taken the journeys with him, going to the mines, living in the camps.
Then she had waited for him here at home, where he had placed her among
her old friends, in this pleasant country house. He was often away,
but he worked the more fiercely to get back to her. Once he had come
wilfully, without warning, from British Columbia, three thousand six
hundred miles, without a pause, hurled on his course by an irresistible
desire to know that his joy was real, to see that she lived on the
earth still and was his. He had arrived after dinner, and found her
dressed to go out,--tall, white, beautiful,--more wonderful than in
the camp he had dreamed she was. When she looked up and saw him,--the
unexpected, welcome one,--she had given a glad cry, and lifted her arms
and face to his, careless of the maid, her gown, his travel-stained
self....
“I had two or three days, and I thought I would come on,” he had said,
repaid already in good fact....
She had her memories, too. Her woman’s life was woven with the little
intimacies of the seven married years. Their life together, their
passion and joy,--it blazed before her in the stillness. She had
thought it was to go on like that always, for many years, fading
perchance when they were old into something gentler, less abundant.
Now, suddenly, in the space of a few days, she was brought to see that
such joy had a term set within her own experience. It was past!
“We have loved so much,” she murmured. “We have been so happy. That is
over now.”
He nodded, bringing her hands to his lips. He knew what she meant. The
old joy, the careless pleasure of their early selves, had gone under
the shadow. Something out of them had been created in those hours of
freedom, which was now asserting its control over them,--something from
the past, unknown to them, gathered up and expressed through them.
_They_ were now to be less, and this which had come out of them was to
be more. Sorrow or satisfaction, it was all one,--it was to be met and
borne with. Youth had passed; selfish joy had been blown away--there
remained their child.
“Little Oscar,” the mother murmured. “We must do what we can for him,
mustn’t we?”
“All that can be done!” he exclaimed.
“Live with him, take him away from here, fight for him,” she whispered.
“As long as he lives. As long as we live!” Her tears fell upon his
hands.
“Yes! that is it. We must fight together for the child as long as we
live!”
And they both divined something of how the years must be, living not
for themselves but largely for their child, changing their life as his
needs changed, preparing to struggle with him against the odds of his
fate.
“Where is he?” he asked.
They found him playing by himself under a great tree. When he saw them
coming across the lawn, he stood very still and watched their faces,
looking at them keenly. His mother took his hand and leaned over to
kiss him. He put his other hand up to his father. Thus they walked
slowly back toward the house, the child gravely marching between his
parents, holding them to him, one on either hand.
_The Macmillan Little Novels_
BY FAVOURITE AUTHORS
Handsomely Bound in Decorated Cloth
16mo 50 cents each
_Philosophy Four_
A STORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. By OWEN WISTER, author of “The
Virginian,” etc.
_Man Overboard_
By F. MARION CRAWFORD, author of “Cecilia,” “Marietta,” etc.
_Mr. Keegan’s Elopement_
By WINSTON CHURCHILL, author of “The Crisis,” “Richard Carvel,” etc.
_Mrs. Pendleton’s Four-in-Hand_
By GERTRUDE ATHERTON, author of “The Conqueror,” “The Splendid Idle
Forties,” etc.
_The Saint of the Dragon’s Dale_
By WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS, author of “A Friend of Cæsar,” “God Wills
It,” etc.
_The Golden Chain_
By GWENDOLEN OVERTON, author of “The Heritage of Unrest,” “Anne
Carmel,” etc.
_Their Child_
By ROBERT HERRICK, author of “The Web of Life,” “The Real World,” etc.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
66 Fifth Avenue, New York
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.