Part 86 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXI

THE GOLDEN HOURS

The weather was unsuitable for hunting. It snowed for a week, thawed over night, then froze, then snowed again, but the moon that night promised a perfect day.

Young Mallett supposed that he was afoot and afield before anybody else in house could be stirring, but as he pitched his sketching easel on the edges of the frozen pasture brook, and opened his field-box, a far hail from the white hill-top arrested him.

High poised on the snowy crest above him, clothed in white wool from collar to knee-kilts, and her thick cl.u.s.tering hair flying, she came flas.h.i.+ng down the hill on her skis, soared high into the sunlight, landed, and shot downward, pole balanced.

Like a silvery meteor she came flas.h.i.+ng toward him, then her hair-raising speed slackened, and swinging in a widely gracious curve she came gliding across the glittering field of snow and quietly stopped in front of him.

”Since when, angel, have you acquired this miraculous accomplishment?”

he demanded.

”Do I do it well, Duane?”

”A swallow from paradise isn't in your cla.s.s, dear,” he admitted, fascinated. ”Is it easy--this new stunt of yours?”

”Try it,” she said so sweetly that he missed the wickedness in her smile.

So, balancing, one hand on his shoulder, she disengaged her moccasins from the toe-clips, and he shoved his felt timber-jack boots into the leather loops, and leaning on the pointed pole which she handed him, gazed with sudden misgiving down the gentle acclivity below. She encouraged him; he listened, nodding his comprehension of her instructions, but still gazing down the hill, a trifle ill at ease.

However, as skates and snow-shoes were no mystery to him, he glanced at the long, narrow runners curved upward at the extremities, with more a.s.surance, and his masculine confidence in all things masculine returned. Then he started, waved his hand, smiling his condescension; then he realised that he was going faster than he desired to; then his legs began to do disrespectful things to him. The treachery of his own private legs was most disheartening, for they wavered and wobbled deplorably, now threatening to cross each other, now veering alarmingly wide of his body. He made a feebly desperate attempt to use his trail-pole; and the next second all that Geraldine could see of the episode was mercifully enveloped in a spouting pinwheel of snow.

Like all masculine neophytes, he picked himself up and came back, savagely confident in his humiliation. She tried to guide his first toddling ski-steps, but he was mad all through and would have his own way. With a set and mirthless smile, again and again he gave himself to the slope and the mercy of his insurgent legs, and at length, bearing heavily on his trail-pole, managed to reach the level below without capsizing.

She praised him warmly, rescued his wool gloves and cap from snowy furrows into which their owner had angrily but helplessly dived; and then she stepped into her skis and ascended the hill beside him with that long-limbed, graceful, swinging stride which he had ventured to believe might become him also.

He said hopelessly: ”If you expect me to hunt wild boar with you on skis, there'll be some wild and widely distributed shooting in this county. How can I hit a boar while describing unwilling ellipses in mid-air or how can I run away from one while I'm sticking nose down in a snow-drift?”

Too faint with laughter to reply, she stood leaning on her trailing-pole and looking over his shoulder as he repitched his sketching easel, squeezed the colours from the leaden tubes, and set his palette.

”I'm horribly hungry,” he grumbled; ”too hungry to make a decent sketch.

How cold is it, anyway? I believe that this paint is trying to freeze on my palette!”

”What are you going to paint?” she asked, her rounded chin resting on his shoulder.

”That frozen brook.” He looked around at her, hesitating; and she laughed and nodded her comprehension.

”You want to make a sketch of me, dear. Why don't you ask me? Do you think I'd refuse?”

”It's so beastly cold to ask you to stand still----”

”Cold! Why, it's much warmer; it's ten above zero. I'll stand wherever you wish. Where do you want me; here above you, against the snow and sky?”

The transcendent loveliness of the picture she made set that excited thrill quivering through every vein; but he took a matter-of-fact grip on his emotions because good work is done in cold blood, even if it sometimes may be conceived in exaltation.