“What on earth happened to you?” she demanded.
“I fell off a ledge into the bay,” lied Irma glibly, “and George dove in and pulled me out.”
NORMAN R. JAFFRAY.
Brushwood Rabnon
The bright spring sun made it a different France than we had tramped two weeks before. Then it had been dark; cold rain had made our cassocks cling like gowns of soft lead, half-frozen roads had cut and blistered our feet. But now, the sky was blue everywhere, and the light sparkled from wet leaves and the little pools that lay along the road. I felt reborn into the full flush of youth: I loved the countryside, the Order which had sent me there, the man with whom I was travelling. I loved the ooze of cool mud that squirted between my toes and splashed about ankles tired from walking. Eleven miles that morning had been a pleasure such as we rarely enjoyed. Our spirits were coming out of their hibernation, with all nature.
I turned at last, as we came over the crest of a hill, and broke the friendly silence that had been between us for some time.
“Look, Rabnon, there is the town. I had not expected it to be so beautiful.”
We stopped to gaze out down the road, for it was beautiful indeed, and we were always willing to stand resting awhile. Below us a shallow valley ran from side to side, its furrow lined by the twistings of a small stream which joined at right angles with the sharper twistings of our present thoroughfare. Where these two met, the village spread itself in an irregular T shape, the larger buildings in the center outlining their tops against the sky, while their lesser, peripheral neighbors snuggled unostentatiously into the flattened background of hill and river. Upstream, on higher and less cultivated ground stood the modest fortress of the Lord of Camereau, its round brown walls unremarkable save by a drawbridge which was half up and half down, so that it rested in relief against a light spot in the woods with a curious air of suspense, and a white pennon which waved in the blue its allegiance to the King of France. Like the pools and foliage at the roadside, roofs and rocks as far as we could see glistened with moisture from the night’s rain and the steaming earth. The stream was a ribbon of alternating coruscance and tree-shaded brown water. The sharp sound of a hammer on planks came distinctly across the intervening mile and told us that some one was repairing his home from the ravages of water. Altogether, everything looked as if in the process of being fixed up and made ready for an event; the valley was as rejuvenated as myself.
“Neither had I,” said Rabnon gruffly, and it was impossible to tell whether or not he felt that immanent something as I did.