Banked Fires Part 46

"Then I'll desert and enlist under another name that I might be killed by a German bullet," he said gloomily.

"But you mightn't be killed. You might just be smashed up instead, invalided out without a limb, or, worse still, be made unrecognisable!"

Horrible prospect! Jack's military ardour cooled visibly. "Anyhow, it would be their fault."

"And I should chase after you and beg of you to marry me, all the same,--limbless and unrecognisable as you may be!"

"You would? You said just now you would have to obey."

"Of course I would obey, but only for a time. Do you think I shall ever give you up, even if the skies were to fall?"

That finished it. Jack was in heaven again, and the time pa.s.sed with amazing rapidity.

Meanwhile, Joyce had been to see Baby Douglas asleep in his crib and was weighing the pros and cons of her problem with agonised uncertainty. He was now as healthy as any normal infant of his age, and was in the care of an experienced and trustworthy nurse. At Wynthrop Manor he would be in the lap of luxury, wanting for nothing, and his grandparents would be sure to bring him up in the way he should go, till she and Ray came home together on his next furlough ... (after the War!--whenever that might be!). But all her baby's pretty ways and unfolding intelligence would be for others to enjoy! She, his devoted mother, would be thousands of miles away!

The thought brought forth a flood of tears, and expressions of sympathy from the nurse. "If it makes you feel so badly, I wouldn't go if I were you."

"It breaks my heart!"

"There now, don't take on so. Give up the idea. You will feel easier in mind to leave him when he is a bit older."

"It will be just as bad--perhaps worse!" cried Joyce, thinking of the possibility of a loveless reunion with Ray, if she stayed away too long!

In that case she would have no compensation for her act of self-sacrifice.

"Then take him with you, I have no objection to the voyage, or serving in India which I have often wished to see."

"Oh, no. Baby is best here, for his own sake. In India I have all sorts of anxieties. I would have to go alone."

"But there are many ladies who stay in Europe for the sake of their children, leaving their husbands in India. In my last place, my mistress, whose husband was a Forest officer living in lonely places among the blacks, spent most of her time with her people in England as she could not abide the natives, and the climate upset her nerves. Only, occasionally, she visited him in the East, and sometimes he came home."

"What a life!" sighed Joyce. "I know it is done, but it isn't right"--she was thinking of Honor's letter. "Both go different ways, and what love and happiness is there for them?"

"But that is always so when ladies have husbands in India!"

"It need not be so. It makes me wonder why men marry when they know the risk they run of broken domestic ties, and the burdens they have to bear! It isn't worth while, if a man is to become only the means of providing money for the comforts of his family, and keeping very little, or none for himself--poor dear!"

Decidedly, Joyce Meredith's views had undergone a change.

The questions pressing on her mind were--Where was she most needed? and where, most, lay her heart's desire?

In her case, duty and desire were no longer in conflict. Clearly, her place was beside her husband as long as she was capable of enduring the climate, and her heart was sick with longing for him.

"I shall be going out almost immediately--as soon as it can possibly be arranged," she said coming to a sudden decision. "Pack the trunks early in the morning, and we shall return home in the afternoon to fix this up. It will be a great comfort to me, nurse, to know that you will stay with Baby."

"I'll stay as long as you want me, ma'am, and you need have no fears,"

said the woman who was sincerely attached to her charge, and who was aware that her devotion received ample recognition.

On her way to her own room, Joyce met two embarra.s.sed and happy people waiting to waylay her with their news.

"Take us into your room for a little while, do, there's a darling, we've so much to tell you!"

Joyce was hustled into her own room by her little sister with Jack's big form looming in the rear, and the wonderful tale was told and her congratulations solicited.

"Of course I saw it coming," said Joyce kissing them both. "You were like ostriches with your heads in the sand----"

"In the clouds, rather. I have been seeing a little bit of heaven, Mrs.

Meredith," said Jack.

"Now please come back to earth, and tell me your plans, for I have decided to join my husband as soon as it is possible to get a pa.s.sage."

"You?--with Baby?" from Kitty.

"No. Baby must stay behind."

"Then that was what gave you a headache? You ought to be ashamed of yourself to have a headache at the prospect of going back to Ray!" Kitty teased.

"Say, 'at the prospect of leaving Baby.'"

"Can't you take him?" said Jack. "There are crowds of youngsters of his age getting rosy and fat in the hills all the summer."

"I shouldn't feel safe about him. He'll be best with Grannie."

"Bravo!" cried Kitty. "Jack's got to go very soon, so we can all three go together." Jack's face showed intense appreciation.

"You don't mean to say you are thinking of marrying at once?"

"Why not?" from him.

"Of course not," said Kitty ruthlessly. "But as it is not good for you to travel alone in these exciting times, you _must_ take me with you--engaged to Jack--and to be married when we have time to look around. Has anyone any objections?"

"You darling!" gasped Jack.

"Well, let's see what Mother has to say about it," said Joyce. "Meantime I shall pack a few things before getting to bed."

"Then you won't be so heartless as to turn us out. Come Jack, and let us talk it over"; and Jack, nothing loath, drew her on his knee in the one big chair by the window, and for some little time Joyce had ceased to exist for them. Neither seemed to mind the fact of her presence; it was sympathetic and that was quite enough, so they felt at liberty to continue to enjoy their mutual delight in the knowledge that they had become engaged.

Joyce suffered a pang of jealous longing for her own dear lover-husband, when she saw the look on Jack's face while he held Kitty to his breast and kissed her yielding lips. And Kitty, with her arms wound about her boy's neck and her face uplifted to his!--It was her hour, and Joyce knew that her own was yet to come. She had indeed been the Sleeping Beauty who had slept too long under the kisses of her Prince. She had never really understood her own heart, or realised love till now. Could there ever be a moment more wonderful on this old earth, than that in which two lips met in mutual pa.s.sion?--two souls fused in divine ecstasy?

"Blessed darlings!" she murmured to herself, turning aside not to intrude on their sacred joy yet conscious of the fervour of the clinging kisses, the incoherent whispers, the bounding hearts! It was all as G.o.d had meant it to be when he created Man and gave him Woman for his mate.

"My place is indeed with my husband," she muttered to herself.

CHAPTER XXII

A DESPERATE RESORT