CHAPTER XXIV
There was nothing to be done for Lady Cecilia because she took her bereavement with so little fuss. She asked for no sympathy; so far as I ever saw, she shed no tears. If on that particular spot in the neighborhood of Ypres a man had had to fall for his country, she was proud that it had been a Boscobel. She put on a black frock and ordered her maid to take the jade-green plume out of a black hat; but, except that she declined invitations, she went about as usual. As the first person we knew to be touched by the strange new calamity of war, we made a kind of heroine of her, treating her with an almost romantic reverence; but she herself never seemed aware of it. It was my first glimpse of that unflinching British heroism of which I have since seen much, and it impressed me.
We began to dream together of being useful; our difficulty was that we didn"t see the way. War had not yet made its definite claims on women and girls, and knitting till our muscles ached was not a sufficient outlet for our energies. Had I been in Cissie"s place, I should have gone home at once; but I suspected that, in spite of all her brave words to me, she couldn"t quite kill the hope that kept her lingering on.
My own ambitions being distasteful to Hugh, I was obliged to repress them, doing so with the greater regret because some of the courses I suggested would have done him good. They would have utilized the physical strength with which he was blessed, and delivered him from that material well-being to which he returned with the more child-like rejoicing because of having been without it.
"Hugh, dear," I said to him once, "couldn"t we be married soon and go over to France or England? Then we should see whether there wasn"t something we could do."
"Not on your life, little Alix!" was his laughing response. "Since as Americans we"re out of it, out of it we shall stay."
Over replies like this, of which there were many, I was gnashing my teeth helplessly when, all at once, I was called on to see myself as others saw me, so getting a surprise.
The first note of warning came to me in a few words from Ethel Rossiter.
I was scribbling her notes one morning as she lay in bed, when it occurred to me to say:
"If I"m going to be married, I suppose I ought to be doing something about clothes."
She murmured, listlessly:
"Oh, I wouldn"t be in a hurry about that, if I were you."
I went on writing.
"I haven"t been in a hurry, have I? But I shall certainly want some things I haven"t got now."
"Then you can get them after you"re married. When are you to be married, anyhow?"
As the question was much on my mind, I looked up from my task and said:
"Well--when?"
"Don"t you know?"
"No. Do you?"
She shook her head.
"I didn"t know but what father had said something about it."
"He hasn"t--not a word." I resumed my scribbling. "It"s a queer thing for him to have to settle, don"t you think? One might have supposed it would have been left to me."
"Oh, you don"t know father!" It was as if throwing off something of no importance that she added, "Of course, he can see that you"re not in love with Hugh."
Amazed at this reading of my heart, I bent my head to hide my confusion.
"I don"t know why you should say that," I stammered at last, "when you can"t help seeing I"m quite true to him."
She shrugged her beautiful shoulders, of which one was bare.
"Oh, true! What"s the good of that?" She went on, casually: "By the by, do call up Daisy Burke and tell her I sha"n"t go to that luncheon of theirs. They"re going to have old lady Billing, who"s coming to stay at father"s; and you don"t catch me with that lot except when I can"t help it." She reverted to the topic of a minute before. "I don"t blame you, of course. I suppose, if I were in your place, it"s what I should do myself. It"s what I thought you"d try for--you remember, don"t you?--as long ago as when we were in Halifax. But naturally enough other people don"t--" I failed to learn, however, what other people didn"t, because of a second reversion in theme: "Do make up something civil to say to Daisy, and tell her I won"t come."
We dropped the subject, chiefly because I was afraid to go on with it; but when I met old Mrs. Billing I received a similar shock. Having gone to Mr. Brokenshire"s to pay her my respects, I was told she was on the terrace. As a matter of fact, she was making her way toward the hall, and awkwardly carried a book, a sunshade, and the stump of a cigarette.
Dutifully I went forward in the hope of offering my services.
"Get out of my sight!" was her response to my greetings. "I can"t bear to look at you."
Brushing past me without further words, she entered the house.
"What did she mean?" I asked of Cissie Boscobel, to whom I heard that Mrs. Billing had given her own account of the incident.
Lady Cecilia was embarra.s.sed.
"Oh, nothing! She"s just so very odd."
But I insisted:
"She must have meant something. Had it anything to do with Hugh?"
Reluctantly Lady Cissie let it out. Mrs. Billing had got the idea that I was marrying Hugh for his money; and, though in the past she had not disapproved of this line of action, she had come to think it no road to happiness. Having taken the trouble to give me more than one hint that I should many the man I was in love with she was now disappointed in my character.
"You know how much truth there is in all that, don"t you?" I said, evasively.
Lady Cissie did her best to support me, though between her words and her inflection there was a curious lack of correspondence.
"Oh yes--certainly!"
I got the reaction of her thought, however, some minutes later, when she said, apropos of nothing in our conversation:
"Since Janet can"t be married this month, I needn"t go home for a long time."
But knowing that this suggestion was in the air, I was the better able to interpret Mildred"s oracular utterance the next time I sat at the foot of the couch, in the darkened room.
"One can"t be true to another," she said, in reply to some feeler of my own, "unless one is true to oneself, and one can"t be true to oneself unless one follows the highest of one"s instincts."
I said, inwardly: "Ah! Now I know the reason for her distrust of me."
Aloud I made it:
"But that throws us back on the question as to what one"s highest instincts are."
There was the pause that preceded all her expressions of opinion.
"On the principle that it is more blessed to give than to receive, I suppose our highest promptings are those which urge us to give most of ourselves."
"And when one gives all of oneself that one can dispose of?"
"One has then to consider the importance or the unimportance of what one has to withhold."