I never should have got this telegram if me and my husband hadn't been down there last September and told the folks who keep it now who I was."
Kitty folded up the telegram and said in a little voice:
"This is a likely story."
Again Mrs. Grey's eyes brimmed. "People are rude to one," she visibly said, but surely not nice people like this. She simply continued to sit.
Kitty cried out, as though arguing:
"There's nothing about shell-shock in this wire."
Our visitor melted into a trembling shyness.
"There was a letter, too."
Kitty held out her hand.
She gasped:
"Oh, no, I couldn't do that!"
"I must have it," said Kitty.
The caller's eyes grew great. She rose and dived clumsily for her umbrella, which had again slipped under the chair.
"I can't," she cried, and scurried to the open door like a pelted dog. She would have run down the steps at once had not some tender thought arrested her. She turned to me trustfully and stammered, "He is at that hospital I said," as if, since I had dealt her no direct blow, I might be able to salve the news she brought from the general wreck of manners. And then Kitty's stiff pallor struck to her heart, and cried comfortingly across the distance, "I tell you, I haven't seen him for fifteen years." She faced about, pushed down her hat on her head, and ran down the steps to the gravel. "They won't understand!" we heard her sob.
For a long time we watched her as she went along the drive, her yellowish raincoat looking sick and bright in the sharp sunshine, her black plumes nodding like the pines above, her cheap boots making her walk on her heels, a spreading stain on the fabric of our life. When she was quite hidden by the dark clump of rhododendrons at the corner, Kitty turned and went to the fireplace. She laid her arms against the oak mantel-piece and cooled her face against her arms.
When at last I followed her she said:
"Do you believe her?"
I started. I had forgotten that we had ever disbelieved her.
"Yes," I replied.
"What can it mean?" She dropped her arms and stared at me imploringly. "Think, think, of something it can mean which isn't detestable!"
"It's all a mystery," I said; and added madly, because nobody had ever been cross with Kitty, "You didn't help to clear it up."
"Oh, I know you think I was rude," she petulantly moaned; "but you're so slow you don't see what it means. Either it means that he's mad, our Chris, our splendid, sane Chris, all broken and queer, not knowing us — I can't bear to think of that. It can't be true. But if he isn't — Jenny, there was nothing in that telegram to show he'd lost his memory. It was just affection — a name that might have been a pet name, things that it was a little common to put in a telegram. It's queer he should have written such a message, queer that he shouldn't have told me about knowing her, queer that he ever should have known such a woman. It shows there are bits of him we don't know. Things may be awfully wrong. It's all such a breach of trust! I resent it."
I was appalled by these stiff, dignified gestures that seemed to be plucking Chris's soul from his body, tormented though it was by this unknown calamity.
"But Chris is ill!" I cried.
She stared at me.
"You're saying what she said."
Indeed, there seemed no better words than those Mrs. Grey had used. I repeated:
"But he is ill!"
She laid her face against her arms again.
"What does that matter?" she wailed. "If he could send that telegram, he is no longer ours."
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