The Price of Things Part 17

She relived the joy of his sudden fierce kiss, when he had said that he must teach her as to what her emotions meant.

Ah! how good to learn, how all glorious was life and love!

"Sweetheart," the word rang in her ears. He had never called her that before! Indeed, John rarely ever used any term of endearment, and never got beyond "Dear" or "Darling" before. But now it was an exquisite remembrance! Just the murmured word "Sweetheart!" whispered softly again and again in the night.

John came back to lunch, but two of the de la Paule family dropped in also, and the talk was all of war, and the difficulty of getting money at the banks, and how food would go on, and what the whole thing would mean.

But over Amaryllis some spell had fallen--nothing seemed a reality, she could not attend to ordinary things, she felt that she but moved and spoke as one still in a dream.

The world, and life, and death, and love, were all a blended mystery which was but beginning to unravel for her and drew her nearer to John.

The days went on apace.

John in camp thanked G.o.d for the strenuous work of his training that it kept him so occupied that he had barely time to think of Amaryllis or the tragedy of things. When he had left her on the following afternoon, the seventh of August, she had returned to Ardayre alone and began the knitting and s.h.i.+rt-making and amateurish hospital committees which all well-meaning English women vaguely grasped at before the stern necessities brought them organised work to do. Amaryllis wrote constantly to John--all through August--and many of the letters contained loving allusions which made him wince with pain.

Then the awful news came of Mons, then the Marne--and the Aisne--awful and glorious, and a hush and mourning fell over the land, and Amaryllis, like every one else, lost interest in all personal things for a time.

A young cousin had been killed and many of her season's partners and friends, and now she knew that the North Somerset Yeomanry would shortly go out and fight as they had volunteered at once. She was very miserable. But when September grew, in spite of all this general sorrow, a new horizon presented itself, lit up as if by approaching dawn, for a hope had gradually developed--a hope which would mean the rejoicing of John's heart.

And the day when first this possibility of future fulfilment was p.r.o.nounced a certainty was one of almost exalted beat.i.tude, and when Doctor Geddis drove away down the Northern Avenue, Amaryllis seized a coat from the folded pile of John's in the hall, and walked out into the park hatless, the wind blowing the curly tendrils of her soft brown hair, a radiance not of earth in her eyes. The late September sun was sinking and gilding the windows of the n.o.ble house, and she turned and looked back at it when she was far across the lake.

And the whole of her spirit rose in thankfulness to G.o.d, while her soul sang a glad magnificat.

She, too, might hand on this great and splendid inheritance! She, too, would be the mother of Ardayres!

And now to write to John!

That was a fresh pleasure! What would he say? What would he feel? Dear John! His letters had been calm and matter of fact, but that was his way.

She did not mind it now. He loved her, and what did words matter with this glorious knowledge in her heart?

To have a baby! Her very own--and John's!

How wonderful! How utterly divine--!

Her little feet hardly touched the moss beneath them, she wanted to skip and sing.

Next May! Next May! A Spring flower--a little life to care for when war, of course, would have ended and all the world again could be happy and young!

And then she returned by the tiny ancient church. She had the key of it, a golden one which John had given her on their first coming down. It hung on her bracelet with her own private key.

The sun was pouring through the western window, carpeting the altar steps in translucent cloth of gold.

Amaryllis stole up the short aisle, and paused when she came between the two tall canopied tombs of rec.u.mbent sixteenth century knights, which made so dignified a screen for the little side aisles--and then she moved on and knelt in the shaft of the sunlight there at the carved rails.

And no one ever raised to G.o.d a purer or more fervent prayer.

She stayed until the sun sunk below the window, and then she rose and went back to the house, and up to her cedar room. And now she must write to John!

She began--once--twice--but tore up each sheet. Her news was a supreme happiness, but so difficult to transmit!

At last she finished three sides of her own rather large sized note-paper, but as she read over what she had written, she was not quite content; it did not express all that she desired John to know.

