Part 31 (2/2)
”Told me? Do you suppose I'm blind?” Freddy spoke with such frank sympathy and pleasure that from his voice more than his words Michael took heart.
”It's awful cheek on my part.”
”Yes, 'awful cheek,'” Freddy said. ”Considering Meg's just the one and only Meg in the world.” He took Meg's brown hand in his--such a different hand from Millicent's!--and placed it on the top of Michael's and held it there. ”Bless you, my children!” he said. ”I feel like a heavy father. And I've nothing more to say, except that I'm jolly glad, and I congratulate you both.”
Meg's eyes were s.h.i.+ning. Freddy was so boyish and yet so much her elder brother. How she loved him!
”Thanks, old chap,” Michael said. ”I suppose Meg's told you all about it?--I mean, how I'm not going to let her bind herself to me? We love each other, and I forgot and told her I did.”
Freddy laughed. ”If something better than you, you old drifter, turns up, she's to be free to take him. Of course, something will!”
”Yes,” Michael said. ”Or if . . .” he paused.
”If you prove too unpractical for a husband, you old humbug, I'm to cancel the engagement!”
Meg linked her arm in her brother's. ”I'm quite practical, enough for us both,” she said. ”The Lampton common sense wants leavening. We never rise to heights, Freddy--we're solid dough.”
”We manage to get down into the bowels of the earth, which helps a bit, if we can't soar very high.”
All three laughed. Freddy meant the tomb, of course.
Freddy was smoking a cigarette. His eyes were following the two donkeys which were taking Millicent and her friend down the valley.
They looked like white insects in the distance; they had travelled rapidly, as donkeys will travel on their homeward journey.
”The fair Millicent!--and, by Jove, she is fair!”--Freddy said, meditatively, ”didn't come here to find out your engagement--don't imagine so. She managed to carry away some information more difficult to obtain than that.” He laughed and quoted the old saying, ”Love, like light, cannot be hid. What a pity she isn't all as nice as the nice parts of her, or as nice as she is pretty!”
”I always think she looks so nice to eat,” Margaret said.
”I think she looks so nice to kiss,” Freddy said laughingly. ”If that American hadn't been there, I'd have taken her off for a walk, and then I could have told you, Mike, what it was like.”
Meg blushed to the roots of her hair. Her brother's words recalled the ball at a.s.suan. She knew that Michael knew what it was like.
Freddy saw Meg's blush and wondered what it meant. He turned and left the lovers to enjoy a few moments' uninterrupted bliss and to discuss the day's events.
Their bliss consisted in standing together, silently watching the two figures on the white donkeys disappear into the valley below. When the last trace of them had vanished and the desert and the sky composed their world, Meg gave a sigh of relief. Perfect content was expressed in her att.i.tude and silence, a long silence, too sacred to be broken rashly. The sun was brilliant, the distance before them immense, compelling.
As Meg gazed and gazed, her heart became more and more full of happiness. The world was a wonderful mother; she had only to trust, to believe, to love, to have happiness showered upon her.
”In a book I was reading the other day, Mike,” she said, ”the heroine remarked that looking into a great distance always made her long to be better than she was. How true it is--at least, with me. I knew what she meant, instantly. I feel it now, don't you?”
”That's why town-life is so bad for us,” he said. ”Our vision never gets beyond the traffic, beyond the progress of commerce. I've often thought the same thing. Distances are sublime.”
”The distances in the desert make me feel far more like that than any other distances. The desert has taught me so much--it is a wonderful mother.”
Michael's eyes answered her.
”Looking at that distance makes me wish I hadn't been so wicked in my heart about Mrs. Mervill. I was bursting with hate of her, Mike--I longed to hurt her as she always hurts me!”
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