CHAPTER XVI

"NOT TO BE FORWARDED"

Miss Urquhart's secretary was not the only person at Urquhart's Court

who thought of "that Hostel-letter."

For presently the young man to whom it had been written, the young

man who had been forced into posting it to himself in that French

pillar-box at the crossroads, yes, Mr. Ted Urquhart himself,

remembered that last letter that was to come.

And he'd realised that there was something odder than all the rest of

it about the posting of that letter.

Hadn't it been handed to him to post, by Eleanor's secretary, through

the window of Eleanor's Hostel? But Eleanor herself had been at that

moment in Paris. Now what was the meaning of that? thought Urquhart.

Why hadn't his _fiancée_ written direct from Paris, where she had put

in a whole week?

Why, in the name of all that was mysterious, had she left that letter

behind her?

Was Eleanor in the habit of writing letters and addressing envelopes

for him at odd times, and then deputing them to be posted, one by

one, at the right time--_or what_?

Young Ted Urquhart, brooding over these questions in that second

inner life of his, had a presentiment that perhaps that Hostel-letter

might prove the key to a situation.

Once before he had reckoned up how long it would be before that

letter reached him. This had been as he stood on the dusty, white

French road, weighing in his hand the letter which he then imagined

had been written to him by that goddess-built, golden blonde whom his

thoughts had called "Nell"----

Never mind that now. Here he was walking along an English road that

wound between English hop-fields, and reckoning up how long it would

be before he received the last of Eleanor's letters that she had ever

written before she met him in the flesh.

He remembered--and he laid his plans accordingly.

These were his plans.

He determined to say nothing to Eleanor on the subject of letters.

To wait at The Court until that last letter arrived. Then--well,

there was an open invitation to the house of an old schoolfellow in

Wales, for some fishing. He'd fit that in. He'd go away, first

making Eleanor promise to write to him. Then he'd have letters to

compare. With luck he'd have some definite excuse to speak out his

mind to Eleanor upon his return.

It was a little thing that nipped Ted Urquhart's plans in the bud.

The old schoolfellow wrote to him from Wales begging him to try and

fit in his week at once if he possibly could.

Ted Urquhart was obliged to go two days before he intended. Before

the arrival of that Hostel-letter.

It is not necessary to describe in detail that Welsh visit, or how

young Urquhart fished without very much luck.

Wales, with its jagged skylines and rich crazy-work colours should

have been a change to him after those flat miles of dove-coloured

weald about The Court; but the fact is that Ted Urquhart didn't seem

to care what sort of country he was in just then. For the first time

in his whole life he was more interested in things that were going on

inside his own mind. He had moods, like a girl....

Also he found the people amazingly dull....

He never knew how dull the people found him, or what strictures the

girls of the house passed upon the stodginess and the apathy of

engaged young men.

Only, he overheard a remark of his hostess's that set him wondering

again.

--"hope they'll be happy! But I am afraid the man who marries

Eleanor Urquhart will find that he's let himself in for marrying S.

Ursula's eleven thousand----"

Here a door had shut.

What could his hostess mean?

Did she mean that his Eleanor was such a many-sided little creature

that the man who got her found eleven thousand different types of

wife rolled into one? He wished he could have catechised his

hostess....

Every day he received a note from Eleanor. An absolutely deadly one.

Dutiful, short, and in the style of all her first letters from The

Court.

But the Hostel-letter wasn't forwarded on.

Yet he'd thought he'd made sure of the date when that Hostel-letter

ought to have arrived.

It didn't come.

Odd!

Now that Hostel-letter, with the French stamp and postmark under the

South American scrawl had arrived at The Court.

Weeks ago that unbetraying grey envelope had been stared at

resentfully, in a passion of curiosity, by some one who, standing on

a road in France, longed to open the letter, but knew that he

mustn't. And now it was being eyed as if it were a bomb timed to go

off at a given hour, by two girls standing in the hall of an English

country-house.

Young Urquhart had held the letter, weighing it in his hand. Eleanor

Urquhart and Rosamond Fayre gazed at it as it lay on the oaken

hall-table, on the top of a boot-maker's catalogue, and an

advertisement for fishing-rods addressed to E. Urquhart, Esq.

"Here's this letter of mine--of ours to Ted. And goodness knows if

there may not be something in it that'll give us away worse than the

others did, if we could only go over it and see," exclaimed Ted's

_fiancée_ to her secretary in low, dismayed tones. "Oh! To think

that it's practically mine--and yet I can't touch it, Rosamond!"

Rosamond knowing all too well that this particular letter was _not_

Eleanor's, returned, "Well! _I_ can't touch it, either!"

In Eleanor's dark eyes she read the unuttered longing that it were

possible to suppress that possibly tell-tale letter; to burn it

without saying a word. The engaged girl heaved a big sigh, turning

away from the hall-table almost as if from a temptation. She

murmured ruefully, "Well, it will have to be forwarded on to him in

Wales. Re-address it with the other two, Rosamond, please."

"I?" remonstrated Rosamond.

"Of course! My dear! We c-c-can't have both our handwritings on the

same envelope. That really might show something. You've the Welsh

address, haven't you? With all those double Ls----"

"Yes, but--it does seem such an irony to have to forward it with

one's own hand. Sort of signing one's own dismissal! And to tell

you the truth," broke from the secretary-girl, "I hate thinking of

his getting it behind our backs, so to speak, and of our not knowing

what he may be planning against us until he comes!"

"Wait till he comes then, if you think it's better," suggested

Eleanor Urquhart, turning a flurried, irritable little face. "He'll

be back in four days. Don't send the letter on. Only, if it stays

down here, Beeton has such a c-c-c-conscientious way of re-addressing

letters he thinks we've forgotten." She turned away again towards

her office. "It had better be put up on Ted's dressing-table,

Rosamond."

Rosamond took a step after her, speaking in the conspiratorial murmur

which now seemed to be growing upon both girls.

"Eleanor, the servants know your _fiancé_ isn't coming home till

Monday. Mightn't they think it odd if they were told to keep the

letter for him----"

"Yes, I suppose they might. Oh, dear, what a lot of things there are

to be careful about now," complained Eleanor. "I suppose _you'd_

better p-p-put the letter into Mr. Ted Urquhart's room."

Rosamond straightened her back.

She felt like using the phraseology of a rebellious housemaid, and

saying, "That's not _my_ place." Eleanor was growing more impossible

nowadays; her salary certainly had to be worked for, thought

Rosamond. She said aloud, rather shortly, "It wouldn't 'show,' on

the envelope, which of us put the letter into his room."

"No," said Eleanor, also shortly. "But I hate going into other

people's rooms."

Rosamond suppressed a Pansy-like inclination to think, "Well, it'll

be _your_ room soon; that is if we're lucky, and if your engagement

isn't broken off."

She took that letter, written by herself on an impulse now bitterly

regretted. She went upstairs with it; and then, stepping almost as

softly as if she were a thief who might be stopped by an enquiry of

"What business have you in here?" she entered the young man's

deserted room.

How that faint pleasant smell of leather-mixed-with-cigarettes seemed

to pervade the place!

The tall fair girl stood for a second hesitating with the letter in

her hand. She sent the swiftest glance about her, then gave one

touch to her burnished hair before the glass on Mr. Ted Urquhart's

dressing-table.... Then, a sudden quick sound made her start

violently, flushed to the brow.... Oh! It was only a starling,

whirring out of the ivy that framed the window outside. This

dressing-table--here--was the conventional place to put a note.

Rosamond put it down and dashed out of the room.

On the stairs again she thought, "I'd like to see his face when he

reads _that_! Well, he'll get it the minute he comes back."

Ted Urquhart came back late on Monday afternoon to find his uncle,

his _fiancée_ and Miss Fayre, the secretary, grouped in the bay about

the tea-table listening to the conversation of an elderly man, some

friend of his Uncle's. Young Urquhart dropped into a chair beside

Eleanor, who bestowed upon him a cup of tea and a half-deprecating,

half-absent-minded little smile.

"Just when the only thing to do in the circumstances would be to keep

her hold on her _fiancé_ by being nicer and more on-coming than usual

to him," thought Rosamond from the other side of the tea-table. As

tactics, she bitterly resented Eleanor's manner to young Mr.

Urquhart. "Of course a girl should make herself so indispensable to

the man that he'd think, '_Oh, be hanged to letters! They're only

stop-gaps anyhow. I don't care how many other people she got to

write to me for her, provided I keep her within speaking distance of

me now, until the finish!_' But Eleanor hasn't a notion of that sort

in her head!"

And Rosamond turned her own golden head away from the unrewarding

view of that engaged couple and began again idly to listen to what

the elderly Professor-person had to say to old Mr. Urquhart.

It was a haze of words and phrases that Rosamond's acquisitive

feminine mind "let through," as her shallow wicker-work basket, made

to hold rose-leaves, would let through heavier grain. It seemed to

be all about "literary criticism" and "style"--things that had far

less interest for Miss Fayre than the slope on the shoulders of a

blouse she'd been cutting out before tea.

Suddenly, however, her mind leapt to attention.

The old Dryasdust-man was violently tapping his palm with his

forefinger and almost shouting at Mr. Urquhart, who looked intensely

irritated, "but, my dear sir, the personal elements of style can

_never_ be eliminated! The plagiarist may imitate the writing, the

general trend of argument may arrive at the same conclusions, but the

_unconscious_ elements of style remain." This Rosamond thought she

grasped.

"Unconscious elements"--Those were not rose-leaves, or the little

"plus" signs that stood for kisses, but _the give-away tone_ as of a

voice speaking between the lines, the things in writing that the

writer can't help!

Good Heavens!

And men recognised the fact? These literary people called Bently,

and Boyle, and--was it Faleris?--had had arguments about it all

before Rosamond was born! There might be some pitfall here that she

and Eleanor had never dreamt of; and they didn't know enough about it

to avoid it; how dreadful!

Desperately the secretary-girl turned to the expounding Professor.

"That's very interesting," she said, as old Mr. Urquhart was silent;

his gray elf-locks seemed almost to bristle with annoyance at being

worsted in whatever this argument was. "But please do explain it a

little more; does it mean that if you had two letters, typewritten

say, by different people, and unsigned, that you could be certain to

find out which of them was written by the----"

Here her pretty, interested voice trailed suddenly off into an

appalled silence.

She'd met the eyes of Mr. Ted Urquhart full and square upon her. And

he was listening, intently. He was looking as if this subject of the

identification of a style of writing held some arresting interest

_for himself_!

Instantly she looked away again, but not before the blush that rose

so easily to her soft cheeks had flooded them with the deepest, most

betraying pink.

"_He_ saw that. Oh, _why_ must I turn colour like a mid-Victorian

missy always? He'll put two and two together now," Rosamond raged at

herself as that scorching, lovely blush faded slowly. "As soon as he

reads my letter that's in his room he'll guess why I turned so

idiotically red and why Eleanor's letters had the wrong sort of

'unconscious elements' and everything! There! He's going!" she

thought in an added flurry as the young man set down his cup and

rose. "In two minutes he'll find that fatal, fatal Hostel-letter on

his dressing-table. And he's bound to say whatever he means to say

directly! This evening, for certain----"

But that evening passed without event.

