CHAPTER V

RONALD BRUCE

Handsome as Hercules, ere his first labor. ANON.

Ronald Bruce! Yes, it was he. There he stood, taller, browner, and stouter, and, withal, handsomer than he had ever been before.

They recognized each other in one mutual, instantaneous, astonished gaze.

“Miss Palmer! You here! What a surprise! I did not know it was you until you turned your face. I am _very_ glad to see you!” exclaimed the young man heartily, offering his hand.

But he looked full of curiosity and interest, as if he would have liked to ask her how on earth she ever came there, if the question had been admissible.

Em.’s expressive face flushed and paled as she received his hand.

“I hope I did not frighten you,” continued the young lieutenant, seeing that she did not speak.

“Oh, no, not much—that is, not at all,” faltered the girl in blushing confusion.

“You did not in the least expect to meet me here, however,” said Ronald Bruce, fixing his honest, dark eyes smilingly upon her roseate face.

“Oh, no; but I am very much pleased to meet you here,” said Em., beginning to recover her self-possession and speaking with all the more formal politeness because of her conscious embarrassment.

“Are you really? Then this is a mutual pleasure as well as a mutual surprise. Being in the neighborhood, and hearing of this beautiful place, I came this morning to see it. I met the housekeeper, who told me that the doors were open, as there was another person inside viewing the rooms. I came in and found you.”

“I have been here once before. I like to come.”

“It is a very attractive place—but do not stand!” suddenly exclaimed the young man as he went off and wheeled up a short sofa before the picture.

“Now sit down, Miss Palmer, and I will explain how I happen to be in this neighborhood.”

She seated herself with a bow of thanks, and he, leaning over the arm of the sofa, continued:

“I am on a three months’ leave, and I have come to spend it with my uncle, Commodore Bruce, who has been placed on the retired list, and is living at a fine old place called The Breezes, on the west bank of the river, about half way between this and a queer old manor called the Wilderness. Perhaps you may know both, if you have been here long.”

“Yes, I have seen The Breezes from the river. It is a long, gray stone house on a plateau half way up the mountain side, half hidden, also, by trees, and with a fountain gushing from the rocks at the right and tumbling all the way down from ledge to ledge until it falls into the river.”

“That is the place. The house, as you say, stands upon a natural plateau about half way up the mountain. The commodore calls the plateau a shelf, and says that it is all right that a worn-out old veteran like himself should be laid upon the shelf. But I am sorry that he is retired from the navy. He needed that active life more than any man I ever knew.”

“Why?” inquired Em.

“To occupy his mind and make him forget his troubles. He has had so much trouble. He lost all his children in their childhood, with the exception of one, who lived to be about eighteen years old, and was then lost on the _Eagle_, when that fine ship was wrecked on the coast of Morocco.”

“Oh, what a terrible misfortune!” sighed Em.

“That catastrophe broke his wife’s heart. She died within a few weeks after the news of the wreck came. And now for years past the brave old man has been a childless widower. Still I think he bore up much better when in active service than he does now, for since his retirement he has been subject to fits of deepest melancholy. I spend all the time I can with him; but I am only his nephew. I cannot take the place of his son.”

“I know you must be a great comfort to him, for all that,” said Em., in earnest sympathy.

“I don’t know. He wants me to resign my commission in the navy and live with him altogether.”

“Oh, I wish you would! I wish you would!” impulsively exclaimed the girl. And then she suddenly recollected herself and blushed deeply at her own impetuous words.

“Most certainly I will do so, since you wish it!” replied the young man with so much comic solemnity that Em. broke into a peal of silvery laughter. Then growing grave in her turn she said:

“I do not think you ought to make fun of what I said, Mr. Bruce.”

“‘Fun!’ You think I am jesting?”

“Of course I do. You certainly do not mean to say that you are in earnest.”

“Indeed I do—that is, if—do you know that I have never ceased to think of you since that day I first met you?” he whispered earnestly.

Em. flushed and paled and began to tremble.

“Never ceased to think of you, and longed to see you again. And now I do see you, I wish never to lose sight of you more. Do you understand me, little Em.?” he breathed, trying to take her hand; but she withdrew it gently and folded her arms.

“There, I will not touch your hand if you do not wish me to do so. But do you understand me, dear little Em.?”

“I—think—I—Oh! but——” muttered the girl, incoherently, and every moment growing more and more confused and—distressed or delighted, she could hardly know which, so mixed were her emotions.

“This is what I mean, dear girl—that your presence in the neighborhood makes the place so much more attractive to me that, if you are to be a permanent resident of the county, I shall indeed be strongly tempted to forego all my cherished hopes of a career in the navy and be delighted to settle down with my uncle at his retreat.”

“Just to see me once in a while?” inquired Em. in low, tremulous, incredulous tones.

