Perhaps it did not seem such “hard lines” when she suddenly came out of the house, later in the day; for as he glanced up the slope and beheld her, he rose promptly and went to meet her.
It was a tortuous way up the slope; the outcropping ledges here and there projected so heavily that it was easier to skirt around than to climb over them. Brambles grew in shaggy patches; trees intervened; more than once, gnarled roots, struck but half in the ground, the bole rising at a sharp angle with the incline, threw him out of the line of a direct approach. He saw, in drawing near, that he was as yet unperceived, as she made her way slowly along the road. Her wonderful eyes were fixed meditatively, softly, upon the blue mountains beyond the Cove, showing through the gap of the nearer purple ranges. Her lips had a drooping curve. The golden glimmers of her brown hair, rising in dense fairness above her white brow, had never seemed to him so distinct. She carried her pink sunbonnet in her hand; the large loose curls floated on the shoulders of her calico dress. It was of a sleazy texture, and the skirt fell in starchless folds from a short waist to the tops of her low-cut shoes. The color was a rose pink, and on it was scattered a pattern of great roses of the darkest red hue, and she looked as fantastic as if she were attired for a fancy-dress ball. Somehow, this accorded better with his humor than the sombre homespun attire which the mountain women as a rule affected. Her costume, regarded as a fad, did not so diminish her beauty. He could judge better of it, as he paused, still unperceived because of the intervening brambles, hardly ten feet from her. She looked like some old picture, as, swinging the bonnet by one string, she stood still for a moment, with an intent expression in her lovely eyes.
“Ef he speaks so agin,” she said slowly, “ef he speaks so agin afore them all, I dunno how I kin abide it.”
There was a look of pain on her face which, however, did not promise tears. He realized that tears were scarce with her and came hard. It was the look of one whose heart is pierced, and whose pride is bent, and whose endurance flags. Then, with an access of resolution visible in her soft face, she suddenly moved onward, and the swaying sprays of the brambles painted the picture out.
He had hardly time to take stock of his impressions, or note his own surprise, or marvel of what or of whom she spoke, when Mrs. Sims issued, waddling, from the house. She perceived him readily enough, having him in mind, perhaps, and called to him to hurry up, “for we-uns air all goin’ ter meetin’ over yander at the church-house, whar ye gin that show o’ yourn,” displaying a fat dimply smile too jolly for the occasion, and all un-meet to companion the Sabbath-day expression on the sour visage of old Tubal Cain Sims, who was shuffling out with high shoulders and hollow chest and bent knees to join the family procession.
Lucien Royce welcomed the summons with the half-bewildered delight of one unexpectedly rescued from the extremest griefs of ennui. His first instinct was to run and dress. Then remembering that he wore the best clothes he had, he composed himself with the reflection that he was in the fashion as it prevailed here. He was consoled, too, as he strolled along beside Mrs. Sims, for the lack of a younger companion, by reflecting that he wanted to make no mischief among any possible lovers of Euphemia, which his public appearance walking with her to church was well calculated to do.
“I think I am safe with Mrs. Sims,” he said to himself. “I suppose nobody is in love with her,—not even old Tubal Cain, whatever he may once have been.”
He cast a glance at the lean and active partner of Mrs. Sims’s joys and sorrows, forging along at a brisk pace which was certain to land him in church before the rest of the household had achieved half the distance.
VI.
The Cove was no longer silent. Akin to the cadence of the echo, one with the ethereal essence of the sighing and lapsing of the mountain stream, the distant choiring of the congregation in the unseen “church-house” seemed some indigenous voice of the wilderness, so sylvan, so plaintive, so replete with subtle solemn intimations, was the sound. The juggler did not at once distinguish it. Then it came anew with more definite meaning, and it smote upon his quivering, lacerated sensibilities. Not that in the sophisticated life which he had quitted he had valued the Sunday sermons, or cared for the house of the Lord, save architecturally; but he had loved the Sunday singing; the great swelling reverberations of the organ were wont to stir his very heart-strings; and while he appreciated the scope and the worth of the standard compositions of sacred music, he was always keen and critically alert to hear any new thing, with due allowance for the lower level. And should the consecrated hour prove heavy to his spirits, did not his seat near the door, his hat at hand, his quick, noiseless, deft step, provide amply for his retreat? With the realization of the loss of his life, his home, poignantly renewed by the vibrations of the long, sustained, psalmodic tones, he would fain have turned back now; but the idea of the tedious solitude on the ledge of the river-bank, his heavy thoughts, the dread of the remonstrances and urgency of Mrs. Sims, constrained him. So he listened to the solemn rise and fall of the hymning in the Cove, rising and falling with the wind, with a new sense of aghast trouble fixed upon him, as if some spectral thing had revealed itself in the wilderness as he walked unwary.