IVI do love life.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.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.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."You'll wear yourself out," Grace Gilpin says.Yet the men seem to like my enthusiasm. I couldn't be blasé if I tried.I love, love, love every bit of every single day—that's the honest truth.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.And the battery is nearly due to leave for France.Cheneston is so sweet and gentle with me, just like an elder brother to his little sister.I never knew a man could understand in the way he does. I always thought a man had a totally different type of brain.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.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.Oh! but the music!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!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.I think it's rotten to be born a quaint little thing that nobody takes seriously.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.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.He is a strange man—you could wonder what he was really like for hours."Did you like it?" he said when it was all over and he helped me on with my coat.I nodded. I couldn't speak.We were staying the night at the Savoy, and Cheneston and I drove there together, mother and father preceding us in another taxi."Pam," he said, "what were you thinking of to-night?""Just dreaming," I answered."I was thinking that in another week I shall be—out there.""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.To-morrow at six the battery entrains.I heard father giving orders for the band to play them off.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.If you do I hope I grow old very quickly, because at the present moment I feel dreadful.To-morrow Cheneston goes—and I mustn't show him I care the least little bit. I've got to keep the flag wagging.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.I think having the right to break your heart makes the breaking an easier affair.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.I don't think he realises the dreadful effect his red-faced shouting has on people—it's like being scolded by a lion.The atmosphere of the house is almost as if a raid were just over when he is gone.The Gilpins had announced their intention of seeing the battery off, and they were calling for us in their motor.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.Cheneston has been up to say good-bye to the Gilpins.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!Later.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?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.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!"Let's sit down, kid," he said abruptly. "I've a lot to say."We sat down.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."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."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 abigman—his eyes, his laugh, his voice, the funny way he says things. He makes all other men seem little and very young."Oh no!" I said. I shut my eyes because I could concentrate on getting carelessness into my voice, and it all hurt so horribly.He seems little and ordinary—I can pop the atmosphere on paper—but he wasn't; he wasbig, 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."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?""I always knew I should have to," I said steadily."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!"I rose and stuck my hands in my pockets."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."He rose too, he looked ill and worried."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.""Why?" I queried starkly."If you should ever pay for these six weeks—in any way—I'd never forgive myself."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.I do not believe there ever was a more wonderful night, so full to the brim of scents and moonlight and velvet shadowed mystery."I—I want to go home," I said suddenly. "I'm tired."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.At the gate he put his hands on my shoulders, he was breathing like a man who had run far."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.""Why?""A man knows when another man—cares. I'm glad I'm off to-morrow. Pam, I was just an incident, kid—an incident.""Did—did Mr. Markham say—he cared?""He's too loyal a pal for that. Besides, until I told him, he thought——""What did he say when you told him?""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!""You're just an incident!" I said quietly.I couldn't send him away with that look on his face.He bent and kissed my hand.His lips seemed hot.Then he turned, and I heard him running swiftly down the little lane.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.I climbed into the Gilpins' car with a white face.It was the beginning of a gorgeous blue and gold September morning, but everything was misty and silvery and shiny with dew and mist."Cheer up, little thing!" Mrs. Gilpin said as I got in."Everyone is turning out to give them a send-off," Grace said. "I suppose the Major has been gone hours?""Yes," I answered, "his orderly called for him at four. Mother never goes to see him off. She hates it."Mrs. Gilpin made sympathetic noises."Walter Markham is the most fed-up thing on earth. He hates new recruits. He wishes he was going," said Grace."Perhaps the war will soon be over; the papers say themoraleof the German troops is deteriorating," said Mrs. Gilpin hopefully; conversation languished until we arrived.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.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."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.""I—I expect he'll be here," I answered foolishly.We passed through the gate on to the platform; the little group of women outside the barrier watched us enviously.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.Father was much in evidence. He came up and spoke to us, and then bustled off again.I turned to see Cheneston and his orderly beside me."Morning," he said; he, too, was pale, but smiling. He turned aside to speak to Grace.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.The men were beginning to get into the train; a cheer, a very feeble cheer that somehow seemed wet, came from beyond the barrier.Walter Markham joined us, and another man, a cheery boy called Withers."I wish I was going too," Walter Markham said. "I applied for a transfer months ago. I want to get into a Scotch regiment."I thought he avoided looking at me, and I felt uncomfortable."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."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.""Yes, sir.""