Chapter XVI: Sunshine After the Storm

It was the last day, or rather the last night of the storm. The wind had subsided, and when the sun went down there was in the west a tinge of red as a promise of a fair to-morrow. But to Mildred there seemed no to-morrow better than to-day had been, and when after her early tea she sat down in her little sitting-room, there came over her such a sense of dreariness and pain as she had never before experienced. Once she thought of her husband, who had been so kind to her, and whispered sadly:

“I might have learned to love him, but he is dead and gone; everybody is gone who cared for me. Even Hugh has disappointed me,” and although she did not realize it this thought was perhaps the saddest of all. Hugh had disappointed her. During the two years since her return to the farm house, she had seen but little of him, for it was seldom that he called, and when he did it was upon her mother, not herself.

But he had not forgotten her, and there was scarcely a waking hour of his life that she was not in his mind, and often when he was busiest with his clients, who were increasing rapidly, he saw in the papers he was drawing up for them, her face as it had looked at him when she said:

“Oh, Hugh, don’t you know me?” He was angry with her then, and his heart was full of bitterness towards her for her deception. But that was gone long ago, and he was only biding his time to speak.

“While her mother lives she will not leave her,” he said; but her mother was dead, and he could wait no longer. “I must be decent, and not go the very first day after the funeral,” he thought, a little glad of the storm which kept every one indoors.

But it was over now, and wrapping his overcoat around him, and pulling his fur cap over his ears he went striding through the snow to the farm house, which he reached just as Mildred was so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear the door opened by her maid, or know that he was there until he came into the room and was standing upon the hearth rug before her. Then, with the cry, “Oh, Hugh, is it you? I am glad you have come. It is so lonesome,” she sprang up and offered him her hand, while he looked at her with a feeling of regret that he had not come before. He did not sit down beside her, but opposite, where he could see her as they talked on indifferent subjects,—the storm,—the trains delayed,—the wires down,—the damage done in town,—and the prospect of a fair day to-morrow. Then there was silence between them and Mildred got up and raked the fire in the grate and brushed the hearth with a little broom in the corner, while Hugh watched her, and when she was through took the poker himself and attacked the fire, which was doing very well.

“I like to poke the fire,” he said, while Mildred replied, “So do I;” and then there was silence again, until Hugh burst out:

“I say, Milly, how much longer am I to wait?”

“Wha—at?” Mildred replied, a faint flush tinging her face.

“How much longer am I to wait?” he repeated; and she answered, “Wait for what?”

“For you,” and Hugh arose and went and stood over her as he continued: “Do you know how old I am?”

Her face was scarlet now, but she answered laughingly, “I am thirty. You used to be four years older than myself, which makes you thirty-four.”

“Yes,” he said. “As time goes I am thirty-four, but measured by my feelings it is a hundred years since that morning when I saw you going through the Park gate and felt that I had lost you, as I knew I had afterwards, and never more so than when I saw you in the cemetery and knew who you were.”

“Why are you reminding me of all this? Don’t you know how it hurts? I know you despised me then, and must despise me now,” Mildred said, with anguish in her tones as she, too, rose from her chair and stood apart from him.

“I did despise you then, it’s true,” Hugh replied, “and tried to think I hated you, not so much for deceiving us as for deceiving your husband, as I believed you must have done; but I know better now. Your record has not been stainless, Milly, and I would rather have you as you were seventeen years ago on the summer morning when you were a little girl of thirteen shelling peas and prophesying that you would one day be the mistress of Thornton Park. You have been its mistress, and I am sorry for that, but nothing can kill my love, which commenced in my boyhood, when you made fun of my hands and feet and brogue and called me freckled and awkward, and then atoned for it all by some look in your bright eyes which said you did not mean it. I am awkward still, but the frecks and the brogue are gone, and I have come to ask you to be my wife,—not to-morrow, but some time next spring, when everything is beginning new. Will you, Milly? I will try and make you happy, even if I have but little money.