Several days passed. And still two girls in an English country-house

waited anxiously, while a young man in whose sun-burnt and restrained

mask of a face the impatient eyes seemed on the look-out for

something far away, said absolutely nothing further on the subject of

letters.

"There you are, you see, Rosamond! You were wrong, and it is quite

all right," Eleanor reassured her secretary in the trite little voice

to which all the self-assurance had returned. "Ted hasn't said a

word, in spite of getting another letter that you'd written!"

"It's almost enough to make one think he hasn't got the wretched

letter," thought Rosamond. "Yet I left it staring him in the face on

his dressing-table! If he insisted on 'having it out' with me about

the odious letter it would be horrid enough of him. But if he isn't

going to have anything out, _ever, it's--it's--unpardonable!_"

The fact was that Miss Rosamond Fayre's first surmise had been right.

Ted Urquhart had not found the letter that she had left on his

dressing-table. It was lying hidden where he would not readily see

it.

For as Rosamond was closing the door behind her that morning, a

chance breeze from the open window, stirred into a strong draught,

had lifted the light, foreign-papered letter as it lay and had swept

it off the table and down towards that serried row of young

Urquhart's so varied footwear; brown brogues, black boots, soft

moccasins, shooting-, fishing-, and riding-boots....

It was at the bottom of one of Ted's tall riding-boots that

Rosamond's Hostel-letter had found a hiding-place!

And the days went by--days fraught with fate for England, nodding

over her sheathed sword.

_PART II_

IN TIME OF WAR

CHAPTER I

THE CALL TO ARMS

There came a time when Rosamond Fayre began to think that the Fates

had doomed her to spend far too much of her existence with a pen in

her hand!

Paper and ink, and the complications to which paper and ink had

led--these futile, barren things seemed to have made up the whole of

her life ever since that afternoon at the beginning of the summer

when she'd sat down to write another girl's courtship-letter.

Well, her pen, of course, was Miss Fayre's profession. Clerical work

was what she seemed fitted for. And she sighed to think so.

By the middle of August, Nineteen Fourteen, she felt she had good

reason to sigh impatiently, not only over her work, but over her sex;

things that barred her from the life of glorious Action and stir and

comradeship that seemed so much better worth living!

For a fully feminine young woman of Rosamond's type considers, and

will always consider, that the Sword is mightier than the Pen....

How suddenly that glint of the drawn sword had flashed over England,

even into such rose-garlanded, chintz-hung haunts of Peace as

Urquhart's Court!

Yes: suddenly one day in its mellow oak-panelled dining-room, under

the placidly-smiling Romney portrait, there appeared pinned up a

brightly-coloured War-map, bristling with tiny flags of the European

nations. In the pot-pourri-scented drawing-room bales of grey Army

flannel were heaped knee-deep about Eleanor Urquhart, who would give

them out to wives of Reservists in the village for sewing into shirts

for the troops. And up in her own pretty room sat Rosamond Fayre the

secretary-girl writing (on her own account) a Good-bye to a young man

who would shortly be off to the Front.

She wrote:--

"My dear Cecil,

"Thank you for your letter, which I was so very glad to get. It's

splendid that you Territorials will, as you say, be allowed a look-in

at the present show, and I do congratulate you with all my heart.

"For the first time in my life I would change places with a man, just

so as to be a soldier. It's in War-time that you score. I suppose

that if he were alive now my dear old boy would be going out, with

luck, with your Draft."

Then she paused. This was not the way she really wished to write.

She would have liked to send a really warm, affectionate letter to

her brother's gentle and plucky chum. Gladly she would have told him

that she was proud of him; proud to think that one young soldier who

was fighting for his country had offered himself to her, and that her

thoughts and prayers would follow him.... But it would be fatal,

even now, to write that sort of letter to Cecil Bray. He would take

it for more than mere sisterly encouragement, she knew. He would be

back again with his innocent, persistent wooing, as soon as the War

was over. Or even before. Poor dear Cecil, she thought whimsically,

was just the sort of youth who might be expected to slip on the

gang-plank of the troopship as he was embarking, to break a leg or a

collar-bone, and to be left behind, cursing his luck that would not

hold either in War or Love. Yes; Rosamond must keep her farewells

coolly friendly if she wished to avoid another of those urgent boyish

proposals, and another rueful "Oh, Cecil, I am so sorry," later on.

She must write on "outside" subjects only. Rather a pity that she

couldn't employ Eleanor to write some of her letters, even as Eleanor

employed Rosamond. Miss Urquhart's triteness would be useful here!

And Rosamond wrote on:

"Even in this Sleepy Hollow of a house we are managing to raise three

men. Beeton the butler went first. He is an old Naval Reserve man,

and it seems he was all ready to rejoin before his orders came.

"Then Mr. Marrow the gardener here went off with the Yeomanry; and

the chauffeur has given notice and is going to enlist."

Here Rosamond put down that everlasting pen of hers and gazed out of

the open casement-window above the writing-table thoughtfully....

She didn't think, at first, that she was thinking of anything in

particular.... But she was.

She was wondering why the men raised for the Army at Urquhart's Court

were _only three_?

And Cecil's letter was interrupted while she wondered about it.

There ought to have been four men from the Court.

There was Mr. Ted Urquhart! why, why on earth was _he_ not going too?

Why wasn't _he_ volunteering--putting in for some sort of a

commission--enlisting--getting out somehow to the War?

For Rosamond Fayre, like a million other gently-nurtured girls, who

could not have endured one of War's details, could yet contemplate

War as a whole with a glad stir of the pulses and the deep-rooted

conviction that "_Two things greater than All things are--One is Love

and the other is War_"--Man's Big Job. Even so kindly men (while

wincing from any hint of a woman's suffering) will think with a shake

of the head of the woman who shirks the Big Job of womankind, and

will say "A pity she doesn't have any babies."

Rosamond, the Army doctor's daughter, thought it not only a pity, but

absolutely inexplicable that young Mr. Urquhart hadn't answered the

call to arms.

Wouldn't they take him?

But they took slow, middle-aged men like Beeton? They took mere boys

like the chauffeur? They took weeds like Mr. Marrow the gardener,

thought the disdainful Rosamond, who, with all women, judged a man's

usefulness entirely by his shoulders and limbs. Surely they'd jump

at the sort of man who could carry castings and boilers and things up

the Andes? Why, look at him! His clean "fit"-ness; his whole

impression of lithe strength! Even Eleanor's girls had thought he

"looked as if he might be a soldier" that time in France, so long

ago, when they hadn't known who he was! Wasn't he going to turn

soldier, _now_? His hand was probably as well used to a gun as

Rosamond's own fingers were to the silver handle of her mirror.

Of course it had nothing to do with Rosamond. It wasn't her business

to feel pleased with him, or the reverse.

But she couldn't help thinking that if she were in Eleanor's place

she would be bitterly disappointed in Mr. Ted Urquhart. Even poor

dear Cecil Bray, who was so much younger and who wasn't even a

soldier's son, who had never been further away from Oxford than

Florence, even he was showing himself to be after all more of a man

than the other!

The thought of Cecil brought her back to his letter. The ink upon

the paper was black and dry at the last sentence.

Slowly Cecil's letter was resumed.

"The Urquharts themselves have the intellectual, 'enlightened'

Angell-ic sort of way of looking at the War, I think. Old Mr.

Urquhart is one of those people who have always declared that War is

now impossible, and that it has no part in our modern civilisation,

our modern culture. And now he quite calmly says he's like

Archimedes, poring over his documents, while the armies rage outside

his tent. Miss Urquhart thinks that 'All War is so Wrong?" The only

side she can see of it is that the husbands of so many of her old

Club-girls are Reservists and that the pay their wives are allowed is

so scandalously small. I am sure it will be supplemented by Miss

Urquhart's last half-penny.

"Will you please remember me to your Mother when you write to her"----

Rosamond thought with a lump in her throat of gentle, grey-haired

Mrs. Bray. She wished she might add another message. She envied

her; she thought it must be wonderful to be the mother of a fighting

son.... This she concluded to leave out. So she ended up--

--"and wishing you the best of luck, and plenty to do, and a safe

return,

"I remain, my dear Cecil,

"Your old friend,

"Rosamond Fayre."

As she fastened the envelope she heard the sound of a quick footstep

go past her door. Mr. Ted Urquhart's. How light-heartedly he was

whistling as he turned into his own room!

And yet he was turning his back on what other young men of his kind

were eager to meet!

Here, however, Rosamond Fayre's conclusions about the young master of

The Court were quite wrong.

She did not know that long, long ago Ted Urquhart, who had trained as

a Civil Engineer, had passed specially well in some technically

military examination, had been recommended for a commission in the

R.E. Special Reserve, and had put in the requisite drills at

Aldershot before he went out to that work in South America....

And at this moment he was fuming that some detail of red tape

prevented him from joining upon the instant. Still, waiting was

discipline to which he must accustom himself.

And letters were not the only things upon which this young man could

keep his mouth shut; he had not mentioned a word of his plans for

joining, either to his uncle or to his _fiancée_.

Eleanor! She was the girl he was to marry, but there was not a girl

or woman in the land to whom he would not presently stand in a direct

relation--that of protector--the man behind the gun.

Up in his room he moved about, whistling, pacing up and down, trying

to kill the time that dragged so before the authorities should find

all in order; making himself ready as if he might hope to embark next

day.

There was another copy of a birth-certificate to be turned up, too....

Also he might decide which of his smaller personal possessions could

travel with him as part of his Service-kit.... His flask; he must

get a lighter concern than that. A housewife he had. "Wire-nippers,

mustn't forget," he interrupted the whistle to mutter. Then he went

on whistling as he sorted receipted bills--("Hand over to Uncle

Henry") and took out his worn letter-case ("Might get a smaller

one"). On the Elizabethan bed was spread out that business-like

invention of a soldier's wife, the newly-patented Manœuvre-rug

("Godsend, that, presently"). Some of these boots might be cleared

away.... He lifted one of his riding-boots, turned it upside down to

examine some slight sign of wear on the heel.

Once more, and very suddenly, he stopped that whistle.

He did not go on whistling.

There had dropped from its hiding-place in his boot, a letter.

He picked it up from the green carpet; gave it one glance, recognised

the French stamp and the writing. Ah!

Yes; here it was. Delayed, long-looked-for, mislaid, and come back

to him at last.

"The Hostel-letter!"

That white Hostel was deserted now; its green shutters barred, and

all that friendly coast was to-day a waste for the Enemy....

And here, a written relic of those days of English holiday-making on

French soil, was this letter.

Hurriedly young Urquhart tore it open. Quickly he read through _the

one sentence_ that it contained.

Then his brown hand, holding the letter, dropped.

"What?" he said curtly, aloud.

Again he held up the grey sheet, fastening his eyes upon the curly

clear writing of it as if he would learn it off by heart.

Yet there was only one sentence in it, and such a short and simple

one. It would not take much committing to memory. And he knew it:

his memory would hold it for ever, together with a picture.... The

War had almost blotted out that picture; now it returned, almost

obliterating all sterner images for a moment.

