Chapter III: Part 3

Miss Judy groped her way cautiously through the darkness of the chilly parlor, and raised the shades far enough to let in a slender shaft of sunlight. She looked around the room with a soft sigh. It was so full of sad and tender memories, and so empty of everything else. The portraits of her father and mother, painted very young, hung side by side over the tall mantelpiece. The intelligent force of her father's face and the soft beauty of her mother's came back to Miss Judy anew whenever she looked at their likenesses. On the opposite walls hung the portraits of her paternal grandfather and grandmother, painted when they were very old. The old gentleman, a judge under the crown in Virginia, had been painted in his wig and gown. His fine face was hard and stern, and Miss Judy often wondered whether he ever had forgiven his son for fighting against the king and the mother country. The old lady's face was as sweet and gentle as Miss Judy's own, and there was a charming resemblance between the pictured and the living features. But the grandmother's face wore an expression of unhappiness, and the granddaughter's was never unhappy, although it was sometimes sad for the unhappiness of others and the pain of the world.

The portraits had been taken out of their frames, so that they might be brought over the Alleghanies with less difficulty. They had never been reframed, and there was something inexpressibly melancholy in their hanging thus, quite unshielded, against the rough, whitewashed logs. Melancholy, vague and far-off, pervaded indeed the whole atmosphere of the shadowed room. It floated out from a broken vase of parian marble which was filled with dried rose leaves, brown and crumbling, yet still sending forth that sweetest, purest, loneliest, and saddest of scents. It clung about the angular, empty arms of the few old chairs, dim with brocade of faded splendor. It lay on the long old sofa--with its high back and its sunken springs--like the wan ghost of some bright dream that had never come true. But the tenderest and subtlest sadness came from the fading sampler which Miss Judy's mother had worked in those endless days of exile in the wilderness. Ah, the silent suffering, the patient endurance, the uncomplaining disappointment, wrought into those numberless stitches! And yet, with all, perhaps bits of brightness too,--a touch of rose-color here, and a hint of gold there--such as a sweet woman weaves into the grayest fabric of life.

Miss Judy, sighing again, although she could not have told why she always sighed on entering the darkened parlor, now knelt down beside the sofa, and drew a small box from beneath it. But she did not open the box at once; instead, she seated herself on the floor and sat still for a space holding the box in her hand, as if she shrank from seeing its contents. At length, slowly untying the discolored cord that bound the box, she lifted the cover, and took out a pair of satin slippers. They had once been white, but they were now as yellow as old ivory, and the narrow ribbon intended to cross over the instep and to tie around the ankle had deepened almost into the tint of the withered primrose. The slippers were heel-less, and altogether of an antiquated fashion, but Miss Judy did not know that they were. She was doubtful only about the size, for they seemed very small even to her; and she thought, with tender pride, how much taller Doris was than she had ever been, even before she had begun to stoop a little in the shoulders. Turning the slippers this way and that, she regarded them anxiously, with her curly head on one side, until she at last made up her mind that Doris could wear them. They might be rather a snug fit, but they would stay on, while Doris was dancing, all the better for fitting snugly. Yet Miss Judy still sat motionless, holding the slippers, and looking down at them, long after reaching this conclusion. The most unselfish of women, she was, nevertheless, a truly womanly woman. She could not surrender the last symbol of a wasted youth without many lingering pangs.

VI

LYNN GORDON

The slippers had belonged to a white dress which Miss Judy used to call her book-muslin party coat, and this treasure was already in Doris's possession. It had been very fine in its first soft whiteness, and now, mellowed by time, as the slippers were, into the hue of old ivory, and darned all over, it was like some rare and exquisite old lace. Doris thought it the prettiest thing that she had ever seen; certainly it was the prettiest that she had ever owned. When, therefore, the slippers came to join it as a complete surprise, she took the party coat out of its careful wrappings, and, after a close search, was delighted to find one or two gauzy spaces still undarned. It was a delight merely to touch the old muslin. She held it against her cheek--which was softer and fairer still, though Doris thought nothing of that--giving it a loving little pat before laying it down. There were household duties to be done ere Doris would be free to get her invisible needle and her gossamer thread, and to begin the airy weaving of the cobwebs.

There was only one room and a loft to be put in order, but Doris always did it while her mother was busy in the kitchen, getting ready for the day's professional round. Sidney was exceedingly particular about the cleaning of her house, insisting that the "rising sun" of the red and yellow calico quilt should always be precisely in the middle of the feather bed, and that the gorgeous border of sun-rays should be even all around the edges. The long, narrow pillow-cases, ruffled across the ends, must also hang just so far down the bed's sides--and no farther. The home-made rug, too, had its exact place, and there must never be a speck of dust anywhere.

The house was said to be the cleanest in Oldfield, where all the houses were clean. Some people believed that Sidney scrubbed the log walls inside and outside every spring, before whitewashing them within and without. Be that as it may, the poor home had, at all events, the fresh neatness which invests even poverty with refinement.

