Windsor/'Good Morning, Valentine!'

By OWEN OLIVER

O you know what to-morrow is, Betty?" Miss Elizabeth Stone's niece asked her, when they were going to bed.

"The fourteenth of February," Miss Elizabeth said, "to me. To you I dare say it's Valentine's Day."

"How you do like to make yourself out an old thing!" Marie protested.

"Only a sensible one," Miss Elizabeth assured her. "The plain fact is that I am thirty-two. Thirteen years older than you—almost old enough to be called aunt!"

("I'll be a sort of mother to you," Miss Elizabeth had offered, when Marie Stone was left alone and unprovided for, "but I'm hanged if I'll be 'Aunt.'")

"Well, I shan't," Marie said.

"Anyhow," Miss Elizabeth stated, "old enough and ugly enough"

"Fishing for compliments!"

"To be assured that no one will greet me 'Good morning, Valentine.'"

"Because you won't be their valentine," Marie contended. "You could be if you liked. There was something in the way you said 'Good morning, Valentine!' that made it sound like—oh, I don't know! What did it stand for to you?"

"The inscription on a tombstone, my dear," Miss Elizabeth told her. "I don't want to be reminded of it. Of all the words in a wordy world, they are the last that I wish to hear or see to-morrow morning. So don't you dare!"

Yet she heard them the next morning, just after the maid had brought her morning tea, and she sat up in bed in her pink dressing-jacket and saw herself in the long looking-glass. She sipped the tea, and stared long and hard at her own reflection.

"Good morning, Valentine!" she taunted herself fiercely, spilt some tea on the new bed-spread, uttered a naughty word, and took up The Daily Record, seeking refuge from herself—and from "the inscription."

She opened the paper in the middle, and the inscription stared at her in leaded type:

It was the title of an article deploring the passing of a tender old custom.

Miss Elizabeth gave a savage little cry and crumpled the paper angrily in her dainty hands. She was rather given to little bursts of anger, though the bursts were usually evanescent and harmless. "A sweet woman with a temper," someone had called her (to her pretty face) in time before—someone who had been the last to greet her as his Valentine, the only man who had ever had the right so to greet her.

That was ten years ago now; but she had not altered much in either respect, though perhaps both sweetness and temper were a trifle chastened, like her looks. She was still pretty, but the prettiness was a wee bit "tired." The look of the girl who is finding things in life was replaced by the look of the woman who has lost something. Her friends thought that the loss was just a valentine.

Anyhow, the newspaper heading set her thinking of one, sitting up in bed, with her knees raised and an elbow on a knee, and her chin upon her hand. Really a very pretty lady, although the ten added years were in discontented evidence.

She seemed to picture the old valentine lying before her, a page of very neatly-written verses ("What a nice hand Norman wrote!") with a very ill-drawn Cupid upon the top of them. ("Norman never could draw. I thought at first that the wing was a shawl!"

The verses that she seemed to see again were these:—

"Tosh in itself," Miss Elizabeth muttered, when she had stumbled through the verses in her mind, going back occasionally to get a word right—warned by a failure to rhyme. "And, in its context, tosh of toshes! To vow for ever in the morning, and to take the ring back in the afternoon, just because the girl says a few things in a temper! And I always warned him that I should 'fly out' about once a week through the 'many a year.' Of course I was wrong; but I should often have been wrong through 'the many years.' I always told him so. I expect that's what I shall say if I meet him across the line. Who knows? … 'I told you so!' That's my probable angelic greeting! … Nice angel! What a little demon I was that morning!"

Her memory went back to "the context."

She stood panting with her hand on "the silver table"—so-called from its ornaments—in her mother's drawing-room. The verses, rent in two, lay at her feet. Norman Temple stood at the doorway, glaring at her. He, too, had a temper, hard to rouse (he was usually distinctly "easy." She gave him that credit in her memory), but out of hand when roused.

"When you find out that your suspicions—they show a nasty mind!—are utterly and entirely wrong, if you have the fairness and pluck to write and say so, I'll try to forgive you; but unless you do, I'll never come back, Betty!"

"Never dare!" she cried. "I know your horrid temper now. Go!"

He went, bowed, and spoke bitterly as he closed the door.

"Good morning, Valentine!"

"Cad!" Betty called. But she was always afraid that he did not hear her.

