Hills of the Shatemuc Part 164

She had not much leisure to ponder the question, for her attention was called off to answer present demands. And there was another subject for pondering -- Winthrop did not seem like the same person she had known under the same name, he was so much more free and pleasant and bright to talk than he had ever been to her before, or in her observation, to anybody. He talked to a very silent listener, albeit she lost never a word nor a tone. She wondered at him and at everything, and stepped along wondering, with a heart too full to speak, almost too full to hide its agitation.

They were nearing home, they had got quit of the woodway road, and were in a cleared field, grown with tall cedars, which skirted the river. Half way across it, Elizabeth's foot paused, and came to a full stop. What was the matter?

Elizabeth faced round a little, as if addressing her judge, though she spoke without lifting her eyes.

"Mr. Landholm -- do you know that I am _full_ of faults?"

"Yes."

"And aren't you afraid of them?"

"No, -- not at all," he said, smiling, Elizabeth knew. But she answered very gravely,

"I am."

"Which is the best reason in the world why I should not be. It is written 'Blessed is the man that feareth always.'"

"I am afraid -- you don't know me."

"I don't know," said he smiling. "You haven't told me anything new yet."

"I am afraid you think of me, somehow, better than I deserve."

"What is the remedy for that?"

Elizabeth hesitated, with an instant's vexed consciousness of his provoking coolness; then looking up met his eye for a second, laughed, and went on perfectly contented. But she wondered with a little secret mortification, that Winthrop was as perfectly at home and at his ease in the newly established relations between them as if they had subsisted for six months. "Is it nothing new to him?" she said to herself. "Did he know that it only depended on him to speak? -- or is it his way with all the world?" It was not that she was undervalued, or slightly regarded, but valued and regarded with such unchanged self-possession. Meanwhile they reached the edge of the woodland, from which the house and garden were to be seen close at hand.

"Stay here," said Winthrop; -- "I will carry this basket in and let them know you may be expected to breakfast."

"But if you do that, --" said Elizabeth colouring --

"What then?"

"I don't know what they will think."

"They may think what they have a mind," said he with a little bit of a smile again. "I want to speak to you."

Elizabeth winced a bit. He was gone, and she stood thinking, among other things, that he might have asked what _she_ would like. And how did he know but breakfast was ready then? Or did he know everything? And how quietly and unqualifiedly, to be sure, he had taken her consignment that morning. She did not know whether to like it or not like it, -- till she saw him coming again from the house.

"After all," said he, "I think we had better go in and take breakfast, and talk afterwards. It seems to be in a good state of forwardness."

CHAPTER XVIII.

From eastern quarters now The sun's up-wandering, His rays on the rock's brow And hill-side squandering; Be glad my soul! and sing amidst thy pleasure, Fly from the house of dust, Up with thy thanks and trust To heaven's azure!

THOMAS KINGO.

It was sufficiently proven at that breakfast, to Elizabeth's satisfaction, that it is possible for one to be at the same time both very happy and a little uncomfortable. She had a degree of consciousness upon her that amounted to that, more especially as she had a vexed knowledge that it was shared by at least one person in the room. The line of Clam's white teeth had never glimmered more mischievously. Elizabeth dared not look at her. And she dared not look at Winthrop, and she dared not look at Rose. But Rose, to do her justice, seemed to be troubled with no consciousness beyond what was usual with her, and which generally concerned only herself; and she and Winthrop kept up the spirit of talk with great ease all breakfast time.

"Now how in the world are we going to get away?" thought Elizabeth when breakfast was finishing; -- "without saying flat and bald why we do it. Rose will want to go too, for she likes Winthrop quite well enough for that." --

And with the consciousness that she could not make the slightest manoeuvre, Elizabeth rose from table.

"How soon must you go, Mr. Landholm?" said Rose winningly.

"Presently, ma'am."

"I am sorry you must go so soon! But we haven't a room to ask you to sit down in, if you were to stay."

"I am afraid I shouldn't wait to be asked, if I stayed," said Winthrop. "But as I am not to sit down again -- Miss Haye -- if you will put on your bonnet and give me your company a little part of my way, I will keep my promise."

"What promise?" said Rose.

"I will do better than my promise, for I mean to shew Miss Haye a point of her property which perhaps she has not looked at lately."

"Oh will you shew it to me too?" said Rose.

"I will if there is time enough after I have brought Miss Haye back -- I can't take both at once."

Rose looked mystified, and Elizabeth very glad to put on her bonnet, was the first out of the house; half laughing, and half trembling with the excitement of getting off.

"There is no need to be in such a hurry," said Winthrop as he came up, -- "now that breakfast is over."

Elizabeth was silent, troubled with that consciousness still, though now alone with the subject of it. He turned off from the road, and led her back into the woods a little way, in the same path by which she had once gone hunting for a tree to cut down.

"It isn't as pretty a time of day as when I went out this morning," she said, forcing herself to say something.

But Winthrop seemed in a state of pre-occupation too; till they reached a boulder capped with green ferns.

"Now give me your hand," said he. "Can you climb?"

They turned short by the boulder and began to mount the steep rugged hill-path, down which he had once carried his little sister. Elizabeth could make better footing than poor Winifred; and very soon they stood on the old height from which they could see the fair Shatemuc coming down between the hills and sweeping round their own little woody Shahweetah and off to the South Bend. The sun was bright on all the land now, though the cedars shielded the bit of hill-top well; and Wut- a-qut-o looked down upon them in all his gay Autumn attire.

The sun was bright, but the air was clear and soft and free from mist and cloud and obscurity, as no sky is but October's.

"Sit down," said Winthrop, throwing himself on the bank which was carpeted with very short green gra.s.s.

"I would just as lieve stand," said Elizabeth.

"I wouldn't as lieve have you. You've been on your feet long enough to-day. Come! --"

She yielded to the gentle pulling of her hand, and sat down on the gra.s.s; half amused and half fretted; wondering what he was going to say next. Winthrop was silent for a little s.p.a.ce; and Elizabeth sat looking straight before her, or rather with her head a little turned to the right, from her companion, towards Wut-a-qut-o; the deep sides of her sun-bonnet shutting out all but a little framed picture of the gay woody foreground, a bit of the blue river, and the mountain's yellow side.

"How beautiful it was all down there, three or four hours ago," said Elizabeth.

"I didn't know you had so much romance in your disposition -- to go there this morning to meet me."

"I didn't go there to meet you."