DROP-SCENE
"There is no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend but he grieveth the less."
Bacon.
Mrs. Cartwright went up to her room, but she did not pack those bags of hers at once.
Instead, she put on her coat, tied a scarf over her head, changed her shoes, and went for a walk.
She knew that she must tire herself out. She had thought she was rather tired already from her tussle with the waves that afternoon, but that wasn't enough. She must be more exhausted before she could sleep for a few hours. She would order them to call her very early in the morning, so that she could be packed and off before any of the other visitors had left their rooms.
She set out, and she couldn't have told anybody in what direction. A path was soft—probably with pine-needles—beneath her feet. Before her eyes there was a striping of light on darkness; still a moon between the trees.
She walked. She could not have said off-hand what she thought about as she swung along. Not many definite thoughts filled her mind. Only a very definite picture of young Awdas's fair eaglet face, looking with startled and pleased surprise into the face of that beautiful girl. One look; the boy had just been taken aback at the sight of a stranger, and such an unusually pretty one. Then and there Claudia Cartwright didn't herself know why she knew that this, the look that did not seem to mean anything, meant ... everything.
It meant that she, the woman at her last love affair who had been within an inch of accepting the proposal of that boy, must begin to pay, already, for her one moment of ecstasy.
The coming of that girl had stopped not one, but all kisses for her.
She knew what was coming between that boy, all awakened and malleable from his first passion, and that girl. They were heritors of an age in which Love has quickened his pace to keep up with the double-march of war.
She was resigned. She had foreseen it. Hadn't she said to him, "Wait until you see me beside a real young girl"? It had come upon her rather abruptly, that was all, but she need not really allow herself to suffer....
She whistled a little tune between her teeth as she swung along. She was thinking of nothing, she was just moving quickly and regularly, as a mechanical toy that has been wound up to go for a certain time before the machinery runs down.
So mechanically, so fast she covered the ground. Suddenly a voice called out, "Halt! Who's there? Mrs. Cartwright?"
With a start, she found that she was in the forest, approaching the clearing and the woodcutter's hut. The sturdy, square-set figure that, coming away from the hut, had encountered her on the moon-dappled path, was that of Captain Ross.
"Hullo!" she returned, brightly. "Have you been cat-calling on Mr. Brown? Isn't it perfectly lovely? After all, this is the time of day to go for walks, I find."
"Is that so? I thought this was the time of day you sat writing your great worrrks."
"Sometimes; but how did you know?"
"You told me you were sitting up working that last time Awdas had that infairrrnal dream of his," said the Staff-officer. "That was how."
But at this the machinery that had kept Mrs.
Cartwright going so steadily for the last hour or more, broke down without warning. Without warning, she blurted out in a low, unnatural voice, "Oh, Captain Ross! I am——in such trouble."
Her limbs failed her and she would have fallen.
The next moment she found that she was sitting upon a pine-log, with her head upon the solid support of Captain Ross's shoulder, and with his arm thrown very comfortingly about her. She wept, copiously and silently, all her tears; the only tears a man had ever seen Claudia Cartwright shed.
This man, to his eternal honour, made no attempt to check them or to enquire into them. He sat there, supporting her, clasping her with the arm of a brother—this man whom she had not before regarded as any particular friend of hers. She wept, taking his handkerchief, large and scented with cigarettes, that he presently stuffed into her hands. She knew that she must be making him feel miserably uncomfortable and upset; she cried on, unashamed in the silence of the wood, telling herself that it would be for the one and only time that she would give herself this relief. Presently she sobbed out, "I loved him——"
Captain Ross's "Is that so?" was entirely unstartled and matter-of-fact.
Actually he had been too pole-axed with amazement to do anything but the natural thing; but a finer judge of women might have been less of a comfort to her. He sat holding her stolidly until she gave the long-drawn breath and the apology that mark the ebbing of the storm.
"Thank you so much," she was able to say presently, almost as lightly as if he had put a coffee-cup down for it. "You'll forget it, I know. I must just tell you that it was in my own hands. I refused him. I shall be glad, presently. But——"
She paused, and the man muttered awkwardly something about wishing there were anything he could do——
She spoke softly but gravely now. "Captain Ross! Be very gentle, won't you, with that little, young girl?"
Captain Ross did not ask what young girl she meant.