Chapter IX: Part 9

"I know, but that takes labour; and Father and Josiah have as much work as they can manage. There isn't any money to pay the wages of hands. We've got some good pastures too. If only there was something to begin with, we might have a dairy farm. Nathan Pedlar says, or a stock farm like James Ellgood's. I wish I knew the science of farming," she concluded earnestly. "Doctor Faraday says it is as much a science as medicine."

It was The first time he had seen her deeply interested. Strange, the hold the country could get over one!

"Is there any way I could learn farming from books?" Dorinda asked before he could reply. "I mean learn the modern ways of getting the best out of the soil?"

He smiled. "It all comes back to chemistry, doesn't it? That, I imagine, is what Doctor Faraday meant--the chemistry of agriculture. Yes, there are books you can study. I'll get you a list from a friend of mine who is a professor in the University of Wisconsin. By the way, he is to give a lecture on that very subject in New York next month. There is to be a series of lectures. I'll find out about it and take you if you'll go with me. You must remember, though, that practical experience is always the best teacher."

She shook her head. "We have the experience of generations, and it has taught us nothing except to do things the way we've always done them. Mother used to say that the only land she would ever cultivate, if she had to choose over again, is the land of Canaan where

'generous fruits that never fail,
On trees immortal grow!'"

He laughed. "I think I'd like your mother."

The casual remark arrested her. Would he really like her mother, she wondered, with her caustic humour, her driven energy, her periodical neuralgia, and her perpetual melancholy? Had he ever known any one who resembled her? Had he ever known any woman whose life was so empty?

"Poor Ma!"--She corrected herself: "Poor Mother, the farm has eaten away her life. It caught her when she was young, and she was never able to get free."

"Doesn't she care for it?"

"I don't know. I sometimes think she hates it, but I know it would kill her to leave it. It is like a bad heart. You may suffer from it, but it is your life, and it would kill you to lose it." She broke off, pondered deeply for a few moments, and then added impulsively, "If I had the money, I'd go back and start a dairy farm there."

While she spoke a vision glimmered between the windy dusk in the Park and the orange light of the afterglow. She saw it with an intensity, an eagerness that was breathless;--the fields, the roads, the white gate, the long low house, the lamp shining in the front window. For the first time she could think of Old Farm without invoking the image of Jason. For the first time since she had left home, she felt that earlier and deeper associations were reaching out to her, that they were groping after her, like the tendrils of vines, through the darkness and violence of her later memories. Earlier and deeper associations, rooted there in the earth, were drawing her back across time and space and forgetfulness. Passion stirred again in her heart; but it was passion transfigured, recoiling from the personal to the impersonal object. It seemed to her, walking there in the blue twilight, that the music had released some imprisoned force in the depths of her being, and that this force was spreading out over the world, that it was growing wider and thinner until it covered all the desolate country at Old Farm. With a shock of joy, she realized that she was no longer benumbed, that she had come to life again. She had come to life again, but how differently!

"I feel as if the farm were calling to me to come back and help it," she said.

That night she dreamed of Pedlar's Mill. She dreamed that she was ploughing one of the abandoned fields, where the ghostly scent of the life-everlasting reminded her of the smell of her mother's flowered bandbox when she took it out of the closet on Sunday mornings--the aroma of countless dead and forgotten Sabbaths. Dan and Beersheba were harnessed to the plough, and when they had finished one furrow, they turned and looked back at her before they began another. "You'll never get this done if you plough a hundred years," they said, "because there is nothing here but thistles, and you can't plough thistles under." Then she looked round her and saw that they were right. As far as she could see, on every side, the field was filled with prickly purple thistles, and every thistle was wearing the face of Jason. A million thistles, and every thistle looked up at her with the eyes of Jason! She turned the plough where they grew thickest, trampling them down, uprooting them, ploughing them under with all her strength; but always when they went into the soil, they cropped up again. Millions of purple flaunting heads! Millions of faces! They sprang up everywhere; in the deep furrow that the plough had cut; in the dun-coloured clods of the upturned earth; under the feet of the horses; under her own feet, springing back, as if they were set on wire stems, as soon as she had crushed them into the ground. "I am going to plough them under, if it kills me," she said aloud; and then she awoke. A chill wind was blowing the white curtains at the window. Was it only her imagination, or did the wind, blowing over the city, bring the fragrance of pine and life-everlasting? For an instant, scarcely longer than a quick breath, she felt a sensation of physical nearness, as if some one had touched her. Then it vanished, leaving her in a shudder of memory. It was not love; of this she was positive. Was it hate which had assumed, in the moment between sleep and waking, the physical intensity of love? It was the first time she had dreamed of Jason. Long after she had ceased to think of him, she told herself resentfully.

