The Bent Twig Part 32

She was startled at this abrupt emergence of the name which secretly filled her mind and was aware with exasperation that she was blus.h.i.+ng.

Her companion appeared not to notice this. He was attempting the difficult feat of wiping his face on the upper part of his sleeve, and said in the intervals of effort: "Well, you know _my_ name. Molly didn't forget that."

"But _I_ did," Sylvia confessed. "I was so excited by the fire I never noticed at all. I've been racking my brains to remember, all the way up here."

For some reason the man seemed quite struck with this statement and eyed her with keenness as he said: "Oh--really? Well, my name is Austin Page." At the candid blankness of her face he showed a boyish flash of white teeth in a tanned face. "Do you mean to say you've never heard of me?"

"_Should_ I?" said Sylvia, with a graceful pretense of alarm. "Do you write, or something? Lay it to my ignorance. It's immense."

He shook his head. He smiled down on her. She noticed now that his eyes were very kind as well as clear and keen. "No, I don't write, or anything. There's no reason why you should ever have heard of me. I only thought--I thought possibly Molly or Uncle George might have happened to mention me."

"I'm only on from the West for a visit," explained Sylvia. "I never was in Lydford before. I don't know the people there."

"Well then, to avoid Morrison's strictures on introductions I'll add to my name the information that I am thirty-two years old; a graduate of Columbia University; that I have some property in Colorado which gives me a great deal of trouble; and a farm with a wood lot in Vermont which is the joy of my heart. I cannot endure politics; I play the flute, like my eggs boiled three minutes, and admire George Meredith."

His manoeuvers with his sleeve were so preposterous that Sylvia now cried to him: "Oh, don't twist around that way. You'll give yourself a crick in the neck. Here's my handkerchief. We were going to share that, anyhow."

"And you," he went on gravely, wiping his face with the bit of cambric, "are Sylvia Marshall, presumably Miss; you can laugh at a joke on yourself; are not afraid to wash your face with kitchen soap; and apparently are the only girl in the twentieth century who has not a mirror and a powder-puff concealed about her person."

All approbation was sweet to Sylvia. She basked in this. "Oh, I'm a Hottentot, a savage from the West, as I told you," she said complacently.

"You've been in Lydford long enough to hear Morrison hold forth on the idiocies of social convention, the while he neatly manipulates them to his own advantage."

Sylvia had dreaded having to speak of Morrison, but she was now greatly encouraged by the entire success of her casual tone, as she explained, "Oh, he's an old friend of my aunt's, and he's been at the house a good deal." She ventured to try herself further, and inquired with a bright look of interest, "What do you think of his engagement to your cousin Molly?"

He was petrified with astonishment. "_Molly_ engaged to _Morrison_!"

he cried. "We can't be talking about the same people. I mean _Felix_ Morrison the critic."

She felt vindicated by his stupefaction and liked him for it. "Why, yes; hadn't you heard?" she asked, with an a.s.sumption of herself seeing nothing surprising in the news.

"No, I hadn't, and I can't believe it now!" he said, blinking his eyes. "I never heard such an insane combination of names in my life."

He went on, "What under the _sun_ does Molly want of Morrison!"

Sylvia was vexed with him for this unexpected view. He was not so discerning as she had thought. She turned away and picked up her hat.

"We ought to be going on," she said, and as they walked she answered, "You don't seem to have a very high opinion of Mr. Morrison."

He protested with energy. "Oh yes, I have. Quite the contrary, I think him one of the most remarkable men I know, and one of the finest. I admire him immensely. I'd trust his taste sooner than I would my own."

To this handsome tribute Sylvia returned, smiling, "The inference is that you don't think much of Molly."

"I _know_ Molly!" he said simply. "I've known her and loved her ever since she was a hot-tempered, imperious little girl--which is all she is now. Engaged ... and engaged to Morrison! It's a plain case of schoolgirl infatuation!" He was lost in wonder, uneasy wonder it seemed, for after a period of musing he brought out: "They'll cut each other's throats inside six months. Or Molly'll cut her own. What under the sun was her grandfather thinking of?"

Sylvia said gravely, "Girls' grandfathers have such an influence in their marriages."

He smiled a rueful recognition of the justice of her thrust and then fell into silence.

The road did not climb up now, but led along the side of the mountain.

Through the dense woods the sky-line, first guessed at, then clearly seen between the thick-standing tree-trunks, sank lower and lower.

"We are approaching," said Page, motioning in front of them, "the jumping-off place." They pa.s.sed from the tempered green light of the wood and emerged upon a great windy plateau, carpeted thickly with deep green moss, flanked right and left with two mountain peaks and roofed over with an expanse of brilliant summer sky. Before them the plateau stretched a mile or more, wind-swept, sun-drenched, with an indescribable bold look of great alt.i.tude; but close to them at one side ran a parapet-like line of tumbled rock and beyond this a sheer descent. The eye leaped down abrupt slopes of forest to the valley they had left, now a thousand feet below them, jewel-like with mystic blues and greens, tremulous with heat. On the n.o.ble height where they stood, the wind blew cool from the sea of mist-blue peaks beyond the valley.

Sylvia was greatly moved. "Oh, what a wonderful spot!" she said under her breath. "I never dreamed that anything could be--" She burst out suddenly, scarcely knowing what she said, "Oh, I wish my _mother_ could be here!" She had not thought of her mother for days, and now hardly knew that she had spoken her name. Standing there, poised above the dark richness of the valley, her heart responding to those vast airy s.p.a.ces by an upward-soaring sweep, the quick tears of ecstasy were in her eyes. She had entirely forgotten herself and her companion. He did not speak. His eyes were on her face.

