Part 54

There was something in the way she said it, that made him feel that he must break the spell, then and there, or he should be playing the mischief with his own peace of mind. Yet he was conscious of a strange absence of conviction, as he asked abruptly: "Dorothy, whom are you going to marry?"

So he had heard that foolish gossip, and that was why there was that look in his face!

She was too generous to think of herself, too sure, indeed, of him and of herself, to weigh her words. With the little, half-defiant toss of the head he knew so well, yet gathering up the reins as if for instant flight, she said:

"I should think that was for you to say, Harry!"

XII.

THE BLIZZARD PICNIC.

"Ah, there, Mr. Burns! Glad to see you! This is what we call real Colorado weather!"

The speaker, a mercurial youth of two and twenty, was one of a group of young people assembled, some on horseback, some in yellow buckboards, in front of a stately Springtown mansion.

"Nothing conceited about us!" a girlish voice retorted. "I am sure you understand by this time, Mr. Burns, that Colorado is a synonym for perfection."

The new-comer laughed appreciatively as he drew rein close beside the girl, who sat her part-thoroughbred with the ease and grace of lifelong habit.

"I had learned my lesson pretty well before I came out, thanks to you," the young man answered, in a tone that was a trifle over-significant.

The girl flushed, whether from pleasure or annoyance, it was impossible for the looker-on to decide. The looker-on--and his name, as usual, was legion,--had found no lack of occupation since the arrival on the field, some two weeks previous, of the Rev. Stephen Burns. Although the young minister was staying at the hotel, like any other chance tourist, there could be no question as to the object of his visit, for he passed most of his waking hours, either under Dr. Lovejoy's roof, or in the society of the doctor's daughter. The fact that Amy Lovejoy tolerated such assiduous attendance boded ill for Springtown, yet so cheerful is the atmosphere of the sunny-hearted little community, that foregone conclusions of an unwelcome character carry but scant conviction to its mind. Springtown could not spare Amy Lovejoy, therefore Springtown would not be called upon to do so.

By this time the group was twenty strong, a truly gala assemblage, which might have blocked the way on a less generous thoroughfare. On the broad expanse of Western Avenue, however, no picnic party, however numerous, was likely to interfere with traffic.

They were all young people, the chaperone of the occasion, a bride of twenty, looking, as she was, one of the very youngest. The brilliant February day gleamed like a jewel upon the proud and grateful earth. The sky was one glorious arch of tingling blue, beneath which the snowy peaks shone with a joyful glitter. The air had the keen, dry sparkle that is sometimes compared to champagne, greatly to the advantage of that pleasant beverage. In short, it was a real Colorado day, and these young people were off on a real Colorado picnic. How exceptionally characteristic the occasion might prove to be, no one suspected, simply because no one payed sufficient heed to a shred of gray vapor that hovered on the brow of the Peak. Amy Lovejoy, to be sure, remarked that there would be wind before night, and another old resident driving by, waved his hat toward the Peak, and cried, "Look out for hurricanes!" But no one was the wiser for that.

The last packages of good things, the last overcoat and extra wrap, were stowed away under the seats of the yellow buckboards; the mercurial youth, Jack Hersey by name, had cried, for the last time, "Are we ready,--say, are we ready?" Elliot Chittenden's restive bronco, known as "my nag," had cut its last impatient caper; and off they started, a gay holiday throng, passing down the Avenue to the tune of jingling harness and chattering voices and ringing hoofs. From a south porch on the one hand, and a swinging gate on the other, friends called a cheery greeting; elderly people jogging past in slow buggies, met the pleasure-seekers with a benignant smile; foot-passengers turned and waved their wide sombreros, and over yonder the Peak beamed upon them, with never a hint of warning; for the gray vapor hovering there was far too slight a film to cast a shadow upon that broad and radiant front.

"It makes one think of the new Jerusalem, and the walls of Walhalla, and every sort of brilliant vision," Stephen Burns remarked, as his horse and Amy's cantered side by side, a little apart from the others.

"Yes," said Amy, looking absently before her; "I suppose it does." And she wondered, as she had done more than once in the past two weeks, why she could not enter more responsively into the spirit of his conversation. She knew, and she would once have considered it a fact of the first importance, that to Stephen Burns the New Jerusalem was not more sacred than the abode of the ancient gods,--or, to be more accurate, Walhalla was not less beautiful and real than the sacred city of the Hebrews. Each had its own significance and value in his estimation, as a dream, an aspiration of the human mind.

