CHAPTER XXI

THE MAN-HATER DISCUSSES MEN

"Man delights not me."--SHAKESPEARE.

"And the taable staained wi' his aale, an' the mud o' 'is Boots o' the stairs, An' the stink o' 'is pipe i' the 'ouse, an' the mark o' 'is 'ead o' the chairs!" --TENNYSON.

I didn't ask for any explanation.

I had the sense not to show any surprise at the self-abandonment of this usually so sturdily reserved little chum of mine.

I just plumped down on the stones beside her and slipped my arm about the sobbing little overalled body. I suppose it comforted her. For presently she left off sobbing, drew a long breath, blew her nose, and began, in a resigned little voice, to open out her whole heart to me.

"You know who I mean, Joan?"

"Yes, old kid."

The name of "_Colonel Fielding_" seemed to hang in the air above us as tangibly as those hazel boughs against the sky, but neither of us uttered it.

In rueful little spurts the truth began to gush from the once silent and matter-of-fact Elizabeth.

"I guessed you'd guess. Oh, Joan! I'm idiotic about him. Crazy! As silly about him as you ever were about your precious Harry in London.

"I used to laugh at you!"

"Everybody starts by laughing at people in love," I said, settling myself on that wall. "And everybody ends by being quite as silly themselves. You're no worse than anybody else."

"Yes I am, much," declared Elizabeth.

"Why? Because you've always thought you couldn't like men, and now you find you can?"

"No!" declared Elizabeth, shaking still more vigorously. "I still can't like 'men.' It is still true enough about _that_. I still hate _them_! ... You don't mind my talking, do you? I've bottled myself up so ever since I met _him_. But as for '_men_'----"

She talked, setting out plainly and sincerely what I do believe is the attitude of a certain type of girl.

* * * * * * *

Men seldom hear it. If they do, they disbelieve it. But let them--if any of them are reading this story--be reminded that this point of view exists. Here's its creed as told me by my bonniest and best of little pals, Elizabeth Weare.

I'd heard lots of it, in scraps, already. Tonight, when she was stirred and troubled, I got it in swathes, which I scarcely interrupted.

"I don't think men are amusing," she declared. "Perhaps I _have_ no sense of humour. If it is sense of humour that makes their smoking-room stories funny, I am glad I haven't. They think those stories funny, I think them far-fetched; as if they'd been thought out with lots of trouble. It's not the improperness of them that I mind, those that are supposed to be so 'naughty.' _It's the ugly sort of pictures they nearly always make_. Think of any you know; don't they mean something rather horrid to look at? Men haven't enough imagination to see that's what one hates. Men laugh at those 'jokes,' with a noise like the Prices' old Jack, braying. And they tell some of them to their wives. And the wives pass them on. And the girls tell me; pretty girls, with their soft red mouths, repeat these hideous stupid Limericks and things. And I feel like _crying_, Joan. Only I have to laugh, or they'd think I didn't understand. What I _do_ understand is that every time _I've been put a little bit more off men!_

"Then, I think men are dull. They don't hear what you say quickly enough. They don't see what it means half the time. And they aren't noticing what's going on around them. They're wrapped in a _fog_ of newspaper print and tobacco. They're slow. Slow!

"I think men are so ugly, too. Look at them in omnibuses and trains. Look at them anywhere! Are they attractive? Not to me. I don't like their nubbly knuckles and their huge feet (not that I need talk in these land boots, but still)--I can't bear those great wrists they have. I hate their horrid skins where they shave--all nutmeg-graters! How any girl wants to be kissed by them I don't know. I don't suppose she does really; it's just the Idea. Bristly moustaches, too. Awful!

"They do such hideous things, men. What can be more revolting than the sight of one of them knocking out a dirty, smelly black pipe? Or wolfing down a plateful of half-raw steak? Or mopping up--as they call it--a fat pint of beer out of a pewter pot? I could not love one after seeing him do those things!" declared Elizabeth.

"Yet women do, my dear," I reminded her. "They like a man to be even rather rough-hewn and coarse-fibred, so that he is unlike them. They don't mind his smelling of tobacco, and wearing scratchy tweeds, and tanks on his feet. They like him rugged. I--I speak for myself and for the majority of girls, I think. They like him 'manly.'"

"Heavens!" ejaculated Elizabeth, with equal fervour and truth in her voice. "How I do loathe what they call 'a manly man'! All lumps, and a bull's voice, and irregular features!"

