THE HARVEST-MOON
"Oh, moon of my delight!"
--OMAR KHAYYAM.
About Muriel's piece of news a good deal was said, later on, by
Colonel Fielding.
He declared that Miss Muriel, who had played all she knew to marry
the Holiday property, now saw that the game was absolutely up, and
that she had better fall back at once upon the other ... er ...
source of comfort and luxury. He, Colonel Fielding, vowed that her
intention to write to "that unfortunate blighter, Markham," was born
then and there on the steps of the farmhouse as her cousin strafed
her. He also told Elizabeth that Miss Muriel's last hope was to
irritate Miss Matthews, whom she had always suspected of a
_tendresse_ for young Markham.
To all this the Man-hater replied that if the "Falconer" made any
more of his catty remarks about the future Mrs. Markham, it would
merely show him up as a disappointed admirer of hers. I believe they
"chipped" each other happily for hours about this.
But to return to the actual moment of Muriel's staggering
announcement.
She looked round for its effect. Certainly she got it.
All eyes gazed upon the pretty creature standing there. Engaged!
Another engagement in the place! This excitement eclipsed all
thought of the fire, the incendiary Germans, the commandant (who
couldn't come, by the way, until next day). For an instant we
stared; and Muriel's cousin seemed the most dumfounded.
But he pulled himself together the first. Holding out his hand, he
exclaimed heartily: "Good! The best of luck, my child!" He wrung
her small fingers, beaming all over his face.
Then I heard myself exclaim: "Oh, Muriel! You really are going to
marry Harry? I am so glad; so glad!"
(Which I certainly was!)
Elizabeth and the others added congratulations. Vic declared there
never was such a spot for "getting off" as here! Mr. Price beamed as
benignantly as if Muriel were a favourite sister, and little Mrs.
Price, all smiles, insisted on our drinking Miss Elvey's health in
her own elderberry wine, in the dining-room.
"Come in, all of you!" she urged hospitably. "Come, Captain
Holiday----"
But Captain Holiday stood still, smiling.
"Mrs. Price, I'll join you in one second, but Mr. Price has got his
coat, and I really can't come in like this in shirt-sleeves. I must
get a coat; I've lost mine."
"Lost it?" exclaimed the farmer. "Dear me, where did you do that,
Captain Holiday?"
Captain Holiday answered promptly and serenely. "Miss Matthews
thinks she passed a coat in the harvest field as she was coming
along" (and there was a "Dare-to-contradict-me" gleam in the eyes he
turned to me). "You might just come along with me, Joan, and show me
where you saw it?"
Gasping over this bit of obvious improvisation, I found it had
succeeded.
Muriel and the others had disappeared into the house, and the
shirt-sleeved Captain Holiday was piloting me gently but firmly
across the now-deserted farmyard.
"Captain Holiday," I protested, "I never said I saw a coat----"
He interrupted serenely. "Of course I rapped out just any excuse to
get you to myself at once. I've things to say to you. But you know
that, Joan."
Yes ... Already I guessed (and with what sudden rapture!) what was
coming. Not always do misunderstandings "keep up" until the
uttermost word is said. For long enough I had misunderstood. But
now---- I knew, from the tone in which he wished Muriel joy, that
she never could have been "the" girl. That had not been cordiality
"put on." He had been as genuinely glad as I was to hear of the
girl's engagement!
And I knew what was coming next; with quiet but growing delight I
expected it, yet did not wish one word of explanation to be hurried.
He began, in his direct way: "What do you think of this news about my
cousin and Captain Markham? Are you surprised?"
"I didn't know whether she meant to accept him. But I knew he was
desperate about her! He told me so himself, that Sunday we all went
to tea with those people."
Here Dick Holiday gave me a quick, searching glance. We were going
through the gate of the harvest-field as he took up "That Sunday!
Yes! D'you mind my asking you? Markham was telling you about all
that, in the garden?"
"Yes."
Dick Holiday said simply, "I thought he was making love to you."
"Ah!" A light had broken upon me. Just as keenly and as mistakenly
as I had been jealous of Muriel, this man at my side had been jealous
of Harry. So he had gone away, avoided me these last weeks!
He said: "Markham is a great pal of yours, is he?"
"Yes," I agreed.
"Nothing more?"
I said: "I think you guessed that he was the man I cared about once."
"Once?" he repeated eagerly. "Why not now?" He knew as well as I
did! Sure of it, I laughed softly as I glanced about the cleared
field. I said, "I don't see that coat of yours anywhere about."
"Must be in the next field," he returned, coolly. We walked on, over
the stubble and through a gap in the hedge to where the sheaves still
stood in their pyramids of five.
