|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 37
A lone pine, a wild geranium, a lark or Joan's garden where the
heliotrope grew; they were sparks to a fire of inspiration that came
forth in song.
There was one song he sang most often.
"What is it, Kenny?" Joan asked one sunset when Kenny on the farm porch
was finding the subtleties of color for her in the darkening valley below
them and the western sky above the hills.
"What's what, Arbutus, dear?" he asked with guile.
The "dear" didn't bother her. It was frequently "Hannah, dear!" and
"Hetty, dear!" and Hughie was often "Hughie, darlin'."
"Why," asked Joan, "do you call me Arbutus?"
"Because you're like one," he said gently.
"And what was the song?"
"'My Love's an Arbutus,'" said Kenny demurely. He knew at once that he
must not step so far ahead again. She looked a little frightened. Kenny
instantly called her attention to a gap in the range of hills to the west.
"Like the Devil's Bit in Ireland," he said. "There the devil, poor lad,
bit a chunk out of a mountain and not liking the morsel over well,
treated it as you and I would treat a cherry pit."
Joan laughed.
"True." said Kenny, "every word of it. I myself have seen the chunk he
threw away. Tis the Rock of Cashel. He's been bitin' again over there,
I take it. To-morrow you and I will go down into the valley, seek the
unappetizin' rock he rejected and look it over."
"I think most likely," said Joan, "the farm's built on it."
And then the sound of the horn came over the water and Joan ran.
Kenny as usual cursed the horn.
With the valley filled with the first haze of twilight and the hills
still aglow, Kenny sat on the farm porch and brooded. He had not meant
to frighten her. The Arbutus gallantry he had considered strategic and
poetic. There was the baffling thing about her that kept him piqued.
She was always shy and elusive. Of convention she knew nothing at all;
yet like the shrine in the garret she kept herself apart and precious.
Always she seemed fluttering just ahead of him, like a will-of-the-wisp.
If he touched her hand ever so gently she drew it away. The caresses
most girls he had known would have understood and accepted as part of the
summer idyl, he knew, instinctively, would be evaded.
Ah! the truth of it was she was an incomprehensible torment of delight.
For she roamed the fields and woods with him gladly, lunched in glens
remote it seemed from everything but the call of that infernal horn,
yielded to the enthusiasm of his maddest moods, romped with him like a
kitten or a child--and kept miraculously the poise and reticence of a
woman. She talked freely of her brother; never of her uncle.
He was quick and impressionable, this gifted Irishman, with a trace of
the melancholy of his race and all of its cheer. Melancholy was the one
mood in which Joan did not seem to flutter just ahead. Always then she
followed, gentle, compassionate and shyly tender. He was quick to find
it out and wily enough to feign it when in reality his heart was as light
and buoyant as a feather.
Save for the call of the horn beneath the willow, the girl was as free to
come and go as an oriole in the orchard; for that he was grateful. But
whether Adam Craig's attitude was one of trust or cold indifference, he
could not fathom. With Hughie and Hannah it was different. They loved
Joan and trusted him. That trust, he resolved, should not be futile. He
could justify it and he would. Joan, of course, was foredoomed to know
the delirium of the heart that had come to him that day beneath the
willow. Fate could not deny him requital. She never had. Equally, of
course, Joan's delirium, like his own, would not last. It could not.
The thought hurt his vanity a little.
It remained for him who had aroused it to linger here at the farm until
the fancy had run its course and she was quite herself! Even if, long
before, his own madness had waned. That was apt to happen, for he was
handicapped by an earlier start. Yes, he would linger. And he would be
scrupulous and honorable and kind. Joan was young and a woman. She
would nurse the shadows of her summer's idyl long after the idyl was
gone, and would mistake them for reality. There with his wider
experience and the sad memory of much ebb and now he could be helpful.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|