CHAPTER I

THE CALL TO ARMS

There came a time when Rosamond Fayre began to think that the Fates had doomed her to spend far too much of her existence with a pen in her hand!

Paper and ink, and the complications to which paper and ink had led--these futile, barren things seemed to have made up the whole of her life ever since that afternoon at the beginning of the summer when she'd sat down to write another girl's courtship-letter.

Well, her pen, of course, was Miss Fayre's profession. Clerical work was what she seemed fitted for. And she sighed to think so.

By the middle of August, Nineteen Fourteen, she felt she had good reason to sigh impatiently, not only over her work, but over her sex; things that barred her from the life of glorious Action and stir and comradeship that seemed so much better worth living!

For a fully feminine young woman of Rosamond's type considers, and will always consider, that the Sword is mightier than the Pen....

How suddenly that glint of the drawn sword had flashed over England, even into such rose-garlanded, chintz-hung haunts of Peace as Urquhart's Court!

Yes: suddenly one day in its mellow oak-panelled dining-room, under the placidly-smiling Romney portrait, there appeared pinned up a brightly-coloured War-map, bristling with tiny flags of the European nations. In the pot-pourri-scented drawing-room bales of grey Army flannel were heaped knee-deep about Eleanor Urquhart, who would give them out to wives of Reservists in the village for sewing into shirts for the troops. And up in her own pretty room sat Rosamond Fayre the secretary-girl writing (on her own account) a Good-bye to a young man who would shortly be off to the Front.

She wrote:--

"My dear Cecil,

"Thank you for your letter, which I was so very glad to get. It's splendid that you Territorials will, as you say, be allowed a look-in at the present show, and I do congratulate you with all my heart.

"For the first time in my life I would change places with a man, just so as to be a soldier. It's in War-time that you score. I suppose that if he were alive now my dear old boy would be going out, with luck, with your Draft."

Then she paused. This was not the way she really wished to write. She would have liked to send a really warm, affectionate letter to her brother's gentle and plucky chum. Gladly she would have told him that she was proud of him; proud to think that one young soldier who was fighting for his country had offered himself to her, and that her thoughts and prayers would follow him.... But it would be fatal, even now, to write that sort of letter to Cecil Bray. He would take it for more than mere sisterly encouragement, she knew. He would be back again with his innocent, persistent wooing, as soon as the War was over. Or even before. Poor dear Cecil, she thought whimsically, was just the sort of youth who might be expected to slip on the gang-plank of the troopship as he was embarking, to break a leg or a collar-bone, and to be left behind, cursing his luck that would not hold either in War or Love. Yes; Rosamond must keep her farewells coolly friendly if she wished to avoid another of those urgent boyish proposals, and another rueful "Oh, Cecil, I am so sorry," later on.

She must write on "outside" subjects only. Rather a pity that she couldn't employ Eleanor to write some of her letters, even as Eleanor employed Rosamond. Miss Urquhart's triteness would be useful here!

And Rosamond wrote on:

"Even in this Sleepy Hollow of a house we are managing to raise three men. Beeton the butler went first. He is an old Naval Reserve man, and it seems he was all ready to rejoin before his orders came.

"Then Mr. Marrow the gardener here went off with the Yeomanry; and the chauffeur has given notice and is going to enlist."

Here Rosamond put down that everlasting pen of hers and gazed out of the open casement-window above the writing-table thoughtfully.... She didn't think, at first, that she was thinking of anything in particular.... But she was.

She was wondering why the men raised for the Army at Urquhart's Court were _only three_?

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

There ought to have been four men from the Court.

There was Mr. Ted Urquhart! why, why on earth was _he_ not going too? Why wasn't _he_ volunteering--putting in for some sort of a commission--enlisting--getting out somehow to the War?

For Rosamond Fayre, like a million other gently-nurtured girls, who could not have endured one of War's details, could yet contemplate War as a whole with a glad stir of the pulses and the deep-rooted conviction that "_Two things greater than All things are--One is Love and the other is War_"--Man's Big Job. Even so kindly men (while wincing from any hint of a woman's suffering) will think with a shake of the head of the woman who shirks the Big Job of womankind, and will say "A pity she doesn't have any babies."

Rosamond, the Army doctor's daughter, thought it not only a pity, but absolutely inexplicable that young Mr. Urquhart hadn't answered the call to arms.

Wouldn't they take him?

