When the hymn ended, a soft hand touched Mauney on the arm and, looking to his right, he saw Jean Byrne seated in the end of the oaken pew directly next to him. She was just letting her closed hymnal drop into her lap.
“Glad to see you,” she whispered, guarding her lips with her gloved hand.
One of the preachers rose slowly from his chair. He was a stout man of fifty, mild-appearing and pleasant, with clean-shaven face and grey hair. He walked forward to the edge of the carpeted platform, rested his elbow on the side of the pulpit and raised his face to gaze slowly over the quieting congregation. “My dear friends,” he said in soft, silver tone, “I thank God for the hymn we have just been singing. It has been indeed very inspiring. Brother Tooker and myself have been in your little town for two weeks now, and have grown so fond of the people that we view to-night’s meeting with inevitable feelings of regret, because, so far as we can see the divine guidance, it will be our last night with you. But we have also feelings of hope, because we are praying that there may be a great turning to God as a result of this meeting.”
As he paused to shift his weight slowly to his other foot and clasp his hands behind his frock coat, the congregation was silent. Only the sound of a horse stamping in the shed could be heard.
“During our fortnight with you,” he continued, “many souls have been led to the Cross. We thank God for that. But there are many more who are still living in sin—some of them are here to-night.”
As his glance shifted over the mass of upturned faces, Mauney fancied he paused perceptibly as he looked his way.
“It is to you, who are in sin, that we bring a message of hope. You have only to take God at his word, who sent His Son to save that which was lost.”
“Amen!” came a vigorous response from an old man in the front pew.
“You have only to believe on Him who is righteous and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
“Amen!” from near the back.
“Amen!” also, from the side, half-way up.
At this juncture a woman in the body of the auditorium burst forth, in good voice, singing the first verse of “Though your sins be as scarlet,” whereat the preacher indulgently acquiesced, and waved for the congregation to join her. At the end of the first stanza he raised his hand.
“The lesson for to-night is taken from the first chapter of the beloved Mark.” As he carefully read the passage of scripture the ushers were busy leading in more people, so that, when he finished, the floor was entirely filled save for two narrow aisles, one on either side, leading from the back to the altar railing.
The Reverend Francis Tooker, as he walked confidently forward, was seen to be tall and thin, with a long, florid face and a great mass of stiff, black hair. He raised his large, bony hand.
“Let every head be bowed!” he commanded, sharply.
After a short invocation he commenced his discourse. He dealt at length with the experiences of the prodigal son, pictured in adequate language the depths of profligacyto which he had sunk, stressed the moment of his decision to return home, and waxed touchingly eloquent over the reception which his father accorded him.
“And now, people,” he said more brusquely, as he slammed shut the big pulpit Bible and ran his long fingers nervously through his hair. “You’ve got a chance to do what that boy did. You’ve been acting just the way he acted—don’t dare deny it! You’ve been wallowing in the dirt with the pigs, and you’re all smeared up. What are you going to do about it?”
The audience, keyed up to the former flow of his unfaltering eloquence, were now mildly shocked by the informality of his pointed question. He walked to the very edge of the platform while his eyes grew savage and his face red.
“What are you going to do about it?” he shouted, clenching his fists and half-squatting. Then, rising quickly, he hastened to the other side of the pulpit. “Are you going to arise and go to your Father? Or are you going to keep on mucking about with the pigs? Don’t forget that for anyone of you this night may be your last. To-night, perhaps you” (he pointed), “or you,” (he pointed again) “may be required to face God. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to die forgiven of your sins like a man, or are you going to shut your ears to the word of God and die like any other pig?”
No sound interrupted the intense silence. No one moved. Even the flickering lamps seemed to steady their illumination to a glaring, yellow uniformity.
Suddenly his manner altered. Moving to a position behind the pulpit he rested his elbows on the Bible and folded his hands together out over the front edge ofthe book-rest, while his voice assumed a quiet, conversational tone.
“Remember that on this night, the twentieth day of April, 1914, you were given an opportunity to come out full-breasted for God. I have discharged my duty. The rest remains for you to do. If you are sorry for your sins, say so. If you regret the kind of life you’ve been leading, confess it. Come out and get washed off clean. The invitation is open. The altar awaits to receive you.”
As he pointed to the altar railing, his black eyes flashed hypnotically.
“Those who have sinned, but are repentant and seek redemption, please stand.”
For about ten seconds a great inertia possessed the seated congregation. Then two men stood up near the front of the pews, followed soon after by groups of both men and women in various parts of the auditorium, until, at length, only a sporadic rising here and there marked a new mood of hesitancy.
“While the choir sings,” the preacher said softly, “I will ask you to steal away to the foot of the altar. The choir will please sing the first two verses of ‘Come Ye Disconsolate,’ and you who have, by standing, thus signified your desire for salvation, will move quietly forward and kneel by the railing.”
As the slow, full chords of the hymn began the preacher’s voice kept calling “Come away, Brother,” and the standing penitents sought the narrow aisles and moved slowly forward to kneel with their heads touching the oaken railing. The Rev. Archibald Gainford and the Rev. Edmund Tough descended from the platformto the crescent-shaped altar space and, bending down, spoke words of comfort to the suppliants.
As the choir stopped and the organ notes faded, the exhorter produced a silver watch and examined it, hurriedly.
“If we had more time,” he said, “how many more would like to come forward? Please stand.”
A dozen or more rose to their feet.
“Well,” he said, with a smile, as he returned his watch to his pocket, “we have plenty of time. Come out, brother!”
Caught by this subtle snare, many of the presumably wavering individuals found it impossible to refuse his invitation, while a few sat down again.
When the meeting eventually drew to a close, after a long hymn, sung with the same exciting rhythm as the first one, Mauney rose with the rest and moved impatiently toward the door, walking beside Jean Byrne and talking to her of obvious matters. Her face, he noticed, was flushed and her eyes shining with unusual brightness from delicately moist lids, while her voice seemed husky and uncertain. The auditorium emptied slowly. The steps leading down from the front doorway to the walk presented the customary Sunday night groups of village beaux waiting to accompany their sweethearts home, or perhaps stroll with them through quiet, moonlit streets.
Beulah village council, anxious to keep taxes at a minimum, had never provided street-lighting, so that pedestrians, on dark nights, carried lanterns, unless they were lovers, in which case they relied either on moonlight or familiarity with the local geography.
Jean Byrne had come to the village in the buggy ofMr. and Mrs. Fitch with whom she boarded on the Lantern Marsh road, but Mauney, being alone, invited her to drive down with him. She accepted and soon they were off together.
“I could have kicked over a pew in there to-night,” said Mauney at length, tersely.
