A Nice Girl

by G. B. Lancaster

A NICE GIRL

 

By G. B. LANCASTER

 

UNDER the broad hat Dorothy's pretty face showed almost sulky—quite sulky, if one believed Vera, who could always be trusted to be candid, if not correct. But the day promised to be broiling, even for a New Zealand midsummer; this train crawled always, and shunted often, and stopped everywhere, and there would be nine solid hours of travel in which to suffer Vera, who, being still in the hoydenish school-girl stage, had a relish for every kind of movement and a positive instinct for picking up undesirable acquaintances and inviting them home. This was the home-going now, after a long visit to the south, and Dorothy, with all the stern wisdom of twenty-three, had laid down rigid rules for her young sister.

"You are not to wriggle about all over the carriage, Vera, and you are not to talk to people at the stations or on the train—not unless they have babies. Then you can nurse the sticky little beasts, if you want to. And you are not to accept lollies or fruit or anything from strangers. I was positively ashamed of you coming down. You even took that banana the Maori offered you, and you couldn't have been hungry—you'd been stuffing all day."

"I didn't want to hurt his feelings." Beneath the braided black hair Vera's rosy face shone with virtue. "Mum says we must always consider others."

"There are—limits." In Dorothy's mind Vera had overreached them long since. "A lady never allows liberties, especially when she's travelling without a man. You must learn to behave like a lady now you're past fourteen."

"It's so beastly dull." Vera's long limbs tied themselves in objecting knots. "Doll, can't I even talk to a returned soldier, if there's one about?"

"Gracious, I should think not! They always fancy girls are running after them. You mustn't even look at one. I never do, for they always expect it."

"Poor brutes!" commented Vera. And underneath she added: "And poor me, unless——"

With that "unless" still upholding her, an hour later she plunged after her sister through the second-class corridor carriage crammed with farmers, shearers, a knot of gold-diggers going up to Thames, old women with market-baskets, young women with babies, boys and girls with bananas, and came at last to the first-class end carriage, empty but for one freckled and weary-looking girl in a corner. Here Dorothy set down parasol, basket, magazines, dust-cloak, and a huge bunch of roses, shook out her dainty skirts, preened her pretty self at her vanity mirror and prepared to make the best of a long day. Vera flung off her hat and settled, with knees on seat and sharp elbows on sill, to watch from the open window as the train drew, slowly grunting, out of the little town. Faces on the platform slid behind, and at the last possible moment the door at the carriage end flew open, and a young soldier dashed in with two tea-cups on a little tray. He dropped down panting beside the bored and freckled girl, and his voice exulted.

"Managed it! But, by Jove, I thought I'd have to leave it, there was such a crowd. Here you are! Hot, too. Good, isn't it?"

Vera was staring with all her powers, and Dorothy sneaked a look over her magazine, for the heavy look on the girl's face did not lighten as she took the cup with a curt word of thanks.

"Engaged and quarrelled, or honeymoon. What a cat! And he's just back, by the look of him."

He was one of those bronzed, hardened, and capable youths of whom New Zealand had been full before the War. Dorothy had seen few enough of late, and her heart went out to him as he talked and sipped his tea ecstatically, for he was so alive that he seemed to light the carriage up, and his laugh was the freshest she had ever heard. His eyes, bright as a bird's, darted over the girls and away again, not too fast for interest nor too slow for courtesy. And on this point Dorothy was somewhat of a martinet. Vera pulled her sleeve.

"He's a gunner. See his badge? And he's got a gold wounded-stripe. Oh, Doll, how do you s'pose he got it?"

Surreptitiously Dorothy kicked her. Then she spoke with dignity.

"Here are some lollies. You can read or look out of the window. Vera. But please don't talk, for I want to read."

She retired firmly behind the magazine. The train crawled up a steep grade. Vera wriggled and muttered to herself. At the far end of the carriage the bright-eyed gunner talked eagerly, and the bored girl listened with effort.

