"An airy devil hovers in the skyAnd pours down mischief."Shakespeare.
"An airy devil hovers in the skyAnd pours down mischief."
Shakespeare.
Presently the growling of the guns began to reverberate over London.
First came the far-off rumbling that is felt rather than heard; the hint whereat the mothers of households drop book or work to exclaim, "Hush!... Itis!..."
"Don't think so, dear," return the men folk; to retract a couple of minutes later with an "Ah, yes; blast 'em. Here they are. I'll bring the kids down."
Then came the long, nerve-irritating pause.
In Mrs. Cartwright's Westminster flat there were no children to cause those anxieties with which the enemy had made himself more detested than by any legitimate act of war. Her son, as he would have wished you to note, was hardly a kid to be roused from his sleep. As he strolled back from the staircase window, hands in pockets, his manner was nonchalant in the extreme. He was no callow scout, either, to wait in a police-station for that thrilling moment when he should be allowed out to sound the bugle-call.
"Like the gramophone on again?" he suggested (luckily in the more manly of his two voices). "It would drown that boring noise for you."
"I don't think so, darling, thanks," said his mother. A pause; silence. "They may not get through after all. Won't you go to bed, Keith?"
"Oh, I don't know"—the over-grown lad was already dropping with sleep. "Wouldn't you women rather I stopped up with you?"
Golden and Mrs. Cartwright exchanged a tiny smile before the mother said, "Do you know, I don't think we'll stop up. I am going to show Mrs. Awdas to her room now. You do as you like."
The Master of the House moved from the traditional attitude, flat back against the sitting-room mantelpiece, feet wide apart on the Persian rug. "Oh, well, I don't see why I should hang about, waiting up for those wretched Huns, either," he pronounced, his pink mouth twisting sidewards as he strangled his yawns. "I'll turn in too, if you're sure you don't mind."
And he walked across the sitting-room to hold the door open for his mother and her guest to precede him.
Golden, who considered this English schoolboy "perfectly lovely," gave him a smiling good night over her shoulder.
"Good night, Precious," whispered his mother.
Very prettily the boy returned her kiss as he responded, "Good night, old Bean."
He turned out the lights behind him and betook himself to his room on the left of the corridor that skirted the flat. On the right were Reggie's room and his mother's; her old Belgianfemme de ménagecame in by the day. Her younger son's room was unoccupied tonight, but it was her own bedroom that Mrs. Cartwright gave up to Golden Awdas. Here she left her to undress, promising to come back.
She did not think that Golden would sleep at once.
She wandered back to turn up the lights again in the sitting-room, still full of cigarette smoke, and with its atmosphere still vibrant as if with young voices and laughter. And as she set chairs into their places, plumped up cushions, and, putting her hand carefully through the curtains, set a window open and wheeled her standing-desk back ready for her morning's work tomorrow, she thought smilingly of those guests of hers; all so many years behind her, in age, in emotion, in experience. She delighted in them, these young men who felt themselves masters of all wisdom, these girls on the right side of a barrier.... The passing of it had been an agony to Claudia Cartwright.
It did not take all women in the same way, she reflected. Many went through life so entirely satisfied with inessentials; so half-awake.
Most had never been lovers or had lovers. But those who had——!
No death of a sweetheart in early youth, no cruel jilting, no bitter matrimonial experience, nothing, nothing! could compare with the poignant, crushing, rending pain of those years when Youth and Love slip away from the woman. It is a long black tunnel of misery from which she emerges (having lost much but accepted, bowed her head, folded her hands) into the grey afternoon of Life.
And then——Heaven's blessing on the maternal sense that is rich in any real woman's character, even if she never has a child at all! For it is this that comes to her aid; and she spreads it out over the girls and the men she knows; caring, helping, sympathizing with all their love emotions (or lack or them).
Henceforward everything must be vicariously felt by her. She must live in the lives of her children; in their professions and interests; she must love through her young friends ... Little Olwen ... Golden.... As she thought of these Untried, their friend smiled over a tag of verse that came into her mind with the image that seemed its illustration.
"Oh, tarnish late on Wenlock Edge, Gold that I never see! Lie long, high snowdrifts on the hedge, That will not shower on me."
"Oh, tarnish late on Wenlock Edge, Gold that I never see! Lie long, high snowdrifts on the hedge, That will not shower on me."
Prayer, she thought, can take odd forms——well, this was hers for the happiness of her girl-friends.
Golden, she thought, would be in bed by now.
A nearer growling of guns, from the north, she judged, sounded as she tapped at the door.
"Come!" called the charming un-English voice.
Mrs. Cartwright entered her own familiar room with its known mingling of kuss-kuss, rose, and orris scent. The toilet silver, the Indian numnah on the floor, her husband's sword and sash over the bookshelf, and the enlarged photograph of him laughing under the black, semi-lune shadow of his solar-topi——these things were Claudia's background. Her eyes opened upon them each morning. Tonight they all seemed suddenly new to her....
It was because they were now a background to this radiant stranger in her room. Out of that cloud of loosened gold on her pillow there looked the face of a beauty as rare as any that had ever been kissed awake by a fairy prince.
"Oh, my dear," exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright, involuntarily. "How lovely you are, Golden; how lovely!"
Paradoxical enough it might seem to some women, but this woman thanked Heaven it was a girl so beautiful who had supplanted her, or rather, to whom she had relinquished that beautiful boy. She could not have endured to see Jack choose a bride unworthy in body or mind, least of all one who might be as the ordinary "nice" pretty girl often is, a bundle of mere sentiment and frigidity. To Golden she could give him. Actually she had brought them together. And now it was to his best woman-friend that the young flier confided his sweetheart.
On this, of all nights! Their bridal night!
