Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/247

Rh "I am gathering firewood," she answered sullenly, and looking at him with defiant eyes. "Leave me alone."

"Leave you alone because you are gathering firewood? Why, no — that is just the reason why I should stay. I want to help you to gather firewood."

"I do not want any help."

"You do not want help? Yes, that is always what the girls in the corn-fields say, and yet they are happy enough when I help to make their stack of grain higher, and give them the chance of wearing the harvest-wreath."

"I am not a girl." "No, you are a woman — a beautiful woman. But there is no reason why I should not help a beautiful woman to pick up sticks, is there?" and he looked at her with laughter in his blue eyes.

"Danelo, go away!" cried Magda, putting out her hands as if to ward him off, though he had not attempted to come nearer as yet. "Go away — remember that I am Filip's wife!"

"Then why," said Danelo, coming now a step nearer, and taking hold of her out-stretched hands in his — "why does not Filip come to the forest to help his wife to pick up sticks?"

"He never comes with me!" she cried imprudently, out of the irrepressible impulse of her overburdened heart. "He does all his work by himself, and leaves me to do mine by myself as well. I am always alone. He thinks of nothing but of St. Peter and his key and the seventy florins, and I — I —-" she broke off with a sob.

"You will look for sticks with me; you will not be alone, Magda?"

"Leave me — oh leave me!" she cried again, with a last effort; but his voice was whispering in her ear as Filip's voice had never spoken, and his eyes were gazing at her as Filip's eyes had never looked, and she felt weak and powerless to escape. Perhaps the victory was no longer in her power; for had not her battle been fought and lost the day before? She was hardly aware that his arm had clasped her waist, and that his lips were close to hers; she felt as if the whole forest were spinning around her — every tree seemed to be nodding approval, and every bird to be warbling dreamy love-ditties. The wood-pigeons were cooing softly and insinuatingly, the lark was singing a triumphant jubilee, and the woodpeckers were tapping applause on the hollow beech-trees.

She had no ears for the other chorus, where the mocking-bird was laughing its harsh, discordant laugh, and the ill-mannered raven croaked "Beware! beware!"

Filip was wending his way back from the town after sunset that day. Leaving the dusty highroad, he struck into a pathway through the forest; this way was shorter, and he wanted to look whether his beehives were safe — whether no marauder had discovered their retreat.

The beehives were safe, as he remarked with satisfaction, — not a hive had been disturbed, not a honeycomb had been tampered with. He observed this, and he observed nothing else; for the waving ferns, which grew so high in the forest glades, gave no clue to the mysteries they concealed.

CHAPTER X. DROOPING SUNFLOWERS. "We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move; The sun flies forward to his brother sun" . Summer was now over, and Nature, like a miser regretting his gifts, was taking back, one by one, all the beautiful things she had lent to earth for a while.

The wood grew lighter day by day; and the forest sanctuaries, robbed of their leafy curtains, were no longer the dangerous, alluring places they had been before. When Magda went to the forest to gather firewood, she shuddered and turned away her head whenever she passed by the spot where stood the largest and finest forest tree. How could she ever have found beauty in that spot, where now the branches stretched black and uncompromising against the grey sky, sending down their remaining leaves in sharp, rustling showers at each breath of air? where the bleached ferns, all their life and juiciness fled from them, lay rotting prostrate against the cold, damp earth?

The cottage gardens, too, had been gradually stripped of their summer ornament. Every rose and lily, every poppy and carnation, had long since passed away. Only the yellow and orange flowers still lingered — sunflowers, marigolds, and nasturtiums — as though their fiery nature enabled them to resist a little longer the chill dampness that was slowly but surely sapping their life away. Their hour of death was fast approaching; for the proud sunflower, its brown velvet heart developed out of all proportion to its orange petals, was already beginning to lean aslant, every day bringing it a little nearer to its grave.