Shadows of Flames: A Novel

III

One afternoon there was a big storm brewing at Sweet-Waters. The sunlight was dulled—the leaves hung listless. Over the mountain just behind the house a huge cloud of thunderous blue-black was swelling slowly. Now and then came a flitter of lightning—a muffled detonation far away. Bobby was very much afraid of thunderstorms. But he was now five years old. Sophy could not bear it that her boy should be afraid of anything. She took him in her arms and went out to watch the coming tempest.

"See, Bobby man," she said. "The world's asleep. Now the Storm is coming to wake her up."

"I 'spec she'd wavver sleep," said Bobby doubtfully.

He gazed in awe at the great cedars, so black and sullen blocked out against the tremendous cloud. The intense stillness scared him almost as much as the approaching hurly-burly.

Suddenly there came a violet flash, followed by a bellowing blare of thunder. At the same time a sibilation of leaves ran through the sultry air.

"Le's we go, muvvah! Le's we go!" urged Bobby in a small voice.

"Not yet, sweetheart. It's so splendid out here. See that big cloud come flying! It's like Sinbad's roc in the fairy tale. Don't you remember?"

"I don't like wocs," said Bobby falteringly.

Now the wind fell on them with a shout. The trees tossed. They bowed wildly, almost to the sunburnt earth. Twigs and leaves spun through the air. White fringes streamed from the inky cloud; then lightning—the sky blazed with a gigantic frond of fire. A pulse stroke—then a shattering, re-echoing roar.

Bobby pressed hard against his mother's breast. He was too much a man to howl, but his heart was as water within him.

"Le's go now, muvvah," he whispered.

"Just a minute more, darling. Don't you want to see the rain come over the mountain? Hark! You can hear it—hundreds of little glass-slippered feet, like Cinderella's—running—running——"

This idea fascinated Bobby for a second, but another blast of thunder was too much for him. He began to tremble.

"Darling," coaxed Sophy, "surely you aren't afraid of God's own thunder?"

"Don't like Dod," said Bobby.

"You mustn't say that, sweetheart. God made the thunder, but he made you and mother, too. He loves you."

"El pias minga a mi" (He doesn't please me), said Bobby firmly.

Now the rain swirled over the mountain. In grey-white, hissing clouds it came, as though the earth were red-hot, and the cold drops burst into steam as they smote it. Sophy ran into the house with Bobby. She took him to the upper hall, and knelt down before a door that opened upon the railed roof of the front portico.

"Ah, be a man, Bobby," she pleaded. "You're the only man mother's got in all the world."

He stood with both arms about her neck. The bright, buff freckles showed up clearly on his pale little face. But with underlip thrust out and brows drawn down, his eyelids winking with every flash of lightning, he looked the storm firmly in the face, because "Muvvah" had begged him to be a man.

Charlotte, coming upstairs to see that all window-shutters were properly closed, found them kneeling there together. She had hardly appeared before there came a flash and crash in one, so appalling that Bobby could resist no longer. He flattened himself against his mother's breast and shouted clamorously to be removed.

Then Sophy turned and slipped his hand into Charlotte's. An inspiration had come to her.

"There!" she said. "Stay safe with Aunt Chartie and watch mother! Mother's not afraid!"

The next moment she was out in the scented downpour. To and fro she ran, laughing. Her sleeveless wrapper of white muslin was soon soaked through. The wind beat it close to her in fine, rippled lines. She looked like a living figure from Tanagra. And she had never felt anything more exquisite than this cool, pelting of summer rain against her whole body.

Now and then flares of lightning would illumine her, throwing her light, drenched figure into relief against the wind-blown leaves. She seemed dancing to great tambourines of thunder. Bobby, quite made over by his mother's bravery, gazed on enraptured. She called to him as she whirled:

"Look, Bobby! See how mother loves God's splendid storm!"

Suddenly the boy broke from Charlotte's grasp. He sprang out into the tempest towards his mother.

"Me, too!" he shouted. "Viva Dio!" (Long live God!)

Sophy was still smiling to herself over this "Viva Dio!" as she braided her damp hair into a loose plait before going down to supper. The placid life at Sweet-Waters was very old-fashioned. During the hot weather there was no dinner served, only this light, simple meal at seven o'clock.

"How like me Bobby is," she thought. "I'm always rebelling against the Deity, and then crying 'Viva Dio!' in the end."

The storm had passed. She went and stood at her window, drawing in deep breaths of rain-freshened air, dense with sweet-shrub and honeysuckle. A serene level light lay upon the glistening grass—the "clear shining after rain." Now and then a shower of heavy drops loosened by the breeze pattered through the magnolia tree near by. The great tree, splendid with creamy blossoms, looked as though covered by a flight of doves. The birds were at their evening gossip as though no storm had ever been. One alighted on a branch close to her window, beside one of the white, chalice-like flowers, and fluffing up its feathers in a sort of musical frenzy, began its joyous song.

Sophy's heart swelled. It seemed to her that she and the bird and the white, impassioned flower, and the spent storm, and repentant Bobby crying "Viva Dio!" were all one. The whole, glad, drenched, shining earth and all that clung to it seemed shouting "Viva Dio!"

And she stretched out her arms as though to embrace this thrilling wonder called life, so that the bird broke off its song, and flew away with a loud frrrrt! of startled wings, leaving the great white flower trembling as with ecstasy....

She put on an old, corn-coloured muslin frock for supper, made cottage-fashion with a soft kerchief. It was one of her girlhood's dresses. She was proud to find how easily it hooked about her slim waist. She was still as slender as she had been at twenty. As she ran lightly downstairs she sang to a tune of her own improvisation: "For the rain is over and gone ... the time of the singing of birds has come...."

