‘Goo’night.’
‘Good-night.’
Judith ran home, shutting eyes to the clouds, ears to the wind, and with the slam of the front door behind her striving to ignore the God of envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness whose portents were abroad in the sky.
‘To-morrow they are coming again and bringing Roddy. To-morrow I shall see Roddy. O God, be merciful!’
Towards dawn she woke and heard the blind, drearily sighing, futile hurry and hiss of the rain,—and said aloud in the darkness: ‘How can I bear it?’
Yet lured by sick fantastic hope she crossed the river that morning and made her way to the pond.
There was nobody there, save one small boy, sliding upon the ice through several inches of water and throwing up before him in his swift career two separate and divided fountains.
Then that was the end. They were lost again. They would not come back, they would not write, she would never go to London to see them. Even Julian would forget about her. They did not care, the rain was glad, there was nothing in the wide world to give her comfort. She turned from the rain-blurred place where their unreal lost images mocked at and confused her,—dreams within the far-off dream of happy yesterday.
3
It was some time in the middle of the war that she knew for certain that Julian was at the front. She heard it from the old next door gardener, who had given her apples and pears long ago, and it was from the grandmother herself that he knew it. She had written to tell him to plant fresh rose-buds and to keep the tennis lawn in perfect order, for very soon, directly the war was over, the grandchildren were to have the house for their own, as a place for week-ends and holidays.