CHAPTER XXXVI

THE HARVEST-MOON

"Oh, moon of my delight!" --OMAR KHAYYAM.

About Muriel's piece of news a good deal was said, later on, by Colonel Fielding.

He declared that Miss Muriel, who had played all she knew to marry the Holiday property, now saw that the game was absolutely up, and that she had better fall back at once upon the other ... er ... source of comfort and luxury. He, Colonel Fielding, vowed that her intention to write to "that unfortunate blighter, Markham," was born then and there on the steps of the farmhouse as her cousin strafed her. He also told Elizabeth that Miss Muriel's last hope was to irritate Miss Matthews, whom she had always suspected of a _tendresse_ for young Markham.

To all this the Man-hater replied that if the "Falconer" made any more of his catty remarks about the future Mrs. Markham, it would merely show him up as a disappointed admirer of hers. I believe they "chipped" each other happily for hours about this.

But to return to the actual moment of Muriel's staggering announcement.

She looked round for its effect. Certainly she got it.

All eyes gazed upon the pretty creature standing there. Engaged! Another engagement in the place! This excitement eclipsed all thought of the fire, the incendiary Germans, the commandant (who couldn't come, by the way, until next day). For an instant we stared; and Muriel's cousin seemed the most dumfounded.

But he pulled himself together the first. Holding out his hand, he exclaimed heartily: "Good! The best of luck, my child!" He wrung her small fingers, beaming all over his face.

Then I heard myself exclaim: "Oh, Muriel! You really are going to marry Harry? I am so glad; so glad!"

(Which I certainly was!)

Elizabeth and the others added congratulations. Vic declared there never was such a spot for "getting off" as here! Mr. Price beamed as benignantly as if Muriel were a favourite sister, and little Mrs. Price, all smiles, insisted on our drinking Miss Elvey's health in her own elderberry wine, in the dining-room.

"Come in, all of you!" she urged hospitably. "Come, Captain Holiday----"

But Captain Holiday stood still, smiling.

"Mrs. Price, I'll join you in one second, but Mr. Price has got his coat, and I really can't come in like this in shirt-sleeves. I must get a coat; I've lost mine."

"Lost it?" exclaimed the farmer. "Dear me, where did you do that, Captain Holiday?"

Captain Holiday answered promptly and serenely. "Miss Matthews thinks she passed a coat in the harvest field as she was coming along" (and there was a "Dare-to-contradict-me" gleam in the eyes he turned to me). "You might just come along with me, Joan, and show me where you saw it?"

Gasping over this bit of obvious improvisation, I found it had succeeded.

Muriel and the others had disappeared into the house, and the shirt-sleeved Captain Holiday was piloting me gently but firmly across the now-deserted farmyard.

"Captain Holiday," I protested, "I never said I saw a coat----"

He interrupted serenely. "Of course I rapped out just any excuse to get you to myself at once. I've things to say to you. But you know that, Joan."

Yes ... Already I guessed (and with what sudden rapture!) what was coming. Not always do misunderstandings "keep up" until the uttermost word is said. For long enough I had misunderstood. But now---- I knew, from the tone in which he wished Muriel joy, that she never could have been "the" girl. That had not been cordiality "put on." He had been as genuinely glad as I was to hear of the girl's engagement!

And I knew what was coming next; with quiet but growing delight I expected it, yet did not wish one word of explanation to be hurried.

He began, in his direct way: "What do you think of this news about my cousin and Captain Markham? Are you surprised?"

"I didn't know whether she meant to accept him. But I knew he was desperate about her! He told me so himself, that Sunday we all went to tea with those people."

Here Dick Holiday gave me a quick, searching glance. We were going through the gate of the harvest-field as he took up "That Sunday! Yes! D'you mind my asking you? Markham was telling you about all that, in the garden?"

"Yes."

Dick Holiday said simply, "I thought he was making love to you."

"Ah!" A light had broken upon me. Just as keenly and as mistakenly as I had been jealous of Muriel, this man at my side had been jealous of Harry. So he had gone away, avoided me these last weeks!

He said: "Markham is a great pal of yours, is he?"

"Yes," I agreed.

"Nothing more?"

I said: "I think you guessed that he was the man I cared about once."

"Once?" he repeated eagerly. "Why not now?" He knew as well as I did! Sure of it, I laughed softly as I glanced about the cleared field. I said, "I don't see that coat of yours anywhere about."

"Must be in the next field," he returned, coolly. We walked on, over the stubble and through a gap in the hedge to where the sheaves still stood in their pyramids of five.

