Of course I'll go, unless something happens, as per usual. I've got
the last three weeks of June, and nowhere in particular to waste them
at. Shall I come to Boston, or where do we meet? Let me know when
we're to start; likewise what I am to bring. Do you take a trunk, or
do we send the things ahead by express? I've never been on a long
motor trip before. I'm mighty glad to go; it's just what I would have
wanted to do, if I'd wanted to do anything. Doesn't sound eager, does
it? What I mean is, it will be out-of-doors and I need that a good
deal; and it will be with you, which I need more.
The chances are you won't find me gay. It's been a rotten winter,
mostly, and it's left me not up to much. Not up to anything, in fact.
Things have happened, and the bottom dropped out last autumn.
The fact is, I'm going to clear out. Try something else. I want to
talk to you about that--I mean about the new job. I'd thought, maybe,
of a school up in the country. I like youngsters. You remember that
Scotch lad--the one with the money? I wrote you--I tutored him in
Latin. That's where I got the notion. I had luck with him, And I've
missed him a lot since. So maybe that's the thing. I don't know.
We'll talk. Anyhow, this is ended.
I never let out what I thought about your being so decent, that night
at college, when I said I was going to be a parson; the chances are I
never will. But that's largely why I'm telling you this. I'm flunking
my job--I have flunked it; the letter to the rector is written--he's to
get it at the end of his holiday. I think I've stopped caring what
other people will say, but I hate to hurt him. But you see, I thought
it through, and it's the only thing to do--just to get out. I picked
one definite job, for a sort of test, and it fell through. That
settled it.
I wanted to tell you for old sake's sake. Besides, I somehow needed to
have you know. And so now I'm going motoring with you. Write me about
the trunk, and about when and where.
As ever,
MAC.
P. S. We needn't see people, need we?
The automobile with the two young men in the front seat sped smoothly
over June roads. For a week they had been covering ground day after
day; to-night they were due at Dick Marston's cousin's country house to
stop for three days before the return trip through the mountains.
"Dick," reflected Geoffrey McBirney aloud, "consider again about
dropping me in Boston. I'll be as much good at a house-party as a
crape veil at a dance. You're an awful ass to take me."
"That's up to me," remarked Dick. "Get your feet out of the gears,
will you? The Emorys are keen for you and I said I'd bring you, and I
will if I have to do it by the scruff of the neck. Don Emory is away
but will be back to-morrow."
"Splendid!" said McBirney, and then, "I won't kick and scream, you
know. I'll merely whine and sulk," he went on consideringly. "I'll
hate it, and I'll be ugly-tempered, and they'll detest me. Up to you,
however."
"It is," responded Marston, and no more was said. So that at twilight
they were speeding down the long, empty ocean drive with good salt air
in their faces, and lights of cottages spotting the opal night with
orange blurs. It was a large, gay house-party, and the person who had
been called, it was told from one to another, "the young Phillips
Brooks," a person who brought among them certain piquant qualities, was
a lion ready to their hand. With the general friendliness of a good
man of the world, there was something beyond; there was reality in the
friendliness, yet impersonality--a detached attitude; the man had no
axes to grind for himself; one felt at every turn that this important
universe of the _haute monde_ was unimportant to him. Through his
civility there was an outcropping of savage honesty which made the
house-party sit up straight, more than once. Emerson says, in a
better-made sentence, that the world is at the feet of him who does not
want it. Geoffrey McBirney had taken a long jump, years back, and
cleared the childishness, lifelong in most of us, of wanting the world.
There is an attraction in a person who has done this and yet has kept a
love of humanity. Witness St. Francis of Assisi and other notables of
his ilk.
