Antonia said, “There’s young Nell—and she looks ... queer.”
II
Nell Redbury walked slowly across the lawn towards the tea-table under the yellowing chestnut tree. Arrived there, she stood, mutely awaiting interrogation; her gaze full on Gillian.... Nobody spoke; the three elder girls felt as though nipped and held in the pincers of tragedy, and each one was afraid....
“I’m going to have a baby,” said Nell at last, in the stupid voice of a child repeating a lesson she has not quite understood. “The doctor said so. Mums cried. And father said I was not to come home any more.”
“Is that all!” Gillian almost laughed in her relief. “Oh, you lucky little devil—no, I don’t mean that—you’re only a kid still yourself, and it’s rather rough luck, but still—Who and where’s the infant husband? I suppose it’s Timothy?”
“Yes,” Nell answered gravely, but still standing a little aloof from the tea-table. “But he’s not my husband. We—I—thought you would be pleased.”
“Because I did it myself?” Her goddess became suddenly stern.
“Yes.” And once more the refrain, “I thought you would be pleased. You said ... you all said.... I’ve forgotten what you said,” with sudden droop to weariness.
“Whatever I said and whatever I did, wasn’t for a baby like you,” Gillian brutally informed her, in a double effort to vitalize the girl’s apathy and to knock her own conscience insensible. “I may have said that where marriage is impossible, it’s better to do the other thing than to brood and mope ... but in your case marriage is possible; possible and natural and inevitable. Especially now.... There’s no earthly or heavenly reason, young Nell, why you and Timothy should put yourselves to the inconvenience of being not married, and you’re jolly well going to be shoved through the ceremony the very first moment he can wangle leave and come back.”
“Yes,” Nell acquiesced again. And, after a pause: “But he won’t come back. It was in the paper to-day.... They’ve killed him.”