He did not care to linger longer within the premises. He could not even enjoy the relapse into old sounds and sights in a guise in which he was thought so meanly of, and which so ill beseemed his birth and quality. When he issued from the quadrangle, at the lower end of the veranda, he found he was nearer the descent to the spring than to the store. He thought he would slip down that dank, bosky, deserted path, make a circuit through the woods, and thus regain the road homeward without risking further observation and the laceration of his quivering pride. False pride he thought it might be, but accoutred, alas, with sensitive fibres, with alert and elastic muscles for the writhings of torture, with delicate membranes to shrivel and scorch and sear as if it were quite genuine and a laudable possession.
The ferns with long wide-spreading fronds, and great mossy boulders amongst the dense undergrowth, pressed close on either hand, and the thick interlacing boughs of trees overarched the precipitous vista as he went down and down into its green-tinted glooms. Now and again it curved and sought a more level course, but outcropping ledges interposed, making the way rugged, and soon cliffs began to peer through the foliage, and on one side they overhung the path; on the other side a precipice lurked, glimpsed through boughs of trees whose trunks were fifty feet lower on a slope beneath. An abrupt turn,—the odor of ferns blended with moisture came delicately, elusively fragrant; a great fracture yawned amidst the rocks, and there, from a cleft stained deeply ochreous with the oxide of iron, a crystal-clear rill fell so continuously that it seemed to possess no faculty of motion in its limpid interlacings and plaitings as of silver threads; only below, where the natural stone basin—hewn out by the constant beating of the current on the solid rock—overflowed, could the momentum and power of the water be inferred from its swift escape, bounding over the precipice and rushing off in great haste for the valley. The proprietor had had the good taste to preserve the woodland character of the place intact. No sign that civilization had ever intruded here did Royce mark, as he looked about, save a book on a rock hard by. Some one had sought this sylvan solitude for a quiet hour in the fascinations of its pages.
He hesitated a moment, then advanced cautiously and laid his hand upon it. How long, how long—it seemed as if in another existence—since he had had a book like this in his hand! He caught its title eagerly, and the name of the author. They were new to him. He turned the pages with alert interest. The book had been published since the date of his exile. Once more he fluttered the leaves, and, like some famished, thirsting wretch drinking in great eager gulps, he began to absorb the contents, his eyes glowing like coals, his breath hot, his hands trembling with nervous haste, knowing that his time for this draught of elixir, this refreshment of his soul, was brief, so brief. It would never do, for a man so humbly clad as he was, to be caught reading with evident delight a scholarly book like this. When at last he threw himself down amongst the thick and fragrant mint beside the rock, his shoulders supported on an outcropping ledge, his hat fallen on the ground, he had forgotten all thought of caution, he was not conscious how the time sped by. His eyes were alight, moving swiftly from side to side of the page. His face glowed with responsive enthusiasm to the high thought of the author. His troubles had done much to chasten its expression and had chiseled its features. It had never been so serious, so intelligent, so refined, as now. He did not see how the shadows shifted, till in this umbrageous retreat a glittering lance of sunlight pierced the green gloom. He was not even aware of another presence, a sudden entrance. A young lady, climbing up from the precipitous slope below, started abruptly at sight of him, jeopardizing her already uncertain footing, then stared for an instant in blank amazement.
So precarious was the footing where she had paused, however, that there was no safe choice but to continue her ascent. He did not heed more the rustle of her garments, as she struggled to the level ground, than the rustle of the leaves, or the rattle of the little avalanche of gravel as her foot upon the verge dislodged the pebbles. Only when the shaft of sunlight struck full upon her white piqué dress, and the reflected glare was flung over the page of the book and into his eyes with that refulgent quality which a thick white fabric takes from the sun, he glanced up at the dazzling apparition with a galvanic start which jarred his every fibre. He stared at her for one moment as if he were in a dream; he had come from so far,—so very far! Then he grasped his troublous identity, and sprang to his feet in great embarrassment.
“I must apologize,” he said, with his most courteous intonation, “for taking the liberty of reading your book.”
“Not at all,” she murmured civilly, but still looking at him in much surprise and with intent eyes.
Those eyes were blue and soft and lustrous; the lashes were long and black; the eyebrows were so fine, so perfect, so delicately arched, that they might have justified the writing of sonnets in their praise. That delicate small Roman nose one knew instinctively she derived from a father who had followed its prototype from one worldly advancement to another, and into positions of special financial trusts and high commercial consideration. It would give distinction to her face in the years to come, when her fresh and delicate lips should fade, and that fluctuating sea-shell pink hue should no longer embellish her cheek. Her complexion was very fair. Her hair, densely black, showed under the brim of the white sailor hat set straight on her small head. She was tall and slender, and wore her simple dress with an effect of finished elegance. She had an air of much refinement and unconscious dignity, and although, from her alert volant pose, he inferred that she was ready to terminate the interview, she did not move at once when he had tendered the book and she had taken it in her hand.
“I merely intended to glance at the title,” he went on, still overwhelmed to be caught in this literary poaching, and hampered by the consciousness that his manner and his assumed identity had become strangely at variance. “But I grew so much interested that I—I—quite lost myself.”
She had some thought in mind as she looked down at the book in her gloved hand, then at him. The blood stung his cheek as he divined it. In pity for his evident poverty and hankering for the volume, she would fain have bid him keep it. But with an exacting sense of conventionality, she said suavely, though with impersonal inexpressiveness, “It is no matter. I am glad it entertained you. Good-morning.”
He bowed with distant and unpresuming politeness, and as she walked, with a fine poise and a quick elastic gait, along the shadowy green path, vanishing at the first turn, he felt the blood beating in his temples with such marked pulsation that he could have counted the strokes as he stood.