"I should like to hear from you. A letter from you in the winter might bring the summer back--the crickets in the gra.s.s and the wild sunflowers by the ditch. Yes, you may write to me."
"And you will send me your address?"
"Yes, I will write first--when I go to the country. Not before."
"And if you don"t go to the country I am not to know where you are?"
"But I am going to the country. You shall hear."
Near the road, between them and the station, stood an old cheese factory, now inhabited by summer vagabonds. The windows were stuffed with cast-off clothes. It was a wretched place, but now it served a purpose--it shut off all view from the station. It made no difference as to who might peep from the windows.
They walked on slowly a few paces, and halted behind the old house. They heard the rumble of the train. He looked down at her up-turned face. Her lips were slightly apart as if on the eve of Utterance. He thought of the seam in a ripe peach.
"There, the train is coming," she said.
"Plenty--plenty of time."
"No. Mrs. Goodwin is calling me. Good-bye," she said, still suffering him to hold her hand. "Are you always going to be a wild man?"
"You remember what they used to call me."
"Yes, that bad name. But I must go."
She ran away from him. He strode back across the field. He heard the train when it stopped and when it started again, but did not look round.
He stood in the ditch where he had helped her across. There was the print of her foot in the moist earth. He heard the crickets crying in the deep gra.s.s. He lay down for a moment, and felt that the cry of his heart drowned all sounds of earth. "If it were only different," he said to himself, over and over again. "When she knows, what will she think?
Must she know? Perhaps not--I hope not. When it is all over, I will kill it in my own breast." He was conscious of the theatrical. He was on the stage. Glow-worms were his footlights; his orchestra was deep-hidden in the gra.s.s. "Why can"t a man be genuine?" he asked himself. "Why does a heart put on, talk to itself, and strut?"
In the road he met Mrs. Blakemore walking with Bobbie. The boy had a long stick, pushing it on the ground in front of himself. He called it his plow. His mother cautioned him. He might hurt himself. The stick struck a lump in the road and punched him. He howled just as Milford came up.
"I told you not to shove that stick. And now you"ve nearly ruined yourself. Here"s Mr. Milford. Perhaps he will carry you."
Milford took the boy on his back. "You are my horse," said the boy, whimpering. They turned toward the house, Mrs. Blakemore striving to keep step with Milford. "Don"t go so fast. I can"t keep step with you,"
she said.
"Get up," the boy commanded.
"How long do you expect to stay?" Milford asked.
"I don"t know," she answered. "George is away on a tour, and I am to wait till I hear from him. I don"t think I"ll be here but a few days longer. I ought to put Bobbie in school."
"We"ll have a good deal more of warm weather," Milford said; "and October out here I should think is the finest time of the year."
"Oh, yes, but you know we must get back. After all, the summer spent in the country is a hardship. We give up everything for the sake of being out of doors. Put him down when he gets heavy."
"He"s all right. Yes, hardship in many ways. But hardships make us stronger; still, I don"t know that we need to be much stronger. We are strong enough now for our weak purposes."
"You mean spiritually stronger, don"t you? Well, I don"t know. But, of course, we are more meditative when we have been close to nature, and that always gives us a sort of spiritual help. But the time out here might be spent to great advantage, in reading and serious converse. As it is, however, people seem ashamed to talk anything but nonsense. They hoot at anything that has a particle of sentiment in it. And as for art--well, so few persons know anything about art. And on this account I shall miss Mrs. Goodwin so much. She talked beautifully on art. Don"t you think so?"
"She talks well on almost any subject."
"And Gunhild is a real artist," she said, looking at him. "Did she show you any of her drawings?"
"No. I didn"t ask her and she didn"t offer to show them."
"Perhaps you were more interested in the artist than in her art."
"Yes, that may be about the size of it."
"Do you know, Mr. Milford, I can"t fathom you. Sometimes you speak with positive sentiment and dignity, and then again you are a repository of slang. Why is it? Is it because that, at times, I am incapable of--shall I say inspiring?"
"Yes, I guess that"s about the proper thing to say. No. What am I talking about? You are always inspiring, of course. The fault lies with me."
"Such a strange man!" she said, meditatively. "Mrs. Stuvic declares she doesn"t know you any better now than she did the first day, but I believe I do, though not much better, I must confess. I wish you would tell me something."
"Well, what is it?"
"Did you know Gunhild before she came out here?"
"I had never spoken to her."
"Well, it"s very strange. You got acquainted very soon. Oh, I know she was out here quite a while, still--oh, you know what I mean. Yes, you met her at the haunted house--once. More than once? Am I too inquisitive? But I am so interested."
He acted the part of a politer man; he said that she was not too inquisitive--glad that she was interested. The boy, pulling at his ears, the bridle, turned his head toward her, and he caught the drooping of her eye. Over him she had established a sentimental protectorate, in accordance with a Monroe Doctrine of the heart, and resented foreign aggression.
"So much interested in Gunhild, you know," she said. "Peculiar girl, not yet Americanized. Perhaps it is her almost blunt honesty that gives her the appearance of lacking tact. But tact is the protection of honesty.
Don"t you think so?"
"I don"t know anything about tact, as you understand it. I know what it is to get the drop on a man, and I suppose the woman of tact always has the drop. Is that it?"
"Yes," she laughed, walking close beside him. "A woman of tact is never taken unawares."
"A suspicious woman, I take it."
"Well, a ready woman. And Gunhild is not dull, but she is not always ready. Do you think so?"
"I"ll be--I don"t know what you"re driving at."
"Get up," the boy cried, clucking.
"Perhaps I am a little obscure. But I thought you would understand."
"But I swear I don"t."
"Then it would be cruel to explain."
"It would? You"ve got to explain now." He halted and turned to her. The boy pulled at his ears. Her laughter came like the rippling of cool water.
"You know that Gunhild is an experiment," she said. "She was a girl of talent with uncertain manners. Even her restraint is blunt. And I think that Mrs. Goodwin has found her a failure."