CHAPTER XVI.
AT LAST.
There came a bright and perfect day, followed by a night quite its equal. Had a petition been sent to the portals above, where the weather angel sat, there could not have come from him more mellow, golden hours than those that dawned for the Cresent City that beautiful Wednesday of early March. All along the flower-clad streets men and women walked, sauntering, in their Southern fashion, stopping now and then to greet each other, or to gaze in the shop windows. The old peanut woman smiled upon her stores as she kept the lazy flies away; and the violet stands sold double their usual number of bunches. Every one was out. Every one seemed happy. Children, in white dresses and gay sashes, wandered hand in hand along the street, their sweet laughter mingling with the sounds around them.
In after years, how often came to those two the memory of that brief morn. Alone, with folded arms, Neil stood and watched the setting sun, as it went down across the waters at West End. The white sails of countless pleasure boats were framed against the sky. There came a strange, wild yearning in his heart to be upon the deep once more—to go forever from all this! And yet he could not leave her. He thought of taking her with him to foreign lands and beginning anew his life. But the end? What must it be?
All day he had thought to seek her, and all day he had not done so. He had walked the beautiful streets in fierce restlessness, and there would come again and again that feeling of solitude, impossible to describe; and though the sound of her last hurried whisper rang ever in his ear, still did he shrink away, hugging to his breast the memory of a treasure he longed yet dared not to look upon.
“Would that I might keep you pure, my love, pure as the children I pass in the mid-day beams!” and the man, stretching out his arms in the twilight gloom, surrendered himself to his fate.
All through those golden hours, she, too, had thought of him; she had spent the day across the lake, wandering on the sea shore, pausing, now and then, in the shadow of some great tree to throw back her light veil that she might watch the distant ships go out into the ocean. She, too, had longed to be away from “all this,” and still, ever with each fleeting thought, came the heart cry, “I cannot leave thee, for I know thou wilt come again!”
Back to the city, when the night dews fell, they came; and, after she had rested a little, she went with her mother to the theatre. They did not think to look at the bills, before starting for the Grand, nor ask the name of the troupe, so when the curtain went up on the second act they were not a little surprised to see an old friend step to the footlights. Gwendoline whispered to her mother:
“Mamma, I am so glad we came. I have always enjoyed her acting so.”
Mrs. Gwinn put up her glasses.
“Why, yes!—and it really is Clovis! I thought she was in California!” said her mother.