“Captain Granet was a stranger to me,” he assented. “One is naturally interested in soldiers, however.”
“You must have met thousands like him,” she remarked,—“good-looking, very British, keen sportsman, lots of pluck, just a little careless, hating to talk about himself and serious things. I have known him since he was a boy.”
Major Thomson continued to be gravely interested.
“Granet!” he said to himself thoughtfully, “Do I know any of his people, I wonder?”
“You know some of his connections, of course,” Mrs. Cunningham replied briskly. “Sir Alfred Anselman, for instance, his uncle.”
“His father and mother?”
“They are both dead. There is a large family place in Warwickshire, and a chateau, just now, I am afraid, in the hands of the Germans. It was somewhere quite close to the frontier. Lady Granet was an Alsatian. He was to have gone out with the polo team, you know, to America, but broke a rib just as they were making the selection. He played cricket for Middlesex once or twice, too and he was Captain of Oxford the year that they did so well.”
“An Admirable Crichton,” Major Thomson murmured.
“In sport, at any rate,” his neighbour assented. “He has always been one of the most popular young men about town, but of course the women will spoil him now.”
“Is it my fancy,” he asked, “or was he not reported a prisoner?”
“He was missing twice, once for over a week,” Mrs. Cunningham replied. “There are all sorts of stories as to how he got back to the lines. A perfect young dare-devil, I should think. I must talk to Mr. Daniell for a few minutes or he will never publish my reminiscences.”
She leaned towards her neighbour on the other side and Major Thomson was able to resume the role of attentive observer, a role which seemed somehow his by destiny. He listened without apparent interest to the conversation between Geraldine Conyers and the young man whom they had been discussing.
“I think,” Geraldine complained, “that you are rather overdoing your diplomatic reticence, Captain Granet. You haven’t told me a single thing. Why, some of the Tommies I have been to see in the hospitals have been far more interesting than you.”
He smiled.
“I can assure you,” he protested, “it isn’t my fault. You can’t imagine how fed up one gets with things out there, and the newspapers can tell you ever so much more than we can. One soldier only sees a little bit of his own corner of the fight, you know.”
“But can’t you tell me some of your own personal experiences?” she persisted. “They are so much more interesting than what one reads in print.”
“I never had any,” he assured her. “Fearfully slow time we had for months.”
“Of course, I don’t believe a word you say,” she declared, laughing.
“You’re not taking me for a war correspondent, by any chance, are you?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Your language isn’t sufficiently picturesque! Tell me, when are you going back?”
“As soon as I can pass the doctors-in a few days, I hope.”
“You hope?” she repeated. “Do you really mean that, or do you say it because it is the proper thing to say?”
He appeared for the moment to somewhat resent her question.
“The fact that I hope to get back,” he remarked coldly, “has nothing whatever to do with my liking my job when I get there. As a matter of fact, I hate it. At the same time, you can surely understand that there isn’t any other place for a man of my age and profession.”
“Of course not,” she agreed softly. “I really am sorry that I bothered you. There is one thing I should like to know, though and that is how you managed to escape?”
He shook his head but his amiability seemed to have wholly returned. His eyes twinkled as he looked at her.
“There we’re up against a solid wall of impossibility,” he replied. “You see, some of our other chaps may try the dodge. I gave them the tip and I don’t want to spoil their chances. By-the-bye, do you know the man two places down on your left?” he added dropping his voice a little. “Looks almost like a waxwork figure, doesn’t he?”
“You mean Major Thomson? Yes, I know him,” she assented, after a moment’s hesitation. “He is very quiet to-day, but he is really most interesting.”
Their hostess rose and beamed on them all from her end of the table.
“We have decided,” she announced, “to take our coffee out in the lounge.”
CHAPTER II
Table of Contents
The little party trooped out of the restaurant and made their way to a corner of the lounge, where tables had already been prepared with coffee and liqueurs. Geraldine Conyers and Captain Granet, who had lingered behind, found a table to themselves. Lady Anselman laid her fingers upon Major Thomson’s arm.
“Please talk for a few more minutes to Selarne,” she begged. “Your French is such a relief to her.”
He obeyed immediately, although his eyes strayed more than once towards the table at which Captain Granet and his companion were seated. Madame Selarne was in a gossipy mood and they found many mutual acquaintances.
“To speak a foreign language as you do,” she told him, “is wonderful. Is it in French alone, monsieur, that you excel, or are you, perhaps, a great linguist?”
“I can scarcely call myself that,” he replied, “but I do speak several other languages. In my younger days I travelled a good deal.”
“German, perhaps, too?” she inquired with a little grimace.
“I was at a hospital in Berlin,” he confessed.
Lady Anselman’s party was suddenly increased by the advent of some acquaintances from an adjoining table, all of whom desired to be presented to Madame Selarne. Major Thomson, set at liberty, made his way at once towards the small table at which Captain Granet and Geraldine Conyers were seated. She welcomed him with a smile.
“Are you coming to have coffee with us?” she asked?
“If I may,” he answered. “I shall have to be off in a few minutes.”
