"Don't tell me—not that you ever have—that there ain't such a thing as Providence!" Thus Franky, after lunch upon the fateful Third of August, from the hearthrug of the drawing room at 00, Cadogan Place. "When," he went on, "just as I'm on the point of sendin' in my papers to please you—good old England kerwumps into War!"
He continued, as Margot shrugged her small shoulders:
"All right, best child! Bet you twenty to one in gloves it comes off!—as sure as the Austrian monitors were shellin' Belgrade, and the British Cabinet were sittin' on Sunday, and the weekly rags selling like hot cakes, when you and me and the rest of the congregation were slowly oozin' out of Church. Why, the Kaiser and the Tsar have been at loggerheads since Saturday. German troops are swampin' Luxembourg, and the next move will be the Invasion of France. There We come in—and the rest of the big European Powers! Like a row of beehives kicked over!—all the swarms mixed and stingin', and Kittums' little Franky in the middle of the scrum!"
"Why are you so—frightfully keen about it?"
Margot's great dark deer-eyes were vaguely troubled. She got up from her writing-table, a lovely thing in Russian tulip-tree, the shelf of which was graced by a row of mascots: Ti-Ti and the jade tree-frog, Jollikins, Gojo, and half a dozen more.
"Best child, I'm not keen!" asserted Franky. "But I'm pattin' myself on the back—gloatin' over the knowledge that I'm not a bally Has Been—but a real live soldier—just when I'm likely to be wanted to be one! Switch on?"
He added, as Margot shook her head: "My grammar's a bit off, but I know what I mean if I can't express it. Here's a telegraph-kid on a red spider. Two to one in cough-drops that yellow screed's for me! Callin' me to Headquarters just as I'd got into my civvy rags to spend the afternoon with my wife!"
The prophecy proved correct. Franky vanished upstairs to peel, plunge into his Guards' uniform, and whirl away, borne by a taxi, into the dim conjectural regions known as Headquarters.
Margot went back to her desk to re-read a type-written letter from the Secretary of the Krauss and Wolfenbuchel Fraüenklinik at Berlin, counselling the honoured English lady whose introduction, supplied by a former lady-client, was specially satisfactory!—to secure a room at the Institute, by the payment of a moiety of the fee in advance. The crowd of applicants desirous to subject themselves to the wonderful "Purple Dreams" treatment, was so large, the accommodation, by comparison, so restricted, that to follow this course would be the only wise plan. Similar treatment could be obtained in Paris and Brussels, but to ensure success beyond doubt it was wisest to seek it at the German fountainhead. One hundred guineas would secure admission to the Berlin Fraüenklinik. By cheque made payable to the British Agent of Professors Krauss and Wolfenbuchel, Mr. Otto Busch, 000, Cornhill, London, E.C. It would be advisable were the English client to follow her remittance, taking up residence in Berlin within the next few days. Travelling might not be so easy in October, mildly hinted the Secretary of the Institute.
Why, bosh! what utter piffle! Good old England wasn't going to toddle into any European War in a hurry, decided Margot. She had had enough bother over the South African biz. Perhaps if Germany was having a rag with Russia, and a tiny bit of a scrap with France, one would have to get a passport, and travel by a different route to Berlin. Perhaps the best thing would be to go now—and stick the boredom of a three months' residence in the Kaiser's capital! Why not? Under the existing circumstances, one would be bored anywhere.
She drew the cheque, and enclosed it to Mr. Busch's address, and wrote a little letter in a huge hand to the Secretary, saying that she had done this and was obliged by his advice. Then she 'phoned to the Club to ask Patrine to come round to tea at 00, Cadogan Place. Miss Saxham was not there, according to the hall-porter, but might be found at AA, Harley Street. There Margot ran her to earth. Yes, Pat would come with pleasure! but upon condition that Lady Norwater was alone.
"Of course!" Margot remembered. "She's in mourning for the pretty kiddy-cousin! I must be getting stupid, or I'd have thought of that!"
But when the tall figure passed under the Persian portière of the Cadogan Place drawing-room, it was arrayed in a revealing gown of pale rose lisse with the well-known stole of black feathers and a tall-crowned hat of golden braiding topped the Nile sunrise hair.
"Why, I thought—" Margot began:
"I know! Do you think it horribly unfeeling?" The speaker stooped to kiss the soft cheek of the little creature curled up in the corner of a favourite sofa in a favourite attitude which conveyed an impression of Margot's having no feet. Patrine did not look at all horrid or unfeeling as she said, winking back the tears that had overbrimmed her underlids, "My heart is in crape if my body isn't!"
"I know!" Margot's lovely eyes looked sympathy. "I remember how fond you've always been of the little cousin."
"Uncle Owen and Lynette won't believe that the darling's drowned," Patrine went on. "But I can't hope! I'm not of the hoping kind! When I shut my eyes I seem to see Bawne fighting to keep afloat—then sinking. It's as though he called me, and—it's horrible!" She shuddered. "It's horrible!"
"And—Count von Herrnung? The German Flying Man?" Margot touched the large white hand next her. "You know what a bad hand I am at saying things that are consolatory and cosy. Couldn't rake up a single text for my life—or if I did I'd quote 'em wrong end topside. Like the callow curate who assured the weeping widow that 'Heaven tempers the wind to the lorn sham!'"
"I'll let you off the texts, not being a weeping widow!"
But Patrine's pale cheeks burned. Margot pursued, not looking at them:
"Rhona Helvellyn told me there was nothing serious between you. Indeed, she said you rather hated him than otherwise. But of course you're sorry he's drowned, naturally!"
There was a silence. Then:
"Yes," Patrine agreed, "I rather hated him than otherwise!"
