“I’m so glad,” rejoined her father, “and now you two young people must just leave things to me, for we’re at the wharf. Here, steward!” and an obsequious black man came running up, “get our grips and take them down the gangway to a hack. We’ll go to the Everett House.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll be there at the hack station waitin’ for you when you come down the gangway, sir;” and off he went.
Like a man in a dream C. B. followed Mr. Stewart with his beloved on his arm, but guiding him rather than leaning on him, until, in some strange fashion as it seemed to him savouring of an enchantment, they found themselves in a very babel of noise of men shouting, horses’ hoofs striking fire on the slippery cobbles, clanging of bells and shrill whistlings, seated in the carriage and passing swiftly through a tremendous entanglement of traffic between mighty rows of buildings. Tenderly his beloved looked in his bewildered face and sympathized with him, as much out of his element as a fish is out of water, while Mr. Stewart, his square jaw set and his bushy eyebrows frowning, sat opposite them busily weaving plans for their future.
It was not until they were quietly settled in their comfortable sitting-room at the spacious hotel in Union Square that C. B. began to lose that worried, harassed look which so distressed his sweetheart. Then, when Mr. Stewart had left them, pleading business, she said tenderly—
“My dear one, I know how you hate all this. And so do I for your sake. Now tell me if you can what you would like to do after—well, after we are married?”
Without a moment’s hesitation he answered—
“Why, I would like to take you home. Home to that dear place where all this needless bustle and uproar never comes, where peace and love reign without a break and God is King. Oh, how I long to be there again!”
For a moment her brow clouded as she felt that if the choice were to be made by him between living here with her in the vortex of gay society and going back to his island home alone, he would give her up, and the question trembled on her lip. But she dared not ask it. She felt that where he was she could be happy, and that she had chosen rightly in taking such a man for her husband in any case, for although full of spirits and intelligence and so easily first in all the gay companies she had been wont to frequent, she had always longed for the peace and quiet of a country where the absurd conventions of civilization did not count. And she was glad. So she said quietly, “In the words of Ruth, in that book you love so well, ‘Whither thou goest I will go, thy people shall be my people, thy God my God.’ I will leave all for you, dear, and I feel sure that I shall never regret my choice.”
He, simple soul, took all that for granted, and as he had never dreamed that there had been anything heroic in the sacrifice Mr. Stewart was making, or thought about the monetary aspect of the affair, so now it seemed to him the most natural thing in the world that this dear girl, loving him as she said she did, should be glad to throw all the stress and strain of the life she had been used to behind her and follow him. I fear that many will account it callous selfishness on his part, but it was really not so. In his very soul he felt that it would be best for them both. He remembered the lovely life of his father and mother, and could conceive of nothing happier, more delightful for his beloved. And so his soul was at rest.
They sat there and talked of their simple future until the waiter came and announced luncheon, which they took together as the father had not returned. And the afternoon slipped away as the morning had done, until the shadows lengthened and still Mr. Stewart did not come. At last, when it was quite dark, he returned, and flung himself into a chair with a sigh of weariness. Immediately his daughter was at his side full of solicitude.