CHAPTER IX. THE STRAIGHT SIMPLICITY OF EVE
For the next three weeks Eric Marshall seemed to himself to be
living two lives, as distinct from each other as if he possessed
a double personality. In one, he taught the Lindsay district
school diligently and painstakingly; solved problems; argued on
theology with Robert Williamson; called at the homes of his
pupils and took tea in state with their parents; went to a rustic
dance or two and played havoc, all unwittingly, with the hearts
of the Lindsay maidens.
But this life was a dream of workaday. He only LIVED in the
other, which was spent in an old orchard, grassy and overgrown,
where the minutes seemed to lag for sheer love of the spot and
the June winds made wild harping in the old spruces.
Here every evening he met Kilmeny; in that old orchard they
garnered hours of quiet happiness together; together they went
wandering in the fair fields of old romance; together they read
many books and talked of many things; and, when they were tired
of all else, Kilmeny played to him and the old orchard echoed
with her lovely, fantastic melodies.
At every meeting her beauty came home afresh to him with the old
thrill of glad surprise. In the intervals of absence it seemed
to him that she could not possibly be as beautiful as he
remembered her; and then when they met she seemed even more so.
He learned to watch for the undisguised light of welcome that
always leaped into her eyes at the sound of his footsteps. She
was nearly always there before him and she always showed that she
was glad to see him with the frank delight of a child watching
for a dear comrade.
She was never in the same mood twice. Now she was grave, now
gay, now stately, now pensive. But she was always charming.
Thrawn and twisted the old Gordon stock might be, but it had at
least this one offshoot of perfect grace and symmetry. Her mind
and heart, utterly unspoiled of the world, were as beautiful as
her face. All the ugliness of existence had passed her by,
shrined in her double solitude of upbringing and muteness.
She was naturally quick and clever. Delightful little flashes of
wit and humour sparkled out occasionally. She could be
whimsical--even charmingly capricious. Sometimes innocent
mischief glimmered out in the unfathomable deeps of her blue
eyes. Sarcasm, even, was not unknown to her. Now and then she
punctured some harmless bubble of a young man's conceit or
masculine superiority with a biting little line of daintily
written script.
She assimilated the ideas in the books they read, speedily,
eagerly, and thoroughly, always seizing on the best and truest,
and rejecting the false and spurious and weak with an unfailing
intuition at which Eric marvelled. Hers was the spear of
Ithuriel, trying out the dross of everything and leaving only the
pure gold.
In manner and outlook she was still a child. Yet now and again
she was as old as Eve. An expression would leap into her
laughing face, a subtle meaning reveal itself in her smile, that
held all the lore of womanhood and all the wisdom of the ages.
Her way of smiling enchanted him. The smile always began far
down in her eyes and flowed outward to her face like a sparkling
brook stealing out of shadow into sunshine.
He knew everything about her life. She told him her simple
history freely. She often mentioned her uncle and aunt and
seemed to regard them with deep affection. She rarely spoke of
her mother. Eric came somehow to understand, less from what she
said than from what she did not say, that Kilmeny, though she had
loved her mother, had always been rather afraid of her. There
had not been between them the natural beautiful confidence 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 quick to catch and interpret every fleeting change
of expression in his voice and face--she discerned what Eric did
not know himself--that his eyes clouded 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 little shake.
"I do not think so," she wrote. "I do not know much of the world,
but I do not think there are many people like you in it."
One evening, when the far-away hills and fields were scarfed in
gauzy purples, and the intervales were brimming with golden
mists, Eric carried to the old orchard a little limp, worn volume
that held a love story. 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 been very slight and subordinate. This was a
beautiful, passionate idyl exquisitely told.
He read it to her, lying in the grass at her feet; she listened
with her hands clasped over her knee and her eyes cast down. It
was not a long story; and when he had finished it he shut the
book and looked up at her questioningly.
"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 could like anything that hurt her. I do not know why it
hurt me. I felt as if I 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 is about love and I
do not know anything about love. Mother told me once that love
is a curse, and that I must pray that it would never enter into
my life. She said it very earnestly, and so I believed her. But
your book teaches that it is a blessing. It says that it is the
most splendid and wonderful thing in life. Which am I to
believe?"
"Love--real love--is never a curse, Kilmeny," said Eric gravely.
"There is a false love which IS a curse. Perhaps your mother
believed it was that which had entered her life and ruined it;
and so she made the mistake. There is nothing in the world--or
in heaven either, as I believe--so truly beautiful and wonderful
and blessed as love."
"Have you ever loved?" asked Kilmeny, with the directness of
phrasing necessitated by her mode of communication which was
sometimes a little terrible. She asked the question simply and
without embarrassment. She knew of no reason why love might not
be discussed with Eric as other matters--music and books and
travel--might be.
