Chapter XXII

She had no address of Henry's, but that evening she wrote to the hotel at Brunnen, trusting that it would be forwarded to him somewhere. The composing of the letter gave her much mental debate. She wanted to pour out passionately all that she was really feeling--the mere phrasing of love was relief and almost joy; but the old muddle as to whether it was fair to write thus to a man who was returning from her to his wife intervened. And finally her letter amounted to little more than saying, "I never meant not to say good-bye to you." But she hoped he would read everything in her few lines.

There was a moment's afterglow of bygone happiness as she put the letter in the concierge's box. From that moment she encouraged the conviction that he would write a reply to her--just one, before the silence settled. She would stop and stand in the passage of the hotel while she deliberated where he would first be able to write and how long the letter would take to reach her.

Friday morning, she decided, was the earliest she could expect it.

Then, walking on, she would compose his letter.

Now Owen joined them from the camp at Aldershot where the Sillborough Cadet Corps had been training. He was full of the war rumours in England, and Daphne, going for walks with him, pretended to listen. Sometimes she played against him a desultory set of tennis, though the game and everything about it, its cries and its scoring, had a stab for her.

On the Friday morning, when she dared to hope that his letter might have come, she was afraid to approach the pigeon-holes in the concierge's office; and yet, by a will-effort, she walked there quickly, satisfied with her pluck. Sickness took her heart when she saw her pigeon-hole empty and many of the others full. In despairing hope she asked the concierge had that morning's post been.

Yes.

She turned about gaily.

"He hasn't had time to write. Or letters take a long time over these slow mountain railways. I'll give him till to-morrow morning."

Still, at each of the other posts during the day she looked for the letter and suffered the blow of disappointment to see her empty pigeon-hole. Sometimes she would go back and look in the other holes in case her letter had been put in one of them by mistake.

On the Saturday morning she went with a sudden high hope to the place.... But her throat was affected and her mouth dried when again the empty pigeon-hole stared at her. There must be one. And she asked the concierge merrily:

"What, isn't there really a letter for me?"

"No, Miss Bruno."

And she laughed:

"Oh, what a shame!"

Walking away, she told herself that he was writing a long one and adding to it day by day.

The next morning, as nervously she approached the office, she saw that there was a single white envelope in her space. Her heart thumping with eagerness and terror, she said to the concierge:

"There _is_ one this time!"

"Yes, Miss Bruno, there's one for you," and he took it out and gave it to her.

The handwriting was Miss Carrell's.

The August days went by, and the pain of going to the office after each post, or of returning from a walk in the hope that the letter would be there, was slowly drugged down by monotony. "He'll never write now. After all, why should he? Mine was nothing but an answer to his good-bye letter."

Only once did her control utterly fail her. It was after dinner in the lounge, and her father, Owen and she were listening to the string band. She had been talking vivaciously, almost happily, to some friends in the neighbouring chairs. Then the band struck up a selection from _Tannhäuser_, and the familiar tunes stopped all talk. She leaned back in her chair and stared at a hunting picture on the wall. The music, good or bad, well played or badly played, was stirring up all the pain which she temporarily trampled down. The Pilgrims' Chorus seemed the very notes and chords of her despair. And the song "O Star of Eve" was one of its melodies. As the tune went on inclemently she felt her breath getting shorter and a misery rising in her so massed and tumultuous that if it did not burst in tears it would madden and kill her.

She got up while control was still with her, walked across the lounge, and once outside the door, rushed up the stairs to her bedroom. There she flung herself on her bed, and passionately crying, kept repeating aloud, "I don't care how soon the end comes.... I don't care how soon the end comes...." At intervals she would stop her crying and muttering to think, "But no, I don't want to die and be out of the world where Henry is.... I must be in the same world as he is.... If only he would die and I could die too...."

