They paused and drank in the rich music until each of these voices was silenced, and out of a copse of dense shade by the brookside there began to bubble a spring of melody so liquid, so clear, and withal of such beauty, that Pepeeta trembled with delight, hearing in that audible melody the unheard songs of the soul itself.
"What is it, Steven?" she asked in a whisper.
"Why, that is a cat bird! Doesn"t thee know a cat bird? I cannot remember when I did not know what that song was! It is such a crazy bird! It has only two tunes and is like our teacher at school. She either praises or else scolds us. And that is the way with the cat bird.
It is either talking love to its mate, or else abusing it! I don"t like such people or such birds; I like those who have more tunes. Now thee has a lot of tunes, Pepeeta!"
This quaint reflection and delicate compliment broke the bird"s spell and made Pepeeta laugh,--a laugh as musical and sweet as the song of the bird itself. It pa.s.sed through the fringe of trees along the river bank, rippled across it over against the smooth face of a cliff and came back sweetly on the spring air.
"Oh! did you hear the echo?" Pepeeta exclaimed.
"That is what I brought thee here for!" he said. "Uncle David taught me how to make it answer and told me what it was. It frightened me at first. Let us get close up to the water and listen!"
He took her by the hand and drew her along.
"Is it here that you are to tell me the secret?" she asked.
"Oh, no," he said. "The echo tells its secrets! It is nothing but a blab any way. But I do not tell mine until the right time comes! Thee must wait."
They came out upon the edge of the river which makes a sweep around a sharp corner on the opposite side of which was "Echo Rock." There they stood and shouted and laughed as their voices came back upon the still air softened and etherealized.
Becoming tired of this sport at last, the boy picked up a flat stone from the river"s edge and said, "Can thee skip a stone, Pepeeta? I never saw a girl that could skip a stone."
"But I am not a girl," she said.
"Oh, but thee was a girl once, and if thee did not learn then thee cannot do it now. Come, let me see thee try. Here is a stone, and a beauty, too; round, flat and smooth. That stone ought to make sixteen jumps!"
"But you must show me how," she said.
"All right, I will," he replied, and sent one skimming along the smooth surface of the water.
"Beautiful," she said, clapping her hands as it bounded in ever diminishing saltations and with a finer skill than that of Giotto, drew perfect circles on the watery canvas.
Delighted with the applause, the child found another stone and gave it to Pepeeta. She took it, drew her hand back and tossed it awkwardly from her shoulder. It sank with a dull plunge into the stream, while out of the throat of the lad came a great and joyous shout of laughter. "I knew thee could not," he said. "No girl that ever lived could skip a stone!"
And then he threw another and another, and they stood enchanted as the beautiful circles widened away from their centers and crossed each other in ever-increasing complexity of curve.
Steven did his best to teach Pepeeta this very simple art; but after many failures, she exclaimed:
"Oh dear, I shall never learn! I am nothing but a woman after all! Let us hasten to the fishing pool, perhaps I shall do better there."
"Don"t be discouraged. Thee can learn, if thee tries long enough!"
Steven said encouragingly, and led the way to a deep pool a few rods farther up the river. It was a cool, sequestered, lovely spot. Great trees overhung it, dark waters swirled swiftly but quietly round the base of a great rock jutting out into it; little bubbles of froth glided dreamily across it and burst on its edges; kingfishers dropped, stone-like, into it from the limbs of a dead sycamore, and the low, deep murmurs of the flood, as it hurried by, whispered inarticulately of mysteries too deep for the mind of man to comprehend. Except for this ceaseless murmur, silence brooded over the place, for the song-birds had hidden themselves in the wood, and the two intruders upon the sacred privacy, by an unconscious sense of fitness, spoke in whispers.
"Beautiful!" said Pepeeta.
"Hush! See there!" Steven exclaimed, in an undertone, and pointing to a spot where a fish had broken the still surface as he leaped for a fly and plunged back again into the depths.
His eye glowed, and his whole figure vibrated with excitement.
