"Will you ask your father?" Nasmith persisted.
"Yes, I will ask him," said Nancy; and away she went swiftly, like the quiet, swift descent of evening.
Nasmith did not try to follow, although it was high time for him to be swinging into his sturdy stride homeward. He felt as much amazed by the riddles as Nancy herself. Suddenly it occurred to him that this was only his second meeting with the girl—two meetings, and these a year apart. He could not account for the intense feeling which made him still loiter in this spot as though all that was real of her were lingering with him. He could not understand the attraction which held him. Was there real insight, after all, expressed in those words whose meaning with baffling enlightenment he now realized?
The sun moving to the west kindles a splendid beacon for the moon;
The moon following from the east tenderly displays the
reflection of the sun.
Or had these words, slowly maturing in his mind, worked their own desire for fulfillment? He loved these mountains the sun had painted in broad sweeping colors, to which night was hurrying to put in shadow. He regarded them tenderly; they seemed to breathe of Nancy, to sing of Nancy, with the old time-worn cadence of the land whose tongue she had learned. Ah, what a beacon he could light for her, what a splendid beacon he must set blazing! She could not, she should not, be lost to him!
So the serene glow of evening had helped him find himself, had made him resolute, had sent him home resolute, after a year of fighting shadows.
Nancy, in her own way, was tranquil. The habit of taking life as it came enabled her to speak simply to her father about this meeting with Nasmith and about his request. The father was still indulgent. He did not need to remind himself of his promise; this was Nancy's summer. He had screwed his will to its final pitch when he consented to the date of her marriage. Nothing more seemed to matter; nothing more was he willing to debate. Let life run as it chose.
"I see no harm in it," he said, dealing with Nasmith's invitation. "Mr. Nasmith is a man I trust and his family, so far as I met them, are delightful. The change will be good for you both. I will send a man the first thing in the morning to tell them you are coming, and by the afternoon the chairs can be ready for you to start. Amah of course must go. They're sure to have room for her."
In this matter-of-fact way Herrick granted the request as though it were business of no concern. Nancy was not so sure. She too could not rid her memory of the prophetic lines her father had written. The words had caught in her brain. She repeated them till she fell asleep and repeated them again in the morning when her spirit had become infected by Edward's growing excitement. With great ado the little procession set out, the amah waving more farewells than a traveler bound across the ocean. Nancy was not insensible of the bustle. She was both glad and afraid, timid and joyful, but she abandoned her body to the motion of the chair, lying back with eyes half closed, while the sun beat hot through the screened window. She was content to let her spirit be carried, like her limbs, with the inertia which leaves every directing impulse to destiny. "The sun—the moon; the moon—the sun—t'ai-yang, yueh-liang; yueh-liang—t'ai-yang," the words made their own drowsy refrain to the slogging pace of the coolies.
Deep was the silence which had fallen over the deserted household. Herrick had not realized how much he would miss these children whom never before had he allowed to go away from their home. The sun shone vacantly on the temple; in the evening he walked with Kuei-lien in the moonless dark, passing the tomb of the monk and standing pensive on the little platform which overhung the ravine. He was like a lonely child, but afraid of something worse than the loss of Nancy and Edward, afraid of the solitariness of death, which seemed to threaten him from the deep shadows of the mountains.