SOMETIMES early in the morning, and often at evening, Caleb Trench took
long walks alone with his dog. It was after sunset, in the sweet long
twilight of July, that he came up through the woods behind Colonel
Royall’s place, and approached the long elbow of the road, shadowed by
the tall walnuts and hickories, and clothed here and there with the
black-jack oak. Before him lay the beautiful valley. He could see the
curl of the mist below Paradise Ridge, and beyond, the long gray folds
of the distant mountains. He looked up toward the beaten trail that led
to Angel Pass, and he could perceive the fragrance of wild magnolias.
Shot, who was running ahead, stopped suddenly and stood at attention,
one shaggy ear erect. Then Caleb saw the gleam of a white dress, and
Miss Diana Royall appeared, walking toward them. Over her head the
green boughs locked, and in the soft light she had a beauty that seemed
to Trench more than the right of a girl so apparently heartless. He
would have passed by the other road, merely raising his hat, but she
called to him.
“Good evening, Mr. Trench,” she said, with that bewitching little
drawl of hers, which made her voice almost caressing and deceived the
unwary. “Your dog remembers me more often than you do.”
Caleb’s face stiffened. Oh, the mockery of women! “I remember you more
often than you remember me,” he replied courteously.
Diana bit her lip. She had not expected this, and she hated him for
it; yet he had never looked so strong and fine as he did to-night. In
the soft light the harsh lines were softened, the power remained, and
something of sweetness in the eyes. “Oh,” she said, “have I ever failed
to remember you?”
Trench made no direct reply, but smiled. Something in her way, at the
moment, was very girlish, the whim of a spoiled child. She had been
gathering some ferns, and she arranged them elaborately, standing in
the path. His attitude vexed her, his manner was so detached; she was
accustomed to adulation. She swept him a look from under her thick dark
lashes. “I remember dancing with you at Kitty Broughton’s ball,” she
observed.
“You were very kind,” he replied at once, “I remember it, too; you
danced with me twice.”
“Because I promised to dance if you asked me; I promised Judge Hollis,”
she said demurely.
“But the second?” Caleb was human, and his heart quickened under the
spell of her beauty. “I hope that was on my own account.”
“The second?” Diana rearranged the ferns. “I danced then because my
cousin did not wish me to,” she said.
Trench reddened. “I am sorry that you felt compelled to do it--twice,”
he said involuntarily, for he was angry.
“You are very rude,” replied Diana, unmoved.
“I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly, aware that he had been foolish
and lost his temper; “pray forgive me.”
“It’s a matter of no consequence,” she said sweetly.
His heart was filled with sudden wrath. Why need the girl be so brutal?
He did not know that Diana had been goaded by Mrs. Eaton and Jacob
until she was beyond reason; besides, his manner, which defied her,
was like tossing the glove at her feet. He had no appreciation of her
condescension, and he did not bear her flouting with meekness. Yet,
all the while, his strength and his repose made him immeasurably more
interesting than the young men of her acquaintance, which, of course,
was another reason to be unreasonable.
“I did not see you at the Wilton-Cheyneys,” she said agreeably,
pressing the ferns against her cheek.
“Quite naturally,” he replied coolly; “I was not asked.”
“Oh!”
There was a silence. The sweet soft twilight seemed to enfold them with
a touch like velvet; a Bob White whistled once in the stillness.
“Miss Royall.”
She looked up with her soft little smile, but his face froze it on her
lips. He looked stern and cold. “Yes?” she said, faintly startled.
“Why do you say such things to me? You know that I’m not asked, that
I’m an outsider. A poor Yankee shopkeeper, I believe your set calls me;
I do not know. Certainly I do not care; a man must live, you know, even
out of your class. I have a right to live. I also have a right to my
own pride. I am a gentleman.”
They stood looking at each other, the width of the woodland path
between them, and that indefinable, impalpable thing which is neither
sympathy nor antagonism but which, existing once between two souls,
can, never be forgotten,--a white flame that burns at once through all
barriers of misunderstanding, the divine spark of a love that is as far
beyond commonplace passion as the soul is above the body that it must
leave forever. The man felt it and bowed reluctantly before it; the
girl struggled and resisted.
“If I did not know that you were,” she said, as quietly as she could,
“I would not be here talking to you now. I’m afraid you think me very
ill mannered. The last was really thoughtlessness.”
He looked at her relentlessly. “But the first?”
She blushed scarlet. “I--I did not mean it.”
His eyes still searched her, but there was no tenderness in them; they
were cold and gray. “That is not quite true, Miss Royall.”
Diana winced; she felt ten years old and knew it was her own fault. “I
think it is you who are rude now,” she said, rallying, “but”--it choked
her, she held out her hand--“let us be friends.”
He shook his head slowly. “No,” he said, “that can’t be until you
are sure I am your equal. I’ve picked up crumbs long enough, Miss
Royall,--forgive me.”
She experienced a curious feeling of defeat, as her hand dropped at
her side. She was angry, yet she admired him for it. She remembered
that night when he brought the hateful six pennies and she had behaved
disgracefully. Would he always put her in the wrong? “I am sorry,” she
said haughtily; “I was offering you my friendship.”
He smiled bitterly. “Were you, or mocking me with it?”
“Mr. Trench!”
