*chapter Ii*

*DAME NATURE INTERVENES*

“I can’t bear it!—I won’t bear it!” Margot reiterated. With her tumbled hair, swollen eyes, pink uptilted nose, and the little mouth and chin that quivered with each sobbing breath intaken, she looked absurdly babyish for her twenty years, as she vowed that wild horses shouldn’t drag her to Longchamps, and railed against the injustice of Fate.

“None of my married friends have had such rotten luck!” she asserted. She stamped upon the velvety carpet and flashed at Franky a glance of imperious appeal. “Not Tota Stannus, or Cynthia Charterhouse, or Joan Delabrand, or anybody! Then, why me? That’s what I want to know? After all the mascots I’ve worn and carried about with me… Gojo and Jollikins and the jade tree-frog, and the rest! … Every single one given me by a different woman who’d been married for years and never had a baby! This very day I’ll smash the whole lot!”

“By the Great Brass Hat! …”

Franky exploded before he could stop himself, and laughed until the tears coursed down. So “Gojo,” the black velvet kitten, and “Jollikins,” the fat, leering, naked thing that sat and squinted over its pot-belly at its own huge, shapeless feet, and all the array of gadgets and netsukis crowding Margot’s toilette-table and secretaire, down to “Pat-Pat,” the bog-oak pig, and “Ti-Ti,” the jade tree-frog, were so many insurances against the Menace of Maternity. By Jove! women were regular children… And Margot … Nothing but a baby, this poor little Margot—going, in spite of Jollikins and Gojo, to have a baby of her own.

“What is one to believe? Whom is one to trust in? …”

“‘Trust in.’ … My best child, you don’t mean that you believed those women when they told you that such twopenny gadgets could work charms of—that or any other kind?”

“Indeed, indeed they do! Tota Stannus was perfectly serious when she came to my boudoir one night at the Club, about a week before our—the wedding… She said—I can hear her now; ‘Well, old child, you’re to be married on Wednesday, and of course you know the ropes well enough not to want any tips from me… Still—‘”

“That wasn’t overwhelmingly flattering,” Franky commented, “from a married woman twice your age. What else did she say?”

“She said I must be aware,” went on Margot, “that a woman who wanted to keep her friends and her figure, simply couldn’t afford to have kids.”

“And you—“

Franky no longer battled with the grin that would have infuriated Margot. Something had wiped it from his face.

“I said she was frightfully kind, but that I was quite well-posted—everything was O.K., and she needn’t alarm herself… And she said, ‘Oh! if you’ve arranged things with Franky, jolly sensible of him! Too often a man who is open and liberal-minded before marriage develops gerontocracie afterwards, don’t you know? …’ And I told her that you were the very reverse of narrow-minded—and she kissed me and wished me happiness, and went away. And the maid knocked later on to say Mrs. Stannus sent her apologies for having forgotten to leave her little gift. And the little gift was, Jollikins. And my special pals joined in to stand me a farewell dinner, and they drowned my enamel Club badge in a bowl of Maraschino punch, and fished it up and gave me this diamond and enamel one, mounted as a tie-brooch, instead. And every married woman brought me a mascot… I had Gojo from Joan Delabrand, and Ti-Ti from Cynthia Charterhouse, and the jade tree-frog from Patrine Saxham, and the carved African bean from Rhona Helvellyn, and—“

Franky objected:

“Neither Patrine Saxham nor Rhona Helvellyn happen to be married women!”

“Perhaps not; but Patrine is an Advanced Thinker, and Rhona Helvellyn is a Militant Suffragist.”

Franky commented:

“As for Suffragists, that Club of yours is stiff with ’em. Gassing about their Cause… I loathe the noisy crowd!”

“Then you loathe me! I share their convictions!” Margot proclaimed. “I hold the faith that Woman’s Day will dawn with the passing of the Bill that gives us the Vote…”

“My best child, you wouldn’t know what to do with the Vote if you had it.”

Margot retorted:

“I cannot expect my husband to treat me as a reasonable being while the State classes his wife with infants and imbeciles.”

It will be seen that a very pretty squabble was on the point of developing. Fortunately, at this juncture a valet of the chambers knocked at the door to say that a waiter from the restaurant begged to know whether Milord and Miladi would take lunch a la carte, or prefer something special in their own apartments?

