The Light Heart (31 page)

“Until after the Twelfth, anyway,” the Duke answered for her, and this was news to Rosalind. “They’ll be coming up to my place in Scotland then, I hope.”

“Indeed, yes,” Prince Conrad assured them, smiling. “I look forward to some Scottish shooting again, and have brought my guns.”

“Oh, good,” said Charles. “Time enough to see something of you, then. How does it look to you hereabouts?” His eyes came back to Rosalind. “Pretty much the same?”

“It looks like heaven to me!” she said, laughing up at him. “I had no idea how homesick I was!”

“Mustn’t forget all about us, you know,” said Charles easily, and those were the last words he addressed to her that evening.

“Such a nice man,” the Duchess remarked when he had returned to Lady Shadwell’s table. “High time he married, though. Is that Selma Gluckston on his right? Would she do, do you think?”

“Usen’t the name to be Gluckstein?” asked a brittle little woman seated next to the Duke, who replied with dignified
reproof
, “Perhaps it was, my dear Lily, but her father makes much the best motor car England has yet succeeded in turning out.”

“Well, she
is
quite pretty,” conceded the rebuked one amiably. “This is the third time in a month I’ve seen her with Charles, which is pretty drastic for him, isn’t it, he usually plays the field, rather.”

“But surely she is a Jewess?” remarked Prince Conrad in surprise. “Surely his people would raise objections to so unsuitable a connection?”

There was a longish pause. Then the Duke said obtusely, “Oh, you mean because of the motor cars. We are becoming very broadminded in England about families in trade, you know, nowadays. Have to be. That’s where all the money is, what?”

“I should like to see Charles settled,” said the Duchess smoothly and with nothing but kindliness in her tone, before His Highness could explain that he had not been referring to motor cars. “He would make some woman a good husband. I suppose it might as well be Selma, and no doubt she’s willing enough!”

“Steady on!” said the Duke genially. “You might leave Charles something to say about it!”

“I’m afraid I shall have to, my dear,” his wife replied in all good humour, and the subject was adroitly changed.

But by then Rosalind’s hands were cold and unsteady, for one of them had lain briefly in Charles’s big warm grip, and she was thinking, Thank God they’ve all forgotten, if they ever knew—and so has Charles—so has Charles—and she
is
a very pretty girl….

At the Ritz on Monday Charles and Phoebe began with harmless gossip about who had got married or engaged or fallen out of love since last she was in London, and whose sisters and daughters were coming out this year, and whether Phoebe would see the Coronation Procession best from Archie’s seats on the island in Parliament Square or from the War Office seats near Admiralty Arch, and what were the prospects for Goodwood—and then Charles said, turning a glass of Chablis in his big fingers, “I suppose you know that Oliver is pretty well done for.”

Again Phoebe’s insides went into a cold lump.

“How do you mean?” she asked faintly.

“Now don’t try to put on a show, my girl, I know all about it. Years ago, when you and Rosalind both left England in the same week, Oliver and I had to sweat it out together.”

“You knew about my letter—afterwards?”

“Yes, even that. You
were
a blazing idiot, weren’t you!”

“Well, if it’s any comfort to you, I’ve paid for it ever since.”

“
You’ve
paid for it!” said Charles with rude scorn. “What about Oliver, married to a she-basilisk who has damaged his chances of promotion by her vicious tongue, and made him a social liability in half the houses in London!”

“Oh, Charles, it can’t be as bad as that! Virginia said Maia was terribly jealous, but I can’t—can’t believe—”

“You’ll find out,” Charles promised with an awful sort of satisfaction.

“Would it be better if I arranged not to see him at all?”

“I suppose he could bear that too,” said Charles bitterly. “It’s about all that’s left for him to come up against. And by now he ought to be used to the idea that you’re a coward.”

“
Charles!
” It was an incredulous yelp of pain.

“Forgive me for being frank,” said Charles with irony.

“I suppose you mean it will make it easier for him if he sees me again now,” she suggested coldly, and Charles grinned.

“Not in the sense that you aren’t still a very desirable young woman,” he admitted. “But to know you are in London and not to see you at all—” He shook his head. “I can only judge by myself, of course.”

