"Clam Beach? I've come from there. You'll find it pleasant. The house is full; but of course they can put up a single gentleman."

"You are there? Come, that's nice! I declare I'm in luck at last. My trip has been real lonesome, so far. I have been so long West that I have lost sight of my old friends, and can't scare up one, now I want 'em."

"You don't deserve to, if you serve them all as you did me. How many years is it since you wrote last, do you think? It's eight."

"Eight years? Ah, well, but that is different," he answered, with a laugh. "Who is with you at Clam Beach?"

"Who would be? The teachers at our college are mostly home with their friends. I'm an orphan, as you know, and I don't make very free with strangers; so I come to the sh.o.r.e, like other folks who have no friends to visit;" and she heaved a little sigh, but not a painful one. If life had been rather empty for her, that was forgotten now; "over," I daresay she would have said just then, if her feelings had fallen into words, for her eyes were on his face, her lips were parted, and her countenance was alight, more brightly than when the sunset clouds had lit it up a while ago. This was a rosier, warmer light, shining from within. It transfigured her for the moment, casting back the gathering years with their encrusting vapours, and disclosed her again as the enthusiastic maiden from whom the young man had parted ten years before, but purified and brightened by the struggles, and the victories, and the wisdom painfully acquired--for the moment, that is: there are no tabernacles or abiding-places on our mounts of transfiguration, and their glories are evanescent.

"You mean that you are still unmarried? Strange!"

"Strange that a woman should keep her troth, Gilbert? There came no word of your death. I only had patience--only waited, just as any right woman would have done."

"Hm----" It was not the answer which Gilbert had antic.i.p.ated, if indeed he antic.i.p.ated any. It startled him, and made him look more carefully in her face. Illuminated by the momentary exaltation of her nerves, she really looked attractive then, and there was a glowing warmth in her eyes resting on his own which thrilled him, and held him in a spell not to be shaken off, though he tried. It turned back the pages of his memory and opened a far-back chapter where ardent pa.s.sages were inscribed--a chapter broken off in the middle; and then a leaf had been turned, and new chapters with new interests and new ardours had written themselves in--the stirring interests and eager ardours of an intenser life--and the old chapter had remained unfinished, and even the part written had been forgot.

Now, the old pa.s.sage was again before him, and he felt a drawing back to the old-time idyl, and an impulse to carry it on and complete it.

Yet there was a thinness in this proffered draught of love, which did not now as of old attract his sophisticated palate. It seemed like whey to the shepherd's son who has sojourned in cities and revelled in stronger drinks--wholesome, but not exhilarating. The bowl was at his lips, but he hesitated to drink. His glance waxed unsteady beneath the gaze of blissful trust which beamed on him. He coughed again to break the confusing silence, and would have spoken, but he could think of nothing to say.

And then the damsel's look grew clouded, in sympathy with, or in consequence of, his confusion; and with a little gasping sob and a tighter clutch at his hand, which she still was holding, she spoke, half whispering--

"And you? You--you are not married, Gilbert?" and her eyes rose shrinkingly to his face, with an eager frightened look, as if she dreaded to hear his answer.

"N--no--that is--no--certainly not! What makes you suppose such things? I have no thought----Tush! you put me out asking ridiculous questions. I forget what I am saying;" and he laughed uneasily, looking most unnecessarily confused over so simple an avowal.

His confusion was unnoticed, however. Maida looked up in his face once more, as trustingly as ever; or more so, for now there was the triumph of proud possession. Her ten years' waiting was accomplished; her love was come to claim her. The stony road she had been travelling so wearily and alone, was behind her now. It grew radiant in retrospect by the light of the joy she had now attained, even as the toils of battle seem glorious in the l.u.s.tre of the victory which they have achieved. Her love was come to claim her! She stood up closer and looked into his face, with upturned lips, awaiting the seal of their reunion.

It did not come. The omnibus was drawing up at the platform, and Gilbert, calling a porter, turned away to point out his luggage. Maida went in pursuit of her own, and to the surprise of the driver, had it restored to the place on the roof whence it had been lifted an hour or two before, and then followed Gilbert inside, to return to Clam Beach.

CHAPTER XV.

IN AN OMNIBUS.

