Part 13 (2/2)
”Hoidy Pearl,” replied the lad.
Hoiden Pearl! That name had been woven into every sound that had reached Luke's ears for days and nights and nights together, and now, like a sweet tune nearly mastered, it took a deeper, tenderer meaning as the boy p.r.o.nounced it in his childish way.
”Hoidy Pearl is her name,” the lad continued. ”She's come to stay at the Judge's all summer till the new railroad's finished. Her father's the boss of the road. She's jest the funniest girl, o-o-e! And she likes me, too!”
Luke raised himself to a sitting posture and looked at the boy so earnestly that he drew back a pace or two as if afraid.
”Boy, you're not lyin', are ye?” said the man in a low, earnest tone.
”No I'm not, neither,” was the quick reply.
Luke got up, flung aside his book and strolled off into the woods.
Wandering there in the cool, silent places, he dreamed his dream. For hours he sat by a little spring stream in the dense shadow of a big cotton-wood tree. The birds congregated about him, and chirped and sang; the squirrels came out chattering and frisking from branch to branch; but he gave them no look of recognition--he saw them not, heard them not. The birds might have lit upon his head and the squirrels might have run in and out of his pockets with impunity. He smoked all the time, refilling and relighting his pipe whenever it burned out. He did not know how much he was smoking, nor that he was smoking at all. A bright face set in a ma.s.s of yellow curls, a wee white hand all spangled with jewels, a voice sweeter than any bird's, a name--Hoiden Pearl--these rang, and danced, and echoed, and shone in the recesses of his brain and heart to the exclusion of all else. He was trying to think, but he could not. He wanted to mature a plan, but not even an outline could find room in his head. It was full. Strange, indeed, it may seem, that a rough farmer of Luke's age should thus fall into the ways of the imaginative, sentimental stripling; but, after all, the fit must come on some time in life. No doubt it goes harder with some const.i.tutions than with others. Luke may have been unwittingly strongly predisposed that way.
Neither the exterior of a man nor his surroundings will do to judge him by. Nature is that mysterious in all her ways. Luke talked aloud, sometimes gesticulating in a quiet way.
”I _must_ see the gal--I _will_ see the gal,” he muttered at last. ”It's no use talkin', I jist will see her!”
Suddenly a light broke from his face. He smiled like one who has victory in his grasp--like an editor who has an idea, like a reviewer who has found some bad verse. He got up immediately, went back to the barn, hitched a horse to a small road wagon and drove to town. There he spent time and money with a merchant tailor and other vendors of clothing. He was very fastidious in his selection. Nothing but the finest would do him. A few days after this he brought home a trunk full of princely raiment--broad cloth and fine linen. Betsy was struck dumb with amazement when the trunk was opened. A dream of such costly things, such reckless extravagance, would have driven her mad. Silent, open-eyed, wondering, she came in and stood behind Luke while he was unpacking. He looked up presently and saw her. His face flushed violently, and in a half-whining, half-ashamed tone he muttered:
”Now, Betsy, you jest git out'n here faster'n ye come in, for I'm not goin' to stan' no foolin' at all, now. These 'ere's my clothes and paid for out'n my money, an' I'm the jedge of what I need. I ha'n't had any good duds for a long time, and I'm tired o' lookin' like a scarecrow made out'n a salt bag. I've been thinkin' for a long time I'd git these 'ere things, an' now I've got'm. You kin git you some if ye like, but I don't want ye a standin' round here gawpin' at me on 'count o' my clothes; so you go off an' mind yer own affairs. It's no great sight to see some s.h.i.+rts, an' coats, and pants, an' collars, an' vests, an' sich like, is it?”
Before this speech was finished Betsy had backed out of the room and closed the door. As she did so she let go a sigh that came back to Luke like a Parthian arrow; but it happened just then that he was holding up in front of him a buff linen vest which kept the missile from his heart.
He dressed himself with great care, and an hour later he slipped out of the house unseen, and took his way towards the rather pretentious residence of Judge Barnett, the gables of which, a mile away, gleamed between rows of Lombardy poplars. The Judge was one of those half cultivated men who, in every country neighborhood, pa.s.s for prodigies of learning and ability. He was the autocrat of the county in political and social affairs--one of those men who really know a great deal, but who arrogate more. He got his t.i.tle from having been County Commissioner when the court house was building. Some said he made money out of the transaction, but our story is silent there.
