CHAPTER XV
THE BRIDE WRITES HOME
Well, at last, two whole days after she had been married, our sister Nancy (now Mrs. Harry Masters) has condescended to write and tell us all about it!
Two long letters she has written! One is to Aunt Victoria, rather stilted and full of the most lovely words and phrases, and with "My husband" coming in about every second line.
"Just as if nobody had ever _had_ a husband before," said Evelyn.
I said, "Well, _she_ hasn't, which is the same thing as far as she is concerned."
The second letter is addressed to "The Misses Evelyn and Elizabeth Verdeley."
And it begins, "My dear Kids."
Well, that rather put us off at first. Considering that I am only three years younger than she is, and that Evelyn is actually a whole year older!
"Kids!" When for about twenty years we have done absolutely everything together--never been separated! "Kids!" Just because she is a married woman of forty-eight hours' standing!
However, it was a long letter, and quite jolly when you got past the beginning.
She says:
"To begin with, I absolutely must apologise and grovel for what you must think my perfectly unspeakable behaviour in getting married and all that sort of thing without having let you into the secret. But, Evelyn and Rattle, it really was impossible to do it any other way.
"You see, Harry and I knew that we couldn't possibly tell Aunt Victoria, because we imagined that what she immediately would do would be to put her foot down firmly, instantly, and never let us see each other for centuries, not until I was twenty-five. We made quite sure that since she could not turn Harry out of the place until he has got to go to France, she would pack me off to be paying guest in some fearful spot as far removed from Mud Flats as you can get it on the map, such as the Orkney Islands.
"And, you know, Evelyn and Rattle, if she had done that we should simply have died!
"At least, Harry wouldn't have died, perhaps, because men are so much better able to bear things than we are, and, besides, he has got his King and country to go on serving: but I know I should have died: I simply couldn't have existed without him. I could not have been dragged away from him, just at the very moment when we found we were simply made for each other, which we are.
"And then, as I couldn't possibly tell Aunt Victoria, I couldn't tell you kids----"
"Kids" again!
"I couldn't tell you kids, because it would seem so awful afterwards, when Aunt Victoria found out that I had dragged you two into my fearful deceit and wickedness. It was quite bad enough having to involve Mr. Lascelles in that. I am afraid he will be in fearful disgrace with Aunt Victoria for ever and ever after this."
If Nancy only knew! Aunt Victoria seems to have taken a greater fancy to Mr. Lascelles than ever before! Really, he does seem to know how to make himself popular, for Nancy goes on now to sing his praises.
"He has been the most awful brick all through this affair. I always told you girls it was exactly like having a delightful grown-up brother ready made for us when he came to be billeted at the Moated Grange, and even I didn't realise what a little ripper he was until he began tacking on to the best man business for Harry.
"Evelyn, I believe, does know he is nice, but I suppose it is no use appealing to Rattle, since she always did hate him, and is much too obstinate to leave off hating him still, even though he has been so nice to her sister and her brother-in-law."
This is very awkward, you know, for I don't know how I am ever going to break it to the girls after this that the ex-Incubus and I shook hands and declared peace on Nancy's wedding-day!
But to go on with Nancy's letter. She says:
"As for you, Rattle darling, I feel more apologetic about you than about anything else, after having dragged you out under false pretences to be bridesmaid to your eloping sister, and then getting married without waiting for you, and then disappearing without even letting you see me to wish luck to the bride!
"I will explain why that was.
"I have already explained it so hard to Aunt Victoria that I should think I must have writer's cramp, but never mind, dear old thing, I will tell you how it was.
"When we got to the church and found the clergyman all ready, and had waited for a quarter of an hour and you didn't turn up, Harry said he was perfectly certain that something had happened to that old tinker's cart of a motor-cycle of Frank's, and that when that went wrong it was not a question of time: it was a question of eternity!
"And he thought we had better push on and get married, for supposing we had waited there until it was so late that the marriage wasn't legal, well, then we should be in a worse fix than ever, and didn't know what in the world we were going to do about it or how we should get married at all, so married we got then and there.
