"Oh! don"t trouble about that," he broke in, "because you know it couldn"t be. Ten years, or ten thousand, and it would make no difference."
"I wonder," she mused, "oh! how I wonder. Do you think it possible that we shall be living ten thousand years hence?"
"Quite," he answered with cheerful a.s.surance, "much more possible than that I should be living to-day. What"s ten thousand years? It"s quite a hundred thousand since I saw you."
"Don"t laugh at me," she exclaimed.
"Why not, dear, when there"s nothing in the whole world at which I wouldn"t laugh at just now? although I would rather look at you. Also I wasn"t laughing, I was loving, and when one is loving very much, the truth comes out."
"Then you really think it true--about the ten thousand years, I mean?"
"Of course, dear," he answered, and this time his voice was serious enough. "Did we not tell each other yonder in the Abbey that ours was the love eternal?"
"Yes, but words cannot make eternity."
"No, but thoughts and the will behind them can, for we reap what we sow."
"Why do you say that?" she asked quickly.
"I can"t tell you, except because I know that it is so. We come to strange conclusions out yonder, where only death seems to be true and all the rest a dream. What we call the real and the unreal get mixed."
A kind of wave of happiness pa.s.sed through her, so obvious that it was visible to the watching G.o.dfrey.
"If you believe it I dare say that it is so, for you always had what they call vision, had you not?" Then without waiting for an answer, she went on, "What nonsense we are talking. Don"t you understand, G.o.dfrey, that I am quite old?"
"Yes," he answered, "getting on; six months younger than I am, I think."
"Oh! it"s different with a man. Another dozen years and I"m finished."
"Possibly, except for that eternity before you."
"Also," she continued, "I am even----"
"Even more beautiful than you were ten years ago, at any rate to me,"
he broke in.
"You foolish G.o.dfrey," she murmured, and moved a little away from him.
Just then the door opened, and Mrs. Parsons, looking very odd in a nurse"s dress with the cap awry upon her grey hair, entered, carrying a bit of paper.
"The hunt I had!" she began; "that silly, new-fangled kind of a girl-clerk having stuck the paper away under the letter O--for officers, you know, Miss--in some fancy box of hers, and then gone off to tea. Here are the names, but I can"t see without my specs."
At this point something in the att.i.tude of the two struck her, something that her instincts told her was uncommon, and she stood irresolute. Isobel stepped to her as though to take the list, and, bending down, whispered into her ear.
"What?" said Mrs. Parsons. "Surely I didn"t understand; you know I"m getting deaf as well as blind. Say the name again."
Isobel obeyed, still in a whisper.
"_Him_!" exclaimed the old woman, "him! Our G.o.dfrey, and you"ve been and let on who you were--you who call yourself a nursing Commandant?
Why, I dare say you"ll be the death of him. Out you go, Miss, anyway; I"ll take charge of this case for the present," and as it seemed to G.o.dfrey, watching from the far corner, literally she bundled Isobel from the room.
Then she shut and locked the door. Coming to the bedside she knelt down rather stiffly, looked at him for a while to make sure, and kissed him, not once, but many times.
"So you have come back, my dear," she said, "and only half dead. Well, we won"t have no young woman pushing between you and me just at present, Commandant or not. Time enough for love-making when you are stronger. Oh! and I never thought to see you again. There must be a good G.o.d somewhere after all, although He did make them Germans."
Then again she fell to kissing and blessing him, her hot tears dropping on his face and upsetting him ten times as much as Isobel had done.
Since in this topsy-turvy world often things work by contraries, oddly enough no harm came to G.o.dfrey from these fierce excitements. Indeed he slept better than he had done since he found his mind again, and awoke, still weak of course, but without any temperature or pains in his head.
Now it was that there began the most blissful period of all his life.
Isobel, when she had recovered her balance, made him understand that he was a patient, and that exciting talk or acts must be avoided. He on his part fell in with her wishes, and indeed was well content to do so.
For a while he wanted nothing more than just to lie there and watch her moving in and out of his room, with his food or flowers, or whatever it might be, for a burst of bad weather prevented him from going out of doors. Then, as he strengthened she began to talk to him (which Mrs.
Parsons did long before that event), telling him all that for years he had longed to know; no, not all, but some things. Among other matters she described to him the details of her father"s end, which occurred in a very characteristic fashion.