Her song stopped suddenly. The last turn of the staircase had brought her face to face with a little group in the lower hall—Judge Macon, Charlotte, and two men. One was her cousin Aleck Macfarlane, one was a stranger—a young fellow of about twenty-six. Sophy was struck by the pure Greek type of his head, silhouetted against the outer green of the wet lawn. It looked like some classic bas-relief, seen so in shadow against the light, gleaming grass—bronze on a background of verdigris. He was introduced by Macfarlane.

"My friend, Morris Loring——"

Sophy learned that they had been caught by the storm when they were about a mile from Sweet-Waters. They had taken refuge in a farm-house, and then ridden on.

"We got horribly muddy," said Loring, glancing down at his riding breeches and puttees which were plastered with red clay. He had a fresh, clear voice. Sophy guessed that he was a New Yorker. Now that she saw his face in the light, she thought it manly in spite of being beautiful. She had never before seen a man's face that she thought beautiful. It struck her as very singular. But even in England, where the Anglo-Saxon race so often produces perfect Greek types, she had never seen anything so Hellenic as young Loring. In figure he was tall but slight; the regular horseman's figure—flat-thighed and slim of leg. His riding-clothes were almost too well cut, Sophy thought. Loring appeared to her a little too much like the smart tailor's advertisements of sportsmen attired for riding. But she enjoyed looking at him. She wondered, amused, if he didn't enjoy looking at himself. He, on his side, was thinking: "Lord! What a dazzler! She wins, hands down, over anything I've ever seen!"

Sophy suddenly remembered the loose plait that hung below her waist. She laughed, colouring a little. Loring couldn't get his eyes away from her.

"You must excuse my appearing as Gretchen...." she said. "I got caught in the rain, too. I left my hair down because it wasn't quite dry."

"You really needn't excuse yourself for the way you look, Sophy," said Macfarlane dryly.

Sophy slipped her arm through his.

"Old humbug!" she said affectionately. She was very fond of Aleck. He was about ten years older than she was and had taught her how to ride.

Judge Macon took the two men off to tidy up a bit before supper. As soon as they had disappeared, Charlotte darted to Sophy. She began speaking rapidly in a nervous whisper.

"Sophy!... I'm dreadfully worried—Machunk Creek is 'up' and those two boys (all men under fifty had been 'boys' to Charlotte ever since the birth of her first-born), they'll have to stay all night with us. And they haven't a thing to sleep in...."

"Well, but Joe will lend them things of course," said Sophy.

Charlotte's anxiety did not abate.

"That's just it!" she whispered hoarsely. "This Mr. Loring looks so very fashionable. And Joe never will wear anything but those long, old-fashioned night-shirts! I don't see how I can put one of Joe's night-shirts on the Blue-room bed for Mr. Loring, Sophy! Aleck's different— I don't mind Aleck."

Sophy stared at her for a second, then she sat down on the lowest step of the stairs and rocked to and fro, hiding her face.

"Sophy! Sophy!" said Charlotte, still in that raucous whisper, and shaking her vexedly by the shoulder. "Stop! Get up and help me! You're too trying sometimes!"

Sophy tried earnestly to speak, but laughter kept stopping her.

Charlotte shook her again.

"How selfish of you, Sophy! I can't see where the fun comes in. I tell you I don't want to lay out one of poor, dear Joe's night-shirts for that young man to snigger over."

"I ... I don't believe he's the ... the 'sniggering' sort...." murmured Sophy, wiping her eyes.

"Well, to sneer at, then. You've got to help me. Can't you think of anything?"

Sophy considered. Suddenly her face became convulsed again.

"I ... I might lend him ... a pair of B-Bobby's pyjamas...." she faltered.

Charlotte turned on her heel.

"Very well," she said haughtily. But Sophy ran after her, repentant. She hooked a cajoling arm in Charlotte's stiffened elbow.

"Don't get huffy, dear," she coaxed. "I'm sure one of Joe's night-shirts will do perfectly ... really I do...."

They finally went to the Blue-room together—Charlotte with a white object folded very small over one arm. She laid it on the foot of the bed, outside the old brocade quilt. Then she stood looking discontentedly down on it.

"I'm sure it looks very nice," said Sophy.

But Charlotte stood absorbed. Presently she said:

"I really think I'd better unfold it. He might think it was an extra pillow-case."

And she displayed the quaint garment at greater length.

"Thank heaven I marked these myself with white embroidery cotton," she then murmured. "Joe will mark them with that horrid, indelible ink if I don't watch him like a hawk. Do you think it looks better so?"

"I think it looks perfectly charming," said Sophy gravely. Then she went off again into uncontrollable fits of laughter. "I ... I even think...." she stammered, "that it will be becoming...."

Charlotte turned her back and left the room, perfectly outdone with her. But all during supper Sophy kept smiling now and then, as she pictured Morris Loring's classic head emerging from the Judge's ample night-robe.

IV

October had come. Sophy and Morris Loring were walking together towards the woods that lay along the hills behind Sweet-Waters. He had ridden over from the Macfarlanes' and was to stay to dinner. Bobby trotted soberly by his mother, his mittened hand in hers. He was a reticent child about his deepest feelings. One of these feelings was that he did not like Loring. As he had said of the Deity in His form of Jupiter tonans so he said in his heart of Loring: "El pias minga a mi." Bobby thought in the Lake dialect. It was his medium of intercourse with Rosa. He did not know why he did not like Loring. The young man was particularly nice to him—or tried to be. Children are peculiar. What seems "being nice" to grown-ups, does not always appeal to them by any means. For one thing, Loring always addressed him as "General." This soldierly epithet would have pleased some little boys. It did not please Bobby. He preferred to be called by his own name. Doubtless jealousy had something to do with his dislike of Loring. Until the young man had appeared in the neighbourhood, Bobby had had his mother almost entirely to himself. Now "Mr. Lorwing," like the world in the great sonnet, was too much with them. He even intruded on the hours heretofore sacred to Bobby—firelight hours just before bedtime, when "Muvvah" used to tell such lovely fairy tales: hours like this one, in which Bobby had looked forward to gathering the first chestnuts of the season—just he and "Muvvah," with Rosa to throw sticks into the big trees for them. So Bobby trotted along in sober silence, wishing that something would happen to make Mr. Lorwing go away forever.