"And I do wish you had been there, Rattle and Evelyn, to hear how beautifully I said my responses and my 'I wills.' I wasn't one bit nervous or hoarse, like I have always imagined I should be when I was a bride and would have to promise all those things about 'love, honour and obey.'
"Harry said to me when we were first engaged that that always seemed an awfully tall order and rather cheek of any fellow to expect a girl to promise, but I don't think it is a bit tall.
"As for 'love,' it is a question of who could help it when once they meet Harry?"
"Oh, dear! this is very long," said Evelyn, impatiently. "Aren't we ever going to get on to where she says she is, and why you didn't find her?"
"I expect that is coming presently," I said. I was reading the letter aloud. "Don't you interrupt: I call all this about Harry very interesting."
For somehow it is beginning to get rather on my nerves the superior attitude Evelyn is taking up just now about people being in love, as if it was rather a disgraceful, childish thing!
I call it being rather dog-in-the-mangerish. Even if you are not in love, and never going to be (like me), you might at least take a friendly interest in your relations that are. So I went on reading Nancy's letter, putting as much expression into it as I could just to shock Evelyn!
"As for love, who can help it when they have got to know Harry, and seen how frightfully good-looking he was, and what fascinating little ways he has?"
"'Some Lad!'" I quoted Mr. Lascelles before I went on.
"As for honour, well, the same thing applies when you think of his character and how noble and splendid he is, and how hard he has worked, poor darling, all these years so as to be independent, and how he has always longed to be a soldier, and how well he has got on ever since he has joined the Army, and what a lot everybody thinks of him wherever he is.
"As to 'obey,' well, when those first two things are right the third is merely a matter of form! When you love and honour a person so much, you simply want them to give you orders or forbid you to do things, simply for the sheer pleasure of obeying them! At least, that is how I feel."
"If I felt like that," declared Evelyn, "I should know I was getting softening of the brain. Why, because a girl is newly married, must she proceed to lose her individuality, and become a sort of door-mat under some young man's muddy, pontooning boots?"
"What does it matter as long as she enjoys it? Some people are born boots and some mats," I said, "and it must be a great relief to find yourself in your proper element whichever it is," and I went on reading the letter.
"Then, when we had got married, we were going on, as Mr. Lascelles would know, to the Royal Hotel, and oh! Rattle! we should have had such a lovely lunch: we had settled about that long before the wedding day, and how we should have jam roll with cream, because you love it. I do feel such a cad when I think of how frantically hungry you must have been, you poor darling, and with none of it ordered for you."
If she only knew that I did have it, after all, the exact lunch that she had thought of ordering for me.
"What happened," Nancy's letter went on, "was that when we got outside the church we came, if you please, upon something that put all ideas of lunch and everything else out of our heads forever.
"We came upon a car full of people, who immediately stopped us and held out their hands and called 'Harry!' and, do you know, before I could say anything I found myself in the middle of a large group of Harry's relations.
"There was his sister Doris, who is just married to somebody in the Ordnance Department, there was her husband, there were some schoolboy brothers of his, one of whom had just got a commission too, and, the most important of all, there was an old gentleman with fluffy white hair and beard, looking something between Father Christmas and our old gardener Penny, and as if he ought to have on a red dressing-gown trimmed with white cotton wool.
"This, my dears, if you please, was no less a person than Harry's rolling-in-riches grandfather, the one who quarrelled with Harry's mother because she would marry a soldier. (I don't blame her for that, of course; in fact, I will give you two girls one word of advice, and that is, don't ever look at anything else yourselves, because it is absolutely the one profession, and the only one, to marry.)
"Of course, I heard all about Harry's wicked old grandfather, and how cruel he had been to Harry's parents, so you can imagine how startled I was when Harry's sister Doris, who is very good-looking, of course, very like Harry, introduced him, and the old gentleman nearly wept with joy over him, and said he was exactly like his dear mother. Then Harry introduced me as his wife, both of us feeling most important, of course, because we were married, and then there was a general chorus of surprise and congratulations and all that sort of thing, and I thought I was going to have my hand positively shaken off by the relations.
"And then Harry's grandfather absolutely insisted on taking us all into the big car, and whisking us off to lunch at Great Merton, which is about thirty miles from the Junction, where he has taken a big country house.