The people at Sea-Acres felt the attraction and tried to lionize the
dark, tall parson with the glowing, indifferent eyes. But the lion
would not roar and gambol; the lion was a reserved beast, it seemed,
with a suggestion of unbelievable, yet genuine, distaste under
attentions. That point was alluring. One tried harder to soften a
brute so worth while, so difficult. Three or four girls tried. The
lion was outwardly a gentle lion, pleasant when cornered, but seldom
cornered. He managed to get off on a long walk alone when Angela, of
nineteen, meant him to have played tennis, on the second day.
The June afternoon was softening to a rosy dimness as he came in, very
tired physically, hot and grimy, and sick of soul. "Glory be,
tea-time's over, and they'll be dressing for dinner," he murmured, and
turned a corner on eight of "them." A glance at the gay group showed
two or three new faces. More guests! McBirney set his teeth. But he
had no space to take note of the arrivals, for Angela spoke.
"Just in time, Mr. McBirney," Angela greeted him. "Don Emory's
coming--see!" A car was spinning up the drive.
"Is he?" he answered perfunctorily. And the two words were clipped
from history even as they were spoken, by a cry that rang from the
group of people. Tod Winthrop ought to have been in bed. It was
six-thirty, and he was four years old, but his mother had forgotten
him, and his nurse had a weakness for the Emorys' second man; it was
also certain that if a storm-centre could be found, he would be its
nucleus. Out he tumbled from the shrubbery, exactly in front of the
incoming automobile, as unpleasant a spoiled infant as could be
imagined, yet a human being with a life to save. McBirney, standing in
the drive, whirled, saw the small figure, ten feet down the drive, the
machine close upon it; there was time for a man to spring aside; there
was no time to rescue a child. A lightning wave of repulsion flooded
him. "Have I got to throw myself down there and get maimed--for a fool
child whom everybody detests?" Without words the thought flooded him,
and then in a strong defiance, the utter honesty of his soul caught
him. "I won't! I won't!" he shouted, and was conscious of the clamor
of many voices, of a rushing movement, of a man's scream across the
tumult: "It's too late--for God's sake _don't_!"
It was a day later when he opened his eyes. Dick Marston sat there.
"Shut up," ordered Dick.
"I haven't----"
"No, and you won't--you're not to talk. Shut up. That's what you're
to do."
The eyes closed; he was inadequate to argument. In five minutes they
opened again.
"None of your eloquence now," warned Dick.
"One thing----"
"No," firmly.
"But, Dick, it's torturing me. Was the child killed?"
Dick Marston's face looked curious. "Great Scott! don't you know what
you----"
McBirney groaned inwardly. "Yes, I know. I was a coward. But I've
got to know if--the kid--was killed."
"Coward!" gasped Dick--and Geoffrey put out his shaking hand.
"In mercy, Dick"--he was catching his breath, flushing, laboring with
each word--"don't--talk about--Was the boy--killed?"
"Killed, no, sound as a nut--but you----"
"That's all," said McBirney, and his eyes closed, and he turned his
face to the wall. But he did not go to sleep. He was trying to meet
life with self-respect gone. The last thing he remembered was that
second of utter rebellion against wrecking his strength, his good
muscles--he had not thought of his life--to save the child. There had
been no time to choose; his past, his character, had chosen for him,
and they had branded him as that impossible thing, a coward. He put up
his hand and felt bandages on his head; he must have got a whack after
all in saving his precious skin. He remembered now. "Didn't jump
quick enough, I suppose," he thought, with a sneer at the man in whose
body he lived, the man who was himself, the man who was a coward.
After a while he heard Dick Marston stir. He was bending over him.
"Got to go to dinner, old man," Dick said. "I wish you'd let me tell
you what they all think about you."
McBirney shook his head impatiently, and Dick sighed heavily, and then
in a moment the door shut softly.
Things were vague to him for hours longer, and a sleeping powder kept
the next morning drowsy, but in the afternoon, when Marston came for
his hourly look at the patient, "Dick," said the patient, "I want to
talk to you."
