“ALL CHANGE HERE”
Cicely’s answering wire—for a wonder correctly worded—arrived this
morning at breakfast as I came down.
I’ve shown it to the Waters: explained that I must be off at once. Only
Theo protested angrily, “Your chum ill? How _careless_ of her just when
we were such a jolly party, and going to Red Wharf Bay with the Charriers
to-morrow, and all!” The others accepted it with scarcely a word. They
didn’t even show that they found it odd that Miss Harradine, who lives
in Battersea, should hand her telegram in at Euston Station—though I
wondered over that myself. Not even Mrs. Waters said a word to press me
to wait and send a nurse instead; she didn’t ask when I thought I might
come back. If she _looked_ questions I didn’t see them; I was steadfastly
keeping my eyes for breakfast-cups, and clocks, and time-tables, and
anything but the faces of these people I’m going to leave—for good. All
the morning I’ve spent in my bedroom, packing-up.
Twice, while I was busily emptying drawers and laying out my things in
folded heaps on the bed, I heard outside my window a whistle like a
blackbird’s note; but this time I wasn’t taken in for a moment. I knew it
wasn’t a blackbird. I took no notice of him.
I went on packing, laying my string-soled bathing shoes at the bottom
of my trunk. A long time before I shall need _those_ again! I let him
whistle.
He tried something else.
Twice there was a sharp tap on the pane, just as when that thrush was
cracking a snail. But I knew that this time it really was a pebble thrown
up to catch my attention: thrown, not from the trimly-gravelled sweep
in front of a big house, but from the cottage garden planted with sandy
white pinks and lad’s-love—thrown to bring me down. I wasn’t to be either
whistled or tapped to his side.
I rolled my sun-bonnet—there was a little rip where it had caught on a
gorse prickle—into a tight pink bundle and rammed it down beside my shoes.
I wasn’t going down.
Then came a crunching on the cobbles of the path below, and a soft call
of “Nancy!”
Not I; I wasn’t going down.
“Nancy!”—more urgently. “I say!”
No! Let him think what he liked of me—rude, obstinate, childish, or
sullen—as long as he only didn’t guess _why_ I didn’t mean to go down, or
even look out the window to answer him. I couldn’t face it now. Not with
what my own lips had first told me of the thing which I had to hold away
from me, at arm’s length, for as long as I had the strength.
“Nancy!”
Evidently he was set on saying something to me—but whether it was about
yesterday morning or yesterday afternoon I didn’t care. I was equally set
on his not having the chance. Now I was afraid this chance would happen
after lunch, and I was grateful to that which prevented his taking me up
to Holyhead and seeing me off by the Euston mail alone.
I rejoiced over the timely and snorting arrival of that magenta-coloured
“auto” of the Charriers, bringing over Monsieur with some more of his
business-documents, and Mademoiselle with business that a child might
guess at.
I leaped at their proffered lift of luggage and all, back to Holyhead
Station, and the four of us went off together.
Then, sitting beside this French coquette, who seemed bent on seeming
sweet to me—(Why? I suppose because the girl to whom he _is_ engaged
feels that it’s “in the picture” to be generous to the girl he _has_
“engaged”)—my heart sank, and I wished I hadn’t accepted. We were
speeding along far too fast along the level road towards the purple hump
of the Holyhead mountain. We should be there too soon. Heavens! There’d
be half an hour to wait at the station, and he could get what he wanted
to say in then....
Why hadn’t I thought of that! If something would only happen....
It did.
Never, never has a motor breakdown been hailed with delight before by
a passenger; but I blessed the fortunate accident that kept Monsieur
Charrier and my employer fumbling, fidgeting and fuming about the
bonnet for over half an hour by the roadside. Mademoiselle, in her
lemon-coloured wrap and daring little hat, sat on the top of a low
stone fence with me in my brown silk coat and skirt in which I’d first
travelled down to The Lawn. I was so delighted by the delay that I could
even laugh quite gaily at her as she chattered.
“Always the same! Each time that we take a passenger to make very
quickly, there arrives this _malheur_!... Now, now, it is good? it is
well? it is right? No?... Regard my father, Miss Nancy, on the earth
under the auto nearly: he look like a little fat dog that has been run
over, not? Ah look at this brave Billy, always the same idea, _encore
un_ spanner! Now he will lick her into shapes!... It is finish, Billy?
No?... Ah, he is doing it express, on purpose.... You will loose the
train, and Mademoiselle must return with you—what a chancey day!”
* * * * *
Mercy! Return with him?—the midnight train would be impossible—I should
be kept until the next morning—Horrors! My heart was in my mouth at the
thought....
