Part 4

"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?"

*VIII*

I am writing this in my bedroom at Cromer Court, at a Queen Anne desk, and by-and-by I am going to climb in a Queen Anne bed to watch the firelight flicker on the white panelled walls, on the quaintest chintz I have ever seen covering the chairs and the great divan, and fluttering like restless wings over open windows--pale green linen, the colour of young leaves, with bunches of white-heart cherries scattered over it.

I feel simple as a milkmaid and good as a nun in this dear old house, and I have never felt so happy. It is a precarious happiness. I should think the wives of the husbands home on leave feel it the last two days. It is a sort of happiness that freezes you while you are hugging it to you because of its warmth, and turns and rends you while you are caressing it--painful and beautiful at the same time.

I saw Cheneston's mother to-night for a few moments.

She is like one of those exquisite miniatures in the Academy that no one but miniaturists ever stay long enough to examine; her skin is like a child's, her eyes are Cheneston's eyes grown infinitely gentle--those queer hazel eyes that look, in a miniature, as if the paint had never dried.

"So this is Pam," she said, looking up at me, and her voice is like Cheneston's, grown faint and gentle; it has the same curious quality that makes you feel thrilled, and causes all the little nerves in your spine to "ping" as they do at an exciting play. "My son," she said, "I am so proud--such a vain old woman!--proud that you should have won such a woman--the only sort of woman that could ever have held you, son."

They have no gas or electric light here, only candles in silver sconces. I looked up suddenly and saw the perspiration glistening in beads on Cheneston's forehead. She took my hands.

"Pam," she said, "you're a wonderful little person--half gallant boy, half elf, and the other part sheer mother. The gallant boy in you will be his pal, the elf will keep him your eternal lover, and the mother--will keep him on his knees to you." She looked up at me whimsically, tenderly. "The Cromers are a woman's life-work--they run away for years and leave you to break your heart, and they come back and fill the hall with tusks and elephant-leg umbrella-stands, and expect you to go mad with them over the trophies. The elf in you will still the call of the wild in Cheneston, he will not dare to leave you, and the mother that broods in your quiet eyes." She turned to Cheneston. "You mustn't lose her--she's the one woman in the world for you--the only woman."

Then the nurse came back and signed to us to go.

Old Mrs. Cromer gave me a wonderful smile, and in that smile I suddenly realised how beautiful, how magnetic she had been. It was a smile of the most extraordinary and amazing happiness.

"Your father," I said, when we got outside, "your father went away from her?" I wanted to see if I had understood the significance of the smile.

"He took her," he said hoarsely. "She was his star, his goddess."

To-night we dined alone downstairs.

I wore my grey taffeta with the tiny bunches of pink apple-blossom and the little pink georgette fichu.

I felt that nothing else in my wardrobe was in keeping with the atmosphere of the Court.

Cheneston changed into ordinary evening dress. It was the first time I had seen him out of khaki. It sounds foolish and snobbish to say he looked a very gallant gentleman, as if I were trying to write an old-fashioned novel; but it is the only phrase that exactly describes him.

I felt an extraordinary atmosphere of noble sweetness, it seemed to throb through me. I was shiningly happy in the very inmost corner of my soul.

Cheneston is a perfect host; so many men leave off being the wives' hosts after they have married them. I had a feeling that Cheneston never would.

We talked of books--funny, dear old-fashioned authors like Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell and Jane Austen. When we rose he looked at me.

"You, woman, are wonderful," he said tersely: "you have only blown in here, and yet you belong to it, you are of it."

"And to-morrow I shall blow away again," I said.

"And to-morrow you will blow away again, he acquiesced.

"Can you imagine Grace Gilpin here?" I said suddenly. "Can you imagine her beauty in this setting?"

"It is unimaginable," he said curtly.

"She is beautiful," I persisted. I had an idea that my words must come sobbingly, because my heart was sobbing.

"She is the most beautiful thing I ever saw," he agreed. "They are bringing us coffee in the drawing-room."

