Everyman's Land. C. N. Williamson
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would have met. No rules could have kept you apart. Go to them—go to them—or if you're afraid, write a note, and ask if they'll receive you. If they refuse, no harm will have been done."
Maybe, even then, if I'd stopped to tell myself what a wicked, cruel plan it was, I should have given it up. But it seemed a burning inspiration, and I knew that I must act upon it at once or never.
I subsided into my chair again, and softly, very softly, hitched it closer to the table which pretended to be a writing-desk. Inside a blotting-pad were a few sheets of hotel stationery and envelopes. My stylographic pen glided noiselessly over the paper. Now and then I glanced over my shoulder at Brian, and he was still fast asleep, looking more like an angel than a man. You know my nickname for him was always "Saint" because of his beautiful pure face, and the far-away look in his eyes. Being a soldier has merely bronzed him a little. It hasn't carved any hard lines. Being blind has made the far-away things he used to see come near, so that he walks in the midst of them.
I wrote quickly and with a dreadful kind of ease, not hesitating or crossing out a single word.
"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Beckett," I began (because I meant to address my letter to both). "I've just heard that you have come over from America, only in time to learn of your great loss. Is it an intrusion to tell you that your loss is mine too? I dearly loved your son. I met him nearly four years ago, when my brother and I were travelling in France and Belgium. Our meeting was the romance of my life. I hardly dare to think he told you about it. But a few months ago I took up nursing at the Hôpital des Épidemies, near St. Raphael. As you know, he was there training. He sent us a cheque for our sufferers; and what was fated to happen did happen. We met again. We loved each other. We were engaged. He may have written to you, or he may have waited till he could tell you by word of mouth.
"I am in Paris, as you will see by this address. My soldier brother has lost his sight. I brought him here in the hope of a cure by your great American specialist Dr. Cuyler, but he tells me an operation would be useless. They say that one sorrow blunts another. I do not find it so. My heart is almost breaking. May I call upon you? To see his father and mother would be a comfort to me. But if it would be otherwise for you, please say 'no.' I will try to understand.
"Yours in deepest sympathy,
"Mary O'Malley."
As I finished, Brian waked from his nap, so I was able to leave him and run downstairs to send off the letter by hand.
When it had gone, I felt somewhat as I've felt when near a man to whom an anæsthetic is being given. The fumes of ether have an odd effect on me. They turn me into a "don't care" sort of person without conscience and without fear. No wonder some nations give soldiers a dash of ether in their drink, when they have to go "over the top!" I could go, and feel no sense of danger, even though my reason knew that it existed.
So it was while I waited for the messenger from our mean little hotel to come back from the magnificent Ritz. Would he suddenly dash my sinful hopes by saying, "Pas de réponse, Mademoiselle"; or would he bring me a letter from Father and Mother Beckett? If he brought such a letter, would it invite me to call and be inspected, or would it suggest that I kindly go to the devil?
I was tremendously keyed up; and yet—curiously I didn't care which of these things happened. It was rather as if I were in a theatre, watching an act of a play that might end in one of several ways, neither one of which would really matter.
I read aloud to Brian. My voice sounded sweet and well modulated, I thought; but quite like that of a stranger. I was reading some moving details of a vast battle, which—ordinarily—would have stirred me to the heart. But they made no impression on my brain. I forgot the words as they left my lips. Dimly I wondered if there were a curse falling upon me already: if I were doomed to lose all sense of grief or joy, as the man in the old story lost his shadow when he sold it to Satan.
A long time passed. I stopped reading. Brian seemed inclined for the first time since his misfortune to talk over ways and means, and how we were to arrange our future. I shirked the discussion. Things would adjust themselves, I said evasively. I had some vague plans. Perhaps they would soon materialize. Even by to-morrow——
When I had got as far as that, tap, tap, came the long expected knock at the door. I sprang up. Suddenly the ether-like carelessness was gone. My life—my very soul—was at stake. I could hardly utter the little word "Entrez!" my throat was so tight, so dry.
The very young youth who opened the door was not the one I had sent to the Ritz. But I had no time to wonder why not, when he announced: "Un monsieur et une dame, en bas, demandent à voir Mademoiselle."
My head whirled. Could it be?—but, surely no! They would not have come to see me. Yet whom did I know in Paris? Who had learned that we were at this hotel? Had the monsieur and the dame given their name? No, they had not. They had said that Mademoiselle would understand. They were in the salon.
I heard myself reply that I would descend tout de suite. I heard myself tell Brian that I should not be long away. I saw my face in the glass, deathly pale in its frame of dark hair, the eyes immense, with the pupils dilating over the blue, as an inky pool might drown a border of violets and blot out their colour. Even my lips were white. I was glad I had on a black dress—glad in a bad, deceitful way; though for a moment after learning who Jimmy Beckett was, I had felt a true thrill of loyal satisfaction because I was in mourning for my lost romance.
I went slowly down the four flights of stairs. I could not have gone fast without falling. I opened the door of the stuffy salon, and saw—the dearest couple the wide world could hold.
CHAPTER IV
They sat together, an old-fashioned pair, on an old-fashioned sofa, facing the door. The thing I'd thought impossible had happened. The father and mother of Jim Beckett had come to me.
For some reason, they seemed as much surprised at sight of me as I at sight of them. We gazed at each other for an instant, all three without moving. Then the old man (he was old, not middle-aged, as most fathers are nowadays) got to his feet. He took a step toward me, holding out his hand. His eyes searched mine; and, dimmed by years and sorrow as they were, there was in them still a reminder of the unforgotten, eagle-gaze. From him the son had inherited his high nose and square forehead. Had he lived, some day Jim's face might have been chopped by Time's hatchet into just such a rugged brown mask of old-manliness. Some day, Jim's thick and smooth brown hair might have turned into such a snow-covered thatch, like the roof of a cottage on a Christmas card.
The old lady was thin and flat of line, like a bas-relief that had come alive and lost its background. She had in her forget-me-not blue eyes the look of a child who has never been allowed to grow up; and I knew at once that she was one of those women kept by their menfolk on a high shelf, like a fragile flower in a silver vase. She, too, rose as I entered, but sank down again on the sofa with a little gesture at the same time welcoming and helpless.
"My daughter, no wonder he loved you!" said the old man. "Now we see you, we understand, don't we, Jenny?" Holding my hand, he turned and led me toward his wife, looking at me first, then at her. "We had to come. We're going to love you, for yourself—and for him."
Speaking, his face had a faintly perceptible quiver of strained nerves or old age, like a sigh of wind ruffling the calm surface of water. I felt how he fought to hide his emotion, and the answering thrill of it shot up through my arm, as our hands touched. My heart beat wildly, and the queer thought came that, if we were in the dark, it would send out pulsing lights from my body like the internal lamp of a firefly.
He called me his "daughter!" As I heard that word of love, which I had stolen, I realized the full shame and abomination of the thing I had done. My impulse was to cry out the truth. But it was only an impulse, such an impulse as lures one to jump from a height. I caught myself back from yielding, as I would have caught myself back from the precipice, lest in another