Diane of the Green Van Page 22

  CHAPTER XXII

  SYLVAN SUITORS

  Southward wound the green and white van; southward the hay-camp withinfrequent scurries to inn and barn for shelter; southward, his healthstill improving, went the musical nomad, unwinding his musicalhullabaloo for the torture of musical crowds.

  Now the world was a-riot with the life and color of midsummer. Sleepycows browsed about in fields dotted with orange daisies, horsesswitched their tails against the cloudless sky on distant hillsides,sheep freckled the sunny pastures, and here and there beneath an appletree heavy with fruit, lumbered a mother-sow with her litter of pigs.Sun-bleached dust clouded the highway and the swaying fields of cornwere slim and tall.

  The shuttle of Fate clicked and clicked as she wove and crossed andtangled the threads of these wandering, sun-brown nomads. Howfrequently the path of the music machine crossed the path of the van,no one knew so well perhaps as Philip, but Philip at times wastantalizing and mysterious and only evidenced his knowledge in peculiarand singularly aggravating ways.

  For the friendship between Diane and the handsome minstrel was steadilygrowing. By what subtle hints, by what ingenuous bursts of confidence,by what bewildering flashes of inherent magnetism he contrived tocement it, who may say? But surely his romantic resources like hisirresistible charm of speech and manner, were varied. A rare flower,an original and highly commendable bit of woodland verse, some luxuryof fruit or camping device, in a hundred delicate ways he contrived tomake the girl his debtor, talking much in his grave and courtly way ofthe gratitude he owed her. Adroitly then this romantic minstrel spunhis shining, varicolored web, linking them together as sympatheticnomads of the summer road; adroitly too he banned Philip, who by reasonof a growing and mysterious habit of sleeping by day had gained forhimself a blighting reputation of callous indifference to the charm ofthe beautiful rolling country all around them.

  "I'm exceedingly sorry," read a scroll of birch bark which Ras drowsilydelivered to Diane one sunset, "but I'll have to ask you to invite meto supper. Ras bought an unhappy can of something or other behind inthe village and it exploded.

  "Philip."

  "If I refuse," Diane wrote on the back, "you'll come anyway. Youalways do. Why write? Will you contribute enough hay for a cushion?Johnny's making a new one for Rex."

  It was one of the vexing problems of Diane's nomadic life, just how totreat Mr. Philip Poynter. It was increasingly difficult to ignore orquarrel with him--for his memory was too alarmingly porous to cherish agrudge or resentment. When a man has had a bump upon his only head,held Mr. Poynter, things are apt to slip away from him. Wherefore onemay pardon him if after repeated commands to go home, and certainfrost-bitten truths about officious young men, he somehow forgot andreappeared in the camp of the enemy in radiant good humor.

  Philip presently arrived with a generous layer of hay under his arm anda flour bag of tomatoes.

  "Hello," he called warmly. "Isn't the sunset bully! It even woke oldRas up and he's blinking and grumbling like fury." Mr. Poynter fell tochatting pleasantly, meanwhile removing from his clothing certain wispsof hay.

  "You're always getting into hay or getting out of it!" accused Diane.

  Philip admitted with regret that this might be so and Diane staredhopelessly at his immaculate linen. Heaven alone knew by whatingenuity Mr. Poynter, handicapped by the peculiar limitations of ahay-camp, contrived to manage his wardrobe. What mysterious toiletparaphernalia lay beneath the hay, what occasional laundry chores Rasdid by brook and river, what purchases Mr. Poynter made in everyvillage, and finally what an endless trail of shirts and cuffs andcollars lay behind him, doomed, like the cheese and buns, as hefeelingly put it, to one-night stands, only Ras and Philip knew; butcertainly the hay-nomad combined the minimum of effort with the maximumof efficiency to the marvel of all who beheld him. Ras's problem wasinfinitely simpler. He never changed. There was much of the originalload of hay, Philip said, dispersed about his ears and pockets andfringing the back of his neck.

  "Where did you get tomatoes?" inquired Diane at supper.

  "Well," said Philip, "I hate to tell you. I strongly suspect Ras ofspearing 'em with a harpoon he made. Made it in his sleep, too. It'spretty long and he can spear whatever he wants from the wagon seat.Lord help the rabbits!" He lazily sprinkled salt upon a large tomatoand bit into it with relish. "But why should I worry?" he commentedsmiling. "They're mighty good. Johnny, old top, see if you can rustleup a loaf of bread to lend me for breakfast, will you? I'm willing totrade three cucumbers for it. And tell Ras when you take his supperover that there's a herring under the seat for Dick Whittington'ssupper. Tell me," he added humorously to Diane, "just how do youcontrive to remember bread and salt?"

  "I don't," said Diane, smiling. "Johnny does. Did the storm get youlast night, Philip?"

  "It did indeed. It's the third load of hay we've had this week. We'reperpetually furling up the tarpaulin or unfurling it or skinning themattress or watching the clouds. I'm a wreck."

  "Where have you been all day?"

  "Haying!" said Philip promptly.

  "Sleeping!" corrected Diane with a critical sniff.

  Mr. Poynter fancied they were synonyms.

  "Do you know," he added pointedly, "I imagine I'd find ever so muchmore romance and adventure about it if I only had some interestingailment and a music-mill. I did think I had a bully cough, but it wasonly a wisp of hay in my throat."

