However, a summer in Ireland, undertaken with no such great stakes in mind as Salemina's marriage, made possible a chance meeting of the two old friends. This was followed by several others, devised by us with incendiary motives, and without Salemina's knowledge.
There was also the unconscious plea of the children working a daily spell; there was the past, with its memories, tugging at both their hearts; and above all there was a steady, dogged, copious stream of mental suggestion emanating from Francesca and me, so that, in course of time, our middle-aged couple did succeed in confessing to each other that a separate future was impossible for them.
They never would have encountered each other had it not been for us; never, never would have become engaged; and as for the wedding, we forcibly led them to the altar, saying that we must leave Ireland and the ceremony could not be delayed.
Not that we are the recipients of any gratitude for all this!
Rather the reverse! They constantly allude to their marriage as made in Heaven, although there probably never was another union where creatures of earth so toiled and slaved to assist the celestial powers.
I wonder why middle-aged and elderly lovers make such an appeal to me! Is it because I have lived much in New England, where "ladies-in-waiting" are all too common,--where the wistful bride-groom has an invalid mother to support, or a barren farm out of which he cannot wring a living, or a malignant father who cherishes a bitter grudge against his son's chosen bride and all her kindred,--where the woman herself is compassed about with obstacles, dragging out a pinched and colourless existence year after year?
And when at length the two waiting ones succeed in triumphing over circumstances, they often come together wearily, soberly, with half the joy pressed out of life. Young lovers have no fears! That the future holds any terrors, difficulties, bugbears of any sort they never seem to imagine, and so they are delightful and amusing to watch in their gay and sometimes irresponsible and selfish courtships; but they never tug at my heart-strings as their elders do, when the great, the long-delayed moment comes.
Francesca and I, in common with Salemina's other friends, thought that she would never marry. She had been asked often enough in her youth, but she was not the sort of woman who falls in love at forty. What we did not know was that she had fallen in love with Gerald La Touche at five-and-twenty and had never fallen out,--keeping her feelings to herself during the years that he was espoused to another, very unsuitable lady. Our own sentimental experiences, however, had sharpened our eyes, and we divined at once that Dr. La Touche, a scholar of fifty, shy, reserved, self-distrustful, and oh! so in need of anchor and harbour,--that he was the only husband in the world for Salemina; and that he, after giving all that he had and was to an unappreciative woman, would be unspeakably blessed in the wife of our choosing.
I remember so well something that he said to me once as we sat at twilight on the bank of the lake near Devorgilla. The others were rowing toward us bringing the baskets for a tea picnic, and we, who had come in the first boat, were talking quietly together about intimate things. He told me that a frail old scholar, a brother professor, used to go back from the college to his house every night bowed down with weariness and pain and care, and that he used to say to his wife as he sank into his seat by the fire: "Oh! praise me, my wife, praise me!"
My eyes filled and I turned away to hide the tears when Dr. Gerald continued absently: "As for me, Mistress Beresford, when I go home at night I take my only companion from the mantelshelf and leaning back in my old armchair say, 'Praise me, my pipe, praise me!'"
And Salemina Peabody was in the boat coming toward us, looking as serenely lovely in a grey tweed and broad white hat as any good sweet woman of forty could look, while he gazed at her "through a glass darkly" as if she were practically non-existent, or had nothing whatever to do with the case.
I concealed rebellious opinions of blind bats, deaf adders, meek lambs, and obstinate pigs, but said very gently and impersonally:
"I hope you won't always allow your pipe to be your only companion;--you, with your children, your name and position, your home and yourself to give--to somebody!"
But he only answered: "You exaggerate, my dear madam; there is not enough left in me or of me to offer to any woman!"
And I could do nothing but make his tea graciously and hand it to him, wondering that he was able to see the cup or the bread-and-butter sandwich that I put into his modest, ungrateful hand.
However, it is all a thing of the past, that dim, sweet, grey romance that had its rightful background in a country of subdued colourings, of pensive sweetness, of gentle greenery, where there is an eternal wistfulness in the face of the natural world, speaking of the springs of hidden tears.
Their union is a perfect success, and I echo the Boots of the inn at Devorgilla when he said: "An' sure it's the doctor that's the satisfied man an' the luck is on him as well as on e'er a man alive! As for her ladyship, she's one o' the blessings o' the wurruld an' 't would be an o'jus pity to spile two houses wid 'em."
July 12, 19-.
We were all out in the orchard sunning ourselves on the little haycocks that the "hired man" had piled up here and there under the trees.
"It is not really so beautiful as Italy," I said to Himself, gazing up at the newly set fruit on the apple boughs and then across the close-cut hay field to the level pasture, with its rocks and cow paths, its blueberry bushes and sweet fern, its clumps of young sumachs, till my eyes fell upon the deep green of the distant pines. "I can't bear to say it, because it seems disloyal, but I almost believe I think so."
"It is not as picturesque," Himself agreed grudgingly, his eye following mine from point to point; "and why do we love it so?"
