CHAPTER X

For centuries philosophers have attempted to disentangle dreams from reality and to fix definite boundaries between the two. They have not found it easy. It is doubtful whether, even if possible, this would prove worth while except for the satisfaction it would bring the philosophers. Probably when the latter are all done with their grave conclusions people will continue to mix the two agreeably to their own lives.

If deep-browed academicians have found the task of separation difficult, certainly Roxie Kester cannot be blamed if she did not succeed and so kept right on with her dreaming. Particularly after that wonderful evening when Allston stood by her side like a veritable knight of old. For he had seemed to her then nothing short of magnificent. And yet, unlike most magnificent things in her life--such as story-book heroes and angels and gallant men of whom she read in the papers during the war--not remote. He had been near enough to touch. He _had_ touched her; had held her hands for a moment. How the stars had swam before her then! How close, at that moment, her dreams had seemed to reality. She had been ready to give herself up to them utterly. She had been ready to give herself up to him had he but asked or, not even asking, had taken. A little later, recalling her emotion, she had grown big-eyed, but she did not deny the fact. She had been quite helpless. And she was not ashamed of it. He had fought for her, twice risked his life for her, and she was his if he wished. Not that she had any very definite idea of what that meant. Few of her ideas were definite. They were scarcely more than instincts, warning her here and urging her on there, but always proving themselves sound and sweet and true.

Roxie thought of love as she thought of Heaven--a condition of complete happiness necessarily obscure until actually experienced. It was quite detached from marriage, or marriage, at any rate, as she saw it exemplified in the lives about her. Here it meant housekeeping and scarcely anything more than housekeeping. Marriage marked the end of youth; the beginning of old age. It was a serious, more or less matter-of-fact estate into which women entered, not because they wished, but because it was inevitable. It was what Bud Childers had proposed for her. It was what, for the time being at any rate, Allston had saved her from.

Love was something entirely different; as different as poetry from prose; as different as dreams from reality. It even turned prose into poetry and reality into dreams. It glorified everything like spring. It made flowers grow beneath her feet; made the birds break forth into song when she walked abroad; it deepened the blue of the sky and burnished the gold of the sun; it put her in touch everywhere with the beautiful. It even brought out the beauty in her own face and figure.

Roxie was not vain, although she knew well enough she compared favorably with other girls in the village. But lately, when standing before the mirror while doing her hair for the night, she had looked at herself a little more critically. And with a thrill of pride she had not discovered much with which to find fault. Her light hair was long and silken and responded with an added sheen to the careful combing she now gave it. Her blue eyes stared back at her with a new light which quickened them. Her skin was clear and though slightly more tanned than Miss Wilmer’s had a creamy bloom the latter lacked. Her nose and mouth and chin were not much and yet not badly modeled. Her teeth were large and not as pearly white as Miss Wilmer’s, but they were strong and, ever since the teacher at school had taught her to use a toothbrush, had improved. Her body was lithe and firm, but she did not think much about that. Except, she could not help but notice, she looked her best when in her long white night-robe which gave her full freedom and revealed the fine curves of her neck and her slight, rounded arms. She blushed even as she noted this and was glad enough to blow out her lamp and shelter herself in the dark.

She awoke every morning as fresh and clear-visioned as the dawn. She awoke with the physical vigor of a young animal ready to frolic and with her eyes wide open. She dressed as quickly as a boy and went down to her tasks with a song in her heart. For she was kindling the morning fire, not for Miss Wilmer, but for Allston. She threw open windows to let in the cool, fragrant new air, not for her mistress, but for him. For him she started the kettle to boiling and for him mixed her batter for hot bread. This was his house. He was the host and the others guests.

At odd times he stepped into the kitchen to say Hello. That was something to look forward to and later to remember. She made it a point always to be wearing a clean gingham apron.

“Do you know,” he said to her, dropping in just before supper, “you look as though you grew in the field like the daisies and some one plucked you fresh every day. You sure that isn’t true?”

She shook her head.

“Flowers are pretty, but they don’t last long,” she said.

“And yet they are everywhere. They were even in France--on the battle-fields.”

Roxie often carried Allston’s thoughts back to those days by suggestions of one kind and another. And he never resented this. She never made him feel that he was recalling past events for the entertainment of an outsider. It was more as though she helped him live over again the pleasanter details. She accepted them as he had done at the time, simply and naïvely.

“But I don’t know if it’s any stranger to find them in France than in my room every day,” he went on with a smile. “How do they get on my table?”

“I put them there,” she answered directly. “Don’t you like them?”

“Very much. It’s mighty kind of you, Roxie. About this time, three years back, there was a lady in France who used to do that for me.”

She looked up quickly.

“A girl?” she asked.

“A lady--a very old lady.”

“Oh.”

“But the flowers were young. Flowers are always young, aren’t they?”

“Until they die.”

“Who knows? They may be young after that.”

“Maybe,” she nodded seriously.

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen. How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Seems like you was younger.”

“Is that very old, Roxie?”

“No, sir, that ain’t very old,” she hastened to assure him, fearing she had offended. “No, sir, only seems like I’d be old when I was twenty-four.”

“I doubt it--if you keep growing in the field. You’ll come up every spring.”

“Seems sometimes like it was spring always.”

“What?” he questioned. “That sounds as though you were in love.”

Her cheeks flamed scarlet at that. He noticed it before she could turn. He studied her pretty back as she bent her head over her work and the curve of her neck where the soft hair grows.

“Roxie,” he said without moving, in a lowered voice, “is love like that?”

“I dunno,” she answered weakly.

