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SUMMER IN ARCADY 
 
SUMMER IN ARCADY 
 
 A TALE OF NATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES LANE ALLEN 
 
 AUTHOR OF " FLUTE AND VIOLIN," " THE BLUEGRASS REGION 
 
 OF KENTUCKY," "JOHN GRAY," "A KENTUCKY 
 
 CARDINAL," " AFTERMATH," ETC. 
 
 O Nature ! 
 
 Some still work give me to do 
 Only be it near to you ! 
 
 THOREAU 
 
 gorfe 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 1896 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1896, 
 BY MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 
 J, S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 
 Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 
 
298643 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THIS preface is a flag of war, here run up 
 and set freely waving on the breastworks of 
 this story. If any timorous stranger, approach 
 ing it as an unknown fortress, should hesitate 
 in foot and courage for lack of means to dis 
 cover whether it were more prudent for him 
 to advance or to retire, he will need but to glance 
 up at these colours. They will acquaint him 
 at once with the real nature of the forces en 
 trenched behind ; with the spiritual country to 
 which they belong; with the cause they have 
 undertaken to defend. Should the knowledge 
 thus gotten, reveal to him his unexpected near 
 ness to the border-land of a friendly power, he 
 is invited to enter the fort, to study the low 
 earthworks, to inspect the smallish garrison. 
 But if he choose to consider himself confronted 
 by a foe, he is free to depart whither he will, 
 
viii Preface 
 
 nor shall he be meanly fired upon as he turns 
 his manly back. 
 
 Our separate, wholesome, altogether peace 
 ful and rather unambitious world of books, 
 lying far off to itself on this side of the ocean, 
 has of late suffered a twofold invasion from 
 the literature of the mother-country, that has 
 well-nigh swept every living American author 
 away before it. These two armies of invading 
 volumes have had little in common but a port 
 of departure and a port of entry ; for while one 
 has reached us as the forces of light benign 
 and always welcome the other has spread 
 abroad as the old and evil and ever-hated 
 darkness. To those who understand, there is 
 no need of plainer speech; to all others no 
 need of speech at all. We know them too 
 well these black, chaotic books of the new 
 fiction know what unhealthy suggestions they 
 have courted, what exposures of the eternally 
 hidden they have coarsely made, what ideals 
 of personal depravity they have scattered broad 
 cast, what principles of social order they have 
 attacked, what bases of universal decency they 
 
Preface ix 
 
 have been resolute to undermine. There is 
 hardly a thing of value to the normal portion 
 of the race, in its clean advance toward higher 
 living, that they have not in effect belittled or 
 insulted ; there is scarce a thing that the long 
 experience of the race has condemned and 
 tried to cast off from itself as an element of 
 decay, that they have not set upon with ap 
 proval and recalled to favour. 
 
 It is against this downward-moving fiction 
 of manifold disorder that the writer has vent 
 ured to advance a protest under cover of a 
 story a story, he is too well aware, that could 
 not possibly carry with it the weight and meas 
 ure of an opposing argument, but that should 
 at least contain the taste and quality of health 
 ful repudiation. To this end, and with the 
 use of the weapons put into his hands, he has 
 taken two robust young people in the crimson 
 flush of the earliest summer of life; they are 
 dangerously foref athered ; they are carelessly 
 reared; they are temptingly environed; they 
 are alone with one another and with Nature; 
 and Nature, intent on a single aim, directs all 
 
x Preface 
 
 her power against their weakness. The writer 
 has thus endeavoured to charge this story with 
 as much peril as may be found in any of the 
 others even more ; he has ventured to lay 
 bare some of the veiled and sacred mysteries 
 of life with no less frankness than they have 
 used, but using, as he hopes, full and far greater 
 reverence ; and, nevertheless, from such a situ 
 ation he has tried to wrest a moral victory for 
 each of the characters, a victory for the old 
 established order of civilized societies, and a 
 victory for those forces of life that hold within 
 themselves the only hope of the perpetuity of 
 the race and the beauty of the world. Such 
 and so far runs the plan and hoped-for mission 
 of his work. 
 
 But furthermore : no man has ever sat 
 gravely and sincerely down to study the lights 
 and shadows of our common human destiny, 
 desiring to transfer these in the due proportion 
 of reality to the creations of his art, without 
 sooner or later being driven to perceive that 
 into nearly all the lights falls one dark ray 
 from one great shadow, the greatest shadow 
 
Preface xi 
 
 of the world, its outcast women. This story 
 has been sent very near to the old, old path 
 way that has always been trodden and is trod 
 den to-day by these, alas ! wandering, innumer 
 able ones ; and the writer has cast it in that 
 direction with the utmost desire that it might 
 do some good in this way: 
 
 If any mother should read this account of 
 the life of a partly irresponsible girl, whose 
 own mother had failed to warn her of the 
 commonest dangers, had neglected to guard and 
 guide her feet to the knowledge that may mean 
 safety, it will haply arouse in her the question 
 whether she herself is giving the needed warn 
 ings, throwing forth the proper guard, lending 
 the upward guidance ; for how much of the 
 world s chief tragedy lives on and on for the 
 simple lack of these ? 
 
 If any father should read this story of 
 temptation and struggle in two children, he 
 might perhaps order his own life the better for 
 having had the truth brought home to him, that 
 whenever he weakens the moral fibre of his 
 nature, he may be weakening as well not only 
 
xii Preface 
 
 the moral fibre of a son, but what is far 
 more terrible and pitiful in the judgment of 
 the world the moral fibre of his own daughter, 
 yet unborn ; for it is true that the fallen women 
 of the race are in a measure set apart to that 
 awful doom by the inherited immorality of 
 their fathers. 
 
 If any girl, alone in the world, having no 
 mother or counsellor of any kind, alone with 
 her youth, her innocence, her beauty, perhaps 
 her poverty as well and the need of hard 
 work, not in the country chiefly, but rather 
 in the vast city, in the treacherous town, if 
 any such poor, undefended child should chance 
 to read this story, she should bear in mind 
 that its main lesson and most solemn warning 
 are addressed to her : the lesson not to trust 
 herself, the warning to trust no other, with 
 out reservation blindly led on by love; or 
 else, sitting lonely in her sorrow on her bed 
 at midnight, she may come to know what her 
 countless sisters have known, that even the 
 purest love can do wrong, can betray, can be 
 betrayed. 
 
Preface xiii 
 
 If many a man should read this story 
 married or unmarried, younger, older who 
 has resolutely set his feet in the pathway of 
 right living, there is nothing here to tempt 
 them thence ; if they are straying elsewhither, 
 there are some things here that might well 
 follow after him, if not with the power to 
 recall, at least as a memory to rebuke ; for 
 he has found set forth in these pages the 
 case of a boy, who, being greatly wronged by 
 a past beyond his reach and associates beyond 
 his control, nevertheless did struggle upward 
 into something better than he had been, so 
 winning his happiness in one woman at last, 
 as men must always win it, by rising to it 
 as something that stands above them, never go 
 ing down to it as something that waits below. 
 
SUMMER IN ARCADY 
 
 PRELUDE 
 
 SILENTLY summer waxes. The first wave 
 of warmth trembles northward, pauses, flees 
 back, is gone; but it has left an imperishable 
 touch on thousands of delicate things as a 
 glacier scars the rocks. Another wave, more 
 heated, more vitalizing, creeps forward; even 
 while advancing, it has died away amid the 
 common chill. Then follow the sunlit break 
 ers, running faster and farther toward the 
 changeless coast of the North, until over the 
 entire gentle zone settles one deep, tranquil, 
 crystalline, perfumed sea. 
 
 Some day far out on this rockless ocean of 
 air a solitary craft may be seen drifting a 
 gay little barge of two sails that seem woven 
 of sunlight. From what port can it have 
 
in Arcady 
 
 started ? Whither is it bound ? What mar 
 iner holds it in charge ? With what freight 
 may it be laden for the good of the world ? 
 Turn your best glass upon it : you will never 
 answer. No pilot stands on board ; cargo there 
 is none ; of how it was built and where launched 
 no hint is given ; it changes its course at every 
 point, and can be meant to reach no port at 
 all: the most fragile and daring of earthly 
 cruisers, careening fearfully to the one side or 
 the other under the lightest breeze, like a yel 
 low leaf on the slow winds of autumn. 
 
 By and by, in another part of the ocean, 
 you observe a second vessel, fashioned like the 
 first. Later, several; at last a fleet without 
 number. No bay of the earth was ever so 
 crowded with human sail. What can it mean 
 this warm sea of air crossed and recrossed 
 at every parallel and meridian by rolling and 
 rocking yellow-sail ships ? 
 
 Two that have had naught to do with their 
 own build and launch are drifting far apart, 
 unknown to each other. Borne nearer, some 
 day they pass within signal range; but there 
 
Summer in Arcady 3 
 
 is no salute : what do they care ! Another 
 day they crash into each other and are hard 
 put to it to draw unharmed asunder; but they 
 are not friends, they are not enemies : each 
 steers calmly on. Before the summer is gone, 
 however, and at the instant of Nature they 
 come within hailing distance again. Now they 
 rush together. The meeting of zephyrs could 
 not be more soft; the onset of ironclads could 
 not be more resolute. Out of that countless 
 fleet they think of each other alone. To them 
 the ages gone, the ages to come, are nothing; 
 their one moment is eternity; the whole uni 
 verse was created for the sake of their love. 
 Eager, winnowing wings, built up so airily of 
 a distant sunbeam and a few grains of dust! 
 Weightless little bodies, heavy with Love ! How 
 they ride the blue billows of air, circling, pursu 
 ing, mounting higher and higher, the first above 
 the second, the second above the first; then 
 whirling downward again, and so ever fleeing 
 and seeking, floating and clinging, blindly, 
 helplessly, under the transport of all-compelling, 
 unfathomable Nature ! 
 
4 Summer in Arcady 
 
 As the end of it all, the two lash themselves 
 together and go wandering by as one, or as one 
 they come to stillness on the nearest blossom. 
 
 Not long afterwards the darkened, roughened 
 sea of air is filled with another fleet snow- 
 flakes; and the wee yellow-sail ships of sum 
 mer, where are they then ? 
 
 Can you consider a field of butterflies and not 
 think of the blindly wandering, blindly loving, 
 quickly passing human race ? Can you observe 
 two young people at play on the meadows of 
 Life and Love without seeing in them a pair 
 of these brief moths of the sun ? 
 
THE warmth of June had settled over Ken 
 tucky, and yellow butterflies were thick along 
 her path that day as Daphne crossed the sweet 
 green fields. 
 
 She had not yet reached eighteen, and she 
 was like the red-ripeness of early summer fruit 
 where of late were white blossoms. A glance 
 at her lithe, round figure, the unusual womanly 
 development of which always attracted secret 
 attention and caused her secret pain, could 
 have made many a mother reflect upon the 
 cruel haste with which Nature sometimes forces 
 a child into maturity, and then adds to the peril 
 of its life by covering it with alluring beauty. 
 
 Briskly she walked on, humming tunefully ; 
 now and then lifting her rustling, snow-white 
 petticoats high over the sheep and cattle traces 
 in her path, and watchful lest she be tripped 
 and thrown. For the bluegrass and the tongue- 
 5 
 
6 Summer in Arcady 
 
 grass and plantain and dog-fennel, growing 
 along those byways that braid the rich meadows, 
 soon mingle unless torn apart by passing feet ; 
 and she remembered that she was unfortunate 
 about stumbling. So that her thoughts were 
 wholly concerned with the safety of the small 
 basket of eggs she was carrying. 
 
 Once she paused. A young farmer was 
 singing in his field of corn not far away. It 
 was a warm voice, pouring itself out in bold, 
 glad unconcern of everything and everybody. 
 She listened a moment, and then hurried on : 
 neither the song nor the singer meant anything 
 to her. 
 
 And nothing to Daphne, likewise, were the 
 other wayside sights and sounds that morning. 
 The eternal archway of blue, crossed by slow 
 white clouds ; the south wind playing with the 
 hair on the back of her neck; the whole outlook 
 of that green, quiet, sunlit land ; plain, sturdy 
 homesteads of brick lying about the horizon ; 
 motherly old orchards that had been the com 
 fort of cellar and fireside for many a wintry 
 year; fields of grain bending northward in 
 
Summer in Arcady J 
 
 long, shadowy, golden waves ; red cattle grazing 
 knee-deep on distant hillside pastures; the 
 meadow about her set thick with violets and 
 dandelions ; the yellow-breasted lark springing 
 up before her with a long silvery salute ; the 
 Kentucky warbler rising and falling through 
 his low plane of feeding these and the whole 
 vast interwoven realm of Nature s influences 
 were as nothing to her. And yet it was Nature 
 that now drove Daphne swiftly onward along 
 with orchard and cattle, grain, insect, and weed, 
 to what we love pompously and ignorantly to 
 call in human life the great hours of destiny. 
 
II 
 
 THE meadow was separated from the corn 
 field by a high staked-and-ridered fence. Along 
 the fence at irregular intervals grew locust- 
 trees a familiar feature of the Kentucky fields. 
 Had you climbed to the top rail and sat under 
 the shade of one of these, as he often did, you 
 would have seen coming down the corn-row 
 toward you the young man, or boy, who had 
 been singing. 
 
 He was in loose cowhide boots, into the tops 
 of which he had stuffed his blue cotton trousers ; 
 his white cotton shirt was opened down the 
 bosom, so that the cool breeze might blow in 
 and keep him cool. It blew in now, showing 
 his deep, clean, beautiful chest, and causing the 
 shirt to bend out from his broad, flat back like 
 a little bellying sail. His shirt and trousers were 
 girt tightly about his waist; around his neck 
 he had tied a handkerchief with a pink border ; 
 8 
 
Summer in Arcady 9 
 
 and set well forward over his clear, careless 
 eyes was a broad-brimmed hat of coarse straw, 
 with a hole in the crown. A heavy-limbed, 
 heavy-built, handsome young fellow of about 
 nineteen, with a yellowish mustache just fairly 
 out on a full red lip that had long been impa 
 tient for it. 
 
 The old horse kept his gait up and down the 
 rows as evenly as though urged along by the 
 pressure of steam ; it would have been as likely 
 for an alarm whistle to have blown off through 
 one of his ears as for him to have stepped by 
 mistake on a hill of corn ; the corn itself was 
 still too young for him to bite and so need a 
 watchful curb; the share parted the furrow 
 through a soil without clods or stones to roll 
 over on the brittle shoots ; so that with one 
 hand lightly guiding the plough handle and the 
 noose of his plough-line around his other wrist, 
 what was there to keep the boy from singing ? 
 And of what should he sing at nineteen, in the 
 month of June, with the gold of the sun on his 
 face and its flame in his blood ? 
 
 Once, as he reached the edge of the field 
 
io Summer in Arcady 
 
 and swung his plough from the furrow into the 
 next, he caught sight of a blue figure moving 
 away along the meadow path. He dropped 
 everything, and stepping over to the fence, 
 leaned heavily and lazily upon it, watching 
 in dead silence. To his gross instincts any 
 thing in the shape of a woman was worth 
 gazing after, even at long range, especially 
 a woman alone. But beyond this passion his 
 face betrayed no interest. The blue figure 
 became smaller, bearing away with it through 
 the quivering heat the fragrance and fresh 
 ness of a hyacinth, and he returned to his 
 plough and to his singing. 
 
Ill 
 
 DAPHNE stepped out into the front porch 
 of her father s house near ten o clock the 
 next morning with the empty basket in her 
 hand : it gave her a pretext to go back to her 
 aunt s ; and to Daphne on this day anything 
 was better than staying at home. 
 
 The houses were about a mile and a half 
 apart as a crow flies. They were connected 
 by a carriage and wagon road and by a foot 
 path ; and even before Daphne was born this 
 foot-path had become a little highway for the 
 passage of creams and jellies, butter, fruit, 
 vegetables, and the thousand more things, eat 
 able, wearable, or otherwise usable that may 
 be sent to and fro between friendly house 
 holds in a remote country neighbourhood. 
 
 From childhood one house had been as 
 nearly her home as the other. She had 
 moved contentedly backward and forward be- 
 ii 
 
12 Summer in Arcady 
 
 tween them, much as a pith-ball between two 
 batteries ; which, on being made negative, re 
 turns to be made positive ; and having become 
 positive, returns to be made negative again ; 
 and so on endlessly. 
 
 But during the last year or two, for reasons 
 of which she knew nothing but of which 
 Nature could have given a reasonable account, 
 the pith-ball had begun to be jerked about in 
 the most violent, irregular manner, under dis 
 turbances from another quarter, and the two 
 batteries no longer held it in rhythmic peace : 
 the child had become a woman, and there 
 was no longer any one in either household to 
 make her happy. 
 
 Some evidence of this complete discontent 
 could have been gathered from the manner 
 in which she had now paused on the steps of 
 the porch, undecided whether to go or not, 
 and looking with disapproval at the green 
 landscape quivering with crystal heat. 
 
 The little brown porch had large white pil 
 lars, and over these had been trained a queen- 
 of-the-prairie rose-bush. This hung heavy with 
 
Summer in Arcady 13 
 
 bloom now, and there was the sound of dron 
 ing inside the petals. Two bees rolled angrily 
 out of a rose just over her head and she 
 started aside ; then going down the steps to 
 an old calycanthus-bush of rare sweetness, 
 she gathered several half-blown buds, and put 
 ting them into her bosom passed dreamily out 
 of the yard. 
 
 She crossed the stable lot, full of dog- 
 fennel and June-bugs, where the short-horn 
 calves stayed, her father made a specialty 
 of young steers, passed through a woodland 
 pasture where the short-horn cows stayed, 
 and began to cross a meadow where there 
 were Southdown sheep. 
 
 If you can imagine a pond as growing to 
 hate its smooth surface and wishing that the 
 ducks and geese would all come wabbling 
 down the hill, a pond so lonesome in its 
 way that it would be thankful for a few frogs 
 at nightfall, you will understand Daphne s 
 state of mind as she strolled across the 
 meadow swinging in both hands the basket 
 to which she gave idle, vicious little kicks 
 
14 Summer in Arcady 
 
 with her knees. Nothing better in the way 
 of pleasure was within her reach than to 
 have gone back to the calf-lot, caught a June- 
 bug in the dog-fennel, and tied a thread to 
 its leg merely for the excitement of hearing 
 it buzz around, and of dodging when it darted 
 at her with its prickly feet. 
 
 But to be satisfied with insects was not for 
 such as Daphne. Once she did stoop down 
 in the path to look closely at a most gorgeous 
 dot of moving scarlet; and becoming inter 
 ested, pulled a plantain and let the insect 
 crawl on it and studied it. Her eyes were 
 ravished with its splendour. A robe like that 
 perhaps no queen had ever worn. What was 
 the use of making such a thing so beautiful ? 
 And what was it doing in this big meadow 
 all by itself ? Daphne s thoughts on human 
 life were not of a kind to have filled the 
 note-book of Epictetus, or made Solon walk 
 the floor for envy; but as she threw it away 
 with a sigh she asked herself one mighty 
 question : Why, in a world so full of people, 
 should she be crossing the meadow without 
 a companion ? 
 
Summer in Arcady 15 
 
 Look to the right or to the left, only two 
 things gave the slightest relief to her green 
 world of loneliness : on one side the sheep ; 
 on the other the figure of the young farmer 
 whose land adjoined her father s. He was 
 resting on the top rail of the fence under a 
 locust-tree, and was watching her with his 
 hat in his hand; and once, as she looked 
 that way, he put it on and took it off again 
 with a movement that said "good morning," 
 said it with cordial good-nature. All at 
 once, full of cordial, gay good-nature herself, 
 Daphne took off her hat and waved it in re 
 turn, laughing because she felt that he must 
 be laughing also ; and immediately the world 
 became a different sort of place in which 
 something does happen. The next time she 
 looked at him he waved his handkerchief 
 it was pretty wet; so that Daphne drew out 
 her fresh handkerchief from beneath her belt 
 and waved it. Then he put his hands up to 
 his mouth in the shape of a conch and 
 shouted several words to her. She called 
 back that she could not hear. He shouted 
 
1 6 Summer in Arcady 
 
 again. And she again. Then he again. 
 Then she no more; but with a gesture of 
 impatience she pursued her way. 
 
 But she wished that she had heard. He 
 had tried very hard to make her hear. And 
 she looked again, thinking that if he cared to 
 come across and walk beside her, and tell 
 her, she would wait for him. But he had 
 gone back to his work. 
 
 " Are you going to the picnic ? " 
 This was all that he had said; and as he 
 started down the corn-row, he whacked the 
 old horse with the plough-line in a growing 
 hope that he would meet her there. 
 
IV 
 
 DAPHNE was kept at home during the next 
 two days, with helping her mother make 
 cherry preserves ; and on the third day they 
 had a roll for their twelve-o clock dinner 
 which would be the last of the season. 
 After dinner she started to take a slice of it 
 to her grandmother. 
 
