He had intended to take the tram-car--that he might hurry down to the Castle, and get through with what he had to do there, and so away again quickly. But when he had crossed the canal he let the car go off without him--for the good reason that the meeting and the parting might not come so soon. And for this same reason he walked slowly, irresolutely. Once or twice he halted and almost turned back. It all was very unlike his brisk, assured advance on that far back day--ages before, it seemed to him--when he went down the Point for the first time.
As he went onward, slowly, he was thinking about that day: how it had been without intention that he turned eastward instead of westward when he started on his walk; how a whim of the moment had led him to cross the canal; how the mere chance of the three church-bound women hurrying into the ferry-boat had prevented his immediate return. He fell to wondering, dully, what "chance" is, anyway--this force which with a grim humour uses our most unconsidered actions for the making or the unmaking of our lives; and the hopeless puzzle of it all kept his mind unprofitably employed until he had passed the last of the little houses, and had gone on through the stunted pines, and so was come to the desolate graveyard.
He did not shun the graveyard, as he had shunned it all the summer long. The need for that was past--now that, in reality, Ulrica's name had come to be to him a name upon a grave. For a while he stood with his arms resting on the broken fence, looking before him in a dull way and feeling a dull surprise because he found the dismal place still precisely as he remembered it. That in so very long a time it should not have become more ruinous seemed to him unreasonable. Then he walked on past the little church, still slowly and hesitatingly, and so came at last to the Castle. Oddly enough, the Major was standing again at the same lower window, and saw him, and came out to welcome him. For a moment he had a queer feeling that perhaps it still was that first day--that he might have been dozing in the pine woods, somewhere, and that the past summer was all a dream.
The Major was beaming with friendliness. "Aha, Masteh Geo'ge, I'm glad to see yo' and to congratulate yo'!" he said heartily. And he gave Maltham a cordial dig in the ribs as he added: "Yo' ah a sly dog, a vehy sly dog, my boy, to keep youah secret from us! But I happened to be up in town yestehday, and by the mehest chance I met Captain Todd, of youah boat, and he told me why yo' ah going back to Chicago in such a huhy, suh! It is a great match, a magnificent match that yo' ah making, Geo'ge, and I congratulate yo' with all my haht. I should be glad of the oppo'tunity to congratulate Miss Strangfo'd also. Fo' I am not flattehing yo', Geo'ge, when I tell yo' that she could not have found a betteh husband had she gone to look fo' him in South Cahrolina. Suh, I can say no mo' than that!"