Part 13 (1/2)

'Well, I'm glad that's over, ain't you?' says Mrs Dalrymple, who is comfortably seated in a railway carriage, her husband opposite.

'Very,' replies Jimmy, looking unutterable things at her. 'I say though, how late you were. I thought you were never coming, and Helmdon had the fidgets.'

'It was exactly five minutes late,' says she, 'for George looked at his watch just before the carriage stopped, but do look at that woman, isn't she lovely?'

The train is stopping at one of the suburban stations, and the lady who has caught Lippa's attention is hurrying down the platform, trying to find a seat, holding a small child by the hand.

Jimmy pokes his head out of the window. 'By Jove,' he says, 'she is handsome. She's getting into a third cla.s.s, doesn't look like it, does she?'

'No,' says Lippa, and then they forget all about her, till on reaching their destination, they see her again.

'Hullo,' says Dalrymple, 'there's that woman again, I wonder who she is?' As they pa.s.s out of the station, she drops her umbrella, and Jimmy picking it up, restores it to her.

'Thank you,' she says, raising for a moment a pair of wonderful dark eyes to his face.

Lippa looks at her curiously, wondering what her life story is, and then they part, going in opposite directions.

Jimmy has a small house of his own, not far from C---- and only half-a-mile from the sea coast and quite close to 'The Garden of Sleep,'

and here it is that he brings Lippa to pa.s.s the first days of their married life, days of almost perfect happiness. But, in course of time, as they are going to live together for the rest of their lives they come to the wise conclusion that an overdose of solitude to begin with, would be tedious, to say the least of it.

'It wasn't as if we were going to stop here long,' says Lippa one day.

'When we go back to London we must set to work to be very economical, and that will give me heaps to do; I can't bear being idle, can you?'

'I am afraid, dear, that I rather like it,' replies Jimmy, 'but you're not going to worry yourself over making both ends meet, are you? I dare say it will be rather difficult, but if we let this place, it will help us a little, and you said you wouldn't mind.'

'Mind,' and Lippa rises and goes up to him, kneeling down at his side, 'I shan't mind anything now, Jimmy,' she says.

'What does the ”now” imply,' asks he, 'that you did once mind, eh?'

'Yes, I did, when you used to look so gravely at me, when we met in the street, I think my heart was nearly breaking, you know you tried to think I was a flirt, and--'

'Never mind now, sweetheart, it was blind of me not to see through it all, and if you only could have guessed how I was longing to take you in my arms, to ask you why you sent me away, you would not have looked so cold, and--'

It is her turn to interrupt this time, which she does by kissing him.

'Do you know,' she says, 'you nearly made me forget what I was going to say--'

'Is it of great importance?' asks he.

'Yes, it is. Don't you think it would be nice to ask Mabel and the children down here, and we might all go back to London together. I know Teddy would like the sands here; and there is plenty of room; shall we?'

Jimmy says yes, although he would have preferred to remain alone for a little longer.

There is something so nice in knowing that the lovely little person who is always with him, is his very own to take care of and protect against everything, for all the years that lie before them. And he fears to be disturbed, in case it may all prove a dream, and burst like a bubble with the slightest contact of the outer world. But a week later Mabel arrives accompanied by Teddy and the baby; George and Paul, whom Lippa has also begged to come, turn up, and the lovely days that follow, when the sun creeps into their rooms in the early morning enticing them out, where the hedges are covered with sweet smelling honey-suckle and the fields are carpeted with brilliant red poppies, and a walk will take them to the 'Garden of Sleep,' where among the tombstones and long gra.s.s they can watch the sea sparkling in a golden haze, and listen to the waves as they break on the yellow sands; where the birds are ever trilling forth their songs without words; those days for ever are stored in the minds of some of them as the loveliest summer man could wish for.

CHAPTER XI

'Love pardons the unpardonable past.'--CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.