Part 47 (1/2)

Olwen's Aunt Lizzie was coming up the Drive behind her, having been delayed in another carriage of that very same train, since she had also been dining in town. From some distance she had observed the farewell at the gate. But she exchanged greetings, quite unprejudiced, with the young sailor who pa.s.sed her. She was a modern Aunt....

At the house she found her niece already in the bedroom, so busy with her little straw work-basket and two lengths of pink ribbon, that before any talk even of the raid, she asked, ”What have you got there, Olwen?”

”I'm just mending something,” returned the intent Olwen, ”that I've got to wear.”

CHAPTER XIII

VIGIL

”The raid is still in progress.”

Morning Paper.

To other members of the party that raid had been less (obviously) eventful.

Little Mr. Brown, after he had seen Mrs. Cartwright's niece, the nurse, back to her rooms, trotted back to the Regent Palace Hotel all in a dither of undeniable funk.

Not funk for himself! Gallipoli and the Somme had found him ”sticking it” with a music-hall joke between his teeth. But here he had something to be frightened about. The danger-zone was no place for women. At once he rang up his _fiancee_, Mrs. Robinson, in Baker Street. There was no reply!... On duty still? And Lord knew where....

[The little dispatch rider was at that moment, as we know, scorching along the road out of London and past the Kilburn Empire.]

Mr. Brown, M.C., took his cold feet and his pipe to another man's room, and sat there talking feverishly to drown the guns; from here he rang up at intervals, getting through to her at last.

”Worrying?... What about?” her cheeky little voice called back to him.

”Been? Why I've been carting some young lunatic who's lost his 'bus or something, back to his 'drome.... I say! He tried to give me two pounds.

Got off again, didn't I?... Yes, and I'm just going to turn in.... Silly a.s.s.... Worrying about me? Well, drop it. I'm not marrying any worries, they're too old-fash. Go to bed!”

”Right you are,” called back her future lord on the note of cheery docility which was to resound throughout his married life. ”See you demang. Good night, Pet!”

”Good night, Pug.”

She rang off; he sought his room, and slept through the rest of the raid.

Miss Agatha Walsh sat up for it. She sat up in the private sitting-room of her hotel, where there was also staying, on business, the old family lawyer who transacted her business. There she sat with him and her _fiance_ at midnight, feeling delightfully emanc.i.p.ated if not ”fast,”

drinking stone ginger-beer and translating the lawyer's remarks to her half-dozing sergeant. Agatha was entirely happy, for the talk was all about arrangements for her approaching marriage, settlements for her husband, and so on. What, compared to these things, was the noise of gun-fire? The only attention that she paid to it was to exclaim once, ”Oh, I do wish I could have a bit of the shrapnel set in gold as a paper-weight or something for Gustave, just as a souvenir of the first raid we've been through together!”

And now we come to Captain Ross.

Captain Ross would have allowed no questions as to where he was and what doing whilst that raid was in progress. Suffice it to say that he was on duty.

Not active duty; not strenuous duty, but duty which, unfortunately for him, gave him plenty of leisure to think, and to feel, as he himself put it curtly, ”sick.”

Very sick he felt.

First there was the standing grouse of his not being able to take a man's job, ever, in that sort of show. They would never allow a one-armed chap to go up in a plane, of course. Not even by altering the mechanism of the whole thing so that he could work the controls left-handed--that was off for good; and he was sick of it.