Maddy did not know what she was saying, or half comprehend the effect it had on Guy, who forgot everything save that she had missed him, had turned to him in her trouble, and it was not in his nature to resist her appeal. With a spring he was at her side, and lifting her in his arms seated himself upon her mother’s grave; then straining her tightly to his bosom, he kissed her again and again. Hot, burning, passionate kisses they were, which took from Maddy all power of resistance, even had she wished to resist, which she did not. Too weak to reason, or see the harm, if harm there were, in being loved by Guy, she abandoned herself for a brief interval to the bliss of knowing that she was beloved, and of hearing him tell her so.
“Darling Maddy,” he said, “I went away because you sent me, but now I have come back, and nothing shall part us again. You are mine, I claim you here at your mother’s grave. Dear Maddy, I did not know of all this till three days ago, when Agnes’s letter found me almost at the Rocky Mountains. Then I traveled day and night, reaching Aikenside this morning, and coming straight to Honedale. I wish I had come before, now that I know you wanted me. Say that again, Maddy. Tell me again that you missed and wanted me.”
He was smoothing her hair, as her head still lay pillowed upon his breast, so he could not see the spasm of pain which contorted her features as he thus appealed to her. Half bewildered, Maddy could not at first make out whether it were a blissful dream or a reality, that she was there in Guy’s arms, with his kisses on her forehead, lips and cheek, his words of love in her ear, and the soft summer sky smiling down upon her. Alas, it was a dream from which she was awakened by the thought of one across the sea, whoso place she had usurped, and this it was which brought the grieved expression to her face as she answered mournfully:
“I did want you, Guy, when I forgot; but now—oh, Guy—Lucy Atherstone!”
With a gesture of impatience Guy was about to answer, when something in the heavy fall of the little hand from his shoulder alarmed him, and lifting up the drooping head he saw that Maddy had fainted. Then back across the meadow Guy bore her to the cottage, where Flora, who had just returned from a neighbor’s, whither she had gone upon an errand, was looking for her in much affright, and wondering who had come from Aikenside with that wet, tired horse, which showed so plainly how hard it had been driven.
They carried Maddy again into her little chamber, which she never left until the golden harvest sheaves were gathered in, and the hot September sun was ripening the fruits of autumn. But now she had a new nurse, a constant attendant, who during the day seldom left her except to talk with and amuse Uncle Joseph, mourning below because no one sang to him or noticed him as Maddy used to do. He had not been sent to the asylum, as Maddy feared, but by way of relieving Flora had been taken to Farmer Green’s, where he was so homesick and discontented that at Guy’s instigation he was suffered to return to the cottage, crying like a little child when the old familiar spot was reached, kissing his arm-chair, the cook-stove, the tongs, Mrs. Noah and Flora, and timidly offering to kiss the Lord Governor himself, as he persisted in calling Guy, who declined the honor, but listened quietly to the crazy man’s promise “not to to spit the smallest kind of a spit on the floor, or anywhere except in its proper place.”
Guy had passed through several states of mind during the interval in which we have seen so little of him. Furious at one time, and reckless as to consequences, he had determined to break with Lucy and marry Maddy, in spite of everybody; then, as a sense of honor came over him, he resolved to forget Maddy, if possible, and marry Lucy at once. It was in this last mood, and while roaming over the Western country, whither after his banishment he had gone, that he wrote Lucy a strange kind of letter, saying he had waited for her long enough, and sick or well he should claim her the coming autumn. To this letter Lucy had responded quickly, sweetly reproving Guy for his impatience, softly hinting that latterly he had been quite as culpable as herself in the matter of deferring their union, and appointing the bridal day for the —— of December. After this was settled Guy felt better, though the old sore spot in his heart, where Maddy Clyde had been, was very sore still, and sometimes it required all his powers of self-control to keep from writing to Lucy and asking to be released from an engagement so irksome as his had become. He had neglected to answer Agnes’s letters when he first left home, and she did not know where he was until a short time before his return, when she wrote apprising him of grandpa’s death and Maddy’s severe illness. This brought him at once, and Maddy’s involuntary outburst when she met him in the graveyard, changed the whole current of his intentions. Let what would come, Maddy Clyde should be his wife, and as such he watched over her constantly, nursing her back to life, and by his manner effectually silencing all remark, so that the neighbors whispered among themselves what Maddy’s prospects were, and, as was quite natural, were a very little more attentive to the future lady of Aikenside. Poor Maddy! it was a terrible trial which awaited her, but it must be met, and so with prayers and tears she fortified herself to meet it, while Guy hung over her, never guessing of all that was passing in her mind, or how, when he was out of sight, the lips he had longed so much to kiss, but never had since that day in the graveyard, quivered with anguish as they asked for strength to do right; crying often, “Help me, Father, to do my duty, and give me, too, a greater inclination to do it than I now possess.”
Maddy’s heart failed her sometimes, and she might have yielded to the temptation but for a letter from Lucy, full of eager anticipations of the time when she should see Guy, never to part again.
“Sometimes,” she wrote, “there comes over me a dark foreboding of evil—a fear that I shall miss the cup now just within my reach; but I pray the bad feelings away. I am sure there is no living being who will come between us to break my heart, and as I know God doeth all things well, I trust him wholly and cease to doubt.”
It was well the letter came when it did, as it helped Maddy to meet the hour she so much dreaded, and which came at last on an afternoon when Mrs. Noah had gone to Aikenside, and Flora had gone on an errand to a neighbor’s two miles away, thus leaving Guy free to tell the story, so old, yet always new to him who tells it and to her who listens, the story which, as Guy told it, sitting by Maddy’s side, with her hands in his, thrilled her through and through, making the sweat-drops start out around her lips and underneath her hair; the story which made Guy himself pant nervously and tremble like a leaf, so earnestly he told her how long he had loved her, of the picture withheld, the jealousy he felt each time the doctor named her, the selfish joy he experienced when he heard the doctor was refused; of his growing dissatisfaction with his engagement, his frequent resolves to break it, his final decision, which that scene in the graveyard had reversed, and then asked if she would not be his—not doubtfully, but confidently, eagerly as if sure of her answer.