I looked at Roy. He was crimson too.

Spring! Spring! Spring!

*CHAPTER II*

*REBELLIOUS MARJORIE*

*I*

While Sunday at Baronrigg was a day of mild tribulation, Sunday at

Netherby was a day of wrath. It was a direct survival of the darkest

period of the Victorian era.

Albert Clegg--or, rather, Mr. Albert Clegg--believed in taking no risks

with his immortal soul, or with those of his family. He also believed

in being master in his own house. Accordingly, when he bade his

household remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, the household, as

they say in the Navy, "made it so." The necessary standard of sanctity

was attained, firstly, by the removal on Saturday night to locked

cupboards of everything in the shape of frivolous or worldly literature;

in place of which there appeared a few "Sunday" books--the latest

record, mayhap, of missionary endeavour, together with one or two godly

romances of a rather distressing character. Periodical literature was

represented by _The Sunday at Home_, while unsecular comment on current

events was furnished by that brilliantly ingenious combination of broad

religion and literary entertainment, _The British Weekly_.

The necessary atmosphere having been duly created, those two powerful

engines, Prayer and Fasting, were now set in motion. The latter, to be

just, was of little account: its operation merely involved the omission

of afternoon tea and the substitution of cold supper for ordinary

dinner. But the devotional programme of the Clegg Sunday was an exacting

business. It opened with family prayers at eight-thirty a.m., including

an extemporary supplication by the master of the house. Catechism came

at nine-thirty, Church at eleven o'clock. The household were conveyed

thither in the Rolls-Royce. In the course of time, as the glory of that

extremely new vehicle faded, and the task of making an impression upon

the neighbourhood accomplished itself, the young Cleggs gloomily foresaw

a still further extension of Sabbath observance, in the direction of

pedestrian exercise. Meanwhile, they covered the three miles to church

in the car, and were thankful for small mercies.

After one o'clock dinner, the family sang hymns. Marjorie

accompanied--not very convincingly, owing to the presence of a

surreptitious novel or volume of poetry propped upon the music-rest

beside the hymn-book. You cannot engage in psalmody and mental culture

simultaneously with any degree of plausibility. The younger children

sang a shrill soprano; brothers Amos and Joe growled self-consciously an

octave--sometimes two octaves--lower. Sister Amy--a plain but intensely

pious child of fourteen--offered a windy and unmelodious contribution

which she termed "seconds." Mrs. Clegg sang--as she did everything

else--dutifully, and slightly apologetically. Mr. Clegg sang what he

had imagined for more than thirty years to be tenor, inciting his

fellow-choristers to continued effort by beating time with his

hymn-book, until post-prandial drowsiness intervened, and he retired to

bed, with all his clothes on, for his Sabbath nap. During this interval

the family enjoyed a slight respite from Sabbath observance--all, that

is, but the younger members, who received instructions in Biblical

history from two small and not uninteresting manuals, entitled _Peep of

Day_ and _Line Upon Line_, with maternal additions and elucidations of a

somewhat surprising character.

At six o'clock the chauffeur was once more called upon to observe the

Sabbath by conveying the family to evening service at the parish church.

The small fry, in consideration of _Peep of Day_ and _Line Upon Line_,

were permitted to go to bed.

After cold supper at eight-thirty, the devotional exercises of the day

petered out with a second instalment of family prayers, including what

brother Joe (Marjorie's accomplice and pet) was wont to describe as "a

final solo from Pa." After that, the exhausted household retired to

rest, leaving the master to relax himself from the spiritual tension of

the day with weak whisky-and-water.

Albert Clegg had bought Netherby a year previously. He came from the

North of England, and was deeply interested in Tyneside shipping. His

father had been a small tradesman in Gateshead. Albert's initial

opportunities had not been too great, but he possessed two priceless

natural assets--superb business capacity and a sincere dislike for

recreation or amusement of any kind. At twenty-one he was a clerk in a

rather moribund shipping business. At twenty-five he was managing

clerk. In that capacity he took it upon himself, unofficially, to

investigate the books of the firm--he was the sort of young man who

would joyfully devote a series of fine Saturday afternoons to such an

enterprise--and was ultimately able to expose a leakage of profits which

had kept the venerable and esteemed cashier of the office in

considerably greater comfort than his employers for the past ten years.

Needless to say, Albert was the next cashier. At thirty he was junior

partner and practically dictator. A few years later his exhausted

seniors gave up the struggle, and allowed themselves to be bought out.

Albert promptly called in his younger brother Fred, who, up to date, had

been dividing his undoubted talents fairly evenly between jerry-building

and revivalist preaching--a combination of occupations which enabled him

to

_Compound for sins he was inclined to,_

_By damning those he had no mind to--_

thus marking himself down as an ultimate and inevitable ornament of our

National Legislature. Fred was taken into partnership. From that day

the firm of Clegg Brothers went from strength to strength.

Albert Clegg's first wife was what Lady Christina would have described

as "a young person of his own station in life." She had died a few

years after the birth of Master Amos. The present Mrs. Clegg was a

member of an aristocratic but impoverished family named Higgie, of

Tynemouth, and she came to Albert just at a time when his rising

fortunes called for a helpmeet possessed of the social accomplishments

which he himself so entirely lacked. On his second marriage, he removed

from Gateshead to a large house in the pleasant suburb of Jesmond, and

lived there for twenty years, while the Clegg firm prospered and the

Clegg family multiplied. As already foreshadowed, brother Fred's

combined reputations as a captain of industry and a silver-tongued

orator presently wafted him into Parliament, where he established a

reputation for verbosity and irrelevance remarkable even in that

eclectic assembly.

That is all that need be said about Mr. Albert Clegg for the present.

The main purpose of this brief summary of his character and achievements

is to provide the reader with some sort of key--in so far as keys are of

any use at all where feminine locks are concerned--to the character of

that rather unexpected young person, his daughter Marjorie. For it was

from her father, most undoubtedly, that Marjorie derived her initiative

and determination. From her mother she seemed to have inherited

nothing, except her Christian name and her naturally waved hair.

Everything else--her superb body, her absolute honesty, her lively sense

of humour, her critical attitude towards certain existing things, and,

above all, her warm, impulsive young heart--came from that one supreme

gift of God which is entirely our own--set high out of reach of those

twin busybodies, Heredity and Environment--Personality.

*II*

On the particular spring morning with which we are already concerned,

Marjorie made a bad start. She missed prayers altogether, and was late

for breakfast into the bargain. To crown her iniquity, she entered the

dining-room whistling a secular air, with her arms full of daffodils.

Whistling is at all times an unladylike accomplishment, even though one

whistle like a mavis. Moreover, it was Sunday. Furthermore, Uncle Fred

was present on a visit, and one has to keep up appearances before

relations, however despicable.

"I am not at all satisfied with Doctor Chirnside," Mr. Clegg was

remarking. "But we must employ such instruments as lie to our hands."

"That is very true," remarked Uncle Fred, making a mental note of this

apt expression. Uncle Fred was an industrious gleaner of other people's

impromptus, with a view to parliamentary requirements.

"As you know," continued Mr. Clegg, "our own Body is not represented in

this county. The nearest United Free Church--which conforms most closely

to our own beliefs--is fifteen miles away. In any case, I consider that

a household should, as far as possible, worship in its own district."

"Quite right," said Uncle Fred. "Like a constituency."

"Besides, we would not get to know people any other way," interposed

Mrs. Clegg timidly.

"My dear," said Mr. Clegg severely, "we cannot worship God and Mammon.

And I will thank you for another cup of tea. John, my boy, eat up that

crust; I know of many a poor lad that would be glad of it. The only

other places of worship within easy reach," he continued, "besides the

parish church (Established, of course), are a Papist Chapel, Burling

way, which I do not go to very often"--Mr. Clegg paused and assumed a

wintry smile, to indicate that he spoke sarcastically--"and the English

Episcopal Church at Fiddrie--where I would as soon see any belongings of

mine trying to disport themselves as in the Church of Rome itself."

Mr. Clegg paused, and Uncle Fred laughed sardonically. Mrs. Clegg, who

all her life had hankered after the comfortable consolations of Anglican

ritual and the social cachet of an Anglican connection, smothered a

sigh, for she knew to what address her husband's remark was directed.

At this moment, as related, Marjorie tramped in, whistling, with her

daffodils.

"Hallo! am I late?" she inquired. "I am so sorry: I was out gathering

these. Good morning, everybody!"

She sat down amid a deathly silence.

"What were you all talking about?" Marjorie rattled on. "Church, wasn't

it? I wonder how many hours old Chirnside will preach to-day? Oh, that

awful children's sermon! I don't think it's sportsmanlike to make you

listen to two sermons in one morning. My idea is that during the

grown-ups' sermon the children should be allowed to go out and play, and

that during the children's sermon the grown-ups should have their choice

of going out too, or lying right down in the pews and having a nap!"

She gazed out of the window, over the sunny landscape. "I know which I

should choose!"

"My girl," interposed Mr. Clegg, "if you talk in that strain I shall

regret more than ever that I allowed your mother to send you to that

school in Paris."

Marjorie had been "finished"--which means "begun"--at Neuilly. It is

difficult to understand why her father had sent her there, except that

it was expensive. Mr. Clegg had long transferred the blame for this

lapse of judgment to his wife.

During those two quickening years, Marjorie, though hedged about by

every preventive device known to the scholastic hierarchy, had fairly

wallowed in Life--Life as opposed to Existence. She had sucked in Life

through her pores; she had scrutinised Life through her shrewd blue

eyes; she had masticated Life with her vigorous young teeth. Life in

Paris, even as viewed from the ranks of a governess-guided "crocodile"

in the Bois de Boulogne, or a processional excursion to the Tuileries,

is a stimulating and disturbing compound, especially to unemancipated

seventeen. At any rate, Marjorie had returned to her home possessing

certain characteristics which had not been apparent when she left it.

These were, roughly, three in number:

Firstly, a passionate interest in the world and its contents. She was

ablaze with enthusiasm for all mankind. She wanted to do something--to

be a hospital nurse, a journalist, a chorus girl, a barmaid--anything,

in fact, that would bring her into contact with her fellow-creatures

and, if possible, enable her to make herself uncomfortable on their

behalf. She was a Giver, through and through.

