David Malcolm Part 26

"There were other days on the Avenue which you could have remembered,"

she returned. "There was that day when we met--after long years. And that day I remembered the valley and the boy who had come into the mountains to help me; I remembered my father's last words to us, and for a little while I was foolish enough to think that it must be for that that I had found you again."

I would have taken the outstretched hand, but she drew it away quickly and stepped back.

"And do you think I had forgotten the mountains that day?" I said.

"Why, Penelope, I loved you that day as I love you now, as I have from the morning when you and I rode into the valley together."

I took a step toward her, but she moved from me, and stood with her hands clasped behind her back and her head tilted proudly as she looked up at me.

"It sounds well," she said, her lips curling in disdain. "But how about Miss Dodd, or Miss Todd?"

"Why will you be forever casting that up at me?" I protested. "For a time I did forget. I was a plain fool. But, Penelope----"

"I must be going," she said; but though she pointed toward the slope down which I had come from the little piazza, she really went again to the wall and stood there where I first found her, as though held spellbound by the view.

I was beside her. "Penelope," I said firmly, "there are some things which you and I must straighten out here and now."

"There is nothing to straighten out," she said. "Everything is settled. We are friends." Lifting a hand, she pointed over the plain.

"What does that remind you of, David?"

"A little of the valley," I answered. Then I raised my hand too.

"There are the mountains, Penelope, and just before them the ridge over which we rode that morning. Do you remember it? Do you remember how Nathan ran away over the trail, how you clung to me and called to me to save you? Home should be down there where you see the village. Do you remember----"

Penelope was looking from me, as though at the stone house, its roof just showing in the green of giant oaks.

Again she raised her hand. "And the barn, David--the big white barn--there!" she cried. Then she checked herself. She was very straight and very still. "I was forgetting," she said.

A step closer and I said: "You do remember, Penelope!"

"I must be going," she returned in a low voice, but she did not move.

I feared to speak now lest I should awaken her from the revery in which she seemed to have suddenly forgotten my existence.

"I must be going," she said again, and still she did not move.

She was looking across our valley! I knew that she saw it as on the morning when we rode in terror from the woods and it lay beneath us, a friendly land, in the broad day, under the kindly eye of G.o.d. Then I bent nearer her, an arm resting on the wall, my eyes on her averted face, patiently waiting until she should speak. And I could wait patiently now, for I believed that in the silence the memory of that day was fighting for me.

After a long time Penelope spoke. "David, do you remember--" She paused. Her voice fell to a whisper. "What was it that you said to me that morning--don't you remember?--don't cry, little one!"

In all the world there is no fairer prospect than that on which I looked from the little terrace in Perugia. For I saw not alone the lovely Umbrian plain. Before me stretched a fair life itself, into the unending years, from that moment when Penelope spoke, turning as she spoke and looking up at me with a smiling face. What a blind, blundering creature I had been! The black-gloved hand was close to mine on the wall, and I took it. Then I leaned down to her and said: "I remember, Penelope, and I will--I will take care of you always."

CHAPTER XXVII

"Yesterday, Harry, your mother laid a hand upon my arm, and, turning to me with a curious, far-away light in her eyes, said: 'How time flies, David!'"

And I looked down at her proudly, as though this were another of the innumerable new and clever ideas which she has a way of discovering and expressing so concisely.

"What made you think of that, Penelope?"

She pointed over the tangled briers to the woods, to the very spot where the path breaks through the bushes and leads to the brook.

"Yesterday, David--it seems but yesterday--I dragged you out of the deep pool, and to-day--a moment ago--I heard Harry there, shouting."

"He has probably caught a trout," said I as I lighted a cigar. "A small boy always shouts when he lands a fish."

Penelope laughed.

"And if," I went on, between critical puffs--"if he falls in, James is with him and James will pull him out. You must not think that these woods are full of small girls with blue ribbons in their hair who are watching for an opportunity to rescue drowning boys."

"How stupid you are, David!" said Penelope, "And yet at times you have been monstrously stupid. Of course, I know that Harry is perfectly safe with James; but what I meant was that it seems only yesterday----"

"Since you pulled me out of the brook?" I said.

Then I tucked her hand beneath my arm, and, standing there in the deep weeds and briers, we looked about the clearing. Even the Professor's care had long been missing. The roof of the cabin had fallen in years ago, and the end of a single log, poking through a ma.s.s of green, marked the stable from which the white mule had regarded me so critically. Yet the mountains rose above us, the same mountains; the same ridge sloped upward to the south, and above it was the same blue sky and a white cloud hovering in it. A crow cawed from the pines. It might have been the same crow that in other days called to me, now cawing his welcome. It did seem but yesterday. How fast the weeds and briers had grown, defying the Professor's languid hoe! How suddenly had the timbers snapped which held the roof! And doubtless Nathan's home went down in a gust of wind.

"Yesterday, Penelope," I said, "you led me out of the woods, dripping wet--don't you remember? from my tumble into the pool. Right there your father stood, looking at that very cloud, wistfully."

"And yesterday," Penelope said, pointing over the clearing, "in the morning early, father and I were sitting by that very door, when we heard a shout and, looking, saw you running toward us through the brush. Don't you remember, David? You fell down out there--why, a juniper tree has grown up there since yesterday."

Then Penelope was very quiet. I saw her glance to the bushes, and her hand gripped mine. I knew what was in her mind. I saw the same picture; I could almost hear the brush crackling under the Professor's flying feet, and leaning down over her I said: "Don't cry, little one; I'll take care of you."

That was really yesterday, Harry, and really yesterday Penelope and I rode again over the trail along which the white mule had carried us at such a terrible pace. We climbed the ridge, and at its crest Penelope reined in her horse and pointed over the valley. I followed her raised hand over the land, over the green of the fields and the white of blossoming orchards, to the great barn, gleaming cheerfully in the noonday sun, and to the dark roof nestling in the foliage of giant oaks.

Penelope turned to me with smiling eyes and said: "It's all right, David. Yon's our home!"