CHAPTER I

THE HEN-PARTY

Imagine three really pretty girls like ourselves--and then this hole of a place that we live in!

Oh, dear! Why on earth did we have parents who disapproved of early marriages?

They married early enough themselves, goodness knows. Father was twenty-one, and had only just taken on the big yacht-building business in this place. Mother was seventeen. A whole year younger than I am now, if you please. (I am what they called at school "a precocious eighteen.") Just because I've read a lot, and thought a good deal about what I've read. But what price Mother's precocity? which really seemed to be a distinct success. I know she and our good-looking Dad were awfully fond of each other, and awfully happy for the ten years of their married life. So why on earth did they make that absurd stipulation in their will?

That has been at the root of all our troubles!

Why did they say that Aunt Victoria (Mrs. Verdeley) was to take charge of their three daughters (that's us) "until they arrived at the age of twenty-five, in order that the said daughters may not plunge recklessly into the dangers of a too early marriage"?

Since this was what they wished (for Evelyn, Nancy and me to remain old maids until we are twenty-five) they've certainly done the right thing in sending us to live here.

Let me try to describe the sweet spot.

Imagine a village, a God-forsaken village on the bleakest part of the East Coast of England.

Imagine mud flats and wind-swept marshlands, and a sea that crawls out over miles and miles of shore that looks like nothing on earth but sheets and sheets of wet brown paper.

Imagine a street or so of small, red-brick houses. Imagine several boat-building yards, throw in a village green, a post-office, a church, a few better houses, and a railway station, where the trains go twice daily as far as "Nowhere," which is the junction to this place. There you have the delightful part of the world in which we live!

Its name?--well, perhaps the Censor might not like me to tell you its name. So I shall call it "Mud Flats," which is certainly descriptive enough of it.

And now imagine a house that's like a bell without a clapper. In other words, a house full of women, without any sort of a man at all about it. Unless you count Penny, our gardener, who walks lame with rheumatism and who's as deaf as a post, and at least 156 years of age. Poor dear, he's so old that he thought it would stand in his way of getting a job _Even Here_, so he always wears (over what I suppose is a pink Easter-egg of a head) a bushy raven wig that a baby could see through. He told me it had cost him no end of his savings to buy. Pathetic, isn't it?

A tragedy of old age, my dears. But no more pathetic than our own, which is a tragedy of youth!

To go back to it:

Imagine a life where nothing, absolutely nothing ever happens!

Imagine getting up in the morning and looking out of the window at the brown, flat shore and at the distant sea, with a few fishing-sails dotted about on it. Imagine dressing for the day in country clothes that it doesn't matter what they looked like exactly, considering that nobody ever looked at one, or saw whether one was plain or pretty, dowdy or smart. Imagine coming down to breakfast, always the same breakfast--porridge, fish (for Aunt Victoria won't have bacon in the place), toast, marmalade, and tea. We never have coffee. It is too much trouble to make for just a household of women. That's the keynote of our lives!

And now imagine looking round the table and seeing, morning after morning, the same faces. One old one, that's Aunt Victoria, and two young ones, my sisters, Evelyn (aged twenty-two) and Nancy, who is going to be twenty-one next month.

Also, if I craned my neck a little to look into the gilt-framed mirror over the mantelpiece, I could see a third young face--my own. Really, I sometimes get as tired of that view as of the view out of the windows.

Nancy and I often say what a mercy it would be if, one morning, one could look in the glass and suddenly see a perfectly different face staring at one! The face of quite another girl: dark instead of fair, say. (For all of us are sickeningly fair! I get so tired of it sometimes: tired of the gold and blue and pink and white colouring.)

Or, better still, if the face of one of us suddenly turned into the face of a young man with a nice, firm, jutting-out chin, and a toothbrush moustache! Really, it would be a comfort! Anything for a change, in fact.

Even a change for the worse! Not that there could be anything worse than this stage of absolute deadly monotony. For we never catch a glimpse of the world outside, even though it's no more than a two and a half hours' journey up to London. Aunt Victoria never lets us go. Also she is very, very "difficult" about when we get invitations to stay from girls we were with at school. It would be awful if we went and actually SAW anything of Modern Life! We can only read in the papers about what is going on. And isn't that a flavourless way of getting to know what's on at the theatres, and what sized hats people are wearing?

