WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE
There came a day when the brown ravines of Smoky Mountain laughed in
genial sunshine, when the tangled thickets, and the foliaged reaches,
painted with the cardinal and bishop's-purple of late autumn, flushed
and stirred to the touch of their golden lover, and the silver water
gushing through the flumes sang to a quicker melody. There was no wind;
everywhere, save for the breathing life of the forest, was dreamy beauty
and waiting peace.
In the soft stillness Harry stood on the doorstep of the hillside
cabin--for the last time. Below him in the gulch the light glanced and
sparkled from the running flume, and beyond glimmered the long street of
the town where the dead past of Satan Sanderson had been buried for ever
and the old remorseful pain of conscience had found its surcease. In
that last lack-luster year before the rector of the old St. James had
been snuffed out in the wild motor-ride, he had come to doubt the
ultimate Prescience and Purpose. How small and futile now seemed those
doubts in face of the new conception he had apprehended, in the tacit
acceptance of a watchful Will and Plan not his own.
Here had been the theater of his pain and his temptation. Sitting on
that very spot, with the wise stars overhead, he had drawn from Old
Despair's violin the strain that had brought him Jessica, her hand in
his, her head upon his breast! In the far distance, a tender haze
softening their outline, stood the violet silhouette of the enduring
ranges, and far beyond them lay Aniston, where waited his newer life,
his newer, better work--and the hope that was the April of his dreams.
Since that tragic day in the court-room he had seen Jessica once
only--in the hour when the bishop's solemn "dust to dust" had been
spoken above the man who had been her husband. One thought had comforted
him--the town of Smoky Mountain had never known, need never know, the
secret of her wifehood. And Aniston was far away. About the coming of
Hugh injured and dying to his rescue, would be thrown a glamour of
knight-errantry that would bespeak charity of judgment. When Jessica
went back to the white house in the aspens she would meet only
tenderness and sympathy. And that was well.
He shut the door of his cabin and, whistling to his dog, climbed the
steep path, where the wrinkled creeper flung its new splash of scarlet,
and along the trail to the Knob, under the needled song of the redwoods.
There in the dappled shade stood Jessica's rock-statue, and now it
looked upon two mounds. The Prodigal had returned at last, father and
son rested side by side, and that, too, was well.
He went slowly through the brown hollows to the winding mountain road,
crossed it, and entered the denser forest. He wanted to see once more
the dear spot where he and Jessica had met--that deep, sweet day before
the rude awakening. He walked on in a reverie; his thoughts were very
far away.
He stopped suddenly--there before him was the little knoll where she had
stood waiting, on the threshold of his Palace of Enchantment, that one
roseate morning. And she was there to-day--not standing with parted lips
and eager eyes under the twittering trees, but lying face down on the
moss, her red bronze hair shaming the gold of the fallen leaves.
There was a gesture in the outstretched arms that caught at his heart.
He stepped forward, and at the sound she looked up startled.
He saw the creeping color that mounted to her brow, the proud yet
passionate hunger of her eyes. He dropped on his knees and took her
hands and kissed them:
"My dear love that is!" he whispered. "My dearer wife that is to be!"