Doris slighted nothing that morning, although she was naturally impatient to go back to the book-muslin. Yet it seemed to take longer to get the house in perfect order than ever before. The trundle-bed in which Kate and Billy slept was particularly contrary, and it really looked, for a time, as if Doris would never be able to get it entirely out of sight under the big bed. It was settled at last, however, and she had taken up the party coat and had seated herself beside the window, when her mother entered the room.

Sidney cast a sharp glance at the white cotton window curtain to see if it were drawn exactly to the middle of the middle pane, or rather to the hair line, which the middle of the middle pane would have reached, had Doris not put the sash up. Sidney, rigid in her rudimentary ideas of propriety, considered it improper for a young girl to sit unshielded before a window in full view from the highway. It made no difference to Sidney that nobody ever passed the window, except as the neighbors went to and fro, or an occasional farmer came to the village on business. Sidney was firm, and Doris, the gentle and yielding, did as she was told to do. The coarse white curtain was accordingly now in its proper place. Sidney noted the fact, as she cast a sweeping glance around the room, seeking the speck of dust which she seldom found and which never escaped her keen eyes. Doris put the book-muslin aside and arose as her mother came in, and she now stood awaiting directions for the management of the household during the day. Sidney's professional absences lasted from nine in the morning until six in the evening every day, winter and summer, the whole year round, Sunday alone excepted. During these prolonged absences the care of the family rested upon Doris's young shoulders, and had done so ever since she could remember. It may have been this which gave her the little air of dignity which set so charmingly on her radiant youth. She now listened to her mother's directions, gravely, attentively, respectfully, as she always did.

"Everything is spick and span in the kitchen," Sidney said, setting the broom on end behind the door and rolling down the sleeves over her strong arms. "Make the children stay in the back yard till the school bell rings. Don't let them go in the kitchen. They clutter up things like two little pigs. And don't let them get at the cake that Anne Watson sent. We'll keep that for Sunday dinner. It's mighty light and nice. It lays awful heavy on my conscience, though. I really ought to go to see poor Tom this very day. I ought to go there every day and try to cheer him up. But I've got so many places engaged that I actually don't know where to go first. Remember--don't let the children touch the cake. Give 'em a slice apiece of that pie of Miss Pettus's. And there will be plenty of Kitty Mills's cold ham for them and for Uncle Watty too."

"Yes'm," answered Doris, assenting to everything which her mother told her to do or not to do. Trained by Miss Judy, she would no more have thought of speaking to an older person or to any one whom she respected, without saying "sir" or "madam," than a well-bred French girl would think of doing such a thing. Miss Judy and Doris had never heard of its being "servile" to do this. They both considered it an essential part of good manners and gentle breeding. Many old-fashioned folks in the Pennyroyal Region still think so.

Untying her gingham apron, and hanging it beside the broom, Sidney put on her sunbonnet, and, firmly settling her ball of yarn under her left arm, began to knit as she left the door-step on which Doris stood looking after her.

Sidney paused for a moment at the gate after dropping the loop of string over the post, and looked up at the little window in the loft.

"It would, I reckon, be better to let your Uncle Watty sleep as long as he likes. He's kinder out of the way up there, and better off asleep than awake, poor soul, when he hasn't got any red cedar to whittle. I noticed yesterday that he had whittled up his last stick. He never knows what to do with himself when he's out of cedar. I'll try to get him some. Maybe old lady Gordon's black gardener Enoch Cotton will fetch some from the woods, if I promise to knit him a pair of socks."

An expression flitted over Doris's face, telling her thoughts. Sidney, seeing it, felt in duty bound to rebuke it.

"Now, Doris--mind what I say--as young folks do old folks, so other young folks will do them when their turn comes. I never knew it to fail. We all get what we give, no more, no less. It always works even in the end, though it may not seem so as we go along. See that your Uncle Watty's breakfast is real nice and hot. Make him some milk toast out of Mrs. Alexander's salt-rising--if it's too hard for his gums. Old lady Gordon said she would have Eunice fetch me a bucket of milk every day. You won't forget?"

Doris again said "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am" in the proper place, listening throughout with the greatest attention and respect, and trying very hard not to think about the book-muslin party coat.

Sidney twitched the string which held the gate to the post, to make sure that it was firmly tied. "That crumpled-horn of Colonel Fielding's could pick a lock with her horns. Now remember about Uncle Watty. He's had a hard time, poor old man, ever since his leg was broken. If Dr. Alexander had been here, it would have been different. I should just like to give that fool of a travelling doctor a piece of my mind. Him a-pretending to know what he was about, and a-setting your poor Uncle Watty's broken leg east and _west_, instead of north and _south_!"

