CHAPTER VII

THE LONELY SUBALTERN AGAIN

This morning I got another letter from the Lonely Subaltern, to acknowledge the photograph I sent.

He really _does_ seem to have been pleased with it.

His letter begins, without any "Dear Sympathiser" at the top, straight away:

"I think that if you know how pleased I was to have the charming picture, which is looking at me as I now write, even your kindness in having sent it would feel rewarded! It is certainly very unlike the fancy portrait that I made up of you in the letter which I had the absolute cheek to ask you for this. But now, shall I confess something to you? I only made up that description as a kind of draw! I knew perfectly well that you were gay as well as pretty, and that there could be no spectacles or seriousness about you!

"And even if this laughing blonde face shows you as you were 'some time ago,' I can't help feeling that it is very like what you are now. If I said all this to your face I suppose it might be looked upon as rather cheek, mightn't it?"

(Yes, it certainly might.)

"Still, as you are not here, I think I might be allowed to say what I mean, which is I think that you are a perfect peach. If you will only go on writing letters to me I shall look forward to them more than to anything else I have ever looked forward to in my life."

Poor boy! He must have had a horribly dull sort of time. He says:

"I shall read them over and over to see whether I can't find between the lines something that gives me more of you, that tells me more about the 'true inwardness,' as they call it, of the girl who has been so awfully sweet to me. I shall keep all your letters (if I have the luck to get some more) in my pocketbook, close to me wherever I go, with your photograph letters from Betty.

"By the way, I forgot to tell you that that is my new name for you--Betty.

"Elizabeth is too long and too pompous. It reminds me too much of the 'Maiden Queen' in one of her tantrums. But Betty is just you--a rose-faced, shapely, blue-eyed and golden-haired English girl."

My dears! Fancy having things like that about you written down in pen-and-ink! _Don't_ I wish I could show them to my sisters! I can't, of course, ever. But never mind. Whenever I feel down in the mouth or neglected, or bad-tempered with the Incubus, or bored with Mud Flats, I shall always be able to take the Lonely Subaltern's letters up to my own room, and have a little private preen over them, all to myself. How glad I am that I answered his _touching_ advertisement! Didn't I tell you that I believed in Fate? Well, there you are. Isn't it funny?

The letter ends up:

"Good-bye, my Betty. Think kindly of me sometimes, will you? and believe me

"Ever "YOUR LONELY SUBALTERN."

This I call perfectly sweet.

Fancy his saying "_my_ Betty." It gives one quite a little warm glowy sort of feeling at one's heart. Fancy his thinking the photograph so nice! I wish I'd had a coloured one to send him, but he seems to have guessed the colours rather well.

I wonder what _he's_ like? How I _do_ wish I could see him! (Anybody would, I think.)

Well, I must write to him again. Aunt Victoria always taught me that a letter deserved an answer. I must write to him at once. If I don't he might think I was offended at the new name he's given me, and then his poor dear feelings would be hurt, and I should so hate to do that. I must tell him that of course I don't mind his calling me "Betty": that as a matter of fact, I rather like it. I'll go to the Lair and write now.

* * * * * * * *

Now comes the most awful thing that's ever happened in my life.

To begin at the beginning of it, there was no ink in the Lair.

I really believe Nancy has taken to drinking ink--at least, I know she was writing in there for hours yesterday, and I can't imagine what about, though she said it was accounts. As I say, this place is full of mystery and surprises, both inside and out--in fact, I don't seem to know even my own sisters, Nancy and Evelyn, as well as I did before the arrival of the troops in our hamlet. Well, to go back to this ink--I knew there was a good large bottle of it in the dining-room. So, carrying the Lair inkpot in my hand, I betook myself off to the dining-room, thinking to find it--what most people's dining-rooms are at a quarter to four in the afternoon, namely, a deserted wilderness faintly smelling of lunch. However, when I got in who should I run into but the eternal "Incubus," who, I thought, would be busy making saps or something in a field out by the Ford. He was sitting there writing. Up he jumped, of course, and said he was afraid he was in my way. (Of course he always is, really.) Then he said: "Do let me fill that for you," and I said, "Oh, no, thank you! I can do it perfectly well myself: I am myself doing it."

Well, of course I should have done it perfectly well if I hadn't been flurried and annoyed at finding him there--horrid little creature!

As it was, what you would imagine to happen did happen. My hand shook, and I upset three large tears of blue-black ink on to the red leather cover of the dining-room writing-table.

"Oh, I say!" exclaimed the Incubus. And I said, of course, the usual thing, "Oh, it doesn't matter in the very least. I will get a cloth and wipe it up."

"No, wait. I have got a handkerchief here--quite an old handkerchief, which doesn't matter in the least, I assure you," he went on: "it will be good for it."

Before I could say another word he thrust his hand into the pocket of his coat, and had brought it out.

This was where, I expect, he wished he had never been born.

Why on earth don't they have classes for those men which, instead of only being about demolishing houses and blowing up bridges, would teach them to pull a handkerchief out of a pocket without pulling out everything else that the pocket contains?

For as the Incubus took out his quite nice khaki silk handkerchief there fell on the floor----

You will never guess!

Yes, perhaps you will guess. Perhaps it is only I who has been such a fool and lunatic as not to guess all about it from the very beginning!

Anyhow, there it was, staring me in the face, now! What they call in books "the confirmation of my own folly."

What had fallen out of the young man's pocket was my own photograph!

There was no mistaking it. You know that old proverb about bread and butter falling always on the buttery side? Well, photographs (especially when you don't want them to) always fall picture-side uppermost. There it lay--my latest photograph that was taken just after I had my hair up--the last one I had in the house--the one, I knew it was the one, that I had sent to the "Lonely Subaltern."

And in one second the appalling truth flashed upon me.

_It was him!_

_He was it!_

At one and the same moment That Deceiver and I made a dash for the thing as it lay on the carpet. If I had got it first I think I should have torn out of the room with it, and, still holding it in my hand, have rushed to the station and taken the next train to London, and gone into a tea-shop or something--as a waitress, I mean--and never have seen him or anybody else who knew me again as long as I lived!

If he had got the photograph first, well--I don't quite know what he would have done--perhaps pretended that it came out of a packet of cigarettes, or something like that!

But as it was, what do you suppose happened? Of course, the last thing one would wish.

We both get it at once! Our fingers were all entangled in the sickening thing.

Firmly grasping my edge of the thing, I dragged my hand back.

But that ... that young Pretender (who I hope will never feel comfortable as long as he lives) had hung on to his edge of the photograph as well.

Naturally, it came in two! There we stood, for one brief second, glaring at each other over the two halves, exactly like the judgment of Solomon!