Part 52 (1/2)

”Certainly! They _can't_ understand it! They seem to think the South we love is a certain region and everything and everybody within its borders.”

”I have a mighty dim idea where its Northern border is sit-u-a-ted.”

”Why, so we all have! Our South isn't a matter of boundaries, or skies, or landscapes. Don't you and I find it all here now, simply because we've both got the true feeling--the one heart-beat for it?”

Barbara's only answer was a stronger heart-beat.

”It's not,” resumed March, ”a South of climate, like a Yankee's Florida.

It's a certain ungeographical South-within-the-South--as portable and intangible as--as----”

”As our souls in our bodies,” interposed Barbara.

”You've said it exactly! It's a sort o' something--social, civil, political, economic----”

”Romantic?”

”Yes, romantic! Something that makes----”

”'No land like Dixie in all the wide world over!'”

”Good!” cried John. ”Good! O, my mother's expressed that beautifully in a lyric of hers where she says though every endearing charm should fade away like a fairy gift our love would still entwine itself around the dear ruin--verdantly--I oughtn't to try to quote it. Doesn't her style remind you of some of the British poets? Aha! I knew you'd say so! Your father's noticed it. He says she ought to study Moore!”

Barbara looked startled, colored, and then was impa.s.sive again, all in an instant and so prettily, that John gave her his heartiest admiration even while chafed with new doubts of Garnet's genuineness.

The commercial man went back to the smoking-room to mention casually that Mrs. March was a poetess.

”There's mighty little,” John began, but the din of a pa.s.sing freight train compelled him to repeat much louder--”There's mighty little poetry that can beat Tom Moore's!”

Barbara showed herself so mystified and embarra.s.sed that March was sure she had not heard him correctly. He reiterated his words, and she understood and smiled broadly, but merely explained, apologetically, that she had thought he had said there was mighty little pastry could beat his mother's.

John laughed so heartily that Mrs. Fair looked back at Barbara with gay approval, and life seemed to him for the moment to have less battle-smoke and more suns.h.i.+ne; but by and by when he thought Barbara's attention was entirely on the landscape, she saw him unconsciously shake his head and heave a sigh.

LVI.

CONCERNING SECOND LOVE

When the train stopped at a station they talked of the book in her hand, and by the time it started on they were reading poems from the volume to each other. The roar of the wheels did not drown her low, searching tones; by bending close John could hear quite comfortably. Between readings they discussed those truths of the heart on which the poems touched. Later, though they still read aloud, they often looked on the page together.

In the middle of one poem they turned the book face downward to consider a question. Did Miss Garnet believe--Mr. March offered to admit that among the small elect who are really capable of a divine pa.s.sion there may be some with whom a second love is a genuine and beautiful possibility--yet it pa.s.sed his comprehension--he had never seen two dawns in one day--but did Miss Garnet believe such a second love could ever have the depth and fervor of the first?

Yes, she replied with slow care, she did--in a man's case at least. To every deep soul she did believe it was appointed to love once--yes--with a greater joy and pain than ever before or after, but she hardly thought this was first love. It was almost sure to be first love in a woman, for a woman, she said, can't afford to let herself love until she knows she is loved, and so her first love--when it really is love, and not a mere consent to be loved----

”Which is frequently all it is,” said John.

”Yes. But when it is a real love--it's fearfully sure and strong _because_ it has to be slow. I believe when such a love as that leaves a woman's heart, it is likely to leave it hope-less-ly strand-ed.”

”And you think it's different with a man?”

”Why, I hope it's sometimes different with a woman; but I believe, Mr.