Her eyes met his fairly for a moment, were lowered, then again raised. Something within them gave him courage, or perhaps the splendid rising color in her face, or perhaps the provocation of her mouth. And he kissed her. She did not stir; her lips were stiffly unresponsive.
But when, once more, he bent above her, she caught both his hands with a sob and met his lips with heart and soul, closing her wet eyes.
“D-darling,” said J. Abingdon Smith, bending his head over hers where it lay buried in his shoulder, “I don’t mind being an ass — really I don’t—”
Her hands crushed his, signaling silence.
“It isn’t the funny things you wrote about me,” he persisted; “but I really am that sort of a man. And likely to continue. You don’t care, do you, dear?”
“W-when I love you!” she sobbed; “how can you say such things! D-do you think I’d love an idiot?”
He was discreetly silent for a while, then: “Anyway, I’ve found all your furniture — the bandy-legged chairs and things,” he whispered cheerfully. “They are waiting for you at — a — Abingdon — a place I have in the country. Are you pleased?”
She lifted her face and made an effort to speak. “Never mind,” he said, dizzy with happiness, “we’ll talk it over to-morrow. I think,” he added, “that I’ll have the men here to-morrow to remove our tree. There’s a splendid place for it on the lawn.”
She turned, her hands clasped in his, and looked up at the Tree of Dreams. Then, very gently, she bent and laid her lips against the bark.
CHAPTER V
THE BRIDAL PAIR
“IF I were you,” said the elder man, “I should take three months’ solid rest.”
“A month is enough,” said the younger man. “Ozone will do it; the first brace of grouse I bag will do it—” He broke off abruptly, staring at the line of dimly lighted cars, where negro porters stood by the vestibuled sleepers, directing passengers to staterooms and berths.
“Dog all right, doctor?” inquired the elder man pleasantly.
“All right, doctor,” replied the younger; “I spoke to the baggage master.”
There was a silence; the elder man chewed an unlighted cigar reflectively, watching his companion with keen narrowing eyes.
The younger physician stood full in the white electric light, lean head lowered, apparently preoccupied with a study of his own shadow swimming and quivering on the asphalt at his feet.
“So you fear I may break down?” he observed, without raising his head.
“I think you’re tired out,” said the other.
“That’s a more agreeable way of expressing it,” said the young fellow. “I hear” — he hesitated, with a faint trace of irritation—” I understand that Forbes Stanly thinks me mentally unsound.”
“He probably suspects what you’re up to,” said the elder man soberly.
“Well, what will he do when I announce ray germ theory? Put me in a strait-jacket?”
“He’ll say you’re mad, until you prove it; every physician will agree with him — until your radium test shows us the microbe of insanity.”
“Doctor,” said the young man abruptly, “I’m going to admit something — to you.”
“All right; go ahead and admit it.”
“Well, I am a bit worried about my own condition.”
“It’s time you were,” observed the other.
“Yes — it’s about time. Doctor, I am seriously affected.”
The elder man looked up sharply.
“Yes, I’m — in love.”
“Ah!” muttered the elder physician, amused and a trifle disgusted; “so that’s your malady, is it?”
“A malady — yes; not explainable by our germ theory — not affected by radio-activity. Doctor, I’m speaking lightly enough, but there’s no happiness in it.”
“Never is,” commented the other, striking a match and lighting his ragged cigar. After a puff or two the cigar went out. “All I have to say,” he added, “is, don’t do it just now. Show me a scale of pure radium and I’ll give you leave to marry every spinster in New York. In the mean time go and shoot a few dozen harmless, happy grouse; they can’t shoot back. But let love alone.... By the way, who is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know her name, I suppose?”
The young fellow shook his head. “I don’t even know where she lives,” he said finally.
After a pause the elder man took him gently by the arm: “Are you subject to this sort of thing? Are you susceptible?”
“No, not at all.”
“Ever before in love?”
“Yes — once.”
“When?”
“When I was about ten years old. Her name was Rosamund — aged eight. I never had the courage to speak to her. She died recently, I believe.”
The reply was so quietly serious, so destitute of any suspicion of humor, that the elder man’s smile faded; and again he cast one of his swift, keen glances at his companion.
“Won’t you stay away three months?” he asked patiently.
But the other only shook his head, tracing with the point of his walking stick the outline of his own shadow on the asphalt.
A moment later he glanced at his watch, closed it with a snap, silently shook hands with his equally silent friend, and stepped aboard the sleeping car.
Neither had noticed the name of the sleeping car.
It happened to be the Rosamund.
Loungers and passengers on Wildwood station drew back from the platform’s edge as the towering locomotive shot by them, stunning their ears with the clangor of its melancholy bell.
Slower, slower glided the dusty train, then stopped, jolting; eddying circles of humanity closed around the cars, through which descending passengers pushed.
“Wildwood! Wildwood!” cried the trainmen; trunks tumbling out of the forward car descended with a bang! — a yelping, wagging setter dog landed on the platform, hysterically grateful to be free; and at the same moment a young fellow in tweed shooting clothes, carrying gripsack and gun case, made his way forward toward the baggage master, who was being jerked all over the platform by the frantic dog.
