"I think Sister Vanna had better apply for the vacant 'place,' and take possession until you are strong. Would you like to have me with you, dear? We have been having rather a strenuous time lately, and when the present inmates leave at the end of this week, I should be quite glad to shut the house and give the staff a rest. It's a poor thing if I give my life to nursing, and can't wait upon my one friend when she needs me.

Would you like to have me?"

Needless to say, Jean was enchanted at the prospect; so was Robert when he returned at the close of the day; so also, more inexplicably, was Piers himself. Vanna had been prepared for expostulations against a proposal which would leave her less free for his visits, but none came, and their absence added to the dull weight of oppression which had hung over her ever since the evening when she had heard of Edith Morton's engagement. Try as she would to live in the present, and avoid vain imaginings, she could not blind herself to a certain change in Piers, which seemed to increase rather than diminish. It was not a lessening of love; never had she known him more devoted, more pa.s.sionately her own; but in his tenderness was an element of sorrow, of self-reproach, which chilled her heart. Piers was sorry for her! Some thing was working in his mind, the knowledge of which must give her pain. What could it be?

The revelation came one evening after she had been located for some weeks in the Gloucester _menage_, and for all her forebodings, found her unprepared.

"Vanna, I have something to tell you to-night. I have been trying to say it for some time. Darling, can you be brave?"

Vanna looked at him sharply. They were sitting together on a sofa drawn up before the fire, and the kindly glow hid the sudden whitening of her cheeks. She leant back against the pillows, feeling faint and sick with the rapid beating of her heart.

"Not--very, Piers! Tell me quickly. Don't wait."

"Vanna, I'm going abroad."

Her eyes dilated with surprise. This was not what she had expected.

Compared with the greater dread, the announcement came almost as a relief. She struggled with the oppression in her throat and breathed a breathless, "Where?"

"To India. I have a chance. A junior partner is invalided home. I can take his place for a few years. It is the best thing--I am sure of it.

I have made up my mind."

"Is it because you are--_tired_ of me, Piers?"

He turned upon her in pa.s.sionate protest.

"Tired? Heaven knows I am tired; tired to the soul of waiting for the woman I love; of eternal fighting against self! It's more than I can bear. I can't go on without some change, some break."

"You would find it easier to leave me?"

He hesitated, shrinking, then braced himself to a painful effort.

"Yes! it would be easier. You think me brutal, but I am a man. I cannot endure this life. If you cannot be my wife, I must go. It is hard to part, but it will help us both, and after a year or two we can begin afresh. I have been trying to tell you. I was thankful to know you were to be here, with Jean, for I must sail soon. In a few weeks."

"Yes." Vanna had a sudden rending remembrance of the moment when she sat in Dr Greatman's consulting-room, and heard her life laid waste.

Now, as then, she felt no disposition to weep or lament; the fountains of her heart were frozen, and she was numb with pain. "Yes; I suppose so. The best time for the Red Sea. You must avoid the heat... You will enjoy the voyage, Piers."

Her frozen calm was more piteous than tears. Piers groaned, and buried his face in his hands.

"Oh, Vanna, Vanna! my poor, poor darling! What must you think of me? I have failed you after all my vows; and yet, G.o.d knows, it is _because_ I love you, because my love is stronger than myself, that I must go! You will never understand, but can't you believe me? Can't you trust me still?"

"I know you love me, Piers. Will you write to me when you are away?"

"Will I write? Do you need to ask? I shall live for your letters.

There will be nothing else to look for but their arrival, and being able to write back, and tell you all my thoughts. I'll make a diary for you, dearest; write something every day, so that each mail shall bring you a small volume. We have always maintained that distance could make no difference to our love, but it does this much, darling--it silences angry words! I have made you miserable with my repinings many times these last years; but whatever I might feel, I could never endure to send a hard word travelling to you across the world. It may be happier for you, darling--more peaceful."

She smiled--a wan, strained smile.

