Blue-Bird Weather

Was it the writing on the flyleaf that had stirred some forgotten

memory? It had seemed to him familiar, somehow--yet not like the

handwriting in Herold's business letters to him. Yet it was Herold's

writing--"Jim, from Daddy"--that was the inscription. And that

inscription had riveted his attention from the first moment he saw it.

Who was Herold? Who was this man whose undoubtable breeding and personal

cultivation had stamped his children with the same unmistakable

distinction?

Somehow or other there had been a great fall in the world for him--a

terrible tumble from higher estate to land him here in this desolation

of swamp-bound silence--here where only the dark pines broke the vast

sky line, where the only sound was the far rumor of the sea. Sick,

probably with coast fever, poor, dependent, no doubt, on the salary

Marche paid him, isolated from all in the world that made the world

endurable to intelligence, responsible for two growing children--one

already a woman--what must be the thoughts of such a man on a night like

this, for instance?

"I want to see that man," he kept repeating to himself. "I want to see

him; and I'm going to."

Restless, but now always listening for the sound of a light tread which

he had come to know so well--alas!--he began to walk to and fro, with

keen glances toward the illuminated kitchen window every time he passed

it. Sometimes his mind was chaotic; sometimes clear. The emotions which

had awakened in him within the week were complex enough to stagger a

more intelligent man. And Marche was not a fool; he was the typical

product of his environment--the result of school and college, and a New

York business life carried on in keenest competition with men as

remorseless in business as the social code permitted. Also, he went to

church on Sundays, read a Republican newspaper, and belonged to several

unexceptionable clubs.

That was the kind of a man he had been only a week ago--a good fellow in

the usual sense among men, acceptable to women, kind hearted, not too

cynical, and every idea in his head modeled upon the opinions he heard

expressed in that limited area wherein he had been born and bred.

That was the kind of a man he had been a week ago. What was he

now--to-night--here in this waste corner of the world with the light

from a kitchen window blazing on him as though it were the flashing

splendor streaming through the barred portals of paradise? Was it

possible that he, John Benton Marche, could be actually in love--in love

with the daughter of his own game warden--with a girl who served him at

supper in apron and gingham, who served him further in hip boots and

ragged jacket--this modern Rosalind of the marshes, as fresh and

innocent, as modest and ardent, as she of the Arden glades?