When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling, and her lips were soft. She seemed to smile and be soft all over, and she took both his hands. Everything was a pleasure to her that day, even the sight of this sad face. She was in love and was loved again; had a present and a future once more, not only her own full past; and she must finish with Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was coming. She sat down on the divan, took his hand in a sisterly way, and said:
“Tell me, Edward; I can see you're in trouble. What is it?”
“Noel. The boy she was fond of has been killed.”
She dropped his hand.
“Oh, no! Poor child! It's too cruel!” Tears started up in her grey eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief. “Poor, poor little Noel! Was she very fond of him?”
“A very sudden, short engagement; but I'm afraid she takes it desperately to heart. I don't know how to comfort her; only a woman could. I came to ask you: Do you think she ought to go on with her work? What do you think, Leila? I feel lost!”
Leila, gazing at him, thought: 'Lost? Yes, you look lost, my poor Edward!'
“I should let her go on,” she said: “it helps; it's the only thing that does help. I'll see if I can get them to let her come into the wards. She ought to be in touch with suffering and the men; that kitchen work will try her awfully just now: Was he very young?”
“Yes. They wanted to get married. I was opposed to it.”
Leila's lip curled ever so little. 'You would be!' she thought.
“I couldn't bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like that; they had only known each other three weeks. It was very hard for me, Leila. And then suddenly he was sent to the front.”
Resentment welled up in Leila. The kill-Joys! As if life didn't kill joy fast enough! Her cousin's face at that moment was almost abhorrent to her, its gentle perplexed goodness darkened and warped by that monkish look. She turned away, glanced at the clock over the hearth, and thought: 'Yes, and he would stop Jimmy and me! He would say: “Oh, no! dear Leila—you mustn't love—it's sin!” How I hate that word!'
“I think the most dreadful thing in life,” she said abruptly, “is the way people suppress their natural instincts; what they suppress in themselves they make other people suppress too, if they can; and that's the cause of half the misery in this world.”
Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose cause he could not know, she added hastily: “I hope Noel will get over it quickly, and find someone else.”
“Yes. If they had been married—how much worse it would have been. Thank God, they weren't!”
“I don't know. They would have had an hour of bliss. Even an hour of bliss is worth something in these days.”
“To those who only believe in this 'life—perhaps.”
'Ten minutes more!' she thought: 'Oh, why doesn't he go?' But at that very moment he got up, and instantly her heart went out to him again.
“I'm so sorry, Edward. If I can help in any way—I'll try my best with Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you feel inclined.”
She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down again, she yet could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a little rush of pitying warmth in the pressure of her hand.
Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for him.
“Good-bye, Leila; you're very good and kind to me. Good-bye.”
Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and—she let him out.
Running upstairs again she thought: 'I've just time. What shall I put on? Poor Edward, poor Noel! What colour does Jimmy like? Oh! Why didn't I keep him those ten years ago—what utter waste!' And, feverishly adorning herself, she came back to the window, and stood there in the dark to watch, while some jasmine which grew below sent up its scent to her. 'Would I marry him?' she thought, 'if he asked me? But he won't ask me—why should he now? Besides, I couldn't bear him to feel I wanted position or money from him. I only want love—love—love!' The silent repetition of that word gave her a wonderful sense of solidity and comfort. So long as she only wanted love, surely he would give it.
A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her. It was he! And suddenly she bethought herself. She went to the little black piano, sat down, and began to sing the song she had sung to him ten years ago: “If I could be the falling dew and fall on thee all day!” She did not even look round when he came in, but continued to croon out the words, conscious of him just behind her shoulder in the dark. But when she had finished, she got up and threw her arms round him, strained him to her, and burst into tears on his shoulder; thinking of Noel and that dead boy, thinking of the millions of other boys, thinking of her own happiness, thinking of those ten years wasted, of how short was life, and love; thinking—hardly knowing what she thought! And Jimmy Fort, very moved by this emotion which he only half understood, pressed her tightly in his arms, and kissed her wet cheeks and her neck, pale and warm in the darkness.
Noel went on with her work for a month, and then, one morning, fainted over a pile of dishes. The noise attracted attention, and Mrs. Lynch was summoned.
The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila's nerves severely. But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent for. Leila went with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot Mansions. Why take her home in this state, why not save the jolting, and let her recover properly? They went upstairs arm in arm. Leila made her lie down on the divan, and put a hot-water bottle to her feet. Noel was still so passive and pale that even to speak to her seemed a cruelty. And, going to her little sideboard, Leila stealthily extracted a pint bottle of some champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent in, and took it with two glasses and a corkscrew into her bedroom. She drank a little herself, and came out bearing a glass to the girl. Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed to say: “Do you really think I'm so easily mended?” But Leila had been through too much in her time to despise earthly remedies, and she held it to the girl's lips until she drank. It was excellent champagne, and, since Noel had never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous effect. Her eyes brightened; little red spots came up in her cheeks. And suddenly she rolled over and buried her face deep in a cushion. With her short hair, she looked so like a child lying there, that Leila knelt down, stroking her head, and saying: “There, there; my love! There, there!”
