Part 73 (2/2)
”Quite useless!”
But the hands stretched out to him belied her words; and as he knelt beside her once more, she set them upon his shoulders and kissed his forehead.
”This time I give you up for good, Michel!” she said, smiling. ”At least I have done my level best for you; so my conscience is clear.
But it is written that 'no man may redeem his brother'; and I might have known that Providence was not likely to make an exception in favour of a woman!”
”Is it perhaps a step towards redemption if, on your account, I give up playing with the _feu sacre_ of the heart, and confine myself to the only form of it that the G.o.ds appear to have granted me?”
”_Dieu vous garde_,” she whispered, and kissed him again.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
”I have my lesson; understand The worth of flesh and blood at last.”
--Browning.
”Oh, Theo--it is too cruel. Too terrible! What on earth is one to tell her?”
”Anything but the truth,” Desmond answered decisively, his gaze reverting to the telegram in his hand. It was from the Resident of Kashmir; bald and brief, yet full of grim possibilities.
”Captain Lenox dangerously ill at Darkot. Rheumatic fever. Doctor sent out. Will wire further news. Writing.”
Desmond read and re-read the words mechanically, an anxious frown between his brows. Then, looking up again, he encountered his wife's eyes, heavy with tears; and his arm enfolded her on the instant.
”Bear up, my darling, like the plucky woman you are,” he commanded gently, his lips against her cheek. ”It's not the worst. By G.o.d's mercy we may get him back yet. You must keep on upholding her a little longer; that's all. I know it has been a strain for you,--this last fortnight; so soon after your own affair too.”
For they themselves had been enriched by a new life, a new link in the chain that bound them--a bright-haired daughter not yet four months old.
Honor did not answer at once; but leaned upon him, choking back her sobs, soothed by the magnetism of his hand and voice, that seemed always to leave things better than they found them.
When her tears were under control, she drew herself up, brus.h.i.+ng them from her cheeks and lashes.
”Yes, it has been a strain,” she admitted. ”And I did so hope this had brought news I could give her, at last. You don't see her as I do, Theo, lying there day after day, so frail and white and patient. Quita patient! Can you picture it? I quite long for a flash of her old perversity. She has almost left off speaking of him. But the eternal question in her eyes haunts me; and I feel half ashamed of my golden time with you, when I see her going through it alone, poor darling; her natural joy in the child shadowed and broken by the anxiety and longing that are eating her heart out, and holding her back from health. Is there nothing I can tell her, that would be truth, yet not all the truth?”
Desmond knitted his brows again, pondering.
”Go to her now,” he said. ”Tell her we've heard by wire that he is safely over the Darkot, but he may be delayed in getting on to Kashmir, and we hope for more news within the week. If she asks to see the wire, say you're sorry, but I tore it up.”
He did so on the spot, dropping the shreds of paper reflectively among the smouldering logs upon the hearth; while Honor hurried to the sick-room, with her fragment of news: the room in which Lenox had almost died of cholera, and in which Quita's ring had been restored to her finger sixteen months before.
She lay in it now, propped up among frilled pillows, an etherealised edition of herself; her hair divided into two plaits, one lying over each shoulder; the sweeping curve of her lashes shadowing her cheek; her eyes resting on a small dark head that nestled in the hollow of her arm. For, to Quita's intense satisfaction, the child had Eldred's black hair, and the clear Northern eyes that held all she knew, or as yet cared to know, of heaven.
Her delight at the inadequate tidings of her husband was greater than Honor had dared to expect. For she could not know how the wakeful night watches, and the hours of enforced quiet, had been haunted by that nightmare dread of the mountains, which Eldred's expurgated accounts of certain vicissitudes had justified rather than dispelled.
But now--now he was through the worst of them, within easy distance of Kashmir; and she felt as a prisoner may feel when the doors swing wide, and he finds himself once more lord of light and s.p.a.ce.
<script>