As she said nothing, he went on, reflectively: “Eminent authorities have computed that a man with lots of hair on his head stands thirty and nineteen-hundredths better chance with a girl than a man who has but a scanty crop. A man with curly hair has eighty-seven chances in a hundred, a man with wavy hair has seventy-nine, a man—”
“Mr. Burleson,” she said, exasperated, “I am utterly at a loss to understand what it is in you that I find attractive enough to endure you.”
“Seventy-nine,” he ventured— “my hair is wavy—”
She touched her mare and galloped forward, and he followed through the yellow sunshine, attendant always on her caprice, ready for any sudden whim. So when she wheeled to the left and lifted her mare over a snake-fence, he was ready to follow; and together they tore away across a pasture, up a hill all purple with plumy bunch-grass, and forward to the edge of a gravel-pit, where she whirled her mare about, drew bridle, and flung up a warning hand just in time. His escape was narrower; his horse’s hind hoofs loosened a section of undermined sod; the animal stumbled, sank back, strained with every muscle, and dragged himself desperately forward; while behind him the entire edge of the pit gave way, crashing and clattering into the depths below.
They were both rather white when they faced each other.
“Don’t take such a risk again,” he said, harshly.
“I won’t,” she answered, with dry lips; but she was not thinking of herself. Suddenly she became very humble, guiding her mare alongside of his horse, and in a low voice asked him to pardon her folly.
And, not thinking of himself, he scored her for the risk she had taken, alternately reproaching, arguing, bullying, pleading, after the fashion of men. And, still shaken by the peril she had so wilfully sought, he asked her not to do it again, for his sake — an informal request that she accepted with equal informality and a slow droop of her head.
Never had she received such a thorough, such a satisfying scolding. There was not one word too much — every phrase refreshed her, every arbitrary intonation sang in her ears like music. And so far not one selfish note had been struck.
She listened, eyes downcast, face delicately flushed — listened until it pleased him to make an end, which he did with amazing lack of skill:
“What do you suppose life would hold for me with you at the bottom of that gravel-pit?”
The selfish note rang out, unmistakable, imperative — the clearest, sweetest note of all to her. But the question was no question and required no answer. Besides, he had said enough — just enough.
“Let us ride home,” she said, realizing that they were on dangerous ground again — dangerous as the gravel-hill.
And a few moments later she caught a look in his face that disconcerted and stampeded her. “It was partly your own fault, Mr. Burleson. Why does not your friend take away the mare he has bought and paid for?”
“Partly — my — fault!” he repeated, wrathfully.
“Can you not let a woman have that much consolation?” she said, lifting her gray eyes to his with a little laugh. “Do you insist on being the only and perfect embodiment of omniscience?”
He said, rather sulkily, that he didn’t think he was omniscient, and she pretended to doubt it, until the badinage left him half vexed, half laughing, but on perfectly safe ground once more.
Indeed, they were already riding over the village bridge, and he said: “I want to stop and see Santry’s child for a moment. Will you wait?”
“Yes,” she said.
So he dismounted and entered the weather-battered abode of Santry; and she looked after him with an expression on her face that he had never surprised there.
Meanwhile, along the gray village thoroughfare the good folk peeped out at her where she sat her mare, unconscious, deep in maiden meditation.
She had done much for her people; she was doing much. Fiction might add that they adored her, worshipped her very footprints! — echoes all of ancient legends of a grateful tenantry that the New World believes in but never saw.
After a little while Burleson emerged from Santry’s house, gravely returning the effusive adieus of the family.
“You are perfectly welcome,” he said, annoyed; “it is a pleasure to be able to do anything for children.”
And as he mounted he said to Miss Elliott, “I’ve fixed it, I think.”
“Fixed her hip?”
“No; arranged for her to go to New York. They do that sort of thing there. I see no reason why the child should not walk.”
“Oh, do you think so?” she exclaimed, softly. “You make me very happy, Mr. Burleson.”
He looked her full in the face for just the space of a second.
“And you make me happy,” he said.
She laughed, apparently serene and self-possessed, and turned up the hill, he following a fraction of a length behind.
In grassy hollows late dandelions starred the green with gold, the red alder’s scarlet berries flamed along the road-side thickets; beyond, against the sky, acres of dead mullein stalks stood guard above the hollow scrub.
“Do you know,” she said, over her shoulder, “that there is a rose in bloom in our garden?”
“Is there?” he asked, without surprise.
“Doesn’t it astonish you?” she demanded. “Roses don’t bloom up here in October.”
“Oh yes, they do,” he muttered.
At the gate they dismounted, he silent, preoccupied, she uneasily alert and outwardly very friendly.
“How warm it is!” she said; “it will be like a night in June with the moon up — and that rose in the garden.… You say that you are coming this evening?”
“Of course. It is your last evening.”
“Our last evening,” she repeated, thoughtfully.… “You said …”
“I said that I was going South, too. I am not sure that I am going.”
“I am sorry,” she observed, coolly. And after a moment she handed him the bridle of her mare, saying, “You will see that she is forwarded when your friend asks for her?”