“I knew you wouldn’t like it,” she said. “Personally I think it’s very unreal. Perhaps some people derive good from it, though.”
“Perhaps. But it hasn’t any connection with real life, Miss Byrne. I can’t help feeling you’ve got to let the common daylight into things.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s easy enough to see how they get pulled into it,” he went on. “There’s a sort of excitement about it. I don’t think one person by himself could get so excited.”
“You mean there’s a mob consciousness?”
“Yes, exactly—a lot of minds rubbing each other, like.”
“I believe you’ve hit it, Mauney,” she said. “I never thought of it like that before. How did you manage to think that out?”
“Well, I’ve always noticed, if I’m in a crowd, that it’s hard for me to stay just as I am when I’m alone. Now, I hate people who are always chirping like chipmunks—you’ll meet them at socials and dances. They don’t say anything that matters and might better keep their mouths shut. But if I get with them I’ll notice how it affects me, for after I leave I feel sort of weak.”
“You must enjoy observing things like that, Mauney.”
“No, I don’t enjoy it,” he replied. “That’s just what I’m up against the whole time at home. My father and brother and the hired girl keep up an endless rattle oftalk, all the time, about things that aren’t important. I keep quiet on purpose because I don’t want to talk about them.”
“What sort of things do they discuss?”
“Oh—the price of eggs, what somebody did with a certain horse, who married so-and-so and who she was before she did it, and whether the preacher’s wife is human, and then they’re always teasing Snowball; but he isn’t such a fool as they think he is.”
For a moment Miss Byrne studied Mauney’s face, bright with moonlight.
“Well, what kind of things do you think are important?” she asked. “I mean what would you like to discuss, if you had your own way at home?”
“I couldn’t say exactly,” he said, reflectively. “But I’m discontented all the time, and feel ignorant. I want an education. I’m interested in history, most.”
While she listened to his words, Miss Byrne was enjoying the landscape as they drove slowly along. It was no new thing for her to feel fresh attractions toward Mauney, but to-night, for some reason that she did not seek, she felt uncomfortably warm toward him, and presently her soft, gloved hand pressed his hand tenderly, and remained holding it. It came as a surprise to him, and he glanced quickly at her face, across which the sharp shadow of her hat formed a line just above her lips. He could distinguish her eyes turned away in the direction of the moonlit fields she was admiring, and her pretty lips, vivid and tender, sent a strange thrill through his body. Although he made no effort to draw away his hand, he disliked the situation as something he could not grasp. Lying helplessly captured, his fingers felt the heat of her hand. She hadstopped talking and he noticed her bosom moving as deeply as if she were asleep, but more quickly. He had the same feeling, for an instant, as in the meeting, of an outside power insidiously exciting his mind, but noticed with a definite sense of relief that they were nearing Fitch’s gate. In a moment he freed his hand from hers and pulled up the horse.
“Mauney!”
She spoke his name in a low, unsteady voice and pressed her hand against his arm. That she was not warning him of some sudden obstacle in their way, was clear, for, on looking toward the road, he saw nothing. When he turned to her, her hat was hiding her bowed face and her hand was relaxing slowly—so very slowly—and falling from his arm. The emotion that caused her breathing to be broken by queer, jerky pauses mystified him.
“Are you ill, Miss Byrne?” he ventured to ask, and noticed that his own voice was tremulous.
She shook her head slowly and began to climb out of the buggy. “No, Mauney boy,” she replied softly. “I was just lonesome, I guess. Goodnight!” He was puzzled. As he drove along he grew exceedingly impatient. There were so many things, he thought, beyond his comprehension.
“A pretty woman is a welcome guest.”—Byron, “Beppo.”
“A pretty woman is a welcome guest.”—Byron, “Beppo.”
“A pretty woman is a welcome guest.”—Byron, “Beppo.”
“A pretty woman is a welcome guest.”—Byron, “Beppo.”
When he reached home, Mauney found his father talking in the kitchen with William Henry McBratney while the hired girl lay on the sofa with the cat asleep on her bosom. His father, seated with his socked feet resting on the stove damper and his chair tilted back, looked up as he entered from the yard.
“Well,” he addressed him, “I hope to God you didn’t get it.”
“Get what?” asked Mauney, surprised at being noticed, and irked by his father’s abrupt manner.
“You wasn’t in a place where you’d be likely to get a bottle of whiskey, was you?” Bard quickly responded.
“Oh—you mean religion, Dad?”
Without further acknowledgment of Mauney’s presence than a sarcastic motion of his head, Bard addressed his neighbor.
“I guess that’s about all he’d get up to Beulah church, ain’t it, William Henry?”
“Yes, sir, that’s about the size of it, Seth!” admitted McBratney, smacking the arm of the chair with his bony palm, as if one would naturally expect to get a variety of commodities at Beulah church. He possessed an evil, circular face, with gray hair falling untidily over a low forehead. His long, thin legs seemed largest atthe knee-joints as he sat with difficulty in the low rocking-chair, and his long, brown neck, with its prominent Adam’s apple, gave his small, ball-like head an unreal appearance of detachment. When he spoke, in his high-pitched, rasping voice, his Adam’s apple shifted up and down his throat as if it were a concealed bucket bringing the words up from his body.
“That’s about the size of it, I tell yuh!” he repeated. “And when they get religion, Seth, why there ain’t no good tryin’ to drill any reason into ’em!”
Mauney stood in the door leading to the former dining-room, watching McBratney’s small eyes shine with wicked animation.
“As I was tellin’ yuh,” he went on, “the woman wouldn’t let up on him, day ner night, pesterin’ the life out o’ the boy, goin’ into her room there off the kitchen an prayin’ like she was tryin’ to ward off a cyclone.”
He suddenly bent forward, so that his long hands nearly touched the floor, suggesting to Mauney an enraged orang-outang looking through the bars of his circus cage.
“An’ now that she’s got her way, what do you think?”
Bard knocked the bowl of his pipe against the edge of the stove.
“God only knows! What?” he said.
“Dave’s made up his mind to go preachin’!”
“I heard that,” admitted Bard with a sly smile. “I s’pose you’ll be proud to have a son o’ yours called of the Lord, eh?”
“Called o’ nothing!” declared McBratney, hammering the chair arm with his fist, then settling back, with much silent movement of his Adam’s apple. “I’ve tried to reason with him, but his mind is stopped workin’ or elseit’s workin’ just a little bit too fast fer me. I think he’s just framin’ an excuse to leave the farm.”
“Give him a few weeks, William Henry,” suggested Bard. “He may get over this here frenzy o’ his. Dave always struck me as a purty sharp lad an’ I reckon it’s only temporary, like.”
The hired girl looked up from her idle occupation of stroking the cat’s fur.
