LOVE IN A MUDDLE

I

I can't sleep.

I should go simply potty lying down and trying to get quiet and peaceful.

I'm going to write down all the absolutely mad, freakish things that have happened to-night, and hope that in doing so I shall perceive some sane and feasible method of escape.

Diaries are useful sometimes; they keep your nerves from going absolutely to pieces with the sheer unexpectedness of life.

Dad and mater were in a particularly horrid mood this evening. The C.O. had complained about the Y.M.C.A. hut in the camp, or something, and dinner was filthy, so the usual mutual recriminations took place. Rows always make me feel so frightfully sick. I've never enjoyed a really proper one, because I've always had to run away in the middle and be ill, and then of course I never feel equal to coming back and finishing it.

I don't think any of the shabby Tommies' wives who come over on the paddle steamer on Sundays to visit their husbands at the camp live such a petty, sordid life as we do in our diggings.

I hate dad when he gets red and shouts—I simply have to beat a retreat. I can quite understand why the men are in such a fearful funk of him. I have been terrified and appalled by him all my life, such is his effect on my temperament that I could do or say anything when he loses control and goes for me, tell any childish lies or make any excuses. My moral sense positively ceases to exist.

I crept from them to-night and went for a walk by the sea.

I am not afraid of the dark. I enjoy it. You can think so awfully well when there is nothing to distract your eyes, and the world feels so spacious after our digs.

All my life I have felt there was never quite enough room for the three of us, dad, and the mater, and myself. I believe if we lived in St. Paul's together I should still feel overcrowded.

I walked for a long time. It was a topping night, the air was as soft and warm as cotton-wool and the moon was on the sea. It was the sort of night that makes you want to do a frightful lot of good in the world, mother a lot of orphans or marry a man from St. Dunstan's. I could have cried because there was such a lot of sorrow and unhappiness in the world. You do feel like that sometimes out of doors.

I went along keeping close to the cliff and not thinking, and then I suddenly realised that I was right under the lee of the big guns, and facing the big guns of the fort just across the water; and the searchlights over there suddenly started playing and picked me out.

I got frightened, absolutely scared.

I could have screamed.

Every minute I expected to see those big guns fire; only the month before a German spy in woman's clothes had been found wandering just where I stood.

I knew the marines behind the searchlights could see me quite clearly, probably even my white mackintosh. I had asked father to let me go to the fort. He wasn't keen. I'm twenty-three, but he pretends to himself that I'm not "out"—it saves dresses, so I never go anywhere.

I was in an absolute panic, and I felt as if all the muscles of my knees had suddenly turned to water, which wibble-wobbled every time I moved them.

I turned back; and those searchlights never left me alone, one steady bar of brilliant, dazzling light kept me focussed the whole time, and I could not see to walk in it. I felt as though every step might be a drop into space.

It was a perfectly beastly experience, and every minute I expected the guns to belch out at me.

I suppose I must have been crying. I seemed to have noticed myself making a funny little bleaty noise; I know I screamed when a very curt voice said: "What the devil are you doing here? You know perfectly well you aren't allowed!"

"The searchlights!" I stammered. "The searchlights!"

"Well, they probably think you're up to no good here."

"I am Major Burbridge's daughter," I stammered; "and they'll fire!"

"Probably," he said casually, "if they think you're spying."

"But they mustn't!"

"It would be a bore," the voice admitted lazily, "especially as I should be included in the result of their energies." It sounded as if he didn't care a hang whether he was or not.

He came and stood in the dazzling white path of light the searchlight made, and I saw he was an officer. I had never seen him before, but there were dozens of officers I did not know. I only met those who came to the house to play auction with father and mother.

"Please, please—make them go away," I pleaded, just like a kid surrounded by sheep or something.

"To signal," he said thoughtfully, "would be to invoke the wrath of the gods at once. We are nearly out of the boundary. They can see I am an officer, they can probably see also who I am." The light remained unwaveringly upon us the whole time he was speaking. "If the gentleman behind them could be persuaded to believe we are but a couple of harmless lovers! I dare not wave or anything, because, although I am attached to the joy-spot, they might not recognise me; the sparkling intelligence behind the guns would immediately take it for the arranged signal to a sporty submarine. Would it annoy you fearfully if I made an effort, by exhibition, to show that we are harmless lovers who shun the light of publicity now being shed upon us? It is the only thing I can think of to persuade them to transfer their attentions." His voice sounded bored and mocking, and I thought he must be an elderly man.

"Please," I said, "please make them go away."

He moved to my other side and put his arm round me, then he turned for a minute so that his embracing arm must have been visible against my white mack to the men behind the