An American Politician Part 36

Sybil made a struggle to rise, but it was not a very brave struggle, and in another moment she had fallen into his arms and was sobbing out her whole love pa.s.sionately.

"Oh, Ronald, you mu--must not!" But Ronald did.

Half an hour later they were still sitting side by side on the steps, but the storm of uncertainty was pa.s.sed, and they had plighted their faith for better and for worse, for this world and the next. Ronald had foreseen the event, and had hoped for it as he never had hoped for anything in his life; Sybil had perhaps guessed it; at all events, now that the supreme moment was over, they both felt that it was the natural climax to all that had happened during the spring.

"I think," said Sybil, quietly, "that we ought to tell my uncle at once.

He is the only relation I have in the world."

"Oh yes, of course," said Ronald, holding her hand. "That is, you know, I think we might tell him after lunch. Because I suppose it would not be the right thing for me to stay all day after he knows. Would it?"

"Why not?" asked Sybil. "He must know it soon, and you will come to-morrow."

"To-morrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and always," said Ronald, lovingly. "But he will not like it, I suppose."

"Why not?" asked Sybil, again.

"Because I am poor," said Ronald, quietly. "You know I am not rich at all, Sybil dearest. We shall have to be very economical, and live on the place in Scotland. But it is a very pretty place," he added, rea.s.suringly.

Sybil flushed a little. He did not know, then, that she had a fortune of her own. It was a new pleasure. She did not say anything for a moment.

"Do you mind very much, dearest?" asked Ronald, doubtfully. "Do you think it would bore you dreadfully to live in the country?"

Sybil hesitated before she answered. She hardly knew whether to tell him or not, but at last she decided it would be better.

"No, Ronald," said she, smiling a little; "I like the country. But, you know, we can live anywhere we please. I am rich, Ronald--you did not know it?"

Ronald started slightly. It was indeed an unexpected revelation.

"Really?" he cried. "Oh, I am so glad for you. You will not miss anything, then. I was so afraid."

That evening Ronald telegraphed to Joe the news of his engagement, and the next day he wrote her a long letter, which was more remarkable for the redundant pa.s.sion expressed than for the literary merit of the expression.

It seemed far easier to write it since he had seen her and talked with her about Sybil, not because he felt in the least ashamed of having fallen in love within six months of the dissolution of his former engagement with Joe, but because it seemed a terribly difficult thing to speak to any one about Sybil. Ronald was very far from being poetical, or in any way given to lofty and medieval reflections of the chivalric sort, but he was a very honest fellow, loving for the first time, and he understood that his love was something more to be guarded and respected than anything that had yet come into his life; wherefore it seemed almost ungentlemanly to speak about it.

When Joe received the intelligence her satisfaction knew no bounds, for although she had guessed that the climax of the affair was not far off, she had not expected it so very soon. Had she searched through the whole of her acquaintance at home and in America she could have found no one whom she considered more fit to be Ronald's wife, and that alone was enough to make her very happy; but the sensation of freedom from all further responsibility to Ronald, and the consciousness that every possible good result had followed upon her action, added so much to her pleasure in the matter, that for a time she utterly forgot herself and her own troubles. She instantly wrote a long and sympathetic letter to Ronald, and another to Sybil.

Sybil replied at once, begging Joe to come and spend a month at Sherwood, or as much time as she was able to give.

"I expect you had best go," remarked Miss Schenectady. "It is getting pretty hot here, and you look quite sick."

"Oh no, I am very well," said Joe; "but I think I will go for a week or ten days."

"Well, if you find you are going to have a good time, you can always stay, any way," replied the old lady. "I think if I were you I would take some books and a Bible and a pair of old boots."

Miss Schenectady did not smile, but Joe laughed outright.

"A Bible and a pair of old boots!" she cried.

"Yes, I would," said her aunt. "Old Tom Sherwood cannot have seen a Bible for fifty years, I expect, and it might sort of freshen him up." The old lady's eye twinkled slightly and the corners of her mouth twitched a little. "As for the old boots, if you conclude to go, you will want them, for you will be right out in the country there."

Joe laughed again, but she took her aunt's advice; and on the following day she reached Newport, and was met by Sybil and Ronald, who conveyed her to Sherwood in a thing which Joe learned was called a "carryall."

Late in the afternoon, when Ronald was gone, the two girls sat in an angle of the old walls, looking over the sea to eastward. The glow of the setting sun behind them touched them softly, and threw a rosy color upon Joe's pale face, and gilded Sybil's bright hair, hovering about her brows in a halo of radiant glory. Joe looked at her and wondered at the change love had wrought in so short a time. Sybil had once seemed so cold and white that only a nun's veil could be a fit thing to bind upon her saintly head; but now the orange blossoms would look better there, Joe thought, twined in a bride's wreath of white and green, of purity and hope.

