Chapter 72
Nothing had changed, he a.s.sured her; mill-dam and pond and bridge, and the rus.h.i.+ng creek below were exactly as she knew them; her house stood there at the crossroads, silent and closed in the suns.h.i.+ne, and under the high moon; pickerel and sunfish still haunted the shallow pond; partridges still frequented the alders and willows across her pasture; fireflies sailed through the summer night; and the crows congregated in the evening woods and talked over the events of the day.
"And my cat? You wrote that you would take care of Adoniram."
"Adoniram is an aged patriarch and occupies the place of honour in my father's house," he said.
"He is well?"
"Oh, yes. He prefers his food cut finely, that is all."
"I don't suppose he will live very long."
"He's pretty old," admitted Neeland.
She sighed and looked out of the window at the kitten in the garden.
And, after an interval of silence:
"Our plot in the cemetery--is it--pretty?"
"It is beautiful," he said, "under the great trees. It is well cared for. I had them plant the shrubs and flowers you mentioned in the list you sent me."
"Thank you." She lifted her eyes again to him. "I wonder if you realise how--how splendid you have always been to me."
Surprised, he reddened, and said awkwardly that he had done nothing.
Where was the easy, gay and debonaire a.s.surance of this fluent young man? He was finding nothing to say to Rue Carew, or saying what he said as crudely and uncouthly as any haymaker in Gayfield.
He looked up, exasperated, and met her eyes squarely. And Rue Carew blushed.
They both looked elsewhere at once, but in the girl's breast a new pulse beat; a new instinct stirred, blindly importuning her for recognition; a new confusion threatened the ordered serenity of her mind, vaguely menacing it with unaccustomed questions.
Then the instinct of self-command returned; she found composure with an effort.
"You haven't asked me," she said, "about my work. Would you like to know?"
He said he would; and she told him--chary of self-praise, yet eager that he should know that her masters had spoken well of her.
"And you know," she said, "every week, now, I contribute a drawing to the ill.u.s.trated paper I wrote to you about. I sent one off yesterday.
But," and she laughed shyly, "my nostrils are no longer filled with pride, because I am
"Of course. Contentment in creative work means that we have nothing more to create."
She nodded and smiled:
"The youngest born is the most tenderly cherished--until a new one comes. It is that way with me; I am all love and devotion and tenderness and self-sacrifice while fussing over my youngest. Then a still younger comes, and I become like a heartless cat and drive away all progeny except the newly born."
She sighed and smiled and looked up at him:
"It can't be helped, I suppose--that is, if one's going to have more progeny."
"It's our penalty for producing. Only the newest counts. And those to come are to be miracles. But they never are."
She nodded seriously.
"When there is a better light I should like to show you some of my studies," she ventured. "No, not now. I am too vain to risk anything except the kindest of morning lights. Because I do hope for your approval----"
"I know they're good," he said. And, half laughingly: "I'm beginning to find out that you're a rather wonderful and formidable and overpowering girl, Ruhannah."
"You don't think so!" she exclaimed, enchanted. "_Do_ you? Oh, dear!
Then I feel that I ought to show you my pictures and set you right immediately----" She sprang to her feet. "I'll get them; I'll be only a moment----"
She was gone before he discovered anything to say, leaving him to walk up and down the deserted room and think about her as clearly as his somewhat dislocated thoughts permitted, until she returned with both arms full of portfolios, boards, and panels.
"Now," she said with a breathless smile, "you may mortify my pride and rebuke my vanity. I deserve it; I need it; but Oh!--don't be too severe----"
"Are you serious?" he asked, looking up in astonishment from the first astonis.h.i.+ng drawing in colour which he held between his hands.
"Serious? Of course----" She met his eyes anxiously, then her own became incredulous and the swift colour dyed her face.
"Do you _like_ my work?" she asked in a fainter voice.
"_Like_ it!" He continued to stare at the bewildering grace and colour of the work, turned to another and lifted it to the light:
"What's this?" he demanded.
"A monotype."
"_You_ did it?"
"Y-yes."
He seemed unable to take his eyes from it--from the exquisite figures there in the sun on the bank of the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river under an iris-tinted April sky.
"What do you call it, Rue?"
"Baroque."
He continued to scrutinise it in silence, then drew another carton prepared for oil from the sheaf on the sofa.
Over autumn woods, in a windy sky, high-flying crows were buffeted and blown about. From the stark trees a few phantom leaves clung, fluttering; and the whole scene was possessed by sinuous, whirling forms--mere glimpses of supple, exquisite shapes tossing, curling, flowing through the naked woodland. A delicate finger caught at a dead leaf here; there frail arms clutched at a bending, wind-tossed bough; grey sky and ghostly forest were obsessed, bewitched by the winnowing, driving torrent of airy, half seen spirits.
"The Winds," he said mechanically.
He looked at another--a sketch of the Princess Naa. And somehow it made him think of vast skies and endless plains and the tumult of surging men and rattling lances.
"A Cossack," he said, half to himself. "I never before realised it."
And he laid it aside and turned to the next.
"I haven't brought any life studies or school drawings," she said. "I thought I'd just show you the--the results of them and of--of whatever is in me."
"I'm just beginning to understand what is in you," he said.