But there was a deeper affinity between them than she knew; and he showed it now by answering the call of her presence and waking under her eyes. He woke in terror, with her name on his lips, a cry of agony, which changed, when he saw her, to relief—instantaneous. He turned and hid his face against her, in the gesture of a frightened child. Lettice never forgot that moment. It was a sword through her heart. She drew a deep breath; without impulse, deliberately rather, she put her arm round his shoulders and held him there, strong to comfort. Her face was stern.... Moments passed; little by little the tremors and the quick uneven breathing subsided. He sat up.
"Apologies," he said with a half-laugh, unconcealably shaken, but unashamed.
"Do you often wake like that?" asked Lettice unsmiling.
"Do I? Occasionally. When I get the jim-jams. Yes, I have pretty often lately. It's all your fault, you know."
"My fault?"
"That story of yours, that particular danger—well, it happened to be my particular nightmare. I don't think there were many minutes when it was out of my head. I kept it under mostly during the day, but at night it used to wear through and wake me up. I used to visualize it in all sorts of variations. You, Lettice, who hate to have a hand laid on you—"
"Who told you I disliked that?"
"You have yourself, a dozen times."
She let that pass. "I am thankful you are out of that place," she said in a low voice, half to herself. He smiled.
"I'm all right, darling. Or I soon shall be, when—"
"When what?"
"Nothing," said Gardiner. "I shall be all right soon."
He captured the hand which hung by her side and kissed it softly, inside and out. "It's been rather sport pulling your tail when you've always tried to pull mine, but I can't keep it up any longer. Are you going to give me what I want, Lettice of my heart?"
"What do you want?"
"You. All of you. Mind as well as body. Mind principally. I told you before, I tell you again, it was you brought me through. You have me—all of me. And if I'm better worth having than I was a year ago, it's your doing. I claim no credit. I put myself into your hands to do what you like with. Will you take on the job?" Lettice did not answer—could not answer; she was in travail, and hers was no easy delivery. Gardiner looked up. "My God, you don't want to!"
She put out her hand quickly. "I will marry you."
"No, you won't. I decline."
"You—you don't understand. I will marry you."
"Oh, damn," said Gardiner. "Oh, I can't stand this. It's quite all right. I can get on without you." He stood by the table, striking match after match in vain efforts to light his cigarette; when he had it burning, he threw it away. Then he began on the matches again; the floor was strewn with broken ends. "My darling, it really is all right. I should have seen it before if I hadn't been an ass. What you can't give is the least part of what I want. Put me on the same ration as Denis, and I shall do famously."
"Youdon'tunderstand," said Lettice, "and I am such a dolt—"
"Lettice, Iwill nottake what you don't want to give. I saw what you were feeling. Think you could take me in after we were married? Think I should enjoy the position? I tell you one reason why your instincts are rebelling now, and that's the—the—what that poor child killed. Isn't it so?" Lettice was mute. "Well, do you think I want to even myself withthat?"
"I don't care what you think," said Lettice with staccato distinctness, "and I amgoingto marry you."
He turned and seized her shoulders. "Lettice, you don't love me?" She was dumb again. "Do you?Doyou? Lettice—alma de mi vida, niña de mi corazón—saladisima, preciosisima, hermosisima—"
If he had never known it before, he saw now that he had power over her; she could not resist that tone. "Well, I can't have you waking up like that, can I?"
"How would you have me wake?" asked Gardiner under his breath. He did not know what he expected, certainly not what he got: a swift turn, Lettice's face grim with feeling, her hands strongly drawing him down against her heart. She said not a syllable, but she held him there; and by and by she bent her graceful little neck and kissed him, the oddest little salute, it might have been called a peck, quite definite and not at all shy. Gardiner sprang up, flushed, impassioned, freeing himself from her arms to seize her in his own; then holding her off, with one lingering scruple—"Sure it's all right, Lettice? Sure you don't mind? I swear I'll take nothing you don't freely give—now or as your husband, nothing!"
"You are not all there is of most intelligent, are you?" said Lettice.
