Part 4 (1/2)
He pa.s.sed out to the gate. The long, shady village street, bordered by tall, swaying elms, stretched away on either hand, peaceful and deserted. To the new doctor the place looked half asleep, and uncompromisingly healthful. The clear May morning air was filled with a chorus of robins and orioles. A bluebird in the orchard bordering his lawn was singing ecstatically. Far up the street the musical cling-clang of the blacksmith's anvil, and from the depths of the ravine, in the opposite direction, the hum of the sawmill, served only like a lullaby to make the silence more dreamy.
He stepped out upon the boardwalk that ran along the street. Overhead the maples and elms met, making a cool tunnel. In this green canopy nest-building was being carried on, on a great scale and with tremendous commotion. The doctor picked his way carefully along the undulating surface of the sidewalk, for the boards were damp and rotten, and liable to fly up at one end and break a limb; and though he was anxious for a patient, he did not fancy serving in that capacity himself.
The quiet houses, surrounded by their demure gardens, gave no indication that he was being watched from behind many a window-blind.
Neither was there any stir to give hint that from the upstairs window of the village shop at the end of the street a telescope was pointing at him, while Granny Long informed the breathless circle about her bed that his necktie was of blue-gray satin, and that his hair was thick and wavy.
Quite unconscious of the sensation he was creating, the new doctor walked on. He pa.s.sed a tiny white house set in a square garden bright with early blossoms. A little woman, in a faded lilac gown, sat sewing on the porch, and a green parrot, in a cage at her side, stalked to and fro on his perch, muttering sullenly. At sight of the stranger the bird gave an indignant stare, then swung, head downward, from his perch and shouted, ”Oh, Lordy, ain't we havin' a slow time!”
The remark so exactly coincided with the new doctor's sentiments that he looked over the cedar hedge at the speaker with a feeling of friendly regard. But the little lilac lady seemed quite of another mind. She sprang up in dismayed haste, scattering thimble and scissors out on the pathway, and, seizing the cage, fled with it indoors.
Gilbert pa.s.sed on, feeling that there was one creature, at least, in this new place who was in sympathy with him. His eye traveled with satisfaction along the double row of trim houses and neat gardens; they spoke of thrift and prosperity. There was only one exception, the place next to the home of the ennuied parrot. Hens scratched merrily in the midst of desert flower-beds, or nested under the lilac bushes, a handsome goose and gander pa.s.sed in stately promenade up and down the front veranda, and the whole place had a happy, go-as-you-please air.
The last in the line was the schoolhouse, a big, square building, scarred and worn, standing in the middle of a yard trampled bare of gra.s.s, and surrounded by the forlorn skeleton of a fence. From the battered pump in one corner, to the dilapidated woodshed in the other, the whole premises had the appearance of having just weathered a long and terrible siege. The commanding voice of the Duke of Wellington coming through the open windows added to its military suggestiveness.
When he had pa.s.sed the school the stranger found himself at the end of the village. The row of houses stopped at a rustic bridge spanning a ravine. Away up this valley he could see the tall smokestack of the sawmill, with its waving plume of smoke coming up out of a fairy ma.s.s of delicate May foliage. The mill-pond gleamed, green and golden brown, between the willow clumps along its margin. From the dam a stream issued in a little, noisy, silver waterfall. It babbled across the road, under the old bridge, among bracken and mint, and wound this way and that through the deep valley until it lost itself in a swamp far to the south. A hard, beaten path led from the street down into the gold and green depths. It was an alluring path, and Gilbert stepped into it. He slid and stumbled down the steep bank, catching at blossoming dogwood bushes and fragrant cedar boughs. A boyish light came into his eyes as they caught the flash of the tiny river; here green under an overhanging willow, there snow white under a rain of cherry blossoms, now silver as it ran around a shallow curve, and again gold in the sunlight filtered through a tangle of elm boughs and bitter-sweet.
The little valley was as level as a floor at the bottom, carpeted with vivid green gra.s.s spangled with dandelions, and intoxicating with the perfume of the wild-cherry blossoms. A cow stood knee deep in the stream, and another was feeding off the underbrush half way up the bank. At a sudden curve in the brook a great elm stretched up from a bank of blue violets. On its topmost limb, swinging gaily, an oriole was blowing gloriously on his little golden trumpet.
Gilbert flung himself down on the violet bank. He had been born and bred a country boy, and now, after years of city life, the old charm of the free open s.p.a.ces of earth and sky came over him stronger than ever.
