CHAPTER XXI

NANCY TO THE RESCUE

All this wrangling was going on in front of the creaky gate of the Masters's billet, me holding Mr. Curtis by the sleeve.

I daresay I wasn't behaving like a lady; I didn't care if he thought I was a perfect un-lady and how could I be that angel's sister? Matter of utter indifference to me. He'd already said I was artless, and a kid. All right. But I _would_ hear the end of all this, and besides, I had to see that he got my side of the story right to Nancy.

So, taking the bull by the horns again, I rang the bell, three times.

And when the scared rabbit came to the door who's the landlady's servant, I said firmly, "Mrs. Masters," and I clumped in in my rather heavy boots, shoo-ing Mr. Curtis in front of me as if he were a horse I had to turn in to a field.

A door a little further down the passage opened, and a soft voice, almost a coo, called out, "Is that my beau'ful boy come home? Is that my handsome love?"

Fancy! It was Nancy! Quite a strange voice to me, it sounded; like hearing the chime of a new clock, that you've not got accustomed to, strike in the house. And fancy hearing her say those extraordinary things! Was _that_ what she called Harry when she thought he was by himself? Her handsome love! Well, so he is, I suppose, but it sounded so unexpected from her! I always knew she was sentimental, but not that she would go to these lengths! Wasn't it funny?

Even while I was thinking this, I'd called back quickly, "No, it isn't him. It's only Mr. Curtis and me."

"Oh! Rattle, my dear child, do come in," cried Nancy, relapsing into her usual voice again. "Come along; you're just in time for the muffins."

"I don't think I will come in, Miss Elizabeth," was Mr. Curtis's last effort. "I--I will look in to-morrow."

"Yes, and to-day," said I, clutching him firmly, "to your right. Quick--March!"

And I fairly pushed him into the Masters's little, overcrowded sitting-room, with all the vases and the enlarged photographs of the landlady's sailor-sons mixed up with the wedding presents, and Nancy on her knees on the hearthrug, taking a dish of muffins out of the grate.

Nancy had got on all new clothes, I saw.

A new blouse, that you could see her pink satin ribbon tie-ups through, a skirt I hadn't seen before, delicious silk stockings and shoes that made her feet look quite small, though she knows perfectly well that she and Evelyn and I all take large sixes, and why should we mind, being much taller than most men in the place? Mr. Lascelles told me one day that he would hate a very small foot on a rather large woman. Make her all out of proportion, and remind him of wooden legs.

However, to get on to Nancy. (By the way, she has got her hair done quite differently. This is just to show you what a mass of changes married life brings about!)

She beamed upon Mr. Curtis, and said, "Hullo, Edwin. So you have come, too. Sit down. No, not in that easy chair. You will never get up again with your long legs. Take the sofa, it's higher. You been taking my baby sister for a walk, you incorrigible philanderer?"

This remark annoyed me so intensely that I snapped out:

"No! Your baby sister has been taking him for a walk, and for a good talking-to. And now he has got something to ask you. Go on, Mr. Curtis. Go on," I said mercilessly, seeing him turn turtle and not wanting to go one bit. "Your shot."

"Well, Edwin, what is it?" said Nancy, in the kind young married woman's voice.

Edwin said desperately, "It is something I would have liked to ask you about by ourselves. That is--I don't know exactly--I--er--_Ahur_!" he cleared his throat. "I really think we'll leave it alone, perhaps."

Nancy turned to me.

"Men are so bad at beginning always," she said, encouragingly. "Rattle, you tell me."

"I can't--that is--I mustn't," I said regretfully. "I promised Evelyn on my solemn word of honour that I wouldn't breathe a single syllable."

"Oh, it's about Evelyn, is it?" said Nancy, a sudden light coming into her face. She added, quite as a matter of fact, "Won't she have anything to say to you, Edwin?"

I could see by "Edwin's" expression that it was a bombshell to him that Nancy should have guessed he ever wanted to have anything to say to Evelyn.

Men always think that nobody knows what they are up to except themselves.

It's such a _rest_ to come back to the society of one's own sex!

Yes, it was perfect relief to me after all my uphill, heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Curtis, to whom every mortal thing has to be explained!

Nancy, without another word having to be said, caught at once the wireless messages that were going on all round in the atmosphere, so to speak, and said rapidly, "I'm sure she likes you awfully. Or if she won't have you it's simply because she thinks you've been making love to me first. Is that it, by any chance?"

