CHAPTER VII
KHAKI FEVER
It was high noon at Palm Beach, and a rolling chair, propelled by a coal-black gentleman in white raiment, and containing an obvious Englishman in blue serge, was proceeding along a pleasant thoroughfare known as Sunset Avenue towards the sea.
The charioteer leaned forward confidentially, and inquired:
‘Do Ah stop in at the Tilford home, Captain?’
‘You do, George.’
‘Ah suppose she will be all wait’n’ on de po’ch,’ suggested George—‘like yesterday, Captain?’
George's surmise was correct. Mrs. Tilford was waiting—a very beautiful vision under a big tulle hat, through the wide brim of which the filtered sun shine irradiated a perfect oval face, a wide, sensitive, and most attractive mouth, and a pair of appealing blue eyes. Altogether a woman, one would say, who required a man to lean upon. Truth to tell, there had never been any lack of applicants for this post, but Geraldine Tilford, a widow of more than three years’ standing—ever since her twenty-second birthday, in fact—had so far kept the vacancy unfilled.
‘Good-morning, Captain Conway!’ she cried, with a smile which to another woman would have betrayed a certain lack of composure. ‘You didn't forget your promise, then?’
‘There are some promises,’ replied the gentleman addressed, handing her into the chair, ‘which are easier to keep than others. Bathing Beach, George!’
‘Talking of promises,’ resumed Mrs. Tilford, as they bowled along in the pleasant intimacy of their conveyance, ‘have you forgotten the promise you made to me last night?’
‘Forgotten it? It kept me awake till six o'clock this morning!’
‘But you’ll keep it?’
‘Must I? The idea terrifies me. I don’t so much mind standing up and delivering a discourse to the Women’s Uplift Guild at Clam Neck, Arkansaw—’
‘Don’t you get fresh about our American place names,’ Mrs. Tilford warned him playfully; ‘or I'll start right in with something about Marjoribanks, and Cholmondeley, and Kirkcudbright!’
Evidently the pair were on the best of terms. Dale Conway smiled disarmingly.
‘Sorry! But you know what I mean. To hand out that line of talk to a Palm Beach audience—sophisticated, well-dined, and slightly—’ he hesitated.
‘“Lit up,” is our current idiom,’ said his companion gently.
‘Thank you—“lit up”—in the ballroom at The Breakers—well, it calls for a degree of physical courage which I don’t possess.’
‘Courage?’
Mrs. Tilford’s long eyelashes fluttered upward for a moment in a glance of genuine admiration. ‘Captain Conway, I know your record!’
‘I shall begin to be sorry I ever told you that rotten story,’ said Conway, frowning. ‘I don’t know why I did: I've never done such a thing to any one before.’
‘That’s why I prize it so. I know it makes you all wrought up and nervous having bouquets thrown at you; and I just love throwing them. But I promise not to do it any more in public, if you will let me do it occasionally in private. There!’
‘Don’t be silly, please,’ replied Conway severely. ‘Now, let us get back to the lecture. You really want me to give it?’
‘Yes—just to please me. Will you?’
For a moment Conway's eyes held Geraldine’s, with a boldness somewhat at variance with his recent expressions of diffidence.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I will.’
Mrs. Tilford clapped her hands like a child.
‘Oh, how lovely!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ll let me pay the overhead expenses, won’t you, just as a little contribution to the cause we all stand for? I'll have them drape the platform with the Allied flags—and the American flag, too, neutral or not! I'll get old Mr. Storey to preside; he’s about the most pro-British thing on two legs around here; and we’ll charge five dollars admission, and you shall send it all to one of those perfectly wonderful War Relief Funds of yours; and I’ll give just a tiny little dinner-party for you first, and a little informal supper after, and I’ll invite—oh, it will be too exciting!’
And Geraldine Tilford, who, as the reader will doubtless have gathered, was a lady of an incurably romantic disposition, suffering in addition from an acute attack of a malady epidemic in those distant days, but now conspicuously extinct—Khaki Fever—laid an impulsive little hand upon Conway's sleeve.
