The wooing of Rosamond Fayre

"One would think you were a German officer," scoffed Rosamond Fayre, "to mind so much being laughed at for being found out in a trick——"

This stung him. "I wasn't the only person who was playing tricks."

"You do mean those stupid letters, then? Very well," said Rosamond, with a little shrug of the white shoulders framed in the pink frock. "I can't say more than that I'm sorry about them. I have made a clean breast of them——"

"Oh, have you? If you'll forgive me for contradicting you, I don't think you've ever mentioned them," said Ted Urquhart stiffly, "to me."

"Well, Miss Urquhart did. She told me so. It was the same thing."

"Not at all," he objected. "It was something very different."

"I shouldn't have thought so. Miss Urquhart seemed to think that everything was in order about it, now. And I should have said," fenced Rosamond, "that she was the person to be considered."

"Not me?" he said, challengingly.

She would not look at him.

She said, as if very tired of this discussion, "Well! If you feel you really must go on like this, and ask a lot of questions about them! I don't know why you think it's necessary, and I don't see why you couldn't have done it while I was still at The Court," Rosamond protested, standing very erect behind that chair; "but never mind. I'm here."

The man who loved her was only too conscious of that fact. Every fibre in him was thrilling to the sight and the sound of her, to the thought that he was free to tell her so, directly.... But she was fastening upon him larkspur-blue eyes full of what seemed undeniable distaste.

"If you must cross-examine me about those idiotic letters, Mr. Urquhart," said Miss Urquhart's ex-secretary coldly, "let us go on and get it over. I did write them; five or six of them, I think it was. At all events I could tell you which were the ones I wrote, if you can produce them."

He produced the pocket-book over which his brown head had been bent when she came into the room. He took out a letter. He said, "D'you mind looking at this one?"

Rosamond took it, looked at it, and gave a sudden little gasp of horror.

It was a letter—and not a letter. She realised that, here she was "caught out" in a mistake she thought she'd never made. It was the rough draft of that epistle of Eleanor's to the young man in the South American Camp—and yet it had nothing to do with Eleanor. It was the letter that had the love-names in it, written on the margin and scrawled over again, yet not so that a man could not read them, if he tried. It was the work of an idle hand guided by a brain drowsy with day-dreams!

And this young soldier, who'd had neither lot nor part in that dream, stood, tall and implacably real, before Rosamond, and asked quietly, "Did you write that?"

Scarlet to the hair, she flung back at him, "I suppose you guessed that I did?"

"Not when I got it," Urquhart said. "Not at first. Eleanor told me that the letter with the rose-leaves in it was the first one you'd written. This is the one."

"And you came—to show it to me—Oh!" faltered Rosamond.

Words failed her. She felt suddenly drooping; she moved quickly to Mrs. Core's little horsehair sofa with its bright cushions of plush and crazy-work. She sat down, her hands clenched in her lap, her golden head bent to hide her hot and whelming blush from the profane eyes of this despicable and brutal young man. Here was the revenge that he was taking upon the girl who had dared ever to laugh at him. He'd come, the very night before his wedding and all, to display to her her own unbearable (because so silly) bit of self-revelation.

"Cad," thought Rosamond fiercely. "One doesn't expect to find any cads wearing khaki."

"I came to ask you about it," he said, standing above her so that her eyes were on a level with his sword-hilt. "I'm off, early next week. I'm going to ask you before I go—and, to start with this letter—" it rustled in his brown hand as he put the incredible question, "Why did you call me 'Darling'?"

"I?" She raised her golden head abruptly. He had not understood, after all? "What can you mean? That letter," she dropped her head again, "had nothing to do with you, Mr. Urquhart. I—I didn't mean you——"

"This is what we've got to have out," took up Ted Urquhart, with decision. "Now then——"

At this moment the hall-door bell tinkled shrilly.