  Philip's powers of intuition were most fearful. Diane colored.

  "Just what do you mean?" she inquired cautiously.

  "Nothing at all," replied Philip with a charming smile. "I never do.Why mean anything when words come so easy without? It has occurred tome," he added innocently, "that it takes an uncommonly thick-skinnedand unromantic dub to tour about covered with hay. Fancy sleepingthrough this wild and beautiful country when I might be grinding uplost chords to annoy the populace."

  Diane had heard something of this sort before from quite anothersource. Acutely uncomfortable, she changed the subject. There wassomething uncanny in Philip's perfect comprehension of the minstrel'stactics.

  A little later Mr. Poynter produced a green bug mounted eccentricallyupon a bit of birch bark.

  "I found a bug," he said guilelessly. "He was a very nice little bug.I thought you'd like him."

  Diane frowned. For every flower the minstrel brought, Philip contriveda ridiculous parallel.

  "How many times," she begged hopelessly, "must I tell you that I am notcollecting ridiculous bugs?"

  Philip raised expressive eyebrows.

  "Dear me!" said he in hurt surprise. "You do surprise me. Why, he'sthe greenest bug I ever saw and he matches the van. He's a nomad withthe wild romance of the woodland bounding through him. I did think I'dscore heavily with him."

  Diane discreetly ignored the inference. Whistling happily, Mr. Poynterpoured the coffee and leaned back against a tree trunk. Watching himone might have read in his fine eyes a keener appreciation of nomadiclife--and nomads--than he ever expressed.

  There was idyllic peace and quiet in this grove of ancient oaks shotwith the ruddy color of the sunset. Off in the heavier aisles ofgolden gloom already there were slightly bluish shadows of the comingtwilight. Hungry robins piped excitedly, woodpeckers bored for wormsand flaming orioles flashed by on golden wings. Black against the skythe crows were sailing swiftly toward the woodland.

  With the twilight and a young moon Philip produced his wildwood pipeand fell to smoking with a sigh of comfort.

  "Philip!" said Diane suddenly.

  "Mademoiselle!" said Philip, suspiciously grave and courtly of manner.The girl glanced at him sharply.

  "It annoys me exceedingly," she went on finally, finding his laughingglance much too bland and friendly to harbor guile, "to have youtrailing after me in a hay-wagon."

  "I'll buy me a rumpus machine," said Philip.

  "It would bother me to have you trailing after me so persistently in
any guise!" flashed the girl indignantly.

  "It must perforce continue to bother you!" regretted Philip."Besides," he added absently, "I'm really the Duke of Connecticut indisguise, touring about for my health, and the therapeutic value of hayis enormous."

  Now why Diane's cheeks should blaze so hotly at this aristocratic claimof Mr. Poynter's, who may say? But certainly she glanced with swiftsuspicion at her tranquil guest, who met her eyes with supreme goodhumor, laughed and fell to whistling softly to himself. Despite acertain significant silence in the camp of his lady, Mr. Poynter smokedmost comfortably, puffing forth ingenious smoke-rings which he lazilysought to string upon his pipestem and busily engaging himself in avariety of other conspicuously peaceful occupations. All in all, therewas something so tranquil and soothing in the very sight of him thatDiane unbent in spite of herself.

  "If you'd only join a peace tribunal as delegate-at-large," she said,"you'd eliminate war. I meant to freeze you into going home. I dowish I could stay indignant!"

  "Don't," begged Philip humbly. "I'm so much happier when you're not.

  "There _is_ another way of managing me," he said hopefully a littlelater. "I meant to mention it before--"

  "What is it?" implored Diane.

  "Marry me!"

  "Philip!" exclaimed the girl with delicate disdain, "the moon is onyour head--"

  "Yes," admitted Philip, "it is. It does get me. No denying it.Doesn't it ever get you?"

  "No," said Diane. "Besides, I never bumped my brain--"

  "That could be remedied," hinted Philip, "if you think it would altermatters--"

  Diane was quite sure it would not and later Philip departed for thehay-camp in the best of spirits. In the morning Diane found aconspicuous placard hung upon a tree. The placard bore a bombasticode, most clever in its trenchant satire, entitled--"To a WildMosquito--by One who Knows!"

  Since an ill-fated occasion when Mr. Poynter had found a neatly inditedode to a wild geranium written in a flowing foreign hand, his literaryoutput had been prodigious. Dirges, odes, sonnets and elegiesfrequently appeared in spectacular places about the camp and as Mr.Poynter's highly sympathetic nature led him to eulogize the lowlier andless poetic life of the woodland, the result was frequently of strikingoriginality.

  Convinced that Mr. Poynter's eyes were upon her from the hay-camp,Diane read the ode with absolute gravity and consigned it to the fire.

  The minstrel's attitude toward the hay-nomad might be one of subtleundermining and shrugging ridicule, but surely with his imperturbablegift of satire, Mr. Poynter held the cards!

  Still another morning Diane found a book at the edge of her camp.

  "I am dropping this accidentally as I leave," read the fly leaf inPhilip's scrawl. "I don't want you to suspect my classic tastes, butwhat can I do if you find the book!"

  It was a volume of Herodotus in the original Greek!