“Oh, Hugh! What do I care for money. I hate it!”

It was the old Mildred who spoke in the old familiar words, which Hugh remembered so well, but it was the new Mildred who, when he held his arms towards her, saying “Come,” went gladly into them, as a tired child goes to its mother.

It was late that night when Hugh left his promised bride, for there was much to talk about, and all the incidents of their childhood to be lived over again, Hugh telling of the lock of hair and the pea-pod he had kept with the peas, hard as bullets now, especially the smaller one, which he called Mildred.

“But, do you know, I really think it has recently begun to change,” Hugh said, “and I shall not be surprised to find it soft again——”

“Just as I am to let you see how much I love you,” Mildred said, as she laid her beautiful head upon his arm, and told him of the rumor of his engagement to Bessie, which had been the means of making her Mrs. Thornton.

“That was the only secret I had from my husband,” she said. “I told him everything else, and he took me knowing it all, and I believe he loved me, too. He was very kind to me,—and——”

She meant to be loyal to her husband, and would have said more, if Hugh had not stopped her mouth in a most effective way. No man cares to hear the woman who has just promised to marry him talk about her dead husband, and Hugh was not an exception.

“Yes, darling, I know,” he said. “But let’s bury the past. You are mine now; all mine.”

Hugh might be awkward and shy in many things, but he was not at all shy or awkward in love-making when once the ice was broken. He had waited for Mildred seventeen years, and he meant to make the most of her now, and he stayed so long that she at last bade him go, and pointed to the clock just striking the hour of midnight.

No one seemed surprised when told of the engagement. It was what everybody expected, and what should have been long ago, and what would have been, if Mildred had staid at home, instead of going off to Europe. Congratulations came from every quarter and none were more sincere than those from the young people at the Park, who wanted to make a grand wedding. To this Hugh did not object, for in his heart was the shadow of a wish to see Mildred again as he saw her that night at the party in jewels and satins and lace. But she vetoed it at once. A widow had no business with orange blossoms, she said, and besides that she was too old, and Hugh was old, too, and she should be married quietly in church, in a plain gray traveling dress and bonnet. And she was married thus on a lovely morning in June, when the roses were in full bloom, and the church was full of flowers, and people, too,—for everybody was there to see the bride, who went in Mildred Thornton and came out Mildred McGregor.

And now there is little more to tell. It is three years since that wedding day, and Hugh and Mildred live in the red farm house, which is scarcely a farm house now, it has been so enlarged and changed, with its pointed roofs and bow windows and balconies. Brook Cottage they call it, and across the brook in the rear there is a rustic bridge leading to the meadow, where Mr. Leach’s cows used to feed, but which now is a garden, or pleasure ground, not so large, but quite as pretty as the Park, and every fine afternoon at the hour when Hugh is expected from his office, Mildred walks through the grounds, leading by the hand a little golden-haired boy, whom she calls Charlie for the baby brother who died and whom he greatly resembles. And when at last Hugh comes, the three go back together, Hugh’s arm around Milly’s waist and his boy upon his shoulder. They are not rich and never will be, but they are very happy in each other’s love, and no shadow, however small, ever rests on Milly’s still lovely face, save when she recalls the mad ambition and discontent which came so near wrecking her life.

In the Park three children play, Giles and Fanny, who belong to the Thorntons, and a second Mildred Leach, who belongs to Tom and Alice.

One picture more, and then we leave them forever near the spot where we first saw them. Gerard and Bessie,—Alice and Tom,—have come to the cottage at the close of a warm July afternoon, and are grouped around the door, where Mildred sits, with the sunlight falling on her hair, a bunch of sweet peas pinned upon her bosom, and the light of a great joy in her eyes as she watches Hugh swinging the four children in a hammock, and says to Bessie “I never thought I could be as happy as I am now. God has been very good to me.”

THE END.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.