The next morning, when office hours were over, she went to the library and asked for a list of books on dairy farming. She read with eagerness every one that was given to her, patiently making notes, keeping in her mind the peculiar situation at Old Farm. When Doctor Burch arranged for the course of lectures, she attended them regularly, adding, with diligence, whatever she could to her knowledge of methods; gleaning, winnowing, storing away in her memory the facts which she thought might some day be useful. Before her always were the neglected fields. She saw the renewal of promise in the land; the sowing of the grain, the springing up, the ripening, the immemorial celebration of the harvest. She saw the yellowing waves of wheat, the poetic even swath falling after the mower. "All that land," she thought, "all that land wasted!" The possibility of the dairy farm haunted her mind. Enterprise, industry, and a little capital with which to begin! That was all that one needed. If she could start with a few cows, six perhaps, and do all the work of the dairy herself, it might be managed. But Old Farm must be made to pay, she decided emphatically. Old Farm with a thousand acres could supply sufficient pasture and fodder for as many cows as she would ever be likely to own. "If I could get the labour it wouldn't be so hard," she thought one day, while she was sitting by the window in the nursery. "If I could buy the cows and hire a little extra labour, it wouldn't be impossible to make a success." Then her spirit drooped. "You can't do anything without a little money," she thought, and laughed aloud. "Not much, but a little makes all the difference."

"What are you laughing at, Dorinda?" asked Mrs. Faraday, turning from the crib, where she was bending over the baby.

"I was thinking I'd give anything I've got for six--no, a dozen cows."

"Cows?"

"At Old Farm. It hurts me to think of all that land wasted."

"It is a pity. I suppose it was good land once?"

"In great-grandfather's day it was one of the best farms in that part of the country. Of course he never cultivated much of it. He let a lot of it stand in timber. That's what we paid the taxes with right after the war. Father and Josiah do the best they can," she added, "but everything is always against them. Some people are like that, you know."

"It's a bad way to be," commented Mrs. Faraday, and she asked presently, "What would you like to do with the farm?"

Dorinda's cheeks flushed as she answered. "First, if I had the money, I'd try to bring up the fields. I'd sow cowpeas and turn them under this year wherever I could. Then I'd add to the pasture. We can easily do that, and in a little while we could get a good stand of grass. Then I'd buy some cows from James Ellgood, some of his Jerseys, and try to set up a dairy farm, a very little one, but I wouldn't let anybody touch the milk and butter except Mother and myself. I wouldn't be satisfied with anything that wasn't better than the best," she concluded, with an energy that was characteristic of the earlier Dorinda.

"And you'd sell your butter--where?"

For an instant this dampened the girl's enthusiasm. How funny that she had never once thought of that!

"Oh, well, we're near enough to Richmond or Washington," she said. "The road to the station is bad, but it is only two miles. We could churn one day and send the butter out before sunrise the next morning."

Mrs. Faraday looked at her sympathetically. "I could help you in Washington," she said. "I've a friend there who owns one of the biggest hotels. The manager would take your butter, I know, and eggs too, if they are the very best that can be bought. And you'd ask a large price. People are always willing to pay for the best."

Dorinda sighed. "It's just like a fairy tale," she said, "but, of course, it is utterly out of the question."

"Well, I don't see why." Mrs. Faraday lifted the baby from the crib and sat down to nurse it. "We would lend you the money you needed to start with. After all you've done for Penelope, we'd be only too glad to do that in return. But it would be drudgery, even if you succeeded, and you ought not to look forward to that. You ought to marry, my dear."

Dorinda flinched. "Oh, I've finished with all that!"

"But you haven't. You're too young to give up that side of life."

"I don't care. I'm through with it," repeated Dorinda, and she meant it.

"Well, just remember that we are ready to help you at any time. It would mean nothing to us to invest a few thousand dollars in your farm. You could pay us back when you succeeded."

"And I could pay you interest all the time."

"Of course--if it would make you feel easier. Only don't let your foolish pride stand in the way of achieving something in the end."

Dorinda gazed thoughtfully out of the window. Her pride was foolish, she supposed, but it was all that she had. With nothing else to fall back on, she had taken refuge in an exaggerated sense of independence.

"You are so capable," Mrs. Faraday was saying, "that I am sure you will never fail in anything that you undertake. The doctor was telling me only yesterday that, for a woman without special training, your efficiency is really remarkable. It isn't often the girls of your age are so practical."

A laugh without merriment broke from Dorinda's lips. "That would please my mother," she said. "They used to say at Old Farm that my head was full of notions."

"Most young girls' are. But you were fortunate to settle down as soon as you did."

Without replying, Dorinda stared at the baby in Mrs. Faraday's arms. It was a fat, pink baby, with a round face in which the features were like tiny flowers, and a bald head, as clear and smooth as an egg shell. When it laughed back at her, the pink face crumpled up and it gurgled with toothless gums.

"If you've ever been poor, you can't get over the dread of having to borrow," she answered after a pause.

