"I say! Look here! I'm getting abso-lutely _fed_ with this!" he

exclaimed crossly. "_All_ you girls keep _on_ asking a fellow why he

isn't at the Front----"

Rosamond's blue eyes echoed his query.

"Well! A fellow's done his best, don't you know!" he told her, still

in that exasperated tone. "Twice I've applied to those guys at the

War Office, besides writing and writing to those Territorial

Johnnies. They don't seem--ah--to _want_ a fellow. I'm keen enough

to fight, or to do anything. But they don't seem to have another

blessed commission to _give_ a fellow----"

"Oh, a commission--but why wait for that?" asked Rosamond Fayre.

"Why not join Lord Kitchener's Army?"

"Me?" barked the auburn-haired youth.

"Yes! why not? You're 'between nineteen and thirty-five,' I expect?"

suggested the fair girl, quite gently. One or two elderly men paused

to regard the little scene; a nurse with a Red Cross on her coat, and

holding a white-jerseyed two-year-old by the hand, listened smiling

as Rosamond added, "You're 'physically fit,' aren't you?"

"_Ra_-ther! Of course a fellow's physically fit! When he can break

records--ah--for swimming the----"

"Splendid," said Rosamond, soothingly. "Then since you want to get

out to the Front, why don't you enlist?"

"As a common soldier?" took up this patriot, disgustedly. "Oh, dash

it--look here, you know! A fellow's a gentleman--ah--by birth and

education----"

"Yes! That is exactly how I should have described you," said

Rosamond, finding it a little difficult to speak as evenly as she

would have wished.

"Well, then, you _see_!" took up the auburn-haired youth. "A fellow

can't mix with all the tag-rag and bobtail of the slums, what? Hang

it all! Fellow doesn't want to have to sleep fourteen in a tent, or

whatever it is, with beastly unwashed Tommies!"

Rosamond could only glance at her companion. The other hardier girl

came forward briskly.

"'Unwashed'?" she echoed. "Wouldn't you rather have unwashed

Englishmen than the other kind spreading themselves all over the

Horse Guards here? Germans don't go in for too many baths, I can

tell you; I know, because I've worked for 'em in an office that

wasn't one bit fresher than one of those tents you're shying at. As

for you, you'd be as unwashed as our Tommies yourself at this minute

if you were doing your duty. Aren't you afraid you're a bit of a

snob?"

"I'm afraid," said the young man rebukefully, "that you're just

_suffragettes_!"

"I never was! I'm engaged to an unwashed Territorial, thank you!

And anyhow there isn't such a thing as a suffragette left nowadays.

You are behind the times. Good-bye!" the recruiting-girl dismissed

him with a little nod and the quotation--

"'_For we don't want to lose you

But we think you ought to go_!"

The auburn-haired Exquisite went; muttering something about what a

fellow had to put up with, just because those blighters at the War

Office----

Rosamond laughed, with the other girl. The Nurse, the tiny boy who

was all eyes for the sentry's cuirass, and the old gentlemen passed

on towards the Mall. A knot of working-girls--probably members of

Eleanor's Club--went by chattering, arm-in-arm, into Whitehall.

There was a little pause before any young man came along to be

classified as "Number Six."

Rosamond took another handful of bills from her companion; she was

smiling, speaking to her when, from the direction of Wellington

Square, that Sixth young man walked by.

Rosamond, talking to the other girl, had not noticed him as he strode

past. He halted abruptly; turned back, faced that tall, fair girl in

black, with the bunch of recruiting-ribbons fluttering above her

breast. The shadow of his arm as he lifted his hat fell across her

sheaf of papers.

Rosamond Fayre's eyes turned from her companion to confront the

second tall and stalwart young civilian who had that morning stopped

before her.

And then an odd thing happened; a thing bewildering but swiftly gone

as the sudden flash in the sun of a heliograph message.

For at the sight of this sixth young man Rosamond Fayre almost

uttered a little "oh--" and she knew herself to be colouring hotly.

She had felt for the second time in her life that indescribable and

sudden thrill of delight; warm and young and not-to-be-denied. The

first time had been at Eleanor's Hen-party, when Mr. Ted Urquhart had

asked Eleanor's secretary for that waltz (which she had refused).

This second time it was at the mere unexpected sight of Mr. Ted

Urquhart here in London.

Then in a flash it had gone, and she knew that she must have been

dreaming to imagine that it had ever been.

She glanced unsmilingly up at Eleanor's dear Ted; he was still

wearing that grey suit; still determined that he'd be damned if he'd

go to the War.

"How do you do, Miss Fayre?"' he said.

For a second Rosamond wondered which would best convey her

disapproval of a young man of this calibre; silence or speech? Then

she said, "Good-morning," allowing her gaze to wander to the Wireless

masts above the Admiralty buildings which she could observe beyond

Mr. Ted Urquhart's shoulder.

He stood there--as if he had anything to say! As he stood,

half-a-dozen working-men in corduroys came up and held out horny

hands for papers from these girls, pressing about them. Rosamond

proffered no recruiting-pamphlet to Mr. Ted Urquhart. She felt that

she need not take of him even as much notice as she had bestowed upon

the other shirker, the gentleman (by birth and education) who could

not enlist. She was not any longer at that Court--of his.

And still Eleanor's dear Ted waited. He spoke, rather stiffly.

"Have you--any message for down there? Could I do anything--for

you----?"

"Oh, I don't think so," answered Miss Fayre in cool surprise,

"thanks."

She turned from him, making it her business to hand a pamphlet of

each sort in her sheaf to the nearest passer-by; needlessly enough!

since this chanced to be an officer in Naval uniform, who thanked her

with much grace, much play of the reprobate and, sea-blue eye under

the peak of his white cap.

And when, having uttered a hasty "Pass them on, please!" she turned

again, Mr. Ted Urquhart had taken himself off; he had disappeared

through the arches and across the courtyard into Whitehall. That way

lay the War Office--with which, of course, Mr. Ted Urquhart had no

business.

And Rosamond had 'absolutely no' business (as she seemed to be

continually reminding herself) with Mr. Ted Urquhart. Why need _she_

feel sore and ashamed about his defection? That was for Eleanor to

feel--fortunately Eleanor, being a Pacifist, didn't feel it. What

difference could it have made to Rosamond if she'd heard that Mr. Ted

Urquhart had volunteered as soon as War broke out? Ah, yes! it would

have made a difference! That is, she would have felt then that all

the men were standing together. Now she knew that one was holding

back. And it had "rubbed it in" so to have lived for all those weeks

in the same house with him.

Well, she'd left now!

She'd have to make herself forget it.

She was sorry that here, in the midst of such different surroundings,

she had been reminded of it all again.

She wished she'd never seen him....

That is, she wished she hadn't seen him just now....

"I say, my dear----"

Rosamond came back with a start to her surroundings, and to the other

girl who touched her arm, and went on. "I've got rid of all mine

now, and it's nearly two. (What about five-pennyworth of something

to eat in an A.B.C.? Come along.) If we haven't sent any of them to

the Front, we've shown them what they're thought of at the Back.

What price Gilbert the Filbert, eh? And weren't you crushing to your

tall friend in grey!"

"He wasn't a friend," Rosamond assured her hastily, as the two walked

up to the Strand together. "He was merely a man I met while I was

working for the girl he's engaged to."

"_Engaged_, is he?" said the London girl, with an odd, quick glance.

Rosamond said: "He's to be married to-morrow."

And that thought, which had even less to do with her than the thought

of Mr. Ted Urquhart generally, recurred to her again and again. Even

while she sat in the tea-shop, sharing with that other girl a meal

composed of a cup of Bovril, a soup-plateful of

peaches-and-cream--even when she said good-bye to this new friend,

made another appointment with her, and turned towards that Agency

where she must put down her application--even while she walked back

along Oxford Street noting the "_Business As Usual_" signs, and the

inevitable bright be-flagged war-maps, those war-telegrams in every

shop-window--even while, back in her Ebury Street room, she took down

her heavy hair to brush out the London dust, she found herself

ridiculously unable to keep that irrelevant memory out of her mind.

Mr. Ted Urquhart and Eleanor were to be married to-morrow!

Very quietly, in that little village Church with the grey spire like

a pepper-castor peering above the dull green cliff of elm.... They'd

all motor there together, Rosamond supposed; thinking of them all in

a series of pictures clear and distinct to her mind as any thrown

upon a cinema-screen. There'd be old Mr. Urquhart, with his grey

elf-lock and his Tennysonian hat, full of allusions to the "Dame

Eleanors" and the "Mistress Edward Urquharts" who had been brides in

the course of the last five centuries; there'd be Eleanor with that

dream of a Limerick lace veil softening the matter-of-fact,

conscientious little face, standing rather stiffly before the altar,

with perhaps a splash of jewelled colour--purple, scarlet,

orange--flung from the panes of the old stained-glass window upon her

white wedding-dress. Repeating, in that trite young voice that had

dictated so many business-letters, "_I, Eleanor, take thee, Edward

Clive----_" And Edward Clive--Eleanor's dear Ted? He would be

towering by a head and shoulders above the small compact figure of

the bride: with that inscrutable sun-burnt face of his giving away as

little as usual of what he was feeling at the moment. He'd be

wearing the morning-coat, the conventional grey trousers of the

bridegroom----

"Odious rig!" thought Rosamond Fayre. "No wonder a man always looks

his very worst at his wedding, unless he elects to get married in

uniform!"

But there'd be no question of uniform at Urquhart's Court.

There was the question of the vow to "obey," though.

Rosamond remembered that the name of Eleanor Urquhart had been signed

to more than one petition for the disuse of this obsolete absurdity.

"As if it mattered whether a woman _said_ it, or _meant_ it, or

_what_. If she was marrying a real man, he'd make her want to,"

thought this retrograde Rosamond, brushing her shining mane out

before the ex-bank clerk's small mirror.

The echo of other scraps of that service drifted through her golden

head. She'd heard many brides-to-be discussing it as "unnecessary,"

and "horrid," and "awful." But to her it seemed that so much of it

was stately, beautiful. "To have and to hold ... till death do us

part." Could that be bettered? Softly Rosamond repeated it to

herself. And then, "With my body I thee worship." What poet had

ever put into the mouth of a lover such a line as this that the

bride-groom must be saying to-morrow?

Here, abruptly, Rosamond turned to answer a tap at the door.

"Brought you up a nice hot cup o' tea, Miss Fayre," announced her

little landlady, entering. "I'll put it down on the chest-o'-drawers

here. Dear me, what hair you have, to be sure. Never saw anything

like it. Seems a pity there's nobody but other girls allowed a look

at it all down like that. Got a bit of a headache, have you?"

"No! Thank you very much," said Rosamond. "I haven't a headache.

But I'd love a cup of tea, Mrs. Core. Nothing to eat, thank you."

"Thought you seemed a bit quiet when you came in?" suggested Mrs.

Core with that quick glance and void of illusion which she had in

common with the little typist of the German cinema-agency and the

Horse Guards Parade. "No! P'raps it's only natural we should all

feel quieter these days, Miss Fayre. I'll take the cup down

presently."

Even as Rosamond, with her hair streaming over her blue crêpe kimono,

sat on the edge of the "camp-bed" that Mrs. Core's last lodger had

left for a more comfortless Camp--even as she sipped the welcome tea,

the girl's thoughts flew back once more to that tormenting--no, that

irrelevant subject of the Urquhart wedding to-morrow.

This time to-morrow Eleanor and her dear Ted would be having tea

together for the first time as a married couple! Rosamond wondered

where it would be. In the train, probably, going off somewhere....

