Chapter 7

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.

YOUR REVERENCE.

I can't say but three words. Don Emory is waiting to post this in town. I do just want to tell you that if you write any more letters like that I am _not_ going to break the engagement. You'll get the rest of this to-morrow. I thought I'd warn you. I am, for sure, yours,

AUGUST FIRST.