114CHAPTER IV
The sky was filled with morning when a noise startled Davidge out of nullity. He was amazed to find a strange woman asleep at his elbow. He remembered her suddenly.
With a clatter of wheels and cans and hoofs a milkman’s wagon and team came out of the hills. Davidge stepped down from the car and stopped the loud-voiced, wide-mouthed driver with a gesture. He spoke in a low voice which the milkman did not copy. The taxi-driver woke to the extent of one eye and a horrible yawn, while Davidge explained his plight.
“Gasolene gave out, hey?” said the milkman.
“It certainly did,” said Davidge, “and I’d be very much obliged if you’d get me some more.”
“Wa-all, I’m purty busy.”
“I’ll pay you anything you ask.”
The milkman was modest in his ambitions.
“How’d two dollars strike ye?”
“Five would be better if you hurried.”
This looked suspicious, but the milkman consented.
“Wa-all, all right, but what would I fetch the gasolene in?”
“One of your milk-cans.”
“They’re all fuller melk.”
“I’ll buy one, milk and all.”
“Wa-all, I reckon I’ll hev to oblige you.”
“Here’s five dollars on account. There’ll be five more when you get back.”
“Wa-all, all ri-ight. Get along there, Jawn Henry.”
John Henry got along. Even hiscloppety-clopdid not waken Miss Webling.
The return of the rattletrap and the racket of filling the tank with the elixir finished her sleep, however. She woke115in confusion, finding herself sitting up, dressed, in her little room, with three strange men at work outside.
When the tank was filled, Davidge entered her compartment with a cheery “Good morning,” and slammed the door after him. The gasolene, like the breath of a god, gave life to the dead. The car snarled and jumped, and went roaring across the bridge, up the hill and down another, and down that and up another.
Here they caught, through a frame of leaves, a glimpse of Washington in the sunrise, a great congregation of marble temples and trees and sky-colored waters, the shaft of the Monument lighted with the milky radiance of a mountain peak on its upper half, the lower part still dusk with valley shadow, and across the plateau of roofs the solemn Capitol in as mythical a splendor as the stately dome that Kubla Khan decreed in Xanadu.
This sight of Canaan from Pisgah-height was no luxury to the taxi-driver, and he hustled his coffee-grinder till he reached Rosslyn once more, crossed the Potomac’s many-tinted stream, and rattled through Georgetown and the shabby, sleeping little shops of M Street into the tree-tunnels of Washington.
He paused to say, “Where do we go from here?”
Davidge and Marie Louise looked their chagrin. They still had no place to go.
“To the Pennsylvania Station,” said Davidge. “We can at least get breakfast there.”
The streets of Washington are never so beautiful as at this still hour when nothing stirs but the wind in the trees and the grass on the lawns, and hardly anybody is abroad except the generals on their bronze horses fronting their old battles with heroic eyes. The station outside was something Olympic but unfrequented. Inside, it was a vast cathedral of untenanted pews.
Davidge paid the driver a duke’s ransom. There was no porter about, and he carried Marie Louise’s suit-cases to the parcel-room. Her baggage had had a long journey. She retreated to the women’s room for what toilet she could make, and came forth with a very much washed face. Somnambulistic negroes took their orders at the lunch-counter.
Marie Louise had weakly decided to return to New York116again, but the hot coffee was full of defiance, and she said that she would make another try at Mrs. Widdicombe as soon as a human hour arrived.
And she showed a tactfulness that won much respect from Davidge when she said:
“Do get your morning paper and read it. I’m sure I have nothing to say that I haven’t said, and if I had, it could wait till you find out how the battle goes in Europe.”
He bought her a paper, too, and they sat on a long bench, exchanging comments on the news that made almost every front page a chapter in world history.
She heard him groan with rage. When she looked up he pointed to the submarine record of that week.
“Last week the losses took a horrible jump––forty ships of over sixteen hundred tons. This week it’s almost as bad––thirty-eight ships of over sixteen hundred, thirteen ships under, and eight fishing-vessels. Think of it––all of ’em merchant-ships!
“Pretty soon I’ve got to send my ship out to run the gantlet. She’s like Little Red Riding Hood going through the forest to take old Granny Britain some food. And the wolves are waiting for her. What a race of people, what a pack of beasts!”
Marie Louise had an idea. “I’ll tell you a pretty name for your ship––Little Red Riding Hood. Why don’t you give her that?”
