But none of them would have understood why the son had hope for his father for another life, or why he should want to have hope for him.
So Revel went back to his grandfather and told him everything. Also, he took out all of Margaret’s letters and made the old man read them one by one as he told the story of his acquaintance with the girl of the woods.
Revel watched the sweet old face glow with pleasure as Grand read the letters and listened to Revel’s account and studied the photograph of the lovely girl his boy had found, and his pulse quickened with joy.
Grand asked a few questions, and when he finally handed back the letters, he said with a smile and a sigh of content, “Well, that’s one big burden off my mind. I was afraid of what kind of girl you might take up with. You know I lived through a lot of sorrow for your dear mother, my little girl Em’ly. But I’m satisfied you’ve picked the right girl. Now go get her, boy! Make it sure that she is yours before any other fellow steps in and takes her. There aren’t so many of her kind around. May the Lord go with you, boy, and give you success.”
Revel’s face blazed with joy.
“Then you don’t think, Grand, that I ought to wait till I graduate before I say anything to her?”
“No, lad. Don’t wait! Go out and find out if she loves you. But don’t take any chance on that. If you know she loves you, you can both wait better if you have the comfort of knowing that you belong to each other. You know it is a long time since you have looked into each other’s faces, and you need to catch up!”
Chapter 22
A telegram had come to Margaret in the university to say that her aunt had died in the sanitarium where she had been taking treatment for several weeks, and sadly she hurried back to Crystal Beach for the funeral service.
It was the nurse from the sanitarium who had come down for the funeral, who told her of her aunt’s last days.
“Pretty near the last thing she said was, ‘Tell my niece Margaret that I decided to take her advice, so it’s all right with me.’ She didn’t explain what she meant. She said you would understand.”
Margaret lifted sweet eyes filled with joy as she said, “Yes, I understand.”
Margaret did not return to the university at once, for there were many little things in her aunt’s house that needed her attention. She had to see to packing some of her aunt’s things that had been left to various people, a few to herself, and it must be done at once. The house itself would go to a nephew of her dead uncle, but the aunt had left her a small sum of money and a number of things in the house that she knew the girl admired, so there was plenty to be done, and she was hard at work every day. She had written, of course, to Revel, to tell him what had happened, but her letter did not reach Linwood until after he had left, and so Revel went first to the university.
He was greatly dismayed when he found she was not there. He had been counting every minute until he should see her face and hear her well-remembered voice, and now it was a great disappointment not to see her at once.
He had not sent her word that he was coming. He wanted to come upon her unawares and get her first reaction to the sight of him. He had studied it out that way so he would be able to find out whether she really cared for him—yet. If she didn’t, he meant to stay until he had made her care—if he could. Revel was never one to think too highly of himself, and he had not taken account of stock and reckoned greatly on his own assets. She was a friend, yes, he knew that surely and could never be made to doubt it again, but would she be willing to take him for a fiancé?
He stood at the desk and frowned at the girl who had said that Margaret Weldon was not there.
“Oh no,” said the girl, “she’s just gone down to Crystal Beach. Her aunt died, and she had to go to the funeral. No, I can’t say when she’s coming back. She talked to somebody over the phone yesterday. She said she had some things to do and she couldn’t tell just when she would be done.”
So Revel turned and hastened away to find a train to Crystal Beach.
It was midafternoon when Revel reached the Gurlie house. Katie had gone out to the store for something she needed in her dinner preparations. Margaret went to the door herself, and her face, as it dawned with amazement written over it, was all he had dreamed it would be, only she seemed even lovelier.
“Margaret!” he said, as he put down the luggage he was carrying and put out his arms. “My Margaret!” And then he laid his lips down on hers and kissed her, as he folded his eager arms about her and held her close. “Oh, Margaret, my sweet, I love you so!” It wasn’t at all what he had meant to do.
He came to himself long enough to kick the door shut behind him, and then he held her very close again, thrilled to his soul.
