Part 15 (1/2)

”I should hate to make the thrush jealous. No, my accomplishments cease with philology. I'm very happy here, really. You must go back to your work.”

I went back, and read a few more pages of the silly novel.

”This story is so silly I really think it would be a success,” I called out.

A head peeped up at me over the settle. ”You aren't working,” she reproached. ”I'm going away, so you won't have me to talk to.”

”Very well, I'll go with you,” I cried, slamming the ma.n.u.script into a drawer. ”I'll come down here and work after supper.”

”No, you'll work till five o'clock.”

”Not unless you'll stay!”

The eyes looked at me over the settle, and I looked steadily back. We each smiled a little, silently.

”Very well,” said she, as the head disappeared.

I read on, vaguely aware that the west was breaking, and the room growing warm. Presently I heard a window opened and felt the cooler rush of rain-freshened air from the fragrant orchard. Then I heard the painters come downstairs, talking, and tramp out through the kitchen. It was five o'clock. But I still read on, to finish a chapter. The painters had departed. The entire house was still.

Suddenly there stole through the room the soft andante theme of a Mozart sonata, and the low sun at almost the same instant dropped into the clear blue hole in the west and flooded the room. I let the ma.n.u.script fall, and sat listening peacefully for a full minute. Then I moved across the floor and stood behind the player. How cheerful the room looked, how booky and old-fas.h.i.+oned! It seemed as if I had always dwelt there.

It seemed as if this figure at the piano had always dwelt there. How easy it would be to put out my hands and rest them on her shoulders, and lay my cheek to her hair! The impulse was ridiculously strong to do so, and I tingled to my finger tips with a strange excitement.

”Come,” I said, ”it is after five, and the sun is out. We will go to hear the thrush.”

The girl faced around on the bench, raising her face to mine, ”Yes, let us,” she answered. ”How lovely the room looks now. Oh, the nice new old room!”

She lingered in the doorway a second, and then we stepped out of the front entrance, where we stood entranced by the freshness of the rain-washed world in the low light of afternoon, and the heavy fragrance of wet lilac buds enveloped us. Then the girl gathered her skirts up and we went down through the orchard, where the ground was strewn with the fallen petals, through the maples where the song sparrow was singing, and in among the dripping pines. The brook was whispering secret things, and the drip from the trees made a soft tinkle, just detectable, on its pools.

We waited one minute, two minutes, three minutes in silence, and then the fairy clarion sounded, the ”cool bars of melody from the everlasting evening.” It sounded with a thrilling nearness, so lovely that it almost hurt, and instinctively I put out my hand and felt for hers.

She yielded it, and so we stood, hand in hand, while the thrush sang once, twice, three times, now near, now farther away, and then it seemed from the very edge of my clearing. I still held her hand, as we waited for another burst of melody. But he evidently did not intend to sing again. My fingers closed tighter over hers as I felt her face turn toward mine, and she answered their pressure while her eyes glistened, I thought, with tears. Then her hand slipped away.

”Don't speak,” she said, leading the way out of the grove.

We went into the house again to make sure that the fires had burned down. The room was darker now, filled with twilight shadows. The last of the logs were glowing red on the hearths, and the air was hot and heavy after the fresh outdoors. But how cheerful, how friendly, how like a human thing, with human feelings of warmth and welcome, the room seemed to me!

”It has been a wonderful day,” said I, as we turned from the fires to pa.s.s out. ”I wonder if I shall ever have so much joy again in my house?”

The girl at my side did not answer. I looked at her, and saw that she was struggling with tears.

I did instinctively the only thing my clumsy ignorance could suggest--put my hand upon hers. She withdrew it quickly.

”No, no!” she cried under her breath. ”Oh, I am such a fool!

Fool--Middle English _fool_, _fole_, _fol_; Icelandic, _fol_; old French _fol_--always the same word!”

She broke into a plaintive little laugh, ran through the hall and lifted the stove lid to see if the fire there was out, and hastened to the road, where I had difficulty to keep pace with her as we walked up the slope to supper.

”You need a rest more than you think, I guess,” I tried to say, but she only answered, ”I need it less!” and made off at once to her room.