The picture of a golden-haired girl in white, sitting writing at an

open window, then raising her small burnished head on its creamy neck

to tell him quietly that she had changed her mind about coming out

with him that afternoon, and that he might post the letters for her

instead.

This was all that she had written in the Hostel-letter:

"_Mr. Urquhart, I Know quite well who you are._"

And she'd signed it with her own name,

"ROSAMOND FAYRE."

He thrust the note into his pocket and stood frowning....

Presently he thought he'd better attend to the business in hand, turn

up that blessed certificate. Where was the thing? He turned out the

case of stationery on his writing-table--nothing there. He went to

the small drawer where he kept handkerchiefs, turned it upside down

upon the bed, glanced at the folded square of newspaper that had been

taken to line the drawer. A headline took his eye: "_The Naval

Meeting at Kiel. Arrival of the British Squadron._" Extraordinarily

incongruous that looked to eyes that were now accustomed to such

different items in the _Morning Post_! This was only dated June 24,

yet it seemed part of something as remote and futile as his Uncle

Henry's documents; an irresponsible echo from the Past.

The letter in his pocket might also stand for something just as

remote, just as completely crowded out by weightier happenings....

But young Urquhart, keen as he was on those happenings, could not

resign himself philosophically to forgetting the other. Not yet ...

not entirely....

So when he had run the missing birth-certificate to earth under his

mirror he turned again to the letter, and pondered over it....

Putting detail to detail; Eleanor's preoccupations, the mischievous

temperament of that other girl; Eleanor's once more flavourless

letters to him in Wales, the things that Professor-Johnnie had been

saying the other afternoon about forgeries and plagiarisms, that

other girl's sudden blush----

Seeing at last this letter of Miss Fayre's as the key to all those

other letters, purporting to come from Eleanor, with that

disturbingly unfamiliar note.

He saw it all now. Of course. That was it. _She_--the

secretary-girl--_had written those others_!

If that proved to be so, thought Ted, absently polishing the bowl of

his pipe on his jacket-sleeve, it meant that all his hopes of

discovering a new Eleanor were dashed to the ground.

There was no "new" Eleanor.

There remained only the cold-blooded little cousin whom he ought to

marry, and the other girl who was going to marry another man.

"Well! Couldn't have a more thoroughly cheerless look-out than

_that_!"

Still! He'd be off soon. Off "somewhere in France." Somewhere,

where he hoped it mightn't seem to matter so frightfully much _which_

girl a man is engaged to out of all those that he had left behind him.

And he might make sure about that other; quite sure.

He slipped his pipe into his pocket again and turned quickly out of

his room.

At the head of the staircase, as Luck would have it, he encountered

that other girl, Eleanor's secretary.

She came out of her room behind him.

He stopped dead and wheeled round to face her.

And she, with the letter to Cecil Bray in her hand, tilted her

burnished head slightly to glance up at Ted Urquhart. She was

thinking to herself, "M'well! You don't _look_ the kind of young man

who would be gun-shy. So perhaps it isn't that? Perhaps you feel

you've other responsibilities to attend to? This lovely old Court of

yours, and so on? Still! I should have thought you'd have liked to

take a hand yourself in defending it from those Blonde Beasts of

Huns? To know you had done something at least to stop them from

trampling their charges all across its lawns, and from making

bonfires of its old carved oak, and from throwing Mrs. Marrow's

little children, perhaps, into the flames? For that's the kind of

thing they'd be doing in every Englishman's home at the present

moment, if every young and fit Englishman had been the sort of

slacker that you are!"

Now, these comments, of course, Miss Fayre kept to herself, as far as

the letter was concerned. But the whole spirit of them was made

clear enough by her manner. It was allowed to inform her (extremely

meek) enquiry as to whether Mr. Urquhart would be kind enough to tell

her "how you ought to address a Territorial Officer who had

volunteered for Active Service; was it just Esquire, or did you, in

time of war, put 'Lieutenant'?"

He answered her briefly.

He was perfectly conscious of that unuttered feminine fling at a

defaulter so young and so able-bodied; he was also conscious that he

could retaliate very completely if he chose.

She didn't deserve to be so beautiful, he thought.

She had the assurance to smile at him, and to say lightly, "Please go

on; I mustn't pass you on the stairs. It means a fight--that is, it

means that we shall quarrel."

"That would be a pity," said young Urquhart shortly.

He went down a step. Then he paused.

"One moment, Miss Fayre----"

It was in his mind to go on, "D'you mind coming out into the garden

while we get something cleared up between us? ... Yes; there is

something I wanted to say.... To begin with--You don't _look_ the

kind of girl who'd forge. Why did you do it?"

But he thought better of it. After all, this was a thing he had to

speak to her employer about first.

Behind him the voice of the secretary said, just a little

apprehensively, "Yes?"

"Oh--er--I only wanted to ask," he said, "if you knew where I should

find Eleanor?"

"She is in the drawing-room," said Miss Fayre, and in her voice there

might have been detected a note of relief mingled with some

exasperation.

He went to find Eleanor in the drawing-room.

CHAPTER II

THE WHITE FEATHER

About the Court drawing-room that grey Army flannel still lay in

drifts, shrouding the pinks and peaches and creams of the summery

chintz, and heaping the soft dead-rose-coloured Aubusson carpet. On

every chair were stacked green cardboard boxes, half-unpacked, with

parcels of shirts, socks, mufflers, pyjamas, every sort of

undergarment that the troops might or might not require; all ordered

as patterns by Miss Urquhart.

The small, grey-gowned brunette herself was sitting in one of the

window-seats with her back to the sun-bathed Terrace outside, bending

those dark brows of hers over the complexities of a Balaclava helmet

that she was going to knit, when her _fiancé_ came quietly in and

stood before her.

"Eleanor," he said.

"Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-SIX," counted the absorbed Eleanor

aloud over her knitting. "Wait a minute. Drop five and then go

on--Oh, Ted, mind, please! That's the pattern for a soldier's

bed-jacket that you've got your foot on."

"Sorry," said the young man, stepping back off one of the perforated

plans of tissue-paper that added their litter to the other signs of

toil. "If you can spare me one minute----"

"Five, six, seven," murmured Eleanor.

--"I came," he said, rather more abruptly, "to tell you something."

"Oh, yes?" said Eleanor, suddenly flurried, dismayed.

She thought to herself, "Oh dear! Is this what Rosamond said, after

all? Is he going to begin about those letters?" And she made a

movement as if she would put the work away from her lap. There was a

frightened little catch in her voice as she went on, "What is it,

Ted? I'll c-come into the office if you like, and get Miss Fayre to

finish c-clearing up these b-b-b-bundles of stuff in here."

Young Urquhart reflected a little bitterly that his _fiancée_ seemed

able to rely upon Miss Fayre for doing plenty of her odd jobs; from

tidying up her sewing to writing letters to the man she (Miss Fayre's

employer) had promised to marry. But he only hastened to say, "No;

don't trouble. I can tell you in here, it won't take a minute. I

might have told you before. It's practically settled now. I've

asked them to make what use they can of me for Active Service."

Eleanor looked up at him wide-eyed.

"Active Service?" she echoed blankly. "What? You d-don't mean

you're going out too, to this perfectly horrible War?"

"I hope so."

"But, Ted," objected his _fiancée_, "you aren't in the Army."

"I hope to be," said the young fellow.

He went on to explain to the girl, in as few words as possible, his

plans.

He concluded, "I hope this won't upset Uncle Henry or--you very much."

Eleanor shook her dark head with a sigh that was partly of

reassurance. After all, that about the letters seemed to be a false

alarm. This other was very startling, but it was Ted's affair.

"Well, I am afraid Father will think it such a pity. He considers

all this fighting is _so_ unnecessary," said Miss Urquhart, taking up

her work again, "and really if you come to think of it, Ted, so it

is. (Nine, ten, eleven; drop five again.) Why couldn't everything

be settled by Arbitration? It seems so _absurd_, not. In the

Twentieth Century and all, when we ought at least to have outgrown

Brute Force, as Octavia Fabian says. She took me to such a splendid

lecture about it not so long ago." The memory of that lecture

restored the authoritativeness to Eleanor's sedate little voice as

she concluded, "I suppose you've never read anything by a man called

Normal Angell, Ted?"

"Yes, I have," said Ted.

"Well, then, you see what _I_ think about it all: wasting the wealth

of nations on great hulking armies and plunging innocent people into

poverty and suffering, _all for no reason_! I do think (five, six,

seven) that it's so _wrong_----"

"Well, Eleanor, I'm afraid we shan't agree on that if we go on

talking about it for ever," put in the young man temperately. "I

think I'm going, with luck, whatever happens."

A pause, occupied by Eleanor's half-whispered, "Cast on ten, eleven,

twelve, thirteen----"

Then, raising his voice a trifle, young Urquhart began again: "And

when I come back---- But that'll be time enough to talk about that

then, perhaps. There are a good many things that we shall have to

leave standing as they are for the present, Eleanor."

He meant to speak quietly, even casually. But his tone betrayed

something of what he was feeling. Eleanor, who was not usually

susceptible to "tones," but whose uneasy conscience had left her

rather "jumpy," took the point. She laid her work down again, and

glanced quickly at him. He was looking away, over her head, across

the Terrace and the lawn outside, and the expression on his face

betrayed, even to her, more than his tone had done.

Eleanor felt she could not endure any more surprises, any more

suspense over this thing.

She rose and stood before him, small and sallow and nervous. With

that little scared quaver in her voice again she began: "Ted! What

'things'? D-do you m-m-mean about----"

"Ah, never mind what about just now," the young man said quickly.

"As I tell you, it doesn't so much matter----"

"Yes, but it does. B-b-because I've been very unc-c-comfortable

about it! And I c-c-can't let you go like this. I must tell you

that I think I know what you m-m-m-m-mean," protested his _fiancée_,

in a flurry of stuttering. "Is it about some l-l-letters----?"

"No, no, don't let's worry about anything now."

"Yes, but I must. D-d-do let me exp-explain----" she pleaded.

The authoritativeness was melting away from her; so was that feeling

of superiority which it was so easy to acquire in a lecture-hall

surrounded by Octavia Fabian and her set. And as there were

occasions when Miss Fayre craved for the unabashed fluency of the

Principal Boy to back her up, so there were moments when Miss

Urquhart longed for the moral support of a College-educated woman.

It was not to hand. Helplessly Eleanor rushed upon the dangerous

subject which had loomed above her ever since that morning of the

conversation with her secretary over the pot-pourri. She made a

little surrendering gesture with her hands as she cried:

"It _is_ about those l-last four or five l-letters you got from me,

isn't it? I d-_did_ make Rosamond Fayre write them. I am so

dreadfully sorry. But, Ted, I was so busy----"

"All right, all right," he said, looking away. "Never mind now."

But the small dark girl trembling before him would go on faltering

out her trite, childish words of explanation:

"I n-never _can_ write letters, any letters! I'd rather do accounts,

sew, anything. And I hadn't ever seen you, you know! And I didn't

see why Rosamond shouldn't. She _said_ you'd find out. H-how did

you?"

