WHICH SHALL SPEAK FIRST?
Ronald West stood at the window of
his wife's sitting-room, looking across the bright garden-borders to the wide
park beyond, and wondering how on earth he should open the subject of which his
mind had been full during their morning ride.
He had swung off his own horse a
few moments before; thrown the bridle to a waiting groom, and made his way
round to her stirrup. Then he had laid his hand upon Silverheels' mane, and
looking up into his wife's glowing, handsome face, he had said: "May I
come to your room for a talk, Helen? I have something very important to tell
you."
Helen had smiled down upon him.
"I thought my cavalier was
miles away from his horse and his wife, during most of the ride. But, if he
proposes taking me on the same distant journey, he shall be forgiven. Also, I
have something to tell you, Ronnie, and I see the turret clock gives us an hour
before luncheon. I must scribble out a message for the village; then I will
come to you at once, without stopping to change."
She laid her hand on his shoulder,
and dropped lightly to the ground. Then, telling the groom to wait, she passed
into the hall.
Ronald left her standing at the
table, walked into the sitting-room alone, and suddenly realised that when you
have thought of a thing continuously, day and night, during the best part of a
week, and kept it to yourself, it is not easy to begin explaining it to another
person—even though that other person be your always kind, always understanding,
al- together perfect wife!
He had forgotten to leave his hat
and gloves in the hall. He now tossed them into a chair—Helen's own particular
chair it so happened—but kept his riding-crop in his hand, and thwacked his
leather gaiters with it, as he stood in the bay window.
It was such a perfect spring
morning! The sun shone in through the old-fashioned lattice panes.
Some silly old person of a bygone
century had scratched with a dia- mond on one of these a rough cross, and
beneath it the motto: In hoc vince.
Ronald had inveighed against this.
If Helen's old ancestor, having nothing better to do, had wanted to write down
a Latin motto, he should have put it in his pocket-book, or, better still, on
the even more transitory pages of the blotter, instead of scribbling on the
beautiful diamond panes of the old Grange windows. But Helen had laughed and
said: "I should think he lived before the time of blotters, dear! No doubt
the morning sun was shining on the glass, Ronnie, as he stood at the window. It
was of the cross gleaming in the sunlight, that he wrote: In this conquer. If
we could but remember it, the path of self-sacrifice and clear shining is al-
ways the way to victory."
Helen invariably stood up for her
ancestors, which was annoying to a very modern young man who, not being aware
of possessing any, considered ancestors unnecessary and obsolete.
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The
Upas Tree, by Florence L. Barclay
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