"I'm to stay behind and take Markham's place, and train a lot of fool
boys to form fours and dig trenches! It's infamous!"
"Surely you are glad for Pam's sake, Mr. Cromer," the Colonel's wife
interrupted reproachfully.
I think Cheneston had utterly and completely forgotten me until that
moment. He turned and looked at me in bewilderment; I suppose he
suddenly realised that his enforced stay in the town would necessitate
the continuation of our supposed engagement.
He drew a long breath.
"Of course," he said, quite quietly, "of course, Mrs. Walters."
You would imagine that when Fate calmly picked up two people, shook
them, and then placed them in a position alien to anything they had ever
planned or dreamed of, they would remain in a state of scared chaos; but
it isn't so.
When we had seen the train off, Cheneston and I walked back to the camp,
quite quietly.
"Poor little kid!" he said. "One never anticipated this, did one?"
"No," I answered. I was thinking that God had made the morning for
lovers to walk in--the mist had not lifted, the sun shimmered golden
through it. It seemed to encase us in soft amber radiance. I had that
only-two-people-in-the-whole-wide-world-to-day feeling, which must be so
absolutely wonderful when you want to be quite, quite alone with a man
and he wants to be quite, quite alone with you. I was watching a cobweb
sewn with dewdrops; there was a sweet and foolish peace in my heart. I
could only remember that Cheneston was going to stay.
"What are you going to do about it, Pam?"
"Oh--carry on," I said. I tried to speak lightly.
"You feel like that about it?"
"Well--we can't break the engagement at once. It would be perfectly
awful for both of us--especially me. People would say I was only
waiting for you to go to France to--to rot."
"You funny little soul! Pam--I--I blame myself for all this. You seem
only a kid to me--until you sing."
"And then?" The golden mist seemed to dance towards me.
"And then I know you are a woman--with all a woman's rotten wiles, the
little feline habit of plucking at a chap's heart-strings in order to
amuse yourself. There's only one good woman in the world--my mother."
"I--I had no idea you had a mother!"
"Why should you have?" he demanded curtly. "She is a great invalid, she
lives at Cromer Court near Totnes, in Devon."
"Does she know about--us?"
"She knows nothing," he said briefly. "There is nothing for her to know.
My God! look!"
I looked. We had walked down to the sea, near Brennon House
bathing-tents. The Gilpins had built a little diving platform, and on
it, her hands above her head, stood Grace Gilpin.
Half mermaid, half angel, she looked. She wore a black bathing-dress,
and a beach gown of brilliant violet lay behind her, a little pool of
exquisite colour.
No pen can do justice to her, only the brush of a Sargeant or one of
those people who have things on the Academy walls that make everybody
else's work look dud. I think if I had been an artist I would have
burst into a passion of tears--something rose in my throat because she
was so lovely; perched there, gold and black, between the misty blue sea
and the misty blue sky, all the colour in the morning seemed to be
enmeshed in her hair and her beach gown, and the next minute she had
dived into the water.