CHAPTER VI.
After the day when, alone upon the hillside, Sidney watched Len Simpson’s funeral wind along the narrow ways of Dole, there ensued for him a sweet calm interlude—a tranquil period, yet surcharged with potentialities.
It was the space between the casting of the grain into the ground and the first blade. At such a time there is no stir upon the surface of the earth, yet in its brown bosom the vital germinal growths are beginning; the husk of individuality is bursting, the tap-root of deeper sympathy is searching for sustenance; and at last upon some happy morning a green glow gladdens the sky, and we say: “Lo, the new grain!” and offer thanks for the promise of the gracious harvest.
But all the after-vigour of the plant depends upon that silent time in the darkness. So the whole fabric of Sidney’s after-life was built up from the beginnings made in that uneventful month, whose days are difficult to chronicle, as beads which slip adown the string and mingle with each other are to count. Itpassed like a lover’s dream to Sidney, to be remembered afterwards as a season of peace and happiness whose source and sense eluded analysis.
The calm happiness which encompassed the lives of Mabella and Lanty lay like a benediction upon the house, and the hearts beneath its benison rested for the moment like a congregation hushed after the last Amen, and not yet surrendered again to the worldly cares and sordid joys which wait without the sanctuary doors.
But as one of the peaceful congregation may writhe in the hair shirt of personal perplexity, so Vashti Lansing beneath her calm smile suffered agonies in those days.
Is there any torture more poignant than the cry of “Peace, Peace” when there is no Peace?
She was very pale, the insolently perfect oval of her face had fined a little, there was a hint of a break in the suave curve of her cheek, and this, albeit an imperfection, lent her beauty a new and subtle charm of appeal.
She was very quiet, too, and now and then a tender wistfulness dimmed her eyes, softening the majesty of her brow alluringly. When Sidney saw this he felt his heart go out to her more strongly than ever.
“Unconsciously,” he said to himself, “her sweet, strong nature covets the joy of loving and being loved”; and there welled up within him that indulgentand protective tenderness which all good men feel for the women they love.
Vashti Lansing had never appeared so gentle, so womanly, so good, as at this juncture when all the evil within her was rising, and gathering, and forming into malevolent purposes. Some deadly creatures take to themselves the semblance of flowers that they may sting their victims unaware.
Mabella and Lanty were together continually. It was very pretty to see her shy eagerness for his coming, his open happiness at her presence. Temperance was always busy with her housework, to which was added now the cutting and hemming of Mabella’s household linen. For Temperance had long saved egg-money and butter-money for such an emergency, and, delighted at the prospective union of her two favourites, she fell to the work eagerly. Mabella tried to help, but her usually busy fingers were rather idle during those first halcyon days. She let her hands fall in her lap with the needle between her fingers, and slipped away into a dream, leaving all earthly considerations far behind. If a word or a smile reminded her that mortals were peeping into her paradise, she would rise and steal away to the little shadowy room, from the windows of which she had seen him waiting in Mullein meadow, and there, chiding herself for over great delight, she would strive to bring down her great joy to the basis of every-day fact. “We love eachother,” she would say, stating the fact in bold terms, “we love each other,” and by the time she had said it twice her face would shine again with the glory of the thought, and the words ceased to become words to her, and became only the sighing of Love’s mouth. What a simple figure Mabella Lansing presents upon the little stage whereon these people trod, beside the splendid and forceful personality of her cousin Vashti! What an ordinary and commonplace product of ordinary and commonplace conditions Lanty Lansing seems beside Sidney Martin, supersensitive, morbidly idealistic, a Sir Galahad, bearing the white flower of a stainless life and giving it into the hands of a wicked woman to work her will upon it!
Yet though the love of Mabella and Lanty was but “the homespun dream of simple folk,” still the very gladness of it makes it precious in this world, where even the divine passion has grown a little hum-drum, and where the ashes lie whitely upon the divine fires.
But perhaps the world will shake off its lethargy when the new century begins, and even now there may be smiling in his cradle the Shakespeare whose breath shall blow the embers again into flame. Surely it is simple, natural kindly souls like Mabella and Lanty who perpetuate fidelity, honour and trust upon the earth; and eager, pure, unselfish souls like Sidney Martin who transmit the gloriousimpetus of aspiration from one generation to another.
It is hands like theirs which crown the years with enduring chaplets, and brush from the brow of the aging century the dishonouring garland of senile sins which are like toadstools, the efflorescence of decay.
