CHAPTER XIX

THE SURPRISE TURN

"Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour, The heavy white limbs and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower, When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, Oh wicked and sombre Dolores." --SWINBURNE.

There swept down towards the impromptu foot-lights an apparition tall and beautiful. Dressed as a Spanish lady, it was a study in black, white, and red. Black was the mantilla draped so filmily over the glossy black hair, black was the sequined gown that clung to the slim shape, black was the fan that waved, beckoned, hid, revealed and hid again in a series of gestures, each more perfectly and subtly coquettish than the last.

White was the handsome face, whiter the proud shoulders above the cut-out bodice. Scarlet was the carnation worn just under the ear, and vividly scarlet were the made-up lips of this new performer.

"Whoever is it?" ejaculated Peggy, loudly, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. But there was a perceptibly louder buzz in the talk all over the hall.

"Say; who's she?"

"Isn't she beautiful?"

"Lovely figure----"

"Little bit o' Dixie, eh?"

"Sssh---- The Captain's goin' to make a speech about her!"

For Captain Holiday had stepped forward from his place by the piano and had, with a sort of little laughing flourish, taken the lovely creature's black-gloved hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, "as an extra, my friend Signora Dolores has kindly consented to sing an old-fashioned song, entitled 'Carissima.'"

He went back to his seat. Muriel at the piano, with an unexpectedly sweet smile towards this rival beauty, this wonderful stranger who was to sing, struck the first rippling chords of an accompaniment.

Then, from those vermilioned lips there broke out in a low contralto voice the first notes of the song:

"Carissima, the night is fair----"

What a voice! It was not powerful--indeed, it seemed to me as if the singer were using only part of it--but to what purpose! It was sweet as the deepest brown honey, and of a quality that--well! even as the water-finder's rod goes straight home to the hidden spring, so that kind of voice, "finds" the listener's heart--finds tears.

Surprised at myself, I blinked those tears away. I glanced from the black, white and scarlet beauty on the stage to the audience for a moment. All spellbound, all a-gaze.

I saw little Mrs. Price--a row back--slip her hand into that of her gentle giant beside her. I saw Vic's face without a smile, full of brooding tender memories. I saw Elizabeth all tense ... the soldier-boys were serious, intent; the country people behind them looked as full of solemn, poignant enjoyment as if this were not a mere Concert, but a funeral itself.

As for me, I was ashamed of myself. I had to bite my lips and clench my hands as the syrupy Victorian melody was crooned out to the inanely Victorian words:--

"Carissima! Cariss--ima! The night and I wa-ant oh-oh-oh-only thee!"

Yes; I was having to fight those senseless tears away from my eyes as I listened.

Oh! It wasn't "cricket" for that woman to sing so that she could reduce a healthy matter-of-fact Land-worker to this state of--of mushy sentimentality!

She did more than that. Before the end of the second verse she made me realize something that left me gasping.

I was just thinking, while I listened:

"Ah, if her voice goes so straight home, unconsciously, what must be the effect if she sings 'at' somebody?"

Then I saw her do that very thing. Slightly, raising the fan with a little studied gesture, the singer tilted her head and launched from under her eyelashes a deliberate glance at Captain Holiday. I saw him raise his brown chin out of his hand and look back at her hard, too.

Then I saw the Signora's reddened lips tremble, even through the song, into the very wickedest of smiles that would not be suppressed. It dimpled her powdered cheeks; it almost shut her long-lashed eyes; what a tantalizing and lovely sight! But everybody in the place must have seen that she was singing "at" him; must have heard it!

"Carissima!"

cooed that wooing contralto with its invincible appeal,

"Cariss-ima! My boat and I will come to thee."

And with "thee" the glance was more unmistakably "at" Captain Holiday than before.

Then I knew.

This Spaniard--if she were Spanish?--this stranger with the voice and the fan and the shoulders, and the slim hips and the witching glances that surely no man on earth could withstand, must be "she" of whom Captain Holiday had spoken to me!

Not Muriel, after all. The blonde prettiness of Muriel looked positively ineffectual beside this vivid brunette. She, yes! she must be "THE" girl he'd meant.

Here was a discovery.

But the annihilating part of it was this--that I minded horribly.

For in a flash I felt that I could not deny it to myself. No longer could I pretend to my own heart. Jealous I was, more so than I'd ever been before. But now it was not because of Harry at all. It never would be Harry again.

