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Title: At the Sign of the Fox: A Romance
Author: Wright, Mabel Osgood
Language: English
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AT THE SIGN OF THE FOX
AT THE SIGN OF
THE FOX
_A Romance_
BY
BARBARA
AUTHOR OF “THE GARDEN OF A COMMUTER’S WIFE,”
“PEOPLE OF THE WHIRLPOOL,” AND
“THE WOMAN ERRANT”
NEW YORK
HURST & CO.
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1905.
Reprinted August, September, December, 1905;
March, 1912.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
This Book is for the Brave
[Illustration]
PRATE NOT TO ME OF WEAKLINGS, WHO
LAMENT THIS LIFE AND NOUGHT ACHIEVE,
I HYMN THE VAST AND VALIANT CREW
OF THOSE WHO HAVE SCANT TIME TO GRIEVE,
FIRM SET THEIR FORTUNES TO RETRIEVE,
THEY SING FOR LUCK A LUSTY STAVE,
THE WORLD’S STANCH WORKERS, BY YOUR LEAVE—
THIS IS THE BALLADE OF THE BRAVE!
—RICHARD BURTON.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE RIVER KINGDOM 1
II. A BELATED FIRST CAUSE 13
III. THE DECISION OF MISS KEITH 25
IV. INTERLUDE 37
V. A PICTURE 49
VI. THE LAWTONS 64
VII. THE DAY AFTER 84
VIII. TRANSITION 101
IX. THE RETURN 125
X. TATTERS TRANSFERS HIMSELF 144
XI. BREAD 170
XII. REVELATION 195
XIII. AT THE SIGN OF THE FOX 219
XIV. THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS 243
XV. A MASQUE OF SPRING 263
XVI. THE WAY THE WIND BLEW 282
XVII. LOCKS AND KEYS 302
XVIII. THE RETURN OF MEMORY 324
XIX. SETTERS OF SNARES 342
XX. FIRE OF LEAVES 362
THE PEOPLE
BROOKE LAWTON A Young Woman of To-day, who sees Things as they
might be.
ADAM LAWTON Her Father, a Country-bred New Yorker of Affairs.
PAMELA LAWTON Her Mother, a Brooke of Virginia.
ADAM THE CUB Her Brother, at the Difficult Age of Sixteen.
KEITH WEST Adam Lawton’s Maternal Cousin, who stayed at Home.
LUCY DEAN Brooke’s Friend, who sees Things as they are.
MRS. ENOCH FENTON A Cheerful Cripple.
SILENT STEAD Sportsman and Misanthrope.
MARTE LORENZ Idealist and Artist.
TOM BROWNELL Engaged in climbing the Ladder of Journalism from
the Bottom Rung.
HENRY MAARTEN A Farm Hand working on Shares.
DR. RICHARD RUSSELL Of Oaklands, Friend of Stead and the Lawtons, and
Confidant-general of the County.
THE PIEMAN A Travelling Optimist.
TATTERS A Person, though disguised as an Old Collie Dog.
The Usual Critic’s Chorus, composed of Citizens, Villagers,
Male and Female, Commonplace, Eccentric, or Otherwise.
TIME
The Present Century.
PLACE
Manhattan and the Hill Country of the Moosatuk.
AT THE SIGN OF THE FOX
CHAPTER I
THE RIVER KINGDOM
Robert Stead and Dr. Russell, clad for hunting, tramped down a pent road
through the woodland and halted at the bars that separated it from the
highway.
Like careful woodsmen, they made sure that their guns were at half-cock
before resting them against the tumble-down wall; pulling out pipe
and tobacco pouch, they filled and fingered the smooth bowls with the
deliberation that is akin to restfulness. Then, face to windward, they
applied the match and drew the few rapid puffs that kindle the charmed
fire, and leaning on the top rail, looked down the slope to where the
river, broad and tranquil as it passed, narrowed and grew more elusive
as the eye traced it toward its starting-point in the north country many
miles away.
For more than a hundred miles between its throne in the hill country
and the sea travels the Moosatuk, and all the land through which it
passes is its kingdom. What its stern mood was in the ancient days when
as an ice-floe, maybe, it tore a pathway through the granite hills,
fortressing them with splintered slabs and tossing huge boulders from
its course, man may but guess; but to-day a wild thing, half tamed, it
obeys while it still compels. Above, below, confined by dams, it does the
will of man; and yet, flow where it will, man follows, with his mills,
his factories, his railways, until, by spreading into shallows, it half
eludes his greed. For twenty sinuous miles it follows a free, sunlit
course, now running swift and lapping the banks of little islands wooded
with hemlocks, now stretching itself on the smooth pebbles until it
tempts the unwary to the crossing on a bridge of stepping-stones. For all
this space the ferns and wood flowers stoop from the slanting banks to
snatch its lingering kisses, the wood folk drink from it, the wild fowl
sleep on it, and its waters bear no heavier responsibility or weight than
driftwood or the duck boat, that steals silently forth, a shadow in the
morning twilight, like the Mohican canoes that a mere century ago plied
the selfsame waters.
Such is the Moosatuk where it passes Gilead, a peaceful village halfway
between Stonebridge and Gordon, with its farmsteads filling the fertile
river valley and climbing up the hillside as if to shun railways, until
from below the topmost are lost in the trees, like the aeries of some
furtive hawk or owl of the woods. This was the scene which lay below the
hunters as they paused to rest in the October noon glow before returning
to Stead’s lodge on top of Windy Hill.
For a little space neither man spoke. In fact, the last mile of their
walk had passed in silence save for the occasional smothered exclamation
of the younger hunter, when he came upon a snare, now and then, and broke
it. Even the dry leaves lay untouched in their tracks, for the foot of a
woodsman seems instinctively to avoid the dead twig and leaf-filled rut.
The dogs, two brown-eyed, mobile Gordon setters, well understanding
that the signal of stacked arms and the smell of tobacco meant that
the day’s work was over, started unchidden on a private hunting-trip,
nosing about through the ground-pine and frost-bleached lady-ferns, and
paused with tails swinging in wide circles before a great patch of glossy
wintergreen, where a ruffed grouse or shy Bob-white had doubtless made
his breakfast on the pungent scarlet berries. Out in the little-used
highway, October, herself an Indian in her colour schemes, had set her
loom in the grass-divided wheel tracks, a loom of many strands, wherein
she wove a careful tapestry of russet, bronze, crimson, gold, and ruby
from leaf of beech, sumach, oak, pepperidge, chestnut, birch, and
purpling dogwood, only to drop it as a rug for hoof tracks or fling it
aloft at random, a bit of gracious drapery for the too stern granite.
Between these two men, neither young, as often happens between close
friends of either sex, silence did not come from lack of mutual
understanding. It is only the machine-made or undeveloped brain that
mistakes garrulity for companionship and casts the blight of motiveless
chatter upon the precious gift of silent hours, wherein the soul may
learn to know itself.
More than fifteen years divided their ages, and their temperaments were
wider still apart; you could judge this even from trifles, as the shape
of their pipes and the way in which they held and smoked them.
Robert Stead, turning fifty, tall and well knit, had heavy, matted brown
hair, beard cut close, and impenetrable eyes, whose colour no one could
tell offhand, any more than he might read the meaning of the mustache-hid
mouth. His firm walk and clear skin told of strength and present outdoor
life; his slightly rounded shoulders spoke either of past indoor hours or
the resistless, flinching attitude where a man ceases to face the storms
of life with chest thrown out and head erect as if to say to warring
elements—“See, I am ready; come and do your worst!” “Silent Stead” people
hereabout called him from his taciturnity, and he either held his short
brier close against his lips and puffed between tightly clinched teeth,
as if pulling against time, or in the revulsion let the flame die out
until, forgotten, the pipe hung cold, bitter, and noisome between his
lips.
Dr. Russell’s pipe, a plain meerschaum of moderate length, held with
light firmness, was smoked deliberately as something that soothed yet
held in no thrall, and when its first sweetness passed, with a sharp,
cleansing rap, he returned the pipe to his pocket. Though in the later
sixties, the doctor radiated all the hope of youth. One realized that
his was a face to trust, even before compassing its details; the easy
turn of his shapely, well-poised head, with its closely cut hair blended
of steel and silver, every glance of his searching gray eyes, that
looked frankly from under eyebrows that were still black, conveyed both
comprehension and sympathy. His nose was straight and not too long, and
the thin nostrils quivered with all the sensitiveness of a highly strung
horse, while the mouth was saved from the sternness to which the firm
chin seemed to pledge it by a drooping of the corners that told of a keen
sense of humour. In stature he was of medium height, but his shoulders
were still squared to the burdens of life, and his erect carriage made
him appear tall; but, after all, the secret of his youth lay in a quality
of mind, the very quality that the younger man lacked—his steadfast
faith and confidence in his fellow-men; this had lasted undaunted by
disappointment during the forty years and more that he had held to them
the closest, wisest, and most blessed of human ministries—that of the
good physician.
The doctor’s pipe grew cold, and placing it in one of the deep pockets
of his jacket, he fumbled in the other as he turned to his companion,
saying: “Was I not right, Rob? Give the city boys, with their automobiles
and pretty clothes, and the trolley-car hunters, the first two weeks
of October in which to moult their fine feathers, ruin their firearms
and dispositions, and decide that the Moosatuk has been overhunted, and
we may have the rest of open season to ourselves without danger when
crossing a brush lot in broad daylight of being mistaken for wild turkeys
or what not. It is the eighteenth to-day. We’ve tramped good twenty miles
since daybreak, and whom have we met? A woman looking for cows, two men
stacking slab sides, and some school children on the cross-road, while
we’ve had our fill of air unpeppered by small shot, this glorious view at
every curve and through every gap, and,” freeing his pocket, “a brace of
grouse, another of quail, and three woodcock as an excuse for our outing,
in the eyes of those who insist that excuses, aside from the desire, must
be made for every act.
“Strange, perhaps, that the killing and hunting lust should be an excuse.
I often feel like begging pardon of these little hunched-up feathered
things; but in spite of humanitarian principles, I somehow fear that
we are growing too nice, and when the hunting fever dies out wholly,
something vital is lacking in a man.”
“Hunting fever or not,” replied Stead, kicking a decaying log at his
feet into dust, “I’d rather the woods were full of visible men with guns
than invisible snares. Do you know that I have broken thirty or more
this morning? Some day these setters of snares and I shall meet, and
there will be trouble; it seems that I am destined always to war with
the intangible.” Then he spread his game on the fence, and though it
outranked the doctor’s spoils, he seemed to take no pleasure in it, but
still looked moodily across the river.
“Ah, Rob, Rob,” said the doctor, throwing his arm affectionately about
the shoulder of the taller man, who leaned heavily on the fence-top,
“will your mood never change? Can you not forgive and at least play
bravely at forgetting?
“It is ten years—no, eleven—since your child whom I tended died and Helen
left you, or you her, whichever way you choose to put it. The why of it
all you have never deemed best to tell, and I have never asked, trusting
your manhood. She led her own life then for the four years she lived. I
have managed to see you every year since, in spite of the drifting life
your profession forced upon you. And since the railway’s completion, when
you settled here, I’ve spent a week of my holiday each autumn with you,
hoping to see a change, believing you would waken and live your life out
instead of moping it away. But no! Your work and old comrades need you,
and you still refuse. What is it, Rob? Life seems so good to me with the
threescore and ten in plain sight that I cannot bear to see it playing
through your fingers at fifty.
“Love may be gone, or clouded, let us say, but there is always work, and
work is glorious! Get out of your own shadow, man, and let the sun pass.
It is with you as _The Allegorist_ says:—
“‘One looked into the cup of life,
And let his shadow fall athwart;
The wine gleamed darkly in the cup—
It surely was of bitter sort.’”
Stead withdrew his gaze from the river and turned it on the face of his
companion.
“I know it all, doctor, and much more than you can say. I know you’ve
clung to me when no one else would trouble, and that you drive all those
forty miles from home every autumn, rain or shine, to tramp the woods
with me, to sit beside my fire and give me comfort, and yet—— Do you
remember the old adage, that ‘Life without work is water in a sieve’? but
in the antiphon lies the sting, ‘Work without motive cannot live.’ It is
motive that is dead in me. I think I have forgiven, I delude myself if I
say I have forgotten, but, good God, doctor, can you imagine sitting and
feeling yourself as useless as water in a sieve and _not caring_? That is
my misery. If I could only really care, heart and soul, for anything for
one short month, I would give the rest of my life for it.
“I have not even the primal motive of hunger that sets the wolf
a-prowling. The few yearly thousands my father left me have put that
chance away, and my contempt for that form of cowardice precludes
suicide. So I have actually come to be what passes current for content,
with every one but you. Here I am, located for life on the hillside,
with only half-breed José left of what was, with my books, which can
neither dissemble nor betray, for company, and so long as I have food
I shall have dog friends to follow me by day and sleep by me at night.
Then, as long as eyesight lasts, there is my River Kingdom,” and Stead
stretched his arms, half to relax their tension, toward the silver fillet
shimmering in the valley below, in which at that moment some white gulls,
with black-tipped wings, hanging in the skylike clouds, were mirrored.
Then, giving a nervous, mirthless laugh, he whistled to the dogs, and as
if led to speak of himself too much, he turned to action, and vaulting
over the bars with but a hand touch, trailed his feet through rifts of
glowing leaves, and reaching backward for his gun, said lightly, “Who was
it, by the way, that christened this region The River Kingdom? Was it
your daughter?”
“No, it was not Barbara,” said the doctor, crossing the bars, but more
sedately, his cheery temper relieved at the change of theme. “It was
Brooke Lawton, a cousin or niece or some such kin of Miss Keith West—a
lovable child, full of both romance and common sense. Her father, Adam
Lawton, whom you must have met in your capacity as a civil engineer,
for he has floated many railway schemes, was born here in Gilead in the
West homestead, his mother being of that family. Though he never comes
here, and all the kin but Keith, a first cousin, are dead, some slight
sentiment binds him to the past, and he has kept the little farm abreast
of all improvements and leaves Keith in charge. A few years ago Brooke,
his elder child and only daughter, recovering from an illness, came up
and spent the autumn; and I, being here for the shooting and knowing
Keith well, for she and my sister Lot were schoolmates at Mt. Holyoke
long ago, was called to see her several times.
“But there was little that I could do for her,—indomitable pluck and
dauntless spirits were her best medicine. Well I remember one gray, cold
day, the last of her stay, I found Miss Keith in some alarm about her, as
the child had gone out on foot over two hours before.
“As we stood consulting in the porch, a slim, gray-coated figure, with
soft brown hair flying like a gypsy’s, arms full of autumn leaves and
berries, came swiftly down the lane between house and wood, and throwing
her load on the steps, gazed at it in a sort of ecstasy, from which she
waked only at Miss Keith’s words of chiding.
“‘I—lost?’ she queried, straightening her thick eyebrows into an
expression of incredulity, ‘why, Cousin Keith, I’ve only been to my River
Kingdom collecting tribute, but when I’m grown up and do as I please, I’m
coming back here to reign and have the wild flowers bow to me when I pass
and the little wood beasts follow me in procession.’
“I must have told you of it at the time, for I was stopping with you.
Yes, it was Brooke Lawton who christened the River Kingdom,—but she
never returned, and I heard indirectly that she had gone abroad to study
art. Come to think of it, she must be a grown woman now, at the rate
time goes. All of which reminds me that I sent word that I would go to
Miss Keith’s to-day; she wants counsel of some sort, about what I could
not even surmise from her letter. As she is one of the good middle-aged
women who always wish excuses made for every act, I will take her these
grouse as an apology and tangible explanation as to my clothes and gun,
and as she always insists that I should take a meal with her, you will
not see me until supper-time. If you will tell José to dress and split
the quail, I myself will broil them over the wood coals in your den,
spitted on hickory forks. Metal should never touch wild fowl, but you of
the younger generation do so grudge trouble and seem to have no capacity
for detail,” and, half chiding, half laughing, Dr. Russell shouldered
his beloved gun, picked up the grouse, smoothed the rumpled ruff of the
cock bird, and started on the mile walk downhill to the West homestead,
whistling.
Robert Stead looked after him a moment, and then, calling the dogs to
heel, started up the hillside in an opposite direction. Before him for
a single instant stood the form of the young girl of the River Kingdom,
as Dr. Russell had portrayed her, with arms full of gay leaves and vines
that she had stripped from the hedges as she went, but as he reached her
she vanished, and turning toward the river itself, he was half surprised
to find it still moving as ceaselessly as ever. Love had mocked him long
ago and motive eluded him, but the dog at his side touched his fingers
with caressing tongue, and the River Kingdom still remained.
CHAPTER II
A BELATED FIRST CAUSE
The West farm was on the upper of the two roads between Stonebridge and
Gordon, at the point where a steep uphill grade paused, on a plateau of
several hundred feet in length, as if to rest and take breath and allow
those who travelled upon it to drink in the splendour of the river view
before attempting the still steeper ascent beyond.
Three generations of Wests had lived from this farm until, some forty
years before, its hundred acres being all too small for the needs of
modern push and life, the last young male of the family, a man of twenty
odd, of tenacious mixed Scotch and New England stock, had gone to New
York to follow a quicker game of dollars.
In due course, when Adam Lawton’s parents died, his mother having been
a West and the homestead her portion, he found himself absorbed in the
beginnings of money-making, yet somewhere in him was a deep-buried
sentiment for his boyhood’s home, stern though the life and discipline
had been, and even though he found no leisure to revisit it. He therefore
had installed his maternal cousin Keith in it as guardian, paying the
taxes and for such improvements and repairs as kept it apace with the
times. Then he promptly forgot it, except on pay days, when he justified
himself to himself, the Scotch thrift in him insisting on justification,
for the comparatively slight outlay, by saying half aloud to his private
secretary, who did the forwarding, “A snug little place, and always worth
a price; my daughter fancies it, and perhaps some day, who knows, I may
like to go back there for a rest.”
Thus it followed that Miss Keith and the farm had lived together for
twenty years a life of almost wedded devotion. The sheep had disappeared
from the hills, it is true, and four cows, a fat horse, and countless
chickens and ducks represented the live stock. The cultivated ground
had been reduced to a great corn-field, a potato patch, and vegetable
garden, on whose borders grew fruits of all seasons, the rest of the
land being sown down to rye or hay, while the woodland that protected
the house on the north and east, being only required to yield kindlings,
had returned to the beauty of a forest primeval, with a dense growth of
oak, white pine, and hemlock, underspread with untrodden ferns, amid
which, following the seasons’ call, blossomed arbutus, anemones, moccasin
flowers, snow crystal Indian pipe, and partridge vine.
Now, for the first time in all these years, Miss Keith was faltering in
her single-hearted allegiance, and this upheaval coming on her fiftieth
birthday, too, gave it a double significance. At fifty one’s ideas and
person are supposed to be settled for life, but with Miss Keith her
semi-centennial was the first occasion upon which she ever remembered to
have felt thoroughly unsettled, and as she stood in front of the parlour
mantel-shelf, arms akimbo, gazing at the _First Cause_, that rested
against the wall between the fat clock and a blue china vase filled with
quaking grass, she alternately frowned and smiled.
This First Cause was the highly finished cabinet photograph of a man,
coupled with a suggestion of marriage contained in a letter, the edge of
the pale blue envelope containing which peeped from under the garrulous
little clock that ticked vociferously the twenty-four hours through, and
gave an alarming whir-r, suggestive of asthma in the depths of its chest,
before striking every quarter and half, and mumbled a long grace before
the hours.
The photograph was of a man past fifty, with a good head, large,
wide-open eyes, and a broad nose that might mean either stupidity or a
sense of humour, according as to how the nostrils moved in life. Very
little else could be said of the face, for mustache and beard covered
it closely, running up before the ears to meet a curly mop of hair that
roofed the head. It was an attractive face at first glance, and the low,
turned-over collar, flowing tie that was barely hinted at beneath the
beard, and loose sack-coat carried out the suggestion of strength, that
was continued to where a pair of powerful hands, whose fingers rested
together easily tip to tip, completed the picture.
Picture and letter had arrived three days before, and yet the answer
to the latter lay in process of construction upon the flap of the
old-fashioned bookcase in the window corner. Perhaps the cause for the
delay was more in the fact that both picture and letter, though relating
to the First Cause, had not come directly from him, but from his sister.
She had been a school friend of Miss Keith’s, who occasionally came to
visit her and who was now living in Boston, having become the third wife
of some one connected in a humble capacity with a free library in the
city where the State-house dome seeks to rival Minerva’s helmet, and
whose streets ever coil in and out as if in classic emulation of Medusa’s
locks.
Taking the letter from under the clock, Miss Keith went to the window and
re-read it for the twentieth time.
“October 10, 19—.
“MY DEAR FRIEND:
“It is only during the past year, since I have been living
within reach and under the privilege and influence of all that
is inspiring to one of my aspirations, that I have realized
how lonely your life must be upon that farm, where your only
intimate associates are animals, feathered and otherwise, and
evening, instead of becoming as it is with me the period of
self-culture in the society of a loyal male companion, is too
often a period of premature somnolence and apathy.
“Until now I have seen no method of escape to offer you,
and so have held my peace. Two weeks ago, however, fortune
smiled through a letter from my brother, James White, out in
Wisconsin. You must remember James—the handsome man with curly
hair who waited on Jane Tilley when we were at Mt. Holyoke,
until she jilted him for William Parsons. He got over it
nobly, though, and brought us paper flower bouquets the day we
graduated. Mine was of red and white roses, and yours was all
white. Surely you will remember—he said you looked ‘quite smart
enough for a bride.’
“Well, you _were_ pretty in those days, Keith, with your white
skin and light brown hair, before you took on freckles; but,
after all, dark complexions like mine wear the best.
“Now, to come to time—James is a widower. He has sweet children
and needs a wife and mother for them. Though there are plenty
of western women, and some that have hoards of money, out
in Corntown, where his canning business is, he was always
particular and peckish, preferring a refined eastern woman
to influence his family. Knowing that I am living in Boston
in the midst of opportunities, so to speak, our home being
halfway between Bunker Hill Monument and Harvard University,
he has intrusted me to select him a wife. Your face appeared
to me. Putting aside more pressing claimants, I wrote to him
of the girl he once declared fit to be ‘a bride,’ and sent him
your last picture—at least it’s the last I’ve seen. He answered
by return post. He has not forgotten, and he will, if you
consent, come here the first of May to meet you and be married.
“Now, dear Keith, why not put your place on the market, and
when winter sets in come here to me in Boston and see the
world, spend a season of relaxation, hear lectures and music,
and be thus attuned for matrimony in the sweet spring, when
the horse-chestnut buds yield to the sun and drop their glossy
shields in the Public Gardens?
“Your friend and sister-in-law to be,
“JUDITH W. DOW.”
Straightway Miss Keith, the strong of body and heretofore of mind, the
adviser of both men and women for miles around, Miss Keith, the capable,
who, with help “on shares,” made the little farm pay and lived a life of
bustling content that was the opposite of somnolent vegetation, began
mentally to chafe and rebel against the confinement and loneliness of her
lot, and yearn for change,—she who had always preached and practised
that one’s work is that which lies nearest to hand.
She ignored the freckle thrust and the phrase taking for granted that
the farm was hers to sell. The words _music_ and _lectures_ seemed
italicized, yet the strongest appeal in the crafty letter was its promise
of human companionship, for she had often yearned for kin.
Miss Keith was of no common type, even among the many intelligent women
reared on New England farms. She had struggled her way through Mt.
Holyoke and fitted herself to teach in the Gilead school, where she had
remained ten years, until, at the death of her Aunt Lawton, her cousin
had offered to install her at the farm, where the active life indoors
and out proved a strong attraction. During these years her clear, strong
voice had led in singing-school and in the village choir, where it still
held sway,—the fact that it was slightly “weathered” increasing rather
than diminishing its power. Though pale of hair and face, at no time in
her life had she been wholly unattractive, and her speech, sometimes
lapsing into provincialisms when she was either excited or constrained,
was wholly free of either Yankee dialect or nasal twang. She had met many
people of all grades in due course,—farmers, manufacturers, prospectors,
and the leisurely class of cottagers from Stonebridge and Gordon; but no
man had ever said, “I love you.”
Seating herself at the desk with an unaccustomed drooping of the head,
she finished the letter begun the day before, filling each of the four
pages with rapid strokes, folded it without once re-reading, sealed it
with a bit of crumby red wax that had not seen light probably since her
Aunt Lawton had used it for the sealing of her will, and affixed the
stamp with slow exactness precisely in the proper corner. Then with
folded hands she leaned back and gazed at the missive, saying, as she did
so, “That decides it. I will go to Boston the first of the year, when
everything is closed up and settled for the winter. Farrish, below, can
tend the stock. I’ve saved a little money to enjoy myself with, and when
May comes, if James White turns up and we hold to the same mind, I shall
marry him; if not—I suppose Cousin Adam will be glad for me to come back,
that is, unless he makes other arrangements.”
The alternative to the matrimonial scheme seemed just then of such slight
moment that she hardly pronounced the words, but turned to leave the
desk, when a sharp, compelling bark from the rug before the hearth made
her start and brought a red spot to each cheek.
There before her sat a shaggy brown dog, setter in build, but with a
collie cross showing in eccentricities of hair that formed a ruff about
his neck and gave the tail a strange bushiness. A pair of great, soft,
brown eyes were fixed on Miss Keith’s face, and the expression in them
was accentuated by the slight raising of the long, mobile, silky ears,
which seemed to ask a question. Meeting no response, the dog barked once
more and raised one paw pleadingly.
Miss Keith, who had risen, seated herself again suddenly. “Why, Tatters,
old man, I’ve forgotten your breakfast, and it is almost dinner-time.
Where have you been since yesterday? Hunting by the river? You know you
should not come in here with a wet coat and muddy paws. Down! Down!” she
cried, as the dog, never moving his gaze from her face, crossed the room
and, sitting on his haunches before her, rested his fringy wet paws on
her lap.
“What is the matter? Thorns or burs in your feet?”
The dog continued to look at her steadfastly, giving a little whine
meantime, but never a wag of his tail.
“Tatters!” she exclaimed at last, moistening her lips, which seemed to be
unaccountably dry, “I believe you know what is on my mind, and what I’ve
been wrestling with in the spirit these three days,—but it’s all settled
now, and my mind is free. Come, and I’ll get your dinner bone.”
“Settled!” and then the thought struck her, “What would become of
Tatters?” A new caretaker might easily be found for the place and cattle,
who would also understand the pruning of the cherished vines and fruit
trees, but would he understand Tatters, and would Tatters understand or
tolerate any one not born of the family? As long as people of the West
stock had lived in Gilead, with them had been a sturdy breed of collies
and setters, whose sagacity and nosing power were famed throughout the
country-side. Now, through chance and short-sightedness, the two breeds
had merged in one, and Tatters, of middle age, wise beyond the dog wisdom
of his ancestors, was its only representative.
Ever since his year of puppyhood, when Miss Keith with New England
firmness had completed his house-breaking education, he had been the
house man, guarding the picket gate by day, the door by night. In his
responsibility of combining double natures, he herded young calves in a
poorly fenced pasture, or tracked the turkey hens (those most brainless
of feathered things) when they recklessly led their broods into the dark
woodland in May storms. As setter, he ran free by the wagon when Miss
Keith took eggs, butter, or berries to her various customers, dashing in
among the hordes of English sparrows by the roadside, or going afield
with cautious tread and circling tail to flush the flocks of meadowlarks
with eager sporting fervour. As collie, with Scotch traditions in his
blood, he followed her to meeting or singing-school, and slept under
the pew seat or sat sentinel in the vestibule, according to season and
weather. Then by the winter hearth fire he was Miss Keith’s counsellor,
for in spite of the stoves that her Cousin Adam had supplied, her
practicality of mind, and the labour it entailed, she had a primeval
streak in her that yearned to see the heat that warms one. Tatters was
the silent partner, it is true, in their discussions, and merely looked
assent as he listened to the oft-repeated tale of short weight in feed,
and the sloth of hired men as opposed to the thrift of those who work on
shares, with perfect composure, yet let one of these hired men but raise
his voice in unamiable argument with Miss Keith, and Tatters crouched to
heel, upper lip cleared from his glistening teeth, ready for action, and
no one ever braved the warning.
Then, too, he took the responsibility of beginning the day’s work upon
his shaggy shoulders. At six o’clock in winter, changing to five on May
day, he left his rug in the outer kitchen, and going to Miss Keith’s
bedroom, nosed open the door, wedged from jarring by a mat, and after
lifting her stout slippers to the bed edge, carefully, one by one, with
many false starts and droppings, if she did not waken, he would sit down,
and with thrown back head give quick, short barks until he had response.
How did he know hours and dates? How do we know that of which we are most
sure, yet cannot prove by mathematical problems? He _did_ know—that was
sufficient.
As all these things surged through Miss Keith’s brain, the First Cause on
the mantel-shelf grew more remote, and folding her strong lean arms about
the pleading dog, she rested her face against his head and began to cry
softly, a thing unheard of.
CHAPTER III
THE DECISION OF MISS KEITH
It was while mistress and dog were thus absorbed that Dr. Russell, gun
on shoulder, and grouse dangling from his fingers, came up the side road
on the south that separated house and garden plot from the barn and
outbuildings, that stood close to the lane edge, facing it, like a row of
precise soldiers drawn up to give salute.
He expected that at his first footfall on the side porch his coming would
be heralded by short, percussive barks,—Tatters’ greeting to his friends.
He knocked twice, then tried the yielding door-knob, and entered the
kitchen, where various saucepans, boiling over madly and deluging the
polished stove with an impromptu pottage, told of some sort of domestic
lapse. Crossing the hallway, guided by a light streak toward the first
open door, he entered the sitting room at the moment that Miss Keith had
raised her wet eyes from Tatters’ head, and was alternately rubbing them
with her handkerchief, held in one hand, and looking at her answer to the
disturbing letter, held in the other.
“Why, what is the matter, Miss Keith,—bad news or a love letter?” the
doctor asked with the easy cheerfulness that showed how little real
anxiety lay beneath the question. “The carrier said that you wished to
see me to-day, and so I’ve come down, but I’d no idea that it was about a
tearful matter, and one in which Tatters was too much involved to ‘watch
out’ as usual.”
Taken thus unawares, an aggressive expression crossed Miss Keith’s face
for an instant, but immediately disappeared under the influence of the
doctor’s smile, and, quickly recovering, she answered, as she gave her
hands into his hearty grasp: “It is both bad news _and_ a letter. To-day
is my fiftieth birthday,—you see I do not believe in belying the Lord’s
work and concealing one’s age as some do,—and I’ve had a letter that I
want man’s counsel upon.” Then, as a sound of liquid hissing on a hot
stove and the smell of burning food came from the hallway, she remembered
the time of day, the dinner in peril, and her duties as housekeeper,
at the same moment, and mumbling a hasty apology, fled to the kitchen,
followed by the doctor, who, after making the grouse serve as a birthday
offering, wisely retired to the sitting room until dinner should be ready.
Once there, he made a few rapid but direct observations, beginning with
the First Cause on the mantel-shelf.
Then, as he saw the two letters on the desk, one envelope hastily torn
open and bearing the signs of much handling, the other carefully sealed
and lying face downward, he chuckled to himself. “Woman all through,
Miss Keith, in spite of everything. Ten to one she has made up her mind
and answered her letter while she was waiting for me to come and advise
with her about it. At the same time, when the dinner is off her mind, she
will tell me the whole story, and discuss it from the very beginning, for
the mere pleasure of it; but no matter what I may say, she will post the
letter already written.” Then, going over to the bookcase that topped
the desk, he unlocked the diamond-paned door, and pulling out a book at
random, which proved to be a dingy copy of Hogg’s “Shepherd’s Calendar,”
he resigned himself to the inevitable drowsiness born of the volume and
his long walk, and stretching himself on the wide haircloth sofa, was
soon taking the “forty winks” that should sharpen his wits for the coming
interview.
Fortunately he awoke before Miss Keith came to call him, for she had
scant respect for either man or woman who was caught napping in broad
daylight; and together they went out to the wide kitchen that served also
as a cheerful dining room, with its long double window filled with plants
and beau-pot of gay chrysanthemums on the table, the doctor meanwhile
offering Miss Keith his arm, half with natural, courtly deference, half
in mischief, a frequent mood of his that old friends understood and loved.
At first Miss Keith, speaking clearly for the sake of breaking silence,
appeared nervous. The talk ran lightly in general channels,—the glorious
season, the shooting, the way in which the trolley line had turned the
horse traffic from the turnpike to the upper road, and how much more life
passed the West farm, Miss Keith telling that sometimes of an afternoon
a dozen pleasure vehicles on the way from Stonebridge to Gordon, or the
reverse, would stop on the plateau under the pines, combining a resting
spell for horses with their drivers’ enjoyment of the view.
Next Silent Stead and his bachelor housekeeping on Windy Hill followed
in natural sequence. Did the doctor know the real story about Stead’s
dead wife, or if it were true that he was going away, back to his work
as civil engineer again? Many visitors, men of weight from Gordon, had
called on him that season, and the letter carrier said he had many thick
letters with great red seals, and it was whispered that he was wanted to
direct some new railway enterprise in the far West.
No, Dr. Russell could not answer, other than to wish the gossip that sent
his friend back to the world’s work might foreshadow the truth.
Then the doctor took the lead, asking home questions about Mr. Lawton and
the other kin, saying, “I met your Cousin Adam last winter in New York
one evening at the Century, where Martin Cortright introduced us. His is
a keen and interesting face, though rather nerve-worn. As he stood among
a group of financiers, that also deal liberally by the various arts, his
eyes roved about, dilating and contracting strangely, as if they followed
the workings of a dozen thoughts each minute, though otherwise his face
remained unchanged and he never moved a muscle.
“Did I like him? He is not easy to approach, and it was only when I
told him that, though living at Oaklands, I go inland every autumn for
the hunting, and know Gilead well, also his Cousin Keith and West farm,
where I had once seen his daughter Brooke, that his eye brightened and
he showed any interest, while at the same moment some one whom he had
evidently been watching broke away from a distant group, and, your cousin
darting off to join him, our talk ceased.”
“If Adam cares for anything but money-making, which I’ve sometimes
doubted, it is for Brooke,” said Miss Keith, quite at her ease again,
the coffee that she was pouring being fully up to its reputation. “In
fact, he deeded this farm to her on her twenty-first birthday, all on the
strength of her girlish whim and talk long ago about the _River Kingdom_.
This also makes me feel uncertain about my stay here. What if Brooke
should marry and _he_ should wish her to sell the place? Not that Adam
has ever said a word to me about the transfer, and he pays the taxes and
what not just the same, but Job Farrish was looking up his boundaries
last spring and saw the deed recorded in the Town House. In fact, Adam
himself never writes nowadays, his secretary does it all; and even Brooke
has only written once this year, and that was when I said the gutter
having leaked, the north room needed new paper, and she sent it—pretty it
is, too, wild roses running through a rustic lattice—she’s always had an
open eye for colour.”
“What! is that gypsy child twenty-one?” exclaimed the doctor in surprise,
pushing back his chair so as to pull Tatters’ head between his knees and
stroke his ears, at the same time that he drew his coffee cup toward
him, sniffing the subtle aroma, only second in his nostrils to that of
the fresh earth in spring and his beloved pipe. “It seems but a year or
so since she was roving about the lane with her hair flying and Tatters
after her,—the two were inseparable.”
“Twenty-one! Why, Dr. Russell, that time was eight years ago, the second
autumn you came up to hunt with Silent Stead. She’s turned _twenty-four_,
and that Tatters was this one’s uncle; they say there has been a dog of
the name in the family this hundred years and more.
“Yes, Brooke was twenty-four last May, and it seems now that they should
call her by her rightful Christian name, Pamela, instead of that absurd
one that might as well be stick or stone. You did not know she had any
other? Oh, it is her middle name to be sure—Pamela Brooke Lawton. Her
mother was one of the proud old Virginia Brookes, and they say, failing
of male heirs in the South, they often call a daughter by her mother’s
maiden name. Mannish and affected though, I call it, still I must own
it did suit her eight years ago, for she had as many ways and turns and
deep and shallow places as that little stream on Windy Hill that begins
in only a thread that wouldn’t move a fern, and then widens to the Glen
Mill-pond, and saws all the wood hereabouts and grinds the flour for
Gilead.
“Yes, she has been here several times, though never to stay long; mostly
she came with her great friend, Lucy Dean, when they were at school
at Farmington. I never liked _her_ though, she had a way of asking
point-blank questions and calling a spade a spade that sent a chill
through you.”
“And what has Brooke been doing since she’s been a woman grown? What, for
the last four years?” asked the doctor, returning to the present with new
interest at sound of Brooke’s name.
“Let me see,” and Miss Keith began counting on her fingers; “after
Brooke left school, she and her mother and father, with the Dean girl
and the Cub, spent one summer travelling in the West,—Adam was nosing
out some scheme or other. Then the women folks went to Europe for a year
or more, leaving young Adam, the Cub,—that’s what they call the boy, and
I must say, poor lad, he does seem a misfit and hard to manage,—at a
military boarding-school somewhere.
“The Dean girl had a voice that her people thought worth the training,
though I never heard what became of it after, and Brooke wanted to go on
with her painting. Oh, yes, she does really paint—doesn’t just dabble
colours together like a marble cake, such as most pictures are, and call
it Art. Why, she got a prize, they say, in a New York exhibition for a
picture of some children eating cherries. I’ve got a photograph of it,
that she sent me, on my bureau. It’s fine work, good judges say; all the
same, to my eye it lacks one thing—it doesn’t look just quite alive. If
she was poor and had to work and kept on, I guess she’d get somewhere;
but now she’s at home again, and in society, and not being in need of
money, I suppose she’ll let the painting slip, except maybe to make candy
boxes for charity fairs and such.
“Adam’s always been too busy ever to have much of a settled home. They
travelled about mostly of summers, and since they left the house down
town two years ago, where the children were born, they’ve lived in a big
sort of apartment arrangement, half flat, half hotel, as near as I can
make it out—‘It gives mamma no responsibility,’ Brooke wrote in telling
of it. But without some responsibility you can’t get much home comfort,
to my thinking.
“Now that Brooke is educated and at home, I hear her father is building a
big city house and another down by the sea somewhere, and so perhaps—when
he has money enough—he will slow up and take a rest. The Lawtons and
Wests are both long-lived, and Adam never drank or dissipated, I guess;
but I should think at the pace he’s trotted these thirty years he’d be
footsore by this, and like a back-stairs sitting room out of reach, and a
loose pair of slippers.”
Miss Keith grew more careless of her speech as she warmed to her subject,
and Dr. Russell laughed outright at the idea of the Adam Lawton whom he
had met, tall and distinguished, a bundle of steel nerves bound by will
power, sitting to rest anywhere, much less in loose slippers out of the
sound of the Whirlpool’s eddying.
The fussy little clock in the sitting room, after making many futile
remarks, like a choking _do-re-mi_, landed fairly on _do_, and struck
four! Then Miss Keith, saying casually that she must skim the milk at
five, began to unfold her plan matrimonial.
She did not read Mrs. Dow’s letter to the doctor, but spoke from memory,
with which an unexpected quality of imagination blended with dangerous
frequency.
Alack a day! How often are the overworked three graces, Faith, Hope, and
Charity, pushed into the place of Truth, Experience, and Common Sense,
and forced to bear responsibility not theirs!
When Miss Keith had finished, the good doctor naturally supposed that she
had received a direct proposal from an old-time lover who, once rejected,
had married some one else in pique. Also that the making of the sister’s
home the meeting place was her own idea, born of her maidenly regard of
the proprieties, which regard he well knew usually strengthens in inverse
proportion to the need for it!
Finally, as he arose to go, she said, hovering tremulously between
kitchen and sitting room, “Now that I know that you agree with me, I will
ask one favour more. I have a letter that I would like to have posted in
Gilead by your hand; these outdoor letter boxes sometimes leak, you know.
Then I shall sleep content.”
“Most certainly,” said the doctor, turning back, a smile crossing his
face and lurking at his mouth corners at this latest of many vocations
given him—that of Cupid’s postman, though he could not but admit that his
age made him a peculiarly suitable assistant in such a belated wooing.
As he took the letter, he involuntarily turned it face upward, and
glanced at the address, saying in a dubious tone, his eyebrows raised:
“Mrs. Dow? Why not James White himself?” Then adding, with a touch of
irony in his voice that Miss Keith missed, “Is his sister acting the
kindly part of go-between? Ah, so! Well, Miss Keith, no one but yourself
can settle so delicate a matter finally, _but_ one thing promise me: go
to Boston, if you will; jig and jostle, hear reform lectures and eat
health food, and see life if you must; but for God’s sake, woman, don’t
commit yourself until you have seen the ‘_sweet children_’ and the man!
Photographs can lie, as well as tongues!” Then, fearing he had been too
harsh, he added kindly, “If you find that Tatters can’t transfer himself,
as you call it, let me know,—there is always room for one more dog at
Oaklands, and Barbara will pamper him.”
That night Miss Keith, buoyed by the doctor’s talk and a man’s recent
presence in the house, albeit it was temporary, was in an exalted mood
and trod on air. Already she saw visions of the future, and kept saying
to herself, “I will do and see so and so when I go to Boston.”
When she lit her candle and went upstairs, she took the First Cause
from the mantel and bore him with her. Where should she put him? Her
dresser seemed too intimate a place; the spare room album, too remote.
Finally she placed the photograph against the puffs and quills of the
pillow-shams of the best room bed and then fled to her own chamber, where
she blew out the candle and undressed in the dark, or, rather, by the
half moonlight, saying aloud, as she got into bed, “Thank fortune for one
thing, I’ve kept my own hair and teeth, and such as I am there is nothing
of me that takes off.” And though the remark was apropos of nothing in
particular, a wave of hot colour covered her face at the words, and she
buried her head in her pillow and tried to sleep. This she didn’t do,
for Tatters, whom she had utterly forgotten for the first time, and shut
out when she closed the door, resented being forced to sleep out on
the porch at such a frosty time, and at intervals throughout the night
bayed dismally at the moon, thereby calling to her mind an old ballad of
chilling and ominous portent.
CHAPTER IV
INTERLUDE
On a bright afternoon in early December a number of carriages and motor
cars that usually entered Central Park via the Plaza promptly at four,
continued to the right instead, and in impromptu procession slowed down
before the entrance of a new house in the Park Lane section of the avenue.
The house belonged to Senator Parks, and on this day it was to be thrown
open to that portion of the public selected by the social sponsors of
his new wife. This wife, being a rather handsome California widow on
the agreeable side of thirty-five, had acquired enough knowledge of the
world during a three years’ residence abroad to bend the knee gracefully,
if not quite sincerely, to the powers that make or mar the fate of
newcomers, at the same time always, so to speak, carelessly twisting in
plain sight between her slender fingers the strings of a full purse.
The conventional “At Home from 4 to 7 o’clock,” therefore, had more
than the usual significance, for it was known to imply a concert in
the superbly appointed music hall, by singers from the opera, and an
exhibition of paintings in the new gallery, so spacious that it ran from
block to block, such a one as had never before been seen in any private
dwelling in Manhattan. Then, too, there had been whispers of a _chef_ of
Gallic renown who had served two emperors and a prince, and altogether
society, whose appetite is rather keen at the beginning of the season,
expecting novelty or at least to be amused, was beginning to sally forth.
It did not commit itself by so doing, and it assumed no responsibility
other than leaving a card, by footman or otherwise, at the door, in due
course; it merely gave itself the opportunity to pass judgment. But as
the new hostess understood this perfectly well, and only desired the
chance of playing her trump card to win the lead, it was a beautifully
frank arrangement on both sides, in which no one was deceived.
As the hour passed the stream of carriages became continuous, the
cavernous awning that swallowed the people as soon as they alighted being
the centre of that strange mob, usually composed of fairly well-dressed
women, who appear spontaneously wherever the carpet-covered steps and
striped awning tell of an entertainment to be. No buzzard hovering in air
drops to his prey more quickly than does the average idle woman catch
sight of this emblem of hospitality.
Two young women, walking with easy, rapid gait up the avenue, paused on
the outskirts of the throng, uncertain as to the best point for breaking
through. At least the shorter of the two hesitated, while the taller,
after a swift survey, put her white-gloved hands firmly on the shoulders
of a gaping dressmaker’s apprentice, turned her about, saying, as she did
so, “Let us pass, please,” and instantly a way was opened.
These young women were simply dressed for the street, with no obtrusive
fuss and feathers, yet each had an unmistakable air of individuality
and distinction. They were both of the same age, twenty-four, yet the
difference in colouring and poise made the taller appear fully two years
older. She had glossy black hair, tucked up under a three-cornered hat,
heavy eyebrows, from under which she looked one straight in the face with
a half-defiant look in the steel-gray eyes. Her nose was aquiline, and
her lips rather thin, but curled in a humorous way when she spoke. She
was broad of shoulder and small of waist and hips; and it was only a shy
curve of neck and bust that, judging from poise alone, prevented one from
thinking Lucy Dean a young athlete masquerading in his sister’s black
velvet fur-trimmed frock with its scarlet-slashed sleeves.
Brooke Lawton, her companion, looked little more than twenty, was formed
in a more feminine mould, and though half a head shorter, was still
of medium height. Her hair, of the peculiar shade of ash brown with
chestnut glints that artists love, was worn rather loose at the sides
and gathered into a curly knot at the back of the neck, under a wide
brown beaver hat that was tied below the chin with a large bow and ends
after the fashion of our grandmothers. Her eyes were dark brown, and yet
a shade lighter than the brows and lashes. Her nose was not of classic
proportions, being rather too broad at the base and inclined to be
tip-tilted, but her mouth had a generous fulness that softened a resolute
chin, albeit it was cleft by a dimple. Her long coat was of brown, so
that the only bright colour about her was the vivid glow that the crisp
air and walking had brought to her cheeks.
She also looked one straight in the eyes when she spoke, but with an
entire lack of self-consciousness wholly at variance with the attitude of
her friend. Brooke might be typified as a joyous yet shy thrush; Lucy, as
a splendid but vociferous red-winged blackbird!
“Is your mother coming?” asked Lucy, as they went up the steps together.
“Later, perhaps; she has not been feeling very festive these few days
past. In fact, she has been strangely spiritless of late; living in a
hotel disagrees with her ideas of home hospitality. Father seems worried
and has not been sleeping,—has a bit of a cough, and anything like that
always upsets dear little Mummy; she doesn’t realize that he is made of
steel springs just as I am. I’m sure she will try to come, if only for a
minute, for Mrs. Parks asked her to receive with her. She didn’t care to
do that because, though we met the Parkses very often in Paris, they were
never more than acquaintances, not real friends; but to stay away might
hurt her feelings, and of course that must not be.”
“Oh, no, a Brooke of Virginia would never do that; she would be
hospitable to a burglar, even while waiting for the police to come
for him, and when he left, handcuffed, regret that uncontrollable
circumstances prevented his spending the night!” said Lucy, mimicking the
tone and manner of an old great-aunt of Brooke’s so thoroughly that she
was forced to laugh.
“But thou, O most transparent of all the Brookes, even if you have Scotch
granite and American steel concealed in your depths, you very well know
that Madame Parks would have given many shekels of gold to have had your
mother standing on her right this afternoon. Do you realize that she even
asked me to sing to-day? Of course I wouldn’t.”
“That surely was a compliment to your voice that you can hardly find
fault with,” said Brooke, pausing on the threshold to gather together the
requisite number of cards.
“My voice! That had nothing whatever to do with it My voice might be
like a jay’s with its crop full of popcorn, for all she knows about it.
No, it was all on account of daddy; this affair has been well thought
out. She has been careful to have a representative bidden from every
department of the society trust,—clergy, laity, art, music, science.
Daddy represents up-to-date financiering,—there is no Mrs. Dean, hence
me! She wandered a bit, though, in asking me to sing on the same
afternoon with paid professionals. If it had been a very select and
spirituelle affair, with Maud Knowles at the harp and Dick Fenton with
his Boulevard imitations and songs, followed by bouquets of orchids
concealing bijouterie for the performers, I might have yielded.
“Yes,” Lucy chattered on, “let us go upstairs; we had better drop our
wraps, as we expect to make an afternoon of it. What an apartment!
Madame’s, of course. Look at that bed on the dais and a boudoir and
breakfast room beyond! Eight maids! Why didn’t she have four and twenty
to match the pie blackbirds? Look at the way in which their skirts stay
in place behind when they wiggle them. Never saw such a thing off the
stage; one straight line from belt to hem, just the stunning way Hilda
Spong wears hers in ‘Lady Huntworth’s Experiment’! What is the exhibit
in that room across the hall, with the walls draped with white over
sky-blue? Everybody is going that way; let us also flock!
“As I live, it’s the baby lying in state—no, holding a levée, I mean.
What an odd-shaped cradle! Isn’t he a fright, but look at his robe—Irish
point all made in one piece—and his gold toilet things on that tray!
Well, after all, there must be something novel to the Parkses about this.
Papa has been married three times and mamma twice, and this Chinese Joss
is all there is to show for it! I wonder if her craze for collecting
bric-a-brac can possibly account for his looks? If there isn’t the
Senator himself, hovering around to show off his little son. I wonder if
Madame knows papa is on the premises? Gracious, he’s taking the baby out
of the Easter egg! Hear the lace tear, and that monumental English head
nurse doesn’t move a muscle!
“Don’t look distressed and blush so, Brooke; facts are facts, and then
besides, nobody can hear me in this babel. Now, let’s agree where we
shall meet, for we shall be duly torn asunder directly we go downstairs.
Come in here a second, my head feathers are awry. What a mercy it is
to have hair like yours, that the more it is let alone, the better it
behaves!
“No, don’t touch the strings of your poke, and leave your bodice alone.
That creamy lace simply looks confidential and clinging, and not a bit
mussy like mine.”
“I think I will go to the picture gallery as soon as we have made our
bows to Mrs. Parks, and settle there,” said Brooke, “so that I can see
everything before the concert is over. Then you will know where to find
me. To-day I feel more like looking than listening,” she added, when Lucy
was silenced a moment by holding half a dozen jewelled stick pins between
her lips, as she rearranged the folds of an expensive draped lace bodice
that, in spite of the beauty of the fabric, seemed out of key and mussy,
the severe and tailor-made being better adapted to her.
For a few moments the two lingered in one of the alcoves of the dressing
room, looking for familiar faces among the arrivals.
“By the way, I suppose Mr. Fenton is coming in later with the other
down-town men?” said Brooke. “If so, you needn’t look me up at all.”
“Dick may be coming, though I doubt it, but it will not be to meet
me. See here, goosie,” said Lucy, half avoiding her friend’s eyes, “I
might as well tell you now as any other time. Dick and I have agreed to
disagree. It happened last Sunday, and I’d have told you before, only you
take all such things so seriously.”
“What is the matter; has he changed?”
“No, he has not, that is half the trouble. He has stayed quite too much
the same; I only wonder that I could have endured it for the eight months
it has lasted. You see, he was perfectly satisfied with himself as he
was, and that leaves no room for improvement. Of course everybody knows,
at the pace the world’s rolling along, if you don’t go ahead, you slide
back! I tend to balk and jump the traces enough myself when it comes to
hills, Heaven knows, and if my mate in harness can’t pull true on an up
grade, where shall we be at? Dick kept along on the level good naturedly,
I’ll say that for him, yet it was because I was my father’s daughter, not
because I’m myself. Being a young broker, he thought it a good thing to
have a father-in-law with unlimited ‘pointers’ in every wag of his chin
(poor chap, he hasn’t yet realized that these things mostly point both
ways), and he was serenely content! As for me, I felt as if I should go
wild,—no conversation except the eternal money market. I said so,—and
more besides!