Rosamond wondered how Eleanor was feeling about it all.

Probably just the same as usual! Probably not in the least agitated

or excited or suffering from any symptom of the malady that Miss

Fayre had heard described as "_Bridal Fluster!_" Probably putting

aside all thought of to-morrow's event while she busied herself with

what seemed of equal importance--to-day's meeting at The Court of the

Reservists' Wives!

"I daresay it was because of the meeting that her dear Ted was packed

off up to Town this morning," reflected Rosamond as she set down her

empty cup. "Or perhaps he came up--it's a thing a man's supposed to

leave to the last minute!--to buy the wedding-ring?"

Her ringless, pretty hands went up to her hair again, dividing,

before she coiled into the heavy knot, that warmed and scented shawl

of gold. "A pity," the little landlady had said, "that no one but

other girls were allowed to see it"----

With a curious little stab of--what must be resentment, _since pain

and longing it could not be_--Rosamond remembered that once she had

been seen with all the glory of her hair tumbling about her, far

below her waist, by a man. By the man who had run up to her help

that morning on the sea-shore in France--the man who had then scraped

acquaintance with her, without saying who he was--the man who was

Eleanor's property--the man who had turned out to be a shirker and a

coward--the man who had surprised Rosamond into that first mad moment

of throb and thrill, before she'd snubbed him on the Horse Guards

Parade....

"Anyhow, that's the last glimpse I shall ever have of him, I hope,"

concluded Rosamond Fayre, stabbing her largest tortoise-shell pin

very firmly through the Clytie knot. "And I'm glad that the last

glimpse he had of _me_ was that I turned my back on him."

CHAPTER VII

THE RESERVIST'S WIFE

While Rosamond Fayre, with recruiting-ribbons at her breast, had been

surrounded by men on the sunlit Parade, Miss Eleanor Urquhart had

been preparing for another Hen-party at Urquhart's Court.

Very different, this one, from the gay gathering of Club girls that

had been scattered like a giantess' piece-box of many colours over

the great green billiard-table of a lawn, that afternoon not many

weeks ago!

For this party did not fill the whole lawn, but only a few garden

benches that were set out under the lime-trees that had already shed

a light carpet of dead leaves which would have been beheld with

horror by Mr. Marrow--on a far corner of that lawn.

Eleanor, the chairwoman of that meeting, standing by a table that was

put to face the rows of seated women, wore the "responsible"-looking

grey costume that she had worn on the other occasion. Her friend,

Miss Fabian, who, all pince-nez and superiority, was to address the

meeting, wore under her cape of Art-green cloth with the collar of

Vorticist embroidery, the same brown-patterned Liberty gown; but the

dress of the Reservists' wives was soberer and in many cases shabbier

than the pink and Saxe and sky-blue bravery that had adorned the

party of Eleanor's Club girls. Those girls had chattered and giggled

and shrieked aloud in the high tide of exuberant spirits, but there

was little laughter or noise among these women. The Club girls had

sung musical-comedy choruses, and had played kissing-games and had

waltzed to the music of the blue-and-white uniformed band; but here

was no singing, no dancing; and, in the now historic phrase, "_this

was not the time to play games_." These wives of men who had

rejoined their old regiments were of varying ages and varying

classes, from a bonneted and shawled flower-seller to a retired

lady's maid, in a hat and a black frock that had been made

(originally) in Vienna; but upon the faces of nearly all of them

there was to be seen the levelling look of strain, of responsibility.

For at such a time "_women must weep_" is not the motto for such as

they, but "_women must work_."

To find reasonably-paid work for each of these left-behinds was now

Eleanor's care. In the large book before her on the table there was

entered--in the pretty, clear handwriting that was so successfully

modelled on the writing of her late secretary--a suggestion for

employment opposite each name that she had just taken down.

"And now, before we all go into the dining-room for tea," she

concluded, "my friend, Miss Octavia Fabian, will say a few words to

us explaining why our country is at War, and what we hope the results

of this War will be."

Miss Fabian rose, and the decorous silence in the ranks of the

Reservists' wives became troubled by gusts of whispering here and

there that made a background for the high-pitched, clear-cut tones of

Miss Fabian's platform voice.

"Now, what I have to Explain to you wives of our soldiahs----"

"--Six of 'em, and always kept as any one could see them! When I

took them to the Institute the Matron said, 'Well, if all the

children we had brought here was as----'"

"Same battery as my old----"

"Rent? I says, whatever's '_rent_,' I should like to know----"

"Ah, she's one o' the lucky ones; never bin so well off in her life.

He used to drink every penny she made, and now what's she got?

Separation allowance and half-pay from his firm, if you please;

bought herself a new 'at, new boots. All she's got to do now is walk

out in 'em and get off again!"

"Order, please! Hush!" from Miss Urquhart.

Then, louder from the speaker in the green cape, "We intend that

aft-ah this deplorable War, there can be No furth-ah War. We are

fighting for that Great Aim. We are fighting (paradoxically enough!)

for Disarmament! We are fighting so that our children and our

children's children need Nev-ah know what fighting Is----"

"--soon as he read that piece in the _Mirrer_ about that charge of

his old Rigiment he says to me, 'Good-bye, Annie,' he says, 'I'm off.

Don't care if my time is up,' he says, 'I'm goin' to rejoin, if

they'll 'ave me.' And o' course they----"

"Will you all p-p-please be quiet until Miss Fabian has finished,"

interposed the chairman once more. Then she turned, to find, waiting

at her elbow, the tall young parlour-maid in blue with silver

buttons, who had replaced Mr. Beeton the butler (now Petty Officer

Beetles).

"What is it, White?" murmured her mistress. "I said----"

"If you please, Miss, a young--a young Person has just arrived who

says she must see Miss Urquhart at once," whispered the parlour-maid,

conveying all her scandalised disapproval of this intruder in one

sedate glance. "I said you were engaged, Miss, but the--the Person

said it was important and she must see you yourself, at once. She

didn't give any name."

"Is she a Reservist's wife?" murmured Miss Urquhart; upon which the

sedate White replied, "I shouldn't imagine so, Miss, but she has a

little baby with her."

"Perhaps I'd better come," said Eleanor. With an apologetic glance

at the back view of Miss Fabian's Art-green cape, she slipped away

from the meeting under the limes, and walked across the lawn beside

the parlour-maid.

"Where is she--in the Hall?"

"Oh no, Miss; she didn't want to come into the house, she said. And

when she heard you'd got a meeting, she wouldn't come on to the

Terrace. She said she wanted to speak to you by yourself, and she'd

wait at the back. She gave the little baby to Mrs. Marrow to hold,

Miss, and she went towards the kitchen-garden; walking up and down; I

wondered if perhaps she weren't quite right in her head; she looked

quite wild, somehow----"

"Poor thing, what can it be?" said Miss Urquhart wonderingly, and she

sped towards the walled kitchen-garden at the back of the Court.

She opened the green door which pushed softly against the great dark

cushion of the rosemary bush that grew beside the wall. The rest of

that brick wall of mellow-red and yellow was a backing for great

spreading fans of plum and apricot. Half a dozen forcing frames were

ranged in between it and the thick box border that edged the path.

And on the path, between those frames and the prickly ranks of the

gooseberry bushes in the opposite bed, she beheld, striding away from

the door, the buxom figure of a young woman clad in a skirt of large

black-and-white check, and a belted frieze sports-coat of a most

brilliant and arresting pink; the colour of the brightest

rhododendron, the most garishly gay petunia. Her hands were thrust

deep into the pockets of this garment; her head, in a lurid crimson

casque of a hat, was held defiantly erect.

As the door opened to admit Miss Urquhart, the girl in the flaring

pink coat wheeled round and turned her comely, excited face upon her.

"_Pansy_! It's _you_?" cried Eleanor astonished.

Then, as she came forward to meet the Principal Boy, that astounded

look faded from Miss Urquhart's small face, leaving it disapproving

beyond description; searching, hard.

For Pansy Vansittart was the very last visitor whom Eleanor had

expected or wished to see, since enquiries that she had lately been

making about her seemed likely to be true.

There was a cloud of the blackest suspicion over Pansy's good name.

A rumour of it had reached Urquhart's Court as long ago as the day of

the Girls' Garden Party, when Miss Fabian had mentioned that friend

of hers who collected rents, and who knew "_something to the

discredit_" of Miss Urquhart's theatrical _protegée_.... That

friend, who had been away, had returned and had furnished Miss Fabian

with further particulars of what she knew. Miss Fabian had only

to-day passed them on to the Head of the Girls' Holiday Hostel Club.

No wonder Miss Urquhart scarcely expected to see this girl before

her, here!

In her austerest voice she began, "Well, Pansy. I am surprised.

Have you anything to say to me----"

"I have, Miss Urquhart. I should think I had. Several things!" cut

in the Principal Boy in her loudest and least abashed tone. She

stood there, her feet in their showily-buckled shoes planted well

apart on that path; her handsome head well up, her face pale beneath

its inevitable powder, and her brown eyes ablaze with temper. "I

want to know, for a start, if you aren't _ashamed_ of yourself?"

Eleanor, rooted to the spot beside the rosemary bush, was for a

moment struck dumb by this unlooked-for opening. It was one which

she thought might have been more suitably turned upon Miss Vansittart

herself. But there was no trace of shame or even nervousness in that

young woman's wrathful gaze as she glared down upon the Court's young

mistress and, without waiting for any answer, went on with her

indictment:

"Nosing and busybodying into my affairs, you've bin! Writing

letters! Sending to my old address! Setting the landlady on to Mag

about my concerns! It's not what any _lady_ would do, that's flat!"

Eleanor, with a very stiff backbone, interposed: "I think you are

forgetting yourself----"

"What?" (Staccato.) "Me? Haw!" (Still more staccato.) "Tell me who

started it--that's what I'd like to know. That's what I'd like to

know! Who sent that little freak of an Autumn Daisy pokin' round my

place and wantin' to know everything from the hot-water pipes down to

what time everybody came in at night, the----"

She paused. No epithet to be found even in Pansy's vocabulary could

have conveyed the withering scorn of that short pause.

She went on again. "I know who it was, as a matter of fact. Ho,

yes! It was that Miss Four-eyes Fabian of yours! She's the one!

_She's_ one o' those spiteful cats who's never happy unless she's

raking up anything she can against any girl who happens to be

good-looking; she hasn't got any chance of a young man of her own,

no, and she'll see that nobody else has, too, without she can make

things hot for her! Rakin' up and snuffin' out, the----"

Here another of those brief but pregnant pauses, while Eleanor,

flushed and angry, would have spoken. Pansy's "Huh!" cut like a

pistol-shot across any attempt at interruption. The warm quiet of

that sunny garden fled; walls and bushes and frames and

vegetable-beds seemed to ring, to echo again with the storming of

that young woman with that voice, those garish garments.

"Taking away a girl's reputation. Thinks nothing o' that, she don't!

... A respectable girl! Girl that's always been being got at, as a

matter of fact, for being so particular and strait-laced! Starting a

pack of lies about her, and people jorin'----!"

"Do you mean that this is not true?" Eleanor slipped in hastily and

edgeways. "This that Miss Fabian's friend----"

"There! A-_har_! Didn't I know it----"

"--that Miss Fabian's friend told me was known for a fact? She said

that when she called at your rooms at that place in Brixton,"

persisted Miss Urquhart, "that she actually saw you, and that you did

not deny----"

"'Course I didn't deny anything! Deny? What's the good of denying

anything to a little flannel-face with a voice like an ungreased

wheel that came pokin' round with her, 'Are you Miss Vansittart?'

