CHAPTER VII.
THE MEETING IN THE GREENWOOD.
WITH her glorious mahogany-colored hair loose in masses on her shoulders, with her eyes inquiring, and her lips slightly parted as she stole forward, thrilled with the exquisite beauty of Adam’s playing, in such a temple of perfect harmonies, Garde appeared like the very spirit of the forest, drawn from sacred bowers by the force of love that vibrated the instrument’s strings.
No bark of pine tree was browner than her eyes; no berries were redder than her lips, nor the color that climbed upward in her cheeks, the white of which was as that of the fir beneath its outer covering. As some forest dryad, maidenly and diffident, she held her hand above her heart when Adam looked up and discovered her presence.
The man leaped to his feet, like one startled from sleep. It almost seemed as if a dream had brought him this radiant figure. No word came, for a moment, to his lips.
“Why—it’s you!” said Garde.
“Garde!—Miss—Mistress Merrill!” said Adam, stammering. “By my hilt, I—the—the wonder is ’tis you.”
“Not at all,” corrected Garde, recovering something that passed for composure. “I come here frequently, to gather herbs and simples for Goody Dune, but for you to be here, and playing—like that——”
“Yes,” agreed Adam, when he had waited in vain for her to finish, “perhaps it is an intrusion. You—you came away from the town early.”
“Why did you come here to play?” she asked. Her own nature so yearned over the forest and things beautiful, her own emotions were so wrought upon by the sublimity of earth’s chancels of silence, that she felt her soul longing for its kindred companion, who must be one reverent, yet joyous, where Nature ruled. She wanted Adam to pour forth the tale of his brotherhood with the trees and the loneliness of his heart, that would make him thus to play in such a place and at such a time. While she looked at him, the love she had fostered from her childhood was matured in one glorious blush that welled upward from her bosom to her very eyes themselves.
Adam had looked at her but once. It was a long look, somewhat sad, as of one parting with a dear companion. In that moment he had known how wholly and absolutely he loved her. His pretended doubts of the night before had fled as with the darkness. The daylight in her eyes and on her face had made him henceforth a sun-worshiper, since the sun revealed her in such purity of beauty.
In the great delight which had bounded in his breast at seeing her there, he had momentarily forgotten his conversation with Wainsworth. When she asked him why he had come to the woods, he would fain have knelt before her, to speak of his love, to tell of his anguish and to plead his cause, by every leap of his heart, but he had remembered his friend and his old Indian schooling in stoicism gathered upon him, doubtless for the very presence of the firs and pines, so solemn and Indianesque about him. He put on a mask he had worn over melancholy often.
“Why, I came here for practise, of which I am sadly in need,” he said. “When once I played before King Pirate and his court of buccaneers, I was like to be hung for failing, after a mere six hours of steady scraping at the strings. If you came for simples, verily you have found a simple performer and simple tunes.”
Garde was painfully disappointed in him. His flippancy had, as he intended it should, deceived her. She shut that little door of her heart through which her soul had been about to emerge, ready to reveal itself to and to speak welcome to its mate. She did not cease to love him, emotional though she was, for love is like a tincture, or an attar,—once it is poured out, not even an ocean of water can so dilute it as to leave no trace of its fragrance, and not until the last drop in the ocean is drained can it all be removed or destroyed. No, she was pained. She desired to retreat, to take back the overture which, to her mind, had been a species of abandon of her safeguards and so patent that she could not conceive that Adam had failed to note its significance. Yet she gave him up for a soulless Pan reluctantly. That playing, which had drawn her, psychically, physically, irresistibly to his side, could have no part with things flippant. It had been to her like a heart-cry, which it seemed that her heart alone could answer. And when she had found that it was Adam playing—her Adam—she had with difficulty restrained herself from running to him and sobbing out the ecstasy suddenly awakened within her. The memory of the music he had made was still upon her and she was timidly hopeful again when she said:
“How long have you been practising here?”
Adam mistook this for a little barb of sarcasm. His mind was morbid on the subject of Wainsworth and of Garde’s evasiveness of the evening before. He put on more of the motley.
“Not half long enough,” he said, “by the violence I still do to melody; and yet too long by half, since I have frightened the birds from the forest. There is always too much of bad playing, but it takes much bad practising to make a good performer. I am better at playing a jig. Shall I try, in your honor?”
“Thank you, if you please, no, I would rather you would not,” said Garde. It was her first Puritanical touch. If she had given him permission to play his jig, very many things might have been altered, for Adam would have revealed himself and would have opened her heart-doors once again, such a mastery over everything debonair in his nature would the violin have assumed, with its spell of deeper emotions, inevitable—with Garde so near.
