CHAPTER XXV.
LOVE’S TRAPS FOR CONFESSIONS.
SOME time before nightfall, the two having shared their luncheons together and wandered on, through the delightful patches of sunlight, slanting through the trees, they came upon one of the farms where Garde had already tested the hospitality of the good people residing by the highway.
Here, by a little dexterity, and through Adam’s generosity toward the delicate boy, to whom he had taken such a fancy, Garde occupied the spare apartment she had made her own when headed in the other direction, and Adam contented himself in the hay-loft of the barn.
In the morning they were up betimes, to greet another smiling sun, and so resumed their leisurely journey toward the north. At noon they halted as before, and made a meal of the stock of bread and other provisions they had been able to secure at the farm-house.
Garde sat upon a mossy bank, while Adam reclined on a stone, somewhat below her woodland throne. Adam looked at her so long and so steadfastly that she grew most uneasy, lest he were about to pierce her disguise.
“What are you looking at?” she said, with an attempt to be boyishly pert.
“I was looking at your legs,” said Adam, frankly. “They are uncommonly symmetrical, but a shade too pretty for a boy.”
Garde immediately bent the plump objects of interest underneath her and sat on her heels.
“You find a great deal of fault with me,” she said, a little vexed.
“It’s because you have faults, as a boy,” Adam told her, honestly. “You know, my lad, you could be a bit sturdier and none the worse. And yet, I like you immensely as you are. Perhaps if you were changed, you would lose some charm and spoil it all. I shall have to let you be, and content myself with you as you are.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Garde, already smiling at him again, to herself. “Then please make no more remarks about me.”
“About your legs? Well, I won’t, since you appear so sensitive about them. Mind you, they will do well enough, after all.”
“Shall we go on?” Garde asked him. She was a little weary and would have been glad of further rest, but she found she was much more comfortable when they were walking side by side.
Adam was up at once, for walk they never so fast, he felt he could by no means come up with his thoughts and desires, which had run so far ahead of them always.
“Never mind what I say,” said he, as they resumed the onward march. “I have to have my say out, when I think it. And you know you do puzzle me constantly.”
“I don’t see why, or how,” said Garde.
“It’s because I seem to think I have seen you somewhere before. And yet I know that is impossible, hence I am driven to think of your girlishness, for an explanation.”
Garde said: “I think this is very much in your imagination, Adam Rust.”
“Not a bit of it,” corrected her comrade. “You were patterned for a girl, my boy, depend upon it. There was some mistake, or some bit of trickery, when you became one of us. Why, a man couldn’t even think a little oath, in your presence.”
“Then is it not better that I was raised somewhat after the manner of girls?” said Garde, complimented as much by the reverent tone in his voice as by what he had said. “Does not the rearing I have known serve some good purpose, if what you say is so?”
“By my faith, yes. But then you do admit that you were treated in your younger days, somewhat as a girl?”
“I hope it is no shame to confess this is so,” she answered, looking down on the ground to hide the dancing of her eyes. “I was treated somewhat in this manner and I was even dressed as a girl, at times.”
“Ah, that accounts for your bashfulness and so forth. But you need not blush for this. Bless your heart, a man’s the better for it, if he has something of the woman in his heart—and even in his hand.”
“I am glad to hear you say so,” murmured the girl.
“Oh, yes, it’s all right,” said Adam magnanimously. He looked at her with frank admiration. “Only it is something of a pity you were not a girl, you know.”
“Because you would be such an one as a man could love.”
“But not you, Adam Rust. You have said you love a sweetheart already.”
“I do—mightily! But if you were a girl I would enjoy finding a man worthy to love you.”
“But this is unseemly. You forget that I am a boy.”
“Yes, for some reason or other, it is easy to forget that. But I was merely supposing. Say that a man had come along when you were dressed as a girl—why, what then?”
“What then indeed,” said she, with some spirit, “would you have talked like this to me, of—of love?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Rust, stoutly enough. “It would then have been quite another matter. As it is, you play the deuce with my brain and fancy. I start in to talk to you as man to man, and then I think you are almost better fitted to be a girl—and you admit you were raised somewhat in that manner, so what can one expect?”
“Well, what if your sweetheart heard you speaking thus?” said Garde, who was enjoying the situation the more for the very danger of it. “Should you like to have her hear you telling me I should have made a girl that a man could—could love?”
“You being a boy, why not?” Adam made answer. “Ah, she is too present in my thought and feeling for me to say anything I would be loth for her to hear.”
