CHAPTER IV

"ON ACCOUNT OF THE WAR"

There was no mention of its being "_on account of the War_" in that announcement that "_the marriage arranged between Edward Clive Urquhart and Eleanor, only child of Henry Urquhart, Esquire, of Urquhart's Court, Kent, would take place very quietly_" on the Friday of that same week.

Ted Urquhart, boyishly sulking (as older men than he will sulk), determined that Miss Fayre should hear nothing of his volunteering until he'd actually got his orders.

And Eleanor said nothing.

So that Miss Fayre, the secretary-girl, was left wondering over the cause of this unexpectedly abrupt arrangement.

Why were not Eleanor and her dear Ted, to whom the War meant apparently nothing but a crowding of the newspapers with one monotonous subject--why weren't they going to have a big wedding and a reception with scarlet-and-white tents on the great green lawn where Eleanor's Hen-party had gathered? and Eleanor was leaving herself no time to get her things!

She said she wasn't getting "things." Truly they were the most unbelievable couple who had ever announced their intention of getting married "without any fuss."

"'Fuss' means such different things to different people," reflected Rosamond Fayre. "To me fuss would mean asking all the people I'd never liked to come in a body and stare at me while I made embarrassing mistakes over the Marriage-Service. Eleanor calls 'fuss' any attempt at getting pretty new frocks! Well, even a young man who's strong and fit and says he'll be damned if he'll go to the War isn't any more surprising than a young woman who doesn't take any interest in wedding-garments!"

Such interest as was taken in this sudden wedding seemed to be supplied by old Mr. Urquhart. It was he who stipulated that since all the Mrs. Edward Urquharts since before the time of the Romney had been wedded in white, Eleanor must follow suit. Also Eleanor, though there would be no guest to see her, must wear the veil of old Limerick lace that had decked her mother's bridal. He fetched it himself from its casket of cedar-wood and brought it to the drawing-room and to the Urquhart engaged pair. And he would have thrown it over Eleanor's little black blot of a head, to try the effect; but here Rosamond Fayre, bringing in a note of thanks for Eleanor's signature, intervened.

"Oh, but she mustn't try on 'the' veil," said her secretary, smiling, "before 'the' day, Mr. Urquhart; it's so unlucky!"

"Rosamond always has some proverb about 'Luck,'" said Eleanor. "Or about what something 'means'!"

Ted Urquhart thought, "Yes. Last time she spoke to me it was to say what passing a person on the stairs meant!"

"Ah, my dear Miss Fayre, how refreshing it is to find a girl still holding to all the little decorative feminine superstitions!" sighed the elder Urquhart. "Were I even twenty years younger, and you ten years older, I should venture to beg you to wear 'the' Urquhart veil on 'the' day yourself. You would remind us of--ah--the nymph Arethusa smiling through the spray of the brook that engulfed her! You would look like----"

Here Ted Urquhart, muttering some improvised excuse about a telephone-call, got up and went out of the room. His uncle presently followed him; leaving the bride-to-be and Rosamond with the filmy folds of that Limerick lace spread out between them.

Eleanor tossed her end of the soft veil on to her secretary's lap.

"Fold it up again, please," she said, rather brusquely, "and put it into the bottom drawer of my wardrobe."

Rosamond folded the lace and then rose, holding it across her long arm. In her eyes was the sparkle of thriving rebellion. For now the secretary-girl had come to hate her surroundings.

She resented these so-superior Urquharts, who took it upon themselves, forsooth, to represent that civilisation for which other men were leaving home and comfort with a cheer, were tramping, unwashed and footsore and hungry, the roads of France, were fighting against odds, were giving up their young and joyous lives.... Why, sometimes she could not help realising that those valuable English lives were only lost thanks to the other stay-at-home, pacific English of the Urquhart type.... Yes! They who wouldn't listen! They who refused to prepare! They who caused to be looked upon as unnecessary or contemptible that career which has been rightly called "_The Lordliest Life on Earth!_" These people were as truly "the Enemy" as Germany had ever been. England's strength had been sapped in English homes like Urquhart's Court.

Rosamond hated this Court.... She loathed this sluggish little back-water in Kent....

