“She’ll get used to it,” Martha said gently. “You mustn’t worry, Dan.”
“Oh, I don’t. In a few days she’ll probably see how lovely it really is here, and she’ll begin to enjoy it and be more like herself. Everything’ll be all right in a day or so; I’m sure of that.”
“Yes, Dan.”
“Of course just now, what with the heat and all and everybody strangers to her, why, it’s no wonder it makes her feel a little upset. Anybody would be, but in a few days from now”—he hesitated, and concluded, with a somewhat lame insistence, “Well, it’ll all be entirely different.”
“Yes, Dan,” she said again, but there was an almost imperceptible tremble in her voice, and his attention was oddly caught by it.
All his mind had been upon the suffering little bride, but there was something in the quality of this tremulousness in Martha’s voice that made him think about Martha, instead. And suddenly he looked at her with the same wonder he had felt earlier this queer evening, when he noticed for the first time that emanation of serenity between his father and mother. For there seemed to be something about Martha, too, that he had known familiarly all his life, but had never thought of before.
There is indeed a light that is light in darkness, and these strange moments of revelation, when they come, are brought most often by the night. Daylight, showing too many things, may afterwards doubt them, but they are real and not to be forgotten. They are only moments; and yet, while this one had its mystic little life, Dan was possessed in part by the feeling, altogether vague, that somewhere a peculiar but indefinable mistake had been made by somebody not identified to him.
Moreover, here was matter more curious still: this thing he had all his life known about Martha, but had never realized until now, made her in a moment a woman new to him, so that she seemed to stand there, facing him across the iron fence, a new Martha. He had no definition in words for what he felt, nor sought one; but it was as if he found himself in possession of an ineffable gift, inexpressibly valuable and shining vaguely in the darkness. This shining, wan and touching, seemed to come from Martha herself; and this newness of hers, that was yet so old, put a glamour about her. The dim, kind face and shimmering familiar figure were beautiful, he saw, never before having had consciousness of her as beautiful; but what most seemed to glow upon him out of the glamour about her was the steadfastness within her; for that was the jewel worn by the very self of her and shining upon him in the night.
“Martha——” he said in a low voice.
“Yes, Dan?”