CHAPTER XVI

CURIOUS CONDUCT OF THE MAN-HATER

"To maidens' vows and swearing Henceforth no credit give." --GEORGE WITHER.

I ran back to the hut.

So late! I found the tea-supper all cleared away, and most of the Campites dispersed about their evening avocations.

Only Elizabeth the trusty had kept back for me milk, a huge plateful of bread-and-butter, and cold bacon.

I expected that Elizabeth would sit down near me while I devoured my meal, and would spice it with comments on the reason for my lateness. Here I had reckoned without my hostess. Not only did she not have a word to say about my having walked--or loitered--home with a young man; but she hadn't, apparently, got a word to say to me about anything, though we had hardly seen each other all day!

In an abstracted way she glanced at the food disappearing from before me, murmuring absently:

"Mustard? Or don't you take it?" Then, looking at the clock said: "Slow, I'm sure." And then, with a curious look on her small face, she left me and strayed forth into the gloaming outside the hut.

I finished my meal, cleared it away, and went out to find her. No sign of Elizabeth in the field that led down to the bathing-pool. I crossed the tiny bridge over the stream, and wandered into the next field.

Here, through the branches of some hazels growing beside a stone fence, I caught sight of the gleam of a light overall. I went up to it. I found Elizabeth in a nook where it was almost dark under the branches.

"Hullo!" I greeted her. "So this is where you've hidden yourself away, is it?"

Elizabeth, turning, gave a violent start. "Hullo," she said, in what I can only describe as a most unwelcoming tone. To me, her inseparable chum!

I let myself down on a boulder close to her.

"Elizabeth, old thing, what's the matter? Have you got a headache?" I said.

"Headache!" echoed Elizabeth quite pettishly. "You know I never have headaches."

"I thought perhaps you were a little tired."

"Tired! Not in the very least, thanks." My chum's tone was discouraging.

I tried again.

"Look here, my dear, are you stuffy with me about anything? Did I rag you too much about getting tamed by Hackenschmidt the Second, or----"

"Stuffy?" echoed the little Man-hater, her tone getting snappier and snappier. "If I were, Joan, I'd tell you."

"Yes; I should have thought so," said I, feeling perfectly convinced that something was up. "For you know that if there's anything I could do for you----"

Here Elizabeth quite took my breath away by the suddenness with which she spoke.

"There is something you can do," she blurted out through the gloom. "You can just go away, if you don't mind, and leave me alone."

I'd only just breath left to say flatly:

"Oh, righto," and to get up and set off back to the hut.

Elizabeth wanted me to leave her alone! What on earth was the meaning of that?

"To be left alone"--with most girls that means that they have fallen in love and want to pick themselves up before they can assess the damage.

But with Elizabeth? With that genuine Loather of Men?

Never--!

With most girls, to say "I dislike men" means one of perhaps six things.

1. They don't know any men.

2. No men have been known to pay any attention to them.

3. Some man has treated them very badly.

4. They wish to be contradicted and teased.

5. They are fibbing for the sake of fibbing.

With Elizabeth not one of these reasons would hold for a second.

But Elizabeth in love! Reason positively shouted an "Oh, no." ...

Yet a mad little suspicion, whispering within me, seemed to defy that voice of reason. As I walked along in the fast-gathering gloom I remembered I had seen a man look at Elizabeth quite lately. More lately still I had seen Elizabeth most uncharacteristically confused at the mention of that man's name.

Wildly improbable, I told myself. And, as I did so I walked straight into the meaning for Elizabeth's wanting to be left to herself just then.

In fact, I bumped into the young man, who was coming along the path.

"Oh, sorry," said a low-pitched, masculine voice that I had heard before. A hand was put up to a cap. Then the figure which I had run against passed quickly on up the field.

Elizabeth's "old" Colonel! She was meeting him out there!

_Him?_

There are no words to describe my condition of pole-axed astonishment at this.... Why try to find any?

(_Elizabeth----!_)

* * * * * * *

In about half an hour she returned to the hut, where the others were turning up again by twos and threes.