“Were those few minutes at the Savoy with Rosalind really any good to you?”

“You write books about people, don’t you?” said Charles. “It’s your business to know things like that, I thought.”

She swallowed that meekly, and said, “Virginia thought I’d better try not to dance with him at Winifred’s ball.”

“Nonsense,” said Charles.

“She said Maia might make one of her scenes.”

“Let her,” said Charles. “He’d have got the dance.”

Phoebe lifted candid, troubled eyes.

“Worth it, you think?”

“Stop fishing,” said Charles. “You’re more beautiful and more disturbing than you were ten years ago. He’s got the right to make what he can of that. God knows his pleasures are few enough these days. But you’re not to pity him, you know. He isn’t sorry for himself.”

“He was so
gay,
” Phoebe said softly, looking back. “That’s what I remember best about him. He always made you feel gay too. It was just something inside him that
lifted
.”

“He’s still got it.” Charles refilled her glass, and his own, and Phoebe raised hers, looking at him directly over the top of it.

“Do you want to hear about Heidersdorf now?”

“May I?” he asked in his gentle voice, and his eyes were unabashed and honest.

So Phoebe told him, with brutal simplicity, and he listened almost without comment, and without too obviously
neglecting
his food, for Charles never did anything that was obvious, especially since he belonged to the War Office. None of it was really surprising to him, for he had spent most of his
holidays during the past nine years travelling in Germany, and had made a point of learning to understand the nuances of the language, which he now spoke fluently, and his observation of the German character had prepared him for most of what he heard from Phoebe. He had always been careful to travel as an inconspicuous Englishman with an interest in picturesque ruins and spectacular views and quaint villages. He had avoided the diplomatic circles in Berlin and the big princely houses and the international set. Instead, he took rooms in odd, inexpensive places, and conversed respectfully with local authorities and bigwigs who condescended to him, and he asked polite
questions
and never argued with the answers, for fear of drying up the subject before he had learned all he could.

At first it was just a sort of hobby with him, a labour of love, a rather pitiful effort to acquaint himself with Rosalind’s new surroundings and see for himself what she was up against. Then one day in London he had talked too much to a man at the club—an unusual thing for Charles, but it was raining and he was lonely—and soon he was sent for by his superiors, who asked him if he would care to go in for it seriously, now that he had started. Charles pricked up his ears. And that was how Captain, now Major, Laverham, VC, Royal Horse Guards (Blue), seconded to duty at the War Office, became attached as it were in his spare time to Intelligence.

So he listened attentively, but without surprise, to what Phoebe had to say about life at the
Schloss,
recognizing in her a keen observer and a good reporter, waiting patiently for her to tell him without prompting the things he wanted to know. And finally she asked him the question he was expecting.

“Charles, what’s all this about a war?”

“I’m afraid it’s got to come,” he sighed, and Phoebe stared at him.

“But those are Conny’s very words!” she gasped. “How can you all just sit round
saying
that? Can’t you get busy and stop it?”

“Does he want it stopped?” said Charles.

“Yes, I think he does,” Phoebe said consideringly. “I think he’s sorry. But he’s the only one I saw in Germany that I could say that of.”

Charles nodded.

“And he isn’t sorry enough to do anything about it,” he remarked.

“But aren’t
you?
”

“We in England can’t stop it,” said Charles. “We can only batten down and prepare to ride it out.”

“You hear a lot about submarines in Germany,” Phoebe told him. “Could they really sink a battleship?”

“They never have,” said Charles cheerfully. “But then, we must remember that they’ve never tried, mustn’t we! It’s our fleet that worries Berlin, of course, so they dream of something that can destroy it. Personally, I think the real trouble in any future war would come from the air.”

“Malvida said once,” Phoebe recalled suddenly, “that Cuno said that Zeppelins could cross the Channel to London carrying bombs.”

“Easily,” said Charles.

“And when I said that sounded as though the fighting would be in England, which was nonsense, she
closed
up
, as though she might have given something away, which I thought was queer, because usually they brag.”

“Very interesting,” said Charles. “And did you hear
anything
about guns mounted on aeroplanes?”

