Killing frost had come and given the blackening touch to garden and wild hedge-row. Even the hardy chrysanthemums bowed their hoary heads, and a snow-like rime covered the river meadows every morning. The flame was already burning low in the leaf torches of the swamp maples, while the oaks changed to wine and russet slowly, with majestic dignity and pride of hardihood.
The modest crops the farm had yielded were divided, and Brooke’s portion of hay, rye, corn on the cob, potatoes, and apples duly stored away under Enoch Fenton’s argus eyes; while even this astute Yankee found nothing to quibble at, so generous had been Maarten’s halving.
In fact, when the strange “farmer-on-shares,” after the sharing time, prepared to plough up the corn stubble for burning and harrow the cleared field, Fenton laughed half derisively, and said, “It’s plain to me he’ll never make a farmer,—that harrowing job belongs to next year’s man.”
Still Maarten kept on at work, this last week of his stay, for that mysterious source “they say” had informed Adam that the man was homesick and would return to the old country, also that Bisbee knew it to be true and he had bought Maarten’s portion of the crops.
So when, one afternoon of late October, Brooke, in a restless mood, looking down the fields toward Moosatuk, saw the opal smoke of burning brush, stubble, and leaves following the fence line just above the brook, while a dark figure moved in and out, stirring and feeding the flames with a trident fork, her feet followed her inclination to go and thank the man who had worked for and halved so well with her, and wish him God-speed.
Later, she herself would flit for a time, and though she desired to go, yet she dreaded it. The pleasure season itself was waning, although many of the hill people, especially at Gordon, lingered until Thanksgiving. After this, winter would quickly close in, they told her, and as Rosius would be in Washington executing some commissions, Brooke, urged by the entire household, had agreed to spend the first two winter months there with Mrs. Parks, to study animal anatomy under him.
As Brooke strolled slowly down the lane, Tatters, as usual, followed her. At first, when Adam Lawton began to walk daily about the garden, Tatters’ indecision whom to follow had been most amusing; but he had evidently worked it out to his entire satisfaction by dog philosophy, and convinced himself that the one who went farthest afield was most in need of company, so followed her as at first, mounting guard again by the master’s chair the moment of her return; and though he was kind and obedient to Miss Keith, after her return, there was a decided tinge of condescension in it.
Brooke reached the line of smoke and found that the fire was north of the tumble-down wall, while Maarten was bringing rakesful of dry chestnut leaves from under the trees, beneath which they had drifted half across the hay-fields. These leaves he was using as kindling for the obstinate stubble, piled in a long line.
As the breeze veered and brought the pungent smoke toward her, Brooke walked back a few paces, dragging her feet luxuriously through the leaves, and waited for Maarten to come down the line once more, that she might speak. Then, as the time lengthened and he did not return, the idea forced itself upon her that perhaps he was keeping on the outskirts of the fire to avoid her or her thanks, either one or both, and feeling humiliated, she turned nonchalantly to cross the hay-fields toward the wood-lot, a customary walk of hers.
As she did so she scented something burning that was not the brush fire. Glancing about, she saw that a thin tongue of flame had crawled out from the brush heap, and was licking up the dry leaves all about, and that the flaring line was scorching her wool and cotton outing gown and slowly creeping upward toward her hand. For a second she tried to beat it out; then, seeing the leaf fire spreading on every side and no way of escape save through it, she tried to call, but fear muffled her voice.
Faint as the cry was, it was heard by Tatters, who was hunting squirrels in the fence. Bounding toward her, he too felt the fire; circling it, he flew straight across the brush toward Maarten, barking in a wholly new and piercing key of pain and warning.
Running down the line, Maarten took in the situation at a glance, tried to beat the flame out with his hands, and failed. Tearing off his loose coat, he wrapped Brooke in it, and lifting her bodily, dashed over the brush and wall, setting her down at the stream’s edge, where a few hatsful of water put out the fire without even blistering her finger-tips.