He laughed. “The name would be heavier than the cargo. I wonder what the crew would make of it. No, this ship, my first one, is to be named after”––he lowered his voice as one does on entering a church––“after my mother.”
“Oh, that’s beautiful!” Marie Louise said. “And will she be there to christen–– Oh, I remember, you said––”
He nodded three or four times in wretchedness. But the grief was his own, and he must not exploit it. He assumed an abrupt cheer.
“I’ll name the next ship after you, if you don’t mind.”
This was too glorious to be believed. What bouquet or jewel could equal it? She clapped her hands like a child hearing a Christmas promise.
“What is your first name, Miss Webling?”
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She suddenly realized that they were not, after all, such old friends as the night had seemed to make them.
“My first two names,” she said, “are Marie Louise.”
“Oh! Well, then we’ll call the shipMarie Louise.”
She saw that he was a little disappointed in the name, so she said:
“When I was a girl they called me Mamise.”
She was puzzled to see how this startled him.
He jumped audibly and fastened a searching gaze on her. Mamise! He had thought of Mamise when he saw her, and now she gave the name. Could she possibly be the Mamise he remembered? He started to ask her, but checked himself and blushed. A fine thing it would be to ask this splendid young princess, “Pardon me, Princess, but were you playing in cheap vaudeville a few years ago?” It was an improbable coincidence that he should meet her thus, but an almost impossible coincidence that she should wear both the name and the mien of Mamise and not be Mamise. But he dared not ask her.
She noted his blush and stammer, but she was afraid to ask their cause.
“Mamiseit shall be,” he said.
And she answered, “I was never so honored in my life.”
“Of course,” he warned her, “the boat isn’t built yet. In fact, the new yard isn’t built yet. There’s many a slip ’twixt the keel and the ship. She might never live to be launched. Some of these sneaking loafers on our side may blow her up before the submarines get a chance at her.”
There he was, speaking of submarines once more! She shivered, and she looked at the clock and got up and said:
“I think I’ll try Mrs. Widdicombe now.”
“Let me go along,” said Davidge.
But she shook her head. “I’ve taken enough of your life––for the present.”
Trying to concoct a felicitous reply, he achieved only an eloquent silence. He put her and her luggage aboard a taxicab, and then she gave him her most cordial hand.
“I could never hope to thank you enough,” she said, “and I won’t begin to try. Send me your address when you have one, and I’ll mail you Mrs. Widdicombe’s confidential118telephone number. I do want to see you soon again, unless you’ve had enough of me for a lifetime.”
He did very handsomely by the lead she gave him:
“I couldn’t have enough––not in a lifetime.”
The taxi-driver snipped the strands of their gaze as he whisked her away.
Marie Louise felt a forenoon elation in the cool air and the bright streets, thick with men and women in herds hurrying to their patriotic tasks, and a multitude of officers and enlisted men seeking their desks. She was here to join them, and she hoped that it would not be too hard to find some job with a little thrill of service in it.
As she went through Georgetown now M Street was different––full of marketers and of briskness. The old bridge was crowded. As her car swooped up the hills and skirted the curves to Polly Widdicombe’s she began to be afraid again. But she was committed to the adventure and she was eager for the worst of it. She found the house without trouble and saw in the white grove of columns Polly herself, bidding good-by to her husband, whose car was waiting at the foot of the steps.
Polly hailed Marie Louise with cries of such delight that before the cab had made the circle and drawn up at the steps the hunted look was gone and youth come back to Marie Louise’s anxious smile. Polly kissed her and presented her husband, pointing to the gold leaves on his shoulders with militaristic pride.
Widdicombe blushed and said: “Fearless desk-fighter has to hurry off to battle with ruthless stenographers. Such are the horrors of war!”
He insisted on paying Marie Louise’s driver, though she said, “Women will never be free so long as men insist on paying all their bills.”
Polly said: “Hush, or the brute will set me free!”
He kissed Polly, waved to Marie Louise, stepped into his car, and shot away.
Polly watched him with devout eyes and said:
“Poor boy! he’s dying to get across into the trenches, but they won’t take him because he’s a little near-sighted, thank God! And he works like a dog, day and night.” Then she returned to the rites of hospitality. “Had your breakfast?”
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“At the station.” The truth for once coincided very pleasantly with convenience.
“Then I know what you want,” said Polly, “a bath and a nap. After that all-night train-trip you ought to be a wreck.”
“I am.”