Even the war, when it came, seemed to have nothing to do with Mud Flats. For months and months after everywhere else was seething with excitement and military, nobody here seemed to think of going to join the Colours. The few young men in the place seemed only busy fishing, or whistling about the boat-building yards as usual. No khaki here--except in the colour of the beastly landscape! No drilling, no route-marching, no doings of any kind!

As I said to the girls: "I don't believe it would make the slightest difference to this hole even if the Germans did land: even if the Kaiser did go into residence at Buckingham Palace and ran that beastly Spread-eagle of his up in place of the Union Jack! Even that couldn't make it any more absolutely mouldy than it is now!"

So you see the state of mind we were in up to about a fortnight ago.

And now perhaps you will have some idea of what the inhabitants of our house (the "Moated Grange" we call it) felt like when the Great News came to Mud Flats.

* * * * * * * *

When I say the "inhabitants," I mean, of course, we three girls, Evelyn, Nancy and me. You couldn't expect any feelings in Aunt Victoria, who is sixty-two, and has a Roman nose, and a figure like a padded armchair. Unless you count feelings about mud on the carpet, and scratches on the mahogany, and the wear and tear of the hearthrug, and her new "_Patience_" that the Doctor's old-maid sister has just taught her, and so on.

But about the Great News!

I've been chattering on so about other things that I've forgotten to put that first, as I should. It's this kind of thing that has given me my nickname of "Rattle." Everybody calls me that who knows me at all, absolutely ignoring the fact that I have got a most pompous name of my own, and that I have had my hair up for six weary months (ever since I came back from school to drag out an existence in this swamp!). You could only call it a swamp, and an unhabitable one at that, until the great----

Oh, yes! The Great News!

Well, the great news is this: Mud Flats is to be turned into a camp of instruction. Soldiers are to come here in batches, with their officers, and stay for six weeks at a time, undergoing a course of training in making bridges and pontoons, and blowing up houses, and all sorts of thrilling things that they'll have to do when they get out to the front. And when one batch goes another batch will come in and do it all over again.

The long and short of it is that Mud Flats, this awful spot ten miles from Nowhere Junction: Mud Flats, this backyard of beyond, where we live because there are only a few old people and some boat-builders and other civilians in it--_Mud Flats_ is going to be positively crammed with men!

"Men, my dears!" said I to the girls. "Do you understand? Real live young men in trousers (khaki ones, my beloved sisters!) with puttees, and enormous boots, and pipes, and deep bass voices, and by-Joves, and swaggering strides and spurs and tobacco-pouches, and all those things that we've been panting and pining for the merest glimpse of in this desert!"

"Rattle! I do wish you wouldn't allow your high spirits to run away with you like this," said Evelyn to me when she heard me giving vent to those expressions of delight upstairs in the bedroom the day after we had heard the news. You know Evelyn's the eldest and the prim one. She thinks she has to set an example, poor long-suffering dear. She said to me, "Sometimes you become positively vulgar!"

"Vulgar?" I said indignantly. "Why is it vulgar to show I'm delighted that we are all going to have some sort of a change in our lives at last? You know you and Nancy are both as glad as I am that there is now a chance that we shan't have to live the rest of our lives in this perpetual hen-party of four! Even if the new state of affairs does only last for a few months, we shall have had some fun! We shall have had some youth and tobacco-smoke about the place at last!"

Nancy's face went all quivery in her attempt not to let it crumple up into smiles. She has the prettiest face of the lot of us, I think. And we all three are as decent-looking as they make them, though I say it, in our large, blond, Greek-goddessy style. I never did hold with mock modesty, and considering that all nice girls are in duty bound to consider themselves frights, which is what seemed to be the fashion in Aunt Victoria's time. Why should it be correct for a girl not to realise that her skin is white-velvety, and her eyes like corn-cockles with dew on them, and her hair like yellow silk and masses of it?

She would be expected to notice those things quickly enough if they were on another girl, wouldn't she? In fact, she would be looked upon as stupid and unobservant if she didn't.

And if I pretended I didn't it would be merely insincerity, and insincerity is a thing I don't hold with. I told Evelyn so. I am afraid she is just a little inclined to be given to it. I suppose she thinks it's always an eldest sister's duty to look shocked at what the two younger ones say.

