As the hart panteth

by Hallie Erminie Rives

That morning Glenn ate breakfast with the family by lamplight. He went back to his window afterwards and watched the sun rise. At this season of the year the beauty of Virginia was at its height. He delighted from the first in the splendid scenery and moody weather.

A haze of purple mist was lifting slowly from the mountains between whose heart the valleys lay. The view was fresh with the lusty color of midsummer. Exquisite perfumes, breath of young corn and cut clover, came to him and grew sharper and sweeter as the dawn opened wide. In nature he could see the warm heart of life, tender, strong and true. In the distance stretched the wheat fields studded over with yellow shocks, waiting for harvest-time. Later, as Glenn Andrews passed out on his way to the woods, he saw the lengthening of the table, the unusual hurry among the servants, which was a sign that he was to have dinner that day in a harvest home. Wheat threshing time was on. This lover of the sun, of long, wandering strolls, took the way he had not been. It did not concern him much which way he took to solitude. Wherever they met they made friends—he and solitude. They were so much alike. Their sympathies were so much akin. Both were full of deep nature, dignity and intense self-possession; they could not but find comforting good-fellowship. With solitude he could almost hear the voice of God, hear it speaking, between him and his hopes. Returning, he stopped at “Indian Well.” A long time he sat there, face to face with his own heart and brain. He made notes at times in a small book, which he kept always with him. The class poet and editor of the college magazine had a right to drop into rhyme whenever he felt like it, even though the indulgence might never be known to the world. Glenn Andrews took out his second cigar, drew a whiff of its scent and put it back in his pocket. In his self-denial there was the compensation of looking forward. He smoked it that afternoon over his work. The sun was striking aslant and was not far from setting. Here was a broad hint to hurry if he cared to see them harvesting. The engine sent its shrill whistling call for “wheat” as he leaned over the fence. Dressed in a hunting suit of brown tweed with tan boots laced from the ankle to the knee, his broad hat pulled forward to shade his eyes, Glenn Andrews attracted notice. The field was alive with toilers moving easily, swiftly, leaning in a hundred graceful inclinations; some were loading their wagons, lifting and loosening their shocks with a thrust of their pitch-forks, others unloading them beside the thresher, clipping the twine that bound the bundles and making a moving bridge of beaten gold as they fed it. The heated engineer, with his oil-can, stood at the head of the monstrous steam horse that had never lost its mysterious power to charm the negro.

Tagger often stopped to stare and wonder. The machinery belt, smooth and glittering like a broad satin ribbon, industriously turning on great wheels, made him dance, barefooted over the stubble, to the music of its motion. Little imps, such as he, counted this day of the year a holiday high above all others they had ever known.

The mule that was driven with a long lasso under the straw as it fell had a half-dozen or more children to pull every time it went to the stack. In spite of the dust and the chaff that covered their heads and half stifled them, they gave a wild dart and leaped upon the heap as it was hauled away. Sometimes the wind took a whirl and scattered the straw, niggers and all broadcast along the field. Glenn Andrews’ heart beat lightly, the air thrilled with sounds, the music of the harvesters and the hum of the thresher. There is nothing like life under the open heaven, he knew. Glenn was a gypsy by nature.

“How is it turning out?” he asked, coming up to Mr. Curtis, who was counting the loaded wagons that were filled with sacks of wheat, starting off to be stored.

“Very good; the yield is something like sixteen bushels to the acre. I’ll have about eighteen hundred altogether.” Glenn Andrews looked up and saw a figure coming across the stubble—one that stood out in delicate relief, slimmer, shapelier than the rest. She was all in white; Mr. Curtis saw her, too.

“Here comes the fly-up-the-creek,” he said. “She looks like a hearse horse with all those elder blooms on her head.” His speech had no touch of spitefulness.

“I like her way; she is as wild and lawless as the wind, and as free.” Glenn Andrews never thought or spoke of Esther without defense.

“Yes, and as sprightly as they make ’em,” Mr. Curtis began. “She never went to school a day in her life. Her mother taught her, and her grandpa reads to her. But play the fiddle—she can play it to beat the band. She just took it up first. She could catch any tune. A teacher came along about two years ago who knew a little about the fiddle. Mr. Campbell is very poor now. He let the lady board with him to give Esther lessons while she was teaching in the district. She would not practice, they say, but you never saw anybody learn like she did without it.”

“What a pity she hasn’t a chance to keep on.”