Dispelling a momentary qualm, she stooped her head under the honeysuckle and entered; and then, clearly visible, with her pale hair and face,—as pale, as evident as an evening’s primrose,—the girl sitting there, wide-eyed, revealed, with her identity, that haunting analogy of a little while ago. Of course, it came in a flash now, that was what they reminded her of. Long ago she had thought—conceding them their most lovable association—that Pamela Braithwaite looked like an evening primrose.
“My dear Pamela,” she said, almost as gently as she would have said it to a somnambulist; for, like the flowers, again, she was sad, even uncanny; although Pamela’s uncanniness too,—sweet, homely creature,—could never be sinister. She put a hand upon her arm, for the girl had started to her feet.
“Oh—do forgive me, Mrs. Hayward!” Pamela gasped. Sad? It was more than that. She was broken, spent with weeping. “I didn’t know you were coming. I sit here sometimes in the evenings. I thought you wouldn’t mind.”
“My dear child, why should I mind? I’m thankful to you for coming to the sad little place. It’s much less lonely to think about, for you have always been so much of our life here.”
This, she knew, was an exaggeration; but she must be more than kind to such grief as this: she must find some comfort, if that were possible.
And to feel herself accepted, welcomed, did give comfort; for, sinking again on the seat, bending her face on her hands, Pamela sobbed, “Oh, how kind you are!”
“Poor child, poor, poor child!” said Rosamund. She was only five years older, but she felt as a mother might feel towards the stricken girl. She put an arm around her, murmuring, “Can you tell me what it is? Don’t cry so, dear Pamela.”
Pamela Braithwaite had been a girl of eighteen when they had come, in the first year of their marriage, to Crossfields. The Braithwaites lived a mile away, near the river, a large, affectionate, desultory family, in a large, dilapidated house. Already Pamela mothered the younger brood, and mothered the widowed father as well—a retired tea-planter, who had brought from Ceylon some undefined but convenient complaint that enabled him to pass the rest of his days wrapped in a number of coats, eating very heartily, and, as he expressed it, “sitting about.” A peaceful, idle man, legs outstretched in sun or firelight, hat-brim turned down over his eyes (he had a curious way, even in the house, of almost always wearing his hat), pipe between his teeth; good-looking, too, tall and fair, like his daughters, and with a touch in his appearance, though not in his character, of amicable distinction.
Pamela, except for a brother already married and in Ceylon, was the eldest, with a long gap between her and the group of younger brothers, of whom Rosamund thought mainly as a reservoir of Boy Scouts until they had had to be thought of as a reservoir of volunteers. There were three or four younger sisters, too, some of whom had married and some of whom had gone forth into the world—always with an extreme light-heartedness and confidence—as companions or secretaries. These again were hardly individualized in Rosamund’s recollection, except for the fact that, since Pamela was always making blouses or trimming hats for them, she had become aware that it was Phyllis who wore pink and Marjory blue.
But whoever went, Pamela always stayed; and even when the war broke upon the world, with Frank, the Braithwaite baby, just old enough to enlist, and Phyllis and Marjory at once enrolling themselves as V.A.D.'s, Pamela remained rooted. Who, indeed, had she gone, would have taken care of Mr. Braithwaite, and of the brothers and sisters home on leave, and of the garden earnestly dedicated to potatoes, or the small family of Ceylon nephews and nieces deposited continually in her charge by their parents?