It was on the return from one of these walks through the river meadows, arms laden with blue fleur-de-lis and golden sundrops gathered to the tinkling music of soaring bobolinks, that she met the postman turning up the cross-road from the lower pike, and he begged that she would take the mail, as he had none this afternoon for any other on that branch and his horse was lame.
Good-naturedly she turned up a corner of her skirt to act as mail pouch, for the papers, circulars, and what not made quite a budget.
Reaching the boundary of her land when halfway uphill, and being wrist-cramped by the double load, she dropped her flowers and mail, and sitting in the shade began to sort it. Behind her was the rye field, and the wind curling across the crisping ears, now gold-green, made sound as of a gently rising tide on pebbled shores, while as she leaned against the bank the bayberry, sweet-gale, and hay ferns breathed their wild fragrance.
Oh, what a day it was! June dominance and rush yielding to the more finished manners of July—nothing was lacking! That is, nothing attainable; the love of things seemed to eclipse the love of people. Ah, no, not quite, for as she gazed idly at the letters in her lap, her heart gave a great throb, and one square package lurched and slid between her trembling fingers, for the address on it was written in Ashton’s eccentric hand. Picking it up, she laid the others by, and steadying herself deliberately broke the seal, for it was sealed endwise with wax. Inside was a double-folded piece of foreign-looking paper, but no other address or postmark, the transit cover evidently having been torn or soiled, and not a written word of any sort in view. Within its folds a little square of millboard, the duplicate of that which had borne her picture, only from this looked forth the face of Lorenz himself, standing in a doorway, clad in his loose blouse, palette and brush in hand. The heavy thatch of hair shaded his forehead deeply, the face was thinner than she remembered it, the chin under the thick mustache more determined, the jaw set with a depth of purpose, while the eyes looked half away as if seeking inspiration and yet followed her everywhere, until Brooke covered them with her hand a moment as if to escape the too tense gaze of a real presence.
Hoofs sounded on the road, and there passed by Enoch Fenton with his horse-rake, coming in neighbourly fashion to help the farmer-on-shares gather up the timothy hay from its last sunning to house it before nightfall; to-morrow it would be turn about, according to country lore. Seeing Brooke he stopped, and after making the usual crop and weather epigrams, said: “That there man of our’n is right smart and steady, but he hustles too much and he’s losing girth—’fore summer’s out he’ll be slim enough to swim through an eel run. I’ve advised him, if he’s goin’ to follow the soil, to locate farther north, but he seems unsettled and I reckon he’ll move on after leaf-fall,—they mostly do, the smart ones, besides which he acts as if the girl he’s waitin’ fer wasn’t comin’. If she don’t, she’s a silly, for I nary seen a man with two strong hands hev such a wise head!
“Say, but you look sort of like a picter setting there with all them posies, something like the one on the calendar they give with the ‘Rise up bake powder’ when you’ve bought six cans. It’s called ‘The Love Letter,’ only the girl’s got red heels to her shoes and powered-up hair, besides which they’d bought her too small a pattern for her waist to piece it well up in front!
“Want ter know! I bet it’s a love letter, his picter and all, and I’m right glad on’t!” Then farmer Fenton chirruped to his horses and went his way, laughing to himself, and turning the tobacco from cheek to cheek with relish, for Brooke had reddened under his banter, and in trying to save the sliding letters in her lap had not only dropped them, but the picture as well (which the farmer barely saw, having no glasses). When she stooped to gather them up, and slipped the picture inside her blouse for safer keeping, a second shadow crossed the road—that of Henry Maarten, following the brook path to the hay-field, but if he saw her in the sheltered bank nook he made no sign; neither did Brooke, but huddled there among the ferns elated, disappointed, and quite bewildered, until the sound of hoof and wheel had died away, and she knew that both men were well within the fence.
The words that Enoch Fenton muttered as he walked, talking to himself in lengthy monologue, after the style of those much alone, were these: “Bob Stead! by gosh, he’s been away a month, and what’s more likely than he’s sent his picter and writes reglar? Anyhow, all the women folks this side of Windy Hill and further has planned it so, and so it’s bound to be! Besides which our darter’s boy, Willie, was lookin’ fer wintergreen for mother’s rheumatiz up in North Woods beyond Stony Guzzle two months back, and he spied a couple settin’ by the stream a-holdin’ hands and eatin’ apples. Now if that ain’t courtin’—what is? Though it’s only jest likely hit and miss, wife and Sairy Ann Williams met and pieced together who they wuz. He’s a mum sort, but that’s the kind it takes a girl to get goin’, and he’s well set up, funds and all, though oldish! Well, she might do worse seein’ she’s had a taste o’ pinchin’,” and selecting a fine spear of timothy with which to pick his teeth, Fenton reversed the rake and mounted.
Adam had written to Stead several times since his going away, and received cheerful, though brief, replies, which, however, said nothing definite as to his return, and though the time mentioned was a month, the term might be merely nominal. All the household had missed him in their different ways, the Cub with almost girlish sentiment, Mrs. Lawton as a link with the state of life that was, and Brooke chiefly because she was entirely used to him and associated him with so much that had given hope and eased the winter rigour, that the friendship to her had become almost the easy intimacy of relationship.
It was an afternoon early in July that Brooke was searching along the foot-path in the hemlock woods above the Fenton’s for the flowers of pipsissewa, with their wax petals and spicy wood fragrance, when the snapping of twigs made her turn, and striding down the hill, straight into the light, with quick, elastic step, came Robert Stead, a new, alert expression on his well-tanned face that wiped at least half a dozen years from his time record.