“Many folks out to church, Maun?” she asked.
Bard, as though he resented her speaking to his son, made a gesture toward the table.
“Here, Annie,” he said authoritatively, “Go cut up a loaf o’ bread and set out a bowl of preserves. Me and William Henry is goin’ to have a bite to eat.”
Up in his own room, Mauney later tried to read a small book Miss Byrne had given him. It was a leather-bound copy of Thomas à Kempis. He wondered why she had chosen such a gift, for the subject matter was too cloistral. Tossing it aside, he picked up an Ancient History she had recently loaned him and became absorbed in it until he was able to forget some of the things that rankled in his breast, among others, Jean Byrne’s peculiar manner in the buggy. Lying with his head propped on a pillow he read until his eyes ached. In fancy he lived in ancient palaces among courtiers and councillors, saw the regalia of royal fêtes, through which came the sound of war trumpets. He read of ambitious sculptors whose names were written on the roster of deathless fame and saw steel engravings of their work—headless, armless torsos, nicked and cracked by the ravage of centuries. He saw conquerors leading stalwart armies, deciding the fate of nations. The story held him to the last page and he saw that the aspirationsof a mighty nation were dead; the rising star of ambition was quenched in its ascent; and only a vast pile of melancholy tokens remained to interest scholars who delved with spades. And he went to sleep in great wonderment as to what it all signified.
A few days later he took the Ancient History to return it to Miss Byrne. As he approached Fitch’s gate on foot, he heard Jean’s low laughter, and on passing between the lilac hedges, saw her on the front verandah with Mrs. Fitch.
“Good evening,” he said, “you both seem to be enjoying yourselves.”
“Come and sit down, Mauney. Mrs. Fitch has just been convulsing me with a story from real life,” she invited, her eyes red from laughter. “What have you been doing to-day?”
“Oh, the same old stuff,” he replied, nodding slyly towards Mrs. Fitch, busy with long, white knitting-needles. “I thought I’d stroll over and hear the latest scandal.”
Mrs. Fitch was a woman of fifty, with scrupulously tidy grey hair, a square jaw, silver spectacles and thin lips suggesting latent deviltry.
“Wal, Maun,” she said, without looking up from her rapidly-interplying ivory-points, “we ain’taccuratescandal-mongers. Not the kind that talk about folks for the sake of harmin’ them. But things do strike us peculiar like, at times, and gives our livers a healthy shakin’ up. I’ve just been telling Miss Byrne about the young Hawkins brat.” She paused and cast a sharp glance over the tops of her glasses. “You know him?” she asked.
Mauney nodded and smiled, for it was common knowledgethat the son of Miss Lizzy Hawkins could not claim, with any degree of accuracy, the paternal factor of respectability enjoyed by most children.
“Wal,” she resumed, her eyes returning to the line of her knitting, “young Hawkins was a-playin’ in the road out here after school. Along comes William Henry McBratney drivin’ the old, grey horse. He sees the Hawkins boy and he pulls up and he says, says ’e, ‘Where’s your father, you young brat!’ Young Hawkins, of course, didn’t know him—hasn’t brains enough to know anybody, but, after a minute of heavy thinkin’ he looks up at McBratney and he says, says ’e, ‘Maw told me, me father was down in South Americky workin’ on a steam roller, but I heard her tellin’ me grandmother as how me father’s name is William Henry McBratney!’”
Mauney laughed as Mrs. Fitch soberly glanced over her spectacles again.
“And then,” she resumed, “old William Henry leans half out of his buggy, waving his whip and shouting, without knowing as how he had an audience: ‘Tell yer mother to keep her damned mouth shut, you brat!’
“I guess it’s true enough,” she went on presently, pulling a string of yarn from the revolving ball in her lap. “And then people talk about Dave McBratney for getting converted. It was the best thing he ever done! If I was a son of William Henry’s I’d get converted before you could say Jack Robinson.”
Mauney had never so little enjoyed talking with Jean Byrne as to-night. The episode of Sunday evening had left a distasteful flavor in his mind, for, although he tried to forget it, the incident kept flashing back upon his memory. He was left alone on the verandahwith her presently, and immediately felt an awkwardness, hard to overcome. Hitherto, she had always been just his teacher. But to-night, dressed in a yellow-flowered frock, with a pale yellow ribbon holding her dark hair down on her brow, she had lost a quality of dignity. He noticed also a hundred fine lights of tenderness in her eyes that he had never seen before.
He talked with her a few minutes and gave back the history.
“Let me get you another book,” she said, starting toward the door.
“Please don’t bother—just now, Miss Byrne,” he said.
“Why not, Mauney?”
“I’m so busy I haven’t time to read,” he lied.
He thought afterward that in that moment when he refused to accept her kindness she divined perfectly the underlying feeling. It was his last conversation with Jean Byrne. He went home quite sadly. There was no surfeit of comforts in that home of his, to be sure, which could render him careless of helpful friendships: but, although he felt the significance of refusing her offer, knowing it meant the end of things between them, his sadness was over the seeming weakness in her that had caused his dislike. He might not have been so astonished at other women. But of Jean Byrne he had expected differently.
His life in the Lantern Marsh thus robbed of one more brightness became the more uninteresting. He felt the need of companionship. Struggling through long days, of planting, sowing, and haying, he forced back the tug of expanding desires that urged him to different pursuits. In the evenings he would stand looking down the road that led to Lockwood, wishing thathe were travelling it never to return. To Lockwood, to Merlton beyond, to the world. He dreamed of a different life from his own, where people were gentle, where they knew things and would be willing to teach him out of their knowledge. But these dreams were folded to rest each night in heavy sleep and the light of each morning found them dissipated. He wanted books, but there was no library in Beulah. He had no money of his own and knew the foolishness of asking his father for it.
At the end of June, Jean Byrne returned to her home in Lockwood, and Mrs. Fitch remarked to him one day that she was not coming back, but was going to be married in the autumn to a doctor in her own town. Mrs. Fitch was curious, no doubt, to discover a reason for Mauney’s never having come back to see her again.
“Miss Byrne was a good teacher, Maun,” she said, as they talked in the Beulah post-office, “and I think she was powerful fond o’ you, boy. She told me onct as how she expected you would some day make your mark in the world.”
Mauney felt tears welling into his eyes and turned away from her without further comment. He drove home blaming himself for having been rude to Jean Byrne. Her confidence in him, expressed through Mrs. Fitch, had come as sharp reward for his ingratitude. And yet, was it his fault?
On a sultry July evening an unexpected break in the monotony of his life occurred. He was sitting alone on the front steps of the farm-house, having just come in from the fields, when his attention was attracted by a cloud of dust on the Lockwood road. A motor car was travelling rapidly along and as it drew near, slackenedits speed. When it stopped directly at the foot of the orchard he surmised the people in it had paused for directions. A woman in the back seat waved to him and he quickly responded.
