The Project Gutenberg eBook of The girls at his billet
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The girls at his billet
Author: Berta Ruck
Illustrator: Edward C. Caswell
Release date: June 30, 2025 [eBook #76419]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: A. L. Burt Company, 1916
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRLS AT HIS BILLET ***
[Frontispiece: It came to the last round. I put down my card. The
Queen Hearts. Good omen, eh? (Page 21)]
THE GIRLS
AT HIS BILLET
By BERTA RUCK
(MRS. OLIVER ONIONS)
Author of "His Official Fiancee," "In Another
Girl's Shoes," "The Wooing of
Rosamond Fayre," Etc.
WITH FRONTISPIECE
By E. C. CASWELL
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by Arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company
COPYRIGHT, 1916
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I The Hen-Party
II The "Boy at Last"
III The Incubus in the House
IV The Strange Case of Mr. Curtis
V The New Interest
VI The Disgraceful Party
VII The Lonely Subaltern Again
VIII The Frightful Row
IX Another Shock!
X The Zeppelin Night
XI The Making of a Man-Hater
XII The Anything-But-Joy Ride
XIII The Search for the Bride
XIV Mostly About Relations
XV The Bride Writes Home
XVI Something Quite Unexpected
XVII An Evening of Thrills
XVIII A Day of Despair
XIX Out of Danger
XX I Play Providence
XXI Nancy to the Rescue
XXII Two More Engagements
XXIII The Visit
XXIV A Middle-Aged Romance
XXV Love's New Name
THE GIRLS AT HIS BILLET
CHAPTER I
THE HEN-PARTY
Imagine three really pretty girls like ourselves--and then this hole
of a place that we live in!
Oh, dear! Why on earth did we have parents who disapproved of early
marriages?
They married early enough themselves, goodness knows. Father was
twenty-one, and had only just taken on the big yacht-building
business in this place. Mother was seventeen. A whole year younger
than I am now, if you please. (I am what they called at school "a
precocious eighteen.") Just because I've read a lot, and thought a
good deal about what I've read. But what price Mother's precocity?
which really seemed to be a distinct success. I know she and our
good-looking Dad were awfully fond of each other, and awfully happy
for the ten years of their married life. So why on earth did they
make that absurd stipulation in their will?
That has been at the root of all our troubles!
Why did they say that Aunt Victoria (Mrs. Verdeley) was to take
charge of their three daughters (that's us) "until they arrived at
the age of twenty-five, in order that the said daughters may not
plunge recklessly into the dangers of a too early marriage"?
Since this was what they wished (for Evelyn, Nancy and me to remain
old maids until we are twenty-five) they've certainly done the right
thing in sending us to live here.
Let me try to describe the sweet spot.
Imagine a village, a God-forsaken village on the bleakest part of the
East Coast of England.
Imagine mud flats and wind-swept marshlands, and a sea that crawls
out over miles and miles of shore that looks like nothing on earth
but sheets and sheets of wet brown paper.
Imagine a street or so of small, red-brick houses. Imagine several
boat-building yards, throw in a village green, a post-office, a
church, a few better houses, and a railway station, where the trains
go twice daily as far as "Nowhere," which is the junction to this
place. There you have the delightful part of the world in which we
live!
Its name?--well, perhaps the Censor might not like me to tell you its
name. So I shall call it "Mud Flats," which is certainly descriptive
enough of it.
And now imagine a house that's like a bell without a clapper. In
other words, a house full of women, without any sort of a man at all
about it. Unless you count Penny, our gardener, who walks lame with
rheumatism and who's as deaf as a post, and at least 156 years of
age. Poor dear, he's so old that he thought it would stand in his
way of getting a job _Even Here_, so he always wears (over what I
suppose is a pink Easter-egg of a head) a bushy raven wig that a baby
could see through. He told me it had cost him no end of his savings
to buy. Pathetic, isn't it?
A tragedy of old age, my dears. But no more pathetic than our own,
which is a tragedy of youth!
To go back to it:
Imagine a life where nothing, absolutely nothing ever happens!
Imagine getting up in the morning and looking out of the window at
the brown, flat shore and at the distant sea, with a few
fishing-sails dotted about on it. Imagine dressing for the day in
country clothes that it doesn't matter what they looked like exactly,
considering that nobody ever looked at one, or saw whether one was
plain or pretty, dowdy or smart. Imagine coming down to breakfast,
always the same breakfast--porridge, fish (for Aunt Victoria won't
have bacon in the place), toast, marmalade, and tea. We never have
coffee. It is too much trouble to make for just a household of
women. That's the keynote of our lives!
And now imagine looking round the table and seeing, morning after
morning, the same faces. One old one, that's Aunt Victoria, and two
young ones, my sisters, Evelyn (aged twenty-two) and Nancy, who is
going to be twenty-one next month.
Also, if I craned my neck a little to look into the gilt-framed
mirror over the mantelpiece, I could see a third young face--my own.
Really, I sometimes get as tired of that view as of the view out of
the windows.
Nancy and I often say what a mercy it would be if, one morning, one
could look in the glass and suddenly see a perfectly different face
staring at one! The face of quite another girl: dark instead of
fair, say. (For all of us are sickeningly fair! I get so tired of
it sometimes: tired of the gold and blue and pink and white
colouring.)
Or, better still, if the face of one of us suddenly turned into the
face of a young man with a nice, firm, jutting-out chin, and a
toothbrush moustache! Really, it would be a comfort! Anything for a
change, in fact.
Even a change for the worse! Not that there could be anything worse
than this stage of absolute deadly monotony. For we never catch a
glimpse of the world outside, even though it's no more than a two and
a half hours' journey up to London. Aunt Victoria never lets us go.
Also she is very, very "difficult" about when we get invitations to
stay from girls we were with at school. It would be awful if we went
and actually SAW anything of Modern Life! We can only read in the
papers about what is going on. And isn't that a flavourless way of
getting to know what's on at the theatres, and what sized hats people
are wearing?
Even the war, when it came, seemed to have nothing to do with Mud
Flats. For months and months after everywhere else was seething with
excitement and military, nobody here seemed to think of going to join
the Colours. The few young men in the place seemed only busy
fishing, or whistling about the boat-building yards as usual. No
khaki here--except in the colour of the beastly landscape! No
drilling, no route-marching, no doings of any kind!
As I said to the girls: "I don't believe it would make the slightest
difference to this hole even if the Germans did land: even if the
Kaiser did go into residence at Buckingham Palace and ran that
beastly Spread-eagle of his up in place of the Union Jack! Even that
couldn't make it any more absolutely mouldy than it is now!"
So you see the state of mind we were in up to about a fortnight ago.
And now perhaps you will have some idea of what the inhabitants of
our house (the "Moated Grange" we call it) felt like when the Great
News came to Mud Flats.
* * * * * * * *
When I say the "inhabitants," I mean, of course, we three girls,
Evelyn, Nancy and me. You couldn't expect any feelings in Aunt
Victoria, who is sixty-two, and has a Roman nose, and a figure like a
padded armchair. Unless you count feelings about mud on the carpet,
and scratches on the mahogany, and the wear and tear of the
hearthrug, and her new "_Patience_" that the Doctor's old-maid sister
has just taught her, and so on.
But about the Great News!
I've been chattering on so about other things that I've forgotten to
put that first, as I should. It's this kind of thing that has given
me my nickname of "Rattle." Everybody calls me that who knows me at
all, absolutely ignoring the fact that I have got a most pompous name
of my own, and that I have had my hair up for six weary months (ever
since I came back from school to drag out an existence in this
swamp!). You could only call it a swamp, and an unhabitable one at
that, until the great----
Oh, yes! The Great News!
Well, the great news is this: Mud Flats is to be turned into a camp
of instruction. Soldiers are to come here in batches, with their
officers, and stay for six weeks at a time, undergoing a course of
training in making bridges and pontoons, and blowing up houses, and
all sorts of thrilling things that they'll have to do when they get
out to the front. And when one batch goes another batch will come in
and do it all over again.
The long and short of it is that Mud Flats, this awful spot ten miles
from Nowhere Junction: Mud Flats, this backyard of beyond, where we
live because there are only a few old people and some boat-builders
and other civilians in it--_Mud Flats_ is going to be positively
crammed with men!
"Men, my dears!" said I to the girls. "Do you understand? Real live
young men in trousers (khaki ones, my beloved sisters!) with puttees,
and enormous boots, and pipes, and deep bass voices, and by-Joves,
and swaggering strides and spurs and tobacco-pouches, and all those
things that we've been panting and pining for the merest glimpse of
in this desert!"
"Rattle! I do wish you wouldn't allow your high spirits to run away
with you like this," said Evelyn to me when she heard me giving vent
to those expressions of delight upstairs in the bedroom the day after
we had heard the news. You know Evelyn's the eldest and the prim
one. She thinks she has to set an example, poor long-suffering dear.
She said to me, "Sometimes you become positively vulgar!"
"Vulgar?" I said indignantly. "Why is it vulgar to show I'm
delighted that we are all going to have some sort of a change in our
lives at last? You know you and Nancy are both as glad as I am that
there is now a chance that we shan't have to live the rest of our
lives in this perpetual hen-party of four! Even if the new state of
affairs does only last for a few months, we shall have had some fun!
We shall have had some youth and tobacco-smoke about the place at
last!"
Nancy's face went all quivery in her attempt not to let it crumple up
into smiles. She has the prettiest face of the lot of us, I think.
And we all three are as decent-looking as they make them, though I
say it, in our large, blond, Greek-goddessy style. I never did hold
with mock modesty, and considering that all nice girls are in duty
bound to consider themselves frights, which is what seemed to be the
fashion in Aunt Victoria's time. Why should it be correct for a girl
not to realise that her skin is white-velvety, and her eyes like
corn-cockles with dew on them, and her hair like yellow silk and
masses of it?
She would be expected to notice those things quickly enough if they
were on another girl, wouldn't she? In fact, she would be looked
upon as stupid and unobservant if she didn't.
And if I pretended I didn't it would be merely insincerity, and
insincerity is a thing I don't hold with. I told Evelyn so. I am
afraid she is just a little inclined to be given to it. I suppose
she thinks it's always an eldest sister's duty to look shocked at
what the two younger ones say.
"It isn't as if it need make any difference at all to us, even if the
village is full of soldiers," Evelyn went on, pouring cold water over
my glee. "We shan't get to know any of them, just a houseful of
women like ourselves."
"Shan't we!" said Nancy, from the glass where she was trying on her
last Spring's hat, which she had retrimmed with a quite smart and
rather military-looking "pom-pom." "Shan't we, indeed? Now I will
burst upon you another bit of news that I have just heard at the
post-office. These men and their officers that are going to
come--where do you suppose they are going to live? There aren't any
barracks for them: there aren't any tents. And they are not going to
be in huts either. No," she finished impressively. "They are going
to put them all into billets."
You know, until this war, we were all so benighted that I don't think
any of us would have known what a "billet" was. Perhaps we should
have imagined that it was a piece of wood. So it is, in the
dictionary.
But now, of course, we realised exactly what was meant. It meant
that every house in the place would be expected to put up some of
these soldiers, to have them to board with them.
"And we shall have some one, see if we don't!" I said exultantly.
"This Grange is one of the biggest houses in the place, in fact the
biggest next to the Admiral's and the Rectory and the Doctor's.
There's the quite big spare room where nobody ever sleeps. The
drawing-room makes quite a good sitting-room, and there is the girls'
Lair that's simply crying out to be made into a man's smoking-room,
and----"
"And you may as well wake up from these rosy dreams at once," said
Evelyn, quenchingly, "because there is at least one very good reason
why we shan't have any soldiery billeted here with us."
"Why?" I asked quite blankly, and Nancy turned from the glass.
Her hands were still held up to the reorganised hat, which any one
could see she had been imagining herself fascinating the New Army
with! And she echoed, "Why on earth not?"
"Because," said Evelyn, "we are not forced to take any men if we
object. We can refuse. The Authorities allow that, if there are
only women in the house, as there are here in the Moated Grange. You
can be pretty certain that Aunt Victoria won't want to have any great
men with pipes trampling in huge Army boots all over her
well-preserved stair-carpets: now, will she?"
I felt my face fall a yard. No, it was not at all likely that Aunt
Victoria would agree to take men into her precious house! Why, it
was all the lawyers could do to persuade her to take Nancy, Evelyn
and me when Father and Mother both died together of German measles.
You see, Aunt Victoria is one of the most hopeless types of old
maids. Namely, the old maid who has got married to another old maid,
and who has added a lot of the "he-old maids'" fads to her own, and
who has then become a widow with the last state worse than the first!
"Wild horses," said Evelyn, "will not make Aunt Victoria say they can
billet even one of the Camp of Instruction officers here."
"Wild horses isn't a very good way of getting any one to do
anything," I said, picking up heart again. "There is a much better
way of getting a person like Aunt Victoria to do what you want."
And for ages I wouldn't tell them what I meant. However, to save
time, I will tell you now. It is to go on exactly the opposite tack
and to make her think that you don't want what you do want. For
instance, the whole of lunch-time to-day my conversation has been
this sort of thing:
"Oh, Aunt Victoria, isn't it awful to think that almost everybody in
this village will have to have soldiers foisted on them soon! Fancy
having a strange man in the house whether you wanted to or not.
Fancy having to have him to meals, and tramping all up and down your
passages! I do think it is an imposition!"
For I knew that was what she had been thinking herself. As usual,
she turned slick round.
"Dear me, Elizabeth! What did you say? An imposition, indeed!" she
repeated, looking at me most severely over the top of her
lady-mayoressy-looking black satin blouse. "A great many people
would consider it an honour to be able to do so much for their
country, let me tell you. Personally, I think that any Englishwoman
worthy of the name should be glad to do what she can for the comfort
of these noble fellows. Remember that but for what they do for us we
should have no homes to-day, no roofs over our heads, certainly no
carpets under our feet! Remember Belgium!"
With much more in the same strain.
I listened, inwardly shrieking with delight, and stamped hard on
Nancy's toes under the table at the same time.
Of course, I truly agreed with every single word that Aunt Victoria
was saying! Of course, all that about what every Englishwoman should
feel was exactly what Nancy and Evelyn and I do feel about soldiers,
only more so!
However, it wouldn't have been the least use letting Aunt Victoria
know that, not it! The "contrary" old thing would immediately "have
taken the offensive," as it says in the newspapers, and would have
said: "A great deal too much fuss is being made over these soldiers
nowadays. After all, they are only doing their duty! They are only
doing what they are paid to do by ratepayers like ourselves. I do
not see why we should have the added burden of housing and feeding
the creatures!"
So I went on sowing the good seed by saying:
"Well, I suppose that's how one ought to feel! But I am rather glad
that the doctor and the admiral will have the bother of the officers,
and that the Higginses and the Eltons and all the people in the
little houses round about will have the men foisted on them, and
chalk-marks of their regiments and companies all over _their_ doors!
Anyhow, we shall be left in peace and quiet without a single soldier
or officer or anything in our house!"
"And why should you be so sure of that, Elizabeth?" my Aunt Victoria
boomed out at me in her stateliest contralto tones. "How do you know
that we shall not be asked to harbour some of these brave men?"
I put down my spoon and looked at her in a mildly docile, puzzled
sort of way, after having exchanged a glance with Nancy, who was only
keeping herself from open giggles by counting the damson stones on
her plate.
"Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor!" She counted up to "soldier"
again, and then I said to Aunt Victoria: "But, Auntie, you know we
won't be expected to put anybody up, as you are a widow-lady living
alone with three single nieces in the house. You will be allowed to
refuse."
"Refuse! I hope I should not dream of doing anything so
unpatriotic!" said Auntie fussily, while I no longer dared meet
Nancy's eye. "If any soldiers are suggested to me as visitors to the
Grange, I can only say that they will be made welcome to the limit of
my modest means!"
So that settled that.
This afternoon the whole thing was fixed up.
An officer came round to arrange about billets for the first draft.
We, of course, were absolutely thrilled when we heard his ring at the
bell. He gave his name in to Beeton, our housemaid, as "Major
Lawless." A lovely name, I thought!
And though he said he wished to interview Mrs. Verdeley, meaning Aunt
Victoria, I did manage to be coming through the hall when he passed,
and to be looking for something in the drawing-room when he was
there. I was aching for the first sight of khaki! Anyhow, I
contrived to get in a good hard look at the gallant major. I hoped
he'd be like the one in "Jones of the Lancers," "_When I'm booted,
and trousered, and spurred_--MY WORD!"
And I can only tell you that he was absolutely disappointing. To
begin with, he was as old as the hills, and I should think he'd
learnt his drill before the Flood, or, at any rate, just at the
Flood. Embarkation officer, perhaps. Putting the animals through
it, you know: this sort of thing: "Beasts of the field--form _fours_!
Form four feet! ... Birds of the air--two flights to the Ark,
forward--FLAP!" and so on.
He couldn't have been a day under forty, and not at all the sort of
figure that you always imagine a soldier must have: smart and well
set-up, and broad-chested and flat-backed.
Oh, no! He was quite round-shouldered, as if he were more accustomed
to sitting in an office and bending over desks than doing any real
military work! And he was pale. He wore such a worried look, too,
as if he had the cares of a whole campaign on his narrow shoulders!
The voice in which he talked was so resigned and melancholy.
I heard him say to Aunt Victoria: "Thank you, very much.... Most
kind of you, I am sure.... Then the young man will be turning up
here about tea-time on Thursday."
Armed with this glad tidings, I scuttled back to the other girls in
the Lair, behind the dining-room.
The Lair is quite the nicest room in the house. It is very
"girly-girly," but almost as comfortable as if it belonged to men.
You know, I always imagine men, as a rule, have things cosier than we
have.
The lazy-chairs are very old and very shabby, but they are springy
and comfortable still. The broad window-seat is well padded with
turkey-red covered cushions, and there is a big curtain of the same
stuff to draw and hide the view when it rains, and the mud flats and
the lead-paper sea and the weeping grey skies get altogether too
depressing.
There is a cottage piano, with a stack of ancient songs about "_The
Gipsy's Warning_" and "_In the Gloaming, O My Darling_," and that
type of thing, as well as our own slightly more modern ditties, and a
whole pile of stamp-papered and thumbed dance music--the only chance
we ever get of hearing any dance music down here. Woe is me!
Then, in the corner there is a red calico-covered wirework shape for
us to make our blouses on. There are our three work-baskets, all
rather chaotic, I am afraid, and Evelyn's everlasting knitting. On
the walls there are bookshelves, quite full of all sorts of books--my
old school histories and geographies, and a long red row of
sevenpennies, and the blue Service Kiplings which we clubbed together
to buy last summer. The top shelf has got all old novels from
mother's and grandmamma's day; also poetry: Keats and Shelley and
Byron and Scott. That's how it is I come to be so awfully well-read.
On the walls we have got a queer mixture of pictures, just the ones
we like. There is Maurice Greiffenhagen's young shepherd kissing the
girl among the poppies: which always comforts Nancy and me to look
at, because the girl has such a very big foot, bigger even than ours,
and we take sixes! Then there's a tear-off calendar with a picture
of Romeo and Juliet, and a quotation for every day in the year.
Then there is a big photograph of the statue of the Venus de Milo,
who is such a duck, we think: so good-natured-looking! Rather like
my face, I think. And, last of all, there is a framed coloured
supplement from the _Graphic_ of the year One, which I do so love.
Do you know it? It is a picture of about six girl sisters, all
dressed alike, in navy-blue jerseys and kilted skirts with crimson
sashes and their hairs down, crowded round a nurse who has got a
long-clothes new baby in her arms. She is showing it to the family.
And the title of the picture is, "Mamma's Christmas Present: A Boy at
Last."
Isn't it appropriate to us in this house? Better days are in store!
I feel it in my bones! I skipped into the Lair, where Nancy was busy
over a new camisole which she was making out of a summer muslin
skirt. Evelyn was sitting by the table, knit, knit, knit.
"'A Boy at Last!'" I quoted the title of the picture to them.
"Girls, the major says the young man is to arrive on Thursday next,
at tea-time. The question is," I concluded impressively, "THE
question is, which of us is he going to fall in love with?"
"My dear Rattle," gasped Evelyn in a really scandalised voice this
time. Even Nancy, who generally doesn't mind, murmured, "Really,
Rattle, you are too perfectly disgraceful sometimes."
"Why?" I asked, sitting on the table and swinging my feet. "Why
shouldn't I mention things that everybody knows are very likely to
happen? Have you read all the short stories that they are putting
nowadays in magazines about the young soldier who always falls in
love with the girls at his billet?"
"All of the girls?" asked Nancy, twinkling over the camisole again.
"Oh, well, one of them. You know what I mean. There is always a
romance, an engagement, and a war wedding at the end."
"But that's in magazine stories, you absurd child," said Evelyn
again, trying not to laugh. "That's not in real life."
"Real life is so much more like magazine stories than it used to be
before the war," I declared. "I am sure there is much more romance
all over the place. As for the war weddings, you can't say that's
all fiction. You can see photographs of them in the _Daily Mirror_
and the _Daily Sketch_ every morning of your lives. I think it would
be perfectly lovely to have one from this house, between one of us
and the young officer who's coming here to be billeted! Yes, and
never mind the bothering old will about not rushing into early
marriages!"
"Rattle, you really are awful!" the two girls said together this
time, and again I said: "I am not awful, I am only frank. I only say
out in a quite unabashed voice what you know other people are
thinking all the time. It is not that I am worse than other people!
It's only that I am much more honest."
"It is that you are such a child that you don't really know what you
are talking about," Evelyn went on superiorly. "You're only a
flapper, after all."
"Flappers are 'in' just now, according to the papers. So he might
like me better than any of you in the long run," I said. "Wait and
see!" And I hummed the old song, "_Maybe the lad will fancy me, and
disappoint you all!_"
"He may not 'fancy' any of us," said Nancy, sewing away busily at her
camisole. "He may be so busy with his classes and his
bridge-building and signalling. He won't have a look or a thought
for the girls at his billet."
A thought struck me suddenly.
"Let's tell fortunes about it," I suggested, "and see what really is
going to happen according to the cards."
And I opened the table-drawer, and brought out the rather cockley
pack of cards that we had learnt to play "Beggar My Neighbour" with
about five weary years ago, when we all were recovering from
whooping-cough, and couldn't go out.
"Let's see," I said, "which of us is what poetry books call the
'destined maid.' And then, which ever comes out the one the young
soldier is to have, well!--the other two can just take a back seat
and allow her a fair field."
"Rattle, what absolute nonsense," said Evelyn severely. "What bosh!
As if anybody believed anything of that sort----"
"We needn't believe it," I said. "It won't 'mean' anything. But it
will be just something to pass away the time with before the tea-bell
rings. It's a most loathsome afternoon, so we may as well have
something to amuse ourselves." For the rain dashed heavily against
the windows outside. The melancholy view was the limit. I drew the
red curtain. Nancy stirred up the fire, and even Evelyn (pretending
she wasn't going to) put down her book, and drew nearer to the table
where I was shuffling the cards. And murmuring to myself a poem that
I'd just finished. You know, I write verses sometimes. I'll tell
you these ones. I call them "Fate." They're about engagements.
"_Never chortle when you hear--
That your school-friend's troth is plighted
To a man with spectacles
Or a man the King has knighted.
If he stutters in his speech,
If his years are more than forty,
Even if his head is bald
Do not laugh at her; it's naughty.
Fate has probably reserved
Something worse in store for you!
How would you like a----_"
"Oh, come on, Rattle: those are shuffled now!"
"All right. You cut, Nancy," I said, handing the pack to her. She
cut, and Evelyn dealt. "Now! It's for the one who is left with the
highest card in her hand," I said.
We played out the cards on the old ink-spattered table, laughing and
chattering together. For it's all very well to say how dull this
place has been, and what a howling wilderness Mud Flats, is, and what
a hole of a place the Moated Grange: but we have had quite a lot of
fun among ourselves. We three have always got on well together.
Nothing can spoil that.
It came to the last round. I put down my card.
The Queen of Hearts. Good omen, eh?
Nancy threw down the Two of Diamonds.
The Nine of Spades was Evelyn's.
"Aha! you see," I said triumphantly, "I take this trick. Young
Lieutenant Whatever-his-name-is will be the fate of the flapper!"
"We ought to try it three times," said Nancy. So again we gathered
up the cards and cut and dealt.
I saw the faces of the other two girls growing quite excited over the
game, utter nonsense as it was.
This time Nancy had the King of Diamonds, I had the Two of Spades,
and Evelyn the Ace. Eldest first, in fact.
"Now again," said Nancy. "Why d'you laugh, Rattle?"
"I'm thinking," I said, "of 'our' possible fiancé."
I wondered what that unconscious young officer, now at his depot,
would have thought if he could have taken a little peep at the scene
in the country house which was to be his billet.
I wondered if he would have been amused at the picture. The cosy,
untidy, red-curtained room, with the trio of pretty girls, all tall,
all fair, gathered about the table with their three golden heads bent
eagerly above their absurd game. If he could have guessed that the
game was supposed to decide which of the players was to become his
"destined maid"! Ha! If they all guessed about this sort of thing,
what would happen?
There was silence, this last round.
Silence broken only by the little "talking" noise of the flames in
our old-fashioned fire-grate, and by the rustling sound of the cards
as they flew one above the other just as the autumn leaves outside
were dropping from the big sycamore on to the path.
The last card fell.
This time the score stood thus:
Nancy, King of Clubs.
The vulgar Rattle, Three of Diamonds.
The lady-like Evelyn, Five of Hearts.
"Ah, now each of us have come out top once," said I. "How is that
supposed to count?"
"Why, that we've all got an even Fate, I suppose," suggested Evelyn,
sweeping up the cards and tossing them into the table-drawer again.
"Probably that the young man who's coming to be billeted here won't
have anything to say to one of us."
"Always look on the bright side," laughed Nancy. "But I believe that
the first round was meant to count. Rattle, Queen of Hearts. Child,
your elder sisters will retire into the background like Cinderella
the other way round, and give you, as you say, a fair field with the
young man."
"Thanks, awfully. I would do the same for you, any time," I said
gratefully.
And then we all three burst out into shrieks of laughter over our own
seriousness about what was only fun.
Now we've got a week to wait and see what the young man's going to
turn out like.
Nancy, who is rather sentimental, though she tries to hide it by
pretending she's talking bosh--Nancy calls him "the possible Prince
Charming."
His real name, according to a quite solemn and ceremonious little
note that he's written to Aunt Victoria, is Frank Lascelles.
Auntie says "Lascelles" is what she calls a "good" name, but Nancy
says never mind, there are all sorts of ramifications of even the
goodest families, so that he need not be one of the very high and
mighty ones at all. Auntie says they are always called "Frank" for
some reason.
"Frank" is nice.
I wonder whether he is?
* * * * * * * *
(Later.) No! he isn't!
He's come--has this young---- Well, I haven't thought of anything
bad enough to call him yet, this young officer that we've got to put
up with at the Moated Grange for six mortal weeks.
Oh, how am I going to stand it?
It'll be perfectly ghastly.
However, perhaps I'd better begin again at the story of that awful
day when he arrived.
CHAPTER II
THE "BOY AT LAST"
To begin with, when people say they're going to turn up "at
tea-time," why don't they find out first when tea-time is?
At the Moated Grange it is always five o'clock.
Aunt Victoria is so embedded in her old-fashioned, old-maidish ways
that she doesn't realise anybody else could have it at any other
time. She didn't dream of altering her hours, or her habits, or even
her afternoon siesta, as she calls it, just because to-day was The
Day. I mean the day when the first draft of camp-of-instruction
soldiers were to come down to Mud Flats. Even yesterday there'd been
some signs of life about the place.
A big car full of khaki had driven up to the "Pearl and Oyster,"
which is the one-eyed hotel of our hamlet. It's now the headquarters
for the officers of the permanent staff. Meaning, the instructors of
the classes they're going to have here for destroying houses and
blowing up bridges and wrecking railways and whatever else they have
got to do.
It sounds all very jolly and destructive, doesn't it?
The butcher's wife said, with a grave waggle of her grey head, that
she "reckoned Mud Flats would never be the same place again after all
this."
We do so hope it won't.
There has been a general buzz going on in all the little shops of the
village here. The talk has been about nothing but how many men Mrs.
So-and-So has got to find room for in her place: also which
particular lot are paying two-and-sixpence a day and which three
shillings. Also about the difference it will make having to cook for
these lads, and the preparations that will have to be made....
Plenty of preparations, for example, at the Moated Grange.
Aunt Victoria had still got on what we call her "Paroxysm of
patriotism," brought on, of course, out of perverseness, just because
I had pretended to be "so against" the billeting.
I am against it now, considering what has happened, but I am coming
to that presently.
We had made the spare bedroom, which was to be given over to the
young officer, into a perfect vision of comfort--snowy curtains, the
best towels, a huge tablet of scented soap on his washing-stand. As
a last touch Nancy had put the pink eiderdown from her own bed, if
you please.
"Charity blankets would be quite good enough for a mere woman," she
declared. "We simply must have the best of everything for our brave
defenders."
"He has not begun to defend us yet," suggested Evelyn, in her rather
squashing voice.
But I know she is just as keen as anybody on making things nice for
him. For at that moment she was arranging in an old cut-glass
finger-bowl upon his dressing-table a bouquet of all the flowers we
have got left now that it is autumn. Namely, some bright yellow
button chrysanthemums, a spray of red berries, and the last pink
monthly rose that I could find blossoming over our porch. We had put
a fire in the bedroom, too, in case he found the air of Mud Flats too
chilly after Salisbury Plain. Mrs. Miles at the post-office said
that "a tidy few of them" were expected to come from Salisbury.
As for the tea which we had prepared for the creature--well, it was a
case of nine whole pennyworth of cream to start with. Then we had
brown bread and butter and white, with no end of butter spread on it.
Evelyn had made a gingerbread cake, which she is very good at, and I
had made lemon cheese (which, if I had only known then the sort of
person I was making it for I shouldn't have squeezed a single
lemon!). Then, again, Cook, usually the grumpiest old soul alive,
who grudges any one "mucking about" in her lovely big warm
kitchen--even Cook unbent until she wasn't one bit the cross old
thing that she seems by nature! She herself volunteered to make
delicious sandwich-paste out of the cold fish that was left over from
breakfast.
"There's nothing that gentlemen fancy more than some sort of a little
relish with their tea," she told me as she went to the cupboard for
the red pepper. "They'll give all the sweet things that's going for
something savoury in the anchovy line, or a nice taste of potted ham!
Yes, you mark my words, young ladies, it will come in handy to you
some day when you have got a house and gentlemen of your own to
provide for.
"Dear me!" she went on quite expansively, "there will be some
satisfaction in cooking meals now, such as there never is when it's
just a parcel of ladies, that is content to make a meal off the top
of a breakfast egg and a teaspoonful of raspberry jam! There will be
a difference in the order I shall have to give to the butcher as soon
as the young orficer-gentleman arrives."
The one thing that all of us hoped about him was--well, what do you
suppose? That he was dark. For if you have lived all your life in a
household of fair heads (even Aunt Victoria is fair turned to grey--a
most depressing tint) you will realise how one simply pants to see an
opposite colour. Evelyn is golden blonde: Nancy is much lighter, a
regular ash-blonde. I am betwixt and between: in fact, what they
call "a honey-blonde." "How lovely!" a lot of people would say. But
what I think is, "How insipid!"
"I hope the young man is going to be as black as jet," I said
decisively, "with midnight eyes like pools of--of black currant tea:
and an olive skin and a black moustache like the mark of candle smoke
on his upper lip. That'll make all of us look so dazzling by
contrast. A fair girl one can put up with, after all. But what I
say is, there's no devil in a fair man."
"Rattle!" remonstrated Evelyn in her best "shocked" voice.
"Sorry if I've said the wrong word again," I apologised. "When I
said 'devil' in that sense, of course what I meant was
'individuality.' I should never dream of marrying a man who hadn't
got plenty of that."
"You'll wait till you're asked, like everybody else," said Evelyn,
who is really very simple, in spite of being the eldest. "And that
depends entirely upon the young man himself."
"Oh, does it? Oh, does it?" I cried, taking a taste of hot
lemon-curd out of the spoon as I talked. "I bet you the young
orficer-gentleman won't have a chance against Little Me if I take it
into my head it's me he's got to fall in love with. Didn't he come
out mine first of all in the cards? And doesn't Shakespeare say the
same thing?"
"Shakespeare?" echoed Nancy.
"Yes, Shakespeare. I don't understand what half of those sonnets of
his are about as a rule. But this one I mean is pretty clear.
Something about:
"'For when a woman woos, what mother's son
Will rudely leave her till she do prevail?'
"So you see that if I intend to 'prevail' upon this Mr.----"
"Really, Rattle, one would think you had been engaged at least three
times already," said Evelyn, "instead of never having had the vaguest
hint of a love affair, you absurd child."
"Makes no difference at all to a person of any imagination," I told
her cheerfully. "Haven't I had the run of all the novels in the
house? And isn't it just the same as if I'd met all these eligible
young heroes I've read about? Yes. I'm so well up in the love
scenes by this time that I know exactly what the most successful sort
of young girl does at those emergencies.
"You needn't think I shouldn't know how to handle the situation. You
needn't think that just because I've lived in this little mud-puddle,
with nobody but my sisters to talk to, that I shouldn't be perfectly
capable of coping with a fascinating young man. Oh, dear, yes. I
should be very offhand with him, too," said I, warming to my subject.
"I should start away by saying to him, 'Now, Billet Boy'----"
"Now WHO?" demanded Nancy, rather startled.
"'Billet Boy.' That would be my name for him," I said, raising my
voice so that they should hear what I said as I stood with my aproned
back to them, stirring away at my double-cooker over the fire. "I
should say, 'You know, I'm going to call you Billet Boy, because I
think Mr. Lascelles is too long and pompous a name for a mere junior
subaltern. As for Frank, it's too affectionate.'"
Here Nancy, quite suddenly, gave a loud cough. I thought it was just
the red pepper that cook had left on the table. So I took no notice.
I went gaily and recklessly on, talking as quickly as I stirred.
"You see, girls, the affection will all have to be on the young man's
side. Anyway, at first. Perhaps, a good deal later on, at the end
of the six weeks that he's going to be here, perhaps then I shall
turn round and----"
Here, with the lemon-curd spoon still steaming in my grasp, I did
turn round to sort of give point to the remark....
Point?
Oh, horrors! If you only had seen the point that the remark had
unconsciously taken!
For what did I behold? My two sisters standing there quite paralysed
with embarrassment. Evelyn crimson and Nancy magenta with blushes.
And beyond them, having just pranced in through the back kitchen
door, was a small, red-haired figure in khaki, with a floppily-soft
cap, high brown boots, and a Sam Browne belt.
In one horrified flash, of course, we had all realised who it was.
The young man who was coming here to be billeted. Second-Lieutenant
Frank Lascelles himself!
* * * * * * * *
(_Here follow some impressions of Francis Lascelles, Esquire,
Temporary Second-Lieutenant R.E._)
Jolly ripping billet this! Startling contrast to what I'd expected,
namely, a bleak, tumble-down villa kept by the oldest inhabitant as
ugly as sin. Anything but, by Jove! Found myself landed in a
bright, cosy kitchen full of a heavenly smell of cooking and a
regular beauty-chorus of tall girls. Two of them very pretty. Can't
think why girls don't always wear white aprons and trot about in red
firelight. Suits them A1. Third girl (seems to be the youngest),
Some Peach. All of them goddess-built with smothers of golden hair.
Just as I blew in The Peach was holding forth to the others. All
about my humble self and what she was going to call me when I arrived.
Personally don't care what she calls me as long as can persuade her
to let me take her out in the side-car of my motor-bike: but afraid I
dropped rather a brick by way of a start.
(_Here the youngest girl resumes._)
The brute: the little brute! Eavesdropping, I call it. It's all
very well for Nancy to say she did cough to let me know he was there.
It's all very well for Evelyn to say it wasn't his fault that I would
go gabbling on.
Why did he laugh?
That's the unforgivable thing!
If he'd behaved like a gentleman and pretended he hadn't heard
anything, then perhaps I could have thought no more about it. I
could have overlooked his really dreadful personal appearance-- But
I'm coming to his appearance later on. When I've got time to spread
myself on it.
I'll go back to that first awful minute when he stood framed in the
open doorway of our back kitchen, creasing up his eyes and showing
all his teeth, and rocking with idiot laughter, while we stood like
three Lot's wives, turned to pillars of salt, in aprons.
Evelyn was the first to collect herself.
Evelyn came forward, rather pink still, but holding herself as
dignifiedly as if she had swallowed both rolling-pins as well as the
kitchen poker. I really felt proud of Evelyn as she turned to the
intruder. She said, in a voice that sounded just as if it were quite
a swagger party in her own drawing-room, "How do you do? It's Mr.
Lascelles, I suppose?"
"Yes, it is," said the odious little creature. He pulled himself
together, looked up from one to the other of us as he put his hand to
his floppy cap and saluted briskly before he took it off.
This was the first time any of us girls had received a salute from a
man in uniform.
I knew exactly how the other two girls felt about it. I could read
it on their faces.
They were thrilled. Wasn't it funny? They were simply tingling with
the pride of it from their hair down to their toes.
As for me--No, thank you! I shall wait until something a little more
attractive salutes me before I feel anything but annoyance at the
cheek of its daring to look at me.
He said, "How d'you do? I say, I am so awfully sorry, don't you
know, at bursting in upon you like this. I know it's round the other
way. But I did go to the front first, and I couldn't get the servant
to hear me."
That was because cook had gone over "to row that butcher," and Mary,
our housemaid, had what she calls "popped up-street" to the
post-office-and-drapery to get herself a fresh Peter Pan collar to
wear in honour of the new arrival, not realising how much too soon he
was going to arrive.
I shall never forgive either him or her for that!
Evelyn, becoming more and more the credit of the family, was smiling
graciously down upon the little horror, and telling him that it
didn't matter one scrap, and that she was very glad to see him, and
that she hoped we should be able to make him comfortable.
To which he replied, without a moment's hesitation, "Oh, thanks
awfully. I'm sure you will. Are you Mrs. Verdeley, may I ask?"
"No," said Evelyn, growing about an inch visibly before our eyes with
pride at being taken for Married. "My aunt, Mrs. Verdeley, is
usually asleep at this hour of the afternoon: that is why she did not
hear your ring. I am her niece, Miss Evelyn Verdeley, and this is my
sister Nancy."
Here Nancy dimpled at him, and apologised for her gingered, floury
hands.
"And this," Evelyn went on, turning to me, "is my youngest sister."
Here she paused. She said afterwards that it was because she forgot
for a moment what my other name was besides "Rattle."
And I think I could quite well leave off that nickname now, and pass
it on to the creature that we have got to have billeted with us.
For he is a "rattle," if you like. At least ten times more so than
I, and a far sillier kind of one. For he actually began to hum that
tune out of the Alhambra revue that we have got the music of:
"_Here's my youngest sister. Take a look at her. Take a look at
her----_"
At the same time he _was_ taking a look at me, and twinkling all over
himself in a way for which I simply longed to boil him.
"It's too sweet of you," he then said, "to be making lemon cheese on
purpose to please me. Absolutely nothing I like so much, I assure
you----"
I determined then and there that I'd never make another eggspoonful!
And I said in a truly forbidding voice, "I don't think I was making
it on purpose for you exactly."
"What? Not for the Billet Boy?" he said. And tried to make me smile
at him. Me! I could have taken the double-cooker full of hot curd
and flung it over his red head! (Wait: I'm coming to his red hair
presently.) I gave him a look that--well, I can't describe it. You
should have seen it. Anyhow, I gave him a look that chilled him.
For he left off twinkling at me at last, and turned to the two other
girls.
And actually had the insolence to ask in a plaintive voice if it
would be possible to have the first detachment of tea now, in the
kitchen. It was then a quarter to four. Of course, he ought to have
been told tea would be ready in an hour and a quarter. I'm ashamed
of Evelyn and Nancy.... In less time than it takes me to write about
it they got the creature's tea.
They fetched out the best afternoon tea-cloth. They laid it on the
kitchen table. They spread it with all the lovely things we'd been
preparing, including my lemon-curd, I'll trouble you. I left off
counting how many slices of bread-and-butter, plastered with it, the
young man ate: going on from that to cook's fish-paste, then to the
ginger-cake--ginger was appropriate enough. Then back to more
lemon-curd, washing it all down with great gulps of hot, sugary tea.
At last he said, "You girls must think I'm a cormorant."
Girls! Before he'd known us twenty minutes.
"The fact is," he said, "I didn't manage to snaffle any tiffin on the
way down to this God-forsaken--I mean down to this place. And after
we arrived--Thanks. Was that my sixth cup? Seven is a lucky
number.... Yes, there was only time to get our lads fed."
By the look in Nancy's eyes I could see exactly what she was
thinking, namely, how splendid it was of him to see about getting his
men fed before he thought of having lunch himself. I could see that
she was within an inch of melting into tears over the idea. I think
that I mentioned before how utterly sentimental Nancy is.
And, of course, it was absurd to think anything of that. Naturally
an officer thinks of getting his men fed first. It is only his duty,
after all. Why make a fuss about it?
Why, men with horses have to attend to them first. I shouldn't have
thought much of this little Lieutenant Frank Lascelles if he had gone
and gorged himself instead of attending to his Tommies. Goodness
knows, he was making up for lost time now.
I didn't see why I should stop in the kitchen and watch him do it.
He's going to have plenty of attention and spoiling without me.
So, humming a careless tune, I left that orgy in the kitchen and came
away to sit by myself in the Lair. The Lair where we'd had so many
conversations about what "our billeted officer" was going to be like.
Little did I ever think how painfully unattractive the young man
would be!
I said so to Evelyn and Nancy to-night, when they came in to brush
their hairs and gossip as usual before we all went to bed. They were
all flushed and sparkly ... evidently their first impressions of Mr.
Lascelles were very different from mine. I told them what I thought
of him. "To begin with, so small!" I said disgustedly. "So
shrimpesque!"
"Nonsense! He's five-foot-six-and-a-bit. He said so. That's not a
bad height," said Evelyn. "It's only because we're such a family of
young giantesses that he may look a little short----"
"A little!" I scoffed. "He's what I call two teacups and a rim high!
He's tiny!"
"Small men make the best fighters," ventured Nancy. "Look at Nelson.
Look at Napoleon."
"How can I possibly? Don't be so silly," I said. "All I can look at
is the creature and his awful looks. His hair! That _hideous_ shade
of ginger! And sprinkled with freckles all over his absurd face!"
"Still," Evelyn reminded me very unkindly, "he did 'come out yours'
in the cards!"
"I abdicate," I said, tying a bit of pink ribbon found the ends of my
plaits with a jerk. "Not any, thanks," I said, imitating the
curate's voice at tea. "I resign my first chance. I'd rather marry
dear old Penny the gardener. Even a black wig is better than carrots
grown on the premises----"
"Rot----"
"And I've just made up a lovely poem about it, too." I ignored them.
"I call it '_Repudiation_.' Here it is:
"'_Oh, I will never marry
A man who is shorter than me,
A man who has not enlisted,
Or a man in the N.C.C.
The R.A.M.C., or a red-haired R.E.,
Would be likewise definitely barred by me._'
"So if one of you wants to get up Our Great Khaki Romance with the
Lascelles lad, ending in a war-wedding and an arch of swords, prrrray
don't let any thought of your youngest sister stand in your way. Do
you hear, Evelyn?"
"I hear you talking more nonsense in half an hour," said Evelyn,
"than ten ordinary girls get through in a day. Who began the idea of
a Khaki romance? Not I----"
"Then perhaps it'll be Nancy's," said I, skipping into bed and
drawing the pillows well down into the nape of my neck. "Blush,
Nancy; the bride's always supposed to. I shall be merely the
bridesmaid. No! _I_ shall be the 'Best Girl'; that's what they have
nowadays. The best man always has the ring to find when it drops
through a crack in the floor; so I suppose my job will be to keep the
bridegroom from getting lost? Goodness knows he'd be small enough,"
I said, cruelly. "And I don't see how there's going to be room for
anybody to sit on his knee ever, not in our family. But anyhow the
game is between you two girls now. Good-night. Good luck!" And I
curled myself up to my well-earned rest.
CHAPTER III
THE INCUBUS IN THE HOUSE
I say, dear readers, have you ever had to live in the house with a
person you absolutely hate? It's awful.
I've had some experience of it already.
When I was at school, it was our German mistress whom I loathed with
a black and bitter hatred. I can't tell you how every detail about
her used to get on my nerves, from the way she did her tow-coloured
hair in plaits round her head (that you could see was never washed)
to the way she used to stump into the classroom on her large flat
feet and call out in her odious Hanover accent: "Elizabet, I shall
r-r-report you! Elizabet, why zis noise? Sit immediately down and
write out two hundred times, '_I shall not talk in Preparation: I
shall not talk in Preparation._'"
Do you know, when I left school I simply cried for joy, just because
I was leaving "Fraulein"! (I wonder how many English schoolgirls
have felt that delight!) Never again should I hear her murder the
King's English! Never again should I behold her everlasting red
check blouse that always smelt of the golosh cupboard! Never, never
again should I have to sit next to her in church and feel myself
tingling all over with the exasperation of being anywhere near a
person I so disliked!
When they read of the atrocities in Belgium, some people said they
would never have believed such things of the Germans. They'd always
considered the Germans a noble, brave, splendid, intelligent and all
that sort of thing Nation. They were surprised. I wasn't. I'd
believe ANYTHING of a nation that produced people like our "Fraulein"
at school.
My goodness, how I detested her!
And now that old, well-known feeling of exasperation and dislike has
come back to me here, at the Moated Grange, Mud Flats.
