The Price of Things Part 32

He suddenly understood the suffering, that she, too, must be undergoing.

What right had he to have taken this young and loving woman and then to have used her for his own aims, however high?

"Amaryllis--you cannot forgive me. I see now that I was wrong."

But the sympathy which she had felt when she had looked at him from the piano welled up again in Amaryllis's heart and drowned all resentment.

She knew that he must be enduring pain greater than hers, so she stretched out her hands to him, and he took them and held them in his.

"Of course, I forgive you, John--but I cannot cease from loving Denzil, that is the tragedy of the thing. I am his really, not yours, even if I never see him again, and that is why we must not make any pretences.

John dearest, let us be friends--and live as friends, then everything won't be so hard."

He let her hands drop and got up and paced the room. He was suffering acutely--must he renounce even the joy of holding her in his arms?

"But I love you, Amaryllis--I love you, dearest child--"

And now again she said "Alas!"--and that was all.

"Amaryllis--this is a frightful sacrifice to me--must you insist upon it?"

Then her eyes seemed to flash fire and her cheeks grew rose--and she stood up and faced him.

"I tell you, John, you do not know me. You have seen a well brought up, conventional girl--milk and water, ready to obey your slightest will--I had not found myself. I am a creature as primitive and pa.s.sionate as a savage"--her breath came in little pants with her great emotion,--"I _could not_ belong to two men--it would utterly degrade me, then I do not know what I should become. I love Denzil, body and soul--and while he lives no other man shall ever touch me; that is what pa.s.sion means to me--fidelity to the thing I love! He is my Beloved and my darling, and I must go away from you altogether and throw off the thought of the family, and implore Denzil to take me when he comes home if you can agree to the only terms I can offer you now."

John bowed his head. Life seemed over for him and done.

Amaryllis came close to him, then she stood on tiptoe and kissed his brow. Her vehemence had died down in her sorrow for his pain.

"John," she whispered softly, "won't you always be my dearest friend? And when the baby comes it will be a deep interest to us both, and you must love it because it is mine and an Ardayre--and the comfort of that must fill our lives. I truly believe that you did everything, meaning it for the best, only perhaps it is dangerous to play with the creation of life--perhaps that is why fate forced me to know."

John drew her to him, he smoothed the soft brown hair back from her brow and kissed her tenderly, but not on the lips--those he told himself he must renounce for evermore.

"Amaryllis,"--his voice was husky still, "yes--I will be your friend, darling--and I will love your child. I was very wrong to marry you, but it was not quite hopeless then, and you were so young and splendid and living--and I was growing to love you, and for these reasons I hoped against hope--and then when I knew that everything was impossible--I felt that I must make it up to you in every other way I could. I don't know how to put things into words, I always was dull, but I thought if I gratified all your wishes perhaps--Ah!--I see it was very cruel. Darling, I would have told you the truth--presently--but then the war came, and the thought of Ferdinand here drove me mad and it forced my hand."

She looked up at him with her sweet true eyes--her one idea was now to comfort him since she need no longer fear.

"John, if you had explained the whole thing to me--I do not know, perhaps I should have agreed with you, for I, too, have much of this family pride, and I cannot bear to think of Ferdinand--or his children which may be, at Ardayre. I might have voluntarily consented--I cannot be sure. But somehow just lately I have been thinking very much about spiritual things, things I mean beyond the material, those great forces which must be all around us, and I have wondered if we are not perhaps too ignorant yet to upset any laws. Perhaps I am stupid--I don't know really. I have only been wondering--but perhaps there are powerful currents connected with laws, whether they are just or unjust, simply because of the force of people's thoughts for hundreds of years around them."

They went to the sofa then and sat down. It made John happier to hear her talk. His strong will was now conquering the outward show of his emotion at last.

"It may be so--"

"You see, supposing anything should happen to Ferdinand," she went on, "then Denzil would have been naturally the next heir--and now--if the child is a boy--"

John started.

"We neither of us thought of that."

"But nothing is likely to happen to Ferdinand; he won't enlist--it is only you, dear John, who are in danger, and Denzil, too--but surely the war cannot go on long now?"

John wondered if he should tell her what he really felt about this, or whether it were wiser to keep her quietly in this hopeful dream of a speedy end. He decided to say nothing; it was better for her health not to agitate her mind--events would speak for themselves, alas, presently.

He talked quietly then of Ardayre and of his boyhood and of its sorrows; he was determined to break down his own reserve, and Amaryllis listened interestedly, and gradually some kind of peace and calm seemed to come to them both, and they resolutely banished the thought of the future, and sought only to think of the present. And then at last John rose and took her hand:

"Go to bed now, dear girl,--and to-morrow I shall have quite conquered all the feelings which could disturb you, and just remember always that I am indeed your friend."

She understood at last the greatness of his sacrifice and the fineness of his soul, and she fell into a pa.s.sion of weeping and ran from the room.

But John, left alone, sank down into the same chair as he had done once before on the night he was waiting for Denzil, and, as then, he buried his face in his hands.

CHAPTER XVII

The next day they met at breakfast. John had not slept at all and was very pale and Amaryllis's eyes still showed the deepened violet shadows from much weeping. But they were both quite calm.

She came over to John and kissed his forehead with gentle tenderness and then gave him his tea. They tried to talk in a friendly way as of old before any new emotions had come into their lives. And gradually the strain became lessened.

They arranged to go out shopping, and John bought Amaryllis a new emerald ring.

"Green is the colour of hope," she said. "I want green, John, because it will make me think of the springtime and nature, and all beautiful things."

They lunched at a restaurant and in the afternoon went down to Ardayre.

John had many things to attend to and would be occupied all the following day.

There had been no Christmas feasting, but there were gifts to be distributed and various other duties and ceremonies to be gone through, although they had missed the Christmas day. Amaryllis tried in every way to be helpful to her husband, and he appreciated her stateliness and sweet manners with all the tenants and people on the estate.

So the four days pa.s.sed quite smoothly, and the last night of the old year came.

"I don't think that you must sit up for it, dear," John said after dinner. "It will only tire you, and it is always a rather sad moment unless one has a party as we always had in old days."

Amaryllis went obediently to her room and stayed there; sleep was far from her eyes. What was the rest of her life going to be without Denzil?

And what of John? Would they settle down into a real quiet friendship when he came back, and the child was born? Or would she have always to feel that he loved her and was for ever suffering pain?

The more she thought the less clear the issue became, and the deeper the sadness in the atmosphere.

At last she slipped down onto the big white bear-skin rug and began to pray.

But when the clock struck midnight, and the New Year bells rang out, a dreadful depression fell upon her, a sense of foreboding and fear.

She tried to tell herself that she was foolish, and it was all caused only because she was so highly strung and sensitive now, on account of her state. But the thought would persist that danger threatened some one she loved. Was it Denzil, or John?

Amaryllis tried to force herself from her unhappy impressions by thinking of what she could do presently in the summer, when she would be quite well again, though her greatest work must always be to try to make John happy, if by then he had come home.

She heard him go into his room at about one o'clock, and then she crept noiselessly to her great gilt bed.

John had waited for the New Year by the cedar parlour fire. The room was so filled with the radiance of Amaryllis that he liked being there.