Mrs. Cartwright could have laughed outright at the strangeness of it. Jack's wedding-night!
She remembered that other night, months ago, when in a French hotel bedroom she had outwatched the hours with a nightmare-haunted man. In the very attitude that she had taken then, she sat down now on the edge of this other bed, tucking the eider-down about her as she began chatting, quietly and cheerfully, with his bride. Through speech and pause alike the elder woman's mind was echoing with memories. It was Jack Awdas's husky voice that she heard, clearly as when it was his face upon a pillow that she watched. How feverishly he had muttered, "That's why I always shout in my dream.... I was falling, falling, and calling out to my observer.... Wewerepals!... I don't think it could ever be exactly like that with a girl."
She, Claudia, had told him, "The girl is more to you or less to you, but not the same."
And now she lay in her beauty, the girl; that worshipped "girl" of Jack's. And this——This!—was her bridal night.
Guns! The nearer guns were uttering now. Bark after vicious bark set windows rattling. The racket died away only to break out afresh....
In an interval, Golden said suddenly. "Jack told me what a really fine friend you'd always been to him. And, d'you know? I've always known I should be friends with you."
"Have you?"
"Why, yes. I said so before we left Les Pins.... D'you remember, I saw you for a moment that very first evening, sitting with him in the lounge? But who would have thought where we should all be tonight?" mused the girl, lifting the throat that rose so pillar-wise and white above the silken edge of a night-dress of her hostess's. "In London, and me married to the Bird-boy, and an air raid going on outside. But do I have to keep you up this way? You're all dressed and everything: I'm so afraid you'll be dead tired."
"Not I. I shouldn't be able to sleep if I did undress. There'll be another hullabaloo on in another minute, I expect," said Mrs. Cartwright, cheerfully. The sound of the guns had died down for a moment. "And—well, it won't be the first time, Golden, that I've stayed up with somebody who could not sleep.... Ah, they're starting again."
Yes, they were starting again....
Throughout London, nurses in hospitals set their teeth angrily over patients whom they had hoped to drag back to life, out of the horrors of shock. Other nurses, in maternity homes, could have wrung dismayed hands over this terror added to Nature's ordeal. And in operating rooms the white-coated surgeons cursed below their breath the hellish interruption that might cause a slip of the hand or the instrument and leave all care, all science vain. These things were the danger and the damage; not merely the bomb dropped at random; the crumbling masonry. These, and the mischief to countless little children, disturbed past soothing now, with tender nerves a-fret, heads gathered to their parents' shoulders. Little heads! They ought never to have been visited by such questions as punctuated the din in homes where baby voices asked,"Was that a gun or a bomb, daddy?" ... "Where was that firing from?" ... "If a raid came right on Billy's cot, mamsie, what would you do?"
Then there came to their ears a new sound—the gutteral, syncopated drone of twin engines—beating over the roofs.
"Ah! There's one got through, then," said Mrs. Cartwright. Following on her words came the outburst of nearer gunnery, to which the whole house seemed to shake; in twos and threes—"Brroum—brrroum!—brrroum!—brroum!—brrrroum!" then a more ponderous crash than all.
Then, a light tap at the door and a voice in two keys, calling with zest, "Mums! Are you all right? Is Mrs. Awdas? There's nothing to be frightened at really."
"No; all right, Keith darling. You're all right, aren't you?"
"Top-hole. I say, did you hear that last? I'm sure it was a dud shell just outside on the pavement, so——"
"Keith, you're topromiseyou won't go outside until they've gone," called his mother, starting up. "Go to your room!"
"Oh ... all right, then. I'll nip out as soon as the all-clear goes though." The Master of the House pattered off down the corridor to his room.
"I wonder if any others will get through tonight," said Mrs. Cartwright, listening.
Golden, who had not yet lost any of her kin or seen them broken in this War, suggested that these German flyers were, anyway, brave.
"So are other beasts of prey," returned the Englishwoman.
Again the firing rolled away in the distance, following the raiders' course....
But a thoughtfulness seemed to have fallen upon the wakeful girl. For the first time she had given a little shiver at the sound of that receding turmoil.
"Now I hope it isn't too cowardly of me, what I'm going to say," she began, suddenly, turning on her rounded elbow. "But I can't help thinking of boys flying up there in the dark, in the teeth of guns like that....Hewas doing it, of course, until he crashed. My Bird-boy!... He's always glad when he goes up; he was grousing to me, as you call it, yesterday, because he hadn't been off the ground for a week ... but, oh, Mrs. Cartwright! do you know,I'mreal glad, just for tonight, that Jack can't be up."
Mrs. Cartwright smiled at her, answering her in two words that seemed ordinary enough.
"I know."
But they meant, to the elder woman, something very different from the gentle agreement that they conveyed to the girl.
Claudia Cartwright heard again the hasty whisper with which Jack had taken leave of her those hours ago. "I wantHerto stay here," he told her. "I'd want you to take care of her."
At the time Mrs. Cartwright had been paralyzed with surprise. Golden Awdas to stay with her? Why?
Why on earth should Jack leave her——tonight of all nights? She, the bride, had seemed to see nothing stupefying in his action in going off with Captain Ross when the warning came through.
But Mrs. Cartwright knew that Captain Ross had his own duty, not anything in which Jack must help him. Jack was free, she'd heard, until ten o'clock tomorrow morning. It was not Jack's pidgin to do anything until then.... Therefore why in the name of all that was extraordinary hadn't he taken his bride away when the others all went? Why hadn't he taken her off home with him, or to the hotel where he put up, or wherever it was?
Then, very quickly, she'd seen why.
