She laughed up at him. "I"ll be as tall as you when I get my growth."
She was so lovely that he could scarcely refrain from telling her so. It seemed to him, however, it would be taking an unfair advantage to say that sort of thing when she was in a way at his mercy. "Where shall we spread the table?" said he. "I"m hungry as the horseleech"s daughter. And you--why, you must be starved.
I"m afraid I didn"t bring what you like. But I did the best I could. I raided the pantry, took everything that was portable."
He had set down the bag and had loosened its strings. First he took out a tablecloth. She laughed. "Gracious! How stylish we shall be!"
"I didn"t bring napkins. We can use the corners of the cloth."
He had two knives, two forks, and a big spoon rolled up in the cloth, and a saltcellar. "Now, here"s my triumph!" he cried, drawing from the bag a pair of roasted chickens. Next came a jar of quince jelly; next, a paper bag with cold potatoes and cold string beans in it. Then he fished out a huge square of cornbread and a loaf of salt-rising bread, a pound of b.u.t.ter--
"What will your folks say?" exclaimed she, in dismay.
He laughed. "They always have thought I was crazy, ever since I went to college and then to the city instead of farming." And out of the bag came a big gla.s.s jar of milk. "I forgot to bring a gla.s.s!" he apologized. Then he suspended unpacking to open the jar. "Why, you must be half-dead with thirst, up here all day with not a drop of water." And he held out the jar to her.
"Drink hearty!" he cried.
The milk was rich and cold; she drank nearly a fourth of it before she could wrest the jar away from her lips. "My, but that was good!" she remarked. He had enjoyed watching her drink.
"Surely you haven"t got anything else in that bag?"
"Not much," replied he. "Here"s a towel, wrapped round the soap.
And here are three cakes of chocolate. You could live four or five days on them, if you were put to it. So whatever else you leave, don"t leave them. And--Oh, yes, here"s a calico slip and a sunbonnet, and a paper of pins. And that"s all."
"What are they for?"
"I thought you might put them on--the slip over your dress--and you wouldn"t look quite so--so out of place--if anybody should see you."
"What a fine idea!" cried Susan, shaking out the slip delightedly.
He was spreading the supper on the tablecloth. He carved one of the chickens, opened the jelly, placed the bread and vegetables and b.u.t.ter. "Now!" he cried. "Let"s get busy."
And he set her an example she was not slow to follow. The sun had slipped down behind the hills of the northwest horizon. The birds were tuning for their evening song. A breeze sprang up and coquetted with the strays of her wavy dark hair. And they sat cross-legged on the gra.s.s on opposite sides of the tablecloth and joked and laughed and ate, and ate and laughed and joked until the stars began to appear in the vast paling opal of the sky. They had chosen the center of the gra.s.sy platform for their banquet; thus, from where they sat only the tops of trees and the sky were to be seen. And after they had finished she leaned on her elbow and listened while he, smoking his cigarette, told her of his life as a newspaper man in Cincinnati. The twilight faded into dusk, the dusk into a scarlet darkness.
"When the moon comes up we"ll start," said he. "You can ride behind me on the horse part of the way, anyhow."
The shadow of the parting, the ending of this happiness, fell upon her. How lonely it would be when he was gone! "I haven"t told you my name," she said.
"I"ve told you mine Roderick Spenser--with an _s_, not a _c_."
"I remember," said she. "I"ll never forget. . . . Mine"s Susan Lenox."
"What was it--before----" He halted.
"Before what?" His silence set her to thinking. "Oh!" she exclaimed, in a tone that made him curse his stupidity in reminding her. "My name"s Susan Lenox--and always will be. It was my mother"s name." She hesitated, decided for frankness at any cost, for his kindness forbade her to deceive him in any way. Proudly, "My mother never let any man marry her. They say she was disgraced, but I understand now. _She_ wouldn"t stoop to let any man marry her."
Spenser puzzled over this, but could make nothing of it. He felt that he ought not to inquire further. He saw her anxious eyes, her expression of one keyed up and waiting for a verdict. "I"d have only to look at you to know your mother was a fine woman,"
said he. Then, to escape from the neighborhood of the dangerous riddle, "Now, about your--your going," he began. "I"ve been thinking what to do."
