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She had come suddenly upon a team hitched at the side of the road, the sorrels and the trap in which Philip Haig had driven her to Huntington's that terrible evening. For a moment she was bereft of thought and feeling. At that very instant she had been thinking of him; what instant was she not thinking of him?
As the Germans continued to push forward in Italy, threatening the city of Venice called the most beautiful in the world General Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander-in-chief, prepared himself for a blow in Flanders, and also for a drive at Cambrai, one of the most important German military centers.
Here preparations had been begun by both the French and the British before the German retreat, and it had barely reached its limit when on Easter Monday, 9 April, Haig attacked along the Vimy Ridge and in front of Arras.
He stepped nimbly, obediently, as if resistance were the farthest thing from his thoughts, even when Haig, his arch-enemy, walked up to him, grasped the bridle, and looked steadily into his eyes. For a moment all stood still, as the challenge passed between man and brute. Then Haig tested the cinches of the saddle, looked carefully around him, and disposed the men with a final word to each.
But his tail swished with the slow and menacing movement of a tiger's, and there was just a quiver of muscles under his golden hide. "Watch out!" called Pete. And then it came. The horse bounded into the air, and came down stiff-legged, with a jolt that Haig felt in every bone. Then he leaped sideways half a dozen feet, and Haig was flung far over, hanging perilously in the saddle.
The initial success of the attack, which began on the 9th of April, was undeniable, and Sir Douglas Haig himself admitted the danger of the moment: "Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight to the end.
The two men came hurrying from the creek. "Here, Curly!" said Haig, resigning his post. "Miss Gaylord has hurt her ankle. I found her unseated down the road yonder." He paused, as if to let that be thoroughly understood. "I want you to hitch up the sorrels and drive her home." "Right!" responded Curly, going into the stable. Marion then did almost faint. She had not foreseen that manoeuver.
"But I'd like to know if there is any one of us except Betty perhaps who would have the nerve to go to him and ask him a question like that " "Say, who's telling this story I'd like to know," broke in Betty impatiently. "I'm not asking any one to go to Mr. Haig with that question or any other although I would be perfectly willing to brave the lion in his den if there were no other way.
In the darkening afternoon we passed over the Montagne de Rheims, and crossed the valley of the Ardre, near the spot where the 19th British Division, in the German attack of last June, put up so splendid a fight in defence of an important position commanding the valley the Montagne de Bligny that the General of the Fifth French Army, General de Mitry, under whose orders they were, wrote to General Haig: "They have enabled us to establish a barrier against which the hostile waves have beaten and shattered themselves.
But Haig was coming to him; and this meant, surely, that something had occurred to his enemy that would make the event easy for himself, if not quite free from embarrassment. He looked again at Marion; and at last, seeing her radiant countenance, he understood that this was her achievement, that it was for her Haig would be coming unarmed to the house of his bitter foe that afternoon.
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