Secondly, an entire lack of sentimentality. Young men made no appeal to

her. She had never flirted in her life: she did not know how. She made

friendships at a rush--many of them with boys of her own age--but if any

young man flattered himself that he had made a tender impression, he was

soon woefully undeceived. Marjorie was purely maternal. If she was kind

to a young man it was because she felt sorry for him--sorry for his

adorable clumsiness, his transparency, his helplessness, his lack of

finesse. Young men, as a class, never gave her a thrill. She loved her

own sex too, especially the self-conscious and foolish. Marjorie's main

instinct at that time, and indeed through all her life, was to interpose

her own beautiful and vigorous young personality between the weaker

vessels of her acquaintance and the hard knocks of this world.

Thirdly, a strongly critical attitude towards the theory that children

owe a debt of gratitude to their parents for the mere fact of having

been brought by them into existence. Loyal she was, because it was her

nature. Dutiful she was prepared to be. She was impulsively

affectionate always; but her inborn sense of equity was strong.

Moreover, for two years she had associated with new companions--members

of another world than her own--either young girls of the English upper

class, who were accustomed to regard their parents as amiable but

unsophisticated accomplices in misdemeanour, or maidens from New York

and Philadelphia, who appeared to entertain no opinion of their parents,

as such, at all. This association had shaken to its foundation the law

of her childhood--that children existed entirely for the convenience of

their parents, and must expect no consideration, no indulgence, and,

above all, no _camaraderie_ from those aloof and exalted beings. In the

spring of nineteen-fourteen Youth had not yet been called in to rescue

Age from extinction.

Such was Marjorie at eighteen--a dangerous mixture, particularly liable

to explode under compression.

She had risen early this Sunday morning in order to ramble through the

woods and compose her turbulent spirit. The previous evening had

witnessed a sleep-destroying interview between her father and herself.

After prayers, while Mr. Clegg, according to his custom, was setting the

markers in the great family Bible for the following morning's devotions,

Marjorie had seated herself beside him at the head of the library table,

with the air of one determined upon a plunge. She waited until the

servants had filed out and the rest of the family were dispersed. Then

she came to the attack with characteristic promptness.

"Father," she said, "may I go and be trained as a hospital nurse?"

"No," replied Mr. Clegg, without hesitation or heat; "you may not."

"May I learn shorthand and typewriting, then?"

"No."

"May I go and take training in some profession? Any kind," she added

eagerly, "as long as it is useful."

"No," said Mr. Clegg for the third time. Then with the air of a just

person patient under importunity:

"Why?"

"For two reasons," said the girl. "I want to be useful, and I want to

be independent."

For answer, Mr. Clegg reopened the Bible, and with the accuracy of long

practice came almost immediately upon what he wanted--certain

illuminated manuscript pages occurring between the Old and New

Testaments. There were six of these pages. Two were allotted to the

Births, two to the Marriages, and two to the Deaths of the house of

Clegg. Albert Clegg turned to the Births, and ran his finger down the

list. There were quite a number of names, for the Bible was a family

inheritance.

Presently he found what he wanted. A line in red ink had been drawn

right across the page under the name of his youngest brother, Uncle

Fred, to indicate the end of a generation. Below this line was written,

in his own neat business hand:

_Children of Albert and Mary Clegg._

This title-heading had erred on the side of plurality, for beneath it

came but one entry--that of the birth of Albert's eldest son, Amos, at

Gateshead, upon the tenth of March, Eighteen Ninety-two. A second

heading followed immediately:

_Children of Albert and Marjorie Clegg._

After this came quite a satisfying list. First, Joe's name--it proved

to be Joshua, in full--recorded upon the twelfth of August, Eighteen

Ninety-four. Then came the entry he was seeking:

_Marjorie; born at "The Laburnums," Jesmond, April twenty-fourth,

Eighteen Ninety-Six_.

Albert Clegg surveyed his daughter over the top of his spectacles, which

had been assumed for purposes of perusal, and performed a small exercise

in mental arithmetic.

"That makes you eighteen," he observed.

Marjorie nodded. At this point, to her intense annoyance, the egregious

Uncle Fred re-entered the room and joined the Board.

"Girls of eighteen--" began her father.

"Young ladies of eighteen," amended the Member of Parliament.

"--have no call to be independent," continued Albert Clegg; "and if they

want to be of some use they can stay at home and help their mothers, as

God meant them to."

"Mother," riposted Marjorie, "has more servants than she knows what to

do with, and she hates interference with her house management, anyway.

I have been home now for three months, honestly trying to help, and

there isn't a single thing for me to do. There are hundreds of things I

can do away from here. I do not ask to go out and do them now, but I do

ask to be trained in something useful, so that when the time comes--"

"When what time comes?" asked her father quickly.

"The time when it will be a living impossibility for me to stick it out

any longer," said Marjorie frankly. "Do you think I can sit here for

ever"--with one comprehensive gesture she summarised Netherby, with its

stodgy gentility, its squirrel-cage routine, and its cast-iron

piety--"twiddling my thumbs? Every girl has a _right_ to make herself

efficient, nowadays."

"What comes before our rights," said Albert Clegg, "is our duty--our

grateful duty to the parents that brought us up."

"_Honour thy father and thy mother_," chaunted the apposite Uncle Fred,

"_that thy days--_"

Marjorie sat up.

"I hope I do honour my father and mother," she said. "I am fond of them

both: they have been kind to me all my life. But I do not see why I

should be particularly grateful to them for bringing me up. After

all"--turning to her father--"you _had_ to, hadn't you? You were

responsible for my being here, weren't you? It seems to me that parents

owe a debt to their children--not children to their parents!"

This amazingly audacious deliverance--and one had to be familiar with

the Clegg tradition to realise how audacious it was--produced a stunning

silence. Uncle Fred, fumbling in his repertoire for something really

commensurate, breathed alarmingly. Presently Albert Clegg's heavy voice

broke in:

"A debt? You mean I owe _you_ a--a debt of gratitude?"

"Not gratitude," replied Marjorie. "Something bigger--honour. I think

that parents owe it to their children, having brought them into the

world--and all that sort of thing," she added a little shyly, "to give

them a chance to live the sort of life that appeals to them."

Uncle Fred was ready now.

"The French," he announced, "are a giddy and godless race!"

But neither Albert Clegg nor his daughter took any notice. Wide apart

as their natures lay, they had one point in common--inflexible

determination. Clegg surveyed Marjorie's curving lips and hot blue eyes

for a moment, and asked:

"So you want to live your own life, eh?"

Marjorie nodded.

"Yes," she said. "At least, I don't want to rush off and live it right

away; but I do think I ought to be given sufficient--" she hesitated for

a word.

"Equipment?" suggested her father.

"Rope?" amended Uncle Fred.

Marjorie nodded to her father again.

"Yes," she said, "sufficient equipment. A girl ought to be capable of

doing something. I have told you some of the things a girl might learn

to do, but there are lots of others. Even if she could support herself

on the Stage it would be something."

"_The Stage?_"

Marjorie had exploded a bombshell this time. Uncle Fred's goat-beard

dropped upon his shirt front, and waggled helplessly. Albert Clegg

gazed at his daughter long and fixedly. Then he pulled the Bible

towards him again, and turned back a page or two in the family record.

He twisted the great volume round, and pushed it in his daughter's

direction and pointed.

"Look at that," he said.

Marjorie looked. Upon the page of births, near the bottom of the list

of her father's brothers and sisters, she saw a horizontal black

strip--perhaps a quarter of an inch high--extending the full width of

the page, where an entry in the record had been crossed out again, and

again, and again, by a thick quill pen. She had seen it before, and had

asked what it meant--without success. Now apparently she was to know.

"That," said Albert Clegg, "was my youngest sister."

"Your Aunt Eliza," added Uncle Fred.

"When she was nineteen," continued Clegg, "she ran away from home--to go

on the Stage."

"Hoo! Where?" asked Marjorie, intensely interested.

"London, my father thought; but he never enquired."

"He never--? You mean--?"

"He blotted her name out of the Book, and it was never mentioned in our

home again."

"And not one of you ever tried to find what had become of her?"

"Certainly not."

Marjorie looked up at her father and drew a long and indignant breath.

"Well--!" she began.

"And now," explained Uncle Fred, "it's coming out in you, my girl."

What was coming out Marjorie did not trouble him to explain. It is

doubtful if she heard him at all.

"You mean to say," she said hotly to her father, "that your father let

his own daughter go right out of sight and mind, just like that?"

"He did. And I want to say to you, my daughter, that I think he was

right. This life is a preparation for the next. As we live now, so

shall we be rewarded hereafter. A few years' empty pleasure and

excitement are a poor exchange for an eternity of punishment."

"That's right! Take no risks!" recommended the sage at the other end of

the table. "Safety first!"

"The wisest life," concluded Mr. Clegg, "is the safe life. The safe

life is the Christian life, and the sure foundation of the Christian

life is family life--united, wisely controlled, family life. So you

will stay at home and live that life; and some day you will be grateful.

Now go to bed. I appreciate your honesty in telling me what is in your

mind, but my advice to you is forget all about it. Good-night!"

"Don't forget your prayers!" added Uncle Fred.

*III*

Marjorie finished her breakfast without further flippancy, and in due

course the family set out for church in the Rolls-Royce. That is to

say, Mr. and Mrs. Clegg, Uncle Fred, Marjorie, and the younger

children--Miss Amy, already mentioned, and Masters James and John, aged

ten and eight--were packed into that spacious vehicle and driven into

Craigfoot, with meticulous observation of the speed limit and all the

windows up. Amos and Joe followed in the two-seater. The servants had

the waggonette.

The parish kirk at Craigfoot has already been described in some detail,

but it may be worth while to record a few observations made from a

different angle.

