The Upas Tree by Florence Louisa Barclay (free ebooks for android .TXT) 📖

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 the mother look, in its yearning tenderness.

"Ronnie dear, you _are_ so very much younger than I, in many ways; and you always will be. Unlike the 'Infant of Days,' if you live to be a hundred years old, you will still die young; a child in heart, full of youth's joyous joy in living. You must not mind if your wife occasionally treats you as though you were a dear big baby, requiring maternal care and petting. You are such a veritable boy sometimes, and it soothes the yearning for a little son of yours to cuddle in her arms, when she plays that her big boy is something of a baby."

Ronald took her left hand from about his neck, and kissed it tenderly.

This was his only answer, but his silence meant more to Helen than speech. Words flowed so readily to express his surface thoughts; but when words suddenly and unexpectedly failed, a deeper depth had been reached; and in that silence, his wife found comfort and content.

Ronnie was not all ripples. There was more beneath than the shifting shallows. Deep, still pools were there, and rocks on which might eventually be built a beacon-light for the souls of men. But, as yet, it took Helen's clear and faithful eyes to discern the pools; to perceive the possible strong foundations.

"Do you remember," he said presently, "the Dalmains coming over last January, with their little Geoff? When I saw that jolly little chap trotting about, and looking up at his mother with big shining eyes, full of trustful love and innocent courage, absolutely unafraid--notwithstanding her rather peremptory manner, and apparently stern discipline--I felt that it must be the making of two people to have such a little son as that, depending upon them to show him how to grow up right. One would simply be obliged to live up to his baby belief in one; wouldn't one, Helen?"

"Yes, darling; we--we should."

"I hope you will see a lot of the Dalmains while I am away. Try to put in a good long visit there. And she would come over, if you wanted her, wouldn't she?"

"Yes; she will come if I want her."

"You and she are great friends," pursued Ronnie, "aren't you? _I_ find her alarming. When she looks at me, I feel such a worm. I want to slide into a hole and hide. But there is never a hole to be found. I have to remain erect, handing tea and bread-and-butter, while I mentally grovel. I almost pray that a hungry blackbird or a prying thrush may chance to come my way, and consider me juicy and appetising. You remember--the Vicar and _Mrs._ Vicar came to tea that day. She wore brown spots. But even the priestly blackbird, and the Levitical thrush, passed me by on the other side."

"Oh, Ronnie, how silly! I know Jane admires your books, darling!"

"She considers me quite unfit to tie your shoe-strings."

"Ronnie, be quiet! You would not be afraid of her, had you ever known what it was to turn to her in trouble or difficulty. She helped me through an awfully hard time, six months before I met you. She showed me the right thing to do, then stood by me while I did it. There is nobody in the whole world quite like her."

"Well, send for her if you get into any troubles while I am away. I shall feel quite brave about her being here, when I am safely hidden in the long grass!"

"Is there any possible chance that you will get back sooner than you think, Ronnie?"

"Hardly. Not before November, anyway. And yesterday my publishers were keen that I should put in a night at Leipzig on my way home, and a night at the Hague; show whatever 'copy' I have to firms there, and make arrangements for German and Dutch translations to appear as soon as possible after the English edition is out. I think I may as well do this, and return by the Hook of Holland. I enjoy the night-crossing, and like reaching London early in the morning. By the way, haven't you a cousin of some sort living at Leipzig?"

"Yes; my first cousin, Aubrey Treherne. He is studying music, and working on compositions of his own, I believe. He lives in a flat in the Grassi Strasse."

"All right. Put his address in my pocket-book. I will look him up. My special chum, Dick Cameron, is to be out there in November, investigating one of their queer water-cures. I wish you knew Dick Cameron, Helen. I shall hope to see him, too. Has your cousin a spare room in his flat?"

"I do not know. Ronnie, Aubrey Treherne is not a good man. He is not a man you should trust."

"Darling, you don't necessarily trust a fellow because he puts you up for the night. But I daresay Dick will find me a room."

"Aubrey is not a good man," repeated Helen firmly.

"Dear, we are none of us good."

"_You_ are, Ronnie--in the sense I mean, or I should not have married you."

"Oh, then, yes _please_!" said Ronnie. "I am very, very good!"

He laughed up at her, but Helen's face was grave. Then a sudden thought brightened it.

"If you really go to Leipzig, Ronnie, could you look in at Zimmermann's--a first-rate place for musical instruments of all kinds--and choose me a small organ for the new church? I saw a little beauty the other day at Huntingford; a perfect tone, twelve stops, and quite easy to play. They had had it sent over from Leipzig. It cost only twenty-four pounds. In England, one could hardly have bought so good an instrument for less than forty. If you could choose one with a really sweet tone, and have it shipped over here, I should be grateful."

"With pleasure, darling. I enjoy trying all sorts of instruments. But why economise over the organ? If my wife fancied a hundred guinea organ, I could give it her."

"No, you couldn't, Ronnie. You must not be extravagant."

"I am not extravagant, dear. Buying things one can afford is not extravagance."

"Sometimes it is. Extravagance is not spending money. But it is paying a higher price for a thing than the actual need demands, or than the circumstances justify. I considered you extravagant last winter when you paid five guineas for a box at Olympia, intended to hold eight people, and sat in it, in solitary grandeur, alone with your wife."

"I know you did," said Ronnie. "You left me no possible loop-hole for doubt in the matter. But your quite mistaken view, on that occasion, arose from an incorrect estimate of values. I paid one pound, six shillings and three-pence for the two seats, and three pounds, eighteen and nine-pence for the pleasure of sitting alone with my wife, and thought it cheap at that. It was a far lower price than the actual need demanded; therefore, by your own showing, it was not extravagant."

"Oh, what a boy it is!" sighed Helen, with a little gesture of despair. "Then, last Christmas, Ronnie, you insisted upon feting the old people with all kinds of unnecessary luxuries. They had always been quite content with wholesome bread-and-butter, plum cake, and nice hot tea. They did not require _pate de foie gras_ and champagne, nor did they understand or really enjoy them. One old lady, in considerable