Dennison Grant Part 30

"Yes."

"Did you kill a German?"

"I've seen a German killed," said Grant, evading a question which no soldier cares to discuss.

"Did you kill 'em in the tummy?" the boy persisted.

"We'll talk about that to-morrow. Now you hop up on to my shoulders, and I'll tie the horses and then carry you home."

He followed the boy's directions until they led him to a path running among pleasant trees down by the river. Presently he caught a glimpse of a cottage in a little open s.p.a.ce, its brown shingled walls almost smothered in a riot of sweet peas.

"That's our house. Don't you like it?" said the boy, who had already forgotten his injury.

"I think it is splendid." And Grant, taking his young charge from his shoulder, stepped up on to the porch and knocked at the screen door.

In a moment it was opened by Zen Transley.

CHAPTER XVII

Sitting on his veranda that evening while the sun dropped low over the mountains and the sound of horses munching contentedly came up from the stables, Grant for the twentieth time turned over in his mind the events of a day that was to stand out as an epochal one in his career. The meeting with the little boy and the quick friendship and confidence which had been formed between them; the mishap, and the trip to the house by the river--these were logical and easily followed. But why, of all the houses in the world, should it have been Zen Transley's house?

Why, of all the little boys in the world, should this have been the son of his rival and the only girl he had ever--the girl he had loved most in all his life? Surely events are ordered to some purpose; surely everything is not mere haphazard chance! The fatalism of the trenches forbade any other conclusion; and if this was so, why had he been thrown into the orbit of Zen Transley? He had not sought her; he had not dreamt of her once in all that morning while her child was winding innocent tendrils of affection about his heart. And yet--how the boy had gripped him! Could it be that in some way he was a small incarnation of the Zen of the Y.D., with all her clamorous pa.s.sion expressed now in childish love and hero-worship? Had some intelligence above his own guided him into this environment, deliberately inviting him to defy conventions and blaze a path of broader freedom for himself, and for her? These were questions he wrestled with as the shadows crept down the mountain slopes and along the valley at his feet.

For neither Zen nor himself had connived at the situation which had made them, of all the people in the world, near neighbors in this silent valley. Her surprise on meeting him at the door had been as genuine as his. When she had made sure that the boy was not seriously hurt she had turned to him, and instinctively he had known that there are some things which all the weight of pa.s.sing years can never crush entirely dead. He loved to rehea.r.s.e her words, her gestures, the quick play of sympathetic emotions as one by one he reviewed them.

"You! I am surprised--I had not known--" She had become confused in her greeting, and a color that she would have given worlds to suppress crept slowly through her cheeks.

"I am surprised, too--and delighted," he had returned. "The little boy came to me in the field, boasting of his braces." Then they had both laughed, and she had asked him to come in and tell about himself.

The living-room, as he recalled it, was marked by the simplicity appropriate to the summer home, with just a dash of elegance in the furnishings to suggest that simplicity was a matter of choice and not of necessity. After soothing Wilson's sobs, which had broken out afresh in his mother's arms, she had turned him over to a maid and drawn a chair convenient to Grant's.

"You see, I am a farmer now," he had said, apologetically regarding his overalls.

"What changes have come! But I don't understand; I thought you were rich--very rich--and that you were promoting some kind of settlement scheme. Frank has spoken of it."

"All of which is true. You see, I am a man of whims. I choose to live joyously. I refuse to fit into a ready-made niche in society. I do what other people don't do--mainly for that reason. I have some peculiar notions--"

"I know. You told me." And it was then that their eyes had met and they had fallen into a momentary silence.

"But why are you farming?" she had exclaimed, brightly.

"For several reasons. First, the world needs food. Food is the greatest safeguard--I would almost say the only safeguard--against anarchy and chaos. Then, I want to learn by experience; to prove by my own demonstrations that my theories are workable--or that they're not. And then, most of all, I love the prairies and the open life. It's my whim, and I follow it."

"You are very wonderful," she had murmured. And then, with startling directness, "Are you happy?"