"I won't try to keep you, Piers, if you want to go, but--I can't pretend! Letters can never make up. I have been happy--happier than I even thought I could be; but Jean was right, Robert was right--it has not been fair to you. I should not have consented, but I loved you so; I was so tempted. Even now I am not sorry. No; I am _not_ sorry! Even if I never see you again, I have had these years--six years of happiness and love, and you are still young, you have your life ahead--"

He stopped her with his lips on hers.

"You don't meant it, you don't believe it. Don't hurt me, my heart! Be generous; be patient; and I'll come back more your own than ever. It's because I love you--because I love you--."

That was the strain which he dinned into her ears--the one fundamental fact on which all arguments hung; but Vanna's sore heart could find in it no solid comfort. A love which finds separation easier than loving intercourse is incomprehensible to a woman's mind.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

MARKING TIME.

Robert and Jean were not surprised. That was the fact which, for Vanna, stood out in conspicuous relief. They were grieved, sympathetic, unspeakably tender towards her; but she divined that if they felt any surprise, it was not that Piers had found his present position untenable, but rather that he should have been able to endure it so long. That they should feel so, who were her dearest, most admiring friends, planted a sharp stab in Vanna's heart, yet it was to them that she owed what poor comfort was to be found during the long intolerable weeks before Piers's departure.

Jean said little. In her own hour of blackness she had discovered the futility of words, but in a hundred quiet, exquisitely tactful ways she forced upon Vanna the importance of what remained: of the place which she occupied in so many lives; of her own love and need.

"You will never know what you have been to me, Vanna! I have often wanted to tell you; but it isn't easy to speak of these things. I think after one has married and settled down, one needs a woman friend more than ever. There is so much that even the best and tenderest of men can't understand. You've been my safety-valve and my prop. Multiply my grat.i.tude by the number of all the poor souls whom you have nursed and tended, and you will realise your riches. Thoughts _help_, Vanna--I'm convinced of that--loving, thankful thoughts going out towards you from all parts of the land. It's impossible that your life should be cold or bald--"

"Is it, Jean, is it? It sounds very sweet, dear, and very lofty; but put yourself in my place. Would all the grat.i.tude in the world cheer you if Robert went away?"

The colour flooded Jean's face, then slowly ebbed away, leaving her pale and wan.

"No," she sighed, breathlessly. "No; nothing! There would be no comfort. He is everything to me--everything! More, a thousand times more, than when we were married; but, Vanna, can you believe it? there have been times during these last years when I have envied _you_. The balance hasn't been _all_ on my side. To be well; to be strong; to be able to run about, and plan out one's life; to say 'I will do this, I will do that'; to shut up house at a day's notice, shake off responsibilities, and go away for long, lovely rests--oh, it has seemed so _good_! When we were young we took health for granted: one has to be ill to realise how it counts; how desperately it counts. Love is said to triumph over all; but, Vanna dear, one needs to be well to be able even to love. That sounds strange, but it's true; there's no feeling left. Often and often I've longed all day for Robert to come home, and after he has been in the room for five minutes, I've longed for him to go away again. I've been too tired! Of course every woman does not suffer as I have done; but then how many have a husband like Robert? I tell him sometimes that my bad health is the price I've had to pay for having a saint for my husband. If I'd kept well, it would have been too perfect. One does not get everything... And the children--little pets!

they love me now; I am a sort of G.o.d to them; all that I do is right; but sometimes as I hold them a pang goes through my heart; such a pang!

_I know it won't last_! I shall go on loving them more and more, _needing_ them more; but they will grow past me. They will make their own lives, their own friends, and I shall retreat farther and farther into the background. They will love me still; I shall be the 'dear old mater; but they won't need me any more.' I won't really touch their lives. I remember how father loved me, and how I left him without a pang! Is it _possible_ that he felt as I should do, if Lorna or Joyce... The young are cruel to the old--"

Thus Jean, with many tender, loving words; but Vanna noted with a pang that she never once expressed the belief which alone could have brought comfort--the belief that Piers would speedily return home, and remain faithful until death.

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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tution 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 fete_, 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!"