From her seat against the wall in the high-curtained Netherby pew

Marjorie could see nothing but the last few rows of the public gallery

and the Baronrigg balcony. The latter fascinated her, for it was always

full--usually of interesting, and always of different, people. Sir

Thomas Birnie himself was a permanent figure. He sat in the left-hand

corner of the balcony, at the end nearest the pulpit. Consequently, his

severe gaze, concentrated upon the preacher, was averted from the other

occupants of the pew--a circumstance particularly agreeable to some of

the younger members of his numerous house parties. What fun they seemed

to have among themselves! How they giggled and whispered! Marjorie

longed and longed to be with them and of them, especially the girls of

her own age. They were so pretty, so overflowing with life, and dressed

so exactly right. For three months, ever since she came back from Paris

to find her family at Netherby, and the comfortable hospitality of a

Newcastle suburb exchanged for the frigid waiting-list of a county

society where one knew either everybody or nobody, she had taken weekly

notes of the ever-changing kaleidoscope in the Baronrigg pew--studying

faces, studying frocks, studying characters, and weaving histories round

each.

Some of the faces were quite familiar. This morning, for instance, in

the right-hand corner of the front row, sat Major Laing. He was a

frequent visitor at Baronrigg, and was a widower. Marjorie knew that his

wife had been a twin-sister of the late Lady Birnie. Then there were

Captain and Mrs. Roper. Captain Roper owned horses, and was here--in

fact, the whole house-party was here--for the Castleton Races, the

largest meeting on this side of the Border. They were constant

visitors. Then there was a pretty little woman in a big hat--Mrs.

Pomeroy, really--of which Marjorie took mental and quite unsabbatical

note. There was Arthur Langley, one of the best-known gentlemen riders

in England. There was a tall girl with fair hair--not unlike Marjorie

herself. Marjorie decided that this girl was dressed not quite right.

She would have been better placed in a fashionable West-end church in

London than in this grey, prim, Presbyterian conventicle. Probably her

first visit, Marjorie decided. She would know better next time.

Her shrewd gaze passed on.

And then, for the first time in her life, she saw Roy Birnie, home after

four months of toil and tribulation at an army crammer's. He had been

plucked out of Eton at Christmas to that end, Eton having decided that

it was a case for desperate measures. Three months of intensive

brain-culture had not affected his appearance, which was healthy, nor

his snub nose, nor his cheerful grin, nor the slight curl in his hair,

of which his mother had once been so proud and of which he was still so

ashamed. He sat on the left of Major Laing, his chin resting on the pew

ledge, his grey eyes devoutly closed, and his ebullient spirits

throttled down until it should please Doctor Chirnside to conclude the

first prayer. He was exactly like hundreds of other clean-run Public

School boys of eighteen. Marjorie had observed a dozen such in that

very pew during the past three months. But, as already noted, she had

never seen Roy.

That usually dependable organ, her heart, missed a couple of beats, and

she lowered her head quickly.

Presently, impelled by a power greater than herself (or, indeed, than

any of us), she lifted her head and looked up--only to find that Roy was

gazing straight down upon her.

For the moment her eyes were interlocked with his. Then suddenly she

became aware of the expression upon his face. The result has already

been described.

That evening, after prayers, her father motioned to her to stay behind.

When they were alone, he said:

"I hope you have given up that idea of yours about going away."

"Well," replied his daughter pleasantly, "I have postponed it, anyhow,

father."

"You have decided wisely for yourself," said Mr. Clegg.

Marjorie felt inclined to agree. But it is just possible that the

matter had been decided for her.

*CHAPTER III*

*DER TAG*

*I*

I suppose I may be forgiven for having felt a trifle preoccupied upon

the first of August, nineteen-fourteen. Most people did. But the

European situation, desperate though it was, was not sufficiently

desperate to excuse me for forgetting that the first Saturday in August

is the inexorable date of Lady Christina's annual garden party at

Buckholm. So I blundered right into it.

I am a methodical person, and I like to do the same things at the same

seasons. When it comes to revisiting the place of my birth, marriage

and, I hope, interment, I make a practice of going to Baronrigg for

Easter, Buckholm for the August cricket week, and The Heughs for the

woodcock. On this particular occasion I had travelled from King's Cross

by the early morning express--it leaves at five o'clock, and is the best

train in the day, if only people knew about it--with the result that by

four o'clock in the afternoon I found myself rumbling along in the

Craigfoot station fly, in lovely, summer weather, _en route_ for the

Buckholm cricket week. Lady Christina, whose foes--and their name is

legion, for they are many--accuse her of parsimony, does not usually

send the motor to the station to meet unencumbered males. She expects

such guests to cover the last stage of the journey at their own charges

and, in addition, to share the conveyance with such parcels and oddments

as may be lying in the station office consigned to Buckholm.

On this occasion Mr. Turnbull, the station master, apologetically packed

me into the fly in company with half a sheep and three bright new zinc

buckets, freshly arrived from the stores in Edinburgh.

In addition to my personal luggage, I was laden with a limp, damp

package, smelling to heaven of fish, which had borne me noisome company

all the way from my flat in Jermyn Street, having been delivered there

by an accomplice of Lady Christina's the night before my departure, with

the information that her ladyship had signified my willingness to convey

it to Buckholm.

But things might have been worse. Lady Christina had played this fish

trick upon me last year as well. (It is one of her most cherished

economies.) On that occasion the fish was delivered at my flat five

minutes after I had left for Scotland. It was marked "Very Important";

so the lift boy, a conscientious but unimaginative youth, sent for the

pass-key and carefully deposited the package in my hall cupboard. I

found it there, quite safe, when I returned from Scotland, three weeks

later.

The first warning that all was not well came to me when my equipage drew

up, to a symphonic accompaniment of rattling buckets, at the lodge gates

of Buckholm. These were held, like the bridge across the Tiber upon a

famous occasion, by a resolute trio composed of Mackellar, the

under-gardener, and Mesdames Elspeth and Maggie Mackellar, Mackellar's

daughters, aged about fourteen. Horatius Codes (Mackellar) informed me

that by her ladyship's orders it was "hauf-a-croon to get in," adding

(quite incomprehensibly at the moment) that it was "on account of the

Feet for Charity."

My contention that, as a guest, I was entitled to exemption, or, at

least, abatement of entrance fee, was overruled by a dour but respectful

majority of three to one. I handed Horatius Codes a reluctant

half-crown; Herminius and Spurius Lartius threw open the gates, and the

experienced animal between the shafts, unusually braced by the eerie

combination of sounds and smells conveyed to his senses by a following

breeze, delivered me at the front door, with much spurting of gravel,

four minutes later.

My worst fears were realised. Dotted about the wide lawns stood

bazaar-stalls, under striped awnings. The band of our Third Battalion

from the Depot was making music on the terrace, and fair women and brave

men drifted here and there, shying nervously at the stalls. Too late, I

understood Mackellar's reference to the "Feet for Charity." I had heard

from afar of the existence of this recurrent and gruesome festival for

many years. No one knew why it was held, or to what charity Lady

Christina devoted the proceeds. I once asked Lord Eskerley if he could

tell me. He replied that so far as he was aware it was a charity which

was not puffed up, and began at home. But Lord Eskerley is a cynical

old gentleman, and has been at war with Lady Christina for forty years.

A sympathetic butler received me and showed me my room. The ceremony

was purely formal: I knew the room almost as well as I knew him.

"It will go on until ten o'clock, sir," he announced mournfully, in

reply to my anxious query. "The present company will leave about seven;

but the townspeople begin to arrive then, when the admission fee is

reduced to sixpence. Are we going to have a flare-up, sir?"

"No. What's the use? We shall take it lying down, Bates, as usual.

You know Lady Christina!"

"I was referring, sir, to the European situation."

"Oh, sorry! Yes, it looks like it. If Germany joins Austria against

Russia, France is bound to come in on the side of Russia; and if France

comes in I fancy we shall all come in. And then God knows what will

happen! Is there much excitement down here?"

"Very little at present, sir--less than when the South African War was

imminent. But I understand that all the officers at the Depot are being

recalled from leave. You will find several of them here, sir."

"Mr. Eric is here, of course?"

"For the afternoon, sir, yes. But he sleeps at the Depot now. He is

very busy. You will change into flannels, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"It will fill out the time a bit, sir, before you need go outside. Her

Ladyship is not aware of your arrival. Shall I bring you a whisky and

soda?"

"Please."

By judicious dawdling I staved off the moment of my entrance into the

"Feet" for another half-hour. Then, fortified by Bates's timely

refreshment, I went downstairs to search for my hostess.

The garden was full of people--sirens in lace caps proffering useless

articles of merchandise; officers from the Depot; boys and girls just

home for the holidays; local dames talking scandal in deck-chairs. Upon

the distant croquet lawn I beheld my hostess engaged in battle. I could

hear her quite easily, shouting: "Now then--no treachery, no treachery!"

to her partner, a nervous subaltern who was furtively offering advice to

a pretty opponent. I remembered Bates's hint, also a maxim to the

effect that what is not missed is not mourned. Perhaps it would be

wiser--

"Yes, I would if I were you," remarked a raven's voice at my elbow.

"She hasn't seen you yet!"

Lord Eskerley is a very remarkable old gentleman, with certain

pronounced and rather alarming characteristics. In the first place, he

has an uncanny knack of reading one's thoughts, which enables him to

begin a conversation without wasting time over preliminaries, which he

hates. Secondly, he has a peculiar habit of side-tracking a subject

right in the middle of a sentence, sometimes because he is overtaken by

a reverie, sometimes because another subject occurs to him--to return

sooner or later, but always without warning, to the original topic--like

brackets in algebra. I once met him coming out of Brooks's Club, and

accompanied him down St. James's Street.

"Just been to a funeral," he announced; and forthwith subsided into a

brown study.

I offered a few appropriate observations regarding the uncertainty of

human life, and then proceeded to the political situation. He replied

with his usual incisiveness. Ten minutes later, as we passed through

the Horse Guards into Whitehall, he stopped abruptly, shook me by the

hand, and said:

"Good-bye! At Woking. We cremated him. Very interesting!"--and set off

at a brisk walk in the direction of the Houses of Parliament.

These conversational acrobatics call for considerable agility on the

part of the listener. The strain is increased by the circumstance that,

owing to his uncanny powers of memory, Lord Eskerley is able (and

usually proceeds) to take up a conversation with you exactly where he

left it off, sometimes after an interval of months. I was once walking

in the Park on Sunday morning with Lady Christina, whom I had

encountered for my sins after church. Near the Achilles statue I was

aware of Lord Eskerley, plunged in profound meditation. Suddenly he

looked up and saw me. He hurried forward and shook hands, utterly

ignoring Lady Christina.