"Cat!" thought Dorothy again. "If I——" And then she bit her lip and stared from the window. Even Vera had a special boy in France, to whom she wrote long blotched letters. Dorothy had none. Her eyes clouded wistfully as the deep flax gullies gave place to tussock land, patched with sheep, and then to sandy river-bed with stagnant streams of water and tall cabbage-trees reeling in heat-haze. That bored girl was hearing about Gallipoli. The magic word came more than once above the rock and rattle of the train. If she had been the listener—— The train slowed, stopped. Bright eyes looked over the top of her magazine, and the gunner said—

"There's a refreshment-room here. I'll bring you and your sister some tea with ours, shall I?"

He was gone before she could gasp. Then, choking the impulse to slap Vera for unashamed elation, she turned to the bored girl.

"It is very kind of your—friend."

"He's no friend of mine." The bored girl sat up with explosive force. "I never saw him till yesterday. Then he offered to bring me tea, just as he's done to you now."

"Oh!" Dorothy felt herself suddenly freeze. "Really? If he is that sort——"

"He isn't. Oh, don't be stupid!" The bored girl spoke now with a kind of repressed passion. "Can't you see that? It's because he isn't that I can't stop him. He's a nice boy—a really nice boy. And he's been bringing me tea—cups and basins and buckets and barrels of it—till I wish I was dead! Oh-h!"

Vera sniggered, but Dorothy's large eyes widened. Unconsciously she was the little haughty maiden who had daunted men before this day.

"I should imagine you could tell him you didn't want it."

"Tell him! Heavens!" The voice of the bored girl rose, and she reddened beneath the freckles. "Wait till he talks to you about the ladies of England, and all they did for him, and how delighted he is to be able to do something for a lady again, after nearly three years of soldiering. Why should I have to suffer for those ladies of England? I never did them any harm, but I wish I could now. Tea! Buckets and basins and barrels of tea!"

"I should think"—Dorothy was still unresponsive—"that you could tell him you didn't care for the expense."

"Gracious! You don't imagine he lets me pay!"

Dorothy stiffened, dropping her words through prim red lips.

"I can't imagine anything else—with a stranger."

"Oh, all right!" The girl flung herself back, becoming bored again. "Wait till he talks to you, that's all!"

Dorothy got her purse out and sat rigid, but inwardly she flamed. Vera sighed, looking sideways through her black hair.

"He is a darling, though." She spoke half to herself, "A puffeck darling—with the nicest eyes——"

"Shut up!" snapped Dorothy. And then appeared a huge tin tray heavy with cakes and steaming cups, and topped by a face that shone like the full moon.

"Good old morning tea—what?" he hailed them cheerfully. "My word, it does make a chap feel at home again! Your cup's on the right flank, behind the seed-cake emplacement, Miss Cole. Lots of milk." His sunny gaze was turned on Dorothy. "I brought a weak and a strong, not knowing which you'd like. I like either—too many times when I couldn't get any to be particular now. It's all good, anyway. And cakes—your sister likes cakes, I bet."

He beamed on the enchanted Vera, whose fingers tingled to touch that gold magic stripe which made him free of all the essentials of this present world, and Dorothy spoke crisply.

"Take your cup and a cake, Vera. It is very good of this gentleman to trouble. Here is what I owe you, I think."

He glanced carelessly at the coin and sipped his tea.

"Rotten cheap, isn't it? Many's the time I'd have given a pound for a pannikinful. And many's the cup I've got for nothing,too. Those ladies of England, you know—they're a marvel! Out in France, on beastly long train journeys in the middle of wet nights, or when we were dry as h—as a limekiln, or when, we were coming down wounded, with the fever on us, there they were at nearly every halt, shoving their little trollies along the platform, or racing around with trays, or pouring tea behind little makeshift counters. Same in England—always there with big aprons and big teapots and big smiles and lashings of sandwiches and cheery words. My word, how we did love 'em!"

"Yes, naturally. Please take this——"

"Felt funny, too"—he stirred his tea reminiscently—"after having to tumble off chairs and open doors and wait on women generally ever since I was a kid. I can tell you, it did feel rum to have them always waiting on me, y'know. And giving me things—from penny smokes up to motor drives. Crumbs, they were good to us! Dear old things, every one of 'em! But you don't know how jolly it feels to get back to yourself and wait on a lady again. Miss Cole"—he nodded towards the bored girl—"she understands. Tumbled to it at once, with just that delicate sort of instinct women have. You couldn't make a man understand with a club—unless he'd been through it. Have some more cake? Awfully nice she's been to me. I say, she isn't drinking her tea!" He lurched away with the tray as the train rounded a sharp elbow, and Dorothy heard him asking concerned questions. Vera was going off in suppressed explosions, and Dorothy dug frantic fingers into her knee.

