Seven years! Time enough, so physiologists tell us, for the whole
structure of the body to be worn out and renewed again. And for the
mind? Is it to be allowed no chance of change, no throwing aside of
effete matter, no relief from the monotony of a fixed body of
opinions, thoughts, and emotions? That would be hard indeed. Yet Belle
Raby--for she was Belle Raby still--had altered little either
outwardly or inwardly in the seven years which had passed since she
stood leaning over the taffrail watching a boat slip landwards, and
asking herself if that was to be the end of it all. Perhaps this lack
of change was the less remarkable because, as she leant over the
wicket-gate looking into the lane beyond, she was still watching and
waiting, and asking herself what the end was to be. Not, however, as
she had done then; for then she had been in a state of nervous
collapse and unable to judge fairly of anything or any one, of herself
least of all. To do her justice this state of mind had not lasted
long; indeed Belle had found herself facing the white cliffs of
England, and the uncertain future awaiting her there with more
equanimity than she would have deemed possible or even proper a month
before. The long journey home,--that slow passaging day after day
towards a set haven regardless of storm or calm,--the imperturbable
decision of the big ship which seems to have absorbed your weakness in
its strength--the knowledge that day and night, night and day, while
you forget, the engines like a great heart are throbbing on
purposefully across the pathless sea,--all this has worked many a
miracle of healing in mind and body exhausted by the struggle for
existence. It wrought one for Belle, luckily, since the future held
many a difficulty. Despite them all, as seven years afterwards, she
stood bareheaded in the cool English sunshine she looked wonderfully
young and happy; even though those seven years had been the fateful
ones which find a woman in the twenties and leaves her in the
thirties. True it is that wisdom, either of this world or the next,
brings a sadness to most eyes, but in this case a sweetness had come
with it which more than counterbalanced the loss of gaiety. In fact
Belle Raby had never looked more attractive than she did as she stood
in a white dress with a Jacqueminot rose tucked away in the lace at
her throat leaning over the wicket-gate waiting,--waiting for what?
For Philip, of course. Ten o'clock had just chimed from a church-tower
close by, and the time between that and the half-hour had belonged for
years to her best friend. Sometimes during those short thirty minutes
of a busy day she wrote to him; sometimes, as now, she stood watching
for him with tolerable certainty that, if steamers and trains were
punctual, he would step with bodily presence into her life for a few
weeks; but most often she was setting time, and space, and absence,
and all the trivialities which clip the wings of poor humanity at
defiance. In other words she was allowing her imagination to get the
better of her common sense. That is one way of putting it. Another is
possible to those who, like Belle, have learnt to recognise the fact
that the outside world exists for each one of us, not in itself, but
in the effect which it produces on our consciousness. Two women are
grinding at the mill; the one weeps over the task, the other smiles;
just as they choose to weep or smile. The secret of the emotion lies
not in the cosmic touch itself, but in the way the consciousness
receives it, and in the picture which the imagination draws of our own
condition; the abstract truth, the actual reality affects us not at
all. So Belle Raby, as she looked out to the wild roses in the
hedgerow and the yellow butterflies fluttering over the grey bloom of
the flowering grasses, saw nothing of the placid English landscape
spread before her eyes. She was standing on a faraway Indian platform
where the crows sat on the railings cawing irrelatively, and a tall
man in undress uniform was listening to those first words,--"it is
father." That had been the beginning of it all; the keynote both of
the discords and harmony of the whole. Then suddenly, as irrelatively
perhaps as the cawing of the crows, the scene changed. The flood of
sunshine faded to mirk and fog; such mirk and fog as humanity and its
ways creates in London on a dull November day. An atmosphere of
civilisation and culture, say some. Perhaps; but if so, civilisation
with all its advantages is apt to smell nasty. She saw a man and a
woman standing opposite each other in a London lodging, in a London
fog. But five minutes before Philip had come into it buoyantly,
decisively, bringing with him a memory of sunshine and purer air. Now
he stood with his back to the grey square of the window, his hands
stretched out to her in something between command and entreaty.
"Belle! put down the child and let me speak to you." And then for the
first time, she had gone over to him, with the child still in her
arms, and kissed him. "Jack will not trouble me, dear," she said; "he
is such a quiet wee mite. Come, let us sit down and talk it over."
