Part 9 (1/2)
He took the tool from the woodcutter, and, whirling the sharp edge in the air, laid it at the root of the tree with a ringing blow.
”It appears in truth that monsieur 'ave 'andled an axe before.”
”Surely, John. I once spent a summer with some friends of mine, who lived in a forest in Brittany; they were _sabotiers_.”
”Monsieur is jesting?”
”Not in the least. I not only can fell a tree,--clumsily enough, be it confessed,--but if I had the tools I could shape you a pair of _sabots_, as good ones as you could buy for ten sous at Quimper; that is your town, I think?”
He talked in short, jerky sentences between the strokes, while the white splinters flew about him like a hail-storm. After a few moments the knack which he seemed at first to have forgotten came back to him. The smell of the bruised bark was aromatic; the death-sigh of the young branches was musical as they trembled for the last time together, reaching out to touch their sister trees in solemn leave-taking. Their sigh was now drowned in the groan of the swaying tree.
”Take care, monsieur, take care; it is about to fall,” cried the Frenchman.
His warning was a timely one. Graham, so long unused to the exercise of the craft, had not noticed how deeply he had cut into the stem. The straight tree seemed to hesitate, tossing its branches helplessly heavenward, and then with a creaking sound crashed through the surrounding underbrush, and with a dull thud measured its slender length upon the earth. For a moment its branches shook convulsively, and then all was quiet. It seemed as if all nature paused at the fall of so fair a thing: the birds were silent in the thicket; the babble of the water-fall grew faint; and the wood creatures stirred not in their burrows. A mighty breeze crept through the forest, rustling the surrounding trees, wailing through the open gap as if in requiem, and a light cloud floated over the face of the sun, throwing its shadowy pall on the spot.
”That was well done, monsieur.”
And, at the sound of the man's voice, the cloud floated by and the sun shone out once more, the wood birds took up their song again, the squirrel in the hollow of the white oak went on cracking her nut, and the brief mourning was over.
That man must feel himself indeed beloved, who fancies that the world will pause as long beside his grave as does the forest at the fall of one of its children.
Not until the branches had been lopped off and the long stem cut into lengths, did Graham cease his labor. The exercise did him good, and gave him an appet.i.te for the breakfast which old John served him in the open air. He declared that the coffee was better than could be had at the _Cafe de Paris_; and a.s.sured John that neither Paris nor Vienna could produce such bread as that which the old man had baked in some mysterious manner in an oven of his own construction, made of flat stone sunk in the ground. Graham remembered that he had somewhere in the tower a bottle of rare old wine, which he sent John to fetch.
”Bring my gla.s.s and your tin cup, John.”
He needed sympathy, he who had lived for years without asking man or woman to share his joys or sorrows; he felt a new need in himself for human companions.h.i.+p; and the silent old fellow who did his bidding was the only soul to whom he could look for it. The ice which had encased his heart was broken; and instead of sternly demanding from his fellow-men honor, truth, and sincerity, he embraced the whole world in a warm, unquestioning love and sympathy. Yesterday he was a man who labored for his kind; to-day he was content to love them. Yesterday he was a reformer; to-day he was a philanthropist. The henchman returning with the wine, Graham filled the crystal goblet and the humble cup to the brim, and together these two denizens of the balmy forest drank to the new day which had dawned on the young man's life. After the long, black night which for months obscures the face of nature in the far northern land, the first rising of the sun touches the hearts of men with a deeper, more profound joy than the dwellers in a temperate zone can well understand. So was the light of this new love more glorious a thousand-fold to the man in whose life there had so long been darkness, than if it had arisen in a heart unacquainted with grief. In the first flush of happiness, his whole nature rebelled against the joyless life he had been leading; his work lost its attraction for him, and he could not have painted a stroke that day if his whole future reputation had depended upon it. The new impulse had swung him far out of his accustomed orbit; that there might be a rebound, he never for an instant fancied.
He spent an hour in ransacking his tower to find the most beautiful thing he possessed to carry to Millicent. He wanted to go to her with something in his hand that might in some measure express the tide of generous feeling that flooded his whole nature. He still had a score of those treasures, souvenirs of his European residence, of which the greater part had found their way to the shelves and cabinets of his friends' houses. He spread them out before him on his one table, ruthlessly pus.h.i.+ng aside paints, brushes, books, and drawing chalks, in a hubbub of disorder. With an intense interest he looked them all through. He had almost decided upon a rare Etruscan coin which he had seen roll from the palm of an exhumed skeleton, when his eye was caught by a tiny Tanagrine figure. The exquisite modelling of this clay toy, instinct with the beauty which pervaded every detail of Greek life, made it a more appropriate gift. The miniature woman was as truly proportioned as the Milo herself, and as surely constructed according to that greatest law of art that the world has yet seen evolved, the Greek, wherein are welded together the real and the ideal. A third article now struck his fancy as more appropriate than either of these for his first gift to Millicent. It was a crown of olive leaves of the purest gold, which might have bound Helen's brow. It had lain amidst the dust of eons which covers Troy with its pall; and now, in the nineteenth century, it was to serve as the gift of a Californian lover to his mistress. Surely, never before had the precious leaves encircled so fair a head as that which they were now destined to adorn.