All because of the person I once imagined was going to turn out such
a ray of sunshine in our house: all because of this horrid,
red-haired, giggling, school-boyish microbe of a little officer-boy
that we've got to have billeted on us. He's been here a week now.
For seven whole days we've had the Grange sort of permeated with him.
We've had him taking up the bathroom for hours and hours the first
thing in the morning, as well as when he comes in caked with mud in
the afternoon, and using absolutely all the hot water and leaving his
disgusting shaving-brush face downwards on the soap, always: we've
had him whistling and singing the whole time, too.
The sounds of his splashing and wallowing like a grampus are always
accompanied by the sounds of his bellowing bursts of song. His
favourite seems to be that Gaiety thing:
"_Oh, please don't try to flirt with me:
Don't try to flirt with me----_"
(As if one could imagine anybody wanting to!)
Then we have him doing what I call "the New Army stamp" downstairs.
We have him at breakfast, odiously chirpy and gay: "Morning, Mrs.
Verdeley! Morning, Miss Evelyn! Morning, Miss Nancy!" in the kind
of voice that sounds as if he might just as well say "My dear girls"
and have done with it.
To me he just says "Good morning," in quite another tone of voice.
(Thank goodness, I have managed to snub Mr. Frank Lascelles into
that!)
Then, no sooner has he dashed off to what he calls his work than he
seems to be dashing in to lunch again, mud to the eyes, and
monopolising all the bathroom again first and all the conversation
afterwards. The house is never free of him and his cigarettes and
his matches. And his floppy khaki cap seems to be always flung down
in three places at once.
I don't know how Aunt Victoria can stand the new state of affairs. I
don't know how anybody can stand it.
Curiously enough, everybody at the Grange seems to like him except me.
They all take his part!
Nancy frowned like a thunder-cloud at lunch because I said something
about the "REAL Army," meaning the one that was here before the war,
and before they took to making officers out of young men-in-the-City
and secretaries of suburban tennis-clubs. I heard the Incubus say
he'd been all that. He used to be a Bank Clerk, too, before he
became what he calls a soldier.
I don't call what he's doing here "soldiering." Do you?
My idea of soldiering is leading charges at the head of your men,
with a drawn sword flashing in one hand and a revolver in the other,
and you shouting, "Come on, lads! Let 'em have it! No quarter for
the Prussian Guard! Remember Wittenberg!" Or else being found
covered with blood standing with your back propped against a
listening-post, or whatever they're called, with half your company
dead at your feet, holding up a battalion of Germans with one dummy
machine-gun.... Not much of that sort of thing about Tem. Sec.
Lieut. Lascelles' duties. Well, of course there couldn't be, _here_,
but he doesn't even seem to be preparing for it. Instead of that, he
goes in for the most footling jobs.
Feeding the men is the funniest. A great G.S. wagon comes along the
Junction Road, heaped with their victuals. Revolting masses of raw
meat, girls, just like at the Zoo. Loaves, stuck together in fours.
Sickening great lumps of cheese. Millions of tins of Tickler's jam.
Well, these things are all carted into the empty cottage next door to
the post-office, where our old gardener Penny used to live. Here
these half-oxen and other raw joints are hacked and sawn and chopped
up and flung at the sappers as if they were a lot of hungry jaguars.
They tuck these rations away under their arms, or in their
haversacks, or string-bags, or anyhow, and tramp off to get their
landladies to cook them--the lumps of meat, I mean. Of course, it's
the Quartermaster-Sergeant who's supposed to be responsible for all
these disgusting proceedings, but the Incubus is most fearfully faddy
about seeing that he does it all right. Absurd of him. I hate a man
to know anything about housekeeping.
Then he (the Incubus) has the men's billets to pay once a week. Oh,
my dears, that Day! The importance of the Ker-reature!
The amount of talk we have about "Four hundred pounds from my Company
on me this moment!" And then the fuss-fuss-fuss over Sapper
Stick-in-the-Mud, whose billet has been moved and who's got to have
breakfast fivepence down on one form, and dinner one-and-a-penny down
on another form! It bores me, stiff. I don't know how you can
possibly look upon as a real soldier a being who, if you please, has
to be always seeing about boots. For we always have yards about
those, too. Lance-Corporal Thingammijig's boots, and how they have
to be sent off to the London, Chatham and Dover regimental boot-maker
to be soled and heeled, and how the bill's come in and had to be sent
to Headquarters with a solemn inscription: "_These repairs are
rendered necessary by fair wear and tear. F. Lascelles._"
I call him a mixture of a kitchen-maid and a cashier and a
nursery-governess!
And when I said so to Aunt Victoria she actually said quite sharply,
"Nonsense. He is a young man who has taken on a number of duties
that are entirely strange to him, and I'm sure he is doing them very
conscientiously and well, and, Elizabeth, I won't have you talking
about 'real' soldiers: they're all alike doing 'real' work and
they'll be in 'real' peril of their lives, presently, just like the
others, and, Mary, tell Cook Mr. Lascelles likes the beef a little
under-done."
Even Aunt Victoria!
It must be because she's deaf and can't hear half the noise he makes
and doesn't understand the other half.
As for Evelyn and Nancy, they're sillier and sillier about him. I
must admit it's not the "lovey-dovey" Khaki romance kind; no, even
they seem to have grasped the fact that nobody could possibly be
attracted in that way. But their chummy sort of way is just as
annoying. They laugh at all his _petty_ jokes! They listen to his
stories, even the ones that we heard from a girl at school that her
brother told her in Nineteen Thirteen! They keep on saying, "What a
dear he is to have in the house" (dear at any price!) and "Doesn't it
make one feel how much we've missed all these years, not having any
brother of our own," until it makes me feel literally sick.
I shall be really rude to him one of these days. I shall be driven
to it, I know I shall!
* * * * * * * *
(_Here follow some comments by Second Lieutenant Frank Lascelles._)
Whew! I said the youngest girl at this billet of mine was a peach. A
lemon would have been nearer the mark. Ever since I've been at Mud
Flats she's gone out of her way--I swear she has--to be a perfect
little beast to me.
Don't know what I've done. The other two girls are the best of pals
with me. But this little--well, I'd better not say it. The
Peach--for she is a Peach to look at, all the same!--the Peach seems
to think it'll hurt her to give me a glance. Whenever I'm about she
turns away. Never see anything of the girl but her profile. It's a
jolly pretty profile, that I will say for her. Still, that's no
reason why she should go about pretending to be a queen on a coin,
always side-face on, eh?
Nothing I say or do makes any diff. She pretends she thinks I'm
talking to Evelyn or Nancy, the sisters!
And the fact is--well, it doesn't sound very polite to two jolly nice
girls, but neither of 'em is a patch upon her. Little demon! To-day
she cut me in the village, walking down to the Hard. I swear she saw
me coming. She turned her back and glared into a shop window until
I'd gone by, walking with Curtis. He saw her. It was only a
butcher's shop, too. Absolutely no excuse. Told her about it at
lunch.
"You cut me dead," I said.
She just raised her eyebrows and said: "Oh? Was that you going by?
So sorry. Hadn't you a different sort of coat on? I must have
thought you were one of the sea scouts."
Now, considering the beastly little scouts run about twelve years old
and four foot high, it was a little thick, wasn't it? However,
"there are others." I'm not breaking my heart about the Peach! I'd
just like to see how much ruder she could get; merely as a matter of
curiosity!
(_The youngest girl resumes._)
If it only weren't for this man, or, rather, Incubus, in the house
here, I should think that Mud Flats was so changed for the better
since the soldiers have come down.
Even the country doesn't look so dead.
The brown beach and the lead-grey sea and the dove-grey and primrose
evening sky were desolate enough when they were only landscape. But
they make a jolly background to the workings of the pontoon-class.
The crowds of men, you know, dragging and hammering, and shoving away
at things, make it look like pictures or groups of statues of ancient
soldiery.
For the clothes they wear when they are toiling about in the mud here
is not a bit the commonplace, usual, khaki uniforms in which they
turned up from the station.
Because they now have always to be in and out of mud baths, they wear
sort of white canvas overall sort of things that they have mudded and
got rained on until they are just the colour of clay. In fact, the
things do look like a coat of clay that has been plastered all over
their bodies. Their trousers they tuck up about their knees. On
their heads they wear Balaclava woollen caps that are just any old
shape.
And what with the bare sunburnt limbs, and the reflections in the
water, and the coming and going on shore, and the boats pushed off,
and the singing and shouting and deep-voiced laughter heard through
the lilac-tinted twilight, why! it seems to carry one right back into
the days of the landing of the Romans! Before this country got so
civilised and educated that girls could grow up on a sea-coast of it
without ever catching a glimpse of real men doing a real strenuous
man's work!
And then we hear there are going to be sports, and concerts, and
dances for the Sappers, and Staff Officers coming down from London to
inspect, and quite a lot of other excitements that Mud Flats never,
never dreamt of before the war.
How I should have enjoyed the thought of them if only we'd got one of
the other officers billeted here, instead of the Incubus!
The one he was walking with the other afternoon looked rather nice.
Very tall and dark and rather shy-looking. Interesting, I thought: I
wonder who he was....
But I can't ask. You see, having made up my mind to be icy cold and
as prickly as a hedgehog to the Incubus, I can't allow myself to take
any sort of interest in his friends, which makes me dislike the
Incubus himself more than ever, of course.
For he is on my nerves. Meals are a perfect punishment to me,
because he is always there. I spend no end of time and energy
avoiding him, whether it is in this house in the evening or walking
about our transmogrified village.
"Rattle, you are getting perfectly childish about Mr. Lascelles,"
Evelyn said to me one day quite crossly in the Lair. "If you don't
like him, you needn't show it quite so patently."
"Why not?" I said, at my flippantest. "You and Nancy don't mind
'showing patently' that you do like him. His head is getting quite
turned enough by the attention he's allowed to have from you two. I
suppose you're going to toss up for him later on?"
"Don't be silly, Rattle," said Evelyn in her most grown-up voice.
"You know you've been angry with Mr. Lascelles ever since that first
afternoon he turned up, chiefly because you are angry with yourself!"
"Angry with myself?"
"Yes. Because you were caught out, talking nonsense as usual."
"Pooh! I never thought about that again," said I, hideously annoyed.
"I'm sure you have," contradicted Nancy. "And you're so afraid that
Mr. Lascelles might think you'd been too interested about him that
you can only fly to the opposite extreme, and bite his head off
whenever he tries to make friends with you."
"Nothing of the kind," I said. "I don't like him because I don't
like him."
"You allow him to notice it."
"Any reason why I shouldn't?" I said.
"Yes," said Evelyn. "For one thing he might, if he were a very
conceited young man, imagine that you were really losing your heart
to him."
"Oh, good gracious!" I said, impatiently. "Did anybody ever hear
such poodle-doodle?"--this is our family word for absolute rot.
Which it was.
I felt myself turning scarlet as the Turkey twill cushions of the
Lair with pure annoyance. I said: "It's you two who he might quite
well imagine were losing your hearts!"
Nancy laughed. Evelyn said: "Really, I'd rather he thought that of
me than that he should see me behaving--well, not like a lady,
Rattle!"
It was said in quite a different voice from the one in which she
usually scolds me and Nancy when we have shocked her about anything.
It was as if she really meant what she said, and the expression on
Nancy's face was just as grave. They did really mean it, they did
really think that I had behaved in a rotten way to the little
blighter--(Yes, now be shocked at the word "blighter." He uses it as
a slang word. I mean it literally. I mean he "blights" the whole of
my enjoyment like a worm in the bud)--the horrid little blighter who
has spoilt everything by coming here.
Yes, spoilt everything! That's exactly what he has done if he wants
to know. I always used to think that nothing in the world could come
between us three girls getting on together better than any sisters
who have ever lived together in one house! And now here's this
"incubus" come, and what's the result? What used to be a happy
family is split up into factions! Two against one! Civil war, like
the Wars of the Roses!
They say that's what happens as soon as one young man plumps himself
into the middle of a group of girls, however attached the girls may
have been to each other up to then. Only, I imagined it would have
to be an attractive young man--not an eyesore.
Well, there was nothing more said on the subject of him. Presently
Evelyn broke the silence in the Lair by asking Nancy what on earth
she'd done with the bodkin. Just as if nothing had happened.
But it has.
There's a feeling in the air. I know what it means. Again, it's
like something I've felt before at school.
It means that I, "Rattle," who used to be more or less the baby and
the pet, have been sent to Coventry!
They're not going to invite me to any more hair-brushing family
conclaves. They're going to be "polite." They're going to let me
realise that they disapprove.
Here's a nice thing to happen after all those years and years and
years of happy family life at the Grange!
Yes: I know I used to grumble at those years like anything when they
were there: but how I wish, now, that they were back again! Oh, for
the happy, happy days before any of those disgusting soldiers came to
Mud Flats! Oh, for the top-hole time that we had, just by ourselves,
without the Incubus in the house!
_See_ if I don't get even with them all, somehow!
CHAPTER IV
THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. CURTIS
This evening Evelyn began asking the Incubus about the very tall,
dark young man we had seen him walking with the time that I had
failed to escape them both down by the Hard.
The Incubus said, "Oh, yes, that's Curtis. Awfully good chap,
Curtis."
And then he began to laugh all over his silly baby face.
"What are you laughing at, Mr. Lascelles?" said Nancy at once. "Why
should you laugh because Mr. Curtis is a good chap?"
"I am not laughing at that," said the Incubus. "In fact, I am
laughing----" and then he laughed some more.
All this was in the drawing-room after supper. We were sitting by
the big fire made of wreck wood.
You know, the salt water that the timber is soaked in makes the
flames go emerald-green, and purple and scarlet, and all sorts of
jolly colours.
The thick plum-coloured curtains were drawn across the bay windows,
which were carefully shuttered as well, so that not the teeniest ray
of light could find its way out into the black night of Mud Flats.
They are most fearfully particular about lights now in our part of
the world. I wonder they haven't made Mr. Lascelles wear a cap in
the house over his flaming red hair! Talk about "Keep the Home-fires
Burning." Well! _He_ does his best. One gleam of a candle through
the keyhole, and some special constable or other is knocking at the
door and calling out, "Put out that light."
But inside Aunt Victoria's drawing-room it was light and warm and
cosy enough. Aunt Victoria herself was in the big armchair, drawn up
beside the lamp with the rose-coloured shade. She had a book of
"Reminiscences" of some Court or other in her hand, and she was
pretending that she wasn't nodding her head and going to sleep over
it.
I may as well say that this pretence was quite as transparent as the
Incubus's attempt to persuade us that there was not some private joke
to do with the tall, eye-glassed young officer he called Curtis.
Making a mystery of it! Poodle-doodle!
Nancy said coaxingly: "You might tell us what it is."
She was sitting knitting a khaki sock on the big black bearskin rug
in front of the fire, which made her hair (and all of our hairs, I
suppose) look perfectly ripping.
The little Incubus was holding khaki wool for Evelyn to wind off his
hands. I daresay a stranger would have said that "the three young
people made a charming group."
_I_ was right out of it, of course. I had drawn my chair right aside.
I just wanted to let the girls see that I didn't mind staying bang in
"Coventry" as long as they liked. I went on embroidering a large "E"
for Elizabeth on one of my own handkerchiefs. I wasn't going to knit
khaki socks, thank you, or do anything that suggested the least
interest in khaki while that young man was about.
However, I couldn't help hearing his conversation with the other two
girls, even though I wasn't listening.
"At least you might tell us what sort of a chap this Mr. Curtis is."
"Oh, a thundering good chap," said the Incubus, and laughed again.
"Capital fellow--really good sort."
"But that conveys nothing to us girls," said Nancy. "It's the sort
of thing men do say about each other, and leaves you just as wise as
you were before."
"Well, I don't know what else to say about the fellow," said the
Incubus. "I have said all the nice things I can. You saw what he
was like to look at; and then I tell you that he is a good chap.
What more can I say? He's clever, too."
"What sort of clever?" persisted Evelyn, winding away at the wool.
"Oh, a regular bookworm cleverness," said the Incubus; "always
reading. He has read no end of Johnnies that I have never heard of,
and, by Jove! he writes himself, too! That's a thing I can't
understand any one doing. I couldn't write a line to save my life,
but this beggar actually keeps himself in 'baccy' by it. Sits down
and writes an article every week, if you please; or did, before the
War."
"An article?" Evelyn said, looking really interested. She's always
thought it would be rather thrilling to meet a real person who wrote.
"What's his article about, Mr. Lascelles?"
"Ah, that's the funny part of it," said the Incubus, laughing again
so that he dropped the khaki wool and had to pick it up. "He writes
for some ladies' paper. _Diana's Weekly_, or something. All about
girls--what they ought to wear."
"What girls ought to wear?" echoed Nancy, staring with all her blue
eyes. "How can he possibly know?"
"Oh, only what they're to wear when they are playing games,"
explained the Incubus. "You know, he's very hot stuff on the theory
of games, old Curtis. That's what he writes about. 'Hockey for
Girls,' and all about the right sort of blouse for it," he added
vaguely (so like a man), "and how it ought to be all in one piece
with the skirt, or something. Then he sits down and reels off yards
about 'Swimming for Girls,' and 'Cross-Country Running for Girls,'
and 'Motor-Cycling for Girls,' and all the lot. That's what Curtis
does."
I felt that here was a chance for snubbing the Incubus in quite a
dignified way. So I said, "Well, why shouldn't he?" in a haughty
voice. "If Mr. Curtis knows such a lot about athletics, why should
you gig--I mean laugh--about it? Where's the tremendous joke?"
"Oh! It's not tremendous. It's only this. He may know a lot about
athletics," said the Incubus, turning to me, "but--it's the girls he
knows so little about. I never met a fellow who was so absolutely
blank on the subject. Why, if you'll believe me, he's twenty-three,
and--no. Perhaps I'd better not say."
Here there was a loud chorus from the other two girls. "Oh, you
must, now; you must, now. What is it? You must tell us! You must
tell us what it is."
"Must I? Seems rather mean----"
"Not half as mean as letting us think there must be something
perfectly unspeakable about your friend!" said Nancy.
So then the Incubus turned rather pink under his freckles and said:
"Oh, well, it's nothing really. it's only this. Curtis reels off
all that information for girls, about girls, and yet he--he--he's
never kissed a girl in the whole course of his life!"
And he ended this absurd anecdote with his loudest "Ha, ha," Evelyn
and Nancy joining in. Needless to say _I_ didn't laugh. I bit my
lips hard not to. But the others made such a noise that Aunt
Victoria gave a jerk all over herself and nearly dropped her
Reminiscence-book.
Nancy was just beginning: "Oh, I say, I would like to meet this Mr.
Curt----"
When Aunt Victoria woke up in good earnest, and said quickly: "What
was that? What was that, Mr. Lascelles? I didn't quite catch that
last remark. What are you all laughing at?"
Whereupon we had another example of the utter cheek of the popular
(except with me) Mr. Lascelles.
He looked up at her, smiling, and said: "I think your nieces are
laughing, Mrs. Verdeley, at the idea of my having the nerve to ask
you. They say you will never allow it."
"Oh?" purred Aunt Victoria, beaming at him over the top of her
spectacles. "Allow what?"
Mr. Lascelles smiled back at Aunt Victoria as if she were his most
favourite godmother.
And he said: "Allow me to suggest that two of our fellows should come
round here to see you one evening. Two awfully nice quiet chaps--at
least, one of them's quiet. But no, no. It's too much to ask. I
won't."
So he knows the way to get round the contrariness of Aunt Victoria.
She beamed at him again, and said in her most amiable tone: "Oh? Why
not? We don't pretend to entertain, you know, Mr. Lascelles. But
supposing your young friends came in here to supper on Saturday; I'm
sure I should be very glad to see them, if they don't mind our simple
fare----"
"Simple fare" was good, considering how Auntie allows Cook to simply
spread herself on butter and things since the Incubus has been here.
"And if your friends like music," Aunt Victoria purred on, "the
little girls might play to them."
"The little girls," if you please, mean Nancy and me. Life is full
of quiet humour, isn't it? Especially in the way of names. Auntie
often calls us this, never remembering that any years have gone by
since we were twelve and thirteen. It's a mercy in one way, because
it means she never thinks of any flirting or love-making
possibilities in any of us. She never remembers the silly old will
of father's, in which he's so dead against any of his children
rushing into an early marriage. She thinks that needn't be
considered for about fifteen years, of course. Such a blessing.
Otherwise she might add to the nuisance of having Mr. Lascelles here
by trying to bring in a "chaperoney" atmosphere! That would be the
last straw!
As it was, I felt myself turning pillar-box red with pure indignation
at her bringing out the absurd expression "the little girls" just
now, before the young man who is this little girl's pet abomination.
However, the young man didn't seem to have heard it. He was letting
loose a shower of "thanks awfullys" and "so awfully good of yous" to
Aunt Victoria. He ended up by saying, "One of these chaps is
Masters, Captain Masters. He was in my Bank in the old days, but he
was always champing his bit to be a soldier. Awful good sort; some
lad! The other was a schoolmaster: I shared digs with him in town
once, ages ago, and I'm sure you'd like _him_, Mrs. Verdeley. _All_
his people were in the Church. Curtis is his name."
And, turning to my sisters, he added in a rapid aside, "Now, you will
see the great Scribe for yourselves!"
If I weren't in Coventry I should be quite looking forward to this.
Everybody else is.
THE great excitement in this house is the supper-party next Saturday,
and what this weird young man Curtis will be like, and what we're
going to give them all to eat.
Nancy is going to make her special trifle. Evelyn looks after "the
drinks": the drinks, of course, being barley-water and lemonade. You
couldn't imagine any other in this house. Then both the girls
surprised me, rather, by coming round to ask me quite nicely if I'd
make the lemon-cheese cakes that I'm always such a success with.
"I don't think I will," said I, remembering how the Incubus said he
loved lemon-cheese, and so afraid he might think I'd done it to
please him.
"Rattle, don't be absurd. Of course, you must make it," said Evelyn.
She took me by the shoulder, shook me, looked into my face and said,
in her old, affectionate voice, "Don't sulk, old girl."
I said, "I'm not sulking," but I heard my own voice melt. "I thought
I was in Coventry for being rude to the Favourite."
And then I hugged her and Nancy.... The squabble was over, and I'm
going to make the blessed lemon-cheese for the party after all.
But I'm not going to leave off disliking the Incubus for all that!
I'm not going to allow that one little red-haired Temporary
Lieutenant to become the chief interest in the lives of _all_ the
three girls at his billet. I'm thinking----
This is a sudden, lovely idea! I'm thinking of setting up quite a
new interest, on my own!
CHAPTER V
THE NEW INTEREST
Aren't you dying to know what the new interest is going to be?
Perhaps you think it's for me to make special friends with one of the
other young officers, one of those who are coming here on Saturday
night? Oh, no. Something much more subtle than that. (I always was
rather an unusual sort of person, I think, even as a quite young girl
of about thirteen.)
But about the new interest. This is it.
The idea came to me this morning at breakfast. There was a general
buzz of conversation going on among my sisters and Mr. Lascelles over
the front page of the paper. You know, there are always quite a
number of advertisements there from "Lonely Subalterns" asking if
"some cheery individual" could be induced to correspond with them.
Evelyn was saying she thought nowadays there could not possibly be
such a thing as a subaltern who had not got crowds of people only too
anxious to write any quantity of long letters to him.
"Yet here's one who expressly states, 'Mother only correspondent,'"
said Evelyn, picking up the paper again.
"Something seriously wrong with that chap, I should think," said our
odious visitor, helping himself to an enormous spoonful of marmalade
that was nearly as bright a colour as his hateful hair. "I must say
I distrust the idea of a fellow who isn't able to get girls to write
to him without rushing into the agony column. Shows he must be
poisonously unpopular for some reason."
"I don't see that it follows that he need be unpopular at all," I
said as snubbingly as I could from the other side of the
breakfast-table. Generally I don't say anything at all when Mr.
Lascelles speaks. There are times when I feel a mad wish to
contradict him, and this was one of those times.
So I added: "It may mean that he is simply reserved. Some young men
are, I suppose, even nowadays? And girls very foolishly pass them
over for the men who try to make themselves popular by always
jabbering a lot of compliments and nonsense to them."
"That's a nasty one, Miss Rattle--I mean, Miss Elizabeth, that really
is a very nasty one," said that horrid little Mr. Lascelles, laughing
boisterously with that great schoolboyish "Ha-ha!" that gets on my
nerves so very badly.
But at the same time I saw that he realised I did mean to be severe
with him.
He flushed up to the roots of his horrid hair again. And both Evelyn
and Nancy looked at me reproachfully. They said, "Oh, Rattle," in a
tone that quite stopped me caring whether I had hurt the young man's
silly feelings or not.
So I went on calmly: "I don't see why these advertisements shouldn't
be perfectly genuine. I shouldn't wonder if some quite nice people
put them in. And I don't see why quite nice girls shouldn't answer
them. I shouldn't mind writing 'cheery' letters to a poor dear
subaltern who was----"
Here Aunt Victoria, who, as usual, hadn't heard what was going on,
burst into conversation with something about her Belgian refugees.
For, to add to the general transformation of Mud Flats, we have got
two whole families of Belgian refugees down there now. And it's full
of difficulties. Not because the Mud Flats people aren't kind to
them. Why, Mrs. Miles, the Post-Office, says she's given them her
last stitch of baby-clothes! It's the Belgians. The poor darlings
do quarrel so dreadfully among themselves! I daresay we should, too,
if we were like them--turned out of house and home and dumped into
quite a strange country where we simply despised the cooking and
where we were always expected to wash more than we considered
natural! However, it does make it very hard for the committee, all
the same.
Anyhow, that introduction of the Belgians ended the conversation
about correspondence with lonely subalterns.
But it didn't end my thinking about it. I did go on thinking about
it--hard. And it was then that I thought, why shouldn't I write to
one of these poor lambs who were reduced to advertise for letters?
Evelyn and Nancy were taking to having friends that I wasn't friends
with! Why shouldn't I have somebody that they didn't even know? It
didn't matter a bit even if it were somebody whom I had never seen in
my life! It made it all the more exciting! Now, which of these
shall I answer?
Of course, they have taken the paper away. Newspapers do disappear
if one happens to want them. If one does not happen to want them,
there they lie in sheaves and stacks for the next fortnight. But
to-day the paper has disappeared.
So I shall have to wait until another _Times_ comes in. Then I shall
look and see whether there is any specially lonely soul who would be
glad to have some one to exchange a few thoughts with him.
(Later.)
Hurray! I have found it! I have found the very advertisement that I
want. It is at the top of the agony column in this morning's paper.
Neither Nancy nor Evelyn noticed it. As for the other horrid little
creature who was discussing the question yesterday, he was off early
to the Ford, where his men are supposed to be building a
trestle-bridge. We were spared, at least I was spared, the sight of
him at table for once in a way!
This is the advertisement:
"Would any one Young and Cheery take pity to the extent of writing an
occasional letter to Lonely and Unpopular Subaltern who is unable to
make himself liked?--Address Box X.Y.Z."
This went straight to my heart!
Imagine anybody putting himself down in black and white as being
unpopular and unable to make himself liked!
Doesn't it show an awfully nice nature? So pathetic and diffident
and appealing! So different in every way from that odious Mr.
Lascelles, who seems to be popular with everybody in the place
(except me--much he cares about my feelings towards him!), and who is
perfectly able to make himself most undeservedly "liked" by all, from
the colonel down to the latest-joined recruit.
"Unpopular!" That won't appeal to many people, I am afraid. I
expect most girls when they read that would be as unsympathetic as
our Incubus, and would say, "Oh, well, serve him right. If a man's
unpopular it's his own fault."
But I know that this is not true.
I am in a very popular stage of my career at the moment myself. Yes,
in spite of Nancy and Evelyn having "made up" our squabble, they do
still disapprove of my attitude towards Mr. Lascelles.
And I know that that is not my fault. It is only just force of
circumstances, and of having the wrong people about me. I daresay it
is something of the same kind with this poor dear young man of the
advertisement. Perhaps his is the only sensible one in a whole mess
full of young officers like our beauty here! How awful for him! I
really do sympathise. Perhaps he himself is like that Mr. Curtis,
who's so clever at writing, but who doesn't know anything about
girls? But no. I don't imagine him (the Lonely Subaltern) at all
like that. Somehow or other I don't feel Mr. Curtis is going to be
very amusing. I don't know what gives me this feeling, but something
or other has "put me off" Mr. Curtis. But about this other----
D'you know, I've the most curious feeling, as if I were really meant
to answer this particular advertisement. As if it were a kind of
Fate that I should.
I believe in Fate.
Nancy and Evelyn are out this afternoon. They've gone for a tramp up
to a place called the Ford, where they are making a trestle-bridge.
"They" are Mr. Lascelles's London, Chatham and Dovers. Judging from
the amount of laughter and comic songs and awful parodies of hymns
that you hear from them on their way home every night, the men are
about as serious-minded as their officer. Nancy said something about
all that joking and larking being the things that help our Tommies to
be so plucky and to "carry on" at the Front. But of course one
mustn't say a word against Temporary Second Lieutenant Frank
Lascelles, not even against the taste in music of his Field Company!
However, I shall have the Lair all to myself this afternoon. Here's
my chance for sending an answer to the Lonely Subaltern who is not
able to make himself liked, poor dear.
I must write him a nice letter.
(Later.)
Here's the letter I have written.
It's taken me simply hours, and three sheets of the white paper I use
for covering the marmalade. It's flushed my cheeks pæony-colour with
the concentration I've put into it, and my fingers are a mass of ink,
for goodness knows what's happened to our fountain-pen (the Incubus
has been borrowing it, I daresay). Still, here it is, written at
last in my clearest handwriting:
"DEAR LONELY SUBALTERN,
"I saw your advertisement in the _Times_, and I felt there was a
special reason that I should answer it. The special reason is that
you call yourself 'unpopular.'
"So we are companions in misfortune, because I am very unpopular,
too. I am one of a family of three girls, and the other two, who
used to be such jolly chums of mine, have sort of drifted apart from
me. Perhaps some day, if you care to know, I will tell you what that
was about. But in the meantime please let me ask you questions about
yourself. For that is really what interests me. You know, I truly
was interested in your advertisement. To begin with, why do you say
that you 'can't make yourself liked'? Perhaps this isn't true?
Perhaps it is all your modesty? Perhaps people do really like you
very much, only you don't give them a chance to show what they feel?
There are people like that: I have read about them in books.
"However, perhaps you will tell me that you have very good reason to
know that people don't like you? Perhaps you have overheard them
saying so? Well, if that is so, you must try to get at the bottom of
it. You must try and find out the reasons why people take a dislike
to you, and then you must try and alter them.
"To begin with, who are the people that you can't make yourself liked
by?
"You don't mind my asking you these direct questions, do you? It
isn't as if I know you. I have never seen you, and I never shall.
That will make it ever so much easier. But to go on----"
Here I had to take a fresh sheet of the jam-covering paper. Really,
it was the longest letter I had ever written in my whole life. I put:
"If it is men who dislike you--your C.O., the other people in your
mess--well, then, I am afraid that I, being a girl, can't help very
much.
"It seems to me almost impossible to guess what men will like and
dislike, and why they admire lots of people that I should not be able
to stand. For instance, I am now thinking of the little officer who
is billeted in our house. I simply loathe the man, and he hates me.
I look upon him as an absolute worm. But I hear from people in our
village that his men adore him, and that his brother officers say he
is 'the best little chap in the world.' Perhaps they look upon him
as a mascot for their section? (I am sure he is small enough!)
"So you see there is no accounting for men's tastes! Men are so
inconsistent, and so illogical. They act without reasons.
"With girls it is different. They always have some splendid reason.
Anyhow, you can always account for girls' feelings so much better.
So is it girls who don't like you? Please answer this question quite
sincerely. It doesn't matter bothering to pretend to me. I'm simply
what you might call a Voice out of the Unknown.
"And it's no disgrace not to be liked by girls. We have a man coming
here to supper on Saturday who has never kissed a girl in his life.
His best friend told us this. Yet he--the first man--is
twenty-three, and very clever.
"Do you mind telling me if you think you are too ugly for girls to
like? It must be rather terrible to the plain. Thank goodness, all
my family have always been reasonably good-looking."
I wasn't quite certain whether I should put that in. It sounded so
fearfully vain! Then I thought:
"Oh, well: why shouldn't I?--it isn't as if I was drawing attention
to my good looks to any one who should ever see them. Or even
preparing him for them as if I was going to meet him ever." Of
course, I didn't mean to give him my address--just the number that he
could write back to at the newspaper office.
At the same time, getting a letter from a girl who admitted that she
wasn't quite a fright would make it so much more interesting for this
poor, dear, lonely, unpopular one:
I went on:
"Ugliness or beauty doesn't matter in a man. What does matter are
his looks.
"Perhaps you will say that this is the same thing? But if you do it
shows that you can't have associated much with girls, or you would
understand better their ways of looking at things. I think a man's
looks means whether he is well and fit or whether he allows himself
to have spots on his face. (This is unforgivable!!)"
I underlined the last sentence heavily, three times.
"Also how he does his hair. This is very important. For instance,
part of the reason why I detest our little red-haired 'incubus' here
is because he does his hair like Gilbert the Filbert instead of
parting it at the side like a man. (Either from right to left, like
most people, or from left to right, like some quite fascinating
people I've seen portraits of. But, anyhow, it must be parted.)
"Then, of course, there is the way he holds himself. Men who have
straight backs and their heads up are the ones that walk away with
the admiration. Of course, there are more of them about, now that
everything you could call a man is serving and has been trained 'how
to walk and where to put his feet,' than there used to be in
peace-time.
"Then, of course, there is whether a man looks as if he wanted to
please us, meaning the women. If he doesn't, it is his finish. You
know the Scotch proverb about what it is that gets a lassie married.
'It's not the beauty: it's not the dowry: it's the come-hither in the
eye.' I think that holds good of men even more than it does of us.
Anyhow, I am making you a present of a Woman's Point of View."
Here I drew myself up over the ink spotted table of our Lair and
chuckled to myself.
"A woman!" If the lonely subaltern knew that I was only just
eighteen, and that six months ago I had my hair dangling in a long,
golden bell-rope below my waist-belt, he probably wouldn't call me a
woman at all. He'd put me down as quite a young girl. A flapper,
even."
Little realising how much more mature my mind is than that of a woman
like--say Aunt Victoria. I've read far more love-stories than she
has: I've studied the whole subject much more deeply. And I'm sure
no one would guess from this letter that I am anything but a
sophisticated woman of the world!
How could they?
I went on:
"Perhaps you think that the ideas of a woman are scarcely worth
considering. Well! That won't hurt my feelings, you know, as if you
were somebody who had ever met you. And, at any rate, it will be one
more envelope for you to open at your lonely breakfast-table, or in
your rat-infested 'dug-out' or wherever you do happen to be. Isn't
it too funny to think that I don't know whether the man to whom I am
writing is in England, or somewhere in France, or where?
"But it makes no difference at all.
"With much sympathy,
"Believe me, dear Lonely Subaltern,
"Your unknown friend,
"ELIZABETH."
That's all the signature that I shall put. And now to post this to
Box X.Y.Z.
How I do hope that the Lonely Subaltern will answer this long epistle.
How disappointing if it really was a "fake," and a bet between two
larky young men to see which of them snaffled the biggest mail!
Or, even if it's real--suppose "Lonely Subaltern" has so many
sympathetic letters showered upon him that he will merely put a
formal note of thanks in the paper "to all his unknown friends,"
explaining that it is absolutely impossible for him to answer them
all individually? Or supposing he only answers some of the letters,
and mine is one of those that he doesn't care for?
Well! I can't help that. Anyhow, I shall have done my best to bring
a little brightness into the poor young man's sad life. And,
incidentally, into my own! For I shan't so much mind being "Odd Girl
Out" in our party at the Moated Grange if I have some little private
interest all to myself. Yes, even if it is only a pen-and-ink one.
And somehow I have a presentiment that I shall have it.
He will answer, I think! Wouldn't any rather nice young man answer a
letter like that?
* * * * * * * *
Well! "To-night's the night," as that idiotic little Mr. Lascelles
will keep on saying.
Meaning the night of the supper-party at our house. "Only to think
of it, only to dream of it!" as it says in one of the antediluvian
song-books which we have in the Lair. Three men to supper: I'll just
ask you to dwell on it for a few seconds. In our house! At the
Moated Grange, Mud Flats! With the full sanction of Aunt
Victoria.... Well, as I say, if you'd told us six months ago that
this was going to happen we three girls would all have greeted the
news in exactly the same spirit. We should have all, "with one sweet
voice," exclaimed:
"TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!"
And now?
Well, now ... it's perfectly extraordinary how soon one gets
accustomed even to the most weird and cataclysmic happenings and
changes in one's daily life. Look at the way Mud Flats has grown
accustomed to being a Camp of Instruction and a background of
Bridge-Builders and a Nest of Billets, instead of being "Scene--a
Blasted Heath," like in Shakespeare.
We three girls are positively blasé about "Young Men and How to Feed
Them."
Nancy and Evelyn have, of course, taken a good deal of trouble with
the supper for them. Everything as stodgy and English as possible.
What they'll call "filling" after the long cold afternoon spent
trampling about the icy mud at the Ford.
So there is going to be a goose, roast goose with lagoons of hot,
rich, brown gravy, and with sage-and-onion stuffing that they'll be
able to notice from the Junction, pretty well! and apple sauce with
cloves in it, and other savoury sorts of things that make men seem to
lose all their self-control as they sniff them up and murmur, "By
Jove! there's a top-hole smell of----" whatever it is. Things we
should never dream of cooking for ourselves. I'm sure if any young
men read this story they'll wish to goodness they'd ever struck a
billet like this fellow Lascelles.
Then for pudding there's the last Christmas one left over from last
year. It'll be well seasoned. Not to mention Nancy's trifle, and
Elizabeth's cheesecakes. Hah! also there'll be a quince-pie with
custard: Aunt Victoria's great-grandmother's recipe. Really, people
used to guzzle in the Eighteenth Century: worse even than Mr. Frank
Lascelles does now. Then there's to be celery, and toast, and
biscuits and butter, and cheese, of course. The sort that I suppose
people will never give up making childish jokes about, and calling
Christian names, and all that sort of thing. As for drinks, as I
broke it to you before, there will be home-made lemonade and barley
water. The only beverages that have ever been known in this
maiden-lady-like establishment.
"I do hope to goodness the visitors won't mind that very much," said
Nancy, rather doubtfully. "One always imagines young men washing
everything down with rivers of strong drink and quaffing torrents of
whisky and soda----"
"Not in war-time, surely?" said Evelyn in her shocked little voice.
"I always understood this campaign was being fought entirely on tea.
Anyhow, if there isn't any 'strong drink' there, they can't quaff it.
They are much better without it." So like Evelyn! Being "better
without" is one of her little pet phrases. She's one of those people
who are born thinking that to like a thing very much is a sure sign
that the thing is a sin and the liker a sinner.
I laughed and said: "I suppose you'd say just the same thing about
Mr. Whatsitsname who's coming, this friend of the Incubus's? (Yes: I
shall call Mr. Lascelles the Incubus if I want to.) This Mr. Curtis,
who has never kissed a girl in his life. I suppose he's much better
without it, Evelyn?"
Evelyn looked very coldly at me over the big soup-ladle that she was
covering with pink polishing paste. We were all in the pantry at the
moment cleaning the silver for this evening.
She said: "Well, at any rate, it shows that he is probably a much
nicer sort of young man than most."
"Does it?" I said. "It might show that he was a much nastier one,
because nobody would ever let him come near them. Or what I think is
that the Incubus may have made up the whole story about Mr. Curtis."
"One would soon know," murmured Nancy over the salt-cellars.
Evelyn said, "What do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing," said Nancy. "Run, Rattle: there's the postman's
knock."
I ran, and took in the letters from the three o'clock post. A
seedsman's catalogue and a Church Family Newspaper for Aunt Victoria:
a glove company sale announcement for Evelyn: and a letter for Miss
Elizabeth Verdeley....
Yes! A letter for me.
"A letter in an unknown hand," as it says in books, forwarded on from
the box at the newspaper office. It was--it was a letter from the
Lonely Subaltern in answer to my own!
He had answered. And as I realised this I realised how fearfully
disappointed I should have been if he hadn't.
Yes: supposing he'd had too many letters to reply to each--or
supposing that mine hadn't been one that he cared for the sound of.
Never mind. Those were things that might have happened. They hadn't.
He'd answered. Now I'd got to see what he'd said. Dropping the
unimportant other letters on the hall table, I clutched my own and
tore up to my bedroom. It was piercingly cold there, but never mind.
It was solitary. I plumped down on the bed and cuddled the eiderdown
all round me (thank goodness I hadn't been the ass that Nancy was,
giving away her cosiest quilt to the Billet Incubus!) and I tore open
the envelope.
The letter was written in a rather large, round hand. It reminded me
of my own handwriting one time when I was at school and when I stuck
a steel nib by accident into my thumb. I had to learn to write with
my left hand for some weeks after that. This writing, as I say, was
a little like it. Awkward and clumsy, and boyish. Rather touching,
I thought.
The letter said:
"My dear 'Sympathiser,'
"Thank you most awfully for your letter, which I was no end bucked to
get.
"It's most awfully good of you to take the trouble to write me such a
jolly long letter, and to worry about 'why I am unpopular,' and all
that.
"You ask me whether it is men or women that I 'can't get myself liked
by.'
"Well, the answer to that is 'Women.' Or, rather, some women. I
seem to have put her back up--"
Here the "her" is scratched out, and "their" is put instead. Of
course he means "her": he means some particular girl. What a little
cat she must be! Because I am sure he is frightfully nice. You can
see it by his handwriting, and by his simple boyish way of putting
things.
Well, he goes on:
"I seem to have put their back up in some way, and what I have done
goodness only knows. Other people seem to get on with me all right,
but I simply can't break any ice in this quarter. I'll take your
kind advice about parting my hair. You never do seem to know what's
going to make a difference--with women!
"I wonder why you, for example, are so down on the unlucky fellow who
is billeted in your house--though I don't suppose I ought to call him
unlucky really.
"You say something about my being perhaps 'above' taking an interest
in 'a woman's point of view.' Believe me, this isn't at all true.
Far from being 'above' it, I humbly admit that I am fearfully
thrilled by any views that you may have. You wrote me about the most
interesting letter that I've ever got in my life. Like Oliver, I am
asking for more. Tell me more about what I am to do to make myself a
little less repulsive to your sex. Will you? I'd be awfully
grateful if you would.
"And another thing. Couldn't I have a photograph of yourself? I
should like to see what she was like to look at, the woman who'd been
so kind as to answer my foolish advertisement. I imagine you with a
serious, serene sort of face, rather like Miss Florence Nightingale.
Do you perhaps wear glasses? You say something about being thankful
that all your family Have been reasonably good-looking. Is it the
regular-featured, classical, rather passive style of good looks? Or
is this a boss shot?"
Here I couldn't help leaving off to simply screech with laughter.
Like Miss Florence Nightingale? Me? And with glasses? And
"serene"? I peeped into the looking-glass on the dressing-table
beyond the bed, and shrieked again at the sight of my own baby face,
pink and dimpled under the cloud of unruly golden hair.
"Regular-featured"? "Classical"? "Passive"? Oh, no: I couldn't
allow Lonely Subaltern to think that that was the sort of person who
was writing to him. I should simply have to explain to him!
"You see, I have nothing to go by," the letter says quite
pathetically. "So do please let me have a photograph of some sort.
A snapshot would do. Won't you send one?"
What shall I do about this? To send or not to send? What would
other girls do, I wonder? I rather feel I'd like to send. There is,
as it happens, quite a good post-card photograph of me that was taken
by the little man at Nowhere Junction. Shall I let Lonely Subaltern
have a copy? It might amuse him, poor lad, in his solitary, damp
dug-out--if he is in a dug-out. He doesn't say. No: he can't be in
a dug-out, because he talks of this girl whose back he's managed to
get up. That shows he must be serving somewhere at home still.
Unless this girl is a French lady. Perhaps the dark-eyed daughter of
the landlady at his billet in some once-enchanting and peaceful
French village? You see, he doesn't tell me anything at all about
where he is or what he's doing. He just ends up:
"With many thanks for your kindness,
"Believe me yours most gratefully,
"THE LONELY SUBALTERN."
Perhaps he thinks I'm too old and "serious" for him to write to me in
detail? That may be it. Perhaps he'd be encouraged to go on and
write yards to me if he realised that I was just a fair-haired girl
with big eyes and dimples?
That settles it.
Evelyn would perhaps say that I should be "better without" details of
what Lonely Subalterns are doing. And that they would be better
without photographs of their sympathetic girl correspondents; Never
mind. Let Evelyn go on cleaning the silver for to-night's
supper-party. This has nothing to do with her, or with Nancy. This
is my own private little show! And, besides, I do feel that I'm some
good in the world when a lonely and unappreciated young man writes to
me in such a really grateful and appreciative way. He shall have a
photograph.
I'll get one now....
H'm.... It certainly does look rather a flapper! There is a certain
effect of "How-do-I-look-with-my-hair-up?" about it. I mustn't let
him imagine that it's a mere schoolgirl who is offering him all this
sage advice about life, and love, and popularity, and all that sort
of thing. I know what I'll do. I'll write him just a little note to
send with the photograph. I'll put:
"DEAR LONELY SUBALTERN,
"Thank you for your touching letter, which I will answer at greater
length presently."
(For I shall have to get dressed directly.)
"I am so sorry that I have not got an up-to-date photograph of myself
to send you, but I enclose one that was taken some time ago"
(It was--it was taken in May, and it's now December.)
"when I was a mere girl."
