Part 11

After many rides, many conversations, the light about Demetrius was insensibly changed, and offered him under a different aspect. What genuine kindliness in his rather heavy yet well-featured face! what a good, sane, comprehensive intelligence under his shaggy hair! and under his country-made waistcoat a heart suspected to be tender and faithful! If he had done little, risen little, circumstances were more to blame than will; and it pierced through his mockery of himself sometimes that he was not all satisfied now with his condition; ambition that had slumbered gave signs of waking. And he was still young enough to mould his fate to a different shape.

Chloris, regarding him, as she told herself, merely in the light of a specimen in which to study human nature, concluded that the woman who intrusted her happiness to Demetrius, at least in the event of her being a superior creature, would be in the main a very fortunate one. Nothing to fear in this man from inconstancy; no account to make with the inflammable imagination of youth; the gracious, condescending woman would get unbounded gratitude from his humility for every little favor shown. Her life would be so peaceful, so guarded from all trouble that care can keep at bay, so surrounded with delicate consideration.

So the herds-grass purpled and was mown; the mustard yellowed, and its yellow vanished; and the apple began to redden. Then Demetrius, with a little help from everybody, gave a party--a party the like of which had not been given in the sleepy place since his sister's marriage a dozen years before; but this Chloris from afar, as Fidele had foretold, was inspiring the natives.

And undoubtedly she was the queen of the party. To see her was to know as much. She wore a grand gown of pale purplish silk, with a real lace bertha (the talk of the place for nine days after), and white flowers pricked into the shiny structure of her hair.

There was hired music, and dancing on the waxed kitchen-floor, and an opportunity never surpassed in the annals of the neighborhood to get enough of good things to eat.

Towards the end, when one-half the simple revellers were gone, and the musicians were silenced with feeding, and the night air breathed in at the open windows with a feel of great lateness in it, came a petition to Chloris to play a piece on the piano.

After various laughing negatives, yielding, Chloris, whose eyes were lightsome and dancing to-night, pushed away the stool, and, substituting for it a chair, sat a little sideways in this, with one arm over the back; and, a curious little smile playing on her lips, propped her ruffled head with its wilted flowers on her right hand; and, while the country innocents exchanged wondering glances, with her nimble left hand, amply sufficient to the task alone, began playing a waltz--a sweet, dreamy waltz.

When they were at last home, and Fidele, half undressed, had come in to chat a moment with her friend, she asked, "Did you enjoy yourself, dearie?"

"Immensely!" said Chloris. "How nice they all are to me! What dear, kind things they are! By the way, though, there was something I wanted to ask. Who is that dark-haired, plump young woman, with black bugle eyes, and a skin like red-and-white paper--quite passable-looking, if she did not look so sulky?"

"What did she wear?"

"Something pretentious but unbecoming. It had a lot of bead-trimming. Now, speaking of how nice every one and everything was, I except that girl's manner. _She_ was positively rude. I did not know how to take it. I have met her before, with all the others, and passed her on the road, bowing my best; but we have never more than exchanged a word or two, so I can have done nothing to offend her."

Fidele was laughing.

"Who is she?" asked Chloris.

"That is Chloe," replied Fidele.

"Chloe?"

"You mustn't mind her rudeness, dearie. She is really a good sort of creature. But she is no doubt sorely tried."

"What tries her? Why do you laugh?"

"Demetrius! He was a shade partial to her before you came--not enough to cause comment in any place but this. And, even here, not enough to lay himself open to blame. It is a pity, though, that she can't keep her feelings hidden, and must vent her spite on you. Silly thing! I have no patience with that kind of girl."

Chloris's fingers became absent among the hair they were braiding. She looked into the lamp-flame with a vacant expression.

Fidele plied the brush in her tangled locks, and went on chatting.

Suddenly Chloris, who for some time had not spoken, laughed.

"What is it, dear?" asked Fidele, looking up at her friend, where she stood still staring in the lamp-flame. "Have I said anything funny?"

"No, it was nothing you said. I was thinking--my mind travelled from one thing to another--you know how it jumps about--and I had to laugh, before I knew, at a stupid old circumstance--"

"What circumstance?"

"Oh, nothing, dear--a thing we learned in school, in French, a fable--never mind!"

