Tramping on Life Part 108

"--time to go to bed ... here it's almost one o'clock."

"--had no idea it was so late. I have a lot of typing to do to-morrow.

Good night, folks!" and Ruth was off to her room upstairs.

"Good-night, Hildreth,--suppose you're going to sleep down in the little house!" It was Darrie who spoke.

"Yes," answered Hildreth, in a simple tone, "I will feel quite safe there ... Johnnie's tent is only a few yards away."

Hildreth and Darrie kissed each other on the mouth tenderly.

"Good night, Johnnie--" and impulsively Darrie stepped up to me, took me by the two shoulders, and kissed me also a kind sisterly kiss.... I responded, abashed and awkward.

A ripple of pleasant laughter at me from both women.

"Johnnie's a dear, innocent boy!" Darrie.

"He makes me feel like a mother to him!" said Hildreth.

Though each of these remarks was made without the slightest colour of irony, I did not like them ... I lowered my head, humiliated under them.

Ever since I had been among them the three women had treated me in the way they act with small boys, preserving scarcely any reserve in my presence. Penton himself had lost all his first disquiet.

Outside--

"I'll take you as far as the cottage ... it's right on the way, you know."

"All right, but where are you going?"

"Into the kitchen to get a lantern."

"The moon is almost as bright as day. We won't need it."

We stepped out into the warm, scented night. In a mad flood of silver the moon reigned high in the sky, dark and bright with the contours and shades of its continents and craters, as if nearer the earth than it had ever been before....

"This night reminds me of those lines in Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_, the ones that follow after 'Is this the face that launched a thousand s.h.i.+ps, and burnt the topless towers of Ilion?' which are, to me, a trifle over-rhetorical ... the ensuing lines are more lovely:

"'Fair as the evening air--

"'Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars,' or is it 'ten thousand stars'?"

Hildreth turned her face up to me. Her arm went through mine. She drew my arm close against her body and held it tight in silent response for a quiet interval....

"You _are_ a poet ... a _real_ poet ... and," she dropped her voice, "and, what is more, a real man, too!" there was a world of compa.s.sion in her voice....

"--You remember Blake's evening star--that 'washed the dusk with silver?'"

"Jesus, how beautiful!" I cried.

We were standing in front of her cottage, that darkled in the trees.

Suddenly, roused by our voices, like some sweet, low, miraculous thing, a little bird sang a few bars of song, sweet and low, in the bushes somewhere, and stopped....

"Hildreth, don't let's go to bed yet." I caught her arm in my hands, "it's too beautiful ... to go to bed."

I was trembling all over....

"Yes, boy?"

"Let's--let's take a walk."

We went through the little sleeping community. She clung to my arm lightly....

"You're the first woman I haven't been frightened of, rather, have felt at home with."

"You, who have been a tramp, a worker all over the country ... in big cities ... do you mean to tell me that?--"

"Yes ... yes ... before G.o.d, it is true! You don't think I'm a fool, do you--a ninny?"

"No, on the contrary, I think you are a good man ... that it is miraculous ... I--I feel so old beside you ... how old are you, Johnnie?"

"Twenty-six."

"Why, I'm only two years older ... yet I feel like your mother."

In the groves adjoining the colony, for a mile on either side, wherever there was a big tree, a circular seat had been built about it. It was on one of these that we sat down, without a word.

I laid my head against Hildreth's shoulder. Soothingly she began stroking my hair. With cool fingers she stroked it.

"What fine hair you have. It's as soft and silky as a girl's."

"I took after my mother in that."

"What a mixture you are ... manly and strong ... an athlete, yet sensitive, so sensitive that sometimes it hurts to look at your face when you talk ... you've suffered a lot, Johnnie."

"In curious ways, yes."

"Tell me about yourself. I won't even whisper it in the dark, when I'm alone."

"I know I can trust you, Hildreth."

"What are you doing, boy?"

"I want to sit at your feet."

"You dear boy."