Elizabeth, looking about two inches taller than usual, gave a defensive glare round the groups of smiling and gossiping girls. But none of them had seen her except me. The defensive glare was then focussed upon me.

I hadn't meant to say a word to the girl! I really hadn't!

I suppose nobody feels exactly _chatty_ when they've just fallen out of a balloon?

But Elizabeth, evidently wishful to speak, followed me up to the mattresses when I went to unroll mine for the night.

"Joan! Er--he told me he met you!"

"Oh, yes!" I said, in a voice as ordinary as possible. I didn't want her to think I was going to "rag," or make any sort of fuss about this. Why shouldn't Elizabeth go out for an evening stroll with a young man if she wanted to--just like any other girl on the land or anywhere else?

"He knows some of my people," Elizabeth flung back in that defensive mutter, "and he wanted to talk to me about another tenant for the flat in London, and, as well as that, he's got a mother who's got a friend who's got a daughter who's thinking of joining up for the Land Army. So, you see, he wanted to--talk to me."

"Yes, I quite see," said I.

Three excuses for talking, from a young man whom she only called "He"!

"So he wrote to me. I promised I'd see him for a minute after tea tonight."

"Oh, yes. When did you promise that?" slipped from me before I knew.

Elizabeth gave her mattress a little kick as she lugged it out.

"I met him on the road the other day," she said in the tone of one who shakes a fist at the world--what it is to have to live up to the name of Man-hater!--and added: "You needn't think there's any nonsense of that sort about it!"

"I never said there was," mildly from me.

"You're always ready to think it!" tigerishly from her. "So I thought I'd just tell you, to stop your getting any wrong impression!"

"Righto!" said I, pacifically. "I won't think anything about it, old thing."

Elizabeth gave a queer little sigh--was it of gratitude?--as she spread her blankets.

Whether she was just annoyed at the possibility of my thinking she had taken a fancy to a mere man who admired her, or whether she really had begun to take a fancy--well, I gave it up as I settled down to my well-earned rest.

I'd said I wouldn't think any more about it. As a matter of fact I was too stunned by the extraordinary possibilities of the subject. I left it. I turned to the thought of Captain Holiday's other guest for that concert, that girl from town who was coming to stay with her mother at the Lodge.

I found myself wondering over her again during the few minutes that elapsed between my curling up on my mattress and my losing consciousness of that and every other question.

It was all very well for that young man to announce so succinctly, "She's just the girl I want." What did he think that would convey to me? She would be rather lucky, as luck goes, to have any one so nice and amusing in love with her. But what sort of a girl would a man like that want?

Absolutely no frills about her, I decided. She would be extraordinarily practical and efficient; very out of doorish; good-looking, but not pretty in any "doll-y" sort of way; thorough sportswoman--only, why hadn't she wanted to say either "yes" or "no" to him? Why not "yes" at once? Why not----

Here a curious little incident wound up a day of curious incidents. I had, whilst engaged in these meditations, been tucking my wrist watch under the rolled-up scarf that was my only pillow. My hand met a handkerchief that I had forgotten was there. As I took hold of the thing I felt a knot that was tied tightly in the corner of it.

A knot to remind me of something.

Now what was that, and when had I tied it?

Suddenly I remembered.

Elizabeth had tied that knot in my green silk handkerchief days and days ago. And she'd said: "That's to remind you to think mournfully of Harry at least once a day."

I'd forgotten that. More than that, I'd forgotten Harry for the moment--or for how long? Had it really been days since I had given a thought to those bitter-sweet memories of the man who used to blot out every other interest from my horizon? Had the land-work cure progressed so rapidly that other interests were beginning to keep all remembrance of Harry in the background?

I looked back to the obsession that had been the indirect cause of sending me--a love-sick wreck!--on to the land.

And now--was it possible that I'd got over it so well?

In ruefulness, relief, and surprise I drew a deep breath. Then I turned over and slept.

But I never dreamt of what else was coming to remind me of Harry--and very shortly!