"Nothing!" said Vanna. "Nothing!" She raised her tear-stained face, and laid it beside Jean's on the pillow, and at that touch, at the sound of the broken voice, the hard composure broke down. Jean trembled, gasped, and clinging tightly to the outstretched arms, sobbed out her heart in a paroxysm of grief.

An hour later Robert was again summoned to the sick-room; but this time it was by Jean's request, and when he entered she stretched out her hand towards him, and pitifully endeavoured to smile.

"Poor darling! I'm sorry I was unkind. I will try, I _will_ try to be good! I am calmer now."

"Vanna helped you?"

Jean nodded. Robert sat gazing at her, his eyes wistful, like his voice. It was not jealousy which he felt, nor anger, nor impatience-- but simplest, saddest humiliation. He had failed and Vanna had succeeded. With all his soul he longed to find the secret of her power.

"How did she help you, dear? What did she say?"

"Nothing! She cried. The tears rolled down her face."

Robert sat silent, holding his wife's hand, and striving, hopelessly, pitifully, to understand.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

LIFE WORK.

After the first few weeks were over Jean recovered her strength more quickly than had been expected, and by the end of the second month was able to take her usual place in the household.

One of the first things which she had done after being p.r.o.nounced convalescent was to fold away with her own hands all the tiny garments which had been prepared with such joy, and to cover the dainty new furnishings of the nursery with careful wrappings. This done, the key was turned in the lock, and henceforward there was a ghost-chamber in the house--a chamber haunted by the ghost of a dead hope.

Jean spoke but little of her loss--the wound went too deep for words; and as time went on some of the old interest in life began to revive, aided by the joys of recovered health, and of Robert's devotion, if possible more ardent than before. Nevertheless no one could look upon her without realising the change wrought by the last few months. She had been a merry, thoughtless girl, to whom grief and pain were but abstract words conveying no definite impression: now the great revelation had come, anguish of body, anguish of soul, and she emerged from the shadows, sobered and thoughtful.

"What women have to suffer! The thought of it haunts me. I can't get away from it," she said to Vanna one afternoon as they sat together in the autumn gloaming, enjoying that quiet _tete-a-tete_ which was the most intimate moment of the day. "I walk along the streets staring at the women I meet, and marvel! There they are--thousands of them, British matrons, plain, ordinary, commonplace creatures with dolmans, and bonnets far back on their heads, each with a family of--what? four, six, eight, sometimes _ten_ children! For years and years of their lives they have been chronic invalids, goaded on by the precepts that it is 'only natural,' and that they have no right to shirk their work on that account. The courage of them, and the patience, and the humility!

They never seem to consider that they deserve any praise. If they read in the newspaper of a soldier who saved a life in the rush and excitement of battle, and was wounded in the act, they rave of him by the hour together; but if you offered _them_ the Victoria Cross, they would think you were mad! Yet every life given to the world means nearly a year of suffering for some poor mother!"

Vanna was silent. It was inevitable that in her position she should see the other side of the question, and feel that a year would be a light price to pay for the joy of holding Piers's son in her arms; but Jean had lost that great recompense which wipes away the remembrance of the anguish. Her heart was still hungry and sore. Having no words of comfort to offer, Vanna deftly turned the conversation to a safer channel.

"Apropos of suffering, Jean, I have been waiting to talk to you about my own plans. I've been here over four months, dear, and it's time I moved on. I told you I had a plan in my head which was slowly working itself out. Well! at last, I think I can see daylight. I have my life to live, and I can't be content just to fritter it away. I must find something that is worth doing, and which will justify my existence.

I've thought of many things, but it always comes back to nursing as the likeliest and most suitable. For the last four years that's been my work, and I know I did it well. Every doctor I have met told me I was a born nurse. One Sunday when you were ill I went to Dr Greatman, and had a long talk. He had asked me to go. I told him what I wanted-- technical training to add to what I had learnt by experience, and then when I was properly equipped to _give_ my services to poor gentlewomen who could not afford to pay to be properly cared for."

"A nurse! A hospital nurse! _You_!" Jean's tone was eloquent with dismay. The day of lady nurses was but in its dawn, and public opinion had yet to be reconciled to the thought. "Vanna, you could not stand the everlasting strain. And you spoke of a home, a house of your own!