It was what seemed to Amy Lovejoy the originality and daring of the young minister's views of things high and low, which had at first fascinated the girl. She had never before met with just that type of thinker,--indeed she had never before associated on equal terms with any thinker of any type whatever!--and it was perhaps no wonder that she had been inclined to identify the priest with his gospel, that she had been ready to accept both with equal trust. In fact, nothing but her father's cautious reluctance had deterred her from pledging herself, four months ago, to this grave-eyed cavalier, riding now so confidently by her side.

She was her father's only child, and since the death of her mother, some ten years previous to this, she had been called upon to fill the important position of "apple of the eye" to a secretly adoring, if somewhat sarcastic parent.

"Your parson may be all very well," the doctor had written, "but if he is worth having he will keep! He must have the advantage of extreme youth, to be taken with a callow chick like yourself, but that shall not injure him in my eyes. Tell him to wait a while, and then come and show himself. Two heads are better than one in most of the exigencies of life, and when he comes, you and I can make up our minds about him at our leisure."

The girl's mind had reverted, a propos of nothing, to that concluding sentence of her father's letter, which she had read at the time with an indulgent but incredulous smile. Presently she became aware that her companion was speaking again.

"It is all one," he was saying. "What we see and what we imagine; what we aspire to, and what has been the aspiration of other men in other ages. And how good it all is!"

This he added with a certain turn and gesture which made the words intensely personal. Why did they repel her so strongly, she wondered, and wondering, she failed to answer. Involuntarily she had slackened her horse's pace, and fallen in line with the others, and when Jack Hersey rode up at that moment, she gave him a look of welcome which had the effect of making him more mercurial than ever for the rest of the day.

"I say, Amy," he cried; "isn't this a dandy day?" and Amy felt herself on good, homely, familiar ground, and she answered him with a heart grown suddenly light as his own.

Stephen Burns, meanwhile, rode on beside her, with no very distinct misgiving in his mind. He had, to be sure, been somewhat daunted once or twice before, by a curious, intermittent asperity in her, which he could not quite account for. Yet why should he expect to account for every changing mood in this uniquely charming being? Had he not perceived from the beginning that she was not fashioned quite after the usual pattern?

They had met, the previous autumn, in the quaint old New England town where his people lived. She had come like a bit of the young West into the staid, old-fashioned setting of the place, and he had rejoiced in every trait that distinguished her from the conventional young lady of his acquaintance. To-day, as they rode side by side toward the broad-bosomed mountain to the southward, he told himself once more that her nature was like this Colorado atmosphere, in its absolute clearness and crispness. Such an air,--bracing, stinging, as it sometimes was,--could never turn really harsh and easterly; neither, perhaps, could it ever take on the soft languor of the summer sea. And Amy Lovejoy's nature would always have the finer, more individual quality of the high, pure altitude in which she had been reared. Possibly Stephen Burns had yet something to learn about that agreeable climate with which he was so ready to compare his love. The weather had been perfect since he came to Colorado. How could he suspect the meaning of a tiny wisp of vapor too slight to cast a visible shadow?

And Amy chatted gaily on with Jack Hersey, as they cantered southward, while Stephen Burns, riding beside them, told himself with needless reiteration, that he was well content. One reason for content he certainly had at that moment, for he was a good horseman, as an accomplished gentleman is bound to be, and he was never quite insensible to the exhilaration of that delicious, rhythmic motion.

They had passed through a gate which signified that the rolling acres of prairie on either hand, the winding road that lost itself in the distance, the pine-clad slope to the right, were all but a part of a great ranch. Herds of cattle were doubtless pastured within that enclosure, though nowhere visible to the holiday party riding and driving over their domain. Hundreds of prairie-dog holes dotted the vast field on either hand, and here and there one of the odd little fraternity scampered like a ball of gray cotton across the field, or sat erect beside his hole, barking shrilly, before vanishing, with a whisk of the tail, from sight. Stephen took so kindly to the little show, and made such commonplace exclamations of pleasure, that Amy felt a sudden relieved compunction and smiled upon him very graciously.