“Maybe—I suppose he didn’t know where you were,” she added, as Julius volunteered no word. “But he was shore you’d come if you got the letter.”
“It was a promise,” her husband put in quietly. Evidently he wished us to make acquaintance in our own way. He left us alone with purpose, content to watch and show his satisfaction. The relationship between them seemed natural and happy, utterly devoid of the least sign of friction. She certainly—had I perhaps, anticipated otherwise?—showed no fear of him.
The “man” came in with a plate of butter, clattering out noisily again in his heavy boots. He gave us each a look in turn, of anxiety first, and then of pleasure. All was well with us, he felt. His eyes, however, lingered longest on his mistress, as though she needed his protective care more than we did. It was the attitude and expression of a faithful dog who knows he has the responsibility of a child upon his shoulders, and is both proud and puzzled by the weight of honour.
A pause followed, during which I made more successful efforts to subdue the agitation that was in me. I broke the silence by a commonplace, expressing a hope that my late arrival the night before had not disturbed her.
“Lord, no!” she exclaimed, laughing gaily, while she glanced from me to Julius. “Only I thought you and he’d like to be alone for a bit after such a long time apart.... Besides, I didn’t fancy my food somehow—I get that way up here sometimes,” she added, “don’t I, Julius?”
“You’ve been here some time already?” I asked sympathetically, before he could reply.
“Ever since the wedding,” she answered frankly. “Seven—getting on for eight—months ago, it is now—we came up straight from the Registry Office. At times it’s a bit funny, an’ no mistake—lonely, I mean,” she quickly corrected herself. And she looked at her husband again with a kind of childish mischief in her expression that I thought most becoming.
“It’s not for ever, is it?” he laughed with her.
“And I understand you chose it, didn’t you?” I fell in with her mood. “It must be lonely, of course, sometimes,” I added.
“Yes, we chose it,” she replied. “We choose everything together.” And they looked proudly at each other like two children. For a moment it flashed across me to challenge him playfully, yet not altogether playfully, for burying a young wife in such a deserted place. I did not yield to the temptation, however, and Mrs. LeVallon continued breezily in her off-hand manner: