CHAPTER XXXI

A FEW FACTS ABOUT RICHARD WYNN

"Look in my face, my name is Might-Have-Been. I am also called No-More, Too-Late, Farewell." --ROSSETTI.

Sensation!

In fact, of all the many thunderbolts that had fallen upon me since I had been working on the Land, this (as Vic would say) had cleft it.

Blank bewilderment was my first feeling.

My next feeling was, curiously enough, that I wasn't surprised after all.

I thought "I knew it all the time! All the time at the bottom of my mind I felt that there was something of the kind..." And swiftly my thoughts flew back to that day on the hillside when I had been feeding Mrs. Price's chickens.

That was the first time that I had seen Captain Holiday out of khaki.

As I'd caught sight of his light figure in those ancient tweeds and that disreputable scarecrow's hat I had at once sensed something familiar. Through the mists of forgetfulness a gleam of recognition had struggled, and I had actually asked: "Isn't your name Richard Wynn?"

He'd denied it---- No. He had put me off with "My name is Holiday, you know"; leaving me wondering why I had asked such an idiotic question.

And now, weeks afterwards, here was this friend of his letting it out casually that the young man's name was both Holiday and Richard Wynn!

What was the meaning of this? Why did he----

A hundred questions crowded into my mind. Other questions chased each other over the face of Colonel Fielding as he looked at me. We were standing as if turned into a couple of milestones on that country road, the bright evening sunlight dazzling our eyes. There wasn't time for more than a very few of these questions. I couldn't monopolize Elizabeth's _fiancé_ for the rest of the evening! Yet I had to get in my questions first.

Quickly pulling myself together and collecting what senses seemed to be left to me, I began:

"Colonel Fielding, what you've just told me is a great surprise."

"Er--so it seems," returned Colonel Fielding, still regarding me in a puzzled manner. "I say, I am sorry if I have ... er ... dropped any sort of brick. It just slips out sometimes. I mean, calling old Dick 'Wynn' instead of 'Holiday,' even now. One ought to be quite accustomed to his being 'Holiday' by this time. It's ... er ... five years since he took the name, isn't it?"

"Don't ask me," I returned, bewildered. "I didn't know he'd 'taken' any name at all."

Colonel Fielding glanced at me again as if he wondered whether I had got a touch of sun, and said:

"But I thought you were ... er ... quite an old friend of his? And when you said just now that you knew him as Richard Wynn----"

"This is going to be very difficult to explain," I exclaimed, helplessly. "But we can't stand here till ten o'clock. We'll talk going along."

We went on walking slowly along the road; Elizabeth having disappeared with that other young man and his two names.

I went on: "Why did he 'take' the name of Holiday?"

"Why, because his uncle wished it," was Colonel Fielding's reply, still in that voice of not being able to make out why I didn't know all this already. "You did know--didn't you?--that his ... er ... uncle was that old Mr. Holiday who owned all the property about here; the white house, the lodge, the Prices' farm, and all the lot?"

"Yes, I'd heard that."

"Well, about five years ago this old man, who was a hardened old ... er ... bachelor, thought he'd like to leave his property to his favourite nephew, who happened to be our friend. Dick was then in Canada. Did you know he'd gone in for ranching in Canada?"

"Yes, I knew 'Mr. Wynn' had," said I.

"Well! The condition was that he wasn't to be 'Mr. Wynn' any more. He was to assume the name that went with the property. It's ... er ... often done; by deed-poll, as they call it," explained Colonel Fielding, as if to a child. "You pay--I forget how much, and then you have it in the _Gazette_ and the _Morning Post_ and things that your name isn't Smith any more, but Jones or Robinson or ... anything you choose. You understand that?"

"Oh, yes! I've heard about such a thing before, thanks!" I laughed a little impatiently. "It isn't that that I don't understand. It's about Mr. Richard Wynn----"

"Richard Holiday now," Colonel Fielding corrected me. "Well! He stayed in Canada until this ... er ... war broke out. And then ... Am I just to run over what happened to him, Miss Matthews?"