Polly led her to a welcoming room that would have been quite pretty enough if it had had only a bed and a chair. Marie Louise felt as if she had come out of the wilderness into a city of refuge. Polly had an engagement, a committee meeting of women war-workers, and would not be back until luncheon-time. Marie Louise steeped herself in a hot tub, then in a long sweet sleep in a real bed. She was wakened by the voices of children, and looked out from her window to see the Widdicombe tots drilling in a company of three with a drum, a flag, and a wooden gun. The American army was not much bigger compared with the European nations in arms, but it would grow.
Polly came home well charged with electricity, the new-woman idea that was claiming half of the war, the true squaw-spirit that takes up the drudgery at home while the braves go out to swap missiles with the enemy. When Marie Louise said that she, too, had come to Washington to get into harness somewhere, Polly promised her a plethora of opportunities.
At luncheon Polly was reminded of the fact that a photographer was coming over from Washington. He had asked for sittings, and she had acceded to his request.
“I never can get photographs enough of my homely self,” said Polly. “I’m always hoping that by some accident the next one will make me look as I want to look––make ithers see me as I see mysel’!”
When the camera-man arrived Polly insisted that Marie Louise must pose, too, and grew so urgent that she consented at last, to quiet her. They spent a harrowing afternoon striking attitudes all over the place, indoors and out, standing, sitting, heads and half-lengths, profile and three-quarters and full face. Their muscles ached with the struggle to assume and retain beatific expressions on an empty soul.
The consequences of that afternoon of self-impersonation were far-reaching for Marie Louise.
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According to the Washingtonian custom, one of the new photographs appeared the following Sunday in each of the four newspapers. The Sunday after that Marie Louise’s likeness appeared with “Dolly Madison’s” and Jean Elliott’s syndicated letters on “The Week in Washington” in Sunday supplements throughout the country. Every now and then her likeness popped out at her fromTown and Country,Vogue,Harper’s Bazaar,The Spur, what not?
One of those countless images fell into the hands of Jake Nuddle, who had been keeping an incongruous eye on the Sunday supplements for some time. This time the double of Mamise was not posed as a farmerette in an English landscape, but as a woman of fashion in a Colonial drawing-room.
He hurried to his wife with the picture, and she called it “Mamise” with a recrudescent anguish of doubt.
“She’s in this country now, the paper says,” said Jake. “She’s in Washington, and if I was you I’d write her a little letter astin’ her is she our sister.”
Mrs. Nuddle was crying too loosely to note that “our.” The more Jake considered the matter the less he liked the thought of waiting for a letter to go and an answer to come.
“Meet ’em face to face; that’s me!” he declared at last. “I think I’ll just take a trip to the little old capital m’self. I can tell the rest the c’mittee I’m goin’ to put a few things up to some them Senators and Congersmen. That’ll get my expenses paid for me.”
There simply was nobody that Jake Nuddle would not cheat, if he could.
His always depressing wife suggested: “Supposin’ the lady says she ain’t Mamise, how you goin’ to prove she is? You never seen her.”
Jake snarled at her for a fool, but he knew that she was right. He resisted the dismal necessity as long as he could, and then extended one of his most cordial invitations:
“Aw, hell! I reckon I’ll have to drag you along.”
He grumbled and cursed his fate and resolved to make Mamise pay double for ruining his excursion.
121CHAPTER V
For a time Marie Louise had the solace of being busy and of nibbling at the edge of great occasions. The nation was reconstituting its whole life, and Washington was the capital of all the Allied peoples, their brazen serpent and their promise of salvation. Almost everybody was doing with his or her might what his or her hand found to do. Repetition and contradiction of effort abounded; there was every confusion of counsel and of action. But the Republic was gathering itself for a mighty leap into the arena. For the first time women were being not merely permitted, but pleaded with, to lend their aid.
Marie Louise rolled bandages at a Red Cross room presided over by a pleasant widow, Mrs. Perry Merithew, with a son in the aviation, who was forever needing bandages. Mamise tired of these, bought a car and joined the Women’s Motor Corps. She had a collision with a reckless wretch named “Pet” Bettany, and resigned. She helped with big festivals, toiled day and night at sweaters, and finally bought herself a knitting-machine and spun out half a dozen pairs of socks a day, by keeping a sweatshop pace for sweatshop hours. She was trying to find a more useful job. The trouble was that everybody wanted to be at something, to get into a uniform of some sort, to join the universal mobilization.
