THE MEETING IN THE GREENWOOD.
WITH her glorious mahogany-colored hair loose in masses on her
shoulders, with her eyes inquiring, and her lips slightly parted as she
stole forward, thrilled with the exquisite beauty of Adam’s playing, in
such a temple of perfect harmonies, Garde appeared like the very spirit
of the forest, drawn from sacred bowers by the force of love that
vibrated the instrument’s strings.
No bark of pine tree was browner than her eyes; no berries were redder
than her lips, nor the color that climbed upward in her cheeks, the
white of which was as that of the fir beneath its outer covering. As
some forest dryad, maidenly and diffident, she held her hand above her
heart when Adam looked up and discovered her presence.
The man leaped to his feet, like one startled from sleep. It almost
seemed as if a dream had brought him this radiant figure. No word came,
for a moment, to his lips.
“Why—it’s you!” said Garde.
“Garde!—Miss—Mistress Merrill!” said Adam, stammering. “By my hilt,
I—the—the wonder is ’tis you.”
“Not at all,” corrected Garde, recovering something that passed for
composure. “I come here frequently, to gather herbs and simples for
Goody Dune, but for you to be here, and playing—like that——”
“Yes,” agreed Adam, when he had waited in vain for her to finish,
“perhaps it is an intrusion. You—you came away from the town early.”
“Why did you come here to play?” she asked. Her own nature so yearned
over the forest and things beautiful, her own emotions were so wrought
upon by the sublimity of earth’s chancels of silence, that she felt her
soul longing for its kindred companion, who must be one reverent, yet
joyous, where Nature ruled. She wanted Adam to pour forth the tale of
his brotherhood with the trees and the loneliness of his heart, that
would make him thus to play in such a place and at such a time. While
she looked at him, the love she had fostered from her childhood was
matured in one glorious blush that welled upward from her bosom to her
very eyes themselves.
Adam had looked at her but once. It was a long look, somewhat sad, as of
one parting with a dear companion. In that moment he had known how
wholly and absolutely he loved her. His pretended doubts of the night
before had fled as with the darkness. The daylight in her eyes and on
her face had made him henceforth a sun-worshiper, since the sun revealed
her in such purity of beauty.
In the great delight which had bounded in his breast at seeing her
there, he had momentarily forgotten his conversation with Wainsworth.
When she asked him why he had come to the woods, he would fain have
knelt before her, to speak of his love, to tell of his anguish and to
plead his cause, by every leap of his heart, but he had remembered his
friend and his old Indian schooling in stoicism gathered upon him,
doubtless for the very presence of the firs and pines, so solemn and
Indianesque about him. He put on a mask he had worn over melancholy
often.
“Why, I came here for practise, of which I am sadly in need,” he said.
“When once I played before King Pirate and his court of buccaneers, I
was like to be hung for failing, after a mere six hours of steady
scraping at the strings. If you came for simples, verily you have found
a simple performer and simple tunes.”
Garde was painfully disappointed in him. His flippancy had, as he
intended it should, deceived her. She shut that little door of her heart
through which her soul had been about to emerge, ready to reveal itself
to and to speak welcome to its mate. She did not cease to love him,
emotional though she was, for love is like a tincture, or an attar,—once
it is poured out, not even an ocean of water can so dilute it as to
leave no trace of its fragrance, and not until the last drop in the
ocean is drained can it all be removed or destroyed. No, she was pained.
She desired to retreat, to take back the overture which, to her mind,
had been a species of abandon of her safeguards and so patent that she
could not conceive that Adam had failed to note its significance. Yet
she gave him up for a soulless Pan reluctantly. That playing, which had
drawn her, psychically, physically, irresistibly to his side, could have
no part with things flippant. It had been to her like a heart-cry, which
it seemed that her heart alone could answer. And when she had found that
it was Adam playing—her Adam—she had with difficulty restrained herself
from running to him and sobbing out the ecstasy suddenly awakened within
her. The memory of the music he had made was still upon her and she was
timidly hopeful again when she said:
“How long have you been practising here?”
Adam mistook this for a little barb of sarcasm. His mind was morbid on
the subject of Wainsworth and of Garde’s evasiveness of the evening
before. He put on more of the motley.
“Not half long enough,” he said, “by the violence I still do to melody;
and yet too long by half, since I have frightened the birds from the
forest. There is always too much of bad playing, but it takes much bad
practising to make a good performer. I am better at playing a jig. Shall
I try, in your honor?”
“Thank you, if you please, no, I would rather you would not,” said
Garde. It was her first Puritanical touch. If she had given him
permission to play his jig, very many things might have been altered,
for Adam would have revealed himself and would have opened her
heart-doors once again, such a mastery over everything debonair in his
nature would the violin have assumed, with its spell of deeper emotions,
inevitable—with Garde so near.