(That gets over the difficulty.)
"The photograph is still considered to have quite a look of me. So I
am sending it to give you some 'idea.' Please do not thank me for
any of the advice which I may be able to give you. If my experience
and my point of view prove to be of any use to one of our gallant
defenders,"
(There! That sounds woman-of-the-worldly enough.)
"I shall be only too pleased.
"Believe me, dear Lonely Subaltern,
Your sympathetic friend,
"ELIZABETH."
There! I shall just catch the post out from Mud Flats.
(Later.) As I tore down the road towards the pillar-box-in my
blanket-coat, and without a hat, I almost ran into our Incubus, Mr.
Frank Lascelles.
He was stampeding up to the house, swinging along with that would-be
military swagger that I suppose is put on to conceal the fact that
he's almost too small to see. Up to the eyes he was clay mud. Down
to the eyes he was floppy khaki cap. (I suppose that's supposed to
look active service-y?) He saluted, and said: "Hullo, Miss
Elizabeth, are you taking a letter to the post?" Such an absolutely
futile question, don't you know, seeing that I was flying along
towards the pillar-box, and had a large white envelope in my hand.
So I simply couldn't help snapping at him, "Oh, no. I'm sitting by
the fire and reading a book!" Then I was sorry because it sounded so
absolutely idiotic and fifth-form-at-schoolish. And he made it worse
by holding out his hand towards the envelope and saying: "Anyhow,
mayn't I take that thing down the road for you?"
Well, I couldn't let him, could I?
Supposing he'd caught sight of the address? My handwriting's quite
big enough. Suppose he'd tumbled to it that I was "one of these
girls" who write to Lonely Subalterns? ...
Oh, no. He's the sort of little beast who would laugh and tease me
about it for evermore.
So I said, "Please don't trouble," and simply legged it past him
without drawing breath until I dropped the big envelope with the
photograph of little Me and the note to Lonely Subaltern into the
pillar-post.
And when I ran back again to the house the Incubus had disappeared,
as usual, into the bathroom, where I was just going to get some hot
water.
And, as usual, the little toad bagged every drop: singing away as he
splashed in his tub his exasperating song about
"_Oh, please don't flirt with me:
Don't try to flirt with me.
For it might be horribly awkward
If some one were to see._"
So Evelyn, Nancy and I had to wash in cold.
CHAPTER VI
THE DISGRACEFUL PARTY
I suppose everybody--I mean every girl body--will want to know what
we three had to wear for this party? Nothing wildly exciting, I can
tell you: the fact is we haven't got any really compelling clothes.
How can you, when you have to shop out of catalogues, and when you're
_miles_ bigger than stock size? Still, we'd three quite fairly
pretty frocks left over from last summer; Evelyn's is pale, pale pink
voile, with little rosy dabs scattered all over it, and with a fichu
that makes her look like a Puritan maid. Particularly as she never
likes "extremes" of fashion, and simply wouldn't have her skirt cut
as it was in the _Lady's Pic._, though Nancy and I _told_ her that
skirts were going to be imitations of the London Skittish, only more
so!
I wore white: my last Prize-Day frock made a little shorter and
fuller, and frillier, and Nancy had a very sweet mauve, like a
fondant.
All our hairs looked simply lovely: and I'm sure our complexions must
have been a treat to three young men who had been surrounded all day
by masculine tan and freckles and mud-ground-in-ness!
Now, I'd better get on to those young men, and to about what happened
at the party....
Aunt Victoria--she really is a weird old thing! Always taking you by
surprise when you're least expecting it. What do you think she'd
done? She had actually rolled down to the supper-table after we had
finished arranging it: and she'd placed by the side of the glasses of
each of our visitors a large dark bottle with a gold paper "top" to
it.
"Bubbly, by Gad!" were what burst from Mr. Frank Lascelles' lips at
the sight of them.
And Aunt Victoria beamed at him, and said: "Just the three bottles of
champagne that were left over from little Elizabeth's christening
dinner-party" (I being called "little Elizabeth," you understand!)
"and they've been waiting in the cellar here ever since."
The first any of us had ever heard of there having ever been a
christening dinner-party in this house: not to mention champagne.
Life is full of sudden shocks, these days. Well, to get on with this
other party. Dinner lasted for hours, with everybody having second
helps of everything, and a great deal of what you could only call
"horse-play" from Mr. Lascelles, though I can't imagine any horses
being as silly as he was over going round the table with a
table-napkin thrown over his arm and pouring out champagne and
pretending to be a waiter; and then pretending to "straf" Captain
Masters for letting some of his fizz over on to the table-cloth.
Telling him to "parade in chains at ten o'clock to-morrow," and that
sort of rot.
The really interesting part of it all to us (not to the men, of
course) began after the eating was finished, and after we had left
those three young men alone to smoke, and after they had rejoined us
in the drawing-room afterwards. Aunt Victoria was playing patience,
and Evelyn was busy as usual over her embroidery-frame, and Nancy and
I were comparing notes, just as girls always do, about what we
thought of the two new young men.
I haven't said anything about them yet, so I'll just tell you quickly
that Captain Masters, the elder one, was a perfect dream of good
looks, just like an illustration to a story in _Forget-me-not_, only
better. He'd black, black hair, like pitch with a crinkle in it, and
black lashes framing his dark-grey "round-the-corner" sort of eyes,
and a cleft chin that's supposed to be the mark of a flirt. And so
tall, and such a nice shape all over! I thought he was rather too
much of a vision. Any girl that he went about with would have to be
most frantically pretty to keep pace with him! I expect that's what
most girls feel when they say they like a man to have a nice _ugly_
face: and probably that's why these Greek-goddy sort of men are
always picking out quite ordinary girls in the Society Wedding
photographs of them. They don't feel they can stand up against
competition. It's all vanity really, as Solomon said. Well, but
about these two. The other one, Mr. Curtis, was a complete contrast.
I don't know why I thought he was "interesting-looking" the first
time. He's fearfully tall and thin, with those glasses, and very
bulgy knuckles and khaki-coloured hair. He looked as if Nature
never, never meant him to wear khaki in any other way, but never
mind, I daresay it's all the more credit to him that he joined as
soon as war broke out. He had a look about him, too, that
immediately convinced Nancy and me that the story which the Incubus
had told us about him was literally true. I could just imagine him
sitting down and reeling off articles about "Weight-lifting for
Girls" and "Steeplechasing for Girls," and all the other things that
seemed to make out that he was a regular expert about girls,
whereas-- Well, I don't suppose he was on Christian-name terms with
any girl except his sister. He gave you that feeling about himself.
I was just saying so to Nancy, when in he came with the others.
Captain Masters, coming over to Nancy, immediately began about
"having a little music," as he'd heard we all played. Wanted to
"turn over" for her, I guessed.
You know, there's no piano in the drawing-room at the Moated Grange,
only antimacassars and vases and what-nots. The only piano is in the
Lair.
I scarcely expected that Aunt Victoria would be the one to suggest
that "the young people" should adjourn to that room for their little
concert. It was quite as unexpected as the bubbly for dinner when
she did so. Not only that, but she thought nothing of going on
playing her own solitary game of patience in her accustomed corner of
the drawing-room while we all trooped off to the back of the house.
This is where the evening really began, so listen.
After putting chairs for us nearly inside the grate, the three young
men plumped down on the hearthrug, which is a nice thick, furry one.
Captain Masters flung his glossy black head back against the
Incubus's knee, and sent a sleepy, round-the-corner glance at Nancy
which was evidently meant to convey the message, "It's really you
that I should like to be leaning up against at this minute."
However, of course, Nancy never noticed it. She says so. And all he
(Captain Masters) said was: "Now, do let us have these songs, shall
we? Who's going to open the Concert? And what are we going to have?
Have you got any of the music of Shell Out, Miss Verdeley? There's
an awfully pretty thing in it called
"'_Sprinkle me with kisses if you want my
Love to Grow----_'"
"Oh, yes: let's have that: I think I can manage to vamp it,"
volunteered the Incubus, springing up from the rug and bustling
across to the piano. In a stage aside I heard him say to Nancy, "So
awfully appropriate for old Curtis, what?"
I saw Nancy, who was looking prettier than ever in her life before,
dimple back at him. Then she gave a glance at "Old Curtis." He
still looked painfully shy, but as if he were thoroughly enjoying
himself, in an embarrassed sort of way. Yes, he was exactly the sort
of person who would be too bashful to ask any girl to write to him.
He would be a regular "Lonely Subaltern" himself. But I did hope
that my own special Lonely One, to whom I'd sent a letter and a
photograph that very afternoon, was not like Mr. Curtis to look at.
Perhaps he'll send me a photograph in return. Then I shall know.
Well, but to get on with this celebrated party of ours. (Evelyn has
taken to calling it "that disgraceful" party, by the way.) There was
a lot of laughing and "ragging" each other by the young men, in fact,
the Lair echoed more than even when the three of us have been there
in our giggliest mood. Captain Masters said something about
palmistry, and the Incubus said: "Yes, old Thing, you can tell mine;
anything else would take too much time..." and so on.
The next thing that happened was the Incubus giving an imitation of
Miss Vesta Tilley singing
"_I joined the Army yesterday,
So the Army of To-day's all right!_
and the staircase window which is outside the Lair began to rattle so
violently that we heard it right through the music. Nancy, skipping
up in the middle of all her mauve flounces from the hearthrug, said
she must go and put a wedge in it.
Of course, directly she hopped up, up jumped Captain Masters, who had
been lolling with his head against Mr. Curtis's knee, this time.
"Let me help you," he said; "I'd love to."
And then Mr. Curtis jumped up and actually plucked up courage to say
that he was very good at putting in wedges. At the same moment the
Incubus--Mr. Lascelles--also skipped to his feet and said, "Bravo,
Curtis! This will provide you with copy for another newspaper
article: 'Window-Fastening for Girls'--what? I'm going to come and
look on at this."
"Surely it won't take four of us," protested Nancy, in her most
mischievous voice. "I can do it all by myself, thank you;
unless--unless Mr. Curtis really wants to help me?"
And with that, of course, the other two young men flopped down again
on the hearthrug like two terriers when one tells them that they are
not going to be taken for a walk after all.
And Mr. Curtis was at Nancy's heels like another dog to whom she had
whistled.
Evelyn was at the piano trying over the music of "Neville Is a Devil
with the Girls," which Mr. Lascelles had just sent for down from
London.
I must say that he is very good about sending for those things for
us--I mean, for Evelyn and Nancy.
For he knows perfectly well that I don't want any dance music, or
chocolates, or fashion magazines, from him. He scarcely spoke to me,
either, the whole of the evening.
Well, Evelyn had played all through "Neville" and gone on to the one
about "In my heart there's always room for One Girl More," and still
Nancy, in spite of what she'd said about being able to do it all by
herself, hadn't got that window wedged.
Minutes passed, my dears. And she was still out there in the
passage, with the young man who wrote those articles on "Exercise for
Girls"--and who had never kissed a girl in his life--until then.
You notice that I said "until then." That's the point.
For when he came in again to the Lair I looked at that minx Nancy,
and _I saw that he had_! Don't ask me how I knew. If you're a girl,
you won't have to. (Girls have intuitions, thank goodness, even if
they haven't any sense of humour, as people always say.) And if
you're a man, you won't get answered. So that's that.
(Later.)
All to-day, which is the day after this scandeelious orgy, poor Nancy
has been having nothing but talking to upon the subject. You see, it
was no earthly good pretending that she hadn't been kissed--we just
knew. And to do her justice, Nancy didn't try to pretend that she
hadn't been. She stood her ground quite pluckily, and said: "Yes!
That was why we were such ages over the rattling staircase window.
Yes, I did let Mr. Curtis kiss me. Why not?"
This was where our eldest sister, Evelyn the Ever-proper, came down
on Nancy like a ton of bricks. She was really fluent. I needn't go
into all that fluency. I expect every girl who reads this has heard
bits of it at one time or another: "He comes too near who comes to be
denied." Also: "A young girl who has been kissed is like a peach
with the bloom off it." (I've never seen any kisses that come off
like that.) Also: "Men think very lightly of any girl who gives her
favours to a man before she is even engaged to him."
"Engaged to him!" said Nancy, turning upon the lecturer at this.
"But how do you want me to be engaged to the man when I had only seen
him for the first time that evening? Don't be so ridiculous--and
besides," here she began to laugh a little, "Mr. Curtis is scarcely
the kind of young man that I should want to be engaged to. Not my
type. Much too---- Well! Too everything that I could never like in
that way."
"Why not, I should like to know? He's a good deal cleverer than his
friends---- I mean, if you wouldn't want to be engaged to him," said
Evelyn, in a voice that was even more shocked than before, "how was
it, Nancy, that you allowed him to kiss you? That makes it so far,
far worse."
"No, it doesn't. It makes it so much, much better," protested Nancy
defiantly, but still going on with her work, which was, as usual, the
darning of our Incubus's khaki socks. "Poor Mr. Curtis, he really
never had before! It seemed to mean such a treat to him! And it
didn't mean anything particular to me!"
"Only like letting a rather rough retriever lick your hand," I
suggested.
"Rattle, there's only one word for you," said Evelyn. "Vulgar!"
"Yes: people always call people that as soon as they're _natural_," I
said. "The fact is, we live in an artificial age. I've read that,
heaps of times, and I see it's true. Why, the girls in Shakespeare
say much worse things than I do--much! and the other people in the
plays never seem to turn a hair at them. Even the ones that are
supposed to be quite ladies. Like Juliet. Or Beatrice when she
says----"
The other two weren't taking the least notice of me and my
Shakespeare. Nancy was going on explaining to our eldest sister that
what she had done in letting Mr. Curtis kiss her was "only patriotic."
She said, "Think what a man like that is doing for us. Leaving his
good job as a schoolmaster. Leaving his home. Leaving his
friends----"
"Can't have many friends," I put in, "if this was the first time he'd
ever been allowed to----"
"All his friends," pursued Nancy, waving aside my objection with the
khaki sock, "and everything he's got! Presently, in three weeks'
time, he'll be off to the trenches in that awful country where it
seems to be even muddier than it is here at its worst. He's going to
have an awful time there this winter. He may," said Nancy, with a
graver look on her pretty face, "he may be giving his life for
England and Englishwomen. Yet here you are, ready to grudge him a
little thing like a kiss."
Evelyn began to look cross as well as shocked. She protested that a
kiss was not "a little thing." It was all part and parcel of the
biggest thing that a girl had to give--her love and herself.
"You mean you would refuse that poor young man?"
Evelyn, drawing herself up to her full height, which as you know is a
good long way with all of us three girls--Evelyn said, whatever
happened, rather than not refuse, she would remain an old maid with
nobody wanting to kiss her for the rest of her life.
"And how would you have felt a month after," asked Nancy, "if we have
to read Mr. Curtis's name in the casualty lists: '_Wounded and
missing--believed killed_'? How would you have felt then?"
Evelyn gave a little shiver.
"Don't--don't talk about that----"
"Yes, but I want to ask you. Wouldn't you have felt sorry?"
"Of _course_ I should have felt sorry if anything had happened
to--him," Evelyn quite snapped, "but I shouldn't be sorry about what
I'd done. I should always be glad to think I had behaved in the
right way about _that_."
And as she marched out of the room I couldn't help laughing.
Because, for the only time it has happened in her life, I saw my
pretty sister looking like Aunt Victoria.
Yes, she had just the sort of face on that Aunt Victoria has
sometimes when we have a very special kind of cake for tea. She
looks down her nose at it, and raises her eyebrows as she passes it
to us as much as to say, "How can any one possibly eat it?" You see,
poor auntie is what they call "a martyr to indigestion," and she
isn't allowed to have any sort of cake. At the same time, we always
think that she is really, in her secret heart of hearts, rather
greedy about cake, and would give anything to take some.
But about the party: it may have been a "disgraceful" one, but you
_can't_ say it was an unsuccess!
All the young men were absolutely enthusiastic about the way they'd
enjoyed themselves--even Mr. Curtis!
CHAPTER VII
THE LONELY SUBALTERN AGAIN
This morning I got another letter from the Lonely Subaltern, to
acknowledge the photograph I sent.
He really _does_ seem to have been pleased with it.
His letter begins, without any "Dear Sympathiser" at the top,
straight away:
"I think that if you know how pleased I was to have the charming
picture, which is looking at me as I now write, even your kindness in
having sent it would feel rewarded! It is certainly very unlike the
fancy portrait that I made up of you in the letter which I had the
absolute cheek to ask you for this. But now, shall I confess
something to you? I only made up that description as a kind of draw!
I knew perfectly well that you were gay as well as pretty, and that
there could be no spectacles or seriousness about you!
"And even if this laughing blonde face shows you as you were 'some
time ago,' I can't help feeling that it is very like what you are
now. If I said all this to your face I suppose it might be looked
upon as rather cheek, mightn't it?"
(Yes, it certainly might.)
"Still, as you are not here, I think I might be allowed to say what I
mean, which is I think that you are a perfect peach. If you will
only go on writing letters to me I shall look forward to them more
than to anything else I have ever looked forward to in my life."
Poor boy! He must have had a horribly dull sort of time. He says:
"I shall read them over and over to see whether I can't find between
the lines something that gives me more of you, that tells me more
about the 'true inwardness,' as they call it, of the girl who has
been so awfully sweet to me. I shall keep all your letters (if I
have the luck to get some more) in my pocketbook, close to me
wherever I go, with your photograph letters from Betty.
"By the way, I forgot to tell you that that is my new name for
you--Betty.
"Elizabeth is too long and too pompous. It reminds me too much of
the 'Maiden Queen' in one of her tantrums. But Betty is just you--a
rose-faced, shapely, blue-eyed and golden-haired English girl."
My dears! Fancy having things like that about you written down in
pen-and-ink! _Don't_ I wish I could show them to my sisters! I
can't, of course, ever. But never mind. Whenever I feel down in the
mouth or neglected, or bad-tempered with the Incubus, or bored with
Mud Flats, I shall always be able to take the Lonely Subaltern's
letters up to my own room, and have a little private preen over them,
all to myself. How glad I am that I answered his _touching_
advertisement! Didn't I tell you that I believed in Fate? Well,
there you are. Isn't it funny?
The letter ends up:
"Good-bye, my Betty. Think kindly of me sometimes, will you? and
believe me
"Ever
"YOUR LONELY SUBALTERN."
This I call perfectly sweet.
Fancy his saying "_my_ Betty." It gives one quite a little warm
glowy sort of feeling at one's heart. Fancy his thinking the
photograph so nice! I wish I'd had a coloured one to send him, but
he seems to have guessed the colours rather well.
I wonder what _he's_ like? How I _do_ wish I could see him!
(Anybody would, I think.)
Well, I must write to him again. Aunt Victoria always taught me that
a letter deserved an answer. I must write to him at once. If I
don't he might think I was offended at the new name he's given me,
and then his poor dear feelings would be hurt, and I should so hate
to do that. I must tell him that of course I don't mind his calling
me "Betty": that as a matter of fact, I rather like it. I'll go to
the Lair and write now.
* * * * * * * *
Now comes the most awful thing that's ever happened in my life.
To begin at the beginning of it, there was no ink in the Lair.
I really believe Nancy has taken to drinking ink--at least, I know
she was writing in there for hours yesterday, and I can't imagine
what about, though she said it was accounts. As I say, this place is
full of mystery and surprises, both inside and out--in fact, I don't
seem to know even my own sisters, Nancy and Evelyn, as well as I did
before the arrival of the troops in our hamlet. Well, to go back to
this ink--I knew there was a good large bottle of it in the
dining-room. So, carrying the Lair inkpot in my hand, I betook
myself off to the dining-room, thinking to find it--what most
people's dining-rooms are at a quarter to four in the afternoon,
namely, a deserted wilderness faintly smelling of lunch. However,
when I got in who should I run into but the eternal "Incubus," who, I
thought, would be busy making saps or something in a field out by the
Ford. He was sitting there writing. Up he jumped, of course, and
said he was afraid he was in my way. (Of course he always is,
really.) Then he said: "Do let me fill that for you," and I said,
"Oh, no, thank you! I can do it perfectly well myself: I am myself
doing it."
Well, of course I should have done it perfectly well if I hadn't been
flurried and annoyed at finding him there--horrid little creature!
As it was, what you would imagine to happen did happen. My hand
shook, and I upset three large tears of blue-black ink on to the red
leather cover of the dining-room writing-table.
"Oh, I say!" exclaimed the Incubus. And I said, of course, the usual
thing, "Oh, it doesn't matter in the very least. I will get a cloth
and wipe it up."
"No, wait. I have got a handkerchief here--quite an old
handkerchief, which doesn't matter in the least, I assure you," he
went on: "it will be good for it."
Before I could say another word he thrust his hand into the pocket of
his coat, and had brought it out.
This was where, I expect, he wished he had never been born.
Why on earth don't they have classes for those men which, instead of
only being about demolishing houses and blowing up bridges, would
teach them to pull a handkerchief out of a pocket without pulling out
everything else that the pocket contains?
For as the Incubus took out his quite nice khaki silk handkerchief
there fell on the floor----
You will never guess!
Yes, perhaps you will guess. Perhaps it is only I who has been such
a fool and lunatic as not to guess all about it from the very
beginning!
Anyhow, there it was, staring me in the face, now! What they call in
books "the confirmation of my own folly."
What had fallen out of the young man's pocket was my own photograph!
There was no mistaking it. You know that old proverb about bread and
butter falling always on the buttery side? Well, photographs
(especially when you don't want them to) always fall picture-side
uppermost. There it lay--my latest photograph that was taken just
after I had my hair up--the last one I had in the house--the one, I
knew it was the one, that I had sent to the "Lonely Subaltern."
And in one second the appalling truth flashed upon me.
_It was him!_
_He was it!_
At one and the same moment That Deceiver and I made a dash for the
thing as it lay on the carpet. If I had got it first I think I
should have torn out of the room with it, and, still holding it in my
hand, have rushed to the station and taken the next train to London,
and gone into a tea-shop or something--as a waitress, I mean--and
never have seen him or anybody else who knew me again as long as I
lived!
If he had got the photograph first, well--I don't quite know what he
would have done--perhaps pretended that it came out of a packet of
cigarettes, or something like that!
But as it was, what do you suppose happened? Of course, the last
thing one would wish.
We both get it at once! Our fingers were all entangled in the
sickening thing.
Firmly grasping my edge of the thing, I dragged my hand back.
But that ... that young Pretender (who I hope will never feel
comfortable as long as he lives) had hung on to his edge of the
photograph as well.
Naturally, it came in two! There we stood, for one brief second,
glaring at each other over the two halves, exactly like the judgment
of Solomon!
CHAPTER VIII
THE FRIGHTFUL ROW
My mind was in such a whirl of feelings that I really don't know
whether I was most petrified with amazement or dumb with anger. I,
that had been known from childhood's hours as "Rattle," was too
flabbergasted to have a single syllable to say for myself.
He spoke first. As usual, he said something that nobody else in the
world would have the absolute cheek to: for he said, quite angrily,
and as if he were talking to some naughty little girl: "There, now!
See what you have done! You have torn my photograph!"
"Your photograph!"
I simply gasped as I said it. Then, collecting my breath and my
scattered wits, I went on again: "It's my photograph, a photograph of
me--you know it is. How dare you have it!"
"You--I mean--it was sent to me," said Mr. Frank Lascelles.
I felt that I had turned as red as his own horrid hair. But I stood
my ground, and spoke as dignifiedly as I possibly could.
"Oh, then you admit it. You--you are the man who has been writing
letters to me----"
"Yes, I am."
"Pretending," I said witheringly, "to be a lonely subaltern!
Pretending that you couldn't make yourself liked!"
"Pretending?" The Incubus brazened it out. "Not much pretence about
that."
"Oh! What an awful story!" I said downrightedly. "Apart from
everything else, what a--what an untruther you are! You said you
weren't popular."
"Well? I'm not."
"You are. All your idiots of men seem to adore you. How they can I
don't know."
"Thank you," he said. "That's what I meant. It's you I'm unpopular
with. You know you've had a 'down' on me----"
"Well, d'you wonder?" I snapped, glaring at him with whole Hymns of
Hate in my eyes. "Haven't I an excuse?"--waving the torn photograph.
"Yes, you may have now. But that's only since this minute. You
hadn't before," he went on. "And you began to have that 'down' the
moment I arrived here. Why? Will you explain?"
Well, I couldn't. I couldn't say that it started the first minute
that he came upon me in the kitchen, talking loudly about HIM. I
couldn't explain that it was all part and parcel of my being ashamed
of having played cards for him, and made plans about him, even if it
was in fun, before he came! I said: "Anyhow, I shall have a much
worse 'down' after this! I don't know what you have to say for
yourself, Mr. Lascelles."
"A great deal," he said. Then he put on a more ingratiating sort of
tone. He said: "Look here, I may be a rotter in many ways, but I'm
dashed if I see how I've deserved your considering me such a--such an
impossible sort of person. I'd give anything to have you like me,
even a tiny bit, Miss--Elizabeth!"
He was trying to get round me. But I'm not soft-hearted like Nancy.
I wasn't going to allow him to.
"I wish----" he began again.
"It's a wish you never will get, if it is that we should be friends,"
said I. "I--I dislike you instinctively."
"So it seems. I saw that."
"And you tried to pay me out by playing tricks on me," I said,
beginning to realise more clearly what had happened, and getting
angrier than ever. "You thought that if you could get me to write
letters to you and send you my photograph, you'd turn round some day
and show them to me, and that would be your revenge!"
"I never thought anything of the kind!" he declared, fearfully angry
himself. "I only wanted to get to know you! And you've been turning
me down with a loud bang every time I've spoken to you. I didn't
know how to get hold of the crab. This seemed the only way."
"It is a most dishonourable and sneaky way," I said hotly. "It was
not fair."
Mr. Lascelles, standing there with his torn half of the photograph
still between his finger and thumb, and with the ink still trickling
down over the edge of the writing-table--Mr. Lascelles said: "You
know, they say all is fair in--in war! And, after all, this is
war-time, you know!"
"Some people seem to think that's an excuse for absolutely everything
nowadays," I told him. "But there are some things at which one has
got to draw the line! I can't tell you," I said, suddenly boiling
over again with rage, "what I think of you!"
Then the Pretender said another unforgivable thing. He said, "In
your _letters_ you didn't seem to mind me."
"Because I didn't know it was you. I thought it was somebody----"
Well, I couldn't say "nice." So I said rather lamely, "somebody
lonely, who really needed my--my----"
"I _did_ need your letters," the Incubus put in. "I knew that you'd
never write if you'd known it was me, that you'd got your knife into!"
"Known? If I had known, I----" Here I sort of clutched about for
words and couldn't find any. I simply had to repeat myself and say,
"I can't--I can't tell you what I think."
"Could you write it?" suggested Mr. Lascelles quite meekly.
But there was a laugh in his voice. I heard it. There was a twinkle
in his eye. I saw it!
Well, at that I was so angry that I know now exactly what people mean
when they say "that they see red." A mist seemed to come before my
eyes, a red mist of the same colour as Mr. Lascelles's locks, and
then----
Well--I am almost too ashamed to write it! To use one of Aunt
Victoria's old-fashioned words, it certainly was an unladylike thing
to do--I had done it before I had thought--or something did it for
me! Something lifted my arm and took direct aim. A sound rang out
that I should think they could have heard from the Ford, clearer than
the sound of rifles practising at the range.
For I slapped his face as hard as I possibly could with my open hand!
The second afterwards I was so ashamed of myself that I wished I'd
never been born. I wished the dining-room floor would open and
swallow me up: it often creaks as if it were going to!
But not it.
There I stood, still panting with temper, and gazing at the red mark
of my own hand (not by any means a microscopic one) on the Incubus's
smooth and freckled cheek.
He glared back up at me with eyes like grey-blue icicles, if you can
imagine them. Then with a movement, as quick as a cat putting out a
claw to scratch, he seized my hand--the one that slapped him.
I was terrified for a minute. I was so certain what would happen
next. I knew that he was going to kiss me by force, as a punishment.
I had read in a book that a man who has had his face slapped by a
girl has the right to kiss her in anger, and that she deserves it.
(It's just "reprisals," like we ought to take on the Germans for
murdering babies.)
And you know men always seem to be much stronger than we are, even if
we are six foot, and they (the reprisaling men) are tiny!
I flung my head back and screwed my face as far to one side as I
could. If he had kissed it, I'm sure it would have come out all over
Spotted Plague, from sheer temper, and given him blood-poisoning!
However, thank goodness, the little horror didn't even try to touch
my face.
Instead of that he took my hand, the one that had slapped him. He
crushed it in his and then put it to his mouth, and kissed it. First
the fingers and then the palm, as if he'd never had anything to kiss
in his whole life before.
"There!" he said, rather breathlessly. "You needn't think----"
But what he meant that I "needn't think" I shall never know, for at
that moment I heard the footsteps of Mary, our housemaid, coming
along the passage to what she calls "see about the dining-room fire."
I wasn't going to let her come in and find me there. No: not with
the whole atmosphere quivering with slaps and kisses, thank you: not
with me and the Incubus standing facing each other like a Christmas
number supplement called "The Lovers' Quarrel," by Marcus Stone, or
something like that.
Not much!
So up I flung the dining-room window, and out I tore through the
laurustinus bushes, with no hat, and just my blue sports coat on, and
with my half of the torn photograph grasped firmly in my hand.
He shall never have that again, anyhow!
And I hope that I jolly well hurt him, even if I am ashamed that I
did!
For _oh_, what a beastly thing he's done to me! Not so much by
pretending to be the Lonely Subaltern, but by not _being_ it....
That sounds muddled, but if you're a girl you'll understand what I
mean, and if you're a man you'll never understand anything. At
least, not if you're a man like that loathsome little bank-clerk of a
temporary second lieutenant.
I feel he's robbed me of a friend, for the Lonely Subaltern _would_
have been a friend, if his letters had been real letters--I mean, if
it hadn't been the Incubus who'd written them. And now all that
promising new interest has gone out of my life with a loud bang. I
shall have nothing to console myself with now when I feel bored with
life and nobody loves me. I shan't be able to take the Lonely
Subaltern's letters out _now_ and purr over them to myself. Good
gracious, _no_! I shall feel ill at the very sight of a letter
addressed to me for the next fortnight. And, of course, I shall take
the Incubus's detestable letters and do them up in a big envelope
with lumps of sealing-wax over it and register it back to Frank
Lascelles, Esquire, at the Moated Grange....
No: I can't do that. Mrs. Miles at the post-office would wonder what
on earth was in the packet and why I was sending things through the
post to the young orficer gentleman that lives in our very house, and
she'd ask Mary, our housemaid, and----
Oh, anybody who's ever lived in a village will know the yards and
yards that get added in this way to the "Annals of a Quiet
Neighbourhood."
That wouldn't do.
Besides, I can't have the little brute writing back to acknowledge
the receipt.
And I'm not going to give them into his own hands, either.
I shall tear them all up into the teeniest scraps, and burn them in
my bedroom grate.
No, I won't, either. I'll keep them as they are: it'll serve him
right!
CHAPTER IX
ANOTHER SHOCK!
You know how fast you can walk when you're angry and don't see where
you are going?
Well, that was me as I tore out of our garden (still hatless and in
my Saxe blue woolly coat) down the road towards Nowhere Junction and
then came to the field that leads in the direction of the Ford. It
might have been Hyde Park for all I saw of it, but close to the stile
I was reminded of where I was by the tramp of feet on the frosty road
(thanks be it's dry frost at last for a change) and the sound of
men's voices singing in parts a hymn tune with these words:
"_When we get our civvy clothes on,
O 'ow 'appy we shall be!
When this blooming war is o--ver,
No more soldiering for me!_"
It was a squad of that regiment called "The Super-Filberts," marching
at ease after a class.
Behind them came their officer, the sort of young man who is awfully
nice, but whom you feel you must have met before somewhere because he
is so like thousands of pictures of our gallant defenders in the
_Sunday Herald._
With him came another tall, rather disconsolate figure in khaki,
wearing eyeglasses--Nancy's friend, Mr. Curtis!
At that moment I was so infuriated against Mr. Lascelles that I felt
just as angry with anything calling itself his friend. So I only
gave the very curtest nod when he and the other officer saluted me.
Salutes are "no treat to me" now--as the bus driver said about the
ladies' ankles.
I presently came to a field where I had to pass a guard of soldiers,
who challenged me, and then, smiling, let me go on. I had to pick my
way pretty carefully. It was a perfect honeycomb of wet and muddy
ditches--trenches that the "Super-Filberts" had been digging under
the instruction of Mr. Curtis, who is an instructor, I may mention.
I looked into them, and simply couldn't help heaving a tiny sigh of
pity for the poor darlings out there "somewhere in France." They
have to live in those trenches for weeks on end. How on earth do
they ever keep their poor feet dry? Or do they give up all hope of
trying to?
Some way away from the trenches, there was a deeper hole covered
over. I had heard the Incubus explaining to Evelyn that this was the
entrance to a "sap"--one of the long tunnels which the men go down to
lay a charge of gunpowder.
I put aside the wooden cover, which was like the door of the open
mouth of a well, looking right down into the beginning of the sap.
It looked so narrow that I couldn't possibly imagine anybody working
there except a mole or something about the size of that scrubby
little Mr. Lascelles. Never mind him, though. I had come out here
to try to forget him. So, beginning to feel angry again, on I
pranced, towards what they call "the fortified house" at the other
end of the field.
Now, the fortified house is a square, stone-built farm affair, which
has been bought by the military authorities for instruction purposes.
The inside roofs and some of the inner walls have been knocked down.
And the windows have all been boarded up, and instead of them there
are wicked little square holes everywhere just big enough to put the
muzzle of a machine-gun through. A lot of the classes for defence
and that sort of thing take place up at this house. But, of course,
there wouldn't be a soul about there now, as it was four o'clock.
The sun was beginning to set behind the trees just like an
old-fashioned Christmas card, and I had met the class, of course,
marching away.
I peeped in through the open, doorless entrance of the house and
tried to imagine what it must be like to find yourself one of a lot
of soldiers working those machine-guns, with perhaps half of your
comrades fallen around you and scarcely enough ammunition to hold out
until the relief comes up, and a strong surrounding force of horrible
grey-coated Boches creeping nearer and nearer!
I was just thinking this when I jumped back with a little scream.
"Hullo! What is it? Oh!----"
For a moment I felt as if my imaginings had come true. I thought
that there before me, out of the fortified house, was slinking and
stealing the stealthy grey-clad form of one of those Germans.
Then I saw what it was. And I burst out laughing, in relief, at the
cause of my absurd fright. For the man who had slipped quietly out
of the house, touching his old felt hat to me, was nothing more
alarming than an English labourer.
Besides this, it was a labourer whom I knew! It was no one more or
less than our nice old Penny, the gardener, with that pathetic old
black wig of his, who has been working for Aunt Victoria since before
we girls came to live with her at Mud Flats.
"Good evening, missie. What a fright you gave me!" he said in his
nice, kind, affectionate voice. He is very fond of all of us--a real
old-fashioned English servant, who is more of a friend than anything
else, as Aunt Victoria says. "What are you doing out here at this
time--come to watch the soldiers?" I asked him.
"Oh, no, miss. I was just about seeing whether there mightn't be one
or two cart-loads of gravel by the hedge there where they have been
digging. I thought I might be able to get them to let me have it
cheap, and it would do nicely to mend those holes in your auntie's
garden path where the drippings have come from the rain off the porch
roof; and then I went into the house here, so as to get a bit of
shelter for lighting a pipe--too much breeze outside."
Somehow I couldn't help feeling at the time that there was something
very queer about Penny that afternoon. To begin with, talking about
"a breeze" when it was so still and frosty that one could hear the
chinking of the R.E.'s forge and the sawing of some planks in their
workshops simply miles away!
And, for the second thing, old Penny never has smoked for as long as
I can remember. Mr. Lascelles's cigarettes were the first whiff of
tobacco smoke that have profaned Aunt Victoria's curtains since the
year Eighteen Hundred and Goodness Knows.
So how could our old Penny have imagined that he was going to light a
pipe?
And I said to him: "You had better not let the 'Super-Filberts' catch
you poking round their fortified house, Penny! They might arrest you
on suspicion of being a German spy!" I was just joking, of course,
to keep his spirits up. And, anyhow, the poor dear old fellow did
smile at last. He said to me: "Bless your heart, my dear Miss
Elizabeth! There ain't no soldiers going to think anything of that
sort about an honest old man like me! They all know where I work,
and all about me. They are civil to me, and no mistake."
And he went hobbling off, rheumatism and all.
I didn't want to go back home again so soon, as you can imagine.
What I wanted was to put off as long as possible seeing again that
Lonely-Subaltern-impersonating disgrace to the New Army, Mr.
Lascelles.
So, instead of going straight down the road again, I turned down a
lane that is rather a long way round, by the oyster beds.
It is a narrow lane, always muddy unless we have frost, when the ruts
are as hard as very deep corrugated iron. There is a wood on each
side.
I say, you must really excuse some more landscape just here, will
you? because it really is part of the story. I have just got to put
in those woods, because it was they that made the lane so very dark.
The tall hollies on either side of it branch out overhead and turn it
into a regular tunnel.
So that was how it happened that two figures ahead of me, strolling
along, I hardly saw until I was right up to them.
And they didn't see me at all, being too fearfully absorbed in what
they were saying to each other.
They were a tall girl and a young man in uniform--an officer.
Oh, of course, we have plenty of officers down here. Some of them
have their wives and things down for the week-end, too.
So, though the man had got a massive-looking khaki arm about the
girl's waist, and though she was leaning her head in that "loppy,"
helpless sort of way against his shoulder that I suppose must mean
she's fearfully in love, I shouldn't have taken any notice of this
pair if I hadn't heard the man's voice.
It was a voice I knew. It was the voice of that big, good-looking
Captain Masters: you know, the forget-me-notty one who came to our
party, with the black hair like pitch, with a crinkle in it.
And it--the voice, of course--was saying, just as I passed, these
startling words:
"But look here, darling: look here, Nancy----"
I gave one startled glance, through the dusk, at the figure of the
girl.
Yes, it was. There are only three girls, only three of us in this
village who would look as tall as that standing by the side of a
six-foot-fourer like Captain Masters.
It was my own sister Nancy! _With_ the young man that I thought she
hadn't even seen since the party, since she was out when he came to
pay his duty-call! How--what----
Well, of course, there was only one thing to be done, and that was to
pass on as quickly as I could, pretending that I hadn't seen them.
(They really hadn't seen me.)
I have my faults, goodness knows! Hot-tempered I may be. Vulgar and
outspoken, Evelyn says I am, very often. And it is not for nothing
that I have been nicknamed "Rattle." I suppose I do really talk
rather a lot?
But no one shall ever say that I am not a sports-woman!
So I didn't breathe a word to Evelyn, when I got home this evening,
of the terrific surprise I had been just given by our fair young
sister! However, I didn't see why I shouldn't tax Nancy with it
later on. So, after tea (where Mr. Lascelles never turned up) I took
her aside, and said I had simply got to speak to her. I dragged her
into the linen-room, which is a funny little warm, lavender-scented
cubbyhole two steps down from the garret, where our poor old Penny,
the gardener, has been put for the benefit of his rheumatism.
"I say, you are greedy," I said to her as a start off.
"Greedy?" said Nancy, opening her enormous innocent-looking blue eyes
at me. "Do you mean because I have finished all those chocolates of
Mr. Lascelles's? You know Evelyn had a box of her own, and you never
will touch any sweets that unfortunate young man brings into the
house, so----"
"Nothing about chocolates," I said, cutting it short. "But what
about a girl who in the same week allows one young man to kiss her,
and another to get on 'darling' terms with her?"
For a moment Nancy didn't say a single word. By the light of the
tiny blue fairy light in the linen-room I saw that she had got the
family blush well on!
There really are drawbacks to being the possessors of these dazzling
fair skins like all of the Verdeleys have got.
Then she drew a long breath and said in a resigned little voice: "I
suppose you mean ... just before tea?"
I nodded. "The--er--the second Prince Charming is a good deal
better-looking than the first one," I told her. "That I will say for
you."
"But--but, Rattle," began Nancy, in a half-horror-struck,
half-puzzled tone, "how could you--how did you know?"
"Passed you just now in the lane when you were too wrapped up in your
flirtation to see who was walking up behind you."
"Flirtation?" cried Nancy, quite sharply. "It isn't any flirtation!"
"What? What?" I put in, thrilled. "D'you mean it's what they call
in books The Real Thing?"
"Rather," said Nancy, as if she meant it from the bottom of her
heart, and then she pulled up as if she'd said what she wasn't going
to.
I clutched her nice plump arm, "Nancy! Are you really very in love
with him, and him with you?"
"Don't! _Please_ don't ask me any questions!"
"You're engaged to him, then?"
"No!" said Nancy, in an uncertain sort of voice.
"What? Not engaged to him," I said, angrily. "Oh! If he's just a
philanderer, like they have on the stage----"
"He--he's nothing of the kind----"
"If he is, and he's just passing the time away by making love to the
prettiest girl here, and then going to ride away leaving her to break
her heart----"
"But he isn't: he isn't. Rather not! Oh, my dear child, I can't
explain," Nancy said, half laughing, half crying. "I assure you it's
all right!"
"That means that you _are_ engaged."
"I never said so," murmured Nancy, dimpling.
"I don't care what you 'say.' I suppose you call it 'an
understanding.' A girl at school's sister had one of those for six
months once, and it meant that nobody could go into the drawing-room
when she was there with the young man and that she never looked at
anybody else and that they got married in the usual way: so what the
_difference_ is," I said, "I can't see!"
"Perhaps not. Only, Rattle, you will be a brick, won't you?" she
said very coaxingly. "You will prrrromise you won't breathe a word
of----"
"You needn't have asked me that," I said, hurt. "Awful I may be.
But at least I'm not a sneak."
"Oh, I know, I know! Only you might forget, and rag me before
Evelyn, and Evelyn would be---- You _know_ what Evelyn would be
like!"
I nodded. "A conscientious objector."
Then I thought of something. Just as Nancy was going to slip away, I
caught her arm again.
"You might tell me just one thing."
"No, Rattle, no. I'm not going to answer any questions. I can't
now. 'Tisn't fair."
"It is! It's nothing to do with your--with him. It can't make any
difference if you tell me just this.
"What, then?"
"This. I may be the youngest of the family, and too young and
ignorant to know anything at all," I began (meaning it sarcastically,
of course), "but I can guess _some_ things. I can see from your
face----"
Here Nancy turned her pretty face away.
"I could see from your face," I persisted, "that what's happened
means something absolutely wonderful to you."
She gave my hand a little squeeze, "You _darling_ Baby! You'll know
yourself, some day----"
"Yes, but what I want to know now is, doesn't it make you sorry that
you let Mr. Curtis kiss you at the party?"
She stared at me. "Sorry? What's it got to do with it? Why should
I be sorry?"
"You don't feel," I asked, "that you've wasted something that ought
to have been saved up for--for the real love affair?"
Nancy laughed like anything. "My _dear_ Rattle! My _dear_ Kid!"
"Thanks: a year younger than you, aren't I?"
"Yes, but--oh, as if _that_ had anything whatsoever to do with
_this_!" cried Nancy, still laughing. "Oh, what a lot of mistakes
there must be made in this world by people making up their minds to
believe there's only one kind of kiss!"
And then she ran downstairs, leaving me to ponder over the doings of
a very crowded day.
CHAPTER X
THE ZEPPELIN NIGHT
When I said it had been "a crowded day" I only meant at the time
crowded with the little affairs of the Verdeley family. My finding
out first of all about that unforgivable Incubus and his "Lonely
Subaltern" trick and our quarrel for one thing! And, for the other
thing, my coming unexpectedly upon Nancy's romance. For it is a
romance. How they have managed it in such a short time I don't know.
But here she is actually engaged. Ahem! I _mean_, of course, having
an understanding with this Captain Masters, whose name we hadn't
heard a fortnight ago.
Really it reminds me of that old poem:
"_A roving eye, a soldier's mien,
A doublet of the blue,
No more of me you knew, my love--
No more of me you knew._"
In this case, of course, the doublet is made of what the _London
Mail_ tells you is the only key to a woman's heart--khaki!
_How_ I should like to know every detail about just how it all
happened! I must get Nancy to tell me every atom of that as soon as
the "understanding" has blossomed out into a proper engagement.
Yes, here's Nancy, if you please, only just twenty and flying
straight in the face of our parents' will that sent us down to this
God-forsaken place on purpose so that we mightn't rush into the
madness of an early love affair before the age of twenty-five!
What would our parents have said to this?
However, those two bombshells are not the only ones that have fallen
on this place to-night. Between eleven o'clock and half-past we had,
by way of a little change, some real ones!
An air raid over Mud Flats! That is the latest!
I heard the sound of "bang, bang, bang!" outside when I was in bed.
Immediately I popped up and slipped on my dressing-gown and nipped
across the passage to Evelyn's room, which looks out on to the front.
Nancy was there already. Then out bounced Aunt Victoria in a million
shawls and an eider-down and a most worried look, and her grey hair
like a bird's nest with hoar frost on it. All this time "bang, bang,
bang," was still going on outside, with a deep "Brrr--Rroum!
Brrr--Roum!" that we seemed to hear in our bones, first of all. We
were told afterwards that these were the guns from the cruiser in the
Bay outside Mud Flats.
And then we heard a tap at Evelyn's door, which we'd left open.
And then, looking up, we beheld the weirdest little figure in
bright-blue-and-cream-striped pyjamas, with red hair standing bolt
upright on end, like a baby's just rumpled from its cot.
"Don't be frightened! I say, it's quite all right," said a voice
that I suppose was intended to be awfully encouraging and dauntless,
though, as a matter of fact, all of us girls were far more excited
than frightened.