If you were at the hospital--"

"Let me finish my story, dear. Don't interrupt half through. Dr Greatman was most kind and understanding. I think in a kind of way he feels that he owes me some compensation, as it was he who laid the bar on my life. I took him letters from the doctors who know me, giving my character as professional nurse. They were rather nice, Jean. I was proud of them, and Dr Greatman said he wished he could speak as highly of many of his certificated nurses. He advises me to take a two years'

course of training at a hospital. I should have to 'live in,' and give up all my time; but as soon as the two years are over I will look out for a house and a sheep dog, and gather together my treasures to make a real little home of my own. You shall help me to arrange it, Jean! It shall be in town, as near to you as rents will allow, in a quiet street, with at least two spare rooms facing south. Then I shall be ready for work as it comes along. Sometimes I shall go to a patient's house, and nurse her there; sometimes--if her own house is unsuitable, or if she is a poor governess, or a worker who hasn't got a home--I'll take her in, and look after her in my own rooms. At other times I'll have convalescents who want kitchen food and kindness. Sometimes I'll have guests--poor, dull drones who are suffering from all work and no play, and dose them with kindness and amus.e.m.e.nt. Then I shall fed of some use, and that my house is doing good to other people besides myself."

"They'll sponge upon you, and tire you out, and take everything they can get, and then go away, and slander you behind your back."

"_Tant pis_! Let's hope they'll do it sufficiently far away to let me continue in my blissful delusion that I've done some good."

"You'll get sick of it. It's no use pretending; you were as fond of gaiety and amus.e.m.e.nt as I was myself. You'll get sick of everlasting invalids."

"Then I'll take a spell off, and do nothing, and be as selfish as I please. I'm not bound. If a roving fit seizes me I can shut up house and go off on my travels. I don't intend to spend all my life in a rut.

I'm a poor gentlewoman myself, and need my own medicine. Don't imagine that I'm tying myself down to continual drudgery, for I'm not; but I must, I must have an object in life!"

"And for two whole years you propose to shut yourself up in a hospital?"

"I do; with the exception of an afternoon a week, a day a fortnight, and three weeks' annual holiday."

"May I ask what Piers has to say?"

Vanna's smile was both whimsical and pathetic.

"You may; but I shan't answer. Several volumes of very strong language, poor dear man; but he knows--at the bottom of his heart he knows that I am right!"

Not even to Jean could Vanna confess that her plans for the future had a nearer and more personal object than mere philanthropy. The conservation of love! This was the great problem with which she struggled in secret. Her clear, far-sighted brain realised the truth, despised by most lovers, that love is a plant which needs careful and a.s.siduous tending if it is to live and retain its bloom. Kindred interests, kindred hopes, kindred efforts and aims--these are the foods by which it is nourished in happy home-life; but if these be wanting--if instead of the hill tops there stretches ahead a long flat plain, what then can nourish the plant and guard it from decay? Piers had sworn that his troth should not bind him if his heart grew tired; but, having received that promise, Vanna never again allowed herself to allude to the subject. Her woman's instinct taught her that no good could come of continually putting such a possibility into words. She must write, act, speak, as if the eternity of the love between them was beyond doubt-- fixed as the hills. What precautions seemed advisable to keep it so she must take upon herself, and with as slight an appearance of intention as might be. Piers might rage and fume at the prospect of her years in hospital, but she knew that the scarcity of their meetings would be a gain rather than a loss. Once a week they would meet for a few hours; once a fortnight there would come a long happy day, which would make an epoch to be antic.i.p.ated and remembered with tenderest thought. Better so than to run the risk of satiety, and the hastening of that day when the dread question might arise: "What next?"

This conviction, deeply rooted in Vanna's mind, made her strong to resist all arguments and reproaches, and the end of the year found her established as a nurse at one of the largest and most advanced of the great London hospitals.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

AFTER FIVE YEARS.

Five years later Vanna Strangeways and Piers Rendall were taking tea with Robert and Jean Gloucester in their London home. Those years of busy living had left their trace on all four friends; but, as is usually the case, these changes were most marked on the faces of the women.

A man of forty is almost invariably handsomer than the same man at the age of twenty-five; but though a woman may gain in expression, the delicate bloom of youth is a charm which can never be replaced.

Jean Gloucester would always be beautiful, but already in her thirtieth year she wore a worn and fragile air. The two children who now occupied the nursery upstairs had made heavy demands on her strength. Jean was one of the women who, though naturally robust, seem totally unfitted for the strain of child-bearing. Her figure was slight almost to emaciation, and her cheeks had lost their bloom, but she was still a picture fascinating to the eye as she leant back against the cushions of the sofa--bright rose-coloured cushions, newly covered to show off the beauty of a wonderful grey gown made in the long flowing folds which she affected, and which were in striking contrast to the inartistic dresses of the period.

