Chapter II: Part ONE (2)

It was such a shock, such a deep pang of joy and misery.... They would not understand.... After all these years of thinking about them, seeing them so passionately, nursing in her imagination their unreal and dream-like existence, that they should all at once quite casually be there! It was almost as if dead people were to come to life. She prayed to be swallowed up in the ice.

‘Well, you’re no pigmy,’ said Julian.

And they all laughed. Then it was all right. They ceased to swell and waver before her eyes, settled down, began to grow real.

‘Well, I don’t know how it’s done,’ said Charlie, still rather angrily looking at the ice. ‘Mariella, what on earth did you drag us here for? You don’t know any more than I do how it’s done. What a stupid waste of a day!’ The stress of his petulance made his voice, which was breaking, squeak suddenly now and then, in the funniest way, so that nobody could have taken him seriously.

‘Well, you needn’t have come.’ Mariella’s voice was still cool and childish. With her little smile, she turned away from him to watch the skaters.

‘And my feet are so cold I can’t feel them,’ went on Charlie. ‘Three great gawps, that’s what we are, three great gawps.’ He looked at Mariella’s back. ‘And Mariella’s _easily_ the gawpest.’

That seemed to unburden him, for he suddenly threw off his bad temper and laughed.

‘Put on your skates, chaps,’ he said. ‘We’ll do our damndest.’

He began to whistle and sat down, struggling with his boots.

‘Judith shall show us how it’s done. She is so _extremely_ able.’ He looked at her, giving her his attention for the first time, and charmingly smiled. His eyes were amazing when they looked full at you--brilliant, icy-blue, a little too wide open. His long red girlish lips still parted a trifle in repose; and the whole head had a breath-taking extravagance of beauty.

‘How are you, Judith?’ he said. ‘Do you remember the dear old days?’

‘Yes, I do.’

What self-possession he had! She was not up to him. He lost interest in her, and went on with his boots, fiercely whistling.

‘Do you really still live here, Judith?’ said Mariella.

‘Yes, really. Where do you live?’

‘Well, we’re in London now. Grannie moved there to be near my school. Where do you go to school?’

‘I don’t. I have classes by myself with a man who coaches boys for Oxford and Cambridge. He’s a vicar. And then I have music lessons from a person who comes from London, and Daddy teaches me Greek and Latin. My Mother and Father don’t believe in girl’s schools.’ That sounded rude and priggish. She blushed and added. ‘But I do. It’s awfully dull by myself.’

‘Why don’t you get your Mother to send you to my school?’ said Mariella. ‘It’s ripping fun. You could come up to London every day.’

‘Mariella _loves_ her school,’ said Julian. ‘It’s _topping_. She doesn’t learn _anything_ and plays hockey _all_ day. Judith’s parents want her to be _educated_, Mariella. You don’t understand. Isn’t that so, Judith?’

Judith blushed again and was afraid it was so.

‘I believe in female education,’ muttered Julian to his boots.

They had become extremely queer creatures as they grew up, thought Judith. The boys especially were very peculiar, with their height and pallor and their trick of over-emphatic speech. Julian was immensely tall and cadaverous, with a stormy, untidy, hideous face, and eloquent eyes that seemed always to be changing colour in their deep sockets. He actually had lines in his cheeks, and his nose was becoming hooked, with dilated, back-sweeping nostrils.

‘Well, I wish you’d come,’ said Mariella unruffled, after a silence. ‘It’s ripping. You’d love it.’

It was nice of Mariella to be so friendly and pressing. Perhaps she had always been very fond of you, had missed you.... Judith’s heart warmed.

‘I wish _you’d_ come back and live here, Mariella. It was so lovely when you did.’

‘I’d like to,’ said Mariella complacently. ‘P’raps we will some day. If Grannie’s rheumatism would only get better we might come every summer.’

‘But it never will get better,’ said Julian. ‘Not at her age.’

The boots were all on at last, the skates fastened. They got up and wobbled out a few inches on to the ice. There was a chorus of ‘Hell!’ ‘Wow!’ ‘Goodness!’