Mr. Bruno had instantly guessed what her abrupt departure meant. At the end of the Brunnen stay he had learned with surprise that the American boy whose appearance, even if it held a remarkable mind, suggested a callow undergraduate, was a married man. And Daphne was much in love with him. It looked horribly like the real thing. Her request to be taken away he assumed to have followed a confession of the boy's, who certainly struck him as a _gentil_ youth. He blamed neither. What was the good of telling people not to love if they did? And now Daphne was in the grip of her tragedy--Daphne suffering! He must go to her. He mustn't leave her to writhe in it alone. But he didn't know what to say. Now that he came to think of it he had never spoken seriously to her in his life--always behind a veil of banter. "I can't get through to her. I never have been able to get through to her."

In the applause after the orchestra's finale he rose from his seat, saying to Owen, "Keep my place for me, old man," and walked upstairs. The passage and door of Daphne's room frightened him, and for a long time he strode up and down wondering what he was going to say. What could he give her of comfort and advice? Though he had written forty books, he had no complete and rounded code of living. And of religion, nothing.

Well, there it was. He knocked on her door. No answer came, though he heard a quick movement inside.

"Daphne."

She did not reply, and he walked back along the corridor, abandoning the task. But at the head of the stairs he stopped.

"No, poor darling, I must go in and see her. I shall find something to say when I'm there."

He walked slowly back, and, without knocking, turned the handle of her door. It was unlocked and he stepped into the room. He saw Daphne in the long easy-chair, sitting sideways, her heels drawn up under her, her elbow hanging over the arm but bent to make a support for her head. Her hair was tumbled and falling, her shoulders shuddering.

"Duffy, my darling!"

She did not move, but now her shoulders steadied as if petrified.

"Duffy, what's the matter?"

He was annoyed with his feebleness. How could she answer such a question?

"My dear.... I know all about it.... Daphne, I can't bear to see you suffering...."

She raised her head and looked up at him, admitting all in a sentence.

"Daddy, how do people stand it?"

What answer could he give to that? The child ought to have some religion--some stay--some hope. He stood there awkwardly with two fingers of his right hand pushed into his waistcoat pocket. Then he began to walk up and down as he struggled to express for her the few things that he believed.

He had searched nature in vain, he said, for a God of pity. All that he was able to see was that men had pity. Pity for all things ... and amazing courage when God or nature was showing no pity to them. And in spite of modern thought-waves, the unshakable conviction was still with him that men were only at their best and happy when they were yielding to their pity. Or, of course, when they were summoning a defiant courage about them and lifting their heads above their trouble.

"I'm trying, dear, to give you the minimum of religion that I have found, and perhaps you'll be able to build more on it. It's rather a rebel's creed, I'm afraid. It amounts to saying that men, because they have pity and unconquerable courage, are greater than God, Who seems to have no pity.... And then I think, if that is so, let us glory in transcending him. Let us at all costs keep these things.... I don't know how far I have kept them myself, but I should like you to...."

His daughter smiled her affection through her tears.

So much of a general code he tried to give her. In meeting her present need he felt he was happier. Daphne was staring at him as he spoke with interested eyes. To begin with, said he, she was much, much better off than many, because her love had apparently been returned. Many had loved as passionately but without requital, and had survived. It would be futile to tell her to cut out her love, but what she must do was to transmute it. One could transmute a suppressed love into two things: into service of others and into art. Didn't Dante transmute his love for Beatrice into his "Divina Commedia"? So his love was always with him and always expressed.

"You used to want to write, dear. I hope you will. You'll find that much of what you are suffering now will escape into that, and it will be ever so much better than it would otherwise have been. Remember, there have been little housemaids in London who have had to suppress their love and have had no mind to understand these things ... and yet they have endured and survived.... But I'll tell you one thing that you must guard against. Books and Art are very great, and no life is half a life without them; but they are apt to become a fixed idea, excluding everything--unselfishness and all the rest. And so you get set as selfish, and only occasionally a kindly impulse in you shows you what you might have been.... So the remedy, I feel, is to get this other idea equally--the idea that there is no happiness apart from pity and service...."

His daughter had risen and was standing before him.

"Daddy, I always think you're wonderful.... Don't--don't tell Owen anything about it, will you?"

He passed his hand over the back of her head, aware of moistened eyes.

"Don't suffer too much, my Daphne. I can't stand it."

Daphne shook her head and smiled confidently.