Old Mr. Lansing having become better acquainted with Sidney, had ceased to regard him as “company,” and had relapsed comfortably into his own ways. Reading his weekly paper, gossiping with Nathan Peck (who, being the village carpenter, always knew the latest news), and going to bed when the grey died out of the twilight sky.
Vashti and Sidney were thus left much to themselves.
The “odd” horse having effectually lamed herself by stepping on a nail, driving her was out of the question. To break a team upon any frivolous pretext would have been a scandal in Dole, so Vashti and Sidney were kept busy going errands. They went to the post office twice a week; they made pilgrimages out to the far-away hill pastures, where the young cattle grazed, to count them, and report upon the depth of water in the little brown pool where they drank.
What glorious days these were to Sidney; what rapture to stand upon some little eminence with the wind, “austere and pure,” blowing across the valleyupon their faces; with Vashti beside him, her eyes meeting his with sweet serenity, or looking vaguely forth far across the country, as if to seek out some haven remote from lesser mortals. So Sidney translated her thoughts, but in the original there was writ only bitter speculation as to whethertheywere together—if his arm embraced her, if their lips—Ah! it was of no remote haven that woman dreamed.
They gathered great fragrant bunches of spearmint and tansy, smartweed and pennyroyal for Temperance, searching for the scented herbs as children search for joy; and as the memory of childish pleasure lingers long with us, so the perfume of the aromatic herbs clung about Vashti’s garments and Sidney’s sleeves. Never again could Sidney know the wholesome odour of any of these plants without seeing Vashti, her tall figure in its faded blue gown standing straight and strong against the sunlight, with a huge bunch of greyish-green clasped to her breast, above which her face, fit for Burne-Jones’ most mystic, most beautiful maiden, shone out palely. About her was no mystery of birth or circumstance, no halo of romantic environment, but her whole personality was eloquent of mystery, the sphinx-like riddle of sex presented in a new and strongly individualized type.
Their many expeditions together begot a sense of companionship which was inexpressibly preciousto Sidney. True, as he realized, it sprang rather from circumstances than from the manifestation of any personal predilection upon Vashti’s part; and yet, humble as he was before the woman he loved so blindly, he could not but be aware that she brightened perceptibly at his approach, and was always very willing to undertake any message or errand with him.
So she fooled him exquisitely, solacing her wounded pride thus. Whilst he, too great-hearted to pry for petty faults, dowered her lavishly from the generosity of his own noble nature, with all the classic virtues.
With what reverent fingers we hang virtues upon the lay figures of our imagination! How we becrown them, and worship them and offer them the incense of our efforts! Yet, it is pleasant pastime, and sanctifying too, for incense purely offered hallows the hand which gives it, perchance more than the God to whom its smokes ascend.
All this is well, and though the world gape and wonder at our adorations, what is that to the devotee? Only, to some of us comes the hour when with trembling hands we must undrape our false gods, lay bare their feet of clay to jeering eyes, fold away the rich draperies in which our love has clothed them as a mother folds and hides away the garments her dead child wore, and carry the manikins to the grave.
Happy for us if we can bury our dead decently; but bury them never so deep, they rise and walk down the vistas of our happiest hours, infecting their sunshine with the pollution of dead faith.
During these long walks together Vashti and Sidney talked much, and of more vital subjects than are generally discussed between young men and women. The fashionable chit-chat about theatres and plays, receptions and fashions was utterly missed from their calendar of subjects.
Now and then, Sidney, being a man, could not forbear to let her know how beautiful he found her; but empty compliment, the clipped coin of conversational commerce, he did not offer her; nothing but pure gold minted by her sweet looks in his heart was worthy of her acceptance. Thus they fell back upon the old immortal themes which have been discussed since the world began. They looked at life from widely different standpoints, but their conclusions were equally forceful.
Vashti Lansing had nothing of the simpering school-girl about her, and none of the fear which makes women reticent sometimes when speech would be golden.
