Diana also wrote, not at all hurt that I hadn't accepted her invitation. Indeed, she seemed to have forgotten the episode, quite taking it for granted that I was disposed of with the Miss Splatchleys for some time to come. "Kitty and I will motor out to see you the first day we have a chance," she said, "if we can find Fitzjohn's Avenue. I never heard of it. But then, one doesn't hear of streets in Hampstead, I suppose, except in war, or crises like that, when we're all as democratic as saints. You might ask your friends for a subscription to buy shirt material for us to make up. I can get more workers than I need, but very little money, and we need a lot, especially as some of us have had no experience in sewing and we do waste rather a lot of material getting things wrong at first! Still, we are persevering, and you must come and see us at work cutting out and putting together garments for the wounded every afternoon in my drawing-room, where the decorations are all finished and immensely admired. We have tea, and I've engaged a palmist, who tells us what will happen to our friends at the front and how the war will end. She encourages us and keeps us up. Later we hope to get convalescent officers to tell us their experiences while we sew. Could you do any knitting for us? I remember you learnt from your nurse when you were a small child. I thought it so irritating of you, but it might come in useful now, if you remember the stitch. Some of us can crochet, but it seems that won't do for socks. A good many use worsted of a pretty colour which doesn't clash with their frocks; but as for me, I've thrown aside all vanity. Don't forget to ask the Miss Splatchleys for a cheque, as Bally says they're rich; and I do hope you haven't jilted poor Tony. He has gone, as of course you have heard, and the Dalziels don't know anything—I mean about you and T——I see them every day. Milly spoiled two shirts this afternoon, but her mother bought us some beautiful readymade ones instead, with tucked fronts."
Work was so real and so pressing with us at "The Haven" that I laughed at the picture of Diana's guild with its list of helpers from Debrett, its palmist, and its tea. Miss Jane and Miss Emma, however, said that it was my duty to go and see my family, as I was younger than they were, and it was not to be expected that they could get to me. The desired cheque I hadn't meant to mention, but in reading the funny part of the letter aloud one of Di's references to it fell out inadvertently, and the generous creatures caught it up. They were prepared to spend many hundreds of pounds in turning "The Haven" into a refuge, and in supporting the homeless Belgian women and children to whom they offered hospitality, but they couldn't allow my sister to ask in vain. I was given twenty guineas for the guild and told that I ought to take the cheque myself, for I would discover that "it was the busiest people who could always find time."
We were busy from six-thirty in the morning till ten-thirty at night, with indigestibly short intervals snatched for meals; but, as the two angels said, there was always time to do one more thing. On that principle I contrived to go to Diana's on one of her "afternoons," armed with the Splatchley cheque and my own knitting, strongly resolved not to drink any of Sidney Vandyke's tea or eat one of his horrid éclairs.
I was ushered into the house by two powdered footmen far too big for it. It is a small house for Park Lane, all up and down stairs; but the drawing-room is of good size; and when a bishop-like butler published my name at the door, I saw that the room was full of women, young, old, and middle-aged, seated at sewing-machines, or standing at long tables cutting out strange-looking shapes from hideous materials.
There were some quaint sights to be seen at "The Haven," rooms being partitioned off into cubicles; others being turned into dormitories, nurseries, or refectories for the refugees, who had already begun to arrive, before things were half ready to receive them. But Diana's smart new drawing-room in Park Lane presented a far more extraordinary study in contrasts than anything the middle-class "Haven" could show.
Improbable Louis-Seize furniture was pushed back against white and gold and silk-panelled walls. Gilt-legged tables and chairs were piled with rolls of bleached and unbleached cotton, feverishly pink flannelette, and scarlet flannel; or littered with cut-out parts of garments, some of which (judging from the confusion and clamour about them) had got badly mixed. On the garland-embroidered curtains of primrose yellow silk were pinned placards announcing patriotic meetings of women who wished to assist or form recruiting agencies; or appeals from the Red Cross Society or the Prince of Wales' Fund. Rugs had been rolled up, and the polished parquet floor was strewn with shirt buttons, reels of cotton, and torn papers of pins. Scissors hid among scraps of waste material, and on request were searched for by very young girls whose apparent business was to supply the sewing-machines with cut-out and basted-up garments, to fold and stack the finished things according to kind, and to knit wildly at intervals on immense stockings with singularly long feet which clearly could suit no one but Santa Claus.
