  Produced by Al Haines. [image] Cover art [image] "His arm was round her, her cheek was pressed to his, her bosom heaved against him." THAT WHICH HATH A NOVEL OF THE DAY BY RICHARD DEHAN AUTHOR OF "THE DOP DOCTOR," "BETWEEN TWO THIEVES," ETC. "For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, S. B. GUNDY COPYRIGHT, 1918 The Knickerbocker Press, New York THESE LEAVES IN
CONTENTS CHAPTER I.— That Which Hath Wings CHAPTER I PRESENTS TWO YOUNG PEOPLE In January, 1914, Francis Athelstan Sherbrand, Viscount Norwater, only son of that fine old warrior, General the Right Honourable Roger Sherbrand, V.C., K.C.B., first Earl of Mitchelborough, married Margot Mountjohn, otherwise known as "Kittums," and found that she was wonderfully innocent—for a girl who knew so much. It was a genuine love-match, Franky being a comparatively poor Guardsman, with only two thousand a year in addition to his pay as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Bearskins Plain, and Margot a mere Cinderella in comparison with heiresses of the American canned-provision and cereal kind. It had seemed to Franky, standing with patent-leathered feet at the Rubicon dividing bachelorhood from Benedictism, that all his wooing had been done at Margot's Club. True, he had actually proposed to Margot at the Royal Naval and Military Tournament of the previous June, and Margot, hysterical with sheer ecstasy, as the horses gravely played at push-ball, had pinched his arm and gasped out: "Yes, but don't take my mind off the game just now; these dear beasts are so heavenly! ..." And theatres, film-picture-shows and variety halls, race-meetings, receptions, balls and kettledrums, polo and croquet-clubs, had fostered the courtship of Franky and Margot; but all their love-making had been carried out to the accompanying hum of conversation and the tinkle of crystal and silver-plate in the dining-room of the "Ladies' Social," where Margot had her favourite table in the glass-screened corner by the fire-place; or in the circular smoking-room with the Persian divan and green-glass dome, that Margot had given the Club on her nineteenth birthday; or in the boudoir belonging to the suite she had decorated for herself on the condition that no other member got the rooms if Margot wanted them, which Margot nearly always did.... There was a big, rambling, ancient red-brick Hall, stone-faced in the Early Jacobean manner, standing with its rare old gardens and glass-houses, lawns and shrubberies, about it, within sight and sound of the Channel, amidst pine and beech-woods carpeted with bilberry-bushes, heathery moors, and coverts neck-high in July with the Osmunda regalis fern. The Hall belonged to Margot, though you never found her there except for a week or two in September and three days at Christmas-tide. The first fortnight with the birds was well enough, but those three days at Christmas marked the limit. Of human endurance Margot meant, possibly. She never vouchsafed to explain. She also possessed a house in town, but just as her deceased father's spinster sister lived at the Hall in Devonshire, so did her dead mother's brother Derek, with his collection of European moths and butterflies and other Lepidoptera, inhabit the fine old mansion in Hanover Square. Devonshire at Christmas marked the limit of dulness, but Hanover Square all the London season through beat the band for sheer ghastly boredom.... Not that there were any flies on little old London.... Paris and Ostend were ripping places, and you could put in a clinking good time at Monte Carlo.... Margot had tried New York and liked it, except for the place itself, which made you think of illustrations to weird Dunsany legends in which towering temples climb up unendingly upon each other into black star-speckled skies. But the Club and London, with Unlimited Bridge and Tango, constituted Margot's idea of earthly happiness. She never had dreamed of marrying anybody—until Franky had arrived on the scene. Perhaps you can see Franky, with the wholesome tan of the Autumn Manoeuvres yet upon him. Twenty-seven, well-made and muscular, if with somewhat sloping shoulders and legs of the type that look better in Bedford cords and puttees, or leathers and hunting-tops, than in tweed knickers and woollen stockings, or Court knee-breeches and silks. Observe his well-shaped feet and slight strong hands with pointed fingers, like those of his ancestors, painted by Vandyke; his brown eyes—distinctly good if not glowing with the fire of intellect, his forehead too steep and narrow; his moustache of the regulation tooth-brush kind, adorning the upper-lip that will not shut down firmly over his white, rather prominent, front teeth. Cap the small rounded skull of him with bright brown hair, brushed and anointed to astonishing sleekness, dress him in the full uniform of a Second Lieutenant in the Bearskins Plain, and you have Franky on his wedding-day. Photographs of the happy couple published in the Daily Wire, the Weekly Silhouette, the