第79章

'When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last, And took a long farewell, and wished in vain For seats like these beyond the western main, And shuddering still to face the distant deep, Returned and wept, and still returned to weep.'

Oliver Goldsmith.

It is almost over, our Irish holiday, so full of delicious, fruitful experiences; of pleasures we have made and shared, and of other people's miseries and hardships we could not relieve. Almost over!

Soon we shall be in Dublin, and then on to London to meet Francesca's father; soon be deciding whether she will be married at the house of their friend the American ambassador, or in her own country, where she has really had no home since the death of her mother.

The ceremony over, Mr. Monroe will start again for Cairo or Constantinople, Stockholm or St. Petersburg; for he is of late years a determined wanderer, whose fatherly affection is chiefly shown in liberal allowances, in pride of his daughter's beauty and many conquests, in conscientious letter-writing, and in frequent calls upon her between his long journeys. It is because of these paternal predilections that we are so glad Francesca's heart has resisted all the shot and shell directed against it from the batteries of a dozen gay worldlings and yielded so quietly and so completely to Ronald Macdonald's loyal and tender affection.

At tea-time day before yesterday, Salemina suggested that Francesca and I find the heart of Aunt David's labyrinth, the which she had discovered in a less than ten minutes' search that morning, leaving her Gaelic primer behind her that we might bring it back as a proof of our success. You have heard in Pearla's Celtic fairy tale the outcome of this little expedition, and now know that Ronald Macdonald and Himself planned the joyful surprise for us, and by means of Salemina's aid carried it out triumphantly.

Ronald crossing to Ireland from Glasgow, and Himself from Liverpool, had met in Dublin, and travelled post-haste to the Shamrock Inn in Devorgilla, where they communicated with Salemina and begged her assistance in their plot.

I was looking forward to my husband's arrival within a week, but Ronald had said not a word of his intended visit; so that Salemina was properly nervous lest some one of us should collapse out of sheer joy at the unexpected meeting.

I have been both quietly and wildly happy many times in my life, but I think yesterday was the most perfect day in all my chain of years.

Not that in this long separation I have been dull, or sad, or lonely. How could I be? Dull, with two dear, bright, sunny letters every week, letters throbbing with manly tenderness, letters breathing the sure, steadfast, protecting care that a strong man gives to the woman he has chosen. Sad, with my heart brimming over with sweet memories and sweeter prophecies, and all its tiny crevices so filled with love that discontent can find no entrance there! Lonely, when the vision of the beloved is so poignantly real in absence that his bodily presence adds only a final touch to joy!

Dull, or sad, when in these soft days of spring and early summer I have harboured a new feeling of companionship and oneness with Nature, a fresh joy in all her bounteous resource and plenitude of life, a renewed sense of kinship with her mysterious awakenings!

The heavenly greenness and promise of the outer world seem but a reflection of the hopes and dreams that irradiate my own inner consciousness.

My art, dearly as I loved it, dearly as I love it still, never gave me these strange, unspeakable joys with their delicate margin of pain. Where are my ambitions, my visions of lonely triumphs, my imperative need of self-expression, my ennobling glimpses of the unattainable, my companionship with the shadows in which an artist's life is so rich? Are they vanished altogether? I think not; only changed in the twinkling of an eye, merged in something higher still, carried over, linked on, transformed, transmuted, by Love the alchemist, who, not content with joys already bestowed, whispers secret promises of raptures yet to come.