For the next few months, while she read books and attended lectures without understanding them, the idea of the country worked like leaven in Dorinda's imagination. Gradually, though she was unprepared for the change in her attitude, some involuntary force was driving her back to Old Farm. Problems that had appeared inexplicable became as simple as arithmetic; obstacles that had looked like mountains evaporated into mist as she approached them. "I couldn't let them do it," she would declare, adding a minute later, with weakening obstinacy, "After all, it isn't as if they were giving me the money. I can always pay them in the end, even if I have to mortgage the farm."

As the winter passed, she saw more and more of Burch. She liked him; she enjoyed her walks with him; his friendship had become a substantial interest in her life; but she realized now and then, when he accidentally touched her hand, that every nerve in her body said, "So far and no farther" to human intercourse. Her revulsion from the physical aspect of love was a matter of the nerves, she knew, for more than two years under the roof of a great surgeon had taught her something deeper than the patter of science. Yet, though her shrinking was of the nerves only, it was none the less real. One side of her was still dead. The insensibility of the last two years, which had made her tell herself at moments that she could not feel the prick of a pin in her flesh, had worn off slowly from that area of her mind which was superior to the emotions. But the thought of love, the faintest reminder of its potency, filled her with aversion, with an inexpressible weariness. She simply could not bear, she told herself bluntly, to be touched.

"There must be something in life besides love," she thought, in revolt from the universal harping upon a single string. Watching the people in the street, she would find herself thinking, "That woman looks as if she lived without love, but she doesn't look unhappy. She must have found something else." Then, with the vision of Old Farm in her mind, she would reflect exultantly: "There is something else for me also. Love isn't everything."

"Do you know, I've almost decided to go home," she said to Doctor Burch one day in April, when they were sitting in the Park. "Did you see those lilacs in the florists' windows as we passed? It is lilac time at Old Farm now, and the big bushes in the corner of the west wing are all in bloom. They are so old that they reach to the roof, and the catbirds build in them every year." She lifted her head and looked at the delicate pattern of the elms against the pale sky. How cold and thin spring was in the North!

"You mean you'll go back and begin farming?"

"I mean I can't stay away any longer. I'm part of it. I belong to the abandoned fields."

"Will you let me come?" he asked abruptly.

Her hand lay, palm upward, in her lap, and as he asked the question, his fingers closed caressingly over hers. Instantly the alarm began in her nerves; she felt the warning quiver dart through them like the vibration in a wire. Her nerves, not her heart, repulsed him. She might even love him, she thought, if only he could keep at a distance; if he would never touch her; if he would remain contented and aloof, neither giving nor demanding the signs of emotion. But at the first gesture of approach every cell in her body sprang on the defensive.

"You wouldn't be comfortable," she said, while an expression that was almost hostile crept over her full red mouth. "It is so different from anything you have known."

His smile was winning. "I shouldn't mind that if you wanted me."

She looked over his head at the elm boughs arching against the sky. Yes, it was lilac time in Virginia. She saw the rich clusters drooping beside the whitewashed walls, under the grey eaves where wrens were building. The door was open, and the fragrance swept the clean, bare hall, with the open door at, the other end, beyond which the green slope swelled upward to the pear orchard. Over all, there was the big pine on the hill, brushing the quiet sky like a bird's outstretched wing. How peaceful it seemed. After the storm through which she had passed, tranquillity meant happiness.

The silence had grown intimate, tender, provocative; and for a moment she had a feeling of relaxation from tension, as if the iron in her soul were dissolving. Then the pressure of his fingers tightened, and she shivered and drew away her hand.

"You don't like me to touch you?" he asked, and there was a hurt look in his eyes.

She shook her head. "I don't like anybody to touch me."

"Are you as hard as that?"

"I suppose I am hard, but I can't change."

"Not if I wait? I can wait as long as you make me."

"It wouldn't make any difference. Waiting wouldn't change me. I've finished with all that."

She rose because the thought of Jason had come to her out of the vision of Old Farm; and though she no longer loved him, though she hated him, this thought was so unexpected and yet so real that it was as if he had actually walked into her presence. He was nothing to her, but his influence still affected her life; he was buried somewhere in her consciousness, like a secret enemy who could spring out of the wilderness and strike when she was defenseless.

On the hall table, when she entered the house, she found a letter, addressed in the pale, repressed handwriting of her mother. As she went upstairs she tore it open, and dropping into a chair by the window of her room, she read the closely written sheets by the last gleam of daylight.

_My dear Daughter_:

I hate to have to send you bad news, but your father had a stroke last Saturday while he was ploughing the tobacco field. He had not been well for several days, but you know he never complains, and he did not stop work till he dropped in the field. Josiah and Rufus had to pick him up between them and bring him into the house.

