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- float: left; - margin-right: 1em } - -.align-right { clear: right; - float: right; - margin-left: 1em } - -.align-center { margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto } - -div.shrinkwrap { display: table; } - -/* SECTIONS */ - -body { margin: 5% 10% 5% 10% } - -/* compact list items containing just one p */ -li p.pfirst { margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0 } - -.first { margin-top: 0 !important; - text-indent: 0 !important } -.last { margin-bottom: 0 !important } - -span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 } -img.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.5em 0 0; max-width: 25% } -span.dropspan { font-variant: small-caps } - -.no-page-break { page-break-before: avoid !important } - -/* PAGINATION */ - -.pageno { position: absolute; right: 95%; font: medium sans-serif; text-indent: 0 } -.pageno:after { color: gray; content: '[' attr(title) ']' } -.lineno { position: absolute; left: 95%; font: medium sans-serif; text-indent: 0 } -.lineno:after { color: gray; content: '[' attr(title) ']' } -.toc-pageref { float: right } - -@media screen { - .coverpage, .frontispiece, .titlepage, .verso, .dedication, .plainpage - { margin: 10% 0; } - - div.clearpage, div.cleardoublepage - { margin: 10% 0; border: none; border-top: 1px solid gray; } - - .vfill { margin: 5% 10% } -} - -@media print { - div.clearpage { page-break-before: always; padding-top: 10% } - div.cleardoublepage { page-break-before: right; padding-top: 10% } - - .vfill { margin-top: 20% } - h2.title { margin-top: 20% } -} - -/* DIV */ -pre { font-family: monospace; font-size: 0.9em; white-space: pre-wrap } -</style> -<title>LOVE IN A MUDDLE</title> -<meta name="DC.Created" content="1920" /> -<link rel="coverpage" href="images/img-cover.jpg" /> -<meta name="DC.Language" content="en" /> -<meta name="DC.Title" content="Love in a Muddle" /> -<meta name="PG.Released" content="2015-05-30" /> -<meta name="PG.Producer" content="Al Haines" /> -<meta name="PG.Rights" content="Public Domain" /> -<meta name="PG.Id" content="49090" /> -<meta name="DC.Creator" content="Christine Jope Slade" /> -<meta name="PG.Title" content="Love in a Muddle" /> - -<link rel="schema.DCTERMS" href="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" /> -<link rel="schema.MARCREL" href="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/" /> -<meta name="DCTERMS.title" content="Love in a Muddle" /> -<meta name="DCTERMS.source" content="/home/ajhaines/muddle/muddle.rst" /> -<meta scheme="DCTERMS.RFC4646" name="DCTERMS.language" content="en" /> -<meta scheme="DCTERMS.W3CDTF" name="DCTERMS.modified" content="2015-05-31T03:04:49.044435+00:00" /> -<meta name="DCTERMS.publisher" content="Project Gutenberg" /> -<meta name="DCTERMS.rights" content="Public Domain in the USA." /> -<link rel="DCTERMS.isFormatOf" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49090" /> -<meta name="DCTERMS.creator" content="Christine Jope Slade" /> -<meta scheme="DCTERMS.W3CDTF" name="DCTERMS.created" content="2015-05-30" /> -<meta content="width=device-width" name="viewport" /> -<meta content="Ebookmaker 0.4.0a5 by Marcello Perathoner <webmaster@gutenberg.org>" name="generator" /> -</head> -<body> -<div class="document" id="love-in-a-muddle"> -<h1 class="center document-title level-1 pfirst title"><span class="x-large">LOVE IN A MUDDLE</span></h1> - -<!-- this is the default PG-RST stylesheet --> -<!-- figure and image styles for non-image formats --> -<!-- default transition --> -<!-- default attribution --> -<!-- -*- encoding: utf-8 -*- --> -<div class="clearpage"> -</div> -<!-- -*- encoding: utf-8 -*- --> -<div class="align-None container language-en pgheader" id="pg-header" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> -<p class="noindent pfirst"><span>This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States -and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no -restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the </span><a class="reference internal" href="#project-gutenberg-license">Project Gutenberg License</a><span> included with -this ebook or online at </span><a class="reference external" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license</a><span>. If you -are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws -of the country where you are located before using this ebook.</span></p> -<p class="noindent pnext"></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<div class="align-None container" id="pg-machine-header"> -<p class="noindent pfirst"><span>Title: Love in a Muddle -<br /> -<br />Author: Christine Jope Slade -<br /> -<br />Release Date: May 30, 2015 [EBook #49090] -<br /> -<br />Language: English -<br /> -<br />Character set encoding: UTF-8</span></p> -</div> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="noindent pfirst" id="pg-start-line"><span>*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK </span><span>LOVE IN A MUDDLE</span><span> ***</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="noindent pfirst" id="pg-produced-by"><span>Produced by Al Haines.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em"> -</div> -<p class="noindent pfirst"><span></span></p> -</div> -<div class="align-None container titlepage"> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst"><span class="xx-large">LOVE IN A -<br />MUDDLE</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst"><span class="medium">BY</span></p> -<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">CHRISTINE JOPE SLADE</span></p> -<p class="center pnext"><span class="small">AUTHOR OF -<br />"BREAD AND BUTTER MARRIAGE"</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 3em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst"><span class="medium">HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED -<br />LONDON -<br />1920</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -</div> -<div class="align-None container plainpage"> -<p class="center pfirst"><em class="italics medium">BY THE SAME AUTHOR</em></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst"><span class="medium">THE KEYS OF HEAVEN -<br />LOVE IN A MUDDLE -<br />BREAD AND BUTTER MARRIAGE -<br />WEDDING RINGS FOR THREE</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst"><span class="medium">HODDER & STOUGHTON, LTD. -<br />PUBLISHERS LONDON</span></p> -</div> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="i"><span class="bold large">I</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>I can't sleep.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I should go simply potty lying down and -trying to get quiet and peaceful.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Diaries are useful sometimes; they keep your -nerves from going absolutely to pieces with the -sheer unexpectedness of life.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I crept from them to-night and went for a -walk by the sea.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I got frightened, absolutely scared.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I could have screamed.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was a perfectly beastly experience, and -every minute I expected the guns to belch out -at me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"The searchlights!" I stammered. "The -searchlights!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Well, they probably think you're up to no -good here."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I am Major Burbridge's daughter," I -stammered; "and they'll fire!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Probably," he said casually, "if they -think you're spying."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"But they mustn't!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Please, please—make them go away," I -pleaded, just like a kid surrounded by sheep or -something.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"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.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Please," I said, "please make them go away."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>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 -searchlights.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Forgive me," he said perfunctorily. "I -think the pantomime will have the desired effect -on our friends yonder, and whether they know -me or not they know they'll have a hot time -to-morrow for playing the dickens with an -amorous officer—the main thing is to get them -to switch the light off us, isn't it?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I thrilled. I had always wondered, as every -girl born wonders, what it was like to feel a -man's arm round you.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I </span><em class="italics">liked</em><span> it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I liked the cool, rather insolent, devil-may-care -voice.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I am always honest with myself, so I write -these things quite honestly and frankly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I love reading, but I have never thought of -love or romance as being even remotely -connected with me. I have always been very -interested in engaged couples and newly married -people, but I think it is rather squashing to be -the plain daughter of a pretty mother and a -father who can't afford to give you nice clothes. -I mean, it doesn't give you much chance. -Suddenly, when I felt those arms round me—very -limp and casual, it is true—I would have -given the world to have been attractive and had -an attractive personality and attractive frocks. -I have tried very, very hard to be nice and -useful and kind in my life, because I know I -could never have the more alluring virtues; but -it has been very, very dull. I do think clothes -matter, and hair-waving, especially when your -hair is straight like mine; and I do understand -the girl who, when she was asked, "Which -would you rather be, beautiful or good?" -answered, "I would like to be born beautiful -and grow good." I feel she must have been a -relation of mine.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The lights swished round.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"That," said the officer, "has done the -trick, Miss Burbridge, and here we are at the -boundary."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He removed his arms from me, and out of -the darkness suddenly came my father's voice.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I had no idea you were in the habit of -taking my daughter for walks, Captain Cromer. -Your mother sent me to search for you, Pam. -I am awaiting an explanation."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh—Captain Cromer—just—just——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," said my father, "I perceived it. I -presume you have an explanation to make, sir? -I have had the pleasure of watching you for the -last ten minutes."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," said my companion, "Miss Burbridge -unfortunately got picked out by the -searchlights, and we thought the guns——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pamela," said my father, "have you anything -to say? If not——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said desperately. "Oh yes——" -then the old sickening fear of my father, the -terror that made me deceive and even lie in a -sort of blind panic, rushed over me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I presume there is some understanding, an -engagement between you and Captain——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Hullo! Major. Hullo! Captain Cromer. -We've had a most entertaining time. We've -been watching you through our glasses. If you -will stand in the limelight——" came an -unexpected voice behind father.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was the C.O. and his wife.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It brings back my own young days," said -the C.O. with his jolly laugh.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I suppose we are the first to congratulate -you young people," the C.O.'s wife said -charmingly. "I couldn't help overhearing the -word 'engagement.'"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked at father.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I answered desperately. "You -are—thank you very much."</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><em class="italics">Later</em><span>.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I threw this on the top of the chest of drawers -because mother came in to say "good night!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She has never done such a thing before.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What a dreadfully old-fashioned nighty you -are wearing, Pam," she said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It was one of yours," I answered. "I -always have yours when you have done with them."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You must have some pretty new things -now, dear," she said. She stayed and chatted -for a few minutes, and then strayed out again, -leaving an atmosphere of elegance and jasmine -scent.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I really am numbed mentally. My brain -keeps taking records to-night, like a camera. -It's a sort of human sensitised plate, but I don't -feel anything, not even that it is really -happening to me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>When the C.O. and his wife made their -appearance, we all turned and walked up the hill -together; father and the Colonel and his wife -walked on in front, and the man and I walked -behind.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The man bent his head quite close to my head -and laughed. It was rather a beastly laugh, -not villainy, just as if he didn't care whether -an earthquake or the millennium started next -minute.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Well," he said, "you seem to have had -your innings, Miss Burbridge. Now I want mine."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'll tell dad when I get home," I babbled -foolishly. "I'll explain fully all about the -searchlights and everything."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt absolutely the same as I did when I sat -down at my "maths." paper when I tried to -matric., after having been awake all night with -raging toothache. I felt I couldn't be decisive -or adequate or even sensible, I couldn't deal -efficiently with a fly that settled on my own nose.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"The inopportune arrival of the Colonel and -his wife have made it rather difficult to explain," -he hazarded. "Don't you remember -gracefully acknowledging our tender regard for each -other, and equally gracefully accepting -congratulations on existence of same?" He -sounded all the time frightfully amused in a -bored sort of manner. He had the most -delightful kind of voice, frightfully deep and -soft, and he drawled in a fascinating way.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We walked, unconsciously, slower and -slower, far behind the others, in the scent of -the heather that clothed the hill.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was a wonderful night. It sort of caught -you by the throat and made you ache for all the -things you could never, never have; crave the -deep friendships and wonderful love that would -never come your way.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I am afraid I have been very stupid," I -said. "I often am. You see, I am afraid of -father."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He's a bully, a rotten bully," he said; and -then: "I beg your pardon, Miss Burbridge—I -shouldn't have said that."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It's just that he shouts, and I can't think -when he shouts. I just say something that will -make him stop shouting—anything."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It's funny my not meeting you before," he -said. "I've met your mother scores of times. -Of course, I've heard of you." He paused -thoughtfully, as if he were trying to remember -what he had heard.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I don't go about much," I put in.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It seemed unnecessary to tell him I had no -"glad rags."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Have you ever had a good time?" he -demanded abruptly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I don't think so," I answered, then sudden -loyalty to my parents made me add: "I—I -don't care for the sort of good time some girls -have."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Rubbish!" he interrupted rudely. "Every -girl likes a good time, and every girl will use a -fellow to get one—his money, his influence, his -friends, his admiration, his love—anything that -adds to her rotten vanity and flatters her. -There is no honour among women, they are all -the same; there isn't a sport among them—not -one; and the prettier a girl is the less of a sport -she is."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I am plain enough to be a sport," I put in.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," he acquiesced indifferently; then -he suddenly swung round on me. "The real -explanation of to-night is going to be damned -awkward," he said curtly. "Do you realise -that?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Then why explain? It suits me jolly well -if you don't."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I must."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh—because I must."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"A fool reason."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"We can't pretend to be engaged."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why not? I think it would be rather a -piquant relationship. It appeals to my debased -sense of humour. It would at least have this -Stirling advantage over the average engagement. -We needn't be a couple of confounded -hypocrites the whole time with each other. We -have no mutual regard—we could at least -reserve our self-respect by being honest; or -perhaps the prospect of explaining to the -inflammable Major, his Colonel, and the Colonel's -lady, the circumstances that necessitated the -loving embrace in which they found us to-night -appeals to your sense of humour?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Don't be a beast," I flashed out.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You perceive how charmingly natural we -are already. I find it refreshing—and I intend -to continue to refresh myself. Own honestly -that you simply daren't explain. The Colonel -is going back to the mess for bridge. When I -arrive the entire mess will be in a position to -congratulate me. Those officers who have -charming wives in billets will carry back the -glad tidings of our betrothal."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You must stop him!" I said. "Oh—please—please—do -something! Where are -they?" I searched the hill for the three -figures.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"They have considerately left us to our -lovers' lingering. Your father is swollen with -pride to-night."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Because I am an excessively eligible young -man—the sort of young man no one expected -you to noose."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You are a horrible young man—perfectly -beastly!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Yet I did not hate him, he was so frightfully -exciting. I can't quite explain to myself what -I felt about him. I could breakfast every morning -in his company for a year and not know -what I was eating once. I am quite sure of -that.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I am not going to let you go," he said -suddenly. "I have made up my mind about -that. You are a present from the devil to the -worst side of my nature. There, aren't you -</span><em class="italics">thrilled</em><span>? Doesn't your foolish female heart -flip-flap?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No," I said stormily; "and I think you -are talking like an idiot."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Delightful creature! Now, listen here, -young spitfire, I'm going to give you a good -time——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I won't take it!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You'll lap it up as a kitten laps up -milk—that's all girls are for."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I am going back to explain to father and -mother."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"The thought of 'father' explaining to the -C.O. and the mess fills me with pleasurable -anticipation. Your own conduct alone will -require all his ingenuity to explain; the natural -and charming and quite unblushing way in -which you accepted the very nice congratulations -of Mrs. Walters and the Colonel requires -quite a——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I didn't know what I was doing."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"That merely denotes you an idiot."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Where are we going?" I said, suddenly -realising the pleasant wiry spring of the heather -was gone from beneath my feet.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He gripped my arm and laughed. "I am -taking you to pay a little call," he said.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="ii"><span class="bold large">II</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>"It's Brennon House!" I protested. "You -aren't going in here!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>For answer he swung open the gate of the -largest house in the neighbourhood, still -keeping tight hold of my arm.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why not?" he demanded coolly. "I have -a book to return."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"But it must be nearly ten."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Better late than never."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Besides—I don't know them—and I have -my old mack on."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I knew who lived there well enough.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mother had called.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It is an honour to know the Gilpins," he -assured me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I knew that. I knew they were frightfully -rich and aristocratic, and that half the officers -were crazy about Grace Gilpin. All the most -attractive ones used to live up at Brennon -House playing tennis and boating on the -artificial lake in the grounds; and they used to give -weekly dances and have a coon orchestra from -London, and they had amateur theatricals and -no end of fun.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace Gilpin had always seemed sort of -unreal to me, like the princess in a fairy story. -I had never seen her.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Please! Please!" I protested. "This is madness!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It is delicious madness," he said softly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>In the moonlight I could see the heavy, -colourless heads of flowers; the scent of them, -sweet and strange and all different, seemed to -wave over us for a minute as we passed.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"They'll be on the veranda," he said. -"We'll go round."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You're not going in!" I said desperately.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He stopped and looked down at me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"In six weeks I go to the front with my -draft," he said. "And I hope to be killed. -To-night has placed us both in the most -extraordinary position. It's practically impossible -for us, at the moment, to extricate ourselves. -It just happens that fate has played into my -hands in the rummiest way. I don't want to -extricate myself. Six weeks is a very short -time. I'm awfully rich. I'll give you a topping -time, a time you'll remember all your life—if -you won't try to extricate yourself for six -weeks."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pretend to be engaged to you?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why not? You've no one else in view at -the moment. Everyone will envy you, and say -sweet things to your face and nasty things -behind your back. If you won't—I leave you -to explain things to your people and the -regiment and the wives of the regiment."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I can't!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Precisely! Then why worry? What does -our engagement demand of us? Civility and -excessive courtesy in our bearing towards -each other before people. And please"—he -caught his breath sharply—"when we are -alone we will have no horrible hypocrisy, no -feminine flim-flam, no playing up and pretty -lies and coquetries and deceits; nothing but the -plain unvarnished truth and bare honesty; as -we have no interest in each other, we can at -least pay each other the compliment of -behaving as if we were two men."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"But," I began, dazed. He absolutely -carries you off your feet.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Come on," he said curtly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We went through a sort of old-fashioned -honeysuckle and jasmine pergola and came -opposite a broad stoep, all hung with baskets -of pink geraniums and ferns and pink Japanese -lanterns with electric lights inside, and white -wicker armchairs and big pink silk cushions and -white tables.