The Clean Heart

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

The laughter brought them to the registered letter and to Essie's exclamation at it; and then, as she handled the packet, readdressed in Mr. Bickers' clerkly script, and gave it to Mr. Wriford: "Feels to me as if some one's sent you a pocket-handkerchief," said Essie.

"That shows you don't know what a honeymoon ticket feels like," said Mr. Wriford and fingered the bundle of banknotes within their parchment cover. "Listen to the crinkling. That's the confetti they always pack it in."

Essie was highly amused. "Hasn't being engaged made you different, though! You're jolly as anything down here. Aren't I glad!"

"It's you that's made me different," Mr. Wriford declared; and "Oo-oo!" cried Essie at what went with this assurance. "Oo-oo! Look out, here's Mother coming."

Mrs. Bickers' appearance, and then all the jolly chatter at breakfast, and afterwards the morning bathe and the rest of the usual programme of Whitecliffe's delights, caused the mysterious registered letter to go—as she would have said—clean out of Essie's head. Mr. Wriford, when he had a moment alone, opened it and read it, and found within it, thrice repeated, a phrase that intensely he chorused as he put letter and the twenty ten-pound notes in his pockets and looked upon the immediate plans that now were all ripe for execution.

II

"Your return to life" was this phrase that the literary agent three times repeated in the course of his enthusiastic delight and surprise at news at last of missing Mr. Wriford. He gave some astonishing figures of the sales of Mr. Wriford's books. He put forward what appeared to him the most engaging of the contracts which publishers were longing to make. He ended with How soon would Mr. Wriford run up to town for a talk? or should Mr. Lessingham come down? "Don't let your return to life—now that at last you have made it—give me a moment's longer silence than you can help."

"Return to life"—that was the phrase. Essie's words—"Hasn't being engaged made you different, though?"—that was the illustration of it. Return to life! Ay, that was it, ay, that was his, far, far more truly, with wonder of rebirth immeasurably more, than ever Lessingham or any one in all the world could know. There was thrill in that very thought that none but himself knew its heights, its volume, its singing, its radiant intensity. That knowledge was his own as in the immediate future his life was to be his own—life without a care, life without a tie, life of complete abandonment to pleasure of work, to pleasure of sheer pleasure, to pleasure of jolly little Essie always to turn to, to look after, to make happy, and yet always to know of her that if he wished—he never would so wish—he could be rid of her: no tie, no bond—happiness, freedom; freedom, happiness!

This was the state to which, with a sudden, ecstatic soaring as it were, he had swung away from the evening of saying "I love you, Essie," and of posting his letter, through these laughing days at Whitecliffe Sands, to now when arrival of the honeymoon ticket made him all ready for the final step. Once that declaration of the love he did not feel—as Essie understood love—had been made, his scrupulous withholding from it lay strewn about his feet as matter of no more regard than the torn wrappings of a casket from which there has been taken a very precious prize. That declaration sealed her to him; and through those intervening days while the letter was awaited, constantly he repeated it, constantly embellished it. He mocked, he almost upbraided himself for his old scruples at it. Why, it was her due, her right, he told himself. She should be happy with him—that was his resolve: never should regret, never suffer. Why, how possibly could she be happy, how avoid pains of regret, if she were not assured that he loved her?

So he gave her this bond—that was her due—of his love; so with each day, each hour, each moment of Whitecliffe in her company he became more and more assured of her. Assured! He was convinced. There was not a glance from her eyes, not a sound from her lips, not a touch of her hand but informed him that she was his to do with as he would, come any test that he might put her to. Return to life! Why, this freedom, this happiness, was but the threshold of it. Return to life! He imaged all the darkness he had come through and damned it in exultant triumph at all its terrors trampled under foot: night, darker than deepest summer darkness here, he had known; day, of which these burning cloudless days of holiday were sign and symbol, now was his, and brighter still awaited him....