"No," said Eric--honestly, as he thought, "but every one has an
ideal of love whom he hopes to meet some day--'the ideal woman of
a young man's dream.' I suppose I have mine, in some sealed,
secret chamber of my heart."
"I suppose your ideal woman would be beautiful, like the woman in
your book?"
"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 the sun is going down. Time does certainly fly in this
enchanted orchard. I believe you bewitch the moments away,
Kilmeny. Your namesake of the poem was a somewhat uncanny maid,
if I recollect aright, and thought as little of seven years in
elfland as ordinary folk do of half an hour on upper earth. Some
day I shall waken from a supposed hour's lingering here and find
myself an old man with white hair and ragged coat, as in that
fairy tale we read the other night. Will you let me give you
this book? I should never commit the sacrilege of reading it in
any other place than this. It is an old book, Kilmeny. A new
book, savouring of the shop and market-place, however beautiful
it might be, would not do for 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 which always sounds as if
it had been specially invented for you--'Kilmeny of the
Orchard'--and the date of this perfect June day on which we read
it together. Then when you look at it you will always remember
me, and the white buds opening on that rosebush beside you, and
the rush and murmur of 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
me remember you because I can never forget you. But I would
rather not take the book. I do not want to read it again. It is
about love, and there is no use in my learning about love, even
if it is all you say. Nobody will ever love me. I am too ugly."
"You! Ugly!" exclaimed Eric. He was on the point of going off
into a peal of laughter at the idea when a glimpse of her half
averted face sobered him. On it was a hurt, bitter look, such as
he remembered seeing once before, when he had asked her if she
would not like to see the world for herself.
"Kilmeny," he said in astonishment, "you don't really think
yourself ugly, 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 told me that I was very ugly and that nobody would ever
like to look at me. I am sorry. It hurts me much worse to know
I am ugly than it does to know I cannot speak. I suppose you
will think that is very foolish of me, but it is true. That was
why I did not come back to the orchard for such a long time, even
after I had got over my fright. I hated to think that YOU would
think me ugly. And that is why I do not want to go out into the
world and meet people. They would look at me as the egg peddler
did one day when I went out with Aunt Janet to his wagon the
spring after mother died. He stared at me so. I knew it was
because he thought me so ugly, and I have always hidden when he
came ever since."
Eric's lips twitched. In spite of his pity for the real suffering
displayed in her eyes, he could not help feeling amused over the
absurd idea of this beautiful girl believing herself in all
seriousness to be ugly.
"But, Kilmeny, do you think yourself ugly when you look in a
mirror?" he asked smiling.
"I have never looked in a mirror," she wrote. "I never knew
there was such 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 looking glasses in the house when I was a baby.
But I have seen my face reflected in the spoons, and in a little
silver sugar bowl Aunt Janet has. And it IS ugly--very ugly."
Eric's face went down into the grass. For his life he could not
help laughing; and for his life he would not let Kilmeny see him
laughing. A certain little whimsical wish took possession of him
and he did not hasten 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 thought me very ugly, and he looked away and would not speak,
so I knew what he thought about it, too. Do not let us speak of
this again. It makes me feel sorry and spoils everything. I
forget it at other times. Let me play you some good-bye music,
and do not feel vexed because I would not take 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
day yet--after I have shown you something I want you to see.
Never mind about your looks, Kilmeny. Beauty isn't everything."
"Oh, it is a great deal," she wrote naively. "But you do like
me, even though I am so ugly, don't you? You like me because of
my beautiful music, 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 a pleased smile.
He left her playing there, and all the way through the dim
resinous spruce wood her music followed him like an invisible
guardian spirit.
"Kilmeny the Beautiful!" he murmured, "and yet, good heavens, the
child thinks she is ugly--she with a face more lovely than ever
an artist dreamed of! A girl of eighteen who has never looked in
a mirror! I wonder if there is another such in any civilized
country in the world. What could have possessed her mother to
tell her such a falsehood? I wonder if Margaret Gordon could
have been quite sane. It is strange that Neil has never told her
the truth. Perhaps he doesn't want her to find out."
Eric had met Neil Gordon a few evenings before this, at a country
dance where Neil had played the violin for the dancers.
Influenced by curiosity he had sought the lad's acquaintance.
Neil was friendly and talkative at first; but at the first hint
concerning the Gordons which Eric threw out skilfully his face
and manner changed. He looked secretive and suspicious, almost
sinister. A sullen look crept into his big black eyes and he
drew his bow across the violin strings with a discordant screech,
as if to terminate the conversation. Plainly nothing was to be
found out from him about Kilmeny and her grim guardians.
