CHAPTER X.
Swingingher violin case by the handle, Esther started off through the cornfield, stopping now and again to pull a spray of morning glories that wreathed around the stalks to the tips of their tassels. By the time she got in sight of the Curtis house there were many of these branches trailing over her. It was still early. The heavy dew had dampened the dust on her shoes. She tried to brush it off with the leaves she had gathered, then bunching the blossoms of bright color together she fastened them on her breast.
Just as she walked up Tagger was seated on the steps of the back porch, getting Glenn Andrews’ boots in order for him. “Let me have the brush a minute.” Esther took the brush, leanedover and cleaned the mud off of her own shoes. Then she took up one of the boots and began to polish it. A thrill of delight leaped through her at the thought. She was working for him. When she put it down the boot looked fresher and glossier than it could ever look under Tagger’s care. There was a sniffling sound and Esther looked behind her. Tagger stood scouring in his eyes with his shining fists, his small body quivering with sobs.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“You’ll git my money,” he said through his gasps.
“Well, for heaven’s sake! you little scamp, I don’t want your nickel.”
“’Tain’t no nickel,” he blurted out. “He gimme a quarter for turnin’ de cartwheel and standin’ on my head. Dat warn’t work; dat was play.”
Esther’s voice echoed through the halls. When she stopped laughing, she said: “You poor little mite, I hope he will give you the half of hiskingdom. Here, take the brush and earn your fortune.”
As Tagger took up the other boot, to finish it, Esther unclasped the bunch of morning glories and tied them at the top of the one she had polished. Seeing nothing of Glenn, and passing a word with Mrs. Curtis who was busy in the dining room, she went out to the flower garden. About her in riotous health and beauty grew flowers that gave no evidence of care. There was a suggestion of wilfulness everywhere. The sun had not been up long. It was splashing its rays in the face of the great, slumbering mountains like spray on the face of a sluggard. Glenn walked up behind Esther as she bent over a white rosebush in the heyday of its blooming.
“You did not waste time waiting for me. This is worth seeing. Don’t you think so?”
As her face raised to his, how pure and radiant it looked. The purity was heightened by the flush.
“Oh, if I could only do to them as I want to.”She stretched her arms and brought them together with a sigh. “I’d like to hold them close and love them as hard as I could; then I’d be satisfied.”
“You’d crush them, break their stems and pay the penalty of indulgence by pricking those arms of yours by the wretched little briars hidden under the beauty that you would spoil,” he said, sharply.
He wanted her to see a lesson in this.
“That’s the way with life,” he said, watching her break off one of the buds which she put in his coat.
“Come on. You have got enough. I must leave by two o’clock.”
“I’ve been ready longer than you—my violin is on the porch. We can go by there to get it.”
At the start Glenn saw that Esther looked very radiant, but suddenly the look of exaltation faded from her face. He did not understand her mood.
Generally she enjoyed what he recalled to her, visible or invisible, with the most exquisite feeling.He dearly loved that trait in her. This was not one of her receptive moods. She did not seem to know when they got to the spring.
He indulged in an indolent sprawl upon the grass, and she dropped down on the roots of a tree by his side. He was an ideal lounger. That was sufficient contentment for awhile. He was trying to think it out without asking her.
“What’s the matter?” he said at last. “Have I hurt you—displeased you?” That passive gentleness of manner was rarely changed. “Won’t you tell me?” He placed his hand softly over hers that lay on the ground. Her lashes, delicate in their tinting, beat together, struggling to catch the tears that tried to overflow. She pulled away her hand and started to rise. The child’s heart was almost breaking and the rebellious tears that came, hot and fast, were dashed away by little, mad hands.
“Oh, Esther, have I hurt you? Don’t, don’t! I’d rather you would strike me—anything but that.” He sprang to his feet and bent over her.“Are you disappointed in me. Have you found too many flaws? Is it because I must go away?” His soft, sad eyes regarded her uneasily. “If I am the cause, haven’t I a right to know?”
“You oughtn’t to have to be told,” she said, with shamed frankness, when she could command her voice.
“If I had meant to, I wouldn’t; that is my justification.”
He touched her hair. “Come, this isn’t you—I always liked that straightforward way of yours. Don’t spoil our last day. Tell me, what’s the matter?”
“That’s what stings—you not only thought little enough of them to throw them away; you forgot it.”
There was a complaining note in her voice. It was less anger than grief she felt. Her head had the plaintive droop of a spoiled child asking consolation.
“Do you mean the flowers on my boot; is that all?” Slipping one hand in his pocket andpulling out a few, bruised, draggled morning glories. An expression of joy flashed over her wet face. A faint, amused gleam shot into his serious eyes.
“Tagger used them for a handle, and I thought their condition decided in favor of pressing rather than wearing. I saved the pieces you see.”
“They were all the color of my dreams—I couldn’t help but think that was the way they would go some day.”
“If I can help it, they won’t.”
Taking out a notebook he dropped the flowers between its leaves. Her girlish illusions were dear to him. He wouldn’t destroy one of them.
“Here, let me get your violin. Play for me, while I smoke.”
She took it from him, and he began smoking, as she played for him the piece he had asked her to learn. He could see the confidence she had gained in herself. Patience was all that she lacked.
“There is yet another one I want you to learn for me.”
“What’s the use? I may never see you again. I don’t know that I’ll worry with it.”
The thought of his going away met with resentment in her. She did not like to picture life with his companionship withdrawn.
“Fiddledee humbug! I expect to see you again lots of times. Maybe I’ll spend Christmas day with the Curtises. I might come over awhile at that time if you would ask me. I am not going home just for a day. New York State is too far.”
“I couldn’t divide you, I want the whole day or nothing.” Esther leaned her elbow on the violin case.
“I remember the first time I was ever offered a piece of a whole thing. I was a very little girl. I had a china plate that I always used at my place at table, and one day a boy broke it in halves and mended it. It had tiny green dots shaped like a fence row around it, and I noticed one place where the dots didn’t fit, and then I sawwhere they had pasted it together. A little chip of it was gone. It nearly broke my heart. They all said it was as good as new, but they couldn’t make me see it in that way. What do you suppose I did?”
“There is no telling.”
“It had been the pride of my life, but I took that plate out, and broke it in pieces and strewed them down the road to cut his feet when he came by from school.”
“Suppose the feet of others had got the punishment?”
“I wasn’t old enough to reason that out then.”
“Some people would have been sore enough and revengeful enough not to care if they had. I have known such instances, but I can understand that your plate would never be the same to you with a part of it gone. I don’t like anything incomplete myself.”
“Give me the whole day—I want you all the time.”
“If you will promise me to learn every piece of music that I ask you to, I will.”
“You haven’t told the Curtises yet that you were coming?”
“No.”
“Well,” her voice was merry, “that’s a bargain.”
Glenn Andrews looked at his watch.
“Great Scott! ten minutes to two. I must go.”
They stood for a moment hand in hand. Not a sound could be heard save the water lisping in the spring. He touched her hair. “Beautiful hair!” he half whispered. “If it had been cut off, when you came so near having the fever, I should have asked you to give me a curl.”
His veins throbbed with tenderness—between these two there was a tie nearer than blood—the tie of comradeship. One couldn’t think of relations more subtle or pure.
“Give me your knife,” she said.
Glenn raised her face, touching her chin gently with the tips of his fingers.
“No, no,” he said. “It is much prettier where it is. I wouldn’t let you cut one off.”
She turned and closed her violin case with a snap.