Providence!" Thus Franky, after lunch upon the fateful Third of August,
from the hearthrug of the drawing room at 00, Cadogan Place. "When," he
went on, "just as I'm on the point of sendin' in my papers to please
you--good old England kerwumps into War!"
He continued, as Margot shrugged her small shoulders:
"All right, best child! Bet you twenty to one in gloves it comes
off!--as sure as the Austrian monitors were shellin' Belgrade, and the
British Cabinet were sittin' on Sunday, and the weekly rags selling like
hot cakes, when you and me and the rest of the congregation were slowly
oozin' out of Church. Why, the Kaiser and the Tsar have been at
loggerheads since Saturday. German troops are swampin' Luxembourg, and
the next move will be the Invasion of France. There We come in--and the
rest of the big European Powers! Like a row of beehives kicked
over!--all the swarms mixed and stingin', and Kittums' little Franky in
the middle of the scrum!"
"Why are you so--frightfully keen about it?"
Margot's great dark deer-eyes were vaguely troubled. She got up from her
writing-table, a lovely thing in Russian tulip-tree, the shelf of which
was graced by a row of mascots: Ti-Ti and the jade tree-frog, Jollikins,
Gojo, and half a dozen more.
"Best child, I'm not keen!" asserted Franky. "But I'm pattin' myself on
the back--gloatin' over the knowledge that I'm not a bally Has Been--but
a real live soldier--just when I'm likely to be wanted to be one!
Switch on?"
He added, as Margot shook her head: "My grammar's a bit off, but I know
what I mean if I can't express it. Here's a telegraph-kid on a red
spider. Two to one in cough-drops that yellow screed's for me! Callin'
me to Headquarters just as I'd got into my civvy rags to spend the
afternoon with my wife!"
The prophecy proved correct. Franky vanished upstairs to peel, plunge
into his Guards' uniform, and whirl away, borne by a taxi, into the dim
conjectural regions known as Headquarters.
Margot went back to her desk to re-read a type-written letter from the
Secretary of the Krauss and Wolfenbuchel Fraueenklinik at Berlin,
counselling the honoured English lady whose introduction, supplied by a
former lady-client, was specially satisfactory!--to secure a room at the
Institute, by the payment of a moiety of the fee in advance. The crowd
of applicants desirous to subject themselves to the wonderful "Purple
Dreams" treatment, was so large, the accommodation, by comparison, so
restricted, that to follow this course would be the only wise plan.
Similar treatment could be obtained in Paris and Brussels, but to ensure
success beyond doubt it was wisest to seek it at the German
fountainhead. One hundred guineas would secure admission to the Berlin
Fraueenklinik. By cheque made payable to the British Agent of
Professors Krauss and Wolfenbuchel, Mr. Otto Busch, 000, Cornhill,
London, E.C. It would be advisable were the English client to follow
her remittance, taking up residence in Berlin within the next few days.
Travelling might not be so easy in October, mildly hinted the Secretary
of the Institute.
Why, bosh! what utter piffle! Good old England wasn't going to toddle
into any European War in a hurry, decided Margot. She had had enough
bother over the South African biz. Perhaps if Germany was having a rag
with Russia, and a tiny bit of a scrap with France, one would have to
get a passport, and travel by a different route to Berlin. Perhaps the
best thing would be to go now--and stick the boredom of a three months'
residence in the Kaiser's capital! Why not? Under the existing
circumstances, one would be bored anywhere.
She drew the cheque, and enclosed it to Mr. Busch's address, and wrote a
little letter in a huge hand to the Secretary, saying that she had done
this and was obliged by his advice. Then she 'phoned to the Club to ask
Patrine to come round to tea at 00, Cadogan Place. Miss Saxham was not
there, according to the hall-porter, but might be found at AA, Harley
Street. There Margot ran her to earth. Yes, Pat would come with
pleasure! but upon condition that Lady Norwater was alone.