He forgot that he had been going to go at this matter very cautiously. He knew nothing but that her nearness was the most precious thing he had ever known, as his hungry arms drew her closer and closer till her sweet head was on his breast and her little pink ear was close to his lips. Then he whispered, “Oh, Margaret, my darling, I love you with my whole soul. Can you ever love me? I’ve come all the way out here because I couldn’t stand it another day without you. I want you for my own. Will you marry me?”
Margaret lifted her lovely head and looked at him with a glory in her eyes, and then her arms came softly about his neck and drew his head down till her lips could meet his own.
“Oh, Revel dear!” she whispered. “Love you? Of course I love you. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you in the woods. I’ve often dreamed of your lips on mine when you kissed me good-bye. I thought I was wrong and silly to do it. We were just children then, but I couldn’t forget you, and I loved you.”
They went and sat down on the couch, his arm about her, her head resting on his shoulder, and now and then they would stop talking and their lips would steal together again. It was the happiest reunion that ever could be!
And so for a time they just sat and talked together, his arm still about her, drawing her closer now and again.
He told her all about his father’s death and what he hoped for him, for he had only had time to write the briefest facts before he left, and as she had left before it got to the university, she had not seen it yet. He thrilled again to see how her face lighted with sympathy. How she entered into his very innermost thoughts and hopes and fears.
“I think he may have been saved,” he said reverently. “I don’t know whether I have the right to believe that or not, but somehow I feel it. There was a look in his face at the last when I read to him. A softer look, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes,” said Margaret. “I think you can believe that. We prayed, with promises. I think we can always trust that those promises of God will be performed. I’m sure we shall meet him in heaven and be glad together. Your mother will be glad, and my mother will be glad, too. She was like that, glad in others’ joys. Perhaps our mothers know each other now.”
“You dear!” said Revel, touching her eyelids with his lips and gently smoothing her silky fingers.
“I shall love your mother,” said Revel thoughtfully. “She will be my mother, too, then, and mine will be yours!”
Something went singing then in Margaret’s heart, and she reached up and kissed him tenderly.
Then Margaret began to talk about her aunt, telling what the nurse had said.
“And so she is saved, too,” said Revel, “for that must be what she means.”
“Yes,” said the girl happily. “I think so. And just to think, I wanted to get away from her! I didn’t want to stay with her worldly crew, and all the time God was wanting me to bring her a message from Him! And suppose I hadn’t done it? It seems He just had to keep my lovely bracelet away from me for a while to bring me back here before I could have it, because He had some work for me to do for Him here. Strange, it never occurred to me that I could help a self-sufficient worldly woman, who half despised me for a little Puritan and did her best to try and make me over into her kind.”
“And whe
n she found she couldn’t do it, you got her goat!” said Revel. “That’s where you got your opening. She saw you had something she didn’t have, and after a while she saw she needed it.”
Margaret smiled half shamedly.
“Yes, but how much time I wasted! All that first summer I was here, I was so unhappy.”
“Well, probably the time hadn’t come yet when God wanted you to work. It might not have reached her then. She had to test your witness out first.”
“Perhaps,” said Margaret. “But Revel, do you know what she said? She said if I went on this way and didn’t learn to smoke and drink and do as others did, and didn’t dance or anything, that I would never be a success. She said she meant I would never make a brilliant marriage! Oh, I wish she could look down now for just a few minutes and see what a wonderful man I’m going to marry!”
“Well, maybe she can see now, I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Grand about that. He knows a lot about heaven and things. But it’s certain she wouldn’t have thought this was a grand marriage if it had dawned on her then. She wasn’t in a state to think that, you know. I’m not much.”
Then Katie came back from the store, surprised to find there was company to dinner, and while they were eating they talked of practical things.
“Can’t we be married right away, tonight, or tomorrow, and you go back with me?” asked Revel eagerly.
Margaret shook her head.