"All right, old man," Dick answered, "but first just a word. I hate to
bother you, but somebody's after you on long-distance. The fellow has
telephoned three times--I was here the last time. He says----"
The man with the bandages on his head groaned. "Don't," he begged and
tossed his hand out. "I know what he's wanting. I can't talk to him.
I don't want to hear. It's no use. Shut him off, Dick, can't you?"
"Sure, old man," Marston agreed soothingly. "Only, he says----"
"Oh, don't--I know what it is--don't let him say it," pleaded the
invalid, quite unreasonable, entirely obstinate.
A committee from the vestry of a city church had, unknown to him at the
moment, come to Warchester to hear him preach the Sunday before he had
left on his trip. A letter from the rector since had warned him that
they were full of enthusiasm about his sermon and himself and that a
call to the rectorship of the church was imminent. This was a
preliminary of the call; there was no doubt in his mind about that.
And knowing as he did how he was going to give up his work, writhing as
he was under the last proof, as he felt it, of his unfitness, the
thought of facing suave vestrymen even over a telephone, was a horror
not to be borne.
"Tell 'em I'm dead, Dick, there's a good boy. I _won't_ talk to
anybody--to-day or to-morrow, anyhow."
"All right," Dick agreed. The patient was flushed and excited--it
would not do to go on. "But the chap said he might run down here," he
added, thinking aloud.
The patient started up on his elbow and glared. "Great Scott--don't
let him do that; you won't let him get at me, Dick? I'm sorry to be
such a poor fool, but--just now--to-day--two or three days--Dick, I
_can't_"--he stammered out, his hands shaking, his face twisting. And
Dick Marston, as gently as a woman might, took in charge this friend
whom he loved.
"Don't you worry, Geoffie; the bears shan't eat you this trip. I'll
settle the chap next time he calls up."
And McBirney fell back, with closed eyelids, relieved, secure in Dick's
strength. He lay, breathing quickly, a moment or two, and then opened
his eyes.
"When can I get away, Dick?"
"We'll start to-morrow if you're strong enough."
"You needn't go, Dicky. I'll get a train. I'm----"
"None of that," said Marston. "Whither thou goest, for the present,
I'll trot. But--Hope Stuart's anxious to--meet you."
"Who's Hope Stuart?"
Dick Marston hesitated, looked embarrassed. "Why--just a girl," he
said. "But an uncommon sort of girl. She's done some--big things.
Cousin of Don Emory's, you know. Came yesterday--just before your
party. She--she's--well, she's different from the ruck of 'em--and
she--said she'd like to meet you. I half promised she could."
McBirney flushed. "I _can't_ see people, Dick," he threw back
nervously. "They're kind--it's decent of them. I suppose, as long as
the boy wasn't killed--" he stopped.
"Geoff, you've got some bizarre idea in your head about this episode,
and I can't fathom it," spoke Dick Marston. "What do you think
happened anyway?" he demanded. And stopped, horrified at the look on
the other's face.
"Dick, you mean to be kind, but you're being cruel--as death,"
whispered Geoffrey McBirney. "I simply--can't bear any
conversation--about that. I've got to cut loose and get off somewhere
and--and--arrange."
His voice broke. Dick Marston's big hand was on his. "Old man," Dick
said, "you're all wrong, but if you won't let me talk about it I
won't--now. Look here--we'll sneak to-morrow. Everybody's going off
in cars for an all-day drive, and I'll start, and pull out half-way on
some excuse, and come back here, and you'll be packed, and we'll get
out. I'll square it with Nanny Emory. She'll understand. I'll tell
her you're crazy in the head, and won't be hero-worshipped."
"Hero-worshipped!" McBirney laughed bitterly to himself when Dick was
gone. These good people, because he was a parson, because the child's
blood, by some accident, was not on his head, were banded to keep his
self-respect for him, to cover over his cowardice with some distorted
theory of courage. Perhaps they did not know, but he knew, about that
last thought of determined egotism, that shout of "I won't! I won't!"
before the car caught him. He knew, and never as long as he lived
could he look the world in the eyes again, with that shame in his soul.
