CHAPTER XVII.

AT THE CREEK.

Shortly after Sawyer took his leave, Lyman went out for a meditative stroll in the wooded land. About a mile and a half distant was a creek, with great bluffs on one side, and with a romantic tumble of land on the other. Of late he had gone often to this stream, not to listen to the melody of water pouring over the rocks, not to hear the birds that held a joy-riot in the trees, but to lie in the grass on a slope, beneath an elm, and gaze across at a limestone tower called "Lover's Leap." And on these journeys he always went through the shaded lane-like street that led past the banker's house. It was the most pretentious house in the town, of brick, trimmed with stone. In the yard, which was large, the great man had indulged his taste for art, stucco statuary—a deer, a lion, a dog, two Greek wrestlers, a mother with a child in her arms, and a ghastly semblance of Andrew Jackson.

Lyman reached the shore of the creek and walked slowly among the large, smooth rocks, that looked like the hip bones of the worn and tired old earth, coming through. As he approached the tree and the grassy slope whereon he was wont to lie and muse, he saw the fluttering of something white, and then from behind the tree a woman stepped. His heart beat faster, for he recognized her, and when he came up, with softened tread, to the tree, he was panting as if he had run a race. The woman did not see him until he spoke, her eyes having been cast down when she passed from behind the tree, and she started and blushed at beholding him.

"I hope I don't intrude," he said, taking off his hat.

"Oh, no, since you have as much right here as I have."

"I don't know but that I have a pretty good right," he said. "That is, if occupancy means anything. I come here often."

"Do you?" she cried in surprise. "Why, I have never seen you here before, and this has been my favorite spot for years."

"Well, as we are both at home," he said, laughing, "we might as well sit down."

They laughed and seated themselves on the spreading roots of the tree, though not very near each other. She took off her hat and he looked with admiration at her brown hair, tied with a ribbon. She flushed under his gaze and said he must pardon her appearance, as she had not expected to meet anyone.

"A violet might say as much," he replied.

"You must not talk that way," she said.

"Why? Because you like to hear it?"

"The idea! How could you say that?"

"Because modesty protests against the words that a woman most likes to hear, and modesty does not chide until she ventures upon an enjoyment."

"Then modesty is a scold, instead of a friendly guide."

"No. But over-modesty is over-caution."

"We were not talking of over-modesty. Are you as bold with all women as you are with me?" She looked at him with quizzical mischief in her eyes. He plucked a white clover blossom and tossed it upward. It fell in her lap.

"Bold, did you say? Am I bold? Most women have laughed at my angular shyness."

"Laughed at you; how could they?"

"On account of my peculiarities. I was called an old bachelor before I was twenty, and as I grew older I considered myself one, irredeemably, for I never expected to marry."

"I should have thought your life full of romance, wandering about, as you must have done."

"My life has been a tread-mill," he answered.

"But you see so many beautiful things in nature."

"The horse on the tread-wheel can look through a crack, and see a flower growing outside."

"Has your life been really hard?" she asked.

"Yes, desperately hard, at times."

"But you don't show it. You seem so kind and gentle."

"If I do, it is out of charity for those who have suffered."

"But I don't see any sign of your suffering, you write so beautifully."

"I had to suffer before I could write. The heart cannot express a joy until it has felt a sorrow."

She gave him her frank, admiring eyes. "Why haven't I met such men as you are? I have not lived here all my life; I have travelled with my aunt, who knew the world, and she took me to many strange places, and I met many men, but they didn't appeal to me or interest me any more than those I met at home. It was all the same old commonplace flattery."

"You have never found a man so interesting because you have never had the opportunity to see a man standing in the light I stand in now," he replied. "Our relationship has given me a new color."

She shook her head: "I have thought of that, but I believe that I should have found you interesting, even if I should have met you in the ordinary way."

"No, you would never have allowed yourself the time. Some sobering process was required."

"Yes, that is true," she frankly admitted.

In the tree tops above them the birds were riotous. The air was scented with a sharp sweetness from the wild mint that grew at the edge of the water.

"Has Mr. Sawyer been to see you?"

"He came today."

"Tell me about his visit. What did he say?"

"He wanted to buy me—wanted to hire me to go away."

