Part 57 (2/2)

He crept along cautiously. He fancied he had caught a white gleam between the trees that was neither suns.h.i.+ne nor water. He groped his way through the underwood, putting the branches back that they might not crackle, and then all at once he stood still; for he saw a little runlet of a stream making dimples of eddies round a fallen tree, and a great silver birch sweeping over it; and there, in her soft spring dress, with the ripples of golden-brown hair s.h.i.+ning under her hat, was his lost Wee Wifie. She had floated a rowan-branch on the stream and was watching it idly, and Nero, sitting up on his haunches beside his little mistress, was watching it too.

Hugh's heart beat faster as he looked at her. He had not admired her much in the old days, and yet how beautiful she was. Either his taste had changed or these sad months had altered her; but a fairer and a sweeter face he owned to himself that he had never seen, and all his man's heart went out to her in in a deep and pitiful love. Just then there was a crackling in the bushes and Nero growled, and Fay, looking up startled, saw her husband standing opposite to her.

In life there are often strange meetings and partings; moments that seem to hold the condensed joy or pain of years. One grows a little stony--a little colorless. There are flushes perhaps, a weight and oppression of unshed tears, and a falter of questions never answered; but it is not until afterward that full consciousness comes, that one knows that the concentrated essence of bitterness or pleasure has been experienced, the memory of which will last to our dying days. It was so with Fay when she looked up from her mossy log and saw Hugh with his fair-bearded face standing under the dark larches. She did not faint or cry out, but she clasped her little hands, and said piteously, ”Oh, Hugh, do not be angry with me. I tried so hard to be lost,” and then stood and s.h.i.+vered in the long gra.s.s.

”You tried so hard to be lost,” he said, in a choked voice. ”Child, child, do you know what you have done; you have nearly broken my heart as well as your own. I have been very angry, Fay, but I have forgotten it now; but you must come back to me, darling, for I can not live without my Wee Wifie any more;” and as she hid her face in her trembling hands, not daring to look at him, he suddenly lifted the little creature in his arms; and as Fay felt herself drawn to his breast, she knew that she was no longer an unloved wife.

She was calmer now. At his words and touch she had broken into an agony of weeping that had terrified him; but he had soothed her with fond words and kisses, and presently she was sitting beside him with her shy, sweet face radiant with happiness, and her hands clasped firmly in his. He had been telling her about his accident, and his sad solitary winter, and of the heart-sickness that he had suffered.

”Oh, my darling, will you ever forgive me?” she whispered. ”It was for your sake I went. How could I know that you would miss me so--that you really wanted me? it nearly killed me to leave you; and I do not think I should have lived long if you had not found me.”

”My child,” he said, very gravely and gently, ”we have both done wrong, and must forgive each other; but my sin is the heavier. I was older and I knew the world, and I ought to have remembered that my child-wife did not know it too. If you had not been so young you would never have left me, but now my Wee Wifie will never desert me again.”

”No, never. Oh,” pressing nearer to him with a shudder, ”to think how you have suffered. I could not have borne it if I had known.”

”Yes,” he said, lightly, for her great, beautiful eyes were wide with trouble at the recollection, and he wanted to see her smile, ”it has changed me into a middle-aged man. Look how my hair has worn off my forehead, and there are actually gray hairs in my beard. People will say we look like father and daughter when they see us together.”

”Oh,” she returned, shyly, for it was not quite easy to look at him--Hugh was so different somehow--”I shall not mind what people say.

Now I have my own husband back, it will not matter a bit to me how gray and old you are.” Then, as Hugh laughed and kissed her, she said in a very low voice, ”Do you really mean that you can be content with me, Hugh; that I shall not disappoint you any more?”

”Content,” he answered, fondly, ”that is a poor word. Have I ever really deserved you, sweetheart; but I mean to make up for that. You are very generous, Fay; you do not speak of Margaret--ah, I thought so,” as her head drooped against his shoulder--”she is in your mind, but you will not venture to speak of her.”

”I am so afraid you must regret her, Hugh.”

And Hugh, with a shade of sadness on his fine face, answered, slowly:

”If I regret her, it is as I regret my lost youth. She belongs to my old life; now I only reverence and cherish her memory. Darling, we must understand each other very clearly on this point, for all our unhappiness springs from that. We must have no secrets, no reservations in our future life; you must never fear to speak to me of Margaret. She was very dear to me once, and in some sense she is dear to me still, but not now, thank G.o.d, so precious in my eyes as the wife He has given me.” Then, as she put her arms round his neck and thanked him with innocent, wifely kisses, he suddenly pressed her to him pa.s.sionately, and asked her to forgive him, for he could never forgive himself.

Then, as the evening shadows crept into the green nest, Fay proposed timidly that they should go back to the Manse, for she wanted to show Hugh their boy; and Hugh consented at once. And hand in hand they went through the tangled underwood and past the s.h.i.+mmering falls; and as Hugh looked down on his little wife and saw the new sweet womanliness that had grown on her with her motherhood, and the meek purity of her fair young face, he felt a proud happiness thrilling within him, and knew that it was G.o.d-given, and that its blessing would last him throughout his whole life.

CHAPTER XLII.

KNITTING UP THE THREADS.

Day unto day her dainty hands Make life's soil'd temples clean, And there's a wake of glory where Her spirit pure hath been.

At midnight through that shadow land Her living face doth gleam, The dying kiss her shadow, and The dead smile in her dream.

GERALD Ma.s.sEY.

A little later, Jean, honest woman, suffered an electric shock. She was brus.h.i.+ng out baby Hugh's curls, that had been disordered by the walk, when she thought she heard Mrs. St. Clair's footsteps, only it was over-quick like, as she remarked later, ”like a bairn running up the stairs,” but she fairly shook with surprise when the door opened, and a rosy, dimpled, smiling creature stood before her.

”Give me the baby, Jean, quick--no, never mind his sash, he looks beautiful. My husband has come, and he wants to see him. Yes, my boy!

Father has come”--nearly smothering him with kisses, which baby Hugh returned by mischievous grabs at her hair.

”Ech, sirs,” began Jean, turning very red; but before she could give vent to her surprise, a big, grand-looking man suddenly entered the old-fas.h.i.+oned room, and took mother and child in his arms before her very eyes.

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