Those were the days when all thoughts turned to the fleet. The expected
leave of Jim McIntyre, and of many a sailor son, had been cancelled.
Terrible and glorious things were happening in the element ruled by
Britannia. Only the stern discretion of the Admiralty prevented detailed
knowledge. Maintenance of this self-denying ordinance on the part of the
authorities could not prevent the rumors, which ran about, of a decisive
naval engagement. Lady McIntyre, lying awake at night, distinctly heard
the boom of guns off the Dogger Bank. Her beloved Jim (God keep him!)
was crumpling up the Germans in the North Sea.
It was something to have Colin home from Aldershot and Neil from
Shorncliffe. The fact that the two young soldiers were granted leave
because they were going off on active service was hidden from their
mother.
The knowledge brought Sir William post-haste from London. His proud eyes
went from the natty-looking Neil, to the taller, elder soldier with the
ugly, honest face. The father's gaze rested longest there. "If you knew
the trouble I had--I sha'n't try it again. This place is too far away at
such a time."
Lady McIntyre inquired anxiously for admiralty news.
"Well, the Turks have got the _Breslau_ and the _Goeben_." Sir William
glanced at his sons. They said nothing.
"Oh, _that_," said his wife. "I mean about the great North Sea
engagements."
"The movements of the fleet aren't published."
"Published! Of _course_ not," retorted Lady McIntyre. "But that's no
reason they shouldn't tell you."
"Well, I'm afraid they haven't."
"Nonsense! It's just because you've grown so secretive all of a sudden.
You're nearly as bad as Colin. I _do_ wish Jim would write!" A rush of
tears blurred the blueness of her eyes. Evidently the presence of the
other sons only emphasized for the mother the absence of her sailor.
"Surely, William, you know about the naval battle. Why, I hear the guns
all night long!"
"In your head, my dear," said Sir William, gently.
There was a moment's poignant silence. In truth, the reverberation of
those guns of rumor shook all hearts.
"Well, Neil, go on,"--Madge returned to her low chair at Miss Greta's
other side. "You were telling us about the new army regulations. Go on."
Miss Greta had fixed her eyes on Napier with that "savior of my life,"
expression that he was coming to know. He made an ungrateful return.
"And how is your 'little friend'?"
"Oh, Nan is well, thank you."
"She ought to be back by now." Lady McIntyre was making a brave effort
to put away fears for her sailor. "Nan," she explained to Napier, "very
kindly agreed to take the car and do an errand or two which Miss Greta's
slight headache--"
The thought flashed across Napier's mind of the far worse pang it would
have cost Miss Greta to be away when official news was arriving hot and
hot. She listened now to Sir William's reasons why Liege could hold out
indefinitely.
Over the shrubberies the winged hat of the girl messenger rose against
the landscape, and again, hardly had the car swerved round to the door,
before, with that same blackbird-over-the-hedge action, she was out of
the car and coming into the hall. "Yes, I did all the commissions, and
in about half the time you said. Oh, Sir William!" She went up and shook
hands. "You see, I am here still." She stood childishly in front of him,
as if waiting for a further extension of playtime.
"That's right, and you look as if it agreed with you."
"Oh, it _does_!" She gave her hand to Napier. And then, turning with one
of her quick movements, she found a singular thing to say to a captain
of the Black Watch and a young gentleman who held a commission in the
Seaforths. "I've seen soldiers, Scotch soldiers! They _did_ look funny!"
"Funny!" said Sir William. The two elder sons turned away their eyes.
Bobby grinned and contorted his legs....
"Yes, soldiers wearing aprons."
"I suppose you mean kilts," said Sir William. "Did you never see--"
"Oh, yes, of course, on the stage, and in pictures. But these soldiers
had on the funniest little brown aprons _over_ their kilts."
"Temporary measure," said Colin, slowly. "They'll soon be all in khaki."
"And it was awfully difficult to get your check cashed." She turned
toward Lady McIntyre. "They say now there isn't any silver left in
Scotland. And in _your_ town there isn't even copper. I hope you don't
mind; I had to take stamps in change. There,"--she produced a roll of
postal-orders--"are what we'll have to use for money now, they say."
Lady McIntyre protested, but Sir William indorsed the news. Like the
khaki aprons, a "temporary measure." Miss Nan made her accounting.
"All these horrid little scraps of paper!" Lady McIntyre complained.
"You can always change them for gold," Neil said.
"If you do, you must keep it circulating," warned Sir William. "No
hoarding of gold!"
"But we can't get any more--that's just the trouble."
"You ought to have asked Miss Nan," said Madge.
"But I did, and Nan hadn't any."
"Why, I saw _piles_ of gold on your table when I went up to the inn with
Miss Greta's note yesterday!"
