Under aisles of woodland shadows he sat, where the river murmured down mossy stairs of granite in a deep dingle. Above him, the varying foliage of oak and ash and silver birch was already touched with autumn, and trembled into golden points where bosses of pristine granite, crowned with the rowan's scarlet harvest, arose above their luxuriance. The mellow splendour of these forests extended to the river's brink, along which towered n.o.ble ma.s.ses of giant osmunda, capped by seed spears of tawny red. Here and there gilded lances splashed into the stream or dotted its still pools with scattered sequins of sunshine, where light winnowed through the dome of the leaves; and at one spot, on a wrinkled root that wound crookedly from the alder into the river, there glimmered a halcyon, like an opal on a miser's bony finger. From above the tree-tops there sounded cynic bird-laughter, and gazing upwards Martin saw a magpie flaunt his black and white plumage across the valley; while at hand the more musical merriment of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r answered him.

Then a little child's laugh came to his ear, rippling along with the note of the babbling water, and one moment later a small, st.u.r.dy boy appeared. A woman accompanied him. She had slipped a foot into the river, and thus awakened the amus.e.m.e.nt of her companion.

Chris steadied herself after the mishap, balanced her basket more carefully, then stooped down to pick some of the berries that had scattered from it on the bank. When she rose a man with a brown face and soft grey eyes gleaming through gold-rimmed spectacles appeared immediately before.

"Thank G.o.d I see you alive again. Thank G.o.d!" he said with intense feeling, as he took her hand and shook it warmly. "The best news that ever made my heart glad, Chris."

She welcomed him, and he, looking into her eyes, saw new knowledge there, a shadow of sobriety, less of the old dance and sparkle. But he remembered the little tremulous updrawing of her lip when a smile was born, and her voice rang fuller and sweeter than any music he had ever heard since last she spoke to him. A smile of welcome she gave him, indeed, and a pressure of his hand that sent magic messages with it to the very core of him. He felt his blood leap and over his gla.s.ses came a dimness.

"I was gwaine to write first moment I heard 'e was home. An' I wish I had, for I caan't tell 'e what I feel. To think of 'e searchin' the wide world for such a good-for-nought! I thank you for your generous gudeness, Martin. I'll never forget it--never. But I wasn't worth no such care."

"Not worth it! It proved the greatest, bitterest grief of all my life--but one--that I couldn't find you. We grew by cruel stages to think--to think you were dead. The agony of that for us! But, thank G.o.d, it was not so. All at least is well with you now?"

"All ban't never well with men an' women. But I'm more fortunate than I deserve to be, and can make myself of use. I've lived a score of years since we met. An I've comed back to find't is a difficult world for those I love best, unfortunately."

Thus, in somewhat disjointed fashion, Chris made answer.

"Sit a while and speak to me," replied Martin. "The laddie can play about. Look at him marching along with that great branch of king fern over his shoulder!"

"'T is an elfin cheel some ways. Wonnerful eyes he've got. They burn me if I look at'em close," said Chris. She regarded Timothy without sentiment and her eyes were bright and hard.

"I hope he will turn out well. Will spoke of him the other day. He is very fond of the child. It is singularly like him, too--a sort of little pocket edition of him."

"So I've heard others say. Caan't see it at all myself. Look at the eyes of un."

"Will believes the boy has got very unusual intelligence and may go far."

"May go so far as the workhouse," she answered, with a laugh. Then, observing that her reply pained Martin, Chris s.n.a.t.c.hed up small Tim as he pa.s.sed by and pressed him to her breast and kissed him.

"You like him better than you think, Chris--poor little motherless thing."

"Perhaps I do. I wonder if his mother ever looks hungry towards Newtake when she pa.s.ses by?"

"Perhaps others took him and told the mother that he was dead."

"She's dead herself more like. Else the thing wouldn't have falled out."

There was a pause, then Martin talked of various matters. But he could not fight for long against the desire of his heart and presently plunged, as he had done five years before, into a proposal.

"He being gone--poor Clem--do you think--? Have you thought, I mean? Has it made a difference, Chris? 'T is so hard to put it into words without sounding brutal and callous. Only men are selfish when they love."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

A sudden inspiration prompted his reply. He said nothing for a moment, but with a hand that shook somewhat, drew forth his pocketbook, opened it, fumbled within, and then handed over to Chris the brown ruins of flowers long dead.

"You picked them," he said slowly; "you picked them long ago and flung them away from you when you said 'No' to me--said it so kindly in the past. Take them in your hand again."