One of the cleverest soldiers of her acquaintance had already told Claudia that, could the true history of these campaigns ever be written, it would read not merely likeanother versionof the War, but likeanother War. She guessed how many things planned never happen and how many things happen that were never planned, and how few of either get into the papers. Oh, the difference between the published account and the story of the man who was there! Tomorrow would see a report of this raid, which would say nothing at all of the men whose duty ... it hadnotbeen to beat back the raiders. It wasnotJack's duty to go up that night. It was his duty not to go.
But——
Up there he was now, she knew it. Up there, in the darkness and the din! Perhaps over the house now, the joyous eaglet-boy, fighting those circling hawks ... now, at this moment!...
She knew it in her heart.
And, thinking of that, she sat there smiling at the white and golden bride who was glad to think of her boy safe from this danger at least.... There was no reason why Golden should know it too.
The woman he had loved continued to watch with the girl he loved, during her bridal night.
"Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkindThat from the nunneryOf thy chaste breast and quiet mindTo war and arms I fly.Yet this inconstancy is suchAs you too shall adore,I could not love thee, Dear, so much,Loved I not Honour more."Lovelace.
"Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkindThat from the nunneryOf thy chaste breast and quiet mindTo war and arms I fly.
Yet this inconstancy is suchAs you too shall adore,I could not love thee, Dear, so much,Loved I not Honour more."
Lovelace.
Mrs. Cartwright's intuition had been perfectly right.
Jack Awdas was up during the raid over London. He was up to some purpose, as his comrades and three other airmen (prisoners of war) could tell.
But here is his own version of the affair, as told by him, on the following day, to his young wife.
"When that warning came through, you see, I felt that it was for me too. I don't know what my own idea was when I went off with old Ross. He said, 'What the something doyouwant to come along for?' I said, 'All right; shut up.' I didn't know, you know. Queer, wasn't it? All I knew was that I had got to go too, instead of bringing you back here as I'd thought.... I'dgotto leave you, girl."
"When that warning came through, you see, I felt that it was for me too. I don't know what my own idea was when I went off with old Ross. He said, 'What the something doyouwant to come along for?' I said, 'All right; shut up.' I didn't know, you know. Queer, wasn't it? All I knew was that I had got to go too, instead of bringing you back here as I'd thought.... I'dgotto leave you, girl."
She listened, leaning back now in his happy arms. She listened, all eyes. His own blue eyes had been deep in hers, locked to them with the lover's look that is another embrace. But now he took them from hers. He glanced aside and away, and into Jack Awdas's eyes there crept back one of those two other looks which were characteristic of him. It was the "yonderly" look that sees what is not for all to see.
"Somehow," he said, "I knew I just couldn't stay with you. I'd got to go up, and Lord only knew how it was going to be managed, or how I was going to get out of the 'drome in time, even. There wasn't a taxi in sight. Ross and I walked on to the Honeycomb, or half ran, half walked. Going up Whitehall he said, 'Jack, you darned fool, go back; what's wrong?' I said, 'Nothing; shut up, old thing, if you don't mind.'
"In the courtyard of the Honeycomb we nearly ran into a tiny little dispatch-rider girl with a side-car. I didn't know until just now that it was young Brown's widow that he was going to marry, that we'd heard about at dinner! She'd brought some man in, and was just starting up; I said to her, 'Where are you for?' She said, 'Home! and time, too.' 'Where's home?' said I, and I believe she told me it was Baker Street.... But just as I was asking her I began to see what I'd got to do. It began to come to me then, d'you see?
"I said to the girl, 'Look here, I'm sorry, you can't go home yet. You've got to drive me out to my 'drome, and I told her where that was. Half an hour's ride into the country. We did it in less. I told her I'd got to get to my 'bus, and that she'd got to go hell-for-leather; and we did it in less....
"You see, I'd got to take that machine across at ten o'clock next morning. Had to: duty. (You knew about that, of course.) But if I could only get her up a few hours before that! I thought.... There she was, waiting. There were dozens of our chaps up already, I knew. Here was I——and I couldn't stand it, somehow. Not last night. Just because itwasthat night. It would have spoilt it. You see, don't you? Yes; I thought you would. I wouldn't think of you then; except to think 'It'sherI'm going to give Them.' I don't even know what 'them' meant——(This sounds such rot, girl, that I couldn't possibly tell anybody else, but there you are.... I won't kiss you again until I've told you the end of this.)
"Well, we chased along the roads in the moonlight at the deuce of a lick, coming round the corners on the edge of one wheel. Just imagine it! Me and that side-car, and that girl of Brown's——No more idea it was his girl——! She's only about so-size; I thought she was a kid of fifteen like one of those little brown messengers with pigtails that go trotting about the corridors, and by Jove, I tried totipher! I did! I didn't know. I hadn't any silver on me after all those tips and things in the afternoon, after we were married. I just lugged out my note-case and got out a couple of John Bradburys—the last. I stuffed 'em into her hand. 'Here, thanks awfully!' I said; 'do buy yourself a hat-pin or some sweets or something——' She did laugh! 'You won't?' I said—she stuffing them back for all she was worth. 'Oh well, sorry if I've made a break,' I said, 'can't stop to explain now—thanks awfully—Good night!' and up I legged it to the gates, holding those notes in my hand all the time....
"You know, I hadn't my papers or orders or anything! Neck, wasn't it?Ididn't know what on earth I was going to ask the Adjutant! Sometimes when you want a thing it's a good deal better not to ask ... just go and grab it, and explain afterwards.
"Well, then I had a bit of luck.
"Scurrying through the gates, I ran straight into Dashmold himself; that is the Adjutant. (A stinker on duty.)
"'Ha, Awdas!' he said, 'can't stop now, the Colonel's just rung me up from his house. See you in half an hour.'
"'Rightoh,' I said, and dashed ahead, thanking my lucky stars—for this only left me with our assistant adjutant, always a bit of an ass. I chased off to the orderly-room and found him.
