London was not kind to him. He had felt, like many Canadians, that
in going to England he was going home. But England was cold.
Not the people on the streets. They liked the Canadians and they
cheered them when their own regiments went by unhailed. It appealed
to their rampant patriotism that these men had come from across the
sea to join hands with them against common foe. But in the clubs,
where his letters admitted the boy, there was a different
atmosphere. Young British officers were either cool or, much worse,
patronising. They were inclined to suspect that his quiet confidence
was swanking. One day at luncheon he drank a glass of wine, not
because he wanted it but because he did not like to refuse. The
result was unfortunate. It loosened his tongue a bit, and he
mentioned the medals.
Not noisily, of course. In an offhand manner, to his next neighbor.
It went round the table, and a sort of icy silence, after that,
greeted his small sallies. He never knew what the trouble was, but
his heart was heavy in him.
And it rained.
It was always raining. He had very little money beyond his pay, and
the constant hiring of taxicabs worried him. Now and then he saw
some one he knew, down from Salisbury for a holiday, but they had
been over long enough to know their way about. They had engagements,
things to buy. He fairly ate his heart out in sheer loneliness.
There were two hours in the day that redeemed the others. One was
the hour late in the afternoon when, rehearsal over, he took Edith
O'Hara to tea. The other was just before he went to bed, when he
wrote her the small note that reached her every morning with her
breakfast.
In the seven days before he joined his regiment at Salisbury he
wrote her seven notes. They were candid, boyish scrawls, not love
letters at all. This was one of them:
_Dear Edith_: I have put in a rotten evening and am just
going to bed. I am rather worried because you looked so
tired to-day. Please don't work too hard.
I am only writing to say how I look forward each night to
seeing you the next day. I am sending with this a small
bunch of lilies of the valley. They remind me of you.
CECIL.
The girl saved those letters. She was not in love with him, but he
gave her something no one else had ever offered: a chivalrous
respect that pleased as well as puzzled her.
Once in a tea shop he voiced his creed, as it pertained to her, over
a plate of muffins.
"When we are both back home, Edith," he said, "I am going to ask you
something."
"Why not now?"
"Because it wouldn't be quite fair to you. I--I may be killed, or
something. That's one thing. Then, it's because of your people."
That rather stunned her. She had no people. She was going to tell
him that, but she decided not to. She felt quite sure that he
considered "people" essential, and though she felt that, for any
long period of time, these queer ideas and scruples of his would be
difficult to live up to, she intended to do it for that one week.
"Oh, all right," she said, meekly enough.
She felt very tender toward him after that, and her new gentleness
made it all hard for him. She caught him looking at her wistfully at
times, and it seemed to her that he was not looking well. His eyes
were hollow, his face thin. She put her hand over his as it lay on
the table.
"Look here," she said, "you look half sick, or worried, or
something. Stop telling me to take care of myself, and look after
yourself a little better."
"I'm all right," he replied. Then soon after: "Everything's strange.
That's the trouble," he confessed. "It's only in little things that
don't matter, but a fellow feels such a duffer."
On the last night he took her to dinner--a small French restaurant
in a back street in Soho. He had heard about it somewhere. Edith
classed it as soon as she entered. It was too retiring, too demure.
Its very location was clandestine.
But he never knew. He was divided that night between joy at getting
to his regiment and grief at leaving her. Rather self-engrossed, she
thought.
They had a table by an open grate fire, with a screen "to shut off
the draft," the waiter said. It gave the modest meal a delightfully
homey air, their isolation and the bright coal fire. For the first
time they learned the joys of mussels boiled in milk, of French
_souffle_ and other things.
At the end of the evening he took her back to her cheap hotel in a
taxicab. She expected him to kiss her. Her experience of taxicabs
had been like that. But he did not. He said very little on the way
home, but sat well back and eyed her wistful eyes. She chattered to
cover his silence--of rehearsals, of--with reservations--of Lethway,
of the anticipated London opening. She felt very sad herself. He had
been a tie to America, and he had been much more than that. Though
she did not realise it, he had had a profound effect on her. In
trying to seem what he thought her she was becoming what he thought
her. Her old reckless attitude toward life was gone, or was going.
The day before she had refused an invitation to a night club, and
called herself a fool for doing it. But she had refused.
Not that he had performed miracles with her. She was still frankly a
dweller on the neutral ground. But to that instinct that had kept
her up to that time what she would have called "straight" had been
added a new refinement. She was no longer the reckless and romping
girl whose abandon had caught Lethway's eye.
She had gained a soul, perhaps, and lost a livelihood.
When they reached the hotel he got out and went in with her. The
hall porter was watching and she held out her hand. But he shook his
head.
"If I touched your hand," he said, "I would have to take you in my
arms. Good-bye, dear."
"Good-bye," she said. There were tears in her eyes. It was through a
mist that she saw him, as the elevator went up, standing at salute,
his eyes following her until she disappeared from sight.