Miss Stuart's Legacy Part 35

"Philip!"

"Not of you, dear; but this love of ours seems better than we are ourselves,--than _I_ am, certainly. Then marriage, as I take it, is for young people, and what they call Love is the bribe held out by Nature to induce her thoughtless children to undertake a difficult duty. The sweet isn't unwholesome in itself, but that is no reason why we should call it manna from heaven and say it is better than plain, wholesome bread and b.u.t.ter."

"You are growing detestably didactic in your old age, Phil. When you come to the gatekeeper's house I shall have to amend your ways."

"You forget I shall be incurable then; but you are right. I am fast becoming a real old crusted military fogy, and of all fogies that is the worst. You can't think what a nuisance I am to the boys at mess; they depute a fresh one to prose to the Colonel every night."

"I know better. When young Cameron came home sick he had a very different story."

"Young Cameron isn't to be trusted. To begin with he had had a sunstroke, and then he proposed marrying on subaltern's pay."

"Well, you can't expect the world to give up falling in love because you don't approve."

"Let it fall by all means; only let us call things by their proper names. You and I, Belle, know the trouble which follows on the present confusion. And if we, eminently respectable people, suffered much, many must suffer more. Many! Why the question, 'Is Marriage a Failure?' fills up the interstices of conversation left between the Rights of Labour and Home Rule. How can it be anything but a failure when people are taught to expect impossibilities? when they are told that love is better than duty? Thank heaven, we never were in love with one another!"

"Never?"

"No,--at least,--yes! perhaps I was one day. Do you remember when you kissed your cousin d.i.c.k in the church garden at Faizapore? I was decidedly jealous as I stood by the ca.n.a.l bridge. If he had lived, Belle, I think you would have married him."

She did not answer, but sate softly smiling to herself. "So long ago as that," she said at last in a contented tone of voice.

Philip started to his feet with a half-embarra.s.sed laugh. Even now, after all these years, her woman's nature, in its utter inconsequence, was a puzzle to him,--perhaps to herself.

"Come," he said prosaically, "I'm sure it must be time for lunch."

"Are you so very hungry?" she asked, dusting from her dress, with something of regret in the action, the sweet-smelling herbs which she had idly gathered from the crannies of the cliff and crumbled to pieces for the sake of their perfume.

"I ought to be, seeing I had no breakfast."

She started up in her turn. "Philip! How could you? and never to tell me!"

"You see we were late all through; something went wrong somewhere, and then I had to catch the ten o'clock train. Don't look horrified; I got a stale bun at Swindon."

"Stale buns are most unwholesome."

"That is what materialists like you always say of any diet which does not suit them. Personally I like stale buns."

"You mean that you can put up with them when you have a solid lunch in prospect."

He had taken her hand to help her to the level and now suddenly he paused, and stooping kissed it pa.s.sionately. "Oh, Belle, my darling, why should we talk or think of the future? To-day is holiday-time and I am happy."

So, hand in hand, like a couple of children, they went homewards across the down; while the great gilt letters of the legend above the hospital glowed and shone like a message of fire against the blue sky.

Was that the end of the story, so far as Belle and Philip were concerned? Or on some other sunshiny day in a future June or December did those two pa.s.s through the churchyard where the tiny flower-set graves grew more numerous year by year, and, beneath the tower whose chime had so often called Belle to her bairns, take each other for better, for worse? Most likely they did, but it is a trivial detail which has nothing to do with the record of Miss Stuart's Legacy. That began with her father, and ended with her child. She paid it cheerfully to the uttermost farthing, and was none the worse for it.

Such payments, indeed, leave us no poorer unless we choose to have it so. The only intolerable tax being that which follows on the attempt to inherit opinions; for, when we have paid it, we have nothing in exchange save something that is neither real estate nor personal property.

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 1: A lineal descendant of the Prophet.]

[Footnote 2: The three divisions recognised in Mahometan polemics. (1) The place of Islam; (2) the place of the enemy; (3) the place of protection. The sign of the latter is the liberty of giving the call to prayers.]

[Footnote 3: A common occurrence in old Pathan houses.]

[Footnote 4: A celebrated white charger of a Rajpoot prince; an eastern Bucephalus.]

[Footnote 5: Literally, a footman.]

[Footnote 6: Small millet; the food of the poorest.]

[Footnote 7: The extreme south-east.]

[Footnote 8: Electrical dust-storm.]

[Footnote 9: Deputy-Collector, _i.e_., chief native official.]

THE END.