"'Hello, Awdas,' he squeaked. (Voice rather like George Clarke at the Empire; pink and white face.)
"'I suppose you know there's a raid on?' I said. 'I've come for that 'bus.' He said, 'What about your papers?' I said, 'Yes, hand 'em over, that's all right. I've just this moment spoken to Dashmold.' (So I had; just said 'Rightoh' to him.) 'Those are my orders,' I said, 'in that pile there. Chuck 'em over. Thanks.' So that wasthat....
"Then off I streaked to the Officers' Quarters to get into my things. Not a soul there. You know. It's a long corridor with a row of little cubicles not much bigger than the dressing-rooms at the swimming bath. Just hold a camp-bed and a chest of drawers and a row of pegs.... By Jove, if some thief hadn't pinched my kit. Some one got into the first that was handy, I suppose, when they got the warning. I'll have his blood for that, later. So in I nipped to one cubicle after another. All empty. I thought I wasn't going to find a stitch. However! At last I came to one; there it was, a lovely outfit all hanging ready on the pegs. Man called Jackson. He'd got leave. Well! I plunged into his coat and overalls and flying-cap and goggles, all the lot! quicker than anything I've ever done in my life. I remember I'd got those blessed pound notes still in my hand. I shoved them into my teeth while I dressed. Then down I doubled to the hangars.
"About a dozen of the ac emmas—those are mechanics, dear—were waiting about there. I switched the lights on.
"There was my 'bus all ready for tomorrow morning—ah, a beauty! Yes, the one you saw on Thursday, that I'd been making the trial flight in; the single-seater Scout monoplane. I'd always fancied her. She ran a little light, but I liked that. I'd got her balanced; just right for me. I.T. All ready, tanks filled up and everything. The gun was on her, but——Dash it! No ammunition, of course. That did me.
"Then I saw Smithers. (He's the Quartermaster's nephew.) I said, 'Smithers! Jump to it ... here you are, take this' (the last two quid I had on me, that Brown's widow refused), 'and get me two drums of ammunition. How?Idon't know. Somehow. Off with you and give you five minutes to get back in.' Off he streaked. Then I said to the others, 'Now, you men, get a move on. Get her out.' They wheeled her out of the hangar and into the moonlight.
"Oh! I nearly forgot to tell you all about something, though. Even at the time I noticed it. (The sort of funny little thing you do notice when you aren't really thinking of anything except getting on with what's on.) It was tied round the joy-stick! You know, dear, your bit of ribbon that I've always kept as a mascot since that day on the beach. I'd tied it on just before the trial flight. It's always been on, you know, on whatever 'bus I've been flying. I meant it to, until you were mine, and then I was going to give it back to you, Girl, because it wouldn't matter which of us two had the Luckthen; it would be the same thing.
"I looked at it once as I was waiting, and I remember thinking to myself quickly, in the sort of rum way, like you think of things in dreams, 'By Jove, I suppose that's the most precious prize I've owned, up to now.'
"But after that I just looked at my watch and stamped as I stood waiting for those blighted drums. I'd given Smithers five minutes. Lord, if he couldn't do it. I——It seemed a thundering important thing to me, you see: the most important I'd ever had to do. You do know why, don't you? You do understand?"
Golden's great eyes upon his face were as full of understanding as the tone of her simple "yes." Her young husband gave a short, contented nod, then he went on:
"Well! So then I saw Smithers, coming running back. 'Got 'em?' I shouted. 'Right, sir!' he shouted back. Up he came with those two drums he'd got (God knowshow). I fixed one on the gun myself, and put the other handy.
"'Start her up,' I said. I climbed in, and the boys swung the propeller. I gave 'em 'Contact,' and then I was up and off.... Hadn't been off the earth for a week. And, by the way, I hadn't gone up to fight since the time I crashed.
"Yes, of course, it was a perfectly idiotic thing to do. I hadn't got the night's Orders any more than I'd orders to go and stand by with Ross, where you thought I was. I didn't know if we were fighting with guns or planes or both, nor where nor when nor anything about it. However!—--.
"What did London look like from up there? Oh, just all dark, you know: like a great turned-up field below you, with the river winding through it. What you do see very plainly is that silver ribbon of the Thames, reflecting the light of the sky.
"You think the sky's big, don't you? Well, it isn't so big when you can bumble into your own barrage at any moment, or when a Hun you can neither see nor hear lets fly suddenly. But I could see shrapnel breaking away to the south-west, so I just beetled off after that....
"Then I'm dashed if those three blighters in their big plane didn't nearly run me down. Yes, I s'pose she'd be the plane you and Mrs. Cartwright heard over the house. Was she missing it all?"
"Missing?" repeated the fascinated Golden. "Why, how could I know?"
"Well, anyway, she was somewhere over that part of town. They'd jumped the barrage and got in. I circled round, climbing all I knew, and then I guess they dropped those two bombs to lighten themselves.
"The searchlight fellows down below were dazzling away to beat the band. You could see nothing but jumping flashes all over the show, putting 'em off their aim. Me too. Perfectly poisonous. I cursed, but I knew I'd no business there....
"Well, that Scout of mine could climb as quick as any Gotha built yet, so I gave them twenty rounds or so right into 'em. They didn't like that, so I gave 'em some more. They fired back, but nothing to hurt. The next go, they decided to give it up, I think. They headed for the south-west again. Evidently they were going to chance the barrage. Bon! Anyway, if they were, so was I.