"Yes; I'd got it out for her--all I had."
Miss von Schwarzenberg was leaning against the back of the settle. "What
a pity!" she said quietly. "I wish I'd known you wanted gold."
"But, _dear_ Greta, I _said_--"
"Did you? I couldn't have taken it in. It's gone now. To a poor person
in desperate straits--A stranded American. That was why I borrowed it."
"Bor-_ch_-rowed it," she said, with the vanishing "ch" like a ghost of
the final sound in the Scots word "loch."
Captain Colin was looking at her from under his thick, whitey-yellow
eyebrows--in spite of the fact that his father was talking to him very
earnestly about the tactics of the German Army. Beyond a doubt,
consciousness of Miss Greta's foreignness was growing. Her slight
burring of the "r" had never sounded so marked as it did to-day. For all
her long residence in the States, Miss Greta was far more German than
anybody in the Kirklamont circle had quite realized until the war. And
now very plainly this "Germanism" was taking its place as a bar to
conversation, a something still not productive of hostility so much as
of _gene_.
"I'd be so grateful, my dear," Lady McIntyre said half aside to Nan, "if
you'd make Greta bathe her temples and lie down."
"Yes, let us go. All this--" Nan looked round the hall through a sudden
bewilderment of compunction which fell like a veil over her
brightness--"all this is dreadful for you."
"For me! Oh, no!"--Miss Greta held her head higher than ever--"it's not
dreadful for _me_." She smiled a little fiercely,--to Napier's sense--as
she left the hall, Madge on one side and Nan on the other.
When Sir William went off with his three sons for a stroll, Lady
McIntyre accompanied them as far as the gate.
She brought back into the hall a face more agitated than Napier had ever
seen it. Irresolute, miserable, she paused on her way to the sofa where
Napier sat, trying to read. "Colin," she jerked out in a guarded voice,
"has the _strangest_ notions!" The pale eyes looked round more helpless
than ever. "He says Greta tried to pump him about army matters, and he's
sorry he didn't warn Neil! He's going to. Colin said,--oh, in the
unkindest way! 'That woman ought to go home!' 'Home?' I said, 'why, this
is Greta's home!' 'No, it isn't,' he said; 'Germany's her home, and she
ought to go there!' Oh, Colin can be very hard when he likes!" She
choked back her tears, as Miss Ellis came running down the stairs. "What
is it?" Lady McIntyre started to her feet. "Is Greta worse?"
"Oh, no. It's only Ju--Mr. Grant has got back. We saw him coming across
the--"
He stood in the doorway. Nan went forward, hand out, welcome in every
lineament, a kind of all-enfolding affection in the forward inclination
of the whole, lightly poised figure.
Napier looked on dully.
Though Julian was smiling as he took the girl's hand, she said, with
quick intuition of his mood, "What's happened?" And after he'd come in
and greeted the others, "Aren't they well, your father and mother?" she
persisted gently. "They haven't come? I _am_ sorry! I knew something was
wrong." She folded her sympathy round him like a cloak.
"It isn't their not coming." He dropped into a chair. "It's the stuff
I've had to listen to in town. And in the railway carriages too. The
colossal tomfoolery--the--the indecent way people were jubilating over
the greatest disaster in history. This is the kind of fierce test that
people go down under. They'd be ashamed to be unfair, lying, and greedy
for themselves. They think it's a merit to be unfair, lying, and greedy
for England."
Lady McIntyre cast her eye up the staircase, whither her thoughts had
already gone. She was in the act of getting up, when Julian broke out
moodily, "And the way people already are beginning to talk and behave
about the Germans in England!" He had his instances.
Napier pointed out that, regrettable as these manifestations were, they
were fewer and of a much milder character with us than in other
countries. He spoke of ill-treatment in Germany and Austria of retiring
ambassadors and even of neutrals. He turned to Nan Ellis. "_Your_
countrymen could tell you a tale of these last days that would make you
open your eyes. Ask your ambassador."
"If the Germans really did," Julian began; but Napier picked him up
smartly, "You forget, we _know_."
"Well, well, it's one proof the more, if we needed the more, that war
brutalizes noncombatants as well as combatants."
Lady McIntyre shook her ear-rings desparingly. "Aromatic vinegar," she
murmured, as she went upstairs.
While Julian exposed diplomacy and denounced governments, Nan sat, chin
in hand, drinking it in, as if she recognized in these doctrines that
true faith for which all her life she had been thirsting. Under the
subtle flattery, Julian, in spite of weariness, waxed yet more eloquent.