At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike despair of the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her face had a wild look. She withdrew herself from Leila's touch, and, crossing her arms tightly across her chest, said:
“I can't bear it; I can't sleep. I want him back; I hate life—I hate the world. We hadn't done anything—only just loved each other. God likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had only one day to love each other—only one day—only one!”
Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms straining and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it. The voice, uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the words and face, went on:
“I won't—I don't want to live. If there's another life, I shall go to him. And if there isn't—it's just sleep.”
Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings. Like most women who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was orthodox; or rather never speculated on such things.
“Tell me about yourself and him,” she said.
Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin. “We loved each other; and children are born, aren't they, after you've loved? But mine won't be!” From the look on her face rather than from her words, the full reality of her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again. Nonsense! But—what an awful thing, if true! That which had always seemed to her such an exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of life—why! now, it was a tragedy! Instinctively she raised herself and put her arms round the girl.
“My poor dear!” she said; “you're fancying things!”
The colour had faded out of Noel's face, and, with her head thrown back and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young ghost.
“If it is—I shan't live. I don't mean to—it's easy to die. I don't mean Daddy to know.”
“Oh! my dear, my dear!” was all Leila could stammer.
“Was it wrong, Leila?”
“Wrong? I don't know—wrong? If it really is so—it was—unfortunate. But surely, surely—you're mistaken?”
Noel shook her head. “I did it so that we should belong to each other. Nothing could have taken him from me.”
Leila caught at the girl's words.
“Then, my dear—he hasn't quite gone from you, you see?”
Noel's lips formed a “No” which was inaudible. “But Daddy!” she whispered.
Edward's face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see the girl for the tortured shape of it. Then the hedonist in her revolted against that ascetic vision. Her worldly judgment condemned and deplored this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding that hour of life and love, snatched out of the jaws of death. “Need he ever know?” she said.
“I could never lie to Daddy. But it doesn't matter. Why should one go on living, when life is rotten?”
Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October. Leila got up from her knees. She stood at the window thinking hard.
“My dear,” she said at last, “you mustn't get morbid. Look at me! I've had two husbands, and—and—well, a pretty stormy up and down time of it; and I daresay I've got lots of trouble before me. But I'm not going to cave in. Nor must you. The Piersons have plenty of pluck; you mustn't be a traitor to your blood. That's the last thing. Your boy would have told you to stick it. These are your 'trenches,' and you're not going to be downed, are you?”
After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said:
“Give me a cigarette, Leila.”
Leila produced the little flat case she carried.
“That's brave,” she said. “Nothing's incurable at your age. Only one thing's incurable—getting old.”
Noel laughed. “That's curable too, isn't it?”
“Not without surrender.”
Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling. Then Noel got up from the divan, and went over to the piano. She was still in her hospital dress of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the keys, playing a chord now, and then, Leila's heart felt hollow from compassion; she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very wretched!
“Play to me,” she said; “no—don't; I'll play to you.” And sitting down, she began to play and sing a little French song, whose first line ran: “Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous.” It was soft, gay, charming. If the girl cried, so much the better. But Noel did not cry. She seemed suddenly to have recovered all her self-possession. She spoke calmly, answered Leila's questions without emotion, and said she would go home. Leila went out with her, and walked some way in the direction of her home; distressed, but frankly at a loss. At the bottom of Portland Place Noel stopped and said: “I'm quite all right now, Leila; thank you awfully. I shall just go home and lie down. And I shall come to-morrow, the same as usual. Goodbye!” Leila could only grasp the girl's hand, and say: “My dear, that's splendid. There's many a slip—besides, it's war-time.”
With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl moving slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital, with a disturbed and compassionate heart.