“He was very nice about it,—daddy really seemed relieved,—and—well, it’s
all over, though his mother did glower at me at first when I met her on
the avenue yesterday, but she decided to bow.”
“Oh, Lucy, why are you so impetuous? When you told me of the engagement,
you said—”
“Now listen, Brooke Lawton, and hear me swear one thing: money in one’s
pocket is a blessing, but continually dinned into one’s ears it’s the
other thing. If ever I marry any one, he must not be in this sickening
money business; he must do something different, if it’s only drawing
pictures on the sidewalk with chalk held between his toes, like the
armless sailor in Union Square, though, come to think of it, I’d rather
he’d have arms!
“By the way, why don’t you ’phone your mother to come? It’s going to be
an awfully smart party. There’s a ’phone in the writing room or somewhere
near—there always is one now at swell functions for the use of guests,
and a young man (not a woman—too dangerous) from central to work it; they
say the society reporters fight and bribe to get the job, they hear so
much ‘inwardness.’ Your mother needn’t worry and stay at home. I don’t
think your father’s sick. I heard daddy say last night that he is in
another big deal, with trump cards enough to fill both hands, and he’s
holding them so close for fear of dropping any that he’s bound to be
preoccupied.”
“It’s time for us to go; I hear the music,” said Brooke, who had been set
thinking by her friend’s talk.
“Why not come into the music room for a few numbers and then escape if
you wish?” said Lucy, navigating the crowded stairs easily, and pausing
on a landing to continue her chatter and glance into the room below.
“What, all the chairs taken already? Just look at those orchids, by the
dozen, not single, the whole plant hung by gilt chains from the ceiling!
“You won’t come? Well, so be it, if you have the ‘picture hunger’
as badly as you did in Paris. Do you remember the big hybrid
French-English-Dutchman who gave that name to the moonstruck turns
you used to have over painted ‘masterpieces’ and unpainted landscapes
outdoors? Yes, I see you do. Well, I thought at one time he was painfully
smitten and would probably lay himself down humbly at your feet, like
an inconveniently thick bear rug that, failing to be able to step over,
one must tread on, though often to one’s downfall. Still, of course,
with artists the meaning of their looks and actions are usually either
exaggerated or vague, much like their talk of values and colour schemes
and atmosphere. I heard this same Marte Lorenz in a group of ravers
standing before a canvas one day at the Mirlitons’ when I called for you,
and I rubbered and peeped over their shoulders, expecting to see the
portrait of a delicious woman at the very least; and what was the whole
row about but an onion on a wooden plate, and they were saying that it
was genuine and showed insight!
“It would be such fun to tease you, Brooke, if only you were teasable.
Suppose, after all, there should be a real live man behind all this
‘picture hunger.’ I think that there must be from the way you have turned
slack and dropped your brush in seeming disdain at your work, even after
you won that Baumgarten prize, with the picture of your cousin Helen’s
Mellin’s food babies sitting on the ground _au naturel_, eating cherries
(pits and all), bless their poor fat tummies!
“However, there can’t be a man concealed in your mind, you are too
transparent,—I should have known it, and helped matters nicely to a
focus for you. Yet the copy-books used to say ‘still waters run deep’;
who knows, innocent-looking mountain Brooke, but there is a great, deep,
still swimming pool somewhere in your mind!”
“Bless me, she is teasable after all!” ejaculated Lucy, for, while she
was still gabbling, Brooke had left her, slipped through the portières,
held apart by two footmen, given her name to a third, shaken her hostess
cordially by the hand, and after carefully giving her mother’s message of
regret, melted away in the crowd.
“Charming girl, that Miss Lawton,” was Mrs. Parks’s mental comment. “I
guess, after all, there is something in having a well-bred-to-the-bone
mother. Three hundred people have squeezed my fingers already this
afternoon and murmured all sorts of things, while they either gazed over
my head or at my gown. She is the first one that looked at _me_ and as if
she meant what she said, or would really do me a good turn if she could.”
And the Senator’s ambitious wife gazed after Brooke rather wistfully.
CHAPTER V
A PICTURE
Escaping from the ballroom, where, in spite of all possible care,
the hothouse heat and heavy odour of flowers, together with the mild
afternoon, made the air stifling, Brooke was guided by instinct toward
the picture gallery. In the reception hall back of the stairs, concealed
by a rose-covered screen, a Russian orchestra, the latest novelty, was
playing; but as the first strains of the concert floated from the music
room, the intended effect was lost and became wholly discordant and
bewildering.
Once inside the doors, for the picture gallery was separated from the
house itself not only by a short passageway, curtained at both ends, but
by doors of richly carved antique oak, Brooke found herself in another
world, in which two more of the liveried regiment and she herself were
the only inhabitants. One of the men took from a Japanese stand of
bronze, by which he was stationed, a long satin-covered book, that proved
to be a catalogue of the paintings in the gallery. A photogravure of each
one filled the left-hand page, a few words relating to the artist facing
it.
Mind and body were at once refreshed. The air itself was pure and
invigorating in the gallery, for the only floral decorations were
conventionally trimmed bushes of box, European laurel in pots, and
some pointed holly trees red with their Christmas offering of berries.
Whatever there was of lavish overdisplay in the other parts of this new
palace stopped outside of these doors. Ceiling and panelled wainscoting
that ran below the picture line were of the same carved oak, the inlaid
floor matching it in tone, while all else, wall hangings, divans, and
rugs, were blended of soft greens, as harmonious and restful to the
senses as the vines, ferns, and moss that drape and floor the forest.
The lights adjusted above the paintings, with due regard to individual
effect, were hidden from the eye by screens of coloured glass, in which
design of flowers and leaf were so well mingled that they formed a part
of the general whole.
As to the pictures themselves—not too many, all in a way masterpieces
carefully hung—they seemed vistas opening through the greenery, carrying
the vision at once into the scene or among the people represented. Only
art could so feel for art, and the fact that the seeming simplicity was
the result of much detailed thought and expense was nowhere apparent.
Brooke walked slowly to the upper end of the room, and seated herself in
one of the recesses of an oddly divided settee, high of back and arm,
that gave to each occupant complete seclusion. For a few minutes she
leaned back against the soft velvet, letting the quiet atmosphere envelop
her, and then raised her eyes to the two pictures that chanced to face
her, peering at them in her seclusion, from under her wide hat, with a
sidewise expression of eyes and lips slightly parted that reminded one of
Mme. le Brun’s portrait of the charming Mme. Crussal.
The nearer picture was a marine, in which the Irish coast and waters of
the Channel were revealed by light of the full moon, and between the
headland and the foreground the white gulls were bedding themselves
so closely that they made a second moon path on the water. Back flew
Brooke’s thoughts across the sea,—England and Holland held her for a
moment, then she slipped on to France, to Paris, where for a year she
had worked in Ridgeway’s studio in the Rue Malesherbes and out at Passy,
had been oftentimes elated and finally cast down. How a past mood can
dominate the present as well as all surroundings! The next painting was
of a stretch of low country threaded by a canal, cattle in the distance,
and shivering poplars bending to the wind that scudded across the sky in
threatening clouds, while in the foreground a flock of geese were looking
about and pluming themselves against the coming storm.
Where had that scene passed before her? “The Coming Storm near The
Hague—E. Oliver (Salon, 1900),” said the catalogue.
“Ah!” Brooke exclaimed, half aloud. She remembered her first visit to
the Salon, of standing before this same picture with Marte Lorenz,
“the big hybrid English-Dutch-French artist,” Lucy Dean called him,
and laughing at the solemn, stupid geese, while he had told her in his
perfect, slow English that he had often driven flocks of geese to pasture
in his boyhood, also that sometimes he had found them to be no laughing
matter,—a trifling incident at the time, but now a sort of landmark in
the receding journey.
She had met this Lorenz (Marte his intimates called him) often that
winter and spring on the easy impersonal footing that prevails between
the well-bred American woman and the art students of all countries. He
had been presented to her mother most regularly at a fête in Ridgeway’s
garden the autumn of their arrival, and from that moment until their
parting, a year later, one thing had set him apart from all the score of
men with whom she had come in close contact, men who blindly flattered,
evaded, or temporized. He had always told her the truth about her work.
If she had not realized it at the time, the conviction had always come to
her sooner or later.
As to Lorenz himself, once a pupil of the Beaux Arts, his nationality
prevented his striving for the Prix-de-Rome, and he had turned his work
toward less classic lines; landscapes were his forte, the figure coming
second, and yet he oftenest worked at figure-painting and conventional
portraiture also, for he must have money for the pot-boiling, much as he
disliked the necessity.
Farther away slipt the Whirlpool city and its surroundings. Once more
was Brooke sketching in oils, with some friends who often went to the
Carlo Rossi garden to pose for each other. Her subject was a girl of the
Boulevards, nominally a flower seller. Successful in the drawing and
colour, try as she might Brooke could not give the touch that should
bring the lifelike expression to the face. With knit brows she looked up
to see whose was the shadow cast on the grass before her. It was Lorenz,
big, honest fellow, his hands clasped upon the back of the garden seat,
his thatch of dark hair sticking out over his deep-set blue eyes, while
a questioning expression involved in its uncertainty his straight nose,
his deeply cleft chin, and the sensitive yet strong mouth that separated
them. Even his short-cut mustache, which accentuated rather than
concealed his lips, expressed doubt.
“What is it, M. Lorenz?” Brooke had asked, smiling at his serious air;
“no one ever tells me anything definite but you. The master says, ‘Good!
keep on!’ One friend only grunts; some one else says ‘_Pas mal_.’ I know
that I must work, work, work, but what do I most lack?”
Lowering his eyes almost to the grass itself, he spoke rapidly, as if the
telling was a pain to him: “You have not yet had the awakening; for it
you must wait; it is the same with me, but I may not dry my brushes to
wait for the day, only work, and destroy, and work again, come good, come
ill. It is not enough to block the form and lay on the colours truly.
Unless you can interpret your vision and see its shadow on the canvas,
watch it draw breath, move, and speak to you, you can never create. But
first of all you must know and feel, even if you suffer. How can you
interpret this woman before you? Never could you paint for what she
stands. Try children, animals, anything else—or better, dry your brush
and wait!”
Brooke had flushed angrily and answered curtly; even now the memory
brought colour to her cheeks. Only once again had she seen Lorenz before
leaving, and now two years had passed. What had become of him? There were
depths in this woman’s nature that her parents, all devotion in their
different ways, had never fathomed, of which her friends of every day
had never dreamed; and in one of these secret places, all unconscious to
herself, this man had gained sufficient place at least to bar all others.
While she was thus dreaming away the afternoon, the concert being ended,
the throng pressed toward the gallery, and the confusion of voices, high
in key and surging on, brought Brooke quickly to herself. Rising, she
turned over the pages of the catalogue, reading the artists’ names, and
sauntered down the line to where the numbers began, nodding occasionally,
or saying a few words to friends that came up; some of whom were stopping
to see the pictures, others merely noting the scenic effect of the whole.
Suddenly she halted so abruptly, her fingers gripping the page between
them with noticeable tension, that a man behind nearly fell over her,
while her eyes fastened on the letters that said, “24: Eucharistia. M.
Lorenz. 1901.” Before she could read the details opposite, the man whom
she had stopped, Charlie Ashton (now Carolus, cousin to Lucy Dean and a
courtesy artist possessed of a popular studio for concerts) looked over
her shoulder and said:—
“Ah, Miss Lawton, looking for the picture the Senator’s gone daft about,
because he thinks the woman in it looks like his wife when he first saw
her as a girl out in the California wine country? It’s over this way,
that one with the long palm over the frame. I’ve just come from there;
everybody’s crowding round, guessing what the name means. I suggested
making up a guessing pool on it at five a head, and letting the winner
choose the charity; the Bishop is having a shy at it now.”
Brooke steadied herself, and crossing the room joined the group,
catching at first but a partial glimpse of the picture.
“Step back here by this holly tree; this distance is needed to preserve
the atmosphere,” said Ashton, guiding her by the sleeve into an alcove
formed of holly and laurel bushes arranged to shelter an exquisite ivory
statuette of Diana, the crescent, fillet, and bow being of rich gold.
“I have never before seen pictures so well hung,” said Brooke, glancing
about as they waited for the crowd to move on, as it soon inevitably
would, toward the banquet hall.
“A well-placed remark, Miss Brooke, sent straight home,” gurgled Ashton,
plucking at his collar, which was too tight for his short neck. “I may
say that I virtually hung these pictures, for I sent the Senator the
man who did, you know. Before I forget it, the Bagby girls and the rest
asked me to see you about arranging a benefit concert for that pretty
little Julia Garth,—used to give such stunning musicales a year ago,—now
old Garth is dead, and they’ve gone to no-put-together smash! Yes, not a
cent! I’ve offered my studio for it, and they thought perhaps you’d give
a picture to raffle,—just any little thing you’ve thrown off in a hurry
will do.”
His words passed almost unheard, for while he was speaking the crowd
parted and the entire painting became visible. Brooke, leaning forward,
at first flushed, then grew white to the lips. The scene set before her
was a bit in the depths of the park at Fontainebleau. A grassy path
melted away in the distance between great sombre oaks that strengthened
as they reached the foreground. At the foot of one of these sat a man,
an artist, who had been sketching, for his implements lay on the sward
before him. His whole position was of dejection, except the head, which
was raised in a startled attitude. A little behind him stood a young
woman, clad in the dainty summer dress of every day, ash-brown hair
loosely caught up beneath a simple hat, paint box and luncheon basket
slung from her shoulder. One hand rested on the gnarled oak trunk,
the other, reaching across his shoulder, dropped into the man’s idle,
listless hands a bunch of golden grapes, that in their ripeness carried
sunlight with them. Graceful and charming as was the composition, it was
the handling of the light wherein the magic lay. Sifting down between
the leaves, the glow of early afternoon hovered about the girl’s bent
head like a halo, and passing behind, fell upon the man’s upturned face,
transfiguring it with a sort of holy joy, then focussed and was swallowed
in the bunch of grapes.
A voice seemed calling in Brooke’s ears: “The last afternoon, when you
all went sketching with the master, and after lunching in the woods you
overtook the brotherhood of Clichy (as Lorenz’s coterie was called).
Farther on and apart you found him alone, with head bent. You thought he
was asleep and dropped the cool grapes in his hands, half as a trick,
darting away again. Then good Madame Druz, the chaperon of the day,
coming up, scolded you for ‘American imprudence,’ and finally that night
you cried, half at her vulgar interpretation of a harmless act, and half
because Lorenz never gave word or sign before your leaving. And because
not a single flower of the mass that filled your railway carriage was
from him, you let Lucy amuse herself all the way to Cherbourg by pelting
officials with them at each station passed. He has painted you as you
were!” cried the voice; “his face is as he might wish it to be.”
It required an effort on Brooke’s part not to cry out, “Hush! speak
lower!” so real did the words seem.
“Good work, isn’t it?—though half a dozen of us here at home could do as
well, if we had the atmosphere, you know,” said Ashton’s voice, sounding
through the rush of waters that filled her ears. “The Senator boasts that
he was the first to recognize the artist whom every one now applauds, and
he paid a cool ten thousand for it, the man’s first important picture at
that! The old man saw it in the new Salon, but it wasn’t for sale. ‘No,
no, no,’ said the artist,—‘he had a superstition, a sentiment, a desire
to keep it,’—but the Senator thought ‘Yes, yes, yes, the desire will
decrease with time and—money,’ and so it did, for this fall, just as the
Parkses were on the verge of leaving, the Senator doubled the first offer
and Lorenz capitulated. Then, before the ‘brotherhood’ could borrow his
‘luck penny’ he disappeared somewhere in Normandy, they say, to study,
out of the depressing sound of the pot-boiling of the Quarter. Half his
friends were glad, Ridgeway wrote me, and the other half, being jealous,
shrugged their shoulders and raised their eyes, groaning, ‘Another mad
American!’
“I have it all down fine, you see, for the papers to-morrow,—great
scheme! I had a Harvard chum that was, Tom Brownell, who won’t go the
respectable pace his father set for him in finance, and has turned
reporter, work it up. He wants news, and, plague it, it must be _true_ or
he won’t touch it. Of course I don’t appear in it, but all the credit is
socially mine, you see.
“Why, come to think of it, Miss Brooke, I believe the girl looks a bit
like you! Did you ever chance to see this man? But then, of course, so
many charming women look alike in those stunning shirt-waist things, you
know. What do you make of the name?”
Brooke wished that he might babble on as long as possible, that she
might learn the painting by heart and try to fathom the peculiarity of
the shaft of light, but as he stopped she said, almost without thought,
“Eucharistia! why may it not be the girl’s name?”
“By Jove! of course, we never thought of it!” said Ashton. “You’re
growing quite pale from standing so long. You must have some punch. Do
let me take you to the banquet hall; it’s jolly nice there—all small
tables and souvenir menus in silver frames. I planned them, too, though
Tiffany’s name _is_ on them. There’s Cousin Lucy, and the Bagby girls are
waving to you now.” (“Yes, we’re under way, hold a table,” he signalled.)
“We can cook up the concert while we feed,” and offering his arm, upon
which Brooke laid her hand gratefully, for she felt a sudden weariness,
he led her through the maze of skirts and furniture as skilfully and
rapidly as if he had been her partner in the cotillon, and seated her at
one of the little tables amid a bevy of her friends, who were discussing
the house, the hostess, the flowers, the menus, and the fallen fortunes
of poor Julia Garth in a most impartial way, and at the top of their
voices.
“Of course it’s awful to suddenly drop from having your gowns from Paris,
a maid, a private turnout, and keeping open house—or rather houses—and
all that, to a flat somewhere in Brooklyn, with a sick mother, and trying
to work off your music for a living,” said one shrill voice; “but then it
is an awful bore, too, for us to have her on our minds. This concert is
only the beginning, I suppose.”
“Julia plays delightfully, and we all have more or less chamber music
during the winter, and one of us might take her to Lenox or Newport this
summer,” said another, in a reproving tone; “and then among us all there
are plenty of children for her to teach.”
“If she plays and sings for us all winter, that is sufficient reason why
we shall be sick of her next summer,” said the first voice. “You know how
it was with Mrs. Darcey Binks and her Creole songs. We thought we could
not get enough of her. She thought she was settled here for life, and
biff! the Spanish mandolin players knocked her out the second season. As
for lessons, if you take up some one half out of charity, and then go
South in the middle of a term, they will always whine about it, and you
feel mean; a professional can take care of herself and always gets even,
but doesn’t let you know it.”
“I wish we could think of something newer than a concert, that would make
a hit and a pot of money,” said Lucy Dean, not bragging of the fact that
she had already asked Julia Garth to come and live with her, and been
refused kindly but firmly. “What can you suggest, Brooke? you are always
overflowing with ideas, even if some of them are too good for this world.”
Brooke, thus challenged, half rose in her chair so that she faced both
tables, and said: “I do not believe in offering Julia what she would
accept as work and you consider as charity; it is false pretence on both
sides! We can easily make up a Christmas purse for her among ourselves,
without giving her the pain of the advertising of a benefit concert,
and all the talk of it. Then when she has a chance to know where she
stands,—her father only died a month ago, poor child,—I will get my
father or yours” (motioning to Lucy) “to give her _real_ work for _real_
pay, and with no charitable tag hanging to it. She has kept household
accounts and sometimes been her father’s private secretary. I saw her
last week, and what she wants and is able to do is real work and plenty
of it to make her forget, not charity coddling to make her remember.”
“Mercy on me! don’t cut us up like cheese sandwiches, with your sarcasm!”
ejaculated Lucy, “and clutch that chair so, as if you had claws. Your
eyes remind me of a hawk that perches in a cage over in the park opposite
my window, and glares all day long at the silly sparrows outside!”
Brooke laughed, and the dangerous flash in her eyes dying out again, she
turned to her plate of salad and the general gossip of the day, but a red
spot still glowed in the middle of each cheek. A few minutes later she
might have been seen driving down the avenue in her mother’s brougham,
trying to decipher, by the light of the electric street lamps, some
printing in the silk-covered catalogue.
This is what she read: “Marte Lorenz, born at his uncle’s tulip farm
near Haarlem, in 1872. Educated in England, where his father had been a
merchant. Studied at the Amsterdam Art School, going afterward to Paris,
where his countryman, Israels, befriended him. A hard student, but the
picture ‘Eucharistia’ is his first important work, while European critics
and his masters believe it is the beginning of a great career. At present
he is living in seclusion in Normandy, following his art.”
Ashton, the useful, had patched up the biographies in the little book,
helter-skelter, but Brooke did not know it, and tucking the catalogue
carefully into her great muff, she leaned back and closed her eyes.
It was her portrait that Lorenz had painted, together with his own,
whatever the mystic word “Eucharistia” might mean. He had not forgotten
her, then, and he was loath to part with the picture. She did not
formulate the pleasure the thought gave her,—it was enough in itself.
Then the brougham stopped before the blazing lights of the St. Hilaire,
where the Lawtons were making a temporary home, a sort of bridge, that
both mother and daughter had long wearied of, between the simpler
past and the long-delayed, complex future, when in the new house, now
building, her father promised once and for all to drop the reins of tape
and wire, cease from hurrying, and take rest.
CHAPTER VI
THE LAWTONS
With Mrs. Lawton the afternoon of the Park musical had been a time of
irresolution. When the man of a family is noted for swift arbitrary
decisions and often unexplained action in all domestic affairs, in
important matters and petty details alike, his wife is apt, simply by
force of reaction, to be driven to the opposite extreme in those things
that concern herself alone. Not that Adam Lawton’s wife had ever been
lacking in spirit, and when, as Pamela Brooke, a girl of twenty, he
had taken her from her southern plantation home, then crippled and
impoverished by war, yet where she still held absolute sway, many nodded
their heads, and said that the calculating, keen-eyed Yankee would some
day be startled by the fire of southern blood.
Not but what his coming, seeing, and conquering had been as swift as the
most romantic could desire, one short month compassing it all, for there
was a certain magnetism about Adam Lawton that, when he chose to exert
it, was irresistible, while to those outside its influence he was doubly
a bit of chilling steel.
Nor had his wife ever faltered in her loyalty to him; she would have
given much more than he would take, for in the beginning hers had been
a nature that sought happiness in pouring out her love freely and
enveloping its object in it, at the same time giving the man she had
chosen, through imagination, every noble and winning attribute that would
increase her passion.
Two sons had been born to her before she had awakened from this ecstatic
period and was perforce obliged to separate the real from the ideal. Not
that Adam Lawton loved her a degree less strongly than when, calling
upon her father on purely business matters, he had first seen her riding
up the unkempt avenue of her home, her beauty and bearing lending
distinction to the faded habit that she wore. His love was of a strange
quality, a sort of transmutation of metals by sudden fire that, having
once taken place, must of necessity be welded for all time. In reality
an egotist, from his own point of view he was wholly unselfish, for he
asked little for what he gave, and would allow none of the little daily
services that nourish love, whose best food must have the flavour of
mutual dependence.
The two boys died of scarlet fever almost together, before they were well
out of babyhood, and after a lapse of many years a daughter, Brooke,
had come, then another lapse, and another son, called Adam, now about
sixteen; and like many a son of a father who has planned a boy’s career
to the minutest detail, he seemed not only bound not to go in the desired
way, but to lack the bump of direction, which turns a boy from being
merely driftwood and guides him in any sort of way whatsoever.
From habitual restraint of emotions learned in those first ten years,
Mrs. Lawton had come to pass for a perfectly bred, though somewhat
unsympathetic, woman.
Brooke, whose own heart naturally beat as tumultuously as ever did
her mother’s, had learned to feel something of this even in her early
childhood, when at her father’s footstep she had been hushed in some wild
exhibition of childish enthusiasm; and though she and her mother were
the very best of friends, there was a certain quality missing in their
intercourse. Perhaps missing is not the word,—a quality not yet developed
expresses it more exactly, and this, too, came through the peculiar
temperament of Adam Lawton himself. Outside of his business he had but
one thought, his family, and to supply their needs as he read them, his
selfishness lying in the fact that he asked so little of them, beyond
their presence in his house, that it was impossible for him to judge,
by intimate contact, what those needs really were, or to realize that
confidence and sympathy are better coin than dollars.
Brooke alone had been able to break through this crust of
self-sufficiency that he had used as a barrier against the world in his
early days of struggle, until it now shut him off from the luxury of
everything natural, uncalculated, and spontaneous. Brooke had enough
of the enthusiasm of youth not to be chilled by it. She looked forward
hopefully to the promised time when he should take a long holiday, and
be with them, and, as she explained it, only “think foolishness.” He had
never refused her anything that she asked of him, not that her wishes had
ever been extravagant. Many a time, as some clever whim of hers brought
a rare smile to his keen, thin face, intelligent and alive, if somewhat
harshly fined and worn, he almost clinched the hand that he always kept
in his left pocket in despair that this child was not the boy who should
keep his name alive, instead of that other who now bore it. But in the
fact that Brooke was a daughter lay all the charm, for there is no other
born relationship so subtle, so potent of good for each, as that between
father and daughter.
For many years the Lawtons lived in an ample old-fashioned house in one
of the streets converging at Washington Square, where Brooke and young
Adam had been born. Here Mrs. Lawton had passed many days of quiet
content and social comfort, entertaining in the open-hearted southern
way that does not admit of push or hurry. True, the neighbourhood was
changing, and others more ambitious were moving away; in fact, Adam
Lawton had one day said the time had come when he was ready to build
a modern house, in a part of the city where a home more suited to his
position and a good investment could be combined, for with him the two
propositions always went together.
Mrs. Lawton had sighed, but said nothing. She loved the wide, sunny
house, with its colonial mantels and irregular staircase, and secretly
she hoped that no one would buy it. Faint hope, for in a week from the
day the matter was broached, Adam Lawton announced that the house was
sold. A business building had purchased the adjoining property and
virtually gave him his price. They could live in an apartment hotel
pending the building of the new house. It would give his wife a rest,
for he was beginning to notice that she was looking rather worn, and
did not attribute it to the real cause or the flight of years, but to
some extraneous reason that that most dubious of all acts, “a change,”
might overcome. So Mrs. Lawton was spending her second winter at the St.
Hilaire, living apart from her own life, as it were. True, she had been
listless and not very well of late, but it was more from inertia than
any constitutional weakness. No one could expect to keep for thirty years
the radiant type of blonde beauty with which Pamela Brooke had glowed
at twenty. Mrs. Lawton was still in a sense a beautiful woman, but the
vivacity that often outlives freshness of tint and distinctiveness of
feature had died first of all. Her charm lay in a certain refinement of
outline; colour and features had grown dim as the reflection of a face in
a mirror blurred by dust, and her mass of waving golden brown hair, that
in its lights and shades had once surpassed even Brooke’s, was of a clear
white, as of the days of powder, and gave the delicate features an almost
dramatic setting.
As Adam Lawton grew more and more absorbed in finance, he was the more
exacting of her presence during the evening hours, when, too absorbed to
either go out or bid friends come to him, he sat in his simply furnished
den, for all luxury stopped at his door, and pored over papers, letters,
and maps, scarcely glancing up or speaking to his wife twice in the
evening, yet expecting her presence and conscious if she left him for a
moment.
* * * * *
When Brooke had started on this particular winter afternoon for the
Parkses’ musicale, in company with her friend, Lucy Dean, Mrs. Lawton had
quite decided not to go. Her husband had been unusually silent for the
few days past, and had said something about possibly coming home in time
to drive up to the new house, which was yet uncompleted, owing to the
building strike of the past summer.
But as the early twilight came on and he did not appear, she grew
restless, and knowing that it was too late for the proposed drive,
quickly determined to go to the Parkses’ for a little while and return
with Brooke. Going to her lounging room to call the carriage by
telephone, for she had an entirely separate wire from the private service
at her husband’s desk, she found several letters lying upon the table.
Exclaiming at the carelessness of the maids, of whom two were kept for
service of meals, etc., in the apartment, she looked at the addresses,
and the handwriting on the last put the thought of going out from her
mind.
Four were in the handwriting of private secretaries, and promised social
invitations; the fifth, addressed in the shaded pin-point writing of the
seminary of thirty years ago, was postmarked Gilead; while the sixth
was in the rough and painfully unformed hand of Adam, “the Cub,” as his
friends called him, her only living son, now at a military school some
sixty miles away.
It was impossible to deny that the Cub was behind-hand in his work,
and that, instead of being within two years of college, according to
his father’s schedule, he was little more than in sight of it; but her
mother’s heart told her that the rigidity of his father’s methods was
quite as much to blame as her son’s stupidity. Coming of ancestors whose
training on both sides had been for and of the out-of-door life, the
forcing system of surveillance under which he had lived, summer and
winter alike, since his eleventh year, had developed only the evil in him.
Vainly she had suggested, nay almost fought, to have him sent to a famous
ranch school, where the sons of several of her friends had learned
self-reliance and books at one and the same time. Adam Lawton would not
hear of it, saying the dangers of the life and the distance were too
great.
In Brooke his measure of fatherly affection was complete and satisfied,
and that she should never put her hand in an empty pocket his chief
desire; but still all his hopes of the future of his race theoretically
centred in this only son, as in an asset of both flesh and money, and
every hair of his tawny head and freckle on his face was more precious
than his own life-blood; yet he had the narrowness of the self-made man,
the financier in particular, and he could see honour and success in one
path only—that in which he himself had trodden.
Adam Lawton senior, now halfway between sixty and seventy, though he did
not allow it even to himself, often felt the lack of academic knowledge,
and therefore Adam junior must undergo a certain polishing system
perforce, even if the substance to be polished lost its identity and
crumbled to chalk in the process. For only two things had Adam evinced
any liking,—for out-of-door life and a horse, while his backwardness with
his lessons had cut off these outlets by keeping him at school or under
tutelage the entire season through.
If Adam Lawton loved his son as a matter of heredity, Pamela Lawton
loved him as a human being, as her baby, and her maternal passion gained
fierceness by repression. The letter was an appeal for permission to go
home, and contained a doctor’s certificate saying that the boy had, in
his opinion, outgrown his strength, and needed several months of outdoor
life, etc., etc. Mrs. Lawton crushed the paper in her hand. The last time
such a missive had been received it had resulted in the Cub’s being sent
to travel with a tutor. One human being the boy did love, and that was
herself,—he must have her care now or never!
Without realizing that the hotel was no place for the boy, or what the
result might be, she went to her desk, wrote a few emphatic words,
enclosed a ten-dollar bill in the envelope (it chanced to be the last
money in her purse), and, quickly putting on coat and bonnet, took it
herself to the post-box on the street corner, not trusting it to the
hotel box; then she returned to her room with flushed cheeks, feeling
as guilty as a girl slipping out with a love-letter instead of a mother
daring to tell her own son to come home. At that moment she fairly hated
the motiveless comfort by which she was surrounded; passivity had become
almost a disease, she must shake it off; she would speak that night, and
have an understanding about the Cub, no matter how busy her husband might
be.
When she had laid aside her things, no maid yet appearing, the Gilead
letter claimed her attention, and she was soon absorbed in it. It told of
Keith’s resolution to go to Boston, and gave an inventory of the property
on the farm that had been bought with Adam Lawton’s money.
She had also, she said, written for instructions as to its future care;
would he take charge, or should she look for some suitable person in
the neighbourhood? Receiving no answer, and judging that the letter had
either been lost, or else that her cousin had been too busy to consider
it, Miss Keith had made a second careful copy and enclosed it in a letter
to Mrs. Lawton, saying that time pressed, and she must rely upon her to
“jog” Cousin Adam’s memory, or perhaps, as the farm at least stood in
Brooke’s name, that she might have some wishes in the matter.
Mrs. Lawton had almost finished reading the inventory of simple
furnishings, etc., when Brooke entered. Her mother at once noticed a
strange expression in her always candid features, and a new light in her
wide-open eyes; but the letters in her lap caught Brooke’s attention, and
after she had given a brief history of the doings of the afternoon, the
two women, seated side by side, bent their heads over the Cub’s epistle,
though the elder already knew it by heart, word for word.
“The poor, poor Cub!” ejaculated Brooke at last, half laughing, and then
stopping short, for looking up, she saw tears trembling on her mother’s
lashes. “If it were only long ago, we would buy him a horse, and spear,
and shield, and smuggle him outside the castle walls at night, and let
him gallop away to seek his own fortunes. Do you know, little mother,
that, in spite of all the liberty I have, and money in my pocket without
the asking, I sometimes feel choked and tied down like this bad boy of
ours? It was only an hour ago, when I was sitting in that beautiful
picture gallery, that it came over me how so many of the things we do
every day seem unreal and like a useless dream. We ourselves arrange or
else blindly submit to customs that keep us apart instead of bringing
those who love each other together, until life gets to be like those
stupid gas fire-logs yonder, all for show—a little feverish heat and
unwholesomeness as a result instead of the true thing, though to be sure
real logs are more trouble and a greater responsibility to tend.
“I want to be something more than furniture in our new home, if it is
ever finished, and we succeed in getting out of what Lucy Dean calls
this ‘elaborated parlour-car method of living.’ Yes, mother, I’m getting
what you call a restless streak again. I think I’m going to pick up my
brushes”—and then a serious, almost sad expression crossed her face as
she added, “if they will let me.”
“So Cousin Keith’s going away,—going to be married! I wish she could
have done the second without the first. I like to think of her at the
farm just as she used to be. You know it’s my farm now, and I’ve always
planned to go back there some summer, and really work, for if anything
could put life in my brush, it would be to live in my ‘River Kingdom.’
I’d much rather do that than have a large country place, such as father
plans, though of course Gilead is too quiet and out of touch with things
for him, and the farm is too small a bit for his energy to work upon.
Cousin Keith has been very thrifty,—‘five cows, a farm horse, chickens,
ducks, seed potatoes, cordwood, etc.,’ (all mine, too, because the deed
says ‘inclusive of all live stock, and furnishings’). Last of all she
lists ‘Tatters, the family dog, whose race has been on the soil as long
as we ourselves; if he can’t transfer himself to the newcomers not of
the name, Dr. Russell has promised to take him down to Oaklands. Please
understand, Cousin Pamela, that Tatters doesn’t rank with live stock,—he
is a person, and must be treated as such!’”
“Tatters!” repeated Brooke, looking involuntarily at the artificial fire,
so surely does visible heat draw the outward eye when the mind’s eye is
a-roving. “That was the name of one of the dogs they had that autumn when
I spent that lovely month there, and played at gypsy every day. But he
must be very, very old now. Yes, you shall be well treated, old fellow,
and not ‘transferred’ to anything or anybody against your will.
“Mother, do you know I think that if only Cousin Keith were not going
away, it would be a fine thing to send the Cub to Gilead for a while,
until he pulled himself together, and then some not overzealous tutor
with a fondness for walking might be found for him.
“What is it?” asked Brooke, reading the confusion in her mother’s face.
“You have answered him already and told him that he may come? Good! now
we will act together. You take father quite too seriously; if he really
understood just what we both wish to do and be, I’m sure that he would
be the last one to hinder either, but we haven’t let him see. How can a
man who has lived his own life so long possibly understand women unless
they give him the clew, and whisper ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ when he gets off the
track?
“No one, since ever I can remember, has been allowed to let father even
think that he can make a mistake; consequently he really believes he
cannot err, and I don’t think that he is wholly to blame for it. I’m
going to beg for the Cub’s liberty the minute father comes home, and more
than that, I’m going to tell him that we four have been groping round in
opposite directions, and that he simply must come into our lives, and let
us do for him, or take us into his—that the ‘some day’ when he will have
time to listen must begin this very night!”
“Dinner is served!” said the reproving accents of the waiting-maid,
letting drop the portière as she spoke, and both women glanced in
surprise at the clock that was striking eight.
“Eight o’clock already, and I’m in my street gown,” said Brooke,
gathering up her possessions, and making sure that the silk-bound
catalogue was in her muff.
“Eight o’clock, and your father has not yet come home!”
“Perhaps he has stopped at the club, and talked longer than usual. I
heard to-day through Lucy, to whom her father seems to speak as freely
about his business as if she were his partner, that our parents are
engaged in some important ‘deal’ together!
“He is probably late for our special benefit,” said Brooke, cheerfully,
“so that we may make ourselves just a wee bit pretty,” and putting her
arm about her mother, she led her down the corridor to their rooms, which
adjoined, and five minutes sufficed for each to slip on the tasteful, yet
simple, dinner gown that the lady’s-maid, now at her post, had laid in
readiness.
“Ask the page in the outer hall if any note has come for mother,” said
Brooke to the woman, as they went to the dining room. “It was only
yesterday that I found that two personal notes had been travelling up and
down in the elevator for half the morning, in spite of two men at the
door, and one posted every ten feet the rest of the way.”
“There is no note come, ma’am,” replied the waiting-maid, a couple of
minutes later, “but he says that Mr. Lawton’s been over an hour at
home,—at least he came in then, and he’s not seen him go out, that is,
not by the lift. He must have let himself in with a key, then, for
neither Sellers nor I opened for him.”
“Perhaps he went to the den, thinking we were all out, and does not
realize how late it is,” said Brooke, moving swiftly down the hall,
followed by her mother. Turning the corner, for her father had located
his den, for the sake of quiet, as far as possible from the rest of the
apartment, she saw the light that shone above and below the portière, for
the door was not wholly closed.
“Yes, he is here after all!” and she threw open the door without
knocking, as she alone dared, and entered with some playful words upon
her lips, quite prepared to rumple the iron-gray hair, a little thin on
top, that partially capped the figure seated at his desk, with his left
hand, as usual, in his pocket.
The next moment she stopped, as an undefined feeling of dread held her
fast,—the right hand was stiffly extended, as if it had just let go its
hold of the movable ’phone that stood on the desk, and knocked it over.
The usually alert figure had settled in the chair, the head dropping
backward, while, after a single breath, that resounded like a snore,
there was no sound.
Brooke touched him quickly; there was still the warmth of life, and the
left side of the face twitched frightfully, but no words came; his face,
flushed at first, was growing rapidly livid. Instantly she wound her
strong young arms about him, and, laying him on the thick rug, his head
slightly turned and raised, she motioned to her mother and the maid, who
had come at her unconscious call, to loosen collar and clothing, while
she sped back to the telephone in her mother’s sitting room to call a
doctor who was resident in the hotel, and he was at hand almost before
she realized that the call had gone forth.
“Cerebral hemorrhage; has he had bad news or some sudden shock?” was what
the physician said a moment after he entered the room where Adam Lawton
lay, and saw the litter of papers and the overthrown instrument. But
there was no letter or telegram among them that could indicate, and the
ominous telephone receiver was mute.
As the men from the house helped move him to his room, Mrs. Lawton and
Brooke following silent with the first calmness of a shock, her own words
rang in her ears. “He must come into our lives and let us do for him or
take us into his life; the ‘some day’ when he will have time to listen
must begin to-night!”
The first hour passed, that period of rapid action following a calamity
that intervenes before the clutch of the tension of continued strain is
felt.
The family physician came and called an expert in counsel, and then
Brooke was directed to send for a nurse,—more than one her mother would
not have, and as she was intelligently calm, no objection was made to her
insistence that she should share both the care and responsibility of the
night.
Adam Lawton was unconscious, and life itself must hang in the balance for
many hours at best, and the physicians insisted upon the most perfect
quiet.
Who can say where the mind is when its physical registry is interrupted?
The physician cannot tell you, but at the same time he is very careful to
keep injurious impression beyond the range of the seemingly deaf ears.
Brooke went to her father’s den and touched the instrument that had so
recently fallen from his hand, almost with a shudder. If only it would
repeat to her what it had said to him, some light would be shed upon the
mystery.
After arranging for the nurse, a desire for companionship during this
night of suspense seized her, and she called the number that meant Lucy
Dean, thinking as she did so, “I must tell her as quickly as I can, for I
cannot bear her usual telephone joking now.”
“Lucy? It is I, Brooke Lawton; can you come down and spend the night with
me? Please listen until I finish. Something awful has happened—father—”
Lucy (breaking in with a torrent of words): “Yes, you poor dear, I know
all about it; heard it just as soon as I got home, before dinner—dad told
me. We would have been down by now, only dad thought, as your father had
gone against his advice through all this matter, it might seem pushing in
me. Cheer up, it may come out all right yet.”
Brooke: “I don’t understand; how could you have heard before dinner?—it
was eight o’clock before we knew ourselves.”
“Dad was worried over the affair and had a special sent him after he came
up town.”
“Lucy, what are you talking about?”
“Why, what else but your father’s great deal to buy up the stock control
of the T. Y. D. Q. Railroad, and the way those rascally friends of his
turned traitor? It isn’t so killing, after all. Dad was down perfectly
flat twelve years ago, and now he’s ten times to the good. What dad
thought foolish was for him to realize on everything else he had to go
into this shaky deal!”
“You mean that my father has failed! Then that accounts, oh, that
accounts for it all!”
“You don’t say that you did not know it? What did you mean and what are
you talking about? Your father hasn’t—” Fortunately the question that
Lucy asked did not reach Brooke’s ears, for, pushing the instrument from
her across the desk, she neither cried nor raved nor wrung her hands, but
sitting forward in her father’s chair, very much the attitude he took
when deep in thought, scarcely stirred for the quarter-hour. The visible
signs of the years she lacked of being the age she really was came
swiftly, and laid their hands upon hers, not empty hands nor yet filled
with the trifles the years sometimes hold. Presently Courage entered her
heart, and then its sponsors, Hope and Constancy.
Soon a muffled closing of the door at the lower end of the hall, and the
approaching tiptoe tread of two people of uneven weights, brought her to
her feet and into the crisis again. It was Lucy, who, with every vestige
of flippancy gone, threw her arms around her friend’s neck and burst into
tears, while Brooke held out her hand to Mr. Dean, meanwhile, looking
him straight in the eyes, saying: “Thank you for coming. Do not trouble
to conceal anything, only tell me the truth, and do it quickly,” not
realising that in such cases truth-telling is not the simple thing that
it is reckoned.
CHAPTER VII
THE DAY AFTER
There was a single day of incredulity and suspense, and then the fact
of Adam Lawton’s financial downfall was made public through the papers,
together with the names of those who had been swept from their feet in
his company. As to his physical collapse, it was merely stated that
he was ill at his department in the St. Hilaire, denied himself to
all visitors, and would hold no communication even with his lawyer or
business associates.
Few people sink alone in a financial maelstrom, and Lawton was not one
of these; so that the cries and muttered imprecations of those who,
unlike her father, were conscious and battling for life in trying to find
and cling to bits of the wreckage reached Brooke and rang in her ears,
partially deafening her to her own thoughts.
It was not until noon of the second day that she had succeeded in getting
her mother to leave her post and see Mr. Dean in the library. At first
Brooke had hoped to keep the knowledge of the real cause of her father’s
illness from her mother, for a few days at least, but it was of no use;
every one in the great hotel was aware of the facts, even though it made
no difference in the attitude of the employees, for with a certain class
of people, and a fairly intelligent one at that, failures are often
interpreted merely as an odd trick in the game of finance now played. One
of the important morning papers even went so far as to print a thinly
veiled hint that Adam Lawton’s seclusion and supposed illness was a very
subtle excuse for gaining time or allowing him to forget much that it
would be extremely inconvenient to be called upon to remember at this
juncture.
Mrs. Lawton had gone through her ordeal with Mr. Dean very quietly; she
heard his explanation—that is, as far as anything that might be said
could be called such, but its full meaning had not yet dawned upon her;
and being utterly worn out she allowed herself to be tucked up on the
lounge in Brooke’s room, where she fell into an exhausted sleep, under
the soothing touch of her daughter’s fingers.
Lucy Dean, coming in during the late afternoon, for she had remained with
her friend since the first and had only gone out for a walk, found Brooke
sitting bolt upright in her father’s chair in the den, a newspaper that
rested on the desk crumpled in one hand, and a dangerous light in her
eyes.
“Have you seen this?” she asked Lucy, in a voice that was fairly hoarse
from suppression, as she pointed to the insinuating article which bore
the double significance of being semi-editorial in form,—“and appearing
in the _Daily Forum_, too, the paper that father always thought the most
sound and moderate. Oh, how I wish that I could get hold of some one and
make them believe at least that father is truly ill and knows absolutely
no one, not even mother and me!”
“Brooke Lawton, if you are going to read all the papers say or hint about
your affairs during the next few weeks, you will give me a chance to look
up a sanatorium, with nice cool bars for you to snub your nose against,
which won’t improve its shape. Don’t read the papers; if the things
aren’t true, why bother, and if some of them are, what are you going to
do about it?”
Lucy had been astonishingly quiet and sympathetic for nearly twenty-four
hours, but a long walk in the fresh air had raised her indomitable animal
spirits to the top again, and though they sometimes made Brooke catch
her breath and gasp, like too crude a stimulant, they were under the
circumstances probably the best counterbalance and tonic she could have
had.
“Of course,” Lucy continued, “if it was a purely social affair, I
could get Charlie Ashton to stuff the papers to the limit. If he is
my cousin, I must say that he managed to syndicate the account of the
Parkses’ musicale most adroitly (of course, though, you didn’t read
that yesterday). The main description—gowns and all that—was the same in
each, but Charlie contrived to let each reporter have some extra item
that fitted his paper specially. A little more about the music for one,
details of the picture gallery for another, the brand of champagne used
for a third, upholstery for a fourth, and so on. Come to think of it, I
remember something about his saying that a reporter on the _Daily Forum_
was a chum of his at Harvard. I might try and see what Charlie can do,
but I’m afraid, as far as serious news goes, even his chum wouldn’t
swallow him.”
“Oh, Lucy, Lucy! can’t you see it is not _stuffing_ and _swallowing_
that I want, but for people to know that father is really ill and not
shamming—that we are not all combining in a dreadful game of deceit?”
“Do be content, child, to let the talk wear itself out. From what the
doctor told my father this morning, your father may be a long time like
this—weeks and months perhaps—even if by and by he comes to himself. It
isn’t like a toothache that will be over to-morrow. You can’t rush out on
the avenue and pull the people up here in flocks to see for themselves,
though by to-morrow, just as soon as society has made up its mind what it
ought to do, you’ll have plenty of callers. You told me yourself that the
result of the consultation was that everything hinges on quiet.
“By the way, there were two reporters clamouring at the lift when I went
out, one actually trying to bribe the boy to tell whether your father
was really here in the apartment. I sent them scurrying in a hurry, I
can tell you. Listen! I believe that there is another at the door now;
anyway, some one is asking for you. I think I heard the words _Daily
Forum_,” and Lucy pulled aside the curtain, and going to the angle in the
hallway peered down its length to where the maid was talking in whispers
to a tall somebody in pantaloons.
“Yes, it is a reporter,” said Lucy, stepping back noiselessly. “Sellers
is trying to shoo him out, but he’s all inside the door and asking, not
a bit humbly, to see ‘a member of the family.’ Watch and see how long
it will take me to get rid of him,” and Lucy pulled on and buttoned her
gloves, which, on coming in, she had begun to take off, with a gesture as
though fists were to take part in the encounter, if necessary.
Brooke, who had been listening to Lucy, yet not looking at her, with eyes
fixed on the crumpled paper before her, suddenly sprang to her feet, the
warning flash returning to her eyes, saying: “Don’t go; I will see this
man myself, and please remember, Lucy, whatever I may say or do, you are
not to speak. No, don’t leave the room. I want you to stay by me, but
this matter of father’s feigning illness is an affair of honour that only
one of the family can conduct.”
Going quickly down the hall, she relieved the harassed maid by indicating
to the visitor that he was to follow her, at the same time making a
gesture to caution silence, as she guided him back to the den.
What he first saw on entering the room was the tall, straight figure of a
young woman, back turned, half a hat and one cheek outlined against the
lace drapery, through which she was looking into the street with a frozen
fixedness, as if her very life depended upon not moving or turning the
fraction of an inch. His second glance rested on the other woman, who,
having preceded him, was standing by the desk corner, half supporting
herself by it. She raised her head with its wreath of ash-brown hair
proudly, and looked him in the face with eyes in which anger struggled
with a pleading expression, in keeping with the heavy shadows that
underlay them.
After moistening her lips once or twice nervously, Brooke spoke: “You
asked to see one of the family, and said it was important that you
should. If you are a gentleman, as you appear to be, of course you would
not have come at such a time on trivial business. I am Brooke Lawton;
what do you wish to ask?”
For an instant the young fellow hesitated, thoroughly abashed; he had
met with a variety of experiences in following his vocation of news
collecting, but never before had he felt so much like beating a retreat,
or his errand seemed so intrusive. Without any special claim to good
looks or great stature, he had a certain clear-cut distinctiveness of
feature, a mouth that stood the harsh test of the shaved upper lip, and
eyes that, though they opened lengthwise rather than wide, looked as if
they would take in the surroundings and atmosphere as well as the main
object on which they were focussed.
While he hesitated the newspaper which Brooke still clutched attracted
him, and as he read its title he divined that Brooke had overheard the
name he had just given the maid at the door and already associated him
with the sneering article. Laying the card, which the maid had refused,
upon the table, he said quietly, but with an earnestness that carried
conviction: “I am Tom Brownell of the _Daily Forum_, the sheet you have
in your hand. I know that there was a nasty leader in this morning’s
issue that was slipped in, no one seems to know how, by some one who had
animus or was hard hit in this T. Y. D. Q. deal. We pride ourselves upon
getting at the truth of things that concern the public, so I have come
here to settle for once and all the question of Mr. Lawton’s reported
serious illness, by direct communication with some one of his family.”
“You mean that you wish to know if my father is really ill? Then people
do doubt it and think he may be merely hiding to avoid inquiry?” said
Brooke, who now had full control of the voice that her friends called
silvery, but which now had more of steel in its ring.
“Moreover, you expect to learn the truth by _asking_ one of his
family—what will that amount to if they choose to aid and abet the
illness that your paper hints is part of a well-arranged covering of a
retreat? If I should tell you that night before last, while my mother
and I were waiting for him to return to dinner, my father had come home,
unknown to us or the maids, letting himself in with a latch-key, which
he used so seldom that we had forgotten its existence; when finally,
attracted by a light under the door of this room, we opened it, he was in
this chair, unconscious, stricken with apoplexy, his hand by the receiver
of the overturned telephone; since then, though as far as physical life
goes he is living, he has neither moved nor spoken nor recognized any
one, nor can he swallow, and such liquid food as he has taken is given
artificially,—if I tell you all this, still how can you be sure it is the
truth?”
“Please, please, Miss Lawton, I am shocked and awfully grieved and
ashamed. Don’t be so hard on yourself and on me as to think that I
dreamed of any such condition existing. We reporters do not rejoice in
the misfortunes of others. But that it is not the time for such things,
I could tell you that one of the reasons I had in beginning life in this
way was to get to the bottom of things, and see if some people at least
didn’t really want to tell and hear the truth in the newspapers. Of
course I will believe what you tell me, and all that remains is for me to
apologize for pushing in upon you and—go as quickly as possible. I only
wish I could help or do something to ease you.”
