Mrs. Rossiter didn't.
"Because in Manchester Square, in Cavendish—Grosvenor—Hanover Squares, in Portland Place—a few doors off your own house—in Harley Street and Wigmore Street: there are special friends of the Kaiser living. They may call themselves by English names, they may even be ex-cabinet-ministers; but they are working for the Kaiser, all the same. And he wouldn't be such a fool as to have them bombed, would he?"
"Especially as it is well known that there is a wireless installation on a house in Portland Place which communicates with a similar installation in the Harz Mountains," added Lady Helen.
This was a half-reassuring, half-terrifying statement. It was comfortable to know that you lived under the Kaiser's wing—Mrs. Rossiter hoped the aim of the aeronauts was accurate, and their knowledge of London topography good. At the same time it was alarming to feel that you might be involved in that final blow up of the villains which must bring such scoundreldom to a close. But if Lady Vera and Lady Helen knew all this for a fact, why not tell the Police? "What would be the good? They'd deny everything and we should only be sued for libel."
However to form some conception of how English home life was undermined with plots, she was advised to go and see Mr. Dennis Eadie in The Man That Stayed at Home. She did, taking Mrs. Adams with her to the Dress Circle for a matinée. Both were very much impressed, and on their return expected the fireplaces to open all of a piece and reveal German spies with masked faces and pistols, standing in the chimney.
At last these and other nightmares were dispelled by the arrival of Rossiter on leave of absence in the autumn of 1916. He had the rank of Colonel in the R.A.M.C., and wore the khaki uniform—Mrs. Rossiter proudly thought—of a General. He had shaved off his beard and trimmed his moustache and looked particularly soldierly. The butler who came with him though not precisely a soldier but a sort of N.C.O. in a medical corps, also looked quite martial, and had so much to say for himself that Mrs. Rossiter felt he could never become a butler again. But he did all the same, and a most efficient one though a little breezy in manner.
Linda now entered on an aftermath of matrimonial happiness. Rossiter was to take quite a long leave so that he could pursue the most important researches in curative surgery—bone grafting and the like; not only in his own laboratory but at the College of Surgeons and the Zoological Gardens Prosectorium. With only occasional week-ends at home he had been away from London since September, 1914; had known great hardships, the life of the trenches and the bomb-proof shelter, stewed tea and bad tinned milk, rum and water, bully beef, plum and apple jam, good bread, it is true, but shocking margarine for butter. He had slept for weeks together on an old sofa more or less dressed, kept warm by his great-coat and two Army blankets of woven porcupine quills (seemingly) the ends of which tickled his nose and scratched his face. He had been very cold and sweatingly hot, furiously hungry with no meal to satisfy his healthy appetite, madly thirsty and no long drink attainable; unable to sleep for three nights at a time owing to the noise of the bombardment; surfeited with horrible smells; sickened with butchery; shocked at his own failures to retrieve life, yet encouraged by an isolated victory, here and there, over death and disablement. So the never-before-appreciated comfort of his Park Crescent home filled him with intense gratitude to Linda.
Had he known, he owed some of his acknowledgment to Mrs. Adams; who had worked both hard and tactfully in her undefined position of lady's-maid-housekeeper-companion. But naturally he didn't know, though he praised his wife warmly for her charity of soul in taking pity on the poor little woman and her two children. He could only give the slightest news about Bertie, but said he was a sort of jack-of-all-trades for the Y.M.C.A. As to Vivie—"that Miss Warren"—he answered his wife's questions neither with the glowering taciturnity nor suspicious loquacity of former times. "Miss Warren? Vivie? I fancy she's still at Brussels, but there is no chance of finding out. There is a story that her mother is dead. P'raps now they'll let her come away. She must be jolly well sick of Brussels by now. When I last heard of Adams he was still hoping to get into touch with her. I hope he won't take any risks. She's a clever woman and I dare say can take care of herself. I hope we shall all meet again when the War is over."
He seemed very pleased to hear of the new Conciliation Bill, the general agreement all round on the Suffrage question and the enlargement of the electorate. He had always told Linda it was bound to come. "And after it has come, dearie, you mark my words: things will go on pretty much as before." But his real, intense, absorbing interest lay in the new experiments he was about to make in bone grafting and cartilage replacing, and the functions of the pituitary body and the interstitial glands. To carry these out adequately the Zoological Society had accumulated troops of monkeys and baboons. At a certain depôt in Camden Town dogs were kept for his purposes. And the vaults and upper floors of the Royal College of Surgeons were at Rossiter's disposal, with Professor Keith to co-operate. Never had his house in Portland Place—to be accurate the Park Crescent end thereof—seemed so conveniently situated, or its studio-laboratory so well designed. "Air-raids? Pooh! Just about one chance in a million we should be struck. Besides: can't think of that, when so much is at stake. That's a fine phrase, 'Menders of the Maimed.' Just what we want to be! No more artificial limbs if we can help you to grow your own new legs and arms—perhaps. At any rate, mend up those that are a hopeless mash. Grand work! Only bright thing in the War. Now dear, are you ready with that lymph?"
And she was. Never had Linda been so happy. She overcame her disgust at the sight of blood, at monkeys, dogs, and humans under anæsthetics, at yellow fat, gleaming sinew, and blood-stained bone. She was careful as a washer-up. The services of Mrs. Adams were enlisted, and she was more deft even than her mistress; and the butler, who was by this time a regular hospital dresser, greatly admired her pretty arms when they were bared to the elbow, and her flushed cheeks when she took a humble part in some tantalizing adjustment.