Читать книгу The Web - Frederic Arnold Kummer - Страница 4

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“BAD news!” exclaimed Alan Brooke, as he went up to his wife. “Good God! I should say so!”

“What is it, Alan?” asked Lady Brooke, a quick pallor replacing the color in her cheeks. “Not—Herbert?”

Her husband nodded, and flung himself into a chair. “Yes—Herbert.”

Lady Brooke glanced across the table, and met the eyes of the young man who was seated opposite her, pretending to be interested in a book. He was a tall man, with clear grey eyes, and a smile, whimsical, yet determined, very like her own.

“Can Bob know?” she asked, turning to her husband.

Alan Brooke looked up quickly. The young man put down his book and rose.

“If you two want to be alone”—he began.

“Nonsense. Sit down, Bob. No reason why you shouldn’t hear what I have to say to Nelly. It will all be in the papers, by morning, anyway. Cradock’s squadron, in the Pacific, you know, has been defeated by the Germans. My younger brother, Herbert, was Lieutenant on the flagship, Good Hope. She was sunk, with all on board. I’ve just come from the Admiralty.”

Lady Brooke gave a sudden cry.

“Alan!” she gasped. “How awful.”

The young man beside the table extended his hand to Lord Brooke, but he did not say anything at all. His handclasp, the look upon his face, fully expressed his feelings.

“God—what a day for England!” Lord Brooke exclaimed, rising, and beginning to stride up and down the room.

“I can’t believe it,” the young man said, at length. “I understood reinforcements had been sent—the battleship Canopus.”

Lord Brooke turned with a look of interrogation.

“How did you know the Canopus had gone out?” he asked quickly.

“Why—you told him so yourself,” interposed Lady Brooke. “I remember it distinctly. You need have no fears about Bob. He doesn’t talk.”

“I haven’t any fears about him, Nelly,” observed Lord Brooke. “Not in the sense you mean, at least. But Bob is a writer, and it's his business to tell the public anything he knows, or can find out, about the movements of our fleet. I need scarcely say, old chap,” he continued, turning to the other, “that anything you may happen to learn, here”—he glanced about the splendidly furnished drawing-room—“is not to be given to the public.”

Hoffman flushed, and straightened his shoulders.

“I quite understand,” he replied, his mind going back to the instructions given him but a few hours before. Well, at least he had no intention of publishing anything he might learn.

Lord Brooke observed the young man's embarrassment, and hastened to relieve it. Going up to him, he threw his arm about his shoulders.

“Sorry, Bob,” he exclaimed, with a smile. “This damned business has completely upset me. Think of Cradock, gone! And Herbert.” He looked helplessly at his wife. “Who’s going to tell Patricia?”

Lady Brooke went up to him, her eyes heavy with tears.

“Let us go to her together,” she said. “Patricia will be brave. Herbert died for his country. That is as you, as all of us, would have wished. And as he would have wished, too. You'd better wait, Bob. Patricia will want to see you.” A moment later she and her husband had left the room.

Hoffman tossed his cigar into the fire and began to stride up and down the hearth-rug. Patricia—he had almost forgotten her in the startling events of the day. And yet, Patricia Brooke had been almost as constantly in his thoughts, during the past few weeks, as his desire to go to the Continent, and that was saying a great deal.

Patricia was twenty-two, and considered a great beauty. Hoffman thought her so. In fact, he was half convinced that he was in love with her. He would have been fully convinced, had he dared, but so far no word or action on the girl’s part had given courage to his convictions. She seemed far too deeply occupied, bringing in slackers, bolstering up the courage of the timid, living and breathing a vivid patriotism, to have time for such matters as love. At least so Hoffman thought. And now, her brother Herbert, whom he had never seen, but whom he well knew Patricia adored, had been taken from her. The agony that this loss would bring to the girl’s heart lay close to his own.

Now, however, all was changed. He had embarked on strange waters. He hesitated to imagine what Patricia would think of him, could she have heard the instructions given him that morning—instructions that at any moment he might be called upon to carry out. The whole thing became horribly distasteful to him, and yet there were reasons why he must not draw back. He waited impatiently for his sister to return.

After what seemed to him an interminable time, someone came through the doorway behind him. Hoffman turned, thinking it to be Lady Brooke. It was Patricia.

