a lovely evening and you’ve been indoors nearly all day. It isn’t good, and I was saying to your father only the other day, ‘Father, dear, I’m sure April isn’t up to the mark. She looks so pale nowadays.’ ”
“I’m all right, mother.”
“No, but are you, dear? You’re looking really pale. I’m sure I ought to ask Dr. Dunkin to come and see you.”
“But I’m all right—really, I’m all right, mother. I know when anything is wrong with me.”
“But you don’t, April, dear. That’s just the point. Don’t you remember that time when you insisted on going to the tennis party and assured us that you were quite well, and when you came back we found you had a temperature of 101° and that you were sickening for measles? I was saying to Dr. Dunkin only this morning: ‘Dr. Dunkin, I’m really not satisfied about our little April. I think I shall have to ask you to give her a tonic’; and he said to me: ‘Yes, that’s right, Mrs. Curtis; you bring me along to her and I’ll set her straight.’ ”
April put her hands up to her head and tried not to listen, but her mother’s voice flowed on:
“And now, dear, do go out for a walk—just a little one.”
“But, mother, dear, I don’t want to, really, and I’m feeling so tired.”
“There, what did I say? You’re feeling tired and you’ve done nothing all day. There must be something wrong with you. I shall certainly ask Dr. Dunkin to come and see you to-morrow.”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes, mother. I’ll do anything you like to-morrow. If you’ll only leave me alone to-night.”
But Mrs. Curtis went on talking, and April grew more and more exasperated, and the minutes went past and Roland did not come. Six struck and half-past six, and a few minutes later she heard her father’s latch-key in the door. And then the whole question of her health was dragged out again.
“I was saying to you only yesterday, father, that our little April wasn’t as well as she ought to be. She has overworked, I think. Last night she went to bed early and to-day she looks quite pale, and she says that she feels tired although she hasn’t really done anything. I must send for Dr. Dunkin to-morrow.”
It seemed to April that the voice would never stop. It beat and beat upon her brain, like the ticking of the watch that reminded her of the flying moments. “He won’t come now,” she said; “he won’t come now.” Seven o’clock had struck, the lamps were lit, evening had descended upon the street. He had never come as late as this before. But she still sat at the window, gazing down the street towards the figures that became distinct for a moment in the lamplight. “He will not come now,” she said, and suddenly she felt limp, tired, incapable of resistance. She put her head upon her knees and began to sob.
In a moment her mother’s arms were round her. “But, darling, what is it, April, dear?”
She could not speak. She shook her head, tried desperately to make a sign that she was all right, that she would rather be left alone; but it was no use. She felt too bitterly the need for human sympathy. She turned, flung her arms about her mother’s neck, and began to sob and sob.
“Oh, mother, mother,” she cried. “I’m so miserable. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”
Next morning Dr. Dunkin felt her pulse, prescribed a tonic and told her not to stay too much indoors.
“Now, you’ll be all right, dear,” her mother said. “Dr. Dunkin’s medicines are splendid.”
April smiled quietly. “Yes, I expect that was what was wanted. I think I worked a little too hard last term.”
“I’m sure you did, my dear. I shall write to Mrs. Clarke about it. I can’t have my little girl getting run down.”
And that afternoon April met Roland in the High Street. It was the first time that she had seen him alone since the evening of the dance, and she found him awkward and embarrassed. They said a few things of no importance—about the holidays, the weather and their acquaintances. Then April said that she must be going home, and Roland made no effort to detain her—did not even make any suggestion about coming round to see her.
“So that is what you have been looking forward to for over a month,” she said to herself, as he passed out of sight behind an angle of the road. “This is the date you wanted to mark upon your calendar with a red cross. Little fool. What did you think you were doing? And what has it turned out to be in the end? Five minutes’ discussion of indifferent things. A fine event to make such a fuss about; and what else did you expect?”
She was not bitter. It was one of those mild days that in early spring surprise us with a promise of summer, on which the heart is stirred with the crowded glory of life and the sense of widening horizons. The long stretch of roofs and chimney stacks became beautiful in the subdued sunlight. It was an hour that in the strong might have quickened the hunger for adventure, but that to April brought a mood of chastened, quiet resignation. She appreciated, as she had not done before, the tether by which her scope was measured. For the last month she had made Roland’s return a focus for the ambitions and desires and yearnings towards an intenser way of living, for which of herself she had been unable to find expression. This, in a confused manner, she understood. “I can do nothing by myself. I have to live in other people. And what I am now I shall be always. All my life I shall be dependent on someone else, or on some interest that is outside myself. And whether I am happy or unhappy depends upon some other person. That is my nature, and I cannot go beyond my nature.” When she reached home she sat for a long time in the window-seat, her hands folded in her lap. “This will be my whole life,” she said. “I am not of those who may go out in search of happiness.” And she thought that if romance did not come to her, she would remain all her life sitting at a window. “Of myself I can do nothing.”
CHAPTER VII
A SORRY BUSINESS
APRIL did not see very much of Roland during the holidays, and was not, on the whole, sorry. Now that the hysterical excitement over his return had passed, she judged it better to let their friendship lapse. She did not want any repetition of that disastrous evening, and thought that it would be easier to resume their friendship on its old basis after the long interval of the summer term. Roland was still a little piqued by what he considered her absurd behavior, and had resolved to let the first step come from her.
This estrangement was a disappointment to his people.
“Have you noticed, my dear, that Roland’s hardly been round to the Curtises’ at all these holidays?” Mr. Whately said to his wife one evening. “I hope there has not been a row or anything. I rather wish you’d try and find out.”
And so next day Mrs. Whately made a guarded remark to her son about April’s appearance: “What a big girl she’s getting. And she’s prettier every day. If you’re not careful you’ll have all the boys in the place running after her and cutting you out.”
Roland answered in an off-hand manner, “They can for all I care, mother.”
“Oh, but, Roland, you shouldn’t say that; I thought you were getting