But they took slow, middle-aged men like Beeton? They took mere boys like the chauffeur? They took weeds like Mr. Marrow the gardener, thought the disdainful Rosamond, who, with all women, judged a man's usefulness entirely by his shoulders and limbs. Surely they'd jump at the sort of man who could carry castings and boilers and things up the Andes? Why, look at him! His clean "fit"-ness; his whole impression of lithe strength! Even Eleanor's girls had thought he "looked as if he might be a soldier" that time in France, so long ago, when they hadn't known who he was! Wasn't he going to turn soldier, _now_? His hand was probably as well used to a gun as Rosamond's own fingers were to the silver handle of her mirror.

Of course it had nothing to do with Rosamond. It wasn't her business to feel pleased with him, or the reverse.

But she couldn't help thinking that if she were in Eleanor's place she would be bitterly disappointed in Mr. Ted Urquhart. Even poor dear Cecil Bray, who was so much younger and who wasn't even a soldier's son, who had never been further away from Oxford than Florence, even he was showing himself to be after all more of a man than the other!

The thought of Cecil brought her back to his letter. The ink upon the paper was black and dry at the last sentence.

Slowly Cecil's letter was resumed.

"The Urquharts themselves have the intellectual, 'enlightened' Angell-ic sort of way of looking at the War, I think. Old Mr. Urquhart is one of those people who have always declared that War is now impossible, and that it has no part in our modern civilisation, our modern culture. And now he quite calmly says he's like Archimedes, poring over his documents, while the armies rage outside his tent. Miss Urquhart thinks that 'All War is so Wrong?" The only side she can see of it is that the husbands of so many of her old Club-girls are Reservists and that the pay their wives are allowed is so scandalously small. I am sure it will be supplemented by Miss Urquhart's last half-penny.

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

Rosamond thought with a lump in her throat of gentle, grey-haired Mrs. Bray. She wished she might add another message. She envied her; she thought it must be wonderful to be the mother of a fighting son.... This she concluded to leave out. So she ended up--

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

"I remain, my dear Cecil, "Your old friend, "Rosamond Fayre."

As she fastened the envelope she heard the sound of a quick footstep go past her door. Mr. Ted Urquhart's. How light-heartedly he was whistling as he turned into his own room!

And yet he was turning his back on what other young men of his kind were eager to meet!

Here, however, Rosamond Fayre's conclusions about the young master of The Court were quite wrong.

She did not know that long, long ago Ted Urquhart, who had trained as a Civil Engineer, had passed specially well in some technically military examination, had been recommended for a commission in the R.E. Special Reserve, and had put in the requisite drills at Aldershot before he went out to that work in South America....

And at this moment he was fuming that some detail of red tape prevented him from joining upon the instant. Still, waiting was discipline to which he must accustom himself.

And letters were not the only things upon which this young man could keep his mouth shut; he had not mentioned a word of his plans for joining, either to his uncle or to his _fiancée_.

Eleanor! She was the girl he was to marry, but there was not a girl or woman in the land to whom he would not presently stand in a direct relation--that of protector--the man behind the gun.

Up in his room he moved about, whistling, pacing up and down, trying to kill the time that dragged so before the authorities should find all in order; making himself ready as if he might hope to embark next day.

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

Also he might decide which of his smaller personal possessions could travel with him as part of his Service-kit.... His flask; he must get a lighter concern than that. A housewife he had. "Wire-nippers, mustn't forget," he interrupted the whistle to mutter. Then he went on whistling as he sorted receipted bills--("Hand over to Uncle Henry") and took out his worn letter-case ("Might get a smaller one"). On the Elizabethan bed was spread out that business-like invention of a soldier's wife, the newly-patented Manœuvre-rug ("Godsend, that, presently"). Some of these boots might be cleared away.... He lifted one of his riding-boots, turned it upside down to examine some slight sign of wear on the heel.

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

He did not go on whistling.

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

He picked it up from the green carpet; gave it one glance, recognised the French stamp and the writing. Ah!

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

"The Hostel-letter!"

That white Hostel was deserted now; its green shutters barred, and all that friendly coast was to-day a waste for the Enemy....

And here, a written relic of those days of English holiday-making on French soil, was this letter.

Hurriedly young Urquhart tore it open. Quickly he read through _the one sentence_ that it contained.

Then his brown hand, holding the letter, dropped.

"What?" he said curtly, aloud.

Again he held up the grey sheet, fastening his eyes upon the curly clear writing of it as if he would learn it off by heart.

Yet there was only one sentence in it, and such a short and simple one. It would not take much committing to memory. And he knew it: his memory would hold it for ever, together with a picture.... The War had almost blotted out that picture; now it returned, almost obliterating all sterner images for a moment.

