He rubbed his eyes and peered again. There was no mistake. It was Jane.
XXIX
ARCADIA AGAIN
She did not move at his approach, although his footsteps among the dried leaves must have been plainly audible, and he was within ten feet of the fire before she turned.
“We had better be going soon, Challón,” she began and then stopped, as she raised her head and looked at him. He wore his old fishing hat with the holes in it, a faded blue flannel shirt, corduroys and laced boots; and as her eye passed quickly over his figure to his face, she paled, started backward and stared with a terror in her eyes of something beyond comprehension. He saw her put her arm before her face to shut out the sight of him and rise to one knee, stumbling blindly away, when he caught her in his arms, whispering madly:
“Jane! Jane! Don’t turn away from me. It’s Phil, do you hear? Myself—no other. You were waiting for me—and I came to you.”
She trembled violently and her hand clutched his arm as though to assure herself of its reality.
“Jane, look up at me. Look in my eyes and you’ll see your vision there—where it has always been, and always will be—unchangeable. Look at me, Jane.”
Slowly she raised her head and saw that what he said was true, the pallor of dismay retreating before the warm flush that suffused her from neck to brow.
“It’s—you, Phil? I can’t understand–”
“Nor I. I don’t know or care—so long as you are here—close in my arms. I’ll never let you go again. Kiss me, Jane.”
She obeyed, blindly, passionately, the wonder in her eyes dying in heavenly content.
“You came to me, Phil,” she whispered. “How? Why?”
“Because you wanted me, because you were waiting for me. Isn’t it so?”
“Yes, I was waiting for you. I came here because I couldn’t stay away. I—I don’t know why I came—” She paused and her hands tightened on his shoulders again. “Oh, Phil,” she cried again, “there’s no mistake?”
“No—no.”
“You frightened me so. I thought you were—unreal—a vision—your hat, your clothes are the same. I thought you were—the ghost of happiness.”
He kissed her tenderly.
“There are no ghosts, Jane, dear. Not even those of unhappiness,” he murmured. “There is no room for anything in the world but hope and joy—and love—yours and mine. I love you, dearest. Even when reason despaired, I loved you most and loved the pain of it.”
“The pain of it—I know.”
She was sobbing now, her slender body quivering under his caress.
“Don’t, Jane,” he whispered. “Don’t cry. Don’t!”
But she smiled up at him through her tears.
“Let me, Phil, I—I’m so happy.”
He soothed her gently and held her close in his arms, her head against his breast, as he would have held that of a tired child. After a time she relaxed and lay quiet.
“You’re glad?” he asked.
There was no reply.
“Are you glad?” he repeated.
“Glad! Oh, Phil, I’ve suffered so.”
“Oh, Jane, why? Look at me, dear. It was all a mistake. How could you have misjudged me?”
She drew away from him and took his head between the palms of her hands and sought his eyes with her own.
“There was no other?” she asked haltingly.
“No—a thousand times no,” he returned her gaze eagerly. “How could there be any other?” he asked simply.
She looked long and then closed her eyes and drew his lips down to hers.
“You believe in me—now?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes still closed. “I believe in you. Even if I didn’t, I would still—still—adore you.”
“God bless you for that. But you do believe–” he persisted.
“Yes, yes, I do believe in you, Phil. I can’t doubt you when you look at me like that.”
“Then I’ll never look away from you.”
“Don’t look away. Those eyes! How they’ve haunted me. The shadows in them! There are no shadows now, Phil. They’re laughing at me, at my feminine weakness, convinced against itself. I thought you were a ghost.” She held him away and looked at him. “But you’re not in the least ghostlike. You’re looking very well. I don’t believe you’ve worried.”
“Nor you. I’ve never seen you looking handsomer. It’s hardly flattering to my vanity.”
She sighed.
“I’ve lived in Arcadia for three weeks.”
He led her over to the log beside the shack and sat beside her.
“Tell me,” he said at last, “how you came to be here—alone.”
She straightened quickly and peered around.
“But I’m not alone—my guide—he went into the brush for firewood.”
“Curious!”
“He should be back by now.”
“I hope he doesn’t come back.”
“Oh, Phil, so do I—but he will. And you?”
“My guide, Joe Keegón, is there,” and he pointed upstream.
A shade passed over her face.
“But we’ll send them away, Jane, back where they came from. We need no guides now, you and I, no guides but our hearts, no servants but our hands. We’ll begin again—where we left off—yesterday.”
She crouched closer in his arms.
“Yesterday. Yes, it was only yesterday that we were here,” she sighed. “But the long night between!”
“A dream, Jane, a dream—a phantom unhappiness—only this is real.”
“Are you sure? I’m afraid I’ll awaken.”
“No,” he laughed. “See, the fire is just as we left it last night; the black log charred, the shack, your bed, the two birch trees and your ridgepole.”
“Yes,” she smiled.