Charlie slipped up with a crash, Mariella followed him.

‘It’s beastly,’ he said furiously. ‘You can’t keep your skates still. I think I’ve broken my wrist. I shall go home.’ The others took no notice. They wobbled further and further out, giggling. They were too tall and thin to balance properly, and their ankles kept on betraying them.

‘Come and help us, Judith,’ screamed Julian. ‘We’ve never skated before in our _lives_. We can’t _stop_. We’re too thin to be allowed to fall down.’

They were dragging each other on helplessly.

‘Come _here_,’ wailed Charlie. ‘Judith, come and help me to stand. Shan’t we fall in? Are you sure it’s safe? My feet are _frozen_.’

Judith giggled as she went from one to the other encouraging, admonishing, supporting. The three ridiculous sillies! They enjoyed their silliness, they enjoyed making her laugh, they were not a bit frightening after all. Never, never since she had bidden them good-bye years ago had been such warm and bubbling happiness. Everything delightful was really starting at last.

As they began to improve they became ambitious. They declared their desire to learn fancy skating, and Charlie swore he would cut a figure of eight before the day was out; and all the time they were simply no good at all. Out of the corner of an eye Judith saw the old gentleman and the boy in the Norfolk jacket wistfully looking on, and she ignored them.

‘Now, come along Mariella,’ said Charlie. ‘Take hands like this, crossed, and we’ll go for a glide.’ They sailed rather haltingly away.

Under Mariella’s blue wool cap the dark short hair curled softly upwards now, longer than the boyish crop of yore. Her face had preserved its pure and innocent mask. She was laughing, not as other people laughed, unreservedly in the enjoyment of physical pleasures, but rather as if she were making a concession to Charlie’s mood, and found the abandonment of laughter alien to her. There was still the curious likeness between the two clear bloodless faces, though Charlie’s was forever changing with quick emotions and Mariella’s was still, empty almost. They would understand each other, thought Judith. In spite of the friction that used to go on between them, they had always been more obviously, more oppressively blood-relations than any other members of the circle. With years the bond had become even more subtly defined.

Julian was left out. He had never taken any notice of Mariella, yet he had always been the one upon whom her light gaze had dwelt with a faint difference, as if it meant to dwell. In the old days it had sometimes seemed as if she would have been pleased--really pleased, not just indifferently agreeable as she generally was--if Julian had offered to take her for a beetle-walk. She appeared to have a slight respectful interest in him, and a manner which suggested, though only to a remorseless watcher, that she would have valued his good opinion. It still seemed so. When he was teasing her about her school, her eyes, uncertain yet dwelling, had fallen on him a moment; but now, as formerly, you could detect no affection between them.

‘We wondered if we should meet you,’ said Julian shyly. ‘I’m so glad we did.’

Then they had not completely forgotten. She blessed him for the assurance, which only he would have given.

‘I couldn’t believe it was you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I did miss you after you went. I thought perhaps Martin might write to me, but he didn’t. How is Martin?’

‘He’s all right. We don’t see him so much now. His people are back from Africa and he spends most of the holidays with them.’ He smiled and added: ‘I remember Martin was terribly devoted to you. I must tell him I’ve seen you.’

‘And where’s Roddy?’

‘Oh, Roddy.... He’s all right. He’s in London. Roddy’s very grown up: he’s having dancing lessons.’ Julian snorted.

‘Does he still draw?’

‘I don’t know. Should think he’s too lazy.’

Julian had never liked Roddy.

‘Do you still compose, Julian?’

‘Oh, do you remember that?’ He smiled with pleasure.

‘Of course. The “Stag-Beetles” Dance. And “Spring with the Cuckoo in it.”’

‘Oh, that rot. Fancy your remembering!’ He looked at her in just the old way, amused but interested, thinking well of her.

‘I thought it was beautiful. Have you written anything lately?’

‘No. No time. I’ve given it all up. I’ve been working like mad for a scholarship. P’raps I’ll take to it again a bit at Oxford.’

He seemed to have become enthusiastic about it all at once, encouraged by her interest. He had not changed much.

