"Attracted? To Miss Elvey?" he cried out as if I'd said something too wildly improbable. "I? To her? Of all the girls on this earth?"
"Why not?" I asked, surprised. "Nearly every man is!"
"Yes, but I couldn't possibly be—er—attracted to Muriel Elvey!" he declared, vigorously shaking that small golden head of his. "Oh, no. Not to her! I know too much!"
"You hardly know her at all. You've only met twice."
"I know a great deal about her," declared young Colonel Fielding, impressively. "Not about this girl personally, perhaps. But about her kind."
He got up off the sack with an air of "that finishes it."
Deeply interested, since this was Dick Holiday's pal speaking of Dick Holiday's lady-love, I asked: "What do you mean by 'her kind'?"
"I'll tell you some day," the young man promised me, getting into his Burberry again. "I could tell you—er—yards! And I will. Only I am afraid there isn't time just now. I promised to meet old Dick at the bridge at eleven, by Jove. I must tear myself away. Good-bye. I say, I am glad we had this—er—little talk."
"Little talk" was good! His tongue had been going at least as fast as the shearing-wheel, or as the clipping-knife in Ivor's hand.
As he nodded to the shepherd and saluted me, I said, in a tone more cheerily friendly than I'd ever thought I should use to him, "Wait, wait; do stop a minute! This is all very well, Colonel Fielding, but when are you going to have that other little talk?"
"Which other?" he asked, standing, a graceful black silhouette, in the opening of the shearing-shed.
"Oh, you know! What a young Pretender you are, always!" I cried, half laughing. "I mean when are you going to speak about this, to her?"
He looked down, tilting his head sideways in a characteristic pose he had, lashes down, a gleam of small white teeth showing between the parted lips under the Avenue-gold smudge that he called a moustache. Oh, he was much too like a coloured advertisement for Burberry's! Still, it was Elizabeth's choice. I was thankful that she was going to be happy with it. Only, when?
He said, laughing, "What a staunch little friend you are to her! You even go as far as to—er—ask people their 'intentions' about her.... Miss Matthews, you'll be the first person we shall tell!"
Now what did he mean?
In spite of his caring, genuinely, was he going to keep his love guessing a little longer?
"Do you think," he said teasingly to me, "that I ought to go off and bother her with this—er—on the nail? In the middle of whatever job she's on? I don't knew where she is?"
He was answered—as he deserved.
Not by me!
It was that "reserved man," Ivor the shepherd, reputed to speak only his own language, who suddenly took us both aback.
Lifting his head from his shearing, the Welshman put in, in his pleasant up-and-down accent, "You looking for that other lady, sir? Miss Weare? I do think it is in the kitchen!"
Here was a bit of a shock.
The young Colonel and I had been chatting so freely, so confidentially! Imagining ourselves quite uncomprehended, we had literally forgotten the presence of the silent, blue-jacketed Welsh shepherd, who knelt there busily shearing, while one of us turned the wheel and both of us talked.... How we had talked, to be sure!
And Ivor had not only heard; he had followed the conversation!
This was what he sprung upon us now! Consternation! The blankest of awkward pauses!
Then Colonel Fielding, biting that golden morsel of a moustache, cleared his throat, turned to the shepherd, and said coldly and with as much dignity as could be lent to an obviously foolish remark, "I thought you didn't know any English?"
Ivor blinked mildly back at the officer and answered: "'Deed, I not know only very little, sir."
"I expect you all know a great deal more than you—er—give out, you Welsh!" declared Colonel Fielding, half-exasperated, half-amused. "That's how you get on in the world, isn't it?"
"Sir?" said Ivor, with a pleasant, puzzled smile.
Impossible to tell whether he understood or not! We should never know, either, how much of the talk we'd had had been eagerly taken in by him! All of it? We couldn't exactly ask him! Colonel Fielding glanced at me with a half-humorous little shrug. The same thought struck us both at the same minute.
One thing was pretty certain. Very shortly Ivor would retail to Mrs. Ivor in fluent Welsh everything that he had understood of our English. In that gossipy little nest which was Careg, gaping for any crumb of news, it would very soon be all over the place that Colonel Fielding was to marry "that little young lady that's working for Mr. Price"! Yes; by midday it would be proclaimed. It would run like wildfire up to the Hospital and down to the Land Girls' Camp. Everybody would know! Before Elizabeth herself knew!
I could not help laughing at the dismayed face of young Colonel Fielding as he stood there, frowning, the wind taken out of his sails. It did serve him right! Mischievous as he was, and full of guile and wile and teasing, sheltering himself behind that pretence of shyness, he found his match in this Welshman who put up that bluff of ignorance! The game was to Ivor the shepherd, who did understand English after all....
But Colonel Fielding trumped that. He turned to me and remarked: "I am going to find her now, at once."
And he said it in rapid French!
With which he left me to my soothing mechanical work in the shearing-shed.
I watched his figure (waisted as if he wore corsets always, though to do him justice he never did except for his masquerades) disappear across the farmyard to the red-brick house.
For the rest of the morning, turning steadily away at that wheel, I found myself wondering rather wistfully how things were going in there.
In spirit I saw the whole setting for this love-scene. Mrs. Price's back-kitchen with the big table, where she "put up" the dough for baking, set under the latticed window. The huge, hive-shaped "batch-oven" where I myself had helped with the baking last week. That oven had to be heated, early, by filling it with a stack of brushwood (some quite big boughs), setting the stack on fire, and leaving it so until the wood was powdery-ash, and the bricks of the domed oven-roof were white-hot. Then in went the loaves which Mrs. Price's tiny expert hands had shown us how to knead and to put up!
They—Mrs. Price and Elizabeth—had reached this stage of the morning's work by the time Colonel Fielding made his appearance in search of the girl he'd decided to marry.
What happened I heard something of later. (Not all.) Partly from Elizabeth, partly from him.
An odd courtship; so entirely War-time and modern! Yet going back hundreds of years; for what could be more old-fashioned than for the young man to seek his love among the warmth and the fragrance and the homely domesticity of the kitchen on baking-day! There was little Mrs. Price in her crisp grey overall with an old ivory brooch at her throat, busy and brisk and looking with every inch of herself "a Lady" in every sense, including that of the original Saxon "Loaf-ward." There was my chum Elizabeth helping her. With her hat off and her short thick hair rumpled about her small flushed face I expect she looked like a rather defiantly conscientious cherub!
