Christina put her hand into his. She shook her head; she could not answer. He was going away, perhaps to his death, and she had not a word for him, and yet he was leaving her deliberately to another at the call of duty. Her heart was in a tumult of grief and self-abasement. She could only stand and look up at him, her eyes filled with tears, her lips trembling, and the next moment, Gavin had stooped, with the sudden boldness of a shy man, and kissed her.
And then the door was flung open and shut again, and he was gone into the storm and darkness, and Christina was left standing motionless, gazing at the closed door.
It was a long time before she found courage to return to the sitting-room. Her heart was throbbing with grief and at the same time a wild exultation that she could not understand and had no time to analyze. She did not even attempt to answer Wallace's raillery as to the length of time she had been away, or John's as to why she had stayed in the cellar long enough to eat all the apples which she found she had forgotten to bring. The event had been too stupendous for her to come down to the commonplace. And at last Wallace grew just a little piqued over her absent-minded air and went home early very much to Christina's relief.
It was the week after Gavin had gone out into the storm and Christina was still going about in a sort of daze, with feelings still unanalyzed, when she remembered that Friday would be Jimmie's eighteenth birthday. Jimmie should have been through school, but he had done that disgraceful thing that, so far, no Lindsay had ever done; he had failed in his examinations the Summer before. Had it not been for the boys' going to war, the great event that absorbed the mind of the family, Jimmie might have fared badly. As it was he received a solemn warning from John, and went back to school in the Fall very unwillingly.
"Life is so queer," Christina was constrained to say. "I was always dying to go to school and couldn't, and Jimmie is dying to stay out of it and can't."
"It's Allister's money that's spoiled the silly kid," grumbled John. "That and the war. I tell you, Christina, we always thought it was a dreadful misfortune to be poor, and wished we had money, but I am beginning to think that we ought to thank the Lord that we have had to do without. Jimmie has never done very well at school just because it has been made easy for him to there."
"I'm afraid Allister's money is not likely to do any of us much more harm, anyway," Christina said to herself, remembering another rather despondent letter from him. She could not quite agree with John that money was not a very good thing to have. It would have opened for her the road to the college halls, but it had been denied. And yet she was not unhappy. Something sang in her heart these days, the memory of a certain farewell at the back door in the wind and the rain and darkness, a memory that was all light and glory.
But Jimmie was still unsettled and dissatisfied with school, and Christina said that she would please him by making him a birthday cake. She would ice it with plenty of thick almond paste, his favourite, and put his initials on it and the date. It was a very handsome and tempting confection indeed, when she put it on the pantry shelf in a secluded spot where he would not see it until the right moment arrived.
The kitchen was still filled with its spicy fragrance when there came a quick footfall in the porch and a knock at the door. Christina opened it to meet a slim young soldier who strode into the room and saluted smartly. She stood looking at him in stupefied silence for a moment, and then she dropped upon a chair and put her head down on the kitchen table.
"Oh, Jimmie! Oh, Jimmie!" she sobbed. "How could you?"