Then pausing again, he added. "What about my question, though?"

My heart was beating very quickly under that well-worn smock of mine, but I managed to say, "Which question was that? You always ask so many, Captain Holiday."

"I've told you so often not to call me that," he retorted. He paused, standing tall and dark and graceful between the mauve evening sky and the russet stocks. "My name," he began--and I expected to hear the familiar protest--"my name is Dick, you know." But he ended with an announcement which I suppose was meant to take away my breath.

"My name was Richard Wynn."

I could trump that, I thought!

Looking up at him, I said, "I knew." But this he trumped instead by saying calmly: "I wondered how soon you would! Extraordinary that you didn't tumble to it before, Joan, when everybody here knew I'd only taken my uncle's name. The Prices, Muriel, any of the farm people could have told you. Or Fielding--I suppose, by the way, he did tell you? Yes? So now you know I did write to you, in the spring--letter you threw away, eh? What have you to say about it?"

He took a step nearer to me. I stood my ground, and retorted, "Richard Wynn, why did you write that letter, to begin with?"

"Difficult to explain," he said simply, pulling an ear of corn from the stook nearest to him and nibbling at it as if absently with his strong teeth. "Difficult ... Well! It was when I was feeling pretty rocky and 'down'----"

"Ah! Elizabeth always said it was the effect of shell-shock!"

"Did she?" He laughed, nibbling that ear. "It wasn't altogether, either. I was in hospital, badly hipped. Some of the fellows there were engaged; nice girls coming to visit them, bringing them roses. They'd something to look forward to every afternoon. Bucked to the nines. 'My girl'--'my girl says this'--'my girl and I are doing a show today'--'my girl's brought me so-and-so'--'my _fiancée_ and her governor took me so-and-so'---- That sort of thing the whole time. Here was I"--he threw away the stripped stalk--"back in Blighty and scarcely a soul interested whether I lived or died. Not a woman in my life at all, Joan.... All this sounds awful piffle, perhaps, but that's not a funny thought for any fellow when he's down; not a woman to care----"

His brusque voice sounded boyishly shy. It tore at my heartstrings; but I only said the first thing that came into my head.

"What about the Elveys? What about your aunt and Muriel? They must have known you were in England, wounded."

"Er----" He paused. "Yes. Yes, I suppose they did. But they only wrote much later on, just before I came down here ... Well, then I got to barracks, Millshott. It was still there ... I mean that feeling of being fed because I'd no one to care. One night----"

He stopped. "Ah! Have I got to report all these details?"

"Please. Yes. You must."

"One night I saw a fellow in the card-room, writing. You could tell by his face it wasn't any business-letter. I felt 'Gad,' if I'd a girl to write to of my own!'"

"I should have thought---" I hesitated. "I shouldn't have thought it was possible ... for you ... not to have had one..."

"Ah! Now what d'you mean by that?"

"Go on. After you thought 'Gad, if I'd a girl to write to'----?"

"Well, then, sort of desperately, I fished out an old letter-case of mine that I hadn't touched," he told me, "for years. I found--what d'you think?--a bow of blue ribbon. Blest if I hadn't forgotten what it was, at first----"

"Flattering of you----"

--"but I soon remembered, Joan! I'd sneaked it off your plait. D'you remember?"

"Go on, please."

"Well, _I_ began remembering the old days at Mr. Matthews's farm.... The veranda with all our sticks and fishing-boots! The wood-fires. The icicles round the back-kitchen door; you remember? That fox-terrier pup I gave you--he's dead, I expect? And how I used to go out after the beagles with your brothers--what a regiment of chaps we were! And you just the one little girl ... I remembered how I'd looked at you----"

"Oh, you couldn't have looked at me----"

"Couldn't I? I'd often thought 'There's a sweetheart, now, some day, for some man.' I remembered, in barracks. Then I thought 'She's grown-up now, that kid. Supposing there were a chance of that very girl, grown-up, looking at _me_?' So----"

He stopped, with a smile, as though I must understand everything now.

To me an odd thing had happened; just as on that day among the chickens on the hillside I was swept back for a moment to the Past. I felt memories flocking and twittering about me. I remembered him, the leggy dark Welsh lad ... Mr. Wynn, the pupil ... yes ... yes, this was his familiar voice; this was the look and the movement of him, it was all coming back to me ... and the time that he'd said "Good-bye" to me under the dripping veranda. One hand clutching his suit-case, the other grasping me suddenly by the hair, his boy's mouth had snatched a half-brotherly kiss; the first I'd known from one who was not a brother. And now, more than seven years later, he came close, put his hand on the nape of my neck, just under my twisted-up hair. It thrilled me to the heels with happiness.

