I Walked in Arden Part 14

"I was once in love with Arabella Allen," I remarked solemnly.

"Isn't that just like a man? She is better than some of the impossible good-goody ones, though. Now, I'll bet, Ted, you thought David Copperfield's Agnes adorable?"

"She was my first love."

"Oh, men make me so angry!" she exclaimed fervently. "They put a silly doll on a pedestal and think that the pattern of what a woman should be."

"How old are you, Helen?"

"Eighteen, Ted."

"Therefore you are old enough to know what a man's woman should be."

"Ted, I hate sarcasm, especially from a boy, on the subject of women."

"I'm twenty-three; that's a lot older than you are."

"No, it isn't. A girl is always older than a boy, no matter what their ages."

That sounded illogical and complicated enough to be true. I didn't want, however, to surrender Agnes too easily.

"What ought a woman to be?" I followed up.

"A person of commonsense; not a silly, affected creature made in man's image--like Agnes."

"My truly first love was a fairy princess."

"A blonde, of course. Man again," and Helen replaced, I think unconsciously, a stray lock of most delicious brown hair.

"I was only nine years old."

"I told you a man's age never made any difference."

To this I had no satisfactory reply.

"I'm sorry, Ted. I didn't mean to be rude, or imply anything when I said that."

"I wasn't silent because you said that," I murmured. "I was just thinking how different Deep Harbor seems to me now."

"Were you very bored when you first came?"

"Perhaps," I said, "or lonely--I don't know which. Yes, I did find this a lonely place."

"It needn't have been. You could have met plenty of nice people, if you had taken a little trouble."

"It sounds frightfully foolish--in fact, I know it doesn't sound remotely plausible--I didn't know there were any nice people here."

Helen's eyes were upon me in open astonishment, then she broke into one of her merry laughs.

"You thought you were marooned among barbarians, I suppose. How masculine and English, both together! The combination would be disastrous anywhere."

"I don't know," I protested. "I didn't get started, that's all. I had a lot to do out at the factory."

"Ted, don't lose your temper when you're teased. It's not good sporting spirit."

"I think I'm honest when I say I didn't think about meeting people at all. I wanted to get my work done as soon as possible and get away."

"I see. You were just camping in the wilderness," she laughed.

"Please don't."

"I know, Teddy boy, it's mean to tease you, but you do tease so easily.

You don't suppose I would have asked you to go riding with me today, if I had not believed you were--well--nice, do you?"

And again she cantered away.

I let Satan take his time catching up. Helen's last words made me so happy I wanted to think it over. We were by now a long way ahead of the others; they were not even in sight. Moreover, it began to be a question with Satan and me how much longer we could hold the pace. Helen's instinct gave both Satan and me a respite. We found her resting by an oak overhanging the road.

"We must wait for the crowd to catch up with us," she waved to me. I rolled painfully off Satan's back, unloosed the girths, and allowed him to crop the roadside gra.s.s.

"Tie him to the fence," Helen suggested. Satan was promptly made fast to one of those picturesque barriers called locally a "snake-rail fence," a conglomeration of heavy split timbers piled one upon the other in alternate layers, each section forming nearly a right angle with the adjacent one. Tawny golden-rod and purple asters stuck their tops through the fence rails, and many kinds of creeping vines, some already scarlet and yellow, helped bind the angles together. We stretched out on a little gra.s.sy bank facing the far distant lake, which lay about a mile away and a hundred feet or so below us. The flat vineyard-covered country sloped downward, away from us, to the lake sh.o.r.e.

"A pleasant open country;" I thought, as I relaxed my aching muscles.

"Wait until you see us after the first real frosts--when all the maples have turned," said Helen. It seemed natural and matter-of-course for her to read my thoughts.

"What a country to write a border ballad in," I exclaimed. "It's a pity nothing ever happened here."

Helen's militant patriotism was up in arms at once. "If that isn't like your conceited British ignorance! Over there, not far from that clump of trees by the lake, is a little blockhouse that has a story of pioneer heroism equal to--well, to the bravery at the siege of Lucknow, and not many miles from here the battle of Lake Erie was fought. Perhaps your English history books don't mention that fight," she flung at me mischievously.

"That is naturally wasted on me, because I'm not English," I answered.

"Well, you've lived there all your life and learned some of their ways.

You are American only in streaks--and I've heard you call England 'home.'"

"That's true," I replied. "It seems curious to me sometimes--almost a man without a country. But when I said nothing had happened in this big place we are sitting in--it feels like sitting in the centre of a circle thousands of miles in diameter--I was thinking of one of our little English counties, Hertfordshire, for example, where, in any village you choose, you'll find half the world has happened. There's St.

Albans--with the old Norman abbey church of Roman bricks sitting high on the hill above the land on which Boadicea and her warriors held the legions at bay."

"Now I know you are a good American," she laughed.

"Why?"

"Because no Englishman is ever sentimental about England; it takes an American to be that."

She had undoubtedly scored a palpable hit. I dropped lecturing on English history.

"The others should be in sight by now," Helen said after a silence. I stood up and looked along the road. There was no trace of them to be seen.

"Perhaps it's because we turned off on to the Ridge Road; they've probably taken the shorter main road by the railroad tracks. I think we'd better ride on, Ted."