"Of course!" Margot remembered. "She's in mourning for the pretty
kiddy-cousin! I must be getting stupid, or I'd have thought of that!"
But when the tall figure passed under the Persian portiere of the
Cadogan Place drawing-room, it was arrayed in a revealing gown of pale
rose lisse with the well-known stole of black feathers and a
tall-crowned hat of golden braiding topped the Nile sunrise hair.
"Why, I thought--" Margot began:
"I know! Do you think it horribly unfeeling?" The speaker stooped to
kiss the soft cheek of the little creature curled up in the corner of a
favourite sofa in a favourite attitude which conveyed an impression of
Margot's having no feet. Patrine did not look at all horrid or
unfeeling as she said, winking back the tears that had overbrimmed her
underlids, "My heart is in crape if my body isn't!"
"I know!" Margot's lovely eyes looked sympathy. "I remember how fond
you've always been of the little cousin."
"Uncle Owen and Lynette won't believe that the darling's drowned,"
Patrine went on. "But I can't hope! I'm not of the hoping kind! When
I shut my eyes I seem to see Bawne fighting to keep afloat--then
sinking. It's as though he called me, and--it's horrible!" She
shuddered. "It's horrible!"
"And--Count von Herrnung? The German Flying Man?" Margot touched the
large white hand next her. "You know what a bad hand I am at saying
things that are consolatory and cosy. Couldn't rake up a single text
for my life--or if I did I'd quote 'em wrong end topside. Like the
callow curate who assured the weeping widow that 'Heaven tempers the
wind to the lorn sham!'"
"I'll let you off the texts, not being a weeping widow!"
But Patrine's pale cheeks burned. Margot pursued, not looking at them:
"Rhona Helvellyn told me there was nothing serious between you. Indeed,
she said you rather hated him than otherwise. But of course you're
sorry he's drowned, naturally!"
There was a silence. Then:
"Yes," Patrine agreed, "I rather hated him than otherwise!"
"Ah!" Margot's little face was sage. "It's a pity you don't care for
some nice man or other!"
"Isn't it?"
"But you will one day. It's much nicer to live with your husband than
with your sister. Though I never had a sister," added Margot. Then her
mind, light and brilliant as a humming-bird, flitted to another subject.
"Rhona and her two Militants lunched with me on Sunday. Awfully down on
their luck, all three. The Grand Slam they'd planned--the
surprise-packet for the Mansion House Banquet had had the lid put on it
by the Police. Fancy Scotland Yard finding out anything! But it had,
for Rhona got a mysterious note warning her that she'd be dropped on
before she could open her head. So--the Bishops toddled through their
speeches without being interrupted! Sit down and light up. These
Balkan Sobranies are tophole!"
"I can't stay!" But Patrine sat down on the sofa, dipped in the
ever-brimful silver box, and kindled a cigarette.
"Where's His Nibs?" she asked. For not even the chastening of
bereavement could cure Patrine of slanginess.
"Called to B.P.G. Headquarters suddenly." Margot blew rings. "Or doing
duty for some pal or other at the Tower. Don't bother about him! Tell
me--why can't you stay with me?"
"Aunt Lynette wants me, for one thing. And----"
"And who for the other?"
"A man!" Patrine sent a thin blue spiral of cigarette smoke twirling
upwards from her pursed lips. Intently she watched it climbing and
spreading. When it faded between her absorbed eyes and the Futurist
mouldings of the lapis lazuli-grounded ceiling whereon a silver comet
swung in a great elliptical orbit about a golden central Sun, she
resumed:
"A man----"
"That makes two men!" said Margot shrewdly,
"No, only one. A man I'm going to marry. Rather soon, too," said
Patrine calmly, and put her cigarette into her mouth again.
"PAT!"
Margot was staring at her blankly.
"Well, my dinkie?"
"Isn't this frightfully previous?"
