I, Thou, and the Other One: A Love Story

Then Piers called for his son; but Harold could not be found. The Squire laughed. “He has run away,” he said. “The boy wants a holiday. I’ll take good care of him. He isn’t doing nothing; he is learning to catch a trout. Many a very clever man can’t catch a trout.” Then Piers asked his little daughters to come home with him; and Edith hid herself behind the ample skirts of her grandfather’s coat, and Maude lifted her arms to her grandmother, and snuggled herself into her bosom.

“Come, Piers, we shall have to go home alone,” Kate said.

“You have Katherine at home,” said the Squire.

And then Kate laughed. “Why, Father,” she said, “you speak as if Katherine was more than we ought to expect. Surely we may have one of our six children. The Duke thinks he has whole and sole right in Dick and John; and you have Harold and Edith and Maude.”

“And you have Katherine,” reiterated the Squire.

When they got back to Exham Hall, the little Lady Katherine was in the drawing-room to meet them. She was the eldest daughter of the house, a fair girl of fifteen with her father’s refined face and rather melancholy manner. Piers delighted in her; and there was a sympathy between them that needed no words. She had a singular love for music, though from what ancestor it had come no one could tell; and it was her usual custom after dinner to open the door a little between the drawing-room and music-room, and play her various studies, while her father and mother mused, and talked, and listened.

This evening Piers lit his cigar, and Kate and he walked in the garden. It was warm, and still, and full of moonshine; and the music rose and fell to their soft reminiscent talk of the many interests that had filled their lives for the past twenty golden years. And when they were wearied a little, they came back to the drawing-room and were quiet. For Katherine was striking the first notes of a little melody that always charmed them; and as they listened, her girlish voice lifted the song, and the tender words floated in to them, and sunk into their hearts, and became a prayer of thanksgiving.

 
“We have lived and loved together,
  Through many changing years;
We have shared each other’s gladness,
  And wept each other’s tears.”
 

And while Kate’s face illuminated the words, Piers leaned forward, and took both her hands in his, and whispered with far tenderer, truer love than in the old days of his first wooing.

And if any thought of The Other One entered his mind at this hour, it came with a thanksgiving for a life nobly redeemed by a pure, unselfish love, and a death which was at once sacrificial and sacramental.