"GOOD-BYE, RHODA POLLY"
At Chateau Schneider I was received with tumultuary questioning on my
return from the reed-beds. Where had I been? What had I been doing? I
might easily have got my throat cut and no one would have been sorry. It
was a scurvy trick I played them, slipping off like that. And so
on--Hugh De venter being the loudest and most persistent.
"My friend in whom I trusted," was his cry. His grievance was not that I
had broken bounds and would give no account of myself, but that I had
sneaked off alone without giving him a chance to come along with me.
However, a glance from Rhoda Polly and the smiling response of her eyes
shut my ears to all this hubbub. She understood, and that was enough. I
would, of course, tell her about it, making only a mental reservation in
the little private matter of Jeanne Felix, and the spraying shadows
which her long lashes cast on her eyes of purple-velvet. With a woman,
there is no use of talking of another woman--not at least till the
listener is well over fifty, and even then it must be done with
circumspection.
But I knew my duty, and with another glance at Rhoda Polly I demanded to
know where her father was, and in five minutes was sitting among the
chimney-pots with that old fighter and captain of men stuffing a pipe
bowl and preparing to listen. He nodded his head gravely when I told of
my meeting with Gaston Cremieux. He grew restless as a caged beast
himself when I described to him the hither-and-yon wolf's prowl of the
sullen young men in front of the riding-school. But when I told him of
the men's resolve to go at once to work, he rose suddenly to his feet
with a shout.
"Jaikes, Irvin, Allerdyce, Brown, Macallister! Here!"
And at his cry these subordinates came running to him like dogs at the
shepherd's whistle. Eagerness was in their faces, and confidence in
their leader showed in their eyes.
"Young Cawdor has brought good news," he said. "The men are coming back.
It may not be for long, but they are coming. They have taken the terms,
and now I shall have to fight the masters single-handed. However, I can
manage that. Run, fellows! Get the squads together. Set the furnaces
going, and steam up in the boilers. It will be the easier for the men
when they come in if they find everything ready for them. A few will
troop in first in a non-committal way, then will set in a steady trickle
of the secretly willing, and lastly the factory benches will fill up
with a rush. In two days we will have the ateliers working at high
pressure, and we may begin to send out our orders by Saturday."
The engineering sub-chiefs swung their hats in the air and yelled. It
was the best of news for them, and they did not even wait to ask how I
chanced to be so well informed. Dennis Deventer had doubtless assured
himself of that. That was his business, not theirs. They rattled down
the ladder one after the other as quickly as a barrel would roll the
same distance. They simply fell through the trap-door and disappeared
from sight. Presently we could see them leading their emergency gangs
across the courtyard to the entrance of the works. In Jack Jaikes's
contingent I noticed the broad shoulders and rough blond head of Hugh
Deventer, towering like a Viking among the wiry Clydeside and bearded
Tynemouth men about him.
His father must have noticed him too, for he turned to me with a smile.
"Yonder goes our Hugh. He is a strong lad, but has no spring. He falls
all over himself at present. If you are still set on soldiering, you can
take him with you. He has little sense as yet, but I can see that he
will do what you tell him."
"Thank you, sir," I said; "war is a stranger business than we young
fellows dream of. I cannot be responsible for accidents, but if you
trust me with Hugh--well, he is my comrade, and I shall look after him
as myself."
He held out his hand, after first glancing about to see that we were not
overlooked, and grasped my fingers. Such demonstrations of emotion were
by no means in his way.
"With Hugh it is a case of thews and brawn," he said. "When it comes to
the marching, see that you make him carry your musket as well as his
own. He has no heavy load in his top story."
Of course I had to see Rhoda Polly before our final marching off towards
the north. As I came down the great front steps of the Chateau Schneider
I saw her crossing the lawn far away to the right. She was going in the
direction of the vegetable garden, and I stood still on the steps till I
watched her into the potting-house. With her hand on the latch she cast
a look over her shoulder in my direction.
"Amaryllis desires to be first seen," I muttered, and after a
comprehensive tour of the grounds I approached the potting-house from
the rear.
Rhoda Polly was sitting on a bench with peat and leaf-mould in little
boxes about her, and a red flowerpot held firmly between her knees while
she kneaded the black flaky mass down with urgent little knuckles.
"If I don't get those Alan Richardson roses to do this year--why, the
devil fly away with me!"