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was just like a theatrical scene.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>There was an awfully handsome middle-aged -woman sitting at a table playing bridge with -three elderly men, and someone inside the inner -room was playing "Iolanthe."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Everybody yelled, "Hello, Cromer!" and -"Cheerio, Cromer!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>A girl suddenly appeared from behind a huge -flowering Dorothy Perkins in a white tub, and -two or three officers and another girl in a bunchy -mauve and silver gown fluttered up from a low -pink divan.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>They stared at me, in my old mack, with -well-bred curiosity, and I thought I looked like -someone from the pit wandered on to a musical -comedy scene.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The music stopped, and a girl suddenly -appeared at the french-windows.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She was perfectly wonderful.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She was awfully fair and tall and slender, -and she had blue eyes the exact colour of her -georgette gown.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>You could have cried over her, she was so -lovely; and she had the sort of mouth that -made you feel you simply couldn't go away -until you had seen it smile.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Hullo! Cap.," she said; her voice was -light and high and sweet, almost as if she were -laughing at something.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I've brought your book back, Grace," he -said; and then he took my hand. "Oh, Pam -dear," he said—then to the handsome lady at -the bridge table, "May I introduce my little -fiancée—Miss Burbridge."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I knew then; I just knew by the look in those -very blue eyes. I quite understood why -Captain Cromer was bitter, why he wanted a -fiancée.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He wanted to hit back.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>A sort of buzz of talk and teasing broke out -all round me, and through it all I detected a -vein of surprise.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace Gilpin came down the veranda to -shake hands. She walked wonderfully—just -like an actress on the stage.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why, you poor souls!" she said, lightly -and gaily, "so it's raining"—and she looked -at my old mack; then </span><em class="italics">everybody</em><span> looked at it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt suddenly as if I wanted to cry.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I made her put it on," I heard Captain -Cromer say. "She is such a foolish little -person. She doesn't take half enough care of -herself"—and I knew that I could learn to love -that man, that I was doing a crazy thing, and -I was going to go on with it.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="iii"><span class="bold large">III</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>When I am with people I feel as if I am a fairy -princess taking part in a fairy play, a wonderful -and desirable and adorable person. It is a -perfectly marvellous feeling; and when I am -alone with Cheneston I feel as if he switched -the limelight off with an impatient hand, and I -was just a plain, shabby, silly kid.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He has bought me an engagement ring—for -the six weeks before he goes to the front.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Let us be as beastly orthodox as possible," -he said as he popped it on. "Why don't -you look after your nails—you've got decent -hands."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What shall I do with it when——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"When you write and break off the engagement! -Oh! keep it if you like."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It is a platinum set with one glorious ruby, -an enormous stone. You could almost warm -yourself by the red there is in it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I love warm things, and glows and twinkles -and brightness.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I am waking up. I feel as if I were as -covered with shutters as an old anchor with -barnacles, and every morning when I wake up -I find more shutters opened.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think Cheneston must be perfectly appallingly -rich. He has a villa in Italy, and a little -hut in Norway where he stays for the ski-ing -season, and the white yacht </span><em class="italics">Mellow Hours</em><span> in -the harbour is his.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It's more fairy tale-y than ever.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mother and father are delighted at my -engagement; but their surprise is rather -humiliating, it does make me realise how awfully -plain and dull I am.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I haven't any parlour tricks or conversation, -my tennis is rotten, I'm sick on the yacht, I -swim like a mechanical toy, I haven't the -foggiest idea how to play golf, and I'm never -sure of my twinkle in jazzing—and Grace Gilpin -does all these things absolutely toppingly. -She's been trained to do them from quite a -little kid.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We seem to do everything in fours—I and -Cheneston, and Grace Gilpin and a man called -Markham, Walter Markham, who adores her.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston is sweet to me when we're all -together, but when he and I leave the others -and are alone sometimes he hardly speaks.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I imagine he is bored.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I do love him so much, every day I seem to -love him more and more and more.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I suppose I ought to be ashamed and -humiliated to write that down, because I simply -bore him to tears; but I'm not, mine isn't a -silly love—he's my very, very dear, the most -wonderful man I have ever seen or known.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Sometimes people say things that simply -wring my heart.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I suppose you'll get married directly after -the war?" the C.O.'s wife said. "Will you -live in England?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I—I don't know," I answered.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"We shall winter in the South," said -Cheneston; he glanced at Grace Gilpin and I -knew she was listening. "We shall probably -go to Norway for the sports, and spend the rest -of the time in England."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It sounds like a fairy tale," said the -C.O.'s wife.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I think it is," I broke in unexpectedly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace Gilpin turned in her chair and glanced -at me. She was lovely; she wore cornflower -blue crêpe and white collar and cuffs.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I think Cheneston would be quite wonderful -in the rôle of a fairy prince," she said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He laughed, rose, and walked away.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Going home he looked at me gravely.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I hope you're not getting romantic about -our engagement. I don't mean anything -rotten, child—but all that silly rubbish about -fairy tales and fairy princes. I have only five -weeks more—then I go to the front."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Did you care for Grace most frightfully?" -I asked boldly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He looked down at me with slightly puzzled -eyes. I can't describe his eyes exactly, they -are hazel, and when he is going to laugh they -laugh first; and they are hard and honest and -straight.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I thought," he said. "I gave my very -soul into her hands, to play with and laugh -at—but I don't know. It doesn't hurt so much—as -it did. Pam—I gave her everything that was -best in me; and she encouraged me, she let me -give, and when I had beggared myself—when I -cared like hell—she flung my gifts back in my -face and laughed. I wanted to humiliate her as -she had humiliated me. I'm not a great man, -Pam; she ground my pride and my love and my -manhood under her heel—and I wanted to hit back."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And I afforded you the opportunity," I -said very quietly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He looked out over the downs, his eyes were -worried and troubled and his face was white.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I wouldn't hurt you for the world, Pam; -I have been thinking over this make-believe -engagement of ours, wondering if it could -possibly hurt you in any single way. The only -thing I can see is that it might keep off another -man who might want to marry you—and there -isn't one about. It simply amounts to this: I -give you a good time, and you wear a ring I -gave you. I wouldn't hurt you, Pam. Sometimes -I could almost fancy you're not like other -women—you're not a beastly little actress. I -suppose I seem an awful cad sometimes. We -can't cry off just now, kid; the Service makes -prisoners of us all. I can't leave here, whatever -happens, until I go to France with my battery -in five weeks' time; and if we pretended things -were broken off now our position would be -intolerable. We've got to carry on. I'll make -the next five weeks as pleasant as ever I can -for you."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mother came out as we reached our gate, -and Cheneston said good-bye.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She looked at me curiously as we went -inside.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You funny cold little thing," she said, -"never a kiss."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>One of the things that makes me feel -frightfully sick is the amount mother and father are -spending on clothes for me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It's rather like an Arabian Nights dream to -have a wardrobe full of perfectly adorable -frocks, but I feel it's so unfair to let them spend -all this money to get me settled when being -settled is as remote as it ever has been.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I try to accept the light and airy "take what -the good gods give" philosophy, but I am too -aware that it isn't the good gods, it's mother -and father who give, on a Major's pay, fully -believing their reward will be made concrete in -"The Voice that breathed o'er Eden," and the -disposing of a singularly plain and unexciting -daughter to a handsome young man with pots -of money.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I would so like to be angry with someone for -being plain, but I did it absolutely on my own, -because mother is quite a beautiful person and -father is frightfully aristocratic and romanish—they -are both rather splendidly beaky, but mine -is a pure and unadulterated snub.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I suppose I have a petty, shallow nature, but -I pine to be romantic and wonderful like Grace -Gilpin, and simply draw people to me; no one -but deaf old ladies who think I look kind and -good ever ask to be introduced to me; and only -chivalrous men who think I look tired and -anæmic and work for my living ever offer me -seats in buses or tubes.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace Gilpin takes her surroundings and uses -them as a background—she is always to the -fore. I sink into the background and become -part of them.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Yesterday we took out lunch on the links, -caviare sandwiches and stuff, and Grace sat -down by a flaming gorse-bush in a grey frock -and a grey jersey. She just used that glorious -bit of flame as an "effect." I sat on the other -side, and they all nearly forgot me and went off -without me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I didn't see you," Walter Markham said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It's true; there are heaps of people in this life -you don't see because of the more ornamental -people.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I would have given almost anything to have -been born showy, so that people would look at -me. I want Cheneston to look at me as he, -and other men, look at Grace, as if she were a -splendid vision vouchsafed to them for five -minutes.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I do love that man, and love isn't one bit what -I thought it was. I always imagined it was a -mixture of bubble and scorch, but it isn't—it's -so sweet to love. I could be good! It makes -me feel good right to my finger-nails, and -full of that after-church-on-a-summer-Sunday -evening-in-peace-time feeling; that's why I -think that my love for the man isn't anything -to be ashamed of or humiliated about. He -doesn't love me, I know; but I have a -conviction you can't grow unless you love, and I -feel so much more use in the world since I've -started growing.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Loving Cheneston has made life perfectly -wonderful for me. He doesn't know it and he -never will, but he's shown me all the dear -beauty of the world—and it is beautiful.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Walter Markham is awfully nice to me; -sometimes he leaves Grace Gilpin to Cheneston -and walks with me, and he is teaching me tennis -in the mornings before breakfast. He is much -older than Cheneston, Grace, or I—he must be -forty—and he is very rich.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wonder if Grace will marry him—or if she -will marry Cheneston. Sometimes I think he -will forget he is angry with her, and he will tell -her how the mistaken idea of our "engagement" -arose, and why he let it prosper—there -is a frightful lot of the open-hearted, impetuous -schoolboy about Cheneston.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I don't think he is happy.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>If he made a clean breast of it to Grace -we should have to break off our supposed -"engagement," and mother would have to -take me away—father couldn't leave.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I can imagine what my life would be!</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think they would pack me off as governess -or companion to someone.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I know if I don't marry by a certain age that -will be my fate. Mother was perfectly honest -about it—before Cheneston came along; now -I am her dear little daughter, she looks at -me in pleased bewilderment sometimes, as if -wondering how so homely a hunter could have -achieved such a sensational capture.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>They have never tried to equip me in any -way. I was never given the opportunity to -acquire any accomplishments. Old Giovanni -taught me to sing—for love of his art.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mother laughed when she heard he was -teaching me—she laughed because he was a -funny, broken-down old Italian singer, and the -boys used to pay him five shillings a night out -of mess funds to come up and play to them in -the evening when the regiment was stationed -at Gilesworth and there was nothing on earth to do.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Giovanni was a great teacher, and to him I -owe to-night.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I don't think I'll ever forget to-night.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was lovely!</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wish I could tell Giovanni all about it, he -would so understand. Once he was furious; -he told mother I had an extraordinary voice, -and mother laughed and said she did not -doubt it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston used the words at the Gilpins' to-night.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You have an extraordinary voice, Pam!" -he said, "amazing."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace sings. Cheterton and Pouiluex of the -Paris Conservatoire trained her voice.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>To-night we all went over to the Gilpins' -for coffee—mother, father, Cheneston, and -I—and when we arrived Grace was singing -"Jeunesse," that funny little song about -"taking your picture out of its frame, and -out of my heart I have taken your name"—it -wasn't very effective. It needs a lot of sorrow -in the voice, and Grace's voice is full of light -laughter; it was rather like a tom-tit trying to -dance a minuet.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I was feeling stirred up and rebellious. It -seemed so hard that I had only a funny little -face and homely little ways in which to express -all the beautiful big, swishy feelings that were -eating me up inside, and Grace was so lovely -that she could express things she didn't really -feel at all.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It seemed so awfully unfair and rotten, just -as if we were both trying to touch Cheneston's -heart with the same melody, and she had a -glorious grand to work on, and I just a little -boarding-house upright.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>They had blue chinese lanterns with apple-blossom -pattern on the stoep, and great copper -bowls of larkspurs and pale pink carnations -everywhere, and black cushions on all the white -wicker chairs; and Grace wore black with an -enormous blue sash.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She was singing in the drawing-room, with -Walter Markham turning over her music, and -when she came out on to the stoep she said:</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Surely, Pam, you play or something?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I sing a little," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Then do try," said she—you know the -sort of woman who always asks another woman -to "try" to sing.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I went straight to the piano and I sang -"Melisande in the Wood," accompanying myself.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think my voice has a funny register, it -seems to surprise people. It's terrifically deep -and strong and soft—almost "furry."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It's rather disconcerting, because it doesn't -sound as if it belonged to me at all; I am like -a doll's house fitted with a church organ.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I don't think I have </span><em class="italics">ever</em><span> sung as I did that -night. I was pealing and ringing and chanting -inside before ever I started, and all that was -there in my heart seemed to rush into my voice.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was like some great big longing, hoping, -sad she-spirit singing.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>When the last "sleep" had sort of slid -away, I turned round; they were all in the -room staring—just staring.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Walter Markham came over to see me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You are wonderful!" he said. "Pam—you -are wonderful!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked at Cheneston, suddenly I felt as if I -had taken control of my background.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston's face was white.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>His face was the face of a discoverer.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He bent over me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You have an extraordinary voice, Pam," -he said, "amazing—— But of course it -lies—women use their singing voices to tell -lies—wonderful, beautiful, sweet-sounding lies."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Sing again," Grace said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>But I would not sing again; I had made my -effect—I own it quite, quite honestly—I could -have shrieked with triumph.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>So Grace sang.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She sang "Rose in the Bud"—and it was -like the trickling after the pour had ceased.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think they all felt it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>They began to talk.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston did not talk; he leant back against -the black cushions and stared into the garden -with a white face.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="iv"><span class="bold large">IV</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>I do love life.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It's a perfectly priceless possession, sometimes -I'm quite sorry to go to sleep and forget -what has happened and what is going to -happen. I suppose I am childish.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston makes everything so smooth and -easy and charming. I never realised the -enchanted atmosphere that money and good -breeding creates. You feel as if you were -continually being fêted. All the women in the -set in which I live now are treated the same -way. I cannot understand why they ever grow -old or have to have their wrinkles massaged and -their hair hennaed; none of the sort of things -that make a woman grow old are allowed to -come near them.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>All the things, and the sights, and the feelings -that are stale to Grace Gilpin and her chic -friends are new to me—I sort of rush at them -and mop them up. I can't help being thrilled -and happy.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You'll wear yourself out," Grace Gilpin says.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Yet the men seem to like my enthusiasm. I -couldn't be blasé if I tried.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I love, love, love every bit of every single -day—that's the honest truth.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I don't think it's rained once since the night -Cheneston and I met in the glare of the searchlights. -I suppose that seems a frightfully little -thing, but it isn't—it's an awfully big thing.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>And the battery is nearly due to leave for -France.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston is so sweet and gentle with me, -just like an elder brother to his little sister.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I never knew a man could understand in the -way he does. I always thought a man had a -totally different type of brain.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We went up to Town to the opera last week, -and we dined at the Carlton and I wore a rather -clever dress mother selected for me—brown and -amber tulle the colour of my hair, with just a -huge bunch of tea-roses at my breast.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>A man Cheneston used to be at Oxford with, -and his sister, and Cheneston's aunt and uncle, -made up the party; and I seemed to make them -laugh an awful lot, and I heard the aunt tell -Cheneston I was the most original child she had -ever met.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Oh! but the music!</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I didn't know I could feel as I did. It seemed -to pluck at my heart with little red-hot fingers. -One minute it picked me up and swung me into -a state of dizzy gladness, and the next I seemed -to see nothing but Grace Gilpin and Cheneston, -and the battery leaving for France! One -minute I felt good—so good that I could have -got up and walked straight into a convent for -the rest of my life. And the next I wanted to -fight Grace Gilpin for Cheneston and start that -very minute; me, the funny little thing with the -snub nose who made people laugh!</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Why did Heaven make me a funny little thing -with a snub nose? It wasn't sporting; and I -do think it handicaps one. One doesn't -somehow expect a snub nose to be a Joan of Arc, or -Florence Nightingale, or Mrs. Pankhurst, or -anything thrilling and earnest and vital and -glowing.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think it's rotten to be born a quaint little -thing that nobody takes seriously.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was awfully weird the way Cheneston -looked at me, and the boy who was at Oxford, -and the uncle, and the father—just as though -I was something they had never really seen -properly before.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston sat behind me, and I could feel -him trying to read things in my brain through -the back of my neck—it made me all tingly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He is a strange man—you could wonder what -he was really like for hours.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Did you like it?" he said when it was -all over and he helped me on with my coat.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I nodded. I couldn't speak.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We were staying the night at the Savoy, and -Cheneston and I drove there together, mother -and father preceding us in another taxi.