And with this half-formed criticism of Bunny there came most curiously a more urgent physical longing for him. Before, when he had seemed so utterly perfect, the holding of hands, kisses, embraces could wait. Everything was so safe. But now was everything so safe? If they could quarrel like that at a moment's notice, and he could look suddenly as though he hated her, were they so safe? Bunny himself was changing a little. He was always wanting to kiss her, to lead her into dark corners, to tell her over and over again that he adored her. Their love in these last days had lost some fine quality of sobriety and restraint that it had possessed at first.
There was something in the air of Cladgate with its brass bands, its over-dressed women, its bridge and its dancing.
It is not to be supposed, however, that Millie worried herself very much. Only dimly behind her the sky had changed, thickening ever so slightly. Her sense of enchantment was not pierced.
Ellen arrived and was too sweet for any words.
In a letter to Henry, Millie wrote:
. . . and do you ever feel, I wonder, that our paths are crossing all the time? It is, I suppose, because we have always been so much together and have done everything together. But I see everything so vividly that it is exactly as though I had been there—Duncombe and the thick woods and the little chapel and the deserted rooms and the boxwood garden. All this here is the very opposite, of course, and yet simply the other half of a necessary whole perhaps. Aren't I getting philosophical? Only I should hate to think that all that you are sharing in now is going out of the world and all this ugliness of mine remains. But of course it won't, and it's up to us, Henry, to see that it doesn't.
Meanwhile, Ellen has arrived and is at present like one of those sugar mice that you buy at the toy-shop—simply too sweet for words. Poor thing, all she needs is for some one to love her passionately and she'll never, never get it. She's quite ready to love some one else passionately and to snatch what she can out of that, but she isn't made for passion—she's so bony and angular and suspicious, and is angry so easily.
I begged Victoria not to say anything about the engagement at present and she hasn't, although it hurts her terribly to keep it in. Is'nt it silly to be afraid of Ellen? But I do so hate scenes. So many people seem to like them. Mother cured us of wanting them.
I'm dancing my legs off. Yesterday, I'm ashamed to say, I danced all a lovely afternoon. The Syncopated Orchestra here is heavenly, and Bunny says I two-step better than any one he's ever known.
Meanwhile, under the dancing and the eating and the dressing-up, there's the strangest feeling of unrest. Yesterday there was a Bolshevik meeting near the bandstand. Luckily there was a football match (very important—Cladgate v. Margate) and all the supposed Bolshies went to that instead. Aren't we a funny country? Victoria's very happy, dressing and undressing, taking people out in the car and buying things she doesn't want. She plays bridge very badly and was showing signs of interest in Spiritualism. They have séances in the hotel every night, and Victoria went to one last evening and was fortunately frightened out of her life. Some one put a hand on her bare shoulder and she made such a fuss that they had to break up the séance. Give my love to Peter if you see him. He wrote me a sweet little letter about the engagement. . . .
That which Millie had said about her consciousness of Henry's world was very true. It seemed to her that his life and experience was always intermingling with hers, and one could not possibly be complete without the other. Now, for instance, Ellen was the connecting link. Ellen, one could see at once, did not belong to Cladgate, with its materialism, snobbery and self-satisfaction. Cross old maid though you might call her, she had power and she had passion; moreover she was restless, in search of something that she would never find perhaps, but the search was the thing. That was Henry's world—dear, pathetic, stumbling Henry, with his fairy princess straight out of Hans Andersen, and the wicked witch and the cottage built of sugar—all this, as Millie felt assured, to vanish with the crow of the cock, but to leave Henry (and here was what truly distinguished him from his fellows) with his vision captured, the vision that was more important than the reality. Ellen was one of the midway figures (and the world has many of them, discontented, aspiring, frustrated) who serve to join the Dream and the Business.
Unhappy they may be, but they have their important use and are not the least valuable part of God's creation. See Ellen in her black, rather dingy frock striding about the corridors of the Cladgate hotel, and you were made uncomfortably to think of things that you would rather forget.
During her first days she was delighted with Cladgate and everything and everybody in it. Then the rain came back and danced upon the glass roofs and jazz bands screamed from floor to floor, and every one sat under the palms in pairs. There was no one to sit with Ellen; she did not play bridge, she did not dance. She was left alone. Millie tried to be kind to her when she remembered, but it was Ellen's fate to be forgotten.
One evening, just as Millie was going to bed, Ellen came into the room. She stood by the door glowering.