“You forget that I have told you nothing,” said Brooke, hesitating and
catching at the throat of her blouse as if she wished to pull it away
and give herself more room to breathe—“I only said _if_, and if you are
looking for truth, to be certain you must see it, not ask about it.”
Then, as the new thought grew upon her, and she realized that her mother
was asleep, the tragedy fled from her eyes, that she had fixed upon the
face of the reporter,—who, fast losing his self-possession, stood looking
uncomfortable and foolish, turning his hat about by its rim like an
applicant for a situation,—her entire poise had altered, and she seemed
several inches taller.
“Oh, Mr. Brownell, don’t you see that the only way that you can help
us in telling the truth about father is by seeing for yourself? Put
down your hat and come with me—” and before he had recovered from his
astonishment, Brooke grasped Tom Brownell by the wrist and literally led
him from the room, up the hallway, not toward the entrance but along the
side passage, where the electricity had not yet been turned on and which
was in a dim and uncertain light.
Pausing before the door of Adam Lawton’s room, and without releasing her
hold of Brownell’s wrist, she turned the handle carefully, entered, and
was standing with her companion in the shadow of the bed before the nurse
at the opposite side realized that any one had come in, or could even
raise her hand in caution. No one spoke, and the footsteps on the thick
rug that covered the floor made no sound—the breathing of the pale figure
prone upon the bed was the only vibration even of the air.
For two, perhaps three, minutes, that held an eternity of torture to
Brownell, who stood with bent head, they remained, so that no detail
could escape his notice. Then Brooke led him back to the den, leaving
the nurse in grave doubt as to what manner of man this might be who had
seemingly been forcibly led into the room where, by the doctor’s orders,
no one but mother and daughter were to be admitted.
The moment that the curtains had closed behind the two, Lucy Dean turned
from the window with a suddenness that might be described as a bang,
except that no noise went with the motion. Drawing two or three long
breaths, as a relief to her suppressed speech, she crossed the room and
picked up the reporter’s card, turned it over and over and, reading the
name with deliberation, put it in her pocket. “Thomas Brownell, Jr., the
_Daily Forum_,” she repeated, at the same time making a mental note
that the card itself was of good quality and engraved, not printed, an
unusual occurrence with the average reporter. Spying his hat, she next
seized upon that, discovering at a single glance the name of a maker
of good repute and Brownell’s own address, at a comfortable though
inexpensive bachelor inn, stamped in gilt letters on the band. Hearing a
slight rustling in the hall, she returned to her post by the window, but,
instead of standing, she had thrown herself into a chair, half facing the
room, by the time that the two returned.
Nothing further was said as to what had been seen. Brownell picked up
his hat, preparing to leave as quickly as possible, yet he could not
but notice that Lucy Dean, who by this time had turned wholly toward
the room, was looking at him with an expression half quizzical, half
challenging.
Brooke dropped wearily into the chair by the desk; the strain of the last
hour had been greater than what she actually felt; she had been hurried
swiftly to face stern realities, which all her life, though through no
choice of her own, had been to her a side issue in which she took no part
or responsibility, and which she was never allowed to question. Then,
seeing that the reporter was standing and evidently at a loss how to go,
she went forward with extended hand, saying, very gently, “Good-by. I
think I may trust you not to misunderstand my father’s illness now.”
Turning to the figure by the window, now all on the alert, she said,
“Lucy, dear, will you please show Mr. Brownell the way out, there are
so many turns in this inner hall?” Then, as Lucy raised her eyebrows in
disgusted question marks, Brooke continued, “Ah, forgive me! this is my
dear friend, Miss Dean, Mr. Brownell, and”—a little smile hovered around
the comers of her mouth in spite of herself—“you may be very sure that
she will never tell you anything but the whole truth!”
Then, as the two girls changed places and Lucy led the way down the main
hall, Brooke reseated herself before the desk, that might tell so much if
it only could, folded her arms upon it, hiding her weary eyes in them.
Had she done right or wrong in letting a stranger see her father’s real
condition? Would it make outside conditions better or worse? Why had the
doctor given out such evasive bulletins? Well, the die was cast, and
something within told her that from that hour, when she had taken the
family responsibility upon herself, she would have to bear it.
* * * * *
As Tom Brownell crossed the rug that lay before the outer door of the
Lawton apartment, something between it and the tiled flooring slid under
the pressure of his foot. Checking his first impulse to pass on and get
out as quickly as possible, he turned back, even though the door itself
was open, and, lifting the corner of the rug, picked up two thin keys,
one smaller than the other, that were joined by a steel ring. Accustomed
to fit two and two together rapidly, he involuntarily glanced at the
spring lock on the door to see if they belonged to it, but found it of
a different pattern. Stepping outside, the better to see by the hanging
electric light, he found that the keys bore no name or mark other than
figures, probably the factory number of keys of a fine make. Turning
to Lucy, who had already come into the main hall and, half closing the
door behind her, was watching him, he muttered a hasty apology for his
curiosity concerning the keys, saying: “To me unfamiliar keys have always
had a strange fascination, for all my life I have expected to find one
that would unlock a mystery. These probably belong to some of Mrs. or
Miss Lawton’s possessions—a travelling bag or jewel case. Will you please
take charge of them? And thank you for showing me the way out,” turning
up the corridor as he spoke.
“You needn’t thank me for showing you the way, as you evidently don’t
know it,” said Lucy; “that is, unless you have professional reasons for
going down in the luggage lift with trunks, baby wagons, clothes-baskets,
and scrubbing pails. No, you needn’t raise your eyebrows, I’m not English
or infected with Anglomania either, simply I’m to the point, and _luggage
lift_ is a much more smooth and pronounceable expression than baggage
elevator, don’t you think?
“To the right—there you are! Not running? Why, the thing was all right
when I came in not an hour ago, but I’ve noticed that the power has a
way of giving out, or the machinery needs oiling, about the time the
man might be supposed to want an afternoon nap. You’ll have to walk
downstairs. Good afternoon. Oh, by the way, do you happen to know Charlie
Ashton? I beg his pardon, _Carolus_, though I only promised to call
him that at his studio teas. He had a chum at college, he said, with a
literary and reformatory streak, who a year ago had cut away from his
father’s business, and incidentally his own fortune, and was climbing
into journalism, not in at the top story, but up the cellar stairs. I’ve
rather forgotten his name. He doesn’t chance to be you, does he?”
“I’m afraid he does, and that Ashton has guyed me unmercifully to you, in
spite of all the good turns that he has done me. But as I am myself, you
must be his cousin, Miss Dean, of whom he talks so much at the club. I
did not quite catch what name Miss Lawton said.”
“I am Lucy Dean, and I dare say that he has talked about me even at so
reprehensible a place as the club. Talking about me, I fear, is a bad
habit that a great many of my friends have. I also know that he didn’t
call me Miss Dean. What club was it? What did he call me? Lucyfer is his
pet title—and what did he say?”
“Oh, Miss Dean, it wasn’t the way you mean at all. I was lunching,
at his invitation, with him at the Players,—quite by ourselves on my
word, and—he—well, he did call you Lucyfer, and said it expressed your
stand-off way and all that; but he declared you were the best chum a
fellow ever had, and if he wanted a studio entertainment to be a corking
success, he always had you pour tea. If I hadn’t been spending all my
time the last year climbing up the cellar stairs, as you express it, I
should have begged him to ask me to one of the teas; but I’m out of that
sort of thing, for good and all, you see.”
Lucy flushed slightly, an odd thing for her, and then said suddenly,
holding out her right hand, both having been held behind her, after a
habit she had, until this moment: “You are keen to avoid teas, they
are horribly stupid; the cigarette smoke makes one’s eyes weak, and
the Saké punch does for the rest of one’s head, and unless we act
like mountebanks and shock people so that they forget to be bored, no
one would come twice. Ask Charlie to bring you up to the house some
afternoon, as you live so near to him, about five for a cup of real tea.
No, don’t thank me, it is not an invitation. It’s years since I’ve taken
the responsibility of giving one to a man,—certainly not since I was
eighteen; you must take the responsibility of coming upon yourself!”
“As you have never seen me until this afternoon, and I only moved over
from—well, let’s call it the Borough of Queens—last month, how could
you know where I live?” queried Brownell, looking up with a quizzical
expression, and passing over the first part of her speech, not because he
did not heed it, but for the reason of a certain Indian instinct he had
of picking up trails as he went along, that helped him not a little in
his work.
Lucy flushed furiously, this time to the roots of her hair, sought refuge
for a single instant in subterfuge, but finding herself fairly caught,
throwing her head up, stood with hands again clasped behind her, and lips
parted, smiling at the man who had already gone two steps downward on the
stairs when she had called the halt.
“You say that you are seeking for truth with a fountain pen and a
stenographer’s note-book, also Brooke says that I always speak the
truth—attention! I saw your address in your hat this afternoon!”
Brownell, who was at that moment holding his hat against his chest,
looked anxiously at the top of the crown, wondering if it had become
transparent.
“No, I didn’t see _through_ the hat, it’s not my way; I looked _in it_
when you were out of the room, because I wanted to know where it was
bought! A woman can tell a great deal by that! The biped _I_ call a _man_
never buys a department-store hat, for instance, he’d rather wear a
second-hand one first. Well, yours did not come from a department store,
neither was it second-hand; in fact, it was painfully new, address and
all!”
Then Lucy Dean turned on her heel with right-about-face rapidity and
vanished around the corner of the corridor; while Tom Brownell, half
angry, half fascinated, and wholly amazed, went down the marble stairs
two steps at a time, a difficult feat, and one that would have made the
very correct man at the door suspect that the visitor had been summarily
ejected, if it had not been for the expression of Brownell’s face, which,
by the time he reached the bottom stair, wore a decidedly satisfied
smile.
CHAPTER VIII
TRANSITION
When Lucy Dean returned to the den, she found Brooke leaning upon the
desk, her head still pillowed by her arms, and fast asleep. Checking her
first impulse to waken Brooke and discuss the episode of the reporter,
Lucy stood thinking a moment, looked at the clock, then, drawing a sheet
of paper toward her, wrote a few words upon it in vigorous upright
characters, placed it where the sleeper could not fail to see it the
moment her eyes opened, and, after rearranging her furs, that she had
thrown off when she had returned from her walk, vanished from the room.
Her coming and going made a mental movement, for there had been no sound.
Brooke raised her head, and looking about in a dazed way spied the note,
which said, “As everybody and thing seems to be asleep, have gone home to
dine with father; will be back before ten.”
It was a positive relief to Brooke to be quite alone for a few hours,
and it would also give her the chance to see the physicians more
satisfactorily; they were due about six.
Going to her own room, she found her mother had returned to the sick
room, so, slipping on a wrapper and loosening the tension of hair-pains,
she busied herself by laying away in closet and dresser various things
that had lain about since two nights before, which Olga, the maid, under
stress of confusion, had neglected. Taking up her great chinchilla muff
from a chair, she was shaking it in an absent-minded fashion before
putting it in its box, when something slipped from it and fell lightly to
the carpet. Groping in the dim light, she picked up, not her card case,
as she expected, but the silk-covered catalogue of the Parkses’ pictures
and the souvenir menu in its frame of silver filigree. It was only two
days since she had put them in her muff, but it seemed almost as if she
were looking back from another world.
The catalogue naturally opened to the little reproduction of Marte
Lorenz’ picture. Cutting it carefully from the page, she slipped it into
the silver frame, which chanced to be of the exact size, and setting it
upon the dressing table, turned on the light above. Somehow the sight of
it gave her comfort more than anything else could, and the separation of
circumstances and distance seemed suddenly to have grown less. Whatever
the interpretation of the picture might be, whatever else might tide, she
had entered into and formed a part of the artist’s first serious work,
and even if they never met again, they would be comrades upon the canvas
as long as it lasted. For, in spite of the veiling of both the likenesses
by certain subtle touches, it did not obliterate the characteristics of
the two; and the longer that Brooke gazed upon the picture the stronger
grew her conviction that, under guise of an attractive composition,
it was he and she that Lorenz had painted, that he had bound together
forever by some mystical inspiration.
Still Brooke did not formulate her feelings toward this man who had been
the first one to tell her the truth when an untruth or evasion would
have had a pleasanter sound; such a thing did not occur to her. Lucy
Dean would have dragged her emotion into the electric light, diagnosed,
and duly labelled it at once. Neither did Brooke kiss the portrait nor
put it under her pillow, nor hide it away in her orris-scented drawer
for sentiment’s sake or to feed mystery, as many a girl would have done;
but as the light glared upon the glass she turned it out, and lighting
a small green candle of bayberry wax, that stood upon her desk, placed
it near the frame so that its rays fell obliquely in accord with the
picture’s scheme of light, while the pungent fragrance of the wax wafted
like incense at a shrine.
As she stood thus, the outer door closed, a squeaky tread awkwardly
muffled came along the hallway, and stopping outside her door made her
turn hastily. Without further ado the door opened, and a pair of lean,
sloping shoulders and a freckled face topped by a mop of sandy hair
parted the curtain, while two dull, greenish hazel eyes, very round and
wide open, explored the room to the very corners with an expression of
apprehension. Evidently being satisfied with the result, the rest of the
six feet of overgrown boy followed the head, swinging a suit case before
him with one hand, while he closed the door behind him with the other.
Brooke was almost startled into calling out aloud, but the figure clapped
his hand to her mouth, and her voice dropped to a whispered “Oh, Cub,
Cub, where did you come from? How did you hear?”
“Why, from school, to be sure, Sis, and I heard from Mummy, else I hadn’t
dared, or couldn’t have come,—she sent me a ten,—for I spent all that was
left of my quarterly on Pam; she was worth it, even if I’d have had to
walk. I’ve only had her a month, but she knows my whistle out of twenty,
and she just loves me; yes, she does, you ought to see her look at me
with her head on one side. I’ve just left her below with the engineer
till I saw if the coast was clear. I’ll bring her up to you, unless you
think father’s likely to come in. Then I suppose I’ll have to take her to
the stable for keeps.”
While the boy rattled on, Brooke was recalling the fact of her brother’s
letter, and that her mother had told her about sending for him to come
home in spite of everything. He had come, then, in response to that and
knew nothing of what had happened.
“Father will not come in,” she said, going to him and speaking very
quietly to gain time, also because she did not know exactly how best to
break the matter to this sixteen-year-old brother of hers, who, partly
through perversity, but chiefly because his father had never understood
his temperament or considered him as an individual, was the sort of cross
between a mule and a firebrand dubbed “an impossibility” by people in
general.
“Who or what is Pam?”
“She! She’s the finest year-old brindled pup you ever rolled your eyes
on, only a quarter English for bone and grit, and the rest Boston for
looks. Her father’s got eight firsts, and Bill Bent’s father owns the
mother, and she’s reckoned the finest bitch shown this year. I paid
fifty, but if Bill hadn’t been my chum, two hundred was the price! I
called her Pam, after Mummy, you know, and I thought maybe she’d keep
her for her own if father sends me off again to where they won’t have
Pam. Lots of women have Boston bulls to ride out with them every day,”
while, at the likelihood of catastrophe in connection with his pet,
the animation that had lighted the boy’s face and shown the improving
possibility of latent manhood died out, a weary look replacing it, and
the Cub dropped into a lounging chair and began to cough, holding his
hand to his side.
“If you think I’d better not bring her up, I’ll take her round to the
stable right away,” he said, when the fit had passed over.
“Leave her downstairs for now,” said Brooke; “I’m not sure if there is
any stable to-day,” and sitting on the arm of the chair, untangling his
mop of hair with her strong, slender fingers, a proceeding that he did
not resent as roughly as usual, she began to give him a brief history
of the past two days. At first he looked at her in amazement, as if he
thought that she had lost her mind, then his head sank, and when she
finished and tried to take his hand, he pulled it away, and, turning from
her, buried his face in the chair back, breaking into long sobs that
almost strangled him, and that he could not stifle.
In vain Brooke tried to comfort him, to find if there was anything on his
mind of which she did not know. Her brother had never been emotional in
this way, and though she knew that her father’s strictness with the boy
was a sign that all his hope was in him, she never dreamed the Cub would
care so much, if at all. Pushing her away, he staggered toward the door,
his face still hidden by his hands.
“Where are you going? you must be very quiet,” said Brooke, getting
between him and the curtain.
“To mother! I want my mother! I must have her all to myself, and father
can’t prevent it now!” Then, to her amazement, Brooke realized that her
brother’s tears were not born of grief, but of hysterical relief at
release from a mental and physical bondage that had fretted and cramped
and warped his very soul.
“Stay here,” she begged, “and I will bring mother to you!” Turning back,
with a look that told the boy better than words that she understood his
outburst, and did not brand it as foolishness, she said: “Be careful of
her, for I know now that you and I must be father and mother, and do some
hard thinking, and perhaps acting, in these next few weeks, for they
cannot. Will you stand by me, Adam?” Then the boy did not push away the
hands that rested on his shoulders, but held his sister close, awkwardly,
it is true, but as he had not clung to her since the old days in the
down-town house, when as a little girl she stooped over his crib to kiss
him good night.
The doctors came, and when they left, Mrs. Lawton went to her son. An
hour passed, dinner was served, and still the two did not come out.
Brooke went to the door, then prepared and carried in a tray of food,
eating her own meal afterward in solitary silence that was very soothing
to her.
For the first time she had been able to see the specialist alone, and
put such definite questions to him as dispersed the usual non-committal
generalities, while at the same time it convinced him that here was a
member of the family to whom the truth might and should be told. It was
possible that her father might recover from this attack, if there was no
further hemorrhage; also that the clot that plugged the brain channel
might be absorbed, the paralysis of face, leg, and arm relax, and speech
and memory return, so that though full vigour would never again be his he
might still have years of placid living and enjoyment. Or else he might
regain his physical faculties without the brain cloud ever lifting. As
for medicine, a few simple regulations and then quiet must do its work,
coupled with constant care. His failure and its agitation had struck the
blow, and of this cause not the faintest suggestion must reach him or be
even whispered of, for in such cases no one may precisely tell how much
of conscious unconsciousness exists.
Meanwhile the laws of trade must be carried on, and others, to keep
their rights, sift and settle Adam Lawton’s affairs as far as possible,
before Brooke could learn what they as a family had or did not have and
by it measure what might be done. For neither mother nor daughter knew
of the extent of this final venture of all, and beyond keeping domestic
accounts and holding a joint key with her father to a box in an up-town
safe deposit company, where family papers and some securities belonging
to her mother were kept, Brooke was no partner in her father’s affairs.
In fact one of the things, Mr. Dean said, that had hurried the crisis and
complicated its untangling was the habit that Adam Lawton had formed of
holding aloof from the advice and confidence of his fellows.
* * * * *
Later in the evening, when the Cub emerged from Brooke’s room, he found
that she had taken the nurse’s place by her father and the library was
empty. While he walked about the room restlessly, alternately enjoying
his comparative liberty or wondering what he had best do about his dog,
something led him to cross the hall and turn the angle to the den, where,
to his intense astonishment, amid a blaze of lights, that contrasted
vividly with the semi-dark silence of the other rooms, was Lucy Dean, in
the great leather-covered Morris chair, upon one arm of which sat the
bull pup, whose persuasive pink tongue had just succeeded at the moment
he entered in touching Lucy’s nose in affectionate salute.
“Brooke told me about the dear, and I went down and fished her out of
an old box, where they had bedded her, just in time to save her from
spoiling her figure with a whole bowl of oatmeal and soup,” said Lucy,
in answer to the question on the Cub’s face. “You’ve got to be very
particular about feeding her, remember, or she’ll grow groggy and sleepy
and wheeze, instead of keeping her sporting blood up—” and Lucy held
out her unoccupied left hand to the boy, who, after the callowness and
fervour of youth, regarded this friend of his sister’s, eight years his
senior, with her dash and vim, as the combination of everything admirable
and adorable and himself her equal in years.
“No, I’m not going to kiss you this time,” she continued, leaning back in
the chair, as he half stooped behind her; “I’ve just transferred that to
Pam here. Why? Because you’ve gained a year and two inches since I saw
you when you came home last Christmas—and sixteen is a good stile to stop
at. Then hands off, young man, and no kisses outside the family until you
are twenty-one and able to shoulder your own responsibilities.” The Cub
growled out something half sulkily.
“Yes, I know I never had an own brother, but I’ve been a good sister to
more of you boys than were ever born even in a Mormon family, and I’ve
kept them all for good friends, just such as you’re going to be. No,
don’t mope and go over in the corner, because within five minutes you’ll
simply have to come back again and sit by Pam and me—so you might as well
do it now.
“That’s it, stretch and be comfortable! See, chains wouldn’t keep Pam
away from you now! Do you know I don’t blame you for squandering your
last penny on this bull pup—her points are all right, she has an angel
disposition; but she doesn’t forget to whom she belongs for a single
minute—it was all I could do to drag her past your coat in the hall! But
suppose she barks, how can you keep her here?”
“That’s the point, I must take her over to the stable right away; but
you’ll be here when I come back, won’t you? I think Brooke said you were
stopping here.”
“I was, but I guess now that you are here, I’ll go home. I stayed so that
Brooke shouldn’t be lonely; besides, I have your room.”
“That don’t count,” protested the Cub, “I can sleep here just as well as
not.”
“Oh, there is one other thing,” added Lucy. “I’m not so sure who there is
at the stable or how they would treat Pam, so best not take her there.
I’m so glad that you have come home, boy. I dined with dad to-night
and tried to learn as much as I could about this money trouble of your
father’s, and it is about as bad as can be, and though of course it may
be some time before it can be known exactly how things stand, there is
little doubt but when what’s left of the apple is divided there won’t be
even the core for you all. Of course, if the illness had not come, some
arrangement might have been made to tide things over. Suppose you take
Pam down to our house to-night, and stay there and have a talk with dad.
He will tell Brooke all he knows to-morrow. Don’t go yet, it’s only nine,
half an hour later will do as well as now.
“Tell me, what is the matter with you, honour bright? Are you really
sick or only sort of lazy and shilly-shally, obstinate, discouraged, and
crazy to get out of jail? I know the symptoms, for I’ve had them all
one by one, in my youth, doing everything by rule, duty the watchword,
more mathematics the penalty for forgetting it, and dyspepsia the
result. _My_ sons shall be reared in the open, if they never get beyond
horse-breaking and cattle-breeding,” and a shiver of sympathy ran down
Lucy’s flexible spine, branching off in an odd twisting of her fingers
that sent her handkerchief, that she had rolled into a ball to amuse the
pup, flying across the room, much to the amusement of Pam, who caught it,
and made her master jump to rescue the roll of cambric and lace from her
investigating paws.
“Honour bright, Lucy, it’s the being shut up so much, and the confounded
mathematics and knowing that I never seem to satisfy the old man on
top of that. If he’d only let me work at something I like, and learn
to do something out-of-doors, but at this rate I think I’m getting
consumption—” and the Cub gave a really dismal cough.
“Of course a man must know how to count, and a few little things like
that, no matter what he does,” said Lucy, so seriously that the boy did
not at first realize that she was mocking him; “for whether you handle
your own or some other person’s money, or eggs and potatoes, counting
will be a painful necessity.
“Oh, oh! what is this?” she exclaimed, as in handing her back her
handkerchief the thumb and forefinger of his right hand caught her eye.
These were stained a brownish yellow on the inside. Spreading the fingers
apart, she looked the boy in the face, and he flushed scarlet under his
freckles.
“Been smoking cigarettes, on the sly, of course, and consequently in a
hurry, swallowed the smoke, and sometimes chewed the butts to pulp! There
is half the cause why your head won’t work right, as well as one reason
why you are lanky and cough. See here, young man, do you know that only
_what-is-its_ and _mistakes_ smoke cigarettes? _Men_ smoke pipes, or
cigars if they can afford them; and I’m going to give you a pipe on your
next birthday, with Pam’s head carved on a meerschaum bowl. I’ll get
Charlie Ashton to order it to-morrow; he knows a fellow who carves pipes
that are perfect dreams. Meantime not a whiff or sniff of a cigarette.
Yes, of course it’s hard to stop, they all say that, but really, Cub,
it’s a horrid trick. Yes, I know all about it; I tried cigarettes once
myself. Empty your pockets quick and swear off.”
At first the boy had looked annoyed, and a curious, obstinate expression,
akin to that of a horse putting back his ears, crossed his features,
flattening them; but it only lasted a moment. It was impossible to be
angry with Lucy, for her tongue was pointed with common sense born of
experience, and there was never anything censorious or priggish in her
strictures.
So the Cub produced two packages of cigarettes, an amber holder, and a
silver match-box, and piled them in the outstretched hand of his mentor.
“Keep the match-box, and we’ll give those things to the ‘grasshoppers’
that go around the street picking up cigar stumps with a spike in the end
of a stick.” So saying, the vigorous young woman opened the window, and
with a sidewise motion skittled the cigarettes through the air into the
street below, much to the alarm of an old gentleman upon whose shoulders
a shower from the first box fell. He had come out of the house to sample
the weather and immediately returned for umbrella and goloshes, while
the second box landed intact on the top of a passing hansom, much to the
driver’s satisfaction.
Then the Cub brought his suit case, and, picking up Pam, went to carry
out Lucy’s suggestion, while she, after watching him go, said half aloud:—
“He’s all right if you only understand him. I’ll give Brooke a hint. I
shouldn’t wonder if this smashup will give him a push and his chance—for
somebody has got to go to work in this family, and pretty quick, too,
according to father’s ideas.
“Heigh-ho, I wonder what Tom Brownell will have to say in the _Daily
Forum_ to-morrow. Will he make a sensation column of us,—I mean of Brooke
and her object lesson,—or will he turn his back on the devil and give
out a simple, dignified statement regardless of making copy? No, I don’t
wonder either, I’ll gamble he’s straight as a plumb-line. Gracious, what
did I do with those keys?” and Lucy began feeling in the gold chain bag
that hung from her belt, as, hearing Brooke leave her father’s room, she
went to join her.
* * * * *
The _Daily Forum_ not only corrected its insinuation of the previous
day, but printed a further statement, the sincerity and judiciousness
of which at once made the financial disaster of Adam Lawton secondary
to his physical collapse. This allowed the numerous family friends and
acquaintances the chance to offer sympathy with perfect good taste, which
in the conventional society of the Whirlpool usually takes the place of
more spontaneous warm-heartedness.
For many days a stream of callers came and went from the St. Hilaire,
some content merely to leave a card with inquiries, others asking for
Mrs. Lawton or Brooke, emphasizing their offer of “doing something” with
a hand-shake, but asking no prying questions. Still others, as “intimate
friends” of the family, as the days wore on and it was definitely known
that though the creditors might in time receive dollar for dollar, there
would be nothing over, not only called, but stayed and mingled advice and
chiding with their verbal sympathy.
“Reduced to absolute beggars,” was the term that Mrs. Ashton, Lucy Dean’s
aunt, applied to the Lawtons when discussing the affair at a luncheon she
was giving, where all the guests were women of Mrs. Lawton’s class and
set, though few of them had her gentle breeding, “and if Mrs. Lawton and
quixotic Brooke had not had such ridiculous scruples as to what belonged
to whom, quite a lump might have been rescued for them, my brother says.”
“My dear Susie,” protested Mrs. Parks, who since her housewarming was
fast advancing in power and called several exclusives by their first
names by request, “that is not a fault that can be often found with any
one nowadays. The Senator says that through all this business it was
precisely the same trait in Adam Lawton of not being quite willing to
knock down others and make them serve as scaling ladders that dealt him
out at last.”
“The question is now,” continued Mrs. Ashton, “What shall we be expected
to do for them? They will leave the St. Hilaire the 1st of January; Mr.
Dean has manipulated things so far as that for them, and he wants them to
put Mr. Lawton into a partly endowed sanatorium of which he himself is a
trustee, as all the physicians say he must be kept out of turmoil. The
Cub, as they call the boy, is rather out of health, so that a year on a
school-ship would be a good place for him. They say if he went into an
office at once, as Mr. Dean expected, it would probably kill him.
“Brooke, of course, will have to take up her painting, teach, and paint
bonbon boxes for Cuyler and Gaillard, or menus for us. We can all use
influence to get her work of that sort, and it will help out for a time
until we get sick of her style probably. Lucy swears that Brooke shall
live with her; we shall see. I think that there will be something a year
from some little investment they have, with which Mrs. Lawton might board
in some cheap place, not of course in New York, but Brooklyn or up in the
Bronx.”
“Don’t, pray don’t suggest boarding in those dreadful places for that
sweet, sensitive woman; it would be like putting lilies-of-the-valley in
a saucepan,” cried Mrs. Parks with warm-hearted energy; “it’s too awful!
I would be only too glad to have her live with me, if she could put up
with the whirl of it, and Brooke too. I often wish that I had an elder
sister in the house with whom I could talk things over comfortably and
not have them spread over the face of the earth. The hard part of this
is that whatever is done the family will be split to kindlings, and it’s
no joke parting a mother and son!” For be it said that since the arrival
of the belated and beruffled little man in the Easter-egg crib, though
Mrs. Parks’s social ambition had rather increased than diminished, the
cold-heartedness that is often a part of a social career was altogether
lacking.
“Besides, suppose that Mr. Lawton comes back to himself suddenly, for
you know they say that it sometimes happens when this aphasia (I’m
always possessed to call it aspasia, after the snake that bit Cleopatra)
lifts—how will he feel to find himself in an institution and his family
scattered?”
“I don’t see that it concerns us,” said Mrs. Ashton, shrugging her
shoulders. “If he had only died at once and been done with it, they would
all have been comfortable, for my brother says that he carried a simply
fabulous life insurance, and that the keeping it up was what made him so
economical.”
* * * * *
It was the last week in December, Christmas week. Brooke and her mother
sat opposite each other in the den in a silence that was keeping the
brain of each more active than the most rapid speech. Although Adam
Lawton had not spoken, the tension that had drawn his face had relaxed,
and sensation was slowly returning to his foot, though his right hand
was still quite useless. But while he took no apparent notice of what
passed about him, his wife felt that his eyes dwelt upon her and followed
her when she was in range, and only that morning he had feebly retained
the hand she had laid within his upturned left palm. Recovery to a
certain extent was possible, the physician proclaimed, with no further
jars, and care and quietness; but how to secure this? Quiet is not always
the inexpensive thing it seems. But with this new-born hope, everything
else seemed unimportant to her.
The apparent worst had been carefully explained to them and accepted
several days ago, but there had been yet more, for when Brooke had that
morning gone to the safety box, where some jewels of her mother’s,—a
necklace and other things seldom worn,—and some dozen railroad bonds, the
little property that came to her from the Brookes, with some shares of an
industrial stock, a birthday gift to Brooke at twenty-one, were stored,
the box was empty!
Thoughts would come that must not find words even between themselves as
they sat there. They both believed in Adam Lawton’s honour and that if he
could speak he would explain; and finally, as the tension tightened into
agony, Brooke went over to her mother, and kneeling by her said, “Don’t
try to think it out now, mother; some day we shall know, and now it is
how to live and work until that day comes.”
As for Brooke, she had lived five years in those few weeks. Every word
that she had ever heard of criticism of those in their present position
came back to her, the cruel discussion of Julia Garth at the musicale
topping the list.
All the various suggestions, practical and problematical, for their
future arrayed themselves mockingly in a row before her, but one and all
they had their beginning in the separation of the family; not a single
plan offered the remotest possibility of keeping it together.
That morning, after her finding of the empty box, Brooke had seen Mr.
Dean in his office and learned definitely that the only income they could
count upon after the new year was the interest upon her shares of stock,
six hundred dollars a year—fifty dollars a month; for though the shares
themselves were missing, as they stood in her name upon the company’s
books, the interest would keep on. Besides this, there would be a fund
gathered here and there from articles she or her mother personally owned
beyond question—a scant two thousand dollars.
One asset had been overlooked until that interview, the homestead at
Gilead, Brooke’s own property, asked for in a moment of sentiment and
freely given her. Mr. Dean, knowing the place and location well, thought
that, with good management, it might be sold at the right season for
perhaps six or eight thousand dollars.
All these circumstances were pushed into Brooke’s brain, jostling and
crowding each other until it seemed hopeless to think. Even Lucy Dean,
huffed because Brooke would not come to her for the rest of the winter
or borrow money of her father to establish a little apartment where she
could work at her painting, though she came as regularly as ever, had
ceased to question or even offer cheer. And it seemed almost impossible
for Brooke to tell her mother, in the face of hope, that Mr. Dean’s
plan of sending Adam Lawton to the sanatorium in the country seemed the
only feasible solution at the present moment. As for her mother and
herself, she would work for both, but not in anything obtained merely
by the insecure path of social influence. It would be teaching drawing,
of course, for too well she realized Lorenz’ words that as a painter of
pictures she had not yet “awakened,” and in the world of competition the
winners of a single prize or the acclaim won in charity bazaars is a
damning introduction.
* * * * *
The entrance of some one brought Brooke to herself, a shrill voice that
replied in a high key to the answer of the maid, “In the den? Then we’ll
go right in very informally, no need to take the cards,” and Mrs. Ashton,
followed by a married daughter, entered quite abruptly, the elder lady
looking at the two women with something akin to disapproval on her florid
face, an expression that Brooke interpreted instantly. Mrs. Ashton was
becoming bored at the situation and had a feeling of resentment that all
her opportunities of becoming the patroness of the Lawtons were vanishing.
She still had one more card to play, a trump she considered it, and she
suddenly drew it from the pack and cast it before Mrs. Lawton. A widower,
more than passing rich, though not of her precise set, with two daughters
just leaving school, had intrusted her to find a well-bred New Yorker as
chaperon and companion to travel with them until the next autumn, and
then launch them tactfully in the Whirlpool. Any reasonable salary might
be demanded—would dear Pamela like the chance? Six or eight months abroad
would doubtless restore her tone and spirits.
Brooke’s eyes flashed fire, Scotch fire not easily put out when once it
was kindled; but Mrs. Lawton only grew a shade more pale, and said in
her soft, slow accent, looking steadily at her friend, “Susan, you are
forgetting Adam. How could I both go abroad and give him the care he will
always need while he lives?”
For some reason the soft answer not only did not turn away wrath, but
augmented it, and shortly the couple left; but alas for the treachery of
portières—scarcely were the pair in the hall when, forgetting that it
was not a door that closed behind them, Mrs. Ashton said, in an echoing
whisper, “Care, while he lives indeed—it’s just as I said the other
day, if Adam Lawton had only died at once and had done with it, those
women, instead of being beggars, could have lived in luxury on his life
insurance!”
With the harsh, insistent vibration of a graphophone, the words stung the
ears of mother and daughter, who were standing where their guests had
left them. A look of horror froze Mrs. Lawton’s face to the immobility of
a statue, while in Brooke’s brain, still tingling with the other blow,
the thoughts were suddenly clarified as if by fire, and she never noticed
that the Cub had come in and was looking from one to the other in alarm.
“It is monstrous!” she choked out, clasping her mother in her strong
arms. “Oh, mother, mother! do not look so, as if you were turning to
stone! You shall not be torn from father; we will go together and
keep together! Listen, you and he desired me and brought me into your
world for love, and took the responsibility of me when I was helpless;
now you shall come into mine and be my children, and I will bear the
responsibility for that same love. Father needs country quiet; so be it;
we will take him home to Gilead. It is my home, my very own in deed and
truth, given so long ago that no creditor can grumble. I never have lived
in the country, and I know nothing, you may say. What I do not know I can
learn. At worst, with what I have we can be secure somehow for a year.
Cousin Keith has lived and worked there, so can I, and if only Adam will
stand by me, I cannot fail. But you must trust me like a child, as I did
you, and do not question.”
A look of wondrous joy crept into the mother’s eyes, but with it her
strength gave way, and when she tottered and would have fallen, it was
Adam who caught her, and as he held her with tender awkwardness, nodding
at his sister as if in answer to her appeal, he jerked out, “You bet your
life, Sis, I’ll stand by the crowd, and won’t it just suit Pam and me to
get out of town!”
CHAPTER IX
THE RETURN
It was the 10th of January. At Gilead winter had been a-masking all
through December, and played the part of a fantastic snow-draped
Columbine in the Christmas pantomime where, the North Wind being
piqued to keep his distance, she was wooed by the South and West Winds
alternately amid a setting of warm noons, dramatic sunsets, and moonlight
nights of electric clearness, to the song of the Moosatuk’s mad racing.
With January the reign of the North Wind began in a wrath of sleet
and ice that bound forest, field, and river also in cruel, glittering
shackles, covering the wayside granaries and driving the faithful birds
of the season, hooded and clad in sober garb of grays and russet, to beg
from door to door like mendicant friars of old.
Even before its close, each day of the New Year had been checked by a
double cross from the calendar that hung on the door of Keith West’s
pantry, as if by its complete obliteration she hoped to hurry time itself.
Waiting for others to act had never before fallen to Miss Keith’s lot in
life. For twenty years her comings and goings, her waking and sleeping,
and even the setting of the first spring brood of embryo broilers had
depended upon herself alone, for she had long since substituted an
incubator for that coy and freakish feathered female known as a setting
hen. Consequently this delay at the very outset of a new order of things
found her restless and in no very amiable mood. Also Judith Dow had
written that, as Miss Keith had promised to come the first of the year,
she had reserved her room and must charge her accordingly, which, as the
whole affair was upon a nominal basis, irritated her not a little.
In writing to Adam Lawton of the determination to leave the farm, the
1st of January had been the date she had set for starting for Boston _en
route_ to Matrimony, and when, a short time after Christmas, Brooke had
combined her reply to the unanswered letter with the announcement that
she herself expected to go to take charge of the place as near the 1st of
January as possible, Miss Keith had hastened to complete her arrangements.
Brooke had written concisely, yet with entire frankness; but even then
Miss Keith did not compass the exact condition of her cousin’s affairs,
or understand that as far as his relation with the world stood he was
as helpless and irresponsible as the day of his birth. She knew that
money and health had been lost, but fancied that, after a few months’
retirement, more voluntary than enforced, as had been the case with one
or two families of the wealthy summer colony at Stonebridge, every one
concerned would swing back to the old pace again.
Nevertheless she took great pride in making the evidence of her thrifty
stewardship apparent on every side. The hired man had been well-nigh
frantic at the number of times that he had been obliged to whitewash
spots that had dried thin in the cow and poultry houses. A fringe of
unthreshed rye straw made a lambrequin over the entrance to the stall of
Billy, the general utility horse with the long, common-sense face. The
front gate, always removed from its hinges at the coming of frost, had
been scrubbed before being stowed away in the attic, and the plant boxes
that edged the front porch and held nasturtiums in summer were filled
with small cedar bushes and branches of coral winterberry in remembrance
of Brooke’s youthful love of such things.
The outside condition of things gave Miss Keith much more satisfaction
than did the inside arrangement of the house. Her only concern about
them was lest the mischievous boy should upset everything and doubtless
stone the cows, torment Laura, the sedate barn cat, and turn the laying
hens out in the cold; for to her spinster mentality if there was a
dubious quantity, it was the growing boy, the last straw under which the
many-humped back of female patience must break.
She had considered the house the pink of perfection until she peopled it
with New Yorkers accustomed to every luxury, and then the gay flowers
of the chintz slip covers that hid the haircloth gloom of the parlour
furniture began to pale and fail to hold their own, and the texture of
the freshly laundered dimity curtains, those upstairs having wide hems,
while those below were edged with tatting of the wheel pattern, seemed to
grow coarser as the days went by.
And all the while that she bustled to and fro, now in the cellar to see
that the stones had not slipped in the pork barrel and allowed the meat
to rise above the brine, then to the attic to be sure that her personal
possessions of bedding, linen, and tableware, neatly put up in barrel,
bale, and bundle until her marriage and final move, did not take up more
room than was necessary,—Tatters followed her, either so close to heel
that he literally seemed to dog her footsteps, or else sitting a little
way apart with his eyes fastened upon her with a blended look of dread
and reproach. Then she would often drop whatever she held and raising his
face (yes, Tatters had a face, not a “muzzle”) between her hands, plead
with him to tell her what he made of it all and if he believed she could
be happy away from Gilead, and if he thought that he could follow any one
else to market, allow her to shake out his mat, and choose juicy bones
that were not too hard for his middle-aged teeth. All of which showed
that she did not rejoice in thought at the _First Cause_ as completely
as would, under the circumstances, have been desirable; while Tatters
understood that this was not the accustomed affectionate babble or the
confidential discourse of everyday doings in which he was frequently
consulted, and he would raise his head and give, not his usual howl
belonging to moonlight nights, but a strange bay like an echo, deep down
in his throat.
Three times in those ten bleak January days had she given what she
declared aloud to be a “final dusting” to each room. Three times had she
baked bread, cake, pies, and custard for the invalid (no, the third time
she made boiled soft custard to break the monotony), and then hovered
between the dread of waste and surfeit in consuming the food.
However, on the tenth day of waiting her spirits rose, for soon after
breakfast Robert Stead stopped on his way back from Gilead, whither he
rode daily, rain or shine, to the post-office, as the rural carrier went
to Windy Hill but once a day and that in early afternoon, to say that he
had just heard from Dr. Russell and expected him up from Oaklands that
afternoon, as he was coming to meet Adam Lawton at the request of his New
York physician, in order to see the invalid safely established after his
precarious journey.
In addition to this bit of news, Stead brought a fine pair of wild
ducks, shot a few days previous, farther down where the river was not
ice-locked, and he had taken the wise precaution of having them dressed
by José, his Mexican man of all work, for in Miss Keith’s agitation at
the knowledge that her kinsfolk were actually coming that very day, the
task of picking pin-feathers would have been impossible.
In fact her hands trembled so, as she took the basket from Stead, that,
contrary to his habit of taciturnity, he questioned her closely as to her
health, and if he could help her in any preparations, and finally, after
leading Manfred to the stable, followed Miss Keith into the house only to
find her in the kitchen seated, as Dr. Russell had some months before,
with her face pressed against Tatters’ ears in a vain effort to stifle
her sobs.
“I’ve wished for kin so long that now they are coming it doesn’t seem
as if I could bear it,” she said by way of explanation. “If it was only
Adam and Brooke, I wouldn’t mind; I’ve sampled her, and though she’s full
of spunk, she’s as pleasant as if she never had a cent, but to think of
that high-spirited southern woman, perhaps lording it over me, it’s too
much, even though I’m only going to hold over a day or two to give them
the lay of the land, as it were. Then like as not their city help will
take me for a servant, for they’ll not likely bring less than two for all
the cooking and the waiting that they are used to, which reminds me that
they’ll need to use the living room to dine in, for of course they won’t
eat in the kitchen as I’ve done, and what with turning the south parlour
into a bedroom (which it was in his mother’s day) for Adam, so that he
can get out on the porch easily, there won’t be any best room at all.
“Would you help me move the table and dresser with the glass door into
the living room? Larsen bangs furniture so when he does it, and the deal
table from the summer kitchen can come here for the help.”
Jumping up—“There’s some one knocking now! Dear me, it’s the Bisbee boy
with a telegram. Open it, do, and give him a quarter from the shelf
by the clock, for riding up with it,” and Miss Keith sank back in the
rocking chair and closed her eyes like some one about to have a tooth
drawn, who dreaded the sight of the instruments.
Silent Stead opened the blue envelope with the studied deliberation with
which he performed every act of life, except riding Manfred, at which
time the two abandoned themselves to mutual impulse. Shaking out the
sheet, he read slowly:—
“NEW YORK, January 10, 1904.
“To MISS KEITH WEST, Gilead.
“Please meet us with closed carriage at Stonebridge, two-thirty.
Baggage to Gilead.
“BROOKE LAWTON.”
“To-day at two-thirty!” ejaculated Miss Keith, who, mind you, had been
more than ready for ten days; “then there’s no time to fix up the living
room, or do more than sweep and tidy up and get dinner,—they will have
to put up with the kitchen for once. Why do they get out at Stonebridge?
It is three miles farther than Gilead Station, and a closed carriage
means one of Bisbee’s hacks, for the rockaway must go too for the help.
Has that boy of his gone?” Stead hurried to the road, but the boy was
disappearing down the third hill at a pace that forbade recall.
“I will go down and order the carriage for you,” Stead volunteered, “and
tell them to put in hot stones and plenty of rugs; it’s a cold drive
from Stonebridge, but they come that way doubtless because the express
stops there and not at Gilead. They could not bring a man in Mr. Lawton’s
condition so long a journey in a way train.”
“If you would, I should be so relieved, and one thing more. I know you
make a point of keeping away from folks, especially women, and these are
strangers to you; but they’ll be so worried likely as not they’ll hardly
notice you. Now would you be so good as to meet them and see they find
the carriage and get properly started, and tell Bisbee to keep to the
lower road in spite of the trolley until they reach the third hill? It’s
far less jolty and better shovelled out.
“You see Brooke says, ‘Please meet us,’ and it doesn’t look hospitable to
send an empty hack, as if it was to meet a funeral; besides which there
wouldn’t be room, and I can’t spare the time, though, as I suppose the
boy is small, they could set him between.”
“Yes, I will go to meet them,” answered Stead, hesitating a moment and
still looking at the telegram, which he folded absent-mindedly and
dropped into his pocket. “I do not think you need fear seeing Mrs.
Lawton. I knew her family and met her once long ago; she is a gentlewoman
to her finger-tips, and such are never overbearing,” and after making
this unusually long speech Silent Stead went out for his horse, Tatters
bounding in front of him joyously, for dogs and children always swarmed
about the lonely man whenever they had the chance, and they alone, Dr.
Russell excepted, were welcome at his retreat on Windy Hill.
Like many capable people, who fuss aimlessly when there is really little
to do, but bring their best efforts to bear swiftly under stress, Miss
Keith set in motion certain necessary preparations for an afternoon meal,
which should be a compromise between a country dinner and supper, and
then went to the south parlour, until a few days ago her pride and the
most precise best room in the neighbourhood, and sitting quietly down
with hands folded in her lap, took a final survey.
Something had suddenly changed her attitude toward the room. She ceased
thinking of it as her state apartment, sacred to sewing society meetings
and the more formal and rare social function of a high tea to welcome the
wife of a new minister, and now looked at it as it was to be, the bedroom
to which her Cousin Adam was coming for rest, and as she sat there it
occurred to her that it was the very room in which he had been born.
Then there stole over her one of those subtle inspirations called
intuition, with which the Creator has blessed woman as a token of
sympathy with their weaknesses and a reward for much unspoken suffering,
and thereby more than bridged the difference of her physical inequality
with man. If the hope was to bring Adam Lawton back to himself, what
could be more suitable than that the surroundings should be those of his
early youth?
Ringing the dinner bell out of the back door, the sign to Larsen that he
was wanted, Miss Keith began by taking the decorated “fireboard” from
before the wide fireplace, and brushing up the fragments of swallow’s
nests that had fallen down since the regular autumn clearing. Going
to a deep closet under the back stairs, she pulled out a large bundle
wrapped in papers and cloth, which being unrolled gave forth a pair of
long-necked andirons, with oval head-pieces and curiously curved legs,
made of what was known in the old days as princess metal, a warm-hued
alloy of copper and brass. Setting these in the fireplace, she directed
Larsen, who now appeared in the carpet slippers without which he never
dared come indoors, to bring in logs and lay a substantial fire with
backlog, forestick, catstick, and kindling, such as would outlast a
night, instead of the mere “splutter blaze that needs tending like a
spoiled child,” as she called the modern wood fire.
Next she had the ornate and hideous black-walnut bed, a product of the
“ugly sixties,” that she had long regarded as a patent of respectability,
unscrewed, taken up garret, and put under the eaves, from which she
unpacked the frame of a slender-limbed four-poster of mellow, unstained
mahogany. The Wests had always been of plain farming stock, and had never
possessed carved mahogany or beds of the famous pineapple pattern. Dull
and lustreless as was the wood, she set the man to work with rags and a
compound of beeswax, oil, and turpentine, of which she always kept a jar
for brightening spotted furniture. Meanwhile she untied a bundle shaped
like a pillow, and carefully unfolded curtains, valance, and tester of
dimity, finished with a cross-stitch border, mended carefully here and
there, and yellow with age.
Looking at the clock, which had not yet struck ten, she turned the fabric
over carefully, evidently weighing something in her mind, the while
saying aloud, “Yes, I’ll simply scald them, and iron them out with a bit
of starch. To bleach them would take weeks, and besides this old dimity
will never stand the strain.”
While the irons were heating she returned to her reconstructive attempt.
The canvas bottom was laced firmly to the bed frame, the bedding adjusted
with mathematical precision, and finished with a cheerful patchwork
quilt from one of the attic chests. From the floor of her own room she
dragged a great rug made of rags in the herring-bone pattern, and spread
it over the somewhat faded parlour carpet, which it concealed, all but a
narrow border. A work-stand, with fat stomach and many little drawers,
and an old chintz-covered English arm-chair, with high back and head-rest
flaps at the top, were also brought to light and put in place, while the
haircloth parlour set, in its flowered outer covering, suggestive of a
gay domino worn over ministerial clothes, was distributed in living room
and hall, the long sofa being obliged to seek refuge under the plant
window in the angle of the kitchen itself.
Twelve o’clock saw the bed draperies ironed and fastened in place, the
yellow hue of the dimity harmonizing with the painted woodwork and
blending with the wall paper of a cheerful nosegay pattern that Brooke
had chosen several years before, much to Miss Keith’s disappointment, as
at the time embossed papers with effects of gold, silver, and copper were
much in vogue in Gilead.
Still not quite satisfied, Miss Keith swept into her apron all the
accumulations of little meaningless nothings that covered table and
mantel-shelf. Seeking for something with which to replace them, she
gathered half a dozen books from the old desk case in the living room,
and set a pair of iron candlesticks as sentinels on the corners of the
mantel-shelf, to guard a row of polished shells of various sorts.
Raising the flap of the table near the west window, that coming between
two closets formed a small bay, Miss Keith placed half a dozen geraniums
upon it, that were rather overcrowding the plant window in the kitchen.
Satisfied with that quarter of the room, she was haunted by the partial
recollection of some bit of furniture that had once filled in the angle
between chimney and door leading to the back stairs, yet refused to
become definite. But presently the veil lifted, and going to the attic
for the twentieth time that morning, she returned followed by a bumping
sound, one bump for each stair of the two flights, twenty-six in all, and
presently the light of the fire that had kindled slowly cast sidewise
glances at a mahogany cradle, from under whose hood three generations of
little Wests had first gazed out into life.
With a sigh of content Miss Keith folded her arms, searched every nook
in the room with eyes into which there crept a moisture, born neither
of nervousness nor of grief, but of an emotion in which race instinct
and true womanliness of heart were blended, and as, the circle of the
room being rounded, she looked beyond into the square hallway, her eyes
stopped, as if asking for courage, upon the face of the tall clock, above
which a full-rigged brig had been sailing for more than a hundred years
toward the harbour it never reached. At the same moment it struck the six
strokes of the three-quarter hour, and the words it said sounded like
“Well done! well done! well done!”
In January, though the days have begun to lengthen minute by minute, dusk
begins to weave its shadows soon after four o’clock, and this fabric was
blending hill and river in its impenetrable gray when Miss Keith’s keen
eyes, now strained with watching, saw a man on horseback coming up the
second hill, while farther down, turning from the cut that connected
the upper and lower roads, two vehicles could be seen moving slowly,
the rockaway being in the lead, but as to their occupants, nothing was
discernible.