Doris's cheek dimpled, but she answered dutifully as before. She had her own opinion as to how much the latitude or longitude of Uncle Watty's left leg had to do with his general disability. She could remember him before the leg was broken, and she had never known him to do anything except whittle a stick of red cedar. Youth, at its gentlest, is apt to be hard in its judgment of age's shortcomings. Doris knew how good her mother was as she watched her walking down the big road, with her long, free, swinging stride, with her sunbonnet on the back of her head, and her knitting-needles flashing in the sun. But she wondered if there were no other way. She hated to see her set out on these rounds, she had hated it ever since she could remember, and had gone on hating it as vehemently as it was in her gentle nature to hate anything. The mother never had been able to make Doris see from her own point of view, and Doris had never been able to make her mother understand the intensity of her own sensitiveness, or the soreness of her silent pride. Many a day, as Doris sat sewing beside the window in seeming contentment, she was restlessly seeking some means of escape; almost continually she was trying to find a way to lift the burden from her mother--striving to see something wholly different that she herself might do. Going back to her book-muslin on that morning, she was wondering whether Mrs. Watson or Mrs. Alexander might not need some needle-work done. Perhaps she could earn a little money in that way, and they could live on very little. But hers was not a brooding disposition, and she was soon singing over the old party coat. Then the school bell reminded her that the children's faces and hands must be washed before they went to school; and by the time they were sent off down the big road, Uncle Watty was ready for his breakfast. Doris carried out her mother's directions to the letter. She poured his coffee, and sat respectfully waiting until he had finished eating, and then she washed the dishes, and put them away.

Returning to her seat by the window, she glanced now and then at Uncle Watty, who had seated himself under the blossoming plum tree to enjoy a leisurely, luxurious pipe of tobacco, having recently swapped a butter paddle, which he had whittled out of red cedar, for a fine old "hand" of the precious weed. It was, however, most unusual for Uncle Watty's whittling to assume any useful shape, or, indeed, any shape at all. Every morning, except Sunday, he hobbled off down the big road, to take his seat before the store door on an empty goods-box, with his pocket-knife and his stick of red cedar, ready for whittling. Year after year, the box and Uncle Watty were always in the same spot, moving only to follow the sun in winter and the shade in summer; and the heap of red cedar shavings always grew steadily, ever undisturbed save as the winds scattered them, and the rains beat them into the earth. When Uncle Watty finally came hobbling around the corner of the house that day, and went away in the direction of the store, Doris looked after him, wondering--rather carelessly, and a little harshly, after the manner of the young and untried--what could be the meaning of an existence which left a trail of red cedar shavings as the sole mark of its path through life. But that perplexing thought also passed as the other had done. She began thinking of the dancing lessons, growing more and more absorbed in the darning of the party coat. She wished she knew whether Miss Judy had ever worn it to a real dancing party. She had never heard of one's being given in Oldfield, excepting of course the famous ball at the Fielding's, near the jail, on the night that the prisoner escaped; long, long before she was born. Most of the Oldfield people thought it a sin to dance. Miss Judy must have looked very pretty in the book-muslin. Doris laid it on her lap, and, turning to the window, gave the curtain an impatient toss, pushing it to one side. There was no use in keeping it half drawn when never a soul ever went by. And the sun was shining, almost with the warmth of midsummer, on this glorious May-day. When the spring was still farther advanced, when the leaves were larger on the two tall silver poplars standing beside the gate, lifting a shimmering white screen from the soft green earth to the softer blue sky; when the climbing roses, already blooming all over the snowy walls, were more thickly festooned; when the Italian honeysuckle hung its rich bronze garlands and its fragrant bloom from the very eaves of the mossy roof--then Doris might push the curtain farther back, but not before, no matter how brilliantly the sun shone or how entirely deserted the big road was. As Doris sat sewing and thinking, it seemed to her that her mother was unnecessarily strict. She had even thought it wrong to allow her to learn to dance. Miss Judy had found much difficulty in persuading her. However, she had consented at last, and presently Doris, all alone in the old house, began singing blithely, oblivious of everything except the anticipation of the dancing lessons and the pleasure of darning the party coat. The song was one of Allan Ramsay's, a languishing love-song which Miss Judy's mother had sung. But as Doris's thoughts danced to inaudible music, and her needle flew daintily in and out of the soft old muslin, the words and the tune soon tripped to a gayer measure than they had, perhaps, ever known before.

The birds, too, were lilting gayly on that perfect May morning. A couple of flycatchers were breakfasting in mid-air. It is impossible to conceive of a daintier way to satisfy hunger; as a Kentucky poet has said: "It is, apparently, all color and rhythm--with green boughs and violet sky for canopy, the pure air for a table--and in its midst the sweet bouquet of the woods." And the flycatcher was but one of many beautiful melodious creatures thronging between heaven and earth. Brown thrashers by twos and fours flitted back and forth across the big road, leaving one green wheat-field for another of still richer verdure. A happy pair of orioles, flashing orange and black, were darting--bright as flame and light as smoke--through the tallest silver poplar, building an air-castle almost as wonderful, and nearly as fragile, as those that young human lovers build. With the fetching of each fine fibre, the husband fairly turned upside down, and hung by his feet, while singing his pride and delight. The wife, more modestly happy, quietly rested her soft breast on the unstable nest--with all a woman's trust--as though the home were founded upon a rock, as all homes should be, and hung not by a frail thread at the hazardous tip of an unsteady bough as--alas!--so many homes do. It was steady enough just now, when love was new and the spring was mild, and only the southern breeze stirred the white-lined leaves with a silken rustle. The soft cooing of the unseen doves sounded far off. The bees merely murmured among the honeysuckle blooms. The humming-bird, which was raying rubies and emeralds from the hearts of the roses, came and went as softly as the south wind.

