Part 5

"Why, it's Pam!" he said weakly. "Dear little, funny little Pam." Then earnestly, with a terrible effort to concentrate. "Are you real?" He took my hand and felt it tremblingly. "You're real," he said.

The matron left us alone.

He was in a tiny room by himself, the blind was up and the big window looked on to a great hill, like the hunched shoulder of a giant.

"Why did you come?" he said. "Why did you come?"

I knelt beside the bed. I was trembling and I felt sicker than ever.

Above the titanic shoulder of the hill the tiny bare white shoulder of the moon shrugged itself into view.

"I can't!" I pleaded. "Not now."

"My dear, you must. If I go out to-night I go out--wondering."

I began to tell him. I told him all about meeting Cheneston in the searchlight, and how the mistake about our being engaged had started. I told him that Grace Gilpin and Cheneston loved each other. I told him all about somebody writing to Cheneston's mother and telling her that Cheneston was engaged to me. I told him how fearfully ill she was, and that I had gone to Cromer Court because she so passionately wanted to see her son's future wife.

"But why did you come to me?" he said.

The moonlight was sweeping down the hill to us now, an incoming tide of limpid silver. I looked out of the window desperately.

"I told Cheneston you and I cared--I wanted him to feel free to marry Grace. This morning he--he was coming to you--Cheneston was--he was so afraid you would misunderstand my being at Cromer Court, and think I had ceased to care for you. Also this morning I had a note from Grace Gilpin telling me you were here, asking me what I was going to do about it."

"And they--Grace and Cromer--believe there is some understanding between us, that we grew to care for each other when the four of us went about together?"

"Yes," I said desperately; the hill suddenly seemed to tip towards me, it seemed to carry with it the smell of iodoform and disinfectant.

And then the amazing and paralysing thing happened: Captain Markham suddenly put his arm round me.

"Well," he said, "isn't it true, Pam! My God! child, isn't it _true_? Don't I love you?--you ridiculous child, you wonderful, wonderful thing with your strange crooked little mouth and your great eyes! Oh! Pam, my little, little girl--didn't you know I cared!"

The hill tipped back into place like a giant sitting back on its haunches, and the silver tide seemed to ripple down it to ultimately engulf us.

*X*

Love is a cloak and is made in different styles; some people wrap themselves tightly in it, and there is only just enough to go round them: it is their cloak, and if Cupid himself, dimpled and in his birthday suit, came and sat beside them on the top of a motor-bus in the rain, they wouldn't go shares. For other people Love is a large cloak, voluminous and overlapping, and capable of sheltering, warming, and comforting quite a lot of people round the hem.

My heart ached for him as I sat beside him. He held my hand very tightly with his thin fingers, almost like a frightened child, and I had a feeling that he feared to drift out and I was his anchor, and I wished that I could drift out with him.

"Pam," he said once or twice, and I had a feeling as if he were saying "Mother," and I answered, "Yes, dear," and by-and-by he smiled and whispered again, "Pam."

The matron kept coming in and out. Once or twice she fed Walter Markham with a teaspoonful of brandy, once she brought me a cup of bovril; she seemed just the same as when I first met her hours ago, like warm snow immeasurably deep.

"Human vitality is at its lowest in the small hours," she whispered. She looked down at Walter Markham. I looked at her. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know."

I sat on. It was so quiet in there--the world seemed like a very young baby asleep, the moonlight flooding over the hill to diffuse a sort of white holiness, an effortless tranquillity.

They had said that Walter Markham could not live through the night, and yet I was not sorry for him. I only wanted to be immensely good to him while he lived, to send him out happy.

"Pam," he said, "I sort of hear you singing--are you singing?"

"Perhaps my heart is."

"What songs, Pam?"

"Lullabies, dear, lovely, gentle lullabies."

"Not love-songs, Pam?"

"No."

"Love-songs suit you best," he said.

I tried to see the future, sitting there. I thought the peace and the moonlight might help me, it seemed to make things so beautifully abstract and impersonal that the planning hardly hurt at all. In all my plans I never contemplated Walter Markham living and loving me, and believing I had come to him because I loved him. I saw myself leaving the hospital and going back to Cromer Court. I knew that Cheneston's sympathy and gratitude would be my particular Garden of Gethsemane.

