She started and looked away from the landscape."You have long memories in this county, I know," she said."So few things happen that it becomes a religion to cherish the little incidents.It may be that I, too, have inherited something of this, for Iremember very clearly the few months I spent here.""You remembered them even while you were away?""Why not?" she asked."It is not the moving about, the strange places one sees, nor the people one meets, that really count in life, you know.""What is it?" he questioned abruptly.
She hesitated as if trying to put her thoughts more clearly into words.
"I think it is the things one learns," she said; "the places in which we take root and grow, and the people who teach us what is really worth while--patience, and charity, and the beauty there is in the simplest and most common lives when they are lived close to Nature.""In driving the plough or in picking the suckers from a tobacco plant," he added scornfully.
"In those things, yes; and in any life that is good, and true, and natural.""Well, I have lived near enough to Nature to hate her with all my might," he answered, not without bitterness."Why, there are times when I'd like to kick every ploughed field I see out into eternity.Tobacco-growing is one of the natural things, Isuppose, but if you want to see any beauty in it you must watch it from a shady road.When you get in the midst of it you'll find it coarse and sticky, and given over generally to worms.I have spent my whole life working on it, and to this day I never look at a plant nor smell a pipe without a shiver of disgust.The things I want are over there," he finished, pointing with his whip-handle to the clear horizon."I want the excitement that makes one's blood run like wine.""Battle, murder, and all that, I suppose?" she said, smiling.
"War, and fame, and love," he corrected.
Her face had grown grave, and in the thoughtful look she turned upon him it seemed to him that he saw a purpose slowly take form.
So earnest was her gaze that at last his own fell before it, at which she murmured a confused apology, like one forcibly awakened from a dream.
"I was wondering what that other life would have made of you,"she said; "the life that I have known and wearied of--a life of petty shams, of sham love, of sham hate, of sham religion.It is all little, you know, and it takes a little soul to keep alive in it.I craved it once myself, and it took six years of artifice to teach me that I loved a plain truth better than a pretty lie."He had been looking at the strong white hand lying in her lap, and now, with a laugh, he held out his own bronzed and roughened one.
"There is the difference," he said; "do you see it?"A wave of sympathy swept over her expressive face, and with one of her impulsive gestures, which seemed always to convey some spiritual significance, she touched his outstretched palm with her fingers."How full of meaning it is," she replied, "for it tells of quiet days in the fields, and of a courage that has not faltered before the thing it hates.When I look at it it makes me feel very humble--and yet very proud, too, that some day I may be your friend."He shook his head, with his eyes on the sun, which was slowly setting.
"That is out of the question," he answered."You cannot be my friend except for this single day.If I meet you to-morrow Ishall not know you."
"Because I am a Fletcher?" she asked, wondering.
"Because you are a Fletcher, and because you would find me worse than a Fletcher.""Riddles, riddles," she protested, laughing; "and I was always dull at guessing--but I may as well warn you now that I have come home determined to make a friend of every mortal in the county, man and beast.""You'll do it," he answered seriously."I'm the only thing about here that will resist you.You'll be everybody's friend but mine."She caught and held his gaze."Let us see," she responded quietly.
For a time they were silent, and spreading out her skirt, she made a place for the dog upon it.The noise of the heavy wheels on the rocky bed of the road grew suddenly louder in his ears, and he realised with a pang that every jolt of the cart carried him nearer the end.With the thought there came to him a wish that life might pause at the instant--that the earth might be arrested in its passage and leave him forever aware of the warm contact that thrilled through him.They had already passed Weatherby's lane, and presently the chimneys of Blake Hall appeared above the distant trees.When they reached the abandoned ice-pond Christopher spoke with an attempted carelessness.
"It would perhaps be better for you to walk the rest of the way,"he said."Trouble might be made in the beginning if your grandfather were to know that I brought you over.""You're right, I think," she said, and rising as the cart stopped, she followed him down into the road.Then with a word or two of thanks, she smiled brightly, and, calling the dog, passed rapidly into the twilight which stretched between him and a single shining window that was visible in the Hall.
After she had quite disappeared he still stood motionless by the ice-pond, staring into the dusk that had swallowed her up from his gaze.So long did he remain there that at last the oxen tired of waiting and began to move slowly on along the sunken road.
Then starting abruptly from his meditation, he picked up the ropes that trailed before him on the ground and fell into his accustomed walk beside the cart.At the moment it seemed to him that his whole life was shattered into pieces by the event of a single instant.Something stronger than himself had shaken the foundations of his nature, and he was not the man that he had been before.He was like one born blind, who, when his eyes are opened, is ignorant that the light which dazzles him is merely the shining of the sun.
When he came into the house, after putting up the oxen, Cynthia commented upon the dazed look that he wore.
"You must have fallen asleep on the way home," she remarked.
