The Firefly Of France

M >> Marion Polk Angellotti >> The Firefly Of France


"Simply," I cried stormily, "that I can't bear thinking of it! The idea
of your taking risks, of your daring the police and the Germans--you who
oughtn't to know what the word danger means! I tell you I can't stand
it. Wasn't there some man to do it for you? Well, it's over now; and in
the future--See here, Miss Falconer, I can't wait any longer. There is
something I've got to say."

But I was not to say it yet, for, behold! just as my tongue was
loosened, I became aware of a most distinguished galaxy approaching us
round the lake. All save one of its members--Dunny, to be exact--were in
uniform; and the personage in the lead, walking between my guardian and
the duke of Raincy-la-Tour, was truly dazzling, being arrayed in a blue
coat and spectacularly red trousers and wearing as a finishing touch a
red cap freely braided with gold. Miss Falconer had risen.

"Why," she exclaimed, "it is General Le Cazeau!"

"Then confound General Le Cazeau!" was my inhospitably cry.

He was, I saw when he drew close, a person of stately dignity, as
indeed the hero who had saved Merlancourt and broken that last furious,
desperate, senseless onslaught of the Boches ought by rights to be.
Perhaps his splendor made me nervous. At any rate, my conscience smote
me. I remembered with sudden panic all my manifold transgressions,
beginning with the hour when I had chucked reason overboard and had
deliberately concealed a murdered man's body beneath a heap of straw.

"I believe," I gasped, "that this is an informal court martial. Nobody
could do the things I have done and be allowed to live. Still, I don't
see why they cured me if they were going to hang or shoot me."

I struggled up with the help of my crutches and stood waiting my doom.

The group had paused before us, and presentations followed, throughout
which the master of ceremonies was the Firefly of France. Then the
gray-headed general fixed me with a keen, stern gaze rather like an
eagle's.

"Your affair, Monsieur, has been of an irregularity," he said.

As with kaleidoscopic swiftness the details of my "affair" passed
through my memory, it was only by an effort that I restrained an
indecorous shout. He was correct. I could call to mind no single feature
that had been "regular," from the thief who was not a thief and had
flown out of my window like a conjurer, to the fight in Prezelay castle
where I had vanquished four husky Germans, mostly by the aid of a wooden
table, of all implements on earth.

"It is too true, _Monsieur le General_," I assented promptly. My
humility seemed to soften him; he relaxed; he even approached a smile.

"Of an irregularity," he repeated. "But also it was of a gallantry. With
a boldness and a resource and a scorn for danger that, permit me to say,
mark your compatriots, you have unmasked and handed over to us one of
our most dangerous foes. For such service as you have rendered France is
never ungrateful. And, moreover, there have been friends to plead your
cause and to plead it well."

As he ended he cast a glance at the Duke of Raincy-la-Tour and one at
Dunny, whereupon I was enlightened as to the purpose of my guardian's
three trips to Paris the preceding week. I believe I have said before
that Dunny knows every one, everywhere; in fact, I have always felt that
should circumstances conspire to make me temporarily adopt a life of
crime, he could manage to pull such wires as would reinstate me in the
public eye. But the general was stepping close to me.

"Monsieur," he was saying, "we are now allies, my country and the great
nation of which you are a son. Very soon your troops are coming. You
will fight on our soil, beneath your own banner. But your first blood
was shed for France, your first wounds borne for her, Monsieur; and in
gratitude she offers you this medal of her brave."

He was pinning something to my coat, a bronze-colored, cross-shaped
something, a decoration that swung proudly from a ribbon of red and
green. I knew it well; I had seen it on the breasts of generals,
captains, simple poilus, all the picked flower of the French nation.
With a thrill I looked down upon it. It was the Cross of War.



CHAPTER XXVII

A THUNDERBOLT OF WAR

The great moment had arrived. General Le Cazeau and his staff were
on their way back to Paris. The duke and duchess were at the chateau
talking with the _blesses_; for the second time Dunny had tactfully
disappeared. The approach of evening had spurred my faltering courage.
As the first rosiness of sunset touched the skies beyond Raincy-la-Tour
and lay across the water, I sat at the side of the only girl in the
world and poured out my plea.

"It isn't fair, you know," I mourned. "I've only a few minutes. I
shouldn't wonder if we heard your car honking for you in half an
hour. To make a girl like you look at a man like me would take days of
eloquence, and, besides, who would think of marrying any one with his
head bound up Turkish fashion as mine is now?"

She laughed, and at the silvery sound of it I plucked up a hint of
courage; for surely, I thought, she wasn't cruel enough to make game
of me as she turned me down. Still, I couldn't really hope. She was too
wonderful, and my courtship had been too inadequate. Despondent, arms on
my knees, I harped upon the same string.

"I've never had a chance to show you," I lamented, "that I am civilized;
that I know how to take care of you and put cushions behind you and
slide footstools under your feet, and--er--all that. We've been too busy
eluding Germans and racing through forbidden zones and rescuing papers
from behind secret panels, for me to wait on you. Good heavens! To think
how I've done my duty by a hundred girls I shouldn't know from Eve if
they happened along this moment! And I've never even sent you a box of
_marrons glaces_ or flowers."

She shot a fleeting glance at me.