"As happy as I have any right to be. Happier than I have been since childhood."

She had risen and walked to the mantelpiece; then, with an apparent change of impulse, she had turned and faced him. He had noted that her figure was rounder than in girlhood, her complexion paler, but the sunlight still danced in her hair, and her reckless force had given way to a poise that suggested infinite resources of character.

"Frank has done well, too," she had said.

"So I have heard. I am told that he has done very well indeed."

"He has made money, and he is busy and excited over his pursuit of success--what he calls success. He has given it his life. He thinks of nothing else--"

She had stopped suddenly, as though her tongue had trapped her into saying more than she had intended.

"What do you think of my summer home?" she had exclaimed, abruptly.

"Come out and admire the sweet peas," and with a gay little flourish she had led him into the garden. "They tell me Western flowers have a brilliance and a fragrance which the East, with all its advantages, cannot duplicate. Is that true?"

"I believe it is. The East has greater profusion--more varieties--but the individual qualities do not seem to be so well developed."

"I see you know something of Eastern flowers," she had said, and he fancied he had caught a note of banter--or was it inquiry?--in her voice. Then, with another abrupt change of subject, she had made him describe his house on the hill. But he had said nothing of the whim-room.

"I must go," he had exclaimed at length. "I left the horses tied in the field."

"So you must. I shall let Wilson visit you frequently, if he is not a trouble."

Then she had chosen a couple of blooms and pinned them on his coat, laughingly overriding his protest that they consorted poorly with his costume. And she had shaken hands and said good-bye in the manner of good friends parting.

The more Grant thought of it the more was he convinced that in her case, as in his own, the years had failed to extinguish the spark kindled in the foothills that night so long ago. He reminded himself continually that she was Transley's wife, and even while granting the irrevocability of that fact he was demanding to know why Fate had created for them both an atmosphere charged with unspoken possibilities. He had turned her words over again and again, reflecting upon the abrupt angles her speech had taken. In their few minutes' conversation three times she had had to make a sudden tack to safer subjects. What had she meant by that reference to Eastern and Western flowers? His answer reminded him how well he knew. And the confession about her husband, the worshipper of success--"what he calls success"--how much tragedy lay under those light words?

The valley was filled with shadow, and the level rays of the setting sun fell on the young man's face and splashed the hill-tops with gold and saffron as within his heart raged the age-old battle.... But as yet he felt none of its wounds. He was conscious only of a wholly irrational delight.

As the next forenoon pa.s.sed Grant found himself glancing with increasing frequency toward the end of the field where the little boy might be expected to appear. But the day wore on without sign of his young friend, and the furrows which he had turned so joyously at nine were dragging leadenly at eleven. He had not thought it possible that a child could so quickly have won a way to his affections. He fell to wondering as to the cause of the boy's absence. Had Zen, after a night's reflection, decided that it was wiser not to allow the acquaintance to develop? Had Transley, returning home, placed his veto upon it? Or--and his heart paused at this prospect--had the foot been more seriously hurt than they had supposed? Grant told himself that he must go over that night and make inquiry. That would be the neighborly thing to do....

But early that afternoon his heart was delighted by the sight of a little figure skipping joyously over the furrows toward him. He had his hat crumpled in one hand, and his teddy-bear in the other, and his face was alive with excitement. He was puffing profusely when he pulled up beside the plow, and Grant stopped the team while he got his breath.

"My! My! What is the hurry? I see the foot is all better."

"We got a pig!" the lad gasped, when he could speak.

"A pig!"

"Yessir! A live one, too! He's awful big. A man brought him in a wagon.

That is why I couldn't come this morning."

Grant treated himself to a humble reflection upon the wisdom of childish preferments.

"What are you going to do with him?"

"Eat him up, I guess. Daddy said there was enough wasted about our house to keep a pig, so we got one. Aren't you going to take me up?"

"Of course. But first we must put teddy in his place."

"I'm to go home at five o'clock," the boy said, when he had got properly settled.