"No," he said bluntly; "I see a better one."
"Tell me."
"I can never tell you," he replied gravely--"not even when you are an ancient dame and I rheumatic."
She was merry again.
"Then I fear it"s wicked," she said, "and I"m amazed at you. But my day-dreams are all common ones. I ask only the country and my home and horses and cows and chickens--and a rheumatic friend. You see I must be happy, I ask so little."
"And you argue that he who demands little gets it," he returned lightly. "On the other hand, I should say that he who is content with less gets nothing. I ask the biggest thing Fate has to give, and then stand waiting for--"
He paused for a breathless instant while he looked at her, and then slowly finished:
"For the skies to fall."
They swung open the gate into cattle lane, and stood waiting while the cows trooped by to the barnyard.
Eugenia called them by name, and they turned great stupid eyes upon her as they stopped to munch the hollyhocks.
"She was named after you," said the girl suddenly.
"She? Who?" he turned a helpless look upon the two small negroes who drove the cows.
"Why, Burr Bess, of course--that Jersey there. You know we couldn"t name her Nick because she wasn"t a boy, so Bernard called her Burr Bess. You don"t seem pleased."
"She"s a fine cow," observed Nicholas critically.
"Oh! she was the most beautiful calf! I thought you remembered it. One was named after me, but it died, and one was named after Bernard, but it went to the butcher. Bernard was so angry about it that he waylaid the cart on the road and let it out. But they caught it again. It was too bad, wasn"t it?"
The garden gate closed behind them with a click, and they crossed the lane to the lawn.
Miss Chris, who stood shading her eyes in the back porch, was giving directions to Aunt Verbeny in the smoke-house. When she saw Nicholas she broke off and asked him to stay to supper, but he declined hastily, and, with an embarra.s.sed good-evening, turned back into the lane. The hollyhocks over the whitewashed fence brushed him as he pa.s.sed, and the spices of the garden came to him like the essence of the eternal Romance.
III
Over all hung Indian summer and the happy sunshine. Eugenia, rising at daybreak for a gallop across country, would feel the dew in her face and the autumn in her blood. As she dashed over fences and ditches to the unploughed pasture, the morning was as desolate as midnight--not a soul showed in the surrounding fields and the long road lay as pallid as a streak of frost. The loneliness and the hour set her eyes to dancing and the glad blood to bounding in her veins. When a startled rabbit shied from the brushwood she would slacken her speed to watch it, and when, as sometimes chanced, she frightened a covey of partridges from their retreat, she went softly, rejoicing that no shot was near.
At this time she was possessed, perhaps, of a spirit too elastic, of a buoyance almost insolent--she turned, as it were, too round a cheek to Fate. In her clear purity romanticism held no part, and her soul, strong to adhere, was slow to conform. Her nature was straight as an arrow that would not fall though it overshot the mark. She dreamed scant dreams of the future because she clove tenaciously to the past--to the rare a.s.sociations and the old affections--to the road and the cedars and the Hall as to the men and women whose blood she bore and whose likeness she carried. She loved one and all with a fidelity that did not swerve.
Riding home along the open road that led to the cedars, she marked each friendly object in its turn--on one side the persimmon tree where the fruit ripened--on the other the blackened wreck of the giant oak, towering above the shining spread of life-everlasting. She noted that the rail fence skirting the pasture sagged at one corner beneath a weight of poisonous oak, that a mud hole had eaten through the short strip of "corduroy" road, and that where Uncle Ish"s path led to his cabin the plank across the gully was rapidly rotting. She saw these things with the tender eyes with which we mark decay in one beloved.
Then, pacing up the avenue to the gravelled walk, she would call "good-morning" to the general and leap lightly to the ground, fresh as the day, bright as the autumn.
It was on one of these early rides that she saw Nicholas again. She was returning leisurely through the stretch of woodland, when, catching sight of him as he swung vigorously ahead, she quickened her horse"s pace and overtook him as he glanced inquiringly back.
"Divide the worm, early bird," she cried gaily.
He paused as she did, laying his hand on the horse"s neck.
"There wasn"t but one and you got it," he retorted lightly. "Have you been far?"
"Miles, and I"m as hungry as two bears. Have you anything in your pocket?"
Her glowing face rose against a background of maple boughs, which surrounded her like a flame. The mist of the morning was on her lips and her eyes were shining. He felt her beauty leap like wine to his brain, and he set his teeth and looked blankly down the road.
She laughed as she plunged her hand into the pocket of his coat. "You used to have apples," she complained, "or honeyshucks, at least--now there"s only this."
It was a worn little Latin text book, with frayed edges and soiled leaves.
"Give it to me," he said quickly, but as he reached to take it from her the leaves fell open and she saw her own name written and rewritten across the crumpled pages.
She closed it and gave it back to him.
"You used that long ago," she remarked carelessly; "very long ago."
He replaced the book in his pocket, his steady eyes upon her.
"That"s what we get for rifling our neighbour"s pockets," he said quietly, "and what we deserve."
"No," she returned with equal gravity, "sometimes we get apples--or even peanuts, which we don"t deserve."
He took no notice of the retort, but answered half-absently a former question.
"Yes; I used that long ago," he said. "You don"t think I would write your name "Genia" now, do you?"
There was a dignity in his a.s.sumption of indifference--in his absolute refusal to betray himself, which bore upon her conception of his manhood. There was strength in his face, strength in his voice, strength in his quiet hand that lay upon her bridle. She looked down on him with thoughtful eyes.
"If you wrote of me at all," she returned. "It is my name."
"But I am not to call you by it."
"Why not?"
"Why not?" He laughed with a touch of bitterness, and held out his hand, fresh from the soil, hardened by the plough. It was a powerful hand, brown and sinewy, with distorted knuckles and broken nails. "Oh, not that," he said. "I don"t mean that. That shows work, but I know you--Genia--you will tell me work is manly. So it is, but is ignorance and poverty and--and all the rest--"
She leaned over and touched his hand lightly with her own. "All the rest is courage and patience and pride," she said; "as for the hand, it is a good hand, and I like it."
He shook his head.
"Good enough in its place, I grant you," he answered; "good enough in the fields, at the plough; or in the barnyard--good enough even to keep this poor farm from collapse and to lift a few of its burdens--but not good enough to--"
He raised her hand lightly, regarding it with half-humorous eyes.
"How strong it is to be so light!" he added.