Bellair sat upon a stone and looked at the child: “I wish you could tell me, little man ... but you are not telling. You know it all, like the sea—but you do not tell.... And I’ll see you so many times, when I’m away,—see you like this and wish many times I could hold you. For we were always friends, good friends. You didn’t ask much.... And you were fine in the pinch, my son.... That little cry I heard, that little cry.... He loved you, and promised great things for you. I’ve come to believe it, little man, for I know your mother. That’s good gambling, from where I stand.... He knew it first. He knew it all first. And you didn’t tell him.... Oh, be all to her, little Gleam—be all to her, and tell her I love her—when she looks away to the sea. Tell her, I’ll be coming, perhaps.... I didn’t know I’d ever be called to kiss a little boy—but it’s all the same to you ... and take care of her for me.”
They were standing together a last time before his journey. The carriage had been waiting many minutes. The child was propped upon the lawn, and Elsie was picking her steps and shaking her paws that met the dew under the grass. His eye was held over her shoulder to the weathered door of the stone cottage. It was ajar and coppery brown, like the walls above the young vines. And over her other shoulder, too, was the brilliant etheric divide of the sea. He had to go back and stand a moment in the large room. The wind and the light came in; the vine tendrils came trailing in. He saw her books, her pictures, her chair, her door....
He stood beside her again, and tried to tell her how moving these weeks had been.
“Yes, we have seen both sides, and this was the perfect side. We saw the other, well——”
“And you are not caught in either—that’s what thrills me most,” said he. “I am always caught—in hunger and thirst and fear and pain—in beauty and possessions. But you have stood the same through it all—ready to come or go, ready for sun or storm——”
“After years of changes and uncertainty, one comes to rely only upon the true things.”
“I shall want to come back—before the first turn of the road,” he said. “I think I am hungry for the little house now——”
She put her arms about him. His heart was torn, but there was something immortal in the moment.
“This shall always be your home,” she said. “You may come back to-night—to-morrow—in twenty years—this is your house. I shall be here. I shall teach him to know and welcome you.... We are different. We are not strangers. We have gone down into the deep ways together. We shall always know each other, as no one else can, or as we can know no others. So we must be much to each other—and this is our home. You will never forget.... Oh, yes, you must come back—just as you must go away——”
Sentence by sentence, softly, easily spoken; not with a great beauty of saying, but with a bestowal of the heart that compelled his finest receptivity. And she had held him as a mother might, or as a sister, or as a woman who loved him. There was something in her tenure, of all the loves of earth. He looked deeply into her eyes, but hers was the love that did not betray itself then in the senses. He could not know, for he would not trust his own heart.... But this he knew, and was much to ponder afterward: This which she gave, could not have been given, nor have been received, before the days of the open boat. So strange was the ministry of that fasting.