Dolly came suddenly out of the fringe of the trees. It was dusk; the lake
was aflash with leaping trout. And she came to him across the darkened
meadow like a fawn panting for her retreat. He stood there petrified, but
as she neared, felt his arms open in an irresistible and large movement;
she nestled within them, her head on his heart.
They stood there long, without speaking a word, in the center of the
dusky meadow, by the sparkling lake. Her face was on his breast; his arms
were about her, but his eyes were looking straight ahead into the
obscurity. He could feel her palpitate softly against him, and a
tenderness like a warm pool was collecting in his heart.
"Dolly!" he said at length.
But she did not answer; only pushed farther into his embrace in a blind
little snuggling movement like that of a puppy. He dropped his eyes down
upon her, slyly. He could see her shoulders, agitated as if she were
weeping, and a wisp of her golden hair, and one tip of a rosy ear; and
then, nearer, he saw the furry toque with its white aigrette.
"You little Cossack!" he said, a bit huskily.
Again there was a silence; then he felt the vibration of her muffled
voice against his chest. "Do you like it?" she asked timidly.
"It's dandy," he said.
The silence that followed was like that of a kitten after a cup of cream.
Then the voice sounded again within the depths of his embrace.
"O, Goosie," she sobbed; "I've been so miserable!"
"Poor little girl," he growled, above there in the dark; "poor little
girl!"
"All my money is gone, Goosie--and the janitor was impolite and treated
me dreadfully, and oh, Goosie, I've had such a terrible time!"
"Yes, yes, yes," he said soothingly (I'll kill that janitor, he thought,
gnashing his teeth).
"Goosie," began the voice again; "you won't drive me away, will you? You
won't drive me away; I can stay to-night, can't I? It's so dark, and so
cold! And in the morning, if you still don't want me, I'll--I'll go away,
Goosie. I'll go away and never, never bother you any more, Goosie; never!
But let me stay to-night; Goosie, don't drive me away to-night!"
"Good God!" groaned Charles-Norton, horrified at the very possibility,
and suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of the enormity of his past conduct.
"Good God, Dolly! don't, don't----"
"I can stay--then--to-night?" she asked, with a glimmer of hope, of hope
that cannot believe itself. "I can stay to-night, Goosie?"
"Oh, Dolly, you can stay to-night, you can stay to-morrow night, you
can stay always, Dolly, poor little Dolly," moaned the agonized
Charles-Norton. "We'll stay here, always, together, Dolly. Never will I
move from you again, Dolly; Dolly, my little wife, my love, my----"
Dolly snuggled back close. "Oh, Goosie," she said, "if you let me stay,
I'll be so good! I won't bother you at all, Goosie. You can do just what
you want; I'll let you have--anything! I won't bother you, you won't know
I'm here. I'll just hide around and take care of you, Goosie, I'll do
_anything_! If only you'll let me stay, Goosie!"
"Come," he said, not daring to give his voice much of a chance; "come;
let us go in."
The little nose suddenly popped out like a squirrel's out of its hole.
She no longer wept, though he could see a tear still at the end of one of
her lashes, agleam in the dark. She raised her head out of his arms and
looked about her. "Oh," she cried, "is that your house? What a cute
baby-house! It's pretty here, isn't it?"
"It is beautiful!" he said enthusiastically. "We'll be happy here. Come,"
he said; and very close, her head upon his shoulders, his arm about her
waist, they went slowly across the meadow to the cabin.
It was pleasant, somehow, the next morning, to loll about with trailing
wings, undesirous of flight. The cabin, the meadow, had taken on a
certain intimacy, a coziness; it was pleasant to remain there all day,
upon earth, idle-winged.
Charles-Norton had his morning swim alone after vain attempts to entice
Dolly, her eyes still full of blue sleep, into the crystal waters. Then
he fished from his rock--twice as long as he usually fished. And when he
returned with his string of rainbows, Dolly, uncovering the dutch-oven
which he had bought on his arrival, but the mystery of which he had never
mastered, proudly showed him the cracked golden dome of a swelling loaf
of bread. Its warm fragrance mingled with the pungent puffs coming from
the curved nozzle of the coffee-pot, set in the glowing coals. He gave
her the fish, all cleaned, and rolling them in corn-meal, she laid them
delicately in the sizzling frying-pan, each by the side of a marbled
strip of bacon.
There was no doubt that this breakfast was an improvement on breakfasts
that had gone before. Bread is mighty good when one has not had any for
nearly two months; and warm golden bread just out of the oven and made by
Dolly is more than mighty good. The coffee had undeniably an aroma that
it had not had of past mornings. And as you held up to the light,
delicately between thumb and finger, a little trout with crisply-curved
tail, and slipped it head first between eager white teeth, your eyes
smiled into two other eyes (like blue stars), smiling back at you over
just such another troutlet, golden crisp, entering in successive
movements between just such eager teeth (small pearly ones, these).
Oh, you Charles-Norton!
He wore a blanket on his back, undulating from his shoulders, over his
wings, to the ground. Dolly had put it there, fearing he would catch
cold. Now and then, by some reflex action of which Charles-Norton was
unconscious, the wings stirred uneasily to the burden and let it slip to
the ground, upon which Dolly, springing up with a laugh, quickly replaced
it. This happened so often that it became a game.