“Yes.”
She looked at the mare, then walked up slowly and put her arms around the creature’s silky neck. “Good-bye,” she said, and kissed her. Turning half defiantly on Burleson, she smiled, touching her wet lashes with her gloved wrist.
“The Arab lady and the faithful gee-gee,” she said. “I know The Witch doesn’t care, but I can’t help loving her.… Are you properly impressed with my grief?”
There was that in Burleson’s eyes that sobered her; she instinctively laid her hand on the gate, looking at him with a face which had suddenly grown colorless and expressionless.
“Miss Elliott,” he said, “will you marry me?”
The tingling silence lengthened, broken at intervals by the dull stamping of the horses.
After a moment she moved leisurely past him, bending her head as she entered the yard, and closing the gate slowly behind her. Then she halted, one gloved hand resting on the closed gate, and looked at him again.
There is an awkwardness in men that women like; there is a gaucherie that women detest. She gazed silently at this man, considering him with a serenity that stunned him speechless.
Yet all the while her brain was one vast confusion, and the tumult of her own heart held her dumb. Even the man himself appeared as a blurred vision; echoes of lost voices dinned in her ears — the voices of children — of a child whom she had known when she wore muslin frocks to her knees — a boy who might once have been this man before her — this tall, sunburned young man, awkward, insistent, artless — oh, entirely without art in a wooing which alternately exasperated and thrilled her. And now his awkwardness had shattered the magic of the dream and left her staring at reality — without warning, without the courtesy of a “garde à vous!”
And his answer? He was waiting for his answer. But men are not gods to demand! — not highwaymen to bar the way with a “Stand and deliver!” And an answer is a precious thing — a gem of untold
value. It was hers to give, hers to withhold, hers to defend.
“You will call on us to say good-bye this evening?” she asked, steadying her voice.
A deep color stung his face; he bowed, standing stiff and silent until she had passed through the open door of the veranda. Then, half blind with his misery, he mounted, wheeled, and galloped away, The Witch clattering stolidly at his stirrup.
Already the primrose light lay over hill and valley; already the delicate purple net of night had snared forest and marsh; and the wild ducks were stringing across the lakes, and the herons had gone to the forest, and plover answered plover from swamp to swamp, plaintive, querulous, in endless reiteration— “Lost! lost! she’s lost — she’s lost — she’s lost!”
But it was the first time in his life that he had so interpreted the wild crying of the killdeer plover.
There was a gown that had been packed at the bottom of a trunk; it was a fluffy, rather shapeless mound of filmy stuff to look at as it lay on the bed. As it hung upon the perfect figure of a girl of twenty it was, in the words of the maid, “a dhream an’ a blessed vision, glory be!” It ought to have been; it was brand-new.
“THERE WAS THAT IN BURLESON’S EYES THAT SOBERED HER”
At dinner, her father coming in on crutches, stared at his daughter — stared as though the apparition of his dead wife had risen to guide him to his chair; and his daughter laughed across the little table — she scarcely knew why — laughed at his surprise, at his little tribute to her beauty — laughed with the quick tears brimming in her eyes.
Then, after a silence, and thinking of her mother, she spoke of Burleson; and after a while of the coming journey, and their new luck which had come up with the new moon in September — a luck which had brought a purchaser for the mare, another for the land — all of it, swamp, timber, barrens — every rod, house, barn, garden, and stock.
Again leaning her bare elbows on the cloth, she asked her father who the man could be that desired such property. But her father shook his head, repeating the name, which was, I believe, Smith. And that, including the check, was all they had ever learned of this investor who had wanted what they did not want, in the nick of time.
“If he thinks there is gas or oil here he is to be pitied,” said her father. “I wrote him and warned him.”
“I think he replied that he knew his own business,” said the girl.
“I hope he does; the price is excessive — out of all reason. I trust he knows of something in the land that may justify his investment.”
After a moment she said, “Do you really think we may be able to buy a little place in Florida — a few orange-trees and a house?”
His dreamy eyes smiled across at her.
“Thank God!” she thought, answering his smile.
There was no dampness in the air; she aided him to the garden, where he resumed his crutches and hobbled as far as the wonderful bush that bore a single belated rose.
“In the South,” he said, under his breath, “there is no lack of these.… I think — I think all will be well in the South.”
He tired easily, and she helped him back to his study, where young Burleson presently found them, strolling in with his hands in the pockets of his dinner-jacket.
His exchange of greetings with Miss Elliott was quietly formal; with her father almost tender. It was one of the things she cared most for in him; and she walked to the veranda, leaving the two men alone — the man and the shadow of a man.
Once she heard laughter in the room behind her; and it surprised her, pacing the veranda there. Yet Burleson always brought a new anecdote to share with her father — and heretofore he had shared these with her, too. But now! —
Yet it was by her own choice she was alone there, pacing the moonlit porches.
The maid — their only servant — brought a decanter; she could hear the ring of the glasses, relics of better times.… And now better times were dawning again — brief, perhaps, for her father, yet welcome as Indian summer.
After a long while Burleson came to the door, and she looked up, startled.
