Chapter XLII: Lucille's Appeal

JACK'S uneasiness grew as days went by. Denham was certainly in a condition by no means satisfactory. This last heavy blow, the death of his adored Chief—of the man who had been to him as a guiding star from boyhood—seemed to have shaken his hold on life, and the old courage and energy were gone. Though he struggled on, it was in a listless fashion.

Even the assurance as to Polly's constancy could not arouse him. The lassitude which oppressed him was unconquerable.

"It is so much the worse for her," he said dejectedly to Jack. "If she could forget me, she at least might be happy. She is wasting the best years of her life in this miserable waiting. I may be out here another ten years. I may never go home."

"You don't wish her to forget you, my dear fellow?"

"For her sake I could be glad. Not, of course, for my own."

"Fact is, there's no manner of use in expecting you to take reasonable views of things, while your head is in this state," declared Jack.

But he became so troubled that he confided his cares to Lucille. He could not worry the Colonel or Mrs. Baron, who were anxious enough already.

"I'm not at all happy about him, and that's the solemn truth," Jack declared confidentially, a fortnight or so after his arrival. "I don't like the look in his eyes, or here," drawing a finger across his brow. "And as for strength—just see him this afternoon! He's utterly floored by that stroll on the ramparts. Why, in old days he'd do his twenty or thirty miles at a stretch, and get back as fresh as he started. He didn't know what it was to be done up."

Lucille had not the least idea why, at this point, she should find herself to be confiding to Jack a secret which she had told to nobody else. She and he were becoming extremely good friends. Jack had taken to Lucille on the spot, when they were first introduced, and the feeling was returned. Still, Lucille had not meant to let anybody know what she had done. Somehow, it slipped out.

She had long wondered whether it might not be possible to obtain leave for Denham to return home. Some few among the détenus had been permitted by the Emperor to do so, under exceptional circumstances. And Captain Ivor was a soldier. It was well known that, if Napoleon were chivalrous to anybody, he would be so first to a soldier. He was always harder upon civilians.

At the Emperor's court an old friend of hers moved—one who had been formerly a Royalist, and who now for many years had attached himself to the fortunes of Buonaparte. Lucille had found it hard to pardon this change of front in her old friend—more strictly her parents' friend—and intercourse between the two had been almost entirely dropped. Yet Lucille had heard of him from time to time; and she knew he was not one to forget the past—the more so in her case, since that past included a debt of gratitude from him to Lucille's father.

It had one day occurred to her that she might write to this friend, explaining about Captain Ivor's failing health, and asking him to intercede with the Emperor for leave for Ivor to go home. Lucille did not tell Jack how many days she had held out against the notion. Not for Denham's sake, but for her own. He had been so long the main centre of thought in her quiet existence, that she could hardly now picture life at Verdun without him. Not that she was exactly in love with Ivor, because from the beginning she had known him to belong to Polly; and though she had been in danger of caring for him a great deal too much, she had fought against the tendency. But she was very much his friend.

So she hesitated, till one day the selfishness of her own conduct broke upon her, awakened by some fresh view of his altered looks. Then at once she acted. She wrote to the friend, putting the matter before him, frankly stating her own belief that Ivor was in point of fact slowly dying of captivity, and entreating him, in memory of old days, to interest himself in the matter, and if possible to get permission for Ivor's return to England.

The friend—whose name Lucille did not mention to Jack—had answered her letter. He had written kindly, cordially,—promising to take an opportunity, sooner or later, to lay the matter before the Emperor. He might or might not meet with success; but at least Mademoiselle de St. Roques could depend upon him to do his best for Captain Ivor.

"And you think there is the smallest chance?" Jack said incredulously.

"I cannot tell. There is no certainty, none! But until I hear from my friend, I will not give up hope. You will not say one word to the Colonel or to Mrs. Baron—least of all to Captain Ivor?"

"Trust me! Never do to raise his hopes for nothing." Jack himself had not the least expectation of success.

As a matter of course, Jack had taken up his abode under the same roof with the Barons. Roy's former room was given to him, and he made a markedly cheerful addition to the family circle.

Some ten days later they were one evening all together, after dinner. Jack was dictating a letter to Molly, having pressed Lucille into his service as amanuensis. The Colonel was reading; his wife was working; and Denham for an hour past had not stirred or spoken. They all knew what this meant, and mercifully left him alone. Jack's glance wandered often towards the motionless figure in the sofa-corner, and in the midst of his dictation he paused to murmur, "Head as bad as ever?"

"Oui," Lucille said with a sigh. "All day; and now he is quite 'done.' It is always so. What am I to write next? Ah—I am called. Somebody wants a word. Will you excuse me?"

Jack amused himself during her absence by scrawling caricatures with his left hand upon the unfinished sheet. Then Lucille came swiftly in, running, as if with joy; while her eyes were full of tears. Her face seemed to shine, and a suppressed sob could be heard in her voice, as she panted—

"Something for Captain Ivor!"

Denham looked up slowly as she came to his side, and though he received the packet from her hand, he would have put it aside without attention.

"Ouvrez-le! Ouvrez-le, vîte!" she urged impatiently.

"Who brought it?"

"A gentleman, travelling from Paris. Ouvrez-le!"

Denham roused himself with difficulty to obey. "A passport!" he said, with listless surprise, and a slight laugh. "Not the passport for Roy, surely! Rather late in the day."

"But read—read!" implored Lucille, and he made an effort to do so. Then a rush of colour came, and he looked at Lucille, a strange gleam in his eyes.

"This—what does it mean?"

"It means that you are free! Free to go home!"

From the others broke a chorus of exclamations.

"'Au nom de Napoléon!' It must be right." Ivor spoke in a bewildered tone. "But what can have made him choose me?"

"Are you not glad?"

"Glad!" The word was too absurdly inadequate. He walked across to Colonel Baron.

"Will you look at this, sir? Tell me if I understand it rightly."

Colonel Baron complied, then passed the papers on to his wife and Jack, while he grasped Ivor's hand.

"I congratulate you with all my heart," he said. "Nothing could have given me greater delight. For your sake—not for ours."

"But to leave you here still!"

"Don't think of that. Your duty is to go."

"What are the conditions? I can't read to-day."

"Not to bear arms against France for twelve months from the date of your reaching England, unless an exchange is arranged sooner. It will not be, of course. There is no exchange for détenus. That means that for one year you will still be a prisoner on parole, only in England. It will take you some months to grow strong enough for fighting."

"I am strong already," was the answer, and even in those few minutes it was remarkable how his face had changed, gaining a healthier tint, and losing its languor, while the very hollows seemed to be filling up. "One year from the day I arrive in England! Then I must be off at once—not lose a day."

"Next week," suggested Jack.

"To-morrow. But what can have induced the Emperor to free me? Why me, more than any other détenu?"

"Ask Mademoiselle de St. Roques," said Jack, and this brought upon Lucille a flood of questions. She related simply what she had done; not specifying, as she had specified to Jack, the precise manner of description given of Ivor's health.

Denham lifted her hand to his lips. "It is you whom I have to thank, then," he said, much moved. "But no thanks could repay what you have done. I can never forget this debt."

One grey shadow lay on Ivor's happiness, of which Jack alone was allowed a glimpse, when the two were together, late at night. "If it had but been to serve once more under him!" broke from Denham, in a tone which Jack too well understood. The sorrow of that loss, to those who had known John Moore personally, could end only with life itself.