In July the sun is still an early riser, but long before he was up next
day a succession of raps on the door woke Gethryn, and a voice outside
inquired, “Are you going fishing with me today, you lazy beggar?”
“Colonel!” cried Rex, and springing up and throwing open the door, he
threatened to mingle his pajamas with the natty tweeds waiting there in
a loving embrace. The colonel backed away, twisting his white mustache.
“How do, Reggy! Same boy, eh? Yes. I drove from Schicksalsee this
morning.”
“This morning? Wasn’t it last night?” said Rex, looking at the shadows
on the opposite mountain.
“And I am going to get some trout,” continued the colonel, ignoring the
interruption. “So’s Daisy. See my new waterproof rig?”
“Beautiful! but—is it quite the thing to wear a flower in one’s fishing
coat?”
“I’m not aware—” began the other stiffly, but broke down, shook his
seal ring at Rex, and walking over to the glass, rearranged the bit of
wild hyacinth in his buttonhole with care.
“And now,” he said, “Daisy and I will give you just three quarters of
an hour.” Rex sent a shower from the water basin across the room.
“Look out for those new waterproof clothes, Colonel.”
“I’ll take them out of harm’s way,” said the colonel, and disappeared.
Before the time had expired Rex stood under the beech tree with his rod
case and his creel. The colonel sat reading a novel. Mrs Dene was
pouring out coffee. Ruth was coming down a path which led from a low
shed, the door of which stood wide open, suffering the early sunshine
to fall on something that lay stretched along the floor. It was a stag,
whose noble head and branching antlers would never toss in the sunshine
again.
“Only think!” cried Ruth breathlessly, “Federl shot a stag of ten this
morning at daybreak on the Red Peak, and he’s frightened out of his
wits, for only the duke has a right to do that. Federl mistook it for a
stag of eight. And they’re in the velvet, besides!” she added rather
incoherently. “ _What_ luck! Poor Federl! I asked him if that meant
_strafen,_ and he said he guessed not, only _zanken._”
“What’s ‘strafen’ and what’s ‘zanken,’ Daisy?” asked the Colonel,
pronouncing the latter like “z” in buzz.
Ruth went up to her father and took his face between her hands,
dropping a light kiss on his eyebrow.
“ _Strafen_ is when one whips bad boys and t—s—_zanken_ is when one
only scolds them. Which shall we do to you, dear? Both?”
“We’ll take coffee first, and then we’ll see which there’s time for
before we leave you hemming a pocket handkerchief while Rex and I go
trout fishing.”
“Such parents!” sighed Ruth, nestling down beside her father and
looking over her cup at Rex, who gravely nodded sympathy.
After breakfast, as Ruth stood waiting by the table where the fishing
tackle lay, perfectly composed in manner, but unable to keep the color
from her cheek and the sparkle of impatience from her eye, Gethryn
thought he had seldom seen anything more charming.
A soft gray Tam crowned her pretty hair. A caped coat, fastened to the
throat, hung over the short kilt skirt, and rough gaiters buttoned down
over a wonderful little pair of hobnailed boots.
“I say! Ruth! what a stunner you are!” cried he with enthusiasm. She
turned to the rod case and began lifting and arranging the rods.
“Rex,” she said, looking up brightly, “I feel about sixteen today.”
“Or less, judging from your costume,” said her mother. “Schicksalsee
isn’t Rangely, you know. I only hope the good people in the little
ducal court won’t call you theatrical.”
“A theatrical stunner!” mused Ruth, in her clearest tones. “It is good
to know how one strikes one’s friends.”
“The disciplining of this young person is to be left to me,” said the
colonel. “Daisy, everything else about you is all wrong, but your frock
is all right.”
“That is simple and comprehensive and reassuring,” murmured Ruth
absently, as she bent over the fly-book with Gethryn.
After much consultation and many thoughtful glances at the bit of water
which glittered and dashed through the narrow meadow in front of the
house, they arranged the various colored lures and leaders, and
standing up, looked at Colonel Dene, reading his novel.
