That night the little lady slept the sweet sleep of a tender conscience, set wholly at rest by a full confession. Old lady Gordon also rested well, after having taken some drops out of the bag hanging at the head of her bed, thus settling an uncommonly hearty supper. So that neither of the ladies either heard or dreamed of a drama which was being enacted that same night under the dark of the moon, and which threatened to turn into a tragedy with the light of the next morning.
It was true—as has been said before—that old lady Gordon had known all along of the trouble brewing between her own cook and Miss Judy's maid of all work. She had also observed the growing fierceness of their rivalry for the heart and hand of her gardener and coachman, Enoch Cotton, but she had not, even yet, thought of interfering, since the affair had progressed without the slightest interference with her own comfort. She had merely laughed a little, as she always did at any candid display of the weakness of human nature; though she had incidentally given Eunice a characteristic word of advice.
"Don't make any more of a fool of yourself than you can help, Eunice," old lady Gordon said, with careless scorn. "You're going about this matter in the wrong way. Stop all this foolery, all this quarrelling and fighting, and stop it now—right off the reel, too. And I'll give you a big red feather for your hat. One red feather is worth more than any number of fights,—for getting a man back."
Eunice thanked her and accepted the present in dignified silence, but without saying what she herself thought of it as an antidote for man's inconstancy to woman, and her mistress had no means of knowing whether she ever really tried it or not. In fact, the whole matter passed out of old lady Gordon's mind as an unimportant incident which had amused her for a moment. And there was nothing to recall it, the warning which she had let fall having made Eunice more than ever cautious in keeping out of her mistress's sight all sign or sound of what was going on.
Thus it was that the danger grew quietly and in darkness, utterly unknown to everybody except the three dusky persons most closely concerned. It had long been unsafe for Merica to come into Eunice's kitchen, and it now became dangerous for her even to venture inside the back gate, when coming for the young master's clothes or taking them home. Eunice was the very soul of frankness with all save her mistress, the only human being of whom she ever stood in awe. She accordingly made no sort of mystery of her intentions to any one else; on the contrary, she told Enoch Cotton, in the plainest language at her command, just what she meant to do:—
"Ef ever dat reg'lar ebo darst set her hoof over dat doo' sill agin!"
And Enoch knew that she meant what she said, and that she would do it, whatever it was. The only doubt was as to the meaning of "ebo." The term may have been merely an abbreviation of ebony and nothing worse than a slur upon Merica's complexion. And yet it can hardly have been anything quite so simple and harmless, if only for the reason that Eunice was the blacker of the two rivals—if there be degrees in blackness; and, moreover, Eunice's way of using the word really made it sound like the very worst thing that one colored person could possibly say against another. At any rate, Enoch Cotton felt that the crisis was come, and he warned Merica, as any honorable man—regardless of the color of his skin—stands bound to guard, so far as he can, the girl whom he means to marry in the uncertain event of his being able to escape the widow who means to marry him. Merica was a little frightened at first, and she readily agreed to Enoch Cotton's elaborate plan of fetching the young master's clothes to the althæa hedge every Monday morning at sunup, and of handing them to her there over the fence, shielded from Eunice's argus eyes by the thick dusty foliage and the dull purple flowers. The girl also consented to her lover's waiting at the hedge every Tuesday evening at sundown to take the clothes when she fetched them back and handed them to him, under shelter of the leafy screen. Eunice saw Enoch Cotton going and coming, and knew full well what these manœuvres meant; but the althæa hedge stood directly in front of her mistress's window, so that Eunice could only bide her time, in masterly inactivity, bound hand and foot to the burning rack of jealousy. Most bitterly trying of all was the fact that at night—and every night—while she was still busy in ministering to her mistress's wants, Enoch Cotton nearly always disappeared, and, try as she would, she could not learn whither he went.
In the rear of Miss Judy's garden, close to a secluded corner, was a half-leaning, half-fallen heap of butter-bean poles, rankly covered with vines. That little lady called it a bower, and thought it very pretty indeed. She had been somewhat disappointed at first when her butter-beans ran all to vines and did not bear at all. She had expected a good deal of those butter-beans; they had been so nice and fat and white when she planted them, and they had doubled out of the earth in such thick loops of luscious whiteness when they first came up. She had indeed told Miss Sophia that she thought there would be enough butter-beans to exchange for two (and maybe three) pairs of stockings, which Miss Sophia had needed for some time; possibly there might be so many that she herself could have a pair. But when the vines utterly failed to bear, and did nothing but riot in rank and tangled greenness over the bending, falling poles, Miss Judy consoled Miss Sophia and comforted herself by observing how very pretty and romantic the bower was. And when she observed, later in the summer, that Merica had formed a habit of going to sit in the bower every night, as soon as the day's work was done, she was quite consoled.
