SOLO

The lights sank low again, and a flickering announcement appeared upon the screen, to the effect that the next picture would be a further instalment of that absorbing serial, The Marvels of Natural History—upon this occasion, Still Life in the Frog Pond. The majority of the audience took the hint, rose to their feet, and shuffled out. But Marjorie stayed on. Some of us go to the pictures to see pictures, others to hold hands, others to sit down and rest. Marjorie belonged to the third class. Not even the prospect of a quarter-of-an-hour in a frog pond could induce her to concede to the management the chance of selling her seat once more before closing time. She sat on, in a tired reverie.

Marjorie had arrived in London three months ago, to find that overcrowded metropolis fairly evenly divided between two classes—the people who had taken up war work, and the people who were doing it. The chief difficulty of the latter was to push their way through the unyielding ranks of the former. Things righted themselves later, under the unsentimental régime of necessity; but in November, nineteen-fifteen, the road to victory was blocked with good intentions.

Having invaded London, Marjorie and Joe devoted two days to exploration. Marjorie had been in London twice before—going to and returning from school in Paris—her stay upon each occasion being limited to a single extremely domestic evening at Uncle Fred's house in Dulwich. This experience naturally qualified Marjorie (being Marjorie) for the role of guide and courier to that unsophisticated yokel, brother Joe. They put up at the Grand Hotel, because Marjorie considered Trafalgar Square a good point d'appui, and a difficult place to lose altogether even in the howling wilderness of Central London. They pooled their money. Marjorie had drawn the whole of the savings of her dress allowance—about one hundred pounds—from the custody of Mr. Gillespie shortly before the day of her departure, and Joe had a quarter's salary intact. They dined, went to the play, sat in the Park, lunched at the Carlton, and generally had their fling (but not of) a world composed entirely of elegantly dressed females and uniformed officers of every grade.

After keeping carnival for forty-eight hours, Marjorie conducted her brother to a recruiting office, where the authorities were unfeignedly glad to see him, business at that period being lamentably slack. There, having kissed him, she left him and returned to the Grand Hotel. At the end of half-an-hour she rose from her bed, dabbed her eyes with a cold sponge, sent for her bill, paid it with a bright smile, and removed herself and her effects to a self-contained flat near the Brompton Road. There she sat down to make a plan. She had several sketched out, but her choice depended, like so many other choices in this life, upon sordid financial considerations. If her allowance were continued, she could afford to do war work for love. If not, she must perforce do war work for money. So she wrote to her father, telling him frankly why she and Joe had left home, giving her new address, and concluding her letter:

So now you know where I am. If I don't hear from you I shall know that you don't intend to have anything more to do with me. But I hope I shall hear from you. Love. Marjorie.

Upon the question of her father's financial intentions she refrained from inquiry, for she knew full well what the result of such directness would be. Her intention was to hold on until the September quarter, and then try the experiment of a cheque to her own order on Mr. Gillespie's bank. Her hope was that the allowance would continue automatically, as it might not occur to her father to stop it—presuming he wished to do so.

"If he does," she said to herself, "I must just go and work in an ammunition factory, or something—that's all! Still, I don't believe he will. Father's a hard man, but he does try to be just. He can't punish me for simply wanting to work now, of all times!"

In this she did her father no less, and as it ultimately proved, no more than justice; for a ballon d'essai despatched northward to Mr. Gillespie at the end of September was received by him with the honour due to a credit balance.

But September was a long way off. Marjorie methodically reviewed all the avenues of occupation open to her. Nursing attracted her most; but she knew herself to be pathetically ignorant of the elements of the craft, and furthermore doubted (rightly) if her combative nature would endure the complete subservience to the professional element inevitable in the life of that plucky, much-enduring, self-effacing Cinderella, the V.A.D. Stenography and typewriting were unknown to her. Munition-making at this time was but an infant industry—as the occupants of the trenches had continuous occasion to note, with characteristic comment. There were a number of minor Red Cross activities open to her—bandage-rolling, parcel-packing, and the like—but these pursuits were too sedentary for ebullient Marjorie. Other forms of war activity, such as selling programmes at charity matinées, or pestering total strangers in 'buses and tube-trains to purchase flags to relieve the contingent wants of hypothetical Allied babies, were pushed contemptuously aside as war work pour rire. It was not too easy, either, to know where to apply, with adequate results. Upon the Olympus whence the country was being directed to victory, the Organisation of Womanhood still lay in the tray—much the biggest tray on Olympus—marked "Pending." Those quaint but proud expressions, "Wren," "Waac," and "Wraf" had not yet been added to the English language.