Patrine removed the cigarette to say:
"It depends on how you look at things."
"But--when did you meet?"
"In Paris."
"Do I know him?"
"No, luckily for me!"
Margot's small, amazed face dimpled a little at the compliment.
"Is he nice?"
"I think so!"
"In Our Set?"
"I don't think so! He's a Flying Man by profession. Now you know nearly
as much as I do," said Patrine. "And I've to be getting back to Harley
Street." She rose from the sofa, towering over her small, indignant
friend.
"You're not going out of this room until you tell me the rest of it!
What is his name, and when did--it--come off?"
"His name is Alan--and he only asked me on Wednesday, when he came to
Harley Street. He has called every day since that horrible 18th of
July, but this time he came to bring"--Patrine choked a little--"Bawne's
Scout staff and smasher. They had been forgotten in the dressing-shed
at the Flying School. Lynette was too ill to go down to receive them.
I had to instead--and the sight of them broke me up."
"I--see!"
"And," Patrine went on, "he--Alan--was being sympathetic, when Uncle
Owen came in."
"My hat!" Margot sat up, her small face alight and sparkling. "The
Doctor-man with the chin and eyebrows! Did he give you unlimited wigging
or relent and bless you like the heavy uncle in a proper French Comedy?"
"He saw how things were between us. He wasn't astonished. He was very
kind. He is always kind!" said Patrine, swallowing. "If I really
believed God were as good as Uncle Owen, I shouldn't be afraid to die."
"He makes me feel like an earwig under a steam-roller," affirmed Margot.
"And the charming aunt. Does she cotton to the engagement?"
"Lynette is not, for the present, to be told. I asked that. It seems so
cruel to be happy when she is so broken-hearted."
"Umps! Then--Irma and your gay and giddy mater? How do they take it?"
"They haven't been asked to take it any way."
"Oh well! Love is good while it lasts," Kittums said from the summit of
a pedestal of experience, "but if I could change back to Margot St. John
again----"
"You wouldn't!"
"Wouldn't I, that's all! This horror that November brings--that's
coming every day closer! ... Pat--I haven't told Franky yet, that's to
be got over! But I've definitely settled to go to that Institute in
Berlin where women can have babies without knowing anything about
it--under--Bother! I never can remember the name of that drug!"
Patrine sat up. Her face was curiously expressionless. She said,
crushing out the last spark of her cigarette-end against the face of a
Chinaman on the lacquer ash-tray that occupied a little stand beside the
sofa with the silver Sobranie box:
"You told me something--you showed me the pink book with the pretty
title, 'WEEP NO MORE MOTHERS'--wasn't that the name? You've made up
your mind? Does it cost the earth?"
"Two hundred for patients of the superior class--_wohlgeboren_ clients.
Half paid in advance! Stiff!--but to make sure of not suffering I'd
plank a thou'! It's a nightmare, and a Day-mare, that haunts me all the
clock round. That's why I'd change--and be Margot St. John again! That's
why I can't whoop with joy when my friends tell me they're going to be
spliced!"
Patrine got up.
"Oh!--well! Perhaps I shall escape. After all--it's a lottery!"
"Not for big, splendid women like you. You were made to be a mother,
Pat!"
"_Don't!_"
She kissed Margot hastily and went to the door.
"Stop!" Margot scrambled off the sofa. "You've forgotten the most
important thing of all. Hasn't 'Alan' got a surname by any chance?"
Patrine looked back over her shoulder with something of the old smile.
"Rather! What do you think of Sherbrand?"
"What do I think of Sherbrand? How odd! It's Franky's family name!"
"Queer coincidence. But _my_ Sherbrand hasn't any relatives in the
Peerage!--or if he has, he hasn't told me! I'll butt you wise when I
know him well enough to ask him about them. You see, the whole thing
has been beautifully sudden!"