"Ah!" Margot's little face was sage. "It's a pity you don't care for some nice man or other!"
"Isn't it?"
"But you will one day. It's much nicer to live with your husband than with your sister. Though I never had a sister," added Margot. Then her mind, light and brilliant as a humming-bird, flitted to another subject. "Rhona and her two Militants lunched with me on Sunday. Awfully down on their luck, all three. The Grand Slam they'd planned—the surprise-packet for the Mansion House Banquet had had the lid put on it by the Police. Fancy Scotland Yard finding out anything! But it had, for Rhona got a mysterious note warning her that she'd be dropped on before she could open her head. So—the Bishops toddled through their speeches without being interrupted! Sit down and light up. These Balkan Sobranies are tophole!"
"I can't stay!" But Patrine sat down on the sofa, dipped in the ever-brimful silver box, and kindled a cigarette.
"Where's His Nibs?" she asked. For not even the chastening of bereavement could cure Patrine of slanginess.
"Called to B.P.G. Headquarters suddenly." Margot blew rings. "Or doing duty for some pal or other at the Tower. Don't bother about him! Tell me—why can't you stay with me?"
"Aunt Lynette wants me, for one thing. And——"
"And who for the other?"
"A man!" Patrine sent a thin blue spiral of cigarette smoke twirling upwards from her pursed lips. Intently she watched it climbing and spreading. When it faded between her absorbed eyes and the Futurist mouldings of the lapis lazuli-grounded ceiling whereon a silver comet swung in a great elliptical orbit about a golden central Sun, she resumed:
"A man——"
"That makes two men!" said Margot shrewdly,
"No, only one. A man I'm going to marry. Rather soon, too," said Patrine calmly, and put her cigarette into her mouth again.
"PAT!"
Margot was staring at her blankly.
"Well, my dinkie?"
"Isn't this frightfully previous?"
Patrine removed the cigarette to say:
"It depends on how you look at things."
"But—when did you meet?"
"In Paris."
"Do I know him?"
"No, luckily for me!"
Margot's small, amazed face dimpled a little at the compliment.
"Is he nice?"
"I think so!"
"In Our Set?"
"I don't think so! He's a Flying Man by profession. Now you know nearly as much as I do," said Patrine. "And I've to be getting back to Harley Street." She rose from the sofa, towering over her small, indignant friend.
"You're not going out of this room until you tell me the rest of it! What is his name, and when did—it—come off?"
"His name is Alan—and he only asked me on Wednesday, when he came to Harley Street. He has called every day since that horrible 18th of July, but this time he came to bring"—Patrine choked a little—"Bawne's Scout staff and smasher. They had been forgotten in the dressing-shed at the Flying School. Lynette was too ill to go down to receive them. I had to instead—and the sight of them broke me up."
"I—see!"
"And," Patrine went on, "he—Alan—was being sympathetic, when Uncle Owen came in."
"My hat!" Margot sat up, her small face alight and sparkling. "The Doctor-man with the chin and eyebrows! Did he give you unlimited wigging or relent and bless you like the heavy uncle in a proper French Comedy?"
"He saw how things were between us. He wasn't astonished. He was very kind. He is always kind!" said Patrine, swallowing. "If I really believed God were as good as Uncle Owen, I shouldn't be afraid to die."
"He makes me feel like an earwig under a steam-roller," affirmed Margot. "And the charming aunt. Does she cotton to the engagement?"
"Lynette is not, for the present, to be told. I asked that. It seems so cruel to be happy when she is so broken-hearted."
"Umps! Then—Irma and your gay and giddy mater? How do they take it?"
"They haven't been asked to take it any way."
"Oh well! Love is good while it lasts," Kittums said from the summit of a pedestal of experience, "but if I could change back to Margot St. John again——"
"You wouldn't!"
"Wouldn't I, that's all! This horror that November brings—that's coming every day closer! ... Pat—I haven't told Franky yet, that's to be got over! But I've definitely settled to go to that Institute in Berlin where women can have babies without knowing anything about it—under—Bother! I never can remember the name of that drug!"
Patrine sat up. Her face was curiously expressionless. She said, crushing out the last spark of her cigarette-end against the face of a Chinaman on the lacquer ash-tray that occupied a little stand beside the sofa with the silver Sobranie box:
"You told me something—you showed me the pink book with the pretty title, 'WEEP NO MORE MOTHERS'—wasn't that the name? You've made up your mind? Does it cost the earth?"
"Two hundred for patients of the superior class—wohlgeboren clients. Half paid in advance! Stiff!—but to make sure of not suffering I'd plank a thou'! It's a nightmare, and a Day-mare, that haunts me all the clock round. That's why I'd change—and be Margot St. John again! That's why I can't whoop with joy when my friends tell me they're going to be spliced!"
Patrine got up.
"Oh!—well! Perhaps I shall escape. After all—it's a lottery!"
"Not for big, splendid women like you. You were made to be a mother, Pat!"
"Don't!"
She kissed Margot hastily and went to the door.
"Stop!" Margot scrambled off the sofa. "You've forgotten the most important thing of all. Hasn't 'Alan' got a surname by any chance?"
Patrine looked back over her shoulder with something of the old smile.
"Rather! What do you think of Sherbrand?"
"What do I think of Sherbrand? How odd! It's Franky's family name!"
"Queer coincidence. But my Sherbrand hasn't any relatives in the Peerage!—or if he has, he hasn't told me! I'll butt you wise when I know him well enough to ask him about them. You see, the whole thing has been beautifully sudden!"
"Bring him to lunch at the Club to-morrow. You're not in mourning, and if you were it wouldn't matter. It's simply a family affair, if he's really Franky's cousin. So, say yes."
"Very well, if he'll come!"