"Be quiet! There's nothing to laugh at. He just doesn't understand that a girl can't allow—I won't let him do it again. Be quiet, Vera!"

"You talked to him, an' you let him give you things! He, he! What about the Maori?" gurgled Vera. But Dorothy would not hear. With red lips pursed and pretty brows drawn down, she entrenched herself behind the magazine again, and spoke no more until a scream from the other end of the carriage brought her gasping to her feet. The train had waddled down a steep incline to a small, dusty, weather-board township warping in the still heat; the gunner was gone, and the bored girl leaned against the door, wild-eyed.

"Stop him! Why didn't you stop him?" she wailed. "He'll bring us more tea! Oh, what shall I do? The fifth time since six-thirty! Oh, what shall I do?"

"He won't be such a fool," said Dorothy crisply.

"You don't know him as I do. All yesterday, and five times to-day, and it's not twelve o'clock."

"He says that the ladies of England——" began Vera, and the girl turned on her with cold malevolence.

"Don't you speak to me of the ladies of England!" she said.

"I think you're exciting yourself unnecessarily. There now! The train has started, and he hasn't come back. He's just gone into a smoking-carriage for——"

The words died on Dorothy's mouth as the door opened and, battered, breathless, and beaming, the gunner arrived with three sloppy cups of tea.

"Best I could do." He dealt them out unhesitating. "Sorry there's no cake, but I nearly missed the 'bus completely. There were two dear old ladies further down who hadn't anyone to look after them, and by the time I'd got them fixed, there wasn't more than just time. But I was determined you should have some tea if I had to knock everyone in the buffet down." He looked round pridefully. "I'll never forget one night in England—going right up to a hospital in the North. And we had an hour's wait at one station, and no one to bring us anything at all. 'Bout the only time they slipped us up—hospital cases. But I'll never forget my disappointment as long as I live. Some of the chaps cried. I was one. So I was determined you shouldn't be disappointed."

"It was—very good of you," murmured the bored girl, and sipped the cup.

"It was dear of you," said Vera, and let her hand casually touch the gold stripe.

"Thank you." Dorothy held her cup at arm's length. "I don't want any tea. Please drink it yourself."

He shook his head, smiling at her, and for the first time she realised the vigorous genial personality behind the good-looking young face.

"Not on your life! I don't say I wouldn't have done it once—in England. One doesn't feel so much a man as a—a sort of perambulating obedience there. You get used to sitting or to lying in bed while a lady stands. Now—why, I'd no more take your tea than I'd take your seat! You see, the ladies of England——"

"I take no interest whatever in the ladies of England," said Dorothy.

She drank off the tea very much as Socrates must have drunk the hemlock, and retreated with determination to her fortifications. But Vera went shamelessly over to the enemy, sitting by him, fingering that gold stripe openly, and listening with rapt face to his low talk. Dorothy worked herself into a cold fury.

"She'll be asking him to the house next—after all I've told her, too!" She thrilled with what she believed to be her anger. "And he has quite impudence enough to come. Been going about with cheap sorts of girls, of course, and now he thinks we're all alike. He'll find out his mistake before I've done with him! He'll learn that he can't treat me as he's treating silly Miss Cole."

Stiffly she sat with eyes on book, while heavy bush rose about them, and Vera and the gunner rushed from window to window, hilariously greeting old friends. Tall, bloated nikau palms had evidently been cherished intimates of the gunner's childhood. Also tangles of vines and supple-jack and kia-kia and flowering clematis such as wound about the thick limbs of totara and titoki and birch, and a hundred great trees more. He had reminiscences of the little brooks, brown as his own clear eyes; endearing words for the steep banks of dark maidenhair fern such as a man loves to lie and dream on; rollicking whistles for the weka that stalked, with stiff tail pumping up and down, out from a clump of manuka. Hand in hand, the child and the man, forgetting Gallipoli's horror and England's pain, revelled in the sights and sounds and smells of home again, and Dorothy saw the glow on the brown face and the suddenly tender eyes as the call of the mock-a-mock rang sharply up from a deep fern gully. Then she bit her lips and read: "How little we understand ourselves!" said Adele sadly. "We are unusually weakest when we think ourselves most strong." Steeled by this reflection, she kept her eyes down while the train slouched up to an open platform in the bush and decided to rest there. Maoris with little rush baskets of fish and fruit came peering at the windows, and the gunner's voice cut suddenly through the weak protestations of the bored girl.

