"Is this true?"
"Ah, yes, yes," she hurriedly answered. "It is all true. The n.o.bility which made old Ben French and Leister Mann be friends, has reached into the valley and calmed the hatred which by our law should live between you and me. Go back to your book. Tomorrow when I see you, today will not have been. No, don"t thank me! You might--thank Ruth!" And quickly she was gone.
But Dale was following. At the end of the arbor he caught her by the shoulders, as he would have caught a fleeing boy. Springing about, she saw the new light of happiness in his face, and her irritation at being thus stopped changed almost into laughter.
"I will thank you anyhow," he said, with a silent chuckle of honest fellowship. "This is like givin" me a new life after I"d been shot to death. Just watch those lessons fly now!"
"But you mustn"t stop ladies roughly that way!"
He stepped back, stammering and visibly embarra.s.sed as she knew he would be; and, believing it well for him to continue so to be, she went toward the horse. But he was again at her side, not to apologize;--just humbly to help her mount.
He watched as she cantered around the circle and pa.s.sed between the old gate posts; then threw back his head and gazed into the sky, solemnly, earnestly; taking deep, deep breaths, as famished kine will dip their muzzles in a stream and gluttonously swallow. After this he went slowly to the library, took up the book, and reverently opened it at the place where he had begun to dream a dream.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
THE SHERIFF FORGETS HIS PRISONER
Had Jess remained undiverted when he galloped out of Arden, Brent might soon have been honorably and apologetically escorted from the Buckville court house steps; but as he crossed a stream trickling over the pike--the same spot where Tusk gave battle to Mephisto--his eyes rested on a bee, a bee which had settled there to drink from the moist earth.
This checked the sheriff, who was ever considerate of his fondness for wild honey--and this was a wild bee. Moreover, when he had looked again, he saw other bees in the act of drinking. So he quietly dismounted, gave his bridle rein to the darky, crouched and crept forward.
There is sometimes found in the realm of man one whom a bee will not sting. Whether this is in respect for the man, or self-respect, may still be p.r.o.nounced an open question. One is inclined to think this way, or that way, according to the aspect of him who makes the boast. At any rate, Jess was of this select few, and in another minute he was standing erect, chuckling, with five little workers buzzing excitedly between his two palms, held together cup-like.
Now he permitted one to crawl out, and it shot away as a rifle ball toward a clump of trees some half a mile distant. This was the sheriff"s first clue.
Carefully he climbed the worm fence--for it would not do to crush even so lightly his four remaining captives--and strode blithely on. But he was a long time reaching the trees; for a man, holding his two hands out before him, delicately clasped and protecting bees, who must cross fences and scramble through ravines, does not travel with the rapidity of thought.
At the edge of the wood he released a second bee, watching it with the same intentness as it darted off; and, having walked to about the spot where it had disappeared, he let out prisoner number three. Of course, on the same direct line this one went--for wild bees thus captured and set at liberty abandon all desire for further work, and in a panic rush headlong to their hive; in this way the wild hives are found. But the fourth very soon swerved upward into the branches of a hollow black-gum tree. Chuckling now, Jess indifferently freed the remaining captive; for the search was ended, the treasure house was his. He pressed his ear against the bark and listened. A low, incessant buzzing sound was there, as though these five excited wanderers were recounting their adventure to the agitated colony.
Having marked the place, the sheriff pressed on through the wood to a neighboring farm house where he prevailed upon one Hod Fugit, to accompany him with axe and buckets. The prudent Hod would have brought a veil had Jess not laughed him out of it--for Jess, secure within himself, would have the fun go as far as it could be stretched. An hour later the black-gum tree came ripping, crashing to earth.
The intelligence, or instinct, of the bee has furnished inspiration for many pens. Centuries prior to Maeterlinck, even before Pliny, Virgil, Varro and Aristotle, those warmly constructed little insects, hailed by the ancients as Winged Servants of the Muses, have been immortalized.
But, however much has been extolled their intelligence, or instinct, in no page is it transcribed that their heads, or brains, or hearts are the regions wherewith they argue; and, when this honey had been gathered, Hod"s rotundity of countenance was not all cheer. This, because man"s sense of humor is an enigmatical product, afforded Jess many pleasant chuckles as he trudged, now with a full bucket of the golden prize, back to his horse; and, in order to portray Hod"s antics more vividly to the several acquaintances he met on his way to town, he not infrequently dismounted. But, entering the Court House square at sunset, his mirth sank miserably into his boots; for there upon the steps sat a young man in smart puttees and riding breeches just finishing his dozenth cigarette.
