In the Mountains Part 28

_Night._

I knew this little house was made for kindness and love. I've always, since first it was built, had the feeling that it was blest. Sure indeed was the instinct that brought me away from England, doggedly dragging myself up the mountain to tumble my burdens down in this place. It invariably conquers. n.o.body can resist it. n.o.body can go away from here quite as they arrived, unless to start with they were of those blessed ones who wherever they go carry peace with them in their hearts. From the first I have felt that the worried had only got to come here to be smoothed out, and the lonely to be exhilarated, and the unhappy to be comforted, and the old to be made young. Now to this list must be added: and the widowed to be wedded; because all is well with Uncle Rudolph and Dolly, and the house once more is in its normal state of having no one in it who isn't happy.

For I grew happy--completely so for the moment, and I shouldn't be surprised if I had really done now with the other thing--the minute I caught sight of Uncle Rudolph's face when I went downstairs.

Dolly was sitting by the file looking pleased. My uncle was standing on the rug; and when he saw me he came across to me holding out both his hands, and I stopped on the bottom stair, my hands in his, and we looked at each other and laughed,--sheer happiness we laughed for.

Then we kissed each other, I still on the bottom stair and therefore level with him, and then he said, his face full of that sweet affection for the whole world that radiates from persons in his situation, 'And to think that I came here only to scold you!'

'Yes, Uncle Rudolph,' I said. 'To think of it!'

'Well, if I came to scold I've stayed to love,' he said.

'Which,' said I, while we beamed at each other, 'as the Bible says, is far better.'

Then Dolly went upstairs to tell Mrs. Barnes--lovely to be going to strike off somebody's troubles with a single sentence!--and my uncle confessed to me that for the first time a doubt of Dolly had shadowed his idea of her when I left him sitting there while I fetched her--

'Conceive it--conceive it!' he cried, smiting his hands together.

'Conceive letting Germans--_Germans_, if you please--get even for half an instant between her and me!'--but that the minute he saw her coming down the stairs to him such love of her flooded him that he got up and proposed to her before she had so much as reached the bottom. And it was from the stairs, as from a pulpit, that Dolly, supporting herself on the bal.u.s.trade, expounded Siegfried and Juchs.

She wouldn't come down till she had finished with them. She was, I gathered, ample over Siegfried, but when it came to Juchs she was profuse. Every single aspect of them both that was most likely to make a dean think it impossible to marry her was pointed out and enlarged upon.

She wouldn't, she announced, come down a stair further till my uncle was in full possession of all the facts, while at the same time carefully bearing in mind the Table of Affinity.

'And were you terribly surprised and shocked, Uncle Rudolph?' I asked, standing beside him with our backs to the fire in our now familiar att.i.tude of arm in arm.

My uncle is an ugly little man, yet at that moment I could have sworn that he had the face of an angel. He looked at me and smiled. It was the wonderfullest smile.

'I don't know what I was,' he said. 'When she had done I just said, "My Beloved"--and then she came down.'

_October 15th._

This is my last night here, and this is the last time I shall write in my old-age book. To-morrow we all go away together, to Bern, where my uncle and Dolly will be married, and then he takes her to England, and Mrs. Barnes and I will also proceed there, discreetly, by another route.

So are the wanderings of Mrs. Barnes and Dolly ended, and Mrs. Barnes will enter into her idea of perfect bliss, which is to live in the very bosom of the Church with a cathedral almost in her back garden. For my uncle, prepared at this moment to love anybody, also loves Mrs. Barnes, and has invited her to make her home with him. At this moment indeed he would invite everybody to make their homes with him, for not only has he invited me but I heard him most cordially pressing those peculiarly immovable Antoines to use his house as their headquarters whenever they happen to be in England.

I think a tendency to invite runs in the family, for I too have been busy inviting. I have invited Mrs. Barnes to stay with me in London till she goes to the Deanery, and she has accepted. Together we shall travel thither, and together we shall dwell there, I am sure, in that unity which is praised by the Psalmist as a good and pleasant thing.

She will stay with me for the weeks during which my uncle wishes to have Dolly all to himself. I think there will be a great many of those weeks, from what I know of Dolly; but being with a happy Mrs. Barnes will be different from being with her as she was here. She is so happy that she consists entirely of unclouded affection. The puckers from her face, and the fears and concealments from her heart, have all gone together. She is as simple and as transparent as a child. She always was transparent, but without knowing it; now she herself has pulled off her veils, and cordially requests one to look her through and through and see for oneself how there is nothing there but contentment. A little happiness,--what wonders it works! Was there ever anything like it?

This is a place of blessing. When I came up my mountain three months ago, alone and so miserable, no vision was vouchsafed me that I would go down it again one of four people, each of whom would leave the little house full of renewed life, of restored hope, of wholesome looking-forward, clarified, set on their feet, made useful once more to themselves and the world. After all, we're none of us going to be wasted. Whatever there is of good in any of us isn't after all going to be destroyed by circ.u.mstances and thrown aside as useless. When I am so foolish--_if_ I am so foolish I should say, for I feel completely cured!

as to begin thinking backwards again with anything but a benevolent calm, I shall instantly come out here and invite the most wretched of my friends to join me, and watch them and myself being made whole.

The house, I think, ought to be rechristened.

It ought to be called _Chalet du Fleuve Jordan_.

But perhaps my guests mightn't like that.