I wondered a little why Life and Love should always peck and beat and burn me, and I wondered for the first time without resentment.

The house surgeon came in; he wore a long white linen coat over pink and white pyjamas, and apologised for his costume, and I went and walked in the moonlit corridor with the matron.

"It will be a triumph if we save him," she said--"but it will be your triumph."

I looked at her, startled and perplexed.

"Then you think?" I said.

"Six hours ago the chances were a hundred to one against; they aren't now."

"Doesn't anything ever hurt you?" I said suddenly. "Don't you ever feel all twisted up with the beauty or the honour of things? Don't you find things cruelly lovely or hideously bad? Don't people and their ways make you writhe?"

"I haven't time," she answered tranquilly. "I'm always doing things or else I'm sleeping hard."

The house surgeon came out.

"Everything is extraordinarily satisfactory," he said. "I've tried a very small dose of scopolamin-morphine."

I went back and resumed my vigil. I did not feel at all tired. I felt a little aloof, as if I were sitting apart and critically watching myself.

I heard a bird twitter, and then the stillness settled down tighter than ever, and then the bird twittered again and a tinge of light, pallid and uncertain, crept up behind the hill.

The dawn was coming, the little bird voice had heralded it.

The little tinge became pink; the stars seemed to blink baldly, like eyes without eyelashes.

The bird world stirred, a blackbird trilled a few delicious notes. I saw that a few trees fringed the hill; the dawn peeped behind them, rosy and fresh, like a child peering from behind its fingers.

The hospital was waking up, too; I saw a woman cross the dewy orchard to a cowhouse in the corner carrying milk-pails and stool.

The scene, which had been changing and intensifying every second, suddenly remained stationary; it was as if Nature suddenly stepped back to view her work--she had fashioned a golden world with the help of the sun, gloriously, dazzlingly gold, golden apples and golden trees, golden thatched roofs; it blazed beyond my window.

Walter Markham opened his eyes.

"Topping day," he said weakly. "Hullo, doc!--I didn't go out, you see."

"Go out! Havers! man, I'll be dancing at your wedding before the week is out!" The gruff Scotch doctor, shaved, and clad in khaki and alert, laughed. "You're doing fine!"

"Wedding," Walter Markham said weakly. "I shall be all right? My arm? There--there isn't any reason why I shouldn't marry?"

"None on earth."

He looked at me. There was a radiancy in his eyes, a sort of throbbing happiness.

"O God!" he said, "I'm so happy!"

The house surgeon took me away; he was babbling foolishly, and he looked like an excited rocking-horse; he had a long narrow face and wide nostrils.

"Splendid!" he kept saying. "Absolutely top-hole! Splendid! Good chap, yours! Splendid!"

"He's going to live?" I said. Suddenly I felt very tired, as if my eyelids had been pressed back.

"Of course! The hospital must have some of your wedding-cake. Oh, splendid!"

The matron came down the long corridor.

"Will you take her down to the visitors' room, doctor?" she said. "I'm just going off duty. I didn't tell you before, Miss Burbridge, but your mother is here--she's been here nearly an hour."

Mother was sitting with her back to the orange curtains. As I entered the room I became conscious of the faint scent of jasmine with which I always associated her.

"How did you know I was here?" I said involuntarily.

"I wired to Cromer Court that I must see you, and Cheneston wired back that you were away in the North for a few days. I was puzzled. I showed the letter to Grace Gilpin, and she suggested that you had come to see Captain Markham. Why did Cheneston let you come, and why did you come?"

"I wanted to and he wanted me to," I said.

I thought it very clever of Grace Gilpin to guess and send mother here, it made it so much easier for Cheneston and her if I could be caught with the man I was supposed to be in love with.

"I knew that you knew no one in the North; but for Grace I should never have thought. I didn't believe I should find you here."

"But you have," I said wearily. "What do you want?"

"Pam," mother said baldly, "are you in love with Walter Markham?"