"And oh, Girl, if you knew how I wanted to get them! I wanted to get those raiding Huns, if I had to chase them to the coast and across and right to Berlin. As Ross says, 'I wanted to let 'em have it where Dora wore the beads.' I felt 'I must. I'll die if I don't, and I——'
"D'you know what I did? This is one of the most idiotic bits yet, but I'm going to tell you the lot.... Generally, I don't think I'm superstitious. Some fellows are; well, I'd known one perfectly sane and sensible fellow, who, when he was mad keen after something he wanted, winning some event, or something——he'd turn money out of his pocket—a sovereign, say, in the days when we had sovereigns, or a handful of silver——and throw it away. Pitch it right away, you know, to buy him luck. Well, I thought of it then. If I could buy that German plane! So——
"I pulled off my glove as I buzzed along after 'em and made a dive inside my jacket for money. Then I remembered I hadn't a bean on me. I'd given my last two quid to Smithers, and here I was, and I wanted to buy that Gotha, I tell you! I'd have bought her with anything I'd got, money, ring, every last thing——
"Then I remembered.
"It was on the joy-stick, the thing I valued. Your little mascot! I ripped it off. I gave one look round to where those beggars were heading for the barrage, and then chucked that bit of ribbon out over where I guessed you might be. (Perfectly absurd, of course. The wind whisked it away.) ... And as I chucked it I shouted something out. Somebody's name.
"No! You can't guess whose name it was. Nobody'd have thought it. The funny thing about it was, it wasn't even the name I meant to shout. I meant to shout out 'Cheer O, Girl!' I heard myself yelling out instead, 'Cheer O,Ferris!'
"He was the observer I used to have. Killed, last year.... Somehow, just then, I forgot that; I felt as if he were with me. Then! I thought 'Good Lord, fancy if old Ferris——'
"Then I didn't think any more; I settled down to business. Well, as you know, I did have to chase 'em to the coast, those dashed Archies popping all the way.Atthe coast the Archies were——say really hot. Then those sea-planes took a hand, but it wasn't the seaplane that got her.Igot her! Got her right over Beachy Head.
"I knew I'd done it the moment he turned about. I'd put half a drum right into her engines, and she wouldn't want to land in the sea (rather Irish).
"Suddenly a searchlight blazed right on the pair of us, and the Archies stopped, just like the band stops and the limelight concentrates for the really tricky bit of the show with those acrobats at a music-hall....
"But this was dead easy, the rest of it. I just circled above her like a buzzard, driving her down, down, all the time. I didn't fire at her any more, because you could tell within twenty yards where she was going to land, and I knew the lads of the village were all ready and waiting for her. One bad wobble she gave and pitched straight down. I sheered off a bit for fear of getting any bombs, but she'd drop her last one on the way. She simply came down end on like shying a lump of clay at a board. Then I landed, tumbled out, and legged it up the slope as fast as I could; just in time to see 'em getting out all the three Huns alive.
"'My bird, I think,' says I, running up all out of breath.
"Then a chap beside me spoke out of the dark, 'Hi! Who are you?'
"I couldn't see him, so I said, 'D'you mind telling me whoyouare?'
"He pulled a torch out of his pocket and showed it on himself. A Staff-major. So we shook hands, and he congratulated me.... Then I felt rather a fool," laughed Jack Awdas, "for he asked me my name.
"'Well, as a matter of fact, Sir,' I said, and stopped.
"'Well what?' he asked.
"'Well, as a matter of fact, I'm not supposed to be here at all.'
"'Oh?' he barked. 'Got any orders on you?'
"I had; from the Assistant Adjutant. I pulled 'em out and he read them by the light of his torch.
"'H'm,' he said, 'taking a machine to France, but I see by this you're not due to start until tomorrow morning. It's now two, ac emma. How's this?'
"Well, when you're cornered like that I always think there's only one thing for it; pure cheek. So, as bold as brass, I gave a look at the orders myself, and then said, 'I rather fancy this must be a clerical error, sir. My verbal orders were to start today, and I can't have been two hours on the way yet?'
"I fancied I heard him give a chuckle in the dark, but all he said was, 'Well, this will be a serious matter for you.'
"'Oh, I hope not, Sir,' I said.
"'A serious matter,' says he. 'If you'd been sent up to chase Hun planes you might have got the D.S.O. for this. But you see what it means now?'
"'What?' I asked.
"'Well! This being an act outside the course of your duty,' he said, 'itmaymean the Victoria Cross!'"
Golden Awdas gasped. "Then, think of it, Bird-boy! You'll only have tradedmyribbon," she exclaimed, "for that wonderful other! Now wasn't that a prize——"
But the wide and distant stare had gone now from her airman's eyes. These had returned to her; his sweet American who had journeyed across a world before he had found her, his love whom he had loved enough to leave, knowing that it might be for ever.... His blue eyes were locked into hers again for a moment with his lover's look that now sent a wave of pink fire flaming into her face and down her throat. Against that perfect throat he buried eyes and lips.
"'Think?' I needn't think of anything else now, Girl," he whispered. "You'remy prize!"
That was Jack Awdas's story of his share in the raid.
The evening papers announced:
"Bombs were dropped in several districts, but no material damage was caused. A woman and two children were slightly injured.
"One German aeroplane was brought down on the coast by a pilot of the Royal Flying Corps."
The German account read:
"A successful raid was carried out by our airmen over London last night. Good results were obtained, and large fires were seen to break out in various districts.
"All our aeroplanes returned safely."
"Never the time and the place and the loved one all together!"Browning.
"Never the time and the place and the loved one all together!"
Browning.
And what of the other people who had been at Mrs. Cartwright's party when that raid alarm came through?
Olwen Howel-Jones and young Ellerton had imagined that by taking "the Metropolitan" from Baker Street Station they might arrive at Wembley Park before the raid started in earnest.
This hope proved to be vain before their train reached Willesden Junction. Out went the lights as the train came to a dead stand between two stations. Up went the windows; above the iron bars that guarded them there craned the heads of passengers asking in every key what the matter was.