He scarcely heard her reply. His thoughts this time had gone back, not to France, but to a tiny sunlit cove on the mountain-side; to the impulsive clasp of a warm hand which had left him worried ever since.

“It might be like that,” he said. “That’s what the poets are always singing, isn’t it?”

“I dunno,” she repeated.

He roused himself.

“I don’t know either,” he said. “But perhaps some day we may find out--both of us. It sounds reasonable, anyhow.”

He went out leaving Roxie alone with her burning thoughts while he reviewed his own.

It would seem that with all that has been written about love by both philosophers and romanticists; with all the lovers there have been in the world since the world began who have recorded their experiences in song and story and memoirs; with all that a man sees and hears of love with his own ears and his own eyes before he has reached twenty, there should be little chance left for speculation on the part of any one. And yet here was Allston, who had read a good bit and had seen a good bit, unable to recognize it either in himself or in others. It was as though he found himself in some newly discovered land about which he must feel his way cautiously lest he lose his direction. It was as though he were upon some untried venture.

He had, of course, a sentimental notion of what love meant, but this did not seem to the point. It was not that which had made him reach for Wilmer’s hand. He had said at the time he could not explain his act, and that was true. His impulse had come from deep within. But stranger than this was the effect this brief contact produced in him. The effrontery of it, which had at first startled them both, she seemed ready to forgive, and this, in turn, allowed him to forget that crass feature. But this by no means settled the matter. Their relations were not what they had been before. He saw this in her eyes suddenly grown timid; he felt it in his own changed attitude when with her.

She had become, he would have said, more human. Until now she had been no more than an intellectual pastime, like a pleasant and not too baffling problem in chess. He had enjoyed moving this way and that in order to see how she would respond. When he made her smile, he felt that he had scored Check, although more often than not she moved easily out of danger. This seemed like an amusing and safe diversion for them both. With nothing at stake it mattered little who won.

But the touch of her warm fingers--brief as it was--had proved her of flesh and blood. It seemed strange after this that he had ever doubted it. On the walk home from the cove that late afternoon he was conscious of it every minute. He saw her try to resume the old game at the point where it had been so rudely interrupted and saw her fail, though he did his best to help her. He himself tried and failed. For long intervals they walked in silence--a dangerous silence.

That evening she came down to supper light-heartedly enough and in a pretty new gown. For the first time since his stay here Allston could have told with some detail just what she wore. It was a light, gauzy thing of a bluish tint with rosebuds peeping out from the skirt beneath. Her hair was done high and fastened with a large tortoise-shell comb. The walk had so crimsoned her cheeks that her father noticed it.

“You’re looking very fine to-night,” he said.

“Thank you, dad,” she answered.

Allston wished to add his testimony, but when he met her brown eyes he decided not to venture. But at that he honestly did think she looked very fine.

Howe appeared troubled with Allston’s lack of success in the neighboring streams. He had recommended them--on hearsay evidence, to be sure--and held himself more or less responsible.

“It’s odd you don’t have better luck,” he said at supper. “I’ve always understood the fishing around here was excellent--particularly for bass.”

“It is,” answered Allston. “But I’ve been fishing for trout.”

“Well, it seems as though you ought to get a trout occasionally.”

“I’m afraid it’s been my fault,” broke in Wilmer. “I think Mr. Allston will have to try his luck alone for a while.”

“I might get more fish,” admitted Allston. “But I wouldn’t have as much pleasure.”

“Trout are wary,” said Howe.

“As wary as smiles,” admitted Allston.

“I did more or less fishing when a boy,” ran on Howe. “The streams were better stocked then.”

“But the woods were not any sweeter nor the sun any brighter,” suggested Allston. “And that after all is what counts. I haven’t a complaint to make--unless it is of to-day.”

“Why of to-day?” questioned Howe.

“I didn’t give enough attention to my fishing.”

“And lost a big one? They always bite best when your head is turned.”

“My head _was_ turned,” replied Allston, looking across the table at Wilmer. She was very busy at that moment pouring tea.

“You will have sugar to-night?”

“All you’ll give me.”

“That’s too bad,” Howe consoled him. “I hope you’ll have better luck next time.”

“I shall certainly try to keep my head another time,” declared Allston.

It was not easy, however, even for the remainder of that evening. He had never before minded the presence of her father, but from this point on he found himself contriving all sorts of little subterfuges for isolating her. She managed to foil them all without permitting him to know whether it was deliberate or not. To-night she consumed at least two hours in reading the New Orleans papers until he heartily wished that New Orleans could be blotted from the map. And yet, had it not been for the papers and those droning market quotations on sugar, the chances are that Howe would not have impolitely closed his dear old eyes and gone off peacefully to sleep. The girl herself did not notice until Allston rose and touched her shoulder, pointing at the dozing figure.

“Let’s go out on the porch,” he whispered. “We mustn’t disturb him.”

She hesitated--evidently uneasy.

“You don’t want to wake him, do you? You know he hasn’t been sleeping very well lately.”

Which was true enough.

Reluctantly she rose and yet with a curious sort of reluctance too; a reluctance that expressed itself in a choking kind of eagerness. Out there he faced her in the light of a waning moon.

“You didn’t mean what you said about letting me fish alone?” he demanded.

“It--it might be best,” she answered.

“It would be like sending me into exile, and you don’t want to do that, do you?”

“I don’t know,” she answered with almost the bewilderment of a child. “Oh, I don’t know anything.”

It was strange that her phrase should have recalled to him the half-heard phrase Roxie had used. The latter had said, “I dunno” in answer to the question he had asked, carelessly enough, of her.

“Everything seems to be getting down to that,” he muttered. “I don’t know very much myself.”