THE ONLOOKER
"Hélas, mon ami!
C'est triste d'econter le chanson sans le chanter aussi."
--BRETON BALLARD.
As for me, I was delighted. Let one of us be happy, I thought; let
Elizabeth, since I was evidently fated to be lonely!
Yes! Any love-story for me, Joan Matthews, seemed to be something
quite past praying for.
Twice, now, I had fallen in love. Twice I had drawn a blank!
The first time I'd set my affections upon a philanderer (Harry
Markham) who had given me every reason to think they were returned,
but who probably hadn't "meant" anything, even before he deserted to
Muriel.
The second time I had lost my heart to a man worth a hundred Harrys.
This man (Dick Holiday) had never attempted to admire me. He was
just helpful and jolly and friendly, but he'd never pretended to
think of me in that other way. Yet I couldn't stop caring for him
with all the best that was in me. And now he was Muriel's too; I
only waited to hear when their engagement would be announced.
"Really I ought to be phenomenally lucky at cards, seeing the sort of
luck I've had in Love!" I laughed at myself.
For I could still laugh; and here I must put forward something in my
own defence! _I was taking the second love-fiasco very differently
from my first_.
In London, over Harry's desertion, I had let go all ropes, and had
fretted and wept myself into a nervous wreck.
Here on the Land, I never thought of behaving like that. I set my
teeth to "stick" unhappy Love, which is a girl's equivalent for a
soldier's "sticking" his most painful wound. I found I could still
enjoy myself among the other girls, I could still be sympathetic over
my chum's engagement. I could throw myself body and soul into the
work on the farm, where the hay-harvest was now in full swing.
That work saved me, my self-respect, my spirits, and my looks from
the ruin that threatens the very being of the girl who is crossed in
love. How she endures that is so largely a matter of health after
all. My health was now magnificent. Every day I grew fitter, more
vigorous, rosier (though my nickname of "Celery-face" would persist
to the end of my life here!) and more full of zest for anything that
happened along. For on the Land one soon learns not only to take the
rough with the smooth, but also to take plenty of interest in both.
Now, after a couple of weeks of strenuous toil, there came a promise
of "smooth"; a little treat.
A note arrived for me at the Land Girls' Camp which said:
"DEAR CELERY-FACE--
"_These nice people that I work for suggest that I should ask a
couple of 'my young friends' over to tea next Sunday. Will you and
Mop be the young friends? They know Captain Holiday and are asking
him, so I expect he will bring Mop's 'lovely Spaniard' with him. Do
come._
"_Yours_, SYBIL.
"P. S.--_These people think the uniform so 'picturesque,' so come in
it, even if Mop does want to wear garden-party clothes for the
fiancé!_"
By the way, I have not yet dwelt on the enormous excitement that
blazed all over our Camp at the news that "little Mop, the
Man-hater!" had actually got engaged to be married to "Colonel
Fielding who was that Spanish lady at the Concert!"
That sensation could have been beaten by nothing, unless perhaps news
had come that same day of the sudden and complete surrender of the
whole German Army.
Anybody who has lived the communal life among girls (as most girls
have in these days of Women's Service!) can imagine the whirlwind of
exclamations, congratulations, questions, laughter that almost
carried the newly-engaged messmate off her sturdily-booted little
feet. Only, no imagination can do justice to the golden camaraderie
with which that Timber-gang and those other Land-workers at our Camp
took Elizabeth to their hearts. (I hoped that her _fiancé_ would
realize it; for after that he could never again say that girls were
usually "little" and "spiteful"!) They had always liked my plucky,
downright little chum. Now, they couldn't do enough for her!
Peggy, who had started an elaborately crocheted camisole-top for her
own bottom-drawer, dedicated it to Elizabeth. Peggy's Sergeant Syd
brought an offering of a table-centre, designed and worked by himself
in the gaudiest silks with the crest of Colonel Fielding's regiment,
as well as with a Land Army hat, a rake and a rifle crossed, the
motto "England must be fed!" and other emblems. This was her very
first wedding-present, an object that, whatever shape it takes, never
fails to stir the heart of any engaged girl! But Elizabeth, who had
flashes of defensiveness and of seeming to make (outwardly) little of
Love and Marriage, declared that the wedding was not going to be for
ages.
"The Colonel, he'll watch that," had been Vic's laconic comment.
"The earliest that it can be," Elizabeth had then announced, "is when
my year is up."
"Good idea," Miss Easton, the forewoman, had pronounced drily. "But
you might remember that the Secretary is able to let you have a
brand-new overall in advance before the six months yours has got to
go, if you want it."
"I don't want a new overall," from my chum, glancing down at her
already well-worn garment. "What for, Miss Easton?"
"Lots of the girls like to get married in uniform, my dear."
"I shan't be getting married for eighteen months at least," had been
Elizabeth's ultimatum.
"That's putting a lot of extra work on me and Vic!" the young
forewoman had sighed whimsically.
For every evening now Miss Easton had a Thermos filled and a packet
of bread-and-butter or rock-cakes ready for "Mop" to take after work,
so that she could have her tea out with her _fiancé_ in the field,
where they met at a stile. (Those were the halcyon hours for them
both!)