“Much obliged; I’ll take the dog,” he said, slipping a bit of silver into the official’s hand, and receiving the dog’s chain in return.
“Hope you’ll have good sport,” replied the baggage master. “There’s a lot o’ birds in this country, they tell me. You’ve got a good dog there.”
The young man smiled and nodded, released the chain from his dog’s collar, and started off up the dusty village street, followed by an urchin carrying his luggage.
The landlord of the Wildwood Inn stood on the veranda, prepared to receive guests. When a young man, a white setter dog, and a small boy loomed up, his speculative eyes became suffused with benevolence.
“How-de-do, sir?” he said cordially. “Guess you was with us three year since — stayed to supper. Ain’t that so?”
“It certainly is,” said his guest cheerfully. “I am surprised that you remember me.”
“Be ye?” rejoined the landlord, gratified. “Say! I can tell the name of every man, woman, an’ child that has ever set down to eat with us. You was here with a pair o’ red bird dawgs; shot a mess o’ birds before dark, come back pegged out, an’ took the ten-thirty to Noo York. Hey? Yaas, an’ you was cussin’ round because you couldn’t stay an’ shoot for a month.”
“I had to work hard in those days,” laughed the young man. “You are right; it was three years ago this month.”
“Time’s a flyer; it’s fitted with triple screws these days,” said the landlord. “Come right in an’ make yourself to home. Ed! O Ed! Take this bag to 13! We’re all full, sir. You ain’t scared at No. 13, be ye? Say! if I ain’t a liar you had 13 three years ago! Waal, now! — ain’t that the dumbdest — But you can have what you want Monday. How long was you calkerlatin’ to stay?”
“A month — if the shooting is good.”
&n
bsp; “It’s all right. Orrin Plummer come in last night with a mess o’ pa’tridges. He says the woodcock is droppin’ in to the birches south o’ Sweetbrier Hill.”
The young man nodded, and began to remove his gun from the service-worn case of sole leather.
“Ain’t startin’ right off, be ye?” inquired his host, laughing.
“I can’t begin too quickly,” said the young man, busy locking barrels to stock, while the dog looked on, thumping the veranda floor with his plumy tail.
The landlord admired the slim, polished weapon. “That’s the instrooment!” he observed. “That there’s a slick bird dawg, too. Guess I’d better fill my ice box. Your limit’s thirty of each — cock an’ pa’tridge. After that there’s ducks.”
“It’s a good, sane law,” said the young man, dropping his gun under one arm.
The landlord scratched his ear reflectively. “Lemme see,” he mused; “wasn’t you a doctor? I heard tell that you made up pieces for the papers about the idjits an’ loony ticks of Rome an’ Roosia an’ furrin climes.”
“I have written a little on European and Asiatic insanity,” replied the doctor good-humoredly. “Was you over to them parts?”
“For three years.” He whistled the dog in from, the road, where several yellow curs were walking round and round him, every hair on end.
The landlord said: “You look a little peaked yourself. Take it easy the fust, is my advice.”
His guest nodded abstractedly, lingering on the veranda, preoccupied with the beauty of the village street, which stretched away westward under tall elms. Autumn-tinted hills closed the vista; beyond them spread the blue sky.
“The cemetery lies that way, does it not?” inquired the young man.
“Straight ahead,” said the landlord. “Take the road to the Holler.”
“Do you” — the doctor hesitated—” do you recall a funeral there three years ago?”
“Whose?” asked his host bluntly.
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll ask my woman; she saves them funeral pieces an’ makes a album.... Friend o’ yours buried there?”
“No.”
The landlord sauntered toward the barroom, where two fellow taxpayers stood shuffling their feet impatiently.
“Waal, good luck, Doc,” he said, without intentional offense; “supper’s at six. We’ll try an’ make you comfortable.”
“Thank you,” replied the doctor, stepping out into the road, and motioning the white setter to heel.
“I remember now,” he muttered, as he turned northward, where the road forked; “the cemetery lies to the westward; there should be a lane at the next turning—”
He hesitated and stopped, then resumed his course, mumbling to himself: “I can pass the cemetery later; she would not be there; I don’t think I shall ever see her again.... I — I wonder whether I am — perfectly — well—”
The words were suddenly lost in a sharp indrawn breath; his heart ceased beating, fluttered, then throbbed on violently; and he shook from head to foot.
There was a glimmer of a summer gown under the trees; a figure passed from shadow to sunshine, and again into the cool dusk of a leafy lane.
The pallor of the young fellow’s face changed; a heavy flush spread from forehead to neck; he strode forward, dazed, deafened by the tumult of his drumming pulses. The dog, alert, suspicious, led the way, wheeling into the bramble-bordered lane, only to halt, turn back, and fall in behind his master again.
In the lane ahead the light summer gown fluttered under the foliage, bright in the sunlight, almost lost in the shadows. Then he saw her on the hill’s breezy crest, poised for a moment against the sky.
When at length he reached the hill, he found her seated in the shade of a pine. She looked up serenely, as though she had expected him, and they faced each other. A moment later his dog left him, sneaking away without a sound.
