The wooing of Rosamond Fayre

Part II In Time Of War

I

The Call to Arms ....

. 227

II

The White Feather ....

. 241

III

. 260

IV

“ On Account of the War ” .

. 268

V

. 279

VI

Recruiting-Ribbons ....

. 290

VII

The Reservist’s Wife ....

. 309

VIII

. 328

IX

. 347

X

. 355

Postscript — Wish and Fulfilment

. 375

THE WOOING OF ROSAMOND FAYRE

PART 1

IN TIME OF PEACE

TWO GIRLS AND A MAN-IN-THE-AIR

“ Love-letters are the paper-currency for kisses, after all. So imagine having to write another girl’s love-letters ! Imagine an engaged girl who commissioned another girl to kiss her fiance for her ! Really, it wouldn’t be much more extraordinary than what she wants me to do!”

And Rosamond Fay re, the secretary-girl (who was incidentally a golden-blonde, goddess built) sat back in the Sheraton chair before the drawing-room of Urquhart’s Court, Kent, and gasped again.

“ I write to her young man for her? A girl’s courtship letter? The sort of live, intimate personal thing that oughtn’t to have the trace of a third person’s touch about it? It’s not my job at all,” Rosamond told herself, indignantly. “No one would have thought of giving me such a thing to do — except Eleanor ! ”

Now the “ Eleanor ” in question was Miss Urquhart of Urquhart’s Court. She was a small olive-skinned brunette, with dark conscientious eyes, a tiny, tight-lipped mouth, and a spare brown hand. That hand wasn’t the kind of hand upon which one expects to see the blaze of the sapphire-set-with-diamond engagement ring that Miss Urquhart wore. She was immersed in “ good works ” of every description.

And because “ good works ” bring in their train an endless string of business-letters — because Eleanor Urquhart, though she possessed a fine head for figures, lacked the pen of a readier writer, she usually employed the readier click of the typewriter belonging to a lady secretary (who lived at the Court with herself and her father) to cope with her correspondence. . . .

Really reliable secretary-girls are about as plentiful as really Heaven-born cooks, or artists.

The arrangement had been rather reminiscent of the tragedy of those ten little niggers !

For one secretary-girl had contradicted Miss Urquhart. She, of course, went. The next had kept a charitable duchess waiting in the ante-room. The next had appropriated blouses, sent for the Jumble Sale, for her own use. The next had had a South London accent

S that had jarred too painfully on old Mr. Urquhart ’s sensitive, scholarly nerves. The next secretary-girl had done worse than all; she had got up a flirtation with the Public-School-educated and handsome young chauffeur at Urquhart’s Court! Yea; after dinner she had slipped out into the rose-garden to meet him. This sort of thing Miss Urquhart simply did not understand, did not wish to understand, — and did not mean to have. That secretary-girl left at a moment’s notice.

And it was the day after Miss Urquhart had been forced to dismiss her fifth amanuensis in two months that she discovered the favourite of her old school, Rosamond Fay re, the Army Doctor’s daughter, now orphaned and penniless except for what she could earn, fainting from over-fatigue in a cash desk at the Hotel Midas, London.

Miss Fayre possessed a clerical training that Miss Urquhart lacked. She possessed also an appearance and a voice that were invaluable in interviews with snobbish subscribers. Lastly she possessed a clear handwriting that Eleanor had admired even to mimicry while the girls were still at school together.

To Miss Fayre, pale and lovely in her black, cottonbacked satin business-frock, Eleanor had offered the vacant post.

Rosamond had wept with delight as she had accepted it. Then and there she had arranged to undertake that endless writing to the President of the Guild of Mothercraft and to the eleven thousand odd members of the Working Girls’ Holiday Hostel Club.

Little dreaming of the other letters that she would presently be called upon to write !

Still dazed at the thought of this task, she stared out of the long French window at the grey stone Terrace with steps leading down to the sun-washed lawn, at the famous lime-tree avenue beyond that, and, far beyond that again, the glimpse of flat, blue Kentish Weald, in the midst of which this old house seemed to bask and doze, padded with ivy to its red chimneystacks. In the late May, before the War, it nestled under the very wing of the Angel of Peace.

Urquhart’s Court! A lovely place!