“Forgive me,” he said, in a low voice, but with less self-control, “I
came here a poor man; it was necessary to make my bread, and I would
have swept offices to do it. I asked nothing and I received”--he smiled
with exceeding bitterness--“nothing. Then, unhappily, Judge Hollis
found out that I was well-born; he told a few people that I was a
gentleman. It was a serious mistake; I have been treated like a dog
ever since.” He was thrashing the wayside brush with his stick, and
unconsciously beheaded a dozen flowers; they fell at Diana’s feet,
but neither of them looked down. “I do not wish to force myself upon
your acquaintance, Miss Royall,” he went on, the torrent of pent-up
passion unspent. “I understand the reason of your condescension at the
ball, but couldn’t you have found a more agreeable way to chastise your
cousin? I must have been insufferable?”
The intensity of the man’s wounded pride had forced itself upon Diana;
she was crimson with mortification, yet she understood him--understood
him with a temperamental sympathy that sent a thrill of alarm through
her consciousness. “I never knew before how very bad my manners were,”
she said simply.
He turned and looked at her. All that was womanly and beautiful in her
face was crystallized in the colorless atmosphere; her eyes dwelt upon
him with a kindness that was at once new and wholly unbearable. “I’m a
cub!” he retorted harshly; “how you must hate me!”
“On the contrary,” she said very sweetly, “I like you.”
Their eyes met with a challenge of angry pride, then a whimsical
smile quivered at the corners of her mouth, and she clasped her hands
innocently over her ferns. “When you begin to like me we shall be
friends,” she said.
There was an instant of awkward silence, and then they both laughed,
not happily, but with a nervous quiver that suggested hysterical
emotion.
“I do not know when I began--to dislike you,” he said.
“I deserved it from the first, I fancy,” she retorted, hurrying on with
her determination to show her repentance; “I have behaved like a snob.”
He did not reply; he stooped, instead, to pick up the flowers that he
had broken. “My mother would never step on a flower or leave it to die
in the road,” he explained simply; “whenever I remember it I pick them
up. As a boy I recollect thinking that there was some significance in
it, that I must not leave them to die.”
Diana looked at him curiously, from under her lashes. What manner
of man was he? “It is a sweet thought,” she said, “in a woman--a
tenderness of heart.”
“Her heart was as tender as her soul was beautiful,” said Caleb Trench;
“she died when I was twenty years old.”
Diana held out her hand. “Will you give me the flowers?” she asked
simply.
He gave them with a slight flush of surprise. “They are poor and
broken,” he apologized lamely.
“I see that you think I have neither a heart nor a soul,” she replied.
He smiled. “I do not let myself think of either, Miss Royall,” he said;
“I fancy that a wise man will always avoid the dizzy heights, and even
a foolish one will see a precipice.”
Diana was silent; that she understood him would have been apparent to
the initiated, for her little ears were red, but the proud curve of her
lips remained firm and the steady glance of her eyes rested on the
darkening valley. The hills had purpled to gray, the sky was whitening,
and in the west the evening star shone like a point of flame.
Out of the stillness her voice sounded unusually soft and sweet. “I’m
going to have some friends to tea to-morrow afternoon, Mr. Trench,” she
said; “will you come?”
“No,” he replied, and then added: “Pardon me, that seems discourteous,
but I am not going out again here, Miss Royall.”
Almost involuntarily she smiled. “We are playing the game of
tit-for-tat, Mr. Trench, and you’ve won.”
“I have been a bear,” he replied, “but--Miss Royall, it’s growing dark;
let me take you home.”
“I am waiting for my cousin,” she replied, and then blushed hotly. “I
promised to wait five minutes,” she explained hastily, “while he talked
to Mr. Saxton at the farm. I suppose it’s politics; we’ve been here
long enough to quarrel three times.”
Trench assumed her engagement to Jacob Eaton and would not offer his
escort a second time. “I am taking the dog through the woods,” he said;
“shall we walk as far as the farm gate?”
Diana laughed merrily. “I never went in search of a lost knight in
my life,” she said. “I’m going on; it’s quite light and beautiful
yet--good evening.”
Trench swung around. “I will go with you,” he said at once, “if you
will permit me.”
But at that moment Jacob Eaton came up. As he recognized Trench, he
stopped short and stared. Then he joined Diana without acknowledging
her companion. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, “but the old fool
was deaf. We may as well go on, Diana.”
But Diana stood still. “This is Mr. Trench,” she said.
The two men looked at each other. Eaton had just heard more of what
Caleb Trench thought of the Land Company, but he knew Diana.
“How d’ye do,” he said curtly.
Trench made no reply. Diana gathered up the soft white folds of her
skirt and took two steps away. “Good-night, Jacob,” she said sweetly,
“Mr. Trench will see me home. Tell Cousin Jinny I’ll bring over the
terrapin recipe in the morning.”
Jacob said nothing, and Trench whistled to Shot. The dog came bounding
and followed his master and Miss Royall down the path.
Jacob stood stock-still and regarded what seemed to him the beginning
of miracles. Was it possible that Diana was in open rebellion against
society? That Diana should be in open rebellion against him was
not amazing. She was wont to let him know that he was a mere speck
on the horizon, but that he regarded as pretty coquetry, and of no
consequence, because he intended to marry Diana. But that Diana should,
a second time, prefer Caleb Trench to him was beyond belief, and that
she should do it after certain revelations that he had just heard, was
adding insult to injury, for Jacob had suddenly found that the poor
Yankee shopkeeper lawyer was a foe worthy of his steel. He remained a
long time motionless, his heavy lids drooping over his eyes and his
brows meditative. He was, after all, a gentleman of resources, and it
was merely a question of how to use them.