It has been said that to know the Bible and Shakespeare is to have a good English vocabulary. Vashti did not know Shakespeare, but she knew her Bible thoroughly. Her speech, unweakened by the modern catch-words which, if expressive, areyet extraneous and dangerous growths, had all the trenchant force of the old Anglo-Saxon, with much in it too of imagery and beauty; for she did not fear to use such metaphors as nature or life suggested. Steeped in the stern Mosaic law, she knew well the stately periods of its prophets. The gentle Christ-creed of forgiveness did not find favour in her sight. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was a judgment which she said only timorous souls feared. She read with grim delight the tales of the kings, with their feet upon their captives’ necks; an evil sympathy with their triumph lighted her eyes with wicked light. What a spouse she would have been for one of these cruel kings! she thought sometimes. And she applied a relentless utilitarian philosophy to life. The weakest go to the wall and the strong triumph. She accepted that with the stoicism which springs from conscious strength, but in her system she rather confused strength with righteousness. She watched the movings of life about her with cold, curious eyes, and yet her philosophy of life was but an expanded egotism. She comprehended only those sets of actions which might have taken place had she given free rein to her own inclinations; she judged of all motives by the repressed impulses of her own bosom. She scrutinized others unsparingly, prying into the most sacred griefs, the most holy joy without shame or remorse, and she did not spare herself more than others.
The dim, terrifying impulses and visions which girls put behind them, shudderingly and uncomprehendingly, hiding them away with the other spectres which people the realm of the unknown, until such time as life’s meanings shall be expounded in a sacred mystery play of sense and spirit, she marshalled forth into the light of day and considered calmly and cynically.
She applied the foot-rule of her own lymphatic temperament to the morals of her fellows and was never disappointed when they fell short. She was well versed in all the wisdom of the Pharisees, and at the sewing circle talked always to the older women, and was never found in the corner where the clear-eyed girls whispered together.
And quickening and vitalizing all her existence there was that sense of Power. Power uncomprehended, undeveloped, yet there; and as a thunder-cloud gives premonition of its potent force even before the brand leaps from its cloudy sheath, so Vashti Lansing’s personality was instinct with potentiality.
This was the woman Sidney Martin, idealist and dreamer, loved.
The days sped swiftly, the present lapsing into the past, the future flying forward with the unique tirelessness of time.
How wrong to typify Time with hoary head and tottering limbs. Crowned with the vigour of eternalyouth, does he not leap forward triumphantly like the messenger of the gods fresh plumed with flame? Ah, he is not old, but young and swift. Strive if you will to stay his flight for but one single precious instant, stretch forth your hand while yet his wings brush your face, and ere the fingers may close upon his pinions, he is gone, leaving but thelargesseof lost days.
The harvest was done, the ploughshare and the harrow were tossing the earthy bed for the new grain. Day after day, through the clear air, there came from different points the blowing of the traction engine which dragged the one threshing mill in the section from farm to farm.
It was the custom of the neighbourhood that the farmers should assist each other with the threshing. Sidney was charmed when he heard this—how idyllic it was this community of helpful effort! To be strictly truthful, this custom had its genesis in less worthy reasons than he imagined, the simple fact being that in the little hide-bound community there were no odd men left unemployed, therefore as labour could not be hired the farmers perforce clubbed their efforts.
“I say, girls,” said Lanty, rushing out from his uncle’s big barn to where the two girls and Sidney stood beside the engine, “I say, isn’t that engine exactly like Mrs. Ranger in church?” His facewas begrimed with dust, thistle-down rested whitely upon his yellow hair, his blue eyes were alight with hope and happiness and that exaltation which a strong man feels in effort. The girls shook their heads warningly, but laughed.
The traction engine, its wheels shackled, puffed and panted with a ludicrous simulation of bottled-up energy, and to the minds of the three young people it was decidedly suggestive of the irate patience expressed in Mrs. Ranger’s attitude when placed in conditions where she could not answer back.
Nathan Peck, watching the engine, stored up the saying for Temperance’s delectation, and wished she had come out with the girls.
Above the rattle and hum of the threshing mill sounded the hoarse voices of the men shouting jokes at each other—threshing time being always a jovial season. A good or bad harvest meant often life or death to these people; but, having done their best, they could but accept the results. It was a point of honour to accept unflinchingly the verdict of a poor yield, yet many wives could tell of despairing hours when, after their neighbours had departed, husband and wife essayed to reconcile ways and means.
Clouds of golden dust, starred here and there by a silver thistle-down, shimmered out of the barn door; there was an aroma of crushed straw, a scentof charred wood from the engine fire, a sense of eager, healthy life.
The swallows flew agitatedly above the barn, yearning over their clay nests beneath its eaves.
“What are you doing?” asked Vashti.
“Measuring,” said Lanty. “Uncle said he’d take the bushel for a little though when he saw your petticoats out here——”
“Who’s in the mow?”