I wish I didn't feel so horribly tired and done. I knew I could never be subtle and evasive with mother, somehow she always knocked over my defences and surprised the truth in me. She had a way of taking my deepest and most secret feelings by the scruff of the neck and dragging them ruthlessly into the light--almost as if she wanted to see if their ears were clean.

"No," I said, "I'm not in love with him."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"He wanted me."

"Did he send for you?"

"No."

"Pam," said mother, "you are hiding things. Are you?"

"Yes," I said.

"I am going to find them out, there's something here I don't understand at all. Why did Cheneston let you come to see another man?"

"He thought I wanted to."

"You did not want to," mother said. "You are crazily, madly in love with Cheneston, that is obvious to anyone who knows you."

"Is it?" I said. "I hoped it wasn't. I did it for that purpose, you see, because I am crazily, madly in love with Cheneston, and he is crazily, madly in love with Grace Gilpin."

"He used to be before he met you," mother put in. "I did not know----" she paused and looked at me. "I think you'd better explain right from the beginning," she said decisively.

"Do you?" I countered quickly. "I am afraid it will be rather a shock--you see, I'd never met Cheneston until that night father came home and told you I was engaged to him. He has never for one minute intended to marry me."

"But you are staying with his mother as his future wife."

"We could neither of us help that. It was Fate."

"Look Here, Pam, cease to talk like a penny novelette! Explain things."

"Very well," I acquiesced. I sat down and explained things from the very beginning, fully.

"And so you're engaged to neither of them?" mother said when I had finished.

I felt as if my very soul had been dragged out for public inspection. I was busy packing it back again.

"No," I said. "Now please tell me why you came?"

"I came because I have to get five hundred pounds from somewhere at once."

"I haven't fifteen shillings, mother; why come to me? and what is it for?"

"Your father," answered mother; her lips were compressed. "He must have it immediately. He owes to his C.O.--and there are complications. He--" she paused and frowned--"he was always a vile bridge-player. His declarations were crimes."

"Yes," I said. "But why come to me?"

"You must borrow it from Captain Markham or Cheneston."

I stared at her! This morning she seemed no longer handsome, her elegance was the only thing left to her--and that seemed just a physical and social mark.

"It is impossible," I said, "absolutely! Captain Markham is desperately ill!"

"Then there is Cheneston."

"Absolutely impossible!"

"He would give it to you in gratitude for the way you've played the game. If you don't you force me to take it with my own hands--you see, we should have had the money but for the amount we have spent on you lately."

"What would you do?" I said hoarsely.

"I should just tell Cheneston that you adored and worshipped him, and if he didn't marry you he would utterly spoil your life. I should say you were too proud and noble to come yourself."

"You wouldn't do that," I said. "Mother--at least play the game!"

"Two can't do that," she said. "Your father does that. I pay the price."

*XI*

I used to wonder, in the days when love and marriage seemed very beautiful and interesting and tremendous food for speculation, but utterly removed from reality and _me_, what the woman felt like when the question of money first cropped up, whether it spoilt the idealism and romance a little, upset the atmosphere like a Ransome lawn-mower introduced into the Garden of Eden.

I used to wonder how I would like asking Cheneston for a new hat, and I always came to the conclusion that I would sooner wear the brim like a halo when the crown fell to pieces from old age than ask him.

I suppose if men love you frightfully they make the question of finance easy; but I think my experience with mother and father has rather terrified me, they made the mutual finance discussion so utterly degrading--and I think listening to them has given me a nervous distaste, a sort of hyper-sensitive shrinking from the discussion of ways and means.

It has always seemed so infinitely easier to go without things.

When I sat in the train and thought of asking Cheneston for five hundred pounds to pay father's card debts I felt sick, and I felt the real me starting to close up tight, like a sea-anemone when you poke it with your toe.

Mother travelled to Town with me.

She questioned me about my farewells to Walter Markham--she has a serene way of questioning. I think she would have made a mark in the Spanish Inquisition.

"Did he show much distress at your leaving him, Pam?"