Now when lovers fall to talking hand in hand it is proper, even in a
novel, to avert one's head and smile, saying that the conversation can
have no possible interest to outsiders. Or, if a sentence or two be
suggested, it is necessary to insist that love, divine love, can only
find its first expression in mere foolishness. Belle and Philip
therefore could evidently not have been lovers, for they talked
serious and sound good sense while the year-old Jack with his wide,
wistful eyes lay in his mother's arms and listened to it all. What was
it to him if more than once a reluctant tear fell on his tiny wrinkled
hands, and more than once Philip's voice trembled and then stopped a
while? What were such emotions to a life which had come into the world
barred from them forever? For Belle's child would never be as other
children are; so much was certain; whether he would ever need her care
more than another's was yet to be seen. But it was strange, was it
not? she seemed to hear herself saying in a calm voice, the steadiness
of which surprised her even at the time, that poor Dick's legacy had
gone to a hospital for just such poor little God-stricken children.
"Don't, Belle,--don't, for pity's sake,--I can't bear it." That had
been the man's cry, bringing home to her the fact that she and Philip
had changed places. In the old days a duty had lain between them; a
duty lay between them now. Why had she seen evil and shame in this
man's love then, and yet find none in it now? Then he had been calm,
and she had fretted. Now with another man's child in her arms, and
just the same love in her heart, she had the decision, and he the
restless pain. In those days no thought of such love as deals in
marriage had ever arisen between them; but now Philip had come all the
way from India full of a man's determination to end the story in what
the world said was the only possible, natural, or moral ending to any
love-story. And on such stories as theirs the worldly verdict runs
thus: they had loved each other when they could not marry, which was
very wrong; but a kindly Providence having removed the unnecessary
husband, they could marry, which set everything right.
The mirk and fog settled very closely round them as they sate by the
fire; closer on Philip than on Belle, for it was his turn to be scared
by the phantom of foregone conclusions. What he had strenuously denied
when the position ran counter to his pride, seemed true enough now
that it joined issue with it. He loved Belle, so of course he must
want to marry her. The two things were synonymous; when, of course,
there was a possibility of getting married. Yet Belle, even with tears
in her eyes, could smile as she told him that her first thought in
life lay in her arms; that she could not even give him hope in the
future, or bid him wait, since the waiting might be forever.
That had been more than five years ago, and there was still a smile on
Belle Raby's face as she roused herself from her day-dreams, looked at
her watch, and turned back into the garden. Perhaps he had missed his
train. Even if he had he would still come by and by to see how
magnificently the roses were blooming that year. There were roses
everywhere; wild in the hedgerows, many-coloured in the borders, white
in the trailing sprays that climbed round about the verandahs of the
low cottage which formed one wing of a plainer yet more important
building beyond. It was evidently the later addition of a different
taste, for the gardens surrounding them showed a like dissimilarity.
In the distance, open stretches of well-kept lawns and wide gravelled
paths; civilised, commonplace. Round the cottage a strip almost wild
in its profusion of annuals, its unpruned roses, and the encircling
shade of tall forest trees which must have stood there long before
either the cottage or the pretentious building beyond had been thought
of; a strip of garden suggestive, even to a casual observer, of a less
conventional fashion of life than is usual in the old country. To
Belle, as she stooped to push a tangle of larkspur within reasonable
bounds, it served as a reminiscence of days which, with all their
sadness, she never ceased to regret. She envied Philip often; Philip
in command of his regiment, away on this expedition or that, able to
come back always to the sociable yet solitary existence so strangely
free from the hurry and strain inseparable from life in the West.
Philip, whose name was known all along the frontier as the boldest
soldier on it. A perfect content for and in him glowed at her heart as
with her hands clasped behind her she strolled back to the gate. And
there he was, his head uncovered, his pace quickening as he saw her.
Her pulse quickened too, but she composed herself to calm. For they
had a little game to play, this middle-aged man and woman; a game
which they had played with the utmost gravity on the rare occasions
when Fate brought them into each other's presence.
