"I'm puzzled, too," I said, "but probably not so much as you are. I think I know the real cause of the trouble."
Anthy looked around at me, but I did not turn my head. The evening shadows were falling. I felt again that I was in the presence of high events.
"He seems so preoccupied," she continued finally.
"Yes, I've wondered what book it is he is reading so industriously."
"Oh, I saw that," she said.
"What was it?" I asked eagerly.
"Nicolay and Hay's 'Life of Abraham Lincoln.'"
It struck me all in a heap, and I laughed aloud--and yet I heard of Nort's reading not without a thrill.
"What _is_ the matter?" asked Anthy. "What does it all mean?"
I had very much the feeling at that moment that I had when I took Anthy's letters from my desk to show to Nort, as though I was about to share a great and precious treasure with Anthy.
So I told her, very quietly, about Nort's visit to me and some of the things he said. She sat very still, her hands lying in her lap, her eyes on some shadowy spot far across the garden. I paused, wondering how much I dared tell.
"I don't know, Anthy, that I was doing right," I said, "but I wanted him to know something of you as you really are. So I told him about your letters to Lincoln, and showed him one of them."
She flushed deeply.
"You _couldn't_, David!"
"Yes, I did--and that may explain why he's reading the life of Lincoln.
Maybe he's trying to imitate Lincoln."
"Imitate Lincoln----"
The sound of her voice as she said these words I think will never go quite out of my memory: it was so soft and deep, so tremulous.
And then something happened that I cannot fully explain, nor think of without a thrill. Anthy turned quickly toward me, looked at me through shiny tears, and put her head quickly and impulsively down upon my shoulder.
"Oh, David," she said, "I love you!"
But I knew well what she meant. It was that great moment in a woman's life when in loving the loved one she loves all the world. She was not thinking that moment of me, dear though I might have been to her as a friend, but of Nort--of Nort.
It was only a moment, and then she leaned quickly back, looking at me with starry eyes and a curious trembling lift of the lips.
"But David," she said, "I don't _want_ him like Lincoln."
The thought must have raised in her mind some vision of the sober-sided Nort of the last few weeks, for she began to laugh again. I cannot describe it, for it was a laughter so compounded of tenderness, joy, sympathy, amusement, that it fairly set one's heart to vibrating. There was no part of Anthy--sweet, strong, loving--that was not in that laugh.
"I don't _want_ him like Lincoln," she said.
"What do you want him like?" I asked.
"Why exactly like himself, like Nort."
"But I thought you rather distrusted his flightiness."
She was hugging herself with her arms, and rocking a little back and forth. An odd wrinkle came in her forehead.
"David, I did--I do--but somehow I like it--I love it."
She paused.
"It seems to me I like _everything_ about Nort."
Do you realize that such beautiful things as these are going on all around us, in an evil and trouble-ridden old world? That in nearly all lives there are such perfect moments? Only we don't remember them. We grow old and wrinkled and sick; we bicker with those we love; it grows harder to remember, easier to forget.
I was going to say that this was the end of the story of the _Star_ of Hempfield, but I know better, of course. It was only the beginning.
"Nort, my boy, I knew it, I knew it!" said the old Captain, when Anthy and Nort told him, though as a matter of fact he had never dreamed of such a thing until two minutes before.
[Illustration: Fergus stuck his small battered volume of Robert Burns's poems in his pocket--and going out of the back door struck out for the hills]
Fergus saw Nort and Anthy come in together, and knew without being told.
He sat firmly on his stool until they went out again, so absorbed in their own happiness that they never noticed him at all, and then he climbed down and took off his apron deliberately. He felt about absently for his friendly pipe, put it slowly in his mouth, but did not light it.
He stuck his small battered volume of Robert Burns's poems in his pocket--and going out of the back door struck out for the hills. The next morning he was back on his stool again just as usual. It would have been impossible to print the _Star_ of Hempfield without Fergus MacGregor.
On a June day I finish this narrative and lay down my pen.
An hour ago I walked along the lane to the top of my pasture to take a look at the distant town. In the meadows the red clover is in full blossom, the bobolinks are hovering and singing over the low spots, and the cattle are feeding contentedly in all the pastures. I have never seen the wild raspberry bushes setting such a wealth of fruit, nor the blackberries so full of bloom. The grass is nearly ripe for the cutting.
At the top of the hill I stood for a long time looking off across the still countryside toward the town.... It is here, after all, that I belong!
I come to the end of the narrative of the _Star_ of Hempfield with an indescribable sadness of regret. So much I proposed myself when I set out to write the story of my friends; and so very little have I accomplished! I can see now that I have not taken all of Hempfield--no, not the half of it--nor even all of my friends; but perhaps I have taken all that I could, all that was mine.
As I came down the hill my mind went out warmly toward the printing-office of the _Star_ of Hempfield, and I thought of the pleasant old garden in front of it, of the curious bird house, built like a miniature Parthenon at the gable end, where the wrens were now rearing their broods, I thought of Dick, the canary, and of Tom, the cat, sleeping comfortably, as I so often saw him, in a patch of sunlight on the floor--and then, like a great wave of friendly warmth, came the full realization of my friends there in the office of the _Star_ of Hempfield, so that I seemed to see them living before my eyes.
I thought of how we had worked together for so many months, how we had enjoyed one another, had been thrust apart and drawn together again, had changed, indelibly, one another's inmost lives, and so played our little parts for a brief time upon the stage of life in a country town.
As I came down the hill, reflecting upon all these things, I found myself repeating aloud the words of Miranda:
"Oh wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in't."
And so my narrative must close. Friendly town of Hempfield! Even if I write no more about you I shall still feel your presence just beyond the hills. On calm mornings from the top of my pasture I shall see the smoke of your friendly fires, and when the wind favours on sunny Sabbath mornings I shall hear the distant and drowsy sweet sound of your bells.
And Anthy and Nort, Fergus MacGregor, and Captain Doane, and Ed Smith--how I have enjoyed you all and all I have known of you! As I look back to the time before I knew you the world seems small and cold, and even the hills and the fields and the town somehow less admirable. I shall not easily let you go out of my life! And twinkling _Star_ of Hempfield--may you long continue to illuminate this small corner of the world!
THE END