Napier pulled out his watch and made a low exclamation, intended to
indicate some pressing business overdue. He went up the stairs two steps
at a time. And yet the pace wasn't quick enough to please him. Away, he
must get away. Julian had been pitying Colin and Neil, "pawns in the
great game." Napier knew now that he envied them. Oh, that he too might
go and fight! He walked to and fro in his room in the first access of
that fever that was to beset him sore until he should be standing in the
trenches of the Somme. With Julian's denunciation of war nagging at his
ears, Napier hailed war as the Great Simplification. Not only of
international troubles, but of private ones. Instead of ten thousand
struggles, one.
Well, at all events, he couldn't, as he now realized (and happily, by
reason of the great crisis, he wasn't going to be asked to) stay here in
Scotland and look on at this love-making! War had its uses, even to the
civilian.
* * * * *
An hour later he was still sitting there, back to the window, smoking
innumerable cigarettes and trying to read his novel. A light, rattling
sound made him turn round. A fine hail on the window-panes this
cloudless August evening. He looked out.
Julian was down below with a handful of coarse sand. A sign: Come down.
What now?
The hall was empty, except of the footmen beginning to lay tea. Outside
Julian waited.
"You're off to London to-morrow, too," he began. "Is that the idea?"
"Yes, that was the idea."
"Well, then there's precious little time." He was threading a way
through the shrubberies to a half-concealed garden bench.
"I've been wanting your advice, Gavan. The fact is,"--he smiled as he
made the confession--"I don't know quite where I am."
"I should have thought you must be in a happier place than most
mortals." Napier sat down on a half-concealed wooden seat.
Julian joined him with an eager, "What makes you say that?"
"Well, it must be plain to the blindest she is very fond of you."
"You think she is?" He sat wondering. Then he presented the grievance
closest to hand. "She wouldn't let me kiss her just now, and I've been
away three whole days."
"She has let you before?"
"Yes."
"As if she was in love with you?"
"She _must_ be, or else she wouldn't, would she, now? A girl like that?"
Napier tried to ask if these scenes were of frequent occurrence, whether
they were courted or evaded. The question stuck in his throat. And then,
exactly as if he had spoken, Julian answered.
"She's a little capricious about that kind of thing. But,"--he turned
trustfully to his friend--"girls often _are_, aren't they?"
Napier sat there without speaking. "I wondered," Julian went on, "if it
could possibly mean the sort of disapproval that's putting me into other
people's black books--about this devil's mess of a war. But you saw she
took quite a rational view about that."
"I saw she took _your_ view. As to its being rational--"
"Oh, well, we won't say any more about that _now_. I've talked war till
I'm sick. I thought I was coming back here to--something I don't find."
Into Napier's silence Julian dropped the suggestion. "It may only be
that I don't understand women." In his quandary Napier wondered aloud
whether you ever did understand a person brought up in a different
country.
"Or in your own," Julian said moodily. "People I've known since I was a
baby I begin to realize I've never known at all!"
"Oh, come, it isn't as bad as that, though we're all of us having our
eyes opened these days. Those Pforzheims now; I'm persuaded they got
hold of the Kirklamont newspapers and kept them back with the express
idea of giving Greta an excuse for getting the official news they
wanted."
Julian stared, and then he turned his head wearily away. "What rot!"
The tone nettled Napier. "You seem to have forgotten your own suspicions
of that woman."
"They were never of _that_ sort, thank God!" Julian flung out. "I didn't
like the idea of Nan's friend carrying on a doubtful love affair--But
that's all pettiness. The awful actualities of war have brought fine
things to the surface in Greta von Schwarzenberg's character."
Napier told himself that he knew what had been brought to the surface,
and what effect that bringing had had on Julian.
The spectacle of injustice, or even the danger of injustice, would at
any time make Julian Grant forget his own interests and yours and
anybody's who wasn't being actively oppressed.
"Have you been to Gull Island since?"
"I've had no time for picnicking," Julian answered shortly.
"Well, since you're championing Schwarzenberg, it's your business to see
she isn't made a tool of. You heard how the Pforzheims vanished. I've
wondered,"--Napier found it curiously difficult to go on. There was a
quality--he had noticed it before--a something in Julian's frankness
which put astuteness out of countenance, something that made suspicion
seem not only vulgar but melodramatic. Napier felt obliged to throw a
dash of whimsicality, of confessed extravagance, into the speculation,
"Whether the reason we weren't allowed to land on Gull Island was those
Pforzheims. They may have made an emergency camp out of your Smugglers'
Cave."
Julian's weary disgust lightened a little. "I had no notion you were so
romantic, Gavan."
"Very well, then. If you won't look into the matter, I must get some one
else. And set afoot a new crop of rumors. Risk involving Sir William in
responsibility for--"
"Oh, see here! I'll go, and hold an inquisition on the gulls and
cormorants."
Napier thanked him a little sheepishly. "Of course I don't expect you to
find anything. I only feel we've got to make sure."