She went out little of evenings, preferring to keep herself in the seclusion of the Rosslyn home. Gradually her fears subsided and she felt that her welcome was wearing through. She began to look for a place to live. Washington was in a panic of rentals. Apartments cost more than houses. A modest creature who had paid seventy-five dollars a month for a little flat let it for five hundred a month for the duration of the war. A gorgeous Sultana who had a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-month apartment rented it for a thousand dollars a month “for the duration.” Marie Louise had money122enough, but she could hardly find anything that it would buy.
She planned to secure a clerical post in some of the offices. She took up shorthand and poked a typewriter and read books on system and efficiency, then gave them up as Greek.
Once in a while she saw Ross Davidge. He suffered an intermittent fever of hope and despondency. He, too, was trying to do his bit, but he was lost in the maelstrom swirling through the channels of official life. He would come to town for a few days, wait about, fuming, and return in disgust to his shipyard. It was not altogether patriotism that pulled him back to Washington. Marie Louise was there, and he lost several appointments with the great folk he came to see, because their hours clashed with Marie Louise’s.
On one of his voyages he was surprised to find at his hotel an invitation to dine at Mrs. Prothero’s. Little as he knew of the eminent ones of the fashionable world, he knew the famous name of Prothero. He had spoken with reverence always of her late husband, one of the rebuilders of the American navy, a voice crying in the wilderness for a revival of the ancient glories of the merchant marine. Davidge had never met him or his widow. He felt that he could not refuse the unexplained opportunity to pay at least his respects to the relict of his idol.
But he wondered by what means Mrs. Prothero, whom everybody had heard of, had heard of him. When he entered her door on the designated evening his riddle was answered.
The butler glanced at his card, then picked from a heap on the console a little envelope which he proffered on his tray. The envelope was about the size of those that new-born parents use to inclose the proclamation of the advent of a new-born infant. The card inside Davidge’s envelope carried the legend, “Miss Webling.”
The butler led him to the drawing-room door and announced him. There indeed was Marie Louise, arm in arm with a majestic granddam in a coronet of white hair.
Marie Louise put out her hand, and Davidge went to it. She clasped his and passed it on to Mrs. Prothero with a character:
“This is the great Mr. Davidge, the shipwright.”
Mrs. Prothero pressed his hand and kept it while she said:123“It is like Marie Louise to bring youth to cheer up an old crone like me.”
Davidge muffed the opening horribly. Instead of saying something brilliant about how young Mrs. Prothero looked, he said:
“Youth? I’m a hundred years old.”
“You are!” Mrs. Prothero cried. “Then how old does that make me, in the Lord’s name––a million?”
Davidge could not even recover the foot he had put in it. By looking foolish and keeping silent he barely saved himself from adding the other foot. Mrs. Prothero smiled at his discomfiture.
“Don’t worry. I’m too ancient to be caught by pretty speeches––or to like the men who have ’em always ready.”
She pressed his hand again and turned to welcome the financial Cyclops, James Dyckman, and his huge wife, and Captain Fargeton, a foreign military attaché with service chevrons and wound-chevrons and acroix de guerre, and a wife, who had been Mildred Tait.
“All that and an American spouse!” said Davidge to Marie Louise.
“Have you never had an American spouse?” she asked, brazenly.
“Not one!” he confessed.
Major and Polly Widdicombe had come in with Marie Louise, and Davidge drifted into their circle. The great room filled gradually with men of past or future fame, and the poor women who were concerned in enduring its acquisition.
Marie Louise was radiant in mood and queenly in attire. Davidge was startled by the magnificence of her jewelry. Some of it was of old workmanship, royal heirloomry. Her accent was decidedly English, yet her race was undoubtedly American. The many things about her that had puzzled him subconsciously began to clamor at least for the attention of curiosity. He watched her making the best of herself, as a skilful woman does when she is all dressed up in handsome scenery among toplofty people.
Polly was describing the guests as they came in:
“That’s Colonel Harvey Forbes. His name has been sent to Congress for approval as a brigadier-general. I knew him in the midst of the wildest scandal––remind me to tell you.124He was only a captain then. He’ll probably end as a king or something. This war is certainly good to some people.”
Davidge watched Marie Louise studying the somber officer. He was a bit jealous, shamed by his own civilian clothes. Suddenly Marie Louise’s smile at Polly’s chatter stopped short, shriveled, then returned to her face with a look of effort. Her muscles seemed to be determined that her lips should not droop.
Davidge heard the butler announce:
“Lady Clifton-Wyatt and General Sir Hector Havendish.”