A waiter paused before their table and offered a salver on which were several cups of coffee and liqueur glasses. Captain Granet leaned forward in his place and stretched out his hand to serve his companion. Before he could take the cup, however, the whole tray had slipped from the waiter’s fingers, caught the corner of the table, and fallen with its contents on to the carpet. The waiter himself—a small, undersized person with black, startled eyes set at that moment in a fixed and unnatural stare—made one desperate effort to save himself and then fell backwards. Every one turned around, attracted by the noise of the falling cups and the sharp, half-stifled groan which broke from the man’s lips. Captain Granet sprang to his feet.
“Good heavens! The fellow’s in a fit!” he exclaimed.
The maitre d’hotel and several waiters came hurrying up towards the prostrate figure, by the side of which Major Thomson was already kneeling. The manager, who appeared upon the scene as though by magic, and upon whose face was an expression of horror that his clients should have been so disturbed, quickly gave his orders. The man was picked up and carried away. Major Thomson followed behind. Two or three waiters in a few seconds succeeded in removing the debris of the accident, the orchestra commenced a favourite waltz. The maitre d’hotel apologised to the little groups of people for the commotion—they were perhaps to blame for having employed a young man so delicate—he was scarcely fit for service.
“He seemed to be a foreigner,” Lady Anselman remarked, as the man addressed his explanations to her.
“He was a Belgian, madam. He was seriously wounded at the commencement of the war. We took him direct from the hospital.”
“I hope the poor fellow will soon recover,” Lady Anselman declared. “Please do not think anything more of the affair so far as we are concerned. You must let me know later on how he is.”
The maitre d’hotel retreated with a little bow. Geraldine turned to Capt
ain Granet.
“I think,” she said, “that you must be very kind-hearted, for a soldier.”
He turned and looked at her.
“Why?”
“You must have been so many horrible sights—so many dead people, and yet—”
“Well?” he persisted.
“There was something in your face when the man staggered back, a kind of horror almost. I am sure you felt it quite as much as any of us.”
He was silent for a moment.
“In a battlefield,” he observed slowly, “one naturally becomes a little callous, but here it is different. The fellow did look ghastly ill, didn’t he? I wonder what was really the matter with him.”
“We shall know when Major Thomson returns,” she said.
Granet seemed scarcely to hear her words. A curious fit of abstraction had seized him. His head was turned towards the corridor, he seemed to be waiting.
“Queer sort of stick, Thomson,” he remarked presently. “Is he a great friend of yours, Miss Conyers?”
She hesitated for a moment.
“I have known him for some time.”
Something in her tone seemed to disturb him. He leaned towards her quickly. His face had lost its good-humoured indifference. He was evidently very much in earnest.
“Please don’t think me impertinent,” he begged, “but—is he a very great friend?”
She did not answer. She was looking over his shoulder towards where Major Thomson, who had just returned, was answering a little stream of questions.
“The man is in a shockingly weak state,” he announced. “He is a Belgian, has been wounded and evidently subjected to great privations. His heart is very much weakened. He had a bad fainting fit, but with a long rest he may recover.”
The little party broke up once more into groups. Granet, who had drawn for a moment apart and seemed to be adjusting the knots of his sling, turned to Thomson.
“Has he recovered consciousness yet?” he asked.
“Barely,” was the terse reply.
“There was no special cause for his going off like that, I suppose?”
Surgeon-Major Thomson’s silence was scarcely a hesitation. He was standing perfectly still, his eyes fixed upon the young soldier.
“At present,” he said, “I am not quite clear about that. If you are ready, Geraldine?”
She nodded and they made their farewells to Lady Anselman. Granet looked after them with a slight frown. He drew his aunt on one side for a moment.
“Why is Miss Conyers here without a chaperon?” he asked. “And why did she go away with Thomson?”
Lady Anselman laughed.
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“Tell me what?” he insisted eagerly.
Lady Anselman looked at her nephew curiously.
“Evidently,” she remarked, “your progress with the young lady was not so rapid as it seemed, or she would have told you her secret—which, by-the-bye, isn’t a secret at all. She and Major Thomson are engaged to be married.”
CHAPTER III
Table of Contents
A few rays of fugitive sunshine were brightening Piccadilly when Geraldine and her escort left the Ritz. The momentary depression occasioned by the dramatic little episode of a few minutes ago, seemed already to have passed from the girl’s manner. She walked on, humming to herself. As they paused to cross the road, she glanced as though involuntarily at her companion. His dark morning clothes and rather abstracted air created an atmosphere of sombreness about him of which she was suddenly conscious.
“Hugh, why don’t you wear uniform in town?” she asked.
“Why should I?” he replied. “After all, I am not really a fighting man, you see.”
“It’s so becoming,” she sighed.
He seemed to catch the reminiscent flash in her eyes as she looked down the street, and a shadow of foreboding clouded his mind.
“You found Captain Granet interesting?”
“Very,” she assented heartily. “I think he is delightful, don’t you?”
“He certainly seems to be a most attractive type of young man,” Thomson admitted.
