OLD LOVE AND NEW.
While I waited, as nearly a log, under the weariness of spiritual unrest,
as a girl could well be, the door opened. Very seldom did that door open
to any one but my uncle or myself: he would let no one but me touch his
books, or even dust the room. I jumped from the chest where I sat.
It was only Martha Moon.
“How you startled me, Martha!” I cried.
“No wonder, child!” she answered. “I come with bad news! Your uncle has
had a fall. He is laid up at Wittenage with a broken right arm.”
I burst into tears.
“Oh, Martha!” I cried; “I must go to him!”
“He has sent for me,” she answered quietly.
“Dick is putting the horse to the phaeton.”
“He doesn't want me, then!” I said; but it seemed a voice not my own that
shrieked the words.
The punishment of my sin was upon me. Never would he have sent for Martha
and not me, I thought, had he not seen that I had gone wrong again, and
was no more to be trusted.
“My dear,” said Martha, “which of us two ought to be the better nurse?
You never saw your uncle ill; I've nursed him at death's door!”
“Then you don't think he is angry with me, Martha?” I said, humbled
before myself.
“Was he ever angry with you, Orbie? What is there to be angry about? I
never saw him even displeased with you!”
I had not realized that my uncle was suffering--only that he was
disabled; now the fact flashed upon me, and with it the perception that I
had been thinking only of myself: I was fast ceasing to care for him! And
then, horrible to tell! a flash of joy went through me, that he would not
be home that day, and therefore I _could_ not tell him anything!
The moment Martha left me I threw myself on the floor of the desert room.
I was in utter misery.
“Gladly would I bear every pang of his pain,” I said to myself; “yet I
have not asked one question about his accident! He must be in danger, or
he would not have sent for Martha instead of me!”
How had the thing happened, I wondered. Had Death fallen with
him--perhaps on him? He was such a horseman, I could not think he
had been thrown. Besides, Death was a good horse who loved his
master--dearly, I was sure, and would never have thrown him or let him
fall! A great gush of the old love poured from the fountain in my heart:
sympathy with the horse had unsealed it. I sprang from the floor, and ran
down to entreat Martha to take me with her: if my uncle did not want me,
I could return with Dick! But she was gone. Even the sound of her wheels
was gone. I had lain on the floor longer than I knew.
I went back to the study a little relieved. I understood now that I was
not glad he was disabled; that I was anything but glad he was suffering;
that I had only been glad for an instant that the crisis of my perplexity
was postponed. In the meantime I should see John Day, who would help me
to understand what I ought to do!
Very strange were my feelings that afternoon in the lonely house. I had
always felt it lonely when Martha, never when my uncle was out. Yet when
my uncle was in, I was mostly with him, and seldom more than a few
minutes at a time with Martha. Our feelings are odd creatures! Now that
both were away, there was neither time nor space in my heart for feeling
the house desolate; while the world outside was rich as a treasure-house
of mighty kings. The moment I was a little more comfortable with myself,
my thoughts went in a flock to the face that looked over the garden-wall,
to the man that watched me while I slept, the man that wrote that lovely
letter. Inside was old Penny with her broom: she took advantage of every
absence to sweep or scour or dust; outside was John Day, and the roses of
the wilderness! He was waiting the hour to come to me, wondering how I
would receive him!
Slowly went the afternoon. I had fallen in love at first sight, it is
true; not therefore was I eager to meet my lover. I was only more than
willing to see him. It was as sweet, or nearly as sweet, to dream of his
coming, as to have him before me--so long as I knew he was indeed coming.
I was just a little anxious lest I should not find him altogether so
beautiful as I was imagining him. That he was good, I never doubted:
could I otherwise have fallen in love with him? And his letter was so
straightforward--so manly!
The afternoon was cloudy, and the twilight came the sooner. From the
realms of the dark, where all the birds of night build their nests,
lining them with their own sooty down, the sweet odorous filmy dusk of
the summer, haunted with wings of noiseless bats, began at length to come
flickering earthward, in a snow infinitesimal of fluffiest gray and
black: I crept out into the garden. It was dark as wintry night among
the yews, but I could have gone any time through every alley of them
blind-folded. An owl cried and I started, for my soul was sunk in its own
love-dawn. There came a sudden sense of light as I opened the door into
the wilderness, but light how thin and pale, and how full of expectation!
The earth and the vast air, up to the great vault, seemed to throb and
heave with life--or was it that my spirit lay an open thoroughfare to
the life of the All? With the scent of the roses and the humbler
sweet-odoured inhabitants of the wilderness; with the sound of the brook
that ran through it, flowing from the heath and down the hill; with the
silent starbeams, and the insects that make all the little noises they
can; with the thoughts that went out of me, and returned possessed of the
earth;--with all these, and the sense of thought eternal, the universe
was full as it could hold. I stood in the doorway of the wall, and looked
out on the wild: suddenly, by some strange reaction, it seemed out of
creation's doors, out in the illimitable, given up to the bare, to the
space that had no walls! A shiver ran through me; I turned back among the
yews. It was early; I would wait yet a while! If he were already there,
he too would enjoy the calm of a lovely little wait.
A small wind came searching about, and found, and caressed me. I turned
to it; it played with my hair, and cooled my face. After a while, I left
the alley, passed out, closed the door behind me, and went straying
through the broken ground of the wilderness, among the low bushes,
meandering, as if with some frolicsome brook for a companion--a brook of
capricious windings--but still coming nearer to the fence that parted the
wilderness from the heath, my eyes bent down, partly to avoid the
hillocks and bushes, and partly from shyness of the moment when first I
should see him who was in my heart and somewhere near. Softly the moon
rose, round and full. There was still so much light in the sky that she
made no sudden change, and for a moment I did not feel her presence or
look up. In front of me, the high ground of the moor sank into a hollow,
deeply indenting the horizon-line: the moon was rising just in the gap,
and when I did look up, the lower edge of her disc was just clear of the
earth, and the head of a man looking over the fence was in the middle of
the great moon. It was like the head of a saint in a missal, girt with a
halo of solid gold. I could not see the face, for the halo hid it, as
such attributions are apt to do, but it must be he; and strengthened by
the heavenly vision, I went toward him. Walking less carefully than
before, however, I caught my foot, stumbled, and fell. There came a rush
through the bushes; he was by my side, lifted me like a child, and held
me in his arms; neither was I more frightened than a child caught up in
the arms of any well-known friend: I had been bred in faith and not
mistrust! But indeed my head had struck the ground with such force, that,
had I been inclined, I could scarcely have resisted--though why should I
have resisted, being where I would be! Does not philosophy tell us that
growth and development, cause and effect, are all, and that the days and
years are of no account? And does not more than philosophy tell us that
truth is everything?
“My darling! Are you hurt?” murmured the voice whose echoes seemed to
have haunted me for centuries.
“A little,” I answered. “I shall be all right in a minute.” I did not
add, “Put me down, please;” for I did not want to be put down directly. I
could not have stood if he had put me down. I grew faint.
Life came back, and I felt myself growing heavy in his arms.
“I think I can stand now,” I said. “Please put me down.”
He obeyed immediately.
“I've nearly broken your arms,” I said, ashamed of having become a burden
to him the moment we met.
“I could run with you to the top of the hill!” he answered.
“I don't think you could,” I returned. Perhaps I leaned a little toward
him; I do not know. He put his arm round me.
“You are not able to stand,” he said. “Shall we sit a moment?”