Lady's Dictatorial, and the Photographic Smile, hardly do the bridegroom justice. In that without the busby his features are fixed in a painful grin, while in the other there are no features at all. But Margot—Margot in a hobble-skirt of satin and chiffon, with a tulle turban-veil, starred with orange-flowers in pearls and diamonds, and a long serpent-tail train of silver brocade, hung from her shoulders by ropes of pearls, was "almost too swee," to quote Margot's Club friends. Search had been made, amongst the said friends, many of whom were married, for a pair of five-year-old pages to carry the bride's train; but there being, for some reason, a dearth of babies among Margot's wedded intimates, the idea had to be given up. The wedding was quite the prettiest function of the season. The eight bridesmaids walked in moss-green crÊpe de Chine veiled with silver-spotted chiffon. On their heads were skull-caps of silver tissue, each having a thirty-inch-high aigrette supported by a thin bandeau of gold, set with crystals and olivines, the gift of the bride.... Their stockings were of white lace openwork, the left knee of each being clasped by the bridegroom's souvenir, a garter of gold, crystal, and olivines. Silver slippers with four-inch heels completed the ravishing effect. O Perfect Love! was sung before the Bishop's Address, and the ceremony concluded with The Voice that Breathed and Stainer's Sevenfold Amen. The bridal-party passed down the nave to the strains of the Wedding Chorus from Lohengrin. And there was a reception at the Werkeley Square house of one of the dearest of Margot's innumerable dearest friends, and the happy pair left in their beautiful brand-new Winston-Beeston touring car en route for the old red-brick Hall in Devonshire. Decidedly the honeymoon might have been termed ideal—and four subsequent months of married life proved tolerably cloudless—until Fate sent a stinging hailstorm to strip the roses from the bridal bower. An unexpected, appalling, inevitable discovery was made in Paris in the Grande Semaine, at the end of the loveliest of June seasons. It utterly ruined—for two people—the Day of the Grand Prix, that marks the climax of the Big Week, when the Parisian coaching-world tools its four-in-hands to Longchamps Racecourse, and the smartest, richest, and gayest people, mustered from every capital of Europe, parade under the chestnut-trees that shade the sunny paddock, to display or criticise the creations of the greatest couturiers. Margot had put on an astonishing gown for the occasion.... You will recall that the summer dress designs of 1914 were astonishing; the autumn modes promised to be even more so, according to Babin, Touchet, and the Brothers PaillÔt. Skirts—already as short and as narrow as possible—were to be even narrower; the Alpha and Omega of perfection would be represented by the Amphora Silhouette. And Margot, revolving before her cheval-glass in a sheath of jonquil-coloured silk lisse, embroidered with blue-and-green beetle-wings, found—to her horror and consternation—— Shall one phrase it that Dame Nature, intent upon her essential, unfashionable business of reproduction, was at variance with Madame Fashion re the Amphora Silhouette? The slender shape was not yet spoilt, but long before the autumn came, no art would mask the wealthy curves of its maternity. CHAPTER II DAME NATURE INTERVENES "I can't bear it!—I won't bear it!" Margot reiterated. With her tumbled hair, swollen eyes, pink uptilted nose, and the little mouth and chin that quivered with each sobbing breath intaken, she looked absurdly babyish for her twenty years, as she vowed that wild horses shouldn't drag her to Longchamps, and railed against the injustice of Fate. "None of my married friends have had such rotten luck!" she asserted. She stamped upon the velvety carpet and flashed at Franky a glance of imperious appeal. "Not Tota Stannus, or Cynthia Charterhouse, or Joan Delabrand, or anybody! Then, why me? That's what I want to know? After all the mascots I've worn and carried about with me.... Gojo and Jollikins and the jade tree-frog, and the rest! ... Every single one given me by a different woman who'd been married for years and never had a baby! This very day I'll smash the whole lot!" "By the Great Brass Hat! ..." Franky exploded before he could stop himself, and laughed until the tears coursed down. So "Gojo," the black velvet kitten, and "Jollikins," the fat, leering, naked thing that sat and squinted over its pot-belly at its own huge, shapeless feet, and all the array of gadgets and netsukis crowding Margot's toilette-table and secrÉtaire, down to "Pat-Pat," the bog-oak pig, and "Ti-Ti," the jade tree-frog, were so many insurances against the Menace of Maternity. By Jove! women were regular children.... And Margot ... Nothing but a baby, this poor little Margot—going, in spite of Jollikins and Gojo, to have a baby of her own. "What is one to believe? Whom is one to trust in? ..." "'Trust in.' ... My best child, you