There was a sound as of some one opening it, then talking; Mrs. Core's quick voice saying, "Dear me, you are late! I can't have you in the fitting-room. Some one there. Come upstairs——"

"Oh, its a customer, and we—I am taking up the room," said Rosamond, hastily rising, feeling she welcomed the chance of escape. "Mr. Urquhart, if this was all you had to say to me——"

"It wasn't. Far from it," declared the young soldier grimly. "And I must speak to you. You can't pack me off like this. Look here; I tell you I'm off next week. I may not see you again—ever. I may never come back."

"Ah—don't!—it is so unfair!" cried Rosamond, suddenly wincing, "to use that sort of argument!"

"All's fair—sometimes," said Ted Urquhart, looking at her.

And in that moment both man and maid realised in some mysterious way that when they parted, it would not be as they had ever parted before.

Rosamond could not have said how this could be, since he was to marry Eleanor to-morrow. Ted Urquhart still suspected a "Cecil" between them. Only, without knowing how they were to arrive at it, it was as if each of them had had a glimpse of some distant and shining goal. In that moment they saw it so clearly that they could even pretend not to see it. They could quarrel and fence, with that warm, unfounded hope at their hearts that peace—and that goal—would yet be reached.

"If I can't stay and talk to you here, won't you," Ted Urquhart said, speaking more easily now, "come out with me for half an hour?"

"But—" she protested, with a glance about her.

"It's quite warm outside. Have this on," he urged gently, taking up from the table the soft satin cape, to put it about Rosamond's shoulders.

"Please don't—I don't think I'm coming," she said—and followed him.

In the little hall they passed the customer, with Mrs. Core, who threw out a quick "I shall be sitting up, don't worry."

Rosamond preceded Urquhart through the front door, into the quiet street.

"I could drive you about," suggested the young man with a nod towards his waiting car, "if you liked?"

"No, no. We'll walk—but there's nothing really to talk about," declared Rosamond. "Really there's——"

"The Park?" suggested Urquhart at a turning.

"Very well, for a minute. But——"

In the warm autumn darkness they passed the big oblong mass of Buckingham Palace, unlighted now, save for a window here and there; they walked along the broad pavement, passing the sentries who stood to attention as this tall Engineer-officer went by with his lovely, fair-haired lady in the evening coat, that showed a flounce of rose-pink below, and a pair of little, pattering suede shoes. They walked past the fountain of the towering Memorial; past the lawns with the geranium beds, scarlet in sunlight, but now squares and borders of a velvety and inky black. They turned aside to a walk shaded by trees on either side. In the grass further on, low-set lamps glared misleadingly. Above their heads in the deep sky, powdered with stars, a soft milky blotch appeared like a clouded moon. Another like patch of light appeared suddenly beside it; then, abruptly, both moons of white shifted and wheeled and became luminous shafts that chased each other across the heavens, eluding, pursuing, merging for a moment into one.

"Oh, look at those——" uttered Rosamond, surprised. "Look!"

The tall man moved his head impatiently above her.

"Never mind the searchlights for a minute. Listen to me, Miss Fayre. About that letter. About that 'darling' you wrote—which wasn't meant for me."

"You couldn't have thought it was!" interposed Rosamond.

"I'd little cause to flatter myself, once I'd met the writer. I suppose you'll say I might know who it was meant for," Ted Urquhart hazarded, "all things considered."

"Then you would know more than I did," retorted Rosamond.

"What d'you mean, Miss Fayre? D'you often write," he suggested, "without knowing who is to receive the letter?"

"That's meant to be horrid, but it's really only rather silly," said Rosamond loftily, as they retraced their steps. "If you really want so much to know about that—that imbecile scribble of mine—it wasn't 'to' anybody. Except, perhaps, to some sort of a young man-in-the-air, don't you know?"

"Do you mean," he said mystified, "an airman?"

"No! I don't know anybody in the Royal Flying Corps," sighed Rosamond, a little mischievously; "I mean—oh, just a sort of person of one's imagination.... You don't understand. You wouldn't."