We sent straight for the doctor. Rufus saddled Beersheba and rode to Pedlar's Mill, and Nathan sent word to Doctor Stout up near the Courthouse. It was more than two hours before the doctor got here, but your father had not come to himself. The doctor says he will never be up again, and if you want to see him alive, you had better come as soon as you can. We do everything that is possible, and Nathan has been the greatest help in the world. I don't know what I should do without him. Josiah spends the nights here. Since his marriage he has lived, as I wrote you, in that place over beyond Plumtree, but he is real good about helping, and so is Elvira. She has offered to help me nurse, but she is so flighty that I had rather have Aunt Mehitable's granddaughter, Fluvanna Moody. Fluvanna comes every day. She is a mighty good nurse and your father likes to have her around, even if she is one of the new order of darkeys. I believe she takes after Aunt Mehitable more than any of the other grandchildren. Your father does not give any trouble, and he has not spoken but twice since his fall. It is right hard to understand what he says--he speaks so thickly--but Fluvanna and I both think he was asking for you.

The farm is going on just the same. Rufus hates the work here, and wants to go to the city. A week before his stroke your father was offered a thousand dollars for the timber between Poplar Spring and the back gate. Nathan advised him to hold on a little longer, but I reckon we will have to sell it now to pay for your father's sickness. The cow is a great comfort. Your father cannot take any solid food. I give him a little milk and a few swallows of chicken broth. Mrs. Garlick sent him some chicken broth yesterday, and one of the Miss Sneads comes over with something every day.

Your affectionate mother,

EUDORA ABERNETHY OAKLEY.

So, after all, the decision had been taken out of her hands. Life was treating her still as if she were a straw in the wind, a leaf on a stream. The invisible processes which had swept her away were sweeping her back again. While she sat there with the letter in her hand, she had the feeling that she was caught in the whirlpool of universal anarchy, and that she could not by any effort of her will bring order out of chaos.

"Poor Pa." This was her first thought, and she used instinctively the name that had been on her lips as a child. So this was the end for him, and what had he ever had? He had known nothing except toil. Suddenly, as if the fact added an intolerable poignancy to her grief, she remembered that he had never learned even to read and write. He could sign his name, that was all. When he was a child the "poor white" was expected to remain unlettered, and in later years the knowledge her mother had taught him had not, as he used to say apologetically, "stuck by him."

Rising quickly, she put the letter aside and began folding her clothes.

VI

As the train rushed through the familiar country, Dorinda counted the new patches of ploughed ground in the landscape. "James Ellgood must be trying to reclaim all his old fields," she thought.

The sun had not yet risen above the fretwork of trees on the horizon, but the broomsedge had felt the approach of day and was flying upward to meet it. Out of the east, she saw gradually emerge the serpentine curves of Whippernock River; then the clouds of blown smoke, the irregular pattern of the farms, and the buildings of the station, which wore a startled and half-awake air in the dawn.

After more than two years how strange it felt to be back again! To be back again just as if nothing had happened! How small the station looked, and how desolate, stranded like a wrecked ship in the broomsedge. What isolation! What barrenness! In her memory the horizon had been so much wider, the road so much longer, the band of woods so much deeper. It seemed to her that the landscape must have diminished in an incredible way since she had left it. Even the untidy look of the station; the litter of shavings and tobacco stems; the shabbiness and crudeness of the country people meeting the train; the disreputable rags of Butcher, the lame negro, who lived in the freight car; the very fowls scratching in the dust of the cleared space;--all these characteristic details were uglier and more trivial than she had remembered them. A sense of loneliness swept her thoughts, as if the solitude had blown over her like smoke. She realized that the Pedlar's Mill of her mind and the Pedlar's Mill of actuality were two different places. She was returning home, and she felt as strange as she had felt in New York. Well, at least she had not crawled back. She had returned with her head held high, as she had resolved that she would.

The whistle was sounding again, and the brakeman was hastily gathering her bags. She followed him to the platform, where the conductor stood waiting, the same conductor who had helped her into the train the morning she had gone away. He did not recognize her, and for some obscure reason, she felt flattered because he had forgotten her.

The train was stopping slowly. The faces of the assembled farmers started out so close to the track that they gave her a shock. There was Jim Ellgood ready to leave for Richmond; there was Mr. Garlick meeting somebody, his daughter probably; there was Mr. Kettledrum, looking as stringy and run-to-seed, as if he had not moved out of his wheelrut since the morning he had picked her up in the rain. In the little group she saw Rufus, slender, handsome, sullen as ever. How black his eyes were, and how becoming the dark red was in his cheeks! Then, as the train reached the station, she saw Nathan Pedlar running down to the track with the mail bag in his hand. Just at the last minute, but always in time--how like Nathan that was!