It would have been an interesting study for a philosopher to have watched Luke throughout the singular ramble he took that morning. It would have been such a manifest revelation of the state of the fellow's feelings. It would have minutely disclosed, and more eloquently than any verbal confession, the rise and fall, the ebb and flow, the alternating strength and weakness of his purpose, and the will behind it. Then, too, it would have let fall delightful hints of the unselfishness of his new and all-engrossing pa.s.sion, and of the charming simplicity and sincerity of his great rugged nature at its inner core. At first he struck out boldly a direct line to Judge Barnett's residence, his face beaming with the light of settled happiness, but as he neared the pleasant grounds surrounding the house he began to discover some trepidation. His gait wavered, the expression of his face s.h.i.+fted with each step, and soon his course was indeterminate--a fitful sauntering from this place to that--a tricksy, uneven flight, like that of a lazy b.u.t.terfly, if one may indulge the comparison--a meandering in and out among the trees of a small walnut grove--a strolling here and there, now along the verge of a well set old orchard, now down the low hedge behind the garden, and anon leaning over the board fence that inclosed the Judge's ample barn and stable lot; he gazed wistfully, half comically, in the direction of the upper windows of the farm house. It was one of those peculiarly yellow days of summer, when everything swims in a golden mist. The blue birds floated aimlessly about from stake to stake of the fences; the wind, felt only in jerky puffs, blew no particular way, and as idly and as eccentrically as any blue bird, and in full accord with the fitful will of the wind, Luke drifted through the sheen of summer all round Barnett Place. He lazed about, humming a tune, and, for a wonder, not smoking--half restless, half contented, looking for something, scarcely expecting anything. When once a great rough man does get into a childish way, he is a child of which ordinary children would be ashamed, and just then Luke, the big bashful fellow, was an instance strikingly in point.
Occasionally he talked half aloud to himself. Once, while lounging on the orchard fence, gazing down between the long rows of russet and pippin trees, he said dreamily,
”I _must_ see her. I can't go back 'ithout seein' her.” It so chanced that just then a shower of blackbirds fell upon the orchard, covering the trees and the ground, flying over and over each other, twittering and whistling as only blackbirds can. Their wings smote together with a tender rustling sound like that of a spring wind in young foliage, or of a thousand lovers whispering together by moonlight. Luke watched them a long while, a doleful shade gathering in his face. ”The little things loves each other,” he muttered; ”everything loves something; an' jest dern my lights ef I don't love the gal, an' I'm boun' to see her!”
Seemingly nerved by sudden resolution, he climbed over the fence and started at a slas.h.i.+ng pace across the orchard towards the house, scaring all the birds into an ecstasy of flight, so that they dashed themselves against the foliage of the apple trees, making it rustle and sway as if blown on by a strong wind. He did not keep on, however. His resolution seemed to burn out about midway the orchard. He began to drift around again, his pace becoming slower and slower. His shoulders drooped forward as if burdened with a great load, his eyes turned restlessly from side to aide.
”I jest can't do it!” he murmured--”I jest can't do it, an' I mought as well go back!” There was a petulant ring to his voice--a nervous, worried tone, that had despair in it.
Out of a June apple tree right over his head fell a sweet, silvery, half child's, half woman's voice, that thrilled him through every fibre to the marrow of his bones.
”What's the matter, Goosey? What have you lost! What are you hunting for? Want a good apple?”
Luke looked up just in time to catch squarely on his nose a fine, ripe June apple, and through a mist of juice and a sheeny curtain of leaves he saw the lovely face he had come to look for. A thump on the nose from an apple, no matter if it is ripe and soft, is a little embarra.s.sing, and it only makes it more so when the racy wine of the fruit flies into one's eyes and all over one's new clothes. But there are moments of supreme bliss when such a mishap pa.s.ses unnoticed. Luke felt as if the blow had been the touch of a magician conjuring up a scene that held him rapt and speechless.
”O, my! I didn't go to hit you! Please excuse me, sir--do. I thought you'd catch it in your hands.”
She came lightly down from the tree, descending like a bird, easily, gracefully, as if she had been born to climb. She murmured many apologies, but the genius of fun danced in her saucy, almost impertinent eyes, belying her regretful words. Luke looked down at her dazed and speechless. She, however, was full of prattle--half childish, half womanly, half serious, half bantering--her eyes upturned to his, her voice a very bird's in melody. In the more innocent sense of the word she looked like her name, Hoiden. Nothing unchaste or indelicate about her appearance; just a sort of want of restraint; a freedom that amounted to an utter lack of responsibility to the ordinary claims and dictates of propriety. A close, trained, intelligent observer would have seen at once that she was wilful, spoiled, unbridled, but not bad, not in the least vicious; really innocent and full of good impulses. She was beautiful, too--wonderfully beautiful--just on the hither side of womanhood, plump, budding, bewitching. How she did it can never be known, but she soon had Luke racing with her all over the orchard. They climbed trees together, they scrambled for the same apple, they laughed, and shouted, and played till the horn at the farmhouse called the field hands to dinner. They parted then, as children part, promising to meet again the next day. The girl's cheeks were rosy with exercise, so were Luke's.
How strange! Day after day that great, bearded, almost middle-aged, uncouth farmer went and played slave to that chit of a girl, doing whatever ridiculous or childish thing she proposed, caring for nothing, asking for nothing but to be with her, listen to her voice and feast his eyes upon her beauty. He gladly bore everything she heaped upon him, and to be called ”Goosey” by her was to him inexpressibly charming.
Betsy's womanly nature was not to be deceived. She soon comprehended all; but she dared not mention the subject to Luke. He was in no mood to be opposed. So he went on--and Betsy sighed.
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