"The thing's gone over now! And, anyhow, you have got a man in the
house." This was, if you please, our awful Incubus--the Lascelles
boy!
I suppose he was the only object in pyjamas that Aunt Victoria had
ever seen in her life (since I know she said that our uncle Edward
always used to wear a good old-fashioned nightshirt). So possibly
she thought that Mr. Lascelles had gone into mufti and was wearing
the very latest and "nuttiest" thing in lounge suits. (She really is
as ignorant as that about men!) What I mean to say is that she
didn't look in the least shocked: she who always used to consider it
a sign of being extra nice to be shocked at everything but an
overcoat! Isn't it funny? And it was actually she, if you please,
who suggested that we should all have cups of cocoa and pieces of
cake to help us to "compose ourselves" before we went off to sleep
again: not only that, but that she meant Mr. Lascelles as well, of
course! So there he stayed, looking something like an illustration
of "_Toy-Town_" in _The Sketch_, and bustling about in that zebra
pyjama-suit, and that hair, handing cups and gobbling cake, and
jabbering away to all of us--I mean, of course, to all of them.
Neither of _us_ has spoken a word to the other since that echoing
moment when I slapped his face for him in the dining-room, and I
don't see any particular reason why we ever should speak again.
I am not going to apologise for having lost my temper with him: he
deserved everything he got--and I don't suppose he is going to
apologise for his "Lonely Subaltern" trick--so there we shall remain.
I forgot to say that, of course, both the servants were crowded in as
well to that Zeppelin cocoa party in Evelyn's room. Mary, the
housemaid, was the only one of our party who seemed at all
hysterical. She came in Hinde's curlers and pink flannelette. She
began to whimper about this being the end of everything, and how we
had all come to the last hour of our lives.
This was when cook, in a grey golf-cape and carpet slippers, rounded
on her, and said: "Well, if it is the last hour, it has come at a
very good time for you, and don't forget it! Wasn't it your evening
out? Didn't I see you, with my own eyes, trapesing down the market
place with Lance-Corporal Gateshead going to the pictures?"
(I forgot to explain that, among other changes, there actually is a
Picture Palace at Mud Flats now, for the benefit of the soldiers.)
"And even if you do get killed by them Germans to-night, at least you
saw the new film of Charlie Chaplin the last thing before leaving!
So I don't see what you have got to complain of, you ungrateful
thing!" said cook. "If you was like poor old Mr. Penny, now, who had
that bad attack of screwmatics for his last evening----"
That suddenly reminded us of poor old Penny--the only member of the
entire household who wasn't gathered there in Evelyn's little room.
"I wonder if he has slept through all this racket?" said Aunt
Victoria, rather anxiously. "If not, I am afraid he must have been
rather terrified, poor old man."
"Penny? Is that your old gardener chap with the wig--the one who is
always nosing round the camps for leaf-mould and groundsel for your
canary, and that sort of thing?" said the Incubus quickly. "Sleeps
in the attic, does he? Well, I will just pop up to him."
And off he popped in his red Turkish slippers.
We heard voices from Penny's room, Penny's sounding rather angry.
Presently the Sight in pyjamas came down, and said: "He's all right.
He wasn't frightened a bit, unless he is scared by my language!"
"Language!"--just fancy, to dear old Penny, our faithful old servant!
In the middle of a Zeppelin Night! Did you ever hear anything so
disgraceful?
I think even the Incubus noticed my look of stony disapproval, for he
went on rather hastily to explain: "I told the old Johnnie he'd
simply got to keep his skylight covered. He'd lighted his lamp, just
to hearten himself up, he said----"
Poor old fellow! As if he knew what he was doing in his nervousness
and flurry!
--"But there was light enough to see beyond the Martello Tower. I
don't think it will happen again," wound up that interfering parrot
of an Incubus. "Good-night, everybody!"
Everybody said "Good-night," except me. I hope he noticed that I
didn't even look at him. When I got back to my own room and went
straight to the glass to see whether I had been looking as dignified
and mature as I'd been feeling, I was annoyed when I saw myself.
What with my two fat golden plaits hanging down on each side of my
face and the soft muslin collar on my sky-blue dressing-gown and the
pale pink ribbon showing from my nightie, I looked years and _years_
less than my real age. I might have been fifteen-and-a-half!
Girls? Can you _imagine_ anything more maddening?
CHAPTER XI
THE MAKING OF A MAN-HATER
Great excitement this morning in Mud Flats: assessing the damage that
has been done by the Raid! And, after all, that's not much.
Most of the bombs had fallen into a soft mud bank off the Hard. One
had been dropped near the doctor's back-door and had killed a fowl.
Two--I mean two bombs, not fowls--had just missed the Martello Tower
and the magazine that holds explosives for the Instruction Class.
"Bit of a bust-up if they'd got that!" I heard the Incubus saying to
Evelyn at breakfast. "Might have consoled them for not having killed
a single kiddy this time. But perhaps they know the youngest
inhabitant in Mud Flats is nearly seventeen----"
Did he mean me? DID he? He was quite horrid enough to.
"Dear me, Mr. Lascelles, how could the Germans know that?" put in the
drowsy voice of our Aunt Victoria from behind the new coffee-machine.
"They can't have any spies here. Not here in the village."
He laughed and said: "Oh, no spies in Mud Flats. Oh, decidedly
not--what?"
And then laughed again--silly idiot! It's just one of his
thoughtless habits, since, of course, there was absolutely nothing to
laugh at. However, never mind about the Lascelles boy. I've got
something much more interesting to think about now.
You see, I can't help feeling frightfully excited and inquisitive
about Nancy's affair with Captain Masters. She has not said a word
about it to me ever since the Zeppelin night, and I haven't asked,
only I can't help knowing that she is absolutely at the high tide of
a happy engagement. It seems to me to shine all out of her: out of
her blue eyes, out of every single crinkly curl of her golden hair:
she seems to bring a wave of it with her into the house when she
comes in from those errands to the village which always take her such
an unconscionable time. I suppose because she always comes back by
the shady lane? The whole atmosphere of the Grange is seething with
it. Perhaps it is only because I have the key to this affair that I
feel it is too strange that nobody else should guess anything about
it. Yet nobody does suspect. Aunt Victoria goes on knitting as
usual. Evelyn goes on doing the usual things, bandaging-class,
sewing, and practising. The Incubus comes and goes in his awful
boots. Mr. Curtis has been to call several times. Nobody seems to
think of there being any understanding between our Nancy and the
best-looking officer in Mud Flats!
But I do so wish that, instead of just bubbling over with silent
happiness and smiles, Nancy would tell me something. If she would
only enter into one single detail about it! Really it would be an
act of charity to her youngest sister. For, beyond that, I don't
seem to have anything in the wide world to interest me now.
Both my sisters are so altered: lost to me. Evelyn because, ever
since the night of the party, she has taken such a fit of
virtuousness and conscientiousness that we can hardly talk about
anything without her being shocked. And Nancy because she is in the
middle of the throes of first love and a secret engagement! As for
me, among all the coming and going of soldiers and sailors in this
place, I don't seem to have a single "special" that I want to be
interested in me, or that I can possibly be interested in. I tell
you what I think is the matter with me. I think I am utterly
disillusioned--disillusioned at eighteen! I am absolutely "off" men.
I don't think that I shall ever, as long as I live, be able to like
one. Seriously, I mean it. Of course, you can guess whose fault
that is: this horrible little Mr. Lascelles! The fact is, living in
the house with some one whom one so thoroughly dislikes is enough to
sour one's temper and warp one's whole nature for ever! The last
straw to it, of course, was when he robbed me of the new interest
that I was beginning to feel in my life, my "Lonely Subaltern." Yes,
indeed! when my pet aversion turned out to be the same person as my
unknown friend, that really did send all the "fair dreams crashing
down to ruin," as it says in books.
I don't think any one can blame me for being a bit of a man-hater,
after all?
* * * * * * * *
(Later.)
Nancy actually has vouchsafed a word to me at last! Not that it is
much. She came into the drawing-room just now with a very woebegone
face and asked everybody in general whether they had any toothache
cure in the house. This was a bit of a surprise. You see, the one
advantage of belonging to the Verdeley family is that the curse of
toothache never has been known to them, from the cradle to the grave!
Our teeth all "come easily" when we are babies and teething. And
when we get the second set they jolly well stay with us until the end
of our lives. Even Aunt Victoria, who is twice a Verdeley, having
married her cousin, even Aunt Victoria hasn't got a single gold crown
or stopped tooth or atrocity of that kind in her head!
And father was the same. And we have all inherited it from him,
thank goodness! So that I don't wish to boast, but we can't help
realising that the combined teeth of the Verdeley girls are like
nothing in the world but a long, completely-perfect string of white
pearls. Hence the surprise when Nancy, with the corners of her mouth
drawn well down, and her hand over one very pink cheek, murmured
disconsolately that "she had such a racking toothache, and she
wondered if anybody in the house had got any Nerve-Soother?"
Nobody had, of course.
Then Mr. Lascelles said he would nip off to the chemist's for a
bottle.
As usual, on these occasions when you want to buy something in a
hurry, it was Early Closing Day. The only chemist had gone off to
Nowhere Junction. So then he (the Inc.) had to clatter away on his
motor-cycle to Mr. Curtis's billet, at the other end of the town.
Finally, he raised a small bottle of chlorodyne. This I took up to
Nancy's bedroom, where she was lying stretched on a couch of pain
with her thick emerald-green blanket-coat spread over her--(I told
you she had given her pink eiderdown to the Incubus)--and Evelyn,
hovering over her, was saying, "I'm afraid you'll have to make up
your mind to go to the dentist's," and offering Nancy a bottle of
"Eau de Cologne" and some cotton-wool, which she was faintly refusing.
"This will be better," I said, producing the chlorodyne. "It comes
'with Mr. Curtis's profoundest sympathy.'"
The mere mention of Mr. Curtis sent Evelyn out of the room. You
know, she disapproves of him so awfully since the night of the party.
"Try and stick some of this into your tooth, old thing," I said
consolingly. "Is it very bad? Open your mouth, and let me see which
one it is."
"Oh, it's right at the back," moaned Nancy, touching her cheek.
"Why, that's the other side of your face from what it was this
afternoon," I said.
"Yes, I think it must be a kind of neuralgia: it flies all over the
place," said my sister, in a stifled voice. "Evelyn is quite right.
She thinks the only thing to be done is for me to go to the dentist
and see where the trouble really is."
"But if it's neuralgia," I said, "going to the dentist won't do it
any good."
"Oh, yes, I am sure it will," said Nancy hastily. "I think going to
the dentist will be absolutely the only thing to do. I expect
there's a tooth at the bottom of it, really."
In fact, she seemed as anxious to go there as most people are to stop
away. A thought came to me.
"Young Nancy," I said firmly, "open your mouth and let me have a look
at those teeth of yours."
"No," objected Nancy. "You're not a dentist, Rattle. You wouldn't
be able to do any good."
"All right, then I'll go away," I said, and moved to the door.
Nancy glanced at me. I think she saw it was no good pretending any
longer.
"Open your mouth," I insisted.
Well, she opened her pink mouth, wide. I gave a peep in. And, of
course, every one of her thirty-two teeth was as white and sound and
efficient-looking as those of a young terrier!
"Oh, you fraud!" I said, looking her full in the face.
Nancy pursed up her mouth again, and a whole swarm of dimples
immediately broke out over her face.
Then she said, meekly, "But, Rattle, dear, I have got to get to the
dentist's somehow."
"You mean that somehow you have got to fib your way to Nowhere
Junction," I said severely, "so that you have a chance of meeting
Captain----"
"S-sh," said Nancy.
"I won't s-sh," I said. "You know you are only making an opportunity
to meet your fiancé!"
"Oh, Rattle, darling, don't shout so loud," Nancy said softly,
although as it happened I was only talking in a whisper. "If you
ever were fond of me do stand by me now."
I leaned over her and hugged her through the blanket-coat.
"Of course, I am fond of you. You know you're my favourite person in
the world. But I think you might let me know what I am standing by,
and what I am supposed to do."
"Only see me through this! See that I manage to get up to Nowhere
Junction to-morrow," said Nancy beseechingly. "You know that Aunt
Victoria won't let one of us go there alone, and that Auntie won't go
herself in this weather, because the frost is so bad for her
bronchitis, so one of you will have to go with me, and I think it had
better be you."
"Yes," I agreed. "I think it had better not be Evelyn. She wouldn't
think it right. She would be shocked. We won't tell her."
You know it is curious, but as soon as people begin being "shocked"
at things, like Evelyn, other people begin to leave off telling them
anything. So, quite soon, they don't have much left to be shocked
at. This is what's called the wind being tempered to the shorn lamb,
I expect. But to go back to the plans of my other sister. Nancy
said: "The trains to-morrow are very inconvenient for----"
She paused.
"For the dentist, I suppose."
"Yes, for the dentist," said Nancy, with more dimples. "So I shan't
be able to go over by train."
"How then?" I asked, looking down at her.
"I shall go in the side-car of--of somebody's motor bicycle," planned
that disgraceful Nancy, as demurely as you please. "He is going to
offer (very kindly) to run me over to town."
"Well, then, he can't take me," I objected. "There is only room for
one in that side-car of his."
"You will have to go in another side-car of another bicycle," decreed
Nancy. "That has been arranged, too."
"Who's going to take me, then?" I asked (with what you might call a
not unnatural curiosity), "Mr. Curtis?"
"No," said Nancy. Then she added, rather hurriedly, "Mr. Lascelles
says he will take you."
Immediately I stiffened all over myself, as if I had swallowed six
pokers.
"Oh, does he?" I said indignantly. "Mr. Lascelles says he will take
me? Does he? That's kind of him! Well, as a matter of fact, Mr.
Lascelles will not take me. There are a few things which I draw the
line at. This is one. I am not going with Mr. Lascelles."
"Rattle! Be an angel!"
"I will be anything you like," I said, "_but not with Mr. Lascelles_.
I will do anything for you, but I won't have anything to do with him!
I am fright' fully sorry to disappoint you, Nancy, old girl, but
don't ask me any more, because if it is a case of Mr. Lascelles _I
will not!_"
And I meant what I said: every syllable of it. I meant to stick to
it. But!----
Well, you know the kind of argument that begins by one's being
absolutely determined about something, and saying that whatever
happens one will not, one will not give in. It generally ends in the
same way. The most determined of the arguers gets the worst of it.
The one who simply looked pathetic and allowed big tears to well up
into her blue eyes comes off triumphant. This was what happened in
the wrangle between Nancy and me.
"You couldn't be so absolutely horrid to your own sister," Nancy
almost wept, "if you only knew how much it meant to me being able to
get up to Nowhere Junction to-morrow without any bother and asking of
questions! And you know that he--that people will probably be off to
the Front in a fortnight!"
(By "people" of course she meant Captain Masters.) "And I may never
be going to see him again," she mourned. "Oh! Rattle, think of
that! ... If you were a little older you might understand how I feel
about this. But really I think there is no one so callous and
unfeeling about things as the very young," said Nancy, who is only
just twenty herself, dash it all!
She said, "If I could only get you to go up with me to-morrow----"
I said, "I don't mind going. 'Tisn't that. It's only who I've got
to go with! I don't mind coming with you, and disappearing into one
tea-shop while you go into another, in the way that a really good
chaperon ought to do, and then joining you about half a mile from
home again when you come back! Only, my young friend, you will have
to arrange so that I go in somebody else's side-car."
"My dear, there is nobody else with a side-car!"
"But half the officers here have got them," I protested.
"Yes, but there is not another of the officers here that I would like
to know about Harry--I mean about--you know who--and myself," said
Nancy, getting agitated about it again. "You know that Mr. Lascelles
is a pal of his, a very old chum, and Captain Masters knows that he
can trust him to the uttermost----"
"That shows that he doesn't really know the Incubus's true
character," said I, bitterly thinking of my own disillusionment about
the "Lonely Subaltern."
"I don't see how you can pretend to know poor Mr. Lascelles," said
Nancy to me quite indignantly. "You hardly speak to him! You won't
look at him! And it is such a pity, Rattle, you know, because----"
"Well, because what?"
"Because he likes you so awfully much," said Nancy.
I laughed cynically, as it says in books. "Thank you," I said, "but
I happen to know what the Incubus thinks of me!"
I remembered the icicles in his eyes the other day, just after I had
slapped his face. (However, Nancy could not be expected to know
anything about that.) She went on, sitting up on the bed and
clutching her blanket-coat round her, for you know how piercingly
cold it gets up in a bedroom this weather? She said, "Rattle, you
don't know what he thinks, and, as a matter of fact, I do,
since--well, since I've known one of the soldier men here pretty
well. Because I hear a good deal about what all the others say. And
they all say the same thing, Rattle. They say that Frank Lascelles
is most frightfully fond of you."
This absolute rot annoyed me so much that I skipped up off the bed
where I was sitting at Nancy's feet and was just going to bolt out of
the room and not take the slightest notice of anything further that
she said. However, Nancy grasped me firmly by the arm.
"Stop! you must listen," she said. "It's too bad that you are being
so horrid to him. All the boys, my Harry, and Mr. Curtis, and the
adjutant, say exactly the same thing--poor old Frank has been
absolutely 'pottie' about the youngest of the girls at his billet
ever since he first came here, and---- No! stop, Rattle! You are to
hear it! They say, some of them say, that you must like him quite a
lot, for it's always a sign of a girl's taking a really violent
interest in a young man when she won't have anything to say to him in
that very marked manner!"
"Oh!" I said, bouncing up and down on the bed in my annoyance. "How
dare they say anything so absolutely idiotic? If they only knew me
at all they would realise that nothing could possibly be further from
my--why!---- You know----"
"Yes, I know, Rattle," said Nancy. "But, you see, they don't. What
they think is that you don't know whether Mr. Lascelles is merely a
flirt or not!"
"As if I cared what he is!"
"They think," pursued Nancy, "that you are just keeping out of his
way because you are afraid of getting too fond of him!"
"Me, afraid of that?" I said, rocking with indignant laughter. "Oh,
is that what they think?"
"So I understand, my dear!"
"Very well, then, I will see that they do understand," I cried
indignantly. "I shan't care tuppence how much I am with that horrid
little blot on the landscape. I will go and positively live in his
pocket for the next week! I shan't like it, nor will he. But never
mind. Anything to put a stop to this maudlin, puerile gossip of
those young men," I said as witheringly as I could.
"Never mind about his pocket, Rattle," Nancy took up in her most
coaxing tone again, "but if you will only go in his side-car----"
"Very well--I just will," I said, with the calmness of desperation,
"if you like!"
So that was how that was settled!
What a day it will be----
There's one thing that I can have a quiet mind about though, at all
events.
Nobody can accuse me of "using a side-car for pleasure."
"_Pleasure!_"
Ha, ha!
CHAPTER XII
THE ANYTHING-BUT-JOY RIDE
To begin with, I thought that our chaperon, our respected guardian,
who is supposed to be so frightfully particular about us, I thought
she would be a difficulty.
But, do you know, a change has come over our Aunt Victoria? It is
not the first time I have noticed it, either, since the troops have
been here at Mud Flats. What with constantly entertaining masculine
men in this house, and knitting khaki silk ties for the Incubus, and
having coffee and bacon for breakfast, and getting champagne out of
the cellar for that party--well, I don't recognise Auntie: I honour
bright don't. It sometimes seems to me as if she were thoroughly
disorganised. And it has been a great shock to me, I can tell you!
All this is to show you how paralysed with surprise I was to find
that Aunt Victoria seemed to think absolutely nothing of Nancy's
proposed expedition.
She said: "Yes, dear. Toothache must be a terrible thing. And it is
far better to have the tooth out at once, and have done with it. And
I am sure it is very kind of Captain Masters to run you up to the
Junction----"
Imagine it! She went on:
"Yes, and you want Rattle to go with you, I expect, to hold your
hand? Did you say that Mr. Lascelles said he would take her? That
will be nice. What time are you going to start?"
So that was that.
As for the time when we did start, it was about eleven. Nancy, for
reasons best known to herself, had decided upon eleven o'clock in the
morning. Goodness knows how the two young officers managed to
explain things to their C.O. or whoever it is: whether they fibbed,
or told the truth, or got sick-leave, or a funeral, or an operation
for appendicitis, I suppose I shall never hear. Anyhow, they'd what
they called wrangled it.
So at ten minutes to eleven there we both were, waiting at the door
of the Moated Grange. Both of us wore our little brown leather hats
and our big emerald-green belted blanket-coats, which we had all
three got alike. Of course, Nancy, the little scoundrel, had taken
care to have her face well wrapped up in a big white woolly Shetland
shawl to keep the draught from getting into that poor aching tooth of
hers!
Mr. Lascelles had already wheeled up what he calls his "bus" and
stood by it, waiting, all wrapped up and interned in that hideous
belted waterproof garment, with a rug-strap about the waist of it,
and the cap and the goggles, and that general get-up of a
motor-cyclist that makes a man look a cross between a navvy and a
diver.
When Nancy was being helped to her seat by Captain Masters, and was
having about six extra rugs brought out for her by Evelyn (who really
is the sweetest thing when anybody is in pain or trouble), and Aunt
Victoria was impressing upon the poor sufferer to mind and not take
cold in the empty place when the tooth came out, and while cook was
also telling her that she would have some nice camomile tea warmed up
for her when she got home--when all this quite unnecessary fuss was
going on over "poor darling Nancy," the Incubus turned to me. He had
brought a big scarlet rug lined with fur, and this he began, rather
gingerly, to tuck about me.
I had to let him, of course. I was supposed to be in his charge,
just as Nancy was in Captain Masters's. How perfectly awful! What a
completely-against-the-grain sort of day it was going to be! Little
Me making a sisterly sacrifice of herself for that naughty Nancy's
sake--and thrown for hours, probably, into the hated society of the
Incubus!
Oh, how I was going to enjoy myself! I saw it all coming.
(At least, I thought I did.
Little knowing how much more there was going to be than I had
bargained for!)
Just before we started the Incubus actually did speak to me. It was
the first time that he'd done this since that startling moment when I
had slapped his face so hard in the dining-room.
"Quite sure you'll be warm enough, Miss Elizabeth?" he said.
And he spoke in a polite, not-quite-sure sort of voice, as if he
thought probably when I spoke I should snap his head off.
I nearly did, too.
I felt fearfully inclined to speak very curtly to him.
Then I changed my mind again.
Captain Masters, looking a perfect dream in his coat and cap, but as
if butter wouldn't melt in his handsome mouth, was standing close by.
Quite suddenly I remembered what Nancy had told me about what Captain
Masters had said the other men had thought about me and Mr. Frank
Lascelles.
They actually thought that my being horrid to him meant that absurd
thing, did they?--that it was all put on! Idiots! And possibly
Captain Masters, the whited sepulchre, was waiting now to hear Mr.
Lascelles get a snub from the youngest of the girls at his billet--a
snub that he and all the rest of those idiotic young soldiers would
go and interpret in exactly the opposite way!
Very well--all right, then he just shouldn't hear that.
So I turned round and said in the friendliest tone of voice that the
Incubus had ever yet heard from me, "Oh, yes, thank you very much: I
shall be beautifully warm under the nice red rug."
Well, anyhow, even if that tone of voice was no surprise to Captain
Masters (who I don't believe heard it, he having his eyes simply
glued to Nancy's every movement as if he were on a rifle-range and
she were the target), it quite took aback the Incubus himself.
For he (the Incubus) opened his eyes and simply stared at me, and
then, if you will believe it, he actually began to blush. What I
could see of his face between the cap and collar had turned very
nearly as red as that fur-lined rug that I nestled down into in the
wicker carrier. Little dreaming, as I say, of the adventures I was
destined to meet with before the day was over!
Well, in another minute we were off: Captain Masters and my sister
clattering on ahead and the Incubus and I clattering a little way
after them.
I found it awfully exhilarating. The fresh, frosty air shrieked in
my ears and freshened my face and tried to find a loose lock of my
hair to pull from under the little leather hat, but could not. I
even enjoyed the rattle and the clatter and the speed. I quite
forgot that my partner in this mad rush was not an amusing person,
whom I would have liked, but my pet abomination himself! I forgot
everything but the pleasure of the joy-ride itself--I couldn't help
its turning out to be pleasure after all, _could_ I?
I had heard them say that it was about three-quarters of an hour's
run to the Junction, but I don't think we had been tearing along
those roads between those long stretches of marshland for more than
half an hour before the break-down occurred.
The rush got slower and slower, and finally petered out into dead
standstill.
Don't ask me what had happened, because I really cannot tell you. It
was more of that machinery, those things they have "gone wrong."
There the machine stopped, and couldn't be got to go on again:
although Mr. Lascelles nipped off and began fiddling with things and
pulling at things and tugging at things, and saying, "What the--how
the----" in a mutter to them. But "forrader" we did not get!
There we stayed, no more able to move on or back than the milestone
near which the blessed motorcycle had taken it into its head to come
to a standstill.
"I say, this is perfectly awful: what on earth is to be done?"
muttered the Incubus at last, pushing his cap back from his fevered
brow, and gazing at me with a very woebegone look. "We could leave
the thing here and walk on to the Junction, and find some one there
to come back and patch us up, but even if I did that there wouldn't
be time----"
I didn't quite know what he meant by that. Time? Why, there would
be heaps of time, since Aunt Victoria had agreed that she wouldn't
expect to see us back until after tea-time. We were supposed to be
going to have lunch at a confectioner's, and perhaps on to the
picture palace, after Nancy had finished having her tooth out!
And here was the Incubus, standing by the petrified motor-cycle and
looking as if the end of all things had come, just because he
couldn't be at the Junction at the same time as his friend and my
sister!
And he looked most fearfully distressed.
I must say that some men show to better advantage when they are upset
and troubled than when they are larking about and perfectly cheery
and uppish: it was so with the Incubus. Much as I always have hated
that little object, and horrid as he has been to me about the "Lonely
Subaltern," I must say this for him--that he seemed almost quite nice
and boyish and simple as he stood there looking really desperately
anxious. I actually found myself so far forgetting that we were at
daggers drawn that I smiled quite encouragingly at him.
"Cheer up," I said, "it isn't your fault. Even if my sister does
have to go to the dentist and have her tooth out without me being
there to hold her hand it won't really matter so deadly much: she
isn't going to have gas, but she won't feel it a bit," I said. "I
believe they freeze the gum or something."
This I rattled out glibly in the way that we had all been talking
about Nancy's toothache at home. You see, I didn't know how much the
little Incubus knew about its all being what you could only describe
as a "put-up job."
He looked at me very hard; then I began to wonder if he had
suspicions about the "put-uppishness" of it. He said doubtfully, "I
am afraid your sister will be most fearfully fed-up with me."
Then, I thought, he couldn't know?
If he had only known he would have realised that Nancy and Captain
Masters would be only too delighted if they never caught sight of us
again for the rest of the day.
So I said, still sitting in the car while he stood there, a perfectly
abject little figure of despair in the roadway, "My sister won't
mind! I think she had too bad toothache to care very much who is
with her, and that she will be quite glad not to see us turning up
until the tooth is out and it's all over. You know, we can walk on,
or you can walk on to the nearest farm or inn, or something, and see
if you could get some sort of trap."
"Yes, that's all right. I had thought of that," said little Mr.
Lascelles, still in that absolutely disconsolate voice, as if the
most dire catastrophe had happened. "The only thing is----"
Here he seemed to pull himself together and take a resolution. He
looked straight at me and said: "I want to ask you something: you do
know, don't you?--I mean--you do know about that toothache tale of
your sister being all bunkum?"
"Oh, I know all about it," I said, seeing that it was the only thing
to say, and realising that he must know everything now.
"You do know all about it?" he repeated. "You're sure you do?"
"Yes," I said.
Then he said: "Well, then, you must know, of course, why we shall all
be so awfully sick if you and I can't turn up in time?"
This was very mysterious.
"What do you mean, exactly?" I said.
He stared at me.
"Why, Miss Elizabeth," he said, "you said you knew?"
"I do know," I said impatiently. "I know that my sister Nancy has no
more had toothache in her life than she's had spotted plague: I know
that that is simply a piece of new-six-shilling-fiction from
beginning to end: I know that what she wants to get to the Junction
for is simply so that she can have lunch in town and go to a matinee
tea and that sort of thing with your friend, Captain Masters."
"Tea? And a matinee?" exclaimed the Incubus, suddenly, at the top of
his voice. "Ha, ha!"
He let loose that extraordinary loud laugh of his for two seconds.
Then he was serious again. He said: "But, Lord-love-a-duck! if you
thought that, you can't know what we have all come up to town for?"
What on earth could he mean?
"Tell me what you mean," I said, gazing at the Incubus. "Tell me at
once." But he didn't tell me. He stood there trying to gnaw his
moustache, which was rather difficult, as he hasn't got nearly as
much moustache as I have eye-lashes. He muttered: "Why on earth
couldn't Harry Masters have told me how much everybody knew instead
of leaving it all vague and indefinite like this?"
"It is you that is leaving everything vague and indefinite," I
persisted from the side-car. "For goodness' sake tell me what it was
that Captain Masters ought to have told you!"
The Incubus opened his mouth.
But at that moment a motor-car swept round the curve of the road, and
immediately Mr. Lascelles started up and hailed it. It was coming
from the Junction, and it was driven by a woman.
She wore a cloth hat nearly down to her mouth and a big cloth coat
with a fur collar buttoned nearly up to her eyes, so you couldn't see
what she was really like.
Little Mr. Lascelles went up to her and saluted as she slowed down,
and began: "I say, I am most awfully sorry, but----"
Here the motoring woman interrupted him by calling out in a surprised
and brisk and pleasant voice: "Frankie! why, Frankie!"
"Oh! by Jove! I say, if it isn't Sister!" exclaimed Mr. Lascelles.
Then he said: "It's luck meeting you again like this." Then he said
to me: "I want to introduce you to a very old friend of mine. This
is Miss Elizabeth Verdeley, from where I am staying at Mud Flats," he
explained to the woman in the car. "And this is Miss Gates."
"Finish it up, Frankie, and say it is your nurse," said the woman in
the car with her brisk laugh, and she added to me, "I steered him
through appendicitis, you know."
"And I would have gone out, too, but for her," said the Incubus, with
quite a serious look on his school-boyish face. "I gave her an awful
lot of trouble, but she insisted on pulling me through."
"Well, what's the trouble now, Frankie? Never mind about digging up
all these tender memories, but tell me what's the matter now," said
the woman in the car. "Break-down, is it?"
"Yes, worse luck!" said Mr. Lascelles ruefully. "We were going into
the Junction, Miss Verdeley and I--fact is we have a most important
appointment, which we didn't want to miss for anything."
"Oh, really?" said the motoring woman, glancing at me rather
inquisitively over her full collar.
I gazed straight up at her, with a look of perfect candour and
resignation. Meaning to convey that I knew just as much about this
important appointment as she did herself, seeing that she had come up
in the middle of his going to tell me what all this dark mystery was
about my sister Nancy and her fiancé!
"I wish I could tow you into the Junction," then said the lady
motorist. "But I have one of these important appointments myself,
Frankie. I have simply to go on and meet somebody on business at the
village beyond Mud Flats. You know, I have a nursing home of my own
now for wounded officers at the Junction?"
"Oh, have you? Good! you will see me turning up there one day and
getting you to spoil me again after the Boches have had a good shot
at me," said Mr. Lascelles, adding: "Well, if you must get on, we
mustn't keep you. But look here, Sister, when you pass Mud Flats
send somebody to the rescue, will you? Call at the blacksmith's and
tell them to send somebody--anybody will do--to tinker up a
motor-cycle."
"Right," said the motoring lady, gripping the wheel again. She gave
a glance at me as she started the car. Her eyes were very bright and
brown and shrewd-looking, I thought, and a little bit quizzical, too.
She looked at me hard just before she waved her hand for good-bye.
And then I began again: "You have got to tell me what all this fuss
is about. You were just going to when your friend came up. Why
should Nancy and Captain Masters want us to be there?"
Mr. Frank Lascelles made a funny little movement with the hands in
his big brown woolly gloves: it was as if he was throwing everything
to the winds. "All right, I'll tell you," he said. "They wanted us
to be there because I promised to be the best man."
"What!" I exclaimed loudly. "But a best man is only a thing that
they have at a wedding!"
"Yes, that's just it," said the Incubus, half laughing, half rueful.
"However quiet a wedding is, people generally like to have somebody
to see them off, somebody in the shape of a best man and a
bridesmaid."
He added these surprising words:
"And you, Miss Rattle--Miss Elizabeth--I mean--were to have been the
bridesmaid."
"But, good heavens! bridesmaid to whom?" I cried, feeling so
bewildered that it would have been a relief to catch hold of the
Incubus by his Burberried shoulders and shake him: he looked absurdly
like a teddy bear.
"To whom do you suppose?" he said. "It has to come out sometime. To
your sister and Harry Masters, of course."
"They are getting married?" I repeated in a sort of faint scream.
"Married?"
"Yes, at twelve o'clock this morning," said the Incubus, shifting up
his sleeve and looking at his wrist-watch. "It is twenty-five
minutes to one now."
"Married!" I repeated in the faintest voice. "But they have hardly
got engaged--if you can call it engaged! What did they want to get
married for?"
"Oh! what does anybody want to get married for? I suppose because
they are fond of each other. It seems the best kind of working
reason, don't you think so?" said Mr. Frank Lascelles. "You must
know that Harry was keen on your sister from the first minute, and
that she liked him. He's a thundering good chap."
That seems to be about the utmost that one man can ever say of
another whom he likes: "A thundering good chap"--which might mean
anything or nothing. Ever since the troops came to Mud Flats I have
heard one young man say that about some other young man every day. I
suppose they think it's an expressive remark. To me it conveys
nothing.
Besides, I didn't want to sit there in an icy sidecar talking about
"thundering good chaps," when what I was pining to know was some
explanation of this extraordinary thunderbolt that he had just hurled
at my head.
I said, still gasping, "How long ago did they decide to get married?"
"Oh! about a fortnight, I suppose," said the Incubus. "Yes, about
that."
"Why," I asked, "didn't they say anything about it?"
"Why? Because they didn't want a stopper put on it at once,"
explained the Incubus. "You see, Miss Elizabeth, we all know--I mean
he knew about that arrangement of your relations saying that none of
you girls were to think of rushing into early matrimony before you
were twenty-five."
"Oh, you did know that?" I said indignantly. "You did discuss it?
What a lot of gossips men are! Talk about a lot of old ladies! They
are really nowhere in it with any collection of young men in a mess
or a bar or a billiard-room!"
"Oh, come," said the Incubus. "We aren't as bad as that! You are
severe, you know: the severest of you sisters, I think. But, anyhow,
your sister Nancy and Harry Masters didn't see the point of waiting
three mortal years before they settled things up, not to mention the
fact that poor old Masters is due to get his orders in about a
fortnight and may lose the chance of ever being able to marry her at
all. Don't you see how rotten it would be for them?"
"Oh! yes, oh, yes: you needn't think I don't see their point of
view," I said helplessly. "I think they are perfectly right, and it
is just what I should like to do myself!"
"Would you?" said Frank Lascelles, in rather a surprised tone. I
don't know whether he meant that he thought I had rather lost my own
heart to that "thundering good chap" Captain Masters, but anyhow I
went on hastily, "I mean if I were in Nancy's shoes. The only thing
I can't understand is, why did she not tell me about it before?"
"Because she didn't want your auntie to reproach you with having
known all about it and having kept it dark deceitfully," said Mr.
Lascelles. "She meant to keep it from you till the last minute, she
said." (And I thought it was the last minute.) "You see, we all
three talked it over----"
"You talked it over with those two?" I said. "You have been
deceitful all this time!"
"Oh, yes," he said, quite calmly. "I suppose I have. But this is
war-time, after all. And 'all is fair in war.' What?"
A secret engagement: a runaway marriage! And here were the Incubus
and I discussing the ins and outs of how it had happened in a sort of
heart-to-heart way, as if we were the greatest chums, instead of at
daggers drawn!
Who, I ask you, could ever have foreseen this weird situation?
With what they call in books the calm of despair, I asked the
Incubus, "Do you know where these people intend to get married?"
"'Course I do. In church. St. Peter's it's called," said the
Incubus, stamping his feet to try to get them warm on the iron-hard
frosty road. "They've got the licence and all. That's been reposing
in the pocket of Masters's woolly waistcoat for the last five days.
With the wedding-ring. Thank goodness, he didn't give me that to
hold, after all, as I told him he ought to," said the Incubus
fervently. "They'd have been in a nice fix. Had to borrow the key
of the church for a ring, or something of that sort. People did;
once upon a time, didn't they?"
"Oh, never mind 'people,'" I said impatiently. "For goodness' sake
tell me about Nancy and this--this eloper of hers. What were they
going to do after the wedding--go off on a war-honeymoon to Brighton
or something?"
"No: couldn't be done. Masters tried for leave, but couldn't get
it," explained the Incubus. "Besides, I don't think the poor chap
had a farthing to spare for Brighton and that sort of luxury. He's
fearfully hard-up, you know. Got some millionaire relations who
won't allow him a stiver. He and your sister were just going to get
married, and then come back home, and say nothing whatsoever about it
until just before he has to go off to France." Here he glanced again
at his wrist-watch. "Quarter to one, by Jove!"
"Three-quarters of an hour late!" I chimed in. "Oh, do you think
they will be waiting for us all this time?"
"Shouldn't think so," opined (good word, "opined": I've only just
thought of it) the Incubus. "They'll have agreed to give the best
man and bridesmaid part of it a miss by this time. Wait? Not if I
know the bridegroom!"
"Oh, then, what are we to do?" I began again anxiously.
The Incubus said: "Masters said he was going to arrange for us all to
have a spot of lunch together at the Royal Hotel after the ceremony.
So we shall just have to go on and meet them there. That is, we
shall go on if we can. I wonder if Sister will manage to get some
help sent on from Mud Flats?"
I wondered too.
For what seemed like another two hours we fretted and fumed together
on that icy, wind-swept bit of road, waiting, waiting, waiting....
And just as I was feeling so cold and numb that I'm sure it was as
bad as being on any polar expedition, there was the welcome
"pup-pup-pup" noise of another motor-cycle, and up came Greyson's man
to put ours right.
He hopped off and brought out a whole heap of tools and instruments,
and things that clattered and things that clinked. More "things they
had," in fact, for setting right the other things that had gone wrong.
Well, he set to work, as I say, at the cycle, and presently it was
all right again. Little Mr. Lascelles skipped into his seat again,
and off we clattered towards the Junction.
"Better try the church first," said Mr. Lascelles. "We know they
must have been there."
We tore through the town, which is a very old-fashioned one, with
basement houses and bow windows and cobbled streets, and we drew up
at last at the top of a hill at the entrance to a church.
Here Mr. Lascelles skipped off, and I put aside the red rug and got
out of the side-car and followed him. We went up to the door. It
was open. We peeped inside. I'd never been in it before: we don't
go to the Junction much. It was a very dark church, with only the
jewel-bright window glowing like a wonderful sunset at the east end
above the altar.
A sort of awe crept over me as I looked round.
"There is nobody here," muttered Mr. Lascelles to me in a very low
voice: but just as he was speaking there hobbled up a pew clerk or
sexton or bell-ringer or something of that sort--a kind of
shrivelled-looking man, with wispy white hair. He looked at us and
whispered mysteriously: "Are you the party that the young officer and
the lady was expecting here at twelve o'clock for that there wedding?"
"Yes, yes," I murmured, breathless with excitement. "What has
happened? Hasn't there been any wedding yet?"
At the same time Mr. Lascelles was saying in a quick, low tone: "Yes,
we're the party. Where are the others?"
CHAPTER XIII
THE SEARCH FOR THE BRIDE
"They left a message for you, sir," said the old man. "If another
young orficer and a young lady was to turn up later I was to say that
they had gone on to lunch at the hotel."
"Thought so: right you are, thank you very much," said Mr. Lascelles,
slipping something into the old man's hand and turning out of the
porch again towards the motor-cycle.
But I lingered for a moment in the porch all excitement. I said to
the old clerk, or whatever he was, "Oh, but do tell me. Are they
married? Were they married here? Has the wedding really happened,
and is everything all over?"
The old man looked at me in distinct surprise at my excitement. Of
course, he didn't know what a frightful surprise to me the whole
wedding was, and that I had been dragged up to it to be a bridesmaid.
Any one would think that a wedding was no more than a funeral to him!
He blinked at me with his faded old eyes and said: "Oh, yes, Missy,
the wedding has happened all right. The lady and gentleman were
married at a quarter-past twelve. They said they couldn't wait more
than a quarter of an hour before getting on with the wedding."
So the wedding had happened!
This was the thought that simply filled me as I took my seat again in
the side-car that seemed to be becoming my permanent address. They
were married--the first marriage happening in our family, and in such
a different sort of way from anything that I had ever imagined.
A regular Gretna Green sort of romance!
Nancy married! No longer Nancy Verdeley, but "Mrs. Harry Masters."
Mrs.!!
I wondered how long it would take me to get accustomed to the idea of
that. Nancy, my favourite sister! Nancy, who went shares with me in
everything! Why, you know, she and I (and Evelyn, too, for that
matter) hadn't had a secret apart from each other all our lives until
the time that the Camp of Instruction was formed at our
back-of-beyond village!
That has made all the difference in the world: it has made each of us
have our own private feuds and fears and prejudices and likings. I
have had the affair of the "Lonely Subaltern" and my stand-up fight
with the Incubus that I haven't told Nancy and Evelyn.
Evelyn has had--well, I don't know what, quite. I should say
"nothing," but life is so full of surprises. I shall never think I
know anything even about my sisters again. It is quite possible that
even Evelyn has been through things that she hasn't told Nancy and
me! And as for Nancy, she has capped the whole thing by launching
out into a new life altogether.
She has taken the plunge: she is a married woman now. As for me, I
suddenly felt quite shy at the idea of meeting her again for the
first time after this extraordinary thing had happened. I should
have to congratulate her, I suppose. And should I have to say
"Harry" to Captain Masters, whom I scarcely know? How extraordinary
to think that he is now quite a near relation--a brother-in-law!
We drew up at the white stucco entrance of the "Royal," a fearfully
old-fashioned looking hostel with an enormous painting of King
William IV. as a sign above the porch. We've passed it several
times, but never been inside it, of course.
"We had better go in," said Mr. Lascelles, and in we went to a big,
low, dark entrance place that seemed to be chiefly furnished by large
glass cases containing stuffed white owls.
There were also a barometer, very dingy, and a lot of prints of
gentlemen going fox-hunting by moonlight with nightshirts on, and in
the middle of these early Victorian-looking things there was quite a
modern landlady, with a very short skirt halfway up to her knees and
her hair done in the very latest style.
Mr. Lascelles went up to her and asked if she could tell him whether
Captain Masters was in the coffee-room, or if he had ordered lunch in
a private room.
"Captain Masters, Captain Masters?" repeated the landlady; "I don't
think he has been here at all this morning."
"Oh, he must be, Mrs. Ellis," said the Incubus. "He had arranged to
come on here with--with a young lady, and the four of us were going
to have luncheon together: they must have arrived before us."
"They are not here, I am nearly certain," said the landlady, looking
most inquisitively at me.
I turned horrified eyes upon the Incubus. "What can have happened to
them?" I said, but he only nodded encouragingly.
"Oh, they must be here," he insisted, then, turning to the landlady,
he went on: "Are you sure you know who Captain Masters is?"
"Sure! me--why, I know him as well as I know you, Mr. Lascelles!"
said the landlady, laughing in quite an amused way. Wasn't it funny
that somebody miles away at the Junction should seem to know our
officers from Mud Flats quite well? Any one would think they spent
as much time here as there!
"Jim," called this Mrs. Ellis to a young man who was disappearing
into the coffee-room, "is Captain Masters in the hotel?"
"No, ma'am," said Jim, whoever he might be. "There is only Mr.
Longfellow and Mr. Brown and Captain Robinson having lunch. There is
no Captain Masters at all."
"You would have been sure to see him if he had come in, Jim?" said
the landlady.
"Oh, yes, ma'am. He couldn't have come in this morning without me
knowing about it," said Jim.
"So, you see," said the landlady with a little nod to Mr. Lascelles.
"Oh, I do hope something awful hasn't happened," I murmured, gazing
from him to the pert, powdered face of the landlady, and back again.
"Oh, what do you think it can be?"
"Oh, some mistake, probably. He'll be shot at dawn about this, I
expect," said Mr. Lascelles, still cheerily. "Either he or I have
been idiotic, and got the name of the wrong hotel."
"Yes, he might have gone to the 'Queen's,'" suggested the landlady;
"I know he often has been to the 'Queen's' has Captain Masters."
Fancy his going to the "Queen's," a place I scarcely remember seeing,
all the years we've lived at Mud Flats.
"Oh, thanks very much. Yes, I think we will try the 'Queen's,'" said
Mr. Lascelles. "Come along, Miss Elizabeth, and, I say, don't be so
upset: the 'Queen's' is only in the High Street, a few doors higher
up. Good morning, Mrs. Ellis"--this was to the landlady. "We will
try the 'Queen's' for our party."
So off we went and tried the "Queen's."
We drew a blank! Our party was not there. What next?
"Well, there are more than two hotels at the Junction," said Mr.
Lascelles, surprising me again. He's only been three weeks in this
neighbourhood, and yet he seems to know every single hotel here! The
other thing that surprised me was that he really was most awfully
kind in cheering one up. I think I shall have to begin to leave off
calling him the Incubus--he didn't ask to be billeted at our house
after all. He was almost brotherly as he said to me: "Don't you
worry. We will try the 'Sportsman.' It is at the other end of the
town."
