"To this house?"
She dropped her hand lightly on his shoulder and pointed.
"Tarleton"s troopers came stamping and cursing in by that very door after they had burned Judge Lockwood"s and the meeting house--but they left her alone with her dead, here on the floor where you and I are standing... . She was only seventeen; she died a few months later in child-birth. G.o.d dealt very gently with her."
He looked around him in the pleasant light of the room, striving to comprehend that such things had happened in such a sleepy, peaceful place. Sunlight fell through the curtains, casting the wild roses" shadow across the sill; the scent of lilacs filled the silence.
"It"s curious--and sad," he said in a low voice. "How odd that I should come here to the very spot where that old ancestor of mine died----"
"He was only twenty when he died," she interrupted.
"I know. But somehow a fellow seems to think of any ancestor as a snuffy old codger----"
"He was very handsome," she said, flushing up.
There was a silence; then she looked around at him with a glint of humour in her pretty eyes--one hazel-brown, one hazel tinged with grey; and the delicious mouth no longer drooped.
"Can"t you imagine him as young as you are? gay, humorous, full of mischievous life, and the love of life? something of a dandy in his uniform--and his queue tied smartly a la Francaise!--gallant--oh, gallant and brave in the dragoon"s helmet and jack-boots of Sheldon"s Horse! Why, he used to come jingling and clattering into this room and catch his young wife and plague and banter and caress her till she fled for refuge, and he after her, like a pair of school children released--through the bed-rooms, out by the kitchen, and into the garden, till he caught her again in the orchard yonder and held her tight and made her press her palms together and recite: I love thee I love thee Through all the week and Sunday --until for laughing and folly--I--they----"
To his amazement her voice broke; into her strange eyes sprang tears, and she turned swiftly away and went and stood by the curtained window.
"Well, by gad!" he thought, "of all morbid little things! affected to tears by what happened to somebody else a hundred and thirty odd years ago! Women are sure the limit!"
And in more suitable terms he asked her why she should make herself unhappy.
She said: "I am happy. It is only when I am here that I am lonely and the dead past lives again among these wooded hills."
"Are you not--usually--here?" he asked, surprised. "I thought you lived here."
"No. I live elsewhere, usually. I am too unhappy here. I never remain very long."
"Then why do you ever come here?" he asked, amused.
"I don"t know. I am very happy elsewhere. But--I come. Women do such things."
"I don"t exactly understand why."
"A woman"s thoughts return eternally to one place and one person. One memory is her ruling pa.s.sion."
"What is that memory?"
"The Place and the Man."
"I don"t know what you mean."
"I mean that a woman, in spirit, journeys eternally to the old, old rendezvous with love; makes, with her soul, the eternal pilgrimage back to the spot where Love and she were first acquainted. And, moreover, a woman may even leave the man with whom she is happy to go all alone for a while back to the spot where first she knew happiness because of him... . You don"t understand, do you?"
Brown was a broker. He did not understand.
She looked at him, smiling, sighing a little--and, in spite of her fresh and slender youth--and she was certainly not yet twenty--he felt curiously young and crude under the gentle mockery of her unmatched eyes--one hazel-brown, one hazel tinged with grey.
Then, still smiling wisely, intimately to herself, she went away into an inner room; and through the doorway he saw her slim young figure moving hither and thither, busy at shelf and cupboard. Presently she came back carrying an old silver tray on which stood a decanter and a plate of curious little cakes. He took it from her and placed it on a tip-table. Then she seated herself on the ancient sofa, and summoned him to a place beside her.
"Currant wine," she said laughingly; "and old-fashioned cake. Will you accept--under this roof of mine?"
He was dreadfully hungry; the wine was mild and delicious, the crisp cakes heavenly, and he ate and ate in a kind of ecstasy, not perfectly certain what was thrilling him most deeply, the wine or the cakes or this slender maid"s fresh young beauty.
On one rounded cheek a bar of sunlight lay, gilding the delicate skin and turning the curling strands of hair to coils of fire.
He thought to himself, with his mouth a trifle fuller than convention expects, that he would not wish to resist falling in love with a girl like this. She would never have to chase him very far... . In fact, he was perfectly ready to be captured and led blushing to the altar.
Once, as he munched away, he remembered the miserable fate of his late companion Vance, and shuddered; but, looking around at the young girl beside him, his fascinated eyes became happily enthralled, and matrimony no longer resembled doom.
"What are these strange happenings in New York of which I hear vague rumours?" she enquired, folding her hands in her lap and looking innocently at him.
His jaw fell.
"Have you heard about--what is going on in town?" he asked. "I thought you didn"t know."
"They say that the women there are ambitious to govern the country and are even resolved to choose their own husbands."
"Something of that sort," he muttered uneasily.
"That is a very strange condition of affairs," she murmured, brooding eyes remote.
"It"s a darned sight worse than strange!" he blurted out--then asked pardon for his inelegant vehemence; but she only smiled dreamily and sipped her currant wine in the sunshine.
"Shall we talk of something pleasanter?" he said, still uneasy, "--er--about those jolly old colonial days... . That"s rather an odd gown you wear--er--pretty you know--but--is it not in the style of--er--those days of--of yore--and all that?"
"It was made then."
"A genuine antique!" he exclaimed. "I suppose you found it in the garret. There must be a lot of interesting things up there behind those flat loop-holes."