As he seized Brooke, crushing her to him in his speed, a fierce wave of joy that banished all fear enveloped the girl from head to foot, and when he put her down and she knew that the flames were extinguished, she was still breathing hard, and could find neither voice nor words to thank him.
Glancing at Maarten, she saw that he was bathing his scorched, sooty face and wrapping a wet handkerchief about his hands, also that the brush fire had caught his beard and singed it all away.
At her exclamation of regret and pity, he turned, then stood upright before her with folded arms, his eyes fixed directly on hers. In the short interval the outline of his face had changed, solidified, and the firmness of mouth and chin was revealed.
Brooke’s heart stood still, and then surged, in wild, clamorous beating. “Lorenz!” she cried. “Lorenz! Oh, why have I not always known you? This explains everything! Why did you come here like this? Why did you change your name and turn into a labourer?”
Her voice had an unconscious reproach in it,—or at least the man so heard it,—and a light that had gleamed through all the smut and scorch died from his eyes; while half kneeling, half crouching, on the bank among the bleached ferns and feathering seed-stalks, her hair fallen to her shoulders, bright colour succeeding the pallor of fear, looking again the gypsy ruler of the River Kingdom, Brooke waited for the explanation of the man who stood before her. Slowly it came, and the voice, from which the feigned accent was dropped, trembled at first, but grew stronger with fervour every moment.
“Why did I come? To see you! Why did I come as a farm labourer? That is to what I was born, back in the little tulip farm that I have often told you of, near Haarlem. Also it was the only way that I might both be near and serve you. My name is my own, as was that by which you first knew me—Henri Lorenz Maarten—Lorenz being my mother’s maiden name, and by it I was as often called in the days I spent with my uncle, who brought me up, as Maarten, the name of my father, who died so long ago. In Paris my friends reversed the titles, student fashion, to please themselves, and I for the time became Maarten or Marte Lorenz.”
Why did he stand there, stern and aloof? Could he not read her thoughts, Brooke wondered. Did he not fathom the deep undercurrent upon which her questions had merely floated like bits of driftage?
No; what Maarten saw before him, as he looked, was that scene in the July woods—a young woman with eyes cast down, the suitor with eyes aflame pressing kisses upon her hands. That the man was dead did not obliterate the vision. Maarten had resolved to make his own confession, complete and unmistakable, and then to go his way.
Not knowing this, Brooke let her thoughts fly to him in eager questions.
“The picture! Tell me of ‘Eucharistia’ and the meaning of the light in it, and how you found me here when the papers said that you had gone to work and study in Brittany.”
“Did they say that? I did not know it, for I came direct from home, where I had seen my mother. As to the picture, it is a long story. Shall I tell it to you now or write it down and leave it when I go? You will be chilled, perhaps, if you wait longer.”
“Then you are going?”
“Yes, next week, my work now being done,” here he glanced across the fields; “and having seen you, I must go back to my brush again, hoarding the studies I have made. Oh, yes, I have worked—between times—painting you always; such work is life to me.”
“No, do not write, tell me now,” said Brooke, wondering if the chill that seized upon her spirit had its source from without or from within.
“Then I will tell you if you will listen to the end.” Brooke nodded assent.
Maarten drew nearer, and half sitting, half leaning against the bank, told his story.
“When I met you in the Paris studios, it was five years after I had turned my back on England and the commercial life my father’s brother, a London Hollander, had planned for me. I belonged in an art country, and its traditions held me in its grip, not to be broken. I had fought my way along and worked steadily, first at home, earning some praise, and yet always when I felt success coming toward me, it passed me by. At first I thought you one of the great flock of those young women who dabble at art, as an excuse for greater liberty,—soon I learned better. You were kind and frank; you never seemed to wait for flattery, but rather shrank from it. Presently I came to think, ‘Here is a woman to whom one may not only tell the truth, but who craves it.’ So I spoke my mind freely, as you remember on that day at Carlo Rossi’s, when, with a dozen others, you were trying to sketch a woman of the street, and catching poise and colouring admirably, the face was still a blank, because you could not fathom the meaning of her expression.”
