Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight Part 7

"How very kind; you are just the sort of friend one needs. Let's go at once and speak to Mrs Neal."

"Aunt, Mr. Cornwall and I are planning a little party for Wednesday evening. He is to be responsible for the young men and you are to ask three of the girls who have called;--and serve some light refreshments, else Mr. Cornwall will have to take us to the drug store. Does Wednesday evening suit you?"

"Yes, indeed; what girls would you suggest Mr. Cornwall?"

"They've hardly been in my line since I have been up here. I only know one or two. It's nice to come not knowing who you will meet;--besides I am not as deeply interested as the other three men. I shall speak for Miss Durrett in advance and have the pick of all possible prospects."

They returned to their seats under the elms and completed their plans; Mrs. Neal having announced that she would ask Bessie Hall, Mary Norwood and Helen Creech.

Dorothy said; "The young men suggested shall go for them while you come ahead and make yourself generally useful. This is the penalty for being so presumptuous as to demand me as a partner before I have seen the other gentlemen."

Mrs. Neal and Dorothy were both experienced entertainers and the little party was a complete success.

From Wednesday evening the Neal home became the center of gaiety for more than a dozen young persons. At night when Dorothy was at home each window seat and rustic bench was the stage of a scene from the first act of a seemingly serious love affair, had not the actors changed partners and rehea.r.s.ed the same scenes.

By day there were picnics to the mountain tops, fishing and bathing parties, horseback rides up Clover Fork and down the river and at night card parties, informal dances, hay rides and suppers.

Cornwall, who for more than a year had been very studious and unduly sedate, went everywhere; making repeated apologies to his mother for leaving her so much alone all the while declaring that he thought a thousand times more of her than any girl in the world.

She and Mrs. Neal became great friends. Mr. Neal said, when his wife was not at home he knew she was over at the Cornwalls', and John, who heard the remark, replied; "I am always coming over to your house hunting mother," at which the young crowd on the porch roared with laughter.

Dorothy was the most popular of the girls and in her bird-like way a beautiful little creature. A blonde of the purest type, of pet.i.te and perfect form, weighing about a hundred pounds.

Every boy that came to the house, at one time or another, gave her a great bouquet of roses or mountain laurel or a box of chocolates. Among themselves, they called her Dolly Dimples Durrett. All the household and the girls called her Dolly; even Cornwall unconsciously called her Dolly several times; once in Mrs. Neal's presence. After he left the house Mrs. Neal asked Dorothy when he began doing that. "Oh! He did it unconsciously; he is around and hears it so much; I am expecting every day to call him John and probably have. It doesn't mean anything. I'm almost sorry to say."

She seemed not to care in the least who of the boys was her cavalier, making it a point rather to keep the whole company entertained and in the best of spirits though Cornwall was most with her and they were such good friends as to feel privileged not to weary each other with forced conversation, taking time to think a little.

She was as vivacious and light of heart as a feathery summer cloud; and, I was about to say, reminding one of a b.u.t.terfly; but there was nothing of the sedate, slow, hovery movement of that beautiful insect. Her's was an extremely animated, aggressive daintiness. She always seemed to be hovering near or peeping into a bunch of flowers or carefully selecting a piece of candy for her dainty little mouth.

Her costumes were filmy creations of silk or other soft fluffy stuffs that gave forth the iridescence and sheen of a perfect opal; a coal of unquenchable, oscillating ruby fire in the heart of a milky diamond. She was a gorgeous little humming bird. So John described her to his mother and she knew he had not found the girl he wished for his wife.

One Sunday Dorothy and Mr. and Mrs Neal came from church to dine with them.

After dinner, while the others sat in the cool, darkened library, Dorothy and John wandered about the yard and garden.

They pa.s.sed a bed of flowers in full bloom, over which darted and poised a pair of humming birds. The flowers were not attractive to the eye or of pleasant odor; but the long corollas held a pungent, honeyed sweetness that attracted the birds and many insects. Its technical name was Agave Americana. The seed had been brought from Mexico by the former owner of the place who, after making a great fortune in mining, had first settled in Harlan, but moved away, as the place offered very limited opportunities for spending his income.

When Dorothy pa.s.sed the flower bed she gathered a handful and held them to her face with evident relish as they walked through the garden and found seats on the bench under the arbor.

They had been seated a few minutes when a messenger came from the public telephone office calling for John to answer a call from Pittsburgh.

Knowing it was urgent, he excused himself, asking Dorothy to wait in the arbor, expecting to be gone five minutes. He was delayed at least twenty. When he returned she was peacefully sleeping on the bench. To awaken her he held the bunch of flowers to her face.

She smiled, sat up and stretching out her arms moved them up and down more rapidly than he thought humanly possible; the vibration or arc described, being one eighth of a complete circle. She bent forward, placing her lips above first one corolla then another. Her actions were unmistakable imitations of a humming bird. During the whole time she kept up an incessant humming or a chirpy little chatter, when John, almost in tears, taking her by the arm, awoke her.

"Oh! Oh! While you were away I slept and had the funniest dream. Come with me to the hammock under the oaks in the yard and I will tell it.

Tell me the name of those strangely familiar flowers? Why they are the very ones I saw in my dream!"

THE DREAM.

