COLONEL FIELDING DISCUSSES "THE MYSTERY-GIRL"
"I would rather scrub floors for a man than dust a table for a
woman."--EXTRACT FROM PRIVATE CONVERSATION.
"But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,
If we prayed you, paid you, brayed you
In a mortar, for you could not, Sweet!"
--BROWNING.
This was something I wouldn't have allowed to happen, could I have
prevented it!
For Dick Holiday, of all people, to come upon me when I was having my
hand kissed by Harry Markham, of all other people in the world!
Of course you see what Captain Holiday thought he had interrupted?
A love-scene!
He'd heard from me about the man who sailed for Salonika just before
I left London, and that I'd joined up for the Land Army on that
account. He'd tumbled to it that Harry, returned from Salonika, was
"the" man. Now he saw, with his own eyes, this young staff-officer
pressing his lips to the hand which I had put affectionately upon his
red-tabbed shoulder.
Naturally Captain Holiday thought this meant the Happy Ending to
whatever misunderstanding I and the other young man had had. In his
mind I suppose he was certain that he would soon have to congratulate
us!
Of course he never betrayed by one twitch of his face what he thought
of what I know he must have seen.
He merely said quietly: "Ah, here you are. The others are going,
Miss Matthews."
"Oh, are they? Yes, it must be getting late. Thank you so much for
coming to tell me," I said hurriedly. The two young men followed me
out of the garden as I made my hasty way up to the house, fuming!
What could be more annoying, I ask you, than to be so "caught out"?
Especially when one couldn't possibly explain the meaning of the
little incident?
I could not turn round and say to the young man behind me on the path
"Captain Holiday, I hope you won't misunderstand what you saw just
now. Captain Markham was kissing my hand, and perhaps it did look as
if it were an illustration to a magazine love-story! But it wasn't
that sort of kiss! It wasn't that sort of thing at all! He and I
have never been less in love with one another. Both of us happen to
be hopelessly in love with somebody else! For the first time in our
lives we were feeling genuinely fond of each other in a friendly way
because we were sorry for one another's love tragedies. Nothing
could have been more entirely platonic!"
No. I couldn't tell him this, true as it was. For one thing, even
the best and simplest and truest explanations have a way of sounding
"thin." Hence the golden rule "NEVER EXPLAIN." Following it, I
reached the house with my two cavaliers and found that the whole
party were gathered outside the porch waiting for us.
Our host was at the head of the horse in the dog-cart, where Muriel
had already perched herself, and everybody was chattering over the
great bunches of roses and sweetpeas given them by our hostess ... it
was then that I realized that Sybil's new employers must be almost as
hard up as we were ourselves. For how seldom it is that the gardens
of the rich spare a single petal for the flowerless guest! But here
the daughter of the house had stripped even her own window-boxes of
black pansies to make into a posy for me. Muriel, sitting up in the
cart, called, smiling, "Are you coming, Harry? I really must get
back to poor dear Mother now. But if you want to walk," with a
coquettish glance, "my cousin will drive me----"
I saw Dick Holiday's quick step forward on the gravel. He was only
too anxious, I could see, to respond to this invitation. But already
Harry was before him, poor Harry! his face lighting up because his
lady who refused him always could still be got to throw him a
smile.... It was an irony of the Fate that had made so many girls
ready to hang on the smiles of a man like Harry Markham. He sprang
up, took the reins.
She was driven away, her flower-face smiling over her other flowers,
her little hand waving gaily; Disturber of the Peace that she was!
The walking-party--amidst a buzz of kindly farewells and "_come
agains_" and a last call from the mistress of the house of "_you
won't forget that I should love a Land-girl's wedding from
here?_"--set off down the road back to our Camp.
I had been dreading the thought of a walk _à deux_ with Captain
Holiday; since Elizabeth would naturally stroll homewards at a
snail's pace with her adored "Falconer" off a chocolate-box lid.
To my astonishment I found that I was to have this privilege! I
found that somehow it was arranged that Captain Holiday was walking
with Elizabeth, briskly, in front.