"Sitting there all alone must surely tame her in a measure, poor thing," Miss Judy said to Miss Sophia. "It would benefit all of us to have more time for quiet reflection. Think of the difference it must have made to Becky if she hadn't been so driven."
Accordingly Miss Judy was delicately careful to keep away from the bower, for fear of disturbing Merica's reflections. Eunice had never approached it nor even suspected its existence, thinking, when she noticed it at all, that the green tangle of vines was a mere neglected heap of butter-bean poles. Her ceaseless, fruitless search had heretofore always been turned toward the dark windows of Merica's deserted kitchen and cabin. And thus it was that the girl in comparative safety awaited her lover's coming night after night, under the dark of the moon or after its going down, as the savage women of her tribe must have awaited their warrior lovers in the deepest jungles of Africa. Nevertheless, Merica's heart was the heart of her feminine type all the world over, within and without civilization. With her, as with all her kind, to love and be loved was not enough; the other woman must see and know, before her triumph could be entirely complete. In vain Enoch Cotton pleaded and protested, and even tried again to frighten her. Every word that he uttered only made her the more determined to parade her victory openly, in utter disdain of all restraint, in unbounded contempt of all concealment. What was there for her to be afraid of? she demanded. Was she not younger than Eunice and better-looking and several shades lighter in color? And was not her hair ever so much straighter than Eunice's, when freshly combed out on a Sunday, after being tightly plaited in very small plaits and carefully wrapped with string through the whole week? Finally, she and her lover came so close to a violent quarrel that he dared not say anything more; and although Merica ceased urging the point, she was fully resolved to overthrow the screen of the althæa hedge, to scorn its protection, at the earliest opportunity. This came sooner than she hoped for, on the evening following the accident when the fatal spark had fallen upon the wash-kettle's biggest, dryest bubble. Enoch, gravely alarmed, was waiting as usual in the shelter of the althæa hedge, but she passed him boldly, leaving him trembling with fear and gray with terror; and, marching fearlessly up to the kitchen door with a challenging giggle, she thrust the basket of clean clothes through it and under Eunice's very nose. Then she turned deliberately and flaunted off, with a loud laugh of scornful, mocking defiance.
For an instant the black widow was daunted, overwhelmed, dumfounded, utterly routed, by the brown girl's unexpected and brazen audacity. She could do nothing at first but stand glaring after her in dumb, powerless fury. Enoch had disappeared as though he had sunk into the earth; as more self-possessed and more courageous men have done under similar circumstances. Eunice, thus left alone, could only gather her self-possession gradually, as best she could, and try to think, and think, and think. She still kept perfectly quiet; there was not one outward sign of the turmoil of her fierce spirit. She thought and waited till night came on, and until her mistress had gone to bed, and even until she felt sure that old lady Gordon was sound asleep. And then, led by the blind instinct which leads the wild animal through the trackless forest in search of its mate, Eunice stealthily opened the door of her solitary cabin, and noiselessly went forth. She crossed the shadowed orchard through the soundless darkness, a black and terrible shape of vengeance, and crept softly, her bare, heavy feet padding like the paws of a tiger, on and on, straight to the bower.
What happened then only the rivals ever knew. Enoch Cotton himself did not know. He fled at the first onslaught, as braver and whiter men have done under the same desperate and hopeless conditions; he—and they—could do nothing else; could not prevent the conflict, and could not take part. Enoch could only take refuge in instantaneous and wordless flight.
Neither Eunice nor Merica had ever a word to say of what transpired after Enoch was gone and they were left alone to have their wild, furious will of each other. The wrecked bower, of which hardly one pole remained upon another or one vine clung untorn from the others, silently told a part of the story. Eunice's face looked like a red map of darkest Africa, and Merica's face was much mottled by deep blue bruises; Eunice limped about her work on the following morning, and Merica cooked breakfast with one hand, having the other in a sling. And still, oddly enough, neither Eunice nor Merica bore herself quite as the victorious nor yet quite as the vanquished. There was, in truth, an air of tense uncertainty on both sides. Nowadays, everybody would know what was to follow under such circumstances; both sides nowadays would make instantaneous and vociferous appeal to the law as soon as the court was open. But things were different then, and this special case was peculiarly complicated. Eunice was a slave and had consequently no clearly discernible individual rights or privileges under the law. Merica on the other hand was free, and this fact, while placing her socially far beneath Eunice, gave her, nevertheless, certain rights before the courts which her rival as a slave could not enjoy. Accordingly it was with pride and satisfaction unspeakable that Merica set out, unobserved, soon after breakfast, to do what Eunice fully expected her to do, which was, to swear out a warrant for Eunice's arrest. This legal formula was, however, known to Eunice and to Merica, as it is known to most litigants of their race to-day, as a "have-his-carcass," which sounds to be a much larger and a much graver thing. Having, then, seen this document safe in the constable's hand, and having been duly assured of its prompt service, Merica went home as quietly as she had come away, and slid unseen through a hole in the fence, soothed by the completeness of the legal victory which she foresaw, and which could not fail to make her the admired and envied of all her race, which then found—as it still finds—a strange distinction in any sort of legal recognition, either good or bad.
