CHAPTER XXVII
THE SONG OF THE PINE-WOOD SPARROW
With the dawn a laggard breeze came winging drowsily in from thesouthern sea, the first thing astir in the spectral world of palm andvilla. Warm and deliciously fragrant, it swept the stiff wet Bermudagrass upon the lawn of the Sherrill villa at Palm Beach, rustled thecrimson hedge of hibiscus, caught the subtle perfume of jasmine andoleander and swept on to a purple-flowered vine on the white walls ofthe villa, a fuller, richer thing for the ghost-scent of countlessflowers.
Into this gray-white world of glimmering coquina and dew-wet palm rodepresently the slim, brisk figure of a girl astride a fretful horse. Aroyal palm dripped cool gray rain upon her as she galloped past to theshell-road looming out of the velvet stillness ahead like a dim, whiteghost-trail.
The gray ocean murmured, the still gray lagoon was asleep! Here andthere a haunting, elusive splash of delicate rose upon the silverpromised the later color of a wakening world. It was a finer, quieterworld, thought Diane, than the later day world of white hot sunlight.
With pulses atune to the morning's freshness, the girl galloped rapidlyalong the shell-road, the clattering thud of her horse's hoofsstartling in the quiet. As yet only a sleepy bird or two had begun totwitter. There was a growing noise of wind in the grass and palms.
A century back it seemed to this girl in whom the restless gypsy tidewas subtly fretting, she had left Johnny and the van at Jacksonville tocome into this sensuous, tropical world of color, fashionable life andlazy days.
Coloring delicately, the metallic gray bosom of the lake presentlyforetold the sunrise with a primrose glow. When at length the glaringwhite light of the sun struck sparks from the dew upon the pine andpalmetto, Diane was riding rapidly south in quest of the Floridaflat-woods. There was a veritable paradise of birds in the pinebarren, Dick Sherrill had said, robins and bluebirds, flickers andwoodpeckers with blazing cockades, shrikes and chewinks.
It was an endless monotony of pine trees, vividly green and far apart,into which Diane presently rode. A buzzard floated with uptilted wingsabove the sparse woodland to the west. A gorgeous butterfly,silver-spangled, winged its way over the saw palmetto and sedge betweenthe trees to an inviting glade beyond, cleft by a shallow stream.Swamp, jungle, pine and palmetto were vocal with the melody of manybirds.
Diane reined in her horse with a thrill. This was Florida, at last,not the unreal, exotic brilliance of Palm Beach. Here was her father'sbeloved Flowerland which she had loved as a child. Here were pines andtall grass, sun-silvered, bending in the warm wind, and the song of apine-wood sparrow!
From the scrub ahead came his quiet song, infinitely sweet, infinitelyplaintive like the faint, soft echo of a fairy's dream. A long noteand a shower of silver-sweet echoes, so it ran, the invisible singerseeming to sing for himself alone. So might elfin bells have pealedfrom a thicket, inexpressibly low and tender.
Diane sat motionless, the free, wild grace of her seeming a part of theprimeval quiet. For somehow, by some twist of singer's magic, thisFlorida bird was singing of Connecticut wind and river, of dogwood on aridge, of water lilies in the purple of a summer twilight, of a spotnamed forever in her mind--Arcadia.
Now as the girl listened, a beautiful brown sprite of the rustling pinewood about her, a great flood of color crept suddenly from the brownfull throat to the line of her hair, and the scarlet that lingered inher cheeks was wilder than the red of winter holly.
Surely--surely there was no reason under Heaven why the little birdshould sing about a hay-camp!
But sing of it he did with a swelling throat and a melodic quiver ofnerve and sinew, and a curious dialogue followed.
"A hay-camp is a very foolish thing, to be sure!" sang the bird with adulcet shower of plaintive notes.
"To be sure," said the voice of the girl's conscience, "to be sure itis. But how very like him!"
"But--but there was the bullet--"
"I have often thought of it," owned the Voice.
"A gallant gentleman must see that his lady comes to no harm. 'Tis theway of gallant gentlemen--"
"Hum!"
"And he never once spoke of his discomfort on the long hot road, thougha hay-camp is subject to most singular mishaps."
"I--I have often marveled."
"He is brave and sturdy and of charming humor--"
"A superlative grain of humor perhaps, and he's very lazy--"
"And fine and frank and honorable. One may not forget Arcadia and therake of twigs."
"One may not forget, that is very true. But he seeks to make himselfout such a very great fool---"
"He cloaks each generous instinct with a laughing drollery. Why didyou hum when you cooked his supper and called to him through the trees?"
"I--I do not know."
"'Twas the world-old instinct of primitive woman!"
"No! No! No! It was only because I was living the life I love thebest. I was very happy."
"Why were you happier after the storm?"
"I--I do not know."
"You have scolded with flashing eyes about the hay-camp--"
"But--I--I did not mind. I tried to mind and could not--"
"That is a very singular thing."
"Yes."
"Why have you not told him of the tall sentinel you have furtivelywatched of moonlit nights among the trees, a sentinel who slept by dayupon a ridiculous bed of hay that he might smoke and watch over thecamp of his lady until peep o' day?"
"I--do not know."
"You are sighing even now for the van and a camp fire--for the hay-campthrough the trees--"
"No!" with a very definite flash of perversity.
"Where is this persistent young nomad of the hay-camp anyway?"
"I--I have wondered myself."
But with a quiver of impatience the horse had pawed the ground and thetiny bird flew off to a distant clump of palmetto.
Diane rode hurriedly off into the flat-woods.