"And, my dear Kids! to cut a long story short, there we have been ever since, if you please, and there we are going to be for another three days.
"Doris, the married sister, is a perfect angel, and has given me a whole heap of trousseau things. Just you wait till you see them.
"As for the old grandfather, I can't tell you what an unmitigated pet he is. As Rattle would say: 'Isn't it _funny_?' It is quite extraordinary to think that he was ever against the soldiers, and considered them brainless and popinjays and blood-sucking parasites who used to drain the resources of the country to keep up their useless hordes! He is absolutely changed now about all that. He began to change it when he first heard of the atrocities in Belgium, and he has gone on ever since. When it came to the _Lusitania_ he really got quite affectionate about our Army that was fighting to put down a nation of barbarians, and by the time we arrived at the Germans firing on the women and children who were being taken in boats from that other sinking ship, well, the effect it had on Harry's grandfather was simply extraordinary. He felt that all these years, when he had been running down the fighting forces of England, and grudging every penny that went to keep up the Services, what had he been doing? Helping the Germans. Yes, giving a helping hand to those brutes who want to come and take away our Empire. So, of course, he felt most terribly remorseful about it, and about the idea that he had actually turned his own daughter out of the house because she had had the sense to see what he hadn't, namely, that soldiers are the very splendidest people in the whole world!
"Of course, he didn't explain this at the time, not in the street at the Junction. This was later, when we were all tearing on to Great Merton.
"By the way, I quite forgot to explain that there was another soldier we found here when we arrived, a General Blankley. Who he is I don't quite know, but he was so covered with gold oak-leaves and scarlet tabs that you could scarcely see any khaki: so he must be somebody frightfully important, so important that he is actually able to engineer so that Harry got five whole lovely days' leave then and there.
"Of course, you will say but all this was no excuse for our not leaving a message at the 'Royal' for Rattle and Mr. Lascelles when they arrived there.
"Of course, it wasn't an excuse, but oh! my dears, if you only knew the state of excitement that we are all in, what with having successfully fibbed our way to the Junction, as Rattle calls it, and what with having really and truly got married, and what with meeting with long-lost relations.
"Well, some day perhaps you will know the rainbow-coloured whirl that one lives in.
"I hope you will, I am sure.
"Harry's grandfather has been a perfect brick about an allowance for Harry.
"Not that I should have cared tuppence about the money part of it, even suppose I had had to give up my share of the pennies we get from father because I married against the will: even if that had happened, I should have cheerfully existed on what Harry could spare me from his pay, even if I had not been able to afford any more clothes besides the green blanket-coat and the little leather hat that I was married in, as long as I lived.
"But as it is I don't think I could possibly be happier except for one thing, and that is, if I could hear that you two should be going to get married yourselves to somebody nearly as nice as my Harry. Of course, you mustn't expect anything quite as nice."
(I wish Nancy could have seen Evelyn's face at this last remark! It really was a study!)
The epistle ends up at last:
"With best love, and hoping to see you all on Thursday. From
"Your happy and affectionate sister, "NANCY MASTERS."
"Of course she must needs go and put her surname, just because it happens to be a different one," commented Evelyn sourly. Really, I wish she wasn't so ratty these days, I think she must be sickening for something! She has never written to us before and signed herself 'Nancy Verdeley,' I notice."
"Oh, my dear! Have some tolerance for the vagaries of people who are very much in love! It is no use expecting them to behave as if they were normal. I have read that in heaps of books," I told her. "We ought to consider ourselves highly favoured that she condescends to write to us at all before she has come out of the really silly stage. Here's a postscript: 'Please give my love to Frank.'"
I suppose now that Nancy is a young married matron it is considered quite proper for her to call her husband's chums by their Christian names?
To-day, after tea, Evelyn, in her primmest voice, gave the message--or, rather, her version of the message--namely, "My sister wished to be very kindly remembered to you, Mr. Lascelles."
Mr. Lascelles said: "Oh! Awfully obliged, I'm sure," without a flicker. It was very decent of him not to give away the fact that I had met him before lunch going down to the beach in waders and waterproof coat, and that I had told him in the cheeriest way, "Nancy sends you her love."