She must get away to where she could feel the throb and stir of her country's indignant heart, her own thrilling in sympathy.

She spoke upon an impulse. "Eleanor, is there anything else you want me to do for you--upstairs? Before I go to pack?"

Eleanor, in the sofa corner, looked up at her somewhat severely.

"Pack? I haven't asked you to pack anything for me, Rosamond."

"No. They're my own boxes that I want to pack," replied the secretary-girl evenly. "I supposed that you wouldn't be needing me any more now----"

"Oh, but----!"

"--and I've been wanting to ask you if you could spare me at once, instead of my waiting here any longer."

"Why?" asked Eleanor bluntly. "I don't ask you to go just because I'm to get married. I shall be going on with everything, just the same."

"I know. I imagined you would be," said Rosamond demurely, looking down at her and then away about the room. "But--I think I would rather go."

"But--quite lately, you spoke as if you would be so s-s-sorry to leave the Court, This," said Miss Urquhart, "is new, isn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose it is," murmured Rosamond.

Then she lifted her bright head and looked full at the other girl sitting there among the mellow chintz cushions, backed by that stately, complacent room with its Chippendale and china, its prints, its whole air of "_Nothing can touch, nothing change me_." And suddenly it seemed as if the antipathy that had smouldered so long between them flashed into a flame.

Rosamond cried: "No! No, this isn't anything new. I ought to have gone away before. It isn't worth it. We---- We don't get on. We're such different kinds, Eleanor. It's been an armed neutrality, all the time. Hasn't it?"

"Certainly not. On my s-s-side," retorted Eleanor Urquhart angrily, "there has been n-n-nothing 'armed.' I hate any idea of quarrelling or----"

"Then I must go," said Rosamond desperately, "or we shall quarrel."

"But why? What about?"

"Nothing. Everything. The War, mostly. Yes, the War. That must be--that's what has made everything different, I suppose," cried Rosamond hurriedly. "I can't feel that there's all that going on outside--while I live peacefully on here among a set of people who don't care, who don't understand. It's an atmosphere that stifles any one who really cares. I want to be somewhere else! I want to get something else to do."

"Very well," said Eleanor, coldly displeased.

"I'm sorry----;

"It doesn't matter," said Eleanor stiffly. "I shall have to try and get a Lady Miriam Hall girl in your place. If you really want to go like this, at a moment's notice, I w-w-won't stand in your way."

"Thank you," said Rosamond Fayre.

The flame had died down again. She said deprecatingly, "I hope you don't mind--I hope you won't think it unkind and rude of me to go before Friday."

"Friday? Why Friday?" asked Miss Urquhart, adding, "Oh, when I'm married. Why should I mind your not being there? Of course it is not 'rude.' Nobody will be coming to the wedding, practically nobody."

"If you wished," added Rosamond, "I could stay for the meeting of the Reservists' Wives----"

"Oh, no. Please don't trouble," said Eleanor. "I can manage perfectly. When do you want the motor?"

Miss Fayre left Urquhart's Court before tea-time.

"Please say good-bye to your father for me. I didn't find him in his study," she told Miss Urquhart at parting. Her hand was on the door of the car as she turned once more and added to the small sedate figure standing in the ivy-framed entrance beneath the stone shield with the crest, "I hope you--you'll accept my best wishes for yourself, Eleanor----"

It sounded absurdly stiff, to an engaged girl of her own--Rosamond's age! But no stiffer than Eleanor's "Thank you, Rosamond. And if any letters come for you, where shall they be sent?"

"Oh, I'll write and let you know in a day or two," said the girl in the motor. "I don't know myself, yet, where I shall be going to, or what I shall be doing. Good-bye."

The slow train was more than half-way to Charing Cross station before any plan had formulated itself in her own mind.

Where should she go? She knew nobody in London whom she would care to ask to put her up. Mrs. Bray was in town, Rosamond knew; and Mrs. Bray was always kind. But--could she go to Cecil's mother? ...

"Some people would think I might do worse than accept poor Cecil next time he asked me," thought Rosamond, with her blue eyes on the white column of train-smoke trailing beside the window and half blotting out the miles of outer-London backyards, where, among the inevitable washing, Union Jacks and French flags now flapped in the breeze. "Anyhow, Cecil is ready to do his duty as a man. Quite a dear--and nice to look at--and well-off--and adores me--what a pity that all these things don't make a ha'porth of difference when it comes to whether you want to marry a person! I can't. No. I won't go to his mother."

