"It's too late." He drew his hand away. She turned to the friendlier banister and clung there. "They have taken everything," he said very low.
"Everything?"
"All the things you thought you had hidden."
"Hush!" She backed a step.
Napier, with the advantage of his inches, head and shoulders above her, had caught sight of an unfamiliar figure sitting in the upper hall, reading a newspaper. Grindley! Greta had not seen him, but she heard Sir William's voice coming out of Lady McIntyre's bedroom, and Lady McIntyre's raised in a sob: "William! William!—Need any one know? Outside us three and the police?"
"I don't see the slightest necessity." Sir William came out and shut the door.
He stood an instant ruffling up his hair and looking intensely miserable. Greta von Schwarzenberg had backed down the stair.
Sir William descended slowly, Grindley behind him. It was Sir William who started when he realized who was waiting there at the bottom. Napier saw that a strong impulse to turn tail and leave this unpleasant business had to be overcome. Sir William bustled on down. He passed Miss Greta without a sign.
"Where's the other?" he demanded of Napier, and just then Mr. Singleton strolled down the hall. Sir William nodded bruskly, and turned to the motionless figure of the woman. "I—a—" (he felt for his seals) "I am sorry to have to tell you that—a—that the police have convinced me you had better leave here."
"And why," she said, "should I leave here?"
"Because it appears that you abuse our hospitality."
She threw back her head. "What appears yet more clearly is that peopleIhave trusted have betrayed me." Over the prominent blue eyes the lids drooped a little. "In my absence some one has laid a trap." She turned to Napier, with a breath-taking sharpness. "Is it you?"
He met her gaze. "I warned them about Gull Island, and I—"
"Gull Island! What has Gull Island to do with me?"
"No, no," said Sir William. "I don't myself connect you with the Gull Island business."
"Nor,"—she made a slight inclination that seemed to say she was not to be outdone in chivalry—"nor do I need to be told thatyou, Sir William, have no hand in this.Youweren't made for such work."
Sir William's rolling eye caught, as it were, upon some unexpected support. It rested for one mollified moment.
"I haven't lived under your roof all these months," she went on, "under the protection of your great name, without understandingyou, even though people you think your friends cruelly misunderstand me." The voice caught; she carried her handkerchief to her shaking lips. Singleton read signs in Sir William's countenance that made him anxious to end the passage between the owner of the great protecting name and the lady who invoked it. Singleton had joined Grindley, who stood leaning against the wall behind Sir William. In an impatient undertone, "Why didn't you tell him?" demanded Singleton.
"Did," Grindley answered. "Understood diary and tracing. Didn't give himself time to take in the—" His hand came out of his side pocket with a paper. Singleton plucked it away from him and carried it over to Sir William. As it passed, Napier caught a glimpse of Miss Greta's handwriting on a telegraph form bearing the post-office stamp.
"This was sent out from here at noon to-day." Singleton held the message under Sir William's eyes.
"Well, what of it?" retorted Sir William. "A perfectly proper instruction to a broker."
"Till it's been decoded. If you like, Mr. Napier can explain how afterwards. What it means is:
"Troopship leaves Southampton at seven to-night. Four searchlights playing constantly over harbor. No convoy."
"Troopship leaves Southampton at seven to-night. Four searchlights playing constantly over harbor. No convoy."
There was a moment of deathlike silence. The woman stood as motionless as the carved banister at her back.
"Gavan," Sir William cried out, "is it true?"
"It's true," he said.
"You say this information was sent—" The terror in the old man's face evoked the shattered and shattering image of a torpedoed ship, a sea full of drowning soldiers.
"We stopped it at the post-office."
Relieved of the crowning horror, Sir William shook off the paralysis that had held his restlessness in a vice. He hurried half a dozen steps up the hall and half a dozen down, jingling and muttering, "This—going on in my house!" He drew up into a jerk as the woman darted forward and planted herself in his way.
"Why not in your house?" she demanded wildly. "Haven't you a hand and two sons in what's going on elsewhere? What are you doing to my brothers and friends? Is it worse to be drowned than to have your head battered to pulp? Than to have six inches of steel run through your stomach? Wouldn't it makeyouwant to kill your enemies to see what I saw at the Newton Hackett drill-ground—a bag stuffed with straw, hung up—and hear the Staff Sergeant call it Fritz, and shout out, 'Now, men, straight for his kidneys!'"
"Gavan!" Sir William's voice called hoarsely, "make an end of this!" He went down the passage at the double, and shut himself in his private room.
Less the woman's rigid lips than her eyes asked Singleton, "What—do they—mean—to do?"
"You know what they do in a case of this kind in Germany?"
As if the men in front of her had been the firing-squad, each look a bullet, she pitched forward. She would have dropped on her face, had Napier not caught her. He shook her slightly by the arm.
"Here's Nan," he said under his breath, "I mean Miss—your friend and Madge—" The noise outside pierced through the common preoccupation. The motor was rushing up the avenue. Napier led the woman to a chair.
As she sat down, her head fell back against the wall. The face had a dead look.
"We don't want her fainting," Napier said sharply, as Singleton leaned over her.
"There is an excellent train," remarked the secret-service man, "that leaves Fenchurch Street just about this time to-morrow."
She parted her shaking lips. "What has that—to do—with me?"
"You will be able to catch it."
"Shall I—shall Ireally?" She made a fruitless upward clutching at his arm. Her hand fell back into her lap, as though lamed. "Oh, no! You only want—hewants"—she slid a look at Napier—"to get me out of here without a scene. People's—feelings—must be spared. All—except mine."
"He told me,"—Grindley's slow voice sounded, his eyes seemed to find vacancy where another's would have found Sir William's door—"he told me he didn't want to make it any worse for you than necessary!"
"Ah!" Something like life returned to the dead eyes. "Any worse, he means, for himself."
Napier turned away in disgust.
"Your seat in the Pullman," said Singleton politely, "is Number Sixteen."
"You don't m-mean they will let me go—home!"
"Yes; that's the kind of fools we are."
As the voice Napier's ears were straining for called out, "Greta!" Nan came up the steps, leaning forward, as she ran, to see into the hall. "Is that you, Gre—" She hung a second, framed there in the doorway, with Madge behind her. "Whatisit, dearest?" She flew to the figure on the chair. She kneeled beside it. "Greta darling, you've had bad news. Oh, whatisit, my dear?" She chafed the slack hand. She laid it against her cheek. "Tell me, somebody!" she said, looking at Napier. "Who are these strangers?"
By a heroic effort, Miss von Schwarzenberg produced a masterpiece. "They—they are friends of mine," she said.
Singleton, after a faint smiling inclination in Miss Ellis's direction, as though accepting the audacious description as an introduction, made it good by saying to Miss von Schwarzenberg: "You understand then, you're not to give yourself any trouble about tickets or accommodation. We will see to all that, won't we, Grindley?"