Throwing a heavy shawl about her, Miss Keith reached the gate at the same
moment as Robert Stead, who flung himself from his horse the better to
answer her sudden fusillade of questions. Tatters, who had followed her
to the porch, paused with one paw raised, sniffed the wind, and came no
farther, in spite of the sight of his friend.
“Have they come? Does Adam look badly? Can he walk? How much help did
they bring? Where are the trunks? Did they have them taken off at
Stonebridge and changed to the way train for Gilead?”
Smiling in spite of himself, Stead made answer, counting on his fingers
as he did so that he might check off the questions:—
“The family have all come. Mr. Lawton seems very ill and wan, but
as I have not seen him for many years, I cannot speak of his looks
comparatively. I do not think that he can walk; the porters carried him
from the car, and his wheel-chair is lashed behind the coach. They have
brought no maids. Their luggage will be at Gilead to-night, and Bisbee
has agreed to deliver it in the morning. Mr. and Mrs. Lawton, with Dr.
Russell, who came on with them, it seems, are in the coach, and Miss
Brooke and her brother are in the rockaway. I will house Manfred for
a few moments if I may, so that I may help the doctor get his patient
safely indoors.”
Half turning about, Stead hesitated a moment and then added hurriedly,
but with much emphasis, “For God’s sake get indoors, Miss West, and
don’t stand staring down the road like that, nor mention maids, nor ask
a thousand questions before they are fairly inside the door. No one
knows just how much Adam Lawton remembers or understands; but his wife
and daughter are neither dumb nor blind, and both look spent.” And Miss
Keith, too conscience-stricken to be angry at the rating from an almost
stranger, fled in and closed the door before the rockaway came over the
last hill grade, and paused, as all vehicles did, on the long plateau
that reached and passed the house.
Adam junior, long, lanky, and sandy of hair and skin, got out and swung
his sister to the ground. Something was bundled up under one of his arms,
but head and ears alone were visible. “Grandpa Lawton all over again,
Scotch hair and all! and he’s brought one of those snub-nosed dogs, as I
live!” ejaculated Miss Keith, from behind the curtain that screened the
glass half of the door, at the same time wondering if the proper moment
had arrived for hospitality. Brooke and young Adam waited for the coach
to draw up before they even looked houseward, and then Dr. Russell, with
serious cheerfulness, helped Mrs. Lawton, whose face Miss Keith could
scarcely see for the load of pillows that she handed to her daughter.
Stead and the doctor deftly bore out their burden, and Miss Keith opened
the door, stepping within its shadow. So Adam Lawton came home again,
surrounded by his family.
Brooke entered first, close by her father, and spying Miss Keith, there
was a single moment of strained, painful silence, but only a moment, for,
dropping her pillows and holding out her hand with a little smile in
which the doctor and Stead alone discerned a pathetic droop, her silver
voice said, “Here I am, Cousin Keith; I’ve come back to my River Kingdom,
and I’ve more than kept my promise, by bringing all the others with me;”
then the tension relaxed, every one spoke, though quietly, and they
carried Adam Lawton into the south parlour, where the fire burned upon
the wide hearth as steadily as if it had never been extinguished in all
those intervening years, and set him in the old chintz-covered chair.
Miss Keith held back in stiff reserve, and Mrs. Lawton followed, at
first blindly. Then, as her eyes, focussed to the firelight, took in the
details of the room in one swift glance,—bed hangings, quilt, cradle,
and all,—she caught her breath and turned toward Miss Keith with arms
extended, and whispered, “Ah, Cousin Keith, how did you know?—how did you
think of it? They say that he may come back to himself by the long way
of childhood; and how could he better do that than here in his mother’s
room?” And the head, with its lovely crown of silver, rested against the
taller woman’s bosom, and that swift touch of sympathy bound them doubly
as kin.
“That’s a bully fire and no fake,” said the Cub, suddenly, after
examining the long, thick log with the toe of his shoe; then he followed
Miss Keith toward the kitchen, led both by curiosity and the smell of the
supper in preparation.
“Where is that dog?” asked Miss Keith, abruptly. “I don’t know what
Tatters will say to him, so you had best not bring him in too sudden.”
“That’s what the man said,” replied the Cub, cheerfully, “but your dog
couldn’t help liking Pam; she’d make friends with a lion.”
“She. Oh, that’s different,” sniffed Miss Keith.
* * * * *
For the moment Dr. Russell was busy in taking Adam Lawton’s pulse, and
when Brooke turned to speak to Robert Stead he had silently slipped away.
“Never mind, Miss Brooke,” said the doctor, who read her thoughts; “Stead
is a strange fellow, though a man to be trusted, but I know of no more
bitter punishment to him than verbal thanks. You may need to remember
this. I found out long ago that the best gratitude that any one may
show him is to let him have a motive for doing something, no matter how
trivial, for some one else,—lack of motive is his curse.”
Then Dr. Russell also passed out into the living room, and the three were
left alone.
“Mother, are you glad that we have come?” asked Brooke, going to her with
that new look of complete understanding that each had worn toward the
other since that fateful night when Brooke had decided.
“Glad, my daughter? I cannot say how thankful! Oh, if only I could be
sure that we could stay!”
“No _ifs_, mother,” said Brooke, gently, her eyes opening wider as she
gazed into the fire. “You know in our new creed of work there is to be
plenty of love and faith and hope, but not a single _if_. In fact, I
always did think _if_ a poor, leaky word, that let people escape from all
sorts of nice promises; now we will simply banish it,—you and I and Adam
and—father.”
Lowering her eyes to the hearth-rug, she became aware of a shaggy form
stretched out there—Tatters, _couchant_, with his solemn eyes fastened
upon hers, watching their every movement questioningly. In answer to his
appeal, Brooke knelt on the rug before him, raising him so that his paws
rested on her shoulders, and whispered, “We are of your people, Tatters,
and we are so tired and lonely. Won’t you love us, and let us live here
with you?”
Then Tatters, who had not yet moved his eyes from Brooke’s, touched the
tip of her nose with his tongue as lightly as the brush of a moth’s wing,
and dropping his head to her lap, closed his eyes, as if in sign of
complete confidence.
CHAPTER X
TATTERS TRANSFERS HIMSELF
Not even the insistent sense of responsibility and of the literal work of
hands that lay before her could keep Brooke awake that first night in the
homestead.
With the fact that the move was accomplished came a feeling of relief,
as if a heavy weight had suddenly slipped from her shoulders, while the
knowledge that Dr. Russell had elected to return there for the night
after supping with Robert Stead gave her a wonderful sense of security.
In future Adam would sleep in the small room that opened between his
father’s and the back entry, but for this one night Miss Keith insisted
upon occupying it herself, “So that you can all sleep with both eyes
shut, and naught but dreams to trouble you,” she insisted when Brooke,
after helping wash and put away the tea things, had proposed to discuss
certain domestic questions.
The combination of a jingle of sleigh bells and the whirr-r with which
the hall clock cleared its throat, preparatory to striking nine, were
the first sounds that Brooke heard when she opened her eyes upon the
new surroundings, and then suddenly came to herself, conscience-stricken
at her utter oblivion of the past ten hours. Going to the east window,
whence the sound of bells and voices came, she raised the shade and
peered between the curtains. This window faced the front road, and
consequently the Moosatuk, to which it was parallel, though on a much
higher level; but all that could now be seen of the river was a broad
roadway, smooth, white, and level, bounded on each side by rugged banks,
set thick with snow-draped hemlocks.
A light snow had fallen in the early hours of the night, not a
sufficient storm to drift and block the roads, but merely to “polish up
the sleighing,” as the country parlance has it, while its magic touch
lingered on every brier and roadside weed in fantastic crystals, which,
meeting the sunbeams, radiated dazzling prismatic colours.
Stopping outside the fence was Silent Stead, driving Manfred before an
odd-looking low-running sled, with seat in front and box for merchandise
in the rear. With him was Dr. Russell, engaged in earnest conversation,
and also Tatters, who, as usual, was receiving his share of attention, as
he stood paws on the edge of the seat, the expression of his face, ears,
and tail seeming to vary according to the conversation of the men.
Brooke stood there spellbound, the muslin draperies held together beneath
her chin like a garment, and, as she looked, the Cub came up the lane
road from the barn, carrying the beloved Pam held high on one shoulder.
At sight of Tatters, the pup struggled to free herself, and began to
bark wildly. Stead evidently said something to the Cub, for, lowering
Pam to the sleigh box, he stood back, and watched Tatters walk about the
box at a little distance, his tail stiffly erect, and the neck ruff that
belonged to the collie half of him bristling also. As he drew nearer,
Pam leaned forward on her outstretched paws, barked saucily, and before
the dignified old dog could think of a suitable reply, outflanked him
by giving him an enthusiastic lick on the nose, as he drew near. Next,
casting herself recklessly from the sleigh, she slid along sidewise,
landing on her back almost between his front feet, with her paws held up,
as if in sign of complete submission. Then, as the men laughed heartily
at these tactful feminine antics in a puppy of only six months, Pam began
running to and fro in the snow, making believe to eat large mouthfuls
of it, and kicking it into the air. For a moment Tatters hesitated, and
then bounded awkwardly after the pup as fast as his stiff hind leg would
let him. To and fro they ran in the ecstasy of puppy play until Miss
Keith, shawl over head, came out in amazement at the turn of things, and
Tatters, quite spent with his unusual exercise, lay panting in the snow,
Pam following suit. For there is one inflexible dog rule—that as soon as
a newcomer has received recognition, he must yield obedience to the dog
already in command; that is dog law. Thus it was that young life came
to Tatters with the new arrivals, even as it had come to the homestead
itself.
As Miss Keith returned to the house, she glanced up at Brooke’s window,
and, seeing the face between the curtains, she nodded and waved her hand
gayly, a totally different attitude from that with which a week or even a
day before she would have greeted any one who had stayed abed until nine
in the morning. Instantly Brooke turned to her dressing, and though at
first the very cold water made her gasp, the after glow more than made up
for it.
Brooke could not conceal her satisfaction at the fact that some breakfast
had been stored away for her in the “hot closet,” and the mere fact
placated Miss Keith more than a thousand apologies for oversleeping. Why
is it that people, women especially, feel it a special point of virtue
to suppress or deny the existence of natural appetites that to be truly
without would prove them abnormal?
When both Mrs. Lawton and Brooke had duly learned where every dish,
pot, and pan belonged, and had seen the empty closet with its shelves
edged with scalloped paper that had been prepared for the china they had
brought,—one complete set, a Christmas present from Mr. Dean a few years
before, having been retained,—Mrs. Lawton returned to her husband, and
Brooke cornered Miss Keith for the necessary business conversation which,
though inevitable, the older woman for some reason was seemingly trying
to avoid.
“In a minute I’ll be there, and we’ll have it all out,” she said, rushing
out the back door toward the chicken houses with a dish-pan of scraps
that she had deftly made into a sort of stew, while she talked, by the
addition of some corn meal, red pepper, and hot water, returning in a
very few minutes with the empty receptacle.
“That reminds me, Brooke, it’s best the next three months to feed them
their hot meal in the morning, and not to let them out to exercise before
eleven, and shut them up tight, sharp at three, even on clear days. If
you don’t, they get so cold it sort of discourages the eggs at the time
you most want them. I’ve made out a list of my steady customers, and put
it here in the drawer along with the farm book, in case you have enough
eggs to peddle, and mind! forty cents a dozen is my steady price from
December to March. Don’t let ’em cheat you. After March you must follow
market rates. The farm book tells just what I plant, and when, and what
I naturally expect to get back. You see the place has run itself fairly
well, hired man and all, though you won’t expect it to now, because
you’ll need eggs to eat, and pretty much all the milk and butter output,
while your father’s on slop food.
“If you’ll take my advice, you’ll tend the fowls yourself, and don’t
trust the hired help. And I don’t think you’d best start the incubator
this year,—you’ll have enough on your hands. There are eight or ten hens
that have been working overtime this winter, so I expect they will be
thankful to rest their legs, and set the first week in March. By the way,
there’s spring latches on the doors of the roosting and laying houses,—my
idea to trap light-fingered folk if they get in, and to keep the fowls
from straying. Best be careful not to get shut in without the keys (they
lie in the box by the clock with all the others, plainly labelled). What
money there is to be had from poultry in these parts comes from caring
for it yourself, and you can’t trust hired female help, ’specially when
it comes from the city.”
“But, Cousin Keith,” said Brooke, as soon as she could be heard, and
struggling not to laugh at the outpouring of words, which, when the farm
was the topic, she soon found flowed as steadily as Niagara, “I do not
expect to keep female help from the city.”
“Oh, you relied on getting them from about here, then? Well, I’m afraid
you’ll find it a scant market, unless you’ll put up with coloured; the
American girls won’t live out in families where they set them at separate
tables, and I don’t blame them. There’s old Mrs. Peck, she sometimes
accommodates for a month or so, as a working housekeeper in confinement
cases, but she is old-fashioned New England and wouldn’t take to city
ways. Why, she would think her soul lost if she used prepared flour for
her buckwheat cakes instead of setting them with yeast, and she sticks to
soda and cream of tartar, which she understands the workings of, for all
baking, as she claims that baking powder isn’t plain and above board and
so is to be avoided, though I must say her tea biscuits took the prize
over mine at the Gordon fair.”
Once again Brooke shook her head, this time not trying to suppress her
laughter,—“I have no intention of keeping any household help whatsoever,”
she managed to say at last.
Miss Keith stopped short with a gasp, as if a pail of ice-water had been
poured upon her head, and then said: “No hired help! then who is to do
the cooking, and what will you eat? If this was Stonebridge, you could
get table board at the Inn, though it is expensive, and the people that
often stop here in driving, to buy my fresh cake, complain that it isn’t
satisfactory.”
“Cousin Keith, you must take me seriously. I do not think you understood
the letter that I wrote, telling you we were coming here. _I_ am going
to do the work; fifty dollars a month is our present income, and I do
not mean to touch the little principal we have, but keep it in case of
accident,—at least until I am in working order and have devised some plan
for earning more. All I hope to do is to get some good woman, like your
Mrs. Peck, to come here for a few weeks and teach me how to cook plain
food and be economical, for it is the other part that I understand, and
learned at Lucy Dean’s cooking class, to make cake, and candy, and all
the little supper dishes in a chafing-dish. Adam has already promised
that he will make the fires and do the heavy things, so you see I’m not
so badly off after all. You mustn’t look so discouragingly at me, Cousin
Keith. You see the only way for us to earn money in the very beginning is
by not spending it.”
Instantly Keith West’s whole attitude changed. She not only ceased making
objections, but the distance that she herself had, in her imagination,
forced to be kept between herself and her kin disappeared, and practical
suggestions took the place of obstruction.
“That minute you spoke and looked just like your Grandma West, when
the outlying members of the family tried to argue her into giving up,
and going down to winter at Gilead, after grandpa died. Gentle, but set
as fast as bricks in Portland cement. Of course you can do the work for
a while anyway (I did the same, and more too, at your age), if you can
only get the knack of turning it off, and I don’t know of any one more
likely to help you out than Mrs. Peck. That is, unless I postpone my
going for a couple of weeks, and do it myself,” and Miss Keith paused
with an eager look that said she would ask nothing better; for the advent
of the family, instead of making her feel out of place, had already made
her reasons for the change grow vague and hazy, and the departure itself
seemed not an escape, but more like an eviction.
“You are very kind to offer, but that is impossible, you know,” answered
Brooke. “In the last letter you wrote me, regretting the delay, you said
that you must _absolutely_ leave on the 12th, and that will be to-morrow.
It is better too that we should begin at once before Adam and I grow lazy
from seeing you take the lead and being accustomed to our liberty. How
much does Mrs. Peck charge, and where does she live? I think I had best
go to see her to-day while you are here to be with mother.”
Thus Miss Keith, by no act but her own, had literally closed the door
upon herself, which fact she was clear-sighted enough to recognize,
and bore herself accordingly, making haste to reply: “Mrs. Peck has six
dollars a week when she cares for mother, child, and the house, but when
it is just ‘accommodating’ with a grown girl to help out and take steps,
she has three, and must be called for and returned home. She would jump
at the chance to come here for three dollars, for there have been next
to no births this winter, and she has either been at home most of the
time, or else at her daughter’s, where she is kept busy and, of course,
gets no pay. She is very intimate with Mrs. Enoch Fenton, who lives just
round the turn on the Windy Hill road, not half a mile from here. You can
go up there for a walk after dinner, as I suppose you’d rather settle
your own business. No, you can’t go this morning, no one disturbs Mrs.
Fenton before dinner; you see, situated as she is, she must have all
the forenoon uninterrupted for her work—she manages wonderfully, but if
any one comes in before it is done, it upsets her for the day. Why, the
neighbours would no more think of calling on Mrs. Fenton in the morning
than they would of visiting the minister on Saturday night!”
Brooke was about to ask how this particular woman was differently
circumstanced from her neighbours, when Miss Keith again took up the
domestic thread:—
“There’s hay and straw and corn fodder enough to last over until pasture
is growing again. I’d advise you to sell the two old cows, the two young
ones (one calves in April, the other in September) will be enough for you
to manage. _Of course_ you’ll keep Billy; you’d be stuck fast here on
the hill like moss on a rock but for him. There’s no earthly reason why
Adam can’t learn to curry him, and milk too after a spell; but Larsen is
engaged until April, when he expects to be married, and work on one of
the great estates in Gordon. He works for me three hours a day in winter,
just the milking and chores morning and night. I pay him ten dollars a
month; the Fentons keep him the rest of the time, and pay him fifteen
dollars and board, for, of course, I couldn’t board a man here!”
Brooke did not appreciate the exact reason, but did not say so, and Miss
Keith continued: “After the 1st of April, Adam ought to be well broken
in, and you can doubtless get a man to plot out the garden, and work the
corn lot, the potato, hay, and rye fields on shares. I’ll speak to Mr.
Bisbee and the blacksmith about that before I go, and tell them to keep
their eyes open for one.”
“Don’t you think that three dollars a week is very small pay for a
woman such as Mrs. Peck appears to be, from what you say?” said Brooke,
unthinkingly, her old habits of generosity being yet strong upon her.
“Brooke Lawton, if you are going to bring your ideas of city wages and
charitable reforms up here, you’ll make trouble for others, as well as
for yourself,” snapped Miss Keith, vehemently. “That is her price, set
by herself, and you can’t afford to change it for one thing (you’re good
to eat on your principal these first three months anyhow); and suppose
you could, what good would it do her, but make her discontented with
what others could pay, and humble them? People ought to hesitate before
they upset the wages of a place they come into new. Half such charity is
selfish gratification, to my thinking. There was old John Selleck; he
used to do little garden chores for fifty cents a day and food,—light
work with frequent resting spells. Along comes a city man and hires
a cottage on the lower road for two months. Said it was a shame to
‘underpay the labourer,’ gives him a dollar and a half a day. When the
two months were over, and he left again, would John Selleck chore about
for fifty cents a day and food? Not he, so, as nobody would pay him more,
and he wouldn’t work for less, he nearly starved last autumn, and now
he’s working on the town farm for board without the fifty cents!”
It put matters in a different light to Brooke, and she was about to say
so when Dr. Russell thrust his head in at the door, and, catching only
a few words of Miss Keith’s oration on local political economy, judged
that Brooke was being unduly lectured, and would welcome release, which
he hastened to offer, by asking her to wrap up well and take a survey of
her property with him, saying that Adam had driven down to Gilead with
Stead, who had offered to show him the rounds of post-office, store, and
blacksmith’s shop.
As Dr. Russell opened the front door for Brooke to pass out, Tatters, who
for the past hour had been lying by Adam Lawton’s chair in the sitting
room, now rose, stretched himself, and prepared to follow, while as he
did so, Mrs. Lawton saw that her husband’s eyes followed the dog with
an expression very similar to the one that he had worn the last week
when either she or Brooke came into plain view. By thus reading his
expression, and by it guessing of his needs, she had already established
a certain means of communication, which Dr. Russell had explained to her
she might hope to develop day by day to the point when continuous memory
and coherent speech should return.
Once outside the door, Tatters sniffed at Brooke’s cloak, touched the
fingers of her ungloved hand lightly with his tongue, and then fell
behind, following her at a measured distance, pausing when she paused,
and straightway marching along as soon as she did.
“It appears to me,” said Dr. Russell, smiling, as he watched the old
dog’s soldier-like tread, “that Tatters has ‘transferred himself’ pretty
thoroughly, and Miss Keith will therefore have her last objection to
going to Boston removed.”
A path was shovelled from the front gate to the side lane above the
house, into which it turned, passing barn, cow, and chicken houses.
“How well our forebears knew how to build for winter convenience,” said
the doctor, tucking Brooke’s hand under his arm, as they walked, for
there was a layer of treacherous ice under the new snow. “Nowadays a
landscape architect would put all these outbuildings out of sight below
the slope, or else up behind that knot of cedars, where it would take a
day’s work to dig a road in snow time, while here all you have to do is
to look out the kitchen window, and see that all is safe and sound. It is
a compact little home, dear child, and in view of my practical knowledge,
as well as of the sentimental value of such things, I believe that under
any circumstances it is the best and most possible life for you all for
many years to come; only remember, do not be discouraged if you have some
blue days before the spring sun shines. There is a trite old saying,
‘Who loves the land in February loves for life.’ Simply keep working and
do not try to look too far ahead; even the Bearer of the World’s Burden
would only have us cope with evil day by day. There is where we often
make our error—by cutting off the vista to the good with the shadow of
borrowed trouble.”
Brooke looked up at him gratefully, and hesitated a moment before she
said: “There is only one thing about which I am troubling a little, and
that is Adam. How will dropping everything in the shape of books, and
turning into my assistant farmer, much as he likes the idea, affect his
future? You may not know how backward he is even now, and,” smiling
archly, “I’m afraid he’ll have to work for his board this first year
before I can even afford him an immigrant’s wages.”
“I’m glad that you have come straight to this point,” said Dr. Russell,
“for it is one where I can meet you halfway. I had a talk with your
brother on the train yesterday, and I am convinced that the practical,
and not the scholastic, is his forte. When he goes to college it should
be to the scientific, not to the academic school; that part of his
culture must come from good reading. His first need is out-of-door air
and life—so far, so good, that he can have. Last night at supper I
discussed this with Robert Stead, as his early training was both at the
School of Mines and the Polytechnic of Troy. The upshot,—‘Let him come
to me every day,’ said Stead, ‘for as many hours as he can spare, more
or less, and I will see what he lacks, and perhaps stimulate him by
companionship in study, or at any rate we can fight out the essentials
together. Perhaps it will warm my brain again, doctor, who knows?’”
Brooke clasped her hands with an expression of delight, and then dropped
them, saying, “But we cannot pay for such a favour as that would be, and
on the other hand we couldn’t put ourselves under an obligation.”
“My child,” said the doctor, stopping in the middle of the cow-house,
which they chanced to be investigating at the moment, and leaning
against a stall, while the gentle occupant pulled at his coat with
her inquisitive tongue, “there is another way in which we all make
grave mistakes. God forbid that I should advocate the shirking or
casting of responsibility upon others, but there is another extreme
that we are falling into in this twentieth century—an eye-for-an-eye,
tooth-for-a-tooth breed of independence, while the brotherhood that
should blend and sweeten all our daily actions is treated as a vocation,
a thing set apart, and labelled ‘Charity’ or ‘Social Service.’ It seems
to me that the Christian law of silent burden-bearing is far finer and
more subtle than this, in that it leaves no obligation in its wake.
“If Robert Stead, the man cursed with lack of motive, finds a fragment
of impulse in the stimulation of awakening his buried knowledge and in
contact with your brother, when your brother needs this knowledge, where
lies the obligation? No, the scales are evenly balanced; accept the
result, and do not draw a breath to jar the adjustment. Moreover, do not
judge Stead by the usual social standards, but bear with him. Perhaps
at times he may even seem discourteous, for what he thinks he suffered
by one woman, and a most remarkable one she was too, has made him curt
with all; for his great failing is that he can never judge except by the
personal measure, and unconsciously he has made a cult of selfishness.”
“I understand, oh, now I understand; how can I ever thank you for showing
me the way? Do you know, Dr. Russell,” Brooke said, clasping her hands
on his arm, “it seems to me I never began really to live until the day
that trouble came to us;”—while as Brooke spoke, the silent hour in the
Parkses’ gallery, and Marte Lorenz’ picture, stretched themselves as the
inseparable background to all that had followed, and deepened the colour
in her cheeks, that were already glowing with the keen air.
* * * * *
When Brooke and the Doctor finished their tour, and were returning to the
house, Tatters still following solemnly, Bisbee’s double-runner sled with
the baggage was seen coming from the lower road, while Stead’s cutter
turned into the yard from the hill way. The Cub being in a very happy
frame of mind as the result of his morning’s trip.
“Only think, Sis!” he cried, as soon as he was within speaking distance,
“the blacksmith has a registered dog bull pup, with just as good a
pedigree as Pam’s—a son of imported Black-eye who is owned over in
Gordon. He’s got a pedigree a mile long all written out, but it’s smudged
and mussy, and the blacksmith has offered me a dollar to copy it out on
a fan-shaped paper like mine. That will just come in handy to pay Pam’s
tax, too; it’s due up here the 1st of January. Then you see next year
we’ll go in partnership, and raise some pups, and fifty dollars apiece is
the very least we can get for them, and maybe a hundred for the dogs, if
they’re clever!”
The elder men smiled at each other, and the doctor said to Silent
Stead, “Enthusiasm is an element that can be ill spared from _materia
medica_,—it will do you good even to get a whiff of it.” To Brooke:
“Good-by for now, my child; your father will have all that can be done
for him. A sloping platform from the kitchen door will allow him to be
wheeled out in pleasant weather, and time and care alone will show the
result. Remember, do not hesitate to send for me if you are puzzled—and
courage! the courage that is always given to the world’s workers at their
need,” and the good physician, the spiritual son of St. Luke of old, took
his place by Stead, who turned Manfred in the direction of the Gilead
station.
Meanwhile Tatters had disappeared, and when Brooke went indoors again,
realizing too late that she had not yet thanked Silent Stead, she found
the dog stretched by her father’s chair, an indoor post he thereafter
occupied.
* * * * *
A little after two o’clock Brooke set out for Mrs. Fenton’s, leaving
her mother to superintend the unpacking of the simpler things, clothes,
books, and the little table furniture that they had deemed best to save
from the wreck and bring with them, a task in which Miss Keith seemed to
revel so unfeignedly that Brooke began her walk with an unusual sense of
freedom.
She had gone only a few hundred yards when she remembered Tatters, and,
turning back to get him, found that he was already close behind, and
hurrying as if life or death depended upon his escort. “How did you know
I was coming? How did you get out?” she asked him, and then laughed at
herself for expecting a reply other than the short, joyous bark he gave,
as he circled around her, pawing up the snow, inviting her to play with
clumsy, stiff gestures that plainly said, “I know I am rather an old
fellow for this sort of thing, but I’m willing to do anything I can to
amuse you,” while he even raced after the snowballs she threw at random,
and rashly tried to retrieve one, dropping it hastily at her feet with a
comical expression, showing by a twist of his jaw and rubbing his nose
between his paws that it was too cold for his teeth.
The walk was up an almost straight hill, relieved by occasional
resting-places by which alone travel in such a country is made possible
to man or beast, so that when Brooke reached the gate of the Fenton house
she paused, both for breath and to get her bearings. No pathway had been
shovelled to the front door, and the beaten track led round the side of
the house to a wide porch at the south, which also held a well-house in
its shelter, and this Brooke followed.
Her knock at the door was followed by a rumbling sound from within, which
began in an opposite corner of the house, and drew rapidly nearer; then
the door opened outward, singularly enough, and just inside it sat a
little old lady in a wheel-chair that she both guided and propelled with
her own hands.
“I’m so sorry to have troubled you,” Brooke began. “I wished to see Mrs.
Enoch Fenton, and Miss Keith said that it was the first house before the
cross-roads, but I must have misunderstood.”
“And so it is, dear. I’m Mrs. Fenton.” Then, as she read Brooke’s puzzled
expression: “Oh, I see, Keith didn’t tell you that I use wheels instead
of feet. Come right in; see, Tatters is quite at home here, and he knows
where my cooky drawer is just as well as any child in the neighbourhood,”
and, jerking a strap that she held in her hand, which was also fastened
to the door handle, she closed it behind her guest even before Brooke
realized and apologized for not doing it herself.
Quick as a flash the chair was turned, and travelled across the square
hall, which also served as a summer sitting room, into a kitchen,
cheerful and neat as wax, while as Brooke followed, her senses now keyed
to the unusual, she noticed that not only had the door-ways been widened,
but that all the furniture, tables, dresser, chest of drawers, and even
the stove itself were below the usual level.
“Choose a chair,” said Mrs. Fenton, smiling brightly as she brought
herself to a stop close to the sunny southwest bay window, where a wide
shelf with a deep ledge, containing sewing materials and various garments
in process of manufacture, showed it to be her habitual nook.
As Brooke drew a splint-bottomed rocker nearer to her hostess, she
noticed that, though the white hair and thin face had at first given the
impression of greater age, Mrs. Fenton was not more than sixty-five,
while the intelligence of her expression and brightness of eye might well
belong to a woman of fifty, and although her lower limbs seemed small and
were wrapped in a shawl, her arms and chest were full and muscular.
“You don’t tell me your name, but I make it that you are Adam Lawton’s
daughter, whom Keith has been expecting and worrying about these ten
days past. She told me about your father’s money loss and shock, and how
he was coming back home; and I’ve been real interested to hear, because
you see, dearie, Adam and I went to school together fifty odd years
ago, and to the day he left we were always a tie in spelling matches,
and now here we are again, like as not matched together as cripples.
Tell me all about him, dear, if it don’t hurt you. I’ve found, these
eight years since I’ve had my discipline, that exchanging experiences
with others likely situated is apt to make one credit a lot of things
to the mercy side of the record that would never have been set down,
if we hadn’t been brought face to face with other folks’ misery, and
so forced to take count of stock, so to speak. And please, before we
begin and have a comfortable chat, give Tatters a sugar cooky out of the
drawer there (I never before set eyes on a dog so fond of sweet cake,—his
mouth is fairly watering),—no, not that little drawer, the peppermints
and maple candy are in there, though you might like a bit of that to
nibble on,—the second drawer;” and Brooke, after giving the expectant
dog his cake, drew still closer to the wheel-chair, and, such was the
spell of single-hearted sympathy, quite as a matter of course she told
Mrs. Fenton, naturally and frankly, of both her hopes and fears, ending
with her desire to get Mrs. Peck to “accommodate” until she should have
learned to manage alone.
“You dear child!” exclaimed the lame woman, laying her work-hardened hand
on Brooke’s soft, shapely one as she ended, and looking at her through
the reminiscent tears that would gather on her lashes, “I take it a
special thought of Providence, your coming to me, for who has had to
learn, more than I, how to keep housework in hand?—and as to Mrs. Peck,
she will be here to-night, as Enoch, being Deacon, must sleep over at
Gordon, where the Con-Association meets.
“Listen, and I’ll tell you of my trouble quickly as may be, because
what’s over and gone best not be dug too deep, except for the planting
of future seeds of grace. Eight years ago this winter I was down at my
daughter’s house in Gilead (she being the only one of six left me outside
God’s Acre), tending her first-born. All around the well was laid with
great cobbles, I slipped, and having a heavy pail in hand could not save
myself, and hurt my spine, and it paralyzed my legs.
“They brought me home, and weeks and months went by. Enoch had the best
doctors that summer over from Gordon, but nothing could be done to liven
me; and then I knew that I must lie there bed-ridden, or be propped
in a sick-chair for life, and leave my work undone for others. Oh, it
was bitter, and I sorely rebelled to see a hired woman in my place, and
father only half cared for. Then came fall of the year, and one day
father brought in Doctor Russell, who had come up to stop on Windy Hill
with Robert Stead for the shooting. He asked father to go away and leave
him alone with me. Then he looked me over, bent all my joints that would
bend, and, after listening to my heart, sat in the big chair by the bed
(I can see him now just as plain), and said: ‘What troubles you the most,
Mrs. Fenton? What is your worst suffering, and what do you most wish?’
“‘To do something, to get to work, and not lie dead in the midst
of life.’ He sat quite still for ten minutes or more, matching his
finger-tips together in thought, and then he said, ‘If you have will
enough, and courage, as I believe, we’ll have you downstairs and back
at work again within a year.’ Then he told me of the chair, and how I
could be fastened in it to keep from falling, and learn to use the wheels
for legs, as a child does how to walk. Bless him! it all came true. At
first, to be sure, I was afraid, and banged about, and my arms were tired
to aching, and I often cried. But Enoch took such comfort, seeing me at
table even, that it was a nerve tonic. And gradually, as I strengthened,
he had the doors widened, and the sills done away with, and everything
set within my reach, until, when the year was up and a little more, I
turned off all my work except the washing, and cooked the dinner for the
doctor the next time he chanced in.
“When the weather is seasonable, too, I get all about the yard, and now
I really feel ambitious to go down to see your father when the roads are
settled. You see it was a special Providence that I hit my back just the
spot I did, for if it had been higher up, or on my head, it might have
paralyzed my arms. Yes, there’s always something to the mercy side, if we
only stop to reckon up.”
The sun was setting when Brooke left Mrs. Fenton, for she had been there
for two hours. The south-western sky was all aglow as the sun broke its
way through the dusky clouds of falling night, and like it, the heart of
the young woman glowed within her breast. Free of health and of limb,
what might she not will and do, ah, if only she could become, even as
that woman in the wheel-chair, one of the world’s workers!
As she walked swiftly down the road, the long shafts of light and the
wind gusts also, sinking to rest, played with her hair; and at the
turn she met Silent Stead, who was returning from Gilead. Thinking the
opportunity had come to recognize his kindness, she stopped, half turning
to the roadway; but he, either through offishness or suspecting her
design, passed on with a mere greeting.
Not piqued, because she remembered Dr. Russell’s warning, Brooke went her
way, smiling to herself in amusement; and when she neared the farm she
broke into a run, Tatters barking and gambolling about her, so that Miss
Keith, who came to the door at the sound, was forced to confess, though
much against her will, that, in spite of his years of service to herself,
Tatters had “transferred himself.”
Meanwhile, by a strange perversity of fate, the radiant face of the girl
whom Robert Stead had passed by so curtly on the road, turned homeward
with him, all unbidden, now smiling at him from between Manfred’s mobile
ears, sitting opposite him at his table, and even permeating the smoke
wreaths from his pipe that coiled, as in a vision, around her head in
fantastic tresses.
CHAPTER XI
BREAD
Three weeks had now passed since Miss Keith’s departure, and the daily
toil of each had been punctuated by a series of unexpected events.
Much as Brooke had dreaded the going of her executive kinswoman, it was
in a sense a relief. She was well aware that until she was entirely
thrown upon her own resources it would be impossible to judge her
strength or plan definitely for the future; and now that the move had
been made, this planning was the next hill to climb. It was impossible
for Brooke to have a quiet moment, except when she was alone in her room
at night, so long as Miss Keith was in the house; for the estimable woman
was continually remembering some important bit of advice, relative to the
year’s rotation of work in the garden or the “putting up” of the fruit.
One of the last details that she impressed upon Brooke in showing her
baskets of various bulbs and a large store of the seeds of sweet peas,
nasturtiums, and other hardy annual flowers, all neatly put up in paper
bags, was to sow plenty of them in long rows like vegetables, because
as she said “the rich folks were always stopping to see the view as they
drove from Stonebridge to Gordon, and often sent in and begged to buy the
old-fashioned flowers, because their gardens had not room for them.”
Brooke promised, but the matter passed quickly from her overcrowded mind;
for, interpreted by Miss Keith, the work of the mistress of the West
homestead would have kept at least six Plymouth-Rock-ribbed housewives at
work from rise until set of sun. Very different indeed was it from Mrs.
Enoch Fenton’s soothing advice, “Dearie, just begin by doing what you
must, and let the rest sort of slip off your hands until the Lord gives
’em the knack to handle it.”
When the rockaway, driven by Larsen, at last came to the door with the
Cub as honorary footman to see Miss Keith off and make sure that none of
her twelve pieces of wonderfully assorted baggage went astray, she broke
down completely, yet did not seem comforted or pleased with Brooke’s
invitation to return if she changed her mind about matrimony, the final
sniff that followed the sincere and cordial offer being more of scorn
than of grief.
Mrs. Lawton was now fast shaking off the state of being in a waking
dream, in which she lived since the night of the calamity; and, once Miss
Keith had gone, both mother and daughter began to taste the quiet joys
of a companionship that the forced separation of the last few years of
conventional city life had not only left undeveloped but unknown.
Their intercourse was none the less sustaining because the things that
they discussed were the bread-and-butter affairs of every day—whether
the invalid should have chicken or mutton broth, and as to whether it
was possible to make many of the dishes they desired with only half the
ingredients the cook-book demanded, Mrs. Lawton’s experience of long ago
and Brooke’s common sense deciding in the affirmative.
In fact, the young mistress had not been working side by side with Mrs.
Peck (who came to “accommodate” and instruct the day after Miss Keith
left) a week before she was sure of what she had always suspected, that
fully three-quarters of modern recipes for cooking are merely competitive
struggles to see how much good material can be crammed into something
totally unsuitable for the human stomach.
Gradually, as the first week drew to a close, it happened that, after
the Cub and Brooke had helped establish their father in his wheel-chair
for the day, Mrs. Lawton went to and fro about the lower floor, dusting,
adjusting, wiping dishes, watering the plants, and doing the thousand
and one little things that make a woman a part of her home. Then later
in the day she would wheel Adam Lawton into the kitchen perhaps, and,
taking out her work-basket, do some of the sewing that was imperative to
make the garments of the past even possible for present use. As to Adam
Lawton himself, he was more alert and did not seem to doze as constantly
as before, while his eyes wandered from object to object with a changeful
expression unlike the apathy of his first conscious period.
Before the seven days were completely rounded, three things had happened.
Brooke heard her mother hum a snatch of the ballad “Jock o’Hazeldean,”
as she snipped withered leaves from the plants in the kitchen window;
she saw her father stroke Tatters’ head and finger his ears with his
well hand; and Robert Stead, who now left their mail as he returned with
his own from the village every morning, brought her, together with some
belated foreign New Year’s cards, a flat, square package, spattered with
foreign postmarks, addressed in an unknown hand, in care of Charlie
Ashton, and evidently remailed by him.
In a perfectly unobtrusive and matter-of-course way, without so much
as by your leave, the silent man had established a more or less silent
intercourse with the Lawton family as a whole. He must pass the house on
his daily horseback trip to the village, and the fact that he brought
their morning mail or did a bit of marketing was a courtesy that could
not be construed into an obligation, and the lending of a magazine,
novel, or gardening book soon came to be a matter of course.
Mrs. Lawton could not but welcome one of her own kind who belonged as
remotely to a certain past as she herself. Brooke, remembering Dr.
Russell’s words, greeted him cordially, glad to give cheer to one so
lonely, and added to this motive, be it said, was the general interest
which a man of fifty, who is in any way surrounded by a tragedy or
mystery, excites in a young, warm-hearted woman; while the Cub fairly
adored his tutor to be, afar off, for had not Stead a taste for horses,
dogs, guns, fishing tackle, and, above all, liberty? Also, had he not
offered to make easy the torturing pathway of mathematics?—while best of
all from the first he had treated the youth of the difficult age, which
is both aggressive and sensitive, like a fellow-man, younger, of course,
but still an equal, instead of a cross between a fool, a nuisance, and a
criminal, as some of his instructors had chosen to regard him.
When Brooke had taken the little package from Stead’s hand, in spite of
the unfamiliarity of the writing upon it, a sudden embarrassment seized
upon her, making her redden to the temples; and, instead of considering
and opening it as one of the many cards of Christmas greeting that she
had received from fellow-students and friends ever since her Paris year,
she laid it aside and presently carried it to her room.
Closing the door, though it was very seldom that even her mother came to
the second floor, Brooke turned the thick envelope over several times
before cutting the heavy cord that bound it, and so swift and sure is
the speech of telepathy that she did not wonder who had written to
her in care of Carolus Ashton. She did not try to trace the identity
of unfamiliar characters or remember that in the years that separated
her from that time no similar letter had reached her; she simply knew
that the address had been traced by the pen of Marte Lorenz, without
for a moment realizing that the source of this clairvoyance lay in the
undeniable craving of her whole being to know of him. Once opened, a
double sheet of blank paper enclosed a square of artists’ board covered
with light tissue. Tearing this off, with eager trembling fingers,
instead of the man’s face that she had expected to look out at her, with
those wide-open eyes from under the tumbled thatch of hair, instead of
the mustache-veiled lips which told simple truths with such sympathetic
sincerity that it made them more desirable than praise, she saw herself,
or rather one of herselves, for it is only a strangely monotonous,
colourless type of woman who can be interpreted by merely the universal
blending of composites.
It was simply a head, small, perforce, and lightly sketched in oil, with
only enough of the shoulder curve, over which the face was turned, to
give a balance, the sombre background of deep browns serving to throw
out the golden glints of the hair; but the quality that struck Brooke at
once was the same strange effect of lighting that had puzzled her in the
picture of Eucharistia. Without being in the form of the conventional
halo of the old masters, a raying light emanated from behind the head,
and the eyes seemed as if they were but the opening to a vision beyond.
Still hoping for some message or word, Brooke, holding the picture close,
saw in one corner, half hidden by a bit of drapery, the initials “M. L.”
and the words “For the New Year.”
Then Brooke, the girl of sentiment and idealized emotions, argued with
Miss Lawton, the head of the family, the young woman of responsibilities
and practicalities.
Brooke said, “Why did he send me my picture instead of his own?”
Miss Lawton answered, “Perhaps it is not intended for a portrait at all,
but merely a chance resemblance in a New Year’s token, such as an artist
may send to a dozen friends!”
“But,” queried Brooke, not listening, but following her desire, “he may
have meant by sending my portrait that he wished to tell me that he still
thought of me, and a girl always likes to have her picture painted; but
if he had sent his own it would be like intruding himself upon me, if I
had forgotten. How shall I thank him?”
“It is evident, as he sent no address, he particularly desires not to be
thanked,” replied Miss Lawton, somewhat tartly.
“If he trusted his letter to Carolus Ashton, probably hearing of him
through some mutual artist friend, why should not I do likewise, who have
known him as Lucy’s cousin all my life?” persisted Brooke.
“And have him get up one of his fabulous tales about a mysterious
correspondence and tantalize Lucy with it until she turns about and
extracts the scant truth from him?” sneered Miss Lawton.
Without deigning further reply, Brooke went to the little table by
the window, where stood an inkstand, in the drawer of which were some
loose sheets of paper and envelopes. Picking up one of the latter,
she addressed it in her usual hand, stamped it, and then, resting it
on the window ledge, drew a sheet of paper toward her and straightway
fell into a brown study, during which either her brain refused to think
or her hand to write. Then, suddenly starting up, she crossed to her
bureau and, taking up the little picture of Eucharistia, gazed at it
steadily, slipped it from the delicate silver frame, and with a sigh,
half of regret, wrapped it in a sheet of note-paper and sealed it in the
addressed envelope.
Putting the wordless letter in the pocket of the short working apron she
wore, Brooke went to the letter-box that stood at the junction of main
road and lane leading to the barn, and dropped it in, that the carrier
might find it that afternoon on his daily trip.
Returning by way of the kitchen, the loaves of bread that Brooke had
that morning kneaded, moulded, and covered for their final raising met
her eye. At first, smiling at the sudden change of motive, she examined
them seriously, for in reality these loaves were of no small importance,
representing as they did the girl’s first independent baking.
Opening the oven doors, she tested floor and side, adjusted dampers after
Mrs. Peck’s custom, and then, shutting the loaves from sight, went away,
feeling very much as if she had imprisoned some living thing in a fiery
furnace, so much depended upon the outcome of the first venture.
An hour later Mrs. Peck, returning from a neighbourly call upon Mrs.
Fenton, surprised Brooke in the act of taking the four freshly baked
loaves from their pans. They were done to a nicety of golden brown,
and she laid each one down carefully and paused a moment, sniffing the
appetizing odour before covering them with a clean towel, lest too sudden
cooling should make the crust seam.
“Tired, bean’t you!” ejaculated Mrs. Peck, whose principal comfort in the
present was to lament and bewail a past of fabulous grandeur upon the
like of which no living contemporary had ever set eyes. “I suppose you
are thinking how little wunst you ever expected to hev to set to riz and
knead and bake your own bread. Poor dear, I kin feel for you! I’ve been
through it all—it’s turrible to feel yoursel’ downsot like I was after
Mr. Peck died, and not through your own deserts!”
Brooke, who knew the good woman’s pet infirmity, hardly listened to her;
there was another theme that filled her brain, almost shaping itself
to rhythm, not of the past alone, but the present, the future—of all
time, as old as life itself, the unending song of the man who sows, of
the grain in the field that endures the winter and leaps upward, spears
aloft, militant, at the bugle of spring; of the grain in the ear, of the
molten gold of the harvest that goes to the mill, of the clear white
flour that the man’s mate blends with the magic leaven to be bread for
the house. And her heart took wing as she looked at the loaves, for if
the weal of the land rests on the farmer’s plough, second only should
stand the toil of the maker of bread.
There were only four loaves, it is true, but to Brooke they stood for a
definite power—her first direct productive work.
Choosing one from the rest and half wrapping it in a white towel, she
carried it to her mother, who was sitting beside her father, whose chair
was placed close by the sunny window. For the two days past his lips had
moved, though inarticulately, and his wife was doubly on the alert for a
single spoken word.
Holding the loaf before her as if it had been a trophy, Brooke crossed
the room and, folding back the towel, the steaming odour of the bread
reached her mother’s nostrils. Then she held out her hands to her
daughter, taking the bread from her almost reverently.
“Watch father!” whispered Brooke.
There was a look of recognition struggling with other visions in his
eyes, and strange incoherent sounds were formed on the struggling lips.
His eyes fixed themselves on the loaf, which his wife held close. His
nostrils quivered as if in unison with his other awakening senses. Brooke
knelt by his chair, endeavouring to read sense in the vague sounds he
uttered. There came a pause, a hush, and then, in hoarse, uncertain
accents, unmistakable yet feeble at the close, Adam Lawton whispered two
words, “New bread.”
Meanwhile, outside in the kitchen, warming himself by the stove, was
the Cub, who, coming in from the cold and the exertion of rounding up
refractory chickens after their morning sunning, had brought a keen
appetite with him. Snatching a knife that lay on the table, he cut a
thick crust from one of the loaves; this he hastened to spread with
molasses from a jug in the pantry, and then stood with his back to the
fire, taking great round bites with the wholesome gusto of six, instead
of his old-time critical mouthing of surfeited dyspeptic discontent.
* * * * *
The surprise of the second week was a visit from Lucy Dean at its close.
The excellent sleighing had filled many houses of both Stonebridge and
Gordon for the week end, and shortly before noon of Saturday Brooke was
sitting at the old desk in the living room, for which her added books had
earned the name of library, writing her weekly letter to Lucy, when a
shadow darkened the nearest window, and, looking up, she saw Lucy in the
flesh, peering in at her with a serio-comic expression that Brooke knew
of old to mean deep, real feeling. Bells had been jingling by the whole
morning, so that those that had heralded her coming had passed unnoticed.
In an instant Brooke was at the door, and no one who saw the silent but
emphatic meeting could ever after deny the possible existence of real
friendship between women.
“Where did you drop from?”
“The Hendersons’ sleigh! I’m up there for Sunday simply because you
haven’t asked me here yet!”
“Oh, Lucy, everything has been so unsettled and uncertain I really didn’t
even think of it.”
“Of course not; now don’t begin to worry, it’s only my brutal way of
letting you know that I simply had to see you, and have not in the least
increased my admiration for the country in the winter, or the Hendersons
in particular!”
“You will stay to dinner, surely? Or are they waiting outside?” cried
Brooke, in a sudden panic at the thought of being brought thus face to
face with some of their ultrafashionable friends.
“No, my lamb, they have gone over for luncheon to the Parkses’ at Gordon
(you don’t know, of course, that the frisky Senator has just bought the
Smythers’ big estate,—furniture, servants, and all,—in order to carry
still farther the success of the New York housewarming). I begged off for
the day, and, as the party was one man shy, they gratefully gave me my
liberty, and will pick me up about four.
“Now show me your property, live stock and all, and tell me of its
advantages and otherwise, that I may have the right background to keep
in my mind’s eye when I go home. But bless me! where is your mother? and
your father—perhaps he may know me!”
Lucy clung to Mrs. Lawton as she always had, with a wealth of the
untutored daughterly affection that had missed its own outlet motherward,
so Brooke left the two alone together for a few moments in the library
while she went in to see how her father was faring. Tatters, as usual,
was by his chair, not lying down but sitting erect and close. Adam
Lawton was looking intently at a picture paper that Stead had brought
which was propped on the rack before him. Seeing that her father had
not yet noticed her, Brooke stood quite still, watching the pair. Once
in a while the left hand would pat the dog’s head, that was constantly
turned toward him, but Tatters’ attention seemed fixed upon the useless
hand that rested, a dead weight, upon the knee. Nosing it gently, as
a mother dog does her sleeping pups to make sure that they are alive,
Tatters moved it perhaps an inch, his eyes open wide and ears moving
questioningly.
Meeting with no response, no sign of life, his dog mind evidently argued
that the poor human paw was ill, and bringing the universal medicine of
his race in play, he began to lick the hand with slow regular strokes
of his strong, clean tongue, first going over the entire surface, then
separating each finger with a clinging circular motion.
Amazement seized Brooke as the thought came to her that, after all, had
not nature antedated man in this, as in many things, and endowed the
tongues of the dumb beasts with the vital principles of massage? Did the
dog know, with that wisdom that only the confessed materialist is willing
to call mere instinct, the impotence of that right hand; and why might
there not be healing in his imparted vitality? Why might not the natural
magnetism be as good as the electricity from the little machine that her
mother gave her father each day?
As she thought all this, she again heard that hoarse whisper. Straining
every nerve, she listened; the sound came once more—a single word,
“Tatters,” repeated again and again, and lingered over as if it were a
magic clew to the loosening of a tangled skein of memory.
Stepping quickly to his side, Brooke said, slowly and distinctly,
“Father, Lucy Dean is here, with mother in the library. Lucy Dean—would
you like to see her?” Ever since his return to Gilead, Brooke had made
a point of calling Adam Lawton “father” very distinctly whenever she
entered the room in his waking hours, to accustom him to the sound, also
to speak of the ordinary unemotional affairs of every day as a matter of
course, regardless of the fact that he did not heed.
As she repeated the words “Lucy Dean” he shook his head slightly, but
the word “mother” he repeated quite distinctly several times, smiling
as he did so; and then Brooke knew for a certainty that, though motive
power and sense of touch and taste and smell were coming back, memory
had halted, and that it was the Tatters and mother of his youth that he
associated with the words.
Presently Pam came rushing in; she had tracked the footprints of her
friend through the snow and had cast herself wildly against the front
door, regardless alike of paint or bruises, and scrambled into Lucy’s
lap in a very ecstasy. Nor was the Cub far off, and as the two young
women, two dogs, and one youth trudged off presently to see the “estate,”
as Lucy called it, she caught the boy by the wrist and held his right
palm upward as a fortune-teller might, asking what to Brooke seemed
strange questions.