2
But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street. She had received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her experienced cousin's vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by those words: “He hasn't quite gone from you, has he?” “Besides, it's war-time.” Leila had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance in which the girl had been groping these last weeks was now removed. Like most proud natures, she did not naturally think much about the opinion of other people; besides, she knew nothing of the world, its feelings and judgments. Her nightmare was the thought of her father's horror and grief. She tried to lessen that nightmare by remembering his opposition to her marriage, and the resentment she had felt. He had never realised, never understood, how she and Cyril loved. Now, if she were really going to have a child, it would be Cyril's—Cyril's son—Cyril over again. The instinct stronger than reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which had pushed her on in such haste to make sure of union—the irrepressible pulse of life faced with annihilation—seemed to revive within her, and make her terrible secret almost precious. She had read about “War babies” in the papers, read with a dull curiosity; but now the atmosphere, as it were, of those writings was illumined for her. These babies were wrong, were a “problem,” and yet, behind all that, she seemed now to know that people were glad of them; they made up, they filled the gaps. Perhaps, when she had one, she would be proud, secretly proud, in spite of everyone, in spite of her father! They had tried to kill Cyril—God and everyone; but they hadn't been able, he was alive within her! A glow came into her face, walking among the busy shopping crowd, and people turned to look at her; she had that appearance of seeing no one, nothing, which is strange and attractive to those who have a moment to spare from contemplation of their own affairs. Fully two hours she wandered thus, before going in, and only lost that exalted feeling when, in her own little room, she had taken up his photograph, and was sitting on her bed gazing at it. She had a bad breakdown then. Locked in there, she lay on her bed, crying, dreadfully lonely, till she fell asleep exhausted, with the tear-stained photograph clutched in her twitching fingers. She woke with a start. It was dark, and someone was knocking on her door.
“Miss Noel!”
Childish perversity kept her silent. Why couldn't they leave her alone? They would leave her alone if they knew. Then she heard another kind of knocking, and her father's voice:
“Nollie! Nollie!”
She scrambled up, and opened. He looked scared, and her heart smote her.
“It's all right, Daddy; I was asleep.”
“My dear, I'm sorry, but dinner's ready.”
“I don't want any dinner; I think I'll go to bed.”
The frown between his brows deepened.
“You shouldn't lock your door, Nollie: I was quite frightened. I went round to the hospital to bring you home, and they told me about your fainting. I want you to see a doctor.”
Noel shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no! It's nothing!”
“Nothing? To faint like that? Come, my child. To please me.” He took her face in his hands. Noel shrank away.
“No, Daddy. I won't see a doctor. Extravagance in wartime! I won't. It's no good trying to make me. I'll come down if you like; I shall be all right to-morrow.”
With this Pierson had to be content; but, often that evening, she saw him looking at her anxiously. And when she went up, he came out of his study, followed to her room, and insisted on lighting her fire. Kissing her at the door, he said very quietly:
“I wish I could be a mother to you, my child!”
For a moment it flashed through Noel: 'He knows!' then, by the puzzled look on his face, she knew that he did not. If only he did know; what a weight it would be off her mind! But she answered quietly too; “Good night, Daddy dear!” kissed him, and shut the door.
She sat down before the little new fire, and spread her hands out to it; all was so cold and wintry in her heart. And the firelight flickered on her face, where shadows lay thick under her eyes, for all the roundness of her cheeks, and on her slim pale hands, and the supple grace of her young body. And out in the night, clouds raced over the moon, which had come full once more.
1
Pierson went back to his study, and wrote to Gratian.
“If you can get leave for a few days, my dear, I want you at home. I am troubled about Nollie. Ever since that disaster happened to her she has been getting paler; and to-day she fainted. She won't see a doctor, but perhaps you could get her to see George. If you come up, he will surely be able to run up to us for a day or two. If not, you must take her down to him at the sea. I have just seen the news of your second cousin Charlie Pierson's death; he was killed in one of the last attacks on the Somme; he was nephew of my cousin Leila whom, as you know, Noel sees every day at her hospital. Bertram has the D. S. O. I have been less hard-pressed lately; Lauder has been home on leave and has taken some Services for me. And now the colder weather has come, I am feeling much fresher. Try your best to come. I am seriously concerned for our beloved child.
“Your affectionate father
“EDWARD PIERSON.”
Gratian answered that she could get week-end leave, and would come on Friday. He met her at the station, and they drove thence straight to the hospital, to pick up Noel. Leila came to them in the waiting-room, and Pierson, thinking they would talk more freely about Noel's health if he left them alone, went into the recreation room, and stood watching a game of bagatelle between two convalescents. When he returned to the little sitting-room they were still standing by the hearth, talking in low voices. Gratian must surely have been stooping over the fire, for her face was red, almost swollen, and her eyes looked as if she had scorched them.
Leila said lightly:
“Well, Edward, aren't the men delightful? When are we going to another concert together?”
She, too, was flushed and looking almost young.
“Ah! If we could do the things we want to.
“That's very pretty, Edward; but you should, you know—for a tonic.” He shook his head and smiled.
“You're a temptress, Leila. Will you let Nollie know, please, that we can take her back with us? Can you let her off to-morrow?”