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!""I—I am to stay?" Cheneston said. "I—I can't.""Headquarters' orders," said the Colonel curtly. "Now, boys, all serene?"The band blazed out "Tipperary."VFortunately a climax is like a raid or a storm—it has a definite duration.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!"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.Mrs. Gilpin said, "Oh! isn't that splendid! Aren't you glad, Pam?" and I said, "I'm awfully glad!"Grace Gilpin was white as death.I think Cheneston was even whiter."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!""Surely you are glad for Pam's sake, Mr. Cromer," the Colonel's wife interrupted reproachfully.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.He drew a long breath."Of course," he said, quite quietly, "of course, Mrs. Walters."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.When we had seen the train off, Cheneston and I walked back to the camp, quite quietly."Poor little kid!" he said. "One never anticipated this, did one?""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."What are you going to do about it, Pam?""Oh—carry on," I said. I tried to speak lightly."You feel like that about it?""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.""You funny little soul! Pam—I—I blame myself for all this. You seem only a kid to me—until you sing.""And then?" The golden mist seemed to dance towards me."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.""I—I had no idea you had a mother!""Why should you have?" he demanded curtly. "She is a great invalid, she lives at Cromer Court near Totnes, in Devon.""Does she know about—us?""She knows nothing," he said briefly. "There is nothing for her to know. My God! look!"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.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.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.I looked at Cheneston—and I looked away.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."Cheneston was speaking."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.""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."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.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.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.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.He does not care one little scrap for me.He loves Grace Gilpin.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.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, glowingbeautyandwonderof life, which is not for them, but there shall be work—useful, honest work—in which to find forgetfulness and fresh courage.I am hunting for a corner to run away to when my time comes.VINo one has heard from Walter Markham.He has no relations here, it is true—but it's funny he hasn't written.He is in Mesopotamia; perhaps the mails have been sunk or he has dysentery or something.Grace is always asking Cheneston if he has heard, and whenever Cheneston answers he avoids looking at me.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.I know Cheneston is horribly unhappy.I know Grace is equally wretched.Neither of them knows how miserable I am, or that I suspect they are.Sometimes life seems so strange to me, peopled by a lot of actors and actresses all living little lies.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.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.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.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.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.Fantastic problems often demand fantastic solutions.Meanwhile, winter is coming on, frost is crisping the leaves, this morning the dahlias in our little garden were black and sodden.Later the same day.I have found the solution—and it is even more fantastic than I had dreamed of.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.I saw the Way Out for Cheneston quite suddenly, and grabbed it before it was too late.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.They were all talking about Markham, and saying how weird it was that no one had heard a single word since he left England."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?""Yes," I lied suddenly, "I've heard."Everyone exclaimed.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."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?"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.One or two of the men were looking at Cheneston furtively, to see how he took it."Yes, why didn't you tell us, Pam?" Cheneston said.Suddenly I realised that they were all thinking what I meant them to think—that Walter and I were unconfessed lovers.I had achieved my effect."I—I didn't wish to," I said, and burst into tears.And now I am wondering what is going to happen, what everyone will say and do, particularly Cheneston and mother.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.VIISometimes 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.None of these things happened.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.I am one of the people who never "click" in their effects.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.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.I had wanted the delicacy of a butterfly, and I had trodden as earnestly and thoroughly as an elephant—a whole herd of them.I had tried to be subtle and I had achieved blatancy.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.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.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."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?"I slipped on my exquisitely cut linen jacket."Hitch?" I repeated."You've not been doing anything stupid—because, remember, your father and I have had considerable expense in——""What have you heard?" I said hardily."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.""Well!" I said, my voice sounded like reinforced ice. "Who has been gossiping?""I heard it," said mother uncomfortably. "I—I should wear that quaint little collar with the quaint spotted border, Pam."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.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."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.""Yes," I said, "they have.""Oh—of course," Grace said, "you heard. You said so last night, didn't you? I forgot. Do you like Walter Markham?""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."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."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?""Are you being catty?" Grace said. She looked at me with surprise in her beautiful eyes."I—I don't know," I said miserably. "I think I'm trying to be."Grace turned."Pam, have you really been hearing from Walter Markham?" she said quietly.