AN INVITATION
We looked to the right. On a gate in the blossoming hedge sat the
tiny Timber-girl Peggy, she who in the evening always wore a flower
pinned by a badge to the breast of her crisply-ironed smock. This
evening it was a spray of honeysuckle.
Beside her, leaning his elbows on the gate, stood a blue-suited young
soldier from the hospital; he also wore a large spray of honeysuckle
in his button-hole, and another in his khaki cap, which was further
decorated by a lucky gollywog in pink and green wool! He touched it
smiling as we paused beside our little comrade.
"Oh, talking of music, girls," said Peggy, "look what my boy's got
for you, for all of us! Show them, Syd."
Syd, who was a sergeant, and had the cheerfullest pink face I have
ever seen above a blue jacket, thrust his hand into the pocket of
that jacket, and brought out a large envelope which he handed to me.
It was unaddressed and open. I took out a sort of illuminated card;
its border showed floral designs, a rising sun, black cats, and
several regimental crests. In curliest copperplate there was written:
To THE LADY LAND-WORKERS,
CAREG CAMP.
You are invited to a
GRAND CONCERT,
to be held at
THE CAREG AUXILIARY RED CROSS HOSPITAL,
on the night of June 10.
To commence at
7 pip emma
(_Tanks and bi-planes at 9.45._)
"How lovely!" I exclaimed, handing this card back to Peggy. "I heard
something about there being a concert at the hospital, but I never
knew we were to be asked."
"Yes, miss," said Sergeant "Syd" in a husky, boyish voice. "Captain
Holiday himself said the invitation was to go to the camp in good
time, so that all of the young ladies might arrange to come. He
hoped all of you would, of course."
"Tell him not to worry, we're all for it," declared saucy little
Peggy from her gate. "I daresay it'll be a wash-out of a
concert"--with a wink at us--"but we'll have to be thankful for what
we can get in the Land Army. I suppose you'll give us a solo on the
comb? And is your Captain Holiday going to oblige at the concert,
Syd?"
"Not him! Says he doesn't know one tune from another," laughed the
wounded soldier. "Sitting in the audience with you young ladies,
that's the job he's for."
"I'm astonished at him," said Peggy, with a mischievous smile
straight at me.
Syd added:
"I tell you who is a very fine singer, now--we could listen to him
all night--his voice is a fair treat, and he's going to sing. It's
that officer that Captain Holiday's got staying at the Lodge with
him. Colonel Fielding, his name is."
I exclaimed:
"Oh! So he's staying at the Lodge!"
Peggy gave me a quick look and said:
"So he's another friend of yours?"
"No," I explained. "We've just met him." Then, thinking it would be
silly to make any mystery about all this, I explained about Colonel
Fielding being our landlord in London, and I mentioned the business
letters about breakages and drains.
"And we're to hear him sing, are we?" I concluded--and again Sergeant
Syd enlarged upon what a treat it would be for anybody who liked good
music.
"Oh, but I don't know anything about 'good' music," said Elizabeth,
carelessly.
We went on, leaving that picturesque group of Land-girl and soldier
by that gate in the hedge.
Presently I found myself thinking of the way Colonel Fielding's
delicate fair face had lighted up at the sight of Elizabeth, sturdy
and muddy and sweet, in the mangold-field.
How obviously he had admired that sight!
He was probably looking forward to seeing it again. Poor wretched
young man! For if he imagined that my boyish, independent,
man-hating little chum would have a word for him at that
concert--whatever he sang like--a bitter disappointment was in store
for him, thought I. I had seen Elizabeth before, when men had been
attracted. Prickly as a hedgehog she had become in the twinkling of
an eye!
While I was thus musing, she was gazing above the hedge at the hills
in the gloaming, purple against a primrose belt of sky. A heavenly
evening! No wonder Elizabeth wanted to drink in the beauty of
country and sky rather than to talk. I felt as she did.
Suddenly Elizabeth spoke, in a matter of fact tone that sounded as if
she had just dragged herself back into the life of every day.
"That concert," she said, "won't be bad fun."
"I expect it will be ripping," I agreed, as we took the turning that
led us back by a roundabout way to the camp again. "Wasn't that
invitation-card for it rather sweet? You know he'd painted all those
crests and flowers and things himself."
"He did?" said Elizabeth, "he or Captain Holiday, d'you mean?"
I turned to her a little puzzled.
"Captain Holiday--or who?" I said.
Quickly Elizabeth slipped out--"or Colonel Fielding, of course!"
Then she laughed, and went on quickly: "What rot!" and she turned
aside to pull a wild rose out of the hedge above the pond.
"Of course I wasn't thinking about what I was saying. It is Peggy's
sergeant who paints those things, isn't it?" she said.
I looked at her.
With her face still turned to the hedge she went on talking rather
quickly.
"Yes; Peggy told me her boy was 'very clever at anything in the
artistic line.' He does designs for belts, and mats, and cushion
covers himself, and they're sold at Red Cross sales; and the most
lovely necklaces made out of beads of wallpaper!" pursued Elizabeth,
as if she were interested in nothing on earth so much as in the
artistic productions of Peggy's boy.
But why had she coupled the names of Captain Holiday and Colonel
Fielding as if they were the names uppermost in her thoughts?
