COLONEL FIELDING DISCUSSES "ENJOYMENT"
Now, as we sat in that field, between the blond stubble and lowering
purple sky, there was one thing the others didn't guess.
I wouldn't have changed places with a Queen. Just to be so near
Captain Holiday, rested and feasting after work, was sheer joy to me.
He would never know.
But it was odd to find his friend, Colonel Fielding, suddenly putting
my thoughts into words!
He repeated his own words of a moment before.
"Yes, this is one of 'the' feasts," he said softly. "Tea and bread
and butter in a hayfield. And--er--absolutely topping. It's
Enjoyment; pukka. It's what people are always chasing. They flock
to--er--the most expensive restaurants in town for this. They go on
to boxes at theatres, supper clubs. It's what they order champagne
for. Jazz bands. Dressing up to the nines. All to get it!
They--er--they don't get it," murmured the young Colonel, in his
meekest of meek voices. "You can't buy it. It comes to you--or it
doesn't. Fact."
Nobody said anything. Fielding continued:
"When people look back on the best time they've ever had, they don't
find that those are the times that--er--that have swallowed up every
stiver at Cox's. No. Nor the times when they set out deliberately
to do themselves well, and--er--dash the expense. No! As often as
not, _that_ is a wash-out. Er--I don't know why. But somehow the
best time nearly always comes down to something that costs hardly
anything."
Captain Holiday, smoking, gave a sort of non-committal grunt.
Meanwhile Elizabeth was listening spellbound to the homily on Life's
Good Times, given by the young officer, who talked as if he were the
shyest of the shy--but whose shyness did not stop him from holding
forth.
"A woman once told me," the Colonel began again.
Here I saw Elizabeth prick up her ears even more, if possible!
The Colonel saw it too. The smile he gave might have been the smile
of some coquette who, deliberately "playing" her lover, sees him
"rise." Ah, if Elizabeth looked like that Princess who on her
bridal-night was metamorphosed into a lad, this slim Colonel might
have been the bridegroom who, to keep her love, was bewitched in turn
into becoming a Princess....
He went on:
"Yes, a woman who's taught me rather a lot about women once told me
that the most delightful lunch of her life was--er--was in a
poisonous little musty coffee-room of a country pub."
Here Captain Holiday put in: "What induced you to take her _there_?"
A gleam of mischief behind the Colonel's lashes, but no reply to this.
"It was stuffy with the smell of bygone chops," he enlarged dreamily.
"It was hung with huge dark oil-paintings of spaniels, and horses,
and wild duck and things, and there were umpteen hulking sauceboats
on each sideboard; all very plated and dirty----"
"How fascinating," snapped Elizabeth.
"The table decorations," pursued Colonel Fielding, "were five napkins
arranged as mitres and a tall 'fluted ruby' glass vase full of dead
daffodils----"
"May one ask what the unfortunate lady was given to eat?"
"She was given cold ham, Miss Weare, tinned apricots, and black
Indian tea at three o'clock in the afternoon----"
"How extraordinarily nasty," sniffed Elizabeth, obviously wrung with
jealousy of the woman who had thus lunched.
Deprecatingly, Colonel Fielding smiled. "This woman told me," he
said, "that she knew now what was meant by the expression 'A
Priceless Binge.' It was that lunch. She would not have exchanged a
crumb of it for two years of living at the Ritz."
How well I understood that woman's point of view! I opened my mouth
to say so; then I saw that Captain Holiday, leaning up on his elbow
on the grass, was watching me hard behind a cloud of smoke.
Why? Curiosity again? I said nothing.
"I suppose that woman meant that the person she was lunching with
made all the difference in the world to her?" said Elizabeth, whose
small, brown paw had been pulling quite viciously at the grass during
these last remarks, in the voice of bravado.
"Well," he replied, "I believe that she did happen to be lunching at
the time with 'the person' she cared rather a lot about. He
was--er--an old love or something she hadn't seen for ages. At
least--I think it must have been that."
"You 'think'!" I said exasperated. "You don't know?"
"No," returned the young Colonel, "I couldn't ask her, could I?"
"Why not?" demanded Captain Holiday, with his abruptness.
"How could I ask her if she didn't choose to tell me?" Colonel
Fielding answered very gently.
Here I thought there had been enough of this hair-splitting; besides,
I couldn't bear to see Elizabeth's afternoon being spoilt.
So, bluntly and directly, I blurted out:
"But, Colonel Fielding, wasn't it you that this woman was having
lunch with when she said that?"
"I?" He opened his eyes at me just as Muriel might have done, and I
thought exasperatedly what a lot of girl's tricks he had. Still, one
girl adored him for them. I saw poor Elizabeth sitting there doing
it at that moment.
"I?" he said. "Oh, no. I--er--wasn't there, that time. I
wasn't--the fact is I wasn't born. My mother only told me about it
lately."
Elizabeth stopped pulling up the stubble with a jerk, and at the same
moment I said sharply, "Your mother--but what's your mother got to do
with it, Colonel Fielding?"
"She was the woman who had lunch," explained the young man simply.
"She--er--is the woman who's taught me most things, I think. I
always think men might learn more from their mothers than any other
woman allows 'em to--er--know. '_You'll get a sweetheart any day,
but not anothah mothah!_' D'you know that song, Miss Weare?"
Villain! He had simply been "trying it on," "playing up"! He was
quite "up" to the fact of Elizabeth's jealousy. And now he was
equally "up" to the look of exquisite relief that was lighting her up
again--just as it had done when she found she was not to go away
after all.
All this, I thought, was cruel.
I turned to Captain Holiday, who was just laughing--at this rate I
should soon change places with my chum. I should become the
Man-Hater. Men were too irritating, too little worth all this
trouble and affection that we lavish upon them!
But, in the meantime, we had forgotten the storm. Suddenly it broke
out, deafeningly, over our heads.
"Ah!" exclaimed Captain Holiday sharply, springing to his feet.
We followed his example.
"Here it is," he cried. "The storm!"