"Then you think?" I said.
"Six hours ago the chances were a hundred to one against; they aren't
now."
"Doesn't anything ever hurt you?" I said suddenly. "Don't you ever feel
all twisted up with the beauty or the honour of things? Don't you find
things cruelly lovely or hideously bad? Don't people and their ways
make you writhe?"
"I haven't time," she answered tranquilly. "I'm always doing things or
else I'm sleeping hard."
The house surgeon came out.
"Everything is extraordinarily satisfactory," he said. "I've tried a
very small dose of scopolamin-morphine."
I went back and resumed my vigil. I did not feel at all tired. I felt
a little aloof, as if I were sitting apart and critically watching
myself.
I heard a bird twitter, and then the stillness settled down tighter than
ever, and then the bird twittered again and a tinge of light, pallid and
uncertain, crept up behind the hill.
The dawn was coming, the little bird voice had heralded it.
The little tinge became pink; the stars seemed to blink baldly, like
eyes without eyelashes.
The bird world stirred, a blackbird trilled a few delicious notes. I
saw that a few trees fringed the hill; the dawn peeped behind them, rosy
and fresh, like a child peering from behind its fingers.
The hospital was waking up, too; I saw a woman cross the dewy orchard to
a cowhouse in the corner carrying milk-pails and stool.
The scene, which had been changing and intensifying every second,
suddenly remained stationary; it was as if Nature suddenly stepped back
to view her work--she had fashioned a golden world with the help of the
sun, gloriously, dazzlingly gold, golden apples and golden trees, golden
thatched roofs; it blazed beyond my window.
Walter Markham opened his eyes.
"Topping day," he said weakly. "Hullo, doc!--I didn't go out, you see."
"Go out! Havers! man, I'll be dancing at your wedding before the week
is out!" The gruff Scotch doctor, shaved, and clad in khaki and alert,
laughed. "You're doing fine!"
"Wedding," Walter Markham said weakly. "I shall be all right? My arm?
There--there isn't any reason why I shouldn't marry?"
"None on earth."
He looked at me. There was a radiancy in his eyes, a sort of throbbing
happiness.
"O God!" he said, "I'm so happy!"
The house surgeon took me away; he was babbling foolishly, and he looked
like an excited rocking-horse; he had a long narrow face and wide
nostrils.
"Splendid!" he kept saying. "Absolutely top-hole! Splendid! Good
chap, yours! Splendid!"
"He's going to live?" I said. Suddenly I felt very tired, as if my
eyelids had been pressed back.
"Of course! The hospital must have some of your wedding-cake. Oh,
splendid!"
The matron came down the long corridor.
"Will you take her down to the visitors' room, doctor?" she said. "I'm
just going off duty. I didn't tell you before, Miss Burbridge, but your
mother is here--she's been here nearly an hour."
Mother was sitting with her back to the orange curtains. As I entered
the room I became conscious of the faint scent of jasmine with which I
always associated her.
"How did you know I was here?" I said involuntarily.
"I wired to Cromer Court that I must see you, and Cheneston wired back
that you were away in the North for a few days. I was puzzled. I
showed the letter to Grace Gilpin, and she suggested that you had come
to see Captain Markham. Why did Cheneston let you come, and why did you
come?"
"I wanted to and he wanted me to," I said.
I thought it very clever of Grace Gilpin to guess and send mother here,
it made it so much easier for Cheneston and her if I could be caught
with the man I was supposed to be in love with.
"I knew that you knew no one in the North; but for Grace I should never
have thought. I didn't believe I should find you here."
"But you have," I said wearily. "What do you want?"
"Pam," mother said baldly, "are you in love with Walter Markham?"
I wish I didn't feel so horribly tired and done. I knew I could never
be subtle and evasive with mother, somehow she always knocked over my
defences and surprised the truth in me. She had a way of taking my
deepest and most secret feelings by the scruff of the neck and dragging
them ruthlessly into the light--almost as if she wanted to see if their
ears were clean.
"No," I said, "I'm not in love with him."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"He wanted me."
"Did he send for you?"
"No."
"Pam," said mother, "you are hiding things. Are you?"
"Yes," I said.
"I am going to find them out, there's something here I don't understand
at all. Why did Cheneston let you come to see another man?"
"He thought I wanted to."
"You did not want to," mother said. "You are crazily, madly in love with
Cheneston, that is obvious to anyone who knows you."
"Is it?" I said. "I hoped it wasn't. I did it for that purpose, you
see, because I am crazily, madly in love with Cheneston, and he is
crazily, madly in love with Grace Gilpin."
"He used to be before he met you," mother put in. "I did not know----"
she paused and looked at me. "I think you'd better explain right from
the beginning," she said decisively.
"Do you?" I countered quickly. "I am afraid it will be rather a
shock--you see, I'd never met Cheneston until that night father came
home and told you I was engaged to him. He has never for one minute
intended to marry me."
"But you are staying with his mother as his future wife."
"We could neither of us help that. It was Fate."
"Look Here, Pam, cease to talk like a penny novelette! Explain things."
"Very well," I acquiesced. I sat down and explained things from the
very beginning, fully.
"And so you're engaged to neither of them?" mother said when I had
finished.
I felt as if my very soul had been dragged out for public inspection. I
was busy packing it back again.