"Bring him to lunch at the Club to-morrow. You're not in mourning, and
if you were it wouldn't matter. It's simply a family affair, if he's
really Franky's cousin. So, say yes."
"Very well, if he'll come!"
*CHAPTER XLIX*
*THE WAR CLOUD BREAKS*
Patrine kissed her friend again, and went, leaving Kittums in a whirl of
astonishment. To Franky, presently returning from the conjectural
region known as Headquarters she announced:
"Here's something like news! Pat Saxham--the girl with the Nile sunrise
hair that you don't like!--is going to marry a Flying Man. And his name
is--the same as yours!"
"By the Great Snipe! you don't say so!"
Franky, slim and dapper in the scarlet Guards' tunic and crimson sash,
divested himself of his sword, dropped his immaculate buckskin gloves
into his forage-cap, and sighed with undisguised relief as the attentive
Jobling, who had been hovering in the background, disappeared with these
articles. Then he proceeded carefully to choose a cigarette from the
silver box of Sobranies, lighted it up, bundled Fits out of her master's
corner of the sofa, and dropped into it with a sigh of relief.
"Sherbrand.... Must be the aviator-fellow we met in Paris. The chap
whose hoverer was bein' tested by the swells of the French S. Ae! Saved
your life and snubbed me for askin' him to dine with us! Well, that's
what I call a cannon off the cush for the Saxham girl!" His dislike of
her betrayed itself in his tone. "Must be the same man! supposin' him
short of a father! Hilton of Ours showed me an advertisement in the
B.M.D. column of _The Banner_ this afternoon briefly announcin' my Uncle
Sherbrand's death. Never read _The Banner_--that's how I missed it.
Can't say I feel much like puttin' crape on my sleeve in any quantity,"
went on Franky. "My Uncle Noel has been the Family Skeleton, poor old
chap! since that affair in 1900. No doubt his son's cut up--wouldn't be
decent of him not to! But at any rate it brings him nearer these--"
Franky stuck out a beautifully-cut pair of red-striped auxiliaries
ending in dazzling patent-leather Number Eights, and craning over Fits,
who had jumped upon his knees, regarded them critically, ending after a
pause--"By one life out of the three that stand between. Don't be so
gushin', old girl!" The rebuke was for Fits, who had taken advantage of
her master's attitude to lick him on the chin.
Margot crinkled her slender eyebrows and moved restlessly among her big
bright, muslin-covered cushions as she asked:
"Is this Volapuk or Esperanto? For mercy's sake don't be obscure! Why
is this Flying Sherbrand nearer your shoes by one life out of three?
What has he got to do with your shoes at all?"
"Don't you switch on?" He lifted his sleek brown head and turned his
neck in the setting of the gold-encrusted collar badged with the
Scottish Thistle, and stared at Margot with the brown eyes that had
seemed so beautiful under the awnings of the Nile _dahabeyah_, and were
only stupid now.
"Have you forgotten? Don't you twig, best child? Suppose--for the joke
of it--there's War, and I get wiped out tryin' to keep up the fightin'
traditions of my family and get a bit of gun-metal to hang on a ribbon
here." He glanced down at the left breast of the red coat, guiltless of
anything in the decoration line. "Then--unless the child"--his tone
grew gentle--"our kiddy that's coming, happens to be a boy--my Cousin
Sherbrand steps into my billet. He's the next heir to the Norwater
Viscounty. Look in Burke or Whittaker if you don't believe me! Get
down, old lady, you're coverin' me with white hairs!" He bundled Fits
off his knees, got up and rang. "A man ought to be here from Armer's,"
he told the servant who responded. "Armer and Co., Pall Mall, Military
Tailors. Send him up to my room and tell Jobling to help him with all
those cases and things. No! don't send Jobling!--send Dowd!"
The said Dowd being Franky's soldier servant, between whom and the
civilian Jobling reigned a profound mutual contempt.
"What is Dowd going to do?"
