CHAPTER VI

RECRUITING-RIBBONS

"This is all very well, but I can't go on like this as if I were 'a lady of leisure,'" thought Rosamond Fayre on the morning after that day which she'd spent walking about London. "I shall simply have to set about looking for some job."

But even as she made herself ready in her simple black jacket, her small black hat with the one pink velvet single rose, she realised that this was a time when people were losing their usual jobs rather than getting new ones. She would find it harder than ever to obtain work as a typist, a secretary, a cashier.

Once, when she had been first confronted with that problem of wage-earning, the tall supple girl had been asked if she would take a post as mannequin in a Wigmore Street _atelier_--"but now that would be 'off' too, I expect," thought Rosamond, as she walked along. "War does show up how utterly superfluous most single women's occupations are! What can I do?"

About one thing she made up her mind.

She would _not_ apply to the Red Cross Society, saying that she was ready to do "anything."

Rosamond realised how much valuable time of busy women was being taken up by just such applications.

She knew that womanly pity for wounded soldiers does not in itself constitute a "gift" for nursing; that excellence in housework and the constitution of a dray-horse are far more needful assets for a nurse. So, if she could not be of use in this capacity, at least she would not cumber the ground for those who could....

But what else was there?

"I suppose I might try one of my old agencies," she thought as she sprang on to a 'bus in Victoria Street, "and at least put my name down for----"

Here the 'bus, giving a lurch, precipitated Rosamond on to the lap of another girl who was sitting on the front seat.

"So sorry," said Rosamond, stooping to pick up a sheaf of papers that the other girl had dropped. "I'm afraid one's blown over the side there----"

"It doesn't matter at all," the other girl reassured her with the friendly smile which stranger seemed to give stranger without reserve in those days. "Perhaps some young Johnny will pick it up and save me the trouble of having to thrust it into his hand. These are just recruiting pamphlets; I've hundreds of them left."

Rosamond, as the 'bus jogged along towards the Abbey, regarded her with interest. She was dark-eyed and slender and pale with the clear pallor of the London indoor worker; and she wore a bunch of red-white-and-blue ribbons pinned to the breast of her brown cloth jacket.

Rosamond asked her if she belonged to any sort of recognised Society.

"No; oh, no. I'm just doing this on my own. There doesn't seem to be anything else to do. I lost my job (I was typist to a German Film Agency) the week War was declared," the girl said quite cheerfully, "and I don't seem to find another. No, I don't know what I shall do next; but then, who does? Who knows what's going to happen? Only, I don't think any of us will be allowed to starve or turned out into the street for quite a bit," said the girl. "So I typed out a lot of these sort of tracts--some of them are extracts from Blatchford's things--and bits of Lord Roberts' speeches, and Kipling's verses and so on--and distribute them. I daresay the men read them; anyhow, they don't tear them up while I'm there. So I hope they take them on into the public-houses--When I see men walking along, I always imagine they're just off to get a drink somewhere, don't you?--and discuss them together. It does no harm. And it may keep them from forgetting what they ought to be doing, even if they aren't doing it!"

"It's disgraceful if they aren't," said Rosamond, warmly. "Where do you go, to serve these out?"

"On Sundays I've been going up the River. Yes; there are rather a lot of men idling about there, still," said the recruiting-girl. "In flannels, punting, with Union Jack cushions and a girl in a pretty frock----"

"No self-respecting girl ought to allow herself to be seen about with such a 'man,'" protested Rosamond Fayre, but the other shrugged her slim, rather bent shoulders.

"All very well if all women could manage to think alike on just one subject for just one week. But they can't," she said philosophically. "Perhaps two or three of us might turn down a 'nut' who was slacking; but he knows only too well that for those three there'd be a dozen girls ready to leap at the chance of his taking them up the River. That's the whole trouble. I believe that there's nothing women couldn't do, _if there were only not quite enough of us to go round_. But--There are too many girls!"

Rosamond protested. "Not too many of the right kind! Those other girls would have to know that they were only taken when the best had turned their backs; they're only the second choice."

"They wouldn't mind. Some girls don't mind anything, as long as they get a fellow of their own," the ex-typist returned with bright acceptance of fact, "as long as they aren't left one of the million superfluous women--or is it three million?"

"It seems to alter so," said Rosamond, "every time one hears the statistics."

"Well, statistics wouldn't matter to you. If there were five women to every man, you'd be the girl who got him," averred the other girl with a generously appraising glance. "May I ask if your own boy's at the Front?"

