Part 7 (1/2)
Richard and Roberta were left standing at the top of the hill near the place where the fire was smouldering into dulness. Before them stretched the valley, brown and yellow and dark green in the November sunlight, with a gray-blue river winding its still length along. In the far distance a blue-and-purple haze enveloped the hills; above all stretched a sky upon whose fairness wisps of clouds were beginning to show here and there, while in the south the outlines of a rising bank of gray gave warning that those who gazed might look their fill to-day--to-morrow there would be neither sunlight nor purple haze. The two looked in silence for a minute, not at the boy and girl shouting below, but at the beauty in the peaceful landscape.
”An Indian-summer day,” said Roberta gravely, as if her mood had changed with the moment, ”is like the last look at something one is not sure one shall ever see again.”
At the words Richard's gaze s.h.i.+fted from the hill to the face of the girl beside him. The suns.h.i.+ne was full upon the rich bloom of her cheek, upon the exquisite line of her dark eyebrow. What was the beauty of an Indian-summer landscape compared with the beauty of budding summer in that face? But he answered her in the same quiet way in which she had spoken: ”Yes, it's hard to have faith that winter can sweep over all this and not blot it out forever. But it won't.”
”No, it won't. And after all I like the storms. I should like to stand just here, some day when Nature was simply raging, and watch. I wish I could build a stout little cabin right on this spot and come up here and spend the worst night of the winter in it. I'd love it.”
”I believe you would. But not alone? You'd want company?”
”I don't think I'd even mind being alone--if I had a good fire for company--and a dog. I should be glad of a dog,” she owned.
”But not one good comrade, one who liked the same sort of thing?”
”So few people really do. It would have to be somebody who wouldn't talk when I wanted to listen to the wind, or wouldn't mind my not talking--and yet who wouldn't mind my talking either, if I took a sudden notion.” She began to laugh at her own fancy, with the low, rich note which delighted his ear afresh every time he heard it. ”Comrades who are tolerant of one's every mood are not common, are they? Mr. Kendrick, what do you suppose those dots of bright scarlet are, halfway down the hill? They must be rose haws, mustn't they? Nothing else could have that colour in November.”
”I don't know what 'rose haws' are. Do you want them--whatever they are?
I'll go and get them for you.”
”I'll go, too, to see if they're worth picking. They're th.o.r.n.y things; you won't like them, but I do.”
”You think I don't like th.o.r.n.y things?” he asked her as they went down the hillside, up which Ted and Ruth were now struggling. It was steep and he held out his hand to her, but she ignored it and went on with sure, light feet.
”No, I think you like them soft and rounded.”
”And you prefer them p.r.i.c.kly?”
”p.r.i.c.kly enough to be interesting.”
They reached the scraggly rosebush, bare except for the bright red haws, their smooth hard surfaces s.h.i.+ning in the sun. Richard got out his knife, and by dint of scratching his hands in a dozen places, succeeded in gathering quite a cl.u.s.ter. Then he went to work at getting rid of the thorns.
”You may like things p.r.i.c.kly, but you'll be willing to spare a few of these,” he observed.
He succeeded in time in pruning the cl.u.s.ter into subordination, bound them with a tough bit of dried weed which he found at his feet, and held out the bunch. ”Will you do me the honour of wearing them?”
She thrust the smooth stems into the breast of her riding-coat, where they gave the last picturesque touch to her attire. ”Thank you,” she acknowledged somewhat tardily. ”I can do no less after seeing you scarify yourself in my service. You might have put on your gloves.”
”I might--and suffered your scarifying mirth, which would have been much worse. 'He jests at scars that never felt a wound,' but he who jests at them after he has felt them is the hero. Observe that I still jest.” He put his lips to a bleeding tear on his wrist as he spoke. ”My only regret is that the rose haws were not where they are now when I photographed the horses. Only, mine is not a colour camera. I must get one and have it with me when I drive, in case of emergencies like this one.”
A whimsical expression touching his lips, he gazed off over the landscape as he spoke, and she glanced at his profile. She was obliged to admit to herself that she had seldom noted one of better lines.
Curiously enough, to her observation there did not lack a suggestion of ruggedness about his face, in spite of the soft and easy life she understood him to have led.
Ted and Ruth now came panting up to them, and the four climbed together to the hilltop.
Roberta turned and scanned the sun. Immediately she decreed that it was time to be off, reminding her protesting young brother that the November dusk falls early and that it would be dark before they were at home.
Richard put both sisters into their saddles with the ease of an old horseman. ”I've often regretted selling a certain black beauty named Desperado,” he remarked as he did so, ”but never more than at this minute. My motor there strikes me as disgustingly overadequate to-day. I can't keep you company by any speed adjustment in my control, and if I could your steeds wouldn't stand it. I'll let you start down before me and stay here for a bit. It's too pleasant a place to leave. And even then I shall be at home before you--worse luck!”
”We're sorry, too,” said Ruth, and Ted agreed, vociferously. As for Roberta, she let her eyes meet his for a moment in a way so rare with her, whose heavy lashes were forever interfering with any man's direct gaze, that Richard made the most of his opportunity. He saw clearly at last that those eyes were of the deepest sea blue, darkened almost to black by the shadowing lashes. If by some hard chance he should never see them again he knew he could not forget them.