“Yes, I did, once. In connection with the autumn manoeuvres. Are they really going to try that?”

“Oddly enough, it works.” At this point Charles paused to give minute attention to the menu the waiter handed him for the choosing of a sweet. When that was disposed of—

“And I heard something about balloon-destroying guns carried on motor cars,” said Phoebe, raking her memory. “Are they new?”

“They are if they can keep up with an aeroplane going at forty-five miles an hour,” said Charles.

“You mean shoot down an aeroplane from the ground like a
pheasant?
”

“While it does its best at the same time to drop a bomb on you,” he nodded.

“Charles, what kind of world is it going to be? I’m getting frightened. No country could survive a three-dimensional war like that! It would be wiped out in no time. There’s no defence!”

“That’s what they said when gunpowder was invented to replace the bow and arrow. Thick castle walls and slits out of which to pour boiling oil suddenly became obsolete—and there was no defence against the terrible cannon ball. But nobody’s been wiped out yet.” He grinned reassuringly and offered her a silver plate of little iced cakes. “We are witnessing the birth of a new era—the air age. Try one of these, anyway.
You’re
all right, so long as the Atlantic doesn’t dry up!”

“But I don’t want to be all right if England isn’t!” said Phoebe, realizing it with dismay. “If anything happens to England I want to be here. I’ll come back and fight too.”

“It’s still a man’s army, me dear, thanks all the same.”

“I could nurse. My grandmother Louise was a nurse in Richmond all through the worst of it in ’sixty-four.”

“And did she carry life-and-death messages in her hoop and save the city?” he asked lightly.

“That was Cousin Eden,” said Phoebe without smiling. “And it was morphine she carried in her hoop, for the wounded And the city was taken.”

Charles looked up at her from his coffee in astonishment, for some of the tragedy and fortitude of the Confederacy were in the simple words. Phoebe had grown up on the defeated side of that long war, where the bitter knowledge formed part of
her heritage. We didn’t win—we lost—we were beaten. Old wounds had not healed in the South. Poverty and sorrow and humiliation lay at the back of Phoebe’s childhood, because they had lost. Beautiful Great-aunt Felicity had died in
Richmond
of the fever—Great-uncle Ransom had had to go on
without her, and without his livelihood, and his savings—Cousin Barry, another legend to Phoebe, had been killed at seventeen—Cousin Dabney, who was one of the idols of her early youth, had lost a leg—Father himself had been long disabled by a Yankee sabre-stroke in the shoulder—Farthingale plantation had burned to the ground but Great-uncle Lafe always loved to tell of its great days when he was a boy—but Richmond was taken—all that gallant effort and sacrifice, all that agony willingly endured—but they had lost….

“I’m sorry,” said Charles gently. “It seems so long ago and far away. But not to you, I realize that. Careless of me.”

“England always wins her wars,” Phoebe rallied. “Except one.”

“Except one,” he agreed, and they laughed together over Yorktown, Virginia, 1781.

Phoebe felt a rush of tenderness for Charles, who was such a lamb, and who knew so much more about everything, she was sure, then he let on. Since Bracken was not there, and Oliver was denied to her, she decided to confide in Charles.

“Does it seem to you at all mysterious, the way Conny was sent all-of-a-sudden to the Coronation?” she asked, and with satisfaction felt his full attention swing alertly into focus.

“Was it sudden?” he said only, and she told him how the apparently unexpected summons to Berlin had come in the midst of a sacred family visit, and how abruptly a departure for England had ensued, and how unrestricted as to time and whereabouts His Highness appeared to be, now that he had arrived, for he was prepared to stay all summer while Rosalind saw her old friends and enjoyed herself.

Charles seemed to be waiting for her to go on.

“Well, that’s all,” she finished rather lamely. “But it did occur to me the last night at the
Schloss
that it was exactly the kind of thing that always brings Bracken’s ears up. Do you think—by any chance—he’s in the Secret Service?”

“Bracken?” Charles asked stupidly.

“No.
Conny.
Charles, you weren’t listening!”

“I was listening very hard indeed.” Charles studied her a moment, as though making up his mind about something. “My ears are up too, hadn’t you noticed?”

“Will you help me, then?”