Conway promptly covered the hand with his own, as a skilful card-player covers a trick.
‘How many people will be at the informal supper?’ he asked.
‘Well, let me see. My dinner-table only holds twelve, but we needn't sit down. Twenty or thirty, maybe.’
‘Will you do me a favour?’
‘I’ll say I will. What?’
‘Reduce the number.’
‘To how many?’
Conway, bending his head closer, named a figure.
‘Oh!’ said Geraldine, fluttered: ‘I shall have to think about that!’
‘To please me?’
‘Well, I’ll see’—nervously. ‘Why, hello, here we are at the bathing pavilion!’ She jumped out of her chair, obviously relieved at the respite. ‘I’ll run in here and fix myself for the beach. That's the men's entrance, along by the steps. I’ll meet you here in fifteen minutes.’
She was as good as her word. A quarter of an hour later, a slim, piquant figure, sheathed from head to foot in a bathing creation of shimmering black taffeta, covered by a white wrap and set off by a head-band of many hues, she joined Conway, less ambitiously arrayed, at the rendezvous, and the pair picked their way down the crowded, babbling beach.
‘Now I must tell you,’ Mrs. Tilford said, ‘about the people you are going to meet to-day.’
Conway groaned.
‘Another new bunch?’
‘Yes. Don’t forget you’re a lion! I want to have you know everybody here. Old Mr. Storey is one. He's going to introduce you at your lecture, as I said; only he doesn’t know it yet. Then there is his daughter Virginia—just about the cunningest thing that ever bobbed her hair; and her beau, Roger Marvin; he's crazy about her. Then Baby Studfield; I thought you'd like to meet one of our genuine sub-deb types. Then Mrs. Wynne. She’s a widow, but an older one than I am. She lives on Mount Vernon Street in Boston, but she doesn’t allow that to make any difference. And then there's Colonel Winter. But of course you know him.’
‘I can’t say I do. Should I?’
‘Why, yes. He’s in the British Army.’
‘Oh!’ Conway nodded his head thoughtfully, then asked:
‘Do you know his regiment?’
‘No. Does it matter so much?’
‘Yes, in one way. The British Army now contains about five million men, and I’m afraid I don’t know more than about half of them; so corroborative details are welcome. Moreover, I have run across so many British colonels in my lecturing travels over here, who have never been nearer to the Western Front than the Knickerbocker Bar, that—well, one has to be careful, don’t you know!’
Mrs. Tilford laughed.
‘That’s a good one on you,’ she said. ‘Colonel Winter is right out of your British Embassy at Washington. He’s a very, very great friend of mine. He's some kind of dyed-in-the-wool attaché there. I shall enjoy introducing you to one another. It's such fun seeing two Englishmen meet for the first time; they’re just like a pair of strange dogs.’
‘British Embassy, eh?’ said Conway quickly. ‘That’s different.’
‘Oh, Gerr-ee!’
Shrill cries assailed them from a neighbouring group, and a moment later Conway found himself being presented, in the dexterous American fashion, to a grey-haired lady with a whimsical smile, who proved to be that Mrs. Wynne who refused to be dazzled by the fact that she resided on Mount Vernon Street, Boston; Mr. Storey, an old gentleman with a fierce white moustache and the bearing of a Kentucky colonel—as a matter of fact, he was a bank president from New York; two undeniably attractive young ladies whose combined ages must have fallen considerably short of forty years; a lithe, limber American boy of about twenty-one, obviously bound hand and foot to the chariot wheels of the blonder young lady; and Colonel Winter, who proved to be a middle-aged British officer, with a quiet manner and a ‘tin arm’—the fruit of participation two and a half years ago in the Battle of Le Cateau.
Having absorbed the newcomers, the party settled down again upon the warm sand. Dale Conway found himself sitting between Mrs. Wynne and Geraldine Tilford. Opposite him, under a large white umbrella, reclined Miss Virginia Storey—the exponent of cunning and bobbed hair.
‘Well, Captain Conway,’ inquired that young lady, with the engaging aplomb of youthful America, ‘are you enjoying Palm Beach?’.
