With as much majestic grandeur as a small craft can exhibit, the
"Eolus" steamed down the river and out into the bay.
The water was not quite so smooth as Carlita had pictured it, but
rippled and danced in the sunlight, reflecting the opal tints in
blinding splendor. White sails were dotted here and there over the
inviting surface, while along the gray, winter-worn shore the golden
rifts were piled up, lending a fictitious beauty that was entrancing.
It would have been sufficient to fill an artist's soul with rapture
just to lie idly at full length on one of those superb couches, living
in the exquisite loveliness of Dame Nature, and Carlita stood gazing
about her in a sort of rapt wonder, her eyes wandering slowly from
the superbly appointed deck--with Mrs. Chalmers sitting over next
the starboard rail, with old Colonel Washburn bending over her in a
cavalier devotion, and Jessica to the port, with Dudley Maltby sitting
facing her--to the water, and on down the bay out to where a white line
of sand stretched alluringly, sparkling like myriads of scintillating
diamonds.
An absolute silence seemed to infold the scene, broken only by the
gentle caress of the water upon the sides of the tiny ship--a silence
that made it all appear like that mythical experience of Ulysses when
he listened to the seductive voices of the sirens. Carlita clasped her
hands in breathless delight.
"I will be happy today," she murmured, a trifle hysterically. "I will
put all past and future away, and be happy for this one little day as
if there had been no yesterday and would be no tomorrow. This day shall
encompass time, and I will feel the full joy of living once!"
As if in answer to her, a voice spoke in her ear:
"Come and let me make you comfortable. See, I have placed a couch for
you where the sun will shine upon you, but will not be in your eyes,
and I have brought some books to read to you. Will you come?"
She turned at once and obeyed, half defying her own sensitiveness in
her efforts to yield to that determination to be happy.
It was a broad, long couch, upholstered luxuriously in a magnificent
dark green that contrasted perfectly with the tones of the sea. She
threw herself upon it, allowing her delight almost passionate play in
her features, and permitted Leith to pile pillows under and about her
in gorgeous profusion; then, when she looked as comfortable as even he
could desire, he drew up to her side a very low chair and took a volume
out of his pocket.
"Are you fond of Tennyson?" he asked. "If you have a favorite, name it.
I believe most of them are in the library."
"Is it Tennyson you have there?"
"Yes."
"I know my favorite so well, let me hear yours. Read me what you like."
She said it so sweetly, so tenderly that he flushed with pleasure.
It was so different from her manner of late that it touched him. He
might have been still more impressed if he had been able to read that
passionate cry in her heart that kept repeating itself over and over
again:
"I will be happy for this one little day--I will be happy."
At first she could scarcely hear the sound of his voice for the cry in
her own heart, but gradually it ceased under the soothing influence of
his tone, and as if in answer to a prayer for mercy, the awful future
was shut out completely, pitifully hidden in the idly passing present.
He turned the leaves of the book for a moment, then came to that sweet
old poem that has stirred the heart of every lover of Tennyson with
sympathy, "Locksley Hall," and read it as only a man with a voice
like his can read. When he came to the last line, he thought she was
sleeping, she had grown so quiet, so motionless; but after a moment of
silence she stirred slightly and said in a low, dreamy tone:
"Do you believe that--that which you read:
"'Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No; she never loved me truly. Love is love for evermore?'"
He thought he saw the trend of her thoughts, and answered, softly:
"Who can say? We are so often mistaken in the language of our hearts.
How should we know, when we listen to it for the first time, whether
the love is that of admiration, of sympathy, of the loneliness of
our own souls, of the desire to be loved, or of such love as that to
which Tennyson refers? When that love comes, Carlita, the 'love that
is love for evermore,' the least comprehensive of us will know, will
understand, though we may have erred on former occasions."
She did not reply, but lay there silent, motionless, her eyes almost
closed, but looking out from under the lids dreamily at the gently
changing world, her beautiful hand lying palm upward on one of the sofa
pillows like a rose-leaf that has turned toward the sun.