It was mad pain to me to see a woman--any woman--bent upon attracting Dick Holiday.

Yes, I'd come to the truth now. This had shown it to me.

At last I realized that I was in love with him....

Here was a discovery, wasn't it?

* * * * * * *

In love with Captain Holiday! Of all people in the world!

What in the world had he ever done to make me in love with him?

That first time at the hut he had been hideously rude to me; had come up to me and, unintroduced, had asked me how long I thought I was going to stick life in the Land Army!

I remembered his smile as he said it.

Then that next time in the cowshed. He'd come upon me in the act of chucking work, and he'd let me know that he knew it. Then he'd laid down the law to me about the way to "muck out," as the country phrase has it, the way to hold a pitchfork, and the way to trundle a barrow up to the manure-heap. Nothing in that to make a girl take any sort of a fancy to him!

Later on, he had informed me that I should make a rotten poor hen-wife, just because I'd forgotten the milk for the chickens' food! Not very endearing, that remark!

That same afternoon, however, he had been friendly. He'd walked back with me, talking all the way. But what about? His own love affair. The problem of the girl to whom he had proposed, and who had said neither "yes" nor "no" to him. And I--not realizing that I was getting too fond of the sound of his voice whatever it happened to be saying--I had asked him what sort of a girl she was. He'd said the words that had been ringing in my head ever since: "Ah, well! She's just the girl I want."

* * * * * * *

And now here she was; I saw her before me, the beautiful Spanish-clad singer, on this very concert platform, not more than arms' length from him.

I found myself simply hating her! The last words of her song--oh! how that tune of "Carissima" was going to haunt me--melted away. Muriel played the last chord, and again the racket of applause broke out.

She smiled with all her white teeth; she bowed, gracefully enough but put her hand with a curious little jerk to her side as she did so.

How the boys clapped her! So did I, of course, and, holding myself well in hand, I exchanged comments on the lovely voice with the other girls through the clatter and the cries of "'Core! Encore!"

The Signora gave a little nod that she would take the encore to Muriel, who was clapping as enthusiastically as any of the audience.

And the second song she sang was the revue success: "For the First Love is the Best Love!" which she rendered as perfectly as she had the Victorian ballad. I could have murdered her for that!

Half in anguish of jealousy, half in rapture because of the performance, I sat listening again. She had the low, throaty deliciousness of some of Miss Violet Loraine's own notes; very wisely, she was imitating her as closely as possible in her rendering of her best song.

"The new Love Is never the true Love!"

she carolled, and again I felt the keen stab of seeing her mischievously tender glance at Captain Holiday.

Oh, yes. She must be going to take him--after that!

And at the end of the song, when she stood still again, swaying her fan to the applause, she maddened me by a further piece of deliberate coquetry.

Putting up a hand to the coal-black hair under her mantilla, she took out the scarlet carnation that was tucked close to her ear. She kissed the flower with those lips, painted so red. Then, holding it for a moment, she smiled from the carnation to Captain Holiday, if saying, "Shall I let him have it? Shall I?" She made a little, quick gesture as if to toss it to him, across the platform. Then, with a lightning-swift shake of her lovely head, she took that flower and threw it down into the auditorium for any to catch who could.

A dozen hands went out for it. I don't know if she were specially aiming at the row in which we Land Girls found ourselves, but at all events the carnation dropped almost straight into the small, brown, competent paw of Elizabeth, my chum, who had always been used to catch and throw a cricket ball just as a boy does.

She, Elizabeth, tucked the scented souvenir into the breast of her overall. The signora, standing tall and slim just above the footlights that beat up on to the vivid white and scarlet of her make-up, sent down one more smile--a specially witching one. Then she withdrew. Captain Holiday set up another piece of music on the piano, and the concert proceeded.

It was Peggy's sweetheart, the sergeant, who sang next.

At least, I fancy it was. For, to tell you the truth, I have only the most confused impression of the various faces and figures that appeared, one after another, close to Muriel's piano on that stage.

Sometimes it was one of the red-white-and-blue wounded boys. Sometimes the slim, white-frocked figure of the village schoolmaster's daughter, for whom they brought in a harp.

I was drawn away from it to the drama in my own mind.