‘And did you get your scholarship?’

‘Yes. Balliol. I go up next year.’ He was being brief and modest, actually blushing. But Balliol meant nothing to her: she was thinking of his great age.

‘You must be eighteen.’

‘Yes.’

‘D’you know, I remember all your birthdays.’

As she said it she almost cried again, it seemed such a confession of long-cherished vain hope and love. He stared at her, ready to be amused, and then, seeing her face, looked away suddenly, as if he half-understood and were astonished, embarrassed, touched.

‘Oh, look at those two,’ he said quickly.

Charlie had taken off his coat, and they were holding it up as a sail. With a pang of dismay Judith realized for the first time the ominous strength of the wind. It filled the coat full, and Mariella and Charlie, bearing it high in front of them, went sailing straight across the pond. They could not stop. They shrieked in laughter and agony and went ever faster. They were borne to the pond’s edge, stubbed their skates and fell violently in a heap on the grass.

Charlie lay on his back and moaned.

‘I’ve got a pain. I’ve got a pain. Oh, Mariella! Oh, God! Oh, all you people! The anguish, the _sensation_!--like the Scenic Railway--transports of horror and bliss. I thought: Never, _never_ shall we stop. We went faster, and fas.... Oh, Mariella, your _face_.... I shall _die_....’

He writhed with laughter, the tears poured down his face. ‘I t-_tried_ to say: _drop_ the c---- I hadn’t any _voice_--Oh, what a _feeling_!... those skimming dreams.... O God!’

He shut his eyes exhausted.

Then soon he had to try again. Then they all tried, and were a nuisance to the other skaters. Every one looked at Charlie, and nobody was annoyed because of his beauty and radiant spirits, and his charming apologies when he got in the way.

Judith ached with giggling; even Mariella and Julian were wiping their eyes. Charlie was so excited that he looked quite feverish. In his enthusiasm he threw his arms wide and cried:

‘Oh, darlings!’--and Judith was thrilled because she felt herself included in the endearment.

‘You know,’ said Julian, ‘you’ll be sick to-night, Charlie, if you go on like this.’

So he was still the one to be sick.

A small cold mongrel dog came shivering, wriggling across the ice and rolled over before him, waving limp deprecatory paws. Charlie picked it up and wrapped it in his coat, crooning to it and kissing it.

‘Oh, what sweet paws you have, my chap. Mariella, his paws are particularly heart-breaking. Do look,--all blunt and tufted and uncontrolled. Don’t they melt you? Poor chap,--darling chap. You come along with me for a skate.’

He skated away with the dog in his arms, talking his special foolish language to it, and colliding with people at every other step.

Oh, he was strange, thought Judith, looking after him. She had no key to him: she could only dissect him and make notes, learn him by heart and marvel at him,--never hope to meet him some day suddenly, at a chance look, a trifling word, with that secret “Ah!”--that shock of inmost mysterious recognition, as she had once met Roddy.

She thought of Roddy dancing in London, urban and alarming. She saw him distinctly, his dark head, his yellowish pallor, his smile; and wished wildly that he had come instead of Charlie: Charlie who troubled her, made her heavy-hearted with the burden of his lavish indifferent brilliance.

The sharp, blue and white afternoon was paling to sunset. The pond flashed and glittered with empty light. In the middle rose the clump of withered flags, dry starved grasses and marsh plants, berried bushes and little willows,--the whole a blur of pastel shades, purplish-brown, fading green, yellow and russet, with here and there a burning shred of isolated colour,--a splash of crimson, a streak of gold. The whirr and scratch of skates murmured on the air, and the skaters wove without pause, swiftly, lightly, like flies on a ceiling. Beneath the ice the needling grass-blades and the little water-weeds were still, spellbound; outspread stiffly, delicately in multitudinous and infinitesimal loveliness.

As she stood alone gazing down at them Julian came back to her side and said:

‘Do you ever come to London?’

‘Hardly ever. If Daddy’s at home he generally takes me to a theatre at Christmas; and now and then I go with Mamma for clothes.’

