Then, by a curious emotional phenomenon, she seemed to be suddenly invested with the glory of the sunset. The goldenrod burned at her feet and on her bosom, and her fervent blood leaped to her face. The next moment he staggered like a man blinded by too much light--the field, with Eugenia rising in its midst, flamed before his eyes, and he put out his hand like one in pain.
"What is it?" she asked quickly, and her voice seemed a part of the general radiance. "You have been looking at the sun. It hurts my eyes."
"No," he answered steadily, "I was looking at you."
She thrilled as he spoke and brought her eyes to the level of his. Then she would have looked away, but his gaze held her, and she made a sudden movement of alarm--a swift tremor to escape. She held the sheaf of goldenrod to her bosom and above it her eyes shone; her breath came quickly between her parted lips. All her changeful beauty was startled into life.
"Genia!" he said softly, so softly that he seemed speaking to himself.
"Genia!"
"Yes?" She responded in the same still whisper.
"You know?"
"Yes, I know," she repeated slowly. Her glance fell from his and she turned away.
"You know it is--impossible," he said.
"Yes, I know it is impossible."
There was a gasp in her voice. She turned to move onward--a briar caught her dress; she stumbled for an instant, and he flung out his arms.
"You know it is impossible," he said, and kissed her.
The sheaf of goldenrod loosened and scattered between them. Her head lay on his arm, and he felt her warm breath come and go. Her face was upturned, and he saw her eyes as he had never seen them before--light on light, shadow on shadow. He looked at her in the brief instant as a man looks to remember--at the white brow--the red mouth, at the blue veins, and the dark hair, at the upward lift of the chin and the straight throat--at all the perfect colouring and the imperfect outline.
"You know it is impossible," he repeated, and put her from him.
Eugenia gathered herself together like one stunned. "I must go," she said breathlessly. "I must go."
Then she hesitated and stood before him, her hands on her bosom, a single spray of goldenrod clinging to her dress.
He folded his arms as he faced her.
"I have loved you all my life," he said.
She bowed her head; her face had gone white.
"I shall always love you," he went on. "You may as well know it. Men change, but I do not. I have never really loved anybody else. I have tried to love my family, but I never did. When I was a little, G.o.d-forsaken chap I used to want to love people, but I couldn"t--I couldn"t even love the judge--whom I would die for. I love you."
"I know it," she said.
"If you will wait I will work for you. I will work until they let me have you. I don"t mean that I shall ever be good enough for you--because I shall not be. I shall always be a brute beside you--but if you will wait I will win you. I swear it!"
She had not moved. She was as still as the dead oak that towered above them. The sunset struck upon her bowed head and upon the quiet bosom, where her hands were clasped.
"I will wait," she answered.
He came nearer and kissed the hands upon her breast. His face was flushed and his lips were hot.
"Thank you," he said simply as he drew back.
In a moment he stooped to pick up the scattered goldenrod, heaping it into her arms. "This is enough to fill the house," he protested. "You can"t want so much."
He had regained his rational tone, and she responded to it with a smile.
"I never know when I"m satisfied," she said. "It is my weakness. As a child I always ate candy until it made me ill."
They crossed the field, the long plumes brushing against them and powdering them with a feathery gold dust. At the fence she gave him the bunch and lightly swung herself over the sunken rails. It did not occur to him to a.s.sist her; she had always been as good as he at vaulting bars. Now her long skirts r.e.t.a.r.ded her, and she laughed as she came quickly to the ground on the opposite side.
"One of the many disadvantages of my s.e.x," she said. "The best prisons men ever invented are women"s skirts. Our wings are clipped while we wear them."
"It is hard," he returned as he recalled her school-girl feats. "You were such a mighty jumper."
"Those halcyon days are done," she sighed. "I can never stray beyond my "sphere" again."