So off to the other end of the town we rattled to try the "Sportsman."
And, if you will believe me, we met with the same disappointment
there! Nothing had been seen or heard of our party. In the
coffee-room, where we had been making inquiries, every waiter in the
place said the same thing. I turned to the Incubus again with eyes
of absolute despair and said: "They are not here: they are not
anywhere. What--what in the world are we to do, Mr. Lascelles?"
"Oh, a very obvious thing, Miss Elizabeth," said the Incubus quite
briskly. "Before we go another step or make another inquiry we are
going to have some lunch ourselves here."
"Oh, no," I said drearily. "I don't want any lunch: I simply
couldn't touch a crumb of anything."
"I could," said Mr. Lascelles, heartlessly. "After the whole morning
hanging about in the bitter biting blast I am pretty sharp-set, I can
tell you. I bet you anything you like that wherever Masters and his
young Mrs. have got to they have had something to eat already. It is
nearly two o'clock now.... Waiter!"
Well! before I could say any more I found myself sitting down at a
round table in the bow window of the Sportsman Hotel, with before me
a plate of very hot and savoury-smelling thick ox-tail soup.
Almost before I knew what I was doing I had begun to eat it.
My goodness! how delicious it was! I don't think I had ever tasted
anything so lovely in my whole life. And before I had even begun to
think how funny it was that I should be hungry, after all, I found
that I had wolfed down the whole plateful.
I glanced apologetically across the table at Mr. Lascelles. I was
afraid he must think: "Well, this young woman can't care very much
what has happened to her sister, after all, by the way she is
shifting the victuals." (You needn't be shocked at this horrible
expression, because I have heard him use it himself, and it is just
how he would put it.) However, as I say, Mr. Lascelles didn't seem
to take the slightest notice of my disgraceful appetite. He merely
went on ordering cold veal and ham pie, which came embedded in the
most savoury jelly that I have ever tasted, and hot roly-poly made
with lots of raspberry jam, and a great brown jug full of cream.
I know I made a perfect little beast of myself over both these two
things. One thing kept me in countenance, and that was that Mr.
Frank Lascelles's third helpings were quite as big as my second ones.
Very little conversation took place over the meal.
But at the end of it, after we had both heaved deep sighs and turned
to our cups of coffee, Mr. Lascelles smiled at me and said:
"There, that's better, isn't it? You poor little girlie! You know
that you were beginning to look quite faint and ill from sheer
starvation and anxiety."
Such a change seemed to have come over everything since this morning
that if you will believe me I didn't even feel an impulse to slap the
Incubus's face for having dared to call me "a poor little girlie."
"Little," you know! Me! Considering that I tower over him.
But, never mind, he had been so very kind all the morning, and so
sympathetic and helpful, that I felt one ought to make allowances for
his natural afflictions.
And, anyhow, at the moment he was my only friend, my only stand-by in
the search for Nancy.
So I found myself looking at him in quite a friendly way as I asked
him again, "What in the world are we to do next about finding our
party?"
Only, this time I didn't hear my voice quite as agonised as it was
before.
I didn't feel that things were quite so absolutely desperate, even if
my sister and her brand-new husband had chosen to disappear, leaving
no address!
It is wonderful what a difference to one's mental outlook is made by
a little hot food when one is very hungry!
"Candidly," said Mr. Lascelles, "I don't see what more we can do
about hunting those two to earth. I think, myself, that we shall
have to give it up, Miss Elizabeth."
"To give it up?" I repeated, rather blankly.
"Yes," he said; "we have done everything we could: we have been
everywhere--except to the dentist," he added, with a twinkle, "and
now I think we had better do the Little Bo-Peep stunt."
"The which?" I asked, rather puzzled.
Mr. Lascelles explained, laughing, "Leave 'em alone, and they'll come
home!
"They will come home after tea," he added, "so it seems to me quite
the only scheme is for us to go home without them, and turn up at
your aunt's with a hard-luck tale of the old motor-bike having
crocked up. Which is quite true, too, for so she did," added Mr.
Lascelles sedately.
"Very well," I said, feeling ever so much comforted as I put down my
empty coffee-cup and rose to my feet, buttoning up the emerald-green
blanket-coat again. "I suppose we had better go on now: I am quite
ready."
"Oh, no, I don't think we are," Mr. Lascelles broke in. "You see, it
wouldn't do for us to turn up home again at Mud Flats before the time
settled on: that would look really very odd. We can't get back there
until after tea-time; not for all the Eau in Cologne! If you don't
mind, Miss Elizabeth (or, even if you do)," he added, "I am afraid
you will have to resign yourself to an afternoon out with me."
I said: "Oh, I don't mind at all; why should I?" I said it in quite
a pleasant tone of voice. And the funny part of it was that I really
did mean what I said: I really was getting over some of my dislike of
the little man. It was just like one of those old-fashioned songs
that we had got in one of those antediluvian bound music-books in the
Lair--a song that says:
"_He's all right when you know him, but you've got to know him fust._"
"Very well, then," said he. "We will have tea together at that quite
jolly confectioner's in the High Street: but we won't start back
until half-past five, as we had settled with your aunt that we should
probably be out until then. So I think we had better put in the time
at a matinee."
"Oh, a matinee!" I said, nearly skipping with joy.
If you will believe me, I hadn't been to a matinee since the dear
dead days beyond recall, when I was at my last term at school, and we
sixth-form girls were allowed as a great treat to be taken in a body
one Saturday afternoon.
"There is quite a good touring company down here now doing a revival
of _Floradora_," said Mr. Lascelles to me as we left the Sportsman
Hotel. "Dear old Has-been--you have seen it, of course, Miss
Rattle--I mean Miss Elizabeth?"
"No, I haven't," I told him, quite frankly. "As a matter of fact I
haven't ever seen anything, except _Coriolanus_ once."
"Oh, great Scott! Anything for a change," said Mr. Lascelles, but
without laughing at me, as I was afraid he might. "I expect you will
find this at least as amusing."
Well, I should just about think I did. Never in my whole life--no,
never once--have I enjoyed myself as much as I enjoyed that. I
really can't explain how absolutely top-hole it all was, or how
different from the other affair that I went to at school: and, mind
you, I don't exactly know why it should be so utterly different:
perhaps it may be because at the _Coriolanus_ show we were all packed
into the second row of the pit, where we were decidedly squashed, as
well as having to put up with a view of half the toques and bonnets
in the place coming between us and the legs of the Romans on the
stage.
Whereas now I was high above the heads of all the assembled
multitudes, in a box! Yes, if you please, in a box! all to
ourselves. I do think it was most frightfully extravagant of Mr.
Lascelles, and I believe that Evelyn, for instance, would have been
made quite uncomfortable by his spending golden sovereigns on her in
this way. But what I say is, a young man's bound to waste money on
something, so why shouldn't it be on a thoroughly deserving young
woman? as a girl at school told me her cousin had said to her when he
took her to Drury Lane in the holidays.
He, I mean Mr. Lascelles, also got me the most delicious box of
chocolates, tied up with an enormous and lovely piece of pink satin
ribbon, which will be the pride and glory of my best nightie for I
don't know how long after this!
As for the play itself, well, of course, it seemed to me nothing in
the world could ever be as beautiful!
The dresses! and the pretty girls! especially that simply lovely one
who sang, "He insisted that she was his only love."
She was really so beautiful that she brought tears into my eyes!
Mr. Lascelles pretended to believe that she was forty if she was a
day, but he needn't think that he took me in, because he didn't. A
girl with hair and a complexion like that couldn't have been any
older than Nancy!
By the way, all this time I was so thrilled by this unexpected orgy
of theatrical delight that I am sorry to say I quite forgot about
Nancy and her thrilling marriage and her disappearance, and what I
was going to say to her when I met her again safe and sound under the
aunt's roof, which she really honestly had no right to quit, and
which she only bad quitted under false pretences, bless her!
I wish I could explain how glorious it was to hear the tunes we only
knew from the Lair piano played absolutely splendidly by a real
orchestra, with violins and things. At _Coriolanus_ we had only had
tiny little bits of music composed by somebody Elizabethan, played on
the harpsichord or spinet or something between the acts.
What I say is, classical music is all right, but where is the tune?
And when I told him this, Mr. Lascelles quite agreed with me, too.
The fact is, we have quite a number of tastes in common, really.
We were sitting in that confectioner's window in front of an enormous
and lovely tea, which somehow I still managed to enjoy in spite of
the more enormous lunch that I had had at two o'clock.
The most extraordinary part of the whole thing was that I should be
enjoying myself so frantically in the society of some one I had hated
so fervently for absolute weeks.
I was just thinking this, when I happened to catch his eye over the
little round table with its pink table-cloth and pink chrysanthemums
and pink and white china.
And, somehow, I don't know how, but somehow I realised just at that
moment that Mr. Lascelles too was thinking of that furious quarrel we
had had.
I felt the family blush coming on, so I buried my face in my teacup
to hide as much of it as I could, and at that same moment Mr.
Lascelles, leaning across the table, blushed too a little. I knew he
wanted to say something about that ancient affair of the Lonely
Subaltern. I guessed he would have liked to apologise. But he
couldn't very well ask me to forgive him, could he? Not after he's
just been giving me THE time of my life: it would look like bribery
and corruption! It would look as if he thought I _couldn't_ refuse,
after all those chocolates with crystallised violets on the top, and
all!
Those had nothing to do with it. Yesterday I should have _thrown_
them at him!
But to-day, after the things we have been through together, after our
being fellow-conspirators in a way over Nancy's khaki romance, and
after that lovely matinee that he had taken me to, well, it is no use
pretending that I shall ever feel so horrid about him again, because
I shan't. I am really beginning to feel almost ashamed of myself!
So I thought there was only one thing to be done. _I_ should have to
apologise. In a funny little rush I said: "Mr. Lascelles, I--I--I
_am_ so sorry. Please will you forgive me?"
"Oh! Miss Elizabeth! No!"
"You mean you _won't_?" I said, quite chilled to the bone. "You
can't forgive me for being so awful?"
"Oh you--I mean, there's nothing to forgive," blurted out Mr.
Lascelles very quickly, "except what you have to forgive me!"
"Oh!" I said, awfully relieved. "Then there isn't _that_, because
I've done it long ago, Mr. Lascelles!"
He looked at me hard over the dish of my favourite coffee cream
éclairs, and said, "I think we are quits, and that it will be pax
between us now, what?"
"Yes, please," I said.
And at that he put out his hand under the table-cloth and took hold
of mine, squeezing it in a very warm and friendly way.
He said: "I wish you would do something for me, just to show that it
really is pax."
"What?" I asked.
I wondered what on earth it was going to be.
And I should never have guessed, either. Then he said: "Will you
allow me to call you by the name I was going to call you in those
'Lonely Subaltern' letters if they had ever come off? Do you
remember it?"
Well, you know, I couldn't help remembering it, considering that it
was a name which I had happened to rather like.
"Betty," I said.
He said again, "Let me call you 'Miss Betty,' then, will you?"
"Oh, I can't do that," I said, suddenly thinking of something. "The
other girls know that I never could stand you. I mean, the other
girls know that we haven't always got on together very well. And
they have always been annoyed with me about it, and they would so
tease me if they thought I had come round at last! You know how
idiotic people are in that way? If they heard you suddenly call me
by what is more or less a pet name they would laugh at me for ever,"
I explained.
He nodded, and smiled a little. "I see," he said. "Then it will
have to be 'Miss Elizabeth' before them." He added, in a coaxing
sort of tone that I had not heard from him before: "Can't it be 'Miss
Betty' when we are just together out by ourselves like this?"
"We shall never be out by ourselves like this again," I said to him,
and I couldn't help feeling just a trifle sad at the thought, for it
had been a very jolly afternoon, in spite of my heartrending anxiety
about my sister, and she was married, after all, and jour husband is
_supposed_ to look after her--you, I mean. "And really we must be
getting home now," I said, picking up my gloves again.
There was no accident this time on the road, and we had a simply
lovely spin home under the rising moon: with every yard I began to
get more excited over the prospect of seeing Nancy again--Mrs. Harry
Masters, my married sister!
For once in my life I should feel awfully grand. For, except Mr.
Lascelles, I should be the only one in the house who knew anything at
all about the great secret. Wouldn't I enjoy myself! But when we
got back home to the Moated Grange--what do you think?
CHAPTER XIV
MOSTLY ABOUT RELATIONS
We got back to our house at about half-past six at night: the moon
rising slowly but surely over the sea and silhouetting the figures of
the soldiers working down by the jetty, also casting a subdued
radiance on the gables of the Moated Grange, where the latticed and
red-curtained windows gave the usual old-fashioned Christmas-card
effect, which there is such a lot of down at Mud Flats.
I thought what a lovely picturesque sort of home it was after all for
my young bride to come back to after her runaway marriage!
The clatter of Mr. Lascelles's motor-cycle is enough to warn anybody
of his approach about half an hour beforehand.
So, as I anticipated, the porch door was flung open before we got to
the gate: a tall, girlish figure in a blanket-coat like mine rushed
towards us.
"Nancy!" I said gleefully.
But it wasn't Nancy; it was Evelyn.
In the moonlight I saw her face absolutely bewildered and
distraught-looking. Any one would have thought that something
perfectly terrible had happened! For a minute I did wonder whether
perhaps there had been another Zeppelin raid while we were out, and
whether it had hit Aunt Victoria. She's certainly the easiest target
we've got.
But no--Aunt Victoria's plump, tea-cosy-like form appeared in the
porch beyond, and beyond that were the figures of cook, Mary the
housemaid, and the tall, rather leggy form of Mr. Curtis.
But where--where were the bride and bridegroom?
To my horror this was the very question with which we were met
ourselves. There was a sort of chorus in the porch of "Nancy--where
is Nancy? ... What has happened to those other two? ... Where is
Masters--where did you leave Captain Masters and your sister?"
"Leave them? We haven't left them at all!" I retorted in a horrified
voice. "Aren't they here?"
"Here?" said Aunt Victoria, very agitated. "No! They are not here."
This was pretty terrible. I looked at Mr. Lascelles, who took up:
"The machine broke down, and we lost sight of them: we haven't really
seen them since we left the place this morning."
"Then it is true, and not a joke!" exclaimed Evelyn in an awestruck
accent.
I said, feeling more puzzled every minute, "What is not a joke?"
"Come into the drawing-room, and I will show you," said Aunt Victoria
in a very shaky sort of voice.
Well, we all crowded into the drawing-room again, Mr. Curtis and Mr.
Lascelles (still in his teddy-bear motor-cycling get-up) and me in my
blanket-coat and little hat blinking my eyes, because it was too
bright in the lamplight after the soft moon outside, and Evelyn
looking absolutely distraught.
"Read this, Rattle," said Aunt Victoria. And she picked up a
telegram which was lying with its envelope on the marble mantelpiece.
It had been handed in at the Junction at a quarter to two that
afternoon, and it said:
"Very sorry. Married this morning. Writing later--Nancy Masters."
"I thought that it must be some silly practical joke of these
children! The modern sense of humour is so extraordinarily broad,"
murmured Aunt Victoria in her agitated voice. "I made sure it was
all a 'take-in.'"
"Oh! no: it isn't, it isn't!" I said, shaking my head violently. "It
is all quite true and official! They are married!"
"And you knew about it, Rattle? You are an accomplice in this
extraordinary affair?" My Aunt Victoria suddenly turned upon me.
"You, the youngest of the girls: the baby! You have been deceiving
me!"
"No, I haven't. Honour bright," I was beginning, but here Mr.
Lascelles (very decently) came to the rescue.
He said, earnestly, "Upon my solemn word of honour, Mrs. Verdeley,
Miss Elizabeth knew absolutely nothing about the affair. It was kept
absolutely dark from her, I can assure you."
"But she went with them! She was going to start off on that
wild-goose chase to the Junction, when that wicked little Nancy
pretended that she had to go and see the dentist," took up Aunt
Victoria.
Her enormous cameo brooch, that shows the three Graces doing a sort
of one-step together on a terra-cotta background in a plaited gold
frame, rose and fell on her chest with her agitation, like a boat at
anchor on a very stormy sea. "It was Rattle who said that she would
have to go with her and hold her hand during the operation."
"Yes, but upon my sacred sam, Mrs. Verdeley, Miss Rattle--I mean Miss
Elizabeth--didn't know that the operation was only going to be a
marriage!" Mr. Lascelles took up again quite gravely and seriously.
"I only broke that to her when we were nearly at the town, and I
assure you nobody on earth could have been more utterly flabbergasted
than she was."
"Yes, they could--I was," put in Evelyn in a horrified voice.
"Never again shall I believe anything a girl says," said Aunt
Victoria in heartfelt accents. "You did not even get to the church
to see them married, Mr. Lascelles?"
"No. We just missed them," said Mr. Lascelles, ruefully. "Then we
went all over the town hunting for them and drew a blank everywhere.
Goodness knows where they got to: for I don't!"
"Well, that we shall be told, I suppose, when they condescend to
write, as Nancy says they are going to do," said Aunt Victoria,
taking up the wire again. "Now, Mr. Lascelles! since you appear to
be the only person who knows anything at all about this wretched
child's escapade, I shall have to ask you some questions about this.
Dear me! This unscrupulous young adventurer who has lured her into
marrying him!"
"Oh! I shouldn't call him that, Mrs. Verdeley: no, I really
shouldn't call him that," protested Mr. Lascelles, sitting down on
the sofa as soon as Aunt Victoria had settled in her easy chair.
"After all, Masters is----"
Here I waited for the usual masculine expression.
Out it came.
"A thundering good chap! Isn't he, Curtis?"
"Awfully good chap," said Mr. Curtis, nodding his head so hard that
the reflection of the lamplight danced in his eyeglasses. "One of
the best: make an excellent husband. Any girl would be lucky to get
him!"
This surprised me a little, because I thought Mr. Curtis, who had
admired Nancy so awfully himself, would have been rather sick at
anybody who presumed to walk off with her and marry her! Yet, there
he was giving these unsolicited testimonials to his rival. Really,
men are the most inexplicable beings in the world! One thing I have
learnt about them since we have had so many of them billeted in this
place, and that is, that you may as well save yourself the trouble of
guessing what any of them are going to say or do next, because it is
not the slightest good. You will never hit it.
Mr. Curtis went on: "Masters is--er--more of a man of the world than
the rest of us, perhaps, but he is sincerely devoted to your niece,
Mrs. Verdeley. All his friends knew that before he had been in the
place a week."
Here's another little surprise. All his friends knowing something
which had so surprised me when I found it out by accident!
"Never mind about his devotion: we will take that for granted," said
Aunt Victoria, in a resigned sort of voice. "Let's hear what his
people are, and his prospects, and a few things like that about him."
Here Mr. Lascelles, evidently trying to look extra grown-up and
reliable, began to furnish her with some of these details.
"His people--that is, his father and mother are dead," he began, "but
his father was in the Army, and his mother was the daughter of Sir
William Magnate, the man they used to call 'The Steel King.'"
At this Aunt Victoria pricked up her ears.
"Why, then, there ought to be a good deal of money in the family,"
she began, looking rather more encouraged, but Mr. Lascelles put an
extinguisher on this rosy gleam of hope by saying, "No, I am afraid
not. You see, the old man quarrelled so fearfully with his daughter,
practically turned her out of the house for daring to get engaged to
'a gentleman butcher.'"
"A gentleman butcher?" said my Aunt Victoria, looking rather
bewildered again. "But you told me that Captain Masters' father was
a soldier?"
"Yes--that is what he meant, that is what the old man used to call
soldiers," said little Mr. Lascelles cheerfully. "That was just his
sort of pet name for them--'Hired Assassin' was another, you know,
Mrs. Verdeley. There are lots of people who used to talk before the
war like that. 'Brainless Army Type' was another of their phrases.
Old Sir William was very fond of that expression (you must know it?
I always use it myself now, 'lest they forget'). Well, he used to
hate soldiers, you see, and so he absolutely barred having anything
to do with the Masters after they were married. They had a very
tough fight to give Harry a decent education, and even then they were
afraid they never could afford the Army, so they had to send him to
the City, though he was absolutely cut out for the Service, and a
very smart volunteer: that is how I met him, when we were both
Territorials together. This war has given him his chance: he will go
far, see if he doesn't," said little Mr. Lascelles earnestly, and I
couldn't help liking the simple, earnest way he spoke of his chum.
You saw at once that he meant every word he said, and that he simply
couldn't bear Aunt Victoria to think that her niece had thrown
herself away on somebody that wasn't worthy of her.
You could see he wouldn't be happy until Aunt Victoria had come round
to Captain Masters.
There was silence for a while in the drawing-room. We were all
sitting looking into the fire. Nobody knew what to say exactly:
after all, what use is it saying anything, however one may
disapprove, when somebody has absolutely been and gone and got
married?
The milk is spilt by that time!
Why cry?
Evidently even Aunt Victoria saw it from that point of view.
She said slowly at last: "Well, there is nothing now to be done
except wait for Nancy's letter. There is only one thing that
distresses me very much still; and that is, why did the child deceive
me like this? Why in the world couldn't she and Captain Masters have
come to me and told me frankly how things were, and asked for my
consent?"
"Because they didn't think they had an earthly chance of getting it,
don't you see?" explained Mr. Frank Lascelles. "They didn't want to
waste lots of time in family discussions before marriage, when it is
always pretty certain that there will be plenty of them after
marriage. After all, Mrs. Verdeley, think! It may be the last
happiness that the poor fellow is able to snatch. For he'll be out
there--out in France in a fortnight. He may not have the chance of
seeing any more of her after this----"
"Don't talk to me like that. I forbid you to talk to me like that,"
said Aunt Victoria sharply. "Don't you know that it is very unlucky?
For goodness' sake, touch wood," and here she actually took hold of
the Incubus's--I mean Mr. Lascelles's--hand, and tapped hard with it
on the wood of the mahogany cabinet that stands beside her chair.
"Since they are married----"
Here she took out her lavender-watery handkerchief, and blew her
aquiline, early Victorian nose with it as loudly as if she had a big
trumpet.
"Since the dear children have got married," she went on, amazing us
simply frightfully by the expression, "the least we can do is to hope
that they have many, many years of happiness together when----"
Here she gave a funny little laugh, and quoted that song which we
always hear from the "mud larks," and which you would really think
was quite the last thing that you would ever expect from the mistress
of this house.
--"_When this blooming war is over!_"
I don't quite know how to explain it to you, but as she said these
last words her voice was quite different. It seemed just like the
voice of one of us girls, for when I told Evelyn afterwards that it
had reminded me of her voice, Evelyn said: "Why, Rattle, how awfully
funny! Because, do you know, at the time I couldn't help noticing
that Aunt Victoria when she said that sounded exactly like you
speaking!"
And Aunt Victoria looked quite different too.
Perhaps it was the rosy glow of the firelight that suddenly made her
cheeks so pink, and her eyes so bright and sapphire-like.
I know that the dancing flame struck lights out of the faded
long-turned-to-grey hair below her old-fashioned nineteenth century
lace cap with the black velvet bow.
Just for that moment it was golden hair, like Nancy's and Evelyn's
and mine.
And just in that moment I saw her as she must have been years ago,
before she became what we always thought her--a married old maid!
Yes, under all the old maidishness there must have been hidden away
quite a lot of amusing things which we had never suspected. I
suddenly felt that for years and years I had been misjudging Aunt
Victoria, just as I had misjudged the Incubus for days and days. I
wished there was some way of showing her that I realised this, and
that I was sorry for being such a little beast to her so often, and
that I saw how, long ago, she must have felt just as we felt, and
that she must have been nice-looking, as nice-looking as any of us.
I don't know whether you have noticed it, but that sort of
heart-to-heart remark is the kind of thing which you can say to
comparative strangers, such as somebody in a railway carriage whom
you had never seen before and will never see again!
But you simply can't say it to people of your own family that you
have always been with.
It may sound nonsense, but there is such a thing as knowing people so
well that you can't ever know them at all. Nothing can really break
that barrier. Isn't it funny?
However, thank goodness! even if I couldn't manage to say something
nice to Aunt Victoria at that moment, somebody else could.
Mr. Lascelles did. He gazed at our old aunt with a most touched
expression in his grey-blue eyes for a second.
Then a scarlet blush (quite like our own family blush) spread itself
all over his freckles and his school-boyish, tip-tilted features.
And then he blurted out what you may think was absolute nonsense and
blarney, but what I think must have been one of the most graceful
compliments that the old lady had ever heard.
He said: "Mrs. Verdeley, I ought to have been a man when you were a
young girl!"
What more graceful compliment could any woman of any age expect from
any young officer? If any one said that to me when I was getting
old, I should go on living to a hundred and eighty-three, out of pure
bucked-upness!
He took her hand, which is stiff with wedding rings and engagement
rings of bygone ancestors, and kissed it just as if she had been a
girl.
Shortly after this we all went in to supper.
And I can tell you I felt I needed it after all this emotionality and
excitement, even though I had had such an enormous lunch and such a
splendid tea!
Nobody talked much, but I know that everybody was thinking of that
great subject, "the young newly-married couple!"
And everybody was sort of quietly cheerful about it all, as if they
realised that, money or no money, at last one quite promising love
affair had come off now and couldn't be stopped.
Oh! but when I say everybody was cheerful, I forgot to mention that
Evelyn certainly wasn't. She distinctly had the "blues," and she
didn't eat anything except about a mouthful of celery soup and one
crystallised fruit.
I thought perhaps she was rather offended at Nancy's having chosen me
to go to the Junction instead of her? She is the eldest, after all.
But when we got upstairs, and I went into her room to talk, I found
that Evelyn was not so much reproachful with Nancy for having shared
the secret with me as she was disapproving of the whole affair.
She looked primmer than I have ever seen her, with her two great fair
plaits hanging down on each side of her face over her long nightgown,
that she doesn't put ribbons in: she thinks it's a waste in war-time.
And she said, "It's all very well, Rattle, and Aunt Victoria has
taken it very well, and been much more forgiving than I ever thought
she would, but right is right, and wrong is wrong! And it was wrong
of Nancy to get secretly engaged, and then run away to be married.
It was underhand!"
"Yes, but when she wasn't allowed to be overhand," I argued, sitting
on the edge of Evelyn's white bed, and rubbing cold cream into my
face, which was quite sore after the rushing through the frosty air,
"what else was she to do?"
"She ought to have waited," said Evelyn, austerely. "It is our
parents' wish that we should all wait until we are twenty-five."
"Wait!" I said rather scoffingly. "It isn't so jolly easy to settle
down and wait for years and donkey's years when people happen to be
much in love!"
"You don't know anything about being in love," said Evelyn, coldly.
"No, I may not know, but I can read, and I can imagine," I persisted.
"Besides, you don't know anything about being in love yourself!"
"No, of course not," said Evelyn rather crossly. "Still, I do know
that one ought not to steal one's happiness, which is what Nancy has
done."
"Oh, Evelyn, what poodle-doodle!" I said. "It isn't as if Nancy were
not grown up. She is twenty--she has a right to be married if she
wants to be, and bother the silly old will!"
"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if no good comes of it," said Evelyn
gloomily. "It looks very much as if Nancy herself realised that as
soon as she had let herself in for it!"
"Nancy herself?" I said, staring at Evelyn, and not knowing what she
meant.
"Yes--didn't she put it in her telegram?" said Evelyn. "Didn't she
say, 'Very sorry married'?"
"Oh, you silly!" I said, laughing. "That was only a kind of apology
to Aunt Victoria for having kept her in the dark up till now! That
didn't mean she was very sorry she was married!"
"I am not at all so sure," said Evelyn darkly. "You know it always
says, 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure.' This might be the
beginning of the repentance."
"Not it!" I said firmly. "Marry in haste and go on feeling awfully
bucked about it, is far more Nancy's style, I can assure you: but I
am really much too sleepy to argue," I said, breaking off the
argument at the best point (which is when one can't think of what to
say next). "Good-night," I said, and I went to bed, and slept like
the dead until Mary knocked for the fourth time at my bedroom door
this morning.
I think we had all expected to find that Aunt Victoria had received
the note from Nancy by the first post, but nothing of the kind. The
entire mail consisted of a bootmaker's bill for Mr. Lascelles, a
catalogue addressed to "Miss Nancy Verdeley," little dreaming that
there was not such a person left any more on this earth, and a letter
for me.
There was something rather queer about the envelope of this letter.
The stamp seemed to have been cut off another letter, and then fixed
to this with Stick-phast.
Also the postmark was awfully funny. It looked as if it had been
done with a charcoal pencil.
As for the handwriting, I knew it. I had a presentiment what it was
all about before I opened it.
I deciphered it in the Lair.
It was from my old enemy and new friend--the Incubus--Mr. Lascelles.
It was dated last night, about twelve o'clock, so I suppose he
couldn't have posted it--he must have given it to the old postman to
bring in with the others.
And it said:
"My dear Miss Betty,--You may think it awful cheek of me to write to
you, and also frightful rot my writing when I have seen you all day
to-day, but somehow I feel I must write and tell you how fearfully
pleased I am with life now that you are going to be real friends. I
think you are a little brick and lots more things that I suppose I
had better not put. As Kipling says in one of his best poems:
"'_Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he dare not say._'
"Perhaps some day I may be allowed to trot a few of them out. Till
then,
"I remain, dear Miss Betty,
"Yours very gratefully,
"FRANK LASCELLES.
"P.S.--I nearly put 'Lonely Subaltern,' because, however many people
I was friends with, I still should feel lonely if you wouldn't speak
to me."
Second postscript:
"I was so frightfully pleased that you enjoyed yourself at that
matinée. I am sure I did."
Third postscript:
"I do hope you won't be offended with me again for writing."
Of course, I am not offended: I think it was very nice of him to
write.
Quite a pretty letter, too, but not really as good as the ones that
he wrote to me before I knew who he was. I wonder why?
However, the great excitement to-day will be, when is that other
letter coming--the letter from Nancy, and what is she going to say in
it?
CHAPTER XV
THE BRIDE WRITES HOME
Well, at last, two whole days after she had been married, our sister
Nancy (now Mrs. Harry Masters) has condescended to write and tell us
all about it!
Two long letters she has written! One is to Aunt Victoria, rather
stilted and full of the most lovely words and phrases, and with "My
husband" coming in about every second line.
"Just as if nobody had ever _had_ a husband before," said Evelyn.
I said, "Well, _she_ hasn't, which is the same thing as far as she is
concerned."
The second letter is addressed to "The Misses Evelyn and Elizabeth
Verdeley."
And it begins, "My dear Kids."
Well, that rather put us off at first. Considering that I am only
three years younger than she is, and that Evelyn is actually a whole
year older!
"Kids!" When for about twenty years we have done absolutely
everything together--never been separated! "Kids!" Just because she
is a married woman of forty-eight hours' standing!
However, it was a long letter, and quite jolly when you got past the
beginning.
She says:
"To begin with, I absolutely must apologise and grovel for what you
must think my perfectly unspeakable behaviour in getting married and
all that sort of thing without having let you into the secret. But,
Evelyn and Rattle, it really was impossible to do it any other way.
"You see, Harry and I knew that we couldn't possibly tell Aunt
Victoria, because we imagined that what she immediately would do
would be to put her foot down firmly, instantly, and never let us see
each other for centuries, not until I was twenty-five. We made quite
sure that since she could not turn Harry out of the place until he
has got to go to France, she would pack me off to be paying guest in
some fearful spot as far removed from Mud Flats as you can get it on
the map, such as the Orkney Islands.
"And, you know, Evelyn and Rattle, if she had done that we should
simply have died!
"At least, Harry wouldn't have died, perhaps, because men are so much
better able to bear things than we are, and, besides, he has got his
King and country to go on serving: but I know I should have died: I
simply couldn't have existed without him. I could not have been
dragged away from him, just at the very moment when we found we were
simply made for each other, which we are.
"And then, as I couldn't possibly tell Aunt Victoria, I couldn't tell
you kids----"
"Kids" again!
"I couldn't tell you kids, because it would seem so awful afterwards,
when Aunt Victoria found out that I had dragged you two into my
fearful deceit and wickedness. It was quite bad enough having to
involve Mr. Lascelles in that. I am afraid he will be in fearful
disgrace with Aunt Victoria for ever and ever after this."
If Nancy only knew! Aunt Victoria seems to have taken a greater
fancy to Mr. Lascelles than ever before! Really, he does seem to
know how to make himself popular, for Nancy goes on now to sing his
praises.
"He has been the most awful brick all through this affair. I always
told you girls it was exactly like having a delightful grown-up
brother ready made for us when he came to be billeted at the Moated
Grange, and even I didn't realise what a little ripper he was until
he began tacking on to the best man business for Harry.
"Evelyn, I believe, does know he is nice, but I suppose it is no use
appealing to Rattle, since she always did hate him, and is much too
obstinate to leave off hating him still, even though he has been so
nice to her sister and her brother-in-law."
This is very awkward, you know, for I don't know how I am ever going
to break it to the girls after this that the ex-Incubus and I shook
hands and declared peace on Nancy's wedding-day!
But to go on with Nancy's letter. She says:
"As for you, Rattle darling, I feel more apologetic about you than
about anything else, after having dragged you out under false
pretences to be bridesmaid to your eloping sister, and then getting
married without waiting for you, and then disappearing without even
letting you see me to wish luck to the bride!
"I will explain why that was.
"I have already explained it so hard to Aunt Victoria that I should
think I must have writer's cramp, but never mind, dear old thing, I
will tell you how it was.
"When we got to the church and found the clergyman all ready, and had
waited for a quarter of an hour and you didn't turn up, Harry said he
was perfectly certain that something had happened to that old
tinker's cart of a motor-cycle of Frank's, and that when that went
wrong it was not a question of time: it was a question of eternity!
"And he thought we had better push on and get married, for supposing
we had waited there until it was so late that the marriage wasn't
legal, well, then we should be in a worse fix than ever, and didn't
know what in the world we were going to do about it or how we should
get married at all, so married we got then and there.
"And I do wish you had been there, Rattle and Evelyn, to hear how
beautifully I said my responses and my 'I wills.' I wasn't one bit
nervous or hoarse, like I have always imagined I should be when I was
a bride and would have to promise all those things about 'love,
honour and obey.'
"Harry said to me when we were first engaged that that always seemed
an awfully tall order and rather cheek of any fellow to expect a girl
to promise, but I don't think it is a bit tall.
"As for 'love,' it is a question of who could help it when once they
meet Harry?"
"Oh, dear! this is very long," said Evelyn, impatiently. "Aren't we
ever going to get on to where she says she is, and why you didn't
find her?"
"I expect that is coming presently," I said. I was reading the
letter aloud. "Don't you interrupt: I call all this about Harry very
interesting."
For somehow it is beginning to get rather on my nerves the superior
attitude Evelyn is taking up just now about people being in love, as
if it was rather a disgraceful, childish thing!
I call it being rather dog-in-the-mangerish. Even if you are not in
love, and never going to be (like me), you might at least take a
friendly interest in your relations that are. So I went on reading
Nancy's letter, putting as much expression into it as I could just to
shock Evelyn!
"As for love, who can help it when they have got to know Harry, and
seen how frightfully good-looking he was, and what fascinating little
ways he has?"
"'Some Lad!'" I quoted Mr. Lascelles before I went on.
"As for honour, well, the same thing applies when you think of his
character and how noble and splendid he is, and how hard he has
worked, poor darling, all these years so as to be independent, and
how he has always longed to be a soldier, and how well he has got on
ever since he has joined the Army, and what a lot everybody thinks of
him wherever he is.
"As to 'obey,' well, when those first two things are right the third
is merely a matter of form! When you love and honour a person so
much, you simply want them to give you orders or forbid you to do
things, simply for the sheer pleasure of obeying them! At least,
that is how I feel."
"If I felt like that," declared Evelyn, "I should know I was getting
softening of the brain. Why, because a girl is newly married, must
she proceed to lose her individuality, and become a sort of door-mat
under some young man's muddy, pontooning boots?"
"What does it matter as long as she enjoys it? Some people are born
boots and some mats," I said, "and it must be a great relief to find
yourself in your proper element whichever it is," and I went on
reading the letter.
"Then, when we had got married, we were going on, as Mr. Lascelles
would know, to the Royal Hotel, and oh! Rattle! we should have had
such a lovely lunch: we had settled about that long before the
wedding day, and how we should have jam roll with cream, because you
love it. I do feel such a cad when I think of how frantically hungry
you must have been, you poor darling, and with none of it ordered for
you."
If she only knew that I did have it, after all, the exact lunch that
she had thought of ordering for me.
"What happened," Nancy's letter went on, "was that when we got
outside the church we came, if you please, upon something that put
all ideas of lunch and everything else out of our heads forever.
"We came upon a car full of people, who immediately stopped us and
held out their hands and called 'Harry!' and, do you know, before I
could say anything I found myself in the middle of a large group of
Harry's relations.
"There was his sister Doris, who is just married to somebody in the
Ordnance Department, there was her husband, there were some schoolboy
brothers of his, one of whom had just got a commission too, and, the
most important of all, there was an old gentleman with fluffy white
hair and beard, looking something between Father Christmas and our
old gardener Penny, and as if he ought to have on a red dressing-gown
trimmed with white cotton wool.
"This, my dears, if you please, was no less a person than Harry's
rolling-in-riches grandfather, the one who quarrelled with Harry's
mother because she would marry a soldier. (I don't blame her for
that, of course; in fact, I will give you two girls one word of
advice, and that is, don't ever look at anything else yourselves,
because it is absolutely the one profession, and the only one, to
marry.)
"Of course, I heard all about Harry's wicked old grandfather, and how
cruel he had been to Harry's parents, so you can imagine how startled
I was when Harry's sister Doris, who is very good-looking, of course,
very like Harry, introduced him, and the old gentleman nearly wept
with joy over him, and said he was exactly like his dear mother.
Then Harry introduced me as his wife, both of us feeling most
important, of course, because we were married, and then there was a
general chorus of surprise and congratulations and all that sort of
thing, and I thought I was going to have my hand positively shaken
off by the relations.
"And then Harry's grandfather absolutely insisted on taking us all
into the big car, and whisking us off to lunch at Great Merton, which
is about thirty miles from the Junction, where he has taken a big
country house.
"And, my dear Kids! to cut a long story short, there we have been
ever since, if you please, and there we are going to be for another
three days.
"Doris, the married sister, is a perfect angel, and has given me a
whole heap of trousseau things. Just you wait till you see them.
"As for the old grandfather, I can't tell you what an unmitigated pet
he is. As Rattle would say: 'Isn't it _funny_?' It is quite
extraordinary to think that he was ever against the soldiers, and
considered them brainless and popinjays and blood-sucking parasites
who used to drain the resources of the country to keep up their
useless hordes! He is absolutely changed now about all that. He
began to change it when he first heard of the atrocities in Belgium,
and he has gone on ever since. When it came to the _Lusitania_ he
really got quite affectionate about our Army that was fighting to put
down a nation of barbarians, and by the time we arrived at the
Germans firing on the women and children who were being taken in
boats from that other sinking ship, well, the effect it had on
Harry's grandfather was simply extraordinary. He felt that all these
years, when he had been running down the fighting forces of England,
and grudging every penny that went to keep up the Services, what had
he been doing? Helping the Germans. Yes, giving a helping hand to
those brutes who want to come and take away our Empire. So, of
course, he felt most terribly remorseful about it, and about the idea
that he had actually turned his own daughter out of the house because
she had had the sense to see what he hadn't, namely, that soldiers
are the very splendidest people in the whole world!
"Of course, he didn't explain this at the time, not in the street at
the Junction. This was later, when we were all tearing on to Great
Merton.
"By the way, I quite forgot to explain that there was another soldier
we found here when we arrived, a General Blankley. Who he is I don't
quite know, but he was so covered with gold oak-leaves and scarlet
tabs that you could scarcely see any khaki: so he must be somebody
frightfully important, so important that he is actually able to
engineer so that Harry got five whole lovely days' leave then and
there.
"Of course, you will say but all this was no excuse for our not
leaving a message at the 'Royal' for Rattle and Mr. Lascelles when
they arrived there.
"Of course, it wasn't an excuse, but oh! my dears, if you only knew
the state of excitement that we are all in, what with having
successfully fibbed our way to the Junction, as Rattle calls it, and
what with having really and truly got married, and what with meeting
with long-lost relations.
"Well, some day perhaps you will know the rainbow-coloured whirl that
one lives in.
"I hope you will, I am sure.
"Harry's grandfather has been a perfect brick about an allowance for
Harry.
"Not that I should have cared tuppence about the money part of it,
even suppose I had had to give up my share of the pennies we get from
father because I married against the will: even if that had happened,
I should have cheerfully existed on what Harry could spare me from
his pay, even if I had not been able to afford any more clothes
besides the green blanket-coat and the little leather hat that I was
married in, as long as I lived.
"But as it is I don't think I could possibly be happier except for
one thing, and that is, if I could hear that you two should be going
to get married yourselves to somebody nearly as nice as my Harry. Of
course, you mustn't expect anything quite as nice."
(I wish Nancy could have seen Evelyn's face at this last remark! It
really was a study!)
The epistle ends up at last:
"With best love, and hoping to see you all on Thursday. From
"Your happy and affectionate sister,
"NANCY MASTERS."
"Of course she must needs go and put her surname, just because it
happens to be a different one," commented Evelyn sourly. Really, I
wish she wasn't so ratty these days, I think she must be sickening
for something! She has never written to us before and signed herself
'Nancy Verdeley,' I notice."
"Oh, my dear! Have some tolerance for the vagaries of people who are
very much in love! It is no use expecting them to behave as if they
were normal. I have read that in heaps of books," I told her. "We
ought to consider ourselves highly favoured that she condescends to
write to us at all before she has come out of the really silly stage.
Here's a postscript: 'Please give my love to Frank.'"
I suppose now that Nancy is a young married matron it is considered
quite proper for her to call her husband's chums by their Christian
names?
To-day, after tea, Evelyn, in her primmest voice, gave the
message--or, rather, her version of the message--namely, "My sister
wished to be very kindly remembered to you, Mr. Lascelles."
Mr. Lascelles said: "Oh! Awfully obliged, I'm sure," without a
flicker. It was very decent of him not to give away the fact that I
had met him before lunch going down to the beach in waders and
waterproof coat, and that I had told him in the cheeriest way, "Nancy
sends you her love."
It certainly is very much more comfortable now that I have made
friends with the little creature, and now that I have discovered that
he really isn't as bad as I thought he was at first.
More than that--he isn't nearly as plain as he used to be.
And there is a reason for that.
He broached the subject of it this morning when he had to have his
breakfast half an hour earlier than usual, and I was the only one who
happened to be down at it. I poured out his coffee for him, and I
was just handing him his cup when he said:
"Miss Betty, I wish you would tell me if you think it is any
improvement----"
"If what is an improvement?" I asked him behind the coffee-pot
innocently, as if I didn't know what he meant.
But of course I knew. I had noticed it, of course, in one flash the
first minute that he had appeared to say good morning.
For he had done the thing that makes more difference to a person's
appearance than anything else, whether they are a man or a woman.
Namely, he had done his hair in another way.
He had left off smarming it back from his brow like Gilbert the
Filbert. He had had it cut and shampooed, so that it went easily
into the new way.
And he had parted it at the side--he had parted it from left to
right, which is the most becoming way in the world.
Anyhow, it is becoming to him: it just allows a little wave.
The merest suspicion of a wave, not a deep crinkle like you see in
the pitch-black hair of Nancy's husband, but the merest little turn
that gives quite a pretty light in one place to his red hair. This
is not really such a very hideous shade of red as I always made out,
but when you dislike a person you really cannot allow yourself to be
fair about their looks, can you?
However, now that I have stopped disliking him, I can see him with a
more impartial eye! I glanced at him with it over the coffee-pot and
said sedately:
"Yes, I think it is a very great improvement indeed. I think it is
ever so much better, though it is a pity you didn't do it before."
"I should have done it before," said Mr. Lascelles, eagerly. "I
should have done it the first instant that I read your letter--you
know, the one to the 'Lonely Subaltern,' when you said you detested
people with their hair brushed back? I should have started the new
way then, only that was when I was writing incog. to you, and I was
so afraid that that would be enough to make you spot something."
"I daresay I might have," I said, laughing quite cheerfully. "I
suppose I am rather sharp at seeing everything that's going on!"
I find I can laugh over the "Lonely Subaltern" business now instead
of having to blush all over myself, like the man who painted himself
black to play Othello, every time the subject is mentioned.
"I say, I am most fearfully bucked that you do think it is a bit of
an improvement," said Mr. Frank Lascelles, quite as shyly as a girl
at school who has taken to wearing some new kind of blouse. "I'm
glad it makes me stop being--er--quite such an eye-sore to you!"
Well, common politeness demanded that I should say, quite
emphatically, "You never were an eye-sore!"
"Oh, come: I was," he said, quite as if he wanted to have been.
"But, as long as I am not now--am I?"
He said it so pathetically that I had to smile at him, noticing again
how very much better-looking he was for the change of hair.
"_Am_ I?"
"No. Since you _must_ fish for compliments, you're not an eyesore,
now."
"Cheers!" he said, but still without beginning his bacon. "And that
being so, do you think you could possibly feel philanthropic enough
to do me a _great_ favour, Miss Betty?"
"What might that be?" I asked, not being able to help feeling
interested. "Do you want me to do my hair in another way?"
"Oh, no! Please don't touch your beautiful--I mean your hair. It
looks absolutely top-hole as it is," said Mr. Lascelles, hurriedly.
"What I was going to beg you was to tell me whether you'd mind----"
But I wasn't privileged to hear what it was he wanted to know that I
should mind, for at this moment in came Aunt Victoria, rubbing her
hands together and saying she thought it felt as if we must have had
several degrees of frost.
