Part 22 (2/2)
”My mother--” he began.
”To be sure, your mother has first claim. To say nothing of another.”
He coloured. Mary was looking at him with kind interest. Mrs. Morres sent him a quick glance--then looked away again.
”To be sure, you must go, Sir Robin,” she said, in a serious voice. ”I was only jesting. Ah! here we are! So it is good-bye.”
”Au revoir,” he corrected.
”Well, au revoir. I hope you'll have a very happy time at Lugano. But you are sure to.”
A moment later they had gone off in their cab, and he was feeling the blank of their absence.
CHAPTER XIX
WILD THYME AND VIOLETS
While Sir Robin and Mary Gray sat on that English hillside, Nelly and her father walked on a hilly road above Lugano. The April afternoon was Paradise. Below, the lake lay blue as a sapphire mirroring a sapphire sky. The s.p.a.ce between them and the lake's edge was tinged with a bloom of bluish-rose, for all the almond groves were out in blossom. Below them were drifts of sweet-scented narcissi. All around them lay the mountains, Monte Rosa silver against the sapphire sky. Below the fantastic houses cl.u.s.tered to the lake's edge in their little groves and coppices of green.
They were talking of Robin's coming. The hour of his arrival was somewhat uncertain. They might find him at the hotel when they returned, going home in the evening quietness, when Monte Rosa would be flushed to rose-pink and the blue sky would die off in splendours of rose and orange.
Nelly was certainly looking better. Not a hint had come to her of the frontier war in which, by this time, her lover must be engaged. The General starved for his newspapers in these days, if he did not get the chance of a surrept.i.tious peep at one at the English library, or when some friendly fellow-guest in the hotel would hand him a belated print two days old. Nelly had a wild rose bloom in her cheek and a light in her eye at this moment. Who could look upon such a scene and not praise the Designer? Not Nelly, certainly. As they paused for the hundredth time to look she breathed sighs of content and pressed her father's arm close to hers in a caress. Even though one's lover had been cruel and had gone away without speaking, it was good to be alive.
The appealing influence of the season was about them, too. They had just peeped into a little wayside chapel, where there was a small altar ablaze with lights set amid ma.s.ses of flowers. The place was heavy with sweetness. Here and there knelt wors.h.i.+ppers with bent heads. The General had bowed with a reverent knee, and Nelly had knelt with him before they had gone out into the blaze of the day again.
”There are only two armies, after all, Nell,” the General had said, explaining himself. ”The army of the Lord and the army of the Prince of Darkness. Let us rejoice that we have so many fellow-soldiers in the Lord's army, though we fight in different regiments.”
”To-morrow,” said Nelly dreamily, ”the lights will be all out and the little chapel draped in black. There will be the service of the Three Hours' Agony. Do you think we might come?”
”I'm afraid the Dowager would be shocked,” her father replied hastily.
”She would look upon it as deserting the flag. Many excellent women are very narrow-minded.”
They went along in silence. At intervals they sat down to enjoy at leisure the beautiful world about them. They did not say much. There was little need for talk between two who understood each other so thoroughly. While they dawdled, half-way round the lake from their hotel, the sun dropped behind the hills and left them in shadow. It was time for them to go home.
As they went along leisurely, Nelly's face, uplifted towards the sky, seemed to have caught an illumination from it. It was the eve of the Great Sacrifice. Already the shadow and the light of it lay over the world. Nelly was thrilled and touched. That visit to the wayside chapel had set chords vibrating in her heart. Sacrifice for love's sake appealed to her as it does to all generous, impressionable young souls.
Though her own personal happiness had vanished, gone down under the world with the _Sutlej_, there was yet the happiness possible of making those she loved happy. She had understood her father's wistful looks and tentative speeches. She knew that he desired her happiness to be in her cousin's keeping. The old days were over, the sweet days before that other had come, when she and her father had sufficed for each other.
They could never come again, and he wanted her to marry Robin. Robin's mother, who was good to her, had suggested that she was trying Robin's patience too far. Why, if she could make them all happy--she was not in a state of mind to appreciate what marriage with one man while she loved another was going to cost her--if she could make them all happy, ought she not to do so?
”Father!” she whispered. ”Father!”
”What is it, Nell?”
She rubbed her cheek slowly against his arm, not speaking for a second or two.
”Father, I am ready to marry Robin whenever you will.”
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