At the bottom of the lawn there was a privet hedge cut by a broad path that went through the orchard. She knew what she would find there; her mother was in the orchard. She would lift her up in her arms to play with the hard red balls of the apples that hung from the tree. She had got back to the farthest memory of all; there was nothing beyond it.
There would be an iron gate in the wall of the orchard. It would lead into a field.
Something was different here, something that frightened her. An ash-grey door instead of an iron gate.
She pushed it open and came into the last corridor of the Hotel Saint Pierre.
THE TOKEN
I
I have only known one absolutely adorable woman, and that was my brother’s wife, Cicely Dunbar.
Sisters-in-law do not, I think, invariably adore each other, and I am aware that my chief merit in Cicely’s eyes was that I am Donald’s sister; but for me there was no question of extraneous quality—it was all pure Cicely.
And how Donald—But then, like all the Dunbars, Donald suffers from being Scottish, so that, if he has a feeling, he makes it a point of honour to pretend he hasn’t it. I daresay he let himself go a bit during his courtship, when he was not, strictly speaking, himself; but after he had once married her I think he would have died rather than have told Cicely in so many words that he loved her. And Cicely wanted to be told. You say she ought to have known without telling? You don’t know Donald. You can’t conceive the perverse ingenuity he could put into hiding his affection. He has that peculiar temper—I think it’s Scottish—that delights in snubbing and faultfinding and defeating expectation. If he knows you want him to do a thing, that alone is reason enough with Donald for not doing it. And my sister, who was as transparent as white crystal, was never able to conceal a want. So that Donald could, as we said, “have” her at every turn.
And, then, I don’t think my brother really knew how ill she was. He didn’t want to know. Besides, he was so wrapt up in trying to finish his “Development of Social Economics” (which, by the way, he hasn’t finished yet) that he had no eyes to see what we all saw: that, the way her poor little heart was going, Cicely couldn’t have very long to live.
Of course he understood that this was why, in those last months, they had to have separate rooms. And this in the first year of their marriage when he was still violently in love with her.
I keep those two facts firmly in my mind when I try to excuse Donald; for it was the main cause of that unkindness and perversity which I find it so hard to forgive. Even now, when I think how he used to discharge it on the poor little thing, as if it had been her fault, I have to remind myself that the lamb’s innocence made her a little trying.
She couldn’t understand why Donald didn’t want to have her with him in his library any more while he read or wrote. It seemed to her sheer cruelty to shut her out now when she was ill, seeing that, before she was ill, she had always had her chair by the fireplace, where she would sit over her book or her embroidery for hours without speaking, hardly daring to breathe lest she should interrupt him. Now was the time, she thought, when she might expect a little indulgence.
Do you suppose that Donald would give his feelings as an explanation? Not he. They were his feelings, and he wouldn’t talk about them; and he never explained anything you didn’t understand.
That—her wanting to sit with him in the library—was what they had the awful quarrel about, the day before she died: that and the paper-weight, the precious paper-weight that he wouldn’t let anybody touch because George Meredith had given it him. It was a brass block, surmounted by a white alabaster Buddha painted and gilt. And it had an inscription: To Donald Dunbar, from George Meredith. In Affectionate Regard.
My brother was extremely attached to this paper-weight, partly, I’m afraid, because it proclaimed his intimacy with the great man. For this reason it was known in the family ironically as the Token.
It stood on Donald’s writing-table at his elbow, so near the ink-pot that the white Buddha had received a splash or two. And this evening Cicely had come in to us in the library, and had annoyed Donald by staying in it when he wanted her to go. She had taken up the Token, and was cleaning it to give herself a pretext.
She died after the quarrel they had then.
It began by Donald shouting at her.
“What are you doing with that paper-weight?”
“Only getting the ink off.”
I can see her now, the darling. She had wetted the corner of her handkerchief with her little pink tongue and was rubbing the Buddha. Her hands had begun to tremble when he shouted.
“Put it down, can’t you? I’ve told you not to touch my things.”
“I’ve told you not to touch my things.”
“You inked him,” she said. She was giving one last rub as he rose, threatening.
“Put—it—down.”
And, poor child, she did put it down. Indeed, she dropped it at his feet.
“Oh!” she cried out, and stooped quickly and picked it up. Her large tear-glassed eyes glanced at him, frightened.
“He isn’t broken.”
“No thanks to you,” he growled.
“You beast! You know I’d die rather than break anything you care about.”
“It’ll be broken some day, if you will come meddling.”
I couldn’t bear it. I said, “You mustn’t yell at her like that. You know she can’t stand it. You’ll make her ill again.”
That sobered him for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” he said; but he made it sound as if he wasn’t.
“If you’re sorry,” she persisted, “you might let me stay with you. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”
“No; I don’t want you—I can’t work with you in the room.”
“You can work with Helen.”
“You’re not Helen.”
“He only means he’s not in love with me, dear.”
“He means I’m no use to him. I know I’m not. I can’t even sit on his manuscripts and keep them down. He cares more for that damned paper-weight than he does for me.”
“Well—George Meredith gave it me.”
“And nobody gave you me. I gave myself.”
That worked up his devil again. He had to torment her.
“It can’t have cost you much,” he said. “And I may remind you that the paper-weight has some intrinsic value.”
With that he left her.
“What’s he gone out for?” she asked me.
“Because he’s ashamed of himself, I suppose,” I said. “Oh, Cicely, why will you answer him? You know what he is.”
“No!” she said passionately—“that’s what I don’t know. I never have known.”
“At least you know