They were all strangers, the man at the wheel and the two women in the rear seat, although he felt there was something quite familiar about the grey-haired woman sitting nearest him.
“Is this where the Bards live?” she asked a little nervously. She was a small-bodied woman of perhaps fifty with very fine features, and clear, blue eyes that smiled pleasantly through rimless spectacles and the fawn motor veil that covered her face.
“Yes,” Mauney replied, gazing curiously at her, and then at the others.
The man, chewing the end of an unlighted cigar, looked at the house with a frown and then glancing backward said in a low tone:
“Well, suit yourself, Mary. You might regret it if you didn’t.”
The woman, presumably his wife, looked with an undecided expression toward the house, as if she feared it.
“Is your name Bard, please?” she asked, raising her veil, and minutely inspecting Mauney’s face.
“Yes,” he said, glancing again at the others.
“He looks the dead image of her!” the other woman remarked prosaically to the man.
“And are you Mauney?” asked his interlocutor.
His brow was puckered with a dawning idea that soon caused his face to brighten up.
“Are you my Aunt Mary?” he asked, eagerly.
“How did you know?”
He came nearer and took her extended hand.
“Mauney, this is your Uncle Neville, and this is your Uncle’s sister, Jane Day. This must be quite an extraordinary surprise to you, isn’t it?”
Mauney nodded.
“Aren’t you going to stay?” he asked. “When did you come to this country?”
“We came about a week ago, Mauney. Your Uncle Neville is over on business, and our headquarters are in Merlton. We motored all the way from Merlton to-day just to see where—where you lived, you know.”
“You must be tired. What time did you leave?”
“About seven this morning, but the country has been simply beautiful, every inch of the way.”
“Come in. Put your car in the shed. I’ll go and tell my father.”
“Wait!” said his aunt. “Just let’s talk a moment. You’ve got a brother, but I’ve forgotten his name.”
“William.”
“Of course—how stupid of me to forget! Did you ever receive a letter I wrote you, Mauney, just after your mother died?”
“No, I don’t remember getting one,” he replied, with an expression of curiosity.
“That’s strange. Apparently it went astray. But I always wondered—but then I wrote you again, Mauney, about three years ago. Didn’t you get that?”
He shook his head.
“Funny!” she said, looking toward her husband.
“There’s nothing funny about trans-Atlantic mails, my dear,” said Mr. Neville Day, lighting his cigar. “It’s got well past the funny stage with me.”
“And then I sent you a postcard once, I remember. Didn’t you even get that, Mauney?”
“I don’t remember it.”
“Well, anyway, we’re here,” she said, with sudden decision. “And if I don’t see him, I’ll always wish I had.”
“All right, Mary,” said Neville Day. “Now stick to that, my dear. Would you mind telling your father there’s somebody here to see him, Mauney?”
“Certainly,” Mauney agreed, turning to leave.
“Oh, wait!” called his aunt. “Wait a minute. You know I—I don’t think I can see him, Neville. No, I can’t. I really cannot.”
The uncle smoked calmly, studying his finger-nails, while Mauney stood riddled with curiosity.
“Come here, dear,” said his aunt. “Promise me not to mention us to your father. We aren’t going in, and it’s—it’s so hard to explain why we aren’t.”
Neville Day and Miss Jane Day got out of the car and walked slowly along the edge of the road together. His aunt asked Mauney to get in the rear seat and sit beside her. As she turned toward him, he could see his mother’s likeness with startling vividness.
“Your mother used to write to me about you, Mauney,” she said. “You were her favorite, I’m glad you’re such a big fellow. How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“It’s terrible how the time goes. I suppose you’re happy and well all the time—”
He gauged the expression in her eyes. He felt completely at home with her. She looked so much like his mother that he wanted to remain with her endlessly.
“Well, Aunt Mary,” he said slowly, “I’m not very happy, I’m afraid.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked sympathetically.
“I don’t know.”
“Does your father treat you all right?”
“I think he tries to, Aunt Mary, but since my mother died, I’ve always been—dissatisfied. How long are you going to stay—I mean here?”
“We’ll have to return to Lockwood—is that the name?”
He nodded.
“We’ll go back there for the night and return to Merlton, to-morrow.”
“Why won’t you come in, and see my father?” he asked.
“Well you see, Mauney, it’s—it’s so late, you know.”
Her explanation was patently false, for he saw her face struggle to remain composed, and then noticed a queer hardness come upon it.
“Do you know where the old Conyngham place is?” she asked.
“Sure. Over there!” he pointed to a field not far away.
“You knew about that, didn’t you?”
He shook his head and glanced with a puzzled expression toward the old, dilapidated house that had always stood at the edge of his father’s big corn field. It was uninhabited and partly obscured by wild cucumber vines.
“I only knew it was called the old Conyngham place,” he said. “When mother was alive, she used to go over there and keep geraniums in boxes in the front windows, and our hired man—the one we had before—lived there with his wife for quite a long time.”
“Well, your mother used to live there, Mauney,” his aunt said, “She was looking after Uncle James.You see his wife had died and he was old and sick with asthma.” She glanced toward the opposite side of the road. “I suppose this bog-land here gave him the disease. He was all alone and when we got his letter, your mother made up her mind to come out and look after him. So she left Scotland when she was just seventeen. She remained right with him to the last, and certainly did not spare herself.”
“My mother never told me that,” Mauney interrupted.
“No. She wouldn’t tell you. But while she was looking after Uncle James our own mother died in Carstairs and it was too far for her to come home. Then I married Neville and, poor girl, she felt that all her relatives were gone. So, after Uncle James died, she—she stayed here, you see.”
“Married my father.”
“Yes, Mauney,” she said sadly. “Remember, dear boy, your mother was the sweetest girl that—”
She hesitated, as if her interest in the farm house and the orchard had suddenly usurped her attention.
“You’ve got quite a big farm, Mauney,” she said. “Are you going to stay here and be a farmer, too?”
“I guess I’ll have to, Aunt Mary,” he smiled.
“I see.”
“But I’d like to get some education, some time.”
Her pretty, blue eyes wandered from his face to the figures of Neville Day and his sister who were just turning about to come back toward the car. For a moment her face became dreamy as if she were mentally exploring the pleasant future. Then she took a card from her purse and handed it to him.
“My address is on that, Mauney,” she said. “Please write to me once in a while and let me know how youare getting along. We go back to Scotland in another week. Dear me, you ought to be glad you live in America.”
Soon her husband was beside the car.
