The Quickening Part 55

"I shall never be a Felicita Young-d.i.c.kson, and drag you," she promised.

"But, O Tom! I wish--"

"I know," he said gently. "You are thinking of the days to come; when the paths may diverge--yours and mine--ever so little; when there may be children to choose between their mother's faith and their father's indifference. But I am not indifferent. So far from it, I am only anxious now to prove what I was once so bent on disproving."

"You yourself are the strongest proof," she interposed. "You will see it, some day."

"Shall I? I hope so; and that is an honest hope. And really and truly, I think I have come up a bit--out of the wilderness, you know. I am willing to admit that this is the best of all possible worlds; and I want to do my part in making it a little better because I have lived in it. Also, I'd like to believe in something bigger and better than protoplasm."

Her smile was of the kind which stands half-way in the path to tears, but she spoke bravely to the doubt in his reply.

"You do believe, Tom, dear; you have never seen the moment when you did not. It was the doubt that was unreal. When the supreme test came, it was G.o.d's hand that restrained you; you know it now--you knew it at the time. And afterward it was His grace that enabled you to do what was just and right. Haven't you admitted all this to yourself?"

They had crossed the white pike to the manor-house gates and were turning aside from the driveway into the winding lawn path when he said:

"To myself, and to one other." Then, very softly: "I sat at my mother's knee last night, Ardea, and told her all there was to tell."

Ardea's eyes were s.h.i.+ning. "What did she say, Tom, dear--or is it more than I should ask?"

"There is nothing you may not ask. She said--it wasn't altogether true, I'm afraid--but she put her arms around my neck and cried and said: _For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found._"

She slipped her arm in his, and there was a little sob of pure joy at the catching of her breath. The moon was just rising above the Lebanon cliff-line, and the beauty of the glorious night-dawn possessed her utterly. Ah, it was a good world and a generous, bringing rich gifts to the steadfast! Instinctively she felt that Tom's little confession did not require an answer; that he was battling his way to the heights which must be taken alone.

So they came in the sacred hush of the young night to a great tulip-tree on the lawn, and where a curiously water-worn limestone boulder served as a rustic seat wide enough for two whose hearts are one they sat down together, still in the companions.h.i.+p that needs no speech. It was Tom who first broke the silence.

"I have been trying ever since that night last winter to feel my way out," he said slowly. "But what is to come of it? I can't go back to the boyhood yesterdays; in a way I have hopelessly outgrown them. Let us admit that religion has become real again; but Ardea, girl, it isn't Uncle Silas's religion, or--or my mother's, or even yours. And I don't know any other."

She laid a hand on one of his.

"It is all right, dear; there is only the one religion in all Christendom--perhaps in all the world, or in G.o.d's part of it. The difference is in people."

"But this thing that has been slowly happening to me--this thing I am trying to call convincement: shall I wake up some day and find it gone, with all the old doubts in the saddle again?" he asked it almost wistfully.

"Who can tell?" she said gently. "But it will make no difference; the immutable fact will be there just the same, whether you are asleep or waking. We can't always stand on the Mount of Certainty, any of us; and to some, perhaps, it is never given. But when one saves his enemy's life and forgives and forgets--O Tom, dear! don't you understand?"

But now his eyes are love-blinded, and the white-gowned figure beside him fills all horizons.

"I can't see past you, Ardea. Nevertheless, I'm going to believe that I feel the good old pike solid underfoot ... and they say that the House Beautiful is somewhere at the mountain end of it. If you will hold my hand, I believe I can make out to walk in it; blindfolded, if I have to--and without thinking too much of the yesterdays."

"Ah, the yesterdays!" she said tenderly. "They are precious, too; for out of them, out of their hindrances no less than their helpings, comes to-day. Kiss me, twice, Tom; and then I must go in and read to Major Grandpa."

THE END