"I don't know whether he quite realised. He had a sort of relapse, and he was only partially conscious. The doctors thought me callous. The one like a rocking-horse told me I had no right to leave him. I said it was essential I should return. If he could have kept me there by force he would."

"I understand from the sister that this sudden relapse makes it more unlikely than ever that he will pull through, apparently the next twenty-four hours are the test."

"Yes."

"Your nails are not very carefully manicured," said mother.

I laughed; it was so like mother to obtrude utterly unimportant trivialities, to bring you crashing to earth with some ridiculous trifle.

"You will send the money as soon as possible, Pam."

"I absolutely can't do it, mother!" I said desperately. I had a sudden vision of myself asking Cheneston for money.

"You must," mother returned hardily; she spoke casually, as if she were reminding me to send a postcard to notify her of my safe arrival. "I shall not hesitate to go to Cheneston and tell him you are frantically and desperately in love with him, and what may have been jest to him is grim reality to you, and unless he marries you he'll ruin your happiness. I shall be able to say it sincerely because I know it to be true. You are going to tell Cheneston that Walter Markham quite understands why you are staying at Cromer Court, that you have unlocked your lovers' hearts to each other."

I spoke rudely to mother for the first time in my life, my fear of her was swept away by a sudden passion of rebellion.

"Oh, shut up!" I said furiously. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

She looked at me curiously, her lips a little compressed.

"We should have trained you for the stage," she said. "There is an abandon about you at times that would do better for the theatre than real life--where it is merely crude and bad form."

"It seems to me that everything real and vital and honest, all forms of emotion and feeling, are bad form!"

"Nearly all."

"Except borrowing from your friends and threatening your daughter."

Mother shrugged and looked out of the window.

"Unless your father can produce five hundred pounds within the week he will be forced to resign his commission, in which case he would get no pension, and as he has no influence and no brains the prospect of our future does not intrigue me."

I, too, looked out of the window; a light frost had crisped the leaves, and though there was no sun the landscape was so full of gold that it glowed and vibrated with apparent sunshine. The fields were full of workers, women in coloured linen overalls guiding ploughs, and allotment-workers on their patches, and the little cottage gardens were gay with autumn flowers; and I wondered if there were undercurrents in all these apparently simple lives, if the men and women out there in the brilliant golden world had furtive motives and social masks like mother and I.

It is never safe to wonder for more than three seconds whether everything is what it seems unless you are over fifty--when you are under fifty it hurts, but when you are over fifty you know that you can never alter other people, only yourself, and you know that your disillusionment is half your own fault.

I felt a sort of strangling bitterness. I was very grateful for it, because I knew that out of it you can grow a sort of hothouse don't-care-ness that makes it possible for you to do horrid things and not feel horrid until long after they are done.

I caught a train to Cromer Court almost at once.

Mother saw me off.

She stood at the window and chatted charmingly. I am sure that all the people in the carriage were enchanted with her personality. Mother is so fastidiously, almost contemptuously refined and cultured. Had she lived in the time of the French Revolution she would have been gloatingly guillotined by the revolutionists for the very way she breathes.

"And you won't forget?" she said lightly.

"I won't forget," I answered.

One of the most disappointing things in life is that you never go back to a place--even if you have only been away twenty-four hours--feeling exactly the same as when you left it. You can recover your old poise, but the going away has altered you, you make a dozen little mental readjustments on your return--you see things with the aid of the new experience you have gained during your absence. Life is one continual process of readjustment with people, places, and things, and ourselves.

We marvel at the chameleon--his feats are nothing to the feats of a perfectly normal human.

I went back to Cromer Court a different person.

I met Cheneston as a different person.

I know that he was different.

Nothing stands still.

"How is he?" he said at once; and I answered:

"They think he will pull through."

"Oh, Pam!" he said; and then "Thank God!"

"Mother came to the hospital," I told him as I climbed into the dog-cart. "Grace Gilpin seemed to think I would be there. It was rather funny her thinking that."

"I told her--I wrote," he said.

I smiled; the don't-care mood was flourishing. I could feel it steadily swallowing up my little qualms and pitiful sense of honour and dignity, they were vanishing in it like debris thrown on thoroughly efficient quicksands.

