, fate was with her--there he was now in
his great chair with his back to the lime trees, lounging deep. For
a moment she hesitated, her heart thundering in her ears, and then
she swung recklessly across the sun-warmed flags, hands deep in her
pockets, her chin tilted at an outrageous angle.
“Oh, there you are!” she hailed in her magic voice, but there was
something behind the words that turned them from a salutation to a
challenge.
Philippe le Gai sat quite still for a moment, and then, without
rising, he flung her a radiant smile over his shoulder.
“And there are you!” he said. “All finished, the croquo-golf?”
“No--just finished for me. It’s a stupid game, don’t you think?”
“Me? I think no game stupid that once I have started--no, not one.
Then I must play it through to the end, or count myself defeated!”
Fair’s eyes darkened ominously.
“But you don’t start many games, do you?” she asked.
“No,” acquiesced the young man in the chair. “As you say, not
many.”