"Your train is a little late to-day, Phil, isn't it?" she asked as she
held the gate open for him.
"Rather. Have you been waiting long?"
His voice trembled a little in the effort to take it all as a matter
of course, though hers did not; but then the novelty of environment
was greater for him than for her.
"How long is it this time, Phil? I forget, and after all what does it
matter? Come and see the roses, dear; there are such a lot out this
morning."
He stopped her for an instant by drawing the hand he held towards him,
and clasping it in both of his. "More roses than there were yesterday,
Belle?" he asked with a sort of eager certainty in his tone.
She looked at him fondly. "Yes, more than yesterday "--then suddenly
she laughed and laid her other hand on his. "I will say it, dear,
since it pleases you. There are more roses to-day because you have
come, and this is holiday-time."
Their welcome was over; they had stepped for a time into each other's
lives. A ridiculous pretence, of course; a mere attempt to make
imagination play the part assigned since all eternity to facts. But if
it pleased these two, or if it pleases any number of persons who find
facts are stubborn things, why should the world quarrel with it? Belle
had once on a time made herself unnecessarily miserable by imagining
that she and Philip were in love with each other, and that, since love
was inextricably bound up with marriage or the desire for it, she must
be posing as the heroine of the third-rate French novel. Her
consequent loss of self-respect had very nearly spoiled her life, and
even Philip had never ventured to think what might have happened had
John lived to force them into action. The unreality of her past fears
had come home to Belle, however, during the long months when she had
waited for her last legacy. And with the first sight of the baby-face
whereon Fate had set its mark of failure all too clearly, had come a
resolution that in the future nothing but her own beliefs should rule
her conduct. Her life and Philip's should not be spoiled by other
people's ideas; her imagination should be her slave, not her master.
So much, and more, she had said to Philip on that mirky day when in
his first disappointment he had declared that he could not bear it.
But that had been five years ago, and life seemed more than bearable
as he walked round the garden with her hand drawn through his arm and
held there caressingly. A man who is in command of a regiment in which
he has served since he was a boy, whose heart is in his profession,
whose career has been successful, has other interests in life besides
marriage; if he has not, the less he figures as a hero, even in a
novel, the better.
"It is like Nilgunj, isn't it?" said Belle pointing to the tangles of
flowers.
"With a difference. You can't grow Maréchal Niel roses in England.
They were,--well,--overpowering as I came through. Mildred has the
garden very nice; you would hardly recognise the place. The trees you
planted are taller than the house; but everything grows fast in
India,--their eldest girl is up to my elbow. Oh! and Maud was there on
a visit, wearing out her old clothes. She hasn't forgiven you yet,
Belle, for what she calls throwing away your money and becoming a
hospital nurse. I spent some time in trying to explain that you were
simply spending your money in the way which pleased you best; but it
was no use. She only said that caps were no doubt very becoming. Why
don't you wear them, Belle? You always tell _me_ to take what pleasure
I can out of life, and I obey orders."
There was a pause ere he went on. "And Charlie is quite a dandy. More
like you, Belle, than I should have thought possible from my
recollection of him as a youngster at Faizapore. Allsop gives a
first-rate account of him, says he is working splendidly. And Allsop
himself! what a rare good fellow he is, with just that touch of
determination his race generally lack. He is making the business pay
now; not as John would have done, of course, but it supports them and
leaves something over for the bloated capitalist. Besides it is so
much better for Charlie than loafing about at home like the others."
"You needn't tell me that, Phil," said Belle softly. "Don't you think
I see and understand all the good you have forced from what promised
to be evil?"
"That is rather strong, isn't it? It would most likely have done as
well without my interference; things generally come right in the end,
especially if you trust other people. At least that is my experience
in the regiment. By the way, I went over to see the old Khân when I
was at Nilgunj. He is a bit broken, though he won't allow it, by his
wife's death. Obstinate old hero! He declares, too, that it is no
satisfaction having his son back from the Andamans because he is only
out on ticket-of-leave. He stickles for a full apology; as if life
would be endurable without a grievance of some kind or another.
