The Upas Tree | Page 8

death. We were very quietly happy. I do not see why we should not be happy again."
"What shall you do all day?"
"Well, I shall have my duties in the village and on the estate; and, for our recreation, we shall read French and German, and do plenty of music. Mademoiselle Victorine delights in playing what she calls '_des à quatre mains_,' which consist in our both prancing vigorously upon the same piano; she steadily punishing the bass; while I fly after her, on the more lively treble. It is good practice; it has its fascinations, and it will take the place of riding, for me."
"Shan't you ride, Helen?"
"No, Ronnie; not without you."
"Will you and Mademoiselle Victorine drive your four-in-hands in here?"
"No, not in here, darling. I don't think I shall be able to bear to touch the piano on which you play to me."
"I don't play," said Ronnie. "I strum."
"True, dear. You often strum. But sometimes you play quite wonderfully. I wish you had been properly taught!"
"I always hated being taught anything," said Ronald. "I like doing things, without learning to do them. And I know what you mean, about the times when I really play. But, excepting when the mood is on me, I don't care to think of those times. I never feel really myself when it happens. I seem to be listening to somebody else playing, and trying to remember something I have hopelessly forgotten. It gives me a strained, uncanny feeling, Helen."
"Does it, darling? Then let us talk of something else. Oh, Ronnie, you must promise me to take care of your health out in that climate! I believe you are going at the very worst time of year."
"I have to know it at its worst and at its hottest," he said. "But I shall be all right. I'm strong as a horse, and sound in wind and limb."
"I hope you will get good food."
He laughed. "I expect to have to live on just whatever I can shoot or grub up. You see, the more completely I leave all civilisation, the more correctly I shall get my 'copy.' I can't crawl into the long grass, carrying tins of sardines and bottles of Bass!"
"You might take meat lozenges," suggested Ronnie's wife.
"Meat lozenges, darling, are concentrated nastiness. I felt like an unhealthy bullock the whole of the rest of the day when, to please you, I sucked one while we were mountain climbing. I propose living on interesting and unique fruits and roots--all the things which correspond to locusts and wild honey. But, Helen, I am afraid there will be quite a long time during which I shall not be able either to send or to receive letters. We shall have to console ourselves with the trite old saying: 'No news is good news.' Of course, so far as I am concerned, it would be useless to hear of any cause for anxiety or worry when I could not possibly get back, or deal with it."
"You shall not hear of any worries, or have any anxieties, darling. If difficulties arise, I will deal with them. You must keep a perfectly free mind, all the time. For my part, I will try not to give way to panics about you, if you will promise to cable occasionally, and to write as often as you can."
"You won't go and get ill, will you, Helen?"
She smiled, laying her cheek on the top of his head, as she bent over him.
"I never get ill, darling. Like you, I am sound in wind and limb. We are a most healthy couple."
"We shall both be thirty, Helen, before we meet again. You will attain to that advanced age a month before I shall. On your birthday I shall drink your health in some weird concoction of juices; and I shall say to all the lions and tigers, hippopotamuses, cockatrices and asps, sitting round my camp fire: 'You will hardly believe it, my heathen hearers, out in this well-ordered jungle, where the female is kept in her proper place--but my wife has had the cheek to march up to-day into the next decade, leaving me behind in the youthful twenties!'--Oh, Helen, I wish we had a little kiddie playing around! I am tired of being the youngest of the family."
She clasped both hands about his throat. He might have heard the beating of her heart--had he been listening.
"Ronald, that is a joy which may yet be ours--some day. But my writer of romances, who is such a stickler for grammatical accuracy, is surely the younger of a family of two!"
"Oh, grammar be--relegated to the library!" cried Ronnie, laughing. "And you really presume too much on that one short month, Helen. You often treat me as if I were an infant."
The smile in her eyes held