To them, enter Colonel Fielding (with his blush!) telling Mrs. Price (with his usual shy charm of manner!) that he thought he'd like to come and help her, since he understood she'd got a busy day on.
Mrs. Price, demurely: "It will be a wonder if the farm doesn't prosper this year, considering the amount of help we are getting from the Army! It's very good of you, I'm sure. The bread is all into the tins now, Elizabeth? That's right; perhaps the Colonel will help you put them into the oven with this."
She gave him the immensely long-handled oven-shovel. On this Elizabeth set loaf after loaf in the tins, and he shoved one after another into the farther part of the hot oven.
Then Mrs. Price turned to get water from the pump which is set just over the spring in the scullery, and then she bustled away on one of the thousand odd jobs that await the farmer's women-folk at every turn. Or did she do it on purpose to leave those two together, working in the cosy, fragrant place?
For some minutes they were silent as a couple of working ants. Not a sound but the scraping of that shovel against the oven-floor!
Then he began, very gently, "D'you know who I feel sorry for?"
"No," from Elizabeth, setting her last tin loaf on the shovel. "Who?"
"Er ... People who have to get engaged in town," was his unexpected reply. "Such a beastly rush. All mixed up with—er—taxis, and catching trains and crowds of people in restaurants all watching you! Having to go to the theatre.... And then the lights going up, or the curtain. And people all hissing 'Ssh!' when you want to talk to the girl. Everybody jostling you. Not a bit of peace, you know. No room! No—er—time to say anything or feel anything. Don't you know?"
I can picture the Man-hater suppressing her happy little fluster at this; taking up the fruit tarts that had to go in in front of the oven, after the loaves.
Colonel Fielding's shy but deliberate voice went on: "I think one's—er—courtship ought to come in pleasant places. Where there's quiet. And nice things about. And jolly things to do. Making hay. Or ... bread. Don't you think so?"
Of course she thought so. The fields, the farm; any girl might envy Elizabeth the scenes that set first love for her, without hurry, without artificiality or fatigue! But I expect Elizabeth only flushed deeper and deeper pink, half with emotion, half with the heat of that oven. Little bright beads of moisture had gathered about her forehead and neck; annoyed, she brushed them away with the sleeve of her overall, hoping that he did not see.
As if anything she did would escape him now!
He moved from the oven and said thoughtfully: "I wish I could remember that quotation properly."
"A quotation?"
"Yes, something I read about the sweetest sight in the world being that of a woman baking bread, and how, even if it were in the—er—sweat of her brow, what man was there 'who would not rather kiss those drops away, than the powder from the cheek of a Duchess'?"
Having arrived at this stage of the story as told me by Elizabeth herself, I said to her: "And immediately after this, I suppose, the young man proposed to you?"
Elizabeth then told me: "He didn't propose at all."
"What?" I cried.
"He didn't propose," repeated the Man-hater obstinately. "I did."
"You?"
"I had to," explained my little chum, glowing. "He made me."
"What can you mean, 'made' you?"
Elizabeth explained how "that quotation" had made her so embarrassed (being quite unused to these remarks from men) that she hadn't known what to say and had practically snapped the young man's head off.
She told him sharply: "The bottled currants have got to go into the oven when the bread comes out. You might help to fetch them and their tin trays out of the scullery, instead of just standing there talking."
At that Colonel Fielding seemed positively to wither away where he stood. He looked suddenly miserable (according to Elizabeth). He said in the most unhappy voice: "Have I—er—put my foot into it again? I suppose I must have, somehow. You're angry with me, Miss Weare. I'll go."
Elizabeth begged him not to go (I don't suppose the creature had made a movement to the door), and said she wasn't in the least angry, why should she be?
The young Colonel then adopted a truly pathetic tone (I could hear it!) about his being "very unfortunate with women, who always had a down on him. Yes! They thought he was like a barber's block, and hated him. All of 'em!"
I could imagine his sidewards tilt of the head as he told the tale to Elizabeth, the boyishly-sincere.
She, blurting out "Idon't hate you!" hurried into the scullery for a couple of those tall glass jars of fruit for bottling. He followed her, carrying more fruit and murmuring that no girl could be got to care for him; not really care!
Elizabeth said he looked more than ever like that picture "The Falconer" on her chocolate-box lid. I can imagine her adoring glance up at him!
This was in the kitchen, again in front of the oven. He had taken hold with both hands of the tray that she still held.
"I shouldn't believe it," the young villain told her, gazing into her flushed face. "Not unless I heard it out of a girl's own mouth! Not unless she cared enough to say so first!"
Here Elizabeth broke off the story with a defiant "So you see!"
"What did yousay?" I urged.
Neither of them would ever tell me. However! Before kind Mrs. Price returned (to see they did not repeat that old story of Alfred and the Cakes!) Elizabeth had said whatever it was.
In this proposal-scene she, the girl, had been forced to take the initiative.
That went against all my instincts; I couldn't have done that. How human beings vary! For she, strange little thing, simply loved being made to "make the running." This I didn't understand.
"Heunderstood.He'snot like that great hulking brute you prophesied for me, the one who would trample on me with policemen's seventeens!Youthought I would be 'tamed' by somebody bullying me.That'snot what happens to a girl like me; that's all wrong psychology," babbled my chum exultantly, while I realized that the last phrase at least must have come from him. "It's only the frilly, helpless, overfeminized weepers that admire these huge, bullying navvies with ugly faces and muscles like vegetable marrows! I'd have been safe fromthemfor ever! But he's so wonderful!He'snot a usual young man——"
"And you're not a usual girl," I told her affectionately. "My dears! There is only one thing to be said:you certainly have found each other!"
"Hélas, mon ami!C'est triste d'econter le chanson sans le chanter aussi."—BRETON BALLARD.
As for me, I was delighted. Let one of us be happy, I thought; let Elizabeth, since I was evidently fated to be lonely!
Yes! Any love-story for me, Joan Matthews, seemed to be something quite past praying for.
Twice, now, I had fallen in love. Twice I had drawn a blank!
The first time I'd set my affections upon a philanderer (Harry Markham) who had given me every reason to think they were returned, but who probably hadn't "meant" anything, even before he deserted to Muriel.