“For as long as you like; she wants a rest. I've been talking to Gratian. We oughtn't to have let her go on after a shock like that—my fault, I'm afraid. I thought that work might be best.”
Pierson was conscious of Gratian walking past him out of the room. He held out his hand to Leila, and followed. A small noise occurred behind him such as a woman makes when she has put a foot through her own skirt, or has other powerful cause for dismay. Then he saw Noel in the hall, and was vaguely aware of being the centre of a triangle of women whose eyes were playing catch-glance. His daughters kissed each other; and he became seated between them in the taxi. The most unobservant of men, he parted from them in the hall without having perceived anything except that they were rather silent; and, going to his study, he took up a Life of Sir Thomas More. There was a passage therein which he itched to show George Laird, who was coming up that evening.
Gratian and Noel had mounted the stairs with lips tight set, and eyes averted; both were very pale. When they reached the door of Gratian's room the room which had been their mother's—Noel was for passing on, but Gratian caught her by the arm, and said: “Come in.” The fire was burning brightly in there, and the two sisters stood in front of it, one on each side, their hands clutching the mantel-shelf, staring at the flames. At last Noel put one hand in front of her eyes, and said:
“I asked her to tell you.”
Gratian made the movement of one who is gripped by two strong emotions, and longs to surrender to one or to the other.
“It's too horrible,” was all she said.
Noel turned towards the door.
“Stop, Nollie!”
Noel stopped with her hand on the door knob. “I don't want to be forgiven and sympathised with. I just want to be let alone.”
“How can you be let alone?”
The tide of misery surged up in Noel, and she cried out passionately:
“I hate sympathy from people who can't understand. I don't want anyone's. I can always go away, and lose myself.”
The words “can't understand” gave Gratian a shock.
“I can understand,” she said.
“You can't; you never saw him. You never saw—” her lips quivered so that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back a rush of tears.
“Besides you would never have done it yourself.”
Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed. It was true. She would never have done it herself; it was just that which, for all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and sympathy. How terrible, wretched, humiliating! Her own sister, her only sister, in the position of all those poor, badly brought up girls, who forgot themselves! And her father—their father! Till that moment she had hardly thought of him, too preoccupied by the shock to her own pride. The word: “Dad!” was forced from her.
Noel shuddered.
“That boy!” said Gratian suddenly; “I can't forgive him. If you didn't know—he did. It was—it was—” She stopped at the sight of Noel's face.
“I did know,” she said. “It was I. He was my husband, as much as yours is. If you say a word against him, I'll never speak to you again: I'm glad, and you would be, if you were going to have one. What's the difference, except that you've had luck, and I—haven't.” Her lips quivered again, and she was silent.
Gratian stared up at her. She had a longing for George—to know what he thought and felt.
“Do you mind if I tell George?” she said.
Noel shook her head. “No! not now. Tell anybody.” And suddenly the misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian's heart. She got up and put her arms round her sister.
“Nollie dear, don't look like that!”
Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over, went to her own room.
Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious. Her pride was deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself. Why couldn't she have been more sympathetic? And yet, now that Noel was no longer there, she again condemned the dead. What he had done was unpardonable. Nollie was such—a child! He had committed sacrilege. If only George would come, and she could talk it all out with him! She, who had married for love and known passion, had insight enough to feel that Noel's love had been deep—so far as anything, of course, could be deep in such a child. Gratian was at the mature age of twenty. But to have forgotten herself like that! And this boy! If she had known him, that feeling might have been mitigated by the personal element, so important to all human judgment; but never having seen him, she thought of his conduct as “caddish.” And she knew that this was, and would be, the trouble between her and her sister. However she might disguise it, Noel would feel that judgment underneath.
She stripped off her nurse's garb, put on an evening frock, and fidgeted about the room. Anything rather than go down and see her father again before she must. This, which had happened, was beyond words terrible for him; she dreaded the talk with him about Noel's health which would have to come. She could say nothing, of course, until Noel wished; and, very truthful by nature, the idea, of having to act a lie distressed her.
She went down at last, and found them both in the drawing-room already; Noel in a frilly evening frock, sitting by the fire with her chin on her hand, while her father was reading out the war news from the evening paper. At sight of that cool, dainty, girlish figure brooding over the fire, and of her father's worn face, the tragedy of this business thrust itself on her with redoubled force. Poor Dad! Poor Nollie! Awful! Then Noel turned, and gave a little shake of her head, and her eyes said, almost as plainly as lips could have said it: 'Silence!' Gratian nodded, and came forward to the fire. And so began one of those calm, domestic evenings, which cover sometimes such depths of heartache.