'Guilty!' I said; and me that hadn't had time to get dressed, with me

hair all down and my pink matinée on. 'Come in, do. This way! I'd

better put you on the Free List,'" I said, and pretty satirically,

too, _which_ she didn't take in. "'Have a good look round, old

dear.' Which she did. Hoo! I couldn't help seein' the funny side,"

enlarged Pansy indignantly, "when me Aunt Geranium began putting her

eyes on stalks to gape round my place at all Ma's furniture"--a gasp

for breath here--"and the big gramophone in the corner and the

siphons and the ash-trays" (gasp) "and my photographs of the other

girls and the comedian in our Company and some of the little things

drying on the fire-guard" (pant) "and _The London Mail_! It amused

me!" declared Pansy with another angry hoot. "And when she said to

me, 'I hear some of the tenants are complainin' because you never

came in till midnight.'" (gasp). "'Midnight if I'm lucky,' I said.

'It's oftener one and two G.M.!' She said, 'Very unpleasant for a

young woman to walk down this lonely new road alone, so late?' I

said, 'Must be! I generally take good care to have a young man, to

hang on to, with me!' And she" (gasp) "looked all ways for daylight

and said, 'No, really. Do you really mean to admit that you return

every night at those disgraceful hours and with a MAN?' and I" (gasp)

"just said the nastiest thing I could think of."

Here Pansy, with another hoot, tossed her crimson casque and laughed

into Eleanor's apprehensive little face as she concluded with that

"nastiest thing" she had hurled at the rent (and scandal) collecting

spinster.

"I said, 'Yes; _Miss!_'"

"W-w-w-well, then, I d-d-don't see how you can d-d-defend your

conduct," took up Eleanor, with an energetic though stammering

attempt to regain her legitimate footing. "And b-b-besides that,

there is another thing. The m-m-maid told me j-just now that you

b-b-brought a b-b-baby with you, and that the g-gardener's wife is

minding it for you now. Is it your s-sister's child?"

"No fear!" retorted Pansy promptly. "Let my sister cart her own

little handfuls about! It's mine, that is."

"Yours?" said Eleanor, with a deepening of the hardness on her face.

"Then it was all true. You have got a baby----"

"Why shouldn't I?" snapped the Principal Boy.

"A baby----"

"Yes. Why not? Haven't I been married gettin' on for two years

now----"

"Married?" echoed the stupefied Eleanor. "You're married?"

The breast of Pansy's petunia-pink frieze coat seemed to swell as a

sail that takes the breeze. With another toss of her whole person

she retorted, "You don't give me much chance, do you, Miss Urquhart?

You don't take much for granted! As soon as you've made sure there's

a kid, you--ah, you're as bad as the other one!" Her face, no longer

pale, deepened in colour almost to the crimson of her hat. "If you

don't believe me, Miss Urquhart, you'd better look at these----"

She plunged her hand into one of the hip-pockets of her coat, drew

out a long packet of papers and thrust them upon the younger girl.

"Here's my marriage-lines, see? Read 'em," she commanded. "Yes, you

read 'em; here you are. 'Pansy Teresa Price,' understand? That's

me. Vansittart's only my stage name, as any o' the girls could have

told you, if you'd agone about asking them in the right way," snorted

the Principal Boy. "And here's my other name, Hawkins!" She stabbed

the certificate with a nicotine-gilded forefinger. "Here he is:

'George Herbert Stanley Hawkins'--that's the 'young man' I used to

come home with every night at those 'disgraceful hours'--yes, and

stay home with, too. (More than some o' them do!) Think o' that!

That's my Stanley! That's my husband! 'Cinematograph Operator';

that's his occupation. Was then, I mean. Want to know what his

present shop is? What he's doin' now, Miss Urquhart? He"--with

another proud heave of that petunia-pink bosom--"he's reelin' off

another sort o' pictures"--with a brisk circular gesture--"of those

heathen Germans! Yes. He's working a machine-gun somewhere in

France at this minute, bless 'im! That's where he is; with his old

battery that he served with in the Bor' War! That's right. Well!

And so you'd a party for Reservists' Wives here to-day, Miss

Urquhart. Pity you never thought to give me a call!"

"How w-w-was I to know that you were a Reservist's wife?" demanded

the discomfited Eleanor, not unnaturally rather cross. "How

c-c-could any one have thought you w-were a m-married woman?"

At this Pansy's temper, that seemed for the minute abating, suddenly

flared up again. She kicked the path with the wooden Louis heel of

her shoe as she exclaimed, "Not 'a married woman!' Me! A married

woman, ah, and a good wife--_which is more than you'll ever be_, Miss

Urquhart, for all those sparklers on your finger there, and for all

this swanky house-and-grounds that you're getting married for!"

"There is no n-n-n-need," Eleanor began, set-faced, "to be insolent,

Pansy."

"Insolent? Shall be insolent if I like--I shall say what I like to

you for once, Miss Urquhart, and do you good," cried the Principal

Boy, her bell-like tones shaking afresh with anger. "Don't think I

don't see through you--a nice kind of sweetheart you'd make to any

man--let alone the one who's the misfortune to be cast for the

intended! I bet that's never been anything but a dead frost since

the curtain went up on it! I bet he's never been encouraged to catch

you in his arms and fairly _eat_ you up with kisses, same as a girl's

got to expect when she's promised herself to a fellow!"

Here, Eleanor Urquhart, standing there small and undefensive, winced.

She winced distinctly. She put out the spare brown hand that wore

the Urquhart ring, and gave a little clutch, as if for support, to

the rosemary bush beside her. She held on to a bunch of the sturdy

twigs, thick with dark, aromatic leaves. Her other hand went to the

breast of her grey jacket and she cleared her throat with a little

choking sound that was rather pathetic. But she did not move the

relentless Principal Boy. Pansy, who had lashed herself up into

growing excitement, went on.

"Ah, you look down on me, Miss Urquhart. You think I'm 'not a lady,'

but I tell you what it is--I know you're not a woman! Ah, and he

knows it too, your Mr. Urquhart does. A pretty wash-out that'll be,

you getting tied up to him! For"--Pansy wound up with a piece of

tried feminine philosophy--"_if you can't keep a young man before

you've got him, when can you, I should like to know?_"

Here Eleanor, still clutching the rosemary twigs, suddenly raised the

dusky head which had dropped on to her slight chest. Blankly,

incredulously, her dark eyes met the angry, taunting eyes of the

woman of whom she'd thoroughly "got the back up."

"Pansy!" she exclaimed, "I d-don't understand. I w-w-want to know

what you m-mean by what you've just said. 'Not k-keep him'?"

"Oh, you know you haven't! You know you haven't!" Pansy persisted,

roused, angry, the worst in her nature awake and anxious to hurt the

fellow-woman to whom she had always been subconsciously antagonistic.

"Any one could see with half an eye who all his eyes were for! If

I'd only seen him at the Party here, I should have been on to it,

watching him follow her about like--why, like the limelight follows

the leading lady round the stage in her big scene! You weren't on in

that, Miss Urquhart! Let alone that time in France, at the

Hostel----"

"What was that?" Eleanor, her eyes fixed on the Principal Boy,

demanded, very sharply. "What was that at the Hostel?"

"Only the same thing--only more so. He was her shadow, was your

handsome young man. He couldn't help himself!" enlarged the

Principal Boy. "He was hers for a word, for a look----"

"Who d'you mean? Tell me. You must tell me," said Eleanor Urquhart,

peremptorily, with a sharp, shrill note in her voice that sounded odd

in her own ears. "I have a right to know."

"You're a fool if you don't know already," retorted the downright

pantomime girl. "I mean her you left to look after us there; Miss

Fayre. D'you suppose that good-looking young fellow wasn't head over

ears in love at first sight with that peach of a girl?"

There was a silence in that sunny garden; through which floated from

the house the deep and distant purr of the gong for tea. Then

Eleanor, still with that odd new note in her voice, said, "This must

be a mistake."

Pansy laughed unsympathetically.

"A mistake? Not of mine, Miss Urquhart. Why, you should have seen

him! Every time he gave her a look, well, it might as well have been

a arm round and have done with it! And didn't he let out to me

himself that he'd been chasing round the rocks and everywhere that

morning trying to find Miss Fayre? Didn't he get me to get the other

girls out of the way that afternoon so that he should have the stage

to himself to talk to her? Not that I heard a word after," the

Principal Boy added, "turned him down proper, I shouldn't wonder.

Got a best boy of her own, has our Miss Fayre, I expect. But if

there wasn't any poaching on your preserves that week, it wasn't any

credit to your young Mr. Ted!"

"Are you sure?" began Eleanor, a little gaspingly. "Pansy! Are

you----"

But her small and agitated voice was interrupted by a volume of sound

that came from beyond the closed green door of the garden; a noise as

of a young and healthy bull-calf, bellowing.

The door behind Eleanor was pushed open and the noise increased

almost deafeningly as there appeared the aproned, rosy and plump wife

of Mr. Marrow the ex-gardener bearing in her arms a

white-plush-coated child of eight months, his white woolly cap

bristling with War-badges, his eyes tightly closed, and his mouth

stretched to a cavern emitting roar after roar.

"Can't do anything with him," explained Mrs. Marrow in a shriek above

the uproar, with an apologetic dip towards Miss Urquhart. "He woke

up sudden, and I suppose finding hisself all among strangers, pore

lamb, in a place he wasn't used to----"

"Oh, _lor_! Givvim to me, then. Come on, Herbert," exclaimed Mrs.

Stanley Hawkins, grabbing her son, not too gently, into her

petunia-pink embrace. "There! Tinker! Young Terror, ain't you?

Leave _orf_----"

And, as if by magic, the bellowing ceased. With the vibrations of it

still quivering in the air, with the tears still rolling down the

rose-red and bulging cheeks, the Pantomime-girl's baby drew a long,

sobbing breath and then grinned the ineffable grin of Naughtiness

Triumphant.

"Ah," said the baby-boy. "M'--gur!"

The next thing to happen was as sudden and as unexpected as that lull

to a tempest.

For Miss Eleanor Urquhart, moving rapidly as she was never known to

move, took a hasty diffident step towards the group, gazed with a

moved and transfigured face upon Master Herbert Hawkins, and cried

aloud, "Oh, Pansy, what, _what_ a darling! ... Oh! You _sweet_! ...

Can't I hold him for _just_ a minute?"

"Well, if he'll go to you----" returned the young Mother, taken aback

and mollified; and Eleanor put out her hands, cooing invitation.

For a moment the child hesitated. Then the complacent grin creased

his pink face once more, and he stretched out his little arms, stiff

in the thick plush sleeves, towards the instinctively-recognised, the

born Baby-worshipper.

And for the next few minutes those two wives saw Eleanor Urquhart

absolutely at her best; holding and playing with a little child. For

she was of the type of which the perfect nurse is made; and not the

good-natured, capable Mrs. Marrow, not the sumptuous Pansy, not the

beautiful Rosamond, beloved of men, well-fitted to be the mother of

men, would ever learn quite that lovely gesture with which plain,

severe little Eleanor cradled in her arms another woman's child.

"I didn't ought to have said off all I did say to you, Miss Urquhart,

but I _was_ wild," admitted Pansy, ruefully, as she took leave at the

garden-door of the little organiser whom she had never resented less.

"It's not you; it's those _friends_ of yours I haven't been able to

stick; if you don't mind me saying so; still, if there weren't some

o' that sort, there'd be one sort less. And I've been to blame,

myself. I know I didn't ought to have passed myself off as a single

young girl and gone to that Hostel, but there! Nobody calls

themselves 'Mrs.' in my profesh'; and I swear none of those other

girls, Miss Urquhart, had a word of anything Married, as you might

call it, from _me_. I----"

("OOgully-googully," said Pansy's baby-boy.)

