The Young Clementina by D. E. Stevenson Read Free Book Online

invited him to dinner one evening soon after he came home. Father had always been fond of Garth, and he did not see, as I saw, how much Garth had changed. Garth was more gentle to father than he was to other people, more considerate, less cynical. He had always been devoted to father. I decided that evening to wear my yellow frock—the one I had worn at the dance—it had lain in my drawer for five years, wrapped in tissue paper. I took it out that evening when Garth was coming and looked at it—there were tears in my throat—I had been so happy, wearing that frock. It was all gone now, that happiness, the war had killed it. Garth had loved me in that frock. Could it bring back the past? I thought perhaps it might. I thought perhaps the years would fall away and vanish as though they had not been.
    Garth arrived before I was ready, I heard him talking to father in the drawing room, and I went in to greet him. He turned toward me as I came in and for a moment his face brightened, the cynical expression faded and he was the old Garth.
    And then he bowed in a mocking manner. “You never told me it was a party.”
    â€œJust you, Garth,” I told him, with my heart fluttering in my breast like a trapped bird.
    â€œI am honored indeed,” he mocked. “You put me to shame with your grandeur. Why was I not told it was a full dress occasion so that I could have taken my dress suit out of moth-cake and had it pressed?”
    Father looked up at me. “A pretty dress,” he said in his frail, threadlike voice. “A pretty dress, Charlotte.”
    â€œYou think so, sir,” Garth said, looking at me gravely. “I might have thought it pretty at one time perhaps; it is odd how one’s tastes change.”
    I could say nothing to him, and he could thrust the knife into my heart and twist it with savage joy. I could only stand there and bear it as best I might.
    Kitty ran into the room like a spring breeze. She had chosen to wear a simple white frock—a little girl frock with a high neck and long sleeves—she swept me a curtsy and cried gaily.
    â€œLa la—how grand we are tonight!”
    They gave me no peace all the evening. It was good-natured chaff on the surface, but beneath it, in Garth’s case, there was a strange bitterness that I could not understand. Kitty did not know the significance of the yellow frock, she did not know that every word went through my heart, but Garth knew. Garth was being deliberately cruel, he was torturing me. How I wished that I had not been prompted to wear that dress—I longed to run upstairs to my room and tear it off, but I couldn’t do that, I had to brave it out, I had to sit and smile and pretend that I didn’t mind. I pretended I had put on the yellow frock for a joke. It was a funny old-fashioned rag, I said; the fashions were more sensible now. I had put it on to let them see what frights we looked in the days before the war.
    I realized that night that all was over between me and Garth—it could never come right now. Garth had gone from me forever. But I had not bargained that he would turn from me to Kitty—when I heard of their engagement something died in my heart. I loved Kitty, and I loved Garth—yes, in spite of all that had happened, I still loved him—and now they were both lost to me—both lost.
    They were married very quietly in Hinkleton Church. We need not linger here. I shall not tell you about the wedding, Clare, I can’t. It was a blur of pain. I moved through the days of preparation like a ghost. You can imagine the wedding as you please—the presents, the flowers, the music, the eager crowd of tenants and villagers waiting to see the bride. Father married them and they went away. It was the last service that father took; the last time he was in his beloved church. He became very ill after Kitty had gone and only stayed with me a few days. I am sure he was glad to go. The