Robert Stead loved her as a man loves but once, no matter how often he may marry, but this second passion was so different in its elements from the first that he did not recognize it as such, and consequently, unchecked, it doubled its hold, even while Lucy was unable to put two and two together, and piece a single palpable symptom.
In a state of rebellion bordering on disgust, Lucy, who heretofore had been the sort of woman that had usually obtained anything for which she had cared to try, and much for which she had not striven, turned her attention to the farmer-on-shares,—Walther, as she called him, who was undoubtedly a most filling and picturesque figure in the perfect series of pictures that grouped themselves between the homestead and the Moosatuk,—to find him not only difficult but impossible of approach, and try as she might, she had not yet succeeded in exchanging a word with him. At the same time many of his doings puzzled her, for though he was entirely his own master, by the very nature of the half-and-half agreement, and had nothing to do with the home garden or aught else about the place, his whole desire seemed to be of use and to serve its occupants, though unobtrusively.
It had been only a few mornings after her arrival that Lucy, just at dawn, looking out of one of her windows (which overlooked the back of the house, Brooke’s having wholly a river view), discovered the big fellow setting out a quantity of seedling asters, a task that Brooke had begun the afternoon before, and darkness had stopped when half accomplished. Did Brooke know of it, she wondered.
Again, at the same hour, she saw him, hands encased in great leather mittens, uprooting the vigorous poison ivy and tearing it from the pasture fences, and at once she remembered that Brooke bore the crusty burn of contact with it on one hand.
The Cub now and again remarked that Maarten was a brick and helped him out of lots of tight corners, without even a hint being given, and Lucy wondered if Brooke saw or understood; apparently she did neither, and yet the very day after the Cub had thrown down his armful of pea-brush in disgust at the tottering, inebriate line that rewarded his best efforts, the brush appeared all set in place, standing like an evenly trimmed hedge, attractive in its neatness, aside from the crop of fragrant promise that already was beginning to finger the support clingingly with its tendrils.
But how was it with Brooke herself? If it is true that filial love or work in sufficiency can fill life to the brim, then hers was full to overflowing; yet this is not all,—work, to be the heaven it may be at its best, demands that the heart be satisfied.
Lorenz she had known less as a man than as an idealist, and it was this side of his nature that she loved, together with his respectful yet truth-speaking attitude. Then came the mystic picture, bringing with it to fan the naturally kindled flame the knowledge that he remembered! No further word had come from him since the verse of Sisyphus that she had answered merely by a spray of arbutus blossom, the New England flower of spring hope, shining through melting snow. Could he interpret it? Perhaps not.
Sometimes a sense of the unreality of it all and the dream stuff it was made of came over Brooke, and she wondered if the spell would hold or if the separation was not more sweet than the reality; but this mood never lasted long.
Of the patient service of the farmer-on-shares she could no longer be ignorant, nor of the fact that he drew her eyes toward the landscape of which he had come to be an inseparable part. Unwittingly she found herself watching him day by day, though usually as a mere speck in the distance. At such times she was bewildered, and trembled at herself. Was it the poise of his head, and an occasional gesture as he stepped back to look at something that he had done, that reminded her of Lorenz and confused the two identities for the moment, or had the strain of the long winter of struggling warped her brain?