 When she entered the meadow this time, 
 she looked eagerly toward the row of locust- 
 trees. There were seven of them from one 
 end of the field to the other, and not a man 
 under any tree. She began to feel fretful 
 and sorry that she had come, and all at once 
 she remembered how she hated to see her 
 grandmother eat anything soft with her dry, 
 withered, nimble little mouth. And then rid 
 ing down the path toward her she saw Hil 
 ary, sitting sideways on the back of his 
 horse. 
 
 c 17 
 
1 8 Summer in Arcady 
 
 He was returning from his dinner, and he 
 was crossing the upper edge of the meadow 
 to a pair of bars which opened into his field. 
 But his roving eyes had lighted upon her, 
 and with the idea of talking to her about the 
 picnic he had turned his horse s head into 
 the path. And since the old horse crept 
 sleepily along in one direction and the child, 
 now very wide awake, moved straight on in 
 the other, they presently came together, nose 
 to nose. 
 
 "You needn t pretend that you don t see 
 me ! " cried Daphne. She was radiant and 
 laughing. 
 
 " I m not looking at you, am I ? " He had 
 not turned his head. 
 
 "Very well; you needn t look. But get 
 out of the path." 
 
 "/ m not in the path." 
 
 Daphne put her plate down resolvedly on 
 the grass, closed her parasol, rested her hand 
 on the horse s nose, tipped off his hat, picked 
 it up and sent it whirling through the air, 
 and taking her dumpling, sailed round him 
 
Summer in Arcady 19 
 
 in triumph. She was greatly pleased with 
 what she had done. In secret she was even 
 more pleased with what he had done. 
 
 She heard his low laughter behind her, 
 musical with good-nature, and she turned 
 quickly and laughed back. 
 
 "Ah, ha!" she cried. "That s what you 
 get for your impudence." 
 
 "Yes," he said lazily, after looking at her 
 for a moment, " and what ought you to get 
 for yours ? " 
 
 He leaned over toward her, resting his 
 elbows on the broad, fat back of the horse, 
 with his chin in his palms. The sunlight fell 
 on his yellowish hair and on his strong, 
 bronzed face and neck; and his whole out 
 stretched body lay basking as restfully as 
 though asleep on a silvery white rug. She 
 stood with a blue parasol on her shoulder, as 
 though a strip of the lovely vault above had 
 come down and arched itself over her head. 
 Its shadow brought out the whiteness of her 
 clear, firm skin, now moist with heat, the 
 peony-like flush of her cheeks, the chestnut 
 
2O Summer in Arcady 
 
 brown of her soft, thick hair, braided in two 
 long plaits down her back. Her fresh lips 
 parted slightly from her teeth like a crimson 
 bow. Her bosom was rising and falling with 
 her quickened breath. The warm odour of 
 calycanthus buds stole outward. In all that 
 Nature could do she was a challenge. His 
 nostrils quivered, he slowly stretched his 
 limbs, and his eyes filled with something 
 warmer than sunlight. 
 
 "And what ought you to get for yours?" 
 he repeated. Then sitting up, he called to 
 her keenly : 
 
 "Stand still, Daphne! There s a bee com 
 ing to sting you." 
 
 One day when a child, up in the garret 
 where she kept her china, Daphne had es 
 pied a gray object that looked a little like a 
 honeycomb and a little like a spider-web, and 
 she had put up an inquiring hand and pulled 
 down a hornet s nest. There is apt to be a 
 point about such things that keeps them re 
 membered. 
 
 She now raised her shoulders to the back 
 
Summer in Arcady 21 
 
 of her neck, shut her eyes, and drew her scar 
 let lips apart. 
 
 "Quick!" she cried. "Kill it!" 
 
 He slipped down and kissed her, not very 
 quickly, snatched her hat and was up again. 
 
 "You can open your eyes," he said 
 quietly. " The bee s gone." 
 
 They were open wide open and the 
 breath was all but out of her body. 
 
 He had put her hat on one side of his 
 head and was laughing down at her in an 
 unconcerned way, except for a look of roguish 
 mischief. There passed through her mind 
 like a scorching flash the remembrance of 
 what she had heard about his ways with 
 girls, and the colour began to leave her face. 
 She could not even say, " How dare you ! " 
 He had dared so often already. That point 
 seemed settled. 
 
 "Give me my hat," she said instinctively. 
 
 He nodded toward his, lying far out on 
 the grass. 
 
 "You go pick up mine," he replied, laugh 
 ing. 
 
22 Summer in Arcady 
 
 She did not know that the vines and leaves 
 of her hat brought out in his head and face 
 a likeness to Bacchus; but its influence drew 
 her : it was daring, dangerous, rudely beauti 
 ful with the warmth of earth and vine and 
 sun ; and she cried out with a new pain in her 
 anger : 
 
 " How dare you try to kiss me as you do 
 other girls ? " 
 
 " I don t kiss other girfs," he answered, 
 laughing carelessly just as before. " Only 
 you." 
 
 With the instinct that prompts women when 
 excited to put their hands to their hearts, 
 she was pressing the tilted plate against her 
 bosom, and the sauce had begun to trickle 
 down the front of her dress. 
 
 " Look at you there ! " he cried. " Don t 
 waste that sauce." 
 
 When she glanced down and saw what 
 had happened, the indignities and misfortunes 
 of the occasion were too much for her reck 
 less, passionate temper ; and gathering her 
 self up for a mighty effort, she pitched the 
 
Summer in Arcady 23 
 
 dumpling at his head. He dodged, but some 
 of the flying sauce struck his cheek; it glis 
 tened as though coated with gum arabic. 
 
 " Look at you ! " he shouted again, " a-spoil- 
 ing my clean shirt and a-gorming me up like 
 a baby." 
 
 But Daphne was on her way home, bare 
 headed, defeated, and full of the further irri 
 tation that comes from sticky garments. 
 
 When she had gone about twenty paces, he 
 called after her : 
 
 " Here s your parasol." 
 
 She walked on. 
 
 "Here s your hat." 
 
 She took no heed. 
 
 " Here s your dumpling." 
 
 Daphne would not have laughed for the 
 world. 
 
 " Here s pretty much everything." 
 
 Daphne answered with two or three tears, 
 and put up one hand to shield her eyes from 
 the glare of the sun. 
 
 "You ll get sunstruck if you walk home 
 that way." 
 
24 Summer in Arcady 
 
 There was a change in his voice, and she 
 noted it. She put up both hands. 
 
 " I ll bring you your parasol if you ll say, 
 Please, Marster. " 
 
 Daphne now saw unexpected victory ahead. 
 She took out her handkerchief and made a 
 little white sunshade of it with many signs 
 of how hard a thing it was to do. 
 
 " Good-by ! " His voice came with increas 
 ing penitence. 
 
 The end was nigh and Daphne was re 
 solved that he must not see she had been 
 crying : she took down the white umbrella 
 and secretly wiped her eyes. 
 
 "Hello! Hold on there! Where are you 
 going?" He was in dead earnest now. 
 
 Daphne thought to herself that she had 
 managed this very well. 
 
 There followed a minute of silence and 
 then she heard him say, "Get up, here!" 
 and heard the old horse groan aloud at 
 being kicked on both sides for no earthly 
 reason known to him. Then behind her, 
 getting louder and louder, she heard the 
 
Summer in Arcady 25 
 
 rattle of the hames and the jangle of the 
 trace chains. 
 
 Like many another woman, she felt that 
 she must appear a terrible being in the 
 presence of the man she had conquered. He 
 must be made to realize what a vast power 
 he had feebly attacked. But like many an 
 other woman, she was in doubt as to the 
 terms on which she meant finally to make 
 peace and as to the amount of her war debt. 
 And then, human nature, while it knows how 
 to act when wronged in one particular, be 
 comes confused when offended in several 
 being much like a crow that can count one 
 or two, but gets dreadfully puzzled over five 
 or six. So many things had happened to 
 Daphne that she was not sure how to itemize 
 her indignation. Under the circumstances, 
 instinct told her that it would be better not 
 to say anything at all that a stubbornly 
 silent, angry-looking woman is a power hard 
 to reckon with. 
 
 "Are you mad? * 
 
 He had jumped off the horse and was 
 
26 Summer in Arcady 
 
 walking in the grass beside her, and looking 
 round into her face, bareheaded, smiling. 
 
 She made him no answer. 
 
 " I couldn t help it, Daphne. It wasn t the 
 first time, you know; and I had never for 
 gotten. How could I forget ? " His tone 
 was very gentle and apologetic and affec 
 tionate. 
 
 Daphne remembered instantly that once in 
 a game of thimble, when it had been his turn 
 to do the kneeling and the bowing and the 
 kissing, he had kissed her ; for no other rea 
 son really than that she was the nearest girl 
 to him and he had not then lost his bash- 
 fulness. But such speeches have their effect. 
 Daphne reduced her war debt one-half. 
 
 " We are no longer children," she remarked 
 with dignity. 
 
 " That s all the more reason I couldn t 
 resist," he replied insinuatingly. 
 
 " Say you are not mad," he added, as she 
 made no further reply. 
 
 She gave him one look to show him how 
 angry she was. 
 
Summer in Arcady 27 
 
 " I knew you were not mad/ he cried, read 
 ing her through and through, and bursting 
 into a laugh. 
 
 Daphne now began to get angry in earnest, 
 and he saw it. 
 
 " Very well, then," he said, " I m going to 
 stay with you till you get in a good humour 
 again." 
 
 He raised the parasol and held it over her. 
 The plate was in his other hand and her hat 
 dangled from his elbow. And then in a gay 
 undertone, as if wholly to himself, he began to 
 sing: 
 
 " O, there was a little boy who worked in the corn, 
 
 And a little girl who played in the hay ; 
 And he was alone and she was alone. 
 O, they lived to see their wedding-day. 
 
 " O, the little boy cried : * Come play in my corn! 
 
 But the little girl she cried : <Nay! 
 And he worked on and she played on. 
 O, they lived to see their wedding-day." 
 
 He stopped singing and thrust his face 
 around in front of hers again, with an inquir- 
 
28 Summer in Arcady 
 
 ing smile. But he got no smile from her, so 
 he went on : 
 
 " O, the little girl cried : l I m afraid of your corn! 
 
 So you come play in my hay! 
 The little boy sped but the little girl fled. 
 O, he caught her on their wedding-day. 
 
 " O, all of you little boys out in the corn, 
 
 And you little girls out in the hay, 
 May you play and work together in the right kind 
 
 of weather. 
 O, may you see your wedding-day ! " 
 
 They had reached the meadow bars as he 
 finished. He stopped abruptly. 
 
 " Here are your things," he said, handing 
 them to her with quiet authority. " I must go 
 back to my work now. Good-by ! Be sure to 
 be at the picnic," he added kindly as he turned 
 away. 
 
 She stood rooted to the spot and watched him 
 as he went back to his horse and rode away 
 sidewise through the sunlight, singing, and 
 without once glancing back at her. Then she 
 started home, wounded and excited as she had 
 never been. 
 
IN Kentucky June is the season for picnics in 
 the woodland pastures. The skies are fairest 
 then. The earth has the perfect beauty of the 
 young summer. The big oaks and walnuts and 
 maples cast their round shade heavy with new 
 leaves. The breezes blow sweet with the scent 
 of fields never far away, sweet with the odour of 
 crushed grass. The warm-eyed, bronzed, foot- 
 stamping young bucks forsake their plough 
 shares in the green rows, their reapers among 
 the yellow beards ; and the bouncing, laughing, 
 round-breasted girls arrange their ribbons and 
 their vows. It is the Arcady of that passionate 
 land and people. It is the country dance of 
 merry England, full of love and mischief, that 
 was danced by our forefathers centuries ago, is 
 danced to-day on Kentish greens, and is destined 
 to be danced for hundreds of years to come 
 29 
 
3O Summer in Arcady 
 
 among these unchanging Southern children of 
 the mother-land. 
 
 That June Nature appeared in a dream to a 
 young farmer of the neighbourhood. The next 
 day he rode up the turnpike and down the lane, 
 inviting everybody to his picnic. But Nature 
 really issued the invitations. She said to the 
 young women : " The young men will be there 
 
 that is all you need to know;" and to the 
 young men : " The young women will be there 
 
 and that is all you need to know." And 
 then she reflected further within herself: 
 " These blindfolded children ! They think they 
 are giving a picnic : they do not see that it is 
 mine. They do not look around them and 
 behold with terror how I have called back to 
 me nearly all their grandfathers and grand 
 mothers ; that I am about done with their 
 fathers and mothers ; and that their whole land 
 
 these rich old homesteads, these fields with 
 herds and flocks, these crops, and orchards, and 
 gardens would soon become a waste unless I 
 gave picnics and the like, from which I always 
 gather fresh generations and keep things going, 
 /will be at this picnic." 
 
Summer in Arcady 31 
 
 The morning of the dance came. The dew 
 was hardly off the grass when into the woods hur 
 ried the young bucks on horseback, or in their 
 new, or newly washed, buggies, with their radi 
 ant partners. But there were rockaways also 
 with other girls sitting beside their mamas 
 those mamas who know how to take occasion 
 by the foretop and who help Nature wonder 
 fully with the origin of man. 
 
 Down the lane, not far away, the ring of a 
 hammer ceased, and the negro blacksmith, hav 
 ing washed his hands and arms in the huge tub 
 where he cooled his irons, locked the smithy 
 door. Horse and mare and colt were to go 
 unshod that day. They set a table under a 
 sugar-tree, set a chair on the table, set the 
 fiddler in the chair, set a pitcher of ice-water 
 at his feet, and told him to strike while the iron 
 was hot. He took a long, deep, contemptuous 
 draught, struck a shower of musical sparks 
 from his fiddle, hitched his chair so as to face 
 a rectangular space where the sod had been 
 removed and sawdust sprinkled, fixed his eye 
 on the roof of green boughs covering it, and 
 
32 Summer in Arcady 
 
 became lost to all further companionship with 
 the human race. 
 
 " Go it, my children ! " said Nature, looking 
 on. " Dance away ! Whatever is natural is 
 right." 
 
 " Yes," said the Devil, who also attends pic 
 nics. "Go it, my children! Whatever is 
 natural is right." 
 
VI 
 
 DAPHNE awoke that morning with the dawn 
 and the birds and the thought of the picnic. 
 After breakfast, as he was leaving the house, 
 she found courage to ask her father to let her 
 go. He refused; he was an elder in the 
 church, she a member. It was no place for 
 her. 
 
 All the forenoon she sat in the front porch 
 near the droning of bees in the honeysuckles 
 and the roses, looking across the bright fields 
 toward the dark domes on the horizon under 
 which she knew they were dancing. Once she 
 slipped off in the direction of her aunt s. 
 When she came to the meadow bars where two 
 days before she had seen him riding away, she 
 looked across at the locust-trees. No one was 
 sitting there. She bent her ear, listening. No 
 one was singing in the corn-field. How unutter 
 ably deserted and silent the earth was! Very 
 D 33 
 
34 Summer in Arcady 
 
 slowly she went back to the porch and sat 
 there. 
 
 Little things often determine the future of a 
 girl, as the push of a finger will start a great 
 rock down a mountain with ruin to everything 
 in its path. During those hours Daphne took 
 account of her life as never before, and the 
 account consisted mainly of the things she had 
 against her father. There were days when she 
 hated him : this was one. 
 
 Two heroic necessities make up a large part 
 of our life : to be made to do what we dislike, 
 and to be withheld from doing what we desire. 
 
 Early in childhood, Daphne s spirit had been 
 broken to the first. No day passed without 
 unpleasant duties ; but these were so many 
 burdens originating outside her own nature and 
 laid upon her by those she loved ; and for the 
 bearing of other people s burdens, she had 
 quick, warm sympathies, and would in time, 
 perhaps, come to have the true womanly endur 
 ance. But life had no power of teaching her 
 submission to the second of these hardships. 
 The older she grew, the more passionate be- 
 
Summer in Arcady 35 
 
 came her rebellion at ever being thwarted. 
 Whenever she could not have her own way 
 altogether, she always went as far as possible 
 toward the forbidden. And of the things that 
 had been forbidden her in the whole course of 
 her life, nothing had ever been so hard as the 
 command to stay away from this picnic. The 
 desire to be there smouldered in her like a fire. 
 
 When her father came home at noon, she 
 asked him again more boldly. He refused 
 rudely; and after dinner, taking a pillow, he 
 stretched himself on the long, green bench in 
 the front porch, and told her to get the fine- 
 tooth comb. It had been one of her duties 
 when a little girl to be made to put him to sleep 
 by combing the dandruff out of his hair while 
 she was nearly dead for sleep herself. Some 
 times her tears fell softly on his locks, and 
 trickling over his brow had been understood by 
 him as indications of his temperature. At 
 other times she would deal him a fierce dig with 
 the comb that awoke him with a tremendous 
 wince and snort. 
 
 But to-day she combed her father s hair with 
 
36 Summer in Arcady 
 
 the softness women sometimes have that is so 
 terrible to watch ; and the soft movement of 
 her magnetic fingers about his temples put him 
 quickly to sleep. Then Daphne crossed her 
 hands in her lap and simply looked at him. He 
 might well have had bad dreams. 
 
 His nap over, as he was riding away from 
 the stiles, he called to her carelessly to take 
 the boys over to the picnic for a little while : 
 they wanted to go. 
 
 It was the middle of the afternoon, then, 
 when into the woods rattled an old rock- 
 away, driven by a little bareheaded negro 
 with a pea-stick for a whip. Beside him sat 
 two white boys smaller still, and on the seat 
 behind sat Daphne. 
 
 She had the negro drive to a distant fence- 
 corner and got out unnoticed. When she ap 
 proached the vehicles drawn up around the 
 dancers, she searched until she found one 
 that was vacant, and getting into it let the 
 children go. They sped back to a hogshead 
 of lemonade, which they had passed on the 
 way, with a tin cup hanging low on the out- 
 
Summer in Arcady 37 
 
 side from a twine string, and she was left 
 alone. 
 
 For a few minutes longer she indulged her 
 angry, bitter thoughts against her father. He 
 had a good buggy for himself; he was more 
 than able to buy a new rockaway; instead, 
 he made them keep on using the old one, 
 which he varnished thickly over once a year 
 at fair time. It rattled so loud on the turn 
 pike that people could tell what was coming 
 long before they could see what it was; and 
 if she could help, she would never go to 
 town in it except on rainy days when the 
 spokes and hubs were swollen, and she could 
 let down the side-curtains and sit far back 
 inside. It was very dry weather now, how 
 ever, and when they had turned out on the 
 pike, and the little negro with a tremendous 
 whack from his pea-stick had set things in 
 violent motion, the sudden uproar the mor 
 tification of having to go to the picnic in a 
 sort of loosely jointed flying-machine had 
 brought back the feelings with which she 
 had been struggling all day. 
 
38 Summer in Arcady 
 
 The rockaway in which Daphne, with Ken 
 tucky frankness, had now taken her seat 
 and sat pouting was new and stylish. It 
 made her feel respectable ; and she might 
 have been happier still if the family flying- 
 machine, hidden behind the briers, could have 
 caught fire from the trench near by in which 
 they had barbecued the mutton, and been car 
 ried off as sparks and smoke. She could now 
 receive without mortification the attentions of 
 the young men of her acquaintance who did 
 not dance on account of being members of 
 the church ; and Daphne knew also that it 
 was not an unheard-of thing in a young man 
 who did dance to prefer to sit with a girl in 
 such an advantageous place. 
 
 Still, it was only in a half-hearted way that 
 she brightened up and began to talk to the 
 people of the neighbourhood in their carriages 
 near her. 
 
 A middle-aged mother with a screaming 
 baby in her arms got out of her carriage 
 just ahead and hurried toward the rear. She 
 caught sight of Daphne and called to her: 
 
Summer in Arcady 39 
 
 "You here! Tell your father to look out 
 for his black sheep Hilary s been dancing." 
 
 Hilary dancing ! And now her father would 
 have him up before the church! By and by 
 the mother repassed. 
 
 "Whom has he been dancing with ?" asked 
 Daphne, in a voice faint and cold. 
 
 "With all the girls. Don t sit back here; 
 you can t see. Come, get into my carriage." 
 
 "Thank you! I am going home soon," said 
 Daphne. " I only came to bring the children 
 for a while." 
 
 One of her little brothers now ran along 
 side the rockaway, and pointing to her called 
 to some one behind : 
 
 "Here she is in here." 
 
 Hilary came round eagerly. 
 
 "Well!" he said, with an air of tremen 
 dous relief, "why didn t you come over here 
 sooner ? I ve been looking for you all day." 
 
 His chiding friendliness was so sincere that 
 she let her hand lie in his with a sense of 
 refuge. He wore his Sunday clothes ; and he 
 stood wiping his forehead and fanning him- 
 
40 Summer in Arcady 
 
 self with his new summer hat. A big spray 
 of withered honeysuckle was in his button 
 hole. His collar had wilted, and his flowing 
 blue cravat was loose at his neck. His face 
 had in it all the riotous passion of the earth 
 and the sun at play. 
 
