Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 31

But for d.i.c.k Bellamy, caught at last on the ebb of his resistance, one elbow was not enough. So he seized the other, and by the pair held her off from him, looking into her eyes.

"Tell me what it meant," he said, "--your face."

"I've told you," she replied, with serious eyes.

"I saw it. It must have meant a great deal more than your words, or a great deal less than it looked. If you were taking a cheap pleasure in being charitable, your face is a liar, Amaryllis. If you find great happiness in being loved, _you_ are."

She ignored the accusation, merely answering:

"I might."

But she was still so serious that d.i.c.k could not speak.

"It wasn't exactly that, though," she explained. "I want to be as truthful as my face--if you could read it right."

"Tell me, then."

"It was my half, I think, that made me so awfully contented."

"Your half? That means--if you mean anything at all--you mean, your half was loving me?"

She nodded, and spoke before he could answer the nod.

"Of course I might not have stayed contented long, if you hadn't been like that too. You are, aren't you?"

His hands had slipped up her arms to her shoulders, and it sent a pang of wild joy through her content to feel them trembling while they held her.

"Contented? No, by G.o.d, I'm not! _Contented's_ as much as saying I could have enough of you. But I've loved you ever since I heard you calling Zola in that wonderful voice of yours. Before I even saw your face close, your 'Gorgon! Gorgon!' gave me a pain I was afraid of, because I wanted to be hurt again. It made me angry. You've been waking me up at four in the morning and never letting me sleep again. You've filled my head with pictures--a whole cinema of pictures; and my ears with sounds!

Your dress on the stairs; your voice calling 'Dad! dad!' from the garden, and humming little tunes I'd never heard till you sang 'em, coming in with your arms full of leaves and flowers. Seems like months you've filled me, and it's only four days. No, I'm not contented, Amaryllis, but I'm d.a.m.ned happy."

Then his arms crossed each other round her body; and it seemed to Amaryllis that she sank away into s.p.a.ce filled with an ecstasy; and that, after a while, which was not time, she was fetched back into time and to earth by hands so strong that they had brought the ecstasy with them also.

There were kisses, not all his.

Then, to focus her joy, she thrust it away from her; and, seeing d.i.c.k Bellamy's countenance, she remembered how he had spoken of what he had found, when he awoke, in hers.

His eyes shone upon her as she now knew she had always wished them to s.h.i.+ne. Splendid eyes, she had called them in that part of herself where she had for a long time--quite two days--made pretence of deafness; eyes very blue and firm, but seldom, until now, to be long held.

"d.i.c.k," she said, "that's the first time--just what I wanted."

"What?" he asked.

"Your voice has spoken to me, your ears have heard me, your eyes have looked at me. But now, your eyes are listening to mine. Oh, d.i.c.k!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," he answered gravely, "it's great to be free."

"Tremendous!" said Amaryllis.

Her hands were looking for her handkerchief in the Brundage pocket. They encountered a comb, the half-packet of chocolate, a pair of white cotton gloves which raised a moment's hope, and d.i.c.k's pipe, which she had picked up as they started again on their way; but no handkerchief! And her cheeks were wet with half-dried tears, and d.i.c.k was coming nearer.

"Oh, please," she cried, "do lend me a hanky. You made me a bodice of one--in that beastly room with the woman--and you took it from a bundle of them, out of your coat pocket. I felt them there when I wore it. I left the one you gave me behind, and I've lost my own."

The pathetical-comical expression of a pretty woman in danger of using elementary means to dry her tears, made d.i.c.k Bellamy chuckle with laughter of a quality that Amaryllis had not heard from him before, while he chose the least rumpled handkerchief from his stock of four, and shook it open for her.

She took it, blessing him as women will bless a man for such relief; and, as she used it, there struck him, like a smack in his face, the memory of her hand and another handkerchief.

"I saw you use your own," he said, "on the box of that Noah's Ark of a wagonette. I remember your pretty fingers and action. I hoped n.o.body behind us would see that it was a lady blowing her nose. It was a little handkerchief--your own," he insisted. "When did you lose it?"

Amaryllis perceived that the question bore upon their safety, and puckered her forehead, thinking.

"I wiped my fingers with it, after I'd taken Tod Sloan's bridle off,"

she answered, "There was a sticky mess of hay and chaff on them from the bit, and I remember wiping it off with my handkerchief."

"Seen it since?" he asked.

"No," said the girl. "Does it matter? Even if I did drop it then, Melchard wouldn't go in there. He hadn't any horses."

"The ostler called after us, you remember. He was waving something white."

"Oh! You didn't tell me. And you'd given him half a crown!" said Amaryllis.

"Seemed a grateful sort of bloke, didn't he?" said d.i.c.k, ruefully.

"And wanted to give it back to me? Oh, d.i.c.k! Melchard was there, close by, talking to the handsome clergyman."

"Was it marked."

"An embroidery-st.i.tched A.C. That's all," said Amaryllis.

"C doesn't stand for Bunce. Let's get out of this," said d.i.c.k Bellamy.

CHAPTER XX.

A ROPE OR SOMETHING.

As they reached the level of the moor and the Drovers' Track, to join which ancient road their path stretched on for yet a mile, they turned, moved by a common impulse, to look down on the green hollow which had been the nest of so great a happiness.

"Emerald, you said, Amaryllis?"

"And blue, d.i.c.k, from the sky."

When they had tramped a half-mile or more in silence which seemed to Amaryllis very close communion, d.i.c.k spoke; for already he was feeling the stones of the world beneath their feet.

"We put our money on the wrong horse, dear. They didn't suspect--they knew. And they're near us," he said.