As for Vic, the big, good-natured Cockney had taken in hand the
appearance of Elizabeth. Vic now "shined" her Sunday brogues, Vic
saw that she always had a pair of the neatest brown stockings to wear
with them, Vic ironed her smock, Vic "saw to" her armlet and badges;
Vic, every evening, gave ten minutes to brushing "young Mop's" short,
thick crop until it shone and floated out like raw brown silk round
her face.
"Must have you looking a credit to US," the self-constituted female
batman said to her. "Remember, all eyes--such as there are of 'em
here--are upon you! The girl that's going to marry the D.S.O. You
jolly well reflect back on the Camp, my girl, and then some more
D.S.O.'s will come round looking to see if there's any more at home
like you (perhaps). You let me put your belt straight. Now, got a
clean handkie? Like a drop o' Lil's scent on it? No? He don't care
for scent? All right. Now I think you're ready"--all this was just
before Elizabeth and I started off for that somewhat eventful tea at
the house of Sybil's employers.
"Now, young Celery-face," Vic went on, "how do you look? Yes, you'll
do nicely. Of course I may be a bit more particular about the way I
turn you out as soon as you get engaged. You'll be the next, I
bet----"
"I shouldn't bet much," I advised her, smiling above the little stab
at my heart as I disengaged myself from Vic's kindly hands--and
clothes-brush. "You'll only be disappointed. I shall not oblige you
by getting engaged from the farm, Vic!"
"Oh! Why ever not, if I may inquire?"
"Largely because nobody is likely to ask me!" I answered as we left
the hut.
"Ah, go on!" Vic called after me as she stood in the doorway,
laughing and waving the clothes-brush. "F'rall you know, somebody's
going to ask you at this Do this very afternoon!"
Now if Vic had heard the story of that Sunday afternoon-party that
was coming, I expect her verdict would have been: "There! What did I
tell you? Many a true word is spoken in jest!"
That afternoon witnessed my first offer of marriage--No, I had
forgotten. It was not my first. My first had been by letter, that
improbable-sounding sort of letter that I'd received in the Spring
from the young man called Richard Wynn, and that I had tossed away by
mistake into a London County Council waste-paper bin before I'd even
answered it. That was the first!
The second was by word of mouth, and it took place under the sun of
early July, in one of the prettiest country gardens that ever----
But I'll begin with the house where we were invited by these people
for whom our colleague Sybil was now working.
We walked for a good two miles down a lane branching off, under
trees, from the road to our farm; we came at last to a white gate and
then up a drive bordered with tall flowers that flourished as they
chose in the long grass. The house--which had one of those
interminable Welsh names beginning with "Dol"--was long and white,
striped green by creepers, and with a wide porch garlanded with
heavy-headed roses.
Just to the right of the porch a long window-box filled with black
pansies stood in front of an open upper window. A girl's rosy face
and wavy hair peeped out; it was the daughter of the house who called
to us in a voice which, though pleasant, would have made her fortune
as a pilot on the Mersey, "A-hoy! How d'you do? ... Syb--il! Here
are your friends! ... Come in, will you? Don't stop to ring; it
doesn't."
Elizabeth and I went straight into the cool, shady hall, and into the
midst of one of the most welcoming and hospitable, the least
conventional homes that I have ever entered.
We were greeted by Sybil's employers, the master and mistress of the
house. He, an old soldier, wearing the hearthrug-like tweeds and the
mossy stockings of a country squire of that neighbourhood; she a
plump and still pretty woman in spotted black and white muslin, with
wavy hair like her daughter's grown grey, and with an egg-basket
which she never put down, over her arm. He and she seldom stopped
talking, always talked at once; generally in the form of questions.
Thus--
"My dears, won't you come and sit down? Did you walk all the way
from Careg? Aren't you tired?"
"Does Miss Sybil know these young ladies have come, Mother? Can't we
have some tea for them at once?"
"One of you is engaged to that friend of our friend, Captain
Holiday's; is it you? No? You? Isn't that very nice? Will it be a
long engage----"
"Where's Miss Sybil?" (Enter from the back our friend Sybil,
smiling, but unable to get a word in.) "Now, where's Vera, where's
that girl Violet----"
Violet (the daughter of the house) came running down to add her voice
to this family anthem.
"Hullo! Did you find your way easily? Daddy, where are the dogs?
... Dogs!" (loudly). "Sybil, you're not going to try to introduce
everybody, are you? Why are we all standing here? Why aren't we
taking these people into the drawing-room?"
We were borne along into the big drawing-room to the right of the
hall. It was full of flowers and lovely old furniture and
silver-framed photographs and an immense round tea-table and a
cluster of other guests.
Here the sun rose again upon Elizabeth's world. Her eyes had fallen
at once upon her _fiancé_, Colonel Fielding. He was sitting there,
near his friend, Captain Holiday.
What a merry tea-fight that was in the hospitable and happy-go-lucky
Welsh country-house!
