In a moment there was a low, mysterious bird-note. Some one drew back the bolts, and youth incarnate stood framed in the dark oaken doorway. Shreve of the Fields swayed there, his slim, vibrant figure outlined against the sparkling snow without. Pushed back from his thick dark curls he wore a bag-like cap of brilliant red. Over the shoulder of his tattered jacket was flung a brown sack, and in his hands he held a torn net. The lovely poise of his proud young head, the startling beauty of his face, the wonder of his gay, mysterious eyes, were all so intense that one looked again and again, awed, troubled, stupefied, unable to understand such glorious beauty. It was like some vague lovely dream that one had been forced by the very intensity of its sweetness to cast from his thoughts, now recurring to the mind. Even the servants felt it, and they looked again and again at the not unfamiliar sight of the radiant youth. And Shreve, unable, as always, to understand this blind desire to pierce the mystery of his beauty, crossed the room with swift, free steps and approached Bebelle.
“I have brought you this net to mend,” he said, and his voice was low and wonderfully sweet. “I use it to catch the poor starving hares; and then I feed them. I will wait if you are not too long.”
“Oh, I’ll do it gladly,” responded the child; “and I’ll try to hasten as much as I can.”
He put the unfinished scepter in his threadbare little blouse, and bent carefully over the net.
It had now grown dark, and one of the pages went about the room with a taper lighting the candles in the greater pewter sticks. One by one the butlers and footmen came in to eat their evening meal before they should serve the royal dinner. All was light, and laughter and good-natured raillery in the kitchen.
Shreve walked restlessly up and down the long room. Each time he passed the oven he would snatch a loaf and put it in his sack. “For my birds,” he would say with his dazzling smile to the baker. Each time he neared the soup-kettle he stopped and watched little Bebelle’s swift-moving fingers. Without looking up, the child would answer his unspoken question, “In a little while, Shreve, I shall have finished it.”
As the graceful, glowing figure moved about the room all the youths stared at him and the maidens glanced more shyly from under their long lashes. But Shreve’s thoughts were on the world outside and the mending of the net. However, when they spoke to him, he always answered sweetly in his lovely, winning voice.
“How are your friends, O Shreve?” said Mother Jorgan.
“They are well. Only it is cold in the mountains, and the beasts freeze; and the woods and fields are bare, so my birds want food. But wait, old woman; some day I shall know all of nature’s secrets, and then winter cannot harm my people.”
The servants now came up to the kettle to get their bowls of soup, and Shreve of the Fields stood in the corner and watched them silently.