‘Well, you’d better come up some time soon and we’ll go to a play. Fix it with Mariella.’

‘Oh!’

It couldn’t be true,--it could never happen. There was a scratch and stumble of skates, and the other two came to a wavering halt in front of them.

‘We must go,’ said Mariella.

‘Judith’s coming to go to a play with us,’ said Julian.

‘Oh, good,’ said Mariella, not interested.

‘When?’ snapped Julian. ‘Fix it.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, with a quick glance at him. ‘We must ask Grannie. I’ll ask Grannie, Judith, and let you know to-morrow.’

‘Because we’re coming back to-morrow,’ broke in Charlie. ‘Julian, we must, mustn’t we? Will you be here, Judith?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘That’s good, because I shall need you. I need thee every hour. I shall have forgotten my breast-stroke by to-morrow. I do believe if we hadn’t found you, Judith, we should never have stepped on to the ice at all. We should just have looked at it and faded gracefully back to London. We are so _very_ silly.’

He sat down to take off his boots, and began whistling--then burst out singing:

‘There were three sillies
Who stood like lilies----’

A pause--

‘Refusing to spin----’

Another pause--

‘Crying, Hey, Lackaday!
The ice will give way,
And we shall fall in----’

He pulled off his boots; and finished:

‘If Miss Earle they’d not met
They’d be standing there yet.’

‘Pretty poor,’ cried Julian.

‘Oh, I think it’s awfully good,’ said Judith.

Charlie bowed, and said:

‘I can do more like that.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Not now. Pouf! I’m tired.’

He looked it. Save for the bright flush on each cheek his pallor was startling. His eyes looked dark in their shadowy rings, and he leaned back against Mariella while she gravely fastened his shoes and buttoned up his coat. When she put on his muffler he dragged it off again, crying:

‘Oh, Mariella. _No!_ I’m so hot.’

‘You’re to wear it,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll catch cold,’ and she wound it round his neck again, while he submitted and made faces at her, his eyes laughing into hers, like a child coaxing an elder to smiles.

Watching him, Judith thought:

‘Are you conceited and spoilt?’

All that gaiety and proud indifference, all that unconscious-seeming charm, that confident chatter--all might be the product of a complete self-consciousness. Surely he must look in the glass and adore his own reflection. She remembered her old dream of marrying him, and thought with a vast sorrowful prophetic sense of the many people who would yearn to him silently for love, while he went on his way, wanting none of them.

Against the dusk, his head, his face shone as if palely lit.

Narrowly she watched him; but there was no sign for her: all that brilliance of expression glancing and pausing around him, and nothing for her beyond a light smile or two, a casual appreciation of her temporary uses. He and Mariella had scarcely once said: ‘Do you remember?’ If they still cherished any of the past she was not in it. It was strange to think of such indifference, when they, with the other three, were all the pattern, all the colour and richness that had ever come into life.

In the dying light their mystery fell over them again, and they were as unattainable as ever. If only with the rare quality of their physical appearance they must always enslave her; and she felt worn out with the stress of them.

‘To-morrow,’ said Charlie, ‘we’ll bring Roddy.’

‘Yes. Come on,’ said Mariella. ‘We must hurry for our train.’

They tramped in silence across the cold solitude of the marsh, and the wind came after them, keen and menacing. When they arrived at the river’s edge, Charlie stood still, and looked across, saying dreamily:

‘There’s a light in the old house. I suppose that’s the caretaker person. We might look in to-morrow and surprise her. Doesn’t it look lonely?... I wish we would live there again. Where’s your house, Judith? I thought it was next door.’

‘So it is, but the trees hide it.’

‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten.’

Then she ferried them across the river in the punt, and parted from them on the other side, where the lane to the station branched off.

‘Well, see you to-morrow.’

Julian looked up at the sky.

‘I believe it’s thawing,’ he said. ‘I believe it’ll rain in the night.’

‘Rot!’ said Charlie. ‘Why--feel the ground.’

‘Yes, but the air’s milder. And look at the sky.’

