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II
Again it was springtime.
A young man who had been trying to read, where he lounged in the deep embrasure of a window, turned to say to the girl who sat playing at the piano:
"Naomi, why is it the spring always comes like a revelation- a delicious surprise?"
"Wait, Sigmund," and she played the closing bars of the piece of music that was open before her, then rising, went to join him at the window.
She was a splendid type of physical health and beauty, lithe, supple, firm of flesh, wearing youth`s colors in cheek and lip, youth`s gloss and glow in the waves of her thick brown hair. Her brown eyes drowsed and gleamed alternately, and questioned often.
"The spring?" she said, "why does it come like a revelation? How should I know? This is surely reversing roles when you question."
She took the book from his hand to glance carelessly through its pages.
"Do you know, you are a very curious young woman," he said, looking at her with something of admiration, but yet superciliously, for he was young, and a college student. "You gave me the same reply this morning when I asked you- what was it, now, I asked you?"
"To define the quality in Chopin`s music that charms me. Well," she continued, "I don`t know the `why` of things. That certain sounds, scenes, impressions move me I know, because I feel it. I don`t bother about reasons. Remember, Sigmund, I know so little."
"Oh, you want training, no doubt, and it`s an immense pity you`ve never received it. Let us go through a course together this summer. Do you agree to it?"
He was the lordly collegiate, sure of his weapons.
"I don`t believe I do, Sigmund," Naomi laughed. "And if I did it would be useless, for mamma never would consent. You know what she thinks of ologies and isms and all that for women."
"Oh, isms and ologies do not constitute solely the training I have in mind."
"Why, my recollection never goes back to any time when books formed an important feature of my life," she interrupted. "I`ve lived more than half my days under the sky, galloping over the hills, as often as not with the rain stinging my face. Oh, the open air and all that it teems with! There`s nothing like it, Sigmund. What color! Look, now, at the purple wrapping those hills away to the east. See the hundred shades of green spreading before us, with the new-plowed fields between making brown dashes and patches. And then the sky, so blue where it frames those white velvet clouds. They`ll be red and gold this evening."
"What a greedy eye you have- a veritable savage eye for pure color. Do you know how to use it? to make it serve you?"
"Oh, no, Sigmund," she said. "Music`s the only thing I`ve studied and learned. Mamma couldn`t have prevented that if she`d wanted to, I believe. There`s nothing that has the meaning for me in this world that sound has. I feel as if the Truth were going to come to me, some day, through the harmony of it. I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that the wind strikes upon the tree branches. Have you ever heard the earth breathe, Sigmund?" she asked, with wide eyes that filled with merriment when she saw the astonishment in his.
Then, half laughing, half singing the gay refrain of a comic opera air, she sprang with quick catlike movement to her feet, and seizing a foil from against the wall, whirled with it into position in the center of the room.
Her companion had been as quick to follow. They measured their distances with stately grace, and looked a continuous challenge into each other`s eyes. Then for five long minutes, as they stood face to face exchanging skillful thrust and parry, no sound was heard but the clink and scrape of the slender steels; on the hardwood floor the stamp of advancing feet in the charge. It was only when Mrs. Mobry`s long, pale face looked in at the cautiously opened door that the engagement ended.
"Why, Naomi," she said, a little apologetically, coming into the room, "I didn`t hear the piano and-"
"And you wondered what disaster could have happened," the girl replied, flushed and amused as she replaced her weapon upon the wall. "I was only giving Cousin Sigmund a lesson with the foils, Mamma."
"You know your father comes on the early train today, Naomi; he`ll be disappointed if you`re not at the station to meet him, dear."
"And a perfect right he`d have to be disappointed, and bewildered, too. When have I ever failed him?"
And she quitted the room, making, as she left it, a pass at Sigmund with an imaginary weapon, and laughing gaily as she did so.
Mrs. Mobry went to the piano and gathered together the sheets of music that Naomi had left there in some disorder, and arranged them upon the stand. She had the appearance of seeking occupation; a house full of servants left her little or none of a manual sort, for wealth was one of the things which John Mobry had persistently wanted, long ago.
Mrs. Mobry was past fifty, with her hair, that was turning gray, carefully parted and brushed smooth down upon her temples. When she seated herself and began to rock gently, she drew the cape which she wore closely about her thin shoulders.
"Don`t you find it chill, Sigmund," she said, "with that window open? I dare say not, though; young blood is warm."
But Sigmund went and closed the window, making no boast that his veins were scintillant. He only said:
"You`re right, Aunt Editha; this early spring air is treacherous."
"I wanted to speak with you a moment alone, dear," she commenced at once, coughing uneasily behind her hand. "It may be, and I trust it is, wholly unnecessary, this caution; but it`s best to be open, so far as we can be, in this world. And, of course, when young people are thrown together-"
Sigmund, to quote his thoughts, literally, wondered what his aunt was driving at.
"I only want to say- as you perhaps are not aware of it- that it`s our intention, and Naomi`s, too, that she shall never marry. As you will be with us all summer I thought it best to acquaint you at once with such little family arrangements, so that we may all feel comfortable and avoid unpleasant consequences." Mrs. Mobry smiled feebly as she said this, and smoothed down the hair on her temples with her long thin hands.
"Has Naomi made you such a promise?" Sigmund asked, thinking it a great pity if she had.
"Oh, there`s been no promise, but it has been always understood. I`ve impressed upon her since she was a little child that she is to remain with me always. It looks selfish- I know it looks selfish; your Uncle John even thinks so, though he has never opposed my wish."
"I see rather a natural instinct in this wish of yours than cold selfishness, Aunt Editha. Something you can`t overcome, perhaps. I remember now hearing how fearfully cut up you were two years ago when Edward married."
Mrs. Mobry grew a shade paler, and her voice trembled when she said:
"I can`t pardon Edward. It was treacherous, marrying in that way, knowing how I opposed it. It was unfortunate that your uncle should have sent him to take charge of the business in Middleburg. That marriage could not have come about if he had been here at my side, where his place was."
"But, Aunt Editha, it isn`t such a calamity after all. He has married a charming woman, and seems perfectly happy. If you would consent to visit him, and were to see his content with your bodily eyes I think you would be reconciled to his coup d`etat."
Sigmund thought his aunt Editha rather stupidly set in her ideas. But as he had already recognized the possibility of falling in love with his cousin, Naomi, he was not ill-pleased that Mrs. Mobry had so considerately warned him. If he walked into the fire now it would be with open eyes.
Sigmund was the son of Mr. Mobry`s sister; a student of medicine, twenty-two years of age, a little run down and overworked, and hoping for recuperation amid these Western hills. He had visited his uncle`s family often as a child, when he and his cousin Edward- two years his senior- had been friends. But his absence this time had lasted four years. He had left Naomi an awkward, boisterous girl of fourteen. When he returned he found that she had undergone a seeming re-creation.
He himself was a good-looking young blond fellow, full of hope and belief in his future; though he tried hard to cultivate an interesting cynicism, which he could never succeed in making anyone believe in.
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