“Ask Aryenis. He’s her shadow nowadays. But if you speak kindly to her, she’ll let him go, I expect,” said I.
Just then the lady came in to show Wrexham the room she had had fixed up for him. It was rather wasted, because he sat on my bed till long after midnight, telling me of all the “picnics” and “shows” that he and Henga had had. I could picture the pair together: they are very much of a type.
Somewhere about ten o’clock Aryenis came in to say good-night to us, and despite John’s battle yarns my last waking moments were much more concerned with her than with any of his staccato stirring stories. As Aryenis said, “Toys all,” compared to other things: things like red-gold hair and hazel-grey eyes, slim white arms and warm red lips, for instance.
CHAPTER XXIV
I WIN MY BET
The ten days following my first walk in the garden had passed all too quickly. My leg was now completely healed, although a trifle stiff, and a considerable hindrance in walking any distance. But there was no longer any need for the crutch with which I had made my début the day after Wrexham’s departure for Miletis, and, much as I was loath to admit it, no further actual necessity for Aryenis’s arm, which had aided my first dot-and-carry-one efforts round the little walled garden.
Ten days’ undiluted bliss they had been, with day after long day in my lady’s company, at first short strolls, punctuated by long rests in the gardens about the house—sitting in the winter sunlight—then longer walks in the grounds; and of late rides into her beloved woods, elm and birch bare of leaf, and pines in their sombre green, with underfoot the matted pine-needles or the thick mass of fallen leaves, last relics of the dying year.
And day after day Aryenis unfolded more and more each new day bringing forth some new charm, some little turn of speech, some little gesture, to be visualized again and again. The long silences that come when friendship has ripened into love, when, for the time being, all happiness lies in the mere fact of being together, when the delight of simple companionship has replaced the demand for speech or self-expression, when you have learnt to be utterly contented with the mere proximity of the beloved, and words are daily less and less expressive and important, since you have passed the need for the externals that mere acquaintanceship or friendship demand—sometimes so clamorously.
It was sheer delight to me to watch Aryenis—so quick of speech in company—grow silent when we were alone; to try to fathom the thoughts behind her eyes as we rode or as we sat together in some corner of the wooded hills overlooking the rich rolling country spread below us. To catch her slow, questioning glance—that sought no answer in words—or listen to her little laugh that spelt the uttermost height and breadth and depth of rich content.
Life was very good those days—days which formed a little haven on the road that comes from nowhere and leads to Heaven knows where. It was more than unpleasing to think that another three or four days would see me riding again down the Aornos road with John and his train of stores to what we hoped would be the last act of the Shaman drama. Alec had already gone on to join Kyrlos, since I had no further need of his attentions. As we had expected, his medical knowledge had wonderfully impressed the Sakae, and his war-time experience enabled him to do some very useful work at the present juncture—the more so since the Sakae were just the class of uncomplaining, clean-fleshed patients that every surgeon loves. Moreover, he had ridden away with a dainty little cockade in his steel cap, and it was a very bright-eyed Ziné who had come riding up the winding lane to where Aryenis and I sat in the garden whence we had seen Forsyth ride off. Since also I had seen nothing more of the two girls for the rest of the morning, I concluded that Forsyth had at last really found some one who did not remind him of any one else, some one who was herself, and herself alone at every point.
And here was I sitting by the fire in Paulos’s hall, with the deer-antlers and the trophies dim above me under the shadows of the wide-timbered arches in the early winter evening, waiting for Aryenis to come downstairs from changing out of her riding-clothes. We were just back from taking Ziné to Aornos, where she had gone to spend a couple of days with Torka and his wife, a long-promised visit. Paulos, after announcing that we would dine rather later that night, had shut himself up with his steward and a bundle of land-rolls. This, since it was only just five, there would be something like three very cosy hours of firelit winter evening before dinner. And evenings with Aryenis under such conditions were, if anything, even more precious than the sunlit days in her woods.