The second time I had lost my heart to a man worth a hundred Harrys. This man (Dick Holiday) had never attempted to admire me. He was just helpful and jolly and friendly, but he'd never pretended to think of me in that other way. Yet I couldn't stop caring for him with all the best that was in me. And now he was Muriel's too; I only waited to hear when their engagement would be announced.
"Really I ought to be phenomenally lucky at cards, seeing the sort of luck I've had in Love!" I laughed at myself.
For I could still laugh; and here I must put forward something in my own defence!I was taking the second love-fiasco very differently from my first.
In London, over Harry's desertion, I had let go all ropes, and had fretted and wept myself into a nervous wreck.
Here on the Land, I never thought of behaving like that. I set my teeth to "stick" unhappy Love, which is a girl's equivalent for a soldier's "sticking" his most painful wound. I found I could still enjoy myself among the other girls, I could still be sympathetic over my chum's engagement. I could throw myself body and soul into the work on the farm, where the hay-harvest was now in full swing.
That work saved me, my self-respect, my spirits, and my looks from the ruin that threatens the very being of the girl who is crossed in love. How she endures that is so largely a matter of health after all. My health was now magnificent. Every day I grew fitter, more vigorous, rosier (though my nickname of "Celery-face" would persist to the end of my life here!) and more full of zest for anything that happened along. For on the Land one soon learns not only to take the rough with the smooth, but also to take plenty of interest in both.
Now, after a couple of weeks of strenuous toil, there came a promise of "smooth"; a little treat.
A note arrived for me at the Land Girls' Camp which said:
"DEAR CELERY-FACE—
"These nice people that I work for suggest that I should ask a couple of 'my young friends' over to tea next Sunday. Will you and Mop be the young friends? They know Captain Holiday and are asking him, so I expect he will bring Mop's 'lovely Spaniard' with him. Do come.
"Yours, SYBIL.
"P. S.—These people think the uniform so 'picturesque,' so come in it, even if Mop does want to wear garden-party clothes for the fiancé!"
By the way, I have not yet dwelt on the enormous excitement that blazed all over our Camp at the news that "little Mop, the Man-hater!" had actually got engaged to be married to "Colonel Fielding who was that Spanish lady at the Concert!"
That sensation could have been beaten by nothing, unless perhaps news had come that same day of the sudden and complete surrender of the whole German Army.
Anybody who has lived the communal life among girls (as most girls have in these days of Women's Service!) can imagine the whirlwind of exclamations, congratulations, questions, laughter that almost carried the newly-engaged messmate off her sturdily-booted little feet. Only, no imagination can do justice to the golden camaraderie with which that Timber-gang and those other Land-workers at our Camp took Elizabeth to their hearts. (I hoped that herfiancéwould realize it; for after that he could never again say that girls were usually "little" and "spiteful"!) They had always liked my plucky, downright little chum. Now, they couldn't do enough for her!
Peggy, who had started an elaborately crocheted camisole-top for her own bottom-drawer, dedicated it to Elizabeth. Peggy's Sergeant Syd brought an offering of a table-centre, designed and worked by himself in the gaudiest silks with the crest of Colonel Fielding's regiment, as well as with a Land Army hat, a rake and a rifle crossed, the motto "England must be fed!" and other emblems. This was her very first wedding-present, an object that, whatever shape it takes, never fails to stir the heart of any engaged girl! But Elizabeth, who had flashes of defensiveness and of seeming to make (outwardly) little of Love and Marriage, declared that the wedding was not going to be for ages.
"The Colonel, he'll watch that," had been Vic's laconic comment.
"The earliest that it can be," Elizabeth had then announced, "is when my year is up."
"Good idea," Miss Easton, the forewoman, had pronounced drily. "But you might remember that the Secretary is able to let you have a brand-new overall in advance before the six months yours has got to go, if you want it."
"I don't want a new overall," from my chum, glancing down at her already well-worn garment. "What for, Miss Easton?"
"Lots of the girls like to get married in uniform, my dear."
"I shan't be getting married for eighteen months at least," had been Elizabeth's ultimatum.
"That's putting a lot of extra work on me and Vic!" the young forewoman had sighed whimsically.
For every evening now Miss Easton had a Thermos filled and a packet of bread-and-butter or rock-cakes ready for "Mop" to take after work, so that she could have her tea out with herfiancéin the field, where they met at a stile. (Those were the halcyon hours for them both!)
As for Vic, the big, good-natured Cockney had taken in hand the appearance of Elizabeth. Vic now "shined" her Sunday brogues, Vic saw that she always had a pair of the neatest brown stockings to wear with them, Vic ironed her smock, Vic "saw to" her armlet and badges; Vic, every evening, gave ten minutes to brushing "young Mop's" short, thick crop until it shone and floated out like raw brown silk round her face.
"Must have you looking a credit to US," the self-constituted female batman said to her. "Remember, all eyes—such as there are of 'em here—are upon you! The girl that's going to marry the D.S.O. You jolly well reflect back on the Camp, my girl, and then some more D.S.O.'s will come round looking to see if there's any more at home like you (perhaps). You let me put your belt straight. Now, got a clean handkie? Like a drop o' Lil's scent on it? No? He don't care for scent? All right. Now I think you're ready"—all this was just before Elizabeth and I started off for that somewhat eventful tea at the house of Sybil's employers.
"Now, young Celery-face," Vic went on, "how do you look? Yes, you'll do nicely. Of course I may be a bit more particular about the way I turn you out as soon as you get engaged. You'll be the next, I bet——"
"I shouldn't bet much," I advised her, smiling above the little stab at my heart as I disengaged myself from Vic's kindly hands—and clothes-brush. "You'll only be disappointed. I shall not oblige you by getting engaged from the farm, Vic!"
"Oh! Why ever not, if I may inquire?"
"Largely because nobody is likely to ask me!" I answered as we left the hut.
"Ah, go on!" Vic called after me as she stood in the doorway, laughing and waving the clothes-brush. "F'rall you know, somebody's going to ask you at this Do this very afternoon!"
Now if Vic had heard the story of that Sunday afternoon-party that was coming, I expect her verdict would have been: "There! What did I tell you? Many a true word is spoken in jest!"
That afternoon witnessed my first offer of marriage—No, I had forgotten. It was not my first. My first had been by letter, that improbable-sounding sort of letter that I'd received in the Spring from the young man called Richard Wynn, and that I had tossed away by mistake into a London County Council waste-paper bin before I'd even answered it. That was the first!