I think the drawing-room is the biggest room I have ever been in; it is so long and narrow; the walls are white panels, and the carpet pale grey, and the chintz is the same grey with a little fierce blue lobelia bobbing about on it, and there is priceless blue Chinese porcelain everywhere, and a wonderful and enormous grand piano, and there were great bowls of white jasmine everywhere.

I sat down at the piano and ran my hands over the keys, and Cheneston spoke.

"Pam--please don't sing. I--I beg you not to sing."

"I won't if you don't wish it."

"Thank you."

But after they had brought in the coffee old Mrs. Cromer's nurse came and begged me to leave the door open and sing. I looked at Cheneston.

"Yes," he said. "Tell mother Miss Burbridge will sing." Then he looked at me; his face was very white. "Can I fetch you music, Pam?" he said.

"No, I don't need it, thank you."

He opened the french-windows, and the air that blew from the sea and the red fields of Devon swept into the room in a cloud of jasmine scent, and through the diamond panes I saw the stars twinkling--and suddenly I lost Pam Burbridge and the pretty room. I became something that had kinship with the stars and the hot scent of jasmine, something that was houseless and homeless and free; I walked beside Cheneston through Elysian fields, I talked to him and had no need of words. We were mates, we who had never been lovers.

I stopped. I was quite alone, and someone was rapping on the floor, and I heard the nurse's voice over the stairs. "Miss Burbridge, will you come?"

I went slowly. I was trembling and a little afraid.

I found the old lady sitting up in bed, and Cheneston with his arms round her supporting her at the back.

"Pam," she said, "I was frightened, dear--so frightened. I had to send for you. You and Cheneston had lost each other--I heard it in your wonderful voice, child, I saw it in the boy's face when he came to me. What is it? What is it?" she looked at us piteously. "I feel something is there. I know it! Something that shouldn't be there! I feel it!"

"Nonsense, dearest," Cheneston said.

"There is," she persisted. "I am frightened for you both. Why do I fear you losing each other?--you who were made for her, and she who was made for you."

"You are nervous," he said. "You are worrying yourself unnecessarily."

She caught his hands.

"I am afraid for you, my dears," she said. "Cheneston--let me see you married before I go. Let me be quite sure you have not missed the supreme happiness."

"We cannot do that, mother--there are many things to be thought of."

"White satin and bridesmaids, wedding bells and marriage settlements do not make a marriage, children. Pam, what is the obstacle?"

"Nothing," I said desperately. "Nothing."

She looked at Cheneston; Cheneston laid her down very gently.

"You are worn out, dearest," he said. "You must rest now."

She did not refer to it when I saw her the next morning. She looked frailer than ever by day, a wraith woman with jewelled eyes.

I breakfasted alone; a thin, fine rain drove against the windows like sea-spray. In the garden I could see the michaelmas daisies bowed, great clumps of amethyst, the chrysanthemums gleamed tawny red. Autumn was later here, but in the rain gold leaves kept falling, and the pearly white of the jasmine from the front of the house strewed the path, and here and there the petal of a passion-flower, like an exotic beetle's wing.

I put on my little rainproof coat and sou'-wester and went out.

I walked through the orchards, where wet apples gleamed like jewelled fruit wrought in ruby and emerald, where yellow plums hung like waxen fruit, and the late pears like amber ornaments. I walked through little spinneys where the wet gold made your eyes ache. I saw the red fields waiting for ploughing and fields heavy with the late crops through the rain like a soft coloured map: and I saw the sea, queer and grey as an aged woman, through the trees--and as far as I could see it all belonged to the Cromers, and the words of an old poem came to me, something about "a goodly heritage, bound by the sea and netted by the skies."

I stopped to speak to a little child, and it answered me in the soft up-and-down of the Devonshire dialect; and I knew I could have been happy with Cheneston here--not with the satisfied happiness of those who possess a chippendale drawing-room suite, a parlourmaid, and a car, but happy as those who inherit the earth. I could have been happy with a glorious, keen, swelling happiness.

