CHAPTER V

LONDON IN KHAKI

The whole of the next day Rosamond Fayre spent in walking about a city that seemed to her oddly transformed from the London that she had known.

For this was the first time that she had been up to town since the outbreak of War.

It was a glorious morning; the perfect harvest weather still unbroken. Overhead soft white mackerel clouds sailed over a sapphire sky; the September sunshine bathed the pavements as Rosamond sped briskly along, turning first towards Victoria, and noting, with bright eyes, all that seemed so different.

The first thing that struck her was the number of people of every kind who thronged the streets. Every sort of person seemed to find it possible, these days, to take an hour or so "off"--at half-past eleven in the morning!--from Cityfied-looking men in top hats and morning-coats, to bands of tiny street-boys who paraded past in all the pomp and circumstance of uniforms made out of newspaper tied with string and with drums of biscuit-boxes, shouting, "It's a long wy to Tipperary, it's a long wy to gow!"

And in proportion to there being more people abroad, the horse and omnibus traffic was thinner. There were fewer omnibuses than taxis whisking past, each bearing the scarlet signal of that message, worded with varying degrees of urgency, "_Enlist for the War!_" "_Young Men of London, Join the Army Now!_" "YOU _are wanted_ TO-DAY!"

Rosamond found herself wondering if it were her imagination or a fact that the faces of those who passed her wore a new expression; a look more alert, more alive, and more determinate than that she had been accustomed to see on London faces in the time--now so far behind them all!--of Peace? That all-pervading type, the Flapper, seemed to be in abeyance--her place was taken by bonnie and resolute-faced young women, many wearing the badge of a Woman's Help Corps. Perhaps War smoothed out "types"--artistic freaks--by-products--resolving London's citizens into women and men?

Outside Victoria the traffic became a thickening throng. There was a stir and a running and a noise of cheering. But even tall Rosamond, hurrying towards that scene of interest, could not see much over the heads of the many who pressed between her and the Regiment marching into the station. Just a glimpse of lines of rifles above flat-topped caps, a glimpse of that stream of khaki dividing the darker crowds and flowing rhythmically past....

"Off!" said some one near Rosamond to some one else in the crowd, and a voice answered with a note of desperate gaiety, "Ah, well, we shall see 'em turning up again with a bar or two to their medals, please God--(if that that number's not _still_ engaged by the Kaiser)----"

A hand seemed to grip at Rosamond's heart, a lump came into her throat so that she could only whisper below her breath, "Good luck to them!" It was pride for those who went, sorrow for those who might not return, and yet another feeling which was not yet quite clear to the girl herself.

She went on, past Westminster, Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, noticing the busy trade of the newspaper-sellers with their arresting posters--

"DESPERATE FIGHTING IN FRANCE!"

"France!" she thought, with a smile and a sigh. How little she, or any of those kindly village-folk in France had dreamt that fighting would desolate all that holiday place before the summer was over. She supposed that every man she'd ever seen there would be now with the French Army; from the Monsieur of the Hotel down to the polite black-eyed youth at the Debit Tabac, who had finished his military service, he'd told Rosamond, last year; adding, "You have no military service in England, Mademoiselle? It is droll, that."

Rosamond had even then considered that it was more than droll that the men of her country should jib at what these young Continentals took as a matter of course, namely, that every man should be trained to bear arms, and that drill and discipline were no hardship, but a privilege. Even before then she had always wondered why some sort of military training was not as universal among young Englishmen as, say, learning to swim? There need be no "conscription" for that?

Perhaps it was just the mere _words_ "conscription" and "compulsory" to which people seemed to object? Perhaps the actual sacrifice of a little personal liberty would find them ready enough?

For now, at last, it seemed if that spirit permeated All-London....

At every turn she was met by the sight of that concealing and significant colour which is made up out of these three mingled: the brown of earthworks, the green of trampled grass, the sandy-yellow of guarded coast. Drab and ugly enough in itself, yet now as glorious wear as is the richest red in the British Army, khaki was everywhere; swinging down the streets, crowding the tops of omnibuses, filling private motor-cars now labelled in staring letters, "O.H.M.S." Through the great windows of the Clubs, Rosamond caught glimpses of khaki, with here and there a splash of scarlet. "Staff," she supposed. And in Piccadilly she passed a not-to-be-forgotten group of three, standing at the corner by Stewart's. Two of them, very slim and young, were in uniform. These were talking eagerly to the third who stood between them. He was a mere lad; eighteen, nineteen? Small, younger than Cecil Bray, and of the type of youngster that instantly brings the thought, "How very lovely his sister must be!" He wore an ordinary blue lounge suit and a bowler, but there was that about him which marked him out as no uniform could have done. For his dainty, girlishly-featured, resolute little face was bronzed from weeks in glaring sunshine, and his right arm hung in a sling.

This child was a wounded officer, one of the very first of them, home from the Front. And as she passed up Bond Street--with the eyes of all three boys turned to follow her for a moment--Rosamond heard the youngest of them saying, "_Don't know, but as soon as I can get my ruffian of a doctor-man to let me go back, I----_"

So young, and so unperturbed! The sight of him made Rosamond Fayre realise what had been at the back of her mind all the time that she had been watching these signs of the times of England at War, with the best of her sons armed, or preparing to arm.

_It was the thought of another young man whom she knew, and who was making no such preparation._

Ted Urquhart must be seven or eight years older than this youngster who was fuming to be sent back to face danger and what Rosamond thought must be worse, discomforts of the most sordid kind; lack of the most elementary comfort, water, sleep! Ted Urquhart, as far as physique went, was twice the man that this little officer-boy was.