Grindley made a consenting rumble in his throat, and withdrew with Singleton to the front steps. They stood there conferring.
Napier waited on thorns to get a word with Nan. Was it impossible, was it too late, to put her on her guard? She seemed to have no eyes for any one but Greta. If Singleton had doubted the closeness of her relation to that notorious character, what must he think now?
"Try to tell me, dearest, what has happened." Nan hung over the slack form.
"Are you going somewhere, Miss Greta?" Madge pressed to the other side of the chair. "Whereare you going?"
"Andwhy?" Nan urged with a sharpness of concern. "You've had bad news, my dearest, dearest."
"Yes." Greta remembered the telegram. She took the message out and half opened it. The paper was now folded in halves, instead of in quarters. Nan watched eagerly the fingers, which seemed to forget to open the telegram to her friend's eye.
"Poor father!" Miss Greta brought out the words in a tone so exquisitely gentle that Napier studied her face an instant.
He was sure that, as she sat there with that look of sorrow, absently tearing the telegram across, she was thinking lucidly and rapidly what her next move should be.
"Is it that your father is ill, dear?" Nan pressed closer to her side.
Greta nodded. Speechless with emotion, she tore the facing halves of the telegram to ribbons, the ribbons to fragments, all with the air, as it struck Napier, of thefille nobleof the theater.
"Dear, I'm terribly sorry!" Nan took her hand. "But you mustn't think it is as serious as all that. Unless—what did it say?"
Greta looked down at her hands as though expecting to be able to hand the telegram over to speak for itself, only to find it, to her surprise, reduced to the fineness of stage snow.
"He has been telegraphing me for days to come home. I didn't realize it meant—this!"
"Perhaps it's not so bad as you think. Let us send them a message, reply paid. And you'll see. The news will be better."
Miss Greta shook her head. "I have put it off too long already," she said faintly. "There is the slenderest chance of my finding him alive." Suddenly she pressed her handkerchief to her lips.
"Darling Greta,do, dolet me telegraph!"
Miss von Schwarzenberg drew herself up. She rose. She stood like the heroine in Act III. "I am a soldier's daughter. I obey." She went toward the stairs.
Mr. Singleton turned round, watch in hand.
"You could catch the seven-two," he said politely.
Miss Greta, at the bottom of the staircase, faithfully flanked on one side by Nan, by Madge on the other, paused to consider her friend's kind suggestion.
"You could be ready inside an hour if we both helped,"—Nan enlisted Madge as confidently as though there had never been a cloud between them.
"You'll haveyourthings to pack, too," Miss Greta reminded Nan.
"Oh, I'll do that in ten minutes, after I've—after we've helped you." Nan's hand on Miss Greta's arm urged her to the enterprise.
"A—just a moment," Napier interrupted, the disorder of the raided room printed strong upon his inner vision. He saw it in pieces, like a Futurist picture—a corner of gaping drawer showing a confusion of papers, a glimpse of wardrobe-trunk dribbling flimsiness of lawn and froth of lace; in the foreground fierce, violent, malevolent, the broken metal shell of the false hat-box; Nan's eyes, no less clear, clearer than all else, looking down upon the chaos and indignity of a ruined life. She and the other "child," Madge, ought to be spared that spectacle. Over the newel of the banister Napier spoke directly to Nan for the first time since they had stumbled among rocks in the moonlight three weeks ago, fleeing before the tide that raced up the shore, and before the tide higher, more menacing, which had risen in their hearts. "If you were to get a telegraph form—if we could write out a telegram to send to Miss von Schwarzenberg's father—or—to—to—" he floundered.
"Yes," said Miss Greta. "To my father's agent, Schwartz."
"Anybody you like. We'll do our best"—he glanced at Singleton—"to get a message through."
Instead of going to the drawing-room for a telegraph-form, Nan took a scrap of paper out of her side pocket.
"Schwartz,chezKalisch," Napier heard the dictation begin, before Madge created a diversion on her own account.
"Let me by, will you? I must go and tell Mother."
"Tell your mother what?" To Napier's relief, Miss Greta stopped her.
"That I'm going to London to see you off."
"No, dear." Greta caught at a tress of the girl's thick hair.
In the swift parley that followed, Madge, who had been strangely quiet until now, flatly refused to be left behind. "I'd go," she declared with sudden passion, "if I had towalkto London!"
Miss Greta leaned heavily against the banister. What would you?—her glance toward Singleton seemed to say. This is the devotion I am accustomed to inspire. Then hurriedly to Madge:
"Listen, darling. You must be very good and helpful in these last—whether they're minutes or whether they're hours—"
"D-don't!" A gulping sound, more angry than tender, was throttled in Wildfire's throat.
"You'd better, first of all," advised Miss Greta, "go and telephone Brewster to get the rooms ready."
Napier gaped at the effrontery of the suggestion.
"She means at Lowndes Square?" Nan put the hurried question with eyes of sympathy on Madge, who was plainly not at the moment in any condition to speak. "Couldn't I do it for you?"
The girl gave her old enemy a grateful glance and, instead of going first to her mother, pushed past the group at the foot of the stairs and bolted down the passage to Sir William's room.
"Lowndes Square?" Singleton repeated idly as he leaned against the door. "Is that Sir William's London house?"
Miss Greta did not trouble to reply to the obvious. "SchwartzchezKalisch—you've got that?"
Nan nodded.
"It will be more convenient," Mr. Singleton interrupted again, "for you to put up at a hotel."
Miss Greta appeared to consider this suggestion also to be unworthy of notice. She stood wrinkling her brows over the form of the message.
"Let me," said Napier. He held out his hand for Nan's fragment of paper. "Then you can get on with the telephoning."
Couldn't Nan trust herself to look into his face? Without raising her eyes, Nan relinquished paper and pencil, and ran down to the telephone-room.
"Returning home via Folkestone to-morrow." Miss Greta, still leaning against the newel, dictated as imperturbably as though she had a week in front of her for packing and preparation.
He hardly looked at the words he scribbled. The instant Nan disappeared and Singleton had sauntered down the hall in her wake, he said in an undertone, "You wouldn't like her to see your room. You'd better go up and lock the door. Tell her to do her own packing first."
Miss Greta moved quietly up the stairs with Napier at her side. "They've broken everything open?" she inquired, with contemptuous mouth.
"You know what they came for."
She seemed to consider that in its various bearings as she paused an instant. "It isn't part of what they came for, I suppose, to rob me of my savings?"
"They will tell you about that. But if you need anything—"
"I shall need everything! I have nothing fit to travel in." She spoke as though, amid the wreck of life and reputation, her wardrobe was the most important matter she had to think about.
"I should be glad," Napier answered, "if you would allow—you will find others equally ready, I dare say; but anything I could—" She would indignantly refuse, of course.
To his astonishment she stopped again, this time near the top landing, to say in a rapid whisper: "I must pay some bills. I am afraid I owe forty or fifty pounds."
Napier assured her that she would have a part at least of her money returned, "in some form."