They were answered by the distant growling of those first guns.
"Bai Jove! Held up for the blessed raid," exclaimed the cheerful voice of young Ellerton, who was alone with Olwen in a first-class carriage in the front of the train. "How priceless! Here we are and here we stay until the blighters choose to finish their little call, I s'pose. That's all right.... Hope you don't feel nervous, Miss Howel-Jones?"
The soft voice of little Olwen came to him out of the dark. (She was sitting in the corner seat, opposite to him.) "Oh, no! I'm not nervous at all, thanks. I think it's quite exciting! I only hope Lizzie (that's my Aunt) won't be worrying about me; but then she knew where I was; she'll probably think Mrs. Cartwright kept me."
"Ah, yes. She'll probably think Mrs. Cartwright kept you," agreed Olwen's companion. "I thought it looked a likely night for our friends."
He had made this remark, by the way, twice on their way to Baker Street.
"Yes," said Olwen.
Silence, punctuated by a nearer muttering of the guardian guns fell between the two young people in the carriage to themselves. The voices of other passengers could be heard further along the train; and the guard appeared to be exchanging repartee with the engine-driver, whose name (as that of all drivers of 'bus or engine seems to be), was Bill. Olwen gave a little laugh as "Bill's" comments were shouted forth on the night air, and her companion chuckled also. But he started no conversation about it. Or about any other subject.
The whole truth of the matter was that this quite good-looking and pleasant young man Harold Ellerton hadn't got very much conversation. Others besides Captain Ross (who was never inclined to be fair to him) had noticed this. Olwen herself had noticed it before now. It had been noticed by various girls whom he had taken out; for he was fond of taking out girls. But, unlike the majority of his sex, he preferredthemto talk tohim. He was perfectly happy to punctuate their treble twitter with his appreciative bass, "Ha!" "Bai Jove!" and "Priceless!" But (except for one other detail to be presently specified), he hardly knew what else to say to a young woman who was out with him. That was why he felt most at ease sitting beside her at a theatre (where, during two enjoyable hours, all the talking necessary was done for him by Mr. Owen Nares, or Mr. Leslie Henson, or somebody like that). Or at a restaurant, preferably at a table near the band; listening to that could always fill up any awkward pause. At dances, again, one could dance. At a little dinner party like tonight's, for instance, there was a crowd where everybody talked; made everything so much more cheery at once. But it was when these things came to an end, when one had the girl all to oneself to bring home——That, he found, was the crab!
Why was it, he wondered, that he found it so difficult to talk to her, except upon one subject?
He remembered delightful evenings, ending in these painful and tedious journeysà deux. Tonight, for instance, it was going to be the very dickens with this little Miss Howel-Jones. A jolly nice little kid, thought the sailor, a pretty kid! But here they might be held up together in this confounded train for another hour, perhaps, and he couldn't even see her face, and he was blessed if he knew what more to say to her——Why, he'd said everything as he sat next to her at dinner, he and that funny little Brown chap. He did envy the flow of chaps like that! Chaps who could yarn away upon this, that, and the other subject for three years or the duration of the War. Talk to girls for ever, they could, without repeating themselves!
"I thought it looked a likely sort of evening for a raid," he heard himself say at this point.
"Yes," said the girl opposite to him in the dark.
Of course he'd said everything there was to be said on the subject of air-raids in general and this air-raid in particular on the way to Baker Street. Yet he couldn't sit here in the dark opposite to her for the whole length of the raid, saying nothing?
Still the guns made distant thunder....
"I do hope you aren't frightened," he said. "It's quite all right, you know."
"Oh, I know. I'm not a bit frightened," came from Olwen; truthfully enough.
She was not frightened as she settled herself back against the padding of the carriage. She was only a little sleepy, a little anxious for the kind-hearted Lizzie, who would be waiting up for her in that pretty villa at Wembley Park; she was also excited and elated still after her lovely party.
She was thinking far more of that party than she was of her companion of the raid!
She was also wondering about Captain Ross.
What adisgustingtemper the man had been in all that evening!
Positively scowling at her! Was he jealous, really?Washe?
Then she wondered what Captain Ross was doing at that moment.
If there had been no raid——! If it had been he who was seeing her home she might have asked him what she had done that he should scowl at her like that.
Or if only it were Captain Ross who was sitting with her here in this darkened carriage all smelling of engine-dust and cigarette smoke, waiting for the raid to finish....
Hurriedly Olwen put the thought away. It was no use allowing oneself to dwell on thoughts of things that were too good to be true. No, no, not too good. She told herself firmly that she did not wish Captain Ross were in this railway-carriage instead of Mr. Ellerton. Captain Ross would only be disagreeable.
Only——Well! She could imagine some girls feeling glad of a raid in these circumstances. Some girls to whom it would be as one long, long lovely dance "sat out" in a dark corner with their favourite partner of all. Perhaps there were girls "hung up" in this very train, feeling that it was the evening of their lives.
Whereas all she could feel was apologetic to Mr. Ellerton. He liked her, but she was sure he had never bargained for sitting out with her a dance of this length. Still, what was to be done? Here the train stuck. They couldn't get out and walk to Wembley!
"Shall we smoke?" suggested Mr. Ellerton. "You'll have a cigarette, won't you?"
He fumbled in his pockets and brought out his torch. Its tiny beams made rounds of light in the carriage and upon his face and upon the gold braid and gold rings of his uniform. He found case and matches. He lighted a cigarette for Olwen, who puffed at it with secret distaste (for the moderate smoker is not found among her sex; a woman being either a cigarette fiend or a passive objector).
The two red glow-worms winked and wavered in the dark carriage, their reflections shining in the glass of photographs over the rack. Outside the searchlights pointed, and now and again the sky showed the alien star of a shrapnel-burst.
