Cape of Storms Part 19

He put his arm about her, and whispered, "What does it matter Dorothy, if only you love me? Do you, Dorothy, do you love me?"

She sobbed, silently almost. Then she looked up, and, as if she were defining a happiness that could never be, said, "Yes, d.i.c.k, I love you."

Then, as he covered her brow with kisses, she shuddered in his arms, and again moaned, "But you don't know, you don't understand!"

He smoothed the tears from her eyes, and looked tenderly upon her. "Yes, dear, I do." He burst into a fierce trumpet of rage. "That cad, Wooton, --he told me some d.a.m.nable lies...! He was drunk...!"

She shrank away from him. "Ah, then, you see it is quite--impossible!"

"Dorothy," he said, "I am not speaking of that, am I, dear? I am asking you to have pity on me, to help me see that there are bright and tender and true things in life. I tell you that, past or no past, you are as high above me as the stars. Why must we listen to the old shibboleths, Dorothy? Have you not spent a lifetime of regret to atone for a moment of folly? And who am I to judge? I, in whom there is no more of whiteness left, save only that I love you! Consider, dear, if this is not to be, what our lives will be! For me, all the old bitterness, the efforts to drown all things in laughter. For you--memories! But if you say 'yes,' Dorothy, think! How different the world will seem! We will go and live in the country, close to the heart of Nature. All the noise and noisomenesses of this town-world will be shut out; we will forget it.

For you, dear, I will work as I never worked before. Think, dear--think of the dear old, silent, restful hills of Lincolnville! How the insects hum in the clear nights; how blue, how deep, how tender the sky seems there; how the very flowers seem to wear more natural faces than do those of town! Do you remember how, in summer, we used to go camping by the river? The simple pleasures, the healthy out-door life--can you not believe that it would make new creatures of us two, Dorothy? The house--think of the house we would plan, the orchard, the garden! And are we to lose all that, dear, for a whim? Dorothy," he held out both his hands to her, "see, Dorothy, I ask you to let me not see happiness only to lose it?"

For another moment she wavered, then with a choking "Ah, d.i.c.k, I love you!" she let him take her to his arms. He kissed her shining eyes, and said, fervidly, "Sweetheart, I thank you."

EPILOGUE

It was in the first beauty of June that d.i.c.k Lancaster brought her that had been Dorothy Ware home to Lincolnville as his wife. The village, as I remember, was looking its fairest; the trees were radiant and profuse of shade; the gra.s.s was long and luscious, the birds were cheerful and bold. We welcomed the two with all the heartiness we had command of; we had known them as children, and we had loved their memory always, all through the years they had been gone. Of d.i.c.k's fame we were immeasurably proud. We wondered a little, indeed, that a man so dear to the world's heart should find satisfaction in living so far from the pulse of it all. But, we argued, if indeed, he preferred Lincolnville, all the greater was the honor.

Both, as we soon saw, had aged, Mr. Fairly, who had gone up to town to marry them, had told us as much, but we were but little prepared for the actual evidence. Those of us, too, who were permitted closer glimpses into the life of these two, observed in the two a pa.s.sionate fondness for the fields, for the silence and stillness of our life there that was something very different from the matter-of-course acceptance of those attributes to our existence that existed in the rest of us. It was as if the place were, for them, a very harbor of refuge, a hospital in which to forget old ailment, or regain old healthfulness. These things, and many other signs of something wistful in the affection they bore the place and the dislike they long showed for leaving it, made up for me and many others, something of a mystery. At that time, I knew nothing of the things that had occurred since d.i.c.k left Lincolnville.

Afterwards, long afterwards, it happened that I came to know all the things that have been chronicled here. And, for my part, I came to love them the more. As Mr. Fairly, who, I suspect, also knew something of these things, once said to me, "If one has not seen the devil, one does not know enough to get out of his way." I consider that d.i.c.k Lancaster is much more to be commended for the honest life he lives among us than old Scrattan, the milkman, who has never been out of Lincoln County in his life. And as for Dorothy, all Lincolnville thinks she is the sweetest woman breathing--and when a village as given to gossip as is this place, agrees on any such eulogy as that, there must be potent reasons.

It is an ancient trick, I know, and an uncommendable, this of chronicling the lives of two people only up to the church door. In the lives of most people, I hear on all sides of me, the tragedy only begins after marriage. Well, perhaps so. But I hope, for my part, that for d.i.c.k Lancaster and his wife there is not to be much more of battling against the buffets of the world. For them there had been so much of tragedy--the tragedy that is almost intangible, the tragedy that underlies the surface flippancy of our modern life--before Fate chose to let them come together, that it would seem just that thereafter their life be but a pleasant pastoral. As for that I cannot say. I know that d.i.c.k's fame grows with each pa.s.sing year; and that both he and his wife are beginning to lose the look of weariness that was on them when they came back to us.

I have not given this chronicle as an example or a lesson. I do not mean in telling it to declare my belief in the theory that Christ's words "Go, and sin no more!" can be perpetually applied in the practice of modern life. I have transcribed one episode, one group of characters, one set of lives, and having done so, I refer the responsibility whither it belongs to the Being that mapped, that directed those life-threads. I do not mean to say that in like instances, a similar course would inevitably lead to happiness. I only say that yesterday, as I was walking in my garden, watching the blue-jays quarreling in the firs, I heard d.i.c.k and Dorothy talking and laughing on their veranda. There was something so infectious about their gladness that I paused and listened, without thought of curiosity, but rather in something of wistful appreciation of their happiness.

"I had not thought," I heard him say, "that the world would ever seem so fair to me."

There was a pause, and I fancied I heard a kiss, but I will not be sure.

"And all," he went on, "is thanks to you."

Again there was a long silence! And then there came a sudden frightened whisper from her: "d.i.c.k--do you think we shall ever see--him--again?"

He laughed bitterly. "No, dear. He is too vain, too selfish, too fond of his own safety. Besides--what matter if we did. He belongs to the things that we have forgotten."

Then they turned, laughing into the house, and their voices gradually died from my hearing.

It seemed to me, as I nipped the dead leaves from my geraniums, that to these young neighbors of mine Happiness was showing a smiling face. And whether they had deserved that or no, I wish it may be so always, to the end.

FINISH