What would _she_ have thought, had she been there to see? She would
not have been deceived; her clear eyes would have seen the truth.
So he felt; so he went over and over the five minutes of the accident
till all covering seemed to be stripped from his strained nerves.
"You'd better dress now and go down in the garden and sit there,"
suggested Dick the next morning. "Take a book, and wait for me there.
The place will be empty in twenty minutes. I'll be along before lunch."
The garden rioted with color. The listless black figure strayed
through the sunshine down a walk between a mass of scarlet Oriental
poppies on one side and a border of swaying white lilies on the other.
Ranks of tall larkspur lifted blue spires beyond. The air was heavy
with sweet smells, mignonette and alyssum and the fragrance of a
thousand of roses, white and pink and red, over by the hedge. The
hedge ran on four sides of the garden, giving a comforting sense of
privacy. In spite of the suffering he had gone through, the raw nerves
of the man felt a healing pressure settling over them, resting on them,
out of the scented stillness. There were no voices from the house;
bees were humming somewhere near the rose-bushes; the first cricket of
summer sang his sudden, drowsy song and was as suddenly quiet.
The black figure strayed on, down the long walk between the flowers, to
a rustic summer-house, deep in vines, at the end of the path. There
were seats there, and a table. He sat down in the coolness and stared
out at the bright garden. He tried manfully to pull himself together;
he reminded himself that he could still work, could still serve the
world, and that, after all, was what he was in the world for. There
was a reason for living, then; there was hope, he reasoned. And then,
the hopelessness, the helplessness of under-vitality, which is often
the real name for despair, had caught him again. His arms were thrown
out on the rough table and his head lay on them.
There was a sound in the vine-darkened little summer-house. McBirney
lifted his head sharply; a girl stood there, a slim figure in black
clothes. McBirney sprang to his feet astonished, angry. Then the girl
put out her hand and held to the upright of the opening as if to hold
herself steady, and began talking in a hurried tone, as if she were
reciting.
"I had to come to tell you that you were not a coward, but a hero, and
that you saved Toddy Winthrop's life, and it's so, and Dick Marston
says you don't know it and won't let him tell you and I've got to have
you know it, and it's so and you have to believe it, for it's so." The
girl was gasping, clutching the side of the summer-house with her face
turned away, frightened yet determined.
"Who are you?" demanded McBirney, sternly, staring at her. There was
something surging up inside of him, unknown, unreasonable; heart's
blood was rushing about his system inconveniently; his pulse was
hammering--why? He knew why; this sudden vision of a girl reminded
him--took him back--he cut through that idea swiftly; he was ill,
unbalanced, obsessed with one memory, but he would not allow himself to
go mad.
"Who are you?" he repeated sternly. And the girl turned and faced him
and looked up into his grim, tortured face, half shy, half laughing,
all glad.
She spoke softly. "Hope," she said. "You needed me"--she said, "and I
came."
With that, with the unreasonable certainty that happens at times in
affairs which go beyond reason, he was certain. Yet he did not dare to
be certain.
"Who are you?" he threw at her for the third time, and his eyes flamed
down into the changing face, the face which he had never known, which
he seemed to have known since time began. The laughter left it then
and she gazed at him with a look which he had not seen in a woman's
eyes before. "I think you know," she said. "Toddy Winthrop isn't the
only one. You saved me--Oh, you've saved me too." Every inflection of
the voice brought certainty to him; the buoyant, soft voice which he
remembered. "I am Hope Stuart," she said. "I am August First."
"Ah!" He caught her hands, but she drew them away. "Not yet," she
said, and the promise in the denial thrilled him. "You've got to
know--things."
"Don't think, don't dream that I'll let you go, if you still care," he
threw at her hotly. And with that the thought of two days before
stabbed into him. "Ah!" he cried, and stood before his happiness
miserably.
"What?" asked the girl.