It was with two minutes to spare, however, that we flung ourselves,
with the hastiest of thanks, out of the motor, and rushed into the busy
station that stretches down to the quay, where a couple of slanted
funnels seemed as big as two leaning towers of Pisa painted red. No time
to lose. He found me a corner-seat facing the engine, in a carriage with
one other lady. He attended to my luggage with the speed and ease of a
man who can make men obey, then he looked straight at me and began: “I
haven’t time now, but look here, I shall——”
Again I baffled him.
“I have nothing to read!” I cried, as if in dismay over the fact. “Will
you fetch me a paper—anything.”
With a little jerk of his shoulders he turned away to the bookstall,
and I sat back in my corner looking dully out at the moving bustle on
the platform below the big Norman Wilkinson posters of steamboats on a
moonlit sea. Why couldn’t we start—it must be time! I’d said good-bye
to his people, said it as if I were going no further than for one of my
afternoon tramps at Porth Cariad with him. Now it was to him that I must
say good-bye.... I couldn’t take it in yet. I didn’t want to. Above all,
I didn’t want him to say it—or anything else.
Again the situation was unexpectedly saved.
The carriage-door burst open, and a man, panting with haste, flung a cape
and a blue-covered _English Review_ on to the seat opposite mine, drew
his handkerchief over his brow with a “Phew!” that meant “Only just done
it!” then leaped out again on to the platform, calling, “Porter! when is
this train due off?”
“She ought to be off now, sir; we’ve been kept back by the boat, we’re
ten minutes behind time.”
But it was not this that made me sit up and turn quickly to the man who’d
dropped back into the seat opposite to me. Slim shape, soft hat, Vandyke
profile—yes, I thought I’d recognized the voice. Sydney Vandeleur, of all
people—and at this moment! At any other, I might have longed to pick up
that _English Review_ and hurl it at his picturesque head, but, for just
this one occasion, I was overjoyed to see him. My employer wouldn’t be
able to say any last words now, before him.
“Monica—Miss Trant!” exclaimed Sydney quickly. “How odd! Did you see
_her_?”
“See whom?”
“Why, Cicely!”
Cicely! The tone in which he used her Christian name told me all there
was to know, _there_! I’d thought so!
“I’ve been seeing her off, you know, to Ireland—the Dublin boat—just gone
off.” He nodded towards the quay. “Had to get back to London to-night; I
am meeting the Mamma in Pont Street to-morrow morning, and——”
“Take your seats, please! Take your seats!” The guard’s whistle was at
his lips as my official _fiancé_ came racing back along the platform. An
armful of papers and magazines fell on to my lap.
“Here you are, Nancy. And, I say! I’m going to——”
What he was going to say broke off again with a snap. And the last glance
I had of his blonde, sun-browned face and quick eyes showed them frozen
in a stare of utter astonishment at the sight of my travelling-companion.
Yes—my goodness! What would he think of finding me with Sydney
again?—Sydney, whose name has so often nearly cropped up between us.
Would he think——?
What difference would it make if he did?
The train steamed out of the station across the flat Anglesey country,
between marshlands ghostly-white with bog-cotton in the dusk.... What
would he think?
This was what occupied me all the time Sydney was talking, for he was in
a mood to talk to anyone. I, for example, was not the Rose, but I had
shared rooms with the Rose, and he was eager to tell me about her, and
how she had gone to stay with his married sister until—something or other
to do with “the Mamma.” Poor Lady Vandeleur, fated to see her only son
falling in love with such totally ineligible girls! First a City typist
at twenty-five shillings a week; now a Bond Street mannequin!
But my employer didn’t know of this change. How could he? He
probably—yes, certainly!—imagines things are as they might once have
seemed to be.
Will he think I arranged this?
“Of course you know her—but not as one does now!—the last few
weeks! We were together at the Café Royal—He’s going to paint
her—Colouring!—Wonderful! You should have seen the costume I designed for
her—Five Arts Ball——Purposely giving the effect of——Quite in the period,
of course!—People who understand!—Such _souplesse_ of mind as she has——”
Sydney went on to the air. My whole attention was for someone very
different.
He can’t imagine I’d do anything so underhand! Even if he did imagine
that—well, I couldn’t explain unless he asked. If he did ask, I could
explain less than ever! Oh, why can’t I wipe four months straight out of
this year and begin again? But then, there would have been Jack to help!
But then, there would have been Sydney.... I should have been engaged to
this creature before me in that hat, talking of Cicely’s _souplesse_ of
mind! If he—the other one—only knew what I really think of Sydney!
“Fancy,” I commented haphazard to the rhapsodist before me. “Well; I
do hope everything will be all right.” And I took up the magazine my
employer had tossed on to my lap—there was a picture on the cover of a
pretty Summer-girl looking over the sea—and prepared to hold it up in
front of me for the rest of the journey.