"Oh, by putting two and two together in one way and another, I

suppose," he said listlessly. Nothing--except the Big Job--seemed

worth wasting much interest over just now. Still, he asked, "Would

you mind telling me how long the thing went on?"

"I'll l-look up in my notebook," returned Eleanor with a little gulp.

"I've k-kept the dates of all letters sent----"

"Never mind the dates. Which was the first letter that she--that

Miss Fayre wrote? D'you happen to know what was in it?"

"Yes, I do," returned the engaged girl. "The first that Rosamond

wrote was the one with those rose-leaves in it. Perhaps you

d-d-didn't notice?"

"I noticed them," said young Urquhart drily. "Miss Fayre send those?"

"No, no. I sent those, Ted," replied conscientious Eleanor, feeling

constrained to add, "But she said I ought to! She s-seemed to think

that people abroad would like anything that came from an English

garden, and so I p-p-p-put in those p-p-p-petals from the rose that

she was wearing at the time."

In spite of himself he felt he must take her up here.

He echoed, "'_She_' was wearing?"

"Yes; b-because I hadn't a flower on, Ted," apologised his _fiancée_.

"I'm afraid it was Rosamond's rose."

"And her letters. She wrote all the letters after that. Well!" he

said slowly, "Miss Fayre copies your handwriting, Eleanor, remarkably

well."

He was surprised to hear Eleanor reply:

"Oh, no, she doesn't. I copy hers. I m-m-m-mean, I used to when I

was at school with her," explained Miss Urquhart, looking at the

moment not unlike the prim little monitress of her class who was

listening to a scolding for some only just discovered fault. "And I

kept it up, and it comes quite naturally to me now to write exactly

like Rosamond Fayre, whenever I do write anything. That was long

before there were any letters to you to write. The handwriting had

n-n-nothing to do with it, except that it gave me the idea that

Rosamond might write any letter for me, if I were specially busy!"

"I see," said Ted Urquhart smoothly. "And perhaps you didn't even

need to see the letters."

"M-m-m-most of them I did," pleaded his _fiancée_, her little brown

hands working with nervousness. "I read _n-n-nearly_ all of them,

Ted----"

He was still looking blankly away from her. He said, apparently to

himself, "At least it wasn't deliberate forgery, then."

"Oh, no. _P-please_ don't call it that. She s-s-said you would call

it that! Rosamond said you'd be most frightfully angry with her and

m-me and both of us," blurted out Eleanor distressfully. She glanced

about the stately drawing-room that was so unspeakably useful for her

gatherings; she'd meant to hold Guild of Needlework Meetings in this

big room all through the Autumn. Was this the end of all those

plans? Every trace of colour had left the small strained face as

Eleanor said, "I sup-pup-pose it's quite natural that you should feel

you couldn't forgive me for this."

"What?" he said, as if jerking himself away from thoughts that had

been far enough away from this agitated little dusky-headed creature

who stood there almost pathetically at his mercy; his wife-to-be whom

he had never loved, could never love.

But he found it no difficulty to speak quite gently to her now.

"It's quite all right, Eleanor," he said soothingly, lightly touching

her compact little shoulder. "Please don't look so worried about it.

I wish you wouldn't. Really it was nothing. You hadn't seen me.

What did it matter? Anyhow it doesn't matter now. Nothing does,

particularly--I mean nothing does, honestly," said Ted Urquhart.

"The whole secret's out now, such as it is, and--please, please don't

let's have any rot about--any talk about forgiveness and so on!

"Let's talk about something else," he went on hurriedly, as Eleanor

with a little gasp of relief took out her handkerchief and blew her

nose. "By the way, I'm going to tell Uncle Henry now about my having

applied to the R.E. Special Reserve. But I want that kept dark for

the present. Don't say anything about it, if you don't mind,

to--er--anybody else in the house."

"Very well, Ted," said his _fiancée_ gratefully enough, as the young

man left her. "I won't say a word."

She had, however, something upon the other subject to say to her

secretary.

It was said that evening, after Miss Urquhart had dressed for dinner

in a Lady Mayoressy-looking gown of mauve satin, the sight of which

upon a brunette afflicted Rosamond almost to remonstrance.

Rosamond herself was stitching up a rent in the over-skirt of her

long-suffering old black ninon rag when Miss Urquhart tapped at her

door and entered, bearing herself with more than her usual dignity.

"Been having a row with him," Rosamond guessed from the aggressive

tilt of Eleanor's chin, the line of her small mouth; but Eleanor soon

put her right about the origin of this added stateliness.

It was triumph.

"Rosamond, I must tell you," began her employer, "that I have spoken

to my _fiancé_, and explained to him all about those letters."

She paused for effect, while Rosamond stood, struck motionless in the

act of putting in a stitch. Eleanor added: "And you were quite,

quite wrong about its making him so angry!"

"What?" In her surprise Rosamond dropped her thimble and her reel of

black silk; and she forgot to pick them up. She stared at the other

girl and exclaimed, "Wasn't he angry, then?"

"Not in the least," said Miss Urquhart impressively. She might have

been less ponderous had she not felt the need of regaining her own

place in her self-esteem. She had been rather badly frightened; and

she had shown it. "He quite understood. He said it didn't matter at

all. So that needn't worry us--you any more."

She gave a little nod and went out, still holding the dusky head in a

very straight line with the back of the purple satin waist-belt.

Miss Fayre, left to herself, gasped, "Well! I never _heard_ of such

an extraordinary young man as this of Eleanor's in the whole course

of my life! Wasn't angry! Said it didn't matter! Oh, how

differently he's turned out from what he seemed to be like, that time

so long ago, in France. It just shows that one can't put any faith

in anything nowadays, not even in one's first impressions of young

men! I suppose all this is just of a piece with his not 'minding'

staying at home and letting other people do his fighting for him.

Why, he's just a----"

She dropped the mended flounce of her frock and primmed her red mouth

into its most contemptuous curve. She turned to the door, thinking,

"Doesn't seem to occur to him that he ought to volunteer, great,

tall, sinewy waster! It's enough to make any one feel angry with

him. And he isn't even man enough to be angry with _me_!"

Here again Rosamond Fayre was quite wrong.

For young Urquhart, who had found it easy enough to be forbearing to

the apologetic Eleanor, felt furious beyond words with the girl whom

Eleanor had employed. He found no earthly excuse for _her_; none!

He would have liked to tell her so, the minx and hussy, who had been

laughing at him all this while, in her sleeve--or so he thought. Of

course he wouldn't be able to say a word.... Words, however, can so

often be superseded by other forms of self-expression.

The first half-glance at Eleanor's "waster" of a Ted in the

dining-room assured Rosamond that he was silently and coldly raging.

Not at his _fiancée_. To Eleanor he talked, during dinner, brightly

and casually enough. But at any word put into the conversation by

the white-throated blonde who sat opposite to him at table, the young

man became silent. And the casual way in which he averted his eyes

conveyed more anger than the most furious glance above that group of

plump white china-limbed Loves that held up their burden of grapes

and nectarines in the centre of the table.

"Frightfully annoyed with me because I'm in the secret of how

off-handedly his sweetheart treated him," translated Rosamond to

herself.

Then the secretary-girl almost forgot that question of the letters

she'd written, over which young Urquhart fumed and smarted at the

moment. She was wondering, still wondering over the question of the

War and of why this splendid-looking specimen of English manhood was

still a civilian at home.

"He doesn't think much of me; but I am sure I think even less of

him," reflected the girl. And if Ted Urquhart didn't at that moment

realise what is the attitude of the feminine and full-blooded young

woman towards the Non-combatant-from-Choice, it was certainly not

Rosamond's fault, as she, in turn, averted her own blue eyes.

"Won't he go because of Eleanor?" she thought. "But lots of the men

who went out were engaged and got married at the same time as they

ordered their Service-kit. Won't Eleanor let him go? Pooh!--has he

got other duties at home that are important enough to keep him back?

What could they possibly be?"

"... another chauffeur as good, in Ransom's place; oh, yes," Ted

Urquhart was saying to his uncle. "Find one easily----"

"Well, that's not enough to stay at home for, then," thought Rosamond

Fayre, crumbling her dinner-roll.

"And I've gone all over the bailiff's books for you this afternoon,

Uncle Henry----

"That's not so very important either!" pondered Rosamond, and waited,

mocking, for the next remark. Perhaps that would be about something

more important than the struggle for his country's supremacy?

"They sent over from the village to ask if we'd spare some vegetables

and pears and things for Eleanor's Refugees' Convalescent Home,"

young Urquhart was saying. "As Marrow wasn't there to decide, I said

they could come over to-morrow with hampers, and that I'd help 'em to

pick----"

"Not as important as fighting to save people from becoming refugees!"

commented Rosamond, silently.

But actually she said nothing further until dinner was over.

In the drawing-room Eleanor came to the chair where her secretary sat

absorbed in the evening's news from those Belgian battle-fields, and

held out a hank of thick, cocoa-coloured knitting-wool.

"Rosamond, I want you to help me with this if you don't mind," she

said, with some of that extra dignity still lingering in her manner.

"You hold it, please, while I wind."

Rosamond, dropping the _Pall Mall Gazette_, held out her supple white

hands.

"But isn't this a job for Mr. Ted Urquhart?" she suggested, with a

twinkle. "Some men seem to like holding wool, don't they?--of course

it depends who it's for----"

"Ted is having his coffee with my father," vouchsafed Eleanor,

beginning to wind her wool, "in the study."

"They seem to have plenty to talk about," commented Rosamond, mildly,

turning first one pretty ringless hand and then the other as the wool

slipped round them.

"Yes," agreed Eleanor, winding. "I know he had something particular

to tell father."

Her small mouth tightened into its line of disapproval as she thought

again of Ted's intention to volunteer for Active Service.

Probably just because all the other young men who'd been at school

with him seemed to be doing the same thing! Eleanor was very much

afraid that she knew what really intelligent people would call

Ted--and the others. Yes, even if he hadn't been a soldier to start

with, he had the--the sort of brand of it, born on him. Ted Urquhart

was what was always called, "The Usual, Brainless, Army Type."

Really, as Octavia Fabian always said, these men were like sheep in

the way they followed one another along conventional lines. It was

"the thing" to be "keen" on the War. Instead of thinking things out

for himself, and letting Eleanor tell him what those Peace Society

people always proposed, advised....

She wondered what her father would say.

"Needless! Needless folly, the whole thing," her father was saying

at that moment in that book-lined mausoleum of a study of his, where

Ted Urquhart had once sat waiting for his first sight of the girl to

whom he was pledged.

The young man sat now in the chair he had occupied then. His

impatient eyes were fixed on the polished floor as he listened

quietly to his uncle's view of the case.

"Disarmament.... We must abolish these national antagonisms, so

childish, my dear Ted! ... Any one would think we were still not far

advanced from the stage of the savage with the club! ... Deplorable,

to me, these.... You remind me of your father.... I can only say

you remind me of my poor dear brother Clive.... He'd be here with us

at this moment had it not been for that old wound in which he took

that chill----"

"And if he were here," put in young Ted, as the remembered, smiling,

adventurer's face of General Urquhart rose before him, "he wouldn't

try to dissuade me, Sir. He'd be trying to get them to take him too."