“What? Oh! Come along, then!” said he, on being made aware that he was
waited for, and standing up also, he dropped the volume into his creel
and lighted a cigar.
“Are you going to take that trash along, dear?” asked his daughter.
“What trash? The work of fiction? That’s literature, as the gentleman
said about Dante.”
“Rex,” said Mrs Dene, buttoning the colonel’s coat over his snowy
collar, “I put this expedition into your hands. Take care of these two
children.”
She stood and watched them until they passed the turn beyond the
bridge. Mr Blumenthal watched them too, from behind the curtains in his
room. His leer went from one to the other, but always returned and
rested on Rex. Then, as there was a mountain chill in the morning air,
he crawled back into bed, hauling his night cap over his generous ears
and rolling himself in a cocoon of featherbeds, until he should emerge
about noon, like some sleek, fat moth.
The anglers walked briskly up the wooded road, chatting and laughing,
with now and then a sage and critical glance at the water, of which
they caught many glimpses through the trees. Gethryn and Ruth were soon
far ahead. The colonel sauntered along, switching leaves with his rod
and indulging in bursts of Parisian melody.
“Papa,” called Ruth, looking back, “does your hip trouble you today, or
are you only lazy?”
“Trot along, little girl; I’ll be there before you are,” said the
colonel airily, and stopped to replace the wild hyacinth in his coat by
a prim little pink and white daisy. Then he lighted a fresh cigar and
started on, but their voices were already growing faint in the
distance. Observing this, he stopped and looked up and down the road.
No one was in sight. He sat down on the bank with his hand on his hip.
His face changed from a frown to an expression of sharp pain. In five
minutes he had grown from a fresh elderly man into an old man, his face
drawn and gray, but he only muttered “the devil!” and sat still. A big
bronze-winged beetle whizzed past him, z—z—ip! “like a bullet,” he
thought, and pressed both hands now on his hip. “Twenty-five years
ago—pshaw! I’m not so old as that!” But it was twenty-five years ago
when the blue-capped troopers, bursting in to the rescue, found the
dandy “—-th,” scorched and rent and blackened, still reeling beneath a
rag crowned with a gilt eagle. The exquisite befeathered and gold laced
“—-th.” But the shells have rained for hours among the “Dandies”—and
some are dead, and some are wishing for death, like that youngster
lying there with the shattered hip.
Colonel Dene rose up presently and relighted his cigar; then he flicked
some dust from the new tweeds, picked a stem of wild hyacinth, and
began to whistle. “Pshaw! I’m not so old as all that!” he murmured,
sauntering along the pleasant wood-road. Before long he came in sight
of Ruth and Gethryn, who were waiting. But he only waved them on,
laughing.
“Papa always says that old wound of his does not hurt him, but it does.
I know it does,” said Ruth.
Rex noted what tones of tenderness there were in her cool, clear voice.
He did not answer, for he could only agree with her, and what could be
the use of that?
They strolled on in silence, up the fragrant forest road. Great
glittering dragonflies drifted along the river bank, or hung quivering
above pools. Clouds of lazy sulphur butterflies swarmed and floated,
eddying up from the road in front of them and settling down again in
their wake like golden dust. A fox stole across the path, but Gethryn
did not see him. The mesh of his landing net was caught just then in a
little gold clasp that he wore on his breast.
“How quaint!” cried Ruth; “let me help you; there! One would think you
were a French legitimist, with your fleur-de-lis.”
“Thank you”—was all he answered, and turned away, as he felt the blood
burn his face. But Ruth was walking lightly on and had not noticed. The
fleur-de-lis, however, reminded her of something she had to say, and
she began again, presently—
“You left Paris rather suddenly, did you not, Rex?”
This time he colored furiously, and Ruth, turning to him, saw it. She
flushed too, fearing to have made she knew not what blunder, but she
went on seriously, not pausing for his answer:
“The year before, that is three years ago now, we waited in Italy, as
we had promised to do, for you to join us. But you never even wrote to
say why you did not come. And you haven’t explained it yet, Rex.”
