It was September. Harry had left for London, called back by work. Letters from Topbury implored his own return. He was afraid to abandon scenes familiar; in losing them he might lose the sense of Kay’s spirit presence.
Then to him, as to Harry, came the imperative cry of the need of the world.
A telegram sent from Paris and forwarded on from Topbury reached him. Of all persons it was from the golden woman. It bade him urgently to join her. He took no notice. Another, saying that it was not she who wanted him but someone whom he could help. A third, still more insistent. The first he had suspected; this last was too pleading for insincerity. He packed up and left.
In Paris she met him; even then she refused to tell him why she had sent for him. She was a different golden woman, grave and quiet. The day after his arrival, she took him out to a gray Normandy village. On the train journey she had little to say; only once did she explain herself. A flight of swallows was passing over a meadow going south, moving steadily as a cloud. She met his eyes.
“Yes, I’m different. The stork knoweth her appointed times, and the turtle and the crane and the swallow, but——You remember the passage. I didn’t know mine. I waited too long. Foolish! Foolish!—— The winter came. My appointed time went by me.” And a little later, “Don’t let that happen to you, Peter.”
They walked down a white road and came to a cottage. She knocked. A voice, which he ought to have recognized, told her to enter. Sitting in a low chair, her foot rocking a cradle, was Riska. She rose, overcome with surprise, lowering her face, awaiting his judgment. As he pressed her to him, the baby began to cry. She stooped, picked him up and held him out to Peter.
“Isn’t he sweet?”
The first words she had spoken—spoken without shame or apology, almost with pride! It seemed impossible that a sin which had made a thing so beautiful could need excusing. He met her eyes, reading in them sacrifice. Where was the old Riska, impatient of restraint, eager to catch men, with the petulant, fluttering mouth? The passion which should have destroyed had purified, just as his grief which might have embittered had made him more anxious to help.
On the way to England she told him of Hardcastle. “I got so tired of trying and trying to get married. All the men found out something—father, or my shallowness, or something. I don’t blame them. And all the time, ever since I was a little girl, mother talked about the raft and what happened if a girl didn’t escape from it. I grew desperate and frightened. It was anything to catch a man. And then Roy——. He said he’d marry me in Paris; afterwards he put off and put off. When he’d deserted me, I didn’t like to write. After the baby came——. I don’t know, it may be all wrong, but I wasn’t a bit ashamed of myself. I didn’t write then because I couldn’t bear to think of people despising him. If the golden woman hadn’t met me—— Oh, well, I should have gone on somehow, earning money for baby with my hands.——But, dear Peter, I’m so glad you found me. I never understood you till now.”
At Topbury that first night, after a hurried reference to Kay, they didn’t trust themselves to talk about her. They tortured themselves the more by their reticence. Everything spoke so loudly of her absence. Nan sat with Riska’s child in her arms—the child which should have been unwelcome. It seemed to fill a gap in her life; they all knew what was passing behind her eyes. The evening grew late. She and Riska went slowly up to bed.