“I beg your pardon,” I said again. “I have brought you from your bed on a morning like this all because I am headstrong and foolish. If I had not been so fiery I should not have caused you so much anxiety. If I had taken Ben’s advice I should have done better. However, what is done is done. Only I hope you will forgive me for causing you so much trouble.”
“It was not that,” she said, “not that. Suppose you had been killed, Will—suppose I had come here just in time to see you fall dead?”
She shuddered, and raised her hands to her face as if to shut out the sight she spoke of. I went nearer to her and laid my hand on her shoulder.
“And if you had, Rose, would you have been so troubled? There is many a better man than I shot in a duel. Would you have cared so much?”
She lifted her eyes to mine for an instant and looked at me, and then, somehow or other, my arms were round her, and her head was lying upon my shoulder, and our lips had met in their first kiss. It was all so sudden and so soon over, and without a word spoken by either, and yet I knew that she was mine forever. “My dear, my dear!” I said, “so you have some love in your heart for me after all my folly and thoughtlessness?”
“So much,” she whispered, “so much that it filled all my heart, Will. All my heart!”
“And it is mine?”
“Yours, if you will have it. And could you never see that before? Oh, Will, and I have loved you ever since you were a great boy and I a little maiden scarcely up to your shoulder. How slow you were to see it!”
“Why, my dear,” I said, “I never did see it, only somehow I fancied and hoped it might be so. And now that I know it is so, I can hardly believe it. Kiss me again, Rose, so that I may know it is no dream, but blessed reality.”
I can remember all that as if it were yesterday. It was a cold, gray winter morning, and the snow, six or eight inches deep under foot, hung from the trees around us in all sorts of fantastic drapery. There was a strange stillness in the woods now that we were alone, broken only by a robin that came hopping along the branches above our heads, and chirping at us or at his fellows that were trying to find something eatable under the firs and pines. Yet I felt nothing of the cold, and the wintry prospect might have been a fine summer night, so much summer had she put into my heart, this dear one of mine. For now all barriers were suddenly swept away between us, and there was her sweet face resting against my breast, rosy and full of life now, with the dear eyes looking shyly into mine, and the sweeter mouth ready to say, “I love you,” in unison with the eloquent eyes. But of this I need write no more, for every true and happy lover hath experience of what I might say.
So we went homewards across the snowbound meadows, feeling, I think, as if we were walking through some Paradise, rather than across the good old fields where every landmark was familiar to me. And all the way my heart was singing gaily to itself, and its song was of love and hope and happiness, and I forgot all about Dennis Watson and his threats, and had no memory of the sad strife then agitating the land, for I could think of nothing but Rose. And so hand-in-hand we went into the great kitchen, where Ben was warming his blue fingers against the fire and audibly lamenting his folly in going out on such a morning. “And on such an errand too,” growled he, when Rose had gone away to remove her snow-covered garments. “Yea, indeed, if I go on like this I shall soon let out my head for the crows to pick at. For indeed my brains must be soft enow when I go forth to see two fools shoot at each other.”
“Hold thy peace, chatterer!” I said. “What, man, this is the happiest morning I ever knew. Ah, old Ben, thou talkest about happiness! Why, man, thou knowest not the meaning of that word. Indeed, I think nobody was ever happy until now.”
“Oh!” said Ben, rising up and steadily regarding me with questioning eyes. “Oh! Ah! Why now, but really, Will, is thy brain turning? Nay, he is sane enough. Why, man, what has happened? Ah, now I see it all thou hast been making matters square with Mistress Rose. Am I right, Will?”
“Right indeed, Ben. Congratulate me. Is she not divine, eh? Is she not lovelier than a dream, eh, Ben?”
“There is a little mole in her left cheek,” said Ben. “ ’Tis a beauty-spot, man. But what knowest thou about beauty?”
“Enough to tell thee that thou hast got one of the fairest women in all the kingdom, old Will. Ye will make a grand pair. Will, what dost say if you and Rose and Lucy and I get married soon? All at the same time, eh? Say upon Easter Monday? Is it not a good idea, lad?”
“Good enough, lad, but the ladies must be consulted.”
“If only Jack would bring himself a sweetheart home from the wars,” said Ben, “we might all be married together. But I fear me Jack is not a man for matrimony. Yea, he will live and die a bachelor.”
Now, that day will always remain fresh and green in my mind, even though I live to be a hundred years old, for it was a day of rejoicing and gladness. First of all, there was the presenting Rose to my mother
