CHAPTER XXV

AFTER THE RAIN

"And the world grew green in the blue." FOLK-SONG.

"It has stopped raining," I said. "What is the time?"

He turned his wrist.

"A quarter past six," he said. "You're supposed to have knocked off?"

"Yes, but I expect Elizabeth is waiting at the farm. Good-bye, Captain Holiday."

"Good-bye!" But he was walking by my side across the field. "I haven't thanked you yet for being good to me."

"Please don't."

"All right! I won't!" said he serenely. Striding by my side, he came on as far as the farmyard gate.

He opened it for me.

Then, leaning on the gate, he lingered. In quite his old manner he launched a question.

"D'you miss town much?"

I laughed.

All about me there went up that sweet incense of the country earth after rain; the ever-vivid colours of the Welsh landscape were heightened to brilliance; each twig of the hedge had its hanging diamonds. Across the green breast of the hill behind the farm there lay, striped like a medal-ribbon, the end of the rainbow. Hope and gaiety smiled from every inch of the rain-washed country; and I echoed: "Miss town? Not now, thank you."

"But you did at first, Joan."

"Oh, yes," I admitted. "Badly."

"Then why did you ever leave it? I've often wondered," said Captain Holiday. "Why did you come away?"

I hesitated. How could I tell him about Harry?

"It was a toss-up whether I stayed or came," I said.

Still leaning on that gate, Captain Holiday said: "I'm glad the country won that toss."

[Illustration: _Still leaning on the gate, Captain Holiday said: "I'm glad the country won that toss"_]

Sweet of him, and friendly! But it meant no more than mere friendliness.

I fought down a sigh.

"Good-bye," I said again.

He did not move from the gate. He just went on with the conversation.

"So you came here; left London. Sometimes one hates leaving--places, I mean, of course."

I said rather bitterly, "Yes--places."

"Not people?" he took up, with a very quick tilt of his head.

What could one say? I agreed.

"Oh, people are hard enough to leave sometimes."

"Are they?" he said, looking down at me. I could not meet his friendly eyes. I moved to go on.

Then at last he took his arm from that gate and followed me through it, shutting it behind him.

"Perhaps there were people who were hard to leave in London?"

What right had he to say it? I was angry with him. Considering he had his own love-story to attend to, why should he question me still--try to find out how love had treated me? What business was it of his?

Temper flamed up in me.

"No! When I left town to join up there was nobody I minded leaving. Else I should not have left. The--the people I should have hated to leave had left themselves!"

My voice grew harder as the memory of Harry Markham surged back into my mind. Black eyes, red tabs, soft caressing voice that promised "all things to all women," tender ways--how I had adored him. And how completely that adoration had died away now!

Oh, the unexpected things that happen in life; nearly always in our own selves! But I didn't intend to give any of that away to this other young man who stood beside me, quietly attentive to what I was saying, outside that closed green door.

I put out my hand; but his was on the latch before me. He held it there as if he were just going to open it for me.

"Oh! So 'they' had left." He took up, in his quiet steady voice.

"Yes," I said defiantly. "If you must know, and it seems as if you always must know everything about everybody----"

"Not everything," he assured me seriously, "and not about everybody. Only some things, and about my--well, I can say we are friends, can't I?"

This, of course, melted me again to him. I had to look away, back over the yard, the cloister-like sheds, the now-smiling country beyond.

"Friends? Oh, yes," I said.

"Then tell me what you were going to say when you began, 'if you must know'?"

Still looking away, I finished the sentence.

"If you must know," I said, "'they' sailed for Salonika days before I left London."

Very quickly he said:

"That was why you left?"

"Yes," I admitted.

The main lines of the story were known to him now. I didn't care.

Speaking as lightly as I could, I said:

"Well! That's that. D'you think you've had enough questions answered for one day, Captain Holiday?"

"'Dick' is my name really," he observed for the second time that day; "and I'd like to ask one other question, if I may. Don't imagine that I don't know it's neck my asking. I do know better. But I'm going to ask. Do you----"

Even he hesitated for a moment. Then went on:

"Do you hear from--these people?"

"These people in Salonika?"

"Yes. From him," said Captain Holiday.

There flashed into my head the thought that had I been Muriel I should have replied neither "Yes" nor "No" to this question. It's the successful type of girl who always "keeps a man guessing" about everything she does, or means, or is. But I was cursed from my cradle by the fairies with the quality of truthfulness. Out it came now.

"Write to me! No," I replied definitely. "Not a line! Not a word! I shall never hear from him again. I shall probably never see him again as long as I live!"

And to avoid being asked more questions on this sore subject, I looked meaningly at Captain Holiday's hand holding the latch of the back door. At once he opened it.

"I want to speak to the Prices," he said, and followed me through the slate-paved scullery into the big light kitchen.

It seemed full as a railway station of people gathered about the wood fire, sheltering or drying after that storm.

On the settle a dainty but ruffled figure in pale mauve was sitting and holding out tiny silk-stockinged feet to the blaze; her drenched white kid shoes stood on the range. Muriel caught in the wet!

