The airman glanced at his wrist-watch; it was half-past nine. The
miller slept by the side of the stove, his chin crushing his beard
against his chest. Louis also slept, having curled himself into a
black, furry ball, apparently possessed of neither head nor tail. A
clock brazenly stating the time to be five-thirty, ticked lazily as
though finding itself four hours behind the correct hour, there was no
chance of its ever catching up, and it only kept going because it was
the sporting thing to do. Just over the clock a picture of Marshal
Joffre gazed paternally on the quiet scene.
Seated at the table, which was covered by a geranium-colored cloth, the
girl and the airman sat silent, while a shaded lamp lent a crimson glow
through which her deep eyes gleamed, like the first stars of a summer
evening.
To her romance had come.
She was no longer the miller's niece, but the girl who had seen the
Fairy Prince. All the sighs, all the questionings, all the longings of
her girlhood had culminated in this amazing adventure of a fair-haired
knight who, descending from the clouds, had proceeded to terrorize her
uncle who was feared for miles around. It was wonderful. And he was so
droll, this young man; and his voice had a little soothing drop in it,
at times, that left a fluttering echo in her heart.
She had left the convent when ten years of age, on the death of her
mother. Her father--but then gossip was never kind. He was an officer
who had deserted his pretty little wife for another woman--or so rumor
had it; and her mother had died, a flower stricken by a frost. The
daughter had been taken by a relative, the owner of a lonely mill, and
for six years had lived in solitude, her horizon of life limited to the
adjacent village, her knowledge of women gained from the memory of a
sad, yearning face, paler than the pillow on which it rested, and an
occasional visit to the curé's sister. Of men she knew only her uncle
and the few villagers that had not gone to fight for La Belle France.
From unquestioning childhood she had passed to that stage in a girl's
life when the emotions leap past the brain, fretful of the latter's
plodding pace. Her mind untutored, unsharpened by contact with other
minds, left her the language and the reasonings of a child; but her
imagination, feeding on the strange longings and dreams which permeated
her life, pictured its own world where romance held sway over all the
creatures that inhabited its realm.
It is the instinct of a little child to picture unreal things--the
unconscious protest of immaturity against the commonplaceness of life.
But with the education of to-day and the labyrinth of artificiality
which characterizes modern living, the imaginativeness of childhood
disappears, except in a few great minds who, retaining it, are hailed
by the world as possessors of genius.
Unhampered (or unhelped, as the case may be) by association with the
patchwork pattern of society, the miller's niece had retained her gift
of imagination, without which the solitude and the monotony of her days
would have been unendurable; until, blending it with the budding flower
of womanhood, she found mystery in the moaning of the wind. While the
sun danced upon the grass her spirit mingled with the sunlight; and
when the moon exercised her suzerainty of the heavens the poetry in her
soul thrilled to sweet dreams of lover's wooings (though her unreasoned
rapture often ended in unreasoned tears upon the pillow).... She found
melancholy in the coloring of an autumn leaf, and laughter in the music
of the mill-stream.... There were smugglers' tales in a northeast gale,
and fairy stories in a summer's shower.
The doctrine of pleasure so feverishly followed by her sisters to-day
was unknown to her--as was its insidious reaction which comes to so
many women, with the dulling of the perceptions, the blinding of eyes
to the colors of life, the deadening of ears to the music of nature,
until they cannot hear the subtle melody of happiness itself, so
closely allied to the somber beauty of sorrow.
"Little one"--the aviator's voice was very soft, so that the ticking of
the clock sounded clearly above it--"in a few minutes I must go. It is
a dark night, and of necessity I must get to the village to-night, and
be on my way before dawn."
Her eyes were hidden by her drooping eyelashes. "You will return--yes?"
she asked, without looking up.
He smiled rather wistfully. "'When the red-breasted robins are
nesting,'" he quoted slowly, "'I shall come.'"
The clock ticked wearily on.... A few drops of rain fell upon the roof.