"I greatly doubt it. I've heard how they rob us."
"I beg your pardon, they do nothing of the kind. Not inthiscountry!"
Miss Greta tightened her lip as she went on toward her room. She looked through plump Grindley as if he'd been thin air. Nan was flying up, two steps at a time, with a sheaf of telegraph forms.
Not far behind, Wildfire came flaming. "Father wants to see you, Mr. Gavan," she said.
Sir William was at the house telephone. "Yes, yes, my dear. No fuss, no foolishness, no publicity. The very fact of our allowing Madge to see her off—I thought it a horrible idea at first, but don't you see the value of it? Oh, here's Gavan. I'll come to you in a minute."
He hung up the receiver. "Look here, Gavan, the really important thing is that the silly newspapers shouldn't get hold of this. We are sending Madge up with an old servant to see the woman off. It will quiet any misgivings in the child's mind, a thing my wife is painfully exercised about. There's no doubt it would be a dreadful shock to Meggy; and besides, the great thing is, it will choke off the suspicions of any nosing, ferreting little penny-a-liner. At least, it would if—my dear boy, there isn't any one else I would ask such a thing of, but do you think you could—would you—"
The strangeness of that leave-taking!
Miss Greta was the first to come down, calm, carefully dressed indemi-deuil, as one too fearful of the death of her father to have heart for her usual pinks and apple-greens, yet showing the front befitting the daughter of a soldier. She seemed not to notice Grindley coming slowly down behind her, nor Singleton and Napier talking together on the steps. She occupied herself with her gloves as she waited till the men-servants passed her on their way back after hoisting a wardrobe-trunk and a hat-box on top of the service-motor.
"That American box, I am afraid it was very heavy." Miss Greta smiled as she dispensed herdouceurswith the demeanor Napier could have sworn Miss Greta herself took to be suitable to the daughter of a German officer. It was, at all events, the demeanor popularly supposed to be the hallmark of the duchess.
"I hope," she said, advancing to the door and speaking to Singleton, "I hope you won't mind waiting a moment for Miss McIntyre. Sir William insists on sending his daughter along to look after me."
"Sir William should have more faith in us," returned Singleton, with his agreeable smile. "We have already telegraphed to Cannon Street."
"Cannon Street!" She supported herself an instant against the jamb of the door. And then she looked back to see that the butler was out of earshot. "Sir William can't know we are going to—Cannon Street, or he wouldn't be allowing Madge—" How well she knew one aspect of London!
"I don't mean the police station," replied Singleton.
"Whatdoyou mean?" she asked, indignant at the trick.
"The hotel."
She turned another look across her shoulder. The corridor was empty. "You aren't meaning I am not to leave the hotel?"
"You won't need to leave the hotel, not till about five o'clock to-morrow afternoon."
"Why didn't you say that in time to prevent my friends here from taking all the trouble to order my room to be ready for me at their house in town?"
Mr. Singleton did not stop to point out that the order had been Miss Greta's own and that he had politely opposed it. "I am sure you must appreciate that your preference for the convenience of a hotel will come better from you."
"There are things Imustgo out for."
"Oh?" he looked at her.
"Shopping. I havenothingI can travel in."
Singleton caught Napier's eye, and both glanced at Behemoth disappearing down the drive on top of the service-motor. Really, these Germans! This coolly dictatorial woman knew as well as Singleton did that in the bag at his feet was evidence sufficient to imprison her for life. She also knew her luck in having been in the service of a man whom it was undesirable to involve in a scandal. Nan and Madge came running down, while Singleton, with his unfaltering politeness, was still trying to think of some way in which to meet Miss Greta's objection. "You have so many devoted friends," he suggested, "perhaps some one could do these commissions for you."
"No."
"Then I am afraid you will have to postpone your shopping till you reach home."
"Icould do your shopping," Madge volunteered.
"You see!" Singleton went down the steps and turned to hand the ladies in.
Napier was sure that Miss Greta was as aware as he was of the forlorn, frightened little face peering out from the drawn blind in Lady McIntyre's room. But the woman, settling herself calmly in the car, gave no sign; at least not till Madge, on a note of sympathy that struck Napier as curious coming from that source, said with an upward glance, "Mother!" And when Greta still affected to be oblivious, the girl said peremptorily, "Look!"
"Where? Oh!" Greta raised her face. She didn't bow; merely smiled. It was one of the saddest smiles possible to see. "Your poor mother had one of her prostrating headaches to-day. I am sorry." And then the car rolled away, bearing a haunting memory of that face at the window.
If Nan's excitement at the thought of nearing London helped the party over some difficult moments, it created others.
"You see, I went straight from the docks in Liverpool to Scotland, and from Scotland to Lamborough. This is the first time in all my life—oh, what's that?" She stared out of the window. Through a gap in the huddle of suburban dwellings and factories, looming dark against the deep-blue dusk of evening, a blade of pallid light pointed upward to something invisible in the sky. "What is that?" the overseas voice asked, awestruck. While she spoke, the giant shaft moved a little and then stopped. It seemed, human-wise, to reconsider. Another bolder shaft shot up beyond it, seeming to say: "This way! Have at them, brother!" The doubtful one quivered, and flashed upward, only to be hidden as the train rushed on into the intervening immensity which was London.
"The new searchlights," Madge remarked in a dry tone. "Rum if we should come in for a Zeppelin raid!"
"How dim it is in London!" Nan said, as she stepped out of the railway carriage. "There must be a fog."
"No. They keep the lights low these days."
On the opposite side of the platform another train, a very long one, was discharging its passengers. Most of these people, with untidy hair and sleep-defrauded eyes, were dressed in stained and tumbled odds and ends. Some were in working-clothes; women in great aprons, many carrying babies; little children holding to their skirts; and nearly every soul in the motley company, even the children, had one or more bundles, bags, or boxes in their hands. They were like people who had been waked suddenly out of a nightmare and told to run for the train. They seemed not to see the prosaic sights of the platform. The look of nightmare was still in their eyes. A middle-aged woman and an old man stood clinging together. The saddest immigrant ever landed in the New World had not shown a face like these.
"Where do they come from?" Nan was looking nearly as bewildered as the foreign-speaking horde.
"They come from Belgium," Napier said.
Singleton was waiting to hand Nan and Miss Greta into his cab.
"Non! non!" a high, agitated voice said in passing, "les Allemands n'ont pas dépassé la ligne Ostende-Menin!"
Out in the street newsboys were crying an extra: "Great battle raging!Arrival of Canadian Troops!"
About noon the next day a couple of porters stood waiting for the service-lift at the Royal Palace hotel. Each man had a sole-leather trunk on his shoulder, a trunk so new that the initialing "G. V. S." was still wet. It was something else which halted Napier in the act of sending up his card to Miss Ellis, a glimpse of Singleton's face behind an outspread newspaper.
"Cabs full of stuff keep coming," was the gentleman'ssotto vocecomment.
