Dimbie and I—and Amelia

The stranger looked at us thoughtfully, benevolently almost. His face was extremely thin and worn, his hands delicate, and his boots too large for him. There was a refinement about his whole personality above the ordinary, and I liked him.

"Have some lunch?" Dimbie said, beginning to unbend. "There isn't any pie left, but there's lots of bread and cheese and some fruit."

"No, thank you. I have some lunch in my pocket, so with your permission I will eat it with you."

He produced an envelope, and taking out a brown lozenge began to suck it. When he had finished this he extracted a second, and then a third. Then from his coat pocket he produced a tin cup, dipped it into a stream which feeds the pool, drank, returned it to his pocket, and leant back in a finished way.

"Is that all you are going to have?" I couldn't resist asking in astonishment.

"Yes," he said. "Being a balloonist, I am obliged to eat sparingly, so take my meat in a concentrated form. I'm one of the thinnest men in Great Britain, and usually wear two coats to hide my lean appearance. Would you like to feel my ribs?"

He asked this simple though somewhat unusual question in exactly the same way as a man might ask you to see his Velasquez.

"No, thank you," we both said together.

"They're worth feeling," he said, a little disappointed.

We assured him of our belief in his veracity.

"A bit prudish, eh?" He turned towards me.

"Not in the least," I replied indignantly; "but to be quite candid, I'm not very interested in your ribs. You see, we don't know you very well yet," I added, to soften the blow.

"Where do you live?" he asked.

We told him in guarded language.

"Within two miles of Leith Hill. Pretty country?"

We nodded.

"What's the name of your house?" was his next question.

"Have you taken a great fancy to us?" Dimbie inquired sweetly.

"Very," he said. "Don't remember taking a greater fancy to anybody. You seem so ridiculously happy and young."

Dimbie's and my face, I fear, wore the expression of happiness fleeting.

"I'm going now," he said rising. "If you had favoured me with the name of your house I might have dropped in on you some day from my balloon."

This sounded rather interesting.

"One Tree Cottage," we said together.

He laughed.

"Might have known it would be a cottage. You both look so exactly like a cottage—lattice windows, roses and honeysuckle thrown in. Quite common-place, if you only knew it."

"Good afternoon, sir," said Dimbie in an extinguishing voice.

The stranger smiled good-humouredly.

"Now you're going to get offended with me," said he, "and I am sorry. But you take my word for it, there are scores of young couples in lattice-windowed cottages—or would like to be in lattice-windowed cottages—with honeysuckle and roses and a baby. It's the craze now to live in a cottage. We avoided them as you would the plague in my young days—insanitary, stuffy, no gas, no hot water, floors with hills in them, walls with mould in them, skirtings with rats in them. Yours is like that, I expect."

We vouchsafed no reply.

"And your drains—I expect they're all wrong. Most cottage drains are abominable."

"We have a drain-bamboo," I said eagerly. "Amelia uses it regularly."

"Amelia sounds a sensible young person. I should like to see her and the cottage. I'm interested in young people. I was young myself once, though you mightn't think it."

"Perhaps it was some time ago," I observed.

"Yes, it's a long time." His eyes became reminiscent. "I jumped into an old man the day my wife died, very old. Then I took up ballooning. I thought that might prove the surest method of ending myself—short of suicide. Don't like suicide—unpleasant and dramatic." He still spoke with cheerful detachment.

"And are you a professional balloonist—ascend from the Crystal Palace and that sort of thing?" I asked.

He looked at me with amused surprise, I imagined, for an instant; in fact, he laughed.

"Oh, no, I am not a professional. I am engaged on various work. Generally pretty busy. Ballooning is my hobby. If you've plenty to do you can't be lonely."

"We shall be very glad to see you," I said, suddenly feeling very sorry for this eccentric person. A shadow had crept across his face as he had spoken. How dreadful to be lonely, I thought. "Our village is Pine Tree Valley. We searched about till we found a place set among the pines. I love them so. Perhaps you will dine with us one evening?"

"It is very kind of you," he said quickly, "but I never dine with people. They invariably eat fattening, indigestible things. If I went out to dinner I shouldn't have ribs like knife blades." He spoke quite proudly. "But I should like to call and see the baby."

"There isn't a baby." Dimbie's voice was irritable, and my cheeks were scarlet.

"I'm sorry," he said. "We hadn't one either."

"And did you mind?" I asked.

"Not a bit while Amabella was alive. But when she died I was a great deal alone, and the house seemed big and empty. I think it is a mistake not to have children." He looked at me a trifle severely.

"We've only been married a little over three months," Dimbie explained apologetically.

"Ah, well, that makes a difference, of course. You've got plenty of time. Good-bye, and may I give you my card?"

He fished one out of the pocket which contained the tin mug. It was a little soiled and wet.

"It is unnecessary to give me one of yours," he said with a smile. "I don't want to know your name. I shall just ask for Mr. and Mrs. Smilingface, who live in a tiresome, typhoid-inviting, creeper-covered cottage. Good-bye," and before we could speak he had gone.

With interest we examined the card:—

Mr. MONTGOMERY LEIGHRAIL,
THE GREY HOUSE,
ESHER.

Dimbie sat down and opened his blue eyes so wide that the crook in his nose moved in sympathy.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Marg," he said solemnly, "do you know what you have done?"

"No," I replied; "hurry up and tell me."

"You have refused to feel the ribs of one of the greatest scientists of the world. That was Professor Leighrail."

"Well, he ought to have known better than to have asked me," I said, refusing to be impressed.

At which Dimbie fell back and chuckled softly for some minutes.

