A Question of Marriage

by Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

The last day came—a blur of pain and grief. Piers spent his last hour alone with Vanna in the den, in which the first happy hours of their engagement had been passed, demanding of her a dozen impossible promises—that she would stay with Jean until his return, that she would not tire herself, that she would be happy; and if at times a bitter reply trembled on her lips, she repressed it valiantly, knowing that by so doing she was saving herself an added sting. His last words imprinted themselves in her brain, and were sweet to remember:

”... If I am ever any good in this world or the next, it is your doing. You have given me faith, you have given me joy, the revelation of heaven and earth. Everything that I have, that is worth possessing, is your gift...!”

When the door closed behind him—oh, the knell of that closing door!—Jean left her friend alone until an hour had passed, and then sent her children as missioners of comfort—the two dainty little maidens in their sublime innocence of untoward happening. Lorna had acquired two new pieces of “poentry”—“Oh, Mary, go and call the kettle home,” and “anozzer one” called, “Twice ones is two”—which she must needs recite without delay. Joyce developed earache, and remembering former help in need, expressed a wailing desire to sleep in “Wanna’s bed,” for “Wanna to stwoke me!” The little, soft, warm body clinging to her, the touch of the baby lips were unspeakable comfort to Vanna during those long wakeful hours when every moment carried Piers farther and farther away.

A week later Vanna returned to the hospital where she had been trained, to fill a temporary vacancy for a few months. Hard work was her best medicine—hard, incessant work, which left no time for thought, and sent her to bed so weary that sleep came almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. A nurse by instinct, it was not in her nature to perform her duties in mechanical fashion. The human aspect of a case made a direct appeal to her heart, and, surrounded on every hand by suffering and want, she was forced into a realisation of her own blessings. She was alone, but youth, health, and money remained to help her on her way, and Piers’s letters arrived by each mail—long, closely written sheets, detailing every day of his life, drawing word-pictures of home surroundings, new acquaintances; above all, breathing the tenderest, most faithful love. Each letter was read and reread until it was known by heart, was answered with a length equal to its own, and by the time this was dispatched—wonderfully, surprisingly soon—another letter was due. She read of the arrival of the mail at Brindisi, and counted over the hours.

The first shock of parting was over, six months had already passed by. Six months was half a year, a quarter of the time of Piers’s probable absence! When the half was over, what joy to strike off the months which must elapse before his return; and meantime could any other man in the world have written such delightful, heart-satisfying letters?

Vanna was keenly interested also in the changes in hospital treatment which had taken place during the four years since she had finished her course, and felt that the six months’ experience had been valuable from a medical as well as a mental point of view. Nevertheless, it was with no regret that she saw the nurse return whose place she had taken, and made her own preparations for departure. At thirty-two the unaccustomed strain of hospital life told heavily on a constitution weakened by mental strain, and she thought with joy of the comfort of her own home, of long, restful hours, when she could write to Piers at her ease, of talks with Jean, of play with the children.

She drove straight from the hospital to the Gloucesters’, where she had arranged to spend a week in idleness before the effort of reopening her own home. The rooms were en fête, profusely decorated with flowers. Jean and the children rushed to the door to receive her—a charming trio, all dressed alike, in a flutter of white muslins and blue ribbons. The whole made an entrancing picture to one accustomed to the bare austerity of a hospital ward; and Vanna felt her spirits soar upwards with a delightful sense of exhilaration. She hugged Jean with schoolgirl effusion, swung the children about in a merry dance, and gave herself up with undisguised zest to the pleasures of the moment: the daintily spread, daintily provided tea, the luxurious appointments of the little house, her own comfortable bedroom, the easy laxity of hours. The first long chat with Jean seemed but to open out the way for a hundred other subjects which both were longing to discuss, and when it was over, the agreeable task remained of dressing herself in a pretty gown to partake of the sociable evening meal.

“Oh, dear! The pomps and vanities of this world, how I love them; how good they are,” she sighed happily. “What a delight it is to sit at a dear little table bright with silver and flowers, and eat indigestible dainties, and know you can sit still and be lazy all evening, and go to bed when you like, and get up, no, not get up, stay in bed and have breakfast, and snoodle down to sleep again if you feel so inclined! I shall be lazy to-morrow! And to wear a pretty dress, and a necklace, on a nice bare neck, instead of a stiff starched bow sticking into one’s chin. Have my strings marked my neck? How do I look? I seemed to myself a perfect vision of beauty, but Jean looks at me askance. I don’t fancy she looks flattering.”

“No, not a bit,” said Jean bluntly. “You look a wreck, like most discharged patients—fit for nothing but a convalescent home. Don’t talk of necks! It’s nothing but bones, a perfect disgrace. I shall feed you up, and forbid work for weeks to come. What you need is a good, bracing change. I need a change, too. Couldn’t we three go off together, and do something nice? I’ve had nothing but seaside holidays with the babies since we were married. A month in Switzerland, in high, bracing air, in good hotels, among the mountains—oh, how good it sounds. Say yes, Rob, like a darling. I want it so!”

But Robert did not speak. It was the first time in the history of their acquaintance that Vanna had known him show even a moment’s hesitation in granting a request from Jean’s lips, and she looked at him in surprise. Distress was written upon his face, and a wistful appeal for forgiveness, but stronger than all, an air of decision which gave no promise of weakening.