The conductor, with one foot on the step, was swinging his free leg while he felt for the ground. She put up her hand, hurriedly arranging her small blue hat with the flowing chiffon veil. Then she lifted the folds of her skirt as the conductor, who was firmly planted now on the earth, helped her to alight. Her heart was sad for her father, but beneath the sadness her indomitable pride supported her. Yes, she had come back unashamed. She might not return as a conqueror, but she had returned undefeated. They were looking at her as she stepped to the ground, and she felt, with a thrill of satisfaction, that, in her navy blue poplin with the chiffon veil framing her face (hanging veils were much worn in New York that year) she was worthy of the surprised glances they cast at her. A little thinner, a little paler, less girlish but more striking, than she had been when she went away. Her height gave her dignity, and this dignity was reflected in her vivid blue eyes, with their unflinching and slightly arrogant gaze. Romantic eyes, Burch had called them, and she had wondered what he meant, for surely there was little romance left now in her mind. If experience had taught her nothing else, it had at least made her a realist. She had learned to take things as they are, and that, as Burch had once remarked whimsically, "in the long run fustian wears better than velvet." She had learned, too, she told herself in the first moments of her homecoming, that so long as she could rule her own mind she was not afraid of the forces without.

They had gathered round her. She was smiling and shaking the outstretched hands. "Well, it looked as if we'd about lost you for good." "You've been gone two years, ain't you?" "Hardly know Pedlar's Mill, I reckon, since Nathan's painted the store red?" "I saw her off," Mr. Kettledrum was saying over and over. "I saw her off. A good long visit, warn't it?"

Moving out of the throng, she kissed Rufus, who looked dejected and resentful.

"How is Pa, Rufus?"

"There ain't any change. The doctor says he may drag on this way for several weeks, or he may go suddenly at any time."

"Well, we'd better start right on." Walking quickly up the slope to where the old buggy was standing, she put her arms round Dan's neck and laid her cheek against him. "He knows me," she said, "dear old Dan, he hasn't forgotten me. Is there anything you want for Ma at the store?"

"She gave me a list. I left it with Minnie May."

"Minnie May doesn't work in the store, does she? Who looks after the children?"

"She does. She does everything."

"Well, it's a shame. She oughtn't to, and only thirteen. I'll speak to Nathan about it."

At her commanding tone, Rufus grinned. "You've come back looking as if you could run the world, Dorinda," he observed, with envy. "I wish I could go away. I'd start to-morrow, if it wasn't for Pa."

"Yes, that's why I came back. We can't leave Pa and Ma now. But it's hard on you, Rufus."

"You bet it is! It's my turn to get away next."

She assented. "I know it. If the time comes when Pa can do without you, I'll help you to go. You'll never make much of a farmer."

He stared moodily at the road, but she could see that her promise had encouraged him. "There's nothing in it," he answered. "I believe it is the meanest work ever made. You may slave till you drop, and there's never anything to show for it. Look at Pa."

"Pa never had a chance. He grew up at the wrong time. But all farming isn't bad. Suppose we had a dairy farm?"

He grinned again. "O Lord! with one cow! You're out of your head!"

"Perhaps. Anyway, I've come back to see what I can do."

Her glance wavered as Nathan, having dashed into the store with the mail bag, came toward them with the kind of lope that he used when he was in a hurry. "I didn't get a chance to speak to you at the train, Dorinda," he said, "but all the same I'm glad you're home again. The children want to get a peek at you in your city clothes. Minnie May's gone crazy about your veil."

In two years he had altered as little as the landscape. Lank, sand-coloured, with his loping, stride, his hands that were all knuckles, and his kindly clown's face under hair that was as short as rubbed-off fur, he appeared to her, just as he used to do, as both efficient and negligible. Poor Nathan, how unattractive he was, but how good and faithful! Clean, too, notwithstanding the fact that he never stopped working. His face and neck looked well scrubbed, and his blue cotton shirt was still smelling of starch and ironing. The memory of the lunch he had given her when she went away was in her mind as she held out her hand to him and then stooped to kiss the children, one after another. How they must miss their mother, these children! She must do something for Minnie May, who had the stunted look of overworked childhood. Nathan was well off for Pedlar's Mill, yet he let the little girl work like a servant. It was simply that he did not know, and she would make it her business, she told herself firmly, to instruct him. Minnie May was a nice, earnest child, with the look of her mother. She would be almost pretty, too, if she could get that driven expression out of her pinched little face. Her hair was really lovely, wheaten red like Rose Emily's, only it needed brushing, and she wore it dragged back from her forehead where, at thirteen, wrinkles were already forming. Yes, Dorinda decided, she would certainly speak to Nathan.

"You look fine, Dorinda," he was saying while he stared at her.

"She is like a paper doll in a book," Minnie May exclaimed. "One of those fashion books Miss Seena Snead has."

The three smaller children were staring with wide open eyes and mouths, and John Abner, the baby, she remembered, with the clubfoot, was holding a slice of bread and butter in both hands. He limped badly when he walked, she noticed. What a job it must be keeping these children washed and dressed.

"Are you the nurse too, Minnie May?" she inquired.

"Yes, I do everything," the little girl replied proudly, wrinkling her forehead. "We had a coloured girl, but the children didn't like her and wouldn't mind her."

Dorinda turned to Nathan. "It's too much, Nathan. You oughtn't to let her do it."