"Chests full," she nodded. "We save everything."
He said: "You look wonderfully charming in the costume of those days. It suits you so perfectly that--as a matter of fact, I didn"t even notice your dress when I first saw you--but it"s a wonder!"
"Men seldom notice women"s clothes, do they?"
"That is true. Still, it"s curious I didn"t notice such a gown as that."
"Is it very gay and fine?" she asked, colouring deliciously. "I love these clothes."
"They are the garments of perfection--robing it!"
"Oh, what a gallant thing to say to me... . Do you truly find me so--so agreeable?"
"Agreeable! You--I don"t think I"d better say it----"
"Oh, I beg you!"
"May I?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""Pray, observe my unmatched eyes.""]
Her cheeks and lips were brilliant, her eyes sparkling; she leaned a trifle toward him, frail gla.s.s in hand.
"May not a pretty woman listen without offense if a gallant man praises her beauty?"
"You are exactly that--a beauty!" he said excitedly. "The most bewitching, exquisite, matchless----"
"Oh, I beg of you, be moderate," she laughed--and picked up a fan from somewhere and spread it, laughing at him over its painted edge.
"Pray, observe my unmatched eyes before you speak again of me as matchless."
"Your eyes are matchlessly beautiful!--more wonderfully beautiful than any others in all the world!" he cried.
Yet the currant wine was very, very mild.
"Such eyes," he continued excitedly, "are the most strangely lovely eyes I ever saw or ever shall see. n.o.body in all the world, except you, has such eyes. I--I am going quite mad about them--about you--about everything... . I--the plain fact is that I love--such eyes--and--and every harmonious and lovely feature that--that b-b-belongs to them--and to--to you!"
She closed her painted fan slowly, slowly left her seat, took from the blue bowl on the window-sill the wild rose blooming there, turned and looked back at him, half smiling, waiting.
He sprang to his feet, scarcely knowing now what he was about; she waited, tall, slender, and fresh as the lovely flower she held.
Then, as he came close to her, she drew the wild rose through the lapel of his coat, and he bent his head and touched his lips to the blossom.
"When she and you--and Love--shall meet at last, you will first know her by her eyes," she began; and the next instant the smile froze on her face and she caught his arm in both hands and clung there, white to the lips.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
XXI.
"LISTEN!" she whispered; "did you hear that?"
"What?" he asked, dazed.
"On the Bedford road! do you hear the horses? Do you hear them running?"
"W-what horses?"
"Tarleton"s!" she gasped, pressing her white face between her hands. "Can"t you hear their iron scabbards rattle? Can"t you hear their bugle horn? Where is Jack? Where is Jack?"
A flurry of mellow music burst out among the trees, followed by a loud report.
"Oh, G.o.d!" she whispered, "the British!"
Brown stared at her.
"Why, that"s only an automobile horn--and their tire just blew out," he began, astonished.
But she sprang past him, calling, "Jack! Jack! Where are you?" and he heard the door fly open and her childish cry of terror outside in the sunshine.
The next second he followed her, running through the hall and out through the door to the porch; and at the same moment a big red touring car came to a standstill before the house; the chauffeur descended to put on a new tire, and a young girl in motor duster and hood sprang lightly from the tonneau to the tangled gra.s.s. As she turned to look at the house she caught sight of him.
Brown took an uncertain step forward; and she came straight toward him.
Neither spoke as they met face to face. He looked at her, pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes, bewildered, and looked again.
She was slim and red-haired and slightly freckled, and her mouth was perhaps a shade large, and it curled slightly at the corners, and her eyes were quite perfectly made except that one was hazel-brown and the other a hazel-grey.
She looked at him, and it seemed to him as though, in the fearless gravity of her regard, somewhere, somehow--perhaps in the curled corners of her lips, perhaps in her pretty and unusual eyes--there lurked a little demon of laughter. Yet it could not be so--there were only serenity and a child"s direct sweetness in her gaze.
"I suppose you have come to look at this old-time place?" she said. "People often come. You are perfectly welcome."
And, as he made no answer: "If you care to see the inside of the house I will be very glad to show it to you," she added pleasantly.
"Is--is it yours?" he managed to say, "or--or your sister"s?"
She smiled. "You mistake me for somebody else. I have no sister. This is the old Brown place--a very, very old house. It belonged to my great grandmother. If you are interested I will be glad to show you the interior. I brought the key with me."
"But people--relatives of yours--are living there now," he stammered.
"Oh, no," she said, smiling, "the house is empty. We are thinking of putting it in shape again. If you care to come in I can show you the quaint old fireplaces and wainscoting--if you don"t mind dust."
She mounted the step lightly and, fitting the key and unlocking the door--which he thought he had left open--entered.
"Come in," she called to him in a friendly manner.
He crossed the threshold to her side and halted, stunned. An empty house, silent, shadowy, desolate, confronted him.
The girl beside him shook out her skirts and glanced at her dusty gloves.
"A vacuum cleaner is what this place requires," she said. "But isn"t it a quaint old house?"
He pressed his shaking hands to his closed eyes, then forced them to open upon the terrible desolation where she had stood a moment since--and saw bare boards under foot, bare walls, cobwebs, dust.
The girl was tiptoeing around the four walls examining the condition of the woodwork.
"It only needs electric lights and a furnace in the cellar and some kalsomine and pretty wall paper----"