"Oh, she has? Well, let her go, there wan"t no string tied to her. Bill, I want you to drive over to Antioch for me if you"ve got the time, and you never appear to be busy when there"s women around. They"ve got the pony hitched up."
Mrs. Goodwin drove with him. Near the old brick house they met the Professor, leading a calf.
He s.n.a.t.c.hed off his hat, and the calf s.n.a.t.c.hed him off his feet, but he scrambled up, tied the rope to a fence-post, and was then ready to do the polite thing, bowing and brushing himself. He had been on the keen jump, he said, catching drift-wood in the commercial whirlpool, but he had often thought of Mrs. Goodwin, one of the n.o.blest of her honored s.e.x. "I have turned from the sylvan paths where wild roses nod," said he, "turned into the dusty highway of trade, but I have not forgotten the roses, madam," he declared with a bow. "They come as a sweet reminiscence of my brighter but less useful days. Permit me to extend to you----"
The calf broke loose and went scampering down the road, a twinkling of white hoofs in the black dust; and with a shout the Professor took to his heels in pursuit.
"Something always happens to that man"s dignity," said Mrs. Goodwin, laughing as they drove on. "Is he ever serious?"
"He may not appear so, but he"s serious now," Milford answered, looking back at him, galloping down the road.
"Couldn"t we have helped him in some way?" she asked, now that it was too late even to think about it.
"We might have shouted advice after him, but that was about all we could have done," said Milford. "He"ll catch him down there. Somebody"ll head him off."
As they drove through the village street, Milford pointed out the place wherein he had trained himself to meet the man Dorsey. He had worked during weeks that one minute might be a victory. She told him that it was the appearance of having a dauntless spirit that at first aroused in her an interest in him. She detested a quarrel, but she liked a man who would fight. Her father had been a captain in the navy, and he had taught her to believe that a courageous knave was more to be admired than an honest man without nerve. Of course this was an extreme view, the exaggerated policy of a fighting man, and though she did not accept it in full, yet it had strongly impressed her. She did not see how a man could be an American and not be brave. And frankness was a part of bravery. At least it ought to be. Milford was brave, but not frank enough, with her. On the way home she returned to the subject. There was a charm in the confidence of a brave man. It was strange that he had not told Gunhild more about himself. He surely loved her. She was capable of inspiring the deepest love. Of course she had seen him in the West, but had merely seen him, and his life was still a sealed book to her.
Oh, no, she had not complained. That was not her nature.
"She"ll know enough one of these days," said Milford. "Perhaps too much," he added.
"Well, I suppose we must wait," she replied. "And I hope you"ll not think my curiosity idle. All interest is curiosity, more or less, but all interest is not idle. So you don"t know how long you"ll remain here?"
"I haven"t staked off the time."
She sighed. She said that the summer had been a disappointment. She had not been happy since Gunhild left her. Her going away must have been a wild notion, caught from Milford. There was no necessity for teaching, till at least she had studied longer herself. She had not been disappointed in her development, not wholly. Her outcome as a woman had more than offset her failure as an artist. And she found that it was the woman whom she had liked, rather than the artist. With her new care it was different. She was all musician, a genius with whims and caprices, a moody companion, not capable of inspiring friendship. She had taken her as a duty, a duty which she felt that she owed to the musical world.
"I am going home to-morrow," she said, when Milford helped her down at Mrs. Stuvic"s gate. "I don"t like these new people. They are coa.r.s.e."
"To-morrow I have business across the country," said Milford. "I may not see you again."
"I am sorry. Will you do me a favor? When you write to Gunhild tell her that she must come back to me. I need her."
"I will tell her that you have said so."
"That won"t be much of a favor, but tell her. And I want you to promise one thing--that you will come to see me, when you are married."
"I"ll promise that gladly, and keep it. I am very fond of you."
"Are you?"
"Yes. You said you would like to be the mother of such a son. That was the kindest thing ever said to me. It makes you my mother."
"Oh," she said, falteringly, as he took her hand. "You will understand me better in the time to come. Good-bye."
CHAPTER XXIV.
DREAMED OF THE ANGELUS.
Gunhild wrote that she could not spare the money to come out, and to Milford the summer fell flat and lay spiritless on the ground. He begged her to let him bear the expense, and for this she scolded him. But she enlivened him with a suggestion. Near the first of October she would visit her uncle in the city. "It will make me glad to have you come to see me then," she said. "And I shall feel that you have held the summer and brought it with you. Mrs. Goodwin wrote to me as soon as she came home. She said much about you, and I really think she likes you deeply.
I have been astonished at her. I did not think that she would care for me more when her house I left, but she does. She is a good woman. Oh, you remember the Miss Swartz who was with her. Well, she wanted to keep company with a fiddler in a variety show, and Mrs. Goodwin objected, and that was not the end of it. The girl went out at night late and married the fiddler, and Mrs. Goodwin has seen her no more."