Rosamond was lucky to be there, instead of at the Midas.

But she forgot her “ luck ” as she remembered the quick, authoritative young voice of Eleanor Urquhart, half an hour ago, giving her instructions in the walled garden where both girls had been gathering flowers to send to a Hospital.

“ It’s mail-day, the day for Ted’s letter, and I haven’t a minute now,” she had said, standing by the green door. “ So, Rosamond, you’ll put it together for me, please.”

Rosamond had opened her pansy eyes so wide that one would have expected to see blue petals fall out upon her cheeks. She had gasped, “Put it together? You can’t mean in my own handwriting?”

“ Well — 4 our ’ writing! They’re so very much alike, Rosamond.”

“ But you won’t want that copy sent? ”

“ Of course. There isn’t t-t-t-time to make another,” from Eleanor Urquhart, who, when she was flurried, uncertain, or vexed, showed a danger-signal in the form of a tiny stutter. 44 Y-y-yes ! ”

44 D’you mean it, Eleanor? ”

Apparently Eleanor had meant it. And Rosamond, walking beside her, flower-laden, up the lawn, had said in turn what she meant.

44 My darling employerette ! I’ll do 4 anything in reason ’ to earn my position in this lap of luxury, but it’s not in reason to want me to write to an engaged young man and tell him that his sweetheart hasn’t got time ! ”

Fastidious Eleanor had frowned a little. Sometimes Rosamond, in her laughing, careless way, used expressions that made her, Eleanor, feel shy and cold. She disliked the old English word 44 sweetheart ” that came without a thought to Rosamond’s lips. 44 Sweetheart ” — How Club-girlish ! Why, it was almost as bad as 44 followers ” / It would be “ walking out with ” next ! In a girl like Rosamond, all this was 44 a pity.” However, Eleanor was otherwise satisfied with the Secretary who had proved so efficient, up to now. So, as they reached the Terrace, she explained gravely :

“ I don’t want you to tell him that. I hate hurting people’s feelings, and Ted might not understand why I was so busy. Men don't understand ! But I promised he should have a weekly letter, and I never break promises. So I want you to write, Rosamond, as if you were me. Sign it with my name.”

“ But — -my dear ! ” from the freshly aghast Rosamond. “That’s impossible! Can’t you understand? Heavens ! It — it would be a kind of forgery ! ”

“ No, it wouldn’t. Not if I tell — ask you to do it. You wrote and signed for me those dinner-invitations.”

“ Dinner-invitations, yes. But a girl’s 1 — her personal letter to a man — no ! I simply couldn’t.”

“Why not, Rosamond? You’ve known more men

than I have. You do sometimes write ”

“ To admirers ? ” The secretary stopped. In Eleanor’s little dark “ shut ” face she had observed that this too was a disapproved-of expression. “ Menfriends of my own, perhaps ! But never . . . never a real love-letter ; sheets and sheets, tiny handwriting, five postscripts, snapshots and pressed pansy enclosed and fourpence extra to pay for postage ! I’ve never yet achieved one of those ! ”

“ Well, n-n-n-nor have I,” from the young fiancee , with a new coldness that had chilled the girl who lived on her salary. “ You have written my letters before from dictation. You know what I should wish to have said. And you know as well as I do what has been

INTRODUCTION 7

happening here for the last few weeks. It won’t take you long, Rosamond.”

“ No, but—”

“ I will give you his last letter to me, so that you may answer any question he puts.”

“And what about . . . him? . . . Mr. Ted Urquhart? Is he supposed to notice no difference — — ?”

“ Why need he notice? ” from the girl “ he ” was to marry. “ Those dinner-party people didn’t.”

“No! But ”

As they reached the ivy-draped front of the house Rosamond was remembering another, a very young man, who, then in College rooms with her brother, had once written to her, “ When the postman brings letters for Fay re, I know when there is one from you! It seems to make a sound of its own , as it's pushed through the letter-box. It's different! 1 swear this isn't imagination! Won't you ever write to me? "

Eleanor knew nothing about letters of this sort ! She was saying, “ It is only so that my fiance does not miss a mail. That seems to mean so much to a man — Abroad. And I am — as you see — prevented. Come and write in the drawing-room,” concluded Miss Urquhart less stiffly, as she passed through the huge open French windows, “ it’s so cool.”