"I'm not fit to speak to you. I'm disgraced; I'm a coward; you don't
know, but I let--that child be killed as much as if he had not been
saved by a miracle. It wasn't my fault he was saved. I didn't mean to
save him. I meant to save myself," he went on with savage accusation.
"Tell me," commanded the girl, and he told her.
"It's what I thought," she answered him then. "I told the doctor what
Dick said, this morning. The doctor said it was the commonest thing in
the world, after a blow on the head, to forget the last minutes before.
You'll never remember them. You did save him. Your past--your
character decided for you"--here was his own bitter thought turned to
heavenly sweetness!--"You did the brave thing whether you would or not.
You've got to take my word--all of our words--that you were a hero.
Just that. You jumped straight down and threw Toddy into the bushes
and then fell, and the chauffeur couldn't turn fast enough and he hit
you--and your head was hurt."
She spoke, and looked into his eyes.
"Is that the truth?" he shot at her. It was vital to know where he
stood, whether with decent men or with cowards.
"So help me God," the girl said quietly.
As when a gate is opened into a lock the water begins to pour in with a
steady rush and covers the slimy walls and ugly fissures, so peace
poured into the discolored emptiness of his mind. Suddenly the gate
was shut again. What difference did anything make--anything?
"You are married," he stated miserably, and stood before her. The
moments had rushed upon his strained consciousness so overladen, the
joy of seeing her had been so intense, that there had been no place for
another thought. He had forgotten. The thought which meant the
failure of happiness had been crowded out. "You are married," he
repeated, and the old grayness shadowed again a universe without hope.
And then the girl whose name was Hope smiled up at him through a
rainbow, for there were tears in her eyes. "No," she answered, "no."
And with that he caught her in his arms: her smile, her slim shoulders,
her head, they were all there, close, crushed against him. The bees
hummed over the roses in the sunshiny garden; the locust sang his
staccato song and stopped suddenly; petals of a rose floated against
the black dress; but the two figures did not appear to breathe. Time
and space, as the girl had said once, were fused. Then she stirred,
pushed away his arms, and stood erect and looked at him with a flushed,
radiant face.
"Do you think I'd let you--marry--a cripple, a lump of stone?" she
demanded, and something in the buoyant tone made him laugh unreasonably.
"I think--you've got to," he answered, his head swimming a bit.
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong," and she shook her finger at him
triumphantly. "I'm--going--to--get--well."
"I knew it all along," the man said, smiling.
"That's a lie!" she announced, so prettily, in the soft, buoyant voice,
that he laughed with sheer pleasure. "You never knew. Do you know
where I've been?"
"In Germany."
"I haven't been in Germany a minute." The bright face grew grave and
again the quick, rainbow tears flashed. "You never heard," she said.
"Uncle Ted died, the day before we were to sail." She stopped a
moment. "It left me alone and--and pretty desperate. I--I almost
telegraphed you."
"_Why_ didn't you?" he groaned.
"Because--what I said. I wouldn't sacrifice you." She paid no
attention to the look in his eyes. "Robin was going to my place in
Georgia--I told you I had a place? My father's old shooting-box. I'd
arranged for him to do that. With some people who needed it. So--I
went too. I took two trained nurses and some old souls--old sick
people. Yes, I did. Wasn't it queer of me? I'm always sorrier for
old people than for children. They realize, the old people. So I
scraped up a few astonished old parties, and they groaned and wheezed
and found fault, but had a wonderful winter. The first time I was ever
any good to anybody in my life. I thought I might as well do one job
before I petrified. And all winter Robin was talking about that
bone-ologist from France who had been in Forest Gate, and whom I
wouldn't see. Till at last he got me inspired, and I said I'd go to
France and see him. And I've just been. And he says--" suddenly the
bright, changing face was buried in her hands and she was sobbing as if
her heart would break.
McBirney's pulse stopped; he was terrified. "What?" he demanded.