2
Noel stayed up until her father went to bed, then went upstairs at once. She had evidently determined that they should not talk about her. Gratian sat on alone, waiting for her husband! It was nearly midnight when he came, and she did not tell him the family news till next morning. He received it with a curious little grunt. Gratian saw his eyes contract, as they might have, perhaps, looking at some bad and complicated wound, and then stare steadily at the ceiling. Though they had been married over a year, she did not yet know what he thought about many things, and she waited with a queer sinking at her heart. This skeleton in the family cupboard was a test of his affection for herself, a test of the quality of the man she had married. He did not speak for a little, and her anxiety grew. Then his hand sought hers, and gave it a hard squeeze.
“Poor little Nollie! This is a case for Mark Tapleyism. But cheer up, Gracie! We'll get her through somehow.”
“But father! It's impossible to keep it from him, and impossible to tell him! Oh George! I never knew what family pride was till now. It's incredible. That wretched boy!”
“'De mortuis.' Come, Gracie! In the midst of death we are in life! Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it's the war—the war! Your father must get used to it; it's a rare chance for his Christianity.”
“Dad will be as sweet as anything—that's what makes it so horrible!”
George Laird redoubled his squeeze. “Quite right! The old-fashioned father could let himself go. But need he know? We can get her away from London, and later on, we must manage somehow. If he does hear, we must make him feel that Nollie was 'doing her bit.'.rdquo;
Gratian withdrew her hand. “Don't!” she said in a muffled voice.
George Laird turned and looked at her. He was greatly upset himself, realising perhaps more truly than his young wife the violence of this disaster; he was quite capable, too, of feeling how deeply she was stirred and hurt; but, a born pragmatist, confronting life always in the experimental spirit, he was impatient of the: “How awful!” attitude. And this streak of her father's ascetic traditionalism in Gratian always roused in him a wish to break it up. If she had not been his wife he would have admitted at once that he might just as well try and alter the bone-formation of her head, as break down such a fundamental trait of character, but, being his wife, he naturally considered alteration as possible as putting a new staircase in a house, or throwing two rooms into one. And, taking her in his arms, he said: “I know; but it'll all come right, if we put a good face on it. Shall I talk to Nollie?”
Gratian assented, from the desire to be able to say to her father: “George is seeing her!” and so stay the need for a discussion. But the whole thing seemed to her more and more a calamity which nothing could lessen or smooth away.
George Laird had plenty of cool courage, invaluable in men who have to inflict as well as to alleviate pain, but he did not like his mission “a little bit” as he would have said; and he proposed a walk because he dreaded a scene. Noel accepted for the same reason. She liked George, and with the disinterested detachment of a sister-in-law, and the shrewdness of extreme youth, knew him perhaps better than did his wife. She was sure, at all events, of being neither condemned nor sympathised with.
They might have gone, of course, in any direction, but chose to make for the City. Such deep decisions are subconscious. They sought, no doubt, a dry, unemotional region; or perhaps one where George, who was in uniform, might rest his arm from the automatic-toy game which the military play. They had reached Cheapside before he was conscious to the full of the bizarre nature of this walk with his pretty young sister-in-law among all the bustling, black-coated mob of money-makers. 'I wish the devil we hadn't come out!' he thought; 'it would have been easier indoors, after all.'
He cleared his throat, however, and squeezing her arm gently, began: “Gratian's told me, Nollie. The great thing is to keep your spirit up, and not worry.”
“I suppose you couldn't cure me.”
The words, in that delicate spurning voice, absolutely staggered George; but he said quickly:
“Out of the question, Nollie; impossible! What are you thinking of?”
“Daddy.”
The words: “D—n Daddy!” rose to his teeth; he bit them off, and said: “Bless him! We shall have to see to all that. Do you really want to keep it from him? It must be one way or the other; no use concealing it, if it's to come out later.”
“No.”
He stole a look at her. She was gazing straight before her. How damnably young she was, how pretty! A lump came up in his throat.
“I shouldn't do anything yet,” he said; “too early. Later on, if you'd like me to tell him. But that's entirely up to you, my dear; he need never know.”
“No.”
He could not follow her thought. Then she said:
“Gratian condemns Cyril. Don't let her. I won't have him badly thought of. It was my doing. I wanted to make sure of him.”