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said, "what were you thinking -of to-night?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Just dreaming," I answered.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I was thinking that in another week I shall -be—out there."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said; and all the happiness that -the music had brought me ebbed from my heart, -and left it cold and dark, like a little cellar when -the lamps had been extinguished.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>To-morrow at six the battery entrains.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I heard father giving orders for the band to -play them off.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He is to go too, of course, but mother seems -quite philosophic about it. I wonder if when -people grow older they lose that sort of sick, -gnawing fear that attacks you when you think -of someone you care for very much going into -danger.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>If you do I hope I grow old very quickly, -because at the present moment I feel dreadful.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>To-morrow Cheneston goes—and I mustn't -show him I care the least little bit. I've got to -keep the flag wagging.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I suppose everyone will turn out to see the -battery off. I know a lot of the men's wives -came over in the old paddle boat last night to -say good-bye. Poor souls!—their eyes were -red, and some of them had little kiddies in their -arms; but they had the right to grieve. I -haven't any.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think having the right to break your heart -makes the breaking an easier affair.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I'm sorry about father, but I'm not as sorry -as I ought to be. I have always felt uneasy -when he was around, like Pomp and Circumstance, -his wire-haired fox-terriers, on the alert -to move out of the way quickly and hide if -necessary.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I don't think he realises the dreadful effect -his red-faced shouting has on people—it's like -being scolded by a lion.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The atmosphere of the house is almost as if -a raid were just over when he is gone.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The Gilpins had announced their intention of -seeing the battery off, and they were calling for -us in their motor.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I dread that little station at six o'clock in the -morning, and all the men, and the crowd of -women beyond the barrier, and the mess band -shouting "The Long, Long Trail," and the -chilly greyness; it sort of nibbles your heart -before ever the good-byes are started.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston has been up to say good-bye to -the Gilpins.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He is whistling outside for me to go down. -Oh! I wish I were wonderful like Grace, and -I could make him care, ever such a little bit, -before he went away!</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><em class="italics">Later</em><span>.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The moors, and the stars, and the leaves -of the aspens shivering in the moonlight like -spangles on a dancer's dress, and the scent of -the heather, and of gorse, and the tingling, -exhilarating pungency of the unseen sea—could -anything hurt more?</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>And me, longing to belong to the night—to -capture just a scrap of its mystic, thrilling -beauty—walking beside the one man in the -world an unromantic, bunchy little thing with -a snub nose.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He was very pale and constrained. I suppose -it was his good-byes with Grace. I kept -on wondering what they had said to each other, -wishing I knew!</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Let's sit down, kid," he said abruptly. -"I've a lot to say."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We sat down.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We seemed to have the whole, beautiful, -wonderful world to ourselves—only it was -an empty old eggshell of a thing, because he -didn't care.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said, "I want to thank you for -being a fine little pal to me. I—I must have -seemed a pretty rotten sort of swine often."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Now, as I write him down and the things he -says, he doesn't cut a very gallant figure, and -yet he is. He's a </span><em class="italics">big</em><span> man—his eyes, his laugh, -his voice, the funny way he says things. He -makes all other men seem little and very -young.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh no!" I said. I shut my eyes because -I could concentrate on getting carelessness into -my voice, and it all hurt so horribly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He seems little and ordinary—I can pop the -atmosphere on paper—but he wasn't; he was -</span><em class="italics">big</em><span>, and splendid, and very, very far away from -me. I seemed to look at him through glass -and hear him through space. He isn't the type -that could share himself with two women—I -expect I got that feeling because he'd given -everything to Grace.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said, "I'm so afraid—it's -tortured me! You had a rotten dull life before -I came. Will—will it seem very dreadful going -back?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I always knew I should have to," I said -steadily.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," he said, "I know!" I had never -heard his voice like that. "Pam—be honest! -I didn't know how absolutely splendid you were! -I thought you were just like other women!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I rose and stuck my hands in my pockets.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'm all right," I answered brusquely. -"I've had a top-hole time, and I'm frightfully -bucked about it. Let's have a tramp."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He rose too, he looked ill and worried.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said, "things may happen—out -there. They do. I don't think it's necessary -to break off our supposed engagement at -once. It—it would be so much easier for you -if you didn't. Pam—I wish to God I could -undo things."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why?" I queried starkly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"If you should ever pay for these six -weeks—in any way—I'd never forgive myself."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I tried to reach him. I wish I were big that -I could tuck an arm in his and tell him not to -be an idiot, but I dare not touch him. I knew -that I should cry and cling to him.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I do not believe there ever was a more -wonderful night, so full to the brim of scents -and moonlight and velvet shadowed mystery.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I—I want to go home," I said suddenly. -"I'm tired."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We hardly spoke again until we reached our -garden gate. I had the feeling that he, too, -was surging with the things he wanted to say.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>At the gate he put his hands on my shoulders, -he was breathing like a man who had run far.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said, "Walter Markham and I -were talking about you to-night—and I told -him the truth, child—that we weren't engaged, -and hadn't any feeling for each other."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"A man knows when another man—cares. -I'm glad I'm off to-morrow. Pam, I was just -an incident, kid—an incident."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Did—did Mr. Markham say—he cared?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He's too loyal a pal for that. Besides, -until I told him, he thought——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What did he say when you told him?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I—I don't know. I just walked out of his -hut and came to you. He's not going with us -to-morrow, you know—he's going to take on -the new draft. I—I'm glad. Pam, say that -I'm just an incident. I shall feel better about -things, kid! I feel awful!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You're just an incident!" I said quietly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I couldn't send him away with that look on -his face.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He bent and kissed my hand.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>His lips seemed hot.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Then he turned, and I heard him running -swiftly down the little lane.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wanted to have a sort of bright and shining -appearance the next day, but nothing helped -me, neither the sleepless night nor the hot -coffee.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I climbed into the Gilpins' car with a white -face.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was the beginning of a gorgeous blue and -gold September morning, but everything was -misty and silvery and shiny with dew and mist.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Cheer up, little thing!" Mrs. Gilpin said -as I got in.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Everyone is turning out to give them a -send-off," Grace said. "I suppose the Major -has been gone hours?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I answered, "his orderly called for -him at four. Mother never goes to see him off. -She hates it."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mrs. Gilpin made sympathetic noises.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Walter Markham is the most fed-up thing -on earth. He hates new recruits. He wishes -he was going," said Grace.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Perhaps the war will soon be over; the -papers say the </span><em class="italics">morale</em><span> of the German troops is -deteriorating," said Mrs. Gilpin hopefully; -conversation languished until we arrived.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>All the coldness and greyness of the morning -seemed concentrated in that little station. It -was heart-breaking; and the mess band blaring -out "Soldiers of the King" seemed to -accentuate the dreariness.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The battery had answered the roll-call; when -we arrived they stood in little groups, some of -them sitting on their kit-bags, the tin bullet-proof -helmets that had been served out the -previous day hanging from their haversacks.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"There's Captain Markham," said Grace. -"There's Mr. Wood and Connel; there's -Colonel and Mrs. Walters, and there's your -father. I don't see Captain Cromer, Pam."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I—I expect he'll be here," I answered -foolishly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We passed through the gate on to the -platform; the little group of women outside the -barrier watched us enviously.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I was shivering and my teeth were chattering—the -silence was so uncanny. It was as if all -those women outside and the men on the platform -were waiting for a miracle to happen and -deliver them from the necessity to face the -immediate future.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Father was much in evidence. He came up -and spoke to us, and then bustled off again.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I turned to see Cheneston and his orderly -beside me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Morning," he said; he, too, was pale, -but smiling. He turned aside to speak to -Grace.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I saw an A.S.C. man push through the crowd -to Colonel Walters; he looked very hot; in his -hand he had a telegram.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The men were beginning to get into the -train; a cheer, a very feeble cheer that -somehow seemed wet, came from beyond the barrier.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Walter Markham joined us, and another -man, a cheery boy called Withers.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I wish I was going too," Walter Markham -said. "I applied for a transfer months ago. -I want to get into a Scotch regiment."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I thought he avoided looking at me, and I -felt uncomfortable.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I shouldn't have to train," he said, "and -my majority is due. Yes, sir?" this to Colonel -Walters, who had hurried up looking amazingly -agitated.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"The War Office is mad!" he said. -"Stark, staring mad! Markham, you have -been transferred with a majority to the Cameron -10th Battalion of the Leal Argyllshires. You -will report to the C.O. at the headquarters on -Wednesday."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes, sir."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You, Captain Cromer, will remain on home -service to train the new battery which occupies -the barracks under Colonel Prosser, taking -Markham's place. Johnstone is promoted to -Captain at my discretion, and I am to go -with one subaltern lacking and an inadequate -battery. Stark, staring mad!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I—I am to stay?" Cheneston said. "I—I can't."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Headquarters' orders," said the Colonel -curtly. "Now, boys, all serene?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The band blazed out "Tipperary."</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="v"><span class="bold large">V</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>Fortunately a climax is like a raid or a -storm—it has a definite duration.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>In the days before the curtain went up on -life, I used to think how ripping it would be to -live through great situations and climax and -tragic happenings, like the heroines in the -novels I used to devour. Now I know you do -not know they are happening to you at the -time; sometimes it's months before you say to -yourself with sudden understanding, "That -was a terrible day!" or, "It was a great -moment!" or, "It was the happiest day of -my life!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Undoubtedly the biggest moment in my -whole life was when Colonel Walters told -Cheneston he was not to go to the front with -his battery—and yet I didn't know it at the -time.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mrs. Gilpin said, "Oh! isn't that splendid! -Aren't you glad, Pam?" and I said, "I'm -awfully glad!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace Gilpin was white as death.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think Cheneston was even whiter.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'm to stay behind and take Markham's -place, and train a lot of fool boys to form fours -and dig trenches! It's infamous!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Surely you are glad for Pam's sake, Mr. Cromer," -the Colonel's wife interrupted reproachfully.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think Cheneston had utterly and completely -forgotten me until that moment. He turned -and looked at me in bewilderment; I suppose -he suddenly realised that his enforced stay in -the town would necessitate the continuation of -our supposed engagement.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He drew a long breath.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Of course," he said, quite quietly, "of -course, Mrs. Walters."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>You would imagine that when Fate calmly -picked up two people, shook them, and then -placed them in a position alien to anything they -had ever planned or dreamed of, they would -remain in a state of scared chaos; but it -isn't so.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>When we had seen the train off, Cheneston -and I walked back to the camp, quite quietly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Poor little kid!" he said. "One never -anticipated this, did one?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No," I answered. I was thinking that -God had made the morning for lovers to walk -in—the mist had not lifted, the sun shimmered -golden through it. It seemed to encase us -in soft amber radiance. I had that -only-two-people-in-the-whole-wide-world-to-day feeling, -which must be so absolutely wonderful when -you want to be quite, quite alone with a man -and he wants to be quite, quite alone with you. -I was watching a cobweb sewn with dewdrops; -there was a sweet and foolish peace in my heart. -I could only remember that Cheneston was -going to stay.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What are you going to do about it, Pam?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh—carry on," I said. I tried to speak -lightly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You feel like that about it?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Well—we can't break the engagement at -once. It would be perfectly awful for both of -us—especially me. People would say I was -only waiting for you to go to France to—to rot."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You funny little soul! Pam—I—I blame -myself for all this. You seem only a kid to -me—until you sing."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And then?" The golden mist seemed to -dance towards me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And then I know you are a woman—with -all a woman's rotten wiles, the little feline habit -of plucking at a chap's heart-strings in order to -amuse yourself. There's only one good woman -in the world—my mother."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I—I had no idea you had a mother!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why should you have?" he demanded -curtly. "She is a great invalid, she lives at -Cromer Court near Totnes, in Devon."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Does she know about—us?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"She knows nothing," he said briefly. -"There is nothing for her to know. My God! look!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked. We had walked down to the -sea, near Brennon House bathing-tents. The -Gilpins had built a little diving platform, and -on it, her hands above her head, stood Grace -Gilpin.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Half mermaid, half angel, she looked. She -wore a black bathing-dress, and a beach gown -of brilliant violet lay behind her, a little pool of -exquisite colour.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>No pen can do justice to her, only the brush -of a Sargeant or one of those people who have -things on the Academy walls that make -everybody else's work look dud. I think if I had -been an artist I would have burst into a passion -of tears—something rose in my throat because -she was so lovely; perched there, gold and -black, between the misty blue sea and the misty -blue sky, all the colour in the morning seemed -to be enmeshed in her hair and her beach gown, -and the next minute she had dived into the -water.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked at Cheneston—and I looked away.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>If only I might gleam and shine, if only I -might palpitate with youth and beauty and -stand twixt sky and earth a thing of loveliness! -But I knew that no one would stand and stare if -I stood where Grace Gilpin had stood a moment -before; they would only say: "There's a girl -bathing—but she'll find it pretty fresh."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston was speaking.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Life isn't fair. One does a thing in pique -or temper, or because one's pride is hurt; one -thinks the effects will only last a minute, and -they last for months and years—they are -far-reaching, they involve other people, till -sometimes it seems one cannot light a match or -perform the most trivial office without -involving other destinies and lives. Kid—I never -guessed, that night, that all this would -happen."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"In a way we're sort of pawns," I said. -"It isn't any good fussing, is it? You'll be -sent out with this battery for sure, and then -things will settle themselves—won't they? I -ought to go home to mother and tell her that -father went off quite cheerily. She knows, -because Mrs. Gilpin went back to her."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I went home. It seems all singularly lacking -in tenseness and emotion, it seems common-place—it -seems as if I had skipped the great -moment and hurried on with the "afterwards"; -but there was no great moment, it -was all afterwards-ish.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Things went on the same as usual, Cheneston, -Grace Gilpin, and I went about together; -she had a new man in place of Mr. Markham, a -man called Dickie Wontner. The only change -I find is in myself.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Oh! I get so angry when people talk of the -"peace of love"—there is no peace in it. -Maybe there is when you are married, I don't -know and probably I never shall; but love is -revolutionary, it robs you of your power of -concentration—it may only be that you dust the -same thing twice, or you put things down and -can't remember where you put them, or you -forget to take an interest in your friends and -lose them without knowing it; but the fact -remains that you are only living with half of -yourself, the other and more vital half is -continually padding round after the beloved like a -little invisible dog.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I love Cheneston. I write it honestly. It is -almost the only thing in my life I am proud of. -Sometimes I feel that my love is compounded -of blue sky and sunshine, and everything that is -big and honest and glittering in nature.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He does not care one little scrap for me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He loves Grace Gilpin.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I want them to be happy together, but I do -not wish to sit in the front pew at their wedding, -or watch them fashion life together afterwards—I -want to run right away then, to the utter-most -corner of the earth.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I don't believe the world is round; I believe -that somewhere there are little corners for lovers -who are not loved, and there neither moonshine, -nor sunshine, nor star shine shall worry them, -neither the scent of flowers nor the dear, shrill, -heart-plucking songs of birds; there shall be no -memory of the quivering, glowing </span><em class="italics">beauty</em><span> and -</span><em class="italics">wonder</em><span> of life, which is not for them, but there -shall be work—useful, honest work—in which -to find forgetfulness and fresh courage.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I am hunting for a corner to run away to -when my time comes.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="vi"><span class="bold large">VI</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>No one has heard from Walter Markham.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He has no relations here, it is true—but it's -funny he hasn't written.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He is in Mesopotamia; perhaps the mails -have been sunk or he has dysentery or something.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace is always asking Cheneston if he has -heard, and whenever Cheneston answers he -avoids looking at me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Sometimes I honestly think Cheneston thinks -I might have cared for Mr. Markham, perhaps -did care for him, and my supposed engagement -to himself spoilt and prevented things ever -coming to a head.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I know Cheneston is horribly unhappy.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I know Grace is equally wretched.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Neither of them knows how miserable I am, -or that I suspect they are.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Sometimes life seems so strange to me, -peopled by a lot of actors and actresses all -living little lies.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I know Cheneston will never tell Grace that -his engagement to me is only a farce. He has -a fierce sense of honour, it makes him regard -all sorts of things that other men do every day -as utterly and absolutely impossible.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Sometimes I have thought of going to Grace -and telling her the whole story of the mistake -from beginning to end; but it might make -things even more impossible for Grace, because -it isn't the sort of story a woman should tell a -woman.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wish I could learn to care for one of -the boys and they for me, it would simplify -matters; but not one of them is a bit keen. -Their eyes shine when I sing—but they shine -because of the memories I bring of other girls.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I am just "a nice little thing" and "a -perfect sport"—and it is as safe as being the -mother of sons too old for the Army.