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Rose looked at him narrowly, as if to find his real thought. He stopped abruptly at her glance.
"I beg your pardon for boring you; but these disagreeable phases of my character should be known to you. I'm full of whims and notions, you'll find."
She looked away and a moment later said: "There is our farm; that house in the grove is ours."
"Cattle I hate, so I hope your father will not expect me to be interested in stock."
This was the first time he had mentioned her father, and it moved her unaccountably. It would be so dreadful if he should not understand her father. His perverse attitude toward her and toward the country had brought her from exalted singleness of emotion down to a complexity of questionings and forebodings.
As they whirled in the yard Mason saw a new house of the ambitious pork-pie order, standing in a fairly well-kept sward, with a background of barns, corncribs, pigsties and beehives. A well-to-do farmstead of the more fortunate sort, and the thought that the man coming out of the barn to meet them was to be his father-in-law struck him like a gust of barnyard air. Really could it be that he had made this decision?
As the man came nearer he appeared a strong-armed, gentle-faced farmer of sixty. His eyes were timid, almost appealing. His throat was brown and wrinkled as leather. His chin beard was a faded yellow-grey, and his hands were nobbed and crooked in the fingers. He peered at Mason through dimmed eyes.
"Father," said Rose, and her voice trembled a little, "this is Mr. Mason."
John Dutcher put up his hand heartily.
"How do you do, sir?" His timid smile touched Mason, but there was something else in the man which made him return the hand-clasp.
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Dutcher," he said, and his tone was so genuine it brought a gush of tears to the daughter's eyes. Her lover understood her father after all.
"Won't you 'light out, sir?" continued John with elaborate hospitality.
"Well, yes, I think I will," said Mason, and Rose's spirits shook off their cowls.
Suddenly she heard every bird singing, the thrush in the poplar top, the catbirds in the willows, the robin on the lawn; the sun flooded the world with magical splendor. It was morning in the world and morning in her life, and her lover was walking up the path by her side.
It was splendid beyond belief to show him to his room, to bring him water and towels and to say from the doorway, with a smile:
"Breakfast is ready!"
The picture that she made lingered pleasantly on Mason's interior eye. She was so supple of form and so radiant of color, and so palpitant with timid joy.
She sat alone at the table when he came out. She explained as she showed him his seat, "Father and my aunt had breakfast long ago."
Mrs. Diehl brought the coffee in and bowed awkwardly to Mason. The whole thing seemed like a scene in a play to him. It was charming, all the same, to sit alone at the table with such a girl; it was just the least bit exciting. His hands shook a little, he noticed.
As he took his cup of coffee from her he said whimsically:
"I expect to wake up soon."
"Does it seem like a dream to you too?"
"Well, it isn't my everyday life, I must confess."
To her he seemed handsomer and more refined than in the city. He seemed simpler, too, though he was still complex enough to keep her wondering. The slope of his shoulders and the poise of his head were splendid to her. It could not be possible that he was here to see her; to be served by her; to spend the days with her; to be her husband if she should say so.
And yet she retained her dignity. She did not grow silly nor hysterical as a lesser woman might have done. She was tremulous with happiness and wonder, but she sat before him mistress of her hands and voice. Her very laughter pleased him; if she had giggled – heavens, if she had giggled!
John also went busily, apparently calmly, about his work. Mason was pleased at that; it showed astonishing reserve in the man.
Again that keen, sweet feeling of companionship – wifehood – came to Rose as they walked out side by side into the parlor. He had come to her; that was the marvelous thing! She was doing wifely things for him; it was all more intimate, more splendid than she thought!
They sat down in the best room and faced each other. It was their most potential moment. Breakfast was eaten and the day was before them, and an understanding was necessary.
"Now, I can't allow you to be hasty," Mason said. "I'll tell you what I think you had better do; defer your answer until two weeks from today, when I shall return to the city. That will give us time to talk the matter over, and it will give you time to repent."
A little shadow fell over her and the sunlight was not quite so brilliant. The incomprehensible nature of the man came to her again, and he seemed old, old as a granite crag, beyond song, beyond love, beyond hope.
Then he smiled: "Well, now, I'm ready to go see the world; any caves, any rocking boulders, any water tower?"
She took up the cue for gaiety: "No, but I might take you to see the cemetery, that is an appropriate Sunday walk; all the young people walk there."
"The cemetery! I'm a believer in crematories. I'll tell you what we'll do. After you've hung out the wash-boiler to dry we'll go down under the trees, and I'll listen to some of your verse. Now, that is a tremendous concession on my part. I hope you value it to the full."
"I do, indeed."
"You do? good! We'll put the matter in movement at once."
"The dew is still on the grass," she said warningly.
"So it is. I thank you for remembering my growing infirmities. Well, let's go out and see the pigs. As I told you, I hate cattle and swine, they act out so frankly the secret vices of man – but, never mind, I'll go out and have it out with your father."
The moment he began in that tone she was helpless.
They moved out into the barnyard, but John was not in sight.
"I guess he's with his bees," Rose said. "He likes to sit out there and watch them when he is resting."
They peered over the fence, and their eyes took in a picture they will never forget while they live. John Dutcher sat before his bees in the bloom of the clover, his head bowed in his hands. He was crying for his lost daughter.
There came a gripping pain in the girl's throat, the hot tears rushed to her eyes, and she cried in a voice of remorseful agony:
"Father – pappa John!"
He lifted his head and looked at her, his eyes dim with tears, his lips quivering.
