"Oh, Cynthia," he cried, "if you knew what I have been through, you wouldn"t have held out, I know it. I began to think I should never have you."
"But you have me now," she said, and was silent.
"Why do you look like that?" he asked.
She smiled up at him again.
"I, too, have suffered, Bob," she said. "And I have thought of you night and day."
"G.o.d bless you, sweetheart," he cried, and kissed her again,--many times. "It"s all right now, isn"t it? I knew my father would give his consent when he found out what you were."
The expression of pain which had troubled him crossed her face again, and she put her hand on his shoulder.
"Listen, dearest," she said, "I love you. I am doing this for you. You must understand that."
"Why, yes, Cynthia, I understand it--of course I do," he answered, perplexed. "I understand it, but I don"t deserve it."
"I want you to know," she continued in a low voice, "that I should have married you anyway. I--I could not have helped it."
"Cynthia!"
"If you were to go back to the locomotive works" tomorrow, I would marry you."
"On ninety dollars a month?" exclaimed Bob.
"If you wanted me," she said.
"Wanted you! I could live in a log cabin with you the rest of my life."
She drew down his face to hers, and kissed him.
"But I wished you to be reconciled with your father," she said; "I could not bear to come between you. You--you are reconciled, aren"t you?"
"Indeed, we are," he said.
"I am glad, Bob," she answered simply. "I should not have been happy if I had driven you away from the place where you should be, which is your home."
"Wherever you are will be my home; sweetheart," he said, and pressed her to him once more.
At length, looking past his shoulder into the street, she saw Lem Hallowell pulling up the Brampton stage before the door.
"Bob," she said, "I must go to Coniston and see Uncle Jethro. I promised him."
Bob"s answer was to walk into the entry, where he stood waving the most joyous of greetings at the surprised stage driver.
"I guess you won"t get anybody here, Lem," he called out.
"But, Bob," protested Cynthia, from within, afraid to show her face just then, "I have to go, I promised. And--and I want to go," she added when he turned.
"I"m running a stage to Coniston to-day myself, Lem," said he "and I"m going to steal your best pa.s.senger."
Lemuel immediately flung down his reins and jumped out of the stage and came up the path and into the entry, where he stood confronting Cynthia.
"Hev you took him, Cynthy?" he demanded.
"Yes, Lem," she answered, "won"t you congratulate me?"
The warm-hearted stage driver did congratulate her in a most unmistakable manner.
"I think a sight of her, Bob," he said after he had shaken both of Bob"s hands and brushed his own eyes with his coat sleeve. "I"ve knowed her so long--" Whereupon utterance failed him, and he ran down the path and jumped into his stage again and drove off.
And then Cynthia sent Bob on an errand--not a very long one, and while he was gone, she sat down at the table and tried to realize her happiness, and failed. In less than ten minutes Bob had come back with Cousin Ephraim, as fast as he could hobble. He flung his arms around her, stick and all, and he was crying. It is a fact that old soldiers sometimes cry. But his tears did not choke his utterance.
"Great Tec.u.mseh!" said Cousin Ephraim, "so you"ve went and done it, Cynthy. Siege got a little mite too hot. I callated she"d capitulate in the end, but she held out uncommon long."
"That she did," exclaimed Bob, feelingly.
"I--I was tellin" Bob I hain"t got nothin" against him," continued Ephraim.
"Oh, Cousin Eph," said Cynthia, laughing in spite of herself, and glancing at Bob, "is that all you can say?"
"Cousin Eph"s all right," said Bob, laughing too. "We understand each other."
"Callate we do," answered Ephraim. "I"ll go so far as to say there hain"t n.o.body I"d ruther see you marry. Guess I"ll hev to go back to the kit, now. What"s to become of the old pensioner, Cynthy?"
"The old pensioner needn"t worry," said Cynthia.
Then drove up Silas the Silent, with Bob"s buggy and his black trotters.
All of Brampton might see them now; and all of Brampton did see them.
Silas got out,--his presence not being required,--and Cynthia was helped in, and Bob got in beside her, and away they went, leaving Ephraim waving his stick after them from the doorstep.
It is recorded against the black trotters that they made very poor time to Coniston that day, though I cannot discover that either of them was lame. Lem Hallowell, who was there nearly an hour ahead of them, declares that the off horse had a bunch of branches in his mouth.
Perhaps Bob held them in on account of the scenery that September afternoon. Incomparable scenery! I doubt if two lovers of the renaissance ever wandered through a more wondrous realm of pleasance--to quote the words of the poet. Spots in it are like a park, laid out by that peerless landscape gardener, nature: dark, symmetrical pine trees on the sward, and maples in the fulness of their leaf, and great oaks on the hillsides, and, coppices; and beyond, the mountain, the evergreens ma.s.sed like cloud-shadows on its slopes; and all-trees and coppice and mountain--flattened by the haze until they seemed woven in the softest of blues and blue greens into one exquisite picture of an ancient tapestry. I, myself, have seen these pictures in that country, and marvelled.
So they drove on through that realm, which was to be their realm, and came all too soon to Coniston green. Lem Hallowell had spread the well-nigh incredible news, that Cynthia Wetherell was to marry the son of the mill-owner and railroad president of Brampton, and it seemed to Cynthia that every man and woman and child of the village was gathered at the store. Although she loved them, every one, she whispered something to Bob when she caught sight of that group on the platform, and he spoke to the trotters. Thus it happened that they flew by, and were at the tannery house before they knew it; and Cynthia, all unaided, sprang out of the buggy and ran in, alone. She found Jethro sitting outside of the kitchen door with a volume on his knee, and she saw that the print of it was large, and she knew that the book was "Robinson Crusoe."
Cynthia knelt down on the gra.s.s beside him and caught his hands in hers.
"Uncle Jethro," she said, "I am going to marry Bob Worthington."
"Yes, Cynthy," he answered. And taking the initiative for the first time in his life, he stooped down and kissed her.
"I knew--you would be happy--in my happiness," she said, the tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g in her eyes.
"N-never have been so happy, Cynthy,--never have."
"Uncle Jethro, I never will desert you. I shall always take care of you."
"R-read to me sometimes, Cynthy--r-read to me?"