Napier wondered drily that anybody should expect to get the stuff out of England.
"Personal wardrobe. Member of household of cabinet minister. Special privileges. And nobody knows better that avoidance of publicity is worth thousands of pounds to Sir William and, I daresay, to the Government. She's playing it for all she's worth. She's got this Mr. Julian Grant in her pocket, too. He's up with her now."
The lift came down with Nan. She made a little hurried bow, and was for escaping. Napier stood there in front of her.
"Just a minute."
"I can't; I'm sorry. I haven'tgota minute."
"Yes, you have," he said bitterly, "when I tell you it's about Miss Greta's affairs."
"Oh, about Greta—"
The face was whiter, more transparent, than he had ever seen it.
"You don't look as if you'd had a wink of sleep."
Although Singleton had vanished, Nan showed little disposition to linger. As Napier stood there, looking down at the face alight with fidelity and eager service, he knew in his soul he was thankful there wasn't time, nor this the place, to wring her heart with the disgraceful truth about her friend. The last thing he expected to say was the first to come out.
"A ... you don't gather, I suppose, that Miss Greta is at all harassed about money?"
"It is kind of you to think that!" She smiled at him. "The fact is, Greta—that is, Ididcable home last night. I am going back to the bank now, to see if they've heard."
Napier arrested her slight movement. "Just let me understand. Do you mean that you've overdrawn your account?"
"Oh, not overdrawn. But the gold I got this morning just finished it. I seem to have needed a good deal of money lately, one way and another."
"You got gold this morning, you say?"
"Yes; wasn't it lucky? Greta has a prejudice against paper money. She thinks it unsanitary."
"Oh, I see. And you were able to give her all she needs—of the sanitary sort?"
"No. I could get only sixty pounds."
"Not in gold?"
"Forty in sovereigns, twenty in half-sovereigns."
"You were uncommon lucky; but Miss Greta will have to give you back that sixty pounds, or the inspector will take it away at the station."
"Oh, surely not!"
"Beyond a doubt. They don't allow more than twenty pounds to be taken out of the country, and that mustn't be in gold."
She stared. "What do people do who have hundreds of pounds in your banks?"
"They have to leave it behind till the end of the war."
"Not Americans?"
Nobody, he said significantly, would be allowed to carry English gold to Germany.
Gravely, for a moment, she considered the astonishing statement.
"Heavens, the time!" Her eyes over his shoulder had found the clock.
"Only a little after twelve." He didn't stir from the stand he'd taken in front of her.
"You don't realize how much there is to do," she pleaded. Then, as he stood there so immovable, she made the best of it. "I believe, after all, I'll tell you."
"Better," he agreed.
"Well, only half an hour ago we decided Greta couldn't go alone. I'm going with her."
All his life he would remember what he went through in those next seconds.
"Julian,"—she threw in with a hurried glance at Napier's face—"Julian thinks it will be all right."
"You imagine you'll be allowed to go?" Napier said, with infinitely more firmness than he felt.
"Who would try to prevent?"
"Maybe your own embassy."
"Oh,the embassy!"
"It couldn't be anything but very unpleasant in Germany just now."
"Not for an American," she said.
"Even an American," he replied with an edge in his voice, "who has already overdrawn at the bankers' and whose cable can't, I should say, be answered in time."
A teasing, tricksy expression put her burdened seriousness to flight. "Of course I know, if I asked you,you'dlend me what I need."
"To go to Germany?"
"Well, wouldn't you?"
"No."
She smiled. A secret rapture escaped out of her eyes. "You wouldn't?" And then she seemed to put him to some test. "Julian is kinder."
"That's as it should be," he said.
She made a little harassed movement. "I must manage somehow. Julian's going to get my ticket. He's telephoning about all that now. But Greta wouldn't like me to ask Julian for a loan forher."
Napier glanced at the clock. There was still, thank Heaven, the passport difficulty. He scribbled a line on a card. All that was really essential was to make Julian abandon his efforts to remove the obstacles, and Nan would be spared what couldn't fail to be a horrible shock. His aching tenderness for the girl asked why she shouldeverknow the truth unless, indeed, Greta von Schwarzenberg should succeed in carrying off the goose that laid the golden eggs. By all the gods, he must prevent that!
Eagerly she had watched him writing, and now she gave her own interpretation to the card Napier despatched upstairs. "Itiskind of you to come and see if you can help us. But you oughtn't to have kept me! Send for a taxi, will you?" she called to the passing commissionaire. "Julian's promised not to leave poor Greta alone till I get back."
Taxis were beginning to grow scarce in London. Napier had followed her to the door; they could see the page-boy pursuing a cab. "Nan—"
She began to speak in a nervous, forestalling haste. "You've never understood about Greta.Ibelieve it's people of strong natures that suffer the most. Last night she couldn't sleep!"
"How do you know?"
"I watched the crack of light under her door. Twice I knocked and tried to make her let me come in. She wouldn't. 'Go to sleep,' she said. As if I could! Once she unbolted the door and came on tiptoe into my room. What do you think for? To get a needle out of my case. Greta! sewing! And what do you think she found to sew? She wouldn't tell me, but I saw this morning. She had been trying to put herself to sleep by changing the buttons on that very-buttony ulster of hers. Took off all the round, bumpy ones and put on a flat kind instead.Ican't see it's any improvement. But, then, I always hate buttons that don't button anything, except when they're on cute little page-boys."
The cab had rushed up to the door with Buttons on the footboard. Another of the button brotherhood stood by Napier's side.
"Will you please, sir, come up to seventy-two?"
He heard Julian's high voice through the closed door, and as it was opened, "All that doesn't matter a straw," he was shouting impatiently into the receiver. "Those regulations, you know as well as I do, can be set aside for the special case. Iknowshe'll have to have a passport. You've got to tell the fella at the American Embassy. What? Look here, Tommy, you don't understand. I'll be round before you go to luncheon."
Napier had made his way among cardboard boxes and clothes-encumbered chairs, to the sofa where Miss Greta half sat, half lay, in a becoming mauve tea-gown. She gave him her hand.
"Hello!" said Julian, already looking up a new telephone number.
Madge came out of the adjoining bedroom, dragging an enormous brown-paper parcel along the floor. "Did you know Nan had got you the sealskin coat? How do, Mr. Gavan. It's a love of a coat. You'll wear it, won't you?"
"No; pack it," said Miss Greta, indifferently.
"But on the boat, Miss Greta. You'll want some warm—"
"I'vegota coat," she said impatiently. "Take that thing back where you found it."
"I say,"—Julian jumped up to lend a hand—"I didn't know you'd come back, Madge. I might as well go now and see about the passport. What's this?"
"Can't imagine. That's why I brought it in." Between Madge and her unskilful assistant, the cord round the great bundle, already loose, came off. The contents bulged. Julian picked the unwieldy thing up in his arms, and a fold of heavy fur oozed out. And then the whole thing had half slithered out of his hold and fell along the floor.