Then, without warning, crash after crash seemed to rock the train on the rails. Some guns, very near, that had not yet spoken, were barking savagely, and between the barks a shrill "whee-you! whee-you!" hissed past the telegraph wires....
The start that Olwen gave made her drop her cigarette on to the floor of the carriage. She dug her little French heel into the spark. Young Ellerton threw his cigarette down beside it and rose quickly. Snapping up the arm of the seat by Olwen, he sat down close to her.
"You needn't be frightened," he said, encouragingly.
"I'm not frightened," she assured him. "Only it makes me jump."
"Brutes, frightening you!" exclaimed young Ellerton. "I say, I do wish I'd thought of bringing some chocolates or something for you."
"I'm not hungry either, thank you," laughed Olwen into the barking of those guns, but young Ellerton's voice repeated, "I wish I'd got any sweets for you. I've only this——"
She felt him move against her arm as he leant nearer to her to get something else out of his pocket: it was a phial of saccharine tablets, carried about since the sugar restrictions.
"Have some of these," he said. "Put out your hand ... here, where are you?" He shook half a dozen tablets out into her palm.
As it happened, Olwen disliked saccharine worse than she disliked Virginian cigarettes, yet she munched the substitute-sweets to please this young man who, according to his lights, was being nice and kind and protective towards her.
For the severalth time he informed her that she was not to be frightened.... Then, in a new tone, he added, "Dear little girl." Then, more softly still, "For youarea dear little girl, you know. Do you know, you're just about the sweetest I've ever met."
"Oh, pooh!" laughed Olwen, taken by surprise, nevertheless. She rather wished she could see the face of the young man sitting so close beside her. Had she done so, she would have seen it was what is known as "a study." For during the last half-hour or so the young man had become the prey to conflicting emotions indeed. Chief of these, perhaps, was a helpless fascination; the fascination of some one with a weak head who watches himself draw nearer and nearer to the brink of some giddy height.
Harold Ellerton knew he was drifting, as he'd done times and again, towards a fatal habit of his. Times and again, since before he had left Dartmouth, this thing had happened to him. It was as characteristic of him as was his lack of general conversation where women were concerned. In fact, it's not impossible that one of these characteristics may have led to the other.
He didn't know what to say to girls unless he were making love to them, and his sole conception of love-making was to ask them to marry him!
He saw it coming now in the dark accomplice solitude of this railway carriage. He knew that he was going to say a few more tender things to this little Howel-Jones girl, about her eyelashes and how sweet she'd looked at that party and how she ought to have a bridal party of her own, directly—dear little sweetheart she'd make to any fellow!
He said these things.
He knew the other was coming.
It came.
"Look here, d'you think you could care enough to bemine?" he heard himself say. "Bai Jove, if you would——! If you'd marryme! Would you? Would you?"
There! He'd done it again.
Now came the agonizing moment.
Now again he'd have to wait for the girl's answer. That always seemed to him to be at least two hours in coming: except once, an anguished once when the girl had said, "Yes" directly. What would this one say; what? He waited in the dark; and sweat broke out on the young brow under the peaked cap.
In a long, uncertain breath the girl said, "Oh——"
Then, "D'you mean it, Mr. Ellerton?"
"Ofcourse!" returned Mr. Ellerton, ardently, but digging his nails into the palms of his hands.
The soft voice beside him said, rather waveringly, "Wait a minute——"
The young man who had just proposed again set his teeth and waited. This was Hades. Serve him right for being such a double-blanked fool again! But this was the worst yet. Never before had he not been able to see the girl's face when he asked her to marry him. Never again, he vowed incoherently to himself, never again would he be such an ass as to propose to a girl during a raid with all the lights out! But then, never again would he let himself in for this with any girl alive! Not if he got safely out of this! Oh, Lord, the fool he'd been!... Could he possibly light a cigarette?... No, only wait.... "A minute" this little thing had said....
Before she spoke again, æons seemed to elapse.
Actually they were a few moments only, during which the mind of Olwen Howel-Jones dashed swiftly through four distinct phases of thought. The first was pure surprise.
The second was a "No" that came from the bed-rock of woman's nature, that fundamental thing which Convention must blast and quarry into acceptable shapes.
The third was a "Yes" compounded of a thousand artificialities inherited, acquired, fostered, observed, and taught. Fear was among them; fear handed down from generations of dowerless girls who accepted the first proposal lest they might die as old maids. Why not! thought little Olwen. Engaged! Fancy if she were! What would her Aunts think, and Uncle, and her sisters! She would be the first of her sisters to become engaged! And she had got her leave, too, and would be going down to Wales; fancy going home to tell them! Fancy telling them at the Honeycomb; Mrs. Newton and everybody! What fun! Engaged to Mr. Ellerton. She did like him so much; she did, she did! He was awfully nice, and jolly with people, and so good-looking and so——it appeared, so fond of her!... More than could be said for Captain Ross. Wouldn't it be absolutely ridiculous to miss a real thing like this, for just a fancy like that? Girls had to get engaged while they could. It was the happiest thing; getting engaged and having a ripping time for a bit, then getting married and having everybody congratulating you. Getting engaged in the middle of a raid, too! Nobody could say that wasn't romantic. Love?... Well, Captain Ross had said that men couldn't bear "that Love-with-a-capital-L" business. It wasn't for everybody. And why do without all the fun of getting engaged, simply for the sake of some man who evidently didn't care two-pence.... It would be awfully silly to say "No."
Swiftly as the flash of the guns this phase passed; swiftly as the following report there followed the fourth phase in the girl's mind. It flung her back to phase the second. But that had been composed of dumb Instinct. This was articulate.