don't mean that you believed those women when they told you that such twopenny gadgets could work charms of—that or any other kind?" "Indeed, indeed they do! Tota Stannus was perfectly serious when she came to my boudoir one night at the Club, about a week before our—the wedding.... She said—I can hear her now; 'Well, old child, you're to be married on Wednesday, and of course you know the ropes well enough not to want any tips from me.... Still——'" "That wasn't overwhelmingly flattering," Franky commented, "from a married woman twice your age. What else did she say?" "She said I must be aware," went on Margot, "that a woman who wanted to keep her friends and her figure, simply couldn't afford to have kids." "And you——" Franky no longer battled with the grin that would have infuriated Margot. Something had wiped it from his face. "I said she was frightfully kind, but that I was quite well-posted—everything was O.K., and she needn't alarm herself.... And she said, 'Oh! if you've arranged things with Franky, jolly sensible of him! Too often a man who is open and liberal-minded before marriage develops gerontocracie afterwards, don't you know? ...' And I told her that you were the very reverse of narrow-minded—and she kissed me and wished me happiness, and went away. And the maid knocked later on to say Mrs. Stannus sent her apologies for having forgotten to leave her little gift. And the little gift was, Jollikins. And my special pals joined in to stand me a farewell dinner, and they drowned my enamel Club badge in a bowl of Maraschino punch, and fished it up and gave me this diamond and enamel one, mounted as a tie-brooch, instead. And every married woman brought me a mascot.... I had Gojo from Joan Delabrand, and Ti-Ti from Cynthia Charterhouse, and the jade tree-frog from Patrine Saxham, and the carved African bean from Rhona Helvellyn, and——" Franky objected: "Neither Patrine Saxham nor Rhona Helvellyn happen to be married women!" "Perhaps not; but Patrine is an Advanced Thinker, and Rhona Helvellyn is a Militant Suffragist." Franky commented: "As for Suffragists, that Club of yours is stiff with 'em. Gassing about their Cause.... I loathe the noisy crowd!" "Then you loathe me! I share their convictions!" Margot proclaimed. "I hold the faith that Woman's Day will dawn with the passing of the Bill that gives us the Vote...." "My best child, you wouldn't know what to do with the Vote if you had it." Margot retorted: "I cannot expect my husband to treat me as a reasonable being while the State classes his wife with infants and imbeciles." It will be seen that a very pretty squabble was on the point of developing. Fortunately, at this juncture a valet of the chambers knocked at the door to say that a waiter from the restaurant begged to know whether Milord and Miladi would take lunch À la carte, or prefer something special in their own apartments? "Tell him no!" wailed Miladi, to the unconcealed consternation of Milord, who had a healthy appetite. "Must keep up your pecker—never say die!" Franky, stimulated by the pangs of hunger, developed an unsuspected talent for diplomacy. "Look here! We must talk over things quietly and calmly. I'll order a taxi, and we'll chuff to that jolly little restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne—where you can grub in the open air under a rose-pergola—and order something special and odd——" Since Eve's day, this lure has never failed to catch a woman. Margot began to dry her eyes. Then she asked Franky to ring. "Three times, please.... That's for Pauline; I want another handkerchief." "Have two or three while you're about it," advised Franky, obeying, returning, and perching on the arm of the settee. "And bathe your eyes a bit, have a swab-over of the pinky cream-stuff, and a dab of powder." He brushed some pale mealy traces from his right-arm sleeve and coat-lapel, ending, "And put on your swankiest hat and come along to Nadier's." "Could we get anything to eat at Nadier's that we couldn't get here—or in London, at the Tarlton or the Rocroy? ..." "Stacks of things! For instance—Canard À la presse.... They squeeze the juice out of the duck, you twig, with a silver kind of squozzer, and cook it on a chafing-dish under your nose. Look here! ..." Franky, now desperate, produced his watch. "All the cushiest little tables will be taken if you don't look sharp." "Not on the day of the Grand Prix!" Franky retorted, spurred to maddest invention by the pangs of hunger: "My best child, there are about a hundred thousand wealthy Americans in Paris who don't care a red cent about racing, while with most of 'em—to eat canard À la presse at Nadier's in the Bois de Boulogne in the June season—is a—kind of religious rite!" So Margot disappeared to dab her eyes and apply the prescribed touches of perfumed cream and powder, and duly reappeared, crowned with the most marvellous hat that ever promenaded the ateliers of the Maison Blin on the head of a milliner's mannequin. You are to imagine the tiny thing