But how could a mere letter convey the wordless gladness in her heart?

She wanted to tell him how she would wors.h.i.+p their baby, and how she would pray that they should be given a son--and how she would remember all his love words spoken that last time they were together, and weave the joy of them round the little form, so that it should grow strong and beautiful and radiant, and come to earth welcomed and blessed!

Something of all this finally did get written, and she concluded thus:

"John, is it not all wonderful and blissful and mysterious, this coming proof of our love? And when I lie awake I say over and over again the sweet name you called me, and which I want to sign! I am not just Amaryllis any longer, but your very own 'Sweetheart'!"

John received this letter by the afternoon post in camp. He sat down alone in his tent and read and re-read each line. Then he stiffened and remained icily still.

He could not have a.n.a.lysed his emotions. They were so intermixed with thankfulness and pain--and underneath there was a fierce, primitive jealousy burning.

"Sweetheart!" he said aloud, as though the word were anathema! "And must I call her that 'Sweetheart'! Oh! G.o.d, it is too hard!" and he clenched his hands.

By the same post came a letter from Denzil, of whose movements he had asked to be kept informed, saying that the 110th Hussars were going out at once, so that they would probably soon meet in France.

Then John wrote to Amaryllis. The very force of his feelings seemed to freeze his power of expression, and when he had finished he knew that it was but a cold, lifeless thing he had produced, quite inadequate as an answer to her tender, exalted words.

"My poor little girl," he sighed as he read it. "I know this will disappoint her. What a hideous, sickening mockery everything is."

He forced himself to add a postscript, a practice very foreign to his usual methodical rule. "Never forget that I love you, Amaryllis--Sweetheart!" he said.

And then he went to his Colonel and asked for two days' leave, and when it was granted for the following Sat.u.r.day and Monday he wired to his wife asking her to meet him in Brook Street.

"I must see her--I cannot bear it," he cried to himself.

And late at night he wrote to Denzil--it was just that he should do this.

"My wife is going to have a baby--if only it should be a son, then it will not so much matter if both of us are killed, at least the family will be saved, and be able to carry oh."

He tried to make the letter cordial. Denzil had behaved with the most perfect delicacy throughout, he must admit, and although they had met once and exchanged several letters, not the faintest allusion to the subject of their talk in the library at Brook Street had ever been made by him.

Denzil had indeed acted and written as though such knowledge between them did not exist. He--Denzil--in these last seven weeks had been extremely occupied, and while his forces were concentrated upon the exhilarating preparations for war, it would happen in rare moments before sleep claimed him at night that he would let his thoughts conjure a waking dream, infinitely, mystically sweet. And every pulse would thrill with ecstasy, and then his will would banish it, and he would think of other subjects.

He could not face the marvel of his emotions at this period, nor dwell upon the romantically exciting aspect of some things.

He was up in London upon equipment business on the very Sat.u.r.day that John got leave, and he was due to dine at the Carlton with Verisschenzko who had that day arrived on vital matters bent.

As they came into the hall, a man stopped to talk to the Russian, and Denzil's eyes wandered over the unnumerous and depressed looking company collected waiting for their parties to arrive. War had even in those early Autumn days set its grim seal upon this festive spot. People looked rather ashamed of being seen and no one smiled. He nodded to one or two friends, and then his glance fell upon a beautiful, slim, brown-haired girl, sitting quietly waiting in an armchair by the restaurant steps.

She wore a plain black frock, but in her belt one huge crimson clove carnation was unostentatiously tucked.

"What a lovely creature!" his thoughts ran, and Verisschenzko turning from his acquaintance that moment, he said to him as they started to advance:

"Stepan, if you want to see something typically English and perfectly exquisite, look at that girl in the armchair opposite where the band used to be. I wonder who she is?"

"What luck!" cried Verisschenzko. "That is your cousin, Amaryllis Ardayre--come along!"