"N-n-n-never mind, Pansy. You go and have some tea with Mrs. Marrow,

will you?"

"It was all because I was weaning my little Herb!" the Principal Boy

persisted. "He'd always slept in an old property-box in the

dressing-room while I went on, Miss Urquhart, and I'd given him his

feed at ten there, regular, every night. (More than lots of 'em

would!) And I said, 'Well, if I've got to drop it, go away I _must_,

and so----"

("Goo an' glue," said the baby.)

"It is all right," said Miss Urquhart, standing there with one finger

still lingering in the baby-boy's pink clutch. "We'll forget about

it now."

"There's something else I was gassing about," added the young

Reservist's wife, uneasily, "that I didn't ought, and that I've

p'raps got off all wrong, and that I hope you'll forget, too----'

"Very well, Pansy," said Miss Urquhart with her most business-like

nod of farewell. "Good-bye, you _Duck_--" to the baby.

Pansy knew, as well as Eleanor knew herself, that what she had said

about a _fiancé_ and about another girl was something not to be

readily "forgotten" by a bride-to-be.

And Eleanor Urquhart, outwardly busied with the tea for the Meeting,

thought of little else but that "something" for the rest of the

afternoon--except of the slow passage of the time to the hour when

Ted Urquhart had said he would be coming back, from his business in

London, to The Court.

With a beating heart and a catch at her throat the girl who was to be

married on the morrow decided, "I shall speak to him about it. I

shall ask _him_."

CHAPTER VIII

ALLIES

The Reservists' Wives, together with Miss Octavia Fabian, who for the

first time that she had visited The Court had not been pressed to

stay for dinner, had all gone by the time that Ted Urquhart, rather

out of spirits and irritable, returned to his house from a day in

London spent between the War Office and the outfitter's. All was in

order now. He might expect to be off on the following Monday or

Tuesday, ready, married, will made, everything. There were a few

people to say Good-bye to. One young woman, to whom he'd thought

he'd like to say a friendly Good-bye, after all had turned her back

on him just as he was opening his mouth to say it. Well, the other

one had agreed without demur to becoming his wife at once. And in

the late afternoon sunlight this girl was waiting to meet him on the

Terrace as he jumped down from the motor; she came quickly forward,

and for the first time since he and she had been engaged, young

Urquhart saw that Eleanor, his betrothed, seemed really glad to see

him.

"You are late, aren't you?" she said in a queer breathless little

voice. "I thought you were never coming back, Ted."

"Do you know, that is the nicest thing you have ever said to me,

Eleanor?" said Ted, looking down upon the prim little figure, and

feeling rather touched. She did care then, whether he came or went?

Well, that was something, when another girl had just shown him so

very plainly that she preferred him to go. Eleanor, after all, had

got a scrap of ordinary womanly feeling for him tucked away under all

that chilly and matter-of-fact crust of hers? That was an edge of

silver to the black cloud of depression into which there seemed to be

setting the sun of this day before Ted Urquhart's wedding.

He smiled quite gratefully down into the big anxious brown eyes that

the bride-to-be lifted to his face.

"It isn't so very late," he suggested. "Half an hour before we

dress. What about going for a stroll all round? We may not have

time to-morrow. Or are you tired, Eleanor?"

"N-no. Oh, no. I'm not tired. Let's go for a walk before we go

into the house. I'd like it," said Eleanor, quite eagerly. "I--I

w-wanted to have a little talk with you, if I could."

"Rather," he said, brightening a little. "Come along."

He tossed his hat on to a chair in the hall, and came down the steps

again. "We'll do the grand tour of our estate, shall we?" said Ted

Urquhart with determined cheerfulness to the girl so soon to be his

wife. They turned along the Terrace to the right, towards the park

that led through the rose-garden, and to the new fish-pond.

"It's a jolly evening, isn't it?" said the bridegroom-to-be, raising

his eyes to the apricot sky patterned with pink fleecy clouds. The

soft air with the September nip in it was full of the scent of tall

tobacco-plants that grew jungle-thick at the back of the herbaceous

border on the south of the rose-garden; nearer to the path were

clumps of ragged glowing double dahlias, sulphur-yellow, orange,

cardinal-red; a huge blot of richest purple marked the China asters

and next to these ran a long splash of shrieking scarlet, salvias.

"Gorgeous weather for autumn; I've never seen this bit of the garden

look so ripping," said young Urquhart, gazing at the English flowers

under the English sunset. "This is my good-bye to it, Eleanor."

"Yes," said Eleanor, with that agitated little quaver in her voice

that moved him and hurt him because it lacked power to move him more.

At least the little thing was sorry he was off. The near parting was

stirring up what feelings she had; or the near wedding.

Some girls were like this, he thought; made on such conventional

lines that when they really definitely belonged to a man they were

automatically "fond" of him; sad to think of his going. And when--if

he came back, Eleanor would become as automatically glad to welcome

her husband.

That thought brought a gleam of comfort. There was just a sporting

chance that he and she, together, might find married happiness at

last--at least, as much happiness as many couples.... They would be

not strangers, but allies even if they never might be lovers. If

only he had never seen another; if only he had never given himself up

to those mad dreams of that golden-haired girl pacing this very

garden at his side!

"Come and have a look at the pond," he said hastily to Eleanor, who

was strangely silent as they walked along. All her usual store of

trite little platitudes seemed to have forsaken her; she seemed to

have nothing to say this evening. And yet she had volunteered that

she'd wanted "a little talk" with him! Perhaps she only wanted to

be, quite quietly, with him. Perhaps she didn't want to speak at all.

But when they reached the round pond with the grey stone border and

stood looking at that smooth mirror to the sky, blotched at one side

with lily-pads, Eleanor Urquhart spoke, her queerly agitated little

voice breaking through the heavy country quiet.

"Ted! I want to say something to you!"

"Oh, yes?" He turned, looking down at her again.

"It--it's rather d-d-difficult!"

"Is it?" said Ted Urquhart, encouragingly, and wondering what this

might be. Perhaps she was going to ask him what he wished done about

some business or other in the event of his being wiped off the slate

out there? It was rather "difficult," perhaps, for a girl who was

not yet a wife to ask for her instructions as a widow, he thought

whimsically as he added kindly, "surely you can tell me--we're

getting married to-morrow, and----"

"That's just it," gasped Eleanor. She clenched her small hands.

There lingered on her palms the aromatic scent of the rosemary twigs

she had clutched at for support when Pansy blurted out those

revelations in the kitchen-garden. The memory of what that girl had

said spurred Eleanor to bring out, with a little breathless rush,

what she herself wanted to say.

"Ted! Is it true? Something I heard. S-something somebody has just

t-told me. That you liked somebody ... were in love with somebody

else?"

Young Urquhart's tall elastic figure seemed to stiffen all over into

angry alertness.

"Who?" he demanded.

He meant "who said it?" But Eleanor mistook his question and

answered without reserve.

"They said you were in love with Rosamond Fayre."

"What's this?" he took up angrily. "Who's been talking to you?"

"Pansy Vansittart--you know her----"

--"Oh, Lord," from Ted below his breath.

--"was here this afternoon. She was very angry. She said it to hurt

me, I think," his _fiancée_ explained rapidly. "But I want to know,

from you, whether it's really true?"

The tall young man and the small girl stood confronting each other

above their own contrasted reflections in the still waters at their

feet.

He spoke quietly now.

"Eleanor, will you believe me? I swear that there is

nothing--absolutely nothing between me and any woman. Since I've

been engaged to you I haven't said a word to any woman that you could

not have heard."

"B-but that's not what I asked you!" the engaged girl took up with a

helpless, repudiating gesture of her hands. "Why do m-m-men always

answer one like this? Always something that's got nothing to d-do

with the question! Is it true? What Pansy said! _Is_ it? I want

to be told!"

"Well, but look _here_--" began the young man, cruelly embarrassed,

bewildered.

He took a few steps away from the side of the lily-pond, towards the

path that went up beyond the clipped, box-peacocks-and-windmill

hedge, to the smaller lawn where Eleanor's girls had danced. Eleanor

followed him; every movement of her small figure, the pose of her

dark head one urgent, repeated demand.

"Is it _true_?"

"Look here, Eleanor," he began again. "I must tell you that she--the

girl you speak of--would simply--Well! I don't know what she'd do

for surprise if she heard what you said. She--why, if it ever

occurred to her----"

"N-never mind her. That isn't it. Oh," Eleanor cried desperately,

"c-c-can't you answer what I'm asking you? Ted!" she put out a hand

and clutched his sleeve even as she had clutched that rosemary bush.

"This is the first time I've ever asked you to d-do anything for me.

Won't you do this?" Her voice was the voice of an appealing and

frightened child. "Ted! Will you tell me?"

"All right. I will tell you," said the young man quickly and firmly.

That touching, unexpected, girlish appeal had made up his mind for

him. The poor child! Poor little mite, hiding that jealous

affection until admission was forced from her like this! There

remained only one thing for the man she cared for to do. Namely, to

obey the Eleventh Commandment at Eton; to tell a lie, to tell a good

'un, and to stick to it. And so he declared, without a quiver, "It's

all a mistake, Eleanor! It isn't true."

"Not true?" muttered Eleanor, and her hand dropped from his sleeve.

"You're sure, Ted?"

"Quite sure," insisted Ted Urquhart briskly. "It was all rot, my

dear."

The next moment the small girl at his side had made such an impulsive

movement that he thought she was going to fling her arms wide to him.

But she had only taken a couple of steps backward.

There was a rustic bench beside that path, backed by the clipped

hedge. Blindly, and as if pushed down by a crushing blow, Eleanor's

compact little figure collapsed upon that seat. She dropped her

dusky head upon both her hands and broke into uncontrollable sobs....

Poor little soul! Poor, overwrought little thing--Lord, how he

wished she wouldn't! ... Even if she were crying for joy--what could

be done to stop it?

Suffering acutely from this sight of a woman in tears--Eleanor, of

all women!--and on his behalf, too!--Ted Urquhart plopped down

hastily beside his _fiancée_ on the bench.

"Eleanor. Look here, Eleanor, _please_----"

He put his long arm about her shoulders.

He was ill-prepared for the brusque, the intense gesture with which

Eleanor drew herself back.

"No. Oh, Ted, if you _don't_ mind, I can't bear to be touched!"

"Sorry," he said, mystified, and dropping his arm. "What have I

done----?"

"Oh, nothing. I know you can't help it, but-b-b-but oh! it was so

_awful_ when you said that just now," sobbed Eleanor Urquhart out of

her handkerchief. "All--all the afternoon since Pansy spoke I've

been thinking--and thinking--M-M-M-Making up my mind that she

m-m-must be right! G-G-Going back and remembering things and

thinking I'd _n-n-noticed_! F-Feeling quite c-convinced that you did

c-care for Rosamond, and that it was all t-t-true! And now you say

it isn't. Oh! _Oh_! After I'd _hoped_----"

"Hoped," echoed Ted Urquhart blankly. "I don't understand, Eleanor.

I don't quite understand. D'you mean--? Can you mean you wanted it

to be true that I cared for somebody else?"

"Yes! Of _c-course_!" sobbed the bride-to-be desperately. "Because

then--then I needn't--I shouldn't be exp-pup-_pected_ to marry you

to-morrow!"

"Good Heavens!" said the bridegroom-to-be, sitting up very straight

and staring at her. "Is _this_ how you feel about it, Eleanor?"

