CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ONLOOKER

"Hélas, mon ami! C'est triste d'econter le chanson sans le chanter aussi." --BRETON BALLARD.

As for me, I was delighted. Let one of us be happy, I thought; let Elizabeth, since I was evidently fated to be lonely!

Yes! Any love-story for me, Joan Matthews, seemed to be something quite past praying for.

Twice, now, I had fallen in love. Twice I had drawn a blank!

The first time I'd set my affections upon a philanderer (Harry Markham) who had given me every reason to think they were returned, but who probably hadn't "meant" anything, even before he deserted to Muriel.

The second time I had lost my heart to a man worth a hundred Harrys. This man (Dick Holiday) had never attempted to admire me. He was just helpful and jolly and friendly, but he'd never pretended to think of me in that other way. Yet I couldn't stop caring for him with all the best that was in me. And now he was Muriel's too; I only waited to hear when their engagement would be announced.

"Really I ought to be phenomenally lucky at cards, seeing the sort of luck I've had in Love!" I laughed at myself.

For I could still laugh; and here I must put forward something in my own defence! _I was taking the second love-fiasco very differently from my first_.

In London, over Harry's desertion, I had let go all ropes, and had fretted and wept myself into a nervous wreck.

Here on the Land, I never thought of behaving like that. I set my teeth to "stick" unhappy Love, which is a girl's equivalent for a soldier's "sticking" his most painful wound. I found I could still enjoy myself among the other girls, I could still be sympathetic over my chum's engagement. I could throw myself body and soul into the work on the farm, where the hay-harvest was now in full swing.

That work saved me, my self-respect, my spirits, and my looks from the ruin that threatens the very being of the girl who is crossed in love. How she endures that is so largely a matter of health after all. My health was now magnificent. Every day I grew fitter, more vigorous, rosier (though my nickname of "Celery-face" would persist to the end of my life here!) and more full of zest for anything that happened along. For on the Land one soon learns not only to take the rough with the smooth, but also to take plenty of interest in both.

Now, after a couple of weeks of strenuous toil, there came a promise of "smooth"; a little treat.

A note arrived for me at the Land Girls' Camp which said:

"DEAR CELERY-FACE--

"_These nice people that I work for suggest that I should ask a couple of 'my young friends' over to tea next Sunday. Will you and Mop be the young friends? They know Captain Holiday and are asking him, so I expect he will bring Mop's 'lovely Spaniard' with him. Do come._

"_Yours_, SYBIL.

"P. S.--_These people think the uniform so 'picturesque,' so come in it, even if Mop does want to wear garden-party clothes for the fiancé!_"

By the way, I have not yet dwelt on the enormous excitement that blazed all over our Camp at the news that "little Mop, the Man-hater!" had actually got engaged to be married to "Colonel Fielding who was that Spanish lady at the Concert!"

That sensation could have been beaten by nothing, unless perhaps news had come that same day of the sudden and complete surrender of the whole German Army.

Anybody who has lived the communal life among girls (as most girls have in these days of Women's Service!) can imagine the whirlwind of exclamations, congratulations, questions, laughter that almost carried the newly-engaged messmate off her sturdily-booted little feet. Only, no imagination can do justice to the golden camaraderie with which that Timber-gang and those other Land-workers at our Camp took Elizabeth to their hearts. (I hoped that her _fiancé_ would realize it; for after that he could never again say that girls were usually "little" and "spiteful"!) They had always liked my plucky, downright little chum. Now, they couldn't do enough for her!

Peggy, who had started an elaborately crocheted camisole-top for her own bottom-drawer, dedicated it to Elizabeth. Peggy's Sergeant Syd brought an offering of a table-centre, designed and worked by himself in the gaudiest silks with the crest of Colonel Fielding's regiment, as well as with a Land Army hat, a rake and a rifle crossed, the motto "England must be fed!" and other emblems. This was her very first wedding-present, an object that, whatever shape it takes, never fails to stir the heart of any engaged girl! But Elizabeth, who had flashes of defensiveness and of seeming to make (outwardly) little of Love and Marriage, declared that the wedding was not going to be for ages.

"The Colonel, he'll watch that," had been Vic's laconic comment.

"The earliest that it can be," Elizabeth had then announced, "is when my year is up."

"Good idea," Miss Easton, the forewoman, had pronounced drily. "But you might remember that the Secretary is able to let you have a brand-new overall in advance before the six months yours has got to go, if you want it."

"I don't want a new overall," from my chum, glancing down at her already well-worn garment. "What for, Miss Easton?"

"Lots of the girls like to get married in uniform, my dear."

"I shan't be getting married for eighteen months at least," had been Elizabeth's ultimatum.

"That's putting a lot of extra work on me and Vic!" the young forewoman had sighed whimsically.

For every evening now Miss Easton had a Thermos filled and a packet of bread-and-butter or rock-cakes ready for "Mop" to take after work, so that she could have her tea out with her _fiancé_ in the field, where they met at a stile. (Those were the halcyon hours for them both!)

