CHAPTER IV.
The next day dawned with pale rain-bleached skies and fresh sweet odours of reanimated vegetation, but it dawned heavily for Sidney Martin. During the drive home from the church the evening before they had all been somewhat silent.
“Are you studyin’ for the ministry?” old Mr. Lansing had asked.
“No—oh no,” said Sidney, flushing unseen in the dark.
“It seems like you had a call,” said old Lansing, wishing he had not said quite so positively at the church that his visitor was qualifying for the service of God, and certainly from Mr. Lansing’s point of view he was justified in his assertion.
Young men in delicate health who could pray as Sidney Martin had prayed seemed to be the real ministerial material.
“Wouldn’t you like to be the minister?” asked Vashti.
People in Dole usually employed the definite article in referring to men of the cloth. To theDole mind it smacked of irreverence to say “a” minister, as if there were herds of them as there is of common clay.
There was asoupçonof surprise in Vashti’s tones. How quickly the acid of deception permeates the fabric of thought!
“I have no call to the ministry,” answered Sidney—employing the slang of the cult glibly to please the woman whom he loved.
“But if you felt you were called you would let nothing stand in your way—would you?”
“No,” said Sidney, glad of an opportunity to say an honest word frankly. “No.”
There was little else said. When they came to the cross-road Mr. Lansing halted and Nathan Peck got out of the waggon to walk down the Brixton road the quarter of a mile to where he lived with his mother.
He stood a lank ungraceful shape in the gloom.
“Here, Nat,” said Temperance, “take my umbrell.”
“Not by a jugful,” he said. “Why, Temp’rins! you’d be soaked clean through.”
“Temperance can come under my umbrella,” said Mabella, divining the pleasure it would give Temperance to yield up hers to Nathan.
“I’ve got my muffler on,” said Nathan stoutly.
“Here!” said Temperance, a trifle imperatively. “Good-night, Nat.”
The bays pulling at the reins started forward and Nat was left with the umbrella.
“Would you care to offer a few words of thanks for the vouchsafed blessing?” asked Mr. Lansing, with a laudable desire to make his saintly guest comfortable, entering the house after putting the bays in their stable.
“Blessing!” echoed Temperance irascibly. “He’s had enough of blessings this night, I’m thinkin’; it’s boneset tea he needs now.”
“Woman!” said Mr. Lansing. Vashti looked her cold displeasure. The word and the look did not disturb Temperance.
“Lend a hand, M’bella,” said she; “we’ll go and get them yarbs.”
“Oh—thank you, Miss Tribbey,” said Sidney, feeling strangely comforted by this motherly old maid’s attentions. “But——”
Temperance cut him short, looking at him with grim kindness and heeding his protest not at all.
“Your face is as pale as buttermilk,” she began. “Now what you’ll do is to go upstairs and go to bed. Mind shut your window down, for rain after a drought is terrible penetratin’. When this boneset tea has drawed Mr. Lansing ’ill bring it up to you.”
Mabella was bustling about getting a lamp to go to the garret for the herbs.
“You are very good,” Sidney said to her as one might praise a willing child.
“Light heart makes light foot,” said Temperance oracularly. Mabella smiled brightly and blushed.
Vashti standing with the dark folds of her cloak slipping down about her superb figure, noted the blush, and connecting it with the eagerness of Mabella’s aid to Temperance concluded that Mabella was casting eyes upon Sidney. Vashti’s eyes grew deep and sombre. A pale smile curled her sculptural lips; such a smile as Mona Lisa wears in her portraits.
Mabella’s coquetries against her power! Bah! a sneer flickered across her countenance, erasing expression from it as acid cleans metal of stain. But she was shaken with silent rage at the mere idea. She let her white lids fall over her full eyes for a moment; then crossed to where Sidney stood. She always seemed to move slowly, because of her long gliding paces, which in reality bore her swiftly forward. She looked into his eyes. “I am so sorry,” she said—her voice, always beautiful, seemed to his greedy ears more than exquisite now—
“I am so sorry you are not well. You will go upstairs, won’t you, and take what Temperance sends you? You are not suffering?”