“Will you sing? Your father asks it.”
“Won’t you ask me, too, Mr. Burleson?”
“Yes.”
“But I want to show you my rose first. Will you come? — it is just a step.”
He walked out into the moonlight with her; they stood silently before the bush which had so capriciously bloomed.
“Now — I will sing for you, Mr. Burleson,” she said, amiably. And they returned to the house, finding not a word to say on the way.
The piano was in decent tune; she sat down, nodding across at her father, and touched a chord or two.
“The same song — the one your mother cared for,” murmured her father.
And she looked at Burleson dreamily, then turned, musing with bent head, sounding a note, a tentative chord. And then she sang.
A dropping chord, lingering like fragrance in the room, a silence, and she rose, looking at her father. But he, dim eyes brooding, lay back unconscious of all save memories awakened by her song. And presently she moved across the room to the veranda, stepping out into the moonlit garden — knowing perfectly well what she was doing, though her heart was beating like a trip-hammer, and she heard the quick step on the gravel behind her.
She was busy with the long stem of the rose when he came up; she broke it short and straightened up, smiling a little greeting, for she could not have spoken for her life.
“Will you marry me?” he asked, under his breath.
Then the slow, clear words came, “I cannot.”
“I love you,” he said, as though he had not heard her. “There is nothing for me in life without you; from the moment you came into my life there was nothing else, nothing in heaven or earth but you — your loveliness, your beauty, your hair, your hands, the echo of your voice haunting me, the memory of your every step, your smile, the turn of your head — all that I love in you — and all that I worship — your sweetness, your loyalty, your bravery, your honor. Give me all this to guard, to adore — try to love me; forget my faults, forgive all that I lack. I know — I know what I am — what little I have to offer — but it is all that I am, all that I have. Constance! Constance! Must you refuse?”
“Did I refuse?” she faltered. “I don’t know why I did.”
With bare arm bent back and hand pressed over the hand that held her waist imprisoned, she looked up into his eyes. Then their lips met.
“Say it,” he whispered.
“Say it? Ah, I do say it: I love you — I love you. I said it years ago — when you were a boy and I wore muslin gowns above my knees. Did you think I had not guessed it?… And you told father to-night — you told him, because I never heard him laugh that way before.… And you are Jack — my boy that I loved when I was ten — my boy lover? Ah, Jack, I was never deceived.”
He drew her closer and lifted her flushed face. “I told your father — yes. And I told him that we would go South with him.”
“You — you dared assume that! — before I had consented!” she cried, exasperated.
“Why — why, I couldn’t contemplate anything else.”
Half laughing, half angry, she strained to release his arm, then desisted, breathless, gray eyes meeting his.
“No other man,” she breathed— “no other man—” There was a silence, then her arms crept up closer, encircling his neck. “There is no other man,” she sighed.
Contents
THE MARKET-HUNTER
A WARM October was followed by a muggy, wet November. The elm leaves turned yellow but did not fall; the ash-trees lighted up the woods like gigantic lanterns set in amber; single branches among the maples slowly crimsoned. As yet the dropping of acorns rarely broke the forest silence in Sagamore County, although the blue-jays screamed in the alders and crows were already gathering for their annual caucus.
Because there had been as yet no frost the partridges still lurked deep in the swamps, and the w
oodcock skulked, shunning the white birches until the ice-storms in the north should set their comrades moving southward.
There was little doing in the feathered world. Of course the swallows had long since departed, and with the advent of the blue-jays and golden-winged wood peckers a few heavy-pinioned hawks had appeared, wheeling all day over the pine-woods, calling querulously.
Then one still night the frost silvered the land, and the raccoons whistled from the beach-woods on the ridges, and old man Jocelyn’s daughter crept from her chilly bed to the window which framed a staring, frosty moon.
Through the silence she heard a whisper like the discreet rustle of silken hangings. It was the sound of leaves falling through the darkness. She peered into the night, where, unseen, the delicate fingers of the frost were touching a million leaves, and as each little leaf was summoned she heard it go, whispering obedience.
Now the moonlight seemed to saturate her torn, thin night-gown and lie like frost on her body; and she crept to the door of her room, shivering, and called, “Father!”
He answered heavily, and the bed in the next room creaked.
“There is a frost,” she said; “shall I load the cartridges?”
She could hear him stumble out of bed and grope for the window.
Presently he yawned loudly and she heard him tumble back into bed.
“There won’t be no flight to-night,” he said; “the birds won’t move for twenty-four hours. Go to bed, Jess.”
“But there are sure to be a few droppers in to-night,” she protested.
“Go to bed,” he said, shortly.
After a moment she began again: “I don’t mind loading a dozen shells, dad.”
“What for?” he said. “It’s my fault I ain’t ready. I didn’t want you foolin’ with candles around powder and shot.”
“But I want you to have a good time to-morrow,” she urged, with teeth chattering. “You know,” and she laughed a mirthless laugh, “it’s Thanksgiving Day, and two woodcock are as good as a turkey.”
What he said was, “Turkey be darned!” but, nevertheless, she knew he was pleased, so she said no more.
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