It was successful—brilliantly successful—the operation. Lizzie made it
so; at any rate she helped considerably. It was she who held his hand as
he went under the anæsthetic; it was she who cheered him up in the
morning, when he awoke dazed and frightened in a strange room. And then
she slipped away and disappeared from the house. It was only later that
Lethbridge found a scrawled pencil note, strangely smudged, on his desk:
“Let me no wot appens.—LIZZIE.”
He didn’t know her address, so he couldn’t write and tell her that her
Bill had come to consciousness again, completely recovered except for
one thing. There was another blank in his mind now—the last three
years. One of his first questions had been to ask how the fight had
gone, and whether we’d broken through properly.
And then for a day or two Lizzie was forgotten; he had to make his own
renunciation.
Molly came, a little surprised at his unusual invitation, and he left
the door open so that she could see Peter in bed from one part of his
sitting-room.
“Where have you buried yourself, Jimmy?” she cried. “I’ve been——” And
then her face grew deathly white as she looked into the bedroom. Her
lips moved, though no sound came from them; her hands were clenching and
unclenching.
“But I’m mad,” he heard her whisper at length, “quite mad. I’m seeing
things, Jimmy—seeing things. Why—dear God! it’s Peter!”
She took a step or two forward, and Peter saw her.
“Molly,” he cried weakly, “Molly, my darling——”
And Jimmy Lethbridge saw her walk forward slowly and uncertainly to the
man who had come back. With a shaking little cry of pure joy she fell on
her knees beside the bed, and Peter put a trembling hand on her hair.
Then Jimmy shut the door, and stared blankly in front of him.
It was Lizzie who roused him—Lizzie coming shyly into the room from the
hall.
“I seed her come in,” she whispered. “She looked orl right. ’Ow is ’e?”
“He’s got his memory back, Lizzie,” he said gently. “But he’s forgotten
the last three years.”
“Forgotten me, as ’e?” Her lips quivered.
“Yes, Lizzie. Forgotten everything—barrel-organ and all. He thinks he’s
on sick leave from the war.”
“And she’s wiv ’im now, is she?”
“Yes—she’s with him, Lizzie.”
She took a deep breath—then she walked to the glass and arranged her
hat—a dreadful hat with feathers in it.
“Well, I reckons I’d better be going. I don’t want to see ’im. It would
break me ’eart. And I said good-bye to ’im that last night before the
operation. So long, mister. I’ve ’ad me year—she can’t tike that away
from me.”
And then she was gone. He watched her from the window walking along the
pavement, with the feathers nodding at every step. Once she stopped and
looked back—and the feathers seemed to wilt and die. Then she went on
again—and this time she didn’t stop. She’d “’ad ’er year,” had Lizzie;
maybe the remembrance of it helped her gallant little soul when she
returned the barrel-organ—the useless barrel-organ.
“So this was your present, Jimmy.” Molly was speaking just behind him,
and her eyes were very bright.
“Yes, Molly,” he smiled. “Do you like it?”
“I don’t understand what’s happened,” she said slowly. “I don’t
understand anything except the one big fact that Peter has come back.”
“Isn’t that enough?” he asked gently. “Isn’t that enough, my dear?
Peter’s come back—funny old Peter. The rest will keep.”
And then he took her left hand and drew off the engagement ring he had
given her.
“Not on that finger now—Molly; though I’d like you to keep it now if
you will.”
For a while she stared at him wonderingly.
“Jimmy, but you’re big!” she whispered at length. “I’m so sorry!” She
turned away as Peter’s voice, weak and tremulous, came from the other
room.
“Come in with me, old man,” she said. “Come in and talk to him.”
But Jimmy shook his head.
“He doesn’t want me, dear; I’m just—just going out for a bit——”
Abruptly he left the room—they didn’t want him: any more than they
wanted Lizzie.
Only she had had her year.
_X_ _Lady Cynthia and the Hermit_
I
“MY dear Cynthia, you haven’t seen our Hermit yet. He’s quite the show
exhibit of the place.”
Lady Cynthia Stockdale yawned and lit a cigarette. Hermits belonged
undoubtedly to the class of things in which she was _not_ interested;
the word conjured up a mental picture of a dirty individual of great
piety, clothed in a sack. And Lady Cynthia loathed dirt and detested
piety.
“A hermit, Ada!” she remarked, lazily. “I thought the brand was extinct.
Does he feed ravens and things?”
It is to be regretted that theological knowledge was not her strong
point, but Ada Laverton, her hostess, did not smile. From beneath some
marvellously long eyelashes she was watching the lovely girl lying back
in the deck-chair opposite, who was vainly trying to blow smoke rings. A
sudden wild idea had come into her brain—so wild as to be almost
laughable. But from time immemorial wild ideas anent their girl friends
have entered the brains of young married women, especially the lucky
ones who have hooked the right man. And Ada Laverton had undoubtedly
done that. She alternately bullied, cajoled, and made love to her
husband John, in a way that eminently suited that cheerful and easygoing
gentleman. He adored her quite openly and ridiculously, and she returned
the compliment just as ridiculously, even if not quite so openly.