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mother is getting a trifle impatient. She -twitters about weddings sometimes, and comes -and sits on my bed and shows me pictures of -bridal gowns from sixpenny illustrated weeklies. -Poor mother! it's going to be a bitter blow. -Sometimes I feel a little criminal about it. -I read a book the other day in which the -heroine finds herself in "a ridiculous position, -unbelievable and unsurpassed in fiction"—I -laughed until I cried. She had only got to -use a pennyworth of honesty and a pinch of -common sense to get out of her position; I am -wedged tight in mine.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Fantastic problems often demand fantastic solutions.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Meanwhile, winter is coming on, frost is -crisping the leaves, this morning the dahlias in -our little garden were black and sodden.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><em class="italics">Later the same day</em><span>.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I have found the solution—and it is even -more fantastic than I had dreamed of.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I know that Mrs. Gilpin, Grace, young -Wontner, Cheneston, and one or two other men -who were at Gilpin's to-night, think I am in -love with Walter Markham in Mesopotamia and -he with me—in spite of the fact that I was -engaged to Cheneston when he went out.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I saw the Way Out for Cheneston quite -suddenly, and grabbed it before it was too late.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I am sure that to-morrow Cheneston will -come to me and ask me outright if I love -Markham, and then he will release me—— Oh, -I don't know what will happen! There -will be a horrible row with mother, and I am -sure Grace will marry Cheneston before he -goes out.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>They were all talking about Markham, and -saying how weird it was that no one had heard -a single word since he left England.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He's not the sort of man to drop his -friends, either," Mrs. Gilpin said; then she -turned to me, laughing. "Come now, Pam, -you were in his confidence—haven't you heard?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I lied suddenly, "I've heard."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Everyone exclaimed.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace Gilpin was wearing pearl grey crêpe -de Chine and old Mechlin lace; she leant -forward in her low chair and stared at me; her -face was very pale, her wonderful eyes wide.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You didn't tell us, Pam!" she said, her -voice thrilled, that queer silver voice that -always seemed to laugh. "Why ever didn't -you tell us?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston was staring at Grace. He was -white too. I had a queer idea that a minute -before Grace had seemed very far away from -him and I had brought her near.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>One or two of the men were looking at -Cheneston furtively, to see how he took it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes, why didn't you tell us, Pam?" -Cheneston said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Suddenly I realised that they were all -thinking what I meant them to think—that Walter -and I were unconfessed lovers.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had achieved my effect.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I—I didn't wish to," I said, and burst into -tears.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>And now I am wondering what is going to -happen, what everyone will say and do, -particularly Cheneston and mother.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wish I could find a corner of the earth now -to crouch in, and I want it to be dark and -utterly silent, so that I may think and find out -where I stand.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="vii"><span class="bold large">VII</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>Sometimes I wonder what humans are fitted -with imaginations for; they are a great nuisance -and utterly unreliable. I was fitted with a -high-power imagination—it overbalances me -sometimes, swings me down to misery and nearer to -the face of ecstasy than I was ever meant to go. -I spent a sleepless night wondering what -would happen after my confession that I had -heard from the renegade Captain Markham, -and my inexplicable tears; by the time I rose -I had all the results planned out, beginning with -the interview with Cheneston, in which I implied -my love for Walter Markham, and ending in a -sort of grand finale scene with mother, in which -elegance and reproaches and jasmine scent -mingled, and my clothes, all I had cost, and my -obvious lack of chic and charm were hurled at -my head.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>None of these things happened.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace Gilpin and her mother drove by in the -high dog-cart as I was taking Pomp and -Circumstance for their morning run; they stopped -and chatted, but neither of them referred to -Walter Markham, or Cheneston, or the little -scene I had enacted in their drawing-room the -previous night.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I am one of the people who never "click" -in their effects.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had meant to be so frightfully subtle over -Walter Markham when the idea first flashed -into my mind. I meant to leave my little -audience with the vague impression that there -might be something in it, that I might have -found in Walter Markham's society I had -made a mistake in getting engaged so quickly -to Cheneston Cromer—I just wanted to -make it easy for Cheneston to break off the -engagement.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I was so sure he would come to me and ask -me if his first suspicions were correct and -Walter and I cared for each other; then I -would be delicate and subtle again, and hint at -devotion, nothing settled, nothing sure.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had wanted the delicacy of a butterfly, and -I had trodden as earnestly and thoroughly as -an elephant—a whole herd of them.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had tried to be subtle and I had achieved -blatancy.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I'm more schoolgirl than woman of the -world; sometimes I get so mad with myself I -wish I could be another person, and meet -myself out, and be fearfully subtle and -humiliating.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>All the morning I was strung up to concert -pitch waiting for things to happen, and nothing -happened. I had a feeling that the end of my -little interlude with Cheneston was nearly over. -I tried so hard to be philosophic about it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We were going for the last picnic of the -season with the Gilpins and Morrisons. We -were going to motor out to the White Woman's -Cave and have lunch there. Cheneston was -coming too; the new battery was not in camp -yet, and he was at a loose end. Several of the -officers had been invited, and I had looked -forward to it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You'll wear your lemon linen coat and skirt -and your big black sailor, won't you, Pam?" -mother said, wandering into my room as I was -changing. "Dear, dear! how ragged the -garden looks! Winter will soon be here, and -then we shall have to see about coats and skirts -and things for you. Pam, there isn't any hitch, -is there?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I slipped on my exquisitely cut linen jacket.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Hitch?" I repeated.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You've not been doing anything stupid—because, -remember, your father and I have had -considerable expense in——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What have you heard?" I said hardily.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"That you had a certain friendliness for -Walter Markham, and that, although no one -else has had the honour of being reminded of -his existence, you have been hearing from him."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Well!" I said, my voice sounded like -reinforced ice. "Who has been gossiping?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I heard it," said mother uncomfortably. -"I—I should wear that quaint little collar with -the quaint spotted border, Pam."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>So already the idea was gaining ground, the -little rumour was gleaning strength as it floated -along. Pam Burbridge was in love with Walter -Markham, they wrote; perhaps they were -waiting till he came back to break it off. The -Burbridge-Cromer engagement had been too -sudden to be lasting. Rather hard on Cromer; -still, it was pretty obvious where he would -console himself, and a far more suitable match -in every way. I could hear them.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked at the successor chosen by popular -opinion when she and her mother came to call -for me. She wore a curious sea-green -hand-woven linen; instantly I knew why—it was the -colour of the water in the White Woman's -Cave. She wanted to make another exquisite -picture for Cheneston and the subalterns to -gaze at.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Carver is following with the lunch in the -dog-cart," she said. "Melon and salmon -mayonnaise and pineapple, and cold pheasant -and quail, and all sorts of lusciousness. Climb -in, Pam. Captain Cromer and the boys are -motoring over. Isn't it a ripping morning? I -heard from Walter Markham this morning. He -says it's the first letter he's been able to write -since he got out there. They seem to have had -a ghastly time."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said, "they have."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh—of course," Grace said, "you heard. -You said so last night, didn't you? I forgot. -Do you like Walter Markham?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I like him awfully," I said earnestly. I -tried to bring all sorts of things into my voice, -but I only sounded, as usual, like a guileless but -honest schoolgirl.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"So do I," said Grace Gilpin. Her face -was half turned away, exquisite tendrils of gold -fluffed about her face and hat—there were -cherries on her hat, they seemed no redder than -the curve of her wonderful mouth.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"If I were a man I should want to eat you," -I said suddenly. "Grace—what does it feel -like to be able to make any man you meet feel -like that?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Are you being catty?" Grace said. She -looked at me with surprise in her beautiful eyes.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I—I don't know," I said miserably. "I -think I'm trying to be."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace turned.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam, have you really been hearing from -Walter Markham?" she said quietly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked beyond her, up at the great bunch -of blackberries gleaming like black diamonds in -the sun. They seemed like a bunch of eyes -watching me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Suddenly I felt good; I felt as if my silly -little soul were enlarging and bubbling to the -surface. I knew why Grace asked—she asked -for herself and Cheneston, she wanted to think -I cared for Walter Markham.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said, "I have."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Does—Captain Cromer know?" she said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You heard me say I had heard from him -last night in your drawing-room."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I know, and then you burst into tears. I -was so glad you did."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why?" I asked, startled.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You saved me from doing the same thing, -you did it first."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We went into the White Woman's Cave -while the maids laid the lunch on the smooth, -springy grass. More guests had been invited -than I expected, but Cheneston had not yet -turned up.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The walls of the White Woman's Cave are -smooth and dark, and the sea purrs through it -and licks the smoothness with a little kiss, and -the light comes through the roof and lights the -water so that it gleams like pale green fire.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was wonderful and a little uncanny, like a -theatrical scene, and it was cold in there, and -the daylight and the sunshine seemed far away.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And to think a woman lived here for -years," one of the girls said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Her lover died and she wanted to get away -from the world."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"How romantic!" said another girl. -"Look, here's Major Morrison and Captain -Cromer."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think she thought that much more -romantic. As she spoke Grace Gilpin moved. -I don't know whether she did it purposely; -perhaps the instinct to frame her beauty is -implanted in her. She stood so that the green -light from the water, fairylike and -phosphorescent, held her in a shimmering glow of -opalescent fire. She had taken off her hat; -her coronet of fluffy, tendrilly gold hair shone -like a halo, and her dress gleamed like a -mermaid's sheath; she seemed neither of heaven -nor earth, a betwixt and between creature made -for man's undoing.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I wish I were an artist, Grace!" Cheneston said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Her pretty silver laughter floated out.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh! Why?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He would paint you as a spirit of the -cave," Major Morrison said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>As we came out into the sunshine I saw that -Cheneston was very white. He gripped my arm.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said, "I must talk to you, child. -I'm nearly off my head!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Lunch," I said feebly. I was suddenly -inexplicably scared. I seemed to have brought -the atmosphere of the cave into the sunshine -with me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Confound the lunch!" he said violently. -He turned to Grace. "I must talk to Pam," -he said. "May we have a quarter of an hour's -grace?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh—certainly."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Begin without us if we don't come."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Very well," she acquiesced.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Come," said Cheneston curtly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>So he had been thinking things over, and he -was going to ask me about Walter Markham, -and tell me that he and Grace had discovered -they cared for each other.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wondered if I could manage to look merry -as a marriage-bell with a funeral going on in my -own heart. I discovered that to be a quaint -little thing with a snubby nose has its -advantages: you're not expected to furnish a big -display of facial emotion.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I can't walk any more," I said. My knees -were trembling; I felt horribly, unromantically -sick. It was my great hour, the hour of my -renunciation, and I had no great feelings, only -little squeamish, physical ones.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Sit down, then," he said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I sat down with a flop, under a crab-apple -tree that was like a flame, and there was blue -sky above us and golden bracken all around us, -and when it swayed we could see the sea, like -slits of turquoise through golden fretwork, and -it seemed to me the stillest place in all the -world.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said, "my mother is very ill—dying," -and he turned from me and buried his -head in his hands.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I sat very still. It was so absolutely -unexpected, and by-and-by I clutched the bracken -on either side of me and I prayed inside myself: -"Don't let me go on feeling so dreadfully -like his mother—or I shall put my arms round -him and cuddle him!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>And I knew then that I loved Cheneston with -the only sort of love that is real and lasting—I -loved him as if he were my little, little boy. I -loved him when he was my strong, decisive -young knight. I loved the mystery in him, and -the strength of him that I didn't understand; -but I loved him best of all, most sweetly and -dearly of all, when he was just my hurt boy.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I don't think I see things romantically. I -suppose it's in keeping with my appearance. -I never see love as something that is remote and -cold and miles away. I would go to the ends -of the earth with Cheneston, and I would love -to nurse him when he's got a cold. I would -love to go to his house in Norway, but I would -also adore to make toast in front of the kitchen -fire with him if the maid was out. I suppose -my love is homely like myself, but it seems to -me that once you've got love you can't tuck it -up with the stars when you order dinner and -help make the beds—you don't even want to, -it makes you absolutely enjoy ordering dinner -and making the beds, that's the splendid part -about it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Love makes ordinary every-days, full of -ordinary every-day tasks, into high-days and -festivals full of little sacred services and -missions.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said. He lifted his head and -looked at me. "I'm sorrier than ever, my -poor little soul—since last night. You see, I -always thought that Walter Markham cared, -but I didn't know that you did. Kiddie, you're -such a splendid little sport, and I'll help you all -I can; but if you can't stick it, dear, I'll understand."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Stick what?" I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He put his hand over mine, and I felt it -tremble, and somehow the trembling made me -very strong.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'm an only son," he said. "I think I've -been rather a bad egg, debts and cards, wandering -over the face of the earth, a sort of rolling -stone, running away from my niche. It's -worried the poor old mater. You see, Cromer -Court is rather a topping old place, family for -generations and all that. She wanted me to -settle and marry and all that. Grief of her life -that I didn't."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"She's splendid, absolutely fine. Pam, -somebody has told her—about us. She wrote -me a wonderful letter this morning—it broke -me up—about us."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"About us?" I said idiotically.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Someone wrote to her and told her I was -engaged to you. She wants to see my future -wife. She's dying. I had a telegram from my -cousin down there. Her letter was so -wonderful. She said she would die happy knowing. -Pam—is it too much?" His eyes were full of tears.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It's nothing," I said. "I understand."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam!" he said. "Best woman in all the -world! Pam, there's something about you—it -upsets all my theories; I seem just a pretty -helpless sort of rotter."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I tried to find the right words to say.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The bracken swayed, a delicate, golden -trellis broken here and there into turquoise -like a mosaic; the birches shook their golden -spangles; and the little harebells, their stems -invisible in the welter of gold, swayed like jewels -on invisible chains: all the world was wonderful, -wonderful, wonderful, and its wonder was -throbbing in me, and all I could say was:</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"When is the next train?"</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="viii"><span class="bold large">VIII</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>I am writing this in my bedroom at Cromer -Court, at a Queen Anne desk, and by-and-by -I am going to climb in a Queen Anne bed to -watch the firelight flicker on the white panelled -walls, on the quaintest chintz I have ever seen -covering the chairs and the great divan, and -fluttering like restless wings over open -windows—pale green linen, the colour of young leaves, -with bunches of white-heart cherries scattered -over it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I feel simple as a milkmaid and good as a -nun in this dear old house, and I have never -felt so happy. It is a precarious happiness. -I should think the wives of the husbands home -on leave feel it the last two days. It is a sort -of happiness that freezes you while you are -hugging it to you because of its warmth, and -turns and rends you while you are caressing -it—painful and beautiful at the same time.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I saw Cheneston's mother to-night for a few -moments.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She is like one of those exquisite miniatures -in the Academy that no one but miniaturists -ever stay long enough to examine; her skin is -like a child's, her eyes are Cheneston's eyes -grown infinitely gentle—those queer hazel eyes -that look, in a miniature, as if the paint had -never dried.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"So this is Pam," she said, looking up at -me, and her voice is like Cheneston's, grown -faint and gentle; it has the same curious quality -that makes you feel thrilled, and causes all the -little nerves in your spine to "ping" as they -do at an exciting play. "My son," she said, -"I am so proud—such a vain old woman!—proud -that you should have won such a woman—the -only sort of woman that could ever have -held you, son."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>They have no gas or electric light here, only -candles in silver sconces. I looked up suddenly -and saw the perspiration glistening in beads on -Cheneston's forehead. She took my hands.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," she said, "you're a wonderful -little person—half gallant boy, half elf, and the -other part sheer mother. The gallant boy in -you will be his pal, the elf will keep him your -eternal lover, and the mother—will keep him -on his knees to you." She looked up at me -whimsically, tenderly. "The Cromers are a -woman's life-work—they run away for years -and leave you to break your heart, and they -come back and fill the hall with tusks and -elephant-leg umbrella-stands, and expect you -to go mad with them over the trophies. The -elf in you will still the call of the wild in -Cheneston, he will not dare to leave you, and -the mother that broods in your quiet eyes." She -turned to Cheneston. "You mustn't lose -her—she's the one woman in the world for -you—the only woman."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Then the nurse came back and signed to us -to go.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Old Mrs. Cromer gave me a wonderful smile, -and in that smile I suddenly realised how -beautiful, how magnetic she had been. It was a -smile of the most extraordinary and amazing -happiness.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Your father," I said, when we got outside, -"your father went away from her?" I wanted -to see if I had understood the significance of -the smile.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He took her," he said hoarsely. "She -was his star, his goddess."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>To-night we dined alone downstairs.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wore my grey taffeta with the tiny bunches -of pink apple-blossom and the little pink -georgette fichu.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt that nothing else in my wardrobe -was in keeping with the atmosphere of the Court.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston changed into ordinary evening -dress. It was the first time I had seen him out -of khaki. It sounds foolish and snobbish to -say he looked a very gallant gentleman, as if -I were trying to write an old-fashioned novel; -but it is the only phrase that exactly describes him.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt an extraordinary atmosphere of noble -sweetness, it seemed to throb through me. I -was shiningly happy in the very inmost corner -of my soul.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston is a perfect host; so many men -leave off being the wives' hosts after they have -married them. I had a feeling that Cheneston -never would.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We talked of books—funny, dear old-fashioned -authors like Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell -and Jane Austen. When we rose he -looked at me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You, woman, are wonderful," he said -tersely: "you have only blown in here, and -yet you belong to it, you are of it."