 " Why didn t you come ? " he repeated in 
 the tone of a good-natured scolding. 
 
 "I couldn t." Her lips began to quiver 
 and her eyes fell. 
 
 " Well, it s not too late ! " he cried, cheer 
 ing her up roughly. " Come on and dance 
 with me! They are just making up a set. 
 Come on ! " 
 
 He opened the door of the rockaway. 
 
 " Come on ! " he repeated with overbearing 
 confidence. " I want to dance with you ! " 
 
 With a sudden thought Daphne s lips 
 ceased quivering and her eyes flashed: a 
 woman does not need more than a minute 
 in which to revenge herself for a day or 
 for a lifetime. 
 
 She put her daintily-slippered foot out on 
 the step of the rockaway, and gave him her 
 
Summer in A ready 41 
 
 hands with a little laugh that was as reck 
 less with joy as the note of an escaped bird. 
 
 When the dance was over they went back 
 to the rockaway, happy and fanning them 
 selves. As she resumed her seat she made 
 way for him to sit beside her. 
 
 " Good-by ! " he said with a gay dismissal, 
 and without offering his hand, as he hurried 
 off. 
 
 It was like a blow in her face. With a 
 startled, yearning look at him, she sank 
 miserably back into the corner. 
 
 For more than an hour she waited, but 
 he did not come again ; and toward dusk, 
 having found her brothers, Daphne took each 
 by the hand and started toward the rock- 
 away. 
 
 As she was passing through the vehicles 
 she heard his low, confidential talk close to 
 her ear. The back curtain of a buggy was 
 rolled up, and she saw his arm around a girl. 
 
 Soon a miscellaneous clatter arose on the 
 turnpike and died away in the distance, leav 
 ing a mournful, white dust behind. 
 
VII 
 
 WHAT are little brothers, if not spies and tale 
 bearers and jackals generally ? Daphne s, on 
 reaching home, ran confidingly to their father. 
 That night the family were called into the par 
 lour. Her father sat upon her case as a court 
 of ecclesiastical inquiry ; and at the neighbour 
 hood church the next morning, which was Sun 
 day, Daphne acknowledged her waywardness 
 before the whole congregation, and was kept 
 within the membership. Her sobs were ac 
 cepted as showing the sincerity of her repent 
 ance ; but only Daphne herself knew why they 
 brought no relief to an unutterable heartache. 
 Not that she did not believe that she had com 
 mitted a sin ; her religious training convicted 
 her of this. For Daphne s idea of the devil 
 was that he lived somewhere in the earth 
 perhaps moved about under her father s farm 
 and that he was altogether too near to be 
 42 
 
Summer in Arcady 43 
 
 trifled with. To her mind he was especially on 
 the lookout for young people who moved their 
 feet in certain ways to the sound of music. If 
 you can imagine a small insect on the outside 
 of a walnut keeping quiet through terror of an 
 enormous insect mysteriously at work on the in 
 side, and reported capable of bursting through 
 the shell if in any way annoyed, you will under 
 stand how grateful she was for now being given 
 a chance to assure Beelzebub that she would 
 never dance again. 
 
 But Hilary stood his ground even though 
 the devil s own. He was not at church that 
 morning, having gone off in his buggy with a 
 girl to another church miles away across the 
 country ; but he was quoted as having said that 
 if the devil wanted him for dancing with the 
 pretty girls at a picnic, he could have him 
 and welcome. But meantime, till he came for 
 his property, he d dance on. 
 
 Having twice gone to see him at his home 
 without finding him, one afternoon during the 
 week the elders of the church mounted their fat 
 saddle horses and racked comfortably over to 
 
44 Summer in Arcady 
 
 where he was ploughing on the other side of 
 his farm. He was pouring out the everlasting 
 praises of his favourite theme as they ap 
 proached him down the corn-rows ; and al 
 though their memories were now an armoury of 
 scriptural texts, they might as well have gone 
 out to capture a tremendous young bear by 
 merely carrying along the sacred description 
 of a rifle. 
 
 In neighbourhoods quiet and settled, every 
 body knows not only what kind of children 
 are born in it, but what kind are going to be 
 born ; and a young man may gain a reputa 
 tion before he earns it. Some quality in the 
 strain of the family, or some sign in the early 
 build and look of the boy himself, is held for 
 as good or as bad as conduct; and old 
 people, who may be stupid enough on other 
 subjects, often scan their own offspring 
 and that of their acquaintances with a pre 
 ternatural wisdom in reading the early prep 
 aration of nature, and get ready in mind 
 and heart, sometimes in distress, for what 
 is sure to come in the course of time. And 
 
Summer in Arcady 45 
 
 sometimes they scan them with as preternatu 
 ral a folly. 
 
 Neighbourly talk had always greatly por 
 tended that in Hilary s case the boy would 
 be father to the man ; and the boy had 
 always passed for what people who are more 
 or less wooden, deem wild. The old stumps 
 in a forest are wiser : they never reproach the 
 dancing, sappy, leafy boughs. 
 
 In addition to these prophecies, his father 
 had died before he turned eighteen; and at 
 the period of passing into the years that nat 
 ure makes so unruly, he had stepped forward 
 to the head of the family and management 
 of the farm. His middle-aged neighbours had 
 then been forced to adjust themselves to a 
 further change in his habits and his bearing, 
 and it had gone hard with some of them; for 
 the old are often shocked by the discovery that 
 the young have grown up and must be treated 
 as men. And he soon made them feel not only 
 that he was a man, but that he had taken the 
 bit entirely in his own teeth and meant to 
 choose his own road and go his own gait. 
 
46 Summer in Arcady 
 
 It had come as a surprise, therefore, when 
 the summer preceding this he had joined 
 the church. His confession had been re 
 ceived at the time with secret misgivings : 
 with misgivings they had seen him baptized, 
 and with misgivings on the following Sunday 
 morning they had presented him with a little 
 red Testament as his earthly rule of faith and 
 practice. But the entire congregation had 
 filed past him, singing and offering him the 
 right hand of their Christian fellowship, 
 some at least with that grasp of the hand 
 which means forgiveness of the past, and the 
 hope of a life where none of us shall need to 
 be forgiven. 
 
 And now, in the first year of his member 
 ship, he had fallen from grace. 
 
 When the boy saw them coming toward 
 him down the corn-rows, he laughed quietly 
 to himself, stopped his horse, sat down on his 
 plough, and began trimming his finger-nails; 
 and the elders on coming up threw their legs 
 over the pommels of their soft saddles and 
 sternly whittled the butt ends of their 
 
Summer in Arcady 47 
 
 switches as they reasoned with him touching 
 his eternal damnation. 
 
 " No, sir," he said, at a certain point in 
 the discussion, looking up at Daphne s father 
 from under his old straw hat. " I can t 
 honestly say to the church that I am sorry 
 for what I ve done, because I don t honestly 
 believe that I ve done anything wrong. All I 
 am sorry for is that anybody else thinks so." 
 
 They had never talked with him seriously 
 on any subject before. The cool, polite way 
 in which he opposed his convictions to theirs 
 as though they were entitled to equal respect 
 left them ill at ease and they did not reply 
 to his last words at once. He went on in a 
 vein of gruff philosophizing : 
 
 "I come of a dancing family. Back in the 
 wilderness, in the forts and cabins, they were 
 dancing when they were not fighting, and 
 fighting when they were not dancing. They 
 were dancing in Virginia before they came to 
 Kentucky. They were dancing in England 
 before they came to Virginia. They were 
 dancing wherever they were before that. I 
 
48 Summer in Arcady 
 
 suppose they ve been dancing since they were 
 first created. I don t know much history, 
 but I know a little. It s natural for people 
 to dance. It does them good. I know it 
 does me good." 
 
 Daphne s father made his one stern, brief 
 rejoinder : 
 
 " You know the rule of the church ? " 
 "But the church is wrong!" replied the 
 young fellow, with a heavy, bludgeon-like 
 handling of such ideas as he had. " It was 
 wrong to take this position at the start. It 
 will have to change. It is changing al 
 ready. In some parts of the country they 
 don t turn the members out for dancing now. 
 You know that. And you know that some of 
 the best preachers in the church never have 
 believed it a sin. There s a difference of 
 opinion even in the churches. Then why don t 
 you let me have my opinion ? The greater 
 part of the world agree with me. You have 
 no more right to keep me from dancing than 
 I have the right to make you dance and I 
 never would think of doing that." 
 
Summer in Arcady 49 
 
 "Brother Hilary," said the other elder, who 
 was the kinder soul of the two, " don t you re 
 member what the New Testament says about 
 the eating of meat?" 
 
 "Yes," he replied, "but I don t think it 
 means that I mustn t dance if you think it s 
 wrong." 
 
 "That s just what it does mean," inter 
 posed Daphne s father. "/ understand the 
 Apostle." 
 
 " So do / understand him ! " exclaimed the 
 boy, giving a contemptuous cut at his boot- 
 top with the end of his plough-line. 
 
 " Beware of causing others to stumble," 
 said the milder officer, who hereupon shut up 
 his penknife with a warning click and threw 
 his leg into place. 
 
 "All I have to say is, if my dancing ever 
 caused anybody to stumble, he couldn t stand 
 up if I didn t." 
 
 " It were better for a millstone to be tied 
 around your neck, and that you were sunk 
 in the bottom of the sea," cried Daphne s 
 father, gathering up his bridle-reins. 
 
50 Summer in Arcady 
 
 " Sink or swim, I m going to dance," said 
 Hilary. " But it s all nonsense. You are 
 quoting texts to me that don t apply to my 
 case. And you ought to know it. If you 
 are going to turn me out of the church, it 
 ought not to be for dancing. It ought to be 
 for worse things things that I am sorry for, 
 but that I do. And there is one thing that 
 I don t want you to misunderstand : all that 
 I have said has been against you, remember, 
 and not against the Bible; and to my mind 
 there is a difference." 
 
 He rose from his plough as he spoke, and 
 looked from the one to the other of them with 
 his face growing solemn as he concluded : 
 " Turn me out ! But you will have to answer 
 for the consequences. You know how this 
 hurts a young man at the beginning of his life 
 at the beginning of his temptations and real 
 struggles, when you old people ought to help 
 him." 
 
 He stepped behind his plough and started his 
 horse with a quiet, friendly cluck. 
 
 The next Sunday the elders and the deacons 
 
Summer in Arcady 5 1 
 
 rode gravely to church through the June woods, 
 and sat as an ecclesiastical body on the front 
 seat. The gravest among them was Daphne s 
 father, who at intervals held to his nose a 
 green walnut which he had pulled on the way, 
 as was often his wont at this season. He 
 smelled at it in long, devoted, audible draughts, 
 as if fearing that otherwise he might be an 
 noyed with the odour of brimstone. At the 
 proper moment he arose and laid the case 
 before the church with a recommendation, and 
 the congregation thereupon withdrew its mem 
 bership from Hilary. On the way home 
 Daphne s father, who was in all things a wal 
 nut-smelling person of the most superior sort, 
 forbade her to receive any further attentions 
 from him. 
 
 The next day he met Hilary in the lane and 
 drew in his nag, but without any greeting. 
 
 " Your bull has been breaking through my 
 fences again," he said. " I want you to keep 
 him at home hereafter." 
 
 " If you kept your fences up," the young 
 farmer replied bluntly, " my bull wouldn t 
 
52 Summer in Arcady 
 
 break through them. He never breaks through 
 my fences." He was talking to another farmer 
 now, not to an elder of the church, and his 
 manner was fiercer. 
 
 " You ve no right to keep any such dangerous 
 animal in the neighbourhood," insisted the elder 
 hotly. 
 
 " Right or wrong, I keep him," replied Hilary. 
 " A bull that didn t have spirit enough in him 
 to jump some fences wouldn t be of any use to 
 me. But, of course, I know that troubles in 
 the church keep you busy." 
 
 His clear eyes rested with sarcastic mischief 
 on the elder, who rose suddenly in his stirrups, 
 as though he would have struck him. 
 
 " Never do you darken my door again, sir," 
 he said, his voice getting thick with anger, 
 "or speak to a member of my family," and he 
 drove his heels into his horse s ribs and started 
 off. 
 
 The boy sat still for a moment looking after 
 him. 
 
 "If he only were about my age," he said 
 slowly to himself, "or anywhere under fifty." 
 
Summer in Arcady 53 
 
 And then he spurred forward and rode beside 
 him. 
 
 "There was one question I wanted to ask 
 you," he said savagely. 
 
 The elder glared at him without speaking. 
 
 " I ve heard you say the church was meant to 
 save sinners. I reckon you wouldn t object to 
 my coming to church the same as before?" 
 
 And the next Sunday he was back in his old 
 seat. A thrill shot through the congregation at 
 the sight of this black sheep of the fold, whose 
 very wool now seemed to smell ominously all 
 over the church. So that Daphne s father pro 
 duced his green walnut at once ; and his prayer 
 had that peculiar tone in which men sometimes 
 virtually say to the Almighty that He can rely 
 upon them to see that all sinners are duly 
 punished. 
 
 Hilary could watch Daphne from where he 
 sat ; and during the prayer Daphne, under a 
 pretext, opened her eyes to get her handker 
 chief and glanced at him. When their eyes 
 met, his face took on a smile of victory and 
 contempt. In return Daphne gave him a smile 
 
54 Summer in Arcady 
 
 of the wickedest approval ; and if they had 
 ridden all day in his buggy, she could not better 
 have expressed her forgiveness for his rudeness 
 to her at the picnic and in the field. 
 
VIII 
 
 HAS it ever been remarked that when a 
 scandal like this occurs in a country neighbour 
 hood, somebody soon afterwards gives a dinner 
 to several ladies ? The connection of terrestrial 
 happenings is not always clear. Who would 
 suspect that a calm, remote, little thing like the 
 moon could so trouble the seas ? Or that the 
 dark side of it brings the waters rushing 
 together as tumultuously as the bright? 
 
 The Thursday following there was one of 
 these dinners, and it was one of those long, 
 dry, summer days when the ladies arrive with 
 freshly starched faces before it gets hot, and 
 leave with freshly starched faces after it gets 
 cool. 
 
 The guests, although having that sense of 
 
 bodily comfort which precedes the certainty of 
 
 delicacies and which makes people kindly and 
 
 confidential in advance, were sitting together 
 
 55 
 
56 Summer in Arcady 
 
 in the forenoon amid the most frigid attempts 
 to start a conversation. At last one of them 
 ventured upon the dryest, simplest mention of 
 Hilary s name. After that the deluge. 
 
 They reviewed his entire past. One told 
 how, as a little boy, he had always come into 
 church with the other members of the family, 
 and sung out of a hymn-book with his mother ; 
 but in the last few years had waited outside 
 with the fast young men of the neighbourhood, 
 keeping a purely secular eye upon the girls in 
 the carriages as they drove up to the steps. 
 Another remembered that he regularly marched 
 in at the head of these upon the singing of the 
 last hymn, and sat far back among the hardened 
 and the backsliders ; and that sometimes he 
 whittled matches, more than one of which ex 
 ploded with a loud crack close to the ear of one 
 of the most venerable sisters in the fold ; that 
 if the sermon was long, he snapped his watch 
 at the preacher loud enough for half the con 
 gregation to hear; that at times he did not 
 come to church at all, but was away, no one 
 knew where. A third recalled how he would 
 
Summer in Arcady 57 
 
 never miss a circus in the neighbouring towns, 
 and would often guy the clown in a voice to 
 be heard above the uproar of the ring ; that 
 once being bantered by the clown in return, he 
 had shed his coat and tried to ride the mule 
 and did ride it until the mule lay down and rolled 
 on him. It was not forgotten that he had always 
 been fond of the negro minstrel shows, where he 
 picked up songs and the best of his jokes to be 
 retold on Saturday afternoons at the blacksmith 
 shop, where the young farmers assembled to 
 pitch quoits and hear the news. One of them 
 had heard from her husband that he could be 
 seen about the court-house square on county 
 court days in the neighbouring counties, smoking 
 constantly, shaking hands right and left, and 
 followed by other young fellows trying to smoke 
 and shake hands like him all with a colour in 
 their faces that did not come from the sun. It 
 seems, also, that he would be the last to start 
 home from town toward nightfall, and when he 
 did start, whirled out of the livery stable in a 
 curve that made the buggy reel ; passing every 
 body on the way home, over rocks, ruts, culverts, 
 
58 Summer in Arcady 
 
 bridges, and those long piles of cracked lime 
 stone that are so terrible to a horse s feet. It 
 was not related, however, that once in this way 
 he had spun so dizzily around two old jogging 
 neighbours of his husbands of two of these 
 ladies that they had spoken up feelingly on 
 the subject of old Bourbon, and the better to 
 illustrate to each other the proper use of this 
 wily spirit, had produced a confidential bottle 
 from under the buggy-seat and exchanged their 
 " regards." But it was known that once he had 
 come in unsteadily upon one of these good old 
 men as he warmed himself at the office stove of 
 the livery stable, had sat down in his lap, and 
 throwing his arms around him had challenged 
 him to billiards for fried oysters. 
 
 By degrees the conversation drifted into 
 darker channels as the caldron bubbled more 
 furiously being so richly fed. They recalled, 
 with low, sad voices, the fact that about two 
 years before this he had been sent as a student 
 to the State college, and after a short career 
 had returned home disgraced. And since then 
 he had become wilder ; the hurrying hoof -beats 
 
Summer in Arcady 59 
 
 of his little mare could be heard up and down 
 the turnpike long after midnight, miles away 
 from home. What was the meaning of those 
 songs of his, always of the same tenor ? 
 
 From this point the talk, if submitted for 
 print, must have lost in volume by reason of 
 expurgations. The whole conversation might 
 have made Dr. Johnson s ideal book : one con 
 sisting of a preface, setting forth what it would 
 contain, followed by an appendix stating why 
 it did not contain it. 
 
 Daphne and her mother were among the 
 company. The girl had sat silent thus 
 far, her head bent low over her needle 
 work. 
 
 Her mother, also, had taken little part in the 
 talk. She was one of the crushed and silent 
 women. The wives of such elders usually are. 
 When she spent a day abroad, her habit of 
 silence lay on her still. Her conversation con 
 sisted mainly of replies to questions. If she 
 volunteered a remark, it was usually a quotation 
 or a timid interpretation of her husband s opin 
 ions. She never dared quote or interpret him 
 
60 Summer in Arcady 
 
 to his face ; and this boldness behind his back 
 was the last strain of vivacity in her that sur 
 vived his desolating tyranny. 
 
 At last the conversation turned on the sub 
 ject of the picnic, and then she felt emboldened 
 to make a remark : 
 
 " My husband will never forgive him for tak 
 ing advantage of a child like Daphne. He felt 
 the disgrace of it terribly on account of his posi 
 tion in the church." 
 
 Daphne here dropped her sewing as though 
 it were a coal. 
 
 " Now, mother, you hush," she exclaimed. 
 Her lips were white and quivering with anger 
 and with the heartache of those two infinite 
 hours. A ^ they had been sitting there with 
 out observing her ! They saw her now, and 
 such a silence filled the room that the sounds of 
 insect life out in the yard were heard through 
 the open doors and windows. Daphne picked 
 up her work again and bent her head lower. 
 But the silence lasted ; and feeling that their 
 eyes were turned on her like burning-glasses, 
 and that it was too late now ever to undo the 
 
Summer in Arcady 61 
 
 scandal of her words, she folded her hands and 
 fixed her eyes on her mother again. 
 
 "You know that I am not a child," she said. 
 "You know that Hilary did not take any ad 
 vantage of me. You know that I did not dis 
 grace anybody. And father knows it. Then 
 why do you say so ? I ll tell you why I danced, 
 if you want to know. And I ll tell him when I 
 get home. And why don t you keep out of this 
 gossip ? I am sick of it," she continued excit 
 edly, her eyes flashing as she looked round 
 upon them all. " And you are no better than 
 mischief-makers. What you ve been saying are 
 lies! " She flirted out of the room with a back 
 ward toss of her head and taking her seat on 
 the porch went on with her w6*I 
 
 This spoiled the dinner. One cannot per 
 fectly enjoy the hospitality of a hostess whom 
 one has just accused of telling lies, and the 
 hostess does not perfectly enjoy having one try. 
 But great things were possible to the company 
 that day. Daphne at the table was so pressed 
 with attentions from her hostess and the guests 
 that the occasion was as good as an ovation in 
 
62 Summer in Arcady 
 
 her honour. She was glad enough to smooth 
 over the rupture ; for she was secretly terrified 
 by the thought that they would misunderstand 
 her motive in taking Hilary s part, and make a 
 neighbourhood scandal of that. Simple, seven 
 teen-year-old Daphne ! As if those wiseacres 
 did not understand perfectly now what the mat 
 ter was, and as if one-half of them were not 
 already preparing to tell the other half that 
 they had known it all the time. 
 
