_The Inner Woods_
In the fireplace there were birch logs ready to be kindled. At her
suggestion he put a match to them for the cheeriness they gave while
she lighted a green shaded lamp which radiated a soft glow over the
heavy mahogany library table upon which it stood. The room slowly
warmed out of the gloom and shadows as though the three walls closed in
nearer to the fire. Just outside the radius of warmth the bookbindings
shone gold in the dark. In a frame six inches deep the ghostly
outlines of a portrait of Horace Arsdale flickered near and away as the
flames rose and fell.
Miss Arsdale came to a chair a little to the left of Donaldson,
brushing back from her eyes the soft hair which in the firelight shone
like burnished copper. He smiled at the strange chance which led her
to seat herself almost directly in front of the grandfather's clock, so
that facing her he faced the pendulum which ticked out to him the cost
of each new picture he had of her. It was now within a few minutes of
midnight--one half of his first day gone before he had more than raised
the glass to his lips. He felt for a moment the petulant annoyance of
a man imposed upon--as though Time were playing him unfairly; until
today the hours had dragged heavily enough; now they sped like arrows.
[Illustration: _Facing her he faced the pendulum which ticked out to
him the cost of each new picture he had of her_]
And yet he did not count the time as ill spent. Though he had
anticipated nothing of this sort, he found himself enjoying the
situation with as deep a satisfaction as anything which had so far
occurred in the swift hours which had sped by since noon. Outside lay
the quick-moving throngs which he so loved, in his room there waited
for him the gentle marine, the bit of brown ivory, the luxury of deep
blooming roses, and yet he was not conscious of missing them. Those
things had been waiting for him all through the long tedious years, and
this--well perhaps this, too, had been waiting for him. He wondered if
this effect was produced by the surroundings which were much as he
would have chosen them if he had possessed the means from the first.
The sober good taste of the room, its quiet richness, its air of being
a part of several generations of men of culture pleased him.
He turned to the girl again. She too was one with this past of the
room. The straight nose with its shell-like nostrils as sensitive to
her thoughts as her eyes, the sharp cut corners of her mouth, and the
fine hair over her white forehead dated back to women whose features
had long been refined through their souls. All that he wished to crowd
into a week, they had possessed for a hundred years or more. It showed
even in this girl who had not yet come into the fulness of her
womanhood.
She sat uneasily far forward on her chair, leaning toward the flames as
though fearful of what might happen next. The light played upon her
hair and her white face, making her seem almost a thing of some
lighter, spirit world.
"I don't feel that I ought to detain you," she said, breaking the
silence which he for his part would have been willing to continue,
"but"--she looked up at him with a half-shamed smile--"I have n't the
courage to refuse your kindness."
"You have the right to accept it merely as a woman," he assured her.
"But I should n't need help," she answered with some spirit. "I don't
know what has come over me. I 'm just afraid of being alone."
"It is n't good for any one to be alone."
"You know?"
He answered slowly,
"Yes, I know."
Did any one know better? The curse of it had driven him to secure at
any cost the broader comradeship of men and women which, if it does not
come through some more subtle means such as she now seemed to suggest
to him, can be found in that cruder relationship always at the command
of those with some fortune. The thought swept over him that if he had
known her before yesterday, he could never have felt alone again. But
what had he to do with yesterday any more than with to-morrow?
"It is n't that there is anything to be afraid of here," she protested,
to ward off any suspicions that might be lurking in his mind. "It is
n't that. I 'm perfectly safe."
He nodded, though he by no means agreed with her.
"It would be just the same," she insisted with almost too much
emphasis, "if Ben were well. I think I must have become panic stricken
with myself."
He frowned. Then he broke out fiercely,
"It's the feel of all the silent people in the city around you,
perhaps. They are ghosts, these strangers,--human ghosts with fingers
which clutch your throat if you are n't careful. You sense them in New
York as nowhere else."