Rosa walked happily in the rear, gathering a great posy of autumn flowers.

The afternoon was lovely—mild yet sparkling. The blue autumnal haze veiled everything. The sky was almost purple. Against it melted clouds of silverish azure. Just over the yellowing wood hung a frail day-moon.

"What a blue day!" said Sophy, looking up at the fragile disk. "Even the moon is blue—it looks as if it were made of thin blue crystal...."

Loring was looking at her.

"That's a good omen—a 'blue moon,'" he said. "All sorts of wonders happen in a 'blue moon.'"

"Well, we might find a blue rose," said Sophy, smiling.

"I've found one."

"Ah! Shall you press it or preserve it in spirits?"

"Blue roses don't fade."

Sophy answered flippantly that in that case he would always be provided with a unique and inexpensive "button-hole"—much more unique and economical than Mr. Chamberlain's orchid.

Loring was still looking at her. She did not look at him, but kept glancing about her at the October landscape that she loved best of all.

"It seems queer that you're so contented in this quiet old place after having led such a brilliant life abroad," he said. This strain of thought had been roused in him by the mention of Mr. Chamberlain's orchid. "I should think you'd long for it again."

"Not yet," said Sophy.

His face lighted.

"'Not yet'? Then you do feel sometimes that this buried-alive-life won't satisfy you forever?"

"Oh, no! I shall fly far and wide again some day."

Loring was silent. His heart gave a hot twist. This was just what he most feared, that she would "fly far and wide" away from him. He had never in all his exceedingly wilful life desired anything with the frantic vehemence that he desired Sophy. And he was not accustomed to having his desires denied him. At home the household word was: "Morry has such a strong will." This had been the slogan of his childhood: "My will—or nothing. My will—or a burst blood-vessel. Death or punishment in any form—rather than yield my will." He had been rather delicate as a child. So his parents had preferred concession to the convulsions with which he threatened them whenever he was crossed in any way. It was a wonder that he grew up to likable manhood. Yet people thought him "perfectly charming"—a bit spoiled, but delightful. Girls called him "fascinating." His own pals said: "Morry Loring's a good sort. A bit ugly if you cross him—you've got to know how to handle him; but he's all right." By "handling" Loring they meant that one must seem to give him his way while skilfully getting one's own. This was not always practicable. Then coolnesses sprang up. Only two out of the old Harvard set stuck to him. But he was, in fact, not at all a bad sort—provided that you were willing not to announce too positively and publicly that your soul was your own. And his will was certainly strong. It was a brand-new sensation for him to will so ardently the possession of a thing which he was in sick doubt of securing. It had a poignant yet terrible charm of sheer novelty. And at the same time he experienced an inner revelation which shook him even more. It was the undreamed of capacity for adoration. There was no denying it—his spirit was on its knees to Sophy. She seemed to him as beautifully overwhelming as the suddenly revealed goddess to the shepherd of Mount Ida. There was about her, in addition to the aura of beauty and talent, the glamour of a woman who has moved brilliantly in a brilliant world. Had he been told that this naïf snobbishness had much to do with his novel emotion of adoration, he would have received the information with a tempest of incredulous and outraged wrath. Yet, though undoubtedly due to it in part, there was also genuine humility in his love for Sophy—that romantic abasement of self which makes a man find a subtle pleasure in the realisation of his own unworthiness.

Loring had come down to Aleck Macfarlane's country place to buy hunters. When he saw Sophy, he believed suddenly in Fate. No mere chance wish to buy hunters had sent him to Virginia. Here was the Lady of Legend—the Princess out of the fairy-tale books of his boyhood. He had always heard of Virginia as romantic. Now he found that it was inhabited by Romance herself in the person of Sophy Chesney. He had heard often of the Hon. Mrs. Cecil Chesney. He knew that she "had written something." Poems were not much "in his line." Yet he sent to Brentano's for Sophy's poems the day after he met her. He was frankly disappointed in them. He had expected something more fiery. And he tried to get a volume of her first book, The Shadow of a Flame. But it was out of print. He had given Brentano an order to find it for him. Only that morning the book had arrived from England. He was still tingling with the fearless, young passion of her printed words, as he walked now beside her. Her own words seemed to put him from her—far back with that past self which she no longer was, and which he craved to have her be again. And how young she looked ... what a girl! It was absurd, vexatious, incredible, impossible that so keen a flame should have died down into the white ash of philosophy ... as expressed in her latest poems.

"A penny...." said Sophy.

His long silence disturbed her. He gazed down at her, his bold eyes softening.

"I was thinking that you looked about nineteen, with that black bow on your hair," he said.

"And you say that as if you were about ten," she retorted, laughing.

"I don't feel ten."

"And I don't feel nineteen."

"Yet you're really not quite old enough to be so devilish motherly with me." His tone was quite pettish.

She was teasing him on purpose. She had found out at once that he was badly spoilt. It pleased her to see him wince, and flush, helpless under her amiable elderliness. She liked him very much, but she didn't want any love-making, though she didn't mind his being so evidently in love with her. She thought that a "disappointment in love" might do him no end of good—teach him that he couldn't "swing the earth a trinket at his wrist"—avenge some of the many young women with whom she felt sure that he had flirted outrageously. One wasn't given a Greek head, many millions, and an exaggerated sense of one's Ego, in order that one might practise the homelier virtues, such as unselfishness.