Conway laughed.
‘If I had a tail,’ he said, ‘I should wag it.’
‘Fine! And what strikes you as the most attractive thing about the place?’
‘You.’
‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ said Miss Storey frankly; ‘only I was afraid you'd say Gerry instead!’
‘I meant all of you,’ explained Conway—‘especially in your present setting.’
‘You mean this sort of thing?’ Virginia indicated her bathing costume—a cherry-coloured tunic, with glossy silk stockings and sandals to match, set off by a black scarf about her fair hair, and a black sash.
‘Yes. But do you mean to say that you go into the water in all that elaborate gear?’
‘Why, certainly. We'd get arrested if we didn't.’
‘You’ve got to remember, Captain Conway,’ said Mrs. Wynne, ‘that the Pilgrim Fathers were very austere old gentlemen. They established the tradition that it is indelicate to display the human skin to any considerable extent. That’s why in these days American girls go bathing in silk stockings.’
Conway chuckled.
‘If you ask me, Mrs. Wynne,’ he replied, ‘I should say that the Pilgrim Fathers were neither so austere nor so fatherly as they looked. There’s nothing enhances an ankle like a silk stocking—and in the matter of ankles the rest of the world has to hand it to the American girl, every time.’
‘I adore this man,’ announced Baby Studfield, simply. ‘I know he's your beau, Gerry, dear, but I’ve got to say it.’
Most Englishmen would have been embarrassed by this frank and public bestowal of a virgin affection; but Conway merely laughed.
‘The plaything of an hour,’ he said, shaking his head—‘that’s all we are! In a few months your own countrymen will be in uniform; and Colonel Winter and I will be thrown aside like broken toys—broken tin soldiers! Eh, Colonel?’
Colonel Winter, thus addressed, murmured something noncommittal, and reddened. This was the first time he had met Captain Conway in the flesh. He had heard rumours of him—of his success as a war-lecturer in the Middle West, of his charm of manner and winning personality. But Winter was a Regular soldier of the old breed, with certain very definite ideas upon the subject of good form and the correct attitude of an officer and a gentleman towards ladies; and this man, for all his charm and personality—and certainly he had both—struck him as a rather free-and-easy bounder. A bounder! Yes, that was why he disliked him so. The fact that Mrs. Tilford and Conway had arrived at the beach in the same chair for three mornings running had, of course, nothing to do with the case. The Colonel suspected that Mrs. Wynne shared his opinion; possibly old Storey, too.
But here he was wrong. For the moment Mr. Storey's patriotism outbalanced his sense of values.
‘Uniform?’ he cried. ‘You’re right there, Captain Conway. This time next year Uncle Sam will be holding up his head again, because there'll be a million of his uniforms in the trenches with American boys inside them!’
‘That'll take quite a little responsibility off Brother's shoulders,’ observed Virginia.
‘Your brother?’ asked Conway.
‘Yes. He's been serving in the Royal British Artillery quite a while. He had to take an oath of allegiance to King George to get in, too! You'll admit that’s going some for an American citizen!’
‘It’s magnificent,’ said Conway. ‘You must be very proud of him.’
‘Well,’ interposed Miss Studfield stoutly, ‘I guess we shall be starting in with some Royal Artillery of our own soon—made up of nothing but little old brothers. It’ll be a wonderful time!’
‘I wonder!’ said Mrs. Wynne, turning to Colonel Winter.
The Colonel nodded. He had seen the youth of another nation on fire for this very cause, and he knew the difference between anticipation and reality.
‘Still,’ said Conway, skilfully diverting the conversation from its sombre trend—‘promise that if America comes into the War you won’t do one thing.’
‘What's that?’ asked several people.
‘Send us lecturers. I know we deserve no mercy, after what we have done to you; but promise!’
‘He’s prospecting for an orchid for himself now,’ announced Baby Studfield.
‘No; I’m serious. Of course dull, respectable, semi-official bores like myself don't do any particular harm or good; but this great land of yours is simply stiff with impostors and confidence men—most of them from London, I regret to say, though Canada has done her bit—exploiting the American national passion for information.