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.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."Yes," I said, "I have.""Does—Captain Cromer know?" she said."You heard me say I had heard from him last night in your drawing-room.""I know, and then you burst into tears. I was so glad you did.""Why?" I asked, startled."You saved me from doing the same thing, you did it first."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.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.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."And to think a woman lived here for years," one of the girls said."Her lover died and she wanted to get away from the world.""How romantic!" said another girl. "Look, here's Major Morrison and Captain Cromer."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."I wish I were an artist, Grace!" Cheneston said.Her pretty silver laughter floated out."Oh! Why?""He would paint you as a spirit of the cave," Major Morrison said.As we came out into the sunshine I saw that Cheneston was very white. He gripped my arm."Pam," he said, "I must talk to you, child. I'm nearly off my head!""Lunch," I said feebly. I was suddenly inexplicably scared. I seemed to have brought the atmosphere of the cave into the sunshine with me."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?""Oh—certainly.""Begin without us if we don't come.""Very well," she acquiesced."Come," said Cheneston curtly.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.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."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."Sit down, then," he said.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."Pam," he said, "my mother is very ill—dying," and he turned from me and buried his head in his hands.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!"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.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.Love makes ordinary every-days, full of ordinary every-day tasks, into high-days and festivals full of little sacred services and missions."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.""Stick what?" I said.He put his hand over mine, and I felt it tremble, and somehow the trembling made me very strong."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.""Yes," I said."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.""About us?" I said idiotically."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."It's nothing," I said. "I understand.""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."I tried to find the right words to say.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:"When is the next train?"
IV
I do love life.
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.
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.
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.
"You'll wear yourself out," Grace Gilpin says.
Yet the men seem to like my enthusiasm. I couldn't be blasé if I tried.
I love, love, love every bit of every single day—that's the honest truth.
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.
And the battery is nearly due to leave for France.
Cheneston is so sweet and gentle with me, just like an elder brother to his little sister.
I never knew a man could understand in the way he does. I always thought a man had a totally different type of brain.
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.
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.
Oh! but the music!
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!
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.
I think it's rotten to be born a quaint little thing that nobody takes seriously.
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.
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.
He is a strange man—you could wonder what he was really like for hours.
"Did you like it?" he said when it was all over and he helped me on with my coat.
I nodded. I couldn't speak.
We were staying the night at the Savoy, and Cheneston and I drove there together, mother and father preceding us in another taxi.
"Pam," he said, "what were you thinking of to-night?"
"Just dreaming," I answered.
"I was thinking that in another week I shall be—out there."
"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.
To-morrow at six the battery entrains.
I heard father giving orders for the band to play them off.
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.
If you do I hope I grow old very quickly, because at the present moment I feel dreadful.
To-morrow Cheneston goes—and I mustn't show him I care the least little bit. I've got to keep the flag wagging.
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.
I think having the right to break your heart makes the breaking an easier affair.
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.
I don't think he realises the dreadful effect his red-faced shouting has on people—it's like being scolded by a lion.
The atmosphere of the house is almost as if a raid were just over when he is gone.
The Gilpins had announced their intention of seeing the battery off, and they were calling for us in their motor.
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.
Cheneston has been up to say good-bye to the Gilpins.
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!
Later.
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?
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.
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!
"Let's sit down, kid," he said abruptly. "I've a lot to say."
We sat down.
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.
"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."
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 abigman—his eyes, his laugh, his voice, the funny way he says things. He makes all other men seem little and very young.
"Oh no!" I said. I shut my eyes because I could concentrate on getting carelessness into my voice, and it all hurt so horribly.
He seems little and ordinary—I can pop the atmosphere on paper—but he wasn't; he wasbig, 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.
"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?"
"I always knew I should have to," I said steadily.
"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!"
I rose and stuck my hands in my pockets.
"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."
He rose too, he looked ill and worried.
"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."
"Why?" I queried starkly.
"If you should ever pay for these six weeks—in any way—I'd never forgive myself."
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.
I do not believe there ever was a more wonderful night, so full to the brim of scents and moonlight and velvet shadowed mystery.
