CHAPTER X

THE ZEPPELIN NIGHT

When I said it had been "a crowded day" I only meant at the time crowded with the little affairs of the Verdeley family. My finding out first of all about that unforgivable Incubus and his "Lonely Subaltern" trick and our quarrel for one thing! And, for the other thing, my coming unexpectedly upon Nancy's romance. For it is a romance. How they have managed it in such a short time I don't know. But here she is actually engaged. Ahem! I _mean_, of course, having an understanding with this Captain Masters, whose name we hadn't heard a fortnight ago.

Really it reminds me of that old poem:

"_A roving eye, a soldier's mien, A doublet of the blue, No more of me you knew, my love-- No more of me you knew._"

In this case, of course, the doublet is made of what the _London Mail_ tells you is the only key to a woman's heart--khaki!

_How_ I should like to know every detail about just how it all happened! I must get Nancy to tell me every atom of that as soon as the "understanding" has blossomed out into a proper engagement.

Yes, here's Nancy, if you please, only just twenty and flying straight in the face of our parents' will that sent us down to this God-forsaken place on purpose so that we mightn't rush into the madness of an early love affair before the age of twenty-five!

What would our parents have said to this?

However, those two bombshells are not the only ones that have fallen on this place to-night. Between eleven o'clock and half-past we had, by way of a little change, some real ones!

An air raid over Mud Flats! That is the latest!

I heard the sound of "bang, bang, bang!" outside when I was in bed. Immediately I popped up and slipped on my dressing-gown and nipped across the passage to Evelyn's room, which looks out on to the front. Nancy was there already. Then out bounced Aunt Victoria in a million shawls and an eider-down and a most worried look, and her grey hair like a bird's nest with hoar frost on it. All this time "bang, bang, bang," was still going on outside, with a deep "Brrr--Rroum! Brrr--Roum!" that we seemed to hear in our bones, first of all. We were told afterwards that these were the guns from the cruiser in the Bay outside Mud Flats.

And then we heard a tap at Evelyn's door, which we'd left open.

And then, looking up, we beheld the weirdest little figure in bright-blue-and-cream-striped pyjamas, with red hair standing bolt upright on end, like a baby's just rumpled from its cot.

"Don't be frightened! I say, it's quite all right," said a voice that I suppose was intended to be awfully encouraging and dauntless, though, as a matter of fact, all of us girls were far more excited than frightened.

"The thing's gone over now! And, anyhow, you have got a man in the house." This was, if you please, our awful Incubus--the Lascelles boy!

I suppose he was the only object in pyjamas that Aunt Victoria had ever seen in her life (since I know she said that our uncle Edward always used to wear a good old-fashioned nightshirt). So possibly she thought that Mr. Lascelles had gone into mufti and was wearing the very latest and "nuttiest" thing in lounge suits. (She really is as ignorant as that about men!) What I mean to say is that she didn't look in the least shocked: she who always used to consider it a sign of being extra nice to be shocked at everything but an overcoat! Isn't it funny? And it was actually she, if you please, who suggested that we should all have cups of cocoa and pieces of cake to help us to "compose ourselves" before we went off to sleep again: not only that, but that she meant Mr. Lascelles as well, of course! So there he stayed, looking something like an illustration of "_Toy-Town_" in _The Sketch_, and bustling about in that zebra pyjama-suit, and that hair, handing cups and gobbling cake, and jabbering away to all of us--I mean, of course, to all of them.

Neither of _us_ has spoken a word to the other since that echoing moment when I slapped his face for him in the dining-room, and I don't see any particular reason why we ever should speak again.

I am not going to apologise for having lost my temper with him: he deserved everything he got--and I don't suppose he is going to apologise for his "Lonely Subaltern" trick--so there we shall remain.

I forgot to say that, of course, both the servants were crowded in as well to that Zeppelin cocoa party in Evelyn's room. Mary, the housemaid, was the only one of our party who seemed at all hysterical. She came in Hinde's curlers and pink flannelette. She began to whimper about this being the end of everything, and how we had all come to the last hour of our lives.

This was when cook, in a grey golf-cape and carpet slippers, rounded on her, and said: "Well, if it is the last hour, it has come at a very good time for you, and don't forget it! Wasn't it your evening out? Didn't I see you, with my own eyes, trapesing down the market place with Lance-Corporal Gateshead going to the pictures?"

(I forgot to explain that, among other changes, there actually is a Picture Palace at Mud Flats now, for the benefit of the soldiers.)

"And even if you do get killed by them Germans to-night, at least you saw the new film of Charlie Chaplin the last thing before leaving! So I don't see what you have got to complain of, you ungrateful thing!" said cook. "If you was like poor old Mr. Penny, now, who had that bad attack of screwmatics for his last evening----"

That suddenly reminded us of poor old Penny--the only member of the entire household who wasn't gathered there in Evelyn's little room.

"I wonder if he has slept through all this racket?" said Aunt Victoria, rather anxiously. "If not, I am afraid he must have been rather terrified, poor old man."

"Penny? Is that your old gardener chap with the wig--the one who is always nosing round the camps for leaf-mould and groundsel for your canary, and that sort of thing?" said the Incubus quickly. "Sleeps in the attic, does he? Well, I will just pop up to him."

And off he popped in his red Turkish slippers.

We heard voices from Penny's room, Penny's sounding rather angry.

Presently the Sight in pyjamas came down, and said: "He's all right. He wasn't frightened a bit, unless he is scared by my language!"

"Language!"--just fancy, to dear old Penny, our faithful old servant! In the middle of a Zeppelin Night! Did you ever hear anything so disgraceful?

I think even the Incubus noticed my look of stony disapproval, for he went on rather hastily to explain: "I told the old Johnnie he'd simply got to keep his skylight covered. He'd lighted his lamp, just to hearten himself up, he said----"

Poor old fellow! As if he knew what he was doing in his nervousness and flurry!

--"But there was light enough to see beyond the Martello Tower. I don't think it will happen again," wound up that interfering parrot of an Incubus. "Good-night, everybody!"

Everybody said "Good-night," except me. I hope he noticed that I didn't even look at him. When I got back to my own room and went straight to the glass to see whether I had been looking as dignified and mature as I'd been feeling, I was annoyed when I saw myself. What with my two fat golden plaits hanging down on each side of my face and the soft muslin collar on my sky-blue dressing-gown and the pale pink ribbon showing from my nightie, I looked years and _years_ less than my real age. I might have been fifteen-and-a-half!

Girls? Can you _imagine_ anything more maddening?