THE FIRST AVOWAL
I suppose I must have dropped off to sleep directly I threw myself down
on my bed, and have slept for some time.
It was growing dusk in my little bedroom; outside my window veils of
purple gauze were drawn over sand-hills and shore, and the tide was far
out again by the time I was awakened by a tap at my bedroom door.
“Yes?” I called drowsily, wondering, for a second, where I was, and
what horrible thing it was that seemed lying in wait for me to wake up
properly and remember it.
The door opened and Mrs. Waters came in, carrying a little tray.
“I’ve brought you this, dear.” It was a glass of ginger wine with two
biscuits laid over the top of it. “I know you stayed in the water too
long this afternoon; you were done up. Drink it up, child.”
I sat up, and she put out her hand to smooth my damp hair while I
finished the glassful.
“That’s better, isn’t it?”
“Much, thank you,” I sighed gratefully; for the wine had seemed very
heartening, and heartening was what I needed. The horrible memory had
come back to me. Two of them, in fact: that of this morning, even before
that of this afternoon. His mother knew nothing of either; _that_ I read
in the pink, December rose of a face under the grey hair. The dear! and I
must leave her....
“I’ve brought you something else too,” she said, almost shyly, like a
schoolgirl who isn’t sure that she won’t be snubbed; “something you’ll
like.”
She put her hand to her soft black muslin bodice, unfastened something
that was hidden inside, and brought out a thin, old-fashioned pendant of
flat gold, slung on a slender golden chain.
She opened it and held it out to me. I took it in my hand and carried it
to the window, where there was still enough light by which to see it well.
Coiled up below the oval glass, faintly gold as thistle-down in sunshine,
and fine as floss-silk, there was a baby’s curl.
“That was the very first curl I ever cut from Billy, the day that he
was christened,” his mother told me softly, sitting on the side of my
bed, while I stood, not knowing how to speak to her, by the window. “He
had such pretty hair always!” she went on, “quite as pretty as Theo’s
is now. Only boys—men always seem to look upon curly hair as a sort of
affliction; they’re never satisfied unless they’re flattening it out with
brushes and horrid stuff out of bottles, are they? And when we all go
back to Sevenoaks again, Nancy—”
I lifted my head to try to interrupt her, to say something about my being
forced to go away before, but no words came; she went on talking, as if
more to herself than to anyone else, of what seemed, just then, almost
unbearable to me.
—“I’ll show you heaps of other little things that belonged to him as
a baby. His very first tiny shirt! They put new babies into shirts
then, you know. Fine linen, with narrow, real lace round the neck and
the little sleeves.... Oh, of course I know those silk-and-wool vests
they have now are much more sensible. I’m _quite_ modern, really.
Still—there’s a lovely embroidered christening-robe of his ... all his
robes. I made others for Blanche and Theo. I’d a fancy to keep them all
separate, so that when they—my babies!—grew up and married they could
have them handed on. So all Billy’s will be for you, Nancy—and the little
locket. I knew you’d care to keep it.”
“I?” I cried, aghast and huskily. I held it back to her. “Oh, no! It’s
not for me!”
“Of course it is. I always meant to give it to his bride on her
wedding-morning.”
“Then you keep it for—for her, until then,” I broke in, with a little
laugh that sounded wild in my own ears, and I pressed the pendant with
the christening-day curl back into his mother’s hand. She said nothing
for a moment.
Presently, in the dusk, I felt her long arm slip round me, and her
hesitating, gentle voice was saying very earnestly and pitifully: “Nancy!
You do care for my boy, don’t you?”
And then into that day of queer and crowded horrible happenings, there
was packed yet another.
In my own ears I heard my own voice answering his mother’s appeal with
words I could scarcely recognize as my own. Yet it was no freak of
imagination this time. It was no mad fancy like that on the beach. It
was I, Monica Trant, who in that voice so shaking and strained cried
desperately:
“Oh, yes! _Yes!_ You _know_ I care for him!”
And with that avowal in my ears I felt as if some stranger had cried
aloud a secret that I had never even guessed, but that now—_now_ I knew
to be coming true.
I found myself putting out my hands before me, almost as if this growing
knowledge were something that I could hold away from myself. For a time
I must hold it away; I _must_! For at least as long as I remained here. I
clenched my hands tightly, dropping them to my sides, using all my will
to bring myself to speak in my usual voice again.
“Will you tell me what time it is, Mrs. Waters?”
“Half-past seven. You’ll go to bed early, dear, won’t you? You won’t stop
up!”
“No, I’ll go to bed.”
“And to-morrow—Nancy, I don’t want to say much more. Only, Life promises
to be so golden, dear, for you and him!”
It was then that she gave me a sting that I wish I could forget. I
_shall_ forget, but not at once, that his mother said:
“_Fate has been merciful to let you two meet._ Don’t let that be spoiled!
To-morrow——”
I held her hand with that little locket in it clutched for a minute
against my breast.
“It shall be different to-morrow,” I whispered before she went, keeping
my meaning to myself. It will, of course, be “different” enough!
* * * * *
Half-past seven. There was just time, then, to send my wire.
I crept out silently over the sand-hills and away to the tiny post office
where, thank goodness, the postmistress’s literal English won’t allow her
to read much between the lines of this.
“To Harradine, Marconi Mansions, Battersea, London.
“Please send off immediately to Trant, care Waters, Porth
Cariad, Anglesey, telegram as follows: (Begins.) ‘Please return
at once; am ill, must see you, Cicely.’ (Ends.)—From TOTS.”
If she only has the sense to answer that correctly, and at once!