"I tell her not to slave so hard," he answered helplessly. "But it doesn't do any good. She promised her mother that she would take care of the children."

"But Rose Emily never meant this. It is making an old woman of the child before she grows up."

"I can't help it. She's as stubborn as a mule about it. Maybe you can do something."

Dorinda nodded with her capable air. "Well, I'll fix it." She looked cool, composed, and competent, the picture of dignified self-reliance, as she stepped between the muddy wheels of the dilapidated buggy.

"I hope you'll find your father better," Nathan said. "I'll come over later in the day and see if there is anything I can help about." She smiled gratefully over her shoulder, and Rufus remarked, in his sullen, suppressed voice, as they drove off, "He's been over every single evening since Pa had his stroke."

"Nobody ever had a kinder heart," Dorinda responded absently, for she was not thinking of Nathan.

As the buggy jolted down the slope to the pine woods, a dogcart passed them on the way to the station, and she recognized Geneva Greylock. She was driving the dogcart with red wheels which she had used before her marriage; she was wearing the same jaunty clothes; but the change in her appearance made Dorinda turn to glance back at her. Though she was still in her early twenties, she looked like a middle-aged woman. Her sallow cheeks had fallen in, her long nose was bony and reddened at the tip, and her abundant flaxen hair was lustreless and untidy.

"How soon blondes break," Dorinda said aloud, and she thought, "Two years of marriage have made an old woman of her."

"Yes, she's lost what looks she ever had," returned Rufus. "She was always delicate, they say, and now her health has gone entirely. It's the life she leads, I reckon. Folks say he is beginning to follow in his father's footsteps. That's why the new doctor up by the Courthouse is getting all his practice." When he spoke of Jason he carefully refrained from calling his name.

"Are there any children?" Dorinda asked. Her spirits were drooping; but this depression, as far as she was aware, had no connection with Jason. Not her own regret, but the futility of things in general, oppressed her with a feeling of gloom.

"Not that I ever heard of," Rufus replied. "To tell the truth I never hear anybody mention his name. You can ask Nathan. He knows everything about everybody." He shut his sullen lips tight, and stared straight ahead of him.

"Oh, it doesn't matter. I was merely wondering why her health had failed."

They had come out of the woods, and the wheels were creaking over the dried mudholes. The sun had risen through a drift of cloud, and beneath the violet rim an iridescent light rained over the abandoned fields. While they drove on, it seemed to Dorinda that it was like moving within the heart of an opal. Every young green leaf, every dew-drenched weed, every silken cobweb, every brilliant bird, or gauzy insect,--all these things were illuminated and bedizened with colour. Only the immense black shadow of the horse and buggy raced sombrely over the broomsedge by the roadside.

"Nothing has changed," Dorinda thought. "Nothing has changed but myself."

Yes, it was all familiar, but it was different, and this difference existed only within herself. All that she had suffered was still with her. It was not an episode that she had left behind in the distance; it was a living part of her nature. Even if she worked her unhappiness into the soil; even if she cut down and burned it off with the broomsedge, it would still spring up again in the place where it had been. Already, before she had reached the house, the past was settling over her like grey dust.

They passed the Sneads' red brick house with white columns. The same flowers bloomed in the borders; the same shrubs grew on the lawn; the same clothes appeared to hang perpetually on the same clothes-line at the corner of the back porch. In the pasture, the friendly faces of cows looked at her over the rail fence, and she remembered that two years ago, as she went by, she had seen them filing to the well trough. In a few minutes she would pass the burned cabin and the oak with the fading Gospel sign fastened to its bark. Her heart trembled. The racing shadow by the road appeared to stretch over the sunrise. She felt again the chill of despair, the involuntary shudder of her pulses. Then she lifted her eyes with a resolute gesture and confronted remembrance.

The place was unchanged. The deep wheelruts where the road forked; the flat rock on which the mare slipped; the cluster of dogwood which screened the spot where she had waited for Jason's return; the very branch she had pushed aside,--not one of these things had altered. Only the fire in her heart had gone out. The scene was different to her because the eyes with which she looked on it had grown clearer. The stone was merely a stone; the road was nothing more than a road to her now. Over the gate, she could see the willows of Gooseneck Creek. Beyond them the tall chimneys of Five Oaks lay like red smears on the changeable blue of the sky.

After they had left the fork, Dan quickened his pace.

"The fence has been mended, I see, Rufus."

"Yes, we had so much trouble with the cow straying. Pa was trying to get all the fences near the house patched before fall. We were using the rails that were left over from the timber he sold."

"Those weren't the woods Ma wrote me about?" She could never think of living trees as timber.

"No, he is holding on to that in hope of getting a better price."

They travelled the last quarter of a mile without speaking, and not until the buggy had turned in at the gate and driven up the rocky grade to the porch, did Dorinda ask if her father expected her.

"Yes, Ma told him, but she wasn't sure that he understood. He was awake before I left the place and Ma was seeing about breakfast."

"Haven't you had any yet?"

