Part 2

"I think it is," I broke in unexpectedly.

Grace Gilpin turned in her chair and glanced at me. She was lovely; she wore cornflower blue crepe and white collar and cuffs.

"I think Cheneston would be quite wonderful in the role of a fairy prince," she said.

He laughed, rose, and walked away.

Going home he looked at me gravely.

"I hope you're not getting romantic about our engagement. I don't mean anything rotten, child--but all that silly rubbish about fairy tales and fairy princes. I have only five weeks more--then I go to the front."

"Did you care for Grace most frightfully?" I asked boldly.

He looked down at me with slightly puzzled eyes. I can't describe his eyes exactly, they are hazel, and when he is going to laugh they laugh first; and they are hard and honest and straight.

"I thought," he said. "I gave my very soul into her hands, to play with and laugh at--but I don't know. It doesn't hurt so much--as it did. Pam--I gave her everything that was best in me; and she encouraged me, she let me give, and when I had beggared myself--when I cared like hell--she flung my gifts back in my face and laughed. I wanted to humiliate her as she had humiliated me. I'm not a great man, Pam; she ground my pride and my love and my manhood under her heel--and I wanted to hit back."

"And I afforded you the opportunity," I said very quietly.

He looked out over the downs, his eyes were worried and troubled and his face was white.

"I wouldn't hurt you for the world, Pam; I have been thinking over this make-believe engagement of ours, wondering if it could possibly hurt you in any single way. The only thing I can see is that it might keep off another man who might want to marry you--and there isn't one about. It simply amounts to this: I give you a good time, and you wear a ring I gave you. I wouldn't hurt you, Pam. Sometimes I could almost fancy you're not like other women--you're not a beastly little actress. I suppose I seem an awful cad sometimes. We can't cry off just now, kid; the Service makes prisoners of us all. I can't leave here, whatever happens, until I go to France with my battery in five weeks' time; and if we pretended things were broken off now our position would be intolerable. We've got to carry on. I'll make the next five weeks as pleasant as ever I can for you."

Mother came out as we reached our gate, and Cheneston said good-bye.

She looked at me curiously as we went inside.

"You funny cold little thing," she said, "never a kiss."

One of the things that makes me feel frightfully sick is the amount mother and father are spending on clothes for me.

It's rather like an Arabian Nights dream to have a wardrobe full of perfectly adorable frocks, but I feel it's so unfair to let them spend all this money to get me settled when being settled is as remote as it ever has been.

I try to accept the light and airy "take what the good gods give" philosophy, but I am too aware that it isn't the good gods, it's mother and father who give, on a Major's pay, fully believing their reward will be made concrete in "The Voice that breathed o'er Eden," and the disposing of a singularly plain and unexciting daughter to a handsome young man with pots of money.

I would so like to be angry with someone for being plain, but I did it absolutely on my own, because mother is quite a beautiful person and father is frightfully aristocratic and romanish--they are both rather splendidly beaky, but mine is a pure and unadulterated snub.

I suppose I have a petty, shallow nature, but I pine to be romantic and wonderful like Grace Gilpin, and simply draw people to me; no one but deaf old ladies who think I look kind and good ever ask to be introduced to me; and only chivalrous men who think I look tired and anaemic and work for my living ever offer me seats in buses or tubes.

Grace Gilpin takes her surroundings and uses them as a background--she is always to the fore. I sink into the background and become part of them.

Yesterday we took out lunch on the links, caviare sandwiches and stuff, and Grace sat down by a flaming gorse-bush in a grey frock and a grey jersey. She just used that glorious bit of flame as an "effect." I sat on the other side, and they all nearly forgot me and went off without me.

"I didn't see you," Walter Markham said.

It's true; there are heaps of people in this life you don't see because of the more ornamental people.

I would have given almost anything to have been born showy, so that people would look at me. I want Cheneston to look at me as he, and other men, look at Grace, as if she were a splendid vision vouchsafed to them for five minutes.

I do love that man, and love isn't one bit what I thought it was. I always imagined it was a mixture of bubble and scorch, but it isn't--it's so sweet to love. I could be good! It makes me feel good right to my finger-nails, and full of that after-church-on-a-summer-Sunday evening-in-peace-time feeling; that's why I think that my love for the man isn't anything to be ashamed of or humiliated about. He doesn't love me, I know; but I have a conviction you can't grow unless you love, and I feel so much more use in the world since I've started growing.

Loving Cheneston has made life perfectly wonderful for me. He doesn't know it and he never will, but he's shown me all the dear beauty of the world--and it is beautiful.

