The Price of Things Part 6

John glanced at them, and at the glowing, living, delicious bit of young womanhood which they adorned. He saw the rebellious ripe cherry of a mouth, and the warm, soft tenderness in the grey eyes, and then he quickly looked out of the window--his own blue ones expressionless, but the hand which held the newspaper clenched rather hard.

"Amn't I a pet!" cooed Amaryllis, deliberately subduing the chill of her first disappointment. "Dearest, see I have kept this last and loveliest set of garments for the morning of our home-coming--and for you!" and she crept close to him and laid her cheek against his cheek.

He encircled her with his arm and kissed her calmly.

"You look most beautiful, darling," he said. "But then, you always do, and your frills are perfection. Now I think we ought to have breakfast; it is most awfully late."

She sat down in her place and she felt stupid tears rise in her eyes.

She poured out the tea and b.u.t.tered herself some toast, while John was apparently busy at a side table where dwelt the hot dishes.

He selected the daintiest piece of sole for her, and handed her the plate.

"I am not hungry," she protested, "keep it for yourself."

He did not press the matter, but took his place and began to talk quietly upon the news of the day--in a composed fashion between glances at _The Times_ and mouthfuls of sole.

Amaryllis controlled herself. She was too proud and too just to make a foolish scene. If this was John's way and her little effort at enticement was a failure, she must put up with it. Marriage was a lottery she had always heard, and it might be her luck to have drawn a blank. So she choked down the rising emotion and answered brightly, showing interest in her husband's remarks--and she even managed to eat some omelette, and when the business of breakfast was quite over she went to the window and John followed her there.

The view which met their eyes was exquisite.

Beyond the perfect stately garden, with its quaint clipped yews and ma.s.ses of spring flowers and velvet lawns, there stretched the vast park with its splendid oaks and browsing deer. It was a possession which any man could feel proud to own.

John slipped his arm round her waist and drew her to him.

"Amaryllis," he said, and his voice vibrated, "to-day I am going to show you everything I love here at Ardayre--because I want you to love it all, too. You are of the family, so it must mean something to you, dear."

Amaryllis kindled with re-awakening hope.

"Indeed, it will mean everything to me, John."

He kissed her forehead and murmured something about her dressing quickly, and that he would wait for her there in the cedar room. And when she returned in about a quarter of an hour in the neatest country clothes, he placed her hand on his arm and led her down the great stairs and on through the hall into the picture gallery.

It was a wonderful place of green silk and chestnut wainscoting, and all the walls of its hundred feet of length were hung with canvases of value--portraits princ.i.p.ally of those Ardayres who had gone on. Face after face looked down on Amaryllis of the same type as John's and her own--the brown hair and eyes of grey or blue. Some were a little fairer, some a little darker, but all unmistakably stamped "Ardayre."

John pointed out each individual to her, while she hung fondly on his arm, from some doubtful crude fourteenth century wooden panels of Johns and Denzils, on to Benedict in a furred Henry VII. gown. Then came Henrys and Denzils in Elizabethan armour and puffed white satin, and through Stuart and Commonwealth to Stuart again, and so to William and Mary numbers of Benedicts, and lastly to powdered Georgian James' and Regency Denzils and Johns. And the name Amaryllis recurred more than once in stately dame or damsel, called after that fair Amaryllis of Elizabeth's days who had been maid of honour to the virgin Queen, and had sonnets written to her nut brown locks by the gallants of her time.

"How little the women they married seem to have altered the type!" the young living Amaryllis exclaimed, when they came nearly to the end. "It goes on Ardayre, Ardayre, Ardayre, ever since the very first one. Oh!

John, if we ever have a son he ought to be even more so--you and I being of the same blood--" and then she hesitated and blushed crimson. This was the first time she had ever spoken of such a thing.

John held her arm very tightly to his side for a second, and his voice was uncertain as he answered:

"Amaryllis, that is the profound desire of my heart, that we should have a son."

A strange feeling of exaltation came over Amaryllis, half-innocent, wholly ignorant as she was.

She had been stupid--French novels were all nonsense. Marriages in real life were always like this--of course they must be--since John said plainly and with such deep feeling that his profoundest desire was that they should have a son! That meant that she would surely have one. This was perfectly glorious, and it must simply be those silly books and Elsie Goldmore's too uxorious imagination which had given her some ridiculously romantic exaggerated ideas of what love hours would be. She would now be contented and never worry again. She nestled closer to her husband and looked up at him with eyes sweet and fond, the brown, curly lashes wet with tender dew.

