"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.