"Ah! It wouldn't surprise me. It wouldn't surprise me.... Poor

dear fellow.... He was good for another twenty years ... might have

died peaceably in his bed at home here," murmured the old scholar, as

one who quotes the whole duty of man. "Incurably wrong-headed ideas

he had, though. He was one of those people who think that, without

War, heroism would decay. The qualities of unselfishness and

sacrifice and strenuousness would rust away, he used to say. He said

a War went through a country like a fume of disinfectant through a

rose-tree with green fly on it. 'A beautiful Cleanser,' he called it

... poor dear Clive!"

The son of this deluded Urquhart crossed one long leg over another,

cleared his throat, and raising his close-cropped head, said, "Well,

Uncle Henry, one can't help what one inherits----"

"Inherit--Yes! And just as I was so pleased to see you back here, my

dear boy, settling down in your inheritance----'

"Lord! I didn't mean that! I----"

"I did," persisted the elder Urquhart. "It was the greatest relief

to me, Ted. I felt ... no further responsibilities ... Eleanor and

I, provided for, ... while depriving you of none of your rights ...

she and you ... getting on so well together. An ideal arrangement!

I had hoped to see you and the child married this autumn, perhaps.

And now----" He shook his grey locks. "Suppose anything happened to

you----"

"I have arranged for that contingency," said Eleanor's _fiancé_.

"She will have The Court and everything."

But again the grey elf locks were shaken. "I guessed so. But it

will not be the same to me, Ted. I had always liked the idea that

she would be mistress here--as your wife. I ... You know I didn't

always get on too well with your poor dear father," old Mr. Urquhart

murmured on. "All strife is childish, of course, and--it always

seemed to me as if it would put an end to its having ever been, if

Clive's son and my child were to marry. But if you go----"

Here he suddenly raised the grey head. He spoke more quickly and

decisively. He said something that gave young Urquhart a shock of

surprise mingled with dismay.

"My boy, would it not be possible to marry Eleanor before you go?"

There was a moment's silence.

Then Ted Urquhart said quietly, "You mean almost at once?"

"If you expect to go so soon. Could it be managed? I see

constantly, in these dreadful newspapers," put in the elder man,

wistfully, "notices of officers' weddings being hurried on, 'on

account of the War.' If you and Eleanor could be quietly married

before you left--it would set my mind at rest, Ted----"

Ted, after another moment's pause, said,

"Certainly. That is, of course, I'll consult Eleanor. If she

consents----"

"It would be a weight off my mind, my dear boy."

"Then I will see her about it," said Ted Urquhart.

He rose and went out to the drawing-room with a half-conscious urge

to get this thing settled at once.

But, he soon saw, it could not be to-night.

Eleanor's usual excuse, it seemed, must hold. A glance told him that

she was again "so busy!"

She was winding wool off the hands of that other girl, into fat,

cocoa-coloured balls.

Ted Urquhart, standing above them for a moment, saw the

secretary-girl's face suddenly quiver and glow; she broke into a low

but distinct and whole-heartedly amused girlish chuckle.

Eleanor said, "What are you laughing at, Rosamond?"

Rosamond murmured demurely, "Oh, nothing; only something quite silly

that I'd just remembered out of some book."

She guessed that the young man who walked sharply to the other end of

the room would have given his ears to hear what this quotation might

be.

But she did not mean to tell Eleanor.

It was an extract from Artemus Ward:

"I met a young man who said he'd be damned if he'd go to the War. He

was sitting on a barrel, and was indeed a loathsome object."

Mr. Ted Urquhart hadn't even the grace to look a "loathsome object!"

CHAPTER III

THE DAY

The next morning, a rather grey and chilly Sunday, Ted Urquhart came

to Eleanor in her little "office" and asked her, with simple

directness, whether she would mind fixing a day, as soon as possible,

for their marriage.

Eleanor, obviously startled, looked at him over the desk at which she

sat. He had drawn a chair up to face her.

"Soon? H-How do you mean, Ted?" she asked. "I thought you might be

going away so soon."

"So I may. That was the reason," he told her. "I mean if it's

not--if it's not inconveniencing you very much, Eleanor--that I wish

you'd see your way to marrying me, just quietly, you know, in the

little church in the village, perhaps, before I'm ordered off."

"Oh!" said Eleanor, with a little gasp, "I never thought of that."

"I know it's abrupt," said the young man. "But you know lots of

people in the Services are fixing it up this way just now. I believe

they're making it much easier for couples to get special licenses, or

to get married without any banns, and ... and so forth.

It--er--I--er--Well! It seems under the circumstances rather a--a

sensible plan, I think--if we were----"

Here he checked himself. He had nearly used the unfortunate

expression "_turned off!_" But it is only the joyous bridal of which

a grim joke may be made.

He altered it tritely to

"--married before I had to leave you, Eleanor."

Eleanor asked, still in that startled tone, "Does Father think so?"

"Oh, yes! Yes. Uncle Henry and I talked it over last night," said

Ted Urquhart, leaning his cleft chin on his brown hand and his elbow

on his knee as he sat a little forward, not looking at his _fiancé_.

"Your father quite ... agreed with me. I think he--he wishes it too,

Eleanor."

"Oh, does he?" murmured Eleanor. "Yes, I suppose he would."

Evidently she was still very much surprised, almost dazed, he

thought, by the suddenness of this plan. Evidently she scarcely knew

what to say.

There was only one thing that Ted Urquhart hoped she wouldn't say.

Namely, that she did not wish their marriage to take place before he

went.

For he wished it. He wished it, as he put it incoherently to

himself, over and done with. He wanted to do his duty by his

people--and then to clear! He wanted it settled for good and all.

Also--he wanted to do all he could to rid himself of the power of an

obsession that tortured him still, however he fought it down. _That

golden-haired witch! That mocking girl who could speak tenderly

enough to the other man--the man she was going to marry!_ Ted

Urquhart could feel furious with her. He could tell himself all her

faults. (She was vain, flippant, irresponsible, insolent!) He could

snub and ignore her, and put aside for days the thought of her. He

could school himself not to look. But at the bottom of his heart he

could not yet forget that fatal apprehension under which he'd been

when first he met her; that delusion that she, and none other, was

intended to be his. He must forget it. He must not run any risk of

coming back, at the end of other fighting, to begin that struggle

over again.

"If I were married," thought the young man in his desperation, "it

would _have_ to mean the end of all that."

So, anxiously, he watched Eleanor's little dark, restrained face,

waiting for her answer.

It came, quiet and matter-of-fact.

"Very well, Ted."

"You mean you will, Eleanor?" he took up quite eagerly. "That you'll

let me settle it up at once?"

"Yes."

"Good," said young Urquhart, with a sigh of relief. "Now, the

question is, what day will suit you?"

"Oh--how much longer do you think you will be here?" asked his

_fiancée_.

"A matter of a week or so, I expect," he told her. "Ten days, I

should think, at most."

"Ten days," murmured Eleanor. "Now, just let me look at my fixtures,

please, Ted, and I will see what I am doing this week."

She opened a desk-drawer to her right, took out a neat leather-bound

book and began turning over the pages, murmuring--

"Sunday to-day. Monday I'm motoring up to town for all day.

Tuesday, the Reservists' wives here. Wednesday--I know there was

something on Wednesday, but I must have forgotten to note it. I'll

ask Rosamond. Thursday I promised to let Miss Fabian come down again

to give her lecture to the Reservists' wives----"

Ted Urquhart sat, his glance straying about the small, neat room so

full of a girl's kindly preoccupations with her poorer sisters. His

impatient eyes, rather listless now, rested on the framed "groups" of

uniformed crêche-nurses with babies; on the files, the long red row

of Whitaker's almanacks, the small side-table with the typewriter....

He was morosely glad that his wife would always have so much to

occupy her. It would at least keep her from missing what he could

never give her. Would she think of missing it? Would she, in her

queer little matter-of-fact way, imagine that he was, naturally, as

self-contained as she herself? Or did she just think, vaguely, that

"men were like that"?

He watched her. And he wondered whether any other girl on earth

would have taken just like this the function that used to be called

in her grandmother's time "_naming the Happy Day_."

She had finished turning over the leaves of that little book. She

looked up for a moment as she said composedly, "Friday is free. I

could marry you, if you liked, on Friday, Ted."

"Oh, thanks so much," said the young man quickly. "It's really

awfully good of you not to mind a rush like this--a wedding

without--without any of the things a girl expects--a big party, and a

trousseau, and a----"

He stopped again.

He felt he could not use the word that belongs to courtship as

naturally as "Dearest" and "Darling" belong; the pretty word

"Honeymoon." Not here. Not now.

He went on--"without any sort of a wedding-trip abroad, or anything.

I suppose----"

"What?" said the bride-to-be, as he paused once more.

"I suppose you'll let me take you up to town for the week-end, won't

you?" said her _fiancé_ rather hurriedly. "That is, if I haven't

already got my orders. We could--go round and look up various

people, to say 'Good-bye,' you know----"

There rose up in his mind the relentless suggestion that the bride to

whom he would presently be saying "Good-bye" would be very different

from the usual ("Brainless, Army,") type of the soldier's young wife;

the girl who smiles resolutely through her tears, and whose agony at

parting is kept at bay by her pride and joy at sending forth her man

to fight.

Eleanor would feel no pride; nothing but the Fabian-instilled

conviction that it was "a useless, wasteful risk of life," ... and

"_wrong_"!

She herself was always so anxious to do what was "right"--even by him.

"Just as you like, Ted," she said.

She fastened the little engagement-book and opened the drawer in

which it was kept.

"Thank you," said the bridegroom-to-be again. And he rose.

He knew what he ought to do now.

Up to now there had been no word of endearment between this engaged

couple, nothing but her Christian name and his. Up to now there had

been no caress but that twice-daily cousinly peck on the cheek. But

now--when she'd just promised to become his wife within the week!

Oh, it would be too cruelly casual to let the occasion pass

absolutely unmarked except by a cool word of thanks--

He drew a step nearer to the little stiff, grey-gowned figure with

the dark head bent over the drawer of her desk.

He began, awkwardly, "Well----"

He ought to call her "_Dear_"!

Why should it come so ludicrously hard?

"Well, Eleanor," he said, "you've been uncommonly kind to me about

all this."

A nice object-lesson he was, he thought savagely, for any young man

who considered that which girl he got engaged to wasn't, after all, a

matter of paramount importance! But it was too late to think of that

now....

Eleanor's face was still averted as she slipped the book into the

drawer.

Clumsily, abruptly, he closed his own fingers over her other little

brown hand as it lay on the desk.

He'd got to say "Aren't you going to let me have a kiss to clinch it?"

Every fibre in him seemed to draw back in revolt from what he had to

do. But, dash it, he _must_!

He held her hand for another horrible second....

And at that moment the door of the office opened, and there entered

Miss Rosamond Fayre, dressed for Church, and carrying a large sheaf

of white Bride-lilies for the flower-service.

The scent of them trailed behind the girl as she walked quickly

through the office and into the drawing-room beyond.

Eleanor, hastily withdrawing her hand, called, "Oh, Rosamond----"

But the secretary-girl had passed through the drawing-room and into

the hall beyond.

