CHAPTER X

THE DREAM

I

"Registered letter for you," cried Essie. "My goodness if there isn't!"

This was in the little sitting-room of the Whitecliffe Sands lodgings--the fifth morning there; Mr. Bickers expected on the morrow; Mr. Wriford, as had been arranged when he was invited for the blow by the sea that would do him a world of good, supposed to be leaving on the same day; and Essie, as they walked the parade together before breakfast, in highest state of excitement and mystification at Arthur's insistence that their secret should be kept till then and then should be revealed--if Essie wished it.

"Well, but aren't you a tease, though!" said Essie delightedly, as this was repeated while they came in to where the registered letter awaited them on the breakfast-table. "Aren't you a fair tease! 'If I want to!' Why, aren't I simply dying to just! I'm simply bursting to tell Mother every single minute. Isn't a secret a caution though--just like when you've got a hole in your dress and think everybody's looking at it. Oh, isn't it funny how you do when you have, though? Let's have a laugh!"

The laughter brought them to the registered letter and to Essie's exclamation at it; and then, as she handled the packet, readdressed in Mr. Bickers' clerkly script, and gave it to Mr. Wriford: "Feels to me as if some one's sent you a pocket-handkerchief," said Essie.

"That shows you don't know what a honeymoon ticket feels like," said Mr. Wriford and fingered the bundle of banknotes within their parchment cover. "Listen to the crinkling. That's the confetti they always pack it in."

Essie was highly amused. "Hasn't being engaged made you different, though! You're jolly as anything down here. Aren't I glad!"

"It's you that's made me different," Mr. Wriford declared; and "Oo-oo!" cried Essie at what went with this assurance. "Oo-oo! Look out, here's Mother coming."

Mrs. Bickers' appearance, and then all the jolly chatter at breakfast, and afterwards the morning bathe and the rest of the usual programme of Whitecliffe's delights, caused the mysterious registered letter to go--as she would have said--clean out of Essie's head. Mr. Wriford, when he had a moment alone, opened it and read it, and found within it, thrice repeated, a phrase that intensely he chorused as he put letter and the twenty ten-pound notes in his pockets and looked upon the immediate plans that now were all ripe for execution.

II

"Your return to life" was this phrase that the literary agent three times repeated in the course of his enthusiastic delight and surprise at news at last of missing Mr. Wriford. He gave some astonishing figures of the sales of Mr. Wriford's books. He put forward what appeared to him the most engaging of the contracts which publishers were longing to make. He ended with How soon would Mr. Wriford run up to town for a talk? or should Mr. Lessingham come down? "Don't let your return to life--now that at last you have made it--give me a moment's longer silence than you can help."

"Return to life"--that was the phrase. Essie's words--"Hasn't being engaged made you different, though?"--that was the illustration of it. Return to life! Ay, that was it, ay, that was his, far, far more truly, with wonder of rebirth immeasurably more, than ever Lessingham or any one in all the world could know. There was thrill in that very thought that none but himself knew its heights, its volume, its singing, its radiant intensity. That knowledge was his own as in the immediate future his life was to be his own--life without a care, life without a tie, life of complete abandonment to pleasure of work, to pleasure of sheer pleasure, to pleasure of jolly little Essie always to turn to, to look after, to make happy, and yet always to know of her that if he wished--he never would so wish--he could be rid of her: no tie, no bond--happiness, freedom; freedom, happiness!

This was the state to which, with a sudden, ecstatic soaring as it were, he had swung away from the evening of saying "I love you, Essie," and of posting his letter, through these laughing days at Whitecliffe Sands, to now when arrival of the honeymoon ticket made him all ready for the final step. Once that declaration of the love he did not feel--as Essie understood love--had been made, his scrupulous withholding from it lay strewn about his feet as matter of no more regard than the torn wrappings of a casket from which there has been taken a very precious prize. That declaration sealed her to him; and through those intervening days while the letter was awaited, constantly he repeated it, constantly embellished it. He mocked, he almost upbraided himself for his old scruples at it. Why, it was her due, her right, he told himself. She should be happy with him--that was his resolve: never should regret, never suffer. Why, how possibly could she be happy, how avoid pains of regret, if she were not assured that he loved her?

