"About you."
"When?"
"All day long while I was at work, and every night when I sat here and you didn"t come."
"Was it a happy thing to do?"
"Very happy."
"Even when I didn"t come?"
"Even when you didn"t come."
"Then it"s just as nice to think about me as to talk to me?"
"Almost!" He said it quite cheerfully, and through her pique she had to laugh.
"What do you think, playmate?"
"I make a world and I put you in it. Then I put myself in, too."
When he spoke like this, simply and even with a gay indifference, she wondered whether the world was a pageant to him, which it cost him no pains to relinquish, and whether, too, though he had great kindliness and understanding, deep emotions were forbidden him. At least, since he was impersonal and remote, she could ask him anything.
"What is your world? Is it like this?"
"It isn"t my world. It"s yours and mine. We go about in it, having a bully time, and n.o.body looks at us or asks us questions."
"Don"t they see us?"
"Oh, yes, I dare say. Only they don"t stare after us and say, "Why do they do thus and so?" They don"t even speak of your beautiful hair. I talk about that myself, all the time, and you like to have me. But we should both think it mighty queer if anybody else did."
"Do we speak to the other people?"
"Sometimes. If we want to. If you see a diamond or a sapphire, or I see a new patent weeder, then we say, "We want to buy that." But we don"t have much time for other folks. We travel a lot. You tell me about pictures and Alps and thrones and princ.i.p.alities, because I don"t know much except about grafting trees and sowing seed at the best time. But always we come home here to the plantation because I find that"s where I feel most at peace. And you are at peace here, too. I am delighted when I find that out."
"Be delighted now, then. I am at peace here, more than anywhere else."
"And when we are here, we live in our house. At first, I built a large one up there on the hill, and I had you bring over pictures for it from abroad, and I planted trees, and it was very grand. But I wasn"t contented there, and you weren"t, because of it. You saw at once that my sh.e.l.l had got to fit me, and the plain house did. So I kicked over the big house, and we lived in the old one."
"With grannie?"
"Yes, only I didn"t think very much about her. She was always there, I suppose, like the sun through the windows, very kind and warm, and glad we were contented; but it was our house. That"s what makes the charm of everything--that it"s yours and mine. I couldn"t sleep in the house though. It had to be outdoors."
"Did I have my hammock swung in the upper veranda?"
He laughed out delightedly.
"How did you know? Yes, I slept down here or under the fir by the house, but you were afraid of caterpillars and you had to be up there."
"I"m not afraid of anything else," she explained humbly. "Not of bears or anything in the deep woods. But caterpillars crawl so!"
"However, it didn"t make any difference where you were, because while we were asleep it was just as it is while we are awake--there is a fine thread that goes from me to you. There might be processions of people between us, chariots and horses and marching armies, but they couldn"t break the thread."
"And what do we do all day?"
"Talk. Think. I think to you and you think back to me."
"But we must work. If we don"t, you"ll get tired of me." She spoke out of sad knowledge.
"Why, playmate!"
The reproach in his voice recalled her, and she was ashamed to find her belief less warm than his.
"Well," he conceded, "maybe we work. I go on grafting and sowing seeds and sending things to market, and you sit on a stone and sing."
"Shall I sing to you now?"
"No, playmate. It makes me sad."
"I could sing happy songs."
"That wouldn"t make any difference. When you sing, it wakens something in me, some discontent, some longing bigger than I am, and that"s not pleasure. It is pain."
"Are you afraid of pain?"
He waited a long time. Then he asked her,--
"Have you ever known pain?"
"Yes. I thought my mind was going."
"But not pain of your body?"
"Oh, no, not that."
"The pain of the body is something to be afraid of. If we have it once, we cringe when we see it coming. But your singing--can I tell you what it wakens in me? No, for I don"t know. Pain, the premonition of pain.
Something I must escape."
"Yet I was to sit by and sing to you while you were at work."
"Yes, but that would be when we were quite content." It was the first wistful hint that things were lacking to him. He could not be contented; yet, against reason, his manner told a different, braver story.
"You said," she began, "if armies came between us, they could not break the little thread. Suppose I go away?"
"That wouldn"t break it. Don"t you suppose my thought can run to London or Rome? It isn"t worth much if it can"t."
"Suppose I"--she stopped, appalled at herself for the thought, but jealously anxious to be told.
"Suppose you marry the prince? That would be dreadful, because you don"t love him. But it wouldn"t break the thread. It would m.u.f.fle it, I guess.