She found out that her suspicions were utterly and entirely wrong; would have owned this (and lectured Norman for not making a sensible defence, "instead of flying into a beastly temper, and frightening a poor little girl into saying what you ought to have known she didn't mean!") if he had come to see her; but he did not come. He went off overseas, to his brother in Ceylon, without even saying good-bye to her. A year later she heard that he had married.

She shrugged her shoulders and told herself that she was "well out of it." … Shrugged her shoulders still after ten years. …

"So much for the ever and ever stunt!" she said scornfully. "He always vowed that he wouldn't marry anyone else if we—kicked up. And did it first chance; proved himself a liar! … However, I always said I should. So I'm a liar, too! … Well, I hope she combed his hair for him while she was alive! (She had heard that Mrs. Temple died six years ago.) It's not because I worry about Master Norman that I don't marry, but because I don't happen to want to marry anyone in particular. I wish I did. A woman is entitled to have one man to bully. Wouldn't I just! Well, now for the toshy old paper and the toshy old tea!"

She took up the cup; found the tea cold; spilt some more on the bed-spread; said another naughty word. "I don't know what's the matter with me this morning. I seem to be distinctly profane! It's this rotten paper raking up the silly old past against me! 'Good Morning, Valentine!' May I never hear it again I … Well, I shan't! …"

The telephone bell rang. She picked up the receiver.

"Miss Stone speaking," she announced (according to the printed instructions).

"Good morning, Valentine!" a man's voice said. She almost dropped the receiver. The voice was rather like Norman's, and the laugh which followed was very like his.

"Who is it?" she gasped.

"Your Valentine," he claimed.

"In-deed! I suppose I have some voice in the matter? Who is it?"

It wasn't quite Norman's voice. … But voices alter. …

"It's Harry," the voice answered.

"Ur-r-r!" she muttered aside from the telephone. "I'm much obliged to you, I'm sure!"

She turned over the Henrys of her acquaintance; wondered what one or two H's stood for.

"Well, what about it, 'Harry'?" she fenced.

"I'd come and strum under your window," Harry announced, "but for the dragon aunt!"

"Oh-h-h! It may interest you to know that it isn't Marie speaking, but the dragon aunt!"

"Er—er—I meant—er"

Miss Elizabeth grinned wickedly, shook her fist at the telephone.

"If you're that young fool Harry Blake"

"Eh?" the voice cried in alarm. "What? Who? Blake, did you say? Never heard of him!" Neither had Miss Elizabeth, but she knew very well now who was speaking, and that he was madly jealous of Marie's other suitors. She was a lady who liked to get her own back.

"You'd better ask Marie about him," she advised. "I'll put you back to the hall. Mind you make it plain to the maid that you wish to valentine Marie, not the dragon! The next time you call, I'll box your ears—Harry Potter!"

"Serve me right!" he owned. "Dragon was only a figure of speech, though, Miss Elizabeth. I'll swear it. Wet my finger, and cross my throat, and"

"Stop, stop, you donkey! … Is that you, Polly? This gentleman wants Miss Marie, not me. Transfer him, please."

She hung up the receiver.

"Young donkeys," she sighed. "And once I was one. I suppose I still am, for I was quite fluttered when I thought it might be that owl! … 'Good morning, Valentine!' I wonder if he says it to his wife! But I heard that she was dead. That was why I thought perhaps … Bah! I dare say he's got another by now. What does it matter to me? I don't care really. I'm just playing a sentimental stunt with myself. I've practically forgotten all about Norman for—say, nine years and eleven months. I'll admit that I gritted for a few weeks. It was absurd, of course, to think that he was speaking. If he'd really cared, he'd have made some excuse to come and see me before he went away. I suppose. any old excuse would have done. I was a young fool then. … I'd have been married to him for about nine years and a half… I might have been married to some other fool for—anything from nine years to nine days, if I hadn't been a pig-headed idiot. … I might now. …" She shook her fist at the Miss Elizabeth in the looking-glass. "No, you don't!" she said. "You may do all the other fool things, Bet Stone, but marry a man you don't want to, you shan't. It would be a dirty trick upon the man! And upon yourself because. … Oh, you fool! Get on with your toshy paper!"

She buried herself in the middle pages of The Daily Record.

"Wreck of The Hope of the Clan," she read. "Only a few of the women and children passengers saved. All the men lost. …" "Dreadful—dreadful! I shan't read any more about it." "Lloyd George's speech. …"

Tr-r-r-r! The telephone bell rang again. She picked up the receiver rather impatiently.

"Miss Stone speaking—Elizabeth Stone."