Her wonderful eyes seemed wells of womanly concern for him. They searched his as if eager to be assured that there was no other ill troubling him than was apparent. A happy tremor thrilled his heart.
“I shall be quite well, I hope, in the morning,” he said. “I have bad headaches sometimes. This is the beginning of one I suppose.”
He shivered with cold.
“Ah!” she said, “you must go away at once. I’m afraid you feel worse than you will admit. If it was only your head I might help to cure it; but really you had better go—” she looked at him—was it compellingly or pleadingly? “Go,” she half whispered, with obvious entreaty in her eyes; then she veiled it with a smile of mock deprecation, as if—his heart stood still with delight—as if she was loathe to see him go—yet forhissake wished it. Temperance and Mabella having been to the garret where the herbs were hung to dry, re-entered the kitchen in time to hear Vashti’s good-night words.
“It’s a deal easier,” said Temperance, in the course of a circumstantial account of the occurrence later on. “It’s a deal easier to say ‘Go’ with a dying-duck expression, turning up the whites of your eyes, than to go yourself up them stairs and that pesky ladder to the garret for yarbs.”
Fortunately Sidney never knew of Temperance’s profane criticisms upon his goddess.
“Yes—I will go,” he said to Vashti. He spoke vaguely, as of one hardly awake to the realities about him; and indeed he was stunned by the glory that suddenly had shone in upon him when her feigned solicitude made his heart leap.
“You are very good,” he said.
“Ah, no—” said Vashti simply, but her eyes were eloquent. Girlish coquetries became subtle sorceries as she employed them.
The boneset tea had been duly despatched, but morning found him racked by an intolerable headache, that acme of nervous pain of which only supra-sensitive folk know. He half staggered as he sought the porch.
Temperance came to him presently.
“How do you feel this mornin’?” she asked.
He looked at her, his blood-shot eyes dizzy with pain.
“I’m not over well,” he said. “My head——”
“I’ll bring your breakfast here,” said Temperance and departed. He sat down upon the porch step and leaned against the pillar, the same against which Vashti had stood that night in the after-glow. The thought was pleasant, but it was better to open his eyes and see standing before him, strong and calm, the Queen of his dreams.
“Don’t rise,” she said. “Is it your head?”
“Yes,” he said, half closing his eyes again, for her form seemed to be reeling across his vision. “Yes.”
“What do you do for these headaches?” asked Vashti.
“Oh, bromides and endurance,” he said.
“Well—wait till you breakfast and I’ll try it Ican cure it,” said Vashti. “Here is Temperance coming.”
Temperance and her tray arrived at the moment. Temperance put it down on the step and went down the sandy garden paths whilst he ate, pulling up a weed there, straightening a flower here. Mabella came out to the porch, or rather came and stood in the wide doorway a moment. Mabella had on her pink dress—at that time in the morning! Vashti’s eyes grew sombre for an instant; she liked battle, but not presumption, and surely if, from whatever motive, she chose to smile upon Sidney, it was not for Mabella to oppose herself and her charms toherwill.
Temperance came back for the tray, which she found untouched, save for the tea which Sidney had drunk so eagerly.
“Where is Mr. Lansing?” asked Sidney, as Temperance stood holding the tray under one arm with its edge resting upon her hip. “He will think I am very lazy.”
“He’s gone over to Brixton to find out when The Body will arrive,” said Temperance.
Poor Len! In life he had been “that Len Simpson,” and not one of his neighbours would have crossed the threshold to greet him, unless prompted by that curiosity which leads us to pry into the misdeeds of others. Now he was a Body, and more than one of the Dole people had left early like Mr. Lansingupon the odd chance of meeting his corpse at Brixton.
Ah, poor, inconsistent humanity which fills dead hands with flowers and denies eager palms one rose, and doubtless these things must be. Yet we can imagine that a higher race than we might well make mock of our too severe judgments—our uncomprehending judgments, and our tardy tendernesses.
