He stretched his arms over his head, in utter joyful content with life.
"Go on, Boy dear," said Christobel. "I am not sure that I agree with you; but I like to hear you talk."
"At first," he said, "our bodies are so babyish that our souls do not find them an adequate medium of expression. But by and by our bodies grow and develop; after which come the beautiful years of perfection, ten, twenty, thirty of them, when the young soul goes strong and gay through life, clad in the strong gay young body. Then--gradually, gradually, the strong young soul, in its unwearied, immortal youth, wears out the body. The body grows old, but not the soul. Nothing can age that; and when at last the body quite wears out, the young soul breaks free, and begins again. Youthful souls wear out their bodies quicker than old ones; just as a strong young boy romps through a suit of clothes sooner than a weakly old man. But there is always life more abundant, and a fuller life farther on. So the mating of souls is the all-important thing; and when young souls meet and mate, what does it matter if there be a few years" difference in the ages of their bodies?
Their essential youthfulness will surmount all that."
Christobel looked at him, and truly for a moment the young soul in her leapt out to his, in glad response. Then the other side of the question rose before her.
"Ah, but, Boy dear," she said, "the souls express themselves--their needs, their delights, their activities--through the bodies. And suppose one body, in the soul-union, is wearing out sooner than the other; that is hard on the other--hard on both. Boy--my Little Boy Blue--shall I tell you an awful secret? I suppose I sat too closely over my books at Girton; I suppose I was not sufficiently careful about good print, or good light. Anyway--Boy dear--I have to use gla.s.ses when I read." She looked wistfully into his bright eyes. "You see?
Already I am beginning to grow old." Her sweet lips trembled.
In a moment he was kneeling by the arm of her chair, bending over her, as he did on the first day; but as he did not do yesterday. Suddenly she realized why she had felt so flat yesterday, after he was gone.
He lifted her hand and kissed it gently, back and palm. Then he parted the third finger from the rest, with his own brown ones, and held that against his warm young lips.
She drew her hand slowly away; pa.s.sed it over his hair; then let it fall upon her lap. She could not speak; she could not move; she could not send him away. She wanted him so--her little Boy Blue, of long ago.
"Old, my Beloved?" he said. "You--old! Never! Always perfect--perfect to me. And why not wear gla.s.ses? Heaps of mere kids wear gla.s.ses, and wear them all the time. Only--how alarmingly clever you must look in spectacles, Christobel. It would terrify me now; but by and by it will make me feel proud. I think one would expect gla.s.ses to go with those awe-inspiring cla.s.sical honours. With my barely respectable B.A., I daren"t lay claim to any outward marks of erudition." Then, as she did not smile, but still gazed up at him, wistfully, his look softened to still deeper tenderness: "Dear eyes,"
he murmured, "oh dear, dear eyes," and gently laid his lips on each in turn.
"Don"t," she said, with a half sob. "Ah, Boy, don"t! You know you must not kiss me."
"Kiss you!" he said, still bending over her. "Do you call that kissing?" Then he laughed; and the joyous love in his laughter wrung her heart. "Christobel, on the seventh day, when the gates fly open, and the walls fall down; when the citadel surrenders; when you admit you are my own--_then_ I shall kiss you; _then_ you will know what kissing really means."
He bent above her. His lips were very near to hers. She closed her eyes and waited. Her own lips trembled. She knew how fearfully it tempted the Boy that her lips should tremble because his were near; yet she let them tremble. She forgot to remember the past; she forgot to consider the future. She was conscious of only one thing: that she wanted her Little Boy Blue to teach her what kissing really meant. So she closed her eyes and waited.
She did not hear him go; but presently she knew he was no longer there.
She opened her eyes.
The Boy had walked across the lawn, and stood looking into the golden heart of an opening yellow rose. His back appeared very uncompromising; very determined; very erect.
She rose and walked over to him. As she moved forward, with the graceful dignity of motion which was always hers, her mental balance returned.
She slipped her hand beneath his arm. "Come, Boy," she said; "let us walk up and down, and talk. It is enervating to sit too long in the sunshine."
He turned at once, suiting his step to hers, and they paced the lawn in silence.
When they reached the postern gate the Boy stood still. Something in his look suddenly recalled her Little Boy Blue, when the sand on his small nose could not detract from the dignity of his little face, nor weaken its stern decision.
He took both her hands in his, and looked into her eyes.
"Christobel," he said, "I must go. I must go, because I dare not stay.
You are so wonderful this afternoon; so dear beyond expression. I know you trust me absolutely; but this is only the third day; and I cannot trust myself, dear. So I"m off!"
He lifted both her hands to his lips.
"May I go, my Queen?" he said.
"Yes, Boy," she answered. "Go."
And he went.
It was hard to hear the thud of the closing door. For some time she stood waiting, just on the inside. She thought he would come back, and she wished him to find her there, the moment he opened the door.
But the Boy--being the Boy--did not come back.
Presently she returned to her chair, in the shade of the mulberry-tree.
She lay, with closed eyes, and lived again through the afternoon, from the moment when the Boy had said: "Hip, hip, hurrah!" There came a time when she turned very pale, and her lips trembled, as they had done before.
At length she rose and paced slowly up the lawn. On her face was the quiet calm of an irrevocable decision.
"To-morrow," she said, "I must tell the Boy about the Professor."
In the middle of the night, Martha, being wakeful, became haunted by the remembrance of the smoke, as it had curled from cracks and keyholes in the kitchen. She felt constrained to put on a wonderful pink wrapper, and go creaking slowly down the stairs to make sure the house was not on fire. Martha"s wakefulness was partly caused by the unusual fact of a large and hard curl-paper, behind her left ear.
Miss Charteris was also awake. She was not worried by memories of smoke, or visions of fire; and her soft hair was completely innocent of curl-papers. But she was considering how she should tell the boy about the Professor; and that consideration was not conducive to calm slumber. She heard Martha go creaking down the stairs; and, as Martha came creaking up again, she opened her door, and confronted her.
"What are you doing, Martha?" she said.
Martha, intensely conscious of her curl-paper, was about to answer with more than her usual respectful irritability, when the eyes of the two women--mistress and maid--met, in the light of their respective candles, and a sudden sense of fellowship in the cause of their night vigil pa.s.sed between them.
Martha smiled--a crooked smile, half ashamed to be seen smiling. When she spoke, her aspirates fell away from her more completely than in the daytime.
""E went crawlin" about the kitchen," she said, in a m.u.f.fled midnight whisper; "all in "is white flannels, puffin" smoke in every crack an"
"ole to kill the beetles. So kind "e meant it; but I couldn"t sleep for wonderin" if the place was smokin" still. I "ad to go down an"
see. "Ow came you to be awake, Miss Christobel?"
"Things he said in the garden, Martha, have given me food for thought.
I began thinking them over; and sleep went."
Martha smiled again--and this time the smile came more easily. ""E _"as_ a way of keepin" one on the go," she said; "but we"d best be gittin" to sleep now, miss. "E"ll be at it again to-morrow, bless "is "eart!" And Martha, in her pink wrapper, lumbered upwards.
But the Boy, who had this disturbing effect on the women who loved him, slept soundly himself, one arm flung high above his tumbled head. And if the sweet mother, who perforce had had to let her dying arms slip from about her baby-boy, almost before his little feet could carry him across a room, saw from above the pure radiance on his lips and brow as he slept, she must have turned to the Emerald Throne with glad thanksgiving for the answer vouchsafed to a dead mother"s prayers.
"_And the evening and the morning were the third day._"
THE FOURTH DAY
CHRISTOBEL SIGNS HER NAME