 The ladies separated into groups of twos and 
 threes immediately after dinner and strolled 
 away on their quiet little biological walks, some 
 around the flower-beds in the front yard, some 
 to look at the grapes and young vegetables in 
 the garden ; and then it was that they began to 
 give each other nudges that were as long as 
 paragraphs and glances that would have filled a 
 page. Daphne s mother having framed awk 
 ward excuses a little later for starting home, 
 some salt-rising had to be made for supper, 
 they came together again ; and once more there 
 followed a frigid effort to begin general conver 
 sation. One of them at last inquired Daphne s 
 
Summer in Arcady 63 
 
 age, and everything else followed. It was like 
 turning up a long open tube filled with shot. 
 They did not even omit the story of how 
 Daphne had as a child never cared for dolls, 
 but liked better to play with little boys and was 
 often caught hugging them. Another of the 
 guests soon made excuses for leaving ; and she 
 availed herself of the extra time to drive by 
 and talk the rest of the afternoon with Hilary s 
 mother. And then, having made all the mis 
 chief she could in one day, at the close of it she 
 felt so proud of herself, and so pleased with her 
 virtues, that on the way home she leaned back 
 in the corner of the rockaway, closed her eyes, 
 folded her hands over her waist, and, unmind 
 ful even of the fact that she was crushing her 
 bonnet, she sang over and over again her favour 
 ite hymn : 
 
 "Just as I am, without one plea! " 
 
 Pleasant to human nature are its lies ! 
 
 Cutting words passed between Daphne and 
 her father that night words that life is too 
 short to make forgotten. She was sitting at 
 
64 Summer in Arcady 
 
 the window of her room as late as twelve 
 o clock, her eyes swollen and sobs still trem 
 bling on her lips. Poor child, poor Daphne! 
 Any rebellion against the general order of 
 things in this world was beyond her intelli 
 gence. Her quarrel with life directed itself 
 against a dozen or more people as the wilful 
 originators of all her grief and restlessness and 
 pain ; and she believed that as soon as she 
 were rid of these, she would be perfectly happy. 
 She had all the desires she wanted, and she 
 would gratify these just as she chose. 
 
 She did not care enough for her father to 
 have been deeply wounded by anything he said. 
 But aroused to the idea that he was mainly 
 responsible for her unhappiness, she recalled 
 the things she had against him as far back in 
 life as she could remember. 
 
 There is no earthly tribunal so terrible, both 
 in its justice and in its injustice, as the mind of 
 a child bent upon finding out why it turns 
 against a parent. It always does find out ; and 
 Daphne s memory fished up some black and 
 curious things from the river of the past. 
 
Slimmer in Arcady 65 
 
 She was too young to make allowances for 
 his faults, and perhaps she was too truly his 
 child to have been able to show him the mercy 
 that he denied to her. The young never real 
 ize when judging the old that the old are in a 
 measure irresponsible and guiltless. The old 
 themselves never fully understand why it is 
 that despite all their wisdom and struggles they 
 do not become better than they are. Daphne 
 could not see generations of faulty people dark 
 ening away behind her father and handing 
 down to him their injustice, hardness, unlov- 
 ableness, their warped and purblind consciences ; 
 could not see that he could no more help being 
 what he was than she could help being what 
 she was : so that both of them might well have 
 been more patient and forgiving with each 
 other. But it takes a great deal of inner light 
 to see this outer darkness enveloping our life, 
 and a great deal of goodness to walk sweetly 
 forward through it. 
 
 Of one fact during these unhappy hours 
 she remained unaware : that whenever she was 
 thinking of her father her tears ceased; and 
 
66 Summer in Arcady 
 
 whenever she was remembering Hilary they 
 flowed again. Those stories about his life in 
 the town while he was a student and of his 
 expulsion from college were they true ? 
 Those midnight rides and songs ever since 
 did they mean what those old mothers had 
 said they meant ? 
 
 Among all the terrible things her father had 
 said, the chief one with which he had fright 
 ened her, was the idea that she had now made 
 herself the subject of a new and more serious 
 neighbourhood scandal. And most of all, he 
 had forbidden her ever to see Hilary again. 
 
 Nevertheless the plan which Daphne had 
 been forming all night was to see Hilary once 
 more as soon as possible. Scandal or no scan 
 dal, she must let him know that she had taken 
 his part as his friend, and correct any false 
 impression that he might have formed of her 
 character and her motive. 
 
 Then she would tell him that it was the last 
 time they could meet, and say good-by. And 
 then she would always live a sad and lonely 
 woman in this dark and dreary world. Daphne 
 
Summer in Arcady 67 
 
 was so soothed and cheered by the future image 
 of herself as a sad and lonely woman in a dark 
 and dreary world, that she got into bed imme 
 diately and had a delicious sleep. 
 
 Through her sleep she was out in the green 
 meadow, and he was coming down the path 
 to meet her. Once in the vividness of the 
 vision she stretched out her arms : her lips 
 parted and her bosom heaved with a long, deep 
 breath of peace. 
 
 Love had at least taken possession of her 
 dreams : and Love knows that dreams are 
 often the most important thing to capture. 
 
IX 
 
 HILARY S mother was waiting for him when 
 he reached home late that night. For years 
 they had spread the report, as they always 
 do, that he had broken her heart. If so, she 
 idolized him with the fragments. Not a night 
 in all that time but she placed a lamp in the 
 window to guide him home across the storm- 
 swept fields ; in winter kept the fire bright 
 for him ; made him draw off his soaking or 
 frozen boots for a warm foot-bath ; wiped his 
 feet in her own lap, pressing them jealously 
 against her heart ; asked no questions ; thought 
 no wrong ; watched with devoted eyes his 
 face with the flickering firelight on it, now 
 thoughtful, now happy with the pleasure of 
 things in which he allowed her no share ; when 
 he was in bed, often stole into his room to 
 give a last tuck to his feet and touch his 
 68 
 
Summer in Arcady 69 
 
 forehead with her lips ; and afterwards prayed 
 for him in tears and with pride at her own 
 shining pillow ; a divine love and trust, which 
 is perhaps the best anchor that we men can 
 ever be held by during those raging years. 
 
 The front door stood open, a swinging lamp 
 burned low in the hall, and as he walked up 
 the pavement, having taken the bridle and 
 saddle off his mare, he saw the soft, slow 
 movement of her fan. He sat down at her 
 feet, leaning against a white Corinthian col 
 umn, and took out a cigar. 
 
 " Don t smoke yet," she said, and she 
 brought him a saucer of his favourite cream 
 and a plate of his favourite cake. He was in 
 one of his quiet moods, and ate it in silence. 
 But she knew how to wait. Then he lighted 
 his cigar. 
 
 "You d better go to bed, mother," he said 
 gently. He liked to talk of her as though 
 she were a child. 
 
 " It s too hot. Surely it will rain to-morrow. 
 It has been lightning in the north." She 
 leaned forward and looked intently at the sky 
 
7O Summer in Arcady 
 
 as if a shower were the only thing in the 
 
 world she could be minding. 
 "The corn needs it." 
 " And the garden everything." 
 " Has anybody been here to see me since 
 
 dinner?" 
 
 "No. Somebody has been to see me" 
 
 "One of your beaux?" 
 
 " Never you mind." 
 
 She often coquetted with him. Southern 
 
 women characteristically do with their grown 
 
 sons. It is the lingering remnant of an old 
 
 prodigal habit. 
 
 "I know! I saw her rockaway." 
 
 "I don t believe it. Who was she?" 
 
 " Never you mind. And I can guess what 
 
 she came for." 
 "What?" 
 
 "To tell you about the dinner to-day." 
 She did not reply at once. When she did, 
 
 her words had the calm of a coming storm. 
 "She did tell me about that." 
 He remained silent, not being further inter 
 ested ; and her fan moved before her face 
 
 with slow precision. 
 
Summer in Arcady 71 
 
 -Hilary!" 
 
 "Yes m." 
 
 "There was a disgraceful scene at that 
 dinner to-day." 
 
 " There always is at that house, isn t there ? 
 Isn t that the reason you and the others who 
 were invited didn t go ? " 
 
 " I don t mean that now ! " 
 
 Her tone caught his ear as unusual. More 
 over, when his mother said that anything was 
 disgraceful, it was disgraceful. 
 
 She began and told him, not exactly 
 the facts, but what had been reported as 
 facts ; and naturally her informant had not 
 repeated what the ladies had said about her 
 own son. It is remarkable that a woman who 
 is not a gossip will believe a gossip when the 
 tale flows in with the current of her anxieties. 
 Hilary s mother had in mind the girl that she 
 wanted him to marry. The recent coupling 
 of his name with Daphne s aroused her to 
 prompt decisive action. 
 
 He listened without comment ; but his 
 cigar went out ; he was interested, 
 
72 Summer in Arcady 
 
 The old clock behind the door in the hall 
 struck one. She rose and stood over him. 
 
 "It is not a delicate thing for a mother to 
 say to a son, and you know that I have never 
 said such a thing to you. But" her tone 
 was gentle, merciless " the girl is in love 
 with you, and she has shown it, and it will 
 be talked about all over the neighbourhood. 
 Keep away from her ! She is not the kind 
 of a girl you want to have anything to do 
 with. There are some things I can t very 
 well explain to you, but if I must I will ! " 
 
 One of her hands sought for his forehead 
 under his heavy hair. 
 
 "Good-night," she murmured, and she bent 
 down and laid her lips on it. 
 
 He threw away his cigar, and putting up 
 his arms drew her face down to his like a 
 child. 
 
 When she reached the doorway of the hall, 
 she turned. 
 
 "Would you like to know now what I 
 mean ? " Her voice was calm and deter 
 mined. 
 
Summer in Arcady 73 
 
 "No m. Good-night." 
 
 His setter got up from where it had been 
 lying on the other side of the porch, and 
 stretched itself beside him. He lighted a 
 cigar. 
 
 Young men of twenty do not care much 
 for what their mothers may think about girls. 
 The world has grown a deal wiser since 
 mothers understood that subject, if they ever 
 did. These sons, on the other hand, have 
 mastered that branch of knowledge. Hilary 
 considered himself a man who was able to do 
 his own thinking ; and it afforded him now 
 some amusement that his mother should un 
 dertake, at this late day, to give him advice 
 about his own specialty. 
 
 But he began to turn over the account he 
 had received of the day s doings. It struck 
 him that the girl, arraigned before that tri 
 bunal of women, was a good deal like him 
 self, when summoned of old before the faculty 
 of the college. She had honestly told them 
 what she thought of them, and he on one 
 occasion had told the faculty in pretty much 
 
74 Summer in Arcady 
 
 the same terms what he thought of them. 
 He liked her spirit immensely, and he re 
 solved, the first chance he could get, to let 
 her know it. 
 
 And then she had declined to allow the 
 blame of the dancing to rest on him that fact 
 had been incidentally dropped by his mother 
 as it had been incidentally imparted by the 
 tale-bearer. His heart warmed to her for this. 
 He remembered how he had once fought a 
 student for involving him without ground in 
 a college scrape, when he had scrapes enough 
 of his own. It was fair-minded in her; and 
 fair play was a thing that he might have 
 prided himself upon having always tried to 
 practise. It was courageous in her ; and he 
 did not respect anybody man or woman 
 who was not courageous. 
 
 Altogether he liked better the way she had 
 acted in the whole matter than his own con 
 duct ; for he had certainly helped to get her 
 into the trouble, and it had not even occurred 
 to him to try to help her out. Now she was 
 more deeply in than ever. She had bearded 
 
Summer in Arcady 75 
 
 those old gossips in their den. They would 
 never forgive her, and they would have their 
 revenge. That was why they had already 
 started this new scandal that she was in love 
 with him. And when they had used that 
 scandal against her until they got tired of it, 
 they would invent some other. He was in a 
 position to know what this kind of rapid in 
 eradicable scandal-growth meant. Experience 
 had taught him. In his own case he had 
 gone on in his own way, and had left every 
 thing to settle itself, or to unsettle itself, as 
 it chose or did not choose ; and he would no 
 more have taken the trouble to turn upon his 
 vilifiers than he would have made a trip to 
 the woods for the purpose of stamping out 
 the toadstools ; some would be dying by the 
 time he got there, and others would be 
 springing up the moment he was gone. 
 
 But his mother s last words about Daphne 
 what did they mean ? What were those things 
 about her that she could not explain to him ? 
 If he had been a gentleman, of course, he would 
 have let that question go unanswered. But he 
 
76 Summer in Arcady 
 
 was not quite a gentleman, and he resolved to 
 see her and find out for himself. As for asking 
 his mother to tell him, or even allowing her to 
 tell him he tossed his cigar out into the 
 grass. 
 
 And as for letting any amount of gossip that 
 had influenced or might hereafter influence his 
 mother prejudice him against the girl who had 
 befriended him his state of mind on that sub 
 ject was also expressed by the same gesture. 
 
 They were close to Nature as they lay there 
 that summer night those two young animals. 
 The dog was the better trained, and had be 
 hind him generations of better trained fathers ; 
 for what is it to train a whole race of dogs in 
 comparison with a single human being the 
 very breath of whose life is error? 
 
 The dog at best would have made but a poor 
 sort of human creature; but the fellow would 
 at least have made a noble dog. He had the 
 sovereign qualities of courage and faithfulness 
 and affection, with no mean order of sagacity ; 
 and if he hunted much, at least he always 
 hunted fairly and in the open field. 
 
Summer in Arcady 77 
 
 Take a cannon-ball of the best metal that 
 may be cast. Hollow it out. Fill it with 
 water. Plug it tight. Put it under the cor 
 ner of a house, so that the weight of the 
 house will rest on the plug. Then let Nature 
 come along in a freezing mood, and one of two 
 things will happen : the water will force the 
 plug and lift the house, or the ball will burst. 
 And if she requires so much room in which 
 to freeze, think of the space that she needs 
 for heat ! Nature quietly asks room for the 
 operations of her laws ; if it is not given, she 
 takes it, and you take the consequences. If 
 the young man s life had overflowed the inno 
 cent banks of childhood, if wild oats seem to 
 spring up wherever he had trod, you could not 
 have gotten from him any intelligent account 
 of what he was doing. You would have had to 
 question Nature and his forefathers, and some 
 of the people who had always influenced him. 
 
 He had never had a moral friend among his 
 young neighbourhood associates ; if he had had 
 one, he would not have believed in him ; and 
 for many a generation, perhaps, he had not 
 
78 Slimmer in Arcady 
 
 had a strictly moral male ancestor. What 
 chance was there for him, even before he was 
 born, ever to see and to love the right as it 
 is seen and loved by the right-minded ? What 
 chance was there for him, after birth, to grow 
 up unlike those who taught him their ways of 
 life before he was old enough to understand 
 there are other and better ways the only 
 true ones ? When he was a little fellow also, 
 going around with his father, he often fell 
 into the company of a group of old farmers 
 who were cracking broad jokes at each other 
 with great laughter, or telling stories about 
 their young days. He looked up to these big, 
 burly, ruddy men ; he felt ashamed that he 
 alone of the company had no good stories to 
 tell about himself, and he determined to have 
 the stories by and by. 
 
 By and by he had them. They will not be 
 told here except one which has been darkly 
 hinted at. It is scant credit to him but it 
 is justice, nevertheless to have it known in 
 its truth. 
 
 One autumn he had been sent as a student 
 
Summer in Arcady 79 
 
 to the State college, and a room engaged for 
 him in the dormitories, in order that he might 
 fall more closely under the fatherly care of 
 the president. Up to the following Christmas 
 he fell at intervals under the fatherly care of 
 the entire faculty. 
 
 His career as an academician ranged through 
 the tenets of many unlike systems of philoso 
 phy, and by turns he was everything except 
 one thing only he was never platonic. 
 
 In a few weeks after his entering, the top of 
 his bureau and the edge of his looking-glass 
 blossomed out into a bower of the photographs 
 of the girls he soon met, and of actresses 
 whom he had never seen but whose curves 
 and poses struck his fancy. He soon wore 
 the bloom off of two cadet uniforms ; and on 
 Saturday afternoons was much in evidence 
 walking along Main street in the tarnished 
 splendour of one of these a cigarette in his 
 fingers, his heavy front of yellow hair hanging 
 forward as a bang under the lip of his gray 
 cap, and his glance roving about for anything 
 feminine and attractive that passed and would 
 
8o Summer in Arcady 
 
 notice him. He spent a good deal of time 
 around the livery stables, where he took part 
 with the men in the talk about stock and 
 crops, and occasionally met farmers from his 
 neighbourhood. In his college society, they 
 quickly chose him as a marshal at their open 
 sessions ; and on these occasions, gorgeous in 
 sash, rosette, and white gloves, he would guide 
 the company to their seats ushering the 
 girls along with an official pressure of their 
 beautiful soft arms, the real nature of which 
 did not deceive them, however. And now and 
 then he made a recitation that fairly took the 
 breath of a professor away, merely to show 
 everybody that he was not a fool. 
 
 The downfall of his scholastic career came 
 about through a cornet. Being of a musical 
 turn, he had entered the college band, and had 
 elected to play upon that instrument, which 
 is known to be of a most uncertain perform 
 ance in the wind when not kept strictly to its 
 better and more reasonable nature. His favour 
 ite hours of practice he thought would be in 
 his room at night ; but he was soon admon- 
 
Summer in Arcady 8 1 
 
 ished that this was not allowable. Occasion 
 ally, however, he would allow himself one va 
 grant blast he called it blowing the dust out 
 of Gabriel s throat that awoke the sleepers 
 around, leaving them to regain their dreams 
 as best they could. 
 
 One night he had come from the theatre 
 after an hour or more about town and he 
 was feeling ungovernably alive ; and when he 
 got into his room and lighted his student s 
 lamp, and did not wish to go to bed, and did 
 not wish to get his lessons, the spirit of the 
 cornet came upon him, and swearing that he 
 would practise when and where he pleased, 
 he reached for Gabriel. 
 
 Across the hall opposite Hilary s room was 
 the room of a tall, green sapling from the 
 foothills of the Cumberland a transplanted 
 sapling that had swayed backward and forward 
 till midnight before an awful thing called 
 Greek, and that meant to get up at five 
 o clock the next morning and sway on, as it 
 had been swaying for the three months past. 
 Meantime the sapling asked for rest. 
 
82 Summer in Arcady 
 
 Hilary had hardly begun to woo the ear of 
 night with his fingering fantasies, when his 
 door was flung open, and the sapling stood in 
 the doorway, his short shirt fluttering about 
 his thin loins, and his legs rising from the 
 floor to his slab trunk like a pair of long, 
 yellow ivory compasses. 
 
 The musician was sitting in his chair with 
 his face toward the door, his eyes blinking 
 softly like a cat s before a fire, and his cheeks 
 puffed out like an old picture of Boreas. 
 
 The storm-swept sapling said something 
 that was drowned by the music and waited. 
 Then he spoke again and waited. Then he 
 advanced his compasses and with one leg of 
 them, and an inconceivable nimbleness for 
 anything so rigid, kicked Gabriel against the 
 ceiling with a crash ; and then there was 
 called a meeting of the faculty the next after 
 noon, and the young Kentucky highlander and 
 the young Kentucky lowlander attended the 
 meeting. 
 
 The complaints of a faculty are often like 
 the janitor s keys a bunch gradually made up 
 
Summer in Arcady 83 
 
 of little and large, so that whenever they care 
 to use one they can have them all. Hilary 
 was invited to examine a surprising bunch of 
 keys, and to testify to what kind of a door each 
 key unlocked. He quietly acknowledged to 
 the big keys, but of the little ones grew heady 
 and contemptuous, going so far as to say that 
 the faculty made as much trouble about noth 
 ing as a lot of old cats at night on a backyard 
 fence. What right had they to pry into a 
 young fellow s outside affairs ? Suppose the 
 students were to pry into their outside affairs ? 
 What was sauce for the gander ought to be 
 good sauce for the gosling, etc., etc. 
 
 The first light snows of the year were falling. 
 The Thanksgiving gobbler had been selected at 
 home. The quails were fat in the fields, and 
 the rabbits were nibbling the cabbages in the 
 gardens. His setter missed him sadly. He 
 and the faculty held irreconcilable views of life 
 and discipline ; and once more the sapling 
 swayed on undisturbed before the tongue of 
 Pericles. 
 
THE sunlight grew pale the following morn 
 ing ; a shadow crept rapidly over the blue ; 
 bolts darted about the skies like maddened red- 
 birds ; the thunder, ploughing its way down the 
 dome as along zigzag cracks in a stony street, 
 filled the caverns of the horizon with reverbera 
 tions that shook the earth ; and the rain was 
 whirled across the landscape in long, white, 
 wavering sheets. Then all day quiet and si 
 lence throughout Nature except for the drops, 
 tapping high and low the twinkling leaves ; 
 except for the new melody of woodland and 
 meadow brooks, late silvery and with a voice 
 only for their pebbles and moss and mint, but 
 now yellow and brawling and leaping back into 
 the grassy channels that were their old-time 
 beds; except for the indoor music of dripping 
 eaves and rushing gutters and overflowing rain- 
 barrels. And when at last in the gold of the 
 8 4 
 
Summer in Arcady 85 
 
 cool west the sun broke from the edge of the 
 gray, over what a green, soaked, fragrant world 
 he reared the arch of Nature s peace ! 
 
