 | III. My third book |  |
3. III.
The slow, reluctant feet of the New England spring
came over the mountains. Her blue eyes shone over
hill and meadow-land through many tears, and in her
footprints sprang up crocuses and violets, to live their
little day, and die their balmy death. The plowman
turned up the rich, loamy soil of the valleys, whistling
at his task. The larch hung forth her fragrant blossoms,
the laburnum dropped her long sprays of gold.
The old lilac-bushes, planted in Moses Grant's front
yard when Margaret was a baby, put on once more
their liveries of green, and coquettishly tossed up their
purple blossoms, that the winds might rifle their perfume.
Walter Fairfield came very often, in these days, to
the elder's house. He had undertaken to teach Elinor
botany, and the study involved long, delightful walks
over the hills. The old folks were well content that
their grandchild should acquire a little of the learning
they held in sincere reverence, but which they would
seemed to them so mere a child still, that they never
thought of the danger that she might learn another
lesson — that while she analyzed the blossoms that
skirted hillside and brookside her own heart might
be unfolding itself, petal by petal, even to the golden
centre, whereon was written “love.”
And Elinor was, like them, blissfully unconscious.
She had never read a novel in her life. No one had
ever talked to her of love or marriage. How should
she, at sixteen, be able to translate aright the story
which Walter Fairfield delighted to read in her blushes,
her downcast eyes, to hear in her tremulous tones which
replied to his questionings?
He was an honorable man, and he loved her with
an honorable man's deathless love — a man's love,
full of passion, stronger than life, and yet he shrank
from telling her so—from awaking her heart from its
maidenly repose—changing sweet hope into certainty
—binding her by vows of betrothal.
The time when he could keep silence no longer
came to him, as it does to most men, unexpectedly.
They had been taking a long walk. The sun had
scarcely set, but a young June moon was drifting, like
a tiny, glittering cloud, up the blue sky, and they stood
watching it together. At last Elinor turned her wet
face toward him. He had never seen tears in her eyes
before.
“I have been thinking,” she said, “how lonely my
life used to be before you came. What mysterious
fancies, which I had none to explain, haunted me at
twilight and moonrise, and how your coming changed
all; and you found time to talk with me, and understand
end some day, and you will be busy with other happiness,
and I shall be all alone.”
Then the words—the wild, loving, yet reverent
words—gushed in a tide from his full heart, and overflowed
his lips. The story was told—the old, evernew
story—old as our first parents, new as a new day.
They loved one another. The veil was lifted from
Elinor's heart, and she knew that, with all the quiet
strength of her quiet nature, she loved Walter Fairfield.
She was silent from very happiness.
As her lover drew her close to his side, and pressed
his first kiss on her pure lips, he said, fervently,
“Elinor, you are all I ever asked—good, gifted,
beautiful. You fulfill my every want. God in heaven
bless you—the crown, the glory of my life, whom
He has given me.”
| III. My third book | |