Adam laughed, well enough to appear careless. “I commend your judgment,” he said, “though I have always thought, even after last night,—ah, by the way, where is your companion, Mistress Prudence somebody?”
He had parried his own tendency to get back to the tender subjects and memories flooding his heart, but not in a manner to gladden Garde. Indeed, the ring of artificiality in everything he said made her less and less happy.
“Her name is Prudence Soam. She is my cousin, and she is at home,” said Garde, quietly. “If you would care to see her again, I will tell her of your wish.” She could readily understand how any one might like Prudence, knowing what a sweet, good girl her cousin was, but it caused her an acute pain to think she had cherished the image of Adam in her heart for seven years, only to find now that he had been inconstant.
She suddenly thought of the meeting of the evening before. Adam’s willingness to present her—in the presence of Prudence—with that something which he had brought her from his first trip to Hispaniola, appeared to her now in a light, not of his stupidity, but of his deliberate intention to show her that he had not preserved a sacred dream of their childhood friendship, as she had so fondly hoped he had. She even wondered if he might not have seen, known and cared for Prudence before. She concluded that he cared for Prudence now, and certainly not for herself. Then she thought he might think of that something, which he had wished so to give her—that something from Hispaniola,—and she feared he might present it to her now. This would have been too much to bear, under the circumstances.
Adam was indeed thinking on this very subject, but Wainsworth—his friend—arose like a specter in his meditations, and all that Garde had said had confirmed him in his belief of her coldness to himself, so that he preferred to seem to forget the trinket, which would have been at once the token of his love and constancy.
“Mistress Prudence Soam,” Adam repeated, replying to Garde’s last remarks. “Indeed I should be but a sorry clod, not to wish to see her again. Does she also come searching for simples?”
“No,” replied Garde, a little dully. “But I thank you for reminding me that I must set about my task. Therefore I must bid you good day.”
Adam thought something would snap inside his breast. There was the sunlight, streaming through the aisles of the trees; there was Garde, whom he loved beyond anything of earth, setting off alone when he should be at her side, culling her herbs, touching her hands as he gave her the aromatic leaves that he too knew so well, and looking into Paradise through her eyes, that had so danced when first he knew them. But what of Wainsworth? What of the honor of a friend to a friend?
“Good day,” he echoed, with a mock gaiety that struck painfully on the ears of both. “I trust your quest will be as successful as I could wish your life to be happy.”
He hesitated a moment, for it was hard to part thus. Garde had hoped he might volunteer to go along and carry the tiny basket she held on her arm, for a woman’s love can never be so discouraged as not to have a new little hope every other moment that something may happen to set matters aright in spite of all. But Adam did not dare to prolong this test of his honor to Wainsworth. He felt that his head was reeling, but with a stately bow he took a final, lingering look at the sweetest vision he had ever seen, and started away.
Garde, steadied by her pride, returned his bow and walked further into the woods.
Adam felt that he must pause and turn; that the “Garde!” that welled up from his heart would burst through his lips in spite of all he could do. With his violin clasped beneath his arm, however, he conquered himself, absolutely, and never so much as turned about again to see where the wood-nymph had gone.
But Garde could not so slay her dearest impulse. She turned before she had gone ten steps. Looking back, she saw Adam, bareheaded, crowned by his golden ringlets,—through which the sunbeams were thrust like fingers of gilt,—trailing his sword, clutching his violin, striding off in his boots as lithely as a panther and bearing up under his faded brown coat as proudly as a king.
“Oh, Adam!” she said, faintly, but he was already too far away to hear the little wood-note which her voice had made.
He disappeared. She knew he would soon be clear of the trees. Reluctantly at first, and then eagerly, though silently, she flitted along from tree to tree, where he had gone, till at length she came to the edge of the forest.
Adam, heavy with Wainsworth’s gold, was walking less buoyantly now. He was far out on the flat, heading southward, not exactly toward Boston. Garde watched him yearningly, going, going and never once looking backward to where he had left her.
She could bear no more. She sank down on the moss at the foot of a tree, and leaning against the gnarled old trunk, she covered her face with her hands and cried, heart-brokenly.
Had she watched but a moment longer, she would have seen Adam halt, slowly turn about, and with his hand at his lips gaze toward the woods steadily for fully a minute. Then with a slow gesture he waved a kiss back to where she was and once more went upon his way.
The man had no mind to walk through Boston in daylight, with his violin naked in his hands. Keeping therefore southward, he came at length to the upper part of the harbor. Here he engaged a boatman with a sloop to convey him down to the ship-yard of Captain William Phipps.
The worthy ship-builder soon made him welcome.
“William,” said Adam, “I have replenished the treasury, as I said I might, and I have made up my mind to join you in your treasure-hunting expedition.”