Part 23 (2/2)
”You are learning. That's the vagabond philosophy.”
He was a true prophet. In an hour a brisk wind from the west had blown the storm away and burnished the sky like a new jewel. All things animate suddenly awoke and field and road were alive with people. The birds appeared from tree and bush and set joyously about getting their belated breakfasts. A miracle had happened, it seemed to Hermia. The blood in her veins surged deliciously, and all the world rejoiced with her. And yet--it was merely that the sun had come out.
They had mounted a high hill and stopped for breath at its summit.
The country over which they were to travel was spread out for their inspection. Down there in the valley the river choosing its leisurely course northward to the Seine, and beyond it the harlequin checkerboard of vine and meadow, the sentinel poplars, and to the east-ward the blue hills that sheltered Ivry-la-Bataille. Tiny villages, each with its slender campanile, made incidental notes of life and color and here and there, afar, the tall chimneys of factories stained the sky. About them in the nearer fields were hay-wagons and workers, men and women, their shouts and songs floating up the hill refined and mellowed by the distances.
Hermia took the air into her lungs, and surveyed the landscape.
”All this,” said Markham, ”is yours and mine--you see, when you have nothing, everything belongs to you.”
She laughed.
”You won't dare to put that philosophy to the test. There's a delicious odor of cooking food. If everything belongs to me, I'll trouble you for the contents of that coffee-pot.”
”Not hungry already--!”
”Frightfully so. I haven't eaten for ages.”
He looked at his watch.
”It's only eleven, but of course--”
”Oh, don't let me interfere with your plans.”
”You don't. I have no plans. We'll go into camp at once.”
They descended the hill and after a while found a secluded spot near the river bank. Markham quickly unstrapped the donkey's pack and to Hermia's surprise drew forth a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of red wine which he set out with some pride on a flat rock near by.
”This,” he announced, ”is our _djeuner ? la fourchette_. I won't apologize for it.”
”Wonderful man! Somehow you remind me of the sleight-of-hand performer producing an omelette from a silk hat. I don't think I've ever been really hungry before in my life.”
He opened the bottle with the corkscrew on his pocket-knife and watched her munching hungrily at the rye-bread.
”Half the pleasure in life, after all, is wanting a thing and getting it,” he observed. ”How can you want anything if you've already got it?”
”I can't,” she mumbled, her mouth full, ”unless perhaps it's this bread.”
He pa.s.sed the bottle to her and she drank from it sparingly, pa.s.sing it to him again.
”Every wine is a vintage if you're thirsty enough,” he added. ”The trouble with our world is that most of its people are always about half full of food. You can't really enjoy things to eat or things to drink unless you're quite empty. It's the same thing with ideas. You can't think very clearly when you're half full of other people's biases.”
”Or their b-bread and ch-cheese!” she said, choking. Further than that she did not reply at once. The reasons were obvious. But she munched reflectively, and when she had swallowed:
”If all your arguments are as convincing as your fare, then you and I shall never disagree,” she said.
Clarissa, for that was the name she had given the beast, was turned loose in the meadow. Markham sat beside Hermia on the warm rock, and, between them, without further words, they finished both the wine and the food. Markham filled his pipe and stretched out at full length in lazy content while she sat beside him, brus.h.i.+ng the dried cakes of mud from her skirt and stockings.
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