"Hitch?" I repeated.
"You've not been doing anything stupid--because, remember, your father
and I have had considerable expense in----"
"What have you heard?" I said hardily.
"That you had a certain friendliness for Walter Markham, and that,
although no one else has had the honour of being reminded of his
existence, you have been hearing from him."
"Well!" I said, my voice sounded like reinforced ice. "Who has been
gossiping?"
"I heard it," said mother uncomfortably. "I--I should wear that quaint
little collar with the quaint spotted border, Pam."
So already the idea was gaining ground, the little rumour was gleaning
strength as it floated along. Pam Burbridge was in love with Walter
Markham, they wrote; perhaps they were waiting till he came back to
break it off. The Burbridge-Cromer engagement had been too sudden to be
lasting. Rather hard on Cromer; still, it was pretty obvious where he
would console himself, and a far more suitable match in every way. I
could hear them.
I looked at the successor chosen by popular opinion when she and her
mother came to call for me. She wore a curious sea-green hand-woven
linen; instantly I knew why--it was the colour of the water in the White
Woman's Cave. She wanted to make another exquisite picture for
Cheneston and the subalterns to gaze at.
"Carver is following with the lunch in the dog-cart," she said. "Melon
and salmon mayonnaise and pineapple, and cold pheasant and quail, and
all sorts of lusciousness. Climb in, Pam. Captain Cromer and the boys
are motoring over. Isn't it a ripping morning? I heard from Walter
Markham this morning. He says it's the first letter he's been able to
write since he got out there. They seem to have had a ghastly time."
"Yes," I said, "they have."
"Oh--of course," Grace said, "you heard. You said so last night, didn't
you? I forgot. Do you like Walter Markham?"
"I like him awfully," I said earnestly. I tried to bring all sorts of
things into my voice, but I only sounded, as usual, like a guileless but
honest schoolgirl.
"So do I," said Grace Gilpin. Her face was half turned away, exquisite
tendrils of gold fluffed about her face and hat--there were cherries on
her hat, they seemed no redder than the curve of her wonderful mouth.
"If I were a man I should want to eat you," I said suddenly.
"Grace--what does it feel like to be able to make any man you meet feel
like that?"
"Are you being catty?" Grace said. She looked at me with surprise in
her beautiful eyes.
"I--I don't know," I said miserably. "I think I'm trying to be."
Grace turned.
"Pam, have you really been hearing from Walter Markham?" she said
quietly.
I looked beyond her, up at the great bunch of blackberries gleaming like
black diamonds in the sun. They seemed like a bunch of eyes watching
me.
Suddenly I felt good; I felt as if my silly little soul were enlarging
and bubbling to the surface. I knew why Grace asked--she asked for
herself and Cheneston, she wanted to think I cared for Walter Markham.
"Yes," I said, "I have."
"Does--Captain Cromer know?" she said.
"You heard me say I had heard from him last night in your drawing-room."
"I know, and then you burst into tears. I was so glad you did."
"Why?" I asked, startled.
"You saved me from doing the same thing, you did it first."
We went into the White Woman's Cave while the maids laid the lunch on
the smooth, springy grass. More guests had been invited than I
expected, but Cheneston had not yet turned up.
The walls of the White Woman's Cave are smooth and dark, and the sea
purrs through it and licks the smoothness with a little kiss, and the
light comes through the roof and lights the water so that it gleams like
pale green fire.
It was wonderful and a little uncanny, like a theatrical scene, and it
was cold in there, and the daylight and the sunshine seemed far away.
"And to think a woman lived here for years," one of the girls said.
"Her lover died and she wanted to get away from the world."
"How romantic!" said another girl. "Look, here's Major Morrison and
Captain Cromer."
I think she thought that much more romantic. As she spoke Grace Gilpin
moved. I don't know whether she did it purposely; perhaps the instinct
to frame her beauty is implanted in her. She stood so that the green
light from the water, fairylike and phosphorescent, held her in a
shimmering glow of opalescent fire. She had taken off her hat; her
coronet of fluffy, tendrilly gold hair shone like a halo, and her dress
gleamed like a mermaid's sheath; she seemed neither of heaven nor earth,
a betwixt and between creature made for man's undoing.
