Part 55 (1/2)
Rames, S. S. Perhaps, Tilbury Docks.
As she read her face changed. There came a look of introspection in her dark, wide-open eyes. She swept back in her thoughts over the course of years and took note of the irony of things and of the surprising changes in a life like hers which, to all the world, was uneventful and prescribed.
”I remember,” she said. ”These are the good wishes sent to you when you started. You once told me that you never opened them.”
”I hadn't the time. We had to catch the tide out of London. We were late getting away. I had forgotten that I had kept them all.”
”I am going to open them.”
”It is too late to answer them.”
”I wonder.”
Cynthia opened the telegrams until she came upon one about half through the number which arrested her attention. This she spread out before her and smiled at its phrasing.
”Harry!” she said.
Rames turned about.
”Yes?”
”Come and read this.”
He stood behind Cynthia's chair and read aloud the message still legible upon the form.
”Every heart-felt wish for a triumphant journey from an unknown friend in--;” and then he stopped with an intake of his breath. ”In South America,” he resumed, and so stood quite still for the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds. Then he leaned forward and looked at the name of the telegraph office from which the message had been sent.
”Daventry,” he cried.
”Yes,” said Cynthia with a little laugh upon which her voice broke.
”We had a telegraph office on the estancia. We were very proud of it, I can tell you”; and then the amus.e.m.e.nt died away from her voice, and ”oh!” she whispered in a long sigh, as she felt his arm about her.
”You sent that! You! Cynthia! Before I knew you, before we met.”
”Yes, dear, I sent it.”
”Just think,” he cried. ”It reached me at Tilbury. It travelled out with me to the South. It was in the desk in my cabin for three long dark winters. It came back with me to England. By chance I met you----”
”No, not by chance, Harry,” Cynthia interrupted. ”I sent Mr. Benoliel to fetch you.”
”Yes, you did,” he agreed, with a laugh. ”We met, and we married, and through all these changes it has lain here unopened. Why didn't I open it? That was conceit, Cynthia. I was haughty. I was going out to discover the South Pole. I didn't open my telegrams.”
”But if you had opened it, Harry, you would only have laughed. For it's just the message of a schoolgirl, isn't it? You were one of my heroes--oh, not the only one but the latest one--I had just let you in past the turnstile to my enchanted garden. I was seventeen on the very day I sent it. I drove down to the office--oh in such a condition of importance. I pictured to myself you, the unknown you, sitting in your cabin and wondering and wondering and wondering who your little friend was in South America. Then I drove back and”--she stopped and went on again slowly--”yes, other things happened to me that day.” She looked down again at the telegram. ”Yes, the message of a foolish and romantic school-girl.”
”I should like to be able to think, Cynthia,” said her husband, ”that I had opened it when it came.”
”But you didn't,” said Cynthia, ”and so--” she broke off her sentence.
She took the telegram form, folded it, and replaced it in its envelope. She took a brush from a little bottle of gum which stood ready upon the table by the inkstand and, smearing the inner border of the envelope, stuck it down again. Then she stood up and turned to her husband. ”And so,” she continued, ”you must take it, Harry, as though it were despatched to you by me only to-day for the first time and delivered to you here now at midnight.”
She held out to him the telegram and he took it, gazing at her with a look of wonder. And then hope flamed in his eyes. Cynthia turned away abruptly. To her that swift flame of hope, of life, was almost intolerable.