TORQUAY, SOUTH DEVON
BELLA VISTA HOTEL
_June 19--_
If he had come the next day, or even the same week, he would have had
a cold welcome, for on the whole I did not understand, nor did I
fancy, his methods.
But I had had time to think, time to talk it over with mamma, time to
write Breck Calhoun that there was no use in our discussing the old
subject, for I feared, though I was not absolutely sure, that there
was 'some one else.' Always dear old Breck has finished by saying,
'Jinny, there is no one else?' And there never was till now.
Now there is not only some one else, but there is also in very truth
'no one else' who counts! All is absolutely different from, and yet
precisely like, everything that I have imagined ever since the
foundation of the earth. In love, he is, what all good men and good
women ought to be, something quite unlike his former self, or the
outer self he shows to the world. He has lost himself and found
himself again in me, and I have gone through the same mysterious
operation. He has place for no troublesome uncertainty of mind now,
although mamma and I have decreed a year of waiting, in which we shall
have ample time to change if we choose. But we shall not choose; we
were made for each other, as we have both known ever since the day we
had luncheon together at the Mug o' Cider in Little Widger.
What chapters, what books, we talked sitting in the gorse bushes on
Daddy Hole Plain! In the evening of my days I shall doubtless be glad
that I climbed those heights, remembering that Archibald had to exert
himself somewhat arduously in order to ask me to marry him. I wanted
to be alone and feast my eyes on the dazzling blue of the sea, one
broad expanse of sapphire, stretching off, off, into eternity; a blue
all be-diamonded with sunlit sparkles; a blue touched with foam-flecks
wherever it broke on the rocks or the islets. Granted that any view
has charms when one is young and in love, the view from Daddy Hole
Plain would inspire an octogenarian, or even a misogynist.
'It was in Exeter we really met, you remember,' I reminded Archibald.
'I am not likely to forget it.'
'Do you chance to know the motto that your virgin queen, Elizabeth,
bestowed upon Exeter? It was _Semper fidelis_.'
'That's a good omen, isn't it,' he said. 'You always do find out the
cleverest things, Virginia! How am I ever to keep up with you?'
'Don't try!' I answered, quite too happy to be anything but
vainglorious. 'Gaze at me on my superior intellectual height, and when
I meet your admiring eyes you can trust me to remember that though you
are voluntarily standing on a step below, your head is higher than
mine after all! Archibald, do you know what I am to give you for a
wedding present?'
'No,' he answered gravely; 'is it your mother?'
'No, I am going to lend mamma to Miss Evesham for a little, until her
turn comes,--dear old Cecilia!'
'Do you think it will ever come?'
'It's only just round the corner; Cupid is even now sharpening his
arrows and painting little pictures on the shafts.'
'Oh, I see! Well, is it Greytoria? for I don't mind saying that I'm
quite ready to give her a stall in my stables at Kindarroch; though of
all the ill-conducted and lazy little brutes--'
'Be careful, Archibald,' I exclaimed warningly; 'you owe some few
hours of martyrdom, but many a debt of gratitude, to that same
Greytoria.'
'I remember only one,' he said, looking at me in a very embarrassing
way, 'and by George, she cut that one short! But I give it up--the
wedding present; I can't guess, and I don't care specially, so long as
you come along with it.'
'I shall come with it, and in it, if the faithful Johnson will steer
me,--it's going to be a new motor!'
'Well, you owe it to me, Virginia,' he cried with enthusiasm, 'for
mine isn't worth a brass farthing at this moment. I knew before I had
been at Grey Tor twenty-four hours that it was going to be knocked
into smithereens, but I hadn't the pluck to take it or myself out of
harm's way. Now we are both done for!'
'Which do you prefer?' I asked,'your old motor or me?'
'You, with a new one,' he answered unblushingly. 'We'll take our
wedding journey in it, shall we? Early this autumn would be a good
time.'
'And mamma and Cecilia and Mrs. MacGill can follow behind with
Greytoria.'
'I don't mind their trying to follow,' Archibald responded genially,
as he lighted his pipe, 'so long as they never catch up; and they
never will--not with that little brute!'
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press