"Dead bluebells," she answered. "Ess, I can call home the time. To think you gathered them up!" She looked at him with something not unlike love in her eyes and fingered the flowers gently. "You'm a gude man, Martin --the husband for a gude la.s.s. Best to find one if you can. Wish I could help'e."

"Oh, Chris, there's only one woman in the world for me. Could you--even now? Could you let me stand between you and the world? Could you, Chris?

If you only knew what I cannot put into words. I'd try so hard to make you happy."

"I knaw, I knaw. But theer's no human life so long as the road to happiness, Martin. And yet--"

He took her hand and for a moment she did not resist him. Then little Tim's voice chimed out merrily at the stream margin, and the music had instant effect upon Chris Blanchard.

She drew her hand from Martin and the next moment he saw his dead bluebells hurrying away and parting company for ever on the dancing water. Chris watched them until they vanished; then she turned and looked at him, to find that he grew very pale and agitated. Even his humility had hardly foreseen this decisive answer after the yielding att.i.tude Chris first a.s.sumed when she suffered him to hold her hand. He looked into her face inquiring and frightened. The silence that followed was broken by continued laughter and shouting from Timothy. Then Martin tried to connect the child's first merriment with the simultaneous change in the mood of the woman he worshipped, but failed to do so.

At that moment Chris spoke. She made utterance under the weight of great emotion and with evident desire to escape the necessity of a direct negative, while yet leaving her refusal of Martin's offer implicit and distinct.

"I mind when a scatter of paper twinkled down this river just like them dead blossoms. Clem thrawed them, an' they floated away to the sea, past daffadowndillies an' budding lady-ferns an' such-like. 'T was a li'l bit of poetry he'd made up to please me--and I, fule as I was, didn't say the right thing when he axed me what I thought; so Clem tore the rhymes in pieces an' sent them away. He said the river would onderstand. An'

the river onderstands why I dropped them dead blossoms in, tu. A wise, ancient stream, I doubt. An' you 'm wise, tu; an' can take my answer wi'out any more words, as will awnly make both our hearts ache."

"Not even if I wait patiently? You couldn't marry me, dear Chris? You couldn't get to love me?"

"I couldn't marry you. I'm a widow in heart for all time. But I thank G.o.d for the gude-will of such a man as you. I cherish it and 't will be dear to me all my life. But I caan't come to 'e, so doan't ax it."

"Yet you're young to live for a memory, Chris."

"Better 'n nothing. And listen; I'll tell you this, if 't will make my 'No' sound less hard to your ear. I loves you--I loves you better 'n any living man 'cept Will, an' not less than I love even him. I wish I could bring 'e a spark of joy by marryin' you, for you was allus very gude, an' thought kindly of Clem when but few did. I'd marry you if 't was awnly for that; yet it caan't never be, along o' many reasons. You must take that cold comfort, Martin."

He sighed, then spoke.

"So be it, dear one. I shall never ask again. G.o.d knows what holds you back if you can even love me a little."

"Ess, G.o.d knaws--everything."

"I must not cry out against that. Yet it makes it all the harder. To think that you will dedicate all your beautiful life to a memory! it only makes my loss the greater, and shows the depths of you to me."

She uttered a little scream and her cheek paled, and she put up her hands with the palms outward as though warding away his words.

"Doan't 'e say things like that or give me any praise, for G.o.d's sake. I caan't bear it. I be weak, weak flesh an' blood, weaker 'n water. If you could only see down in my heart, you'd be cured of your silly love for all time."

He did not answer, but picked up her basket and proceeded with her out of the valley. Chris gave a hand to the child, and save for Tim's prattle there was no speaking.

At length they reached Newtake, when Martin yielded up the basket and bade Chris "good-night." He had already turned, when she called him back in a strange voice.

"Kiss the li'l bwoy, will 'e? I want 'e to. I'm that fond of un. An' he 'peared to take to 'e; an' he said 'By-by' twice to 'e, but you didn't hear un."

Then the man kissed Tim on a small, purple-stained mouth, and saw his eyes very l.u.s.trous with sleep, for the day was done.

Woman and child disappeared; the sacking nailed along the bottom of Newtake Gate to keep the young chicks in the farmyard rustled over the ground, and Martin, turning his face away, moved homewards.

But the veil was not lifted for him; he did not understand. A secret, transparent enough to any who regarded Chris Blanchard and her circ.u.mstances from a point without the theatre of action, still remained concealed from all who loved her.