"Courvoisier," he said, "not Martell!"--and departed towards Stanhope

Gate.

"What does the demented creature mean?" inquired Lady Christina.

I was able to explain that His Lordship had merely been unburdening

himself of a name which he had been unable to recall at the time of our

last conversation. Criminology is one of his numerous hobbies, and on

this occasion he had been trying to tell me the name of one of the last

murderers publicly hanged in England. (Thackeray went to see it.) All

he could recall, however, was that the murderer had been a valet in Park

Lane, and that his name had suggested liqueur brandy.

Decidedly he is a character. But he is a Pillar of State for all that,

and, unlike some Pillars of State, he has done the State some service.

He likes me, because I catch his references more quickly than most

people.

"Well," I rejoined, "suppose you assist me to find cover?"

"Certainly!" he replied. "By the way"--extending a hand--"how do you

do? Wonderful day! Now come and find a seat, and we will smoke."

We doubled a promontory of rhododendrons and sat down on a rustic bench,

somewhat apart from the turmoil. The only person in sight was a girl,

with very good ankles. (Eve always reproved me for beginning at that

end.) She was standing fifty yards away from us, under the dappled

shade of a copper-beech, surveying the scene--a little disconsolately, I

thought. My companion, as usual, was ready with an appropriate but

elliptic comment.

"Doesn't know he's here!" he observed.

"Why don't you tell her?" I asked.

"No need. They'll find one another all right."

"Who is she? And he?"

The question partly answered itself, for at that moment the girl turned

in our direction, and I recognised her as the unexpected young beauty of

the Netherby pew. Aware that two inquisitive dotards were leering at

her, she withdrew out of sight. Lord Eskerley did not answer the rest

of my question, because his thoughts had run ahead of the situation.

"There is something particularly cruel and brutal," he said, "about

British snobbery. If this had been America, her hostess would have

introduced her to every one in sight. (If she had not been prepared to

do so, she would not have invited her at all.) On the Continent, young

men would have led one another up, and clicked their heels together, and

announced their names, with a view to a fair exchange. But here--well,

she knows nobody, and every woman in the county will see to it that she

continues to know nobody. Practically, that was why she was invited

here. Tantalus, and so on!"

"I have often wondered," I said, "why we never go in for introducing.

It would save much discomfort to rustic persons like myself."

"I'll tell you. Roughly, our attitude is this. There are only a certain

number of people in this world who are anybody--Us, in fact. You are

either one of Us, or you are not. If you are, obviously there is no

need to introduce you. If you are not--well, an introduction would

imply that you are not one of Us! So it is almost more insulting to

introduce people than to ignore them. Very ingenious system: I wonder

what woman invented it! Still, _she's_ all right." (Apparently His

Lordship had switched back to the girl again.) "She and her mother only

get invited to Gather-'em-Alls and Charity Sales-of-Work, but most of

the boys have managed to scrape acquaintance with her by this time. She

fairly bowled them over at the Third Battalion Gymkhana a few weeks ago.

Looked a picture; won first prize for the motor obstacle race; and

fairly had to keep subalterns off with a stick! _And_ at least one

field officer!"

"You seem to have taken considerable notice of her," I observed.

"I take considerable notice of most things," replied the old gentleman

complacently, "even pretty girls. By the way, we are going to fight

them."

"The girls?"

"God forbid! Germany!"

"Oh!"

"Yes. I go back to town to-night. There seems little doubt now that we

shall come in. We can't leave France in the lurch. For one thing, we

should be skunks if we did"--Pillars of State can be surprisingly

colloquial in private life--"and for another, Germany means to gobble

the whole of Europe this time, including this pacific little island of

ours. It would be playing Germany's game to allow her to take us on one

after another, instead of all together. Of course, the

peace-at-any-price crowd are yowling; but--if we don't back our friends

on this occasion, we can never hold up our heads again. It is just

possible that the Germans may be fools enough to invade Belgium, in

which case even the Cocoa Eaters and the Intellectuals will have to stop

supporting them. But I think we shall fight anyhow. It will be a short

war, but it will be the bloodiest war ever fought."

"Why do you think it will be short?"

"Because it will be so expensive in money and men that no country will

be able to stand the racket for longer than a few months. Modern

weapons are so destructive, and modern warfare costs so much, that

before we know where we are one side will all be dead and the other side

bankrupt; so we shall _have_ to stop! The South African affair cost us

a quarter of a million a day, while it lasted. This enterprise may run

us into two, or even three millions. Think of that! Twenty millions a

week! A thousand millions a year! We can't do it! Neither can France!

Neither can Germany! No, it will be a short war. I am bound to admit

K. of K. doesn't agree with me. He puts it at three years. I lunched

with him two days ago. He was getting ready to go back to Egypt

then--sorely against the grain, naturally; but it did not seem to have

occurred to anybody to tell him to hold back for a week or two. We

can't allow him to go out of the country at present; the thing's

preposterous! Let me see, where was I?"

"Lunching with K."

"Oh, yes. He said three years. I asked why, and he replied that before

this war finished every single able-bodied man of the combatant nations

would be fighting in a national army, and it would take three years for

this country to put its full strength into the field. But of course K.

doesn't understand economic conditions. He's our greatest soldier, but

not an economist. Still, that's K.'s view. I don't agree with it, but

it's K.'s view. And if we go to war, K. will probably lead us; so we

must expect to provide for war on K.'s scale."

All this was sufficiently stunning and bewildering in its suddenness and

immensity; but it aroused my professional instincts.

"How is K. going to set about creating such an army?" I asked. "Raise

supplementary Regular battalions; expand the Territorial establishment;

or what?"

"I don't think he knows himself. In fact, he said so, quite frankly.

In the first place, he hasn't been invited to help, as yet. In the

second, he has been absent from England for the best part of fourteen

years, and has not been able to keep himself conversant with the recent

orgy of Army reform. He knew that the old Militia had been scrapped,

but I found he was not sure whether its place had been taken by the

Special Reserve or the National Reserve. And, of course, like all

Regulars, he regards the Territorials with the utmost distrust. I think

he shares the general soldier-man's opinion that the 'Terriers' are the

old Saturday afternoon crowd with a new label. His idea seems to be to

take no risks with amateur organisations, but to create a _pukka_ new

professional army on regular lines. He's wrong. He should take the

present Territorial Army as a nucleus, and expand from that. The

Territorial Associations are a most capable lot, and would build up big

units for him in no time. Still, whatever way he does it, he will do it

well; he's our great man. And he will need all his greatness. Germany

means to smash us this time. She has been calling up her reservists, on

the quiet, for the last six months. Her intelligence people have told

her that we are all so tied up with the Suffragettes and Ireland that we

_can't_ come in, and that if we do, we cannot put up anything of a

fight. I am almost tempted to believe Germany is right. I don't

suppose we have a thousand spare rifles in the country. As for

artillery--it takes three _years_ to make a gunner! How on earth--"

"Now, then, what are you two absurd creatures conspiring about?" Our

hostess was upon us brandishing a croquet-mallet. We rose hurriedly.

"Alan Laing, how do you do? Why didn't you come and tell me you had

arrived? As for you, Eskerley, I think you are getting into your second

childhood. What's all this nonsense I hear about war with Germany?

Why, I have a signed photograph of the Emperor in my drawing-room! How

can one make war on people like that? And yet there you sit, talking

about the thing as if it were really possible, and disorganising my

_fete champetre_ by mobilising all my young men! Come and play

croquet!"

Croquet with Lady Christina resembles nothing so much as croquet with

the Queen in "Alice in Wonderland." It is true that she does not order

our heads to be chopped off, but one sometimes wishes she would, and be

done with it. Her success at the game--and she is invariably

successful--is due partly to the nervous paralysis of her opponents, and

partly to the uncanny property possessed by her ball of removing itself,

while its owner is engaged in altercation, to a position exactly

opposite its hoop. I bent my steps dutifully towards the lawn, leaving

Lord Eskerley, who fears no one, not even Lady Christina, to fight a

spirited rearguard action with that worthy opponent.

On the way I encountered Eric Bethune, my friend. It always thrills me,

even at my sober age, to encounter Eric suddenly. I have never got over

my boyish tendency to hero-worship. We shook hands.

"Come along the Green Walk with me," he said. "My car is waiting at the

West Lodge; I have to fly back to my orderly room."

"We seem to be fairly for it, this time," I said, as we strode along the

avenue of grass.

Eric threw up his handsome head exultantly. The sloping sunlight caught

his clean-cut profile and sinewy throat.

"Yes," he said; "we're for it! The Fleet has been ordered not to

disperse after Manoeuvres. The Army is mobilising. We are going to have

at them at last! It's 'Der Tag,' all right! You are coming back to us,

I suppose, Alan?"

"If they will have me," I said.

"Have you? They'll jump at you! They'll give you a battalion! We

shall all get battalions! Brigades, perhaps!" He laughed joyfully, like

a schoolboy who sees his first eleven colours ahead. "There will be

promotions all round--"

"In a month or two," I said soberly, "there will be a lot more."

"Oh, I don't know," replied Eric. "We may finish Fritz off in one big

battle. The German soldier is a machine: so is his officer. The whole

German Army is a machine."

"A damned efficient machine, too!" I observed.

"Yes, boy; but cumbrous, cumbrous! If we let it get into its swing, it

will be hard to stop. But we won't. The little British Army--and mind

you, as a result of its South African lessons, it is the best trained,

the best led, and the finest body of men that we have ever put into the

field in all our history--will get the first move on, and it will chuck

itself, like a flinty little pebble, plumb in the middle of the German

machinery, and put all its gadgets out of gear! After that, the German,

with his entire lack of initiative, will go to pieces, and we'll eat him

up!"

Eric's old Scottish nurse was accustomed to say of him that he was "aye

up in the cloods or doon in the midden." There was no mistaking his

whereabouts to-day. I began to feel the thrill too.

"Are you going back to the First Battalion?" I asked.

