CHAPTER XXIX

LOVE----AFTER THE INTERVAL

"Let this be said between us here, One love grows green as one grows grey, Tomorrow has no more to say To yesterday." --SWINBURNE.

At last the long leisurely tea of Sunday afternoon in a country-house came to an end. People strayed out into the grounds, a little green and golden world of peace it was!

I heard Colonel Fielding's velvet voice murmuring "Carissima----"

This was his pet name for his sweetheart. She called him "Falconer." The pair of them wandered off together and disappeared with the swift and utter completeness possible only to lovers--or to small boys who are called to have their faces washed.

The others drifted towards the water-garden, or to inspect the vegetables which were Sybil's domain; Sybil, the garden-girl, was entirely one of the family here.

Muriel (of course) called to Dick Holiday to come and translate the motto on the sun-dial for her.

And then, suddenly, I found a figure in khaki with soft dark eyes under a scarlet-banded cap, edging purposefully towards me in a manner that recalled a year now dead.

How often I had longed in vain for this to happen! What fruitless tears I'd shed! And now---- Oh, why do people pine, after long years to see their first loves again? It is, nearly always, a mistake to meet them any more.... It is a wash-out!

Shakespere's most characteristic lover puts it all in a nutshell.

"Enough, no more! 'Tis not as sweet now as it was before."

But Harry Markham, whom I had once thought such a man of the world, had less _savoir vivre_ than the Count Orsino.

"Joan," he murmured ingratiatingly as he came up, "I haven't been allowed a single word with you----"

Presently I found myself having the "word" alone with him at the bottom of the garden, away from the others in a sheltered nook screened by a hedge of sweetpeas.

Harry always was an adept at these arrangements. Strange, to think that he should be making them again for me after all these months!

He began in a voice distinctly sentimental, "It's a long time, isn't it, since ... last summer? Look here, there's a seat. We'll sit down."

"Not for long," said I, matter-of-fact. "I have to get back soon, to Camp."

"Camp," returned Harry, as he sat down beside me on the garden-bench. "Sounds odd to hear all you girls talking about 'Camp' like a lot of Tommies."

"We're rather proud of being like them."

"Of course. But, I say, who are you with all day? What do you have to do?"

I answered his questions as concisely as I could. I, who used to prize every moment with him! felt I wanted to join the others!

He nodded; asked "Don't you mind having to rough it?"

"I don't call it 'roughing it' very badly, thank you. I enjoy it."

"Sporting of you," declared Harry, "but not a bit the sort of thing you used to be keen on, Joan. You've altered."

"Yes," I agreed quietly. "I think I have altered a good deal."

He sent one of those well-known glances of his from under the peak of his cap as he sat. "I needn't tell you how the life suits you, as far as looks go. I've never seen you with such a colour, and your hair's all full of those gold gleams I always thought so topping----"

For the first time in my life that caressing voice left me cold.

"That kit is jolly becoming to you."

"Yes?" I said politely. "I thought you admired pretty frocks."

"Those suited you, too. But in this you're a young Ceres."

"I'm afraid I've forgotten what those were."

"She was the goddess of Harvest or something," explained Harry, discomfited. "Somebody outdoor and glowing and rosy, with a lovely figure, if I may say so----"

"Why not?" I smiled at him in a friendly way.

He amused me, now. I was rather tickled to see him not quite knowing how to talk to me after this silence of months in which he'd left me without a good-bye.

I saw him like a precocious schoolboy who has been rude to somebody and who wants to apologize without losing his dignity.

And, as I say, I used to see him as the most wonderful, the cleverest mixture of a man of the world and a demigod!

To think how we can change.... But he imagined I was still the adoring conquest of those old days in town.

He thought I was putting up a gallant little bit of feminine bluff. He imagined that my heart was still beating as wildly as ever it did at the sound of his voice, the glance of his eyes that courted and caressed.

Gone was their magic for me! Harry Markham didn't realize that.

That want of perception helped him towards one of the biggest mistakes he was ever to make!

I, who thought I could read every sign of his handsome, rather self-conscious young face, I'd never foreseen it.

No, not even when he began by lowering his voice to its most persuasive pitch.

"Joan! You aren't being very nice to me. You're fed with me about something."

"Not a bit," I assured him.