CHAPTER V

A LETTER FROM MISS FAIRBROTHER

Beyond the fact that I have received a letter from Miss Fairbrother, there seems to be nothing of any real importance to-day to enter in my "daily-round." I call my journal my "daily-round," though it isn't anything of the kind, for I only scribble in it when I have nothing else to do, and when I am waiting for Dimbie to come home. I always seem to be waiting for Dimbie to come home, and yet I don't always write in my "daily-round"; I wait for moods. Dimbie calls it my recipe book. He says it looks like one, with its ruled lines and mottled brawn stiff covers. He wants to read it, but this I won't permit. I say, "Dimbie, within those covers are the meanderings of a new wife, I mean a newly-made wife. It could be of no interest to you to read: 'I have ordered two pounds of steak for dinner. Amelia is unusually squeaky to-day,' but they are of vital interest to me." Journals can only be of interest to the people who write them. There are, of course, exceptions, such as Pepys and Evelyn—I have not read either of them, but they may have made notes of really important events. I don't, for I have none to note. Besides, I never know the date. Properly constructed journals have dates. I only know the month we are in. I have an idea whether it is the beginning or the end, but if anyone were to say to me, "What is the day of the month?" I should be extremely flurried. I always find, too, that people who ask you the date know it much better themselves. If you say it is the sixteenth they flatly contradict you and say they are sure it is the seventeenth. Peter was always like that. He would sit down at the writing-table in the library with a calendar hanging right in front of his nose, and would suddenly pounce upon poor mother with, "What is the date?" Mother, not knowing any more about dates than I, would gently refer him to the calendar. Peter would not be referred to calendars. Mother should know dates the same as other sensible people. Then there would be ructions. Peter would show mother and me what could be done with an ordinary pair of lungs. I used to think what splendid bellows Peter's lungs would make. One day I ventured upon this to him, I asked him to blow up the fire. I shall never forget the result. His facial contortions and the noise he made were out of the common.

I am wondering if he makes those noises now. Mother was always a little gentler and more yielding to him than I, so perhaps the house is quieter since I left. I don't see them very much. Not possessing a carriage, and the journey by train being a little cross country, we do not exchange many visits. Peter won't allow mother to come alone, and of course when he comes everything is spoilt. He does not believe in private confidential talks between women. He says that most of it is ill-natured gossip, and I have never heard mother say an unkind word of anybody in her life.

I did not mean to write of Peter this morning. My head was full of Miss Fairbrother.

Such a delightful letter from her. Dimbie was as much interested in it as I. She says—

"'I am thirty-five to-day. Yes, I have reached half the allotted age of man. The Psalmist was a little mean and skimpy, I think, to limit one's years to threescore and ten. Probably he was old for his age, having crowded a good deal into his life. And all those wives and sons of his were enough to make any man feel tired.'"

I looked up and laughed.

"Go on," said Dimbie.

"'Thirty-five will appear to twenty-three a great and mysterious age—mysterious in the way that death is mysterious; a state at which to arrive at some dim and future period—very dim, very far off when you are but twenty-three.

"'And yet my years sit lightly upon me. I can still run, though not so swiftly as of old. I can still laugh, though India is very hot and very sad in some of its aspects. I still wear cotton frocks—perhaps the last foolishly; but what is one to do in an Indian climate, and when one has to count up the pennies in readiness for the old age which must come? Muslin I eschew as being too airy and girlish for one of rounded proportions, but mercerised cotton is my salvation. Praised be the Lancashire cotton mills! Do you happen to have met with mercerised cotton? It is deceitful, for it tries to cheat you into believing that when you don it you straightway have a silken appearance. It may deceive you, but it certainly does not deceive the other women of the station. You read in their uplifted glance "six-three," which means sixpence three farthings. You don't care dreadfully, for are you not cool and most suitably attired as a governess?

"'You ask me, dear Marguerite, what I am doing. I am still existing in a pink bungalow endeavouring to teach two poor, hot, sticky children. Of course it is cool now, but the hot weather will return once more, and then they are going home to that cool, green garden whose other name is England, and my work will be finished. This makes the fourth batch of children who have left me during the years I have been here. And now that garden is calling me, calling me with a voice not to be resisted, and I too am "going home."

"'You, little old pupil, will be one of the first persons upon whom I shall leave cards. Marguerite married is a person of importance now. Her two fair pigtails went "up" long ago, but she will always remain the little old pupil to me.

"'Then, too, I badly want to see this wonderful husband of yours. He won't be nice to me. A young husband, I think, is rarely devoted to his wife's old friends. But I shan't mind. I shan't resent it. I shall understand.'"

I stopped again to laugh up at Dimbie, who was leaning over me.

"She seems a very sensible woman," he remarked.

"There never was anyone quite so sensible as Miss Fairbrother," I returned. "She could even manage Peter in a fashion, and mother was devoted to her. One of the very cleverest things mother ever did was to find Miss Fairbrother."

"Please finish," said Dimbie, "or I shall miss my train."

"'Your charming present, for which many thanks, has already raised me some inches in the eyes of the women out here. For long they have been trying to persuade me into wearing a hair-frame. You will probably know the thing I mean—a round, evil-looking, hairy bolster, over which unpleasantness you comb your own hair, hoping to delude mankind into the belief that you have come of parentage of Samsonian characteristics. Now this beautiful jewelled comb of yours adds somewhat to my stature when, with an attempt—somewhat feeble, I fear—at high coiffured hair, I swim, like Meredith's heroines, or try to swim, into dinner. They almost pardon my lack of a bolster when their eyes rest upon such modishness. A little less spinster-governess, they think. And I translate their thought and smile.

"'Always your most affectionate,
    "'EGOIST.'"

"Egoist, indeed!" I said musingly, as I folded the letter and took a photograph out of my desk—a photograph of a strong, smiling face, with low, broad forehead, over which the hair was parted on one side, clear, unflinching eyes, and large mobile mouth.

"Why don't you put her into a frame somewhere about the room?" asked Dimbie. "It is a fine face."