"Lawks!" remarked Madge, with wide eyes on the superb black-fox rug, beaver-lined.
"Too heavy for anything but a Russian sledge," Julian objected.
"Well,willyou take it back in there, and put it in the canvas hold-all!" Miss Greta settled back wearily against the ulster, as Madge and Julian struggled into the next room with the rug between them. "I understood Madge was going to bring the maid to do the packing," Miss Greta murmured discontentedly.
Napier leaned forward.
"Do you approve this plan of Miss Ellis going to Germany?" he asked.
"I can easily believe you don't approve it," she said with a gleam ofSchadenfreude.
"I do more than disapprove," he answered under his breath. "I am going to prevent it."
"Oh? And how do you propose to do that?"
"I had meant to put a spoke in the passport wheel. But there's a better—a shorter way."
"Oh?"
He leaned nearer. "I have done my part to prevent Miss Ellis's knowing"—Greta raised her china-blue eyes—"the things some of the rest of us know."
"You are very considerate—of Miss Ellis."
"Exactly. I am too considerate of her to let her even apply for a passport without my first of all—enlightening her before you leave."
"Ah,"—she drew in her breath—"youwould, would you?"
Napier was aware of having to brace himself to meet the unexpected dart of malignity out of the round eyes. But it passed—taking in the open door of the bedroom as it dropped. And in its place came pure scorn, controlled, intensely quiet, as she inquired in her society manner: "And you think Nan would believe you? You suppose for one moment that your word would stand any chance against mine?"
Napier concealed his harrowing doubt on this head. "I am to understand, then, you are willing that the facts we have been at pains to suppress should be known? Very well. I'll begin by enlightening Mr. Grant and saving him the trouble of seeing about the passport." He caught the sudden shift of focus in the china-blue eyes. "That's what I came up for," Napier added.
There was silence for an instant, except for the talk floating in through the open door: "No, let's fold it in three. I'll show you."
Was it the threat to enlighten Julian which had given her pause? "We have Singleton downstairs,"—Napier quietly suggested witnesses for the convincing of Mr. Grant—"and Grindley up."
"As if I didn't know!"
"Then you must know, too, that we are none of us making this experience harder for you than is necessary. But"—their eyes met—"we are not going to let you take that girl along."
"Couldn't live without her, eh?" she burst out. For the first time in Napier's experience of her there was a common tang in her tone.
He rose to his feet. "Simply, she is not going with you. I thought you might prefer to decide this yourself, or to tell her you have ascertained that the passport difficulty is insuperable; anything you like." She sat looking down on the film of handkerchief held affectedly in the thick, white hand. There was no sign of anxiety or haste in either her face or her weary attitude. "The alternative," Napier went on in a quick undertone, "is that she will be staying behind with full knowledge of all that we have up to now kept back."
She turned to him with smothered vehemence. "It never was myplanto take her. I don't know what on earth I'd do with her."
Napier repressed the jubilation crying out in his heart. "The question, as I say, is merely, will you give her up after struggle and exposure or will you do it quietly?"
She seemed to make a rapid calculation. "If I agree to this, will you promise that she shall never know what I've gone through, this last twenty-four hours?" The handkerchief went to her lips.
"No," said Napier, sternly, "but I'll promise that I won't enlighten her before you leave."
"And Mr. Grant? If you tellhim, you may as well tell every one. He couldn't keep anything to save his neck."
"Ifyoukeep to the course I've laid down, I don't know any special reason for enlightening Mr. Grant." Napier knew that he was showing weakness over the point. Yet, after all, in a few hours the woman would be out of the country. Behind that wall of the German lines she would be lost.
By the time Julian returned to the sitting-room, Miss Greta had accepted the inevitable.
"I don't want to seem rude,"—she turned to Napier with her weary grace—"but I think I must ask to be left alone awhile. Perhaps you'll be soverykind as to explain to Mr. Grant that in these circumstances of family affliction"—only Napier recognized the Adelphi touch in the phrase and in the lace-bordered handkerchief pressed to heroic lips—"the more I think of it, the more I feel it would be best for me to go home alone."
Napier went back to the hotel at five o'clock with Julian, who drove his own big car to take the three to the station. The progress was slow and penitential, for Miss Greta declined to lose sight of the two taxis which followed with the luggage. Napier, with Madge at his side, sitting opposite Nan and Miss Greta, found himself taking refuge from the unconscious reproach in Nan's face by studying the buttons on Miss Greta's ulster. There was a great many of those buttons. The immense labor of changing them induced thoughtfulness. They were thicker, but weren't the bigger ones exactly sovereign size? The smaller on collar, cuffs, and pocket-flaps—weren't they precisely of half-sovereign dimensions, excepting, again in thickness? He began to count....
"Look at that shop!" Nan leaned forward over the long narrow cardboard box she was carrying.
The front glass was smashed, the place empty. Over the door was a sign, "Zimmerman, Family Baker." A little way on stood yet another shop with demolished front. On the opposite side was a third. There were seven in all, over each a German name.
Nan looked away. Miss Greta seemed not to have heard the exclamation, seemed to see nothing.
Some recruits for the army came lumping along, out of step, a sorry enough crew, pasty-faced, undersized, in ill-fitting, shabby, civilian clothes.
The china-blue eyes that had "gone blind" in front of raided German shops were full of vision before this mockery of militarism. As she looked out upon the human refuse for which war had found a use at last, the subtle pity in Miss Greta's face asked as plain as words, "What chance have these poor deluded 'volunteers' against the well-drilled German, fed and fashioned for war?"
The station at last! As Napier helped Miss Greta out, the front of her ulster swung heavily against his leg. "Sovereigns!" he said to himself.
The station was already densely crowded. While Napier and Madge mounted guard over Behemoth and the lesser luggage, Julian and Nan, with Miss Greta between them, disappeared in the crush.
When the reconnoitering party reappeared, Singleton was with them, porters at his beck, in his hand Miss Greta's ticket, passport, and German and Dutch money to the value of twenty pounds. He met the chief inspector as if by appointment, near the luggage, that loomed so important by contrast with that of other travelers.
To Miss Greta—although in her ugly ulster she looked less a person of consequence than she might—was plainly accorded a special consideration. Mr. Singleton was there to see to that. He could not, to be sure, prevent some respectful interrogation as to the money, etc., she was taking out of the country, some perfunctory examination of luggage.
The only anxious face in the group was Nan's. Miss Greta, calm as a May morning, her round eyes trustingly raised to the inspector's face, with eighty to ninety pounds in English gold on her coat, and how much more elsewhere who should say, offering her purse and keys. "One is an American lock. I may have to help you with that," she said sweetly.
Napier half-turned his back on them, but he stood so that he could keep an eye on the stricken face above the long cardboard box which Nan was carrying as if it were an infant. Through the din Greta's innocent accents reached him. "Nobody ever told me! Oh, dear, my poor little savings!" When Nan turned her tear-filled eyes away from the group about Behemoth, Napier joined her.
