The talkers

It was the most wonderful week in Gilda’s life.

They had stopped for an hour at Heron Nest. She would not cross the threshold; but inspected the big, dowdy old mansion from every outside angle, and the poor boy pointed out to her endless unwashed windows, describing eagerly what lay behind each. His room, his mother’s, his father’s, all were identified by windows; library, dining room, the two parlours—he spared her not a square inch of his natal roof.

But the girl adored it, tenderly desirous of making up for his disappointment at her refusal to enter the abode of the Suttons.

However, she went through the gardens with him, finding them quaint and lovely in the fresh brilliance of spring flowers.

Some young fruit trees still remained in blossom; hedges wore unsullied green, the warm aroma of newly turned earth where gardeners were working blended deliciously with the perfume of new blossoms.

There was an acre of glass. She went with him into two or three greenhouses, the grapery, melon shed—glimpsed the carnations, now in the sere and withered finis, accepted the violets that a gardener brought her, and then walked to the low, grey wall which overlooked the valley and its famous river.

Far below a train rushed by toward the metropolis, leaving writhing coils of smoke in the green ravine. Beyond, the Hudson sparkled under a blinding sun. Haze veiled the rolling heights to westward. Lagoon-like backwaters and bays were brimming with the flood-tide. From the south came a grey Destroyer speeding upstream.

The boy had possession of the girl’s hand. He had a story to tell her of every inch of ground along the grey stone wall.

Here he had shot his first hawk; in yonder oak his first squirrel; among the distant reeds across that inlet he had pursued black duck and coots in a punt.

If she sighted along his levelled arm she could see a great blue heron wading out there in the shallows.

She laid her soft cheek against his shoulder and took aim with beguiling eyes. When, finally, she had discovered the dignified wader, she softly kissed her lover’s sleeve. He touched her hair with his lips.

A squirrel derided them from the fatal oak.

That was her confused recollection of Heron Nest—the scent of spring, a squirrel shrilling in a lofty tree, miles of sunlit river, and her lover’s cheek against her own.

And now they were on their way northward once more, thundering through short tunnels, roaring along rock-ribbed cuts, out into blinding sunshine again with the river a blinding waste of light quivering away into the magic North.

Sunset reddened the cars at Albany; starlight silvered their berths at Utica.

The boy lay awake, too thrilled to sleep. The girl, in her berth opposite, slept dreamlessly in supreme surrender to a destiny no longer questioned.

At ten o’clock the next morning the train stopped on signal at Fisher-cat Dam.

Dan Leggett, planting superintendent, awaited them in a Ford.

The road was awful; the flivver crawled as a dog negotiates an unsteady bridge, on its belly.

Pink-cheeked, glad of her fur coat, astonished to find the springtime just beginning here, excited by the heady air and the aroma of the pines, Gilda clung to Stuart and gazed fearfully from the pitching car.

She was full of breathless exclamations—now enchanted by a tumbling mountain brook, now in ecstasy as the blue view widened away over acres of forests accented by ridges of hard wood and set with steep little tree-clad hills.

Once, ahead in the bed of the brook which Leggett spoke of as “the road,” a burly woodchuck scrambled over the stones and out of sight. And Gilda’s excitement knew no bounds.

She stood straight up in the car when a ruffed grouse, “dusting,” got up, leisurely, and walked on ahead with an irritated, reproachful air.

Wild birds called wistfully from thin depths of newborn foliage; pale blossoms starred the woods, clotted the twigs of slim grey shrubs.

In Gilda’s breath the wine of the pines sweetened, intoxicating her; in her veins the fire of youth ran moulten. Solitude, and her lover! There was nothing else in the world. Nothing more to desire, beyond.

And all the while Stuart was talking—explaining trees, identifying pine, hemlock, spruce, and balsam, instructing her in the differences characterising each species, estimating “markets,” guessing at “calipers,” pointing out “ripe” growths, “cruising” in his mind’s eyes as the creaking flivver crawled upward.

She only heard his voice as a celestial melody without words. Clinging to him in their lurching craft, her girl’s eyes were as remotely lost as the rim of misty blue-green mountains on the horizon.

Once, in a gorge below, a stony river leaped into sight. But the river-driving was ended; the run of log was over. A few lay stranded here and there, or, caught between boulders crossways in mid-stream, lay massive and black, drenched with snowy spray.

A haze filled one valley where men were sawing. The wicked whine of the steam-saw came thinly to their ears.

Beyond, men were busy with slashings, preparing lumbered areas for reforestation.

After a while they began to pass panels of red pine and Norway spruce—the trees in various panels varying from eighteen inches to ten feet in height.

Acres of beautiful silvery grey-green trees were in sight, now—Scotch pines, soft as pyramids of moss to the eye, and prickly as briers to the touch.

He told her all about it. The weevil, curse of white pine and Norway spruce, also attacked these Scotch pines. It remained to be seen whether they were worth the planting.

Acres of emerald green, bushy, broom-like young evergreens clothed the hills ahead.

“Red pines,” he explained, “immune to weevil and blister.”

“So far,” drawled Leggett.

“So far,” echoed Stuart gloomily.

Gilda dreamed on blissfully, their voices vague as in a trance. A heavenly rapture possessed her through which her soul floated, drifted, slumbered on the wing, or swept the green earth below like the shadow of a sky-lark.

The sun’s heat, waxing intense, distilled aromatic nectar from every stem and leaf and blossom, and delicate wild perfumes arose from black mould and rotting leaves.

“Hey, Mike!” shouted Leggett, as the car rattled across a log bridge.

Gilda opened bewildered eyes. Stuart was laughing at her.

On the edge of a flashing stream she saw twin log houses, and a faded man in formless, faded garments standing between them.

On a board over the door of one was painted Villa Gilda; over the other, Hotel Sutton.

In her ears was the golden melody of the stream; in her eyes the glory of the sun.

Eden!

“This is Mike Hanford, Gilda, who is going to look out for us. He tosses the finest flap-jack in the North Woods.”

Mr. Hanford removed his cap and scratched his head to atone for such servility.

“Reckon you’ll eat a snack,” he surmised. And spat to readjust social conditions throughout the earth.