Bylow Hill | Page 9

point midway between the old cottage and the
larger house. There it crossed under an arch transecting an arbor that
extended from a side door of the one dwelling to a like one of the other,
and the brother and sister had just passed this embowered spot and
were stepping down a winding descent by which the path sought the
old mill-pond, when behind them they observed two women pass
athwart their track by way of the arbor, and Ruth smiled and murmured
again. The crossing pair were Mrs. Morris and Sarah Stebbens, the
Winslows' life-long housekeeper, deeply immersed in arranging for
Isabel to become lady of the larger house, while her mother, with a
single young maidservant, was to remain mistress of the cottage.
The deep pond to whose edge Leonard and Ruth presently came was a
narrow piece of clear water held in between Bylow Hill and the loftier
cliff beyond by an old stone dam long unused. Rude ledges of sombre
rock underlay its depths and lined and shelved its sides. Broad beeches
and dark hemlocks overhung it. At every turn it mirrored back the
slanting forms of the white and the yellow birch, or slept under green
mantles of lily pads. It bore a haunted air even in the floweriest days of
the year, when every bird of the wood thrilled it with his songs, and it
gave to the entire region the gravest as well as richest note among all its
harmonies. Down the whole way to it some one long gone had
gardened with so wise a hand that later negligence had only made the
wild loveliness of this inmost refuge more affluent and impassioned.
At one point, where the hemlocks hung farthest and lowest over the
pool, and the foot sank deep in a velvet of green mosses, a solid ledge
of dark rock shelved inward from the top of the bank and down through
the flood to a depth cavernous and black. Here, brought from time to
time by the Byington and Winslow playmates, lay a number of mossy
stones rounded by primeval floods, some large enough for seats, some
small; and here, where Ruth had last sat with Godfrey, she now came

with her brother.
The habitual fewness of Leonard's words was a thing she prized beyond
count. It made Mrs. Morris nervous, drained her mind's treasury, and
sent her conversational powers borrowing and begging; Isabel it awed;
Arthur it tantalized; to Godfrey it was an appetizing drollery; but to
Ruth it was dearer and clearer than all spoken eloquence.
The same trait in her, only less marked, was as satisfying to him, and
from one rare utterance to another their thoughts moved like consorted
ships from light to light along a home coast. A motion, a glance, a
gleam, a shade, told its tale, as across leagues of silence a shred of
smoke may tell one dweller in the wilderness the way or want of
another. Such converse may have been a mere phase of the New
Englander's passion for economy, or only the survival of a primitive
spiritual commerce which most of us have lost through the easier use of
speech and print; but the sister took calm delight in it, and it bound the
two to each other as though it were itself a sort of goodness or
greatness.
"They have it of their mother," the old General sometimes said to
himself.
There were moments, too, when their intercourse was still more subtle,
and now they sat without exchange of glance or gesture, silent as chess
players, looking up the narrow water into a sunset exquisite in the
delicacy of its silvery plumes, fleeces pink and dusk, and illimitable
distances of palest green seen through fan-rays of white light shot down
from one dark, unthreatening cloud.
"Leonard," at length said the sister, as if she had studied every
possibility on the board before touching the chosen piece, "couldn't you
go away for a time?"
And with deliberate readiness the other gentle voice replied, "I don't
think I'd better."
While they spoke their gaze rested on the changing beauties of pool and
sky, and after the brief inquiry and response it still remained, though
the inner glow of their mutual love and worship deepened and warmed
as did the colors of the heavens and of the glassing waters. The brother
knew full well Ruth's poignant sense of his distresses; and to her his
mute tongue and unbent head were a sister's convincement that he
would endure them in a manner wholly faithful to every one of the

loved hands that had lain under his the evening Godfrey had said
good-by.
[Illustration: Indeed it was clear that to go away would be unfair.]
Indeed, it was clear that to go away--unless he