"What shall you do after—after she is gone?" he asked.
"I haven't an idea beyond going back to the hotel to wait for my cable from home." She made a diversion of opening the long cardboard box and taking out six glorious roses tied with leaf-green and rose-colored ribbon. But she held the flowers absently.
"I shall be at my chambers. If I can be of any—"
"Oh, thank you. I shan't need anything."
When Napier faced round again, Greta was smiling gently on the melted inspector. Perhaps that functionary wouldn't have "forgotten" to confiscate the few pieces of gold so frankly shown had he known they were the mere residue left over from the lady's midnight activities.
They found themselves on the platform with, unhappily, time still to spare. Singleton made polite conversation with Miss Greta, abetted by Julian and Madge—who was taking the approaching parting with astonishing composure. A lesson to poor Nan who couldn't keep the tears out of her eyes. Her effort to smile very nearly cost both her and Napier their self-possession. She went abruptly away from him, and stood dumb behind Greta at Julian's side.
"Take your places!"
A whistle blew. Miss Greta was shaking hands with Singleton. "Thank yousomuch. Youhavebeen kind." Her good-by to Julian and to Napier were quieter, but entirely cordial. She embraced Madge with dramatic fervor. "My darling child! We'll never forget—"
Nan stood, the tears running down her cheeks unchecked, and probably unaware. A little apart she stood, all her sympathy, her very soul, flowing out as a final offering. "Good-by, my Nanchen!" Miss Greta kissed her on both cheeks. "You'll write me? And you won't forget me?"
Nan was far past power of words. She thrust the roses toward Greta with a look that made Napier himself feel he could fall to crying. Even Miss Greta seemed touched by some final compunction. The carriage-door had no sooner slammed on her than she turned suddenly as if she had forgotten something. "Nanchen!" she leaned out and took the girl's face in her two hands. She bent and whispered. The guards shouted. The train began to move.
"Oh, will you?Willyou, Greta?" Nan was running along the platform with upturned face.
Miss Greta leaned far out, giving a flutter of white to the wind and leaving a smile for memory.
Thank God! Napier breathed an inward prayer. She can't do any more harm here.
Nan stood staring at the last coaches. Napier touched her arm. "Well?" he said gently.
"Ioughtn'tto be miserable," she wiped her wet cheeks. "To have Greta soon to help me to bear things—ought to make it possible to bear them now."
"You are still counting on her help?"
She nodded, "I'm to hold myself ready."
"Ready for what?"
"To join her. I shall pack my trunk to-night."
At the tail of the dispersing crowd, they were following Julian and Madge down the platform. Napier slowed his pace, looking down at the face beside him. Weeks, months, of passionate, fruitless waiting—no! "I promised her," he said,—"the lady we've just seen the last of—that I wouldn't enlighten you about her true character till she was gone. You won't feel so badly at losing her when you hear what we know about Miss von Schwarzen—"
"Oh, oh!" Nan stood quite still an instant. "I thought Greta did you an injustice! You—you disappoint me horribly." She fled on to catch up the others.
After all, what was the use of quarreling about a woman who was out of the Saga? In a little while Nan would be able to bear the truth. Not yet, it was too soon.
Julian was to take her back to the hotel; and that wasn't the worst. Napier couldn't even go away by himself. He knew he ought to see Madge to Lowndes Square, where the McIntyre motor and maid were to call at seven o'clock for the purpose of conveying the young lady to Lamborough. It was, at all events, something to be thankful for that Madge wasn't howling. So far as Napier had observed, she hadn't shed a tear. This wasn't the first occasion upon which Madge's late self-possession had vaguely puzzled Napier.
The drive back to Lamborough was a silent one, except for that extraordinary five minutes or so, after Madge had turned to say, "I wish Nan had come back with us, don't you?"
"Yes," he said, "I wish she had."
"I begged her to. I said, 'What shall you do at that hotel?' and she said she hardly knew yet. She'd see. Rotten arrangement, I call it."
Napier smiled down at the girl. It occurred to him she was looking tired, too. And she hadn't cried a tear that Napier had seen. "You seem to be getting on better with our American friend," he said, teasing. "Stood it like a Spartan, even when you thought she was going to Germany with Miss Greta."
"Well, I thought Miss Greta neededsomebody."
"But didn't you want the somebody to beyou?"
"No."
He looked at her again. "I suppose you're expecting to have Miss Greta back after the war."
"No," she said again, looking straight in front of her.
The thought of the solicitude of her parents to keep the dear child in the dark, suddenly flashed over him, along with the conviction, Madge knows!
Was it possible she accepted Greta's guilt? He couldn't make it out at all. "Weren't you sorry to see her go?"
"It was horrid," she admitted. After a few seconds she found a steadier voice in which to say, "It's been pretty horrid anyway, you know. We could prevent people from saying things, but we couldn't prevent them from looking things. Theywantedher to be a disgusting spy. They hated her worse for not being."
"Why don't you want her back when the war is over?"
She drew her red eyebrows together in a frown. "I expect," she said slowly, "it will be best for Germans to stay at home."
Napier laughed, but he felt sorry, in a way, to see Wildfire growing so sage. Evidently she had gone through a great deal in these weeks, a great deal of which she had given no sign. Behind her homesickness for her idol, Napier detected a great relief at the idol's being out of the way of suspicion and misprizing.
"That was why I wanted so to go and see her off. To try to make up a little; to do everything wecoulddo just because I felt there'd never be any other chance." The tears came at last. "Shewasnice, wasn't she, Mr. Gavan?"
"She was wonderful." And before they fell back into that silence that lasted till they reached Lamborough, he asked, "How long have you known, Meggy?"
"Been sure only since yesterday—those men, what they did to her room."
There was good stuff in the McIntyre child, he said to himself. The part she'd played wouldn't have shamed Napier or even a Nicholson Grant.
There was nobody about to receive them on their return. When Madge had gone up to her mother, Napier took his way down the hall to Sir William's room. But he caught sight of him through the open door of the drawing-room at the far end. Sir William sat reading. That was natural enough, and he was sitting in his own chair. But as far away as Napier could see his chief, he was vaguely aware of something odd about the figure that was, or should be, so intimately familiar. It wasn't merely that Sir William did not instantly rise to his feet, seal-jingling, and call out, "Evening paper? Anything new about—" The first impression was of a man smaller than Napier had realized Sir William to be. Or had he—Napier half smiled at the grotesque idea—had he shrunken in these last hours? The great chair Miss Greta had fetched for him from Kirklamont certainly did seem ludicrously too big for a being so diminished, not only in body, but in spirit. His quick turns and vivid ways—what, Napier wondered with a dreamlike feeling as he walked down the room, had happened to all the familiar, foolish, endearing oddities? For an instant the thought thrust shrewdly, Is he dead? No, he moved.
