Summer would pass to autumn, with maple-foliage falling in golden rain, and fawn-brown fields scattered with life-everlasting, with the wine-red beauty of October, its purple pageant of crimsoning woods, its opal haze of Indian summer, and scent of burning leaves. Frost would lay its spectral stain over the old house like star-dew, and the scent of cider would linger under the apple-trees. In his mind’s eye he could see Uncle Jefferson bent with the weight of hickory-logs for the eager chimney-piece, deep as the casement of a fortress. Snow-sandaled winter would lay its samite on the dark blue ramparts of the mountains, and droop the naked boughs of the mock-orange bushes, dishevel the evergreens like rough-and-tumble schoolboys, and cover the frosted ruts of the Red Road. But in Damory Court would be cheerful warmth and friendly noises, with a loved woman standing before the crackling fireplace whose mottoed “I clinge” was for him written in her fringed and gentian eyes. So he stood dreaming—a dream in the open sunlight, of a future that should never end, of work and plan, of comradeship and understanding, of cheer and tenderness and clasping hands and [Pg 349]clinging lips—of a woman’s arms held out in that same adorable gesture of the tourney field, to little children’s uncertain footsteps across that polished floor. When he came from the little close there was a new mystery in the sunshine, a fresh and joyous meaning in the intense blue overarching of the imponderable sky. Every bird-note held its own love-secret. A wood-thrush sang it from a silver birch beside the summer-house, and a bob-white whistled it in the little valley beyond. Even the long trip-hammer of a far-away woodpecker beat a radiant tattoo. He paused to greet the flaming peacock that sent out a curdling screech, in which the tentative potterack! potterack! of a guinea-fowl tangled itself softly. “Go on,” he invited. “Explode all you want to, old Fire-Cracker. Hang your purple-and-gold pessimism! You only make the birds sound sweeter. Perhaps that’s what you’re for—who knows?” He tried to work, but work was not for that marvelous afternoon. He wandered about the gardens, planning this or that addition: a little longer sweep to the pansy-bed—a clump of bull-rushes at the farther end of the lake. He peered into the stable: a saddle horse stood there now, but there should be more steeds stamping in those stalls one day, good [Pg 350]horse-flesh bought with sound walnut timber from the hillside. How he and Shirley would go galloping over those gleaming roads, in that roseate future when she belonged to him! Uncle Jefferson, from the door of the kitchens, watched him swinging about in the sunshine, whistling the Indian Serenade.