CHAPTER XIX

OUT OF DANGER

At last! At last! After what has seemed seventeen years of waiting, and after Evelyn and I both feel that our hairs must have turned at least as grey as Aunt Victoria's! At _last_ we've got some good news. Mr. Lascelles is out of danger.

This morning the blue-and-white-print nurse condescended to tell us that the doctor says her patient--(_hers_, you know! Please don't all laugh too loud, or the echoes of your laughter may break the bubble of self-satisfaction in which that woman lives)--"her" patient has turned the corner, and is beginning to do remarkably well.

We were all so frightfully relieved that I could have fallen on nurse's neck and kissed even her.

"But he will be weak for some time still," she said, discouragingly, "and had better not see anybody."

"She might have waited until somebody had suggested rushing in to see him," as Nancy said.

Oh! I forgot to tell you that our married sister, Nancy--Mrs. Masters--has arrived home safely. Her home-coming, which was going to have been such a terrific bust-up, fell very flat, coming just after that thrilling evening of the capture of the German spy in our house and in the very middle of all our anxieties about poor Mr. Lascelles. Hardly any fuss was made.

We had to receive her, so to speak, in a whisper: because the house has to be kept so very quiet still.

It's quite a nuisance.

Now that we know he is going to get well quite soon, we don't mind grumbling at him. As for me, I can't think why I made such a donkey of myself and actually shed tears.... I suppose it was tiredness, really, after not being able to sleep for excitement. Thank goodness there was nobody but Evelyn to notice how silly and hysterical I got! She has plenty of other things to think about.

We'll now talk a little about the newly-marrieds!

You didn't suppose they were going to settle down at the Grange, did you? Oh, no. Captain Masters--that is Harry--whisked Nancy off to stay with him where he is billeted at some rooms right at the other end of the village.

Aunt Victoria says she thinks it is not at all a bad plan for a young couple to start married life in billets, because then they will not get any new-fangled, grand ideas about artistic furniture, and a great deal of space, and a servants' hall and a private sitting-room for every member of the family. She says they will start by getting quite accustomed to the hideous inconvenience of rooms, and that, in the first flush of being together, they won't notice where it is! Then, afterwards, whatever other place they go into of their own, they will look upon it as a kind of mixture of heaven and the "Ritz!"

(Later.)

Evelyn and I have just been to tea with Nancy in her newly-married billet and found her surrounded by stores of cardboard boxes and drifts of tissue paper--wedding present stuff. It has begun to roll in now from Harry's relations. Salt-cellars, mustard-pots, silver-framed calendars, silver photograph-frames, and all the usual sort of things. "His people have been very kind," she told us at tea, which we had out of the silver Queen Anne service on the oval tray, which is another wedding present. I thought the first day she arrived that being married had made no difference at all to Nancy. She looked as young and pink and bubbling over with jolliness as she had before, only if possible she was more jolly.

But to-day, at tea, I noticed that there was a change. She did talk a tiny bit as if there was a great gulf fixed, or at least a trench dug.

I could see Evelyn getting rather annoyed at this little "superior" way, these airs and graces; but I didn't mind them.

Everything wears off as long as the other people don't take any notice.

So I fully expect that Nancy's newly-married manner will wear off, too, including the little flourish with which she calls her husband's friends by their Christian names. "Edwin," if you please for Mr. Curtis (I consider Edwin the limit in names myself, but no doubt poor Evelyn would be only too thankful to have the chance to utter it!) and "Frank" for Mr. Lascelles!

"Have you seen Frank yet, Evelyn?" she asked, after we'd talked all about her new relations and the honeymoon, and how long it would be before Harry went out. Ages, he thought. If a man's told he may expect to go within the next fortnight, he's pretty safe in taking a house at home for eighteen months. All this we were told before Nancy went on to talk of Mr. Lascelles, as she blew out the fire of the silver spirit-kettle with the long, slender trumpet affair that made her look like a very pretty, golden-haired sort of archangel Gabriel. "Or does the dragon of a nurse still mount guard?"