"No," she agreed, "you haven't! If you don't mind my saying so, I
think they would have been out of place. At Bleau, for instance, and at
Prezelay I hadn't much time for eating bonbons; but after all you did me
one or two more practical services, Mr. Bayne."

"Nothing," I maintained, my gloom unabated, "that amounted to a row of
pins. Though I might have shone, I'll admit; I can see that, looking
back. The opportunity was there, but the man was lacking. I might have
been a real movie hero, cool, resourceful, dependable, clear-sighted, a
tower of strength; and what I did was to muddle things up hopelessly
and waste time in suspecting you and seize every opportunity of trusting
people who positively spread their guilt before my eyes."

"I don't know." She was looking at the lake, not at me, and she was
smiling. "There were one or two little matters that have slipped your
mind, perhaps. Take the very first night we met, when you tracked your
thief to my room and wouldn't let the hotel people come in to search it.
Don't you think, on the whole, that you were rather kind?"

"I couldn't have driven them in," I declared stubbornly, "with a
pitchfork. I couldn't have persuaded them to make a search if I had
prayed them on my bended knees. Their one idea was to help the fellow
in what the best criminal circles call a getaway; and when I think how I
must have been wool-gathering, not to guess--"

"Well, even so,"--Miss Falconer was still smiling--"weren't you very
nice on the steamer? About the extra, I mean. And at Gibraltar, too,
when they asked you what you had thrown overboard--do you remember how
you kept silent and never even glanced my way?"

"No," I groaned, "I don't; but I remember our trip to Paris. I remember
marching you into the wagon-restaurant like a hand-cuffed criminal, and
sitting you down at a table, and bullying you like a Russian czar. I
gave you three days to leave France. Have you forgotten? I haven't. The
one thing I omitted--and I don't see how I missed it--was to call the
gendarmes there at Modane and denounce you to them. It's more than kind
of you to glide over my imbecilities; I appreciate it. But when I
think of that evening I want a nice, deep, dark dungeon, somewhere
underground, to hide."

"I think," she murmured consolingly, "that you made amends to me later."
Her face was averted, but I could see a distracting dimple in her
cheek. "You mustn't forget that I haven't been perfect, either. When
you followed me to Bleau, and I came down the stairs and saw you, I
misunderstood the situation entirely and was as unpleasant as I could
be."

"Naturally," I acquiesced with dark meaning. "How could you have
understood it? How could any human being have fathomed the mental
processes that sent me there? I only wonder that instead of giving
me what-for, you didn't murder me. Any United States jury would have
acquitted you with the highest praise."

She turned upon me, flushed and spirited.

"Mr. Bayne, you are incorrigible! Why will you insist on belittling
everything that you have done? I suppose you will claim next that you
didn't risk imprisonment or death every minute of a whole day, just to
help me, and that at Prezelay you didn't fight like a--a--yes, like a
paladin!--to save me from being tortured by Herr von Blenheim and his
men!"

I started up and then sank back.

"As a special favor," I begged her, "would you mind not mentioning that
last phase of the affair? When you do, I go berserker; I'm a crazy
man, seeing red; I'm honestly not responsible. It was when our friend
Blenheim developed those plans of his that I swore in my soul I'd get
him; and I thank the Lord that I did and that he'll never trouble you or
any other woman again.

"Still, Miss Falconer, what does all that amount to? Any man would have
helped you, wouldn't he? A nice sort of fellow I should have been to
do any less! Whereas for a girl like you I ought to have accomplished
miracles. I ought to have made the sun stop moving, or got you the stars
to play with, or whisked the moon out of the skies."

She was laughing again.

"Dear me!" she exclaimed. "What fervor! Can this be my Mr. Bayne, the
Mr. Bayne of our adventure, who never turned a hair no matter what mad
things happened, and who was always so correct and conventional and so
immaculately dressed, and so--"

"Stodgy! Say it!" I cried with utter recklessness. "I know I was; Dunny
told me so that evening at the St. Ives. Have as many cracks at me as
you like. I was getting fat; I was beginning to think that the most
important thing in the universe was dinner. Well, I'm not stodgy any
longer, Esme Falconer; you've reformed me. But of all the men in all the
ages who were ever desperately, consumedly, imbecilely in love--"

In the distance two figures were strolling toward the blue car, the duke
and the duchess. When they reached it, the Firefly cast a glance in our
direction and sounded a warning, most unwelcome honk upon the horn. They
were going, stony-hearted creatures that they were! They were taking
Esme back to Paris. At the thought I abandoned my last pretense at
self-command.

"Esme, dearest," I implored, "do you think you could put up with
me? Could you marry me when I've done my part over here--or even
sooner--right away? A dozen better men may love you, but mine is a
special brand of love--unique, incomparable! Are you going to have
me--or shall I jump into the lake?"

The sunset light was in her hair and in the gray, starry eyes she turned
to me--those eyes that, because their lashes were so long and crinkled
so maddeningly, were only half revealed. Her lips curved in a fleeting
smile.

"Oh, you dear, blind, silly man! Do you think any girl could help loving
you--after all that has happened to you and me?" she whispered.

Then I caught her to me; and despite my crutches and my bandaged head
and that atrocious horn in the distance honking the signal for our
parting, I was the happiest being in France--or in the world.

"I knew all along it was a dream, and it is! Such things don't really
happen. No such luck!" I cried.