“Hazel and the babies are coming for a week,” announced Bertha
triumphantly.
“How delightful! But oh! dear Mrs. Tregaskis, _have_ you considered
where you’re going to put them?” urgently demanded Miss Blandflower,
wearing an expression of anxiety.
“Ask my landlady, Minnie.”
Miss Blandflower’s expression, now complicated by the addition of a
puzzled smile, was turned towards Rosamund.
“The little balcony room for Hazel, of course, and the spare room is
quite large enough for nurse and the baby--but Dickie----”
“He can have a cot in my room,” said Dickie’s grandmother quickly,
“unless Hazel wants him with her. What about a nursery? They’ll be out
most of the day, in this glorious weather, but it gets dark early; and
then for meals----”
“There’s the attic,” said Rosamund rather slowly. “It’s very big and
light, and can easily be cleared. It used to be a sort of nursery.”
She remained a moment reflective, and Mrs. Tregaskis eyed her kindly
and observantly.
“Fancy!” ejaculated Minnie in the silence.
“Yes,” said Rosamund. “It makes a very nice room, and there are two
windows.” She thought to herself that she would rather like the attic,
where she and Francie had played together, to be a nursery again.
“You’d rather like it to be a nursery again, wouldn’t you?” said Bertha
gently.
The attic was made ready, and two days later the engaging Dickie was
trotting round it and gazing through the big dormer windows on to the
garden below.
Hazel, radiantly pretty and good-humoured, showed the caressing
appreciation and gratitude for the welcome prepared that Rosamund had
never known her fail to bestow. She played with the babies, gardened
with Minnie, and answered all Bertha’s half-tentative questions with
the same joyous unreserve of manner. If, in that very unreserve,
there was a withholding, Rosamund thought it a most unconscious one.
To Rosamund, Hazel gave of her loving way and impulses freely. Above
all, she gave her, by a sort of tender instinct, what Rosamund needed
most--the care of Dickie.
It was Dickie who, unknowing enough, completed what Mrs. Mulholland,
with her kind, inadequate goodness, had begun after Frances’ death.
Rosamund came to realize that, on the day that she received news of
Mrs. Mulholland’s death. She was in the garden with Ludovic Argent, as
so often now, under the big Spanish chestnut from which still hung,
stained and creaking, the frayed ropes and wide seat of the swing that
had belonged to her and to Frances.
“Mrs. Mulholland is dead,” she said, with wet eyes. “She just died in
her sleep, on Sunday night. They’ve written from the convent to tell
me.”
She handed him the letter quite simply.
Ludovic read the rather set, conventional phrases in which a French nun
asked Rosamund’s prayers for the repose of the soul of her old friend.
She had been “ready to go” for a long while.
“Yes,” said Ludovic, “I remember you told me about that.”
“She wondered what the meeting with her husband would be like--after
all those years. She talked of dying just as though it was like going
on a journey, to some place where people one knew were waiting. She was
very matter-of-fact about it. I think Catholics are like that. She
said she would take messages from me to Frances--in a sort of way it
comforted me very much. It made it seem--not so very far away, after
all. I wonder.”
She was silent for a moment, and then said almost timidly:
“Do you think perhaps she’s given the messages now?”
“Who knows, my dear?” said Ludovic Argent gently.
Watching Rosamund, whose gaze was turned to the dim outline of the
Welsh hills, he knew that he loved her, and told himself that he had
always known it.
Presently he told her.
“I think I am not capable of any very strong feeling any more,” said
Rosamund almost childishly, and half apologetically. “I had to tell
Morris that.”
“You don’t care for him?” he asked quickly.
“Oh no,” said Rosamund.
“Then may I try to make you care for me?”
“Ludovic, I’ll try and explain,” said Rosamund, speaking with
difficulty, and using his name for the first time. “It has seemed
to me that there is only one way for anyone to learn anything--and
that is through caring. Francie’s love for God, whether one thinks
it a mistaken sort or not, made her give up everything and go to the
convent--as you know. And it nearly broke my heart, because it took
her away from me, and I wanted her to be happy in my way and with me.
When I went to see her after she’d actually entered I knew that in
some way she’d grown up, while I hadn’t--I was still muddling about
in chaos, while she’d found a definite anchor. I couldn’t understand,
and I felt further away from her than ever before. Then, when I went
to the convent when she was ill, and they wouldn’t let me go to her,
I understood all she’d given up. You see, for _Francie_ to do or say
anything that would hurt _me_ was the greatest sacrifice that she could
ever have offered. When I was in the chapel then, I prayed that she
might die....
“It was all such pain and despair as I can’t describe--but afterwards,
very slowly, I think I’ve understood a little. There is only one thing
which counts, and that’s loving--and loving is giving.
“Frances gave one way--her way--and taught me a very little of what it
meant.
“But my way is not the same as hers.”
“You are giving the things of the spirit,” said Ludovic.
“I don’t know,” said Rosamund with a sort of sob. “But it’s the only
way of feeling that Francie and I are not so very far apart after all.”
From the garden below came the voices of Hazel’s children, Dickie
calling in a shrill, sweet treble.
Rosamund gave a sudden smile, and then it died from her eyes in a rush
of overwhelming loneliness.
Ludovic’s need was urgent, and he took his advantage.
“Rosamund,” he said entreatingly.
Her gaze did not leave the far line of the horizon, but very slowly,
without turning her head, she gave him her hand.
EXETER, _June, 1916_.
LONDON, _June, 1917_.