SOON, he saw, she too left the car, and passed him, apparently ignorant
of his presence. But, upon her return, she stopped, and indicated
with her foot some feathery plants growing in a ditch by the road.
“Horsetails,” she declared; “they are Paleozoic... millions of years
old.”
“They look fresh and green still,” he observed. She glanced at him
coldly, but his expression was entirely serious. “I mean the species
of course. Father has fossils of the Devonian period... they were trees
then.” She chose a place upon the wall, ten feet or more from him, and
sat with insolent self-possession, whistling an inconsequential tune.
There was absolutely no pose about her, he decided; she possessed a
masculine carelessness in regard to him. She leaned back, propped upon
her arms, and the frank, flowing line of her full young body was like
the June day in its uncorseted freedom and beauty.
“If you will get that package from the confectioner's--” she suggested
finally. She unfolded the paper, and exposed a row of small cakes, which
she divided rigorously in two; rewrapping one division she held it out
toward him.
“No, no,” he protested seriously. “I'm not hungry.”
“It's past two,” she informed him, “and we can't possibly be back in
time for luncheon. I'd rather not hold this out any longer.” He relieved
her without further words. “Two brioche and two babas,” she enumerated.
He resumed his place, and then consumed the cakes without further
speech.
“The study of biology,” she informed him later, with a gravity
appropriate to the subject, “makes a great many small distinctions seem
absurd. When you get accustomed to thinking in races, and in millions
of years, the things your friends fuss about seem absurd. And so, if you
like, why, smoke.”
It was his constant plight that, between the formal restrictions of his
position, and the vigorous novelty of her speech, Anthony was constantly
at a loss. “Perhaps,” he replied inanely; “I know nothing about those
things.”
She flashed over him a candid, amber gaze that singularly resembled her
father's. “You are not at all acquisitive,” she informed him; “and it's
perfectly evident that you are the poorest sort of chauffeur. You drive
very nicely,” she continued with severe justice. “One could trust you
in a crisis; but it is little things that make a chauffeur, and in the
little things,” she paused to indicate a globe of cigarette smoke that
instantly dissolved, “you are like--that.”
He moodily acknowledged to himself the truth of her observation, but
such acumen he considered entirely unnecessary in one so young; he did
not think it becoming. He contrasted her, greatly to her detriment, with
the elusive charm of Eliza Dreen; the girl before him was too vivid, too
secure; he felt instinctively that she was entirely free from the bonds,
the conventions, that held the majority of girls within recognized,
convenient limits. Her liberty of mind upset a balance to which both
heredity and experience had accustomed him. The entire absence of a
tacitly recognized masculine superiority subconsciously made him uneasy,
and he took refuge in imponderable silence.
“Besides,” she continued airily, “you are too physically normal to
think, all normal people are stupid.... You are like one of those wood
creatures in the classic pastorals.”
A faint grin overspread Anthony's countenance; among so many
unintelligible words he had regained his poise--this was the usual, the
familiar feminine chatter, endless, inconsequential, by means of which
all girls presented the hopeless tangle of their thoughts and emotions;
its tone had deceived him only at the beginning.
In the stillness which followed other blackbirds, equally within shot,
winged over the apple tree; the shadow of the boughs crept farther
and farther down the road. She rose vigorously. “I must get back,” she
announced. She remained silent during the return, but Anthony, with the
sense of direction cultivated during countless days in the fields and
swales, found the way without hesitation.
When she left the car he slowly backed and circled to the carriage
house. As he splashed body and wheels with water, polished the metal,
dried and dusted the cushions, the crisp, cool voice of Annot Hardinge
rang in his ears. He divined something of her isolated existence, her
devotion to the absorbed, kindly man who was her father, and speculated
upon her matured youth. She recalled his sister Ellie, for whose
inflexible integrity he cherished a deep-seated admiration; but both
left him cold before the poignant tenderness of Eliza... Eliza, the
unforgettable, who loved him.