And I jumped up to give her my place, and Mr. Lascelles jumped up to
say good morning, and what between the talk of the weather and of
what time the young Masters would arrive home on Thursday, Mr.
Lascelles simply didn't have time to go on asking me whatever the
favour was going to have been.
I wonder what on earth it could have been?
Perhaps he will think of it again after a day or so. I don't want to
ask him: it would seem as if I took such an exaggerated interest in
him, which I don't, of course, except that I do think he is rather a
nice, funny little thing whom it is quite amusing to be friends with.
The great excitement in my life at present is the thought of the
young bride and bridegroom, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Masters, if you
please, coming back to take up their abode at Mud Flats!
CHAPTER XVI
SOMETHING QUITE UNEXPECTED
Really, our family is the rummest ever! Always breaking out in some
new place, it seems to me.
I should have thought that Nancy's runaway marriage with Captain
Masters would have been quite enough excitement for, say, the next
two years, and that we need not have expected anything further to
flutter this dovecot of a Moated Grange. I should have thought that
we could now settle down to the anticipation of at least a peaceful
and uneventful winter, summer and spring.
But no.
It is too much to expect. Before Nancy is so much as come back from
her five days' honeymoon, before I have left off feeling absolutely
thrilled about it once every five minutes of the day, before I have
left off talking about "Miss" Nancy to the servants, a fresh piece of
unexpectedness is burst upon me.
And who do you think it is this time?
Evelyn, if you please! Evelyn, the eldest of the family, the
best-behaved, the one who is, as Aunt Victoria says, the most
balanced, and the one who has always talked the least nonsense of all
three of us girls. Let it be a lesson to all girls who think they're
"sensible." I know Evelyn always thought she was that. Now listen
to what's happened to her.
It was two days after the long talk we had had over Nancy's
newly-married letter.
I think I told you that Evelyn seemed to me to be rather snappy over
that or at any rate unsympathetic, making remarks about how girls
seem to have softening of the brain as soon as they were in love, and
how idiotic it was that a girl should think that it was her duty to
become a door-mat under the young man's pontooning boots!
All this, you know, was not quite like Evelyn, the Evelyn we had
always known: but then, of course, as I think we said, we had noticed
she had been getting very much more prim and easily shocked ever
since that first quite giddy party at the Moated Grange here, when
Aunt Victoria actually had out champagne for dinner and Mr. Curtis
kissed Nancy afterwards by the staircase window. Yes, I think that
was when we began to realise that Evelyn was what is considered a
"much nicer" girl than Nancy and me.
However, to get on with it. Ever since then Evelyn has been getting
more and more difficult; she has never been jolly or laughed with us
in the way she used to do: she has given up playing the piano in the
Lair--that is to say, she has given up trying over the saucy revue
tunes that we are all so fond of.
She can't bear any of those nowadays except what I call a droopy
waltz like "Destiny" or one of those clinging nocturnes that really
get you into the mood of making you wish you had never been born!
Or else it's one of the songs from one of those antediluvian old
song-books with the red leather covers that we have inherited from
goodness knows who, called
"_Love not, love not, ye Hapless Sons of Clay._"
But most of the time now she is wrapped up in her bandaging class or
the linen fund for soldiers' babies.
Really, she began to behave like the girl in those old-fashioned
books who is sick of life and worldly frivolities and who is thinking
of taking the veil. She was coming in from the bandaging class this
afternoon, when I put my foot into it apparently by making the most
harmless remark you can imagine: at least, I thought it was harmless.
You see, she was very late, at least half an hour later than the
bandaging class usually bursts--I mean breaks up--and I said, "Hurry
up, Evelyn, you had better look in at the kitchen on the way up and
ask them to make you the little brown tea-pot full of fresh tea: we
have nearly finished in the dining-room."
(I forgot to mention that we always have tea in the dining-room now,
instead of the drawing-room, all on account of Mr. Lascelles, who
says that he likes to spread himself and not to sit down in fear and
trembling lest he should be spoiling the carpet every time he drops a
crumb, which is, after all, only natural; and why shouldn't he be
allowed to feel at home after a bothering afternoon of messing about
with "men's applications for leave," and sick reports, and evening
passes, and half-fare railway vouchers, and all those things that I
think it's very clever of him to know how to manage, so there! But
to get on about Evelyn, when she was late for tea.)
I went on light-heartedly, "There is only what you might describe as
'husband's tea' left in the dining-room teapot, and I know that you
disapprove just now of everything to do with husbands."
Of course, I only meant to tease her a little about the attitude she
has taken up with regard to Nancy and her new husband. Nothing was
further from my thoughts than to wish to upset Evelyn in any way.
Yet, to my horror, this is what I seemed to do.
For Evelyn, if you please, glared at me for a moment as if I were a
hair in the butter, and then broke out, positively violently, "Oh!
Rattle, you talk too much nonsense! You do, indeed, and you say
horrid things, and it is very unkind of you, it's hateful!"
What in the world could be the meaning of that, I asked myself.
Wasn't it funny?
I stood there in the hall under the hanging-lamp, being absolutely
flummoxed and flabbergasted, and Evelyn went on, still violently:
"You are always horrid to me now, both of you! Have been for the
last I don't know how long! You don't think anything of what I say:
you only make fun of me, and laugh at me. I know you do! You and
Nancy! I don't seem to have even any sisters left----"
And then she turned and dashed up the stairs and I heard her own door
banging behind her.
What, indeed, could be the matter?
I went back into the dining-room with the fourth plate of muffins for
Mr. Lascelles, and the little brown teapot of nice, fresh, hot tea
for that extraordinary Evelyn. Somehow I had a kind of idea that she
didn't mean to come down and drink it.
So in a minute or two I got a little tray, and arranged a really
tempting tea for one on it.
I told Aunt Victoria and Mr. Lascelles that I thought poor Evelyn had
got rather a headache.
Always a nice, safe thing to say: it commits you to nothing.
Then I went up to Evelyn's room and tapped at the door.
As I expected, there was no answer, so I went calmly in.
Evelyn was lying on her bed with her face buried in the pillow, just
as Nancy had been last week when she was pretending to have such
violent toothache!
But Evelyn was not pretending.
When I came in she stopped all of a sudden, but I knew that she had
been sobbing as if her heart would break.
"I have brought you some tea," I said.
"I don't want any tea, thank you, Rattle," said Evelyn, in a muffled
voice with all the violence gone out of it.
"Oh, you do. Just a nice cup of tea! You needn't eat anything with
it if you aren't feeling very hungry," I said.
And I sat down on the bed beside her and put my arm round her and
persuaded her to drink some nice hot tea, which was very sugary and
milky, with a long tea-leaf floating about on the top, which meant a
stranger to see her very shortly.
And a very tall stranger.
However, I didn't say any more about that sort of thing, not wishing
to annoy her any more than I could help.
I just whispered to her: "Awfully sorry, old girl, if I upset you."
Evelyn gulped, and said: "It's all right, Rattle, it wasn't a bit
your fault. I was a cross pig: but----"
Here she began to gulp again, and then felt for her handkerchief,
which was a little, grey, sopping ball of linen by this time.
I stuffed my own quite nice dry one into her hand.
(It wasn't my own, really, being a very large white silk one with
"F.L." embroidered in the corner. You know how people's wash gets
mixed up when there are a lot of you in the same house, and I knew
Mr. Lascelles wouldn't mind my using his hankie for just one week.)
I went on to say earnestly to Evelyn: "You know you are quite, quite
wrong in thinking that Nancy and I don't think enough of you. Why,
we are frightfully fond of you, if you only knew. When we begin to
laugh at you for being prim----"
"Oh, Rattle, don't! 'Prim!'" mourned Evelyn. "Anybody who knew what
I felt like inside would know I couldn't be called prim!"
"Well, primmer than we are," I said. "But if we do laugh at it, it
means that we are so fond of you, and so pleased that there is at
least one of us who makes some attempt to behave like a lady!"
I made her drink a little more tea, then eat a piece of muffin, which
seemed to make her feel better, and presently she seemed well enough
to confide to me: "Oh, Rattle! I am so fearfully miserable! the most
miserable girl in Mud Flats!" she said.
"My dear old thing, why?" I asked, taking the tray out of her way and
sitting down beside her on the bed. "Can't you tell me?"
In a choked voice poor old Evelyn said something about having to tell
somebody or burst.
"Tell me, then," I encouraged her. "Was it _really_ because you
thought Nancy and I weren't as fond of you as we used to be?"
Evelyn shook her head. "It's not that. It's nothing to do with
that."
"Have you had a row," I asked, "with the Bandaging Class?" For I
knew what a cat in mittens the doctor's sister is; she adores the
curate, I think, and she was frightfully annoyed once when she heard
the doctor say that the curate had said that the eldest Miss Verdeley
was the sort of girl who would be a parish priest's right hand.
She's never been anything but hideously polite to Evelyn ever since,
and as she is secretary to that Bandaging Class, I thought she had
been getting even with the curate's idea of a right hand that way.
But no. Evelyn said it was nothing to do with that either.
"Is it anything," I suggested, "that I could help you with?"
"Nobody can ever help me," mourned Evelyn. And she added in a sort
of gulp something that surprised me so much that I bounced on the bed
and nearly kicked over the tea-things on their tray at my feet.
"Somebody," Evelyn moaned, "somebody wants to marry me!"
"What!" I exclaimed so loudly that I wonder they didn't hear me
downstairs in the dining-room. Really, with all these love affairs
going on in the house, I shall have to learn to modulate my voice a
little more. "To marry you?"
The fact is, I nearly said "Why?" For I've never thought Evelyn,
though she's so nice-looking and such a dear in many ways, is a bit
the kind of girl you'd fall in love with! Nancy, yes. But Evelyn,
who's out of sympathy with men! I should have thought they tumbled
to that and avoided that sort of girl, at least, as a wife!
Then I pulled myself together and uttered my second thoughts. "Well,
I suppose I know who it is. I suppose it's the curate?"
"It's nothing of the kind," said Evelyn, quite indignantly. "It's a
young man."
(You see, the curate is at least thirty-two to begin with.)
"Oh," I said, with a long breath, for that made it quite different.
"Two wantings-to-marry in our family in one week! How frightfully
thrilling! What'll be the next, I wonder? But, Evelyn! for
goodness' sake tell me who the young man is? And why, why are you
crying about him?"
Poor Evelyn began to sob again so bitterly that she couldn't speak.
"It's a funny way to take a proposal," I said. "Does it--I say, does
it mean that you've refused him?"
"Hurp--yes!" wept Evelyn.
I felt even more thrilled. You see, it was a change from Nancy's
affair. Now we'd had both kinds in the house, a Yes and a No! What
a lot of experience I'm getting!
"It must be very painful to have to cause a lot of unhappiness to a
man, even if you don't like him well enough to marry," I said,
understandingly. "Still, Evelyn, you must look on the bright side of
it, you know. You'll have to remember that though he may seem to be
upset just for the moment, you haven't really broken his heart for
ever. Of course, he says you have, I expect? But don't you believe
him, my dear girl," said I, encouragingly patting her arm. "He will
get over it. Look what hundreds of men do. Think of half the novels
we've read about that very thing. Think of that Somersetshire
folk-song:
"'_The grass that once has been trampled underfoot,
Give it time, it will rise up again: give it time, it will
rise up again!_'"
I couldn't help feeling rather pleased over this quotation: it was so
apt. Then I went on comforting poor Evelyn, whose head was buried in
the pillow, showing only one hot little pink ear. I whispered into
it: "Do you know, I was reading a book only the other day which says
that hardly any man gets just the girl he has asked: most of them
have been turned down by one or two before they find the woman who is
meant to be their affinity. This proposer of yours would probably be
quite grateful to your refusing him," I said, "in a year or two's
time." She didn't answer, but I know she heard.
"For, you see, there is no scarcity of girls," I said judiciously.
"Plenty of those to pick and choose from for any young man,
especially after this war, when young men are going to be more of a
rarity than ever! So, cheer up, Evelyn. He is bound to forget quite
soon."
At this Evelyn suddenly reared her golden head up from her pillows
and turned her flushed and tear-stained face to me. Then she hurled
another bomb of surprise at me.
"Oh, Rattle! don't, don't!" she besought me wildly. "My dear! you
think you are consoling me, don't you? But if you only knew, every
word of yours about those other girls hurts. Do you suppose I want
him to marry anybody else at once? I, who like him so frightfully
badly myself."
Here was a facer! I said, "You like him frightfully badly and yet
you aren't going to marry him?"
"I can't," wailed Evelyn.
"Why?" I asked, absolutely thrilled. This was the most unusual bit
of the whole affair. "Is he married already?"
This terrible thought did seem to startle Evelyn--the only one in
this family with any sense of propriety--into some sort of calm. She
sat up against her pillows and sobbed again with her pretty face
struggling into its normal prim expression. "Married, Rattle! Of
course not! As if I should ever have spoken on such a subject if he
had been married! Oh! dear no! There is nothing of that sort in it
at all!"
"Then what is there?" I asked eagerly. "And, to begin with,
Evelyn--tell me, do tell me, I really think you might tell me, if I
promise not to say a word--I do so awfully want to know who he is?"
Buried in the pillow again, Evelyn murmured something about, "I
thought you might have guessed. Do you mean you really haven't any
idea, Rattle?"
I really hadn't, not the slightest. Since it wasn't the curate. Was
it one of the soldier-men? She gave a tiny nod.
I then began to repeat the names of some of the officers we have got
to know since the troops have been at Mud Flats. I thought first, of
course, of the one we have in the house here.
I said, "It isn't Mr. Lascelles, is it?"
"Oh, Rattle! don't be absurd," said Evelyn, with a trembly laugh.
"Mr. Lascelles! Why! He is only a child!"
"He is twenty-four! Three whole years older than you are!" I
retorted. I was going on to explain how unexpectedly reliable and
grown-up Mr. Lascelles had seemed at that awful moment at the
Junction when we couldn't find the bridal party, but Evelyn went on:
"Well, he doesn't look like twenty-four! He looks about fourteen!"
"Yet you all seem so awfully fond of him," I reminded her, "and you
all scold me because I couldn't--I mean, I can't--stand him. He was
always a favourite of yours."
"Yes, in a kind of way--the sort of nice friendly way you feel
towards a younger brother or a nephew, even," said Evelyn. "In that
way I quite love his dear little Schoolboy face and his hideous red
hair."
"I didn't think his hair was at all so hideous," I said. "At all
events, it doesn't look so bad now, since he has taken to parting it
at the side."
"Oh! is that what he has done? I thought I noticed it looked rather
worse-looking, but I didn't know exactly what he had been doing with
it. But, nice as he is, if he was the only man I ever see I
shouldn't want to fall in love with the Lascelles boy. Oh, no,
Rattle. It is somebody really grown-up; really clever."
"And really good-looking?" I asked. For the quotation on the
calendar in the Lair to-day had been:
"_Now, though we always know that looks deceive
And always have done, somehow these good looks
Make more impression than the best of books._"
(BYRON.)
Rather true, I thought it. And Evelyn was saying earnestly, "Oh!
He's _very_ good-looking. Handsome."
"The handsomest man who's ever been here is Captain Masters (that we
must get into the way of calling Harry)," I said. "But, of course,
Nancy got him."
"I should never have looked at Captain Masters. He's _much_ too
novelette-y. A barber's block, I should call him," declared Evelyn,
quite excitedly. The last trace of sobs had gone from her voice as
she spoke. "My--I mean the man I am speaking of, is worth ten of
Nancy's husband for looks or anything else. Can't you guess who it
is?"
Conscientiously I began to go over the names of all the good-looking
men I've seen about this place.
The adjutant? No. That young officer of the Super-Filberts? No.
One of the sailor-men off the cruiser in the Bay? (nearly all sailors
are nice-looking. Going into the Navy seems to give them such nice
blue eyes!) Commander Smith? Mr. Brown? Mr. Robinson? No; it was
none of these. Much handsomer than any of them.
"Then I can't have seen him," said I.
"Oh, yes, you have, Rattle. Often."
"Can't have. Some one I've often seen about this place? Why, there
is only old Penny the gardener that I haven't guessed. It isn't him,
by any chance, is it, Evelyn?"
This, thank goodness, made Evelyn laugh. "Don't be so absolutely
idiotic, Rattle! If you really are too stupid to guess I suppose I
shall have to tell you myself."
And she told me.
She blurted it out in these three electrifying words:
"It's Mr. Curtis!"
Have you got that, dear readers? I didn't, for about three seconds
after she'd said it. Then----
Well, thank goodness! I didn't lose my head and exclaim, "Mr.
Curtis!" with a long-drawn shriek of idiot mirth! The shock was
quite enough to make me. However, one seems to get very quickly
acclimatised to shocks. After the first two or three. There are
only three of us girls, but I should think in really large families,
such as sevens and eights, you would have to make them think the end
of the world had come before they turned a hair.
See how hardened I was getting! I didn't even begin to explain to
Evelyn that I didn't think of guessing Mr. Curtis for the simple
reason that that young schoolmaster who was now a soldier hadn't made
the faintest impression on me. I looked upon him, when I did look
upon him, as a sort of pale, washed-out, long-legged shadow, who just
sat there blinking through his eyeglasses and taking up the highest
chair, so that there would be room for his legs. Once or twice after
that celebrated party I had wondered if he was still going on writing
his articles about "Pontoon Bridging for Girls," or something of that
sort, or whether he had ever soared to composing verses about "The
First Kiss," or anything of that sort. Then when the Nancy-Masters
romance came on I hadn't thought of anything else to do with Mr.
Curtis. If I had thought I should never have dreamt of connecting
him with anything like a love affair!
Yet here was Evelyn, if you please, the most particular as well as
the most proper of us girls, fairly crying her eyes out because of
some reason or other for wanting to marry him, and yet she wasn't
going to!
I gazed upon her in astonishment. "Handsome," she'd said! _Wasn't_
it funny? I realised that the Mr. Curtis she saw must be an entirely
different person from the Mr. Curtis I saw.
Perhaps that is the same way with everybody's young man or girl as
the case may be? Perhaps the greatest shock that anybody ever could
get would be for half an hour to borrow somebody else's eyes, just
like Mr. Lascelles borrowed Mr. Curtis's eyeglasses once to see how
he looked in them? And to see those other people's impression of
their best friends? My word! there would be some astonishment!
The poem about seeing yourself as others see you would not be in it
with seeing the other ones!
Just think of girls, for instance, that one had always considered
hopeless freaks and frumps. Fancy catching sight of them transformed
into a cross between Lily Elsie and Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland!
And then just think of the young men that you have always considered
"It," and imagine seeing them dwindle down to the miserable
nonentities that some other girls might see them as!
(I do wish a machine had been made to enable us to do it. However, I
suppose it is one of those inventions that don't seem ever to be
going to come off in our time, like hairpins that will stick in and
silk stockings that never go into ladders.)
However, to go on with this absolutely unaccountable love affair of
Evelyn and Mr. Curtis.
"You--I know you won't tell anybody," she said. "Nobody knows."
"Does he know?" I asked. "That you care for him, I mean?"
"Oh, no! Oh, NO!" cried my sister. "Because of course I told him
that I didn't."
Now, that struck me as a silly sort of thing to do. Such a waste!
Except, of course, in those old-fashioned novels on the top shelf in
the Lair when sometimes the girl looks down (why?) and trembles (what
at?) and refuses the man just so that he will ask her again.
I wondered if it was this kind of thing. I asked Evelyn.
"Ask me again? Oh, no. I made it quite clear to him that it would
be absolutely no good if he did," went on that mysterious Evelyn.
"Why on earth not?" I asked.
It was quite a time before I could get that absurd Sphinx of an
Evelyn to condescend to tell me the reason that stood between her and
the man of her (no-accounting-for-tastes ) choice.
At last it came out. An absolutely footling reason, of course.
Simply this:
Because Evelyn felt that she couldn't possibly marry a man who had
been attracted to her own sister before he had proposed to her!
"It's no use! I should be too jealous," she said, sitting up and
staring away blankly above the framed photograph of us three as
little girls with curls over our sailor-blouses. "You don't
understand, Rattle, how I should feel. Every time he kissed me I
should"--here she buried her face in the pillow--"I should be
reminded of that time at the staircase window when he kissed Nancy."
"My dear, good child!" I said to her, feeling quite like a maiden
aunt. "Don't you remember how Mr. Curtis was a st----" Here I
nearly said "standing joke," but I stopped myself, because I thought
that Evelyn wouldn't like it. I said instead, "Don't you remember
how Mr. Curtis was such a surprise to all those other young men just
because he hadn't kissed anybody at all before? They seemed to think
he was a regular white elephant--I mean, very unusual.
"So I expect that more than half the men who get engaged must have
kissed other people before: or at least one other person."
"Yes, but not the girl's own sister."
"I don't see what difference that makes," I said.
"All the difference in the world," said Evelyn, obstinately.
"Rattle, you don't understand how I feel about a thing like that.
How could you? You're too young."
"I call that the unfairest argument in the world to use to a sister
who just happens to have been born four years later than you have," I
told her, reproachfully. "I'm sure I'm older than you are, in my
mind."
"I'm glad," said Evelyn, looking up gloomily at me, "that you're not
so miserable."
"You needn't be miserable, if you had the sense to accept the man you
care for, Evelyn!"
"Yes, I need," argued Evelyn, huskily. "I should be desperately
unhappy if I were going to marry Mr. Curtis, knowing that he had--oh,
dear!"--down went the head into the pillow again--"knowing that he
had cared for my sister first."
"But you seem to be going to be pretty unhappy as it is," I pointed
out, gazing sympathetically at the rumpled back of her hair. "So I
should have thought it was better to be unhappy with the people you
liked, than just marooned, all by yourself!"
She only repeated that I was too young to understand.
"Mr. Curtis is years older than either of us, and you won't let him
understand either," said I. "He thinks you won't marry him just
because you don't like him enough?"
"Yes, that's it," said Evelyn, hopelessly.
Being in love does take people different ways, they say. Hers is the
most exasperating I've ever come across in the whole course of my
experience!
We can't have it. It must come right. Somebody capable of thinking
things out reasonably must do something.
_I_ must do something.
In the meantime, _wasn't_ I right when I told you that my sister
Evelyn was an awful warning and object-lesson to all "Sensible" girls?
CHAPTER XVII
AN EVENING OF THRILLS
Things simply will not leave off happening in this house! I should
think we had come to the climax of them to-night!
Still! touch wood, you never know! There may be something else
waiting to happen just round the corner.
To begin at the beginning. It was the evening after Evelyn had
confided to me her love affair.
What a contrast between the beginning of that evening--and the end of
it!
To start with the beginning.
We had spent a very quiet time in the drawing-room, Aunt Victoria
playing patience on her green-covered table by the fire, and I busily
embroidering a chemise top which I had just made out of two very nice
hankies, and which I meant to be a belated wedding present for my
sister Nancy.
Because, even if she is able to afford to pay for the new trousseau
pretties out of his grandfather's reconciled allowance, I should
think she would still rather like to have a few little things made
for her by her own flesh and blood. So I have been sewing "a kiss
and a good wish" into every stitch of this chimmie top, as you always
should into the presents that you give to somebody that you are very
fond of.
Evelyn, looking more than washed-out, poor child! after her fit of
crying and confidence this afternoon, was rather languidly knitting a
pair of khaki mittens for one of the men in Mr. Lascelles's company.
Mr. Lascelles himself was stretched out in his own particular
armchair, which is the comfiest one in the drawing-room.
And so it ought to be, considering how hard he has to work, poor boy!
and how he simply tears about all day. It really is just like that
thing he's always humming:
"'_I do all the work,' says the Subaltern._"
To-day it was trousers, if you'll believe it; hours of his time taken
up over four pair of the most awful khaki bags that looked just as if
they were made of the old felt that we've got underneath the
stair-carpet. "Please, sir, do you think these are worth mending?"
and all that. Combined with some complication with a person who is
called the Officer-in-charge-of-stores, who is always complaining
that the precious stores have been misused, and getting people
strafed when they don't deserve it one bit. Mr. Lascelles said he
was quite looking forward to settling down to a little peace and
quiet in the trenches, after all this.
However, he was settled down in his chair for the present, smoking a
cigarette--oh, yes! cigarettes in Aunt Victoria's drawing-room are
nothing, nowadays. I fully expect to see her light up herself one of
these evenings! Well! He was smoking a cigarette and chuckling over
a copy of _The Natal Newsletter_, that ship's newspaper that was
written and printed and everything on board ship. It had been lent
to him by the Commander, who had pinched it off one of the men on a
trawler.
"You might read aloud to us," I said, stitching away.
And he, Mr. Lascelles, said he'd read a poem that was supposed to be
about H.M.S. _Queen Elizabeth_.
"It isn't unlike you, yourself," he said, rather mischievously. "It
begins:
"'_She's quite a modern-to-the-minute flapper----_'"
"I do hate being called a flapper!" I put in, but he frowned me down.
It wasn't a real frown, you know: we were quite friends, now.
"'_And older folk have called her rather fast----_'"
("H'm, that's not so appropriate") put in Mr. Lascelles, reading on:
"'_She's a girl of very vigorous opinions._'"
("That's all in order, isn't it?")
"'_Though young, already has a vivid Past._'"
("That's the joy-ride to the Junction, Miss Elizabeth, the day of
your sister's wedding.")
"'_When she goes a-walking out there's consternation
Among the baggy-trousered Eastern swells.
For she's slinging Cupid's arrows
In the region of their narrows
Is our bu-sy little Lizzie in the dizzy Dardanelles!_'"
Here Aunt Victoria looked up from her patience and asked mildly:
"What are you reading, Mr. Lascelles? Aren't you going on?"
I should have liked him to, but he didn't. He got up, looked at Aunt
Victoria's patience for a minute, then said that as he had had a
rather hefty day's work he thought he would turn in early.
"Good-night, Mrs. Verdeley," he said. "Good-night, Miss Evelyn."
Then he turned to me on his way to the door, and caught my eyes and
said in a lower tone that I don't think the others could possibly
have caught, "Good-night, Miss Betty."
To show there was no ill-will I smiled up at him from my seat on the
_pouffe_ and said, "Good-night, Lonely Subaltern!"
Then I went on embroidering that white silk true-lovers' knot on
young Mrs. Masters' chemise-top, and thinking how funny it was that
I'd ever really disliked him. Evelyn was knitting away, mooning away
at the same time, I expect, over her extremely uninteresting (except
to her) young lover. Aunt Victoria continued to murmur to her cards,
"Ah! that, and that, and _that_. Is it going to come out now? I
believe I shall get it to come out after all." And the fire-flames
"talked" softly in the grate, and everything under the pink lamplight
of the cosy, old-fashioned room was Peace, perfect Peace.
I suppose that peace must have lasted for about five or seven minutes
after Mr. Lascelles had gone upstairs. Then, as suddenly as thunder
in the dark, the peace was shattered by the sound of the quickest,
sharpest "Crack--Crack!"
An explosion? Another raid?
"The Zeppelins! Oh, my goodness, those horrible Zeppelins again!"
shrieked Aunt Victoria, starting up and scattering all her cards,
while the sewing dropped from my hands and the knitting from Evelyn's.
Before we had got up to put out all the lights (as we have been
warned to do by the posters) there followed, quick upon the sound of
those two shots, loud screaming--a shout--(there seemed to come from
the top of our house) and then a hammering and violent ringing at our
front door! I rushed to it, and opened it. There were Mr. Curtis
and four of the sappers from the nearest house to us, all very
breathless and excited-looking, all chorusing, "What's up? what's
up?" Mr. Curtis, rather white, added, "Where's Evelyn?" And then
went on, "I heard shots fired: it is in your house! What has
happened?"
"I don't know," I began, still bewildered. Then Aunt Victoria came
out, still clutching the knave of spades in her hand, and Evelyn
looking over her shoulder.
"Shots came from the garret--I'm sure--they did," declared Mr. Curtis
quickly. (In fact, you must please remember that all these sayings
and doings took place much more quickly than I can possibly write, or
you read about them. It was one mad rush, I can tell you.) "Come
along, you men," called Mr. Curtis; "we must run up and see."
He dashed up the stairs with the four sappers at his heels, me after
them, and Evelyn after me.
Aunt Victoria panted two steps behind Evelyn.
On the first landing we ran into Mary, the housemaid, all ready for
bed.
Her face was as white as her nightie and her eyes were nearly out of
her head with terror. She seized Mr. Curtis by the arm and
exclaimed: "Oh, Lor! I believe I am going to faint."
Here Mr. Curtis shook her--a thing I have often longed to do
myself--and she left off flopping and looked indignantly at the
sappers and said: "Any one would be ready to faint! Happened? Why,
there's that little Mr. Lascelles and old Penny just been and gone
and murdered each other in the attic."
"Murdered!" gasped Aunt Victoria from the rear.
And I knew what it meant when it says in books that people's hearts
have stopped beating with horror. For a moment I really did feel as
if my own heart had stopped.
Mr. Lascelles? Murdered?
Ah, no, no, no! This must be some sort of hideous nightmare! It
could only be that. It was so like the sort of things that only
happen in dreams.
I saw Mr. Curtis put Mary firmly but not too gently aside and then
pelt up the next flight of stairs on to the second landing, then on
to the attic, where old Penny sleeps next door to the maids.
And here I found that I had rushed in front of the sappers and the
others, and was close beside Mr. Curtis as he flung open the door of
old Penny's room. It was dark.
Mr. Curtis struck a match and quickly turned on the gas, of which
there is a bracket close to the side of the door.
The flaring light fell on the most extraordinary picture I have ever
seen, either on a cinema or anywhere else.
The bed, which had been in the farther corner of the room, had been
dragged into the middle of it, close under the skylight. The
skylight was uncovered and open. On the bed was the figure of Penny,
our gardener, fully dressed in his brown corduroys and his gardening
leggings. One hand, hanging over the edge of the bed, was fumbling
frantically about for something that lay just out of his reach on the
floor. At that awful moment I didn't even take in what it was that
he was trying to get at. Mr. Curtis dashed forward and snatched it
up. It was a revolver. ("A thing dear old Penny never _had_!" as
Aunt Victoria kept on saying.) A revolver for which he was feeling
blindly--yes, thank Heavens, he _was_ blinded!
Covering and muffling his head, which we couldn't see, of course, was
the thick curtain of dark green serge which Aunt Victoria had sent up
to his room for him to tack over the skylight so that not a vestige
of light should get through and get him into disgrace with the
military authorities.
He was struggling violently, making what I suppose are the
"superhuman" efforts they're always doing in Henry's books, to free
himself. For he was pinned down as he kicked and writhed. Half
sitting, half lying on his chest, was Mr. Lascelles. Mr. Lascelles
had blood trickling from a wound in his head down his cheek and chin,
and his right arm was hanging all limp and helpless and
dreadful-looking at his side.
"Hullo!" he said, smiling in a crooked way as we came in and Mr.
Curtis rushed on him. "I have just collared this beauty signalling
through the skylight with his electric torch! How's that for a fair
cop, Miss Betty?"
At the last word he just toppled over and fell face downwards on to
the still struggling Penny.
He had fainted dead away.
* * * * * * * *
It's now a whole day after that scene in the attic, and I am only
just getting clear in my mind about what has happened.
Mr. Lascelles, who had been pretty badly hurt (they find), is in his
room with a hospital nurse from the Junction to look after him.
Just as if Aunt Victoria and Evelyn and I couldn't do everything the
doctor wanted! It seems to me that all the nurse does is to give
herself fearful airs, and to send us running about on various
messages for herself all day. Every time I have been to the door to
see if there wasn't something I could do myself for Mr. Lascelles I
have been held up by a starched blue-and-white figure who hasn't so
much as let me put my foot over the threshold. I have only twice
been able to catch a glimpse of Mr. Lascelles's bandaged red head
lying on the pillow; once he didn't even see me, but the other time
he just did. I saw him twist his poor, feverishly flushed little
face into the funniest grimace of dislike at the nurse's back, just
before she shut the door upon me.
I went down to Mr. Curtis, who was in the drawing-room, having torn
over to the Junction and back on his motor-cycle to bring some grapes
and everything else that he could think of in the way of comforts for
his wounded friend.
Isn't it extraordinary that we, in this peaceful camp-of-instruction
place, should have in our house a real, live, wounded officer,
wounded on the spot, too, by the enemy--by a German?
For, would you believe it! After all these years old Penny, our
gardener--that faithful old man as we have thought him--has turned
out to be nothing in the world but a German spy!
Think of that!
Faithful, indeed! Do you know that all these ten years that he has
been here it has been with only one idea in his mind apparently, and
that is to help with the landing party in this place as soon as the
war broke out which the Germans have been planning for years and
years. He got in bright and early, you see, so that he should be
looked upon as the oldest inhabitant, so to speak, and quite one of
the landmarks of the place. Nobody having the vaguest suspicion
except that he was a dear old hard-working Englishman!
And "old," you know. Would you believe it, he isn't even old! That
"pathetic" black wig that we all thought was because he didn't want
to go about as bald as a pale pink Easter egg, was all part of the
take-in. When I saw him being marched off by the military police who
were fetched by the sappers that dreadful night, they tore off his
wig, and there he was underneath, if you please, with a thick stubble
of hair as fair as our own! As for his walking lame with rheumatism,
that was an old sabre-cut on the leg--from one of his superior
officers, I suppose.
(Later.)
Mr. Curtis has just told me the latest about our treasure of a
gardener. They have found out who old Penny is. His name is Otto
Pfennig, and there was enough information in the papers they found in
his garret to have given away every fortified place along this bit of
coast! That is what he has been up to. That was why I met him that
afternoon in the field sniffing round the explosives and saps and
things; that was why he had pretended to have "screwmatics" so badly
that he should leave his cottage, and be able to come and live in our
garret, where there was a nice skylight convenient for signalling
from.
That was why Mr. Lascelles had that bust-up with him the night of the
Zeppelin raid when he found Penny with the skylight uncovered.
But Mr. Lascelles has had his eye on Penny ever since, Mr. Curtis
says. He was absolutely certain that there was something very fishy
about him, and so he shadowed him, and watched him, and that night
when he went to bed early it was really more to reconnoitre than
anything else.
It seems he had got another key cut in the R.E. workshops to fit the
door of Penny's attic, which Penny, if you please, always kept
locked, pretending that he was frightened of burglars! So Mr.
Lascelles was able to steal in softly behind him and to find him with
that electric torch which helped the Zeppelin raid over London that
same night!
Mr. Lascelles had his revolver, and was just going to cover Penny,
but the German, who was a much bigger man, flung himself on to the
top of Mr. Lascelles, and wrested it from him.
Then little Mr. Lascelles seized hold of the skylight curtain, which
was lying on the bed, and managed just in the very nick of time to
get it round Penny's head just as Penny fired.
Those two shots in the dark were what we heard. Of course, they
would have killed poor little Mr. Lascelles if the German had been
able to see what he was doing: as it was, they shattered his right
upper arm and tore his--Mr. Lascelles's--scalp. Thank Heaven he had
the pistol knocked out of his hand and couldn't get at it to fire off
the other four chambers.
Then, while we all pelted upstairs, there must have been a desperate
scuffle between the German gardener and Mr. Lascelles, who still
managed to keep that thick serge curtain wound over his head and
round his throat, and who sat on his chest, keeping him down, just as
a small, very game terrier is sometimes able to hold his own with a
much bigger and more powerful mongrel.
"As it was," said Mr. Curtis, "the rescue party only just got up
there in the very nick of time. That fellow would have wrested
himself free and downed Lascelles in another minute."
"Dear me, oh, _dear_ me!" murmured Aunt Victoria, looking in an
absolute daze of not realising anything yet. "I daresay he might
have hurt him dreadfully!"
"I should have been sorry for him then. For the German gentleman, I
mean, if Lascelles's men had got hold of him," said Mr. Curtis,
grimly. I quite liked him at that moment, being so very angry made
him look almost _nice_! Perhaps Evelyn always sees him like that?
"They'd have picked that spy to pieces like an old woman feathering a
goose."
"That would have been very wrong," said Aunt Victoria, who is one of
those people who sometimes forget that we are fighting Germans, and
not merely savage tribes and barbarians that you have to remember the
rules of war with. _I_ didn't see why Herr Otto Pfennig shouldn't
have been given over to Mr. Lascelles's Field Company as it was, to
do what they thought fit with. None of the officers in the place
need have been passing at the time!
"He was a good gardener while he was a gardener," Aunt Victoria stood
up for him. "And he thinks he's right in doing what he can for his
country, just as you are, Mr. Curtis." (Poor Mr. Curtis looked as if
he wondered why he had ever joined to defend his country, if his
countrywomen thought of him in the same breath as a Boche!)
Aunt Victoria wound up by asking anxiously, "What do you think will
be done with him?"
Mr. Curtis shrugged his rather bony shoulders and said he supposed
Mr. Pfennig would be given the best quarters in the Junction
Barracks, turning out several of our officers to make room for him;
and that he would be allowed to go over to the nearest
concentration-camp and pick out whichever of the German prisoners he
fancied to be his batman and wait on him.
"At least, he's certain to be treated with the utmost consideration,"
he assured Aunt Victoria. "It's only British prisoners who cannot
expect to have every comfort and luxury when they fall into alien
hands. You needn't worry about him, Mrs. Verdeley. It's Lascelles
I'm worrying about. That head-wound of his is jolly nasty. The
nurse says his temperature is up again."
CHAPTER XVIII
A DAY OF DESPAIR
Mr. Lascelles is worse. This morning the nurse said, in quite an
ordinary sort of voice, something about "If he pulls through----"
"If!----"
Meaning he may not.
If he doesn't, I shall want to murder that nurse. I am sure it is
her fault.
No, it isn't; it's the fault of that Miss Gates, the woman we met
that lovely time on the road when he took me on his motor-cycle to
the Junction.
It was she who sent down this nurse from her (Miss Gates's)
nursing-home that she has for wounded officers at the Junction. Why
didn't she send somebody better? Somebody who knew what ought to be
done? Somebody who'd let _us_ in to attend to him? I know he'd
rather see one of our familiar faces than that unpleasant-looking
feline in the blue-and-white print who thinks she's Everybody!
Already she's found fault with the bathroom, _and_ with the
soda-water. All she's fit for is to nurse wounded Germans; I can't
think why they don't set her to it. That would certainly be _her_
"bit." She's enough to make _anybody_ have a relapse.
You know, he _did_ make a face at her....
But he's too ill even to make faces, now. Isn't it awful? He
doesn't know what he's saying. He mutters and mutters in a voice
that isn't his a bit I could hear it right from the mat outside,
where I was standing. Once he called out quite loudly, "Mother! I
want you! Where are you, Mother? _Mother_!"
And I had to swallow down a lump in my throat as big as an ostrich
egg as I stood there on the mat listening to him. For, you know, his
mother died when he was eleven-and-a-half.
"Mother!" he called again, and I couldn't bear it.
I dashed downstairs as quietly as I could ... I don't know what to do
with myself. I don't want to go out, I'm afraid of meeting people in
the village who will ask me how he is, and I should so hate having to
hear myself say that I thought he was still in danger.
I've been walking all over the house, from the Lair, where Evelyn
sits silently knitting, to the drawing-room, where Aunt Victoria sits
silently staring at her patience cards, but doesn't care any longer
whether it "comes out" or whether it doesn't come out. All she cares
is whether Mr. Lascelles is going to pull through.
I left her and wandered aimlessly out into the kitchen, where cook
was baking bread. At least cook would talk, I thought.
Cook did talk. She let loose a flow of it before I could say a word.
"Have you noticed all the signs there's been about, Miss Rattle, that
there's going to be a death in the house?" she began, while I stood
there petrified. "Yesterday that blessed dog howling outside for no
reason that you could see! To-day a single magpie flew over the
field in front of the house just as I was hotting the
breakfast-plates, and the first thing in the morning if I didn't see
a hare run across the garden-path! Always means something, that
does. Always!"
"Cook! You sound as if you were hoping it meant----"
Without listening to me, cook went on, shaking her head lugubriously
over her kneading-crock, in which her plump, pinky arms were plunging
up and down.
"Ah, poor dear young gentleman! I expect he's doomed! You mark my
words, Miss Rattle," said cook. "A short life and a merry! After
all, he died doing his duty, just the same as if he had gone out to
the front and stopped a German bullet there, as he calls it. Well!
I suppose they will have a reel military funeral for him, the first
there has ever been here!"
And she shook her head again and sighed with a gloom that she
seemed--yes! she seemed to enjoy it!
For if there is one thing that cook seems to love it is going to what
she calls "a burying"; even _his_! I was speechless with
horrifiedness at her.
"There is always a silver lining to every cloud," she went on with
gusto. "There is that good black crêpe toque I had for when my pore
sister-in-law was took; now that will come in lovely. Haven't had it
on above four times, and I should like to wear it, to show kind of
respect, as you might say, to poor dear Mr. Lascelles. For I am sure
your auntie, Miss Rattle, would be quite agreeable to letting us have
the afternoon off for the ceremony, don't you think so?"
Here I lost my speechlessncss. "You awful woman!" I cried. "You
perfect ghoul!" For I also lost my temper. Worse than I had ever
lost it before, except that one time before I got to know Mr.
Lascelles when I slapped his face in the dining-room. (Oh, how could
I!) If I'd had a grenade in my hand then, I should have flung it at
cook's capped head.
Fortunately, all that I had in my hand was a bunch of rather passé
yellow chrysanthemums and laurustinus branches, which I had taken out
of the bowl on the hall table, meaning to burn them in the kitchen
fire.
I flung them at cook instead, wet stalks and all! You know how
horrid wet chrysanthemum stalks are when they have been in water for
some time?
Cook was so taken aback that, for the first second, she didn't
realise what had happened.
"Good heavens above!" I heard her gasp out of the middle of that
handful of decaying foliage. "Whatever's this?"
"As you are so fond of funerals," I heard myself cry furiously,
"there's some flowers to make a wreath!"
Then I tore out of the kitchen again and fled to the Lair.
Evelyn was still there, knitting. I flung myself on the ground at
her knee, and buried my face in her lap.
Then I burst into tears. Loud, bitter tears, just like a child of
three.
I cried as if my heart would break.
"Oh, Evelyn! Oh, Evelyn!"
I must say dear old Evelyn was perfectly beautiful to me at this
juncture. She threw down her knitting and put her arms round me and
petted and comforted me as if she understood everything that I was
feeling. She didn't even once ask me what I was crying about: she
didn't tell me not to cry. She fished my hankie out for me, she gave
me the comfortablest part of her shoulder to rest my head on.
For I must say that when anybody's really in trouble my eldest sister
is so _nice_ that you wouldn't believe she was in the least _good_!
You know what I mean!
"Oh, Evelyn, if he dies," I sobbed brokenly. "If he dies!----
Beast! Little _beast_!"
"Rattle, darling! Don't call him names, now----"
"Call him names? Him? I mean _me_," I almost bellowed. "Little
beast that I've been to him ever since he came here, Evelyn!
S-s-snubbing him at every tut--turn! And saying such cuck--_cruel_
things about bank-clerks and red hair and how he ought to be in the
Bub--Bantam's Battalion and have c-c-corn strewed for him in the
trenches because he was so small! Oh, _oh_! How could I? And then
that awful day when I qu--quarrelled with him in the dining-room
and----"
"Slapped his face," I was just going to gulp out, but in the nick of
time I remembered that the others knew nothing about all that.
Evelyn whispered soothingly: "But, Rattle, you've been _so_ much
nicer to him lately. I've noticed that. Ever since the day you went
to the Junction in his side-car, you've been quite--quite friends,
comparatively, with Mr. Lascelles. Haven't you, now?"
"Not enough! Not enough to make up for all the times before!" I
wept. "And, oh, supposing he dies!"
"I don't believe he is going to," said Evelyn firmly. "He's got
youth on his side, the doctor said! I've a feeling he's going to be
all right!"
"Oh! If only I could have that feeling, too!"
"He'll recover," Evelyn persisted, rubbing her cheek against my hair.
"He'll pull through."
"Oh, if he does, I--I--I shall be such a perfect angel to him that he
won't know me!" I sobbed. "And if he doesn't get well ... Evelyn,
Evelyn! I shall wish that I was dead, too!"
CHAPTER XIX
OUT OF DANGER
At last! At last! After what has seemed seventeen years of waiting,
and after Evelyn and I both feel that our hairs must have turned at
least as grey as Aunt Victoria's! At _last_ we've got some good
news. Mr. Lascelles is out of danger.
This morning the blue-and-white-print nurse condescended to tell us
that the doctor says her patient--(_hers_, you know! Please don't
all laugh too loud, or the echoes of your laughter may break the
bubble of self-satisfaction in which that woman lives)--"her" patient
has turned the corner, and is beginning to do remarkably well.
We were all so frightfully relieved that I could have fallen on
nurse's neck and kissed even her.
"But he will be weak for some time still," she said, discouragingly,
"and had better not see anybody."
"She might have waited until somebody had suggested rushing in to see
him," as Nancy said.
Oh! I forgot to tell you that our married sister, Nancy--Mrs.
Masters--has arrived home safely. Her home-coming, which was going
to have been such a terrific bust-up, fell very flat, coming just
after that thrilling evening of the capture of the German spy in our
house and in the very middle of all our anxieties about poor Mr.
Lascelles. Hardly any fuss was made.
We had to receive her, so to speak, in a whisper: because the house
has to be kept so very quiet still.
It's quite a nuisance.
Now that we know he is going to get well quite soon, we don't mind
grumbling at him. As for me, I can't think why I made such a donkey
of myself and actually shed tears.... I suppose it was tiredness,
really, after not being able to sleep for excitement. Thank goodness
there was nobody but Evelyn to notice how silly and hysterical I got!
She has plenty of other things to think about.