She glanced up quickly,
"That's an odd idea," she replied. "The loneliness comes then because
you are n't really alone."
"Yes--here in New York."
"But that is n't true of the woods," she asserted.
"You have been much among the trees?" he asked quickly, his voice
softening.
"Not very much. But enough to learn to love them. Especially the
inner woods."
He knew what she meant--the forests where things still grow for the sky
and the beasts and not for man; where man may come as guest but not as
master.
"No," he answered, "one never feels alone there."
"In there," she faltered, trying to express vague thoughts which yet
were most real to her, "everything seems to be normal."
He studied her with increasing interest and a growing sense of
comradeship. Her eyes were wonderful as she sat chin in hands, gazing
into the fire, lost in some pleasant picture of the past. When he
looked into them, they caught him up again as they had done in the
café. They swept him to the rhythm of some haunting music back to the
days when his blood had run strong--back to the beauty of the hills at
twenty when he had not felt big enough by himself to absorb their full
marvel. In a dim mystical way he had realized even then that the
keenest edge of their meaning was escaping him. The blue sky above the
trees had seemed like the laughing eyes of a woman and the rustle of
leaves like the whisper of her skirt. He had laughed back boldly then,
feeling in the pride of his strength little need of them.
Now the eyes of this girl, and the soft modeling of every line of her,
filled him with an infinite tenderness for those forgotten hours. It
was as though she cleared away the intervening years and made him face
the fragrant Spring again. Without diminishing one whit of his
vigorous enjoyment of life, she added an element of refinement to it.
Half in fear of what this might mean, he shook himself free of the
mood, and moving a chair to the other side of the fire sat down.
Behind her the old clock still ticked as though in malicious
appreciation of the situation.
She clung to the subject of the woods as though in it she found relief.
She wished to hear more of it from him. It made him appear less a
stranger. When he spoke of these things he went back into her own
past--into the most beautiful, intimate part of it. He was the only
man other than Mr. Arsdale that she could have endured to associate
with those days. She felt at ease with him there, and this made her
feel that he had more right to be here now. His eager face softened
when he spoke of those things. There was in it then none of that
fierceness which had for a moment startled her when he spoke of the
loneliness he had found here in New York. At that moment he had looked
like a man at bay. He had challenged life bitterly. It was not in
keeping with the kindly generous strength of his mouth and chin.
"Tell me," she asked him, "of some of your days in the woods."
Yesterday he could not have complied. Those days had seemed dead and
buried. Now he was in the mood for it. He found it pleasant, sitting
here, to go back.
Each hour stood out as bright with sunshine as a Sorolla. It was as
though they had sprung to life at a call from her--had come to bring
her ease. He talked at random of brooks that start nowhere and go
nowhere, save over white stones and past watercress; of thin ribbed
ferns and of scarlet bunchberries. He told her of a stream he knew,
where, if you lie very quiet in the moss, you see speckled trout dart
over white pebbles into the darker water beneath the lichened rocks.
He told her of the shallows, and pools, and falls you find if you keep
to its banks for the miles it sings by the grave trees. He told her of
mountain tops where he had lain near the stars and watched the noon
clouds sweep half a county with their big shadows. He told her of old
wood roads he had followed through the young maples and birches and
evergreens and pines--roads which lay silent all day long and all night
long, month after month, ready for the feet which might tread it once
in a year.
So she took him back again to the redolent shadows, back to the
silences where dreams are born. Here he came upon other things--the
old path gay flowered with illusions which led him toward that future--
A future? What had he to do with a future? Was he rushing headlong
thus soon into another pit as bad as that from which he had just
escaped? The Future was Now--not one minute, not one second beyond.
He was here before an open fire, with this girl in the background, with
beautiful rugs and pictures about him, with a great seething,
struggling, future-chained horde outside, and the eternal stars
overhead. In the midst of it he was free, and this was enough for him
to know. Now! Now! The girl was now and her eyes were now and the
flush of her velvet cheek was now!