"Fixed her hip?"
"No; arranged for her to go to New York. They do that sort of thing
there. I see no reason why the child should not walk."
"Oh, do you think so?" she exclaimed, softly. "You make me very happy,
Mr. Burleson."
He looked her full in the face for just the space of a second.
"And you make me happy," he said.
She laughed, apparently serene and self-possessed, and turned up the
hill, he following a fraction of a length behind.
In grassy hollows late dandelions starred the green with gold, the red
alder's scarlet berries flamed along the road-side thickets; beyond,
against the sky, acres of dead mullein stalks stood guard above the
hollow scrub.
"Do you know," she said, over her shoulder, "that there is a rose in
bloom in our garden?"
"Is there?" he asked, without surprise.
"Doesn't it astonish you?" she demanded. "Roses don't bloom up here in
October."
"Oh yes, they do," he muttered.
At the gate they dismounted, he silent, preoccupied, she uneasily alert
and outwardly very friendly.
"How warm it is!" she said; "it will be like a night in June with the
moon up--and that rose in the garden.... You say that you are coming
this evening?"
"Of course. It is your last evening."
"Our last evening," she repeated, thoughtfully.... "You said ..."
"I said that I was going South, too. I am not sure that I am going."
"I am sorry," she observed, coolly. And after a moment she handed him
the bridle of her mare, saying, "You will see that she is forwarded when
your friend asks for her?"
"Yes."
She looked at the mare, then walked up slowly and put her arms around
the creature's silky neck. "Good-bye," she said, and kissed her. Turning
half defiantly on Burleson, she smiled, touching her wet lashes with her
gloved wrist.
"The Arab lady and the faithful gee-gee," she said. "I know The Witch
doesn't care, but I can't help loving her.... Are you properly
impressed with my grief?"
There was that in Burleson's eyes that sobered her; she instinctively
laid her hand on the gate, looking at him with a face which had suddenly
grown colorless and expressionless.
"Miss Elliott," he said, "will you marry me?"
The tingling silence lengthened, broken at intervals by the dull
stamping of the horses.
After a moment she moved leisurely past him, bending her head as she
entered the yard, and closing the gate slowly behind her. Then she
halted, one gloved hand resting on the closed gate, and looked at him
again.
There is an awkwardness in men that women like; there is a _gaucherie_
that women detest. She gazed silently at this man, considering him with
a serenity that stunned him speechless.
Yet all the while her brain was one vast confusion, and the tumult of
her own heart held her dumb. Even the man himself appeared as a blurred
vision; echoes of lost voices dinned in her ears--the voices of
children--of a child whom she had known when she wore muslin frocks to
her knees--a boy who might once have been this man before her--this
tall, sunburned young man, awkward, insistent, artless--oh, entirely
without art in a wooing which alternately exasperated and thrilled her.
And now his awkwardness had shattered the magic of the dream and left
her staring at reality--without warning, without the courtesy of a
"_garde a vous!_"
And his answer? He was waiting for his answer. But men are not gods to
demand!--not highwaymen to bar the way with a "Stand and deliver!" And
an answer is a precious thing--a gem of untold value. It was hers to
give, hers to withhold, hers to defend.
"You will call on us to say good-bye this evening?" she asked, steadying
her voice.
A deep color stung his face; he bowed, standing stiff and silent until
she had passed through the open door of the veranda. Then, half blind
with his misery, he mounted, wheeled, and galloped away, The Witch
clattering stolidly at his stirrup.
Already the primrose light lay over hill and valley; already the
delicate purple net of night had snared forest and marsh; and the wild
ducks were stringing across the lakes, and the herons had gone to the
forest, and plover answered plover from swamp to swamp, plaintive,
querulous, in endless reiteration--"Lost! lost! she's lost--she's
lost--she's lost!"
But it was the first time in his life that he had so interpreted the
wild crying of the killdeer plover.