They had reached the end of the avenue, so he left her and went homeward along the road. The sun had gone slowly down and the western horizon was ripped open in a deep red track. The charred skeleton of the oak loomed black and sinister against the afterglow, and at its feet the glory went out of the autumn field. Straight ahead the sound of shots rang out where a flock of bats circled above the road. On the darkening landscape the lights began to glimmer in farmhouses far apart, and to Nicholas they seemed watchful, friendly eyes that looked upon him. All Nature was watchful--all the universe friendly. The glow which irradiated his outlook with an abrupt transfiguration was to him the glow of universal joy, though he knew it to be but the vanishing beam of youth and the end thereof age.
It seemed to him that he was singled out--securely set apart by some beneficent hand for some supreme good which, in his limited observation, he had never seen put forth in the lots of others. His own life lay so much nearer the Divine purpose than did the lives of his neighbours--the purpose of Nature, whose end is the happiness that conforms to sane and immutable laws. His kiss on Eugenia"s lips was to him G.o.d-given; the answer in her eyes had flamed a Scriptural inspiration. In the tumultuous leaping of his thoughts it seemed to him that the meaning of existence lay unrolled--a meaning obscured in all religions, overlooked in all philosophies--a meaning that could be read only by the lamp that was lit in the eyes that loved.
So in his ignorance and his ecstasy he went on his confident way, while pa.s.sion throbbed in his pulses and youth quickened in his brain.
From the far-off pines twilight came to meet him, the lights glimmered clearer in distant windows, the afterglow drifted from the west, and the shots ceased where the black bats circled above the road.
V
Eugenia arranged the goldenrod in the great blue vases and sat in the deserted dining-room thinking of Nicholas. Where the damask curtains were drawn back from the windows a gray line of twilight landscape was visible, and a chill, transparent dusk filled the large room. Outside she would see the box-walk, a stretch of lawn, broken by flower-beds, and the avenue of cedars leading to the highway. From the porch floated the smoke of the general"s pipe.
Her brow was on her hand and she sat so motionless that the place seemed deserted, save for an errant firefly that vainly palpitated in the gloom. The glow that had flamed beneath Nicholas"s kiss still lingered in her face, and she was conscious of a faint, almost hysterical impulse to weep. The fever in her veins had given place to a still tremor which ran through her limbs. At first she felt rather than thought. She lapsed into an emotional reverie as delicate as the fragrance of the October roses on the table. There was a sensation of softness as when one lies full length in sunshine or is caressed by firelight. She felt it pervade her body even to the palms of her hands. Then her quick mind stirred, and she recalled the pressure of his arms, the light in his eyes, the quiver of his lips as they touched her hands. His strength had dominated her and it still held her--the firm note in the voice that trembled, the power in the hand that appealed, the almost savage vigour in the arms that he folded on his breast. She had succ.u.mbed less to his gentleness than to the knowledge that it was she alone who evoked that gentleness out of a nature almost adamantine, wholly masculine. His faults she knew to be the faults of one who had hewn his own road in life--a rugged surface--a strain of rigidity beneath--at worst a tendency to dogmatise--and knowing as she did her own control over them, they attracted rather than repelled her.
And yet in this pulsating recognition of his manhood there was mingled with an emotion half-maternal the memory of her own guardianship of his stunted childhood. To a woman at once rashly spirited and profoundly feminine the pathos of his boyish struggle appealed no less forcibly than did the virility of his manhood. She might have loved him less had her thought of him been untouched by pity.
She sat quietly in the twilight until Congo brought in the lamp and a prospect of supper. Then she rose and went to join her father on the porch.
"Why did you tell Mrs. Webb I would be a "Daughter," papa?" she gaily demanded.
The general took his pipe from his mouth and stared up at her.
"It"s a good cause, Eugie," he replied, "and she"s a remarkable woman.
Her executive ability is astounding--absolutely astounding."
"I joined," said Eugenia. "I had to, after you said that. You know, I called on her the day I took Sally in."
The general lowered his eyes and thoughtfully regarded the light that was going gray in his pipe.