“ Not as 4 cool ’ as what she proposes to let me do there ! ” thought the reluctant Rosamond, following the small, composed figure of her girlish employer. “ Writing forged letters to a young man-in-the-air ! An engaged man ! A man I’ve never seen ! ”

“ Here you are,” Eleanor had said, drawing out the topmost foreign envelope of a neat pile in a right-hand drawer of her escritoire. “ This is his last. You’ve got a pen and plenty of ink? — blotting paper. . . . It’s a twopenny-ha’penny stamp. There are some in the little red leather box on the left there ; and the foreign note-paper is here. . . .Now you’ve got everything you want.”

“ Stop — Oh, wait a minute ! How do I begin ? ” urged Miss Fayre, with a vague “ Dearest ” balancing a “ My own Boy ” at the back of her mind. Surely the “ edited ” editions of those dictated letters held Eleanor’s own expressions before they were sent off? “ If

you don’t mind telling me ”

“Begin? Why, 4 My dear Ted.’ That’s all, isn’t it? G-G-Good-bye!”

And the secretary-girl had been left alone to her grotesque and unthinkable and impossible new duty !

Chapter I

Sitting there at Eleanor’s desk, staring at Eleanor’s blotter and biting the end of her pen, it was long before Rosamond so much as dipped that pen in the ink.

“ Oh, I can’t do this,” was her first decision. “ Can’t ! Anybody but that benighted little philanthropic innocent of an Eleanor would realise that it was quite impossible. She really is — ‘ Handwritings so alike,’ she said ! As if that were all there was in a letter ! As if the young man mightn’t suspect from a dozen things that it wasn’t the usual letter. He’d be hideously ahnoyed with her — oh, with both of us, but I don’t matter, I’m just ‘the pen.’ Perhaps she wouldn’t mind his annoyance? But she must learn to mind ! After all, she’s going to be a very different sort of girl presently, one hopes. When the young man comes home, that will be the crisis ! Then, she’ll grow to mind. Then she’ll be precious sorry she ever deputed a mere salaried menial like me to do such a crazy thing! I shall refuse.”

Her blue eyes strayed about the stately old room, from lustre chandelier to Adams fireplace, its grate hidden by a cataract of fern. They rested, scarcely 9 seeing it, on a gilt-framed Baxter print of 44 The Lover’s Letter-box,” the picture that shows a pretty Victorian in a soap-bubble of white muslin skirts, who is slipping a sealed note into the fork of a hollow tree. How unlike Eleanor’s methods !

Presently came the grim thought : 44 Eleanor has had secretaries who 4 refused ’ one thing or another. They went ! ”

And then, 44 Oh, but I can’t go ! Not back to all those horrors that I’ve only, by good luck and Eleanor’s job, just escaped! Orders, in Cockney accents, from men who ought by rights to be calling me 4 Madam ’ ! Compliments, from the same — and worse *

44 And what about London in this heat ? And the stuffiness ? and the smells ? and washing one’s own hankies in the bath-room? and the shop eggs for breakfast? and no room to put one’s things? (even supposing one had ‘things’ to put!), and how about losing your looks, Rosamond, my child? ” she addressed herself. 44 How about getting 4 washed-out ’ with tiredness and roundshouldered with work, and old and out of mischief before your time?

“No! . . . I won’t! . . . I will, I mean ! ” And she drew her chair a little nearer the desk.

44 1 shall have to pay for the other. Pay by writing letters from Eleanor to 4 her dear Ted. 9 Very well ! ” decided the secretary-girl with a little reckless laugh. 44 It’s not as if he or she were the 4 usual ’ type of engaged people. It’s not as if the whole engagement weren’t — well ! rum in the extreme ! ”

For Eleanor Urquhart’s engagement to her cousin Ted was a thing that never failed to amuse, puzzle and even exasperate her friend, Rosamond Fayre.

In one way, it was “ so business-like.”

For what could be more business-like than the action of the young man? Here he was, left heir to the beautiful old Kentish estate out of which — unless some better arrangement could be made — he would have to turn the uncle and the girl-cousin who had always lived there. And his idea of a “ better arrangement ” had been to propose to marry the girl-cousin, who could then continue to live in the place as if she were the heiress and the mistress thereof — merely keeping house for one extra in the family, a husband as well as her father.

