“Hello, wood nymph,” he said, stopping when he was still several yards away from her and smiling.
It was the smile that did it. She knew beyond any doubt that the unthinkable had happened. She loved him. She could not believe ill of his motives. There was such gentleness in his smile. “Hello,” she said.
“You see?” he said, holding up the volume he clasped in one hand. “I have brought the book. You will like some of the poems, I believe.” He came and sat beside her under the tree so that she felt suffocated, unable to breathe freely. “You do not look very pleased,” he added. “Am I forcing myself and my interests on you, Nell?”
“Oh, no,” she said, and looked up into his dark eyes, so disturbingly close to her own. “I thought you were not coming, and I would have been disappointed if you had not. Please read to me.”
“Would you?” he asked. “Have been disappointed, I mean? I would have been here sooner, but I had an unexpected visitor and had to stay and be civil.”
He looked across at her as if he expected her to say something, but she looked back silently. Finally he opened the book and thumbed through the pages. She waited with great interest to see which poem he would choose to read first.
“Here it is,” he said at last. “This, I think, you will appreciate. It is one of my favorites.”
And he began to read her the poem about the rainbow, which was not one of her favorites—it was her very favorite.
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
He read slowly and distinctly, savoring every word. By the time he had finished, Helen had her eyes tightly closed, enthralled as much by his voice as by the sentiment of the poem.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.” Her eyes flew open and looked into his. “It is just exactly as I feel, you see. But people keep telling me that I shall grow up one of these days and that I shall then become interested in the more important things of life. I shall not. I would rather die!”
He smiled gently and his eyes dropped involuntarily to her mouth. “You need not fear, little wood nymph,” he said. “You will never change. At least, you will never lose your love for what you have now. It is too deeply a part of your nature, I think.”
She could feel tears welling to her eyes and dropped them hastily to look at the grass between them. No one had ever understood before, and no one had ever spoken with approval of her strange tastes. Was it possible that he felt about her as she felt about him?
But, no. He was to dance with Melissa that very evening, and ride with her one morning soon. He would perhaps be betrothed to her before the summer was out. And she herself was a mere village wench, as far as he knew. She jumped to her feet suddenly and moved away from him among the trees.
“What is it, Nell?” he called after her.
She did not answer. But she did not run far away, either. She merely wanted a few moments to collect herself. She did not want their afternoon to end so soon, their last afternoon. Within a few hours he would know who she was, and his approval would turn to amusement at the best, contempt at the worst. It was perhaps acceptable for a serving girl to love the woods and the sky and the stream, but there was something definitely odd about a society girl who preferred those things to fashion and gossip and visits. She stopped at the big oak that she had climbed the day before and leaned against it, resting one cheek against the rough old bark and wrapping her arms as far around it as she could reach. She closed her eyes.
“What are you doing now?” William Mainwaring asked from behind her. His voice held a mixture of concern and amusement.
“This tree was here for hundreds of years before you and I,” she said, neither moving nor opening her eyes. “Can you imagine all the life it must have seen and all that it will see long after we are dead and buried? Sturdy as an oak’ is such an apt phrase. It lives, you know. If I were led here blindfold and did not know what I clasped, I would know it was a living thing.”
“Would you, Nell?” he asked gently.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “It is so full of life. If we could only understand a tree! Do touch it. Run your hand over the bark. You will see what I mean.”
She felt his hands touch the tree on either side of her, just above her own hands. He did not touch her, though every inch of her body was aware of the closeness of him. Neither of them moved—or breathed, it seemed—for several seconds, and then she turned, or he turned her, she was never sure which.
