This time the girl was pretty again, and, he at once discovered, not indisposed to light conversation. Yet she was a shallow creature, with little mind for the subtler things of life and the springtime. He decided she was much better to look at than to talk to. With a just appreciation of her own charms she appeared to pose perpetually before an imaginary mirror, regaling him and herself with new postures, tossing her brown head, curving her supple waist, exploiting her thousand coquetries. He was pained to note, moreover, that she was more than conscious of the red-cheeked youth who came in from the carriage shed, whistling.
When the man and the beast had been appeased they sat out under a blossomed apple-tree and smoked together in a fine spirit of amity.
He was not amazed when, in the gloom, he saw the red-cheeked youth with both arms about the girl—nor was he shocked at detecting instantly that her struggles were meant to be futile against her assailant's might. The birds were mating, life was forward, and Nature loves to be democratically lavish with her choicest secrets. Why not, then, the blooming, full curved kitchen-maid and the red-cheeked boy-of-all-work?
He smoked and saw the night fall. The dulled bronze jangle of cow-bells came soothingly to him. An owl called a little way off. Swallows flashed by in long graceful flights. A bat circled near, indecisively, as if with a message it hesitated to give. Once he heard the flute-like warble of a skylark.
He was under the clean, sharp stars of a moonless night. His keen senses tasted the pungent smoke and the softer feminine fragrance of the apple-blossoms. His nerves were stilled to pleasant ease, except when the laugh of the girl floated to him from the grape-arbour back of the house. That disturbed him to fierce longings—the clear, high measure of a woman's laugh floating to him in the night. And once she sang—some song common to her class. It moved him as her laugh did, making him vibrate to her, as when a practised hand flutters the strings of a harp. He was glad without knowing why when she stopped.
At ten o'clock he went in from under the peering little stars and fell asleep in an ancient four-poster. He dreamed that he had the world, a foot-ball, clasped to his breast, and was running down the field for a gain of a hundred yards. Then, suddenly, in place of the world, it was Avice Milbrey in his grasp, struggling frantically to be free; and instead of behaving like a gentleman he flung both arms around her and kissed her despite her struggles; kissed her time after time, until she ceased to strive against him, and lay panting and helpless in his arms.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured
He was awakened by the unaccustomed silence. As he lay with his eyes open, his first thought was that all things had stopped—the world had come to its end. Then remembrance came, and he stretched in lazy enjoyment of the stillness and the soft feather bed upon which he had slept. Finding himself too wide awake for more sleep, he went over to the little gable window and looked out. The unfermented wine of another spring day came to his eager nostrils. The little ball had made another turn. Its cheek was coming once more into the light. Already the east was flushing with a wondrous vague pink. The little animals in the city over there, he thought, would soon be tumbling out of their beds to begin another of their funny, serious days of trial and failure; to make ready for another night of forgetfulness, when their absurd little ant-hill should turn again away from the big blazing star. He sat a long time at the window, looking out to the east, where the light was showing; meditating on many idle, little matters, but conscious all the time of great power within himself.