Mr. Curtis looked at Nancy with a glance that was one quarter admiration and three quarters disapproval, which I suppose is what a man always does feel when he thinks that a woman has been at all clever in any way.

He said, "Mrs. Masters, you are a witch!"

Nancy said, "If you will excuse me a minute, I will run and get my broomstick and my steeple hat--I mean, I'll just get my things on and come out."

"Where to?" I asked, rather staggered, because I knew she was expecting the adored Harry ("the beau'ful boy") to come in to his sumptuous, newly-married tea at any minute.

But she said, "Where do you think? I am coming on to tackle Miss Evelyn at once."

"Oh, no, please," said Mr. Curtis and I together, both looking absolutely aghast. "Evelyn mustn't know anything about our having told you--not that we did really tell you anything, but--but----"

But Nancy had whisked out and presently whisked down again in furs that were evidently another wedding present. A perfect plantation of them, in fact, and new boots with pearl grey suede tops and the cheekiest tassels dangling from the tops of them.

"I am going to revisit my girlhood's home with my younger sister, and you aren't invited, Edwin," said that puss-in-boots, Nancy. "You had better disappear to your billet and resign yourself to having seen absolutely nothing of the Verdeley family for the last forty-eight hours."

So out we went again into the pitch black evening.

On the doorstep we met Nancy's new husband, who exclaimed rather angrily, "Hullo! hullo! what's this? You are not going out, Honey, just as I am going to get my tea, are you?"

"Only for a few minutes, on urgent family affairs, darling," said Nancy sweetly. "You take Mr. Curtis back with you and get him to share your lonely tea. Yes, do. Don't forget the hot muffins in the corner by the fireplace."

So, having shaken the two men, off we pranced again.

"What are you going to say, Nancy?" I asked her as we got to the garden gate of the Moated Grange.

"I am not sure till I'm in the middle of it," said Nancy gaily, but in a low voice. "Still, I am determined that if I am the only obstacle it will soon be cleared out of the course of true love between Evelyn and Edwin Curtis! They are just made for each other, for Evelyn is such a bundle of scruples and conscientiousness and all that sort of thing. And she wouldn't be happy with what you might call a normal kind of young man! (How could she be? Look at them.) Now, Edwin Curtis is the kind of young man for whom nine women out of ten haven't any use at all, as Harry says. I confess he would bore me stiff in ten minutes," said Nancy frankly. "So it would you, Baby. But birds of a feather flock together. And there's quite a pretty name for that sort of young man, Harry says. He's an 'idealist.'"

We found that other bird of a feather, by which I mean Evelyn, pretending to knit in the Lair, which was unlighted except for the red-hot log fire into which she was gazing, seeing pictures I expect of herself and Mr. Curtis living in a little home of their own for the next ninety years! Just think how awful!

"Do you mind if I shed a little light on the subject?" said Nancy, apologetically. "I want you to look at these patterns and tell me which I am to have for an evening dress. Choose by candle-light for candle-light, you know." And she brought out one of those little books of many-coloured silk of various soft shades--rose pink, Nile green, blue and palest heliotrope.

"But I thought you had got five evening frocks, out of your grandfather's allowance?" said Evelyn. She had already confided to me that she thought it perfectly dreadful to spend money on clothes in war-time, however newly-married you might be! Surely one nice plain coat and skirt and a few serviceable Vyella shirts and some country boots ought to be quite enough for the trousseau of any war-bride whose husband expects to be off to the front before they had eaten up what was left of the wedding cake!

"Yes; but Harry wants me to have a new frock as much as possible like the mauve one I was wearing the first night he saw me," explained Nancy, treading hard on my foot with her new French heel to draw my attention to how she was just going to begin. It hurt like anything, but I was a Spart and did not give a sign.

"You remember, Evelyn, that party that those three--poor Frank Lascelles, and my Harry and Mr. Curtis----?"

"Yes, I remember," said Evelyn in her shortest and most discouraging voice, not realising how absolutely impossible it is to discourage any young newly-married woman who's had a whole week of getting her own way and doing absolutely anything she fancies in this world. Nancy went on in tones of a rather gay grandmother reminiscing over her past of about forty years ago. She does talk much more, and with much more "go" since she's been married, anyhow!

"Dear me! I wonder what made me behave so awfully badly that evening? Because I felt like it, I suppose. Do you remember, Evelyn, what a fearful lecture you gave me for getting Mr. Curtis to kiss me?"

"_Getting_ him to!" exclaimed Evelyn, quite suddenly. "Allowing him to, I suppose you mean?"