Satisfactory enough.

Only, how ^-business-like in another way ! That was how it appeared to Rosamond.

Fancy being prepared to marry and to spend the rest of your life with — a person whom you have never even seen!

For, thanks to one accident after another, the Urquhart cousins had never happened to meet. Eleanor had found it impossible to leave her College the last time that Ted Urquhart had stayed with his Uncle at Urquhart’s Court, three years ago. And it was two years after this visit that General Urquhart, Ted’s father, had died where he had always preferred to live, abroad. The beautiful Kentish mansion, which had always seemed to belong to the bookish, stay-at-home brother, had passed by right of entail to that rolling-stone, young Ted, then prospecting in Mexico; for he was a born traveller, adventurer, ranger, even as his soldier father had been.

It had been by letter that the curious arrangement of the Urquhart engagement had been made. And by letter — for Ted, deep in schemes that were Greek to the home-keeping Urquharts, had remained abroad from that day to this — the courtship had been carried on.

“ If you can call it a courtship ! ” Rosamond Fayre had laughed when she had first heard of it. But Eleanor had refused to see anything “ odd ” about this contract.

“ Why, it’s the best possible solution.” This was Miss Urquhart’s view. “ There’s this Court ; it’s Ted’s only home when he isn’t wandering all over the earth. And I must have it for my drawing-room meetings and for the Working Girls’ Garden Parties. And there’s the library for father. He’d never get accustomed to another study. Ted couldn’t turn us out ! He said so.”

“ And is there no happy medium between brutally turning a young woman out of house and home, and . . . marrying her? ”

Not in this case, Eleanor had pointed out. How could she be the mistress of Urquhart’s Court unless she were either the daughter or the wife of the owner?

And the owner himself? Rosamond had put amused, eager questions as to what he could be like?

Eleanor was not vivid in description. She’d informed Rosamond that “ Father had seemed to like him as much as he ever did like young men.” He had seemed to think Ted Urquhart “ nice ” — though all his interests were “ out-of-doors ” and “ crude.” He’d said he would have been a soldier himself but for considering that there “ wasn’t enough going on, nowadays,” for a man in the Service. Level-headed enough, Eleanor’s father had thought. Then Eleanor had fetched a letter from this Ted and read aloud:

“ I don’t know when you’re likely to get this. You ask me how I got to this place; well, it’s in a steamer from Southampton — then a three days’ journey by train up-country to where the line runs out, then three more days up a river in canoes. Then mules. This last journey we couldn’t even use mules, because of our machinery. We had to take the castings of it in big pieces, so somehow we managed to cart along the pieces ourselves over the roughest parts; don’t ask what we wore, or looked like at this job”

Here Rosamond had lifted her bright head.

" My dear ! Do you know, he sounds rather a ripper to me. Why does this type of young man always live Abroad, where one doesn’t see him? Why don’t they raise a splendid great Army of them, for Home? Do read me some more, Eleanor ! ”

Eleanor’s incongruously precise little voice had read out scraps about runaway mustangs, tornadoes, the mild excitement of an earthquake, of a ride in front of a runaway bull.

44 And he always seems to be getting among people with knives and revolvers 4 going for ’ each other. Or else nearly breaking his neck somewhere — — ”

Rosamond’s eyes had danced over this description. 4f I say, what a lovely man! Good-looking? ”

44 I’ve no photograph ; I lost the snapshots he sent,” Eleanor had said. 44 Father said not.”

44 Fathers are the worst possible judges of looks in young men. I do like him for hoisting about those great hulking castings ! So different from anything we ever have to do ! ” the secretary-girl had sighed whimsically. 44 And his being so keen on concessions for that oil they’re prospecting about! What’s the oil for, Eleanor ? ”

44 Lamps, I expect.”

44 Ah! You’ve never written to ask! You can’t be really fearfully interested in this man ! ”

44 Rosamond, no girl would be 4 fearfully interested ’ in a man she hadn’t seen.”

44 Oh, wouldn’t she? Not when she’d promised to marry him? Not when he was going to be all that in her life? A fiance! Well, if he’s nothing else, he is at least the man who keeps the other men out! ”

