FullReads

“Y-yes. Certainly. At Trouville.”

(Now I happen to know that the Bonnie Lassie has never been at Trouville, which did not assuage my suspicions.)

“You are friends of my–countryman, Emile Garin, are you not?” he pursued in his phraseology of extreme precision, with only the faint echo of an accent.

“Who?” I said. “Oh, Plooie, you mean. Friends? Well, acquaintances would be more accurate.”

“He tells me that you, Monsieur, befriended him when he had great need of friends. And you, Madame, always. So I have come to thank you.”

“You are interested in Plooie?” I asked.

“Plooie?” he repeated doubtfully. I explained to him and he laughed gently. “Profoundly interested,” he said. “I have here one of his finest umbrellas which his good wife presented to me. There was also a lady of whom he speaks, a grande dame, of very great authority.” For all the sadness of the deep voice, I felt that his eyes were twinkling.

“Madame Tallafferr,” supplied the Bonnie Lassie. “She is away on a visit.”

“I should like to have met that queller of mobs. She ought to be knighted.”

“Knighthood would add nothing to her status,” said I, dryly. “She is a Pinckney and a Pemberton besides being a Tallafferr, with two fs, two ls, and two rs.”

“Doubtless. I do not comprehend the details of your American orders of merit,” said the big sad-voiced man courteously. “But I should have been proud to meet her.”

“May I tell her that?” asked the Bonnie Lassie eagerly.

“By all means–when I am gone.” Again I felt the smile that must be in the eyes. “But there were others here, not so friendly to the little Garin. That is true, is it not?”

“Yes,” said the Bonnie Lassie.

“There is at least a strong suspicion that he is not a deserving case,” I pointed out defensively.

“Then it is only because he does not explain himself well,” returned the Belgian quickly.

“He does not explain himself at all,” I corrected. “Nor does Annie Oom–his wife.”

“Ah? That will clarify itself, perhaps, in time. If you will bear with me, I should like to tell you a little story to be passed on to those who are not his friends. Will you not be seated, Madame?”

The Bonnie Lassie resumed her place on the bench. Standing before us, the big man began to speak. Many times since have I wished that I might have taken down what he said verbatim; so gracious it was, so simple, so straightly the expression of a great and generous personality.

“Emile Garin,” he said, “was a son of Belgium. He was poor and his people were little folk of nothing-at-all. Moreover, they were dead. So he came to your great country to make his living. When our enemies invaded my country and the call went out to all sons of Belgium, the little Garin was ashamed because he knew that he was physically unfit for military service. But he tried. He tried everywhere. In the mornings they must sweep him away from our Consul-General’s doorsteps here because otherwise he would not–You spoke, Monsieur?”

“Nothing. I only said, ‘God forgive us!'”

“Amen,” said the narrator gravely. “Everywhere they rejected him as unfit. So he became morbid. He hid himself away. Is it not so?”

“That is why they left Our Square so mysteriously,” confirmed the Bonnie Lassie.

“After that he hung about the docks. He saw his chance and crawled into the hold of a vessel as a stowaway. He starved. It did not matter. He was kicked. It did not matter. He was arrested. It did not matter. Nothing mattered except that he should reach Belgium. And he did reach my country at the darkest hour, the time when Belgium needed every man, no matter who he was. But he could not be a soldier, the little Garin, because he was unable to march. He had weak legs.”

At this point the eternal feminine asserted itself in the Bonnie Lassie. “I told you there was something,” she murmured triumphantly.