The Idyl of Twin Fires Part 23

"It's agin all laws," said Bert, pointing a thumb toward his wife, "but it ain't every day we hev a noo neighbour in these parts. Here's to yer, once more!"

The four of us walked up the road in merry mood, and the older folk left the girl and me on the porch. She held the door open, as if to go in after them, but I pleaded that the lovely June night was young. "And so are we," I added.

She looked at me a moment, through the dusk, and then came out on the stoop. We moved across the dewy lawn to a bench beneath the sycamore that guarded the house, and sat down. Neither of us spoke for a long moment. Then I said abruptly: "You've only come to my house wearing a fairy cap of invisibility, since I moved in--till to-night. Won't you come to-morrow and walk through the pines? I've cleared all the slash out for you, and put planks in the swamp. The thrush won't sing for me alone."

"Yes, I'll come--for the last time," she said softly.

"Why for the last time?" I cried.

"Because I'm going back to the I's, or the J's, on the day after,"

she answered.

"Oh, no, no, you mustn't!" I exclaimed. "You must stay here with the jays. Why, you're not strong enough, and New York will be horribly hot, and you haven't seen the phlox in bloom yet round the sundial, and you've got to tell me where to plant the perennials, when I sow them, and--and--well, you just mustn't go."

She smiled wistfully. "p.r.o.nunciation is more important for me than perennials, if not so pleasant," she said. "I shall think of Twin Fires often, though, in--in the heat."

"They'll arrest you if you try to wade in Central Park," said I.

She laughed softly, lifting the corners of her eyes to mine.

"Anyhow," I maintained, "you are not well enough to go back. You are just beginning to get strong again. It's folly, that's what it is!"

"Strong! Why, my hands are as calloused as yours," she laughed, "and about as tanned."

"Let me feel," I demanded.

She hesitated a second, and then put out her hand. I took it in mine, and touched the palm. Then my fingers closed over it, and I held it in silence, while through the soft June night the music of far frogs came to us, and the song of crickets in the gra.s.s. She did not attempt to withdraw it for a long moment. The night noises, the night odours in the warm dark, wrapped us about, as we sat close together on the bench. I turned my face to hers, and saw that she was softly weeping. Strange tears were very close to my own eyes. But I did not speak. The hand slipped out of mine. She rose, and we moved to the door.

"The path to-morrow, at twilight," I whispered.

She nodded, not trusting to speech, and suddenly she was gone.

I walked down the road to Twin Fires in a dream, yet curiously aware of the rhythmic throb, the swell and diminuendo, of the crickets' elfin chime.

Chapter XV

A PAGAN THRUSH

All that next June day I worked in my garden, in a dream, my hands performing their tasks mechanically. I ran the wheel hoe between the rows of newly planted raspberries and blackberries, to mulch the soil, without consciousness of the future fruit which was supposed to delight me.

Avoiding Mike, who would have insisted on conversing had I worked near him, I next went down to the brook below the orchard, armed with a rake, brush scythe, and axe, and located the spot on the stone wall which exactly faced my front door. I marked it with a stake, and thinned out the ash-leaved maples which grew like a fringe between the wall and the brook, so that the best ones could spread into more attractive trees, and so that a semicircular s.p.a.ce was also cleared which could surround the pool, as it were, and in which I could place a bench, up against the foliage, to face the door of the house. From the door you would look over the pool to the bench. From the bench you would look over the pool and up the slope through the orchard to the house entrance.

After I had the bench site correctly located, I saw that the four flower beds which Miss Goodwin and I had made were at least four feet out of centre, and would all have to be moved. But that was too much of a task for my present mood. I left them as they were, and busied myself with rooting out undeniable weeds and carting off the slash and rubbish.

My mind was not on the task. Over and over I was asking myself the question, "Do I love her? What permanence is there in a spring pa.s.sion, amid gardens and thrush songs, for a girl who caresses the sympathies by her nave delight in the novelty of country life? How much of my feeling for her _is_ pa.s.sion, and how much is sympathy, even pity?"

