Part 62 (1/2)
”Collectors will pay fancy prices for copies of that same little siege newspaper, at auctions yet to be.”
”I've thought of that,” she confessed. ”But, oh! I could make it so much more spicy if you'd only give me a freer hand.”
His hazel eyes had a smile in them. ”I know you think me an editorial martinet.”
”You blue-pencil out of my poor paragraphs everything that's interesting.”
”No personalities shall be published in a paper I control.”
”The Reading Public adore personalities and puerilities.”
”They can go to the _Daily Whale_ for them, then.”
”Isn't that rather a personal remark?”
”Let me say that if you are occasionally personal, you are never, under any circ.u.mstances, anything but clever.”
”Thank you. But, oh! the difference between what I am and what I aspired to be!”
”And, ah! the difference between what I have done and what I meant to do!”
he said.
Her black eyes flashed. ”You have never really felt it. Achievement with you has never hit below the mark. You, of all men living, are least fitted to enter into the rueful regrets and dismal disillusions of a Hannah Wrynche.”
”Hannah Wrynche, who is content to do a woman's work and fill a woman's place; Hannah Wrynche, who has atoned for a moment of ambitious--shall I say imprudence?--splendidly and n.o.bly, has no reason to be rueful or regretful. Don't shake your head. Do you think I don't know what you are doing, day after day, to help and cheer those poor fellows at the Convalescent Hospital?”
Her eyes were full of tears. ”You make too much of my poor efforts. You underestimate the effect of praise from you.”
”I said very little in the last cipher despatch that got through to Colonel Rickson at Malamye, but what I did say was very much to the purpose, believe me.”
She gasped, staring at him with circular eyes of incredulity. ”You've mentioned--me--in your despatches. ME?”
”Just so!” he said, and left her groping for the ridiculous little gossamer handkerchief to dry the tears of pride and grat.i.tude that were tumbling down her cheeks.
XLI
”Clang--clang--clang!”
A man and a girl came back out of Paradise when the Catholic church-bell rang the Angelus. The girl's sweet flushed face had paled at the first three strokes. When the second triple clanged out, her colour came back.
She rose from her seat upon a lichened slab of granite in the cool shadow of the great boulder, and bent her lovely head, Beauvayse watching her lips as they moved, soundlessly repeating the Angelic Salutation:
”_Ave Maria, gratia plena; Dominus tec.u.m! Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus._”
The wonderful simplicity of the Chosen One's reply followed, and the announcement of the Unspeakable Mystery. The little prayer followed, and the rapid signing with the Cross, and she dropped her slight hand from her bosom, and turned her eyes back upon his.
”You remind me of my mother,” he told her. ”She is Catholic, you know.”
”And not you?”