“There are more verses; I will show you the poem so that you may enjoy the spirit of it. It was a favourite of mine, since boyhood. And now I see the crests of the waves towards the southern skyline, rearing higher. The sea breeze is often chill. Suppose we scramble up the path and go inside?”
“What a lovely view! and what delicious verses,” cried the girl. “Shall we always be as happy as we are now? I feel as if I did not deserve it.”
“And I am lost in wonder and admiration at the supernatural state of bliss in which I find myself,” answered Blount. “I ought to throw something of value into the deep, to avert the anger of Nemesis. Here goes,” and before Imogen could prevent him, he had unfastened a bangle which he wore on his wrist, and hurled it far into the advancing tide. “Let us hope that no fish will swallow it, and return it, through the agency of the cookmaid.”
“Now, I call that wasteful and superstitious,” quoth Imogen, pretending to be angry. “You will need all the silver in the South Pacific Comstock, if you throw about jewellery in that reckless fashion. And who gave you that bangle, may I ask? You never showed it to me.”
“I won it in a bet, long ago. The agreement was that whoever won was to wear the bangle till he or she was married. After that, they might dispose of it as they thought fit. I forgot all about it till to-day. So this seemed an auspicious hour, and I sacrificed it to the malign deities.”
“And this is man’s fidelity!” quoted Imogen. “For of course, it was a woman. Confess! Didn’t your heart give a little throb, as you pitched away the poor thing’s gift?”
“Hm! the poor thing, as you call her, is happily married ‘to a first-class Earl, that keeps his carriage.’ I daresay she’s forgotten my name, as I nearly did that of the possessor of the bangle.”
The allotted term of happiness passed at the Hermitage, for such had been the name given to it by the original owner, who lived there for the last remaining years of a long life, too quickly came to an end. For happiness, it surely was, of the too rare, exquisitely attempered quality, undisturbed by regrets for the past, or forebodings for the future. Such wounds and bruises of the heart, as he had encountered, though painful, even in a sense agonising, at the time, were of a nature to be cured by the subtle medicaments of the old established family physician, Time. They were not “his fault,” so to speak. Such sorrows and smarts are not of the nature of incurable complaints. The agony abates. The healthful appetite in youth for variety, for change of scene, the solace of bodily exercise, and the competition with new intelligences, extinguish morbid imaginings: thus leaving free the immortal Genius of Youth to range amid the unexplored kingdoms of Romance, where in defiance of giants and goblins, he is yet fated to discover and carry off the fairy princess.
“And I did discover her, darling, didn’t I?” said he, fondly pressing her hand which lay so lovingly surrendered to his own, as after a long stroll through the fern-shadowed glades of the still untouched primeval forest, they came in sight of the Hermitage, and halted to watch the breakers rolling on the beach below the verandah, where during their first delirium they had so often watched the moon rise over a summer sea.