If he had not loved her before, his artistic soul would have loved her
then for the very unconscious grace, the poetical charm of her lovely
person.
He feared that he had saddened her, and so turned to something in
lighter vein, his well-modulated voice making music with the waves.
"What a poem life would be if all the days were like to this," she said
when he had finished.
"It would lose its charm through lack of contrast," he returned,
smiling. "How glaring the sun would grow if there were no shadow.
How dull the water would appear if there were no land beyond. How
oppressive the silence would become if the hum of wider, broader,
busier life were stilled forever. And, over all, how palsied and
colorless would the whole world be if there were nothing beyond,
nothing but the limited stretch of a few brief years, with no hope
of the marvelous universe to come, governed by the supreme power of
Perfect Love. We have learned something beyond lotus-eating in this
kindergarten in which God has placed us, and we love the languid hour
of absolute repose, because we have been so long in the schoolroom,
learning the lessons which He has set for us, lessons of bitterness and
strife, as well as those of contentment and love. Life without contrast
would be as dull, as inartistic, as cloying as a picture of sunshine
without a shadow, as a poem without a strain of sadness."
Her eyes wandered toward him, seeing all the earnestness of his
countenance, all the absolute belief in the future that his words
implied. She turned them away again, out over the water, but even there
she saw him reflected in her imagination, his yachting cap pushed back,
his face flushed, his eyes gravely earnest, as handsome a picture of
perfect manhood as the hand of Divinity had ever painted.
Not long afterward they were summoned down to luncheon, a merry meal
enjoyed by all; but it was with a sense of relief and rest that Carlita
wandered back to her couch again as soon as she could leave the others.
The afternoon was waning. Already a hazy red was beginning to glow
in the western sky, that had changed from gold to pink in opalescent
splendor. The wind was freshening with the dying sun, and the caress of
the waves licked higher upon the dainty craft.
Leith went below and had wraps brought in profusion; but about Carlita
he placed them himself, tucking them in carefully that she might not
feel the influence of the breeze.
"You will not care to get home too early?" he asked, caressingly. "The
moon will be superb, and there will be no roughness to speak of. You
will remain a while?"
"I wish it would never end," she returned, dreamily.
He smiled with the delight of a lover, that slow, sweet smile for which
she had begun to watch with pleasure.
"You don't know what happiness your words give me when I remember that
I have been your only companion," he said softly. "How beautiful you
are as you lie there with that crimson glow just touching you! You are
a tropical plant, Carlita, and should be grown in a tropical country.
Warmth suits you. The bewildering delight of flaming colors make you
like some superb bird of plumage. You will love Italy with a sort of
savage delight, I fancy. You have never traveled?"
"No."
"What a world of pleasure there is in store for you, what almost
rapture! Our own country, while beautiful, has none of the mythological
and historical memories that make other countries a constant poem.
One gets so weary of the newness and glitter of it all, just as we
should have grown of that gorgeous old sun but for this Heaven-sent
gloom. There is a greater element of romance in most of us than
practical, particularly we who are removed from the sordid compulsion
of living-getting. We want to fancy ourselves once in awhile as knights
of the olden time, performing deeds of valor for our Helens of Troy.
See! The sun is going out. He has illuminated the old brown shore to
positive glory with his good-night kiss. Do you remember the sweet old
poem of Percy Shelley?"
He leaned forward, with that beautiful smile in his eyes, and repeated
it in his musical voice:
"'The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion.
Nothing in the world is single;
All things, by a law divine,
In one another's being mingle--
Why not I with thine?
"'See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea--
What are all these kisses worth,
If thou kiss not me?"
He was looking down at her still with the smile in his eyes, the
light of incalculable love, and she was looking up at him, totally
unconscious of the expression upon her tremulous lips and in the depths
of her beautiful eyes, totally unconscious of the wistful permission
that expression contained.
And then suddenly--how, neither he nor she could tell--as the laughter
of the others below reached them, he leaned forward and his lips were
pressed upon hers, gently, yet lingeringly, lovingly, and then he
lifted his head--unrepulsed!