The girl rushed through the gate, and Mason turned and walked away like a man discovered thieving from an altar.
CONCLUSION
THE WIND IN THE TREETOPS
Mason freshened magically under her sweet and self-contained companionship. She did not coddle him, nor bore him by attentions, but seemed to do the right thing instinctively. She assumed command over him in certain ways – that is, she insisted on his taking long walks and drives with her – though he sturdily refused to climb hills. "Bring me to them gradually," he said, "for I am from Egypt."
One Sunday afternoon he consented to try an easy one and they started out – she in radiant, laughing exultation, he in pretended dark foreboding of the outcome.
She led the way with swift, steady swing of skirts, her smiling face a challenge to him when he fell too far behind. He never ceased to admire her powerful, decisive movement and her radiant color, though he said nothing about it to her.
She stopped at a spring which came silently to light beneath an overhanging sandstone. There was no dipper, and Rose, with a new daring, dropped on her knees and dipped some of the cool, sweet water in her palm.
"Do you thirst, Sir Guy?"
He kneeled beside her with a comical groan, and drank from her hand.
"Thanks, a sweeter draught from fairer hand was never quaffed."
Rose was highly elated at the success of her trick. She dipped another palm full. He shook his head.
"With your permission I'll use my hat brim."
"I'll show you how to do it," she said. She rose and leaped the little stream, and flung herself down full length on the ground, and resting her palms on two flat stones, she drank from the pool, like an Indian.
"There!" she cried triumphantly. "That's the way to drink. All my life I've done this way at this spring – when there wasn't anyone to see."
Mason felt a wild charm in this. Most other women would have tumbled to pieces doing such a thing, while she sprang up a little flushed, but with no other sign of exertion.
There was something primeval, elemental, in being thus led by a beautiful woman through coverts of ferns and hazel. Every shadow seemed to wash away some stain or scar of the city's strife. He grew younger.
"I almost like this sort of thing," he said.
They came at last to the smooth slope of the peak where grass stood tall in bunches on a gravelly soil, and wild flowers of unusual kinds grew. As they mounted now, the landscape broke over the tree tops, and the valleys curved away into silent blue mist.
On every side low wooded ridges lay, with farms spread like rugs half-way up their deep green clearings. On the further slope a pasture came nearly to the summit, and the tinkle of a bell among the bushes sounded a pastoral note. A field of timothy farther on to the left glowed with a beautiful pink-purple bloom.
"Isn't it beautiful," asked Rose.
Mason dropped full length on the grass before replying.
"Yes, it is lovely – perfectly pastoral. Worthy a poem."
"I've written three, right on this spot," she said a little shyly.
He seemed interested.
"Have you? Haven't one with you?"
"No."
"Always go armed. Now here's a golden opportunity gone to waste."
She smiled shyly.
"I can repeat one though."
"Can you? Better yet! Recite one."
She sat down near him, but not too near, and began in a soft hesitant voice to repeat a poem which was full of feminine sadness and wistfulness. As she went on Mason turned his face toward her, and her eyes fell and her voice faltered.
"That's glorious!" he said. "Go on."
The wind swept up the slope and through the leaning white bodies of the birches with a sadness like the poem. The wild barley bowed and streamed in the wind like an old man's beard; the poem struck deep into secret moods, incommunicable in words – and music came to carry the words. The girl's eyes were sweet and serious and the lovely lines of her lips shifted and wavered.
Mason suddenly reached out and took the girl's right hand. Her voice died out and her eyes met his. He drew her hand toward him and laid his lips upon it.
"You're a poet," he said. "You have found your voice, and I – I love you because you are a poet and because you are a beautiful woman."
The touch of his bearded lips upon her hand was the event of her life, and the whole world reshaped itself. His praise of her poem, her victory over him as a critic was great, but his final words drowned in fierce light the flame of her art's enthusiasm.
Once more a man's voice came to her, filled with entreaty and command, but in this case she had no reservations. It was well, it was inevitable, and it was glorious to set her face toward wifehood and fame with such a man as companion, friend and lover.
A couple of weeks later, Mason came down from his room with a grim look on his face. He stepped out on the porch and stood there feeling the change in the air. The summer was over.
Rose came out, and he put his arm about her.
"Hark!" he commanded. "Do you hear the wind in the tree-tops? It brings me the roar of the city this morning. I hear the grind of cars, the roar of mills, the throb of presses; the city calls me and I must go. My vacation is over. I must say good-by tonight."
"It's very beautiful up here now," she said a little wistfully. "The sumac is beginning to turn and the hills are like jewels."
"Oh yes, it is beautiful," he said smiling a little. "But down there life is. Infinite novelty, ceaseless change. As you love the country, so I love the city. It is a greater pleasure to me to meet men than trees, and concerts are more than winds in the pines. Artist souls, poets, people who do and think, are there, and so I must go."
"When shall I go?" she asked.
"When you please," he said. "I have no commands. You are perfectly free to do as you like. I need you always now."
"Then I will go tonight," she said firmly.
He turned his eyes upon her in a look she never forgot.
"My dearest girl, do you realize what you are doing? Do you realize that you are entering upon a problematical line of action – that you are inviting pain and sorrow and care, that you are leaving girlhood and leisure behind – that you are entering gates that never swing outward. Do you know this – once more and finally, do you realize all this?"
She stood before him stronger than he; he felt it. She knew him at last since that touch of his lips to her arm, since that look in his eyes – and she said: "I realize it all, and I choose it."