Over and over I turned these questions, while my hands worked mechanically. And over and over, too, I will be honest and admit, the selfish incrustations of bachelor habits imposed their opposition to the thought of union. I had bought the farm to be my own lord and master; here I was to work, to create masterpieces of literature, to plan gardens, to play golf, to smoke all over the house, to toil all night and sleep all day if I so desired, to wear soft shirts and never dress for dinner, to maintain my own habits, my own individuality, undisturbed.

What had been so pleasant, so tinglingly pleasant, for a day, a week--the presence of the girl in the garden, in the house, the rustle of her skirt, the sound of her fingers on the keys--would it be always pleasant? What if one wished to escape from it, and there were no escape? Pa.s.sions pall; life, work, ambitions, the need of solitude for creation, the individual soul, go on.

"All of which means," I thought, laying down my brush scythe and gazing into the brook, "that I am not sure of myself. And if I am not sure of myself, do I really love her? And if I am not sure of that, I must wait."

That resolution, the first definite thing my mind had laid hold on, came to me as the sun was sinking toward the west. I went to the house, changed my clothes, and hastened up the road to meet her, curiously eager for a man in doubt.

She was coming out of the door as I crossed the bit of lawn, dressed not in the working clothes which she had worn on our gardening days, but all in white, with a lavender ribbon at her throat. She smiled at me brightly and ran down the steps.

"Go to New York--but see Twin Fires first," she laughed. "I'm all ready for the tour."

I had not quite expected so much lightness of heart from her, and I was a little piqued, perhaps, as I answered, "You don't seem very sorry that you are seeing it for the last time."

She smiled into my face. "All pleasant things have to end," she said, "so why be glum about it?"

"Do they have to end?" said I.

"In my experience, always," she nodded.

I was silent. My resolution, which I confess had wavered a little when she came through the doorway, was fixed again. Just the light banter in her tone had done it. We walked down the road, and went first around the house to take a look at the lawn and rose trellis. The young gra.s.s was already a frail green from the house to the roses, the flowers around the white sundial pedestal, while not yet in bloom, showed a ma.s.s of low foliage, the nasturtiums were already trying to cling, with the aid of strings, to the bird bath (which I had forgotten to fill), and the rose trellis, coloured green by the painters before they departed, was even now hidden slightly at the base by the vines of the new roses.

"There," said I, pointing to it, "is the child of your brain, your aqueduct of roses, which you refuse to see in blossom."

"The child of my hands, too; don't forget that!" she laughed.

"Of _our_ hands," I corrected.

"The ghost of Rome in roses," she said, half to herself. "It will be very lovely another year, when the vines have covered it."

"And it will be then, I trust," said I, "rather less like 'the rose of beauty on the brow of chaos.' The lawn will look like a lawn by then, and possibly I shall have achieved a sundial plate."

"Possibly you will," said she, with a suspicious twinkle. "And possibly you'll have remembered to fill your bird bath."

She turned abruptly into the house and emerged with a pitcher of water, tiptoeing over the frail, new gra.s.s to the bath, which she filled to the brim, pouring the remainder upon the vines at the base.

"My last activity shall be for the birds," she smiled, as she came back with the pitcher. As if in grat.i.tude, a bird came winging out of the orchard behind her, and dipped his breast and bill in the water.

"The darling!" I heard her exclaim, under her breath.

We took the pitcher inside, and I saw her glance at the flowers in the vases. "I ought to get you some fresh ones," she said.

"No," I answered. "Those shall stay a long while, in memory of the good fairy. Now I will show you my house. You have never seen my house above the first story."

"It isn't proper," she laughed. "I shouldn't be even here, in the south room."

"But you have been here many times."

Again she laughed. "Stupid! But Mrs. Pillig wasn't here then!"

"Oh!" said I, a light dawning on my masculine stupidity, "I begin to realize the paradoxes of propriety. And now I see at last why I shouldn't have asked you to pick the paint for the dining-room--when I did."