“That would be lovely,” she said, “but I don’t believe we should. I know my dear old guardian would be terribly hurt. He made me promise when I came away that I would come back to him for my wedding. He said it was going to be his wedding gift, my wedding. And Grand should be there, of course. We haven’t got so many people left in our families that we can afford to ignore them. Besides, I have to stay here till everything is settled up, they told me, and you’ll be needing to get back and round up a lot of things yourself, you know. Grand will live with us, won’t he, while he’s spared to us?”
Revel drew her close again.
“What a girl!” he said reverently and kissed her softly. “You anticipate all the problems and take the problem out of them. I’d love it, and he’ll want to, I know. But if you don’t like it, we can arrange for him, of course.”
“I’ll like it, I know. I love him already.”
“There’s a Bible verse that comes to mind,” he said, drawing her more tenderly close. “ ‘Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’ What more could my heart desire than you, my precious? But, dearest, I don’t like to go away and leave you here alone.”
“I’m not here alone. God is here just as He has been all these three years, and I’ve got work to do. I should go back to the university and get my credits. I don’t suppose it will ever matter whether I have credits of that sort now or not, but, anyway, I’d better get them. And I’ve a lot of things there to gather up and pack. I can do that after I finish up here, and then I’ll go right to my guardian’s in New York, and you can come and see me as much as you like until I get a few bibs and tuckers ready for a trousseau.”
“You don’t need any bibs and tuckers,” he said with a smile. “It shall be my pleasure to get them for you. Grand thinks that I should go right into my father’s business, though I’m not sure I shall carry it on always. But there’ll be enough to keep us from want, anyway. And now, since you insist you won’t get married tonight, I think I’d better take the late train to the city. I’ve some business to transact for a friend of Father’s, some oil-well stock to inquire about, and I’d better do that the first thing in the morning. It might take a couple of days, but I can run out here for the afternoons and evenings, and then when it’s done, I’ll take the night plane home. If I’m going to be a sober, married man, I’ve a lot of things to attend to myself.”
So they marched happily through the hours, dreading the brief separation that was ahead of them, yet trusting God to bring it all out right in the end.
And one day not many weeks later, in a stately old church in New York where her guardian was a member, Margaret walked down the flower-decked aisle, wearing a dress her mother had worn years ago, white and soft and lovely, decked with rare old lace, and in her dark hair the same wreath of orange blossoms her mother had worn. With head high and shining eyes she went forward to meet her bridegroom standing tall and handsome with a college chum for best man and a look in his eyes as if he were about to be crowned.
Down in the audience there sat a few old friends of Margaret’s mother, and a few of her own childhood friends who were still living in the vicinity of New York, and her guardian’s wife. And away at the back sat Bailey Wicke and his ash-blond wife, looking sullen and disappointed. “There never was anybody like her,” he mumbled.
“Well, she’s getting a stunningly handsome man,” said his wife.
Over on the groom’s side, sat Grand in the place Revel’s father might have occupied if he had been living, and behind, a fine array of college students. The Fellowship and the debating team, and the football team, and others who could possibly get to New York, for Revel was a great favorite, and they all were glad for him. They knew what a hard time he had been having during the long months of his father’s illness.
“Say, that’s a pip of a girl Rev is marrying, Walt,” said one called Sam. “Where do you suppose he got her? You don’t see many like that nowadays.”
“I asked him that same thing once,” said the man named Walter, “and what do you think he answered? He said, ‘I found her in the woods, man, one day when I went to pick wildflowers.’ ”
“H’m!” said the other fellow. “I wonder if there are any more like that. If I thought there were, I’d take to picking wildflowers myself.”
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (1865–1947) is known as the pioneer of Christian romance. Grace wrote over one hundred faith-inspired books during her lifetime. When her first husband died, leaving her with two daughters to raise, writing became a way to make a living, but she always recognized storytelling as a way to share her faith in God. She has touched countless lives through the years and continues to touch lives today. Her books feature moving stories, delightful characters, and love in its purest form.
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Grace Livingston Hill, The Girl of the Woods
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