How fine of him to have kept true through all the years!--through vicissitudes and seductions such as she could not imagine or particularise, but which yet must have been most trying. And now they were re-united. And yet, how diffident and even shy he had seemed, at meeting her! and with so little to say. Depth of feeling!--to which language was too poor to give expression. It was beautiful. And what a joy for her, by-and-by, to lend his dumb soul language!--and to encourage his faltering emotions to body themselves in words.
"Douglas! Douglas! tender and true!" were the words which kept hymning themselves through her brain in a continuous rapture. Ah, what a hero! and how goodly was his shadow! It seemed but yesterday that they had parted. Ten years of dreariness, the worries and petty scufflings, small aims and smaller disappointments, which had seemed so long and dull and wearing in their passage, were all forgot and put away, like the flatness of a rainy afternoon, when it is over. She was in her teens again, strolling in the fields with Gilbert on Sunday afternoons, or reading with him on winter nights in the parlour of his uncle's homestead, when the children, her charges, were gone to bed.
The air from the fields blew in through the open windows, as the omnibus lumbered on, dewy and cool, and sweet with the scent of second-growth clover; and she thought of the humming of bees, and the sunshine and the peace of the long vacation, when Gilbert was home from college, and their talks about the world, and books, and college lore, which had been so inspiring, and had filled her with ambitions, and tempted her to break from rustic life, and work and struggle, till now she was a professor in the Female College of Montpelier. What poor dry husks it had all appeared to her but that very morning! And now it was past, clean vanished out of her life; and she felt like a moth when it casts the chrysalis and spreads its wings to sport upon the scented air. The wonder of it all! and the beauty! Now that they were past, she would not have had the times of dark probation shortened by a day.
The omnibus jogged tranquilly on its way in the sweet summer night, diverging here and there to drop a passenger at his own gate, and then resuming its course, no one remonstrating at delay or seeking to quicken the pace. The casuals were all and severally deposited at last. A little longer, and the journey was completed; the dark bulk of the hotel, with its countless lights in ranges long-drawn-out and twinkling tier on tier, a garish illumination intruding on the stillness and mystery of night, loomed up before them, and the travellers drew rein before the entrance at Clam Beach.
It was almost with regret that the two found themselves at their journey's end, so pleasant had it been; and yet they had not exchanged a word. Their musings, different as they were, had been alike pleasurably engrossing, and alike productive in each of kindness for the other. No two people could have been mutually better disposed than were Gilbert and Maida as he handed her out, and waving the porter aside, insisted on carrying in her rugs with his own hands.
"Maidy Springer! you back!" was ejaculated, as Maida reached the hall-way landing; and out of the darkness of the outside gallery swooped Mrs Denwiddie in a whirlwind of flapping drapery, enveloping Maida in a cloud of kisses and black grenadine.
"So glad to have you back again, my dear. It's been real lonesome this afternoon without you. But what has brought you? I thought you were gone to be made a doctoress of philosophy,--and here you are again; and not alone either! Is that the philosophy we study? No better than the rest, for all your learning. It's woman's subjick you incline to after all--a young man--when you can get him. Sly-boots! And me never to suspect it. It's not an hour since I was argying with that stuck-up old Mrs Wilkie, and insistin' that you was all intelleck; and here you are, back with a gentleman to disprove my words."
Maida felt doubtful how she should reply, and but for the joy which filled her she would have resented the other's inquisitive freedom. It seemed to her at that moment, however, that nothing could ever vex her more, and a reproachful look was all she could call up, by way of self-assertion.
"Well, yes, my dear," the widow answered to the look, "I'll own to it. I am making free. But it comes of the interest I feel in you; though many's the spat you and me has had together. But who's the gentleman? A mighty fine man. Is it HIM? the one you kind of let on about, that was away making a fortune to marry you on? Sakes alive, now! Ain't that pretty! If this ain't true love, there's no sich thing. And so little as you said! And so despondent-like you used to seem! I reely thought the whole a flam, and you just makin' believe a bit, because the gentlemen here didn't much mind you. And now, perhaps, you'll be married the first, for all the airs some tries to put on." And again she pumped Maida's hands up and down by way of congratulation.
"And now, my dear," the widow resumed, "you must make me acquainted with the gentleman himself. I'm fairly dyin' to know him. So true and so constant! I wonder if there's more like him where he comes from. I never saw the man myself would be so faithful. But maybe it's yourself, Maidy Springer, has some knack of bindin' them to you; though that's a notion never struck me before."