She turned as I came in.

"Hullo, Joan; talk of angels!" she said.

Talk of angels, indeed. My eyes had flown past her to the man's figure standing close to the fire that lighted up his red tabs.

There he was, the very man of whom we had been talking. The man of whom I'd said I should never see him again as long as I lived!

I was face to face again with Harry Markham!

* * * * * * *

After the first moment of blankest astonishment, I realized that this was not so very startling after all.

Harry, here?

Well, I knew he was back from Salonika. I knew he had a staff job in town. Town, after all, is still within a day's journey from these depths of mid-Wales. I also knew that Captain Harry Markham had always had a bit of a reputation as "a leave-hog." I need not be so amazed that he had secured a week's freedom out of that old General of his.

As to why he should spend it in Careg--well, I think trout-stream and a jolly little inn were the explanations that the young man offered in those first hectic moments, filled by spasmodic hand-shaking and those inevitable remarks of: "I say, fancy coming across you here!" and "You're looking jolly fit," and all the other things people say on these occasions, whether they are thinking about them or about something totally different, or wondering how soon they can get away.

It was a curiously mixed crowd in the Prices' hospitable kitchen!

It was like the collections of people you sometimes meet in a dream. I felt as if it were some dream that brought me there to the man whom I had adored, with the man whom I adored now, and with the girl who had taken them both away from me!

With very mixed feelings I let myself down on a kitchen chair near the big grandfather clock. I felt as if I must be "looking," as Vic might have put it, "all ways for daylight." Fortunately nobody there had much time to notice me.

There were Harry and Captain Holiday ("my cousin, you know, whose place this is!") to be introduced by Muriel Elvey. (A characteristically questioning look, here, from Captain Holiday at the new man; at whom he stared before whilst I was shaking hands.)

Then I watched Harry being introduced to Colonel Fielding, who, by the way, had left Elizabeth's side and was now sitting on the arm of the oaken settle by Muriel, in an attitude suggesting that she, Muriel, was the only girl to whom he'd paid any attention in his life. Wretch! It had wiped all the joy and sparkle out of my chum's face once again.

Then there was more tea suggested, more cigarettes handed round, spills lighted at that comforting blaze. I listened, just as detachedly as if I were in the auditorium of a theatre, to the buzz of talk that went up around me--chatter about the hay-carrying, the recent storm, and the weather prospects for the morrow of which Mr. Price, looming tall against the window, seemed rather doubtful.

"Miss Elvey's sweet little white shoes!" Mrs. Price's cheerful voice broke in. "Don't let them scorch. I do hope they are not ruined----"

"You will have to take to boots and leggings, yet, Miss Elvey," demurely from the young Colonel.

"Oh, can you imagine me!" from Muriel, toasting her mauve-silk clad toes. "Colonel Fielding, think of little me in those clodhopping things! Of course, I think it wonderful of people to wear them!" with a glance at Elizabeth. "I ought really to be on the Land myself--now, why do you laugh, Mr. Price?" with a pout at the farmer. "I believe you think I shouldn't be very useful!"

"Well, indeed, I don't think you would," declared the gentle giant with an indulgent smile. "Only ornamental!"

"How horrid of you! I've a good mind to join up and show you! It's only that I can't leave mother. But I adore the country really, don't I, Dick? I was longing to come and make hay. I brought Captain Markham out on purpose, and then the rain came and we had to fly in here.

"If you only knew how I admired all these splendid girls who are so brave and strong, and who simply don't mind how they get themselves all burnt and rough for evening dress!" declared Muriel, with a glance at me as I sat mum. "I should look a perfect fright! I know I should!" twittered Muriel, glancing at Harry.

I saw Harry smile back at Muriel as he'd often smiled at me. He murmured something about sunburn being sacrilege in some cases.

Muriel laughed back.

"Of course, if you're a man you can get as burnt as a brick and it doesn't matter," she said. "You're so brown I hardly knew you at the station!" Then casually to me: "Joan, don't you think Harry's got frightfully much thinner and sunburnt since he went out to Salonika?"

At that word I met Captain Holiday's clear straight glance.

It was directly upon me.

I saw that he'd seen. He knew! Yes! He'd tumbled to it that this Captain Markham who had lately come from Salonika was the man to whom I'd referred as "people" that had sailed for Salonika before I left London.

Why had I ever opened my mouth about that?

For now Dick Holiday, who was in love with Muriel, knew the whole of my silly, humiliating little tragedy.

I felt that it was written on my face anyhow.

I turned away, wishing that the tiled kitchen floor would swallow me up.

As I turned Elizabeth was at my elbow.

"Let's go home," she muttered forlornly.

We slipped out of the party without any leave-taking. Silently we made our way back to camp. And I am sure that to hear us laughing with Miss Easton and Vic, to see us fox-trotting together to the rowdiest record on the Camp gramophone, you would never have guessed that the Man-hater and I were about the most miserable pair of girls in the Land Army that night!