Among the many sins which had been laid at Graham's door by friend or foe, the vice of foppery was missing. That minute attention to every detail of dress, which is found as often in man as in woman, had no place in his busy life. He was, however, always neatly dressed; and the prosaic fas.h.i.+ons of our time were modified as much as possible in his wardrobe, especially while he inhabited the forest. On this occasion, instead of one absent look in his small mirror, merely to ascertain if his hair were properly parted and his cravat neatly tied, a full hour was given to the process of dressing. Every suit of clothes, and each possible combination of the garments which his wardrobe afforded, were carefully considered. When at last the decision was made, the vest needed a b.u.t.ton, which the artist laboriously attached to the garment.
Taking a coa.r.s.e linen thread strong enough for a halter, he made the b.u.t.ton fast, taking several turns of the thread about its eye, as if he were belaying a rope. His cravat occupied him fully a quarter of an hour. He must have brushed his hair at least half a dozen times. He caught sight of his anxious face in the mirror, just as he was settling his cravat for the last time, and burst into a peal of laughter at his own dandyism. At the foot of the tower his st.u.r.dy mustang Ta.s.so stood ready saddled. French John had given an extra polish to the sleek gray coat, bright enough to reflect the silver-studded Mexican bridle. A pair of red c.o.c.kades, set at the ears of the beast, were made from flowers yielded by the small garden patch behind the woodcutter's cabin, where he raised flowers and vegetables for his patron and himself. The tall c.o.c.k gave a condescending crow of approval as Graham mounted his horse; while the three cats sunning themselves near by hunched their backs at him, as if to express their disapproval of his idleness. It was still early in the afternoon, and it was not his wont to sally forth until the shadows were long. Where could he be going? they asked one of the other, purring inquisitively together like a group of women-folk over a cup of afternoon tea. Of all his brute friends, Ta.s.so alone knew whither his master was going; he snorted scornfully at cats and c.o.c.k, and, shaking his head playfully, sped over the bridle path with flying feet, as if conscious of the eyes that were watching for him, the ears that were strained to catch the first faint echo of his hoofs as they flashed over the stony orchard road.
Those sweet eyes had not closed since they had last looked into Graham's; that white form had known no rest since it had slipped from his arms. The night, which had brought to him such peaceful dreams, was fraught with bitter memories to Millicent. She had paced her room through the long hours. No longer a half-yielding, shrinking maiden, but a woman, full of tears, before whom some great sorrow, long stifled, had risen up again. Was her nature then two-fold? While she was with other people, Millicent seemed a strong, self-reliant woman, pure and cold, with quick intellectual sympathies, and strong opinions and convictions. When in the society of the man she loved, his influence unfolded the closed petals of her heart as the sun kisses back the white leaves of the daisy, and uncovers its great golden centre to the eyes of all men. A new warmth shone from her eyes, and softened her silver voice. An unwonted shyness made her shrinking and timid under his gaze.
A new life was born within her, so much stronger and more intense than any that she had ever known, that her past existence paled before it as the luminous circle of a night-lamp fades before the strong rays of morning. But when she was alone....
Whatever her sombre thoughts had been, they were banished before she next met her lover. When she learned that he had come, she longed to fly from him out into the dim reaches of the forest, where he had told her half in jest that they had lived and loved before man's time began; when nymphs and dryads danced together in the shade of the oak-trees; when Pan reigned, and the earth was young. If she could have seen him in her own sanctum, where the light was softened by the dull green hanging of the wall, where the air was warm from the ever-flaming fire, and sweet with the spices burning in a great sea-sh.e.l.l, she would not have greatly cared; but the stereotyped drawing-room, with its blank white walls, was no place for their greeting. She went down the stairway and stood a moment before Graham; then, as he advanced towards her as if about to speak, she glided swiftly from the room across the hall and out into the sunlight.
Barbara, standing near by, scattering corn to a flock of tame doves which fluttered about her, laughed as the light figure flitted by, with bare head, and delicate silken draperies fit only to rustle over soft carpets. Barbara laughed pleasantly, cheerily calling over her shoulder to her mother, who sat indoors,--
”Look at Millicent racing with her own shadow.”
”'T is a substantial shadow, Bab, but otherwise the simile 's good,”
said Hal, as he pa.s.sed by on his way to the dairy.
And Barbara looked again, and looking sighed. Another figure had sped by her, down the orchard road towards the wood,--the figure of a man, pursuing the flying girl, with kindled face and fleet steps. She threw her last handful of grain to the circling doves, went into the stiff drawing-room, mechanically set straight the disordered chairs and drew down a shade where the light fell too hotly upon a breadth of carpet.
She paused before a mirror and looked at her own pretty face clouded by a pain she would not explain. More than one lover had sued for her hand, earnestly and tenderly, but she had listened to no suit. No man had ever pursued her with fleet steps and sparkling eyes, no man had ever brought that expression of half-shamed happiness to her face which had made Millicent look just now like a child racing with her own shadow.
In the forest Graham found her standing breathless beneath an oak-tree, whose branches had caught her gown and forced her to stay her flight.
”Again under that terrible oak; but I shall not lose you this time. Say that you will not vanish in his jealous arms.”
”He opens them to me no longer; he offers me no refuge now.”