Davidge wondered which of the two names could have so terrified Marie Louise. Naturally he supposed that it was the man’s. He turned to study the officer in his British uniform. He saw a tall, loose-jointed, jovial man of horsy look and carriage, and no hint of mystery––one would say an intolerance of mystery.
Lady Clifton-Wyatt was equally amiable. She laughed and wrung the hands of Mrs. Prothero. They were like two school-girls met in another century.
Davidge noted that Marie Louise turned her back and listened with extraordinary interest to Major Widdicombe’s old story about an Irishman who did or said something or other. Davidge heard Mrs. Prothero say to Lady Clifton-Wyatt, with all the joy in the world:
“Who do you suppose is here but our Marie Louise?”
“Our Marie Louise?” Lady Clifton-Wyatt echoed, with a slight chill.
“Yes, Marie Louise Webling. It was at her house that I met you. Where has the child got to? There she is.”
Without raising her voice she focused it between Marie Louise’s shoulder-blades.
“Marie Louise, my dear!”
Marie Louise turned and came up like a wax image on casters pulled forward by an invisible window-dresser. Lady Clifton-Wyatt’s limber attitude grew erect, deadly, ominously hostile. She looked as if she would turn Marie Louise to stone with a Medusa glare, but she evidently felt that she had no right to commit petrifaction in Mrs. Prothero’s home; so she bowed and murmured:
“Ah, yis! How are you?”
To Davidge’s amazement, Miss Webling, instead of meeting125the rebuff in kind, wavered before it and bowed almost gratefully. Then, to Davidge’s confusion, Lady Clifton-Wyatt marched on him with a gush of cordiality as if she had been looking for him around the Seven Seas. She remembered him, called him by name and told him that she had seen his pickchah in one of the papahs, as one of the creatahs of the new fleet.
Mrs. Prothero was stunned for a moment by the scene, but she had passed through so many women’s wars that she had learned to ignore them even when––especially when––her drawing-room was the battleground.
Her mind was drawn from the incident by the materialization of the butler.
Lady Clifton-Wyatt, noting that the tide was setting toward the dining-room and that absent-minded Sir Hector was floating along the current at the elbow of the pretty young girl, said to Davidge:
“Are you taking me out or––”
It was a horrible moment, for all its unimportance, but he mumbled:
“I––I am sorry, but––er––Miss Webling––”
“Oh! Ah!” said Lady Clifton-Wyatt. It was a very short “Oh!” and a very long “Ah!” a sort of gliding, crushing “Ah!” It went over him like a tank, leaving him flat.
Lady Clifton-Wyatt reached Sir Hector’s arm in a few strides and unhooked him from the girl––also the girl from him. The girl was grateful. Sir Hector was used to disappointments.
Davidge went to Marie Louise, who stood lonely and distraught. He felt ashamed of his word “sorry” and hoped she hadn’t heard it. Silently and crudely he angled his arm, and she took it and went along with him in a somnambulism.
Davidge, manlike, tried to cheer up his elbow-mate by a compliment. A man’s first aid to a woman in distress is a compliment or a few pats of the hand. He said:
“This is the second big dinner you and I have attended. There were bushels of flowers between us before, but I’d rather see your face than a ton of roses.”
The compliment fell out like a ton of coal. He did not like it at all. She seemed not to have heard him, for she murmured:
“Yis, isn’t it?”
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Then, as the occultists say, he went into the silence. There is nothing busier than a silence at a dinner. The effort to think with no outlet in speech kept up such a roaring in his head that he could hardly grasp what the rest were saying.
Lady Clifton-Wyatt sat at Davidge’s right and kept invading his quiet communion with Marie Louise by making remarks of the utmost graciousness somehow fermented––like wine turned vinegar.
“I wonder if you remember when we met in London, Mr. Davidge? It was just after the poorLusitaniawas sunk.”
“So it was,” said Davidge.
“It was at Sir Joseph Webling’s. You knew he was dead, didn’t you? Or did you?”
“Yes, Miss Webling told me.”
“Oh, did she! I was curious to know.”
She cast a look past him at Marie Louise and saw that the girl was about ready to make a scene. She smiled and deferred further torture.
Mrs. Prothero supervened. She had the beautiful theory that the way to make her guests happy was to get them to talking about themselves. She tried to draw Davidge out of his shell. But he talked about her husband instead, and of the great work he had done for the navy. He turned the tables of graciousness on her. Her nod recognized the chivalry; her lips smiled with pride in her husband’s praise; her eyes glistened with an old regret made new. “He would have been useful now,” she sighed.