"It isn't as if it need make any difference at all to us, even if the village is full of soldiers," Evelyn went on, pouring cold water over my glee. "We shan't get to know any of them, just a houseful of women like ourselves."

"Shan't we!" said Nancy, from the glass where she was trying on her last Spring's hat, which she had retrimmed with a quite smart and rather military-looking "pom-pom." "Shan't we, indeed? Now I will burst upon you another bit of news that I have just heard at the post-office. These men and their officers that are going to come--where do you suppose they are going to live? There aren't any barracks for them: there aren't any tents. And they are not going to be in huts either. No," she finished impressively. "They are going to put them all into billets."

You know, until this war, we were all so benighted that I don't think any of us would have known what a "billet" was. Perhaps we should have imagined that it was a piece of wood. So it is, in the dictionary.

But now, of course, we realised exactly what was meant. It meant that every house in the place would be expected to put up some of these soldiers, to have them to board with them.

"And we shall have some one, see if we don't!" I said exultantly. "This Grange is one of the biggest houses in the place, in fact the biggest next to the Admiral's and the Rectory and the Doctor's. There's the quite big spare room where nobody ever sleeps. The drawing-room makes quite a good sitting-room, and there is the girls' Lair that's simply crying out to be made into a man's smoking-room, and----"

"And you may as well wake up from these rosy dreams at once," said Evelyn, quenchingly, "because there is at least one very good reason why we shan't have any soldiery billeted here with us."

"Why?" I asked quite blankly, and Nancy turned from the glass.

Her hands were still held up to the reorganised hat, which any one could see she had been imagining herself fascinating the New Army with! And she echoed, "Why on earth not?"

"Because," said Evelyn, "we are not forced to take any men if we object. We can refuse. The Authorities allow that, if there are only women in the house, as there are here in the Moated Grange. You can be pretty certain that Aunt Victoria won't want to have any great men with pipes trampling in huge Army boots all over her well-preserved stair-carpets: now, will she?"

I felt my face fall a yard. No, it was not at all likely that Aunt Victoria would agree to take men into her precious house! Why, it was all the lawyers could do to persuade her to take Nancy, Evelyn and me when Father and Mother both died together of German measles. You see, Aunt Victoria is one of the most hopeless types of old maids. Namely, the old maid who has got married to another old maid, and who has added a lot of the "he-old maids'" fads to her own, and who has then become a widow with the last state worse than the first!

"Wild horses," said Evelyn, "will not make Aunt Victoria say they can billet even one of the Camp of Instruction officers here."

"Wild horses isn't a very good way of getting any one to do anything," I said, picking up heart again. "There is a much better way of getting a person like Aunt Victoria to do what you want."

And for ages I wouldn't tell them what I meant. However, to save time, I will tell you now. It is to go on exactly the opposite tack and to make her think that you don't want what you do want. For instance, the whole of lunch-time to-day my conversation has been this sort of thing:

"Oh, Aunt Victoria, isn't it awful to think that almost everybody in this village will have to have soldiers foisted on them soon! Fancy having a strange man in the house whether you wanted to or not. Fancy having to have him to meals, and tramping all up and down your passages! I do think it is an imposition!"

For I knew that was what she had been thinking herself. As usual, she turned slick round.

"Dear me, Elizabeth! What did you say? An imposition, indeed!" she repeated, looking at me most severely over the top of her lady-mayoressy-looking black satin blouse. "A great many people would consider it an honour to be able to do so much for their country, let me tell you. Personally, I think that any Englishwoman worthy of the name should be glad to do what she can for the comfort of these noble fellows. Remember that but for what they do for us we should have no homes to-day, no roofs over our heads, certainly no carpets under our feet! Remember Belgium!"

With much more in the same strain.

I listened, inwardly shrieking with delight, and stamped hard on Nancy's toes under the table at the same time.

Of course, I truly agreed with every single word that Aunt Victoria was saying! Of course, all that about what every Englishwoman should feel was exactly what Nancy and Evelyn and I do feel about soldiers, only more so!

However, it wouldn't have been the least use letting Aunt Victoria know that, not it! The "contrary" old thing would immediately "have taken the offensive," as it says in the newspapers, and would have said: "A great deal too much fuss is being made over these soldiers nowadays. After all, they are only doing their duty! They are only doing what they are paid to do by ratepayers like ourselves. I do not see why we should have the added burden of housing and feeding the creatures!"

