Part 15

“Now tell me?” he said.

“Tell you what?” she asked.

“Why did he call you Diana?” Of enormous importance this: it had weighed on his heart for days, or weeks was it?

“Who?” asked Diana.

“Do you really not know?”

She said so many people had called her by her name: so few people called her by any one else’s. She mightn’t have answered to Caroline if he—whoever he was—had called her that. Then she added: “It’s quite a nice name, though, isn’t it? It’s a stately name.”

“Diana—do be nice to me,” he pleaded.

“Call me Caroline, and see.”

He called her Caroline, and she put out her hand and withdrew it.

“Diana,” he said, “don’t tease me.”

“If he—whoever he was—had called me Caroline you wouldn’t have minded?”

“If he had said Caroline had sent him to fetch me off the island, I shouldn’t have known who in the world Caroline was.”

“It was then he called me Diana, was it?”

“Yes, it was then.”

“How dared he spoil everything?”

“He did spoil everything; you admit it; then you were happy?”—this triumphantly. It was an admission on her part.

He was so desperately anxious she should admit she had been happy; but she was in a distracting and provoking mood. Why should she smile at the hills and not at him? “Were you happy, Diana? Tell me.”

She nodded.

He wanted to know just how happy? Had she been as happy as he had been? It was not possible. She had not prayed for him every night as he had prayed for her—she could not say she had?

No, she could not; she had never even thought of him. But after they had met, he pleaded—then—had she not thought of him? They must compare notes. She vowed her notes were so lightly pencilled on her memory, she could hardly read them—a thought here, another there.

His notes were indelibly written on his heart. The first time he had seen her was one. He told her what he had thought of her. What had she thought of him? She wouldn’t say. Driven to say something, she confessed she had thought him—tall—yes, tall _for his age_....

“Darling, don’t look out of the window. I know your little nose by heart—I love your profile—but tell me, do you remember anything else, I mean what you thought of me—it sounds so conceited to imagine for one moment that you thought anything—but if you did—?”

“Let me think—don’t disturb me!” She shut her eyes, and said, “I will try to remember.”

He waited. Was she really going to sleep? If he had been Uncle Marcus he would have been taken in; being more modern, he was not, but he had never seen her asleep and she looked so lovely that he let her sleep on, which was not in the least what she had expected; moreover, it was very dull, so she opened her eyes and asked if she had been asleep? And when he said, “No,” she vowed to herself this was no man to marry lightly—too unerring an intuition was his.

“Will you always know what I am thinking and feeling?” she asked.

He doubted it. He never knew of what she was thinking or what she was feeling. “Tell me something of what you feel.” And she told him how hungry she had felt when she had travelled south, from Loch Bossie, and what a comfort the parcel had been, how glad she had been to see the cocoanut shells.

“Why?” he asked.

Because, she said, she thought—as he had condescended to a joke—a bad one, of course, but a joke—it showed he could not be so angry with her after all.

“And that comforted you?” Another admission, this!

“Yes, it comforted me.”

“Then you must have minded my being angry with you?”

Diana smiled at him. He was too, too clever.

Then he wanted to know about the parcel. How had she got it? Because he had wanted it—he had told Pillar so. “I wanted to keep it,” he said, “and some day I was going to pay you out—when you were hungry—on our honeymoon.” She let this pass unchallenged. “Diana, did you understand what I said?”

“Why should you have wanted to pay me out? Did you mind being left on the island?” She ignored the honeymoon.

And he said, of course he had minded. If she had stayed with him, he would have loved it. As it was, he had had no one to love but Robinson; he could not imagine what he would have done without Robinson, he had been so sympathetic and—jolly.

Diana wasn’t particularly interested in Robinson. She wanted to know more about that loneliness from which Miles had suffered so acutely. On that he would not dwell, but rather on the happiness of being on a desert island alone with Diana—some day! Wouldn’t she love it? She thought so, but suggested that if Pillar came too it might be more comfortable. He admitted it, accusing her of being a sybarite.

“You would never enjoy roughing it. You are meant to walk on red carpets—oh—that fatal snare of the red carpet! You shall walk on it some day—but just for once let’s go to a desert island. Have you ever imagined what it would be?”

Then Diana turned her face from the window to look at Miles, and she asked him if they had not both been on a desert island—each on their own—the last few days—or was it years? And Miles, seeing in her eyes the smile she had kept throughout the journey for mountains and burns, jumped to a glorious conclusion.