"Imagination?" he repeated, and shook his head. "All this is getting a bit too intricate and subtle for me. We might go on like this for ever. There are lots of things—Well, cutting that out——"

They had reached the end of that empty path. Rosamond made as if she would have walked back towards the great space before the Palace again, but he turned once more, and she walked beside him. Why not? Suddenly he stopped and faced her. Her eyes, now grown accustomed to the darkness, seemed to trace some change in the resolute face under the peaked cap. Undeniably there was a change in his voice as he said, "I don't care who you're engaged to. An engagement isn't irrevocable. It's not marriage, after all——"

"Who I am engaged to?" repeated Rosamond, standing still, and entirely bewildered. "I?"

"Yes. I know you thought it wasn't known."

"It—it isn't," returned Rosamond, beginning to wonder if this were just the very longest dream she had ever had? Whether another minute would not see it fade, that uncanny dark landscape of paths and bushes, that sultry gloom illuminated by the stars, the lurid, misleading lamps in the grass, the Titan beams of subdued light that swung and pursued each other across the skies? Whether she must not wake, to find herself in her little room in Ebury Street, alone——

And with that wonder came another, a paralysing sensation.

Breathless, she felt herself pondering, as if over the falling petals of an imaginary flower, "He does, he does care for me. He doesn't. He does. He can't——"

Ted Urquhart's voice above her said, "You see, I knew."

"D'you mean you knew I was engaged?"

"Yes," he muttered, and again he was thinking gloomily that Eleanor must have been mistaken in what she'd said. Eleanor was so easily misled in what people "meant" when they were in love. Again he was steeped in that wretched memory of another dark sultry evening under trees, when the sound so near him was not the mingled and subdued murmur of London's traffic outside the Park, but the sound, punctuating the country silence, of that kiss.

Rosamond asked breathlessly, simply, "But—who to?"

She heard his short, savage laugh out of the soft gloom. "You needn't ask."

"Yes, I need. Please!" urged Rosamond. "Tell me. You must."

"That young fellow," he said sullenly, "Bray."

"Cecil? Cecil?"

"Exactly," said Ted Urquhart grimly. "'Cecil.'"

"But I—but he, poor dear boy—! What reason had you, Mr. Urquhart, for thinking so?"

"Quite a good reason, I take it," Urquhart said. "I heard—not my fault. I couldn't help hearing——"

"Somebody told you I was going to marry Cecil Bray?" cried the girl with an indignation that was as a sudden cordial to the sorely-tried heart of her listener, who took up—

"No! Nobody said so. This was what happened. I was coming up the Avenue that evening after he'd had dinner at The Court, and I heard you—saying Good-bye to him. I heard——"

"Well, what?"

Ted Urquhart, feeling more than foolish, brought it out bluntly. "I heard him kiss you."

"What?" cried Rosamond, unmistakably aghast.

"He didn't kiss you?" eagerly.

"You thought that?"

"Upon my word I didn't know what else to think," said Urquhart, drawing a long breath. "As a matter of fact, I wondered——"

"Perhaps you wondered," put in Miss Fayre scathingly, "whether it was I who'd kissed him?"

"Matter of fact, I did!" confessed Ted Urquhart out of the memory of tormented nights. "You see, it—I thought it was a kiss I heard, and, and——"

Rosamond laughed furiously. "If you must know," she said, with ice, "it was a kiss."

The ice entered Urquhart's heart. Then again hope, the ineffable, revived. Could it have been just her hand that she'd permitted to that boy?

"He was going away. And I was frightfully sorry. For him, if you will have it. And he took up the hem of my black chiffon scarf that I'd got on; like this!" she lifted a corner of the cape she wore. "And he kissed that. I let him. It was all he could expect——"

Not even her hand!

"Some people expect very little. Curious thing, they usually get it," remarked Urquhart in a strained voice. He cleared his throat, adding, "Are you really telling me that that youngster was nothing to you?"

"Couldn't you have seen that for yourself?" retorted Rosamond impatiently. "Considering that I was so specially nice and kind and gentle to him, I should have thought it was obvious."

Ted Urquhart said with an agitated hopeful laugh, "You have always been a perfect little Beast to me."

"Oh, I haven't——"

"You have," he insisted gladly. "Consistently. From the first. Might that mean—? Mightn't it?"