“You will make your passes for Mr. Martin, won’t you, Vashti?” said Mabella, “and Temperance and I will see that you are left quiet. Vashti is a witch, you know,” she continued to Sidney; “she will steal your headache with the tips of her fingers.”
Temperance snorted and entered the house without more ado.
Mabella nodded and smiled and followed her.
“I can’t abear them passes and performances,” said Temperance to Mabella. “It gives me the shivers. Vashti commenced on me onct when I had neuralgia and I was asettin’ there thinkin’ when I got better I’d make some new pillars out of the geese feathers, and all at onct Vashti’s eyes began to grow bigger and bigger—just like a cat’s. They’re cat green Vashti’s eyes is, call ’em what you like—and her hands apassin’ over my forrit was just like cat’s paws, afeelin’ and afeelin’ before it digs its claws in. My! I expected every minnit to feel ’em in my brains, and with it all I was that sleepy. No, for me I’ll stick to camfire and sich.”
“Who’s a silly, Temperance?” demanded Mabella.
“You ain’t bridle-wise yet,” said Temperance, using her accustomed formula of rebuke. And Mabella laughed aloud in defiance of reproof. The girl’s heart sang in her breast, for when Lanty helped her into her waterproof the night before he had whispered—
“At seven to-morrow night in Mullein meadow.”
She had smiled consent.
Would this long day never pass?
Vashti and Sidney were thus left solitary upon the shaded porch.
“Can you really cure headaches?” he said.
“We will see,” she answered. “But I think you had better sit in that chair.” He sat down in the rocking-chair she indicated. It was very low. As she knelt upon the top step before it her head was on a level with his. How beautiful she was, he thought. How divine the strong white column of her throat, exposed down to the little hollow which the French call Love’s bed, creased softly by the rings of Venus’ necklace.
“I wouldn’t think much if I were you,” she said, “or at least, not of many things.”
“I will think of you,” he said, feeling venturesome as an indulged child.
“Ah,” she said; “your cure will be quick,” and then bending gracefully forward she began making simple strokes across his forehead, letting her finger-tipstouch lightly together between his eyebrows, and drawing them softly, as if with a persuasive sweep, to either side. There was much magnetism in that splendid frame of hers, and much potency in her will, and much subtle suggestion in those caressing finger-tips.
“Close your eyes if the light wearies them,” she said softly, but he strove to keep them open to catch glimpses of her regal face, between the passages of the hands, so calm in the tensity of its expression. After a little while his eyelids began to weigh heavily upon his eyes.
The grey—or was it green?—orbs watching him flashed between the moving fingers like the sun through bars of ivory. He still watched their gleam intently; seen fitfully thus their radiance grew brighter, brighter, till it blasted vision.
“Close your eyes,” he heard a voice say, as from far, far away.
“You will be tired,” he muttered, stirring, but his eyes closed. His head fell back against the back of the chair, and strong Vashti Lansing sank back also, pale and trembling.
“Oh!” she said, speaking numbly to herself—“Oh! how long it was. I thought he would never sleep—I,” she paused and looked at the sleeping man with pale wrath upon her face; “to think he should have resisted so—I”—she leaned back, worn out, it seemed, and regarded Sidney with venomous,half-closed eyes, and he slept, and sleeping, smiled—for his last thoughts had been of her.
The time which had seemed so long to Vashti had passed like the dream of a moment to him—a dream in which her form had filled the stage of his mind, yet not so completely as to exclude some struggles of the entrapped intelligence against the narcotic of her waving hands. The trained mind by mere mechanical instinct had striven against the encroaching numbness, but Sidney’s volition had been consciously passive, and the intelligence left to struggle alone was tangled in the web of dreams. Vashti sat listlessly upon the step for some time—like a sleek, beautiful cat watching a mouse. Then she rose and went within doors to perform her share of the household duties very languidly.
The three women dined alone at twelve o’clock, for Mr. Lansing had not returned, and Sidney still slept. After dinner Vashti disappeared, going to her room and throwing herself heavily upon her old-fashioned couch; she also slept.