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And to-morrow I shall blow away again," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And to-morrow you will blow away again, -he acquiesced.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Can you imagine Grace Gilpin here?" I -said suddenly. "Can you imagine her beauty -in this setting?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It is unimaginable," he said curtly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"She is beautiful," I persisted. I had an -idea that my words must come sobbingly, -because my heart was sobbing.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"She is the most beautiful thing I ever -saw," he agreed. "They are bringing us -coffee in the drawing-room."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think the drawing-room is the biggest room -I have ever been in; it is so long and narrow; -the walls are white panels, and the carpet pale -grey, and the chintz is the same grey with a -little fierce blue lobelia bobbing about on it, and -there is priceless blue Chinese porcelain everywhere, -and a wonderful and enormous grand -piano, and there were great bowls of white -jasmine everywhere.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I sat down at the piano and ran my -hands over the keys, and Cheneston spoke.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam—please don't sing. I—I beg you -not to sing."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I won't if you don't wish it."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Thank you."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>But after they had brought in the coffee old -Mrs. Cromer's nurse came and begged me to -leave the door open and sing. I looked at Cheneston.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," he said. "Tell mother Miss Burbridge -will sing." Then he looked at me; his -face was very white. "Can I fetch you music, -Pam?" he said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No, I don't need it, thank you."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He opened the french-windows, and the air -that blew from the sea and the red fields of -Devon swept into the room in a cloud of jasmine -scent, and through the diamond panes I saw the -stars twinkling—and suddenly I lost Pam -Burbridge and the pretty room. I became -something that had kinship with the stars and the -hot scent of jasmine, something that was -houseless and homeless and free; I walked -beside Cheneston through Elysian fields, I -talked to him and had no need of words. We -were mates, we who had never been lovers.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I stopped. I was quite alone, and someone -was rapping on the floor, and I heard the -nurse's voice over the stairs. "Miss -Burbridge, will you come?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I went slowly. I was trembling and a little -afraid.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I found the old lady sitting up in bed, and -Cheneston with his arms round her supporting -her at the back.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," she said, "I was frightened, dear—so -frightened. I had to send for you. You -and Cheneston had lost each other—I heard -it in your wonderful voice, child, I saw it in -the boy's face when he came to me. What -is it? What is it?" she looked at us piteously. -"I feel something is there. I know it! -Something that shouldn't be there! I feel it!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Nonsense, dearest," Cheneston said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"There is," she persisted. "I am -frightened for you both. Why do I fear you -losing each other?—you who were made for -her, and she who was made for you."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You are nervous," he said. "You are -worrying yourself unnecessarily."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She caught his hands.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I am afraid for you, my dears," she said. -"Cheneston—let me see you married before I -go. Let me be quite sure you have not missed -the supreme happiness."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"We cannot do that, mother—there are -many things to be thought of."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"White satin and bridesmaids, wedding -bells and marriage settlements do not make -a marriage, children. Pam, what is the -obstacle?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Nothing," I said desperately. "Nothing."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She looked at Cheneston; Cheneston laid -her down very gently.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You are worn out, dearest," he said. -"You must rest now."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She did not refer to it when I saw her the -next morning. She looked frailer than ever -by day, a wraith woman with jewelled eyes.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I breakfasted alone; a thin, fine rain drove -against the windows like sea-spray. In the -garden I could see the michaelmas daisies -bowed, great clumps of amethyst, the -chrysanthemums gleamed tawny red. Autumn was -later here, but in the rain gold leaves kept -falling, and the pearly white of the jasmine -from the front of the house strewed the path, -and here and there the petal of a passion-flower, -like an exotic beetle's wing.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I put on my little rainproof coat and -sou'-wester and went out.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I walked through the orchards, where wet -apples gleamed like jewelled fruit wrought in -ruby and emerald, where yellow plums hung -like waxen fruit, and the late pears like amber -ornaments. I walked through little spinneys -where the wet gold made your eyes ache. I -saw the red fields waiting for ploughing and -fields heavy with the late crops through the -rain like a soft coloured map: and I saw the -sea, queer and grey as an aged woman, -through the trees—and as far as I could see -it all belonged to the Cromers, and the words -of an old poem came to me, something about -"a goodly heritage, bound by the sea and -netted by the skies."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I stopped to speak to a little child, and it -answered me in the soft up-and-down of the -Devonshire dialect; and I knew I could have -been happy with Cheneston here—not with the -satisfied happiness of those who possess a -chippendale drawing-room suite, a parlourmaid, -and a car, but happy as those who inherit -the earth. I could have been happy with a -glorious, keen, swelling happiness.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I turned home. It smelt as fresh as if all -the earth had been newly turned that morning, -and as I turned a sunbeam struggled through -and flickered uncertainly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I found a letter waiting for me—two -letters, one from mother and one from Grace -Gil pin.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mother's was characteristic. She hoped -Mrs. Cromer was a nice woman and approved -of me. Were the estates extensive? Had -Cheneston a big rent roll? The end was -typical. "I cannot see what you gain by -postponing your marriage. It cannot enhance -your value in Cheneston's eyes. It is always -as well to remember that the world is full of -girls, and an engaged man is not regarded in -the same light as an engaged girl. I shall be -very glad to hear that you have come to some -sensible decision. Your father writes that he -has struck an expensive mess, and that he has -not been lucky at bridge lately. He is playing -"pirate"—it has superseded auction; try to -learn it if you can, social assets are never to -be despised."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Pirate at Cromer Court! I smiled.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I sat down on an old oak chest in the tiled -hall and opened Grace Gilpin's letter. The -sun was shining brilliantly now; the twinkling -raindrops that fringed the windows and hung -glistening on the strands of jasmine were -reflected on the red tiles in wriggling little -shadows, like tadpole ghosts. I took off my -wet mackintosh and my little sou'wester, and -fluffed up my hair with my fingers.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Grace's letter was very much to the point.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>"Walter Markham is home wounded. He is at -Lynn Lytton Hospital, Long Woodstock, Near -Manchester. What are you going to do about -it, Pam?"</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>Well, what was I going to do about it?</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>What </span><em class="italics">could</em><span> I do about it—except pray that -Cheneston didn't get to know until he didn't -want me any more.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I sat down stupidly and stared at the letter.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had a sudden vision of Grace writing, her -golden head bent, seeing in the missive and -Walter Markham's presence in England the -chance of freedom for herself and Cheneston; -believing Cheneston loved her and I loved -Walter Markham; believing that our -engagement was just an emotional mistake, never -guessing it wasn't an engagement at all!</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>A great many engagements are emotional -mistakes. Why not ours?</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston came out of the door on the right, -I suppose it was his study. He held a letter -in his hand. He was in khaki again, and he -looked ill and worried.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Good-morning," I said. I noticed he had -his Burberry over his arm, and his service cap -and a small dispatch case under his arm.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You've heard?" he said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What?" I said stupidly, and my heart -began to beat very rapidly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"That Markham is in England—wounded. -Oh! Pam—you shan't suffer, because you've -been so splendid and wonderful. You ought to -be with him; but he'll spare you, and -understand when he knows."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Where are you going?" I said desperately.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Up to Lynn Lytton to tell him I understand -that you care for each other, that you've told -me all about it, and that we're not engaged to -each other. To tell him how absolutely superb -you've been, and why you're here. My God! -Pam, do you think I'd ever forgive myself if -I mucked up your life, dear!"</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="ix"><span class="bold large">IX</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>"You—you mustn't go to Walter," I pleaded -desperately. "I—I want to go myself."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had one thought; it was so vivid that it -seemed like something dressed in scarlet -floating on a grey sea of little thoughts and fears -all inextricably mixed—it was that I must get -to Walter Markham first and </span><em class="italics">explain</em><span>.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," Cheneston said gravely, "are you -afraid of my being clumsy and not making -things clear to him?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I nodded. I couldn't speak. The idea of -Cheneston being clumsy, Cheneston with his -fine, fierce, almost uncanny insight into things, -had me by the throat.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I see," Cheneston said slowly. "Little -Pam, I hate to think I have made you afraid -for your happiness even for one minute. You -are so worthy of happiness—so absolutely -great! He'll understand, dear, how simply -priceless you've been to—come here. He's -bound to understand." He looked down at -me with fierce anxiety in his hazel eyes, he -seemed desperately questioning his own belief in -Walter Markham's broad-mindedness.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'll make him understand," I said. -"Don't worry, I'll make him understand."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>A sudden flood of fierce protective love swept -over me. I wished for the hundredth time that -I might be big and Cheneston little—ever so -little—that I might take him in my arms roughly -and tell him not to look like that. I felt I could -go to Walter Markham and explain everything, -I could sit by his bedside and skin my very -soul—but I couldn't help feeling, even then, it -would be easier to do something bigger and less -painful, something more actually physical than -soul-skinning.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I never found it very easy to show my feelings -to people; the bigger they are the more tightly -corked they seem. I often wished for, and -sometimes I've cried because I haven't, little -frothy feelings that bubble over into little easy -caresses and kind words and pretty compliments -and easy things like that. It rather hurts me -to get to the surface, I seem to have to tug -from such a long way down.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'll drive you to the station," Cheneston -said. "I shall tell mater you've got to go up -to Town on business."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'll tell her," I answered hastily.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I knew she would sense Cheneston's disquiet; -women lie to women better than men to women. -She took my departure more quietly than I -had anticipated. There was a lovely expression -on her dear face—it was as if her soul was -smiling to itself while she was grave. She -patted me with her lovely soft hands.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And you will be back early to-morrow, -dear, funny little girl? It's odd," she said, -"I see a cloud between you and Cheneston. -When I first saw it I was frightened, but now -I know it is not made by your hearts—it is -only a cloud your silly brains have made, child, -and it will go. You are going to dissipate some -of it to-day."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said, "I am."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was true. In that at least I didn't lie. -I was going to explain the truth to Walter -Markham, and I was going to make it easy -for Cheneston to marry Grace Gilpin.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She held my hand against her face. The -charm of her was like a beautiful, strong -current—I can't explain; all the things I long to -express and cannot, the things I suffer so for -my inability to voice and demonstrate, seemed -gloriously easy. I put my arms round her and -pressed her face to mine. I loved her with a -dear and full love.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"My little Pam!" she said. "My dear, -funny little soul!" Then she said sharply and -fiercely: "Oh, Pam, it's cruel if we women -who are sent into the world with out-size hearts -and feelings meet the wrong men! I met the -right one!" A note of triumph crept into her -voice. "And Cheneston will understand that -in your dear tiny body is a soul and a heart -too big and strong. People call it the artistic -temperament—it isn't really that, it means that -something that is shut up and sealed with other -people until they get to heaven where nothing -can hurt is left open—maybe it's left open -accidentally, maybe it's meant—and those -people suffer more than the rest of the world, -and are more gloriously glad, and out of the -glory and the travail of their souls they give -to the world wonderful music, or wonderful -pictures, or wonderful books. </span><em class="italics">And they are -not like other people</em><span>, Pam! They are very -great and very little at the same time, and not -one in a thousand can understand how life hurts, -and how glorious it is when it is glorious. -Cheneston will understand; that is why you and -he must never, never run away from each -other—you dear, funny little soul!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Then I heard Cheneston calling.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We drove to the station almost in silence. -He took the high dog-cart, and we could see -over the hedges; they sparkled with thousands -of raindrops, and the late dog-roses seemed like -phantasies wrought in vivid coral, and blackberries -like black diamonds and rubies jewelled -the world, and every bird seemed singing and -every cricket chirping for sheer gladness of the -newly washed day.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He told me he had had an extension of leave.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I was so happy. I have never had a feeling -that I did not want to share—I can't explain. -I just want to pass on every bit of loveliness -that comes into my life. We passed lots of -children picking blackberries, and I could have -cried because I wanted to kiss them so, or give -them something, or just tell them I thought -they'd get the loveliest lot of blackberries I had -ever seen—because I was up in the world, -sitting above the hedges with Cheneston.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We passed a little girl who had spilt all her -blackberries and was crying, and I took off a -little gold bracelet I had on and flung it to her.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I shall never forget the ecstatic look in her -small, grimy face.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You see," I said quickly, "I'm sorry if -you think I'm mad, but—but she was crying, -and now she is happy. She will be awfully -happy all day."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I'm never sorry for the impulsive things I -do, but I am nearly always sorry because people -don't understand. It seems to me like rubbing -all the lovely bloom off a butterfly's wing just -to demonstrate that it is a butterfly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I don't think you're mad," he said, smiling.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>If I had had anklets as well as bracelets I -could have given them away this morning. -He helped me down at the station; he was just -a little constrained, so I knew he was feeling -tremendously full of feeling, just as I was.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Modern life doesn't give a fellow much of -a chance. I have rather absurd notions about -you at this minute—I should like to be Sir -Walter Raleigh, and put my cloak down for -you to walk on. You don't know how humble -you make me feel, Pamela Burbridge."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt myself sort of melting towards him.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What can I do to show you how splendid -I think you are?" he said. "You wonderful -small person!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>And something inside me wanted to say, -"Exchange all this chivalrous gratitude for -just a tiny bit of love"; but I sat on the -something's head </span><em class="italics">hard</em><span>, like a good girl, and I said:</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why, you can get me my ticket; the -booking-office is open now."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>There is nothing more cheerless and depressing -than going to a place you don't know and -arriving all alone. If only there is a pillar-box -in the vicinity where you have once posted a -letter, or a tea-shop where you bought chocolates, -it establishes a feeling of intimacy. At -Long Woodstock I felt an alien of aliens, an -Englishwoman in a foreign country.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I swallowed a cup of tea and had a wash on -the cheerless northern station; then I took a -mouldy old fly that smelt of innumerable -weddings and funerals, and set out for Lynn -Lytton Hospital, and as I travelled past the -rows of grey stone houses I felt myself shedding -my high-flown courage of the morning feather -by feather, until I became the reserved, nervous -little coward I had always been. Furthermore, -I began to feel very sick.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I feel with intense earnestness that Charlotte -Corday and Nurse Cavell and Christobel -Pankhurst, and those wonderful women who fought -in the Russian Army, could never have felt sick -as I can feel sick, or they would have stopped -in the middle of their heroic deeds and gone -home to bed.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I can think of nothing more unheroic than to -feel sick on all the great and emotional occasions -of your life.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We seemed to climb Lynn Lytton, it was -high up on a hill, and by the time we reached -it the birds were twittering their benedictions -and the first stars were netted in the tree-tops.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I told the cabman to wait, and climbed some -steps—they seemed like the steps of the Monument.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I am glad the door opened at once, or I would -have turned and bolted down them like a rabbit.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I must have been feeling pretty bad, because -there was some late clematis clinging to one of -the pillars of the portico, and they seemed to -me in the twilight like large and particularly -meaty spiders.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I want so badly to write of the heroic -sentiments and thoughts I had, but I was sick, and -the clematis looked like fat spiders, and I -wanted to run away. That is the honest truth.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I want to see Captain Markham," I told -the sister who came to the door.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It is after visiting hours," said the sister -gently. "Are you his wife?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No—he hasn't a wife."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"His sister?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No—just—just——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I see," said the sister very gently. -"Please come in," and I saw that she did not -see—she thought that Walter Markham and I -had sentimental relations.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She took me into a little grey distempered -room hung with orange curtains, and sent the -matron to me. She reminded me of snow, so -deep that it could never, never melt—kind -snow, deep enough to be soft.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Are you Pam?" she said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked up, startled and taken unawares.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said briefly, and stared.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She sat down; she was a large woman, and -there was a soothing placidity about all her -movements.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I thought so," she said. "Captain -Markham has been calling for you night and -day—if we could have ascertained your other -name we should have sent for you, but when -he was conscious he said there was no Pam." She -looked at me thoughtfully. "So you are -Pam," she said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I nodded. "But it couldn't have been me -he was calling for. I—I—why?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He is very ill," she said, "that is why -I am going to let you see him to-night. I do -not think he will live till morning."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I saw that she told me purposely without -preamble.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I sat numbed. I could only repeat stupidly: -"But it couldn't be me he wanted."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt as if she were passing to me some -imitations of her aloof snowiness. I, too, felt -a little unreal.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I think you have turned up at the right -moment," she said. "Please come, and -don't be surprised if he doesn't know -you." She put her hand on my shoulder. "Don't -give up hope," she said; "nothing is -certain—not even in science and surgery."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think it is in one of Tennyson's things -there comes the phrase "into the jaws of -Hell"; it crept into my mind when I saw -Walter Markham.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I have never seen anything so terrible or so -pathetic. He was conscious.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why, it's Pam!" he said weakly. -"Dear little, funny little Pam." Then -earnestly, with a terrible effort to concentrate. -"Are you real?" He took my hand and felt -it tremblingly. "You're real," he said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The matron left us alone.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He was in a tiny room by himself, the blind -was up and the big window looked on to a -great hill, like the hunched shoulder of a giant.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why did you come?" he said. "Why did you come?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I knelt beside the bed. I was trembling and -I felt sicker than ever.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Above the titanic shoulder of the hill the -tiny bare white shoulder of the moon shrugged -itself into view.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I can't!" I pleaded. "Not now."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"My dear, you must. If I go out to-night -I go out—wondering."