Chapter Twenty Two.
Marking Time.
Robert and Jean were not surprised. That was the fact which, for Vanna, stood out in conspicuous relief. They were grieved, sympathetic, unspeakably tender towards her; but she divined that if they felt any surprise, it was not that Piers had found his present position untenable, but rather that he should have been able to endure it so long. That they should feel so, who were her dearest, most admiring friends, planted a sharp stab in Vanna’s heart, yet it was to them that she owed what poor comfort was to be found during the long intolerable weeks before Piers’s departure.
Jean said little. In her own hour of blackness she had discovered the futility of words, but in a hundred quiet, exquisitely tactful ways she forced upon Vanna the importance of what remained: of the place which she occupied in so many lives; of her own love and need.
“You will never know what you have been to me, Vanna! I have often wanted to tell you; but it isn’t easy to speak of these things. I think after one has married and settled down, one needs a woman friend more than ever. There is so much that even the best and tenderest of men can’t understand. You’ve been my safety-valve and my prop. Multiply my gratitude by the number of all the poor souls whom you have nursed and tended, and you will realise your riches. Thoughts help, Vanna—I’m convinced of that—loving, thankful thoughts going out towards you from all parts of the land. It’s impossible that your life should be cold or bald—”
“Is it, Jean, is it? It sounds very sweet, dear, and very lofty; but put yourself in my place. Would all the gratitude in the world cheer you if Robert went away?”
The colour flooded Jean’s face, then slowly ebbed away, leaving her pale and wan.
“No,” she sighed, breathlessly. “No; nothing! There would be no comfort. He is everything to me—everything! More, a thousand times more, than when we were married; but, Vanna, can you believe it? there have been times during these last years when I have envied you. The balance hasn’t been all on my side. To be well; to be strong; to be able to run about, and plan out one’s life; to say ‘I will do this, I will do that’; to shut up house at a day’s notice, shake off responsibilities, and go away for long, lovely rests—oh, it has seemed so good! When we were young we took health for granted: one has to be ill to realise how it counts; how desperately it counts. Love is said to triumph over all; but, Vanna dear, one needs to be well to be able even to love. That sounds strange, but it’s true; there’s no feeling left. Often and often I’ve longed all day for Robert to come home, and after he has been in the room for five minutes, I’ve longed for him to go away again. I’ve been too tired! Of course every woman does not suffer as I have done; but then how many have a husband like Robert? I tell him sometimes that my bad health is the price I’ve had to pay for having a saint for my husband. If I’d kept well, it would have been too perfect. One does not get everything... And the children—little pets! they love me now; I am a sort of god to them; all that I do is right; but sometimes as I hold them a pang goes through my heart; such a pang! I know it won’t last! I shall go on loving them more and more, needing them more; but they will grow past me. They will make their own lives, their own friends, and I shall retreat farther and farther into the background. They will love me still; I shall be the ‘dear old mater; but they won’t need me any more.’ I won’t really touch their lives. I remember how father loved me, and how I left him without a pang! Is it possible that he felt as I should do, if Lorna or Joyce... The young are cruel to the old—”
Thus Jean, with many tender, loving words; but Vanna noted with a pang that she never once expressed the belief which alone could have brought comfort—the belief that Piers would speedily return home, and remain faithful until death.
The last day came—a blur of pain and grief. Piers spent his last hour alone with Vanna in the den, in which the first happy hours of their engagement had been passed, demanding of her a dozen impossible promises—that she would stay with Jean until his return, that she would not tire herself, that she would be happy; and if at times a bitter reply trembled on her lips, she repressed it valiantly, knowing that by so doing she was saving herself an added sting. His last words imprinted themselves in her brain, and were sweet to remember:
”... If I am ever any good in this world or the next, it is your doing. You have given me faith, you have given me joy, the revelation of heaven and earth. Everything that I have, that is worth possessing, is your gift...!”
When the door closed behind him—oh, the knell of that closing door!—Jean left her friend alone until an hour had passed, and then sent her children as missioners of comfort—the two dainty little maidens in their sublime innocence of untoward happening. Lorna had acquired two new pieces of “poentry”—“Oh, Mary, go and call the kettle home,” and “anozzer one” called, “Twice ones is two”—which she must needs recite without delay. Joyce developed earache, and remembering former help in need, expressed a wailing desire to sleep in “Wanna’s bed,” for “Wanna to stwoke me!” The little, soft, warm body clinging to her, the touch of the baby lips were unspeakable comfort to Vanna during those long wakeful hours when every moment carried Piers farther and farther away.
A week later Vanna returned to the hospital where she had been trained, to fill a temporary vacancy for a few months. Hard work was her best medicine—hard, incessant work, which left no time for thought, and sent her to bed so weary that sleep came almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. A nurse by instinct, it was not in her nature to perform her duties in mechanical fashion. The human aspect of a case made a direct appeal to her heart, and, surrounded on every hand by suffering and want, she was forced into a realisation of her own blessings. She was alone, but youth, health, and money remained to help her on her way, and Piers’s letters arrived by each mail—long, closely written sheets, detailing every day of his life, drawing word-pictures of home surroundings, new acquaintances; above all, breathing the tenderest, most faithful love. Each letter was read and reread until it was known by heart, was answered with a length equal to its own, and by the time this was dispatched—wonderfully, surprisingly soon—another letter was due. She read of the arrival of the mail at Brindisi, and counted over the hours.