But if her tongue was perverse, her eyes were very soft—soft as only Lettice's eyes could be, always with a sparkle in their sweetness; and Gardiner was not critical. He was far too much occupied in making love, which he did very prettily, with a wealth of soft Spanish superlatives. He was drunk with happiness; his most enterprising dreams had never pictured such a surrender.
And Lettice was happy too. She knew now, she had learned in the moment when he woke with her name on his lips, that she was not afraid of passion; and if she had surprised him, he had surprised her too. She had thought she understood him pretty well; but she knew the worst better than the best, and the unselfishness, the delicacy, the almost fantastic chivalry of his love left her wonderingand self-reproachful. So it happened that she finally surrendered the keys of her heart (with reserves: there were certain chambers which she really couldn't and wouldn't unlock, though she spoiled her Harry in every other conceivable way) with fewer regrets than she had thought possible, and with no misgivings at all. Her mind was at rest; she had built her house upon a rock.
We traveled in the print of olden wars,Yet all the land was green,And love we found, and peace,Where fire and war had been.
We traveled in the print of olden wars,Yet all the land was green,And love we found, and peace,Where fire and war had been.
We traveled in the print of olden wars,Yet all the land was green,And love we found, and peace,Where fire and war had been.
We traveled in the print of olden wars,
Yet all the land was green,
And love we found, and peace,
Where fire and war had been.
March, 1920, on the Semois.
Strong sunshine and silver rain-storms; the winds of the equinox marshaling great swan-white droves of cloud across the blue, the wet earth sparkling like a jewel. The hill of the crucifix was green, pea-green with the growth of young wheat; the hill of woods opposite, still leafless, had a million delicate buds, cloud on cloud of russet, and bronze, and lilac, and faint yellow, and fainter green, softly rounding the shape of every bush. Great oaks detached themselves, gnarled lichen-gray skeletons, distinct in branch and twig, from purple hollows of the woodland. The valley was a streak of emerald; the river glistened like thin silver in the sun.
So peaceful, and so little changed! Across the stream the bridge lay broken-backed, but sounds of hammering came up through the thin air, and midget figures moved about with wheelbarrows, repairing it. Among the crushed roofs of Poupehan white scaffolding took the eye. Farther down the valley, where the woods had been stripped, and the Roche des Corneilles showed bare and gray on a bare purple hill-side, the young plantations were rising among the brushwood in dotted lines of green. The orchards of the Bellevue, brutally hacked down, had been doctored and replanted, and were whitening with early blossom; and through their branches a quick eye could discern other signs of growth and restoration. Of the original Bellevue not one stone was left upon another, but a new one was rising in its room.Soon, very soon, the scars would heal, and all would be as it had been.
And O, how deep the cornAlong the battlefield!
And O, how deep the cornAlong the battlefield!
And O, how deep the cornAlong the battlefield!
And O, how deep the corn
Along the battlefield!
One change there was, not due to the tide of war. The forlorn wooden cross on the hill-top had gone: had given place to another, a lovely thing in marble, the inspiration of a French artist, standing forty feet high on its pedestal of steps. It had been put up by an Englishavion, presumably to commemorate his miraculous escape from death on that very spot, though the inscription on the plinth did not quite tally with that theory. Strange that a heretic and an Englishman should choose to erect a crucifix, stranger still to those who had known this Englishman before; but times change, and men with them. At any rate there stood the cross; and Rochehaut, if it could not understand, was inordinately proud of it. "Eh, madame, vous allez au Christ, n'est-ce pas?" said Madame Hasquin of the farm to the wife of her temporary lodger. "Ah! c'est beau ça, savez-vous! Mettez une petite prière pour moi, je vous prie!"
So Lettice, sitting on the steps with a pair of masculine socks, as she had once sat on the stones with the green tablecloth, added a prayer for little murdered Denise (which was what Madame meant by hermoi) to the petition requested by the cross:
D. M. T. PER ARDUA AD ASTRA PRIEZ POUR ELLE
THE END