"How is your mother?"

"Longing for your return. Oh! Pam--the tremendously strong feeling she has for you makes it doubly hard for both of us. You explained to Markham--everything?"

I nodded.

"And they will telegraph news of him here?"

"Yes."

He lifted me out of the dog-cart at the door of Cromer Court; his face looked grey.

"God bless you," he said, "for coming back to us!"

*XII*

We dined in Mrs. Cromer's room.

She insisted and would take no denial.

I thought she seemed stronger and more lovely than ever; she was full of whims and loveliness. She seemed to sparkle with happiness. She sent us away, she wanted a consultation with the cook.

"It is to be a very special dinner," she told us. "And Pam is to go and lie down. Sweetheart, have you a white frock?"

"No," I said, "only pink, dear, pink and grey."

"You must wear white," she said. "I am bubbling with schemes for my dinner of dinners. I have a frock for you, Pam. Nurse shall bring it--you'll look like a funny little Dutch princess in it, stepped out of an old Dutch fairy-tale book. Now run away, Honey."

Nurse was perturbed when she brought the frock; it was of softest ivory white satin, made in Empire style with a wealth of real point de rose lace.

"She will insist," she said, "and the doctor said she was to have her own way as much as possible--but I don't know. I don't know, I'm sure. She says you are to wear this pearl comb in your hair, and these little white satin shoes studded with pearls. Aren't they ducks? Are you going to pile your hair on the top of your head like those funny old pictures downstairs? I wish the doctor would call again. I think he'd veto this dinner idea, but I'm not sure it wouldn't upset her more to be thwarted than to give it. She's wonderful."

There are moments in everyone's life when you feel as if you're taking part in an unreal play; there comes a sudden feeling of panic, as if you did not know your part. I got it that night when I was dressing--and yet there was a dreadful thrilling, electric sweetness about it all.

I was excited, my fingers and my toes tingled and my spine felt creepy; and when I brushed my hair it cracked with electricity, and a funny little nerve near my ear that always betrays itself when I am excited began to wriggle.

I suppose there is something of the joy of forbidden fruit in it--but it is _wonderful_ and gorgeous to have Cheneston look at me like a lover, even though I know it is only to satisfy his mother.

I think it is awful the way we women can kid ourselves about love, drench ourselves in a sweetness that isn't really there, get intoxicated with a joy that exists only in our own imaginations.

If I had been going to the altar with Cheneston I couldn't have been more thrilled than I was when I entered Mrs. Cromer's room.

Cheneston rose. He was looking very white and bewildered; and suddenly the fact that he was nonplussed made me feel almost cruelly gay and confident.

"Pam!" Mrs. Cromer said. "Oh, boy! boy! isn't she the very sweetest thing that ever happened?"

"Surely," he said.

There was a round table laid for two, with a white linen tablecloth with a border of real lace eight inches wide, and in the centre stood a huge white and gold Venetian glass basket filled with lilies of the valley and maidenhair fern.

"I am going to have a little white love-feast all to myself for my two children," she said.

I caught my breath--somehow I had not quite expected just that.

For a dizzy moment I wondered what she would say and do if she knew the truth--that Cheneston and I had never been engaged and would never marry.

Everything we had was white, from the artichoke soup to the iced pudding. It was a wonderful meal, exquisitely served; it tasted like straw to me--and it would have fascinated an epicure. There was champagne, the only note of colour on the table; and Cheneston and I talked at high tension.

To me it had a peculiar and appealing joy; I could say to Cheneston some of the things I felt, and he accepted them as part of my role in the astonishing little farce; and from her bed the old lady watched us, an indescribably happy expression on her face.

And Cheneston said things to me--things to remember and hoard in myself, and not the knowledge that they were just "part of the game" could rob them of their wonder for me.

The atmosphere was extraordinary--to me it felt rather as if we were all being charming and polite, and listening for an explosion at the same time; and there were moments when the explosion seemed inevitable. It seemed as though it _must_ come.

At last she let us go--and yet I was loath to.

As I was crossing the hall a maid came to me.