“Ab Ranger is cutting bands, and he’s let my bone-handled pruning knife go through the mill; Tom Shinar is feeding; there’s three on the mow and four on the stack.”
“How is it turning out?”
“Splendidly, no straw to speak of, but finely headed—like you, Mabella,” he whispered, blushing through the dust.
“Come on here, Lanty,” roared a voice from the barn. “You can spark in the noon-spell if you want to.”
A laugh followed. Mabella blushed hotly, and as a maiden is expected to do under the circumstances, looked absently into vacancy.
“Well, you’ll be too busy eating in the noon-spell to notice,” Lanty called back to the unseen speaker. This, being the retort courteous, was received with applause.
“Well, I must go, girls; uncle’s back will be aching by this time toteing that bushel. I hope you’vemade heaps of good things for dinner, we’re all hungry as hunters.”
“Trust Temperance for that,” said Sidney.
“Yes, indeed,” said Lanty. “Ta-ta, girls.”
“Lanty,” said Mabella, “be careful of the belt.”
“Surely,” he said, his voice softening. The next moment his strong, lithe figure had swung jauntily through the narrow space between the broad whirling belt and the door.
“Nathan,” said Mabella, “Temperance wants you to get someone to mind the engine for ten minutes before dinner, so that you can come round and carve the meat.”
“I’ll be there,” said Nathan, then he added with an irrepressible and comical self-importance:
“Meat ain’t worth puttin’ teeth into if it ain’t cut up proper.”
“That’s very true,” said Sidney, who felt a great kindliness in his heart for this patient lover.
“Well,” said Mabella briskly, “I’m going round to help set the table.” Having seen Lanty, Mabella wished to get off alone to think over his perfections, which impressed her afresh each time she saw him.
“O! can’t you come for a little wander?” asked Sidney of Vashti. “There’s nothing to be done in the house; besides, that imp from the preacher’s is there, and I’m sure she is a host in herself.”
“Yes,” said Vashti, her voice more than usually vibrant. “Yes, I will come.”
She was very pale. She turned away as Jephthah’s daughter turned from the promise of her bridal bower. For, during these few minutes of idle speech amid the whirr of the threshing mill, Vashti Lansing had taken her final decision. She would marry Sidney Martin; but on her own terms, she added to herself. And then she went with him across the stubble, where the late rains had made a phantom spring of fresh green grass and over-eager weeds, which were putting forth their tender tops only to be a prey to the first sneering frost.
Ah, how futile and inconsequent it is to trace laboriously the windings of cause and effect; a touch often sends one over the precipice, and a smile, a sigh or a silence brings us face to face with Fate. Can we by searching find these things?
And Sidney, too, felt the fateful words trembling upon his lips, a keen envy of personal happiness possessed this man, who so rarely sought his own good. A great longing to stand as Lanty had stood, with the promise of life’s fulfilment at his side.
Sidney and the woman beside him walked across the stubble to where a little belt of scrubby oaks followed the course of a ditch between two fields; here and there a vivid red patch against the underwood showed a dogwood bush. Here and there an elm tree sprang up spire-like above the lower oaks.
“See,” said Sidney, “that row of elm trees. Can you not fancy that upon just some such day as this the seed was sown? Does it not give a delightful sense of the continuity and endurance of nature’s miracles to think that a gentle wind, such as now stirs their topmost leaves, chased the seed vessel playfully along the ground? The wind laughed then, thinking it was making fine sport of its little playfellow, but see, at every pause a seed was dropped, and like an egotistical king who marks the stages of his journey, the fragile cluster of seed has left its memento. You have seen the seed of the elm tree?”
“Yes, it resembles a hop. I suppose the seeds are between the little scales. I can fancy it fluttering along the ground like yon leaf.”
“Yes,” he said, delightedly, and then, pleased with her comprehension of his thought, he looked far across the field. After all Mabella had not been in such a hurry to get to the house. She was running up and down like a child with the little brown calves in their special paddock near the house. Her sunbonnet was in her hand, her hair glittered in the sun like ripe wheat. From her Sidney’s eyes turned to Vashti, and his very heart stood still, for dimming the splendour of her eyes two great tears hung between her eyelids. There was no quiver of lip or cheek, no tremour of suppressed sobs; her bosom seemed frozen, so statuesque was her pose.
“Vashti!” he said. It was the first time he had called her by name—used thus the one word was eloquent.