“The two creels and the cooking fish–”
“Oh, those fish! My fish are all in the fire.”
“Do you care?”
“No—I’ll let them burn. But you’ll be good to me, won’t you, Phil?”
There was another long pause. About them the orchestral stillness of the deep woods, amid which they lived a moment of immortality, all thought, all speech inadequate to their sweet communion. A venturesome sparrow perched itself upon Jane’s ridgepole, and after putting its head on one side in inquiry uttered a low and joyful chirp, and failing to attract attention flew away to tell the gossip to its mate. The breeze crooned, the stream sighed and the sunlight kissed the cardinal flowers, which lifted their heads for its caress. All Nature breathed contentment, peace and consummation.
But there was much to be said, much mystery to be revealed, and it was Jane who first spoke. She drew away from him gently and looked out into the underbrush.
“Phil! Those guides,” she whispered. “They may have seen.”
“Let them. I don’t care. Do you?”
“Ye-s. Let me think. I can’t understand. Why hasn’t Challón come back? He was here a minute ago—or was it an hour? I don’t know.” Her fingers struggled with the disorder of her hair as she smiled at him.
“Challón is a myth. I don’t believe you had a guide.”
“A myth, indeed! I wish he was—now. I wanted to go out alone, but father wouldn’t let me–”
“Mr. Loring!” Gallatin started up. “Oh, of course!” he sighed. “I had forgotten that there were such things as fathers.”
“But there are—there is—” she laughed, “a perfectly substantial father within ten miles from here.”
“You’re in camp again—in the same spot?”
She nodded.
“Any one else?” he frowned. “Not Mr. Van Duyn.”
“Oh, dear, no. Coley has gone to Carlsbad.”
He took her by the hand again. “You sent him away?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“After ‘Clovelly.’ Oh, Phil, you hurt me so. But I couldn’t stand seeing him after that.”
“Why?”
“Because, cruel as you were, I knew that you were right and that I was wrong. I hated you that night—hated you because you made me such a pitiful thing; but— Oh, I loved you, too, more than ever. If only you hadn’t been so hard—so bitter. If you had been gentle then, you might have taken me in your arms and crushed me if you liked. I shouldn’t have cared.”
“Sh—that was only in the dream, Jane.” And then: “You never cared for him?” he asked quickly.
“Never.”
“Then why–?”
“My pride, Phil. Poor Coley!”
He echoed the words heartlessly.
“Poor Coley!”
A pause. “Who else is in camp?”
“Colonel Broadhurst, Mr. Worthington, Mr. and Mrs. Pennington–”
“Nellie! Here?”
“Yes, she had never been in the woods before. Why, what is the matter, Phil?”
Gallatin straightened, one hand to his forehead.
“I have it,” he said.
“Have what?”
“It was Nellie. I might have guessed it.”
“Guessed–?”
“It was her plan—coming up here—to the woods. Before we left New York she and John Kenyon were as thick as thieves—and–”
“Oh!”
“Good old Uncle John! He did it. I remember now—a hundred things.”
It was Jane’s turn to be surprised.
“Yes—yes. It’s true, Phil. Oh, how cleverly they managed! But how could Nellie have known that I would come here? I only told Johnny Challón.”
Phil laughed.
“Nellie Pennington is a remarkable woman. She knew. She knows everything.”
“Yes, I think she does,” said Jane. “We’ve been in camp a week. I started with Challón four days ago. He said he had lost the trail, and I gave it up. This morning—I can see it all now. Father—and Nellie started me off themselves at sunrise. They knew I’d come here and–”
She stopped and took him abruptly by the arm. “Phil! Those wicked people had even fixed the day and hour of our meeting.”
He nodded.
“Of course! I wanted to come yesterday, but they wouldn’t let me. If I had—I should have missed you.”
“Oh—how terrible!”
Her accents were so genuine, her face so distressed at this possibility, that he laughed and caught her in his arms again.
“But I didn’t miss you, Jane. That’s the point. Even if I had, Nellie would have managed somehow. She’s an extraordinary woman.”
“She is, Phil. She chaperoned me until Coley was at the point of exasperation.”
“Quite right of her, too.”
“But why has she taken such an interest in you—in us?”
“Because she’s an angel, because she has the wisdom of the centuries, because she is a born matchmaker, because she always does what she makes up her mind to do, and, lastly—and most important, Jane, she has a proper sense of the eternal fitness of things.”
“That’s true. Nothing else was possible, was it, Phil?”
“No. It was written—a thousand years ago.”
She turned in his arms.
“Have you thought that—always?” she asked.
“I never gave up hoping.”
“Nor I.”
She was silent a moment.
“Phil.”
“What, Jane?”
“Would you have come here to Arcadia, alone, even if–”
“Yes. I would have come here—alone. I was planning it all spring. This place is redolent of you. Your spirit has haunted it for a year. I wanted to be here to share it with Kee-way-din, if I couldn’t have—yourself.”
