"Wilna?" I said.
"Yes, Mr. Smith?" as though aroused from agreeable meditation.
But I didn't know exactly what to say, and I remained uneasily silent,
thinking about that man Green and his twenty-four years, and his
profession, and the bottom of the crater, and Wilna--and striving to
satisfy myself that there was no logical connection between any of these.
"I think," said I, "that I'll take a bucket of salad to your father."
Why I should have so suddenly determined to ingratiate myself with the
old grouch I scarcely understood: for the construction of a salad was my
very best accomplishment.
Wilna looked at me in a peculiar manner, almost as though she were
controlling a sudden and not unpleasant inward desire to laugh.
Evidently the finer and more delicate instincts of a woman were divining
my motive and sympathizing with my mental and sentimental perplexity.
So when she said: "I don't think you had better go near my father," I was
convinced of her gentle solicitude in my behalf.
"With a bucket of salad," I whispered softly, "much may be accomplished,
Wilna." And I took her little hand and pressed it gently and
respectfully. "Trust all to me," I murmured.
She stood with her head turned away from me, her slim hand resting limply
in mine. From the slight tremor of her shoulders I became aware how
deeply her emotion was now swaying her. Evidently she was nearly ready to
become mine.
But I remained calm and alert. The time was not yet. Her father had had
his prunes, in which he delighted. And when pleasantly approached with a
bucket of salad he could not listen otherwise than politely to what I
had to say to him. Quick action was necessary--quick but diplomatic
action--in view of the imminence of this young man Green, who evidently
was _persona grata_ at the bungalow of this irritable old dodo.
Tenderly pressing the pretty hand which I held, and saluting the
finger-tips with a gesture which was, perhaps, not wholly ungraceful,
I stepped into the kitchen, washed out several heads of lettuce, deftly
chopped up some youthful onions, constructed a seductive French dressing,
and, stirring together the crisp ingredients, set the savoury masterpiece
away in the ice-box, after tasting it. It was delicious enough to draw
sobs from any pig.
When I went out to the veranda, Wilna had disappeared. So I unfolded and
set up some more box-traps, determined to lose no time.
Sunset still lingered beyond the chain of western mountains as I went out
across the grassy plateau to the cornfield.
Here I set and baited several dozen aluminium crow-traps, padding the
jaws so that no injury could be done to the birds when the springs
snapped on their legs.
Then I went over to the crater and descended its gentle, grassy slope.
And there, all along the borders of the vapoury wall, I set box-traps for
the lithe little denizens of the fire, baiting every trap with a handful
of fresh, sweet clover which I had pulled up from the pasture beyond the
cornfield.
My task ended, I ascended the slope again, and for a while stood there
immersed in pleasurable premonitions.
Everything had been accomplished swiftly and methodically within
the few hours in which I had first set eyes upon this extraordinary
place--everything!--love at first sight, the delightfully lightning-like
wooing and winning of an incomparable maiden and heiress; the discovery
of the fire creatures; the solving of the emerald problem.
And now everything was ready, crow-traps, fire-traps, a bucket of
irresistible salad for Blythe, a modest and tremulous avowal for Wilna as
soon as her father tasted the salad and I had pleasantly notified him of
my intentions concerning his lovely offspring.
Daylight faded from rose to lilac; already the mountains were growing
fairy-like under that vague, diffuse lustre which heralds the rise of the
full moon. It rose, enormous, yellow, unreal, becoming imperceptibly
silvery as it climbed the sky and hung aloft like a stupendous arc-light
flooding the world with a radiance so white and clear that I could very
easily have written verses by it, if I wrote verses.
Down on the edge of the forest I could see Blythe on his camp-stool,
madly besmearing his moonlit canvas, but I could not see Wilna anywhere.
Maybe she had shyly retired somewhere by herself to think of me.
So I went back to the house, filled a bucket with my salad, and started
toward the edge of the woods, singing happily as I sped on feet so light
and frolicsome that they seemed to skim the ground. How wonderful is the
power of love!
When I approached Blythe he heard me coming and turned around.
"What the devil do _you_ want?" he asked with characteristic civility.
"I have brought you," said I gaily, "a bucket of salad."
"I don't want any salad!"
"W-what?"
"I never eat it at night."