Young Lives Part 13

"When will you bring it?"

"I'll tell you what. Come with me to Woodside Meadows on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Your father won't mind?"

"Oh, no; father likes you."

"I'm glad, because I'm very fond of him."

"Yes, he's a dear; and he's got far more in him than perhaps you think, under his country ways. If you could see him in the country, it would make you cry. He loves it so."

"Yes, I could tell that by the way he talked of Derbyshire the first day we met. But you'll come on Sat.u.r.day?"

"Yes, I'll come."

Angel! Yes, it was the face of an angel; but, bright as it had seemed on that dark background, it seemed almost brighter still as it moved by Henry's side among the green lanes. He had never known Angel till then, never known what primal ecstasy her nature was capable of. In the town, her soul was like a flame in a lamp of pearl; here in the country, it was like a star in a vase of dew. To be near trees, to touch their rough barks, to fill one's hands with green leaves, to hear birds, to listen to running water, to look up into the sky,--oh, this was to come home!--and Angel's joy in these things was that of some wood-spirit who you might expect any moment, like Undine, to slip out of your hands in some laughing brook, or change to a shower of blossom over your head.

"Oh, how good the country is! I wish father were here. I could eat the gra.s.s. And I just want to take the sky in my arms." As she swept across meadow and through woodland, with the eagerness of a child, greedily hastening from room to room of some inexhaustible palace, her little tense body seemed like a transparent garment fluttering round the flying feet of her soul.

At length she flung herself down, almost breathless, at the gra.s.sy foot of a great tree.

"I suppose you think I'm mad," she said. "And really I think I must be; for why should mere green gra.s.s and blue sky and a few birds make one so happy?"

"Why should anything make us happy?"

"Or sad?"

"But now you're going to read my poem," she said, presently.

"Yes; but something has to happen before I can read it," said Henry, growing unaccountably serious; "for it is in the nature of a prophecy, or at all events of an antic.i.p.ation. You have to fulfil that prophecy first."

"It seems to me a very mysterious poem. But what have I to do?"

"I don't know whether you can do it."

"Well, what is it? Try me."

"Oh, Angel, I care nothing about poems. Can't you see how I love you?

That's all poetry will ever mean to me. Just to say over and over again, 'I love Angel.' Just to find new and wonderful ways of saying that--"

"Listen, Henry. I've loved you from the first moment I saw you that day talking to father, and I shall love you till I die."

"Dear, dear Angel!"

"Henry!"

Then Henry's arms enfolded Angel with wonderful love, and her fresh young lips were on his, and the world faded away like a dream within a dream.

"Now perhaps you can read me your poem," said Angel, after a while; and she noticed a curious something different in her way of speaking to him, as in his way of speaking to her,--something blissfully homelike, as it were, as though they had sat like this for ever and ever, and were quite used to it, though at the same time it remained thrillingly new.

"It's only a silly little childish rhyme," said Henry; "some day I'll write you far better."

Then, coming close to Angel, he whispered,--

This is Angelica, Fallen from heaven, Fallen from heaven Into my arms.

Will you go back again, Little Angelica, Back up to heaven, Out of my arms!

"No," said Angelica, "Here is my heaven, Here is my heaven, Here in your arms.

"Not out of heaven, But into my heaven, Here have I fallen, Here in your arms."

CHAPTER XXV

THE LAST CONTINUED, AFTER A BRIEF INTERVAL

After the long happy silence which followed Henry's recitation of his verses, Angel at length spoke,--

"Shall I tell _you_ something now?" she said. "I'm almost ashamed to, for I know you'll laugh at me, and call me superst.i.tious."

"Go on, little child," said Henry.

"You remember the day," said Angel, in a hushed little impressive voice, "I first saw you in father's office?"

Henry was able to remember it.

"Well, that was not the first time I had seen you."

"Really, Angel! Why didn't you tell me before? Where was it, then? In the street, or where?"

"No, it was much stranger than that," said Angel. "Do you believe the future can be foretold to us?"

"Oh, it was in a dream, you funny Angel; was that it?" said Henry, whose rationalism at this period was the chief danger to his imagination.

"No, not a dream. Something stranger than that."

"Oh, well, I give it up."

"It was like this," Angel continued; "there's a strange old gipsy woman who lives near us--"

"Oh, I see, your hand--palmistry," said Henry, with a touch of gentle impatience.

"Henry, dear, I said you would laugh at me. I won't tell you now, if you're going to take it in that spirit."