She moved to the parapet of rock and leaned against it. The action brought her to herself and she flashed around on Page a grateful smile. "It's a very beautiful spot you've brought me to," she said.

He came up beside her now. "It's a favorite of mine," he said quietly.

"If I come straight through the woods it's not more than a mile from my farm. I come up here for the sunsets sometimes--or for dawn."

Sylvia found the idea almost too much for her. "_Oh!_" she cried--"dawn here!"

"Yes," said the man, smiling faintly. "It's all of that!"

In her life of plains and prairies Sylvia had never been upon a great height, had never looked down and away upon such reaches of far valley, such glorious ma.s.ses of sunlit mountain; and beyond them, giving wings to the imagination, were mountains, more mountains, distant, incalculably distant, with unseen hollow valleys between; and finally, mountains again, half cloud, melting indistinguishably into the vaporous haze of the sky. Above her, sheer and vast, lay Hemlock Mountain, all its huge bulk a sleeping, pa.s.sionless calm. Beyond was the solemnity of Windward Mountain's concave sh.e.l.l, full to the brim with brooding blue shadows, a well of mystery in that day of wind-blown suns.h.i.+ne. Beneath her, above her, before her, seemingly the element in which she was poised, was s.p.a.ce, illimitable s.p.a.ce. She had never been conscious of such vastness, she was abashed by it, she was exalted by it, she knew a moment of acute shame for the pettiness of her personal grievances. For a time her spirit was disembarra.s.sed of the sorry burden of egotism, and she drank deep from the cup of healing which Nature holds up in such instants of beat.i.tude. Her eyes were s.h.i.+ning pools of peace....

They went on in a profound silence across the plateau, the deep, soft moss bearing them up with a tough elasticity, the sun hot and l.u.s.ty on their heads, the sweet, strong summer wind swift and loud in their ears, the only sound in all that enchanted upland spot. Often Sylvia lifted her face to the sky, so close above her, to the clouds moving with a soundless rhythm across the sky; once or twice she turned her head suddenly from one side to the other, to take in all the beauty at one glance, and smiled on it all, a vague, sunny, tender smile. But she did not speak.

As she trod on the thick moss upspringing under her long, light step, her advance seemed as buoyant as though she stepped from cloud to cloud....

When they reached the other side, and were about to begin the descent into Lydford valley, she lingered still. She looked down into the valley before her, across to the mountains, and, smiling, with half-shut eyes of supreme satisfaction, she said under her breath: "It's Beethoven--just the blessedness of Beethoven! The valley is a legato pa.s.sage, quiet and flowing; those far, up-p.r.i.c.king hills, staccato; and the mountains here, the solemn chords."

Her companion did not answer. She looked up at him, inquiringly, thinking that he had not heard her, and found him evidently too deeply moved to speak. She was startled, almost frightened, almost shocked by the profundity of his gaze upon her. Her heart stood still and gave a great leap. Chiefly she was aware of an immense astonishment and incredulity. An hour before he had never seen her, had never heard of her--and during that hour she had been barely aware of him, absorbed in herself, indifferent. How could he in that hour have ...

He looked away and said steadily, "--and the river is the melody that binds it all together."

Sylvia drew a great breath of relief. She had been the victim of some extraordinary hallucination: "--with the little brooks for variations on the theme," she added hastily.

He held aside an encroaching briar, stretching its th.o.r.n.y arm across the path. "Here's the beginning of the trail down to Lydford," he said. "We will be there in twenty minutes. It's almost a straight drop down."

CHAPTER XXVIII

SYLVIA ASKS HERSELF "WHY NOT?"

If Sylvia wondered, as she dropped down the heights to the valley, what her reception might be at her aunt's ceremonious household when she entered escorted by a strange hatless man in blue overalls, her fancy fell immeasurably short of the actual ensuing sensation. Mrs.

Marshall-Smith, her stepson, Felix Morrison, and old Mr. Sommerville were all sitting together on the wide north veranda, evidently waiting to be called to luncheon when, at half-past one, the two pedestrians emerged through a side wicket in the thick green hedge of spruce, and advanced up the path, with the free, swinging step of people who have walked far and well. The effect on the veranda was unimaginable.

Sheer, open-mouthed stupefaction blurred for an instant the composed, carefully arranged masks of those four exponents of decorum. They gaped and stared, unable to credit their eyes.

And then, according to their natures, they acted. Mrs. Marshall-Smith rose quickly, smiled brilliantly, and stepped forward with welcoming outstretched hands. "Why, Sylvia dear, how delightful! What an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Page!"

Old Mr. Sommerville fairly bounded past Sylvia, caught the man's arm, and said in an anxious, affectionate, startled voice, "Why, Austin!

Austin! Austin!"

Morrison rose, but stood quietly by his chair, his face entirely expressionless, palpably and correctly "at attention." He had not seen Sylvia since the announcement of his engagement the day before. He gave her now a graceful, silent, friendly salute from a distance as she stood by her aunt, he called out to her companion a richly cordial greeting of "Well, Page. This is luck indeed!" but he indicated by his immobility that as a stranger he would not presume to go further until the first interchange between blood-kin was over.

As for Arnold, he neither stirred from his chair, nor opened his mouth to speak. A slow smile widened on his lips: it expanded. He grinned delightedly down at his cigarette, and up at the ceiling, and finally broke into an open laugh of exquisite enjoyment of the scene before him.

Four people were talking at once; Mr. Sommerville, a dismayed old hand still clutching at the new-comer, was protesting with extreme vigor, and being entirely drowned out by the others. "Of course he can't stay--as he _is!_ I'll go home with him at once! His room at my house is always ready for him!--fresh clothes!--No, no--impossible to stay!"