“Shake hands, Lige,” he cried.
The moon peeped over the shoulder of an eastern wood,
and the young men suddenly descried their long shadows
stretching in front of them. Harkless turned
to look at the silhouetted town, the tree-tops and
roofs and the Methodist church spire, silvered at
the edges.
“Do you see that town, Willetts?” he asked,
laying his fingers on his companion’s sleeve.
“That’s the best town in the United States!”
“I always kind of thought you didn’t much
like it,” said the other, puzzled. “Seemed
to me you always sort of wished you hadn’t settled
here.”
A little further on they passed Mr. Fisbee. He
was walking into the village with his head thrown
back, a strange thing for him. They gave him
a friendly greeting and passed on.
“Well, it beats me!” observed Lige, when
the old man was out of hearing. “He’s
be’n there to supper again. He was there
all day yesterday, and with ’em at the lecture,
and at the deepo day before and he looks like another
man, and dressed up—for him—to
beat thunder——What do you expect
makes him so thick out there all of a sudden?”
“I hadn’t thought about it. The judge
and he have been friends a good while, haven’t
they?”
“Yes, three or four years; but not like this.
It beats me! He’s all upset over
Miss Sherwood, I think. Old enough to be her grandfather,
too, the old——”
His companion stopped him, dropping a hand on his
shoulder.
“Listen!”
They were at the corner of the Briscoe picket fence,
and a sound lilted through the stillness—a
touch on the keys that Harkless knew. “Listen,”
he whispered.
It was the “Moonlight Sonata” that Helen
was playing. “It’s a pretty piece,”
observed Lige after a time. John could have choked
him, but he answered: “Yes, it is seraphic.”
“Who made it up?” pursued Mr. Willetts.
“Beethoven.”
“Foreigner, I expect. Yet in some way or
another makes me think of fishing down on the Wabash
bend in Vigo, and camping out nights like this; it’s
a mighty pretty country around there—especially
at night.”
The sonata was finished, and then she sang—sang
the “Angel’s Serenade.” As
the soft soprano lifted and fell in the modulations
of that song there was in its timbre, apart from the
pure, amber music of it, a questing, seeking pathos,
and Willetts felt the hand on his shoulder tighten
and then relax; and, as the song ended, he saw that
his companion’s eyes were shining and moist.
NIGHT: IT IS BAD LUCK TO SING BEFORE BREAKFAST
There was a lace of faint mists along the creek and
beyond, when John and Helen reached their bench (of
course they went back there), and broken roundelays
were croaking from a bayou up the stream, where rakish
frogs held carnival in resentment of the lonesomeness.
The air was still and close. Hundreds of fire-flies
coquetted with the darkness amongst the trees across
the water, glinting from unexpected spots, shading
their little lanterns for a second to glow again from
other shadows. The sky was a wonderful olive
green; a lazy cloud drifted in it and lapped itself
athwart the moon.