To the east and north the frosty stars pointed their darts; but in the smoky, tumultuous west, black clouds devoured the last of the sun.

Panic seized Judith, and she hated Julian, wanted to strike him.

‘Rot! that doesn’t mean anything,’ said Charlie uneasily.

‘And listen to the wind.’

The wind was in the treetops, full and relentless, and driving the clouds.

‘Oh, shut up!’ said Charlie. ‘Can’t there be a wind without a thaw? And come on, can’t you, or we’ll miss our train.’

‘Good-night then.’

‘G’night, Judith. We’ll look out for you.’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘Goo’night.’

‘Good-night.’

Judith ran home, shutting eyes to the clouds, ears to the wind, and with the slam of the front door behind her striving to ignore the God of envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness whose portents were abroad in the sky.

‘To-morrow they are coming again and bringing Roddy. To-morrow I shall see Roddy. O God, be merciful!’

* * * * *

Towards dawn she woke and heard the blind, drearily sighing, futile hurry and hiss of the rain,--and said aloud in the darkness: ‘How can I bear it?’

Yet lured by sick fantastic hope she crossed the river that morning and made her way to the pond.

There was nobody there, save one small boy, sliding upon the ice through several inches of water and throwing up before him in his swift career two separate and divided fountains.

Then that was the end. They were lost again. They would not come back, they would not write, she would never go to London to see them. Even Julian would forget about her. They did not care, the rain was glad, there was nothing in the wide world to give her comfort. She turned from the rain-blurred place where their unreal lost images mocked at and confused her,--dreams within the far-off dream of happy yesterday.

3

It was some time in the middle of the war that she knew for certain that Julian was at the front. She heard it from the old next door gardener, who had given her apples and pears long ago, and it was from the grandmother herself that he knew it. She had written to tell him to plant fresh rose-buds and to keep the tennis lawn in perfect order, for very soon, directly the war was over, the grandchildren were to have the house for their own, as a place for week-ends and holidays.

Mr. Julian was at the front, safe so far, God be thanked, and Mr. Charlie had just been called up; but the fighting, so the grandmother said, would be over before ever he went to France.

Then, nourished afresh on new hopes, desires, and terrors, the children next door came back night after night in dreams.

Julian in uniform came suddenly into the library. He said:

‘I’ve come to say good-bye.’

‘Good-bye? Are you going back to the front?’

‘Yes. In a minute. Can’t you hear my train?’

She listened and heard the train-whistle.

‘Charlie’s going too--He’ll be here in a minute. Good-bye, Judith.’

She put out her hand and he took it and then bent down with a sort of grin and kissed her. He said:

‘That’s what men do when they’re going to the front.’

She thought with pleasure: ‘Then Charlie will want to kiss me too;’ and she looked out of the window, hoping to see him.

It was impenetrably dark, and she thought anxiously: ‘He won’t be able to find his way. He always hated the dark.’

‘Come on,’ said Julian. ‘You must come and wave good-bye to me.’

But still she delayed and peered out, looking with growing panic for Charlie.

All at once she saw him in the darkness outside. He was not in uniform, but in grey flannel shorts and a white shirt open at the neck,--the clothes of his childhood. He trailed himself haltingly, as if his feet hurt him.

‘Sh!’ said Julian in her ear. ‘He’s disguised himself.’

‘Ah, then he won’t get killed....’

‘No.’

She caught sight of his face. It was a terrible disguise,--the shrivelled, yellow mask of an ancient cretin. He looked at her vacantly, and she thought with a pang: ‘Ah! I must pretend I don’t know him.’

He passed out of sight with his queer clothes and his limp and his changed face,--all the careful paraphernalia of his travesty. Looking at him, she was seized with sudden horror. There was something wrong: they would see through it.

She tried to reach him, to warn him; but she was voiceless and he had disappeared.

* * * * *

It was Charlie himself, so the old gardener said, who wrote to tell him that he and Mariella were to be married. Master Charles had always been the beloved one,--the one to be ready with a smile and a pleasant word, and never a bit of haughtiness for all his Grannie made such a little prince of him.

