“Beloved:
“When I sit, as I often do, in perfect quiet under the stars,
and dream that you are looking at them too, not for hours as I
do, but for one full moment in which your thoughts are with me as
wholly as mine are with you, I feel that the bond between us,
unseen by the world, and possibly not wholly recognised by
ourselves, is instinct with the same power which links together
the eternities.
“It seems to have always been; to have known no beginning, only a
budding, an efflorescence, the visible product of a hidden but
always present reality. A month ago and I was ignorant, even, of
your name. Now, you seem the best known to me, the best understood,
of God’s creatures. One afternoon of perfect companionship—one
flash of strong emotion, with its deep, true insight into each
other’s soul, and the miracle was wrought. We had met, and
henceforth, parting would mean separation only, and not the
severing of a mutual bond. One hand, and one only, could do that
now. I will not name that hand. For us there is nought ahead but
life.
“Thus do I ease my heart in the silence which conditions impose
upon us. Some day I shall hear your voice again, and then-”
The paper dropped from the reader’s hand. It was several minutes before he took up another.
This one, as it happened, antedated the other, as will appear on reading it:
“My friend:
“I said that I could not write to you—that we must wait. You
were willing; but there is much to be accomplished, and the
silence may be long. My father is not an easy man to please, but
he desires my happiness and will listen to my plea when the right
hour comes. When you have won your place—when you have shown
yourself to be the man I feel you to be, then my father will
recognise your worth, and the way will be cleared, despite the
obstacles which now intervene.
“But meantime! Ah, you will not know it, but words will rise
—the heart must find utterance. What the lip cannot utter, nor
the looks reveal, these pages shall hold in sacred trust for you
till the day when my father will place my hand in yours, with
heart-felt approval.
“Is it a folly? A woman’s weak evasion of the strong silence of
man? You may say so some day; but somehow, I doubt it—I doubt
it.”
The creaking of a chair;—the man within had seated himself. There was no other sound; a soul in turmoil wakens no echoes. Sweetwater envied the walls surrounding the unsympathetic reader. They could see. He could only listen.
A little while; then that slight rustling again of the unfolding sheet. The following was read, and then the fourth and last:
“Dearest:
“Did you think I had never seen you till that day we met in Lenox?
I am going to tell you a secret—a great, great secret—such a
one as a woman hardly whispers to her own heart.
“One day, in early summer, I was sitting in St. Bartholomew’s
Church on Fifth Avenue, waiting for the services to begin. It
was early and the congregation was assembling. While idly
watching the people coming in, I saw a gentleman pass by me up
the aisle, who made me forget all the others. He had not the
air of a New Yorker; he was not even dressed in city style, but
as I noted his face and expression, I said way down in my heart,
‘That is the kind of man I could love; the only man I have ever
seen who could make me forget my own world and my own people.’
It was a passing thought, soon forgotten. But when in that hour
of embarrassment and peril on Greylock Mountain, I looked up into
the face of my rescuer and saw again that countenance which so
short a time before had called into life impulses till then
utterly unknown, I knew that my hour was come. And that was why
my confidence was so spontaneous and my belief in the future so
absolute.
“I trust your love which will work wonders; and I trust my own,
which sprang at a look but only gathered strength and permanence
when I found that the soul of the man I loved bettered his outward
attractions, making the ideal of my foolish girlhood seem as
unsubstantial and evanescent as a dream in the glowing noontide.”
“My Own:
“I can say so now; for you have written to me, and I have the
dancing words with which to silence any unsought doubt which might
subdue the exuberance of these secret outpourings.
“I did not expect this. I thought that you would remain as silent
as myself. But men’s ways are not our ways. They cannot exhaust
longing in purposeless words on scraps of soulless paper, and I am
glad that they cannot. I love you for your impatience; for your
purpose, and for the manliness which will win for you yet all that
you covet of fame, accomplishment and love. You expect no reply,
but there are ways in which one can keep silent and yet speak.
Won’t you be surprised when your answer comes in a manner you have
never thought of?”
XX. CONFUSION
In his interest in what was going on on the other side of the wall, Sweetwater had forgotten himself. Daylight had declined, but in the darkness of the closet this change had passed unheeded. Night itself might come, but that should not force him to leave his post so long as his neighbour remained behind his locked door, brooding over the words of love and devotion which had come to him, as it were from the other world.