CHAPTER VI

THE DISGRACEFUL PARTY

I suppose everybody--I mean every girl body--will want to know what we three had to wear for this party? Nothing wildly exciting, I can tell you: the fact is we haven't got any really compelling clothes. How can you, when you have to shop out of catalogues, and when you're _miles_ bigger than stock size? Still, we'd three quite fairly pretty frocks left over from last summer; Evelyn's is pale, pale pink voile, with little rosy dabs scattered all over it, and with a fichu that makes her look like a Puritan maid. Particularly as she never likes "extremes" of fashion, and simply wouldn't have her skirt cut as it was in the _Lady's Pic._, though Nancy and I _told_ her that skirts were going to be imitations of the London Skittish, only more so!

I wore white: my last Prize-Day frock made a little shorter and fuller, and frillier, and Nancy had a very sweet mauve, like a fondant.

All our hairs looked simply lovely: and I'm sure our complexions must have been a treat to three young men who had been surrounded all day by masculine tan and freckles and mud-ground-in-ness!

Now, I'd better get on to those young men, and to about what happened at the party....

Aunt Victoria--she really is a weird old thing! Always taking you by surprise when you're least expecting it. What do you think she'd done? She had actually rolled down to the supper-table after we had finished arranging it: and she'd placed by the side of the glasses of each of our visitors a large dark bottle with a gold paper "top" to it.

"Bubbly, by Gad!" were what burst from Mr. Frank Lascelles' lips at the sight of them.

And Aunt Victoria beamed at him, and said: "Just the three bottles of champagne that were left over from little Elizabeth's christening dinner-party" (I being called "little Elizabeth," you understand!) "and they've been waiting in the cellar here ever since."

The first any of us had ever heard of there having ever been a christening dinner-party in this house: not to mention champagne. Life is full of sudden shocks, these days. Well, to get on with this other party. Dinner lasted for hours, with everybody having second helps of everything, and a great deal of what you could only call "horse-play" from Mr. Lascelles, though I can't imagine any horses being as silly as he was over going round the table with a table-napkin thrown over his arm and pouring out champagne and pretending to be a waiter; and then pretending to "straf" Captain Masters for letting some of his fizz over on to the table-cloth. Telling him to "parade in chains at ten o'clock to-morrow," and that sort of rot.

The really interesting part of it all to us (not to the men, of course) began after the eating was finished, and after we had left those three young men alone to smoke, and after they had rejoined us in the drawing-room afterwards. Aunt Victoria was playing patience, and Evelyn was busy as usual over her embroidery-frame, and Nancy and I were comparing notes, just as girls always do, about what we thought of the two new young men.

I haven't said anything about them yet, so I'll just tell you quickly that Captain Masters, the elder one, was a perfect dream of good looks, just like an illustration to a story in _Forget-me-not_, only better. He'd black, black hair, like pitch with a crinkle in it, and black lashes framing his dark-grey "round-the-corner" sort of eyes, and a cleft chin that's supposed to be the mark of a flirt. And so tall, and such a nice shape all over! I thought he was rather too much of a vision. Any girl that he went about with would have to be most frantically pretty to keep pace with him! I expect that's what most girls feel when they say they like a man to have a nice _ugly_ face: and probably that's why these Greek-goddy sort of men are always picking out quite ordinary girls in the Society Wedding photographs of them. They don't feel they can stand up against competition. It's all vanity really, as Solomon said. Well, but about these two. The other one, Mr. Curtis, was a complete contrast. I don't know why I thought he was "interesting-looking" the first time. He's fearfully tall and thin, with those glasses, and very bulgy knuckles and khaki-coloured hair. He looked as if Nature never, never meant him to wear khaki in any other way, but never mind, I daresay it's all the more credit to him that he joined as soon as war broke out. He had a look about him, too, that immediately convinced Nancy and me that the story which the Incubus had told us about him was literally true. I could just imagine him sitting down and reeling off articles about "Weight-lifting for Girls" and "Steeplechasing for Girls," and all the other things that seemed to make out that he was a regular expert about girls, whereas-- Well, I don't suppose he was on Christian-name terms with any girl except his sister. He gave you that feeling about himself.

I was just saying so to Nancy, when in he came with the others.

Captain Masters, coming over to Nancy, immediately began about "having a little music," as he'd heard we all played. Wanted to "turn over" for her, I guessed.

You know, there's no piano in the drawing-room at the Moated Grange, only antimacassars and vases and what-nots. The only piano is in the Lair.