“He was the man who laid the keel-blocks of our new navy,” said Davidge. “The thing we haven’t got and have got to get is a merchant marine.”
He could talk of that, though he could not celebrate himself. He was still going strong when the dinner was finished.
Mrs. Prothero clung to the old custom. She took the women away with her to the drawing-room, leaving the men alone.
Davidge noted that Lady Clifton-Wyatt left the dining-room with a kind of eagerness, Marie Louise reluctantly. She cast him a look that seemed to cry “Help!” He wondered what the feud could be that threw Miss Webling into such apparent panic. He could not tolerate the thought that she had a yellow streak in her.
127CHAPTER VI
Lady Clifton-Wyatt, like many another woman, was kept in order by the presence of men. She knew that the least charming of attributes in masculine eyes are the female feline, the gift and art of claws.
Men can be catty, too––tom-catty, yet contemptibly feline when they are not on their good behavior. There are times when the warning, “Gentlemen, there are ladies present,” restores them to order as quickly as the entrance of a teacher turns a school-room of young savages into an assembly of young saints.
The women in Mrs. Prothero’s drawing-room could not hear any of the words the men mixed with their smoke, but they could hear now and then a muffled explosion of laughter of a quality that indicated what had provoked it.
The women, too, were relieved of a certain constraint by their isolation. They seemed to enjoy the release. It was like getting their minds out of tight corsets. They were not impatient for the men––as some of the men may have imagined. These women were of an age where they had something else to think of besides men. They had careers to make or keep among women as well as the men among men.
The servants kept them on guard till the coffee, tobacco, and liqueurs were distributed. Then recess was declared. Marie Louise found herself on a huge tapestried divan provided with deep, soft cushions that held her like a quicksands. On one side of her was the mountainous Mrs. Dyckman resembling a stack of cushions cased in silk; on the other was Mildred Tait Fargeton, whose father had been ambassador to France.
Marie Louise listened to their chatter with a frantic impatience. Polly was heliographing ironic messages with her eyes. Polly was hemmed in by the wife of a railroad juggler, who was furious at the Administration because it did not put128all its transportation problems in her husband’s hands. She would not have intrusted him with the buying of a spool of thread; but that was different.
Mrs. Prothero was monopolized by Lady Clifton-Wyatt. Marie Louise could see that she herself was the theme of the talk, for Mrs. Prothero kept casting startled glances Marie-Louise-ward, and Lady Clifton-Wyatt glances of baleful stealth.
Marie Louise had proved often enough that she was no coward, but even the brave turn poltroon when they fight without a sense of justification. Her pride told her that she ought to cross over to Lady Clifton-Wyatt and demand that she speak up. But her sense of guilt robbed her of her courage. And that oath she had given to Mr. Verrinder without the least reluctance now loomed before her as the greatest mistake of her life. Her sword and shield were both in pawn.
She gave herself up for lost and had only one hope, that the men would not come in––especially that Ross Davidge would not come in in time to learn what Lady Clifton-Wyatt was so eager to publish. She gave Mrs. Prothero up for lost, too, and Polly. But she wanted to keep Ross Davidge fond of her.
Then in a lull Mrs. Prothero spoke up sharply:
“I simply can’t believe it, my dear. I don’t know that I ever saw a German spy, but that child is not one. I’d stake my life on it.”
“And now the avalanche!” thought Marie Louise.
The word “spy” was beginning to have more than an academic or fictional interest to Americans, and it caught the ear of every person present.
Mrs. Dyckman and Mme. Fargeton sat up as straight as their curves permitted and gasped:
“A German spy! Who? Where?”
Polly Widdicombe sprang to her feet and darted to Mrs. Prothero’s side.
“Oh, how lovely! Tell me who she is! I’m dying to shoot a spy.”
Marie Louise sickened at the bloodthirstiness of Polly the insouciante.
Mrs. Prothero tried to put down the riot of interest by saying:
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“Oh, it’s nothing. Lady Clifton-Wyatt is just joking.”
Lady Clifton-Wyatt was at bay. She shot a glance at Marie Louise and insisted:
“Indeed I’m not! I tell you she is a spy.”
“Who’s a spy?” Polly demanded.
“Miss Webling,” said Lady Clifton-Wyatt.
Polly began to giggle; then she frowned with disappointment.
“Oh, I thought you meant it.”
