CHAPTER XIV

MOSTLY ABOUT RELATIONS

We got back to our house at about half-past six at night: the moon rising slowly but surely over the sea and silhouetting the figures of the soldiers working down by the jetty, also casting a subdued radiance on the gables of the Moated Grange, where the latticed and red-curtained windows gave the usual old-fashioned Christmas-card effect, which there is such a lot of down at Mud Flats.

I thought what a lovely picturesque sort of home it was after all for my young bride to come back to after her runaway marriage!

The clatter of Mr. Lascelles's motor-cycle is enough to warn anybody of his approach about half an hour beforehand.

So, as I anticipated, the porch door was flung open before we got to the gate: a tall, girlish figure in a blanket-coat like mine rushed towards us.

"Nancy!" I said gleefully.

But it wasn't Nancy; it was Evelyn.

In the moonlight I saw her face absolutely bewildered and distraught-looking. Any one would have thought that something perfectly terrible had happened! For a minute I did wonder whether perhaps there had been another Zeppelin raid while we were out, and whether it had hit Aunt Victoria. She's certainly the easiest target we've got.

But no--Aunt Victoria's plump, tea-cosy-like form appeared in the porch beyond, and beyond that were the figures of cook, Mary the housemaid, and the tall, rather leggy form of Mr. Curtis.

But where--where were the bride and bridegroom?

To my horror this was the very question with which we were met ourselves. There was a sort of chorus in the porch of "Nancy--where is Nancy? ... What has happened to those other two? ... Where is Masters--where did you leave Captain Masters and your sister?"

"Leave them? We haven't left them at all!" I retorted in a horrified voice. "Aren't they here?"

"Here?" said Aunt Victoria, very agitated. "No! They are not here."

This was pretty terrible. I looked at Mr. Lascelles, who took up: "The machine broke down, and we lost sight of them: we haven't really seen them since we left the place this morning."

"Then it is true, and not a joke!" exclaimed Evelyn in an awestruck accent.

I said, feeling more puzzled every minute, "What is not a joke?"

"Come into the drawing-room, and I will show you," said Aunt Victoria in a very shaky sort of voice.

Well, we all crowded into the drawing-room again, Mr. Curtis and Mr. Lascelles (still in his teddy-bear motor-cycling get-up) and me in my blanket-coat and little hat blinking my eyes, because it was too bright in the lamplight after the soft moon outside, and Evelyn looking absolutely distraught.

"Read this, Rattle," said Aunt Victoria. And she picked up a telegram which was lying with its envelope on the marble mantelpiece.

It had been handed in at the Junction at a quarter to two that afternoon, and it said:

"Very sorry. Married this morning. Writing later--Nancy Masters."

"I thought that it must be some silly practical joke of these children! The modern sense of humour is so extraordinarily broad," murmured Aunt Victoria in her agitated voice. "I made sure it was all a 'take-in.'"

"Oh! no: it isn't, it isn't!" I said, shaking my head violently. "It is all quite true and official! They are married!"

"And you knew about it, Rattle? You are an accomplice in this extraordinary affair?" My Aunt Victoria suddenly turned upon me. "You, the youngest of the girls: the baby! You have been deceiving me!"

"No, I haven't. Honour bright," I was beginning, but here Mr. Lascelles (very decently) came to the rescue.

He said, earnestly, "Upon my solemn word of honour, Mrs. Verdeley, Miss Elizabeth knew absolutely nothing about the affair. It was kept absolutely dark from her, I can assure you."

"But she went with them! She was going to start off on that wild-goose chase to the Junction, when that wicked little Nancy pretended that she had to go and see the dentist," took up Aunt Victoria.

Her enormous cameo brooch, that shows the three Graces doing a sort of one-step together on a terra-cotta background in a plaited gold frame, rose and fell on her chest with her agitation, like a boat at anchor on a very stormy sea. "It was Rattle who said that she would have to go with her and hold her hand during the operation."

"Yes, but upon my sacred sam, Mrs. Verdeley, Miss Rattle--I mean Miss Elizabeth--didn't know that the operation was only going to be a marriage!" Mr. Lascelles took up again quite gravely and seriously. "I only broke that to her when we were nearly at the town, and I assure you nobody on earth could have been more utterly flabbergasted than she was."

"Yes, they could--I was," put in Evelyn in a horrified voice.

"Never again shall I believe anything a girl says," said Aunt Victoria in heartfelt accents. "You did not even get to the church to see them married, Mr. Lascelles?"