At his "devilish motherly" she laughed out—her ringing, contralto laugh, that was so delicious and that made him want to shake her and to kiss her violently, at one and the same time.

"'Devilish motherly'...." she repeated. "I'm sorry I remind you of Medea—she's the only person I can think of who was 'devilish motherly' ..."

Before Loring could reply, Bobby's voice broke in, austere and haughty.

"My muvvah is not deviliss," he said.

Loring went round beside him.

"Bully for you, General!" he exclaimed. "You'd fight a duel with me this minute, if you could—wouldn't you?"

Bobby pressed close to Sophy. He refused to yield Loring his other hand.

"Please go away," he said coldly. "I don't want you."

"Well ... your 'muvvah' don't want me either."

"No. She wants me," said Bobby.

He looked up at Sophy, his chin quivering. He resented Loring's imitation of the way that he pronounced "mother."

"Don't you?" he appealed to her.

She stooped to him.

"More than anything in the whole, round world or the blue sky," she reassured him. He smiled to feel her lips on his cheek. Close in her ear he whispered:

"We don't want him, do we? Make him go away."

"No. We must always be polite," she whispered back.

He sighed deeply.

"It's awful hard being p'lite," he mourned. "Mos' as hard as being good."

They all walked on in silence for a few moments.

Then Bobby said, with what Sophy called his "inspirational look":

"God ain't p'lite, Muvvah."

"Hello!" laughed Loring.

"Sssh!" said Sophy, flashing him a vexed look.

"Why, darling?" she asked her son.

"'Cause ev'y night I talks and talks to God, an' He never even says, 'Mh-Mh, Bobby.' Vat ain't p'lite—are it?"

Loring strode on ahead to have his laugh out. He thought Bobby the "funniest little beggar" in the world. She was always scolding him for laughing at the boy out of season.

"Children and dogs hate being laughed at," she now told him. "Didn't you hate being laughed at when you were little?"

"Can't remember," said Loring. "I suppose so. But as for that, men don't like being laughed at either."

"You don't, I know. But it's very good for you."

"Why isn't it good for the General?"

"My name's Bobby," came the small but haughty voice. At times her son reminded Sophy strikingly of Cecil. This was just Cecil's tone with presuming strangers.

"Very well, Bobby—do you know why it's good for me to be laughed at, but not for you?"

"I don't fink it matters," said Chesney's son, again in exactly the tone that Chesney would have used. Sophy felt too awed to feel amused. She felt that with the law of continuance thus powerful, death, in one sense, ceased to exist.

"You don't like me, do you, Bobby?" asked Loring, looking queerly at the child.

"Not much—p'ease to 'scuse me," replied Bobby.

"Funny little tot you are," said Loring, rather hurt. Then, to his surprise, he suddenly realised that he on his side, didn't really like Bobby. It seemed as if the child came wilfully between him and Sophy. He walked on moodily, cutting with his riding-crop at the pyred flames of golden-rod, his handsome, short-lipped mouth very sullen.

"What's the matter?" asked Sophy, to break another too long silence. "You look like a tinted marble of Endymion in the sulks."

Loring turned on her passionately.

"Mrs. Chesney," said he, "would you mind letting up on my rotten appearance! It isn't my fault that I've got a nose like a damned statue's!"

His face was scarlet. Sophy put her hands up to her own face to temper the brutality of her wild mirth.

V

"I see 'em! I see 'em!" Bobby cried, dancing gleefully, and making a noiseless clapping with mittened hands. For a moment the sight of the clustered burs among the pointed, russet leaves had made him forget his Kill-joy, Loring.

"Oh! Che splendore!" cried Rosa, running up.

She and Loring threw sticks among the laden branches. The nuts came down with pleasant swups upon the smooth, thick mat of dead leaves.

It was charming to kneel there in the warm October sunlight, at the edge of the rustling wood, pounding away the prickly hulls from the brown, smooth chestnuts. A fresh, pleasant scent rose from the bruised hulls. The breath of the autumn wood was keenly sweet. It smelt of wild grapes and mushrooms. From a field close by stole the odour of pumpkins that had been lying in the sun all day. And this mingled fragrance, so deliciously of the earth earthy, seemed just the perfume that would be shaken from October's russet smock as he strode across the land.

Sophy stood up at last. She lifted her arms in a boyish stretch, and stamped her feet which had "pins and needles" in them from crouching so long. Her big, clubbed plait had been somewhat loosened by her vigorous pounding. Leaves and withered grasses clung to her short, cord skirt. As she stood there stretching her cramped limbs, and laughing nervously as her feet "woke up" again, with the light wind frowzing the loose strands of hair about her face, and her short skirt disclosing her ankles in their tight-laced, brown shooting-boots, she certainly looked quite young enough, and girlish enough, to be Loring's sweetheart rather than Bobby's mother.

And Loring was thinking vehemently, his hands clenched on the chestnuts in his pockets:

"She's got to love me.... I'll make her love me.... I'll make her marry me.... I will.... I will!"

"Ouf!" said Sophy, letting her arms drop. "That was delicious! And what are you so fiercely determined over? You look ... but I won't say what you look like——"

"No ... don't, please," replied Loring shortly.

He turned away to help Rosa adjust the top of her hamper, which would not fit into place over the hard, round chestnuts.

It was beautifully still. The western sky was beginning to redden. A crisp rustling came from the shocks of Indian corn in a near field.

"It must be after five ... time for my Bobbikins to be trotting home," said Sophy, taking his sober face between her hands and crumpling it together like a soft flower. Then she laughed and kissed the crumpled flower of the little face.

"Ho-o-o-g! Ho-o-o-g!" came the long-drawn, minor wail of a negro-voice calling the swine from the mountain for their evening feed.