Gethryn grew pale. This was what he had been expecting. He knew it
would have to come; in fact he had wished for nothing more than an
opportunity for making all the amends that were possible under the
circumstances. But the possible amends were very, very inadequate at
best, and now that the opportunity was here, his courage failed, and he
would have shirked it if he could. Besides, for the last five minutes,
Ruth had been innocently stirring memories that made his heart beat
heavily.
And now she was waiting for her answer. He glanced at the clear profile
as she walked beside him. Her eyes were raised a little; they seemed to
be idly following the windings of a path that went up the opposite
mountainside; her lips rested one upon the other in quiet curves. He
thought he had never seen such a pure, proud looking girl. All the
chivalry of a generous and imaginative man brought him to her feet.
“I cannot explain. But I ask your forgiveness. Will you grant it? I
won’t forgive myself!”
She turned instantly and gave him her hand, not smiling, but her eyes
were very gentle. They walked on a while in silence, then Rex said:
“Ever since I came, I have been trying to find courage to ask pardon
for that unpardonable conduct, but when I looked in your dear mother’s
face, I felt myself such a brute that I was only fit to hold my tongue.
And I believed,” he added, after a pause, “that she would forgive me
too. She was always better to me than I deserved.”
“Yes,” said Ruth.
“And you also are too good to me,” he continued, “in giving me this
chance to ask your pardon.” His voice took on the old caressing tone in
which he used to make peace after their boy and girl tiffs. “I knew
very well that with you I should have a stricter account to settle than
with your mother,” he said, smiling.
“Yes,” said Ruth again. And then with a little effort and a slight
flush she added:
“I don’t think it is good for men when too many excuses are made for
them. Do you?”
“No, I do not,” answered Rex, and thought, if all women were like this
one, how much easier it would be for men to lead a good life! His heart
stopped its heavy beating. The memories which he had been fighting for
two years faded away once more; his spirits rose, and he felt like a
boy as he kept step with Ruth along the path which had now turned and
ran close beside the stream.
“Now tell me something of your travels,” said Ruth. “You have been in
the East.”
“Yes, in Japan. But first I stopped a while in India with some British
officers, nice fellows. There was some pheasant shooting.”
“Pheasants! No tigers?”
“One tiger.”
“You shot him! Oh! tell me about it!”
“No, I only saw him.”
“Where?”
“In a jungle.”
“Did you fire?”
“No, for he was already dead, and the odor which pervaded his resting
place made me hurry away as fast as if he had been alive.”
“You are a provoking boy!”
Rex laughed. “I did shoot a cheetah in China.”
“A dead one?”
“No, he was snarling over a dead buck.”
“Then you do deserve some respect.”
“If you like. But it was very easy. One bullet settled him. I was fined
afterward.”
“Fined! for what?”
“For shooting the Emperor’s trained cheetah. After that I always looked
to see if the game wore a silver collar before I fired.”
Ruth would not look as if she heard.
Rex went on teasingly: “I assure you it was embarrassing, when the
pheasants were bursting cover, to be under the necessity of inquiring
at the nearest house if those were really pheasants or only Chinese
hens.”
“Rex,” exclaimed Ruth, indignantly, “I hope you don’t think I believe a
word you are saying.”
They had stopped to rest beside the stream, and now the colonel
sauntered into view, his hands full of wild flowers, his single
eyeglass gleaming beside his delicate straight nose.
“Do you know,” he asked, strolling up to Ruth and tucking a cluster of
bluebells under her chin, “do you know what old Hugh Montgomery would
say if he were here?”
“He’d say,” she replied promptly, “that ‘we couldn’t take no traout
with the pesky sun a shinin’ and a brilin’ the hull crick.’”
“Yes,” said Rex. “Rise at four, east wind, cloudy morning, that was
Hugh. But he could cast a fly.”
“Couldn’t he!” said the colonel. “‘I cal’late ter chuck a bug ez fur ez
enny o’ them city fellers, ’n I kin,’ says Hugh. Going to begin here,
Rex?”