“Yes, I remember,” Brooke whispered, half introspectively, as with hands clasped over her knee she looked down toward the river.
“I craved your friendship, and you gave it. Then the time came when it was too little for me; and I—what had I to offer? So I kept in the background; my work grew stale, and for the first time I half regretted the five years’ struggle, and might have given up save that, had I done so, my mother’s pride and pinching, that I might become a painter, would have been wasted.
“One day I went with some others from the Quarter to Fontainebleau to sketch out of doors. Three of us had resolved to enter a competition. For a week I had scarcely slept, for somewhere in my brain dwelt a picture, that was growing, yet would not focus. All the morning I had wandered about, and in the early afternoon, leaving the others, I threw myself down under the oaks, quite in despair and wholly miserable.
“Presently I heard a footfall on the grass. Before I could turn, a cluster of cool, golden grapes dropped in my feverish hand, and looking up and backward, I saw your face, and in the smile it wore a ray of light, of inspiration, pierced my soul. Before I had awakened from the vision, you passed on and joined your scolding chaperon.
“As for me, as I lingered there, those grapes became as drops of sacramental wine. I seized my brushes and hastily caught and kept the vision as I saw it—for to me it was the divine awakening.
“For weeks I dreamed and painted as I never had done before. My comrades laughed and said, ‘Is it love or genius?’ and old Rossi shrugged his shoulders and asked, ‘What is the difference?’
“The picture finished, I sent it to the competition, and there your rich Senator both saw and coveted it. I would not sell it,—no, never! Ah, then I never thought to; but later my mother sickened, and the price would more than buy her a good annuity. I thought again, and something said, ‘She would have liked to help your mother, who is old and still plods on the tulip farm behind the poplars, which she will not leave;’ and I yielded, and I then resolved to follow you,—across the earth if must be,—for lacking you, my inspiration fled.
“Through Carolus Ashton, the amateur, well known in the Paris studios, I learned your whereabouts, and at the same time I chanced upon words of your swift sorrow in a paper at a fellow-artist’s home.
“‘She has trouble,’ I thought. ‘Surely in some way I can aid her,’ and I sent the picture of yourself as not too bold a reminder. Your little copy of my picture coming in return, I said, ‘Now I may go; she did not resent my painting us together,’ and hope gave me wings.”
“Ashton knew that you were here from the beginning, then, and forwarded your portrait in the summer, and made no sign! How cruel!”
“Yes, he knew, and also one named Brownell; but do not condemn them, for there is a silence in such matters that is as honour among men, though almost strangers; it is as strong as woman’s love. Besides, what good would it have done?”
“But the name you gave the picture? ‘Eucharistia,’” said Brooke, leaning forward.
Maarten drew closer, and almost dropping on his knees, looked in her eyes and took her hands in his, that were hardened by toil and blistered by fire of leaves, both for her sake, and said, “The word has two meanings,—‘a sacrament,’ and ‘thanksgiving’; you had become the first to me, for this I gave the title ‘Eucharistia.’ It has become my name for you, and—I still give thanks.”
Then, dropping her hands as that other picture in its setting of July woods again crossed his inner vision, he stood, erect and proud, as one waiting inevitable sentence, yet glad in the consciousness that he had told the truth.
For a moment there was silence, and Brooke’s head dropped lower, until it rested on her hands. At last Maarten regained himself: “And now that all is told, what is there more for me to do here? What more for me to say?”
Slowly Brooke struggled to her feet, for in truth her clothes were damp and heavy, though she had not before felt it. Standing there, she looked up and smiled, and once again that shaft of light went forth from her to him, as she said in yearning accents: “What more to say, Henri? All that a man may say to the woman who loves him.”
“Eucharistia!” he cried, still holding back in blind amazement. “It is not parting, then, beloved, but waiting for you and work for me!”
“No; work for you and work for me, for what else means the awakening?” And placing her hand in his, she walked by his side along the border of the stream, while the wind carried the news throughout the River Kingdom, and Tatters, pushing himself between them, wagged his tail as he licked the blistered fingers.