"No. We just missed them," said Mr. Lascelles, ruefully. "Then we went all over the town hunting for them and drew a blank everywhere. Goodness knows where they got to: for I don't!"

"Well, that we shall be told, I suppose, when they condescend to write, as Nancy says they are going to do," said Aunt Victoria, taking up the wire again. "Now, Mr. Lascelles! since you appear to be the only person who knows anything at all about this wretched child's escapade, I shall have to ask you some questions about this. Dear me! This unscrupulous young adventurer who has lured her into marrying him!"

"Oh! I shouldn't call him that, Mrs. Verdeley: no, I really shouldn't call him that," protested Mr. Lascelles, sitting down on the sofa as soon as Aunt Victoria had settled in her easy chair. "After all, Masters is----"

Here I waited for the usual masculine expression.

Out it came.

"A thundering good chap! Isn't he, Curtis?"

"Awfully good chap," said Mr. Curtis, nodding his head so hard that the reflection of the lamplight danced in his eyeglasses. "One of the best: make an excellent husband. Any girl would be lucky to get him!"

This surprised me a little, because I thought Mr. Curtis, who had admired Nancy so awfully himself, would have been rather sick at anybody who presumed to walk off with her and marry her! Yet, there he was giving these unsolicited testimonials to his rival. Really, men are the most inexplicable beings in the world! One thing I have learnt about them since we have had so many of them billeted in this place, and that is, that you may as well save yourself the trouble of guessing what any of them are going to say or do next, because it is not the slightest good. You will never hit it.

Mr. Curtis went on: "Masters is--er--more of a man of the world than the rest of us, perhaps, but he is sincerely devoted to your niece, Mrs. Verdeley. All his friends knew that before he had been in the place a week."

Here's another little surprise. All his friends knowing something which had so surprised me when I found it out by accident!

"Never mind about his devotion: we will take that for granted," said Aunt Victoria, in a resigned sort of voice. "Let's hear what his people are, and his prospects, and a few things like that about him."

Here Mr. Lascelles, evidently trying to look extra grown-up and reliable, began to furnish her with some of these details.

"His people--that is, his father and mother are dead," he began, "but his father was in the Army, and his mother was the daughter of Sir William Magnate, the man they used to call 'The Steel King.'"

At this Aunt Victoria pricked up her ears.

"Why, then, there ought to be a good deal of money in the family," she began, looking rather more encouraged, but Mr. Lascelles put an extinguisher on this rosy gleam of hope by saying, "No, I am afraid not. You see, the old man quarrelled so fearfully with his daughter, practically turned her out of the house for daring to get engaged to 'a gentleman butcher.'"

"A gentleman butcher?" said my Aunt Victoria, looking rather bewildered again. "But you told me that Captain Masters' father was a soldier?"

"Yes--that is what he meant, that is what the old man used to call soldiers," said little Mr. Lascelles cheerfully. "That was just his sort of pet name for them--'Hired Assassin' was another, you know, Mrs. Verdeley. There are lots of people who used to talk before the war like that. 'Brainless Army Type' was another of their phrases. Old Sir William was very fond of that expression (you must know it? I always use it myself now, 'lest they forget'). Well, he used to hate soldiers, you see, and so he absolutely barred having anything to do with the Masters after they were married. They had a very tough fight to give Harry a decent education, and even then they were afraid they never could afford the Army, so they had to send him to the City, though he was absolutely cut out for the Service, and a very smart volunteer: that is how I met him, when we were both Territorials together. This war has given him his chance: he will go far, see if he doesn't," said little Mr. Lascelles earnestly, and I couldn't help liking the simple, earnest way he spoke of his chum. You saw at once that he meant every word he said, and that he simply couldn't bear Aunt Victoria to think that her niece had thrown herself away on somebody that wasn't worthy of her.

You could see he wouldn't be happy until Aunt Victoria had come round to Captain Masters.

There was silence for a while in the drawing-room. We were all sitting looking into the fire. Nobody knew what to say exactly: after all, what use is it saying anything, however one may disapprove, when somebody has absolutely been and gone and got married?

The milk is spilt by that time!

Why cry?

Evidently even Aunt Victoria saw it from that point of view.

She said slowly at last: "Well, there is nothing now to be done except wait for Nancy's letter. There is only one thing that distresses me very much still; and that is, why did the child deceive me like this? Why in the world couldn't she and Captain Masters have come to me and told me frankly how things were, and asked for my consent?"

