A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill Part 15

But these were not ordinary circ.u.mstances.

The impetuous young person who listened to him with such rapt admiration and respect, when she listened at all, had no method or system whatever.

She simply waited for the hint, the flash that revealed the vision, then she joyously and fearlessly leaped to her conclusion.

The fact that amazed him was not that she frequently landed before he did, but that she landed at all!

As for Miss Lady herself, she was finding the Doctor's interest and companionship a welcome solace in her loneliness. The well of his knowledge seemed to her fathomless, and she never tired of hanging over the brink and looking down, often seeing stars in the darkness that she never saw in the day.

When this last lesson was finished, the Doctor closed the book reluctantly:

"I have given you the merest outline for future work," he said. "The rest remains with you. Have you decided yet what you are going to do?"

"No, I'll do whatever you tell me, Doctor. Only I do hope it won't be to teach school,--the very thought of teaching makes me shrivel."

"It is not altogether beyond the range of possibility that you will marry," said the Doctor, tracing parallelograms on the arm of the chair.

"Such things do happen, you know."

Miss Lady, sitting with her elbows on the table and her chin on her palms, flashed a strange, questioning glance at him.

"Do you believe in love, Doctor?"

"Why, of course, you foolish girl, in all its manifestations, filial, paternal, marital. a.s.suredly I do."

"But I mean that other kind, the kind that makes a little heaven for a man and woman here on earth, that answers all their longings, so that nothing else matters, just so they have each other. I read about it in novels and in poetry, but I don't see it. The married people I know take each other as much for granted as they do their hands and feet. That's not what love means to me."

The Doctor smiled indulgently. "Wait until you have pa.s.sed the sentimental age before you give your verdict! Most young ladies imagine that because love does not arrive, full panoplied on a snow-white steed, that it is not love. You, probably, like the rest, have read too many romantic novels. When you come to know life better you will realize that moral equality and intellectual affinity promise a much safer union than a violent romantic attachment."

She regarded him as earnestly as if he had been the fount of all wisdom.

"How long does it usually last?" she asked.

"Last?" he repeated.

"The sentimental age. I suppose a girl ought to get through it by the time she is twenty. But I never do things on time. I didn't even know I was sentimental until you told me. I have learned a great many things since you came."

"There were some things you did not need to learn," said the Doctor quietly. "Kindness and sympathy, and rare understanding. I shall always look back with pleasure to these quiet weeks spent under your father's roof. They have given me the only chance I have had in years for undisturbed writing on the History that will stand for my life work. I must confess that I dread my return home. The noise and confusion, the constant invasion of my privacy, the demands upon my time, appal me.

Very few realize the magnitude of my work, and the necessity it lays upon me for isolating myself. You have been singularly sympathetic and helpful in that respect."

"But think what your being here has meant to me! You came into my life just when everything else seemed to drop out. You explained things to me, and gave me something to do. You can't begin to know how you have helped me."

"I have only tried to direct and suggest," the Doctor said; "in short to take the place--"

"Of a father," finished Miss Lady enthusiastically.

The Doctor tapped his foot impatiently. After all her father was a much older man than he: the distance, at that moment, between forty and sixty seemed infinitely greater than that between forty and twenty.

"You see," Miss Lady went on, unconsciously, "you have taken Daddy's place in so many ways that I have been depending on you for everything.

It makes me awfully lonesome when I think of your leaving. Down here you have just belonged to Miss Wuster and me, and once you get back to town you will be the famous Doctor Queerington again and belong to everybody.

I shan't dare write to you for fear I spell a word wrong."

"Indeed, I shall expect a weekly letter reporting the progress of your studies, and I shall come to see you from time to time and help you with your plans for the future."

"Yes, but it won't be the same. We will sit in the parlor, and you'll be company, and I shall be afraid of you. I am always afraid of you the minute I get out of your sight."

"What nonsense! I never criticize anything but your p.r.o.nunciation, and an occasional exaggeration of statement. If I have seemed severe--"

"You haven't! You've been an angel! When I think of all the time you have taken from your writing to help me, I am ashamed for letting you do it."

"You must not think," said the Doctor slowly, "that I have been wholly disinterested. I have found you singularly helpful to me. I think I may say that you stimulate me and refresh me more than any one I know."

"_I_ do? Oh! Doctor! That's about the nicest thing I ever had said to me."

He was not prepared for the radiant face of grat.i.tude that was lifted to his, nor for the proximity of her glowing eyes which gave him no further reason for doubting their exact hue.

"Yes," he said with slight embarra.s.sment, "your mind interests me exceedingly. It is not complex, nor subtle, but remarkably intuitive.

You have imagination and humor, and great receptivity."

Miss Lady wore the absorbed look people usually wear when their characteristics are undergoing vivisection; she could not have been more fascinated had she been viewing her face for the first time in a mirror.

"This little volume now," the Doctor continued, picking up an elementary treatise on evolution; "I am particularly anxious to see what effect it will have on a fresh, unsophisticated mind. Make notes as you read, and we will discuss it when you have finished."

"And you won't forget to send me the copy of Mrs. Browning?"

"No, I seldom forget. But I may not send it. Science is better for you just now than poetry. What is that blossom you are so carefully cherishing?"

Miss Lady's eyes fell, and the color leapt to her face.

"This? Just a wild rose I found over there by the wall. I thought they had stopped blooming weeks ago."

The Doctor took it in his hand and examined it minutely: "It is the _Rosa Blanda_," he said, "five cleft sepals that terminate in a tube.

Pliny tells us that in ancient days the warriors used the petals of this rose to garnish their choicest meats. Who is that quaint person coming over the stile?"

"It's Miss Ferney. What a nuisance, on our last day! But I forgot, I asked her to come. If she stays very long, just tell a little fib, won't you, and say you need me for something?"

"It will not be a fib," said the Doctor quietly, "I do need you."

Miss Lady met her caller at the front porch and relieved her of the jar she was carrying.

"It's pickles," said Miss Ferney, a withered little woman whose small, nibbling face suggested a squirrel's. "I thought having company you might need 'em. Don't know though. City people may be too aristocratic to eat country pickles."

"The idea, Miss Ferney! Don't you sell them in the city all the time?"

"Yes, under labels. City people lay stress on labels. When I was a child, I wasn't allowed to eat things that was labeled. I hear he's going?"

"Who?"

"Your Doctor. Don't see how you've ever stood him so long."

"Oh! you don't know Doctor Queerington! It's been a great privilege to have him here, He is a very distinguished man, Miss Ferney, and so kind and good!"