To sit in a dainty drawing-room amidst a cluster of strangers wearing
"real" summer frocks. To see a winking bright silver spirit-kettle
and a snowy cobweb cloth. To drink tea from fragile cups and to
spread, with crystal-handled knives, honey upon wafer
bread-and-butter!
These little luxuries we never noticed in our pre-War days. But
now---- Remember! It was the first time for weeks that we
Land-girls had tasted such refinement!
"What a treat this all is," I remarked to Captain Holiday as he
handed hot cakes in a lordly dish.
He replied: "Ah! Now perhaps you'll have an idea how fellows feel
when they get out of the mud and plum-and-apple-with-chloride-of-lime
up the Line, and back to Civilization for a few days' leave."
"When I got my Paris leave last year," put in the demure voice of
Colonel Fielding, who had dropped into a low chair close to his
_fiancée_, "do you know what was the first thing I did?"
"D'you want us to guess, my boy?" boomed the genial master of the
house, who was also a Colonel.
The younger man smiled at him. "I'll tell you, sir. I ordered a
great sheaf of La France roses and lilac to be sent up, with a huge
glass jar to put 'em in, to my room at the Hotel. And there I lay
and looked at 'em, till _déjeuner_, because I hadn't seen a flower
for months!"
The other guests then took up that never-failing topic of leave, and
how some people always get it and some never; why? A question
unanswerable. I thought of Captain Harry Markham, nicknamed in his
regiment "The Special Leave King." But the thought of my faithless
admirer could not depress me now. For the moment I was perfectly
content, sitting at that gay tea-table between my motherly hostess
and Dick Holiday.
He chaffed me about "a woman's ineradicable love of luxury, on the
Land or off!" and I laughed, glad that I could sometimes see him thus
for half an hour, without any Muriel to spoil it all.
On the other side, my hostess's questioning talk flowed on.
"You like the Farm-work, my dear?" to me. "Your people don't mind
you taking it up? The Prices look after you? Perfect dears, aren't
they? Has Mrs. Price had the Isle of Wight disease? Her bees, I
mean? No? How's that, I wonder, when everybody else's bees in the
county--oh, she doesn't keep bees? ... When are your friend and
Colonel Fielding to be married?"
"Not for a _long_ time!" burst from Elizabeth, but our kind hostess
went on, unheeding.
"Couldn't we arrange to have the wedding from this house? I adore
weddings, don't you? ... Vera!" to a laughing blonde in light blue
who was a niece of the house, "you haven't eaten all the light-cakes?
Aren't there any more light-cakes for when Captain Holiday's cousin
comes in? Dick! You did say your cousin, Miss Elvey, was coming
later?"
"Yes!" from my neighbour. "She's driving up presently."
My heart sank.
Muriel Elvey was coming after all?
Even as I thought it there was a crunching of light wheels on the
gravel outside. A dog-cart drove up holding khaki and the flutter of
a dress.
A moment later Muriel entered. Just a bright-headed bouquet of
muslin, rose-sprigged with mauve! Even as she uttered smiling
greetings she made every other girl there look comparatively plain at
once.
As for me, I instantly became a hopeless clodhopper sitting there in
rough breeches and smock, with my thick brogues planted on the soft
carpet. Awkward and out of place, all enjoyment was over for me as
soon as Dick Holiday's fashionable contrast of a girl floated into
the drawing-room.
The man who had driven her up came in a few moments afterwards.
To my surprise, it was Harry again! "More leave, Markham?" I heard
Colonel Fielding laugh; and then Harry, "No, I just got down for the
week-end."
So he had come all that way, just to be near Muriel. Oh, what it
must be to have her power over men! As far as I could see, there was
only one man in that party who wasn't at her little feet as she sat
coquetting now with the master of the house. Elizabeth's _fiancé_
had said, "I know too much about her! I know her kind!"
What did the young Colonel mean?
However! He didn't count; being engaged, and, as Elizabeth herself
said, "not a 'usual' young man."
One thing I noticed about one of the more "usual" young men there.
Harry Markham was not himself that afternoon. Something was weighing
on him.
I knew it! I knew his face and ways so well. Hadn't I studied them,
as only a girl in love has patience to study, for a whole year?
Nobody else out of that roomful of people would detect any cloud.
Harry was a young man who could "make himself at home" anywhere. He
did so now. I saw everybody--except perhaps Dick Holiday, who
suddenly turned silent--summing up Captain Markham as a charming
fellow.
He talked pleasantly; to our host of salmon-fishing and of soldiering
in the East; to our hostess of bees and poultry. Elizabeth he
congratulated prettily, telling her that he (Harry) had spotted
Fielding as "a man determined to win" the first time he met him.
Even Elizabeth had been slightly mollified by this towards the man
she'd once pronounced "a rotter!" He laughed and made himself
agreeable. And only I realized that while he did so his mind was not
in any of it.
Why?
I thought I guessed.
As they came along in the dog-cart he had been trying to make love to
the only girl he couldn't win over at once.
Muriel had been unkind to him. What a revenge for me--if I wanted a
revenge, which I didn't.
So far I guessed. But not what was coming!