"I—I want to go home," I said suddenly. "I'm tired."
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.
At the gate he put his hands on my shoulders, he was breathing like a man who had run far.
"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."
"Why?"
"A man knows when another man—cares. I'm glad I'm off to-morrow. Pam, I was just an incident, kid—an incident."
"Did—did Mr. Markham say—he cared?"
"He's too loyal a pal for that. Besides, until I told him, he thought——"
"What did he say when you told him?"
"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!"
"You're just an incident!" I said quietly.
I couldn't send him away with that look on his face.
He bent and kissed my hand.
His lips seemed hot.
Then he turned, and I heard him running swiftly down the little lane.
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.
I climbed into the Gilpins' car with a white face.
It was the beginning of a gorgeous blue and gold September morning, but everything was misty and silvery and shiny with dew and mist.
"Cheer up, little thing!" Mrs. Gilpin said as I got in.
"Everyone is turning out to give them a send-off," Grace said. "I suppose the Major has been gone hours?"
"Yes," I answered, "his orderly called for him at four. Mother never goes to see him off. She hates it."
Mrs. Gilpin made sympathetic noises.
"Walter Markham is the most fed-up thing on earth. He hates new recruits. He wishes he was going," said Grace.
"Perhaps the war will soon be over; the papers say themoraleof the German troops is deteriorating," said Mrs. Gilpin hopefully; conversation languished until we arrived.
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.
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.
"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."
"I—I expect he'll be here," I answered foolishly.
We passed through the gate on to the platform; the little group of women outside the barrier watched us enviously.
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.
Father was much in evidence. He came up and spoke to us, and then bustled off again.
I turned to see Cheneston and his orderly beside me.
"Morning," he said; he, too, was pale, but smiling. He turned aside to speak to Grace.
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.
The men were beginning to get into the train; a cheer, a very feeble cheer that somehow seemed wet, came from beyond the barrier.
Walter Markham joined us, and another man, a cheery boy called Withers.
"I wish I was going too," Walter Markham said. "I applied for a transfer months ago. I want to get into a Scotch regiment."
I thought he avoided looking at me, and I felt uncomfortable.
"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.
"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."
"Yes, sir."
"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!"
"I—I am to stay?" Cheneston said. "I—I can't."
"Headquarters' orders," said the Colonel curtly. "Now, boys, all serene?"
The band blazed out "Tipperary."
V
Fortunately a climax is like a raid or a storm—it has a definite duration.
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!"
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.
Mrs. Gilpin said, "Oh! isn't that splendid! Aren't you glad, Pam?" and I said, "I'm awfully glad!"
Grace Gilpin was white as death.
I think Cheneston was even whiter.
"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!"
"Surely you are glad for Pam's sake, Mr. Cromer," the Colonel's wife interrupted reproachfully.
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.
He drew a long breath.
"Of course," he said, quite quietly, "of course, Mrs. Walters."
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.
When we had seen the train off, Cheneston and I walked back to the camp, quite quietly.
"Poor little kid!" he said. "One never anticipated this, did one?"
"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.
"What are you going to do about it, Pam?"
"Oh—carry on," I said. I tried to speak lightly.
"You feel like that about it?"
"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."
"You funny little soul! Pam—I—I blame myself for all this. You seem only a kid to me—until you sing."
"And then?" The golden mist seemed to dance towards me.
"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."
"I—I had no idea you had a mother!"
"Why should you have?" he demanded curtly. "She is a great invalid, she lives at Cromer Court near Totnes, in Devon."
"Does she know about—us?"
"She knows nothing," he said briefly. "There is nothing for her to know. My God! look!"
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.
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.
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.
I looked at Cheneston—and I looked away.
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."
Cheneston was speaking.
"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."
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
He does not care one little scrap for me.
He loves Grace Gilpin.
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.
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, glowingbeautyandwonderof life, which is not for them, but there shall be work—useful, honest work—in which to find forgetfulness and fresh courage.
I am hunting for a corner to run away to when my time comes.
VI
No one has heard from Walter Markham.
He has no relations here, it is true—but it's funny he hasn't written.
He is in Mesopotamia; perhaps the mails have been sunk or he has dysentery or something.