 Not a little blade of corn in the fields but 
 holds in an emerald vase its treasure of white 
 gems. The hemp-stalks bend so low under the 
 weight of their plumes, that were a vesper 
 sparrow to alight on one for his evening hymn, 
 it would go with him to the ground. The lean 
 ing barley and rye and wheat flash in the 
 last rays their jewelled beards. Under the old 
 apple-trees, golden-brown mushrooms are al 
 ready pushing upward through the leaf-loam, 
 rank with many an autumn s dropping. About 
 the yards the peonies fall with faces earthward. 
 In the stable-lots the larded porkers, with bris 
 tles as clean as frost, and flesh of pinky white 
 ness, are hunting with nervous nostrils for the 
 lush purslane. The fowls are driving their 
 bills up and down their wet breasts. And the 
 farmers who have been shelling corn for the 
 mill come out of their barns, with their coats 
 over their shoulders, on the way to supper, look 
 about for the plough-horses, and glance at the 
 
86 Summer in Arcady 
 
 western sky, from which the last drops are 
 falling. 
 
 But soon only a more passionate heat shoots 
 from the sun into the planet. The plumes of 
 the hemp are so dry again, that by the pollen 
 shaken from their tops you can trace the young 
 rabbits making their way out to the dusty 
 paths. The shadows of white clouds sail over 
 purple stretches of bluegrass, hiding the sun 
 from the steady eye of the turkey, whose brood 
 is spread out before her like a fan on the earth. 
 At early morning the neighing of the stallions 
 is heard around the horizon ; at noon the bull 
 makes the deep, hot pastures echo with his ma 
 jestic summons ; out in the blazing meadows 
 the butterflies strike the afternoon air with 
 more impatient wings ; under the moon all 
 night the play of ducks and drakes goes on 
 along the margins of the ponds. Young people 
 are running away and marrying ; middle-aged 
 farmers surprise their wives by looking in on 
 them at their butter-making in the sweet 
 dairies ; and Nature is lashing everything 
 grass, fruit, insects, cattle, human creatures 
 
Summer in Arcady 87 
 
 more fiercely onward to the fulfilment of her 
 ends. She is the great heartless haymaker, 
 wasting not a ray of sunshine on a clod, but 
 caring naught for the light that beats upon a 
 throne, and holding man and woman, with their 
 longing for immortality, and their capacities for 
 joy and pain, as of no more account than a 
 couple of fertilizing nasturtiums. 
 
 The storm kept Daphne at home. On the 
 next day the Dearth was yellow with sunlight, 
 but there were puddles along the path, and a 
 branch rushing swollen across the green valley 
 in the fields. On the third, her mother took 
 the children to town to be fitted with hats and 
 shoes, and Daphne also, to be freshened up 
 with various moderate adornments, in view of 
 a protracted meeting soon to begin. On the 
 fourth, some ladies dropped in to spend the 
 day, bearing in mind the episode at the dinner, 
 and having grown curious to watch events ac 
 cordingly. On the fifth, her father carried out 
 the idea of cutting down some cedar-trees in 
 the front yard for fence posts ; and whenever 
 he was working about the house, he kept her 
 
88 Slimmer in Arcady 
 
 near to wait on him in unnecessary ways. On 
 the sixth, he rode away with two hands and an 
 empty wagon-bed for some work on the farm ; 
 her mother drove off to another dinner din 
 ners never cease in Kentucky, and the wife of 
 an elder is not free to decline invitations ; and 
 at last she was left alone in the front porch, her 
 face turned with burning eagerness toward the 
 fields. In a little while she had slipped away. 
 
 All these days Hilary had been eager to see 
 her. He was carrying a good many girls in his 
 mind that summer ; none in his heart ; but his 
 plans concerning these latter were for the time 
 forgotten. He hung about that part of his farm 
 from which he could have descried her in the 
 distance. Each forenoon and afternoon, at the 
 usual hour of her going to her uncle s, he rode 
 over and watched for her. Other people passed 
 to and fro, children and servants, but not 
 Daphne ; and repeated disappointments fanned 
 his desire to see her. 
 
 When she came into sight at last, he was 
 soon walking beside her, leading his horse by 
 the reins. 
 
Slimmer in Arcady 89 
 
 " I have been waiting to see you, Daphne," 
 he said, with a smile, but general air of serious 
 ness. " I have been waiting a long time for a 
 chance to talk to you." 
 
 "And I have wanted to see you," said 
 Daphne, her face turned away and her voice 
 hardly to be heard. " I have been waiting for 
 a chance to talk to you." 
 
 The change in her was so great, so unex 
 pected, it contained an appeal to him so touch 
 ing, that he glanced quickly at her. Then he 
 stopped short and looked searchingly around 
 the meadow. 
 
 The thorn-tree is often the only one that can 
 survive on these pasture lands. Its spikes, 
 even when it is no higher than the grass, keep 
 off the mouths of grazing stock. As it grows 
 higher, birds see it standing solitary in the 
 distance and fly to it, as a resting-place in pass 
 ing. Some autumn day a seed of the wild 
 grape is thus dropped near its root ; and in 
 time the thorn-tree and the grape-vine come 
 to thrive together. 
 
 As Hilary now looked for some shade to 
 
90 Summer in Arcady 
 
 which they could retreat from the blinding, 
 burning sunlight, he saw one of these stand 
 ing off at a distance of a few hundred yards. 
 He slipped the bridle-reins through the head 
 stall, and giving his mare a soft slap on the 
 shoulder, turned her loose to graze. 
 
 "Come over here and sit down out of the 
 sun," he said, starting off in his authoritative 
 way. "I want to talk to you." 
 
 Daphne followed in his wake through the 
 deep grass. 
 
 When they reached the tree, they sat down 
 under the rayless boughs. Some sheep lying 
 there ran round to the other side and stood 
 watching them, with a frightened look in their 
 clear, peaceful eyes. 
 
 "What s the matter?" he said, fanning his 
 face, and tugging with his forefinger to loosen 
 his shirt-collar from his moist neck. He had 
 the manner of a powerful comrade who means 
 to succour a weaker one. 
 
 " Nothing," said Daphne like a true woman. 
 
 "Yes, but there is," he insisted. "I got 
 you into trouble. I didn t think of that when 
 I asked you to dance." 
 
Summer in A ready 91 
 
 "You had nothing to do with it," retorted 
 Daphne, with a flash. "I danced for spite." 
 
 He threw back his head with a peal of 
 laughter. All at once this was broken off. 
 He sat up, with his eyes fixed on the lower 
 edge of the meadow. 
 
 "Here comes your father," he said gravely. 
 
 Daphne turned. Her father was riding 
 slowly through the bars. A wagon-bed loaded 
 with rails crept slowly after him. 
 
 In an instant the things that had cost her 
 so much toil and so many tears to arrange, 
 her explanations, her justifications, and her 
 parting, all the reserve and the coldness 
 that she had laid up in her heart, as one fills 
 high a little ice-house with fear of far-off sum 
 mer heat all were quite gone, melted away. 
 And everything that he had planned to tell 
 her was forgotten also at the sight of that 
 stern figure on horseback bearing uncon 
 sciously down upon them. 
 
 "If I had only kept my mouth shut about 
 his old fences," he said to himself. " Confound 
 my bull ! " and he looked anxiously at Daphne, 
 
92 Summer in Arcady 
 
 who sat with her eyes riveted on her father. 
 The next moment she had turned, and they 
 were laughing in each other s faces. 
 
 " What shall I do ? " she cried, leaning over 
 and burying her face in her hands, and lifting 
 it again scarlet with excitement. 
 
 "Don t do anything," he said calmly. 
 
 " But, Hilary, if he sees us we are lost." 
 
 "If he sees us, we are found." 
 
 " But he mustn t see me here ! " she cried, 
 with something like real terror. " I believe 
 I ll lie down in the grass. Maybe he ll think 
 I m a friend of yours." 
 
 "My friends all sit up in the grass," said 
 Hilary. 
 
 But Daphne had already hidden. 
 
 Many a time when a little girl she had amused 
 herself by screaming like a hawk at the young 
 guineas, and seeing them cuddle invisible under 
 small tufts and weeds. Out in the stable-lot 
 where the grass was grazed so close that the 
 geese could barely nip it, she would sometimes 
 get one of the negro men to scare the little 
 pigs, for the delight of seeing them squat as 
 
Summer in Arcady 93 
 
 though hidden, when they were no more hid 
 den than if they had spread themselves out 
 upon so many dinner dishes. All of us reveal 
 traces of this primitive instinct upon occasion. 
 Daphne was doing her best to hide now. 
 
 When Hilary realized it he moved in front 
 of her, screening her as well as possible. 
 
 " Hadn t you better lie down, too ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 "No," he replied quickly. 
 
 " But if he sees you, he might take a notion 
 to ride over this way ! " 
 
 "Then he ll have to ride." 
 
 "But, Hilary, suppose he were to find me 
 lying down here behind you, hiding?" 
 
 "Then he ll have to find you." 
 
 " You get me into trouble and then you 
 won t help me out ! " exclaimed Daphne with 
 considerable heat. 
 
 " It might not make matters any better for 
 me to hide," he answered quietly. "But if he 
 comes over here and tries to get us into trouble, 
 I ll see then what I can do." 
 
 Daphne lay silent for a moment, thinking. 
 
94 Summer in Arcady 
 
 Then she nestled more closely down, and said 
 with gay unconscious archness : 
 
 " I m not hiding because I m afraid of him. 
 I m doing it just because I want to." She did 
 not know that the fresh happiness flushing her 
 at that moment came from the fact of having 
 Hilary between herself and her father as a 
 protector ; that she was drinking in the de 
 light a woman feels in getting playfully behind 
 the man she loves in the face of danger ; but 
 her action bound her to him and brought her 
 more under his influence. 
 
 His words showed that he also felt his posi 
 tion the position of the male who stalks forth 
 from the herd and stands the silent challenger. 
 He was young, and vain of his manhood in the 
 usual innocent way that led him to carry the 
 chip on his shoulder for the world to knock off ; 
 and he placed himself before Daphne with the 
 understanding that if they were discovered, 
 there would be trouble. Her father was a 
 violent man, and the circumstances were not 
 such that any Kentucky father would overlook 
 them. But with his inward seriousness, his 
 
Summer in Arcady 95 
 
 face wore its usual look of reckless uncon 
 cern. 
 
 " Is he coming this way ? " asked Daphne, 
 after an interval of impatient waiting. 
 
 "Straight ahead. Are you hid?" 
 
 " I can t see whether I m hid or not. Where 
 is he now? " 
 
 "Right on us." 
 
 " Does he see you ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Do you think he sees me ? " 
 
 "I m sure of it." 
 
 "Then I might as well get up," said Daphne 
 with the courage of despair, and up she got. 
 Her father was riding along the path in front 
 of them, but not looking. She was down again 
 like a partridge. 
 
 " How could you fool me, Hilary ? Suppose 
 he had been looking ! " 
 
 " I wonder what he thinks I m doing, sitting 
 over here in the grass like a stump," said 
 Hilary. "If he takes me for one, he must 
 think I ve got an awful lot of roots." 
 
 "Tell me when it s time to get up." 
 
96 Slimmer in Arcady 
 
 "I will. 11 
 
 He turned softly toward her. She was lying 
 on her side, with her burning cheek in one 
 hand. The other hand rested high on the 
 curve of her hip. Her braids had fallen for 
 ward, and lay in a heavy loop about her lovely 
 shoulders. Her eyes were closed, her scarlet 
 lips parted in a smile. The edges of her 
 snow-white petticoats showed beneath her blue 
 dress, and beyond these one of her feet and 
 ankles. Nothing more fragrant with inno 
 cence ever lay on the grass. 
 
 " Is it time to get up now ? " 
 
 " Not yet," and he sat bending over her. 
 
 "Now?" 
 
 "Not yet," he repeated more softly. 
 
 " Now, then ? " 
 
 "Not for a long time." 
 
 His voice thrilled her, and she glanced up at 
 him. His laughing eyes were glowing down 
 upon her under his heavy mat of hair. She 
 sat up and looked toward the wagon crawling 
 away in the distance : her father was no longer 
 in sight. 
 
Summer in Arcady 97 
 
 One of the ewes, dissatisfied with a back 
 view, stamped her forefoot impatiently, and ran 
 round in front, and out into the sun. Her 
 lambs followed; and the three, ranging them 
 selves abreast, stared at Daphne with a look 
 of helpless inquiry. 
 
 " Sh-pp-pp ! " she cried, throwing up her 
 hands at them, irritated. " Go away ! " 
 
 They turned and ran ; the others followed ; 
 and the whole number, falling into line, took 
 a path meekly homeward. They left a greater 
 sense of privacy under the tree. Several yards 
 off was a small stock pond. Around the edge 
 of this the water stood hot and green in the 
 tracks of the cattle and the sheep, and about 
 these pools the yellow butterflies were thick, 
 alighting daintily on the promontories of the 
 mud, or rising two by two through the dazzling 
 atmosphere in columns of enamoured flight. 
 
 Daphne leaned over to the bluegrass where 
 it swayed unbroken in the breeze, and drew out 
 of their sockets several stalks of it, bearing on 
 their tops the purplish seed-vessels. With 
 them she began to braid a ring about one of 
 
98 Summer in Arcady 
 
 her fingers in the old simple fashion of the 
 country. 
 
 As they talked, he lay propped on his elbow, 
 watching her fingers, the soft slow movements 
 of which little by little wove a spell over his 
 eyes. And once again the power of her beauty 
 began to draw him beyond control. He felt 
 a desire to seize her hands, to crush them in 
 his. His eyes passed upward along her taper 
 ing wrists, the skin of which was like mother-of- 
 pearl ; upward along the arm to the shoulder 
 to her neck to her deeply crimsoned cheeks 
 to the purity of her brow to the purity of 
 her eyes, the downcast lashes of which hid 
 them like conscious fringes. 
 
 An awkward silence began to fall between 
 them. Daphne felt that the time had come 
 for her to speak. But powerless to begin, 
 she feigned to busy herself all the more de 
 votedly with braiding the deep green circlet. 
 Suddenly he drew himself through the grass 
 to her side. 
 
 "Let me!" 
 
 " No ! " she cried, lifting her arm above 
 
Summer in Arcady 99 
 
 his reach and Looking at him with a gay 
 threat. "You don t know how." 
 
 "I do know how," he said with his white 
 teeth on his red under-lip, and his eyes spar 
 kling ; and reaching upward, he laid his hand 
 in the hollow of her elbow and pulled her 
 arm down. 
 
 " No ! No ! " she cried again, putting her 
 hands behind her back. " You will spoil it ! " 
 
 " I will not spoil it," he said, moving so 
 close to her that his breath was on her face, 
 and reaching around to unclasp her hands. 
 
 "No! No! No!" she cried, bending away 
 from him. " I don t want any ring ! " and 
 she tore it from her ringer and threw it out 
 on the grass. Then she got up, and brushing 
 the grass seed off her lap put on her hat. 
 
 He sat cross-legged on the grass before 
 her. He had put on his hat and the brim 
 hid his eyes. 
 
 " And you are not going to stay and talk 
 to me ? " he said in a tone of reproachfulness 
 without looking up. 
 
 She was excited and weak and trembling, 
 
TOO Summer in Arcady 
 
 and so she put out her hand and took hold 
 of a strong loop of the grape-vine hanging 
 from a branch of the thorn, and laid her 
 cheek against her hand and looked away 
 from him. 
 
 " I thought you were better than the 
 others," he continued with the bitter wis 
 dom of twenty years. " But you women are 
 all alike. When a man gets into trouble, you 
 desert him. You hurry him on to the devil. 
 I have been turned out of the church, and 
 now you are down on me. Oh, well ! But 
 you know how much I have always liked 
 you, Daphne." 
 
 It was not the first time that he had acted 
 this character. It had been a favourite rdle. 
 But Daphne had never seen the like. She was 
 overwhelmed with happiness that he cared so 
 much for her; and to have him reproach her 
 for indifference, and see him suffering with the 
 idea that she had turned against him that 
 instantly changed the whole situation. He had 
 not heard then what had taken place at the 
 dinner. Under the circumstances, feeling cer- 
 
Summe? -in. A jfcady * - > I o I 
 
 tain that the secret of her love had not been 
 discovered, she grew emboldened to risk a 
 little more. 
 
 So she turned toward him smiling, and 
 swayed gently as she clung to the vine. 
 
 " Yes ; I have my orders not even to 
 speak to you ! Never again ! " she said with 
 the air of tantalizing. 
 
 "Then stay with me awhile now," he said, 
 and lifted slowly to her his appealing face. 
 She sat down, and screened herself with a 
 little feminine transparency. 
 
 " I can t stay long : it s going to rain ! " 
 
 He cast a wicked glance at the sky from 
 under his hat : there were a few clouds on 
 the horizon. 
 
 " And so you are never going to speak to 
 me again," he said mournfully. 
 
 " Never ! " How delicious her laughter was. 
 
 " I ll put a ring on your finger to remem 
 ber me by." 
 
 He lay over in the grass and pulled sev 
 eral stalks. Then he lifted his eyes beseech 
 ingly to hers. 
 
IO2 ^ w - : Dimmer in Arkady 
 
 "Will you let me?" 
 
 Daphne hid her hands. He drew himself 
 to her side and took one of them forcibly 
 from her lap. 
 
 With a slow caressing movement he began 
 to braid the grass ring around her finger 
 in and out, around and around, his fingers 
 laced with her fingers, his palm lying close 
 upon her palm, his blood tingling through the 
 skin upon her blood. He made the braiding 
 go wrong and took it off and began over 
 again. Two or three times she drew a deep 
 breath, and stole a bewildered look at his 
 face, which was so close to hers that his 
 hair brushed it so close that she heard 
 the quiver of his own breath. Then all at 
 once he folded his hands about hers with 
 a quick, fierce tenderness and looked up at 
 her. She turned her face aside and tried to 
 draw her hand away. His clasp tightened. 
 She snatched it away and got up with a 
 nervous laugh. 
 
 "Look at the butterflies! Aren t they 
 pretty?" 
 
Slimmer in Arcady 103 
 
 He sprang up and tried to seize her hand 
 again. 
 
 "You shan t go home yet!" he said in an 
 undertone. 
 
 " Shan t I ? " she said, backing away from 
 him. " Who s going to keep me ? " 
 
 "7 am" he said, laughing excitedly and 
 following her closely. 
 
 " My father s coming ! " she cried out as a 
 warning. 
 
 He turned and looked : there was no one 
 in sight. 
 
 "He is coming sooner or later!" she 
 called. 
 
 She had retreated several yards off into the 
 sunlight of the meadow. 
 
 The remembrance of the risk that he was 
 causing her to run checked him. He went 
 over to her. 
 
 "When can I see you again soon?" 
 
 He had never spoken so seriously to her 
 before. He had never before been so serious. 
 But within the last hour Nature had been doing 
 her work, and its effect was immediate, His 
 
IO4 Summer in Arcady 
 
 sincerity instantly conquered her. Her eyes 
 fell. 
 
 "No one has any right to keep us from 
 seeing each other!" he insisted. "We must 
 settle that for ourselves." 
 
 Daphne made no reply. 
 
 "But we can t meet here any more with 
 people passing backwards and forwards ! " he 
 continued rapidly and decisively. "What has 
 happened to-day mustn t happen again." 
 
 " No ! " she replied in a voice barely to be 
 heard. " It must never happen again. We 
 can t meet here." 
 
 They were walking side by side now toward 
 the meadow path. As they reached it he 
 paused : 
 
 "Come to the back of the pasture to 
 morrow! at four o clock!" he said tenta 
 tively, recklessly. 
 
 Daphne did not answer as she moved away 
 from him along the path homeward. 
 
 " Will you come ? " he called out to her. 
 
 She turned and shook her head. Whatever 
 her own new plans may have become, she was 
 once more happy and laughing. 
 
Summer in Arcady 105 
 
 "Come, Daphne!" 
 
 She walked several paces further and turned 
 and shook her head again. 
 
 " Come ! " he pleaded. 
 
 She laughed at him. 
 
 He wheeled round to his mare grazing near. 
 As he put his foot into the stirrup, he looked 
 again : she was standing in the same place, 
 laughing still. 
 
 "You go," she cried, waving him good-by. 
 "There ll not be a soul to disturb you! To 
 morrow at four o clock!" 
 
 "Will you be there?" he said. 
 
 " Will you ? " she answered. 
 
 "I ll be there to-morrow!" he said, "and 
 every other day till you come." 
 