If he only knew how I had backstaired and earwigged every official
on the list over that business! I wasted a whole month's leave at
Simla,--which I might have saved up and spent on board a P. and O.
steamer, my dear. It was during the rains, and I seemed to live in a
waterproof on my way to some _burra sahib_ or another. But my pride is
all broken and gone to bits, Belle; I shall be asking the authorities
for a C.I.E.-ship some day if I don't take care. Well! the old man
sent you his _salaam_ as usual, said the women ruled the roost
nowadays, and in the same breath fell foul of them collectively
because his daughter-in-law had not prepared some peculiar sherbet
which old Fâtma always produced on state occasions. Not that Haiyât-bi
minds his abuse, now she has a husband to bully in her turn. That,
says the Khân, is women's way; since the beginning of time deceitful
and instinct with guile. And then, Belle--yes, then he brought out the
old sword, and here it is, dear, his and mine in the old way, if only
in the spirit."
He stood beside her, stretching out his hands in the well-remembered
fashion, as if something sacred lay in them and before the tenderness
in his face, the calmness of hers wavered for an instant. "Did we
really go through all that together, Phil?" she asked with a tremble
in her voice. "Oh my dear, my dear, how much you have all given me!
And I give,--so little. But my pride is, like yours, all broken and
gone to bits, and I take everything I can get. You should see how I
beg for the hospital."
She turned to the big white building beyond the cottage as if to
escape into another subject; and Philip turned also.
"Is it,--is it getting along nicely?" he asked dutifully.
"Yes, dear," she replied, looking at him again with a smile; "but we
shall have time to talk of that by and by. You haven't given me half
the budget of news. And do you know, Phil, I begin to suspect that in
writing you tell all the pleasant things and keep back the
disagreeables. Now that isn't fair; as children say, it spoils the
game."
"Does it? Well, I won't do it again. Let me see what is the most
unpleasant story I have heard for the last few months. Ah--yes! that
is about the worst." He paused with a frown.
"Well?"
"Only Shunker Dâs is dead. That isn't very distressful; but you
remember Kirpo?"
"Why, Philip, it was her husband who--"
"Yes, of course, of course; but I was not thinking of that; only of
the day when she came out of the coolies' hut with a child in her
arms, and told us why he was called Nuttu. Well, it is a horrid story,
Belle, but that pitiless old fatalist the Khân, who was my informant,
saw the hand of high heaven in it. Shunker got the telegram informing
him that he was to be made a _Rai Bahâdur_, and another announcing his
son's death by the same messenger. Ghastly, wasn't it? He had a fit,
and though he lived for some weeks they never could understand a word
he said, though he talked incessantly. One can imagine what he wanted
from the sequel. Well, at his funeral-pyre, up turns Kirpo with a
strapping boy of about eight years old, and there was an awful scene.
She swore it was Shunker's son, and made the child defile the ashes.
Do you remember her face that day, and how I said she hated somebody?
Great Heavens! there is something perfectly devilish in the idea of
such a revenge."
"And yet we talk calmly enough of the sins of the fathers being
visited on the children." She paused as the church clock struck
eleven. "It is time I went to see my bairns, Phil. Will you come too?
They will be at their best; the out-ones just in from the garden, the
in-ones ready for their midday rest. They look so comfortable all
tucked up in their cots."
The bravest man winces sometimes, and Philip, despite the five years,
had never forgotten that day of mirk and fog when he had first seen
John Raby's child, and Belle had bidden him go away if he could not be
satisfied with what she had to give him. To be satisfied, or go away!
Both, it had seemed to him then, equally impossible; yet he had done
both. Still the memory was painful. "You are going to build the new
wing next year, I suppose?" he said as indifferently as he could when,
leaving the shady wilderness, they made their way along the gravel
walks which were seamed in every direction by the wheel-marks of
invalid carriages.
"It depends," she replied quickly, answering the effort in his tone by
a grateful look. "I may not have to build it. I may not be here. I am
to go where I am most wanted; that was settled long ago, Phil."
He was silent; what was there to say?
Side by side they climbed the terrace steps to reach the front of the
hospital which looked right across a stretch of wind-swept down to the
open sea. A row of perambulators and wheeled couches stood under a
glazed verandah, and above the level lines of square windows the words
"SMITH'S HOME FOR INCURABLE CHILDREN" showed in big gold letters as a
balustrade to the semi-Grecian façade.