"Fetch her--just ask Miss Fayre to come to me, please, Ted. I want

her," said Eleanor, putting an end to this interview on a bright

conclusive note. "She might as well, before I forget, send off the

notice of this wedding to the _Morning Post_."

CHAPTER IV

"ON ACCOUNT OF THE WAR"

There was no mention of its being "_on account of the War_" in that

announcement that "_the marriage arranged between Edward Clive

Urquhart and Eleanor, only child of Henry Urquhart, Esquire, of

Urquhart's Court, Kent, would take place very quietly_" on the Friday

of that same week.

Ted Urquhart, boyishly sulking (as older men than he will sulk),

determined that Miss Fayre should hear nothing of his volunteering

until he'd actually got his orders.

And Eleanor said nothing.

So that Miss Fayre, the secretary-girl, was left wondering over the

cause of this unexpectedly abrupt arrangement.

Why were not Eleanor and her dear Ted, to whom the War meant

apparently nothing but a crowding of the newspapers with one

monotonous subject--why weren't they going to have a big wedding and

a reception with scarlet-and-white tents on the great green lawn

where Eleanor's Hen-party had gathered? and Eleanor was leaving

herself no time to get her things!

She said she wasn't getting "things." Truly they were the most

unbelievable couple who had ever announced their intention of getting

married "without any fuss."

"'Fuss' means such different things to different people," reflected

Rosamond Fayre. "To me fuss would mean asking all the people I'd

never liked to come in a body and stare at me while I made

embarrassing mistakes over the Marriage-Service. Eleanor calls

'fuss' any attempt at getting pretty new frocks! Well, even a young

man who's strong and fit and says he'll be damned if he'll go to the

War isn't any more surprising than a young woman who doesn't take any

interest in wedding-garments!"

Such interest as was taken in this sudden wedding seemed to be

supplied by old Mr. Urquhart. It was he who stipulated that since

all the Mrs. Edward Urquharts since before the time of the Romney had

been wedded in white, Eleanor must follow suit. Also Eleanor, though

there would be no guest to see her, must wear the veil of old

Limerick lace that had decked her mother's bridal. He fetched it

himself from its casket of cedar-wood and brought it to the

drawing-room and to the Urquhart engaged pair. And he would have

thrown it over Eleanor's little black blot of a head, to try the

effect; but here Rosamond Fayre, bringing in a note of thanks for

Eleanor's signature, intervened.

"Oh, but she mustn't try on 'the' veil," said her secretary, smiling,

"before 'the' day, Mr. Urquhart; it's so unlucky!"

"Rosamond always has some proverb about 'Luck,'" said Eleanor. "Or

about what something 'means'!"

Ted Urquhart thought, "Yes. Last time she spoke to me it was to say

what passing a person on the stairs meant!"

"Ah, my dear Miss Fayre, how refreshing it is to find a girl still

holding to all the little decorative feminine superstitions!" sighed

the elder Urquhart. "Were I even twenty years younger, and you ten

years older, I should venture to beg you to wear 'the' Urquhart veil

on 'the' day yourself. You would remind us of--ah--the nymph

Arethusa smiling through the spray of the brook that engulfed her!

You would look like----"

Here Ted Urquhart, muttering some improvised excuse about a

telephone-call, got up and went out of the room. His uncle presently

followed him; leaving the bride-to-be and Rosamond with the filmy

folds of that Limerick lace spread out between them.

Eleanor tossed her end of the soft veil on to her secretary's lap.

"Fold it up again, please," she said, rather brusquely, "and put it

into the bottom drawer of my wardrobe."

Rosamond folded the lace and then rose, holding it across her long

arm. In her eyes was the sparkle of thriving rebellion. For now the

secretary-girl had come to hate her surroundings.

She resented these so-superior Urquharts, who took it upon

themselves, forsooth, to represent that civilisation for which other

men were leaving home and comfort with a cheer, were tramping,

unwashed and footsore and hungry, the roads of France, were fighting

against odds, were giving up their young and joyous lives.... Why,

sometimes she could not help realising that those valuable English

lives were only lost thanks to the other stay-at-home, pacific

English of the Urquhart type.... Yes! They who wouldn't listen!

They who refused to prepare! They who caused to be looked upon as

unnecessary or contemptible that career which has been rightly called

"_The Lordliest Life on Earth!_" These people were as truly "the

Enemy" as Germany had ever been. England's strength had been sapped

in English homes like Urquhart's Court.

Rosamond hated this Court.... She loathed this sluggish little

back-water in Kent....

She must get away to where she could feel the throb and stir of her

country's indignant heart, her own thrilling in sympathy.

She spoke upon an impulse. "Eleanor, is there anything else you want

me to do for you--upstairs? Before I go to pack?"

Eleanor, in the sofa corner, looked up at her somewhat severely.

"Pack? I haven't asked you to pack anything for me, Rosamond."

"No. They're my own boxes that I want to pack," replied the

secretary-girl evenly. "I supposed that you wouldn't be needing me

any more now----"

"Oh, but----!"

"--and I've been wanting to ask you if you could spare me at once,

instead of my waiting here any longer."

"Why?" asked Eleanor bluntly. "I don't ask you to go just because

I'm to get married. I shall be going on with everything, just the

same."

"I know. I imagined you would be," said Rosamond demurely, looking

down at her and then away about the room. "But--I think I would

rather go."

"But--quite lately, you spoke as if you would be so s-s-sorry to

leave the Court, This," said Miss Urquhart, "is new, isn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose it is," murmured Rosamond.

Then she lifted her bright head and looked full at the other girl

sitting there among the mellow chintz cushions, backed by that

stately, complacent room with its Chippendale and china, its prints,

its whole air of "_Nothing can touch, nothing change me_." And

suddenly it seemed as if the antipathy that had smouldered so long

between them flashed into a flame.

Rosamond cried: "No! No, this isn't anything new. I ought to have

gone away before. It isn't worth it. We---- We don't get on.

We're such different kinds, Eleanor. It's been an armed neutrality,

all the time. Hasn't it?"

"Certainly not. On my s-s-side," retorted Eleanor Urquhart angrily,

"there has been n-n-nothing 'armed.' I hate any idea of quarrelling

or----"

"Then I must go," said Rosamond desperately, "or we shall quarrel."

"But why? What about?"

"Nothing. Everything. The War, mostly. Yes, the War. That must

be--that's what has made everything different, I suppose," cried

Rosamond hurriedly. "I can't feel that there's all that going on

outside--while I live peacefully on here among a set of people who

don't care, who don't understand. It's an atmosphere that stifles

any one who really cares. I want to be somewhere else! I want to

get something else to do."

"Very well," said Eleanor, coldly displeased.

"I'm sorry----;

"It doesn't matter," said Eleanor stiffly. "I shall have to try and

get a Lady Miriam Hall girl in your place. If you really want to go

like this, at a moment's notice, I w-w-won't stand in your way."

"Thank you," said Rosamond Fayre.

The flame had died down again. She said deprecatingly, "I hope you

don't mind--I hope you won't think it unkind and rude of me to go

before Friday."

"Friday? Why Friday?" asked Miss Urquhart, adding, "Oh, when I'm

married. Why should I mind your not being there? Of course it is

not 'rude.' Nobody will be coming to the wedding, practically

nobody."

"If you wished," added Rosamond, "I could stay for the meeting of the

Reservists' Wives----"

"Oh, no. Please don't trouble," said Eleanor. "I can manage

perfectly. When do you want the motor?"

Miss Fayre left Urquhart's Court before tea-time.

"Please say good-bye to your father for me. I didn't find him in his

study," she told Miss Urquhart at parting. Her hand was on the door

of the car as she turned once more and added to the small sedate

figure standing in the ivy-framed entrance beneath the stone shield

with the crest, "I hope you--you'll accept my best wishes for

yourself, Eleanor----"

It sounded absurdly stiff, to an engaged girl of her own--Rosamond's

age! But no stiffer than Eleanor's "Thank you, Rosamond. And if any

letters come for you, where shall they be sent?"

"Oh, I'll write and let you know in a day or two," said the girl in

the motor. "I don't know myself, yet, where I shall be going to, or

what I shall be doing. Good-bye."

The slow train was more than half-way to Charing Cross station before

any plan had formulated itself in her own mind.

Where should she go? She knew nobody in London whom she would care

to ask to put her up. Mrs. Bray was in town, Rosamond knew; and Mrs.

Bray was always kind. But--could she go to Cecil's mother? ...

"Some people would think I might do worse than accept poor Cecil next

time he asked me," thought Rosamond, with her blue eyes on the white

column of train-smoke trailing beside the window and half blotting

out the miles of outer-London backyards, where, among the inevitable

washing, Union Jacks and French flags now flapped in the breeze.

"Anyhow, Cecil is ready to do his duty as a man. Quite a dear--and

nice to look at--and well-off--and adores me--what a pity that all

these things don't make a ha'porth of difference when it comes to

whether you want to marry a person! I can't. No. I won't go to his

mother."

She dismissed also the thought of the tiny stuffy Bloomsbury room she

had occupied while she was working at the Midas.... She had nearly

two months' salary in her pocket; enough to do better on, at least

for the present.... Pondering on her next move, she brushed a crumb

off her lap, and rejoiced girlishly for a moment over the hang of the

black skirt. Her little dressmaker had managed rather cleverly--

The thought gave her an idea....

At Charing Cross she had her two trunks and one hat-box put into a

cab; a grass-green taxi bearing in scarlet letters that appeal then

so startlingly novel to so large a class of mind--

"YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU!"

and she gave the driver an address near Victoria.

It was in a side-street off Ebury Street that the taxi drew up before

a modest brass plate inscribed "MADAME CORA: MODES, ROBES ET

TROUSSEAUX"; and Rosamond's little dressmaker came to the door

herself.

"How d'you do, Mrs. Core?" said Rosamond, holding out her hand as she

stood on the whitened step.

"Miss Fayre. Well, I never!" exclaimed the little dressmaker, in a

quick, twittering voice, with scarcely a stop between her words. She

was a small, neat, fair-haired creature, with the alert eyes and void

of illusion of the woman who has had to fend for herself since her

youth. "If I wasn't thinking of you this very morning and your

rose-pink I made you last month. How's it look on, Miss Fayre?

Doing you well?"

"It's very pretty, but I haven't really worn it yet," began Rosamond,

smiling. "I've----"

"Not had any occasion, Miss Fayre? Nobody worth while? Dear, dear.

Come in, won't you?"

"Yes, I want to know if you'll take me in for some time?" explained

Rosamond Fayre. "You used to have a room----"

--"and my young gentleman left it only this morning," said the little

dressmaker. "Usual reason for everything these days, Miss Fayre, on

account of the War. Good position he had in a Bank! Chucked it, as

he said. Enlisted to go and have a pot at Geyser Bill----"

Five minutes later saw Miss Rosamond Fayre disposing her trunks as

Mrs. Core's lodger, in a room whose windows looked above gray roofs

and red chimney-pots out towards the towering shaft of the Cathedral.