I reddened a little at having to seem eager to hear all I could about this young man, who was nothing to me.... Yet how could I help being eager? I loved him. And I knew so little about him; only the little that I had seen. I must hear, from his friend, all that he would tell me of Dick.... Whether Wynn or Holiday, his first name would remain the dearest on earth to me!

"Please," I said.

So Colonel Fielding's lady-like voice took up the tale. "Dick Holiday came over with that first lot of Canadians, I think they were. 'Little Black Devils'--you know the badge? So do the ... er ... Boches! It was Salisbury Plain for him that winter ... er ... mud and circuses! Then France at last; and Ypres. There he was wounded and gassed--

"_And_ gassed!"

"Yes, and ... er ... why he didn't get his commission on the field I can't tell you. He earned it all right, as well as his Military Medal."

"I'm sure he did!"

"Then I met him in hospital; hadn't see him since we were at Haileybury together," went on Colonel Fielding. "Then we both got out again together. Then he was wounded again ... er ... badly, in the knee. Also shell-shock. That was last winter. He did get his commission then. They brought him home and put him on ... er ... what they called 'light' duty at home for a bit. It meant he had to do the office-work of three ... er ... men at Millshott Barracks----"

"Ah!" I cried involuntarily. A detail that had escaped me for months sprung vividly up in my consciousness at last. "_Millshott!_" That had been the name of the barracks stamping the notepaper of that letter--that fated letter signed "RICHARD WYNN." ... Why, why in the name of everything that I most coveted now had I not answered that letter at once? I might have had him. I might have had him....

Little guessing my thoughts, Colonel Fielding went on with his biographical sketch.

"At Millshott Dick had a breakdown. Er ... not to be wondered at, if you knew half he'd been through ever since the ... er ... Somme. It was when he was in hospital that that uncle of his died suddenly. That meant he had come in for all this place here. So when Dick was put on sick leave, it was ... er ... down here that he came." Colonel Fielding gave a sort of little comprehensive gesture about the slanting Welsh landscape, with the blonde squares that meant hay-stubble tilted halfway up the sides of the hills. "And ... er ... here he is. He's ever so much better, of course; pottering about the ... er ... farm, and all that, suits him down to the ground. He looks practically ... er ... himself again.... Er----"

Here the young Colonel broke off and glanced at me, almost as if he were asking the question, "Is there anything else that you want to know?"

I answered that glance by saying, quietly, "Thank you so much for telling me all this. There is only one more thing----"

"Yes?"

"All that I said was in confidence," I told him, rather confused. "My being surprised about ... those names. My asking you any questions. I can't explain, Colonel Fielding. Only, it will remain between ourselves."

"But of course!" agreed Dick Holiday's friend, very quickly and quietly.

I am sure I don't know what he thought. I don't know what he said later to Elizabeth, who, surprised at her lover's long desertion, was waiting just outside the entrance to our Camp. I don't know if Elizabeth wondered over the interminable conversation which I seemed to have been having with her Beloved all the way back from the tea-party.

I did not tell that good little chum one word of what it had all been about. I--who had unbosomed myself to her in the old days on the subject of my love-affair until she was sick of the very name of Harry!--did not feel that I could confide to her a syllable about these new developments in the _affaire_ Richard Wynn. No! I didn't want to speak to her about him or about Muriel! I didn't want to confide in her the quite staggering news that Harry Markham had proposed to me in the garden; nor what I'd said to him, nor why!

By the way, I am afraid every thought of poor Harry and his perplexities had been swept clean out of my mind by the much more staggering conversation that had followed almost immediately upon his proposal, on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday afternoon; what an extraordinary "Day of Rest" it had turned out!

But, as every Land-girl knows, the most paralysingly interesting Day Off cannot stop the relentless return of the Work-a-day Week.