So it happened that after a very commonplace goodbye given to Amanda in
the presence of the entire Reist household Martin Landis left Lancaster
County a few weeks before Thanksgiving and journeyed to South Carolina
to spend a quiet vacation at a mountain resort.
To Amanda Reist, pegging away in the schoolroom during the gray
November days, his absence caused depression. He had said nothing about
letters but she naturally expected them, friendly little notes to tell
her what he was doing and how he was enjoying the glories of the famous
mountains of the south. But no letters came from Martin.
"Oh," she bit her lip after a week had gone and he was still silent. "I
won't care! He writes home; the children tell me he says the scenery is
so wonderful where he is--why can't he send me just one little note?
But I'm not going to care. I've been a fool long enough. I should know
by this time that it's a case of 'Out of sight, out of mind.' I'm about
done with castles in Spain! All my sentimental dreams about my knight,
all my rosy visions are, after all, of that substance of which all
dreams are made. I suppose if I had been practical and sensible like
other girls I could have made myself like Lyman Mertzheimer or some
other ordinary country boy and settled down into a contented woman on a
farm. Why couldn't I long ago have put away my girlish illusions about
knights and castles in Spain? I wonder if, after all, gold eagles are
better and more to be desired than the golden roofs of our dream
castles? If an automobile like Lyman Mertzheimer drives is not to be
preferred to Sir Galahad's pure white steed! I've clung to my
romanticism and what has it brought me? It might have been wiser to let
go my dreams, sweep the illusions from my eyes and settle down to a
sordid, everyday existence as the wife of some man, like Lyman
Mertzheimer, who has no eye for the beauties of nature but who has two
eyes for me."
Poor Amanda, destruction of her dream castles was perilously imminent!
The golden turrets were tottering and the substance of which her dreams
were made was becoming less ethereal. If Lyman Mertzheimer came to her
then and renewed his suit would she give him a more encouraging answer
than those she had given in former times? Amanda's hour of weakness and
despair was upon her. It was a propitious moment for the awakening of
the forces of her lower nature which lay quiescent in her, as it dwells
in us all--very few escape the Jekyll-Hyde combination.
When Martin Landis returned to Lancaster County he had a vagrant idea
of what the South Carolina mountains are like. He would have told you
that the trees there all murmur the name of Amanda, that the birds sing
her name, the waterfalls cry it aloud! During his two weeks of absence
from her his conviction was affirmed--he knew without a shadow of doubt
that he loved her madly. All of Mrs. Browning's tests he had applied-"Unless you can muse in a crowd all day,
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past--
Oh, never call it loving!"