“The glad, sad, tranquil, passionate human heart.”
WILLIAM WATSON.
Of course Katherine was startled and at first almost angry at her
friend’s decision. It is so difficult not to be angry when one is
startled, but it was her custom always to take the common-sense version.
The work was telling on Daphne, Overham had always suited her, and it
was very, very much better for Philip. Daphne had been making things
very hard for Philip. Katherine had spoken to her quite frankly about
it. “I do not care for Philip,” she said, “as I thought I did, but I do
not like to watch him being played with, I like him a great deal too
much for that.” And Daphne had said, that she wasn’t playing with him,
and that she thought Katherine was very unkind, and that she was going
to evensong. But even though Katherine took all these things into
consideration, her heart ached at the thought of her own loneliness. She
would be quite cut off from the rest of the world, only a part of a
great machine, and to be a part of a great machine is very cruel. Then
there was Bert Russell.
The hours off which had been started in the quiet little A. B. C. had
been carried on by the side of the Thames, and in many city wanderings.
The American knew London better than many who were born and bred in her.
He had explored, visited and wandered into all unlikely places. At night
he had passed out into the life of the streets, North, South, East and
West, and he had seen and heard strange and surprising things. To
Katherine he revealed only the fascinating side of them. During their
holiday hours he never attempted to make love to her, but he had made
himself indispensable. When she looked out into the future, it was he
who made that indescribable difference between a blank out-look, and a
bracing cheerfulness. She did not consciously count him in, but it had
become impossible for her to count him out. Daphne’s going would mean
that he might become more to her, and Katherine knew this would not do
at all, he was quite enough to her already. Daphne herself felt leaving
the hospital more than she had thought possible. She was shutting
herself out of a world that has a fascination greater than its
hardships. It is terrible to give up possibilities, for experience has
laid no dark restraining hand upon their hopefulness.
“Oh, Katherine!” said Daphne their last evening, “I do not want to say
good-bye.” Katherine looked at her steadily.
“You have not told me yet,” she said, “why you are going to say it.”
“Because,” said Daphne, “I should never have come here, I should have
stayed with my uncle. It has been a mistake, a beautiful mistake, for I
have been very happy here, but that was not right either, now I must go
back. Oh, why is one always going back?” Katherine never understood why
Daphne should sorrow over abstract things. She felt herself so very
unhappy at losing her friend, that she could not argue, nor did she wish
to explain.
“I shall—miss you!” she said. So the next morning Daphne disappeared.
If she had expected to find Overham changed, because she had, she was
disappointed.
Her aunt was managing a Sunday school treat in the Vicarage field. She
kissed Daphne when she came in (after handing the last bun to the last
child) and told her how many pounds of cake were left over from the
treat. It would keep, she explained, until next week when there was to
be a choir tea. Her uncle said very little, she thought he was looking a
great deal older, and she was a little disappointed that he entirely
overlooked her spiritual trials. She had come there to be made good, and
for the first few weeks she expected to see dramatic signs of it, but
she found it very difficult to keep her temper with her aunt. By-and-bye
the first dismal feeling of unwontedness wore off, there appeared many
little things that she could do, she arranged the flowers, did the
church vases, and ran errands for her aunt. She had asked her uncle if
she might take a district to visit, but he had evaded her request, and
she was too proud to ask him again. In the autumn he suggested that she
should start an evening club for the village boys, and she jumped at the
opening. At first it was very hard, they were extremely shy, red and
awkward, and had horribly large hands, but in the course of a few weeks
they grew to like the pleasant parish room with its wood fire, and
tables covered with games, books and papers, and the sight of “Miss
Daphne,” who was always smiling and willing, and to whom they gave a
surprising deference and affection.
Daphne grew humble, with a keen sense of how little she was doing to
deserve so much.
The club grew and she started a Sunday Bible Class in connection with
it. Her letters to Katherine grew full of daily difficulties and
surprises in her new work. It _was_ surprising, and at first very much a
system of working in the dark.
“One gets,” Daphne wrote, “very disconcerted about what may be going on
in their minds, but, by-and-bye, one understands that it is more
probably nothing at all, than anything so very terrible. Of course they
are quite inarticulate. If there is anything they don’t like, they won’t
tell you, you have to feel it in the air, and then suggest to them all
the things it may be until an increase of vacancy in their faces, tells
you that you have found the stumbling block, and by the time you have
found it, it is quite possible that they may have got so used to it,
that they will object to its departure, and you will have to bring it
back again. You may get angry sometimes, but you must be good-humoured
after it, and you must always be fair. In all these things one finds
that it is merely character that tells. What you _are_ strikes through
all that you say, and if you talk beautifully and it does not come out
of your heart, they don’t listen. It is tremendously good for one not to
be listened to, it makes one so careful what one says.”
Days passed into weeks, and then into months, until one day Katherine
became a staff-nurse, and Daphne found she had been back in Overham a
year.
Routine puts wings to time, and it is really only events that interfere
with the flight of it. Overham was now, to Daphne, a large and exciting
centre of existence. She had forgotten all about dullness and grey
hairs. She had not, however, forgotten all about Arthur, nor had the
sting of Reggie’s sudden truthfulness passed out of her life; but these
things she had buried, and though they sometimes called to her that she
had not buried them deep enough, she put it down to the cry of a girl’s
heart for love and recognition. And after all, the cry and the ache only
came to her sometimes, when she was alone in the garden on summer
nights, or as she struggled home on autumn evenings when the wind was
high, and the spirit of passing things called out upon her youth and
loneliness. When she felt these moods she would go and play to her
uncle, and he would watch her a little wistfully.