CHAPTER IX. THE STRAIGHT SIMPLICITY OF EVE
For the next three weeks Eric Marshall seemed to himself to be livingtwo lives, as distinct from each other as if he possessed a doublepersonality. In one, he taught the Lindsay district school diligentlyand painstakingly; solved problems; argued on theology with RobertWilliamson; called at the homes of his pupils and took tea in statewith their parents; went to a rustic dance or two and played havoc, allunwittingly, with the hearts of the Lindsay maidens.
But this life was a dream of workaday. He only LIVED in the other, whichwas spent in an old orchard, grassy and overgrown, where the minutesseemed to lag for sheer love of the spot and the June winds made wildharping in the old spruces.
Here every evening he met Kilmeny; in that old orchard they garneredhours of quiet happiness together; together they went wandering in thefair fields of old romance; together they read many books and talked ofmany things; and, when they were tired of all else, Kilmeny played tohim and the old orchard echoed with her lovely, fantastic melodies.
At every meeting her beauty came home afresh to him with the old thrillof glad surprise. In the intervals of absence it seemed to him that shecould not possibly be as beautiful as he remembered her; and thenwhen they met she seemed even more so. He learned to watch for theundisguised light of welcome that always leaped into her eyes at thesound of his footsteps. She was nearly always there before him and shealways showed that she was glad to see him with the frank delight of achild watching for a dear comrade.
She was never in the same mood twice. Now she was grave, now gay, nowstately, now pensive. But she was always charming. Thrawn and twistedthe old Gordon stock might be, but it had at least this one offshoot ofperfect grace and symmetry. Her mind and heart, utterly unspoiled of theworld, were as beautiful as her face. All the ugliness of existencehad passed her by, shrined in her double solitude of upbringing andmuteness.
She was naturally quick and clever. Delightful little flashes of witand humour sparkled out occasionally. She could be whimsical--evencharmingly capricious. Sometimes innocent mischief glimmered out in theunfathomable deeps of her blue eyes. Sarcasm, even, was not unknown toher. Now and then she punctured some harmless bubble of a young man'sconceit or masculine superiority with a biting little line of daintilywritten script.
She assimilated the ideas in the books they read, speedily, eagerly,and thoroughly, always seizing on the best and truest, and rejecting thefalse and spurious and weak with an unfailing intuition at which Ericmarvelled. Hers was the spear of Ithuriel, trying out the dross ofeverything and leaving only the pure gold.
In manner and outlook she was still a child. Yet now and again she wasas old as Eve. An expression would leap into her laughing face, a subtlemeaning reveal itself in her smile, that held all the lore of womanhoodand all the wisdom of the ages.
Her way of smiling enchanted him. The smile always began far down in hereyes and flowed outward to her face like a sparkling brook stealing outof shadow into sunshine.
He knew everything about her life. She told him her simple historyfreely. She often mentioned her uncle and aunt and seemed to regard themwith deep affection. She rarely spoke of her mother. Eric came somehowto understand, less from what she said than from what she did not say,that Kilmeny, though she had loved her mother, had always been ratherafraid of her. There had not been between them the natural beautifulconfidence of mother and child.
Of Neil, she wrote frequently at first, and seemed very fond of him.Later she ceased to mention him. Perhaps--for she was marvellously quickto catch and interpret every fleeting change of expression in his voiceand face--she discerned what Eric did not know himself--that his eyesclouded and grew moody at the mention of Neil's name.
Once she asked him naively,
"Are there many people like you out in the world?"
"Thousands of them," said Eric, laughing.
She looked gravely at him. Then she gave her head a quick decided littleshake.
"I do not think so," she wrote. "I do not know much of the world, but Ido not think there are many people like you in it."
One evening, when the far-away hills and fields were scarfed in gauzypurples, and the intervales were brimming with golden mists, Ericcarried to the old orchard a little limp, worn volume that held a lovestory. It was the first thing of the kind he had ever read to her,for in the first novel he had lent her the love interest had beenvery slight and subordinate. This was a beautiful, passionate idylexquisitely told.
He read it to her, lying in the grass at her feet; she listened with herhands clasped over her knee and her eyes cast down. It was not a longstory; and when he had finished it he shut the book and looked up at herquestioningly.
"Do you like it, Kilmeny?" he asked.
Very slowly she took her slate and wrote,
"Yes, I like it. But it hurt me, too. I did not know that a person couldlike anything that hurt her. I do not know why it hurt me. I felt as ifI had lost something that I never had. That was a very silly feeling,was it not? But I did not understand the book very well, you see. It isabout love and I do not know anything about love. Mother told me oncethat love is a curse, and that I must pray that it would never enterinto my life. She said it very earnestly, and so I believed her. Butyour book teaches that it is a blessing. It says that it is the mostsplendid and wonderful thing in life. Which am I to believe?"
"Love--real love--is never a curse, Kilmeny," said Eric gravely. "Thereis a false love which IS a curse. Perhaps your mother believed it wasthat which had entered her life and ruined it; and so she made themistake. There is nothing in the world--or in heaven either, as Ibelieve--so truly beautiful and wonderful and blessed as love."
"Have you ever loved?" asked Kilmeny, with the directness of phrasingnecessitated by her mode of communication which was sometimes a littleterrible. She asked the question simply and without embarrassment. Sheknew of no reason why love might not be discussed with Eric as othermatters--music and books and travel--might be.
"No," said Eric--honestly, as he thought, "but every one has an ideal oflove whom he hopes to meet some day--'the ideal woman of a young man'sdream.' I suppose I have mine, in some sealed, secret chamber of myheart."
"I suppose your ideal woman would be beautiful, like the woman in yourbook?"