“I do mean it, and if you’ll take my advice you’ll be warned in time.”
Polly turned, expecting to find Marie Louise showing her contemptuous amusement, but the look she saw on Marie Louise’s face was disconcerting. Polly’s loyalty remained staunch. She hated Lady Clifton-Wyatt anyway, and the thought that she might be telling the truth made her a little more hatable. Polly stormed:
“I won’t permit you to slander my best friend.”
Lady Clifton-Wyatt replied, “I don’t slahnda hah, and if she is yaw best friend––well––”
Lady Clifton-Wyatt hated Polly and was glad of the weapon against her. Polly felt a sudden terrific need of retorting with a blow. Men had never given up the fist on the mouth as the simple, direct answer to an insult too complicated for any other retort. She wanted to slap Lady Clifton-Wyatt’s face. But she did not know how to fight. Perhaps women will acquire the male prerogative of the smash in the jaw along with the other once exclusive masculine privileges. It will do them no end of good and help to clarify all life for them. But for the present Polly could only groan, “Agh!” and turn to throw an arm about Marie Louise and drag her forward.
“I’d believe one word of Marie Louise against a thousand of yours,” she declared.
“Very well––ahsk hah, then.”
Polly was crying mad, and madder than ever because she hated herself for crying when she got mad. She almost sobbed now to Marie Louise, “Tell her it’s a dirty, rotten lie.”
Marie Louise had been dragged to her feet. She temporized, “What has she sai-said?”
Polly snickered nervously, “Oh, nothing––except that you were a German spy.”
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And now somewhere, somehow, Marie Louise found the courage of desperation. She laughed:
“Lady Clifton-Wyatt is notori––famous for her quaint sense of humor.”
Lady Clifton-Wyatt sneered, “Could one expect a spy to admit it?”
Marie Louise smiled patiently. “Probably not. But surely even you would hardly insist that denying it proves it?”
This sophistry was too tangled for Polly. She spoke up:
“Let’s have the details, Lady Clifton-Wyatt––if you don’t mind.”
“Yes, yes,” the chorus murmured.
Lady Clifton-Wyatt braced herself. “Well, in the first place Miss Webling is not Miss Webling.”
“Oh, but I am,” said Marie Louise.
Lady Clifton-Wyatt gasped, “You don’t mean to pretend that––”
“Did you read the will?” said Marie Louise.
“No, of course not, but––”
“It says there that I was their daughter.”
“Well, we’ll not quibble. Legally you may have been, but actually you were their adopted child.”
“Yis?” said Marie Louise. “And where did they find me? Had you heard?”
“Since you force me to it, I must say that it is generally believed that you were the natural daughter of Sir Joseph.”
Marie Louise was tremendously relieved by having something that she could deny. She laughed with a genuineness that swung the credulity all her way. She asked:
“And who was my mother––my natural mother, could you tell me? I really ought to know.”
“She is believed to have been a––a native of Australia.”
“Good Heavens! You don’t mean a kangaroo?”
“An actress playing in Vienna.”
“Oh, I am relieved! And Sir Joseph was my father––yes. Do go on.”
“Whether Sir Joseph was your father or not, he was born in Germany and so was his wife, and they took a false oath of allegiance to his Majesty. All the while they were loyal only to the Kaiser. They worked for him, spied for him. It is said that the Kaiser had promised to make Sir Joseph one131of the rulers over England when he captured the island. Sir Joseph was to have any castle he wanted and untold wealth.”
“What was I to have?” Marie Louise was able to mock her. “Wasn’t I to have at least Westminster Abbey to live in? And one of the crown princes for a husband?”
Lady Clifton-Wyatt lost her temper and her bearings.
“Heaven knows what you were promised, but you did your best to earn it, whatever it was.”
Mrs. Prothero lost patience. “Really, my dear Lady Clifton-Wyatt, this is all getting beyond me.”
Lady Clifton-Wyatt grew scarlet, too. She spoke with the wrath of a Tisiphone whipping herself to a frenzy. “I will bring you proofs. This creature was a paid secret agent, a go-between for Sir Joseph and the Wilhelmstrasse. She carried messages. She went into the slums of Whitechapel disguised as a beggar to meet the conspirators. She carried them lists of ships with their cargoes, dates of sailing, destinations. She carried great sums of money. She was the paymaster of the spies. Her hands are red with the blood of British sailors and women and children. She grew so bold that at last she attracted the attention of even Scotland Yard. She was followed, traced to Sir Joseph’s home. It was found that she lived at his house.
