XXXVII
What Gwenda had to do she did quickly.
She wrote to the third Mrs. Cartaret that night. She told her nothing except that she wanted to get something to do in London and to get it as soon as possible, and she asked her stepmother if she could put her up for a week or two until she got it. And would Mummy mind wiring Yes or No on Saturday morning?
It was then Thursday night.
She slipped out into the village about midnight to post the letter, though she knew that it couldn't go one minute before three o'clock on Friday afternoon.
She had no conscious fear that her will would fail her, but her instinct was appeased by action.
On Saturday morning Mrs. Cartaret wired: "Delighted. Expect you
Friday. Mummy."
Five intolerable days. They were not more intolerable than the days that would come after, when the thing she was doing would be every bit as hard. Only her instinct was afraid of something happening within those five days that would make the hard thing harder.
On Sunday Mrs. Cartaret's letter came. Her house, she said, was crammed with fiends till Friday. There was a beast of a woman in Gwenda's room who simply wouldn't go. But on Friday Gwenda's room would be ready. It had been waiting for her all the time. Hadn't they settled it that Gwenda was to come and live with her if things became impossible at home? Robina supposed they were impossible? She sent her love to Alice and Mary, and she was always Gwenda's loving Mummy. And she enclosed a five-pound note; for she was a generous soul.
On Monday Gwenda told Peacock the carrier to bring her a Bradshaw from
Reyburn.