Chapter VI

In search of Lady Wastwood, temporarily busy in that Department, Katharine later on betook herself to the cool and pleasant quarters on the Palace second floor, devoted to Secretarial Work and Accounts.

"Be good enough to explain why you cut the Staff lunch to-day?" Miss Forbis said with severity, as Trixie's white triangular face and bright green eyes came out of a big parchment ledger to smile a tired welcome at her friend.

"Because of the food!" said Lady Wastwood briefly.

"The food is ripping!" pronounced Miss Forbis.

"I admit that! It's seeing you other people eat it that I mind!"

"So you avoid meals, and live on eggs and coffee, and fresh dates, and figs and bananas and grapes and custard-apples. You'll be in for Gippy Tummy if you don't take care!"

"Precious Person, I will take care. But fruit is so simply gorgeous here!--and it reminds me of Old Diplomatic Service days at Constantinople and Calcutta, when I and Wastwood used to eat figs and mangoes and fresh-picked oranges one against the other, for bets in gloves. And neither of us died--though I suppose we ought to have. Don't go, my dinkie! I'm nearly done!"

And Trixie, coming out of the big ledger with a sheaf of pencilled extracts, arranged a huge sheet of foolscap on the blotter and began to write, while Katharine waited, looking out of the window across the lawns and the elaborately-cultivated shrubberies to the line where the blue sea,--traversed by innumerable Allied steamers,--and the bluer sky, threaded by French and British aircraft--met and mingled beyond a wide expanse of light brown sand-dunes, and a belt of casuarina-trees, and tall, waving palms:

"Report On The Working of the Red Cross Motor-Ambulance and Cars For the Month of October, 1917.

"During October our 11 Cars used for General Administrative Work and for the Conveyance of Convalescents, ran 9576 miles on 636 gallons of petrol, making an average of 15.05 miles to the gallon.

"159 Convalescent Patients were taken out for Drives, and nearly all of them given tea at the Nouzah Gardens--"

"I wonder," Katharine began, after watching the long thin hand move over the paper for a minute or so, "whether you ought to be doing that?"

Lady Wastwood's incredibly arched, impossibly-black eyebrows moved nearer her green-golden hair.

"Because my heart goes biff after a ducking, I resolutely decline to be treated as an invalid. Isn't it bad enough to know that another woman is doing my work of organisation at the Convalescent Officers' Hostel at El Naza--and doing it on rottenly unimaginative lines! A woman more than a dozen years younger,--who learned from me in the days of flapperdom how to camouflage a shiny nose? No, you mustn't try to take my work from me. It helps me to forget my unrealised visions of green lawns of rabbia shaded with palms and dotted with snow white sleeping tents, and golden haired English nurses in pale blue linen overalls, ministering to hundreds of weary War-worn men."

"But the nurses mightn't all have been golden-haired," objected Katharine.

"Peroxide," said Lady Wastwood, brainily, "is fairly cheap in Egypt. And I know a Contractor who would have supplied it in seven gallon glass jars." Her small triangular face regained its old vivacity, and her green eyes their brilliancy as she pursued: "Then, I meant, to have a restaurant built far out on the sea shore, where the surf ran up under the tables as the patients sat at lunch, or tea. Rowing, riding and fishing, camel-rides and picnics would have been part of the treatment under my _régime_. And now--" Trixie's voice wobbled a little and she cautiously dabbed with a minute lawn handkerchief at the corners of her bright green eyes--"when I think of all those Convalescent Officers and what they have lost through Me, I get pippy. To have pulled the thing through and made a success of it would have got back my credit with Wastwood and the boys."

"My dear!" Katharine began, and hesitated: "You don't believe _really_--"

Trixie dabbed her eyes again,--and dabbed her nose as an afterthought, and resolutely put away the handkerchief.

