THE SONG OF THE PINE-WOOD SPARROW
With the dawn a laggard breeze came winging drowsily in from the
southern sea, the first thing astir in the spectral world of palm and
villa. Warm and deliciously fragrant, it swept the stiff wet Bermuda
grass upon the lawn of the Sherrill villa at Palm Beach, rustled the
crimson hedge of hibiscus, caught the subtle perfume of jasmine and
oleander and swept on to a purple-flowered vine on the white walls of
the villa, a fuller, richer thing for the ghost-scent of countless
flowers.
Into this gray-white world of glimmering coquina and dew-wet palm rode
presently the slim, brisk figure of a girl astride a fretful horse. A
royal palm dripped cool gray rain upon her as she galloped past to the
shell-road looming out of the velvet stillness ahead like a dim, white
ghost-trail.
The gray ocean murmured, the still gray lagoon was asleep! Here and
there a haunting, elusive splash of delicate rose upon the silver
promised the later color of a wakening world. It was a finer, quieter
world, thought Diane, than the later day world of white hot sunlight.
With pulses atune to the morning's freshness, the girl galloped rapidly
along the shell-road, the clattering thud of her horse's hoofs
startling in the quiet. As yet only a sleepy bird or two had begun to
twitter. There was a growing noise of wind in the grass and palms.
A century back it seemed to this girl in whom the restless gypsy tide
was subtly fretting, she had left Johnny and the van at Jacksonville to
come into this sensuous, tropical world of color, fashionable life and
lazy days.
Coloring delicately, the metallic gray bosom of the lake presently
foretold the sunrise with a primrose glow. When at length the glaring
white light of the sun struck sparks from the dew upon the pine and
palmetto, Diane was riding rapidly south in quest of the Florida
flat-woods. There was a veritable paradise of birds in the pine
barren, Dick Sherrill had said, robins and bluebirds, flickers and
woodpeckers with blazing cockades, shrikes and chewinks.
It was an endless monotony of pine trees, vividly green and far apart,
into which Diane presently rode. A buzzard floated with uptilted wings
above the sparse woodland to the west. A gorgeous butterfly,
silver-spangled, winged its way over the saw palmetto and sedge between
the trees to an inviting glade beyond, cleft by a shallow stream.
Swamp, jungle, pine and palmetto were vocal with the melody of many
birds.
Diane reined in her horse with a thrill. This was Florida, at last,
not the unreal, exotic brilliance of Palm Beach. Here was her father's
beloved Flowerland which she had loved as a child. Here were pines and
tall grass, sun-silvered, bending in the warm wind, and the song of a
pine-wood sparrow!
From the scrub ahead came his quiet song, infinitely sweet, infinitely
plaintive like the faint, soft echo of a fairy's dream. A long note
and a shower of silver-sweet echoes, so it ran, the invisible singer
seeming to sing for himself alone. So might elfin bells have pealed
from a thicket, inexpressibly low and tender.
Diane sat motionless, the free, wild grace of her seeming a part of the
primeval quiet. For somehow, by some twist of singer's magic, this
Florida bird was singing of Connecticut wind and river, of dogwood on a
ridge, of water lilies in the purple of a summer twilight, of a spot
named forever in her mind--Arcadia.
Now as the girl listened, a beautiful brown sprite of the rustling pine
wood about her, a great flood of color crept suddenly from the brown
full throat to the line of her hair, and the scarlet that lingered in
her cheeks was wilder than the red of winter holly.
Surely--surely there was no reason under Heaven why the little bird
should sing about a hay-camp!
But sing of it he did with a swelling throat and a melodic quiver of
nerve and sinew, and a curious dialogue followed.
"A hay-camp is a very foolish thing, to be sure!" sang the bird with a
dulcet shower of plaintive notes.
"To be sure," said the voice of the girl's conscience, "to be sure it
is. But how very like him!"
"But--but there was the bullet--"
"I have often thought of it," owned the Voice.
"A gallant gentleman must see that his lady comes to no harm. 'Tis the
way of gallant gentlemen--"
"Hum!"
"And he never once spoke of his discomfort on the long hot road, though
a hay-camp is subject to most singular mishaps."
"I--I have often marveled."
"He is brave and sturdy and of charming humor--"
"A superlative grain of humor perhaps, and he's very lazy--"
"And fine and frank and honorable. One may not forget Arcadia and the
rake of twigs."
"One may not forget, that is very true. But he seeks to make himself
out such a very great fool---"
"He cloaks each generous instinct with a laughing drollery. Why did
you hum when you cooked his supper and called to him through the trees?"
"I--I do not know."
"'Twas the world-old instinct of primitive woman!"
"No! No! No! It was only because I was living the life I love the
best. I was very happy."
"Why were you happier after the storm?"
"I--I do not know."
"You have scolded with flashing eyes about the hay-camp--"
"But--I--I did not mind. I tried to mind and could not--"
"That is a very singular thing."
"Yes."
"Why have you not told him of the tall sentinel you have furtively
watched of moonlit nights among the trees, a sentinel who slept by day
upon a ridiculous bed of hay that he might smoke and watch over the
camp of his lady until peep o' day?"
"I--do not know."
"You are sighing even now for the van and a camp fire--for the hay-camp
through the trees--"
"No!" with a very definite flash of perversity.
"Where is this persistent young nomad of the hay-camp anyway?"
"I--I have wondered myself."
But with a quiver of impatience the horse had pawed the ground and the
tiny bird flew off to a distant clump of palmetto.
Diane rode hurriedly off into the flat-woods.