Moreover, Cynthia Stockdale was her best friend. Before her marriage
they had been inseparable, and perhaps there was no one living who
understood Cynthia as she did. To the world at large Cynthia was merely
a much photographed and capricious beauty. Worthy mothers of daughters,
who saw her reproduced weekly in the society papers, sighed inwardly
with envy, and commented on the decadence of the aristocracy: the
daughters tore out the pictures in a vain endeavour to copy her frocks.
But it wasn’t the frocks that made Cynthia Stockdale: it was she who
made the frocks. Put her in things selected haphazard from a jumble
sale—put her in remnants discarded by the people who got it up, and she
would still have seemed the best-dressed woman in the room. It was a
gift she had—not acquired, but natural.
Lady Cynthia was twenty-five, and looked four years younger. Since the
war she had been engaged twice—once to a man in the Blues, and once to
a young and ambitious member of Parliament. Neither had lasted long, and
on the second occasion people had said unkind things. They had called
her heartless and capricious, and she had scorned to contradict them. It
mattered nothing to her what people said: if they didn’t like her they
could go away and have nothing to do with her. And since in her case it
wasn’t a pose, but the literal truth, people did not go away. Only to
Ada Laverton did she give her real confidence: only to Ada Laverton did
she show the real soul that lay below the surface.
“I’m trying,” she had said, lying in that same chair a year previously,
“I’m trying to find the real thing. I needn’t marry if I don’t want to;
I haven’t got to marry for a home and a roof. And it’s got to be the
right man. Of course I may make a mistake—a mistake which I shan’t find
out till it’s too late. But surely when one has found it out before it’s
too late, it’s better to acknowledge it at once. It’s no good making a
second worse one by going through with it. I thought Arthur was all
right”—Arthur was the member of Parliament—“I’m awfully fond of Arthur
still. But I’m not the right wife for him. We jarred on one another in a
hundred little ways. And he hasn’t got a sense of humour. I shall never
forget the shock I got when I first realised that. He seemed to think
that a sense of humour consisted of laughing at humorous things, of
seeing a jest as well as anyone else. He didn’t seem to understand me
when I told him that the real sense of humour is often closer to tears
than laughter. Besides”—she had added inconsequently—“he had a
dreadful trick of whistling down my neck when we danced. No woman can be
expected to marry a permanent draught. And as for poor old Bill—well
Bill’s an angel. I still adore Bill. He is, I think, the most supremely
handsome being I’ve ever seen in my life—especially when he’s got his
full dress on. But, my dear, I blame myself over Bill. I ought to have
known it before I got engaged to him; as a matter of fact I did know it.
Bill is, without exception, the biggest fool in London. I thought his
face might atone for his lack of brains; I thought that perhaps if I
took him in hand he might do something in the House of Lords—his old
father can’t live much longer—but I gave it up. He is simply incapable
of any coherent thought at all. He can’t spell; he can’t add, and once
when I asked him if he liked Rachmaninoff, he thought it was the man who
had built the Pyramids.”
This and much more came back to Ada Laverton as she turned over in her
mind the sudden wild idea that had come to her. Above all things she
wanted to see Cynthia married; she was so utterly happy herself that she
longed for her friend to share it too. She knew, as no one else did,
what a wonderful wife and pal Cynthia would make to the right man. But
it must be the right man; it must be the real thing. And like a blinding
flash had come the thought of the Hermit—the Hermit who had come into
the neighbourhood six months previously, and taken the little farm
standing in the hollow overlooking the sea. For, as she frequently told
John, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was tied to a silly old
idiot of a husband, she’d have married the Hermit herself.
“No, he doesn’t feed ravens,” she remarked at length. “Only puppies. He
breeds Cairns and Aberdeens. We’ll stroll up and see him after tea.”
“A hermit breeding dogs!” Cynthia sat up lazily. “My dear, you intrigue
me.”
“Oh! he’s not a bad young man,” said Ada Laverton, indifferently. “Quite
passable looking, D.S.O. and M.C. and that sort of thing. Been all over
the world, and is really quite interesting when you can get him to
talk.”
“What sort of age?” asked her friend.
“Thirty to thirty-five. You shall see him. But you’re not to go and turn
his head; he’s very peaceful and happy as he is.”
Lady Cynthia smiled.
“I don’t think hermits are much in my line. A man’s job is to be up and
doing; not to bury himself alive and breed dogs.”
“You tell him so,” said her hostess. “It will do him good.”