Walter Markham is awfully nice to me; sometimes he leaves Grace Gilpin to Cheneston and walks with me, and he is teaching me tennis in the mornings before breakfast. He is much older than Cheneston, Grace, or I--he must be forty--and he is very rich.

I wonder if Grace will marry him--or if she will marry Cheneston. Sometimes I think he will forget he is angry with her, and he will tell her how the mistaken idea of our "engagement" arose, and why he let it prosper--there is a frightful lot of the open-hearted, impetuous schoolboy about Cheneston.

I don't think he is happy.

If he made a clean breast of it to Grace we should have to break off our supposed "engagement," and mother would have to take me away--father couldn't leave.

I can imagine what my life would be!

I think they would pack me off as governess or companion to someone.

I know if I don't marry by a certain age that will be my fate. Mother was perfectly honest about it--before Cheneston came along; now I am her dear little daughter, she looks at me in pleased bewilderment sometimes, as if wondering how so homely a hunter could have achieved such a sensational capture.

They have never tried to equip me in any way. I was never given the opportunity to acquire any accomplishments. Old Giovanni taught me to sing--for love of his art.

Mother laughed when she heard he was teaching me--she laughed because he was a funny, broken-down old Italian singer, and the boys used to pay him five shillings a night out of mess funds to come up and play to them in the evening when the regiment was stationed at Gilesworth and there was nothing on earth to do.

Giovanni was a great teacher, and to him I owe to-night.

I don't think I'll ever forget to-night.

It was lovely!

I wish I could tell Giovanni all about it, he would so understand. Once he was furious; he told mother I had an extraordinary voice, and mother laughed and said she did not doubt it.

Cheneston used the words at the Gilpins' to-night.

"You have an extraordinary voice, Pam!" he said, "amazing."

Grace sings. Cheterton and Pouiluex of the Paris Conservatoire trained her voice.

To-night we all went over to the Gilpins' for coffee--mother, father, Cheneston, and I--and when we arrived Grace was singing "Jeunesse," that funny little song about "taking your picture out of its frame, and out of my heart I have taken your name"--it wasn't very effective. It needs a lot of sorrow in the voice, and Grace's voice is full of light laughter; it was rather like a tom-tit trying to dance a minuet.

I was feeling stirred up and rebellious. It seemed so hard that I had only a funny little face and homely little ways in which to express all the beautiful big, swishy feelings that were eating me up inside, and Grace was so lovely that she could express things she didn't really feel at all.

It seemed so awfully unfair and rotten, just as if we were both trying to touch Cheneston's heart with the same melody, and she had a glorious grand to work on, and I just a little boarding-house upright.

They had blue chinese lanterns with apple-blossom pattern on the stoep, and great copper bowls of larkspurs and pale pink carnations everywhere, and black cushions on all the white wicker chairs; and Grace wore black with an enormous blue sash.

She was singing in the drawing-room, with Walter Markham turning over her music, and when she came out on to the stoep she said:

"Surely, Pam, you play or something?"

"I sing a little," I said.

"Then do try," said she--you know the sort of woman who always asks another woman to "try" to sing.

I went straight to the piano and I sang "Melisande in the Wood," accompanying myself.

I think my voice has a funny register, it seems to surprise people. It's terrifically deep and strong and soft--almost "furry."

It's rather disconcerting, because it doesn't sound as if it belonged to me at all; I am like a doll's house fitted with a church organ.

I don't think I have _ever_ sung as I did that night. I was pealing and ringing and chanting inside before ever I started, and all that was there in my heart seemed to rush into my voice.

It was like some great big longing, hoping, sad she-spirit singing.

When the last "sleep" had sort of slid away, I turned round; they were all in the room staring--just staring.

Walter Markham came over to see me.

"You are wonderful!" he said. "Pam--you are wonderful!"

I looked at Cheneston, suddenly I felt as if I had taken control of my background.

Cheneston's face was white.

His face was the face of a discoverer.

He bent over me.

"You have an extraordinary voice, Pam," he said, "amazing---- But of course it lies--women use their singing voices to tell lies--wonderful, beautiful, sweet-sounding lies."

"Sing again," Grace said.

But I would not sing again; I had made my effect--I own it quite, quite honestly--I could have shrieked with triumph.

So Grace sang.

She sang "Rose in the Bud"--and it was like the trickling after the pour had ceased.

I think they all felt it.

They began to talk.

Cheneston did not talk; he leant back against the black cushions and stared into the garden with a white face.

*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 feted. 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 blase 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 a _big_ man--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 was _big_, 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 the _morale_ of 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*