Part 17 (1/2)

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!