“Don’t!” she said. “I—will—come—back to the house presently.”
Sidney, his heart wrung, took his dismissal without further speech. He went a few steps from her, then turning went swiftly back.
Her tense attitude had relaxed. She was leaning against the grey bars of the fence, a crimsoned bramble twining round one of the upright supports hung above her as a vivid garland.
“Vashti!” he cried, “I can’t leave you like this.”
“Not if I wish it?” she asked, and gave him a fleeting smile, beautiful as the opalescent glimmer of the sun through rain.
It shook the man to his soul. He stood for a moment blinded by the glamour of her beauty, then left her again. This time he did not look behind, but strode triumphantly across the fields, for he felt that smile had given him definite hope.
Sidney, despite his perfections, was only man. For a moment he had forgotten her tears; then remembering, he said to himself that soon he would kiss away all tears from her eyes.
The best of men are prone to consider their kisses a panacea for all woman’s ills. Perhaps, with the irrefutable logic of the homœopathists, they argue that what produces an ill will cure it!
“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean;Tears from the depth of some divine despairRite in the heart and gather to the eyesIn looking on the happy autumn fields,And thinking of the days that are no more.”
“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean;Tears from the depth of some divine despairRite in the heart and gather to the eyesIn looking on the happy autumn fields,And thinking of the days that are no more.”
“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean;Tears from the depth of some divine despairRite in the heart and gather to the eyesIn looking on the happy autumn fields,And thinking of the days that are no more.”
“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean;
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rite in the heart and gather to the eyes
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.”
The lines sprang spontaneously to his lips. This was the secret of Vashti’s tears. How often he had felt that almost intolerable regret, begotten by the recognition of the evanescence of beauty. And Vashti with her splendid natural soul must feel with treble keenness all these things.
Doubtless to her the crimsoning of the leaves was as the hectic flush upon an ailing child’s cheek to mother eyes. “The days that are no more,” ah! could it be she thought of the days when the grain was growing high, the first days of their companionship? Deluding himself thus with futile fancies he turned slowly, slowly towards the house, arriving to find Vashti already there in the midst of the housewifely bustle.
Whilst the visionary Vashti bore him company, the real Vashti had passed him unseen. So it was ever. The real Vashti eluded his vision; her place was filled by a mimic Vashti created of an ideal and his love, and tricked out in all the virtues.
At the house every one was busy. The preparations for dinner were approaching a crisis. Temperance, with a look of ineffable importance such as only a managing and forehanded woman can wear upon such an occasion, was cutting pies, piling plateswith biscuits, arranging pickles in glass dishes, and between whiles taking flights to the oven, where a huge roast was browning.
Mabella was arranging the table with knives and forks; she reckoned up, six or eight times, the number of people to set for, substracted two for the ends, and divided to find how many for each side. Mabella had no head for figures, so she made a mistake in this process; but as the basis of her calculation was wrong the result was correct. An unexpected thing! But Mabella, cheerfully confident in her methods, had no thought of all this; she trotted about the table with the gladness of one who does not save steps.
Vashti was bringing chairs out from the other rooms to complement the number in the kitchen; and Sally, the preacher’s handmaiden, was arranging the tin basins with soap and water for the men to wash in, and varying the monotony by tantalizing the chained-up mastiff till he was nearly crazed to get at her, drawing back to his kennel door and launching himself forward with magnificent disregard of the chain which at each attempt jerked him off his feet.
Sidney leaned against the door-jamb watching the homely scene with just the faintest tinge of proud proprietorship in his eyes when they rested upon Vashti.
Presently she came and stood before him. Her figure was so suavely graceful that her most ordinarymovements took on an artistic significance. Just now her attitude was that of a queen who fain would ape the serving maid, but who could not cast aside her sovereignty.
“Will you sit down with the men?” she asked.
“Your father does, doesn’t he?”
“Indeed, yes.”
“Then I will also.”
“Then I’ll wait on you,” she said, and primmed her mouth into a quasi-humble expression.
“If you do——” his grey eyes dilated.
“Yes.”
Just then Nathan came round from the barn.
“They’ll be here in ten minutes,” said Vashti, and hurried away.
Temperance, flushed with housewifely pride, had the big carving platter ready with the steel beside it. The latter was a concession to appearances, for Temperance always sharpened the knife for Nathan in a peculiar fashion of her own. When Nathan entered she was sharpening it vigorously on the back of the kitchen stove.
