Chapter Nine.
Treasure Trove!
Miggles did not easily recover from her fright. The good body was in precarious health: it was only the power of mind over body which kept her going, and when the motive power was temporarily eclipsed it was startling, even alarming, to behold the corresponding physical change. The light faded from the eyes; the chin dropped; a dozen unsuspected lines furrowed the face; beaming middle-age was transformed in a moment into suffering age.
“I think, my dears,” she announced apologetically, “so sorry to spoil your walk, but I think I’ll go home! Bulls, you know, bulls! They are disconcerting. When you’ve lived all your life in towns you are not accustomed... I’ve got a little,” she gasped painfully, “stitch in my side! It will soon be gone.”
The grey hue of her face showed only too plainly the explanation of that stitch. Miggles knew it herself, but, as ever, preferred to make light of her ailments. She leant on Piers’s arm, glancing affectionately in his face, and made no objections when Vanna came forward to support her on the other side.
“I am honoured! Quite a triumphal procession!” she gasped, with blue lips.
The two schoolboys had scampered off to join in the chase. Jean was preparing to follow Miggles and her supporters, when a hand was laid on her arm, and Robert Gloucester’s voice spoke in her ear:
“You and I are going on to the wood.”
Jean jerked herself free with a haughty air.
“Excuse me, I am going home. I must look after Miss Miggs.”
“Miss Miggs has plenty of helpers. She doesn’t need you. I do. Be kind to me, Jean. I’ve waited so long.”
So long! It was not yet a fortnight since he had arrived in England; but time has different values, as Jean had discovered for herself. These last days had counted for more in life than all the years which had gone before. She looked for one moment into the brown eyes bent upon her, then hastily lowered her lids. But she turned down hill in the direction of the wood. There was nothing in the world so mad or impossible that she could have refused Robert Gloucester when he looked at her with his clear eyes lighted by that flame.
They walked in silence along the quiet lane, golden with buttercups, into the cool shadow of the wood. “Now!” said Jean’s heart, beating painfully against her side. “Now!” She was not unversed in occasions of the kind, and as a rule had no difficulty in “heading off” her suitor by a baffling flow of conversation, but to-day no words would come. She looked at the soft carpet of moss beneath her feet; she looked at the branches overhead; she looked down the gladelike vista, and saw ahead a green space encircled by trees—a sunlit, sun-kissed space, doubly bright from contrast with the surrounding shade. “There!” said the voice in her heart. “It will be there.” It seemed fitting that Robert Gloucester should tell his love in the light and the sun.
Right into the centre of the sunny space they walked, and as by a mutual impulse halted, face to face. For once Robert’s radiant calm was eclipsed. Before the tremendous purport of the moment, confidence, tranquillity, all the varied qualities which combined to sustain the equilibrium of his character, were swept aside as though they had never been. The world held but one person, and that was Jean; if Jean failed him, nothing was left.
At that moment the physical strain of long sojourn abroad showed itself painfully in sunken cheek and pallid hue. In the light grey clothes, which hung so loosely on his thin form, he looked like the ghost of a man, a ghost with living eyes—glowing, burning eyes, aflame with love and dread. He stood with hands clasped at his back, not daring a touch.
“Jean!” he said breathlessly, “I am a beggar at your gate, I am starving, Jean, and I have nothing to offer you—nothing but myself and my love!”
Afterwards Jean had many criticisms to make concerning the fashion of Robert’s avowal—criticisms at which she would make him blush when his hair was grey; but at the moment she was conscious of one thing only—that Robert was in torture and that she could ease him. With a smile which was divine in its abandon she held out her hands towards him.
“But that’s all I want,” said Jean, trembling.
They sat for an hour by the side of an old oak, the sunshine flickering through the branches on the illumined loveliness of Jean’s face, on Robert’s rapturous joy. Even to a cold, outside eye they would have appeared an ideal couple: what wonder that to each the other seemed the crowning miracle of the world! The perfect moment was theirs; the ineffable content, the amazement of joy which God in His mercy vouchsafes to all true lovers. The love lasts, but the glory wanes; of necessity it must wane in a material world, but the memory of it can never die. It lives to sweeten life, to be a memory of perfect union, a foretaste of the life beyond!
They talked in the tongue of angels, in such words as can never be transcribed in print; they marvelled and soared, and then at last came down to facts. A shadow flitted across Robert’s face; his voice took an anxious note.
“I am a poor man, Jean. Until now I have not cared, but I’m grieved for your sake. I should like to have kept you like a queen, but I am poor, and I fear shall never be otherwise. We shall have to live in a small house with a couple of servants, and think twice of every sovereign we spend.”
“Shall we?” asked Jean absently. She was occupied in measuring her small white hand against Robert’s sunburnt palm, and had no attention to spare for such minor details. Her own dress allowance of a hundred a year had invariably to be supplemented by an indulgent father, but it seemed to her a matter of supreme unimportance whether Robert were rich or poor. At that moment she would have received with equanimity the news that he was a huckster of goods, and that she would be expected to follow his barrow through the streets. Monetary conditions simply did not exist; but on another point there was no end to her exactions.
“How much do you love me?”
“Beyond all words, and all measures, beyond the capacity of mortal man. That is why I feel a giant at this moment—a god! There’s no room for my love in a man’s poor frame.”
Jean dimpled deliriously. This was just as it should be, and such good hearing that it could bear endless repetition.
“And am I the first? Have you never loved any one before?”
“Not for a moment. The thought of marriage never entered my head. I thought I was far better off as I was. Oh, Jean, imagine it!”
Jean smiled at him with shy, lovely eyes.
“And never flirted, nor run after a pretty girl?”
“Goodness, yes!” The emphasis of Robert’s affirmative was a trifle disconcerting to Jean’s complacence. “What do you take me for, Jean? I adore pretty girls. I should be a fool if I didn’t. At balls and picnics it’s part of the programme to get up a passing flirtation. I wish I had a sovereign for every one I’ve enjoyed in the last ten years. Half a dozen dances and supper, and forget all about her next day—you know the sort of thing! It doesn’t enter into our calculations.”
Jean stared, considered, and finally laughed.
“No, it doesn’t! Thank goodness I am not jealous. I have dozens of faults, as you will find out to your cost, poor boy; but that’s not one. I don’t mind how many pretty girls you admire. We’ll admire them together. You are mine; we belong to each other. As you say, that sort of thing doesn’t enter.” She sat silent, musing with parted lips. A bird hopped lightly across the grass, peered at them for a moment with bright, curious eyes, and soared up to the blue. The air was sweet with the fresh, pungent scent of the earth.
“What is it?” questioned Jean, as every lover has questioned since the days of Eve. “What is it that makes the difference, the yawning, illimitable difference between just one person and all the rest of the world? Why do we love each other like this? You have seen hundreds of girls, but you have never wished to marry one. Men have loved me, and I hated them the moment they began to make love. But you—if you hadn’t!—Robert, what should I have done? I should have lived on—I am so strong, but my heart would have died; there would have been nothing left. And a fortnight ago we had not met! People will say that it is madness, that we cannot know our own minds; but the marvel of it is—we knew at once! I was frightened, and ran away, but I knew; deep down in my heart I knew that you would follow. Tell me when you began to know—the very first moment!”
And then Robert retold the story to which Vanna had listened on the night of the ball, with the thrilling addition of the encounter in the conservatory, and Jean listened, thrilled, and trembling with agitation.
“Yes, it is true. I was waiting for you. It was meant to be. We were made to meet and love each other.”
“From the beginning of the world, my Rose, my Treasure!” said Robert Gloucester.