Americans -- England -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
'It's called Daddy Hole Plain,' said the man, 'and you get there by
the road. I can't direct you from here; you must inquire as you go
along.'
'Is there no short cut?' I inquired impatiently.
'Not unless you can swim or fly!' said the man, with a grin.
I never wished before to be a bird or a fish; mere feet seemed a most
inadequate means of getting me to Virginia. But I set off, very nearly
at a run. The wrong turns that I took, the hills that I went up, the
hills that I went down, the people that I asked, the wrong directions
they gave me,--they seemed quite innumerable. Daddy Hole Plain was
about as difficult to get to as heaven, and when I got there the angel
would be flown!
But she wasn't.... For when at last I saw before me the bit of green
downs with the seats facing the bay, the white figure was there.
Virginia was sitting looking out to sea where the sun was setting,
making a red path on the water, and the white-sailed yawl was drifting
to the west!... I was so hot and tired, so travel-stained and dusty!
Virginia looked so cool and sweet!... To see her there after all my
wandering and disappointment was too much.... I could not speak. She
heard my step, looked up and saw me coming--looked glad, I think....
Her little feet were crossed in front of her upon the turf, and I just
flung myself beside them, and something--so like a lump of ice, that I
had always carried in my breast until I saw Virginia--melted entirely
at that moment, and began to beat.
VIRGINIA POMEROY
TORQUAY, SOUTH DEVON
BELLA VISTA HOTEL
_June 19--_
If he had come the next day, or even the same week, he would have had
a cold welcome, for on the whole I did not understand, nor did I
fancy, his methods.
But I had had time to think, time to talk it over with mamma, time to
write Breck Calhoun that there was no use in our discussing the old
subject, for I feared, though I was not absolutely sure, that there
was 'some one else.' Always dear old Breck has finished by saying,
'Jinny, there is no one else?' And there never was till now.
Now there is not only some one else, but there is also in very truth
'no one else' who counts! All is absolutely different from, and yet
precisely like, everything that I have imagined ever since the
foundation of the earth. In love, he is, what all good men and good
women ought to be, something quite unlike his former self, or the
outer self he shows to the world. He has lost himself and found
himself again in me, and I have gone through the same mysterious
operation. He has place for no troublesome uncertainty of mind now,
although mamma and I have decreed a year of waiting, in which we shall
have ample time to change if we choose. But we shall not choose; we
were made for each other, as we have both known ever since the day we
had luncheon together at the Mug o' Cider in Little Widger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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