Part 6 (1/2)
John glanced at them, and at the glowing, living, delicious bit of young womanhood which they adorned. He saw the rebellious ripe cherry of a mouth, and the warm, soft tenderness in the grey eyes, and then he quickly looked out of the window--his own blue ones expressionless, but the hand which held the newspaper clenched rather hard.
”Amn't I a pet!” cooed Amaryllis, deliberately subduing the chill of her first disappointment. ”Dearest, see I have kept this last and loveliest set of garments for the morning of our home-coming--and for you!” and she crept close to him and laid her cheek against his cheek.
He encircled her with his arm and kissed her calmly.
”You look most beautiful, darling,” he said. ”But then, you always do, and your frills are perfection. Now I think we ought to have breakfast; it is most awfully late.”
She sat down in her place and she felt stupid tears rise in her eyes.
She poured out the tea and b.u.t.tered herself some toast, while John was apparently busy at a side table where dwelt the hot dishes.
He selected the daintiest piece of sole for her, and handed her the plate.
”I am not hungry,” she protested, ”keep it for yourself.”
He did not press the matter, but took his place and began to talk quietly upon the news of the day--in a composed fas.h.i.+on between glances at _The Times_ and mouthfuls of sole.
Amaryllis controlled herself. She was too proud and too just to make a foolish scene. If this was John's way and her little effort at enticement was a failure, she must put up with it. Marriage was a lottery she had always heard, and it might be her luck to have drawn a blank. So she choked down the rising emotion and answered brightly, showing interest in her husband's remarks--and she even managed to eat some omelette, and when the business of breakfast was quite over she went to the window and John followed her there.
The view which met their eyes was exquisite.
Beyond the perfect stately garden, with its quaint clipped yews and ma.s.ses of spring flowers and velvet lawns, there stretched the vast park with its splendid oaks and browsing deer. It was a possession which any man could feel proud to own.
John slipped his arm round her waist and drew her to him.
”Amaryllis,” he said, and his voice vibrated, ”to-day I am going to show you everything I love here at Ardayre--because I want you to love it all, too. You are of the family, so it must mean something to you, dear.”
Amaryllis kindled with re-awakening hope.
”Indeed, it will mean everything to me, John.”
He kissed her forehead and murmured something about her dressing quickly, and that he would wait for her there in the cedar room. And when she returned in about a quarter of an hour in the neatest country clothes, he placed her hand on his arm and led her down the great stairs and on through the hall into the picture gallery.
It was a wonderful place of green silk and chestnut wainscoting, and all the walls of its hundred feet of length were hung with canvases of value--portraits princ.i.p.ally of those Ardayres who had gone on. Face after face looked down on Amaryllis of the same type as John's and her own--the brown hair and eyes of grey or blue. Some were a little fairer, some a little darker, but all unmistakably stamped ”Ardayre.”
John pointed out each individual to her, while she hung fondly on his arm, from some doubtful crude fourteenth century wooden panels of Johns and Denzils, on to Benedict in a furred Henry VII. gown. Then came Henrys and Denzils in Elizabethan armour and puffed white satin, and through Stuart and Commonwealth to Stuart again, and so to William and Mary numbers of Benedicts, and lastly to powdered Georgian James' and Regency Denzils and Johns. And the name Amaryllis recurred more than once in stately dame or damsel, called after that fair Amaryllis of Elizabeth's days who had been maid of honour to the virgin Queen, and had sonnets written to her nut brown locks by the gallants of her time.
”How little the women they married seem to have altered the type!” the young living Amaryllis exclaimed, when they came nearly to the end. ”It goes on Ardayre, Ardayre, Ardayre, ever since the very first one. Oh!
John, if we ever have a son he ought to be even more so--you and I being of the same blood--” and then she hesitated and blushed crimson. This was the first time she had ever spoken of such a thing.
John held her arm very tightly to his side for a second, and his voice was uncertain as he answered:
”Amaryllis, that is the profound desire of my heart, that we should have a son.”
A strange feeling of exaltation came over Amaryllis, half-innocent, wholly ignorant as she was.
She had been stupid--French novels were all nonsense. Marriages in real life were always like this--of course they must be--since John said plainly and with such deep feeling that his profoundest desire was that they should have a son! That meant that she would surely have one. This was perfectly glorious, and it must simply be those silly books and Elsie Goldmore's too uxorious imagination which had given her some ridiculously romantic exaggerated ideas of what love hours would be. She would now be contented and never worry again. She nestled closer to her husband and looked up at him with eyes sweet and fond, the brown, curly lashes wet with tender dew.
”Oh!--darling, when, when do you think we shall have a son?”