"No word of it as yet. My orders are to stay here and perfect

mobilisation arrangements. The moment the word goes out from the jolly

old War Office, we shall be swamped with reservists: we may have to

start a recruiting station as well. Great work! Great work! So long,

old son! Run home and polish your buttons!"

He leaped into his car, and disappeared in a cloud of dust--a most

characteristic embodiment of the spirit that was flaming in the hearts

of all the youth of England and Scotland during that hectic,

unforgettable, blissfully ignorant week.

I walked slowly back down the Green Walk, prepared to serve my sentence

on the croquet lawn. It was a perfect summer evening. Not a leaf

stirred: not a bird chirruped. The shadow of my somewhat square and

stocky person preceded me, flatteringly elongated and attenuated by the

rays of the setting sun. Deep and abiding peace seemed to brood upon

the land. Yet all the land, I knew, was making ready for battle. Well,

for my part, I was satisfied. I was a soldier, a widow man, and a

childless man. I had no farewells to make, no last embraces--

From among the trees on my right I was conscious of a flutter of white,

and a murmur of voices. A man and a woman--no, no, in those days one

still talked of boys and girls--were seated side by side on a fallen

tree-trunk, with their backs to me. They did not appear to be

concerning themselves with war, or strife, or hostilities of any kind.

Their present relation, though decorous enough, appeared to be one of

most cordial agreement. I recognised them both, and passed on

discreetly, silently acknowledging the prescience of that aged but

perspicacious student of humanity, my Lord of Eskerley.

"They appear to have found one another all right!" I said to myself.

*CHAPTER IV*

*A TRYST*

*I*

Marjorie lay prone among the bracken in Craigfoot Wood, with her chin

resting on her hands, and her insteps drumming restlessly upon the cool

earth. Below her ran the road. To her left, beyond the wooded ridge

which gave its name to Baronrigg, lay Craigfoot, nestling, like most

small Lowland townships, in its own private valley. To her right, out

of sight a mile away, ran the branch line of the railway which served

that district, and which had furnished material to local humourists for

a generation.

By the roadside, on the edge of the wood, stood the two-seater car which

was accustomed to carry the overflow of the Clegg family to church on

Sundays, and which Marjorie liked to pretend was her own special

property. She was never so happy as when her arms were up to the elbows

in gear-box grease. There was a good deal of the elemental small boy

about Miss Marjorie.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the month was once more

August. The war which was to have been over in a few furious weeks had

now been in progress for twelve months. The memory of the nightmare

campaign of the first winter in Flanders had crystallised into a

national epic. And now Kitchener's Army, having characteristically

survived that chaotic but inevitable experiment in improvisation, its

preliminary training at home during one of the worst and wettest winters

ever known in England, had gone abroad. Here it had graduated, with

first class honours in endurance and cheerfulness, during a season of

trench warfare on the Western Front; and was now bracing itself, with

incorrigible optimism, for that heroic mess afterwards known as the

Battle of Loos. Everywhere the war was consolidating its position. On

land the Boche, in a determined effort to recoup himself for his losses

on the Western swings by a profitable exploitation of the Eastern

roundabouts, had just captured Warsaw; and Hindenburg and Ludendorff

were gloriously smashing their way through Russian armies in which

perhaps one man in ten possessed a rifle. At sea, the battles of the

Falkland Islands and the Dogger Bank had confirmed the German High Seas

Fleet in a policy of watchful waiting--not to be broken, save for the

disconcerting experiment of Jutland, until the final abject excursion of

surrender more than three years later. Submarines and Zeppelins were

beginning to function. Yarmouth and Lowestoft had been bombed, with

_eclat_. The _Lusitania_ had gone down, with eleven hundred souls; and

a certain giant in the Far West was beginning to come out of the ether

administered by Teutonic anaesthetists.

At home, the country had settled into its stride; and everyone, in camp,

tube, train, and tram, argued--Heavens! how they did argue!--by a simple

exercise in simple proportion, that if a mere handful of British

soldiers could hold back overwhelmingly superior numbers for a whole

winter, what wouldn't we do to Germany when the new British Army found

their feet and got busy with the big push which everybody--friend and

foe, be it said--knew was coming in September? (The possibility that

the enemy might have been unsportsmanlike enough to raise a few new

armies of his own did not appear to have occurred to anybody in

particular.) The life of the citizen was still fairly normal. Taxicabs

were plentiful: theatrical business was booming. One could still buy

practically all that the heart desired, provided one had the price. The

days when everybody would have money, but there would be nothing to buy,

were yet to come.

Marjorie's predominant emotion during the first six months of the war

had been that of fierce resentment against having been born a girl. She

felt helpless; and whenever Marjorie felt helpless it made her angry.

(That was why she was so frequently angry with her father.) All round

her the youth of her country were on fire, both boys and girls. Yet the

boys were able to stream away to fight, while Marjorie, who was quite as

brave, quite as vigorous, and infinitely more capable of leadership than

many young men, was debarred by the accident of her sex from doing

anything at all. In the year nineteen-fifteen the great conflict was

still regarded as a man's war: the inevitability of mobilised womanhood

had not yet been recognised. The accepted theory was that men must work

and women must weep--for the duration.

The countryside was full of soldiers, in all stages of growth. Marjorie

used to encounter whole columns of them, route marching--strange

creatures, clothed in apparel which by no stretch of imagination could

be described as uniform. But for all their fantastic blends of khaki and

tweed, glengarry and billycock, Marjorie's heart warmed to them. They

were so boisterous, so childlike, so absolutely certain of what was

going to happen to the Boche when they got "oot there."

At their head, as often as not, rode Major Bethune. He and Marjorie had

become acquainted under circumstances which will be recorded hereafter,

and his punctilious salute never failed to thrill her. He was an

inspiring figure, and conspicuously solitary in his present _entourage_.

He alone was left of all the cheery, careless brotherhood who had

pursued the unexacting peace-time existence of a regular soldier at the

depot of the Royal Covenanters--the prop and mainstay of every

covert-shoot and tennis-party in the county. They were all in France

now. Many of them would never come back. But Eric Bethune remained, to

lick recruits into shape--with astonishing speed and efficiency, be it

said--and send them out, draft after draft, to stiffen the ever-thinning

ranks of the First and Second Battalions. He hated being kept at home,

and said so. Marjorie sympathised with him deeply, for she knew exactly

how he felt. One day she told him so. After that, Eric took

considerable notice of her. He had the simple vanity of a spoiled

child, and reacted promptly to all those who took especially deferential

notice of him.

The pair met here and there--at Buckholm, whither Marjorie was sometimes

bidden with her mother to war relief committee meetings; at

entertainments organised for the recruits; at crossroads, where

Marjorie's two-seater was frequently hung up by columns of marching men.

On these occasions they exchanged greetings--even confidences. Eric was

more than twenty years Marjorie's senior--a circumstance which, if

anything, heightened their attraction for one another. It gratified

Eric hugely to find himself frankly admired by a young girl; while

Marjorie, born hero-worshipper that she was, felt pleasantly thrilled at

attracting the appreciative attention of a man so distinguished in his

record and so much more important than herself. Also, Eric's great

age--and to twenty, forty-three and infinity are very much the same

thing--made him "safe." Fortunately for Eric's self-esteem, he did not

know this.

They had small chance to become really intimate. There were few

opportunities for social amenity in those days, and such as survived

hardly covered Netherby at all. In that bleak household itself opinion

on the war was sharply divided. Albert Clegg came of a stock which had

been educated to regard war as a luxury of the upper classes. He

believed that all wars were started by collusion between the "military

oligarchy" and the armament firms. He maintained that no war had ever

been fought which could not have been avoided. The sight of a uniform

filled him with horror. He was eloquent--though not quite so fluent as

Uncle Fred--upon the iniquity of placing what he called a "musket" upon

the shoulder of a growing boy, and setting him for a period of three

years to strengthen his body by martial exercises, when he might have

been earning dividends for somebody. Finally, he said that the Germans

were an industrious, peace-loving, musical nation, and that it was

sinful to attack--by which it is to be presumed he meant resist--an army

which was merely the involuntary instrument of despotism.

So when the British nation declined, by acclamation, to break faith with

France and Belgium, Albert Clegg was sincerely depressed. Moreover,

being deeply interested in shipping, he foresaw ruin for the overseas

trade of the country. Even when the unforeseen happened; when, as the

submarines began to take toll, the market value of tramp steamers shot

up a thousand per cent., and freights soared out of sight altogether, he

was not entirely comforted. According to his lights he was an honest

man, and it was with a twinge of conscience that he found the war

accumulating for him profits on a scale which not even a swelling

income-tax could altogether moderate. But he compounded with his

conscience in the end. He drew his profits, but he drew them under

formal protest every time. As Pooh Bah once explained, "It revolts me,

but I do it!"

Of the rest of the household, Mrs. Clegg for her part found the war

almost pleasantly exhilarating. None of her kith and kin were

participating in hostilities, which relieved her from such trifling

cares as beset old Mrs. Couper, who was interested in the matter to the

extent of five sons and fourteen grandsons; or Mrs. Gillespie, the

banker's wife, who had contributed all she had, the _ci-devant_ student

of divinity, to the cause; or General Bothwell, whose son Jack had

arrived in Flanders from India with his Pathans in early December, and

had already met the almost inevitable end of a white officer who

undertakes the conspicuous task of leading dusky troops into action

under modern conditions; or Lord Eskerley, both of whose sons had died

at Le Cateau. Bobby Laing, of The Heughs, nephew of our

autobiographical Major, had been killed in the landing of the King's Own

Scottish Borderers at Gallipoli. Neither of Mrs. Clegg's sons had

exhibited any leaning towards what their father described as "this

fashionable military nonsense," so Mrs. Clegg's mind was at rest. She

left everything, quite cheerfully--like too many of her kind--to the

Willing Horse.

Of course, she admitted, there was little going on socially. Still, it

was gratifying to roll bandages or pack comfort-bags in company with

countesses; and though there were flies in the ointment--in the shape of

common persons like Mrs. Galbraith, the chemist's wife, and the Misses

Peabody, included in the same gathering by the caste-destroying

processes of wartime--there were consolations. Netherby itself, with

its spacious accommodation for meetings and committees, was a card which

only great social strongholds like Buckholm and Baronrigg could

overtrump.

