At sunrise, looking again, he saw the town's five or six spires, and heard one tell the hour and the college bell confirm it. Care was on his brow, but you could see it was a care that came of new freedom. He was again a lover, still tremorous with the wonder of unsought deliverance from his dungeon of not-loving. And now the stern yet inspiring necessity was not to let his delivering angel find it out; to be a lover, but not a suitor. Hence his presence up here instead of down in the town beyond the meadows and across the river. He would make it very plain to her and her friends that he had not come, ahead of his business appointment, to thrust himself upon her, but to get a breath of heaven's own air--being very tired of walls and pavements--and to--to discover the bobolink!

Of course, being so near, he should call. He must anyhow go to church, and if only he could keep himself from starting too early, there was no reason why he should not combine the two duties and make them one pleasure. Should he ride or drive? He ordered the concern's best saddle-horse, walked mournfully half round him, and said, "I reckon--I reckon I'll drive. Sorry to trouble you, but----"

"Put him in the shafts, Dave," said the stable-keeper, and then to the guest, "No trouble, sir; if a man doesn't feel safe in a saddle he'd better not monkey with it."

"I dare say," sedately responded John. "I suppose a man oughtn't to try to learn to ride without somebody to go along with him."

The boy had just finished harnessing the animal, when March started with a new thought. He steadied himself, turned away, drew something from his pocket, consulted and returned it--it was neither a watch nor a weapon--and rejoining the stable-keeper said, with a sweet smile and a red face:

"See here, it's only three miles over there. If you'll let me change my mind----"

"You'll walk it--O all right! If you change your mind again you can let us know on your return."

John took a way that went by a bridge. It was longer than the other, by way of a ferry, but time, for the moment, was a burden and either way was beautiful. The Sabbath was all smiles. On the Hampshire hills and along the far meanderings of the Connecticut a hundred tints of perfect springtide beguiled the heart to forget that winter had ever been. Above a balmy warmth of sunshine and breeze in which the mellowed call of church-bells floated through the wide valley from one to another of half a dozen towns and villages, silvery clouds rolled and unrolled as if in stately play, swung, careened, and fell melting through the marvellous blue, or soared and sunk and soared again. Keeping his eyes much on such a heaven, our inexperienced walker thought little of close-fitting boots until he had to sit down, screened from the public road by a hillock, and, with a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt but hardly of complacency, smooth a cruel wrinkle from one of his very striped socks. Just then a buckboard rumbled by, filled with pretty girls, from the college, he guessed, driving over to that other college town, seven miles across the valley, where a noted Boston clergyman was to preach to-day; but the foot-pa.s.senger only made himself a bit smaller and chuckled at the lucky privacy of his position. As they got by he stole a peep at their well-dressed young backs, and the best dressed and shapeliest was Barbara Garnet's. The driver was Henry Fair. It was then that the bobolink, for the first time in his life, saw and heard John March.

LXXI.

IN THE WOODS

The sun mounted on to noon and nature fell into a reverent stillness; but in certain leafy aisles under the wooded bluffs and along that narrow stream where Mrs. Fair some three weeks earlier had walked with the widow, the Sabbath afternoon was scarcely half spent before the air began to be crossed and cleft with the vesper hymns and serenades of plumed worshippers and lovers.

