So when the others were gone these two lingered. All through the long Spring afternoon they sat with us beside our crackling fire of bavin-sticks, telling us of this and that homely interest, of some one’s timid hope and another’s sacrifice, in the life of the little mission. Ah, I dare say that Carlyle and Hugo have the master’s hand for touching open a casement here and there and letting one look in upon an isolated life, and sympathizing for one passionate moment turn away before the space is closed again with darkness; but these two were destined that day to give us glimpses not less poignant, to open to us so many unknown hearts that we would be justified in never again being occupied with our own concerns. And when after tea they stood in the dusk of the hall-way trying to say good-bye, I think that their secret must have shone in our faces too; and, as the children say, “we all knew that we all knew,” and life was a thing of heavenly blessedness.
Young Mr. Lovelow took the hand of Pelleas, and mine he kissed.
“The Lord bless you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you, the Lord give you peace,” was in his eyes as he went away.
“And, O, sir,” Little Friend said shyly to Pelleas as she stood at the top of the steps, knotting her crimson muffler, “ain’t it good, after all, that Easter was all over ice?”
That night Pelleas carried upstairs a great armful of the Ascension lilies to stand in the moonlight of our window. We took lilies to the mantel, and set stalks of bloom on the table, with their trumpets turned within upon the room. And when the lower lights had been extinguished and Nichola had bidden us her grumbling good-night, we opened the door of that upper room where the moon was silvering the lilies; and we stood still, smitten with a common surprise.
“Pelleas,” I said, uncertainly, “O, Pelleas. I thought—”
“So did I,” said Pelleas, with a deep breath.
We bent above the lilies that looked so sweet-scented and yet had been barren of fragrance because, we had told ourselves, they seemed flowers of symbol without mission or message beyond the symbol, without hue or passion, or, so to say, experience. (“Perhaps if one were to make some one happy with them or to put them in a bride’s bouquet they would no longer be scentless,” Pelleas had quaintly said.) And now we were certain, as we stood hushed beside them, that our Easter lilies were giving out a faint, delicious fragrance.
I looked up at Pelleas almost fearfully in the flood of Spring moonlight. The radiance was full on his white hair and tranquil face, and he met my eyes with the knowledge that we were suddenly become the custodians of an exquisite secret. The words of the young servant of God came to me understandingly.