Eleanor had said nothing. Extraordinary, the interest that Rosamond showed in this subject! Rosamond had continued:

44 And you’ve all his letters to piece him together out of! To keep guessing about! I could imagine a girl being perfectly thrilled over a fiance of that sort. Much more so than over an ordinary young man with a bowler and a walking-stick, say, that she had seen ! ”

44 Yes, but you’re romantic. I am not. I’m so practical,” Eleanor had gravely explained. 44 And I think that it’ll make me a very good wife for a man who will probably spend three-quarters of his time carrying those castings and things up and down precipices at the other end of the earth. He’s his interests ; I’ve mine. And when we meet, we’ve this place in common. I am sure we shall be quite good friends.”

“ Friends ! ” Rosamond had echoed, pityingly.

44 Some married people who begin by — by adoring each other,” Eleanor had remarked, 44 end by being n-n-n-not even friends.”

44 M’m. But then they’ve had something out of it,” her friend and secretary had said, thinking — 44 like going to a music-hall show with one ripping 4 turn ’ in it, and all the rest feeble. Better than sitting out a whole long dull play without one redeeming laugh ! ” Rosamond Fayre had decided. “ I’d risk being bored for the rest of my married life, to pay for a really thrilling courtship ! ”

“ Well, he’s practical, too,” Eleanor had concluded before she took up her Club accounts again. “ At least from his letters. That’s all I really know about him ! ”

The letter which Rosamond Fayre had just been given to answer was certainly “ practical ” enough.

It was written in the particularly small masculine handwriting which is so often guided by a particularly large masculine hand, and the crackling foreign sheet of it had arrived from some out-of-the-way No-Man’s Land beyond the Andes, where Ted Urquhart with a party of other men had been sinking wells for that precious, that coveted oil. The rough, open-air camp-life, the bonfires, the tea-tins, the scraps of men’s talk and laughter, the blue, up-curling cloud of tobacco-smoke, the jingling of horse’s harness — a whiff of this unfamiliar atmosphere seemed brought right over the seas to that secluded English drawing-room by the few terse sentences of Urquhart’s — well, it certainly could not be called a love - letter, Rosamond decided, with stars of amusement shining in her larkspur-blue eyes. It began, “ My dear Eleanor,” and ended, “ Yours ever affectionately, T.U.” Like a brother and sister!

There was a postcript which merely said, “ It will be nearly June, I suppose, by the time this letter gets to the dear old Court. Write and tell me what is out in the garden, and if those last roses which Uncle Henry was so keen on have turned out any good. The place ought to be looking lovely.”

“ The place looking lovely ! ” commented Rosamond. “ Not even one question about how the girl is looking ! I wonder if he doesn’t even want to know? How sick I shall be if the man I marry — when that fortunate individual turns up — ever writes like this ! He won’t, though. Rosamond’s lover won’t be ‘ level-headed ’ — at any rate, not as far as anything to do with Rosamond is concerned,” decided that young woman, with a toss of her own beautiful head. “ But to work ! ”

She dipped her pen in the ink and primmed her rather large red begonia of a mouth into an imitation of Eleanor’s small one as she wrote: —

“ My dear Ted,

“ Thank you for your letter of April the First. I was very glad to hear that you were quite well, and that you had arrived safely at your destination.”

(“ Not that she — Eleanor — really cares a capital Dee how you are, or where you’ve arrived,” interpolated Eleanor’s new secretary, aside. “ It’s a matter of life and death to her that five hundred factory girls should have a rise of a shilling a week in wages, but as to what happens to a mere prospective husband — Well, but what ought she to say to him? It’s always ‘ ought * with her.

I wonder if she’ll get any better — worse, I mean — when Ted comes home and tries to teach her — other things, I do hope so. Well—”)

She took up her pen again.

“ Yes ! — The place ”

(“Better put a capital P there to show how allimportant.”)

— “ The Place looks delightful. It’s a great pity that you can’t see it, since you’ve missed every June here for so many years. I hope that you may contrive to come home, as you suggest some time next summer — — ”

(“ That’s not too eager and forward, I trust,” thought Rosamond.)