"Oh! only goin' to help overhaul my Service kit and so on," Franky
responded lightly. "What with gettin' leave and bein' married I've
hardly sported kharks since last Autumn Slogs. Wouldn't do to find
myself too potty to get into the regulation tea-leaves in case my
country called."
"What rot! ..."
But Franky had swung out of the room and clattered upstairs with Fits
close upon his heels. Fits, who, ordinarily unwilling to be out of
sight and sound of her master, now adhered to him like a leech, or his
shadow; whining and fidgeting in his absence, as though her feminine
mind were beset by haunting apprehensions of some sudden parting, or
impending loss.... Long afterwards Margot wondered: "If I had loved him
as Fits loves him--should I not also have felt that foreshadowing
dread?"
But she was conscious only of her own physical discomfort and the
increasing weariness that movement brought her. Sharp discontent peaked
and pinched the tiny features. She caught a reflection of them in a
screen-mirror and shuddered. With every day that dawned now, their
wild-rose prettiness faded. By-and-by--
"If I were as good to look at as I used to be in June--or even a month
ago!" she wondered--"would _he_ leave me as he is leaving me
to-night--to go down to the House? Don't I know that the House means
the Club, or the music-hall, or a card-party! Why do men get the best
of everything and never have to pay the bill?"
She dined in a tea-gown, and when Franky, still in that strange mood of
suppressed excitement, attired to four pins in the magpie evening garb
of civilized life, had kissed her and said: "So-long, Kittums, little
woman! I'm going down to the Big Talk Shop for a bit. Expect me back
on the doormat when the Mouthpieces of the Nation have done swoppin' hot
air!" she tucked up her feet on the big sofa in her charming
drawing-room and read "WEEP NO MORE, MOTHERS," until the pink pamphlet
with the gilt sunrise stamped upon it grew heavy in the tiny hand. Then
she rang for Pauline and betook herself to bed.
The bedroom was blue-green as a starling's egg, its painted walls
adorned with delicate lines of black and silver. Perhaps you can see
Kittums, under her Brittany lace coverlet amongst the big frilled
pillows in one of the narrow black oak bedsteads standing side by side
on a carpet of deep rose. A silver night-lamp burned under a dome of
sapphire glass on her night-table, and an electric clock noiselessly
marked the hours. Lying thus, wrapped about with all the swaddlings of
Civilisation, this dainty daughter of the Twentieth Century strove in
blind revolt against Nature, the huge relentless Force that was slowly
grinding her down. The ant that gets fed into the mill-hopper with the
grain might resent the millstone after the same fashion. Ridiculous,
but infinitely pathetic, the tragedy of an infinitesimal thing.
What did Franky comprehend of her terrors, her forebodings? Even
Saxham's counsels were a man's counsels, his advice a man's advice.
"_Face your ordeal! do not flee it, lest you encounter something even
more terrible!_" Not more terrible for oneself, mind you! but for that
unknown, conjectural being, referred to by Franky with such foolish
tenderness.
The child always! Never Margot! She set her little teeth, staring out
into the blue-green dusk from among her pillows. What if it were to be
always so? "My boy," "My son," for ever, instead of "My wife."
It was a breathless night. A hush of suspense brooded over the huge,
hot city, such as prevails before the breaking of a storm. Sentences
from the Secretary's letter came back to her as she tossed under the
cool light coverings:
"_Wiser not to delay, lest travelling should become difficult. It will
be advisable indeed for the gracious lady to start as soon as may be.
English bank-notes are negotiable here to some extent. A sum in gold is
most convenient to bring._"
Why hang back? Why hesitate because one expected opposition from
Franky? Why not slip off on the quiet without a hint to him? What a
perfectly tophole idea! One could pack secretly, get funds from one's
Bank, and skip with Pauline via Ostend to-morrow! Berlin was a dull
place, but anyhow one had got to be dull for some months yet. The thing
could be arranged while Franky was absent on duty at the Tower, or on
one of his mysterious errands to Headquarters. One could cable to him
afterwards from the _Fraueenklinik_ at Berlin.