Then pausing again, he added. "What about my question, though?"
My heart was beating very quickly under that well-worn smock of mine,
but I managed to say, "Which question was that? You always ask so
many, Captain Holiday."
"I've told you so often not to call me that," he retorted. He
paused, standing tall and dark and graceful between the mauve evening
sky and the russet stocks. "My name," he began--and I expected to
hear the familiar protest--"my name is Dick, you know." But he ended
with an announcement which I suppose was meant to take away my breath.
"My name was Richard Wynn."
I could trump that, I thought!
Looking up at him, I said, "I knew." But this he trumped instead by
saying calmly: "I wondered how soon you would! Extraordinary that
you didn't tumble to it before, Joan, when everybody here knew I'd
only taken my uncle's name. The Prices, Muriel, any of the farm
people could have told you. Or Fielding--I suppose, by the way, he
did tell you? Yes? So now you know I did write to you, in the
spring--letter you threw away, eh? What have you to say about it?"
He took a step nearer to me. I stood my ground, and retorted,
"Richard Wynn, why did you write that letter, to begin with?"
"Difficult to explain," he said simply, pulling an ear of corn from
the stook nearest to him and nibbling at it as if absently with his
strong teeth. "Difficult ... Well! It was when I was feeling pretty
rocky and 'down'----"
"Ah! Elizabeth always said it was the effect of shell-shock!"
"Did she?" He laughed, nibbling that ear. "It wasn't altogether,
either. I was in hospital, badly hipped. Some of the fellows there
were engaged; nice girls coming to visit them, bringing them roses.
They'd something to look forward to every afternoon. Bucked to the
nines. 'My girl'--'my girl says this'--'my girl and I are doing a
show today'--'my girl's brought me so-and-so'--'my _fiancée_ and her
governor took me so-and-so'---- That sort of thing the whole time.
Here was I"--he threw away the stripped stalk--"back in Blighty and
scarcely a soul interested whether I lived or died. Not a woman in
my life at all, Joan.... All this sounds awful piffle, perhaps, but
that's not a funny thought for any fellow when he's down; not a woman
to care----"
His brusque voice sounded boyishly shy. It tore at my heartstrings;
but I only said the first thing that came into my head.
"What about the Elveys? What about your aunt and Muriel? They must
have known you were in England, wounded."
"Er----" He paused. "Yes. Yes, I suppose they did. But they only
wrote much later on, just before I came down here ... Well, then I
got to barracks, Millshott. It was still there ... I mean that
feeling of being fed because I'd no one to care. One night----"
He stopped. "Ah! Have I got to report all these details?"
"Please. Yes. You must."
"One night I saw a fellow in the card-room, writing. You could tell
by his face it wasn't any business-letter. I felt 'Gad,' if I'd a
girl to write to of my own!'"
"I should have thought---" I hesitated. "I shouldn't have thought it
was possible ... for you ... not to have had one..."
"Ah! Now what d'you mean by that?"
"Go on. After you thought 'Gad, if I'd a girl to write to'----?"
"Well, then, sort of desperately, I fished out an old letter-case of
mine that I hadn't touched," he told me, "for years. I found--what
d'you think?--a bow of blue ribbon. Blest if I hadn't forgotten what
it was, at first----"
"Flattering of you----"
--"but I soon remembered, Joan! I'd sneaked it off your plait.
D'you remember?"
"Go on, please."
"Well, _I_ began remembering the old days at Mr. Matthews's farm....
The veranda with all our sticks and fishing-boots! The wood-fires.
The icicles round the back-kitchen door; you remember? That
fox-terrier pup I gave you--he's dead, I expect? And how I used to
go out after the beagles with your brothers--what a regiment of chaps
we were! And you just the one little girl ... I remembered how I'd
looked at you----"
"Oh, you couldn't have looked at me----"
"Couldn't I? I'd often thought 'There's a sweetheart, now, some day,
for some man.' I remembered, in barracks. Then I thought 'She's
grown-up now, that kid. Supposing there were a chance of that very
girl, grown-up, looking at _me_?' So----"
He stopped, with a smile, as though I must understand everything now.
To me an odd thing had happened; just as on that day among the
chickens on the hillside I was swept back for a moment to the Past.
I felt memories flocking and twittering about me. I remembered him,
the leggy dark Welsh lad ... Mr. Wynn, the pupil ... yes ... yes,
this was his familiar voice; this was the look and the movement of
him, it was all coming back to me ... and the time that he'd said
"Good-bye" to me under the dripping veranda. One hand clutching his
suit-case, the other grasping me suddenly by the hair, his boy's
mouth had snatched a half-brotherly kiss; the first I'd known from
one who was not a brother. And now, more than seven years later, he
came close, put his hand on the nape of my neck, just under my
twisted-up hair. It thrilled me to the heels with happiness.
