"Take me, Gordon," I said, as we entered and closed the door behind us. "Take me," the tears now flowing fast, "and never, never let me go."
"You're mine," was all his answer as his arms closed about me. "God gave me you, my darling."
XVIII
THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH
It matters not how parched and bare the plain of life may be, one living spring of joy can enrich and beautify it all. One master gladness can make the heart strong against all the ills of life; it matters not how fierce and angry be the winds, if the heart have shelter. If God be for us who can be against us?
Gordon and I had certainly had our share of the ills of life; and the winds of trouble had found us out. Of course, it doesn't seem so hard to bear, now that it's past; but I reckon few young married couples ever encountered more head wind or sailed more troubled seas. I know everybody thinks their own troubles are the worst; if we could trade with other people for a week, we'd probably be glad to trade back when the time was up. Yet it cannot be denied, so far as we were concerned, that we had a good deal to sadden us.
To begin with, we were far from home and kindred. Gordon's relatives—he seldom spoke of any but his father—were far across the sea. Mine were a thousand miles away, in the sunny Southland, separated from me now by the unhappy storm that had gathered about my husband's head. We never spoke of going home; for Gordon, I knew, would not consider it, and I would not go without him.
Then, too, there was little now to take me there. My mother had passed away. It was a couple of years after we came to Canada that the end had come. Suddenly stricken with the hand of death while summering in the remote mountains of Western Virginia, the dear spirit had found its rest. I could not be notified till it was too late to go, even for the last sad offices; so I went not at all. The heavenly tenderness of my husband through all those days of sorrow lingers with me as a precious memory. Uncle Henry and Aunt Agnes wrote me once or twice, and always sympathetically enough. But it was evident that they recognized through it all how wide was the gulf that divided me from the days and scenes of girlhood. And they sent their "respects" to Gordon, which is about the politest form of epitaph that can be graven on the tomb of friendship.
It was in the very midst of this parched and dreary plain (to quote the words with which I began the chapter) that a spring of living joy suddenly flung forth its waters; amid the troublous winds, our hearts found the dearest of all earthly havens.
It seems hard to realize it now—but I don't believe Gordon and I were unhappy before baby came. Unhappy, I mean, because there wasn't any. I don't think we ever felt that life was poor and skimped and silent; I don't believe we looked and longed at all. No, we didn't—and that's the strangest part of it. The troubles that people with children had—the imprisonment by day—and the marches by night—and the plaintive serenades of the early dawn; the care and responsibility and disappointment, and often heartbreak, of later years—these were so frequently mentioned between us that I fear we came to indulge a kind of blasphemous complacency because we were immune. Then, too, we sometimes whispered the old sophistry that we had each other, in devotion undivided with another—which is nothing but a honeyed perjury.