It was a place to quicken the heart and tongue of any wooer. The breezes moved pensively and without a sound. On the middle surface of the water the sunshine lay in wide bands, liquid-bordered under over-hanging boughs by glimmering shadows that wove lace in their sleep. Between the stream and the steep ground ran an abandoned road fringed with ferns, its brown pine-fallings flecked with a sunlight that fell through the twined arms and myriad green fingers of all-namable sorts of great and lesser trees. You would have said the forest's every knight and lady, dwarf, page, and elf--for in this magical seclusion all the world's times were tangled into one--had come to the noiseless dance of some fairy's bridal; chestnut and hemlock, hazel and witch-hazel, walnut and willow, birches white and yellow, poplar and ash in feathery bloom, the l.u.s.ty oaks in the scarred harness of their winter wars under new tabards of pink and silver-green, and the slim service-bush, white with blooms and writhing in maiden shame of her too transparent gown. In each tangled ravine Flora's little pious mortals of the May--anemone, yellow violet, blood-root, mustard, liverwort, and their yet humbler neighbors and kin--heard ma.s.s, or held meeting--whichever it was--and slept for blissful lack of brain while Jack-in-the-pulpit preached to them, under Solomon's seal, and oriole, tanager, warbler, thrush, up in the choir-loft, made love between the hymns, ate tidbits, and dropped crumbs upon wake-robin, baby-toes, and the nodding columbine.

Was it so? Or was it but fantasy in the mind of Henry Fair alone, reflected from the mood of the girl at whose side he walked here, and whose "Herrick" he vainly tried to beguile from her in hope that so she might better heed his words? It may be. The joy of spring was in her feet, the colors of the trees were answered in her robes. Moreover, the flush of the orchards and breath of the meadows through which they had gone and come again were on her cheek and in her parted lips, the red-brown depths of the stream were in her hair and lashes, and above them a cunningly disordered thing of fine straw and loose ribbons matched the head and face it shaded, as though all were parts together of some flower unspoiled by the garden's captivity and escaped again into the woods.

To Barbara's ear Fair's speech had always been melodious and low. Its well-tempered pitch had her approval especially here, where not only was there the wild life of grove and thicket to look and listen for, but a subdued ripple of other girls' voices and the stir of other draperies came more than once along the path and through the bushes. But there are degrees and degrees, and in this walk his tones had gradually sunk to such pure wooing that "Herrick" was no protection and she could reply only with irrelevant pleasantries.

At length he halted, and with a lover's distress showing beneath his smile, asked:

"Why cannot you be serious with me--Barbara?"

In make-believe aimlessness she swept the wood with a reconnoitring glance, and then with eyes of maidenly desperation fixed on him, said, tremblingly:

"Because, Mr. Fair, I know what you want to say, and I don't want you to say it."

He turned their slow step toward a low rock in an open s.p.a.ce near the water's edge, where no one could come near them unseen. "Would you let me say it if we were down in Dixie?" he asked. "Is it because you are so far from home?"

"No, Mr. Fair, I told you I really have no home. I'm sorry I did; I'm afraid it's led you to this, when everything I said--about taking myself into my own care and all--was said to keep you from it."

The lover shook his head. "You cannot. You must not. To be that kind is to be unkind. Sit here. You do not know exactly what I have to say; sit here, will you not? and while I stand beside you let me do both of us the simple honor to seal with right words what I have so long said in behavior."

Barbara hesitated. "O Mr. Fair, what need is there? Your behavior's always borne the seal of its own perfection. How could I answer you? If you only wanted any other answer but just the one you want, I could give it--the kindest answer in the world, the most unbounded praise--O I could give it with my whole heart and soul! Why, Mr. Fair"--as she sadly smiled she let him gaze into the furthest depth of her eyes--"as far as I can see, you seem to me to be ab-so-lute-ly fault-less."

The young man caught his breath as if for some word of fond pa.s.sion, but the unfaltering eyes prevented him. As she began again to speak, however, they fell.

"And that's not because I can't see men's faults. I see them so plainly, and show so plainly I see them, that sometimes I wonder--" She left the wonder implied while she pinched lichens from the stone. He began in a tender monotone to say:

"All the more let me speak. I cannot see you put away unconsidered----"

She lifted her eyes again. "O! I know what I'm putting away from me; a life! a life wider, richer than I ever hoped to live. Mr. Fair, it's as if a beautiful, great, strong ship were waiting to carry me across a summer sea, and I couldn't go, just for want of the right pa.s.sport--the right heart! If I had that it might be ever so different. I have no other ship ever to come in. I say all this only to save you from speaking. The only thing lacking is lacking in me." She smiled a compa.s.sionate despair. "It's not you nor your conditions--you know it's none of those dear ones who love you so at home--it's only I that can't qualify."