XI 
 
 AN old ash-tree with a double trunk stood 
 on the rear edge of the strip of woods where 
 Daphne s father put his steers for summer 
 pasture. Other forest trees grew near by; 
 and past them ran the fence, low and rot 
 ting, which marked the troublesome boundary 
 line between her father s and Hilary s farms. 
 Blackberry bushes throve rank in some of 
 the fence corners ; in others poke-root towered 
 amid low forests of the may-apple. Pawpaw- 
 trees made a thicket on one side; and out in 
 the pasture the ironweed, not cut until Au 
 gust, spread its purple fringes far above the 
 grass. 
 
 No foot-path led that way. Chipmunks 
 chased each other along the rails, gray and 
 green in lichens, without a shriek, and scam 
 per at the discovery of a looker-on. The 
 1 06 
 
Summer in Arcady 107 
 
 sound of reapers in the nearest fields had 
 a muffled faintness. 
 
 Toward this spot about five o clock the 
 following afternoon Daphne with simple trust 
 was taking her way. From the moment when 
 Hilary had opened up the possibility of her 
 meeting him in secret, from the moment of 
 believing that he was fond of her, life had 
 become a new thing to Daphne and the 
 world a better place. A home and past like 
 hers had made little appeal to the better 
 traits in her character; but neither had it 
 yet destroyed them ; and at once love be 
 gan to soften and irradiate and ennoble her 
 as it softens and irradiates and ennobles 
 every soul who is able and worthy to feel 
 it. She was kinder to them at home that 
 day. When her father came in before din 
 ner, hot and thirsty, she had ready for him 
 a pitcher of lemonade the drops standing 
 like a heavy dew on the old Bohemian glass 
 and a fragrance exhaling from the thin half- 
 moons of lemon ; and she brought it out on 
 the porch to him as a surprise and with a 
 
io8 Summer in Arcady 
 
 novel playfulness. He drank the lemonade 
 but did not thank her or notice her. His 
 repulse caused her to turn with a fresh feel 
 ing of justification to this secret intercourse 
 with Hilary. 
 
 As she entered the woods through a meadow, 
 a butterfly, stirred from the weeds by her threat 
 ening feet, whirled itself upward into the wide, 
 hot air and entered the woods also. Nature at 
 that moment made no great difference between 
 the insect and the girl in her instructions. She 
 said to the butterfly : " Enter this woods. You 
 may find what you seek rest, honey, compan 
 ionship." And she said to Daphne: "Enter 
 this woods. You may find what you seek 
 rest from your restlessness, happiness, compan 
 ionship." If the butterfly could have been 
 asked why it cared for honey and for another 
 butterfly of the opposite sex more than for any 
 thing else in the world, or why it was under the 
 necessity of doing as Nature prompted it, there 
 could have been no reply : and no more could a 
 reply have been given to a like question by the 
 child. But if the butterfly could have reasoned 
 
Summer in Arcady 109 
 
 concerning the butterfly lot, its philosophy 
 would perhaps have fallen into this strain : 
 
 "Truly among created things on this planet 
 my life is the most unhappy. I alight with 
 famishing zest upon one flower; others have 
 been there before. I discover a fresh, splendid 
 blossom that no one has touched : it is set so 
 far inward among stems and thorns as to be out 
 of my reach. I begin to drink at the brimming 
 heart of a third, and lo ! it is an old raindrop, 
 bitter with rotting leaves. Entire days pass of 
 heavenly brightness when I fly and fly and fly 
 over fields without a blossom ; then follow cold, 
 wet ones, when I must lie hidden and wait. 
 The least wind all but tears my wings from my 
 body. I am made for perpetual calm, yet 
 inhabit an earth of unending storms. Even to 
 live, I must travel; no sooner have I moved my 
 wings than I attract the attention of my ene 
 mies. There is no end of my perils and woes ; 
 and altogether, I am of all winged creatures 
 least adapted to live on this globe. The upshot 
 of the whole truth is that Nature allots me some 
 moments of happiness during my one uncertain 
 
no Summer in Arcady 
 
 summer and impels me to make the most of 
 these. So I do. I never decline honey when I 
 want it and can get it." 
 
 Daphne would have given quite as simple 
 account of why she was now going to meet 
 Hilary in the woods. Not to have gone would 
 have been like wasting one of the few chances 
 of happiness in her unhappy life like declin 
 ing a new kind of delicious wild honey which 
 Nature bade her seek as the chief thing in all 
 the world. 
 
 She did not dream that she might be crossing 
 the invisible boundary between moral light and 
 darkness, or that she was advancing gaily 
 toward those wastes of life over which women 
 wander lost and die damned. If she could 
 have known of the countless company of her 
 sisters who have taken their first step toward 
 the central tragedy of the world by doing what 
 she now did going to the first secret meeting 
 with the men they have loved if there could 
 have flitted before her the vast pageant of the 
 painted butterflies of her race, painted and torn 
 and weary, and drooping all at last into the 
 
Summer in Arcady 1 1 1 
 
 same foul mire she might well have recoiled 
 and tottered homeward an old woman, wrinkled 
 with horror, her dark braids turned to snow. 
 
 But it was with Daphne this day as it has 
 been with so many of the others. She had not 
 yet learned what no woman who feels it can 
 ever afterwards forget the fear of herself. 
 She had learned still less that a woman will 
 risk herself with a man as though he had not 
 himself to conquer or not to conquer. She lent 
 her ear wholly to Nature who sat within her 
 and played upon the ancient beguiling pipes of 
 youth and innocence and trust and love. Many 
 a girl has arisen from her seat wherever she 
 has been in the world and gone out to answer 
 these summonses as though they were divine. 
 As for those great, solemn voices of warning 
 that sound out in many other women at such 
 moments those despairing revengeful voices 
 that perhaps sound in all women when it is 
 too late they were silent in this child. Even 
 the bell of the divine casting that hangs in the 
 mortal belfry of the soul tolled no alarm ; the 
 bell hung there, but motionless. 
 
112 Summer in Arcady 
 
 She was very lovely as she passed through 
 the sunlight and shadow of the trees lovelier 
 than any psyche of the sun floating with moons 
 of velvet jet on wings of heaven s blue love 
 liest with the look of love thrilling in her; 
 and no wild, lithe, gray leaper from tree-top 
 to tree-top was ever more palpitant with animal 
 life. 
 
 As she drew near the group of forest trees, 
 she kept herself screened behind the ironweed 
 and pawpaw-bushes. Some one else might be 
 there. Would he be there ? About ten yards 
 off she paused and peeped through the thick 
 boughs. 
 
 He was sitting at the root of the ash-tree 
 with his face turned toward the opening 
 through which he expected her to come. On 
 the grass beside him lay his riding-gloves. On 
 his knees, which were drawn up before him, he 
 held a memorandum book, and in this he was 
 scribbling. Now and then he would raise his 
 eyes and watch for her, and frown with disap 
 pointment, and return to his lead-pencil. 
 
 Her eyes dwelt on him eagerly ; her heart 
 
Summer in Arcady 113 
 
 beat loudly in her ears ; an unwonted shyness 
 urged her to slip away unseen. 
 
 A rabbit sat in its bed in the deep grass a 
 few feet from where she stood, and growing 
 suspicious of her, that she did not move on, 
 leaped softly forth and ran across the open 
 space past the tree to the fence behind. As it 
 bounded by Hilary he threw his gloves at it 
 from old boyish habit, and then, with a loud 
 laugh, went and raked them out from under 
 the briers. When he returned to the tree 
 again, she was sitting quietly in his place. 
 
 " I thought you were never coming," she 
 cried, mocking him reproachfully. 
 
 He stood staring at her in ludicrous surprise 
 and delight. 
 
 "How did you get here?" he exclaimed. 
 "Ride on that rabbit?" 
 
 " I rode on my two little white ones," she 
 replied, daintily smoothing her skirts forward to 
 cover her feet, as he threw himself down before 
 her. 
 
 "The little white rabbits must be awfully 
 tired." 
 
114 Slimmer in Arcady 
 
 "They are." 
 
 "Then they ll have to rest here a long time." 
 
 " Of course ! For hours and hours ! " 
 
 " Is this the first time the little white rabbits 
 were ever in the woods ? " 
 
 "They ve been in a poor little cage ever 
 since they were born. Didn t you know 
 that ? " 
 
 " And didn t they ever get tired of the cage 
 before ? " 
 
 "Oh, awfully tired." 
 
 " And now they are never going to be satis 
 fied to stay in the cage again, are they ? " 
 
 " No, never ! " 
 
 "But what s going to become of them? 
 Where are they going to stay ? " 
 
 " Oh they ll find a place somewhere ! " 
 
 " Don t you know there are a great many 
 big dogs in the world that eat up little white 
 rabbits ? " 
 
 " Do they ? How dreadful ! And what be 
 comes of these big dogs ? " 
 
 "Oh nothing! They just eat up some 
 more ! " 
 
Summer in Arcady 115 
 
 " Poor little rabbits ! If mine were to see one 
 of these dogs, how they would run ! " 
 
 He laughed and lay on his back, watching 
 her contentedly. 
 
 " What were you writing ? " she asked with 
 a gay threat some minutes later. " I saw you 
 writing." 
 
 "A note to you. I thought you were not 
 coming. I was going to send it to you." 
 
 "Then give it to me it s mine!" 
 
 He drew out of his breast pocket a thick, old 
 memorandum book and pulled off the strap. 
 
 It was a curious little book of his personal 
 history. He had bought it upon his father s 
 death, when he had come to the head of affairs, 
 and begun to equip himself with things that 
 gratified his idea of a young farmer s impor 
 tance. About half of it was now taken up with 
 such items as the price of agricultural imple 
 ments, the number of bushels of grain to the 
 acre, and the date of foals ; but the last part 
 was filled with other things. 
 
 In it were scribbled the names of a good 
 many girls ; on some of the pages a great many 
 
n6 Summer in Arcady 
 
 times the names of a few girls ; on others the 
 name of one girl had been written over and 
 over. There were little confessions to some 
 that had relieved his heart and delighted his 
 eye with their air of confidential reality at the 
 moment of writing them. Sometimes, also, 
 when he had been riding in a buggy with a girl, 
 to a church or to a picnic, and the way was 
 long and the horse was tired, he had feigned 
 to be far away from her, and had scribbled 
 notes to her that became a thousand times more 
 telling because of that intoxicating sham be 
 cause of that hopeless distance between them, 
 while his shoulder lay against hers and their 
 breaths mingled. He had done the same thing 
 on long, black mohair sofas in parlours of a Sun 
 day afternoon, availing himself of the dim light 
 that came through the slits of the blinds and 
 the shutters. And he had done the same thing 
 in church with the help of a hymn-book, a hand 
 kerchief, or a palm-leaf fan all the time keep 
 ing a pious eye on the preacher and looking 
 remorseful about his sins. 
 
 He searched among the pages until he found 
 
Summer in Arcady 117 
 
 the note he had just written, and lay back again 
 watching her. 
 
 It was her first love-letter. Imagine a fawn 
 that for days has been wandering lost and 
 athirst over rock and plain, but at last in some 
 green woodland solitude sees the brink of a 
 cold lake and one of the herd browsing near. 
 More than water to thirst, or reunion with kind 
 was this letter to Daphne. Among the things 
 that he had written, he had set down his real 
 disappointment that she had not met him, and 
 he had added his determination to see her, no 
 matter who forbade. Nevertheless, to him the 
 scrap of paper meant something less than love. 
 To her it was a sacred scroll, bidding her to 
 enter the old, old earthly paradise. 
 
 As she finished reading it, she could not look 
 at him. The flush of her own inward confes 
 sion dyed her neck and face and brow. In 
 her embarrassment her fingers began to turn 
 over the leaves and her eyes to fall upon other 
 names and other notes. 
 
 "Are these for me, also? " she asked simply. 
 
 He sprang up, turning a deep red. 
 
Ii8 Summer in Arcady 
 
 "Give it here," he cried, trying to take the 
 book from her. 
 
 "No! " cried Daphne, laughing. "You gave 
 it to me to read ! " 
 
 In a moment he was on his knees before her 
 and had imprisoned her hand with the book in 
 it. With the other he drew the book out and 
 put it into his pocket. Then all at once the 
 same unforeseen desire that had thrilled him 
 that day in the meadow the same unforeseen 
 desire that had come over him as he braided the 
 ring on her hand the day before now rose in 
 him with overmastering strength, and he held 
 her hand. 
 
 " Don t, Hilary ! " she said sweetly, with a 
 little wince of pain. " Let me go. You hurt 
 me ! " 
 
 He caught her other hand. 
 
 " Hilary ! " she cried again, with a deeper 
 rebuke in her voice, falling backward against 
 the tree and struggling to release her hands. 
 
 He tried to draw her to him with a low, 
 caressing laugh. 
 
 " Hilary ! Hilary ! " she cried, resisting him 
 
Slimmer in Arcady 119 
 
 with a sudden terror of his advances, his rough 
 tenderness, the torrent of his feelings. Then 
 with one awful thought, and the strength it 
 gave her, she struggled out of his arms to her 
 feet, and stood supporting herself with one 
 hand against the tree. He rose, and they con 
 fronted each other. The great solemn voices 
 were sounding now : the divine bell was tolling 
 now. Her face seemed cut from marble, and 
 her eyes were full of fright and distress. 
 
 He looked at her, pale, without a word. 
 
 Then, as if realizing what she must do, she 
 started homeward. 
 
 He sprang after her with a bitter cry to 
 her. 
 
 She turned, her figure drawn quickly tense 
 and her eyes filling with a calm, sad light. He 
 could no more have spoken again, or taken one 
 step, than he could have pulled up the oak-tree 
 near him and offered it to her as a flower of 
 apology. And so he stood watching her as she 
 walked falteringly away from him until, gather 
 ing all her strength for one effort, she broke 
 into a run, and tripped and fell, and got weakly 
 
I2O Summer in Arcady 
 
 up with one quick, frightened glance back at 
 him, and then ran on. 
 
 For the first time in many years feeling that 
 her home would be like heaven to reach, she 
 fled through the woods. 
 
 When she had gained the house unnoticed, 
 she passed as noiselessly as a shadow to her 
 room, locked the door, and threw herself across 
 the foot of her bed. Then reaching for a 
 pillow, and drawing it with a tight clutch down 
 over her face, she lay there. 
 
 The sun sank low, and its level rays coming 
 through the little, green shutters kissed pityingly 
 the shoes on her feet. One by one the sounds 
 came on that mark the close of a summer day 
 in the country : the calling of the cattle home 
 and the bleat of calves at the milking ; the jan 
 gling of trace-chains in the quiet, darkening 
 air, as the workmen return from the fields to 
 the barn; the cutting of oats for the horses; 
 the last peaceful quarrels of the fowls going to 
 roost in the trees about the yard ; the play of 
 the young negroes up at the woodpile ; the shuf 
 fling of feet busy about the wash-basin on the 
 
Summer in Arcady 121 
 
 porches below ; and the loud beating of the bis 
 cuit and the grinding of coffee in the kitchen. 
 Then the setting of the supper-table out on the 
 porch, and the dragging of the chairs to their 
 places ; and across the big, white stones in the 
 yard the careful tread of other feet, bringing the 
 milk and butter from the cool spring-house. 
 
 At last her mother s voice a meek, quaver 
 ing treble sounded at the foot of the stairs : 
 
 " Daphne, why don t you come to your 
 supper ? " 
 
 Ah ! if she had had the right kind of a 
 mother, all this would never have happened. 
 
 After an interval, bare feet rushed up the 
 stairway, and impatient hands tried the door, 
 and voices sounded through the keyhole. 
 
 " Daphne, you d better come to your sup 
 per." 
 
 After another interval her father s voice, 
 stern, inquiring, rose from the foot of the 
 stair : 
 
 " Daphne ? " 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 " Daphne?" 
 
122 Summer in Arcady 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 Then his heavy, awkward tread came up the 
 steps, his toes kicking against the brass rods, 
 and his hand shaking the knob violently. 
 
 "Daphne?" 
 
 She opened the door. 
 
 " What s the matter with you?" he said 
 harshly and taking her by the arm led her over 
 to the western window. 
 
 But when they reached it, she turned her 
 face from the low light, and forgetting the past 
 all his coldness, all his unkindness, all the 
 wrong she threw her arms around his neck 
 and hid her face on his bosom with a bitter 
 cry: 
 
 "Oh, father! father! father! You are all 
 that I have in the world." 
 
 Her voice pierced even him; and putting 
 his arms around her, the hard, grisly man, for 
 the first time in his life, strained her to his 
 breast and cried out in broken tones over her 
 head : 
 
 "My poor child! What has happened to 
 you?" 
 
XII 
 
 A CRYSTAL spring gurgled out of the lime 
 stone near the foot of the hill on which Daphne s 
 home had been built by a pioneer forefather. 
 The mouth of this spring had been enlarged 
 and the earth dug away, allowing the water to 
 spread over a flat basin of rock. From the 
 lower edge of this it tinkled away through a 
 mossy trough to the branch in the lot below. 
 Over this basin of rock a spring-house had been 
 built ; large round stones placed here and there 
 for the feet ; and sunk in the dark, cold water 
 were crocks and tins, keeping the milk and 
 butter sweet in the fashion of times and man 
 ners now nearly gone. A foot-path ran down 
 to the spring-house through the back yard and 
 past an old orchard of apple and peach trees. 
 
 Toward dusk one evening, about two weeks 
 later, Daphne had gone down, as often her 
 123 
 
124 Summer in Arcady 
 
 custom was, to skim the milk for supper : the 
 negro girl was soon to come for it. 
 
 But when she had entered the spring-house, 
 she paused among the crocks and tins, lost in 
 her thoughts. She had not had many thoughts 
 in those two long, long weeks poor Daphne ! 
 but the few she had never left her. 
 
 She was freshly dressed in a simple home 
 frock of white. The ends of her long braids 
 were tied together with a blue riband. A spray 
 of heliotrope laid its fragrance on her round 
 breast. She breathed the purity of a primrose 
 that has just opened in the cool twilight grass. 
 The gray-green light of the room, reflected 
 from the white walls and from the moss of the 
 rocks, threw upon her face a pallor that made 
 its sadness very touching. 
 
 Seeing her standing thus, slender and still 
 and white on the low, green stones as though 
 poised on the leaves of the lotus, with only the 
 voice of the tiny spring rippling on the silence 
 as it struggled out of its caverns, the fancy for 
 got who she was and where she was and fell to 
 dreaming of those faint, far shapes that in the 
 
Summer in Arcady 125 
 
 youth of the world s imagination haunted the 
 borderland of mystery and reality. What was 
 she but a nymph of the fountain, brought by 
 some late disaster to ponder the secrets of life 
 and nature ? Or drawing her comfort from the 
 little spring, whose fate it was to fall clear from 
 the skies ; to run a little way over the earth 
 now in light, now in darkness, gathering many 
 stains ; and at last to be drawn back home to 
 the skies, clear once more ? 
 
 She had stood thus only a few minutes when 
 her ear caught the sound of feet on the stones 
 outside. The next moment a figure darkened 
 the doorway : she turned dreamily ; it was 
 Hilary. 
 
 He came down the few steps that led to the 
 basin of rock and walked to the edge of it and 
 stopped there, looking across at her with his 
 face full of trouble. 
 
 She forgot her anger ; forgot her humiliation ; 
 forgot the anguish in which she had lived since 
 they had parted ; forgot his boldness in daring 
 to seek her in such a place and at such an hour, 
 and the consequences to them both if he were 
 
126 Summer in Arcady 
 
 discovered. She forgot everything but the joy 
 of seeing him again which made itself felt 
 beyond any power of help or hindrance. 
 
 But she grew as cold as though her feet were 
 freezing to the rocks and her large, mournful, 
 startled eyes put between him and her a dis 
 tance that was not to be crossed. 
 
 "I have been trying to see you," he said, 
 " trying every day every day for two weeks. 
 But you would not give me a chance : you have 
 stayed at home. I understand ! I am not blam 
 ing you ! But I can t stand it any longer ! If I 
 had not seen you to-day, I was coming to the 
 house to-morrow ! I don t care ! " he cried with 
 a gesture of uncontrollable feeling as he saw a 
 new look of fear on her face. "I was coming! " 
 and as he spoke, for the first time there rang 
 out in his voice his real love of her. 
 
 Nature had been having her way with him as 
 an animal during these days of waiting; but 
 something else had begun to have its way also 
 something that we satisfy ourselves by call 
 ing not earthly and of the body, but unearthly 
 and of the soul something that is not pursuit 
 
Summer in Arcady 127 
 
 and enjoyment of another, but self-sacrifice for 
 another s sake that does not bring satiety 
 but ever-growing dearness onward through 
 youth and joy into old age and sorrow that 
 remains faithful when the one of two sits warm 
 in the sun and the other lies cold in the shadow 
 that burns on and on as a faithful lonely 
 flame in a worn-out broken lamp and that 
 asks, when everything else is over, for a life 
 throughout eternity, spirit with spirit. 
 
 The change in him was unmistakable. She 
 understood ; and in a moment the whole past 
 against him was blotted out. 
 
 He stepped upon the rocks toward her. 
 
 She stretched out one of her hands with a 
 gesture of remonstrance. 
 