— “ and that you will not be disappointed in — — ”

(“your reception as a lover. — No, I mean, of course — — •”)

— “ the alterations that there are — such as the new fish-pond, and the continuation of the hedge beyond the cherry-orchard at The Court.”

She leant back.

(“Now what had I better put? He’s not wildly interested in her creches and clubs and girls, I can tell. I’ll just sum it up vaguely.”)

“ 1 have been very busy lately. We had a garden-party here last week. Need I add that there was a thunderstorm in the middle of it? The purple dahlias in Mrs. Bishop’s toque got drenched and dripped in mauve streaks down her face. It looked as if her complexion had run very badly.”

(“Steady! Eleanor wouldn’t have written that. She never makes fun of people,” said Rosamond. 44 I shall have to make a fair copy — a Rosamond Fayre copy — of all this. I’ll begin again from 4 thunderstorm.’ ”)

44 and on Wednesday we had a dinner-party. A friend of mine is staying here now. She has trained as a clerk, and I am keeping her to help me with my business correspondence — — ”

( 4< This very letter, for example.”)

— 44 and her name is Rosamond Fayre.”

( 44 Hope you think it’s a pretty one, Sir.”)

— 44 Father is quite well now, and sends his love. The roses that you ask after have done splendidly ”

( 44 Flowers are safe, so I suppose I can say what I like here.”)

— 44 They will trail in heavenly, scenty garlands and festoons of pink and white round the grey stone balustrades of the Terrace, just like decorations for a visit from Royalty. Also the 4 Blue Border ’ is planned out. At the back stand the tallest larkspurs and delphiniums, then the clumps of deep blue borage ; then come the blue Canterbury bells, then the corn-flowers ; then blue pansies, then forget-me-nots, and lastly a thick blue row of lobelia, 4 underlining ’ it. I think this is all. So believe me, dear Ted,” wrote the girl, demurely, in the handwriting that was as like her school-friend’s as the voices of some twins are alike,

44 Yours ever affectionately,

44 Oh, how silly,” she broke off impatiently, to scribble a thick 44 E ” over the 44 R ” which she had inadvertently written. Very nearly she had signed, in spite of everything, her own name. But it didn’t show. No; it read quite evenly and naturally

44 Yours ever affectionately ,

“ Eleanor Urquhart .”

She must practise that signature. She began to do so on a loose sheet of paper. Then she must make that fair copy of this epistle. But there was no particular hurry. ... 44 To think that another girl — not Eleanor — might, instead of deputing the job to a paid clerk, be getting quite a lot of fun out of writing love-letters to a fiance who’d never set eyes on her ! ” she reflected as her pen traced curly “ E’s ” and “ U’s.”

“ For instance, I — if I were Eleanor — should make quite a good game out of interesting the man, making him keener to see me every letter I wrote. (She crosses the ‘ t ’ in Urquhart more like this.) One or two should be as brief and brisk and business-like as if they came from the Manager of his Bank. The next should ask him what colours he liked a girl — his girl— to wear? Then I’d write rather a piteous one, as if I were begging, between the lines, to be set free from an arrangement that was spoiling my life, standing in the way of my possible happiness with somebody else ! ”

Rosamond, taking out a fresh sheet of paper to make her fair copy, laughed enjoyingly over this immemorial scheme.

“ That would be a good one ! But the same mail should bring him another note asking him whether he did not think that it might not sometimes seem a tiny bit dull for a girl all alone in this great Convent of a Court? I should wait until he replied to that, I think.”

She tucked the rose she wore into greater security at her breast.

“ Then” she told herself, “ I’d begin to flirt a little ; on paper. There might even be a pet name or so tucked into a postscript — so ”

She began scribbling idly on the rough draft.

— “ and crossed out again — not that a man couldn’t read it, if he tried. So ! ”

She made a charming picture as she sat there, this royally built, golden-haired girl smiling at the desk, playing this “ game ” with a phantom-lover of her own, for at the moment Eleanor and Eleanor’s fiance — probably a milk-sop, and surely a stick! — were forgotten. Rosamond Fayre, lost in a very silly, very common, and very natural form of day-dream, was away with the Prince Charming whose elusive face smiles back into every girlish face that has ever bent over a wishing-well.