Doris smiled at the sylvan housekeeping of the orioles, which she watched for awhile, letting her sewing rest on her lap. But tiring soon of the little drama of the silver poplar, as we always tire of the happiness of others, the girl's eyes wandered wistfully through the fragrant loneliness to the wooded hills which gently folded the drowsy village. The trees, delicately green, almost silver gray, in their tender foliage, were still fringed by the snow of the dogwood, and the misty beauty of the red buds; and the cool, leafy vistas, sloping gently down toward the village, met the sea of blossoming orchards, breaking in wide, deep waves of pink and white foam at the foot of the hills. But Doris had seen those same trees, and hillsides, and orchards every May-time of her eighteen years, and sameness, however grateful to older eyes, has never a great charm for youth.

Doris's eyes came back to the book-muslin with a keener interest. As she sat there, sewing and singing, in the soft light that filtered through the old curtain, the girl was beautiful, almost tragically beautiful, for her uncertain place in the world. Her slender throat, like the stem of a white flower, arose from the faded brown of her dress as an Easter lily unfolds from its dull sheath. Her radiant hair, yellow as new-blown marigolds, clustered thick and soft about her fair forehead, as the rich pollen falls on the lily's satin. Her delicate brows were dark and straight; and her curling lashes, darker still, threw bewitching shadows around her large, brown eyes. Her face was pale with a warm pallor infinitely fairer than any mere fairness. Her lips, which were a little full, but exquisite in shape and sweetness, were tinted as delicately as blush roses. Her small, white hands, with their rosy palms and tapering fingers, bore no traces of hard work. But Doris was not thinking of her hands as, without turning her head, she put out one of them for another length of thread. The spool was a very small one, and it stood rather unsteadily on the uneven ledge of the window, and it rolled when Doris touched it. Instinctively she tried to catch it, and to keep it from falling to the ground outside the window. She had been reared to neatness and order, and to economy which valued even a reel of cotton too much to see it needlessly soiled. Of course Doris tried to catch the falling spool,--and that was the way everything began! It was all as simple and natural and purely accidental as anything could have been. And yet at the same time it was one of those inscrutable happenings which make the steadiest of us seem but feathers in the wind of destiny.

Only a moment before that foolish little spool began to roll, the big road seemed entirely deserted. Not a human being was in sight--Doris was sure that there was not, because she had looked and looked in vain, and had longed and longed that there might be. Nevertheless, as the little reel started to fall, and Doris darted after it as suddenly and swiftly as a swallow, there was a young man on horseback directly in front of the window, appearing as strangely and as unexpectedly as if he had sprung out of the earth. And, moreover, he was looking straight at Doris, with hardly more than a couple of rods between them, when she burst into full view in the broad light of day, appearing like some beautiful bacchante. The white curtain fell behind her radiant head as the breeze caught and loosed the golden strands of her hair, and the sun flashed a greater radiance upon its dazzling crown. She saw him, too, with a startled uplifting of her great shadowy dark eyes as she bent forward--while her exquisite face was still smiling at her own innocent thoughts, and her rose-red lips were still a little apart with the singing of the old love-song.

The white curtain then swung again into place. It was full of thin spots which Doris could see through; but she was so startled, and her heart was beating so fast at first, that she shrunk back without trying to look. How right her mother had been, after all. That was her first feeling. When she recovered self-possession enough to peep out, she saw that the young man's horse was curveting back and forth across the big road in a most alarming manner. This continued for a surprising length of time before Doris observed that, whenever the horse seemed about to stop, the rider touched him with the spur. Such a flash of indignation went over Doris then as quite swept away the last trace of embarrassment. How could he do such a cruel and such a meaningless thing! She wondered still more why he dismounted, and, throwing the bridle reins over his arm, began walking up and down in front of the window, gazing closely at the ground as though looking for something that he had lost. Doris noticed that he glanced at the window every time he passed it, and she knew that she ought to go out and help him find what he had lost. That was a matter of course in Oldfield manners. It is the way of most country people to take a keen and helpful interest in everything that a neighbor does; and city people deserve less credit than they claim for their indifference to their neighbor's affairs, which is too often mere selfishness disguised. Notwithstanding this local social law Doris did not stir, held motionless by an influence which she could not understand. She had known at once who the young man was. Too few strangers came to Oldfield for her to fail to place him immediately as the grandson of old lady Gordon, the young gentleman from Boston, whose coming everybody was talking about. She noted through the worn places in the old curtain how tall he was and how dark and how handsome. She could not decide what kind of clothes his riding clothes were. At last he mounted his horse and galloped up the hill, and then Doris returned serenely to the darning of the book-muslin party coat.