There was a lament for the swift flight of the sunny days, by the woman on the bicycle and the man casting his line into the lake, but to Milford the time was slow. He remembered having seen a lame cow limping down the road, with the sluggish hours dragging at her feet, and he told the hired man that she had come back again to vex him. But time was never so slow that it did not pa.s.s, and one evening the sun went down beyond the fading edge of September. Milford waited two days longer and then went to the city; and just out of the fields, how confusing was the noise and the sight of scattering crowds that were never scattered! But his sense of the world soon came back to him. He had been moneyless in many a town, hanging about the gambler"s table, feeding upon the chip tossed by the exultant winner. The woods, the cattle, the green and purple pictures, musings with his head in the gra.s.s, had taken the gamester"s wild leap out of his blood, but he knew that he dared not go near the vice. He found the Norwegian"s cottage, in the western part of town, and he stood at the door listening before he rang the bell. A little girl came out with a tin pail, the gripman"s dinner. As she opened the door he saw Gunhild. She dropped a boy"s jacket, which she had evidently been mending, and came bounding to meet him, with her welcome bursting out in a laugh. Her hands were warm, and her eyes full of happiness. There was no put-on and no disguises in their meeting. It was two destinies touching again, destinies that were to become as one.
She led him into the neat little parlor, gave him a rocking-chair, and talked of her gladness at his coming, standing for a moment in front of a gla.s.s to put back into place a wayward wisp of hair. Their meeting had not been cool. She drew up a chair beside him and they talked about the country, of the haunted house, and the tree that had hoisted a vine like an umbrella. He told her that he had come through the fields to the station, and had stood in the ditch among the wild sunflowers. He had plucked some for her, but they were dead and had fallen to pieces.
They went out into the park, not far away, and sat amid the scenes of a changing season, the leaves falling about them. It was an odd courtship, an indefinite engagement. There was no attempt at sentiment, no time when either one felt that something tender must be said, but between them there was a wholesome understanding of the heart. They were not living a love story. She was not clothed in the glamour-raiment of love"s ethereal fancy, not sigh-fanned by the breath of reverential melancholy. Her hand did not feel like the velvet paw of a kitten; it was a hand that had toiled; and though easier days may come, the mark of labor can never be erased from the palm.
She left him on the rustic seat, and hastened across the sward to pluck a bloom that had been sheltered from the early frost, and he looked at her, a gladness tingling in his nerves. How trim she was in her dark gown! She looked back at him, pointed at a policeman standing off among the trees, and imitated the walk of a sneak-thief. She returned laughing, and pinning the flower on his coat, stood to gaze upon him as if he were in bloom, and said in an accent that always reminded him of a banjo"s lower tones, "See, the frost has not killed you." Simple, playful, loving, strong, were the words to express an estimate of her--the healthy refinement of an honest heart, and modest because she had seen immodesty. She possessed a knowledge that was a better safeguard than mere innocence, and her pa.s.sion illumined her virtue.
They strolled among the trees, society"s forest; they listened co the ducks and the geese, the city"s barnyard.
"Would you rather live in the country?" he asked.
"I would not rather teach art there," she laughed.
"It must be very hard."
"It is very stupid."
"I don"t suppose the farmers take to it any too kindly."
"No, they often ask me why I do not draw comic as they see in the newspapers."
"They must like to see themselves buying gold bricks."
She did not understand him, and he explained that the honest farmer believing that a fortune was coming down the road to meet him, was the prey of sharp swindlers who prowled about through the country. Steve Hardy, one of the shrewdest men in the community, once had bought an express package filled with worthless paper. It was a case of "honesty"
trying to beat the three-sh.e.l.l man at his own game. Ignorance always credits itself with shrewdness. Industry is no sure sign of honesty.
"Worked like a thief" has become a saying. Smiling at his philosophy, she said that he never could have learned it in a school.
"No," he replied. "In the school we are taught to believe in the true, the beautiful, and the good; but in life we find that the true as we learned it is often false, the beautiful painted, and the good bad."
"I would not have you think that," she said. "The beautiful is not always painted." She stooped and picked up a maple leaf, blushed with the rudeness of the frost. "This is not painted, and it is beautiful. It was the cold that brought out its color. You must not be a--what would you call it?"
"Cynic?"
"Yes. You must not be that. It is an acknowledgment of failure."
He took her hand, and they walked on among the trees. "You talk like a virtue translated from a foreign tongue," he said. He called her a heathen grace. She protested. She was a Christian, so devout that she would have hung her head in the potato field had she heard the ringing of the angelus. They saw a woman on a wheel, and he dropped her hand.
The woman waved at them, jumped off and came to meet them, smiling. It was Mrs. Blakemore. "Oh, I am so surprised and delighted," she said, shaking hands. "Why, how unexpected! You must come home with me. I don"t live far from here. Bobbie will be delighted to see you. He refuses to go to school, and we won"t force him, he is so delicate. How well you look, Gunhild! And you too, Mr. Milford." The man would have yielded against his will; the woman saw this and declined the invitation. She said that they had an engagement to dine. Milford looked at her in surprise. He thought of the frost-tinted leaf. Mrs. Blakemore was sorry--she said. It would be such a disappointment to Bobbie. George was out of town. She bade them an effusive good-bye, mounted her wheel, pulling at her short skirts, and glided away.
"Engagement to dine?" said Milford, as they turned from watching Mrs.
Blakemore.
"Yes, at the little bakery over by the edge of the park."