"Because I promised her she should never be on view. She imagined she was plain. I think clever people are as sensitive about their looks as stupid."

"Perhaps so," said Dimbie, with a fine disregard of all trains. "Was she very clever?"

I was pleased at his interest in my much-loved governess.

"I don't know," I replied. "I am not clever enough to know. But whatever she said seemed to me intensely interesting. Mother and even Peter were inclined to hang on her words. She was so witty, so gay; she had such a sense of humour. You see, she was only twenty-eight when she left. She came to us when she was twenty, just after taking a most fearful degree. Mother says Peter most strongly objected to this degree; that he said women should only take things like measles and scarlet fever, and be feminine, remembering their place in nature, and not try to be clever; and that if only Miss Fairbrother would do her hair properly and wear white-lace petticoats, she even might get married—there was no telling. And mother argued that she did not wish Miss Fairbrother to be married till she had thoroughly grounded me and prepared me for that high-class boarding school, Lynton House.

"And I recollect Peter snorted at this, and said that if Miss Fairbrother could just manage to knock a little writing, reading, and arithmetic into my head and teach me to sew and knit, he, for one, would be satisfied. And he forbade anyone—man or woman—to instruct me in the art of painting flowers, afterwards to be framed and stuck on his walls. I cannot convey to you the scorn in his voice as he shouted the words 'painting flowers.'"

"I think he was right there," said Dimbie.

"So do I," I laughed; "but Peter had forgotten that the painting of still life was a product of a bygone age. To imagine Miss Fairbrother teaching me such an art would be to imagine her teaching me how to embroider wool-work pictures. Granny worked two fierce cats with spreading, startled whiskers, in Berlin wool. They adorn my old nursery walls to this day. Miss Fairbrother made up lovely, exciting tales about them and their habits, and for some little time, till I grew older, I was under the impression they left their frames at night and sported on the tiles. We called them Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour."

"I must go," said Dimbie. "The cats are most interesting, and so is Miss Fairbrother, but I have our living to make. What do you say to asking her to visit us for a bit when she arrives?"

He spoke in a nonchalant way, and I looked up quickly. He had said he shouldn't have anyone to stay with us under twelve months. His back was turned to me, so I couldn't see his face.

"Do you want her?" I asked.

"I want her? Certainly not. But you sound so keen on her, and—she sounds lonely."

"Dear Dimbie," I said, "you are a pet. I appreciate your unselfishness, but——"

"Well, write and ask her before I change my mind. I dare say she'll have the sense to clear off and leave us alone in the evenings."

"But shall you care dreadfully?" I queried.

He laughed.

"Well, not dreadfully. No man hankers after a strange woman in the house, especially when he's already got a dear one like you. But I want you to be happy, Marg." His voice became very tender. "I don't want you to be lonely. I want your days to be a perpetual delight." He crossed the room and stroked the back of my head.

"And so they are," I replied, laying my cheek on his sleeve. "One long delight. Sometimes I wonder why God has given me so much happiness. I don't deserve it any more than anyone else. Peter, all my worries are behind me; in front of me is joy. I seem to have stepped on to a little green island of content, set in the midst of a sun-kissed ocean. The waves lap the shores lovingly; the breezes linger in our hair with a caress. You and I are alone, Dimbie."

And he laid his lips on mine for a moment, and then he left me.

CHAPTER VI

SORROW OVERTAKES ME

I take up my writing again, or rather my book is propped up in front of me, and I wonder how long ago was that. It tires my head to think. My dates are more confused than ever. I know it is May, but what part of May? I look out of my window—the bed has been wheeled into the window—and I see the chestnut is crowned with its white lights, and the broom bush near the gate is a mass of golden blossom. It is the end of May; it must be nearly June, for they tell me the season is late, that there has been much cold and rain. I am almost glad to have missed that. I like my May to be smiling and gladsome, not frowning and petulant. But to-day she has put on her best bib and tucker, and with the conceit of a frail human being I weave the pleasant fancy that it is done in my honour. "They are giving me a welcome, nurse," I say. "The apple tree is rosy pink with pleasure at my greeting blown to it through the window."

And nurse, putting on her bonnet and cloak to go out, tells me to hush and not talk so much.

They have been telling me to hush for so long it seems; but now I am tired of hushing, tired of being good.

I told Dr. Renton this yesterday, and he smiled and said it showed I was getting better. "Not getting, got," I returned. "When may I get up?" And he said he would come and tell me on Wednesday; and this is Monday, three o'clock in the afternoon, and I have forty-eight long hours to get through before I know.

Nurse is just a trifle cross with my impatience. She becomes irritable when I talk about getting up. She says how would I like to lie for some months; and I reply not at all—that it would be quite impossible for Dimbie to get along without my being ever at his elbow, and that it would be still more impossible for me to remain in a recumbent position when an upright one is possible.

I was glad of this "lying down" when I was in pain. Pain! There was a time when I had not known the meaning of the word. It had passed me by, left me alone. I had seen it on a few people's faces; then I thought it was discontent, now I know it was pain.

How do people bear it—always? keep their reason? Does God try them till they are just at breaking-point, and then gently remove them? or send them the blessing of unconsciousness?

They say I lay for hours away in a world of my own. I did not flinch when they touched me, moved me, laid me on my bed, left me in the hands of the doctors.

And yet I would have stayed if I could—kept my brain unclouded to help Dimbie when he picked me up, disentangled me (he always seems to be disentangling me from something) from the wrecked bicycle, and laid me away from that terrible wall. I did so want to help him. His white, set face recalled me a moment from the haze of unconsciousness which was settling upon me, and I whispered, "Dimbie, dear!" but I never heard his answer. The mist became an impenetrable fog, and I left him alone with his difficulties.

I don't know now what I wanted to say.

He teazes me with lips that won't keep steady, and says I wished to know if my hat were straight.

