ANOTHER SHOCK!
You know how fast you can walk when you're angry and don't see where
you are going?
Well, that was me as I tore out of our garden (still hatless and in
my Saxe blue woolly coat) down the road towards Nowhere Junction and
then came to the field that leads in the direction of the Ford. It
might have been Hyde Park for all I saw of it, but close to the stile
I was reminded of where I was by the tramp of feet on the frosty road
(thanks be it's dry frost at last for a change) and the sound of
men's voices singing in parts a hymn tune with these words:
"_When we get our civvy clothes on,
O 'ow 'appy we shall be!
When this blooming war is o--ver,
No more soldiering for me!_"
It was a squad of that regiment called "The Super-Filberts," marching
at ease after a class.
Behind them came their officer, the sort of young man who is awfully
nice, but whom you feel you must have met before somewhere because he
is so like thousands of pictures of our gallant defenders in the
_Sunday Herald._
With him came another tall, rather disconsolate figure in khaki,
wearing eyeglasses--Nancy's friend, Mr. Curtis!
At that moment I was so infuriated against Mr. Lascelles that I felt
just as angry with anything calling itself his friend. So I only
gave the very curtest nod when he and the other officer saluted me.
Salutes are "no treat to me" now--as the bus driver said about the
ladies' ankles.
I presently came to a field where I had to pass a guard of soldiers,
who challenged me, and then, smiling, let me go on. I had to pick my
way pretty carefully. It was a perfect honeycomb of wet and muddy
ditches--trenches that the "Super-Filberts" had been digging under
the instruction of Mr. Curtis, who is an instructor, I may mention.
I looked into them, and simply couldn't help heaving a tiny sigh of
pity for the poor darlings out there "somewhere in France." They
have to live in those trenches for weeks on end. How on earth do
they ever keep their poor feet dry? Or do they give up all hope of
trying to?
Some way away from the trenches, there was a deeper hole covered
over. I had heard the Incubus explaining to Evelyn that this was the
entrance to a "sap"--one of the long tunnels which the men go down to
lay a charge of gunpowder.
I put aside the wooden cover, which was like the door of the open
mouth of a well, looking right down into the beginning of the sap.
It looked so narrow that I couldn't possibly imagine anybody working
there except a mole or something about the size of that scrubby
little Mr. Lascelles. Never mind him, though. I had come out here
to try to forget him. So, beginning to feel angry again, on I
pranced, towards what they call "the fortified house" at the other
end of the field.
Now, the fortified house is a square, stone-built farm affair, which
has been bought by the military authorities for instruction purposes.
The inside roofs and some of the inner walls have been knocked down.
And the windows have all been boarded up, and instead of them there
are wicked little square holes everywhere just big enough to put the
muzzle of a machine-gun through. A lot of the classes for defence
and that sort of thing take place up at this house. But, of course,
there wouldn't be a soul about there now, as it was four o'clock.
The sun was beginning to set behind the trees just like an
old-fashioned Christmas card, and I had met the class, of course,
marching away.
I peeped in through the open, doorless entrance of the house and
tried to imagine what it must be like to find yourself one of a lot
of soldiers working those machine-guns, with perhaps half of your
comrades fallen around you and scarcely enough ammunition to hold out
until the relief comes up, and a strong surrounding force of horrible
grey-coated Boches creeping nearer and nearer!
I was just thinking this when I jumped back with a little scream.
"Hullo! What is it? Oh!----"
For a moment I felt as if my imaginings had come true. I thought
that there before me, out of the fortified house, was slinking and
stealing the stealthy grey-clad form of one of those Germans.
Then I saw what it was. And I burst out laughing, in relief, at the
cause of my absurd fright. For the man who had slipped quietly out
of the house, touching his old felt hat to me, was nothing more
alarming than an English labourer.
Besides this, it was a labourer whom I knew! It was no one more or
less than our nice old Penny, the gardener, with that pathetic old
black wig of his, who has been working for Aunt Victoria since before
we girls came to live with her at Mud Flats.
"Good evening, missie. What a fright you gave me!" he said in his
nice, kind, affectionate voice. He is very fond of all of us--a real
old-fashioned English servant, who is more of a friend than anything
else, as Aunt Victoria says. "What are you doing out here at this
time--come to watch the soldiers?" I asked him.