Belle glanced up at it before passing through the noiseless swinging
doors. "I always wish I had been in time to stop that awful
inscription," she said; "but it was scarcely worth while pulling it
all down. You see none of them can read. We take them young, and those
who stop don't live to be old; that is one thing to be thankful for.
You don't like my speaking of it, Phil, but I often wonder what would
have become of this empty shell of a house if my Jack had been born as
most children are born,--as I wished him to be born. Some one would
have carried on the work, I suppose, if I hadn't, and yet,--these
bairns might have been God knows where, instead of in the sunlight."
She opened an inner door, and signed to him to pass before her. There
was sunlight there, and no lack of it, though it shone on sights which
to Philip Marsden's unaccustomed eyes seemed to dim the brightness.
Rows of little crutches along the walls, weary unchildlike faces
resting on the low divans in the windows; in the centre a more
cheerful picture of little ones gathered round a table set with bread
and milk.
"This is my show room and these are my show babies," said Belle with a
smile. "We all get about more or less and play by ourselves; don't we,
nurse? And some of us, like Georgie here, are going home again because
we are too strong for the place. We don't keep noisy, romping, rioting
ragamuffins, do we, children?"
The face she turned up to hers as she passed grinned doubtfully, but
all the other little white faces dimpled and wrinkled with mirth at
the very idea of Georgie's exile. They went up stairs now, into more
sunshine streaming on rows of beds where childhood wore away with no
pleasure beyond a languid joy at a new picture-book or a bunch of
flowers. Here they trod softly, for some of the little ones were
already asleep.
"Where is Freddy?" asked Belle in a whisper of the nurse busy
smoothing an empty cot.
"He seemed so restless this morning, ma'am, that Dr. Simmonds thought
we had better put him in the White Ward; he was afraid--"
Belle passed on, her face a shade graver, and as Philip followed her
up another wide staircase she paused before a closed door and asked
him to wait for her; she would not be long.
He caught a glimpse of a smaller, more home-like room, white and
still, with the light shaded from the open windows. Then he stood
leaning against the bannisters, watching the dancing motes in a
sunbeam slanting down from the skylight overhead; a skylight looking
as if it were glazed with sapphire.
"That was the White Ward," said Belle, coming out and passing upward
through the beam of light. She spoke almost cheerfully, but Philip,
who had faced death, and worse horrors than death, many a time without
a qualm, felt himself shiver. Once again they paused before a closed
door and she gave Philip a hurried half-appealing glance, before she
said nervously, "I have Jack in this ward now. Dr. Simmonds thinks it
good for him to be with the other children, and he seems to like it
better."
It was the sunniest room of all, for the windows were set wide open,
and the blinds drawn up. The scent of the roses from Belle's garden
drifted in with the cool fresh wind. The children had evidently all
been out, for a pile of hats and cloaks lay on the table, but they
were now seated on their cots awaiting their turn for lunch. Philip's
eyes, travelling down the row of beds, rested on a crop of golden
curls, and he gave a little exclamation, half groan, half sigh. That
was a face he could not mistake, strange and wistful as it was; not an
unintelligent face either, and great heavens! how like the father's as
it fell stricken to death.
"Listen!" said Belle, touching his arm. A nurse passing with a tray
paused in pleased expectancy.
"Jack!" her voice echoed softly through the silence.
The golden head turned, the veriest ghost of a smile came to the
pinched face, and the thin little hands stretched themselves aimlessly
into space with a sudden plaintive cry which sent a lump to Philip's
throat.
"Lor!" protested the nurse full of pride; "didn't he say it beautiful
clear that time? Mother? Yes, it is mother, my pretty; and you knows
her voice, don't you, dearie? just as well as any on us."
Belle sate down on the cot, gathering the child in her arms, and the
yellow curls nestled down contentedly on her shoulder. A mite of a boy
with great wide blue eyes fixed on the only face he ever recognises.
"Do you think him grown at all?" she asked; then seeing Philip's look
bent over the child and kissed the blue veins on the large forehead.