“You mean that the whole world is a desert island if we are not together?”

And that was just what she did mean, although she had not been able to express it. She had hesitated to put it into words, and now that she found the courage she found no words and she discovered, like many another before her, that they are but dumb things after all: that there are other ways and better ways of saying things: that nothing is so expressive as a silence, nothing tells so much or tells it so tenderly—that is, if it be a happy silence. The unbroken silence of misunderstanding is another thing.

“Now tell me,” she said, “what you want to say—I will be very serious.”

Miles had only to pass on the message the old woman had given him over the low stone wall, on his way to Glenbossie. In her Gaelic-spoken message she had given him the eternally old message, and though he “had not Gaelic,” he had understood it, because she had spoken in the universal language. A lover’s language may be as new as the morning; it is also as old as the hills. And that old woman had not forgotten the days of her youth, and why? Because the sun was in the heavens, by day, to remind her: the stars in the sky at night: the burn on the hillside: the heather on the moor: the little children passing by—tender reminders, these. Even the rain must re-awaken memories of the enfolded plaid: the peat smoke bring back memories of evenings when the day was past and over, the harvest gathered in, and the bairns asleep.

As with Dick and his mother the parting lay like a weight on the hearts of Miles and Diana. When she said it would not be for long, he laughed. She little knew how short a time it might be, or that it rested with her to make it short or interminable. He had promised to leave her when he had seen her into the train which should take her on to Loch Bossie and he saw her into that train. When she asked him why he didn’t come on with her, he said it was against orders. Against whose? she wanted to know. He would not tell her. She asked him if he should go south that night?

And he said he should go to Glenbossie by the next train.

“Why not by this?”

Because, he said, he had promised not to go by her train unless something should happen to make him alter his plans.

The dear old lady would have been more human if she had not made this impossible condition, he thought, but she had made it.

“Diana?” he said.

“What?”

“You have never told me.”

“No—”

“Won’t you?”

She shook her head. There wasn’t time—it would take years—the train was going—it was off—Miles was left on the platform.

Then Diana looked out of the carriage window, smiled at him, and drew back—and with one stride Miles was on the step of the guard’s van—

Having made friends with the guard, which was not difficult, he sat down to write to Mrs. Sloane. He sat on a stout wooden box, which, according to the label, belonged to one Christina MacDonald. He hoped Christina was as happy as he was. She must be: perhaps she had gone from London and was going home. From London to Scotland. Happy Christina! Perhaps she was going home to be married! Dear Christina! He loved her, as he loved every one in the world that morning. But he must write his letter: he wrote:

“I am in the guard’s van. The circumstances proved quite exceptional—I did not make them so—and the separation was more than I could bear. Now that I am near her I am absurdly happy, because I believe she is a little unhappy because—she thinks—I am not near her. I saw her into this train, as I promised, and just as the train was going out of the station she popped her beautiful little head out of the window and smiled at me—I thought I saw tears in her eyes! Do I stand exonerated? How can I thank you? I shall never be able to. There is so much I want to say and I am too shy to say it. Why need I say anything to you who understand everything? But I feel in honour bound to explain to you why I am in the guard’s van—you must have known I should be there! As a boy I thought it the best place on the train—now I know one better!”

XXIII

_God made both joy and sorrow— Tears for to-day, smiles for to-morrow._

Shan’t opened her eyes. She opened them just as naturally as she used to open them every morning of her life.

She looked first at Marcus, then at Elsie. Then she looked at his hand on hers, then at Aunt Elsie’s hand on hers, and she smiled.

“Shan’t?” said Marcus, and suddenly Elsie wanted to cry. He should not have said it like that—she hadn’t been prepared for it.

“Speak to her,” he said.

“Shan’t,” whispered Elsie.

“Shan’t-if-I-don’t-want-to,” said Shan’t, and then she laughed: tried to laugh. Most pathetic of all efforts is that of the sick child who tries to laugh. No laugh brings so quickly tears to the eyes of those who watch—who have so lately wondered that there could be any one in the world with the heart to laugh!

Then Shan’t pulled her hand from under Uncle Marcus’s hand, and her other hand from under Aunt Elsie’s, and taking Uncle Marcus’s hand laid it on Aunt Elsie’s—and having done all that she went to sleep. She was tired—and naturally.

She had done—weak and ill—what the strongest man would not have dared to do.

“How are the dogs?” whispered Marcus.

“Very good—and _so_ obedient,” said Elsie softly.

THE END

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS

U . S . A