"Hope you'll be comfortable here, Miss Fayre, I'm sure," said little

Mrs. Core, bustling in with a jug of hot water. "You'll excuse the

young gentleman having left up all his photos," with a nod towards

framed portraits of Miss Lydia Kyasht, of Sam Langford, Lord

Kitchener, Carpentier, and of a group of cricketers that hung upon

the florally-papered walls. "His clothes I said he'd _got_ to store.

So there's heaps of room in here for your things.... This black

serge," she touched Rosamond's skirt with a proprietary finger,

"wears well, don't it? ... M'm! Long time before any o' my clients

come for any more pretty frocks now. As for such a thing as The

Newest Paris Winter Fashions, Miss Fayre, it'll be a case of puzzle

find 'em on most of us. All on account of this War! As far as the

style of our clothes go," laughed the little dress-maker, "we shall

be 'stuck so,' like they say to children making faces when the wind

changes."

"What a good thing we're 'stuck' while frocks are so pretty, then,"

smiled Rosamond, slipping off her simple coat, "instead of being

frozen into the fashions of gored skirts or leg-o'-mutton sleeves!"

"You're right," said Mrs. Core devoutly, unfolding a clean towel as

she spoke. "By the way, I got a letter from that Miss Urquhart o'

yours saying how pleased she was with the tussore coat.

Old-fashioned little piece, isn't she? Frumpy, I'd call her.

Doesn't pay for dressing. Most expensive materials she always goes

in for, too. Very well off she'll be, of course. Well! I'm afraid

you'll find this rather a change after living in that swagger Court,

Miss Fayre----"

But as Rosamond Fayre glanced round the neat room, with its naïvely

hideous decorations, at the resolute cheery face of her little

landlady and at the smoke-grey glimpse of London outside, she shook

her bright head with a quick smiling sigh of relief.

She felt that all she needed was exactly this--a thorough change from

everything to do with Urquhart's Court; indeed, never again to see

anything called Urquhart!

CHAPTER V

LONDON IN KHAKI

The whole of the next day Rosamond Fayre spent in walking about a

city that seemed to her oddly transformed from the London that she

had known.

For this was the first time that she had been up to town since the

outbreak of War.

It was a glorious morning; the perfect harvest weather still

unbroken. Overhead soft white mackerel clouds sailed over a sapphire

sky; the September sunshine bathed the pavements as Rosamond sped

briskly along, turning first towards Victoria, and noting, with

bright eyes, all that seemed so different.

The first thing that struck her was the number of people of every

kind who thronged the streets. Every sort of person seemed to find

it possible, these days, to take an hour or so "off"--at half-past

eleven in the morning!--from Cityfied-looking men in top hats and

morning-coats, to bands of tiny street-boys who paraded past in all

the pomp and circumstance of uniforms made out of newspaper tied with

string and with drums of biscuit-boxes, shouting, "It's a long wy to

Tipperary, it's a long wy to gow!"

And in proportion to there being more people abroad, the horse and

omnibus traffic was thinner. There were fewer omnibuses than taxis

whisking past, each bearing the scarlet signal of that message,

worded with varying degrees of urgency, "_Enlist for the War!_"

"_Young Men of London, Join the Army Now!_" "YOU _are wanted_

TO-DAY!"

Rosamond found herself wondering if it were her imagination or a fact

that the faces of those who passed her wore a new expression; a look

more alert, more alive, and more determinate than that she had been

accustomed to see on London faces in the time--now so far behind them

all!--of Peace? That all-pervading type, the Flapper, seemed to be

in abeyance--her place was taken by bonnie and resolute-faced young

women, many wearing the badge of a Woman's Help Corps. Perhaps War

smoothed out "types"--artistic freaks--by-products--resolving

London's citizens into women and men?

Outside Victoria the traffic became a thickening throng. There was a

stir and a running and a noise of cheering. But even tall Rosamond,

hurrying towards that scene of interest, could not see much over the

heads of the many who pressed between her and the Regiment marching

into the station. Just a glimpse of lines of rifles above

flat-topped caps, a glimpse of that stream of khaki dividing the

darker crowds and flowing rhythmically past....

"Off!" said some one near Rosamond to some one else in the crowd, and

a voice answered with a note of desperate gaiety, "Ah, well, we shall

see 'em turning up again with a bar or two to their medals, please

God--(if that that number's not _still_ engaged by the Kaiser)----"

A hand seemed to grip at Rosamond's heart, a lump came into her

throat so that she could only whisper below her breath, "Good luck to

them!" It was pride for those who went, sorrow for those who might

not return, and yet another feeling which was not yet quite clear to

the girl herself.

She went on, past Westminster, Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, noticing

the busy trade of the newspaper-sellers with their arresting posters--

"DESPERATE FIGHTING IN FRANCE!"

"France!" she thought, with a smile and a sigh. How little she, or

any of those kindly village-folk in France had dreamt that fighting

would desolate all that holiday place before the summer was over.

She supposed that every man she'd ever seen there would be now with

the French Army; from the Monsieur of the Hotel down to the polite

black-eyed youth at the Debit Tabac, who had finished his military

service, he'd told Rosamond, last year; adding, "You have no military

service in England, Mademoiselle? It is droll, that."

Rosamond had even then considered that it was more than droll that

the men of her country should jib at what these young Continentals

took as a matter of course, namely, that every man should be trained

to bear arms, and that drill and discipline were no hardship, but a

privilege. Even before then she had always wondered why some sort of

military training was not as universal among young Englishmen as,

say, learning to swim? There need be no "conscription" for that?

Perhaps it was just the mere _words_ "conscription" and "compulsory"

to which people seemed to object? Perhaps the actual sacrifice of a

little personal liberty would find them ready enough?

For now, at last, it seemed if that spirit permeated All-London....

At every turn she was met by the sight of that concealing and

significant colour which is made up out of these three mingled: the

brown of earthworks, the green of trampled grass, the sandy-yellow of

guarded coast. Drab and ugly enough in itself, yet now as glorious

wear as is the richest red in the British Army, khaki was everywhere;

swinging down the streets, crowding the tops of omnibuses, filling

private motor-cars now labelled in staring letters, "O.H.M.S."

Through the great windows of the Clubs, Rosamond caught glimpses of

khaki, with here and there a splash of scarlet. "Staff," she

supposed. And in Piccadilly she passed a not-to-be-forgotten group

of three, standing at the corner by Stewart's. Two of them, very

slim and young, were in uniform. These were talking eagerly to the

third who stood between them. He was a mere lad; eighteen, nineteen?

Small, younger than Cecil Bray, and of the type of youngster that

instantly brings the thought, "How very lovely his sister must be!"

He wore an ordinary blue lounge suit and a bowler, but there was that

about him which marked him out as no uniform could have done. For

his dainty, girlishly-featured, resolute little face was bronzed from

weeks in glaring sunshine, and his right arm hung in a sling.

This child was a wounded officer, one of the very first of them, home

from the Front. And as she passed up Bond Street--with the eyes of

all three boys turned to follow her for a moment--Rosamond heard the

youngest of them saying, "_Don't know, but as soon as I can get my

ruffian of a doctor-man to let me go back, I----_"

So young, and so unperturbed! The sight of him made Rosamond Fayre

realise what had been at the back of her mind all the time that she

had been watching these signs of the times of England at War, with

the best of her sons armed, or preparing to arm.

_It was the thought of another young man whom she knew, and who was

making no such preparation._

Ted Urquhart must be seven or eight years older than this youngster

who was fuming to be sent back to face danger and what Rosamond

thought must be worse, discomforts of the most sordid kind; lack of

the most elementary comfort, water, sleep! Ted Urquhart, as far as

physique went, was twice the man that this little officer-boy was.

Ted Urquhart--well, what was the use of thinking about him?

Fortunately--for no one likes to have to associate with "wasters" in

time of War!--Fortunately, Rosamond would never see him again.

But everywhere she saw something to remind her of him and of how he'd

failed. In every Bond Street shop-window that showed field service

equipment and uniforms and boots; in the very posters of "England

Expects--" and "Tommy Atkins"; in the badges worn on so many civilian

coats; "O.B.C."----"U.P.S."; in the trays of street-vendors who sold

the French and English and Belgian colours instead of roses and

carnations, "_Not flowers, but flags!_"--Why, it was London's motto

now.

_Yet Ted Urquhart, in white flannels, lounged and loitered among the

hollyhocks and dahlias at Urquhart's Court._

She caught scraps of conversation from the people hurrying past

her--and no one seemed to be speaking, except of War.

"Like to get hold of all those fellows who've been pooh-poohing for

years the 'German Scare,' as they----"

"And if we could have sent double the number of men at once, this

affair would have been over in----"

"A letter this morning;"--this was a woman's voice--"no postmark, of

course; and he mayn't let us know where they were, or what they were

doing, but he sounded cheery and----"

--"Says he met some one who actually saw them! ... two train-loads!

... noticed the odd uniform----"

--"The very people who owe their fortunes to the fact that we've got

an Army!"

"Yes! And who used to impress upon us that the Boy-Scout movement

had absolutely nothing to do with 'any nonsense about being prepared

for War, or Invasion.' But perhaps they'll know better----"

"Ah, half the people in this country ought to go down on their knees

to make a public apology to Lord Roberts!"

"_Don't_ you think five thousand recruits a day is enough?" This was

from a lady who walked beside a white-moustached old soldier. And

Rosamond, going by, with pricked-up ears, heard him answer: "In what

they call 'the families' of England, there's not a man left to-day.

Not a man."

"_Not a man?" Only Ted Urquhart, of The Court!_

As day wore on, more and more newspaper-sellers appeared in the

streets, hawking the seventh and eighth "War-editions" with the flash

of black letters across pink posters----

ALLIES GAIN GROUND

(OFFICIAL)

Among them little neatly-dressed French women with tricolour ribbons

about their jackets and with straight fringes cut above their dark,

anxious eyes, were offering "Le Cri de Londres." ...

And then more people in the streets, more people....

Rosamond Fayre, after one of those hybrid tea-shop meals dear to the

heart of women, strolled back again towards Westminster, and through

the archway into Dean's Yard, stopping at the echoing sound of words

of command.

"'S' you wur! ... 'Shun'! ... By--your--_Left--T_----"

There was a crowd at the railings. The railings themselves were hung

everywhere with coats and Norfolk jackets and headgear of every sort;

straw hats, bowlers, soft felt hats, caps. And beyond in the square

beneath the plane-trees young men in white or coloured shirt-sleeves

marched and formed fours and marked time.

"Recruits," a Special Constable with a striped armlet on his sleeve

told Rosamond, "for the London Scottish. Framing splendidly, they

are! Oh, yes, men drilling in all the Parks now, too...."

(--"Right-T----_whee_--ull!" and a steady rhythmic tramping of

feet....)

Rosamond Fayre stood watching the grand lads, the big company-officer

who moved up and down before them.

And she thought, "_Not one of those looks any more like a soldier

than Mr. Ted Urquhart, who isn't soldiering at all!_"

The September dusk fell over streets only half-lighted. Some lamps

had covers on the top, some were ochred over. London looked odd

without her electric signs and with Piccadilly and Oxford Street all

dim. Gone was that soft and golden glare, and the red haze in the

sky! People's heads were lifted up to that slate-coloured sky, and

Rosamond caught scraps of talk about the patrolling airship. Under

the dim lights girls passed, with men in khaki beside them,

khaki-sleeved arms about waists. And once again Rosamond Fayre found

herself thinking of a young man not in khaki.

