Man and Maid

Wild with excitement, I was now wide awake!

Yes, there were cannons booming!

Had Bertha begun again?

What was happening?

Then I heard murmurs in the street. I rang the bell violently. I had

slept very late. Burton rushed in.

"An Armistice, Sir Nicholas," he cried joyously.

"It's true after all!"

An Armistice! Oh, God!

So at last, at last we have won, and it has not been all in vain!

I shook with emotion. How utterly absorbed in my own affairs I had been

not to have taken in that this was coming. George Harcourt had

telephoned that he had news for me, I remember now, while we were at the

Hotel de Courville on Saturday, and I had paid no attention.

I was too excited all through breakfast to feel renewed anxiety about

Alathea. I was accepting the fact that she had stayed with her mother.

Surely, surely she would be in soon now!

The oculist, and his artist-craftsman, would be arriving soon, at eleven

o'clock, if the excitement of an Armistice does not prevent them! I hope

all that won't be going on when Alathea does come in!

Burton has questioned her maid. She knows nothing of Miladi's movements

only that she herself had been given permission to go out for the day.

All the servants have gone more or less crazy! Pierre hopped in just

now, jolly old chap! and in his excitement embraced me on both cheeks!

(He has a wooden stump, not a smart footed thing like mine, but I shall

change all that now!).

Antoine could not contain himself, and heaven knows what the

underservants did!

I told them all to run out and see what was happening, but Pierre said

no, the déjeuner of Monsieur must not be neglected. Time enough in the

afternoon!

Eleven came, and with it the oculist, and by luncheon time I had a

second blue eye! But Oh! the shouting in the streets and the passionate

joy in the air!

The two men preened themselves upon keeping this appointment upon so

great a day, and indeed my gratitude was deep. But the same gladness did

not hold me as when my leg was given back to me. Everything was now

swallowed up in an overwhelming suspense.

What could have kept Alathea?

I walked to the glass soberly when the doctors had gone, eager to get

away and join the rejoicers. And what I saw startled me. How astonishing

the art of these things is now! Unless I turn my glance in some

impossible way I have apparently two bright blue eyes, with the same

lids and lashes, the scrap of shrapnel only injured the orb itself, and

did not touch the lid, fortunately, and the socket had healed up

miraculously in the last month. I am not now a disgusting object.

Perhaps, possibly--Yes, can I induce her to love me soon?