Chapter X: Part THREE: I (4)

‘Mollie,’ I said, ‘George too. . . . I had not forgotten George . . .’

She said:

‘You should not forget him. He cared for you most of all.’

I said:

‘He never told me . . .’

She said:

‘What was the use?’

I said:

‘Guy is going to be married. You know that too, I expect??’

Mollie bent her head.

‘Yes, I know that too,’ she said.

I said:

‘Mollie, how can you bear it? What have you left at all?’

Mollie looked away. She was kneeling still on the floor, and the firelight danced on her cheek, turned so, away from me, and up the lines of her hair. And I saw that she too looked older, and I saw grey streaks in her hair; and I thought of Guy and Diana, and I felt that I hated Guy.

She said:

‘I don’t know yet. I shall find something soon. Life will go on again. I know in my mind that it must.’

She said:

‘Is Guy very happy? What is Diana like?’

I said:

‘She is very young, lovely, and hard as steel.’

She said:

‘We can’t choose for Guy. Perhaps that is right for him.’

I said:

‘It is not right! I think Guy’s soul has died!’

Mollie smiled at me:

‘You are not changed so much, really,’ she said, and touched my hand. And then John stirred and cried, and I picked him up again, and laid my cheek against his, and I felt that I had John, and that he was life for me.

Mollie said:

‘You are lucky, Helen, to have that baby!’

I said:

‘Yes, and I have two others . . . but they are not like this.’

And then I talked to Mollie, about everything that had happened; about Walter, and Maud, and his mother, and how I was beaten by it all, and how little use I had been.

And then about Hugo’s coming, and all that we did together.

I said:

‘We saw pictures, and heard music, and then we walked about and talked. We went to the station, and there was no train, but there was one in the morning, and I saw him off in a fog . . . it was all foggy’ . . . and I seemed to see it again, as I talked about it, the station filled with smoke, and the lights, and the thin, sharp fog . . . and Hugo’s train going out, away, round the bend of the line . . .

And she said:

‘Is that all, Helen?’

I said:

‘What more could there be? Only everything was different for me after he came and went. You see, we had made a promise, both to go on to the end. It seemed to me, at first, that he had broken his promise; but he hadn’t really, of course; I see that clearly now. It was the end for him, for the war was really ended; but I must go on longer. . . . We had to do different things. . . .’

She said:

‘Is that Hugo’s baby?’

And I said:

‘How I wish it were! But not all my wishing can make it . . . and he had no child of his own!’

She said:

‘Forgive me, Helen!’

I said:

‘It’s no case of forgiving. These things don’t happen really . . . not with people like us.’

‘No, not with you and Hugo. . . . I should have known,’ she said.

We sat and talked together till very late that night. The lamps were lit outside, those cheerless, darkened lamps, and the noise in the streets went on.

We bathed John by the fire, in George’s big blue basin and we put him to sleep on the sofa, and then we made our supper.

And Mollie talked of Salonika and what she had done there, and we talked of little things, little everyday things, and I stayed there that night, and in the morning, it was better.

The next day I went home. I told Walter where I had been. I told him that I got caught in the crowd, and that Mollie had come back, and he did not ask me questions.

I wondered sometimes, with Walter, how much he understood.

And that was the first day after the Armistice. The beginning of the time that has been, since the War.

PART FOUR

They came and went and are not,
And come no more anew,
And all the years and seasons
That ever can ensue
Must now be worse and few.