He was really not worth it! Not even worth wondering over!

Perhaps he thought that text held good for his case: "I have married

a wife, and therefore I cannot come"? He would be married to Eleanor

in a few days--two days' time now.

Rosamond sighed as she walked homewards.

This must be because she was very tired. She had been walking about

all day, looking at things.

Of all these scenes that which was to remain with her longest was

what she'd seen as she had passed Whitehall. In the wide road there

had been a sudden scurrying forward of a crowd that seemed to spring

up out of nowhere. On the tops of omnibuses passengers had stood up

to look, had craned their necks to gaze after a figure in frock-coat

and top-hat, who had just left a car, and was ascending the steps of

the War Office. Small, white-haired, stately and indomitable, he was

not to be mistaken.

His name had passed from mouth to mouth.

"See him? ... It's him.... That's him.... Lord Roberts!"

Full of the picture, Rosamond's mind would link it for ever to the

next sound that had struck upon her ears.

It had been that of a bugle; industriously practised by a lad in the

park near by. Rosamond Fayre knew that bugle-call. She knew the

words the soldier fits to it.

"_I called them; I called them!

They wouldn't come. They wouldn't come.

I called them----_"

And amongst those who wouldn't answer, the case of Mr. Ted Urquhart

seemed to her the most disgraceful.

Perhaps it was rather odd that though she'd left The Court and the

Urquharts behind her for ever, Rosamond should find herself thinking

of him--them even more constantly than when she was among them.

This could only be because she had taken a really strong dislike to

them.

She concluded that it must be that.

And so she went slowly home, through the darkened Buckingham Palace

Road, to bed, hearing another bugle-call, the Last Post sounded from

the near Barracks--and wondering where it would be heard by Cecil

Bray ... and by every other young man she'd seen who that day had

done his duty.

CHAPTER VI

RECRUITING-RIBBONS

"This is all very well, but I can't go on like this as if I were 'a

lady of leisure,'" thought Rosamond Fayre on the morning after that

day which she'd spent walking about London. "I shall simply have to

set about looking for some job."

But even as she made herself ready in her simple black jacket, her

small black hat with the one pink velvet single rose, she realised

that this was a time when people were losing their usual jobs rather

than getting new ones. She would find it harder than ever to obtain

work as a typist, a secretary, a cashier.

Once, when she had been first confronted with that problem of

wage-earning, the tall supple girl had been asked if she would take a

post as mannequin in a Wigmore Street _atelier_--"but now that would

be 'off' too, I expect," thought Rosamond, as she walked along. "War

does show up how utterly superfluous most single women's occupations

are! What can I do?"

About one thing she made up her mind.

She would _not_ apply to the Red Cross Society, saying that she was

ready to do "anything."

Rosamond realised how much valuable time of busy women was being

taken up by just such applications.

She knew that womanly pity for wounded soldiers does not in itself

constitute a "gift" for nursing; that excellence in housework and the

constitution of a dray-horse are far more needful assets for a nurse.

So, if she could not be of use in this capacity, at least she would

not cumber the ground for those who could....

But what else was there?

"I suppose I might try one of my old agencies," she thought as she

sprang on to a 'bus in Victoria Street, "and at least put my name

down for----"

Here the 'bus, giving a lurch, precipitated Rosamond on to the lap of

another girl who was sitting on the front seat.

"So sorry," said Rosamond, stooping to pick up a sheaf of papers that

the other girl had dropped. "I'm afraid one's blown over the side

there----"

"It doesn't matter at all," the other girl reassured her with the

friendly smile which stranger seemed to give stranger without reserve

in those days. "Perhaps some young Johnny will pick it up and save

me the trouble of having to thrust it into his hand. These are just

recruiting pamphlets; I've hundreds of them left."

Rosamond, as the 'bus jogged along towards the Abbey, regarded her

with interest. She was dark-eyed and slender and pale with the clear

pallor of the London indoor worker; and she wore a bunch of

red-white-and-blue ribbons pinned to the breast of her brown cloth

jacket.

Rosamond asked her if she belonged to any sort of recognised Society.

"No; oh, no. I'm just doing this on my own. There doesn't seem to

be anything else to do. I lost my job (I was typist to a German Film

Agency) the week War was declared," the girl said quite cheerfully,

"and I don't seem to find another. No, I don't know what I shall do

next; but then, who does? Who knows what's going to happen? Only, I

don't think any of us will be allowed to starve or turned out into

the street for quite a bit," said the girl. "So I typed out a lot of

these sort of tracts--some of them are extracts from Blatchford's

things--and bits of Lord Roberts' speeches, and Kipling's verses and

so on--and distribute them. I daresay the men read them; anyhow,

they don't tear them up while I'm there. So I hope they take them on

into the public-houses--When I see men walking along, I always

imagine they're just off to get a drink somewhere, don't you?--and

discuss them together. It does no harm. And it may keep them from

forgetting what they ought to be doing, even if they aren't doing it!"

"It's disgraceful if they aren't," said Rosamond, warmly. "Where do

you go, to serve these out?"

"On Sundays I've been going up the River. Yes; there are rather a

lot of men idling about there, still," said the recruiting-girl. "In

flannels, punting, with Union Jack cushions and a girl in a pretty

frock----"

"No self-respecting girl ought to allow herself to be seen about with

such a 'man,'" protested Rosamond Fayre, but the other shrugged her

slim, rather bent shoulders.

"All very well if all women could manage to think alike on just one

subject for just one week. But they can't," she said

philosophically. "Perhaps two or three of us might turn down a 'nut'

who was slacking; but he knows only too well that for those three

there'd be a dozen girls ready to leap at the chance of his taking

them up the River. That's the whole trouble. I believe that there's

nothing women couldn't do, _if there were only not quite enough of us

to go round_. But--There are too many girls!"

Rosamond protested. "Not too many of the right kind! Those other

girls would have to know that they were only taken when the best had

turned their backs; they're only the second choice."

"They wouldn't mind. Some girls don't mind anything, as long as they

get a fellow of their own," the ex-typist returned with bright

acceptance of fact, "as long as they aren't left one of the million

superfluous women--or is it three million?"

"It seems to alter so," said Rosamond, "every time one hears the

statistics."

"Well, statistics wouldn't matter to you. If there were five women

to every man, you'd be the girl who got him," averred the other girl

with a generously appraising glance. "May I ask if your own boy's at

the Front?"

Rosamond coloured--for no earthly reason,--answering candour with

candour. "He would be, if I'd got one, but I haven't."

"Now, isn't Life rum," said the other girl, reflectively. "Teeth

like that, and not a nut to crack with 'em. Well, well! Here's

where I get off," she added, as the 'bus jolted to a standstill

beside the pavement near Whitehall. "Good luck and good-bye--unless

you'd like to come and help me to distribute my tracts----"

Rosamond Fayre answered almost before she knew what she had decided

to say.

"Yes! Why not?" she said, rising and following the other girl down

the steps of the 'bus. "I'll come with you if you'd like me to----"

"Good!" said the recruiting-girl. And as they reached the entrance

to the Horse Guards she divided her sheaf of pamphlets, giving half

to Rosamond. Together they passed the mounted Lifeguardsmen at the

entrance to the Horse Guards; they walked through the shadow of the

arches under the clock and out into the sunny spaces with the tall

grey Admiralty buildings to the right of them, the recruiting-tents

to the left, the green trees of the Park, mellowing now to brown,

facing them as they stood, blinking for a moment after the shadow.

On the wall of a shed near by a knickerbockered lad in a wide hat and

a grey flannel shirt stiff with badges stood pasting up notices with

the air of one firmly convinced that the safety of an Empire rests

upon his efficiency. He was, of course, a Boy Scout.

Rosamond's companion turned towards him.

"I say, sonny, let's have one of your posters," she begged. "One of

those about 'Why Britain is at War.'"

"Can't spare one, Miss," he said, scarcely turning his bright eyes

from his work. "They'll give you some if you apply at that tent over

there," he pointed with his paste-brush. Then, drawing up his small

sturdy figure, this twelve-year-old added with all the authority of a

full General, "Tell them a SCOUT sent you."

Five minutes later the recruiting-girl had fastened one of these

posters to her jacket, sandwich-man-fashion, and had pinned her own

bunch of red-white-and-blue ribbons to the breast of Rosamond's coat.

"We'll stand here by the entrance," she said to Rosamond. "Always a

heap of men here, passing at their dinner-hour, or hanging about to

see people coming through from the War Office. Think they'll get a

glimpse of 'K.' p'raps. Give one to everybody; I'll take the ones on

the left."

The groups of people formed, broke up, re-formed and passed. And now

Rosamond wondered--not that so many young men were drilling and in

uniform, but that there still remained so many in civilian get-up.

She chose to watch the next six who passed her and who took her

pamphlet civilly enough, wondering what kept them as they were,

summing them up in her rapid, perhaps inaccurate feminine fashion.

From among the women, the work-girls, the old or middle-aged men who

walked in the midday sunshine of the parade, she picked out what

seemed to her the potential recruits.

Here was the first. "_One._"--A young fellow of twenty-two or three,

perhaps; black coat, shop-assistant class. Pale, slenderly-built,

but healthy-looking.... Six months, a year's soldiering would make

as good a man of him as that sentry, pink-cheeked and stalwart and

gorgeous in his long black boots and white buckskin breeches, whose

sword gleamed to the salute as a tall officer swung by, with a

rainbow-coloured line of ribbon across his breast.

"_He_ could enlist," decreed Rosamond, as the young fellow took the

pamphlet, with a clearly rueful glance.

"You never know," returned the other recruiting-girl. "Might have an

invalid mother who'd nobody but that to support her. He might _want_

to go all right, but it's not all honey for the soldier's dependants,

so----"

"_Two_" went by; a small, alert Cockney, red-neckerchiefed coster

type, bright-eyed, sharp-featured.

"Undersized, I suppose," thought Rosamond, glancing down at the

narrow chest of the little fellow who took her pamphlet with a

cheerful--

"Ah, I'm too big to send against those pore Germans; must give 'em

fair play, Lady!"

"Plenty of the French Tommies looked smaller," thought Rosamond.

"_Three_" passed with "_Four_"; men of twenty-eight to thirty-three,

say. Soft green felt hats, much gesture as they talked, bold black

glances--Jews! They were probably making money still, even out of

this War. A little, theatrical-looking lady, daintily-dressed,

walked between them with a clash of gold trinkets, leaving a whiff of

perfume on the fresh breeze.

Rosamond's companion gave a philosophic sniff.

"_Number Five_" went by; a rather well-made, rather well-dressed

youth of twenty, with "colours" in his tie. He was hatless. A

horse-chestnut was not more polished than his smooth head and the

boots that matched it. He took the bill that Rosamond offered--it

was headed by a verse entitled "The Shirker." He gave a glance at

it, at her; and then stopped. The expression on his not uncomely

face was distinctly peevish, so was the tone of his voice as he

addressed Miss Fayre.