"Oh, but it isn't impossible," Nan insisted. "I feel wicked, and I know I am wicked. If Gabriel Tolliver ever dares to find out that I was in that closet, I'll tell him what I think of him, and then I'll—" Her threat was never completed. Mrs. Dorrington rose from her chair just in time to place her hand over Nan's mouth.
"If you were to tell Gabriel what you really think of him," said the lady, "he would have great astonishment."
"Oh, no, he wouldn't, Johnny. You don't know how conceited Gabriel is. I'm just ready to hate him."
"Well, it may be good for your health to dislike him a little occasionally," remarked Mrs. Dorrington, with a smile.
"Now, what do you mean by that, Johnny?" cried Nan. But the only reply she received was an eloquent shrug of the shoulders.
Gabriel was as much mystified by his own dread of meeting Nan, as he was by her coolness toward him. He could not recall any incident which she had resented; but still she was angry with him. Well, if it was so, so be it; and though he thought it was cruel in his old comrade to harbour hard thoughts against him, he never sought for an explanation. He had his own world to fall back upon—a world of books, the woods and the fields. And he was far from unhappiness; for no human being who loves Nature well enough to understand and interpret its meaning and its myriad messages to his own satisfaction, can be unhappy for any length of time. Whatever his losses or his disappointments, he can make them all good by going into the woods and fields and taking Nature, the great comforter, by the hand.
So Gabriel confined his communications for the most part to his old and ever-faithful friends, the woods and the velvety Bermuda fields. He walked about among these old friends with a lively sense of their vitality and their fruitfulness. He was certain that the fields knew him as well as he knew them—and as for the trees, he had a feeling that they knew his name as well as he knew theirs. He was so familiar with some of them, and they with him, that the katydids in the branches continued their cries even while he was leaning against the trunks of the friends of his childhood: whereas, if a stranger or an alien to the woods had so much as laid the tip of his little finger on the rugged bark of one of them, a shuddering signal would have been sent aloft, and the cries would have ceased instantly.
Gabriel's grandmother went to bed early and rose early—a habit that belongs to old age. But it was only after the darkness and silence of night had descended upon the world that all of Gabriel's faculties were alert. It was his favourite time for studying and reading, and for walking about in the woods and fields, especially when the weather was too warm for study. Every Sunday night found him in the Bermuda fields, long since deserted by Nan and Tasma Tid. To think of the old days sometimes brought a lump in his throat; but the skies, and the constellations (in their season) remained, and were as fresh and as beautiful as when they looked down in pity on the sufferings of Job.
Gabriel's favourite Bermuda field was crowned by a hill, which, gradually sloping upward, commanded a fine view of the surrounding country; and though it was close to Shady Dale, it was a lonely place. Here the killdees ran, and bobbed their heads, and uttered their plaintive cries unmolested; here the partridge could raise her brood in peace; and here the whippoorwill was free to play upon his flute.
Many and many a time, while sitting on this hill, Gabriel had watched the village-lights go out one by one till all was dark; and the silence seemed to float heaven-ward, and fall again, and shift and move in vast undulations, keeping time to a grand melody which the soul could feel and respond to, but which the ear could not hear. And at such time, Gabriel believed that in the slow-moving constellations, with their glittering trains, could be read the great secrets that philosophers and scientists are searching for.