"Dear goose," I protest, "it was something to do with the black chicken my wheel caught against in my headlong flight down the hill. I tried to dodge it—it was such a nice, wee black chicken, but it dodged too, and—I couldn't help it." And the tears tremble in my eyes—just from weakness. "I think I wanted you to go back up the hill and help it, for we were both in a very sorry plight."

And Dimbie, to my surprise, turns away to the window and says we shall have rain. If it had rained every time Dimbie has predicted it during my illness we should have been obliged to take refuge in an ark and float about the surface of the waters.

I am very cheerful now. I am getting better. What joy, what hope those words contain for those who have been sick and sorry. I wiped away the last tear this morning when mother went. Peter's letters had become so tiresome that I told her she had better go. And as I threw a kiss to the back of her pretty bonnet as she disappeared through the gate the tear was for her and not for myself.

"I would like to cut Peter for life, and I would but for your sake, poor dear little mother," I murmured savagely. And nurse, who entered the room at that moment, said, "You've moved."

"Yes," I replied, a little guiltily; "but as the pain has almost gone, I thought it could not do any harm just to sit up for a moment and watch mother go."

"You've sat up?" she cried in dismay.

"Yes." I snuggled my head down on the pillow. "I think I'll have a little sleep now, nurse."

"I shall tell Dr. Renton and Mr. Westover." Her voice was relentless.

"If you do I shall sit up again, and refuse to take my beef-tea," I asseverated. "Besides, it is sneaky to tell tales."

Her lips twitched as she poured some beef-tea into my feeder.

"If you sit up again I shall give up the case."

Her voice reminded me of the stone wall I had smashed against, and I told her so; but she was not to be moved.

"Will you give me your faithful promise that you will not sit up again? I am responsible to Dr. Renton and Mr. Rovell. I have nursed Mr. Rovell's cases for years, and I do not wish to lose his work."

She stood over me like an angel with a flaming sword.

"I promise, nursey, dear," I said meekly. "But you won't take my manuscript book from me? I can write quite easily lying down. You see, it has stiff covers."

"You can keep that," she conceded. "Are you doing French exercises?"

"No," I said gravely. "At present I am writing what you might call 'patience exercises.' When I am at work I forget how long it is before Mr. Westover will be home. I forget my back. I forget General Macintosh and my other worries. I am so absorbed in keeping my spelling and grammar in order that I have no time for other matters. You see, if I were to di—go before my husband, he might wish to see these exercises, and I should not like him to smile at my mistakes."

"You are not going before Mr. Westover," she said briskly. "All my patients think they are going to die. I am not altogether sorry, as they are so sorry for themselves that it keeps them absorbed and out of mischief. Were they not taken up in picturing their husbands flinging themselves on to their graves in a frenzy of grief they might be picking their bandages off."

I giggled and choked into my beef-tea.

"I hate beef-tea," I said when I had recovered. "Besides, it is only a stimulant, and not a food."

"How do you know that?" she asked.

"I saw it in mother's medical book." I spoke carelessly.

"Where is it?" Her voice was sharp.

"Down the bed."

She dived gently but firmly under the clothes and removed the book which I had had such trouble in purloining from mother by bribing Amelia.

"Is there anything else you have read in it?"

"No," I said, "I've not had time. I was just running through the index when my eye caught the word beef-tea."

"What were you going to look for?"

"Spines," I returned promptly. "As mine has gone a bit wrong I thought I would like a little information about it."

"And I'm just glad I caught you in time," she said sternly. "That is why I like nursing men so much better than women. Men are too scared about themselves to go poking their noses into medical books, but women are so curious about their own cases that there is no holding them in. They look at their charts—I have seen them doing it in hospital when the nurses' backs were turned. They take their own temperatures, feel their own pulses, and ask a thousand questions which no sensible nurse would dream of answering."

"I have not asked silly questions," I argued.

"No, because up to now you have been far too poorly. What is it you want to know?"

"When I may get up," I said eagerly.

"Well, you won't find that in a medical book. Did you expect to do so?"

"Oh, no. I wanted to find out of what spines are made; the diseases to which they are subject," I said rather lamely.

"Yours isn't a disease, but an accident. Dr. Renton will tell you fast enough when you may get up." She put the book into a drawer.

"It seems so long to Wednesday."

"He is not coming till next week."

"Not till next week," I said blankly, "and this is only Monday. He said he would come on Wednesday."

"No, he didn't. You assumed that he would."

"Well, I call it most neglectful."

"There is nothing to come for now," she said soothingly. "It is a good way from Dorking to Pine Tree Valley, and of course, as he said, there is no good in running up a long bill."

"I don't believe he said that," I cried heatedly.

"Perhaps he didn't," she admitted; "but you mustn't excite yourself. I am going to lower the blinds. You said you were sleepy."

"I never was so wide awake in all my life," I almost sobbed. "I think it is mean of Dr. Renton. I did so want to get up this week and smell the wallflowers before they were quite over. I think they were late in flowering for my sake. I put them in and they waited for me, and now I shall miss them."

"I will bring some in for you to smell."

"It won't be the same," I cried petulantly. "You don't understand, nurse. To enjoy wallflowers to the full the sun must be shining upon them, and you must stand a little away from the bed, and the west wind must come along gently, bearing in its arms the scent—just a breath of warm fragrance, and—well, that is the way to enjoy wallflowers, and—oh, nurse, I do so want to bury my face in them." I tailed off to a wail.

She walked to the window and lowered the blind.

"If you carry on in this way you will never smell wallflowers again." She was cross. "I shall leave you now, and perhaps you'll be calmer when I come back."

"Oh, nurse," I said penitently, "don't go. I will be good. And I want you to read me Peggy and Other Tales. You read it so beautifully."

Peggy is a dear black book which belonged to mother when she was a little girl. It was my especial favourite when I was seven, and it has been quite the most suitable form of literature for a weak, fractious invalid with a hazy brain and wobbly emotions.

