I am sure it was on that stream that Halcyone found retreat.
I received quite a shock a few days later when I found in my mail a letter from the Miss Tippses, telling me of their delight on learning of my recovery, and mentioning incidentally the fact, which they felt sure I would be glad to know, that they had settled all of their affairs in a manner entirely satisfactory to them, as Mr. McSheen had very generously come forward at a time when it was supposed that I was fatally injured and had offered to make reparation to them and pay out of his own pocket, not only all of the expenses which they had incurred about the matter, but had actually paid them three thousand dollars over and above these expenses, a munificent sum which had enabled them to pay dear Mrs. Kale all they owed her. They felt sure that I would approve of the settlement, because Mr. McSheen's intermediary had been "a life-long friend of mine and in some sort," he said, "my former law partner, as we had lived for years in adjoining offices." They had signed all the papers he had presented and were glad to know that he was entirely satisfied, and now they hoped that I would let them know what they owed me, in order that they might settle at least that part of their debt; but for the rest, they would always owe me a debt of undying gratitude, and they prayed God for my speedy recovery and unending happiness, and they felt sure Mr. Peck would rejoice also to know that I was doing so well.
Peck! And he had charged them a fee for his services!
It was now approaching the autumn and I was chafing to get back to work. I knew now that success was before me. It might be a long road; but I was on it.
John Marvel, in reply to an inquiry, wrote that the place was still waiting for me in the office he had mentioned, though he did not state what it was.
"How stupid he is!" I complained. Eleanor Leigh only laughed.
She "did not think him stupid at all, and certainly she did not think I should do so. In fact, she considered him one of the most sensible men she ever knew."
"Why, he could not have done more to keep me in ignorance, if he had tried," I fumed. And she only laughed the more.
"I believe you are jealous of him." Her eyes were dancing in an exasperating way they had. I was consumed with jealousy of everybody; but I would never admit it.
"Jealous of John Marvel! Nonsense! But I believe you were in—you liked him very much?"
"I did," she nodded cheerily. "I do—more than any one I ever knew—almost." And she launched out in a eulogy of John which quite set me on fire.
"Then why did you not marry him?" I was conscious that my head went up and my wrath was rising.
"He never asked me." Her dancing eyes still playing hide and seek with mine.
"I supposed there was some good reason," I said loftily. She vouchsafed no answer—only went on making a chain of daisies, while her dimples came and went, and I went on to make a further fool of myself. I was soon haled up and found myself in that outer darkness, where the cheerful occupation is gnashing of teeth. Like the foolish glass-merchant, I had smashed all my hopes. I walked home through the Vale of Bitterness.
That evening, after spending some hours in trying to devise a plan by which I could evade the humiliation of an absolute surrender, and get back without crawling too basely, I went over to say what I called—good-by. I was alone; for Dix had abandoned me for her, and I did not blame him even now. It was just dusk; but it seemed to me midnight. I had never known the fields so dark. As I turned into a path through the orchard where I had had so many happy hours, I discovered her sitting on the ground beneath a tree with Dix beside her; but as I approached she rose and leant against the tree, her dryad eyes resting on me placidly. I walked up slowly.
"Good evening—" solemnly.
"Good evening—" seriously.
I was choosing amongst a half-dozen choice sentences I had framed as an introduction to my parting speech, when she said quietly, looking up: "I thought you might not come back this evening."
"I have come to say good-by."
"Are you going away?" Her voice expressed surprise—nothing more.
"Yes." Solemnly.
"For how long?"—without looking up.
"Perhaps, forever." Tragically.
"You are better at making a fire than I had supposed. Will you give me Dix?" This with the flash of a dimple.
"I—I—yes—if you want him."
I glanced at her face just in time to see the dimples disappear. "I am thinking of being married next week." My heart stopped beating.
"You were—what?"
"But of course, if you are going away I could not do it, could I?" Her eyes sought mine, then fell.
"Eleanor!" I tried to possess myself of her hand; but she put it behind her. I tried to secure the other; but that also disappeared. Then I took—herself. "Eleanor!" Her face next second had grown grave. She looked up suddenly and looked me full in the eyes.
"You are a goose. What would you think if I were to say I would marry you right away?" She looked down again quickly, and her face was sweet with tenderness.
I was conscious of a sudden drawing in of my breath, and a feeling as if I were rising into the sky, "rimmed by the azure world." Then my brain began to act, and I seemed to have been lifted above the darkness. I was up in the sunlight again.
"I should think I was in Heaven," I said quietly, almost reverently. "But for God's sake, don't say that to me unless you mean it."
"Well, I will. I have written my father. Write to Mr. Marvel and ask him to come here."
I have never known yet whether this last was a piece of humor. I only know I telegraphed John Marvel, and though I rode all night to do so, I thought it was broad daylight.
In the ripe autumn John Marvel, standing before us in his white surplice in the little chapel among the oaks and elms which had been his first church, performed the ceremony that gave me the first prize I had really striven for—the greatest any man on earth could have won.
Still, as often as I spoke of my future plans, there was some secret between them: a shadowy suggestion of some mystery in which they both participated. And, but that I knew John Marvel too well, I might have been impatient. But I knew him now for the first time as she had known him long.
On our arrival in the city, after I had given the driver an order where to go, she gave another, and when the carriage drew up, it was not at my hotel, but at the door of the sunny house on the corner where I had first seen Eleanor Leigh come tripping down the steps with her parcels for the poor little crippled child and her violets for the Miss Tippses. Springing out before me, with her face radiant with joy and mystery, she tripped up the steps now just as the door was flung open by a butler who wore a comical expression of mingled pleasure and solemnity, for the butler was Jeams, and then having introduced him to me, she suddenly took the key from the lock, and handing it to me with a bow and a low laugh of delight:
"I make you, sir, livery of seisin."
This, then, was the mystery.
She still lived in the house on the corner—through the aid offered by my namesake and kinsman her father had been enabled to retain it, and had given it to her as a wedding present.
So after long striving by ways that I knew not, and by paths that I had not tried, my fancy was realized.
I now dwell in the house on the corner that I picked so long ago for its sunshine.
It is even sunnier than I thought it. For I have found that sunlight and sweetness are not from without, but from within, and in that home is the radiance I caught that happy morning when I first saw Eleanor Leigh come tripping down the steps, like April, shedding sunshine and violets in her path.