The second was by word of mouth, and it took place under the sun of early July, in one of the prettiest country gardens that ever——
But I'll begin with the house where we were invited by these people for whom our colleague Sybil was now working.
We walked for a good two miles down a lane branching off, under trees, from the road to our farm; we came at last to a white gate and then up a drive bordered with tall flowers that flourished as they chose in the long grass. The house—which had one of those interminable Welsh names beginning with "Dol"—was long and white, striped green by creepers, and with a wide porch garlanded with heavy-headed roses.
Just to the right of the porch a long window-box filled with black pansies stood in front of an open upper window. A girl's rosy face and wavy hair peeped out; it was the daughter of the house who called to us in a voice which, though pleasant, would have made her fortune as a pilot on the Mersey, "A-hoy! How d'you do? ... Syb—il! Here are your friends! ... Come in, will you? Don't stop to ring; it doesn't."
Elizabeth and I went straight into the cool, shady hall, and into the midst of one of the most welcoming and hospitable, the least conventional homes that I have ever entered.
We were greeted by Sybil's employers, the master and mistress of the house. He, an old soldier, wearing the hearthrug-like tweeds and the mossy stockings of a country squire of that neighbourhood; she a plump and still pretty woman in spotted black and white muslin, with wavy hair like her daughter's grown grey, and with an egg-basket which she never put down, over her arm. He and she seldom stopped talking, always talked at once; generally in the form of questions.
Thus—
"My dears, won't you come and sit down? Did you walk all the way from Careg? Aren't you tired?"
"Does Miss Sybil know these young ladies have come, Mother? Can't we have some tea for them at once?"
"One of you is engaged to that friend of our friend, Captain Holiday's; is it you? No? You? Isn't that very nice? Will it be a long engage——"
"Where's Miss Sybil?" (Enter from the back our friend Sybil, smiling, but unable to get a word in.) "Now, where's Vera, where's that girl Violet——"
Violet (the daughter of the house) came running down to add her voice to this family anthem.
"Hullo! Did you find your way easily? Daddy, where are the dogs? ... Dogs!" (loudly). "Sybil, you're not going to try to introduce everybody, are you? Why are we all standing here? Why aren't we taking these people into the drawing-room?"
We were borne along into the big drawing-room to the right of the hall. It was full of flowers and lovely old furniture and silver-framed photographs and an immense round tea-table and a cluster of other guests.
Here the sun rose again upon Elizabeth's world. Her eyes had fallen at once upon herfiancé, Colonel Fielding. He was sitting there, near his friend, Captain Holiday.
What a merry tea-fight that was in the hospitable and happy-go-lucky Welsh country-house!
To sit in a dainty drawing-room amidst a cluster of strangers wearing "real" summer frocks. To see a winking bright silver spirit-kettle and a snowy cobweb cloth. To drink tea from fragile cups and to spread, with crystal-handled knives, honey upon wafer bread-and-butter!
These little luxuries we never noticed in our pre-War days. But now—— Remember! It was the first time for weeks that we Land-girls had tasted such refinement!
"What a treat this all is," I remarked to Captain Holiday as he handed hot cakes in a lordly dish.
He replied: "Ah! Now perhaps you'll have an idea how fellows feel when they get out of the mud and plum-and-apple-with-chloride-of-lime up the Line, and back to Civilization for a few days' leave."
"When I got my Paris leave last year," put in the demure voice of Colonel Fielding, who had dropped into a low chair close to hisfiancée, "do you know what was the first thing I did?"
"D'you want us to guess, my boy?" boomed the genial master of the house, who was also a Colonel.
The younger man smiled at him. "I'll tell you, sir. I ordered a great sheaf of La France roses and lilac to be sent up, with a huge glass jar to put 'em in, to my room at the Hotel. And there I lay and looked at 'em, tilldéjeuner, because I hadn't seen a flower for months!"
The other guests then took up that never-failing topic of leave, and how some people always get it and some never; why? A question unanswerable. I thought of Captain Harry Markham, nicknamed in his regiment "The Special Leave King." But the thought of my faithless admirer could not depress me now. For the moment I was perfectly content, sitting at that gay tea-table between my motherly hostess and Dick Holiday.
He chaffed me about "a woman's ineradicable love of luxury, on the Land or off!" and I laughed, glad that I could sometimes see him thus for half an hour, without any Muriel to spoil it all.
On the other side, my hostess's questioning talk flowed on.
"You like the Farm-work, my dear?" to me. "Your people don't mind you taking it up? The Prices look after you? Perfect dears, aren't they? Has Mrs. Price had the Isle of Wight disease? Her bees, I mean? No? How's that, I wonder, when everybody else's bees in the county—oh, she doesn't keep bees? ... When are your friend and Colonel Fielding to be married?"
"Not for alongtime!" burst from Elizabeth, but our kind hostess went on, unheeding.
"Couldn't we arrange to have the wedding from this house? I adore weddings, don't you? ... Vera!" to a laughing blonde in light blue who was a niece of the house, "you haven't eaten all the light-cakes? Aren't there any more light-cakes for when Captain Holiday's cousin comes in? Dick! You did say your cousin, Miss Elvey, was coming later?"
"Yes!" from my neighbour. "She's driving up presently."
My heart sank.
Muriel Elvey was coming after all?
Even as I thought it there was a crunching of light wheels on the gravel outside. A dog-cart drove up holding khaki and the flutter of a dress.
A moment later Muriel entered. Just a bright-headed bouquet of muslin, rose-sprigged with mauve! Even as she uttered smiling greetings she made every other girl there look comparatively plain at once.
As for me, I instantly became a hopeless clodhopper sitting there in rough breeches and smock, with my thick brogues planted on the soft carpet. Awkward and out of place, all enjoyment was over for me as soon as Dick Holiday's fashionable contrast of a girl floated into the drawing-room.
The man who had driven her up came in a few moments afterwards.
To my surprise, it was Harry again! "More leave, Markham?" I heard Colonel Fielding laugh; and then Harry, "No, I just got down for the week-end."
So he had come all that way, just to be near Muriel. Oh, what it must be to have her power over men! As far as I could see, there was only one man in that party who wasn't at her little feet as she sat coquetting now with the master of the house. Elizabeth'sfiancéhad said, "I know too much about her! I know her kind!"