VII

THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA

Within the hour Lynn Gordon rode back down the hill, and passed the window very slowly, watching the curtain as a star-gazer awaits the passing of a cloud.

The baffling width of white cotton hung still unstirred; Doris was no longer sitting behind it, but the young man had no means of knowing that she had gone. As the hand on the reins unconsciously drew the horse almost to a standstill, the doctor and his wife left their seats on the porch of their house over the way, and came out to the gate to speak to him. They had met him at his grandmother's on the previous evening, and they had been old friends of his father. Lynn sprang from the saddle and, leading his horse, crossed the big road to shake hands with them.

"Have you lost something?" asked Mrs. Alexander.

"Oh, no--yes--I have lost a jewel--a pearl," the young man replied rashly.

The doctor's lady exclaimed in surprise. Jewels were rarely lost or found in that country. The gems oftenest lost were the sparkling seeds which flashed out of the jewel-weed; the finest pearls ever found were those which the mistletoe bore.

"Dear me, what a pity," lamented Mrs. Alexander. "And how was your pearl set?"

"It wasn't mine. I didn't notice how it was set. Oh, yes, I did. It was set amid roses and honeysuckle and humming-birds against a field of spotless snow," Lynn said, still more lightly.

The doctor's wife was not a dull woman. She understood his tone, though she did not understand what he meant. She had been eagerly scanning the big road, as far as she could see; thinking that a jewel dropped near by on the highway--unrolling like a broad band of brown velvet from the far green hills on the north to the farther green hills on the south--must sparkle and flash, showing a long way off in such brilliant sunshine. Now, however, she knew that Lynn was not in earnest, and she turned with a smile on her own face to meet the laughing frankness of his fine dark eyes. But a glance was just passing between the young man and the older man, and she caught that also, with the vague, helpless uneasiness, tinged with resentment, which every woman feels at seeing a sign of the freemasonry of men.

But a doctor's wife learns to overlook a good many things which she would like to have explained, if she be a sensible woman, as Mrs. Alexander was. This one merely said:--

"You are a joker, I see, as your father was. Nobody ever could tell when he was serious. Come in and sit with us. It's nice and cool these early mornings on the porch. Tie your horse to the fence. I thought when I saw you getting down from the saddle, that you meant to hitch him to Sidney's, and I was just going to call and ask you to tie him to ours instead. The doctor's horses pull boards off our fences every day, but it doesn't matter, because he keeps somebody to nail them on again; while Sidney has nobody but herself to depend upon."

"And even the resourceful Sidney--being a woman--can't drive a nail," remarked the doctor, deliberately.

He knew how well worn the truism was, but he used it designedly, as a toreador uses his scarf. He liked to see his wife flare up. Her kind eyes grew so bright and her wholesome cheeks so red, and it was always so delightfully easy to get her in a good humor again. It is a tendency which is very common in large men with amiable little wives like Mrs. Alexander, and one which is very uncommon in smaller men with wives of a different disposition.

Lynn Gordon, as an unmarried man, naturally knew nothing of these matters and blundered on, disappointing the doctor's confident expectations by asking the lady a question, which turned her attention in another direction. He inquired who Sidney was, seeing an opportunity for learning something about the girl behind the silver poplars.

There was no subject upon which Mrs. Alexander was more willing to talk, nor one upon which she could talk more eloquently, and she accordingly began at once to give Lynn the history of Sidney Wendall, whom she held to be a most interesting as well as a most admirable and remarkable character. It was no easy or simple thing, so the doctor's wife said, for a woman of the Pennyroyal Region to earn a family's living. In that country no white woman could work outside her own home (were there anything for her to do) on account of coming into competition with black laborers. And Sidney had received no training to lift her above the laboring class, having had even less than the average country education. And yet, as the doctor's wife pointed out, she had managed to maintain her family and herself in reasonable comfort and universal respect. It was all very well for the men to laugh at Sidney and make fun of her news and her gossip. It was all very well for them to say--as the doctor said, according to his wife, who flashed her eyes at him--that Sidney made her news out of the whole cloth when she did not get it over the grapevine telegraph. Everybody knew how hard men always were on any woman who was not pretty. As though poor Sidney could help the length of her own nose! Let the mean men make fun as much as they pleased! The indignant lady would like, so she said, to see one of them who had done his duty in the world more nobly than Sidney had done hers. She would also like, so she declared, to see one of them who kept as strict guard over what he said about his neighbors, and who was as free from evil-speaking and mischief-making, as Sidney was--for all her talking that they were always so ready to ridicule.

The doctor leaned back in his chair, beaming at his wife. He was very proud of her when she talked and looked as she was doing now, and he was truly sorry when she was compelled to pause for sheer lack of breath.

"I am afraid I don't know the lady of whom you are speaking," Lynn said, as soon as he had a chance to speak. "I haven't been here, you know, since I could remember. Do you mean some one who lives over there in the house behind those silver poplars?" And then, he added artfully, "It seems to be deserted."