"Yes! I'm sorry! I c-c-can't help it! I have tried!" declared Miss

Urquhart, struggling to fight down her sobs. "I thought I could d-do

it! F-For Father's sake and everybody's! I thought I could bear it

all, without showing anything! I thought I could be strong and

bub-brave enough----'

"Brave enough?"

"Yes, and so I was; until there s-seemed to be a _chance_ of

g-getting out of it! And n-now--even if that isn't true about

Rosamond--of c-course I hate p-put-ting you out and d-disappointing

Father and all that! B-B-Breaking my word at the eleventh hour!

Cuc-can-celling my appointments--a thing I _never_ do, really," wept

Miss Urquhart, defensively, "still, I _c-can't_ do the other. Oh,

don't ask me to go on with that dreadful wedding to-morrow, Ted----"

She turned to him, her small face broken up, quivering.

"L-l-_let_ me off!"

"But of course. Oh! Certainly. Rather," broke in Ted Urquhart,

precipitately but mechanically, for he was almost numb with amazement

over the true cause of the girl's emotion. "I say--please don't

consider yourself bound in any way, please let me give you back your

freedom," he concluded, "here and now!"

"Oh, you are good!" cried Eleanor, one tremble of relief. "If you're

sure you don't m-mind very much----"

"It's quite all right," he said, too discomfited for further words.

"Quite all right. I ought to have guessed, perhaps. If you'd said a

word----"

"Oh, but I was t-trying--so _hard_--not to show how I minded----"

Ted Urquhart gave a short and very bitter laugh. "I seem to be

remarkably unlucky in the way of pleasing any woman," he said. And

he raised the gallant young head of which nine out of ten women would

not have denied the attractiveness, and stared away above the

lime-trees. He scarcely saw that quickly yellowing sky, speckled

with homing rooks; what he saw was a picture of the golden knot of

hair above the supple shoulders of that girl who'd also turned her

back on him. "I am sorry," he muttered, half to himself, "that I

manage to put you off like this----"

"Oh, it isn't _you_, Ted. I don't think that being engaged to you

would be worse than being engaged to lots of other people," pleaded

Eleanor deprecatingly, raising her blurred eyes to his again. "It's

only that _I_ hated it so, especially when the actual D-Day was

fixed! And then--it got n-n-nearer and nearer to b-being m-married!

Oh! I tried to th-think of how F-Father wished it, and of how k-kind

you'd been;--b-but all the time I knew how I should hate being your

w-wife--_Anybody's_, I mean!" she corrected herself, hastily, picking

and clutching at a wet handkerchief. "I always think a m-married

woman is only _half_ an ind-d-dividual, as Miss Fabian says. She

g-gives up her p-personality, her privacy! she isn't _herself_,

somehow, any more; oh, I couldn't!" she pleaded, bewilderedly. "I

don't know why I'm like this----

"Don't, child--don't," said young Urquhart, confused beyond words at

this burst of confidence, unrestrained as are the rare confidences of

the naturally self-contained. "Don't bother to explain----"

"Yes. I must ex-pup-plain," she persisted. "I don't want you to

think it's only because it was you that I was so ded-dreadfully

miserable when I was engaged! It would have been the same with

anybub-body else. I don't know whether it's because I d-do so detest

the scent of their cigarettes, or if it's because of their gruff

voices, or what, but----"

Here, with a rush of unmistakable sincerity, the little philanthropic

worker voiced a keynote to her own character.

She cried--

"_I don't like Men!_ I don't like any men at all. I never have. I

never could! There, Ted."

Ted Urquhart regarded her; this young woman of a type not uncommon in

this world, but nearly always misunderstood.

At the head of the same type stands Joan of Arc, the saint, the

Saviour of her country, leader of soldiers--who was the sweetheart of

no soldier, of no man. Of the same type one sees many and many a

noble woman-worker, a born Nurse, a Heaven-sent tender of little

children. To the Eleanor-type, Love for a man is limited to

nurse-love for him at the age of Pansy's baby-boy. She can delight

in the sight of that fruit of Love. But the sweetness of its blossom

sickens and disgusts her. Not for her is the gay warfare between man

and maid--ending in joyous surrender. The caress revolts her.

To the end, men will say of that inborn aversion, "Ah! Sour grapes!

Pretends she doesn't care for men, just because she's never had the

chance of a man making love to her!"

Perhaps Ted Urquhart, that Brainless Army type, was still rather more

understanding than many of his sex. He actually realised that it was

not out of place to say to his cousin, "I see. Will you forgive me

for having made you put up with what must have been rather a beast of

a time for you?"

One moment later he was holding that little spare brown hand of

Eleanor's in the warmest, most affectionate grip it had ever known.

"Oh, Ted, don't apologise! I knew you didn't know how I hated it

all. And you've been so nice now. I shall like you so," she

admitted with a gulp, "as a cousin!"

"Well, that's something saved out of the fire," he said, with a queer

mixture of ruefulness and amusement in his tone. "I hate being bad

friends with any one----"

Here he had another pang, thinking of some one, a girl so different

from the type of Eleanor, who was still "bad friends" with him. He

went on quickly to the girl beside him. "So, in spite of this

bust-up, and of the War, and what not, we two are parting friends, at

all events. Aren't we?"

"Oh yes! Of course. I--I never seemed to know you before," she

said. "You were just--a man, a man that I'd _got_ to put up with.

It was awful! All your little ways----"

"May I ask which little ways?"

"Oh, none p-particularly. Only _everything_ you did! You would talk

to me. You would look at me!" complained his ex-_fiancée_, to his

dumb surprise. "However, that's all over now. _This_ makes such a

difference," she said, drawing a long breath and disengaging one of

the hands; her left one. "I can give you this back now----"

"This" was the famous Urquhart sapphire, set with diamonds, that

Eleanor drew off as gladly as another engaged girl might have assumed

her ring.

"Wear it on the other hand, then, won't you?" suggested her

ex-_fiancé_ gently. "Just to show there's no ill-will--a

dis-engagement present, eh? Please do. I'd like you to----"

"But when you get married," objected his cousin, "this ring is

supposed to go to your wife!"

"All right, all right. Perhaps you'll send it to me," said young

Urquhart, briefly, "when there's a wife to think of. You keep it,

Eleanor."

He rose, as she did. They began to stroll down that path, round to

the lime-tree Avenue that Ted had once paced alone, when he had

wondered in what words he could most gently break to Eleanor that he

wished to cancel that futile and flavourless engagement of theirs.

And now it was she who had found the words to break it off.

In the shadows under the limes her voice broke the stillness again.

"Ted! I do think it's a pity!"

"What's a pity? If you can't," he said soothingly, "you can't."

"I d-don't mean it's a pity we aren't getting married. I mean it's

rather a pity that, after all, you don't care for Rosamond Fayre."

"Oh, that," he said curtly. "Rather a good thing, actually. The

girl never could stand me."

"Couldn't she? Why not? She never said so."

"H'm," said Ted Urquhart, and closed his lips as he paced along by

the side of the other girl who had not been able to "stand" him, at

least as a prospective husband. Then there fell upon him, suddenly,

a great and aching need to talk about that first girl, to some one,

any one. The little cousin at his side was not (now) unsympathetic.

He turned to her and said, quickly, "Besides! Supposing that had

been true--what your friend Miss Pansy made up her mind about! I

should have had no chance to cut that other fellow out."

"What other fellow?"

"Man she--Miss Fayre--was engaged to."

Out of the dusk Eleanor's voice sounded mildly surprised.

"I don't think Rosamond--I'm sure she wasn't engaged to be married."

"Oh, I think she was," said Ted Urquhart.

And the dreariness of his tone struck through even the calm

absorption of the girl who had just regained her freedom, and who

said, quickly, "Why are you so sure about Rosamond?"

Again he laughed that short and bitter laugh, pausing for a moment

under the limes just at the spot where, weeks before in the dusk, he

had caught that soft sound of a kiss that had been his torture ever

since. But he only said briefly, "Well, Eleanor, you saw them too.

You saw the fellow when he came down to call on her."

"Nobody came to call on Rosamond here, though," objected Eleanor,

"except that young Mr. Bray whom Father took such a fancy to."

"Well, that's what I meant."

"Oh, but, Ted," protested Eleanor, quite eagerly, "I am sure Rosamond

doesn't want to marry _him_!"

"Are you?" said Urquhart. Hope, last of all feeling to die, seemed

to stir for a second within him, as he added quickly, "Is that just

what you _think_? Or have you any special reason for saying this?"

Eleanor, bright and matter-of-fact as if no crucial words were

passing her lips, uttered the sentence that caused that stirring Hope

to leap to life in her cousin's heart.

"Yes, I have a special reason, Ted."

What was this?

"What is it?" he demanded brusquely. He took her by the arm. "I

say, Eleanor! If there's anything in this, for God's sake tell me

what you know!"

"You do care, then? How frightfully queer men are! I should never

understand them. How is one to tell _what_ they mean?" reflected

Eleanor aloud. And she went on to say, "Well! Only a week or two

ago I asked Rosamond if she would give me Mr. Cecil Bray's address.

You know he got on so well with Father about those genealogical

charts and all that, I thought he'd cheer Father up, and that it

would be nice to ask him down for the week-end, as he couldn't stay

last time. But Rosamond said--was that the dressing-gong?"

"What," demanded Urquhart, "did she say?"

"She said, '_Oh, do you mind not asking him while I'm in the house?_'"

"She said that?" took up Ted Urquhart in an expressionless voice.

"Perhaps it was because she didn't want the affair given away."

"No, it wasn't," insisted Eleanor, "because I said, '_But, Rosamond,

don't you want him here with you? I thought he was such an old

friend of yours?_' And she s-s-s-"

It seemed to Eleanor's listener that he waited for an hour while

Eleanor got the better of that little stutter of hers and went on.

"Rosamond said, '_He is an old friend, but he's always asking to be

something more. And I don't wish it._"

"She said she 'didn't wish it?' You're certain of that, Eleanor?"

her cousin said breathlessly. "What do you suppose she meant by it?"

"I thought she meant what she said, at the time. But really it's so

difficult to tell, it seems to me," complained Miss Urquhart. "First

people say one thing--and then another. Like you, when you said----"

"I know," interrupted the dazed Ted feverishly. "That is, I don't

know what I said, or what I'm going to say. I only know I've got to

say something, and as soon as I can manage it, to Her----"

"To Rosamond Fayre, d'you mean?" took up Eleanor; even Eleanor's

instinct could recognise and apply that capital H in the young man's

voice.

"Yes."

"Very w-well; then I'll give you her address and you can motor

yourself back to town this evening while I talk to Father," planned

his cousin swiftly. "I broke off the engagement, you know. I have

to explain that----"

"Will you also explain that I shall never come down to the Court

again except as a guest--your guest?" put in young Urquhart. "I say,

though--perhaps I'd better stay," ruefully, "and tell that to Uncle

Henry myself----'

"You can tell him anything l-later. You'd better go now, m-my dear

boy. I know you w-want to. And g-give my love to Rosamond," she

added quite diffidently. "Ask her if she'll come down. If not, I'll

come and see her. I--I--I----You know, being engaged made me all _so

upset and cross_," declared his cousin, "that I was rude to her, I'm

afraid, before she w-went. I've been horrid----"

"Eleanor, you've been a little trump!"

"You've been so good to me, Ted," declared his new ally

affectionately.

He took both her hands again as they reached the house.

"Eleanor," he began again, unsteadily laughing a little, for his head

was still in a whirl, "I say, I haven't been smoking. D'you think

you could bring yourself to let me have a kiss, Dear?"

