Orient had hesitated in her last sentence, wondering how she could deny herself the sympathy in her little pursuits that through this time she had received from Reymund. She had not encountered it before; it was delightful to her; perhaps it only had not taught her love because she did not know what love was. She had but little knowledge of human nature, almost none at all of her own nature: she preferred natural religion before theology, natural history, with its grandiose revolutions, before the petty struggles of warriors and diplomatists which her view was not broad enough to throw into epochs and revolutions more grandiose yet: it was Reymund who had taught her to look with kindly curiosity upon the lives of those about her, in hopes, it may be, of teaching her at last to look in upon her own. Of that she was unaware; but the interest in the flower never found before to-day, the discovery of the bird whose note had ravished the ear last sunset, the hunt up brookside and hill for a fragment of quartz that should have a mountain range and outlying spurs of amethyst crystals, or one full of imbedded beryls, the shining hexagons like drops of light filtered through seawater, or any heap of blooded garnets, a blaze of concrete color; the search into the age of the old pine-tree on the precipice; into the mountain strata, and the wonderment concerning that day of the earth’s date on which they were upheaved; the tracing out the path of some glacier with all its ancient and icy terrors overgrown by the verdant moss and turf of the moraine; the perpetual looking for the Maker’s fingers in his work,—all this, and such as this, she would miss and must resign if she forbade those recurring Saturdays. And then, on the other hand, a friend to meet with the results of work, the choice book, the week’s research, its thought, its fancy: she who had had no intimates, few friends—
Reymund did not wait for her to balance her ideas.
“The train arrives,” said he, “by five o’clock,—a little before. Every Saturday, therefore, at five o’clock, I shall be in your drawing-room.”
The thing was settled, then, without her. She began all at once to fear that, after all, it would not happen so; he would let other things creep between; when he was fairly at a distance from her he would be angry with her for having quite failed to feel that entire satisfaction in him, to give him that love which, in a high ideal, she believed to be due from every woman to her husband; a thousand things would hinder.
“I can hardly believe it,” she said.
“I am too happy when you doubt it,” he replied, half reading her thoughts. “It gives me hope; for we can easily believe that to which we are indifferent. How can I be hindered when I will it,—and when you wish it?” The blush that streamed up her temples doubly pleased him. “Do not doubt it!” he exclaimed, with more vivacity than so small a thing appeared to demand. “For, see, I swear it! I will be with you on each Saturday at five o’clock, with your permission, until the day I die!”
So, dropping her hand, he went down the lane to the coach. But, looking back, he saw her still standing in the doorway, hung with such drooping drapery of woodbine round her head, the sunlight lying in a glory on her golden hair, the downy bloom upon her cheek as though it were a peach, a smile upon her lip, and heaven’s own blue within her eye,—she seemed the incarnation of a summer sunrise. He saw the riotous wind lift one curl and twine it with the next, drop the petal of a rose upon her mouth, kiss and kiss again her ivory forehead, free and welcome where he dared not venture,—and the love in his heart made the blood boil hotly up his veins to cheek and brow,—and for all testimony to his thrilling passion, he only cried, “Every Saturday, at five o’clock!” and was away.
But before Reymund plunged afresh into the exterior world, which, for these weeks, had been shut from his sight, he turned aside for one last outlook upon pleasure. Thus it happened that he left the train at an earlier station than the one near Orient’s home, partly to avoid recognition in the future, partly for the sake of mounting and subduing a spirited horse which had been brought up to tear himself into a foam at sight of the engine. Reymund meant to gratify himself that day with a stroll through Orient’s garden and among the haunts of her bright youth. No one would have taken him for anything but an apparition, who saw him galloping down the long country roads in a cloud of dust. When he had conquered the angry temper of the beast he abated his gait and paced slowly along the margin of the twice-mown meadows, splendid in noon sunshine, over the shaven surfaces of rusty reds and browns, into which they shaded all their gilded verdure. Now and then a bittern cried from the bank of a tiny thread of the tide, other notes were hushed, there was only to be heard through the wide midday air the unbroken treble of the crickets, across which the rich horns of the locusts shrilled like the elfin trumpets of a summer’s state. Reymund hitched his horse, found a penetrable portion of the garden paling, and entered.
It was a large, old garden, laid out, fifty years ago, perhaps, in a kind of pleasance; for in one place a slight hill rose above the rest, while paths wandered round it into new and unsuspected regions; in another a brook meandered and sang silverly over shining pebbles, and among arrow-heads and lily-pods, and, dallying, went its way at last to empty into some tide-streak and find the sounding sea that called to it all night. Weeds, of course, had overgrown the beds, the untrained grapes hung heavily from wall and trellis, wasps and blackbirds made merry together with the nectar of ripening pears, plum and peach dropped ungathered from the bough; vine and tendril, leaf and spray, and branch and blossom, all wrought themselves to a delicious tangle of perfume and rustle and color. Here, through the beautiful and envious weeds, a gladiolus reared his flames, a larkspur absorbed the very blue, a carnation scattered spice; here honeysuckles still blew out a perfect fragrance, while mourning-brides and gillyflowers and spiked lavender and pansies sowed the air with their old-fashioned sweetness. The soft, lonely sky stretched away over the garden and the meadows to haze itself round low and distant woods, and all the empty air seemed sad and desolate between,—the fulness and richness of life at its high noon touching close upon the anti-climax of desert solitude. Through the place a light east-wind was blowing that had in it a tonic for the lungs like the sparkle of champagne. And, somehow, through all the spaces of the neglected garden the spell of Orient seemed complete. There Orient must have stood to twine that white rose upon the porch; there her fingers must have twinkled among the young vine-leaves; there, on that bank of turf, she must many an afternoon have sat at work; there, in the shallow crystal of the brook, she had waded with white feet to set the water-plants. These lichen-covered apple-trees had shed, how many a springtime, the rosy snow of their petals around her head; these gnarled old bergamots had dropped their pulpy globes into her hands; this nut-tree put out its leaves on the day when she was born; her little feet had worn these paths. The garden was the shadow of Orient herself, reduced to dumb and to material things. He wondered what it would be by the magic of moonlight,—the whole place silvered over with tranquil sheen, and raised from every day’s dull sight into the dreamy and ideal,—full of cool dew, and silence, and holy hush, as if it waited on her white sleep. Just under his feet, where the seed had been thrown in handfuls, he traced, written out with blue forget-me-nots, the name of Orient.
It would not do for him to stay much longer here; he should grow wild with hopes and fancies, for all he knew, tread out that lovely name with his heel. She must, she should be won! He clutched a cluster of the forget-me-nots, quickly escaped the labyrinth, galloped back to the station at a rate that streaked his chafing steed,—and so away from dreams to life and real work.