I scarcely expected that Aunt Victoria would be the one to suggest that "the young people" should adjourn to that room for their little concert. It was quite as unexpected as the bubbly for dinner when she did so. Not only that, but she thought nothing of going on playing her own solitary game of patience in her accustomed corner of the drawing-room while we all trooped off to the back of the house.

This is where the evening really began, so listen.

After putting chairs for us nearly inside the grate, the three young men plumped down on the hearthrug, which is a nice thick, furry one. Captain Masters flung his glossy black head back against the Incubus's knee, and sent a sleepy, round-the-corner glance at Nancy which was evidently meant to convey the message, "It's really you that I should like to be leaning up against at this minute." However, of course, Nancy never noticed it. She says so. And all he (Captain Masters) said was: "Now, do let us have these songs, shall we? Who's going to open the Concert? And what are we going to have? Have you got any of the music of Shell Out, Miss Verdeley? There's an awfully pretty thing in it called

"'_Sprinkle me with kisses if you want my Love to Grow----_'"

"Oh, yes: let's have that: I think I can manage to vamp it," volunteered the Incubus, springing up from the rug and bustling across to the piano. In a stage aside I heard him say to Nancy, "So awfully appropriate for old Curtis, what?"

I saw Nancy, who was looking prettier than ever in her life before, dimple back at him. Then she gave a glance at "Old Curtis." He still looked painfully shy, but as if he were thoroughly enjoying himself, in an embarrassed sort of way. Yes, he was exactly the sort of person who would be too bashful to ask any girl to write to him. He would be a regular "Lonely Subaltern" himself. But I did hope that my own special Lonely One, to whom I'd sent a letter and a photograph that very afternoon, was not like Mr. Curtis to look at.

Perhaps he'll send me a photograph in return. Then I shall know.

Well, but to get on with this celebrated party of ours. (Evelyn has taken to calling it "that disgraceful" party, by the way.) There was a lot of laughing and "ragging" each other by the young men, in fact, the Lair echoed more than even when the three of us have been there in our giggliest mood. Captain Masters said something about palmistry, and the Incubus said: "Yes, old Thing, you can tell mine; anything else would take too much time..." and so on.

The next thing that happened was the Incubus giving an imitation of Miss Vesta Tilley singing

"_I joined the Army yesterday, So the Army of To-day's all right!_

and the staircase window which is outside the Lair began to rattle so violently that we heard it right through the music. Nancy, skipping up in the middle of all her mauve flounces from the hearthrug, said she must go and put a wedge in it.

Of course, directly she hopped up, up jumped Captain Masters, who had been lolling with his head against Mr. Curtis's knee, this time. "Let me help you," he said; "I'd love to."

And then Mr. Curtis jumped up and actually plucked up courage to say that he was very good at putting in wedges. At the same moment the Incubus--Mr. Lascelles--also skipped to his feet and said, "Bravo, Curtis! This will provide you with copy for another newspaper article: 'Window-Fastening for Girls'--what? I'm going to come and look on at this."

"Surely it won't take four of us," protested Nancy, in her most mischievous voice. "I can do it all by myself, thank you; unless--unless Mr. Curtis really wants to help me?"

And with that, of course, the other two young men flopped down again on the hearthrug like two terriers when one tells them that they are not going to be taken for a walk after all.

And Mr. Curtis was at Nancy's heels like another dog to whom she had whistled.

Evelyn was at the piano trying over the music of "Neville Is a Devil with the Girls," which Mr. Lascelles had just sent for down from London.

I must say that he is very good about sending for those things for us--I mean, for Evelyn and Nancy.

For he knows perfectly well that I don't want any dance music, or chocolates, or fashion magazines, from him. He scarcely spoke to me, either, the whole of the evening.

Well, Evelyn had played all through "Neville" and gone on to the one about "In my heart there's always room for One Girl More," and still Nancy, in spite of what she'd said about being able to do it all by herself, hadn't got that window wedged.

Minutes passed, my dears. And she was still out there in the passage, with the young man who wrote those articles on "Exercise for Girls"--and who had never kissed a girl in his life--until then.

You notice that I said "until then." That's the point.

For when he came in again to the Lair I looked at that minx Nancy, and _I saw that he had_! Don't ask me how I knew. If you're a girl, you won't have to. (Girls have intuitions, thank goodness, even if they haven't any sense of humour, as people always say.) And if you're a man, you won't get answered. So that's that.

(Later.)