“That land could all be reclaimed,” he said, wagging his thumb toward the marsh. “It wouldn’t cost over two thousand, either.”
“Dollars?” asked Mrs. Day.
“No, pounds.”
“They don’t need to do that sort of thing,” stated Miss Day. “As it is now, there’s plenty of tillable soil not under cultivation. I fancy that it will be a long time before these farmers will find it necessary to reclaim land.”
Day glanced at his watch.
“If you don’t mind, Mary,” he said, “it’s getting late and we’d better try to make Lockwood before dark. How far is it, Mauney?”
“It’s just over twenty miles.”
They entered the car while Mauney stood on the road waiting to say good-bye. Neville Day tossed away the stump of his cigar and settled down behind the wheel, adjusting his motor-cap more comfortably.
“Oh!” he said, turning to hand up a large parcel, done up in wrapping paper. “You forgot the books.”
Mrs. Day laughed.
“Mauney,” she said, “I brought you three books, but I’m not going to give them to you. They are just wild Indian stories of adventure.”
“Why did you buy that truck, my dear?” asked Day.
“Why, I really didn’t figure it out, Neville,” she laughed. “I imagined Mauney about fourteen. But I’ll change them and send them down.”
Mauney took the proffered hands of Day and his sister and then his Aunt Mary’s. When his aunt was kissing him on the cheek, Neville Day was clearing his throat and chewing at the end of a new cigar. Soon the motor-car backed into the lane; then, with a sudden lurch ahead, it snorted up the road, his aunt waving her hand in farewell. Mauney watched it until it was engulfed in a dense cloud of dust and the noise of its opened exhaust had quieted to a faint rumble. Then he walked slowly up the lane toward the house.
By the kitchen door he encountered his father pumping himself a tin ladleful of well water.
“Who was them people?” he demanded.
“Some tourists.”
“What’d they stop here for?”
“One of the women wanted to pick some blue weed by the side of the road.”
“H’m! I wish to God she’d pick some of the blue weed out the grain field,” he said. “Why did they turn around and go back?”
“They wanted to get to Lockwood before dark, I guess.”
Later in the evening, Mauney sat on the kitchen verandah lost in thought. He leaned back in his tilted chair and rested his head on the window-sill. Presently he fell asleep. He was awakened by a sharp sensation on his chin.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, opening his eyes to see the hired girl standing near him, smiling broadly.
“I just pulled one of them hairs out o’ your chin, Maun,” she laughed. “When are yuh goin’ to start to shave ’em?”
“A rustic roughness”—Horace, Ep. Book I.
“A rustic roughness”—Horace, Ep. Book I.
“A rustic roughness”—Horace, Ep. Book I.
“A rustic roughness”—Horace, Ep. Book I.
The story he had heard from his aunt, with its unexplained gaps, filled Mauney’s mind for days. He wondered most about what she had not told him. Her seemingly instinctive fear—or was it scorn?—of meeting his father roused torturing curiosity. Probably his mother’s letters had told her either plainly or in suggestive language of her great unhappiness.
The motor-car visit haunted him. It was so unnatural, as though, in a painful dream, he had beheld his own mother, whose features were to remain before him in waking hours. Spectre-like out of the unknown world she had come, to vanish immediately, leaving scant comfort, herself immune from his ardent desire to detain her.
The incident was characteristic of life, as he was learning to know it, for he gained cognizance of an enigmatical curse aimed at whatever promised happiness. One whom even a few moments had enshrined in his affections must tremble and disappear, as a delicate bird, hovering for an instant, is driven away by a sight or smell.
Every aspiration of his existence was leashed to his father’s stolid nature. He traced the deterring thongs, one by one, back to the paternal influence. Some hiddenaction or some unrevealed quality of his father’s had driven his aunt away in a dust-cloud. And the dust which rose up to obscure her loved face was symbolic, for dust of a kind was slowly settling upon the freshness of his own nature.
One evening his reverie of unhappiness was broken by a familiar voice when, turning about, he beheld David McBratney trudging along with a large, grey, telescope valise. In answer to his question, McBratney replied that he was starting on foot for Lockwood, where next morning he would take the train for Merlton to begin his ministerial studies. He was walking because his father, suffering from ill-humor, had refused him a horse. But evidently, there was no martyrdom about the situation.
“He’s an old man,” Dave said, putting down his burden and wiping his forehead with a big, red handkerchief, “and I didn’t like to start no row.”
“Are you going for good?” Mauney asked, rising from the grass and walking slowly to the edge of the road.
“Sure. I sold my three-year-old yesterday for a hundred, and that’ll keep me for a while up to Merlton. I guess Dad will come around after a while. But I reckon I’d just blow away, quiet like, without causin’ too much commotion.”
“You’re a cheerful cuss, Dave,” Mauney said.
“You bet,” he laughed, as he turned to look back toward his home. “I tell yuh, Maun, when a fellah gets sort o’ squared away with God Almighty, why, he can’t be no other way. Some o’ the neighbors says I’m makin’ a big mistake to leave the farm. But that farm ain’t nothin’ to me now. Maybe I won’t never have abit o’ land to me name, but, I’m tellin’ yuh, I’ve got somethin’ as more’n makes up. Well, Maun, old boy,” he said, picking up his valise and sticking out his big, sun-burned hand. “I’ll be goin’ along. Good-bye. Best of luck to yuh!”
For minutes Mauney stood thoughtfully watching his retreating figure as, swinging into a long stride, he covered the first lap of his long walk to Lockwood. His big figure grew smaller and smaller and the valise dwindled to a little grey speck, but he never turned to look back and soon he was lost in a bend of the road.
Although Mauney disliked in McBratney, what he considered half-familiar references to the Creator, he distinctly admired his courage and did not hesitate to express his admiration next day at supper when the subject came up. Evidently Bard had called at the McBratney’s that afternoon on his way from Beulah.
“The old man’s all broke up,” he said. “Poor old chap. There he is right in the middle of the hayin’ with nobody to help him, and Dave walks right out an’ leaves him. He might ’a’ stayed till the first o’ August, anyway.”
“I guess Dave’s got it pretty bad, Dad,” William remarked as he spread a large chunk of butter over his bread. “Anybody that’ll start out an’ walk to Lockwood on a hot night, carrying a big grip, why, there’s somethin’ wrong with his brains. I never figured Dave’d be such a damned fool!”
Mauney looked up sharply at his brother.
“He isn’t a damned fool!” he said flushing. “I may not have any more use for religion than you have, Bill, but I admire any fellow who does what he thinks is right!”
“Is that so?” scoffed William, glaring across the table. “Well, now look here, freshie—”
Mauney, inflamed by the word, as well as by his brother’s sneering manner, jumped to his feet, and became the centre of attention.