"Yes, I had a bite before I started. I'm no friend to an empty stomach, and I reckon I can manage a little something after I've turned Dan into the pasture. Pa was ploughing the tobacco field when he had his stroke, but he had decided not to plant tobacco there this year. We're going to try corn."

"I'm glad he's given up tobacco."

"He hasn't. Not entirely. But it takes more manure than he can spare this year. Well, we're here at last. Is that you, Ma?" he shouted, as the wheel scraped against the "rockery" by the steps.

At his second call, the door opened and Mrs. Oakley ran out on the porch.

"So you've come, daughter," she said, and stood wiping her hands on her apron while she waited for Dorinda to alight. How old she had grown, thought the girl, with a clutch at her heart. Only the visionary eyes looked out of the ravaged face through a film of despair, as stars shine through a fog.

VII

Jumping out of the buggy, Dorinda took her mother into her arms; but while she pressed her lips to the wrinkled cheek, it occurred to her that it was like kissing a withered leaf.

"How is Pa?" she asked in an effort to conceal the embarrassment they both felt.

"About the same. I don't see any change."

"May I speak to him now?"

"You'd better have your breakfast first. I've got breakfast ready for you."

"In a minute, but I'd like just to say a word to him. Oh, there's dear old Rambler." She stooped to caress the hound. "I don't see Flossie."

"I reckon she's up at the barn hunting mice. She had a new set of kittens, but we had to drown all but one. We couldn't feed so many cats."

Embarrassment was passing away. How much had her mother known, she wondered; how much had she suspected?

"Well, I shan't be a minute," the girl said. "Is he in the chamber?"

"Yes, he hasn't been out of bed since his stroke. Go right in. I don't know whether he'll recognize you or not."

Pushing the door open, Dorinda went in, followed by Rambler, walking stiffly. The room was flooded with morning sunlight, for the green outside shutters were open, and the window was raised that looked on the pear orchard and the crooked path to the graveyard. It was all just as she remembered it, except that in her recollection the big bed was empty, and now her father lay supine on one side of it, with his head resting upon the two feather pillows. There was a grotesque look in his face, as if it had been pulled out of shape by some sudden twist, but his inquiring brown eyes, with their wistful pathos, seemed to be asking, "Why has it happened? What is the meaning of it all?" When she bent over and touched his forehead with her lips, she saw that he could not move himself, not even his head, not even his hand. Fallen and helpless, he lay there like a pine tree that has been torn up by the roots.

"I've come back to help take care of you, Pa."

His lips quivered, and she apprehended rather than heard what he said.

"I'm glad to see you again, daughter."

Dropping into the chair by the bedside, she laid her arms gently about him. "You don't suffer, do you?"

How immeasurably far away he seemed! How futile was any endeavour to reach him! Then she remembered that he had always been far away, that he had always stood just outside the circle in which they lived, as if he were a member of some affectionate but inarticulate animal kingdom.

He tried to smile, but the effort only accentuated the crooked line of his mouth.

"No, I don't suffer." For a moment he was silent; then he added in an almost inaudible tone: "It's sort of restful."

A leaden weight of tears fell on her heart. Not his death, but his life seemed to her more than she could bear. What was her pain, her wretchedness, compared to his monotony of toil? What was any pain, any wretchedness, compared to the emptiness of his life?

For a little while she talked on cheerfully, telling him of the lectures she had heard and the books she had read, and of all the plans she had made to help him with the farm.

"I've borrowed some money to start with, and we'll make something of it yet, Pa," she said brightly.

His lips moved, but she could not understand what he said. Straining her ears, she bent over him. For an instant it seemed to her that his tone became clearer, and that he was on the point of speaking aloud; then the struggle ceased, and he lay looking at her with his expression of mute resignation.

After this, though she tried to interest him in her plans, she saw that his attention was beginning to wander. Every now and then he made an effort to follow her, while a bewildered expression crept into his face; but it was only for a minute at a time that he could fix his mind on what she was saying, and when the strain became too great for him, his gaze wandered to the open window and the harp-shaped pine, which towered, dark as night, against the morning blue of the sky.

"Well, I'll go to breakfast now," she said, as carelessly as she could. "Ma has it ready for me."

Rising from her chair, she stood looking down on him with misty eyes. After all, the pathos of life was worse than the tragedy. "Is the light too strong?" she asked, as she turned away. "Shall I close one of the shutters?"

At first he did not follow her, his thoughts had roved so far away, and she repeated her question in another form. "Does the sun hurt your eyes?"

A smile wrung his lips. "No, I like to see the big pine," he answered; and stealing out noiselessly, she left him alone with the tree and the sky.

In the kitchen her mother stood over her while she ate, watching every mouthful with the eyes of repressed and hungry devotion.

"You ain't so plump as you were, Dorinda, but you've kept your high colour."

"Oh, I'm well enough, but you look worn out, Ma."