and her Franky seated—not in one of the smart automobiles that wait for hire outside Spitz's, but in a little red taxi, borne along with the broad double stream of traffic of every description that ceaselessly roared east and west under the now withering red-and-white blossoms of the chestnut-trees of the Avenue of the Champs ElysÉes, inhaling the stimulating breezes—flavoured with hot dust and petrol, Seine stink, sewer-gas, coffee, patchouli, fruit, RÉgie tobacco and roses—of Paris in the end of June. All the world and his wife might be at Longchamps, but here were people enough and to spare. Luxurious people in costly automobiles or carriages drawn by shiny high-steppers. People in little public taxis, men and women on motor-bicycles and the human-power kind. People of all stamps and classes, clustered like bees outside the big, smelly, top-heavy auto-buses, soon to vanish from the Paris avenues and boulevards, with the red and yellow and green-flagged taxis, to play their part in the transport and nourishment of the Army of France. People of all ranks and classes on foot, though as of old the midinette with her big cardboard bandbax, the military cadet, or the student of Art or Medicine, the seminarist and the shaggy-haired and bearded man with the deadly complexion, the slouch hat, the aged paletÔt and the soiled and ragged crimson necktie that distinguish the milder breed of Anarchist, made up the crowd upon the sidewalks, liberally peppered with the sight-seeing stranger of British, American, or Teuton nationality—the brilliantly-complexioned, gaily-plumaged, loudly-perfumed lady of the pavements; the gendarme and the National Guard, and—with Marie or Jeannette proudly hanging on his elbow—Rosalie in her black-leather scabbard dangling by his side, his crimson kÉpi tilted rakishly—the blue-coated, red-trousered French infantryman, the poilu whom we have learned to love. The Bois was not seething with fashionable life as it would be towards the sunset hour. The dandy Clubmen, the smart ladies, had gone to Longchamps with the four-in-hands. Polo was going on near the Pont de Suresnes, the band of a regiment of Cuirassiers was playing in the Jardin d'Acclimatation, and Hungarian zithers and violins discoursed sweet music on a little gilded platform at the axial point of Nadier's open-air restaurant—which is shaped like a half-wheel, with pergolas of shower-roses and Crimson Ramblers radiating from the gilded band-stand to the outer circle of little white tables at which one can lunch or dine in fine weather under a light screen of leaves and blossoms, beneath which the green canvas awnings can be drawn when it comes on to rain. The tables were crowded with French people taking late dÉjeuner, and English, Germans, and German-Americans having lunch. The gravelled courtyard before the terrace was packed with showy automobiles. If canard À la presse did not grace the meal supplied to Franky and Margot on Nadier's terrace, the potage printaniÈre and Écrevisses and a blanquette d'agneau were exquisitely cooked and served. Asparagus and a salad of endive followed, and by the time they had emptied a bottle of Chateau Yquem and the omelette soufflÉe had given place to PÊches Melba, Margot had smiled several times and laughed once. She was so dainty and sweet, so brilliant a little human humming-bird, that the laughing, chattering, feasting crowd of smartly or extravagantly dressed people gathered about the other trellis-screened tables under Nadier's rose-pergola sent many a curious or admiring glance her way. And Franky was very proud of his young wife, and theirs had been undeniably a love-match; yet in spite of the good dishes and the excellent ChÂteau Yquem, little shivers of chilly premonition rippled over him from time to time. He had got to speak out—definitely decline, in the interests of Posterity, to permit interference on the part of Margot's Club circle in his private domestic affairs.... How to do it effectively yet inoffensively was a problem that strained his brain-capacity. Yet—again in the interests of Posterity—Franky had never previously interested himself in Posterity—the thing had to be done. He refused Roquefort, buttered a tiny biscuit absently, put it down undecidedly, and as the waiter whisked his plate away—conjured crystal bowls of tepid rose-water and other essentials from space, and vanished in search of dessert—he spoke, assuming for the first time in his five months' experience of connubial life the toga of marital authority. "I think, do you know, Kittums"—Kittums was Margot's pet name—"that it will be best to face the music!" "Connu!" Margot shrugged a little, widely opening her splendid brown eyes, "But what music?" "The"—Franky took the plunge—"the cradle-music, if you will have it!" Margot's gasp of dismay, and the indignant fire of a stare that was quenched in brine, awakened Franky to the fact of his having failed in tactics. The return of the waiter with a pyramid of superb strawberries and a