There was a passion of protection in her kisses. "If he were the only
one, Phil, I should break my heart about it; but there are so
many,--and,--and it is so causeless." Her eyes seemed to pass beyond
the child and she went on more cheerfully, "Then he is such a
contented little fellow when he is with me,--aren't you, Jack?"
Again came the ghost of a smile, and the same plaintive cry. Philip
walked to the window and looked out on the roses. It was a very slight
thing, that cry, to have come between a man and a woman,--if it had
come between them. He turned to look at Belle instinctively, and found
her looking at him. No! nothing had come between them. Before the
insoluble problem of what Belle held in her arms love seemed to him
forever divorced from marriage. The veriest pariah, born of God knows
what, or of whom, the outcome of the basest passion, might enter the
world fair and strong and capable, while their child, if they married,
bringing each to each a pure devotion, might be as these children
here.
He crossed the room again and sate down on the bed beside her. "How
many have you in the hospital now?" he asked in a low voice, for Jack,
contented and comfortable, was evidently falling asleep.
"Fifty; but Dr. Simmonds says he could fill a hundred beds to-morrow.
It is the best place, he declares, of its kind."
"Would you undertake so much?"
She shook her head. "I never know,--no one knows from day to day. They
are all so frail. Freddy, for instance, was no worse yesterday, and
to-day! There are plenty to fill my place here when,--when the time
comes."
"It may never come. Besides," he added, "I may be incurable myself ere
long. Don't you remember promising me the gatekeeper's place if ever I
was pensioned off minus a leg or an arm?"
"Did I?" she answered in the same light tone, as she rose to lay
little Jack on his pillow and draw the blanket over him. "Then I must
warn the present old cripple that his place isn't a permanent one.
Isn't he like his father, Phil?" she added, laying her hand on the
child's pretty soft curls.
"Very."
They passed along the sunny corridors again and so out into the open
air. Philip drew his hand over his forehead as if to brush away
puzzling thoughts, and gave a sigh of relief. "Come down to the cliffs
with me, Belle," he said. "There is plenty of time before lunch, and I
feel as if I wanted a blow. It's rather an irrelevant remark, but I
wonder what will become of the babies if women become men?"
They crossed the downs keeping step together, and walking rapidly as
if to leave something behind, finally seating themselves in a niche
between two great white pillars of chalk, whence they could see the
waves ebbing and flowing among the rocks at their feet. The horizon
and the sky were blent into one pale blue, so that the fishing boats
with their red-brown sails seemed hovering between earth and heaven.
"How long is it this time?" she asked after a pause. "The usual three
months?"
"Yes! the usual three months from the frontier. That leaves me six
weeks with you; six whole weeks."
There was another pause. "Philip!" she said suddenly, "I'll marry you
to-morrow if you like,--if,--if it would make you happier."
He was sitting with his hands between his knees, looking out absently
over the waves below. He did not stir, but she could see a smile
struggling with his gravity.
"My dear Belle! The banns haven't been called."
"Perhaps we could afford a special license on the easy-purchase system
by monthly instalments," she suggested quite as gravely. "But really,
Philip, when I see you--"
"Growing so old; don't be afraid of the truth, Belle. Am I very bald?"
"Bald! No, but you are grizzling fast, Phil; and when the fact is
brought home to me by seeing it afresh, I ask myself why you shouldn't
have a wife and children."
"I could, of course; there are plenty of young ladies now on the
frontier. Oh, Belle! I thought we had settled this long ago. You can't
leave Jack; you wouldn't with a clear conscience, if you could. I
can't leave the regiment; I shouldn't like to, if I could. Is not that
an end of marriage from our point of view? Besides," he turned to her
now with a smile full of infinite tenderness, "I am not at all sure
that I do want to marry you. When perfection comes into a man's life,
can you not understand his being a little afraid--"
"Philip!"
"Not of you, dear; but this love of ours seems better than we are
ourselves,--than _I_ am, certainly. Then marriage, as I take it, is
for young people, and what they call Love is the bribe held out by
Nature to induce her thoughtless children to undertake a difficult
duty. The sweet isn't unwholesome in itself, but that is no reason why
we should call it manna from heaven and say it is better than plain,
wholesome bread and butter."