As for Vic, the big, good-natured Cockney had taken in hand the appearance of Elizabeth. Vic now "shined" her Sunday brogues, Vic saw that she always had a pair of the neatest brown stockings to wear with them, Vic ironed her smock, Vic "saw to" her armlet and badges; Vic, every evening, gave ten minutes to brushing "young Mop's" short, thick crop until it shone and floated out like raw brown silk round her face.

"Must have you looking a credit to US," the self-constituted female batman said to her. "Remember, all eyes--such as there are of 'em here--are upon you! The girl that's going to marry the D.S.O. You jolly well reflect back on the Camp, my girl, and then some more D.S.O.'s will come round looking to see if there's any more at home like you (perhaps). You let me put your belt straight. Now, got a clean handkie? Like a drop o' Lil's scent on it? No? He don't care for scent? All right. Now I think you're ready"--all this was just before Elizabeth and I started off for that somewhat eventful tea at the house of Sybil's employers.

"Now, young Celery-face," Vic went on, "how do you look? Yes, you'll do nicely. Of course I may be a bit more particular about the way I turn you out as soon as you get engaged. You'll be the next, I bet----"

"I shouldn't bet much," I advised her, smiling above the little stab at my heart as I disengaged myself from Vic's kindly hands--and clothes-brush. "You'll only be disappointed. I shall not oblige you by getting engaged from the farm, Vic!"

"Oh! Why ever not, if I may inquire?"

"Largely because nobody is likely to ask me!" I answered as we left the hut.

"Ah, go on!" Vic called after me as she stood in the doorway, laughing and waving the clothes-brush. "F'rall you know, somebody's going to ask you at this Do this very afternoon!"

Now if Vic had heard the story of that Sunday afternoon-party that was coming, I expect her verdict would have been: "There! What did I tell you? Many a true word is spoken in jest!"

That afternoon witnessed my first offer of marriage--No, I had forgotten. It was not my first. My first had been by letter, that improbable-sounding sort of letter that I'd received in the Spring from the young man called Richard Wynn, and that I had tossed away by mistake into a London County Council waste-paper bin before I'd even answered it. That was the first!

The second was by word of mouth, and it took place under the sun of early July, in one of the prettiest country gardens that ever----

But I'll begin with the house where we were invited by these people for whom our colleague Sybil was now working.

We walked for a good two miles down a lane branching off, under trees, from the road to our farm; we came at last to a white gate and then up a drive bordered with tall flowers that flourished as they chose in the long grass. The house--which had one of those interminable Welsh names beginning with "Dol"--was long and white, striped green by creepers, and with a wide porch garlanded with heavy-headed roses.

Just to the right of the porch a long window-box filled with black pansies stood in front of an open upper window. A girl's rosy face and wavy hair peeped out; it was the daughter of the house who called to us in a voice which, though pleasant, would have made her fortune as a pilot on the Mersey, "A-hoy! How d'you do? ... Syb--il! Here are your friends! ... Come in, will you? Don't stop to ring; it doesn't."

Elizabeth and I went straight into the cool, shady hall, and into the midst of one of the most welcoming and hospitable, the least conventional homes that I have ever entered.

We were greeted by Sybil's employers, the master and mistress of the house. He, an old soldier, wearing the hearthrug-like tweeds and the mossy stockings of a country squire of that neighbourhood; she a plump and still pretty woman in spotted black and white muslin, with wavy hair like her daughter's grown grey, and with an egg-basket which she never put down, over her arm. He and she seldom stopped talking, always talked at once; generally in the form of questions.

Thus--

"My dears, won't you come and sit down? Did you walk all the way from Careg? Aren't you tired?"

"Does Miss Sybil know these young ladies have come, Mother? Can't we have some tea for them at once?"

"One of you is engaged to that friend of our friend, Captain Holiday's; is it you? No? You? Isn't that very nice? Will it be a long engage----"

"Where's Miss Sybil?" (Enter from the back our friend Sybil, smiling, but unable to get a word in.) "Now, where's Vera, where's that girl Violet----"

Violet (the daughter of the house) came running down to add her voice to this family anthem.

"Hullo! Did you find your way easily? Daddy, where are the dogs? ... Dogs!" (loudly). "Sybil, you're not going to try to introduce everybody, are you? Why are we all standing here? Why aren't we taking these people into the drawing-room?"

We were borne along into the big drawing-room to the right of the hall. It was full of flowers and lovely old furniture and silver-framed photographs and an immense round tea-table and a cluster of other guests.

Here the sun rose again upon Elizabeth's world. Her eyes had fallen at once upon her _fiancé_, Colonel Fielding. He was sitting there, near his friend, Captain Holiday.

What a merry tea-fight that was in the hospitable and happy-go-lucky Welsh country-house!