"But," I suggested mildly, "you wouldn't want a man to look like the picture off a chocolate-box lid?"

"I should adore it," declared this exception in girls. "When I was a little girl, once, I was given a box of sweets with a picture on the lid called 'The Falconer.' He wore a golden-brown hunting-dress and he had a hawk on his shoulder, and golden hair and soft eyes, and, oh! such a pretty face! I thought at the time, 'If only I could ever see a young man looking like that Falconer!' And now I have. Colonel Fielding is exactly like that picture. Oh, Joan, I think he's the most beautiful thing I've seen."

How true it is that when a really reserved person breaks down the barriers it will babble out ten times more than some one who is more expansive in every-day life!

I, for instance, should never have dreamt of calling any young man "the most beautiful thing I'd seen." Not Harry, handsome as he was. Not Captain Holiday, though he was good-looking enough for any girl to rave over; manly good looks, too. Very different from the namby-pamby prettiness of Elizabeth's young Colonel! Personally, I considered that it would take more than his D.S.O. and the devotion of his men to their officer to make one forget that he could dress up and look exactly like a girl!

Yet here was the boyish, resolute, no-nonsense-about-her Elizabeth glorying in the fact!

Again the force of Contrast, I supposed.

Well! Well, if the Man-hater were drawn to him I could only hope it was for her happiness. She didn't look happy at the moment, sitting there on that wall, her chin on her knees and her hands hugging her gaitered legs.

"To think," she mourned, "that at last I've met the sort of man that I could care for--even I who never do care for them!--and that it's no good!'

"Why 'no good,' my dear? Because we're going away? But he's not going to stay in Careg himself for ever! Besides, he'll write to you. He always did about the flat, and he will more now," I comforted her. "I know he likes you."

With her characteristic gesture my chum shook her head till her hair danced about her face.

"He does like you," I persisted. "I saw it when he met you first! And at the concert he threw that red carnation straight for you to catch! I suppose you've kept it?"

A rueful laugh from Elizabeth, a movement of her hand to the breast of her smock. Kept it? It was her treasure. Oh, yes. She'd got it badly.

"Besides," I went on, "he met you. He came to talk to you. He wanted to see you----"

"He used to! But not now!" broke despairingly from the little figure on the wall. "That's the worst of it! To begin with, he--he did like me! I was almost sure of it! But not since that girl came down here to take him from me!"

"Which girl?"

In a tone of passionate despair Elizabeth pronounced the name.

"Muriel Elvey!"

"Muriel--oh, my dear girl, no. That's absurd."

But nothing would persuade Elizabeth that it wasn't true. She had seen Muriel, who was so lovely that every man must fall in love with her. She had seen her at the concert, where Colonel Fielding was talking to her every minute that he was not singing. She'd seen her at the Tests, still with Colonel Fielding in attendance. She, Miss Elvey, was staying at The Lodge, where Colonel Fielding was also staying. Oh! Elizabeth knew what would happen.

I wished I did! Personally, I thought it very unlikely that Muriel meant to look at Colonel Fielding; but was she going to marry her host, Captain Holiday? In the meantime she was causing the bitterest jealousy to both me and my poor little chum!

To think that this was Elizabeth who had strafed me about fretting over what any young man had said or done!

"I wish I hadn't come," she mourned; "and now it will almost kill me to go."

Here she stopped, starting as if shot. She lifted her head from her knees and sprang off the low wall.

There had been a rustling of the leaves that I'd thought was the breeze; but Elizabeth had heard and recognized the light footstep that accompanied that rustling.

Another moment and there appeared before us the slim figure and half-girlish face of the man who was the cause of all this agitation.

I looked hard at him as he saluted and said "How do you do?"

He blushed--yes, he had that trick of blushing which camouflages some of the effrontery of some of the least diffident of men. I realized now that it was all a "put-on"--his quietness, his nervousness, his seeming shyness.

"Er--er--I'm so glad I happened to come across you," he said. "The fact is I've something I--I rather wanted to ask you--you two people."

How deprecatingly he spoke, but what a gleam of mischief there was behind those ridiculously long lashes of his! What did he really mean?

I saw him again as I'd seen him at that concert, dressed up in that successful imitation of a Spanish beauty, singing in a contralto that would have lured the bird from the tree, taking in half the audience by his mock "glad eye" at Captain Holiday, and finally tossing that red flower into the little brown paw of the Land Girl whom he most admired. Not too milk-and-watery, all that! And as Elizabeth herself defended him later, "It's not by being namby-pamby that a man gets the D.S.O." In spite of his distressingly--to me--pretty-pretty appearance, there were depths in this idol of Elizabeth's.