What did the young Colonel mean?
However! He didn't count; being engaged, and, as Elizabeth herself said, "not a 'usual' young man."
One thing I noticed about one of the more "usual" young men there. Harry Markham was not himself that afternoon. Something was weighing on him.
I knew it! I knew his face and ways so well. Hadn't I studied them, as only a girl in love has patience to study, for a whole year?
Nobody else out of that roomful of people would detect any cloud. Harry was a young man who could "make himself at home" anywhere. He did so now. I saw everybody—except perhaps Dick Holiday, who suddenly turned silent—summing up Captain Markham as a charming fellow.
He talked pleasantly; to our host of salmon-fishing and of soldiering in the East; to our hostess of bees and poultry. Elizabeth he congratulated prettily, telling her that he (Harry) had spotted Fielding as "a man determined to win" the first time he met him. Even Elizabeth had been slightly mollified by this towards the man she'd once pronounced "a rotter!" He laughed and made himself agreeable. And only I realized that while he did so his mind was not in any of it.
Why?
I thought I guessed.
As they came along in the dog-cart he had been trying to make love to the only girl he couldn't win over at once.
Muriel had been unkind to him. What a revenge for me—if I wanted a revenge, which I didn't.
So far I guessed. But not what was coming!
"Let this be said between us here,One love grows green as one grows grey,Tomorrow has no more to sayTo yesterday."—SWINBURNE.
At last the long leisurely tea of Sunday afternoon in a country-house came to an end. People strayed out into the grounds, a little green and golden world of peace it was!
I heard Colonel Fielding's velvet voice murmuring "Carissima——"
This was his pet name for his sweetheart. She called him "Falconer." The pair of them wandered off together and disappeared with the swift and utter completeness possible only to lovers—or to small boys who are called to have their faces washed.
The others drifted towards the water-garden, or to inspect the vegetables which were Sybil's domain; Sybil, the garden-girl, was entirely one of the family here.
Muriel (of course) called to Dick Holiday to come and translate the motto on the sun-dial for her.
And then, suddenly, I found a figure in khaki with soft dark eyes under a scarlet-banded cap, edging purposefully towards me in a manner that recalled a year now dead.
How often I had longed in vain for this to happen! What fruitless tears I'd shed! And now—— Oh, why do people pine, after long years to see their first loves again? It is, nearly always, a mistake to meet them any more.... It is a wash-out!
Shakespere's most characteristic lover puts it all in a nutshell.
"Enough, no more!'Tis not as sweet now as it was before."
But Harry Markham, whom I had once thought such a man of the world, had lesssavoir vivrethan the Count Orsino.
"Joan," he murmured ingratiatingly as he came up, "I haven't been allowed a single word with you——"
Presently I found myself having the "word" alone with him at the bottom of the garden, away from the others in a sheltered nook screened by a hedge of sweetpeas.
Harry always was an adept at these arrangements. Strange, to think that he should be making them again for me after all these months!
He began in a voice distinctly sentimental, "It's a long time, isn't it, since ... last summer? Look here, there's a seat. We'll sit down."
"Not for long," said I, matter-of-fact. "I have to get back soon, to Camp."
"Camp," returned Harry, as he sat down beside me on the garden-bench. "Sounds odd to hear all you girls talking about 'Camp' like a lot of Tommies."
"We're rather proud of being like them."
"Of course. But, I say, who are you with all day? What do you have to do?"
I answered his questions as concisely as I could. I, who used to prize every moment with him! felt I wanted to join the others!
He nodded; asked "Don't you mind having to rough it?"
"I don't call it 'roughing it' very badly, thank you. I enjoy it."
"Sporting of you," declared Harry, "but not a bit the sort of thing you used to be keen on, Joan. You've altered."
"Yes," I agreed quietly. "I think I have altered a good deal."
He sent one of those well-known glances of his from under the peak of his cap as he sat. "I needn't tell you how the life suits you, as far as looks go. I've never seen you with such a colour, and your hair's all full of those gold gleams I always thought so topping——"
For the first time in my life that caressing voice left me cold.
"That kit is jolly becoming to you."
"Yes?" I said politely. "I thought you admired pretty frocks."
"Those suited you, too. But in this you're a young Ceres."
"I'm afraid I've forgotten what those were."
"She was the goddess of Harvest or something," explained Harry, discomfited. "Somebody outdoor and glowing and rosy, with a lovely figure, if I may say so——"
"Why not?" I smiled at him in a friendly way.
He amused me, now. I was rather tickled to see him not quite knowing how to talk to me after this silence of months in which he'd left me without a good-bye.
I saw him like a precocious schoolboy who has been rude to somebody and who wants to apologize without losing his dignity.
And, as I say, I used to see him as the most wonderful, the cleverest mixture of a man of the world and a demigod!
To think how we can change.... But he imagined I was still the adoring conquest of those old days in town.
He thought I was putting up a gallant little bit of feminine bluff. He imagined that my heart was still beating as wildly as ever it did at the sound of his voice, the glance of his eyes that courted and caressed.
Gone was their magic for me! Harry Markham didn't realize that.
That want of perception helped him towards one of the biggest mistakes he was ever to make!
I, who thought I could read every sign of his handsome, rather self-conscious young face, I'd never foreseen it.
No, not even when he began by lowering his voice to its most persuasive pitch.
"Joan! You aren't being very nice to me. You're fed with me about something."
"Not a bit," I assured him.
Reproachful glance from Captain Markham. "My dear little girl——"
How long was it since I'd thrilled to hear myself called this? Today I found it the wrong expression; I was nearly as tall as he was, after all, I thought. Also I felt rather bored with the turn that the conversation was taking.
No more flirtation for me, thanks.
"My dear little girl, d'you suppose I don't know the difference between this and the jolly chummy times we used to have?" he appealed to me. "You've forgotten the day we went to Hampton Court."
"I have not," said I, looking away. "I remember it perfectly. We came back too late to go to the theatre, and we were so disappointed."
"I don't remember any disappointment," he said softly. "I only remember ... a perfect day."
Of course I too remembered that the day at Hampton Court had been the first time Harry had kissed me. My face flamed with annoyance to think I had permitted this. I rose from the garden-bench. What busy centuries I'd lived through since that morning at breakfast with Elizabeth in our London flat, when the universe had been darkened for me by the news of Harry's going! Now it had come to my turn to want to go. Uncanny in the light of what had been, but true! The familiar figure in khaki and scarlet seemed to me that of a quiet, strange young man to whom I didn't want to talk at all.