"Never mind what he said, dear. I'll take care of you. Don't trouble,
my own--" And then again the sunshine flashed through the storm and
she looked up, all tears and laughter.
"He said I'd get well," she threw at him. "In time. With care. And
if you don't understand that I've got to cry when I'm glad, then we can
never be happy together."
"I'll get to understand," he promised, with a thrill as he thought how
the lesson would be learned. And went on: "There's another conundrum.
Of course--that man--he's not on earth--but how did you--kill him?"
The girl looked bewildered a moment. "Who? Oh! Alec. My dear--" and
she slid her hand into his as if they had lived together for
years--"the most glorious thing--he jilted me. He eloped with Natalie
Minturn--the California girl--the heiress. She had"--the girl laughed
again--"more money than I. And unimpeachable bones. She's a nice
thing," she went on regretfully. "I'm afraid she's too good for Alec.
But she liked him; I hope she'll go on liking him. It was a great
thing for me to get jilted. Any more questions in the Catechism? Will
the High-Mightiness take me now? Or have I got to beg and explain a
little more?"
"You're a very untruthful character," said "the High-Mightiness"
unsteadily. "It wasn't I who hid away, and turned last winter into
hell for a well-meaning parson. Will--I take you? Come."
Again eternal things brooded over the bright, quiet garden and the
larkspur spires swayed unnoticed and the bees droned casually about
them and dived into deep cups of the lilies, and peace and sunshine and
lovely things growing were everywhere. But the two did not notice.
After a time: "What about Halarkenden?" asked the man, holding a slim
hand tight as if he held to a life-preserver.
"That's the last question in the Catechism," said Hope Stuart. "And
the answer is the longest. One of your letters did it."
"One of my letters?"
"Just the other day. I went to Forest Gate, as soon as I came home
from France--to tell Robin that I was going to get well. I was in the
garden. With--I hate to tell you--but with--all your letters." The
man flushed. "And--and Robin came and--and I talked a little to him
about you, and then, to show him what you were like, I read him--some."
"You did?" McBirney looked troubled.
"Oh, I selected. I read about the boy, Theodore--'the Gift.'"
Then she went on to tell how, as she sat in a deep chair at the end of
a long pergola where small, juicy leaves of Dorothy Perkins rose-vines
and of crimson ramblers made a green May mist over the line of arches,
Halarkenden had come down under them to her.
"I believe I shall never be in a garden without expecting to see him
stalk down a path," she said. She told him how she had read to him
about the boy Theodore with his charm and his naughtiness and his
Scotch name. How there had been no word from Robert Halarkenden when
she finished, and how, suddenly, she had been aware of a quality in the
silence which startled her, and she had looked up sharply. How, as she
looked, the high-featured, lean, grave face was transformed with a
color which she had never seen there before, a painful, slow-coming
color; how the muscles about his mouth were twisting. How she had
cried out, frightened, and Robert Halarkenden, who had not fought with
the beasts for nothing, had controlled himself once again and, after a
moment, had spoken steadily. "It was the boy's name, lassie," he had
said. "He comes of folk whom I knew--back home." How at that, with
his big clippers in his hand, he had turned quietly and gone working
again among his flowers.
"But is that all?" demanded McBirney, interested. "Didn't he tell you
any more? Could Theodore be any kin to him, do you suppose? It would
be wonderful to have a man like that who took an interest. I'll write
the young devil. He's been away all winter, but he should be back by
now. I wonder just where he is."
And with that, as cues are taken on the stage, there was a scurrying
down the gravel and out of the sunshine a bare-headed, tall lad was
leaping toward them.
"By all that's uncanny!" gasped McBirney.
"Yes, me," agreed the apparition. "I trailed you. Why"--he
interrupted himself--"didn't you get my telephones? Why, somebody took
the message--twice. Cost three dollars--had to pawn stuff to pay it.