When he strove to speak, his voice had an unknown tone to him. Her upturned face was his only answer. The breeze in the pinetops, which had been stirring lazily and monotonously, ceased.
Her delicate face was like a blossom lifted in the still air; her upward glance chained him to silence. The first breeze broke the spell: he spoke a word, then speech died on his lips; he stood twisting his shooting cap, confused, not daring to continue.
The girl leaned back, supporting her weight on one arm, fingers almost buried in the deep green moss.
“It is three years to-day,” he said, in the dull voice of one who dreams; “three years to-day. May I not speak?”
In her lowered head and eyes he read acquiescence; in her silence, consent.
“Three years ago to-day,” he repeated; “the anniversary has given me courage to speak to you. Surely you will not take offense; we have traveled so far together! — from the end of the world to the end of it, and back again, here — to this place of all places in the world! And now to find you here on this day of all days — here within a step of our first meeting place — three years ago to-day! And all the world we have traveled over since, never speaking, yet ever passing on paths parallel — paths which for thousands of miles ran almost within arm’s distance—”
She raised her head slowly, looking out from the shadows of the pines into the sunshine. Her dreamy eyes rested on acres of golden-rod and hillside brambles quivering in the September heat; on fern-choked gullies edged with alder; on brown and purple grasses; on pine thickets where slim silver birches glimmered.
“Will you speak to me?” he asked. “I have never even heard the sound of your voice.”
She turned and looked at him, touching with idle fingers the soft hair curling on her temples. Then she bent her head once more, the faintest shadow of a smile in her eyes.
“Because,” he said humbly, “these long years of silent recognition count for something! And then the strangeness of it! — the fate of it — the quiet destiny that ruled our lives — that rules them now — now as I am speaking, weighting every second with its tiny burden of fate.”
She straightened up, lifting her half-buried hand from the moss; and he saw the imprint there where the palm and fingers had rested.
“Three years that end to-day — end with the new moon,” he said. “Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said.
He quivered at the sound of her voice. “You were there, just beyond those oaks,” he said eagerly; “we can see them from here. The road turns there—”
“Turns by the cemetery,” she murmured. “Yes, yes, by the cemetery! You had been there, I think.”
“Do you remember that?” she asked.
“I have never forgotten — never!” he repeated, striving to hold her eyes to his own; “it was not twilight; there was a glimmer of day in the west, but the woods were darkening, and the new moon lay in the sky, and the evening was very clear and still.”
Impulsively he dropped on one knee beside her to see her face; and as he spoke, curbing his emotion and impatience with the subtle deference which is inbred in men or never acquired, she stole a glance at him; and his worn visage brightened as though touched with sunlight.
“The second time I saw you was in New York,” he said—” only a glimpse of your face in the crowd — but I knew you.”
“I saw you,” she mused.
“Did you?” he cried, enchanted. “I dared not believe that you recognized me.”
“Yes, I knew you.... Tell me more.”
The thrilling voice set him aflame; faint danger signals tinted her face and neck.
“In December,” he went on unsteadily, “I saw you in Paris — I saw only you amid the thousand faces in the candlelight of Notre Dame.”
“And I saw you.... And then?”
“And then two months of darkness.... And at last a light — moonlight — and you on the terrace at Amara.”
“There was only a flower bed — a few spikes of white hyacinths between us,” she said dreamily.
He strove to speak coolly. “Day
and night have built many a wall between us; was that you who passed me in the starlight, so close that our shoulders touched, in that narrow street in Samarcand? And the dark figure with you—”
“Yes, it was I and my attendant.”
“And... you, there in the fog—”
“At Archangel? Yes, it was I.”
“On the Goryn?”
“It was I.... And I am here at last — with you. It is our destiny.”
So, kneeling there beside her in the shadow of the pines, she absolved him in their dim confessional, holding him guiltless under the destiny that awaits us all.
Again that illumination touched his haggard face as though brightened by a sun ray stealing through the still foliage above. He grew younger under the level beauty of her gaze; care fell from him like a mask; the shadows that had haunted his eyes faded; youth awoke, transfiguring him and all his eyes beheld.
Made prisoner by love, adoring her, fearing her, he knelt beside her, knowing already that she had surrendered, though fearful yet by word or gesture or a glance to claim what destiny was holding for him — holding securely, inexorably, for him alone.
He spoke of her kindness in understanding him, and of his gratitude; of her generosity, of his wonder that she had ever noticed him on his way through the world.
“I cannot believe that we have never before spoken to each other,” he said; “that I do not even know your name. Surely there was once a corner in the land of childhood where we sat together when the world was younger.”
She said, dreamily: “Have you forgotten?”
“Forgotten?”
“That sunny corner in the land of childhood.”
“Had you been there, I should not have forgotten,” he replied, troubled.
“Look at me,” she said. Her lovely eyes met his; under the penetrating sweetness of her gaze his heart quickened and grew restless and his uneasy soul stirred, awaking memories.
“There was a child,” she said, “years ago; a child at school. You sometimes looked at her; you never spoke. Do you remember?”
He rose to his feet, staring down at her.
“Do you remember?” she asked again.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1146