So I went on sowing the good seed by saying:

"Well, I suppose that's how one ought to feel! But I am rather glad that the doctor and the admiral will have the bother of the officers, and that the Higginses and the Eltons and all the people in the little houses round about will have the men foisted on them, and chalk-marks of their regiments and companies all over _their_ doors! Anyhow, we shall be left in peace and quiet without a single soldier or officer or anything in our house!"

"And why should you be so sure of that, Elizabeth?" my Aunt Victoria boomed out at me in her stateliest contralto tones. "How do you know that we shall not be asked to harbour some of these brave men?"

I put down my spoon and looked at her in a mildly docile, puzzled sort of way, after having exchanged a glance with Nancy, who was only keeping herself from open giggles by counting the damson stones on her plate.

"Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor!" She counted up to "soldier" again, and then I said to Aunt Victoria: "But, Auntie, you know we won't be expected to put anybody up, as you are a widow-lady living alone with three single nieces in the house. You will be allowed to refuse."

"Refuse! I hope I should not dream of doing anything so unpatriotic!" said Auntie fussily, while I no longer dared meet Nancy's eye. "If any soldiers are suggested to me as visitors to the Grange, I can only say that they will be made welcome to the limit of my modest means!"

So that settled that.

This afternoon the whole thing was fixed up.

An officer came round to arrange about billets for the first draft. We, of course, were absolutely thrilled when we heard his ring at the bell. He gave his name in to Beeton, our housemaid, as "Major Lawless." A lovely name, I thought!

And though he said he wished to interview Mrs. Verdeley, meaning Aunt Victoria, I did manage to be coming through the hall when he passed, and to be looking for something in the drawing-room when he was there. I was aching for the first sight of khaki! Anyhow, I contrived to get in a good hard look at the gallant major. I hoped he'd be like the one in "Jones of the Lancers," "_When I'm booted, and trousered, and spurred_--MY WORD!"

And I can only tell you that he was absolutely disappointing. To begin with, he was as old as the hills, and I should think he'd learnt his drill before the Flood, or, at any rate, just at the Flood. Embarkation officer, perhaps. Putting the animals through it, you know: this sort of thing: "Beasts of the field--form _fours_! Form four feet! ... Birds of the air--two flights to the Ark, forward--FLAP!" and so on.

He couldn't have been a day under forty, and not at all the sort of figure that you always imagine a soldier must have: smart and well set-up, and broad-chested and flat-backed.

Oh, no! He was quite round-shouldered, as if he were more accustomed to sitting in an office and bending over desks than doing any real military work! And he was pale. He wore such a worried look, too, as if he had the cares of a whole campaign on his narrow shoulders! The voice in which he talked was so resigned and melancholy.

I heard him say to Aunt Victoria: "Thank you, very much.... Most kind of you, I am sure.... Then the young man will be turning up here about tea-time on Thursday."

Armed with this glad tidings, I scuttled back to the other girls in the Lair, behind the dining-room.

The Lair is quite the nicest room in the house. It is very "girly-girly," but almost as comfortable as if it belonged to men. You know, I always imagine men, as a rule, have things cosier than we have.

The lazy-chairs are very old and very shabby, but they are springy and comfortable still. The broad window-seat is well padded with turkey-red covered cushions, and there is a big curtain of the same stuff to draw and hide the view when it rains, and the mud flats and the lead-paper sea and the weeping grey skies get altogether too depressing.

There is a cottage piano, with a stack of ancient songs about "_The Gipsy's Warning_" and "_In the Gloaming, O My Darling_," and that type of thing, as well as our own slightly more modern ditties, and a whole pile of stamp-papered and thumbed dance music--the only chance we ever get of hearing any dance music down here. Woe is me!

Then, in the corner there is a red calico-covered wirework shape for us to make our blouses on. There are our three work-baskets, all rather chaotic, I am afraid, and Evelyn's everlasting knitting. On the walls there are bookshelves, quite full of all sorts of books--my old school histories and geographies, and a long red row of sevenpennies, and the blue Service Kiplings which we clubbed together to buy last summer. The top shelf has got all old novels from mother's and grandmamma's day; also poetry: Keats and Shelley and Byron and Scott. That's how it is I come to be so awfully well-read.