"You are growing detestably didactic in your old age, Phil. When you
come to the gatekeeper's house I shall have to amend your ways."
"You forget I shall be incurable then; but you are right. I am fast
becoming a real old crusted military fogy, and of all fogies that is
the worst. You can't think what a nuisance I am to the boys at mess;
they depute a fresh one to prose to the Colonel every night."
"I know better. When young Cameron came home sick he had a very
different story."
"Young Cameron isn't to be trusted. To begin with he had had a
sunstroke, and then he proposed marrying on subaltern's pay."
"Well, you can't expect the world to give up falling in love because
you don't approve."
"Let it fall by all means; only let us call things by their proper
names. You and I, Belle, know the trouble which follows on the present
confusion. And if we, eminently respectable people, suffered much,
many must suffer more. Many! Why the question, 'Is Marriage a
Failure?' fills up the interstices of conversation left between the
Rights of Labour and Home Rule. How can it be anything but a failure
when people are taught to expect impossibilities? when they are told
that love is better than duty? Thank heaven, we never were in love
with one another!"
"Never?"
"No,--at least,--yes! perhaps I was one day. Do you remember when you
kissed your cousin Dick in the church garden at Faizapore? I was
decidedly jealous as I stood by the canal bridge. If he had lived,
Belle, I think you would have married him."
She did not answer, but sate softly smiling to herself. "So long ago
as that," she said at last in a contented tone of voice.
Philip started to his feet with a half-embarrassed laugh. Even now,
after all these years, her woman's nature, in its utter inconsequence,
was a puzzle to him,--perhaps to herself.
"Come," he said prosaically, "I'm sure it must be time for lunch."
"Are you so very hungry?" she asked, dusting from her dress, with
something of regret in the action, the sweet-smelling herbs which she
had idly gathered from the crannies of the cliff and crumbled to
pieces for the sake of their perfume.
"I ought to be, seeing I had no breakfast."
She started up in her turn. "Philip! How could you? and never to tell
me!"
"You see we were late all through; something went wrong somewhere, and
then I had to catch the ten o'clock train. Don't look horrified; I got
a stale bun at Swindon."
"Stale buns are most unwholesome."
"That is what materialists like you always say of any diet which does
not suit them. Personally I like stale buns."
"You mean that you can put up with them when you have a solid lunch in
prospect."
He had taken her hand to help her to the level and now suddenly he
paused, and stooping kissed it passionately. "Oh, Belle, my darling,
why should we talk or think of the future? To-day is holiday-time and
I am happy."
So, hand in hand, like a couple of children, they went homewards
across the down; while the great gilt letters of the legend above the
hospital glowed and shone like a message of fire against the blue sky.
Was that the end of the story, so far as Belle and Philip were
concerned? Or on some other sunshiny day in a future June or December
did those two pass through the churchyard where the tiny flower-set
graves grew more numerous year by year, and, beneath the tower whose
chime had so often called Belle to her bairns, take each other for
better, for worse? Most likely they did, but it is a trivial detail
which has nothing to do with the record of Miss Stuart's Legacy. That
began with her father, and ended with her child. She paid it
cheerfully to the uttermost farthing, and was none the worse for it.
Such payments, indeed, leave us no poorer unless we choose to have it
so. The only intolerable tax being that which follows on the attempt
to inherit opinions; for, when we have paid it, we have nothing in
exchange save something that is neither real estate nor personal
property.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1: A lineal descendant of the Prophet.]
[Footnote 2: The three divisions recognised in Mahometan polemics. (1)
The place of Islam; (2) the place of the enemy; (3) the place of
protection. The sign of the latter is the liberty of giving the call
to prayers.]
[Footnote 3: A common occurrence in old Pathan houses.]
[Footnote 4: A celebrated white charger of a Rajpoot prince; an
eastern Bucephalus.]
[Footnote 5: Literally, a footman.]
[Footnote 6: Small millet; the food of the poorest.]
[Footnote 7: The extreme south-east.]
[Footnote 8: Electrical dust-storm.]
[Footnote 9: Deputy-Collector, _i.e_., chief native official.]
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Miss Stuart's Legacy, by Flora Annie Steel