Читать книгу The Uncounted Cost - Mary Gaunt - Страница 3

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"Land me, she says, where love

Shows but one shaft, one dove,

One heart, one hand.

—A shore like that, my dear,

Lies where no man will steer,

No maiden land."

ANNE LOVAT was coming along the pathway when she caught a glimpse of Kitty Pearce's face between the clustering pink roses that festooned the window. It wore no welcoming smile, such as she felt she had a right to expect. Kitty must have seen her, yet she moved back quickly, and for a moment Anne stood still and debated whether she should go back. But Lettingbourne was an hour from Victoria, and The Cottage at least twenty minutes' walk from the railway station, and she was hot and very thirsty. Besides, Kitty was good-nature personified. Anne guessed what was the matter. Mrs Pearce was entertaining her latest admirer and did not want her tete-a-tete to be interrupted. A natural attitude, her cousin would have thought, if her desire had been for one man, but Anne sighed as she remembered the husband in West Africa, and the many others who dangled round pretty Kitty. Then she laughed a little. She did not believe there was any real harm in Kitty. Her speech might be cynical but her actions were invariably kind, and she felt no one would be more sorry than Mrs Pearce if her self-invited guest went away without tea. She went quietly round to the back door.

Sitting on the kitchen doorstep, her face hidden in her apron, sobbing noisily and heart-brokenly, was a damsel in the neat black dress and smart white cuffs and collar of a maid-servant. Anne stood still and surveyed her for a moment, but the girl was lost to everything but her own woe.

"Why, Ellis?" she asked at last, "what is the matter?"

There was a pause, then Ellis apparently swallowed her grief, raised a face sodden with tears and looked at Anne with swimming eyes.

"It's—it's Sam Latimer, please, miss."

Anne was all sympathy in a moment. "Sam Latimer! Oh, poor Ellis, is he ill? But Mrs Pearce will let you go down to see him. You can go to-night and I'll stay and help her."

"He isn't ill, miss," with a gasping sob. "He's disrated. That's what's the matter."

"Disrated? Oh, Ellis, are you sure you aren't making a mistake? Why, Lieutenant Bullen told me only the other day that he's one of their best stoker petty officers."

"But he must be disrated, miss," cried Ellis, with a fresh burst of weeping. "He's given me the go-by, the chuck. Here's his letter, and he says as how he can't marry me," and she held out a crumpled ball of damp paper to Anne.

Anne straightened out the sheets. Sam Latimer had been very brief, apparently considering that the least said under the circumstances the better, and he had written down his change of mind in a neat round schoolboy hand. "I'm very sorry, but I can't marry you," was the burden of his song.

Anne considered the matter. Fair before her lay her own life. She was very sure of a man's love, the love of the one man in the world for her, and her own assured position made her very pitiful and tender-hearted to those who were less fortunate. She searched for some comforting word to say.

"Don't cry, Ellis, don't cry. You see he says he's sorry. Perhaps there is some mistake. I know Lieutenant Bullen; shall I ask him to speak to Sam Latimer for you?"

Ellis gulped down the remainder of her sobs. "I was wondering if I dare ask Captain Cunningham, miss," she said. "Sam thinks a sight of him and he's in the drawing-room."

Captain Cunningham was in the drawing-room. Enlightenment came to Anne. She liked the commander of the Irrepressible, and had always heard his praises sung by the man whose word was her gospel. Then she inquired further.

"Is Captain Cunningham going to stay to dinner?"

"Yes, miss."

Then, thought Anne, I can certainly stay for tea without trespassing unduly.

"Go and tell your mistress I am here," she said.

Kitty rose to receive her with a smile. "Anne!" she said, "how nice to see you again! Why, you haven't been down for ages!"

"No," said Anne diplomatically, "and I am afraid I can't stay very long now. I have to get back to dinner." O mendacious Anne! "But I thought I should just have time for a cup of tea. How do you do, Captain Cunningham?"

Cunningham had naval officer written all over him, from his clean-shaven, ugly, intellectual face to the soles of his serviceable boots, and he rose up smiling, greeted Anne and found a chair for her while Kitty, quite easy in her mind now that she understood Anne did not intend to stay, busied herself with the tea.

"Isn't Ellis a picture of woe?" said Kitty, as her maid left the room after replenishing the teapot, "a living picture. I should label her: 'Alas for the love that lasts alway.' Now how long will it take her to get over the gentleman's defection? Two months? I think I must ask you to lend me a nice-looking sailor-man, Captain Cunningham, to do up my garden. If he's appreciative it would be a certain cure."