“Well,” said Nathan, “here I be; where’s the water?” He had seen the basins upon the apple-tree blocks, where they had stood for time out of mind at the Lansing threshings, but he thought Temperance might be prompted to come and get it for him.
Temperance paused in the sharpening process, but at that moment a tow-head appeared at the door.
“Here ’tis, Mr. Peck,” said Sally, “right here under the shade; fresh water, sweet water, well water. Come up, run up, tumble up, anyway t’ get up; here’s where you gits water. Step up, ladies and gents. Everything inside as represented on the banners, and all without money and without price,” concluded Sally, putting a frosting of the parsonage piety upon the vernacular of the Blueberry Alley dime shows. Mabella, Vashti and Sidney laughed. Temperance resumed her knife-sharpening with a click.
“That child will come to no good end,” she said to Nathan, when he re-entered.
“She won’t,” agreed Nathan with some asperity; his waistcoat and shirt were drenched. He had asked Sally rashly to pour a dipper of water on his head to “rense him off.” Sally complied with alacrity, only she emptied a pailful over his bent head instead of a dipperful.
“Drat that young ’un,” said Temperance, enraged at this. “I believe, I really do, that Mrs. Didymus sent her over here to be shet of her for a day, and if this is a sample of her doin’s I don’t know as I blame Mrs. Didymus, but if there’s any more goin’s on I’ll trapse her back quicker.”
By this time the roast was out of the oven, and Nathan began his work with the enthusiasm of an artist.
Nathan was always greatly in demand when therewas any carving to be done, and he was very proud in a candid childish way of his proficiency. Perhaps his practice with the plane and the drawknife stood him in good stead, for certainly Temperance was justified in thinking proudly that no man could carve like her Nat.
“They’ve blew,” announced Sally, tumbling into the kitchen in great excitement. This was somewhat unnecessary information as the whistle was making itself perfectly audible; ere its shrill echo died away the men, begrimed and laughing, came round the corner of the barn and were soon spluttering in the basins.
Lanty came into the back kitchen, but the voice of one of the men brought him out of his retreat, and in five minutes they were all at table.
Old Lansing at one end with Sidney at one side. Lanty at the other end with Nathan beside him.
“Open the ball, Nat,” said Lanty, passing Nathan the platter. Nathan helped himself with the deprecating modesty of one compelled to pronounce judgment upon his own handiwork; then the platter made the round of the table in pursuit of the one which had started from Mr. Lansing’s end.
“Guess you had something to do with this, Nat,” said Ab Ranger. “I know your shavings.”
Nathan admitted the impeachment.
“Well,” said Sidney, “we can’t beat that in Boston.”
And Nathan ate vigorously to hide his embarrassment. The girls flitted about seeing everyone was supplied. Did calm-eyed Vashti know what she did, when she bent over between Sidney and her father ostensibly to remove an empty plate, and let her palm rest as if by chance for a moment on Sidney’s shoulder? Did ever electricity shoot and tingle through the veins like that touch? He watched her as she passed serenely along the other side of the table, and longed for the moment when he might have speech with her.
Temperance poured the tea and coffee in the back kitchen. Sally performed prodigies in carrying it to the table, and grimacing, as she set it down, behind the unconscious backs of the recipients.
Sidney won golden opinions at this dinner by his frank friendliness.
“He ain’t big feelin’, that’s one thing,” the men said to one another as they swaggered out to rest the noon-spell under the trees.
Lanty and Sidney with great affectation of helpfulness asked the girls to stand aside and watch them clear the table. Temperance was not to be seen, they would surprise her when she arrived. They succeeded beyond their expectations.
“It isn’t such a job to clear a table as you’d think,” said Sidney complacently to Lanty.
“No, ’tain’t for a fact. I’ve seen girls take half an hour at it.”
The two young men had cleared the table by removing the dishes anddébrisindiscriminately and depositing them upon the table in the back kitchen.
When Temperance returned from a little chat with Nathan beside the smoke house, she eyed the chaos upon the table wrathfully.
“Laws!” she said. “Of all the messes! Lanty Lansing, ain’t you ashamed to be so redecklus? And them girls standin’ gawkin’ and laughin’! As for you,” eyeing Sidney severely, “I should ha’ thought you’d more sense, but blessed is them that has no expectations! Lanty! Are you or are you not feedin’ that brute with good roast? Where’s the cold meat fer supper to come from, I’d like to know?”