"No," I said. "Now please tell me why you came?"
"I came because I have to get five hundred pounds from somewhere at
once."
"I haven't fifteen shillings, mother; why come to me? and what is it
for?"
"Your father," answered mother; her lips were compressed. "He must have
it immediately. He owes to his C.O.--and there are complications.
He--" she paused and frowned--"he was always a vile bridge-player. His
declarations were crimes."
"Yes," I said. "But why come to me?"
"You must borrow it from Captain Markham or Cheneston."
I stared at her! This morning she seemed no longer handsome, her
elegance was the only thing left to her--and that seemed just a physical
and social mark.
"It is impossible," I said, "absolutely! Captain Markham is desperately
ill!"
"Then there is Cheneston."
"Absolutely impossible!"
"He would give it to you in gratitude for the way you've played the
game. If you don't you force me to take it with my own hands--you see,
we should have had the money but for the amount we have spent on you
lately."
"What would you do?" I said hoarsely.
"I should just tell Cheneston that you adored and worshipped him, and if
he didn't marry you he would utterly spoil your life. I should say you
were too proud and noble to come yourself."
"You wouldn't do that," I said. "Mother--at least play the game!"
"Two can't do that," she said. "Your father does that. I pay the
price."
*XI*
I used to wonder, in the days when love and marriage seemed very
beautiful and interesting and tremendous food for speculation, but
utterly removed from reality and _me_, what the woman felt like when the
question of money first cropped up, whether it spoilt the idealism and
romance a little, upset the atmosphere like a Ransome lawn-mower
introduced into the Garden of Eden.
I used to wonder how I would like asking Cheneston for a new hat, and I
always came to the conclusion that I would sooner wear the brim like a
halo when the crown fell to pieces from old age than ask him.
I suppose if men love you frightfully they make the question of finance
easy; but I think my experience with mother and father has rather
terrified me, they made the mutual finance discussion so utterly
degrading--and I think listening to them has given me a nervous
distaste, a sort of hyper-sensitive shrinking from the discussion of
ways and means.
It has always seemed so infinitely easier to go without things.
When I sat in the train and thought of asking Cheneston for five hundred
pounds to pay father's card debts I felt sick, and I felt the real me
starting to close up tight, like a sea-anemone when you poke it with
your toe.
Mother travelled to Town with me.
She questioned me about my farewells to Walter Markham--she has a serene
way of questioning. I think she would have made a mark in the Spanish
Inquisition.
"Did he show much distress at your leaving him, Pam?"
"I don't know whether he quite realised. He had a sort of relapse, and
he was only partially conscious. The doctors thought me callous. The
one like a rocking-horse told me I had no right to leave him. I said it
was essential I should return. If he could have kept me there by force
he would."
"I understand from the sister that this sudden relapse makes it more
unlikely than ever that he will pull through, apparently the next
twenty-four hours are the test."
"Yes."
"Your nails are not very carefully manicured," said mother.
I laughed; it was so like mother to obtrude utterly unimportant
trivialities, to bring you crashing to earth with some ridiculous
trifle.
"You will send the money as soon as possible, Pam."
"I absolutely can't do it, mother!" I said desperately. I had a sudden
vision of myself asking Cheneston for money.
"You must," mother returned hardily; she spoke casually, as if she were
reminding me to send a postcard to notify her of my safe arrival. "I
shall not hesitate to go to Cheneston and tell him you are frantically
and desperately in love with him, and what may have been jest to him is
grim reality to you, and unless he marries you he'll ruin your
happiness. I shall be able to say it sincerely because I know it to be
true. You are going to tell Cheneston that Walter Markham quite
understands why you are staying at Cromer Court, that you have unlocked
your lovers' hearts to each other."
I spoke rudely to mother for the first time in my life, my fear of her
was swept away by a sudden passion of rebellion.
"Oh, shut up!" I said furiously. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
She looked at me curiously, her lips a little compressed.
"We should have trained you for the stage," she said. "There is an
abandon about you at times that would do better for the theatre than
real life--where it is merely crude and bad form."
"It seems to me that everything real and vital and honest, all forms of
emotion and feeling, are bad form!"
"Nearly all."
"Except borrowing from your friends and threatening your daughter."
Mother shrugged and looked out of the window.
"Unless your father can produce five hundred pounds within the week he
will be forced to resign his commission, in which case he would get no
pension, and as he has no influence and no brains the prospect of our
future does not intrigue me."
I, too, looked out of the window; a light frost had crisped the leaves,
and though there was no sun the landscape was so full of gold that it
glowed and vibrated with apparent sunshine. The fields were full of
workers, women in coloured linen overalls guiding ploughs, and
allotment-workers on their patches, and the little cottage gardens were
gay with autumn flowers; and I wondered if there were undercurrents in
all these apparently simple lives, if the men and women out there in the
brilliant golden world had furtive motives and social masks like mother
and I.
It is never safe to wonder for more than three seconds whether
everything is what it seems unless you are over fifty--when you are
under fifty it hurts, but when you are over fifty you know that you can
never alter other people, only yourself, and you know that your
disillusionment is half your own fault.
I felt a sort of strangling bitterness. I was very grateful for it,
because I knew that out of it you can grow a sort of hothouse
don't-care-ness that makes it possible for you to do horrid things and
not feel horrid until long after they are done.