I--to have grown to care for Captain Holiday! Fool that I was to have allowed myself----

But, then, I hadn't allowed myself. I had not known it was happening. Now it had irretrievably happened. Tonight had shown me that too plainly.

What fate was upon me? Twice in my life I had been doomed to fall in love with the wrong man. First with Harry Markham, who certainly had done all in his power to bring it about. Now with Captain Dick Holiday, who had never flirted with me for an instant.

Well, I must try to cure myself as soon as possible--that was the only thing.

I must, somehow, take myself severely in hand and refuse to let myself mind so horribly because a woman with a voice to match her lovely face had got Captain Holiday at her feet.

But for the life of me I could not help wondering who the singer was. Signora Dolores--was she really a Signora? Or was she an English girl of an arrestingly Spanish type? Where had she come from? And when had she come to Careg? How long was she going to stay in the house?

I wondered how Muriel liked that Spanish girl who had so completely taken the shine out of her.

I wondered if she--the wonderful singer--were going to sing again.

She did not.

I realized that this was more of her coquetry; to make one marvellous appearance, to reap her success, and then to refuse to reappear until the last note of "God save the King" had been sung, with all the wounded soldiers, and ourselves of the Land Army, standing to attention.

Yes; at last it came to the end of the concert. Votes of thanks had been proposed and seconded. Cheers had been given for our host, Captain Holiday, for the performers, and for "the pretty young lady who had so kindly consented to act as accompanist," but there was no further sign of the lovely lady who had sang "Carissima."

I supposed that she, with the rest of the house-party, would be having a merry little supper afterwards, presided over by Captain Holiday. I am afraid that at the thought of this I felt myself literally trembling with passionate envy.

The audience, laughing and talking, began to move slowly from between the rows of chairs out from the concert-room. I found that I was deadly tired; an evening of emotion takes it out of a girl considerably more than a day of farm-work! I turned for comfort to the sturdy little boyish figure of Elizabeth.

I made myself say, "It has been jolly, hasn't it?"

Elizabeth nodded her bobbed head.

I glanced at the red flower she had tucked into her overall, and said: "That woman, you know, who sang those two songs, she was the best of all."

Elizabeth, with a very quick look up at me, asked brusquely, "Which woman?"

I had opened my mouth to answer, "Why, the Spanish lady, of course," but the words froze on my lips at the picture of which I had caught sight at this moment.

In the vestibule, at the foot of the wide stairs, stood Captain Holiday, laughing whole-heartedly; a group of people were clustered about him and about another figure standing close to him waving a big black fan. This figure was the sight that arrested me.

It was tall and slim-hipped, clad in a black and spangled gown with a low-cut bodice that revealed noble white shoulders; it was, as far as the figure went, that of the Signora Dolores who had appeared at the beginning of the second part of the concert; but--where were the mantilla and the glossy black tresses over which it had been so artistically draped? Gone--one with the other! Above the white shoulders appeared the laughing face and the small mercilessly-groomed golden head of a young man!

"Topping girl he makes, doesn't he?" I heard the voice of the red-haired actor-soldier say just behind me. "That's when I make him up; his own mother wouldn't know him. Why, the female impersonator we had in our Brigade troupe isn't a patch on him; not the professional who used to get fifteen quid a week salary! Asked me for a few tips, he did. But there was nothing I could teach him; only lace him into his 23-inch ladies' corsets----"

I was gasping as I looked. Now that I saw the black wig dangling from the hand that held the fan, now that I knew--oh, I felt I ought to have guessed before.

The things that give away any masquerading "girl" were there. Bert Errol and Co. have not yet learnt to hide the thickness of the wrist, the muscle down the neck just under the ear, the checked and conscious movements of limbs that know no medium between mincing and the normal stride, and (most unmistakable of all) the angle of the male arm at the elbow, which makes "V" instead of "U," as in a woman's soft arm.

All the rest was--what an excellent disguise!

"Elizabeth!" I exclaimed stupidly, "look!"

"I know," said Elizabeth briefly.

"But, my dear," I said, still aghast over the revelation that Dolores was not "THE" girl, not even "a" girl, "did you know when she--when he was singing?"

Elizabeth, with a hand at the red flower in her smock, said: "I knew days ago. Colonel Fielding told me himself that he was going to."

Colonel Fielding!

The "lovely" stranger was--Elizabeth's "old Colonel."