"Tell me all about it. Remember, we are friends."

"He brought a check for five hundred dollars, signed by your father."

"I think you have told me enough," she said.

A flock of sheep came pattering along the road that skirted the hill-top, not far away. A bare-footed boy shouted in the dust behind them.

"Not much more remains to be told. He said I would regret not having taken the check."

"Did he threaten you?"

"Well, he said that I would have to leave town."

"He is afraid of you, and he knows it."

"If he is, he ought to know it," Lyman drolly replied. "If he doesn't know it, somebody ought to tell him. But I won't go away and leave you unprotected."

She looked at him gratefully. "How strange it sounds, and yet how true it is that you are my only real protector. My father cannot understand why I don't place Mr. Sawyer's money-getting ability above everything else. He thinks Mr. Sawyer will become one of the greatest men in the country. And I admit that at times this, together with father's entreaty, has had a strong influence over me. But I don't think," she added, shaking her head, "that I could ever have married that man. No," she said energetically, as she pointed across the stream, "that rock, first."

"You wouldn't do that," Lyman replied.

"Wouldn't I? Don't we read every day of women who kill themselves?"

"Yes, of women whose minds are not sound."

"But who shall say when a mind is not sound? How do you know that it is? What proof have I? We often read that no one suspected that Miss So-and-So had the slightest intention of destroying herself. Well, I may be a Miss So-and-So."

"I have no right to doubt your word," said Lyman. "Things that we most doubt sometimes come to pass, and then we wonder why we should have questioned them. But I will stand between you and the rock; I will be your friend and confidant, your brother, let us say. You must keep faith with me, and if you ever really fall in love, the sweet, torturing, the desperate sort of love which must exist, come to me and tell me."

"I will keep faith. But why do you say the sweet and torturing and desperate love that must exist? You talk as if it was a speculation of the mind rather than a fact of the heart. Don't you know that it does exist? Was there not a woman in the past who aroused it within you?"

"I have seen one or two women who might have done so. I remember one particularly. I was young and foolish, of course, but as I looked at her I thought she could win my soul. I did not know her; I saw her only once and that was at a hotel in the White Mountains. She and a party of ladies and gentlemen dined at the hotel, and I was a waiter." She looked up at him. "Yes, a waiter, with a white apron on and a Greek Testament in my pocket. The employment was menial, perhaps loathsome in your eyes."

"No," she said with a shiver. "Perhaps you had to do it."

"Yes, under a keen whip, the desire to continue my education. I think I must have been the first of my race to run forward at the tap of a knife on a dish. In my strong determination to fit myself—as I then thought—for the duties of life, I would have done almost anything to further my plans; and I was never really ashamed of my having to wait at table to earn knowledge-money, until the night I saw you—until you turned to some one and said: 'What, that thing!'"

"I did say that," she answered, "yes, and I have censured myself a thousand times. I hoped that you had not heard me. I am awfully sorry."

"Oh, I don't take it to heart. It hurt my pride a little and it gave me a wrong impression of you."

"Let us forget it. I was always a fool—until after that night. But about the woman, what became of her?"

"I don't know. She blew away like the down of the dandelion."

"And you didn't see her again?"

"Never again."

"But you dreamed of her?"

"No. You misunderstand me. I didn't fall in love with her. I say that I might have loved her. Perhaps upon becoming acquainted with her, I might have smiled at my foolish belief—might have found her uninteresting."

"You said there was one or two—the other one? What about her?"

"I don't remember her at all. I say that I may have seen her, but I don't recall her."

"Perhaps the other one has read your story."

"Or perhaps her daughter honeyed over it on her wedding journey," he suggested, laughing.

A light vehicle rattled down the road, and she looked up. "I was thinking that someone might drive past and recognize us," she said. "It may be wrong, but I don't want father to know that we meet, except by accident."

"Wasn't this meeting an accident?" he asked, hoping that she would say it was not, on her part.

"Yes. But sitting here under this tree is not. And I must go," she added, arising. He got up and stood there, hoping that she would hold out her hand to him, but she did not. "Good-bye," she said, smiling as she turned away.

"Let me hope for another accident, soon," Lyman replied, bowing to her.