We'll now talk a little about the newly-marrieds!
You didn't suppose they were going to settle down at the Grange, did
you? Oh, no. Captain Masters--that is Harry--whisked Nancy off to
stay with him where he is billeted at some rooms right at the other
end of the village.
Aunt Victoria says she thinks it is not at all a bad plan for a young
couple to start married life in billets, because then they will not
get any new-fangled, grand ideas about artistic furniture, and a
great deal of space, and a servants' hall and a private sitting-room
for every member of the family. She says they will start by getting
quite accustomed to the hideous inconvenience of rooms, and that, in
the first flush of being together, they won't notice where it is!
Then, afterwards, whatever other place they go into of their own,
they will look upon it as a kind of mixture of heaven and the "Ritz!"
(Later.)
Evelyn and I have just been to tea with Nancy in her newly-married
billet and found her surrounded by stores of cardboard boxes and
drifts of tissue paper--wedding present stuff. It has begun to roll
in now from Harry's relations. Salt-cellars, mustard-pots,
silver-framed calendars, silver photograph-frames, and all the usual
sort of things. "His people have been very kind," she told us at
tea, which we had out of the silver Queen Anne service on the oval
tray, which is another wedding present. I thought the first day she
arrived that being married had made no difference at all to Nancy.
She looked as young and pink and bubbling over with jolliness as she
had before, only if possible she was more jolly.
But to-day, at tea, I noticed that there was a change. She did talk
a tiny bit as if there was a great gulf fixed, or at least a trench
dug.
I could see Evelyn getting rather annoyed at this little "superior"
way, these airs and graces; but I didn't mind them.
Everything wears off as long as the other people don't take any
notice.
So I fully expect that Nancy's newly-married manner will wear off,
too, including the little flourish with which she calls her husband's
friends by their Christian names. "Edwin," if you please for Mr.
Curtis (I consider Edwin the limit in names myself, but no doubt poor
Evelyn would be only too thankful to have the chance to utter it!)
and "Frank" for Mr. Lascelles!
"Have you seen Frank yet, Evelyn?" she asked, after we'd talked all
about her new relations and the honeymoon, and how long it would be
before Harry went out. Ages, he thought. If a man's told he may
expect to go within the next fortnight, he's pretty safe in taking a
house at home for eighteen months. All this we were told before
Nancy went on to talk of Mr. Lascelles, as she blew out the fire of
the silver spirit-kettle with the long, slender trumpet affair that
made her look like a very pretty, golden-haired sort of archangel
Gabriel. "Or does the dragon of a nurse still mount guard?"
"She still mounts guard," said Evelyn resignedly. "Never mind, as
soon as he is convalescent she will go. We really have missed him,
Nancy, almost as much as we miss you. He has been exactly like a
brother."
"And a brother that one is so proud of, too," Nancy took up. "When I
think of that minute mite hanging on to that German brute, who would
have killed him, Edwin says, in another minute, I feel that the
Victoria Cross wouldn't be too much for him, provided there were room
for it to hang on his chest!"
"Oh, come! I say, he is not as small as that!" I couldn't help
protesting, through a mouthful of Nancy's tea-cake. "You all talk as
if, because a man isn't six foot three, you couldn't see him!"
"Why, Rattle! it was you that was always talking as if he were too
small to be seen," said Nancy. "It was you who said that dancing
with him would make you feel as if you had got hold of a flea!"
I felt the family blush creeping up from my collar to the roots of my
hair as I said, "That was ages ago, that was before he was wounded,
that was before he was so ill and nearly died."
"Oh; was that it?" said Nancy, smiling at Evelyn; I'm sure I don't
know why. "Well, he is nearly convalescent now," she said
consolingly. "I hear he is cross."
"Cross!" said Evelyn and I together. "Who has been bothering him?"
"Nobody," said Nancy. "The nurse said he was cross."
"I hate all nurses," I said fervently.
"Why, that is exactly what Mr. Lascelles said himself to the nurse,"
reported Nancy. "Simply because she wanted to wash his face, and
then she told me it was an excellent sign, and that he would soon be
well."
"I should be glad," said Evelyn, "to have a talk with the little
creature once more!"
She doesn't know--nobody knows how much I, Rattle, want to have a
talk with the little creature, as they call him. (Quite absurd of
them, because he is inches higher than any of our shoulders.)
But what I was going to say was that I am going to have the first
talk with him. For I've got a secret from them, now.
I've had a letter from Mr. Lascelles. There!
A letter written in his own hand!
It was brought to me by Lance-Corporal Gateshead, who somehow got
round Mary the housemaid to smuggle him up into Mr. Lascelles's room
while that nurse was having her dinner.
It's written, this note of mine, in rather wobbly pencil on a blank
sheet torn from a note-book and folded into a funny little twist. It
simply says:
"DEAR BETTY" (Not "Miss"),
"I must see you as soon as I can possibly work it. I have something
to ask you. It's that favour which I was going to ask you the other
morning, and I haven't had a chance since. I do so want it. Nurse
says that I may see one of you for a minute, at six to-night. Please
be the one. I do so want it.
"Yours,
"LONELY SUBALTERN."
"P.S.--I really am, you know."
Just fancy! I mean his putting "Lonely Subaltern" again, like in
those first letters.
And the "favour"! What can it be? What _can_ it be? _Anybody_
would be bursting with curiosity if they had had a note like that
brought to them from a young man; I mean from anybody-- Curiosity is
the oddest feeling; it makes you so excited that you simply can't
enjoy your tea, really; and you feel kind of aloof, too, from the
light-hearted talk of other people about other things. Isn't it
funny? _You_ don't want to stop and see anybody's husband. Besides,
when Harry Masters came in, I got a kind of clairvoyant sense that he
hoped we'd go soon and leave him to have a _tête-à-tête_ tea with his
blooming bride. I believe in clairvoyance. So I didn't care if I
_wasn't_ the eldest of the party. I just _did_ get up first, and
told Nancy we should have to be going!
It's ten minutes' walk from the newly-married billet to the other
side of the village, and I simply had to be back by six o'clock and
hear all about the mysterious "favour" I was to be asked.
_Anybody_ would have been dying to!
(Later.)
I'm afraid I rushed Evelyn home, rather; tearing across the short way
by the fields, with Mr. Lascelles's note crackling inside my blouse.
Yes, I daresay you are going to say idiotic things about wearing
young men's letters next to one's heart, but it wasn't meant for that
kind of thing at all. It was simply that I always lose everything
that I put into my vanity-bag, and I didn't want to lose this letter,
because--well, because it would look so silly of me.
"Any one would think we were running for a train," said Evelyn rather
pettishly when we got back beyond the village post-office.
I said, "My feet are cold," and rushed on like a runaway horse.
Who could help it, in my shoes? And it seemed as if we must have
been mistaken about the fields being shorter than the road to the
Grange, because it really took a longer time than usual!
When we got to the Grange--well! We needn't have rushed! We might
as well have stayed on at Nancy's for all the use our rushing had
been! In fact, if we _had_ stayed with Nancy and finished our tea,
properly, it would at least have postponed the sickening
disappointment that awaited us at home!
Aunt Victoria, looking a little flushed and flustered, met us in the
hall.
"What's the matter, Auntie?" I asked at once. "Mr. Lascelles isn't
worse, is he?"
Aunt Victoria pronounced these awful words, "He's gone!"
"Gone!" exclaimed Evelyn and I together, not able to believe our
ears. Evelyn added in a horrified voice, "Do you mean he is dead,
Auntie?"
"Dead! Good Heavens! no, my dear child," said Aunt Victoria in an
equally horrified voice. "I only mean that he has gone away from
here."
"Where on earth to?" we asked loudly.
"To the Junction," said Aunt Victoria. "To that nursing home for
wounded officers that they have got, that one that nurse came from."
"Gone!" I said. "But how? How could he possibly go?"
She pointed to the marks of wheels on our gravel.
"A motor came over from the Junction and whisked him off at half-past
five. He asked me to say good-bye very nicely to you girls for him."
Here I heard myself say in a very angry voice, "Who came in the
motor?"
"The matron of the nursing home, Miss Gates," Aunt Victoria told us,
fanning herself with her lavender-scented handkerchief as if she'd
had a rather fatiguing time. "She's a----" here she sat down on the
hall chair and breathed hard. "A very efficient woman, I should
think, very determined and very capable. I don't think Mr. Lascelles
wanted to go at first. He said he was quite comfortable with us if
he was not too much trouble, and the lady said that he would
convalesce so much better at her home, and she took him off."
"Kidnapped him!" said Evelyn. "When he wanted to stay here! How
tiresome of her, wasn't it, Rattle?"
I didn't say anything. I was too cross. If there's one thing I
loathe, it's bad manners. And wasn't it the worst manners in the
world for that woman, that Miss Gates whom I'd seen once, to come
swooping along in a motor to people's houses, carrying off people's
reluctant guests--reluctant to go with her, I mean. Here she came,
upsetting Aunt Victoria!
(You could see poor Auntie had had her "siesta" disturbed, and was
feeling it.) Upsetting Mr. Lascelles! For he'd something to ask me!
He wanted to see me! Had written to me--and she'd whisked him off
before we could catch a glimpse of each other!
Now goodness only knows when I shall be able to find out what he
wanted; a convalescent man, too, ought to have his wishes studied!
Any one with any idea of nursing should have known that!
"Nurse packed up and went with them, at a minute's notice," said Aunt
Victoria.
"She would!" said I. "She's just the sort of nurse who would belong
to that matron!"
Aunt Victoria, still fanning herself, said, "Perhaps she was right;
he will have every comfort and care there."
"And didn't he here?" I said indignantly.
Aunt Victoria murmured something about the matron not seeming to
think Mr. Lascelles's billet was exactly adapted for
hospital-nursing, not any of the modern ideas of----
"That's nurse!" said I.
"Well, the matron was an old friend of his," Aunt Victoria said
mildly. She sticks up for everybody, first Baby-Killers, then
Kidnappers!
"She has the prior claim. It seems she nursed him before once--saved
his life----"
I remembered the appendicitis-story on the road that day, and how
she'd stared at me from the motor, and how she'd called Mr. Lascelles
"Frankie," and all about her.
I said, "He called her 'Sister,' I suppose?"
"Yes, my dear, I believe he did."
"I tell you what _I_ call her," I said bitterly. "A managing old
maid!"
I don't know when I've felt so angry.
CHAPTER XX
I PLAY PROVIDENCE
Well, I've always heard that when one is very upset oneself, the best
cure is to force oneself to take an interest in somebody else's
troubles.
Of course, I'm not exactly "upset" about Mr. Lascelles having been
kidnapped out of this house before I could hear what he wanted. I'm
sorry for him, that's all.
But I'm sorrier still for my poor crossed-in-love sister Evelyn.
I really must devote some attention to her and her rejected suitor.
It makes me perfectly miserable to see somebody I am fond of taking
love as Evelyn takes it. Her smile is a most half-hearted affair,
and she takes absolutely no interest in her food, though she eats
pretty well. At dinner-time she tried to make a meal of vegetables
and gravy and one grain of rice pudding; but immediately Aunt
Victoria looked up and said: "Evelyn, my dear child, is that all you
are going to have? Aren't you feeling well? What is the matter with
you?"
Of course, it is the last thing that poor old Evelyn wants for
anybody to think that there is anything the matter with her, so she
had to pretend that she had got rather a headache again through the
stuffiness of the room where they have their bandaging class, and
that that was why she didn't feel like eating.
And then next day she took to roast mutton and two helpings again as
if nothing had happened.
However, of course I knew that concealment was gnawing away like a
worm in the bud, like that girl in Shakespeare, and that Evelyn was
feeling as if all the champagne had gone out of her life, as I once
heard Mr. Lascelles express it. We do so miss him and his
expressions!
It is--really, it is too beastly to be in a house full of women once
more.
It is nearly as bad as before the troops came to Mud Flats.
At least, now I suppose one can't very well say it is as bad as that,
because, after all, we do have men coming and going. Our
brother-in-law, Harry, is in and out quite a lot, and he brings
various of the men with him to have tea and to play the piano in the
Lair.
And then, of course, we have occasionally the evidently quite
homeless Mr. Curtis. Evidently Evelyn cares as much for the creature
as if he were every inch a soldier, and, goodness knows! there are
plenty of inches of him to be!
So since that is her ideal I do think she ought to be allowed to have
it instead of grizzling and moping about it all day and half the
night, and to think that it's only her obstinate idealism or whatever
she likes to call it that is standing in the way of her being
perfectly happy with the creature forever! You see, he won't be
having to go out to the front like Nancy's Harry, because he (Mr.
Curtis) has got a permanent job as instructor here.
And I am sure Aunt Victoria could be got round, considering how
surprisingly kind and sympathetic she was about Nancy's war marriage.
Evelyn really is like the old song, "If she dies an old maid she will
have only herself to blame."
This afternoon I told her so in the Lair, where she was sitting
looking like the absolute incarnation of The Pip. We had a long,
fruitless, and exhausting argument about it, which I won't go into
again, because it was just like the last one we had, which you read
all about before the German spy night.
Arguments are like history, having a way of repeating themselves.
And this one had a sort of constant refrain from Evelyn of, "It is
all very well, Rattle, but _you don't understand_. You might be able
to go to Edwin--I mean Mr. Curtis--and say to him, 'Look here, I have
thought better of it. I will marry you, I thought I minded too much
about Nancy at the party, and all that sort of thing, but I don't.
All that I mind would be not being able to be with you any more'--I
couldn't do that, Rattle; you don't understand."
I got so very tired of what one can't help considering as a parrot
cry!
It is no earthly use ever arguing, especially when you are the
youngest.
And all you can say is, "Yes, I do understand," and then the other
person says, "No, you don't, you can't," and there you are!
What can be done?
Nothing!
So I resigned myself, and merely said, "No, perhaps I _don't_
understand. Of course, I am the youngest, and, of course, I
_haven't_ ever been in love, so, of course, I haven't any right to an
opinion; but look here, Evelyn, can't you talk it over with somebody
else, and see what they think about it?"
Evelyn, holding her face in both hands, said gloomily, "What sort of
person is there that I could possibly talk it over with?"
"Well," I said, "somebody married, who knew all about love and that!"
"Aunt Victoria, I suppose you mean," said Evelyn, with bitter irony.
"No, of course, not Aunt Victoria," I said patiently. "But what
about Nancy?"
Evelyn gave a little furious jump out of her chair.
"Nancy!" she exclaimed indignantly. "But Nancy is the one that all
the trouble is about--Nancy is the very last person that I should
ever breathe a word to!"
"Is she?" I said, staring at Evelyn across the good old ink-spattered
tablecloth of the Lair. "Now, that's funny, because, if I had been
you, Nancy would have been the very first person to whom I should
have turned! Just because she was at the bottom of the trouble, as
you call it. I call it a storm in a teacup and a mountain and a
molehill," I said, getting mixed up rather in my metaphors because I
was really serious.
I said: "If I were in your place, Evelyn, I should go straight away
to Nancy and get her to tell me exactly what had happened that time
on the staircase. I should say: 'Look here, I do so want to marry
Edwin, but I don't feel I can unless I know exactly how much he liked
you first. Do you think he would have asked you to marry him if you
hadn't got engaged to Harry Masters? Do you think he is only making
love to you because he is one of those young men who marry the family
rather more than the girl? They get a type that they admire and they
stick to it. If the Nancy of the family won't have them they take
the Evelyn. That is what I am afraid of,' I should say to Nancy, in
your place, 'and I really don't know how to stand it; please tell me
exactly everything that happened by the staircase.' I should make
her give me a full descrip----"
"Stop, Rattle, stop! You really do say such dreadful things,"
complained Evelyn, putting her hands over her ears to shut out
anything else I might have been able to say. "You really are what
Mr. Curtis once said you were----"
"Oh? What?" I asked. For one can't help always being interested in
what people have said of one, even if the people don't exactly thrill
one. "What did Mr. Curtis call me?"
"An artless and opinionated kid," said Evelyn, so listlessly that,
disgusted as I was, I hadn't the heart to tell her what I thought of
her precious Mr. Curtis; a pompous mile of measuring-tape! "You
really can't enter into one's feelings yet. I'd much rather die or
go into Miss Gates's Nursing Home for life than say a single word of
all that to Nancy! And promise, Rattle!" she added, suddenly,
"promise that you will never say a word of it either. Promise,
Honour Bright, that you will never breathe a single syllable of it to
her. Oh, if you did----"
"All right, old thing, I won't; don't get so fearfully excited. I've
promised now. I always do what I say I will, don't I? I've never
broken my word yet," I said, drawing myself up to my full height,
which unfortunately made me bump the gas-bracket, hard. Rubbing my
head, I said, "You're simply spoiling two lives, that's all."
"Oh, no; I expect he'll get over it, as you said yourself," was
Evelyn's dreary answer, "and as for me, I shall go away and be a
V.A.D. as soon as the time's up and I needn't be under Aunt
Victoria's wing any more. I've got all my Red Cross certificates,
and I ought to do some useful war-work."
"But, my goodness, d'you expect this war will still be going on,
Evelyn, when you're twenty-five?"
"Captain Masters says it'll last till the youngest of our politicians
die, so I expect it'll be going on when I'm seventy," said Evelyn.
You see the kind of mood she was in!
In fact, I was feeling rather pessimistic and ruffled myself as I
strolled out of the Lair again.
For, you know, Evelyn dragging that promise out of me has just
scotched a nice little plan that I had been making on my own.
I thought, "Well, if that silly Evelyn won't go and have it out with
Nancy, I will go myself; I will tell her the whole complicated affair
and hear what she has to say. Why not?"
However, that, you see, was nipped in the bud. I am a man of my
word, or a woman, or a flapper, whichever you like to call it, and my
lips are sealed by my own hand as far as Nancy is concerned.
But here a ray of hope dawns upon me. _I haven't sealed them as far
as anybody else is concerned_. I haven't said that I wouldn't say
anything to the other principal actor in this performance. So why
shouldn't I speak to Mr. Curtis?
In fact, I shall. I have made up my mind to speak to him as soon as
I get the opportunity!
The chance came sooner than I expected it would.
I went out for my usual afternoon walk, up near that field that is
all riddled with trenches, where I had come upon Penny that afternoon
when I little dreamt what it was he was up to.
And again I passed the Class, singing, "When the Boys come Home,"
with, trailing a long way after them on the road, the leggy,
eyeglassed figure of Evelyn's adored one.
He looked at me as much as to say, "Why are you alone, not with HER?"
but I wasn't damped.
"You are just the very person I want to see," I told him in a
friendly way, stopping short as he saluted. "Will you see me home by
the longest way round, please?"
"Wh--what? Oh! certainly! With pleasure, Miss Elizabeth," said Mr.
Curtis; with a great deal of hesitation would have been truthfuller.
Evidently he was alarmed beyond words at the idea of this
_tête-à-tête_ with the artless and opinionated one, and couldn't
think what on earth it was going to be about.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say: "Do not agitate yourself, my
good young man! this is out-of-doors, with no staircase window
rattling, and at any moment there are motor-lorries and people
passing, so you needn't think I shall expect you to behave to me as
you did to Nancy."
However, I realised that this would be quite the wrong opening. So I
said nothing for a moment, but merely trudged along by his side, in
the gloaming, oh, my darling, when the lights were falling low.
To return to prose. We were going down the road to the Junction that
Mr. Lascelles and I had whizzed down on our way to Nancy's wedding.
What ages ago that seemed now! It really does seem as if we had
never had what I used to call the "Incubus" in the house with us at
all....
However, here was this other creature wondering what in the world it
was I had got to say to him.
It was a situation that called for the greatest delicacy and tact, as
it says in the papers.
I thought I had better stop beating about the bush, take the bull by
the horns and begin at once with the main issue.
I began: "Mr. Curtis! You know that my sister Evelyn is desperately
in love with you?----"
At this he turned round on me like a jaguar at bay or something of
that sort.
His voice was as sharp as any old pistol shot as he rapped out at me,
"Miss Elizabeth! I don't know what your idea may be in making this
kind of joke; but, if you don't mind my saying so, we will have no
more of it. I consider it to be very poor taste."
You would have known he had been a schoolmaster, wouldn't you, by the
way he said that? Schoolmasters always talk about "we" when they
mean just themselves, just like the Kaiser.
And he--Mr. Curtis, I mean--started striding away so fast that, long
as my own legs are, I had to put my best foot foremost to keep up
with him.
"Mr. Curtis, Mr. Curtis," I exclaimed. "It isn't a joke----"
"It is not a joke to me," said Mr. Curtis grimly, through the
gathering darkness.
"No, nor to me," I said, panting a little, for I was out of breath
galloping after him like this, "nor to Evelyn."
"Please, I do not think we need bring your sister's name into it,"
said Mr. Curtis, as stiff as a dress-shirt that has just come home
from the laundry.
He must be frantically in love, mustn't he, to think that Evelyn's
mere name is too good to have her youngest sister mention it?
"But I must," I insisted. "I had to mention Evelyn's name, because
it's about her that I want to speak to you."
"I should prefer it if you chose some other subject for
conversation," said that awful Mr. Curtis that Evelyn was breaking
her heart over at this moment. How true it is that Love is blind! I
should think he must be deaf as well, besides not having any sense of
humour!
However, faint heart never won fair gentleman! Not that Mr. Curtis
is fair, being one of these men who is much of a muchness with their
own khaki. I do like a man to be one thing or the other. Either
definite black or quite fair or even red; but to get on with what I
was saying to Mr. Curtis.
"I really mean it," I insisted, trying to keep in step with him. "My
sister Evelyn is fearfully in love with you. I--I am very anxious
about her because of it!"
"Miss Elizabeth, you must allow me to beg you not to say these
things," barked Mr. Curtis, still doing the heavy schoolmaster.
"Since it is not a very doubtful joke on your part, it is a very
unfortunate and incomprehensible mistake."
"It isn't," I insisted, striding along by the side of the man who was
going to be my brother-in-law, or I would know the reason why.
"Strange as it may seem, it's the absolute truth."
"I am the best judge of that," said the stony voice of Mr. Curtis,
just above me. "Since you have broached the subject, Miss Elizabeth,
I may as well tell you that I have the best possible reason for
knowing that Miss Evelyn does not and could not ever care for me in
the least."
"She told you so, I suppose?"
This satire was quite lost on him.
If you notice, satire nearly always is, on everybody. You have only
got to say a thing without smiling and everybody takes it literally
and sees nothing further in it.
"She did tell me, since you must know," said Mr. Curtis, shortly.
But at the back of his words there was such a sort of quiver of
sorrow and yearning and hopeless loneliness that I overlooked the
rude things he'd said about me. I could not help feeling sorry for
him.
"Because a woman says a thing it isn't always a sign that it is
perfectly true," I informed him. "It is not true that Evelyn does
not care for you. Even if she says so one-hundred-and-sixty-five
times a day, it isn't true, Mr. Curtis. You aren't the only person
with 'reasons' for what you say, either."
He turned towards me very quickly.
It's a shame that all these goings-on and excitement didn't happen in
the summer last year, when one could have seen a young man's face and
what he looked like when he was walking down a country lane beside
one, talking about Life and Love and things.
By this time it was so dusk I couldn't see what the expression on Mr.
Curtis's face was like at all.
But I daresay it was just as anxious and agitated as his voice as he
turned to me and said, "I want to know what you mean. I want to know
what reasons you have for supposing that--that--that what you have
hit on is the truth."
I said, with the proud consciousness of being perfectly truthful, "I
didn't hit on it. I shouldn't have believed it, but that--well!
Evelyn told me so herself."
"What?" cried Mr. Curtis, and turned round in such agitation and so
quickly that his eyeglasses fell off his nose and dangled violently
over his not-nearly-broad-enough chest.
"Yes," I said firmly. "Evelyn told me. I had it all out with her,
more than a week ago. She'd simply murder me, too, if she knew that
I was talking about her to you and telling you all about it at this
moment."
There was a long, long pause as we walked along.
The voices of the Class came faintly to us from further down the road
as they tramped along, singing:
"_There's a sil--ver loin--ing
Threw ther dark claoud shoin--ing----_"
And then Mr. Curtis said to me in the quickest, most uncertain voice,
"Quite right. I ought not to be discussing--HER, even with you."
Then another pause, after which he said, more quickly still, "I've
_got_ to know. Please tell me exactly what she did say; every word,
if you can."
Well, thank goodness, I have a memory like a gramophone. I can
remember every syllable that people said and how they said it.
I simply took this memory of mine back to that afternoon when I found
Evelyn sobbing in her bedroom, and I rattled it all off, with much
expression, to the young man who had been the cause of those sobs.
He said in that quick voice, "I can't believe it. I can't believe
it!"
"You will have to," I said. "If you had any sense," I added, to this
young man who'd been what they call "_so-brilliant-up-at-Oxford_,"
"you would know that I couldn't possibly have made that story up.
Made-up stories," I said, "always sound so much more like Life than a
real one. That is one of the ways by which you tell the difference.
That is what they mean by truth is stranger than fiction. There is
nothing more improbable than the things that go on in real life,"
said I, meditatively. "I have been finding that out all this autumn."
But I found that Mr. Curtis hadn't been listening to one word of my
interesting theories.
He was striding down the road beside me again so fast that I had to
run a little, muttering, "Nancy! She minded that about Nancy?"
Just as he was saying this we arrived at that end of the village
where those semi-detached and furnished with those castor-oil plant
villas are that I told you about, where the Masters are in billets.
No light coming out of them, of course, but you could tell them by
the dark gables against the pale sky.
Here, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, Mr. Curtis stopped.
"Miss Elizabeth," he said earnestly, "you have said on your honour
that you are in earnest? You are serious about what you have just
told me?"
"Yes, I don't say on my honour twice as a rule," I said, rather
snappily.
"It is true, then," said Mr. Curtis, going off in his daze again.
Then again he woke up out of it and said briskly:
"Very well. In that case there is only one thing to be done, Miss
Elizabeth."
I urged him to let me know what it was, of course, but he went on to
say, "Thank you very much for what you have told me. I'll say good
evening."
"Good evening?" I echoed, astonished.
"Yes, I think we part company here," he said firmly, saluting again.
"I must go in and call upon Mrs. Masters."
"No, you don't," I said, gently but firmly. That is, not very
gently, but quite firmly. "You don't go in and see my sister Nancy
without my hearing what it is all going to be about."
For, you know, although _I_ had promised Evelyn solemnly that I
wasn't going to tell Nancy anything, _he_ hadn't. I certainly didn't
see why I should be done out of hearing him do it. Of course, I knew
that it was about Evelyn that he was going to talk to Nancy.
He said, very stiffly, "This matter is between ourselves, Miss
Elizabeth."
But I said, "No fear. I told you everything. I don't see why I
should be cut out of all the fun now, just as if I were a little
child that you talk French before as soon as the conversation begins
to be a little interesting. In fact, I won't. I'll _be_
'opinionated.' I am coming in with you now!"
CHAPTER XXI
NANCY TO THE RESCUE
All this wrangling was going on in front of the creaky gate of the
Masters's billet, me holding Mr. Curtis by the sleeve.
I daresay I wasn't behaving like a lady; I didn't care if he thought
I was a perfect un-lady and how could I be that angel's sister?
Matter of utter indifference to me. He'd already said I was artless,
and a kid. All right. But I _would_ hear the end of all this, and
besides, I had to see that he got my side of the story right to Nancy.
So, taking the bull by the horns again, I rang the bell, three times.
And when the scared rabbit came to the door who's the landlady's
servant, I said firmly, "Mrs. Masters," and I clumped in in my rather
heavy boots, shoo-ing Mr. Curtis in front of me as if he were a horse
I had to turn in to a field.
A door a little further down the passage opened, and a soft voice,
almost a coo, called out, "Is that my beau'ful boy come home? Is
that my handsome love?"
Fancy! It was Nancy! Quite a strange voice to me, it sounded; like
hearing the chime of a new clock, that you've not got accustomed to,
strike in the house. And fancy hearing her say those extraordinary
things! Was _that_ what she called Harry when she thought he was by
himself? Her handsome love! Well, so he is, I suppose, but it
sounded so unexpected from her! I always knew she was sentimental,
but not that she would go to these lengths! Wasn't it funny?
Even while I was thinking this, I'd called back quickly, "No, it
isn't him. It's only Mr. Curtis and me."
"Oh! Rattle, my dear child, do come in," cried Nancy, relapsing into
her usual voice again. "Come along; you're just in time for the
muffins."
"I don't think I will come in, Miss Elizabeth," was Mr. Curtis's last
effort. "I--I will look in to-morrow."
"Yes, and to-day," said I, clutching him firmly, "to your right.
Quick--March!"
And I fairly pushed him into the Masters's little, overcrowded
sitting-room, with all the vases and the enlarged photographs of the
landlady's sailor-sons mixed up with the wedding presents, and Nancy
on her knees on the hearthrug, taking a dish of muffins out of the
grate.
Nancy had got on all new clothes, I saw.
A new blouse, that you could see her pink satin ribbon tie-ups
through, a skirt I hadn't seen before, delicious silk stockings and
shoes that made her feet look quite small, though she knows perfectly
well that she and Evelyn and I all take large sixes, and why should
we mind, being much taller than most men in the place? Mr. Lascelles
told me one day that he would hate a very small foot on a rather
large woman. Make her all out of proportion, and remind him of
wooden legs.
However, to get on to Nancy. (By the way, she has got her hair done
quite differently. This is just to show you what a mass of changes
married life brings about!)
She beamed upon Mr. Curtis, and said, "Hullo, Edwin. So you have
come, too. Sit down. No, not in that easy chair. You will never
get up again with your long legs. Take the sofa, it's higher. You
been taking my baby sister for a walk, you incorrigible philanderer?"
This remark annoyed me so intensely that I snapped out:
"No! Your baby sister has been taking him for a walk, and for a good
talking-to. And now he has got something to ask you. Go on, Mr.
Curtis. Go on," I said mercilessly, seeing him turn turtle and not
wanting to go one bit. "Your shot."
"Well, Edwin, what is it?" said Nancy, in the kind young married
woman's voice.
Edwin said desperately, "It is something I would have liked to ask
you about by ourselves. That is--I don't know
exactly--I--er--_Ahur_!" he cleared his throat. "I really think
we'll leave it alone, perhaps."
Nancy turned to me.
"Men are so bad at beginning always," she said, encouragingly.
"Rattle, you tell me."
"I can't--that is--I mustn't," I said regretfully. "I promised
Evelyn on my solemn word of honour that I wouldn't breathe a single
syllable."
"Oh, it's about Evelyn, is it?" said Nancy, a sudden light coming
into her face. She added, quite as a matter of fact, "Won't she have
anything to say to you, Edwin?"
I could see by "Edwin's" expression that it was a bombshell to him
that Nancy should have guessed he ever wanted to have anything to say
to Evelyn.
Men always think that nobody knows what they are up to except
themselves.
It's such a _rest_ to come back to the society of one's own sex!
Yes, it was perfect relief to me after all my uphill, heart-to-heart
talk with Mr. Curtis, to whom every mortal thing has to be explained!
Nancy, without another word having to be said, caught at once the
wireless messages that were going on all round in the atmosphere, so
to speak, and said rapidly, "I'm sure she likes you awfully. Or if
she won't have you it's simply because she thinks you've been making
love to me first. Is that it, by any chance?"
Mr. Curtis looked at Nancy with a glance that was one quarter
admiration and three quarters disapproval, which I suppose is what a
man always does feel when he thinks that a woman has been at all
clever in any way.
He said, "Mrs. Masters, you are a witch!"
Nancy said, "If you will excuse me a minute, I will run and get my
broomstick and my steeple hat--I mean, I'll just get my things on and
come out."
"Where to?" I asked, rather staggered, because I knew she was
expecting the adored Harry ("the beau'ful boy") to come in to his
sumptuous, newly-married tea at any minute.
But she said, "Where do you think? I am coming on to tackle Miss
Evelyn at once."
"Oh, no, please," said Mr. Curtis and I together, both looking
absolutely aghast. "Evelyn mustn't know anything about our having
told you--not that we did really tell you anything, but--but----"
But Nancy had whisked out and presently whisked down again in furs
that were evidently another wedding present. A perfect plantation of
them, in fact, and new boots with pearl grey suede tops and the
cheekiest tassels dangling from the tops of them.
"I am going to revisit my girlhood's home with my younger sister, and
you aren't invited, Edwin," said that puss-in-boots, Nancy. "You had
better disappear to your billet and resign yourself to having seen
absolutely nothing of the Verdeley family for the last forty-eight
hours."
So out we went again into the pitch black evening.
On the doorstep we met Nancy's new husband, who exclaimed rather
angrily, "Hullo! hullo! what's this? You are not going out, Honey,
just as I am going to get my tea, are you?"
"Only for a few minutes, on urgent family affairs, darling," said
Nancy sweetly. "You take Mr. Curtis back with you and get him to
share your lonely tea. Yes, do. Don't forget the hot muffins in the
corner by the fireplace."
So, having shaken the two men, off we pranced again.
"What are you going to say, Nancy?" I asked her as we got to the
garden gate of the Moated Grange.
"I am not sure till I'm in the middle of it," said Nancy gaily, but
in a low voice. "Still, I am determined that if I am the only
obstacle it will soon be cleared out of the course of true love
between Evelyn and Edwin Curtis! They are just made for each other,
for Evelyn is such a bundle of scruples and conscientiousness and all
that sort of thing. And she wouldn't be happy with what you might
call a normal kind of young man! (How could she be? Look at them.)
Now, Edwin Curtis is the kind of young man for whom nine women out of
ten haven't any use at all, as Harry says. I confess he would bore
me stiff in ten minutes," said Nancy frankly. "So it would you,
Baby. But birds of a feather flock together. And there's quite a
pretty name for that sort of young man, Harry says. He's an
'idealist.'"
We found that other bird of a feather, by which I mean Evelyn,
pretending to knit in the Lair, which was unlighted except for the
red-hot log fire into which she was gazing, seeing pictures I expect
of herself and Mr. Curtis living in a little home of their own for
the next ninety years! Just think how awful!
"Do you mind if I shed a little light on the subject?" said Nancy,
apologetically. "I want you to look at these patterns and tell me
which I am to have for an evening dress. Choose by candle-light for
candle-light, you know." And she brought out one of those little
books of many-coloured silk of various soft shades--rose pink, Nile
green, blue and palest heliotrope.
"But I thought you had got five evening frocks, out of your
grandfather's allowance?" said Evelyn. She had already confided to
me that she thought it perfectly dreadful to spend money on clothes
in war-time, however newly-married you might be! Surely one nice
plain coat and skirt and a few serviceable Vyella shirts and some
country boots ought to be quite enough for the trousseau of any
war-bride whose husband expects to be off to the front before they
had eaten up what was left of the wedding cake!
"Yes; but Harry wants me to have a new frock as much as possible like
the mauve one I was wearing the first night he saw me," explained
Nancy, treading hard on my foot with her new French heel to draw my
attention to how she was just going to begin. It hurt like anything,
but I was a Spart and did not give a sign.
"You remember, Evelyn, that party that those three--poor Frank
Lascelles, and my Harry and Mr. Curtis----?"
"Yes, I remember," said Evelyn in her shortest and most discouraging
voice, not realising how absolutely impossible it is to discourage
any young newly-married woman who's had a whole week of getting her
own way and doing absolutely anything she fancies in this world.
Nancy went on in tones of a rather gay grandmother reminiscing over
her past of about forty years ago. She does talk much more, and with
much more "go" since she's been married, anyhow!
"Dear me! I wonder what made me behave so awfully badly that
evening? Because I felt like it, I suppose. Do you remember,
Evelyn, what a fearful lecture you gave me for getting Mr. Curtis to
kiss me?"
"_Getting_ him to!" exclaimed Evelyn, quite suddenly. "Allowing him
to, I suppose you mean?"
"Good gracious, no! I don't mean 'allowing to.' If I did, I should
have said so. It doesn't so much matter saying what you mean once
you are married," said Nancy, gaily. "You can allow yourself a
little luxury in the way of telling the truth now and again, after
_that_.... Do you think this would look pretty with the gold
waist-band and a little edging of this, Rattle?"
Here there was another prod of Nancy's heel on my instep. Evidently
a signal, so I rose to it and said, "Never mind the gold belt. I am
far more interested in these 'glimpses into the Past.' You don't
mean to say, do you, that that evening when you went and sat out with
Mr. Curtis on the landing over that rattling window that you actually
asked him to kiss you, did you?"
"Oh, no! Not in so many words, my dear," said the shameless Nancy.
"But it amounts to the same thing, doesn't it, when you allow
yourself to lean so close to a young man's shoulder, when he is
wedging a window, that your curls get rumpled against his cheek?"
She went on in an awfully good imitation of Evelyn's shocked voice
when she doesn't like something that has been said.
"In that case a girl knows perfectly well what to expect. She has
only got herself to blame. The young man naturally has to take
advantage of the situation or look like a fool, which naturally Mr.
Curtis did not wish to do."
"But what about you?" I asked, since Evelyn said nothing. She had
her golden head bent over the book of patterns. But I could see that
she was greedily devouring every single word that passed between
Nancy and me.
"Oh! I--I just wanted to see what he would do. A young man with
that reputation of never having kissed a girl before in his life. I
thought it would be _so_ amusing, Rattle!"
I put in the question that I saw Evelyn was simply dying to ask.
"And was it amusing?"
"Rather not!" said Nancy with fervour. "Just a peck on the cheek as
if he were rubbing a smudge off, and then a look of, 'Oh, Great
Scott! Why have I done this? For Heaven's sake let's get back to
the others!'
"You see, Rattle, the Mr. Curtis type of young man isn't a success at
flirtations. He doesn't want to kiss a girl casually just because
she happens to be there and rather pretty, like Harry does--did, I
mean. You see, Rattle, Mr. Curtis is the kind of man who cares about
nothing but The Real Thing, the One Love of a Lifetime. Taking a
girl and setting her up in a niche in his heart, to worship her
forever, without a look or a thought for any one else. It's a--a
rather rare type, Harry thinks. But Mr. Curtis certainly is that
type. What one calls The Idealist."
Here she gave a lightning swift wink at me as she pronounced the word
the second time this evening with oh! such a different tone of voice.
You would have thought that Nancy considered an idealist was the only
type to be! She went on with the same earnestness, "He keeps his
real kisses for his real love-making, for the girl whom he wants to
make love to for keeps."
Again I asked the question that I knew that the silent Evelyn was
longing to have answered.
"But look here, Nancy. Aren't you the girl that he would have liked
for keeps?"
"Me!" said Nancy, with a little shriek of laughter. "Good Heavens!
what made you dream of such a thing?"
"Why," I said, "I always thought that Mr. Curtis was longing to marry
you, and that Harry was his successful rival!"
"I must tell Harry that," said Nancy with her enjoying laugh. "Only
last night we were talking about how odd it was to think of the
different kinds of girls by which the different kinds of men were
attracted. Harry said the kind of girl he was crazy about, such as
me," drawing herself up in the new furs, "always had left old Curtis
as cold as mutton, his idea of an attractive girl being the sweet,
womanly sort of creature who thinks about Life and Duty and taking
things seriously, and never putting any powder on her nose, and all
that sort of thing. That is so unlike me! I am perfectly certain
that Edwin Curtis is only too thankful that he wasn't asked to be
best man at the wedding, in which case he would have been required to
give me another kiss! Too trying! Well, I must be off now to my
married home," she chattered on, after one glance had shown her that
Evelyn had lapped up every word of this. "Good-night, Evelyn, thanks
so much for your advice about the frock. Good-night, Rattlesnake.
Don't bother to come to the door with me."
But of course I went to the door with her, and to the gate. "You
might tell me one thing," I whispered as I kissed her good-night.
Another newly-married change is that she has taken to using some
rather nice scent like honeysuckle and raspberry jam mixed.
"You might tell me," I said, "how much of that rigmarole is true?"
"Rigmarole? I don't know what you mean, Rattle," said Nancy very
solemnly. "True? I don't know what you are talking about." And she
stalked off without another word. I am sure I heard her laugh as she
turned the corner of our lane, where I saw the red point of a
cigarette (Harry's) coming to meet her.
But I am sure she will never tell me now.
That is another of the things that I shall never, never know!
CHAPTER XXII
TWO MORE ENGAGEMENTS
I'm sorry I can't tell you exactly what happened next, because, you
see, I don't know myself.
The history of any family is bound to have some of these hiatuses in
it.
What Nancy went back and reported to Mr. Curtis I never heard.
However, my conscience was simply beaming upon me for having done my
little best to make two people happy. The afternoon after that talk
with Mr. Curtis it beamed some more.
For the very moment that he could get back from his Class (and he
must have galloped!) there came the gallant Curtis to call. He asked
quite unabashedly for "Miss Evelyn Verdeley," with the accent on the
Evelyn.
I heard him, because I happened to be in the hall when Mary opened
the door, so I said, "You'll find my sister in the drawing-room."
He _didn't_, of course; there not being a soul in the drawing-room,
as Aunt Victoria was enjoying that convenient siesta of hers
upstairs, while Evelyn was knitting in the Lair in the most awful old
delaine blouse--the last sort of blouse that any young woman would
want to be proposed to in. It really was truly thoughtful of me not
to let her, I think. I came into the Lair with a perfectly
un-give-away face on and said, "Evelyn, be an angel, will you? Go
into the drawing-room and talk pretty to the curate until Auntie has
finished her nap. He's come," I said, sorry for the fib, but what
else could I tell her? "he's come about some subscription or other."
Evelyn sighed. "Can I go in this blouse?"
"No. I don't think you can," said I, critically. "It is all undone
at the back, and there are two loops off, and pins look so untidy. I
am sure the curate would be horrified."
This awful thought drove Evelyn upstairs and into a nice clean white
silk shirt and her hair done again before she ran down to the
drawing-room to see the curate.
Curate was good, wasn't it?
Well, of course I didn't wait in to see what was going to happen when
Evelyn discovered her mistake, and found herself face to face with
the rejected Curtis youth. I slipped on my belted green blanket-coat
and the little leather cap that I had worn at the Junction on Nancy's
wedding-day, and I went out for a prolonged prowl by myself all over
the charming country scenery, don't you know! of Mud Flats. I do
think I was rather an unselfish angel, because you know I couldn't go
to tea with Nancy even. I knew that the beloved Harry would be in,
and that he would be perfectly furious at having his _tête-à-tête_
spoiled two days running by tiresome sisters-in-law, so I walked
doggedly all over the place, and even when it began to rain that
drizzling, mizzling, depressing way it does here, I wouldn't go in.
I thought the emptier the house is the better for Evelyn and Mr.
Curtis to come to their understanding!
Then I thought, yes, presently the house will be quite empty when two
out of us three girls are married, and then I shall be left alone
with Aunt Victoria.
Well, I suppose that is only to be expected. The youngest ought to
be the last to be married, even if she ever gets married at all,
which is not always the case. Very likely I shan't get married after
all. I shall be the spinster aunt, and just live on at the Moated
Grange, spinsing. It isn't very often that out of a large family of
girls the whole lot get married and live happily ever after. And who
have I had to like me awfully much, since there were no young men who
you could count as young men at Mud Flats?
Nobody at all!
Not unless you could count Mr. Lascelles, I thought, walking along
quickly to keep myself warm in that chilling drizzle. Of course, he
did write charming letters to me when he was the Lonely Subaltern. I
was reading them all over to myself last night when I was going to
bed, and really they're the kind of letters that any girl might be
jolly pleased to get!
It's true I didn't know who was writing to me, but he knew who it was
that he was writing to when he said all these nice things to me.
Then there was all that that Nancy told me before she was married
about the other men, and how they all said that Frank Lascelles was
frantically attracted by the youngest of the girls at his billet.
Of course it's all rubbish, that.
Still ... I do wonder what first put the idea into their heads?
(Later.)
Now, would you have believed it? Could you have imagined that any
one would have been so unkind and shown such black ingratitude as my
sister Evelyn?
When I got in to the Moated Grange, very late and very cold, and
absolutely dying for my tea, which I had gone without all for the
sake of that girl, what do you think had happened? Why, I didn't
even see her and the Curtis youth, who is just as ungrateful as she
is. They were in the Lair; still in the Lair, if you please, though
he had arrived at three, and you surely might have thought that they
had got through all they wanted to say to each other by a quarter to
six!!
But, oh no! Apparently not!
It was Aunt Victoria who met me and beckoned me into the drawing-room
with the most extraordinary mixture of expressions on her face.
"Rattle, I have some wonderful news for you," she said. "Evelyn and
Mr. Curtis have just told me that they care for each other and wish
to be engaged to be married."
"Good heavens! Auntie," I said, with my best surprised face on.
"Are you going to let them?"
"Let them!" said Aunt Victoria in a resigned tone. "I have given up
thinking about letting or not letting any of you girls do anything
you want; after Nancy and Harry I assure you nothing will surprise
me--nothing!"
Well, I thought that was good news in case I ever wish to get engaged
to anybody. I mean, if there were anybody to get engaged to!
Mr. Curtis stayed on and on and on, missing an appointment which he
had with the adjutant at the "Pearl and Oyster," and keeping Evelyn
as well as us from having a speck of anything to eat; but such is
love! It seems to be quite as good as any concentrated food as far
as going without your meals is concerned, but it does take up a lot
of time!
At last! At long last! we heard the front door bang and Mr.
Curtis's heavy boots going scrunch, scrunch down the gravel.
And then at last Evelyn condescended to come in.
She was very pink and very untidy haired and looked so happy. She
was absolutely a different girl from when I had seen her last.
I was so awfully bucked! I went up to her at once to kiss her. I
couldn't help noticing the careful way in which she gave me the edge
of her cheek to do it on! You could have seen from that that she was
an engaged girl! As soon as I could I got her alone and said: "Now,
Evelyn, do tell me. I have been simply dying to know all about it!"
