“But you challenged me,—to follow you! I want to know why you did that!”
She drew away, struggling to free herself
“Why was it, Marian?”
“Because I wanted—”
“Yes.”
“I wanted you to come, Squire Glenarm!”
Thrice spring has wakened the sap in the Glenarm wood since that night. Yesterday I tore March from the calendar. April in Indiana! She is an impudent tomboy who whistles at the window, points to the sunshine and, when you go hopefully forth, summons the clouds and pelts you with snow. The austere old woodland, wise from long acquaintance, finds no joy in her. The walnut and the hickory have a higher respect for the stormier qualities of December. April in Indiana! She was just there by the wall, where now the bluebird pauses dismayed, and waits again the flash of her golden sandals. She bent there at the lakeside the splash of a raindrop ago and tentatively poked the thin, brittle ice with the pink tips of her little fingers. April in the heart! It brings back the sweet wonder and awe of those days, three years ago, when Marian and I, waiting for June to come, knew a joy that thrilled our hearts like the tumult of the first robin’s song. The marvel of it all steals over me again as I hear the riot of melody in meadow and wood, and catch through the window the flash of eager wings.
My history of the affair at Glenarm has overrun the bounds I had set for it, and these, I submit, are not days for the desk and pen. Marian is turning over the sheets of manuscript that lie at my left elbow, and demanding that I drop work for a walk abroad. My grandfather is pacing the terrace outside, planning, no doubt, those changes in the grounds that are his constant delight.
Of some of the persons concerned in this winter’s tale let me say a word more. The prisoner whom Larry left behind we discharged, after several days, with all the honors of war, and (I may add without breach of confidence) a comfortable indemnity. Larry has made a reputation by his book on Russia—a searching study into the conditions of the Czar’s empire, and, having squeezed that lemon, he is now in Tibet. His father has secured from the British government a promise of immunity for Larry, so long as that amiable adventurer keeps away from Ireland. My friend’s latest letters to me contain, I note, no reference to The Sod.
Bates is in California conducting a fruit ranch, and when he visited us last Christmas he bore all the marks of a gentleman whom the world uses well. Stoddard’s life has known many changes in these years, but they must wait for another day, and, perhaps, another historian. Suffice it to say that it was he who married us —Marian and me—in the little chapel by the wall, and that when he comes now and then to visit us, we renew our impression of him as a man large of body and of soul. Sister Theresa continues at the head of St. Agatha’s, and she and the other Sisters of her brown-clad company are delightful neighbors. Pickering’s failure and subsequent disappearance were described sufficiently in the newspapers and his name is never mentioned at Glenarm.