So he gave her this bond--that was her due--of his love; so with each day, each hour, each moment of Whitecliffe in her company he became more and more assured of her. Assured! He was convinced. There was not a glance from her eyes, not a sound from her lips, not a touch of her hand but informed him that she was his to do with as he would, come any test that he might put her to. Return to life! Why, this freedom, this happiness, was but the threshold of it. Return to life! He imaged all the darkness he had come through and damned it in exultant triumph at all its terrors trampled under foot: night, darker than deepest summer darkness here, he had known; day, of which these burning cloudless days of holiday were sign and symbol, now was his, and brighter still awaited him....

Whitecliffe Sands, anxious to present to its visitors every attraction and convenience that may place it among rising seaside resorts, numbers among the latter a Tourist Bureau in the High Street where, so an inscription informs you, you may book in advance to any railway station in the British Isles. On the morning of the arrival of the registered letter, Mr. Wriford stepped in here and took for to-morrow two first-class tickets to London: a fast train at five o'clock in the afternoon, he was told.

III

The morrow brought Mr. Bickers at midday, Mrs. Bickers and Mr. Wriford and Essie at the station to meet him, Essie in his arms and hugging him with delighted cries of joy before he is well out of the train. It is a thing to make all who stand about on the platform desist from their own greetings to see her slim young figure in its pretty white dress flash forward as the train comes in, and to smile at her cry of "There he is! Oh, jus' look at his summer waistcoat he's got!" and then to see her in his arms with "Oh, Dad! Oh, if you don't look a darling in that waistcoat! Whereever did you get it, though?"

Most wonderfully animated she is, most radiantly pretty. Mr. Bickers, after affectionate greeting of his wife, and to Mr. Wriford most genial "Hullo, Arthur! All right? That's the way! Glad to see you again, Arthur," watches her adoringly where she has returned to his carriage with "I'll get your bag, Dad!" and says: "Doesn't she look a picture, our Essie! Doesn't Whitecliffe suit our Essie!"

Most wonderfully animated she is, most radiantly pretty--chattering; walking with gay little skips as she holds Dad's hand while they proceed to the lodgings; carrying them all with her a dozen times on her irresistible appeal of: "Oh, isn't that funny, though! Let's have a laugh," before the lodgings are reached.

It is much more than Whitecliffe's breezes that make her thus, much more than joy at Dad's arrival: it is that this is To-day, the promised day--the secret come to bursting-point, and to burst out in all its wonder at any moment that Mr. Wriford may choose to relieve the almost unbearable excitement and mystery and tell her it may be told. "Feels to me like all the birthdays I ever had all rolled into one," Essie had declared to Mr. Wriford early that morning. "If you'd seen me jump out of bed when I woke up! Oh, jus' think when we tell them! Will it be when Dad arrives at the station? Well, at lunch, then?" And when Mr. Wriford smiles and shakes his head at each of these, "Well, but they think you're going to-day! Oh, if ever I knew any one love a mystery like you do!"

"I'll tell you when," says Mr. Wriford. "I'll tell you all of a sudden." For him also it is the day--the promised day--awaited thus with deliberate purpose, and he a little nervous, a little restless, something ill at ease now that its hour swiftly comes.

"You're never going to keep it till the very last minute just before they think you're going? My goodness, I couldn't bear it. I'll simply scream. I know I shall."

"Look here, Essie, I'll tell you. I'm going by the five o'clock train to London--"

Essie corrects him. "You mean that's what you'll say you are. Oh, how ever I won't scream I can't think!"

"Well, just before that we'll say we're going for a last walk together--for me to say good-bye to everything; and then we'll arrange how to--tell them."

She clapped her hands and laughed with glee. "If you're not a caution, Arthur! Oh, how ever I won't scream before five o'clock! Oh, when we tell them!"

At five o'clock she was to be lying still, with silent lips: he on his knees: death waiting.