‘And when this old war’s over, Lacey,’ he says, ‘we’ll be coming back to live in the dear old house. Grannie wants us to,’ he says, ‘and you may be sure we want to. We were never ones to like London. So look out for us before long.’ But ah! he had to come through the fighting first. They were to get married at once, for he was off to the front. Speaking for himself, said the old gardener, he’d have had enough of life if anything happened to Master Charlie.

The next day, the announcement of their marriage at a registry office appeared in the “Times.”

‘Why, they can’t be more than nineteen,’ said Mamma, ‘and first cousins, too. A dreadful mistake. However, I suppose the chances are----’ and she sighed, settling her V.A.D. cap before the mirror. ‘I must write to the old lady. They were good-looking children--one of them especially. Why don’t you send a nice little note to the girl, Judith? You used to play together such a lot.’

‘Oh, she wouldn’t remember me,’ said Judith, and went quickly away, sick with shock.

Married, those two. Mariella a wife: Mrs. Charles Fyfe.

‘I am _young_ Mrs. Fyfe. This is Charlie, my husband.’

How had it happened?

‘Mariella, you must marry me, you must, you _must_. Oh, Mariella, I _do_ want to marry you, and I’m going to the front so I _do_ think I might be allowed to have what I want. I may be killed and I shan’t have had anything out of life. Oh, Mariella, please! You know you’re happiest with us, Mariella. You couldn’t marry anyone outside and leave us all, could you? Nor could I. I couldn’t bear to be _touched_ by any other woman. You and I understand each other so well we _couldn’t_ be unhappy. We are different from other people, you know. Marry me and I’ll come back from the war. But if you say no I’ll just go out and let myself be killed at once....’

And Mariella, pale and childish and not understanding, went away. She went--yes--to Julian, and looking at him full with her dazed look said: ‘Charlie has asked me to marry him.’ He said not a word, but looked dark and shrugged his shoulders and turned away as who should reply: ‘What is that to me?’ So Mariella went straight back to Charlie and said:

‘All right.’

Her mouth quivered and she nearly cried then, but not quite: neither then nor afterwards. And the grandmother wept bitterly, till in the end Charlie comforted her; and after that, implacably she would give and sacrifice all to Charlie.

No, no, that was too stupid, too abnormal. People only behaved like that in your unbalanced imagination.

Mariella would never have wept, never have gone to Julian, never dreamed of being in love with him,--him or Charlie or any one else you would have thought, childless, sexless creature that she had always seemed, years behind you in development. How she must have changed to be now liable to passion! All at once she had to be thought of as a woman, the gulf of marriage fixed between you and her.

Had she consented then in her usual placidly agreeable way, just to oblige Charlie, without a notion of what it meant to be in love and marry? Had she gradually fallen in love with him during all the years they were growing up together, or had it been suddenly, with a shock of realization, when he told her he was going to France? Or had he come home one day excited, full of emotion at the thought of what lay ahead for him, and found her looking beautiful, strange, and thrilling to his troubled eyes, and taken her suddenly in his arms, charming her into his own illusion of love?

Or had it been gentle and certain all the time,--an idyll?

‘My dear, you know I shall never love anyone but you.’

‘Nor I anyone but you.’

‘Then let’s marry before I go.’

‘Oh yes,--at once.’

So they married, with all the others gentle and certain, and acquiescent as a matter of course, saying, whatever their secret thoughts: ‘Ah well, it had to be.’

They would spend their few days contentedly together, saying quietly: ‘If anything should happen we shall have had this happiness at least:’ their few nights....

When people married they slept in the same room, perhaps in the same bed: they wanted to. Mariella and Charlie would sleep together: that would be the only change for them who had lived in the same house since childhood and knew all about each other. Why had they wanted to make that change--what had impelled them to seek from each other another intimacy? Charlie’s beauty belonged to someone now: Mariella of all people had claims upon it. She might have a baby, and Charlie would be its father....

It was all so queer and unhappy, so like the dreams from whose improbabilities she woke in heaviness of spirit, that it was impossible to realize. This thing had happened and she was further than ever from them, perplexed in the outer darkness, unremembered, unwanted, nothing at all. She might hold on all her life but they would never be drawn back to her.

