FELLOW-CONSPIRATORS
Half-an-hour later Rosamond Fayre tried to open the subject in Miss
Urquhart's office.
"Eleanor, I wanted to speak to you----"
"I'm just coming, with the letters."
"It's not about the letters. Not the _business_-letters, I mean----"
"Then I'm afraid it will have to wait, Rosamond. We must get these
done first."
The impatient Rosamond "took down" and typed as if during an
examination for speed, but it was twelve o'clock before the morning's
correspondence was out of the way. Fortunately Miss Urquhart's
_fiancé_ was also out of the way in the motor-pit with the chauffeur,
strenuously busy over some hitch in the mechanism which was causing
Her Ladyship (the car) to "get very sarcastic coming up the hills."
Rosamond hoped the job would keep him nice and late for lunch while
she had her consultation with Eleanor.
This took place on the smaller lawn beyond the gardens.
Here, on the warm turf where the Club girls had waltzed on the
afternoon of the Hen-party, Eleanor had now laid down sheets and
sheets of newspaper. Upon these she and her secretary were going to
spread out rose-leaves to dry for pot-pourri, that would be sent up
to a London depôt and sold in perforated vases for the benefit of
some Guild.
The two girls walked up to the lawn together, looking the queerest
contrast to one another; dark Eleanor, whose "good" coat-and-skirt of
one of the more trying shades of shantung seemed specially chosen to
conceal every line of her stiff, _affairée_ little figure; fair
Rosamond, tall and dainty and loose-limbed, lending all her own
shapeliness to one of those ready-made voile frocks, rose-sprigged,
with a belted and befrilled tunic--of which a thousand duplicates had
been sold in the summer sales, and which would look cheap and common
enough on many of its wearers. It seemed impossible that they should
have a single interest, a single occupation in common--this pair of
girls whose handwritings alone were alike! Both girls now carried
shallow, large wicker baskets full of the scented petals that seemed
all ready to strew upon the path of a bride. They knelt down close
together on the turf as they proceeded to spread the rose-leaves on
the paper.
"Just like conspirators ... down to the attitude! ... On all-fours,
just as if we were taking cover," thought Rosamond, ruefully amused.
Then, with a "Now-_for-it_!" expression on her face, she cleared her
throat. She began to explain, hurriedly and softly and almost as if
she were afraid of being overheard, that she "had been made to feel
rather uneasy, this morning...."
Her difficulty, she found, was to make Eleanor Urquhart see that
there could be anything to feel uneasy about.
Eleanor only said in mild surprise, "How do you mean, you 'think Mr.
Ted Urquhart has got an idea that I didn't write my letters to him
myself'?" She was sorting out long leaves of lemon-verbena,
grey-blue heads of lavender, jagged carnation-petals to mix with the
roses, as she talked. "How can he guess you wrote for me, Rosamond?
It isn't very likely that he's noticed anything about our having the
same sort of handwriting----"
"Ah, it's nothing at all to do with handwritings! It's not come to
that yet. It hasn't come to his thinking I've anything to do with
the letters. But I'm sure that he's noticing that there's something
different about the letters themselves," declared Rosamond
emphatically, as she smoothed that confetti of
pink-and-white-and-damask petals into a thinner layer on her sheet.
"I know he is."
"It must be your imagination," came Eleanor's concise little voice.
"What 'something' has there been for him to notice? You wrote
exactly as if you were me----"
"Can anybody write _exactly_ as if they were somebody else? I've
always known they couldn't! A letter's bound to 'catch' something
characteristic of the writer! Something creeps in, like the tone of
one's own voice, speaking! One can't help that, Eleanor----"
"But you did. I saw!" said the other girl reassuringly. "I passed
all the letters myself. Except two or three, perhaps. There was
that afternoon I motored Miss Fabian back to her rooms and I couldn't
get back before post-time, or something else happened. But I'm sure
they would be all right--these little white roses are the sweetest of
all--they were just the usual thing, weren't they? I know how
careful you are with all my correspondence."
"I've tried. Yes, I have _tried_ to be careful," said the
secretary-girl uneasily. "But----"
She paused. Here was something of which she had to make a clean
breast. "In one of those letters to Mr. Ted Urquhart I'm afraid I
_wasn't_ quite careful, Eleanor," she admitted. "I must have been in
a mood----"
She stopped again. "Moods" were things Eleanor rather despised, as
Rosamond knew. All this was embarrassingly difficult! It's so much
easier to own up to wrong-doing than to having done something
_silly_! She took another handful of petals out of her basket and
began again.
"Just for fun, I suppose, I sent something ... as from you. I
put----"
Eleanor's dark head turned a little impatiently.