It certainly is very much more comfortable now that I have made friends with the little creature, and now that I have discovered that he really isn't as bad as I thought he was at first.
More than that--he isn't nearly as plain as he used to be.
And there is a reason for that.
He broached the subject of it this morning when he had to have his breakfast half an hour earlier than usual, and I was the only one who happened to be down at it. I poured out his coffee for him, and I was just handing him his cup when he said:
"Miss Betty, I wish you would tell me if you think it is any improvement----"
"If what is an improvement?" I asked him behind the coffee-pot innocently, as if I didn't know what he meant.
But of course I knew. I had noticed it, of course, in one flash the first minute that he had appeared to say good morning.
For he had done the thing that makes more difference to a person's appearance than anything else, whether they are a man or a woman.
Namely, he had done his hair in another way.
He had left off smarming it back from his brow like Gilbert the Filbert. He had had it cut and shampooed, so that it went easily into the new way.
And he had parted it at the side--he had parted it from left to right, which is the most becoming way in the world.
Anyhow, it is becoming to him: it just allows a little wave.
The merest suspicion of a wave, not a deep crinkle like you see in the pitch-black hair of Nancy's husband, but the merest little turn that gives quite a pretty light in one place to his red hair. This is not really such a very hideous shade of red as I always made out, but when you dislike a person you really cannot allow yourself to be fair about their looks, can you?
However, now that I have stopped disliking him, I can see him with a more impartial eye! I glanced at him with it over the coffee-pot and said sedately:
"Yes, I think it is a very great improvement indeed. I think it is ever so much better, though it is a pity you didn't do it before."
"I should have done it before," said Mr. Lascelles, eagerly. "I should have done it the first instant that I read your letter--you know, the one to the 'Lonely Subaltern,' when you said you detested people with their hair brushed back? I should have started the new way then, only that was when I was writing incog. to you, and I was so afraid that that would be enough to make you spot something."
"I daresay I might have," I said, laughing quite cheerfully. "I suppose I am rather sharp at seeing everything that's going on!"
I find I can laugh over the "Lonely Subaltern" business now instead of having to blush all over myself, like the man who painted himself black to play Othello, every time the subject is mentioned.
"I say, I am most fearfully bucked that you do think it is a bit of an improvement," said Mr. Frank Lascelles, quite as shyly as a girl at school who has taken to wearing some new kind of blouse. "I'm glad it makes me stop being--er--quite such an eye-sore to you!"
Well, common politeness demanded that I should say, quite emphatically, "You never were an eye-sore!"
"Oh, come: I was," he said, quite as if he wanted to have been. "But, as long as I am not now--am I?"
He said it so pathetically that I had to smile at him, noticing again how very much better-looking he was for the change of hair.
"_Am_ I?"
"No. Since you _must_ fish for compliments, you're not an eyesore, now."
"Cheers!" he said, but still without beginning his bacon. "And that being so, do you think you could possibly feel philanthropic enough to do me a _great_ favour, Miss Betty?"
"What might that be?" I asked, not being able to help feeling interested. "Do you want me to do my hair in another way?"
"Oh, no! Please don't touch your beautiful--I mean your hair. It looks absolutely top-hole as it is," said Mr. Lascelles, hurriedly. "What I was going to beg you was to tell me whether you'd mind----"
But I wasn't privileged to hear what it was he wanted to know that I should mind, for at this moment in came Aunt Victoria, rubbing her hands together and saying she thought it felt as if we must have had several degrees of frost.
And I jumped up to give her my place, and Mr. Lascelles jumped up to say good morning, and what between the talk of the weather and of what time the young Masters would arrive home on Thursday, Mr. Lascelles simply didn't have time to go on asking me whatever the favour was going to have been.
I wonder what on earth it could have been?
Perhaps he will think of it again after a day or so. I don't want to ask him: it would seem as if I took such an exaggerated interest in him, which I don't, of course, except that I do think he is rather a nice, funny little thing whom it is quite amusing to be friends with. The great excitement in my life at present is the thought of the young bride and bridegroom, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Masters, if you please, coming back to take up their abode at Mud Flats!