She was certain now that Charlie was going to be killed. There was that in the fact of his marriage, of his leaping to fulfil the instincts of normal man for life which proclaimed more ominously by contrast the something,--the fatal excess--that foredoomed him; which made darker the shadow falling ever upon the bright thing coming to confusion.

There seemed nothing now in life but a waiting for his death.

* * * * *

They came and came in her dreams--some that caused her to wake with the happiness of a bird, thinking for a moment: ‘Then he’s safe ...;’ others that made her start into bleak consciousness, heavy with the thought that he was even now dead.

There were dreams of Mariella with a child in her arms; of Mariella and Charlie walking silently up and down, up and down the lawn next door, like lovers, their arms about each other, and kissing as they walked. Then Mariella would turn into Judith, and very soon the whole thing would go wrong: Charlie would cease to walk up and down like a lover, and falter and disappear.

She dreamed of standing in the doorway of the old next door schoolroom looking out into the hall. Between the inner glass doors and the outer white-painted wooden ones, in the little passage where tubs of hydrangeas and red and white lilies stood upon a mosaic floor, Mariella was talking to one of the boys. She must be saying good-bye to Charlie. The back of her neck was visible, the short curls tilting back as she lifted her head to him. Tall and shadowy, faceless, almost formless, he bent over her, and mysteriously, silently they conferred; and she watched, hidden in the doorway. Suddenly Mariella broke away and ran past through the hall. Her face was white and wild, streaming with tears; she bowed it right forward in her hands and fled up the stairs.

‘Oh, look! Mariella is crying for the first time in her life....’

In the doorway the dark figure still stood. It turned and all at once had a face; and was not Charlie but Julian. She sprang back thinking: ‘He mustn’t see me here, spying;’ and in the agitation of trying to slip away unobserved, the dream broke.

There was a dream of playing some game among them all in the next door garden, and of Charlie stopping suddenly, and crawling away with a weak fumbling step, his hand on his heart.

‘He’s got a weak heart.’

‘Ah, then he won’t go to the front.’

‘No, he’s quite safe.’

She woke up happy.

But sometimes Charlie had been to the front and had come back with that feebleness and sickness upon him. He was going to die of it. He came all pale into the schoolroom and stopped, leaning against the big oak cupboard. He put his hand on his heart, sighing and moaning, looking about him in appalling distress. He said:

‘I feel ill. I don’t know what it is.... I’d like to consult my brother.’

He had the face of a stranger, an emaciated and elderly man,--nobody in the least like Charlie; but it was he. He shuffled out again, almost too weak to move, looking for Julian, who would not come. In horror-struck groups the others watched him. He was dying beyond a doubt. She woke, aghast.

* * * * *

It was at the close of a day in February. Outside, where the gentle dusk glimmered on rain-wet branches, the bird-calls were like sudden pale jets of light, coming achingly to the mind; and all at once the sun, like a bell, struck out a poignant richness, a long dark-golden evening note with tears in it, searching all the land with its fullness and dying slowly into an obscurer twilight. The tree-tops were quiet against the sky. There was no leaf upon them: yet, in that liquid mauve air they stirred in her a sudden soft pang, a beating of the heart, and were, for a moment, the whole of the still hidden spring.

She stood staring through the window; and wars and rumours of wars receded, dwindling into a little shadow beyond the edge of the enchanted world.

She went out into the garden, towards the river. Ah, these shapely boughs, this smell of buds, that tenderly-trailing blue smoke from the rubbish heap, this air like clear greenish water, washing in luminous tides, those few stars cast up and glowing upon translucent strands between the riven pale deeps of clouds!... Bearing her ecstasy delicately, she came to the bottom of the garden, where the connecting pathway ran towards the house next door. She heard a heavy trailing step she knew, and she waited to bid good-night to the old gardener coming home from work.

‘Good-night, Lacey.’

His mumbling voice said from the shadows:

‘Good-night, Missie.’

‘_Lovely_ evening, Lacey.’

