The Miller Of Old Church Part 11

Then as he stooped for his gun, which he had laid down, a shot pa.s.sed over his head and whizzed lightly across the meadow.

"The next time I'll take better aim!" called Archie, turning away. "I'll shoot as straight as the man who gave your uncle his deserts down at Poplar Spring!"

Whistling to his dogs, he ran on for a short distance; then vaulting the rail fence he disappeared into the tangle of willows beside the stream which flowed down from the mill.

While he watched him the anger in Gay's face faded slowly into disgust.

"Now I've stirred up a hornet's nest," he thought, annoyed by his impetuosity. "Who, I wonder, was the fellow, and what a fool--what a tremendous fool I have been!"

With his love of ease, of comfort, of popularity, the situation appeared to him to be almost intolerable. The whole swarm would be at his head now, he supposed; for instead of silencing the angry buzzing around his uncle's memory, he had probably raised a tumult which would deafen his own ears before it was over. Here, as in other hours and scenes, his resolve had acted less as a restraint than as a spur which had impelled him to the opposite extreme of conduct.

Still rebuking his impulsiveness, he shouldered his gun again, and followed slowly in the direction Archie had taken. The half bared willows by the brook distilled sparkling drops as the small red sun rose higher over the meadows, and it was against the s.h.i.+mmering background of foliage, that the figure of Blossom Revercomb appeared suddenly out of the mist. Her scant skirts were lifted from the cobwebs on the gra.s.s, and her mouth was parted while she called softly after a cow that had strayed down to the willows.

"You, sir!" she exclaimed, and blushed enchantingly under the pearly dew that covered her face. "One of our cows broke pasture in the night and we think she must have crossed the creek and got over on your side of the meadow. She's a wonderful jumper. We'll have to be hobbling her soon, I reckon."

"Do you milk?" he asked, charmed by the mental picture of so n.o.ble a dairymaid.

"Except when grandma is well enough. You can't leave it to the darkies because they are such terrible slatterns. Put a cow in their hands and she's sure to go dry before three months are over."

She looked up at him, while the little brown mole played hide and seek with a dimple.

"Have you ever been told that you are beautiful, Miss Keren-happuch?" he inquired with a laugh.

Her pale eyes, like frosted periwinkles, dropped softly beneath his gaze.

"How can you think so, sir, when you have seen so many city ladies?"

"I've seen many, but not one so lovely as you are this morning with the frost on your cheeks."

"I'm not dressed. I just slip on any old thing to go milking."

"It's not the dress, that doesn't matter--though I can imagine you in trailing purple velvet with a tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of sable."

An illumination shone in her face, as if her soul had suddenly blossomed.

"Purple velvet, and what else did you say, sir?" she questioned.

"Sable--fur, you know, the richest, softest, queenliest fur there is."

"I'd like to see it," she rejoined.

"Well, it couldn't improve you!--remember always that the fewer fine clothes you have on the better. Tell me, Blossom," he added, touching her shoulder, "have you many lovers?"

She shook her head. "There are so few about here that any woman would look at."

"I've been told that there's an engaging young rector."

"Mr. Mullen--well, so he is--and he preaches the most beautiful sermons.

But he fancies Molly Merryweather, they say, like all the others, though he won't be likely to marry anybody from around here, I suppose."

Her drawling Southern tongue lent a charm, he felt, to her naive disclosures.

"Like all the others?" he repeated smiling. "Do you mean to tell me that Reuben's piquant little granddaughter is a greater belle in the neighbourhood than you are?"

"She has a way with them," said Blossom sweetly. "I don't know what it is and I am sure she is a good, kind girl--but I sometimes think men like her because she is so contrary. My Uncle Abel has almost lost his head about her, yet she plays fast and loose with him in the cruelest fas.h.i.+on."

"Oh, well, she'll burn her fingers some day, at her own fire, and then she'll be sorry."

"I don't want her to be sorry, but I do wish she'd try just a little to be kind--one day she promises to marry Abel and the next you'd think she'd taken a liking to Jim Halloween."

"Perhaps she has a secret sentiment for the rector?" he suggested, to pique her.

"But I don't believe he will marry anybody around here," she insisted, while the colour flooded her face.

The discovery that she had once cherished--that she still cherished, perhaps, a regard for the young clergyman, added a zest to the adventure, while it freed his pa.s.sion from the single restraint of which he had been aware. It was not in his nature to encourage a chivalrous desire to protect a woman who had betrayed, however innocently, a sentiment for another man. When the Reverend Mr. Mullen inadvertently introduced an emotional triangle, he had changed the situation from one of mere sentimental dalliance into direct pursuit. By some law of reflex action, known only to the male mind at such instants, the first sign that she was not to be won threw him into the mental att.i.tude of the chase.

"Are the fascinations of your Mr. Mullen confined to the pulpit?" he inquired after a moment, "or does he wear them for the benefit of the heterodox when he walks abroad?"

"Oh, he's not my Mr. Mullen, sir," she hastened to explain though her words trailed off into a sound that was suspiciously like a sigh.

"Molly Merryweather's Mr. Mullen, then?"

"I don't think he cares for Molly--not in that way."

"Are you quite as sure that Molly doesn't care for him in that way?"

"She couldn't or she wouldn't be so cruel. Then she never goes to lectures or Bible cla.s.ses or mission societies. She is the only girl in the congregation who never makes him anything to wear. Don't you think,"

she asked anxiously, "that if she really cared about him she would have done some of these things?"

"From my observation of ladies and clergymen," replied Gay seriously, "I should think that she would most likely have done all of them."

She appeared relieved, he thought, by the warmth of his protestation.

Actually Mr. Mullen had contributed a decided piquancy to the episode.

"I'm afraid, Blossom," he said after a moment, "that I am beginning to be a little jealous of the Reverend Mullen. By the way, what is the Christian name of the paragon?"

"Orlando, sir."

"Ye G.o.ds! The horror grows! Describe him to me, but paint him mildly if you wish me to survive it."

For a minute she thought very hard, as though patiently striving to invoke a mental image.

"He's a little taller than you, but not quite--not quite so broad."

"Thank you, you _have_ put it mildly."

"He has the most beautiful curly hair--real chestnut--that grows in two peaks high on his forehead. His eyes are grey and his mouth is small, with the most perfect teeth. He doesn't wear any moustache, you see, to hide them, and they flash a great deal when he preaches---"