"Well? You put what?"
With a suspicion of bravado in her pretty voice Rosamond Fayre
confessed to the ultimate folly of what she'd put. "Kisses."
"What!" ejaculated Eleanor. And she moved still kneeling, so
suddenly that she upset her basket. The rest of the rose-leaves
spilled softly out into a fragrant stack before her. Above it she
stared with dark, incredulous eyes at her secretary. "_Kisses?_"
Rosamond Fayre, feeling more than foolish, put forward an historic
excuse. "They were only very little ones!"
"But you actually wrote that I--_I_ sent kisses to----"
"No! I didn't write that!" Rosamond broke in still more quickly,
bending over the overturned heap of rose-leaves as she spoke. "It
was at the very end of one letter; hidden away in the twirly thing
you do under your name. I think I wanted to see if you'd notice when
you passed the letter; and you didn't. So Mr. Ted Urquhart probably
wouldn't see them at all--unless he was looking for them. Two quite
tiny ones I put; like this----"
She took up the small pencil-case she wore dangling from a silver
chain, and on the margin of the newspaper-sheet before her she drew a
couple of those hieroglyphics over which a sleepless young man had
pored and pondered more than a week ago....
Mr. Ted Urquhart's _fiancée_ contemplated those hieroglyphics
silently and as if they were noisome insects that had just crawled
out of the rose-leaves.
"I know," said Rosamond Fayre, abashed. "I know I oughtn't to have
put those, Eleanor. You wouldn't have."
Eleanor, in her austerest tone, answered at last. "I shouldn't have
thought anybody would put anything so vulgar. Except, perhaps,
g-girls like P-P-P-Pansy!"
Rosamond flushed deeply. She felt that Eleanor's reproof was just.
She often felt (as girls surcharged with any warmth of temperament
are so frequently forced to feel) "_I can't be a very 'nice' girl.
Really nice girls are rather shocked at me._" And she regretted that
she seemed sometimes more akin to Pansy than to what "a lady" should
be in emotions and thoughts.... Nevertheless she longed at that
instant for the presence of the Principal Boy. Pansy could have
"stood up to" Miss Urquhart in a way that Miss Urquhart's secretary
couldn't.
Miss Urquhart was so "difficult" these days! Far more forbidding
than the Eleanor of Rosamond's school-time, the dark-eyed monitress
who had always been helpful and kind, almost motherly to the younger
girls!
"They say being engaged 'softens' a girl," Rosamond thought. "All I
can say is that it--or something--'hardens' this one! I ought to
have known how she'd take this----"
She said aloud, meekly, "I was afraid you'd think it very dreadful,
Eleanor."
"A little vulgar, as I say; that is all. Still, it can't be helped
now," said Eleanor Urquhart, with that line of displeasure dividing
her brows. "And it doesn't matter--particularly."
"Eleanor," persisted Rosamond, still warmly flushed, "I'm afraid
it--or more likely something else--must have 'mattered'--Made all the
difference in your letters----"
"How? Were there any more of--those?" Miss Urquhart asked with a
gesture of distaste towards the two crosses marked on the paper.
"_Larger_ ones?"
"No. Oh, _no_!"
"Or anything else of the same kind?" suggested Eleanor, rising to her
feet and moving along the line of spread newspapers. Her secretary
said, truthfully as she thought, "No."
"Very well, then. There's nothing to make him 'suspect.' He can't."
"But--He _is_! _Look_ at him!" broke out Rosamond, rising also and
giving a sweep of her long arm, as if she were indicating the young
man who was at that moment engaged at the other end of the grounds;
shirt-sleeved and sweating and grunting over--or rather,
under--machinery that seemed to him such a simple thing compared with
the motives and mind of a woman. "_Do_ you look at him? Do you
_ever_ look at him?"
And she thought impatiently, "_How_ impossible it is to discuss
anything with the kind of girl who's too reserved to say a _word_
about her lover! How much easier it would be if Eleanor were even
the exhausting type who brought her hair-brushes into my room every
night to gush over what he's like. I don't even get a hint of what
he _is_ like to her!" And she persisted, urgently, aloud--"_Did_ you
watch him at breakfast? He was watching you, Eleanor, as a cat
watches a mouse-hole! He was waiting with all his ears to hear what
you'd say when he suddenly _burst_ it upon us--upon you--that your
letters were coming home to roost!"
"Have you any other reason," Eleanor enquired, "for thinking he's
thought anything of the kind?"
"No, I haven't. But one can't help feeling things like that, in
one's bones," persisted Rosamond. "The whole air at breakfast-time
was _quivering_ with something being 'up.' I saw Mr. Ted Urquhart
looking it, I tell you!"
