The Missioner Part 56

"There is myself," she declared.

He laughed quietly.

"You!" he repeated. "Why, you are the most incorrigible flirt in Christendom. You would no more tie yourself up with one man than enter a nunnery."

She sighed.

"I have always been misunderstood," she declared, looking at him pathetically out of her delightful eyes. "What you call my flirtations have been simply my attempts, more or less clumsy, to gain a husband. I have been most unlucky. No one ever proposes to me!"

He laughed derisively.

"Your victims have been too loquacious," he replied. "How about Gayton, who went to Africa because you offered to be his friend, and Horris--he came to my rooms to tell me all about it the day you refused him, and Sammy Palliser--you treated him shockingly!"

"I had forgotten them," she admitted. "They were nice men, too, all of them, but they all made the same mistake. I remember now they did propose to me. That, of course, was fatal."

"I scarcely see----" he began.

She patted him gently on the arm.

"My dear Gilbert," she said, "haven't I always said that I never intend to marry any one who proposes to me? When I have quite made up my mind, I am going to do the proposing myself!"

"Whether it is Leap Year or not?" he asked.

"Decidedly!" she answered. "Men can always shuffle out of a Leap Year declaration. My man won't be able to escape. I can promise you that."

"Does he--exist then?" Deyes asked.

She laughed softly.

"He's existed for a good many years more than I have," she answered. "I wasn't thinking of marrying a baby."

"Ah! Does he know?"

"Well, I'm not sure," she said thoughtfully. "He ought to, but he's such a stupid person."

It was then that Gilbert Deyes received the shock of his life. He discovered quite suddenly that her eyes were full of tears. For the first time for many years he nearly lost his head.

"Perhaps," he suggested, dropping his voice and astonished to find that it was not quite so steady as usual, "he has been waiting!"

"I am afraid not," she answered, looking down for a moment at the buckle in her waistband.

He looked round.

"If only he were here now," he said. "Could one conceive a more favourable opportunity? An April morning, sunshine, flowers, everything in the air to make him forget that he is an old fogey and doesn't deserve----"

She lifted her eyes to his, now deliciously wet. Her brows were delicately uplifted.

"I couldn't do it," she murmured, "unless he were in the same room."

Deyes stepped over the hyacinths and vaulted through the window.

Wilhelmina selected a freshly cut tree-stump, carefully brushed away the sawdust, and sat down. Macheson chose another and lighted a cigarette.

Eventually they decided that they were too far away, and selected a tree-trunk where there was room for both. Wilhelmina unrolled a plan, and glancing now and then at the forest of scaffold poles to their left, proceeded to try to realize the incomplete building. Macheson watched her with a smile.

"Victor," she exclaimed, "you are not to laugh at me! Remember this is my first attempt at doing anything--worth doing, and, of course, I'm keen about it. Are you sure we shall have enough bedrooms?"

"Enough for a start, at any rate," he answered. "We can always add to it."

She looked once more at that forest of poles, at the slowly rising walls, through whose empty windows one could see pictures of the valley below.

"One can build----" she murmured, "one can build always. But think, Victor, what a lot of time I wasted before I knew you. I might have done so much."

He smiled rea.s.suringly.

"There is plenty of time," he declared. "Better to start late and build on a sure foundation, you know. A good many of my houses had to come down as fast as they went up. Do you remember, for instance, how I wanted to convert all your villagers by storm?"

She smiled.

"Still--I'm glad you came to try," she said softly. "That horrid foreman is watching us, Victor. I am going to look the other way."

"He has gone now," Macheson said, slipping his arm around her waist.

"Dear, do you know I don't think that one person can build very well alone. It's a cold sort of building when it's finished--the life built by a lonely man. I like the look of our palace better, Wilhelmina."

"I should like to know where my part comes in?" she asked.

"Every room," he answered, "will need adorning, and the lamps--one person alone can never keep them alight, and we don't want them to go out, Wilhelmina. Do you remember the old German, who said that beautiful thoughts were the finest pictures to hang upon your walls? Think of next spring, when we shall hear the children from that miserable town running about in the woods, picking primroses--do you see how yellow they are against the green moss?"

Wilhelmina rose.

"I must really go and pick some," she said. "What about your pheasants, Victor?"

He laughed.

"I'll find plenty of sport, never fear," he answered, "without keeping the kiddies shut out. Why, the country belongs to them! It's their birthright, not ours."

They walked through the plantation side by side. The ground was still soft with the winter's rains, but everywhere the sunlight came sweeping in, up the glade and across the many stretching arms of tender blossoming green. The ground was starred with primroses, and in every sheltered nook were violets. A soft west wind blew in their faces as they emerged into the country lane. Below them was the valley, hung with a faint blue mist; all around them the song of birds, the growing sounds of the stirring season. Stephen Hurd came cantering by, and stopped for a moment to speak about some matter connected with the estates.

"My love to Letty," Wilhelmina said graciously, as he rode off. Then she turned to Macheson.

"Stephen Hurd is a little corner in your house," she remarked.

"In our house," he protested. "I should never have considered him if he had not worked out his own salvation. If he had reached me ten minutes later----"

She gripped his arm.

"Don't," she begged.