Part 10 (2/2)

She was m.u.f.fled in her long furs and she swung her sable toque with its one drooping plume in her hand as she walked rapidly across the tennis-courts, cut through the beeches and came out on the bank of the brawling little Silver Fork Creek, that wound itself from over the ridge down through the club lands to the river. She stood by the sycamore for a moment listening delightedly to its chatter over the rocks, then climbed out on the huge old rock that jutted out from the bank and was entwined by the bleached roots of the tall tree. The strong winter sun had warmed the flat slab on the south side and, sinking down with a sigh of delight, she embraced her knees and bent over to gaze into the sparkling little waterfall that gushed across the foot of the boulder.

Then for a mystic half-hour she sat and let her eyes roam the blue Harpeth hills in the distance, that were naked and stark save for the lace traceries of their winter-robbed trees. As the sun sank a soft rose purple shot through the blue and the mists of the valley rose higher about the bared b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the old ridge.

And because of the stillness and beauty of the place and hour, Caroline Darrah began, as women will if the opportunity only so slightly invites them, to dream--until a crackle in a thicket opposite her perch distracted her attention and sent her head up with a little start. In a second she found herself looking across the chatty little stream straight into the eyes of Andrew Sevier, in which she found an expression of having come upon a treasure with distracting suddenness.

”Oh,” she said to break the silence which seemed to be settling itself between them permanently, ”I think I must have been dreaming and you crashed right in. I--I--”

”Are you sure you are not the dream itself--just come true?” demanded the poet in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he were asking the time of day or the trail home.

”I don't think I am, in fact I'm sure,” she answered with a break in her curled lips. ”The dream is a bridge, a beautiful bridge, and I've been seeing it grow for minutes and minutes. One end of it rests down there by that broken log--see where the little knoll swells up from the field?--and it stretches in a beautiful strong arch until it seems to cut across that broken-backed old hill in the distance. And then it falls across--but I don't know where to put the other end of it--the ground sinks so--it might wobble. I don't want my bridge to wobble.”

Her tone was expressive of a real distress as she looked at him in appealing confusion. And in his eyes she found the dawn of an amused wonder, almost consternation. Slowly over his face there spread a deep flush and his lips were indrawn with a quick breath.

”Wait a minute, I'll show you,” he said in almost an undertone. He swung himself across the creek on a couple of stones, climbed up the boulder and seated himself at her side. Then he drew a sketch-book from his pocket and spread it open on the slab before them.

There it was--the dream bridge! It rose in a fine strong curve from the little knoll, spanned across the distant ridge and fell to the opposite bank on to a broad support that braced itself against a rock ledge. It was as fine a perspective sketch as ever came from the pencil of an enthusiastic young Beaux Arts.

”Yes,” she said with a delighted sigh that was like the slide of the water over smooth pebbles, ”yes, that is what I want it to be, only I couldn't seem to see how it would rest right away. It is just as I dreamed it and,”--then she looked at him with startled jeweled eyes.

”Where did I see it--where did you--what does it mean?” she demanded, and the flush that rose up to the waves of her hair was the reflection of the one that had stained his face before he came across the stream. ”I think I'm frightened,” she added with a little nervous laugh.

”Please don't be--because I am, too,” he answered. And instinctively, like two children, they drew close together. They both gazed at the specter sketch spread before them and drew still nearer to each other.

”I have been planning it for days,” he said in almost a whisper. Her small pink ear was very near his lips and his breath agitated two little gold tendrils that blew across it. ”I want to build it before I go away, it is needed here for the hunting. I came out and made the sketch from right here an hour ago. I came back--I must have come back to have it--verified.” He laughed softly, and for just a second his fingers rested against hers on the edge of the sketch.

”I'm still frightened,” she said, but a tippy little smile coaxed at the corners of her mouth. She turned her face away from his eyes that had grown--disturbing.

”I'm not,” he announced boldly. ”Beautiful wild things are flying loose all over the world and why shouldn't we capture one for ourselves. Do you mind--please don't!”

”I don't think I do,” she answered, and her lashes swept her cheeks as she lifted the sketch-book to her knees. ”Only suppose I was to dream--some of your--other work--some day? I don't want to build your bridges--but I might want to--write some of your poems. Hadn't you better do something to stop me right now?” The smile had come to stay and peeped roguishly out at him from beneath her lashes.

”No,” he answered calmly, ”if you want my dreams--they are yours.”

”Oh,” she said as she rose to her feet and looked down at him wistfully, ”your beautiful, beautiful dreams! Ever since that afternoon I have gone over and over the lines you read me. The one about the 'brotherhood of our heart's desires' keeps me from being lonely. I think--I think I went to sleep saying it to myself last night and--”

It couldn't go on any longer--as Andrew rose to his feet he gathered together any stray wreckage of wits that was within his reach and managed, by not looking directly at her, to say in a rational, elderly, friendly tone, slightly tinged with the scientific:

”My dear child, and that's why you built my bridge for me to-day. You put yourself into mental accord with me by the use of my jingle last night and fell asleep having hypnotized yourself with it. Things wilder than fancies are facts these days, written in large volumes by extremely erudite old gentlemen and we believe them because we must. This is a simple case, with a well-known scientific name and--”

”But,” interrupted Caroline Darrah, and as she stood away from him against the dim hills, her slender figure seemed poised as if for flight, and a hurt young seriousness was in her lifted purple eyes: ”I don't want it to be a 'simple case' with any scientific--” and just here a merry call interrupted her from up-stream.

Phoebe and Polly had come to summon her back to the club; tea was on the brew. With the intensest hospitality they invited Andrew to come, too.

But he declined with what grace he could and made his way through the tangle down-stream as they walked back under the beeches.

Thus a very bitter thing had come to Andrew Sevier--and sweet as the pulse of heaven. In his hand he had seen a sensitive flower unfold to its very heart of flame.

”Never let her know,” he prayed, ”never let her know.”

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