The radiance of the renunciation, the resolve, was in her face as she gently released his hand, gently rose, standing smiling, with a strange, rapt smile, above him.
Sir Basil rose, too, silent, and looking hard at her. She guessed at the turmoil, the wonder of his honest soul, his fear lest she did guess it, and, with the fear, the irrepressible hope that, in some sense, it was echoed.
"My dear, dear friend," she said, putting her hand on his shoulder, as though with the gesture she dubbed him her knight, "my more than friend—shall it be elder brother?—I believe that you will be able to help me and my father. And if you fail—my gratitude to you will be none the less great. I can't tell you how I trust you, how I care for you."
From his face she looked up at the sky above them; and in the sunlight her innocent, uplifted smile made her like a heavenly child. "Isn't it wonderful?—beautiful?—" she said, almost conquering her inner fear by the seeming what she wished to be. "Look up, Sir Basil!—Doesn't it seem to heal everything,—to glorify everything,—to promise everything?"
He looked up at the sky, still speechless. Her face, her smile—the sky above it—did it not heal, glorify, promise in its innocence? If a great thing claims one suddenly, must not the lesser things inevitably go?—Could one hold them?—Ought one to try to hold them? There was tumult in poor Sir Basil's soul, the tumult of partings and meetings.
But when everything culminated in the longing to seize this heavenly child—this heavenly woman—to seize and kiss her—a sturdy sense of honesty warned him that not so could he, with honor, go forward. He must see his way more clearly than that. Strange that he had been so blind, till now, of where all ways, since his coming to Vermont, had been leading him. He could see them now, plainly enough.
Taking Imogen's hand once more, he pressed it, dropped it, looked into her eyes and said, as they turned to the descent: "That was swearing eternal friendship, wasn't it!"
XXI
Violent emotions, in highly civilized surroundings, may wonderfully be effaced by the common effort of those who have learned how to live. Of these there were, perhaps, not many in our little group; but the guidance of such a past mistress of the art as Imogen's mother steered the social craft, on this occasion, past the reefs and breakers into a tolerably smooth sea.
With an ally as facile, despite his personal perturbations, as Sir Basil, a friend like Mrs. Wake at hand—a friend to whom one had never to make explanations, yet who always understood what was wanted of her,—with a presence so propitious as the calm and unconscious Miss Bocock, the sickening plunges of explanation and recrimination that accompany unwary seafaring and unskilful seamanship were quite avoided in the time that passed between Valerie's appearance at the tea-table—where she dispensed refreshment to Mrs. Wake, Miss Bocock, and Jack only—and the meeting of all the ship's crew at dinner.