The Anatomy of Love/Chapter 11

Macraven was not altogether satisfied with the outcome of his reconnaissance with Anne. He felt sure that no word had passed between the two women—Anne was too honest for that—yet he felt equally sure that Sybil had some inkling of the conspiracy of separation that had been set on foot. And the more he thought of it, the more heartily he wished himself out of the entire affair.

Yet if Sybil suspected anything, she kept those suspicions firmly locked in her own breast. She even confessed to Macraven, as they returned to the luncheon table after waving a merry good-by to Anne and Richard, that it was nice being alone again. Then she made him sit in Dickie's place, opposite her own, and peel a pear for her.

This intrusion of the personal note made the young professor's task a hard one. It would seem like cannonading a canary, he felt, to say anything to her in her present light and artless mood. He would wait until some interval of sobriety, some moment of seriousness, stole over her, and then talk to her as he knew she must be talked to. So he peeled a second pear for her, while she leaned over the table and wiped the juice from his fingers with her own table napkin.

“I've a scheme,” she said at last, with her rounded chin on her locked fingers and her elbows on the table. “We have all the rest of the day to ourselves, haven't we?”

The young professor confessed, not without a sense of vague satisfaction, that they had.

“And it's going to be hot to-night, and there's going to be a full moon!”

That, also, he could not deny.

“Well, since we've been left in charge, we're going to have a holiday—we're going to have supper together under the Wishing Oak, at nine o'clock to-night!”

“And—er—no dinner?” inquired the professor, with his physiologist's deep-rooted aversion to irregularity of meals.

“Not a bite,” declared Sybil, “for I want you to be ravenous. You can have tongue sandwiches and plum jam for afternoon tea, at four, but not another bite until we get to the Wishing Oak. I'm going to have this supper of mine a feast for the fairies. Every atom of it must taste like nectar and ambrosia!”

She was sitting opposite him in silence, studying his face.

“But won't Anne think it rather odd—without her?” demurred the guardian of youth, looking up from his plate and meeting Sybil's steady and unwavering gaze.

“I told Anne to have supper in the village with Dickie; and while they're having their fun, we can have ours!”

Macraven wondered—a little disturbed, and for reasons he could not fathom—if, after all, that excursion into town was fun for Anne. And for the rest of the afternoon, while Sybil kept Hannah busy in the kitchen and Terence carried mysterious bundles back and forth across the fields to the Wishing Oak, the young professor loitered about, somewhat ill at ease and indeterminately guilty of conscience, wondering just when and where would come the opportunity for his serious talk with this restless child of impulse.

It was late in the gathering twilight before Sybil spread her mysterious banquet on the wide old bench that stood under the Wishing Oak. Here and there, through a tangle of leafage, could be seen an occasional glimmer of the river, tranquil and silver in the afterglow. The night was warm, and there was no wind. Every now and then, across the sultry silences, crept the plaintive cry of a whippoorwill. The entire river valley was jeweled and brightened with drifting fireflies. Two dim Chinese lanterns swayed and glowed among the dark boughs above their heads.

A sense of isolation from realities, of detachment from earthly worries and duties, stole over the young professor, as he helped Sybil unpack the hampers, spread the snow-white cloth, and drape and shroud the rough bench with leaves and blossoms until it looked like a bower.

Then the white-gowned girl, fluttering back and forth through the dusk, set out pyramids of strawberries on crinkled platters of lettuce leaves, and a little gourd filled with golden butter, and the whitest of homemade bread, and candied fruits, and a sealer of clotted and yellow cream, and brandied peaches in a crystal glass, and strange salads of meat and fowl, and little round cakes crowned with cream paste, and a flask of homemade wine, and a comb of honey, and a tightly packed freezer of ice cream, with a silver alcohol lamp for the coffee at the end.

John Herrin Macraven's thoughts, as he looked down at that strange repast, went back to some of his hurried and frugal meals at Amboro, bolted down while his eyes had traveled across the pages of a book propped against his sugar bowl. He even made a second and more careful inspection of their rustic table, and found himself wondering why it was he could be so infected with Sybil's light and careless enthusiasm for things of the moment. Then he remembered that it was five long hours since afternoon tea. And still again he looked at the preparing banquet, with an involuntary sigh. The girl had not erred in her judgment; he was indeed ravenous.

“How Anne would enjoy this!” he remarked inappositely, as he made away with his fifth caviar sandwich.

A shadow crossed Sybil's happy face; she gazed at him with wide and contemplative eyes.

“How Dickie would love it!” she echoed feelingly.

The professor of anthropology emitted something that was dangerously akin to a snort of disdain.

“Your knee hasn't been troubling you at all to-night, has it?” Sybil had the goodness to ask, as she uncovered the ice-cream freezer.

The professor sat up, quite sober again. But he had only to look into her serious and wistful eyes to read that there had been no slightest trace of malice in her interrogation. She leaned back, looking at him, idly tearing roses to pieces, dropping the petals into the basket at her side. Then, with a laugh, she flung off her little outer wrap and stood before him in the square of soft moonlight, framed by the tree branches on the sloping turf.

“Isn't it heavenly?” she murmured.

The professor of anthropology remembered neither Master Richard Sewell nor the carefully balanced phrases of reproof that he had prepared for his companion's shell-like ear. Instead of recalling this stern duty, he joined Sybil in gazing up at the great silver globe of light that was rising higher and higher in the eastern heavens.

“It is mysterious, isn't it?” he cried. “Why, it's almost intoxicating!”

Suddenly stooping to the basket at her feet, she lifted on high two handfuls of rose petals.

“Listen!” she said.

She began to recite, in a low and modulated voice that seemed almost a musical accompaniment to the words, and as she did so, she allowed the rose petals to flutter loose and drift about her in the tranquil moonlight. Her face was upturned, the profile clear cut against the gloom behind it.

The poem ended, and the girl was silent. Her hands fell to her sides, and a little fluttering sigh escaped her lips.

John Herrin Macraven swallowed hard before he essayed to speak, for, to his own surprise, he found that his feelings had brought a sudden lump to his throat.

The girl crossed slowly over to where he sat, as in a trance. He reached out a timid hand and took hers in his own. She surrendered it, without hesitation, apparently without conscious thought, for her wide and dreamy eyes were still turned to the full moon above the treetops.

As he did not speak, she wheeled slowly, at last, and looked down at him. Their eyes met. He felt the vital warmth of her close, yet careless handclasp creep through his body. A soft anæsthesia seemed stealing over him. Yet, even in that moment of ethereal content, he was teased by the vague, yet familiar impression that he was being made the victim of some vast conspiracy of Nature, that he was being pursued by some intangible and yet implacable force.

Sybil's arm crept up to his shoulder, and he no longer psychologized.

Yet still he did not speak, for as he was about to open his lips, the deep-noted baying of the house dogs seemed to tear a sudden hole in the silence that had enveloped them like a veil.

The barking grew louder, came closer; across the fields drifted the disturbing sound of voices.

“What can that be?” asked the professor of anthropology. His voice sounded strained and unnatural to his own ears.

Sybil did not answer. He only felt the fingers in his clasp twitch a little.

“That can't be young Sewell and Anne back already, can it?” he demanded inadequately, as he rose to his feet. He stood listening, as the sounds grew louder. “Yes,” he admitted, “those are the dogs. And that's Anne's voice I hear, I'm certain!”

“Oh, bother!” said Sybil, in a strangely irritable and earthly tone of voice.

The moon, palely serene and tranquil, still floated, an ivory-tinted balloon, above the motionless treetops. The odor of the dew-wet flowers still stole up to Macraven's nostrils. But it was not the same moon and not the same perfume.