"There is where Sidney Wendall lives, but she is never at home in the daytime. Her business takes her out. But Doris, the eldest daughter, is at home. She has always taken care of the house and the other children, and even of Uncle Watty. She used to do it when she wasn't so high," the doctor's wife said, holding her hand about three feet from the porch floor. "Such a lovely, golden-haired, dark-eyed, delicate little changeling, in that homely, rude, rough-and-tumble brood."

"Is this beautiful Doris a child still?" inquired the young man, deceitfully leading on nearer to what he wished to learn.

"Oh, no. I was speaking of years ago. Doris is about grown now, and prettier than ever. You'll be sure to see her. There are very few young ladies in Oldfield. She seldom goes out, though. She stays close at home and takes care of things just as she always has done. It must be a lonely, dreary life for a girl,--and such a beauty too,--but she never seems to mind it. I heard her singing this morning about the time that you rode up."

"I met Sidney coming out of the Watsons' gate when I went in to see Tom in passing," the doctor said suddenly, and with a different manner. "I wish, Jane, that you would ask Sidney, the first time you see her, to go there as often as she can. Send her something, and tell her that I think her going would cheer up Tom."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Alexander, scathingly. "Then Sidney's 'gab,' as you ungrateful men call it, has its uses after all!"

"I am not jesting now, my dear. I am seriously disturbed about Tom Watson. So far as I am able to judge, there is nothing more that surgery or medicine can do for him. The time has come, now when we have done our utmost for his body, that we must find some relief for his mind. He must not be allowed to sit there propped up by the window, staring out at the big road, and never trying to speak even the few indistinct words that he might utter, and always brooding, brooding--over his own awful condition, I'm afraid."

"Well, I've done what I could," said the doctor's wife, quickly, as though her husband's words bore some unspoken reproach. "I know my double duty to a neighbor and a patient of yours, John. But I can't go to see Tom Watson again. You never saw such a sad sight, Mr. Gordon. I actually dream about it after I have seen him. That is where the Watsons live," she said, pointing to the house. "I go every morning to the cross fence between our house and theirs, taking some little thing for Tom just to show that I have been thinking about him, and I call Anne to the other side of the fence and ask her how he is. But doing even that hurts her and hurts me, for she knows that I know that he never can be any better."

"And I think he knows it too. That is the most terrible thing of all," the doctor said, musingly, as if turning over ways and means in his mind.

Mrs. Alexander looked at Lynn with a sudden dimness shadowing the brightness of her kind eyes. "You don't know the Oldfield people, Mr. Gordon, though you are really one of us. Unless you had known Tom Watson as we knew him, you can hardly understand how terrible and how strange his present condition seems to us. He used to be a great, strong, noisy, reckless, hot-tempered dare-devil, but as tender-hearted as a child and liked by everybody, black and white, big and little, in the whole country."

A sudden recollection caused her to smile at her husband, forgetting that she had just been scolding him and that he richly deserved it:--

"You remember, John, that time when Tom kept those bear cubs tied up in his back lot. One day the biggest of them got loose and caught Sidney as she was going home with a pitcher of milk which Anne had given her. Sidney was almost scared out of her wits, and screamed as loud as she could, till the bear squeezed her so tight that she couldn't make another sound. But she never let go the pitcher--never even loosed her grip--and kept on holding it out of the cub's reach, long after she couldn't scream any more. Tom went running. Can't you see him now, John? and hear him shouting at every jump: 'Let go, Sid. Good Gad--woman! are you going to let the bear hug the life out of you before you'll give him that spoonful of milk?'"

"And to think of poor Tom as he is now;" she went on presently, the smile fading. "I will speak to Sidney as you suggest, John. I will send her a basket of sweet potatoes and urge her to go as often as she can. Anne would never think of asking any one to come, but I know she would be pleased to have Sidney drop in. She's always like a fresh breeze on a hot day even to well folks. She told me, however, the other morning that Tom Watson never seemed to notice anything that she had to say. She said that, no matter how hard she tried to entertain him, he kept on staring out at the empty big road, just sitting there, not trying to speak, and looking like a dead man only for his restless, burning eyes."

"And yet he may live for years just as he is now," the doctor said. "But we must not give up trying to help him because he can never be any better. I must devise some sort of relief. It will not do to let him sit there, like that, all day, day after day--maybe for years. I tried this morning to find out what he was thinking about. I also tried to learn from Anne what his tastes were, what sort of things he had liked or was interested in before he met with the accident. His sight is much impaired, and he seems never to have been anything of a reader. I doubt whether he ever had any indoor interests, except playing cards. All that I can remember is that he used to gamble like the very devil."

"Shame on you, John, to be raking up that against the poor fellow, as he is now," protested the doctor's wife, indignantly.

"Nonsense! Who's raking anything up?" the doctor responded. "I was merely trying to think of some way of diverting his mind. I thought perhaps a game of cards--"

The doctor's wife uttered a smothered little shriek: "John _Alexander_! What are you thinking of to speak of card-playing in Anne Watson's house?"

