"Not much!" said Nina. "You can start in and "pinch back" this prairie climber--do you hear, Phil? I won"t let you dawdle around and yawn while I"m p.r.i.c.king my fingers every instant! Make him move, Eileen."
Eileen came over to him, fingers doubled into her palm and small thumb extended.
"Thorns and p.r.i.c.kles, please," she said; and he took her hand in his and proceeded to extract them while she looked down at her almost invisible wounds, tenderly amused at his fear of hurting her.
"Do you know," she said, "that people are beginning to open their houses yonder?" She nodded toward the west: "The Minsters are on the way to Brookminster, the Orchils have already arrived at Hitherwood House, and the coachmen and horses were housed at Southlawn last night. I rather dread the dinners and country formality that always interfere with the jolly times we have; but it will be rather good fun at the bathing-beach... . Do you swim well? But of course you do."
"Pretty well; do you?"
"I"m a fish. Gladys Orchil and I would never leave the surf if they didn"t literally drag us home... . You know Gladys Orchil? ... She"s very nice; so is Sheila Minster; you"ll like her better in the country than you do in town. Kathleen Lawn is nice, too. Alas! I see many a morning where Drina and I twirl our respective thumbs while you and Boots are off with a gayer set... . Oh, don"t interrupt! No mortal man is proof against Sheila and Gladys and Kathleen--and you"re not a demi-G.o.d--are you? ... Thank you for your surgery upon my thumb--" She navely placed the tip of it between her lips and looked at him, standing there like a schoolgirl in her fresh gown, burnished hair loosened and curling in riotous beauty across cheeks and ears.
He had seated himself on the wheelbarrow again; she stood looking down at him, hands now bracketed on her narrow hips--so close that the fresh fragrance of her grew faintly perceptible--a delicate atmosphere of youth mingling with the perfume of the young garden.
Nina, basket on her arm, snipping away with her garden shears, glanced over her shoulder--and went on, snipping. They did not notice how far away her agricultural ardour led her--did not notice when she stood a moment at the gate looking back at them, or when she pa.s.sed out, pretty head bent thoughtfully, the shears swinging loose at her girdle.
The prairie rosebuds in Eileen"s basket exhaled their wild, sweet odour; and Selwyn, breathing it, removed his hat like one who faces a cooling breeze, and looked up at the young girl standing before him as though she were the source of all things sweet and freshening in this opening of the youngest year of his life.
She said, smiling absently at his question: "Certainly one can grow younger; and you have done it in a day, here with me."
She looked down at his hair; it was bright and inclined to wave a little, but whether the lighter colour at the temples was really silvered or only a paler tint she was not sure.
"You are very like a boy, sometimes," she said--"as young as Gerald, I often think--especially when your hat is off. You always look so perfectly groomed: I wonder--I wonder what you would look like if your hair were rumpled?"
"Try it," he suggested lazily.
"I? I don"t think I dare--" She raised her hand, hesitated, the gay daring in her eyes deepening to audacity. "Shall I?"
"Why not?"
"T-touch your hair?--rumple it?--as I would Gerald"s! ... I"m tempted to--only--only--"
"What?"
"I don"t know; I couldn"t. I--it was only the temptation of a second--"
She laughed uncertainly. The suggestion of the intimacy tinted her cheeks with its reaction; she took a short step backward; instinct, blindly stirring, sobered her; and as the smile faded from eye and lip, his face changed, too. And far, very far away in the silent cells of his heart a distant pulse awoke.
She turned to her roses again, moving at random among the bushes, disciplining with middle-finger and thumb a translucent, amber-tinted shoot here and there. And when the silence had lasted too long, she broke it without turning toward him:
"After all, if it were left to me, I had rather be merciful to these soft little buds and sprays, and let the sun and the showers take charge. A whole cl.u.s.ter of blossoms left free to grow as Fate fashions them!--Why not? It is certainly very officious of me to strip a stem of its hopes just for the sake of one pampered blossom... .
Non-interference is a safe creed, isn"t it?"
But she continued moving along among the bushes, pinching back here, snipping, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, clipping there; and after a while she had wandered quite beyond speaking distance; and, at leisurely intervals she straightened up and turned to look back across the roses at him--quiet, unsmiling gaze in exchange for his unchanging eyes, which never left her.
She was at the farther edge of the rose garden now where a boy knelt, weeding; and Selwyn saw her speak to him and give him her basket and shears; and saw the boy start away toward the house, leaving her leaning idly above the sun-dial, elbows on the weather-beaten stone, studying the carved figures of the dial. And every line and contour and curve of her figure--even the lowered head, now resting between both hands--summoned him.
She heard his step, but did not move; and when he leaned above the dial, resting on his elbows, beside her, she laid her finger on the shadow of the dial.
"Time," she said, "is trying to frighten me. It pretends to be nearly five o"clock; do you believe it?"
"Time is running very fast with me," he said.
"With me, too; I don"t wish it to; I don"t care for third speed forward all the time."
He was bending closer above the stone dial, striving to decipher the inscription on it:
"Under blue skies My shadow lies.
Under gray skies My shadow dies.
"If over me Two Lovers leaning Would solve my Mystery And read my Meaning, --Or clear, or overcast the Skies-- The Answer always lies within their Eyes.
Look long! Look long! For there, and there alone Time solves the Riddle graven on this Stone!"
Elbows almost touching they leaned at ease, idly reading the almost obliterated lines engraved there.
"I never understood it," she observed, lightly scornful. "What occult meaning has a sun-dial for the spooney? _I"m_ sure I don"t want to read riddles in a strange gentleman"s optics."
"The verses," he explained, "are evidently addressed to the spooney, so why should you resent them?"
"I don"t... . I can be spoons, too, for that matter; I mean I could once."
"But you"re past spooning now," he concluded.
"Am I? I rather resent your saying it--your calmly excluding me from anything I might choose to do," she said. "If I cared--if I chose--if I really wanted to--"
"You could still spoon? Impossible! At your age? Nonsense!"
"It isn"t at all impossible. Wait until there"s a moon, and a canoe, and a nice boy who is young enough to be frightened easily!"
"And I," he retorted, "am too old to be frightened; so there"s no moon, no canoe, no pretty girl, no spooning for me. Is that it, Eileen?"
"Oh, Gladys and Sheila will attend to you, Captain Selwyn."
"Why Gladys Orchil? Why Sheila Minster? And why _not_ Eileen Erroll?"
"Spoon? With _you_!"
"You are quite right," he said, smiling; "it would be poor sport."
There had been no change in his amused eyes, in his voice; yet, sensitive to the imperceptible, the girl looked up quickly. He laughed and straightened up; and presently his eyes grew absent and his sun-burned hand sought his moustache.
"Have you misunderstood me?" she asked in a low voice.
"How, child?"
"I don"t know... . Shall we walk a little?"
When they came to the stone fish-pond she seated herself for a moment on a marble bench, then, curiously restless, rose again; and again they moved forward at hazard, past the spouting fountain, which was a driven well, out of which a crystal column of water rose, geyser-like, dazzling in the westering sun rays.
"Nina tells me that this water rises in the Connecticut hills," he said, "and flows as a subterranean sheet under the Sound, spouting up here on Long Island when you drive a well."