“Where did those blisters come from?”
“Please, teacher, I got ’em splitting wood,” whined the Cub, in comic
imitation of the drawl of the children at the school below at the
cross-roads.
“That dark red stain?”
“Paint, off Silent Stead’s box sleigh—it’s been done over.”
“Who, pray, is Silent Stead?”
The Cub explained with adjectives and details, while Lucy made a mental
note of the same, watching Brooke out of the tail of her eye the while.
“Yes, but those dirty brown stains on the thumb and fingers—they are not
paint!”
“Nope—pine tar!” jerked the Cub, uncertain whether to laugh or resent
this catechising, but deciding on the former.
“Honour bright, nothing else?”
“Honour bright!”
“Then here’s your pipe!” cried Lucy gayly, to the further mystification
of Brooke, who could not interpret the by-play. “Your birthday is half
a year off and Christmas is past; what comes next? Why St. Valentine’s
Day, of course! It’s a present for that with Pam’s love and my—respects
for your fortitude!” Then, rummaging in the front of her blouse, the
present and only pocket universal allowed women by fashion, she drew out
a leather case that enclosed a meerschaum of really beautiful curve, the
bowl being the carved head of the bull terrier!
Then Brooke understood, and locking her arms in those of the other two,
they slid her between them as they ran up and down an icy bit on the side
road, while the Cub further suggested a good coast down the river slope
on an improvised bob-sled after dinner.
But after dinner and its dishwashing, in which Lucy gayly took part,
the two young women ensconced themselves so snugly before the library
fire that it would have taken a stronger lure than a whiz down ever so
smooth a hill to drag them forth. Then they talked woman’s talk, and
Brooke found herself gradually asking for people, as from the distance
of another world, that two months ago she had met in almost daily
intercourse; while the strangest part of all was the fact thus borne in
upon her that a scant dozen, perhaps, were all among the throng who had
been bound by kindred tastes which make the enduring sympathy called
friendship. The rest were merely incidents, the floating clouds of
summer skies bred and born of the caprice of social wind and weather.
“By the way, Brooke,” said Lucy, after they had travelled the old paths
once more in company, “what did you do with those two thin keys that Tom
Brownell picked up from under the rug the day I escorted him from your
apartment at the St. Hilaire? I gave them to you afterward. Don’t say
that you have lost them!” and, as Brooke hesitated, Lucy sat up straight
with a look of alarm.
“Oh, no, they are quite safe in a box in my drawer, though they are
nothing to bother about, for they do not belong to anything of ours, and
both your father and our lawyer said that they fitted no business desk or
box of father’s.”
“That may be,” said Lucy, guilelessly, “but Tom Brownell asked me
particularly if I would beg you to lend them to him. You see he has
a sort of genius for fitting odd numbers together, and finding those
ownerless keys as he did, they seem to have fascinated him strangely.”
“Tom Brownell,” mused Brooke; then, becoming in her turn suddenly all on
the alert, she continued: “Why, he was that reporter who contradicted the
story of father’s feigned illness in the _Daily Forum_, was he not? And
pray, where did you stumble over him again?”
“I haven’t stumbled over him—that is, I mean not to any great extent.
I wish I had, for he’s a most refreshing person,” answered Lucy, at
first surprised into confused utterance and next growing defiant and
continuing recklessly: “Didn’t you recognize him as the college friend
of Charlie Ashton? Oh, I thought you did! Well, he is, anyway, though he
wouldn’t go to Charlie’s red New Year’s tea, even when I begged him; and
he doesn’t go to dances or play bridge, for he’s on the jump most of the
time with his newspaper work. He’s been to the house a couple of times,
with Charlie, of course, and father being at home and unshakable, we four
have sat down to a solemn game of genuine whist; and you know yourself
that to sit opposite to a youngish man for two whole evenings under such
circumstances and not hate him is a proof of remarkable character, and as
I can’t be accused of anything of that kind, it lies with him, you see.”
“Did he ask for the keys that night?” said Brooke, with overtransparent
innocence, which, however, passed unnoticed.
“No, quite another time, when, having observed my intense interest in
cards, he dropped in between assignments (while he was waiting for it to
be time to take the speeches at an important corporation dinner, I think)
and offered to teach me solitaire; but that was yet more melancholy than
the whist, for as he had to look over my shoulder, I couldn’t even gaze
at him, so we drifted to casino, which allowed both sight and speech!
“Really, Brooke, he is an awfully nice fellow; a gentleman and poor as
a church mouse, for though Charlie says his father would overlook his
distaste for the hereditary family business, a stepmother has recently
occurred, whose policy it is to keep the feud boiling. But you see
the fact that he can’t afford to marry, as Charlie says, and plainly
stating it, puts everything on a nice friendly basis, with no possible
misunderstanding on either side, which is quite delightful,” and Lucy
bridled with an amusing air of disinterested and sisterly virtue.
So the time slipped away, as it has a way of doing under like
circumstances, and the cross streak of sunlight that illuminated the
title “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” on the lower shelf of the diamond-paned
bookcase topping the desk, told Brooke, now becoming versed in the
language of such things, that it was past four o’clock.
“Now we will have some tea before the Hendersons come for you,” she said,
moving a quaint spindle-legged table from the corner to a convenient
place by the lounge, and lifting one of the flaps.
“Yes, we have it as usual every day, mother and I, all by ourselves,
except once in a while when Mr. Stead joins us; and though Adam scorns
tea, I find that he happens in if fresh cakes are about, and Mrs. Peck
has simply spoiled us with her seed cookies, though of course in another
week that sort of thing will all be over.
“No, don’t come and help, sit quite still while I get the tray and
kettle. Mother will make the tea; you know the girls always said, even in
the rush of the season, that a cup of her tea was something to remember,
and the making of it seems to pull her together.”
The three women had but just gathered about the little table, with
Tatters sitting sedately beside, sniffing and coaxing for cookies, by
waving one paw in the air, while Pam found herself being fed literally
in the lap of luxury as personified by Lucy, when a clanging of heavy
shaft-bells sounded, quite unlike the merry jingle of the usual sleigh,
and then stopped suddenly, while at almost the same moment the ring in
the brass lion’s mouth that was the door-knocker sounded a vigorous
rat-tat-tat!
“It’s the Hendersons; they’ve come for me!” cried Lucy, looking from
Mrs. Lawton to Brooke anxiously and jumping up in a confusion unusual
for this young person, who prided herself upon never being caught off
guard. For it suddenly occurred to her that it might be painful for her
friends to have their privacy thus invaded by those who were nothing if
not gossipingly critical, while at the same time she made a motion as if
to put on her outer garments before answering the knock.
Brooke’s face, too, reflected something of her apprehension, but Mrs.
Lawton arose quietly, her head unconsciously taking the half backward
poise of mingled dignity and courtesy which many women of her world had
tried in vain to imitate. Stopping Lucy by a single gesture, she said:
“Do not hurry, it is still quite early; surely our friends will be glad
to join us, for they have already had a long drive and it has been
growing bitterly cold these two hours past. Who did you say made up the
party beside Paula and Leonie Henderson?”
“Violet Lang, the Bleecker brothers, and Charlie Ashton,” replied Lucy,
sinking meekly back into her chair, holding Pam up before her face as a
sort of screen against consequences.
“Brooke, will you please get some fresh tea, bread, and butter, and ask
Adam to show the coachman the way to the barn, where he can shelter the
horses and warm himself by Larsen’s little wood stove?” Then, as the
second battery of knocks began, Mrs. Lawton went swiftly to the door and
threw it open, revealing Charlie Ashton, enveloped to the eyes in the
most picturesque of furs, beating his hands and stamping his feet with
the cold.
At the unexpected sight of the sweet-faced woman at the door,
backgrounded by the hospitable firelit interior, Ashton dropped back the
hooded arrangement that covered his head, and, holding out both hands,
grasped those of Mrs. Lawton with a fervor and expression of face that
said twenty times more than the conventional words of greeting that
followed.
Would they all come in for a cup of tea? Just wouldn’t they, though! The
ladies were growling most dangerously about the wind, their ears, etc.,
and he’d dig them out of that uncomfortable omnibus sleigh in a jiffy!
When the six had fairly entered and been unwrapped from their furs in
the square hall, and the female portion had patted up ragged locks at
Great-grandma West’s eagle mirror that faced the old clock, Brooke (aided
by Mrs. Peck, who arose at once to the country watchword “company”) had
returned with fresh tea and two plates, one of thin bread and butter, the
other of wafer-like cheese sandwiches, while the hospitable influence of
the teakettle put the visitors quite at their ease. As for the men, they
were naturally and frankly delighted at seeing old friends, at the dogs,
the genuine simplicity of the house, and with the good things.
True, the colour had rushed to Brooke’s face as Charlie Ashton had
greeted her, but no reference was made to the letter sent to his care
save a significant pressure of the hand, which somehow gave Brooke
comfort and a feeling of championship.
The women talked rather nervously of the gossip of everyday and eyed the
surroundings in an uncomfortable, furtive sort of way that, as Lucy wrote
Brooke afterward, must have nearly made them cross-eyed. The men roamed
about openly after being bidden by their hostess to make themselves
at home and go where they pleased, “even into the pantry!” This they
presently did. Charlie Ashton, returning with one of Miss Keith’s jars of
strawberry jam carried aloft, and holding out the empty sandwich plate,
begged for more bread to spread it on.
“Very well,” said Brooke, recovering her old-time gayety, “only you must
come to the kitchen and cut it for yourself; my hand is quite tired.”
“Where did you buy such delightful sandwich bread in this out-of-the-way
place?” inquired Miss Henderson, patronizingly. “It is awfully difficult
to get it even in New York, and it’s one of Tokay’s specialties that lets
him ask such fabulous prices for his sandwiches, and this is even a shade
better. I wish I could get the recipe just to start a rival and pique
him, he’s so lordly!”
“The bread?” said Brooke, looking back over her shoulder, “oh, I make it.
The recipe? That is one of the West family inheritances that I cannot
part with,” but as she spoke an idea entered Brooke’s teeming brain,
which remained there for many days awaiting development.
Then the adieus were said, Brooke whispering to Lucy, as she drew her
inside for a final hug, “Remember, in the spring you are to come to stay
with me, even if the sky falls.”
To which Lucy replied, “If I may do as you do in every way, it is a
bargain.” Then the door closed, and the jingle of bells died away in the
distance.
Brooke, going to the kitchen, collected the crusts clipped from the
sandwiches into her chicken dish, Mrs. Peck, who had miraculously kept
in the background, remarking that she never saw pleasanter gentlemen and
that for solid satisfaction in feeding company, give her males.
The men, speeding downhill in the sleigh, praised house and hostesses
alike and said that they had never been to a finer tea-party, the
Bleecker brothers declaring that Brooke’s cheese sandwiches knocked the
truffle and lettuce messes of Ashton’s pink, yellow, and red teas out of
the game. For some unaccountable reason, however, the women were very
silent, but that might have been because with Lucy’s return they were
again one man short.
CHAPTER XII
REVELATION
Winter was loitering through its last calendar month, although it usually
fastens its iron claws upon the first days of spring also, and is
dislodged only after a gusty struggle. Brooke turned from the cross-way
into the river road, upon the daily walk she forced herself to take in
all but impossible weather, according to her compact with Dr. Russell.
Of walking in general she would have declared that she was passionately
fond, but navigating the uneven roads, scarred by the storms of a winter
of unusual severity, did not come under the usual term.
After crossing an especially slippery bit she paused to rest for a
moment, supporting herself by the rough fence of split rails that made
a barrier between the road edge and the rocky bank which fell away, at
first sharply, and then more gradually toward the Moosatuk. As she stood
there, looking up and down, the saying came forcibly to her, “Whosoever
loves the land in February, loves for life.” Did she love nature, or was
she only baffled and cowed by its omnipotence and bent to it by the
force of necessity? This day she herself could not have judged.
All the sources of inspiration seemed closed. Silence reigned in the
River Kingdom; the voice of the ruler was stilled. Great, sooty crows,
lean and ravenous, patrolled the river meadows, croaking ominously as
they quarried a meal from the frozen wild apples, or rent asunder the few
blighted ears that remained in the corn-fields.
The day before had been one of sleet and wind; no human being had even
passed the homestead—merely a brindled cat of the half-wild breed, and he
had scuttled along on the other side of the road under cover of the wall.
Robert Stead was ill of a sudden cold, Adam had reported when he returned
from his daily lessons, consequently José, the Mexican half-breed
factotum, had not left the shack even to fetch the mail.
Thinner than when she had come to Gilead a month before, Brooke’s supple
figure had the spring and elasticity of physical health in spite of its
lack of roundness, for the long nights of sleep and the simplicity of the
daily routine offset the strain of unaccustomed toil. Neither was she
lonely in the common meaning of the word, which always implies a great
degree of leisure; also she was young, and Bulwer was right—“The young
are never lonely.” Then there were the books that the silent man brought
her—poetry, story, and all the lore of her fellows, the birds and beasts
of the field, that heretofore had been to her unknown creatures of
mystery; while Adam (she had never called him the Cub since the night of
his return) and she had many new sympathies, and when the boy, inspired
by the talk of his teacher, rushed in to tell her of the track that he
thought perhaps might belong to a fox or a mink, or with the surmise that
a strange bird was feeding by the granary, she was as eager as he to see
and to prove it.
The grisly mood that had seized upon her this 12th day of February
was born of the sudden stepping into the foreground of the future
with all its necessities, which, until that moment, had been blended
optimistically with the middle distance at the very least.
In two days more Mrs. Peck’s period of “accommodation” would be over;
the 1st of March Larsen would go to Gordon, and the spring work must be
begun if they would eat of the harvest. Toil as she and the boy might
with their hands, there must either be more money, or cattle and land
must be parted with, the homestead depleted, and the family start on that
dreadful shrivelling process of acquiring the habit of doing with less
and less, instead of pushing forward to fresh effort, which enervates the
mental, and finally the moral, nature, and has made some parts of New
England a graveyard of abandoned farms. For the thousandth time Brooke
thought of her mother’s little dower,—this, if it had not vanished,
would have more than doubled the monthly yield,—then she put the thought
from her as she had done before, but this time less forcibly.
With all around ice, snow, dusky tree trunks, and rock of granite, she
felt all the sensations that would belong to a wild animal at bay.
Indeed, she might have lingered on there to her hurt, had not Tatters
barked and pulled her by the skirt.
“Yes, I will come now, old man! I’m sorry I stood so long; I know your
paws must be chilled!” she exclaimed ruefully. “You want to go to Gilead
village instead of to the foot of Windy Hill to see old Mrs. Fenton?
Well, so be it, we shall see more people on that road; besides, I think
that both you and I need something from the store,—post-stamps, and
lavender oil, for I’m going to try my hand at painting, you see, Tatters,
if it’s only Easter bonbonnières. Cookies? Yes, sugar cookies, and you
can get two stale ones for this penny. Watch out, Tatters,” and Brooke,
throwing off her dismal mood with an effort, held the copper coin before
his nose as she spoke, and the dog, comprehending either tone, word,
gesture, or all three, preceded his mistress joyfully in an uneven but
steady trot, that ate up the road and caused her fairly to break step in
order not to be left behind.
The cookies were bought and eaten, mistress and dog resting awhile at
the little shop that sold simple drugs, etc., and eleven o’clock saw
Brooke climbing the upper road toward home. She had gone but half of the
way when, missing Tatters, she turned about to look for him. Whistling
and waiting a moment, she saw his head appearing slowly over the last
upward roll in the road, and noticed that he was limping painfully. She
hurried back to where he had paused, as soon as he knew that he was
in no danger of being deserted, and he began to lick one of his front
paws, which had been cut by a sharp, jagged piece of ice, and which was
bleeding profusely. Kneeling in the road beside him, Brooke moistened
her handkerchief by the slow process of holding snow in her hands until
it melted, and, after cleansing the cut as well as she could, wound the
handkerchief tight around it.
“You can’t hobble a mile in this plight, neither can I carry you. Will
you lie up there on that dry moss in the spot where the snow has melted,
and wait until I can send Adam for you?” and Brooke took a few steps
uphill to illustrate what she meant while waiting for his answer.
No, Tatters emphatically declined to wait, for as soon as she had moved
a step he began to hobble on three legs, while at the same time the
leaden sky shed a few big snowflakes, as if to show casually what might
be expected at any time before night. So his mistress halted and began to
look about as if for a possible suggestion.
Presently the head of a meek, ginger-colored horse began to rise above
a steep “thank-you-ma’am.” A stout body and four legs followed, next a
covered wagon, such as milk pedlers use, with a glass front, through
which a man’s face looked out. The sight was such a relief to Brooke that
she made no pretence of concealing the fact, but waited until the team
came alongside, when she read the legend “Mrs. Banks’ Homemade Pies,”
printed in elaborately shaded letters on the side of the canopy.
The horse stopped of its own accord on the small plateau, the driver
dropped his window and looked out, smiling cheerfully. It was anything
but a handsome face,—that of a man who was probably sixty but might
be less, weathered and somewhat sharp; small gray eyes, but with a
merry twinkle, peered from under shaggy, sandy eyebrows, that matched
a half-starved mustache. The hair of the head was gray, and from it at
right angles two very sizable ears stuck out with somewhat startling
effect. Yet, in spite of these details, the whole was a face to inspire
trust.
“Miss Keith West’s dog, and in trouble, I take it,” was his opening
remark. “I’m goin’ straight past her house, and I’ll fetch him up if you
like and relieve your mind, as you seem partial to animals.”
“Could you take me, too?” asked Brooke, returning his smile, “that is, if
I shall not make your load too heavy, for though Tatters seems to know
you” (Tatters had given the coolest sort of tail wag at the sound of the
man’s voice), “I’m afraid he will not go without me.”
“So you are travelling uphill too—climb right in, though I reckon you’ll
hev to set on this box here. Do you happen to be one uv Miss Keith’s
folks that owns the farm and wuz comin’ to live there when she goes
to Boston? Though, as I says to my wife (she’s _Mrs. Banks, Homemade
Pies_, and I’m Mr. Banks that peddles ’em, besides raisin’ and pickin’
the berries and apples and pumpkins fer their innards, along with a
considerable lot of garden sass), I says, ‘Keith’ll never make up her
mind to go; the city isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when onct you’re
used to plenty o’ room to move and free empty air.’ What air there is in
big cities is so chuck full o’ noise and smell and one thing and another,
you wouldn’t know it. Why, it’s worse than the Methody church down in
the holler, when they had a revival meetin’ on a summer night, and felt
called to close the winders on account of gnats.
“Yes, I lived in N’ York six months,—it’ll be nigh five years ago. You
see, the farm didn’t pay as it uster when I raised six children on it
and we was all satisfied. Everything doin’ got to be more wholesale and
knocked out us small fry. Next, for a spell, I took to the railroad; got
a job through one of the big bugs down ter Stonebridge, and after a time
got ter be conductor on the through express freight, sleepin’ home every
other night. Well, it gave me a chance to see life, I’m glad to say, for
which I’d allus hankered, but it was a nervous job, and kep’ me too far
above the ground, which was my born station.
“Then the boys coaxed ma and me to go to N’ York, she to keep a flat for
’em,—I suppose maybe you’ve seen one o’ them contrary sort of outfits,
a floor divided up small like a parlour box car for racing stock, well
enough looking till you close the doors, then everybody shook up together
until you’re sick o’ the sight and smell o’ your very own. All of God’s
sunlight you get is what’s dribbled in down a flue, like the chute of a
feed bin, and not a scrap o’ grass to bleach clothes on, only to hang
’em out in a little narrer place to sweat on a line like bacon in a
smoke-house. Mother withered so that summer I was afeared she’d let go
the tree before autumn, like a windfall apple; and as for the ‘genteel
work for my old age’ the boys had got me—genteel be _damned_! I beg your
pardon, Miss—?”
“Lawton.”
“Oh, then you are one o’ Miss Keith’s kin. But that word’s one that
remains of my experience on the through freight that somehow’s too handy,
though wrong, to be quite give up. What was that job with short hours
that was to keep me clean-handed and from bendin’ my back? To wear a
plum-red coat, like a circus monkey, and stand in a bank on a stone
floor, that made me cold as an ice pond when you hole fer frost fish,
without the pleasure o’ catchin’, and openin’ and shuttin’ the door
all day fer a lot of fool Jays and Jenny Wrens, well able to do it fer
themselves, and me reachin’ toward sixty! _Genteel nothin’!_ My spirit
broke before noon of the second day, and goin’ to that flat I just picked
up mother and we lit out fer home, which the summer folks that rented
it had left, we leavin’ a note behind like young folks ’lopin’. Then,
when we’d set and considered a spell, the Lord pointed out pies, like a
sky-fallen revelation; the boys caved in and gave us a horse; now life’s
jest a hummin’ along brisk as a swarm o’ bees! And once more the Lord’s
borne it in upon us two old folks, after that discipline of city life,
that if we was goin’ to scratch a livin’ nowadays we’d got to give folks
jest what they want, and make it good, and no skimpin’. Folks in Gilead
County eats pies, and they need ’em good!”
“Cousin Keith has been away a month now,” said Brooke, when Mr. Banks
paused for breath, “and she writes that she is enjoying herself
immensely, so I do not think that she is likely to return.”
“She’s actoolly gone, then? That knocks me out,” said the pieman, with a
disappointed droop in his voice. “I didn’t know that, fer I’ve been goin’
the short way and haven’t been over this upper road since New Year, the
goin’s been so bad. I allus reckoned on puttin’ up at the West farm for
the noon hour to bait Maria here and get my coffee het up; but maybe your
ma won’t fancy shelterin’ strangers, for I think Miss Keith said the farm
came through the female line and was again rightly vested in a female.”
“I own the farm, and I shall be very glad to have you rest and feed your
horse there and take your dinner with us to-day,” said Brooke, taking a
mischievous satisfaction in the effect of her words on the funny little
man.
“You! a slip of a girl like you own the snuggest small place in the
county, and best kep’ up!” he ejaculated, his jaw dropping with reflex
wonder; “but maybe you’re married?”
“No.”
“Keepin’ company, then?”
“No”—this time Brooke had great difficulty in controlling either voice or
countenance.
“Left a beau in town or in foreign parts somewhere, then?” he persisted,
almost anxiously.
“No”—but this time the word had a different sound.
“Not even got picked out yet? well, I want ter know! I thank you kindly
for yer invitation, and I’ll be pleased to go in. Hev you got a ma and
pa, or only a hired man?”
With a person of his persistence social topics might have now become
embarrassing, but chance turned the subject at the right moment, taking
the shape of a covey of quail, huddled under some cedar bushes by the
roadside. The pieman spied them first, and at his sharp pull patient
Maria stopped, although the spot was not very suitable for such a halt.
Brooke expected to see the flock either rise in a body or disappear in
the under-brush, but they did neither, only huddling still closer, while,
inexperienced as she was, she noticed that even their ruffled feathers
illy hid the leanness of their bodies.
“The game along this route has suffered this winter, and it’s missed me,”
he whispered, preparing to raise the curtain on the opposite side of the
wagon to the birds.
“Raise up a minute, please, so’s I can git some buckwheat out uv that
box, and keep a hand on Tatters, else, lame as he is, he’ll out and flush
the covey.”
Brooke did as she was told, while the pieman scooped up a handful of
unhulled buckwheat from the box, and, letting himself down quietly from
the wagon, scattered it among the bayberry bushes, not too near to the
flock, yet in plain sight of it. Returning, he re-fastened the curtain
and started the horse again before he said a word in answer to the
interrogation of Brooke’s face. Reaching the next level, a dozen rods
on, he half turned the wagon in order to give a clear view down the
hill; the quail had crossed the road and were feeding eagerly upon the
buckwheat, like a brood of chickens.
“Puzzled, ain’t yer, ter see a Yankee scatterin’ good fodder by the way?”
said the pieman, highly gratified. “Well, it may seem uncommon, but the
truth is these five years I’ve been peddlin’ and coverin’ a wild tract
of country twict every week in cold and heat, rain and sun, I’ve come to
think that man ain’t the only created thing that the Lord has cause to
be proud uv or care fer. I’ve got kinder close to the wild folks along
the route, which after all is but accordin’ to Scripture, that bids us
‘Consider the way the lilies grow and look to the fowls of the air,’ and
says the Lord himself ain’t too busy to indulge in counting sparrers—(if
he’d only worded it song or chippin’ sparrers it would be more
comfortin’, though he couldn’t hev meant English ones, cause that island
wasn’t discovered in those days, and so is of no account in Scripture,
which must rile their pride).
“I allus did like birds, even way back when I followed the plough, and
of course I knew some of them apart,—robins and swallers and phœbes and
hawks and all the gamies,—and I jest plumb knew that when crows sat on
the fence a-quaverin’, it was interestin’ and worthy conversation, most
like, if we could only sense it. But it was after that hell-fire summer
in the city that I got the call to treat ’em like my brothers and help
’em out with food in winter like we would neighbouring house folks.
“Soon as it come hot weather there, that time in N’ York, I couldn’t set
closed into meetin’ of Sundays (though mother, she sit it out for sake of
principle), and I don’t believe the Lord does, either,—stands to reason
he’s got too much sense, not havin’ to set an example,—so I uster wander
out through that long narrer park o’ theirn, and when onct I cut clean
through westward, I strayed into that big museum where they keep the
natural relics, and there I come face to face with all the birds that
ever wuz together since Eve’s time. When I’d observed all the cockatoos
and parrerkeets and such like, I went on a bit further, ’n if there
warn’t a partridge a struttin’ on the leaves with his tail all fanned
out, and beyond it the brown eggs was nested in a ground holler. I passed
that by and next I seen a catbird in a syringa bush and a robin on an
apple branch and a highholder on a stump, that set my heart a-bumpin’
so I was all of a tremble and sidled off into a small room to set down.
When I looked up next, what was there in a case marked something about
‘seasonable birds’ but a big medder lark. His breast was jest as fresh
and yaller as when he sings from a tree-top to yer in plantin’ time, or
turns and teeters on a fence to keep you from seein’ him too plain, and
it seemed as if I heard him calling fer spring. That broke me all up, and
I jest leaned over and cried it out into the white Sunday handkerchief
mother got me, ’cause my red ones jarred the boys.
“I think it was the sight of those birds gave me grit to break loose fer
home. That next winter a woman we sold eggs to over in Gordon, seein’ my
fancy, gave me a book all about their ways and needs, and so ever since
I’ve been with ’em in heart. My, but ain’t they company along the lonely
road bits and in early mornings when I’m comin’ home! (I go up Tuesdays
and Fridays to sleep at Sairy Ann’s, my wife’s sister’s house near
Gordon, startin’ fer home next dawn.)
“Along in April to see the woodcock flirt an’ dance’s as good’s a circus.
Sometime, maybe, ’twould pleasure you to take the trip with me, and Sairy
Ann’d be proud to hev you stop with her. My, here we are at your corner!
How good conversation does pass the time!”
Without in the least realizing that he had been doing the whole of the
talking, the pieman handed Brooke out at the door stone, Tatters limping
carefully after, and Maria turned down the lane to the barn, with which
she was perfectly familiar.
Brooke, hastening in to explain their unique guest to her mother and tend
the sick paw, found that Mrs. Peck had been sent for to “sit up” with
a bereaved household down at Gilead; telling Mrs. Lawton that it was
expected of her, no matter whom she might be “accommodating,” she had
left immediately, promising to return the next night.
Brooke prepared the dinner, to which was added as a contribution,
received in the spirit in which it was offered, one of Mrs. Banks’ most
juicy whortleberry pies (truly the best of its kind), which the Cub
pronounced to be “just bully,” while in turn the pieman praised Brooke’s
coffee, and, for some reason that he could not have explained, kept his
knife in abeyance, while by his cheerful common sense gained the respect
of his entertainers.
After he had left, taking Brooke’s ready promise to go over the route
with him some spring day to see the woodcock dance and hear the partridge
drum, the cloud that his cheerfulness had lifted again settled over the
girl’s spirits. Why was no gleam vouchsafed to lighten her darkness as
the vision of pies had led these humble people into a sort of promised
land?
When she had washed the dishes and made everything neat, it was still
only half-past two. She could neither sew nor read nor settle herself
to write to Lucy Dean, her usual outlet when cast down; a new sort of
restlessness seized her, that of a wild animal caged, who paces to and
fro to its own exhaustion.
Looking into her father’s room, she saw that he slept, while Tatters,
his hurt paw comfortably stretched out, lay on the rug. Her mother was
writing letters at the old desk; and going out to the barn she found
the Cub, with Pam of course close by, mending some spring traps that
he discovered in an old barrel, and preparing to set them, for mink or
weasel tracks, he could not tell which, had been seen that morning about
the chicken house. He was so absorbed and fascinated with his occupation
that he only grunted answers to his sister’s questions, so she returned
to the house, realizing that the change was doing wonders for the Cub,
which was one consolation.
“What is the matter with me?” she said, half aloud. “Is it an illness
coming on? or can it be the painting fever? The air seems to sparkle and
rush through me like electricity! Oh, why did I not work harder when I
had the time? for now if the desire comes I cannot stop,” and Brooke
wrung her hands, and then laughed hysterically at her tragic action.
Going to her room, she unpacked palette and paint box, and took the maul
stick from the closet, where it had remained all winter tied to some
umbrellas. Of canvas she had none, but hunting up some bits of manila
board from between her books, she took them to the kitchen and spread
them on the table, where she had left the turpentine and oil. What should
she try? The snow and rock bit from the window lacked colour and was too
harsh in outline to be seductive to her mood. A scarlet geranium in a pot
against the dark window frame caught her eye, and seating herself, she
began to draw it in rapidly with chalk—anything, if it would only find
vent for the fever of action that tingled in her finger tips.
She was surprised to find that a certain accuracy as well as facility
of touch had not left her, in spite of stiffened fingers and lack of
practice. For her colour sense she claimed no credit; it was born with
her. But after the outline took shape and she began to paint and give
it texture, she dropped her brush again as the words of Lorenz seemed
whispered in her ears, “You have not yet had the awakening, for it you
must wait; it is the same with me; you must interpret your vision and see
it on the canvas before you can create; but first of all you must know
and feel, even if you suffer.”
The awakening had not come to her, and still she waited; did she not
now know and feel, and had she not suffered enough? The stiff geranium
cramped in its pot bore her no message to interpret, and as a snow-squall
darkened her window she cast the brush aside. Shivering at the utter
silence of the house, she fled to her room and, throwing herself face
downward on her bed, was abandoning herself to the spirits of darkness,
when the thought of her other self, radiating light as Lorenz had painted
her, crossed her wild mood, checking it, and she lay quite still until
her pounding heart calmed to its regular beating, when bodily fatigue
claimed its dole and she fell asleep.
When she awoke it was after five o’clock; the squall had passed away and
sunset light was warming the whole sky, even taking the chill from the
full moon, which it had worn on its apparent rise from the river ice.
Below stairs everything was as she had left it, and yet a different
atmosphere pervaded the place, and the tension left her throat. The Cub
came in with the news, at which he seemed to think she would rejoice,
that Robert Stead was better and would be out again on the morrow. Her
mother expressed unfeigned pleasure, and Brooke was almost ashamed of
the fact that she had for the moment forgotten that he was ill. Yet she
always enjoyed his visits and watched for them, for he was a travelled
and well-read man, and, when off his guard, most entertaining, and not
without a certain compelling magnetism.
“Let’s hurry supper,” said the Cub, when he had brought in the milk.
“I’ve had the last milking lesson I need, and I can do it all right now
without pulling too hard, or squirting, or laming my wrists. Larsen
says I’ll be worth twenty a month and board by summer if I keep on
steady,—just as if I wouldn’t! But I’ve got to keep the other end up
besides, and I’ve some reading to do to-night, if I’m going up to the
shack again in the morning.” Crossing the kitchen, he picked his mother
up as if she had been a feather, and whirling her about, gave her a
hearty kiss that sent a glow to her heart and cheeks at the same time,
before he seated her, like a small child, on the table edge, where she
struggled, laughed, and was sublimely happy at his rough caress. Then,
further to carry out his genial mood, he bounced into his father’s
room and, wheeling him to the kitchen, pushed the chair close to the
table, and thus they all supped together, a circumstance that had seemed
impossible in Mrs. Peck’s presence.
After Adam Lawton had gone to bed, the Cub helping him as usual, the boy
settled himself by the bright lamp in the kitchen with his books, while
Mrs. Lawton and Brooke sat by the firelight in the library, talking
quietly. Brooke, hunched on the rug, leaned her head back against her
mother’s knee, and yielded to the soothing touch of gentle fingers upon
her eyes and brow.
Presently Tatters began to growl deeply and give what they had learned
to designate as his animal bark, quite different in quality from that
with which he announced the approach of man. Pam, of course, joined him,
springing from the cushioned chair in which she slept.
The Cub went to the door and listened—cackles of alarm were coming from
the chicken house.
“It’s the weasel or mink, or whatever it was that prowled last night,” he
reported. “I’ll go out and see, because Stead says that sometimes, if
you leave them all night, they gnaw out of the trap. Don’t you want to
come too, Sis? Hurry up, then, and get your cape. No, don’t let the dogs
out, they’ll get pinched in the trap, or chew the beast up, maybe, and I
want to keep him whole. I guess the moon is bright enough, we will not
need the lantern,” and seizing a stout stick, the Cub tiptoed carefully
out to make as little noise as possible, not having yet learned that to
wild animals scent serves as a warning even more than sound. Brooke,
however, preferred to take the lantern, and lighting it, she quickly
followed.
The Cub examined his traps. They were untouched, but as he knelt he saw
a straight row of tracks in the snow, that were too large to belong
to either weasel or mink. Following these, they led him around to the
roosting house. There, between it and the open yard, something that
appeared to be a small dog crouched in the corner.
The moon shone brightly between the buildings, and every hair of the
little beast stood out as clearly as by electric light.
“It’s a half-grown fox,” whispered the Cub, to Brooke. “Good work if I
can only kill it; there’ll be one less to kill the fowls. Look out that
it doesn’t dodge past you there, Sis,” and the Cub was going toward it,
club raised. But the little fox never stirred. They could only tell that
it was alive by the heaving of its lean sides.
“Stop!” said Brooke, hoarsely, laying a detaining and no very gentle
touch on her brother’s arm. “I won’t have it killed. I believe that it is
starving, like those quails I saw this morning, only they could move, and
this fox is too weak. I’m going to take it in the barn and feed it, and
make it live. Get me some milk, and eggs, and meat.”
“You’re crazy, Sis; it is only a fox, and they’re bad things. It’ll bite
you and make no end of a row,” but as he glanced at her face he saw
something there that stopped all argument, and he hastened to obey.
Then Brooke, placing the lantern on the ground, drew nearer to the little
beast. Yes, he was starving. He tried to stand and toppled over against
the shed; he was powerless and at bay. Fixing her eyes on his, she read
his feelings interpreted by her own of that very afternoon, and kneeling
there in the snow, she understood him.
A vital wave swept over her. Hanging the lantern on her arm, she slipped
the cape from off her shoulders with a swift movement, and covered the
fox with it, wrapping him completely. Then, lifting him in her arms, for
he was less weighty than a well-fed cat, she carried the bundle to the
barn, and slipping the latch, laid the poor little beast on the haymow,
a futile snap and snarl or two having been its only protests.
When the Cub returned with the various articles of food, he was
astonished to see the pair facing each other, not a yard apart, with the
lantern hanging from a beam shedding light upon the strange scene.
While the Cub was near the fox would not touch the food, but when he hid
from its sight, after a time it lapped the egg that Brooke broke and put
before it, as a dog would, and presently the milk; then, still wearing
the hunted look, settled deeper into the hay lair where she had placed
it, panting and with lolling tongue.
“We will go away now and leave it in peace; only promise me, Adam,
that when it grows strong it shall run free, and no one shall kill it;
remember, it is my guest.” Adam promised, and hastily securing the latch,
they went back to the house. The Cub went to the library to tell his
mother of the adventure, but Brooke lingered in the kitchen. A half-hour
passed, and hearing no sound, the Cub went to the door. Returning softly,
he beckoned his mother to follow, and together they stood in the shadow
of the doorway, looking into the room. Two lamps stood side by side on
the mantel-shelf, casting an oblique light; below and at one side of
the fireplace stood Brooke, palette in hand, a straight-backed chair
before her; resting on its arms, as if it were an easel, was the great
oblong bread-board, and on this the girl was painting, with broad rapid
strokes, the head of a fox. Her cloak still hung from her shoulders, her
cheeks glowed; her eyes they could not see until she half turned her
head for a moment as if following a strayed memory, then they noticed a
strange light in them as of inspiration.
Quietly they crept back into the dark and waited. An hour passed; still
Brooke kept at work. Another thirty minutes and they heard the chair move
and again they went to the door.
Brooke stood back from the improvised easel, her hands behind her,
looking at her work. From the board gazed back the head of the little
fox, roughly done, but with the look in its eyes at once hunted, defiant,
and pleading,—not an image, a created thing, living and breathing.
Through suffering and its kinship had come the revelation to Brooke that
if she willed she might be the painter of animals, and as she looked
again, Lorenz’ words sounded in her ears. She had felt and suffered, and
had seen her vision in the eyes of the hunted beast. She had interpreted
it, she felt for what it stood, and now, crude as was the labor, it lived
under her brush. She had awakened, but the strength of the vital touch
was his, and he could not know it. Kneeling before the chair with clasped
hands, as if at some shrine, not to the picture, but to what it stood
for, Brooke took new courage.
Before his mother could restrain Adam he had dashed across the kitchen,
and stood a moment with his hands resting on his sister’s shoulders.
Then, without warning, he tipped back her head and gave her a kiss of
genuine boyish enthusiasm, crying, “That’s a living picture all right,
Sis. Look out it don’t get away from you. I bet you’ve struck your luck
this time.”
CHAPTER XIII
AT THE SIGN OF THE FOX
In the morning the Cub hastened to the barn. Either the old-fashioned
latch had sprung up, or some one had been there before him, for the
little fox, having eaten every scrap of food, and thereby gained
strength, had gone his way, which, according to the string of footprints,
was up in the rock and hemlock country behind the farm. Yet after supper
on that night, and all the others that came before the spring thawing,
a woman’s figure, wearing a cape under which was concealed a dish of
scraps, outwitting Tatters, slipped from the pantry door, and going
around the barn, halted at a flat rock set in a group of hemlocks,
presently returning with the empty platter, her face wearing as rapt an
expression as that of some pious woman of old carrying food to the haunts
of hermit or saint of the pillar.
February, as if sick of its dreary self, suddenly fell away before
March’s vigour, and its first gusty mood had softened before Brooke and
Adam realized themselves at least the sole guardians of their parents
and the homestead; yet in spite of this and the work it entailed,
the Cub managed to spend at least a couple of hours a day with Stead
at the lodge on Windy Hill, and Brooke tried to snatch a little time
for painting, but even with her mother’s help her toil was by far more
constant and exacting than her brother’s. However, direct motive had come
to both of them, and that alone can make one walk sure-footed on the
tight rope which at intervals through life replaces a safe path. Brooke
worked persistently, using Tatters, Pam, and Robert Stead’s hunting
dogs as studies, conscious of crudeness, imperfections, and the need of
criticism, but letting nothing quench her spirit as long as the spark of
vitality flashed back at her. She longed for the warm weather to come,
so that she might work outdoors, and use as a studio an old hay-thatched
shed on the hillside, once a sheepfold, which opened northeast toward the
river valley.
At this juncture Robert Stead, whose technical training and passionate
love of nature and animal life gave his words more than a casual value,
stepped in, both as encourager and critic, and Brooke eagerly promised
to try a picture of Manfred,—“a serious order,” Stead called it,—as soon
as the season would permit. Meantime he brought her books and studies of
animal anatomy, of whose cost she little guessed, and in explaining the
details to her forgot both his warp and himself, becoming for the time
that most enthralling of beings, the man of middle age who blends all the
directness and fervour of youth with the subtle and reassuring charm of
matured experience.
Was it a wonder that Brooke was glad at his coming? Between herself
and the usual man twice her age she would have felt need for greater
ceremony of outward deference. With Stead the friendship had begun on
the most informal of footings, and been almost instantly cemented with
the gratitude born of his kindness to her brother, as well as the mutual
isolation of the two households; while over it all hung Dr. Russell’s
words of caution, that owing to the peculiar circumstances of his life,
she must not regard Stead in the same light as other men or magnify
his little acts of kindness. Dear honest doctor, even he, with all his
fine humanity, could not diagnose the human emotions with anything like
finality.
Here again the need of money in hand, even for canvas, pressed upon
Brooke, and like many another before her, she seized what came nearest
to hand; and when the Cub discovered a head of Pam upon the cover of the
sugar bucket, he straightway removed it from the closet to his room,
thereby letting some very early ants into the sugar.
One great lesson in portrait art Brooke learned for herself in those
lonely days, that whatever the care and detail of finish, the life and
likeness is the work of but a few strokes.
Meanwhile the fox’s head on the bread-board stood on the mantel-shelf in
the kitchen, watching Brooke as she went about her work, until she began
to feel a mysterious kinship with the little doglike animal of the narrow
eyes, and talked to it as if it was a human companion.
One day she had gone for a call at Mrs. Enoch Fenton’s, where, ever since
that first January afternoon, she went when the tension of the mental and
physical became too great, to be soothed and relaxed by the cripple’s
cheerful common sense. She felt more than ever the absolute necessity of
adding at once to the family income, as for the second time since their
arrival she had been obliged to draw on the slender principal. Though the
real motive for the visit was to consult the Deacon, indirectly, through
his wife, about the likelihood of finding a man willing to cultivate the
farm on shares, the talk drifted toward the topic of ways and means, in
spite of Brooke’s constant resolve to keep such matters to herself.
“If you want to get folks’ money steady,” Mrs. Fenton said, pausing in
her occupation of sewing a button on one of the Deacon’s blue hickory
shirts, and using her thimble finger to point and emphasize her remarks,
“you must give ’em something they want and need in exchange for it, and
what they need most constant is something good to eat!”
Brooke smiled to herself, thinking of the pieman’s similar reasoning
concerning his wife’s “revelation,” but did not in any way apply the
matter personally until Mrs. Fenton’s next sentence.
“The jell and jam market is a good one, only it’s pretty well taken
up, hereabouts, by Miss Ryerson at the Mill Farm, t’other side of
Stonebridge. She puts up for nearly all the city people clear through
to Gordon, and last year she added cherry bounce and blackberry brandy.
Strange enough, too, made by your Great-grandmother West’s rule,—I
suppose you know she accommodated wayfarers with meat and drink down
at the farm, and being strictly temperance had a great name for her
ginger-mint pop; the rule is in my book now. The old sign used to be in
the far side of your attic, behind the four-poster—it was a fox chasin’
a goose, and I always heard it came from the old country; that reminds
me, Enoch says that old bed is set up, and your father’s sleepin’ on it
again—well, old times lets go hard sometimes.
“Why, last year Miss Ryerson cleared two thousand above the wages of
her woman she keeps now to help her out. Of course there’s more in
making such things than meets the eye of those that hasn’t been inside
the preservin’ kettle, so to speak. It’s the keepin’ sound and eatin’
well that counts, and that’s why, like everything else, for every ten
that tries the business, nine drop out because they pinch and neglect,
and slop somewhere, and don’t give the best there is. In eatin’ there’s
always a market for the best. But jam and jell won’t do for you, for
let alone not havin’ experience, you’d have to put out everything for a
season to catch your market, same as they cast away samples of new soap
and bakin’ powder.
“Oh, yes, I almost forgot that you were askin’ about that man for the
ploughing! Enoch saw a big strong Dane, or Swede, or some of those
north-country people, down at the smithy last night. He’s come here
lately, and hired the little Bisbee cottage on the river road—plans to
fix it up, and plant a bit of garden, ’n make it ready for his sweetheart
that’s coming over in the fall. They say he’s got a bit of money saved
and table boards at Bisbee’s sister’s. He wants to work on shares or
by the day this season, so’s to have time for his own work between. He
brought a letter to Mr. Denny, the printer down at the _Bee_ office, and
he says he’ll recommend him willing. Somebody like that, steady, and who
would go ahead, would be better for a girl like you than a wild Polack
that you’d have to manage, or one of our town boys that would likely feel
called to boss you. Father says the fellow doesn’t own a horse mower yet,
but we’ll lend ours, and you’ve got a plough and scythes, as I suppose
Keith showed you. Father’ll bargain with him for you, and plan out the
work—he thinks it’ll be better to let the man see you’ve a farming friend
that knows, to come between you and what you’ve never seen done, and in
consequence hev no notion of.”
Thanking the dear old lady both with words and the spontaneous kiss of
sudden gratitude, which she prized far more, Brooke walked home in a sort
of dream. She passed, quite unheeded, the blooming hepaticas clustering
amid the dry leaves in a sunny spot on the road bank, though she had
been looking among their thick ruddy leaves for the flowers ever since
Stead had shown her where they were bedded a week before. A song-sparrow,
perched on a twig of silvery pussy-willow, threw back his head as she
passed, and poured forth the most melodious verse of his changeful song.
She scarcely heard it, or if she did, paid no heed, any more than she did
to the fact that Tatters had flushed a partridge down in one of the wood
roads that start from the highway and end in silence, leaving her for its
ecstatic but fruitless quest.
Going to the kitchen, she stood before the mantel-shelf looking at the
fox, as if at an oracle that must one day speak to her. Then something
cool seemed to touch her brain, clearing it and crystallizing her
thoughts, as it had that night when the plan of coming to the homestead
drove away the oppression of despair itself.
“Yes,” she said aloud, “to win money it must be the best of its kind.
What can I do that is the best?—paint animals? by and by perhaps—but for
daily bread this spring? Ah, it has come! I can make sandwiches, all
kinds, of the very best (how the Hendersons and Bleeckers gobbled them
up), to go with mother’s tea, also the bread for them! I will make the
summer drink of ginger ale, ice, a lemon slice, and three sprigs of mint,
that father once said tasted so much better than the ginger-root affair
they bottle for sale. I will play I am Great-granny West, swing out my
sign, and ‘accommodate wayfarers’—that is, the pleasure drivers between
Stonebridge and Gordon—with food and drink, as Mrs. Fenton put it! She
says a day never passes from May to November but what people in driving
stop, and beg to buy even bread and milk. Grandma West’s sign was a fox
and a goose, but to-day geese are out of the running. My sign shall be
only the Sign of the Fox. You shall hang out over the gate on the old
pine in an iron frame, and talk wisely to the passers-by,” she said,
looking up at the picture.
Then, taking the bread-board down from the shelf, she kissed the fox on
the nose in the fervour of hope that was dawning.
“Instead of cakes and ale, or anything like that, you shall have just one
word—tea—painted over you, and we will leave them to guess the rest,”
and Brooke, who was in a mood to declare that the wise beast winked,
and licked his lips, needs must laugh at the curious yet satisfactory
blending of her dreams of the future, love, painting, and fame, with the
eternal everyday theme, bread and butter!
After a moment the revulsion came. What would her mother say? That passed
away in the thought that she could not object, for to act untrammelled
was unquestionably the first link in the chain by which Brooke was to
endeavour to keep the family bound together. Yet it was a relief when,
an hour later, the plan had been thoroughly discussed and formulated,
to find that her mother not only fully approved, but was already on the
alert, and full of suggestions to make the simple service as dainty as
might be.
Silent Stead was the first to throw a wet blanket upon the scheme, his
reasons being purely personal, as it usually developed that they were;
though he would bitterly have resented the idea of it. He found it
difficult to put his objections into reasonable words, and so merely
retired within himself, and was “grumpy,” as the Cub put it.
The Cub came back from the village a few days later with the rings and
frame for the sign, which the blacksmith had fashioned; and Brooke,
after varnishing the bread-board well to keep out the weather, had fitted
it in place, and was looking at the result when Stead came in. In his
arms he carried several packages of bulbs and garden seeds for her, which
he dropped on the table. He had a lovely hillside garden of his own below
the lodge, which he and José tended, and already he was planning a more
elaborate arrangement of the old-fashioned kitchen garden at the farm
than Miss Keith had attempted, saying, in answer to Brooke’s objection,
that it would perhaps be more than they could care for:—
“Turn about is fair play; you give me, an idler, a daily resting spot
between the valley and the hill; why may I not give you a spot to rest
in between the day’s work? For God’s sake, do not make me feel more of a
cumberer of the ground than necessary!”
As for the gifts of seeds and roots, to Mrs. Lawton, accustomed as she
had been to the perfect southern courtesy of such things, that bore no
obligation between neighbours and equals, they seemed quite matters of
course, and of no special import.
Mrs. Fenton, when Brooke told her of the new venture, and consulted her
as to the ways of the great folk of the neighbourhood, and their seasons
for coming and going, had expressed her opinion that the first of May was
time enough to begin, as then the people in general ran over from Boston
and New York for a few days at a time to start the wheels in motion, and
take a breath of air. This left Brooke a full month for her preparations,
and both Robert Stead and the mail carrier noticed the frequency with
which letters flew between herself and Lucy Dean during this time.
Brooke, at first being humble-minded as to her ability, and therefore as
to the prices to be charged, was gradually convinced by her hard-headed
friend that if her wares were the equal of those which Tokay furnished
the same patrons at their houses in town, why might she not charge the
same at the wayside tea garden of the Moosatuk, where such things had
hitherto not only been unattainable but unknown?
To clinch her unanswerable argument, Lucy had made and sent to her
friend a box of dainty cards, such as are often used at bazaars in
private houses. A fox’s head appeared at the top—next below TEA, lemon or
cream—MILK—FOXHEAD JULEP (the name with which they had christened Granny
West’s delicious ginger, lemon, and mint concoction). Then followed the
price-list of sandwiches—cheese—potted chicken—lettuce—jam, and plain
bread and butter, singly or by the dozen, according to Tokay’s schedule.
And Brooke accepted Lucy’s advice, but exacted a promise that she should
tell no one, nor exploit the plan in any way, saying, “I want the
venture to make its way from the inside out, not from the outside in.”
Thus the matter was settled, and when mother and daughter had agreed that
it was best to use the exquisite fern-leaf china cups and saucers for
their added attraction over commoner china, and there seemed nothing more
to do but to work along in the interim, a new difficulty suddenly smote
Brooke. Though she and her mother might brew and bake, who was to serve
the tea to those who, lacking footmen, wished it brought to carriage or
served in the porch, which Brooke already called her Tea Garden, where
she planned, if business warranted, to place some seats and small tables?
One day, the very last of March, Deacon Fenton stopped at the West farm,
and in answer to Mrs. Lawton’s urgent invitation to come in, replied:
“Thank you kindly, but not to-day. I’m looking for that farmer daughter
of yours. I’ve fetched up the new man, and given him an idee of the
plantin’. He seems to sense it all right, though he’s kinder soft and
unconditioned, and slow for spring ploughin’, and his hands blister up
so’s I told him he’d better wear sheepskin mits fer a spell, as it’s some
time he claims since he worked land for his mother. That don’t count,
however, when it’s work on shares. You get your half jest the same if
he’s a week doin’ a day’s work, and that’s the sense on it fer a girl
like yourn, who can’t be expected to drive farm hands up to the bit,
as must be did if you’re goin’ to git enough offen your land to feed a
sparrer! Where’s the young lady? A-paintin’ pussy cats—no, I think it was
wild rabbits likely, in the barn, Adam said, only I didn’t see her when
I tied up. I thought maybe she’d like to go down to the ploughed field,
and be made acquainted with her new help. She won’t need to bother much
with him, not payin’ out wages, but it may come in handy for her to have
speech with him, jest the same.