"A fable! My dear Chloris, how interesting! What fable?"

"I can't quote it. I have forgotten my French. It was about a hare--a hare who ran away in terror of a bull, and in his flight came to a swamp where the frogs were just as much afraid of him. Wouldn't it be interesting to know the rest? What the hare did, whether he put on his fiercest outside, and tried to make the frogs quake in their little wet boots?"

"What nonsense, you dear idiot! Ask Demetrius! He will give his best consideration to the frog question, and be impressed with its profoundness, while Chloe wears bead trimming and grows sage-color. Good-night, dear. I am dreadfully sleepy."

"I mean you shall take me to call on Chloe some day soon. Now that I see her face with a different idea of her, it is a nice face! Poor child! I could never settle down contentedly under the notion that some one disliked me; could you? Even a dog! I have had such a happy, peaceful time here, in this dear little place, I want every one to feel kindly towards me when I leave."

"You speak as if I were going to let you go, Chloris."

"Oh, my dearest, I don't want to talk of it. I have put off talking of it, day after day, yet you must know that I can only stay a very little longer. Think of it! I came for a month, and I have stayed--how long is it? And father must be getting lonesome; and he so seldom writes, and then tells me little or nothing. And everything must be needing me--"

"You extraordinary girl!" exclaimed Fidele, now very wide awake; "I swear I absolutely do not understand you! What do you mean? First you seem--you seem--and then--and then suddenly--"

Fidele could not get out her words, for Chloris's hand was across her lips.

"Hush!" she pleaded, quite earnestly. "Say nothing about it! When a thing has been spoken it seems to exist! You don't understand--I don't understand either. Who is consistent? Who knows what he wants? Who knows ever what he is doing? How many creatures we crush just walking across the grass! A path opens ahead, we take it blindly, not knowing whither it leads. With good reason we say we grope in the dark. Let us have the grace, then, when a moment's illumination is granted us, to go by its light. You don't know what I mean; I scarcely know myself. But don't try to keep me, dear! Remain at my side every minute that is left of my stay here; see me to the train without the shadow of an adventure--and I will love you all my life!"

And a few days later the train that had brought Chloris picked her up again, all flushed with Fidele's last kisses, and flew with her homeward.

She looked out of the window with other eyes than those she had first turned upon the mountains. Yet tears were in them, too, as she said, "Good-bye, dears! Your little sister leaves you, made quite well again. But never will she cease to love you. You shall be always in her dreams. And she will come back one day. When God sends her sorrows she will take refuge again with you."

All through the first hours of being rushed along across the brilliant fading land, that she looked at, scarcely seeing, she retained a sense of exaltation. She seemed to herself as a sword after the proofs of furnace and ice-brook. She could have laughed to think of the philosopher that was going home in place of the pallid victim of an almost pathological sensibility.

The mountains were dwindling to little hills; the latter-year sun was too barely bright: a crude earth-color and a sombre green took place of the angelic vague green and blue and pink of the dewier, earlier period. The plain was opening with its more trivial detail. Chloris's mind descended to its level, and projected itself with a limited emotion into the circumstances of the approaching home-coming. She felt prepared to endure whatever awaited her with grace and dignity; she felt sure, indeed, that she should feel very little. "I have learned the secret of life," she said to herself; "I have weighed and measured everything."

At this same moment an elderly gentleman who had a daughter was thinking how touchingly young and inexperienced his fellow-traveller looked; in his old heart he felt sorry for her, somehow, for being so young.

"I have weighed and measured everything," she said. "God is real, God lasts, and the love of Him. Human passion passes away. One might almost say that it does not exist. It is like a physical pain: it tortures, you try to locate it, you fix your mind upon the presumed seat of it--it is not there, there is no pain; and presently, when you are well, you cannot call up a remembrance of the sensation. I feel fitted to write a book on this subject. I thought I could never endure my life without Damon--dear, dear Damon! Yet I live and am improved in health. And, blinded by I shall never be able to explain what mist, I was beginning to adapt my mind to the thought of life with Demetrius, whom I pictured out of all proportion happy and grateful to me. Why more grateful than another? Thank God I was delivered from committing such a blunder! Ah, if I could teach Chloe all that I have learned! But she does not need it; she gets what she wants, for beyond a doubt Demetrius in time goes back to her. I--I am armed now at every point. I have a defence against every circumstance. The secret is: Nothing matters, but God above. And, knowing this, I mean to be very sweet to all at home, more thoughtful of every one, more generous of all myself--"

