Then as the deliberate Northern night drew on, and they began to feel cold, they shipped the anchor and rowed back, the four taking an oar each. Being used to boats since they could remember, all rowed well. At the end of each stroke the phosphorescence streamed from their blades simultaneously, and went swarming like millions of fireflies into the black water. And keeping time with their strokes the Bannermans sang. They sang “A Southerly Wind and a Cloudy Sky,” and many old rounds and catches they had learned in the nursery from their father – for Sholto, in his youth had been a great choir-member. And their voices, on the quiet stretch of hill-shadowed loch, sounded very happy, very youthful and plaintive. Juley could not join in for tears; besides though she had a pretty voice, she was apt, she knew, to go out of tune, and she would not for anything have spoiled her children’s singing.

X

But in autumn, with Georgie gone, Mabel again in Edinburgh, and the old life in Collessie Street resumed, Joanna sank into a kind of marasmus – a wasting without fever or apparent disease.

She still found Bob’s behaviour quite baffling, and spasmodically the hope still sprang in her that he would return at length with some undreamed-of explanation. But here was no sustenance for life, and as the weeks dragged on she felt so sore and lonely that she would even have welcomed the return of Mabel.

CHAPTER SIX

I

One day upon coming into the house she found a letter waiting for her on the lobby table.

She knew at once that it wasn’t from Bob (her first glance on coming in was always at the lobby table in case there might be a letter from him, and anything else was a disappointment). But this letter – or rather package – had some interest, It was rolled up carelessly in a newspaper wrapper, stamped with an Italian stamp, and marked Manoscritti, to save in postage.

She would have opened it at once, but her hands were full, and she was tired. So she took it unopened to her bedroom and threw it on the bed while she rid herself of her outdoor clothes. She kicked off her shoes in the way her mother never ceased to deplore, tossed her hat upon the chest of drawers, and her coat across a chair.

How tired she was!

Stooping to the mirror on the dressing table, and thrusting back her hair with both hands, she peered at her face in the fading light. She was certainly rather white, and there were blue, pathetic shadows under her eyes.

A wave of self-pity swept over her. People said youth was a happy time. She knew better. And there and then she determined that she would harbour no such sentiment in old age.

“Don’t forget,” she adjured herself – “don’t ever let yourself forget that when you were young you were very, very unhappy.” And throwing herself with the utmost dejection upon the bed, she lay there staring at the ceiling.