"I don't quite think Wastwood--my husband--would judge me hardly. He took me three times round the world with him, and though I was a jelly of terror all the time at sea, I somehow managed to camouflage my cowardice. It's only when I remember how I groused on that ship that I imagine I can hear my Jerry saying to his brother: 'Old Man, I don't half like to say it, but the Mums is rather letting us down ... What?' And Wastwood--"

"If Wastwood or Jerry said anything so unjust," Katharine broke out, "they ought to--to be thoroughly well spanked--both of them!" She went on as Trixie reluctantly yielded to laughter, "I don't know whether you've found it out yet,--but Nurse-Superintendent Bulleyne is in charge of No. 2 Ground Floor Ward at the Harem. And she has told Lady Donnithorpe and every one else here how--when the Incendiary Bomb from the Zeppelin dropped through the roof of No. 100, West Central Square--where you used to have your Red Cross Work Rooms,--and killed two poor orderlies, and dear Alicia Macintosh!--you went into action with sand-boxes and water-buckets, and fire-extinguishers,--and saved the place from being burned out! ..."

"That was nothing to brag about," declared Trixie. "Things that go off with a bang and a piff never much frighten me, and anyone with an iota of sense knows what to do in a fire. But shipwreck"--she shuddered "and drowning--"

Katharine saw the look on the white triangular face, and came to Trixie's side protectingly. Ever since the sinking of the Hospital Transport _Loyalty_, the terrible experience had been renewed in Lady Wastwood's nightly dreams. She looked frailer and more startlingly attenuated than ever, as she sat among the ledgers heading a fresh sheet of foolscap:

MONTANA WAR LIBRARY--AUGUST, 1917

Requisitions received ........................... 288
Hospitals, Depôts, etc., supplied ............... 73
Bound books ..................................... 1,000
Papers .......................................... 1,190

_Lent to Patients, Montana, and Auxiliary Canvas
Convalescent Camps, Boulboul and Osra_

Magazines ....................................... 1,866
Penny Stories ................................... 647
Periodicals ..................................... 8,904
Bridge, Whist and Poker ......................... 10,966
Blighties ....................................... 19,230
French and Italian Books ........................ 30
Political Economy, Works on ..................... 1
Poetry .......................................... 4
Classics ........................................ 0

GIFTS OF BOOKS FOR THE MONTH

_The Kiss That Changed The World_--By Massy
B. M'Dudgeon ............................. 1 copy

_Pond and Pink Powder_--By Gertie Stumps ... 1 copy

_Sermons For War Time_--By the Bishop of
Bayswater ............................. 100 copies

"Come now, you really have done enough. Stop at the Bishop."

"I wish he would pay the freightage on his stupid sermons. Forty piastres to pay on the parcel. And he expects to be thanked for it. Well, I'll knock off if you'll come and laze with me for a bit in the garden.... Do I shine? I feel like it!"

Trixie gathered up her long thin limbs, stood up and produced a vanity-case.

"Here and there.... But every one does.... I'm beginning to get used to it. No! I'm not coming to smoke your new Macedonian cigarettes, and have iced-tea with lemon in the garden this afternoon. You are coming to tea with me, in the house of a great friend of mine."

"Who is your friend?" asked Trixie, intent on the little circular mirror.

"A Jew."

"I rather like Jews. Where does your friend live?"

"Numero VII., Rue el Farad, Alexandria. His house," Katharine went on, quoting John Hazel, "is one of the few relics extant of the ancient city, a wonderfully-preserved example of the Roman-Egyptian Domestic Style."

"'I guess I shall admire to come,' as that American Nursing-Sister said when you asked her to drive to the Antoniadis Gardens. And is your friend like his house--a wonderfully preserved example of the ancient what-do-you-call-it style?"

Katharine answered promptly and warmly:

"He certainly is a wonderfully-preserved example of unspoiled Faith, and unstained Honour, and old-world Loyalty."

"How nice!" said Lady Wastwood, sweetly. But she said to herself: "I would never have believed it--Kathy Forbis being Kathy Forbis. But--if she is able to forget poor Edward Yaill, even for a wonderfully-preserved example of all the old-world virtues, with shiny jet-black curls and a curly profile--it would be--for her, poor girl--rather a good thing."