The song died away like a sigh; and she arose from the instrument, looking like a little, pale spirit of the twilight, in her flowing white cashmere dress. The red firelight, flickering uncertainly, fell on a young man"s figure leaning against the mantel, and the girl recoiled with a faint cry. Charley started up.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Henderson--Winnie" (they had all grown to call her Winnie of late). "I am afraid I have startled you; but you were singing when I came in, and the song was too sweet to be broken. I am rather late, but I wanted to say good-bye here last."
"Then you really go to-morrow?" she said, not looking at him. "How much your mother will miss you!"
"Yes, poor mother! but," smiling slightly, "I shall send her a box full of all the new novels when I get to New York, and that will console her.
I wish somebody else would miss me, Winnie."
Is a woman ever taken by surprise, I wonder, in these cases? Does she not always know beforehand when that all-important revelation is made that it is coming, particularly if she loves the narrator? I am pretty sure of it, though she may feign surprise ever so well. She can tell the instant he crosses the threshold what he has come to say. So Winnifred Rose Henderson knew what Charles Marsh had come to tell her from the moment she looked at him; and sitting down on a low chair before the glowing fire, she listened for a second time in her life to the old, old story. What a gulf lay between that time and this--a girl then, a woman now! And how different the two men who had told it!
Worthy Mrs. Hill, trotting up-stairs and down-stairs, seeing to fires and bed-rooms, and everything proper to be seen to by a good housekeeper, suddenly remembered the fire in the library must be getting low, and that it would be just like the young people saying good-bye to one another to forget all about it, rapped to the door some half an hour after. "Come in!" the sweet voice of Miss Henderson said, and Mrs. Hill went in and found the young lady and Mr. Marsh sitting side by side on a sofa, and both wearing such radiant faces, that the dear old lady saw at once through her spectacles how matters stood, and kissed Miss Henderson on the spot, and shook hands with Mister Charley, and wished him joy with all her honest heart. So the momentous question had been asked and answered, and on Miss Henderson"s finger glittered an engagement-ring, and Charley Marsh, in the bleak dawn of the next morning, left Speckport once more, the happiest fellow in the universe.
The story is told, the play played out, the actors off the stage, and high time for the curtain to fall. But the audience are dissatisfied yet, and have some questions to ask. "How did Val Blake and Laura get on, and Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham? What became of Cherrie and Catty Clowrie?
and have Charley and Miss Henderson got married yet? and who was at the wedding? and who were the bridemaids? and what did the bride wear?"
Well, let me see. I"ll answer as they come. It is six months after, red-hot July--not a sign of fog in Speckport, picnics and jollifications every day, and the blessed little city (it is a city, though I have stigmatized it as a town) out in its gala-dress. Do you see that handsome house in Golden Row? There is a shining door-plate on the front door, and you can read the name--"V. Blake." Yes, that is Mr. Blake"s house, and inside it is sumptuous to behold; for the "Spouter" increases its circulation every day, and Mr. B. keeps his carriage and pair now, and is a rising man--I mean out of doors. In his own single nook, I regret to say, he is hen-pecked--unmercifully hen-pecked. The gray mare is the better horse; and Mr. Blake submits to petticoat-government with that sublime good-nature your big man always manifests, and knocks meekly under at the first flash of Mistress Laura"s bright eye--not that that lady is any less fond of Mr. Val than of yore. Oh, no! She thinks there is n.o.body like him in this little planet of ours; only she believes in husbands keeping their proper place, and acts up to this belief. She is becoming more and more literary every day--fearfully literary, I may say; and the first two fingers of the right hand are daily steeped to the bone in ink.
Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham are in New York, and are very busy. Charley Marsh was a frequent visitor at their house last winter, and says he never saw a happier and more loving husband and wife. Mr. Wyndham is high in the literary world; and Mrs. Wyndham is very much admired in society, as much, perhaps, for her gentleness and goodness as for her beauty. They are happy and at peace; and so we leave them.
Cherrie Nettleby (n.o.body thinks of calling her Mrs. Cavendish) is going to be married next week. The happy man is Sergeant O"Shaughnessy, a big Irishman, six feet four in his stockings, with a laugh like distant thunder, rosy cheeks, and curly hair. A fine-looking fellow, Sergeant O"Shaughnessy, with a heart as big as his body, who adores the ground Cherrie walks on.
And Charley is married, and happier than I can ever tell. He is rich and honored, and does a great deal of good, and is a great man in Speckport--a great and good man. And his wife--but you know her--and she is the same to-day, and will be the same unto death, as you have known her. Mrs. Marsh, Senior, lives with them, and reads as much as ever; and is waited on by Midge, who lives a life of luxurious leisure in Redmon kitchen, and queens it over the household generally.
There is a quiet little grave out in the country which Charles Marsh and his wife visit very often, and which they never leave without loving each other better, and feeling more resolute, with G.o.d"s help, to walk down to the grave in the straight and narrow path that leads to salvation. They are only human. They have all erred, and sinned, and repented; and in that saving repentance they have found the truth of the holy promise: "There shall be light at the eventide."
THE END.