No one volunteered a response till suddenly Sally piped forth in her thin reedy voice:
“Take no heed for the morrow what ye shall eat, or——”
“You blasphemous brat!” said Temperance, her wrath diverted to another channel.
Sally subsided into silent contemplation of the dish of pickled beets from which she was helping herself with pink-stained fingers. Temperance was not Mrs. Didymus, and Sally in many combats in Blueberry Alley had learned to gauge her antagonists.
The offended Miss Tribbey left the back kitchen in indignant silence and set about arranging the table for her own and the girls’ dinner, murmuring to herself meanwhile a monologue of which such wordsas “messes,” “sinful,” “waste,” and “want o’ sense,” were distinctly audible.
“I don’t believe that was really an unqualified success,” said Sidney to Lanty.
“No,” said Lanty, “I don’t believe it was. What did you mix everything up for?”
“How did I know they were to be separated? What did you feed the dog with the roast for?”
“Did you ever see such an imp as that Sally?”
“Never,” said Sidney. “But Temperance squelched her!”
“She did,” said Lanty. “I say, wasn’t she ripping?”
Meanwhile Temperance’s short-lived wrath had died away, and she was pressing food upon Sally in quantities calculated to appal any but a Blueberry Alley child.
Temperance rose in the midst of her second cup of tea, and, going up stairs, came down with a large fresh bandana handkerchief. She went out to where Lanty and Sidney stood talking.
“Here’s the handkerchief you wanted to keep the dust out of your back,” she said with ill-assumed hauteur. Lanty took it with laughing penitence on his face.
“I say, Aunty,” he said, “would you ask Mabella to put it on?”
Miss Tribbey’s severity relaxed; a vain-glorious satisfaction stole over her face in a smirk. To have Lanty call her Aunty!
Certainly Lanty Lansing “had a way” with women that was well-nigh irresistible.
“Yes,” she said, then with comical apology, she addressed herself to Sidney. “Them children is a most tormented trouble, ’specially when they meddle with things they don’t know nothing about.”
“That’s so,” agreed Sidney with emphasis, and Temperance, highly delighted with her Parthian shot at him, departed.
And presently Mabella came to the door, ariantelittle figure, and demanded with mutinous affectation of indifference:
“Did any one want me?”
“Yes, badly,” said Sidney, and took himself off to the garden, laughing.
“That’s true,” said Lanty. “I did want you badly.”
Her eyes were wavering beneath his masterful regard, but she said—“Oh, youdidwant me! Don’t you now?” The words were brave, but her eyes fell.
“Mabella,” he said—silence. “Mabella, look at me.” Slowly she raised her eyes and crimsoned. “Do you know now?” he asked lovingly. “Ah, what a wicked teasing bird it is when its wings are free, but after all they are gone to the barn and——” he advanced a step.
“Lanty!” said Mabella, and in an instant he was grave.
“Dear girl,” he said, “you don’t think I would do anything to make you feel badly?”
The warning shriek of the whistle came to them.
“See, tie this round my neck, will you?”
She folded it with an adorable air of anxiety and precision, and stood on tiptoe to lay it on his shoulders and again on tiptoe to knot it under his chin, a process Lanty rendered arduous by putting down his chin and imprisoning her hands, a performance he found most satisfying. But at length he was off, and Mabella watched him round the corner of the barn, and then went indoors to attack the chaos upon the table with a good heart.
“Where’s Vashti?” she asked.
“Spooning her young man in the garding,” said Sally, emerging from her shell.
“Of all the impses I ever see!” ejaculated Temperance. “G’long and fetch in some wood.” Sally departed.
“Vashti’s in the garden peeling apples for supper,” continued Temperance to Mabella, with an attempt at unconsciousness. Mabella gave her a hug.
“It’s a sugar plum for Mr. Martin because you were bad to him, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Lanty’s had his——”
Mabella blushed, and an irrepressible ripple of laughter broke from her.
“Well, you needn’t laugh,” said Temperance. “Mr. Martin thinks Vashti’s just about right. Well,there’s no accountin’ for taste. ‘Everyone to their taste,’ as the old woman said when she kissed her cow.”
“Temperance!” said Mabella, “you don’t mean——”
Temperance nodded oracularly, “Nathan thinks so too.”