On the walls we have got a queer mixture of pictures, just the ones we like. There is Maurice Greiffenhagen's young shepherd kissing the girl among the poppies: which always comforts Nancy and me to look at, because the girl has such a very big foot, bigger even than ours, and we take sixes! Then there's a tear-off calendar with a picture of Romeo and Juliet, and a quotation for every day in the year.

Then there is a big photograph of the statue of the Venus de Milo, who is such a duck, we think: so good-natured-looking! Rather like my face, I think. And, last of all, there is a framed coloured supplement from the _Graphic_ of the year One, which I do so love. Do you know it? It is a picture of about six girl sisters, all dressed alike, in navy-blue jerseys and kilted skirts with crimson sashes and their hairs down, crowded round a nurse who has got a long-clothes new baby in her arms. She is showing it to the family. And the title of the picture is, "Mamma's Christmas Present: A Boy at Last."

Isn't it appropriate to us in this house? Better days are in store! I feel it in my bones! I skipped into the Lair, where Nancy was busy over a new camisole which she was making out of a summer muslin skirt. Evelyn was sitting by the table, knit, knit, knit.

"'A Boy at Last!'" I quoted the title of the picture to them. "Girls, the major says the young man is to arrive on Thursday next, at tea-time. The question is," I concluded impressively, "THE question is, which of us is he going to fall in love with?"

"My dear Rattle," gasped Evelyn in a really scandalised voice this time. Even Nancy, who generally doesn't mind, murmured, "Really, Rattle, you are too perfectly disgraceful sometimes."

"Why?" I asked, sitting on the table and swinging my feet. "Why shouldn't I mention things that everybody knows are very likely to happen? Have you read all the short stories that they are putting nowadays in magazines about the young soldier who always falls in love with the girls at his billet?"

"All of the girls?" asked Nancy, twinkling over the camisole again.

"Oh, well, one of them. You know what I mean. There is always a romance, an engagement, and a war wedding at the end."

"But that's in magazine stories, you absurd child," said Evelyn again, trying not to laugh. "That's not in real life."

"Real life is so much more like magazine stories than it used to be before the war," I declared. "I am sure there is much more romance all over the place. As for the war weddings, you can't say that's all fiction. You can see photographs of them in the _Daily Mirror_ and the _Daily Sketch_ every morning of your lives. I think it would be perfectly lovely to have one from this house, between one of us and the young officer who's coming here to be billeted! Yes, and never mind the bothering old will about not rushing into early marriages!"

"Rattle, you really are awful!" the two girls said together this time, and again I said: "I am not awful, I am only frank. I only say out in a quite unabashed voice what you know other people are thinking all the time. It is not that I am worse than other people! It's only that I am much more honest."

"It is that you are such a child that you don't really know what you are talking about," Evelyn went on superiorly. "You're only a flapper, after all."

"Flappers are 'in' just now, according to the papers. So he might like me better than any of you in the long run," I said. "Wait and see!" And I hummed the old song, "_Maybe the lad will fancy me, and disappoint you all!_"

"He may not 'fancy' any of us," said Nancy, sewing away busily at her camisole. "He may be so busy with his classes and his bridge-building and signalling. He won't have a look or a thought for the girls at his billet."

A thought struck me suddenly.

"Let's tell fortunes about it," I suggested, "and see what really is going to happen according to the cards."

And I opened the table-drawer, and brought out the rather cockley pack of cards that we had learnt to play "Beggar My Neighbour" with about five weary years ago, when we all were recovering from whooping-cough, and couldn't go out.

"Let's see," I said, "which of us is what poetry books call the 'destined maid.' And then, which ever comes out the one the young soldier is to have, well!--the other two can just take a back seat and allow her a fair field."

"Rattle, what absolute nonsense," said Evelyn severely. "What bosh! As if anybody believed anything of that sort----"

"We needn't believe it," I said. "It won't 'mean' anything. But it will be just something to pass away the time with before the tea-bell rings. It's a most loathsome afternoon, so we may as well have something to amuse ourselves." For the rain dashed heavily against the windows outside. The melancholy view was the limit. I drew the red curtain. Nancy stirred up the fire, and even Evelyn (pretending she wasn't going to) put down her book, and drew nearer to the table where I was shuffling the cards. And murmuring to myself a poem that I'd just finished. You know, I write verses sometimes. I'll tell you these ones. I call them "Fate." They're about engagements.