Mrs. Oakley hurried to the stove and back again. "Let me give you another slice of bacon. You must be empty after that long trip. Well, of course, I've had a good deal on me since your father got sick. Until Fluvanna came, I didn't have anybody but Elvira to help me, and though she was willing to do what she could, her fingers were all thumbs when it came to making up a bed or moving things in a sickroom."

"I can take most of the burden off you now. You know I learned a good deal about illness when I was with Doctor Faraday."

"Yes, you'll be a comfort, I know, but you're going back again as soon as your father begins to mend, ain't you?"

Dorinda shook her head with a smile, which, she told herself, looked braver than it felt. "No, I'm not going back. I'd sooner stay here and try to make something out of the farm. A thousand acres of land ought not to be allowed to run to broomsedge like an old field."

"Heaven knows we've tried, daughter. Nobody ever worked harder than your father, and whatever came of it?"

"Poor Pa. I know, but he came after the war when there wasn't any money or any labourers."

She told of the money Doctor Faraday would lend her, and of the hotel in Washington which would take all the butter she could make. "But it must be as good as the best," she explained, with a laugh. "I'm going over to Green Acres to buy seven Jersey cows. Seven is a lucky number for me, so I am going to start with it."

"You'll have to have some help, then."

"Not at first. Of course I'll need a boy for the barnyard, but I am going to do the milking and all the work of the dairy myself. You can help me with the skimming until we get a separator, and when Fluvanna isn't waiting on Pa, she can lend a hand at the churning."

Mrs. Oakley shook her head drearily. "You haven't tried it, Dorinda."

"I know I haven't, but I'm going to. I learned a lot in the hospital, and the chief thing was that it is slighting that has ruined us, white and black alike, in the South. Hasn't Fluvanna got a brother Nimrod that I could hire?" she asked more definitely.

"Yes, and he's a good boy too. Fluvanna had him over here one day last week chopping wood when Rufus was out in the field ploughing. That's a thrifty family, the Moodys. I never saw a darkey that had as much vim as Fluvanna. And she belongs to the new order too. I always thought it spoiled them to learn to read and write till I hired her. She's got all the sense Aunt Mehitable had, and she's picked up some education besides. I declare, she talks better than a lot of white people I know."

"I wonder if she'd stay on and help me with the farm?" Dorinda asked. "I mean," she added, while her face clouded, "after Pa is up again." Though she knew that her father would never be up again, she united with her mother in evading the fact.

"Oh, I'm sure she will," Mrs. Oakley responded, with eagerness. "She has been helping me with my white Leghorns. All the hens are laying well. I am setting Eva and Ida now."

"You didn't have them when I was here."

"No, Juliet hatched them. You remember Juliet? She was the first white Leghorn hen I ever had."

"Yes, I remember her. Have you got her still?"

Mrs. Oakley sighed. "No, a coon broke into the henhouse last winter and killed her. She was a good hen, if I ever had one." It was amazing to Dorinda the way her mother knew every fowl on the place by name. To be sure, there were only a dozen or so; but these white Leghorns all looked exactly alike to the girl, though Mrs. Oakley could tell each one at a distance and was intimately acquainted with the peculiarities of every rooster and hen that she owned.

"I'd like to get a hundred and fifty white Leghorns, if we could look after them," Dorinda said thoughtfully. "That's one good way to make money."

A ray of light, which was less a flush than a warmer pallor, flickered across Mrs. Oakley's wan features. While her mother's interest was awakening, Dorinda felt that her own was slowly drugged by the poverty of her surroundings. The sunlight bathing the ragged lawn only intensified the aspect of destitution. Colour, diversity, animation, all these were a part of the world she had relinquished. Pushing her chair away from the table, she went to the back door and stood gazing out over the woodpile in the direction of the well-house. A few cultivated acres in the midst of an encroaching waste land! From the broomsedge and the flat horizon, loneliness rose and washed over her. Loneliness, nothing more! The same loneliness that she had feared and hated as a child; the same loneliness from which she had tried to escape in flights of emotion. Food, work, sleep, that was life as her father and mother had known it, and that life was to be hers in the future. For an instant it seemed to her that she must break down. Then, lifting her head with a characteristic gesture of defiance, she turned back into the room. "I'd better start straight about it," she said aloud, smiling at Mrs. Oakley's startled look.

"Did you say anything, Dorinda? I believe I've got something wrong with my ears."

"I said I was going upstairs to change my dress. The same old room, I suppose?"

"Yes, I fixed the same room for you."

While she cleared off the table, Mrs. Oakley gazed after her daughter with a perplexed and anxious expression. Dorinda in her flowing veil, with her air of worldly knowledge and disillusioned experience, had awed and impressed her. Was it possible that she had created this superior intelligence, that she had actually brought this paragon of efficiency into the world? "Well, I hope it will turn out the way you want it," she remarked presently to her daughter's retreating back, "but, in my time, I've watched many a big bloom that brought forth mighty small fruit."