In retrospect of “the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,” do we not all single out from them one hour becrowned above all others; one hour in marking which the sands of memory’s glass run goldenly? Amidst the dead sweetness of buried hours is there not always one whose rose it amaranthine? One, which in the garlands of the past retains ever the perfume of the living flower, shaming the faint scent of dead delights? One hour in which the wings of our spirits touched others and both burst forth in flame? And the chrism of this hour was visible upon the brow of Mabella Lansing. She was sealed as one worthy of initiation into its fateful mysteries. How far away she seemed from those about her; their voices came to her faintly as farewells across the widening strip of water which parts the ship from shore.
“Did you find out about Len Simpson’s funeral?” asked Vashti of her father.
“Yes—the buryin’s to-morrow, and it seems Len was terrible well thought of amongst the play-actin’ folk, and they’ve sent up a hull load of flowers along with the body, and there’s a depitation comin’ to-morrow to the buryin’ and they say there’s considerable money comin’ to Len and of course his father’ll get it. I don’t know if he’ll buy that spring medder of Mr. Ellis, or if he’ll pay the mortgage on the old place, but anyhow it’ll be a big lift to him.”
“Why, is it as much as that?” asked Vashti incredulously.
“So they say,” said her father.
“Lands sake!” said Temperance. “It seems like blood-money to me. Pore Len!”
As they all rose from the table, Mabella managed to slip away to her room, to spend the few moments before her tryst, alone. She looked out of her window and saw afar amid the boulders of Mullein meadow a form she knew, and the next moment she fled breathlessly from the front porch. A more sophisticated woman would have waited till the trysting time had come, but Mabella’s heart was her helm in those days and she followed its guiding blindly, and it turned towards Lanty waiting there for her. For her. O! the intoxication of the thought! O! the gladness of the earth! the delight of feeling life pulsing through young veins!
And thus it was that as Lanty paced back and forth in patient impatience within a little space hedged in by great boulders, his heart suddenly thrilled within him as the needle trembles towards the unseen magnet; he looked up at the evening sky as one might look upon whom the spirit was descending, and then, turning instinctively, he saw a shy figure standing between two great boulders. He cast his hat to the ground and went towards her, bare browed, and, holding out his arms, uttered a sound of delight. Was it a prayer—a name, or a plea? And with a little happy, frightened cry of “Lansing, Lansing,” Mabella fled to him. Nestling close to his throbbing heart, close indeed, as if she was fain to hide even from these tender eyes, which, dimmed with great joy, looked upon her so worshippingly. There are certain greetings and farewells which may not be writ out in words, and these untranslatable messages winged their way from heart to heart between these two.
The grey heaven bent above them as if in benediction. The stern outlines of the old boulders faded into the dusk which seemed to enwrap them as if eager to mitigate their severity. The soft greys of the barren landscape, the tender paleness of the sky, seemed to hold the two lovers in a mystic embrace, isolating them in the radiance of their own love, even as the circumstances of a United Destiny were to hedge these two for ever from the world. There were jagged stones hidden by the tender mists of twilight, and bitter herbs and thistles grew unseen about them, but to their eyes the barren reaches of Mullein meadow blossomed like a rose. Doubtless, they two, like all we mortals, would some day “fall upon the thorns of life and bleed,” but together surely no terror would overcome them nor any despair make its home in their hearts, so long as across the chasms in the life-road they could touch each other’s hands. The first rapture of their meeting vanished, as a bird soaring in the blue disappears from vision, which yet does not feel a sense of loss, because though the eye sees not the heart knows that afar in the empyrean the triumphant wings still beat.
“Mabella—my Mabella. You love me?”