"But I've been privileged to read his letter," put in Anne, "and from the point of view of an outsider I am by no means sure that the gentleman at the bottom of his heart wants to give her up. He was repenting while he wrote. If she could see him, and if somebody would put in a good word for her——" She looked across at Cunningham and smiled, and he answered her smile.

"The number of disconsolate wives and sweethearts who appeal to the captain of a ship is astonishing," he said with a little laugh. "It's not much good appealing to O'Flaherty though. He just chucks the effusions in the waste-paper basket."

"I suppose they have better luck with the commander," suggested Anne, smiling into the keen clever face.

"Well, I think he's more of a fool," said Cunningham.

"It's wisdom not to interfere with other people's love affairs," said Kitty, leaning back comfortably in her arm-chair. "Let a man love while he can, and when he can't keep it up any longer don't try and heat up cold porridge, it's never worth anything. Don't you meddle, Captain Cunningham, or only to the extent of a nice man to do up my garden. That's my idea of a cure."

"It isn't mine," said Anne with fervour and a little blush at her own earnestness. "I do believe there is such a thing as a love that lasts for ever. What would life be worth otherwise?"

"My poor Anne!" said Kitty. "Is that your confession of faith? Haven't you realised yet that the virtuous world is an extremely dull one? And you call yourself a novelist!"

"Dull to read about," said Anne, "but I don't think it's dull to live in. Happy is the woman who has no history."

"And happier is the woman who has many. Tom, Dick, and Harry come awooing, and they all do it differently, and they all do it delightfully. Now take my advice, Captain Cunningham, and don't speak to that stoker petty officer as man to man. I see in your eyes that's what you are contemplating."

Cunningham laughed, and looked from one woman to the other.

"I could do that," he said, "and I'd probably have some influence, more especially if you gave Ellis a day off and she came down to Sheerness and met him on the mat when I send him ashore."

"And in a year's time two people would be hating Captain Cunningham," laughed Kitty. "Ellis will remember she missed my nice young gardener."

"Oh, do, Captain Cunningham," begged Anne. "I know Kitty. She isn't nearly as bad as she pretends to be. If you talk to that faithless petty officer to-morrow she will give Ellis the afternoon off."

"This cousin of mine, Captain Cunningham," said Kitty whimsically, "is the most fervent believer in true love, true love spelt with a very large capital L. Every man keeps his vows or he wouldn't make them, and every woman—well, every woman is prepared to sacrifice her uttermost farthing in the cause."

Anne blushed, but she blushed happily, for she believed that she at least had found true happiness, whatever the rest of the world might have done.

"Why should I not believe in goodness and truth," she said, "for after all that's what it means?"

"The side issues, you observe," said Kitty, "are as nothing to this budding novelist. It's easy to see why she doesn't keep her motor car. Now Stoker Petty Officer Latimer sees a pretty girl and he wants to kiss her—what more natural? Why should he be bound to one? I don't see why you should restrict a poor sailor-man's pleasures in this way. He hasn't many."

"But poor Ellis?" put in Anne, thinking of the sobbing girl on the back doorstep.

"You must have a thunderstorm occasionally, it clears the air. When Ellis sees my nice new gardener—oh, mine's the best plan! If Captain Cunningham patches this up a year hence the pair will be calling down something very different from blessings upon his head. I recommend the gardener, and after the gardener, say the grocer, and then perhaps another petty officer until——"

"She finds out she's missed all the sweetness in life," said Anne, rising. "Kitty, I must go"—Kitty, she knew, would be pleased with her discretion, "but I want to be sure before I do that Captain Cunningham will speak to Stoker Petty Officer Latimer as man to man," she laughed, "and find out whether he really is tired of Ellis, or whether his mother and sister have been 'saying things' and in his heart he's hankering to recall that letter."

"I will, Miss Lovat, I assure you I will," said Cunningham. "And if Mrs Pearce will send the damsel down to Sheerness to-morrow afternoon I'll see that Latimer is on the pier at three o'clock and risk their hating me for the remainder of their days."

"Thank you," said Anne gratefully. "Now I must go, after a word with Ellis."

"Tell her she must cheer up," said Kitty. "No man was ever won by tears, and she'd better put on her very best frock, and smile as if the world belonged to her, and she didn't care a straw whether she married him or not."

"Is that the way to manage a man?" asked Cunningham.

"The average man," said Kitty. "But it is very unwise to let you behind the scenes like this. Anne, if you must catch the five fifty-two——"

"I must run, I know. Now, Captain Cunningham, everything depends upon you. Good-bye. Good-bye, Kitty dear. Mind you let me know the end of Ellis' love story."