"Monsieur"--the crimson in her cheeks deepened--"you must not smile;
but it is in my book, here."
She took from the table _The Fairy Prince_, and handed it to him. He
gazed at it with a seriousness he might have shown towards a book of
Scottish theology.
"You know, monsieur"--she appeared deeply concerned in the design of
the geranium table-cover--"I never leave the mill-house unless to
attend mass, and sometimes--perhaps you would think so, too--it is very
lonesome; no brother, no sister, just Louis and my uncle."
He nodded, and, with an air of abstraction, his brow wrinkled
sympathetically, and his fingers strummed five-finger exercises on the
table.
"It must be very dull," he said.
"But no, monsieur"--her eyes looked up in protest--"not dull--just
lonesome."
He sustained an imaginary note with his little finger, frowned
thoughtfully until his eyebrows almost obscured his eyes, then came
down the scale with slow and measured pace.
"Well, little lady who is never dull, and what has all this to do with
_The Fairy Prince_?"
"It is because I have no sisters, no friends, that--that I pretend. But
you do not understand."
He played some chord with both hands.
"Very young people and very old ones pretend," he said, with dreamy
sententiousness; "pretending is what makes them happy. But the
Prince----?"
She smiled deprecatingly. "When I read, monsieur, I think that the
girl--there is always a girl, is there not?" He nodded gravely. "I do
not think it is she," she went on, "but myself; and when the book is
finished, and she marries her lover, then I am happy ... and dream...."
"'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,'" he murmured, and trilled
with his first and second fingers.
"So, monsieur," she continued, glancing shyly at him, "in that
book----"
"There is a girl."
"Yes. And a Fairy Prince who was very handsome."
"Like me?"
"It does not say, monsieur."
"Ah!"
"But I think so," she said earnestly, "for he was the handsomest man in
all France."
"It said nothing of England?"
"No, monsieur, only France."
He nodded with great dignity, and motioned her to proceed. She leaned
forward with her elbows on the table, and rested her chin on her
interlocked fingers.
"To-day I was reading it to Louis," she said, "when, just at the moment
that they met--_vous voilà!_--you came. Monsieur," she said naïvely,
"are you a fairy prince?"
He considered, with head characteristically on one side.
"N-no," he said, "I cannot claim that, but----"
"Ah, yes?" Her face lit up with delighted anticipation.
"I am a prince of the air." He struck an attitude and held it.
"Oh!" Her lips parted in ecstasy and her cheeks, which had been
crimson, became scarlet. "You--are really a prince?"
"Of the air, mademoiselle." He folded his arms and tilted his chair
back. His face was still grave, but his voice had a sense of distance
in it, and his light eyes widened as though they saw the world his
words were picturing. "My kingdom is greater than all the kingdoms of
the earth, and when I ride, my steed with wings takes me towards the
stars. For sport I play with clouds and race the wind; at night the
moon gives me light; and when I travel there are no mountains to climb,
no lakes to cross. I go faster than the swiftest horse, and ride from
villages to cities, out into the country, and over the sea with a steed
that never tires."
"But, monsieur," she cried, "this is wonderful!"
He looked frankly into her eyes. "It _is_ wonderful," he said.
For a few minutes neither spoke, and the soft symphony of raindrops
played through the quietness of the night.
"Your Majesty," she said timorously, "are you very brave? You
understand," she hurried on as a slight blush darkened the tan of his
cheeks, "in fairy books the prince always fights a dragon or a wicked
giant."
"Don't uncles count?"
She made a pretty _moue_.
"As a matter of fact," he said slowly, "there was a wicked Emperor--a
blustering popinjay with a madman's vanity--who decreed that all the
world should be his slaves, and sent his armies into France and Belgium
to enforce his will. My brothers heard of this, and came from countries
and dominions thousands of miles away. Across great continents of water
they sailed, and, with their brothers from the little Islands of the
North Sea, came to France...."