She was running between familiar orchards and fields; the image of reaching home became very present, and a sweetness pervaded her rising excitement at the thought of touching so soon the home-hands. The mountains were thrown back to the horizon of her mind. Between the sandy hummocks, beyond the level salt meadows which she had left green and found russet, she caught glimpses of a great sapphire line. She began looking eagerly for the farm-house that meant she was within a minute of her journey's end. It flashed past. She gathered up her things; she came out on the platform, and with a joyous heart looked for her father's gray face and his hand extended to help her down.

He was not there, and she got off the train alone, half-conscious of a dog-cart not far, with a horse behaving as a horse should not at the locomotive. The superbly indifferent iron monster puffed off, dragging after it its train; the indignant horse quieted down. She heard her name called; the voice was the man's in the dog-cart, it was Damon's. The philosopher hurried towards him with an insanely beating heart, an uplifted, greeting, beaming face.

He helped her in, and his trickle of answers met her stream of questions, and her stream of answers his trickle of questions, as they jogged, tilting along between the dusty roadsides. The warm flood of her home-coming sensations subsided a little, and she turned to look at him, to take a fond inventory of his face--dear old faithful friend, so kind to fetch her himself! Her heart tightened. What was gone wrong with Damon?--Damon, whom she had been picturing so happy, and was just rousing her spirit to question casually concerning Cytherea. Even at that moment they were approaching her dwelling, when the question, if she could make her voice right, not too indifferent, nor yet too interested, would seem so in place.

The grass on the lawn was long and uneven, constellated with twinkling autumn dandelions; the windows were shuttered, the veranda was empty, the chimney smokeless; a forgotten hammock rope, blackened and twisted by the rain, swung from a branch in front of the deserted house, thumping faintly against the tree-trunk. Chloris turned her lengthened face towards Damon; he lifted to hers a pair of very miserable eyes, and said, in an unresonant voice, "You should have got back in time for the cattle-fair. It was better than usual this year. Cookson's little mare took a prize."

"You don't mean it!" faltered Chloris, and looking straight ahead set her lips hard, to keep down an impetuous flood of hatred for Cytherea.

She saw the propriety of continuing to talk; but she could not keep her mind on it. Damon's powers of conversation, too, had failed him. He kept a stolid face to the horse's head; and they drove in silence to her door, where, alighting, she was swallowed in a sea of affectionate fatherly and auntly embraces.

"I may stay to tea, mayn't I?" asked Damon, dully, from his corner, where he seemed sitting in the cold.

Chloris gave him a place beside herself, and treated him like a sick, beloved child; but so tactfully, he could know only that it soothed.

She let him lie on the sofa, afterwards, while she played, and the others slept in the upper chambers.

She played with upturned face, pale and gentle and full of understanding; her eyebrows lifted, her eyes very large and kind. She would have thought that Damon slept, but that now and again he sighed.

When at last she stopped to look for something among her music, to go on with, he got up and came to the piano-side. "I am so glad you have got back," he said, from all his heart; "you are such a brick. Good Lord, how I have missed you--"

He turned away and went aimlessly to the window, and stood looking out. "I suppose it is time I went," he said. "But I hate to go home! I don't know what is come to me, I can't sleep these nights."

Chloris had gone to the window, too, and stood beside him, her indulgent young face, that wore a world-old expression, turned on the dimly glimmering white petunia-beds outside.

"Would you--won't you come out for a little stroll, Chloris? Run for your shawl, there is a dear girl, and let us go over to the beach. It isn't really late, and I am so restless, and I don't want to go alone, and it is so stuffy in my room at home."

Chloris, without a word of demur, took her wrap and followed him. They walked side by side in silence; the sense they must have in common of the beauty of the night might at first take lieu of conversation; when that sense must be outworn, they still thought their thoughts in silence. Chloris knew the relief it is not to pretend; Damon thought only of himself in this hour.

