Chapter IV (3)

“That would simply be my whole life,” said Pamela. “It’s so wonderful of you to understand and not to blame me. So many people would have thought it wrong; but it came before I knew what it was going to be, and I never can feel that it was wrong. He never knew. And even if he had, it couldn’t have made any difference. It must be because of that that I can tell you. If you hadn’t been so happy, if it hadn’t been so perfect--for you and him--I don’t think that I could have told. I should just have rushed away when you came in and hidden from you.”

“Why?” asked Rosamund after a moment. She heard something in her own voice that Pamela would not hear.

“I don’t quite know why,” said Pamela; “but don’t you feel it too? Perhaps if it hadn’t been so perfect, even my little outside love might have hurt you--or troubled you--to hear about. But I see now that you are the only person in the world who could care to hear. It is a comfort to tell you. I am so glad you came.” Pamela turned her eyes upon her and it was almost with her smile. “When I see you like this I can believe that he is here, listening with you, and sorry for me, too.”

How like an evening primrose she was! Rosamund could see her clearly now: the candid oval of the face, the eyes, the innocent, child forehead with thick, fair hair falling across it.

“Yes. Go on,” she said, smiling back.

She was not worthy of Pamela, and poor Charlie was not worthy of her; but no human being is worthy of a flower. And though so innocent, she was not stupid; subtlety like a fragrance was about her as she said, “You can comfort me because you have so much to comfort with.”

“So much grief, or so much remembered happiness?”

“They go together, don’t they?” said Pamela. “Every sort of fulness. But I needn’t try to get it clear. You understand. I always thought that perhaps people who had fulness couldn’t; now I see that I was mistaken.”

“Have you been very unhappy, dear child?”

"Until now? While he was here? Oh, no, I have been lonely. Even before he came, even though my life was so crowded, it was rather lonely. I never had any one of my own, for myself. But afterwards, even if I felt lonely, I was happy. At least, after just at first. Because, just at first, it was miserable, for I couldn’t help longing to see him more and to have him like me more, and that made me understand that I was in love with him, and I was frightened. I can’t explain clearly about it, even to myself. But I was very, very unhappy. Perhaps you remember the time when I was twenty, and got so run down, and they sent me to Germany to my old governess--the only time I ever went away from home, out of England. It was a miserable time. I tried not to think of him and not to care. But I had to come back, and he was there, and I knew I couldn’t stop caring, and that all I could do about it was to try to be better because of him,--you know,--and make people happier, and not think of myself, but of him and them. And everything changed after that. I was never frightened any more, and though perhaps it wasn’t exactly happiness, it was, sometimes, I believe, almost better. I can’t explain it, but what I mean is in some poetry. I never cared much about poetry till he came. Then I seemed to understand things I’d never understood before, and to feel everything that was beautiful.

“You remember how dear he was to us all--to the boys and me. I always shared in everything they did. Every bit of this country is full of him; I could never bear to go away and leave it. I want always to stay here till I die.--Flowers and birds--wasn’t he wonderful about them? And our walks in the woods! He saw everything, and made us see it. I never woke in the morning without thinking, Will he come to-day? What will he say and do? I was never tired of watching him and listening to him. All his little ways--you know. When I pleased him,--sometimes I saw the bird we were watching for first, or caught my trout well,--it was a red-letter day. And in big things--to feel I should have pleased him if he’d known. It was he who helped me in every way, without knowing it. And I took more and more joy in you. At first I had felt dreadfully shy with you--and afraid of you. You were so clever, with all your books and music and friends, and you didn’t seem to need anything. But afterwards you were so kind, that, though I was always shy, I was not frightened any longer. I used to think about you so much, and imagine what he felt about you--and you about him.--You won’t mind my saying it, I know. Perhaps you remember the way I used so often, in the evenings, to walk past with the children, and say good-night over the wall. That was to see you and him walking together. You were so beautiful! You are far and far away the most beautiful person I’ve ever known. I always noticed everything you wore, and how your hair was done. I was glad when you took it down from the knot and had it all at the back, as you do now. And the lovely pale blue dress, with the little flounces--do you remember?--a summer dress of lawn. I did love that. And the white linen coats and skirts, and the big white hat with the lemon-coloured bow. Your very shoes--those grey ones you always had, with the low heels and little silver buckles. No one had such lovely clothes. And the way you poured out tea and looked across the table at one. Always like a beautiful muse--you don’t mind my saying it?--a little above everything, and apart, and quietly looking on.--How I understood what he felt for you! I felt it, too, I think, with him.”