"Because they didn't think they had an earthly chance of getting it, don't you see?" explained Mr. Frank Lascelles. "They didn't want to waste lots of time in family discussions before marriage, when it is always pretty certain that there will be plenty of them after marriage. After all, Mrs. Verdeley, think! It may be the last happiness that the poor fellow is able to snatch. For he'll be out there--out in France in a fortnight. He may not have the chance of seeing any more of her after this----"

"Don't talk to me like that. I forbid you to talk to me like that," said Aunt Victoria sharply. "Don't you know that it is very unlucky? For goodness' sake, touch wood," and here she actually took hold of the Incubus's--I mean Mr. Lascelles's--hand, and tapped hard with it on the wood of the mahogany cabinet that stands beside her chair. "Since they are married----"

Here she took out her lavender-watery handkerchief, and blew her aquiline, early Victorian nose with it as loudly as if she had a big trumpet.

"Since the dear children have got married," she went on, amazing us simply frightfully by the expression, "the least we can do is to hope that they have many, many years of happiness together when----"

Here she gave a funny little laugh, and quoted that song which we always hear from the "mud larks," and which you would really think was quite the last thing that you would ever expect from the mistress of this house.

--"_When this blooming war is over!_"

I don't quite know how to explain it to you, but as she said these last words her voice was quite different. It seemed just like the voice of one of us girls, for when I told Evelyn afterwards that it had reminded me of her voice, Evelyn said: "Why, Rattle, how awfully funny! Because, do you know, at the time I couldn't help noticing that Aunt Victoria when she said that sounded exactly like you speaking!"

And Aunt Victoria looked quite different too.

Perhaps it was the rosy glow of the firelight that suddenly made her cheeks so pink, and her eyes so bright and sapphire-like.

I know that the dancing flame struck lights out of the faded long-turned-to-grey hair below her old-fashioned nineteenth century lace cap with the black velvet bow.

Just for that moment it was golden hair, like Nancy's and Evelyn's and mine.

And just in that moment I saw her as she must have been years ago, before she became what we always thought her--a married old maid!

Yes, under all the old maidishness there must have been hidden away quite a lot of amusing things which we had never suspected. I suddenly felt that for years and years I had been misjudging Aunt Victoria, just as I had misjudged the Incubus for days and days. I wished there was some way of showing her that I realised this, and that I was sorry for being such a little beast to her so often, and that I saw how, long ago, she must have felt just as we felt, and that she must have been nice-looking, as nice-looking as any of us.

I don't know whether you have noticed it, but that sort of heart-to-heart remark is the kind of thing which you can say to comparative strangers, such as somebody in a railway carriage whom you had never seen before and will never see again!

But you simply can't say it to people of your own family that you have always been with.

It may sound nonsense, but there is such a thing as knowing people so well that you can't ever know them at all. Nothing can really break that barrier. Isn't it funny?

However, thank goodness! even if I couldn't manage to say something nice to Aunt Victoria at that moment, somebody else could.

Mr. Lascelles did. He gazed at our old aunt with a most touched expression in his grey-blue eyes for a second.

Then a scarlet blush (quite like our own family blush) spread itself all over his freckles and his school-boyish, tip-tilted features. And then he blurted out what you may think was absolute nonsense and blarney, but what I think must have been one of the most graceful compliments that the old lady had ever heard.

He said: "Mrs. Verdeley, I ought to have been a man when you were a young girl!"

What more graceful compliment could any woman of any age expect from any young officer? If any one said that to me when I was getting old, I should go on living to a hundred and eighty-three, out of pure bucked-upness!

He took her hand, which is stiff with wedding rings and engagement rings of bygone ancestors, and kissed it just as if she had been a girl.

Shortly after this we all went in to supper.

And I can tell you I felt I needed it after all this emotionality and excitement, even though I had had such an enormous lunch and such a splendid tea!

Nobody talked much, but I know that everybody was thinking of that great subject, "the young newly-married couple!"

And everybody was sort of quietly cheerful about it all, as if they realised that, money or no money, at last one quite promising love affair had come off now and couldn't be stopped.

Oh! but when I say everybody was cheerful, I forgot to mention that Evelyn certainly wasn't. She distinctly had the "blues," and she didn't eat anything except about a mouthful of celery soup and one crystallised fruit.

I thought perhaps she was rather offended at Nancy's having chosen me to go to the Junction instead of her? She is the eldest, after all.

