I had expected.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, well, you know. I felt so awkward; she started everything. I didn’t have any say in it at all. I had thought it was up to me to do all that.”
“Betty’s not that sort.”
“No, but it’s a funny business.”
“You are coming out next week, though?”
“Rather!”
And next week Dolly, as soon as she was alone with Roland, began to ask him questions about Brewster: “What did he say to you? What did he think of her? Was she nice to him? You must tell me all about it.”
“Oh, I think he enjoyed himself all right. She startled him a bit.”
“Did she? What did he say? Do tell me.”
She asked him question after question, and he had to repeat to her every word he could remember of Brewster’s conversation. Did he still feel shy? Did he think Betty beautiful? Was he at all in love with her? And then Roland began to ask what Betty had thought of Brewster. Had she preferred him to Howard? She wasn’t disappointed in him? Did she like him better than the other boys? They talked eagerly.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to go back and have a look at them?” said Dolly. “I’d give anything to see them together.”
Their eyes met, and suddenly, with a fervor they had never reached before, they kissed.
CHAPTER VI
APRIL’S LOOKING-GLASS
FOR April the term which brought Roland so much excitement was slow in passing. In spite of the disastrous evening at the ball, Roland’s return to school left a void in her life. When she awoke in the morning and stretched herself in bed before getting up she would ask herself what good thing she could expect that day to bring her. When she felt happy she would demand the reason of herself. “Over what are you happy?” she would ask herself. “In five minutes’ time you will get up. You will put on your dressing-gown and hurry down the corridor to the bathroom. You will dress hurriedly, but come down all the same a little late for breakfast. You will find that your father has eaten, as is his wont, more than his share of toast, which will mean that you, being the last down, will have to go without it. You will rush down to school saying over to yourself the dates of your history lesson. You will hang your hat and coat on the fourth row of pegs and on the seventh peg from the right. From nine o’clock to ten you will be heard your history lesson. From ten o’clock till eleven you will take down notes on chemistry. From eleven to a quarter past there will be an interval during which you will try to find a friend to help you with the Latin translation, of which you prepared only the first thirty lines last night. From a quarter-past eleven till a quarter-past twelve you will be heard that lesson. At a quarter-past twelve you will attend a lecture on English literature, which will last till one o’clock. You will then have lunch, and as to-day is Tuesday you know that your lunch will consist of boiled mutton and caper sauce, followed by apple dumpling. In the afternoon you will have gymnastics and a music lesson, after which there will be an hour of Mademoiselle’s French conversation class. You will then come home. You will hurry your tea in the hope of being able to finish your preparation before your father comes back from the office at twenty minutes to seven, because when once he is back your mother will begin to talk, and when she begins to talk work becomes impossible. You will then dine with your parents at half-past seven. You will sit perfectly quiet at the table and not say a word, while your mother talks and talks and father listens and occasionally says, ‘Yes, mother,’ or ‘No, mother.’ After dinner you will read a book in the drawing-room till your mother reminds you that it is nine o’clock and time that you were in bed. You have, in fact, before you a day similar in every detail to yesterday, and similar in every detail to to-morrow. If you think anything different is going to happen to you, then you are a little fool.” And April would have to confess that this self-catechism was true. “Nothing happens,” she would say. “One day is like another, and I am a little fool to wake up in the morning excited about nothing at all.”
But all the same she was excited and she did feel, in spite of reason, that something was bound to happen soon. “Things cannot go on like this for ever,” she told herself. And, looking into the future, she came gradually to look upon the day of Roland’s return from school as the event which would alter, in a way she could not discern, the whole tenor of her life. It was not in these words that the idea was presented to her. “It may be different during the holidays when Roland is here.” That was her first thought, from which the words “when Roland is here” detached themselves, starting another train of thought, that “Life when Roland is here is always different”; and she began to look forward to the holidays, counting the days till his return. “Things will be different then.”
It was not love, it was not friendship; it was simply the belief that Roland’s presence would be a key to that world other than this, of which shadowy intimations haunted her continually. Roland became the focus for her disquiet, her longing, her vague appreciation of the eternal essence made manifest for her in the passing phenomena of life.
“When Roland comes back. …” And though she marked on the calendar that hung in her bedroom April 2, the last day of her own term, with a big red cross, it was April 5 that she regarded as the real beginning of her holidays. And when she came down to breakfast and her father said to her, “Only seven more days now, April,” she would answer gayly, “Yes, only a week. Isn’t it lovely?” But to herself she would add, “Ten days, only ten days more!”
And so she missed altogether the usual last day excitement. She did not wake on that first morning happy with the delicious thought that she could lie in bed for an extra ten minutes if she liked. She had not yet begun her holidays.
But two days later she was in a fever of expectation. In twenty-four hours’ time Roland would be home. How slowly the day passed. In the evening she said she was tired and went to bed before dinner, so that the next day might come quickly for her. But when she got to bed she found that she could not sleep, and though she repeated the word “abracadabra” many hundred times and counted innumerable sheep passing through innumerable gates, she lay awake till after midnight, hearing hour after hour strike. And when at last sleep came to her it was light and fitful and she awoke often.
Next day she did not know what to do with herself. She tried to read and could not. She tried to sew and could not. She ran up and down stairs on trifling errands in order to pass the time. In vain she tried to calm herself. “What are you getting so excited about? What do you think is going to happen? What can happen? The most that can happen is that he will come round with his father in the evening, and you know well enough by now what that will mean. Your mother will talk and his father will say, ‘Yes, Mrs. Curtis,’ and ‘Really, Mrs. Curtis,’ and you and Roland will hardly exchange a word with one another. You are absurdly excited over nothing.”
But logic was of no avail, and all the afternoon she fidgeted with impatience. By tea-time she was in a state of repressed hysteria. She sat in the window-seat looking down the road in the direction from which he would have to come. “I wonder if he will come without his father. It would be so dear of him if he would, but I don’t suppose he will. No, of course he won’t. It’s silly of me to think of it. He’ll have to wait for his father; he always does. That means he won’t be here at the earliest till after six. And it’s only ten minutes to five now.”
And