Yes, dear flower and child, she had: offering to Charlie that last tribute of a woman’s worship, the imaginative love of the woman he loves; cherishing the cruelly sweet closeness of that piercing community. How she had idealized them both. How she had idealized Charlie’s love. Charlie had never seen her like this. Charlie had never dreamed of her as a muse, above, apart, and quietly watching. Why, with Pamela’s Charlie she herself could almost have been in love!

“What did you talk about, you and he,” she asked, “when you were together?” Their sylvan life, Pamela’s and Charlie’s, was almost as unknown to her as that of the birds they watched. She had almost a soft small hope that perhaps Pamela could show her something she had missed. “Did you ever talk about poetry, for instance?”

“No; never about things like that,” Pamela answered. “He talked more to the boys than to me; he talked to us all together--about what we were doing. But I used to love listening to him when he came and talked to father. Politics, you know; and the way things ought to be done. He was a great deal discouraged, you remember, by the way they _were_ being done. All those unjust taxes, you know. He wanted, he used always to say, to _give_ to the poor himself; he _loved_ taking care of them. But he hated that his money should be taken from him like that, against his will. And he always, always foresaw the war; always knew that Germany was plotting, and how England swarmed with spies. He thought we ought to have declared war upon her long ago and struck first.--I’m rather glad we didn’t, aren’t you? because then, in a way, we should have been in the wrong rather than they; but of course he felt it as a statesman, not like an ignorant woman.--You think Germany plotted, too?”

“Yes, oh, yes.” How glad Rosamund was to be able to think it, to be able, here, with a clear conscience, to remember that, on the theme of Germany’s craft and crime, she and Charlie had thought quite sufficiently alike. “But I am with you about not striking first.”

“Are you really?” There was surprise in Pamela’s voice. She did not dwell on the slight perplexity. “Of course, he always worsted father if he disagreed. It was rather wicked of me, but I couldn’t help enjoying seeing father worsted. He’d never thought things out, as Mr. Hayward had. But that’s what he talked about--things like that--and you.”

“Me?” Rosamund’s voice was gentle, meditative--her old voice of the encounters with Charlie. How she could hear him through all Pamela’s candid recitative!

"He was always thinking about you. ‘My wife says so and so. My wife agrees with me about it. I brought my wife last night to see it as I do.’ Oh, you were with him in everything! It was so beautiful to see and hear! I used to imagine that the Brownings were like that--after I read their lives. He was a sort of poet, wasn’t he? Any one so loving and so happy is a sort of poet--even if they don’t write poetry. Down in the meadows one day, when we were watching lapwings, he and I and the boys,--he wanted to show us a nest; you know how difficult they are to find,--you passed up on the hillside, with Philip and Giles. We could see you against the larchwood, they in their holland smocks and you in white, with the white-and-yellow hat. I shall never forget the way he stood up and smiled, his eyes following you. 'There’s Rosamund and the progeny,' he said.--You know the dear, funny way he had of saying things."

Yes--she knew it. Yet tears had risen to Rosamund’s eyes. Dear old Charlie; dear, old, tiresome Charlie! The tears had come as she saw him standing to look after her and his boys; but there was nothing more, nothing that she could give to Pamela, not one crumb of enrichment from what Pamela believed to be her great store. Pamela had seen all--and more than all--that there was to see.

In her own silence now she was aware of a growing oppression. She was too silent, even for one mute from the depth and sacredness of memory. Might not such silence seem to reprove Pamela’s flooding confidence? She struggled with her thoughts. “The lapwings?” she heard herself murmuring. “I remember his showing me a nest. How he loved birds and how much he knew about them! Weren’t you with us on the day we put up all the nesting-boxes here? Do you remember how he planned for the placing of each one, each bird to have its own appropriate domain? It was a lovely day, in very early spring.”