As, according to my stepmother, all the ladies of the guild were "top-wave swells," I'd expected to find the fair brigade of volunteers exquisitely dressed in the latest Paris fashions of "before the war." But no! They had invented a still later fashion of their own. It was to be frumpish. The smart thing for the women of Great Britain was to have their hair done plainly, with an angelic effect of putting patriotism before vanity, and having no time to spend on self. No money, either, to judge from their frocks! Where they had raked up their old clothes, I can't imagine. There were skirts and blouses in that transformed drawing-room in which, a few weeks ago, their wearers would not have gone out to burn down a church or to be dragged to prison. Still, I must say that most of the wearers contrived to look very distinguished, even those at the sewing-machines, who had got tousled as children do over unaccustomed schoolroom tasks. No one had on any jewellery except Kitty, Mrs. Dalziel, and Milly, and one or two others who were also evidently Americans not required to sacrifice everything for Great Britain's sake. They, with their pretty dresses, their rings and earrings and strings of large, glistening pearls, were like gay flowers in a kitchen garden.
Kitty, fat and fashionable, and Di, slim and elaborately frumpish, came to meet me with pajama legs in their hands. They didn't trouble to take off their thimbles, and I thought they seemed far from being ashamed of the needle pricks on their fingers.
A few of the girls I knew already, and some of the older women. All had heard from Di or from the Dalziels that I had been doing a little amateur work as a nurse in Belgium, but no one—not even Di herself—expressed curiosity as to details. They had so much to think of that interested them more; and I was thankful for the self-absorption of Kitty and Di which saved me from awkward questions as to how I had contrived to get out of Liége. It was simply taken for granted by my family that, according to my own written account, I had made the journey home with thoroughly reputable refugees. I felt sure that Tony had not given his mother and sister any indiscreet information about "Monsieur Mars." Neither did he appear to have told them that our engagement was definitely broken off. Their unsuspecting friendliness made me feel guilty, and I decided that I ought sooner or later to let them know the truth.
That day at Di's, however, they gave me no chance to speak, even if I'd had strength of mind to snatch it. Tony was safely on his way to America, travelling in the steerage, having given up his cabin to as many ladies as it could hold. He was admiringly mentioned, and then dismissed as a subject of conversation in favour of others more exciting to his family and closer at hand. Milly, while sewing spasmodically on a weirdly shaped shirt which could only be got on or off by a weirdly shaped man, talked about Stefan and produced a letter from him, which she cherished inside her blouse. He had been wounded, seriously though not dangerously, in Poland, and invalided home. It was not thought that he would be able to do any more fighting, and so when he was strong enough, he hoped to try and reach England in order that they might be married at once, if Milly would not mind taking an invalid for a husband. Apparently Milly did not mind in what condition she took her count provided she was sure of getting him. She was looking forward, if all went well, to becoming a Russian countess within a few weeks, for Stefan expected to arrive in a ship from Archangel along a sea route protected by the British navy. She had so little fear of anything going wrong that she was "encouraging dressmakers" by starting her trousseau, and had begun to study the Russian language as a surprise for her fiancé. Mrs. Dalziel talked about Stefan, too, and how she would help nurse him back to health in a suite at the Savoy, when he and Milly were married. Meanwhile, mother and daughter were giving themselves up to good works, it seemed, whenever they had a minute to spare from their own affairs. Milly went three times a week to the Russian Embassy to sew for the Russians, and came twice a week to Diana's guild. Mrs. Dalziel had joined two committees got up by stranded Americans at the Savoy: one to supply money for moneyless millionaires, and the other to find clothes for clotheless millionairesses.