"Oh, you fancied it."
"I wish I had! No," said Rosamond gloomily. "Either he's caught us
out, or he will soon."
"Nonsense," said Eleanor, a little uneasily, a little shortly.
More shortly Rosamond took her up. "Well, do you care to ask him if
he's noticed----"
"I? Ask him anything at all about it? Certainly not."
"Very well. Then we--you won't know anything until he chooses,"
prophesied Rosamond, kneeling again. "I mean until he's definitely
got to the bottom of the whole trick we played upon him."
"Er--Did you get me a few sp-p-p-prigs of rosemary to put in with the
rest? Thank you," said the restrained little voice of Eleanor as she
stood over her. It added with less restraint, "I don't like your
calling that a 'trick.'"
"I'm sorry. But I think you'll find he'll call it one," returned her
secretary, stripping the sprigs of rosemary with fingers that shook a
little from temper, though her voice was quiet. She was thinking,
"If there's any truth in the old proverb '_Where Rosemary grows the
Mistress is Master_' the bush I picked this from will be withered up
by next year."
She continued to speak quite quietly. "Surely, Eleanor, you see that
he isn't the sort of man to stand it? I mean what man would put up
with having a stranger's letters palmed off on him, under the
pretence that they came from his _fiancée_? Imagine a man like
Mr.--_Any_ man, I mean! When he finds out that's what's been
done--well, I'm afraid of what will happen!"
"_You_ are afraid?"
"Yes. Do you think I've nothing to lose? I've my living!" said
Rosamond, sitting back on her heels and looking up at her girlish
employer. "The reason I gave in to you about writing to him at all
was because I didn't want to lose my post here! That's what I'm
afraid of now!"
"But--I haven't been thinking of your going!" said Eleanor.
"You may have to think of it!" said Rosamond relentlessly.
"Supposing you can't afford to keep on a secretary any longer?
Supposing you leave The Court? Supposing your engagement--suddenly
ends?"
Still Eleanor didn't understand.
"Why should it suddenly end?"
"Your _fiancé_," said Rosamond, "might think that trick was reason
enough!"
"_What!_"
"Well, _I_ think so--now," said Rosamond, lifting those drying
rose-leaves and letting them slip through her white fingers again.
Eleanor's face, looking down at her, at last began to show a dawning
anxiety. She protested, "But I was so busy!"
"Well!" The secretary-girl gave a short laugh. "Tell him that!"
"I--see," said Eleanor, slowly. She was silent for a moment as she
stood, backed by the clipped box-hedge, looking down at the green
turf and at the flower-strewn paper and at the easy movements of the
kneeling girl at her feet. "You mean--that might seem so odd to Ted.
Now I've seen him----"
"It seemed impossible enough to me before I saw him! But now
_you've_ seen him," said Rosamond, tossing her petals, "you don't
want him to break off the engagement, do you?"
"Oh, Rosamond! _No_! Of _course_ I don't!" agreed the other girl
with a sudden fervour that made her secretary glance quickly at her.
A new note of trepidation shook that little trite arranging voice of
Eleanor's as she gasped, "Don't you see what it would mean to me?"
Rosamond nearly exclaimed, "Does he, then, mean so much after all?"
But Ted Urquhart's _fiancée_ went on, "How could I carry on my
Club-work if we didn't live at The Court? You know, Father would
lose all the estate money that Ted wishes him to use; and he has very
little of his own, I've only three hundred a year of my own, from my
mother. As it is at present, I am able to put aside more than a
hundred a year of that towards the Hostel, and I can hand over fifty
to Miss Fabian's Guild. And then there's the use of The Court
for----"
The ruling passion again; the good works and the girls! Rosamond
Fayre listened in speechless amazement; and, humbly enough, she
reflected, "Yes. Eleanor is a much better sort of girl than I am.
She's marrying money--but it's all for other people! Her only fear
is for those Clubs and that they might lose what she can do to help
them. She's willing to sacrifice even _herself_. Oh, I'm afraid I
could never sacrifice _my_self. Not even for money! It must be my
Pansyishness and vulgarity that makes me think only of the kind of
sweetheart I'd like!"
Then came the wonder, "What about _him_? What about Eleanor's dear
Ted?"
Judging from his attention to Eleanor, he was devoted to her,
Rosamond thought. He evidently didn't mind the--the aloofness of his
_fiancée_. He perhaps admired her all the more for it; thought it
part of her unselfishness and sincerity. But when he found out that
the sincerity had failed in one particular, _towards himself_?
Wasn't the devotion more than likely to fail also?