"But of course I did. I wired for it from the last stop. Lunch for four, and lashings of tea. It'll be ready. They told me so. I'll just go and see——"

He disappeared, and the bored girl faced a white-lipped Dorothy with blazing eyes, and shrank back a little.

"How dare you let him order lunch for me? How dare you?"

"I didn't. You heard what he said, I suppose. Why didn't you stop him?"

"I never guessed. But you know what he's like. You said so. And because you have been encouraging him——"

"Encouraging him! Do you imagine a girl—any girl—wants to drink buckets and barrels and——"

"You've got him into the habit of it; it's your business to get him out."

"I didn't. It's those—those unspeakable ladies of England. If only they had to drink——"

"Oh, oh, oh!" Vera rocked herself with squeaks of joy. "If you two only knew how funny you are! He's such a darling, too!"

"It's unpardonable," said Dorothy. "I shall refuse to eat or drink a word of his lunch—I mean a crumb—even if I am hungry. He'll be asking us to go to a cinema with him next! Vera, if you speak to him again——"

"He has asked me, and I'm going when we get to Pahiatua. He means to stay there, he says."

"I told you so." Dorothy stamped her foot at the bored girl. "That's what comes of allowing: an absolute bounder——"

Here the absolute bounder returned, followed by a waiter with a huge tray, and carrying himself a small tray with the inevitable tea. He flung orders and largesse to the waiter royally, and spread the meal with a discriminate hand.

"Many's the picnic I've had on good old Mount Cook and along Milford Sound. And many since—in some queer places, too." He portioned out the ham and chicken with artless skill, but Dorothy was human enough to feel more than a twinge of pleasure in that the best pieces indubitably went to her. Besides, it smelt good, and tea and cake are not sufficient sustenance for a healthy maiden. "I'll eat it because I want it; but I'll pay him afterwards for all," she decided, as knives and forks began to clatter on the plates. The gunner talked—casually, as though for the sheer delight of it. He spoke of Egyptian camps, where every mouthful gritted the teeth, and the men rejoiced when jam ran out, because there was one thing less to eat sand with; he spoke of hard-tack, and tea made with lukewarm water out of petrol-tins—unwashed tins—on Gallipoli, and meals of sorts in the Flanders mud; and he spoke of the mates with whom he had shared them.

"Gives a chap a rum kind of feeling to hear that one of the fellows you've been feeding with an hour ago has gone West," he said, looking from the window, where a sheer hill of shining foliage fell away to the pale gold of a tussock flat with blue sky beyond. "But we get used to it," His eyes came frankly back to Dorothy's fair face. "When you remember that for yourself any minute may be the next, so to speak, you get used to that and to everything else, you know."

Dorothy did not know. For a moment the paucity of her knowledge, as compared with his, abashed her. Then she snatched at her rights again. He might know much, this intolerable young man, but he had yet to learn what was due to womanhood; and since the ladies of England had apparently not been able to teach him, it was necessary that she should do so. She ate her salad with stately dignity, peeled her peaches with slim, dainty fingers, and replied in monosyllables dropped through prim, pretty lips. Soon the gunner ceased to talk to her; but he watched her all the more, and this did not displease her. And then he really did go away for a smoke, and Dorothy drew her purse out.

"I'm going to put the money for this and the other teas on the tray," she announced. "He'll find it when he takes the things away at the next station, and, if he has an ounce of nice feeling, he'll know what he ought to do. Yes, you can put yours there, too, if you like. It is the most tactful way when one is dealing with—these sorts of people."

But when, at the next stop, he caught up the tray and ran out with it, she found her breath coming a little faster. His manner was young, but he was no boy, after all, and one never could tell what these men with square chins and decisive movements would do. In less than two minutes she found out. Through the window a shower of silver coin rattled down into her lap, and at her ear a heated voice said swiftly: "I've no use for these."