Grace is always asking Cheneston if he has heard, and whenever Cheneston answers he avoids looking at me.
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.
I know Cheneston is horribly unhappy.
I know Grace is equally wretched.
Neither of them knows how miserable I am, or that I suspect they are.
Sometimes life seems so strange to me, peopled by a lot of actors and actresses all living little lies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fantastic problems often demand fantastic solutions.
Meanwhile, winter is coming on, frost is crisping the leaves, this morning the dahlias in our little garden were black and sodden.
Later the same day.
I have found the solution—and it is even more fantastic than I had dreamed of.
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.
I saw the Way Out for Cheneston quite suddenly, and grabbed it before it was too late.
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.
They were all talking about Markham, and saying how weird it was that no one had heard a single word since he left England.
"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?"
"Yes," I lied suddenly, "I've heard."
Everyone exclaimed.
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.
"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?"
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.
One or two of the men were looking at Cheneston furtively, to see how he took it.
"Yes, why didn't you tell us, Pam?" Cheneston said.
Suddenly I realised that they were all thinking what I meant them to think—that Walter and I were unconfessed lovers.
I had achieved my effect.
"I—I didn't wish to," I said, and burst into tears.
And now I am wondering what is going to happen, what everyone will say and do, particularly Cheneston and mother.
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.
VII
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.
None of these things happened.
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.
I am one of the people who never "click" in their effects.
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.
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.
I had wanted the delicacy of a butterfly, and I had trodden as earnestly and thoroughly as an elephant—a whole herd of them.
I had tried to be subtle and I had achieved blatancy.
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.
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.
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.
"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?"
I slipped on my exquisitely cut linen jacket.
"Hitch?" I repeated.
"You've not been doing anything stupid—because, remember, your father and I have had considerable expense in——"
"What have you heard?" I said hardily.
"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."
"Well!" I said, my voice sounded like reinforced ice. "Who has been gossiping?"
"I heard it," said mother uncomfortably. "I—I should wear that quaint little collar with the quaint spotted border, Pam."
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.
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.
"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."
"Yes," I said, "they have."
"Oh—of course," Grace said, "you heard. You said so last night, didn't you? I forgot. Do you like Walter Markham?"
"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.
"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.
"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?"
"Are you being catty?" Grace said. She looked at me with surprise in her beautiful eyes.
"I—I don't know," I said miserably. "I think I'm trying to be."
Grace turned.
"Pam, have you really been hearing from Walter Markham?" she said quietly.
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.
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.
"Yes," I said, "I have."
"Does—Captain Cromer know?" she said.
"You heard me say I had heard from him last night in your drawing-room."
"I know, and then you burst into tears. I was so glad you did."
"Why?" I asked, startled.
"You saved me from doing the same thing, you did it first."
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.
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.
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.
"And to think a woman lived here for years," one of the girls said.
"Her lover died and she wanted to get away from the world."
"How romantic!" said another girl. "Look, here's Major Morrison and Captain Cromer."
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.
"I wish I were an artist, Grace!" Cheneston said.
Her pretty silver laughter floated out.
"Oh! Why?"
"He would paint you as a spirit of the cave," Major Morrison said.
As we came out into the sunshine I saw that Cheneston was very white. He gripped my arm.
"Pam," he said, "I must talk to you, child. I'm nearly off my head!"
"Lunch," I said feebly. I was suddenly inexplicably scared. I seemed to have brought the atmosphere of the cave into the sunshine with me.
"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?"
"Oh—certainly."
"Begin without us if we don't come."
"Very well," she acquiesced.
"Come," said Cheneston curtly.
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.
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.
"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.
"Sit down, then," he said.
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.
"Pam," he said, "my mother is very ill—dying," and he turned from me and buried his head in his hands.
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!"
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.
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.
Love makes ordinary every-days, full of ordinary every-day tasks, into high-days and festivals full of little sacred services and missions.
"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."
"Stick what?" I said.
He put his hand over mine, and I felt it tremble, and somehow the trembling made me very strong.
"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."
"Yes," I said.
"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."
"About us?" I said idiotically.
"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.
"It's nothing," I said. "I understand."
"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."
I tried to find the right words to say.
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:
"When is the next train?"