"You see, dear," she said, "as he grew older his pa.s.sion for money-making increased more and more; why, I am sure I cannot say, seeing that Heaven knows he had enough."
"Yes," said G.o.dfrey, "I suppose you are a very rich woman."
She nodded, saying: "So rich that I don"t know how rich, for really I haven"t troubled even to read all the figures, and as yet they are not complete. Moreover, I believe that soon I shall be much richer. I"ll tell you why presently. The odd thing is, too, that my father died intestate, so I get every farthing. I believe he meant to make a will with some rather peculiar provisions that perhaps you can guess. But this will was never made."
"Why not?" asked G.o.dfrey.
"Because he died first, that"s all. It was this way. He, or rather his firm, which is only another name for him, for he owned three-fourths of the capital, got some tremendous shipping contract with the Government arising out of the war, that secures an enormous profit to them; how much I can"t tell you, but hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds. He had been very anxious about this contract, for his terms were so stiff that the officials who manage such affairs hesitated about signing them. At last one day after a long and I gather, stormy interview with I don"t know whom, in the course of which some rather strong language seems to have been used, the contract was signed and delivered to the firm. My father came home to this house with a copy of it in his pocket. He was very triumphant, for he looked at the matter solely from a business point of view, not at all from that of the country. Also he was very tired, for he had aged much during the last few years, and suffered occasionally from heart attacks. To keep himself up he drank a great deal of wine at dinner, first champagne and then the best part of a bottle of port. This made him talkative, and he kept me sitting there to listen to him while he boasted, poor man, of how he had "walked round" the officials who thought themselves so clever, but never saw some trap which he had set for them."
"And what did you do?" asked G.o.dfrey.
"You know very well what I did. I grew angry, I could not help it, and told him I thought it was shameful to make money wrongfully out of the country at such a time, especially when he did not want it at all. Then he was furious and answered that he did want it, to support the peerage which he was going to get. He said also," she added slowly, "that I was "an ignorant, interfering vixen," yes, that is what he called me, a vixen, who had always been a disappointment to him and thwarted his plans. "However," he went on, "as you think so little of my hard-earned money, I"ll take care that you don"t have more of it than I can help. I am not going to leave it to be wasted on silly charities by a sour old maid, for that"s what you are, since you can"t get hold of your precious parson"s son, who I hope will be sent to the war and killed.
I"ll see the lawyers to-morrow, and make a will, which I hope you"ll find pleasant reading one day."
"I answered that he might make what will he liked, and left the room, though he tried to stop me.
"About half an hour later I saw the butler running about the garden where I was, looking for me in the gloom, and heard him calling: "Come to Sir John, miss. Come to Sir John!"
"I went in and there was my father fallen forward on the dining-room table, with blood coming from his lips, though I believe this was caused by a crushed winegla.s.s. His pocket-book was open beneath him, in which he had been writing figures of his estate, and, I think, headings for the will he meant to make, but these I could not read since the faint pencilling was blotted out with blood. He was quite dead from some kind of a stroke followed by heart failure, as the doctors said."
"Is that all the pleasant story?" asked G.o.dfrey.
"Yes, except that there being no will I inherited everything, or shall do so. I tried to get that contract cancelled, but could not; first, because having once made it the Government would not consent, since to do so would have been a reflection on those concerned, and secondly, for the reason that the other partners in the shipping business objected. So we shall have to give it back in some other way."
G.o.dfrey looked at her, and said:
"You meant to say that _you_ will have to give it back."
"I don"t know what I meant," she answered, colouring; "but having said _we_, I think I will be like the Government and stick to it. That is, unless you object very much, my dear."
"Object! _I_ object!" and taking the hand that was nearest to him, he covered it with kisses. As he did so he noted that for the first time she wore the little ring with turquoise hearts upon her third finger, the ring that so many years before he had bought at Lucerne, the ring that through Mrs. Parsons he had sent her in the pill-box on the evening of their separation.
This was the only form of engagement that ever pa.s.sed between them, the truth being that from the moment he entered the place it was all taken for granted, not only by themselves, but by everyone in the house, including the wounded. With this development of an intelligent instinct, it is possible that Mrs. Parsons had something to do.