“When I read that,” said Gabrielle, looking up with her face close to his, as he leaned at her shoulder, “I knew that the man I loved, loved me. And after that I couldn’t get home fast enough.”
“Gabrielle,” David said, trembling, and now she was in his arms. “Is it really so, dear? Dearest and loveliest of women, do you mean what you say?—Do you know what you are doing? I’m not the brilliant sort of man that you might marry, dear—I’ll never be rich, perhaps I’ll never be successful——”
“Ah, David,” the girl answered, facing him now, with both hands upon his shoulders, as he held her with his arms lightly linked about her, “do let’s not have any more misunderstandings and silences and half-said things at Wastewater? Tell me that you love me——”
There was a milky spring twilight in the old garden now; the sea had mysteriously blended itself with the sky, and a mild great moon was rising before the last of the sun’s radiance had fairly faded from the west. As the enervating warmth of the day died, delicious odours began to creep abroad in the dusk, and the plum tree that had burst prematurely into bloom shone like a great pale bouquet against the gathering shadows.
There were smells of grass and earth, the sweet breathing of a world wearied after the unwonted hours of sunshine; there was the clean smell of new paint from the regions back of the farmhouse and barn. The birds were still now, and the very sea seemed hushed.
And to both David and Gabrielle, as they dreamed of the days to come, the golden days of responsibilities and joys unthinkable now, it seemed that no hour would eclipse this hour, when they two, children of the old place, found love among its ruins, and planned there for a better future.
All the terrors, all the whispers, voices, fears, and hates, all the secrets and conspiracies that had shadowed Wastewater in its old and arrogant days were gone. Roger with his vanity and arrogance was gone, Lily with her tears, Cecily frightened and saddened in her youth, Flora with her dark repressions and thwarted love.
The old Sylvia was gone, too, and in her academically complacent place was the much more human Mrs. Tom Fleming. And David was gone; never again would he be only the dreamy, detached painter, the amused older brother and audience for the younger folk, the philosopher who looked at love dispassionately. David was a man, now, and the thought of having this woman for his wife, the thought of the future, when they two would make a home together, for ever and for ever, as long as life should last, made him feel as shaken, as awkward, as humble and ignorant as the boy he had never really been.
All gone. But there remained, steadfast, gray-eyed, sometimes all a mother, sometimes all a child, always simple, direct, loving, anxious for peace and harmony, this tawny-headed waif who had drifted in among the black Flemings so mysteriously, who had flourished upon neglect and injustice, who had borne sorrow and shame courageously and unfalteringly, and who was now, of them all, left to be mistress here, to begin the new history and the new line.