The daylight was stealing swiftly yet imperceptibly away. There was no moon, and the occupants of the omnibus were speedily wrapped in gloom.

Besides the two we know of, there were others sitting in silence, and in wait for anything to amuse them on the monotonous journey. The vehicle rolled easily along the sandy road, without noise or jar to drown the sound of conversation, and Maida dared not give voice to the many things with which her happy heart was overflowing, before the inquisitive strangers, while Gilbert was far from indisposed to hold his tongue.

To partic.i.p.ate with enthusiasm in a _rechauffe_ of feeling, after ten years, and in other scenes and circ.u.mstances, demands an effort. If the feeling has been one merely of friendship, such partic.i.p.ation is no doubt possible--nay, the long interval lends an atmosphere of pensive charm to the revival, clothes it in roseate hues, and tempts one, in looking down the vista of the years, to see the bond as closer than it really was. But if the friendship was one "touched with emotion," as it mostly is when the parties are a young man and a maid, it is different. The aroma of such a tie is far too subtile and evanescent to survive much keeping. Cherish the memories ever so carefully, as Maida had done, it is only like the storing away of roseleaves. The perfume waxes even stronger, but it is not the same; it is musty and heavy, like spice or drugs--a mummy of the old sweet breath of flowers. Cherish not, as was Gilbert's case, and what is left? The roses have withered, the petals crumbled and blown away, and what remains but the memory of a remembrance?

Had this meeting come ten years later, when the effervescence of the emotions, and the expectation of new sweetness still to be extracted from the dregs of youth, had subsided, then doubtless it would have been pleasant to recur to a tender friendship, and to trick it out in such shreds of sentiment as could be picked from out the lumber of the past. Self-love and self-pity would have delighted to dwell on such a memento of departed youth, when the time for new attachments had pa.s.sed away. But at thirty a man is still young, except to his juniors. There may yet be loves and friendships to come, more precious than any which have gone before. He looks back upon his past as a mere introduction to his full-fledged present--the raw and callow time of his probation--and early kindnesses seem pale, watery, and insipid.

Gilbert was pleased enough to meet an old friend; especially just then, when he was bound for a pleasure resort, where, as always, those who have friends are tempted to season their social enjoyments with as much exclusiveness as they can afford, and enhance the satisfaction of being within the ring, by keeping as many as possible outside. But this new-found friend claimed so much for their intimacy in the past--so much which was special and particular, and for which he really doubted in himself if there had been warrant. It was an affair of ten years ago. Since then he had led a busy life, overflowing with all the excitements; and he wondered now if there could have been ground for the meaning she appeared to attribute to it. There might have been once, or there nearly might have been--and if the intimacy had lasted longer, perhaps there _would_ have been; but they had now been ten years apart, and who could resurrect a sentiment buried under ten years of oblivion? There had been time for many another tenderness since then. And were not attachments like the herbage of the fields, of which each season produces its own luxuriant crop? Besides, since then a plant more vigorous than any had sprung up, one with deeper-reaching root and wider branches, which had usurped the s.p.a.ce and choked all weaker growths. It was a plant whose fruit had been tart as well as sweet; but the complex flavour of it had made his palate critical, and anything more luscious would be mawkish now.

Again, had she not been a little abrupt? Was it nice in her to speak so openly--to step so unhesitatingly across the chasm of a ten years'

separation, into a past as to which he really had forgotten the particulars? He doubted if that past had been as she would represent it; and even if it had, was it maidenly in her to be the first to speak of it?

Still, he was going amongst strangers. This old friend would be a resource, and would help to break the ice for him; and no doubt, with judgment, he would be able to lead her into seeing things as they were, instead of as she wished them to be. And after all, it was a kindly trait in her to have remembered him so long, poor girl! He hoped it had not interfered with her prospects, much, or made her measure others who were candidates for her favour by too high a standard. Yet it was well, perhaps, to have a high standard, "a n.o.ble ideal." That was the way it was expressed by the winter-evening lecturers, and the magazine writers; who, as far as he recollected, always spoke of it as "precious." And he spread himself a little wider in his dark corner of the omnibus, expanded his chest, and felt pleased with himself in the new character of "element in a woman's higher culture." Ah! what a fellow he was, to be sure! If the girls did see his perfections, poor things, it was not his fault. It showed only that they had eyes to see, and he could not wish them blind. It was impossible, of course, that he could be in love with them all; but it was consoling to think that, in being a "n.o.ble ideal," he was conferring a moral benefit on those whose attachment he could not return. And through his mind there ran the familiar lines--

"'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all."