"She still mounts guard," said Evelyn resignedly. "Never mind, as soon as he is convalescent she will go. We really have missed him, Nancy, almost as much as we miss you. He has been exactly like a brother."

"And a brother that one is so proud of, too," Nancy took up. "When I think of that minute mite hanging on to that German brute, who would have killed him, Edwin says, in another minute, I feel that the Victoria Cross wouldn't be too much for him, provided there were room for it to hang on his chest!"

"Oh, come! I say, he is not as small as that!" I couldn't help protesting, through a mouthful of Nancy's tea-cake. "You all talk as if, because a man isn't six foot three, you couldn't see him!"

"Why, Rattle! it was you that was always talking as if he were too small to be seen," said Nancy. "It was you who said that dancing with him would make you feel as if you had got hold of a flea!"

I felt the family blush creeping up from my collar to the roots of my hair as I said, "That was ages ago, that was before he was wounded, that was before he was so ill and nearly died."

"Oh; was that it?" said Nancy, smiling at Evelyn; I'm sure I don't know why. "Well, he is nearly convalescent now," she said consolingly. "I hear he is cross."

"Cross!" said Evelyn and I together. "Who has been bothering him?"

"Nobody," said Nancy. "The nurse said he was cross."

"I hate all nurses," I said fervently.

"Why, that is exactly what Mr. Lascelles said himself to the nurse," reported Nancy. "Simply because she wanted to wash his face, and then she told me it was an excellent sign, and that he would soon be well."

"I should be glad," said Evelyn, "to have a talk with the little creature once more!"

She doesn't know--nobody knows how much I, Rattle, want to have a talk with the little creature, as they call him. (Quite absurd of them, because he is inches higher than any of our shoulders.)

But what I was going to say was that I am going to have the first talk with him. For I've got a secret from them, now.

I've had a letter from Mr. Lascelles. There!

A letter written in his own hand!

It was brought to me by Lance-Corporal Gateshead, who somehow got round Mary the housemaid to smuggle him up into Mr. Lascelles's room while that nurse was having her dinner.

It's written, this note of mine, in rather wobbly pencil on a blank sheet torn from a note-book and folded into a funny little twist. It simply says:

"DEAR BETTY" (Not "Miss"),

"I must see you as soon as I can possibly work it. I have something to ask you. It's that favour which I was going to ask you the other morning, and I haven't had a chance since. I do so want it. Nurse says that I may see one of you for a minute, at six to-night. Please be the one. I do so want it.

"Yours, "LONELY SUBALTERN."

"P.S.--I really am, you know."

Just fancy! I mean his putting "Lonely Subaltern" again, like in those first letters.

And the "favour"! What can it be? What _can_ it be? _Anybody_ would be bursting with curiosity if they had had a note like that brought to them from a young man; I mean from anybody-- Curiosity is the oddest feeling; it makes you so excited that you simply can't enjoy your tea, really; and you feel kind of aloof, too, from the light-hearted talk of other people about other things. Isn't it funny? _You_ don't want to stop and see anybody's husband. Besides, when Harry Masters came in, I got a kind of clairvoyant sense that he hoped we'd go soon and leave him to have a _tête-à-tête_ tea with his blooming bride. I believe in clairvoyance. So I didn't care if I _wasn't_ the eldest of the party. I just _did_ get up first, and told Nancy we should have to be going!

It's ten minutes' walk from the newly-married billet to the other side of the village, and I simply had to be back by six o'clock and hear all about the mysterious "favour" I was to be asked.

_Anybody_ would have been dying to!

(Later.)

I'm afraid I rushed Evelyn home, rather; tearing across the short way by the fields, with Mr. Lascelles's note crackling inside my blouse.

Yes, I daresay you are going to say idiotic things about wearing young men's letters next to one's heart, but it wasn't meant for that kind of thing at all. It was simply that I always lose everything that I put into my vanity-bag, and I didn't want to lose this letter, because--well, because it would look so silly of me.