‘Ah, grand.’

‘How does your garden look next door?’

‘Ah, a bit forward. There’ll be frosts later, you may be bound.’

He sounded tired to-night; he was getting very old. Now for the customary last question.

‘When are they coming back, Lacey? It’s high time, isn’t it?’

He paused; then said:

‘You maybe won’t have heard, Miss....’

‘What?’

‘Master Charlie’s been killed.... Yes, Miss. We ‘ad word from London this afternoon. Ah, it’s cruel. It’ll about kill his Grannie, that’s wot I sez first thing--about kill her it will. He was the apple of her eye. That’s what we all said--the apple of her eye. She says to me once she says: “Lacey,” she says, “Master Charlie’ll live ‘ere when I’m gorn. I’m keepin’ the place on for ’im,” she says. “It shall never be let nor nothing. It’s ‘is, for ’im to bring ‘is wife to. Ah, pore little Miss Mariella, pore soul....” He broke into feeble weeping. “Ah, it’ll about be the death of ‘is Grannie. Pore Master Charlie--pore little chap ... everybody’s favourite, I remember ’im when ‘e was.... Yes, Missie, yes, Miss Judith....’

His voice failed; and with a hand touching his hat over and over again in mechanical apology, confused distress and appeal, he went shuffling away into the shadows.

* * * * *

But of course, of course he was dead; she had expected it all the time. Now it had happened she could turn to other things. She thought: ‘It’s not bad now; it’ll be worse later: then some time it will stop. I must bear it--bear it--bear it!’

That wheezing voice echoed in the solitude and complained: ‘Pore Master Charlie, pore little chap,’ over and over again through the dark lane among the poplars, above the wall of the garden where the poor little boy had lived long ago.

Had he really lived? Forget him, forget him. He was only a shadow any way, a romantic illusion, a beautiful plaything of the imagination: nothing of importance. Put him away, be sensible, be indifferent, gather round you once again the imperturbable mysteries of nature, be blinded and made deaf with them for ever. He was much better dead. He was weak and spoilt, selfish; he wouldn’t have been any good.... He never could bear blood: he must be thankful to be dead.

Where was he? He seemed to be near, listening to what you had to say of his death.

‘Charlie, my darling, if only you’d known how I loved you!’

‘I know now. I shall always be watching you.’

Then there is no cause for weeping: he is alive, he is in God’s keeping. “Lord, into thy hands I commend his spirit.” What did that mean? Pretend, pretend to believe it, cover the blankness with confident assertions.

What had become of that shining head? How did he look now?

At this very moment they were all weeping for Charlie shot dead in France. It was really true: he was dead and in the earth, he had vanished for ever. Her mind wavered and fainted under the burden of their grief: her own she could endure, but theirs was intolerable.

She went back, out of the unregarding night, to the Greek verbs which must be learnt by to-morrow.

* * * * *

A long time after, came the last terrible dream.

They were all bathing together from the next door raft, in a sort of dim luminous twilight. She saw her own white legs reaching out to touch the water; and she stepped in and swam about. Roddy was there, a dark head bobbing vaguely near her. Sometimes he touches her hand or her shoulder, smiling at her in a friendly way. The others made a dim group on the bank. They were all very happy: she felt ecstasy swelling within her, and passing from her among them all.

Charlie suddenly came into the group. Oh, there was Charlie safe and well and alive after all, and nobody need be unhappy any more!

He did not speak. He emerged swiftly from among them, and they all watched him in silence while he stooped to the dim river and slipped in. He turned his face, his hidden face, downstream, and went floating and swimming gently along. He too was happy.

A dark misty solitude of night and water was ahead of him, and he went into it without pause or backward look, and it folded around him. Horror crept in: for he was disappearing.

A voice broke ringingly, in anguish:

‘Come back!’

It shattered itself, aghast, upon emptiness.

Softly he vanished.

She cried aloud and woke into a night streaming, blind with the rain’s enormous weeping.

He never came again.

His son was born and his grandmother died; but he was too far, too spent a ghost to raise his head at that.