Chapter 21. The Golden Hours

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_ CHAPTER XXI. THE GOLDEN HOURS

The weather was unsuitable for hunting. It snowed for a week, thawed over night, then froze, then snowed again, but the moon that night promised a perfect day.

Young Mallett supposed that he was afoot and afield before anybody else in house could be stirring, but as he pitched his sketching easel on the edges of the frozen pasture brook, and opened his field-box, a far hail from the white hill-top arrested him.

High poised on the snowy crest above him, clothed in white wool from collar to knee-kilts, and her thick clustering hair flying, she came flashing down the hill on her skis, soared high into the sunlight, landed, and shot downward, pole balanced.

Like a silvery meteor she came flashing toward him, then her hair-raising speed slackened, and swinging in a widely gracious curve she came gliding across the glittering field of snow and quietly stopped in front of him.

"Since when, angel, have you acquired this miraculous accomplishment?" he demanded.

"Do I do it well, Duane?"

"A swallow from paradise isn't in your class, dear," he admitted, fascinated. "Is it easy--this new stunt of yours?"

"Try it," she said so sweetly that he missed the wickedness in her smile.

So, balancing, one hand on his shoulder, she disengaged her moccasins from the toe-clips, and he shoved his felt timber-jack boots into the leather loops, and leaning on the pointed pole which she handed him, gazed with sudden misgiving down the gentle acclivity below. She encouraged him; he listened, nodding his comprehension of her instructions, but still gazing down the hill, a trifle ill at ease.

However, as skates and snow-shoes were no mystery to him, he glanced at the long, narrow runners curved upward at the extremities, with more assurance, and his masculine confidence in all things masculine returned. Then he started, waved his hand, smiling his condescension; then he realised that he was going faster than he desired to; then his legs began to do disrespectful things to him. The treachery of his own private legs was most disheartening, for they wavered and wobbled deplorably, now threatening to cross each other, now veering alarmingly wide of his body. He made a feebly desperate attempt to use his trail-pole; and the next second all that Geraldine could see of the episode was mercifully enveloped in a spouting pinwheel of snow.

Like all masculine neophytes, he picked himself up and came back, savagely confident in his humiliation. She tried to guide his first toddling ski-steps, but he was mad all through and would have his own way. With a set and mirthless smile, again and again he gave himself to the slope and the mercy of his insurgent legs, and at length, bearing heavily on his trail-pole, managed to reach the level below without capsizing.

She praised him warmly, rescued his wool gloves and cap from snowy furrows into which their owner had angrily but helplessly dived; and then she stepped into her skis and ascended the hill beside him with that long-limbed, graceful, swinging stride which he had ventured to believe might become him also.

He said hopelessly: "If you expect me to hunt wild boar with you on skis, there'll be some wild and widely distributed shooting in this county. How can I hit a boar while describing unwilling ellipses in mid-air or how can I run away from one while I'm sticking nose down in a snow-drift?"

Too faint with laughter to reply, she stood leaning on her trailing-pole and looking over his shoulder as he repitched his sketching easel, squeezed the colours from the leaden tubes, and set his palette.

"I'm horribly hungry," he grumbled; "too hungry to make a decent sketch. How cold is it, anyway? I believe that this paint is trying to freeze on my palette!"

"What are you going to paint?" she asked, her rounded chin resting on his shoulder.

"That frozen brook." He looked around at her, hesitating; and she laughed and nodded her comprehension.

"You want to make a sketch of me, dear. Why don't you ask me? Do you think I'd refuse?"

"It's so beastly cold to ask you to stand still----"

"Cold! Why, it's much warmer; it's ten above zero. I'll stand wherever you wish. Where do you want me; here above you, against the snow and sky?"

The transcendent loveliness of the picture she made set that excited thrill quivering through every vein; but he took a matter-of-fact grip on his emotions because good work is done in cold blood, even if it sometimes may be conceived in exaltation.

"Don't move," he said serenely; "you are exactly right as you stand. Tell me the very moment you feel cold. Promise?"

"Yes, dear."

His freezing colours bothered him, and at times he used them almost like pastels. He worked rapidly, calmly, and with that impersonal precision that made every brush stroke an integral factor in the ensemble.

At almost any stage of the study the accidental brilliancy of his progress might have been terminated abruptly, leaving a sketch rarely beautiful in its indicated and unfinished promise.