"Any one would think we were running for a train," said Evelyn rather pettishly when we got back beyond the village post-office.

I said, "My feet are cold," and rushed on like a runaway horse.

Who could help it, in my shoes? And it seemed as if we must have been mistaken about the fields being shorter than the road to the Grange, because it really took a longer time than usual!

When we got to the Grange--well! We needn't have rushed! We might as well have stayed on at Nancy's for all the use our rushing had been! In fact, if we _had_ stayed with Nancy and finished our tea, properly, it would at least have postponed the sickening disappointment that awaited us at home!

Aunt Victoria, looking a little flushed and flustered, met us in the hall.

"What's the matter, Auntie?" I asked at once. "Mr. Lascelles isn't worse, is he?"

Aunt Victoria pronounced these awful words, "He's gone!"

"Gone!" exclaimed Evelyn and I together, not able to believe our ears. Evelyn added in a horrified voice, "Do you mean he is dead, Auntie?"

"Dead! Good Heavens! no, my dear child," said Aunt Victoria in an equally horrified voice. "I only mean that he has gone away from here."

"Where on earth to?" we asked loudly.

"To the Junction," said Aunt Victoria. "To that nursing home for wounded officers that they have got, that one that nurse came from."

"Gone!" I said. "But how? How could he possibly go?"

She pointed to the marks of wheels on our gravel.

"A motor came over from the Junction and whisked him off at half-past five. He asked me to say good-bye very nicely to you girls for him."

Here I heard myself say in a very angry voice, "Who came in the motor?"

"The matron of the nursing home, Miss Gates," Aunt Victoria told us, fanning herself with her lavender-scented handkerchief as if she'd had a rather fatiguing time. "She's a----" here she sat down on the hall chair and breathed hard. "A very efficient woman, I should think, very determined and very capable. I don't think Mr. Lascelles wanted to go at first. He said he was quite comfortable with us if he was not too much trouble, and the lady said that he would convalesce so much better at her home, and she took him off."

"Kidnapped him!" said Evelyn. "When he wanted to stay here! How tiresome of her, wasn't it, Rattle?"

I didn't say anything. I was too cross. If there's one thing I loathe, it's bad manners. And wasn't it the worst manners in the world for that woman, that Miss Gates whom I'd seen once, to come swooping along in a motor to people's houses, carrying off people's reluctant guests--reluctant to go with her, I mean. Here she came, upsetting Aunt Victoria!

(You could see poor Auntie had had her "siesta" disturbed, and was feeling it.) Upsetting Mr. Lascelles! For he'd something to ask me! He wanted to see me! Had written to me--and she'd whisked him off before we could catch a glimpse of each other!

Now goodness only knows when I shall be able to find out what he wanted; a convalescent man, too, ought to have his wishes studied! Any one with any idea of nursing should have known that!

"Nurse packed up and went with them, at a minute's notice," said Aunt Victoria.

"She would!" said I. "She's just the sort of nurse who would belong to that matron!"

Aunt Victoria, still fanning herself, said, "Perhaps she was right; he will have every comfort and care there."

"And didn't he here?" I said indignantly.

Aunt Victoria murmured something about the matron not seeming to think Mr. Lascelles's billet was exactly adapted for hospital-nursing, not any of the modern ideas of----

"That's nurse!" said I.

"Well, the matron was an old friend of his," Aunt Victoria said mildly. She sticks up for everybody, first Baby-Killers, then Kidnappers!

"She has the prior claim. It seems she nursed him before once--saved his life----"

I remembered the appendicitis-story on the road that day, and how she'd stared at me from the motor, and how she'd called Mr. Lascelles "Frankie," and all about her.

I said, "He called her 'Sister,' I suppose?"

"Yes, my dear, I believe he did."

"I tell you what _I_ call her," I said bitterly. "A managing old maid!"

I don't know when I've felt so angry.