"Your voice is very sad," she said tenderly. Her nature, that knew
every mood of a summer breeze, had caught the inflection of his words,
understanding by their tone what the vagueness of his words hid from
her mind.
"So many have died," he said, looking away from her. "Almost every day
some one rides out into the sunlight to his death, young, brave, and
smiling.... Mademoiselle, it is wonderful how they smile."
Tick--tick--tick.
For more than a minute neither spoke, then, with a smile that was
strangely boyish, he squared his shoulders and ran his fingers through
his rumpled hair.
"Ha!" he laughed; "what fancies get into a scatter-brain like mine when
the rain's a-pattering on the roof. If you will allow me, little Pippa,
I shall smoke."
"Little Peepa?" she laughed delightedly.
"Pippa," he assented, puffing smoke as he lighted the pipe. "I think I
shall call you that. You see, according to her biographer, Mr.
Browning, she worked in the silk-mills all the year, but one day she
had to herself, from dawn to midnight, and so as to enjoy it to the
full she--well, she pretended, like you."
"But that is droll," she said eagerly, "for every Easter after Sunday,
my uncle, who is fatigued from so much chanting in the church, always
goes to Boulogne and becomes drunk for one whole day. On Wednesday he
returns. These six years he has done it always the same; and on the
Tuesday it is wonderful. I am alone with Louis, and we ask all the
people in our books to visit us."
A sudden gleam of excitement lit his eyes.
"The Tuesday after Easter?"
"Always it is so."
"Pippa," he said--but checked the remainder of his words. He placed the
pipe in his mouth and ran five-finger exercises at a terrific speed.
"Pippa," he said again, then, ceasing his display of virtuosity, leaned
back and gazed at her from beneath his eyebrows. "Next spring, on the
Tuesday after Easter, I will come for you."
She caught her breath deliriously.
"Beyond the village road," he went on, speaking slowly and distinctly,
"I saw a big pasture-field at the top of the hill. Be there as the sun
is just above the horizon, and I will come in an aeroplane."
"And, your Majesty, you will take me to your kingdom?"
"For one day, Pippa, to the great city of London--the city that is open
to all who possess a golden key. We shall return by the stars at
night."
"Then"--her voice shook, and the brilliancy of her eyes was softened by
sudden tears, as the rays of an August sun are sometimes tempered by a
shower, "then--at last--I am to see the world--boys and girls and
palaces and----"
"To say nothing of prunes and potentates."
"Oh, but, your Majesty, it is too wonderful. I am certain it will not
come true."
He rose and quietly placed his chair against the wall. "Pippa," he
said, "there are only two things that could prevent it. One, if there
is a storm and--the other----" he shook his head impatiently.
The girl took down a work-basket, and after searching its contents
extracted a tiny trinket.
"You mean," she said, stepping lightly over to him, "that you might go
to join your brothers--those who smiled so bravely?"
"We never know, Pippa," he answered.
She reached for the lapel of his coat and pinned the little keepsake on
it. "'Tis a black cat," she said. "I saw it in the village store, so
small and funny, like Louis. It is a gift from little Pippa, who will
pray to the Virgin every night that her Prince may not be
killed--unless----"
He looked at the little mascot, which dangled above a couple of
ribbons.
"Unless?" he said.
For a moment there was a flash in her eyes and a sudden crimson flush
in her cheeks that startled him. For the first time in her life she
felt the instinct of a tigress; that strange fusion of passion and
timidity that comes to women of her kind when it seems they may lose
the object of their love.
"Unless he--forgets." The words were spoken between lips that hardly
moved.
"By the sacred bones of my ancestors," he said, with a sort of sincere
grandiloquence, "I promise to come. So that I shall always think of
you, my Pippa, I will paint a black cat upon the machine, and woe to
the Hun who dares to singe its whiskers!"