George answered stoutly:
“Gracie's upset, of course, but she'll soon be all right. You mustn't let it come between you. The thing you've got to keep steadily before you is that life's a huge wide adaptable thing. Look at all these people! There's hardly one of them who hasn't got now, or hasn't had, some personal difficulty or trouble before them as big as yours almost; bigger perhaps. And here they are as lively as fleas. That's what makes the fascination of life—the jolly irony of it all. It would do you good to have a turn in France, and see yourself in proportion to the whole.” He felt her fingers suddenly slip under his arm, and went on with greater confidence:
“Life's going to be the important thing in the future, Nollie; not comfort and cloistered virtue and security; but living, and pressure to the square inch. Do you twig? All the old hard-and-fast traditions and drags on life are in the melting-pot. Death's boiling their bones, and they'll make excellent stock for the new soup. When you prune and dock things, the sap flows quicker. Regrets and repinings and repressions are going out of fashion; we shall have no time or use for them in the future. You're going to make life—well, that's something to be thankful for, anyway. You've kept Cyril Morland alive. And—well, you know, we've all been born; some of us properly, and some improperly, and there isn't a ha'porth of difference in the value of the article, or the trouble of bringing it into the world. The cheerier you are the better your child will be, and that's all you've got to think about. You needn't begin to trouble at all for another couple of months, at least; after that, just let us know where you'd like to go, and I'll arrange it somehow.”
She looked round at him, and under that young, clear, brooding gaze he had the sudden uncomfortable feeling of having spoken like a charlatan. Had he really touched the heart of the matter? What good were his generalities to this young, fastidiously nurtured girl, brought up to tell the truth, by a father so old-fashioned and devoted, whom she loved? It was George's nature, too, to despise words; and the conditions of his life these last two years had given him a sort of horror of those who act by talking. He felt inclined to say: 'Don't pay the slightest attention to me; it's all humbug; what will be will be, and there's an end of it:
Then she said quietly:
“Shall I tell Daddy or not?”
He wanted to say: “No,” but somehow couldn't. After all, the straightforward course was probably the best. For this would have to be a lifelong concealment. It was impossible to conceal a thing for ever; sooner or later he would find out. But the doctor rose up in him, and he said:
“Don't go to meet trouble, Nollie; it'll be time enough in two months. Then tell him, or let me.”
She shook her head. “No; I will, if it is to be done.”
He put his hand on hers, within his arm, and gave it a squeeze.
“What shall I do till then?” she asked.
“Take a week's complete rest, and then go on where you are.”
Noel was silent a minute, then said: “Yes; I will.”
They spoke no more on the subject, and George exerted himself to talk about hospital experiences, and that phenomenon, the British soldier. But just before they reached home he said:
“Look here, Nollie! If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will be ashamed of you. If you put ashes on your own head, your fellow-beings will, assist you; for of such is their charity.”
And, receiving another of those clear, brooding looks, he left her with the thought: 'A lonely child!'
Noel went back to her hospital after a week's rest. George had done more for her than he suspected, for his saying: “Life's a huge wide adaptable thing!” had stuck in her mind. Did it matter what happened to her? And she used to look into the faces of the people she met, and wonder what was absorbing them. What secret griefs and joys were they carrying about with them? The loneliness of her own life now forced her to this speculation concerning others, for she was extraordinarily lonely; Gratian and George were back at work, her father must be kept at bay; with Leila she felt ill at ease, for the confession had hurt her pride; and family friends and acquaintances of all sorts she shunned like the plague. The only person she did not succeed in avoiding was Jimmy Fort, who came in one evening after dinner, bringing her a large bunch of hothouse violets. But then, he did not seem to matter—too new an acquaintance, too detached. Something he said made her aware that he had heard of her loss, and that the violets were a token of sympathy. He seemed awfully kind that evening, telling her “tales of Araby,” and saying nothing which would shock her father. It was wonderful to be a man and roll about the world as he had, and see all life, and queer places, and people—Chinamen, and Gauchos, and Boers, and Mexicans. It gave her a kind of thirst. And she liked to watch his brown, humorous face; which seemed made of dried leather. It gave her the feeling that life and experience were all that mattered, doing and seeing things; it made her own trouble seem smaller; less important. She squeezed his hand when she said good night: “Thank you for my violets and for coming; it was awfully kind of you! I wish I could have adventures!” And he answered: “You will, my dear fairy princess!” He said it queerly and very kindly.
Fairy Princess! What a funny thing to call her! If he had only known!
There were not many adventures to be had in those regions where she washed up. Not much “wide and adaptable life” to take her thoughts off herself. But on her journeys to and from the hospital she had more than one odd little experience. One morning she noticed a poorly dressed woman with a red and swollen face, flapping along Regent Street like a wounded bird, and biting strangely at her hand. Hearing her groan, Noel asked her what the matter was. The woman held out the hand. “Oh!” she moaned, “I was scrubbin' the floor and I got this great needle stuck through my 'and, and it's broke off, and I can't get it out. Oh! Oh!” She bit at the needle-end, not quite visible, but almost within reach of teeth, and suddenly went very white. In dismay, Noel put an arm round her, and turned her into a fine chemist's shop. Several ladies were in there, buying perfumes, and they looked with acerbity at this disordered dirty female entering among them. Noel went up to a man behind the counter. “Please give me something quick, for this poor woman, I think she's going to faint. She's run a needle through her hand, and can't get it out.” The man gave her “something quick,” and Noel pushed past two of the dames back to where the woman was sitting. She was still obstinately biting at her hand, and suddenly her chin flew up, and there, between her teeth, was the needle. She took it from them with her other hand, stuck it proudly in the front of her dress, and out tumbled the words: “Oh! there—I've got it!”
