CHAPTER XXIII

COLONEL FIELDING DISCUSSES "ENJOYMENT"

Now, as we sat in that field, between the blond stubble and lowering purple sky, there was one thing the others didn't guess.

I wouldn't have changed places with a Queen. Just to be so near Captain Holiday, rested and feasting after work, was sheer joy to me. He would never know.

But it was odd to find his friend, Colonel Fielding, suddenly putting my thoughts into words!

He repeated his own words of a moment before.

"Yes, this is one of 'the' feasts," he said softly. "Tea and bread and butter in a hayfield. And--er--absolutely topping. It's Enjoyment; pukka. It's what people are always chasing. They flock to--er--the most expensive restaurants in town for this. They go on to boxes at theatres, supper clubs. It's what they order champagne for. Jazz bands. Dressing up to the nines. All to get it! They--er--they don't get it," murmured the young Colonel, in his meekest of meek voices. "You can't buy it. It comes to you--or it doesn't. Fact."

Nobody said anything. Fielding continued:

"When people look back on the best time they've ever had, they don't find that those are the times that--er--that have swallowed up every stiver at Cox's. No. Nor the times when they set out deliberately to do themselves well, and--er--dash the expense. No! As often as not, _that_ is a wash-out. Er--I don't know why. But somehow the best time nearly always comes down to something that costs hardly anything."

Captain Holiday, smoking, gave a sort of non-committal grunt.

Meanwhile Elizabeth was listening spellbound to the homily on Life's Good Times, given by the young officer, who talked as if he were the shyest of the shy--but whose shyness did not stop him from holding forth.

"A woman once told me," the Colonel began again.

Here I saw Elizabeth prick up her ears even more, if possible!

The Colonel saw it too. The smile he gave might have been the smile of some coquette who, deliberately "playing" her lover, sees him "rise." Ah, if Elizabeth looked like that Princess who on her bridal-night was metamorphosed into a lad, this slim Colonel might have been the bridegroom who, to keep her love, was bewitched in turn into becoming a Princess....

He went on:

"Yes, a woman who's taught me rather a lot about women once told me that the most delightful lunch of her life was--er--was in a poisonous little musty coffee-room of a country pub."

Here Captain Holiday put in: "What induced you to take her _there_?"

A gleam of mischief behind the Colonel's lashes, but no reply to this.

"It was stuffy with the smell of bygone chops," he enlarged dreamily. "It was hung with huge dark oil-paintings of spaniels, and horses, and wild duck and things, and there were umpteen hulking sauceboats on each sideboard; all very plated and dirty----"

"How fascinating," snapped Elizabeth.

"The table decorations," pursued Colonel Fielding, "were five napkins arranged as mitres and a tall 'fluted ruby' glass vase full of dead daffodils----"

"May one ask what the unfortunate lady was given to eat?"

"She was given cold ham, Miss Weare, tinned apricots, and black Indian tea at three o'clock in the afternoon----"

"How extraordinarily nasty," sniffed Elizabeth, obviously wrung with jealousy of the woman who had thus lunched.

Deprecatingly, Colonel Fielding smiled. "This woman told me," he said, "that she knew now what was meant by the expression 'A Priceless Binge.' It was that lunch. She would not have exchanged a crumb of it for two years of living at the Ritz."

How well I understood that woman's point of view! I opened my mouth to say so; then I saw that Captain Holiday, leaning up on his elbow on the grass, was watching me hard behind a cloud of smoke.

Why? Curiosity again? I said nothing.

"I suppose that woman meant that the person she was lunching with made all the difference in the world to her?" said Elizabeth, whose small, brown paw had been pulling quite viciously at the grass during these last remarks, in the voice of bravado.

"Well," he replied, "I believe that she did happen to be lunching at the time with 'the person' she cared rather a lot about. He was--er--an old love or something she hadn't seen for ages. At least--I think it must have been that."

"You 'think'!" I said exasperated. "You don't know?"

"No," returned the young Colonel, "I couldn't ask her, could I?"

"Why not?" demanded Captain Holiday, with his abruptness.

"How could I ask her if she didn't choose to tell me?" Colonel Fielding answered very gently.

Here I thought there had been enough of this hair-splitting; besides, I couldn't bear to see Elizabeth's afternoon being spoilt.

So, bluntly and directly, I blurted out:

"But, Colonel Fielding, wasn't it you that this woman was having lunch with when she said that?"

"I?" He opened his eyes at me just as Muriel might have done, and I thought exasperatedly what a lot of girl's tricks he had. Still, one girl adored him for them. I saw poor Elizabeth sitting there doing it at that moment.

"I?" he said. "Oh, no. I--er--wasn't there, that time. I wasn't--the fact is I wasn't born. My mother only told me about it lately."

Elizabeth stopped pulling up the stubble with a jerk, and at the same moment I said sharply, "Your mother--but what's your mother got to do with it, Colonel Fielding?"

"She was the woman who had lunch," explained the young man simply. "She--er--is the woman who's taught me most things, I think. I always think men might learn more from their mothers than any other woman allows 'em to--er--know. '_You'll get a sweetheart any day, but not anothah mothah!_' D'you know that song, Miss Weare?"

Villain! He had simply been "trying it on," "playing up"! He was quite "up" to the fact of Elizabeth's jealousy. And now he was equally "up" to the look of exquisite relief that was lighting her up again--just as it had done when she found she was not to go away after all.

All this, I thought, was cruel.

I turned to Captain Holiday, who was just laughing--at this rate I should soon change places with my chum. I should become the Man-Hater. Men were too irritating, too little worth all this trouble and affection that we lavish upon them!

But, in the meantime, we had forgotten the storm. Suddenly it broke out, deafeningly, over our heads.

"Ah!" exclaimed Captain Holiday sharply, springing to his feet.

We followed his example.

"Here it is," he cried. "The storm!"