I clasped Pelleas’ arm while I tried to understand. We who had despaired of contriving for Hobart Eddy a concrete romance, were we to gather that this was love at first sight, on our hearth-rug? Even we have never officiated at anything so spectacular as love at first sight. But my mind caught and clung to that “again.”
“‘Again’?” I echoed it.
“I have loved her for years,” Hobart said; “she was to have been my wife. And she went away, went without a word, so that I couldn’t trace her, and why do you think she did that? Because the lameness came—and she never let me know.”
“It wasn’t ... I thought ... O, I ought not now ...” Eunice cried, “but not because I don’t care. O, never that!”
On which, “Hobart Eddy! Eunice!” I uttered. “Like a Young Husband, you know—didn’t I say so? Haven’t I always said so? Pelleas, you see the rule does apply to Hobart too! And I thought of a bride at once, at once and then that dimple—O,” said I, “I don’t know in the least what I’m talking about—at least you don’t know. But I don’t care, because I’m so glad.”
“You dear fairy god-people,” Hobart Eddy said in the midst of his happiness, “you told me charming things were always happening!”
“To help us to believe,” I heard Pelleas saying to himself.
O, I wish that we two had had more to do in bringing it all about. As it was I was very thankful that it proved not to be love at first sight, for I would see one’s love, like one’s bonnets, chosen with a fine deliberation. But about this affair there had been the most sorrowful deliberation. Pelleas and I sat on the sofa before them and they told us a fragment here and a fragment there and joy over all. Hobart Eddy had met her years before in her little New England town. His wooing had been brief and, because of an aunt who knew what it was to be an ogre, nearly secret. Week by week through one Spring he had gone to see Eunice, and then had come her ugly fall from her saddle of which until now he had never known; for when she understood that the lameness was likely to be incurable she and that disgustingly willing aunt had simply disappeared and left no trace at all.
“What else could I do?” Eunice appealed to us simply; “I loved him ... how could I let him sacrifice his life to me ... a cripple? Aunt Lydia said he would forget. I had no home; we were staying here and there for Aunt Lydia’s health; and to leave no trace was easy. What else could I do?”
“O,” Hobart Eddy said only, “Eunice, Eunice!” There was that in his voice which made Pelleas and me look at him in the happiest wonder. And I remembered that other note in his voice that day in the orchard with Enid’s baby. In the statue story Pelleas and I have never believed that Galatea came to life alone. For we think that the Pygmalions have an awakening not less sacred.