The greatest thing in the story of any life is that moment of miracle when love enters in and transfigures it. It is impossible to describe the coming of Dawn on a mountain-top so that another really feels the glory of it. If he has witnessed it himself anything one could say seems inadequate and commonplace. If he has never experienced such a revelation, all the words in the dictionary couldn't help him to see it.
If I were to put down here the few words Richard said as he was leaving me at the door, they might seem incoherent and ordinary to anyone else, but uttered with his arms around me, the touch of his lips on mine—how could one put into any story the sacredness of such an experience? The wonder of it, the rapture of it? And even if you did partially succeed, there would always be people like Tippy, for instance, to purse up their lips at the attempt, as if to say, "Sentimental!" So I shall never try.
When Tippy, in her bathrobe and with a candle, came down the dark hall to fumble at the door and let me in, I didn't say a word. I couldn't. I just walked past her, so awed by the throbbing happiness that filled me that I couldn't think of anything else, and not for worlds would I have had her know. If it had been Barby I would have thrown my arms around her and whispered, "Oh, Barby! I'm so happy!" and she would have held me close and understood. But I felt that Tippy would say, "Tut, you're too young to be thinking of such things yet." She has shamed me that way, making me feel that she considered me a sentimental silly young thing, several times in the past.
"Well?" she said questioningly, when I did not speak. Her waiting attitude reminded me that she was expecting me to tell her something. Then I remembered—about Aunt Elspeth—and I was conscience-smitten to think I had forgotten her entirely. It seemed ages since we had left Fishburn Court, with the sadness of her death the uppermost thing in our mind, but in reality it hadn't been more than a half an hour. But it had been long enough for the beginning of "a new heaven and a new earth" for me.
My voice trembled so that I could hardly speak the words—"She's gone." Then I saw that Tippy attributed my agitation to grief. She questioned me for details, but there was little to tell. When we left no arrangements had been made for the funeral.
"How did Uncle Darcy take it?" she asked as we reached the top of the stairs. I told her, repeating his own words. My voice shook again, but this time it was because I was remembering the stricken old figure on the doorstep, pathetic loneliness in every line of it, despite the brave words with which he tried to comfort himself. A tear started to roll down Tippy's cheek. She made a dab at it with the sleeve of her bathrobe.
"Poor old soul!" she exclaimed. "Their devotion to each other was beautiful. Over sixty years they've been all in all to each other. Pity they both couldn't have been taken at the same time."
A wonder came over me which I have often felt before. Why is it that people like Tippy, who show such tenderness for a love-story when it is flowing to its end in old age, are so unsympathetic with it at its beginning. What is there about it at the source that Youth cannot understand or should not talk about?
At my door she waited till I struck a match and lighted my lamp. I wondered why she held up her candle and gave me such a keen glance as she said goodnight. When she closed the door behind her and I walked over to the dressing-table, I was suddenly confronted by the reason. The face that looked out at me from the mirror was not the face of one who has just looked on a great sorrow. I was startled by my own reflection. It had a sort of shining, exalted look. I wondered what she could have thought.
I hurried with my undressing so that I could put out the lamp and swing open the casement window that looks down on the sea. The air came cool and salt against my hot cheeks. The silver radiance that flooded the harbor streamed in across me as I knelt down with my elbows on the sill and my hands folded to pray.