Well, they were married by special license three days later, with me and a man friend of Lorillard's as witnesses. When the knot was safely tied, June and Robert went together and broke it to the Duchess—not the knot, but the news. The Duchess of Stane is supposed to know more bad words than any other peeress in England, and judging from June's account of the scene, she hurled them all at Lorillard, with a few spontaneous creations for her daughter. When the lady and her vocabulary were exhausted, however, common sense refilled the vacuum. The Duchess and the Family made the best of a bad bargain, hoping, no doubt, that Lorillard would soon be safely killed; and a delicious dish of romance was served up to the public.
I was the only one beyond pardon, it seemed. According to the Duchess I was a wicked little treacherous cat not to have told her what was going on, so that it could have been stopped in time. A complaint was made to Grandmother. But that peppery old darling—after scolding me well—took my part, and quarrelled with the Duchess.
June was too busy being The Bride of All War Brides to bother much with me, and Lorillard was training hard for France. So a kind of magic glass wall arose between the Affair and me. Months passed (everyone knows the history of those months!) and then the air raids began: Zeppelins over London!
It was smart, you know, not to be frightened, but to run out and gape, or go up on the roof, when one of those great silver shapes was sighted in the night sky. June went on the roof. Oh poor, beautiful June! A fragment of shrapnel pierced her heart and killed her instantly, before she could have felt a pang.
The news almost "broke Lorillard up," so his pal who witnessed the marriage with me put the case. Robert hadn't even once been back in "Blighty" since he first went out. Ninety-six hours' leave was due just then. He spent it coming to June's funeral, and—returning to the Front.
Since that tragic time long ago he had seen a great deal of fighting, had been wounded twice, had received his Captaincy and a D. S. O. Four years and a half had been eaten by Hun locusts since he'd last appeared on the stage, and more than three since the death of June. Everyone thought that Lorillard would take up his old career where he had laid it down. But he refused several star parts, and announced that he never intended to act again. The reason was, he said, that he did not wish to do so; that he could hardly remember how he had felt at the time when acting made up the great interest of his life.
He bought a quaint old cottage near the river, not many miles from a house the Duchess owned—a happy house, where he had spent week-ends that wonderful summer of 1914. June had loved the place, and her body lay (buried in a glass coffin to preserve its beauty for ever) in the cedar-shaded graveyard of the country church near by. Once she had laughingly told Lorillard she would like to lie there if she died, and he had persuaded the Duchess to fulfil the wish. Instead of a gravestone there was a sundial, with the motto "All her days were happy days and all her hours were hours of sun."
Robert Lorillard's cottage was within walking distance of the churchyard, and I imagine he often went there. Anyhow, he went nowhere else. After some months an anonymous book of poems appeared—poems of such extreme beauty and pure passion that all the critics talked about them. Bye and bye others began to talk, and it leaked out through the publisher that Lorillard was the author.
I loved those poems so much that I couldn't resist scribbling a few lines to Robert in my first flush of enthusiasm. He didn't answer. I'd hardly expected a reply; but now, long after, here was a letter from him introducing a girl who wanted to be my secretary!
He wrote: