'Smiles': A Rose of the CumberlandsRobinson, Eliot H. (Eliot Harlow)
General
'Smiles': A Rose of the Cumberlands
Robinson, Eliot H. (Eliot Harlow)
Cumberland Mountains -- Fiction
Within the soft shadow of the doorway stood two figures, close
together--one tall, broad of shoulder and heavily built, the other of
medium height, slender and very graceful--and their arms were about each
other's waists. A man and a woman,--as it was in the beginning.
For a long time they stood thus, without speaking,--there was no need of
speech, for their thoughts were one.
"So old and well remembered; yet so new and strangely beautiful,"
whispered the woman, as she let her gaze travel over the broken,
far-stretching skyline of the forest-clad mountain side, now fading
into the sky, where a memory of the sunset's afterglow still lingered,
as though loath to depart and leave the world to darkness.
"Like love: as old as the hills, yet ever new," answered the other.
"Yes. I cannot yet understand, Don, how this new life can be so
strangely natural to me. We have been married only three all-too-short
days, yet I can scarcely think of the other life as real. Some people
speak of their honeymoon as a golden dream. To me it is the sweet
reality, and all that went before the dream. Isn't it odd?"
"All of nature's laws are inexplicable, dear heart. But we should not
forget that the Almighty's plan for the world did not deal with man and
woman as separate entities, but man and woman as counterparts of a
single unit, in which His laws should find full expression, if the two
were truly mated--not merely married. You remember what Mr. Talmadge
said that night."
"I know. We have found, not each other, but the other part of
ourselves--ourself. Dear, when did you first realize that it was so?"
"My mind, not until it was free to face the truth; my subconscious soul
the first moment that I saw you, I think."
"I know I loved you from that moment too," she answered simply, lifting
her lips for his kiss.
There followed another spell of enchanted silence, broken only by the
low lullaby of the night wind in the trees, and then the man spoke
again.
"Smiles, are you still greatly afraid of the sea?"
"No, dear, I should not be, if you were with me. It is strange; but I
lost most of the old, unreasoning fear the moment that I made up my mind
to jump into it that afternoon. But, why do you ask that now, Donald?"
He did not reply at once, and she continued, "I think that I know, and
the same thought was in my own mind. Is it that you want to go to France
again, to renew the saving work there,--and want me with you?"
He nodded slowly.
"If you hadn't suggested it, I should have, Don; for now I am doubly
prepared for the work I began to long to do, so many years ago. I am not
only trained for it, but I have you beside me, to comfort and strengthen
me, always.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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