I took a step down the grassy path. He followed me, speaking in the ingratiating manner that was second nature to him. I could not help hearing a note of insincerity in his voice now; yes, and a note of odd impatience. It was as if he'd set himself to play some part and were irritated with me because I did not play up to him.
"Ah, Joan, wait! I brought you out here on purpose to say something to you. Not about Hampton Court——"
"No; that's all over," I assured him, meaning more than just one picnic.
"But I want to talk about you. How long d'you mean to go on with this farm-business?"
"I signed on for a year. Why?"
"What d'you suppose you'll do after that year?"
I pulled a mauve-and-purple sweetpea out of the hedge as we passed. "Who knows? Perhaps stay on the Land for good."
"A girl like you?"
"Or I might transfer into the Women's Forestry Corps later on. They'll want people for replanting the timber where all the lovely woods have been cut down. The Forester here says girls are particularly good for nursery-work; they're quick and light-footed, and don't trample down the young plants."
Harry seemed to care little about that question, though he'd surprised me by his sudden interest in my own career. This after months of forgetting my existence!
"It's all very well for you to do this in War-time," he told me. "The War, though, will be over before we're old, I hope. You can't go on tramping round filthy turnip-fields and feeding pigs and pigging it yourself in a wooden shanty with Heaven knows who!"
"I like it."
"No," he insisted, rallying. "Now your little friend, Miss Weare, has done the sensible thing. So will you. Of course you'll get married too, Joan."
"I? No," I said with unsmiling finality. "I shall not get married."
At this my old love put back his head and laughed.
Then it came.
Standing there close to me on the path bordered on one side by the sweetpeas, on the other by the high garden wall with its fans of plum and apricot, he moved as if to pull himself together for a jump. He gave one very odd glance about him. That glance seemed made up of so many things: resolution, amusement, pettishness, teasing, ruefulness, a certain kindliness, and triumph.
Then his eyes came back smiling to mine as he exclaimed, "Ah, darling, rot! I'll tell you something. You are going to get married. I am going to marry you myself."
I suppose no man in this world had ever made that announcement to a girl feeling more utterly sure of his success than was Captain Harry Markham at that moment. I think no girl in this world can ever have had more difficulty than I had then in conveying to a suitor that his proposal was not to be accepted after all.
How he clung to the conviction that I could not mean what I said, that I was teasing him, paying him out!
"Paying you out? Why should I? For what?"
"Because—well, perhaps because I went away without saying anything that time in the Spring," was Harry's idea. "But, darling, I'll make up for that now, see if I don't——"
I put up the hand that held the sweetpea. His arms that he was putting out to me fell to his sides again.
"Don't, please don't," I begged him. "It's no use. I do mean it. Honour bright, I am not just saying this to make you ask me again and again. I am not going to marry you. I do not care for you."
His dark eyes stared blankly, as they well might. Last time they had looked deep into mine they had found adoration. And that was only a few months ago; quite a short time, as time is counted!
He muttered, crestfallen, "I thought you cared. I could have sworn it! ... You were pulling my leg, then, all last summer!"
This from him was almost funny! But I said quite gently, "I wasn't."
"I believed you liked me a little then," said Harry Markham softly. "Will you tell me that?"
Now, is it kinder to tell the man whom one no longer loves that one did really love him once, or better to let him think that he was mistaken from the first? Uncertain, I sniffed at that sweetpea and said nothing.
He lifted his head and asked quietly: "Some one else, then?"
I turned to pull another sweetpea, shaking my head as vigorously as Elizabeth could have done. After all, there was nobody else ... that wanted me!
Harry's voice, encouraged, said over my shoulder: "Ah, then! I could get you to like me again if you would only give me the chance, dear! Be kind to me. Look at me——"
Unreasonably, perhaps, I felt a quick irritation over that caressing tone that held the note of insincerity as a soft flower holds a spoiling insect.
I turned to look straight at him as he asked me. I met his dark eyes. I said bluntly: "Oh! Why do you pretend like this? I know as well as you do that you don't care for me yourself a bit!"
He gave a quick involuntary movement of surprise. The charming humbug of the Harry-type seldom gives anybody credit for seeing, never for seeing through him. Immediately he pulled himself together to look cruelly injured.
"Not care for you?" he echoed, indignantly. "Look here, I've always thought you one of the sweetest and straightest—I mean, the sweetest girl I ever met. The prettiest, too. If you knew how lovely you looked now at this minute with the sun on you! Lovely and warm-hearted and true. If you cared for any man, by Jove, he could bank on you! And he'd be the luckiest fellow in——"
"Perhaps," I cut him short rather ungraciously. "But I am afraid none of this that you say ... Forgive me, but none of it rings true to me."
"Not true? You're trying to make me out a liar?" retorted Harry heatedly. "Not true? A man doesn't ask a girl to be his for keeps, my dear, unless he's pretty serious about it. If it weren't true, why on earth should I ask you to marry me now, Joan?"
"For a reason that I have guessed," I said steadily. I moved on to the end of the hedge, turned up the path towards the garden gate.
Harry followed. I felt that he was fuming and bewildered. He muttered: "What do you mean?"
Without looking at him I replied: "I think you're asking me to accept you because another girl has refused you too often. You want to show another girl that you don't care; that other people have jumped at you! I know that some men have married for no better reason. You proposed to me out of pique. Now, isn't that the truth?"
With the last word I stopped and faced him again. I saw his face change under my eyes.
I insisted: "You don't want to marry anybody but the girl I introduced you to myself—Muriel Elvey!"
Slowly the scarlet flush deepened on the young man's face; his eyes wavered, left mine. Utterly abashed he looked, shamefaced, miserably embarrassed; and how much younger in his awkwardness! He was a schoolboy again, caught out in some wrong-doing that put him not only in the wrong, but made him ridiculous—a thing no man can stand.
And no woman who is a woman can stand the sight of any man suffering thus! He was at my mercy; and my heart melted to him. Not with the old feeling. That, once dead, no power on earth can revive. Only a new feeling filled me; real kindliness towards him. Now that we could never be lovers I felt we might be friends.
Impulsively I cried, in a softened voice, "I couldn't help guessing. You needn't mind me, Harry!"