I expect you have rounded up a few, Colonel, from the Embassy.’
‘Not many,’ replied Winter. ‘We have no authority. All we can do is to warn the American police, and even they can’t act unless the man does something that brings him under the criminal code, which he is usually too smart to do. After all, why should he, when he can make all the money he wants by lecturing on a war about which no one can contradict him, even though he has never seen it?’
‘Never seen it?' said Roger Marvin.
‘No, not as a rule. Sheer bluff! Possunt quia posse videntur, so to speak.’
‘I beg your pardon, Colonel,’ inquired Miss Studfield, with round eyes, ‘but what was that?’
‘A Latin tag: I’m sorry!’
‘Freely translated,’ said Conway, coming gallantly and gratuitously to the rescue of his superior officer, ‘it means Some People can Get Away with Murder.’
‘Oh! Well, if you pull any more of that technical stuff on us poor defenceless women,’ replied Baby, ‘I warn you we shall leave you to it and go in swimming. But tell us some more about these confidence men. Did you ever meet any, Captain Conway?’
‘Lots.’
‘What were they like?’
‘Well, they varied a good deal. I particularly remember two. The first I came across in Chicago, at a vaudeville show—not in the Loop. He was attired in some kind of kilt, with a tin hat. Most of his front teeth were missing: perhaps he had lost them in battle. He had a broken nose, too. He came on carrying an obsolete British rifle—a Martini Henry, I think—with fixed bayonet, presented arms to the audience in a manner all his own, and told us of his experiences in the trenches. Most of his time there appeared to have been spent in exchanging back-talk with his Divisional General, in which our friend always scored heavily. He wound up by making a sort of rampart of furniture, and climbing over it with the band playing, to show us how one stormed German trenches. I’m bound to say the audience ate it up. I got hold of him afterwards. He wasn’t a bad fellow—a rolling stone from Clydebank, near Glasgow. He had been in America for more than twenty years—getting knocked about in the lowest walks of the Entertainment profession—playing the fat policeman in the circus, the one who gets pushed into a tank, or run over by a Ford, and so on. His chance had come to him suddenly with the War, and he had grabbed it. Having once been a private in a Scottish Volunteer Regiment, in the days of the old Saturday afternoon soldiers, he knew just enough of the jargon, when the demand came for wounded heroes, to get in on the ground floor. He was actually earning forty dollars a week. He knew it wouldn’t last, but for the moment he was as happy as a sandboy. I must say I like people like that.’
‘He sounds lovely,’ said Baby Studfield.
‘There’s no denying,’ said Mr. Storey, ‘that crooks are usually most attractive people.’
‘They have to be,’ said Mrs. Wynne, ‘or there wouldn’t be any use in their trying to be crooks. What was the other one like, Captain Conway?’
‘He was a different customer altogether. I met him in Louisville—or rather, I didn’t meet him. He sent up his card to my room at the hotel, and suggested that as we were both British officers in a strange land we might foregather for lunch. It was his card which roused my suspicions. It said: ‘Captain Percy de Lacey, D.S.O.—British Army.’ It didn’t look right to me. ‘British Army’ sounded rather an elastic term, and of course no officer with a D.S.O. would have D.S.O. printed on his card.’
‘And I never knew that!’ said Baby Studfield gravely.
‘So I telephoned down to the hall, and asked him what his regiment was. He thought a little, and then said, “The Sherwood Foresters.” After that I thought a little, and said I was in the Sherwood Foresters, too, and would be pleased to meet a brother officer. Of course it was an error of the first magnitude. When I got downstairs my bird had flown, and I have never heard of him since.’
‘I have,’ said Colonel Winter unexpectedly.
‘Oh, tell us!’ demanded a chorus of voices.
‘I attended his wedding.’
‘Well, what do you know about that?’ exclaimed Baby. ‘Where?’
‘In Buffalo. We had been on his track for some time, but we couldn’t fasten anything definite on him, until he committed the indiscretion of getting engaged to a wealthy widow.’