“Say, Mis’ Lawton, the tea and spice pedler saw that fox-head sign,
settin’ in there in the kitchen, and he says the firm he travels fer
are just introducing a new brand of condensed goat’s milk, and if she’d
paint out a nice, white, lively-lookin’ goat with a pretty, dressed-up
baby sittin’ on its back, and a dreadful thin baby sittin’ on the road
a-crying ’cause she didn’t get none, he reckons he could get her all of
twenty-five dollars for it—maybe more. There’s a fine big carriage goat
boardin’ at Bisbee’s fer the winter that she could copy—’tain’t a milking
one, but she might add to it a little. Thought I’d jest mention it; you
know ’tain’t often she might get the chance to turn picture paintin’ into
something useful and instructive and payin’ all to onct.”
At this juncture Brooke appeared to speak for herself, and, after she
had cleaned the paint from her fingers with turpentine, the shrewd old
farmer and the warm-hearted young enthusiast walked side by side down
the cross-road, skirting the hay-field, now growing green around the
moist edges. The meadowlarks were soaring and singing, the first white
butterflies fluttered in the sun, and down from the garden wafted an
odour that tells of spring in every quarter of the globe, the perfume of
the little white English violets. These nestled in sociable tufts under
the protection of the leafless bushes of crimson and damask roses in the
garden that Great-granny West had planted,—violets whose ancestors had
doubtless come overseas in company with the Sign of the Fox and the Goose.
The unploughed corn-field lay to the right of the cross-road, and to
reach it they were obliged to skirt a small field of fall-sown rye that
was bounded by the roadway. As they picked their way along the stubbly
edge, between which and the stone fence ran one of those little brooks of
the hill countries that brawl and rush along in spring and autumn, but
shrink away and keep their silence in summer heat and winter cold alike,
Brooke paused once or twice to look upon her River Kingdom, which, after
the rain and freshet of a week past, was now showing the first real signs
of life. Dun and gray were still the prevailing hues of the river woods,
except where a ruddy or golden glow lying on the tree-tops told of swamp
maples or willows. The hemlocks on the rocky banks looked rusty and
winter-worn, not having yet donned their curved-tipped new feathers. The
marsh meadows, thickly studded with ponds by the overflow, alone showed
solid green, and glittered with the sunlit emerald leaves of the arums,
that had now risen above and concealed their ill-smelling mottled red
blossoms.
Here and there on the hillsides the columns of pearl-gray smoke, wafted
straight skyward, showed both the location of cultivated land where
litter and brush were burning, and also that the wind was in abeyance,
and the sun once more in power. The sky wore a misty veil over the
blue, and the Moosatuk, rushing, foaming, and overleaping itself in
its spring-running seaward, drew more from the ground for colours than
of the sky reflections. Now and again an uprooted tree would be swept
by, turning and stretching its bare arms upward, as if giving signals
of distress, and then a log would plunge along, striking against the
submerged rocks, rearing, and plunging again like a gigantic water snake.
Yes, in deed and in truth, life had returned to the River Kingdom at the
sound of the voice of the waters, and yet throughout all the wide expanse
the only human touch was in the field below, where a man, who cast a
Titan’s shadow behind him, was driving a plough into the deep, cool
soil, slowly shattering the stubbly hillocks of last year’s corn. Calmly
he worked, but with finality. The reins that guided the horses hung loose
about his neck, for he only made use of them at the turnings, while the
motive power seemed to come less from the horses than from the shoulders
of the man who kept the ploughshare true in its course.
Brooke Lawton stood spellbound. For the first time she saw and
comprehended the most primitive labour of primitive man, and it appealed
to every sense of her body,—the mental, spiritual, physical,—appealed
to her as had the freshly baked loaves, by its symbolism as well as
directness, for beneath the leavening development of generations, side
by side with the temperament for music expressed in rhythm and colour
defined by pigments, walked another Brooke, the primitive woman.
Ah! if she could but fix and paint the scene as she felt it! Instantly
the ploughman stood as the rightful ruler of the River Kingdom, and
dominated it. It was not the personality of the man, for she had not yet
seen his face, merely his fitness to his surroundings. Enoch Fenton’s
voice broke the spell: “A slow worker, as I told your ma (I put in my
mare with your horse, it’s too heavy for one), but that don’t signify in
share farmin’; you won’t hev to watch out sharp until the harvestin’, and
then I’ll help you out. If you was left to yourself, you might fare like
that pretty city Widder Harris, down to the Forks; she let old Ed Terry
keep her cow fer half the milk. Firstly the cow was dry, and Mis’ didn’t
get any of course; time went along, and the cow calved, and after a week
Mis’ Harris went across lots with her kettle fer her milk.
“‘There’s no milk due you,’ said old Terry, chuckling. ‘How’s that?’ says
she, mad-like, ‘I’m to get half, and I saw you take in a full pail this
morning.’ ‘That’s all true,’ says he, ‘half comes to me, and your half
goes to the calf!’
“Not that I expect this chap is that kind; he’s sort o’ mild and solemn,
that’s why I chose you a foreigner; the native is often overcrafty to
work with green women folks that ain’t had the picklin’ experience
gives. There’s fellers round here would sell you cold storage eggs for
settin’ as quick as not. I know ’em, and bein’s you’re a friend o’ Dr.
Russell, wife and I feel a charge to look after you a spell. Now ’f it
was Keith, she’s different—no cold storage eggs for her! Do you hear when
the weddin’s coming off? That’s the only bargain of hers I mistrust. The
sharpest women on general trading most allers slips up on matrimony. I’ve
often said to ma, when it comes to matrimony, I think the Lord loves and
favours women best that, when they sets their mind on a poor sinful
man, jest closes their eyes, and topples right into marriage without
bargaining.
“Old Terry was a corker! ’twas he that was mowin’ fer me one day, and I
says at the nooning, ‘Will you take rum and water, or cider?’ Says he,
‘As the rum’s handiest, I’ll take that while you’re drawin’ the cider!’
“Hi there, Henry! Henry! halt at the turn!” he called to the ploughman
as they reached the field edge. “It’s good he understands English,
and speaks it only a little back-handed. What’s his other name? Let’s
see—Petersen? no that was the one that wanted a steady job. Yes, I
remember, it’s Maarten,—they spell it with double _a_ where he comes from.
“This is Miss Lawton you’re agoin’ to halve the crops with, and bein’ as
it is she expects you’ll measure full and fair, and something over, and
she wants you to remember that I’m standing by her, and my eye teeth is
cut!”
“Why, I didn’t tell you to say that, deacon. I’m sure Mr. Maarten will be
fair,” stammered Brooke, feeling personally embarrassed at the implied
lack of confidence, and oblivious of the wink that her agricultural
preceptor had given her, for he had simply wished to show the newcomer
that she had a protector; while she stood there colouring with distress,
her hand half raised, not knowing whether she was to greet the farmer, as
she had made a point of doing their neighbours, or keep the reserve that
belonged to the city service of inferiors.
As for the man, he stood quite still, one hand on the plough, the other
lifting his wide hat by the crown in greeting, an act of politeness no
country yokel would have vouchsafed. What he said she could not hear,
but the single glance he gave her, though interrupted by the shadow of
his hat, tinged with a swift respect instead of lingering curiosity, she
read as an appeal for fair trial and mercy for his awkwardness, so her
outstretched hand dropped to the stone wall that divided them. Leaning
on it, she asked some trifling questions that could be answered by a
brief yes and no, to put him at his ease, then strolled on again along
the field edges, only half listening to what Enoch Fenton said of the
best rotation of crops for soil somewhat overfarmed, and half busy with
her own thoughts, quickened in a dozen different ways by the impulse of
spring.
“New man don’t seem sociably inclined to women folks,” said the deacon,
with a chuckle; “funny he should be took that way too! Most as dumb and
offish as Silent Stead up there on Windy Hill, though Stead’s thawed
out considerable toward ’em, ain’t he, since you folks come here?” he
added, in a persuasive tone intended to open further possibilities of
conversation.
“Oh, that is not because we are women folks,” answered Brooke, simply,
smiling at the old man’s eagerness; “it is also because of Dr. Russell,
who introduced us. We are strangers, and lonely like himself, and you
know he is teaching my brother, so that he may not wholly lose sight of
college, and of course we are very grateful for that.”
“Want ter know!” was the enigmatical reply, the non-committal answer of
the countryman, given as it always is with the falling inflection, though
the words imply a question.
As they turned again toward the cross-road, the head of a man and horse
could be seen above the leafless wild hedge that covered the fence.
It was Robert Stead, and as he caught sight of Brooke, he pulled some
letters from his saddle-bag and waved them toward her.
“As you’re likely to have company home, I reckon I’ll cut across
lots,” said Enoch Fenton, dryly, noticing her eagerness, for letters
always opened a realm of possibility, while the deacon’s query about
Keith West’s marriage reminded Brooke that she had not heard from the
prospective bride for nearly a month, and so she had unconsciously
hurried her steps.
When she reached the bars (four rough chestnut poles held by old
horseshoes driven into the posts like staples,—the relic of an old
country tradition to keep the distemper from the cattle pastured
therein), Stead had already dismounted, and stood waiting for her, and
saying, “Letters first,” handed her the package—six in all: two for her
mother, one being in the writing of Mr. Dean, and one of the lawyer; one
from Lucy; two in strange hands, and the last addressed in the square,
upright characters that she had seen once before, this also readdressed
by Charlie Ashton.
With a swift movement she dropped them into the pocket of her brown linen
pinafore, and, turning backward toward the Moosatuk, let the beauty
of the vista—which at that point was framed by the mottled trunks of
two gigantic plane trees that linked their gnarled branches across the
roadway—take the place of speech for a few moments.
“Then you too love the river, and turn to it as I do,” Stead said,
watching her face, and attributing its changeful expression, now wrapt,
now alert, to its influence.
“Yes, surely,” she answered, looking far off and beyond, “and I think I
must have known it somewhere in dreams, perhaps before ever I saw it. You
do not know that when I was only a child I christened all over there, as
far as eye can see, my River Kingdom, and said that some day I would be
fairy queen of it!”
“Yes, I know; Dr. Russell once told me of your gypsying,—and now?” Stead
dropped Manfred’s bridle that he had been holding, and drew a step
nearer to the young woman, while the horse, feeling his liberty, began
to crop the tender tufts of grass that were growing between the wheel
tracks. “Is it not still your kingdom?”
“Yes and no. The kingdom is still there, but fairy days have flown away
with their kings and queens, and all of that; it is only a corner of
the same big round workaday world, though an enchanted one, and I am
only just one woman in it, not even a gypsy queen. The river alone has
not changed: when I am quiet, it soothes me; when I am restless and
dissatisfied, it moves for me and cools the fever. This winter, when it
was frozen and buried, I too felt turned to stone at times, or as if I
stood by watching the face of some one I loved who was dead. If the ice
had lasted another month, I do not think I could have borne it,” and
Brooke, as she gazed, clasped her hands before her with a gesture half
supplication, half resolution, that had always been peculiarly her own.
Then Stead saw that the hands, with the firm, but slender fingers that
tell of the artistic temperament, were no longer white and rose-tipped,
but roughened and seamed like the ground itself with the stress of the
winter,—the patient hands of the woman who works, not of the queen who
toys.
Suddenly the frost wherein his heart had been encased, numbing him all
these eleven years, melted in the sunshine of her simple, wholesome
womanliness, and broke away with a swift wrench, like the ice of the
river in the force of the freshet. The red blood pulsed anew and sang in
his ears the eternal spring song that was all forgotten, or worse yet,
disbelieved; for a single moment it swirled him about, and hurried him
along, struggling uselessly, backward toward youth,—a perilous journey.
Manfred, who had cropped all the grass within easy reach, now nibbled
sharply at his master’s pocket for sugar; with an impatient gesture
Stead turned—and the moment passed; while Brooke, once more sweeping
the landscape with her gaze, slowly stretched out her arms toward it
unconsciously, and began to climb the hill again. The last detail of it
all that lingered in her memory was the ploughman following in the furrow
that his strength made true, and as the two walked slowly homeward, the
ploughman in his turn stopped, and, lifting his hat to cool his head,
stood watching them.
Robert Stead stopped at the barn to show the Cub, now in the first
enthusiasm of the coming trout season, how to repair an old rod of
his father’s that had grown brittle from disuse, and Brooke carried
the letters to her mother, reading that from Lucy; but she took the
one marked Overveen to her own room presently, where, sitting by the
window, she opened it slowly. It held a single sheet that bore these
words—random verses from the “Lost Tales of Miletus,” carefully copied—no
less, no more!
But haunted by the strain, till then unknown,
Seeks to re-sing it back herself to charm,
Seeks still and ever fails,
Missing the key-note which unlocks the music—
...
“They gave me work for torture; work is joy!
Slaves work in chains, and to the clank they sing!
Said Orpheus, ‘Slaves still hope.’
“And could I strain to heave up the huge stone
Did I not hope that it would reach the height?
There penance ends, and dawn Elysian fields,
But if it never reach?”
The Thracian sighed, as looming through the mist
The stone came whirling back. “Fool,” said the ghost,
“Then mine at worst is everlasting hope!”
Again up rose the stone.
Holding the paper clasped against her breast, again Brooke’s thoughts
sought counsel of the river, but now between her and it, a silhouette
standing against the water, on the slope below the ploughman guided the
horses to and fro unceasingly across the corn-field.
CHAPTER XIV
THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
April flew by on the wings of the migrating birds, and it was almost the
last week, that brought the fragile wind flower to the wood edges and
the swallows to the old barn, before Brooke realized that the month had
fairly begun. For not more relentless is the rush of the city itself than
life on a farm in the springtime, when the power that drives is the vital
force of Nature herself, while a day dropped at this time slips back
beyond recall.
One morning, in herding a refractory hen, who had strayed with her brood
out among the young oats, Brooke had found herself close by the spot
where Henry Maarten was planting potatoes, and, half laughing and wholly
out of breath, she called to him for help, which call he answered by
catching the clucking, scratching hen, while she gathered the brood in
her apron, and he followed her silently back to the chicken yard at a
respectful distance.
Having put the chicks safely in a coop, Brooke pointed out a shorter
way across the flower garden by which Maarten might return to his
work. Seeing that he paused by the straggling clumps of early tulips
and daffodils that were already in bloom, and thinking they might be
reminding him of some other garden for which he was homesick, she bade
him gather as many as he wished, asked him if he was fond of flowers,
and whether he would not like some roots, seeds, or cuttings for his
little place, saying in a friendly way, to put him at his ease, for he
always seemed to dread her presence, “They tell me you are painting and
repairing to make a home at the Bisbee place for some one who is coming
over in the autumn. Nothing is so homelike to a woman as growing flowers.”
Pulling his hat over his eyes with a gesture of embarrassment rather than
because the sun was bright, he said, in carefully pronounced musical
English, with a decided foreign accent: “And they told you that I make a
home for a sweetheart who comes? Yes, I had thought to; but if she comes
not, what then?”
“But why should she not come? Surely she will if she has promised, and
knows that you work for her,” said Brooke, insensibly adopting his
pronunciation and speaking with ready confidence in the faith of woman
born of her own temperament.
“She has not promised it,” he faltered, looking down at the tulips and
again pulling his hat betwixt himself and his young questioner, as if he
feared that if she saw his eyes she might penetrate too far into his
innermost feelings.
“She knows you are working for her?”
“No, not even that.”
“At least she believes that you care?” persisted Brooke, too direct and
sympathetic to realize at once that she might be probing a wound.
“I once dared to think so, but since I have come away, the word has
travelled that perhaps her liking may be for another.”
“Why, doesn’t she know her own mind?” said Brooke, half to herself, all
at once becoming the self-appointed champion of her farmer-on-shares,
and not realizing until after the words had left her lips that she was
herself too young a woman to be a safe adviser to so young a man, and she
blushed hotly.
Turning to the flowers to aid her in an unforeseen situation by which
she found herself much moved, she spied the great clump of white bridal
roses, now putting out green shoots, that had spread from a single bush
almost to a hedge, and which Miss Keith had pointed out in its winter
leafless state as a much-cherished family possession. “Cut a root from
this with your knife, carefully, for its thorns are long and sharp, and
plant it by your porch, for the saying is that it brings luck to new
homes,” she said quickly. As she watched him she thought of the verses in
her letter, and all unconsciously repeated them half aloud, “‘Then mine
at worst is everlasting hope—’” but a sharp exclamation from the man, who
with back toward her was tugging at the rose root, stopped her; his hand
had slipped, and the sharp thorn pierced his thumb to the bone.
It was the pieman’s day, and promptly at noon his cart turned into the
barnyard. Mrs. Lawton, as well as Brooke, had come to look forward to
the break made by his visits, for embodied cheerfulness must always be a
welcome guest. This time, however, he was bustling with importance, and
laid a pink envelope, with an embossed violet in the place of a seal,
upon Brooke’s lap as she sat on the porch step waiting for him to settle
and unfold his budget.
The envelope contained a painfully written letter from his wife’s sister,
Sairy Ann, inviting Brooke to take the long-promised drive on the “Friday
route,” and pass the night at her farm, “to see the early birds in the
morning.” The sincerity of the invitation was so evident and the promised
experience so tempting, that, after thinking it over a moment, Brooke
went indoors to write an answer of acceptance, realizing that after the
Sign of the Fox should be hung in its place there could be no holidays.
“Going, bean’t you?” smiled the pieman, when she returned.
“Yes,” she nodded gayly, “that is, if I can persuade Mrs. Peck to keep
mother company. You see I have hunted far and wide for a young girl to
help in our new venture,” of which, by the way, the pieman most heartily
approved, and had been heralding it like the most persistent advance
agent along the entire course of both his town and country routes.
“Never mind, suthin’ may turn up yet,” he advised soothingly; “you’ve
got a week to spare and the Lord can raise up a heap o’ good as well as
trouble in that time, and sometimes waitin’ fer Providence after you’ve
done your best is advisable, and not to be jedged like settin’ and
waitin’ before you’ve done aught, and leaning, which is not faith, but
the devil’s yeast of laziness.”
In the early afternoon, after the pieman had gone on his way, Brooke
wheeled her father into the garden, while she planted the seeds of
mignonette, bluets, sweet-sultan, and China pinks, and the second
planting of sweet peas of Miss Keith’s saving, in the long rows that she
had advised, for now there would be a double reason for having jugs of
fragrant flowers on the table of the honeysuckle-screened south porch,
which Brooke had christened the Tea House.
Tatters was worried. Indoors he stayed by his master, outdoors he
followed his mistress—under the present circumstances, what was his duty?
First he licked Adam Lawton’s hand persistently, and then followed
Brooke along the line she had carefully marked with stick and string,
according to Stead’s gardening instructions, until he was made to
understand that his footprints in the newly turned earth were not things
to be desired; then he returned to the chair.
There could be no question that physically Adam Lawton was in every way
improving. The use of his hand was gradually returning, and with the
aid of a cane he could move slowly from the bed to his chair; he could
also play a game of checkers, and though he spoke slowly the words were
finished, not broken as at first. Still his thoughts were of the past and
lacked connection.
A sudden shower of potent April rain fell with sharp sound on Brooke’s
seed packages. Gathering them together hastily, she pushed the chair up
the sloping platform through the kitchen door that had been widened, and
as she did so the fishing pole that the Cub had mended fell clattering to
the floor. Stooping to pick it up she noticed that it caught her father’s
eye, and as she held it toward him, he grasped it eagerly, saying softly
to himself, “My new pole; to-morrow I’ll go fishing, if Enoch Fenton will
play hookey too.”
The rain increased and by five o’clock had promised to settle into
a steady pour that drew a curtain across the river, cut ruts in the
roadway, and gullied the soft fields,—a class of storm dreaded in spring
in a hillside country, and entirely the reverse of the traditional
growing rain.
The Cub came in and hung his coat to drip in the porch, and even the
water that ran from Pam’s grotesque and stubby tail made a puddle on the
floor.
“I turned the cows out and shut the gate, because Mr. Fenton said I ought
to from now on,” said the Cub, looking at the rain, and then gauging the
wind, as it tore downhill, like a veritable native. “I guess I’ll go back
and let ’em in again, just this once. No, I don’t want an umbrella, it’ll
only go bust,” he added, as he stepped out the door, closing it with much
difficulty against the rising tide of wind and rain.
Brooke, who had proffered the umbrella, stood watching him through the
glass half-door, and then a dark object coming up the cross-road drew her
attention. At first she could not make out whether it was man or woman;
then, while she was still in doubt, the screening umbrella broke loose
from its fastenings and, turning completely inside out, showed that its
carrier was a woman.
“Mother, please come here and see if you can tell me who this is
struggling up the road. Can it be Mrs. Peck? She is the only human being
hereabouts who does not keep a horse!” But the figure proved to be too
tall and straight to belong to the widow, who not only had settled and
gone to flesh, but was somewhat listed as well.
“When she reaches the house, whoever she may be, I would ask her in.
It may be some one who has come up by the trolley on the lower road
expecting to be met; better go and open the front door,” said Mrs.
Lawton, hastening to light the lamps, which were her special care.
Brooke started to act upon the suggestion, but as she gave a final look
she saw that the woman had already turned into the barn lane, and, though
evidently almost spent, was coming across to the kitchen door with a
directness that betokened familiarity. So Brooke returned to the side
door and, opening it a crack, held it against the racking wind. As the
gust swept through the house, Tatters, who had been lying in the hallway,
arose, gave a growl, then a sniff, and, with his tail beginning to swing
in a circle, nosed open the door, in spite of his mistress’s effort to
stop him, and threw himself violently against the dripping figure coming
up the cobbled path, who seemed to grapple with him.
“Back, Tatters! come back!” called Brooke, letting go her hold of the
door, which swung back with a clatter, as she clapped her hands to
attract the dog’s attention.
“Down, bad dog! Why, he will tear the woman to pieces. Quick! blow the
horn for Adam; I never dreamed he could act so!” cried Mrs. Lawton.
Brooke raised her hand to take the ram’s horn from its hook, still
calling and whistling to the dog, whose actions seemed to be wholly
unaccountable. As she looked, her hand dropped; the woman was hugging
Tatters, not buffeting him, while at the same instant the wind gave her
hat a final twist, breaking it from its moorings and carrying with it
the short veil whose modish black dots clung soddenly, like concentrated
tears, and the woman’s face was revealed.
“It is Cousin Keith!” gasped Brooke, dashing into the rain to lend a
helping hand, for the water-soaked skirts had finally wound themselves
into a bandage around the poor woman’s legs and effectually prevented her
from lifting her feet to the steps, upon which she sank, chancing into
the biggest puddle she possibly could have chosen.
Mrs. Lawton came to the door with hands extended, and a totally
bewildered expression on her face, while the same ideas were crowding the
brain of both mother and daughter. Had Keith West gone out of her mind,
or had a letter telling of her coming miscarried, and was her plight
wholly the result of not having been met and having miscalculated the
strength of the storm? Probably by this time she was no longer Keith
West, but Mrs. James White. If so, where was the First Cause? Had there
been a railway accident, or had she been “abandoned at the altar,” as the
newspapers put such matters?
“No, not into the kitchen,” expostulated Miss Keith, as Brooke would have
led in; “let me stand here and drip a bit—that is, unless you can set
down the little starch tub for me to stand in,” she added, as a shiver
went up her spine, making her teeth chatter.
“Nonsense, water cannot hurt oil-cloth, and you must go close to the fire
while I take off these sopping things at once,” said Brooke, decidedly,
pushing Miss Keith resolutely over the threshold and closing the door,
thinking, as she afterward said, that if she had a lunatic upon her
hands, she must neither hesitate nor argue.
Meanwhile the Cub had returned from the barn and, throwing open the door,
came upon the apparition of his tall and somewhat angular kinswoman, who
three months before had gone away in such brave array, being rapidly
divested of her outer garments by his mother and sister. Her sandy hair,
usually trigly coiled about her crown, had fallen down and stuck to her
face in gluey strings, suggesting, to his boyish fancy, seaweed clinging
to the figurehead of some shipwrecked vessel that at last view had swept
proudly from port, all sails set.
Giving vent to a long-drawn “wh-e-w,” the Cub began to laugh; it wasn’t
nice of him, but the scene was irresistibly funny. Not a word was
spoken, Miss Keith as yet offering no explanation whatever; and while
she managed to keep her usual poise, erect as a ramrod, she only moved
her legs and arms to release or put on garments as Brooke guided, like
a marionette. His laugh died away unheeded, and it was not until he
whispered “What’s up?” in a somewhat awe-struck tone in Brooke’s ear
that either of the women noticed him; and then Miss Keith gave a shriek,
and snatching one of the stockings that Brooke had but just succeeded
in peeling off, wrapped it around her neck, while Brooke said over her
shoulder, “We don’t exactly know, but won’t you _please_ go and stay
with father and coax Tatters with you,” for the dog was not a respecter
of clothes, and his joy at seeing his old friend was more emphatic than
convenient.
Seated in an arm-chair before the stove, enveloped in the Cub’s striped
blanket wrapper, her hair pushed out of her eyes, and her slippered feet
resting on the oven ledge, Miss Keith looked about the kitchen and then
at Mrs. Lawton, who had quietly taken a seat beside her as if expectant
of some new sort of outbreak, while Brooke went for a stimulant, and
mixing some whiskey and water, held it to the thin, teetotal lips, that
at first sipped dubiously and then quaffed eagerly, as she felt vitality
returning in the wake of the draught.
“Are you not better, and will you not tell us what has happened?” asked
Mrs. Lawton, in the precise, deliberate staccato speech by which the
calmest people often show that they are nervous.
“Did you write us that you were coming? And why, pray, did you not take
Bisbee’s hack from the station, instead of risking such a walk in a storm
like this?”
“Because I am a fool!” jerked Miss Keith; “I wanted to get here without
being seen; I hoped you would let me hide for a few days until I could
think out where to go and what to do! I came on the train as far as
Stonebridge, and when I boarded the trolley it promised to clear off. If
I’d taken Bisbee’s hack, the talk of me would have been all over town and
into prayer-meetin’ to-night. This is Wednesday, isn’t it?”
“No, Tuesday,” replied Brooke, soothingly, exchanging an anxious glance
with her mother, which as much as said, “Yes, the poor soul is deranged,”
while at the same time she was revolving in her mind how she could
manage, without attracting attention, to send Adam for Dr. Love, a young
physician of Dr. Russell’s recommending, who had lately established
himself in Gilead, hitherto the people of the River Kingdom having been
obliged to send either to Stonebridge or Gordon. Swift as the glance was,
Miss Keith, who was rapidly recovering herself, caught it in passing and,
moreover, read its full meaning.
“I’m not crazy, nor coming down with typhoid, nor dying from justice!”
she announced in a tone of suppressed excitement that was far from
reassuring. “In that I have proved scripture (not that it needed
proving), my visit of the last three months has been a success. Pride
goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. My pride is
gone and I have fallen—”
“Oh, Keith!” said Mrs. Lawton, faintly.
“In spirit, from my high aspirations,” she continued, not heeding the
interruption nor the sudden painful colour that suffused Mrs. Lawton’s
face. “Also a fool and his money are soon parted, likewise my money and
me. So I am, as I said before, a fool, but one who would like a few days
to review her folly before the minister and the neighbours feel called
upon to wrestle with her about it.”
Light was beginning to dawn upon Mrs. Lawton and Brooke, though as yet
the clouds were by no means lifted.
“Would you not rather rest until after supper or have a night’s sleep
before you pain yourself by telling us? We do not wish to force any
confidence, only naturally we feared that you were ill. Your room, by
chance, was aired to-day, and the bed-making is only a minute’s work,”
said Mrs. Lawton, rising and laying her hand soothingly upon Keith’s
shoulder, as a hint that she might perhaps like to retire, which would
have been an unspeakable relief. Not she! Keith West’s nature, blended
curiously as it was of Scotch and New England granite, was softest and
most retiring in triumphant, happy moods, but in adversity, unsparing and
unflinching.
“What I have to tell won’t improve by keeping,” she said by way of
answer. “To begin with, I ought to have known better, after all my
farming experience, than to buy a pig in a poke, a cow over seven, or a
horse without knowing its age, and expect a bargain.”
“You seemed to be having a delightful time in Boston when you last
wrote,” ventured Brooke, quietly, in an endeavour to hasten and focus the
explanation, which, being epigrammatically expressed, acquired vagueness
thereby.
“Yes, I did at first, until I found out that my friend Mrs. Dow was
charging her car fare up to me when she took me about, and that her
company, with which the house was so full that I had to take a third
story back, were boarders, and I was charged double rates because I’d
only come for what she called the ‘cream of the season.’ I didn’t find
all this out until the first month’s payday, and then I overlooked
it because I know learned men never get big salaries and I felt for
Judith’s pride. The next shock was that Mr. Dow, who I supposed was at
the very least a professor or something in the museum and, as they say,
‘counted an honourable position above high pay,’ was only the janitor!
One day when I was out alone I called on him, and the door man said the
only person of that name about the place was tending the furnace in
the cellar. As I stood on the sidewalk, hesitating, wondering if I had
mistaken the place, up popped Dow’s head through the coal-hole!
“Why hadn’t I guessed it before? I don’t know why, except that you don’t
judge a man by his looks or his clothes in Boston, only by his language,
and Mr. Dow certainly had a choice and entertaining flow. I meant to
speak of it to Judith, but I let that pass by too. Thinking of being
married so soon myself made me feel sympathy for a woman who wanted
the man of her choice to appear to advantage. All the same I felt like
shortening my stay as much as possible, and I wrote to James White to
that effect, he replying by return mail. He said that only one thing
stood in the way of his coming on the first of April, instead of waiting
until May; a small mortgage of three thousand dollars was due on the
farm, so that he must wait and arrange for it, as he wished to use the
money he had in hand for our journey and improving the place to suit me.
He hinted that money cost more out in Wisconsin than it does East, but he
guessed that he’d have no difficulty in renewing the mortgage at ten per
cent.”
Here Miss Keith paused for breath, clenched her hands, and set her
teeth, as if taking a fresh grip on herself before she continued the
confession. The expression on her face was that of a martyr, not only
refusing to recant, but rather insisting upon punishment. This time,
however, there was a third auditor, the Cub, who was standing in the
hallway, concealed by the door niche, his rather small, deep-set, gray
eyes fairly sparkling with mischief.
“As I said before, a fool and his money are soon parted, and here is
where I parted from mine. I don’t excuse myself and say that I was
overpersuaded, for I wasn’t—I was hallucinated and avaricious all in one.
My twenty years’ savings, four thousand dollars, only drew four per cent
in the savings-banks where I’d put it. If I took up that mortgage at
seven even, I should really be owning my own home, favouring my husband,
and being well paid for so doing, besides having something left over, for
even then a long experience in peddling eggs had learned me not to put
them all in one basket.
“So I wrote James White, and after a little of what seemed natural
hesitation, he took my offer, told me how to forward the money, and said
he’d bring the mortgage on with him, as it would be safer than in the
mails. Also that he would be on in ten days and bring his youngest girl
with him, as she was piney and he wanted her to see a Boston doctor, and
she’d be company for me if I felt strange in going back. He did write
real considerate,” and Miss Keith paused a moment, as if she could not
yet wholly forget her hopes.
“I lived well at Judith Dow’s those last ten days,—ice-cream every night
and as much real clear coffee as I could drink; and Mr. Dow brought home
three reserved-seat tickets to a Boston Symphony concert, but there was a
blizzard that night and the electrics got fouled, so we didn’t get there,
which was probably lucky, as I now firmly believe he found the tickets in
the street, or else in the museum, and the owner might have faced us down.
“Judith helped me with my shopping, and I was ready even to my bonnet
(yes, that very one lying annihilated over there) the last week of March.
James wrote that he would be on by the first week of April, and he was,
the first _day_, as it chanced. It was just before supper that night when
Judith came running up all those three flights of stairs and only had
strength left to say ‘they’ve come,’ and ask me wouldn’t I rather meet
James alone before they all came in to tea, adding that her little niece
was very weary and so she had gone to bed. I thought Judith looked rather
queer and pale, but I laid it to the stairs and a weak heart, and having
my new blue waist on, I went straight down.
“Judith opened the door of the parlour to let me pass, but as there was
nobody in it but a lean old man with a loose, close-shaven upper lip and
chin whiskers, I backed out again, thinkin’ she’d made a mistake, and
James was in the livin’ room where we ate; but she held the door, and I
said, thinking she didn’t notice, ‘Mr. White isn’t here!’
“‘Yes, he is,’ said she; ‘James, this is Keith West, your affianced!’
“‘You’re not James White!’ I said, getting as cold as clams, ‘I have his
picture; he is dark, and stout, and personable, with a heavy beard, and
but a little turned of fifty!’
“‘So I was, twenty years ago, when that picture was took,’ said the
horrid old man, grinning and wobbling his chin as he came forward, and
before I knew what he was doing he put his arm around my waist.
“‘How dared you both lie to me so!’ I cried, turning to Judith.
“‘I didn’t send you any picture; it was sister,’ said he.
“‘I didn’t lie—you deceived yourself, you never asked when the picture
was taken! You are fifty and he was a grown man when you were in the
primary,’ said Judith, sharp as a knife. And when I came to think of it I
never had thought of this, or worked out his age.
“‘Give me back my money and I’ll leave this house to-night!’ I said, but
even then Judith persuaded me to sleep over it and that things might look
differently in the morning.
“They did—only worse—for that night one of the oldest boarders, a third
cousin of theirs, crept in and told me that James White was already four
times a widower, his farm being in a feverish sort of country, and that
the girl—belonging to his second wife—who had come with him was really
twenty, though she had never grown since she was ten, and had epileptic
fits.
“I never slept a wink, but packed my trunks and slipped out for an
expressman as soon as it was light, and moved to a woman’s temperance
hotel that I had noticed not many blocks away.
“James White and his sister followed me hot-foot after breakfast, and
words passed on both sides, Judith doing more talking than her brother,
who it then seemed to me was somewhat lacking and wouldn’t have fought
back without being egged on.
“I said that I would sue for my money, and she said that he would sue
me for breach of promise, which he had in writing and signed plainly! I
stayed at that hotel until yesterday, wrestling with my pride, and then
I grew so homesick, the money I’d taken dwindled, and you know, Brooke,
you said that you’d be glad to see me if I ever came back, and so here
I am. I’ll work my board out, if you’ll let me, until I can look about
and perhaps rent a little place and go to raise chickens—if only you’ll
forget all that I’ve told and not repeat it except to Dr. Russell. Just
say I’ve changed my mind, for if Enoch Fenton got hold of this there’d
be no rest for me short of Middletown Asylum,” and Keith, relaxing at
last, began to sob just as she had the day that she had answered James
White’s first letter, using Tatters’ head (he had stolen in again) for a
pillow.
Both Brooke and Mrs. Lawton, remembering her kindly welcome home in their
trouble, said all in their power to reassure her, and the younger woman
gave her a rapid sketch of her new business plans, saying that if her
hopes were realized fair pay would also be a part of the coöperative
living. Something else she was about to add, for with all her sentiment
Brooke was far-sighted, but her inborn delicacy stopped her, for the idea
seemed harsh and brutal when put in words.
But the third listener read his sister’s thoughts and did not hesitate.
Striding into the room, he stood before his astounded kinswoman, towering
above her, and said, with an apparently genial smile and hands in
pockets: “I’ll make a bargain with you, Cousin Keith, fair and square
over the right. I’ll forget all about your trip to Boston, and help you
do the same, _unless_ you forget that sister is mistress here, that
I’m her backer, and mother the dowager duchess! In which case I shall
_remember_, and with _trimmings_!” And strange to say, the boy’s unasked
championship was possibly the only thing that could have clarified the
situation and made the coöperative household a possibility without
embarrassment or bitter feeling.
CHAPTER XV
THE MASQUE OF SPRING
The new dweller in the country longs for the coming of May as the only
truly gracious month of the New England spring. In a few seasons,
however, he learns to regret April, for when that month has gone, and the
curtain fairly rises on the Masque of Spring, while it seems as if the
orchestra is but playing the overture, and while yet he is watching the
drapery curtain of leafage unfold, the throng on foot and wing pass by,
all madly whirling to the pipe of Pan as they follow the voice of the
ages that guides them to their breeding haunts, lo and behold! spring
promise has merged in the summer of fulfilment.
It was Brooke’s first knowledge of the coming of spring in wild nature.
Spring in New York means a certain lassitude and enervation—the sun
withers and the river winds chill alternately with exasperating
inconsistency. The planted tulips put up their decorous heads in the
parks at a certain date, much as the women in the streets don their
flowery spring head-gear,—both are pleasing to the eye, yet there is
nothing spontaneous or unexpected about either; while to come suddenly
upon a mat of arbutus or catch the silvery gleam of a mass of bloodroot
transfiguring the silence of the woodland, where the leaves of a dozen
winters, graduating to leaf mould, muffle the tread, is an event. So
every night Brooke longed for the next morning and its surprises, and
every morning she was eager for sunset and the night voices. Not that
she wished time away,—far from it,—but to her its passing also meant
progress, the nearing a certain goal.
Sometimes it seemed to her that in a previous existence she had lived the
life of the River Kingdom; perhaps it was the heredity moulded beside
the Highland torrents that sang to her in the voice of the Moosatuk. On
this last day of April, as she stood at the edge of the pasture, with
wands of delicate cherry bloom waving softly between her and the river,
like heralds ushering one into the presence of a monarch, the words from
the song of the migrant bird, “Out of the South,” came to her lips, and
she chanted them softly, watching the old horse holding a nose-to-nose
conversation with a neighbour in the next field:—
“I have sought
In far wild groves below the tropic line
To leave old memories of this land of mine.
I have fought
This vague mysterious power that flings me forth
Into the north.
But all in vain, when flutes of April blow,
The immemorial longing lures me, and I go!”
Then, abandoning for the time the fight against the lure of a voice
beyond her ken and a memory in which sweetness and pain were inextricably
blended, she gave herself wholly up to the spell of the present.
Another happening that day lent wings to her spirit, though the thing
was both practical and humble. Bisbee, the stableman, upon the strength
of having seen the Sign of the Fox when it was at the blacksmith’s being
framed in iron (for the rings had not held), ordered a sign for his newly
completed stable, offering the generous price (to him) of twenty-five
dollars for it, he to furnish the wood.
“There’s a regular horse painter over in Gordon will do me a race-horse
in a sulky, driver included, for fifteen,” said Bisbee, a big, jolly,
liberal man, whose rosy cheeks plainly told that they were not made in
New England; “but he’s done that same one fer everybody within ten miles.
Besides, what sense in a race-horse sign fer a family stable, say I? Give
me something safe and assuring, yet not too safe!”
So Brooke had eagerly accepted the commission, for with the return
of Keith West, two or three hours a day for work had become a joyful
possibility, and she conceived the idea of painting the heads of two
horses upon the sign-board he had sent up. One must represent a staid
family horse, and the other a more speedy roadster, and as she looked
across the pasture, the natural position of the two gossips by the stone
fence gave her the motive in a flash. If she only had the board there,
she might sketch in the grouping at once, she thought, and the light also
was exactly as she would wish it. The sign was in the barn, but it was
too heavy for her to carry, and Adam had gone up to Windy Hill for the
day, to do double work, as Robert Stead was expecting Dr. Russell to go
on their annual trouting excursion to Stony Guzzle the next day. Well,
there was no help for it, but still Brooke gazed about as if expecting
help would fall from the skies or spring Jack-in-a-box fashion from the
ground. It was the latter that happened, for at that moment the head of
the farmer-on-shares appeared above the fence of the potato field, where
he had just completed his task of planting, and was about to follow along
the little brook to the road.
As Brooke hesitated to ask him to do an errand that certainly had nothing
to do with farming, he paused involuntarily. Meanwhile Brooke thought, “I
can surely ask it as a courtesy such as any man would do me,” and said,
“Good morning, Mr. Maarten” (she did not call him by his Christian name
as she would have one distinctly in service, for instinct hinted to her
that he might have been driven to his present vocation by hard luck),
“would you do me a favour?”
Instantly the tools and potato bag were dropped, but he did not take the
advantage of coming nearer, as he might easily have done.
Then Brooke explained her need in the frank way she had of taking people
into her confidence, yet without gush or familiarity, that had always
been one of her charms; and Maarten hastened to the barn while she went
to the house for her chalk and sketching stool.
In an hour, after several false starts, Brooke had compassed the grouping
and outline, though there was one curve in the neck of the young horse
that displeased her. Hearing the pieman’s whistle out on the road, and
remembering that this was the day when she was to accompany him on his
route to “Sister-in-law Sairy Ann’s,” and knowing that Maarten would
naturally have gone home to his dinner,—for he never brought it in a
pail like other labourers, her informant being Enoch Fenton, who said he
table-boarded at the best place in Gilead, and paid six dollars a week,
and most likely had a big head,—she was demurring as to how she should
get the sign back, for to leave it might tempt the cows to lick the chalk
off. At this point she became conscious, through one of those swift half
glances that tell so many tales, that Maarten was waiting a little
beyond, and not only waiting, but watching her eagerly. Therefore, taking
advantage of the circumstance, she laughingly apologized for asking
two favours in one day, but would he carry the sign back to the little
harness room, long disused, with a door of its own on the pasture side of
the barn, where the sign could be kept free from hay dust?—adding, half
aloud, as she took a final look at her work, “There is something wrong
about the line of old Billy’s neck; it could not possibly twist like
that.”
Point of view frequently has as much to do with our estimate of a thing
as the value of the thing itself. Therefore Brooke’s progress of fifteen
miles through the hill country in the pieman’s wagon brought her in
touch with an entirely different side of the world of the woods than if
she had driven over the same way with a party of guests who chattered
inconsequently, or gone on horseback in the company of Stead, as she had
done once or twice lately, for even the mild-mannered old horse required
guiding and attention that banished the spirit of revery.
The pieman had covered his wares carefully, and rolled up the curtains
all around, while the horse, dragging the loaded cart, proceeded perforce
at a walk, so that Brooke, seated on a low chair, travelled with all the
leisurely ease of an old-time queen in a palanquin. This pace brought
her close to every feature of the Masque of Spring, face to face with the
reality of it, and she could anticipate, and then realize, every detail
in its fulness.
Her charioteer also was as much a child of nature and a part of it all as
the big gray squirrels that raced along the fence-tops, while his simple
and positive faith in the goodness of all created things, and his intense
love and kinship with the wild brotherhood, opened a new world to Brooke,
banishing for the time all care and responsibility and replacing it with
the wholesome pleasure of the hour, born of the pure joy of mere living.
When one has known trouble, and then felt this touch of peace, is it not
the new Revelation of God, fitted to meet the needs and greeds of to-day,
even as nineteen centuries ago the single-hearted Messenger brought his
spiritual message to the material Oriental world?
They would travel a mile, perhaps, in entire silence, the pieman merely
pulling up now and then, and pointing with his whip to a warm spot,
where a group of silver-green ferns slowly unfolded and stretched their
winter-cramped paws, or else, with finger raised, caution silence
while the song of some elusive bird thrilled the air,—“Whitethroat,”
“Fox-sparrow,” or “Oven-bird,” being his only words. Then a settlement
of half a dozen houses, and a period of bustle, barter, and exchange of
news would interrupt, and so on until, as the “peepers” began to tune up,
and the sun called the warmth of the day swiftly after him, they turned
into Sairy Ann’s yard.
After a keenly relished supper, Brooke and her guide stole out to the
edge of a strip of woods that separated some grass meadows from a
brawling trout stream running its downhill course a dozen miles before
the Moosatuk received it. There, seated on a log, they waited as the
twilight began to cast its mysterious spell. Presently a strange cry
sounded through the gloom, was repeated, and echoed by others a second
and a third time. Next a rush of wings, as if a bird was flung suddenly
into the air, opening its wings at the same time. A sharp whirring sound
followed, increasing as the wings that made it vanished skyward. Bending
forward to watch the wonderful flight, until eye could not see it, in a
moment Brooke was startled by the falling as of a bolt from the clouds
close beside her, followed by a sweet musical whistle.
“First one’s down again,—see, he’s doin’ it over!” said the pieman, and
the call and lunge were repeated as before. But this time the girl’s
eye did not follow; the wonder and rush of it all was thrilling her
from head to foot. She had seen the sky-dance of the woodcock, the free
Walpurgis night’s festival of the American river woods, with wild flowers
for bracken and hemlock boughs for witches’ brooms. Once more her toes
tingled, music rang in her ears, sorrow and love both slipped away,
and she was again the little girl playing at gypsy queen in her River
Kingdom. That night Brooke slept deeply, but it was the sleep of dreams
that comes from being drowned in a “best room” feather-bed for the first
time, an experience both fearful and wonderful.
Instead of starting on his return trip at seven the next morning, as
usual, the pieman’s advice was asked by his widowed relative concerning
the buying of a cow, which was to be sold at auction that morning in the
next village. For this one day at least Brooke was in no haste, and as
the auction began at nine o’clock and was two miles distant, the pieman
suggested that she might like to spend the time in the woods that they
had skirted the previous night, and walk along the stream. Then, when she
had gone as far as she chose, all she had to do was to follow the brook
north again without fear of going astray, while by way of a lunch Sairy
Ann gave her half a dozen mellow russet apples, the storing and keeping
of which, in prime condition, well into the summer was a matter of great
pride.
Nothing could have suited Brooke better than these few hours of perfect
liberty,—she was responsible for nothing about her, not even for her
presence there. The widow’s hens were cackling vigorously, and she
laughed as she realized that, whether they broke their eggs or stole
their nests, it was a matter of indifference to her. The revulsion from
the tense responsibility of the past three months flew to her head like
the subtle May wine of the Old World, her heart beat fast, she stretched
her limbs, and then began to thread the woods toward the stream in a
delicious waking dream.
Being guided by sound, she stood looking at the bits of drift that
swirled by, the water drawing her eyes and holding them as a mirror does
those who are near it.
In a few moments she noticed that, while there was a distinctly marked
path among the rocks and stones along her side of the watercourse, the
opposite bank was heavily brushed and almost impenetrable, while the
sunlight came filtering through and danced upon the water in a way that
entranced the artist in her. Choosing a mossy stump, and being thirsty,
for the first thirst of spring is more keen than any that follows, she
seated herself, buried her shoe tips in the deep moss, and taking an
apple from her pocket bit into it deliberately, critically watching the
juice ooze from the wound her teeth had made. As she munched, gazing at
the sunbeams chasing the shadows over the water, she was startled by a
ringing sound, as of metal striking stone. It was repeated several times
before she located its direction, and as she did so, saw that the noise
was made by the shoes of a horse, who was coming downstream, browsing
along the foot-path, in the line of which she was seated.
A second glance showed her that it was Manfred, Stead’s horse, with
bridle fastened loosely to the saddle, while a fishing basket attached to
one side easily explained his presence. Seeing Brooke, he came quickly
toward her with a friendly whinny and nosed the apple. Almost at the
same time Robert Stead himself, in the water to the knees, slowly wading
the somewhat treacherous shallows, and whipping the stream as he came,
appeared from under the arch of overhanging hemlocks.
For a moment he did not seem to believe the sight of his own eyes,
and then, rapidly reeling in his line, he looked out for the nearest
landing spot and stood before Brooke, with an expression that might
be interpreted either as one of surprise or resentment at having his
sport thus interrupted. But then he had acquired a stern expression by
practice. Brooke had often before thought he wore it as a mask, and his
words were not angry, but almost playful.
“Eve, the apple, and a bit of Eden! But how did you come here and what
are you doing?”
“_Not_ Eve, because, as you will observe, I am not going to offer my
apple to the only man in sight, but share it with a good sensible horse,
who will not tell tales. I came up to the farm last night with Mr.
Banks, the pieman, to see the woodcock dance, and I’m waiting here while
he buys a cow for Sister-in-law Sairy Ann. As to what I am doing, I _was_
eating an apple, but Manfred interrupted me; and now I’m going to begin
another, and I’m very sorry that your simile prevents my offering one to
you,—for they’re good,” and Brooke took a bite from a particularly fine
specimen, a mischievous glance following her words.
Stead tethered the horse a few yards away and, coming back, threw
himself down on the clean hemlock needles beside her. He felt suddenly
relaxed, tired he would have called it, as if rigidity and strength had
mysteriously left him.
“And you?” continued Brooke, “I see of course that you are fishing, by
the two small trout in the basket; but how do you come to be so far away
from home at eight in the morning, when Adam said that Dr. Russell was to
visit you to-day?”
“Because Dr. Russell came on the mail train last night and is now
whipping the west branch of the stream; in this narrow cut we interfered,
and we shall meet a mile below at Stony Guzzle in the course of an hour.”
“Then you had better take to the water again, for I heard them saying
last night that this stream takes two steps sideways for every one it
goes forward, and that gives you a three-mile walk plus fishing!” said
Brooke, with a perfectly frank unconcern that piqued the man to natural
contradiction.
“Thank you for your prudent advice, but I would rather sit here, for once
simply because I wish to, and trust to Manfred’s hoofs for catching up
with the doctor!”
“Do you not always do what you wish?” asked Brooke, surprised at his
changing mood, and feeling her way.
“Do you suppose that I can wish to lead the idle sort of life I do?” he
asked quickly, looking up at her to compel a direct answer. “It is only
because I have not a motive strong enough to make me break away, and
desire of action is dead; but is that doing as one wishes?”
“Oh, I thought you loved it here at Gilead, and could not be happy out
of sight of the river—I—at least that is—what I made of what Dr. Russell
said,” stammered the girl, astonished at his vehemence in contrast to his
usual deliberation.
“I do not know what he has said,—nothing unkind, that I warrant; but he
does not know—no one does. Listen, Brooke, for I am minded to do what I
have never done before—put my burden on some one else by sharing it, and
tell you the real reason why I am as I am, which has never before passed
my lips in words. No, you must be patient and listen,” he said, for
Brooke had made a sudden movement as if to rise. Stead did not realize
that he was perhaps spoiling the girl’s holiday; self-centred he was,
at base an egotist, though an unconscious one; and to the fact that he
regarded everything at the point where it touched himself could be laid
the pith of all his unhappiness.
“Why do I tell you? I do not know, except that in all these years
since, you are the first woman I have met whom I think would understand
and who is also young enough to have mercy, and it is a matter for
woman’s judgment. Yesterday a letter came to me from an old friend in
my profession, asking me to overlook a bit of bridge work for him for a
month or so in early summer, while he takes some needed rest. At the end
he tells me of his plans for work, urges me to join him, and gives me
what he words as ‘a last call back to life.’ All this has stirred up the
sources of a stream I thought long dry; instead of putting it away, as I
once did, as something done and gone, it tempts me, and I am strangely
all at sea. I feel as if I only need some one in whose sincerity I could
believe to say, ‘Go back to work,’ and I should go.”
“And leave the River Kingdom?” asked Brooke, looking up in alarm, her
first thought, it must be said, being of the Cub’s schooling. “We should
miss you so.”