To sit in a dainty drawing-room amidst a cluster of strangers wearing "real" summer frocks. To see a winking bright silver spirit-kettle and a snowy cobweb cloth. To drink tea from fragile cups and to spread, with crystal-handled knives, honey upon wafer bread-and-butter!

These little luxuries we never noticed in our pre-War days. But now---- Remember! It was the first time for weeks that we Land-girls had tasted such refinement!

"What a treat this all is," I remarked to Captain Holiday as he handed hot cakes in a lordly dish.

He replied: "Ah! Now perhaps you'll have an idea how fellows feel when they get out of the mud and plum-and-apple-with-chloride-of-lime up the Line, and back to Civilization for a few days' leave."

"When I got my Paris leave last year," put in the demure voice of Colonel Fielding, who had dropped into a low chair close to his _fiancée_, "do you know what was the first thing I did?"

"D'you want us to guess, my boy?" boomed the genial master of the house, who was also a Colonel.

The younger man smiled at him. "I'll tell you, sir. I ordered a great sheaf of La France roses and lilac to be sent up, with a huge glass jar to put 'em in, to my room at the Hotel. And there I lay and looked at 'em, till _déjeuner_, because I hadn't seen a flower for months!"

The other guests then took up that never-failing topic of leave, and how some people always get it and some never; why? A question unanswerable. I thought of Captain Harry Markham, nicknamed in his regiment "The Special Leave King." But the thought of my faithless admirer could not depress me now. For the moment I was perfectly content, sitting at that gay tea-table between my motherly hostess and Dick Holiday.

He chaffed me about "a woman's ineradicable love of luxury, on the Land or off!" and I laughed, glad that I could sometimes see him thus for half an hour, without any Muriel to spoil it all.

On the other side, my hostess's questioning talk flowed on.

"You like the Farm-work, my dear?" to me. "Your people don't mind you taking it up? The Prices look after you? Perfect dears, aren't they? Has Mrs. Price had the Isle of Wight disease? Her bees, I mean? No? How's that, I wonder, when everybody else's bees in the county--oh, she doesn't keep bees? ... When are your friend and Colonel Fielding to be married?"

"Not for a _long_ time!" burst from Elizabeth, but our kind hostess went on, unheeding.

"Couldn't we arrange to have the wedding from this house? I adore weddings, don't you? ... Vera!" to a laughing blonde in light blue who was a niece of the house, "you haven't eaten all the light-cakes? Aren't there any more light-cakes for when Captain Holiday's cousin comes in? Dick! You did say your cousin, Miss Elvey, was coming later?"

"Yes!" from my neighbour. "She's driving up presently."

My heart sank.

Muriel Elvey was coming after all?

Even as I thought it there was a crunching of light wheels on the gravel outside. A dog-cart drove up holding khaki and the flutter of a dress.

A moment later Muriel entered. Just a bright-headed bouquet of muslin, rose-sprigged with mauve! Even as she uttered smiling greetings she made every other girl there look comparatively plain at once.

As for me, I instantly became a hopeless clodhopper sitting there in rough breeches and smock, with my thick brogues planted on the soft carpet. Awkward and out of place, all enjoyment was over for me as soon as Dick Holiday's fashionable contrast of a girl floated into the drawing-room.

The man who had driven her up came in a few moments afterwards.

To my surprise, it was Harry again! "More leave, Markham?" I heard Colonel Fielding laugh; and then Harry, "No, I just got down for the week-end."

So he had come all that way, just to be near Muriel. Oh, what it must be to have her power over men! As far as I could see, there was only one man in that party who wasn't at her little feet as she sat coquetting now with the master of the house. Elizabeth's _fiancé_ had said, "I know too much about her! I know her kind!"

What did the young Colonel mean?

However! He didn't count; being engaged, and, as Elizabeth herself said, "not a 'usual' young man."

One thing I noticed about one of the more "usual" young men there. Harry Markham was not himself that afternoon. Something was weighing on him.

I knew it! I knew his face and ways so well. Hadn't I studied them, as only a girl in love has patience to study, for a whole year?

Nobody else out of that roomful of people would detect any cloud. Harry was a young man who could "make himself at home" anywhere. He did so now. I saw everybody--except perhaps Dick Holiday, who suddenly turned silent--summing up Captain Markham as a charming fellow.

He talked pleasantly; to our host of salmon-fishing and of soldiering in the East; to our hostess of bees and poultry. Elizabeth he congratulated prettily, telling her that he (Harry) had spotted Fielding as "a man determined to win" the first time he met him. Even Elizabeth had been slightly mollified by this towards the man she'd once pronounced "a rotter!" He laughed and made himself agreeable. And only I realized that while he did so his mind was not in any of it.

Why?

I thought I guessed.

As they came along in the dog-cart he had been trying to make love to the only girl he couldn't win over at once.

Muriel had been unkind to him. What a revenge for me--if I wanted a revenge, which I didn't.

So far I guessed. But not what was coming!