“I saw the star, and I prayed that we might never be parted; and then it flashed upon me that we might, and I could not bear the thought,” she sobbed, clinging to him like a frightened child.
“My dear one, what should part us, except death?”
“Ah, Godfrey, death is everywhere. How could a good God make His creatures so fond of each other and yet part them so cruelly as He does sometimes?”
“Only to unite them again in another world, Nita. I feel as if our two lives must go on in an endless chain, circling among those stars yonder, which could not have been made to be for ever unpeopled. There are happy lovers there at this instant, I am convinced—lovers who have lived before us here, and have been translated to a higher life yonder; lovers who have felt the pangs of parting, the ecstasy of reunion.”
He glanced vaguely towards that starry heaven, while he fondly smoothed the dark hair upon Juanita’s brow. It was not easy to win her back to cheerfulness. That vision of possible grief had too completely possessed her. Godfrey was fain to be serious, finding her spirits so shaken; so they talked together gravely of that unknown hereafter which philosophy or religion may map out with mathematical distinctness, but which remains to the individual soul for ever mysterious and awful.
Her husband found it wiser to talk of solemn things, finding her so sad, and she took comfort from that serious conversation.
“Let us lead good lives, dear, and hope for the best in other worlds,” he said. “There is sound sense in the Buddhist theory, that we are the makers of our own spiritual destiny, and that a man may be in advance of his fellow men, even in getting to Heaven.”
Those grave thoughts had little place in Juanita’s mind next day, which was the first day the lovers devoted to practical things. They started directly after breakfast for a tête-à-tête drive to Milbrook Priory, where certain alterations and improvements were contemplated in the rooms which were to be Juanita’s. Godfrey’s widowed mother, Lady Jane Carmichael, had transferred herself and her belongings to a villa at Swanage, where she was devoting herself to the creation of a garden, which was, on a small scale, to repeat the beauties of her flat old-fashioned flower garden at the Priory. It irked her somewhat to think how long the hedges of yew and holly would take to grow; but there was a certain pleasure in creation. She was a mild, loving creature, with an aristocratic profile, silvery grey hair, and a small fragile figure; a woman who looked a patrician to her finger tips, and whom everybody imposed upon. Her blue blood had not endowed her with the power to rule. She adored her son, was very fond of Juanita, and resigned her place in her old home without a sigh.
“The Priory was a great deal too big for me,” she told her particular friends. “I used to feel very dreary there when Godfrey was at Oxford, and afterwards, for of course he was often away. It was only in the shooting season that the house looked cheerful. I hope they will soon have a family, and then that will enliven the place a little.”
Milbrook Village and Milbrook Priory lay twelve miles nearer Dorchester than Cheriton Chase. Juanita enjoyed the long drive in the fresh morning air through a region of marsh and watery meadow, where the cattle gave charm and variety to a landscape which would have been barren and monotonous without them, a place of winding streams on which the summer sunlight was shining.