They looked at each other in reverent silence. Fair turned, plucked a flower, and as if to it, said, "I know the pa.s.sion of love is a true and sacred thing. But love should never be all, or chiefly, a pa.s.sion. The love of a mother for her child, of brother and sister for each other, however pa.s.sionate, springs first from relationship and rises into pa.s.sion as a plant springs from its root into bloom. Why should not all love do so? Why should only this, the most perilous kind, be made an exception?"

"Because," softly interrupted Barbara, glad of a moment's refuge in abstractions, "it belongs to the only relationship that comes by choice!"

"Are pa.s.sions ever the best choosers?" asked the gentle suitor. "Has history told us so, or science, or scripture, or anybody but lovers and romancers--and--Americans? Life--living and loving--is the greatest of the arts, and the pa.s.sions should be our tools, not our guides."

"I believe life _is_ an art to you, Mr. Fair; but to me it's a dreadful battle." The speaker sank upon the stone, half rose again, and then sat still.

"It hasn't scarred you badly," responded the lover. Then gravely: "Do you not think we may find it worth the fight if we make pa.s.sions our chariot horses and never our charioteers?"

No answer came, though he waited. He picked another flower and asked: "If you had a brother, have you the faintest doubt that you would love him?"

"No," said Barbara, "I couldn't help but love him." She thrust away the recollection of a certain railway journey talk, and then thought of her father.

Fair dropped his voice. "If I did not know that I should not be here to-day. Barbara, kinship is the only true root of all abiding love. We cannot feel sure even of G.o.d's love until we call ourselves his children. Neither church, state, nor society requires lovers to swear that they love pa.s.sionately, but that they will love persistently by virtue of a kinship made permanent in law."

Law! At that word Barbara inwardly winced, but Fair pressed on.

"These marriages on the American plan, of which we are so vain, are they the only happy ones, and are they all happy? When they are, is it because love began as a pa.s.sion, or has it not been because the choice was fortunate, and love, whether from a large or small beginning, has grown, like that of Isaac and Rebecca, out of a union made stronger than the ties of blood, by troth and oath? Barbara, do you not know in your heart of hearts that if you were the wife of a husband, wisely but dispa.s.sionately chosen, you would love him with a wife's full love as long as he loved you? You do. You would."

Barbara was slow to reply, but presently she began, "Unless I could commit my fate to one who already loved me consumingly----" She gave a start of protestation as he exclaimed:

"I love you consumingly! O Barbara, Barbara Garnet, let that serve for us both! Words could not tell my joy, if I could find in you this day a like pa.s.sion for me. But the seed and soil of it are here to my sight in what I find you to be, and all I ask is that you will let reason fix the only relationship that can truly feed the flame which I know--I _know_--my love will kindle."

"O Mr. Fair, I begged you not to ask!"

"Do not answer! Not now; to-morrow morning. If you can't answer then----"

"I can answer now, Mr. Fair. Why should I keep you in suspense?"

Such agitation came into the young man's face as Barbara had never thought to see. His low voice quivered. "No! No! I beseech you not to answer yet! Wait! Wait and weigh! O Barbara! weigh well and I will wait well! Wait! O wait until you have weighed all things well--my fortune, love, life, and the love of all who love me--O weigh them all well, beloved! beloved one!"

Without warning, a grosbeak--the one whose breast is stained with the blood of the rose--began his soft, sweet song so close overhead that Barbara started up, and he flew. She waited to catch the strain again, and as it drifted back her glance met her lover's. She smiled tenderly, but was grave the next moment and said, "Let us go back."

Nevertheless they went very slowly, culling and exchanging wild flowers as they went. On her doorstep she said, "Now, in the morning----"

"How soon may I come?" he asked.

"Immediately after chapel."