It was she, after a while, that led--tall, slender figure a step ahead of him, walking swiftly, with a sort of intrepidity. With his head a little bowed, his hands behind him, he followed.

She led him to the beach, and without regard for time or fitness of things, farther and farther along the smooth sands, away from home; then, by a long loop, back to the homeward road, as if with the determination to tire him out. She herself was conscious of no fatigue. She felt like a spirit; her uplifted eyes seemed so expanded that they could take in all the radiant firmament.

At last, as if awaking, he stopped and vaguely looked about, saying, "I am ready to drop! Good Lord, how far have you been taking me? Let us sit down a moment and rest."

They were not far from home, on the edge of a familiar pine-grove that ran down to the lapping inland sea. She sank on the dry pine-needles; he dropped beside her, and, tearing off his cap, unquestioningly laid his head in her lap.

"Does it ache?" she asked, softly.

"Yes," he murmured. "Rub it."

She passed her hand with a measured motion across his forehead, pushing up the heavy hair. She felt his face for an instant press closer to her knees; volumes of gratitude seemed expressed in the impulsive movement. She continued her stroking with a quiet, sisterly hand, her swelling heart suddenly choking her. She had him back, that she knew beyond a doubt. Broken, disillusioned, his heart seared by the image of another, he was hers, as he lay there thinking of that other. Hers to help, to heal, to make love her as much as she loved him. And a flood of human passion, the sensation she had decided--God forgive her!--disposed of forever, surged in her. Her eyes brimmed over with happy tears. Why should there be any feeling of bitterness mixed in a feeling so sweet? Why should the hurt to one's vanity be remembered in such a situation? Why not be finally glad to give more than one received, offer something whole for something broken, bless beyond all desert? No--no--that other could never have loved him so! Fate had meant well by him in putting her out of reach; this sorrow of his should pass away and be as if it had never been. Chloris felt in herself such inexhaustible wells of tenderness and patience, she knew hers was the good title; she knew she could be sufficient--make Damon forget. Her heart sang a song of praise and victory, while her hand smoothed his forehead with the fancy that it brushed away the image of Cytherea, fatal line by line.

Ineffable fatigue drew her down from high serene thoughts to thoughts nearer earth. She ached; waves of unnatural sensation swept through her, but she would not move. The weight of his dear head was better than ease.

While she took patience till he should be ready to rise and go sensibly home to bed, a whimsical image formed in her brain: Herself, and to one side of her, a little higher, Cytherea, and to the other, a little lower, Chloe--and beyond Chloe, in the descending line, some poor woman, not pretty or winning at all, to whom Chloe must appear a half-divinity; and above Cytherea, in the ascending line, another fairer than she, for, when all was said, there must be in this world women even fairer than the great Cytherea, of whom she, perchance, lying awake in her queenly bed, would think with anguish, confessing herself helpless to struggle. Poor Cytherea, then, in her turn! Chloris framed a sincere wish for her continued happiness, and that in the event of despised love God should grant her to become a philosopher. And her imagination went on feebly, whimsically, weaving. Still another fairer still creature above Cytherea's victress--still another at the other end, to whom the envier of Chloe should be an object of envy--and so on, till the chain seemed to extend from the seraphs down to the last of the most degraded race, and take a slightly humorous aspect. "It pleases the powers to be merry," thought Chloris, and was conscious of no irreverence in the conceit.

"Wake up, Chloris!" came Damon's voice, sounding more as it had used to sound, before he was so grown-up, and had untoward things happen to him in his sentiments.

"I have not been asleep!" she said, sheepishly, "except below my knees."

"I won't contradict you, but when I struck a light you were nodding and smiling away to yourself like a little China mandarin. Have you any idea of the time it is? Well, I won't enlighten you. What a crazy thing we have been doing! Come, dear, let me help you up. I hope to Heaven you haven't taken cold. Hello, can't you walk straight? What a brute I am! Take my arm--"

And laughing weakly and wearily, they set out staggering across the dim stubble-field that separated them from home.

"Dear old Chloris!" Damon murmured, pressing her arm to his side. "Best girl in the universe! You can never think what a comfort it is to have you home again. I feel more like myself. I think that to-night I shall sleep."

/$ THE END $/