I turned home. It smelt as fresh as if all the earth had been newly turned that morning, and as I turned a sunbeam struggled through and flickered uncertainly.

I found a letter waiting for me--two letters, one from mother and one from Grace Gil pin.

Mother's was characteristic. She hoped Mrs. Cromer was a nice woman and approved of me. Were the estates extensive? Had Cheneston a big rent roll? The end was typical. "I cannot see what you gain by postponing your marriage. It cannot enhance your value in Cheneston's eyes. It is always as well to remember that the world is full of girls, and an engaged man is not regarded in the same light as an engaged girl. I shall be very glad to hear that you have come to some sensible decision. Your father writes that he has struck an expensive mess, and that he has not been lucky at bridge lately. He is playing "pirate"--it has superseded auction; try to learn it if you can, social assets are never to be despised."

Pirate at Cromer Court! I smiled.

I sat down on an old oak chest in the tiled hall and opened Grace Gilpin's letter. The sun was shining brilliantly now; the twinkling raindrops that fringed the windows and hung glistening on the strands of jasmine were reflected on the red tiles in wriggling little shadows, like tadpole ghosts. I took off my wet mackintosh and my little sou'wester, and fluffed up my hair with my fingers.

Grace's letter was very much to the point.

"Walter Markham is home wounded. He is at Lynn Lytton Hospital, Long Woodstock, Near Manchester. What are you going to do about it, Pam?"

Well, what was I going to do about it?

What _could_ I do about it--except pray that Cheneston didn't get to know until he didn't want me any more.

I sat down stupidly and stared at the letter.

I had a sudden vision of Grace writing, her golden head bent, seeing in the missive and Walter Markham's presence in England the chance of freedom for herself and Cheneston; believing Cheneston loved her and I loved Walter Markham; believing that our engagement was just an emotional mistake, never guessing it wasn't an engagement at all!

A great many engagements are emotional mistakes. Why not ours?

Cheneston came out of the door on the right, I suppose it was his study. He held a letter in his hand. He was in khaki again, and he looked ill and worried.

"Good-morning," I said. I noticed he had his Burberry over his arm, and his service cap and a small dispatch case under his arm.

"You've heard?" he said.

"What?" I said stupidly, and my heart began to beat very rapidly.

"That Markham is in England--wounded. Oh! Pam--you shan't suffer, because you've been so splendid and wonderful. You ought to be with him; but he'll spare you, and understand when he knows."

"Where are you going?" I said desperately.

"Up to Lynn Lytton to tell him I understand that you care for each other, that you've told me all about it, and that we're not engaged to each other. To tell him how absolutely superb you've been, and why you're here. My God! Pam, do you think I'd ever forgive myself if I mucked up your life, dear!"

*IX*

"You--you mustn't go to Walter," I pleaded desperately. "I--I want to go myself."

I had one thought; it was so vivid that it seemed like something dressed in scarlet floating on a grey sea of little thoughts and fears all inextricably mixed--it was that I must get to Walter Markham first and _explain_.

"Pam," Cheneston said gravely, "are you afraid of my being clumsy and not making things clear to him?"

I nodded. I couldn't speak. The idea of Cheneston being clumsy, Cheneston with his fine, fierce, almost uncanny insight into things, had me by the throat.

"I see," Cheneston said slowly. "Little Pam, I hate to think I have made you afraid for your happiness even for one minute. You are so worthy of happiness--so absolutely great! He'll understand, dear, how simply priceless you've been to--come here. He's bound to understand." He looked down at me with fierce anxiety in his hazel eyes, he seemed desperately questioning his own belief in Walter Markham's broad-mindedness.

"I'll make him understand," I said. "Don't worry, I'll make him understand."