"Good morning, Valentine!"

It was a woman's voice this time.

"What the—I suppose it's you, Kate?" She meant Kate Harris, Temple's second cousin, and many years her friend, using the word as Society ladies like Miss Elizabeth use it. There was no great love lost between them, but they had been intimate all their lives; and Kate was the only person to whom Elizabeth had ever told the rights of "the Temple affair." "I'm going by the rot you talk!"

"I forgot that the greeting touched a sore spot. As a matter of fact, I don't know that I really used it from forgetfulness. From unconscious memory, I expect—association, don't they call it? I was thinking of an old valentine of yours. … Look here, Betty. You were coming in to play auction this afternoon, weren't you?"

"What passes for auction with you!"

"Ah! You're wild in your calls, Bet. Not only at bridge. That's just why I thought I'd better warn you that someone's likely to come whom you mayn't wish to meet—or may. I don't know that you'd mind nowadays, of course; only thinking of what you said to me donkey's years ago."

"Who is it?"

Miss Elizabeth wondered whether the 'phone was bumping, or only her heart.

"The ex-valentine!"

She concluded that the bumps were heart-bumps.

"What! … I suppose you mean Norman Temple?"

"Yes. He's my second cousin, you know."

"Of course I know. I thought he was abroad."

"He arrives home from Ceylon to-day. We've just had a letter overland. He says he's coming to see us. I don't know if he expects that we are going to ask him to stay, and the child. We're not!"

"Indeed! Why is he barred from that great honour?"

"Well, you see, he doesn't seem to have been a great success abroad. We can't afford the luxury of poor relations. Besides, he's only a second cousin, you know, and we've never had much to do with him. That was what set me thinking why he had written to us now. Of course we don't mind his just calling, and are prepared to be civil to him."

"Good of you! But what's it to do with me?"

"Oh, don't be so—so difficult, Betty! I'm only speaking for your good. Of course I remember the conversation that we had just after you broke it off with him."

"I was a fool to mention it to you," Miss Elizabeth said. "I don't know why I did."

That was not true. She knew very well that she had spoken in the hope that Kate might report the conversation to Norman, and that it might bring him to forgive her. (But she intended to take the line of for- giving him!)

"Anyhow, you did, and … Well, you've never married, Betty, and it hasn't been the fault of the men, if you had liked them. So I've always fancied—but we needn't go into that. The plain facts—at least, they aren't exactly facts, only the best that we can make out about him—are that he doesn't seem to have done very well for himself. He seems to have lost his wife, and to have a child, and to be pretty poor; and he asks after you, and you're a rich woman."

"Rich!" Miss Elizabeth cried. "Indeed I'm not!" ("Not rich enough to lend any more to Kate Harris," she qualified mentally. "She'd only waste it again.")

"By our modest standard you are, my dear; more so, I suppose, by his. And otherwise desirable, of course. Quite seriously, Betty, I can't help thinking that he's only coming to us to find track of you. It's quite your affair whether you choose to meet him. I wouldn't make it too easy if I were you. You know what men are! Of course, he mayn't come this very afternoon; but he said 'directly I arrive,' and his ship's due early this morning—The Hope of the Clan."

Miss Elizabeth shrieked so loudly that the 'phone rattled.

"Kate! The Hope of the Clan! It went down last night. … Went down last night!"

"Betty! … But he'll be saved …"

"Not one! Not one of the men. Only a few women and children. They were picked up by the Adelphian, and are coming in early this morning. Oh, Kate!"

"I wonder if his child is among them? … It's very unfortunate—I don't wish the child any harm, of course, but it's no use anyone thinking that we can have her … Look in the list, Betty, and see if she"

"You brute!" Miss Elizabeth screamed. "Norman is dead! Dead! And all you think of is yourself! You selfish brute!"

She slammed the receiver on the hook. "She's given herself away," Mrs. Harris, at one end of the wire, muttered. "She always said that she'd got over it, but I knew she hadn't!"

Miss Elizabeth, at the other end of the wire, rocked to and fro in bed, with her face in her hands; talked to herself.

"Norman is dead! Norman is dead! He will never say 'Good morning, Valentine!' now. … Never now. … When a man's dead you can own to yourself—just to yourself that—that he mattered. … And I might have been married to him all these years! Had the right to wear black for him—black for him! Unsuccessful and poor, she says, and widowed, and asked after me. Oh, Norman, it might have all come right! Your being poor and unsuccessful wouldn't have stopped me, my dear. My dear! … You did mean it then, didn't you, Norman? Tosh I called it just now. Could you hear? … If there's anything in life that isn't tosh, it's death. … And you are dead, Norman! And I never had the chance to do anything for you! …

She seized the paper suddenly.

