That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
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