musk-melon on cracked ice alone stemmed the outburst of the pent-up flood of reproach. Entrenched behind the melon, Franky waited. The waiter again effaced himself, and Margot said from behind another handkerchief: "Oh, how could you! ... I never dreamed that I should live to hear you speak to me in that way." Over the melon, whose rough green quartered rind had delicate white raised traceries all over it, suggesting outline maps of countries in Fairyland, Franky curiously regarded his wife. He said: "Why are you and all your friends so funky of—what's only a natural phe—what do you call it? ... What do men and women marry for, if it isn't to have—children? ... Perhaps you'll answer me?" "What do people marry for?" Margot regarded him indignantly over the neglected pyramid of luscious, tempting strawberries, "To—to be happy together—to have a clinking time!" Her voice shook. "And this is to be a gorgeous season. Balls—balls! right on from now to the end of July—then from the autumn all through winter. Period Costume Balls, reviving the modes, music, and manners of Ancient Civilisations—Carthagenian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Gothic—got up and arranged by the Committees of the Cercle Moderne, here in Paris, and in London by the New Style Club.... Tony Guisseguignol and Paul Peigault and their set are busy designing the dresses and decorations—nothing like them will ever have been seen! And—Peigault says—Tango and the Maxixe are to be chucked to the little cabbages. A new dance is coming from SÃo Paulo that will simply wipe them out.... And now—just when I was looking forward—when everything was to have been so splendid——" The shaking voice choked upon a note of anguish. Franky had picked up the melon, quite unconsciously, and was balancing it. At this juncture he gripped the green globe with both hands, and said, summoning all his courage to meet the agonised appeal of Margot's tear-drenched eyes: "Look here. This is—strict Bridge.... Do you loathe 'em—the kiddies—so horribly that the idea of having any is hateful to you? Or is it—not only the—the veto it puts on larking and kickabout and—the temporary disfigurement—you're afraid of—but the—the—the inevitable pain?" He glanced round cautiously and looked back again at his wife, saying in a low voice: "Nobody's listening.... Tell me frankly...." He waited an instant, and then said in an urgent whisper. "Answer me! ... For God's sake, tell the frozen truth, Margot!" CHAPTER III FAIR ROSAMOND'S CHOICE The terrace under Nadier's roses—dotted with little tables covered with napery, silver, crystal, and china, surrounded with laughing, chattering feasters—the terrace was no longer a scene out of a comedy of the lighter side of Parisian life.... Tragedy, pale and awe-inspiring in her ink-black mantle and purple chiton, had stepped across the gravel in her gold-buckled leather buskins, to offer to the girlish bride—a piece of human porcelain, prinked in the height of the fashion, and lovely—with her wild-rose cheeks and little uptilted nose, her floss-silk hair and wide, dark, lustrous deer-eyes—Fair Rosamond's choice, the dagger or the bowl.... "Yes—yes.... It is the ugliness of the thing! ..." The little mouth was pulled awry as though it had sipped of verjuice. The tiny hands knotted themselves convulsively, and the colour fled in terror from her face. "The grotesque ugliness.... And the"—the last two words came as though a pang had wrung them from the pale lips—"the pain—the awful pain! And besides—my mother died when I was born!" Margot's voice was a fluttering, appealing whisper; her great eyes were dilated and wild with terror. "Perhaps that is why I am so deadly afraid"—she caught her breath—"but there are heaps, heaps, heaps of married women who fear—that—equally! And they arrange to escape it—I don't know how! ... For I knew—nothing—when I married you! ..." She lifted her great eyes to Franky's, and he realised that it had been so, actually. "I've been ashamed ever to confess that I was—ignorant about these things! ... I've talked a language—amongst other women—that I didn't understand! ..." There are moments when even the shallow-brained become clairvoyant. Franky's love for her made him see clear. He looked back down the vista of Margot's twenty years of existence, and saw her the motherless daughter of a self-absorbed, cultivated, Art-loving valetudinarian, who habitually spent the chillier part of each year in ranging from French to Italian health-resorts, occupying the spring with Art in Paris—returning to London for June and July, generally spending August and September in Devonshire—to take flight Southwards before the migrating swallows, at the first chill breath of October frosts. Margot had been educated at home, down in Devonshire, by a series of certificated female tutors. The spinster aunt, the younger sister of her father, extended to her niece for a liberal remuneration a nominal protection and an indifferent care.... And Mr. Mountjohn had died when