XXXI
In August, Guy was wounded and sent home. He was badly wounded this time. Cousin Delia wrote to me; he was sent to a hospital for officers in Park Lane. Cousin Delia came up to be near him; she stayed with Grandmother, in Campden Hill Square.
They would not let me see Guy at first; they said he was too ill. I saw Cousin Delia, and I saw in her face that she did not think he would live.
I said:
‘Is Guy any better?’
She said:
‘Not yet; he may get better.’
Guy did get better, very slowly indeed. He would live, they said, he would walk again, but he would be lame always. I could not imagine Guy lame, walking about with a stick.
Cousin Delia said only:
‘I am so glad that he will live.’
There was, it seemed, something unconquerable in Guy.
I saw him in September. He looked ill, and almost old. Guy on his back, not moving, seemed all wrong; and his hair was turning grey.
He smiled at me.
He began, at once, to joke.
It was bad luck, he said, to be laid out like this, just at the very end.
‘I might have been in at the death,’ he said, ‘when I had kept going so long! Hugo has beaten me, good old Hugo!’
I talked about Hugo, and the letters I had had from him lately, and of the war ending, and how every one was saying that it must end very soon.
Then Diana came in. She was a V.A.D. Her eyes danced and sparkled under her white coif; she was so tall and strong and full of life, and she moved as though all movement were delight. She came to bring Guy tea, in a feeding cup, on a tray.
Guy introduced her to me, and she smiled at me, and at him. She put her arm under his head to raise him up; she gave him his tea to drink like a little child. She arranged his pillows deftly, with her strong white hands, and I watched Guy’s eyes as they followed her about the room, and I thought:
‘Guy is going to marry that girl . . .’
And I thought of Mollie, at Salonika, with George dead.
And I thought:
‘What chance has Mollie, against that joy and youth?’
And I thought:
‘Guy has forgotten Mollie . . .’
And I thought, as I watched her walk:
‘I know what she feels like. . . . I felt like that, once. . . . I can remember it. . . .’
And then I thought:
‘That is why Walter wanted me . . . do they always want that in us?’
And then I thought:
‘Guy is like Walter, now, in that way, and he wants her . . .’
Guy smiled at her as one might at a loved child.
‘You see,’ he said to me, ‘I have good care; I ought to get well very soon, oughtn’t I?’
She said:
‘You are getting well; we are very pleased with you!’
He said:
‘She loves the war; she thinks it is a splendid war, don’t you, Dinah?’
And she laughed, and her eyes danced.
‘Oh, top hole,’ she said, ‘simply topping!’
Guy said:
‘That is so refreshing. “A quelqu’un le malheur est bon!” ’
And I thought:
‘She is not horrid; she doesn’t understand.’
I thought:
‘She is very lovely, and very young.’
She said:
‘There’s a dance to-night, at Bengy’s . . . you know . . . jazz of course . . . simply divine! simply divine! Old 31 is coming . . . his leg’s nearly all right. . . . It’s rotten,’ she said, ‘that you can’t come!’
And Guy said:
‘Awfully rotten!’
I thought:
‘How can she talk like that to Guy? Doesn’t she know that he will not dance any more?’
It was time for me to go, and Diana came with me to the top of the stairs.
‘Awfully good of you to come,’ she said, ‘he wanted to see you. . . . Come again when you can; he gets awfully blue, you know, at times. . . I buck him up a bit, chaff him, you know, and that sort of thing, but it’s jolly rotten really . . . bucked him up no end seeing you. . . .’
She was kind to me, she meant to be kind. She was explaining Guy to me; he was hers now, but she would not shut us out.
I wondered if she was kind to Cousin Delia too, and what Cousin Delia thought of her.
About a fortnight later they were engaged. Her name was Diana Sotheby; her father was the captain of a battleship; she was very ‘well connected,’ people told us, and twenty years old.
Cousin Delia said:
‘She is lovely, and I think she is fond of Guy. They will be married when Guy is better; when he is out of hospital.’
She wrote to Mollie in Salonika, and so did I. I don’t know at all if Guy wrote too.
Cousin Delia went back to Yearsly, and still the war went on.
We invited Diana to tea. Walter did not like her.
‘A dreadful young woman,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what Guy is about!’
I said:
‘You see, she is not lame, at all, in any way.’
Walter said:
‘Don’t be silly, Helen! There are plenty of young women who are not lame. I suppose Guy thinks her pretty.’
I said:
‘She is pretty.’