The doctor grew calmly judicial, as all good husbands grow when their wives become unduly excited. "I am well aware of Anne's prejudice. I know precisely how strong--"

"Strong!" repeated his wife, interrupting him. "It's the strongest thing--the only really strong thing--_in_ Anne--that, and her religion. Her horror of card-playing is a part of her religion. It's bred in her bone. She got it from her father, the elder. Some people thought he was actually out of his head about cards. And Anne believes as firmly as he believed it, that cards are Satan's chief weapon, and that even to touch them is to imperil the soul. She believes it as firmly as she believes in baptism for the remission of sins; as firmly as she believes that there is a heaven and a hell."

All this breathless outpouring the doctor waved aside: "As I have already said, my dear, I know perfectly well what Anne's feeling used to be. Now, however, in Tom's hopeless condition she will, of course, look at the matter with more reason."

"Now _isn't_ that like a man?" appealed Mrs. Alexander, to no one in particular, since she could hardly appeal to her visitor against his own sex. "Wouldn't anybody but a man know that Anne would only stand the firmer for that very reason? Any woman would see in a moment that the very fact of Anne's knowing that her husband's mortal life was hopelessly wrecked, could not fail to increase her resistance against a thing which she believes must lose him the life everlasting."

The doctor took his feet down from the porch railing, and tapped his pipe against the post with an unnecessary amount of noise. Lynn Gordon looked hard at the silver poplars on the other side of the big road. Different men have different ways of giving outward expression to the embarrassment which every man feels at a woman's innocent frankness regarding spiritual things. Neither of these men spoke for a space. The doctor was casting about for the surest and swiftest way of fetching his wife back to some ground on which he felt rather more at home, and decidedly more secure of his own footing.

"Anne knew that Tom was a born gambler; she knew it before she married him. Nobody but a woman--a fanatical visionary like Anne--would have been foolish enough to expect to change a leopard's spots."

"It doesn't strike me as particularly foolish for Anne--or for any other woman--to expect her husband to keep his promise not to get any _new_ spots," the lady retorted, with all the promptness and spirit that her husband anticipated.

The doctor glanced at the young man as triumphantly as he dared, and the young man returned the doctor's glance as non-committally as he could. They had both often observed before this, as most observant people observe at some period of their lives, that while a man will defend another man whenever he can, regardless of his own feelings toward the individual, he has never a word to say in defence of men; and that, while a woman will seldom defend another woman without strong personal reasons, she is always ready, _cap-a-pie_, to defend women, through thick and thin.

Nevertheless, the doctor was again a trifle disappointed to find his wife content with firing a single shot, and he presently said, trying to urge her on:--

"I have not disputed the fact that Anne Watson is a good woman. Tom no doubt made the promises that such men always make when they want to win some pretty girl, and he doubtless hoped to be strong enough to keep them. But I cannot allow a patient of mine to die or to fall into melancholy because he has failed to keep promises that many good men break; or because his wife lacks common sense; no matter how good she may be or what sort of religion she may be living up to. If Tom wants to play cards,--as I think that he does, as I am nearly sure that he does,--I shall certainly find him a partner if I can. I would play with him myself if I knew how."

"Let me do it, doctor," said Lynn. "I know something about several games. It would give me real pleasure to do anything in my power for your patient."

Mrs. Alexander said nothing more in opposition; she merely looked her thoughts. When, therefore, it was arranged, as the young man was leaving, that he should come on the following morning to go with the doctor to see Tom Watson about the game of cards, the lady merely gave her smooth auburn head a side-wise toss, as if to say they would all see how it turned out.

VIII

AT OLD LADY GORDON'S

Lynn rode slowly by the Watson house, thinking of its tragedy, which had thus touched him so soon after his coming to this quiet village, the seeming abode of peace. It was his first partial realization that the folded green hills cannot shut away the pain of the world. He was too young and too strong, and had not suffered enough in mind or body, to know that quiet and peace only make the heart ache more keenly with the sorrow of living.

And this was no more even now than a partial perception. He was but twenty-two, yet in the springtime of life; and the earth also was still in the season of its perpetual youth. The green of new leafage now tinted the thinning white of the blossoming orchards; the green and the white and the last rosy sweetness of apple blossoms were yet melting slowly into the rich verdure of the hillsides. But the snowy spray of all the exquisite flowering drifted fast before the incoming summer tide. Already the wild flowers were almost done blooming in the woods, and the scented meadows were growing red with clover blossoms.