No, no! She must not say "Yes" to this young man. However nice, however good-looking, however fond, he was not the man. She knew it. She did not love him. Golden said Love must be Lovely. What more unlovely than a loveless pact? The "fun" of this engagement? What would that be? A wretched substitute; no more real, sweet fun than the saccharine tablets which she had been munching were real sugar. Sugar in tea; Love in Life.... Some people put up with makeshifts cheerfully; but not she. Some other people (she pursued the childish analogy) never did take sugar in their tea. The luckier they! They missed nothing; Olwen would crave it forever. But better a thousand times to go without everything than to accept the wrong thing!
She came out of her swift inner reverie, back to the dark railway carriage and the young man.
"Oh, Mr. Ellerton," she said hurriedly and remorsefully. "I am dreadfully sorry but I can't possibly. I don't care for you. Not that way. I do like you ever so much. But if—if you don't mind, Icouldn'tmarry you."
She heard the young man near her give, in the darkness, the profoundest sigh that she had ever heard torn from any human breast....
Remorsefully she repeated, "I am so sorry——" Then stopped abruptly. She seemed, in the darkness and the vibrating atmosphere, to have caught a floating idea that startled her somewhat.
She began again gravely. "Will you lend me your torch for a minute?"
She felt it put into her hand.
Quickly Olwen said, "It's very rude of me, but Imustlook at you, please: I must see your face!"
Then she turned the little beam right upon him.
Then she exclaimed, "Mr. Ellerton!"
"Yes——" he said, unmistakably sheepish.
Olwen burst out laughing. "You are a fraud," she exclaimed gaily. "You aren't one bit sorry that I refused you. You're trying not to, but you're looking——yes,relieved. You're glad! Don't pretend!"
"Oh, I say——"
"No! Don't pretend! You were laughing. You're feeling gladder than you've ever felt over anything in your life because I don't want to marry you! Iknow!"
Young Ellerton dragged his handkerchief from his cuff, pushed back his cap and wiped his forehead. "Bai Jove," he said with the sincerest admiration in his tone, "youarea clever little thing. I—I don't think any of the others have ever tumbled to that."
A moment later he found himself talking to her with more real ease and enjoyment than he had ever talked to a girl in his life; with real fluency. To her (during the second hour for which they were hung up) he confessed that no, he didn't want to get married. There were people——anyhow, men, whodidn't. Not to the sweetest and prettiest girl in the world. Not toanybody. To tie himself up like that for life, declared the young sailor, was what he wouldn't want to do for anything under the sun; certainly not for anything under a hat. Never!
Olwen, finding she had ceased to be bored by him for the first time since she had left Mrs. Cartwright's turned her face towards him in the dark and plied him with question after laughing question.
"But you ask people to marry you!"
"Can't stop myself! It's the devil!"
"And none of them have accepted you?"
"Yes; one! A girl who was at college with my sister. A nice girl. I did get to loathe her!" with feeling. "We were engaged for one whole awful week!"
"How did you break it off, then?"
"She did. I loved her for that. She said I was too much like the young man in Stevenson who said being engaged was all right as long as her sisters were there. So she chucked me. And after that I've been lucky——I mean, you know what I mean!"
Olwen shook with laughter. "But, then, why d'youdoit?" she persisted.
"I tell you I can't help it. It happens!"
"Why? For instance, why did you let it happen tonight? Quite frankly,whydid you ask me?"
"Oh, you——!" he began, and he paused for a minute. "Oh, come," he said, "you are an awful nice little girl, you know. Anybody might be excused for losing his head. You were looking extra pretty at the party tonight, too. Somepeach, you looked, if I may say so; and it wasn't just looks either. There wassomethingabout you. Sort of disturbing.... I swear there was. You attracted me till I——"
"Don't propose to me again," Olwen warned him. "I might think better of it."
"Oh, no," laughed Harold Ellerton. "You're an absolute little sportswoman, I know."
The little sportswoman, while she continued to laugh and chat with him in the friendliest way until the signal sounded for the train to start again, the little sportswoman had been really arrested by one of his remarks.
"Something about her" tonight, he thought. She'd heard something like that before. She thought she might know what it meant.
She went back to early on the afternoon of that eventful day.
Very late she had found herself as she was dressing for her tea with Mr. Brown at the Regent Palace; even as she was putting on her nicest silk stockings she had known that it would mean a scamper down the drive if she meant to catch that train....
Then in her hurry a suspender had snapped.
"Dash!" she had cried.
No time to stitch it.
She had cast round for the nearest bit of ribbon wherewith to garter herself securely, and had snatched it up from where it dangled on her dressing-table, hardly seeing which bit of pink ribbon it was with what satin sachet attached. She'd wound it hastily about her slim and silk-sheathed leg and forgotten all about it. That's how she had come to be wearing it that evening, not in the orthodox way round her neck, but wearing it nevertheless; the Disturbing Charm!
Hidden thus, it almost seemed as if it had done its work again?
As they said good-bye at the wicket gate of her Aunt's house, she found herself quite affectionately promising to write, while on leave, to this young sailor who never would be anything but a friend to her. She found herself submitting quite naturally to one of those flavourless and definite kisses on the cheek, of which the entirely brotherly quality can never be mistaken by the recipient.
A looker-on may be more easily mistaken.
Olwen's Aunt Lizzie was coming up the Drive behind her, having been delayed in another carriage of that very same train, since she had also been dining in town. From some distance she had observed the farewell at the gate. But she exchanged greetings, quite unprejudiced, with the young sailor who passed her. She was a modern Aunt....
At the house she found her niece already in the bedroom, so busy with her little straw work-basket and two lengths of pink ribbon, that before any talk even of the raid, she asked, "What have you got there, Olwen?"
"I'm just mending something," returned the intent Olwen, "that I've got to wear."