“What would you have done if I had not been here?”
“I don’t know—waited for you, I think.”
“But it was I—who waited–”
“You didn’t wait long. What were you thinking of, there by the fire?”
“Of my dream.”
“You dreamed of me?”
“Yes. The night we came into camp I dreamed of you. I saw you poling a canoe upstream. I followed you across a portage. There was a heavy pack upon your back, but you did not mind the weight, for your step was light and your face happy. There was a shadow in your eyes, the same shadow, but your lips were smiling. Night fell and still you toiled in the moonlight, and I knew that you were coming here. There were voices, too, and you were singing with them; but I wasn’t afraid, because you seemed so joyful.”
“I was joyful.”
“I saw the shack—and the ashes of the fire and I saw you coming through the bushes toward it. But when you came to the fire I was not there. You called me, but I couldn’t answer. I tried to, but I seemed to be dumb—and then—and that was all.”
“A dream. It was all true—except the last.”
“That’s why I came. I wanted to be here, so that if you did come, you might not be disappointed. I had failed you before. I did not want it to happen again. I brought Challón to show me the way. I was coming here again—and again—until you found me.”
He raised her chin and looked into her eyes.
“Dream again, dear.”
“I’m dreaming now,” she sighed. “It is so sweet. Don’t let me wake, Phil. It—it mightn’t be true.”
“Yes, it’s true, all true. You’ll marry me, Jane?”
“Whenever you ask me to.”
He looked away from her down the stream where the sunlight danced in the open.
“I told you once that I would come for you some day—when I had conquered myself,” he said slowly, “when I had made a place among the useful men of the world, when I could look my Enemy in the eye—for a long while and not be defeated—to stare him down until he stole away—far off where I wouldn’t ever find him.”
“Yes.”
“He has gone, Jane. He does not trouble me and will not, I know. It was a long battle, a silent battle between us, but I’ve won. And I’m ready to take you, Jane.”
“Take me, then.”
Her lips were already his.
“You could have had me before, Phil,” she murmured. “I would have fought the Enemy with you he was my Enemy, too, but you would not have me.”
He shook his head.
“Not then. It was my own fight—not yours. And yet if it hadn’t been for you, perhaps I shouldn’t have fought at all.”
She drew away from him a little.
“No—I didn’t help you. I only made it harder. I’ll regret that always. It was your own victory—against odds.”
He smiled.
“What does it matter now. I had to win—not that battle alone—but others.”
“Yes, I know,” she smiled. “Father is mad about you.”
Gallatin threw up his chin and laughed to the sky.
“He ought to be. I’d be mad, too, in his place.”
His joy was infectious, and she smiled at him fondly.
“You’re a very wonderful person, aren’t you?”
“How could a demigod be anything else but wonderful? You created me. Aren’t you pleased with your handiwork?”
“Immensely.”
He paused a moment and then whispered into her ear.
“You’ll marry me—soon?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Whenever you want me, Phil.”
“This summer! They shall leave us here!” he said.
She colored divinely.
“Oh!”
“It can be managed.”
“A wedding in the woods! Oh, Phil!”
“Why not? I’ll see–”
But she put her fingers over his lips and would not listen to him.
“Yes, dear,” he insisted, capturing her hands, “it shall be here. All this is ours—our forest, our stream, our sunlight, yours and mine, our kingdom. Would you change a kingdom for a villa or a fashionable hotel?”
“No, no,” she whispered.
“We will begin life together here—where love began—alone. You shall cook and I shall kill for you, and build with my own hands another shack, a larger one with two windows and a door—a wonderful shack with chairs, a table–”
“And a porcelain bathtub?”
“No—the bath is down the corridor—to the right.”
She had used it.
“It will do,” she smiled. “May I have a mirror?”
“The pool–”
Her lips twisted.
“I tried it once, and fell in. A mirror, please,” she insisted.
“Yes—a mirror—then.”
“And a—a small, a very tiny steamer trunk?”
He laughed.
“Oh, yes, and a French maid, smelling salts and a motor–”
“Phil! What shall I cook with?”
“A frying pan and a tin coffeepot.”
“But I can make such beautiful muffins.”
“I’ll build an oven.”
“And cake–”
“We’ll live like gods–”
“Demigods–”
“And goddesses.”
It was sweet nonsense but nobody heard it but themselves.
The shadows lengthened. The patches of light, turned to gold, were lifting along the tree trunks when from the deeps of the ancient forest below them there came three flutelike notes of liquid music of such depth and richness that they sat spellbound. In a moment they heard it again, the three cadenced notes of unearthly beauty and then the pause, while all nature held its breath and waited to hear again.
“The hermit thrush,” he whispered.
“Oh, Phil. It’s from the very soul of things.”
“Sh–”
But they did not hear it again. The hermit thrush, sings seldom and then only to those who belong to the Immortal Brotherhood of the Forest.