An electrical thrill of energy and purpose volted through the
humming-bird brain under the silken brown waves. Margot tossed back her
coverings and sat up suddenly in bed. Her great eyes gleamed like a
lemur's in the light of the night-globe. She would steal that march on
Franky, she told herself, to-morrow, or at the latest, the day after.
Wouldn't it be A1?
The small face dimpled into mischievous smiles. She caught a glimpse of
it in a mirror on the opposite wall and kissed her little hand to Margot
with saucy gaiety. If Franky, down at Westminster, could only know what
Kittums was planning! She had a vision of the Houses of Parliament
under the white-hot August moonlight, outlined in bluish-green and
dazzling silver against a background of glittering black. Like a
Limoges enamel, she told herself. The long lines of electric arc-lights
stretching over the bridge, up Whitehall and down Victoria Street--all
along the Thames Embankment--strings of diamonds--crowds and crowds of
people ... talking bosh about War when there wouldn't----She was asleep.
Asleep, while packed thousands waited under the blue glare of the
arc-lights for the rising of the Curtain on the World Tragedy, of which
four yearlong Acts have been played out. For the tag of which Humanity
is waiting with held breath, too weary even to cry out: "_How long, O
Lord?--how long?_"
Prone to assume strange, angular attitudes when speaking, the Foreign
Secretary hung over and clutched at the dispatch-box before him, as
though it literally contained that most malignant of all the swarm of
Evils that issued from the Box of Pandora, as he told his hearers of the
rejection of the German bribe and warned them of the imminence of a
Declaration of War. Then, amidst increasing, deepening excitement, the
Prime Minister read the appeal of the King of the Belgians, and told of
Great Britain's ultimatum to Germany....
No wonder those close-packed crowds of sturdy Britons waited under the
blue glare of the arc-lamps to hear Big Ben bell the midnight hour. As
the great voice boomed Twelve from the illuminated square of the dial
amidst the striking of the countless clocks of London, a tremendous roar
of cheers acclaimed the pipping of the egg of Fate and Destiny, echoed
by other crowds in distant thoroughfares, spreading in waves to the
unseen horizon, whose East was pregnant with the Kaiser's Day.
That Fourth of August; Eve of the Feast of British Oswald, King, soldier
and Saint, whose Address to his Northumbrian warriors before the battle
of Denisburn, fought against Pagan Cadwalla in 633, the Catholic Church
enshrines in Her Chronicles:
"_Let us all kneel and jointly beseech the true and living GOD ALMIGHTY
in His Mercy to defend us from the doughty and fierce enemy. For He
knoweth that we have undertaken a just War...._"
"Whereupon," says the Venerable Bede, "all did as the King commanded.
And advancing towards the enemy with the first dawn of day, they won the
victory their Faith deserved."
And before midnight of this pregnant Fourth of August, from the great
Wireless Station of Eilvise in Hanover, Germany flung round the world
this vital message to all her mercantile Marine:
"War declared on England! Make as quickly as you can for a neutral
port!"
On the outbreak of War the British Navy cut the All German cables. One
by one the German Colonial Wireless Stations were dismantled. When the
great station at Kamina in Togoland fell, the only remaining link in the
system was between the Fatherland and the United States.
Dawn outlining the silken blinds, vied with the blue glimmer of the
night-lamp as Margot wakened, to hear, in the hush that precedes the
Brocken-hunt of Sloane Street motor-traffic, Franky's low, urgent
appeal:
"_Kittums_! Kittums, best child!"
"What on earth did you wake me for?" said a sleepy and distinctly cross
voice.
"Couldn't help it! I simply had to tell you!" Franky began.
The little hand touched the electric clock-button and on the ceiling
wavered a gigantic dial of yellow brightness.