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I began to tell him. I told him all about -meeting Cheneston in the searchlight, and how -the mistake about our being engaged had -started. I told him that Grace Gilpin and -Cheneston loved each other. I told him all -about somebody writing to Cheneston's mother -and telling her that Cheneston was engaged -to me. I told him how fearfully ill she was, -and that I had gone to Cromer Court because -she so passionately wanted to see her son's -future wife.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"But why did you come to me?" he said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The moonlight was sweeping down the hill -to us now, an incoming tide of limpid silver. -I looked out of the window desperately.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I told Cheneston you and I cared—I -wanted him to feel free to marry Grace. This -morning he—he was coming to you—Cheneston -was—he was so afraid you would -misunderstand my being at Cromer Court, and -think I had ceased to care for you. Also this -morning I had a note from Grace Gilpin telling -me you were here, asking me what I was going -to do about it."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And they—Grace and Cromer—believe -there is some understanding between us, that -we grew to care for each other when the four -of us went about together?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said desperately; the hill suddenly -seemed to tip towards me, it seemed to carry -with it the smell of iodoform and disinfectant.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>And then the amazing and paralysing thing -happened: Captain Markham suddenly put his -arm round me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Well," he said, "isn't it true, Pam! -My God! child, isn't it </span><em class="italics">true</em><span>? Don't I love -you?—you ridiculous child, you wonderful, -wonderful thing with your strange crooked little -mouth and your great eyes! Oh! Pam, my -little, little girl—didn't you know I cared!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The hill tipped back into place like a giant -sitting back on its haunches, and the silver -tide seemed to ripple down it to ultimately -engulf us.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="x"><span class="bold large">X</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>Love is a cloak and is made in different -styles; some people wrap themselves tightly -in it, and there is only just enough to go round -them: it is their cloak, and if Cupid himself, -dimpled and in his birthday suit, came and sat -beside them on the top of a motor-bus in the -rain, they wouldn't go shares. For other -people Love is a large cloak, voluminous and -overlapping, and capable of sheltering, warming, -and comforting quite a lot of people round -the hem.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>My heart ached for him as I sat beside him. -He held my hand very tightly with his thin -fingers, almost like a frightened child, and I -had a feeling that he feared to drift out and I -was his anchor, and I wished that I could drift -out with him.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said once or twice, and I had -a feeling as if he were saying "Mother," and -I answered, "Yes, dear," and by-and-by he -smiled and whispered again, "Pam."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The matron kept coming in and out. Once -or twice she fed Walter Markham with a -teaspoonful of brandy, once she brought me a -cup of bovril; she seemed just the same as -when I first met her hours ago, like warm snow -immeasurably deep.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Human vitality is at its lowest in the small -hours," she whispered. She looked down at -Walter Markham. I looked at her. "I don't -know," she said. "I don't know."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I sat on. It was so quiet in there—the world -seemed like a very young baby asleep, the -moonlight flooding over the hill to diffuse a -sort of white holiness, an effortless tranquillity.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>They had said that Walter Markham could -not live through the night, and yet I was not -sorry for him. I only wanted to be immensely -good to him while he lived, to send him out -happy.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said, "I sort of hear you -singing—are you singing?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Perhaps my heart is."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What songs, Pam?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Lullabies, dear, lovely, gentle lullabies."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Not love-songs, Pam?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Love-songs suit you best," he said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I tried to see the future, sitting there. I -thought the peace and the moonlight might -help me, it seemed to make things so beautifully -abstract and impersonal that the planning -hardly hurt at all. In all my plans I never -contemplated Walter Markham living and -loving me, and believing I had come to him -because I loved him. I saw myself leaving -the hospital and going back to Cromer Court. -I knew that Cheneston's sympathy and gratitude -would be my particular Garden of Gethsemane.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wondered a little why Life and Love should -always peck and beat and burn me, and I -wondered for the first time without resentment.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The house surgeon came in; he wore a long -white linen coat over pink and white pyjamas, -and apologised for his costume, and I went -and walked in the moonlit corridor with the -matron.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It will be a triumph if we save him," she -said—"but it will be your triumph."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked at her, startled and perplexed.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Then you think?" I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Six hours ago the chances were a hundred -to one against; they aren't now."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Doesn't anything ever hurt you?" I said -suddenly. "Don't you ever feel all twisted -up with the beauty or the honour of things? -Don't you find things cruelly lovely or -hideously bad? Don't people and their ways -make you writhe?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I haven't time," she answered tranquilly. -"I'm always doing things or else I'm sleeping -hard."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The house surgeon came out.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Everything is extraordinarily satisfactory," -he said. "I've tried a very small dose of -scopolamin-morphine."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I went back and resumed my vigil. I did -not feel at all tired. I felt a little aloof, as if -I were sitting apart and critically watching -myself.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I heard a bird twitter, and then the stillness -settled down tighter than ever, and then the -bird twittered again and a tinge of light, pallid -and uncertain, crept up behind the hill.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The dawn was coming, the little bird voice -had heralded it.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The little tinge became pink; the stars -seemed to blink baldly, like eyes without eyelashes.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The bird world stirred, a blackbird trilled a -few delicious notes. I saw that a few trees -fringed the hill; the dawn peeped behind them, -rosy and fresh, like a child peering from behind -its fingers.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The hospital was waking up, too; I saw a -woman cross the dewy orchard to a cowhouse in -the corner carrying milk-pails and stool.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The scene, which had been changing and -intensifying every second, suddenly remained -stationary; it was as if Nature suddenly -stepped back to view her work—she had -fashioned a golden world with the help of the -sun, gloriously, dazzlingly gold, golden apples -and golden trees, golden thatched roofs; it -blazed beyond my window.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Walter Markham opened his eyes.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Topping day," he said weakly. "Hullo, -doc!—I didn't go out, you see."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Go out! Havers! man, I'll be dancing -at your wedding before the week is out!" The -gruff Scotch doctor, shaved, and clad in -khaki and alert, laughed. "You're doing fine!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Wedding," Walter Markham said weakly. -"I shall be all right? My arm? -There—there isn't any reason why I shouldn't -marry?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"None on earth."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He looked at me. There was a radiancy -in his eyes, a sort of throbbing happiness.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"O God!" he said, "I'm so happy!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The house surgeon took me away; he was -babbling foolishly, and he looked like an -excited rocking-horse; he had a long narrow -face and wide nostrils.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Splendid!" he kept saying. "Absolutely -top-hole! Splendid! Good chap, -yours! Splendid!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He's going to live?" I said. Suddenly -I felt very tired, as if my eyelids had been -pressed back.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Of course! The hospital must have -some of your wedding-cake. Oh, splendid!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The matron came down the long corridor.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Will you take her down to the visitors' -room, doctor?" she said. "I'm just going -off duty. I didn't tell you before, Miss -Burbridge, but your mother is here—she's been -here nearly an hour."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mother was sitting with her back to the -orange curtains. As I entered the room I -became conscious of the faint scent of jasmine -with which I always associated her.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"How did you know I was here?" I said -involuntarily.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I wired to Cromer Court that I must see -you, and Cheneston wired back that you were -away in the North for a few days. I was -puzzled. I showed the letter to Grace Gilpin, -and she suggested that you had come to see -Captain Markham. Why did Cheneston let -you come, and why did you come?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I wanted to and he wanted me to," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I thought it very clever of Grace Gilpin to -guess and send mother here, it made it so -much easier for Cheneston and her if I could -be caught with the man I was supposed to be -in love with.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I knew that you knew no one in the North; -but for Grace I should never have thought. -I didn't believe I should find you here."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"But you have," I said wearily. "What -do you want?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," mother said baldly, "are you in -love with Walter Markham?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wish I didn't feel so horribly tired and -done. I knew I could never be subtle and -evasive with mother, somehow she always -knocked over my defences and surprised the -truth in me. She had a way of taking my -deepest and most secret feelings by the scruff -of the neck and dragging them ruthlessly into -the light—almost as if she wanted to see if -their ears were clean.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No," I said, "I'm not in love with him."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Then what are you doing here?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He wanted me."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Did he send for you?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," said mother, "you are hiding -things. Are you?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I am going to find them out, there's -something here I don't understand at all. -Why did Cheneston let you come to see -another man?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He thought I wanted to."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You did not want to," mother said. -"You are crazily, madly in love with Cheneston, -that is obvious to anyone who knows you."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Is it?" I said. "I hoped it wasn't. I -did it for that purpose, you see, because I -am crazily, madly in love with Cheneston, -and he is crazily, madly in love with Grace -Gilpin."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He used to be before he met you," -mother put in. "I did not know——" she -paused and looked at me. "I think you'd -better explain right from the beginning," she -said decisively.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Do you?" I countered quickly. "I am -afraid it will be rather a shock—you see, I'd -never met Cheneston until that night father -came home and told you I was engaged to -him. He has never for one minute intended -to marry me."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"But you are staying with his mother as -his future wife."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"We could neither of us help that. It was Fate."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Look Here, Pam, cease to talk like a penny -novelette! Explain things."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Very well," I acquiesced. I sat down -and explained things from the very beginning, -fully.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And so you're engaged to neither -of them?" mother said when I had finished.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt as if my very soul had been dragged -out for public inspection. I was busy packing -it back again.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No," I said. "Now please tell me why -you came?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I came because I have to get five hundred -pounds from somewhere at once."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I haven't fifteen shillings, mother; why -come to me? and what is it for?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Your father," answered mother; her lips -were compressed. "He must have it -immediately. He owes to his C.O.—and there -are complications. He—" she paused and -frowned—"he was always a vile bridge-player. -His declarations were crimes."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said. "But why come to me?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You must borrow it from Captain Markham -or Cheneston."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I stared at her! This morning she seemed -no longer handsome, her elegance was the only -thing left to her—and that seemed just a -physical and social mark.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It is impossible," I said, "absolutely! -Captain Markham is desperately ill!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Then there is Cheneston."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Absolutely impossible!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He would give it to you in gratitude for -the way you've played the game. If you don't -you force me to take it with my own hands—you -see, we should have had the money but -for the amount we have spent on you lately."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What would you do?" I said hoarsely.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I should just tell Cheneston that you -adored and worshipped him, and if he didn't -marry you he would utterly spoil your life. I -should say you were too proud and noble to -come yourself."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You wouldn't do that," I said. "Mother—at -least play the game!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Two can't do that," she said. "Your -father does that. I pay the price."</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="xi"><span class="bold large">XI</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>I used to wonder, in the days when love and -marriage seemed very beautiful and interesting -and tremendous food for speculation, but -utterly removed from reality and </span><em class="italics">me</em><span>, what the -woman felt like when the question of money -first cropped up, whether it spoilt the idealism -and romance a little, upset the atmosphere like -a Ransome lawn-mower introduced into the -Garden of Eden.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I used to wonder how I would like asking -Cheneston for a new hat, and I always came -to the conclusion that I would sooner wear the -brim like a halo when the crown fell to pieces -from old age than ask him.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I suppose if men love you frightfully they -make the question of finance easy; but I think -my experience with mother and father has -rather terrified me, they made the mutual -finance discussion so utterly degrading—and -I think listening to them has given me a nervous -distaste, a sort of hyper-sensitive shrinking -from the discussion of ways and means.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It has always seemed so infinitely easier to -go without things.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>When I sat in the train and thought of -asking Cheneston for five hundred pounds to -pay father's card debts I felt sick, and I felt -the real me starting to close up tight, like a -sea-anemone when you poke it with your toe.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mother travelled to Town with me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She questioned me about my farewells to -Walter Markham—she has a serene way of -questioning. I think she would have made a -mark in the Spanish Inquisition.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Did he show much distress at your leaving -him, Pam?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I don't know whether he quite realised. -He had a sort of relapse, and he was only -partially conscious. The doctors thought me -callous. The one like a rocking-horse told me -I had no right to leave him. I said it was -essential I should return. If he could have -kept me there by force he would."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I understand from the sister that this -sudden relapse makes it more unlikely than -ever that he will pull through, apparently the -next twenty-four hours are the test."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Your nails are not very carefully -manicured," said mother.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I laughed; it was so like mother to obtrude -utterly unimportant trivialities, to bring you -crashing to earth with some ridiculous trifle.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You will send the money as soon as -possible, Pam."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I absolutely can't do it, mother!" I said -desperately. I had a sudden vision of myself -asking Cheneston for money.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You must," mother returned hardily; she -spoke casually, as if she were reminding me to -send a postcard to notify her of my safe -arrival. "I shall not hesitate to go to -Cheneston and tell him you are frantically and -desperately in love with him, and what may -have been jest to him is grim reality to you, -and unless he marries you he'll ruin your -happiness. I shall be able to say it sincerely -because I know it to be true. You are going -to tell Cheneston that Walter Markham quite -understands why you are staying at Cromer -Court, that you have unlocked your lovers' -hearts to each other."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I spoke rudely to mother for the first time -in my life, my fear of her was swept away by -a sudden passion of rebellion.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh, shut up!" I said furiously. "Shut -up! Shut up! Shut up!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She looked at me curiously, her lips a little -compressed.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"We should have trained you for the -stage," she said. "There is an abandon -about you at times that would do better for -the theatre than real life—where it is merely -crude and bad form."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It seems to me that everything real and -vital and honest, all forms of emotion and -feeling, are bad form!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Nearly all."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Except borrowing from your friends and -threatening your daughter."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mother shrugged and looked out of the window.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Unless your father can produce five -hundred pounds within the week he will be -forced to resign his commission, in which case -he would get no pension, and as he has no -influence and no brains the prospect of our -future does not intrigue me."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I, too, looked out of the window; a light -frost had crisped the leaves, and though there -was no sun the landscape was so full of gold -that it glowed and vibrated with apparent -sunshine. The fields were full of workers, -women in coloured linen overalls guiding -ploughs, and allotment-workers on their -patches, and the little cottage gardens were -gay with autumn flowers; and I wondered if -there were undercurrents in all these apparently -simple lives, if the men and women out -there in the brilliant golden world had -furtive motives and social masks like mother -and I.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It is never safe to wonder for more than -three seconds whether everything is what it -seems unless you are over fifty—when you are -under fifty it hurts, but when you are over -fifty you know that you can never alter other -people, only yourself, and you know that your -disillusionment is half your own fault.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt a sort of strangling bitterness. I was -very grateful for it, because I knew that out -of it you can grow a sort of hothouse don't-care-ness -that makes it possible for you to do -horrid things and not feel horrid until long after -they are done.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I caught a train to Cromer Court almost at once.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Mother saw me off.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She stood at the window and chatted -charmingly. I am sure that all the people in the -carriage were enchanted with her personality. -Mother is so fastidiously, almost contemptuously -refined and cultured. Had she lived -in the time of the French Revolution she would -have been gloatingly guillotined by the -revolutionists for the very way she breathes.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And you won't forget?" she said lightly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I won't forget," I answered.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>One of the most disappointing things in life -is that you never go back to a place—even if -you have only been away twenty-four -hours—feeling exactly the same as when you left it. -You can recover your old poise, but the going -away has altered you, you make a dozen little -mental readjustments on your return—you see -things with the aid of the new experience you -have gained during your absence. Life is one -continual process of readjustment with people, -places, and things, and ourselves.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We marvel at the chameleon—his feats are -nothing to the feats of a perfectly normal -human.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I went back to Cromer Court a different person.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I met Cheneston as a different person.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I know that he was different.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Nothing stands still.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"How is he?" he said at once; and I answered:</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"They think he will pull through."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh, Pam!" he said; and then "Thank God!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Mother came to the hospital," I told him -as I climbed into the dog-cart. "Grace -Gilpin seemed to think I would be there. It -was rather funny her thinking that."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I told her—I wrote," he said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I smiled; the don't-care mood was flourishing. -I could feel it steadily swallowing up my -little qualms and pitiful sense of honour and -dignity, they were vanishing in it like débris -thrown on thoroughly efficient quicksands.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"How is your mother?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Longing for your return. Oh! Pam—the -tremendously strong feeling she has for you -makes it doubly hard for both of us. You -explained to Markham—everything?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I nodded.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And they will telegraph news of him here?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He lifted me out of the dog-cart at the door -of Cromer Court; his face looked grey.