But here was Eleanor saying in a brightening tone, "Well, there are
only two or three more letters to come now. And even if Ted did
think there might have been something odd about those, the whole
question of letter-writing will soon blow over----"
"Oh, _will_ it!" thought her secretary. "Not after he gets that
letter I wrote at the Hostel!"
It was on the tip of her tongue to say so.
But, after all, that Hostel-letter, which loomed incessantly at the
back of Rosamond's mind, had nothing to do with Eleanor. _It was not
signed with Eleanor's name_. Rosamond was in no way bound to talk
about it. So she merely shook her bright head and said ruefully,
"I'm not counting on anything 'blowing over.' I'm only sure that we
both stand to lose a good deal!"
Now Eleanor was really troubled. She fidgeted with the handle of her
empty basket. She, usually so prompt with what was to be done next
in all her affairs, asked quite helplessly, "What _are_ we to do if
it turns out that you are right?"
"What _can_ we do?" rejoined Rosamond, looking up again. "You don't
think he can be spoken to about what happened?"
"_I_ can't speak to him. N-N-No, of course I can't," decided Miss
Urquhart. "Could _you_?"
"D'you mean if I were in your place?" rejoined her secretary. "But
if I were, you see, I shouldn't have got myself into this particular
fix. If I'd been engaged to--to anybody, I'd have written my own
love-letters!"
"I d-d-don't mean that at all. I mean, could you go now and tell
Ted,--you, Rosamond, yourself,--what I got you to do for me?"
"No," said Rosamond, firmly. "No."
"Then nobody will tell him," said Eleanor.
"Then we shall have to wait and see if he elects to tell us. Very
well. There seems nothing else to be done."
"And then what?" demanded Rosamond, again rising from her knees.
"For then--especially after we _don't_ tell him!--there's still the
question whether he breaks off the engagement."
"Oh, it _can't_ come to that!" demurred Eleanor, petulant with
anxiety.
"It can come to whatever he wishes. What we did was, after all,
_forgery_!"
"Oh, it was n-n-nothing of the kind!"
"The penalty's the same!"
"'Penalty'? You've a most unpleasant way of putting things!" said
Eleanor, facing her.
But it was not Eleanor's annoyance that made her secretary tremble
for her post. Rosamond answered without hesitation, "I mean the
broken engagement."
"If it is broken, it will be your fault," Eleanor retorted quite
hotly. "You will have done it, with--" again she pointed down to the
coded kisses on the paper--"with those two--things!"
"No; I shan't. You'll have done it yourself," Rosamond insisted,
"with your whole senseless idea of dragging a third person into it at
all. Always a mistake, in any engagement! Always----"
She paused. Both girls were flushed now. They looked into each
other's faces with hostile eyes. Then both at once seemed to realise
that hostility cannot be allowed between allies making common cause
against an enemy.
Eleanor smiled deprecatingly, though still on her dignity, and began
again, "Well, we need not quarrel."
Rosamond said ruefully--
"I'm sorry I called your idea 'senseless'----"
"I'm sorry I said what I did about those--about your message,"
admitted Eleanor. "I daresay plenty of--other girls might put that
sort of thing in a letter----"
Rosamond's blue eyes fell--upon the strewn rose-petals that reminded
her of something. She murmured:
"That--message wasn't very much worse, I thought, than the handful of
rose-leaves you sent him, another time. You did send those!"
"Yes, but you told me to!" protested Eleanor. "Don't you remember?
That was one of your ideas!"
"Oh! dear!" sighed Rosamond, "so it was----"
"Anyhow," said Eleanor, "those didn't count."
(English rose-leaves--in a South American camp! Worn at a woman's
breast--carrying their message a thousand miles and more--treasured
in a man's pocketbook even now--_They didn't count?_)
"The question is," repeated Eleanor, "what are we to do now? Can we
settle what we are to say if Ted does ask anything?"
"If he asks, 'Why are some of your letters so different?' had you
better say that you, personally, don't consider they are
different----" mused Rosamond.
"Shall I have to ask to see them all (if he's kept them) and then go
over them with him and _explain_ them?" suggested the engaged girl
dolefully. "I don't believe I shall even remember which _are_ my
own!"
"He'll soon tell you which he thinks are _not_!"
"Oh, Rosamond! Oh, why did I ever ask you to help me over the
wretched letters? Oh! How I wish I hadn't even promised I'd write
every mail-day! Shall I say that to _him_? Or had I better----"
The discussion prolonged itself until the two girls were even later
for lunch than was the young man against whom they plotted.
And in the end, all the decision to which these fellow-conspirators
came was the time-honoured decision that closes so many even
weightier discussions:
--Namely, "For the present to let things drift!"