The picture of a golden-haired girl in white, sitting writing at an open window, then raising her small burnished head on its creamy neck to tell him quietly that she had changed her mind about coming out with him that afternoon, and that he might post the letters for her instead.

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

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

And she'd signed it with her own name,

"ROSAMOND FAYRE."

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

Presently he thought he'd better attend to the business in hand, turn up that blessed certificate. Where was the thing? He turned out the case of stationery on his writing-table--nothing there. He went to the small drawer where he kept handkerchiefs, turned it upside down upon the bed, glanced at the folded square of newspaper that had been taken to line the drawer. A headline took his eye: "_The Naval Meeting at Kiel. Arrival of the British Squadron._" Extraordinarily incongruous that looked to eyes that were now accustomed to such different items in the _Morning Post_! This was only dated June 24, yet it seemed part of something as remote and futile as his Uncle Henry's documents; an irresponsible echo from the Past.

The letter in his pocket might also stand for something just as remote, just as completely crowded out by weightier happenings....

But young Urquhart, keen as he was on those happenings, could not resign himself philosophically to forgetting the other. Not yet ... not entirely....

So when he had run the missing birth-certificate to earth under his mirror he turned again to the letter, and pondered over it....

Putting detail to detail; Eleanor's preoccupations, the mischievous temperament of that other girl; Eleanor's once more flavourless letters to him in Wales, the things that Professor-Johnnie had been saying the other afternoon about forgeries and plagiarisms, that other girl's sudden blush----

Seeing at last this letter of Miss Fayre's as the key to all those other letters, purporting to come from Eleanor, with that disturbingly unfamiliar note.

He saw it all now. Of course. That was it. _She_--the secretary-girl--_had written those others_!

If that proved to be so, thought Ted, absently polishing the bowl of his pipe on his jacket-sleeve, it meant that all his hopes of discovering a new Eleanor were dashed to the ground.

There was no "new" Eleanor.

There remained only the cold-blooded little cousin whom he ought to marry, and the other girl who was going to marry another man.

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

Still! He'd be off soon. Off "somewhere in France." Somewhere, where he hoped it mightn't seem to matter so frightfully much _which_ girl a man is engaged to out of all those that he had left behind him.

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

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

At the head of the staircase, as Luck would have it, he encountered that other girl, Eleanor's secretary.

She came out of her room behind him.

He stopped dead and wheeled round to face her.

And she, with the letter to Cecil Bray in her hand, tilted her burnished head slightly to glance up at Ted Urquhart. She was thinking to herself, "M'well! You don't _look_ the kind of young man who would be gun-shy. So perhaps it isn't that? Perhaps you feel you've other responsibilities to attend to? This lovely old Court of yours, and so on? Still! I should have thought you'd have liked to take a hand yourself in defending it from those Blonde Beasts of Huns? To know you had done something at least to stop them from trampling their charges all across its lawns, and from making bonfires of its old carved oak, and from throwing Mrs. Marrow's little children, perhaps, into the flames? For that's the kind of thing they'd be doing in every Englishman's home at the present moment, if every young and fit Englishman had been the sort of slacker that you are!"

Now, these comments, of course, Miss Fayre kept to herself, as far as the letter was concerned. But the whole spirit of them was made clear enough by her manner. It was allowed to inform her (extremely meek) enquiry as to whether Mr. Urquhart would be kind enough to tell her "how you ought to address a Territorial Officer who had volunteered for Active Service; was it just Esquire, or did you, in time of war, put 'Lieutenant'?"

He answered her briefly.

He was perfectly conscious of that unuttered feminine fling at a defaulter so young and so able-bodied; he was also conscious that he could retaliate very completely if he chose.

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

She had the assurance to smile at him, and to say lightly, "Please go on; I mustn't pass you on the stairs. It means a fight--that is, it means that we shall quarrel."

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

He went down a step. Then he paused.

"One moment, Miss Fayre----"

It was in his mind to go on, "D'you mind coming out into the garden while we get something cleared up between us? ... Yes; there is something I wanted to say.... To begin with--You don't _look_ the kind of girl who'd forge. Why did you do it?"

But he thought better of it. After all, this was a thing he had to speak to her employer about first.

Behind him the voice of the secretary said, just a little apprehensively, "Yes?"

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

"She is in the drawing-room," said Miss Fayre, and in her voice there might have been detected a note of relief mingled with some exasperation.

He went to find Eleanor in the drawing-room.