‘I want you to come down again as soon as possible after it,’ she said, ‘because it seems so inevitable that you must be here to take part in this great joy of Dick’s and mine. You see, Jack, I can’t remember a single joy or sorrow of my life with which you and Dick were not bound up, as it were. And this--the greatest of all. Do come as soon as mother writes to you.’
The dusk began to fall in layers over the sky, and the evening breeze got up and tossed the incense of the flowers’ evensong over the garden. Then, as night closed in, the smell of syringa and lilac fell asleep, and the sweet-peas closed, and the benediction of the stars shone from the heights of heaven. Then Margery rose from her chair, and held out both hands to me.
‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, ‘every day I thank God for giving me you as my friend and Dick’s. For years I have done that, even when I was a child. And now that I am a woman, and the crown of womanhood is coming to me, I tell you this, and I ask you to continue to be the friend of all of us. I thank you, Jack; I bless you with my whole heart.’
My God, how content I was at that moment! For at that moment the foe which I had been fighting all the year, whose sword was jealousy of Dick, whose spear was bitterness of heart, whose armour was the human longing and the crying of the flesh for this woman, dropped dead. No longer would I have had anything different: all was utterly good; and she whom I loved stood over me in the gathering silence of the night, and under her feet lay that devilish enemy whom her goodness and sweetness had slain.
We dined with great gaiety and foolishness, and dinner was succeeded by absurd games, in which the two members of the alliance of laughter did wonders for the cause. Then Margery and her mother went upstairs, and I strolled into the garden again to smoke for half an hour before going to bed, with the reaction of laughter rather strong upon me, and feeling, in spite of what had happened before dinner, vaguely disquieted and depressed, and my mind went back and dwelt with curious insistence on the hallucination of Dick’s voice the night before. Then, even while I was pondering on the strangeness of it, and telling myself that I must have been asleep, I suddenly heard the clang of the gate leading from the road to the front-door on the other side of the house, followed by the crunching of gravel, and after a moment the sound of the front-door bell. At that a sudden nameless fear leaped into my heart, and before the bell sounded again I was at the front-door. Outside was a telegraph-boy, with a War Office telegram addressed to Margery. I took it from him, closed the door quietly, and stood there with it in my hand, struck motionless and incapable of thought.