“Tell him no!” wailed Miladi, to the unconcealed consternation of Milord, who had a healthy appetite.

“Must keep up your pecker—never say die!” Franky, stimulated by the pangs of hunger, developed an unsuspected talent for diplomacy. “Look here! We must talk over things quietly and calmly. I’ll order a taxi, and we’ll chuff to that jolly little restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne—where you can grub in the open air under a rose-pergola—and order something special and odd—“

Since Eve’s day, this lure has never failed to catch a woman. Margot began to dry her eyes. Then she asked Franky to ring.

“Three times, please… That’s for Pauline; I want another handkerchief.”

“Have two or three while you’re about it,” advised Franky, obeying, returning, and perching on the arm of the settee. “And bathe your eyes a bit, have a swab-over of the pinky cream-stuff, and a dab of powder.” He brushed some pale mealy traces from his right-arm sleeve and coat-lapel, ending, “And put on your swankiest hat and come along to Nadier’s.”

“Could we get anything to eat at Nadier’s that we couldn’t get here—or in London, at the Tarlton or the Rocroy? …”

“Stacks of things! For instance—Canard a la presse… They squeeze the juice out of the duck, you twig, with a silver kind of squozzer, and cook it on a chafing-dish under your nose. Look here! …” Franky, now desperate, produced his watch. “All the cushiest little tables will be taken if you don’t look sharp.”

“Not on the day of the Grand Prix!”

Franky retorted, spurred to maddest invention by the pangs of hunger:

“My best child, there are about a hundred thousand wealthy Americans in Paris who don’t care a red cent about racing, while with most of ’em—to eat canard a la presse at Nadier’s in the Bois de Boulogne in the June season—is a—kind of religious rite!”

So Margot disappeared to dab her eyes and apply the prescribed touches of perfumed cream and powder, and duly reappeared, crowned with the most marvellous hat that ever promenaded the ateliers of the Maison Blin on the head of a milliner’s mannequin.

You are to imagine the tiny thing and her Franky seated—not in one of the smart automobiles that wait for hire outside Spitz’s, but in a little red taxi, borne along with the broad double stream of traffic of every description that ceaselessly roared east and west under the now withering red-and-white blossoms of the chestnut-trees of the Avenue of the Champs Elysees, inhaling the stimulating breezes—flavoured with hot dust and petrol, Seine stink, sewer-gas, coffee, patchouli, fruit, Regie tobacco and roses—of Paris in the end of June.

All the world and his wife might be at Longchamps, but here were people enough and to spare. Luxurious people in costly automobiles or carriages drawn by shiny high-steppers. People in little public taxis, men and women on motor-bicycles and the human-power kind. People of all stamps and classes, clustered like bees outside the big, smelly, top-heavy auto-buses, soon to vanish from the Paris avenues and boulevards, with the red and yellow and green-flagged taxis, to play their part in the transport and nourishment of the Army of France. People of all ranks and classes on foot, though as of old the midinette with her big cardboard bandbax, the military cadet, or the student of Art or Medicine, the seminarist and the shaggy-haired and bearded man with the deadly complexion, the slouch hat, the aged paletot and the soiled and ragged crimson necktie that distinguish the milder breed of Anarchist, made up the crowd upon the sidewalks, liberally peppered with the sight-seeing stranger of British, American, or Teuton nationality—the brilliantly-complexioned, gaily-plumaged, loudly-perfumed lady of the pavements; the gendarme and the National Guard, and—with Marie or Jeannette proudly hanging on his elbow—Rosalie in her black-leather scabbard dangling by his side, his crimson kepi tilted rakishly—the blue-coated, red-trousered French infantryman, the poilu whom we have learned to love.

The Bois was not seething with fashionable life as it would be towards the sunset hour. The dandy Clubmen, the smart ladies, had gone to Longchamps with the four-in-hands. Polo was going on near the Pont de Suresnes, the band of a regiment of Cuirassiers was playing in the Jardin d’Acclimatation, and Hungarian zithers and violins discoursed sweet music on a little gilded platform at the axial point of Nadier’s open-air restaurant—which is shaped like a half-wheel, with pergolas of shower-roses and Crimson Ramblers radiating from the gilded band-stand to the outer circle of little white tables at which one can lunch or dine in fine weather under a light screen of leaves and blossoms, beneath which the green canvas awnings can be drawn when it comes on to rain.