"Wait. Wait," I whispered, pulling back. "I haven't heard everything yet."

"You have."

"You always did--did contradict me," I said, standing there under his hand. "And you only wrote to me because there was nobody else--not much of a compliment----"

"What? Well, no answer came, and I knew I'd been an ass. Then came the business about my uncle's property." He began talking very quickly. "That shoved things right to the back of my mind, Dear ... why d'you shiver? Are you cold?"

"No."

"No?" He put his other brown hand about my neck. "Shoved things out of my mind until I came right up against you, Joan. You!"

"At the Camp----"

"No fear! Hadn't I spotted you all in your brand-new uniform, bless you, on Euston platform that morning? That was why I got little Rhys to bring me up to the Camp at once, to make sure it was you. You see, I'd remembered what you looked like, even if you had forgotten me."

I thought "Forget him! How, how could I have thought of anything but him----"

"So that's all," he said. "Only--that wasn't really much of a kiss just before I went to Canada----"

"But you haven't told me about all these weeks here, since then!"

"That'll keep to make conversation (if we're short of it) after we're married!" he declared abruptly. "You see as we shall get married practically at once--

"'As we shall!' Are you not going to ask me what I have to say in the mat----"

"No, because you always complain so of my asking questions," he whispered. He was near enough to whisper now, having drawn me close, close to him. "Put your arms round my neck," he coaxed. "Kiss me." He put down his brown face.

"There's--Oh, there's such a smudge of black from the wood-smoke on you, Dick!"

"D'you mind, sweetheart?"

Over his shoulder I saw a strip of evening sky deepening slowly from mauve to violet. The long-drawn, quavering cry of an owl came across to us on the freshening air. And from behind a black fringe of elms there peeped out (fit witness to a Land-Girl's betrothal!) the big round primrose-colored Harvest-Moon.

Oh, night of Harvest in that rich Welsh valley! To some you meant the end of toil, relief from anxiety, triumph; to some the overthrow of darkling schemes. To me you were Love's dream come true; oh, night of stars and murmurs and caress, oh not-to-be-forgotten night ...

I found no words to voice what was in my heart, beating so near to his own.

"Dick, Dick!" I sighed.

He nestled his face (smudge and all) against mine, in a string of kisses that were just a give-and-take of the delight that is beyond all words.

POSTSCRIPT

THE VICTORY-DANCE

"Now joy, Old England, raise! For the tidings of thy might, By the festal cities' blaze Whilst the wine-cup shines in light! And yet, amidst that joy and uproar, Let us think of them that sleep Full many a fathom deep By thy wild and rocky steep, Elsinore!"--CAMPBELL.

Lights, lights over London again!

After four years of darkness and gloom the dear old lights shone down on the streets where one could see people's faces plainly once again--and what a crowd of faces, too! The pinky speckle of them was like nothing as much as a huge flower-bed of that sturdy plant London Pride. And above them there had burst into bloom the sudden crop of fluttering flags ... the flags of Victory. Yes, at last after these four tense years Victory had set those flags waving and those lights blazing and those people cheering and shouting and dancing in the streets of London town.

Were you there?

Were you one atom in that whirling stream of laughing and rejoicing people that surged and circled and broke and re-formed again about the steps of the Pavilion and the fountain in Piccadilly Circus? Did you fly before those organized rushes of the Australians through the _mêlée_? did you ride on motor-drays driven by R.A.F. cadets who had adorned themselves with nurses' bonnets and cloaks? did you laugh helplessly over the antics of those young and uplifted Naval officers who, correctly uniformed but for their smashed-in bowler hats, were pressing coin and tobacco and vows of eternal friendship upon their taxi-driver while the surrounding group applauded wildly? School-boyish--yes, the Forces were a crowd of schoolboys let loose that night, and hadn't they deserved it, the right to make holiday and to rejoice in England's way, which is behind a laughing mask and a tin trumpet?

* * * * * * *

And behind that again; ah, what?

Not all the cheers and merry nonsense talked could drown the undersong of Victory-week.