She spoke in French, and the words had not the same sound as in English.
Something gay and Rhoda Polly-ish rang cheerfully in my heart.
"Really you should not swear!" said I. "What would Miss
Balfour-Lansdowne say to that at Selborne College?"
"Oh, sometimes we said a good deal worse than that on the hockey ground,
or in the heat of an argument. Besides, if you did not want to hear, you
need not have followed me."
"Rhoda Polly," I said, "you know that I followed you because you made me
a signal that you wanted to talk to me."
"Yes, I know," owned up Rhoda Polly, who scorned concealment. "Well,
what have you to tell me now that you are here? I let you go just now
and unbosom yourself to the Paternal without complaining. That was only
playing the game, but certainly you owe it to me to stand and deliver as
soon as you got clear."
"Well, and here I am, Rhoda Polly--which will you have--plain
narrative--question and answer--the Socratic method, or a judicious
mixture of the two?"
I knew the inquiry would resolve itself into the latter. Rhoda Polly
went on with the potting of her Alan Richardson, biting her under lip at
critical points, but ever and anon flashing a pertinent query at me over
the boxes of mould without once raising her head.
With the exception of my talks with Jeanne and the harmless little
philandering we had indulged in to pass the time, I confided the whole
of my day's adventures to Rhoda Polly. I told her also of the permission
that her father had given that Hugh should go north and join the new
armies with me.
Then at last Rhoda Polly did lift her eyes with a vividness of reproach
in them.
"You cannot find enough to do here?" she said. "You trust these men at
the works? I tell you they are not to be trusted. I know them better
than either you or my father, I have heard their women-folk talking, and
I know what they mean to do."
"I know what they _say_ they mean to do," I retorted. "I also have heard
them in their cups, but it is only folly and emptiness."
"Do not be too sure," she said, patting the flowerpot round the edges
and squinting down at it as if it were a work of art symmetrically
finished. "I warn you we may need you here sooner than you think, and
then Gaston Cremieux may not be so friendly as he is to-day."
I asked her why, but she only bent more over her work and shook her
head. It had been clear to me from Cremieux's questions that he was in
love with Rhoda Polly, and now from Rhoda Polly's prophecy of his future
unfriendliness that she had made up her mind to reject him. But, in the
meantime, it was my clear duty to go on and do what I could in the army.
We could not hope to defeat the Germans, but at least every additional
man in the ranks added to the chance of withstanding them. If we could
only hold them at bay till the politicians did their work, all this
peaceful Southland would be spared the horrors of war and the more
wearing pains of occupation and pillage.
I said this to Rhoda Polly and she could not help agreeing. Her assent,
however, came from her clear head and trained intelligence, but her
heart was still unconvinced that Hugh and I ought to go, leaving that
houseful of women in Chateau Schneider. All this was perhaps natural
enough, and certainly it made me feel warmer within to know that Rhoda
Polly would regret me.
"I owe you a grudge," she said, as she stood up and rubbed the black
crumbly mould briskly from her hands, "for without you we should at
least have had Hugh. He would never have thought of going by himself."
Rhoda Polly had finished with her roses. She set out the boxes in a row,
and then stood up facing me. Her eyes were steady and level like a
man's--I mean a man of the North. They did not droop and flutter like
Jeanne's at the Ferry. Her breast did not heave nor her full throat
swell. The pent-up emotion in Rhoda Polly's bosom found no such
commonplace feminine vents. Only the firm lines about her mouth betrayed
her, and perhaps a certain moist luminousness of eye.
"I would not hinder you, Angus Cawdor," she said steadily, "let a man do
what he knows he ought. But at least you owe it to me to come back the
very day the war is over. It is not till then that the storm here will
break. I have it from the women. They advise us to go out of the
country, but I have a better plan in my head. You must be here to help
me carry it out."
"I shall be here, Rhoda Polly, if I get through all right!"
"If you get through all right----?" The words fell uncertainly.
"If I live, Rhoda Polly."
"Ah, if you live," repeated the girl, mechanically holding out her hand.
And even as I looked, the bold bright look in her eyes was dimmed, as a
pool greys over with the first coming of a breeze.
And thus I took my real farewell of Rhoda Polly. There was some of the
black mould on my fingers as I went over to the shops to search for Hugh
Deventer.