"My Snow Angel," she exclaimed, "the sun has melted you at last!"

"Tell me the story of the Snow Angel," said Sybil, smiling. "You once said that you would."

"I will tell you," said Joe, "as well I can remember it. Mamma used to tell it to me years and years ago, when I was quite a small thing. It is a pretty story. Listen."

"Once on a time, far away in the north, there lived an angel. She was very, very beautiful, and all of the purest snow, quite white, her face and her hands and her dress and her wings. She lived alone, ever so far away, all through the long winter, in a valley of beautiful snow, where the sun never shone even in the summer. She was the most lovely angel that ever was, but she was so cold that she could not fly at all, and so she waited in the valley, always looking southward and wishing with all her heart that the sun would rise above the hill.

"Sometimes people pa.s.sed, far down below, in sledges, and she almost would have asked some one of them to take her out of the valley. But once, when she came near the track, a man came by and saw her, and he was so dreadfully frightened that he almost fell out of the sled.

"Sometimes, too, the little angels, who were young and curious, would fly down into the cold valley and look at her and speak to her.

"'Pretty angel,' they would say, 'why do you stay all alone in this dreary place?'

"'They forgot me here,' she used to answer, 'and now I cannot fly until the sun is over the hill. But I am very happy. It will soon come.'

"It was too cold for the little angels, and so they soon flew away and left her; and they began to call her the Snow Angel among themselves, and some of them said she was not real, but the other ones said she must be, because she was so beautiful. She was not unhappy, because angels never can be, you know; only it seemed a long time to wait for the sun to come.

"But at last the sun heard of her, and the little angels who had seen her told him it was a shame that he should not rise high enough to warm her and help her to fly. So, as he is big and good-natured and strong, he said he would try, and would do his best; and on midsummer's day he determined to make a great effort. He shook himself, and pushed and struggled very hard, and got hotter than he had ever been in his whole life with his exertions, but at last, with a great brave leap, he found himself so high that he could see right down into the valley, and he saw the Snow Angel standing there, and she was so beautiful that he almost cried with joy.

And then, as he looked, he saw a very wonderful sight.

"The Snow Angel, all white and glistening, looked up into the sun's face and stretched her arms towards him and trembled all over; and as she felt that he was come at last and had begun to warm her, she thrust out her delicate long wings, and they gleamed and shone and struck the cold clear air. Then the least possible tinge of exquisite color came into her face, and she opened her lips and sang for joy; and presently, as she was singing, she rose straight upward with a rushing sound, like a lark in the sunlight, the whitest and purest and most beautiful angel that ever flew in the sky. And her voice was so grand and clear and ringing, that all the other angels stopped in their songs to listen, and then sang with her in joy because the Snow Angel was free at last.

"That is the story mamma used to tell me, long ago, and when I first saw you I thought of it, because you were so cold and beautiful that you seemed all made of snow. But now the sun is over the hill, Sybil dear, is it not?"

"Dear Joe," said Sybil, winding her arm round her friend's neck and laying her face close to hers, "you are so nice."

The sun sank suddenly behind them, and all the eastern water caught the purple glow. It was dark when the two girls walked slowly back to the old house.

Joe stayed many days with Sybil at Sherwood, and the days ran into weeks and the weeks to months as the summer sped by. Ronald came and went daily, spending long hours with Sybil in the garden, and growing more manly and quiet in his happiness, while Sybil grew ever fairer in the gradual perfecting of her beauty. It was comforting to Joe to see them together, knowing what honest hearts they were. She occupied herself as she could with books and a few letters, but she would often sit for hours in a deep chair under the overhanging porch, where the untrimmed honeysuckle waved in the summer breeze like a living curtain, and the birds would come and swing themselves upon its tendrils. But Joe's cheek was always pale, and her heart weary with longing and with fighting against the poor imprisoned love that no one must ever guess.

CHAPTER XXI.

The wedding-day was fixed for the middle of August, and the ceremony was to take place in Newport. It is not an easy matter to arrange the marriage of two young people neither of whom has father or mother, though their subsequent happiness is not likely to suffer much by the bereavement. It was agreed, however, that Mrs. Wyndham, who was Sybil's oldest friend, should come and stay at Sherwood until everything was finished; and she answered the invitation by saying she was "perfectly wild to come,"--and she came at once. Uncle Tom Sherwood was a little confused at the notion of having his house full of people; but Sybil had been amusing herself by reorganizing the place for some time back, and there is nothing easier than to render a great old-fashioned country mansion habitable for a few days in the summer, when carpets are useless and smoking chimneys are not a necessity.

Mrs. Wyndham said that Sam would come down for the wedding and stay over the day, but that she expected he was pretty busy just now.

"By the way," she remarked, "you know John Harrington has come home. We must send him an invitation."

The three ladies were walking in the garden after breakfast, hatless and armed with parasols. Joe started slightly, but no one noticed it.