Nurse laughed as she picked up the book.

"Are you not tired of it?"

"No," I replied. "Peggy comforts me very much. And when you have finished her, you might read me something out of Ecclesiastes. It is not that I am feeling religious or think I am going to die, but the language is so musical and grand: 'Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.' It is the repetition of the word 'broken' I like. Now had I been writing the verse I should have searched about for another verb—smashed, cracked—and straightway the beauty of the lines would have been spoiled. But Solomon was so sure of himself. He knew the word 'broken' was just the right word even if used three times and so he used it."

Nurse sat and looked at me with surprise chasing across her face.

"Dear me," she said, "I never notice things like that when I am reading."

"What do you notice?" I inquired.

"Oh, I don't think I notice anything. I just want to hurry on to where the man proposes."

"But men don't often propose in the Bible, with the exception of Jacob," I said laughing.

"I didn't refer to the Bible. I was thinking of books generally."

"You mean you never notice how a book is written. You just want to get on with the plot."

"That's it," she agreed. "I hate descriptions. They tire me to death, especially as to how the characters feel inside about things. Heroines are the worst of all. They commune with themselves for hours over the merest trifles."

"Do you mean as to whether they will get a new dress, or engage a man to put a new washer on the bathroom tap which drips?"

"Oh, no," she said, a little impatiently, "I can't explain; it is not over things like that they worry themselves. But you look tired. You are talking too much. I will read you to sleep."

She spoke with finality, and picked up the book.

As she read aloud in a somewhat sonorous voice I lay and watched the tree-tops. "Next week," I thought, "I shall be out of doors once more. I shall visit the frog-pond with Dimbie. I shall wander through the fields with him. His arm will clasp mine, as I shall be weak, and we shall sit and rest under a white hawthorn hedge. The scent will be heavy on the still evening air. The fields of clover and wheat will——" And at this point I left Peggy and nurse, and fell asleep.

CHAPTER VII

DR. RENTON BREAKS SOME NEWS TO ME

The week has passed at last—in the daytime on leaden feet, on wings of gold in the evening when, as the clock has struck six, Dimbie and happiness have entered my room hand in hand.

"Only four more days, dear one," Dimbie has said hopefully.

"Only three more days. Nurse must begin to air your tea-gown."

"Only two more. I am putting bamboo poles through the small wicker chair. You may not be able to walk at first, and nurse and I will carry you. I could manage you alone, you are only a feather in weight, but I might hurt you—such a frail Marguerite my little wife looks."

"Is it the drain-bamboo you are using?" I ask demurely. "For Amelia might object." And Dimbie laughs like a happy boy.

"Only one more day. To-morrow you will meet me at the door. Nurse will help you there, and then she will go away, and—we shall be alone." His voice vibrates with happiness and my cheeks glow.

"Have you missed me, Dimbie?" I whisper. "Have you enjoyed pouring out your own tea and finding your slippers and working in the garden alone?"

And he smiles tenderly and says he hasn't missed me one little bit, and can't I see it in his face? And nurse who comes into the room says "Ahem!" Her throat often seems a little troublesome.

And now to-morrow has come. Dr. Renton may walk in at any minute, and I press my finger to my wrist to try to hush the beating.

Nurse has put me into my best blue silk jacket, and my hair has been done—well, not in the very latest Parisian mode, but its two plaits are tied with new blue ribbons. She has propped me up so that I may see the lane and know the exact moment in which Dr. Renton may drive down it.

I persuaded her to go for her walk as soon as lunch was over. I told her Dr. Renton never came, as she herself knew, much before half-past three, and that I felt unusually well.

And as soon as ever I heard the click of the gate and knew she had gone I rang the tortoise—the bell which always lives on the other pillow—for Amelia.

She appeared, very dirty.

"Why, you're not dressed," I said.

"Did you ring to tell me that, mum? Because I knewed it."

Her attitude was not that of impertinence, but of inquiry.

"Oh, no," I replied quickly. "I want you to bring me up one of the volumes of the encyclopædia. I don't know the number, but it will have SPI on the back."

I spoke nervously, for I felt guilty. I was about to embark upon an act of deception. Would Amelia detect me? But, for a wonder, she left the room without a comment.

In a minute she was back.

"There is no volume with SPI on it," she announced. "There is one with SIB and SZO on it, mum."

"That will do," I said eagerly. "It will be in that."

She brought it with a running accompaniment of squeaks and gasps.

"Three at a time, mum."

"Three at a time! What?" I inquired.

"Stairs, mum."

"Well, then," I said, "it is very foolish of you, Amelia. Your breathing resembles a gramophone when you wind it up. I shan't require anything further, thank you; but please get dressed. I should like you to be neat when Dr. Renton arrives, and he will probably have tea with me. I don't know how it is you are so late."

"I do, mum."

"Why?"

My question was answered by another.

"Have you any idea what I do after lunch, mum? Do you think I am skipping or playing marbles?"

"Oh, no," I said hastily, "I am sure you are not, Amelia."

"Well, then, I'll tell you what I do, so as you won't be wonderin' why I'm not dressed by half-past two." She spoke volubly. "I washes up the lunch things—nurse's now as well; she's too grand to so much as put a kettle on. Then I sweeps up the kitchen, sides up the hearth, brushes the kettle, cleans the handle——"

"What do you do that for?" I asked with interest.

"For fun, of course."

"Amelia!" I said rebukingly.

"Beggin' your pardon, mum, but it seemed such a foolish question—meanin' no offence to you. I cleans the handle, which is copper here—it was brass at Tompkinses'—to get the dirt and smoke off. You never got your hands black in lifting my kettle, did you now?"

"I don't think I have ever lifted it," I rejoined.