He was gone again before she could gasp, and she stared down on them blankly, while Vera rolled on the seat with mirth.

"There's nothing like tact, really," murmured the bored girl. And then Dorothy sat bolt upright with flushed cheeks.

"When you have to do with a cad, you can't treat him as a gentleman," she said. "I'll just make that clear to him when he comes back!"

"He—he's a nice boy, you know."

The bored girl moved uneasily.

"Very. And he will most certainly bring us some more tea in a minute."

But it was fruit this time—piled baskets of plums and peaches and nectarines and passion-fruit, and he seemed to have forgotten that little affair of the window. Dorothy waited until he paused opposite her, offering peaches warm-tinted as her own soft skin. Then she held that silver bone of contention towards him.

"I have not paid you for the other meals yet," she said icily.

He banged the basket down with an exclamation, and a light which she did not like sprang into his eyes.

"Can't a man offer a lady a cup of tea without being paid like a servant for it?"

"No"—her heart wavered, but she kept her voice firm—"not unless the lady wishes it."

"And why don't you wish it?" His voice was dangerously quiet. She had a moment's belief that he looked like this, spoke like this, when he was preparing for that mysterious operation known as "going over the top."

"I don't care about being beholden to a stranger," she said.

"I wonder how many strangers I've been beholden to in these three years?" He was speaking half to himself. Then he looked straight at her, somewhat imperiously. "Are you really so narrow-minded as all that?"

"It is not narrow-minded." She was on fire now. "I am not accustomed to being treated as a beggar, nor to having my expenses paid and myself talked to by anyone who chooses to be impertinent."

"Look here," he said earnestly, "you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I can assure you that in England the ladies——"

"I will not have them hurled at my head!" she blazed out. "Suppose they did give you tea and socks and motor drives at every single station you ever stopped at, that's no reason why you should unload your gratitude on me."

For a moment he looked surprised; then he became so extremely solemn that an older woman would have suspected laughter behind.

"Perhaps it isn't, now you come to mention it. I guess I've been clumsy. They never made me feel a beggar or insulted—the English ladies didn't."

"That's quite different. One is ready to do what one can for soldiers——"

"I'm a soldier," he said, with an innocent air of discovery.

Dorothy had a feeling that something like crackers was going off in the direction of Vera.

"I mean a wounded soldier," she said sharply.

With puzzled brows he glanced down at his sleeve and then back at her, and a perfect whirl of fury caught her up, so that she almost boxed his ears.

"Anyone but a cad would understand what I mean!" she cried, and, with a passionate gladness, she saw his face grow white.

"You mean," he said slowly, "that when a chap is half off his head with joy at getting home, he has to get girls who aren't particular to share it with him? Taking it all round, we soldiers have lived pretty much apart from ladies these three years, and now we want to talk to them, do you see? We'd sooner talk to ladies than to the vulgarer kind, many of us. But if all the old hidebound before-the-war conventions are going to hold—if girls and men haven't learnt to see some things a bit straighter—well, I guess it's going to be the worse for us, that's all. Good gracious! There are girls in the second-class carriages to-day—not so pretty as you, but heaps jollier—do you imagine I couldn't have given them all the tea and talk I'd wanted if I'd—wanted to?"

"A man should know how to behave, wherever he is."

"You go to the War for two years, and then come back and tell me that," he said, with sudden grimness. "Just now you're talking rubbish. I was the loneliest pelican ever stepped yesterday, and if Miss Cole hadn't been good enough to let me bring her tea two or three times——"

"Eighteen times!" The bored girl, who had sat dumb and troubled, was galvanised into intense feeling. "Eleven times yesterday and seven to-day! And I know you'll do it again!"

"Why, sure," he answered readily. "As many times as I can, Miss Cole, and with great pleasure." He looked again at Dorothy. "I say that if women would be more comradely and natural with men, there'd be a—a sight less of the false modesty and rottenness that we get tangled up in now. You girls are mighty clever with your Red Cross business when we're sick. When we're well, you either chuck yourselves at our heads or bite 'em off. I—— Why, here's Taihora! We only stop three minutes, but I'll get you some tea, Miss Cole."

He went out, carrying his head a little high. Dorothy walked back to her corner and took up a book with hands that shook a little. The bored girl began to whimper.

