CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Brigit Mead did not go to bed at all that night. All night she worked in her little flat making her plans, packing, and writing letters.
She had burnt her boats and the relief was great. Having broken with her mother, there was no need for her to write to Kingsmead. To Tommy she sent a note, saying that she was going away, but would write soon and explain.
To Pam Lensky she wrote a rather long letter, for there were some few things she wanted made clear.
"Dear Pam,"—she began abruptly—"I am going away with Victor Joyselle. I wonder if you will blame me? In case you do, here is my only defence. I hate my present life, I am miserable without Joyselle, and he is miserable without me. My mother, with whom I have been on fairly decent terms since Tommy has been ill, is hopeless. Gerald Carron shot himself to-day, and mother, just, I honestly believe, to indulge her own taste for sentimental scenes, turned on me about him and pretended to believe a story he told her just before I left Pont Street—that I was Joyselle's mistress, in fact. If she believed the story I would forgive her, though it is not true, but I cannot forgive the kind of mind that can amuse itself with such vulgar melodrama. I have always disliked my mother, and now I simply cannot bear her any longer.
"And I have no other ties except Tommy. Tommy, to whom I shall write before long, is nearly well. He will be forbidden to come to see me, but he will come, and I do not think it will hurt him.
"As to Théo, Pam, I am deeply grieved. He is a remarkably nice young man, but I cannot marry him, and the mere fact of his father's loving me will not much hurt him. Whatever his father does, Théo in the long run thinks right, and he, too, will forgive us.
"Then there is poor Félicité. She has been very kind to me, but she has been stupid and over-self-confident, and I cannot consider her. I must consider him. She will suffer and I am indeed sorry, poor soul, but he—he shall be happy. So good-bye, Pam. Remember your own father and mother, and understand. We go to Paris by the eleven o'clock train to-morrow, and thence—to Arcadia, as your people used to say. My love to you. Brigit."
Re-reading this letter, which she was far too self-engrossed to consider selfish, Brigit addressed it.
Then she looked over her clothes, packed them in three boxes, one of which she labelled, "To be called for," the other two of which were to go with her.
It was long after one when she had finished her work and sat down to rest. She was not tired, nor did she feel any special excitement. It had happened, that was all, and it seemed to her that she had always foreseen this night, with its letter writing and packing.
To-morrow at this time they, she and Victor, would be in Paris. And then they would go—where-ever he chose. She did not care.
And, although she did not know it, this unformulated mental attitude was the first sign in her of any approach to an unselfish love.
Through the long hours she sat in her brilliantly lighted little sitting-room, waiting for day. At five o'clock she switched off the electricity and opened the blinds. A wan light came in.
"It is day. It is to-day," she told herself aloud, her beautiful mouth quivering with happiness. "In four hours he will come."
She made herself a cup of tea and then lay down on the sofa where her mother had lain the day before, and went to sleep.
She dreamed that she stood in a sloping, very green meadow; in the distance a flock of dingy sheep browsed, and some invisible person was playing a pipe! "Il etait une bergère hé ron, ron, ron,"—it was the nursery song Joyselle had played to Tommy when the little boy was ill. She smiled and moved her head.
Then suddenly she was awake, and Théo stood before her. "Brigit," he said quietly, "my mother is dead. Will you come to father?"