“Just to see you as often as I may be permitted to do so. You are to live here, then, I am to understand?”

“Yes; at the Wilderness. My father is the new overseer.”

“In-deed!” slowly responded Ronald Bruce.

“Yes,” replied Em., recovering some self-possession now that the conversation was turned from her personally. “We are all there—father, mother, all my brothers and sisters, the little Italian girl, Valencia, and Mrs. Whitlock and Aunt Monica.”

“Heaven and earth! Your father is a practical communist, with the unprecedented peculiarity of keeping up the commune at his own expense. So the little orphan is still with you?”

“Oh, yes; but she does not feel that she is an orphan. She is one of ourselves. We all love her dearly, and do all we can to make her forget she was ever anything else. Why, do you know, she has a high little spirit of her own, and the first time she showed it by slapping Molly in the face for combin her hair roughly we were all delighted, for we said to ourselves:

“‘Now we _know_ she feels quite at home.’”

“Hum,” gravely commented Ronald Bruce. “Was Molly delighted, too?”

Em. laughed.

“No,” she answered. “It took all the house to mollify Molly; and for a long time it was in vain that we explained what a good sign that was! oh, of course, we know that it was naughty, and that very night, at prayer-time, father gave out the children’s hymn, ‘Let dogs delight to bark and bite,’ for them all to learn by heart against the next Sabbath.”

“How do you like living at the Wilderness?”

“Oh, so much! So very much! We have such a good time! Plenty of clean space and fresh, sweet air. Plenty of well water and cool shade. Abundance of fruit and milk and everything we need. And the forest all around the house and the mountains behind and the river before. We children have learned to ride and drive, for the many horses standing in the stables have to be exercised. And I have learned to row and to manage a sail-boat. Oh, it is so delightful! After Laundry Lane, to be here is like having died to the earth and come to heaven!” exclaimed Em., with such enthusiasm that the young man smiled ruefully and said:

“And, in fact, you are so perfectly happy that you do not need even the presence of an old friend like me to add to your happiness—no, not even though he is willing to resign a glorious career and stay here for your sake. You do not want him.”

“Oh, yes, indeed, indeed I do!” exclaimed Em. impulsively, and then she clapped her hands over her own lips that no more hasty words might escape them, as she turned pale at the thought of their earnestness.

“That settles my destiny,” said the young lieutenant.

“Oh, I must go now,” murmured the girl, rising to her feet and throwing over her head a light gossamer shawl that had been knit by her own hands.

“Ah, not yet! Stay a little longer,” pleaded the young man.

“Oh, _indeed_ I must go now. I have duties to do at home,” persisted Em. as she shook the white gossamer shawl down over her shoulders until it flowed around her form like a mist.

“Stop! One moment! Good Heaven, what a resemblance!” exclaimed Ronald Bruce, gazing at Em. and then at the picture of the veiled lady.

“What? Oh! between me and the portrait? Yes, it has been remarked before,” said Em.

“I did not notice it until that flowing mantle of yours called my attention to it; but the resemblance is perfect in every feature of the face; Is it accidental, or are you perhaps a distant relation of the original?”

“It is accidental. I never even saw the original of that portrait, who I understand to be the lady of this island manor.”

“A strange coincidence of form and feature. You are not going?” he inquired, seeing Em. moving toward the door.

“Oh, yes, I must. Good-by.”

“No, I will see you to your boat.”

“But you have not been through the house you came to look at.”

“I can go through the house another time. I will see you to your boat, unless you forbid me to do so.”

She did not forbid him, and so he followed her out, and when he had returned the key to the keeper he attended her down through the beautiful groves of the isle to the landing where she had moored her boat.

“Do you mean to say that you sailed from the Wilderness alone in that boat?”

“Yes, why should I not?”

“Suppose an accident had happened?”

“They tell me that no accident ever was known to have happened on the Placid. Even if there had been an accident, at the very worst I could only have been drowned. And is it worth while to refrain from any harmless and healthful enjoyment for the fear of a possible accident?”

“Well, no, you are right. But it is rare to find a young girl so skillful and fearless in managing a sail-boat. Who taught you?”

“An old philosopher who is called ’Sias, and keeps the gates at the Wilderness,” said Em. as she began to unmoor her boat.

“No, no, let me do that. I should have done it before, but that I did not wish to hasten the time of your departure—like dropping the handkerchief for my own execution, you know,” said the young man as he took the task out of her hands and performed it himself.

Then he handed her into the boat, hoisted the sail and took the tiller and said:

“I hope you will let me go with you as far as our course separates—that is, to the landing below our place—though, if you feel the very least objection to my doing so, say it frankly and I will leave,” he added.