Thus it came about that a little bee, athirst and momentarily ceasing its frenzied toil to drink beside the way, led a sheriff from his duty, and affected a prisoner"s release from voluntary durance at the precise moment for him to meet, three miles out the pike, a happy girl--herself hurrying homeward--in whose heart someone"s name was ringing with the beat of her bounding pulses, and in whose cheeks a color flamed as she recognized him coming.
They reined in gently and stopped. The horses touched noses. For the merest instant his eyes hungrily devoured her, then for an instant closed, and after this he smiled politely, asking:
"May I say you"re stunning?"
"Flatterer, comforter," she laughed. "But I"m dreadfully in need of it.
I"ve been--been crying!"
"Yes," he murmured, "I remember; you must have been. Shall I go back with you as far as Bob"s gate?"
"No; it is almost in sight, and you"re as late as I. Why do you say you remember?--that I must have been?"
"Because you just now told me you had been," he smiled again.
"Brent," she leaned over and looked very seriously into his face, "don"t temporize. I"m not in the humor for it! I heard about--something today, and I want to tell you that you"re--that you"re splendid!"
"What about?" There was no feigned surprise in his question.
"Oh," she clapped her hands as a delighted child might have done, "he doesn"t know that Tusk is alive!" But added gravely: "Suppose he"d been dead, Brent!"
He turned away; afraid, in this surprise and strange giddiness which was enveloping him, to trust himself to speak. There ensued a longer pause, broken by her wistful voice asking: "Why did you, Brent?"
"Oh, I was just having a little fun with Dale," he answered casually.
"Hurry, it"s late! I"ll race you to Bob"s gate--and leave you!"
Turning his horse to put it in motion, he did not know that she sat drooping in the saddle, and staring--pale and staring--with a horrified fear and disappointment in her eyes.
"I"ll not race," she faltered. "It is so near, so don"t come. Perhaps I might have guessed--that--you--were--but I just--just hoped--. Good night. I didn"t see the Colonel--please say I send my love."
She was riding away, when he called desperately after her:
"Don"t you want Dale to have a little of it?"
That one taunting, trembling, pa.s.sionate question, hurled at her with such bitterness of feeling, such hopeless sense of despair, touched a spring which opened the doors of the heretofore inscrutable, and flooded her with light. For an instant the pike danced before her eyes as though it were a road of bejeweled splendor! She wanted to laugh, and she did laugh; and, if he had guessed the reason, she might have had to use both whip and spur in a longer race than just to Bob"s gate. But he did not guess, and she did not turn her head nor slacken pace. Unhappily and sullenly he rode on to Arden.
Several days pa.s.sed before they met; but in the meanwhile he had spent not a few nights sitting by that window in his darkened room, building castles and tearing them down, planning futures and destroying them; dreaming, dreaming. His att.i.tude had become merely deferential, requiring a studied reticence upon her own part, and precluding a reference to their meeting on the road, or any mention of n.o.bility, the sheriff, Dale or Tusk.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
THE MYSTIC GARDENER SHOWS HIS WORK
It was sundown about a week later when Brent came up the steps and threw himself in a chair by the Colonel"s side. Jane and the faithful Mac had just left--indeed, the sound of her horse"s hoofbeats might still be heard through the pulseless evening as the two men gazed in moody silence at the approaching night. The sky had taken on that deep blue velvet softness of Italian beauty, and the low, red west of the dying day might have been reflected from some funeral pyre in distant, mystic India. A murmur of drowsy birds came from the darkening trees--a few hushed, plaintive notes, wistfully calling in tones of twilight.
"Poor little Mesmie is having a bad time of it," Brent spoke with an effort. "It"s been fourteen days, and Stone says he must try to graft skin. I offered mine, but he couldn"t consider it."
"That was very fine of you, Brent," the old gentleman turned to him.
"Why wouldn"t he take it?"
"Oh, there wasn"t anything fine about it, Colonel," he answered with a touch of irritation. "He couldn"t take it because he saw us with some juleps this morning. He says he has to have healthy skin for grafting."
The Colonel cleared his throat. He had just been contemplating a signal to Zack, but now the idea seemed somehow inappropriate.
"Why not Bradford?" he asked. "He"s her father!"
"He"s got poison-ivy, or hives, or something." And, after another moment: "Good night, sir, I think I"ll go up stairs and work!"