Array Sapper - The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile Sapper

"Ah!" said Vane quietly. "She wrote it here, did she?" He laughed a short, bitter laugh. "She was right, Mrs. Green. I had the game in my hands, and I chucked it away." He rose and stared grimly at the houses opposite. "Did she say by any chance where she was staying?"

"Ashley Gardens, she said; and if you came in, I was to let you know."

"Thank you, Mrs. Green." He turned round at length, and took up the telephone book. "You might let me have some tea. . . ."

The worthy woman bustled out of the room, shaking her head. Like Binks, she knew that something was very wrong; but the consolation of sitting in a basket and waiting for the clouds to roll by was denied her. For the Humans have to plot and contrive and worry, whatever happens. . . .

"Is that Lady Auldfearn's?" Vane took the telephone off the table.

"Oh! Lady Auldfearn speaking? I'm Captain Vane. . . . Is Miss

Devereux stopping with you? Just left yesterday, you say. . . .

Yes—I rather wanted to see her. Going to be where? At the

Mainwarings' dance to-night. Thank you. But you don't know where she

is at present. . . ."

He hung up the receiver, and sat back in his chair, with a frown. Then suddenly a thought struck him, and he pulled the letters he had received that morning out of his pocket. He extracted one in Nancy Smallwood's sprawling handwriting, and glanced through it again to make sure.

"Dine 8 o'clock—and go on to Mainwarings' dance afterwards. . . . Do come, if you can. . . ."

Vane, placing it on the table in front of him, bowed to it profoundly.

"We might," he remarked to Binks, "almost have it framed."

And Binks' quivering tail assented, with a series of thumps against his basket.

"I hope you won't find your dinner partner too dreadful." Nancy Smallwood was shooting little bird-like glances round the room as she greeted Vane that evening. "She has a mission . . . or two. Keeps soldiers from drinking too much and getting into bad hands. Personally, anything— anything would be better than getting into hers."

"I seem," murmured Vane, "to have fallen on my feet. She isn't that gargantuan woman in purple, is she?"

"My dear boy! That's George's mother. You know my husband. No, there she is—the wizened up one in black. . . . And she's going on to the Mainwarings' too—so you'll have to dance with her."

At any other time Vane might have extracted some humour from his neighbour, but to-night, in the mood he was, she seemed typical of all that was utterly futile. She jarred his nerves till it was all he could do to reply politely to her ceaseless "We are doing this, and we decided that." To her the war had given an opportunity for self-expression which she had hitherto been denied. Dreadful as she undoubtedly thought it with one side of her nature, with another it made her almost happy. It had enabled her to force herself into the scheme of things; from being a nonentity, she had made herself a person with a mission. . . .

True, the doings and the decisions on which she harped continually were for the benefit of the men he had led. But to this woman it was not the men that counted most. They had to fit into the decisions; not the decisions into them. . . .

They were inexorable, even as the laws of the Medes and Persians. And who was this wretched woman, to lay down the law? What did she know; what did she understand?

"And so we decided that we must really stop it. People were beginning to complain; and we had one or two—er—regrettable scandals."

With a start Vane woke up from his reverie and realised he had no idea what she was talking about.

"Indeed," he murmured. "Have a salted almond?"

"Don't you think we were right, Captain Vane?" she pursued inexorably. "The men are exposed to so many temptations that the least we can do is to remove those we can."

"But are they exposed to any more now than they were before?" he remarked wearily. "Why not let 'em alone, dear lady, let 'em alone? They deserve it."

At length the ladies rose, and with a sigh of relief Vane sat down next a lawyer whom he knew well.

"You're looking pretty rotten, Derek," he said, looking at Vane critically.

"I've been dining next a woman with a mission," he answered. "And I was nearly drowned in the 'Connaught.'"

The lawyer looked at him keenly. "And the two combined have finished you off."

"Oh! no. I'm reserving my final effort for the third. I'll get that at the Mainwarings'." He lifted his glass and let the ruby light glint through his port. "Why do we struggle, Jimmy? Why, in Heaven's name, does anybody ever do anything but drift? Look at that damned foolishness over the water. . . . The most titanic struggle of the world. And look at the result. . . . Anarchy, rebellion, strife. What's the use; tell me that, my friend, what's the use? And the little struggles—the personal human struggles—are just as futile. . . ."

The lawyer thoughtfully lit a cigarette. "It's not only you fellows out there, Derek," he said, "who are feeling that way. We're all of us on the jump, and we're all of us bottling it up. The result is a trial such as we had the other day, with witnesses and judge screaming at each other, and dignity trampled in the mud. Every soul in England read the case—generally twice—before anything else. You could see 'em all in the train—coming up to business—with the sheet on which it was reported carefully taken out of its proper place and put in the centre of the paper so that they could pretend they were reading the war news."

Vane laughed. "We were better than that. We took it, naked and unashamed, in order of seniority. And no one was allowed to read any tit-bit out loud for fear of spoiling it for the next man."

Jimmy Charters laughed shortly. "We're just nervy, and sensationalism helps. It takes one out of one's self for a moment; one forgets."

"And the result is mud flung at someone, some class. No matter whether it's true; no matter whether it's advisable—it's mud. And it sticks alike to the just and the unjust; while the world looks on and sneers; and over the water, the men look on and—die."

George Smallwood was pushing back his chair. "Come on, you fellows. The Cuthberts will advance from their funk-holes." . . . He led the way towards the door, and Vane rose.

"Don't pay any attention to what I've been saying, Jimmy." The lawyer was strolling beside him. "It's liver; I'll take a dose of salts in the morning."

Jimmy Charters looked at him in silence for a moment.

"I don't know what the particular worry is at the moment, old man," he said at length, "but don't let go. I'm no sky pilot, but I guess that somewhere up topsides there's a Big Controller Who understands. . . . Only at times the pattern is a bit hard to follow. . . ."

Vane laughed hardly. "It's likely to be when the fret-saw slips."

Vane strolled into the ballroom and glanced round, but there was no sign of Joan; and then he saw that there was another, smaller, room leading off the principal one where dancing seemed to be in progress also. He walked towards it, and as he came to the door he stopped abruptly and his eyes narrowed. In the middle of it Joan was giving an exhibition dance, supported by a youth in the Flying Corps.

The audience seated round the sides of the room was applauding vociferously, and urging the dancers on to greater efforts. And then suddenly Joan broke away from her partner and danced alone, while Vane leaned against the door with his jaw set in a straight, hard line. Once his eyes travelled round the faces of the men who were looking on, and his fists clenched at his sides. There was one elderly man in particular, with protruding eyes, who roused in him a perfect fury of rage. . . .

It was a wild, daring exhibition—a mass of swirling draperies and grey silk stockings. More, it was a wonderful exhibition. She was dancing with a reckless abandon which gradually turned to sheer devilry, and she began to circle the room close to the guests who lined the walls. There were two men in front of Vane, and as she came near the door he pushed forward a little so that he came in full view. For the moment he thought she was going to pass without seeing him, and then their eyes met. She paused and faltered, and then swinging round sank gracefully to the floor in the approved style of curtsey to show she had finished.