Active Temperance fell to her patchwork so soon as her dinner dishes were done, sitting, a comfortable, homely figure, in her calico dress and white apron. Now pursing her lips as she pleated in the seams firmly between her finger and thumb; now relaxing into grim smiles at her thoughts, but always doing with all her might the task in hand.
Mabella essayed her crochet, tried to read, rearrangedher hair till her arms ached from holding them up, and found with all these employments the afternoon insupportably long.
About three o’clock in the afternoon Vashti, cool and calm, descended the stairs and went out upon the porch. As she crossed the threshold, Sidney, lying still as she had left him hours before in the low chair, opened his eyes and looked up into her face. She returned the look—neither for a moment spoke. A sudden deep hush seemed to have fallen upon, about them. Had he awakened from his dream, or had she entered it to make the dream world real with her presence? About them was all the shadowyverdâtreof trees and vines. Sidney had forgotten where he was—all earthly circumstances faded before the great fact of her presence. He was conscious only that he was Man, and that Woman, glorified and like unto the gods for beauty, stood before him. Were they then gods together?
“Is your head better?” she asked; her full tones did not jar upon the eloquent silence, but her words reminded him that he was mortal.
“I had forgotten it,” he said. “I must think before I can tell.”
She laughed—just one or two notes fluted forth, but in their cadence was the soul of music. It was as if mirth, self-wrought, bubbled up beneath the dignity of this stately creature, as the living spring laps against the marble basin which surrounds it;and as the tinkle of the spring has more in it than melody, so Vashti Lansing’s laughter was instinct with more than amusement. There was in it the thrill of triumph, the timbre of mockery, and the subtlety of invitation.
“Then,” she said, “we will take it for granted that it is better. You are like father and the thistles in his fingers. He often tells me how he has been tormented by some thistle, and when I go to take it out, he has to search the fingers of each hand before he can find out where it is. He sometimes cannot even tell which hand it’s in.”
“Well,” said Sidney; “I am like your father. I’ve lost my head.”
“But if it ached,” said she; “it was a happy loss.”
“I hope it will be a happy loss,” he said wistfully.
She smiled gently and let fall her eyelids; no flicker of colour touched her cheeks, nor was there any suggestion of shyness in her countenance. Thus a goddess might veil her eyes that her purposes might not be read until such time as she willed to reveal them.
Mabella heard voices upon the porch and came flying out.
Sidney could not find it in his heart to be impatient with this bright-faced girl, whose heart was so full of tenderness to all living things that little loving syllables crept into her daily speech, and “dear” dropped from her lips as gently and naturallyas the petals of a flower fall upon the grass, and as the flower petals brighten for a little the weed at the flower’s foot, so Mabella’s sweet ways gladdened the hearts of those about her.
“Ah, Mr. Martin,” she said, “so you are awake! Was I a true prophet? Yes—I’m sure of it! Vashti’s finger-tips did steal the ache, didn’t they? They’re too clever to be safe with one’s purse. But see—have you had anything to eat? No? Why, Vashti,” in tones of quick concern, “he must be faint for want of something to eat.” She was gone in a moment. With Mabella to know a want was to endeavour to supply it. Ere there was time for further speech between Sidney and Vashti, Temperance had come out. Her shrewd, kindly face banished the last shreds of his dreams. The pearl portal closed upon the fair imageries of his imagination and he awoke, and with his first really waking thought the events of the night before ranged themselves before his mental vision. As he lay awake in the night he had decided that come what may he must put on a bold front before the awkward situation he had created for himself. But if the courage which springs from conscious righteousness is cumulative, the courage which is evolved from the necessities of a false position is self-disintegrating. Sidney felt bitterly that he feared the face of his fellows.
“Eat something,” said Temperance, urging thebread and milk upon him; “eat something. When I was took with the M’lary I never shook it off a bit till I begun to eat. It’s them citified messes that has spoiled yer stummick. Picks of this and dabs of that, and not knowin’ even if it’s home-fed pork, or pork that’s made its livin’ rootin’ in snake pastures, that you’re eatin’. My soul! It goes agin me to think of it; but there, what kin ye expect from people that eats their dinners as I’ve heard tell at six o’clock at night?”