“Oh--_do_ you remember that?” How Pamela craved the crumb was shown by her lightened face; it was almost happy, as it turned to Rosamund, with its sense of recovered treasures. "Very early spring--March. Snowdrops were up over there,--and there,--and there were daffodils at the foot of the wall. You were in blue: a frieze coat and skirt of Japanese blue, with a grey silk scarf and a little soft grey hat with a blue wing in it; and you said,--you were standing just over there, near the pond,--‘We can always count on tits.’--But you did get robins, too, and thrushes in the big boxes; and then the splendid year when the nut-hatches came to the box down in the orchard. And you were tying up one box, but it was too high and he came and did it for you. I can see you both so plainly, your hands stretching up against the sky. Tall as you are he was taller; his head seemed to tower up into the branches. Such a blue sky it was! And afterwards we had tea in the drawing-room, and the tea wasn’t strong enough for him, and you liked China and he Indian tea. And you teased him and said that you had always to make him the little brown pot all for himself. He said, ‘Tea never tastes so right as out of a brown pot.’ There were white tulips growing in a bowl on the tea-table. And then you played to us. And you sang--‘I need no star in heaven to guide me.’--He was so fond of that. Oh, do you remember it all, too?"

All--all. Rosamund, though her tears fell, felt her cheek flushing in the darkness. How often he had asked for "I need no star in heaven to guide me"! How often she had sung it to him, rejoicing so soon, while she threw the proper tumultuous fervour that Charlie loved into the foolish air, in the atoning thought that already Philip’s favourite was “Der Nussbaum” and that even little Giles asked for “the sheep song,” the bleak, beautiful old Scottish strain: “Ca' the yowes to the knowes,” with its sweetest drop to “my bonnie dearie.” “Oh--give us something cheerful!” Charlie would exclaim after it.

“I remember it all, dear,” she answered; and there was silence for a while.

“How do you bear it?” Pamela whispered suddenly.

The hour, the stillness, the hands that held her, drew her past the last barrier. Her broken heart yearned for the comfort that the greater loss alone could give. What was the strength that enabled his wife to sit there so quietly, so gently, so full of peace and pity?

Rosamund felt herself faltering, stumbling, as she heard the inevitable question, and knew, as it came, that even Pamela’s heavenly blindness might not protect her, unless she could be very careful, from horrid loss or suspicion. To touch with a breath of her daylight reality that silver world of recollection would be to desecrate. Could she hold her breath and tread softly while she answered? Yes, surely. Surely she, who had hidden through all the years from Charlie, could hide from Pamela, although Pamela already was nearer than Charlie and knew her better than he had ever done. All the old strength and resource welled up in her, protecting this lovely thing, as, after the long moment, not looking at Pamela, but into Charlie’s garden, she found the right answer.

“You see, dear, it is so different with me. You have only your memories. I have the boys--his boys--to live for.”

It was right. It was the only answer. She heard Pamela’s long, soft breaths, full of a gentle awe, and felt her hand more tightly clasped. Once the right step was taken, it was easier to go on:

"I want to tell you why I am so glad to have found you here, Pamela dear. You’ll understand, I think, when I say that motherhood lives in the present and future, and is almost cruel, cruel to everything not itself, for it forgets the past in the present. Do you see,"--she found the beautiful untruth,--“he is so much in them for me, that I might almost forget him in them--forget to mourn him, as one would if they were not there. So do you see why it comforts me to know that, while I must go on into the future with them, you will be keeping him here and remembering?”

She could look at Pamela now, in safety, and she turned to her, finding rapt eyes upon her.

“Come here often, won’t you, when I’m away as well as when I’m here. We must make it all look again as it did when he was with us--flowers and trees and bird-boxes. You will help me in it all and you will think of him here and love him. I know what happiness you meant to him--more than he was aware of. You were a beautiful part of his life. You say you were always, for him, only together, with the boys. That is only partly true. He used often to speak of you to me, the little passing things people say of any one they are very fond of and take for granted. He appreciated you and counted upon you. I came here so sad, Pamela, so burdened. I’ve never been sadder in my life than I was to-night as I walked here. And you have lifted it all. It makes all the difference to know that you are here, in his garden, remembering him. More difference than I can say.”

It was an unutterable gratitude that, with her tears, with love and pity and reverence, welled up in her, seeing what Pamela had done. The garden was no longer empty, and Charlie not forgotten. In the night of his death and disappearance this flower had become visible. Always, when she thought of him, she would think of evening primroses and of Pamela, so that it would be with tenderness, with the understanding, homely, unexacting, consecrating, that Pamela gave; Pamela herself becoming a gift from Charlie; emerging from the darkness, evident and beautiful,--almost another child whose future she must carry in her heart; though the only gift she could give her now, in return for all that she had given, was the full and free possession of the past, where, outside the garden wall, she had been a wistful onlooker. She felt that she opened the gate, drew Pamela in, and put into her keeping all the keys that had weighed so heavily in her unfitted hands.

AUTUMN CROCUSES