But the pitfalls of the accidental had no allurements for him. She rested, changed position, stretched her limbs, took a long circle or two, skimming the hillside when she needed the reaction. But always she came swinging back again to stand and watch her lover with a half-smiling, half-tender gaze that tried his sangfroid terribly when he strove to catch it and record it in the calm and scientific technique which might excite anybody except the workman.

"Am I pretty, Duane?"

"Annoyingly divine. I'm trying not to think of it, dear, until my hand and heart may wobble with impunity. Are you cold?"

"No.... Do you think you'll make a full-fledged picture from this motive?"

"How did you guess?"

"I don't know. I've a premonition that your reputation is going to soar up like a blazing star from this waste of snow around us.... I wish--I wish that it might be from me, through me--my humble aid--that your glory breaks out----"

"If it ever does, it will do it through you. I told you that long ago."

"Yes."

"I've known it a long, long time, Geraldine. Without you there's nothing to me except surface. You are the depths of me."

"And you of me, Duane." Sweet eyes remote, she stood looking into space; at peace with her soul, dreaming, content. And it was then that he caught and imprisoned in colour the nameless beauty which was the foundation for his first famous picture, whose snowy splendour silenced all except those little critics who chirp automatically, eternally, on the ruddy hearthstone of the gods.

* * * * *

From the distant hill-top a voice bellowed at them through a megaphone; and, looking aloft, they beheld Scott gesticulating.

"If you two mental irresponsibles want any breakfast," he shouted, "you'd better hustle! Miller telephones that the big boar fed below Cloudy Mountain at sunrise!"

Geraldine looked at her lover, cheeks pink with excitement. He was immensely interested, too, and as soon as he could fold his easel, lock up brushes and palette, protect his canvas with a fresh one faced with cork buffers, they started for the house, discussing the chances for a shot that afternoon.

Like the most desirable and wary of most species of game, furry or finny, the huge, heavily tusked veterans of the wild-boar family often feed after dark, being too cunning to banquet by daylight and carouse with the gayer blades and the big, fierce sows of the neighbourhood.

Sometimes in the white gloom of snow-storms there is a chance for a shot; sometimes in a remoter fastness a big boar may deem himself secure enough to venture out where there are no witnesses to his solitary gastronomic revels save an Arctic owl or two huddled high in the hemlocks.

And it was in the rocky oak-ridges of the wild country under Cloudy Mountain that Miller had marked down the monarch of all wild pigs--the great, shaggy, silver-tipped boar, hock-deep in snow, crunching frozen acorns and glaring off over the gully where mile after mile of white valley and mountain ranges stretched away, clotted and streaked with pine.

"Why don't we all go?" asked Geraldine, seating herself behind the coffee-urn and looking cordially around at the others.

"Because, dear," said Kathleen, "I haven't the slightest desire to run after a wild boar or permit him to amble after me; and all that reconciles me to your doing it is that Duane is going with you."

"I personally don't like to kill things," observed Scott briefly. "My sister is the primitive of this outfit. She's the slayer, the head hunter, the lady-boss of this kraal."

"Is it very horrid of me, Duane?" she asked anxiously, "to find excitement in this sort of thing? Besides, we do need meat, and the game must be kept thinned down by somebody. And Scott won't."

"Whatever you do is all right," said Duane, laughing, "even when you jeer at my gymnastics on skis. Oh, Lord! but I'm hungry. Scott, are you going to take all those sausages and muffins, you bespectacled ruffian! Kathleen, heave a plate at him!"

Kathleen was too scandalised to reply; Scott surrendered the desired muffins, and sorted the morning mail, which had just been brought in.

"Nothing for you, Sis, except bills; one letter for Duane, two for Kathleen, and the rest for me"--he examined the envelopes--"all from brother correspondents and eager aspirants for entomological honours.... Here's your letter, Duane!" scaling it across the table in spite of Kathleen's protest.

They had the grace to ask each other's permission to read.

"Oh, listen to this!" exclaimed Scott gleefully:

"DEAR SIR: Your name has been presented to the Grand Council which has decided that you are eligible for membership in the International Entomological Society of East Orange, N.J., and you have, therefore, been unanimously elected.

"Have the kindness to inform me of your acceptance and inclose your check for $25, which includes your dues for five years and a free subscription to the society's monthly magazine, _The Fly-Paper_----"

"Scott, don't do it. You get one of those kind of things every day!" exclaimed Geraldine. "They only want your $25, anyway."

