On Sunday morning Robinette and Lavendar were both ready for church, by some strange coincidence, half an hour too soon. He was standing at the door as she came down into the hall. Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon were nowhere to be seen; even Carnaby was invisible, but the shrill, infuriated yelping of the Prince Charles from the drawing room indicated his whereabouts only too plainly.
"We're much too early," said Robinette, glancing at the clock.
"Shall we walk through the buttercup meadow, then--you and I?" asked Lavendar. His voice was low, and Robinette answered very softly. She wore a white dress that morning without a touch of colour.
"I couldn't wear black to-day for Nurse," she said, in answer to his glance, "but I couldn't wear any colour, either."
"You're as white as the plum tree was!" said Lavendar. "I remember thinking that it looked like a bride." Robinette made no reply. He ventured to look up at her as he spoke, and she was smiling although her lip quivered and her eyes were full of tears. Lavendar's heart beat uncomfortably fast as they walked through the meadow towards the stile which led into the churchyard.
"It's too soon to go in yet," he said. "The bells haven't begun."
"Let's stop here. It's cool in the shadow," said Robinette. She leaned on the wall and looked out at the shining reaches of the river. "The swelling of Jordan is over now," she said with a little smile and a sigh. "The tide has come up, and how quiet everything is!"
The water mirrored the hills and the ships and the gracious sky above them. There was scarcely a sound in the air. At the point where they stood, the Manor House was hidden from view, and only the squat old tower of the church was visible, and the yew tree rising above the wall against the golden field. A bush of briar covered with white roses hung above them, just behind Robinette, and Lavendar looking at her in this English setting on an English Sunday morning, wondered to himself, as he had so often done before, if she could ever make this country her home.
"Yet she has English blood as well as I," he thought. "Why, the very name on the old bells of the church there, records the memory of an ancestress of hers! We cannot be so far apart." Looking at her standing there, he rehearsed to himself all that he meant to say, oh, a great many things both true and eloquent, but at that moment every word forsook him. Yet this was probably the best opportunity he would have of telling her what was burning in his heart: telling her how she had beguiled him at first by her quick understanding and her frolicsome wit, because all that sort of thing was so new to him. She had come like a mountain spring to a thirsty man. He had been groping for inspiration and for help: now he seemed to find them all in her. She was so much more than charming, though it was her charm that first impressed him; so much more than pretty, though her face attracted him at first; so much more than magnetic, though she drew him to her at their first meeting with bonds as delicate as they were strong. These were tangible, vital, legitimate qualities--but were they all? Could lips part so, could eyes shine so, could voice tremble so, if there were not something underneath; a good heart, fidelity, warmth of nature?
"For the first time," he thought, "I long to be worthy of a woman. But I would not tell her how I love her at this moment, unless I felt I need not be wholly unequal to her demands. I have never desired anything strongly enough to struggle for it, up to now; but she has set my springs in motion, and I can work for her until I die!"
All this he thought, but never a word he said. Then the church clock struck and the clashing bells began. They shook the air, the earth, the ancient stones, the very nests upon the trees, and sent the rooks flying black as ink against the yellow buttercups in the meadow.
"We must go, in a few minutes," said Robinette. "Oh, will you pull me some of those white roses up there?"
Lavendar swung himself up and drawing down a bunch he pulled off two white buds.
"Will you take them?" he asked, holding them out to her. Then suddenly he said, very low and very humbly, "Oh, take me too; take me, Robinette, though no man was ever so unworthy!"
Robinette laid the roses on the wall beside her.
"For my part," she said, turning to Lavendar with a little laugh that was half a sob; "for my part, I like giving better than taking!" She put both her hands in his and looked into his face. "Here is my life," she said simply. "I want to belong to you, to help you, to live by your side."
"I oughtn't to take you at your word," he said, his voice choked with emotion. "You are far too good for me!"
"Hush," Robinetta answered, putting a finger on his lip; "it isn't a question of how great you are or how wonderful: it's a question of what we can be to each other. I'd rather have you than the Duke of Wellington or Marcus Aurelius, and I believe you wouldn't change me for Helen of Troy!"
"I have nothing to bring you, nothing," said Lavendar again, "nothing but my love and my whole heart."
"If all the kingdoms of the earth were offered to me instead, I would still take you and what you give me," Robinette answered.
Lavendar laid his cheek against her bright hair and sighed deeply. In that sigh there passed away all former things, and behold, all things became new. Two cuckoos answered each other from opposite banks of the river and two hearts sang songs of joy that met and mingled and floated upward.
Again the bells broke out overhead, filling the air with music that had rung from them ever since just such another morning hundreds of years before, when they rang their first peal from the church tower, bearing the legend newly cut upon them: "Pray for the Soul of Anne de Tracy, 1538." And Anne de Tracy's memory was forgotten--so long forgotten--except for the bells that carried her name!
Yet in these same meadows that she must have known, spring was come once more. The Devonshire plum trees had budded and blossomed and shed their petals year after year, and year after year, since the bells first swung in the air; and now Hope was born once again, and Youth, and Love, which is immortal!
The End
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