"Oh, yes, I am sure I could never care for an ugly woman," said Eric,laughing a little as he sat up. "Our ideals are always beautiful,whether they so translate themselves into realities or not. But thesun is going down. Time does certainly fly in this enchanted orchard. Ibelieve you bewitch the moments away, Kilmeny. Your namesake of thepoem was a somewhat uncanny maid, if I recollect aright, and thought aslittle of seven years in elfland as ordinary folk do of half an houron upper earth. Some day I shall waken from a supposed hour's lingeringhere and find myself an old man with white hair and ragged coat, as inthat fairy tale we read the other night. Will you let me give you thisbook? I should never commit the sacrilege of reading it in any otherplace than this. It is an old book, Kilmeny. A new book, savouring ofthe shop and market-place, however beautiful it might be, would not dofor you. This was one of my mother's books. She read it and loved it.See--the faded rose leaves she placed in it one day are there still.I'll write your name in it--that quaint, pretty name of yours whichalways sounds as if it had been specially invented for you--'Kilmeny ofthe Orchard'--and the date of this perfect June day on which we read ittogether. Then when you look at it you will always remember me, and thewhite buds opening on that rosebush beside you, and the rush and murmurof the wind in the tops of those old spruces."
He held out the book to her, but, to his surprise, she shook her head,with a deeper flush on her face.
"Won't you take the book, Kilmeny? Why not?"
She took her pencil and wrote slowly, unlike her usual quick movement.
"Do not be offended with me. I shall not need anything to make meremember you because I can never forget you. But I would rather not takethe book. I do not want to read i
t again. It is about love, and there isno use in my learning about love, even if it is all you say. Nobody willever love me. I am too ugly."
"You! Ugly!" exclaimed Eric. He was on the point of going off into apeal of laughter at the idea when a glimpse of her half averted facesobered him. On it was a hurt, bitter look, such as he remembered seeingonce before, when he had asked her if she would not like to see theworld for herself.
"Kilmeny," he said in astonishment, "you don't really think yourselfugly, do you?"
She nodded, without looking at him, and then wrote,
"Oh, yes, I know that I am. I have known it for a long time. Mother toldme that I was very ugly and that nobody would ever like to look at me. Iam sorry. It hurts me much worse to know I am ugly than it does to knowI cannot speak. I suppose you will think that is very foolish of me, butit is true. That was why I did not come back to the orchard for such along time, even after I had got over my fright. I hated to think thatYOU would think me ugly. And that is why I do not want to go out intothe world and meet people. They would look at me as the egg peddler didone day when I went out with Aunt Janet to his wagon the spring aftermother died. He stared at me so. I knew it was because he thought me sougly, and I have always hidden when he came ever since."
Eric's lips twitched. In spite of his pity for the real sufferingdisplayed in her eyes, he could not help feeling amused over the absurdidea of this beautiful girl believing herself in all seriousness to beugly.
"But, Kilmeny, do you think yourself ugly when you look in a mirror?" heasked smiling.
"I have never looked in a mirror," she wrote. "I never knew there wassuch a thing until after mother died, and I read about it in a book.Then I asked Aunt Janet and she said mother had broken all the lookingglasses in the house when I was a baby. But I have seen my facereflected in the spoons, and in a little silver sugar bowl Aunt Janethas. And it IS ugly--very ugly."
Eric's face went down into the grass. For his life he could not helplaughing; and for his life he would not let Kilmeny see him laughing.A certain little whimsical wish took possession of him and he did nothasten to tell her the truth, as had been his first impulse. Instead,when he dared to look up he said slowly,
"I don't think you are ugly, Kilmeny."
"Oh, but I am sure you must," she wrote protestingly. "Even Neil does.He tells me I am kind and nice, but one day I asked him if he thoughtme very ugly, and he looked away and would not speak, so I knew what hethought about it, too. Do not let us speak of this again. It makes mefeel sorry and spoils everything. I forget it at other times. Let meplay you some good-bye music, and do not feel vexed because I would nottake your book. It would only make me unhappy to read it."
"I am not vexed," said Eric, "and I think you will take it some dayyet--after I have shown you something I want you to see. Never mindabout your looks, Kilmeny. Beauty isn't everything."
"Oh, it is a great deal," she wrote naively. "But you do like me, eventhough I am so ugly, don't you? You like me because of my beautifulmusic, don't you?"
"I like you very much, Kilmeny," answered Eric, laughing a little;but there was in his voice a tender note of which he was unconscious.Kilmeny was aware of it, however, and she picked up her violin with apleased smile.
He left her playing there, and all the way through the dim resinousspruce wood her music followed him like an invisible guardian spirit.
"Kilmeny the Beautiful!" he murmured, "and yet, good heavens, the childthinks she is ugly--she with a face more lovely than ever an artistdreamed of! A girl of eighteen who has never looked in a mirror! Iwonder if there is another such in any civilized country in the world.What could have possessed her mother to tell her such a falsehood? Iwonder if Margaret Gordon could have been quite sane. It is strange thatNeil has never told her the truth. Perhaps he doesn't want her to findout."
Eric had met Neil Gordon a few evenings before this, at a countrydance where Neil had played the violin for the dancers. Influenced bycuriosity he had sought the lad's acquaintance. Neil was friendly andtalkative at first; but at the first hint concerning the Gordonswhich Eric threw out skilfully his face and manner changed. He lookedsecretive and suspicious, almost sinister. A sullen look crept intohis big black eyes and he drew his bow across the violin strings with adiscordant screech, as if to terminate the conversation. Plainly nothingwas to be found out from him about Kilmeny and her grim guardians.