After breakfast Dolly, instead of throwing the dishes in a shallow spot
of the lake, as it was the habit of Master Charles-Norton, placed them in
a pot of boiling water, at the bottom of which, with wonder-eyes, he saw
them miraculously dissolve to brightness. "You're a genius, Dolly," he
said. She laughed, a silver peal that filled the clearing, then, going
into the cabin, returned with his pipe all filled. Nicodemus came to them
for his salt, then wandered off again. They sat side by side, their backs
against the cabin-wall, the meadow before them, sloping to the lake; he
smoked, and she was silent. The sun had risen. It inundated the western
slopes with a cascade of light; here and there on the crest glaciers
flashed signals; far to the west the plain palpitated liquidly; and
above, the sky domed very high, a miracle of pellucid azure. A big sigh
escaped Charles-Norton, with a blue wafture of smoke. "Isn't this
beautiful?" he said; "isn't it beautiful?"
She said nothing, and so he repeated, "Isn't it beautiful?" And then,
curious of her silence, he turned to her. She was looking about her, at
the trees, at the lake, and the great crags above, and as she looked,
with an unconscious movement, she withdrew closer to him. "It's awfully
big," she said, and her voice was almost a whisper.
"It's big with beauty," he said. "Look at the lake," he went on,
detailing with the pride of a suburban proprietor; "isn't it silvery and
fresh and clean!"
"It's cold, isn't it?" said Dolly.
"And the crest up there. Look at it. It is sculptured--domes, spires,
castles. And those gothic arches. They are like joined hands; the granite
prays. And see the glisten of that glacier in the haze, like a star in
the veil of a bride! It's all beautiful!"
"They're terribly big mountains, aren't they?" said Dolly.
"See the plain away down there. It seems to heave slowly, like the flood
after the rain had ceased."
"Do people live there?" asked Dolly.
"And the sky; did you ever see such sky! And the meadow here, how fresh
and lush; and the pines, and the cabin, and the lake--isn't it all quiet
and peaceful?"
She was silent, and after a while he turned to her. A tear was trembling
at the end of one of her long lashes. "Goosie," she whispered, and she
snuggled up against him; "Goosie, isn't it a bit--lonely here?"
"_We_ won't find it lonely," he answered stoutly, and drew her close
within his arms.
The day drawled on, slowly and deliciously. "Let's take a little walk,"
said Dolly, after a while.
"All right," said Charles-Norton, "I guess I still know how. I haven't
walked much lately."
"I suppose not," said Dolly, hesitatingly. They were going side by side
across the meadow, and Charles-Norton could feel her looking at him out
of the corner of her eye. "I suppose--you have been--doing something
else."
"Yes," laughed Charles-Norton, flushing a bit; "yes--something else."
Somehow they did not look at each other for a time after that, and walked
a bit apart.
They drew together again little by little as they wandered over the
clearing, in a close examination of their domain, which Charles-Norton,
with his passion for big flights and sweeping outlooks, had up to now
neglected. They found a miniature cascade that purled over a mossy log; a
cave, so small and clean and regular that it seemed not the work of the
big Nature about them, but of delicate, elfin hands; and then, on the
edge of forest and grass, a flower, a trembling white chalice upon the
virginal bosom of which one small touch of color burned like a flame. And
thus, little step after little step, they went from little wonder to
little wonder. Dolly liked small things; it was the microscopic aspect of
Nature that touched her heart; she had an adjective all her own for such:
they were "baby" things--baby flowers, baby brooks, baby stars. This
appealed less to Charles-Norton, hungry for big sweeps. And even now, he
caught himself yawning once, and casting a look at the crest far away.
In the afternoon, in the full warmth of the clear sun, he inveigled her
into the lake for a swim. They splashed in the silver waters like merman
and mermaid; and when, after a glistening disappearance within the cabin,
Dolly emerged again, she was tucked in a fuzzy bathrobe that made her
look like a little bear.
They sat long afterward on a warm slope in the sun. Crickets hopped about
them; Charles-Norton at intervals heard by his side Dolly's musical
giggle as one of them struck her. A bird on a long twig balanced above
them, and for a time a squirrel chattered at them in mock scolding from
the top of a pine. Little by little Charles-Norton sank into a profundity
of well-being. He could see ahead, now, his life stretching placid and
colored, solved at last, with both Dolly and the wings, uniting love and
freedom, the ecstasies of flight with the tenderness of home----
"Goosie," said Dolly; "let's go in."
The sun was gone. It had sunk into the plain, far off. "Wait," he
whispered, looking toward the crest, inflamed with living light. The
peaks gleamed, the domes glowed, the glaciers flashed, the whole sky-line
crackled with a great band of color. Then swiftly from the plain a shadow
ran up the mountain sides, extinguished, one after the other, peak, and
dome, and glacier; it went up toward the clouds with its long swift lope:
the clouds became burned rags.
"Let us go in," said Dolly.
"Wait," he said.
The night was pouring in over the crest, filling the meadow, the dome
above; a velvety blueness palpitated vaguely about them; a star, as if
touched by an unseen torch, suddenly sprang to light.
"Wait," murmured Charles-Norton; "it is beautiful at this hour."
But Dolly pressed against him with a little shiver. "I'm cold, Goosie,"
she cried; "let us go in."
They rose, went down the slope and across the meadow. Along the grass a
frigid little haze was forming; it was true that it was cold. If
Charles-Norton had been a practical man he would have observed that for
the last two weeks, in fact, the nights had been growing more and more
cold--which might have introduced a disturbing factor in his dream of the
coming days. But Charles-Norton, as has been seen, was not a practical
man.
They sat within, by a glowing fire. "It's nice to be home," said Dolly.
"It's fine," said Charles-Norton, stoutly.