And he sighed contentedly, feeling very kindly towards poor Maida Springer.

Maida sat in the opposite corner of the omnibus, tumultuously happy.

She felt garrulous at first in her elation, but the presence of fellow-pa.s.sengers--staid country folks, who did not speak, but looked inquisitively at her and her friend, as strangers in those parts, and then communicated with each other in interjectional observations about the crops--compelled her to silence; and she had so much to fill her thoughts, that soon she fell into a delightful reverie, and had no wish to converse.

As the daylight grew more dim, she lost sight of her recovered Gilbert; but there he sat before her, all the same--his outline clear against the quiet sky seen through the open window, broad-shouldered, tall and strong, a very rock of manhood; and every thread and tendril of her heart seemed to go out and twine itself around him, as she sat nestled in spirit within his shadow, in a pa.s.sion of trusting adoration.

How fine of him to have kept true through all the years!--through vicissitudes and seductions such as she could not imagine or particularise, but which yet must have been most trying. And now they were re-united. And yet, how diffident and even shy he had seemed, at meeting her! and with so little to say. Depth of feeling!--to which language was too poor to give expression. It was beautiful. And what a joy for her, by-and-by, to lend his dumb soul language!--and to encourage his faltering emotions to body themselves in words.

"Douglas! Douglas! tender and true!" were the words which kept hymning themselves through her brain in a continuous rapture. Ah, what a hero!

and how goodly was his shadow! It seemed but yesterday that they had parted. Ten years of dreariness, the worries and petty scufflings, small aims and smaller disappointments, which had seemed so long and dull and wearing in their pa.s.sage, were all forgot and put away, like the flatness of a rainy afternoon, when it is over. She was in her teens again, strolling in the fields with Gilbert on Sunday afternoons, or reading with him on winter nights in the parlour of his uncle's homestead, when the children, her charges, were gone to bed.

The air from the fields blew in through the open windows, as the omnibus lumbered on, dewy and cool, and sweet with the scent of second-growth clover; and she thought of the humming of bees, and the sunshine and the peace of the long vacation, when Gilbert was home from college, and their talks about the world, and books, and college lore, which had been so inspiring, and had filled her with ambitions, and tempted her to break from rustic life, and work and struggle, till now she was a professor in the Female College of Montpelier. What poor dry husks it had all appeared to her but that very morning! And now it was past, clean vanished out of her life; and she felt like a moth when it casts the chrysalis and spreads its wings to sport upon the scented air. The wonder of it all! and the beauty! Now that they were past, she would not have had the times of dark probation shortened by a day.

The omnibus jogged tranquilly on its way in the sweet summer night, diverging here and there to drop a pa.s.senger at his own gate, and then resuming its course, no one remonstrating at delay or seeking to quicken the pace. The casuals were all and severally deposited at last. A little longer, and the journey was completed; the dark bulk of the hotel, with its countless lights in ranges long-drawn-out and twinkling tier on tier, a garish illumination intruding on the stillness and mystery of night, loomed up before them, and the travellers drew rein before the entrance at Clam Beach.

It was almost with regret that the two found themselves at their journey's end, so pleasant had it been; and yet they had not exchanged a word. Their musings, different as they were, had been alike pleasurably engrossing, and alike productive in each of kindness for the other. No two people could have been mutually better disposed than were Gilbert and Maida as he handed her out, and waving the porter aside, insisted on carrying in her rugs with his own hands.

"Maidy Springer! you back!" was e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as Maida reached the hall-way landing; and out of the darkness of the outside gallery swooped Mrs Denwiddie in a whirlwind of flapping drapery, enveloping Maida in a cloud of kisses and black grenadine.

"So glad to have you back again, my dear. It's been real lonesome this afternoon without you. But what has brought you? I thought you were gone to be made a doctoress of philosophy,--and here you are again; and not alone either! Is that the philosophy we study? No better than the rest, for all your learning. It's woman's subjick you incline to after all--a young man--when you can get him. Sly-boots! And me never to suspect it. It's not an hour since I was argying with that stuck-up old Mrs Wilkie, and insistin' that you was all intelleck; and here you are, back with a gentleman to disprove my words."

