Elsie, with a smiling frown, said:
“You’re not going, surely, without giving me my … billet-doux?”
Captain Hunter chuckled. He said:
“Rather neat! If you can play with two words of French like that, you really ought to learn the whole language.”
Falcon, looking from Hunter to Elsie, said, stammering:
“I … why … of course …”
Elsie leaped to his rescue.
“Stanley, you run out and find what time the matinee starts. You make Mr. Falcon nervous.”
She looked mischievously at Alec. She added:
“He’s afraid, Stanley, you will find out about my past.”
Captain Hunter shut his eyes and his mouth widened out towards his ears as he shook with silent laughter.
Falcon’s swarthy skin reddened again.
“Well,” said Captain Hunter, rising, “I’ll leave you two alone.” He made an elaborate bow to Falcon, as he added with mock solemnity: “I can imagine no one to whom I could more safely entrust my fiancée.”
“Run along, old dear,” said Elsie.
She turned to Falcon.
“Have you got the cash?”
“Yes, certainly,” he answered nervously, fumbling for his wallet. “Here it is. I’m sorry to be so late about it, but we managed to work in more parties than I expected, and I had no idea there’d be such a delay in getting funds transferred from Canada …”
She cut him short.
“Why apologize?” She counted the three large five-pound notes which he handed her. She folded them carefully, lovingly, and put them in her purse. “I have the money in time to buy my trousseau.”
For the moment Falcon saw Elsie not as a person, but as an institution. His first “adventure” in Canada, undertaken in a boyish attempt to defy convention, had succeeded only in stamping him indelibly with conventional prejudice. It was with a good-looking, stupid Swede.… He shuddered even now as he felt in memory, the embrace of that giant jelly-fish. For days after it he loathed not merely the thought of the woman, but also the thought of himself as her companion. And Elsie, for all her silks and her prettiness and her charm, was only an exalted member of the same passionless sisterhood. Yet, as if in contradiction, there was her fierce devotion to Stanley Hunter.
He said:
“You two are a hard pair to understand.”
Elsie demanded, crisply:
“Why? What’s queer about us? I love Stanley. And why shouldn’t he like me? Three other men proposed before he did. Nice men, too. One of them a ship’s captain …”
“I nearly proposed to you myself …”
Elsie laughed, mollified.
“Yes, I saw that coming. I had to stop you before you became too serious about raising your fallen sister, or I should have slapped your face.… However, you’re a good sort, in your way.… Hello! here’s Stanley back again.”
Captain Hunter smiled down at them like a benignant elder brother.
“Have you two young people settled your differences?”
“We have squared our accounts,” said Elsie, patting her purse.
“This time,” said Falcon, “I really must be going.”
He rose.
“Best of luck, old man,” said Captain Hunter. “I hope they’ll keep you in a training camp till the war’s over.”
“I hope not,” said Falcon. “But my very best wishes to you — to both of you …”
“Wish us long life,” said Hunter. “Not that, these days, there’s much chance of that …”
“Wish us lots of money,” said Elsie.
“Yes,” said Hunter. “A captain’s pay doesn’t go far. But fortunately Elsie is a thrifty house-keeper. She has had plenty of practice.”
Taking the cigarette from her lips, Elsie, with the same sweep of her hand, tossed a farewell kiss.
Falcon mumbled a “good-bye” and strode off.
It was depressing to bid good-bye to the one friend he had made in England. And he had promised Elsie that he would never, under any circumstances, try to get in touch with her again. She insisted on that.…
As he passed towards the door leading out of the restaurant, Falcon noticed the same tall, pale, dark-haired girl whom he had observed earlier in the entrance. She was sitting at a table with the captain of the Prince’s Royal Rifles who had spoken to her then.
Again Falcon envied the fellow. To have a girl of such grace …
He passed near them. The girl’s face showed distress. She wasn’t crying. Her head was held high. But her eyes were wet and her lips quivered.
Falcon heard the Rifleman say loudly, thickly:
“What’s the use of lecturing me? I’ll take my fun where I find it. Every man has the right …”
The Rifle Captain paused. His eyes bulged as he lurched forward. At the blow of his drunken fist, the table jumped, silver clashed against glass. Snarling, he said:
“Every man has the right to go to hell in his own way.”
* * *
While Falcon proceeded on his way towards the door, Elsie, who had been watching the incident from across the room, said to Stanley Hunter:
“Look at that Rifle Captain…. The brute! The poor girl with him is almost crying.”
“His wife, of course. Who else would put up with him?” said Hunter. “I hear she is an American and very charming.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him. He is famous.” He added that before the war the fellow was said to have resigned his commission to save himself from being kicked out of the service. “His name is Hollister.”
“Silence in the ranks!” shrilled the little button-nosed company commander to the men who plodded behind him four abreast, clashing their hobnails on cobblestones. They were in France, on the road to Festubert.
Captain Augustus Rump was the son of a moderately prosperous fish merchant in a town on the south coast of England. After a not-too-distinguished career at a far-from-famous public school — a career terminated by expulsion — young Rump was sent to Canada.
“’E’s just the sort for the colonies,” his father predicted.
But Canada was blind to his merits. For twenty years he drifted up and down the country, backed by remittances from home. He at last found fortune in the person of a lady of ample means and figure — the widow of a butcher, who prided herself on taking a step up the social ladder when she married an Englishman “of the public-school-boy type.”
A year after his marriage Rump became active in the militia. It was pleasant to escape from the authority of his wife for two weeks in the year, and to go to bed, every night, drunk. When the war broke out he found himself so completely established in the eyes of his wife, his brother officers in the militia, and himself, as “an Englishman of the public-school-boy type,” that there was nothing for him to do but play true to form and volunteer to serve. He hoped the British War Office would use the half-trained Canadian militia only for relieving Imperial troops from garrison duty. A trip to India or Egypt would be pleasant. When the First Canadian Division was ordered to France, Rump bore the blow bravely. He had been left at the base.
Later