Sydney—surprised and sulky—read his _English Review_. Presently I refused
his not too pressing invitation to join him in the dining-car, and he
left me for an hour and a half.
For love, that robs us women of the appetite for anything but Romance,
seems to make men even hungrier for their food.
* * * * *
“Eus-tern!” came the familiar Cockney bawl again at last. “Eus-tern!”
It was a change, after what I’d been used to for the last few weeks, to
have to fend for myself in the matter of luggage and a taxi. One doesn’t
specially look to men in love for decent manners. Still—that other one
knew how to pay these attentions in spite of his Odette and her gloves!
Sydney’s evidently the type that pays homage to the Well-Beloved by being
casual towards every other woman. He seemed to efface himself until his
lukewarm offer of getting me a cab could be answered from the cab-window.
“Ah—may I tell him to drive to Marconi Mansions, Miss Trant?”
“I’ve told him, thanks. How fearfully hot it is here, and how stuffy”—I
sniffed with distaste—“after the country!”
“Yes, isn’t it?—one’s almost consoled for Her being away, in that lovely,
soft, pure air of Ballycool! Good night!”
The last sort of night I thought I’d have! But once back in my familiar
little camp-bed in Marconi Mansions, I tucked my cotton dressing-gown
round me because no sheets had been left out, and fell into that
dreamless trance of utter tiredness.
I slept like a log all night.
(_Next day._)
_How_ the flat seems to have shrunk! and what a state Cicely has left it
in! Has she moved _all_ our ramshackle furniture since I was here last?
Used that table to be right in the middle of the room, choking it up
like this?—and where’s my dear print of “Kitty Fisher” that used to hang
just _there_, where she’s put that framed oil-sketch of—what on _earth_?
It looks like a study, by Blossom, of that coloured tie of Sydney’s—and
there’s a little red “_sold_” label on it. I suppose he bought it for
her out of one of the shows at the Grafton Gallery. The couch, too,
is littered with books ... Marinetti ... Schnitzer ... Tangore ...
Strindberg’s “_Stronger Woman_” ... a slender volume, “_The Everlasting
Mercy_,” inscribed “_To Cicely, from her devoted S. V._”
* * * * *
H’m! Cicely among the intellectuals? Well, I suppose some of us are made
adaptable as water, taking the shape of any vessel we’re poured into by
Man. Perhaps—perhaps I might have been the same, if——
But I do wish she’d had the _souplesse_ or the _something!_ to throw
away, before she left, this litter of florists’ half-dead flowers,
expensive stale roses and carnations, that fills up every one of our pots
and crocks.
I’d better do it, I suppose....
Also I’d better wash up my breakfast-things—and Cicely’s of the day
before, which are heaped upon the kitchen table.
On the top of an oily quarter-pound of butter there’s a very dirty note.
“_Dear Miss I am unable to come to-day has my little girl is
queer hoping no inconvenence yrs truely mrs skinner._”
All right. I’ll wash up ... loathsome job! That kettle always took so
long to boil—we ought to have a flat-bottomed one like the one they
use for picnics at the Waters’. It’s a good thing I’m able to think
so composedly of them. Doesn’t it show, after all, that—what I told
his mother, what I thought I should have to hold away from myself so
determinedly, may not really be true ... may not, anyhow, be the deep
and lasting sort of “true” that I imagined? Just a fancy, a passing,
summer-holiday attraction for someone who’ll never guess. It must—it
_shall_ be that. No harm in remembering him—all of them. Let’s see.
To-day was to be their excursion to Red Wharf Bay. I can see the whole
party—and their jolly, sun-browned faces against the throbbing blue of
sea and sky. Odette Charrier will be like some bright foreign bird just
alighted amid the homely gold of the Welsh gorse ... prattling away in
her pretty broken English that I believe she sometimes breaks on purpose
to hear Billy Waters’ amused, boyish laugh.
They’ll be together all the time to-day—no official _fiancée_ to
intervene with even the shadow of a claim....
Together they’ll be unpacking the picnic basket, hunting for the
corkscrew, picking up big, sun-warmed pebbles from the beach to lay at
the corners of the white picnic cloth to keep it from flying into the sea.
The others will be—oh, somewhere about....
Those two will stroll off after lunch, I suppose. I wonder if they’ll
bathe? _He_ wouldn’t have lost his nerve even after that afternoon
swim.... _Only yesterday?_ They’ll bathe from the rocks, I expect. And I
might still have been there....
A ring at the door of the flat. Milk, Mrs. Skinner, or—what?
I’d better go and see....
* * * * *
They call _us_ the unexpected sex, of whom no man can ever say what we
shall be at next.
What about themselves?
Only last evening I’d left him standing, stiff with astonishment, on the
Holyhead platform. This morning here he was again, blocking up the tiny
entrance to our flat—my official _fiancé_!