"And did your Uncle David used to bring you here?" Pepeeta asked.
"Well, I should say," he whispered. "He used to bring me here when I was such a little fellow that he sometimes had to carry me on his back. He was the greatest fisherman thee ever saw. I cannot fish so well myself!"
And with this ingenuous avowal, at which Pepeeta smiled appreciatively, they laid their baskets down, and Steven began preparing the rude tackle.
"Did thee ever bait a hook, Pepeeta?" he asked under his breath.
"I never did, but I think I can," she answered doubtfully.
And then he laughed again, not loudly, but in a fine chuckle which gave vent to his joy and expressed his incredulity in a manner fitting such solitude.
"If thee cannot skip a stone I should like to know what makes thee think that thee can bait a hook," he said, still speaking in low whispers. "I have seen lots of girls try it, but I never saw one succeed. Just the minute they touch the worm they begin to squeal, and when they try to stick it on the hook, they generally, have a sort of fit. So I guess thee had better not try. Just let me do it for thee; I"ll fix it just as my Uncle David used to for me when I was a little fellow, and helpless like a girl." Pepeeta laughed, and Steven laughed with her, although he did not know for what, and they took their poles and sat down by the side of the stream, the child intent on the sport and the woman intent on the child.
He was an adept in that gentle art which has claimed the devotion of so many elect spirits, and gave his soul up to his work with an entire abandon. The waters were seldom disturbed in those early days when the country was spa.r.s.ely settled, and the fish took the bait recklessly. One after another the boy flung them out upon the bank with smothered exclamations of delight, with which he mingled reproaches and sympathy for Pepeeta"s lack of success.
She was catching fish he knew not of, drawing them one by one out of the deep pools of memory and imagination.
There is one thing dearer to a boy than catching fish. That is cooking and eating them.
Hunger began at last to gnaw at Steven"s vitals and to make itself imperatively felt. He looked up at the sun as if to tell the time by its location, though in reality he regulated his movements by that infallible horologue ticking beneath his jacket.
"It must be after twelve," he said, although it was not yet eleven.
"Where are we going to have our dinner?" Pepeeta asked.
"Come, and I will show thee," he replied, flinging down his pole and gathering his fish together.
Pepeeta followed him as he led the way up from the river"s side to a ledge of rocks that frowned above it.
Rounding a cliff, they came suddenly upon the mouth of a cave where Steven threw down the fish, a.s.sumed an air of secrecy, took Pepeeta by the hand and led her toward it, whispering:
"This is the robbers" cave."
"And is it within its dark recesses that we are to eat our dinner?"
Pepeeta asked, imitating his melodramatic manner.
"Yes! No one in the world knows of it, but Uncle Dave and me. We always used to cook our dinner here, and play we were robbers."
Pepeeta saw the ashes of fires which had been built at the entrance, an old iron kettle hanging on a projecting root, a coffee pot standing on a ledge of a rock, and fragments of broken dishes scattered about, and entered with all her heart into an adventure so suddenly recalling the vanished scenes of her gypsy childhood. The eyes of the boy glistened with delight as he perceived the unmistakable evidences of her enjoyment.
"And so this is your secret!" she exclaimed.
"Not by a good deal!" he answered, "Thee is not to know the real secret until we have had our dinner. I will build the fire and clean the fish, and if thee knows how, thee can cook them."
"Oh, you need not think I don"t know anything--just because I cannot skip stones and bait hooks," Pepeeta said gaily, and with that they both bustled about and before long the smoke was curling up into the still air, and the fragrant odor of coffee was perfuming the wilderness.
While they were waiting for the fish to fry, Pepeeta regaled her enchanted listener with such fragments of the story of her gypsy life as she could piece together out of the wrecks of that time. He was overpowered with astonishment, and the idea that he was sitting opposite to a real gypsy, at the mouth of a cave, filled up the measure of his romantic fancy and perfected his happiness. He hung upon her words and kept her talking until the last crust had been devoured and she had repeated again and again the most trivial remembrances of those far off days.