CHAPTER VIII
THE SQUIRE’S BROTHER
Four days later she went to walk in Hawthorn Forest. It was a golden afternoon, and she had hastened her work and got it out of hand. The roof was mended, the beehives were back, the cottage taking on an air of having been lived in all this while. Old Heron earned by scrivener’s work. It was not much that he found to do, but it gave them plain fare and plain clothes to wear. Joan, too, from time to time sold to a merchant flax that she had spun.... She had gone no way into the forest since their return, there had been each day so much to do! But to-day an image had haunted her of how the forest used to look in its garb of May.
She let the gate-latch fall behind her and went out in the grey-green gown that she had spun and dyed herself. She wore a small cap of linen and a linen kerchief. Sunday she would wear a bluish gown, and a cap and kerchief of lawn. She was tall and light upon her feet, grey-eyed and well-featured, with hair more gold than brown, with a warm, sun-flushed, smooth, fine-textured skin, and a good mouth and chin and throat. The sun was three hours high; she meant to have a long and beautiful time.
So close to the forest edge was the cottage that almost immediately great trees were about her, leaf-mould and flowerets beneath her feet. The forest was hardly yet in full leaf. There spread about her a divine pale emerald fretwork, and gold light in lances and arrows, and closing the vistas purple light in gauzy sheets and curtains. The boles of the trees were marvels, the great spreading branches kings’ wonders, every slight fern illustrious. The stir and song of hidden birds, the scurrying of a hare, a glimpse down a beechen aisle of a doe and fawn, filled a cup of delight. She was Greek to it all, a country girl of Attica. Merely to live was good, merely to vibrate and quiver to the myriad straying fingers of life, merely to be, and ever more to be, with a fresh intensity!
On she wandered with a light step and heart, now by some handbreadth of sward, now in a maze of trees. Now and then she stood still, gazing and listening and smelling the good earth. Once or twice she rested upon some protruding root or fallen log, nursed her knees and marked the minute life about her.
Happy, happy, happy! with the blood coursing warmly and sanely through her veins, with her senses keen at the intake and her brain good at combining.... Open places, small clearings, existed here and there in the forest with, at great intervals, some hut or poor cottage. So it was that she soon came in sight of the burned cot and trodden bit of garden whence Mother Spuraway had plucked the rue.
The place lay curiously, half in gold light, half in deep shadow. The stone chimney was standing, together with some portion of charred rafter. There were currant and gooseberry bushes, and a plum tree, but the bit of garden-hedge was broken down and all things had run to waste. Joan, drawing near, heard children’s voices, and presently, touching the cleared space, came into view of six or seven village boys, who, roaming at will or sent on some errand through the wood, had found here a resting-stage and fascination. They were after something—she thought a bird’s nest—in a crotch of the plum tree that brushed the blackened chimney. She stood and watched for a moment, then called to them. “Leave that poor bird alone!” Two or three, turning, laughed and jeered, and one small savage at the foot of the tree threw a stone. Joan was angry, but she could not help the bird—they probably had nest and eggs by now. She went on, past the burned cot, and was presently in the greenwood again.
After a time she found herself upon the Oak Grange road, running across this corner of the forest. She had not meant to go this way, but a memory came to her of a stream flowing over pebbles, of an old house and an oak tree around which they used to say the fairies danced at night. She walked on upon the narrow and grass-grown road, and after a little time it led her out of the wood and to the edge of the pebbly stream. There was a footbridge thrown across, but she did not mean to go over to the other bank. She had no acquaintance at the Grange. She had heard Goodman Cole say that the old miser, Master Hardwick, was still alive, but was rarely seen without the house. Will the smith’s son had once worked at the Grange, but she did not know if he were there yet.... She sat down on a stone at this end of the bridge, and regarded now the old ruinous house sunk in ivy, with the long grass and ragged shrubs before it, and now the giant oak where the fairies danced, and now the bright blue sky behind with floating clouds, and now the shallow, narrow river with its pebbly shore, and now she regarded all in one. Ripple, ripple! sang the water.