Ted Urquhart--well, what was the use of thinking about him? Fortunately--for no one likes to have to associate with "wasters" in time of War!--Fortunately, Rosamond would never see him again.

But everywhere she saw something to remind her of him and of how he'd failed. In every Bond Street shop-window that showed field service equipment and uniforms and boots; in the very posters of "England Expects--" and "Tommy Atkins"; in the badges worn on so many civilian coats; "O.B.C."----"U.P.S."; in the trays of street-vendors who sold the French and English and Belgian colours instead of roses and carnations, "_Not flowers, but flags!_"--Why, it was London's motto now.

_Yet Ted Urquhart, in white flannels, lounged and loitered among the hollyhocks and dahlias at Urquhart's Court._

She caught scraps of conversation from the people hurrying past her--and no one seemed to be speaking, except of War.

"Like to get hold of all those fellows who've been pooh-poohing for years the 'German Scare,' as they----"

"And if we could have sent double the number of men at once, this affair would have been over in----"

"A letter this morning;"--this was a woman's voice--"no postmark, of course; and he mayn't let us know where they were, or what they were doing, but he sounded cheery and----"

--"Says he met some one who actually saw them! ... two train-loads! ... noticed the odd uniform----"

--"The very people who owe their fortunes to the fact that we've got an Army!"

"Yes! And who used to impress upon us that the Boy-Scout movement had absolutely nothing to do with 'any nonsense about being prepared for War, or Invasion.' But perhaps they'll know better----"

"Ah, half the people in this country ought to go down on their knees to make a public apology to Lord Roberts!"

"_Don't_ you think five thousand recruits a day is enough?" This was from a lady who walked beside a white-moustached old soldier. And Rosamond, going by, with pricked-up ears, heard him answer: "In what they call 'the families' of England, there's not a man left to-day. Not a man."

"_Not a man?" Only Ted Urquhart, of The Court!_

As day wore on, more and more newspaper-sellers appeared in the streets, hawking the seventh and eighth "War-editions" with the flash of black letters across pink posters----

ALLIES GAIN GROUND (OFFICIAL)

Among them little neatly-dressed French women with tricolour ribbons about their jackets and with straight fringes cut above their dark, anxious eyes, were offering "Le Cri de Londres." ...

And then more people in the streets, more people....

Rosamond Fayre, after one of those hybrid tea-shop meals dear to the heart of women, strolled back again towards Westminster, and through the archway into Dean's Yard, stopping at the echoing sound of words of command.

"'S' you wur! ... 'Shun'! ... By--your--_Left--T_----"

There was a crowd at the railings. The railings themselves were hung everywhere with coats and Norfolk jackets and headgear of every sort; straw hats, bowlers, soft felt hats, caps. And beyond in the square beneath the plane-trees young men in white or coloured shirt-sleeves marched and formed fours and marked time.

"Recruits," a Special Constable with a striped armlet on his sleeve told Rosamond, "for the London Scottish. Framing splendidly, they are! Oh, yes, men drilling in all the Parks now, too...."

(--"Right-T----_whee_--ull!" and a steady rhythmic tramping of feet....)

Rosamond Fayre stood watching the grand lads, the big company-officer who moved up and down before them.

And she thought, "_Not one of those looks any more like a soldier than Mr. Ted Urquhart, who isn't soldiering at all!_"

The September dusk fell over streets only half-lighted. Some lamps had covers on the top, some were ochred over. London looked odd without her electric signs and with Piccadilly and Oxford Street all dim. Gone was that soft and golden glare, and the red haze in the sky! People's heads were lifted up to that slate-coloured sky, and Rosamond caught scraps of talk about the patrolling airship. Under the dim lights girls passed, with men in khaki beside them, khaki-sleeved arms about waists. And once again Rosamond Fayre found herself thinking of a young man not in khaki.

He was really not worth it! Not even worth wondering over!

Perhaps he thought that text held good for his case: "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come"? He would be married to Eleanor in a few days--two days' time now.

Rosamond sighed as she walked homewards.

This must be because she was very tired. She had been walking about all day, looking at things.

Of all these scenes that which was to remain with her longest was what she'd seen as she had passed Whitehall. In the wide road there had been a sudden scurrying forward of a crowd that seemed to spring up out of nowhere. On the tops of omnibuses passengers had stood up to look, had craned their necks to gaze after a figure in frock-coat and top-hat, who had just left a car, and was ascending the steps of the War Office. Small, white-haired, stately and indomitable, he was not to be mistaken.

His name had passed from mouth to mouth.

"See him? ... It's him.... That's him.... Lord Roberts!"

Full of the picture, Rosamond's mind would link it for ever to the next sound that had struck upon her ears.

It had been that of a bugle; industriously practised by a lad in the park near by. Rosamond Fayre knew that bugle-call. She knew the words the soldier fits to it.

"_I called them; I called them! They wouldn't come. They wouldn't come. I called them----_"

And amongst those who wouldn't answer, the case of Mr. Ted Urquhart seemed to her the most disgraceful.

Perhaps it was rather odd that though she'd left The Court and the Urquharts behind her for ever, Rosamond should find herself thinking of him--them even more constantly than when she was among them.

This could only be because she had taken a really strong dislike to them.

She concluded that it must be that.

And so she went slowly home, through the darkened Buckingham Palace Road, to bed, hearing another bugle-call, the Last Post sounded from the near Barracks--and wondering where it would be heard by Cecil Bray ... and by every other young man she'd seen who that day had done his duty.