An unexpected, appalling, inevitable discovery was made in Paris in the _Grande Semaine_, at the end of the loveliest of June seasons. It utterly ruined--for two people--the Day of the Grand Prix, that marks the climax of the Big Week, when the Parisian coaching-world tools its four-in-hands to Longchamps Racecourse, and the smartest, richest, and gayest people, mustered from every capital of Europe, parade under the chestnut-trees that shade the sunny paddock, to display or criticise the creations of the greatest _couturiers_.
Margot had put on an astonishing gown for the occasion.... You will recall that the summer dress designs of 1914 _were_ astonishing; the autumn modes promised to be even more so, according to Babin, Touchet, and the Brothers Paillot. Skirts--already as short and as narrow as possible--were to be even narrower; the Alpha and Omega of perfection would be represented by the Amphora Silhouette. And Margot, revolving before her cheval-glass in a sheath of jonquil-coloured silk _lisse_, embroidered with blue-and-green beetle-wings, found--to her horror and consternation----
Shall one phrase it that Dame Nature, intent upon her essential, unfashionable business of reproduction, was at variance with Madame Fashion _re_ the Amphora Silhouette? The slender shape was not yet spoilt, but long before the autumn came, no art would mask the wealthy curves of its maternity.
*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.