"It's an innocent recreation," grinned Duane. "Why not let Scott append to his signature--'M.I.E.S.E.O.N.J.'--Member International Entomological Society, East Orange, New Jersey. It only costs $25 to do it----"

"That's all right," said Scott, reddening, "but possibly they may have read my paper on the Prionians in the last Yonkers _Magazine of Science_. It wasn't a perfectly rotten paper, was it, Kathleen?"

"It was mighty clever!" she said warmly. "Don't mind those two scoffers, Scott. If you take my advice you will join this East Orange Society. That would make six scientific societies he has joined since Christmas," she continued, turning on Duane with severe pride; adding, "and there's a different coloured ribbon decoration for his buttonhole from each society."

But Duane and Geraldine were very disrespectful; they politely offered each other memberships in all sorts of societies, including one yard of ribbon decoration, one sleigh-bell, and five green trading stamps, until Scott hurled an orange at Duane, who caught it and blew a kiss at him as recompense.

Then they went outside, on Scott's curt invitation, and wrestled and scuffled and scrubbed each other's faces with snow like schoolboys, until, declaring they were hungry again, they came back to the breakfast-room and demanded more muffins and sausages and coffee.

Kathleen rang and, leaning over, handed Geraldine a brief letter from Rosalie Dysart:

"Do you think Geraldine would ask me up for a few days?" it began. "I'm horribly lonesome and unhappy and I'm being talked about, and I'd rather be with you wholesome people than with anybody I know, if you don't mind my making a refuge of your generosity. I'm a real victim of that dreadful sheet in town, which we all have a contempt for and never subscribe to, and which some of us borrow from our maids or read at our modistes--the sheet that some of us are genuinely afraid of--and part of our fear is that it may neglect us! You know, don't you, what really vile things it is saying about me? If you don't, your servants do.

"So if you'd rather not have me, I won't be offended, and, anyway, you are dear and decent people and I love you.

"ROSALIE DENE."

"How funny," mused Geraldine. "She's dropped Jack Dysart's name already in private correspondence.... Poor child!" Looking up at Kathleen, "We must ask her, mustn't we, dear?"

There was more of virginal severity in Kathleen. She did not see why Rosalie, under the circumstances, should make a convenience of Geraldine, but she did not say so; and, perhaps, glancing at the wistful young girl before her, she understood this new toleration for those in dubious circumstances--comprehended the unusual gentleness of judgment which often softens the verdict of those who themselves have drifted too near the danger mark ever to forget it or to condemn those still adrift.

"Yes," she said, "ask her."

Duane looked up from the perusal of his own letter as Kathleen and Scott strolled off toward the greenhouses where the latter's daily entomological researches continued under glass and the stimulous artificial heat and Kathleen Severn.

"Geraldine," he said, "here's a letter from Bunny Gray. He and Sylvia Quest were married yesterday very quietly, and they sailed for Cape Town this morning!"

"What!"

"That's what he writes. Did you ever hear of anything quicker?"

"How funny," she said. "Bunny and Sylvia? I knew he was attentive to her but----"

"You mean Dysart?" he said carelessly. "Oh, he's only a confirmed debutante chaser; a sort of social measles. They all recover rapidly."

"I had the--social measles," said Geraldine, smiling.

Duane repressed a shiver. "It's inevitable," he said gaily.... "That Bunny is a decent fellow."

"Will you show me his letter?" she asked, extending her hand as a matter of course.

"No, dear."

She looked up surprised.

"Why not? Oh--I beg your pardon, dear----"

Duane bent over, kissed her hand, and tossed the letter into the fire. It was her first experience in shadows cast before, and it came to her with a little shock that no two are ever one in the prosier sense of the theory.

The letter that Duane had read was this:

"Sylvia and I were married quietly yesterday and she has told me that you will know why. There is little further for me to say, Duane. My wife is ill. We're going to Cape Town to live for a while. We're going to be happy. I am now. She will be.

"My wife asked me to write you. Her regard for you is very high. She wishes me to tell you that I know everything I ought to have known when we were married. You were very kind to her. You're a good deal of a man, Duane.

"I want to add something: her brother, Stuyve, is out of the hospital and loose again. He's got all the virtues of a Pomeranian pup--that is, none; and he'll make a rotten bad fist of it. I'll tell you now that, during the past winter, twice, when drunk, he shot at his sister. She did not tell me this; he did, when in a snivelling condition at the hospital.