Then I trailed you. The rector had your address. We're going to
Scotland bang off and I had to see you. We're sailing from Boston.
To-morrow."
"Who's 'we'?" demanded McBirney.
"My family and--oh gosh, you don't know!" He threw back his handsome
head and broke into a great shout of young laughter. With that he
whirled and flung out an arm. "There he comes. My family." The pride
and joy in the boy's voice were so charged with years of loneliness
past that the two who listened felt an answering thrill.
They looked. Down the gravel, through the sunshine, strayed, between
flower borders, a gaunt and grizzled man who bent, here and there, over
a blossom, and touched it with tender, wise fingers and gazed this way
and that, scrutinizing, absorbed, across the masses of living color.
"I told you," the girl said, as if out of a dream, and her arm, too,
was stretched and her hand pointed out the figure to her lover. "I
told you there never would be a garden but he would be in it. It's
Robin."
SATURDAY NIGHT LATE.
WARCHESTER,
St. Andrew's Parish House.
There wasn't time to leave you a note even. I barely caught the train.
Dick was to tell you. I wonder if he got it straight. He motored me
to the station, early this morning--a thousand years ago. You see the
rector suddenly wired for me to come back for over Sunday. It's Sunday
morning now--at least by the clock.
There's still such a lot to tell you. There always will be. One
really can't say much in only eight or nine hours, and I don't believe
we talked a minute longer. That's why I didn't want to catch trains.
Well, there were other reasons too, now I go into it.
Do you know, I keep thinking of Dick Marston's face when he poked it in
at the door of that summer-house yesterday on you and "Robin" and
Theodore and me. I think likely Dick's brain is sprained.
Curious, isn't it--this being knocked back into the necessity of
writing letters--and so soon. But I can say anything now, can't I? It
doesn't seem true, but it is--it is! When I think of that other
letter, that last one, and all the months that I didn't know even where
you were! And now here's the world transfigured. It _is_ true, isn't
it? I won't wake up into that awful emptiness again? So many times
I've done that. I'd made up my mind nothing was any use. I told Dick,
just before we started on the motor trip. The stellar system had gone
to pieces. But to-night I tore up the letter I'd got ready to send to
the rector. All those preparations, and then to walk down a gravel
path into heaven. It isn't the slightest trouble for you to rebuild
people's worlds, is it? As for instance, Theodore's. I must tell you
that some incoherences have come in from that Gift of God, by way of
the pilot, after they'd sailed. Mostly regarding Cousin Robin. Even
that has worked out. And there's Halarkenden--mustn't I say McGregor,
though?--going back home to wander at large in paradise. Three new
worlds you set up in half an hour. I think you said once that you'd
never done anything for anybody? Well, you've begun your job; didn't I
tell you it might be just around the corner? Besides "Cousin Robin,"
two things stuck out in Theodore's epistle; he's going to turn himself
loose for the benefit of those working people in his factories, and
he's going to have "The Cairns" swept and garnished for you and me
when--when we get there.
This is all true. I am sitting here, writing to her. She is going to
be there when I get back. I am to have her for my own, to look at and
to listen to and to love. She has said that she wanted it like that--I
heard her say it. Oh my dear darling, there aren't any words to tell
you--you are like listening to music--you are the spirit of all the
exquisite wonders that have ever been--you are the fragrant silence of
shut gardens sleeping in the moonlight. What if I had missed you?
What if I'd never found you? You _will_ be there when I come back--you
won't vanish--you _are_ real? Think of the life opening out for you
and me; this world now; afterwards the next. Oh my very dear, suppose
you hadn't waited--suppose you'd cut into God's big pattern because
some dark threads had to be woven into it! We shall look at the whole
of it some day--all that mighty, living tapestry of His weaving, and we
shall understand, then, and smile as we remember and know that no one
can have a sense of light without the shadows. Suppose you hadn't
waited? But you did wait--you did--to let me love you.
SEA-ACRES,
MONDAY, June 24th.