When she had swallowed the draught, she looked round her, bewildered, and said:
“Thank you kindly, miss!” and shuffled out. Noel paid for the draught, and followed; and, behind her, the shining shop seemed to exhale a perfumed breath of relief.
“You can't go back to work,” she said to the woman. “Where do you live?”
“'Ornsey, miss.”
“You must take a 'bus and go straight home, and put your hand at once into weak Condy's fluid and water. It's swelling. Here's five shillings.”
“Yes, miss; thank you, miss, I'm sure. It's very kind of you. It does ache cruel.”
“If it's not better this afternoon, you must go to a doctor. Promise!”
“Oh, dear, yes. 'Ere's my 'bus. Thank you kindly, miss.”
Noel saw her borne away, still sucking at her dirty swollen hand. She walked on in a glow of love for the poor woman, and hate for the ladies in the chemist's shop, and forgot her own trouble till she had almost reached the hospital.
Another November day, a Saturday, leaving early, she walked to Hyde Park. The plane-trees were just at the height of their spotted beauty. Few—very few-yellow leaves still hung; and the slender pretty trees seemed rejoicing in their freedom from summer foliage. All their delicate boughs and twigs were shaking and dancing in the wind; and their rain-washed leopard-like bodies had a lithe un-English gaiety. Noel passed down their line, and seated herself on a bench. Close by, an artist was painting. His easel was only some three yards away from her, and she could see the picture; a vista of the Park Lane houses through, the gay plane-tree screen. He was a tall man, about forty, evidently foreign, with a thin, long, oval, beardless face, high brow, large grey eyes which looked as if he suffered from headaches and lived much within himself. He cast many glances at her, and, pursuant of her new interest in “life” she watched him discreetly; a little startled however, when, taking off his broad-brimmed squash hat, he said in a broken accent:
“Forgive me the liberty I take, mademoiselle, but would you so very kindly allow me to make a sketch of you sitting there? I work very quick. I beg you will let me. I am Belgian, and have no manners, you see.” And he smiled.
“If you like,” said Noel.
“I thank you very much:”
He shifted his easel, and began to draw. She felt flattered, and a little fluttered. He was so pale, and had a curious, half-fed look, which moved her.
“Have you been long in England?” she said presently.
“Ever since the first months of the war.”
“Do you like it?”
“I was very homesick at first. But I live in my pictures; there are wonderful things in London.”
“Why did you want to sketch me?”
The painter smiled again. “Mademoiselle, youth is so mysterious. Those young trees I have been painting mean so much more than the old big trees. Your eyes are seeing things that have not yet happened. There is Fate in them, and a look of defending us others from seeing it. We have not such faces in my country; we are simpler; we do not defend our expressions. The English are very mysterious. We are like children to them. Yet in some ways you are like children to us. You are not people of the world at all. You English have been good to us, but you do not like us.”
“And I suppose you do not like us, either?”
He smiled again, and she noticed how white his teeth were.
“Well, not very much. The English do things from duty, but their hearts they keep to themselves. And their Art—well, that is really amusing!”
“I don't know much about Art,” Noel murmured.
“It is the world to me,” said the painter, and was silent, drawing with increased pace and passion.
“It is so difficult to get subjects,” he remarked abruptly. “I cannot afford to pay models, and they are not fond of me painting out of doors. If I had always a subject like you! You—you have a grief, have you not?”
At that startling little question, Noel looked up, frowning.
“Everybody has, now.”
The painter grasped his chin; his eyes had suddenly become tragical.
“Yes,” he said, “everybody. Tragedy is daily bread. I have lost my family; they are in Belgium. How they live I do not know.”
“I'm sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren't nice to you, here. We ought to be.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “What would you have? We are different. That is unpardonable. An artist is always lonely, too; he has a skin fewer than other people, and he sees things that they do not. People do not like you to be different. If ever in your life you act differently from others, you will find it so, mademoiselle.”
Noel felt herself flushing. Was he reading her secret? His eyes had such a peculiar, secondsighted look.
“Have you nearly finished?” she asked.