Rosa went off down the hill, with Bobby trotting at her side. Once the little fellow looked back—only once. His dignity forbade that he should be thought regretful. And "Muvvah" had promised to come and roast chestnuts for him before his bedtime.

"Now for a brisk walk!" said Sophy. "Let's strike into the woods at random and go a little way up the mountain—not far—I must be back to roast those chestnuts before Bobby's bedtime."

"You never break your word to him, do you?" said Loring, as they plunged into the golden depths that seemed aglow with stored sunlight.

"No. Never. I'd rather break my word to ten grown-ups than to one child."

They went on in silence for some yards, the dried leaves ruffling almost to their knees in places. Then Loring said:

"If you once gave your word you wouldn't break it to child or grown-up."

"I don't know.... I've never been tested."

"I know."

"Thanks. But you shouldn't get into the habit of idealising people. You'll end as a cynic if you do."

Her tone was pleasantly mocking.

Loring said quietly:

"I've never idealised but one person in my life."

"Well ... perhaps that's being a little too cautious."

"Caution has nothing to do with it. Such things come or they don't come."

"Yes ... perhaps they do. Ah! Wild grapes! What beauties!"

She stood gazing up at the little clusters of purple-black fox-grapes that hung against the arch of yellow leaves overhead. The vine had swung itself in great loops about a dogwood tree. The grapes were like a delicate design of wrought iron work against the gilded background of autumn leaves. But they hung high—out of reach. Loring caught at them with the handle of his riding-crop. Some of the ripe, purplish beads pattered about them.

"No—no! You can't get them that way," said Sophy. "They're too ripe."

"Wait.... I'll have a go for them this way," said Loring.

He grasped a bough of the tree in either hand, shook it to assure himself that it was equal to his weight, then swung himself up into its crotch. By standing with an arm about the main stem, he could reach the bunches easily on either side. Sophy held out the lap of her skirt.

"You are a nice playmate!" she called up to him, smiling.

He tossed down bunch after bunch from where he stood. Then, seating himself sideways on one of the larger boughs, gathered all that were within reach. His bare head, with its clustered, red-brown hair, looked quite wonderful in the setting of golden leaves and iron-blue grapes.

"Forgive me...." said Sophy. "But I must tell you.... You look like the young Dionysus—with those bunches of grapes hanging all about you."

"Well, that's odd," said Loring; "but from here you look to me like Ariadne." He thanked the gods that he had not forgotten all his mythology. "I ask nothing better than to give you a crown of stars. I believe that's what Dionysus gave Ariadne ... when she became his wife."

Sophy laughed.

"You dear boy," said she. "That was very quick of you. And I like you for conquering your evil temper so nicely. You never had a sister, had you?"

"Why! Are you thinking of offering to be a sister to me?"

"Not at all. I was only thinking that you wouldn't be so 'techess,' as the darkies say, if you'd had a nice, blunt sister to tease you when you were young—that is, younger than you are now," she ended cruelly.

Loring swung himself down beside her.

"The atrocious crime of being a young man!" he said, looking into her eyes boldly and somewhat mockingly, in his turn. "It seems hard for you to forgive me that."

Sophy was a trifle disconcerted.

"You are so easy to tease ... it's a temptation," she said rather lamely.

Loring replied with apparent irrelevance.

"I believe the Brownings are the accepted standard of married bliss, aren't they?"

"Why—yes—I believe they are," admitted Sophy.

"Very well. And do you happen to remember that Elizabeth Barrett was some years older than Robert Browning!"

Sophy was annoyed to feel herself colouring.

"Yes, I know that," she said coldly.

Loring kept his eyes on her. She was eating the little fox flavoured grapes as she walked beside him—very deliberately, one at a time.

"What I find so peculiarly interesting about it," continued Loring, his voice shaken, his heart racing, "is that the difference in their ages was even more than the difference in ours."

Sophy threw aside the bunch of grapes with an impetuous movement. She turned, looking him full in the face. She was very pale now and her eyes shone black. She had not foreseen any such sudden climax as all this.

"Don't ... don't spoil it...." she said vehemently, "don't spoil our pleasant friendship.... I beg of you not to do it."

They stood facing each other, shut alone into the great gold temple of the woods. Loring's beautiful bold eyes were black also. He, too, was white. The pent up passion of his worshipping love for her, that had all the unreasoning fire of a convert's fanaticism, burnt his lips with words. He had not meant to speak. Five minutes ago nothing had been further from his thoughts than the outburst, which now shook him with its violent suddenness.

"You can't stem the high tide with a straw...." he said low and breathless. "Do what you will with me.... I love you.... I more than love you.... I worship you.... I adore you.... Break me if you like.... Snap my life in two.... Throw away the broken bits.... But I worship you.... I worship you!"

He dropped suddenly to his knee on the brown leaves; caught the hem of her clay-stained skirt to his lips. He was past all self-consciousness. He had no dread of seeming ridiculous. Indeed it did not occur to him that he could be ridiculous. Young love has no sense of humour. His white, intense face looked up at her amazingly beautiful—the face of a wood-god kindled with awed passion for some skyey deity. And this sheer beauty of his kept Sophy also from seeing anything absurd in his kneeling there to kiss the soiled hem of her skirt. Supreme beauty, like supreme love, is never ridiculous. The gods wept over Icarus tumbling from his sire's chariot in mid-heaven. They would have tittered had it been lame Vulcan sprawling after his whirling hammer through the gulfs of ether. In the few seconds that Sophy stood transfixed, gazing down into that exalted young face, she understood how the legend of the moon's white stoop to Endymion had been invented. Not imagination so much as material beauty had been the source of the Greek myths. The artist and the poet in her ranged themselves on Loring's side. Her first impulse of anger was replaced by a sad tenderness. She forgot the Morris Loring of everyday in this Endymion of a moment. She forgot even that she had called him like Endymion "in the sulks" only a short while ago. This youth, with the white flame of worship quivering up from his heart's altar and lighting the antique mask of his ardent face—with his awed, yet eager eyes burning upon hers—this was a different thing—one quite new to her. She was startled by the throe of pitiful regret that seized her. If only she had been different herself ... a young virgin ready to receive this outpouring of virginal love.... What miracles would have enfolded them ... what wonders of dawn-time ecstasy. She had been mistaken. A face so beautiful could be only the symbol of a lovely soul. And this soul was gazing at her from the timid passion of the dark eyes, no longer bold, but infinitely, touchingly imploring. In continuous, swift flashes, like the luminous particles from radium, these thoughts showered from her mind, as she stood gazing down at him.