A sudden flood of fierce protective love swept over me. I wished for the hundredth time that I might be big and Cheneston little--ever so little--that I might take him in my arms roughly and tell him not to look like that. I felt I could go to Walter Markham and explain everything, I could sit by his bedside and skin my very soul--but I couldn't help feeling, even then, it would be easier to do something bigger and less painful, something more actually physical than soul-skinning.

I never found it very easy to show my feelings to people; the bigger they are the more tightly corked they seem. I often wished for, and sometimes I've cried because I haven't, little frothy feelings that bubble over into little easy caresses and kind words and pretty compliments and easy things like that. It rather hurts me to get to the surface, I seem to have to tug from such a long way down.

"I'll drive you to the station," Cheneston said. "I shall tell mater you've got to go up to Town on business."

"I'll tell her," I answered hastily.

I knew she would sense Cheneston's disquiet; women lie to women better than men to women. She took my departure more quietly than I had anticipated. There was a lovely expression on her dear face--it was as if her soul was smiling to itself while she was grave. She patted me with her lovely soft hands.

"And you will be back early to-morrow, dear, funny little girl? It's odd," she said, "I see a cloud between you and Cheneston. When I first saw it I was frightened, but now I know it is not made by your hearts--it is only a cloud your silly brains have made, child, and it will go. You are going to dissipate some of it to-day."

"Yes," I said, "I am."

It was true. In that at least I didn't lie. I was going to explain the truth to Walter Markham, and I was going to make it easy for Cheneston to marry Grace Gilpin.

She held my hand against her face. The charm of her was like a beautiful, strong current--I can't explain; all the things I long to express and cannot, the things I suffer so for my inability to voice and demonstrate, seemed gloriously easy. I put my arms round her and pressed her face to mine. I loved her with a dear and full love.

"My little Pam!" she said. "My dear, funny little soul!" Then she said sharply and fiercely: "Oh, Pam, it's cruel if we women who are sent into the world with out-size hearts and feelings meet the wrong men! I met the right one!" A note of triumph crept into her voice. "And Cheneston will understand that in your dear tiny body is a soul and a heart too big and strong. People call it the artistic temperament--it isn't really that, it means that something that is shut up and sealed with other people until they get to heaven where nothing can hurt is left open--maybe it's left open accidentally, maybe it's meant--and those people suffer more than the rest of the world, and are more gloriously glad, and out of the glory and the travail of their souls they give to the world wonderful music, or wonderful pictures, or wonderful books. _And they are not like other people_, Pam! They are very great and very little at the same time, and not one in a thousand can understand how life hurts, and how glorious it is when it is glorious. Cheneston will understand; that is why you and he must never, never run away from each other--you dear, funny little soul!"

Then I heard Cheneston calling.

We drove to the station almost in silence. He took the high dog-cart, and we could see over the hedges; they sparkled with thousands of raindrops, and the late dog-roses seemed like phantasies wrought in vivid coral, and blackberries like black diamonds and rubies jewelled the world, and every bird seemed singing and every cricket chirping for sheer gladness of the newly washed day.

He told me he had had an extension of leave.

I was so happy. I have never had a feeling that I did not want to share--I can't explain. I just want to pass on every bit of loveliness that comes into my life. We passed lots of children picking blackberries, and I could have cried because I wanted to kiss them so, or give them something, or just tell them I thought they'd get the loveliest lot of blackberries I had ever seen--because I was up in the world, sitting above the hedges with Cheneston.

We passed a little girl who had spilt all her blackberries and was crying, and I took off a little gold bracelet I had on and flung it to her.

I shall never forget the ecstatic look in her small, grimy face.

"You see," I said quickly, "I'm sorry if you think I'm mad, but--but she was crying, and now she is happy. She will be awfully happy all day."

I'm never sorry for the impulsive things I do, but I am nearly always sorry because people don't understand. It seems to me like rubbing all the lovely bloom off a butterfly's wing just to demonstrate that it is a butterfly.

"I don't think you're mad," he said, smiling.

If I had had anklets as well as bracelets I could have given them away this morning. He helped me down at the station; he was just a little constrained, so I knew he was feeling tremendously full of feeling, just as I was.