All to-day, which is the day after this scandeelious orgy, poor Nancy has been having nothing but talking to upon the subject. You see, it was no earthly good pretending that she hadn't been kissed--we just knew. And to do her justice, Nancy didn't try to pretend that she hadn't been. She stood her ground quite pluckily, and said: "Yes! That was why we were such ages over the rattling staircase window. Yes, I did let Mr. Curtis kiss me. Why not?"

This was where our eldest sister, Evelyn the Ever-proper, came down on Nancy like a ton of bricks. She was really fluent. I needn't go into all that fluency. I expect every girl who reads this has heard bits of it at one time or another: "He comes too near who comes to be denied." Also: "A young girl who has been kissed is like a peach with the bloom off it." (I've never seen any kisses that come off like that.) Also: "Men think very lightly of any girl who gives her favours to a man before she is even engaged to him."

"Engaged to him!" said Nancy, turning upon the lecturer at this. "But how do you want me to be engaged to the man when I had only seen him for the first time that evening? Don't be so ridiculous--and besides," here she began to laugh a little, "Mr. Curtis is scarcely the kind of young man that I should want to be engaged to. Not my type. Much too---- Well! Too everything that I could never like in that way."

"Why not, I should like to know? He's a good deal cleverer than his friends---- I mean, if you wouldn't want to be engaged to him," said Evelyn, in a voice that was even more shocked than before, "how was it, Nancy, that you allowed him to kiss you? That makes it so far, far worse."

"No, it doesn't. It makes it so much, much better," protested Nancy defiantly, but still going on with her work, which was, as usual, the darning of our Incubus's khaki socks. "Poor Mr. Curtis, he really never had before! It seemed to mean such a treat to him! And it didn't mean anything particular to me!"

"Only like letting a rather rough retriever lick your hand," I suggested.

"Rattle, there's only one word for you," said Evelyn. "Vulgar!"

"Yes: people always call people that as soon as they're _natural_," I said. "The fact is, we live in an artificial age. I've read that, heaps of times, and I see it's true. Why, the girls in Shakespeare say much worse things than I do--much! and the other people in the plays never seem to turn a hair at them. Even the ones that are supposed to be quite ladies. Like Juliet. Or Beatrice when she says----"

The other two weren't taking the least notice of me and my Shakespeare. Nancy was going on explaining to our eldest sister that what she had done in letting Mr. Curtis kiss her was "only patriotic."

She said, "Think what a man like that is doing for us. Leaving his good job as a schoolmaster. Leaving his home. Leaving his friends----"

"Can't have many friends," I put in, "if this was the first time he'd ever been allowed to----"

"All his friends," pursued Nancy, waving aside my objection with the khaki sock, "and everything he's got! Presently, in three weeks' time, he'll be off to the trenches in that awful country where it seems to be even muddier than it is here at its worst. He's going to have an awful time there this winter. He may," said Nancy, with a graver look on her pretty face, "he may be giving his life for England and Englishwomen. Yet here you are, ready to grudge him a little thing like a kiss."

Evelyn began to look cross as well as shocked. She protested that a kiss was not "a little thing." It was all part and parcel of the biggest thing that a girl had to give--her love and herself.

"You mean you would refuse that poor young man?"

Evelyn, drawing herself up to her full height, which as you know is a good long way with all of us three girls--Evelyn said, whatever happened, rather than not refuse, she would remain an old maid with nobody wanting to kiss her for the rest of her life.

"And how would you have felt a month after," asked Nancy, "if we have to read Mr. Curtis's name in the casualty lists: '_Wounded and missing--believed killed_'? How would you have felt then?"

Evelyn gave a little shiver.

"Don't--don't talk about that----"

"Yes, but I want to ask you. Wouldn't you have felt sorry?"

"Of _course_ I should have felt sorry if anything had happened to--him," Evelyn quite snapped, "but I shouldn't be sorry about what I'd done. I should always be glad to think I had behaved in the right way about _that_."

And as she marched out of the room I couldn't help laughing. Because, for the only time it has happened in her life, I saw my pretty sister looking like Aunt Victoria.

Yes, she had just the sort of face on that Aunt Victoria has sometimes when we have a very special kind of cake for tea. She looks down her nose at it, and raises her eyebrows as she passes it to us as much as to say, "How can any one possibly eat it?" You see, poor auntie is what they call "a martyr to indigestion," and she isn't allowed to have any sort of cake. At the same time, we always think that she is really, in her secret heart of hearts, rather greedy about cake, and would give anything to take some.

But about the party: it may have been a "disgraceful" one, but you _can't_ say it was an unsuccess!

All the young men were absolutely enthusiastic about the way they'd enjoyed themselves--even Mr. Curtis!