Apparently Eleanor could; quite promptly.

But as her ex-_fiancé_ strode off towards the garage and she turned

into the house, she thought to herself, "Thank goodness he never said

those sort of things to me while we were engaged! It would have been

nearly as bad as what Pansy said. Oh, I could never have stood it,"

decided the girl who was destined to remain Miss Urquhart, and to be

happy in her lot, "if there had been much _more_ love-making like

that!"

CHAPTER IX

WAR-PAINT

All the way up to town again Ted Urquhart drove along the Kentish

roads like a madman, not caring if he were stopped, but knowing that

this would be unlikely to occur.

For in these days the police did not readily hold up a motor-car that

was speeding along apparently upon urgent business, and driven by an

officer wearing His Majesty's uniform. And this--the one rather

theatrical act of his life--Mr. Ted Urquhart had committed.

He had, after his interview with Eleanor, lingered at Urquhart's

Court not long enough to have anything to eat ("_dinner_? Shan't

want it," he'd smiled at the enquiring parlour-maid), but sparing

himself just the time to get into the khaki and the accoutrements

that had come home.

This would save some explanation to Miss Fayre. She'd see that,

whether at the eleventh hour or not, he'd volunteered. He needn't

tell her that.

He debated what he would tell her; how he'd begin; picking and

choosing and altering sentences as he whizzed along with stretches of

road, gates, and hedges springing into the focus of his headlight for

a flash, then dropping behind. That planning, too, he presently

dropped behind him.

He remembered how much of his time since he'd met that girl had been

passed in just this profitless occupation of making up his mind that

he must say something to her. And then something else had invariably

happened to put a stopper on it. There should be no stopper

to-night....

That day in France he'd had "something to say" to her--and she'd

nipped it in the bud with the curtest little snub he'd ever received.

That afternoon when he'd returned to the Court he'd had "something"

to say. He'd arranged just what crows he had to pluck with that

golden-haired minx--and then had come the staggering revelation that

the girl with whom he'd fallen in love was not the girl he had to

marry.

That evening after the Hen-party he'd had "something to say,"

something crucial--and it had been swept aside by another revelation,

causing him to believe that she was engaged to another man.

Even to-day on the Horse Guards Parade he had nearly said "something"

else. It was only a Good-bye--but she'd turned her back on it!

And to think that She had never had an idea of all these planned

"somethings" of Ted Urquhart! So far as his courtship of Rosamond

Fayre--for, looking back on all the mistakes and tangles and

misunderstandings, he could only admit that the impulse and

mainspring of Courtship was there--So far the courtship had gone on

in the depths of his own heart only. It had all taken place, as

Pansy would say, "_off_ ... There should be a change to-night....

Then as he sat with his hands on the wheel, his impatient eyes fixed

ahead, a thought steadied and sobered him. There remained that

unforgetable moment under the lime-trees, the hardest that Ted

Urquhart had ever lived through. There remained that sound of a kiss

to another man....

The memory of it dashed all the mad rush of hopeful high spirits in

which he'd whirled the car down the avenue and out on to the London

Road.

It was a very grave-faced young man in khaki, with a heart that

seemed sinking into his brown boots and with the look in his eyes of

a man who is staking his all upon a single throw, who pulled up at

last in the little street off Ebury Street, who jumped out of the car

and knocked at that green door with "Madame Cora's" brass plate

affixed.

Madame Cora, startled, opened the door with a "now-whatever's-this"

look on her astute small face.

"Good-evening!" said the tall and khaki-clad apparition who stood on

the whitened step blocking out the view of the dimmed street-lamps.

"Could you tell me if this is where Miss Fayre is staying?"

"_Ah!_ ... Yes, it is," said the landlady swiftly.

In a flash she had arrived at one of those conclusions, which right

or wrong, women preface with the phrase "Something _told_ me...."

"If this young officer here isn't what it's all about that's making

Miss Fayre seem so quiet these days!" thought the landlady with

conviction. "Moping up in her room this minute over the Ad-Verts in

the _Morning Post_. This must be the meaning of it all, true as I

stand here. Fancy."

"Could I see her?" asked the tall visitor, moving so that the light

of the hall gas fell upon the resolute and tanned face under the

Service cap, upon the light, impatient eyes, upon the firm mouth with

the small cropped moustache.

"Smart fellow, I call him; nice couple they'd look," thought the

little landlady even while she replied doubtfully, "Well, I don't

know. I think Miss Fayre was dressing to go out to a party or

something----"

The visitor's face became blankness incarnate at the news.

"Still, I'll run up and see if she'll speak to you a minute before

she goes," amended the landlady. "If you'll go in there a minute

I'll just pop up."

The young man went into the room she indicated; a small parlour of

which the whole of one side was taken up by a long pier-glass. A

round table occupied the centre of the room under the gasolier; it

was piled high with Fashion-papers; "Modes Parisiennes,"

"Delineators," "Chics." A chiffonier at the side held books of

patterns (cloth, satin, Japanese silks) and a silver-topped

biscuit-box. The mantelpiece and over-mantel were crowded with cheap

china; the pictures were an enlarged photograph of the late Mr. Core

in Freemason's insignia, a coloured print of "Carnation, Lily, Rose,"

from the Tate Gallery, and another of a picture called "Reunion." A

couple of albums spread among the fashion-papers showed that Madame

Cora had, some years ago, collected picture postcards. Also

snapshots....

All these, with other details, the visitor was to be allowed ample

time to study while he waited, fuming, for the girl he had come to

see.

For Mrs. Core, "popping" upstairs to Miss Fayre's room, thought to

herself, "I shan't tell her who's come to see her, no fear!

Flurrying and hurrying her; and her in that old crêpe blouse when I

know for certain she'd want to look specially nice. She shall, too."

With a tap at the door the little woman slipped into the room where

Rosamond Fayre sat on the edge of her narrow bed, studying her

_Morning Post_ listlessly enough.

"Not busy, are you? Wish you'd do something to please me," said the

landlady ingratiatingly. "Will you, Miss Fayre?"

"What is it?" asked Rosamond, looking up with a rather subdued little

smile.

"Well, I've never had a sight of that pink lisse of yours, since I

sent it home.... Wish you'd just slip it on now to let me have a

look, could you? ... In this long drawer is it? ... Ah! ... It'll go

over your head.... Tuck this thing here down a bit more ... That's

right. There ... I'll do you up."

And her clever, hard-worked fingers busied themselves with the

fastenings of that dress that Rosamond Fayre had only worn once--for

five minutes. She'd tried it on just that one evening at The Court,

and had nearly gone down to dinner in it. Then she'd taken it off

again.... Three corolla'd, petal-flounced, rose-pink, it really was,

as she'd thought, a flower turned into a frock.

"Looks beautiful on you, Miss Fayre, and no mistake," declared the

little dressmaker decidedly, as she put her head on one side to

contemplate that shining vision of gold and ivory and rose. "Pity

you can't go about all day long in evening dress, with your shoulders

and neck! Pity you aren't just off to a dance now, eh? Got any sort

of a wrap to wear with this?"

Rosamond murmured something about the black satin cape in the

cupboard. She felt, however, that she would never be going off to a

dance again as long as she lived. Somehow she had a presentiment

that nothing interesting could ever happen to her again; somehow this

evening everything seemed over.... Over....

"Throw that coat across your arm then, just to try the effect as if

you were off out. Your hair's all right as it is. Lovely. But slip

on those little suede slippers o' yours. You can't really tell a

dress with the wrong shoes," decreed Madame Cora, for the moment all

costumier. "Now look at yourself--Gracious! Can't see much of

yourself in this rubbishy little shaving-mirror, can you? Remind me

to put you another one in to-morrow. Better pop down now and take a

look at yourself in the long glass in my fitting-room--dear."

Shrewd kindliness glinted in the eyes, out of which all illusions had

been wiped, as the little woman-toiler hurried downstairs with the

Beauty in the pink frock that had been the work of her hands.

"Give her every chance, at all events," was the unspoken thought of

Mrs. Core. "If that's the One and Only she'll be thankful for ever

that she had on her pink when he came. Supposed to make no

difference to the man what a girl's got on! It's her the difference

is made to. Shan't forget my poor Harry comin' up to the scratch

when I was all anyhow and my head tied up for the Spring-cleaning.

Way men spoil things if they can! ... But whatever's happened or

going to happen about Miss Fayre and her young gentleman that's in

this tearin' hurry to see her she'll be glad she was turned out

daintily for the occasion. Him in uniform and all."

Here the little woman opened the door of that small fitting-room.

She gave one last touch, that was almost a gentle push, to the back

of the pretty pink bodice.

"Some one that you know in there!" she announced. Then, standing

outside herself, she closed the door, briskly and decisively, upon

the entrance of Rosamond Fayre.

CHAPTER X

THE LAST LINE

Rosamond, coming into the room, beheld first of all a stalwart and

obstinate-looking back, clad in khaki.

The owner of the back was sitting at the journal-littered table. His

head was bent down over something that he seemed to have taken out of

his tunic-pocket.

A young man--in khaki? Ah, yes; Miss Fayre jumped at once to the

idea of the only young man in that rig who was likely to be calling

upon her. Why had he? What a pity! She'd hoped it was over, the

good-bye to that young man. Still, she was bound to be "nice" to

him--poor, poor fellow! She came forward with a little rush as she

cried, "Why, I thought you were _off_, Cecil?"

The young man stood up. At first she was only surprised at the

height of him in that get-up. She hadn't remembered that Cecil was

so tall?

He turned.

"Sorry," he said. "It isn't Cecil."

And he looked straight into her eyes.

She gave a breathless little gasp.

"Oh! It's--Why--_Is_ it Mr. Urquhart?"

"Yes," said Mr. Urquhart, gloomily.

He felt that this was the worst start that could possibly have been

made. He didn't know what to say next. All he could think of saying

was, "It isn't 'Cecil.'"

"No. I see, now," said the girl, wishing that she could speak

without that silly, that idiotic flutter (of astonishment). "I--I

thought for a minute it was Mr. Bray, because he's in the

Territorials. I thought it must be. I didn't expect to see

_you_--in uniform."

"Obviously not," said he, grimly.

She wished again that this surprise hadn't taken her breath away and

made her hand shake. She steadied it on the back of the chair, and

stood facing him, all at sea.

"Is it really--Are you joining, too, then?"

"Of course I'm joining," he told her, resentfully. "After being kept

waiting since the day War was declared. That was when I wanted to

join."

"Oh, was it?" said Rosamond Fayre.

And that part of the surprise fell away from her.

"Of course" he was joining. How could she have ever thought that

_he'd_ thought of doing anything else? Wasn't the instant impulse to

strike for his country altogether characteristic of the man? Wasn't

he a soldier's son and a born soldier himself? That uniform looked

more natural to him than any clothes she'd seen him in, thought

Rosamond confusedly. That jacket that looked as if it had been born

on him and grown with him; that Sam Brown belt, the sword, those

buttons and badges, the turn-down collar about his strong throat with

the gold safety-pin beneath that knitted tie of khaki silk. That tie

took Rosamond's attention. It was one of those foolish little

details that do catch a woman's interest, so hard to fix on larger

matters afoot. Rosamond found that tie delightful. She loved that

tie ... only the tie, of course.... So this explained matters. Of

course he'd been waiting to join (little fool that she'd been, to put

him down as a shirker!) and of course this was why his wedding had

been hurried on for to-morrow.

It was a War-wedding, and Eleanor would be a War-bride!

Still flutteringly Rosamond suggested, "Eleanor--I suppose it was

Eleanor who sent you to me with--with some commission for me?"