"Wait. Wait," I whispered, pulling back. "I haven't heard
everything yet."
"You have."
"You always did--did contradict me," I said, standing there under his
hand. "And you only wrote to me because there was nobody else--not
much of a compliment----"
"What? Well, no answer came, and I knew I'd been an ass. Then came
the business about my uncle's property." He began talking very
quickly. "That shoved things right to the back of my mind, Dear ...
why d'you shiver? Are you cold?"
"No."
"No?" He put his other brown hand about my neck. "Shoved things out
of my mind until I came right up against you, Joan. You!"
"At the Camp----"
"No fear! Hadn't I spotted you all in your brand-new uniform, bless
you, on Euston platform that morning? That was why I got little Rhys
to bring me up to the Camp at once, to make sure it was you. You
see, I'd remembered what you looked like, even if you had forgotten
me."
I thought "Forget him! How, how could I have thought of anything but
him----"
"So that's all," he said. "Only--that wasn't really much of a kiss
just before I went to Canada----"
"But you haven't told me about all these weeks here, since then!"
"That'll keep to make conversation (if we're short of it) after we're
married!" he declared abruptly. "You see as we shall get married
practically at once--
"'As we shall!' Are you not going to ask me what I have to say in
the mat----"
"No, because you always complain so of my asking questions," he
whispered. He was near enough to whisper now, having drawn me close,
close to him. "Put your arms round my neck," he coaxed. "Kiss me."
He put down his brown face.
"There's--Oh, there's such a smudge of black from the wood-smoke on
you, Dick!"
"D'you mind, sweetheart?"
Over his shoulder I saw a strip of evening sky deepening slowly from
mauve to violet. The long-drawn, quavering cry of an owl came across
to us on the freshening air. And from behind a black fringe of elms
there peeped out (fit witness to a Land-Girl's betrothal!) the big
round primrose-colored Harvest-Moon.
Oh, night of Harvest in that rich Welsh valley! To some you meant
the end of toil, relief from anxiety, triumph; to some the overthrow
of darkling schemes. To me you were Love's dream come true; oh,
night of stars and murmurs and caress, oh not-to-be-forgotten night
...
I found no words to voice what was in my heart, beating so near to
his own.
"Dick, Dick!" I sighed.
He nestled his face (smudge and all) against mine, in a string of
kisses that were just a give-and-take of the delight that is beyond
all words.
POSTSCRIPT
THE VICTORY-DANCE
"Now joy, Old England, raise!
For the tidings of thy might,
By the festal cities' blaze
Whilst the wine-cup shines in light!
And yet, amidst that joy and uproar,
Let us think of them that sleep
Full many a fathom deep
By thy wild and rocky steep,
Elsinore!"--CAMPBELL.
Lights, lights over London again!
After four years of darkness and gloom the dear old lights shone down
on the streets where one could see people's faces plainly once
again--and what a crowd of faces, too! The pinky speckle of them was
like nothing as much as a huge flower-bed of that sturdy plant London
Pride. And above them there had burst into bloom the sudden crop of
fluttering flags ... the flags of Victory. Yes, at last after these
four tense years Victory had set those flags waving and those lights
blazing and those people cheering and shouting and dancing in the
streets of London town.
Were you there?
Were you one atom in that whirling stream of laughing and rejoicing
people that surged and circled and broke and re-formed again about
the steps of the Pavilion and the fountain in Piccadilly Circus? Did
you fly before those organized rushes of the Australians through the
_mêlée_? did you ride on motor-drays driven by R.A.F. cadets who had
adorned themselves with nurses' bonnets and cloaks? did you laugh
helplessly over the antics of those young and uplifted Naval officers
who, correctly uniformed but for their smashed-in bowler hats, were
pressing coin and tobacco and vows of eternal friendship upon their
taxi-driver while the surrounding group applauded wildly?
School-boyish--yes, the Forces were a crowd of schoolboys let loose
that night, and hadn't they deserved it, the right to make holiday
and to rejoice in England's way, which is behind a laughing mask and
a tin trumpet?
* * * * * * *
And behind that again; ah, what?
Not all the cheers and merry nonsense talked could drown the
undersong of Victory-week.
Boys who fell to buy that Victory, day after day of that four years'
struggle! Boys who sold their budding lives, this one working his
gun, that one on his ship, that other darling in his downward
crashing 'plane! Sons, brothers, lovers, sweet young cousins and
boy-friends of ours! All day the thought of these had burned with a
proud and steady flame at every British woman's heart. All day there
had been on our lips the names, the familiar home-names, of those who
would not come home ... "If He--if They were only here ..."