Stead’s eye brightened, and taking her hand that was not busy with the
apple and rested on the stump, he held it between his own. He himself
did not analyze his motive, simply it gave him comfort and secured her
attention. Then he said earnestly, solemnly it seemed to the girl, from
whose eyes the merry banter of a few minutes before had passed, “Listen,
Brooke, brave woman, who is fighting out her own problems to the shame of
others such as I.
“When I was turning thirty and engineering a railway through a mountain
region of the south, I met and loved a woman as heartily as a man may,
but the passion seemed one-sided. She had given me a final answer, and I
was preparing to go away, as gossips whispered there was ‘some one else,’
when the next day she recalled the no and made it yes.
“I was almost beside myself with surprise and joy, and after a brief
month we were married, for my work was ended and I was going North. For
ten years we led a charmed sort of life, a little girl soon coming to
share it with us. We three, with José always as attendant, travelled
wherever my work lay, sometimes living in houses, sometimes in tents,
but always happy. Then the first grief came to me (it is nearly twelve
years since)—my little Helen died, down near Oaklands, where we were
summering. The illness came like a shot in the dark, without warning, and
Dr. Russell, whom I then met for the first time, was powerless.
“After this my wife began to droop and grew sadder day by day. This was
natural except for the fact that she sought to be alone and avoided me,
until one day in a fit of bitter melancholy she told me the secret that
had lain between us like a sword all through those married years.
“When I had first met her she had a lover, a wild, hot-blooded, handsome
fellow of the south mining country,—for him she refused me! At the same
time, unknown to her, he had committed a crime and the law was on his
track. He took refuge, as they thought he would, in her vicinity, and she
was watched to see if she would take him food or shelter him. To foil
them she betrothed herself to me, and thus disarmed, the watchers left,
and her lover escaped scot free.”
“But why didn’t she go too, or follow him?” interrupted Brooke.
“Because what she called her sense of honour forbade her, and she never
meant that I should know,—she was willing to pay the price of the scamp’s
life with her peace of mind.”
“How she must have loved him!” said Brooke, tears trembling in her voice;
“I don’t see how she could have lived it down. To save the man you love
by marrying another, even if it was the only way—oh, I am not brave
enough to do such a thing, and so I must not judge her!”
For a moment a startled expression crossed Stead’s face, as if this side
of the matter had never occurred to him; but again self conquered.
“Do you wonder that I cannot forget, and that nothing seems worth while
when I know that in those years of seeming happiness I was the companion
of a woman whose heart was never mine; who played her part to me, until
the child’s death broke the capacity? Whom can I trust after that?”
“I do not think you could have really loved her as you thought,” said
Brooke, looking at him simply with deep, quiet conviction in her voice,
“for if you had you would have at least understood her. And at the worst
I should think you would have flown to work instead of away from it.”
“It may be that you are right,” Stead said, after a long pause, in which
the thoughts of both travelled far, but in different directions; “I have
a mind to try, but I shall never go away permanently from the River
Kingdom. Child, child! how strange it is that your words should have been
so long on my lips before ever I met you! Will you wish me luck for a
motive, if I go in June?”
“Yes,” answered Brooke, wondering about the time of day, for the shadows
had shifted greatly.
“And be glad to see me when I return?”
“Of course,” said Brooke, frankly; then, as other words struggled on
Stead’s lips, blocking each other by haste, the pieman’s bell warned her
that he had returned and was ready to start. Giving the last apple to
Manfred, she freed her hand, stretching it vigorously, for it was almost
numb, sent a hasty message to Dr. Russell, and fled out into the open.
Robert Stead waited motionless for several minutes, looking after her;
then, shaking himself as a horse does after a period of standing, he led
Manfred to the wood road below, and prepared to make up for lost time.
Yet for some strange reason he did not give the girl’s message to Dr.
Russell, neither did he vouchsafe any explanation of the fact of there
being only two trout in his basket, or prate about “fisherman’s luck”
when the enthusiastic doctor showed ten beauties bedded in wet moss.
There was enough light left on Brooke’s return for a survey of house,
garden, and barns. It is strange when one goes away but seldom, that to
find everything in place on the return and people doing as usual comes as
a certain surprise. She opened the door of the old harness room to peep
at her sketch of the horses. After a careful survey, she said to herself,
“It is certainly true that one cannot judge work justly at the time it is
done. Yesterday the neck of the young horse seemed all awry, but to-day
it has exactly the toss and turn I was striving for.”
As she closed the door she glanced down over the fields, but neither man
nor horse was there, only a convocation of crows sitting on the fence.
The pieman would doubtless have maintained that they were discussing
among themselves the probable location of this season’s corn-fields.
CHAPTER XVI
THE WAY THE WIND BLEW
However anxious the wife of Senator Parks had been to impress herself
upon New York society, she experienced a delightful sense of relief
when the winter of her novitiate was ended. Furling her banners of
tactful triumph, she left town immediately after Easter, thereby doing
the correct thing and following her own mood, a combination of rare
accomplishment.
Many times during the season she had thought of the Lawtons and missed
Brooke sorely from the circle of bright young women in their “third and
fourth winters,” whom she had the good sense as well as the attraction
to draw about her; but the swirl of the pool had been so insistent that
she had done little more than to send Brooke one or two cordial, if
inconsiderate, notes of invitation to visit her, which of course had not
been accepted.
Now that she had moved to the famous Smythers place at Gordon, and
found her early passion for outdoor life and her developed taste for
luxury at once sufficiently satisfied by its beauty and stimulated by
its possibilities, she desired the companionship of some one of taste,
a friend and not a timeserver, with whom she could discuss her plans.
Immediately her mind reverted to Brooke Lawton, and knowing from Lucy
Dean that Gilead was within driving distance from Gordon, she set out
in her victoria one exquisite afternoon toward the end of May to locate
Brooke. Visiting Mrs. Parks was an elderly New York matron, Mrs. Van
Kleek, of particular social importance, who was anxious to run over to
her own cottage, recently built in Stonebridge and not yet open for the
season, in consequence of which this drive, having a double mission,
began immediately after luncheon.
Both coachman and footman, being new importations to the hill country,
knew even less about the upper and lower turnpike and maze of cross-roads
than did their employer, who had a general idea of the region. It seemed
an easy matter to keep the river in sight, and yet the constant desire
of the ladies to follow up each pretty lane, with its delicate fringe
of wild flowers or drapery of catkins, kept luring them away from it at
right angles; so that five o’clock in the afternoon found the sweating
horses, as yet unused to anything longer than the drive through the park
to Claremont and return, toiling wearily uphill on the upper pike just
above Gilead, facing the way in which they desired not to go, but had
accomplished by looping about in a figure eight.
The coachman was growing momentarily more anxious lest the horses should
break down; the footman was bored and cramped with long sitting; both
ladies were weary, quite talked out, and longing for their afternoon tea;
while Mrs. Parks was also exasperated at the failure of the excursion.
“Stop a moment, Benson, and let Johnson ask that man in the field yonder
if we are on the right road to Stonebridge, and if there is any place
near where we can rest,” she said finally. Benson pulled up as well as
he could on the incline; Johnson dismounted and interviewed the farmer
and, returning with a disgusted expression, said, “Stonebridge is six
miles downhill, the way we’ve come up, mum, and if you please Gilead is
that village a mile and a half back, mum, we passed a bit ago. This ’ere
is the hupper road, the one in the dip below follows the river easy from
Gordon to Stonebridge, and he says we’d best get on that.”
Mrs. Parks demurred a moment, and while she did so Benson, whose word was
law in all matters concerning the Parkses’ horseflesh, turned on the box
and, touching his hat, said in a tone that was not to be contradicted,
“Mrs. Parks, mum, we must keep on the way we are going, facin’ with the
wind until we can get to a flat spot where I can blanket my horses and
rest them a bit. I’d not take the risk of turning them against that chill
river breeze in their present sweat.”
Both ladies understood stable ethics, and the moods of husbands when
these same are disregarded, too well to object, and so a drive that
would not have been abandoned for anything else was reversed by the mere
blowing of the wind.
Reaching the beginning of the plateau by the West homestead, Benson had
the tact to choose a spot for blanketing the horses where the cross-road
opened Brooke’s favourite river vista to the ladies in the carriage.
“How beautiful!” mumbled Mrs. Van Kleek, drowsily, her dry tongue
cleaving to the roof of her mouth.
“It would be if we could only have our tea,” sighed Mrs. Parks. “I
declare I must have an outfit of some kind adjusted to this carriage, for
I’m devoted to driving, and every one says that it is the great feature
of this hill country, and of course there isn’t a place around here where
they know what tea is.”
Johnson, who had been reconnoitring with an eye to a well, returned at
that moment. “Hup yonder, mum, there’s a neat house, mum, and a sign of
a fox hangs by the gate, mum, quite like the old country, only it says
‘TEA’ instead of hale, mum.”
“Tea on a sign-board here in the backwoods! Lead the horses a little
farther up, Benson, and Johnson, do you go in and ask what we can
have,”—turning to Mrs. Van Kleek, “I don’t suppose the tea will be any
good, herbs or old hay, but at least it will be wet, and perhaps hot,
and I’m beginning to feel the evening chill in the wind. I wonder why no
one has the sense to have a good tea place hereabouts, like the English
tea-gardens, where they would put up sandwiches for fishing and touring
parties and all that. They could make a fortune in the season, I’m sure.”
“Here’s the bill of fare, mum,” said Johnson, returning and presenting
the card; “a most genteel place, mum, though they’ve no license for
spirits. Everything made fresh to order, mum, and in fifteen minutes.
Besides what’s there, mum, there’s ginger hale and club sody, and will
you ’ave it ’ere or go on the porch, mum?”
“Mrs. Van Kleek, will you look at this!” ejaculated Mrs. Parks, laying
the card upon that lady’s lap as if she had suddenly been presented with
a patent of nobility.
“Printing, get-up, prices, quite like Tokay’s! We will decide quickly,
lest the thing prove an illusion and vanish as we near it, Cheshire-cat
fashion. Johnson, we will have a pot of tea for two, with cream, and
half—no, a dozen lettuce and chicken sandwiches, served out here. Also
you may get ginger ale and cheese sandwiches for Benson and yourself,”
for Mrs. Parks owed much of her social success, as well as happiness in
life, to the fact that she recognized the equal primal necessities of
all classes, and she argued that if Mrs. Van Kleek and herself, seated at
ease in the carriage, were thirsty beyond endurance, Benson and Johnson
on the box must be doubly so.
In due course the man returned, and turning up the flap seat in front of
the ladies, placed the tray, with its dainty array, upon it.
“Damask napkins, instead of paper!” gasped Mrs. Van Kleek.
“Real cream!” said Mrs. Parks, “and domino sugar!”
“English breakfast tea, smell the aroma! a pot with an inside strainer,
and porcelain cups and saucers!” continued Mrs. Van Kleek, proceeding
to pour the tea, after which the remarks of the two women turned into a
veritable patter song of praise, punctuated by sipping and munching.
“Really, this is most extraordinary! I wish I could tell of what those
plates remind me; I seem to have seen the pattern before. Ferns, and no
two bits quite alike,—it’s not at all like the usual commercial china,”
said Mrs. Van Kleek, sinking comfortably back among the cushions, after
finishing two cups of tea, together with five of the delicate sandwiches,
and still looking meditatively at the sixth, murmuring, “Tokay could not
outdo this, they are of the best—and the tea—simply unique!”
“Johnson,” called Mrs. Parks, for the two men were eagerly regaling
themselves at a respectful distance, “take back the tray and see if they
can change this bill—and Johnson, was there a waiter or any one there who
should have a tip?”
“I should jedge, mum, there was one elderish party who should; she
was rather snappy, mum, and charged me not to break the ware; but the
others are gentlefolks, mum, quite through, and said as of course I’d be
careful, which of a certain I would, mum, and me bein’ in service, mum,
where I’d always known real china from Liverpool, and plate from pewter,
which they ’ad the eye to see, mum,” and Johnson walked off, bearing the
tray as carefully as if it held family plate.
“Wait a minute,” Mrs. Parks called after him; “ask if they can put me
up fifty sandwiches, some of each kind, for ten o’clock to-morrow, and
pack them in a box, and if they know where a family named Lawton live
hereabouts,—the Adam Lawtons.” Then to Mrs. Van Kleek, “The Senator is
going to take those four old California chums of his, that come to-night,
trout fishing somewhere up this way to-morrow, to a place called Muzzle
Guzzle, or some such name. I wished to send a nice luncheon out in the
bus with the camping stove and the under cook to have it hot for them,
but no, the Senator has ordered sandwiches—plenty of sandwiches, with
Scotch and soda. They are to be driven only to the foot of the hills,
and then walk for the rest of the day. He says they want to forget who
and where they are for once,—be boys and all that sort of thing, you
know,—so if I could get the soda and sandwiches here it would be quite
delightful.
“How long he stays! I believe I will go in myself and see to the matter,
for my curiosity is quite piqued. Will you come? No—very well, I’ll not
be gone a moment,” and Mrs. Parks, her delicate robes trailing behind
her, crossed the dandelion-studded sward toward the house, with a swish
and swirl of skirts, and a step as elastic as that of a young girl.
Laugh, as has been the foolish fashion, at those women who come out of
the West to receive the chill of eastern polish; yet they bring us a
better gift than they take, that of buoyancy of heel, head, and heart
that we greatly need.
Mrs. Van Kleek meantime adjusted her head, heavy with comfortable
sleep, and gratefully entered the Land of Forty Winks, evidently for a
protracted visit.
Hesitating as to whether front or side door was the legitimate entrance
for wayfarers, and deciding upon the latter, Mrs. Parks, rounding the
corner hurriedly, came face to face with Brooke, who was coming up from
the garden bearing a great bunch of lilies-of-the-valley, while Tatters
trotted beside her carrying a basket that held still more.
“Brooke Lawton at last!” and Mrs. Parks put out her arms and, to
Johnson’s amazement, clasped Brooke, flowers and all, in a hug of
spontaneous pleasure, that made the girl’s heart beat quick for many a
day, as she thought of it.
“Is this quaint, delightful place an inn as well, and are you stopping
here?” queried Mrs. Parks, holding Brooke off at arm’s length, first
looking at her and then sweeping the surroundings with a comprehensive
glance.
“No, it isn’t an inn exactly,” replied Brooke, mischief lurking at the
corners of her eyes and mouth, “though I’m staying here. I am the Sign of
the Fox, and this is my home! Now that you are here, pray come in and see
mother, while I make you a bouquet from my very own garden in remembrance
of the hothouse lilies you sent us when father was first ill.”
“The Sign of the Fox!—you! how do you mean?” ejaculated Mrs. Parks,
knitting her brows as if some one had asked her to guess a conundrum.
“Ah, yes, then that was your _mother’s_ fern china and her brand of tea
that we all used to rave over! Mrs. Van Kleek was recalling it only an
hour ago—by the way she’s out in the carriage (go tell her, Johnson, that
Miss Lawton lives here and ask her to come in). But I do not yet quite
understand.”
“It is this way,” explained Brooke, with an admirable self-possession,
in which diffidence and independence were equally blended. “We had the
farm and a bit of money, but not quite enough to keep us; the life agrees
with father, and may cure him. If Adam and I went away to earn more
money, mother could not stay alone. Then I tried to think what I could
do or sell here. People drive a great deal hereabouts; the hill country
makes people hungry; therefore why not make and sell good tea and good
sandwiches? And I think that you must have found them so,” she added
archly, looking at the empty plate upon the tray that Johnson had left on
the serving table in the screened porch.
“Good! superlatively so! but why didn’t you write me of your plan and
let me exploit it and interest our own set? for you know that they are
scattered all over these parts at some time of the year, either for the
entire season, or between times, and before and after Newport and Europe.
I would have done it with a will, I assure you, as I shall now with a
megaphone voice, in spite of you!”
“I know that you would have, Mrs. Parks, and Lucy Dean wished to also;
but what has happened, I think you must acknowledge, is best. I wanted
people to find out for themselves, as you have done, and if they bought
my wares, to do so because they are good and they need them, not because
I sell them and desire their money. Otherwise the sun would very soon set
on the Sign of the Fox, instead of apparently beginning to rise. You
know that it is the way of the world!
“But tell me; how did you come upon us? merely by chance? This must be a
lucky ‘red letter day,’ for Lucy herself is coming to visit me to-night;
Adam has already driven down to Gilead for her.”
“Partly that, but chiefly because of the way the wind blew. You see we
started for Stonebridge and circled about, not finding our mistake until
we began to climb the hill below. By that time the horses were quite
spent, and Benson would not turn back in the teeth of the river wind.”
“It’s no use, mum,” said Johnson, returning, “Mrs. Van Kleek is sleepin’
that ’eavy and ’appy it would take a brass band to wake her, mum,” so
the two women passed indoors, the fragrance of the lilies-of-the-valley
lingering in the air.
When Mrs. Parks left, her arms full of flowers, a half-hour had sped by;
but Mrs. Van Kleek, awaking with a jerk, was none the wiser for it, for
one of Mrs. Parks’s maxims was that it is always a mistake to apologize,
save at the pistol’s point, because it usually provokes irritation by
calling attention to things that, ten to one, would otherwise pass
unnoticed. As the victoria, following Brooke’s advice, turned the corner
toward the lower road, they met, coming up, a fat-stomached country horse
dragging a rockaway, that pulled to the side of the narrow cross-road to
let them pass. In it, beside Adam, sat Lucy Dean, while the rear seat was
heaped with hand-baggage; she waved gayly to Mrs. Parks, who would have
stopped then and there for a gossip about the afternoon’s events, but
Benson, intent on making the home stretch, all deaf to her exclamation,
kept his horses up to the bit, and soon the river road echoed their
hoof-beats.
As to Mrs. Lawton, the visit, brief as it had been, did her untold good,
besides giving her no feeling save of pleasure, thus bringing her for
the second time naturally in contact with old acquaintances, without in
the least destroying her peace of mind or making her doubt the wisdom of
having broken away from the old life.
* * * * *
Brooke and Lucy always met with enthusiasm; indeed, one of the
reasons for the stanch friendship of the two being the way in which
they supplemented each other, thus allowing the character of both
complete scope, without forcing either into the lead, except in matters
conversational.
“I was so surprised and pleased when I knew that you would come, for
the very evening after I wrote I saw in the _Daily Forum_ that you were
starting with your father on his car party to California. How did it
happen that you changed your mind?” asked Brooke, leading the way to the
little room next hers, for which Lucy had begged, instead of the formal
and unused best room over Mr. and Mrs. Lawton’s, which some day was to be
beautified, but at present harboured the dreadful black walnut furniture
moved from below, in addition to smelling of wood soot and wasps.
Lucy threw herself into the arms of a fat rocking-chair that was covered
with a cheerful bird-of-paradise chintz, and rumpled her hair back from
her forehead before she answered. So long was she about it that Brooke
looked toward her apprehensively, fearing that the trip might have given
her a headache; then she noticed that Lucy really looked tired, and that
there was a lack of colour in her cheeks for which car soot could not
wholly account.
“I did expect to go, and had planned out a delightful group of people for
the trip, which, aside from pleasure as a side issue, was to explore and
exploit a new bit of country that father thinks needs a railroad, and
help convince his friends of that fact.
“_The Forum_ offered to send Tom Brownell as the newspaper man of
the trip, besides which two or three others we had chosen are always
excellent fun, and Mrs. Parks was to be chaperon, at which she is a
perfect success. She has the knack of always being on the spot, in case
any one needs to prove or disprove an alibi, yet at the same time is
totally oblivious; so Mrs. Grundy never has a chance to say a word, and
every one is happy.”
“Did you turn your back on such attractions to come to us?” said Brooke,
deeply touched. Her feeling showed plainly in the look she gave Lucy, as
after unpacking her friend’s toilet things, she had dipped a sponge in
warm water, and kneeling by her, began to bathe her forehead and eyes as
gently as if Lucy had been a tired little child.
Lucy closed her eyes and gave a sigh of content at the touch of Brooke’s
fingers, but in a second opened them again, and looking straight at
Brooke, replied: “No, I won’t let you quite think that, though you know
that I love to be with you and your mother. Some of the party turned
their backs on me; first, Tom Brownell had himself replaced (I made sure
through Charlie that it was his own doing) by a young westerner who, he
said, ‘knew the local ropes’ better, and would be of greater advantage to
the prospectors. Next Mrs. Parks decided that as _the_ baby was teething
she could not leave him for so long, in spite of having a separate maid
for his head, hands, and feet, besides a trained nurse in perpetual
residence.
“Then father suggested that little Mrs. Morton be invited in Mrs. Parks’s
place. You must remember her,—the Hendersons’ cousin, a pretty, subdued
little widow of about thirty, who puts people’s houses in order and sees
to the curtains and other interior decorations. She always looks as if
she’d been cut out for a good time, but fate has been rough to her, and
though she is working hard to get used to it, a merry devil will look out
of her eyes in spite of herself.”
“Oh, yes, I remember. She redecorated your house as a surprise for you
the season we were abroad, I believe,” said Brooke, sudden illumination
coming to her, for it had been openly whispered, early in the season,
that Mr. Dean was ardently, if maturely, in love with Mrs. Morton, but
that the little lady’s peace-loving nature and hardly won independence,
coupled with a fear of Lucy and her sharp tongue, stood firmly in the way
of a very comfortable and suitable match.
“Yes, and father wished it done over again this winter, but I absolutely
refused to be routed out in cold weather. Now I’d heard, as I know you
have by your face, Miss Simplicity, that father was supposed to wish
to marry the lady long ago, but that she was afraid of me. At first it
pleased me to have her afraid; I revelled in it, also I thought that the
idea would wear off with father.
“Lately I’ve changed my mind, and I think life is too good to live it
alone, and that everybody ought to marry any one they wish to, provided
the person does not have fits or inherit consumption. Then I went to
father and told him so, and he was so pleased that he nearly made me cry,
for though he always said that I was everything to him, it wasn’t quite
true it seems; and he said that some day I would find out that he was not
quite everything to me, and oh, Brooke, I really think I should like to!”
Brooke, who was still kneeling by Lucy, put her arms around her, and the
two women, each having felt the mysterious throb of the woman heart that
made them kin, rested a moment cheek to cheek.
Lucy recovered first, and shaking off the tender mood, tossed her head,
the usual bravado returning to eye and lip as she said: “Next, I went to
see Mrs. Morton and told her that so far as I was concerned the coast was
clear, that I bore no malice, and that I hoped she and father would have
a jolly old age (she is only six years older than I); but that I simply
could not go on the car trip with them, though I would thank her not to
announce it until after the start.
“She—well, she is a good sort, and I guess we understand each other, for
she looked me straight in the face and said she hoped she’d have a chance
some day to stand by me in return, and she didn’t slop over or call me
‘dear daughter,’ or say she’d be a mother to me, for any grown woman
knows that there is only one who can be that.
“Consequently society and Charlie Ashton think that I’m speeding to
California, while in reality I’ve flown to you for protection against
the blues, and I want to stay a month if you will let me cook and do
everything as you do—it is what I need. Who knows but I might turn
farmer, or try love in a cottage myself some day.”
“A month, Lucy! oh, how good!” cried Brooke. “Yes, you shall do as
we do,—you’ll really have to if business rushes as it has since we
began,—but I’m afraid you will find it very dull, unless your fate dashes
up in an automobile.”
“Dull! not a bit of it! Why, if I feel my flirting ability growing rusty,
I can practise on the Cub’s elderly paragon, Mr. Stead, or try archaic
sentiment on your big farmer man to console him for the sweetheart who
has not yet materialized. From your ardent written descriptions of the
landscapes about here, and the important places he always fills in them,
it seems to me that he must be at least a straying Walther or a prince in
disguise, seeking to be loved for himself alone.”
“Mr. Stead will probably be down to-night, so that you need lose no time
in beginning,” Brooke made answer, flushing hotly. “We four have been
playing whist a good deal, lately, and as I am not passionately fond of
it, you shall take my hand. I think that you and he will prove pretty
evenly matched in most things. As to my farmer, as you absurdly call
him, you had better leave him alone,—it’s not worth while,—he might
misunderstand, take you in earnest, and embarrass you.” Whereupon, after
making the most cutting speech that Lucy had ever heard from her tongue,
she turned about and went quietly downstairs, saying something about
hurrying supper, as Lucy must be hungry as well as tired.
A new idea came to Lucy, born of her own teasing words, spoken wholly
at random and in jest, and of Brooke’s flushing. She had always thought
Brooke wholly an idealist in affairs of the heart, and that whatever
emotion she had ever been able to detect had been brought out by the
artist Lorenz during their Paris sojourn. When it had apparently ended
in naught she had been both disappointed and glad, the latter especially
after Adam Lawton’s failure, for after this she had desired Brooke,
through matrimony, again to have the luxury and chance to enjoy her art
that she thought her friend deserved.
When Charlie Ashton had drawn her attention to the resemblance to Brooke
in the picture, “Eucharistia,” she had expected developments, but now
that nearly six months had passed she regarded the thing as a mere
artistic coincidence, the lingering in the man’s memory, perhaps, of a
face for which he doubtless had a passing fancy.
Now a tangible possibility in the shape of Stead came into the
foreground. Though Lucy had not seen the man, the Cub had given
him a glowing recommendation. As to his age,—Lucy was a woman of
experience,—fifty might mean many things, fatherly or otherwise, and the
life of leisure he led implied that he had some independent property.
Was he not always much at the house, and were not his books and various
offerings scattered about everywhere, even at her first visit? Brooke had
written of horseback rides in his company. Surely he did not come alone
out of respect for Mrs. Lawton or anxiety about the Cub’s lessons. Why
had Brooke blushed and been so resentful?
Lucy sprang up, and seizing a brush, began to work at her hair with a
will, until the colour returned to her cheeks and the glossy dark locks
wreathed her crown in a way to add a fascinating air of maturity to her
arch face. Then, picking out the most dashing waist she had brought,
having merely chosen her plainest clothing, she adjusted it over a long,
flowing skirt and stood surveying herself for a moment, saying half
aloud, “I will look at Milor Stead, widower; if he is a good possession
for little Brooke, so be it, I stand aside; if not, I interfere!” and
then a softened expression followed the one that Brooke’s semi-challenge
had called forth, and she added, with a sigh, “How I wish Brooke could
have some one’s whole, first, fresh love, be he rich or poor! She would
keep it and live and die for it, and not mar it with a selfish thought. I
wonder if Charlie is right and that Tom Brownell is trying to avoid me?
Bah! but it is really a handicap for a woman to have a rich father; the
money lures those she dislikes, and gives the others blind staggers, and
they bolt in the wrong direction.”
Two minutes later, Lucy, wholly radiant, was pushing Adam Lawton’s chair
in to supper, and insisting that she was sure that he recognized her,
even though he could not speak her name, while the Cub changed seats so
as to be next her at table, and Pam insisted upon sharing the somewhat
narrow chair by wedging herself between Lucy and the straight, high back.
CHAPTER XVII
LOCKS AND KEYS
Ten days passed, and June was urging the growth of flower and leaf with
ardent breath. Even in the hill country, with its cool nights and winds
that rush down the river valley, the days were sultry, and August lent
her younger sister electric batteries for her relief; and almost every
afternoon the soft, rounded summer clouds that seemed to flock about
Windy Hill, like pasturing sheep, were put to flight by the dun-edged
thunder scud with its whips of lightning.
Robert Stead had now gone his way to the north-west at his friend’s
request, the work indoors and out had settled with an even and soothing
monotony over the West farm, while the Sign of the Fox and its fame were
already relieving Brooke’s anxiety as to the immediate future.
As Lucy paced to and fro along the neatly gravelled walks of the
old-fashioned garden, where the Cub was engaged in “brushing” the long
line of sweet peas, a vocation requiring a knack that he did not possess,
it seemed to her that two months, instead of two weeks, had passed since
her coming. Not that she was in any way bored or discontented, rather
did it seem as if she had always been a part of the household and living
her normal life, while the revelation, indoors and out, of work done by
personal service, instead of by money proxy, had given her active brain
much food for thought of a new though baffling order.
In many other ways also did Lucy feel herself baffled. Upon Robert Stead
she had failed to make the slightest impression, either during the
half-dozen calls he had made at the farm, or upon a ride she had taken in
his company to his lodge on Windy Hill, when he had invited Mrs. Lawton
and Brooke to see his garden and some prints of old masters that they
had been discussing. The Cub being busy, Brooke had driven her mother in
the buggy with old Billy, and Stead, who had ridden down with an extra
saddle-horse in tow, had accompanied Lucy back.
Not that he was discourteous; quite the contrary. He was the polished man
of the world, always polite, with a pretty compliment, too well-rounded
for spontaneity, upon his lips and plenty of intelligent conversation,
as well as chink-filling small talk that prevented dangerous pauses, yet
withal he was inscrutable.
Hardly less so did Lucy find Brooke herself; perfectly free and frank
in their daily intercourse, yet she neither offered nor asked special
confidence. She brightened with all the charm of a born hostess when
Stead came, and he gravitated toward her as naturally; yet when he left,
even for six weeks’ stay, she exhibited no sign of loneliness and threw
herself into her play, which she called the few hours she seized for
painting, with fresh vigour, either working in the old carpenter’s shop,
that by opening a trap door above had a fine north light, or going into
the open fields to use Enoch Fenton’s colts, sheep, or oxen as studies.
It was not strange, however, that Lucy could not fathom the mind of
either maid or man, for did they really know themselves? Stead was
experiencing the conscious coming of a second youth, even before he was
more than in the full vigour of middle life. The period of torpor through
which he had passed was much like the indifference and languid, brooding
time of adolescence before the bite of motive and passion awakens body
and brain and clears the vision; and it was Brooke who blamelessly had
brought all this to pass, Brooke, with her heroism of womanhood that was
none the less subtle and acute because of its elusiveness.
Robert Stead loved her as a man loves but once, no matter how often he
may marry, but this second passion was so different in its elements
from the first that he did not recognize it as such, and consequently,
unchecked, it doubled its hold, even while Lucy was unable to put two and
two together, and piece a single palpable symptom.
In a state of rebellion bordering on disgust, Lucy, who heretofore had
been the sort of woman that had usually obtained anything for which
she had cared to try, and much for which she had not striven, turned
her attention to the farmer-on-shares,—Walther, as she called him, who
was undoubtedly a most filling and picturesque figure in the perfect
series of pictures that grouped themselves between the homestead and the
Moosatuk,—to find him not only difficult but impossible of approach,
and try as she might, she had not yet succeeded in exchanging a word
with him. At the same time many of his doings puzzled her, for though
he was entirely his own master, by the very nature of the half-and-half
agreement, and had nothing to do with the home garden or aught else
about the place, his whole desire seemed to be of use and to serve its
occupants, though unobtrusively.
It had been only a few mornings after her arrival that Lucy, just at
dawn, looking out of one of her windows (which overlooked the back of the
house, Brooke’s having wholly a river view), discovered the big fellow
setting out a quantity of seedling asters, a task that Brooke had begun
the afternoon before, and darkness had stopped when half accomplished.
Did Brooke know of it, she wondered.
Again, at the same hour, she saw him, hands encased in great leather
mittens, uprooting the vigorous poison ivy and tearing it from the
pasture fences, and at once she remembered that Brooke bore the crusty
burn of contact with it on one hand.
The Cub now and again remarked that Maarten was a brick and helped him
out of lots of tight corners, without even a hint being given, and Lucy
wondered if Brooke saw or understood; apparently she did neither, and yet
the very day after the Cub had thrown down his armful of pea-brush in
disgust at the tottering, inebriate line that rewarded his best efforts,
the brush appeared all set in place, standing like an evenly trimmed
hedge, attractive in its neatness, aside from the crop of fragrant
promise that already was beginning to finger the support clingingly with
its tendrils.
But how was it with Brooke herself? If it is true that filial love or
work in sufficiency can fill life to the brim, then hers was full to
overflowing; yet this is not all,—work, to be the heaven it may be at its
best, demands that the heart be satisfied.
Lorenz she had known less as a man than as an idealist, and it was this
side of his nature that she loved, together with his respectful yet
truth-speaking attitude. Then came the mystic picture, bringing with it
to fan the naturally kindled flame the knowledge that he remembered! No
further word had come from him since the verse of Sisyphus that she had
answered merely by a spray of arbutus blossom, the New England flower of
spring hope, shining through melting snow. Could he interpret it? Perhaps
not.
Sometimes a sense of the unreality of it all and the dream stuff it was
made of came over Brooke, and she wondered if the spell would hold or if
the separation was not more sweet than the reality; but this mood never
lasted long.
Of the patient service of the farmer-on-shares she could no longer be
ignorant, nor of the fact that he drew her eyes toward the landscape
of which he had come to be an inseparable part. Unwittingly she found
herself watching him day by day, though usually as a mere speck in the
distance. At such times she was bewildered, and trembled at herself. Was
it the poise of his head, and an occasional gesture as he stepped back
to look at something that he had done, that reminded her of Lorenz and
confused the two identities for the moment, or had the strain of the long
winter of struggling warped her brain?
Brooke was no analyst who had made the mental dissipation of the
dissection of motives take the place of natural emotion. The ideal of her
nature had its outlet; why not then the real? It was the natural man in
Maarten that drew her, something beneath the surface, obliterating the
bands of caste and the social grades that divided their normal positions,
though for that, except for her father’s disastrous city career, she was
equally born a child of the soil and its heredities.
She avoided the hay-fields, now swept by the June snow-storm of daisies,
and in spite of success and her friend’s companionship, was truly
miserable for the first time, for she could neither understand nor throw
off the spell she felt upon her. Self-respect is not oblivion, and is but
a chilly comforter for youth.
The frequent thunder-showers had forced a new necessity upon the Sign
of the Fox. An open shed at least must be had to protect vehicles that
needed cover, while their occupants were sheltered by either screened
porch or welcomed in the neat kitchen itself; so that an old lumber room
in the cow barn had been cleared, and furnished with rings for tying
up, the drivers upon the upper road being chiefly of horses; for the
chauffeur avoided the steep, uneven hills, which jarred the constitution
of the car of Juggernaut unpleasantly, even in the downward trip.
It chanced a little before this time that a party of young fellows,
headed by Charlie Ashton, in his big Mercedes touring car, built for
long-distance runs, had started for Gordon, where they were in demand
for a tennis tournament. Ashton’s chauffeur turning ill and unfit at
the last moment, they had beat about, and discussed the possibility of
substituting one of their number for the professional, as they all had
more or less experience; and the lot had fallen to Tom Brownell, who had
joined the party for a brief vacation, at the end of which he was to take
the position of city editor of the _Daily Forum_, a well-earned promotion
for which his gift of discerning the true from the merely sensational
peculiarly fitted him.
Brownell knew from Ashton that the Lawtons were located somewhere on the
route they were to take, and ever since his first maladroit interview
with Brooke he had desired to be of some service to her, that should
atone for his blunder.
The pair of keys on which he had stepped that day in leaving the
apartment had always remained, as it were, before his eyes, and after
learning all possible details of the Lawton failure from many sources, he
felt doubly convinced that, if these keys were placed, they might solve
at least one of the many questions unanswered because of Mr. Lawton’s
illness. He had therefore asked Lucy Dean to get them if possible—which
she had done.
Two months of following the faint trail furnished by two thin keys merely
bearing numbers but not even the initials of their makers, had at last
brought about a certain result which might or might not be satisfactory,
but at least warranted him in seeing Brooke, and telling her of his
progress; and this was one of his many motives of touring to Gordon.
He knew, from Lucy herself, that the Lawtons were located in the vicinity
of Gilead, and inquired the nearest way to the homestead, when they
reached the village late in the afternoon. On learning that it was on
the hill road, and as the machine he was driving had had two temper fits
within the hour, Brownell side-tracked it in a pleasant spot on the lower
road, and leaving his companions to spend an hour with their pipes and
the liquid remains of their luncheon, he started afoot up the cross-road.
There had been many people stopping for tea at the Sign of the Fox that
afternoon; in fact, the last trap was only leaving as Brownell turned the
corner, being that of Mrs. Parks, who dined at eight on purpose to have
the sunset hours for driving,—a performance that the Senator could not
understand.
Brownell hesitated a moment, as many others had done, as to which door,
front or side, was the more direct entrance, and deciding upon the
latter, turned the corner of the house and took the cobbled path that ran
between the prim box bushes toward the kitchen door. As he passed under
the window of the little library, the sound of a voice inside made him
stop as abruptly as if a detaining hand had been laid on his shoulder.
“They are at Coronado,—the engagement is announced,—they are to be
married immediately, and instead of coming home with the party go on to
Vancouver and Alaska. Father can no longer be my all in all, yet there is
no one to take his place!” were the words the voice uttered deliberately,
with an accent half mocking, yet with an undercurrent of sadness to one
who understood.
Standing on tiptoe for one brief moment, Brownell saw Lucy Dean’s
clear-cut face through the shielding vines; it was turned away from the
window, and she continued speaking to some one whom he could not see, but
easily divined was Brooke herself.
Recovering his power of motion as quickly as he had lost it, Brownell
darted down the lane toward the barn, and opening the door of the first
outbuilding that he reached, sprang in, closing it quickly behind him
with a heedless bang, in all the guilty trepidation of some peeping Tom
in fear of justice. In reality the being that Brownell most feared at
that moment was himself, as rendered illogical, helpless, and oblivious
of even the carefully planned work of his life, when in close proximity
to Lucy Dean. If she turned and saw him, he knew himself lost, so that
immediate flight was the only hope left.
From the moment he had first met her Brownell had admired her stanch
friendship for Brooke, while her buoyant and frank audacity had soon
fairly swept him off his feet. He had gone to the Dean house many times,
it is true, half because not to do so would have been brutally rude,
half fluttering, moth-in-the-candle fashion and courting a singeing,
until in the close companionship of the six weeks’ journey that had been
proposed, he saw that he would not only be at bay, but completely at the
mercy of that most uncertain of quantities, the motherless daughter of an
influential and wealthy man.
As an institution he had no quarrel with matrimony,—simply it had no
place at present in his somewhat altruistic plan of work. He did not wish
either to love or to marry; to see Lucy had cast him into the former
state, and caused matrimony to fill the entire vista.
What had he to offer—that is, financially? Even with his promotion he
could little more than compete with her father’s _chef_. Of himself he
had but an indifferent opinion, which was unwise, merely his ambitions
were so far ahead of his achievements that he measured his shortcomings
by the discrepancy.
That Lucy delighted to compete with him in a sort of game that Brooke
had called “truth telling” he knew, also that in some way he seemed
to stimulate her wit; but that there was a grain of sentiment in her
practical, and what people thought somewhat hard, nature, he never for a
moment dreamed. Therefore, knowing that if he saw her often the moment
would come when from his own standpoint he must become ridiculous in her
eyes, he had escaped from the overland trip, as he now sought to escape
the sudden and unexpected meeting by flight.
It would soon be dusk, and he could slip back to his companions unseen,
make some easy excuse for not having called, and tell Brooke of his
partial discovery by letter. This flashed through his mind as the door
closed. At the same time he looked about the building that he had
entered, to see if it had another exit, and discovered it to be a poultry
house, the well-white-washed perches of which were crowded by mature,
experienced hens, each wing-capped for the night. In the uncertain light
he made a misstep on the uneven ground, compounded of ashes and broken
lime, that formed the floor, which sent him reeling into the midst of
the feathered multitude, and as he grasped a perch to save himself from
rolling in the dust, he shook off the portly sleepers. A perfect babel of
hen alarm arose as the frightened ladies flew in his face and lodged on
his arms and shoulders in their useless flight.
“Be still,” he called in a husky voice; “for heaven’s sake don’t raise
such a devil of a row—they will take me for a rat or a weasel at the very
least, and set the dogs on me,” and then he laughed when he realized
upon what unintelligent scatterbrains his words had fallen. The windows,
all too small for retreat, were also netted. There was but one door, so
finally, getting his bearings, he made a dive for that, only to find it
firmly fastened by Miss Keith’s anti-chicken-thief spring lock! They say
love laughs at locksmiths, but bitter satire! when before had the device
of one of the craft imprisoned a man flying love, in a fowl house?
Folding his arms, with shoulders squared and jaw set, Brownell waited.
Already he heard the barking of a dog, women’s voices, and steps upon the
porch of the house. Could any position be more preposterous?
* * * * *
Lucy had finished reading her letter, and stood in the porch, watching a
catbird’s fantastic wooing as it paused in the midst of an impassioned
song to jeer, expostulate, coax, and protest all in a breath, now raising
itself tiptoe on an ecstatic high note, and then languishing until it
seemed to melt into the bushes. Every other bird loses self-consciousness
and pours his heart out in the love time, the catbird never; and yet its
compelling fascination lies in that it is always itself.
Lucy laughed softly as she watched the feathered pair, and said to
Tatters, who stood beside her, “Do you know, old fellow, I think if
any one wooes me, he will have to do it all in a breath, and after
hypnotizing me by his rattling, like that bird yonder, secure my hand and
heart before I wake. How I wish I were that lady bird this very minute,
having all this fuss made for me, and sitting perfectly composed in a
bush without a thought to spare for my trousseau!”
Tatters’ answer was a low growl, and then a series of quick barks as the
hubbub in the hennery began.
“I think something is stirring up your poultry; shall I go and see?” Lucy
called, going around under Brooke’s window, for the latter had gone up to
rest a few moments after a tiresome afternoon.
“I guess the hens have only fallen off their perches, and are
frightened,” Brooke answered, coming to the window; “they often do, the
sillies. It cannot be rats or weasels, for that is not Tatters’ animal
bark,—that tone means a man, and no one would be so foolish as to come
prowling before dark.”
Lucy continued to watch the catbird, but on the noise recommencing,
Tatters growled again, and leaving the porch, nose to ground, skirted the
library window, went to the gate, returned, stood under the window for a
second with bristling hair, and then, leading straight to the fowl house,
began tearing at the door.
Interested in his tactics, and thinking the intruder nothing worse than
a prowling cat, Lucy threw the skirt of her flowered dimity over her arm
and crossed the garden to the lane.
“Quiet, Tatters, quiet!” she cautioned, patting his head; “you must let
me attend to this; dogs are not allowed in fowl houses, they have been
known to produce heart disease in susceptible young pullets. Sit down
and watch out!”
Touching the spring, she released the latch, and opening the door
cautiously, lest any fowls escape, she peered in, thus coming instantly
face to face with the caged man! The shock for a moment made her lose her
poise, and she almost tottered as she cried, “Tom Brownell!”
At the same time Tatters, seeing the strange man, sprang forward, and to
keep him back Lucy stepped inside the sill-less door; his weight as he
sprung closed it with a snap, making her in turn a prisoner.
“I thought you were in New York! What are you doing here?” she flashed,
regaining her poise and colour at the same time.
“And I thought that you were in California,” retorted Brownell,
carelessly, hands in pockets, holding sentiment down hard.
“Then you did not come here to see me?”
“On the contrary, I came to see Miss Lawton! Are you usually to be found
in chicken houses?”
“Ah, she _is_, then? Suppose, as we must put up with each other’s society
until Tatters leads Brooke to our rescue, that we play the truth game to
kill time,—you know that truth can be trusted to kill almost anything
nowadays; I will ask the first question. Did you give up the California
trip because you wished to avoid me?”
“Yes, but not in exactly the way—Yes, I did,” this with an emphatic nod.
“It is my turn. Why did you not go to California?”
“Because—because—” and the eloquent Lucy became suddenly tongue-tied.
“Because of a prospective stepmother, was it not?” assisted Brownell,
feeling an instant warmth about his heart, as her defiance relaxed.
“No, it was because you were not going—that is, because my feelings, my
pride, were hurt,” and again she raised her head with a defiant glance,
adding hastily, “Now my turn. Why did you wish to see Brooke, and if you
came to see her, why are you found hiding in the fowl house?”
“I came because I have learned something about those mysterious keys.
They belong to a box in a little-known safe deposit company in Brooklyn,
and the name of the lessee is not Lawton; further, they would not tell
me, nor can I go on without some aid from the family. Does this errand
meet with your approval?”
“Then the keys do belong to something! Come quick, Brooke, let us out
and hear the news!” called Lucy, pounding on the door; but no response
came,—only a growl, not from Tatters, but from the unseen thunder-shower
that was, as usual, making its way over Windy Hill.
“As to your last question,” continued Brownell, without heeding the
interruption, “I was passing a window on the way to the side door when I
heard a familiar voice reading a letter. One look confirmed my suspicion,
and, like a wise brute in danger, I made for the nearest cover, not
expecting to be made a prisoner, but to get off unseen!”
“Why do you avoid me? What have I done to make you hate me so?” Lucy
almost whispered, a little break creeping into her voice that made
Brownell start forward.
“Why? Because a sane man usually avoids a danger of which he has had many
warnings. Don’t look at me like that, Lucy, and for God’s sake take your
hand off my shoulder, or you’ll make me forget my self-respect and let
myself go, only to be mocked by a woman!”
But Lucy did not move her eyes or her hand, while its mate stole to his
other shoulder.
“Talking of self-respect,” she said slowly, but with an indescribable
tender archness of accent, “why do you wish to make me lose mine by
forcing me to throw myself into your arms? See, I am braver than you, I
do not fear to be mocked by a man!”
“Lucy!”
“Tom!”
Those were the only two intelligible words of the rush that followed,
but even the catbird in the syringa bush, had his eye and ear been turned
that way, might have taken a lesson in rapid and complete wooing and
winning.
A patter of rain on the roof, another growl, and a flash caused Brooke
to hasten out to the porch to look for her friend, while Tatters still
barked and clawed at the door of the poultry house. Opening the door, she
spied Lucy, who, for the moment, had pushed Brownell into the darkness
behind her.
“So you looked for cats and weasels, and the door slammed on you!” she
cried, dragging Lucy out by the wrist, and brushing away the whitewash
that powdered her dark hair. “Hurry back to the house, for you know that
neither one of us has a love of thunder-storms!”
“You were right, Brooke, it was not Tatters’ animal bark,—it was a man
that frightened the fowls,” answered Lucy, still holding back.
“A man! Then why do you stay out here in the dusk? Who was it? You are
laughing,—it must have been Adam playing a trick on us!”
“Adam! Oh, no, it is the man I am going to marry! Brooke Lawton—Tom
Brownell! I believe, by the way, you have never before been properly
introduced!” and the next flash saw three figures, followed by a joyous
dog, scudding toward the house under a burst of rain.
* * * * *
While the storm raged it was impossible either for Brownell to regain
his companions or to communicate with them in any way, while the
probabilities pointed to the chance of their having returned to Bisbee’s
stable for shelter at the first signs of the storm.
At the supper table Lucy’s radiance was so dazzling that no one could
pretend to ignore it. The Cub, to whom Brownell was of course a stranger,
was inclined to be resentful and clumsily sarcastic, but as the elder man
had both tact and magnetism, he speedily concluded that it was better to
have a new friend than an unnecessary enemy. Mrs. Lawton and Miss Keith
were made partakers of the news by mere inference before the formal words
were spoken, and Brownell at once became a friend of the family, even
before the matter of the keys and his diligence in their interest came
up. Brownell took the bits of metal from his pocket and laid them on the
table beside him, as he told of his idea that, being paired and of the
type that is used by safety-vault companies, they might in some way be
connected with the personal belongings of Mrs. Lawton and Brooke; how
that by chance he had seen keys of a similar pattern in the pocket of a
friend, but, in locating the company, had found the name given by the man
renting the box to be West and not Lawton!
“That was grandmother’s maiden name, and this is the West homestead,”
said Brooke, in a tense whisper. “The keys must have something to do with
father and all of us, if we can only fathom how!”
“If West is a family name, the rest must unravel in time,” said Brownell,
looking eagerly toward Adam Lawton, who, sitting as usual in his
wheel-chair at the foot of the table, had turned slightly toward the
young man, idly fingering the keys, his eyes fixed on the distance.
The circular storm, that had veered off for a time, now returned with
renewed fury. Pam jumped into Lucy’s lap and hid her head under the
table-cloth. Miss Keith fled to her room and bounced into the middle of
her feather-bed, to “keep her feet off the floor,” as she said. Lucy held
Tom tightly by the hand, while even Mrs. Lawton and Brooke grew pale and
the Cub feigned an indifference that he was far from feeling, for the
effect of the air charged with electricity was palpable and not to be
ignored.
There came a moment when a series of explosions followed one another like
pistol shots, next a scathing flash and a deafening report, and at the
same instant a sound of ripping and tearing in front of the house, while
a sulphurous odour filled the room.
Tatters, who was huddled close to Brooke, raised his head and gave a
weird howl, and for a moment no one had either power of speech or motion.
Brownell was the first to recover, and going quickly to the front door,
he threw it open and looked out The giant button-ball inside the fence
was split from crown to trunk, and great twisted splinters littered the
short grass; but the old pine, holding the Sign of the Fox upon one of
its gnarled arms, stood safe and intact like a good omen.
“Look at father!” were Brooke’s first words, spoken as Brownell returned,
and the entire group about the table watched him in wonder.
At the flash his eyes had closed and a tremor passed over him, but when
he opened them again, a new intelligence was there. Slowly he looked
about; then, noticing the keys, that had remained between his fingers, he
clasped them tightly with an exclamation of satisfaction, and, turning
toward his wife, who had drawn close to his chair, said slowly, with
perfect articulation, yet hesitatingly, as if each word suggested its
neighbour: “Mela, here are those keys of the new box that I hired to-day
to hold your little belongings. I—seem—to—have—dreamed—that I—lost—them!
I may have a business ordeal—to go through—and what little belongs to
you—and—daughter must be put apart—in—safety. I took—this—in the name—of
Adam West, and to-morrow Brooke must go—also—to be recognized—Where am I?
how—did I come here at the old home?” Slipping from her chair, Brooke
went to her mother, and gently, each holding a hand, they wheeled the
chair back to the familiar bedroom, so that neither place nor people
should cause the return of memory to rush too swiftly and overtax itself.
Brooke left her father and mother together there, and going to the
library, wrote a brief note to Dr. Russell, asking his guidance in this
new crisis that might mean so much or so little.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RETURN OF MEMORY
Of the household at the homestead, one heart sank instead of rejoicing,
at the first sign of the return of memory to Adam Lawton. This one bumped
painfully in the chest of the Cub, as, leaving the room unnoticed, with
face pale as it had not been for months, and unheeding the flapping
sheets of rain that smote and enveloped at the same moment, he fled to
the barn and threw himself with head buried in his arms on the dwindling
haymow that had once sheltered the little fox.
Poor Cub, with the first perfectly lucid utterance of his father all the
old cringing dread had returned, and his manhood again struggled with the
fear that he had believed dead. This, also, after five months of proving
the stuff of which he was made by bitter, patient toil, until day by day
the warring elements were adjusting, the jangling grew fainter, and at
each hammer touch of experience the metal rang more true. If Adam Lawton
could have realized this, and seen his boy with unbiassed clearness, the
loss of money and life itself would have been nothing to the bitterness
that would have come to him as the results of his arbitrary attitude.
The Cub need not have trembled. Remember whatever Adam Lawton might, a
law of life had been broken and their positions were reversed, the leader
must be led, the dictator of another’s free-born will must be protected,
gently dealt with, guarded from trouble, loved pitywise, but never would
he square his shoulders to the world and give and take. Can worse irony
of fate come to any man who has really lived?
An hour after the electric bolt had riven the plane tree planted as a
landmark by the first West, and by its mystic influence cleared Adam
Lawton’s brain, the warm June moon, a line from full, was slowly pushed
edgewise from between the clouds and rolled slantwise above Moosatuk, a
giant coin of gold, fresh and articulate from the mint.