Sidney ate his portion humbly whilst Temperance harangued him. He looked up at her, smiling in a way which transfigured his grave, thin face.
“I’m a bother to you, am I not, Miss Tribbey? But it’s my bringing up that’s responsible for my sins, I assure you. My intentions are good, and I’m sure between your cooking and your kindness I shall be a proverb for fatness before I go away.”
“Soft words butter no parsnips,” said Temperance with affected indifference. “Fair words won’t fill a flour-barrel, nor talking do you as much good as eatin’,” with which she marched off greatly delighted. Mabella seeing a chance to tease her, followed:
“If you make eyes at Mr. Martin like that I’ll tell Nathan Peck,” Sidney heard her say.
“My soul! Mabella, you’ve no sense, but, mind you, it’s true every word I said. I tell you I ain’t often in town, but when I am I eat their messes with long teeth.”
Sidney moved his camp from the porch to the hammock which was suspended between two apple trees in the corner of the garden. Mabella brought out her sewing, and Vashti her netting, and Sidney spent the remnant of the waning afternoon watching the suave movements of Vashti’s arm as, holding her work with one foot, she sent her wooden mesh dexterously into the loops of a hammock such as he was lying in; and at length the shadows lengthened on the grass, and Temperance called that supper was ready.
Mabella Lansing never forgot that repast. It was the passover partaken of whilst she was girded to go forth from girlhood to womanhood, from a paradise of ignorance to the knowledge of good and evil. The anticipation of a new love made these time-tried ones doubly dear. She forgot to eat and dwelt lingeringly upon the faces about her; faces which had shone kindly upon her since she was a little child. The time which had crept so slowly on the dial all day long now seemed to hasten on, as if to some longed-for hour which was to bring a great new blessing in its span.
In retrospect of “the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,” do we not all single out from them one hour becrowned above all others; one hour in marking which the sands of memory’s glass run goldenly? Amidst the dead sweetness of buried hours is there not always one whose rose it amaranthine?One, which in the garlands of the past retains ever the perfume of the living flower, shaming the faint scent of dead delights? One hour in which the wings of our spirits touched others and both burst forth in flame? And the chrism of this hour was visible upon the brow of Mabella Lansing. She was sealed as one worthy of initiation into its fateful mysteries. How far away she seemed from those about her; their voices came to her faintly as farewells across the widening strip of water which parts the ship from shore.
“Did you find out about Len Simpson’s funeral?” asked Vashti of her father.
“Yes—the buryin’s to-morrow, and it seems Len was terrible well thought of amongst the play-actin’ folk, and they’ve sent up a hull load of flowers along with the body, and there’s a depitation comin’ to-morrow to the buryin’ and they say there’s considerable money comin’ to Len and of course his father’ll get it. I don’t know if he’ll buy that spring medder of Mr. Ellis, or if he’ll pay the mortgage on the old place, but anyhow it’ll be a big lift to him.”
“Why, is it as much as that?” asked Vashti incredulously.
“So they say,” said her father.
“Lands sake!” said Temperance. “It seems like blood-money to me. Pore Len!”
As they all rose from the table, Mabella managed to slip away to her room, to spend the few momentsbefore her tryst, alone. She looked out of her window and saw afar amid the boulders of Mullein meadow a form she knew, and the next moment she fled breathlessly from the front porch. A more sophisticated woman would have waited till the trysting time had come, but Mabella’s heart was her helm in those days and she followed its guiding blindly, and it turned towards Lanty waiting there for her.For her.O! the intoxication of the thought! O! the gladness of the earth! the delight of feeling life pulsing through young veins!
