CHAPTER XVII
LOCKS AND KEYS
Ten days passed, and June was urging the growth of flower and leaf with ardent breath. Even in the hill country, with its cool nights and winds that rush down the river valley, the days were sultry, and August lent her younger sister electric batteries for her relief; and almost every afternoon the soft, rounded summer clouds that seemed to flock about Windy Hill, like pasturing sheep, were put to flight by the dun-edged thunder scud with its whips of lightning.
Robert Stead had now gone his way to the north-west at his friend’s request, the work indoors and out had settled with an even and soothing monotony over the West farm, while the Sign of the Fox and its fame were already relieving Brooke’s anxiety as to the immediate future.
As Lucy paced to and fro along the neatly gravelled walks of the old-fashioned garden, where the Cub was engaged in “brushing” the long line of sweet peas, a vocation requiring a knack that he did not possess, it seemed to her that two months, instead of two weeks, had passed since her coming. Not that she was in any way bored or discontented, rather did it seem as if she had always been a part of the household and living her normal life, while the revelation, indoors and out, of work done by personal service, instead of by money proxy, had given her active brain much food for thought of a new though baffling order.
In many other ways also did Lucy feel herself baffled. Upon Robert Stead she had failed to make the slightest impression, either during the half-dozen calls he had made at the farm, or upon a ride she had taken in his company to his lodge on Windy Hill, when he had invited Mrs. Lawton and Brooke to see his garden and some prints of old masters that they had been discussing. The Cub being busy, Brooke had driven her mother in the buggy with old Billy, and Stead, who had ridden down with an extra saddle-horse in tow, had accompanied Lucy back.
Not that he was discourteous; quite the contrary. He was the polished man of the world, always polite, with a pretty compliment, too well-rounded for spontaneity, upon his lips and plenty of intelligent conversation, as well as chink-filling small talk that prevented dangerous pauses, yet withal he was inscrutable.
Hardly less so did Lucy find Brooke herself; perfectly free and frank in their daily intercourse, yet she neither offered nor asked special confidence. She brightened with all the charm of a born hostess when Stead came, and he gravitated toward her as naturally; yet when he left, even for six weeks’ stay, she exhibited no sign of loneliness and threw herself into her play, which she called the few hours she seized for painting, with fresh vigour, either working in the old carpenter’s shop, that by opening a trap door above had a fine north light, or going into the open fields to use Enoch Fenton’s colts, sheep, or oxen as studies.
It was not strange, however, that Lucy could not fathom the mind of either maid or man, for did they really know themselves? Stead was experiencing the conscious coming of a second youth, even before he was more than in the full vigour of middle life. The period of torpor through which he had passed was much like the indifference and languid, brooding time of adolescence before the bite of motive and passion awakens body and brain and clears the vision; and it was Brooke who blamelessly had brought all this to pass, Brooke, with her heroism of womanhood that was none the less subtle and acute because of its elusiveness.