Rosamond coloured--for no earthly reason,--answering candour with candour. "He would be, if I'd got one, but I haven't."

"Now, isn't Life rum," said the other girl, reflectively. "Teeth like that, and not a nut to crack with 'em. Well, well! Here's where I get off," she added, as the 'bus jolted to a standstill beside the pavement near Whitehall. "Good luck and good-bye--unless you'd like to come and help me to distribute my tracts----"

Rosamond Fayre answered almost before she knew what she had decided to say.

"Yes! Why not?" she said, rising and following the other girl down the steps of the 'bus. "I'll come with you if you'd like me to----"

"Good!" said the recruiting-girl. And as they reached the entrance to the Horse Guards she divided her sheaf of pamphlets, giving half to Rosamond. Together they passed the mounted Lifeguardsmen at the entrance to the Horse Guards; they walked through the shadow of the arches under the clock and out into the sunny spaces with the tall grey Admiralty buildings to the right of them, the recruiting-tents to the left, the green trees of the Park, mellowing now to brown, facing them as they stood, blinking for a moment after the shadow.

On the wall of a shed near by a knickerbockered lad in a wide hat and a grey flannel shirt stiff with badges stood pasting up notices with the air of one firmly convinced that the safety of an Empire rests upon his efficiency. He was, of course, a Boy Scout.

Rosamond's companion turned towards him.

"I say, sonny, let's have one of your posters," she begged. "One of those about 'Why Britain is at War.'"

"Can't spare one, Miss," he said, scarcely turning his bright eyes from his work. "They'll give you some if you apply at that tent over there," he pointed with his paste-brush. Then, drawing up his small sturdy figure, this twelve-year-old added with all the authority of a full General, "Tell them a SCOUT sent you."

Five minutes later the recruiting-girl had fastened one of these posters to her jacket, sandwich-man-fashion, and had pinned her own bunch of red-white-and-blue ribbons to the breast of Rosamond's coat.

"We'll stand here by the entrance," she said to Rosamond. "Always a heap of men here, passing at their dinner-hour, or hanging about to see people coming through from the War Office. Think they'll get a glimpse of 'K.' p'raps. Give one to everybody; I'll take the ones on the left."

The groups of people formed, broke up, re-formed and passed. And now Rosamond wondered--not that so many young men were drilling and in uniform, but that there still remained so many in civilian get-up. She chose to watch the next six who passed her and who took her pamphlet civilly enough, wondering what kept them as they were, summing them up in her rapid, perhaps inaccurate feminine fashion. From among the women, the work-girls, the old or middle-aged men who walked in the midday sunshine of the parade, she picked out what seemed to her the potential recruits.

Here was the first. "_One._"--A young fellow of twenty-two or three, perhaps; black coat, shop-assistant class. Pale, slenderly-built, but healthy-looking.... Six months, a year's soldiering would make as good a man of him as that sentry, pink-cheeked and stalwart and gorgeous in his long black boots and white buckskin breeches, whose sword gleamed to the salute as a tall officer swung by, with a rainbow-coloured line of ribbon across his breast.

"_He_ could enlist," decreed Rosamond, as the young fellow took the pamphlet, with a clearly rueful glance.

"You never know," returned the other recruiting-girl. "Might have an invalid mother who'd nobody but that to support her. He might _want_ to go all right, but it's not all honey for the soldier's dependants, so----"

"_Two_" went by; a small, alert Cockney, red-neckerchiefed coster type, bright-eyed, sharp-featured.

"Undersized, I suppose," thought Rosamond, glancing down at the narrow chest of the little fellow who took her pamphlet with a cheerful--

"Ah, I'm too big to send against those pore Germans; must give 'em fair play, Lady!"

"Plenty of the French Tommies looked smaller," thought Rosamond.

"_Three_" passed with "_Four_"; men of twenty-eight to thirty-three, say. Soft green felt hats, much gesture as they talked, bold black glances--Jews! They were probably making money still, even out of this War. A little, theatrical-looking lady, daintily-dressed, walked between them with a clash of gold trinkets, leaving a whiff of perfume on the fresh breeze.

Rosamond's companion gave a philosophic sniff.

"_Number Five_" went by; a rather well-made, rather well-dressed youth of twenty, with "colours" in his tie. He was hatless. A horse-chestnut was not more polished than his smooth head and the boots that matched it. He took the bill that Rosamond offered--it was headed by a verse entitled "The Shirker." He gave a glance at it, at her; and then stopped. The expression on his not uncomely face was distinctly peevish, so was the tone of his voice as he addressed Miss Fayre.

"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."