She dismissed also the thought of the tiny stuffy Bloomsbury room she had occupied while she was working at the Midas.... She had nearly two months' salary in her pocket; enough to do better on, at least for the present.... Pondering on her next move, she brushed a crumb off her lap, and rejoiced girlishly for a moment over the hang of the black skirt. Her little dressmaker had managed rather cleverly--

The thought gave her an idea....

At Charing Cross she had her two trunks and one hat-box put into a cab; a grass-green taxi bearing in scarlet letters that appeal then so startlingly novel to so large a class of mind--

"YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU!"

and she gave the driver an address near Victoria.

It was in a side-street off Ebury Street that the taxi drew up before a modest brass plate inscribed "MADAME CORA: MODES, ROBES ET TROUSSEAUX"; and Rosamond's little dressmaker came to the door herself.

"How d'you do, Mrs. Core?" said Rosamond, holding out her hand as she stood on the whitened step.

"Miss Fayre. Well, I never!" exclaimed the little dressmaker, in a quick, twittering voice, with scarcely a stop between her words. She was a small, neat, fair-haired creature, with the alert eyes and void of illusion of the woman who has had to fend for herself since her youth. "If I wasn't thinking of you this very morning and your rose-pink I made you last month. How's it look on, Miss Fayre? Doing you well?"

"It's very pretty, but I haven't really worn it yet," began Rosamond, smiling. "I've----"

"Not had any occasion, Miss Fayre? Nobody worth while? Dear, dear. Come in, won't you?"

"Yes, I want to know if you'll take me in for some time?" explained Rosamond Fayre. "You used to have a room----"

--"and my young gentleman left it only this morning," said the little dressmaker. "Usual reason for everything these days, Miss Fayre, on account of the War. Good position he had in a Bank! Chucked it, as he said. Enlisted to go and have a pot at Geyser Bill----"

Five minutes later saw Miss Rosamond Fayre disposing her trunks as Mrs. Core's lodger, in a room whose windows looked above gray roofs and red chimney-pots out towards the towering shaft of the Cathedral.

"Hope you'll be comfortable here, Miss Fayre, I'm sure," said little Mrs. Core, bustling in with a jug of hot water. "You'll excuse the young gentleman having left up all his photos," with a nod towards framed portraits of Miss Lydia Kyasht, of Sam Langford, Lord Kitchener, Carpentier, and of a group of cricketers that hung upon the florally-papered walls. "His clothes I said he'd _got_ to store. So there's heaps of room in here for your things.... This black serge," she touched Rosamond's skirt with a proprietary finger, "wears well, don't it? ... M'm! Long time before any o' my clients come for any more pretty frocks now. As for such a thing as The Newest Paris Winter Fashions, Miss Fayre, it'll be a case of puzzle find 'em on most of us. All on account of this War! As far as the style of our clothes go," laughed the little dress-maker, "we shall be 'stuck so,' like they say to children making faces when the wind changes."

"What a good thing we're 'stuck' while frocks are so pretty, then," smiled Rosamond, slipping off her simple coat, "instead of being frozen into the fashions of gored skirts or leg-o'-mutton sleeves!"

"You're right," said Mrs. Core devoutly, unfolding a clean towel as she spoke. "By the way, I got a letter from that Miss Urquhart o' yours saying how pleased she was with the tussore coat. Old-fashioned little piece, isn't she? Frumpy, I'd call her. Doesn't pay for dressing. Most expensive materials she always goes in for, too. Very well off she'll be, of course. Well! I'm afraid you'll find this rather a change after living in that swagger Court, Miss Fayre----"

But as Rosamond Fayre glanced round the neat room, with its naïvely hideous decorations, at the resolute cheery face of her little landlady and at the smoke-grey glimpse of London outside, she shook her bright head with a quick smiling sigh of relief.

She felt that all she needed was exactly this--a thorough change from everything to do with Urquhart's Court; indeed, never again to see anything called Urquhart!