Here Rosamond clenched the white ringless hands under her cape. She knew now the answer of the imaginary petals was "It's true. He does love me!"

Steadying and hardening her voice she said, "Mr. Urquhart, you haven't the right to——"

"That night I hadn't; no. I should have freed myself and taken my chance, though, if it hadn't been for that—that dashed scarf-business. To-night," his voice rang out clearly and joyously, "I am free."

"But to-morrow," she gasped, "you're marrying Eleanor?"

"Eleanor isn't marrying me. When it came to the point she wasn't having any. Sacked me," he exulted boyishly, "this afternoon!"

"She sacked you?" repeated Rosamond indignantly. A man less vain even than the man beside her might have caught the "Oh-how-could-she!" of the girl's tone. "Why?"

"She loathed the idea," he explained rapidly, "of me as a husband. But—look here, should you? ... Should you? What do you think?"

Rosamond, with the goal shining and attained before her eyes, could only think, "He loves me, and I must have known it all the time!"

For one more second the moss-grown shackle of Tradition held her; the Law that was instilled into the "well-brought-up" maids of the Nineteenth Century. "Thou shalt appear reluctant."

"Mustn't let him see I hoped so," she told herself feverishly. "Not, not at first—They're supposed not to think so much of you"—and she turned away from the man beside her.

She turned to gaze over the grass, speckled with those giant glowworms of the low-set lamps. She was glad they were far; that it was so dark along this deserted side-path, that there was nothing to betray that bewildered rapture of her look. But even as she turned, she found herself suddenly girdled from behind by arms that seemed firm as a steel tyre about her.

She had only to say quietly, "Oh, please," and she would be released.

Or, less than that, she had only to let the lissom softness of her length turn to a rigid pillar in his arm.

She did think of it.

But the hold of a rusty fetter upon such as Rosamond Fayre is perhaps less strong than the hold of a tyre of steel. For in the same instant she thought rebelliously, "It isn't HIS sort of man who thinks less of a woman because she doesn't haggle and pretend! Must I? Need I? When I like him so much?"

Her lover spoke, unsteadily over her shoulder.

"Can't you be a little sweet to me now?" he muttered in her ear. "I've had such a mauling!"

"Oh; have you?" sighed Rosamond in pity and delight. He was ready, she knew, to face anything—yet here he was, at her mercy!

A "mauling?" Poor boy!

He pleaded, "There's so little time!"

Quickly she twisted herself about in his hold.

She faced him. Through the gloom she could guess the expression in his eyes; blazing, adoringly-vindictive, and exacting. "Such a mauling——" Ah, she must make that up to him!

To think that such a thing was her Duty!

Impulsively she put up her own arm from which the cape fell away. She took his neck into the soft curve of it.

"There," she gave a little sigh.

She felt as one who for long has battled against the tide, and who now swam buoyantly and easily, the tide having turned.

"There! Is that better?"

"My girl! ... Mine!" he muttered. "No, don't loose it again ... ever!"

He crushed her closer, shutting out for that moment of ecstasy all thought of the impending wrench—of the falling-in, the blare of the band, the crowded platform, the laughing, boyish faces clustered at every carriage-window, the warm handgrips of strangers, the gaiety above the pang, the shouted good-byes—"good luck to our Tommies!"—the cheers that rang to the echoing glass roof as the troop-train steamed out of the station, taking the men to their battles abroad, leaving the women to theirs, at home.... For that moment in the gloom of the Park below the searchlights that swept the guarded skies, an English soldier held his love as though he would not let her go.

"But that's not all?" he demanded hoarsely. "Nell!"

She answered to that call as though she had always known his lover's-name for her. As if the flood carried her, she set back her golden head. She shut her eyes; yielding, yielding and presently returning kisses that left her his—for ever.

"And now," muttered her lover almost on her lips, "now you can say——"

"Oh, Ted," protested Rosamond Fayre, all trembling and alight, "do I have to—oh, after all this—to say anything?"

"Only what you wrote," he insisted, "on the side of that letter. I think I'd like to have it from your own mouth, thanks——"

And he had that too; whispered and warm, this time, and real.

"My darling!"