"I'll have to drink tea for ever now, or he'll be hurt! Oh, how selfish you are! And so stupid! Buckets and basins and barrels of tea!"

But Dorothy took no heed. This impertinent and perfectly impossible young man had dislocated her outlook with a peremptory suddenness which left her gasping. The old comfortable hedges and shelters seemed blown clean away, leaving her in the midst of dazzling horizons, wide and startling. This young man, with the knowledge of great things in his eyes, demanded unheard-of things. They were to stretch a hand, the nice girls—a comradely, natural, common-sense hand. Oh, it was absurd! What business was it of hers? She had to keep on being a nice girl. And that meant being reserved with strangers, allowing no liberties, encouraging no confidences. What business was it of hers if he—— Again her thoughts frayed out. She sat, flushed and angry, tapping her foot on the floor. He was unjust, wickedly unjust, impossible, absurd! Vera strolled back in search of lollies. She was whistling a bugle-call familiar enough throughout New Zealand now. Then she sang the words—

 

"Cock your eye at the maiden, chuck her under the chin!
Tommy's always a-raidin', an' he's certain to win.
He can battle in love or in war;
Mind you do not hit him on the raw,
Else—he'll—show—you—how to go to law!"

 

Dorothy stamped her foot suddenly.

"Stop that vulgar thing!" she cried.

Vera looked up with black brows lifted and lips pursed. "What a dear old duffer you are!" she said. "Would you rather he went and talked to those creatures in the next carriage?"

"It's no concern of mine what he does."

"He seemed to think it was. Well, pity one can only be decent to strangers when they're sick. But he says loneliness is the worst kind of sickness."

She strolled off with the box of chocolates; and Dorothy saw, in the door, the strong young face with the alert eyes and the white teeth laughing in the brown face, and her ignorance and inexperience trembled. In his crude masculine way he and such as he were calling to such as her for friendship and aid—calling to her to assume responsibilities unguessed at, undesired. She was furious and afraid. Did this young man imagine that war was going to mean the readjustment of more than the map of Europe?

"It's no business of mine. A nice girl can't alter things," she said, and dug her little teeth into her lip.

The long, hot afternoon dragged by. Several times the gunner brought tea and fruit, and sent them up by Vera for Dorothy to refuse. But he never came to speak to her himself; and she rose with a savage relief when, through the red sunset, Pahiatua was reached at last, and in a bustle of impedimenta, greetings, and kisses, she and Vera tumbled out on the little bare platform. All around her rose the bush-hills, purpling dark into night. Just across the white street stood the bank—Dorothy's father was bank-manager—with white curtains blowing at the windows of the living-rooms, and lilies in the garden nodding tall white heads. The gunner had disappeared, and Miss Cole's resigned voice floated out through the window.

"He's gone to bring me more tea, or to wire for someone to meet me with it at the next station, 1 suppose!"

"He's staying here to-night," said Vera. "Got to catch the coach out to Nokomai in the morning. There's only his father there now. His mother died while he was away."

Dorothy made no comment. She did not want to hear of or to see that gunner again. And then, like a sudden tide setting across the platform, everyone began to run toward the train and to cry out. Dorothy turned in time to see the gunner miss his footing at the carriage window and go down on to the rails, as the little tray and the broken cup came spinning to her feet. But she was on her knees beside him even as they lifted him up, ripping away the torn sleeve and pressing her thumbs on the cut artery. And the gathering crowd, knowing of all those Red Cross certificates which bore her name, obeyed as one man when her orders flew. Those orders contained demands for such things as tourniquets and house-doors; and it was not until he lay in the best guest-room at the bank, and the doctor, having made play with splints and other toys, had departed, that the gunner looked up in Dorothy's face.

"I suppose it's tea and cigarettes and motor drives now," he said. "You women have a funny sense of logic, you know."

"You mustn't talk. I'll come back," said Dorothy hastily, and ran away, finding herself blushing and dimpling under his eyes.

Vera, lying on the lawn among the roses, giggled when Dorothy came out.

"You've done every mortal thing you said a nice girl never did," she announced. "What a lark! Good old Doll!"

"He was hurt," said Dorothy sharply.

But Vera went on giggling.

"Every single thing!" she chanted, as her sister fled.