“What does Ruth think?”
“She thinks she isn’t in command of this party,” Ruth replied.
“It will take us until late in the afternoon to whip the stream from
here to the lowest bridge.” Rex smiled down at her and pushed back his
cap with a boyish gesture.
She had forgotten it until that moment. Now it brought a perfect flood
of pleasant associations. She had seen him look that way a hundred
times when, in their teens, they two had lingered by the Northern
Lakes. Her whole face changed and softened, but she turned away,
nodding assent, and went and stood by her father, looking down at him
with the bantering air which was a family trait. The lively colonel had
found a sunny log on the bank, where he was sitting, leisurely joining
his rod.
“Hello!” he cried, glancing up, “what are you two amateurs about? As
usual, I’m ready to begin before Rex is awake!” and stepping to the
edge he landed his flies with a flourish in a young birch tree. Rex
came and disengaged them, and he received the assistance with perfect
self-possession.
“Now see the new waterproof rig wade!” said Ruth, saucily.
“Go and wade yourself and don’t bully your old father!” cried the
colonel.
“Old! this child old!”
“Oh! come along, Ruth!” called Rex, waiting on the shore and falling
unconsciously into the tone of sixteen speaking to twelve.
For answer she slipped the cover from her slender rod and dexterously
fitted the delicate tip to the second joint.
“Hasn’t forgotten how to put a rod together! Wonderful girl!”
“Oh, I knew you were waiting to see me place the second joint in the
butt first!” She deftly ran the silk through the guides, and then
scientifically knotting the leader, slipped on a cast of three flies
and picked her way daintily to the river bank. As she waded in the
sudden cold made her gasp a little to herself, but she kept straight on
without turning her head, and presently stepped on a broad, flat rock
over which the water was slipping smoothly.
Gethryn waited near the bank and watched her as she sent the silk
hissing thirty feet across the stream. The line swished and whistled,
and the whole cast, hand fly, dropper and stretcher settled down
lightly on the water. He noticed the easy motion of the wrist, the
boyish pose of the slender figure, the serious sweet face, half shaded
by the soft woolen Tam.
Swish—h—h! Swish—h—h! She slowly spun out forty feet, glancing back at
Gethryn with a little laugh. Suddenly there was a tremendous splash,
just beyond the dropper, answered by a turn of the white wrist, and
then the reel fairly shrieked as the line melted away like a thread of
smoke. Gethryn’s eyes glittered with excitement, and the colonel took
his cigar out of his mouth. But they didn’t shout, “You have him! Go
easy on him! Want any help!” They kept quiet.
Cautiously, and by degrees, Ruth laced her little gloved fingers over
the flying line, and presently a quiver of the rod showed that the fish
was checked. She reeled in, slowly and steadily for a moment, and then,
whiz—z—z! off he dashed again. At seventy feet the rod trembled and the
trout was still. Again and again she urged him toward the shore,
meeting his furious dashes with perfect coolness and leading him
dexterously away from rocks and roots. When he sulked she gave him the
butt, and soon the full pressure sent him flying, only to end in a
furious full length leap out of water, and another sulk.
The colonel’s cigar went out.
At last she spoke, very quietly, without looking back.
“Rex, there is no good place to beach him here; will you net him,
please?” Rex was only waiting for this; he had his landing net already
unslung and he waded to her side.
“Now!” she whispered. The fiery side of a fish glittered just beneath
the surface. With a skillful dip, a splash, and a spatter the trout lay
quivering on the bank.
Gethryn quickly ended his life and held him up to view.
“Beautiful!” cried the colonel. “Good girl, Daisy! but don’t spoil your
frock!” And picking up his own rod he relighted his cigar and essayed
some conscientious casting on his own account. But he soon wearied of
the paths of virtue and presently went in search of a grasshopper, with
evil intent.
Meanwhile Ruth was blushing to the tips of her ears at Gethryn’s
praises.
“I never saw a prettier sight!” he cried. “You’re—you’re splendid,
Ruth! Nerve, judgment, skill—my dear girl, you have everything!”