"Oh, well," she said in a superior way, "of course you can't know; but people who knows anything at all about a house knows that generals' kettles are mostly black. Then I scrubs the table, dusts the kitchen, feeds the canary, and waters the geranium, which is looking that sickly-like I'm ashamed of the tradespeople seeing it. The butcher only says to me yesterday, 'I see you are a bit of a horticulturist, miss.'"

She stopped, breathless.

"You certainly are very busy," I said.

"Busy isn't the word. I'm like a fire-escape from morning till night."

I think she meant fire-engine, and I was not sorry when she departed, for I was anxious to get to my encyclopædia.

I turned the pages rapidly—Sphygmograph, Spice Islands, Spider, Spikenard, Spinach, Spinal Cord. "Ah, here we are!" I said delightedly. In a moment my spirits drooped. "See Physiology, vol. xix. p. 34. For diseases affecting the Spinal Cord, see Ataxy (Locomotor), Paralysis, Pathology, and Surgery."

I gave a deep sigh. I always have disliked the Encyclopædia Britannica. From the moment Dimbie introduced it to our happy home I have had a feeling of unrest. It appears to think you have nothing to do with your time beyond playing "hunt the slipper" with it. You wish to look up a subject like dog. With a certain amount of faith and hope you approach your encyclopædia. Dog refers you to Canine. You check your impatience. Canine refers you to Faithfulness. A bad word, if you were a man, would then be used; but you are not a man, so you only stamp your foot. Faithfulness refers you to Gelert, and you hurt yourself rather badly as you replace the volume. You give up dog. You would prefer your pet dying before your very eyes to searching any more heavy volumes.

When Dimbie first saw the Encyclopædia Britannica advertised in the Daily Mail he became very enthusiastic, and after talking about it for some time commented upon my lack of interest in the subject.

"Why, Marg, they are giving it away!" he cried.

"Oh," I said, rousing myself, "that is quite a different thing. I like people who give books away. When will they arrive?"

"When I said, 'Giving it away,'" Dimbie explained, hedging, "I meant that the payments would be by such easy instalments that we couldn't possibly miss them. And a fumed oak bookcase will be thrown in free."

I became interested in the bookcase, and when it arrived I wasn't, for it was black and varnishy and sticky, and very far removed from fumed oak as I knew it. I gave it to Amelia for her pans, and we ordered another from the joiner, who charged us £4 for it, money down, as we were strangers.

We don't find the payment of the instalment each month in the least easy. In fact, we almost go without fire and food to meet it.

I rang the tortoise sharply. The encyclopædia should be made to divulge that which I wished to know. I would not be hoodwinked.

"Please bring me volumes PHY, LOC, PAR, PAT, and SUR," I said to Amelia, who was buttoning her black bodice all wrong. "And where's your cap?"

"In my pocket, mum." She produced it, fastening it on wrong end foremost with two hair-pins which once might have been black.

"It is an unsuitable place to keep it," I pronounced. "And where are your cuffs?"

Amelia smiled.

"They've melted, mum. I forgot they was india-rubber, and I put them into the oven after washing them, and when I went for them they was just drippin'."

I sighed deeply.

"Well, bring me the volumes. Do you remember which I mentioned?"

"No, mum."

"I will write them down for you."

"Why not have the whole forty, mum?" she said, as she took the slip of paper.

"Those five will be sufficient, thank you," I said coldly.

Her panting was naturally excessive as she laid the volumes on the bed.

"They are rather heavy for me to lift, Amelia," I said. "Please open PHY for me and turn over the leaves till you come to Physiology, and then go and see about some tea. I don't feel I can wait till four o'clock to-day."

"Would you like some drippin' toast, mum? I've got some lovely beef drippin' from the last sirloin which master carved all wrong. He cut it just like ribs—I mean the under-cut—instead of across. He'd have catched it if he'd been Mrs. Tompkins' husband."

"But he isn't, you see." My manner was extinguishing.

"You're a bit cross, mum?" she suggested.

"No, Amelia, I'm not, only tired—tired of waiting for Dr. Renton—tired, sick to death of lying here. Do you know how long I have lain here?"

"Seven weeks come Wednesday," she replied promptly.

"No, Amelia. You have miscalculated. You have minimised the period of time. I have lain here," and I stretched my arms wide, "a thousand days and nights, a million days and nights; and each day and night has stretched away to eternity."

"Lawks, mum!" Her corsets cracked.

"Lawks! doesn't express it, Amelia. Go now and put on the kettle with the clean copper handle. No dripping toast, thank you. I am sure nurse would disapprove. She has a tiresome habit of disapproving of most things. Besides, I don't feel like common fare. I want something to take me out of myself and to uplift me. Something delicate, subtle, ambrosial. Do you know what ambrosial means? No? Ambrosia means food for the gods. I want food for the gods—iced rose leaves, a decoction of potpourri to assuage my thirst. Go, Amelia, and make speed to do my bidding."

And Amelia, with bulging eyes, has gone. I could hear her muttering to the landing furniture, "Just a bit dotty in the head like Ned Wemp, the village softy. Poor thing, no wonder she's queer at times. She did bump her head."

And I am laughing weakly. I feel, after all, unequal to tackling the encyclopædia. I feel faint with waiting and watching for Dr. Renton. It is half-past three. I heard nurse come in a few minutes ago. I hear Amelia rattling the tea-cups. But the sound doesn't cheer me. Somehow, why I cannot say, fear has gripped me at the heart. And I cannot laugh it away. Why is Dr. Renton so long in coming?

"'He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'"

*****

Dr. Renton has been here. And I have sent nurse away so that I may fight it out alone before Dimbie comes home. I broke down a little before Dr. Renton, but I mustn't cry before Dimbie. I must always try to remember that. He has quite enough worries of his own. I must never cry before Dimbie.