Hard to believe that they were not! Far, far beyond that hubbub one
seemed to catch echoes of dear exultant voices we shall hear no more
with these our earthly ears, calling "_cheerio! ... I say! ... Can't
you hear? it's_ US! _So long!_" And, beyond the thronging faces
under the blaze of the street-lamps, Memory and Love could raise a
cloud of other faces: laughing, care-free faces of youths for whom
there would be no Tomorrow of difficulties and sordid struggles and
the anti-climax of growing old.
* * * * * * *
"Yes! Thank Heaven that Jack and the rest of them will never have
lived to _that_----!"
"That" was a sight of which I got a glimpse as a taxi steered its way
inch by inch from the dense throng about the entrance to the
Berkeley. I spoke aloud in the crowd where I found myself, arms
linked with my Dick on one side of me and with Elizabeth's young
husband on the other. The happy four of us (two men in war-worn
khaki, two girls in breeches and new smocks) had come up to town
together on the Wednesday after that glorious Monday.
And the sight which had struck me was that of the face over the heavy
fur collar of the man who was sitting in that taxi; bloated and
coarse, he carried his sixty years as though he had not in all that
time known one hour of strenuous exercise or of clean joy in the
open. Over-eating (more disgustful in its effects than heavy
drinking) was stamped on his face from the bags beneath his eyes to
his lowest chin. A dead thing he seemed to me; dead more truly than
any of the lads who had flung their happy lives away for the cause of
the world while he and his like "lived." Through the square of the
window I caught above his shoulder a glimpse of a girl's pretty and
pettish profile...
The crowd surged in between us and the taxi before I could exclaim
"_Muriel!_ ... I say, it was Muriel; did you see her?"
My tall young husband turned his head as it towered above us. "No!
Muriel with him? I thought I saw old What's-his-name; I s'pose he's
taken her out to celebrate on his steel-profits----"
For since Harvest-time Muriel Elvey had been twice engaged; for a
month to Harry, an engagement quickly broken after she and her mother
had been to stay at the house of this distant connection, the elderly
profiteer of whom I had caught that glimpse. She was to marry him.
Elizabeth and I thought it the most horrible thing we had ever heard
of. But Dick had only shrugged his shoulders and Colonel Fielding
had declared it was an excellent arrangement and that the ... er ...
Mystery-Girl would consider she was in for a very good time.
"A good time!" Oh, misused phrase! To me it has come to represent
one image; the memory of a fleshy and stubby-fingered male hand
resting on a taxi-door, holding a fat black cigar and wearing a
diamond that spat out coloured lights, less sparkling than the
dewdrops that stud the Welsh bracken at home.
We were all going home again in a couple of days; the Land was home
to us for ever now; a very little of Town would do for all of us
these days, and we, fit and joyous from air and work and elemental
interests, had a "good tune" which we never even called such.
"Isn't it odd," I remarked as we struggled back towards the Circus
again, "that Harry Markham _didn't_ seem to mind about Muriel so
much, after all?"
"No," said Elizabeth's Colonel, succinctly. "He had a month of her.
I bet he's ... er ... jolly glad of the change to that topping little
Driver-girl he's all over the place with now----"
"'_Go_ it, Mother Browne!'" whooped the youngest of the dancing
warriors, a Captain with three wound-stripes and a cheeky peach face
which no German bullet would ever now spoil. "Come on!"
"Here, what's this, what's this----" broke in my Dick. "What are you
doing, you people----"
"This" was a new swirl of the whirlpool which had sucked us in just
at the top of the Hay market. A score of young men in khaki and
leather kit, British, Overseas men and a huge American, were dancing
round a policeman, good-humored monument of Tolerance.
They opened the ring, crying "Land-girls! Land Army! Put the girls
in too; come on, dance round the girls----"
Elizabeth and I, laughing, were borne into the middle of that circle;
our men joined hands and whirled around us with the others.
"Dance, man, dance! Dance, Bobby; haven't you heard the news?
There's a Peace on ... No! You can't have my stick--some girl's
snatched my perfectly good stick! _My_ perfectly good stick that
I've had ever since the War! ... The War's over! Come on, dance
round the pretty Land-girls! they helped to win it, too!"
We laughed, my chum and I, but in our eyes tears danced with smiles,
and in our hearts a thrill of pride was all astir as we murmured to
each other, "Did you hear that? It is true, isn't it? We did do our
little bit to help!"
THE END