CHAPTER III

THE DAY

The next morning, a rather grey and chilly Sunday, Ted Urquhart came to Eleanor in her little "office" and asked her, with simple directness, whether she would mind fixing a day, as soon as possible, for their marriage.

Eleanor, obviously startled, looked at him over the desk at which she sat. He had drawn a chair up to face her.

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

"So I may. That was the reason," he told her. "I mean if it's not--if it's not inconveniencing you very much, Eleanor--that I wish you'd see your way to marrying me, just quietly, you know, in the little church in the village, perhaps, before I'm ordered off."

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

"I know it's abrupt," said the young man. "But you know lots of people in the Services are fixing it up this way just now. I believe they're making it much easier for couples to get special licenses, or to get married without any banns, and ... and so forth. It--er--I--er--Well! It seems under the circumstances rather a--a sensible plan, I think--if we were----"

Here he checked himself. He had nearly used the unfortunate expression "_turned off!_" But it is only the joyous bridal of which a grim joke may be made.

He altered it tritely to

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

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

"Oh, yes! Yes. Uncle Henry and I talked it over last night," said Ted Urquhart, leaning his cleft chin on his brown hand and his elbow on his knee as he sat a little forward, not looking at his _fiancé_. "Your father quite ... agreed with me. I think he--he wishes it too, Eleanor."

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

Evidently she was still very much surprised, almost dazed, he thought, by the suddenness of this plan. Evidently she scarcely knew what to say.

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

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

For he wished it. He wished it, as he put it incoherently to himself, over and done with. He wanted to do his duty by his people--and then to clear! He wanted it settled for good and all. Also--he wanted to do all he could to rid himself of the power of an obsession that tortured him still, however he fought it down. _That golden-haired witch! That mocking girl who could speak tenderly enough to the other man--the man she was going to marry!_ Ted Urquhart could feel furious with her. He could tell himself all her faults. (She was vain, flippant, irresponsible, insolent!) He could snub and ignore her, and put aside for days the thought of her. He could school himself not to look. But at the bottom of his heart he could not yet forget that fatal apprehension under which he'd been when first he met her; that delusion that she, and none other, was intended to be his. He must forget it. He must not run any risk of coming back, at the end of other fighting, to begin that struggle over again.

"If I were married," thought the young man in his desperation, "it would _have_ to mean the end of all that."

So, anxiously, he watched Eleanor's little dark, restrained face, waiting for her answer.

It came, quiet and matter-of-fact.

"Very well, Ted."

"You mean you will, Eleanor?" he took up quite eagerly. "That you'll let me settle it up at once?"

"Yes."

"Good," said young Urquhart, with a sigh of relief. "Now, the question is, what day will suit you?"

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

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

"Ten days," murmured Eleanor. "Now, just let me look at my fixtures, please, Ted, and I will see what I am doing this week."

She opened a desk-drawer to her right, took out a neat leather-bound book and began turning over the pages, murmuring--

"Sunday to-day. Monday I'm motoring up to town for all day. Tuesday, the Reservists' wives here. Wednesday--I know there was something on Wednesday, but I must have forgotten to note it. I'll ask Rosamond. Thursday I promised to let Miss Fabian come down again to give her lecture to the Reservists' wives----"

Ted Urquhart sat, his glance straying about the small, neat room so full of a girl's kindly preoccupations with her poorer sisters. His impatient eyes, rather listless now, rested on the framed "groups" of uniformed crêche-nurses with babies; on the files, the long red row of Whitaker's almanacks, the small side-table with the typewriter.... He was morosely glad that his wife would always have so much to occupy her. It would at least keep her from missing what he could never give her. Would she think of missing it? Would she, in her queer little matter-of-fact way, imagine that he was, naturally, as self-contained as she herself? Or did she just think, vaguely, that "men were like that"?

He watched her. And he wondered whether any other girl on earth would have taken just like this the function that used to be called in her grandmother's time "_naming the Happy Day_."

She had finished turning over the leaves of that little book. She looked up for a moment as she said composedly, "Friday is free. I could marry you, if you liked, on Friday, Ted."

"Oh, thanks so much," said the young man quickly. "It's really awfully good of you not to mind a rush like this--a wedding without--without any of the things a girl expects--a big party, and a trousseau, and a----"

He stopped again.

He felt he could not use the word that belongs to courtship as naturally as "Dearest" and "Darling" belong; the pretty word "Honeymoon." Not here. Not now.

He went on--"without any sort of a wedding-trip abroad, or anything. I suppose----"

"What?" said the bride-to-be, as he paused once more.

"I suppose you'll let me take you up to town for the week-end, won't you?" said her _fiancé_ rather hurriedly. "That is, if I haven't already got my orders. We could--go round and look up various people, to say 'Good-bye,' you know----"

There rose up in his mind the relentless suggestion that the bride to whom he would presently be saying "Good-bye" would be very different from the usual ("Brainless, Army,") type of the soldier's young wife; the girl who smiles resolutely through her tears, and whose agony at parting is kept at bay by her pride and joy at sending forth her man to fight.

Eleanor would feel no pride; nothing but the Fabian-instilled conviction that it was "a useless, wasteful risk of life," ... and "_wrong_"!

She herself was always so anxious to do what was "right"--even by him.

"Just as you like, Ted," she said.

She fastened the little engagement-book and opened the drawer in which it was kept.

"Thank you," said the bridegroom-to-be again. And he rose.

He knew what he ought to do now.

Up to now there had been no word of endearment between this engaged couple, nothing but her Christian name and his. Up to now there had been no caress but that twice-daily cousinly peck on the cheek. But now--when she'd just promised to become his wife within the week! Oh, it would be too cruelly casual to let the occasion pass absolutely unmarked except by a cool word of thanks--

He drew a step nearer to the little stiff, grey-gowned figure with the dark head bent over the drawer of her desk.

He began, awkwardly, "Well----"

He ought to call her "_Dear_"!

Why should it come so ludicrously hard?

"Well, Eleanor," he said, "you've been uncommonly kind to me about all this."

A nice object-lesson he was, he thought savagely, for any young man who considered that which girl he got engaged to wasn't, after all, a matter of paramount importance! But it was too late to think of that now....

Eleanor's face was still averted as she slipped the book into the drawer.

Clumsily, abruptly, he closed his own fingers over her other little brown hand as it lay on the desk.

He'd got to say "Aren't you going to let me have a kiss to clinch it?"

Every fibre in him seemed to draw back in revolt from what he had to do. But, dash it, he _must_!

He held her hand for another horrible second....

And at that moment the door of the office opened, and there entered Miss Rosamond Fayre, dressed for Church, and carrying a large sheaf of white Bride-lilies for the flower-service.

The scent of them trailed behind the girl as she walked quickly through the office and into the drawing-room beyond.

Eleanor, hastily withdrawing her hand, called, "Oh, Rosamond----"

But the secretary-girl had passed through the drawing-room and into the hall beyond.

"Fetch her--just ask Miss Fayre to come to me, please, Ted. I want her," said Eleanor, putting an end to this interview on a bright conclusive note. "She might as well, before I forget, send off the notice of this wedding to the _Morning Post_."