“I refuse to be called ‘freshie’ by you,” he said with some effort at restraint, “and I have just enough sympathy with Dave McBratney that I’m not going to have you call him a damned fool, either!”
Bard pounded the table.
“Here, sit down, Maun,” he commanded and then turned with a faint smile toward his elder son. “Bill, eat your victuals and be quiet. O’ course,” he added presently, “there ain’t no doubt but what Dave is a damned fool, and he’s goin’ to wake up one o’ these days and find it out, too. But now he’s gone away I don’t see what the old man’s goin’ to do. I advised him to sell out the farm and go up to Beulah an’ take it easy. There ain’t no good o’ William Henry stayin’ down here no longer. He’ll have to get a hired man now, and with wages where they is he wouldn’t clean up nothin’.”
After a short silence, William chuckled softly as he raised his saucer of hot, clear tea to his lips.
“I was just thinkin’ about the Orange Walk down to Lockwood last year,” he explained. “There was Dave, with a few drinks in him, struttin’ around the park, darin’ everybody to a scrap. Gosh, it’s funny to think o’ him bein’ a preacher. I mind that night—we didn’t get home till seven o’clock the next mornin’ an’ I pitched in the harvest field all that day.”
“Sure,” nodded Bard. “I’ve done the same thing many a time when I was your age.”
“And the next night,” continued William proudly, “me and Dave was up to Ras Livermore’s harvest dance. That hoe-down lasted till five in the mornin’. I can see Dave yet, sweatin’ through the whole thing—never missed a dance.”
“Wonder if Ras is goin’ to put on a shin-dig this here harvest?” mused Bard.
“He ain’t never missed puttin’ one on since I can remember,” said the hired girl, who had been listening intently.
“The other day,” William remarked, “I saw Ras up in Abe Lavanagh’s barber shop. I ast him if he was goin’ to have a dance this year an’ he hit me an awful clout on the back an’ he says: ‘Better’n’ bigger’n ever, my boy. Come an’ bring yer fleusie. They’ll be plenty to eat, and Alec Dent is goin’ to fiddle again.’”
“And I guess Dave won’t hear the music, neither,” said Bard.
About ten days after his aunt’s visit Mauney received a letter from her, written in Merlton, and containing a crisp, five-dollar bill. “I really haven’t had time to choose a gift for you,” she wrote, “so please buy any little thing you fancy. Your Uncle Neville and I are leaving for New York to-night, and intend sailing the next day for Scotland. Neville is afraid England will be drawn into this terrible European mix-up, and of course, if that happens, he may have to leave his business as he holds a majority in the Scottish Borderers. I’m praying there won’t be a war, but it certainly does look dark.”
War! Mauney located theBeulah Weeklyin thewood-box and searched its columns in vain for any mention of European politics. He wished that his father had consented to have a rural telephone installed, so that he could telephone now to some of the neighbors and find out what was transpiring. Next day in Beulah he asked the postmaster through the wicket if there seemed to be any danger of a war.
“War!” the man repeated, staring stupidly through his high-refractive spectacles. “Whereabouts?”
“In Europe.”
The postmaster reflectively poked his index finger into his mouth to free his molar teeth from remnants of his recent supper.
“I guess not,” he said lazily. “I ain’t heard nothin’ about it.”
“Do you know a good Merlton newspaper?” Mauney enquired.
“Oh, yes,” he replied, his face at once brightening to a patronizing smile. “TheMerlton Globeis the best. It is the newsiest paper printed in the country, unexcelled for its editorials, has the largest unsolicited circulation, is unequalled for its want ad. columns, and reflects daily the current thought and events of both hemispheres. Yuh’d certainly get what yer huntin’ for in theMerlton Globe, Mr. Bard, ’cause if there’s any war on anywhere—don’t matter where—they’d most likely have it.”
“What does it cost?” Mauney asked.
“Only five dollars per year,” he replied politely, removing an eye-shade from his forehead, and staring anxiously at his customer. “Of course, I’m the local agent, you know,” he added.
“Oh! are you?”
“Oh, yes—yes,” he said, with a nervous little laugh, his hands together as if in the act of ablution.
For a moment Mauney hesitated, while his hand, deep in his pocket, felt the crisp treasury note with which he was so tempted to part. A number of considerations caused him to weigh well his present transaction, but he soon gave his initials to the eager postmaster and went home satisfied.
Seth Bard had, of course, always been able to find sufficient news in theBeulah Weekly. It is doubtful if he would have spent the annual dollar on it except for the long column advertising farm sales. He usually spent half an hour searching this portion of the paper, then a listless five minutes over the personal column, which, to his particular mind, provided an amusing satire, only to fall asleep, later, as he tried to read the fragmentary generalities that filled the stereotyped section. The hired girl religiously preserved the editions until she had found time to read the instalments of a continued love story. When theMerlton Globebegan to arrive with the name of “Mr. Mauney Bard” upon it, a precedent seemed to have been established for introducing unwelcome new factors into the self-sufficient household.
“Where’d you get the money?” Bard demanded, in accordance with Mauney’s expectations.
“Found it,” he replied, just as he had planned to do.
There was no more questioning, although Mauney knew his father did not believe him. With queer pride, Bard scorned to read the big daily, although the woman found back numbers useful for lining pantry shelves.
“We don’t worry none about what’s goin’ on over in Europe, Bill,” remarked the father one evening whileMauney sat nearby reading the paper. “If they want to put on a war over there, why, let ’em sail to it. ’Taint none o’ our business.”
“Guess we got ’bout enough to do, running this here farm, Dad,” William agreed, “without wastin’ any time with that kind o’ truck.”
The annual harvest dance at Ras Livermore’s was a long-standing event of great local interest, for, since most people could remember, it had been as faithful in its appearance as the harvest itself. Men of fifty recalled gala nights spent there in their exuberant twenties. Livermore was benevolent and kindly, well over seventy, and had developed hospitality to a degree where he required it now as a social tonic. No invitations were sent out because rumour of the event invariably preceded the event itself, thus fixing the date, and, as to the personnel of the guests, Livermore’s slogan of “Everybody come” was sufficient, for he knew that the ultra-religious of Beulah would never appear and that the best recommendation for the qualities of a guest was the very spontaneity that impelled him or her to be present.
For the past three years it had been one of the bright spots in Mauney’s life and so, on the day of the dance, he brought downstairs his best suit of clothes for the hired girl to sponge and press. The men did not get in from the grain field until seven o’clock.
“Me and Annie’ll manage the milkin’ to-night,” Bard generously announced, as they ate supper. “Snowball’s goin’ too. Soon’s yuh get through eatin’, Maun, go bed the horses, and, Bill, you an’ Snowball pump the cowssome water an’ draw the binder under the machine shed. Then hitch up old Charlie, jump into yer boiled shirts, and get up to Ras’s.”