"No," he said.

He stared at her as he spoke; feasting at last the impatient eyes

that he had schooled not to look on the rose-pink jewel in its

ramshackle setting of a little gaslit-room. How perfect she was, how

lovely! It seemed to him at that moment that there was no war, no

vaster issues, that all he prayed his gods for was

"_This girl to falter in his arms and tingle in his blood._"

Was she to be his? Was she? The fear that after all she might not

listen, presently, parched his mouth and made him speak brusquely,

almost gruffly.

"I mean, Eleanor did send me----"

"You said just now she didn't," said Rosamond Fayre, looking at his

Service-cap flung down on the table, and giving a little laugh,

rather a forced little laugh. "Which _do_ you mean, Mr. Urquhart?"

"Both, in a way," he answered, still looking hard at her. It was

ghastly, this forcing of the lips to say certain words before the

things with which his heart was crammed were allowed a hearing. He

began to speak quickly, to gabble almost, in his hurry to get this

part of it over and to come to what he really wanted to say.

"Eleanor did send me, but what I really came about was, what I had to

settle up with you on my own account, Miss Fayre."

"Oh, yes?" she returned.

That fluttering shyness left her; thank goodness! It left her sore,

and angry, and proud; just as she would have wished to feel. She

laid the black silk cape she had been carrying down on the table

beside his cap. She drew herself up, this young and lovely Juno. On

the defensive? Yes; it was--with rather a hard note in her pretty

voice that she continued: "So this is about--what?"

"You don't know, perhaps----"

He said it simply. But she chose to take it as irony.

"Yes. I suppose I do know. I suppose you want to have it out with

me," she said a little defiantly, "about the letters? The ones I

wrote for Eleanor."

"Well, I was going to speak about those, as a matter of fact," he

admitted, jockeying about for a fresh start. "But you do take things

for granted, don't you? The wrong things into the bargain. You've

done that all this time about me!"

"Which time?" demanded Rosamond Fayre.

"All the time I've known you. From the beginning, when----"

"When _you_ thought," she took up quickly, "that I was a girl you

might get to know without letting her know who you were!"

He, hotly, took her up here. "I never thought that!"

"But you did it."

"But what I thought was--I _thought_," he began, and wound up

bluntly, in confusion, "I thought that you were somebody else. I

imagined, like an ass, that you were Eleanor."

"I--Eleanor?"

"Well, I'd never seen her," he began to explain. "When I went over

to France----

"To spy," said Rosamond angrily, "on me--on her--on your

_fiancée_----"

"Look here! 'Spy' is a very ugly word, especially just now," urged

young Urquhart. "Can't you draw it a little more mildly than that?

You never have given me any chance. I know it was a stupid thing to

do. But I think I paid for it, don't you? You saw to that."

"I suppose you mean by writing that note to say that I knew who you

were at the time," said the girl.

"That--and other things," said the man.

"Other things?"

"Yes," he said, flushing at the remembrance of her demure gibes, her

glances, given or averted. "You know quite well you've never done

anything but laugh at me----"

"One would think you were a _German_ officer," scoffed Rosamond

Fayre, "to mind so much being laughed at for being found out in a

trick----"

This stung him. "I wasn't the only person who was playing tricks."

"You do mean those stupid letters, then? Very well," said Rosamond,

with a little shrug of the white shoulders framed in the pink frock.

"I can't say more than that I'm sorry about them. I have made a

clean breast of them----"

"Oh, have you? If you'll forgive me for contradicting you, I don't

think you've ever mentioned them," said Ted Urquhart stiffly, "to me."

"Well, Miss Urquhart did. She told me so. It was the same thing."

"Not at all," he objected. "It was something very different."

"I shouldn't have thought so. Miss Urquhart seemed to think that

everything was in order about it, now. And I should have said,"

fenced Rosamond, "that she was the person to be considered."

"Not me?" he said, challengingly.

She would not look at him.

She said, as if very tired of this discussion, "Well! If you feel

you really must go on like this, and ask a lot of questions about

them! I don't know why you think it's necessary, and I don't see why

you couldn't have done it while I was still at The Court," Rosamond

protested, standing very erect behind that chair; "but never mind.

I'm here."

The man who loved her was only too conscious of that fact. Every

fibre in him was thrilling to the sight and the sound of her, to the

thought that he was free to tell her so, directly.... But she was

fastening upon him larkspur-blue eyes full of what seemed undeniable

distaste.

"If you must cross-examine me about those idiotic letters, Mr.

Urquhart," said Miss Urquhart's ex-secretary coldly, "let us go on

and get it over. I did write them; five or six of them, I think it

was. At all events I could tell you which were the ones I wrote, if

you can produce them."

He produced the pocket-book over which his brown head had been bent

when she came into the room. He took out a letter. He said, "D'you

mind looking at this one?"

Rosamond took it, looked at it, and gave a sudden little gasp of

horror.

It was a letter--and not a letter. She realised that, here she was

"caught out" in a mistake she thought she'd never made. It was the

rough draft of that epistle of Eleanor's to the young man in the

South American Camp--and yet it had nothing to do with Eleanor. It

was the letter that had the love-names in it, written on the margin

and scrawled over again, yet not so that a man could not read them,

if he tried. It was the work of an idle hand guided by a brain

drowsy with day-dreams!

And this young soldier, who'd had neither lot nor part in that dream,

stood, tall and implacably real, before Rosamond, and asked quietly,

"Did you write that?"

Scarlet to the hair, she flung back at him, "I suppose you guessed

that I did?"

"Not when I got it," Urquhart said. "Not at first. Eleanor told me

that the letter with the rose-leaves in it was the first one you'd

written. This is the one."

"And you came--to show it to me--_Oh!_" faltered Rosamond.

Words failed her. She felt suddenly drooping; she moved quickly to

Mrs. Core's little horsehair sofa with its bright cushions of plush

and crazy-work. She sat down, her hands clenched in her lap, her

golden head bent to hide her hot and whelming blush from the profane

eyes of this despicable and brutal young man. Here was the revenge

that he was taking upon the girl who had dared ever to laugh at him.

He'd come, the very night before his wedding and all, to display to

her her own unbearable (because so silly) bit of self-revelation.

"Cad," thought Rosamond fiercely. "One doesn't expect to find any

cads wearing khaki."

"I came to ask you about it," he said, standing above her so that her

eyes were on a level with his sword-hilt. "I'm off, early next week.

I'm going to ask you before I go--and, to start with this letter--"

it rustled in his brown hand as he put the incredible question, "Why

did you call me 'Darling'?"

"I?" She raised her golden head abruptly. He had not understood,

after all? "What can you mean? That letter," she dropped her head

again, "had nothing to do with _you_, Mr. Urquhart. I--I didn't mean

you----"

"This is what we've got to have out," took up Ted Urquhart, with

decision. "Now then----"

At this moment the hall-door bell tinkled shrilly.

There was a sound as of some one opening it, then talking; Mrs.

Core's quick voice saying, "Dear me, you are late! I can't have you

in the fitting-room. Some one there. Come upstairs----"

"Oh, its a customer, and we--I am taking up the room," said Rosamond,

hastily rising, feeling she welcomed the chance of escape. "Mr.

Urquhart, if this was all you had to say to me----"

"It wasn't. Far from it," declared the young soldier grimly. "And I

must speak to you. You can't pack me off like this. Look here; I

tell you I'm off next week. I may not see you again--ever. I may

never come back."

"Ah--don't!--it is so unfair!" cried Rosamond, suddenly wincing, "to

use that sort of argument!"

"All's fair--sometimes," said Ted Urquhart, looking at her.

And in that moment both man and maid realised in some mysterious way

that when they parted, it would not be as they had ever parted before.

Rosamond could not have said how this could be, since he was to marry

Eleanor to-morrow. Ted Urquhart still suspected a "Cecil" between

them. Only, without knowing how they were to arrive at it, it was as

if each of them had had a glimpse of some distant and shining goal.

In that moment they saw it so clearly that they could even pretend

not to see it. They could quarrel and fence, with that warm,

unfounded hope at their hearts that peace--and that goal--would yet

be reached.

"If I can't stay and talk to you here, won't you," Ted Urquhart said,

speaking more easily now, "come out with me for half an hour?"

"But--" she protested, with a glance about her.

"It's quite warm outside. Have this on," he urged gently, taking up

from the table the soft satin cape, to put it about Rosamond's

shoulders.

"Please don't--I don't think I'm coming," she said--and followed him.

In the little hall they passed the customer, with Mrs. Core, who

threw out a quick "I shall be sitting up, don't worry."

Rosamond preceded Urquhart through the front door, into the quiet

street.

"I could drive you about," suggested the young man with a nod towards

his waiting car, "if you liked?"

"No, no. We'll walk--but there's nothing really to talk about,"

declared Rosamond. "Really there's----"

"The Park?" suggested Urquhart at a turning.

"Very well, for a minute. But----"

In the warm autumn darkness they passed the big oblong mass of

Buckingham Palace, unlighted now, save for a window here and there;

they walked along the broad pavement, passing the sentries who stood

to attention as this tall Engineer-officer went by with his lovely,

fair-haired lady in the evening coat, that showed a flounce of

rose-pink below, and a pair of little, pattering suede shoes. They

walked past the fountain of the towering Memorial; past the lawns

with the geranium beds, scarlet in sunlight, but now squares and

borders of a velvety and inky black. They turned aside to a walk

shaded by trees on either side. In the grass further on, low-set

lamps glared misleadingly. Above their heads in the deep sky,

powdered with stars, a soft milky blotch appeared like a clouded

moon. Another like patch of light appeared suddenly beside it; then,

abruptly, both moons of white shifted and wheeled and became luminous

shafts that chased each other across the heavens, eluding, pursuing,

merging for a moment into one.

"Oh, look at those----" uttered Rosamond, surprised. "Look!"

The tall man moved his head impatiently above her.

"Never mind the searchlights for a minute. Listen to me, Miss Fayre.

About that letter. About that 'darling' you wrote--which wasn't

meant for me."

"You couldn't have thought it _was_!" interposed Rosamond.

"I'd little cause to flatter myself, once I'd met the writer. I

suppose you'll say I might know who it _was_ meant for," Ted Urquhart

hazarded, "all things considered."

"Then you would know more than I did," retorted Rosamond.

"What d'you mean, Miss Fayre? D'you often write," he suggested,

"without knowing who is to receive the letter?"

"That's meant to be horrid, but it's really only rather silly," said

Rosamond loftily, as they retraced their steps. "If you really want

so much to know about that--that _imbecile_ scribble of mine--it

wasn't 'to' anybody. Except, perhaps, to some sort of a young

man-in-the-air, don't you know?"

"Do you mean," he said mystified, "an airman?"

"No! I don't know anybody in the Royal Flying Corps," sighed

Rosamond, a little mischievously; "I mean--oh, just a sort of person

of one's imagination.... You don't understand. You wouldn't."

"Imagination?" he repeated, and shook his head. "All this is getting

a bit too intricate and subtle for me. We might go on like this for

ever. There are lots of things--Well, cutting that out----"

They had reached the end of that empty path. Rosamond made as if she

would have walked back towards the great space before the Palace

again, but he turned once more, and she walked beside him. Why not?

Suddenly he stopped and faced her. Her eyes, now grown accustomed to

the darkness, seemed to trace some change in the resolute face under

the peaked cap. Undeniably there was a change in his voice as he

said, "I don't care who you're engaged to. An engagement isn't

irrevocable. It's not marriage, after all----"

"Who I am engaged to?" repeated Rosamond, standing still, and

entirely bewildered. "I?"

