'You see I came here to get cured by forgetting, and I thought I was
cured. And this morning I found I wasn't, and it has--and it has
disappointed me.'
'You musn't cry, you know,' said Dolly gently. 'Not in the middle of
picking red currants. There's the man--'
She glanced at Antoine, digging.
I snuffled away my tears without the betrayal of a pocket handkerchief,
and managed to smile at her.
'What idiots we go on being,' I said ruefully.
'Oh--idiots!'
Dolly made a gesture as of including the whole world.
'Does one ever grow up?' I asked.
'I don't know. I haven't.'
'But do you think one ever learns to bear pain without wanting to run
crying bitterly to one's mother?'
'I think it's difficult. It seems to take more time,' she added smiling,
'than I've yet had, and I'm forty. You know I'm forty?'
'Yes. That is, I've been told so, but it hasn't been proved.'
'Oh, I never could _prove_ anything,' said Dolly.
Then she put on an air of determination that would have alarmed Mrs.
Barnes, and said, 'There are several other things that I am that you
don't know, and as I'm here alone with you at last I may as well tell
you what they are. In fact I'm not going away from these currant bushes
till I _have_ told you.'
'Then,' I said, 'hadn't you better help me with the currants while you
tell?' And I lifted the basket across and put it on the ground between
us.
Already I felt better. Comforted, cheered by Dolly's mere presence and
the sweet understanding that seems to shine out from her.
She turned up her sleeves and plunged her arms into the currant bushes.
Luckily currants don't have thorns, for if it had been a gooseberry bush
she would have plunged her bare arms in just the same.
'You have asked us to stay on,' she began, 'and it isn't fair that you
shouldn't know exactly what you are in for.'
'If you're going to tell, me how your name is spelt,' I said, 'I've
guessed that already. It is Juchs.'
'Oh, you're clever!' exclaimed Dolly unexpectedly.
'Well, if that's clever,' I said modestly, 'I don't know what you would
say to _some_ of the things I think of.'
Dolly laughed. Then she looked serious again, and tugged at the currants
in a way that wasn't very good for the bush.
'Yes. His name was Juchs,' she said. 'Kitty always did pronounce it
Jewks. It wasn't the war. It wasn't camouflage. She thought it was the
way. So did the other relations in England. That is when they pronounced
it at all, which I should think wasn't ever.'
'You mean they called him Siegfried,' I said.
Dolly stopped short in her picking to look at me in surprise.
'Siegfried?' she repeated, her arrested hands full of currants.
'That's another of the things I've guessed,' I said proudly. 'By sheer
intelligently putting two and two together.'
'He wasn't Siegfried,' said Dolly.
'Not Siegfried?'
It was my turn to stop picking and look surprised.
'And in your sleep--? And so affectionately--?' I said.
'Siegfried wasn't Juchs, he was Bretterstangel,' said Dolly. 'Did I say
his name that day in my sleep? Dear Siegfried.' And her eyes, even while
they rested on mine became softly reminiscent.
'But Dolly--if Siegfried wasn't your husband, ought you to have--well,
do you think it was wise to be dreaming of him?'
'But he was my husband.'