A square envelope came from Cartwright, and opening it, I found it addressed to "My dear Lily." Of course I ought not to have read on, but there are situations where etiquette cannot be strictly observed. It was an affectionate but not an extravagant note; the memory came to me of the statement of an officer, made early in the war, who censoring letters out at the front, discovered six from one youth, all in identical and loving terms, but with the Christian names of the girls different in each case. I could picture my dear Lily without trouble. A young girl, good looking, and probably occupied in some business that left her with more time than I had to exchange communications with a soldier friend at Seaford. I boiled with annoyance to think there was someone to whom George Cartwright was writing in these terms; I scorched with irritation to recognise that she was reading the letter intended for me. Towards the end there was reference to a wedding.
"It's the first time I trusted a man," I cried to baby, "and, my word, it shall be the last." The baby seemed under the impression that I was endeavouring to be humorous. "If he'd been kept out in France, he'd have been safe enough."
It has probably been written about already, and in any case I am not going to write about it here; I mean the trial a woman of my age endures when she discovers that her romance has gone. For a while, I lost interest in the matter of the Chislehurst house.
I had to run, with all my might, one afternoon to the doctor's house to beg him to come and see the old people on the ground floor; Katherine's little baby had been given to the care of a motherly servant next door. The doctor was on the point of leaving the house with his wife in his small two-seated car, and I threw the Gloucester Place key to him, gave directions, and started to walk back at a good pace. I noticed that, just inside the Park railings, a long soldier was lying prone on the grass. I took the view—it was just after half-past two—that he had been rather too busily engaged during the brief time of opening permitted to licensed premises. Glancing over my shoulder, I caught sight of the stripes on his arm. I found the nearest gate, and raced back.
"Cartwright," I cried, forgetting my grievance against him. "What's wrong, dear man? Pull yourself together. It's Mary Weston who's talking to you."
"Goo' Lord," exclaimed the Quartermaster-Sergeant, amazedly. "And here I've been mourning for you because I thought you'd gone to Heaven."
"It's not so bad as all that," I said. He jumped up, caught me in his arms, and kissed me until four children stopped to look on.
"Nearly all the worries in this life," he declared, "are about matters that don't exist. And I'm not a chap, in a general way, to go hunting around for trouble, but the information that reached me didn't somehow appear to give me much of a loop-hole."
"You army men get nervy."