"I've heard of it.... I never believed.... Now I believe..." he was stammering. "My soul's in your body.... Your beautiful body is more than any soul to me.... I pray to you.... My soul in you prays to you...." He caught up a bit of leafy clay that had adhered to her foot, and pressed that also to his lips. "See...." he stammered on, "the dirt from your shoe.... That's how I love you...."

And even this act did not make him seem ridiculous. But Sophy caught his wrist, holding back his hand from his lips that trembled into a white, half-smile.

"My dear...." she said, her own voice shaken. "My dear boy.... Please...."

She felt her words very stupid—inane.

"Come...." she said, pulling at the strong wrist to make him regain his feet. He yielded to her touch and rose, standing tall and quivering before her.

"Won't you even let me worship you?" he asked in a smothered voice.

"My dear, no ... be reasonable...."

It seemed to Sophy that she had never been at the mercy of such banalities as her mind now offered.

He stared, his lip curling.

"Reasonable!"

"I mean...." Fitting words would not come to her. "You forget...." she said confusedly.

"What ... what do I forget?"

"My life ... what is past.... My life is over ... that part of life...."

"Your life?... Over?..." He gazed at her so that her eyes wavered from his. She could not help this. It distressed her to be standing there before him in her short skirt, bare-headed, with eyes that would not keep steady. She felt that he had the advantage of her out there in those wide, still aisles of gold with their groining of dark branches. It was as if he had her far from home, in his own haunts. The glowing forest sustained him, gave him his natural setting. He stood there facing her, the young wood-god in his own domain. She felt a droll almost hysteric yearning for trailing skirts, and the dignified refuge of an armchair. That absurdly girlish bow of black ribbon seemed to burn her neck. She knew that she looked incongruously young for the soul that inhabited her. She made a desperate grasp at dignity of voice. Her cold tone should be her trailing garment—make him realise the distance that was spiritually between them. When she spoke it was in a steady voice.

"My life—as regards love—is over, because I have come to a place in it where I do not even wish love," she said icily. A banal quotation slipped from her before she could stop it. "'Ich habe geliebt und geleben,'" she said, vexed at the crass ordinariness of the words as they struck her ear.

There was silence. A squirrel dropped a nut through the still, flaky gold of lapping leaves—then chittered angrily at its own awkwardness.

Loring said at last in a strangled voice:

"I am jealous of that dead man."

Sophy whitened.

"Don't say such things to me," burst from her in a sharp whisper.

"Have I hurt you?" he whispered back. "I'd die for you ... have I hurt you? Did you love him so much as that? Are you really dead ... with him?"

"Yes."

Another silence. Then the wilful, passionate young voice broke out again:

"No! you are not dead ... you are not dead! You are only sleeping...."

Sophy started as though from a sort of sleep.

"We must go," she said. "I'd forgotten...."

She turned and began walking rapidly away from him.

He caught her up in a stride.

"You break my life like a rotten twig," he said. "And go to roast chestnuts for your son."

The anguish of bitterness in his voice kept his words from absurdity.

"Don't say such things ... don't say such things," Sophy murmured, walking faster and faster. He kept beside her, implacable in the smarting novelty of defeated love and will.

"Your face is so beautiful and gentle.... Who would have thought you could be so hard ... like flint?"

"I am not hard.... I only tell you the bare truth to save you pain."

"You can't save me pain. Why do you throw me these mouldy crusts of old sayings? I offer you the best of me.... Don't you even think me worth a word out of your heart?"

Sophy paused. Her heart gushed pity—and regret.

"Oh, my dear...." she said lamentably, looking up at him with frank pain. "Why do you want to make it so hard for us both?"

"Then ... it is hard ... a little ... for you, too? I mean ... it hurts you to hurt me so?"

"Yes, yes, it hurts me! Do you think I am made of stone? Do you think I like seeing you suffer?"

"Then...." his throat closed on the words he wanted to say. He was ignominiously near to tears. Chokily he got it out:

"Then ... don't send me away ... just because ... I love you. Let me stay near you.... It can't hurt you ... and it's life to me."

"No, no. That would be horribly wrong of me—utterly, hatefully selfish."

He caught at this.

"You'd like to have me? You've called me a good 'playmate,' you know. I won't bore you with—with"—he gulped—"this craziness of mine.... If I'm 'good' ... you'll let me stay on?"

"Oh, it's all wrong! It's all wrong, my dear!" said Sophy, quite desperately. "You should go away at once. This is all just a phase ... just a passing...."

"Please," said Loring, with real dignity.

Sophy felt very unhappy. She knew that she was doing wrong to temporise. Yet that cruel kindness of the tender-hearted made her hesitate. She could not bear to banish him all at once in this harsh way.

"Well ... for a little while...." she murmured weakly. "But it would be much better for you to...."

"Please," said Loring again. "Allow me to judge of what will be best for me."