"So God knows what he may do in this matter. It seems that the blackguard in question has been warned to steer clear of Stuyvesant. It's up to them. I shall be glad to have Sylvia at Cape Town for a while.

"Delancy Grandcourt was witness for me, Rosalie for Sylvia. Delancy is a brick. Won't you ask him up to Roya-Neh? He's dying to go.

"And this is all. It's a queer life, isn't it, old fellow? But a good sporting proposition, anyway. It suits me.

"Our love to you, to the little chatelaine of Roya-Neh, to her brother, to Kathleen.

"Tell them we are married and off for Cape Town, but tell them no more.

"B. Gray."

"It isn't necessary to say burn this scrawl."

Geraldine, watching him in calm speculation, said:

"I don't see why they were married so quietly. Nobody's in mourning----"

"Dear?"

"What, dear?"

"Do something for me."

"I promise."

"Then ask Delancy up here to shoot. Do you mind?"

"I'd love to. Can he come?"

"I think so."

"I'll write now. Won't it be jolly," she said innocently, "to have him and Rosalie here together----"

The blank change on his face checked her. "Isn't it all right?" she asked, astonished.

He had made his blunder. There was only one thing for him to say and he said it cordially, mentally damning himself for forgetting that Rosalie was to be invited.

"I'll write to them both this morning," concluded Geraldine. "Of course poor Jack Dysart is out of the question."

"A little," he said mildly. And, furious with himself, he rose as she stood up, and followed her into the armory, her cool little hand trailing and just touching his.

For half an hour they prowled about, examining Winchesters, Stevens, Maenlichers--every make and pattern of rifle and fowling-piece was represented in Scott's collection.

"Odd, isn't it, that he never shoots," mused Duane, lifting out a superb weapon from the rack behind the glass doors. "This seems to be one of those murderous, low trajectory pieces that fires a sort of brassy shot which is still rising when it's a mile beyond the bunker. Now, sweetheart, if you've a heavy suit of ancient armour which I can crawl into, I'll defy any boar that roots for mast on Cloudy Mountain."

It was great fun for Geraldine to lay out their equipment in two neat piles; a rifle apiece with cases and bandoliers; cartridges, two hunting-knives with leather sheaths, shooting hoods and coats; and timberjack's boots for her lover, moccasins for her; a pair of heavy sweaters for each, and woollen mitts, fashioned to leave the trigger finger free.

Beside these she laid two fur-lined overcoats, and backed away in naive admiration at her industry.

"Wonderful, wonderful," he said. "We'll only require saucepans and boiler lids to look exactly like Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee arrayed for battle. I say, Geraldine, how am I going to flee up a tree with all that on--and snow-shoes to boot-s," he added shamelessly, grinning over his degraded wit.

She ignored it, advised him with motherly directness concerning the proper underwear he must don, looked at her rifle, examined his and, bidding him assume it, led him out to the range in the orchard and made him target his weapon at a hundred yards.

There was a terrific fusillade for half an hour or so; his work was respectable, and, satisfied, she led him proudly back to the house and, curling up on the leather divan in the library, invited him to sit beside her.

"Do you love me?" she inquired with such impersonal curiosity that he revenged himself fully then and there; and she rose and, instinctively repairing the disorder of her hair, seated herself reproachfully at a distance.

"Can't a girl ask a simple question?" she said, aggrieved.

"Sure. Ask it again, dearest."

She disdained to reply, and sat coaxing the tendrils of her dark hair to obey the dainty discipline of her slender fingers.

"I thought you weren't going to," she observed irrelevantly. But he seemed to know what she meant.

"Don't you want me to even touch you for a year?"

"It isn't a year. Months of it are over."

"But in the months before us----"

"No."

She picked up a book. When he reached for a magazine she looked over the top of her book at him, then read a little, glanced up, read a little more, and looked at him again.

"Duane?"

"What?"

"This is a fool of a book. Do you want to read it?"

"No, thanks."

"Over my shoulder, I mean?"

He got up, seated himself on the arm of her chair, and looked at the printed page over her shoulder.

For a full minute neither moved; then she turned her head, very slowly, and, looking into his eyes, she rested her lips on his.

"My darling," she said; "my darling."

Which is one of the countless variations of the malady which makes the world spin round in one continual and perpetual fit. _

Read next: Chapter 22. Cloudy Mountain

Read previous: Chapter 20. In Search Of Herself

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