Reproachful glance from Captain Markham. "My dear little girl----"

How long was it since I'd thrilled to hear myself called this? Today I found it the wrong expression; I was nearly as tall as he was, after all, I thought. Also I felt rather bored with the turn that the conversation was taking.

No more flirtation for me, thanks.

"My dear little girl, d'you suppose I don't know the difference between this and the jolly chummy times we used to have?" he appealed to me. "You've forgotten the day we went to Hampton Court."

"I have not," said I, looking away. "I remember it perfectly. We came back too late to go to the theatre, and we were so disappointed."

"I don't remember any disappointment," he said softly. "I only remember ... a perfect day."

Of course I too remembered that the day at Hampton Court had been the first time Harry had kissed me. My face flamed with annoyance to think I had permitted this. I rose from the garden-bench. What busy centuries I'd lived through since that morning at breakfast with Elizabeth in our London flat, when the universe had been darkened for me by the news of Harry's going! Now it had come to my turn to want to go. Uncanny in the light of what had been, but true! The familiar figure in khaki and scarlet seemed to me that of a quiet, strange young man to whom I didn't want to talk at all.

I took a step down the grassy path. He followed me, speaking in the ingratiating manner that was second nature to him. I could not help hearing a note of insincerity in his voice now; yes, and a note of odd impatience. It was as if he'd set himself to play some part and were irritated with me because I did not play up to him.

"Ah, Joan, wait! I brought you out here on purpose to say something to you. Not about Hampton Court----"

"No; that's all over," I assured him, meaning more than just one picnic.

"But I want to talk about you. How long d'you mean to go on with this farm-business?"

"I signed on for a year. Why?"

"What d'you suppose you'll do after that year?"

I pulled a mauve-and-purple sweetpea out of the hedge as we passed. "Who knows? Perhaps stay on the Land for good."

"A girl like you?"

"Or I might transfer into the Women's Forestry Corps later on. They'll want people for replanting the timber where all the lovely woods have been cut down. The Forester here says girls are particularly good for nursery-work; they're quick and light-footed, and don't trample down the young plants."

Harry seemed to care little about that question, though he'd surprised me by his sudden interest in my own career. This after months of forgetting my existence!

"It's all very well for you to do this in War-time," he told me. "The War, though, will be over before we're old, I hope. You can't go on tramping round filthy turnip-fields and feeding pigs and pigging it yourself in a wooden shanty with Heaven knows who!"

"I like it."

"No," he insisted, rallying. "Now your little friend, Miss Weare, has done the sensible thing. So will you. Of course you'll get married too, Joan."

"I? No," I said with unsmiling finality. "I shall not get married."

At this my old love put back his head and laughed.

Then it came.

Standing there close to me on the path bordered on one side by the sweetpeas, on the other by the high garden wall with its fans of plum and apricot, he moved as if to pull himself together for a jump. He gave one very odd glance about him. That glance seemed made up of so many things: resolution, amusement, pettishness, teasing, ruefulness, a certain kindliness, and triumph.

Then his eyes came back smiling to mine as he exclaimed, "Ah, darling, rot! I'll tell you something. You are going to get married. I am going to marry you myself."

I suppose no man in this world had ever made that announcement to a girl feeling more utterly sure of his success than was Captain Harry Markham at that moment. I think no girl in this world can ever have had more difficulty than I had then in conveying to a suitor that his proposal was not to be accepted after all.

How he clung to the conviction that I could not mean what I said, that I was teasing him, paying him out!

"Paying you out? Why should I? For what?"

"Because--well, perhaps because I went away without saying anything that time in the Spring," was Harry's idea. "But, darling, I'll make up for that now, see if I don't----"

I put up the hand that held the sweetpea. His arms that he was putting out to me fell to his sides again.

"Don't, please don't," I begged him. "It's no use. I do mean it. Honour bright, I am not just saying this to make you ask me again and again. I am not going to marry you. I do not care for you."

His dark eyes stared blankly, as they well might. Last time they had looked deep into mine they had found adoration. And that was only a few months ago; quite a short time, as time is counted!

He muttered, crestfallen, "I thought you cared. I could have sworn it! ... You were pulling my leg, then, all last summer!"

This from him was almost funny! But I said quite gently, "I wasn't."

"I believed you liked me a little then," said Harry Markham softly. "Will you tell me that?"