It has been noted that Amos and Joshua Clegg had betrayed no disposition

to join up. But while Amos in this matter followed his undoubted

inclinations, Joe was restrained only by the bonds of parental

discipline. For one thing, Joe was a Public-School boy, and Amos was

not. Joe's school had only been a small establishment in the North of

England, but in nineteen-fourteen its little Officers' Training Corps

had contributed its full quota of young men. To Amos, Public Schools

(to quote his father) were places where boys learned "to take care of

their H's and despise their parents": to his younger brother the

Public-School tradition was the ark and covenant, not to be lightly

profaned by parental sneers or fraternal failure to understand. So Joe

kept his own counsel, and ate his dour young Northumbrian heart out for

twelve sickening months.

The climax had come that very morning, with the arrival, for Joe, of a

circular from his old school, requesting that he would "be so kind as to

fill up the enclosed form" with certain specific information regarding

his military service, for inclusion in the School Roll of Honour--his

rank, his unit, mentions in dispatches, and the like. There was no

alternative column to fill in; no comfortable loophole labelled

"Civilian war work of national importance"--nothing of that kind at all:

nothing but a stark request for poor Joe's military status and record.

It had not occurred to the editors that any Old Boy could, in these

days, be elsewhere than in khaki.

Consequently, Marjorie had found Joe after breakfast, with his head in

his arms, crying like a child in a corner of the unfrequented and

cheerless Netherby smoking-room. (Albert Clegg did not smoke.) After

comforting him in the only fashion she knew--and a very acceptable

fashion any young man but a brother would have considered it--she made

up her mind on the spot to accept a certain sentimental invitation

somewhat shyly offered by Roy Birnie, and laughingly refused by herself,

two days previously. That was why she was now lying in the bracken on

the edge of Craigfoot Wood, gazing up the road to Baronrigg.

*II*

It was Roy's last day at home. At the outbreak of war, to his own

intense indignation, he had been refused a commission. Many of his

young friends, common civilians no older than himself, had been endowed

with what they described as 'one pip' and set to command platoons all

over the country. But Roy, as a prospective regular, had been

despatched--the victim of a conspiracy in which he traced the hand of

every person but the right one--to Sandhurst, where he was compelled to

undergo an intensive education in the science of warfare, speculating

grimly meanwhile as to the kind of mess his amateur supplanters were

making of the British Expeditionary Force. Sometimes he woke at night in

a cold sweat, having dreamed, as he had sometimes dreamed before a house

match, that the war had come to an end before he had had his innings.

Now, at last, he was emancipated. He was a second lieutenant. He could

wear a Sam Browne belt and look an A.P.M. right in the face--instead of

hurriedly plunging down side streets to avoid that suspicious official's

eye, as he had frequently done when up in London on leave with a crony,

the pair of them decked in borrowed trappings to which a cadet's rank

did not entitle them. He was an officer, holding the King's Commission;

and, best of all, had been gazetted to the Second Battalion of the old

regiment, of which his uncle, "Leathery Laing," was now

second-in-command. He had completed his draft leave, and was to report

at the Depot at six o'clock this Sunday evening, to take charge of a

contingent bound overseas to reenforce the battalion at a point on the

Western Front as yet unrevealed.

He had made his farewells--in the offhand, jocular fashion affected by

our race in cases where the probability of return is more than doubtful.

His father had shaken hands with him, and shaken his own head at the

same time. Tom Birnie's heart was not in the war: he persisted in his

belief that it was started by the Jingoes.

His friends--and Roy had friends in every walk of life--had loaded him

with messages to fathers, brothers and sweethearts who were gone before

into the pillar of cloud. Mr. Gillespie, the bank manager, entrusted

him with a small package (on behalf of Mesdames Spot and Plain),

containing mysterious comforts for son Robert. Jamie Leslie, the

organ-blower of the parish church, buttonholed him in the street.

"Mr. Roy," he said wistfully, "you'll tell the boys oot there that I

have tried, and _tried_, for to get ower; but they winna hae me! It's

because I'm no quite richt in the heid," he added, with a candour which

might well have been imitated by others occupying more exalted official

positions than his own. "You'll tell them? I wouldna like them for tae

think--"

Roy supplied the necessary assurance, and passed on to receive a message

from old Mrs. Rorison, whose son John, a giant of six feet four inches,

had abandoned the service of the post office in order to join the Scots

Guards.

"Tell oor John," said the old lady--it was universally assumed that Roy

would encounter the entire Craigfoot contingent, regardless of rank or

unit, immediately upon landing--"tae keep his heid doon in they

trenches. I ken him! And dinna go keeking ower the top yourself, Mr.

Roy!" This, on the whole, was the most practical valediction that Roy

received.

Lord Eskerley's farewell was quite characteristic.

"Good-bye! Don't give away any military news when you write to her. It

has done a lot of harm already."

There was no one left now to say good-bye to but Marjorie. Like the

young sentimentalist that he was, Roy was reserving her for the last.

He wanted to bid her farewell at the very final moment--and, if

possible, clandestinely. There existed no obstacle whatever to his

driving openly to Netherby and delivering his farewell speech on the

hearthrug in the library, or among the raspberry-canes in the kitchen

garden. But war sharpens our romantic appetites to a surprising degree.

At the most ordinary times lovers are accustomed to bid one another good

night with an expenditure of time and intensity which takes no account

of the fact that they are going to meet again directly after breakfast

to-morrow morning. How much more pardonable and ecstatic, then, must

that exercise be when it really is good night--when it is more than

probable that before the time for reunion comes round again, one of the

participants may have blown out his little candle for good.

Roy's preference for surreptitious love-making was natural enough, for

another reason. He was a member of the shyest and most self-conscious

brotherhood in the world--the tribe of the less-than-twenty-one's. By

rights he should not have been in love--matrimonially--at all. A

healthy English Public-School boy of nineteen is not entitled to such

emotions as inspired Master Roy and his friends in the year of grace

nineteen-fifteen. His mind should be set--and in normal times almost

invariably is set--upon his biceps muscle, or his first salmon, or his

college rowing colours, or (at moments of periodic festivity) the

acquisition of souvenirs, like policemen's helmets or door-knockers.

Permanent association with one of the softer sex should be to him, for

several years yet, a delightful unattainability. He matures late, does

our young Briton, and premature responsibility as husband and father

usually prevents him from ever developing into the man he was meant to

be. But wise old Nature is always ready to modify her own laws in an

emergency. In nineteen-fifteen people, especially young people, found

their perspectives considerably foreshortened. It is no use taking long

views about life at a time when life promises to be more than usually

short. There is just one thing to do, and that is to reach out with

both hands after such of life's gifts as are normally reserved,

especially in this country of ours, for those of riper years.

So, engaged couples who in nineteen-fourteen had taken it as a matter of

course that their wedding must be postponed until after the war,

suddenly realised that there might be no after the war for one of them,

and incontinently got married. Boys and girls whose sentimental

exercises in normal times would have been limited to sitting out dances

behind a screen in the Christmas holidays not only became engaged, but

usually plunged into matrimony a few weeks later. They were governed by

forces which they did not entirely comprehend, and which few of them

would have been capable of resisting if they had. They had no idea how

they were going to live after the war; but they married all the same.

It was essentially a case where the morrow must take thought for itself.

They capitalised all their stock, both of money and of youth, these

happy young gamblers, and lived ecstatically on that capital, stoically

resigned to the probability that before it was exhausted their little

partnership would have been dissolved. And in too many cases, poor

souls, they were justified in their expectations. But who shall say

that they were wrong, or improvident, to do as they did? Prudence,

perhaps; commonsense, possibly. But not nature, nor patriotism, nor

romance, nor the spirit of adventure.

It is not to be supposed that our impetuous Roy had reasoned out these

matters with any degree of profundity. All he knew was that he had

loved that glorious girl, Marjorie Clegg, from the moment he had first

seen her in Craigfoot parish church a year and a half ago; and that now

he was called upon to go away and relinquish even his present scanty

opportunities of seeing her. Moreover, his battalion had got through

twenty-three second lieutenants in the last ten months. One, obvious,

course was indicated; but it was a big step for a reserved schoolboy of

nineteen. To tell Marjorie, _tout court_, that he loved her frightened

him--far more than any statistics about second lieutenants. If it had

been peace-time he would have followed the natural path of a boy who

falls in love with a girl of his own age. He would have decided to grow

up, and become an eligible _parti_ at the earliest possible moment. He

might, possibly, have declared himself, and invited his beloved to "wait

for him." It is within the bounds of probability that the damsel would

have promised to do so. The _affaire_ would then have proceeded on its

innocuous course--spasmodically enough, owing to the interposition of

such things as University terms, regimental duties, or vulgar office

hours--to its normal end. That is to say, the girl would probably have

met and married some one really eligible a few years older than herself,

leaving it to the hand of Time to heal the wounds of her late cavalier

and unite him in due course to another really eligible girl some years

younger than himself, recently the property of a shaveling of nineteen.

But this was not peace-time. The country was at war, and for reasons

already indicated waiting and seeing had gone out of fashion. The

watchword of the moment, whether applied to munitions or matrimony, was,

"Do It Now!" No wonder that Roy felt his heart leap to his throat as

the Baronrigg car, conveying him to the Depot seven miles away,

surmounted the last crest on the undulating road, and revealed to him

Marjorie's two-seater standing in the hollow below, under the lee of

Craigfoot Wood. For all her preliminary refusal and offhand acceptance,

Marjorie had kept tryst.

*CHAPTER V*

*THE INEVITABLE*

Marjorie stood on the bank above the road, knee-deep in bracken. The

Baronrigg chauffeur, an elderly gentleman with that perfect repose of

manner which is given only to such members of the tribe as are promoted

coachmen, drew up beside the two-seater. Roy jumped out and saluted

with great smartness. He was in uniform, and was hung about with that

warlike paraphernalia professionally known as "the whole Christmas

Tree." Having disencumbered himself of this, he threw it into the car,

climbed the bank, and joined his lady. His heart bumped.

"You do look nice," said Marjorie. "But what is the matter with your

buttons?"