"Well, sir, we have done your commission."
Like the action of a wooden automaton, one short-fingered hand was pushed out toward the reading-desk. It seemed to point to the small phial that lay on the ledge of the rack; the phial he had carried in his pocket for months now as precaution in the event of an attack of angina. But Sir William's eyes were not on the phial. They were fixed on an open telegram.
And it was that telegram Sir William had sat reading. For how long?
The telegram regretted to inform him that his son, Captain Colin McIntyre, while bravely leading his battalion, had been killed in action.
Whatever it was she had heard or not heard from Germany, Nan presently unpacked her trunk and installed herself in a flat in Westminster, with a servant, two aged Belgian refugee women, and the grand-son of one of them, a little boy of five.
That for some time was the extent of Napier's knowledge of what was going on.
For the rest of that bewildering, tormenting autumn he had, with one or two exceptions, only fleeting and infrequent glimpses of the girl. And this in spite of the fact that she and Madge had set up an intimate friendship. Until a certain day in December, the two were often together both at the Lowndes Square house and at Nan's flat. The Belgian women, Napier gathered, were a sore trial. But that is another story.
Napier knew quite well he hadn't his lack of sympathy with her Belgian complications to thank for the sense ofgêne, of being on new and uncertain ground in such encounters with Nan as the times permitted. Was it because she knew, and resented, his having prevented her going to Germany in Greta's wake? Or was it because some inkling had reached her as to the rifling of Greta's room at Lamborough? Madge couldn't have resisted the temptation to tell Nan the whole story by now. And why should Napier alone keep silence? Why, anyway, keep up this fiction of Greta's impeccability? "I'll have it out with Nan at the very first opportunity!"
Napier was almost happy, for a time, anticipating his first opportunity.
It came after a highly uncomfortable luncheon at Lowndes Square, the occasion of Julian's last appearance in that house where, ever since boyhood, he had been so welcome.
Ten minutes after the older people had sat down, Madge came in, bringing Julian and Nan Ellis. The girls wore that look of happy responsibility that had begun to shine on young faces in England.
"I've joined the Emergency Corps," Madge announced.
"Your new excuse for being late for meals," Sir William exclaimed, with abrusquerieintended to strike a few enlivening sparks out of Wildfire. And she actually let it pass.
Lady McIntyre, in her fashionable mourning, more shrunken and piteous than ever, went on addressing to Julian her polite inanities, couched for the most part in that form of acknowledged intellectual poverty, the question. How many more months did Julian think this dreadful war was going to last? "They" couldn't get home by Christmas now,couldthey? Wasn't it wicked, afterpromising? And what did Julian think about the letters in the papers about possible air raids?
"Wildest folly ever talked!" Sir William interjected.
"It's true," said Lady McIntyre, hopefully. "William has never believed there's the least chance of a Zeppelin reaching England."
"As much as your descending on Berlin out of a parachute. To insure against air raids is to waste money and cocker up the Germans."
"Do you think so, too?" Lady McIntyre fixed her blue eyes on Julian Grant's face. "Do you know, in spite of what William says,Ican't help feeling that every one who goes out at night in these dreadful times ought to take precautions." As no one responded, she strengthened her point. "I hear the streets grow darker and darker. Every night—yes, every single night—people are run over. The only way is for everybody who goes out at night to insure themselves."
Nobody seemed to have the heart to disturb her apparent belief that to insure against accident meant that a stop would be put to these regrettable affairs.
"All this talk in the papers," Sir William went on, "is pure concession to panic. Like the nonsense about what the submarines might do. Nothing could suit Germany's book better."
"Except, I suppose, sinking our ships." For the first time Julian took some interest in the conversation.
"Sinking our ships!" quavered Lady McIntyre.
"I should have thought the loss of theAboukirandCressy(those awful casualty-lists!) might have made people a little less ready to talk about our invulnerable Navy."
"So,"—Sir William laid down his knife and fork and fell to seal-rattling under the table—"so you've come now to doubt the power of the British Navy!"
"I've come," said Julian, "to see the danger of not doubting it."
The seals joined the general silence.
"I wonder," Sir William remarked dryly, "what your father would say to your views."
"I could tell you, sir, if it mattered."
"If it mattered! God bless my soul!" Sir William looked at Julian for the first time with cold dislike.
After luncheon the younger members of the party still hung aimlessly about the table in the hall, while Sir William and Lady McIntyre opened the letters brought by the latest post.
Napier tried in vain, by any of the unmarked means, to detach Nan from the others. Finally he said, with less indirectness than he often permitted himself, "I never see you now. Are you still too devoured by the Belgian locusts to have anything left for your older—friends?"
"Locusts! Howcanyou? I am not at all devoured. Or, if I am, it's by somethingquitedifferent." She said it with her air of new importance.
"But in the midst of it all,"—she lowered her voice and spoke now as one positively beset by weighty affairs—"I keep worrying about Julian. Just because,"—she glanced back at him as he stood talking "Emergency Corps" with Madge—"just because he doesn't in the least worry about himself. Have you heard about the way his relations are behaving?"
"No," said Napier, disingenuously. "How are they behaving?"
"Simply abominably. Some of his friends, too. They cold-shoulder him in private; and in public—they cut him!" Her eyes gleamed with anger. "If they think that's the way to discourage Julian, they know very little!"
"I wish some one would discourage him from rubbing my old man the wrong way."
"He doesn't mean to," she said, with a proprietary air that haunted Gavan afterwards, "but, you see, Sir William and Julian approach everything from opposite poles."
Behind his soreness and annoyance, Napier was secretly amused at "the child's judicial air," as he characterized it to himself. "At opposite poles, are they? It would be interesting to know what they were—those 'poles.'"
"Oh, you think I don't know? Well, I do. Sir William's idea of the problem of government is the same as his idea of the problem of the individual. To acquire. Julian's is to apportion. To administer."
"Who told you all that?" he inquired gently.
She reddened. "You can't say it isn't so. To take care of other people's interests," repeated the parrot, "is the only way to take care of your own."
"Does Julian find the axiom work in his case?"
She reflected a trifle anxiously. "You've heard then?"
"Heard—?"
"His father has cut down Julian's income."
No, Napier hadn't heard that, but he wasn't surprised. Nan looked at him, indignant.
"You aren't surprised? You take it as a matter of course!" She turned away her head as she said, "Oh! I wish I could just once see his mother—" She stopped short. After considering an instant, "You couldn't manage it, I suppose?"
No,thatwasn't a thing Napier could manage. He positively welcomed the exclamation from Lady McIntyre which cut the colloquy short.
"Another—uponmy word!" An envelope fluttered to the waste-paper basket. She held an open paper in her hand.
"Another what, mum?" Madge left Julian to lean over her mother's shoulder. "Oh!" One glance was enough for Madge. She turned away. But one glance didn't suffice for Lady McIntyre. "It's too,toomuch!" She went over to Sir William, who had withdrawn with his letters to the window. They stood talking in lowered voices.