* * * * *
There was a gown that had been packed at the bottom of a trunk; it was a
fluffy, rather shapeless mound of filmy stuff to look at as it lay on
the bed. As it hung upon the perfect figure of a girl of twenty it was,
in the words of the maid, "a dhream an' a blessed vision, glory be!" It
ought to have been; it was brand-new.
[Illustration: "THERE WAS THAT IN BURLESON'S EYES THAT SOBERED HER"]
At dinner, her father coming in on crutches, stared at his
daughter--stared as though the apparition of his dead wife had risen to
guide him to his chair; and his daughter laughed across the little
table--she scarcely knew why--laughed at his surprise, at his little
tribute to her beauty--laughed with the quick tears brimming in her
eyes.
Then, after a silence, and thinking of her mother, she spoke of
Burleson; and after a while of the coming journey, and their new luck
which had come up with the new moon in September--a luck which had
brought a purchaser for the mare, another for the land--all of it,
swamp, timber, barrens--every rod, house, barn, garden, and stock.
Again leaning her bare elbows on the cloth, she asked her father who the
man could be that desired such property. But her father shook his head,
repeating the name, which was, I believe, Smith. And that, including the
check, was all they had ever learned of this investor who had wanted
what they did not want, in the nick of time.
"If he thinks there is gas or oil here he is to be pitied," said her
father. "I wrote him and warned him."
"I think he replied that he knew his own business," said the girl.
"I hope he does; the price is excessive--out of all reason. I trust he
knows of something in the land that may justify his investment."
After a moment she said, "Do you really think we may be able to buy a
little place in Florida--a few orange-trees and a house?"
His dreamy eyes smiled across at her.
"Thank God!" she thought, answering his smile.
There was no dampness in the air; she aided him to the garden, where he
resumed his crutches and hobbled as far as the wonderful bush that bore
a single belated rose.
"In the South," he said, under his breath, "there is no lack of
these.... I think--I think all will be well in the South."
He tired easily, and she helped him back to his study, where young
Burleson presently found them, strolling in with his hands in the
pockets of his dinner-jacket.
His exchange of greetings with Miss Elliott was quietly formal; with her
father almost tender. It was one of the things she cared most for in
him; and she walked to the veranda, leaving the two men alone--the man
and the shadow of a man.
Once she heard laughter in the room behind her; and it surprised her,
pacing the veranda there. Yet Burleson always brought a new anecdote to
share with her father--and heretofore he had shared these with her, too.
But now!--
Yet it was by her own choice she was alone there, pacing the moonlit
porches.
The maid--their only servant--brought a decanter; she could hear the
ring of the glasses, relics of better times.... And now better times
were dawning again--brief, perhaps, for her father, yet welcome as
Indian summer.
After a long while Burleson came to the door, and she looked up,
startled.
"Will you sing? Your father asks it."
"Won't you ask me, too, Mr. Burleson?"
"Yes."
"But I want to show you my rose first. Will you come?--it is just a
step."
He walked out into the moonlight with her; they stood silently before
the bush which had so capriciously bloomed.
"Now--I will sing for you, Mr. Burleson," she said, amiably. And they
returned to the house, finding not a word to say on the way.
The piano was in decent tune; she sat down, nodding across at her
father, and touched a chord or two.
"The same song--the one your mother cared for," murmured her father.
And she looked at Burleson dreamily, then turned, musing with bent head,
sounding a note, a tentative chord. And then she sang.
A dropping chord, lingering like fragrance in the room, a silence, and
she rose, looking at her father. But he, dim eyes brooding, lay back
unconscious of all save memories awakened by her song. And presently she
moved across the room to the veranda, stepping out into the moonlit
garden--knowing perfectly well what she was doing, though her heart was
beating like a trip-hammer, and she heard the quick step on the gravel
behind her.
She was busy with the long stem of the rose when he came up; she broke
it short and straightened up, smiling a little greeting, for she could
not have spoken for her life.
"Will you marry me?" he asked, under his breath.