Everyman's Land. C. N. Williamson
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mean in a fortnight?" I ask. "Probably we shan't be here."
"I mean this evening."
"But—you're not coming back! You're going another way. You told me——"
"Ah, that was before we were friends. Of course I'm coming back. I'd like to stay to-morrow, and——"
"You certainly must not! I won't dine with you to-night if you do."
"Will you if I don't?"
"Perhaps."
"Then I'll order the dinner before I start for the cathedral. I want it to be a perfect one."
"But—I've said only perhaps."
"Don't you want to pour a little honest gold into poor old Madame Mounet's pocket?"
"Ye-es."
"If so, you mustn't chase away her customers."
"For her sake, the dinner is a bargain!"
"Not the least bit for my sake?"
"Oh, but yes! I've enjoyed our talk. And you've been so nice about my brother's pictures."
So it is settled. I put on my prettiest dress, white muslin, with some fresh red roses Madame Mounet brings me; and the dinner-table in the summer-house is a picture, with pink Chinese lanterns, pink-shaded candles, and pink geraniums. Madame won't decorate with roses because she explains, roses anywhere except on my toilette, "spoil the unique effect of Mademoiselle."
The little inn on the canal-side buzzes with excitement. Not within the memory of man or woman has there been so important a client as Mr. Jim Wyndham. Most motoring millionaires dash by in a cloud of dust to the cathedral town, where a smart modern hotel has been run up to cater for tourists. This magnificent Monsieur Américain engages the "suite of the Empress Eugénie," as it grandly advertises itself, for his own use and that of his chauffeur, merely to bathe in, and rest in, though they are not to stay the night. And the dinner ordered will enable Madame to show what she can do, a chance she rarely gets from cheeseparing customers, like Brian and me, and others of our ilk.
I am determined not to betray my childish eagerness by being first at the rendezvous. I keep to my hot room, until I spy a tall young figure of a man in evening dress striding toward the arbour. To see this sight, I have to be at my window; but I hide behind a white curtain and a screen of wistaria and roses. I count sixty before I go down. I walk slowly. I stop and examine flowers in the garden. I could catch a wonderful gold butterfly, but perhaps it is as happy as I am. I wouldn't take its life for anything on earth! As I watch it flutter away, my host comes out of the arbour to meet me.
We pass two exquisite hours in each other's company. I recall each subject on which we touch and even the words we speak, as if all were written in a journal. The air is so clear and still that we can hear the famous chimes of the cathedral clock, far away, in the town that is a bank of blue haze on the horizon. At half-past nine I begin to tell my host that he must go, but he does not obey till after ten. Then at last he takes my hand for good-bye—no, au revoir: he will not say good-bye! "In two weeks," he repeats, "we shall meet again. I shall have won my bet, and I shall bring you the thing I win."
"I won't take it!" I laugh.
"Wait till you see it, before you make sure."
"I'm not even sure yet of seeing you," I remind him.
"You may be sure if I'm alive. I shall scour the country for miles around to find you. I shall succeed—unless I'm dead."
All this time he had been holding my hand, while I have pretended to be unconscious of the fact. Suddenly I seem to remember, and reluctantly he lets my fingers slip through his.
We bid each other adieu in the arbour. I do not go to "see him off," and I keep the picture of Jim Wyndham under the roof of roses, in the moon-and candle-light.
Just so I have kept it for more than three years; for we never met again. And now that I've seen the photograph of Jimmy Beckett, I know that we never shall meet.
Why he did not find us when the fortnight of his bet was over I can't imagine. It seems that, if he tried, he must have come upon our tracks, for we travelled scarcely more than twenty miles in the two weeks. Perhaps he changed his mind, and did not try. Perhaps he feared that my "romantic beauty" might lose its romance, when seen for the second time. Something like this must be the explanation; and I confess to you, Padre, that the failure of the prince to keep our tryst was the biggest disappointment and the sharpest humiliation of my life. It took most of the conceit out of me, and since then I've never been vain of my alleged "looks" or "charm" for more than two minutes on end. I've invariably said to myself, "Remember Jim Wyndham, and how he didn't think you worth the bother of coming back to see."
Now you know why I can't describe the effect upon my mind of learning that Jim Wyndham, the hero of my one-day romance, and Jimmy Beckett, the dead American aviator, were one.
CHAPTER III
There could be no chance of mistake. The photograph was a very good likeness.
For a while I sat quite still with the newspaper in my hands, living over the day in the shabby old garden. I felt like a mourner, bereaved of a loved one, for in a way—a schoolgirl way, perhaps—I had loved my prince of the arbour. And always since our day together, I'd compared other men with him, to their disadvantage. No one else ever captured my imagination as he captured it in those few hours.
For a moment that little bit of Long Ago pushed itself between me and Now. I was grieving for my dead romance, instead of for Brian's broken life: but quickly I woke up. Things were as bad as ever again, and even worse, because of their contrast with the past I'd conjured up. Grief for the death of Jimmy Beckett mingled with grief for Brian, and anxieties about money, in the dull, sickly way that unconnected troubles tangle themselves together in nightmare dreams.
I'm not telling you how I suffered, as an excuse for what I did, dear Padre. I'm only explaining how one thing led to another.
It was in thinking of Jim Wyndham, and what might have happened between us if he'd come back to me as he promised, that the awful idea developed in my head. The thought wasn't born full-grown and armoured, like Minerva when she sprang from the brain of Jupiter. It began like this:
"If I'd been engaged to him, I might have gone to his parents now. I should have comforted them by talking about their son, and they could have comforted me. Perhaps they would have adopted us as their children. We need never have been lonely and poor. Jim would have wished us to live with his father and mother, for all our sakes."
When the thought had gone as far as this, it suddenly leaped to an enormous height, as if a devil in me had been doing the mango trick.
I heard myself thinking, "Why don't you go to see Mr. and Mrs. Beckett, and tell them you were engaged to marry their only son? The paper said he left no fiancée or wife in America. You can easily make them believe your story. Nobody can prove that it isn't true, and out of evil good will come for everyone."
Flames seemed to rush through my head with a loud noise, like the Tongues of Fire in the Upper Room. My whole body was in a blaze. Each nerve was a separate red-hot wire.
I rose to my feet, but I made no sound. Instinct reminded me that I mustn't wake Brian, but I could breathe better, think better standing, I felt.
"They are millionaires, the Becketts—millionaires!" a voice was repeating in my brain. They wouldn't let Brian or you want for anything. They'd be glad if you went to them. You could make them happy. You could tell them things they'd love to hear—and some would be true things. You were in the hospital close to St. Raphael for months, while Jimmy Beckett was in the training camp. Who's to say you didn't meet? If you'd been engaged to him since that