"I have painted them with some black stuff," replied Roy. "Quite the

thing--not swank! It is always done on active service: otherwise my

twinkling little buttons might attract the eye of vigilant Boche." He

took her arm, a little feverishly. "What about a stroll in the shades of

the forest? What about it, what?"

This was not the way in which Roy had intended to begin the interview.

Upon such occasions of stress no man knows what humiliating tricks

self-consciousness may not play upon him. But Marjorie, of the superior

sex, appeared quite unruffled.

"All right," she said cheerfully; "come along! I am so glad you are

here."

"Are you, Marjorie?" exclaimed Roy, much encouraged.

"Yes. I want to consult you about something."

Roy drew back an overhanging branch.

"Step inside the consulting room!" he suggested.

Marjorie seated herself upon a ledge of rock in the snug nook which the

branch had concealed. Roy lay down on the grass at her feet. There was

silence. At last Marjorie said:

"When must you be at the Depot?"

"Six." Roy glanced at his new, luminous, dust-proof, non-breakable

wrist-watch. "That gives me twenty minutes. What did you want to talk

to me about, Marjorie?"

"About Joe."

"Oh!" There was a certain lack of enthusiasm about the interjection,

but Marjorie did not notice it. Roy looked up at her. Her brow was

puckered, and her eyes were troubled. She was very fond of brother Joe.

Roy, resolutely disengaging his attention from the high lights in her

hair, said gently:

"Tell me."

Marjorie blazed out suddenly.

"He can't stand it any longer! He has done his best to be patient, and

obedient to father, and all that; but it's breaking his heart. Why,

only this morning--"

She related the pitiful incident of the school circular and the Roll of

Honour. There were tears in her eyes when she had finished.

"So," she concluded, "he has made up his mind to join up."

"Good egg!" observed Roy. "Is he going to apply for a commission, or

what?"

"That was what I wanted to consult you about," said Marjorie. "You are

so clever about these things, Roy."

"Fire away!" replied Roy, much inflated.

"Commissions," asked Marjorie--"can you get them easily?"

"Not so easily now. The authorities are beginning to sit up and take

notice. The first lot of officers in the new armies were mostly all

right. They didn't know much, but they were sahibs, who played the game

and handled their men properly. Now they are getting used up, and some

pretty strange fish have been given commissions lately. The voice of

the T.G. is heard in the land. Here is a letter from my uncle, Alan

Laing--our second-in-command. You know him?"

"No, but I have seen him."

Roy chuckled.

"Yes," he said, "and he has seen you; and you fairly knocked him flat!

But never mind Uncle Alan now. He's a wicked old man, anyhow. About

this T.G. business. Uncle Alan wrote to me the other day. He said that

some of the officers lately sent out were about the stickiest crowd he

had yet handled. Here's the letter."

_Of course, among ourselves in the Mess, he read, we make allowances,

and try to get the best out of them; for after all, most of them are

plucky enough and efficient enough. Unfortunately, the rank-and-file,

with the true British passion for inequality, do not share our

democratic sentiments. They say, in effect: "This blankety blighter is

no better than we are. Why should we salute him, or obey him, or follow

him?" The T.G. too often confirms his own sentence; I caught one of my

subalterns trying to stand a corporal a drink the other day. I hear

they are going to start officers' schools soon. The sooner the better!_

"Of course," said Marjorie, flying, woman-like, to the personal

application of the subject, "Joe wouldn't behave like that."

"Good Lord, no! Of course he wouldn't," said Roy.

"Amos probably would, though," added honest Marjorie. "He has never

been to a proper school, so he has had no chance to have his Clegg

manners improved. But we aren't troubling about Amos: it's Joe. Would

they take him into a Cadet Officers' School, do you think?"

"I am sure they would," said Roy confidently. "Only, it might require a

little time, you know."

"That's a drawback," replied Marjorie. "Once father knows what Joe is

trying to do, his life at home won't be worth living. It'll be a fight

all day long: he will be lectured, and badgered, and prayed over. I

shouldn't wonder if they sent for Uncle Fred!"

A thought struck Roy.

"I say," he enquired, "how old is Joe?"

"Twenty."

"That hangs the crape on Joseph!" announced Roy--"for a year, at any

rate. They won't give a commission to a minor without his father's

consent." He wriggled. "Don't I know it! If they did, I'd have been

in the show a year ago."

"In that case," said Marjorie, "we must fall back on our second plan."

"We?"

"I mean Joe and I."

"Oh, sorry. I was hoping you meant you and me! What is the plan?"

"It's a secret just now," said Marjorie. "Perhaps I'll tell you about

it, when I write."

Roy looked up eagerly.

"You _will_ write to me?" he said. "Often?"

"Of course I will!" said the girl. "It will be wonderful!"

What she meant was that it would be wonderful to have, in future, a

personal interest in the British Expeditionary Force. As already

indicated, the circle in which Marjorie had been born and bred was not

very heavily represented in France--nor would be until conscription

came. But now Roy would be there. She would have a personal outlet for

her imagination, and a peg to hang her prayers on. Women hate abstract

patriotism, as they hate all abstractions. Roy would supply the human,

personal element, upon which a woman's visions must always be founded.

Male orators might volley and thunder about the common cause and the

redemption of civilization; but to most women the Great War and its

issues were usually embodied in the person of a single undistinguished

individual in a tin bowler.

Roy, of course, did not understand.

"How glorious of you to say that, Marjorie!" he exclaimed.

"You do not know," continued Marjorie rapturously, "how I have longed

and longed to have some one to write to, and send parcels to, and

everything--some one I really knew!--instead of a bundle of things to be

distributed among a whole platoon!"

"And you are going to make me that particular person?" said Roy,

joyfully.

"Rather! You see," explained Marjorie with fatal frankness, "I don't

know anyone else. At least, I shan't, until Joe--"

Roy's face fell. "I thought there was a catch about it!" he said

woefully.

"About what?"

"About what you said. I didn't understand that all you wanted was some

one to write to; and any old thing would do--even me! I did hope, for a

minute--"

Marjorie was all repentance at once.

"Oh!" she cried. "How hateful of me! Roy, I didn't mean it! What must

you think of me? I must seem like a common little war-flapper. But I'm

not, am I? Roy, you _know_ I'm not! Will you forgive me?" She extended

a hand impetuously.

It fired the train. Next moment Roy had caught it in both of his, and

was kissing it rapturously.

"Marjorie--dear!" he murmured. He was kneeling before her now, with his

arms crossed upon her knees. He looked up into her face, and suddenly

realised what he was leaving behind. A great sob shook him. Perhaps the

thought of the twenty-three second lieutenants had something to do with

it. After all, he was only nineteen, and love and life were very sweet.

His head sank on to his arms; his shoulders heaved.

There followed a brief interval of silence--perhaps three minutes. But

within that interval something happened to Marjorie.

Presently a slim hand removed Roy's glengarry bonnet, and began to

stroke his obstinately curly hair. Next, Roy was conscious of a warm

splash, somewhere behind his right ear--followed by another, and

another. Marjorie was shaking now. Roy looked up at her again, and the

sight of her wet face suddenly braced him against his own weakness. He

sprang up.

"You poor, poor, poor!" he said. "Let me--"

He produced a khaki handkerchief from his sleeve, and dried her eyes,

Marjorie meekly submitting. After that, inevitably, he kissed her. It

was not a very successful kiss: first kisses seldom are. Then he sat

down upon the grass again with his head against her knee, and her hand

against his cheek. He sighed, long and rapturously. Marjorie stroked

his hair with her free hand. Children both, they were living through a

moment for which others, less fortunate, have sometimes waited a

lifetime, and which in no case ever comes to man or maid a second time.

Presently they began to talk, employing the two inevitable topics of the

newly-betrothed--"When did it begin?" and, "Do you remember?"

They recalled their first glimpse of one another--that May morning in

church, more than a year ago.

"Uncle Alan was very witty on the subject," said Master Roy. "Oh, most

diverting! It's my belief the old ruffian was having a good

one-time-look-see at you himself, and that was why he caught me at it.

Well, I can't say I blame him!"

They wandered on to the second subject. Here they had much ground to

cover.

They had not actually met until three weeks after the glimpse. During

those weeks Roy religiously attended dances, tea-parties, political

meetings, even a church soiree, in the hope of encountering his

divinity; but in vain. Once he bought three numbered and reserved seats

for an amateur theatrical entertainment in the Town Hall, and sent two

of these to Netherby, "With the compliments of the committee." But Mrs.

Clegg, knowing that her husband did not hold with theatrical

entertainments, and that under no circumstances would she or the family

be permitted to attend this one, had passed the tickets on to a more

emancipated quarter, with the result that Roy witnessed the performance

in the giggling company of two Netherby housemaids. He told the story

to Marjorie now, and was rewarded with tears and laughter.

But they had met at last--at the local Hunt Steeplechases. Marjorie was

present, privily, in the two-seater, with brother Joe. Roy had spied

the pair from the regimental enclosure. He was due back at his

crammer's in two days' time, and was a desperate man. Summoning his

entire stock of audacity--it was considerable, but he needed it all--he

left the enclosure, pushed his way through the crowd, and addressed

himself to the male member of the rather forlorn couple standing by the

rails.

"I say, sir, aren't you Mr. Clegg, of Netherby?"

Joe, quite unequal to the situation, murmured something inarticulate;

but Marjorie came to the rescue.

"How do you do?" she said. "You are Mr. Birnie, aren't you?"

"Yes. We are your next-door neighbours--your nearest little playmates,

in fact," replied Master Roy. (Netherby is some four or five miles from

Baronrigg; but no matter.) "My father has been meaning to shoot cards

on you for a long time. Meanwhile, would you care to come into the

enclosure? Bracing air! Gravel soil! Commands a distant prospect of

the Cheviot Hills, and so on! Highly recommended! Do come!" He waited

breathlessly for her reply, fearful of having gone too far. But the

invitation was accepted.

"What a moment!" he said. "_What_ a moment!" He looked up at Marjorie

again. "I was afraid you would turn me down, for cheek. You hesitated a

bit, didn't you?"

Marjorie laughed, joyously.

"My dear, that was for manners! I wouldn't have let you go at that

moment for anything in the world!" She played a gentle arpeggio on the

brown cheek under her hand.

