第34章

Jane pressed her hands upon her breast."Garth," she whispered, "Garth, I UNDERSTAND.My own poor boy, it was so hard to you to be sent away just then.But you had had all--all you wanted, in those few wonderful moments, and nothing can rob you of that fact.And you have made me SO yours that, whatever the future brings for you and me, no other face will ever be hidden here.It is yours, and I am yours--to-night, and henceforward, forever."Jane leaned her forehead on the window-sill.The moonlight fell on the heavy coils of her brown hair.The scent of the magnolia blooms rose in fragrance around her.The song of a nightingale purled and thrilled in an adjacent wood.The lonely years of the past, the perplexing moments of the present, the uncertain vistas of the future, all rolled away.She sailed with Garth upon a golden ocean far removed from the shores of time.For love is eternal; and the birth of love frees the spirit from all limitations of the flesh.

* * * * * * *A clock in the distant village struck midnight.The twelve strokes floated up to Jane's window across the moonlit park.Time was once more.Her freed spirit resumed the burden of the body.

A new day had begun, the day upon which she had promised her answer to Garth.The next time that clock struck twelve she would be standing with him in the church, and her answer must be ready.

She turned from the window without closing it, drew the curtains closely across, switched on the electric light over the writing-table, took off her evening gown, hung up bodice and skirt in the wardrobe, resolutely locking the door upon them.Then she slipped on a sage-green wrapper, which she had lately purchased at a bazaar because every one else fled from it, and the old lady whose handiwork it was seemed so disappointed, and, drawing a chair near the writing-table, took out her diary, unlocked the heavy clasp, and began to read.She turned the pages slowly, pausing here and there, until she came to those she sought.Over them she pondered long, her head in her hands.They contained a very full account of her conversation with Garth on the afternoon of the day of the concert at Overdene; and the lines upon which she specially dwelt were these: "His face was transfigured....Goodness and inspiration shone from it, making it as the face of an angel....I never thought him ugly again.Child though I was, I could differentiate even then between ugliness and plainness.I have associated his face ever since with the wondrous beauty of his soul.When he sat down, at the close of his address, I no longer thought him a complicated form of chimpanzee.I remembered the divine halo of his smile.Of course it was not the sort of face one COULD have wanted to live with, or to have day after day opposite one at table, but then one was not called to that sort of discipline, which would have been martyrdom to me.And he has always stood to my mind since as a proof of the truth that goodness is never ugly, and that divine love and aspiration, shining through the plainest features, may redeem them, temporarily, into beauty; and permanently, into a thing one loves to remember."At first Jane read the entire passage.Then her mind focussed itself upon one sentence: "Of course it was not the sort of face one COULDhave wanted to live with, or to have day after day opposite one at table,...which would have been martyrdom to me."At length Jane arose, turned on all the lights over the dressing-table, particularly two bright ones on either side of the mirror, and, sitting down before it, faced herself honestly.

* * * * * * *When the village clock struck one, Garth Dalmain stood at his window taking a final look at the night which had meant so much to him.He remembered, with an amused smile, how, to help himself to calmness, he had sat on the terrace and thought of his socks, and then had counted the windows between his and Jane's.There were five of them.

He knew her window by the magnolia tree and the seat beneath it where he had chanced to sit, not knowing she was above him.He leaned far out and looked towards it now.The curtains were drawn, but there appeared still to be a light behind them.Even as he watched, it went out.

He looked down at the terrace.He could see the stone lion and the vase of scarlet geraniums.He could locate the exact spot where she was sitting when he--Then he dropped upon his knees beside the window and looked up into the starry sky.

Garth's mother had lived long enough to teach him the holy secret of her sweet patience and endurance.In moments of deep feeling, words from his mother's Bible came to his lips more readily than expressions of his own thought.Now, looking upward, he repeated softly and reverently: "'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.' And oh, Father," he added, "keep us in the light--she and I.May there be in us, as there is in Thee, no variableness, neither shadow which is cast by turning."Then he rose to his feet and looked across once more to the stone lion and the broad coping.His soul sang within him, and he folded his arms across his chest."My wife!" he said."Oh! my wife!"* * * * * * *And, as the village clock struck one, Jane arrived at her decision.

Slowly she rose, and turned off all the lights; then, groping her way to the bed, fell upon her knees beside it, and broke into a passion of desperate, silent weeping.