Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1924)

" It will be a hard life at first," he said. ■before it and slipped a well-shone key into the feebling lock. She raised the lid. " What are you going to do, dear?" Robert asked. " I thought I'd just look over the diary I've kept all these years, dear,'' she replied. " I've kept it up to date since the first time I ever met your father, and ... I thought that if I read over some of the things we have done together, brought back the past again, perhaps it might . . . Do you know what I mean?" "A revitaliser?" asked John gently. And she smiled and nodded. " That's it, dear. You understand. Somehow, you always understand." HTrying in one way and another to pass that dreadful time away, smoking thinking, feeling, fidgetting, the " children '' gathered round the old lady. In some way they sensed the inner fight that was going on within her heart to save the life of her husband in the next room, and they knew tbat if it could be done mother would do it. She turned the leaves of the fading book, and had to peer at the fading ink on its pages before she could read, well as she knew most of it by heart. Menu res anu ricrurepuer It had been born with their love and side by side with it had grown old in their service. It was a quaint old book. It seemed to have silver hair and a dainty white cap. It was perfumed with lavender, and none of the " children " there had ever read a word of it. Mother turned its pages gently, reverently. It seemed almost an act of religion with her. She spoke softly but in such low tones that only John could catch a word, and then but a word or two here and there. " I remember it all," she said. " T remember the very first day, and the very first moment. I had gone to father's office one day, and John was a clerk there. I dropped my parasol and he stooped and picked it up for me. When he handed it back he looked at me, and I knew I was 'in love. . . . " I felt so tiny, so small to be in love, for love is a great big thing, much bigger than any of us when first we meet it. We must grow up with love. . . But small as I was I knew that love had come to me that day, and something in John's eyes told me that he knew love had come to him. Although we had not exchanged a word, we had a secret to share. It was the first secret I had ever had apart from my parents. " \Y/e met again, of course, and then John sent me letters. The most beautiful letters they were, and I have them still, locked in a drawer here. I answered them, and we had to use the greatest diplomacy. Susan — how she comes back to me ; I see her now, though she has been called away these many years — Susan, my maid, acted as carrier, and nobody but the three of us knew of their existence. My first little secret. . . " And then one day I told my father. . . " Told him. You never knew your grandfather Marlowe, children, not to remember him. In temper he was terrible and he was terrible that night. ' A clerk!' he said, and seemed to think he had said all that mattered when he uttered those two words. ' But not a mere clerk, father,' said I, and your father never was that. But papa would hear no more. I — I was locked in my bedroom and watched by the servants. NOVEMBER 1924 day and night, and forbidden ever again to correspond with John. " Well, well . . . Some parents forget what love has been to them . . . And some don't. . . On the second night John came for me, climbed the ivy on the wall of our old house at Blackheath. I opened the window and admitted him and he told me to prepare, at once that we were to be married next day, and proceed to America. It would be a hard life at first, he said, but we would win through. " T did as he told me. Always I have done as he told me. And we were married and went to America and — and it was a hard life. A hard life in a hard land. . . Day and night John worked for me, making friends, making enemies, making his — our — fortune. Enemies, yes. One night they came for him, cut-throats from a mining camp, for some part he had played in a brawl, and when they fought it was a fight to the death. Father's friends stood by us and they barricaded the camp. We all fought through to dawn, and my firstborn, the little brother you never knew, a mite in his cradle, died that night . . . " But I stood by John. I did not tell him till all was over. Lest his resolve, which was the only thing that held us all together — lest it should break under thestrain — I did not tell him, but nursed the little corpse for four hours, until we won. John needed me then. He always — needed me . . . " Strong years. But we were together . . . " T remember how we went away, yes — and I remember how we came back. Not as we went, children. We came back wealthy and respected. And for the great way in which your father represented his country out there they gave him his knighthood, and I was — Lady Carlton. Proud days, and we were still together. One of the proudest was when my father came to me and acknowledged that he had been mistaken about John — and that I had been right. " Arid then. ... I remember .... " I remember Mrs. Mainwaring. " From her I first learnt that in the past . . . that John had secrets, too — secrets at which I had never guessed, emotions I had never suspected or shared, passions . . . Mrs. Mainwaring. She came. " It^seemed at first as if the very world had collapsed for me. It seemed as if I had ceased to live, and that mv feelings at that moment were a mocking echo of life that had been, manv long ages ago. My John. . . Not my fohn . . . I was like a rose beneath a cruel heel. How could life ever be the same for me again? Che came, and she sneered at my love •^ for Tohn— my paltry love, as she called it. She said that I could never feel for Tohn the passion that she felt, and I smiled, for that was true enough, I do not doubt. She told me I could never love him as she loved him, and at that too I smiled. And then she said