"Good gracious, no! I don't mean 'allowing to.' If I did, I should have said so. It doesn't so much matter saying what you mean once you are married," said Nancy, gaily. "You can allow yourself a little luxury in the way of telling the truth now and again, after _that_.... Do you think this would look pretty with the gold waist-band and a little edging of this, Rattle?"

Here there was another prod of Nancy's heel on my instep. Evidently a signal, so I rose to it and said, "Never mind the gold belt. I am far more interested in these 'glimpses into the Past.' You don't mean to say, do you, that that evening when you went and sat out with Mr. Curtis on the landing over that rattling window that you actually asked him to kiss you, did you?"

"Oh, no! Not in so many words, my dear," said the shameless Nancy. "But it amounts to the same thing, doesn't it, when you allow yourself to lean so close to a young man's shoulder, when he is wedging a window, that your curls get rumpled against his cheek?"

She went on in an awfully good imitation of Evelyn's shocked voice when she doesn't like something that has been said.

"In that case a girl knows perfectly well what to expect. She has only got herself to blame. The young man naturally has to take advantage of the situation or look like a fool, which naturally Mr. Curtis did not wish to do."

"But what about you?" I asked, since Evelyn said nothing. She had her golden head bent over the book of patterns. But I could see that she was greedily devouring every single word that passed between Nancy and me.

"Oh! I--I just wanted to see what he would do. A young man with that reputation of never having kissed a girl before in his life. I thought it would be _so_ amusing, Rattle!"

I put in the question that I saw Evelyn was simply dying to ask.

"And was it amusing?"

"Rather not!" said Nancy with fervour. "Just a peck on the cheek as if he were rubbing a smudge off, and then a look of, 'Oh, Great Scott! Why have I done this? For Heaven's sake let's get back to the others!'

"You see, Rattle, the Mr. Curtis type of young man isn't a success at flirtations. He doesn't want to kiss a girl casually just because she happens to be there and rather pretty, like Harry does--did, I mean. You see, Rattle, Mr. Curtis is the kind of man who cares about nothing but The Real Thing, the One Love of a Lifetime. Taking a girl and setting her up in a niche in his heart, to worship her forever, without a look or a thought for any one else. It's a--a rather rare type, Harry thinks. But Mr. Curtis certainly is that type. What one calls The Idealist."

Here she gave a lightning swift wink at me as she pronounced the word the second time this evening with oh! such a different tone of voice. You would have thought that Nancy considered an idealist was the only type to be! She went on with the same earnestness, "He keeps his real kisses for his real love-making, for the girl whom he wants to make love to for keeps."

Again I asked the question that I knew that the silent Evelyn was longing to have answered.

"But look here, Nancy. Aren't you the girl that he would have liked for keeps?"

"Me!" said Nancy, with a little shriek of laughter. "Good Heavens! what made you dream of such a thing?"

"Why," I said, "I always thought that Mr. Curtis was longing to marry you, and that Harry was his successful rival!"

"I must tell Harry that," said Nancy with her enjoying laugh. "Only last night we were talking about how odd it was to think of the different kinds of girls by which the different kinds of men were attracted. Harry said the kind of girl he was crazy about, such as me," drawing herself up in the new furs, "always had left old Curtis as cold as mutton, his idea of an attractive girl being the sweet, womanly sort of creature who thinks about Life and Duty and taking things seriously, and never putting any powder on her nose, and all that sort of thing. That is so unlike me! I am perfectly certain that Edwin Curtis is only too thankful that he wasn't asked to be best man at the wedding, in which case he would have been required to give me another kiss! Too trying! Well, I must be off now to my married home," she chattered on, after one glance had shown her that Evelyn had lapped up every word of this. "Good-night, Evelyn, thanks so much for your advice about the frock. Good-night, Rattlesnake. Don't bother to come to the door with me."

But of course I went to the door with her, and to the gate. "You might tell me one thing," I whispered as I kissed her good-night.

Another newly-married change is that she has taken to using some rather nice scent like honeysuckle and raspberry jam mixed.

"You might tell me," I said, "how much of that rigmarole is true?"

"Rigmarole? I don't know what you mean, Rattle," said Nancy very solemnly. "True? I don't know what you are talking about." And she stalked off without another word. I am sure I heard her laugh as she turned the corner of our lane, where I saw the red point of a cigarette (Harry's) coming to meet her.

But I am sure she will never tell me now.

That is another of the things that I shall never, never know!