"I ought not to," she said miserably. The whole scene had unnerved her—jarred the fine, secure monotony of the life that she had thought so firmly established. One cannot stand face to face with genuine love without feeling a stir in chords long dumb. Loring's young, idealising passion had set certain strings in Sophy's nature vibrating. It gave her that sensation of aching melancholy with which we listen to the faint notes of an old piano that was rich and mellow in our youth. It made her feel very lonely. She had not once felt lonely since coming home—not once in these calmly joyous years of mental renewal. Restlessness she had known of late, but never loneliness. Now she felt all drooping with the solitude of her own spirit as she walked homeward beside Loring. The soft, dun red of the autumn sky seemed to her like the quiet, sombre glow of her own life that had no more flame to give forth, that had sunk into steady embers, that would presently resolve itself into the white ash of old age. Yet it was wonderful to be loved again—even though she had no love to give in return. It was movingly wonderful—though awful in a way—to feel this tonic answering of slack chords to the full, resonant notes struck from the blazing lyre of youth....

VI

Loring had an excellent, but lazy, mind. At Harvard he had read law. Once out of college, he had dropped it promptly. He had inherited fifteen millions at his father's death, when he was only twenty-one. What was the use of moiling away at law? The property was looked after already by a firm of the most distinguished lawyers in New York. He could see no "sense" in racking his brain with work that bored him when this work was absolutely without necessity. So he had spun in gay peripheral circles with the wheel of life—until meeting Sophy. Now she had drawn him to its centre. It was strange how his consciousness, thus centrifugally established, seemed another consciousness. Only the present was real—this radiant and somewhat awful present in which he loved Sophy as he had not believed that human beings could love. His past seemed like a dull, cheap volume of gaudy colour-prints. He could not realise that he had moved through those vulgar pictures of the past. This Morris Loring, he felt, had not been part of them. He flared hot with shame, merely in glancing back at them. Yet his life had not been really shameful—in the grossest meaning of the word. Some sensual pleasure he had taken, not much. In the odiously smug phrase with which his native literature was given to describing virtuous youth, he was rather by way of being a "clean-limbed, clean-minded young American." But the pig of St. Anthony has a trick of running between the limbs of youth, no matter how cleanly—indeed, he seems to take an evil joy in tripping the cleanliest, if only once. It was these chance tumbles into the mire that scalded Loring's heart with shame, as he knelt now at the white shrine of his lady. He would have liked to have a new body as well as a new soul to love her with. For the will in him had not really submitted to her will. It was only bent to this momentary obedience, like a strong spring ready to act at the least touch. Love made him as wary and as cunning as a fox in springtime. Not for one moment did he relinquish his determination to win her ultimately. In the meantime, he was "good." That is, he did not vex her by hinting at his love.

All his energies were concentrated on becoming such "a playmate" as she would miss if taken from her. He was like Jacob serving for Rachel. This new life that had sprung up in him seemed to have the indomitable patience of spiders. And without tiring, ceaselessly, exhaustlessly, he spun about her the fine web of pleasant habit—a mesh of delicate, trivial customs, fine as the silken band that bound Fenris, and that would be as hard to break should the time come when she wished to break it.

His family and friends thought, of course, that he was merely staying on for the Virginia hunting season. It seemed reasonable enough. The "Eldon Hounds"—Macfarlane's pack—were well known in the North; but the Hunt was not fashionable. Most Northern sportsmen went to Loudoun county. There was too much wire in this part of Albemarle. Even Macfarlane threatened to leave if something could not be done about the wire. So Loring set to work in the matter. He became very popular in the county. This rather bored him, but he must seem to remain for the hunting. He did not choose that there should be gossip. He was very careful about his visits to Sweet-Waters. Even the Macfarlanes did not know how often he went there.

As for Sophy, after the first qualms of conscience had passed, and she saw how easily Loring slipped back again into the old, pleasant intercourse, she was delighted to have him stay on. He had a great charm for her, the charm of sheer beauty and a certain winsomeness that even Charlotte was beginning to yield to.

For this strange baptism of white fire changed Loring in all respects. His egotism shrivelled under it. He glowed with fellow kindliness towards every one. The homely, simple life of the Macons became full of enchantment to him. He did all sorts of little odd jobs for Charlotte, such as riding three miles out of his way to post a forgotten letter, or nailing hinges on the pigeon-house door, when there was no carpenter to be had for days.

Winks thought him a delightful person. He had the most glorious rides around the lawn, on Loring's hunters, every time that he came to Sweet-Waters. Even Bobby grew a little more tolerant. He, too, enjoyed these ambles on the big, shining beasts, that rattled their nostrils with high spirits, and stepped mincing sideways, as Loring walked at the bridle-rein. The boys straddled proudly, their small legs jutting wide apart, on the huge slanting shoulders of "Omicron" or "Proud Aleck."

Loring begged Sophy to try the splendid red hunter that he had bought from Macfarlane.

So she followed the hounds on Proud Aleck, and if Loring had adored her before, he could scarcely keep his love in hand when he saw her riding so gallantly at the tricky snake-fences, mounted on the glittering blood-red horse.

And, when the run was over, came the homeward ride with her, across twilit pasture lands and fallow. They would select low gaps in the fences—then over, side by side, like birds. There would be the reek of ploughed earth and wood smoke in their nostrils. Sometimes a rabbit would leap up under the horses' feet, making them swerve, snorting. They would see the little white, fluffy scut go zigzagging through the yellow broom-sedge.