Now, is it kinder to tell the man whom one no longer loves that one did really love him once, or better to let him think that he was mistaken from the first? Uncertain, I sniffed at that sweetpea and said nothing.

He lifted his head and asked quietly: "Some one else, then?"

I turned to pull another sweetpea, shaking my head as vigorously as Elizabeth could have done. After all, there was nobody else ... that wanted me!

Harry's voice, encouraged, said over my shoulder: "Ah, then! I could get you to like me again if you would only give me the chance, dear! Be kind to me. Look at me----"

Unreasonably, perhaps, I felt a quick irritation over that caressing tone that held the note of insincerity as a soft flower holds a spoiling insect.

I turned to look straight at him as he asked me. I met his dark eyes. I said bluntly: "Oh! Why do you pretend like this? I know as well as you do that you don't care for me yourself a bit!"

He gave a quick involuntary movement of surprise. The charming humbug of the Harry-type seldom gives anybody credit for seeing, never for seeing through him. Immediately he pulled himself together to look cruelly injured.

"Not care for you?" he echoed, indignantly. "Look here, I've always thought you one of the sweetest and straightest--I mean, the sweetest girl I ever met. The prettiest, too. If you knew how lovely you looked now at this minute with the sun on you! Lovely and warm-hearted and true. If you cared for any man, by Jove, he could bank on you! And he'd be the luckiest fellow in----"

"Perhaps," I cut him short rather ungraciously. "But I am afraid none of this that you say ... Forgive me, but none of it rings true to me."

"Not true? You're trying to make me out a liar?" retorted Harry heatedly. "Not true? A man doesn't ask a girl to be his for keeps, my dear, unless he's pretty serious about it. If it weren't true, why on earth should I ask you to marry me now, Joan?"

"For a reason that I have guessed," I said steadily. I moved on to the end of the hedge, turned up the path towards the garden gate.

Harry followed. I felt that he was fuming and bewildered. He muttered: "What do you mean?"

Without looking at him I replied: "I think you're asking me to accept you because another girl has refused you too often. You want to show another girl that you don't care; that other people have jumped at you! I know that some men have married for no better reason. You proposed to me out of pique. Now, isn't that the truth?"

With the last word I stopped and faced him again. I saw his face change under my eyes.

I insisted: "You don't want to marry anybody but the girl I introduced you to myself--Muriel Elvey!"

Slowly the scarlet flush deepened on the young man's face; his eyes wavered, left mine. Utterly abashed he looked, shamefaced, miserably embarrassed; and how much younger in his awkwardness! He was a schoolboy again, caught out in some wrong-doing that put him not only in the wrong, but made him ridiculous--a thing no man can stand.

And no woman who is a woman can stand the sight of any man suffering thus! He was at my mercy; and my heart melted to him. Not with the old feeling. That, once dead, no power on earth can revive. Only a new feeling filled me; real kindliness towards him. Now that we could never be lovers I felt we might be friends.

Impulsively I cried, in a softened voice, "I couldn't help guessing. You needn't mind me, Harry!"

It was the first time that day that I'd called him by his name.

The trouble in his face seemed lightened by a gleam. His eyes softened as they met mine again. I suppose he saw the offered friendliness in them.

Deeply touched, he repeated boyishly, "You are decent, Joan!"

I laughed, repeating, "You needn't mind my having guessed; I shan't say anything!" I added, very gently, "Won't she have anything to do with you?"

Gloomily he shook his head; the handsome head that so many girls found irresistible. "Won't," he said, curtly. "She's turned me down half-a-dozen times, but I've always thought that I might ... might get round her. Until this last time when I've seen her with this fellow Holiday, down here----"

I had a sharp stab of remembrance. "Ah, yes. Her cousin," I said as casually as I could.

Harry, more humbly than I had ever heard him speak, said: "He's got that fine old place and everything. My people have only the money they made. I understand her preferring what Holiday could give her."

He concluded, huskily: "He's the fellow she will marry, I expect."

We were fellow-sufferers in the thought, Harry and I!

With quick sympathy I laid my hand lightly on his red-tabbed shoulder.

"Poor old boy! I'm so sorry."

"You're a little brick," muttered Harry. Dropping his chin, he put a small grateful kiss upon my fingers as they lay on his jacket.

It was this scene that met the eyes of Dick Holiday as he turned the corner of the path, coming to see what had become of us.