And thus it was that as Lanty paced back and forth in patient impatience within a little space hedged in by great boulders, his heart suddenly thrilled within him as the needle trembles towards the unseen magnet; he looked up at the evening sky as one might look upon whom the spirit was descending, and then, turning instinctively, he saw a shy figure standing between two great boulders. He cast his hat to the ground and went towards her, bare browed, and, holding out his arms, uttered a sound of delight. Was it a prayer—a name, or a plea? And with a little happy, frightened cry of “Lansing, Lansing,” Mabella fled to him. Nestling close to his throbbing heart, close indeed, as if she was fain to hide even from these tender eyes, which, dimmed with great joy, looked upon her so worshippingly. There are certain greetings and farewells which may not be writ out in words, and these untranslatablemessages winged their way from heart to heart between these two.
The grey heaven bent above them as if in benediction. The stern outlines of the old boulders faded into the dusk which seemed to enwrap them as if eager to mitigate their severity. The soft greys of the barren landscape, the tender paleness of the sky, seemed to hold the two lovers in a mystic embrace, isolating them in the radiance of their own love, even as the circumstances of a United Destiny were to hedge these two for ever from the world. There were jagged stones hidden by the tender mists of twilight, and bitter herbs and thistles grew unseen about them, but to their eyes the barren reaches of Mullein meadow blossomed like a rose. Doubtless, they two, like all we mortals, would some day “fall upon the thorns of life and bleed,” but together surely no terror would overcome them nor any despair make its home in their hearts, so long as across the chasms in the life-road they could touch each other’s hands. The first rapture of their meeting vanished, as a bird soaring in the blue disappears from vision, which yet does not feel a sense of loss, because though the eye sees not the heart knows that afar in the empyrean the triumphant wings still beat.
“Mabella—my Mabella. You love me?”
“Oh, so much, so very much—and, Lanty, you like me?”
“Like! Oh, Mabella, since that day in the hayfield when Iknew, you can’t imagine what life has seemed to me since then—surely it is ages ago, and how I have thought of you! Dear, I can’t say all I mean—but you know—Mabella,you know, don’t you, sweetheart?”
“I hope so,” she said sweetly, and then, with the inconsequence of women, her eyes filled with tears.
“Lanty—you—you will be good to me?”
“May God treat me as I treat you,” said Lanty solemnly.
There was a pause, such a pause as when the sacramental wine dies upon the palate.
“I did not doubt you, Lanty.”
“No, sweet one,” he said; “I understand all about it. I will be good to you and take care of you, and, oh, my own dear girl, I am so happy.”
“And I——”
And then lighter talk possessed them, and they recounted incidents, which, with the happy egotism of lovers, they chose to consider as important events because they had a special significance for them. The path to love is like a sea voyage. There are always more remarkable occurrences and extraordinary coincidences in one’s own experience than in anyone else’s, and these two were no exception to the rule. They discovered that upon several notable occasions they had been thinkingexactlythe same thing, and upon other occasions each had knownexactlywhat the other was going to say before the words were uttered, and they talked on until they were environed in an atmosphere of wonder and awe, and looked upon each other startled by the recognition of their superiority, and the world was but a little place compared with the vastness of each other’s eyes.
The dusk crept closer to them, the wings of night waved nearer and nearer, and Mabella, resting in Lanty’s arms, sought his eyes for all light, and as they stood thus two other pairs of eyes watched them.
When Mabella had disappeared so promptly after supper, suspicion had stirred uneasily in Vashti’s heart.
“Do you want me to help with the dishes?” she asked Temperance; “Mabella seems to have gotten herself out of sight.”
“No,” said Temperance, who was expecting Nathan, “I’ll finish up that handful of dishes and everything else there is to do in half an hour.”
Vashti betook herself to the garden expecting to find Mabella and Sidney there.
Both were gone.
Sidney, so soon as Vashti’s personal influence was disturbed by the presence of others, fell again into a chaos of self-communings, and the devil which lurked there drove him forth into the wilderness; walking with the hopeless desire of escaping fromhimself he, ere long, found he was amid the barrenness of Mullein meadow. He wandered up and down amid its grotesque boulders till suddenly there came to him a sense of trespass.