“One of the spies, named Easling or Oesten, was her lover. He was caught and met his deserts before a firing-squad in the Tower. His confession implicated Sir Joseph. The police raided his place. A terrific fight ensued. He resisted arrest. He tried to shoot one of our police. The bullet went wild and killed his wife. Before he could fire again he was shot down by one of our men.”
The astonishing transformations the story had undergone in its transit from gossip to gossip stunned Marie Louise. The memory of the reality saddened her beyond laughter. Her distress was real, but she had self-control enough to focus it on Lady Clifton-Wyatt and murmur:
“Poor thing, she is quite mad!”
There is nothing that so nearly drives one insane as to be accused of insanity.
The prosecutrix almost strangled on her indignation at Marie Louise’s calm.
“The effrontery of this woman is unendurable, Mrs.132Prothero. If you believe her, you must permit me to leave. I know what I am saying. I have had what I tell you from the best authority. Of course, it may sound insane, but wait until you learn what the German secret agents have been doing in America for years and what they are doing now.”
There had been publication enough of the sickening duplicity of ambassadors and attachés to lead the Americans to believe that Teutonism meant anything revolting. Mrs. Prothero was befuddled at this explosion in her quiet home. She asked:
“But surely all this has never been published, has it? I think we should have heard of it here.”
“Of course not,” said Lady Clifton-Wyatt. “We don’t publish the accounts of the submarines we sink, do we? No more do we tell the Germans what spies of theirs we have captured. And, since Sir Joseph and his wife were dead, there would have been no profit in publishing broadcast the story of the battle. So they agreed to let it be known that they died peacefully or rather painfully in their beds, of ptomaine poisoning.”
“That’s true,” said Mrs. Prothero. “That’s what I read. That’s what I’ve always understood.”
Now, curiously, as often happens in court, the discovery that a witness has stumbled on one truth in a pack of lies renders all he has said authentic and shifts the guilt to the other side. Marie Louise could feel the frost of suspicion against her forming in the air.
Polly made one more onset: “But, tell me, Lady Clifton-Wyatt, where was Marie Louise during all this Wild West End pistol-play?”
“In her room with her lover,” snarled Lady Clifton-Wyatt. “The servants saw her there.”
This threw a more odious light on Marie Louise. She was not merely a nice clean spy, but a wanton.
Polly groaned: “Tell that to Scotland Yard! I’d never believe it.”
“Scotland Yard knows it without my telling,” said Lady Clifton-Wyatt.
“But how did Marie Louise come to escape and get to America?”
“Because England did not want to shoot a woman, especially133not a young woman of a certain prettiness. So they let her go, when she swore that she would never return to England. But they did not trust her. She is under observation now! Your home is watched, my dear Mrs. Widdicombe, and I dare say there is a man on guard outside now, my dear Mrs. Prothero.”
This sent a chill along every spine. Marie Louise was frightened out of her own brief bravado.
There was a lull in the trial while everybody reveled in horror. Then Mrs. Prothero spoke in a judicial tone.
“And now, Miss Webling, please tell us your side of all this. What have you to say in your own behalf?”
Marie Louise’s mouth suddenly turned dry as bark; her tongue was like a dead leaf. She was inarticulate with remembrance of her oath to Verrinder. She just managed to whisper:
“Nothing!”
It sounded like an autumn leaf rasping across a stone. Polly cried out in agony:
“Marie Louise!”
Marie Louise shook her head and could neither think nor speak. There was a hush of waiting. It was broken by the voices of the men strolling in together. They were utterly unwelcome. They stopped and stared at the women all staring at Marie Louise.
Seeing Davidge about to ask what the tableau stood for, she found voice to say:
“Mr. Davidge, would you be so good as to take me home––to Mrs. Widdicombe’s, that is. I––I am a little faint.”
“Delighted! I mean––I’m sorry––I’d be glad,” he stammered, eager to be at her service, yet embarrassed by the sudden appeal.
“You’ll pardon me, Mrs. Prothero, for running away!”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Prothero, still dazed.
He bowed to her, and all round. Marie Louise nodded and whispered, “Good night!” and moved toward the door waveringly. Davidge’s heart leaped with pity for her.
Lady Clifton-Wyatt checked him as he hurried past her.
“Oh, Mr. Davidge, I’m stopping at the Shoreham. Won’t you drop in and have a cup of tea with me to-morrow at hahf pahst fah?”
“Thank you! Yes!”