"Oh!--darling, when, when do you think we shall have a son?"

Then, for the first time in their lives, John Ardayre clasped her in his arms pa.s.sionately and held her to his heart.

"Ah, G.o.d," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, as he kissed her fresh young lips.

"Pray for that, Amaryllis--pray for that, my own."

Then he restrained himself and drew her on to the four last pictures at the end of the room. They were of his grandfather and grandmother, and his father and mother. And then there was a blank s.p.a.ce, and the brighter colour of the damask showed that a canvas had been removed.

"Who hung there, John?"

"The accursed snake charmer woman whom my father disgraced the family with by bringing home. She was his wife by the law, and a Frenchman painted her. It was a fine picture with the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Ferdinand in her arms--the proof of our shame. I had it taken down and burnt the day the place was mine."

Amaryllis was receiving surprises to-day--John's face was full of emotion, his eyes were sparkling with hate as he spoke. How he must love everything connected with his home, and its honour, and its name--he could not be so very cold after all!

She thought of the Russian's words about a family--the uselessness of its going on for generations, piling up possessions and narrowing its interests. What had the aims been of all these handsome men? She knew the earlier history a little, for even though she was of a distant branch they had been proud of the connection, and treasured the traditions belonging to it. But these were just dry facts of history which she knew, so now she asked:

"John, what did any of them do? Did they accomplish great deeds?"

He took her back to the beginning again and began to tell her of the achievements of each one. There would be three perhaps, one after another, who had filled high posts in the State, and indeed had been worthy of the name. Then would come one or two quiet plodding ones, who seemed to have done little but sit still and hold on.

Then Denzil Ardayre, knight of Elizabeth's time, pleased Amaryllis most of all--though there had been greater soldiers, and more able politicians than he later on, culminating in Sir John Ardayre of George IV. days, who had hammered against pocket boroughs and corruption until he died an old man, the hour the Reform Bill swept aside abuses and the road to freedom was won.

"How strange it seems that different ages produce more accentuated stamps of breeding than others," Amaryllis said, "even in the same families where the blood is all blue. Look, John! that Denzil and the rest of the Elizabethans are the most refined, aristocratic creatures you could imagine, in their little ruffs. Absolutely intellectual and cultivated faces and of old race--and then comes a James period, less intelligent, more round featured. And a Cavalier one, gay and gallant, aristocratic and chiselled also, but not nearly so clever looking as the Elizabethan.

Then we get cadaverous William and Mary ones, they might be lawyers or business men, not that look of great gentlemen, and the Anne's and the first George's are really bucolic! And then that wonderfully refined, cultivated, intellectual finish seems to crop up in the later eighteenth century again. Have you noticed this, John? You can see it in every collection of miniatures and portraits even in the museums."

John responded interestedly:

"The Elizabethans were supremely cultivated gentlemen--no wonder that they look as they do--and their lives were always in their hands which gives them that air of insouciance."

When the history of the family achievements had been told her down to John's father, she paused, still clinging to his arm, and said:

"I am so glad that they did splendid things, aren't you? And we shall not drift either. You must teach me to be the most perfect mistress of Ardayre, and the most perfect wife for the greatest of them all--because your achievement is the finest, John, to have won it all back and redeemed it by the work of your own brain."

He pressed the hand on his arm.

"It was hard work--and the home times were ugly in those days, Amaryllis, though the goal was worth it, and now we must carry on...." And then his reserve seemed to fall upon him again, and he took her through the other rooms, and kept to solid facts, and historic descriptions, and his bride had continuously the impression that he was mastering some emotion in himself, and that this stolidity was a mask.

When lunch time came the usual relations of obvious and commonplace goodfellowship had been fully restored between them, and that atmosphere of aloofness which seemed impossible to banish enveloped John once more.

Amaryllis sighed--but it was too soon to despair she thought, after the hope of John's words, and with her serene temperament she decided to leave things as they were for the present and trust to time.

But as her maid brushed out the soft brown hair that night, an unrest and longing for something came over her again--what she knew not, nor could have put into words. She let herself re-live that one moment when John had pressed herewith pa.s.sion to his heart. Perhaps, perhaps that was the beginning of a change in him--perhaps--presently--

But the clock in the long gallery had chimed two, and there was yet no sound of John in the dressing-room beyond.

Amaryllis lay in the great splendid gilt bed in the warm darkness, and at last tears trickled down her cheeks.

What could keep him so long away from her? Why did he not come?