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"God bless you," he said, "for coming -back to us!"</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="xii"><span class="bold large">XII</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>We dined in Mrs. Cromer's room.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She insisted and would take no denial.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I thought she seemed stronger and more -lovely than ever; she was full of whims and -loveliness. She seemed to sparkle with -happiness. She sent us away, she wanted a -consultation with the cook.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It is to be a very special dinner," she -told us. "And Pam is to go and lie down. -Sweetheart, have you a white frock?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No," I said, "only pink, dear, pink and grey."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You must wear white," she said. "I am -bubbling with schemes for my dinner of dinners. -I have a frock for you, Pam. Nurse shall -bring it—you'll look like a funny little Dutch -princess in it, stepped out of an old Dutch -fairy-tale book. Now run away, Honey."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Nurse was perturbed when she brought the -frock; it was of softest ivory white satin, made -in Empire style with a wealth of real point de -rose lace.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"She will insist," she said, "and the -doctor said she was to have her own way as -much as possible—but I don't know. I don't -know, I'm sure. She says you are to wear -this pearl comb in your hair, and these little -white satin shoes studded with pearls. Aren't -they ducks? Are you going to pile your hair -on the top of your head like those funny old -pictures downstairs? I wish the doctor would -call again. I think he'd veto this dinner idea, -but I'm not sure it wouldn't upset her more to -be thwarted than to give it. She's wonderful."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>There are moments in everyone's life when -you feel as if you're taking part in an unreal -play; there comes a sudden feeling of panic, -as if you did not know your part. I got it -that night when I was dressing—and yet there -was a dreadful thrilling, electric sweetness -about it all.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I was excited, my fingers and my toes -tingled and my spine felt creepy; and when -I brushed my hair it cracked with electricity, -and a funny little nerve near my ear that always -betrays itself when I am excited began to -wriggle.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I suppose there is something of the joy of -forbidden fruit in it—but it is </span><em class="italics">wonderful</em><span> and -gorgeous to have Cheneston look at me like -a lover, even though I know it is only to satisfy -his mother.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I think it is awful the way we women can -kid ourselves about love, drench ourselves in -a sweetness that isn't really there, get -intoxicated with a joy that exists only in our own -imaginations.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>If I had been going to the altar with -Cheneston I couldn't have been more thrilled -than I was when I entered Mrs. Cromer's room.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston rose. He was looking very white -and bewildered; and suddenly the fact that he -was nonplussed made me feel almost cruelly -gay and confident.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam!" Mrs. Cromer said. "Oh, boy! boy! isn't -she the very sweetest thing that -ever happened?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Surely," he said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>There was a round table laid for two, with -a white linen tablecloth with a border of real -lace eight inches wide, and in the centre stood -a huge white and gold Venetian glass basket -filled with lilies of the valley and maidenhair -fern.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I am going to have a little white love-feast -all to myself for my two children," she said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I caught my breath—somehow I had not -quite expected just that.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>For a dizzy moment I wondered what she -would say and do if she knew the truth—that -Cheneston and I had never been engaged and -would never marry.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Everything we had was white, from the -artichoke soup to the iced pudding. It was -a wonderful meal, exquisitely served; it tasted -like straw to me—and it would have fascinated -an epicure. There was champagne, the only -note of colour on the table; and Cheneston -and I talked at high tension.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>To me it had a peculiar and appealing joy; -I could say to Cheneston some of the things -I felt, and he accepted them as part of my -rôle in the astonishing little farce; and from -her bed the old lady watched us, an indescribably -happy expression on her face.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>And Cheneston said things to me—things -to remember and hoard in myself, and not the -knowledge that they were just "part of the -game" could rob them of their wonder for me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The atmosphere was extraordinary—to me -it felt rather as if we were all being charming -and polite, and listening for an explosion at -the same time; and there were moments when -the explosion seemed inevitable. It seemed -as though it </span><em class="italics">must</em><span> come.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>At last she let us go—and yet I was loath to.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>As I was crossing the hall a maid came to me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"The boy brought it nearly ten minutes -ago—so I kept him. I didn't like to disturb -you, miss."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I took it. It was from the matron of the -hospital. "Patient doing well. Out of danger."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No answer," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>So Walter Markham was going to live, and -I had promised——</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Good news?" Cheneston said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I handed him the telegram, and he followed -me into the drawing-room.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh, Pam!" he said. "Then you can -marry him and be happy! I wish I could do -something just to show my enormous gratitude -to you."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Do you really mean that?" I said. I -swung round on the music-stool, on which I -had seated myself, and smiled up at him.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Of course I do."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Then give me five hundred pounds," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston lit a cigarette.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I do think the girl who has been brought -up among a pack of brothers and a crowd of -male cousins misses something. When you -start knowing men for the first time in your -twenties—when your critical faculties are at -their very keenest—you do get a fearful amount -of astonishment and thrills out of the appalling -difference there is between their ways and the -ways of your own sex. It's a never-ceasing -source of wonder to you.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had startled Cheneston by a totally -unexpected demand for five hundred pounds—and -he lit a cigarette.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>A woman would have played with something, -probably the blind-tassel—Cheneston was -standing near the window—repeated my -question, and tried to read my face; the man did -none of these things. I think cigarettes are -to men what dangly things about dresses, and -bracelets, and hairpins are to women—something -they can play with and readjust when -something has robbed them of their poise and -sang-froid. I notice that nervy women and -shy women often have scarves and bead necklaces -and things they can finger in stressful -moments.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Would you like it in notes, or will a cheque -do?" Cheneston asked quietly. "If you will -take a cheque I will give it to you now; if -you want notes I am afraid you must wait until -I can drive in to the bank."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I want it in notes," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wanted him to ask questions, to show -enormous astonishment and interest. I was -furious with him for being so calm.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I think you owe me something for coming -here," I said crudely.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wanted to rouse him at any price. I -don't know quite what there is in feminine -make-up that makes you suddenly want to -hurt the man you love—and somehow the more -aloof and patient and wonderful they are, the -more you want to scratch. It's only when -they get a bit peevish and earthly that you -suddenly leave off and feel repentant. If a -man, especially a husband, ever patted me on -the head, I should </span><em class="italics">bite</em><span> him; and I don't know -why, but terribly gentlemanly men always make -me feel horribly unladylike.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I don't think I'm a nice character—but I -don't think people who feel things terribly, and -get themselves all sort of churned up with -intensity, are very nice—not what ordinary -people call "nice," anyway. I think ordinary -people like to feel "sure" of you because it's -a great compliment when it is said of you, -"She's always just the same." They advance -on you with the same trustful confidence that -a kitten does on its saucerful of milk. I own -it's bad luck to find a saucerful of dead -sea, or a minute proportion of fire and -brimstone.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I owe you more than five hundred -pounds," Cheneston said quietly; then he -looked at me for the first time. "Pam," he -said, "you've altered so lately. Are you -happy?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'm a twittering bunch of sunshine," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt black inside with bitterness and -rebellion.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'm glad," he answered quietly, "you -didn't just strike me that way."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wanted to cry like a silly kid, and yet I -wanted to be a woman of the world and sting -and say clever, lashing things full of prettily -covered up spite.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wanted to feel old and hard and bad, and -I could only feel young and inadequate and -tearful and sniffy, and I hadn't even got a -handkerchief.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I opened the piano. I was thinking how -horrid it is to have our parents thrust upon -us, and have to do humiliating things for them -that put you in a false position with the people -you love best. My brain was a tangled bunch -of rebellious "whys?" all squirming like blind -kittens.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Do you mind if I strum?" I asked.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Please do," Cheneston answered -courteously. "Will my smoking worry you?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh no," I said carelessly, and what I -wanted to say was, "Don't you even care -enough to ask me why I want that five hundred -pounds from you? It's positively insulting of -you just to give it to me without a single query -as to its destination. How dare you—dare -you—dare you think I am the sort of young -woman who calmly asks for five hundred pounds -for pin-money! Your silence implies that you -</span><em class="italics">think</em><span> I am."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The long narrow drawing-room looked so -beautiful, so dainty, so fresh. The candle-light -was reflected softly on the white panelled -walls; the fierce little blue lobelia on the quaint -grey chintz seemed to stand out, and the -moonlight coming through the french diamond-paned -windows lay in pools on the grey carpet -like stagnant water—the room was so big -that the mellow candlelight never spread to -there.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was all so big and grave and stately that -I felt like an angry mosquito—and yet fate -had behaved rottenly to me, assigned to me -an ignoble part.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I chose the wonderful love-song from -"Samson and Delilah," and I forgot -Cheneston, I forgot the room, and the blue -dragon-pots of late madonna lilies. I forgot -myself—only the scent of the lilies stayed -and drenched me with indescribable -sweetness, and I seemed to struggle down into -the soul of Delilah and understand why -she hated and yet loved Samson for his -strength, as I hated and loved Cheneston -for his.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston was sitting in the arm-chair, -gripping the sides, and when I stopped he lit -another cigarette.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I could have smacked him.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Thanks," he said, "it's a wonderful thing."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I played the opening bars of "Thank God -for a Garden."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt like a worn-out mosquito.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'm afraid you're tired, Pam," he said -when I had finished. "You look awfully -tired."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I think I'll go to bed," I said. "My -head is rather rotten."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'll ask nurse to bring you an aspirin."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No thanks—it's just sleep I want. I shall -be all right to-morrow."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'm sorry your head is bad."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I often get headaches."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He held open the door for me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wondered if he were going to refer to the -five hundred pounds.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Good-night," I said slowly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Good-night," he answered gravely. "I -hope your head will be better in the morning."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Outside the door of old Mrs. Cromer's -room I paused. I had a passionate and -overwhelming desire to go and tell her the truth. -I was in need of counsel. I craved advice. -I felt that nothing in the whole world could -ever be right again. The future terrified me, -and all the people in it—Walter Markham, -mother, father.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt I would give anything to go and lay -my burden on someone else's shoulder.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>If I felt like a mosquito at all, it was when -it feels and fears the approach of winter.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="xiii"><span class="bold large">XIII</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>I woke at midnight with an extraordinary -feeling that I was the last person left alive on -earth, a consciousness of desolation and -isolation terrifying and indescribable. I used to -get it when I was a child, and I would have -gone into a lion's cage for company. I believe -it is some form of nerve pressure medical men -can't explain.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I got up shivering and put on my little silk -kimona.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt I had to go to Mrs. Cromer—I had -to tell her all about Walter Markham, who was -getting better and who thought I loved him -and wanted to marry me, and Cheneston who -did not love me. I felt I had to tell her about -Grace Gilpin—the very lovely person Cheneston cared for.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The impossibility of struggling through the -immediate future alone and unadvised appalled -me; chiefly I was terrified about Walter -Markham, the man to whom I had been so -horribly unkind in my kindness, the man who -believed I had gone to the hospital to see him -because I cared. I had fostered the belief -because he was dying—and he had lived, and -all the hopes I had raised and the delusions I -had tenderly fostered lived with him.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>My life had been the life of a little child -until my meeting on the shore with Cheneston -that day, all things ordered and planned for -me, and now I was suddenly called upon to -play a rôle almost verging on drama, requiring -subtlety of which I was quite incapable, finesse -of which I could have no knowledge.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I crept, shivering, along the panelled -landing, past Cheneston's door. I knew the nurse -was sleeping in the little dressing-room attached -to Mrs. Cromer's.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I prayed Heaven she was asleep as I -cautiously opened the door.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The night-light on the washhand-stand -burned steadily; it was reflected in little spots -of primrose light on the mahogany furniture.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I crept to the bed.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The old lady was lying very still. She -looked extraordinarily lovely and fragile, and -a tiny smile curved the corners of her sweet -old mouth, as if she had fallen asleep in a -network of happy thoughts.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She seemed so small in the big room full -of furniture.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I realised as I knelt beside her how much -I loved her, what an ideal she would always -be in my life.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I softly kissed her hand, kneeling there, and -then I realised it held a letter, and I caught -sight of the words.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I fall asleep happily because I leave you to -another mother—little mother Pam of the big -eyes and the big heart. The child loves you, -Cheneston——"</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>I touched her face; it was cold as ice. -touched her hand.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Cheneston's mother had fallen asleep happily.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh, my dear!" I whispered. "And I -came to tell you—and now you'll never know -that I wanted to be his mother, and he wanted -another sort."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I don't know how long I stayed there. -I seemed very close to her. She was so -beautiful, the loveliest old thing with that little -tender smile curving her lips; the peace of -her, like the loveliness, was indescribable.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wondered if in heaven there were things -to mother and love. I hoped so; her life -had been so full of warmth, so radiant with -humanity. I thought of her extraordinary -quaintness, the delicious way she put -things—I heard again her laughter.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked at the letter.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"The child loves you, Cheneston."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He mustn't see that; last words have a -tremendous significance, and we credit those -who are near heaven with super-insight; just -those few words might set him questioning and -wondering, might get between him and Grace -Gilpin.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Had I right to rob him of her last message?</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>To leave it there would be to give myself -a chance; to take it would be to destroy my last.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I took it very gently from her fingers.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I would not destroy it, it was not mine to -destroy; I would cherish it very carefully, -and after a while I would send it to him -anonymously.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I realised that the need for my presence at -Cromer Court was over; I was free to go, -my part was played and the curtain was down.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Exit Pamela Burbridge from Cheneston -Cromer's life.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I staggered to my feet.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It is easy to do dramatic things, to make -your exit; but to slip away when you want to -stay, when your whole heart is aching to stay, -to make exits so silently and unostentatiously -that the ones you long to miss you hardly -know that you are gone—that is the hardest -of all.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I knew before I left Mrs. Cromer's side that -I was going to run away—away from Cheneston -and Walter Markham and mother and father.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had to. I couldn't stay and face things out.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>To begin somewhere else all over again.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was the explanation I was afraid of, -explanations to mother, to father, to Cheneston, -to Walter Markham.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I was running away from Explanations.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wrote a little note and pushed it under -Cheneston's door, where he would find it in -the morning.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>"Please send the five hundred pounds to -mother.—P.B."</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>I packed a few of my serviceable clothes in -a handbag.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had five pounds in notes and fifteen shillings -in silver.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The dawn was just breaking when I left the Court.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The world was wet and cold.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked back at the house from the other -side of the wrought-iron gate; its shuttered -windows seemed like hostile eyes.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I felt a little like Eve expelled from the -Garden of Eden—I wondered if her expulsion -had taken place on a wet morning before the -sun was up.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="xiv"><span class="bold large">XIV</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>I had read "Alone in London" stories, -rather wonderful, poignant things. I -remembered two, one by Horace Newte and one by -Peggy Webling. They had gripped me at the -time. I had been so lonely in my real life -that I always found it easy to get inside the -skin of the heroines I was reading about, and -for days my lonely walks with Pomp and -Circumstance across the wet moors and through -leafless lanes were no longer lonely or -desolate—they had become the streets of the greatest -capital in the world.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>If you have sufficient imagination and a -cheap lending library near you your world is -never unpeopled. I often think that the library -is the one thing that prevents prisoners going -mad—you couldn't go mad if you were allowed -O. Henry once a week and Jane Austen to -read yourself to sleep with.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Two things I hadn't expected about London -happened: it was radiant with sunshine when -I arrived, and no one took the faintest notice -of me.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I was a little nonplussed; then I found -a boarding-house, not in Bloomsbury, where -the wallpaper was not flowered and the -atmosphere was not cabbagey; the landlady -neither stared at me nor asked questions, and -the maid was fat and brisk and efficient; and -there was a parrot in the basement who said -"change for 'Ighgate" all day long; nothing -could have been less sinister or more normal -and cheery.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I cried myself to sleep the first night—it -seemed the right thing to do; but I left off -in the middle because I couldn't think of -anything more to cry about.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had a dear old lady in the room next to -mine. She knocked at my door just as I was -falling to sleep.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"My dear," she piped, "if you should -hear a raid warning, if you would just tap the -wall. We all go down into the cellar—and one -likes to prepare a little."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Prepare?" I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Hindes," she whispered apologetically, -"curlers—you know—one doesn't like——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I fell asleep smiling on my first night in -darkest, dreadfulest, naughtiest London.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The next day I started to hunt for work. -I was paying forty shillings a week, and had -only four pounds ten left of my money.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I found it at once. I took the money in a -cinema booking-office. It was dull, and I got -thirty shillings a week; I took it because it -gave me the entire morning to hunt for more -remunerative work.