Ruth’s eyes shone like stars as she watched him in her turn while he
sent his own flies spinning across a pool. And now there was nothing to
be heard but the sharp whistle of the silk and the rush of the water.
It seemed a long time that they had stood there, when suddenly the
colonel created a commotion by hooking and hauling forth a trout of
meagre proportions. Unheeding Rex’s brutal remarks, he silently
inspected his prize dangling at the end of the line. It fell back into
the water and darted away gayly upstream, but the colonel was not in
the least disconcerted and strolled off after another grasshopper.
“Papa! are you a bait fisherman!” cried his daughter severely.
The colonel dropped his hat guiltily over a lively young cricket, and
standing up said “No!” very loud.
It was no use—Ruth had to laugh, and shortly afterward he was seated
comfortably on the log again, his line floating with the stream, in his
hands a volume with yellow paper covers, the worse for wear, bearing on
its back the legend “Calman Levy, Editeur.”
Rex soon struck a good trout and Ruth another, but the first one
remained the largest, and finally Gethryn called to the colonel, “If
you don’t mind, we’re going on.”
“All right! take care of Daisy. We will meet and lunch at the first
bridge.” Then, examining his line and finding the cricket still there,
he turned up his coat collar to keep off sunburn, opened his book, and
knocked the ashes from his cigar.
“Here,” said Gethryn two hours later, “is the bridge, but no colonel.
Are you tired, Ruth? And hungry?”
“Yes, both, but happier than either!”
“Well, that was a big trout, the largest we shall take today, I think.”
They reeled in their dripping lines, and sat down under a tree beside
the lunch basket, which a boy from the lodge was guarding.
“I wish papa would come,” said Ruth, with an anxious look up the road.
“He ought to be hungry too, by this time.”
Rex poured her a cup of red Tyroler wine and handed her a sandwich.
Then, calling the boy, he gave him such a generous “Viertel” for
himself as caused him to retire precipitately and consume it with
grins, modified by boiled sausage. Ruth looked after him and smiled in
sympathy. “I wonder how papa got rid of the other one with the green
tin water-box.”
“I know; I was present at the interview,” laughed Rex. “Your father
handed him a ten mark piece and said, ‘Go away, you superfluous
Bavarian!’”
“In English?”
“Yes, and he must have understood, for he grinned and went.”
It was good to hear the ring of Ruth’s laugh. She was so happy that she
found the smallest joke delightful, and her voice was very sweet. Rex
lighted a cigarette and leaned back against a tree, in great comfort.
Ruth, perched on a log, watched the smoke drift and curl. Gethryn
watched her. They each cared as much for the hours they had spent in
the brook, and for their wet clothing, as vigorous, happy, and
imprudent youth ever cares about such things.
“So you are happy, Ruth?”
“Perfectly. And you?—But it takes more to make a spoiled young man
happy than—”
“Than a spoiled young woman? I don’t know about that. Yes, I—am—happy.”
Was the long puff of smoke ascending slowly responsible for the pauses
between his words? A slight shadow was in his eyes for one moment. It
passed, and he turned on her his most charming smile, as he repeated,
“Perfectly happy!”
“Still no colonel!” he went on; “when he comes he will be tired. We
don’t want any more trout, do we? We have eighteen, all good ones.
Suppose we rest and go back all together by the road?” Ruth nodded,
smiling to see him fondle the creel full of shining fish, bedded on
fragrant leaves.
Rex’s cap lay beside him, his head leaned back against the tree, his
face was turned up to the bending branches. Presently he closed his
eyes.