the girl was sixteen, leaving her unconditionally heiress to his considerable fortune, and the aunt had let Margot have her head in every imaginable way. She had allowed her to take up her residence at the "Ladies' Social" Club three years subsequently, on the sole condition that a responsible chaperon accompanied Margot to Society functions. Hence, Mrs. Ponsonby Rewes, the irreproachable widow of a late King's Messenger, was evoked from Kensington Tower Mansions upon these occasions—by telephone—to vanish when no longer wanted, in the discreetest and most obliging way. "Poor little Margot! .... Poor little woman!..." Franky could see how it all had happened by the wild light of the great deer-eyes, so like those in the portrait of the girl's dead mother—half Irish, half Greek by birth. While Franky reflected, the tables had been emptying. People were hurrying away to hear the band of the Jardin d'Acclimatation or to fulfil other engagements of a seasonable kind. Some remained to smoke and gossip over liqueurs and coffee. The light blue wreaths of cigar and cigarette smoke curled up towards the awning overhead. Franky mechanically produced his own case and lighted up. And Margot, stretching a slender arm across the table, was saying: "Give me one!—I've forgotten mine! ..." "Ought you? ... Is it wise? ..." Franky was on the point of asking, but his good Angel must have clapped a hand before his mouth. He silently gave Margot a thick, masculine Sobranie and supplied a light; and as their young faces neared and the red spark glowed, and the first smoke-wreath rose between the approximating tubes of delicate tobacco-filled paper, his wife whispered as their eyes met: "You're hurt! But now you know—you're sorry for me, aren't you?" It was a dragging, plaintive undertone, not at all like Margot's voice. "Frightfully! All the more because"—Franky drew so hard at his cigarette that it burned one-sidedly—"I can't help being thundering—glad!" "I—see! ..." She breathed out the words with a thin stream of fragrant Turkish vapour crawling over her scarlet under-lip, it seemed to Franky, like a pale blue worm. And he bit through his Sobranie and threw it on his dessert-plate, saying desperately: "Not yet. Will you listen quietly to what I've got to say?" She nodded. Franky launched himself upon the tide of revelation. Nearly everybody who had been eating when he had come into Nadier's with Margot had got up and gone away. And the Cuirassiers band was playing the love-music from Samson et Dalila on the terrace of the Jardin d'Acclimatation, as melodiously as only a French military band can play. "It's got to do with the Peerage. Only a Second Afghan War-Earldom dating from 1879—tacked on to the Viscounty they gave my great-grandfather after Badajos—but worth having in its way, or the Dad wouldn't have accepted it. And, naturally enough—I want a boy to take the Viscounty when I succeed my father, and have the Earldom when I've absquatulated, just as the kiddy'll want one when his own time comes." Margot was burning a strawberry-leaf on her plate with her cigarette-end. She asked, impressing another little yellow scorched circle on the surface of rough green: "Would it matter so very much if there wasn't any boy?" Franky jumped and turned red to the white, unsunned circle left by the field-cap on the summit of his high forehead. "It would matter—lots! For my Uncle Sherbrand, a younger brother of my father's, would come in for the Viscounty when I succeeded the dear old Dad. And my Uncle Sherbrand is a blackguard! Got cashiered in 1900, when he was an Artillery officer in a gun-testing billet at Wanwich. Kicked out of the Army—in War-time, mind you!—for not backing up his C.O. And the brute has got a son, too, an apprentice in an engine-shop, if he isn't actually a chauffeur. Probably the young fellow's respectable, and of course it ain't the pup's fault he's got such a sire. But my Dad would turn in his grave at the idea of being succeeded by the brother who disgraced him—and as for his grandfather—the jolly old cock 'ud bally well get up and dance, I should say.... So, you see, I can't—sympathise with you as you want me to do in this, darling! I want you to buck up and be cheerful, and face the music like a brick.... As for what you've told me—about your mother——" In spite of himself, Franky gulped, and little shiny beads of sweat stood upon his cheeks and temples. "That sort of thing doesn't run in families, like rheumatism"—he was getting idiotic—"or Roman noses! Be plucky—and everything will turn out all right. Can't possibly go wrong if we call in Saxham ... Saxham of 000, Harley Street—man my sister Trix simply swears by. Brought her boy Ronald into the world thirteen years ago, and successfully operated on him for appendicitis only the other day! ..." Margot looked at Franky attentively and bent her head slightly. Had she understood? She must have.... Had she tacitly agreed? Of course.... |
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