Dr. Renton's words keep slowly repeating themselves in my brain: "To lie for twelve months is hard, but—supposing it had been life-long crippledom, that would be harder."

"Supposing it had been life-long crippledom!"

I must go on saying it over and over again till I feel patient, till I feel grateful for only being asked to bear the lighter burden. But, oh, how long it seems! How very long! To think that I must lie quite still. And this was to have been my first year of happiness, the first year in which I was free to roam at my will, free to stretch my wings away from Peter's cramping influence.

It seems a little hard.

"But supposing it had been life-long crippledom!" I must learn to be patient.

*****

I think I might have helped Dr. Renton, made it less difficult for him to tell. But I was selfish. Instinctively I knew what was coming—his rugged face was more rugged than usual—and yet I clasped my hands and cried, "How long you have been. When may I get up? Oh, say to-day. I do so want to go to the door to meet Dimbie. I ache to go and meet him. I hear the latch of the garden gate, his footstep on the gravel; then my spirit like a bird flies to meet his, and—Amelia meets him. Speak, Dr. Renton. Say it quickly. Say I may get up."

And all the answer he made was to pick up one of the volumes of the encyclopædia and walk to the window.

There was silence for a moment, and that silence told me all.

"But my pulse is steady, doctor, dear," I cried with a sob in my voice. "My temperature is normal. My eyes are clear. My colour is good. I am quite well again."

"I wish to God you were!" he said almost savagely.

"What is the matter with me?" I spoke more quietly. His evident emotion frightened me into a momentary calmness. I might as well know the worst or best and get it over. My heart beat thickly, and I closed my eyes. I had known Dr. Renton long enough to feel sure that whatever he told me would be the truth. And the truth was that I was to be on my back for a whole year; to be lifted from my bed to a couch, and from the couch back again to bed; that I might be wheeled from one room to another on the ground floor, but must never walk.

Never walk! As one in a dream I heard his words. Dully and with unseeing eyes I stared through the window. By and by I should get used to the idea, used to being still. What would Dimbie say?

I turned to the doctor quickly.

"Does my husband know?"

"No," he replied.

"Why haven't you told him?"

"I wanted to make sure."

"And you are sure now? There is no other way—treatment, massage?" I spoke breathlessly.

"There is no other way. But a year will pass quickly. You must be brave."

"But I didn't want it to pass quickly," I cried bitterly. "Don't you understand this was to have been my year—my wonderful year?"

"There will be other years," he began gently. "You are young, Marguerite. All your life is before you. There will be next year——"

"But next year will not be the same as this. Go, Doctor Renton; leave me. I am going to cry, and you will be angry. You hate tears. But I must cry before Dimbie comes home, and the time is passing. Unless I cry I—I shall break in two."

The tears were raining down my face as I spoke, and Dr. Renton swore lustily, as he has always done when upset.

"Good-bye," I said, smiling through my tears. "Your language will deprave Jumbles."

He held my hand between his.

"You know I am sorry. I am a poor hand at expressing what I feel."

"I know," I replied. "No girl ever had a kinder doctor."

"I shook you when you were a little girl with measles for running barefoot about the passages." He was patting my hand.

"Do you mean you want to shake me now?" I asked.

"Yes, if you cry any more," he said a little grimly, but the expression in his eyes was very kind.

"I'll try not to," I whispered tremulously.

"That's a brave girl," he said. "Good-bye, keep up your heart, and we'll get you well." And I lay and cried for half an hour.

CHAPTER VIII

DIMBIE COMFORTS ME

Dimbie went very white when I told him. He walked to the window and stared for some time at the gathering darkness. I had chosen this hour, knowing my face would be in shadow. It is so much easier to control one's voice than one's features. Jumbles rubbed his face against my shoulder. I could hear Amelia singing, "Her golden hair is hanging down her back." She sounded cheerful and happy. Nurse had gone to the village to post a letter. She would be back soon to "settle" me for the night. Why didn't Dimbie speak—say something? I wanted to be comforted as only Dimbie could comfort me.

A little sigh broke from me, and in a second his arms were round me and I was held very closely.

"My poor little girl," he murmured. "I am sorry for her."

"Oh, Dimbie," I whispered, clinging to him, "can you bear with me if I have a little grumble? I meant to be so brave to you, to put on such a bright face, not to let you hear one word of repining; but I want to let it all out, oh, so badly. You only can understand how I feel, because you know and love me best. And after to-night I will try never to speak of it again."

For answer he pillowed my head on his shoulder and kissed my eyes and hair and lips.

"You see," I said, looking across the garden, which was shadowy and mysterious, to the frog-pond field, "I don't think I should have felt it quite so much if it had been next year. We should have been an old married couple by then, and have got used to everything—to all the wonderfulness of being together alone, I mean without mother and Peter."

"I shall never get used to that," said Dimbie with emphasis.

"Yes, you will," and I assumed an old married woman's air. "It seems incredible now, when we have been husband and wife for only five months. How do you feel when you say, 'My wife'?"

"Thrill all over."

"So do I," I laughed, "when I say, 'My husband.' I feel quite shy, and imagine people must be laughing at me. But—have you ever seen Peter getting excited over those two words, 'My wife'?"

"Never," said Dimbie. "But," indignantly, "you are not surely going to compare me with Peter?"

"I am not going to compare you with anyone. But just think of all the couples you know who have been married, say—longer than two years."

"Shan't."

I laughed and kissed his ear. Then I became grave.

"Now listen to my words of wisdom. I am going to speak for some time, tell you all my thoughts, and you mustn't interrupt. You and I love each other very much, and we are always going to love each other very much—at least we hope so. But this would have been our one wonderful year. This would have been the year when we should have walked upon the heights very close to the sun and stars. This would have been our year of enchantment, when the weeds on the wayside would have blossomed as the rose, and the twitter of every common sparrow would have been to us as the liquid note of the nightingale. This would have been the year when we should have wandered down dewy lanes, and, looking into each other's eyes, would have found a something there which would have caused our hearts to swell and our pulses to beat.