Now what had he come to say?

"Er," he began, "I've heard you finished your training and are going away from here."

"Yes, we're off on Monday," Elizabeth said quite steadily.

He tapped against a moss-covered stick with his cane, and went on, as if shyly:

"Er--Holiday told me something of the sort. Do--do you like the job you're going to?"

"We don't know yet," said I, cheerfully enough. "I expect we shall."

"Oh! Holiday didn't know--that is, I expect Holiday might be rather annoyed if he thought I'd said anything to you about this," returned this maddeningly puzzling young man. "But, still, it was an idea of his. And--er--I don't see how he could find out if he didn't ask you himself, do you?"

Together Elizabeth and I demanded, "Ask us what?"

"Well, Holiday wondered if you two would care to stay on at the farm," suggested Captain Fielding.

I saw Elizabeth's head go up.

"Stay on?" I echoed. "But we've finished our training!"

"Er--yes. But the Prices want two more land-workers to take the places of two more men they've had called up. And Holiday thought that--er--since they're pleased with you, and you've got through the exam.--well, it could be managed," concluded Colonel Fielding, diffidently. "It depends upon whether you'd like to stay on jobs there. Would you?"

Here was a question!

To go--or to stay on?

In less time than it takes you to read about it I'd revolved it rapidly in my own mind as I stood there by that wall under the hazels, glancing from Elizabeth to the young officer who had made the suggestion.

To go meant good-bye to so many things I'd come to care for. Good-bye to the Prices, the gentle giant and his dainty wife, to whom her silvered hair gave the look of a little French marquise; good-bye to their kindliness and interest--not every land-worker finds employers as helpful and as considerate. However charming the Rectory people might turn out to be I could not hope that they would come up to these kind people.

It meant good-bye to the Practice Farm, of which I'd become attached to every field, every distant view, every shed--even the celebrated cow-house that I'd cleaned out on that first morning! Good-bye to the merry midday meals in the jolly kitchen! Good-bye to the dear old white mare, and the cows who now knew me well! Good-bye to the morning tramp to work through the dew-spangled, ferny lanes! Good-bye, too, to the life in camp; good-bye to Vic, the irresistible Cockney, to Sybil, and little Peggy with her "I'm astonished at you!"--to Curley, to the red-haired Aggie with her rich Welsh voice, and to the young forewoman who had mothered the whole mixed lot of us!

We had been one big family; I had found sisters of every class and kind. Now I had to leave them all, after sharing their life and their hearts, for six unforgettable weeks. To part--with the chance that we should never meet again! It's the fate that breaks up so many a cheery mess, both in the Army and the Land Army! To go meant all this.

But to stay meant, for me, seeing Captain Holiday still. How could I grow to forget him and thrust him out of my mind, as I hoped, if I knew that round any corner I should meet him still, the golden-and-white collie trailing at his heels? How could I grow resigned and philosophical, and all those things which I meant to be, if I had the constant pain of seeing him with Muriel? (The Elveys, by the way, seemed to be staying on indefinitely at the Lodge.) Oh, I thought that to stay was the very worst thing I could do for myself!

But then I hadn't only myself to think about.

At the very sound of the words "stay on" I'd seen Elizabeth's small face lighted up as if by a ray of sunshine from within. She'd turned it hastily away again. But well I knew what her sentiments were!

So I decided in an instant.

"Oh! If it could be arranged! Of course we'd both prefer to stay on here. We'll stay!" I said, without hesitating.

Enormous relief appeared in the very tilt of Elizabeth's Board of Agriculture hat. As for the young Colonel--what did he think or feel? Was he interested in my little infatuated chum, or wasn't he? Was he just another slave at the chariot wheels of the all-conquering Muriel? And what had he said to Captain Holiday about our staying here? Or had it been the other young man's idea? Afterwards I wondered very much about this.

Why had Captain Holiday thought of us? The Practice Farm was on his land but what had the actual working of it got to do with him, he being merely down in this part of the country on sick leave like his friend, Colonel Fielding?

Further, I wondered how much longer Muriel and her mother would be here, and when the coy, uncertain, and hard-to-please Muriel would make up her mind whom she wanted to marry?