"By gum, I wish I had known that!" observed Roy, with sincerity.

Once inside the enclosure Marjorie created a profound sensation. It is

true that not many of her own sex addressed themselves to her, but this

omission was more than balanced by the _empressement_ of the gentlemen.

First of all, naturally, she was introduced to the senior officer

present--Major Eric Bethune, who, in the secret view of his

subordinates, proceeded to take an unsportsmanlike and unduly prolonged

advantage of his superior rank. Duty called him at last to the side of

a lady of riper years. Thereafter, Marjorie, almost invisible for

second lieutenants, was escorted about the course, shown the jumps,

plied with tea, and invited to back horses at other people's expense.

She had driven home in a dream, with her exhausted relative slumbering

beside her.

After that a few mothers and sisters, hounded thereto by clamorous

menkind, had left cards at Netherby. The calls had been duly returned,

with the result that some of the sisters added themselves, quite

voluntarily, to the ranks of the brothers. Marjorie possessed the

supreme quality in a woman of being attractive to her own sex. Mrs.

Clegg and her daughter began to be seen at subscription balls and the

more comprehensive garden parties; presently at more intimate

entertainments. In the end, Netherby usually received a card for any

function that was going, always excepting such--formal dinner parties

and the like--as necessitated inviting Albert Clegg.

"The girl is a peach," was the local verdict, "and mother does her best;

but the old man merely suggests eternal punishment!"

And wherever Marjorie appeared--at ball, function, fete, bazaar,

gymkhana, or tea-fight, Master Roy Birnie, home for good from the

crammer's, was usually visible in respectful attendance.

Not that she had not other adherents. Even Major Bethune himself, the

handsomest man and the most eligible _parti_ in the county, did not

consider it beneath his dignity to sit out a dance or two with the

daughter of Albert Clegg. But Roy's devotion was marked by its

unflagging and conscientious continuity. He was a regular visitor at

Netherby. It was his habit to ride over every morning--usually about

eleven, when the master of the house was engaged in transacting business

in the library, mostly over the telephone to Newcastle--where he would

play tennis, perform tricks on the billiard table, give the children

riding-lessons, pick roses for Mrs. Clegg--do anything, in fact, which

afforded him a reasonable excuse for remaining on the premises. Being

British, and only eighteen, his passion had not declared itself in

words; nor would have for many a day, but for the quickening influences

already indicated. Even when the coming of war suddenly laid a man's

responsibilities upon his young shoulders, and removed most of his

rivals, real and imaginary, _en masse_, to the other side of the

Channel, he did not look higher, for the present, than the foot of

Marjorie's pedestal. His intention was to leave his lady perched upon

the summit thereof for the duration; and then, if and when he returned

safe and whole from castigating the Boche, to invite her to step down to

earth and start, under his escort, upon the adventure of life. To do

more at present struck him as unsportsmanlike. He would be forcing her

hand unfairly; he would be taking a sentimental advantage of the

military situation. But the last ten minutes had entirely upset his

plan of operations. He had kissed Marjorie; Marjorie had indubitably

kissed him back; and now they were sitting side by side in Craigfoot

Wood, in an attitude which twelve months ago would have outraged both

his susceptibilities and his sense of humour, facing the prospect of

indefinite separation. What was the next step? What about it, what?

Pending a decision, he saluted his lady afresh.

From the road below them came a respectful toot from the horn of the

Craigfoot motor, suggestive of a faithful attendant coughing a discreet

reminder behind his hand. Roy glanced at his watch, and rose to his

feet with a heartrending sigh.

"Time to go!" he groaned.

He held out his hands to Marjorie, and raised her up. For a moment

those two young people looked one another bravely in the face--for the

last time, for aught they knew. They were very much of a height; Roy

had the advantage of perhaps an inch. Then that direct young maiden,

Marjorie, put both arms round Roy's neck.

"Good-bye, dear," she said. "Take care of yourself, and come back safe

to me!"

"I'll come back," replied Roy stoutly, forgetting all about the

twenty-three second lieutenants. He had no doubts about anything now.

Then:

"Marjorie," he asked, "when will you marry me? As soon as the war is

over?" He waited, expectant.

Marjorie's answer took the rather puzzling form of a little choking

laugh, accompanied by two large tears.

"As soon as that?" she asked.

The young of the male species possesses no intuition.

"Yes," replied Roy earnestly, "just as soon! Or"--with the air of one

conceding a point--"pretty soon after." He came closer.

"Marjorie--will you?"

This time Marjorie smiled without any tears at all--a purely maternal

smile.

"Leave it to me, little man!" she said.

Then she kissed him again, and sent him off to fight for her.

That night Joe Clegg crept downstairs, out of the house, and thence (per

two-seater) to the railway junction twelve miles away. Here he caught

the early morning train to London, where it was his intention to enlist.

He was accompanied by his sister Marjorie, who, after a final and

tempestuous debate with her father upon the subject of filial duty and

feminine usefulness in war-time, had decided to burn her boats too, and

enlist in the gallant sisterhood of those who were Really Trying to

Help.

*CHAPTER VI*

*SOLO*

The lights sank low again, and a flickering announcement appeared upon

the screen, to the effect that the next picture would be a further

instalment of that absorbing serial, _The Marvels of Natural

History_--upon this occasion, _Still Life in the Frog Pond_. The

majority of the audience took the hint, rose to their feet, and shuffled

out. But Marjorie stayed on. Some of us go to the pictures to see

pictures, others to hold hands, others to sit down and rest. Marjorie

belonged to the third class. Not even the prospect of a

quarter-of-an-hour in a frog pond could induce her to concede to the

management the chance of selling her seat once more before closing time.

She sat on, in a tired reverie.

Marjorie had arrived in London three months ago, to find that

overcrowded metropolis fairly evenly divided between two classes--the

people who had taken up war work, and the people who were doing it. The

chief difficulty of the latter was to push their way through the

unyielding ranks of the former. Things righted themselves later, under

the unsentimental _regime_ of necessity; but in November,

nineteen-fifteen, the road to victory was blocked with good intentions.

Having invaded London, Marjorie and Joe devoted two days to exploration.

Marjorie had been in London twice before--going to and returning from

school in Paris--her stay upon each occasion being limited to a single

extremely domestic evening at Uncle Fred's house in Dulwich. This

experience naturally qualified Marjorie (being Marjorie) for the role of

guide and courier to that unsophisticated yokel, brother Joe. They put

up at the Grand Hotel, because Marjorie considered Trafalgar Square a

good _point d'appui_, and a difficult place to lose altogether even in

the howling wilderness of Central London. They pooled their money.

Marjorie had drawn the whole of the savings of her dress

allowance--about one hundred pounds--from the custody of Mr. Gillespie

shortly before the day of her departure, and Joe had a quarter's salary

intact. They dined, went to the play, sat in the Park, lunched at the

Carlton, and generally had their fling (but not of) a world composed

entirely of elegantly dressed females and uniformed officers of every

grade.

After keeping carnival for forty-eight hours, Marjorie conducted her

brother to a recruiting office, where the authorities were unfeignedly

glad to see him, business at that period being lamentably slack. There,

having kissed him, she left him and returned to the Grand Hotel. At the

end of half-an-hour she rose from her bed, dabbed her eyes with a cold

sponge, sent for her bill, paid it with a bright smile, and removed

herself and her effects to a self-contained flat near the Brompton Road.

There she sat down to make a plan. She had several sketched out, but

her choice depended, like so many other choices in this life, upon

sordid financial considerations. If her allowance were continued, she

could afford to do war work for love. If not, she must perforce do war

work for money. So she wrote to her father, telling him frankly why she

and Joe had left home, giving her new address, and concluding her

letter:

_So now you know where I am. If I don't hear from you I shall know that

you don't intend to have anything more to do with me. But I hope I

shall hear from you. Love. Marjorie._

Upon the question of her father's financial intentions she refrained

from inquiry, for she knew full well what the result of such directness

would be. Her intention was to hold on until the September quarter, and

then try the experiment of a cheque to her own order on Mr. Gillespie's

bank. Her hope was that the allowance would continue automatically, as

it might not occur to her father to stop it--presuming he wished to do

so.

"If he does," she said to herself, "I must just go and work in an

ammunition factory, or something--that's all! Still, I don't believe he

will. Father's a hard man, but he does try to be just. He can't punish

me for simply wanting to work now, of all times!"

In this she did her father no less, and as it ultimately proved, no more

than justice; for a _ballon d'essai_ despatched northward to Mr.

Gillespie at the end of September was received by him with the honour

due to a credit balance.

But September was a long way off. Marjorie methodically reviewed all

the avenues of occupation open to her. Nursing attracted her most; but

she knew herself to be pathetically ignorant of the elements of the

craft, and furthermore doubted (rightly) if her combative nature would

endure the complete subservience to the professional element inevitable

in the life of that plucky, much-enduring, self-effacing Cinderella, the

V.A.D. Stenography and typewriting were unknown to her.

Munition-making at this time was but an infant industry--as the

occupants of the trenches had continuous occasion to note, with

characteristic comment. There were a number of minor Red Cross

activities open to her--bandage-rolling, parcel-packing, and the

like--but these pursuits were too sedentary for ebullient Marjorie.

Other forms of war activity, such as selling programmes at charity

_matinees_, or pestering total strangers in 'buses and tube-trains to

purchase flags to relieve the contingent wants of hypothetical Allied

babies, were pushed contemptuously aside as war work _pour rire_. It

was not too easy, either, to know where to apply, with adequate results.

Upon the Olympus whence the country was being directed to victory, the

Organisation of Womanhood still lay in the tray--much the biggest tray

on Olympus--marked "Pending." Those quaint but proud expressions,

"Wren," "Waac," and "Wraf" had not yet been added to the English

language.

Marjorie finally decided to try canteen work. Vicarious service had no

attraction for her; to get as close as possible to the human side of an

enterprise was all her aim. At the canteen she would see and wait upon

the most human member of the human family, one Thomas Atkins. A single

fear made her hesitate. She wanted to spend herself utterly upon the

Cause. Might not this canteen business prove just a little too trivial;

a little too like playing at work?