Adam laughed, well enough to appear careless. “I commend your judgment,”
he said, “though I have always thought, even after last night,—ah, by
the way, where is your companion, Mistress Prudence somebody?”
He had parried his own tendency to get back to the tender subjects and
memories flooding his heart, but not in a manner to gladden Garde.
Indeed, the ring of artificiality in everything he said made her less
and less happy.
“Her name is Prudence Soam. She is my cousin, and she is at home,” said
Garde, quietly. “If you would care to see her again, I will tell her of
your wish.” She could readily understand how any one might like
Prudence, knowing what a sweet, good girl her cousin was, but it caused
her an acute pain to think she had cherished the image of Adam in her
heart for seven years, only to find now that he had been inconstant.
She suddenly thought of the meeting of the evening before. Adam’s
willingness to present her—in the presence of Prudence—with that
something which he had brought her from his first trip to Hispaniola,
appeared to her now in a light, not of his stupidity, but of his
deliberate intention to show her that he had not preserved a sacred
dream of their childhood friendship, as she had so fondly hoped he had.
She even wondered if he might not have seen, known and cared for
Prudence before. She concluded that he cared for Prudence now, and
certainly not for herself. Then she thought he might think of that
something, which he had wished so to give her—that something from
Hispaniola,—and she feared he might present it to her now. This would
have been too much to bear, under the circumstances.
Adam was indeed thinking on this very subject, but Wainsworth—his
friend—arose like a specter in his meditations, and all that Garde had
said had confirmed him in his belief of her coldness to himself, so that
he preferred to seem to forget the trinket, which would have been at
once the token of his love and constancy.
“Mistress Prudence Soam,” Adam repeated, replying to Garde’s last
remarks. “Indeed I should be but a sorry clod, not to wish to see her
again. Does she also come searching for simples?”
“No,” replied Garde, a little dully. “But I thank you for reminding me
that I must set about my task. Therefore I must bid you good day.”
Adam thought something would snap inside his breast. There was the
sunlight, streaming through the aisles of the trees; there was Garde,
whom he loved beyond anything of earth, setting off alone when he should
be at her side, culling her herbs, touching her hands as he gave her the
aromatic leaves that he too knew so well, and looking into Paradise
through her eyes, that had so danced when first he knew them. But what
of Wainsworth? What of the honor of a friend to a friend?
“Good day,” he echoed, with a mock gaiety that struck painfully on the
ears of both. “I trust your quest will be as successful as I could wish
your life to be happy.”
He hesitated a moment, for it was hard to part thus. Garde had hoped he
might volunteer to go along and carry the tiny basket she held on her
arm, for a woman’s love can never be so discouraged as not to have a new
little hope every other moment that something may happen to set matters
aright in spite of all. But Adam did not dare to prolong this test of
his honor to Wainsworth. He felt that his head was reeling, but with a
stately bow he took a final, lingering look at the sweetest vision he
had ever seen, and started away.
Garde, steadied by her pride, returned his bow and walked further into
the woods.
Adam felt that he must pause and turn; that the “Garde!” that welled up
from his heart would burst through his lips in spite of all he could do.
With his violin clasped beneath his arm, however, he conquered himself,
absolutely, and never so much as turned about again to see where the
wood-nymph had gone.
But Garde could not so slay her dearest impulse. She turned before she
had gone ten steps. Looking back, she saw Adam, bareheaded, crowned by
his golden ringlets,—through which the sunbeams were thrust like fingers
of gilt,—trailing his sword, clutching his violin, striding off in his
boots as lithely as a panther and bearing up under his faded brown coat
as proudly as a king.
“Oh, Adam!” she said, faintly, but he was already too far away to hear
the little wood-note which her voice had made.
He disappeared. She knew he would soon be clear of the trees.
Reluctantly at first, and then eagerly, though silently, she flitted
along from tree to tree, where he had gone, till at length she came to
the edge of the forest.
Adam, heavy with Wainsworth’s gold, was walking less buoyantly now. He
was far out on the flat, heading southward, not exactly toward Boston.
Garde watched him yearningly, going, going and never once looking
backward to where he had left her.
She could bear no more. She sank down on the moss at the foot of a tree,
and leaning against the gnarled old trunk, she covered her face with her
hands and cried, heart-brokenly.
Had she watched but a moment longer, she would have seen Adam halt,
slowly turn about, and with his hand at his lips gaze toward the woods
steadily for fully a minute. Then with a slow gesture he waved a kiss
back to where she was and once more went upon his way.
The man had no mind to walk through Boston in daylight, with his violin
naked in his hands. Keeping therefore southward, he came at length to
the upper part of the harbor. Here he engaged a boatman with a sloop to
convey him down to the ship-yard of Captain William Phipps.
The worthy ship-builder soon made him welcome.
“William,” said Adam, “I have replenished the treasury, as I said I
might, and I have made up my mind to join you in your treasure-hunting
expedition.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------