"Yes. I know you thought it wasn't known."

"It--it isn't," returned Rosamond, beginning to wonder if this were

just the very longest dream she had ever had? Whether another minute

would not see it fade, that uncanny dark landscape of paths and

bushes, that sultry gloom illuminated by the stars, the lurid,

misleading lamps in the grass, the Titan beams of subdued light that

swung and pursued each other across the skies? Whether she must not

wake, to find herself in her little room in Ebury Street, alone----

And with that wonder came another, a paralysing sensation.

Breathless, she felt herself pondering, as if over the falling petals

of an imaginary flower, "He does, he _does_ care for me. He doesn't.

He does. He _can't_----"

Ted Urquhart's voice above her said, "You see, I knew."

"D'you mean you knew I was engaged?"

"Yes," he muttered, and again he was thinking gloomily that Eleanor

must have been mistaken in what she'd said. Eleanor was so easily

misled in what people "meant" when they were in love. Again he was

steeped in that wretched memory of another dark sultry evening under

trees, when the sound so near him was not the mingled and subdued

murmur of London's traffic outside the Park, but the sound,

punctuating the country silence, of that kiss.

Rosamond asked breathlessly, simply, "But--who to?"

She heard his short, savage laugh out of the soft gloom. "You

needn't ask."

"Yes, I need. Please!" urged Rosamond. "Tell me. You must."

"That young fellow," he said sullenly, "Bray."

"Cecil? _Cecil?_"

"Exactly," said Ted Urquhart grimly. "'Cecil.'"

"But I--but he, poor dear boy--! What reason had you, Mr. Urquhart,

for thinking so?"

"Quite a good reason, I take it," Urquhart said. "I heard--not my

fault. I couldn't help hearing----"

"Somebody told you I was going to marry Cecil _Bray_?" cried the girl

with an indignation that was as a sudden cordial to the sorely-tried

heart of her listener, who took up--

"No! Nobody said so. This was what happened. I was coming up the

Avenue that evening after he'd had dinner at The Court, and I heard

you--saying Good-bye to him. I heard----"

"Well, what?"

Ted Urquhart, feeling more than foolish, brought it out bluntly. "I

heard him kiss you."

"_What?_" cried Rosamond, unmistakably aghast.

"He didn't kiss you?" eagerly.

"You thought _that_?"

"Upon my word I didn't know what else to think," said Urquhart,

drawing a long breath. "As a matter of fact, I wondered----"

"Perhaps you wondered," put in Miss Fayre scathingly, "whether it was

_I_ who'd kissed _him_?"

"Matter of fact, I did!" confessed Ted Urquhart out of the memory of

tormented nights. "You see, it--I _thought_ it was a kiss I heard,

and, and----"

Rosamond laughed furiously. "If you must know," she said, with ice,

"it _was_ a kiss."

The ice entered Urquhart's heart. Then again hope, the ineffable,

revived. Could it have been just her hand that she'd permitted to

that boy?

"He was going away. And I was frightfully sorry. For him, if you

_will_ have it. And he took up the hem of my black chiffon scarf

that I'd got on; like this!" she lifted a corner of the cape she

wore. "And he kissed that. I let him. It was all he could

expect----"

Not even her hand!

"Some people expect very little. Curious thing, they usually get

it," remarked Urquhart in a strained voice. He cleared his throat,

adding, "Are you really telling me that that youngster was nothing to

you?"

"Couldn't you have seen that for yourself?" retorted Rosamond

impatiently. "Considering that I was so _specially_ nice and kind

and gentle to him, I should have thought it was obvious."

Ted Urquhart said with an agitated hopeful laugh, "You have always

been a perfect little _Beast_ to me."

"Oh, I haven't----"

"You have," he insisted gladly. "Consistently. From the first.

Might that mean--? Mightn't it?"

Here Rosamond clenched the white ringless hands under her cape. She

knew now the answer of the imaginary petals was "_It's true. He does

love me!_"

Steadying and hardening her voice she said, "Mr. Urquhart, you

haven't the right to----"

"That night I hadn't; no. I should have freed myself and taken my

chance, though, if it hadn't been for that--that _dashed_

scarf-business. To-night," his voice rang out clearly and joyously,

"I am free."

"But to-morrow," she gasped, "you're marrying Eleanor?"

"Eleanor isn't marrying me. When it came to the point she wasn't

having any. Sacked me," he exulted boyishly, "this afternoon!"

"She _sacked_ you?" repeated Rosamond indignantly. A man less vain

even than the man beside her might have caught the

"Oh-how-could-she!" of the girl's tone. "Why?"

"She loathed the idea," he explained rapidly, "of me as a husband.

But--look here, should you? ... _Should_ you? What do you think?"

Rosamond, with the goal shining and attained before her eyes, could

only think, "He loves me, and _I must have known it all the time!_"

For one more second the moss-grown shackle of Tradition held her; the

Law that was instilled into the "well-brought-up" maids of the

Nineteenth Century. "_Thou shalt appear reluctant._"

"Mustn't let him see I hoped so," she told herself feverishly. "Not,

not at first--_They're_ supposed not to think so much of you"--and

she turned away from the man beside her.

She turned to gaze over the grass, speckled with those giant

glowworms of the low-set lamps. She was glad they were far; that it

was so dark along this deserted side-path, that there was nothing to

betray that bewildered rapture of her look. But even as she turned,

she found herself suddenly girdled from behind by arms that seemed

firm as a steel tyre about her.

She had only to say quietly, "Oh, please," and she would be released.

Or, less than that, she had only to let the lissom softness of her

length turn to a rigid pillar in his arm.

She did think of it.

But the hold of a rusty fetter upon such as Rosamond Fayre is perhaps

less strong than the hold of a tyre of steel. For in the same

instant she thought rebelliously, "It isn't HIS sort of man who

thinks less of a woman because she doesn't haggle and pretend! Must

I? Need I? When I like him so _much_?"

Her lover spoke, unsteadily over her shoulder.

"Can't you be a little sweet to me now?" he muttered in her ear.

"I've had such a mauling!"

"Oh; have you?" sighed Rosamond in pity and delight. He was ready,

she knew, to face anything--yet here he was, at her mercy!

A "mauling?" Poor boy!

He pleaded, "There's so little time!"

Quickly she twisted herself about in his hold.

She faced him. Through the gloom she could guess the expression in

his eyes; blazing, adoringly-vindictive, and exacting. "Such a

mauling----" Ah, she must make that up to him!

To think that such a thing was her _Duty_!

Impulsively she put up her own arm from which the cape fell away.

She took his neck into the soft curve of it.

"There," she gave a little sigh.

She felt as one who for long has battled against the tide, and who

now swam buoyantly and easily, the tide having turned.

"There! Is that better?"

"My girl! ... Mine!" he muttered. "No, don't loose it again ...

_ever_!"

He crushed her closer, shutting out for that moment of ecstasy all

thought of the impending wrench--of the falling-in, the blare of the

band, the crowded platform, the laughing, boyish faces clustered at

every carriage-window, the warm handgrips of strangers, the gaiety

above the pang, the shouted good-byes--"good luck to our

Tommies!"--the cheers that rang to the echoing glass roof as the

troop-train steamed out of the station, taking the men to their

battles abroad, leaving the women to theirs, at home.... For that

moment in the gloom of the Park below the searchlights that swept the

guarded skies, an English soldier held his love as though he would

not let her go.

"But that's not all?" he demanded hoarsely. "_Nell!_"

She answered to that call as though she had always known his

lover's-name for her. As if the flood carried her, she set back her

golden head. She shut her eyes; yielding, yielding and presently

returning kisses that left her his--for ever.

"And now," muttered her lover almost on her lips, "now you can

say----"

"Oh, Ted," protested Rosamond Fayre, all trembling and alight, "do I

have to--oh, after all this--to say anything?"

"Only what you wrote," he insisted, "on the side of that letter. I

think I'd like to have it from your own mouth, thanks----"

And he had that too; whispered and warm, this time, and real.

"My darling!"

POSTSCRIPT

WISH AND FULFILMENT

"Why, you jumped at me, you know you did," Captain Urquhart summed up

a teasing discussion with his young wife.

They were sitting at lazy ease in two deck-chairs set right up in the

bows of his steam yacht as she sped along under tropic, star-strewn

skies and over tropic seas, at night.

They were on their second honeymoon now (the first having lasted two

days only), and the silhouette of the couple showed black as ivory

against the restless silver of the water.

"Naturally, I jumped at you," took up Mrs. Ted Urquhart's pretty

mocking voice. "There was I, a penniless pauper of a secretary-girl,

and out of work at that, remember! Suddenly confronted with the

chance of being released for life from the fear of penury and the

need to work--besides the chance of starring it as a hero's wife. Of

course she snapped at it! And now you throw it in her face----"

"Ah! Shamefully ill-used, isn't she?" the young husband responded

with an easy laugh. "Always getting ragged about something now, if

it's only about the phosphorescence looking so wonderful, like

summer-lightning on the waves----"

They laughed together as together they watched that iridescent toss

to either hand through which their boat was cutting her way.

For that which had been on the evening of their first meeting just a

flicker of light on the French waves was steeping this velvet night

in a steady wash of flame.

"I said then that this was how you ought to see it, Nell," muttered

Ted Urquhart softly. "Remember?"

And, since she would not answer, he leant suddenly forward and caught

hold of her by a fold of the wrap that she wore over her dainty frock.

"Don't you hear that I'm speaking to you? The first time I set eyes

on you, my lady, I gave you a good shaking," he told her, "I'm going

to shake you again now, I think."

She submitted with the little laugh that was sometimes, when her

husband held her, not very far from a sob.

For it was his left arm that he used.

His right arm hung in a sling, like the arm of that eighteen-year-old

officer-boy whom she had seen in Piccadilly. _But with a

difference_. That other promising young officer might return to the

front after his wound was healed; but for Captain Urquhart there

could be no return to Active Service, to the fight for England, Home

and Beauty--against Germany, "Civilization and Culture."

His wounds had been two; a bullet in the leg accounted for one. But

though it had restored him to her, his wife could not allow herself

to think of the other. It had been dealt him even as he had lain

helpless on the field; and it had rendered useless the tendons of his

right wrist....

Such had been, for Ted Urquhart, the Fortune of War.

It was the Fortune of Love that he might draw his young wife to him

at last, and might hide his bronzed face again in the warm white

velvet of her throat.

The ribbon that she sometimes wore, with the old paste ornament, was

reposing at that moment in her husband's jacket-pocket. And now he

put another circlet of kisses about her neck; added a clasp, a

pendant.

"No, but, Ted!--Listen, I wanted to ask you something about that

first evening----"

"M'm?"

"You know that new moon wish----"

"Oh, I believe there is some old superstition of that sort,"

commented Captain Urquhart with mock dignity. "Is there not?"

"Yes, but did you?" she insisted. "I noticed you----"

"Sweet of you," he acknowledged. "I thought you would never 'notice'

me, Nell. That was my trouble, just then."

"Nonsense. You were quite conceited enough to see that I liked you

from the very beginning--I don't mean 'see,' I mean 'imagine,'" Mrs.

Urquhart corrected herself hastily. "Well, I noticed that you put

your hand up to the safety-pin at your collar when you were speaking

about the new moon.... Do tell me," she broke off into a coaxing

whisper as she nestled her head down again. "Were you touching gold

for a wish?"

"As a matter of fact, I was," admitted the young man. "I was wishing

that I might have gold to touch. And I've got it," concluded Ted

Urquhart happily, with his lips on Rosamond's hair.

THE END