“Oh, I have been so afraid this moment would never come,” said Garde, presently, when she could trust herself to speak. “It has been such a long, long time to wait.”
“I love you. Garde, dearest, I love you,” said Adam. “I love to say that I love you. I could say it all day: ‘Garde, I love you. Garde, I love you, dear, and love you.’ I have told every star in the heavens to tell you how I love you, dear. But I would rather tell you myself. Let me see you. Let me look at you, sweetheart.” He still held her hands, but at arms’ length away, and looked at her blushing face with such an adoration in his eyes as she had never beheld.
Indeed, Adam’s passion had swept her from her feet. It possessed her, enveloped her form, held her enthralled in an ecstasy so profound that she gasped to catch her breath, while her heart leaped as if it were pealing out her happiness.
They were standing thus, oblivions of everything, when a sour-visaged Puritan, passing by the gate, halted a moment to look at them malignantly. It was none other than Isaiah Pinchbecker, the scolding hypocrite who had danced to Adam’s fiddling, several years before. He suddenly gave himself a nudge in the ribs. His eyes lighted up with grim satisfaction. He had recognized the rover, and with news in his narrow head he hastened away, prodding himself assiduously as he went.
In the meantime, Grandther Donner, whose naps lasted hardly as long as forty winks, had awakened. He started from his sleep as if he had suddenly caught himself neglecting to watch the charter. Glancing hastily about the room, he missed Garde at once. In his brain, two cells had broken their walls so that their substance commingled, till Garde and the charter seemed at times the same, and always so interlinked that he dared not let her go a yard from his sight.
He tottered to his feet, and rubbing his thumb diligently across the ends of his fingers, went out at the open door, toward his grandchild, guided by some sense which in an animal is often highly developed. He came upon the scene in the garden just as Adam, after looking his heart full, nearly to bursting, had drawn Garde close again, to kiss her hands in uncontainable joy.
At sight of Adam’s costume, which was not a great departure from that of the Royalists of the day, in contradistinction from that of the Puritans, David Donner flew into a violent rage. He raised his two palsied hands above his head and screamed.
“Garde!” he cried, “Garde! Kill that man—Kill him!—kill him! The charter! The King’s devil! Kill him! He’s ripping the charter to pieces with his teeth!”
He came running toward them, clawing his nails down across his face till he made his pale cheeks bleed, and tore out little waving filaments, like gossamer, from his snow-white hair. Almost at their feet he fell full length, where he struck at the soil and dug in his finger nails, frantically, all the while making terrible sounds in his paroxysm, most dreadful to hear.
Adam and Garde had started, he merely alert in the presence of the unexpected, she in a fear that sent the color from her face so abruptly that it seemed she must swoon at once. She uttered one little cry, clung galvanically to Adam’s fingers for a second, and then bent quickly down to place her hand on the old man’s head.