The largest, richest fields lying on both sides of the big road, knee-deep in clover and dotted with cattle, belonged to the Gordon estate. Ultimately they would all be his own, but he was not thinking of this as he looked at them that day. He had never thought of making Oldfield his home, having long cherished other plans. Yet, as he looked at the old house, it was a pleasant sight on that May morning, with its low white walls bowered in dense shrubbery and its mossy roof overhung by giant elms. There were many maples, also, and a cypress tree stood beside the gate, swinging its sombre plumes so close to the ground that the young man did not see a cart standing before the gate until he was almost upon it. Coming nearer, he saw that it belonged to a butcher who had driven in from the country, and that it was well filled with his wares. The butcher stood astride a plank which had been laid across the front wheels, and he was busily engaged in turning over the pieces of meat, evidently seeking something to please the mistress of the house. Old lady Gordon sat at the open window in her accustomed place, looking grimly on; and the small Frenchman who managed her farm waited beside the cart, standing in silence, glancing anxiously from its contents to the mistress and back again. The butcher scowled, as he tossed the steaks, the joints, and roasts about, thinking angrily how much more trouble it always was to please old lady Gordon than all the rest of the easy-going people living along his semi-weekly route. Finally, however, he found a piece which seemed promising, and he handed it to the small Frenchman, who took the huge joint,--holding it as if it were a sword,--and jauntily carried it across the lawn to the window and held it up for the mistress to decide upon. She gave only one contemptuous glance at it; one was enough to cause its rejection with great scorn.

"No, I won't have that!" she called out in her loud, deep, imperious voice, speaking to the butcher over her manager's head. "How many times must I tell you that I don't like the bony parts?"

Monsieur Beauchamp suddenly dropped the joint as if it had burnt him, and started as if he had been stung. His face flushed scarlet, and he drew himself up to his fullest height.

"Ah, madame," he said poignantly yet proudly, "I am stab to ze soul to hear you say zat you do not like ze Bonapartes!"

"For gracious' sake!" old lady Gordon exclaimed, taken quite off her guard; and dropping her turkey-wing fan in her start of amazement.

In another moment she remembered, and forthwith did what she could to soothe the little Frenchman's deeply wounded feelings. She turned away her head as her grandson drew near, and put up the turkey-wing fan to hide the smile which she could not control, when her gaze chanced to meet his as he looked on, a silent and interested spectator of the scene.

"Why, Mister Beauchamp," she said, quite gravely, as soon as she could speak at all, "I am amazed at your thinking that I meant any disrespect to your relations. How in the world could you think such a thing? I give you my word of honor, that I have always believed the Bonapartes to be the only human beings ever created expressly to rule over the French."

Monsieur had begun to soften almost as soon as the mistress had begun to explain, and by the time the explanation was finished, he was fairly beaming with delight. One hand was already holding his hat, but the other was free, and this he now laid upon his heart, bringing his small heels together in a most impressive bow. And then, smiling and quite happy again, he picked up the rejected joint of mutton and carried it back to the cart very cheerfully indeed. The turning over of its contents was accordingly resumed for some time longer, until old lady Gordon consented at last to allow the butcher to leave a large roast. She shouted after him, nevertheless, as he rattled away; telling him at the top of her strong voice that he need not think that she would take another piece as tough and lean as this piece was; that he need have no such expectation the next time he came round.

She told Lynn the story of the Frenchman when the young man had entered the room in which she always sat and, with her permission, had thrown himself down on the couch under the window. But she could not answer his question about Monsieur Beauchamp immediately, because Eunice, the fat black cook, chanced to come in just at that moment for a consultation over the dinner, and the meals in old lady Gordon's house were always the subjects of very grave consideration, requiring a considerable length of time.

While the mistress and the cook were thus conferring, the young man gazed carelessly, and yet curiously, around this large low room in which his grandmother lived, and had spent the greater part of her life; and in which his father had been born. The low ceiling had been covered with canvas years before, but the original white of the canvas had long since turned to a smoky brown. The walls, which had never been plastered, were also covered with canvas, and afterward had been hung with old-fashioned wall-paper in hunting scenes. These had faded into a general effect of hazy dimness, but Lynn's keen young eyes made out the hunters, the hounds, and the game, as he lay idle with his long arms under his handsome dark head, wondering what sort of man his grandfather had been. He had heard it said that rooms are like the people who live in them, and, recalling the saying, he wondered again whether this room was now as it used to be in his grandfather's time. There stood his grandfather's secretary in one corner, still filled with papers, just as he must have left it. The bed in the opposite corner must also have stood in the same place for many a year. It had been a very stately edifice, a magnificent structure, in its day. It even yet upheld a heavy tester of faded crimson damask, gathered to the centre under a great golden star of tarnished splendor. It had evidently once been of imposing height, and it was still of unusual width, but it had lost something of its height with age, as human beings do. It had been much too high for old lady Gordon to climb into and out of, as easily as she liked, when she began to grow stouter and more indolent, and it was not her way to submit to any inconvenience which she could avoid. So that the thick mahogany legs of the grand old bed had been sawed off by degrees--as old lady Gordon's ease required--till it now squatted under its big, dusty red tester like some absurd turbaned old Turk. Lynn smiled as he looked at it, letting his gaze wander on to the tall chest of drawers, to the high-backed split-bottomed chairs, to a great oaken chest at the foot of the bed--to all the homely, comfortable, unbeautiful things.