“Ruth!” he cried in alarm, moving forward as if to sustain her.
She drew herself up, rigid and frozen; then her face relaxed, suffused by a wan smile and a returning flood of carmine. She held out her hand with a nervous laugh.
“How are you, Mr. Strang? I thought it was Billy, and to see you instead startled me.”
As he took the little hand and looked into her face, maturer than its years, though it had not lost its olden charm, especially in the complexion, which was marvellously pure and soft, registering every slightest change of thought and feeling in dainty flickers of rose across its delicate fairness, his soul was invaded by a rush of tender memories, incongruously jostling in his brain: the thrills and raptures of boyhood, the joys of coasting down the slopes, and snaring rabbits and shooting partridges; the glow of skating; the delicious taste of the home-made cakes; the songs and hymns of childhood, the firelight casting shadows on the dusky walls, while his mother read the Bible; the drone of the fusty-coated preacher in the little wooden meeting-house; the thwacking of the dancers’ feet in the barn, the odors of hay and the lowing of cattle; the gleam of the yellow-tipped mullein by the wayside and the smell of the wild flowers in the woods; the note of the whippoorwill in the forest at twilight; the long cranes floating over the summer marshes; the buzz of fresh young voices in McTavit’s school-room. All these came back—dear and desirable, steeped in tears, softened by distance to a pensive beauty, like bawling choruses heard from afar across still water, inextricably interwoven with all the pieties of childhood, the simple sense of God and truth and honor and righteousness.
He stood holding her hand, oblivious of the present, in a whirling chaos of ancient images that melted his soul to childish tenderness, and brought back to it the child’s clear, unquestioning perception of spiritual ideas which had grown shadowy in the atmosphere of salons and studios and fashionable churches, that stereoscopic vision of the saint and the child which sees the spiritual solid. But Ruth disengaged her fingers at last, blushing under the kindly smile of the comely lady.
“This is Mr. Matthew Strang, Linda,” she said. “Mr. Strang, let me introduce you to Mrs. Verder.”
He bowed: “Oh, I have heard of Linda Verder,” he said, smiling.
“And I have heard more of Matthew Strang,” she replied, beamingly.
“That is scarcely possible,” he murmured.
She laughed with a bird-like trill. “Oh, I wasn’t alluding merely to your public career, though our sweet Ruth has gotten a whole album full of newspaper-cuttings about that. But it is of you yourself and your childhood that I have heard so much. So you see I have the advantage of you. But you will excuse me, I know; I have to go out. You needn’t bother about those letters, dear. We’re nearly through with them.” And with an affectionate nod to Ruth and a beneficent smile to Matthew, she left the room. He was reddening: he was beginning to feel uncomfortable under Mrs. Verder’s smiles, which in their insinuation of old sweetheartship made it certain that Ruth had never mentioned his marriage to her friend even; to hear that the forgotten Ruth had been following his career all those years gave him an odd pathetic shiver. She and Billy—and Heaven knew what others—were sunning themselves in the mere reflected rays of that fame which had left him cold.