The girl stood for a moment, silhouetted against the gold and green brocaded curtains that hung in the doorway. Her eyes, glowing with a fine fire, were quite free from the tears that Hoffman had expected to see in them. Even the pallor of her face was relieved by the glow from the log fire, the amber tints from the silk-shaded lamp. Her hair, somewhat disarranged, her defiant carriage, her detached expression, reminded him vaguely of a picture he had once seen of Joan of Arc. He bowed, unable to do more than utter her name—her first name, since his sister had, immediately on his arrival in London, made him one of the family.

She came toward him with a firm and confident step.

“How do you do, Bob?” she said, very quietly. “Nelly tells me you know about Herbert and—and the fleet.” The disaster to the nation seemed to affect her even more than her personal loss.

“It—it is terrible,” Hoffman murmured. “I did not know your brother, but I do know what he meant to you.”

The girl sank into a chair.

“Herbert died as he would have wanted to die,” she said, quietly. “It is a bad day for England. Someone has blundered.”

“Admiral Cradock,” Hoffman ventured.

“No. Not Cradock. He lived up to the traditions of the service. The fault is at the Admiralty. His ships were outclassed. His reinforcements were sent too late. That’s the trouble with us. We do everything too late. This war can 't be muddled through. Our people ought to know that, by this time. Now we must have revenge. Admiral von Spee’s squadron must be hunted out—destroyed.”

“Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Hoffman observed.

“It will be found-and sunk,” the girl replied. “Let us speak of something else. Have you received any encouragement from the War Office?”

“Not the least. They refuse to let me go to France—as a correspondent, at any rate. I might try the Red Cross, or enlist.” He spoke rather lightly, and the girl observed it.

“I should think even that would be better than sitting about doing nothing.” Her eyes sparkled. “A good many of your fellow countrymen are driving ambulances in France. Some are in the Foreign Legion. I should think that either might give you the opportunity for seeing things first hand that you want.”

The implied reproach in her words sent the blood to Hoffman’s cheeks. He straightened his shoulders and his eyes met the girl’s defiantly.

“I had hoped to write a series of articles for one of our magazines at home,” he said. “I could not do that, I am afraid, if I were to enlist, or even to drive an ambulance, although you may be quite sure that I should prefer either to sitting about London doing nothing.”

Patricia rose and Went up to him.

“I did not mean to reproach you, Bob,” she said, gently. “Forgive me, if what I have said has hurt you. I am so accustomed to speaking to our own young men in that way, that I quite forgot, for the moment, that you are a neutral.”

Hoffman flushed at her Words. He felt that he was very far from being a neutral. He was leaving London in the morning, but he could not tell her so. Absolute secrecy as to his movements, his plans, had been most rigidly demanded of him. He regarded his companion with a look of helpless annoyance.

“I know it.” She put out her hand, and Hoffman took it eagerly.

“If you thought for a moment, Pat, that I was a coward,” he exclaimed, “it would break my heart.” It was more perhaps than he intended to say, less than he would have liked to say. The momentary pause which followed his words was embarrassing. Then Patricia spoke.

“I know you are not a coward, Bob,” she whispered. “Don ’t be angry with me. This has been such a terrible day.” Her lips trembled, she sank into a chair and nervously lit a cigarette. Hoffman saw that the strain had begun to tell on her.

“Never mind about my affairs,” he said. “They are not very important. It’s you, I’m worried about, now. Alan and my sister had asked me to dinner, but, in the circumstances, I think I had better not stay. Is there anything that I can do for you?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “But I see no reason why you should not stay for dinner, as you had intended. You know how I loved my brother. Nelly has told you. But this is not a time for personal griefs. We are fighting, all of us, for an ideal. If we have to give one man in every ten, if every family in England wears mourning, we must still go on until we have Won our fight.”

Hoffman, undecided whether to go or stay, watched her eager face. A moment later the curtains before the doorway were thrust aside, and Lord and Lady Brooke came into the room. Patricia spoke at once of Bob’s wish to leave.

“I have told him not to think of it,” she concluded.

“Quite right,” said Lord Brooke, quickly. “I insist upon your remaining, Bob. We can have a talk, after dinner. Will you?”

“Certainly, if you wish it,” Hoffman replied, glancing at Patricia.

It seemed to him that she thanked him with her eyes.