He didn't want to speak to me, then? I was left to follow with my
chum's _fiancé_.
Colonel Fielding was remarkably nice and friendly to me for the whole
of that walk. I seemed to have reached a stage when men became
unsentimental and excellent friends with me. Was it, I wondered
gloomily, because none of them ever fell in love with me any more?
And as I chatted to Colonel Fielding of the "delightfulness" of the
afternoon we'd just spent, I thought with a rueful little sigh of one
young man who had been (presumably) a little sentimental about me.
Mr. Richard Wynn, who'd written to ask me to marry him! because he
had liked the child I had been, seven years ago. What must he have
thought of me for never even answering his letter...!
I didn't often remember that shadowy suitor. I forgot him again as I
said to Colonel Fielding, walking beside me, "How sweetly pretty Miss
Elvey was looking!"
He looked mischievous and said: "Are you still afraid she'll make me
faithless to Elizabeth?"
"My good young man, I don't think she'll try."
"Oh, no! She'd never want to," he agreed serenely. "It never was me
the young lady was anxious to marry. I know who it is all right."
I looked at him eagerly. At last I was going to get a little light
on the subject! At last I was going to hear another opinion about
whether Muriel meant in the long run to say "Yes" or "No" to Captain
Holiday.
I nodded towards his distant back as it turned a corner of the lane
in front of us. I suggested to his friend "You mean----?"
"Er----of course."
My heart felt absurdly heavy at the announcement. Had I still hoped
that it could be otherwise? Silly of me!
I asked, succeeding in not sounding wistful: "Do you think, then,
that she is in love with him after all, Colonel Fielding?"
Elizabeth's young Colonel stopped on the road where we walked. He
turned to me as if he hadn't caught what I'd said. He frowned a
little, and yet he was smiling under that absurdly soft golden
feather of a moustache. He repeated: "In love? Miss Elvey? Of
course not. Miss Elvey isn't the kind of girl who would ever be in
love with anybody whomsoever."
I stopped too. We faced each other on that road at a dead
standstill, as people do when their talk becomes more interesting to
each other than their walk. I was more than eager to know exactly
what this young man thought of the girl who had stolen my admirer,
and who was probably going to marry the other man whom I myself
admired. The girl whom all men loved and of whom all women were
jealous. What was Colonel Fielding's view of her?
"You told me, the day you got engaged, that when you had time you
would tell me all about Muriel's 'kind,'" I reminded him. "Tell me
now."
"Oh ... er ... I don't know that there's so much to tell," he said,
looking at me. "She's just one of the mystery-girls who seem to have
everything a girl should have; looks, go, charm, laughter. But ...
er ... Well! She hasn't got love. That power's just been left out
of her composition, Miss Matthews. She's cold; she's null.
She's--she's just the opposite to your little friend," his voice grew
tender, "and mine."
"Elizabeth? But--except for you--Elizabeth doesn't like men. Muriel
doesn't like anything better!"
He shook his head, the only man's head I'd met that seemed full of
"feminine" intuitions.
"Muriel doesn't like men," he told me. "She likes what men can give
her. Attention. A good time. Admiration _ad lib_. The cachet of
being seen about, queening it over them. The sense of power; the
atmosphere of ... er ... incense. That's what Muriel asks of men.
Nothing else."
Puzzled, I said: "I don't understand."
"You would not."
"I've always thought Muriel a finished flirt, yet you say she's
cold----"
"Flirts are," declared Elizabeth's lover. "Er ... I've heard that
the true drunkard dislikes the actual taste of spirits. Well! The
true flirt hates the actual idea of ... er ... Love."
He blushed as if with unconquerable shyness, but went on: "Do you
know how the Muriel-type looks upon a kiss? As something to be got
out of ... er ... or got over."
"I wonder," said I.
"I know," said he. "Plenty of them, the Mystery-girls."
"Why 'Mystery,' Colonel Fielding?"