It was the first time that day that I'd called him by his name.
The trouble in his face seemed lightened by a gleam. His eyes softened as they met mine again. I suppose he saw the offered friendliness in them.
Deeply touched, he repeated boyishly, "You are decent, Joan!"
I laughed, repeating, "You needn't mind my having guessed; I shan't say anything!" I added, very gently, "Won't she have anything to do with you?"
Gloomily he shook his head; the handsome head that so many girls found irresistible. "Won't," he said, curtly. "She's turned me down half-a-dozen times, but I've always thought that I might ... might get round her. Until this last time when I've seen her with this fellow Holiday, down here——"
I had a sharp stab of remembrance. "Ah, yes. Her cousin," I said as casually as I could.
Harry, more humbly than I had ever heard him speak, said: "He's got that fine old place and everything. My people have only the money they made. I understand her preferring what Holiday could give her."
He concluded, huskily: "He's the fellow she will marry, I expect."
We were fellow-sufferers in the thought, Harry and I!
With quick sympathy I laid my hand lightly on his red-tabbed shoulder.
"Poor old boy! I'm so sorry."
"You're a little brick," muttered Harry. Dropping his chin, he put a small grateful kiss upon my fingers as they lay on his jacket.
It was this scene that met the eyes of Dick Holiday as he turned the corner of the path, coming to see what had become of us.
"I would rather scrub floors for a man than dust a table for a woman."—EXTRACT FROM PRIVATE CONVERSATION.
"But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,If we prayed you, paid you, brayed youIn a mortar, for you could not, Sweet!"—BROWNING.
This was something I wouldn't have allowed to happen, could I have prevented it!
For Dick Holiday, of all people, to come upon me when I was having my hand kissed by Harry Markham, of all other people in the world!
Of course you see what Captain Holiday thought he had interrupted?
A love-scene!
He'd heard from me about the man who sailed for Salonika just before I left London, and that I'd joined up for the Land Army on that account. He'd tumbled to it that Harry, returned from Salonika, was "the" man. Now he saw, with his own eyes, this young staff-officer pressing his lips to the hand which I had put affectionately upon his red-tabbed shoulder.
Naturally Captain Holiday thought this meant the Happy Ending to whatever misunderstanding I and the other young man had had. In his mind I suppose he was certain that he would soon have to congratulate us!
Of course he never betrayed by one twitch of his face what he thought of what I know he must have seen.
He merely said quietly: "Ah, here you are. The others are going, Miss Matthews."
"Oh, are they? Yes, it must be getting late. Thank you so much for coming to tell me," I said hurriedly. The two young men followed me out of the garden as I made my hasty way up to the house, fuming!
What could be more annoying, I ask you, than to be so "caught out"? Especially when one couldn't possibly explain the meaning of the little incident?
I could not turn round and say to the young man behind me on the path "Captain Holiday, I hope you won't misunderstand what you saw just now. Captain Markham was kissing my hand, and perhaps it did look as if it were an illustration to a magazine love-story! But it wasn't that sort of kiss! It wasn't that sort of thing at all! He and I have never been less in love with one another. Both of us happen to be hopelessly in love with somebody else! For the first time in our lives we were feeling genuinely fond of each other in a friendly way because we were sorry for one another's love tragedies. Nothing could have been more entirely platonic!"
No. I couldn't tell him this, true as it was. For one thing, even the best and simplest and truest explanations have a way of sounding "thin." Hence the golden rule "NEVER EXPLAIN." Following it, I reached the house with my two cavaliers and found that the whole party were gathered outside the porch waiting for us.
Our host was at the head of the horse in the dog-cart, where Muriel had already perched herself, and everybody was chattering over the great bunches of roses and sweetpeas given them by our hostess ... it was then that I realized that Sybil's new employers must be almost as hard up as we were ourselves. For how seldom it is that the gardens of the rich spare a single petal for the flowerless guest! But here the daughter of the house had stripped even her own window-boxes of black pansies to make into a posy for me. Muriel, sitting up in the cart, called, smiling, "Are you coming, Harry? I really must get back to poor dear Mother now. But if you want to walk," with a coquettish glance, "my cousin will drive me——"
I saw Dick Holiday's quick step forward on the gravel. He was only too anxious, I could see, to respond to this invitation. But already Harry was before him, poor Harry! his face lighting up because his lady who refused him always could still be got to throw him a smile.... It was an irony of the Fate that had made so many girls ready to hang on the smiles of a man like Harry Markham. He sprang up, took the reins.
She was driven away, her flower-face smiling over her other flowers, her little hand waving gaily; Disturber of the Peace that she was!
The walking-party—amidst a buzz of kindly farewells and "come agains" and a last call from the mistress of the house of "you won't forget that I should love a Land-girl's wedding from here?"—set off down the road back to our Camp.
I had been dreading the thought of a walkà deuxwith Captain Holiday; since Elizabeth would naturally stroll homewards at a snail's pace with her adored "Falconer" off a chocolate-box lid.
To my astonishment I found that I was to have this privilege! I found that somehow it was arranged that Captain Holiday was walking with Elizabeth, briskly, in front.
He didn't want to speak to me, then? I was left to follow with my chum'sfiancé.
Colonel Fielding was remarkably nice and friendly to me for the whole of that walk. I seemed to have reached a stage when men became unsentimental and excellent friends with me. Was it, I wondered gloomily, because none of them ever fell in love with me any more? And as I chatted to Colonel Fielding of the "delightfulness" of the afternoon we'd just spent, I thought with a rueful little sigh of one young man who had been (presumably) a little sentimental about me.
Mr. Richard Wynn, who'd written to ask me to marry him! because he had liked the child I had been, seven years ago. What must he have thought of me for never even answering his letter...!
I didn't often remember that shadowy suitor. I forgot him again as I said to Colonel Fielding, walking beside me, "How sweetly pretty Miss Elvey was looking!"
He looked mischievous and said: "Are you still afraid she'll make me faithless to Elizabeth?"
"My good young man, I don't think she'll try."
"Oh, no! She'd never want to," he agreed serenely. "It never was me the young lady was anxious to marry. I know who it is all right."
I looked at him eagerly. At last I was going to get a little light on the subject! At last I was going to hear another opinion about whether Muriel meant in the long run to say "Yes" or "No" to Captain Holiday.