“And how wonderful to have had such adventures!” she continued. “Life has become so strange, though, during the last few months. To think that the only time I ever saw him before was at a polo match, and to-day we sit side by side in a restaurant, and, although he won’t speak of them, one knows that he has had all manner of marvellous adventures. He was one of those who went straight from the playing fields to look for glory, wasn’t he, Hugh? He made a hundred and thirty-two for Middlesex the day before the war was declared.”
“That’s the type of young soldier who’s going to carry us through, if any one can,” Major Thomson agreed cheerfully.
She suddenly clutched at his arm.
“Hugh,” she exclaimed, pointing to a placard which a newsboy was carrying, “that is the one thing I cannot bear, the one thing which I think if I were a man would turn me into a savage!”
They both paused and read the headlines—
PASSENGER steamer torpedoed without warning in the IRISH sea. TWENTY-two lives lost.
“That is the sort of thing,” she groaned, “which makes one long to be not a man but a god, to be able to wield thunderbolts and to deal out hell!”
“Good for you, Gerry,” a strong, fresh voice behind them declared. “That’s my job now. Didn’t you hear us shouting after you, Olive and I? Look!”
Her brother waved a telegram.
“You’ve got your ship?” Thomson inquired.
“I’ve got what I wanted,” the young man answered enthusiastically. “I’ve got a destroyer, one of the new type—forty knots an hour, a dear little row of four-inch guns, and, my God! something else, I hope, that’ll teach those murderers a lesson,” he added, shaking his fist towards the placard.
Geraldine laid her hand upon her brother’s arm.
“When do you join, Ralph?”
“To-morrow night at Portsmouth,” he replied. “I’m afraid we shall be several days before we are at work. It’s the Scorpion they’re giving me, Gerald—or the mystery ship, as they call it in the navy.”
“Why?” she asked.
His rather boyish face, curiously like his sister’s, was suddenly transformed.
“Because we’ve got a rod in pickle for those cursed pirates—”
“Conyers!” Thomson interrupted.
The young man paused in his sentence. Thomson was looking towards him with a slight frown upon his forehead.
“Don’t think I’m a fearful old woman,” he said. “I know we are all rather fed up with these tales of spies and that sort of thing, but do you think it’s wise to even open your lips about a certain matter?”
“What the dickens do you know about it?” Conyers demanded.
“Nothing,” Thomson assured him hastily, “nothing at all. I am only going by what you said yourself. If there is any device on the Scorpion for dealing with these infernal craft, I’d never breathe a word about it, if I were you. I’d put out to sea with a seal upon my lips, even before Geraldine here and Miss Moreton.”
The young man’s cheeks were a little flushed.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted. “I was a little over-excited. To get the Scorpion was more, even, than I had dared to hope for. Still, before the girls it didn’t seem to matter very much. There are no spies, anyhow, hiding in the trees of Berkeley Street,” he added, glancing about them.
Thomson held up his finger and stopped a taxicab.
“You won’t be annoyed with me, will you?” he said to Conyers. “If you’d heard half the stories I had of the things we have given away quite innocently—”
“That’s all right,” the young man interrupted, “only you mustn’t think I’m a gas-bag just because I said a word or two here before Gerry and Olive and you, old fellow.”
“Must you go, Hugh?” Geraldine asked.
“I am so sorry,” he replied, “but
I must. I really have rather an important appointment this afternoon.”
“An appointment!” she grumbled. “You are in London for so short a time and you seem to be keeping appointments all the while. I sha’n’t let you go unless you tell me what it’s about.”
“I have to inspect a new pattern of camp bedstead,” he explained calmly. “If I may, I will telephone directly I am free and see if you are at liberty.”
She shrugged her shoulders but gave him a pleasant little nod as he stepped into the taxi.
“Sober old stick, Thomson,” her brother observed, as they started off. “I didn’t like his pulling me up like that but I expect he was right.”
“I don’t see what business it was of his and I think it was rather horrid of him,” Olive declared. “As though Gerry or I mattered!”
“A chap like Thomson hasn’t very much discretion, you see,” Ralph Conyers remarked. “You’ll have to wake him up a bit, Gerry, if you mean to get any fun out of life.”
There was just the faintest look of trouble in Geraldine’s face. She remained perfectly loyal, however.
“Some of us take life more seriously than others,” she sighed. “Hugh is one of them. When one remembers all the terrible things he must have seen, though, it is very hard to find fault with him.”
They turned into the Square and paused before Olive’s turning.
“You’re coming down with me, Ralph, and you too, Geraldine?” she invited.
Conyers shook his head regretfully.
“I’m due at the Admiralty at four to receive my final instructions,” he said. “I must move along at once.”
The smile suddenly faded from his lips. He seemed to be listening to the calling of the newsboys down the street. “I don’t know what my instructions are going to be,” he continued, dropping his voice a little, “but I’m sick of making war the way our chaps are doing it. If ever I’m lucky enough to get one of those murderous submarines, I can promise you one thing—there’ll be no survivors.”
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