The Making of a Soul Part 60

Now that she was no longer frightened, no longer felt herself despised, Toni could give her natural intelligence full play; and when once Owen took the trouble to study Toni closely, he thanked his G.o.ds that he had discovered her worth before it was too late.

What he had taken for stupidity was only diffidence. Toni's brain, though not so highly specialized as his own, was a very capable, quick organ all the same; and in the lonely, dreary months of her absence Owen had learned to value at their true worth the precious gifts of laughter and sunny, unselfish gaiety which had once lightened the stately old house. When Toni disappeared, it seemed as though a living sunbeam had deserted the household; and when, on announcing the news of her safety and ultimate return, he had seen the faces of the servants break into relieved smiles, Owen had felt, with a twinge of shame, that even her dependants had valued Toni more than he, her husband, had known how to do.

Always, too, the remembrance of the significance of Toni's sacrifice would keep Owen humble before her. He knew now, beyond all possibility of doubt, that it had nearly broken her heart to leave him; and though her tragically childish notion of setting him free by eloping with Leonard Dowson often brought a tender, half-quizzical smile to his lips, Owen fully appreciated the love and eager longing which had driven Toni to that futile step.

If Toni had found her soul, Owen too had gained something which his character had hitherto lacked; and in his new humility and comprehension there was the germ, also, of a new content for both of them.

Toni caught her breath in a sob of rapture as the old house came into view.

Everyone about the place, servants, gardeners, chauffeur, had worked their hardest during the last excited weeks to bring the whole place to the highest pitch of perfection; and to Toni's longing eyes the beautiful old house, in its setting of tall trees, smooth green lawns, and brilliant, many-hued flowers, had never looked so eminently attractive, so alluringly home-like before.

There were tears in her eyes as she sprang out of the car and greeted the waiting Andrews, who stood beside the open door. In the background Kate and Maggie hovered, all smiles and blushes; and it was evident that whatever construction a censorious world might have put upon Toni's rash departure, these faithful souls, at least, believed no evil.

As a matter of fact very little of the truth ever did leak out. When it was known, as Herrick took good care it should be known, that Mr. Rose had gone to Italy to join his wife, who was wintering there, and would return with her after a few weeks spent together by the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, gossip was at once checked and dumbfounded.

If there had been anything wrong, said the neighbourhood, if Mrs. Rose had left her husband secretly as had been a.s.serted, surely the fact of Mr. Rose's going to Italy to join her would not have been given quite so much publicity.

Not only were there paragraphs in all the society papers--here Barry's hand was discernible--but there were even portraits of the rising young author and his wife, taken together in the garden of their whitewashed villa outside Naples; and it was decided, finally, that Mrs. Rose's hasty departure had been, after all, a good deal less mysterious than it had at first appeared.

There was some consolation, to the more determined gossips of the neighbourhood, in spreading a rumour that the young mistress of Greenriver was far gone in consumption, and had been ordered to winter abroad; but Toni's appearance, on the day of her return, was quite sufficient to give the lie to that particular _canard_.

Browned with the sun, her Southern colouring accentuated by the months spent in what was, after all, almost her native land, Toni looked the picture of glowing, vivid health; and when, late that night, she faced her husband with sparkling eyes across the rose-decked table, Owen realized, for the first time, that this quaint, half-foreign wife of his was giving promise of developing into actual beauty.

After dinner they strolled into the garden, Jock, deliriously happy, pressing closely to his mistress's side; and as they pa.s.sed between the sleeping flowers Toni suddenly clung to her husband's arm.

"Owen! Listen. The nightingale! Oh, isn't it perfect--that big yellow moon--and the roses--and now--_that_."

"Is it better than Italy, Toni? Wouldn't you rather be there--on a night like this--in that land of beauty and romance?"

For a moment Toni stood still, gazing round her in silence. She looked at the old grey house, from which the mellow lamplight streamed, the Ten Little Ladies casting their beams bravely through the big windows of the gallery upstairs. She looked at the sleeping roses, the velvet lawns, the tall trees; and her eyes were very peaceful. The golden moonlight transfigured the scene; from the dreaming river came the creak of oars moving gently in their rowlocks; and the nightingale's song was dying softly, tenderly, on the quiet air.

Slowly Toni's gaze came back to her husband's face; and in her eyes, velvety and black in the moonlight, Owen read her answer before she spoke.

"Wherever you are is my land of beauty," she said, in a low voice.

"But ... oh, I am so glad, so glad you have brought me home--to Greenriver."

And as he heard the words, saw, too, the loving little gesture which accompanied them as she slipped her hand into his arm, Owen felt that for them both Greenriver was home henceforth.

He stooped and kissed her, quietly, on the white brow beneath the ebony hair; end as if he had been waiting for the signal, the unseen nightingale broke once more into song.

THE END

FAMOUS NOVELS BY KATHLYN RHODES

THE LURE OF THE DESERT THE DESERT DREAMERS THE WILL OF ALLAH SWEET LIFE AFTERWARDS FLOWER OF GRa.s.s THE MAKING OF A SOUL

Vivid descriptions of the entrancing scenery of the East, incident crowding upon incident, romantic situations, exciting intrigues, unexpected denouements hold and absorb the interest from start to finish.

KATHLYN RHODES is the a.s.sured success of 1918, as GERTRUDE PAGE was the success of 1916 and MABEL BARNES-GRUNDY of 1917.

Fired with enthusiasm to win fame as a novelist, Kathlyn Rhodes began her career before her school days were ended. "Sweet Life" followed shortly afterwards; and the appreciation which this won encouraged the auth.o.r.ess to follow quickly with other stories. Choice of subject she holds to be of primary importance. With the war depressing us all around, she believes that many readers prefer stories that permit them for the time to forget it; and this she achieves by her delightful flights of fancy through the realms of many lands.

These are the stories to send to your soldier friends to combat the horrors of warfare and the tedium of the hospitals; and the stories to read yourself to relieve the weary vigils we must keep at home.