How oddly, how aptly she'd slipped out that Colonel Fielding! Could
she--could she have been "thinking of him." ...
Oh!
How could I think such a lunatic thing! In spite of all I'd
threatened of her getting "tamed" one day!
Not Elizabeth. Anybody else, but Elizabeth--No!
I was sure of _that_.
* * * * * * *
No sooner had Peggy brought in to our forewoman that illuminated
invitation to the wounded soldiers' concert than there was little
talk of anything else in the Land Girls' camp.
The questions of the hour were who would sing; what they'd sing; what
refreshments would be offered; which of the boys was going to make
the best "girl," varied with which of us girls could dress up as the
best "boy"--given, unanimously, for "Mop," as they called Elizabeth.
These things were discussed in twenty voices before the farm-girls
and the timber-gang set out for work in the morning, and after they
returned in the evening.
A further burning question was whether we went in uniform or in our
civies?
At last Miss Easton, the young forewoman, exclaimed in mock despair:
"I shall feel as if I'd been to the blessed concert ten times over at
this rate, before ever it happens! When it does come off it'll fall
as flat as a committee report. Whatever did they want to send out
the invitations all these days ahead for? 'Tisn't as if we'd so many
engagements in this"--she gazed out of the hut window at the pastoral
scene of lambs taking their evening scamper round and round a daisied
meadow--"in this crowded Metropolis that we had to be booked in
advance."
Peggy returned demurely:
"Ah, Miss Easton, dear, that's all you know. Some of 'em at the
hospital made up their minds to let all us at the camp know in time,
so that nobody should go off on short leave to see their people or
anything, by mistake, on the 10th!"
Here Vic sighed stormily, rolled up her eyes in mock emotion, and
remarked:
"What it is to be in love!"
The usual laugh went round as at the least of Vic's utterances. Then
the talk turned upon the love-affairs of the Campites present. We
were given the probable date of Peggy's wedding with her Syd in the
autumn. We were told of the disgraceful fickleness of Curley, the
straight-haired brunette, who had been engaged to a young gentleman
in the Tank Corps, who had shown her photograph to a friend of his,
who had taken an enormous fancy to it, and had written to Curley who
had broken off the engagement with her first love, and who had been
walking out, by letter, with the friend ever since.
"I'm astonished at her," Peggy said severely.
"What's the good of being astonished at anything in war-time?"
retorted Curley. "And what's the good of going on writing to a
fellow when you are sick and tired of the sight of him before ever he
goes to France? Better sense to break it off in time, and see if you
like the next one better when he comes home!"
General agreement over this--except from the red-haired Welsh
timber-girl who declared in her richest contralto:
"That wasn't love, then, for if you loved a man, it would be for
ever!"
A diversity of opinions upon this, ending in a gale of laughter as
Miss Easton reminded the red-haired one:
"Well, Aggie! You used to say in the woods that the birds seemed to
call aloud the name of the boy one cared for! And in March you said
they sang 'Dick! Deeck!' And the other day you said they were
singing 'Hugh-ie! Hugh-ie!'"
Aggie, blushing down her milky, freckled throat, retorted with some
allusion to some people "getting off with some fat, old, rich
timber-merchant, after the war!" To which the young forewoman
replied good-naturedly that she didn't mind at all the idea, of
settling down with some nice, kind, elderly sort of man!
After the war, and all she'd had to do for twenty odd girls--seeing
after every detail of their health, behaviour, outfit, railway
vouchers, billets, stripes, rows with landladies, tests, and
leaves--she would be glad enough to come in for a bit of "mothering"
herself.
"Which," she concluded quaintly, "a girl gets best from a husband who
isn't too young!"
Chorus of--
"Ah, bah! An old husband would be awful!"
And then Sybil, who had never travelled without a maid before the
war, declared that after the war the best husbands for the girls who
had been in the Land Army would be the Colonials, the Overseas men.
These splendid-looking outdoor fellows could offer a girl the
life--with plenty of hard work rewarded by open-air freedom, and
health, and fun--which she had learnt to love.
Hot argument here, following a demand from Lil the Londoner of--
"What's the matter with our own boys?"
Everybody had a word to say on this perennial poignant question of
young men and marriage.
I rather dreaded being asked what my views were. Silently I sat,
going on with my work; which was shortening Elizabeth's second smock
for her. The things are made in three sizes only, and the smallest
of them was just a trifle voluminous, and long for the little boyish
figure of my chum. As I stitched away at the tuck I was taking in
it, I wondered when my turn was coming.
It didn't come.
None of the other girls asked me if I would like to marry a dark man
or a fair one, a Colonial or a Britisher.
Then I wondered a little at that. Afterwards, long afterwards, I
learnt the rather touching fact that Vic had forbidden the lot of
them to tease "young Celery-face" about any young men.... Vic had
tumbled to it that, honestly, I didn't like it. And Vic had a good
deal of fine feeling, tucked away, upon this subject.
Vic's own love-affair (her "boy" had died in enemy hands, I
afterwards heard) had made her sensitive for others.
So, as Elizabeth had gone shopping in the tiny village known to our
mess as "the town," I was left to a peaceful Saturday afternoon.
It was on the Monday after that that a queer thing happened to me.