"Modern life doesn't give a fellow much of a chance. I have rather absurd notions about you at this minute--I should like to be Sir Walter Raleigh, and put my cloak down for you to walk on. You don't know how humble you make me feel, Pamela Burbridge."

I felt myself sort of melting towards him.

"What can I do to show you how splendid I think you are?" he said. "You wonderful small person!"

And something inside me wanted to say, "Exchange all this chivalrous gratitude for just a tiny bit of love"; but I sat on the something's head _hard_, like a good girl, and I said:

"Why, you can get me my ticket; the booking-office is open now."

There is nothing more cheerless and depressing than going to a place you don't know and arriving all alone. If only there is a pillar-box in the vicinity where you have once posted a letter, or a tea-shop where you bought chocolates, it establishes a feeling of intimacy. At Long Woodstock I felt an alien of aliens, an Englishwoman in a foreign country.

I swallowed a cup of tea and had a wash on the cheerless northern station; then I took a mouldy old fly that smelt of innumerable weddings and funerals, and set out for Lynn Lytton Hospital, and as I travelled past the rows of grey stone houses I felt myself shedding my high-flown courage of the morning feather by feather, until I became the reserved, nervous little coward I had always been. Furthermore, I began to feel very sick.

I feel with intense earnestness that Charlotte Corday and Nurse Cavell and Christobel Pankhurst, and those wonderful women who fought in the Russian Army, could never have felt sick as I can feel sick, or they would have stopped in the middle of their heroic deeds and gone home to bed.

I can think of nothing more unheroic than to feel sick on all the great and emotional occasions of your life.

We seemed to climb Lynn Lytton, it was high up on a hill, and by the time we reached it the birds were twittering their benedictions and the first stars were netted in the tree-tops.

I told the cabman to wait, and climbed some steps--they seemed like the steps of the Monument.

I am glad the door opened at once, or I would have turned and bolted down them like a rabbit.

I must have been feeling pretty bad, because there was some late clematis clinging to one of the pillars of the portico, and they seemed to me in the twilight like large and particularly meaty spiders.

I want so badly to write of the heroic sentiments and thoughts I had, but I was sick, and the clematis looked like fat spiders, and I wanted to run away. That is the honest truth.

"I want to see Captain Markham," I told the sister who came to the door.

"It is after visiting hours," said the sister gently. "Are you his wife?"

"No--he hasn't a wife."

"His sister?"

"No--just--just----"

"I see," said the sister very gently. "Please come in," and I saw that she did not see--she thought that Walter Markham and I had sentimental relations.

She took me into a little grey distempered room hung with orange curtains, and sent the matron to me. She reminded me of snow, so deep that it could never, never melt--kind snow, deep enough to be soft.

"Are you Pam?" she said.

I looked up, startled and taken unawares.

"Yes," I said briefly, and stared.

She sat down; she was a large woman, and there was a soothing placidity about all her movements.

"I thought so," she said. "Captain Markham has been calling for you night and day--if we could have ascertained your other name we should have sent for you, but when he was conscious he said there was no Pam." She looked at me thoughtfully. "So you are Pam," she said.

I nodded. "But it couldn't have been me he was calling for. I--I--why?"

"He is very ill," she said, "that is why I am going to let you see him to-night. I do not think he will live till morning."

I saw that she told me purposely without preamble.

I sat numbed. I could only repeat stupidly: "But it couldn't be me he wanted."

I felt as if she were passing to me some imitations of her aloof snowiness. I, too, felt a little unreal.

"I think you have turned up at the right moment," she said. "Please come, and don't be surprised if he doesn't know you." She put her hand on my shoulder. "Don't give up hope," she said; "nothing is certain--not even in science and surgery."

I think it is in one of Tennyson's things there comes the phrase "into the jaws of Hell"; it crept into my mind when I saw Walter Markham.

I have never seen anything so terrible or so pathetic. He was conscious.