The tables were crowded with French people taking late dejeuner, and English, Germans, and German-Americans having lunch. The gravelled courtyard before the terrace was packed with showy automobiles.

If canard a la presse did not grace the meal supplied to Franky and Margot on Nadier’s terrace, the potage printaniere and ecrevisses and a blanquette d’agneau were exquisitely cooked and served. Asparagus and a salad of endive followed, and by the time they had emptied a bottle of Chateau Yquem and the omelette soufflee had given place to Peches Melba, Margot had smiled several times and laughed once.

She was so dainty and sweet, so brilliant a little human humming-bird, that the laughing, chattering, feasting crowd of smartly or extravagantly dressed people gathered about the other trellis-screened tables under Nadier’s rose-pergola sent many a curious or admiring glance her way. And Franky was very proud of his young wife, and theirs had been undeniably a love-match; yet in spite of the good dishes and the excellent Chateau Yquem, little shivers of chilly premonition rippled over him from time to time. He had got to speak out—definitely decline, in the interests of Posterity, to permit interference on the part of Margot’s Club circle in his private domestic affairs… How to do it effectively yet inoffensively was a problem that strained his brain-capacity. Yet—again in the interests of Posterity—Franky had never previously interested himself in Posterity—the thing had to be done. He refused Roquefort, buttered a tiny biscuit absently, put it down undecidedly, and as the waiter whisked his plate away—conjured crystal bowls of tepid rose-water and other essentials from space, and vanished in search of dessert—he spoke, assuming for the first time in his five months’ experience of connubial life the toga of marital authority.

“I think, do you know, Kittums”—Kittums was Margot’s pet name—“that it will be best to face the music!”

“Connu!” Margot shrugged a little, widely opening her splendid brown eyes, “But what music?”

“The”—Franky took the plunge—“the cradle-music, if you will have it!”

Margot’s gasp of dismay, and the indignant fire of a stare that was quenched in brine, awakened Franky to the fact of his having failed in tactics. The return of the waiter with a pyramid of superb strawberries and a musk-melon on cracked ice alone stemmed the outburst of the pent-up flood of reproach. Entrenched behind the melon, Franky waited. The waiter again effaced himself, and Margot said from behind another handkerchief:

“Oh, how could you! … I never dreamed that I should live to hear you speak to me in that way.”

Over the melon, whose rough green quartered rind had delicate white raised traceries all over it, suggesting outline maps of countries in Fairyland, Franky curiously regarded his wife. He said:

“Why are you and all your friends so funky of—what’s only a natural phe—what do you call it? … What do men and women marry for, if it isn’t to have—children? … Perhaps you’ll answer me?”

“What do people marry for?” Margot regarded him indignantly over the neglected pyramid of luscious, tempting strawberries, “To—to be happy together—to have a clinking time!” Her voice shook. “And this is to be a gorgeous season. Balls—balls! right on from now to the end of July—then from the autumn all through winter. Period Costume Balls, reviving the modes, music, and manners of Ancient Civilisations—Carthagenian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Gothic—got up and arranged by the Committees of the Cercle Moderne, here in Paris, and in London by the New Style Club… Tony Guisseguignol and Paul Peigault and their set are busy designing the dresses and decorations—nothing like them will ever have been seen! And—Peigault says—Tango and the Maxixe are to be chucked to the little cabbages. A new dance is coming from Sao Paulo that will simply wipe them out… And now—just when I was looking forward—when everything was to have been so splendid—“

The shaking voice choked upon a note of anguish. Franky had picked up the melon, quite unconsciously, and was balancing it. At this juncture he gripped the green globe with both hands, and said, summoning all his courage to meet the agonised appeal of Margot’s tear-drenched eyes:

“Look here. This is—strict Bridge… Do you loathe ’em—the kiddies—so horribly that the idea of having any is hateful to you? Or is it—not only the—the veto it puts on larking and kickabout and—the temporary disfigurement—you’re afraid of—but the—the—the inevitable pain?” He glanced round cautiously and looked back again at his wife, saying in a low voice: “Nobody’s listening… Tell me frankly…” He waited an instant, and then said in an urgent whisper. “Answer me! … For God’s sake, tell the frozen truth, Margot!”