“Well!” said Mabella, and relapsed into silence. Here was news for Lanty. If Nathan and Temperance thought so it must be so. A fellow feeling not only makes us kind but often very acute; and in all Dole there were no such keen eyes for any “goin’s on” (as courtship was disrespectfully designated) as those of Temperance and Nathan.
“Love, it is a funny thing;It puzzles the young and the old;It’s much like a dish of boarding-house hash,And many a man gets sold.”
“Love, it is a funny thing;It puzzles the young and the old;It’s much like a dish of boarding-house hash,And many a man gets sold.”
“Love, it is a funny thing;It puzzles the young and the old;It’s much like a dish of boarding-house hash,And many a man gets sold.”
“Love, it is a funny thing;
It puzzles the young and the old;
It’s much like a dish of boarding-house hash,
And many a man gets sold.”
Sally’s falsetto voiced this choice ditty with unction, as she entered with an enormous load of wood in her thin arms. She deposited the wood with a bang.
“Sakes!” said Temperance. “I wonder if she sings them songs to the preacher?”
Whereupon Sally, in vindication of her judgment, began a lugubrious hymn.
“Stop it,” said Temperance. Sally stopped.
Beneath the trees Vashti peeled her apples busily, the narrow parings of the greenings twined abouther white wrist, the thin slices fell with little splashes into the bowl of water which was to prevent them turning brown before being cooked. Miss Tribbey’s apple-sauce was always like white foam. A voyaging wasp came, and settling upon the cores was very soon drunk, so that he was an easy prey to a half dozen ants which wandered by that way. The distant buzz of the threshing mill filled the air with a drowsy murmur as if thousands of bees hummed above a myriad flowers, here and there a thistle-down floated glistening in the sun. The scent of the overblown flowers mingled with the odour of the apples.
“Are we done now?” asked Sidney, as she laid down the knife.
“We are,” she said with meaning emphasis. “Do you feel very tired after your exertions?”
“Not so tired as you’d imagine,” said Sidney. “The truth is I couldn’t bring myself to offer my services, for if you had accepted them I would have had to look at the apples instead of at you, and I did not have strength to make the sacrifice.”
“Could you make sacrifices?” she asked.
“Try me,” he half whispered. There was a tense moment. Mabella’s voice came ringing from the house, the whirr of the threshing mill suddenly seemed near at hand, and through it there came Lanty’s voice shouting some directions to the men on the stack.
“Perhaps I may some day,” she said.
“You know,” he said, his voice enchaining herattention even as she strove with bitter thought, “you know you will have the opportunity to ask anything, everything of me.”
“Ah, how should I know?” she said, as one who has not deigned to observe too much.
Sally, sent out for the apples, appeared round the corner of the house.
“Promise me,” said Sidney, “that you will come for a walk after supper; promise.”
For an instant the boulders of Mullein meadow and the dimness of the twilight sky blotted out the crimson of the Virginia creeper on the porch which flamed in the sun.
“I will come,” she said.
“Ah——” he said no more.
“Sorry t’interrupt,” said Sally genially, as she stood beside them. “But painful as the duty is it must be did; but don’t mind me, I’m blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other.”
“Sally,” said Sidney very gently, “you talk too much.”
For the first time in her life Sally blushed, and gathering up the apples and the parings departed abashed.
“You are not going in?” he said rising as Vashti stood up.
She held up her hands. “I must wash my hands,” she said, “and I want to rest a little.”
The slightest hint of fatigue or illness in thesplendid creature before him always touched him strangely. It was like a sudden assertion of the human in something divine.
“Do,” he said; “and Vashti,” using her name with happy boldness, “you won’t forget your promise.”
“I never forget,” she said, simply and sweetly.
He stood bareheaded watching while she entered. Then looking about, he suddenly noticed that in the garden the summer flowers were overspent, the little battalion of ants tugged viciously at their victim, whose yellow and black had shone so gallantly in the sunlight as he lighted down to sip the apple juice. The whirr of the threshing machine made melancholy cadences which sighed through the trees; and all at once the whole scene darkened.
It was only that the sun had dipped beyond the house, and the crimson Virginia creeper seemed in the shadow to be more brown than red, two or three of its leaves fell desolately to the earth, as dreams die when hope is withdrawn.
And Sidney, with the fatuity of lovers, said, “She has taken the glow with her.”
But the torch which lighted Vashti Lansing’s way was not filched from flowers and sunshine, but shone fed with the evil oils of anger and revenge, baulked will and disappointed love.