In whatever direction Jean economised it was never in dress or household decorations. She was one of the women in whom the beauty instinct takes precedence above other tastes. If it had been her lot to live in a garret on ten shillings a week she would have deprived herself of food until she had saved enough money to paper the walls with a harmonious colour, and to buy a strip of curtaining to match. To purchase a prosaic garment for five pounds, when an artistic one could be procured for ten, was to her practically an impossibility. She stifled any pangs of conscience by arguing that the outlay was economical in the end.

Good things wore longer, one did not grow wearied of them as of cheaper designs; and, to do her justice, these theories were invariably supported by her husband. His wife's beauty was a continual joy to Robert Gloucester, and he took a boyish delight in the moments when, walking by her side, he encountered chance City friends, and watched the first casual glance brighten into surprised admiration. It appeared to him but another instance of Jean's surprising cleverness that she always "hit upon such stunning clothes," and he pitied from his heart the poor fellows who possessed dull, dowdy wives. Jean looked like a queen beside them; but a queen is an expensive luxury in the home of a struggling business man. The process of "selling out a share or two"

had been resorted to several times in the course of the last few years, and Robert had begun to lie awake at nights, pondering uneasily about the future. The lines in his forehead had deepened into furrows, but his eyes were clear and bright as ever; he moved in the same quick, alert fashion, and his laugh rang full and joyous as a boy's.

Piers Rendall's dark hair had turned grey--a curious dark shade of grey which gave an effect of _poudre_. The change gave an added distinction to his appearance, and showed the dark eyes and eyebrows in striking contrast. He was thin, however, and the nervous twitching of the features was more frequent than of old.

As for Vanna, what attractions she possessed had never been of the golden-haired, pink-cheeked category, and there was consequently little change visible at a casual glance. She was prettily dressed in a soft blue gown, and the stag-like setting of the head, the arched black brows, and the delicate oval of the face were untouched. Love and work had filled her life, and her expression was both sweet and strong; but there were new lines written on her face--lines whose secret no one knew but herself.

All these years Vanna had been fighting a battle--a battle against self and fate. When at the end of her hospital course _she_ had settled down in her own house, Piers had been hotly indignant at discovering that the same embargo as of old was to be laid against his visits. One night a week! The thing was preposterous. He had given way to her wishes, had been patient and self-sacrificing, more patient than ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have been under the circ.u.mstances. He had waited, marking off the months as they pa.s.sed, counting on the future to reward him for his abstinence, and now was she going to put him off again, to forbid him the house, to treat him like a common acquaintance? He stormed and argued, Vanna stood firm. They parted for the first time in coldness and anger, but the next day Piers took back his words, and begged for forgiveness.

"You may be right, I don't know. Women are so confoundedly calm and reasoning; but it's hard, Vanna! If you knew how I long for you--what a lost, aimless wretch I feel hanging about, knowing that you are alone--a few streets off! It was easier when you were shut up in hospital and I couldn't get to you; but now! Sometimes it drives me half mad. You can't blame me for flaring out. It's because I love you, darling--love you so wildly. You wouldn't have me love you less?"

"No! a thousand times no." Yet no persuasion could move Vanna from her point. On that one evening a week she was all that the most ardent lover could desire; with every power she possessed she strove to secure the perfection of that hour. Piers's favourite dishes appeared at dinner; his favourite flowers decked the rooms; she rested during the day, so as to be at her best and brightest in the evening, dressed herself in his favourite colours, lavished love upon him in generous, unstinted flow. Every evening he left her aglow with love, chafing at the thought of the time which must elapse before their next meeting, breathing out threats of rebellion. Now and again he did indeed break through the rule, making an excuse of an opportunity to take Vanna to some special entertainment; but these occasions had the excitement of stolen pleasures, and were not allowed to become common.

Sometimes when Piers was visited by one of his black fits of depression; when she realised that these fits grew more frequent with each year as it pa.s.sed, Vanna knew a terrible sinking of the heart. But she strove valiantly to disguise it even from herself, for she realised that for her wisdom lay in living in the present and resolutely shutting her eyes to the future. Piers also she strove to inoculate with this doctrine, forcing him to see outside reasons for his depression.

"Our love is more perfect, we mean more to each other than nine out of ten married couples. If we have not their joys, we are spared their griefs. Dearest, is any human being really content? Is he _meant_ to be content? The animals are peaceful and satisfied to browse, and eat, and lie down and sleep; they are in their rightful environment, but we as spiritual beings are wandering adrift. The divine spark within is eternally urging us on, further, higher--casting aside the baubles. It is not a fault; it's a birthright. We can be patient, but never, never content."

"Robert--"

"No! He has Jean, and she has his heart, but he wants her to be stronger; he wants to be richer for her sake. He craves for the perfection which he can never know."