“I have no objection at all. I thank you very much; but what will become of your own boat that brought you here?” inquired Em., half pleased, half frightened at his proposal.

“Oh, I came in a little row-boat. I can send a servant down here in another boat to tow this back. Come, be charitable, and take me in. I am tired of rowing, and to row up stream will be much harder work than it was to row down.”

Em. hesitated for a moment and communed with herself to this effect.

“I would not refuse _any other_ person a seat in my boat, and why, now, should I refuse this gentleman, who has been kinder to me than most people? I will _not_ refuse him. It would be unkind, ungrateful and impolite.”

“Shall I go?” inquired Ronald Bruce.

“Oh, no, pray do not. Keep your seat, sir,” said Em., all the more graciously because she had hesitated.

“Ay, ay, sir,” said the young officer, laughingly touching his hat.

He took the tiller again and steered for the Wilderness, while Em. sat opposite to him with her idle hands before her.

“Now you know that you are captain of this boat, and I am only the man at the helm, under your command. I will steer where you order me and stop when you tell me,” said Ronald Bruce.

“No,” replied Em., “when I resigned the helm I resigned the command. I decline the responsibility you would force upon me. I am only a passenger.”

“Very well,” said the man at the helm, “then here we go!” and, unknown to Em., he shot past the landing below The Breezes and steered for the Wilderness.

“Why, where are you going?” inquired Em. when at last she perceived his course.

“To take you home to your landing at the foot of the Wilderness and then walk with you up to the house to see your father and mother.”

“I declare you are like the fox in the fable of the fox and the hare,” said Em. to herself, but to him she only put a question:

“How will you get back?”

“Oh, walk it—The Breezes being on the same side of the river with the Wilderness, you know.”

“Oh, yes, to be sure!” replied the girl, and upon every account she was very glad that Ronald Bruce was going straight home with her, for thus she would have his company for an hour or two longer, and then he would see the family, and they would all know how he came home with her, and all would be frank, open, and straightforward.

“You are very kind to me, Mr. Bruce, and you always were. I know my mother and father will be very glad to welcome you,” she said.

They soon reached the island landing, where Ronald Bruce lowered the sail, moored the boat, and would have given his hand to help his companion out, but she, unaccustomed to any such assistance, without waiting for it, sprang lightly to the shore.

He joined her immediately, and they entered the forest road and walked toward the house. It was now so near sunset that the sun had sunk out of sight behind the mountain range, casting the wooded valley into a premature twilight.

The young pair did not hurry themselves, but walked in a leisurely way through the deepening shades of the forest until they reached the manor-house.

Em. then led her companion around to the rear, where they found John and all the family sitting before the door of the Red Wing enjoying the coolness of the August evening.

“Well, little truant, where have you been all the afternoon, and who is that you have got with you?” inquired John Palmer as Em. and her escort approached.

“I have been all this time on the river, and at the island, father, and I have brought an old friend home whom you and mother will be glad to see—Lieutenant Ronald Bruce,” said Em.

Young Bruce lifted his cap and advanced.

But almost before he could take a step the little Italian girl, Valencia, with a great cry of joy rushed forward and clasped him with both little arms, calling him, in her enthusiastic language, her illustrious, her beneficent, her beloved, her caressed, and so forth, and so forth.

Ronald Bruce responded heartily, lifted her in his arms and kissed and blessed her, and then put her gently down and went forward to greet John and Susan Palmer, who both received him very cordially and pressed him to be seated and to stay to tea.

Ronald Bruce in look and manner showed his willingness to do so at the same time that he explained his inability by saying that he was obliged to start immediately, as he had to walk back through the forest and half way up the mountain to The Breezes, where he was then staying with his uncle, Commodore Bruce.

“Well, there,” said John Palmer; “we did hear that a retired naval officer had taken that old place, but we never heard his name. So it was the commodore. Well, sir, his place, I should say, was a good ten miles from here by the road; it is a great deal nearer by the river. Now, sir, there’s no need for you to walk it at all. If so be you must go back, why, there’s a dozen horses in the stable needing exercise, the best of ’em heartily at your service. But—would the old gentleman be anxious if you was to stay out all night?”

“Oh, no!” laughed the young man. “He retires to his study so early that he would not know it.”

“Well, then, sir, here’s my offer to you—the best horse in the stable if you _must_ go; or a hearty welcome to the best room in the house if you can stay,” said John cordially.

“Do stay, Mr. Bruce. We should all be happy to have you,” added Susan Palmer, glad of the chance to offer hospitality.

The little Italian girl caught his hand and held it tightly while she lifted her dark, bright, eager eyes pleadingly to his.

But Ronald Bruce sought the eyes of Em., which said nothing, their glance being fixed upon the ground.

Nevertheless, the young man thanked the hospitable couple and accepted their invitation as frankly as it was given.