Boys who fell to buy that Victory, day after day of that four years' struggle! Boys who sold their budding lives, this one working his gun, that one on his ship, that other darling in his downward crashing 'plane! Sons, brothers, lovers, sweet young cousins and boy-friends of ours! All day the thought of these had burned with a proud and steady flame at every British woman's heart. All day there had been on our lips the names, the familiar home-names, of those who would not come home ... "If He--if They were only here ..."

Hard to believe that they were not! Far, far beyond that hubbub one seemed to catch echoes of dear exultant voices we shall hear no more with these our earthly ears, calling "_cheerio! ... I say! ... Can't you hear? it's_ US! _So long!_" And, beyond the thronging faces under the blaze of the street-lamps, Memory and Love could raise a cloud of other faces: laughing, care-free faces of youths for whom there would be no Tomorrow of difficulties and sordid struggles and the anti-climax of growing old.

* * * * * * *

"Yes! Thank Heaven that Jack and the rest of them will never have lived to _that_----!"

"That" was a sight of which I got a glimpse as a taxi steered its way inch by inch from the dense throng about the entrance to the Berkeley. I spoke aloud in the crowd where I found myself, arms linked with my Dick on one side of me and with Elizabeth's young husband on the other. The happy four of us (two men in war-worn khaki, two girls in breeches and new smocks) had come up to town together on the Wednesday after that glorious Monday.

And the sight which had struck me was that of the face over the heavy fur collar of the man who was sitting in that taxi; bloated and coarse, he carried his sixty years as though he had not in all that time known one hour of strenuous exercise or of clean joy in the open. Over-eating (more disgustful in its effects than heavy drinking) was stamped on his face from the bags beneath his eyes to his lowest chin. A dead thing he seemed to me; dead more truly than any of the lads who had flung their happy lives away for the cause of the world while he and his like "lived." Through the square of the window I caught above his shoulder a glimpse of a girl's pretty and pettish profile...

The crowd surged in between us and the taxi before I could exclaim "_Muriel!_ ... I say, it was Muriel; did you see her?"

My tall young husband turned his head as it towered above us. "No! Muriel with him? I thought I saw old What's-his-name; I s'pose he's taken her out to celebrate on his steel-profits----"

For since Harvest-time Muriel Elvey had been twice engaged; for a month to Harry, an engagement quickly broken after she and her mother had been to stay at the house of this distant connection, the elderly profiteer of whom I had caught that glimpse. She was to marry him. Elizabeth and I thought it the most horrible thing we had ever heard of. But Dick had only shrugged his shoulders and Colonel Fielding had declared it was an excellent arrangement and that the ... er ... Mystery-Girl would consider she was in for a very good time.

"A good time!" Oh, misused phrase! To me it has come to represent one image; the memory of a fleshy and stubby-fingered male hand resting on a taxi-door, holding a fat black cigar and wearing a diamond that spat out coloured lights, less sparkling than the dewdrops that stud the Welsh bracken at home.

We were all going home again in a couple of days; the Land was home to us for ever now; a very little of Town would do for all of us these days, and we, fit and joyous from air and work and elemental interests, had a "good tune" which we never even called such.

"Isn't it odd," I remarked as we struggled back towards the Circus again, "that Harry Markham _didn't_ seem to mind about Muriel so much, after all?"

"No," said Elizabeth's Colonel, succinctly. "He had a month of her. I bet he's ... er ... jolly glad of the change to that topping little Driver-girl he's all over the place with now----"

"'_Go_ it, Mother Browne!'" whooped the youngest of the dancing warriors, a Captain with three wound-stripes and a cheeky peach face which no German bullet would ever now spoil. "Come on!"

"Here, what's this, what's this----" broke in my Dick. "What are you doing, you people----"

"This" was a new swirl of the whirlpool which had sucked us in just at the top of the Hay market. A score of young men in khaki and leather kit, British, Overseas men and a huge American, were dancing round a policeman, good-humored monument of Tolerance.

They opened the ring, crying "Land-girls! Land Army! Put the girls in too; come on, dance round the girls----"

Elizabeth and I, laughing, were borne into the middle of that circle; our men joined hands and whirled around us with the others.

"Dance, man, dance! Dance, Bobby; haven't you heard the news? There's a Peace on ... No! You can't have my stick--some girl's snatched my perfectly good stick! _My_ perfectly good stick that I've had ever since the War! ... The War's over! Come on, dance round the pretty Land-girls! they helped to win it, too!"

We laughed, my chum and I, but in our eyes tears danced with smiles, and in our hearts a thrill of pride was all astir as we murmured to each other, "Did you hear that? It is true, isn't it? We did do our little bit to help!"

THE END