PAGE 16
A Stop-Over At Tyre
by
“Oh, all right, Ed; only I’d calculated to cheat him out o’ part of it–I’d planned to turn in a couple o’ Blaine’s Twenty Years on the bill.”
Hartley roared, and the rest joined in, but not even Albert perceived all that it meant. It meant that the young savage had surrendered his claim in favor of the man he had all but killed. The struggle had been prodigious, but he had snatched victory out of defeat; his better nature had conquered.
No one ever gave him credit for it; and when he went West in the spring, people said his passion for Maud had been superficial. In truth, he had loved the girl as sincerely as he had hated his rival. That he could rise out of the barbaric in his love and his hate was heroic.
When Albert went to ride again, it was on melting snow, with the slowest horse Troutt had. Maud was happier than she had been since she left school, and fuller of color and singing. She dared not let a golden moment pass now without hearing it ring full, and she dared not think how short this day of happiness might be.
IV
At the end of the fifth week of their stay in Tyre a suspicion of spring was in the wind as it swept the southern exposure of the valley. March was drawing to a close, and there was more than a suggestion of April in the rapidly melting snow which still lay on the hills and under the cedars and tamaracks in the swamps. Patches of green grass, appearing on the sunny side of the road where the snow had melted, led to predictions of spring from the loafers beginning to sun themselves on the salt-barrels and shoe-boxes outside the stores.
A group sitting about the blacksmith shop were discussing it.
“It’s an early seedin’–now mark my words,” said Troutt, as he threw his knife into the soft ground at his feet. “The sun is crossing the line earlier this spring than it did last.”
“Yes; an’ I heard a crow to-day makin’ that kind of a–a spring noise that sort o’–I d’ know what–kind o’ goes all through a feller.”
“And there’s Uncle Sweeney, an’ that settles it; spring’s comin’ sure!” said Troutt, pointing at an old man, much bent, hobbling down the street. “When he gits out the frogs ain’t fur behind.”
“We’ll be gittin’ on to the ground by next Monday,” said Sam Dingley to a crowd who were seated on the newly painted harrows and seeders which Svend & Johnson had got out ready for the spring trade. “Svend & Johnson’s Agricultural Implement Depot” was on the north side of the street, and on a spring day the yard was one of the pleasantest loafing-places that could be imagined, especially if one wished company.
Albert wished to be alone. Something in the touch and tone of this spring afternoon made him restless and inclined to strange thoughts. He took his way out along the road which followed the river-bank, and in the outskirts of the village threw himself down on a bank of grass which the snows had protected, and which had already a tinge of green because of its wealth of sun.
The willows had thrown out their tiny light-green flags, though their roots were under the ice, and some of the hardwood twigs were tinged with red. There was a faint but magical odor of uncovered earth in the air, and the touch of the wind was like a caress from a moist, magnetic hand.
The boy absorbed the light and heat of the sun as some wild thing might. With his hat over his face, his hands folded on his breast, he lay as still as a statue. He did not listen at first, he only felt; but at length he rose on his elbow and listened. The ice cracked and fell along the bank with a long, hollow, booming crash; a crow cawed, and a jay answered it from the willows below. A flight of sparrows passed, twittering innumerably. The boy shuddered with a strange, wistful longing, and a realization of the flight of time.