"You"ll help me?" said she, to dispel her last doubt--a very faint doubt, for his words and his way of uttering them had dispelled her real anxiety.
"Help you?" cried he heartily. "All I can. I"ve got a scheme to propose to you. You say you can"t take the mail boat?"
"They know me. I--I"m from Sutherland."
"You trust me--don"t you?"
"Indeed I do."
"Now listen to me--as if I were your brother. Will you?"
"Yes."
"I"m going to take you to Cincinnati with me. I"m going to put you in my boarding house as my sister. And I"m going to get you a position. Then--you can start in for yourself."
"But that"ll be a great lot of trouble, won"t it?"
"Not any more than friends of mine took for me when I was starting out." Then, as she continued silent, "What are you thinking? I can"t see your face in this starlight."
"I was thinking how good you are," she said simply.
He laughed uneasily. "I"m not often accused of that," he replied. "I"m like most people--a mixture of good and bad--and not very strong either way. I"m afraid I"m mostly impulse that winks out. But--the question is, how to get you to Cincinnati.
It"s simply impossible for me to go tonight. I can"t take you home for the night. I don"t trust my people. They"d not think I was good--or you, either. And while usually they"d be right--both ways--this is an exception." This idea of an exception seemed to amuse him. He went on, "I don"t dare leave you at any farmhouse in the neighborhood. If I did, you could be traced."
"No--no," she cried, alarmed at the very suggestion. "I mustn"t be seen by anybody."
"We"ll go straight to the river, and I"ll get a boat and row you across to Kentucky--over to Carrollton. There"s a little hotel.
I can leave you----"
"No--not Carrollton," she interrupted. "My uncle sells goods there, and they know him. And if anything is in the Sutherland papers about me, why, they"d know."
"Not with you in that slip and sunbonnet. I"ll make up a story--about our wagon breaking down and that I"ve got to walk back into the hills to get another before we can go on.
And--it"s the only plan that"s at all possible."
Obviously he was right; but she would not consent. By adroit questioning he found that her objection was dislike of being so much trouble to him. "That"s too ridiculous," cried he. "Why, I wouldn"t have missed this adventure for anything in the world."
His manner was convincing enough, but she did not give in until moonrise came without her having thought of any other plan. He was to be Bob Peters, she his sister Kate, and they were to hail from a farm in the Kentucky hills back of Milton. They practiced the dialect of the region and found that they could talk it well enough to pa.s.s the test of a few sentences They packed the fishing bag; she wrapped the two eggs in paper and put them in the empty milk bottle. They descended by the path--a slow journey in the darkness of that side of the rock, as there were many dangers, including the danger of making a noise that might be heard by some restless person at the house. After half an hour they were safely at the base of the rock; they skirted it, went down to the creek, found the horse tied where he had left it. With her seated sideways behind him and holding on by an arm half round his waist, they made a merry but not very speedy advance toward the river, keeping as nearly due south as the breaks in the hills permitted. After a while he asked: "Do you ever think of the stage?"
"I"ve never seen a real stage play," said she. "But I want to--and I will, the first chance I get."
"I meant, did you ever think of going on the stage?"
"No." So daring a flight would have been impossible for a baby imagination in the cage of the respectable-family-in-a-small-town.
"It"s one of my dreams to write plays," he went on. "Wouldn"t it be queer if some day I wrote plays for you to act in?"
When one"s fancy is as free as was Susan"s then, it takes any direction chance may suggest. Susan"s fancy instantly winged along this fascinating route. "I"ve given recitations at school, and in the plays we used to have they let me take the best parts--that is--until--until a year or so ago."
He noted the hesitation, had an instinct against asking why there had come a time when she no longer got good parts. "I"m sure you could learn to act," declared he. "And you"ll be sure of it, too, after you"ve seen the people who do it."
"Oh, I don"t believe I could," said she, in rebuke to her own mounting self-confidence. Then, suddenly remembering her birth-brand of shame and overwhelmed by it, "No, I can"t hope to be to be anything much. They wouldn"t have--_me_."
"I know how you feel," replied he, all unaware of the real reason for this deep humility. "When I first struck town I felt that way. It seemed to me I couldn"t hope ever to line up with the clever people they had there. But I soon saw there was nothing in that idea. The fact is, everywhere in the world there"s a lot more things to do than people who can do them.