A few minutes later, the heavily coated figure of an aviator was
plowing its way through a drizzling rain, along a dark and solitary
road. His pace was extraordinarily long for his height, and he appeared
to be stepping over a perpetual array of obstacles at least one foot
high.
By a casement window a girl, with hair like the dusk, stood gazing
towards the road that was hidden in darkness. Silently and motionless
she watched the melancholy drops of rain as they fell upon the glass,
until, unconsciously, her lips parted and she sang, very softly, the
little song taught to the maiden in the story by the lonely shepherd:
"Maman, dites moi ce qu'on sent quand on aime.
Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment?"
She paused in the improvised melody, and repeated the words slowly.
"Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment?"
And then the little mistress of the mill laid herself upon her bed and
wept profusely; but whether it was because she was happy or because she
was sorrowful, let those explain who understand the psychology of a
woman's tears.
Downstairs, Louis and the miller slept profoundly.
V
It was several months later that an airman emerged from his hut into
the chilly air of an April night that was lingering grudgingly over its
last hour of darkness. There was a sullen rumble of guns borne on a
restless breeze that stirred the long grass of the fields and set the
leaves in the trees whispering and quivering. The drone could be heard
of a lonely aeroplane returning from its night-ride over the enemy
lines.... Above the distant roll of the artillery, one gun stood out
like a pizzicato note on a giant bass violin.
The airman passed the silent aerodrome, and, with difficulty
accustoming himself to the darkness, made out the shadow of a machine
in the adjoining field. He heard the sigh of cylinders sucking in the
petrol as the mechanics warmed the machine, and walked over to it. For
a moment he spoke to the men before climbing into the pilot's seat.
There followed the incisive monotone of the flier's incantation between
himself and the non-commissioned officer.
"Petrol on: switch off."
"Petrol on: switch off."
"Contact."
"Contact."
The propellers were swung into action, hesitated for a moment, then
wheezily subsided.
The incantation was repeated; the propeller blades coughed, and leaped
into a deafening roar. The mechanics sprang aside, and the machine,
stumbling forward for a few yards, turned into the wind. There was a
sudden acceleration of the propeller, a crescendo from the engines, and
the machine made swiftly across the field, rising as it attained flying
speed, and disappearing into the night.
A few moments later its light was mixing with the dulling stars, and
the drone of its engine could be heard only at the whim of the breeze.
"I wonder what the Black Cat's up to now," said mechanic No. 1, rubbing
his hands together for warmth. "Rum beggar, isn't he?"
His companion slapped his breast with his arms and blew on his fingers.
"Mad as a March hare," he growled; "takes a two-seater out at this time
of night."
"And did you notice the extra outfit?"
"He's mad," repeated the before-dawn psychologist, "mad as a rabbit."
"But he's a mighty stout boy," interposed the N.C.O., who was torn
between his duty of keeping discipline and his love of character study;
"and he sure puts the wind up Fritz when he takes off with his Black
Cat Bristol fighter."
The blackness of night was beginning to give way to a dull and sullen
gray as the solitary pilot made a detour over the lines. In the gloom
beneath he could see a long crescent of orange-colored flashes where
the British guns were maintaining their endless pounding of the enemy.
Farther east was a large patch of winking, yellow lights, giving to his
eye the same effect as flakes of gunpowder dropped upon a heated stove:
it was the bursting of the British shells. Beyond that field of death
he could see other and larger flashes, and knew the Hun was replying in
kind.
Everywhere the darkness was being penetrated by long, rocket-like
lights with a white, starry burst at the end, and, as though to give
variety to the scene, a few red and green bursts mingled garishly with
them.
To the airman, from his refuge of height, it all combined in an uncanny
pageant of fireworks--a weird spectacle of death, as though hell had
opened and the passions of men were feeding the flames to make a
devils' holiday.
A searchlight woke him from his reverie. A couple of anti-aircraft guns
barked at him. With a smile he noticed the rapid approach of morning's
light, and, turning to the west, he set his course by the compass and
made for the lonely mill-house of Picardy.