"On June evenings we should have gathered little wild roses and plunged our faces into fragrant meadow-sweet, and laughed at the croaking of the frogs in the pond and had supper in the garden under the apple tree, loth to leave the sweetness of a summer night. In July we should have sat in the bay or gathered moon daisies; and I, forgetting I was Marguerite married, would have whispered, 'He loves me, he loves me not;' and you, flinging down, your hat on to the grass, would have knelt in front of me and behaved in a manner most foolish and yet most delightful. In August we should have had our first holiday together. What scanning of maps and reading of guide-books! Cromer, we would settle—poppy land. We would laze on the heather at Pretty Corner and look at the blue sea. Too many people we would remember, and fix on the Austrian Tyrol. Baedekers would be bought, trains looked up, only to find that when we had paid Amelia's wages and the poor rate our bank balance was very small. And finally we should have found our way to some old-world Cornish fishing village, where we should have bathed and walked, and fished from an old boat. In September we should have cycled along beautiful autumn-scented lanes, dismounting at Oxshott, and wading ankle-deep through the pine woods, would have silently thanked Cod for the flaming beauty of the birches silhouetted against the quiet sky. In November we should have tidied up our garden and planted our bulbs for the spring—crocuses and daffodils, especially daffodils, for do we not love them best of all the spring flowers? And then Xmas would have come, with its merry-making and festivities, and our beautiful year would have ended on a night when with clasped hands and full hearts we should have listened to the tolling of the bell for its passing—the dear, kind old year which had brought us such joy, such complete contentment."

I finished with a break in my voice, and, forgetting all my brave resolutions, two big tears dropped on to Dimbie's hand which held my own.

"Poor little sweetheart! My own dear wife," he said, "I am sorry for you, so sorry I cannot express it. But why shouldn't such a year as you picture be ours when you are strong and well once more? This first year of our marriage shall be an indoor year. You shall be Marguerite-sit-by-the-fire, knitting and making fine embroidery, and later on you shall be my Marguerite of the fresh air, of the sun and the wind, and we will still have our wonderful year."

I shook my head.

"It could never be the same," I replied. "I may sound sentimental, Dimbie, but I am a woman and know. Men are very ignorant about love, only women know. Men imagine that romance will last beyond the first year as well as love, but women know better. Besides, men don't care about its lasting, it tires them, bores them; but women care, oh, so much. They can't help it, they are born that way. Men are tremendously keen on gaining the object of their affection, and when they have got it they regard it calmly, affectionately, unemotionally. It is a possession: they are glad for it to be there, and almost annoyed when it is absent—not exactly because they miss the possession's companionship, but it has no right to be anywhere but at its own fireside. Men go to golf, tennis, race meetings, fishing on their Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. They are quite surprised at the possession being a little sorry and hurt at first at their not wanting to go about with her as they did in that first wonderful year. The possession is unreasonable, exacting; she wants to tie her husband to her apron strings. She has no right to be lonely—there are the children, and if there are no children she must make interests of her own; or—she might even take to golf so long as she isn't extravagant and ambitious, and expect to play with Haskells or her own husband.

"All these are platitudes, you will say; but there never were truer platitudes. Ah, if husbands would only realise and accept the fact that woman is the other half of man, but diverse, how much happiness there would be. Diverse! He loved her for her feminine attributes before marriage—for her weaknesses if you like to call them such. Why doesn't he after? A true, good woman doesn't want a great deal. A gentle word, a caress, a look of love and understanding from the man she loves are far more to her than coronets. A woman likes to be wanted, and I don't think it is vanity. Watch her smile if her husband marks her out of a large crowd for a little attention. The other women there may be young and beautiful; she is little and old and faded, and wears a shabby gown—but her husband wants her. Women are never happier than when they are wanted. And how quick they are, how instantly they divine when an act of courtesy is performed for them from duty only and not from affection. I once heard a man curse when his wife asked him to hold her umbrella on a wet night when she was struggling with the train of her gown and her slippers. They were dining out, and couldn't afford cabs. She was frail, and he was big and strong. She just caught at her breath. Through the years she had learnt wisdom, a greater wisdom than Solomon could ever teach. She realised that this man would stand by her in a tight place, and with that she must be content. It was unreasonable of her to hanker after the little words of love and kindness which make life so sweet. He was faithful to her, he didn't drink or gamble or go to clubs. He gave her £25 a year for her clothes, and he 'kept' her. What more could she possibly want? And if he swore at her, and told her she looked old, and why couldn't she dress like other women, it was only his little way, and didn't mean anything."

I paused.

"And so, and so that is why I am grieved at the loss of our first year."

Dimbie sat in silence for a moment, and when he moved and gently placed my head on the pillow I was startled by the expression of his face.

"You speak from your experience of the manner in which your father has treated your mother," he said at length slowly, "and that is a little hard on other men. Do you think I shall ever cease to want you, Marguerite?"

"I don't know," I replied.

"Yes, you do." His voice was stern.

"I cannot answer for the future."

"You have no faith in me?"

"You see, I shall be a helpless log, a useless invalid for twelve months or even longer," I said. "It will be a great strain on your love."

He dropped my hand and made to go away.

"Don't go," I cried.

"Do you think my love would stand the test of your being an invalid for even twenty years?"

I did not answer.

"Do you?" he said, dropping on to his knees and looking into my eyes. "Do you, Marguerite, wife?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"Thank God for that!" he said. "I was beginning to think—I was afraid you did not understand me; that you were fearful at having given yourself to me; that you did not love me, in fact, as I love you, for where there is love there is no fear." He laid his cheek to mine, murmuring, "Marguerite! Marguerite!" and so we sat till the darkness fell and nurse came in.