Leaving the house of mourning, where the grave-faced servants moved on
tip-toe, I walked slowly at Sybil's side, feeling in each breath of
fresh wind puffs of inspiring youth. Once again, after our long and
gloomy separation, we were at last alone, confiding lovers, full of all
the joyful hopes of life. I knew that I belonged to her, to her alone,
to her tenderness, to her dream.
Together, as we slowly strolled along that endless avenue through the
great park, it seemed as though we were both advancing towards the
unknown, indifferent to everything, finding our pleasure as in bygone
days in losing ourselves in the depths of the discreet darkness, where
each leafy recess hid our kisses and smothered our love chat.
Though months, nay, years had passed--years of bitterness, anxiety and
doubt, shattered hopes and blank despair--her remembrance, the only joy
on which my heart reposed, had unceasingly urged me on and given me
courage. The glamour of love mingled with the soft moonbeam reflected
in her eyes until they twain seemed the only realities.
"Do you remember, dearest," I exclaimed, halting and pressing her in
fond embrace, "do you remember that bright summer evening at Luchon, the
evening of our farewell, so full of love and sadness? You despatched me
to the fight with a kiss upon the brow like a fond sweetheart who
desires to see the soldier she loves conquer. That kiss I have ever
remembered. Lonely and mystified through those long weary days I only
thought of you, I could only speak of you, for you lived within me."
"Oh, Stuart!" she answered, her beautiful, calm face upturned to mine,
"I, too, thought ever of you. In those dark hours when, fearing that
finding me dead you loved another, those charming rambles among the
mountains were fresh in my memory. Hour by hour, day by day, my mind
was filled by those recollections of a halcyon past, yet I feared to let
you know of my existence lest you should attempt to claim me from the
man whose wife I was forced against my will to represent. That
ever-present thought of you wore my life away; I became heavy with
weariness, and some nights so broken down that I felt a cowardly desire
to die. Yet that sweet thought that past delight leaves within one
urged me to hope, even though ours was a dark night to be followed by an
unknown dawn. You, dear one, seemed but a shadow that had disappeared
in the solitude where the dear phantoms of our dreams reside, but I
hoped and hoped, and ever hopeless hoped."
Then upon my breast the pent-up feelings of her heart found vent in big
tears and quick spasmodic sobs.
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And the rest--well, the rest is that happiness is mine. I have laid my
conscience quite bare, being anxious to conceal nothing, and now having
found my well-beloved the days seem an eternity of joy.
Yes, we have married. My father has died and Wadenhoe has passed into
our possession, while our near neighbour at Fotheringhay is Captain Jack
Bethune, who, on his marriage with Dora, resigned his commission in
order to devote himself entirely to her and to literature. Her
brain-trouble is now completely cured and her happiness complete. The
newspapers teem with eulogistic paragraphs about her husband's life and
work, for he is at the present moment one of the most popular of our
writers of romance. As for Francis Markwick, although he succeeded in
escaping to Rio de Janeiro he did not live long to enjoy his freedom,
for within a few weeks of landing in that malarial city he was attacked
by yellow fever, to which he succumbed.
Sometimes when day is dying the fresh breeze rises from the river and a
soft light falls from the sky, the open valley stretching before our
windows expands peaceful and transparent like a dark, shoreless ocean.
It is in those idle, restful moments of adoration, when earth and sky
are fathomless, that the pure sweet voice of my well-beloved, the voice
that recalled me to the joys of life, raises a recollection within me, a
remembrance that ofttimes brings tears to my eyes--the remembrance of
the strange inviolable secret of Sybil.
The End.