Part 8 (1/2)
Pan took my hand in his as he chanted, and held my fingers to his lips, and ended his chant with several weird, eery, crooning notes blown across his lips and through my fingers out into the moonlit shadows.
”I feel about you just as I do about one of Mrs. Ewe's lambkins,” I whispered, with a queer answering laugh in my voice, which held and repeated the croon in his.
”I am thy child.
I am thy mate.
Oh, come!”
again chanted Pan, and it surely wasn't imagination that made me think that the red crests ruffled in the wind. The light in his eyes was unlike anything I had ever seen; it smouldered and flamed like the embers under the pot beside the rock. It drew me until the sleeve of my smock brushed his sleeve of gray flannel. His arms hovered, but didn't quite enclose me.
”And the way I am going to feel about all the little chickens out of the incubator,” I added slowly as if the admission was being drawn out of me.
Still the arms hovered, the crests ruffled, and the eyes searched down into the depths of me, which had so lately been plowed and harrowed and sown with a new and productive flower.
”And the old twin fathers,” I added almost begrudgingly, as I cast him my last treasure.
Then with a laugh that I know was a line-reproduction descended from the one that Adam gave when he first recognized Eve, Pan folded me into his arms, laid his red head on my breast, and held up his lips to mine with a ”love-thirst” that it took me more than a long minute to slack to the point of words.
”I knew there was one earth woman due to develop at the first decade of this century, and I've found her,” Pan fluted softly as he in turn took me on his breast and pressed his russet cheek against the tan of mine. ”I'm going to take her off into the woods and then in a generation salvation for the nation will come forth from the forest.”
”My word is given to the Golden Bird to see his progeny safe into the world, and I must do that before--” but my words ended in a laugh as I slipped out of Pan's arms and sprang to my feet and away from him.
”We'll keep that faith with Mr. Bird to-night, and then I can take you with me before daylight,” said Pan as he collected his Romney bundle with his left hand and me with his right and began to pad up the path from the spring-house towards the barn under a shower of the white locust-blossoms, which were giving forth their last breath of perfume in a gorgeous volume.
”To-night?” I asked from the hollow between his breast and his arm where I was fitted and held steadily so that my steps seemed to be his steps and the breath of my lungs to come from his.
”Yes; most of the eggs were pipped when I went in the barn to put away the tools,” answered Adam, with very much less excitement than the occasion called for.
”Oh, why--why didn't you tell me?” I demanded as I came out of the first half of a kiss and before I retired into the last half.
”Too hungry--had to be fed before they got to eating at your heart,”
answered Pan in a way that made me know that he meant me and not the dandelion greens and brown bread.
”You are joking me; they are not due until day after to-morrow,” I said as I took my lips away and began to hurry us both towards the barn.
”All April hatches are from two to three days early,” was Adam's prosaic and instructive answer that cut the last kiss short as we entered the barn-door.
CHAPTER VIII
Quickly I released myself from his arm and flew to kneel in front of the metal mother, with the electric torch aimed directly into the little window that revealed all her inmost processes. The p.e.c.k.e.rwood Pan hovered just at my shoulder, and together we beheld what was to me the most wonderful phenomenon of nature that had ever come my way. No sunset from Pike's Peak or high note from the throat of Caruso could equal it in my estimation.
Behold, the first baby Bird stepped forth into the world right before my astonished and enraptured eyes! It was in this manner.
”Look, right here next to the gla.s.s,” said Adam, as he put his finger against the lower left-hand corner of the peep window, and there I directed my torch. One of the great white pearls had a series of little holes around one end of it, and while I gazed a sharp little beak was thrust suddenly from within it. The sh.e.l.l fell apart, and out stepped the first small Leghorn Bird with an a.s.surance that had an undoubted resemblance to that of his masculine parent. For a moment he blinked and balanced; then he stretched his small wings and shook himself, an operation that seemed to fluff about fifty per cent. of the moist aspect from his plump little body, and then he deliberately turned and looked into my wide-opened eyes. I promptly gasped and sat down on the barn floor, with my head weakly cuddled against Adam's knee.
”Two more here on the right-hand side, Woman,” said Adam, as he knelt beside me, took the torch, supported me in my reaction of astonishment, and showed me where a perfect little batch of babies was being born. ”Whew, Farmer Craddock, but those are fine chickens! Heaven help us, but they are all exploding at one time! Only eggs of one hundred per cent. vigor and fertility hatch that way. Look at the moisture gathering on the gla.s.s. If you put your hand in there you would find it about a hundred and ten.”
”Oh, look! G. Bird Junior, the first, is almost dry. Please, please let me take him in my hand!” I exclaimed as that five-minute-old baby pressed close up against the gla.s.s and blinked at the light and us bewitchingly.
”You mustn't open the door for at least twelve hours now. Come away before the temptation overcomes you,” commanded Pan.