But when we got upstairs, and I went into her room to talk, I found that Evelyn was not so much reproachful with Nancy for having shared the secret with me as she was disapproving of the whole affair.

She looked primmer than I have ever seen her, with her two great fair plaits hanging down on each side of her face over her long nightgown, that she doesn't put ribbons in: she thinks it's a waste in war-time.

And she said, "It's all very well, Rattle, and Aunt Victoria has taken it very well, and been much more forgiving than I ever thought she would, but right is right, and wrong is wrong! And it was wrong of Nancy to get secretly engaged, and then run away to be married. It was underhand!"

"Yes, but when she wasn't allowed to be overhand," I argued, sitting on the edge of Evelyn's white bed, and rubbing cold cream into my face, which was quite sore after the rushing through the frosty air, "what else was she to do?"

"She ought to have waited," said Evelyn, austerely. "It is our parents' wish that we should all wait until we are twenty-five."

"Wait!" I said rather scoffingly. "It isn't so jolly easy to settle down and wait for years and donkey's years when people happen to be much in love!"

"You don't know anything about being in love," said Evelyn, coldly.

"No, I may not know, but I can read, and I can imagine," I persisted. "Besides, you don't know anything about being in love yourself!"

"No, of course not," said Evelyn rather crossly. "Still, I do know that one ought not to steal one's happiness, which is what Nancy has done."

"Oh, Evelyn, what poodle-doodle!" I said. "It isn't as if Nancy were not grown up. She is twenty--she has a right to be married if she wants to be, and bother the silly old will!"

"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if no good comes of it," said Evelyn gloomily. "It looks very much as if Nancy herself realised that as soon as she had let herself in for it!"

"Nancy herself?" I said, staring at Evelyn, and not knowing what she meant.

"Yes--didn't she put it in her telegram?" said Evelyn. "Didn't she say, 'Very sorry married'?"

"Oh, you silly!" I said, laughing. "That was only a kind of apology to Aunt Victoria for having kept her in the dark up till now! That didn't mean she was very sorry she was married!"

"I am not at all so sure," said Evelyn darkly. "You know it always says, 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure.' This might be the beginning of the repentance."

"Not it!" I said firmly. "Marry in haste and go on feeling awfully bucked about it, is far more Nancy's style, I can assure you: but I am really much too sleepy to argue," I said, breaking off the argument at the best point (which is when one can't think of what to say next). "Good-night," I said, and I went to bed, and slept like the dead until Mary knocked for the fourth time at my bedroom door this morning.

I think we had all expected to find that Aunt Victoria had received the note from Nancy by the first post, but nothing of the kind. The entire mail consisted of a bootmaker's bill for Mr. Lascelles, a catalogue addressed to "Miss Nancy Verdeley," little dreaming that there was not such a person left any more on this earth, and a letter for me.

There was something rather queer about the envelope of this letter. The stamp seemed to have been cut off another letter, and then fixed to this with Stick-phast.

Also the postmark was awfully funny. It looked as if it had been done with a charcoal pencil.

As for the handwriting, I knew it. I had a presentiment what it was all about before I opened it.

I deciphered it in the Lair.

It was from my old enemy and new friend--the Incubus--Mr. Lascelles.

It was dated last night, about twelve o'clock, so I suppose he couldn't have posted it--he must have given it to the old postman to bring in with the others.

And it said:

"My dear Miss Betty,--You may think it awful cheek of me to write to you, and also frightful rot my writing when I have seen you all day to-day, but somehow I feel I must write and tell you how fearfully pleased I am with life now that you are going to be real friends. I think you are a little brick and lots more things that I suppose I had better not put. As Kipling says in one of his best poems:

"'_Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he dare not say._'

"Perhaps some day I may be allowed to trot a few of them out. Till then,

"I remain, dear Miss Betty, "Yours very gratefully, "FRANK LASCELLES.

"P.S.--I nearly put 'Lonely Subaltern,' because, however many people I was friends with, I still should feel lonely if you wouldn't speak to me."

Second postscript:

"I was so frightfully pleased that you enjoyed yourself at that matinée. I am sure I did."

Third postscript:

"I do hope you won't be offended with me again for writing."

Of course, I am not offended: I think it was very nice of him to write.

Quite a pretty letter, too, but not really as good as the ones that he wrote to me before I knew who he was. I wonder why?

However, the great excitement to-day will be, when is that other letter coming--the letter from Nancy, and what is she going to say in it?