I nodded towards his distant back as it turned a corner of the lane in front of us. I suggested to his friend "You mean——?"
"Er——of course."
My heart felt absurdly heavy at the announcement. Had I still hoped that it could be otherwise? Silly of me!
I asked, succeeding in not sounding wistful: "Do you think, then, that she is in love with him after all, Colonel Fielding?"
Elizabeth's young Colonel stopped on the road where we walked. He turned to me as if he hadn't caught what I'd said. He frowned a little, and yet he was smiling under that absurdly soft golden feather of a moustache. He repeated: "In love? Miss Elvey? Of course not. Miss Elvey isn't the kind of girl who would ever be in love with anybody whomsoever."
I stopped too. We faced each other on that road at a dead standstill, as people do when their talk becomes more interesting to each other than their walk. I was more than eager to know exactly what this young man thought of the girl who had stolen my admirer, and who was probably going to marry the other man whom I myself admired. The girl whom all men loved and of whom all women were jealous. What was Colonel Fielding's view of her?
"You told me, the day you got engaged, that when you had time you would tell me all about Muriel's 'kind,'" I reminded him. "Tell me now."
"Oh ... er ... I don't know that there's so much to tell," he said, looking at me. "She's just one of the mystery-girls who seem to have everything a girl should have; looks, go, charm, laughter. But ... er ... Well! She hasn't got love. That power's just been left out of her composition, Miss Matthews. She's cold; she's null. She's—she's just the opposite to your little friend," his voice grew tender, "and mine."
"Elizabeth? But—except for you—Elizabeth doesn't like men. Muriel doesn't like anything better!"
He shook his head, the only man's head I'd met that seemed full of "feminine" intuitions.
"Muriel doesn't like men," he told me. "She likes what men can give her. Attention. A good time. Admirationad lib. The cachet of being seen about, queening it over them. The sense of power; the atmosphere of ... er ... incense. That's what Muriel asks of men. Nothing else."
Puzzled, I said: "I don't understand."
"You would not."
"I've always thought Muriel a finished flirt, yet you say she's cold——"
"Flirts are," declared Elizabeth's lover. "Er ... I've heard that the true drunkard dislikes the actual taste of spirits. Well! The true flirt hates the actual idea of ... er ... Love."
He blushed as if with unconquerable shyness, but went on: "Do you know how the Muriel-type looks upon a kiss? As something to be got out of ... er ... or got over."
"I wonder," said I.
"I know," said he. "Plenty of them, the Mystery-girls."
"Why 'Mystery,' Colonel Fielding?"
"Because it is a mystery why they're made like that. Avid for what they call 'a good time'—they who can'ttastethe real good times!"
"You mean the times like—like that tea we had in the hayfield; that lunch of your mother's with her old love."
—"And so forth. Yes ... Ah, how they surround themselves with every outward sign of 'a good time,' how they swallow them up into thatgapthat can never be filled in their hearts. I remember one Mystery-girl—but I'm talking too much."
"No, no! Tell me about her."
"Well," said my new friend, "she was one of them, but not like Muriel; a nicer-natured girl altogether, married, and a topping little mother. She said to me once with all her soul in her pretty eyes, 'D'you know, the two wishes of my heart, Colonel Fielding? One is a pearl string down tohere. The other is about ten silver-fox skins made into a stole.' I looked at her (she was a picture). I said, 'What rum things to choose for hearts-wishes!' She said, 'Beautiful things?' I said, 'Well, easy to get, anyhow.' She said, 'Very expensive!' I said, 'Not they!Theyonly cost ... money.' We both meant what we said. She was sweeter than Miss Muriel, too. Some of them aren't even as sweet. But all of them remind me of those—er—gaily-coloured flowers—without scent. If I like them, I'm sorry for them. If I don't like them, I'm sorry for the Race. Give me the palest musk-rose..."
From his face he was thinking again of his Carissima.... She meant all sweetness to him.
I said: "But men swarm round those others!"
"Yes; didn't I tell you the other day how weak the average man is on Love? He's all for the lovely ... er ... shell of the Mystery-girl. He adores to be tantalized and baffled by it ... because he doesn't know what that means, until he's ... er ... married and tied to it for life."
"And then?" I asked.
"Then he thinks Love must have been overrated by ... er ... these fiction-writers. Or he imagines that he's quite happy, because no one seems to think he isn't. Or the Muriel 'pretends' to love him and he doesn't know the difference, because he 'never, even in dreams, has seen the things that are more excellent.' Er ... I do talk too much, Miss Matthews; I bore you."
"Indeed you do not," I said. "All the week I have heard nothing discussed but the feeding of the two baby-calves, and the butter-market. Even the most enthusiastic farm-worker likes to go back to the problems of other lives sometimes."
"Still, you look as if I'd ... er ... depressed you."
"Oh, no," I protested. But he had depressed me. If his theories about Muriel were true, she would never make Captain Holiday happy! Wasn't this enough to sadden me?
In his quick, unmasculine way Colonel Fielding seemed to read my thoughts.
He said: "She—Miss Muriel—has an eye to the main chance. She simply must have the things that people who've got ... er ... love can afford to do without. She covets that lovely old country-house that's been turned into a hospital. It'll be turned back some day. I really think she'd like to see herself mistress of it. Up to now I expect she's hit everything she's aimed for. But..."
He paused and smiled, a curious, encouraging smile, at me.
He went on: "I don't think——"
He paused again before he uttered the very last words that I expected to hear coming out of his mouth.
"I don't think she's going to get our friend ... er ... Richard Wynn."
"What?" I said, sharply. "Colonel Fielding, what made you say that?"
He opened his eyes at me. "Say what?"
"You said 'Richard Wynn.' What has he got to do with it?" I asked, stupefied. "Do you know him? Because I do, and I——"
"Know him?" The young man looked at me as if I'd gone mad. "Know Wynn? Holiday?"
I gasped. "You said 'Richard Wynn,'" I repeated. "Did you mean to say Captain Holiday?"
Elizabeth'sfiancéwas still gazing upon me in bewilderment. Then he uttered these further strange words; words that took me more aback than any I'd heard since I was a child readingThe Arabian Nightsby the firelight that criss-crossed my schoolroom ceiling with the giant shadow of the wire fireguard.
He asked: "Miss Matthews, do you mean to say that you didn't know Dick Holiday and Richard Wynn were ... er ... the same person?"