"I sat on a bare twig, far from the ground, feeling safer at that giddy height than nearer earth, preening pinions, polishing beak and uttering the while a plaintive little chatter.

"There was a whirry buzz from above, a breeze of swift motion, a tremor of my perch, and beside me sat a gorgeous little knight, dressed even more brilliantly than I.

"His general body armor was of shining golden green, duller and giving gradual place to an opaque black underneath. He wore a crown of metallic violet and gorget of emerald green; his tail feathers were a bra.s.sy sheeny green and upon his breast and near his eyes were a few feathers of snowy white, as though he had been caught for a second in a snow storm.

"As he moved in the sunlight those colors shifted and changed until, if I had not been restrained by modesty, in ecstasy I must have cried;--'What a gorgeous being you are!' and he, doubtless reading my thoughts and more than pleased that I liked his appearance, moved yet closer and whispered words of love to me.

"From our perch we looked out upon the land, the foothill country. It was loved and kissed by the sun. The scent of fragrant blossoms filled the air and the fields were dotted with vari-colored flowers. Far above to the north was a mountain range, the highest peaks of which were covered with snow, and far below to the south was a lazy tropic river hemmed to the water's edge by forests of dense shade. There we never ventured though sometimes when the sun was hottest we flew to the very edge of the snow fields and sipped the most delicious nectar from the white wax-like flowers that grew on their moist border.

"It was a life of freedom and movement. Not a moment of inactive discontent; to dart with the speed of an arrow but pursue as variant a course as fancy dictated; from twig top to field, feeding upon honeyed nectar and small insects which also loved the flowers and fed upon their sweets. Not perching in sluggish dumbness at the place of feeding but hovering in a fragrant flowery world over the red or white or blue corolla cloth of an ever changing dinner service, leading all the while a life of intense movement, to pa.s.s as a bar of light, to stop and rest and as suddenly depart.

"There is a flash of green, red and purplish light, as the iridescence of the purest gem. Was it the airplane of a fairy pa.s.sing by that gave forth all those gorgeous hues, or had an angel in pa.s.sing from heaven to earth dropped a jewel from his crown? I saw no wings in motion, but I have grown to know and love the sound I heard; 'tis Sir Knight returning from one of his excursions.

"He alights, and preening his feathers a second, the while humming a little love ditty comes very close and whispers; 'Love, will you be mine?' And the answer is so low that nothing but a humming bird may hear.

"So we leave the twig and skimming over field and rill come into a land of flowers; and many of them are such flowers as I had just gathered.

"No longer alone, we mingle with the bees and b.u.t.terflies and many insects and others of our kind, all intent upon a breakfast of honey dew freshly garnered and served each morning; and such a service! The very air is alive with the gathering; our ears are deafened by the whistling sounds of flight, from a plaintiff treble to a resonant ba.s.s, mingled with cries of joy and greeting and quarrelsome chatter. It is the chit-chat of the insect world.

"My mate on vibrant invisible wing is immovably suspended in a near vertical position over a large bell white corolla, while I feast from a platter with a scarlet border and a golden center.

"Ye men who would learn to fly, take the humming bird for instructor; and be taught that the most powerful flight is not given to breadth of wing but to swiftness of motion or vibration; and in watching Sir Knight poised above a flower you may solve the mystery of a suspended flight.

"Finally we fix upon the place to build the nest, on a limb overhanging the eddying pool of a mountain torrent, just above the foam and spray of a waterfall.

"Equally careful search is made for material. The foundation is made of moss plastered into a ma.s.s and saddled on a limb. Then it is lined with white vegetable lint or down.

"I now lead a more sedate life as becomes one a.s.suming the responsibilities of rearing a family; and, a believer in a small and well-groomed family, lay but two snow-white eggs.

"While I am busy on the nest, Sir Knight pugnaciously guards bride and home and, having much leisure, becomes an exterior decorator of the nest, dressing it in a becoming coat of gray lichens.

"A small hawk lights in the treetop; he is scarcely settled before our guard makes swift and vicious charge at his head and eyes with needle-like beak. The hawk in trepidation soars away, pursued for many a yard, too slow to strike back effectively.

"When the little fellows are old enough to make trips alone to the flowery feeding grounds I fly to the edge of the forest and there, tempted to feed from the cone-shaped flowers of a pendant vine, become enmeshed in the web of a great tropical spider.

"The spider stealthily approaches, watching a chance to spring when I have grown even more helpless from futile struggle. There is a whir of wing, a dart of rainbow light, a hole torn in the net. The spider is tossed from his footing and falls wounded to earth. There is another welcome whir of wings and I, torn loose, half flutter, half fly to a nearby limb. Sir Knight has rescued his lady love!

"It was then I awoke and found you standing beside me with those flowers in your hand."

John did not think it necessary to tell the girl what she had done before he aroused her. This knowledge, with the dream, was to him an uncanny thing. The girl's experience he felt was in some weird way a call from a misty and long-forgotten past. The dream but emphasized comparisons he himself had made. He had even told his mother the girl reminded him of a humming bird. This conception, with the dream, blotted out all thought of the consummation of a slowly growing love. Though he tried to conceal this feeling, the girl in a subtle way perceived it.

They returned to the library, and the Neals shortly after returned home.

That night the girl was depressed and could not sleep. She found herself repeating: "Oh, why did I tell John that dream! He did not like it; I wonder why."