Chapter I

His first love; this is what his heart called her. But his head and a poignant memory offered many negations. There was, for instance, the girl who sold papers outside bounds, when fourteen-year-old effervescence converted a toast-and-water emotion into an intoxicating passion. And his best chum, Harry's sister, whom he had never seen, but whose photograph had lodged in his breast pocket--she, for a short time, had presided in that revolutionary area called his heart. He had the photograph still, with its central yellowy patches, which betrayed repeated collisions with an ardent nose above the place aimed at by his moustacheless lips. When the down began to grow like the feathers on a nestling bird, there had been someone else--a fairy all gauze and wings, a chameleon creature that changed her soft transparencies under the magic of limelight for a limited sum nightly during the pantomime season. Being somewhat of an idealist, his mind retained the fairy element in spite of rather harsh contradictions in the way of healthy appetite, indifferent pronunciation, and dubious finery. Of course he recovered the illusion, as he had recovered the measles, and, moreover, allowed his fancy a few other experimental flights before he encountered Carol Silver.

The introduction was made by Harry Burnley at the time when, let loose from Sandhurst, their movements hung on the voice of the _Gazette_; it was made with reluctance, for Harry was well versed in his friend's inflammability, and had himself for Carol more than a brotherly regard. However, the day was Sunday, and opportunities for detaching himself from Tyndall being scarce, Harry could but pursue his customary route to the Silvers' house, accompanied by his friend and guest.

But Yate Tyndall was not thrust under fire without warning.

"She's an awfully nice girl," jerked his chum, as they crunched the gravelled drive to the house; "but it's no good fooling around in that quarter--everyone knows she's gone on Rosser, some say engaged, but I don't think it's come to that."

"What's he in?" questioned Yate, soldier-like believing that every man that is a man and not a vegetable must be "in" something.

"Oh, he's waiting for the _Gazette_ as we are. He scraped in through the militia, as much to his own amazement as to everyone else's."

Yate's opinion of Miss Silver's suitor shrivelled.

He was himself a mightily clever youngster who had passed into Sandhurst straight from the schoolroom. Perhaps fate had favoured him in providing on the mother's side some German profundity and on the father's a sturdy vertebral column and proportionate wrappings of British muscle; perhaps it had not, for inside the profundity was a luxuriant growth of romance, and through the British muscle coursed subdued but dangerous fires.

"He's a good-looking chap," explained Harry--for Rosser was an old friend--"a dashing rider, and a capital shot--everyone likes him."

"Lucky fellow," grunted Yate. "I've often observed that the failures are quite the most popular."

"Because it's their popularity that does for them." Harry, who had occupied a humble position on the nethermost hem of the Sandhurst list, was conscious that his own anxiety for cavalry was due rather to the "beggars can't be choosers" system of the idle and popular ones than to a direct equestrian penchant.

"And women pet them; they'd prefer a fool who can pot rabbits and do a barn-dance to Homer himself," growled Yate.

"I expect Homer in the flesh was a bit flabby," said Harry, contemplatively rubbing the knob of his stick over an immaculate chin. At this moment the door was opened, and they were invited to follow straight through the house to where the conservatory gave on to a rose garden; Miss Silver and her mother were there reading, said the maid.

From the top of the steps Yate caught a pretty glimpse of Sabbath repose. The lawn and the standard roses were formal enough, but there were acacia trees on the left, and, under them, grouped artistically, an Indian drugget, a tea table, and long basket chairs. In one of these Carol lay curled up like the letter S, with head deep in a frilled cushion. Harry, from his point of vantage, whispered, "She reminds me of a lettuce." The soft green of a shimmering tea gown tipped with transparencies of lemon-tinted gauze was gratifying to parched eyes in over-ripe midsummer.

Yate frowned. He was not on friendly enough terms to appreciate a joke which might be overheard.

Harry proceeded to shout a jovial self-announcement, upon which she lifted her eyes from what seemed an absorbing theme.

Yate's quick glance, in the moment of introduction, observed the book was upside down. Her thoughts had evidently been fixed on something more intensely earnest still. Rosser, perhaps, he thought to himself--he had already begun to detest Rosser.

Her face brightened when she greeted them, and she commenced talking with almost excited volubility.

"I'm so glad you've come."

Harry's expression widened to a grin; his mouth was one of those expansive ones which are born grinning. It sealed for him the reputation of good nature.

"Sunday in the suburbs is such a dull thing, one feels quite asphyxiated, even to the marrow," she said, addressing herself to Harry, and veering weathercock-wise in the direction of Tyndall.

"I thought ladies saved that day for gossip and scandal?" said Yate, dropping, after the fashion of male monsters, into the smallest of chairs indicated by her. Harry had appropriated a footstool, which brought his grasshopper outlines against the green of her gown, and was already resuming his customary pastime of sucking the knob of his walking stick, a survival of babyhood which was doubtless responsible for the awning-like upper lip wherein lurked his impressive joviality.

"Oh, so they do, but at this season of the year all the women wear their old bonnets and their faded summer gowns--they're not even worth abusing."

"Then you do enjoy a little vinegar?" volunteered Yate, with eyes that declared her all honey.

"No, it's too crude; but I like spice--just a pinch or two to leaven appreciation."

Mrs Silver at this moment loomed expansively in the distance. Harry leapt up to join her, and only the acacia leaves above were eavesdroppers to the rest of the conversation. It flowed evenly, sometimes stopping against an impedimental stone of argument--occasionally gushing with iridescent bubbles from the force of energetic collision. Yate was a serious thinker and a confident talker. Carol had by nature that light quality of intellectual exuberance which, ornamental and active as foam, has no kinship with real erudition. They were speaking of Yate's career, the first steps, the coveted Victoria Cross, the laurels, and a warm blush underlay the bronze of the young soldier's cheek.

"A year ago," she said, "I was rampant with your ambition, now I cannot forget that the rungs of a soldier's ladder are made of dead men."

"What are a few lives compared with a country's greatness?"

"Only a subtraction from a multiplicity of mourners whom death rejects, the numberless babes bereft, the women starved of love."

"Surely love were a petty consideration, a paralysis to the hand of----"

"Don't you remember what Byron says?" she uttered, her glance fastening itself on the floating mists of sunset, "'Love is of man's life a thing apart, 'tis woman's whole existence.' If war costs him his life, it takes her whole existence too!"

"Yes, but--but--" stammered Yate, fighting with a wave of sentimentality deeper than any to which he had been accustomed, "women nowadays don't love in that way."

"The more fools they if they do," she answered, flippantly, coming abruptly from the clouds, and flicking at a gnat with the stem of her fan. "Have some tea, it is iced and flavoured with lemon peel, _a la Russe_."

"No tea, thanks. There is Burnley waving at us. I think he has an engagement, and means me to be off."

"Not yet, surely. If you are not booked for anything you need not hurry."

"Thanks. I should be glad to stay. I say, Harry, there's no good dragging me to the Waymans, is there?"

"Besides," interposed Carol, as her mother approached, "he has not been introduced to mamma."

"I beg your pardon," said Burnley, posing himself with mock formality, "Mrs Silver, let me present to you my friend Yate Tyndall--he's poor but pleasant."

"The fact of poverty is an unpleasantness of itself," affirmed Yate, extending a hearty hand to Carol's mother.

The expression of the salutation was scarcely valedictory, and Harry Burnley found himself doomed to solitary departure.