‘I’m a widow, and not too badly off,’ remarked Mrs. Wynne calmly. ‘Where was the indiscretion?’
‘The indiscretion lay in his being married already. His lawful mate was a chorus girl in a Broadway show. She saw his photograph, and the widow’s, in a Sunday paper; and, having been on the lookout for him for two years, was naturally gratified. She came to see us about it, and I went with her to Buffalo. There, with the assistance of the police, we separated Master Percy de Lacey from his prospective meal-ticket at the eleventh hour. I don’t quite know where he is now. I think he was deported to Canada, but he may be in Sing Sing.’
‘But how did your British Embassy get wise to this bird de Lacey in the first instance, Colonel?’ asked Roger Marvin.
‘Oh, our Intelligence Service isn’t so bad,’ said Winter briefly.
‘You mean to say you keep tabs on all roving Britishers in the United States?’
‘We try to.’
‘Well, isn’t that great? I dare say you’ve even got a little pigeon-hole at Washington for Captain Conway here.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Conway, ‘I’m not so sure. I know I ought to have reported formally at Washington long ago, Colonel; but I’ve never done it, for the simple reason that I’ve never been there yet. I came into the country by Canada. I had been invalided out of the Army after the spring attack at Ypres, nearly two years ago—’
‘Were you badly wounded, Captain Conway?’ asked Virginia sympathetically.
‘I wasn’t exactly wounded—’
‘He was very badly gassed,’ interposed Geraldine Tilford, with all the pomp of one imparting exclusive information. ‘He was given special leave by the British War Office to come over here for a while and have his lungs attended to. Isn’t that so, Captain Conway?’
‘Yes; by two wonderful American specialists—brothers, Mayo by name—in Detroit.’
‘Rochester,’ corrected Mr. Storey.
‘I beg your pardon; it was Rochester.’
‘And is. They are a famous pair there.’
‘They are a wonderful pair! Their treatment was so successful that after a few months I was tempted to try a little public speaking on behalf of the Allies. Something of the kind was very badly wanted in the Middle West at the time; and before I knew where I was I had fallen for a lecture tour, and found myself booked solid for six months. I began to feel the strain badly at last, so I came here for a few weeks’ vacation. And that,’ concluded Conway with his quick, attractive smile, ‘is the whole sad tale of how I came to be what I am—a soap-box orator.’
‘Captain Conway, you must not belittle yourself!’ exclaimed Mr. Storey characteristically. ‘I am told you are a born speaker.’
Conway laughed composedly.
‘A Spellbinder from Way Back—eh, sir? No, I’m pretty awful, really. Still, one may do a bit of good here and there—besides helping one's pet War charities.’
Suddenly Geraldine Tilford sat up. She had taken little part in the conversation, but now the time had come for her to play her master card.
‘You will all have a chance to know for yourselves in a few days how Captain Conway speaks,’ she announced triumphantly; ‘because he is going to lecture right here in Palm Beach!’
And forthwith she plunged into the details of the contemplated function.
Within ten minutes Mr. Storey had accepted the post of chairman, Roger Marvin had undertaken to arrange for the necessary publicity, and the young ladies present, having appointed themselves Principal Usherettes, were feverishly attacking the problem of a costume, or possibly uniform, which should be at once becoming, stunning, and symbolical of the approaching union of hearts between English-speaking races, when a general upheaval all over the beach announced that cocktail-time was approaching, and that if they were going to bathe they would have to proceed from words to deeds forthwith. Next moment every one was scampering down to the water, with the exception of Mr. Storey, Mrs. Wynne, and the incapacitated Winter.
‘That’s a fine type of British soldier, Colonel,’ said Mr. Storey warmly. ‘What personality! Did you see how those young folks hung on his words?’
‘I guess Geraldine Tilford would have preferred to hang around his neck,’ commented Mrs. Wynne. ‘Well, she saw him first, I’ll allow.’
Colonel Winter said nothing. He was an honest person, and he could not express admiration that he did not feel. Besides, he was wondering why a man who had spent several months undergoing medical treatment in the city of Rochester should have referred to that city as Detroit.