He wondered if Rosalie would not be happy, too, if she were to come down into this green-and-gold Paradise with him, and listen to the brook babbling along over the pebbles. And yet, how could he ask her to leave the wealth and ease of her city home and come to this dull village? He reflected, with a deep sigh, upon the humiliating fact that Rosalie would not consider the proposition for an instant, even if he had the courage to make it. Well, he would work hard, and by and by he would go back to the city, and then she would listen--she must listen. He leaned back against the elm and dreamed of that day. He could see the light in Rosalie's eyes as he had seen it that last day in Toronto. He would have been happier to-day if they had not been so bright and merry on the occasion of his departure. But what beautiful eyes they were! Blue--so blue; as blue as--he was gazing at something the exact color--a spot of vivid azure that had appeared from among the trees at the top of the opposite bank. It moved, and Gilbert saw that it was the figure of a girl in a violet gown. She made a pretty rural picture as she stood for a moment poised upon the fence-top, a white sunbonnet on her head and a basket on her arm. She descended sedately, holding her basket with great care, and tripped down the zigzag path to the edge of the stream. Here some big, white stones, peeping from the golden pools, made a pa.s.sage to the other side, and the trim la.s.sie began to pick her way daintily across. Gilbert watched her with amused pleasure. He seemed to have stepped into some old rustic ballad. What was that song the boys used to sing at college? Something about the pretty, dainty maiden, going a-haying, or a-Maying, or a-something, all of a bright May morning, tra la la! This one was just like her, only she should be in her bare feet, and carry a pail and a stool, and be coming down to milk that cow standing so placidly in the stream. He felt an almost irresistible desire to sing out, ”Where are you going, my pretty maid?” If he were only a gallant youth, in a velvet cloak and silken hose, he reflected, instead of a commonplace nineteenth-century young man in gray tweed, he would go down the bank and a.s.sist her over. The situation absolutely demanded it.
Suddenly he arose, with a smothered laugh. He would have to take a part in the pretty comedy, after all, for the dainty damsel was in distress. She stood poised on a stone in midstream, like a bird desiring, yet not daring, to fly. A long leap was needed to land her on the next stone, and she paused, perplexed, evidently mindful of her eggs. Gilbert came quickly down the bank, his eyes twinkling.
”May I help you across?” he asked, coming toward her, hat in hand. He felt that the words fell into a sort of jaunty rhythm of their own accord.
The girl looked up quickly, startled at his sudden appearance. The movement caused her sunbonnet to slip back, revealing her face, and Gilbert felt suddenly and unaccountably abashed, for the girl looked straight into his amused face with a glance of grave and unapproachable dignity. He did not even notice, at first, how pretty she was. He saw only those serious eyes. They were wonderful eyes, too; deep, and of a strange, elusive amber, like the water at her feet. They held the mystery of its deep brown pools, and the light of the golden flecks upon its surface. There were the same brown shadows and golden lights repeated in the ma.s.ses of bronze hair piled like a crown on the top of her shapely head.
From some impulse he did not understand, Gilbert felt a vague desire to apologize for his very existence. It seemed as though that searching glance had read the frivolous thoughts in which he had been indulging.
He wondered, in deep mortification, if she had noticed any faint tinge of familiarity in his manner.
”I--I beg your pardon. I hope I did not startle you,” he said, half stammering. ”I hope you will let me help you across.”
”Thank you, you are very kind.” Her voice was low, and very musical, her manner was dignity itself. ”I did not know the s.p.a.ces were so wide.” She spoke with a frank simplicity, looking at him very honestly and very gravely, and Gilbert felt tacitly rebuked. He was struck by the fact that this country girl, in the coa.r.s.e dress and sunbonnet, whom he had whimsically likened to a rustic la.s.s, to be helped across a brook for a kiss, had instantly, by a mere glance, clothed the situation in an impregnable mantle of conventionality. He took her basket and held out his hand, feeling as though he were about to a.s.sist a princess from her carriage. With a touch she sprang past him and stepped quietly up the bank. ”Thank you,” she said, sedately, as she took the basket from him. ”I think it is Dr. Allen to whom I am indebted, is it not?”
Gilbert clutched his hat again. ”Yes, I am very fortunate to have had the privilege,” he said, feeling with relief that he was beginning to recover.
”I am Miss Cameron,” she said, with a stateliness that seemed to convert the sunbonnet into a crown, and the basket of eggs into a scepter.
Gilbert's mind dived back into the remembrance of his stableboy's remarks of a few minutes earlier. What had he said? He could not remember, except that the village had designated some one of that name as the object of his future attentions, and there was something, too, about red hair. He thought her hair beautiful--quite wonderful, indeed, in its bronze splendor.
He murmured some polite remark, and was wondering if he might ask to be allowed to carry the basket of eggs up the hill, or if he would be committing an outrage by so doing, when he was saved from making a second mistake by a shout from the opposite bank:
”Elsie! Elsie, la.s.sie! Would yon be the new doctor body ye've got there?”
The voice came from a little old man, hobbling, with the aid of a stick, along the water's edge. His small body was almost bent double, and his whole person seemed engulfed in a huge straw hat, from under which appeared his only prominent feature--a long, wispy, red beard.
The girl gave a little inarticulate sound, and Gilbert glanced at her.
Her stately gravity had vanished, her face was lit with a radiant smile. She ran down to the brink of the stream.
”Yes, Uncle Hughie,” she called, in a clear, silvery tone, with a new caressing quality in it, ”it's Dr. Allen. Do you want to speak to him?”
”Yes, yes. Oh, yes, indeed. Come away across, man! Come away!