For of course it went without saying that they were lovers. Only fancy! Well—as much had been said outright. He was coming to besiege Aunt Marjie, just as Lynndal....
Her heart clouded a little with the mist of perplexity which seemed, now, to have begun settling the moment she heard Leslie's step outside on the hillside at dawn....
But O'Donnell went on nonchalantly enough: "Oh, but there'll be nothing remarkable at all. Miss Whitcom, if you'll pardon my speaking quite freely of your relative, has the most extraordinary control. Perhaps you've noticed it. I can tell you just what she'll do. She'll talk about the new wall paper in the throne room of the Queen of Tahulamaji's palace. Or else it will be still some perfectly commonplace remark about a tiresome old swimming medal. But exclamations in the true sense? No, there won't be any, Miss Needham, I assure you."
Oh, Eros! Here, sitting all perplexed beside the man she has promised to marry—all besieged by ghosts of her past loves, and the ghost of one scarce passed as yet—is a woman. And yonder in a cottage, covering the unlucky shortage of pancakes with mundane chuckles, is another woman who has been pursued for twenty years by one dauntless lover, and who, when he comes, will talk about the paper on the wall.
The journey drew to a screeching and bumping close; the brakes whistled, and the locomotive fell a-panting most lustily, as though to proclaim that it had done a mighty thing indeed in hauling a few laden coaches a dozen miles across the swamp-lands.
The intrepid Pathfinder lay at the dock, waiting. All Beulah had turned out, it really seemed, to welcome the train; and now all Beulah swarmed down to bid those who would embark farewell.
There was the mayor—or so one fancied; and there were aldermen—could not one fairly see them sitting in solemn council? There was the Methodist minister in his half-clerical week-day togs; there were all the old men of the town, and all the old ladies; all the boys and girls and babies; together with just as many others as could possibly be spared from conducting the business of the town. The dock was quite crowded. Yet Louise and her two companions were the only passengers the Pathfinder was to bear away.
There always seemed something vaguely symbolic about these important departures of the Pathfinder. The townsfolk seemed to gaze off with a kind of wistful regret—yes, from the mayor down to the tiniest babe. It always was so: as though the Pathfinder were bound for free, large spaces of ocean; for ports in Europe, or the Indies. And the townspeople could only assemble on the shore and silently watch this ship's glorious westward flight. So life went.
Many are called, but few are chosen!