“Ain’t you goin’, Dad?” William asked.
“No. I’m goin’ over to see William Henry an’ make him an offer on his farm. Annie’ll have to stay here an’ look after the house. I’m gettin’ too old fer this here dancin’ business anyway. I used to be able to stay with the best of ’em, Bill, but a plug o’ chewing tobacco is about as much dissipation as I can stand now.”
By nine o’clock Mauney, with his brother and Snowball, were driving up through Beulah and turning at the end of the village along the Stone Road. Three miles through the darkening landscape brought them nearer a cluster of pine trees behind which Livermore’s large frame house could be seen with every window alight. Between the trees were suspended yellow Japanese lanterns in long, bellying rows, beneath which could be seen the moving white gowns of women and the dark forms of men standing in groups. Buggy-loads of people were constantly arriving and being directed by Livermore who, dressed in an old-fashioned cut-away suit, was strutting about as actively as a man of thirty. A congestion of buggies at the lane entrance required William to pull up the horse, and wait his turn.
“Hello, Ras!” came the shout of greeting from one of the buggies. “How’s yer old heart?”
“She’s still a-pumpin’!” he replied, causing a general outburst of laughter, since Livermore was noted for an individualistic strain of wit, and anything he might say was to be thus rewarded.
“Hello, is that you, Bill?” he called as they passed him. “I see yer girl is here before you. Drive rightin. There’s more people here to-night than yuh’d see at yer own funeral. Hurry up, Bill, ’cause there’s a mighty sight o’ fine women-folks here, and not a Methodist foot among ’em.”
Even a half-hour later, as Mauney strolled about the lawn chatting with acquaintances, load after load of laughing people continued to arrive, and he joined the crowd who were lined up watching Livermore greet his guests.
“Drive right into the yard, boys,” he called. “If they hain’t room under the cow-sheds, hitch ’em up to the wind-mill.”
“Quite a turn-out, Ras,” remarked Doctor Horne, as he suddenly reined his black horse into the lane.
“Hello, Doc! Well, well, well, if here ain’t Doc Horne!” exclaimed Livermore, advancing to shake the physician’s hand. “I tell yuh, doc, it’s a pretty frisky lot o’ people. You kin tie your horse to the fence, case you git a call an’ have to leave early. One o’ the boys’ll show you.”
“Is that scoundrel, Alec Dent, here to-night?” asked Horne in a mock-whisper, leaning over the side of his buggy.
“Yes, an’ dancin’ is goin’ to start directly, Doc. Alec has just had a pint o’ rye whiskey an’ there ain’t enough furniture left on the kitchen floor fer an Esquimo to start house-keepin’ with.”
“Whoop!” laughed Horne in a loud chuckle, as he touched his horse with the whip. “Erastus, you old reprobate, you old skunk!”
Women were busy preparing five long tables under the pine trees for the refreshments which would be served at midnight. Mauney was inveigled into carryingbenches by Myrtle McGee, one of the acknowledged belles of the countryside, who came up to him in her usual direct way, carrying a pile of plates, and smiling seductively.
“D’yuh want to work?” she enquired, with a much more intimate address than the occasion demanded.
“That’s what I came up here to avoid,” Mauney laughed as he looked down into her sharp, black eyes.
“But you’d help me, wouldn’t you?” she pouted. “Go fetch some o’ them benches, like a good boy.”
After he had obeyed, and while the crowd of people were slowly moving back toward the kitchen, drawn by the lure of the violin music, she came up with him again, fanning her flushed face with her handkerchief. She was not more than twenty and wore a pleated, white silk gown that gave attractive exposure of her arms and bosom, smooth and firm like yellowed ivory, and contrasted markedly with her jet-black hair, decorated by a comb of brilliants.
“Well,” she said, tilting her head sidewise, and according him an angled glance, “I s’pose you’re goin’ to give me yer first dance, ain’t yuh, Maun?”
A subtle compliment was conveyed in this unconventional invitation, and Mauney, surprised at his own susceptibility, at once agreed. Together they strolled toward the kitchen verandah where already a crowd was assembled. The windows and doors of the kitchen were all removed, and Mauney, peering above the mass of eager heads, saw a broad strip of yellow floor, reflecting the light of several oil-lamps set in wall brackets. As yet no dancing had begun, but Alexander Dent, a corpulent man of sixty with a heavy, pasty face, wasperched on top of the kitchen stove, where, seated on a chair, his body swung to the rhythm of his bow.
“Jest gettin’ warmed up!” he announced, with a sly glance from the corner of his black eyes toward the crowd at the doors.
This was the twenty-eighth annual harvest dance at which he had assumed responsibility for the music. In accordance with his ideal of never growing old he had undertaken, in late years, to dye his hair and moustache much blacker than they had ever been even in his youth. Only his chin, which receded weakly beneath his bushy moustache, gave any evidence of age, for his quick eyes, his animated movements, the tap-tap of his toe keeping time against the stove lid, suggested youth. He was to be accompanied by an organ set at the top of three steps leading to the dining room, at which Mrs. Livermore, second wife of the host, already presided in readiness. As Dent finished his first flourish and began tucking a large, white silk handkerchief under his chin Erastus Livermore appeared on the floor and initiated applause in which every one joined. In a moment the host raised his hand for order.
He was a big man, slightly bent at the shoulders, with a high, sloping forehead, a bald pate, a grey, tobacco-stained moustache and dim, grey eyes, full of quiet hospitality that sparkled brightly as he spoke.
“Folks,” he said, by way of opening the function, “I dunno why I allus have to get out here an’ say a few words. The woman told me I had to do it, so I guess that’s reason enough.”
A burst of laughter followed this remark.
“When I look around and see you folks all dressed up in yer Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes, makes me think ofhow much the styles is changed since the first dance we put on here. In them days, the women folks all had big hoop skirts, that ud hardly go through that there door. But now we see a change. They believe more in advertisin’ and showin’ off their ankles.”
“Ras—Ras!” came Mrs. Livermore’s disapproving voice.
Again the guests laughed, this time more heartily.
“Well—ain’t it true, folks?” he asked.
“Sure, Ras!”
“You bet.”
Just then the rural telephone, which was attached to the kitchen wall, rang five short rings.
“That’s our call,” Livermore said to his wife. “Tell ’em to come a jumpin’, we hain’t even started yet.”
When she had answered the telephone she whispered something to her husband.
“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to call our old friend, Doctor Horne. He’s wanted at onct down the Graham road, at Bob Lombard’s. I guess maybe the baby has swallowed a carpet tack.”