"His child!" she cried. "His child!"

She searched the list of the survivors and found among the survivors—

Nora Temple, aged eight. (Father missing.)

"Thank God!" she cried. "I can do something for you, old man!"

She sprang from the bed, began to dress, rang for the hot water, talked excitedly to the maid.

("Something has happened to give the mistress a shock," the girl reported to the kitchen. "Talking with her hands and head as well as her mouth, and can't keep still.")

"Quick, Polly!" she cried, fastening her clothes with little jerks. "I have to go out at once—at once! I'll wear my navy coat and skirt. That's the nearest to black. Tell Jarvis to be ready with the motor directly after breakfast. Then go to the 'phone and get the offices of the Hope Line—the steamship company—and put me on."

She rang every few minutes afterwards to know if the company had answered yet. The maid reported each time that the line was engaged, and finally that the operator had told her that dozens of people were waiting for it, friends and relatives of the crew and passengers of The Hope of the Clan, which had been wrecked in the night.

"Off Ushant, miss; and that's somewhere in France, Jarvis says. Nearly all aboard lost. It's in the paper. She said she'd call you up first opportunity, if you had someone on the ship. I said you had, ma'am. Seemed best to say so, as you were so anxious to get on. 'A near relation,' I says."

"Yes," said Miss Elizabeth. "Yes. … Tell cook to send up the breakfast. I must be quick."

"You hadn't anyone aboard, had you, dear?" her niece asked. She had just come smilingly to breakfast.

"Only someone who might have been someone," Miss Elizabeth said. "I was engaged to him once. … Marie, if ever you care for a man, don't condemn him without giving him a fair hearing. I did. If I hadn't, I suppose we should have been married for nine years. … Nine and a half years, Marie. Now I suppose I can't even wear black for him! … Don't fuss me, child. I shall only cry. … Do you know, I think it would be a good thing if I could cry." She spoke in a dull, detached voice, as if she discussed someone else. "Say 'Good morning, Valentine!' Then perhaps I can."

"Betty! … Auntie, dear! …"

"They were the last words he said to me, Marie, when I sent him away. Not for greeting—for good-bye! … 'Good morning, Valentine!' … I can't cry!"

"Oh, Betty, darling! … Dear old Betty!"

"I think I shall be able to, when I see his child. She is saved. … His child and—and another woman's, Marie. She might have been mine. Now she shall be. Her mother is dead. I think I shall cry all right if she is like him. He was a nice-looking boy—such a nice-looking boy. I hope she will be like him. …1 expect he died worrying that there was no one to look after her. He wouldn't think of me. I couldn't expect him to think of me. I suppose he'd forgotten all about me. Don't you?"

"No, no, no! Eat some breakfast, dear. … Isn't there any hope?"

"None, the paper says, none. … We'll be good to the little girl, won't we?"

"Yes, yes. … What is it, Polly?"

"The mistress is wanted on the 'phone. It's the Hope Line, ma'am."

Miss Elizabeth went quickly to the 'phone in the hall. They heard her speak, and could guess the other end of the conversation.

"Miss Stone, 4, Alexandra Mansions, speaking. … A dear friend of mine was on the ship. … Yes, I mean The Hope of the Clan. … Mr. Norman Temple. … Among the missing? … No later news? … No hope? … None at all? … 'Always hope!' What's the use of platitudes? … Well, his child is saved, I see in the papers. Nora Temple. … Where is she? … Coming up by the eleven-fifteen? Is that when it arrives? … Where I … I'll be at Waterloo. … To fetch her home to my house. … Yes, yes, but I don't want help, thank you, financial or otherwise. I know, I know, but I'd rather do everything for her myself. … I shall provide for her in some way or other. Adopt her, possibly. … Thank you! Yes … Yes! … No, she has no relatives except a second cousin, who will be quite willing to resign any claim to her. … My lawyers will see to that. … Thank you! … I know, I know. … Waterloo at eleven-fifteen."

There was a pale little girl in the train, clinging to an elderly lady. The child seemed dazed, would not come to Miss Elizabeth at first.

"I knew your father, dear," she said. "We were great friends once. I think he would like you to like me."

The child put out a hand then.

"Did he like you?" she asked.