“Put off thy shoes from off thy feet for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground,” his intuitions whispered to him. He raised his eyes—looked out from his own heart and saw Lanty with Mabella within his arms, her eyes raised to his radiant with the ineffable trust of first love. Sidney stood spellbound, his heart aching within him. How sorely he envied the title-deeds to this enchanted country they had found, and possessed by divine right. Surely that meek man Moses endured sore agony as, foot-weary after long wandering, he looked upon the promised land, and looked only. It is indeed bitter to look at happiness through another man’s eyes.
Sidney lingered some little time, till of their sacred talk one syllable came to him clearly; then he realized the sacrilege of listening, and departed; but surely the sky was very dark towards which he turned. Yet as he searched the sombre clouds before him the needle-like rays of a tiny star shone out environed by the darkness, and Sidney lighted a little lamp of hope at its beam.
When Vashti found the garden empty as last year’s nests she never paused, but turning fled up to the little garret cupola whose windowed sidesgave a view for a long distance in every direction, and hardly had she climbed to this eyrie before she saw two figures in Mullein meadow.
That was enough.
Vashti did not wait to study the picture in detail. Gathering her skirts in her hand she sped down the stairs through the garden and down the road like a whirlwind. Her thwarted will shook her whole being as a birch trembles in the breeze. Mabella had dared! Whenshehad smiled upon him! As Vashti ran down the road she promised herself that she would give both Sidney and Mabella a lesson. Mabella would be presuming to Lanty next! So Vashti soliloquised within her angry soul as she climbed the stone fence of Mullein meadow and crept noiselessly towards where she expected to find Mabella and Sidney. She advanced stealthily, paying all heed to caution, and after duly ensconcing herself behind a boulder which she knew commanded a view of the little hollow she looked—and saw.... and controlled herself sufficiently not to scream aloud in rage; but vitriolic anger seethed within her heart, and for the time denied outlet, burned and cankered and tortured the breast which contained it. The first desire of her dominant nature was to fling herself before them in a wild accession of rage, and open upon them the floodgates of speech, but Vashti Lansing was not without a heritage of self-control. Long ago when her ancestress had been on trial forwitchery, cruel persuasion had been used to make her speak—in vain. The torment of the modern Vashti was greater and keener, inasmuch as it came from within; alas! we are told, it is that which defileth; every proud drop of blood in Vashti’s veins urged her to mocking speech; beneath the iron curb of her will she was mute, but the victory cost dear. So as Lilith, the snake-wife of Adam, may have lain in the shadows of Paradise watching the happiness of God-given Eve, Vashti Lansing stayed and watched sombrely, ominously, the joy of these two, and cursed them, vowing them evil, and promising the devil within her the glut of a full revenge—revenge for what?
Lanty had never given her cause to think he loved her, and Mabella had only veiled her love with shyness, not hidden it with guile—but—Vashti Lansing was supremely illogical. They had transgressed the unwritten statutes of her will. Did not that suffice to make them sinners above all others?—besides, like the poison which festers in the already wide wound, she realized in those moments of supreme mental activity that she loved Lanty, as women such as she love men, tigerishly, selfishly—Ah! they should suffer even as she suffered! She dropped her face in her hands, enduring the mortal agony of her baulked will, her misplaced, evil love, her bruised self-confidence, and shattering rage. And when she raised her head once more the scenehad grown dark, the grassy stage whereon two mortals had lately mimed it in the guise of gods was empty, and she was alone.
She rose slowly to her feet wringing her hands in mute wrath. She looked around at the dreary field wherein she had endured such agony. Oh, that some yet more bitter blight than barrenness might fall upon it—some pest of noxious plants, some plague of poisonous serpents; oh, that she knew a curse potent enough to blast the grass upon which they had stood! But nature sanctifies herself; our curses are useless against her righteousness and rattle back upon our own heads like peas cast against a breast-plate of steel.
She entered the house calmly as was her wont. Within her heart was a Hades of rage; upon her brow the glamoured eyes of Sidney Martin saw the spectral gleam of the star of promise.