"Oh, no, miss. I was just about seeing whether there mightn't be one
or two cart-loads of gravel by the hedge there where they have been
digging. I thought I might be able to get them to let me have it
cheap, and it would do nicely to mend those holes in your auntie's
garden path where the drippings have come from the rain off the porch
roof; and then I went into the house here, so as to get a bit of
shelter for lighting a pipe--too much breeze outside."
Somehow I couldn't help feeling at the time that there was something
very queer about Penny that afternoon. To begin with, talking about
"a breeze" when it was so still and frosty that one could hear the
chinking of the R.E.'s forge and the sawing of some planks in their
workshops simply miles away!
And, for the second thing, old Penny never has smoked for as long as
I can remember. Mr. Lascelles's cigarettes were the first whiff of
tobacco smoke that have profaned Aunt Victoria's curtains since the
year Eighteen Hundred and Goodness Knows.
So how could our old Penny have imagined that he was going to light a
pipe?
And I said to him: "You had better not let the 'Super-Filberts' catch
you poking round their fortified house, Penny! They might arrest you
on suspicion of being a German spy!" I was just joking, of course,
to keep his spirits up. And, anyhow, the poor dear old fellow did
smile at last. He said to me: "Bless your heart, my dear Miss
Elizabeth! There ain't no soldiers going to think anything of that
sort about an honest old man like me! They all know where I work,
and all about me. They are civil to me, and no mistake."
And he went hobbling off, rheumatism and all.
I didn't want to go back home again so soon, as you can imagine.
What I wanted was to put off as long as possible seeing again that
Lonely-Subaltern-impersonating disgrace to the New Army, Mr.
Lascelles.
So, instead of going straight down the road again, I turned down a
lane that is rather a long way round, by the oyster beds.
It is a narrow lane, always muddy unless we have frost, when the ruts
are as hard as very deep corrugated iron. There is a wood on each
side.
I say, you must really excuse some more landscape just here, will
you? because it really is part of the story. I have just got to put
in those woods, because it was they that made the lane so very dark.
The tall hollies on either side of it branch out overhead and turn it
into a regular tunnel.
So that was how it happened that two figures ahead of me, strolling
along, I hardly saw until I was right up to them.
And they didn't see me at all, being too fearfully absorbed in what
they were saying to each other.
They were a tall girl and a young man in uniform--an officer.
Oh, of course, we have plenty of officers down here. Some of them
have their wives and things down for the week-end, too.
So, though the man had got a massive-looking khaki arm about the
girl's waist, and though she was leaning her head in that "loppy,"
helpless sort of way against his shoulder that I suppose must mean
she's fearfully in love, I shouldn't have taken any notice of this
pair if I hadn't heard the man's voice.
It was a voice I knew. It was the voice of that big, good-looking
Captain Masters: you know, the forget-me-notty one who came to our
party, with the black hair like pitch, with a crinkle in it.
And it--the voice, of course--was saying, just as I passed, these
startling words:
"But look here, darling: look here, Nancy----"
I gave one startled glance, through the dusk, at the figure of the
girl.
Yes, it was. There are only three girls, only three of us in this
village who would look as tall as that standing by the side of a
six-foot-fourer like Captain Masters.
It was my own sister Nancy! _With_ the young man that I thought she
hadn't even seen since the party, since she was out when he came to
pay his duty-call! How--what----
Well, of course, there was only one thing to be done, and that was to
pass on as quickly as I could, pretending that I hadn't seen them.
(They really hadn't seen me.)
I have my faults, goodness knows! Hot-tempered I may be. Vulgar and
outspoken, Evelyn says I am, very often. And it is not for nothing
that I have been nicknamed "Rattle." I suppose I do really talk
rather a lot?
But no one shall ever say that I am not a sports-woman!
So I didn't breathe a word to Evelyn, when I got home this evening,
of the terrific surprise I had been just given by our fair young
sister! However, I didn't see why I shouldn't tax Nancy with it
later on. So, after tea (where Mr. Lascelles never turned up) I took
her aside, and said I had simply got to speak to her. I dragged her
into the linen-room, which is a funny little warm, lavender-scented
cubbyhole two steps down from the garret, where our poor old Penny,
the gardener, has been put for the benefit of his rheumatism.
"I say, you are greedy," I said to her as a start off.