“Thanks, Ras,” came Horne’s voice from outside. “Don’t let me interrupt your speech!”
“Come back if you can, Doc!”
“I think by the way you and Alexander Dent are starting in, you may need me before you get through,” replied Horne, already untying his horse from the fence nearby. When the laughter had again subsided, Livermore continued.
“An’ there’s only two o’ that old brigade left here to-night,” he said, “myself and Alec Dent.”
The musician’s name was greeted by a loud hand-clappingto which he responded by rising from his chair and executing a deep salaam.
“Mind the lids, Alec,” continued Livermore. “I bet Alec ain’t forgot them hoop skirts.”
“Why, no,” affirmed the musician in a clear, bass voice, as he seated himself. “Them was the fantastic days, Rastus. It was right on this floor I met the woman that’s been bossin’ me around ever since. Them wasthedays!”
“Now, folks,” said the host, “With these few openin’ words, I’ll call on our old friend to play a cotillion, an’ I want everybody to light right in an’ hoe ’er down till mornin’! Joe Hanson, the man on the right with the false teeth, is goin’ to call off, a-standin’ on the wood-box, an’ I want to see the young folks get well het up. Ready, Alec?”
The butt of his bow was poised over the strings of his violin, his head nestled down to the instrument, his toe lifted preparatory to the opening note. He nodded.
“Then let her go!”
The thrilling call of the violin immediately drew four sets to occupy their places on the kitchen floor—tall, sun-burned youths with coats cast aside, smiling at their partners who quivered with eagerness to be started. Mauney and Miss McGee were unable to gain entrance, but collided with Amos Blancher, a husky fellow to whom she had evidently promised the first dance. He demanded an explanation.
“Why, Ame,” she said, “you’re too slow to catch a cold. Mauney an’ I are goin’ to have the first dance together, ain’t we, Maun?”
Blancher scowled ill-temperedly at Mauney and backed away, muttering under his breath.
“It’s goin’ to be a corkin’ good set, too,” predicted Miss McGee, leaning against Mauney’s arm as they watched the progress of the dance.
“Address your partner; corners the same,” commanded Hanson from his position on the wood-box.
Everyone bowed, and immediately scuffled their feet in rhythm with the music.
Another bow, in a different figure, and again the prancing of eager feet.
“Right and left through and inside couple swing. Right and left back and the same old thing!”
Hanson entered into the spirit so thoroughly that his voice took on a barbarous rhythm, but he enunciated his directions very clearly considering the fact that his upper plate habitually fell away from the roof of his mouth on open syllables.
“Ladies turn out, with the bull in the ring; gents come out and give birdie a swing!”
The process of giving “birdie” a swing included a vigorous masculine lurch which brought the lady from the floor with much sailing of her skirts and exposure of her muscular, black-stockinged calves.
“Lady round lady and gents go slow; lady round gent and gents don’t go.”
Thus continued the strenuous dance, while the faces of the dancers began to flush with the warmth of their exercise, and the fiddler proceeded exuberantly and with growing animation from one movement to the next. When the first set was finished, another, made up of different dancers, commenced, leaving only time for Alexander Dent to reach for a proffered glass of spirits. By an unwritten law it was understood that whiskey was reserved only for the fiddler as an indulgent acknowledgmentof his services, but the stealthy movement of the occasional youth to the back box of his buggy in the yard was forgiven if he exercised moderation.
Those not engaged in dancing played euchre in the dining room or sat on long benches on the verandah telling stories, exchanging gossip or discussing crops. By midnight, Mauney, weary of the music, and weary, too, of the monotonous jargon of his associates, stole a few moments by himself on the end of the front verandah farthest from the rest.
The great orb of the red, harvest moon was rising like a ball of molten, quivering fire from the deep purple scarf of smoky air that lay upon the horizon, while a warm breeze moved from the stubble field nearby. His thoughts drifted fancifully, trying to free themselves from the weird thralldom of the dance, imagining the moon the secret source of heat that supplied the dancers with energy, and the warm breeze an emanation from their impassioned enthusiasm. Past him, as he sat secluded behind a vine of Virginia creeper, a youth and a maiden, unsuspecting his presence, walked quietly side by side until they stood by the cedar edge at the border of the grove. He watched the moonlight reflected from the maiden’s face as she glanced quickly toward the house, and from her arms as they encircled her lover’s neck. The lover bent toward her and pressed his lips passionately upon her mouth. Then they returned, with a new rhythm in their gait, to join the crowd who sat at the other side of the house.
Mauney breathed with mild difficulty as if stifled by the glamor of the sultry night. Then in a mood of inexplicable detachment he wandered again through the groups of people, half unconscious of their presence.He stood watching the dancers once more and listening to the endless grind of the fiddle. A round dance was in progress and his eyes followed the two lovers now clasped in the dreamy movement of a waltz. He could not understand why the picture blurred as he watched it. He was thinking of the beauty of love—the tragedy of love—this closed, complete, unopening circle of passion that drifted to the beat of the music heedless of the universe. His eyes wandered from their graceful forms to dwell upon the yellow glow of the Japanese lanterns.
A stronger breeze came from the fields and moved the big lanterns till one of them caught fire and burned, attracting the attention of a score of people.
Then there were five, sudden, sharp rings!
The music ceased. The dancers paused. Livermore entered from the verandah, and going to the telephone put the receiver to his ear. Casual curiosity prompted a general quietness among the guests.
“Hello! Yes, this is Ras, speakin’. Who’s that? Hello, Frank, why ain’t you up to the dance? What?”
Turning about, Livermore waved to the guests. “Be quiet jest a minute. It’s kind o’ hard to hear him.”
For a moment he listened, while the changing expression on his face provoked greater curiosity and greater quietness.
“Ain’t that a caution?” he exclaimed, hanging up the receiver. “If England hain’t gone and declared war on Germany.”
“What’s that?” asked a voice on the verandah.
“War—the British is gone to war,” Livermore answered. “Frank Davidson just got back from Lockwood, an’ says the news just reached Lockwood afore he left.”
“War, eh?”
“Yep! So Frank says. Maybe it’s just talk.”
“Well, I guess it ain’t goin’ to do us no harm, Ras, anyhow,” said Alec Dent, waving with his fiddle-stick. “Get off the floor an’ give ’em a chance, Ras.”
Again the slow, measured music of the waltz floated out on the night air, and Mauney watched the lovers continue in their embrace.
His heart pounded with excitement. Vague sympathies, eager yearnings, and impatient impulses moved by turns in his breast. That which the newspapers had suspected had become fact. How could these people continue to dance in the face of such catastrophic news? He could not dance. He could only think and think, and wonder why, in the unexplorable depths of his heart, he was glad that war was come.