It might have been one minute, or ten. Ruth sat and watched him. He had
grown very handsome. He had that pleasant air of good breeding which
some men retain under any and all circumstances. It has nothing to do
with character, and yet it is difficult to think ill of a man who
possesses it. When she had seen him last, his nose was too near a snub
to inspire much respect, and his mustache was still in the state of
colorless scarcity. Now his hair and mustache were thick and tawny, and
his features were clear and firm. She noticed the pleasant line of the
cheek, the clean curve of the chin, the light on the crisp edges of his
close-cut hair—the two freckles on his nose, and she decided that that
short, straight nose, with its generous and humorous nostrils, was
wholly fascinating. As girls always will, she began to wonder about his
life—idly at first, but these speculations lead one sometimes farther
than one was prepared to go at the start. How much of his delightful
manner to them all was due to affection, and how much to kindliness and
good spirits? How much did he care for those other friends, for that
other life in Paris? Who were the friends? What was the life? She
looked at him, it seemed to her, a long time. Had he ever loved a
woman? Was he still in love, perhaps, with someone? Ruth was no child.
But she was a lady, and a proud one. There were things she did not
choose to think about, although she knew of their existence well
enough. She brought herself up at this point with a sharp pull, and
just then Gethryn, opening his eyes, smiled at her.
She turned quickly away; to her perfect consternation her cheeks grew
hot. Bewildered by her own confusion, she rose as she turned, and
saying how lovely the water looked, went and stood on the bridge,
leaning over. Rex was on his feet in an instant, so covered with
confusion too, that he never saw hers.
“I say, Ruth, I haven’t been such a brute as to fall asleep! Indeed I
haven’t! I was thinking of Braith.”
“And if you had fallen asleep you wouldn’t be a brute, you tired boy!
And who is Braith?”
Ruth turned smiling to meet him, restored to herself and thankful for
the diversion.
“Braith,” said Rex earnestly. “Braith is the best man in this wicked
world, and my dearest friend. To whom,” he added, “I have not written
one word since I left him two ears ago.”
Ruth’s face fell. “Is that the way you treat your dearest friends?”—and
she thought: “No wonder one is neglected when one is only an old
playmate!”—but she was instantly ashamed of the little bitterness, and
put it aside.
“Ah! you don’t know of what we are capable,” said Gethryn; and once
more a shadow fell on his face.
A familiar form came jauntily down the road. Ruth hastened to meet it.
“At last, Father! You want your luncheon, poor dear!”
“I do indeed, Daisy!”
The colonel came as gallantly up as if he had thirty pounds of trout to
show instead of a creel that contained nothing but a novel by the
newest and wickedest master of French fiction. He made a mild attempt
to perjure himself about a large fish that had somehow got away from
him, but desisted and merely added that a caning would be good for Rex.
Tired he certainly was, and when he was seated on the log and Ruth was
bringing him his wine, he looked sharply at her and said, “You too,
Daisy; you’ve done enough for the first day. We’ll go home by the
road.”
“It is what I was just proposing to her,” said Rex.
“Yes, you are both right,” said Ruth. “I am tired.”
“And happy?” laughed Rex. But perhaps Ruth did not hear, for she spoke
at the same time to her father.
“Dear, you haven’t told Rex yet how you got the invitation to shoot.”
“Oh, yes! It was at an officers’ dinner in Munich. The duke was there
and I was introduced to him. He spoke of it as soon as they told him we
were stopping here.”
“He’s a brick,” said Rex, rising. “Shall we start for home, Colonel?
Ruth must be tired.”
When they turned in at the Forester’s door, the colonel ordered Daisy
to her room, where Mrs Dene and their maid were waiting to make her
luxuriously comfortable with dry things, and rugs, and couches, and
cups of tea that were certainly not drawn from the Frau Förster’s
stores. Tea in Germany being more awful than tobacco, or tobacco more
awful than tea, according as one cares most for tea or tobacco.
The colonel and Rex sat after supper under the big beech tree. Ruth,
from her window, could see their cigars alight, and, now and then, hear
their voices.
Rex was telling the colonel about Braith, of whom he had not ceased
thinking since the afternoon. He went to his room early and wrote a
long letter to him.
It began: “You did not expect to hear from me until I was cured. Well,
you are hearing from me now, are you not?”
And it ended: “Only a few more weeks, and then I shall return to you
and Paris, and the dear old life. This is the middle of July. In
September I shall come back.”