“No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not wish to keep you. It is cold for you, sitting there.”
Noel got up. “May I look?”
“Certainly.”
She did not quite recognise herself—who does?—but she saw a face which affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was, and yet was not, in front of her.
“My name is Lavendie,” the painter said; “my wife and I live here,” and he gave her a card.
Noel could not help answering: “My name is Noel Pierson; I live with my father; here's the address”—she found her case, and fished out a card. “My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and see him? He loves music and painting.”
“It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to paint you. Alas! I have no studio.”
Noel drew back. “I'm afraid that I work in a hospital all day, and—and I don't want to be painted, thank you. But, Daddy would like to meet you, I'm sure.”
The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.
“Of course I can see that you're a very fine painter,” she said quickly; “only—only—I don't want to, you see. Perhaps you'd like to paint Daddy; he's got a most interesting face.”
The painter smiled. “He is your father, mademoiselle. May I ask you one question? Why do you not want to be painted?”
“Because—because I don't, I'm afraid.” She held out her hand. The painter bowed over it. “Au revoir, mademoiselle.”
“Thank you,” said Noel; “it was awfully interesting.” And she walked away. The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly sun; and the foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against that French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely. Beauty, and the troubles of others, soothed her. She felt sorry for the painter, but his eyes saw too much! And his words: “If ever you act differently from others,” made her feel him uncanny. Was it true that people always disliked and condemned those who acted differently? If her old school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat her? In her father's study hung a little reproduction of a tiny picture in the Louvre, a “Rape of Europa,” by an unknown painter—a humorous delicate thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted on a prancing white bull, crossing a shallow stream, while on the bank all her white girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour, half-envious faces away from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of them tried with timid desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow, and follow. The face of the girl on the bull had once been compared by someone with her own. She thought of this picture now, and saw her school fellows-a throng of shocked and wondering girls. Suppose one of them had been in her position! 'Should I have been turning my face away, like the rest? I wouldn't no, I wouldn't,' she thought; 'I should have understood!' But she knew there was a kind of false emphasis in her thought. Instinctively she felt the painter right. One who acted differently from others, was lost.
She told her father of the encounter, adding:
“I expect he'll come, Daddy.”
Pierson answered dreamily: “Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him if he does.”
“And you'll sit to him, won't you?”
“My dear—I?”
“He's lonely, you know, and people aren't nice to him. Isn't it hateful that people should hurt others, because they're foreign or different?”
She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: “I know you think people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren't, of course.”
“That's not exactly charitable, Nollie.”
“You know they're not. I think sin often just means doing things differently. It's not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that doesn't prevent people condemning you, does it?”
“I don't know what you mean, Nollie.”
Noel bit her lips, and murmured: “Are you sure we're really Christians, Daddy?”
The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson took refuge in an attempt at wit. “I should like notice of that question, Nollie, as they say in Parliament.”
“That means you don't.”
Pierson flushed. “We're fallible enough; but, don't get such ideas into your head, my child. There's a lot of rebellious talk and writing in these days....”
Noel clasped her hands behind her head. “I think,” she said, looking straight before her, and speaking to the air, “that Christianity is what you do, not what you think or say. And I don't believe people can be Christians when they act like others—I mean, when they join together to judge and hurt people.”
Pierson rose and paced the room. “You have not seen enough of life to talk like that,” he said. But Noel went on:
“One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of conscientious objectors—it was horrible. Why do they treat them like that, just because they disagree? Captain Fort says it's fear which makes people bullies. But how can it be fear when they're hundreds to one? He says man has domesticated his animals but has never succeeded in domesticating himself. Man must be a wild beast, you know, or the world couldn't be so awfully brutal. I don't see much difference between being brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones.”
Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile. There was something fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom he had watched grow up from a tiny thing. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings—sometimes! But then the young generation was always something of a sealed book to him; his sensitive shyness, and, still more, his cloth, placed a sort of invisible barrier between him and the hearts of others, especially the young. There were so many things of which he was compelled to disapprove, or which at least he couldn't discuss. And they knew it too well. Until these last few months he had never realised that his own daughters had remained as undiscovered by him as the interior of Brazil. And now that he perceived this, he was bewildered, yet could not imagine how to get on terms with them.
And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing of the hard fact which was altering her—vaguely jealous, anxious, pained. And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the room a long time, thinking. He longed for a friend to confide in, and consult; but he knew no one. He shrank from them all, as too downright, bluff, and active; too worldly and unaesthetic; or too stiff and narrow. Amongst the younger men in his profession he was often aware of faces which attracted him, but one could not confide deep personal questions to men half one's age. But of his own generation, or his elders, he knew not one to whom he could have gone.