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Updated: June 6, 2025
Many soldiers in the worst of the fighting were sure of victory, because the virgin had promised that never should Nancy be taken again by any enemy whatever." It was late when we came back to the hotel, and while I was translating the Becketts' gratitude into French for the Préfet, the O'Farrells arrived from another direction. The brother looked pleased to see us; the sister looked distressed.
She wished me to make my professional début as Giulio di Napoli." The name appeared to mean nothing for the Becketts, but instantly I knew who the man was, if little about him. I remembered reading of the sensation he created in London the summer that Brian and I tramped through France and Belgium. The next I heard was that he had "gone back" to Italy.
And it is as though I were "betting on a certainty," because there's nobody alive who can come forward to tell the Becketts or Brian what I am. I'm safe, brutally safe! You'll see from what I have written how Brian turned the scales. The plan he proposed developed in the Becketts' minds with a quickness that could happen only with Americans and millionaires.
It was not yet late; only a few minutes after ten o'clock; and though the Becketts and Brian were on the road to sleep, the hotel was awake, and even lively in its wakefulness. The door of the public salon stood open, and the electric light had come on again. At the table, in the centre of the room, sat Mr. Julian O'Farrell, alias Giulio di Napoli, conspicuously interested in an illustrated paper.
What with thinking of my own horridness and other people's, wondering about the shadow-man, and being roused by the usual early morning air raid, bed didn't mother me with its wonted calming influence. Excitement was a tonic for the next day, however; and a bath and coffee braced me for an expedition with the Préfet's wife and daughters, and the Becketts.
Monsieur le Préfet offered himself to the Becketts as guide on a sightseeing expedition next day, and Madame, the Préfet's wife, proposed to exhibit her two thousand children, old and young, refugees housed in what once had been barracks. "The Germans pretend to believe they are barracks still, full of soldiers, as an excuse for bombs," she said. "But you shall see!
Father Beckett proposed to take his wife back to Paris; but while she rested after the fever, industriously she built up another plan. You remember, Padre, my telling you that the Becketts were negotiating for a château, before they arrived in France to visit their son?
I know you think he won't, no matter how he feels. But he'll have missed her while he's away. She's a missable little thing to any one who likes her, and she can tempt him to speak out in spite of himself when he gets back. I'll see to it that she does. The Becketts will be enchanted. The old lady's a born match-maker. We can announce our engagement at the same time.
You're thinking of Brian before yourself, maybe. But he's safe. The Becketts adore him. They say he 'saved their reason. He makes the mysticism they're always groping for seem real as their daily bread. He puts local colour into the fourth dimension for them! They can never do without Brian again. All that's needed is for him to propose to Dierdre.
The Becketts are prepared to love me for Jim's sake; but Brian they worship as a supernatural being. Mr. Beckett says he's saved them from themselves, and given them an incentive to live. It was only yesterday that they answered my S. O. S. call. Now, the immediate future is settled, for the four of us; settled for us together.
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