"_Never chortle when you hear-- That your school-friend's troth is plighted To a man with spectacles Or a man the King has knighted. If he stutters in his speech, If his years are more than forty, Even if his head is bald Do not laugh at her; it's naughty. Fate has probably reserved Something worse in store for you! How would you like a----_"

"Oh, come on, Rattle: those are shuffled now!"

"All right. You cut, Nancy," I said, handing the pack to her. She cut, and Evelyn dealt. "Now! It's for the one who is left with the highest card in her hand," I said.

We played out the cards on the old ink-spattered table, laughing and chattering together. For it's all very well to say how dull this place has been, and what a howling wilderness Mud Flats, is, and what a hole of a place the Moated Grange: but we have had quite a lot of fun among ourselves. We three have always got on well together. Nothing can spoil that.

It came to the last round. I put down my card.

The Queen of Hearts. Good omen, eh?

Nancy threw down the Two of Diamonds.

The Nine of Spades was Evelyn's.

"Aha! you see," I said triumphantly, "I take this trick. Young Lieutenant Whatever-his-name-is will be the fate of the flapper!"

"We ought to try it three times," said Nancy. So again we gathered up the cards and cut and dealt.

I saw the faces of the other two girls growing quite excited over the game, utter nonsense as it was.

This time Nancy had the King of Diamonds, I had the Two of Spades, and Evelyn the Ace. Eldest first, in fact.

"Now again," said Nancy. "Why d'you laugh, Rattle?"

"I'm thinking," I said, "of 'our' possible fiancé."

I wondered what that unconscious young officer, now at his depot, would have thought if he could have taken a little peep at the scene in the country house which was to be his billet.

I wondered if he would have been amused at the picture. The cosy, untidy, red-curtained room, with the trio of pretty girls, all tall, all fair, gathered about the table with their three golden heads bent eagerly above their absurd game. If he could have guessed that the game was supposed to decide which of the players was to become his "destined maid"! Ha! If they all guessed about this sort of thing, what would happen?

There was silence, this last round.

Silence broken only by the little "talking" noise of the flames in our old-fashioned fire-grate, and by the rustling sound of the cards as they flew one above the other just as the autumn leaves outside were dropping from the big sycamore on to the path.

The last card fell.

This time the score stood thus:

Nancy, King of Clubs.

The vulgar Rattle, Three of Diamonds.

The lady-like Evelyn, Five of Hearts.

"Ah, now each of us have come out top once," said I. "How is that supposed to count?"

"Why, that we've all got an even Fate, I suppose," suggested Evelyn, sweeping up the cards and tossing them into the table-drawer again. "Probably that the young man who's coming to be billeted here won't have anything to say to one of us."

"Always look on the bright side," laughed Nancy. "But I believe that the first round was meant to count. Rattle, Queen of Hearts. Child, your elder sisters will retire into the background like Cinderella the other way round, and give you, as you say, a fair field with the young man."

"Thanks, awfully. I would do the same for you, any time," I said gratefully.

And then we all three burst out into shrieks of laughter over our own seriousness about what was only fun.

Now we've got a week to wait and see what the young man's going to turn out like.

Nancy, who is rather sentimental, though she tries to hide it by pretending she's talking bosh--Nancy calls him "the possible Prince Charming."

His real name, according to a quite solemn and ceremonious little note that he's written to Aunt Victoria, is Frank Lascelles.

Auntie says "Lascelles" is what she calls a "good" name, but Nancy says never mind, there are all sorts of ramifications of even the goodest families, so that he need not be one of the very high and mighty ones at all. Auntie says they are always called "Frank" for some reason.

"Frank" is nice.

I wonder whether he is?

* * * * * * * *

(Later.) No! he isn't!

He's come--has this young---- Well, I haven't thought of anything bad enough to call him yet, this young officer that we've got to put up with at the Moated Grange for six mortal weeks.

Oh, how am I going to stand it?

It'll be perfectly ghastly.

However, perhaps I'd better begin again at the story of that awful day when he arrived.