"I wish I were an artist, Grace!" Cheneston said.
Her pretty silver laughter floated out.
"Oh! Why?"
"He would paint you as a spirit of the cave," Major Morrison said.
As we came out into the sunshine I saw that Cheneston was very white.
He gripped my arm.
"Pam," he said, "I must talk to you, child. I'm nearly off my head!"
"Lunch," I said feebly. I was suddenly inexplicably scared. I seemed
to have brought the atmosphere of the cave into the sunshine with me.
"Confound the lunch!" he said violently. He turned to Grace. "I must
talk to Pam," he said. "May we have a quarter of an hour's grace?"
"Oh--certainly."
"Begin without us if we don't come."
"Very well," she acquiesced.
"Come," said Cheneston curtly.
So he had been thinking things over, and he was going to ask me about
Walter Markham, and tell me that he and Grace had discovered they cared
for each other.
I wondered if I could manage to look merry as a marriage-bell with a
funeral going on in my own heart. I discovered that to be a quaint
little thing with a snubby nose has its advantages: you're not expected
to furnish a big display of facial emotion.
"I can't walk any more," I said. My knees were trembling; I felt
horribly, unromantically sick. It was my great hour, the hour of my
renunciation, and I had no great feelings, only little squeamish,
physical ones.
"Sit down, then," he said.
I sat down with a flop, under a crab-apple tree that was like a flame,
and there was blue sky above us and golden bracken all around us, and
when it swayed we could see the sea, like slits of turquoise through
golden fretwork, and it seemed to me the stillest place in all the
world.
"Pam," he said, "my mother is very ill--dying," and he turned from me
and buried his head in his hands.
I sat very still. It was so absolutely unexpected, and by-and-by I
clutched the bracken on either side of me and I prayed inside myself:
"Don't let me go on feeling so dreadfully like his mother--or I shall
put my arms round him and cuddle him!"
And I knew then that I loved Cheneston with the only sort of love that
is real and lasting--I loved him as if he were my little, little boy. I
loved him when he was my strong, decisive young knight. I loved the
mystery in him, and the strength of him that I didn't understand; but I
loved him best of all, most sweetly and dearly of all, when he was just
my hurt boy.
I don't think I see things romantically. I suppose it's in keeping with
my appearance. I never see love as something that is remote and cold and
miles away. I would go to the ends of the earth with Cheneston, and I
would love to nurse him when he's got a cold. I would love to go to his
house in Norway, but I would also adore to make toast in front of the
kitchen fire with him if the maid was out. I suppose my love is homely
like myself, but it seems to me that once you've got love you can't tuck
it up with the stars when you order dinner and help make the beds--you
don't even want to, it makes you absolutely enjoy ordering dinner and
making the beds, that's the splendid part about it.
Love makes ordinary every-days, full of ordinary every-day tasks, into
high-days and festivals full of little sacred services and missions.
"Pam," he said. He lifted his head and looked at me. "I'm sorrier than
ever, my poor little soul--since last night. You see, I always thought
that Walter Markham cared, but I didn't know that you did. Kiddie,
you're such a splendid little sport, and I'll help you all I can; but if
you can't stick it, dear, I'll understand."
"Stick what?" I said.
He put his hand over mine, and I felt it tremble, and somehow the
trembling made me very strong.
"I'm an only son," he said. "I think I've been rather a bad egg, debts
and cards, wandering over the face of the earth, a sort of rolling
stone, running away from my niche. It's worried the poor old mater.
You see, Cromer Court is rather a topping old place, family for
generations and all that. She wanted me to settle and marry and all
that. Grief of her life that I didn't."
"Yes," I said.
"She's splendid, absolutely fine. Pam, somebody has told her--about us.
She wrote me a wonderful letter this morning--it broke me up--about us."
"About us?" I said idiotically.
"Someone wrote to her and told her I was engaged to you. She wants to
see my future wife. She's dying. I had a telegram from my cousin down
there. Her letter was so wonderful. She said she would die happy
knowing. Pam--is it too much?" His eyes were full of tears.
"It's nothing," I said. "I understand."
"Pam!" he said. "Best woman in all the world! Pam, there's something
about you--it upsets all my theories; I seem just a pretty helpless sort
of rotter."