"Greedy?" said Nancy, opening her enormous innocent-looking blue eyes
at me. "Do you mean because I have finished all those chocolates of
Mr. Lascelles's? You know Evelyn had a box of her own, and you never
will touch any sweets that unfortunate young man brings into the
house, so----"
"Nothing about chocolates," I said, cutting it short. "But what
about a girl who in the same week allows one young man to kiss her,
and another to get on 'darling' terms with her?"
For a moment Nancy didn't say a single word. By the light of the
tiny blue fairy light in the linen-room I saw that she had got the
family blush well on!
There really are drawbacks to being the possessors of these dazzling
fair skins like all of the Verdeleys have got.
Then she drew a long breath and said in a resigned little voice: "I
suppose you mean ... just before tea?"
I nodded. "The--er--the second Prince Charming is a good deal
better-looking than the first one," I told her. "That I will say for
you."
"But--but, Rattle," began Nancy, in a half-horror-struck,
half-puzzled tone, "how could you--how did you know?"
"Passed you just now in the lane when you were too wrapped up in your
flirtation to see who was walking up behind you."
"Flirtation?" cried Nancy, quite sharply. "It isn't any flirtation!"
"What? What?" I put in, thrilled. "D'you mean it's what they call
in books The Real Thing?"
"Rather," said Nancy, as if she meant it from the bottom of her
heart, and then she pulled up as if she'd said what she wasn't going
to.
I clutched her nice plump arm, "Nancy! Are you really very in love
with him, and him with you?"
"Don't! _Please_ don't ask me any questions!"
"You're engaged to him, then?"
"No!" said Nancy, in an uncertain sort of voice.
"What? Not engaged to him," I said, angrily. "Oh! If he's just a
philanderer, like they have on the stage----"
"He--he's nothing of the kind----"
"If he is, and he's just passing the time away by making love to the
prettiest girl here, and then going to ride away leaving her to break
her heart----"
"But he isn't: he isn't. Rather not! Oh, my dear child, I can't
explain," Nancy said, half laughing, half crying. "I assure you it's
all right!"
"That means that you _are_ engaged."
"I never said so," murmured Nancy, dimpling.
"I don't care what you 'say.' I suppose you call it 'an
understanding.' A girl at school's sister had one of those for six
months once, and it meant that nobody could go into the drawing-room
when she was there with the young man and that she never looked at
anybody else and that they got married in the usual way: so what the
_difference_ is," I said, "I can't see!"
"Perhaps not. Only, Rattle, you will be a brick, won't you?" she
said very coaxingly. "You will prrrromise you won't breathe a word
of----"
"You needn't have asked me that," I said, hurt. "Awful I may be.
But at least I'm not a sneak."
"Oh, I know, I know! Only you might forget, and rag me before
Evelyn, and Evelyn would be---- You _know_ what Evelyn would be
like!"
I nodded. "A conscientious objector."
Then I thought of something. Just as Nancy was going to slip away, I
caught her arm again.
"You might tell me just one thing."
"No, Rattle, no. I'm not going to answer any questions. I can't
now. 'Tisn't fair."
"It is! It's nothing to do with your--with him. It can't make any
difference if you tell me just this.
"What, then?"
"This. I may be the youngest of the family, and too young and
ignorant to know anything at all," I began (meaning it sarcastically,
of course), "but I can guess _some_ things. I can see from your
face----"
Here Nancy turned her pretty face away.
"I could see from your face," I persisted, "that what's happened
means something absolutely wonderful to you."
She gave my hand a little squeeze, "You _darling_ Baby! You'll know
yourself, some day----"
"Yes, but what I want to know now is, doesn't it make you sorry that
you let Mr. Curtis kiss you at the party?"
She stared at me. "Sorry? What's it got to do with it? Why should
I be sorry?"
"You don't feel," I asked, "that you've wasted something that ought
to have been saved up for--for the real love affair?"
Nancy laughed like anything. "My _dear_ Rattle! My _dear_ Kid!"
"Thanks: a year younger than you, aren't I?"
"Yes, but--oh, as if _that_ had anything whatsoever to do with
_this_!" cried Nancy, still laughing. "Oh, what a lot of mistakes
there must be made in this world by people making up their minds to
believe there's only one kind of kiss!"
And then she ran downstairs, leaving me to ponder over the doings of
a very crowded day.