"Yes," said Miss Elizabeth, "once."

"Did you like him?"

"Yes," said Miss Elizabeth. She did not add the "once" that time. The elderly lady noticed that, stroked her arm.

"I was going to take her for the moment," she said, "but I couldn't afford to keep her with me. You want to take her for good, perhaps?"

"Yes," said Miss Elizabeth. "Come with Aunt Betty, dear."

The child nodded.

"But I want father, too," she said. "Do you know what day it is? He promised to be my valentine. … Will you be?"

"Yes," Miss Elizabeth said. "Yes. … Good morning, Valentine!" She spoke the greeting strangely.

"Try to cry, dear!" the elderly lady advised her.

"It is no use crying," Miss Elizabeth said stonily. "Come with Aunt Betty, Nora dear! My little Valentine! And you shall have me for yours."

"I shall always want daddy, too," the child said in the motor.

"So shall I, dear."

"Won't he ever come any more? Not ever any more? Oh, Aunt Betty, I want him so much!"

"So do I, Nora, so do I. But we must be brave. … I've a little doggy. His name is 'Whim.' He begs for biscuits. You will like him. …"

"Yes. … I want daddy, too."

"And a pussy, a black pussy. She comes to my door and mews in the morning. You will like her."

"Yes. … I want daddy, too! "

"You will break my heart, Nora. … You are going to like Aunt Betty better than doggie and better than pussy, aren't you?"

"Yes. … I want daddy, too! … Aunt Betty? I shan't never want any other Valentine—only father!"

"Neither," said Aunt Betty, "shall I! Not a real one. But you and I must pretend we're valentines to each other. When we come home, I shall say that I've brought my valentine!"

That was what she said, and the old housekeeper said: "Take the child away, Miss Marie, and leave your Aunt with me. She's got to cry … Miss Betty? Miss Betty, dear? I nursed you when you were smaller than she, and I knew how it was always. … My dear, I swept up the verses that you tore. I know! He's only gone to be waiting for you, dearie, ready to say 'Good morning, Valentine!'"

It was the old woman who cried then. Miss Betty seemed turned to stone; but she cried at last after she had nursed Nora to sleep.

"His child," she said, "and not mine!"

That was what brought the tears. She said afterwards that she felt better, fell asleep with the sleeping child hugged close.

Marie woke her presently.

"Auntie," she said breathlessly, "can you be brave? Very brave? Brave enough for good news? … There's someone who has called One of the boats was picked up. …"

"Marie!"

"Let me hold you tightly. … It is Nora's father. … He is outside the door. May he come in?"

"Marie!"

Miss Elizabeth rose to her feet, laid the child in the armchair, held out both hands to the doorway.

"Good morning, Val" she began, and stopped. For the man who entered was not Norman Temple. She knew at once, from the likeness, that it would be his brother, whom she had never seen before. He was abroad when she met Norman.

"Norman?" she gasped. "Was he aboard?"

His brother nodded.

"And—and—now"

His brother shook his head.

"No news," he said. "Poor old chap! I thought you must have taken her for his child … Nora! … Nora, my dear … I told you I'd come. … Good morning, Valentine!"

The child woke, screamed, leapt to him, holding round his neck.

"Good morning, Valentine!" she cried, and clapped her hands.

Miss Elizabeth slid very quietly to the floor.

"Norman never married," his brother told her, after she had come to; "never would have married anyone but you. I think it was to see you that he came home with me. … He said that it was because he was tired of making money. … Unsuccessful! Dear me, no! Norman was a very successful man—in money. He badly wanted someone to share it with. … You, dear lady. You! … And so you were going to adopt his child. … Perhaps the dear old fellow knows … I pray that he knows. …"

"And now," Miss Elizabeth murmured, "I cannot do even that for him. … But I am glad he is mine, all mine. … I shall hear him say it again—'Good morning, Valentine'—when I cross the line!"

She fell asleep that evening, and thought that she had crossed it, for she found herself in Norman's arms.

"I am glad I'm dead, boy," she said. "Life was rather—rather 'tosh' without you, and I knew you'd be waiting. Old silly!" She stroked his hair, suddenly concluded that she was alive and in her own dining-room. … Listened to something about being picked up by a trawler, and motoring up to Town to say "Good morning, Valentine!" … Clung to his coat with her face against his neck. …

"Now you say it," he told her.

"Oh, you do want a shave!" said Miss Elizabeth.

Then she clung to him—clung and clung.