They had arrived at the edge of a brook which was somewhat swelled by the snow, back on the hills, melting in the genial warmth of the sun. It was nothing for Adam to stride across, stepping from rock to rock, but Garde hesitated, her femininity uppermost in a moment, despite her utmost efforts to be boyish.
“Here, give us your hand,” said big Adam, turning back to help her over. “Now, then, jump!”
Thrilling with the delight of his warm, strong fingers closing so firmly on her own, Garde came across the brook in safety and then reluctantly released her grip from his.
Adam had not escaped unscathed from this contact of love, with which she was fairly thrilling. He looked at her oddly, when they were safe again on the further side. Garde caught her breath, in fear that she had betrayed herself at last, in that moment of weakness.
“You are too much for me, John,” Adam admitted, shaking his head in puzzlement. “You are a strange boy.”
“I thought it was all explained,” Garde replied, anxious to get him quieted on the subject. “How far should you say it is to Boston?”
“I think I begin to work it out a little,” the man went on, musingly. “It’s because you remind me of some one I have known.”
“Do I?” said Garde, half afraid of her question. “Of whom?”
“I don’t quite know,” he confessed, looking at her earnestly. “And yet I ought to be able to tell. It was some one I liked, I am sure.”
“As much as you did your sweetheart?”
Adam seemed not to hear this question. “Your complexion,” he resumed, “makes me think of a sweet maid I knew at Jamaica.”
“Oh!”
“And yet your eyes are like those of a lovely French damsel that I met, one time.” Here he sighed. “Your hands bring back a memory of a charming Countess at the court of Charles. Some of your ways make me think of a nice little Indian Princess I once knew; while your ankles—but you don’t care to hear about your ankles.”
Garde was duly shocked. She knew not what to think of Adam, who was revealing such astonishing epochs in his life. This was terrible. Yet she wished, or almost wished, he had gone on, just a little further, though she dared not encourage him to do so, right as it might be for her to know it if his heart had strayed elsewhere, at any time during his absence. She was alarmed, curious, piqued. She forgot that she was a boy to whom he had spoken.
“It seems to me,” she presently answered, “that I remind you of nothing but the ladies and maids of these countries where you have traveled.”
“Well, you don’t remind me of the lads, that I admit,” said Adam.
Garde made up her mind to profit by the occasion. She piled her little courage up to the top-most mark.
“And who was the little maid of Jamaica?” she asked.
“Oh, she was as sweet a little thing as ever prattled Spanish,” Rust replied, with a reminiscent look in his eyes. “You would have liked her, I know.”
Garde entertained and reserved her own opinion on that point. “Well—did she like you?” she asked, indifferently.
“Oh yes, she said she did, and I am sure you could depend upon her to tell the truth. She used to like to sit on my knee, dear little thing!”
Garde gasped. It was fortunate that Adam’s mind was occupied with memories. His perfidy was coming forth finely. She knew not whether she wished to cry or to stamp her foot in anger. She controlled her impulses heroically.
“About how old was she?” was her next question.
“Three, I should say,” said Adam. “She was a pitiful little thing, more than pretty. In a way she made me think of Garde, so I couldn’t help but like her.”
Garde was flooded, all through her being, with feelings of love and penitence. To think that she had entertained for a moment a notion that Adam—and yet, stay, there were the others,—dames and countesses. They could not all have been mere tots of children. Then she wondered if it were fair, thus to try to trap the poor fellow and take advantage of him, to make him confess these subjects as to another man. Of course for his own good it might be better to let him tell. And she would understand him so much more thoroughly.
“Was the French damsel only three also?” she summoned courage to inquire.
“Oh dear, no. She was three and ninety, but still sprightly in the minuet and with eyes that could easily have lighted the sun again, had he chanced to go out. I shouldn’t have been sorry to have her for a mother—except that I flatter myself I had a better one—once upon a time.”
Garde would have felt like a coward indeed, had she desired to ask him of any of the others. Having done him a little measure of injustice, she made it up to him by loving him the more, now that she found him so innocent. Nevertheless she had ears to listen with when he volunteered some information about the countess he had seen and admired at the court of Charles.
It turned out, however, that he had merely seen her safely married to one of his royal friends, for whose happiness he had the most sincere of wishes.
Garde felt her spirit of daring and merriment return. It was so tempting to play around the point of her identity that she could not altogether resist the impulse of her nature, to keep him talking.
“I seem to be happy in reminding you of many persons,” she said. “But I think I would rather remind you of some one else. Since you claim to be so much in love, it would compliment me more if I could remind you of your Mistress Garde.”
“Maybe you would,” said Adam, “only that I am getting so near to Boston that such a reminiscence, in a boy, would be sheer impertinence.”