Round Anvil Rock - Nancy Huston Banks

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well as I do that he would have given us a home in his own house if it had not been so rough and bare a place, a mere camp. And then there was no woman in it to take care of us, and we were only little mites of babies—poor, crying, helpless morsels of humanity. Where do you think we came from, David? I wonder and wonder and wonder!" wistfully, with her gaze on the darkening river.

      It was an old question, and one that they had been asking themselves and one another and every one, over and over, ever since they had been old enough to think. The short story which Philip Alston had told was all that he or any one knew or ever was to know. The boy silently shook his head. The girl went on:—

      "Sometimes I am sorry that we couldn't live in his house. You would have understood him better and have loved him more—as he deserves. It is only that you don't really know each other," she said gently. "And then I should like to do something for him—something to cheer him—who does everything for me. It must be very sad to be alone and old. It grieves me to see him riding away to that desolate cabin, especially on stormy nights. But he never will let me come to his house, though I beg and beg. He says it is too rough, and that too many strange men are coming and going on business."

      "Yes; too many strange men on very strange business."

      She did not hear or notice what he said, because the sound of horses' feet echoing behind them just at that moment caused her to turn her head. Two horsemen were riding along the river bank, but they were a long way off and about turning into the forest path as her gaze fell upon them. She stood still, silently looking after them till they disappeared among the trees.

      "Father Orin and Toby will get home before dark to-night. That is something uncommon," she said with a smile.

      Toby was the priest's horse, but no one ever spoke of the one without thinking of the other; and then, Toby's was a distinct and widely recognized personality.

      "But who is the stranger with them, David? Oh, I remember! It must be the new doctor—the young doctor who has lately come and who is curing the Cold Plague. The Sisters told me. They said that he and Father Orin often visited the sick together and were already great friends. How tall he is—even taller than Father Orin, and broader shouldered. I should like to see his face. And how straight he sits in the saddle. You would expect a man who holds himself so to carry a lance and tilt fearlessly at everything that he thought was wrong."

      She turned, quickly tossing the willow branches aside and laughing gayly. "There now, that will set you off thinking of your knights again! But you must not. Truly, you must not. For it is quite true, dear; you are a dreamer, a poet. You do indeed belong to the Arcadian Hills. You should be there now, playing a gentle shepherd's pipe and herding his peaceful flocks. And instead—alas!"—she looked at him in perplexity which was partly real and partly assumed—"instead you are here in this awful wilderness, carrying a rifle longer and heavier than yourself, and trying to pretend that you like to kill wild beasts, or can endure to hurt any living thing."

      David said nothing; there seemed to be no response for him to make. When a well-grown youth of eighteen or thereabouts is spoken to by a girl near his own age as he had just been spoken to by Ruth, he rarely finds anything to say. No words could do justice to what he feels. And there is nothing for him to do either, unless it be to take refuge in a dignified silence which disdains the slightest notice of the offence. This was what David resorted to, and, bending down, he calmly and quietly raised his forgotten rifle from the ground to his shoulder. He did it very slowly and impressively, however, in the hope that Ruth might realize the fact that he had killed the buck whose huge horns made the rifle's rest on his cabin walls. But she saw and realized only that he was wounded, and instantly darted toward him like a swallow. She caught his rigid rifle arm and clung to it, looking up in his set face. Her blue eyes were already filling with tears while the smile was still on her lips. That was Ruth's way; her smiles and tears were even closer together than most women's are; she was nearly always quiveringly poised between gayety and sadness; like a living sunbeam continually glancing across life's shadows.

      "What is it, David, dear?" she pleaded, with her sweet lips close to his ear. "What foolish thing have I said? You must know—whatever it was—that it was all in fun. Why, I wouldn't have you different, dear, if I could! I couldn't love you so much if you were not just what you are. And yet," sighing, "it might be better for you."

      She laid her head against his shoulder and drew closer to him in that soft little nestling way of hers. David looked straight over the lovely head, keeping his grim gaze as high as he could. He knew how it would be if his stern gray eyes were to meet Ruth's wet blue ones. He was still a boy, but trying to be a man—and beginning to understand. No man with his heart in the right place could hold out against her pretty coaxing. It was sweet enough to wile the very birds out of the trees. It made no difference that he had been used to her wiles from babyhood up. To be used to Ruth's ways only made them harder to resist. No stranger could possibly have foreseen his defeat as clearly as David foresaw his at the moment that she started toward him. But self-respect required him to stand firm as long as possible, although he felt the strength going out of his rifle arm under her clinging touch. She felt it going, too, and began to smile through her tears. And then, sure of her victory, she threw caution to the winds—as older and wiser women have done too openly in vanquishing stronger and more masterful men. She let him see that she knew she had conquered, which is always a fatal mistake on the part of a woman toward a man. Smiling and dimpling, she put up her hand and patted his cheek—precisely as if he had been a child.

      The boy shrunk as if the caress had been a touch of fire. He broke away and strode off up the hillside with his longest, manliest stride. This humiliation was past bearing or forgiving. He could have forgiven being called a dreamer—a useless drone—among the men of clear heads and strong hands who had already wrested a great state from the wilderness, and who, through this conquest, were destined to become the immortal founders of the Empire of the West. He could have overlooked being spoken to like a child by a girl who might be younger than himself for all he or she knew to the contrary—though this would have been harder. He might even have forgiven that pat on his cheek which was downy with beard, had he been either younger or older. But as it was—well, the matter may safely be left to the sympathy of the man who remembers the most sensitive time of his own youth; that trying period when he feels himself to be no longer a boy and nobody else considers him a man.

      David did not know where he was going or what he meant to do. He was blindly striding up the river bank away from Ruth, fairly aflame with the determination to do something—anything—to prove his manhood. For nothing ever makes a boy resolve quite so suddenly and firmly to become a man instantly as to be treated by a girl as he had been by Ruth. Had the most desperate danger then come in David's way, he would have hailed and hazarded it with delight. But he could not think of anything to overwhelm her with just at that moment, and so he could only stride on in helpless, angry silence. Ruth flew after him as if her thin white skirts had been strong, swift wings. She overtook him before he had gone very far, and clung to him again more than ever like some beautiful white spirit of the woods wreathed in mist, with her soft blown garments and her softer blown hair. She merely wound herself around him at first, breathless and panting. But as soon as she caught her breath the coaxing, the laughing, and the crying came all together. David kept from looking down as long as he could, but his pace slackened and his arm again relaxed. Finally—taken off guard—he glanced at the face so near his breast. The dusk could not dim its beauty and only made it more lovely. No more resistance was possible for him—or for any man or boy—who saw Ruth as she looked then. David's big rough hand was now surrendered meekly enough to the quick clasp of her little fingers, and—forgetting all the daring deeds that he meant to do—he was led like any lamb up the hill to the open door of Cedar House.

       Table of Contents

      THE HOUSE OF CEDAR

      So far as they knew, there was no tie of blood or relationship binding them to the kind people of Cedar House. Yet it was the only home that they could remember

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