Lucy Dean and Tom Brownell, coming out-of-doors the instant the storm
abated, walked up and down the cobbled path, all oblivious of the puddles
between the stones or of the dripping trees above. Brownell had meantime
entirely forgotten how he came to be where he was, also his friends below
on the river road, whose motive power he represented for the time being,
or the fact that, as the only resting-place in Gilead for the homeless
was a “Commercial Hotel” of small dimensions and still less visible
cleanliness, it would be necessary for them either to sleep in the
touring car or in Gordon.
As the pair for the twentieth time reached the road end of the path and
turned again into the deep, sweet-smelling shadows of the great box
bushes, a buggy turned the corner from the cross-road and came to a halt
by the side gate. A slender male figure in a light suit and cap, leaping
therefrom, attracted their attention, and Brownell exclaimed, “Great
Cæsar! I’ve forgotten those wretches down below and they’ve come for me!
Now for it! right-about face, Lucy!” at the same time by a dexterous turn
of the arm catching her about the waist; for Lucy, whose chief pride
had always been facing the music, whether necessary or not, had started
to bolt, and exhibited as charming a bit of struggling confusion as the
heart of man could desire.
The moonlight struck the man’s face as he came forward. “It’s only
Charlie Ashton,” she said, freeing herself at once, her head raised to
its defiant poise; “as he doesn’t know that I am here, it is his turn to
be surprised!”
Charlie Ashton, the useful and ornamental, did not bear a reputation for
overweening brilliancy; but the moment his eyes rested upon the pair
before him, divided though they now were by a box bush, he divined what
had happened.
“So this was the plot, and the reason you thought the hill would
disagree with the auto, and left us to drown all this time down on that
soaking river road so that you could meet Lucyfer alone,” he cried,
seizing Brownell by the hand and nearly wringing it off, while he aimed a
kiss at his cousin’s cheek, in token of his approval, which by a toss of
the head landed on her chin.
“On my word, Charlie, there was no plot, it was pure accident. I never
dreamed of my luck!”
“Most certainly not!” interrupted Lucy; “otherwise he would have been
safe and sound in Gordon two hours ago, instead of being engaged to me.
He really came here to tell Brooke about the keys, but circumstances
which he could not control (as he did the overland trip) obliged him to
see me first in a place hardly as airy, though quite as secluded, as a
special Pullman vestibule!”
Ashton, scenting a mystery, but being too wary to press his cousin for
the clew, gave Brownell’s hand a final wring, saying, without being in
the least aware of his play upon words, “She’s a match for you, old man,
stubborn as you are—yes, and more than a match, and you have my profound
sympathy; but do have pity on us to-night and pilot us into Gordon, for
we are damp and hungry and sleepy, and this old plug is all I could get
at the stable. To-morrow you shall have the confounded car for the rest
of the week to return here in, choose your passenger, and go and break
down in the wildest cross-road of this confounded hill country. I’ll
even give you leave to ruin a tire, or if the worst comes to the worst,
wrench the steering gear, though I hope that won’t be necessary. Cheer
up, Lucyfer, it isn’t nine o’clock yet, and he can have a good sleep and
be back in twelve hours. I’ll go in and see the ladies a moment while you
do the finals!”
“I shall write to father to-night,” Lucy said abruptly, as the door
closed upon Ashton, and Pam, who had been waiting to get out, began
bounding about her friend, giving yelps of joy. “What do you suppose he
will say?”
Brownell began to speak, then paused, setting his teeth, and raising
Lucy’s chin gently, looked steadily in her face—“He will say one of two
things, according to his mood. Either that, resenting a stepmother, you
have thrown yourself away upon the first fellow who chanced by; or that
you have met the man who is to be, what he could not, ‘all in all’—that
you have found your mate!”
And Lucy, pale with feeling, a different pallor from that the moonlight
gives, returned his gaze fearlessly, proudly, and from the lips that met
his bitterness vanished, while truth remained. He was indeed her mate,
her match, the first of many suitors, rich and poor alike, who had wooed
her, man to woman, without thought or apology of money.
The second day after the great storm, for such it came to be
called, its erratic course through the hill country being blazed by
lightning-splintered trees and gullied watercourses, Dr. Russell came and
with him the Lawtons’ lawyer. Little by little the various happenings
were made clear, his situation and as far as might be his presence at
the farm explained, while, as the days went by, slowly the jarred brain
fitted the links in the chain of memory. But Dr. Russell said truly, that
Adam Lawton’s grit and grip were broken once for all, desire of power was
dead and in its place came desire of peace. Soon the little pottering
details of the farm, despised in youth, seemed dearer than aught else,
and he would sit for hours in his wheel-chair, training a vine or busied
with harness buckles in the barn. Nothing, however, would induce him to
allow his chair to go outside the gate, or to drive about the country or
to the village with Adam or Brooke upon their many errands.
Side-tracked though he was to many eyes, one of his selves, the one
unknown,—for most of us have two,—came back to him through kinship
with the soil; and at his first words of pride in and praise of Adam’s
usefulness, the boy had fled away to the rick again, great sobs tearing
his throat, but in this tempest lay no dread, and with those tears the
Cub cast off his nickname and leaped a year in manhood.
Toward his wife Adam Lawton was all tenderness, as in the early years,
and once more he called her Mela. But instead of the protective pride of
lover to sweetheart, it was the twofold, leaning quality, that makes some
men as they age seek the mother element in their wives and rest upon it.
Before July came round the little property of Mrs. Lawton and Brooke,
together with the farm deed and the jewels, was restored to them. In all
it made an annual sixteen hundred dollars, less by many times than either
woman had spent for clothing or the many little luxuries and nothings
that smooth and beautify the daily life—yet for their station they had
been frugal women, though always generous.
This money did not lessen Brooke’s determination or endeavour; it simply
turned striving to possibility of life in the composite household.
Neither, had the sum been ten times what it was, would any of the three,
mother, daughter, son, have cared to give up the work and with it motive;
simply Brooke could now dream more than day-dreams of her art. Rosius,
the animal painter, had built a studio at Gordon, and, after seeing a
head that Brooke had done of Senator Parks’s prize bull, he had replaced
his usual shrugging lethargy toward amateurs by enthusiasm, offered to
criticise her work throughout the season, and take her as a student of
animal anatomy in his winter studio in Washington, where the models
of the Zoo would be open to her, saying, “You feel, you understand,
you catch the thought, the meaning in the eyes,—this must be born, not
taught, all the rest only means much work and is learnable.”
If all went well and the Sign of the Fox remained her talisman, who knew
but the fund might grow, her father become strong enough to be house
man in more than name, Adam might have some education even if Stead
returned to work, and she herself could steal a month or two in the dead
season?—for the Parkses would be in Washington, and both the Senator and
his wife took an interest in her work, not born of desire to patronize.
Presently Adam Lawton began to read a little and could move slowly from
porch to garden seat, steadied by canes, and attend to many of his wants.
Then one glad day Mrs. Fenton had come down in her wheel-chair, and by
sheer force of will broke the home-staying spell by coaxing him to drive
back to a country boiled dinner with her, saying, “Don’t you remember,
Adam, when we were boy and girl together, and I said I’d go to your
father’s barn-raising dance with whichever of you boys could lift himself
up and touch his chin to the schoolroom door frame, three times? Some
boys couldn’t claw, and some got a grip and let go, while some wanted
boosting. You were the smallest, yet you got a hold and lifted yourself
slowlike, inch by inch, until you got there. That’s the way now, Adam!
You’ve had your tumble, and naturally you’ve got to help lift yourself!”
Was it what rural folks call a good growing season, or did love and
labour brighten and sweeten the simple garden flowers beyond their wont?
Who can say? Adam had made some corner brackets for the vine-screened
“tea room” porch, which Brooke had covered with tufts of gray moss and
coral-capped lichens, and here every day she placed, as well as on the
table, quaint stone jugs and lustre pitchers, rescued from the high top
shelf of Grandma West’s dresser, filled them with sweet peas, Madonna
lilies, mignonette, sweet-william, and clove pinks, and kept long sprays
of sweet syringa, lilacs, snowballs, lemon-lilies, foxgloves, larkspur,
hollyhocks, according to the season, in an old stone churn raised upon a
bench before the kitchen window end to veil it.
Not only did the garden yield its best to those who paused for
refreshment in passing by, but Brooke’s measure of added liberty, scant
though it was, gave her a breathing time to go abroad for flowers of
roadside, wood, and the rank river meadows; and while her eyes and hands
were busy with the blossoms, her soul drank in the beauty of the scenes
beyond, her heart beat strong, and her whole nature seemed to expand and
perfect itself in the growth and perfecting of the earth about her.
It was on the return from one of these walks through the river meadows,
arms laden with blue fleur-de-lis and golden sundrops gathered to the
tinkling music of soaring bobolinks, that she met the postman turning up
the cross-road from the lower pike, and he begged that she would take the
mail, as he had none this afternoon for any other on that branch and his
horse was lame.
Good-naturedly she turned up a corner of her skirt to act as mail pouch,
for the papers, circulars, and what not made quite a budget.
Reaching the boundary of her land when halfway uphill, and being
wrist-cramped by the double load, she dropped her flowers and mail, and
sitting in the shade began to sort it. Behind her was the rye field, and
the wind curling across the crisping ears, now gold-green, made sound as
of a gently rising tide on pebbled shores, while as she leaned against
the bank the bayberry, sweet-gale, and hay ferns breathed their wild
fragrance.
Oh, what a day it was! June dominance and rush yielding to the more
finished manners of July—nothing was lacking! That is, nothing
attainable; the love of things seemed to eclipse the love of people.
Ah, no, not quite, for as she gazed idly at the letters in her lap, her
heart gave a great throb, and one square package lurched and slid between
her trembling fingers, for the address on it was written in Ashton’s
eccentric hand. Picking it up, she laid the others by, and steadying
herself deliberately broke the seal, for it was sealed endwise with
wax. Inside was a double-folded piece of foreign-looking paper, but no
other address or postmark, the transit cover evidently having been torn
or soiled, and not a written word of any sort in view. Within its folds
a little square of millboard, the duplicate of that which had borne
her picture, only from this looked forth the face of Lorenz himself,
standing in a doorway, clad in his loose blouse, palette and brush in
hand. The heavy thatch of hair shaded his forehead deeply, the face was
thinner than she remembered it, the chin under the thick mustache more
determined, the jaw set with a depth of purpose, while the eyes looked
half away as if seeking inspiration and yet followed her everywhere,
until Brooke covered them with her hand a moment as if to escape the too
tense gaze of a real presence.
Hoofs sounded on the road, and there passed by Enoch Fenton with his
horse-rake, coming in neighbourly fashion to help the farmer-on-shares
gather up the timothy hay from its last sunning to house it before
nightfall; to-morrow it would be turn about, according to country lore.
Seeing Brooke he stopped, and after making the usual crop and weather
epigrams, said: “That there man of our’n is right smart and steady, but
he hustles too much and he’s losing girth—’fore summer’s out he’ll be
slim enough to swim through an eel run. I’ve advised him, if he’s goin’
to follow the soil, to locate farther north, but he seems unsettled and
I reckon he’ll move on after leaf-fall,—they mostly do, the smart ones,
besides which he acts as if the girl he’s waitin’ fer wasn’t comin’. If
she don’t, she’s a silly, for I nary seen a man with two strong hands hev
such a wise head!
“Say, but you look sort of like a picter setting there with all them
posies, something like the one on the calendar they give with the ‘Rise
up bake powder’ when you’ve bought six cans. It’s called ‘The Love
Letter,’ only the girl’s got red heels to her shoes and powered-up hair,
besides which they’d bought her too small a pattern for her waist to
piece it well up in front!
“Want ter know! I bet it’s a love letter, his picter and all, and I’m
right glad on’t!” Then farmer Fenton chirruped to his horses and went his
way, laughing to himself, and turning the tobacco from cheek to cheek
with relish, for Brooke had reddened under his banter, and in trying
to save the sliding letters in her lap had not only dropped them, but
the picture as well (which the farmer barely saw, having no glasses).
When she stooped to gather them up, and slipped the picture inside her
blouse for safer keeping, a second shadow crossed the road—that of Henry
Maarten, following the brook path to the hay-field, but if he saw her in
the sheltered bank nook he made no sign; neither did Brooke, but huddled
there among the ferns elated, disappointed, and quite bewildered, until
the sound of hoof and wheel had died away, and she knew that both men
were well within the fence.
The words that Enoch Fenton muttered as he walked, talking to himself
in lengthy monologue, after the style of those much alone, were these:
“Bob Stead! by gosh, he’s been away a month, and what’s more likely than
he’s sent his picter and writes reglar? Anyhow, all the women folks this
side of Windy Hill and further has planned it so, and so it’s bound to
be! Besides which our darter’s boy, Willie, was lookin’ fer wintergreen
for mother’s rheumatiz up in North Woods beyond Stony Guzzle two months
back, and he spied a couple settin’ by the stream a-holdin’ hands and
eatin’ apples. Now if that ain’t courtin’—what is? Though it’s only jest
likely hit and miss, wife and Sairy Ann Williams met and pieced together
who they wuz. He’s a mum sort, but that’s the kind it takes a girl to
get goin’, and he’s well set up, funds and all, though oldish! Well, she
might do worse seein’ she’s had a taste o’ pinchin’,” and selecting a
fine spear of timothy with which to pick his teeth, Fenton reversed the
rake and mounted.
Adam had written to Stead several times since his going away, and
received cheerful, though brief, replies, which, however, said nothing
definite as to his return, and though the time mentioned was a month, the
term might be merely nominal. All the household had missed him in their
different ways, the Cub with almost girlish sentiment, Mrs. Lawton as a
link with the state of life that was, and Brooke chiefly because she was
entirely used to him and associated him with so much that had given hope
and eased the winter rigour, that the friendship to her had become almost
the easy intimacy of relationship.
It was an afternoon early in July that Brooke was searching along the
foot-path in the hemlock woods above the Fenton’s for the flowers of
pipsissewa, with their wax petals and spicy wood fragrance, when the
snapping of twigs made her turn, and striding down the hill, straight
into the light, with quick, elastic step, came Robert Stead, a new, alert
expression on his well-tanned face that wiped at least half a dozen years
from his time record.
Brooke was surprised and also frankly glad. Dropping her flowers, she
held out both her hands and told him so.
“As this is the first word from you in five long weeks, it is well that
it is a kind one,” he replied. Then, holding her off, he looked at her
as if to make sure it was she herself, and not the masquerading gypsy
girl whose image always rose and came between them when he met her
out-of-doors.
“Ah, so much has happened since then! but Adam has written it all, except
perhaps that now I may hope to go to Washington for next winter to study.
That is quite far off, however, so tell me about yourself, also how
working has agreed with you!” she added mischievously.
“Work! They tell the truth—those that call it the master-word that
unlocks all barriers! Child, child, do you know what you have done for me
by acting and teaching it, so that now to me life, that was ended (as far
as joy is life), has but begun?
“Not only the desire for work, but the motive, came from you—is you! You
have the magic crystal of youth, I hold anew the power to shield it;
you have the fire of genius, I the fuel to feed its flame! Come to me,
Brooke; with you only I can forget, forgive! Redeem the past for me!”
As he paused with arms extended, Brooke shrank backward against the trunk
of a great hemlock, bewildered, dizzy almost, by the sudden fierceness
of his passion, confounded by the meaning that now banished what was
friendship. She moistened her lips nervously and tried to speak, but
found no words.
Hardly noticing her silence, he swept on: “Listen, and you will believe
that I know love at last. Ever since the day I met you by the trout
stream, I have understood how Helen could give up all to save her lover.
Why do you shrink? Is it all too sudden, my rebirth? Did you not even
guess?”
Brooke steadied herself with difficulty and merely shook her head. Stead
leaned toward her and would have clasped her in his arms, but something
in her face held him at bay.
“What is it, child? for God’s sake, don’t look so! I have frightened
you! You welcomed me as a friend, why not a lover? Am I then too old for
that?” and for an instant an iron frown drove the radiance from his face.
Slowly Brooke began to realize that he was offering her his love,
his protection to them all. It meant pleasant companionship, no more
struggling, certainty and reasonable ease, time for study. For an instant
she felt weary, overcome, vanquished, and the relief within her grasp
seemed almost sweet. The next moment her woman’s nature, frank and real,
knew that this was not all, and faltering, yet gaining courage as she
spoke, she answered:—
“That is not it; you do seem old to me, but if I had loved you, I should
not think of that or know it—only that I loved you.”
“And how can you know that you do not? you with the transparent nature of
a child, how can you judge of these things as well as those who have been
tried by fire? Unless—” and his voice dropped and the colour died from
his face, leaving it an earthy gray under its coat of tan—“unless there
is some one else this time as there was before. Is there this some one,
Brooke, and has he stood proof as well?”
Brooke’s pallor left her, and strength came to limb and voice. Stepping
quickly toward him, she laid her hands on his that were now held
clenched, and looking into his face said, in a voice quivering with
coming tears: “I need your pity, too. There is another, Robert Stead, but
he does not and may never know.”
“God help us both,” he murmured, and stooping almost reverently, pressed
the kiss upon the folded hands with which a moment before he would have
sought to kindle the fire in her lips.
For many moments they stood thus, and then Brooke said, with difficulty,
“You will come sometimes to see my mother and Adam? Oh, do not let my
blindness make you cast him off!”
“Yes and no—” Stead answered, as they turned and walked mechanically down
the wood lane toward the highway.
Once in the open he paused and said, in a voice so low and trembling that
it was but a whisper, “I have a report to make to-night, but to-morrow
I will go to see your mother.” Then, taking her hand gently: “Do not
grieve, gentle one, I was blind too; we are all blind when the heart’s
eye is satisfied. At worst, you have done more than you know for me;
now, the motive lacking, I shall try to work for work’s sake—and—”
pointing eastward—“I shall still share with you the River Kingdom!”
No word of this ordeal ever passed the lips of Brooke, but it lay heavily
upon her, for she was of the sort who feel that love, honestly proffered,
even if unsought, carries an eternal obligation. Yet some one else had
seen and shared the secret that lay buried between them, and read the
meaning amiss. The farmer-on-shares had crossed the path below on his way
from Enoch Fenton’s rye-field at the moment that Stead had stooped to
kiss Brooke’s folded hands.
CHAPTER XIX
SETTERS OF SNARES
The month of Lucy Dean’s stay spread itself over the entire summer, and
before she left the fragrance of wild grapes came from the river woods,
and the blue ribbon binding the tasselled grasses of the moist meadows
was loomed of Puritan fringed gentian instead of royal fleur-de-lis. Time
was when Lucy’s protracted presence, under like circumstances, would
have been a strain, akin to moving in a comedy of rapid action, where
every actor must be on the alert to take his cue. But to this restless,
high-strung woman love had come as a clarifier, like the magic electric
touch that vitalizes the air after the summer storm has passed, and makes
the breath come more freely.
As she became an open book to her friend, their relative positions
altered, and the transparent Brooke of old in her turn became a mystery
to Lucy, while Stead fairly piqued her to the point of anger. She thought
she knew at least the eyemarks of masculine devotion, and before Stead’s
June departure she had read them in all their changefulness when his
eyes rested upon Brooke, and wondered if she were wholly blind, or
seeing it unwillingly, feigned blindness. Time would tell, she thought,
for judging by herself, she knew that, to some moods at least, separation
is the searcher of hearts in doubt. All visible signs, however, had
failed, as on the return the visits, though hardly less frequent, seemed
to lack the personal spontaneity of before, and to come under the family
or merely casual order. Still this might be accounted for by the fact
that Stead was absorbed in the designing of a serious piece of work of
some magnitude, and the remote hermitage had become the destination of
men of divers sorts,—old friends who had been held almost forcibly aloof
and new professional acquaintances.
Dr. Russell, who had been at too great a distance to divine the intimate
reason of the revulsion, laid it wholly to the humanizing effect of the
general companionship and contact with the wholesome, firm-purposed
family life of the homestead, and he rejoiced exceedingly that at last
his friend had, as it were, separated self from shelf, and stood aside
from the self-inflicted gloom of his own shadow. But one day, chancing
upon Stead in New York, and reading a different, yet deeper, suffering,
purged of old selfishness, in his face, his habit of mental diagnosis,
tinged with kindly philosophy, was at an equal loss with Lucy’s lightning
intuition.
As to Brooke, she walked straight forward, almost mechanically,
throughout those summer days, filled alike with work and sunshine. The
anxiety of the winter had been to know if the new life could possibly
become a permanence. Now life under the Sign of the Fox seemed a thing
assured; and yet the days seemed longer labourwise now than before, for
though Brooke could read the material future, she did not know herself.
The culmination of Stead’s friendship pained her, almost haunted her,
though chiefly because it had laid bare the needs of her own heart. Ideal
and real alike had grown intangible. Even Lorenz’ picture seemed to look
at her in reproach, and the giant shadow of the farmer-on-shares crossed
the fields less frequently now that the growing time was past. It seemed,
too, that Enoch Fenton’s words were proving true, for the man had grown
gaunt under the scorching sun and toil, and Bisbee duly reported that his
plans had fallen through about his sweetheart and settling, and that he
was going to the old country before winter.
As to Lucy’s proposed descent upon the farmer-on-shares, begun in a
spirit of teasing and continued purely through curiosity, it was, as she
afterward termed it, “a regular toboggan slide”; and no matter in what
way or from where she approached him, without the least apparent effort
on his part, he was immediately at the farthest possible point away from
her. So that a one-sided wager she had made with Brooke, who professed
complete ignorance, that she could tell the colour of his eyes and what
he would look like without his “barbarous beard” at first sight, remained
unproven,—for Lucy there was no near-by first sight at all.
From the West homestead Lucy Dean had gone to Gordon to visit Mrs. Parks.
After she had been away a week the early twilight saw her coming up the
cross-road from Gilead station, driven by the ubiquitous Bisbee boy in
the same buggy that had brought Ashton the night of the storm.
No one was ever wholly surprised at any action on Lucy’s part, and when
Mrs. Lawton and Brooke noticed that the buggy had driven away again, they
concluded that Lucy had come to bid them good-by before returning home,
as the papers were full of the return of the new Mrs. Dean to New York,
of the satisfaction of their friends in general, and of the popularity of
the couple. They themselves were both dubious as to how Lucy would enjoy
being even temporarily only a daughter in the house where she had reigned
supreme; and though Mr. Dean had cordially approved of Lucy’s engagement,
it was well understood that it must necessarily be a long one.
After the greetings were over, and Lucy learned their thoughts of her
coming, she did not appear as much at ease as usual.
“The fact is,” she began abruptly, “I haven’t come to say good-by; I’m
stopping with Mrs. Parks until she goes to town, for the Senator has to
be away, and we hit it off nicely together. I’ve taught the heir apparent
endless tricks, so that he can outrank any baby of the social circus, and
consequently of course they adore me.
“I’ve come to bid Tom good-by, for he is suddenly being sent abroad to
report socially, politically, and otherwise on that Congress at The
Hague. Of course it isn’t exactly the work of city editor, but he knows
the ground and languages and all of that, besides which it will be good
for him in every way, and he sails on Saturday!”
“But where is he?” asked Brooke, too much puzzled to be surprised. “We
have not seen him, and how do you expect to meet him here when he knows
that you are in Gordon? though I’ve often thought it safest to look for
you where you are not, for there is where you are usually to be found,”
and then they both laughed at the Irish bull Brooke had perpetrated.
“The telephone, my dear—from Gordon to New York—price one dollar! He
wired frugally: ‘Sail for Hague Saturday, will be in Gordon to-night,’
upon which I called him up, and limited his trip to Gilead, supper at
the Sign of the Fox, afterward the Commercial Hotel by the depot, unless
_urgently_ requested by Mrs. Lawton to pass the night in the wasp room
with the black walnut furniture! Unfortunately, as you have no ’phone, I
could not inform you of the arrangement until I came in person,” and even
Adam Lawton joined quietly in the laugh that followed Lucy’s audacious
confession.
“There will be a ’phone here for you to announce your marriage next
summer, if you grow impatient of watching and waiting,” said Brooke
mischievously; “so many people have asked us to have it that they may
send orders with less trouble, and then both Cousin Keith and mother
think that it would be real economy of both time and material for us to
know when large parties are driving out.”
Tom Brownell came duly, and Mrs. Lawton almost purred with content as
she saw the pair of strong young faces at the tea-table, happy with the
tender happiness that is refined by a coming parting for anticipated
good. Again the two paced up and down the path beside the house in the
moonlight, but this time it was the young hunter’s moon, curved as a
powder-horn, and hurrying early to bed after his sun mother, that looked
narrowly between the trees athwart the western sky.
“It will be a splendid trip for you,—nothing could be better,” said
Lucy, brightening; “you’ve not had a month out of the city these two
years past.”
“It would be better if it were to be our wedding journey,” answered
Brownell; “being engaged may be an excitement and stimulant to the
sluggish, but for us the calmness of certainty would be far better; but
as it is, dear, I am more than thankful for my half-loaf.”
Lucy did not speak for a few moments, and then, turning swiftly and
putting both hands on his shoulders, in her old earnest fashion, said,
transfixing him with her black eyes, in which mischief and pleading now
struggled for mastery: “If a thing would be better, it is wrong not to do
it, for we are bound to do our best. It shall be our wedding journey. How
much money have you of your very own?”
Stunned into plain fact-telling, Brownell named a sum of less than three
thousand dollars, accumulated of extras and contributions to magazines.
“Good! I have as much more of my half year’s allowance, which papa always
pays in advance; it will do very nicely!”
“But Lucy, you wonder, I will not take a wedding trip or travel on your
money!”
“Certainly not; yours will be more than enough for two months! I will
save mine for the suburban cottage furniture on our return, and I can
paper a not too big room beautifully myself, if the paper has stripes
to guide by. Miss Keith taught Brooke and me this past summer, and we
practised on the pantry, which looks quite well, because when the shelves
were put back they hid the bubbles, where our arms ached and we didn’t
rub the paper smooth.”
“But think a moment, sweetheart,” almost gasped Brownell, who felt that
he was on the full run downstream toward rapids for which he had not a
paddle adjusted to shoot in safety. “Where shall we be married? This is
Wednesday,—there are only three days! How about your father? and then,
clothes?—women always need clothes! Don’t think I am objecting; it’s
only that I will not take unfair advantage of your warm-heartedness,” he
added, as a shadow of disappointment lurked on her piquant face.
“Where? Here, to-morrow, at the Sign of the Fox, father and company to be
bidden by telephone; they can arrive at three-forty, and go on to Gordon
later. As to clothes—oh, Tom! all women have clothes enough in which to
follow their heart’s desire, and I have trunks full!”
Then that slim young hunter’s moon (which should have been in bed)
thought some one called him softly, and, looking back, saw what would
have lured his godmother Diana from her hunting trail of solitude!
For the second time that season the personal affairs of Lucy and Brownell
electrified the sober old house by their rapidity, and each one received
the news quite differently. Miss Keith rushed for the raisin jar and
began seeding with might and main, and handled the spice boxes until
they rattled, for it would take all the early morning hours to bake the
wedding cake, and all the early afternoon to cool it.
The Cub was in his element, as, with Billy harnessed to the buggy,
he escorted Tom Brownell to the telephone office and the parson’s.
Brooke and Lucy opened a great chest in the attic, where some gowns of
past luxury were stowed away, to find a muslin for Brooke’s part of
bridesmaid; while Mrs. Lawton, thinking as ever first of her husband,
told him of the happenings with her hand resting on his, to secure
attention, and at the same time wondered, somewhat apprehensively,
how the sight of his old friend in the flower of his prosperity would
affect him. She need not have troubled, for Adam Lawton dwelt in that
strange between-land called Peace, where life is made up of apathy and
simple comfort, and was content, a state altogether different from the
triumphant peace that follows work achieved or victory won.
So it came about that the next afternoon at five, in the little library
of the homestead, two strong human identities merged, and Lucy, no
longer Lucy Dean, in her dark red travelling gown, her bouquet made by
Brooke of fleece-white garden chrysanthemums, turning to her father,
clasped her arms about his neck with a new fervour, and whispered, “You
see I’m still following your lead, you dear old daddy, so have a care!”
Then, led by Brownell, she went to the screened porch, gay with bright
leaves and berries, to cut the wedding cake, which, both well baked and
safely cooled, crowned the hastily improvised collation. Tatters and Pam
appeared wearing white neck bows, and the only outsiders were Mrs. Parks
and Charlie Ashton, the mysterious coming of whom no one could fathom,
and of which he emphatically declined to tell. Although Brooke watched
him wistfully and lingered after the others had left for Gilead station,
he made no sign.
It was three months since Lorenz had sent word or token. Was it, after
all, only an illusion? Brooke even began to doubt if Ashton’s was really
the hand that had forwarded the letters from Lorenz. She was minded
to ask him outright, but while she hesitated the moment passed, for,
entering Mrs. Parks’s landau, he returned with her to Gordon. Looking
up at the Sign of the Fox, her talisman, as she passed under it and in
at the gate, she wondered if it would ever see another wedding, and
smiled in spite of her own thoughts, and at the possible comic answer
to them as she looked up the path and saw the parson, lately installed,
an unencumbered man of sixty, taking his fourth cup of tea, alternating
lemon and cream, while Miss Keith twittered about him with the eatables,
and gave a deeply freckled blush at some remark he made in stowing a
small, flat package of wedding cake in his waistcoat pocket. Thus does
hope often triumph over experience.
* * * * *
Again it was the hunting season, and Dr. Russell would soon come for his
autumn holiday. Stead waited for him with more than usual eagerness,
being in pitiful want of companionship in which he need no longer play a
part that was growing every day more impossible and intolerable. Brooke
desired to see the doctor, and learn if possible how far her father’s
steady and rational improvement might be trusted; and Miss Keith,
remembering some past advice of his, began to feel tremulously that
possibly before another visit she might need a fresh instalment, and so
resolved to be forehanded.
Much game had been let loose during the past few years in the hill
country in a sportsmanlike effort to restock it as far as might be, and
when this is done there follows the pot-hunter with his snares. Robert
Stead, always an enemy of these slouching malefactors of wood and brush
lot, had this season announced that he was prepared to give the tribe no
quarter. The very day before the doctor’s expected arrival he had covered
their shooting grounds quite thoroughly, and after breaking numerous
snares, set with the utmost boldness on his own immediate land, he took
his gun and ambushed himself at dusk, telling José and two constables,
whom he had summoned from the village, to be in readiness to come to him
whenever the signal gun was fired, indicating the different routes that
they were to take to make a capture the most likely.
Sunset came, and another hour passed, when a single report called the
watchers; but as they circled in the direction of the sound, they did not
meet the flash of Stead’s dark lantern as agreed, and heard no crash of
bushes as of men in sudden flight,—nothing but darkness and deep silence.
José, the half-breed, bloodhound by nature, with even more of the animal
instinct than human intelligence, the outcome of the trailing instinct
coupled with much adventure, at once scented calamity. Was the gun the
master’s or was it another’s? To him it had a heavy, muffled sound, and
besides, it was not the discharge of both barrels, as agreed upon.
Returning quickly to the lodge, he seized the lantern and a flask of
brandy, and locating the foot-path his master had purposed to take, stole
carefully along it, the others following in his wake.
Suddenly he paused and lowered the lantern; before him, stretched between
two trees, was what is called a foot-snare, a thin, stiff cord, well-nigh
invisible, which was fastened across the path between the trees at such
a height as to the most surely throw the passer. José cut this with a
muttered curse and hurried on. Twenty yards farther he found another;
still following the path, his nostrils began to quiver and his eyes to
dilate, as if he felt a presence he could not see. A low groan made him
bound forward, and he almost fell upon the form of his master, doubled
upon the ground, head upon breast, where, in coming up the path, the
third snare had thrown him.
Raising him in haste, one of the men stepped backward on his gun, and lo!
the tale was told. The lurch of the sudden fall had reversed the weapon
and pitched it against a tree bole, which, striking the cocked hammer,
had discharged the gun, shooting its owner in the chest.
Laying him on the moss, José attempted to stanch the bleeding, which
came also from the lips. “It is the lungs,” he muttered, and making
the sign of the cross above his master, he poured some brandy down his
throat, giving a grunt of satisfaction when it was swallowed. Awkward in
emergency, yet the constables made stalwart bearers, and between them,
guided by José, they carried Stead—now truly Silent—to the lodge, pausing
now and then to reassure themselves, by his laboured breathing, that he
was alive.
Once there, José used all the skill of the half-savage to make his
master comfortable, one of the men bearing him company, while the other,
leaving the rig in which they had come to Windy Hill, took Stead’s horse
Manfred and rode against time for the Gilead doctor, who, also being a
hunter and a firm friend of both men, telegraphed to Dr. Russell before
starting on his drive.
* * * * *
The next morning, when news of the accident reached the homestead, Brooke
was already on her way by train to Gordon to buy the weekly supplies
according to her habit, and Mrs. Lawton, driven by Adam, wild with grief
at the calamity to this friend, started for Stead’s home.
Arriving at Windy Hill by ten o’clock, they found Dr. Russell there, so
that, with Dr. Love and José, who would not leave his master’s side, as
nurse, and a coloured woman of the neighbourhood in the kitchen, material
help was not needed; while as for personal sympathy, though Stead was
quiet and perfectly conscious, Dr. Russell, who came into the book-strewn
den to greet them, told them gently but firmly that the strain on the
emotions would be most dangerous for Stead, as the wound from the
scattered shot must prove fatal, rally as he might, and that he wished to
arrange some business affairs as soon as might be. If later in the day
he had the strength and the desire to see his friends, they would send
down a messenger.
So mother and son drove home in silence to break the news to Brooke on
her return, and Mrs. Lawton cautioned Adam that it must be done most
gradually, for even Brooke’s mother did not know how far beyond the
outward friendship her feelings might be involved, or even but what some
deeper understanding was either foreshadowed or might actually bind them.
* * * * *
Dr. Russell had been alone with Stead for half an hour, José keeping
jealous guard outside the door, where, lying upon the floor, he dozed
lightly, worn out with the night’s reflected suffering.
Gradually the heart history of the last six months was revealed to the
good physician, who, half sitting, half kneeling, by the narrow bed,
hands clasped before him, eyes half closed as if to shut away outside
things, might easily have passed for a purely spiritual confessor. Yet
in the fact of closing his eyes lay his only power to keep back tears.
Twice he essayed to speak and stopped, and then said gently, “A year ago
you said that you would willingly give the rest of life if you could only
feel and care once more. At least that wish has been granted.”
“Yes, and I rejoice in it, even now,” Stead answered slowly and
painfully. “What now lies before me is to take the means and give, as
far as it will do so, all that I have to secure the rest and comfort of
the woman who gave me the power to care, but could not grant me more.
There is paper in the desk, good friend, so now sit and write as I
dictate. Black Hannah and the doctor outside shall be the witnesses.”
Then came to Dr. Russell the hardest task of all, to argue with one
dying, but he did not flinch. “Stop for a moment, Robert, and think, led
by your new power of caring. If Brooke could not take your love, do you
think that she would take your money? Would not the idea hurt that same
brave tenderness that kindled you to life? Think of some other way.”
“She said that there was ‘some one else,’ but that ‘he did not know.’
Some day his eyes will open, for God will not allow a steadfast heart
like Brooke’s to be shut out of life.”
A struggle seemed to pass over Stead’s face that left a blueness about
the lips and the eyes, that quivered and closed. Dr. Russell gave him a
stimulant and waited in silence.
Presently the eyes opened and he spoke deliberately, as one reciting a
hard lesson. “Then let me leave all in trust to you for the man Brooke
Lawton marries, not to be known or given until their wedding day, when
you must tell him all, and if he is struggling with life,—as I have
a feeling that he is, for nothing else could keep him from such a
woman,—for her sake he will take the gift as from man to man.”
“And if the day does not come, or he refuses?” asked Dr. Russell, joy at
the man’s final unselfishness beaming from his face.
“After ten years, then let it become a part of the endowment of your
hospital, in memory of the two Helens, my daughter and her mother.”
Thus the will was made with due regard to formality, making the doctor
holder of a trust, the details of which were contained in sealed
instructions to keep privacy; a certain sum being set aside to furnish
the faithful José with an annuity; Stead’s lodge, guns, fishing
rods, books, and furniture to Dr. Russell for his convenience as a
shooting-box; his saddle-horse to Adam; and his pictures and his two dogs
to Brooke herself, for these last were really the possessions he most
prized. Then Dr. Love and Hannah Morley signed as witnesses, they having,
as is needful, no part in the will.
* * * * *
For a short time Robert Stead seemed better, as if a load was lifted from
his brain, but Dr. Russell was not deceived by it, while his heightening
colour spoke of increasing fever.
About two o’clock Stead asked the time, and that he might be lifted up to
see the river, that, far below in the distance, flashed by between the
trees. But his sight no longer carried. Presently he said, “Do you think
that Brooke would come here for one single moment?—would it be too hard
for her to bear?”
“No; I have sent the horses for her, and she should be here at once. Yes,
I see them now coming up the lower hill.”
Brooke entered alone, as Dr. Russell had asked, and led by him went to
the bedside, gently taking the single hand that lay upon the counterpane,
the other arm being bandaged at the shoulder. She knew by Dr. Russell’s
face that there was perfect mutual knowledge, and that she might be
herself without fear of misunderstanding.
Slipping down to her knees, to relieve the tension of stooping, neither
spoke, for what is there to say when each knows the other’s grief and
helplessness? Stead fastened his eyes upon her face with fading vision
that still saw through and beyond.
“I cannot see the River Kingdom, it has faded from me, but you have
come to me from it,” he said at last. Then looking toward Dr. Russell,
he added, “Open the window, please, that I may hear the rushing of the
water.”
“You could not hear it, there has been no rain this fall and the river
is still; it is only in the spring flood that the waters rush noisily,”
answered Dr. Russell, watching the man apprehensively.
Again a space of silence, and Stead murmured, “What was that about still
waters?—a hymn or prayer or something of the sort. I used to know it when
I was a little chap—my mother taught it me!”
Dr. Russell glanced at Brooke. Did she understand, and could she bear
the strain and answer? Yes,—leaning forward, she repeated softly, close
to his ear: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to
lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He
restoreth my soul: he leadeth me—”
Here the grasp of Stead’s hand tightened, so that she paused abruptly,
and turning toward her, he cried—“Child, child! that is what you have
done—you have restored my soul to me!” and answering the unconscious
appeal in the pleading eyes, Brooke, without hesitation, kissed him on
the lips. Then, obeying a sign from Dr. Russell, she arose and passed
quickly from the room.
The next day Robert Stead died, and to Brooke it seemed as if a hush
must fall over all the River Kingdom,—the hawks stop sailing to and fro,
the keen October wind rest from blowing, and the meadowlarks in the low
fields cease their song. Yet it was not so, for this is not the law of
life, which must forever be triumphant over the other law.
After a time people who had missed and wondered about Stead and Brooke
concluded that they had been mistaken; the little gifts of the will were
the natural ones to friends and neighbours, and the trust placed in Dr.
Russell’s hands was natural, and doubtless for charity, and there was no
one in the Hill Country who would deny his fitness to hold it.
CHAPTER XX
FIRE OF LEAVES
Killing frost had come and given the blackening touch to garden and wild
hedge-row. Even the hardy chrysanthemums bowed their hoary heads, and a
snow-like rime covered the river meadows every morning. The flame was
already burning low in the leaf torches of the swamp maples, while the
oaks changed to wine and russet slowly, with majestic dignity and pride
of hardihood.
The modest crops the farm had yielded were divided, and Brooke’s portion
of hay, rye, corn on the cob, potatoes, and apples duly stored away under
Enoch Fenton’s argus eyes; while even this astute Yankee found nothing to
quibble at, so generous had been Maarten’s halving.
In fact, when the strange “farmer-on-shares,” after the sharing time,
prepared to plough up the corn stubble for burning and harrow the cleared
field, Fenton laughed half derisively, and said, “It’s plain to me he’ll
never make a farmer,—that harrowing job belongs to next year’s man.”
Still Maarten kept on at work, this last week of his stay, for that
mysterious source “they say” had informed Adam that the man was homesick
and would return to the old country, also that Bisbee knew it to be true
and he had bought Maarten’s portion of the crops.
So when, one afternoon of late October, Brooke, in a restless mood,
looking down the fields toward Moosatuk, saw the opal smoke of burning
brush, stubble, and leaves following the fence line just above the brook,
while a dark figure moved in and out, stirring and feeding the flames
with a trident fork, her feet followed her inclination to go and thank
the man who had worked for and halved so well with her, and wish him
God-speed.
Later, she herself would flit for a time, and though she desired to go,
yet she dreaded it. The pleasure season itself was waning, although many
of the hill people, especially at Gordon, lingered until Thanksgiving.
After this, winter would quickly close in, they told her, and as Rosius
would be in Washington executing some commissions, Brooke, urged by the
entire household, had agreed to spend the first two winter months there
with Mrs. Parks, to study animal anatomy under him.
As Brooke strolled slowly down the lane, Tatters, as usual, followed
her. At first, when Adam Lawton began to walk daily about the garden,
Tatters’ indecision whom to follow had been most amusing; but he had
evidently worked it out to his entire satisfaction by dog philosophy,
and convinced himself that the one who went farthest afield was most in
need of company, so followed her as at first, mounting guard again by
the master’s chair the moment of her return; and though he was kind and
obedient to Miss Keith, after her return, there was a decided tinge of
condescension in it.
Brooke reached the line of smoke and found that the fire was north of the
tumble-down wall, while Maarten was bringing rakesful of dry chestnut
leaves from under the trees, beneath which they had drifted half across
the hay-fields. These leaves he was using as kindling for the obstinate
stubble, piled in a long line.
As the breeze veered and brought the pungent smoke toward her, Brooke
walked back a few paces, dragging her feet luxuriously through the
leaves, and waited for Maarten to come down the line once more, that she
might speak. Then, as the time lengthened and he did not return, the
idea forced itself upon her that perhaps he was keeping on the outskirts
of the fire to avoid her or her thanks, either one or both, and feeling
humiliated, she turned nonchalantly to cross the hay-fields toward the
wood-lot, a customary walk of hers.
As she did so she scented something burning that was not the brush fire.
Glancing about, she saw that a thin tongue of flame had crawled out from
the brush heap, and was licking up the dry leaves all about, and that
the flaring line was scorching her wool and cotton outing gown and slowly
creeping upward toward her hand. For a second she tried to beat it out;
then, seeing the leaf fire spreading on every side and no way of escape
save through it, she tried to call, but fear muffled her voice.
Faint as the cry was, it was heard by Tatters, who was hunting squirrels
in the fence. Bounding toward her, he too felt the fire; circling it, he
flew straight across the brush toward Maarten, barking in a wholly new
and piercing key of pain and warning.
Running down the line, Maarten took in the situation at a glance, tried
to beat the flame out with his hands, and failed. Tearing off his loose
coat, he wrapped Brooke in it, and lifting her bodily, dashed over the
brush and wall, setting her down at the stream’s edge, where a few
hatsful of water put out the fire without even blistering her finger-tips.
As he seized Brooke, crushing her to him in his speed, a fierce wave of
joy that banished all fear enveloped the girl from head to foot, and when
he put her down and she knew that the flames were extinguished, she was
still breathing hard, and could find neither voice nor words to thank him.
Glancing at Maarten, she saw that he was bathing his scorched, sooty face
and wrapping a wet handkerchief about his hands, also that the brush
fire had caught his beard and singed it all away.
At her exclamation of regret and pity, he turned, then stood upright
before her with folded arms, his eyes fixed directly on hers. In the
short interval the outline of his face had changed, solidified, and the
firmness of mouth and chin was revealed.
Brooke’s heart stood still, and then surged, in wild, clamorous beating.
“Lorenz!” she cried. “Lorenz! Oh, why have I not always known you? This
explains everything! Why did you come here like this? Why did you change
your name and turn into a labourer?”
Her voice had an unconscious reproach in it,—or at least the man so heard
it,—and a light that had gleamed through all the smut and scorch died
from his eyes; while half kneeling, half crouching, on the bank among
the bleached ferns and feathering seed-stalks, her hair fallen to her
shoulders, bright colour succeeding the pallor of fear, looking again the
gypsy ruler of the River Kingdom, Brooke waited for the explanation of
the man who stood before her. Slowly it came, and the voice, from which
the feigned accent was dropped, trembled at first, but grew stronger with
fervour every moment.
“Why did I come? To see you! Why did I come as a farm labourer? That is
to what I was born, back in the little tulip farm that I have often told
you of, near Haarlem. Also it was the only way that I might both be near
and serve you. My name is my own, as was that by which you first knew
me—Henri Lorenz Maarten—Lorenz being my mother’s maiden name, and by it
I was as often called in the days I spent with my uncle, who brought me
up, as Maarten, the name of my father, who died so long ago. In Paris my
friends reversed the titles, student fashion, to please themselves, and I
for the time became Maarten or Marte Lorenz.”
Why did he stand there, stern and aloof? Could he not read her thoughts,
Brooke wondered. Did he not fathom the deep undercurrent upon which her
questions had merely floated like bits of driftage?
No; what Maarten saw before him, as he looked, was that scene in the July
woods—a young woman with eyes cast down, the suitor with eyes aflame
pressing kisses upon her hands. That the man was dead did not obliterate
the vision. Maarten had resolved to make his own confession, complete and
unmistakable, and then to go his way.
Not knowing this, Brooke let her thoughts fly to him in eager questions.
“The picture! Tell me of ‘Eucharistia’ and the meaning of the light in
it, and how you found me here when the papers said that you had gone to
work and study in Brittany.”
“Did they say that? I did not know it, for I came direct from home, where
I had seen my mother. As to the picture, it is a long story. Shall I
tell it to you now or write it down and leave it when I go? You will be
chilled, perhaps, if you wait longer.”
“Then you _are_ going?”
“Yes, next week, my work now being done,” here he glanced across the
fields; “and having seen you, I must go back to my brush again, hoarding
the studies I have made. Oh, yes, I have worked—between times—painting
you always; such work is life to me.”
“No, do not write, tell me now,” said Brooke, wondering if the chill that
seized upon her spirit had its source from without or from within.
“Then I will tell you if you will listen to the end.” Brooke nodded
assent.
Maarten drew nearer, and half sitting, half leaning against the bank,
told his story.
“When I met you in the Paris studios, it was five years after I had
turned my back on England and the commercial life my father’s brother, a
London Hollander, had planned for me. I belonged in an art country, and
its traditions held me in its grip, not to be broken. I had fought my way
along and worked steadily, first at home, earning some praise, and yet
always when I felt success coming toward me, it passed me by. At first I
thought you one of the great flock of those young women who dabble at
art, as an excuse for greater liberty,—soon I learned better. You were
kind and frank; you never seemed to wait for flattery, but rather shrank
from it. Presently I came to think, ‘Here is a woman to whom one may not
only tell the truth, but who craves it.’ So I spoke my mind freely, as
you remember on that day at Carlo Rossi’s, when, with a dozen others,
you were trying to sketch a woman of the street, and catching poise and
colouring admirably, the face was still a blank, because you could not
fathom the meaning of her expression.”
“Yes, I remember,” Brooke whispered, half introspectively, as with hands
clasped over her knee she looked down toward the river.
“I craved your friendship, and you gave it. Then the time came when
it was too little for me; and I—what had I to offer? So I kept in the
background; my work grew stale, and for the first time I half regretted
the five years’ struggle, and might have given up save that, had I done
so, my mother’s pride and pinching, that I might become a painter, would
have been wasted.
“One day I went with some others from the Quarter to Fontainebleau to
sketch out of doors. Three of us had resolved to enter a competition. For
a week I had scarcely slept, for somewhere in my brain dwelt a picture,
that was growing, yet would not focus. All the morning I had wandered
about, and in the early afternoon, leaving the others, I threw myself
down under the oaks, quite in despair and wholly miserable.
“Presently I heard a footfall on the grass. Before I could turn, a
cluster of cool, golden grapes dropped in my feverish hand, and looking
up and backward, I saw your face, and in the smile it wore a ray of
light, of inspiration, pierced my soul. Before I had awakened from the
vision, you passed on and joined your scolding chaperon.
“As for me, as I lingered there, those grapes became as drops of
sacramental wine. I seized my brushes and hastily caught and kept the
vision as I saw it—for to me it was the divine awakening.
“For weeks I dreamed and painted as I never had done before. My comrades
laughed and said, ‘Is it love or genius?’ and old Rossi shrugged his
shoulders and asked, ‘What is the difference?’
“The picture finished, I sent it to the competition, and there your rich
Senator both saw and coveted it. I would not sell it,—no, never! Ah, then
I never thought to; but later my mother sickened, and the price would
more than buy her a good annuity. I thought again, and something said,
‘_She_ would have liked to help your mother, who is old and still plods
on the tulip farm behind the poplars, which she will not leave;’ and I
yielded, and I then resolved to follow you,—across the earth if must
be,—for lacking you, my inspiration fled.
“Through Carolus Ashton, the amateur, well known in the Paris studios, I
learned your whereabouts, and at the same time I chanced upon words of
your swift sorrow in a paper at a fellow-artist’s home.
“‘She has trouble,’ I thought. ‘Surely in some way I can aid her,’ and I
sent the picture of yourself as not too bold a reminder. Your little copy
of my picture coming in return, I said, ‘Now I may go; she did not resent
my painting us together,’ and hope gave me wings.”
“Ashton knew that you were here from the beginning, then, and forwarded
your portrait in the summer, and made no sign! How cruel!”
“Yes, he knew, and also one named Brownell; but do not condemn them, for
there is a silence in such matters that is as honour among men, though
almost strangers; it is as strong as woman’s love. Besides, what good
would it have done?”
“But the name you gave the picture? ‘Eucharistia,’” said Brooke, leaning
forward.
Maarten drew closer, and almost dropping on his knees, looked in her
eyes and took her hands in his, that were hardened by toil and blistered
by fire of leaves, both for her sake, and said, “The word has two
meanings,—‘a sacrament,’ and ‘thanksgiving’; you had become the first to
me, for this I gave the title ‘Eucharistia.’ It has become my name for
you, and—I still give thanks.”
Then, dropping her hands as that other picture in its setting of July
woods again crossed his inner vision, he stood, erect and proud, as one
waiting inevitable sentence, yet glad in the consciousness that he had
told the truth.
For a moment there was silence, and Brooke’s head dropped lower, until it
rested on her hands. At last Maarten regained himself: “And now that all
is told, what is there more for me to do here? What more for me to say?”
Slowly Brooke struggled to her feet, for in truth her clothes were damp
and heavy, though she had not before felt it. Standing there, she looked
up and smiled, and once again that shaft of light went forth from her to
him, as she said in yearning accents: “What more to say, Henri? All that
a man may say to the woman who loves him.”
“Eucharistia!” he cried, still holding back in blind amazement. “It is
not parting, then, beloved, but waiting for you and work for me!”
“No; work for you _and work for me_, for what else means the awakening?”
And placing her hand in his, she walked by his side along the border of
the stream, while the wind carried the news throughout the River Kingdom,
and Tatters, pushing himself between them, wagged his tail as he licked
the blistered fingers.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "At the Sign of the Fox: A Romance" ***
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