If possible be at lodge in Caddle three-thirty this afternoon. Particular business Gas and Gaiters. J. D.
It was like finding a bottle of champagne in a glooming wilderness. At the first gulp the clouds lifted, a crevice opened in them, and sunshine poured into my heart. Cryptic as ever, there was no telling Johnny’s meaning; but, Johnny being Johnny, and all things equal, helpfulness shone in some sort potential.
I looked at the clock. With barely time to keep the appointment, I started, with a bounding heart, on my way.
Reaching near to the wicket at last, I was aware of a station fly loitering along the road ahead, as if in waiting for a discharged fare. I hesitated an instant, then, passing through the gate, plunged into the wintry coppices, and went resolutely for the lodge. I had not once entered this old hermitage of mine since my return. I had felt it, indeed, morally barred to me while the great question was at issue. But now I could not resist the sudden recall, since, as I told myself, I was visiting it an invited guest.
How familiar and yet strange it looked, as I drew near, viewed in the light of my wider experiences—a dark and lonely little tenement, but haunted by what wistful ghost at last, a spirit more potent than all its old-time spectres of melancholy and decay. Whatever might come to be, it was hallowed for evermore in the memory of that possession. My heart was very full as I approached it, and entered by the open door, and stepped softly into what had been my sanctuary.
“Ira,” I whispered, half choking—“if only it could be Ira!”
“O, Richard! it is me.”
Sweet imperfection of sweet lips and slips! What has love to do with grammar? With a sob I had her in my arms. I could not help it—this dream, this rapture—and I was overwrought.
The gentle lovely child! How she understood, and quieted my quivering face with her soft hand, and spoke to me in murmurs of heavenly pity as if I were her child, her baby, the first-born of her heart. And I bent to her in an ecstasy of submission, until I felt the manhood in me rise and strike for conquest.
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