The first shock of parting was over, six months had already passed by. Six months was half a year, a quarter of the time of Piers’s probable absence! When the half was over, what joy to strike off the months which must elapse before his return; and meantime could any other man in the world have written such delightful, heart-satisfying letters?
Vanna was keenly interested also in the changes in hospital treatment which had taken place during the four years since she had finished her course, and felt that the six months’ experience had been valuable from a medical as well as a mental point of view. Nevertheless, it was with no regret that she saw the nurse return whose place she had taken, and made her own preparations for departure. At thirty-two the unaccustomed strain of hospital life told heavily on a constitution weakened by mental strain, and she thought with joy of the comfort of her own home, of long, restful hours, when she could write to Piers at her ease, of talks with Jean, of play with the children.
She drove straight from the hospital to the Gloucesters’, where she had arranged to spend a week in idleness before the effort of reopening her own home. The rooms were en fête, profusely decorated with flowers. Jean and the children rushed to the door to receive her—a charming trio, all dressed alike, in a flutter of white muslins and blue ribbons. The whole made an entrancing picture to one accustomed to the bare austerity of a hospital ward; and Vanna felt her spirits soar upwards with a delightful sense of exhilaration. She hugged Jean with schoolgirl effusion, swung the children about in a merry dance, and gave herself up with undisguised zest to the pleasures of the moment: the daintily spread, daintily provided tea, the luxurious appointments of the little house, her own comfortable bedroom, the easy laxity of hours. The first long chat with Jean seemed but to open out the way for a hundred other subjects which both were longing to discuss, and when it was over, the agreeable task remained of dressing herself in a pretty gown to partake of the sociable evening meal.
“Oh, dear! The pomps and vanities of this world, how I love them; how good they are,” she sighed happily. “What a delight it is to sit at a dear little table bright with silver and flowers, and eat indigestible dainties, and know you can sit still and be lazy all evening, and go to bed when you like, and get up, no, not get up, stay in bed and have breakfast, and snoodle down to sleep again if you feel so inclined! I shall be lazy to-morrow! And to wear a pretty dress, and a necklace, on a nice bare neck, instead of a stiff starched bow sticking into one’s chin. Have my strings marked my neck? How do I look? I seemed to myself a perfect vision of beauty, but Jean looks at me askance. I don’t fancy she looks flattering.”
“No, not a bit,” said Jean bluntly. “You look a wreck, like most discharged patients—fit for nothing but a convalescent home. Don’t talk of necks! It’s nothing but bones, a perfect disgrace. I shall feed you up, and forbid work for weeks to come. What you need is a good, bracing change. I need a change, too. Couldn’t we three go off together, and do something nice? I’ve had nothing but seaside holidays with the babies since we were married. A month in Switzerland, in high, bracing air, in good hotels, among the mountains—oh, how good it sounds. Say yes, Rob, like a darling. I want it so!”
But Robert did not speak. It was the first time in the history of their acquaintance that Vanna had known him show even a moment’s hesitation in granting a request from Jean’s lips, and she looked at him in surprise. Distress was written upon his face, and a wistful appeal for forgiveness, but stronger than all, an air of decision which gave no promise of weakening.
“I’m sorry, darling; but it’s impracticable. It will be hard enough to squeeze out any holiday this year; an extra trip abroad is out of the question. Expenses have been heavy lately”—he shrugged his shoulders with a smile. “They always are heavy, somehow, and we must be careful not to launch into fresh extravagance.”
“We have not been extravagant. The money has gone in uninteresting, disagreeable necessities. No one can call a doctor’s bill extravagance, or a new cistern, or stair carpets. Au contraire, we’ve been so dull and prudent that it would be a tonic to spend a little money on fun, for a change. Can’t we manage it, somehow, Rob? Do! Sell a share, or something. It would be a treat.”
The lines on Robert’s face deepened suddenly; his smile flickered out.
“No; I’ve done that too often. That must come to an end. My shares are painfully near an end. I’m sorry, dear, but it’s impossible.”
Jean shrugged her shoulders. The lines deepened on her face also, and her lip quivered with disappointment, but she made no fruitless protestation. For the rest of the meal she was silent, leaving the conversation to be carried on by Vanna and Robert; but before leaving the room she went out of her way to pass Robert’s chair and lay a caressing hand on his shoulder.
He lifted his face to her with the old adoring expression in his brown eyes, and the tired lines disappeared from his brow. He had kept up the conversation out of consideration for Vanna’s feelings, but his attention had really been engrossed by Jean, and his own regrets at being obliged to refuse her request. Now he evidently felt himself forgiven, and was transparently grateful for his wife’s forbearance.