As winter drew on, and they became more intimate, she read him some bits of her childish scribblings that she had discovered, put away by her mother in an old chest. They made deliciously funny reading in the firelit hours of tea-time. One line from a long, sprawling tragedy in blank verse came to be a saying with Loring:

"'Ah well to rob a comet of its tail
To make the moon a wig!'"

he used to quote dramatically, when anything seemed impracticable. He was a dear playmate! Sophy became very fond of him indeed. And Loring, for his part, loved every member of the household, especially Judge Macon. There was such a taking contrast between the genial humour of the man and his gaunt, lean figure with its dark, rather tragic-looking face, that reminded him of the photographs of Edwin Booth as "Hamlet." Yes, he certainly looked like a world-worn, weary Hamlet who had recovered with only a slight lameness from Laertes's sword-thrust. The Judge limped a little from a bullet in his knee. He had fought in the Southern army when a lad of sixteen. Loring, as he watched the Judge limping about the house, mused sometimes on what life must have been like in Virginia when boys of sixteen had gone to war.

The Judge, on his side, returned Loring's liking in full. He quite exasperated Charlotte by what she called his "real weakness" for the young man.

"Yes, I've got a mighty soft spot for this Yankee boy," he would admit. Then he would chuckle wickedly. "But it's nothing to Sophy's," he would add; "only she don't know it."

Charlotte's more kindly feeling towards Loring did not keep her from being quite miserable over such possibilities. She thought them only too likely. She could foresee nothing but unhappiness for Sophy in such a marriage. Yet she was helpless. Sophy was not the sort of person that one could "guide." There was nothing for it but to leave her in God's hands, as the Judge had once suggested. Charlotte was truly religious. Yet it is strange how hard it is for the truly religious to "leave things in God's hands." "Putting parcels in the Heavenly post-office, and jerking at them by the string of prayer," the Judge called it.

Towards the end of November Loring's mother fell ill. He was telegraphed for. He was very fond of his mother, but the old egotism surged up in him when he read that she was not in danger, only suffering. He could not ease her suffering. That was the affair of doctors and trained nurses. However, he left for New York at once.

VII

Would she be alone, he wondered—in her own study?... Or would she be sitting with her sister and the Judge in the general living room?... He cantered across the lawn. Ah—there was a flicker of firelight from her study window!... Perhaps she was there. Perhaps he would have the joy of seeing her alone, this first moment after those interminable six weeks....

Mammy Nan told him that she opened "de do'" for him, "'caze Miss Chalt an' dee Jedge done step over tuh dee Univussity, an' I'se sleepin' in dee house tuh keep keer uv Miss Sophy."

Miss Sophy was "in her steddy," Mammy Nan further informed him. She "sut'ny wuz glad he done come tuh cheer Miss Sophy up some. 'Peared like, to Mammy Nan, that she'd ben a-mopin' ever sence Miss Chalt an' dee Jedge tuck an' lef' her behine."

Loring found Sophy sitting in the firelight, gazing at the big logs of hickory, and smoothing her collie's head as it rested against her knee. The room was large but cosy. It had old-fashioned curtains of dark-red worsted grosgrain at the windows. Little green "steps" set between them held pots of flowers. There was all through the room a sweet scent of rose-geranium, lemon verbena, and the clean, fresh fragrance of new-cut logs. It was the perfume that he associated with her. He stood near the door after entering, breathing deep of this pleasant, candid scent, and drinking her with his eyes.

She looked up, startled. And he shook inwardly with the soft firelit beauty of her face. She was wearing a gown that he loved—an old gown of olive velveteen trimmed with narrow bands of fur. It was made like the gown in a picture, quite straight from throat to shoe-tip. The long, wide sleeves opened from the shoulder. They hid her arms usually; but when she reached for something, her lovely, slender arms gleamed between the soft bands of fur. Behind her, on her writing-table, was an old Algerian water-bottle of dull copper, and in it a branch of magnolia. The scarlet seed-cones gleamed like gems or coals of fire among the glossy black-green foliage. Her face as it turned to him against this background of leaves and jewelled seed-cones was something for a lover to remember in old age.... He got a desperate grip of himself and went forward. As she lifted her hand to his, the wide sleeve parted, as he had known that it would do, and the amber-white arm shone bare for his worship.... Without speaking, she smiled a welcome, but the firelight showed him tears caught on her under-lids. Mammy Nan's surmise was correct. Sophy had been "moping" a little of late. When Charlotte and the Judge had left for some festivity at the University two days ago, her mood had been quite tranquil. But she had been rather overworking, and these two days, all alone in the empty house, had set her brooding. It was nearly nine o'clock. The wind thrummed in deep, minor chords between the double doors that shut her study from the greenhouse in the wing. A hound, hunting alone by moonlight, bayed from the distance. Dhu cocked his ears—the supple tips hung flickering an instant, then drooped again. The collie resumed his wide, gold-eyed, tranced stare into the fire. He, too, seemed overwhelmed by melancholy. Sophy drew him to her at last, and leaned her cheek against his silky black shoulder which smelt like warm, clean straw. His sire was not a kennel dog, but tended sheep in the Highlands. Now when Sophy put her head against his shoulder, he leaned down his head on hers much as a person might have done.

With her arms around him and her eyes on the fire, she listened to the beating of his heart. The warm, red mystery of hearts—even a dog's heart—awed her. What was this love that even dogs could feel, and why was it so immeasurably sad? The feeling of desolation grew and grew.... She was so horribly lonely. Even the close, simple contact with her collie did not comfort her. This love without comprehension, that he gave her, was only another sadness. Nothing lasted. No one remained the same. There was Morris Loring.... At least he had seemed to have a real fondness for her, after he had conquered his first boyish, fantastic frenzy. Yet already he, too, had changed, forgotten. Just a nice, beautiful boy ... but she had been fond of him also.... Now he had forgotten. She was growing old. Youth draws youth. Naturally he would forget her.

The collie, hearing her sigh, got down from his chair and leaned his head against her knee with a low whine. She sat gazing at the burning logs and gently stroking the sleek, black head. It was so that Loring found her when he entered.