 "Go back!" she said faintly. 
 
 But he came on over and stood close be 
 fore her and looked her imploringly in the 
 eyes. 
 
 " I cant go away ! " he said. " I under 
 stand how you feel ! But you must try to 
 understand how I feel, Daphne ! Try to 
 understand everything ! " 
 
128 Summer in Arcady 
 
 "I can t talk to you here," she answered 
 pleadingly. " If you will only go away ! . . . 
 They will be coming here in a minute . . . 
 they will see you ! " 
 
 " I am going back to the house with you," 
 he replied stubbornly. " I am going to ask 
 your father and mother for you ... if you 
 will only say ..." 
 
 "No! No!" she cried. "It would only 
 make it worse worse for me ! They have 
 threatened me ! . . . If I meet you again, 
 they are going to send me away to some 
 school for a year two three years ! 
 Will you go for my sake ? " 
 
 "They shall not send you away!" he 
 replied. "It is not for them it is for you 
 to say." 
 
 "Oh, then, if you care for me don t stay 
 here any longer." 
 
 " But when can I see you ? " 
 
 "Only give me time to think." 
 
 " I will not go till you promise to meet me 
 again ! Will you come to the back of the 
 pasture to-morrow ? " 
 
Summer in Arcady 129 
 
 "I can t! I can t promise that." 
 
 " Don t you trust me now, Daphne ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes ! But will you go ? " 
 
 "Will you come to-morrow?" 
 
 "I will see you somewhere soon!" 
 
 " No ! " he cried. " To-morrow ! I must 
 
 see you to-morrow! I ll wait for you. If you 
 
 are not there, I am coming to the house." 
 "If you loved me," she said with a quick 
 
 reproachful gesture, " you would go away 
 
 now ! " 
 
 He turned and went out. 
 
XIII 
 
 SHE went to the rear of the pasture the next 
 afternoon and found him waiting; and after 
 that she met him there every few days, some 
 times daily. 
 
 A pair of butterflies out of their countless 
 kind had met on the meadows of life and, 
 forgetting all others, were beginning to cling. 
 The time was not far off when Nature would 
 demand her crisis that ever old, ever new 
 miracle of the dust through which the perish 
 able becomes the enduring, and the individual 
 of a moment renews itself into a type for 
 ages. 
 
 The crisis came on in beauty. The noon 
 of summer now was nigh. Each day the 
 great tawny sun became a more fierce and 
 maddening lover of the earth, and flushed her 
 more deeply, and awoke in her throes of re 
 sponsive energy, until the whole land seemed 
 130 
 
Summer in Arcady 131 
 
 to burn with colour and to faint in its own 
 sweetness. 
 
 And this high aerial miracle of two floating 
 spheres that swept all life along in the flow 
 of its tide, caught the boy as a running sea 
 catches a weed. 
 
 He began to lose energy and interest in 
 his work. He would go out to the fields and 
 forget everything, or not care ; and throwing 
 himself down in the shade of a tree, lie with 
 his hat over his eyes until the dinner-horn 
 sounded faint and clear, calling him home. 
 When night fell he was restless and away, 
 riding back late and slowly, not having 
 spoken with any one. The mare s nervous 
 ears often questioned his silent lips, and her 
 eyes glanced uneasily backward at his figure, 
 with its hands folded over the pommel of his 
 saddle, and the moonlight shining on his face, 
 serious and still. When he had turned her 
 out, he sat for a long time smoking, and his 
 mother s unseen fan often stirred the air 
 softly about his face like the wing of a hov 
 ering bird. But he addressed few or no 
 
132 Summer in Arcady 
 
 words to her; and at last with a wound at 
 the change in him, but with no questions and 
 with no suspicion of the cause, lingeringly she 
 left him to his mood. Then his setter would 
 creep nearer and lay her head heavily across 
 his lap, uttering her reproachful whine. More 
 than one sweet girl of the neighbourhood slipt 
 out into her porch during the fragrant twi 
 lights of these days and waited for the sound 
 of a front gate being opened; but he did not 
 come. And in a private street of the town not 
 far away a richly furnished house, with lighted 
 windows kept well curtained and closed, also 
 missed him greatly and persistently. 
 
 All women to him had become Daphne in 
 the woods. 
 
 At first he had urged her to let him speak to 
 her father and mother and end the secrecy, but 
 she had counselled that this would be worse 
 than cruelty to her ; they disliked him bitterly ; 
 she was a child. He was a child also, she 
 added ; but the look with which she said this 
 was not the look that one child gives an 
 other. For both reasons her father would 
 
Summer in Arcady 133 
 
 separate them at once ; and at the mere thought 
 of her separation from him she betrayed how 
 her life now clung to his. He reflected for 
 his own part upon the folly of marrying at 
 his age, with no roof of his own to shelter her, 
 and with his mother s certain anger and prob 
 able refusal to receive them even for a while 
 into her home. 
 
 Thus they continued to meet, and he realized 
 that she did not understand the constantly in 
 creasing danger. 
 
 For she had greatly changed. At the open 
 ing of June, but a few weeks before, she had 
 been of a fretful and rebellious temper, dis 
 satisfied with her surroundings, without a tie in 
 life that kept her in constant activity, and there 
 fore in constant rest. But under that rapid 
 growth which some women undergo when the 
 revelation of Nature has fallen upon them for 
 the first time, and with the explanation it gives 
 of so many things, all her vague yearnings had 
 taken rigid order or sunk into nothingness 
 around this single passion. She, too, had 
 behind her generations of immoral forefathers, 
 
134 Summer in Arcady 
 
 each of whom in weakening the moral fibre of 
 his own nature had helped to weaken hers. It 
 was along the edge of the sad immemorial har 
 vests sown by them that her wayward feet were 
 straying. 
 
 And now the thought preyed ceaselessly 
 upon him of how another man in his place 
 might use his advantage. 
 
 But it aroused in him, at least, the greater 
 care that his own power over her should be 
 come her defender. He did not forget that 
 she had been drawn into this false situation by 
 his urgency; and whatever else he may not 
 have had, he had the spirit of fair play. Her 
 absolute trust of him alone would have put him 
 upon his honour, even had not the first impulse 
 of his love been to draw about her the circle of 
 sacredness. Perhaps something in his dissolute 
 past had already taught him that a man s love 
 for a woman is bound up with his knowledge 
 or at least his belief of her purity. 
 
 There were days when he scarcely dared see 
 her ; and not once had he so much as touched 
 her hands, except at meeting and at parting. 
 
Summer in Arcady 135 
 
 At times he was grave and silent, as though 
 he were revolving some plan for them in the 
 knowledge of which he allowed her no share ; 
 at other times indeed always he struck her 
 as being secretly troubled. If she sought to 
 question him, he was rude and cross with her. 
 She misunderstood the change in him, and was 
 deeply wounded ; and her old wretched doubts 
 of him returned. Was this the beginning of 
 coldness and withdrawal ? Did he care for her 
 after all ? No woman feels sure in such a case 
 and the case has many forms in life what 
 it is that has attracted a man, or how long and 
 at what a price she can hold him. 
 
 Thus her love rose in her like a spring that 
 must overflow in the end, and he lay beside the 
 spring with a parched tongue. 
 
 One afternoon as he was riding along that 
 side of his farm, he hitched his mare and 
 walked across to the spot where they were in 
 the habit of meeting. Once she had asked him 
 whether he ever came to it when she was not 
 there, and he had said that he often felt like 
 coming. 
 
136 Summer in Arcady 
 
 She was there already. The afternoon before 
 they had shifted their position under the trees 
 to avoid the sun, and had gone to a fresh place 
 in the cool grass. When they had risen, she 
 had laughed at the print of his figure. 
 
 She lay in this print of his figure now, 
 with her face buried in her hands. Some 
 thing in her attitude made him feel sure that 
 she was praying. He left the place quickly, 
 noiselessly, with a new awe of her. 
 
 That night as he sat alone on the porch, 
 his thoughts returned to this scene. What 
 impulse had drawn her to the place? And 
 of what could she be praying? Was the 
 struggle going on in her nature, as in his, 
 the same struggle ? 
 
 Over the tree-tops the stars of the southern 
 summer night were glowing with chaste fire. 
 The flowers about the yard were releasing 
 their last fragrance to the night ; and from 
 their hiding-places under the leaves, beneath 
 the grass, in the crevices of the roof and the 
 walls, everywhere, the butterflies of the earth s 
 shadow with wings of silver and breasts of 
 
Summer in Arcady 137 
 
 snow were hurrying to the blossoms, circling 
 about their loves, pursuing and meeting each 
 other in the languorous darkness. 
 
 He had been of their roving kind using 
 their freedom, lacking their innocence a 
 seeker of the fast-fading buds of the night. 
 
 Nature had never made him of the highest 
 or for the highest, and he had already fallen 
 a good deal lower than he was made ; but of 
 late the linking of his life to a pure one, in 
 duty and in desire, had helped him in his 
 struggle to do what was right. The recollec 
 tion of the scene of to-day touched him most 
 deeply, and perhaps during these moments he 
 realized as far as was possible to him now, 
 that the happiness of a man s life lies and 
 must always lie where a woman s lies. 
 
 But on the shifting sands of a false past 
 and with hands little fitted for the work, he 
 was making his first sincere but blundering 
 effort to rear a barrier of a moral resistance 
 as the safeguard of two lives. And far out on 
 the deeps of life Nature, like a great bury 
 ing wave, was rolling shoreward toward him. 
 
XIV 
 
 LOVELY June had gone and nearly all July. 
 It was Saturday and for an hour or more the 
 shadows of things had been lengthening east 
 ward. 
 
 A great circus had come to town that day. 
 From early morning a band of white dust, be 
 ginning on the green horizon at the north and 
 disappearing on the green horizon at the south, 
 had hung over the turnpike, marking the pas 
 sage of vehicles and horsemen. At every sta 
 tion the train had taken on gaily dressed, merry 
 people. 
 
 Quiet as if Sunday rest had fallen upon the 
 fields. A plough lay at the end of a furrow, 
 the earth still undried upon the mole, the gear 
 pitched among the weeds in the fence corner, 
 the horses scarce done drinking at the pond in 
 the woods and wearing the sweat mark of the 
 collar on their necks. A yoke of oxen stood 
 138 
 
Slimmer in Arcady 139 
 
 resting under a mighty elm, the loaded wagon 
 left in the far-away fields, beside the unfinished 
 wheat stack. For miles in every direction hardly 
 a voice or a human presence on the landscape, 
 except perhaps the slumberous singing of an 
 old negro at work with a loving hoe among 
 the watermelon vines or the sweet potatoes. 
 
 Upon many of the homesteads a quiet greater 
 still some closed, door and shutter, and not 
 a soul remaining. Here a barn door had been 
 left unbolted, so that the calves had gotten in 
 and were tearing the yellow heads of the new 
 oats; there a garden gate unlatched, and the 
 fowls were scratching up the late peas and 
 sinking their bills into the red tomatoes. In 
 the cabin door of one farm-house under her 
 gourd-vines and sunflowers, a granny might 
 have been sitting, her fillet of white wool silver 
 ing in the sunbeams between her ebon brow 
 and scarlet turban, her clawlike finger on the 
 bowl of her pipe, a babe asleep across her 
 knees. On the porch at another house, in 
 the shadow of the Catawba grape-vines, an 
 old farmer dozed solitary in his sock feet and 
 
140 Summer in Arcady 
 
 unbuttoned waistcoat ; or he having passed 
 away his wife, with her Bible in her lap and 
 heavy spectacles on her dim eyes, sat softly 
 rocking, and knitting, and praying, soon to 
 be with him in the world of eternal youth. 
 
 Upon the midsummer woods most of all lay 
 brooding stillness and subtle relaxing heat. In 
 the depths of one the moo of a restless heifer 
 broke at intervals upon the ear like a faint, 
 far bell of distress. The squirrel hid asleep. 
 The cuckoo barely lilted in silky flight among 
 the trees. The mourning moth lay on the 
 thistle with flattened wings as still as death. 
 The blue snake-doctor had dropped on the 
 brink of the green pool like a lost jewel. Amid 
 such silence in a forest, the imagination takes 
 on the belief that all things in Nature under 
 stand and are waiting for some one to come 
 for something to happen that they will all 
 feel. 
 
 Daphne glided like a swift, noiseless shadow 
 into the woods. 
 
 It was partly by reason of her doubt of him 
 that she had arranged their meeting for this 
 
Summer in Arcady 141 
 
 afternoon. He had been telling her that he 
 was going to the circus ; and she had jealously 
 watched the eagerness with which he looked 
 forward to that pleasure. He had been keenly 
 disappointed therefore when she had named 
 this day and he had begged her to set another ; 
 but she had refused, and at last he had said 
 that this day it should be. 
 
 To avoid suspicion, he was to drive to town 
 in the morning, let himself be seen on the 
 streets by the people from the neighbourhood, 
 and allow it to be taken for granted that he 
 was going to the circus. He was to come out 
 by another turnpike, drive across through a 
 lane, and hitch his buggy somewhere near the 
 woods. Daphne was to remain at home with 
 her grandmother the country would be de 
 serted they would have the whole afternoon 
 to themselves. 
 
 But when she now reached the edge of 
 the pawpaw thicket and peeped through the 
 branches, there was no one sitting at the foot 
 of the ash-tree. She stepped anxiously into 
 the open space and looked about her. With 
 
142 Summer in Arcady 
 
 a sweet smile of discovery she ran to the tree 
 and peeped behind. Then she stood with her 
 hand against it, overcome with disappointment. 
 But he might be hiding somewhere near. 
 
 " Hilary ! " she cried. 
 
 Her voice was so faint that it could have 
 penetrated only a few yards. Amid the deep 
 silence of the woods it terrified her as though 
 it could be heard back at the house. But 
 there was something worse now than even the 
 fear of being heard. 
 
 " Hilary ! " she cried more loudly. Of all 
 those little appeals that the women send out 
 for the men in such cases for the men who 
 do not intend to come none could ever have 
 been more distressing. 
 
 A ground-squirrel that had been watching 
 her from between two fence rails darted with 
 a shriek into his hole. It gave her a great 
 start, and out of sheer weakness she sat down. 
 Then she bent her ear, listening. Only the 
 bell-like moo in her father s pasture. 
 
 The world was suddenly to Daphne as if 
 sackcloth had been drawn over the sun. 
 
Summer in Arcady 143 
 
 The temptation to stay in town had been too 
 great: he was not coming. He knew that 
 she would be there, waiting ; but that was noth 
 ing to him. He was tired of her, and had de 
 serted her, as she had always known that he 
 would. She drew her knees up and laid her 
 sick, white face over on them. 
 
 Then there was the sound of feet hurrying 
 nearer, and the snapping of dried twigs under 
 the grass ; then the breaking of a rail on the 
 fence, as a heavy weight was thrown reck 
 lessly upon it ; and then he hurried round into 
 the open space, and when he saw her, stopped 
 short, with his hat in his hand and the worried 
 expression on his face vanishing as though he 
 had stepped from shadow into sunlight. 
 
 In an instant she noticed as in their un 
 like ways women do little changes in his 
 appearance which left him more attractive in 
 her rustic eyes : he had on a new suit of clothes 
 which made him look cool and sweet ; he had had 
 his hair cut and was freshly shaved, so that his 
 face wore the freshness of a child s that still has 
 the wholesome fragrance of the bath upon it. 
 
144 Summer in Arcady 
 
 The happiness of knowing that she had 
 wronged him that he had given up every 
 thing for the sake of coming back to her 
 that he was hers absolutely wrought the 
 betrayal of Daphne s self-control. She was 
 taken off her guard. Her love swept her on 
 like a flood. With a cry of gratitude and de 
 light she ran to him, but checked herself, and 
 merely caught his hand and kissed it again 
 and again, and pressed it to her bosom, and 
 laid her cheek down on it and held it there, 
 closing her eyes to hide her tears. 
 
 And this in her was so sudden and so 
 maddening to him that, taken off his guard 
 also his long self-restraint swept away 
 with a low answering cry he threw his arms 
 around her and drew her form in against his. 
 Then, bending her slowly backward, his face 
 close over her face, he pressed his lips to 
 hers. 
 
 The young trust themselves alone with Nat 
 ure, who cares only for life and nothing for 
 the higher things that make life worth the liv 
 ing. To them who understand her deadly 
 
Slimmer in Arcady 145 
 
 approaches she can come least near with the 
 power to harm. When her low storm threat 
 ens, they can rise to higher strongholds, per 
 haps to the great calm crags of spiritual re 
 treat, and look down with pity upon her havoc 
 in the plain. But the young, who have not 
 learned and do not suspect, these from the 
 creation of the world she has been engulfing 
 as those who once walked between walls of 
 water. 
 
 How still the woods were all around ! How 
 still the trees were overhead. For centuries 
 their roots, their boughs and buds and heart 
 fibres, had witnessed the love histories of the 
 irresponsible little creatures of earth and air 
 that had come and gone, countless and for 
 gotten, like their own leaves. Never had Nat 
 ure driven to them such an earthly pair, two 
 ephemera of immortal destinies. 
 
 How still the woods were, except that not 
 far away, in Hilary s pasture, a wild, danger 
 ous bull, whose blood was raging, paused once 
 as he roved nearer and listened, his head in 
 the air ; then with a deep answering roar came 
 
146 Summer in Arcady 
 
 hurrying on : a vast bulk with noble arching 
 neck covered with red curls ; red curls about 
 the base of his crescent horns; a central sun 
 of white curls between his sullen, majestic 
 eyes ; his head now swung low ; the snowy 
 fringes of his tail rippling far behind across 
 the grass and weeds. 
 
 Straight on toward the still trees he moved, 
 with the lash of his feet through the grass, 
 and the snapping of vines across his resist 
 less brows straight on toward a panel of the 
 fence where the briers were short and the top 
 rail broken. The pause of an instant there ; 
 then his awful weight was lifted, and came 
 crushing down. 
 
 With a cry of alarm Hilary sprang up and 
 stood between him and Daphne. But the great 
 glad beast, looking neither to the right nor to 
 the left, and with one announcing roar, swept 
 past them. 
 
 When Hilary turned, Daphne had risen and 
 gone. She had sunk on the grass some yards 
 away, and she had hidden her face in her 
 hands and was crying bitterly. 
 
Summer in Arcady 147 
 
 He did not go to her. He did not know 
 what to do, or what he was doing. He walked 
 mechanically around to the broken panel and 
 stood looking over into his pasture, seeing 
 everything, and seeing nothing. 
 
 He was like a traveller who has passed from 
 the radiance of moonlight into the blackness 
 of a tempest and been blinded by a red flame 
 in his face ; so that for a moment he does not 
 feel his feet under him, or know his road, but 
 stands with the crash of the heavens in his 
 ears, and a sense of his helplessness amid 
 the forces of Nature that are freeing them 
 selves without any concern for his life or his 
 death. But even while he stands thus per 
 haps the next minute a few rays may strug 
 gle down into the pit of darkness, recalling 
 him to his path and to what reigns on above 
 the storm. 
 
 He came around from behind the briers 
 and hurried across the open space to where 
 Daphne sat; and, dropping on one knee be 
 fore her, he began to speak to her. He had 
 the air of a man who has thrown away every- 
 
148 Summer in Arcady 
 
 thing for the sake of one only. At first she 
 did not hear or heed ; later she listened. Then 
 for a few minutes longer they spoke together 
 passionately, he pleading, she refusing; after 
 which he got up and walked to and fro, while 
 she buried her face in her hands again. Then 
 he glanced at his watch, and with an exclama 
 tion returned to her. 
 
 "There s only a little time left, Daphne!" 
 he said imploringly. "We barely have time 
 before the train passes. We can arrange 
 everything on the way to the station. There 
 is no one to stop us. Will you go with me ? " 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 He got down on his knee again and laid 
 his hand tenderly on her head and urged her 
 yet another time: 
 
 "We can get to Aberdeen to-night. . . . 
 We can be married to-night. . . . Won t you 
 go with me, Daphne ? " 
 
 Still she did not answer. So that he rose 
 and stood looking down upon her in silence. 
 His one thought was the danger they had 
 just escaped, and the one duty before him, as 
 
Summer in Arcady 149 
 
 he saw it now, was clear as noonday. When 
 he spoke again, it was with a sudden wrench 
 of nature. 
 
 " Then, Daphne, I am going to tell you 
 good-by now ! " 
 
 She sprang up and came close, and looked 
 him piercingly in the eyes. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " she said. 
 
 "I mean," he answered, "that you must go 
 with me, and marry me now, or we must not 
 meet in this way any more." 
 
 "Oh!" she cried, clasping her hands to 
 her heart and looking at him piteously. 
 
 "Daphne," he cried, "your father will 
 never consent. ... If we are ever to marry, 
 we ll have to go in this way. But if you 
 will not go," he added with a forced harsh 
 ness that he had never used to her before, 
 "then go home." 
 
 She stood, her tears arrested, her lips quiv 
 ering, her eyes searching his face miserably. 
 
