"SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN!"
Wednesday dawned; an ideal First of May: Garth was in the garden before breakfast.Jane heard him singing, as he passed beneath her window.
"It is not mine to sing the stately grace, The great soul beaming in my lady's face."She leaned out.
He was walking below in the freshest of white flannels; his step so light and elastic; his every movement so lithe and graceful; the only sign of his blindness the Malacca cane he held in his hand, with which he occasionally touched the grass border, or the wall of the house.She could only see the top of his dark head.It might have been on the terrace at Shenstone, three years before.She longed to call from the window; "Darling--my Darling! Good morning!
God bless you to-day."
Ah what would to-day bring forth;--the day when her full confession, and explanation, and plea for pardon, would reach him? He was such a boy in many ways; so light-hearted, loving, artistic, poetic, irrepressible; ever young, in spite of his great affliction.But where his manhood was concerned; his love; his right of choice and of decision; of maintaining a fairly-formed opinion, and setting aside the less competent judgment of others; she knew him rigid, inflexible.His very pain seemed to cool him, from the molten lover, to the bar of steel.
As Jane knelt at her window that morning, she had not the least idea whether the evening would find her travelling to Aberdeen, to take the night mail south; or at home forever in the heaven of Garth's love.
And down below he passed again, still singing:
"But mine it is to follow in her train;
Do her behests in pleasure or in pain;
Burn at her altar love's sweet frankincense, And worship her in distant reverence.""Ah, beloved!" whispered Jane, "not 'distant.' If you want her, and call her, it will be to the closest closeness love can devise.No more distance between you and me."And then, in the curious way in which inspired words will sometimes occur to the mind quite apart from their inspired context, and bearing a totally different meaning from that which they primarily bear, these words came to Jane: "For He is our peace, Who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us...that He might reconcile both...by the cross." "Ah, dear Christ!" she whispered."If Thy cross could do this for Jew and Gentile, may not my boy's heavy cross, so bravely borne, do it for him and for me? So shall we come at last, indeed, to 'kiss the cross.'"The breakfast gong boomed through the house.Simpson loved gongs.He considered them "Haristocratic." He always gave full measure.
Nurse Rosemary went down to breakfast.
Garth came in, through the French window, humming "The thousand beauties that I know so well." He was in his gayest, most inconsequent mood.He had picked a golden rosebud in the conservatory and wore it in his buttonhole.He carried a yellow rose in his hand.
"Good day, Miss Rosemary," he said."What a May Day! Simpson and Iwere up with the lark; weren't we, Simpson? Poor Simpson felt like a sort of 'Queen of the May,' when my electric bell trilled in his room, at 5 A.M.But I couldn't stay in bed.I woke with my something-is-going-to-happen feeling; and when I was a little chap and woke with that, Margery used to say: 'Get up quickly then, Master Garth, and it will happen all the sooner.' You ask her if she didn't, Simpson.Miss Gray, did you ever learn: 'If you're waking call me early, call me early, mother dear'? I always hated that young woman! I should think, in her excited state, she would have been waking long before her poor mother, who must have been worn to a perfect rag, making all the hussy's May Queen-clothes, overnight."Simpson had waited to guide him to his place at the table.Then he removed the covers, and left the room.
As soon as he had closed the door behind him, Garth leaned forward, and with unerring accuracy laid the opening rose upon Nurse Rosemary's plate.
"Roses for Rosemary," he said."Wear it, if you are sure the young man would not object.I have been thinking about him and the aunt.Iwish you could ask them both here, instead of going away on Thursday.We would have the 'maddest, merriest time!' I would play with the aunt, while you had it out with the young man.And I could easily keep the aunt away from nooks and corners, because my hearing is sharper than any aunt's eyes could be, and if you gave a gentle cough, I would promptly clutch hold of auntie, and insist upon being guided in the opposite direction.And I would take her out in the motor; and you and the young man could have the gig.And then when all was satisfactorily settled, we could pack them off home, and be by ourselves again.Ah, Miss Gray, do send for them, instead of leaving me on Thursday.""Mr.Dalmain," said Nurse Rosemary, reprovingly, as she leaned forward and touched his right hand with the rim of his saucer, "this May-Day morning has gone to your head.I shall send for Margery.She may have known the symptoms, of old.""It is not that," said Garth.He leaned forward and spoke confidentially."Something is going to happen to-day, little Rosemary.Whenever I feel like this, something happens.The first time it occurred, about twenty-five years ago, there was a rocking-horse in the hall, when I ran downstairs! I have never forgotten my first ride on that rocking-horse.The fearful joy when he went backward; the awful plunge when he went forward; and the proud moment when it was possible to cease clinging to the leather pommel.
