Although Gabriella had joyously greeted the day, as bringing exemption
from stifling hours in school, her spirits had drooped ere evening with
monotony. There were no books in use among the members of that lovable
household except school-books; they were too busy with the primary joys
of life to notice the secondary resources of literature. She had no
pleasant sewing. To escape the noise of the pent-up children, she must
restrict herself to that part of the house which comprised her room. A
walk out of doors was impracticable, although she ventured once into
the yard to study more closely the marvels of the ice-work; and to the
edge of the orchard, to ascertain how the apple trees were bearing up
under those avalanches of frozen silver slipped from the clouds.
So there were empty hours for her that day; and always the emptiest are
the heaviest--those unfilled baskets of time which strangely become
lightest only after we have heaped them with the best we have to give.
Gabriella filled the hour-baskets this day with thoughts of David,
whose field work she knew would be interrupted by the storm, and whose
movements about the house she vainly tried to follow in imagination.
Two months of close association with him in that dull country
neighborhood had wrought great changes in the simple feeling with which
she had sought him at first. He had then been to her only a Prodigal
who had squandered his substance, tried to feed his soul on the swinish
husks of Doubt, and returning to his father's house unrepentant, had
been admitted yet remained rejected: a Prodigal not of the flesh and
the world but of the spirit and the Lord. But what has ever interested
the heart of woman as a prodigal of some kind?
At other times he was figured by her sympathies as a young Samaritan
gone travelling into a Divine country but fallen among spiritual
thieves, who had stripped him of his seamless robe of Faith and left
him bruised by Life's wayside: a maltreated Christ-neighbor whom it was
her duty to succor if she could. But a woman's nursing of a man's
wound--how often it becomes the nursing of the wounded! Moreover,
Gabriella had now long been aware of what she had become to her
prodigal, her Samaritan; she saw the truth and watched it growing from
day to day; for he was incapable of disguises. But often what effect
has such watching upon the watcher, a watcher who is alone in the
world? So that while she fathomed with many feminine soundings all that
she was to David, Gabriella did not dream what David had become to her.
Shortly after nightfall, when she heard his heavy tread on the porch
below, the tedium of the day instantly vanished. Happiness rose in her
like a clear fountain set suddenly playing--rose to her eyes--bathed
her in refreshing vital emotions.
"I am so glad you came," she said as she entered the parlor, gave him
her hand, and stood looking up into his softened rugged face, at his
majestical head, which overawed her a little always. Large as was the
mould in which nature had cast his body, this seemed to her dwarfed by
the inner largeness of the man, whose development she could note as now
going forward almost visibly from day to day: he had risen so far
already and was still so young.
He did not reply to her greeting except with a look. In matters which
involved his feeling for her, he was habitually hampered and ill at
ease; only on general subjects did she ever see him master of his
resources. Gabriella had fallen into the habit of looking into his eyes
for the best answers: there he always spoke not only with ideas but
emotions: a double speech much cared for by woman.
They seated themselves on opposite sides of the wide deep fire-place: a
grate for soft coal had not yet destroyed that.
"Your schoolhouse is safe," he announced briefly.
"Oh, I've been wanting to know all day but had no one to send! How do
YOU know?" she inquired quickly.
"It's safe. The yard will have to be cleared of brush: that's all."