 "You mean," she asked at length, slowly, 
 " that you will not meet me here 
 any more ? " 
 
150 Summer in Arcady 
 
 -No." 
 
 She closed her eyes, and a shiver passed 
 through her as though his words had cut her 
 like a lance. Then she came a step nearer to 
 him, with a fear in her eyes that was awful to 
 see ; and in the same slow way she asked again : 
 
 " You mean that you will not 
 meet me anywhere any more ? " 
 
 " No ! " he cried again with blind impetuos 
 ity and the same forced harshness. 
 
 There was no playground in the summer 
 woods for them now but a bare foothold on 
 a steep mountain rock; the right and the 
 wrong of life and death yawned near them. 
 
 " Marry me now ! " he cried for the last 
 time and with a warning. 
 
 She stood bending slightly toward him, look 
 ing beyond him into the future if she yielded. 
 She foresaw the unforgiveness of her father 
 and mother, which would last through life ; the 
 anger of his mother, whom she dreaded; the 
 long distance to be travelled, and the risk of 
 their being stopped on the way ; the river to 
 be crossed ; the uncertainty of getting the 
 
Summer in Arcady 151 
 
 marriage ceremony performed that night, and 
 the necessity of her being left alone with him 
 in a strange place. To this last thought was 
 linked a new fear of herself and of him that 
 had been aroused during the last hour ; for 
 Nature had stolen treacherously nigh them 
 both, as is her sad, sad wont with her human 
 children. And with this fear now came again 
 the old torturing doubts of him. He was no 
 longer even a member of the church, and to 
 her mind this was the last thing that made 
 her fear that he might not do what was right. 
 
 The moments were flying and he did not 
 understand her silence. 
 
 " I thought you loved me ! " he cried angrily, 
 with a sting in his tone and his first distrust of 
 her. 
 
 She turned upon him one look of reproach 
 beyond words. 
 
 And then, as if this doubt of her drove her 
 on, she came quickly and laid her hands on 
 his shoulders. 
 
 " Promise me if I go with you, Hilary," she 
 said very rapidly and incoherently, " promise 
 
152 Summer in Arcady 
 
 me if I go with you no, give me your word 
 of honour ! no, swear to me ! swear by the 
 name of your mother, who hates me! swear 
 before God ! that you will not that you 
 will " 
 
 She took her hands from his shoulders and 
 folded them over his forehead, and pressed 
 his face back and gazed into his eyes as her 
 tears rained down her face. 
 
 " that you will be true to me!" 
 
 If she had been confronted with the women 
 who have asked that pledge and with the 
 men who have broken it! 
 
 He gave her a look of surprise. 
 
 "There is no need for me to promise," he 
 exclaimed, beside himself with joy. "Only 
 let us make haste. It is almost too late ! " 
 and he would have led her away. 
 
 She recoiled with a cry of astonishment. 
 He turned back to her speechless. She made 
 one little gesture with her hand: 
 
 " Promise swear ! " 
 
 "You love me and do not trust me?" he 
 asked roughly. As if there are not always in the 
 
Summer in Arcady 153 
 
 world women who love men well enough to die 
 for them and doubt them enough to kill them. 
 
 "Will you promise? Will you swear?" 
 
 " You have no right to ask it," he cried 
 hotly, aroused to resist her with all his strength. 
 For no matter what such a man s past may 
 have been, he wishes to be taken by the 
 woman he loves as he takes her. 
 
 " You ask all this of me ? " she replied, " and 
 you are not willing to give me any pledge 
 any ? " 
 
 " If you could not trust me without one, 
 what would it be worth if I gave it?" he ex 
 claimed more passionately still. 
 
 Her hands dropped at her sides, then with 
 another slight gesture of dismissal she turned 
 homeward, saying faintly : 
 
 " I will not go with you ! " 
 
 He sprang before her. 
 
 " Daphne," he cried, breaking completely 
 down, " I will promise ! I will promise you 
 anything ! " 
 
 She searched his face sorrowfully and then 
 gave him her hand. 
 
154 Summer in Arcady 
 
 "Ah, but you should have promised at first," 
 she said with great gentleness, and her tears 
 flowed again. 
 
 " If we are to go, we must be going ! " he 
 implored. 
 
 "Yes! if we are to go, we must be going," 
 she answered sadly ; and then realizing that 
 the last moment of her girlhood had come, 
 that love was leading her on into the un 
 known, that every other human tie was fall 
 ing away from her, and that she might be 
 tempted beyond her strength, with a sudden 
 turning to the fortress of her religion, she 
 sank upon her knees and pulled him down 
 before her. 
 
 "Here, on your knees," she said, shaken 
 by her sobs, "give me your solemn oath, 
 Hilary before God, who sees us and will 
 judge us for what we do that wherever we 
 are together whatever may happen to us 
 you will be true to me . . . true to me . . . 
 true to me ! " 
 
 " I swear ! " he said, his eyes filling, " God 
 helping me, I will be true to you ! " 
 
XV 
 
 THE broad, lofty plateau of Middle Kentucky 
 where the rich farm lands lie sinks slowly 
 westward to the Ohio. There the great tawny 
 river throws a caressing arm around the com 
 ing hills, dividing the South from the North. 
 
 At a certain point on the river bank these 
 verdurous hills jut out against the southern 
 sky like the fragments of enormous emeralds. 
 Along the base of them stretches the old 
 town of Maysville. Opposite, on the Ohio 
 side, lies the old village of Aberdeen hardly 
 more than a quiet hamlet. A ferry plies 
 between. 
 
 Here in early days was a great historic 
 crossing, a pathway of primeval travel, a water 
 way of southward moving civilization, a gate 
 way of northwestern war; and here for three- 
 quarters of a century, until a few years ago, the 
 fleeing couples of Kentucky escaped from the 
 55 
 
156 Summer in Arcady 
 
 State to be married by the squires on the other 
 side. 
 
 It was late that night. The spirit of the in 
 finite and the divine seemed to brood through 
 out the universe. In Nature reigned only the 
 law of beauty and of peace. 
 
 The moon hung on the violet walls of the 
 sky like a broken shield of beaten gold hung 
 there as if to be at rest from the clangour of 
 arms forevermore. The stars burned as great 
 cathedral tapers, freshly lighted for some 
 chaste processional of the soul. The air, 
 blowing from the south through the rifts in 
 the emerald hills, brought with it the thoughts 
 of quiet meadows far away, of noiseless hemp 
 and corn, of cattle drowsing in the deep, cool 
 grass near some silvering flake of water. The 
 river rolled on in curves of light, unbroken by 
 keel or oar, the ferry-man asleep. Only some 
 glowing window in the town betrayed the 
 watchful or the sleepless ; and once in a 
 dark alley the voices of a man and a woman 
 parting in a doorway the locking of the 
 door, and the sounds of his feet hurrying un- 
 
Summer in Arcady 157 
 
 steadily away jarred rudely upon the thought 
 that all things were at rest under the wing of 
 darkness and in the beauty of holiness. 
 
 Suddenly a skiff shot out from the Kentucky 
 bank a little way above the town and started 
 in a slanting line across the river. In the 
 stern sat two figures. 
 
 As the boat passed out into the mighty 
 current, whether filled with the fear of it and 
 of what was coming, or chilled by the cooler 
 wind that blew on her she had on a thin 
 dress and had no wrap the girl shivered. 
 The boy took off his coat and, folding it about 
 her shoulders, drew it softly across her bosom 
 and buttoned it under her throat. 
 
 "You must not get cold," he said, bending 
 over her. She looked up at him gratefully. 
 
 " Don t take off your coat," she said. " You 
 will catch cold. Please don t for my sake." 
 
 " Oh, I m warm," he replied carelessly. 
 
 All the afternoon, from the moment of their 
 starting, the new reverence with which he 
 treated her put her in new awe of him. As she 
 nestled into the coat and the warmth of his 
 
158 Summer in Arcady 
 
 body passed into hers, she slipped one of her 
 hands down between his burning palms. 
 
 Far out in the stream the powerful young 
 fellow at the oars addressed them, being tired 
 of the silence. 
 
 " You re not the first couple I ve taken over 
 to-day. I rowed one over just after sundown. 
 We hadn t more than shoved off when her 
 father was down on them. He walked quietly 
 down to the edge of the river and levelled his 
 shot-gun and said : Come back ! But the 
 young fellow in the boat, he moved away from 
 his girl, and then he said to me just as quietly : 
 You go on!" 
 
 When the boat had been run ashore and 
 they had gotten out, he stepped up to Hilary, 
 for whom he had conceived a liking. 
 
 "I reckon you ll need me for a witness," 
 he said. 
 
 " Witness ! Do we have to have witnesses ? " 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "How many?" 
 
 "Two." 
 
 " Do you know where I can get another ? " 
 
Slimmer in Arcady 159 
 
 "Maybe I can pick up one as we go along. 
 Maybe we can get one at the hotel next door 
 to the squire s." 
 
 Their voices were as low and grave as 
 though they had been arranging the details 
 of a military execution. The three walked 
 through the moonlit village in silence. There 
 was not a sound anywhere. On the farther 
 edge of it in a street leading back in the 
 country, they stopped before a large two-story 
 house. Old maple-trees stood in front of it 
 on the sidewalk, covering it now with shifting 
 light and shadow. On one side was a yard 
 and in the yard stood old apple-trees. From 
 under one of the apple-trees came the low 
 sound of a fife. 
 
 "That s the squire," said the oarsman. " He 
 is used to being up at all hours of the night. 
 Wait here." 
 
 He entered the yard gate. Soon the sound 
 of the fife ceased. Then followed the sound 
 of feet passing into the house from a back 
 porch ; then the noise of feet inside ; and then 
 the front door was opened, and in the doorway, 
 
160 Summer in Arcady 
 
 holding a lamp high over his head, stood a lean, 
 wrinkled, old man with short white hair, heavy, 
 circling eyebrows over vivacious, sunken eyes, 
 and the general demeanour of a firm and polite 
 Frenchman. 
 
 " Come in," he said simply. 
 
 They walked into the parlour. He went back 
 into the hall, with a nod to Hilary. 
 
 "The fee is five dollars," he said. 
 
 Hilary thrust his hand into his pocket and 
 drew out two dollars and some change. 
 
 "I didn t know I was coming. This is all 
 I have. But I can send it." 
 
 The squire took the two dollars from his 
 palm and reentered the parlour. 
 
 "Are you ready?" he said. 
 
 The oarsman had come in, bringing with 
 him the keeper of the hotel. Hilary walked 
 over to where Daphne sat on a chair holding 
 her hat and her handkerchief in her hand. He 
 took her by the other hand and drew it inside 
 his arm. 
 
 The squire stepped before them. He spoke 
 in the tone in which a witness is sworn in a 
 court-room. 
 
Summer in Arcady 161 
 
 " Marriage is a solemn ordinance, instituted 
 by an all-wise Being for the happiness of man 
 and woman. It is a solemn pledge, or contract, 
 entered into by the parties, which is to continue 
 through life. 
 
 "Join your hands. 
 
 " Each of you do solemnly promise that you 
 will love, honour, and obey each other as a duti 
 ful husband and wife ; and, forsaking all others, 
 cleave to each other alone until it shall please 
 Almighty God to separate you by death. To 
 this do you both agree ? " 
 
 There was silence. Each waited for the 
 other to speak. 
 
 " To this do you both agree ? " repeated the 
 squire sharply. 
 
 Hilary shifted his weight heavily from one 
 foot to the other. 
 
 "I do ! " he said, in a thick, nervous tone. 
 
 "I do ! " said Daphne, in a low, trembling 
 voice, with an effort to give some dignity to 
 her vow, but with a pathetic sense also of how 
 alone she was among those strange men and 
 of how unlike all this was to a wedding. 
 M 
 
1 62 Summer in Arcady 
 
 "In the presence of Almighty God and 
 these witnesses present, by authority vested 
 in me, I now pronounce you husband and 
 wife." 
 
 The hotel-keeper stepped forward. 
 
 "Your room will be ready when you come 
 over," he said, and went out. 
 
 The oarsman, who had not been able to keep 
 his eyes from Daphne s face since they had 
 come into the light of the room, stepped for 
 ward and shook hands with rough warmth. 
 
 " Partner ! " he said to Hilary, " I ll change 
 boats with you ! " 
 
 Then he, too, went out : nothing had been 
 said about paying him. 
 
 The squire had opened a writing-desk of a 
 pattern ancient and now little seen : with 
 quaint drawers and upright shelves, and many 
 pigeon-holes. He had taken his seat before 
 this, and was unrolling a sheet of paper nearly 
 covered with closely written names. Other 
 sheets and numerous little rolls of paper of a 
 few inches square some of them yellow and 
 crumpled and covered with dust, and all of 
 
 
Summer in Arcady 163 
 
 them filled with names bulged from the 
 pigeon-holes, and were crammed away between 
 the upright shelves. 
 
 There they were the rolls of the secret 
 marriages of the people of Kentucky. Thou 
 sands upon thousands of couples. Many of 
 them not much more than children, sometimes 
 one couple a day, sometimes three or four. A 
 long, gay pageant : some less gay than others, 
 being desperately pursued; some less gay, not 
 being guiltless; some most sorrowfully bent 
 upon the office of having the marriage per 
 formed and the date of it set back for the 
 sake of the poor little life soon to appear 
 in the world. In quick succession the fugi 
 tives trod upon each other when Nature had 
 begun to inflame the earth in the mornings 
 of May and June ; or in the languishing 
 noons of autumn, during the season of rural 
 fairs ; or later still, when the wine was ready 
 to burst the grape, and when the first fire on 
 the hearth stirred in the blood the desire of 
 human warmth during the long winter nights. 
 
 If Daphne had but known, hidden away on 
 
164 Summer in Arcady 
 
 one of those yellow sheets were the names of 
 her own father and mother. 
 
 "Your names and ages," said the squire. 
 " And where do you live ? " 
 
 " Hilary , aged nineteen, Bourbon County, 
 
 Kentucky." 
 
 "Daphne , aged seventeen, Fayette 
 
 County, Kentucky." 
 
 The squire wrote down the words, added 
 the date and the amount of the fee, and laid 
 a blotter on what he had written. Then ris 
 ing, he led the way to the front door. 
 
 " Good-night ! " he said politely, and turned 
 the key on them. 
 
 They stood as in a dream under the shadows 
 of the old maples and looked around them. A 
 light fell out upon the sidewalk from a door of 
 the house adjoining, and a man was waiting on 
 the steps. 
 
 " This way," he said. 
 
 They went over and followed him into the 
 parlour. 
 
 " Have you had any supper ? " he asked, 
 
 "We ve had supper," said Hilary, 
 
Summer in Arcady 165 
 
 "Can I do anything for you?" He looked 
 from one to the other. Hilary glanced cov 
 ertly at Daphne. 
 
 " No ! " she said quickly, and turned away 
 from both of them. 
 
 "You ll find your room at the head of 
 the stairs, when you get ready to go up," 
 he said. "Take this lamp with you. Good 
 night." 
 
 He went out, but came back and thrust in 
 his head. 
 
 "You can lock the front door," he said to 
 Hilary, significantly. 
 
 It was all over now the life of peril and 
 unrest from which they had barely escaped 
 with its tossing nights, its wistful, heartsore 
 days, its ungovernable yearnings. 
 
 An awkward, embarrassed silence fell upon 
 them the moment they were left alone. Daphne 
 turned to a picture of the squire, that hung over 
 the mantelpiece. From that she passed to a 
 window, opening upon the rear of the yard, 
 and stood for a little while, looking out trem- 
 
1 66 Summer in Arcady 
 
 blingly at the grass and the trees, silvered with 
 moonlight. Then she sank upon a small, stiff 
 chair, and dropping her eyes on her lap, began 
 passing her fingers slowly, mechanically, around 
 her handkerchief, going from corner to corner, 
 corner to corner. 
 
 Across the room Hilary had sat down by the 
 table, on which stood the small dim lamp, and 
 had picked up the photograph album. The 
 pictures ran : grandfather, grandmother ; father, 
 mother ; then the children from the oldest 
 down to the latest born. There was a portrait 
 of a young mother clasping an infant trium 
 phantly to her breast. There was another of a 
 rustic young husband with his bride on his arm, 
 and with a smile on his face that was like a 
 challenge to the beholder to do anything better 
 in life than that or be anything better him 
 self, if he could. Then came relatives and 
 friends with a few places at the back of the 
 album for scattering and less valued acquaint 
 ances. 
 
 He went through them all from beginning to 
 end, confusedly, never once lifting his eyes. 
 
Summer in Arcady 167 
 
 His hand was shaking, his face was flushed, 
 and his tongue was palsied. 
 
 The hour had come to him when, of all that 
 can ever come to man, he feels that he must 
 begin a new life and when he would like to be 
 gin it as one newly born ; when his old past 
 rises against him ; when, if there is anything 
 decent and manly surviving in him still, he is 
 overwhelmed with some sense of the awful gift 
 that love has brought into his unworthy life, 
 a pure woman. 
 
 The great heights were never to be for 
 Hilary. His ancestors, his companions, Nature, 
 his own temperament and limitations, had ap 
 pointed him his poor rough place far lower 
 down ; but if there ever descended upon him 
 any rays of that divine light of the spirit which 
 also rests upon such a union ; if there ever 
 reached him any fresh vision of the real manli 
 ness of what is right ; these intimations from 
 the wisdom of everlasting law, from the per 
 petuity of the species, and from the growing, 
 triumphing movement of the world, conquered 
 him and crushed him now. 
 
1 68 Slimmer in Arcady 
 
 The album slipped from his hands to 
 the table. He started, and stole a look at 
 her. 
 
 The moonlight, streaming through the win 
 dow, rested upon her bare, lovely head, and 
 upon one side of her face. He could see how 
 white it was, how frightened, how appealing in 
 its loneliness : a child his wife awaiting his 
 will submissive. 
 
 A new feeling of protecting tenderness rose 
 in him for her ; and with a quick, deep breath 
 he started up and went over, and took both her 
 hands softly in his and stood before her, look 
 ing reverently down at her. 
 
 " Will you go up now, Daphne ? " he said, 
 in a low tone. "It is so late, and you must 
 sleep." 
 
 Her head dropped forward a little lower. 
 
 "Go, dearest," and his hands gathered them 
 selves about hers with the strong, true pressure 
 of a promise. 
 
 She lifted her face to him. 
 
 "You go with me," she whispered. "I m 
 afraid." 
 
Summer in Arcady 169 
 
 He turned to the lamp solemnly, and led the 
 way. When he reached the door, he glanced 
 back. She sat still in the chair. 
 
 "Come on," he said, with something in his 
 voice that drew her irresistibly to him. 
 
 She rose and began to follow. But when 
 she reached the foot of the stair, she stopped, 
 faint and trembling, and watched him as he 
 went slowly up. How heavy his tread was, 
 how large his limbs were, how broad his back 
 looked with the lamplight close in front of it ! 
 There was a pitiful fear of him in her eyes, 
 and her bosom rose and fell with her quiver 
 ing breath. 
 
 But at last she was happy and at peace : he 
 was hers. The old, troublesome, uncertain life 
 with him in the meadows, now so far away, at 
 the picnic, in the pasture, was at an end. 
 Girlhood, too, was at an end now ; and with a 
 certain new pity of herself she recalled the day 
 when, careless and free, she had walked home 
 across the fields in the warmth of early June, 
 and had paused to hear him singing in the 
 corn. 
 
170 Summer in Arcady 
 
 He reached the top of the stairs and, turning, 
 raised the lamp above his head. But when he 
 looked down and saw her at the bottom, he 
 came back down the stairs and put his arm 
 closely around her and they went up together. 
 
 THE END 
 
THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE, 
 
 And the Wonders of the World we live in. By SIR JOHN 
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 A New England Chronicle of Birds and Flowers. By MABEL 
 OSGOOD WRIGHT. Cloth, gilt top. i8mo. 75 cents. Large 
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 FROM A NEW ENGLAND HILLSIDE. 
 
 Notes from Underledge. By WILLIAM POTTS. With Photo 
 gravure Frontispiece. Cloth, gilt top. i8mo. 75 cents. 
 
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 dainty thought." 
 
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AN EXPERIMENT IN ALTRUISM. 
 
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 TRYPHENA IN LOVE. 
 
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 A RINGBY LASS, 
 
 And Other Stories. 
 
 By MARY BEAUMONT. 
 
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 LIVES THAT CAME TO NOTHING. 
 
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 CHRISTIAN AND LEAH, 
 
 and Other Ghetto Stories. 
 By LEOPOLD KOMPERT. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 ALFRED S. ARNOLD. F. HAMILTON JACKSON. 
 
 Cloth. Price 75 cents. 
 
 " This book contains those Jewish stories, which are extremely 
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 pathetic mind." The Beacon. 
 
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 Ghetto realm of fiction, which has come into such wide favour 
 of late." Boston Courier. 
 
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 NOV 9 
 
 14Jan 53BW 
 
 
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YB 72692 
 
 298643 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LIBRAR 
 
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