Evelyn smiled kindly at me and said, in a far-away sort of voice,
"Oh, but I thought you knew. It is quite all right. Edwin and I are
engaged to be married, and I am the happiest girl in the world!"
"Yes, but I don't mean that," I said a little impatiently. "Don't
keep the conversation so general; I want to know all about it
properly. Every detail. What he said and what you said, and what
happened next, and all that."
"That," said Evelyn decidedly, "you will never hear!"
"What!" I exclaimed, simply appalled, as you can imagine, by this
black display of sisterly ingratitude. "Do you mean you are not
going to?"
"I am certainly not going to discuss it with my youngest sister,"
said Evelyn, just as if her youngest sister hadn't been responsible
for all her happiness! "Some things are too sacred to be talked
about." Well! Comment is superfluous; so I'll simply leave Evelyn's
behaviour at that.
She's been engaged a week now....
And the more it goes on the more one feels that this event has
touched the summit of all earthly excitements and that nothing
further will ever happen!
Now something has happened. This afternoon something happened by the
second post. A letter came for Aunt Victoria in a rather determined
handwriting that I didn't know.
Mary took it in to her where she was playing patience as usual in the
drawing-room.
In a short time she cried: "Oh, Rattle, my dear, it never rains but
it pours; here is news of your young friend, Mr. Lascelles."
"Oh, three cheers!" I said, feeling really pleased, for it had seemed
ages and ages since we had heard anything about him.
Also, I was only just beginning to realise how frightfully I missed
him. You see, there really is nobody young about the place for me to
talk to. Nancy married, and Evelyn worse, namely, engaged! I should
be truly thankful to have had Mr. Lascelles's merry prattle and his
footstep on the stair, if only to cheer me up for the loss of my
sister.
I said: "Is he well enough to come back to his billet?"
"No, my dear, apparently not," said Auntie, still holding on to Mr.
Lascelles's letter. "But it is suggested that he is well enough to
have visitors, and that some of us might be allowed to go over to the
Junction and see him.... Now, I'd go myself with pleasure, poor dear
little Mr. Lascelles! But you know what rheumatism it gives me to
travel in that horrid little draughty train in this weather. And
Evelyn has arranged to meet Mr. Curtis' sister, who is coming down.
So I think, Rattle, that you will have to go over and make our
apologies."
I could have skipped for joy!
You see, I was really longing to talk to somebody about the
Evelyn-Curtis affair. I knew Mr. Lascelles would be simply thrilled
to hear the details of it, considering he was the person who had
first introduced the noble-minded Edwin to the bosom of our family!
And you know how cheering it is to have an interesting story to tell
to any one who you guess will drink in every syllable with gusto!
Hence my glee. But I didn't want Aunt Victoria to change her mind
about my going, so I said quite casually, "Oh, I'll go if you like.
I'll do my best to cheer up the wounded."
Aunt Victoria said, contemplating her cards on the green table, "Yes,
I daresay he will be quite glad to see one of us again. Though I
don't suppose he will need any 'cheering up' at present. At least,
not judging by Mr. Curtis and Harry."
"Judging by Mr. Curtis and Harry?" I repeated. "How do you mean,
Auntie?"
Aunt Victoria moved the Queen of Hearts and then replied, "Well, you
see they are engaged too."
"Engaged too?" I echoed, thinking I couldn't have heard what she'd
said. "Engaged _too_? You can't mean that Mr. Lascelles is engaged?"
"That won't do," said Auntie, slipping the Queen down again. "What
did you say, Rattle? Oh, yes; Mr. Lascelles. Why shouldn't he be
engaged?"
"Why--but--but---- Yes, why shouldn't he?" I said, with a most
peculiar mixy sort of feeling in my chest; pure surprise, you know,
and unexpectedness. "Of course; everybody is, nearly. It--it--it
seems to be in the air. But, Auntie, _is_ he?"
"So it seems," said Auntie, glancing at his letter before she slipped
it back into her knitting bag. "I hadn't heard anything about it
before, had any of you girls?"
"No, I'm sure we hadn't," I said, rather dismally. For, you see,
this meant I shouldn't have even a friend left to myself! Everybody
under sixty engaged--except me! And who on earth was this other
girl--I mean this girl who had got engaged to the Lonely Subaltern?
He must have been engaged all the time he was here, I supposed.
Well! He might have told us before! Pretending to be such friends,
and keeping a thing like that from us all the time! No wonder I felt
sort of sore and hurt.
I said, "Auntie, has he told you her name?"
"Oh, yes," said Aunt Victoria blandly. Then she exclaimed, "_Ah!_"
in great delight, for the patience had "come out" unexpectedly. She
gloated over this for what seemed like ten minutes before she
condescended to go back to the subject of Mr. Lascelles's fiancée.
"Quite a surprise to me, though I am making up my mind never to be
surprised at any engagement," said Aunt Victoria, gathering up her
cards again. "I see now why she was so anxious to nurse him
herself----"
"What?" I almost shrieked. "Is it that awful domineering,
self-satisfied, blue-and-white nurse from the Nursing Home who was
here?"
"No. Oh, no," said Aunt Victoria. "It's not the nurse, it's the
matron of the Nursing Home herself."
"Miss Gates?" I ejaculated in a kind of mixture of a whisper and a
scream. "D'you mean Mr. Lascelles is engaged to be married to that
old Miss Gates?"
"So it seems, my dear," said Aunt Victoria, starting another
patience. "But you couldn't possibly call her 'old'!"
_Couldn't_ I?
I could call her lots more things than that! That woman engaged to
Mr. Lascelles?
Why, he's twenty-four, and she must be at _least_ ten years older
than that! _Years_ past any thought of engagements, and loves, and
follies of that sort!
Why--why----!
I hope she knows what they call the behaviour of an elderly woman who
goes and commandeers the affections of a mere boy? Cradle-snatching!
Robbing the nursery!
Good gracious!
So that's what she meant by calling him "Frankie" and pretending to
be a sister to him!
That's why she motored down here and swept him off to her den like
the spider and the fly!
She was sick and tired of being an old maid, I suppose, and she took
him to be a comfort to her declining years!
As for him---- Well, what he can see in a withered frump of
thirty-four----
Never mind. It's nothing to me. As far as I'm concerned he can
marry his grandmother if he likes--I mean, anybody else's grandmother.
The only annoying part about it to me is that you can't possibly
chatter away to an engaged man or woman as you can to a bachelor,
because you know perfectly well that it will all be passed on to
whoever they're engaged to. This sad phenomenon in natural history
has cut off a lot of my conversations with Nancy, also with Evelyn.
Now, of course, I shan't be able to say another word to Mr. Lascelles
ever.
So that's taken most of the interest out of my trip to the Nursing
Home at the Junction to-morrow.
I have a good mind not to go.
Horrible woman! I shan't go.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE VISIT
Well, I went.
I mean, to see Mr. Lascelles in the Nursing Home for wounded officers
at Nowhere Junction.
I thought it would be rather cat-like not to when he did want to see
me, after all, even if he is engaged to somebody else--I mean, to
somebody. Besides, he might want to say something about some of his
things that he had left at his billet with us.
So off I went on what you can only describe as a pious errand. It
was a horrible day, neither wet nor dry, but cold and piercing and
depressing. I think the most depressing day I've ever spent in the
whole course of my life.
Everything went wrong from the start. First I forgot one of the
parcels that I'd got to take Mr. Lascelles. Then my suspender broke.
And though I fastened it up with a safety-pin at the Junction
waiting-room, still, you never know when a thing like that may not
give, and there it is hanging over you like a pale-blue sword of
Damocles the whole time that you're out.
Then I missed my way to the place and wasted about a quarter of an
hour going back to the right turning.
Then, when I had got to the blessed home--a large, new, red-brick
building surrounded by sprouts of laurel--there was some mistake
about my having come.
They didn't seem to realise that I had been asked to visit a wounded
officer.
They showed me into an awful little bleak waiting-room with nothing
in it but a gas-fireplace and a framed photograph of a lot of nurses
in a group, with Miss Gates in the middle with her hair done like
they used to when mother was a girl.
I waited for what seemed like an hour, which, of course, made me
furious. I should have been far better employed sitting at home
going on embroidering Nancy's chemise-top or darning my own stockings
or something really productive like that, instead of hanging on
waiting until this wretched matron-fiancée person of Mr. Lascelles's
chose to think that I had been there long enough.
I wondered why a woman like that with a big nursing home of her own
and what they call one of the most sacred professions should choose
to go and get herself engaged to be married.
And at her age, too!
Just as I was thinking this the door opened, and in came the
so-called fair fiancée herself--Miss Gates--the matron.
She had a little starchy cap perched on her brown hair with lots of
grey in it--I mean the hair, not the cap--and she also had on a
business-like looking navy blue alpaca gown with little lawn collar
and cuffs, but no apron. What a very different sort of bride she'll
make from Nancy!
Well, in she came and shook hands very briskly with me and said: "Oh,
yes, Mr. Lascelles does expect you; so I think I may permit you to
see him for a few minutes."
Permit you, you know! That made me so annoyed that I didn't do what
I intended to do--namely, ask if I might congratulate her on her
engagement to our old friend.
Yes, I say old friend because when a person has been billeted on you,
you get to know him better in a week or two than you would get to
know in years and years some young man that you only saw at hockey
matches or at Badminton or subscription dances and that sort of thing.
Well, led by this matron, I went upstairs to an upper landing that
went all round the well of the staircase.
There was a sound of playing the piano and singing "When the Girls
come up to Town----" from one of the rooms where I suppose a lot of
them were, and a quite young youth came out in very beautiful grey
mufti and only one leg, poor darling, hopping and holding on to the
banisters and laughing at some one behind him.
"Now, Mr. Tracey, Mr. Tracey," the matron called, "where are your
crutches?"
"Oh, Sister, I do hate the beastly things," said this young wounded
officer in a very drawly sort of voice, looking hard through a
monocle at me. "They simply ruin the set of one's coat, don't you
know."
"Once a nut, always a nut, I suppose," said Miss Gates, and then she
opened a door and said, "Here's a visitor to see you, Frankie."
Mr. Lascelles was sitting up in bed, looking, I must say, not nearly
as well as he did when he left the Moated Grange. I don't believe he
is one bit better for having left there, in spite of being nursed by
his fiancée. He was wearing the same striped cream and pale blue
pyjamas that he had on the night of the Zeppelin raid, and his
red-gold hair was all rumpled under the bandage round his head, and
his eyes were much brighter than they had any business to be, and his
cheeks were flushed--feverishly flushed.
As for his hands, I could have cried over them! They were shrunk so
very tiny, and they had got so white and transparent, with blue veins
showing through the backs of them. They felt so absurdly soft, too,
for a man's hands, for he took both of them to hold my hand when I
put it out to him and said, "How do you do?"
Never again shall I call the young man, as I have once or twice
called him, by his sort of pet name of "Lonely Subaltern"!
You see, never again will he be that, now that he is engaged to this
business-like person who owns this nursing home.
I suppose she will never leave him. I thought she was never going to
leave him, even this afternoon, when I came to see him, for there she
sat smiling patronisingly upon me as I brought out the various little
presents and parcels that I had got with me.
"Thank you, it was most awfully sweet of you, Miss Elizabeth," he
said, smiling for the first time really as he touched a little white
china jar of lemon-cheese that I had made for him, tied up with
lemon-coloured ribbon off a chocolate box.
Then I said something about the weather being very warm for the time
of year, and Miss Gates said that personally she had thought it was
rather cold, and Mr. Lascelles said in a sort of duty voice that
being in bed still he hadn't noticed much what the weather was like.
And then a terrible pause ensued, and nobody said anything or seemed
to know what to say next.
I was just going to get up and say that Aunt Victoria was expecting
me back immediately.
Just then the door opened and the nurse came in and said: "Sister,
there is an officer downstairs come to ask how many patients you will
be able to take in by Wednesday."
"Oh, I will come down and see him at once," said Miss Gates, getting
up briskly. Then she said to me: "Excuse me a moment," and went out.
I was only too thankful to excuse her for any number of minutes. All
curiosity, of course, because of what I had to ask Mr. Lascelles. I
was determined not to go back without having found out something I
had been bothering about ever since I had first got his message.
So no sooner had the door closed behind Miss Gates's blue alpaca back
than I turned to Mr. Lascelles, and began gabbling quickly so as to
get it all in. "Oh, before I go away, there is something I simply
must ask you, Mr. Lascelles."
"Oh, yes, do tell me what it is," he said, in a much more natural
sort of voice--his old schoolboyish one, like before he was engaged.
"I say, it was most frightfully ripping of you to come."
"Oh, not at all," I said politely; "somebody had to come, and Evelyn
and Nancy were busy, and Aunt Victoria can't stand these draughty
trains, so, you see, I was the only one who could manage it."
"Otherwise, I suppose you would have let one of the others do it?"
said Mr. Lascelles, in rather a hurt voice, though what he had to be
hurt about goodness only knows!
So I began again, and said: "Look here, Mr. Lascelles. You know you
wrote a letter to me the day before you were taken--I mean, the day
before you came here?"
"Yes, I did," said little Mr. Lascelles, flushing up to the roots of
his hair again, "and look here! I've something to say about that. I
never got any answer to it, Miss Elizabeth."
"Well! I don't think," I said, "there could be any answer to it.
You see, in the letter, you asked me to come up and see you because
you wanted to speak to me; and I couldn't very well come up and see
you when you had just been whisked off--I mean, when you had just
gone away to a nursing home."
"You might have written," said Mr. Lascelles, sitting up, a little,
bolt upright figure, in the bed, and speaking quite resentfully. "I
thought you might have written if you wanted to know what it was all
about, that is."
"Of course I wanted to know," I said, speaking as dignifiedly and
calmly as I could, and gazing aloofly at the bottle of eau de Cologne
on his dressing-table. "I knew there was something you wanted to ask
me, even before that night. Will you tell me what it is?"
"Sure you care to hear?"
"I shouldn't ask," I said, quite angrily, "if I didn't want to know!"
"Very well, then, I had better tell you," said Mr. Lascelles, also
gabbling a little, as if he wasn't quite sure that his destined bride
might not come prancing in at any moment.
"You--you--that--that----"
He actually began to stammer in a most absurd way and to look more
feverishly flushed than ever as he went on at last: "You remember
that blessed photograph that you sent to me when I was the 'Lonely
Subaltern'?"
I said, rather sharply: "I don't think you need remind me of that
now."
"Why not? Why not?" asked Mr. Lascelles, quite heatedly.
Well, of course, it was obvious why not.
It was because I didn't think an engaged young man ought to rake up
any bygones, however merely platonic they were, with any sort of
other girl, if his fiancée could be called a girl exactly.
However, I couldn't tell him this; it sounded so absolutely silly, so
I adopted my cool, dignified manner again and merely said: "Well, but
I thought we had arranged to forget about that idiotic quarrel of
ours."
"It was the quarrel I was remembering," said Mr. Lascelles, pushing
his hair off his fevered brow at he spoke; "although you did tear it,
you know you did, and that is what I have been going to ask you about
that photograph. You know I have got one half and you kept the other
half of it. I want to know whether I mayn't have it to join on to my
half." This was unexpected. In a kind of way it was touching, his
still thinking about old friends and caring to have photographs of
them. But I couldn't let him see I was touched. It would seem so
absurd.
So I spoke as if I had a heart as light as a feather.
"Join on? Oh, no; I don't think so," I said. "It would be too
silly; it would make such an idiotic mark right across. I think
those bits had better be burnt."
Mr. Lascelles said nothing for a minute. Then he shut up his mouth
very tight under his baby moustache as he said, rather shortly: "Very
well, since you won't let me have that, can't you let me have another
photograph some time, Miss Betty?"
I was so pleased--I mean surprised--to hear that old name coming out
that I nearly said in the first moment, "Yes, I will send you another
copy." However, thank goodness, I refrained in time. I think I was
reminded by hearing the jingling of the keys and the quick step in
the passage of Miss Gates, his fiancée.
Let her give him her photograph--hers is the only woman's photograph
he has got any right to want, or even to say he wants, since I don't
suppose he wants mine at all, really.
So I got up from the white bedroom chair and said with a conventional
sort of smile: "I am so afraid I haven't got another copy of that
photograph."
"Is there no such thing as getting another copy off the negative?"
demanded Mr. Lascelles, quite in his own quarrelling voice.
"No, I don't think so," I said.
Mr. Lascelles, sitting up there in his pyjamas, and looking very
nearly as angry as that afternoon when I had slapped his face for
him, said: "Why not? Why not?"
In another minute I should have told him why, and I should have said
something quite bitter, too, on the subject of the greed and
grabbiness of engaged men who ask for the photographs of other girls
as well as those of their own legitimate fiancées--but, of course! at
that moment the door opened, and in whisked his everlasting
legitimate fiancée once more.
"Now, Frankie, I think you have talked quite enough," she said, in
that brisk, managing voice of hers which I should find so trying if I
were her fiancé. "You will be getting a temperature, you know, and
it will be ages before you are allowed out again, and as for
duty--oh! no, no. Miss Verdeley," turning to me, "I am afraid that I
shall have to send you away now."
But I was already at the door. I wasn't waiting to be sent away, I
can tell you!
And so I told her practically, for I said: "Oh, yes, I have been
longing to go for the last ten minutes. I have a really very
important engagement at home that I have got to keep, only I thought
I had better wait and say good-bye to you, Miss Gates."
And I shook hands with her, though I didn't want to a bit, really.
I noticed she wore a plain gold signet ring on her engagement finger.
I suppose Mr. Lascelles will choose the real engagement ring for her
later when he is well enough to go out.
I didn't shake hands with him; I just didn't think he deserved it. I
only nodded to him and said: "Well, good-bye again, Mr. Lascelles! I
am so glad to have seen you looking so much better."
Which I hadn't, of course!
"And in such good hands."
Which, of course, I thought awful--still, of course, they were his
choice!
Then I went out of the room and downstairs and out of the house and
through the town again, walking so quickly that when I got to the
station I found I had three-quarters of an hour to wait for the train
back to Mud Flats.
CHAPTER XXIV
A MIDDLE-AGED ROMANCE
There I had to sit, feeling depressed to tears, with nothing to look
at but a stack of dark grey milk-cans and an advertisement for
Bovril. It seemed a century even when I found by the station clock
at the Junction that I had only been there half an hour.
Fifteen more minutes to wait! There I sat, getting more cold-toed
and low-spirited and angry with that woman every minute.
For, of course, it was her fault. It was she who had bundled me out
of Mr. Lascelles's room ages before the time, and consequently kept
me hanging about here.
Well might I tell you that this was the most depressing day I had
ever had in the whole of my life.
I suppose it was another five minutes before I saw, coming through
the station entrance with a lovely "swing," and a quite unconscious
glad eye, and taking a Tommy's salute as if he'd been accustomed to
them for generations instead of only since the War, a tall,
British-Warm-clad form that I knew. In fact, Nancy's "handsome
love." Her "beau'ful boy."
He turned his really very good-looking face towards me and broke out
into smiles as soon as he saw who it was.
"Hullo! Rattle, my child," he exclaimed gaily, as he saluted, "you
are looking rather blue."
"I should think so, indeed," I said. "Blue with cold! Sitting in
this disgusting station for hours and hours and hours waiting for the
revolting train. Are you coming by it, Harry?"
"Yes, I am. I had to come over and see the O.O. My motor-bike is in
hospital again, and I am reduced to going by rail. We will travel on
together to our charming hamlet, shall we?"
"Oh, yes, Harry, I would love to," I said, quite affectionately.
"It's so nice to see somebody I know, after the truly rotten
afternoon that I have been having!"
"Why, what have you been doing, Baby Juno? Shopping, and not able to
get anything to match?" asked Nancy's good-looking husband. "Come
and sob it all out on my shoulder, in here----" He settled me in a
corner seat of a nice first-class compartment (that is to say, it is
nice for our line, which is too awful!), and put a foot-warmer just
in the right place for my feet, and was altogether so comforting and
nice that I could _quite_ imagine why Nancy seems so blissfully happy
since her marriage!
She has got, as Mr. Lascelles would say, "some" husband!
One hears a lot of talk about people boasting of their husbands, and
saying how "splendid" they are because they "never have eyes for
another woman or even see when one is there!"
This, I think, must be rot!
For I should think that the nicer a man was to the others the more
chance his own wife would have of getting treated as a woman likes to
be treated by him. I've always thought that; long before I knew a
lot about men, even.
I know that if I have a husband (which, of course, I never shall
have) I shouldn't want to be the first one to teach him how a woman
likes to have a foot-warmer put under her toes, or a cushion stuffed
into the curve of her back! Cutting his teeth on me, so to speak;
no, ta!
However, why dwell upon this painful topic of husbands? It doesn't
matter what sort of a fad I should have about them, considering, as I
say, that I am destined to live and die an old maid to the end of the
chapter.
I shall have to content myself with feeling very happy to have one
brother-in-law who can spare a little time to be nice and polite to
his old-maid sister-in-law.
So I smiled gratefully at him, and said: "Oh, no, I haven't been
doing anything nearly as nice as shopping. I just went up to the
nursing home for wounded officers with a few things from Aunt
Victoria, and to inquire after your friend, Mr. Lascelles."
"My friend, is he?" said Captain Masters, and bit his moustache,
looking at me in a quizzical way under the peak of his cap. "Well,
and how was old Frank?"
"Oh, he is not quite well yet, of course," I said, as at last the
train began to steam out of the Junction and to thread its way over
the gloomy-looking marshlands towards our village. "Still, he is
being very--er--very firmly looked after. Naturally, he is getting
every care and attention given him, since he is being nursed by his
fiancée."
"By his what?" exclaimed Captain Masters, suddenly sitting up in his
corner of the compartment and staring hard at me.
"By his fiancée--the woman--I mean the lady--that he is going to
marry," I exclaimed. "Why do you look so awfully surprised? Didn't
you know of his engagement?"
"Know of old Frank being engaged to somebody else--I mean, being
engaged to somebody?" said my brother-in-law, still staring at me.
"Who is he supposed to be engaged to?"
"Oh, I thought everybody knew; I thought it was official," I said,
feeling awfully horrified that I had gone and put my foot in it again
by publishing something that was meant to be a secret. "I thought
that as you are a great friend of his you must have heard that he was
engaged to Miss Gates."
My brother-in-law opened his handsome eyes so wide that I wondered
they didn't fall out on to his moustache. "Miss Gates! Rattle," he
said. "Do you mean the matron of that place where he is?"
I nodded. I couldn't help feeling a little bit cheered up by my
brother-in-law's evident surprise.
For at all events it hadn't only been me that thought it was
extraordinary for a quite schoolboyish and jolly sort of young man
like Mr. Lascelles to go getting himself engaged to an old thing, or,
at any rate, a middle-aged thing, like that woman who was nursing him!
"Why, she might be his mother!"
She would be the mother of subalterns like him if she had only
managed to get herself married at a reasonable sort of age! Like my
sister Nancy, for instance! instead of waiting and waiting on the
shelf until she finally contrived to catch the last train home, as
they call it!
Meantime, here were Harry and I sitting in our train home--the real
one, I mean, and he staring his eyes out as if he had just heard the
most astonishing news of his life.
He said again, "Miss Gates? Isn't she ashamed of herself?"
This cheered me up some more. I do think Harry is a sensible man.
He said just exactly what I had been thinking myself.
I said: "She didn't look a bit ashamed of herself when I was at the
home just now. In fact, she looked jolly bucked up and proud of
herself, swanking about with his engagement ring on her finger and
giving orders to him exactly what he was to eat and drink and do!"
"Ye gods! The poor little beggar! How on earth did he manage to get
himself into that galley?" ejaculated Nancy's nice husband. "Poor
old Frank! I always said that he is absolutely helpless in the hands
of a woman! As soon as he gets away from all of us, here he is
driven like a sheep to the slaughter by a blue alpaca matron!
Anything in petticoats, and if it is sufficiently determined he is a
lost man! It's the colour of his hair, I expect, Rattle! Red hair
always is a danger signal!"
"Well, I don't know--your hair is black enough, and you were quite
helpless in the hands of Nancy," I argued. "And as for Edwin Curtis,
he is mud-coloured, and with him it was first Nancy and then Evelyn!
So it doesn't seem as if any coloured hair could be a safeguard,
Harry!"
Harry Masters shook his head bewilderingly. He was still murmuring
to himself. "Miss Gates, Miss Gates. Thank goodness I am married,
otherwise I know I should get swooped on and dragged to the altar by
a hospital nurse the first time I got pipped. This is what I call
adding fresh terrors to being wounded!"
Then he turned to me, and said, "Rattle, my dear, are you perfectly
sure of the news?"
I said dolefully, "I wish I were even half as sure that the Germans
are running short of food. Oh, yes! I am quite sure."
"Frank told you so himself?" asked Harry Masters, quickly.
"No! I knew it before I saw him," I said. "He wrote to Aunt
Victoria to tell her, himself."
"I am blessed," said my brother-in-law, staring first at me and then
out of the carriage window at the familiar landscape of Mud Flats.
For we had crawled into the station now.
I got out, and held out my hand to say good-bye to my brother-in-law.
For I expected he would make a bolt to his billet, in the opposite
direction from The Grange.
Rather to my surprise he said: "Oh! I am coming with you, Rattle, if
you don't mind. I expect MY WIFE" (excuse my putting it in capital
letters, but that was how he pronounced it) "is having tea at The
Grange to-day, as I said I might be late. I will come in and fetch
her.
"Besides," he added, as we set off at a good pace down the road
towards our house, "besides, I really feel that I have got to ask
Aunt Victoria to explain to me in cold blood exactly what's happened
about poor old Frank and his engagement. I really don't seem as if I
can believe it just yet."
My goodness! it is so comforting when one has been in very low
spirits to be talked to by a really sympathetic soul.
My spirits, which, as you know, had been right down in my boots all
the afternoon, were quite high by the time we reached The Grange, and
found ourselves in the middle of nice warm firelight and the smell of
muffins and the society of my two pretty sisters--just a contrast to
the bleak and blue-alpaca plainness of the woman at the nursing home!
I could see they'd heard about the engagement and were almost dead
with surprise, and no wonder!
I was just finishing my muffin, and then opening my mouth to say that
I had found Mr. Lascelles as well as could be expected in the
circumstances, when I was interrupted before I began by a ringing at
the front door.
"Who on earth is this?" said Nancy. "There isn't very much tea-cake
left for him, whoever it is."
Evelyn, who was sitting drinking her tea with her left hand, as her
fiancé was sitting on her right, said rather guiltily: "I expect it
is a message sent round from my bandaging class to ask why I haven't
been there lately. Somehow I do seem to have been so very busy."
At this moment Mary opened the dining-room door and announced "Major
Lawless."
Now, I expect you have all forgotten the very name of Major Lawless?
I am sure I had, and so had the rest of us.
But Major Lawless was the first person who arrived down here at Mud
Flats to make arrangements for the billeting, and he has been in and
out several times since the others have been here, only somehow he
isn't the kind of man who makes the slightest impression on me. He
is a kind of pale, round-shouldered, khaki shadow, besides being at
least forty years of age, and I have always called him to myself "The
Knight of the Rueful Countenance."
That name wasn't a bit appropriate this evening.
My goodness! He was beaming all over his face. He wasn't stooping a
bit, but holding himself up and smiling away under his grey sprinkled
moustache, and out of his eyes, which really are rather blue and nice.
Aunt Victoria made room for him to sit close beside her behind the
tea-tray, but he said, "I mustn't stop a minute, Mrs. Verdeley,
really! No, thanks, I have had tea--honour bright, had an enormous
one with the colonel at the 'Pearl and Oyster' just before I came
along. The fact of the matter is, you have been so kind to me ever
since I came to Mud Flats that I felt I ought to look in and tell you
a great bit of news about myself."
Here the poor dear old dug-out drew himself up again, and looked as
if he had been made at least Commander-in-Chief, with a D.S.I, and
K.C.B. and all the rest of the letters of the alphabet into the
bargain!
But it was Nancy, my married sister, who guessed at once what had
happened.
She called out merrily across the table:
"Major Lawless! I believe you are going to be married!"
"You have guessed it in one, my dear young lady. You have guessed it
in one," said the funny old thing, and then there was a general
chorus of "Hearty congratulations, sir----"
"Wish you joy, sir----" "Delighted to hear it--I hope you will be as
happy as my wife and I----" (this from Captain Masters).
And then in a sort of concerted burst came the question that sounds
like a comic song.
"Who's the lady?"
Standing by the door just about to go out and beaming all over his
face, Major Lawless said, "Ah, I was sure all you young people would
be certain to ask that."
Clever of him, wasn't it, to guess?
"I think one or two of you have met her already," he said. "I
believe, Masters, that you have. The lady has been a very dear
friend of mine all my life; in fact, I may tell you that ten or
fifteen years ago I asked her to become my wife----"
Fifteen years ago, girls, think of it. Why, I was only just three,
with little white socks and bare legs and a frock like a
cutlet-frill, when this lady of Major Lawless's was old enough to
become his wife! Isn't it funny!
"--and she refused me."
"_Oh!_" cooed Nancy sympathetically, but pinching me under the table,
"how _could_ she!" (Talk about marrying and settling down, well,
that's not the effect it's had on my second sister. All the mischief
she didn't know already she's being taught by her husband, it seems
to me.)
"She was wedded," Major Lawless went on with this Romance of the
Middle Ages, "wedded to her profession at that time. Then, three
weeks ago we met again, and--well!" said Major Lawless, laughing as
he opened the door, "with a little persuasion I found I could bring
her round to the belief that--er--love was better than a
profession----"
"Good!" from Harry Masters, with his eyes glued to his wife again.
"--and that a home and husband of her own are what every woman needs."
"Hear, hear, sir," said Mr. Curtis.
By this time the Major was out in the hall.
It was Nancy who called eagerly after him, "But, Major Lawless!
Wait, wait! You haven't told us her name yet!"
The delighted face of Major Lawless peeped round the door again for a
minute as he replied, "Her name is Angela. Miss Angela Gates. She
is in charge of that nursing home at the Junction. Good evening!"
And off he dashed.
We heard the front door closed behind him. Then we heard him
prancing off down the road like a two-year-old, whistling away to
himself that old Scots song,
"_My Love she's but a Lassie yet._"
What d'you think of that?
Inside the dining-room our party sat round the tea-table and the
wreck of the large tea that we'd had, and simply gaped and goggled
upon each other in various stages of dumbfounded flabbergastedness.
Aunt Victoria found her voice first. In tones of mild surprise she
exclaimed, "Did the Major say Miss Gates? Can he really have said
Miss Gates? Yes? You all heard him? Dear me! Then how does she
come to be engaged to poor dear Mr. Lascelles and to poor dear Major
Lawless as well?"
"Because she's a wicked, designing woman," cried out an indignant
voice that I found was my own, shaking. I gazed round at my
O-mouthed family and said, "Just think of it! She's engaged to two
men at once!"
Nancy said in a more hopeful voice, "She can't marry them both!"
"No! That's why she's going to unscrupulously jilt the first one," I
explained, heatedly. "Don't you see? She won't want to marry a
seared old yellow leaf like Major Lawless, when she can claw an
attractive young one like Mr. Lascelles----"
Even as I said it I found myself gasping with astonishment over the
extraordinary things that I was saying, and then, in a dazed voice I
heard Nancy's husband bursting in with, "Aunt Victoria! If you've a
spark of natural affection left for any of us, let me ask you a
favour. I want to see old Frank's own letter about himself and this
extraordinary harpy of a woman; the letter in which he told you of
his engagement; may I?"
"Oh, yes, I think I've kept it," said Aunt Victoria, mildly. "That
letter is in my knitting-basket in the drawing-room. Go, Rattle, and
fetch it; be quick."
CHAPTER XXV
LOVE'S NEW NAME
This--this was the fateful note from Mr. Lascelles.
Nancy's husband, seeing that Auntie had mislaid her glasses again,
read it aloud.
"The Nursing Home,
"Nowhere Junction.
"February 14th.
"MY DEAR MRS. VERDELEY,
"Thanks so much for kind inquiries. Yes, I am getting on very
nicely, and I hope soon to be perfectly fit and back again at work
and in my comfortable billet with you.
"However, as I shall not be out for a few days yet, would it be too
much to ask if you or one of the Miss Verdeleys would be kind enough
to come over and see me?
"I have no visitors, as the Junction is so far away from any people I
know, and it gets a bit dull sometimes.
"Miss Gates asks to be very kindly remembered to you. She takes
great care of me, in fact looks after all of us like a dragon, in
spite of her engagement, in which she seems to be very happy.
"With salaams to all of you,
"Believe me,
"Dear Mrs. Verdeley,
"Yours most sincerely,
"FRANK LASCELLES."
There was a general silence of bewilderment round the table.
Then the voice of Evelyn said: "But, Aunt Victoria, is that the
letter you thought was announcing Frank's engagement to Miss Gates?
It is announcing nothing of the kind."
"No, so it isn't," said Aunt Victoria in her mild, soft voice. "What
could have made me think so? Give me the note, Harry, my dear, will
you? Ah! here are my glasses, under my lace as usual.... Now...
Ah, yes! Of course. I see what it was," she went on, gazing over
the top of her spectacles at the grey sheet. "Here it is. You know
poor dear Mr. Lascelles's handwriting is so peculiar. _Her_
engagement, he says. I went and read it 'our.' And of course I
thought it meant their engagement--Mr. Lascelles's engagement to this
Miss Gates."
Nancy's husband burst into a roar of laughter. "But, Aunt Victoria!"
he cried, "did it seem likely?"
"Dear me! my dear Harry, I don't know how you can ask whether
anything seems likely or unlikely, nowadays," protested Aunt Victoria
in a quite injured tone of voice, looking first at Evelyn and her Mr.
Curtis and then at Nancy and Harry. "There is a regular epidemic of
engagements just now, what with one and another of you----"
Nancy took up, "Yes, but Auntie! It's not quite the same sort of
thing. Just think! Mr. Lascelles, a mere boy, and so young for his
age, even! and Miss Gates!"
"She seemed to me a very capable woman," said Aunt Victoria, rather
severely. Upon which they all, even Mr. Curtis, went off into fits
of laughter. All, that is to say, except me.
I was feeling far too horrified and beaten-up-eggish to indulge in
any light-hearted girlish mirth.
You see what upset _me_! I'd snubbed him; I'd been rude to him, a
wounded hero, and all, and for no reason.
You see if he were not engaged there was no earthly reason why I
should not have let him have my absurd photograph and all if he had
wanted it, and he did want it!
However, one can't explain that kind of thing at a tea-table before
millions of aunts and brothers-in-law and people. So all that I
could do was to pretend I was choking into my quite empty cup of tea,
to get up and rush into the Lair.
And there, just as I thought I was going to have a minute's peace to
collect my scattered thoughts in, Nancy rushed in after me!
"Rattle, darling!" she said, beaming all over herself. Then she put
her arms round me. "_Rattle!_"
I knew exactly what she meant. Can you imagine anything more
aggravating of her than for her to go imagining, if you please, that
I was too overcome by joy that Mr. Lascelles wasn't engaged after all
to face them? I said, bending over my skirt, "It's quite all
right--it's nothing. It's only my suspender given way again. I did
this up at the Junction pro tem., but I shall have to sew it now,"
and I reached for my work-basket on the table. "Do go back and
finish your tea."
"Not any more, thanks," said Nancy, imitating the curate's voice.
Then, very firmly in her own voice, "You may take in Aunt Victoria
and Evelyn with your nonsense, but you won't take in me! I always
knew you liked him. Didn't I tell you so, ages ago, the day before I
was married, even? And Harry says that he (Frank) is simply mad
about you, Rattle. He always has been. Don't be a silly girl and
waste any more time about pretending that you don't care as hard as
you can!"
"Go away," I said, stamping my foot and keeping my face well hidden.
"I will when I have just begged you once more not to waste any more
time," said my married sister. "Look at Harry and me; we had the
sense to be engaged the third time we met, yet we shall never stop
regretting that it wasn't the first time, the night of the party----"
"What? When you kissed Mr. Curtis?"
"Oh, yes, that time," said the shameless Nancy. "Harry and I were
married a fortnight after that. Why wasn't it a week? Nothing will
give us back those days that we missed before we told each other so.
In war-time, too, when they may--they might be the last.... And,
Rattle! My baby sister!" She put her nice cuddley arm about my neck
again and whispered, "I don't want you to have any more days to
grudge!"
"Thanks," said I as dignifiedly as I could, still busy with the
suspender-clip, "but I don't think I should ever feel like that
myself----"
"Oh, you would! Oh, yes, you would. I can tell!" said that odd
Nancy, smoothing her hair with that new scent on it against my cheek.
"It's all very well for Evelyn to have a sensibly long engagement and
a good 'start' and all that sort of thing. I'm sure she'll be quite
happy, but----" Here Nancy laughed, and wound up, firmly, "I don't
suppose she'll ever really know anything much about _Love_!"
This was a weird sort of thing to say, with Evelyn's new engagement
ring actually on Evelyn's finger at that minute. Wasn't it _funny_?
"Of course they're fond, and devoted, and tastes in common, and I
know that she cried buckets over it all.... There's more in things
than that," declared young Mrs. Masters. "You're like me, Rattle, I
think.... And you'll just see if I'm not right!"
(Later.)
I have been wondering--oh, I have been wondering whether Nancy knows
what she is talking about....
It's an unsettling sort of day. The Early Spring weather, Aunt
Victoria says it is. One doesn't feel like settling down to anything
definite; isn't it funny? All this morning--the morning after the
day I went to the Junction, I've just been wandering about doing
sundry little odd jobs that there are to do about the place, washing
my hair and polishing my nails.
Also I have fished out that torn half of the picture postcard of me
that Mr. Lascelles wanted, and that has been hidden away in the
pocket of my sports coat ever since the day of that dreadful quarrel
of ours! Shall I send it to him?
He did beg for it. He really did seem as if he would like it better
than a new copy. I have a good mind.... Or would it be a little too
much as if I wanted to be nice to him?
I wish I knew what to do!
I think I will.
I shall put it into an envelope--the photograph, I mean--and send it
off to Mr. Lascelles at that gloomy, gloomy home for wounded
officers. I shan't write a letter, though. I don't feel I know what
to say. He can write. Goodness knows he used to write long enough
letters to me in the old days. This first one, that's all getting
torn at the creases, took eight pages. Yes; let _him_ write....
(Later still.)
I had just put that torn and crumpled photograph into an envelope,
and while I was addressing it to Frank Lascelles, Esquire, I heard
the hoot of a motor horn outside.
I looked out and there I saw the big brown car that had pulled up
beside Mr. Lascelles and me on the road on the fateful day of Nancy's
wedding.
And in it, who do you think? Miss Gates, driving, and beside her,
looking like a Knight of Very Cheerful Countenance indeed, Major
Lawless.
Behind them in the car, with his face peeping out of a mass of wraps,
and his whole self looking like a teddy-bear with three coats on,
sat--the man whose name I'd just been writing down.
I didn't know what to do.
I suddenly felt far too nervous to go and open the door. How
perfectly terrible that I should have to see these people!
For Aunt Victoria was upstairs, and Evelyn was out as usual at that
time in the afternoon watching her Mr. Curtis instructing his class
of sappers! Petrified, I sat there at the writing-table in the
drawing-room, waiting for Mary to announce the party. To my
astonishment, after I had heard the bell ring and Mary go to the
door, I saw the car drive off again, with Major Lawless and his
fiancée talking and laughing together like a boy and girl.
They weren't coming in, those two! Only _Him_!
And here there's another of those hiatuses in the family history of
us. For I don't believe I shall ever be told what my brother-in-law
Harry must have said to Major Lawless after he left the Grange last
night, nor what Major Lawless thought about it all, nor how he'd
managed to induce his fiancée to allow "her" patient to get up from
his bed and come careering away to his own billet for the first
outing since he'd left it!
Still, it had all happened.
Well, Mary (all smiles) showed him, Mr. Lascelles (all smiles also),
into the drawing-room and we sat him down in Aunt Victoria's big
chintz-covered armchair.
Well, I stood there looking at him in khaki that seemed suddenly to
have stretched too big for him. I couldn't think what to say. About
a hundred sentences seemed buzzing in my head at once.
All I could say was: "Were you really fit enough to come over here
to-day?"
"I should jolly well have had to be at death's door if I hadn't
come," said Mr. Lascelles, very quickly and decidedly. "What do
_you_ think?"
No answer to that sort of question, is there?
Then he asked another unexpected question. Pointing with his wasted
scrap of a hand to that envelope that I'd not yet fastened up, and
that I was still holding, he asked suddenly, "What have you got
there, Miss Betty?"
Now, it is an absurd thing, and I can't explain it a bit, but though
I had addressed it to him, though I had made up my mind to send it to
him, I suddenly felt horribly shy of his seeing it now.
I longed to put it behind me.
But he said: "Has it got anything to do with this?"
He fumbled in the breast of his jacket.
I knew what he was going to pull out before he did it--the other half
of that photograph!
He laid it down face upwards, just as if he had been playing cards on
Aunt Victoria's little square, green cloth-covered table.
I couldn't help being reminded of ages ago in the Lair, when we three
girls had played that absurd game of cards over the unknown young
officer who was coming to be billeted on us!
I had won that game!--the Queen of Hearts----
And, of course, at the remembrance of it the family blush must needs
come on and cover me from head to foot. At least, that is what it
felt like.
I also felt Mr. Lascelles looking hard at me. He said coaxingly,
peremptorily at the same time, "You to play, Betty."
So I saw there was nothing else for it.
I took the top half of that torn photograph, and I threw it down on
the table beside his.
He gathered them together as if they had been his trick.
(Exactly what they were, of course.)
Then he fitted them together.
And, holding them so in his left hand, he drew me down with his right
hand--the wounded one--to sit on the arm of his chair.
Perhaps you will now think that he was going to propose to me?
I don't mind telling you that it was what I thought myself!
But, oh, no! Nothing so conventional! I may as well let you into
the secret of something very odd and unprecedented about this affair
of mine. I always knew I was an unusual sort of girl, with
everything happening to me in an unusual way. Listen to what
happened--at least, didn't happen. _There was no proper "proposal"
at all!!!_ Perhaps there are no such things as definite proposals
nowadays. I wish I could get some data about them out of Nancy or
Evelyn; but, oh, no! Not a word will they say. Mean, mean I call it.
Of course, it makes no difference, because we are all getting married
just the same, in spite of our parents' will that told Aunt Victoria
they didn't wish their girls to go rushing into the evils of early
matrimony before they were twenty-five.
And, talking about that--here's a surprise!
What do you think? Aunt Victoria has just opened a note that was
left at the lawyer's at the same time as that will.
And what it goes to prove is that that will was all a put-up job.
It says that they (father and mother) who, as you know, got married
the instant father was of age, had been so happy in their early
marriage, and thought it such a pity that so many girls seemed taking
to the habit of postponing marriage until they were all sorts of ages.
They--father and mother--were determined that their own children
should follow their own good example.
And as they knew the contrary nature of girls, as they knew that
nothing was so attractive as that which was supposed to be
forbidden--they had arranged this plan between them of pretending
they would be against our marrying just so as to drive us into it all
the more certainly and quickly!
A curious scheme, wasn't it?
And yet it has come off!
But to go back to Mr. Lascelles and me in the drawing-room. (Though,
mind you, I shan't dream of saying a single word about it to Nancy or
Evelyn.)
He gathered up the photographs with one hand and me the other, and
said quite as coolly as if we had been on these terms for weeks: "I
say, darling! it's a pity you tore that photograph like that in your
naughty little temper--even when I get it mended and framed there
will always be a great mark showing just here."
But when he said "just here," it wasn't the photograph that he
touched at all. He put his hand under my chin and kissed me full on
the mouth!
And then I knew--oh! Then I knew that it must be true what Nancy had
said. I must have always liked him dreadfully. _That_ was what let
me behave so hatefully to him. That was why I'd have wanted to die
if he had. That was what made me fit to murder poor dear Miss
Gates--I'd have killed anybody that I thought he was going to marry
instead of me.
Yes; then I knew that if it hadn't been me he cared for, there
wouldn't have been any point in my having been born.
Books don't give you the leastest _idea_ of what I feel!
And which of those young idiots of girls was it that said there
wouldn't be room for anybody on his knee? There's miles of room.
Oceans.
I said presently: "Really, you take a great deal for granted, Mr.
Lascelles."
He said: "I say, you will have to call me by my right name now, you
know."
I let him beg a little, and then I said, "Frank."
He said: "Yes, that will do for when Auntie and the girls are there;
you will have your own name for me when we are alone."
"Oh, will I?" I said. "Very well, then--'Lonely Subaltern'!"
He laughed, but he said: "Not now--it isn't appropriate any more."
So then I laughed and said teasingly: "Incubus!"
He said: "You will pay for that, too! Thanks.... Wait for the
change, please. But you know perfectly well what I want you to call
me, Betty. I haven't heard it since the first day I came here and
met you all in the kitchen. What was it you were saying you would
call me then? 'Now, Bil----'"
"Ah, no, don't, don't!" I begged, with my cheek against his. "Don't,
please, tease me about that time in the kitchen. I honour bright
felt _awful_. I can't say it."
"Write it, then," he said.
Men always seem to have things to write with planted all over their
persons. Before you could say "knife" he had brought out a stump of
pencil and a tiny leather-covered note-book, and turned over to a
blank page. He put it and the pencil into my hand.
"Write it down, Betty, darling," he said tenderly into my ear.
And with our heads close together over the notebook I wrote down,
with a long kiss for where the hyphen comes:
"Billet-Boy!"
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRLS AT HIS BILLET ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