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I met with no adventures in my hutch. I -was sworn at several times for giving the -wrong change, and the gorgeous gentleman in -Prussian blue and silver uniform, who waved -the people to their seats inside, gave me a -packet of butterscotch. But the more -remunerative work did not present itself. I was -untrained. I could not type or do shorthand, -and I had no previous experience. The men -who interviewed me were most civil, they -suggested Clark's College or Pitman's. I was no -good to them.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had to change my boarding-house. I went -to one near Kentish Town, it was very clean, -and the landlady had been a professional cook. -I boarded with the family, and a Polish Jewess -also lived there, a skirt hand in a big West -End tailor's. She used to press my skirts.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wondered if anybody was advertising for -me, or if there was any fussation going on. I -did not think I was worth a whole detective -for one minute. I did not attempt to hide. -I had read somewhere that to live an ordinary -life was the surest way to escape detection.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wondered, as the months slipped by, if -Cheneston had married Grace Gilpin.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I did not lose Cheneston. I could always -step right back in memory into the days I had -spent with him, days of infinite and dear -delight.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I knew I loved Cheneston, that I wanted -passionately to be his wife; that if he were to -ask me to marry him I would marry him -rapturously and thankfully, even though I knew -he didn't care two straws about me and would -need a photograph to remember the way I did -my hair.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I believe the "if she be not fair for me, -what care I how fair she be" sort of people -are very, very jelly-fishy.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>If you care for a man you care for him, and -that's all there is to it; the fact that he cares -for someone else or doesn't care for you -doesn't alter your feelings, it only makes the -pain and hurt of it an artistic success.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wish I was jelly-fishy in my feelings for -people. If I were I could say of Cheneston, -"I can't stick here! I'll float on." But I'm -a barnacle creature where I love. I shall be -Cheneston's girl even if I never see him again. -My heart went from me when I first met him, -and the doors closed after it and left a little -hole. It will always ache, and I shall always -know there is a hole where a heart should -be—especially when I listen to wonderful music or -see sunsets or little children at play.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I shall never, never have another heart to -give away; some women have theirs on bits -of elastic so that they can always pull them -back and give them away again; a man sort -of holds it until somebody else wins it, like a -challenge shield or a football cup.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I gave mine entirely and unconditionally; I -believe that time will cocaine the hole.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I look to time to do a lot for me in the -healing and dulling line—all that the poets and -the proverbs say it will. Time never fails -you—when all else fails, you can always kid -yourself you haven't given it long enough to perform -the miracle.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I don't ever want to see anyone I knew in -the old life. I feel that the Pamela Burbridge -of those days is dead, poor thing! but she -has a more exciting time than most defunct -people, because every night I shake her up -and make her live over again her enchanted -halcyon days by the sea and at Cromer Court.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She lives in sunshine and happiness for an -hour or two of memory every night, even if -she has to die off while I go and do my day's -work.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Life is really awfully funny and un-understandable. -Why are we given feelings we've -got to squash?</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Are we big if we squash them and little if -we let them grow?</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wouldn't squash my feelings about Cheneston.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I simply love them.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I couldn't squash them even if I knew I -would grow such a huge and splendid national -character, and such a power for good, that -they would give me a gold-leaf Pamela -Memorial in Kensington Gardens with a -lightning conductor, and ten lines in the -</span><em class="italics">London Guide Book</em><span> all to myself.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="xv"><span class="bold large">XV</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>I have lost my job, and the little Russian -tailoress presses my skirt every day and has -lent me a pound.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Russia doesn't seem a lucky country for me; -the cinema proprietor was a young Russian -Jew, and when the August orders about -Russians serving came up he got five months' -exemption, and now he's joined up and the -cinema has been turned into a Y.M.C.A. canteen. -I help them two nights a week.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was funny; the other day there were a -lot of men expected in. It's just outside the -station, and often we get officers, and an -officer in Walter Markham's regiment came in. -I knew it was his battalion. The officer was -just home on leave. I asked him if he knew -Captain Markham.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Used to be under him," he said. "Went -West, poor chap! Died in a hospital -somewhere up North."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Are you sure he died?" I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Positive. He had a sudden relapse. -Ballyntine, one of our senior officers, was -pipped at the same time and got sent to the -same hospital. He was there when Markham -died. He's rejoined since; he's out there now. -Why? Did you know Markham?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"He was a great friend of a friend of mine."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Jolly decent chap," the young officer said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I thought it such an accurate epitaph. He -was a jolly decent chap. I turned away -because my eyes were so full of tears.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>If he had recovered and I had married him -I could never, never have made him happy. -I should have been one of those wives who -suddenly look at their husbands with vacant -eyes, and have thoughts they cannot tell when -they are asked—you see, Cheneston Cromer -is with me for keeps, the memory of him will -never go, and I know that often I should -wander away from Walter with Cheneston, and -be sorry to come back, and Walter was too -great a dear to treat like that, a very gallant -and honest English gentleman.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Regina Merolovitch has found me a "job" -at twenty-five shillings a week. She says it is -only temporary, and soon I shall find -something better; but I don't know. I am only -"honest and willing," and the world seems -overcrowded with honesty and willingness unadorned.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I "do anything" for Madame Cherry, who -has a little cherry-coloured shop with grey -fittings and purple hangings in the West End. -Sometimes I am in the showroom, sometimes -I make tea for the girls, sometimes I pick pins -off the showroom floor, sometimes I "match" -things at the big London stores, sometimes I -take things home to customers.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I marvel at the prices people pay for clothes. -The people who fluff in and say, "I must -have some little cheap thing, madame," seem -to pay most and buy most.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Madame made a wonderful "little cheap -thing" the other day—black tulle over blue -tulle, and all of it edged with blue beetles' -wings, and blue tissue round the waist to -match.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was done in a violent hurry because "he" -was coming home on leave; "he" was staying -at the Savoy with her for a few days, and -then they were going down to their country -seat when he had seen about his kit.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She paid for the girl's "hurry."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Madame never breaks her promises.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She had promised it by seven, and I was -to deliver it at the Savoy.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And wear your best coat and skirt; and -if it is fine you can wear that blue velour hat -that has just come in, but don't put any pins -in it," said Madame. "I can't have people -carrying my boxes and going to the Savoy -looking anyhow."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Madame's boxes are French grey with -bunches of cherries on them, tied with gay -cherry ribbons, and "Cherry" written -across. They are a part of her general -scheme.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I had one of them on my arm when I went -to the Savoy.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I like the Savoy; it never smells foody, and -the orchestra chats to itself instead of shouting -at you. I like an orchestra that chats to -itself, and then you can talk without feeling -you oughtn't to.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I was very, very tired, and I did feel an -awful alien in that place. It's not personality -or breeding that makes you feel at home in -big restaurants and hotels—it's just clothes. -It doesn't matter if you've given your twelve -country seats to the country for hospitals, and -you've got the newest thing in Rolls Royce's -nestling on the kerb outside; if you've got -the wrong clothes on you feel as out-of-place -and insignificant as a flapper at a silver -wedding.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I found the right suite and delivered the -box; an ecstatic young woman rushed out in -a violet kimona with black storks on it. I -think my appearance rather nonplussed her, -it's horribly embarrassing to wear decently cut -clothes sometimes.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Are you Madame Cherry's daughter?" -she said. "Well—it's frightfully decent of -you to bring it—er—will you have a cocktail -or anything?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I went down the lift with a huge box -of Fuller's chocolates tucked under my -arm.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I adore Fuller's chocolates.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>As I stepped out of the lift at the bottom -someone grasped my arm and said:</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam! Pamela Burbridge!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>It was Grace Gilpin.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She looked simply gorgeous.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>She wore a cloak of dull velvet the exact -colour of her hair, with a great skunk collar. -There was a sort of laughing radiancy about -her, as if she were bubbling and dancing with -happiness.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wondered if she knew that my people -didn't know where I was. I thought I could -trust mother for that. I was right.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I met Mrs. Burbridge not so very long -ago," she said. "She was most mysterious -and injured about you, Pam. What have -you been doing? She seemed quite martyred. -I couldn't get anything out of her. Have -you got married, or gone on the stage, or -what? Won't Cheneston be surprised! You -must stay and have dinner with us and tell us -all your misdeeds."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Cheneston?" I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>People were drinking their coffee and -staring at Grace, just as they always did.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes, he's home on leave and staying -here. Pam—didn't you know I was married?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I lied swiftly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I knew that Cheneston was behind me. I -knew it without turning. I felt it; once more -the old thrilling excitement, the tension of -expectancy, stirred in me—for another woman's -husband.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Where is that husband of mine?" Grace -said in her familiar, high, sweet, laughing -voice. "I do want you to meet."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wanted to say, "He's behind me. You -don't know it, but </span><em class="italics">I</em><span> do. I can feel it all down -my neck and spine. He belongs to you, but -you can't feel it. I'm glad you can't feel it. -Glad! Glad! Glad!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Instead I said:</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Good heavens! I was forgetting! I'm -going on to dinner, and my husband's outside -in the car. I went up to see some friends, -and said I wouldn't be a second."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You married, Pam! I never knew that!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I must absolutely fly!" I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"But, Pam—I'm so interested. Who did -you marry, Pam? Hang it all! I'm thrilled -to the core—you can't run away like this! -Besides, Cheneston's here, and—— Pam, -</span><em class="italics">why did you break off your engagement to -Cheneston?</em><span>"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Must fly!" I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I caught sight of Cheneston. He had not -recognised my back, he was waiting to come -forward and join his wife.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>That queer, quizzical, bored look was on -his face. He's the only man whose thoughts -I ever pined to know.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I would have given the world to have been -able to stop and say:</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What </span><em class="italics">are</em><span> you thinking about?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I heard Grace say in that queer, lilting -voice of hers:</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh, bother! Cheneston, you're just too -late! That was Pam Burbridge—only she -isn't any more, she's married, and her husband -is outside in a car."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>And as I hurried out into the courtyard a -woman getting out of a car said:</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Look at that woman; isn't she wonderful!"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Of course it was Grace; if it had been me -she would have said:</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Look at that funny little moth-eaten -rabbit of a girl hurrying away as if there was -a stoat after her. You really do see the -queerest people everywhere nowadays."</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst" id="xvi"><span class="bold large">XVI</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst"><span>There is a street that leads round the back -of the Savoy Theatre. I ran down that. I -don't know what it was like. There were -great inky splotches of shadow, they seemed -almost glistening wet in their impenetrable -blackness. As a rule I mind these pools of -darkness. I cross roads to avoid them, and -if I must needs pass through them I hurry -very quickly and my heart seems to beat in -my throat.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>This night I did not care; mad kaffirs, -Landrus, the denizens of Soho, might nestle -in their dozens in the shadows of London—I -didn't care.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>You can get so absolutely don't-carish that -the things that normally terrify and appal you -fail even to rouse a flicker.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I reached the Embankment.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I love the Thames Embankment. To me -it seems a thousand times more romantic and -wonderful than the canals of Venice or the -crocodile-y charms of the Nile. The water -is so sad and so wicked—the wisest, wickedest -thing in England, flowing greyly between the -great palaces of commerce; floating little -ships and dirty hulks; holding up to the sunset, -in places, a tangled mass of sails, a veritable -fretwork; the humbler and less ostentatious -commerce of the world flows through its -veins, dear furtive, dirty, splendid, muddy old -river!</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I looked over the parapet. Once in my -dim, funny little far-away youth, when -impressions sort of bedded themselves down on -your mind, I had driven in a hansom with -mother and father from Blackfriars to -Waterloo; and all the electric signs over the -warehouses on the bank had streaked the water -with colour, and all the Embankment had been -fringed with electric lights, and I had cried -with the beauty of it, and mother and father -had been curious as to the cause of my -emotion, and then angry because I wouldn't -tell them—but how could I tell them I was -crying because somebody's whisky advertisement -looked so lovely on the water.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I remembered as I looked in the water and -thought how jolly it is to be able to feel sad -and romantically melancholy about abstract -things, and let yourself go, when the real -sorrows come there is always something to -prevent you from letting yourself go.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wondered why I wasn't feeling more -awful about Cheneston's marriage to Grace.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wasn't feeling at all. I was numbed. The -pain hadn't begun to work.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>An old gentleman passed me and then came -back. Instantly the remembrance of London -novels I had read flashed into my mind. Was -he going to offer to adopt me, or help me -save my soul, or thrust five pounds into my -hand.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You're not thinking of—popping in?" he said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"It hadn't occurred to me," I answered.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Good," he said, relieved. "It's cold, -and damn silly. It just occurred to me. You -seem interested. I can't swim."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Neither can I," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Then it </span><em class="italics">would</em><span> be damn silly," he said. -"Good-night."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>And then I heard Cheneston's voice.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Where is your husband?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Ah," murmured the old gentleman, "now I see."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Oh," I said stupidly, "he—he didn't wait."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I followed you," Cheneston said. "I -had to know things."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"What things?" I said feebly. I was -beginning to feel the pain now, the numbness -was passing off; and I knew that I was going -to suffer.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I want to know when you married, and -if you are happy—and why you ran away like -that, and if you loved Walter Markham. -Pam—I'll be content if you'll only answer -me one thing, is he good to you? Have you -married the right man? Pam, I've got to -know."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I knew then how much it hurt; my throat -felt like a funny little unoiled, unused machine -when I spoke.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Tell me if you are happily married?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'm not married at all."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Grace," I said, "Grace said——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"She's married. She married Clay Rendle. -She was always in love with him."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"She was in love with you."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Never! I was in her confidence, that -was all. Clay Rendle's wife was a homicidal -maniac. She died a week after mother. But, -Pam—I'll go away, I'll go straight back to -the Savoy now, if you'll just answer 'Yes' or -'No.' Pam, are you happily married?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He looked down at me, he was very white -there was a queer look on his face, as if -his feelings were bunched up inside him and -he was sitting hard on the lid.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I wanted the lid up.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I'm not married," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>The lid flew up.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I did not know a kiss </span><em class="italics">could</em><span> feel like that. -The Embankment sort of slid away from under -it and us. I think it lasted for hours.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>We looked at each other blankly.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Pam," he said shakily, queerly, "you -kissed me—did you know you kissed me?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I nodded. I felt as if half of me stood -there and the other half was slowly unwrapping -itself from the kiss.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"You kissed me as if—as if——"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I know," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I didn't think that any woman in the -world could kiss like that," he said. "My -God! I didn't think it! Pam, are we both -crazy?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>His eyes began to flicker and twinkle, those -curious hazel eyes, not brown, not yellow, and -not readable.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I want things explained," he said, "and -yet I don't want them explained. You are -sure you aren't married?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Quite," I said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Then, Pam, will you marry me? Oh, -Pam!—listen to it—you funny, exquisite little -person! Listen to it!—doesn't it sound -gorgeous!—Heaven!—</span><em class="italics">you</em><span> married to </span><em class="italics">me</em><span>! -Did you ever like anything in the world as -much as the sound of that, my sweet?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"No," I whispered.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>He put his face down to mine. I was -trembling and crying; his face was wet.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I love you so!" he whispered. "I love -you so's I could eat you, and yet I'm scared -to touch you—that's </span><em class="italics">how</em><span> I love you, you -exquisite baby thing!" He laughed and -kissed my hands. "I'm plum crazy with -happiness," he confessed. "You'll have to -be sane for the two of us. What shall we -do, sweetheart, what shall we do?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Walk on—and I'll explain things."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"And every time we come to a shadow I'll -kiss you."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Only big ones, then. Which way shall -we go?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Towards the Houses of Parliament."</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"Why?"</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>"I see a shadow," he said.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>I have always been scared of shadows, but -if all the murderers and thieves in the world -nestled in the shadows that night, I did not -know. I did not care.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><em class="italics">I did not see</em><span>.</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> -</div> -<p class="center pfirst"><span class="small">BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS GUILDFORD ENGLAND</span></p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 6em"> -</div> -<!-- -*- encoding: utf-8 -*- --> -<div class="backmatter"> -</div> -<p class="pfirst" id="pg-end-line"><span>*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK </span><span>LOVE IN A MUDDLE</span><span> ***</span></p> -<div class="cleardoublepage"> -</div> -<div class="language-en level-2 pgfooter section" id="a-word-from-project-gutenberg" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> -<span id="pg-footer"></span><h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><span>A Word from Project Gutenberg</span></h2> -<p class="pfirst"><span>We will update this book if we find any errors.</span></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>This book can be found under: </span><a class="reference external" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49090"><span>http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49090</span></a></p> -<p class="pnext"><span>Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. -Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this -license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ -electronic works to protect the Project Gutenberg™ concept and -trademark. 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