Nan's inquiring look met Madge's offhand explanation: "Another of Greta's bills. That makes £160, just for furs."
"Oh!" Nan stood up, then, in an access of shyness, "Just go and ask your mother to let me have it."
"No good!" Wildfire shook her mane. "She won't. She thinks you've had enough of 'em sent direct to you."
"Your mother doesn't understand. It's all right. I'm taking care of these things for Greta."
"Have you had another letter?" Wildfire demanded.
"No. I told you she's nursing her father day and night. She hasn't time to; besides, it's understood."
"Why do some of the bills come to us and some to you?"
Nan stood nonplussed an instant and then said:
"It's all right, I tell you."
"You mean you think she's going to pay you back?"
"Well, of course." Nan crossed the room and stood a moment in front of Lady McIntyre, with hand extended and speaking in an undertone.
"You may take it from me"—Sir William didn't moderate his tone—"Miss von Schwarzenbergwon'tpay the money back." His voice rose higher over the low protest. "For one thing, she can't."
"You think she hasn't got it?" Nan inquired.
"Oh, I haven't much doubt she'sgotit; but even if she wanted to repay you, she won't be allowed to send money out of Germany."
"Surely she'll be allowed to pay her debts?"
"Miss Greta would tell you, 'No trading allowed with the enemy.'" Sir William dismissed the matter with decision.
"You hear that, Julian? Notallowedto pay her debts!"
Nan's instinctive turning to Julian for sympathy and understanding was no more lost on Napier than Julian's comment, "There's no end to the little wickednesses of war as well as the great central one." He threw down the illustrated paper he'd been glancing at and took his hat. "Come along," he said to Nan under his breath. "Let's get out of this."
"Good-by." She held out her hand to Napier as he stood looking at the paper Sir William had given him. "I'msure, if you aren't, Greta didn't know that horrid new rule."
"Good-by," was all Napier said.
"Of course she didn't know!" Julian atoned for the other's omission. "Come," he repeated impatiently, as Nan stood saying last things to Madge. "They're expecting us."
She started. "Expecting me too?"
"Yes, expecting you."
The girl glowed. No more urging needed.
Napier had, even then, a fairly shrewd idea of who was expecting them. And he had let her go without asking her the question he meant to ask! Was it worth while, after all? Wasn't it enough to know that since Greta von Schwarzenberg had left bills for furs, and trunks, and clothing to be paid for by her friends, she would inevitably leave a still heavier account to be paid for by her enemy? Napier "paid" every time he met Nan Ellis, and he knew he paid.
A deep disheartenment laid hold of him. His only escape from it was work. Enough of that and to spare. He had difficulty in finding time for drill, even at "the oddest hours"—odd for a young gentleman of his habits. Yet for the work that lay closest to his heart odd hours were all that Gavan had. This came about partly by reason of Sir William's increased need for, and increased dependence on, his secretary, partly because of his impatience with the desire of men like Gavan to join their university corps, or some other O. T. C. "and waste their time playing at soldiers." It was no good for Gavan to remind Sir William of the lack of officers to fill the gaps abroad, and the lack of instructors at home. "By the time you'd be able to instruct anybody the war'll be over!"
And still Gavan managed double duty during the last weeks of the fateful old year and the early days of the problematic new. The thoughts of people at home, after following day by day, hour by hour, the bloody November struggle for Ypres, settled now on those survivors who were making their first acquaintance with the stark misery of winter in the trenches. It stood to reason this sort of thingcouldn'tgo on.
The next thing would be peace.
Those who believed in Kitchener agreed that no man as shrewd as K. of K. had ever made a prophecy so absurd on the face of it as that alleged dictum of his, "The war will last three years." The only way of understanding it was to interpret it as a recruiting call, and a final flourish in the face of the Teuton. K. of K. must have 100,000 men. Have 'em at once, too. Let the Germans putthatin their pipes and smoke it!
Meanwhile the Germans were struggling for Calais and bombarding Rheims, and over on the other side of the world President Wilson talked peace.
Napier watched the gradual khaki-ing that came over the male population of the United Kingdom; watched regiments marching by day to the tune of "Tipperary," marching by night very quietly, on each man's shoulder a long white bundle, like little canvas bolsters—men on their way to entrain for the front, following in the wake of that fourth of the Expeditionary Army which had already fallen. With as little publicity as possible, hospitals multiplied. People began to look upon wounded soldiers in the streets without that shuddering, first passion of pity, that mingled gratitude and anger at the price exacted of those maimed men. "The price of our present, and our children's future safety," said the many. "The price of our past blundering," said the few. Of these, Julian, in season and out of season, rubbed in the unwelcome truth.
Napier was seeing nearly as little in these days of Julian as of Nan. They had had high words over the development and intensification of Julian's opposition to the war, and in particular over his strictures on the Government. Napier had studiously avoided all reference to Nan Ellis. Such efforts as had been possible to keep in touch with her were mainly unsuccessful. He had a minimum of time he could call his own, and she apparently had none at all. She was never at the little flat in Westminster except late at night, and she was seldom in Lowndes Square. Madge, too, resented this preoccupation on the part of her new ally. "Oh, don't askmewhere she is. Gone to see some of Mr. Grant's queer friends, I suppose."
By this side wind and that, he gathered that Nan was being swept into the little pacifico-philosophic group and was thick as thieves with certain men and women whose names were beginning to be anathema to the general public. Gradually, in Napier's mind, the conviction tightened. If something isn't done, they'll not only have made a convert of that girl, they'll be making use of her—some use or other, God knew what!—for their nefarious ends.
Instead of Julian's protecting her, he'd likely as not do the other thing. All from the loftiest motives!
And upon that, Napier's first motion of enmity toward the man who had been his closest friend. Strangely to his own sense, with far more bitterness than he resented Julian's notorious anti-war work, Napier would, as he knew now, resent the harnessing of the airy spirit of the girl to that lumbering and ill-looked-on car.
What was to be done?
He had stood aside out of loyalty to his friend, who was also (as he reminded himself a thousand times) the first comer in the field. The field of private feeling. Yes. But there was no obligation upon Napier to stand aside while the girl he loved was swamped in a bog of disloyalty to the country, and of personal reprobation. Worse. Of personal danger.
No! he wasn't going to look on at that and not raise a hand. The old struggle which he thought he had abandoned, wearing this new face, became possible once more. Possible? It became inevitable. For it had become a duty. So he told himself.
The trouble was that on the rare occasions when he was with her, something in the new post-Greta manner of the girl—an intangible but effectual barrier—so barred the way to even the beginning of renewed confidence, that Napier, over-worked, over-anxious, found the edge of his impulse turned. He would leave her, saying to himself, "I'll have this out with Julian." And when he found himself with Julian for a few hasty minutes, "having it out" proved so baulked and inconclusive a business, "I must tackle Nan," Napier would say to himself.