"Because it is a mystery why they're made like that. Avid for what
they call 'a good time'--they who can't _taste_ the real good times!"
"You mean the times like--like that tea we had in the hayfield; that
lunch of your mother's with her old love."
--"And so forth. Yes ... Ah, how they surround themselves with every
outward sign of 'a good time,' how they swallow them up into that
_gap_ that can never be filled in their hearts. I remember one
Mystery-girl--but I'm talking too much."
"No, no! Tell me about her."
"Well," said my new friend, "she was one of them, but not like
Muriel; a nicer-natured girl altogether, married, and a topping
little mother. She said to me once with all her soul in her pretty
eyes, 'D'you know, the two wishes of my heart, Colonel Fielding? One
is a pearl string down to _here_. The other is about ten silver-fox
skins made into a stole.' I looked at her (she was a picture). I
said, 'What rum things to choose for hearts-wishes!' She said,
'Beautiful things?' I said, 'Well, easy to get, anyhow.' She said,
'Very expensive!' I said, 'Not they! _They_ only cost ... money.'
We both meant what we said. She was sweeter than Miss Muriel, too.
Some of them aren't even as sweet. But all of them remind me of
those--er--gaily-coloured flowers--without scent. If I like them,
I'm sorry for them. If I don't like them, I'm sorry for the Race.
Give me the palest musk-rose..."
From his face he was thinking again of his Carissima.... She meant
all sweetness to him.
I said: "But men swarm round those others!"
"Yes; didn't I tell you the other day how weak the average man is on
Love? He's all for the lovely ... er ... shell of the Mystery-girl.
He adores to be tantalized and baffled by it ... because he doesn't
know what that means, until he's ... er ... married and tied to it
for life."
"And then?" I asked.
"Then he thinks Love must have been overrated by ... er ... these
fiction-writers. Or he imagines that he's quite happy, because no
one seems to think he isn't. Or the Muriel 'pretends' to love him
and he doesn't know the difference, because he '_never, even in
dreams, has seen the things that are more excellent._' Er ... I do
talk too much, Miss Matthews; I bore you."
"Indeed you do not," I said. "All the week I have heard nothing
discussed but the feeding of the two baby-calves, and the
butter-market. Even the most enthusiastic farm-worker likes to go
back to the problems of other lives sometimes."
"Still, you look as if I'd ... er ... depressed you."
"Oh, no," I protested. But he had depressed me. If his theories
about Muriel were true, she would never make Captain Holiday happy!
Wasn't this enough to sadden me?
In his quick, unmasculine way Colonel Fielding seemed to read my
thoughts.
He said: "She--Miss Muriel--has an eye to the main chance. She
simply must have the things that people who've got ... er ... love
can afford to do without. She covets that lovely old country-house
that's been turned into a hospital. It'll be turned back some day.
I really think she'd like to see herself mistress of it. Up to now I
expect she's hit everything she's aimed for. But..."
He paused and smiled, a curious, encouraging smile, at me.
He went on: "I don't think----"
He paused again before he uttered the very last words that I expected
to hear coming out of his mouth.
"I don't think she's going to get our friend ... er ... Richard Wynn."
"What?" I said, sharply. "Colonel Fielding, what made you say that?"
He opened his eyes at me. "Say what?"
"You said 'Richard Wynn.' What has he got to do with it?" I asked,
stupefied. "Do you know him? Because I do, and I----"
"Know him?" The young man looked at me as if I'd gone mad. "Know
Wynn? Holiday?"
I gasped. "You said 'Richard Wynn,'" I repeated. "Did you mean to
say Captain Holiday?"
Elizabeth's _fiancé_ was still gazing upon me in bewilderment. Then
he uttered these further strange words; words that took me more aback
than any I'd heard since I was a child reading _The Arabian Nights_
by the firelight that criss-crossed my schoolroom ceiling with the
giant shadow of the wire fireguard.
He asked: "Miss Matthews, do you mean to say that you didn't know
Dick Holiday and Richard Wynn were ... er ... the same person?"