Maida felt doubtful how she should reply, and but for the joy which filled her she would have resented the other's inquisitive freedom. It seemed to her at that moment, however, that nothing could ever vex her more, and a reproachful look was all she could call up, by way of self-a.s.sertion.

"Well, yes, my dear," the widow answered to the look, "I'll own to it.

I _am_ making free. But it comes of the interest I feel in you; though many's the spat you and me has had together. But who's the gentleman?

A mighty fine man. Is it HIM? the one you kind of let on about, that was away making a fortune to marry you on? Sakes alive, now! Ain't that pretty! If this ain't true love, there's no sich thing. And so little as you said! And so despondent-like you used to seem! I reely thought the whole a flam, and you just makin' believe a bit, because the gentlemen here didn't much mind you. And now, perhaps, you'll be married the first, for all the airs some tries to put on." And again she pumped Maida's hands up and down by way of congratulation.

"And now, my dear," the widow resumed, "you must make me acquainted with the gentleman himself. I'm fairly dyin' to know him. So true and so constant! I wonder if there's more like him where he comes from. I never saw the man myself would be so faithful. But maybe it's yourself, Maidy Springer, has some knack of bindin' them to you; though that's a notion never struck me before."

Maida smiled and held up her chin, while her eyes modestly sought the ground. She mentioned that she and her friend were going to supper, and if Mrs Denwiddie cared to accompany her to the dining-room, she would introduce Mr Roe. That gentleman reappearing at the moment, the three went in together, and Mrs Denwiddie's sentimental tendencies had a treat in watching over the reunion and refreshment of two faithful lovers. Her eyes dwelt on the face of the gentleman with smiles of motherly solicitude, and she ministered to his wants whenever the waiter turned his back, pa.s.sing him the sugar-basin, handing him jam and pickles, and pointing out the nicest kinds of cake, in a way as troublesome as it was well intended.

Maida was in glory--too happy to eat or drink. Her credit among women was vindicated at last. Evidence of her prowess was there present; the victim, a man of six feet stature, acknowledging her silken fetters.

No one would ever say "old maid" to her again, or think it. She was transferred from the forlorn to the triumphant division of her s.e.x, and it was altogether "just too delightful." Her merit, even in her own eyes, took new proportions. How true she must have been, and constant! And she began to perceive what a very superior nature was hers, to have cherished this beloved image for ten long years. And yet, in her modesty, she had been as little aware of the tenacity of her affection as of the enduring influence of her conquering charms.

To think that she could have loved and waited so long! As if, poor soul, there had since appeared in her life any man on whom to bestow the treasure of her love. She had not hoped, far less expected, this felicity. The memory of ten years back had been but the remembered gleam of sunshine in a clouded existence, to be recurred to when other women flaunted their successes before her eyes--a testimony that she, too, had had her sip of love. Her soul overflowed with grat.i.tude to this champion who had vindicated her equality with other women to herself and them, with humble trustful devotion.

The sensations were all so new as yet. By-and-by, doubtless, when ideas had had time to ferment, it would be different. Victorious beauty would as usual demand its dues, trifle with the captive's chains, and play at being imperious and exacting. For the present the game was all too new; she was too happy for common food, and pastured her eyes on the goodly proportions of her hero--his n.o.ble brow, his moustache, his nose, and all his manifold perfections. Timidly she pushed the b.u.t.tered toast within his reach, and the anchovy paste, and watched the carefully divided mouthfuls of his meal as they were made away with.

Maida's heart was too full for speech, Gilbert's jaws were employed in mastication; wherefore they sat in silence, and Mrs Denwiddie, facing them with attentive eyes, was forced to feed her curiosity with sympathetic fancies.

"How much the poor dears must be thinking, when they speak so little!

and how devoted Maida is, to be sure, pressing toast and anchovy upon her companion, and never touching a morsel herself! And what a very fine man the gentleman is, to be sure! And as for Maida herself, she really is not at all amiss--quite spry, in fact, and with a good colour, if she do be a little thin. But that will mend soon. There's nothing like a good heart to put flesh on the bones."