The officer nevertheless took his own time in serving the warrant. It was not the Oldfield way to hurry over the doing of anything. Moreover, he had, perhaps, had a rather wide experience of colored quarrels, notwithstanding the fact that they were brought into court much more rarely at that period than they have been since. And then, no one, however daring or energetic, ever hastened under any circumstances to interfere with the old lady Gordon's affairs. Was it not known—as has been related—that when Alvarado himself dashed along the big road and everybody else drove into the fence-corner till he went by, old lady Gordon always kept straight along the middle of the big road, and it was Alvarado that went round. Bearing this recollection in mind, the constable strolled very slowly down the highway toward the Gordon place, and he was glad to catch sight of Eunice in the garden, gathering vegetables for dinner. It was better than finding her nearer her mistress. He laid his hands on the top of the garden fence and swung himself over the pickets.
"Good morning, Eunice," he said, walking toward her between the tall rows of yellow-flowering okra, from which she was picking tender green pods, for a delicious soup which only herself knew the recipe for.
"Good morning, Mr. Jim," responded Eunice, calmly. She knew at once what he had come for. There was a nice distinction in her calling him "Mr. Jim," rather than "Marse Jim," a subtle social distinction which was quite as clear to the constable as to herself, and one which he did not like.
"I've got a warrant here for your arrest for attempted murder," he accordingly said somewhat less mildly. "You'll have to come along with me to jail."
"Yes, sir," answered Eunice, respectfully, but adding calmly, as if stating an accepted and unalterable fact: "Yes, sir, but in course I'll have to ask Miss Frances first. I can't stop a-gathering her vegetables while the dew's on 'em—lessenshesay so. You know that, Mr. Jim, just as well as I do. Miss Frances's vegetables ain't to be left a-layin' round to swivel in the sun—no, sir, they ain't!"
The officer hesitated; he took off his rough straw hat, and looked for a moment as if he meant to scratch his head. But remembering the dignity of office, he fanned himself instead. "Well, come on up to the house, then, and I'll speak to your mistress," he said, with more composure than he felt.
They turned toward the house, the officer leading the way, and Eunice walking in her proper place behind him, carrying in her large, clean, white apron the okra, the beets, the cucumbers, and tomatoes, and all the other fresh and good, green and red things which she had already gathered for the daily noontide feast.
Old lady Gordon's keen eyes caught a glimpse of the constable and the cook a long way off; and she hailed them sharply as soon as they were within hearing: "What's this? What are you doing, Eunice? What areyouhere for, Jim, at this time of day?"
The officer, a good-looking, good-humored young giant, bared his head with an embarrassed smile. He made a brief explanation, turning his hat in his awkward hands, and resting his huge bulk first on one foot and then on the other.
Old lady Gordon hardly allowed him to finish what he found to say, which was very little. "Now, what's the use of your telling me any such nonsense as that, Jim Slocum? You know I'm not going to let you come here, interfering with my cook's getting my dinner."
"Yes, ma'am," said Jim, deferentially. "I do hate to inconvenience you, ma'am. But you see, ma'am, there's the law and here's the warrant. I'm bound to do what the law requires—I'll have to serve it."
"Indeed, you won't do anything of the kind! Who ever heard of such impudence!" exclaimed old lady Gordon. "The very idea! Taking my cook away from getting my dinner to lock her up in jail! Upon my word, Jim Slocum, I thought you had some sense. But I'm not going to allow you to annoy me or get me stirred up on a warm morning like this. I'm not even going to discuss the matter. Just you run along now, Jim, that's a good fellow, and let Eunice alone—she's busy—and don't bother me any more."
She settled herself back in her wide, low chair, and began to wave the turkey-wing fan with one hand, turning the leaves of her novel with the other.
"But you see, ma'am, it's a mighty grave charge, attempted murder,—the state—"
"Grave fiddlesticks!" retorted old lady Gordon, looking up from her novel with real fire blazing now in her fine dark eyes. "The state!" with infinite scorn. "What difference would it make to me if it were the United States? I tell you I won't have another word!"
Her raised voice, the lower tone of the officer's mild, but firm, persistence, the hurried gathering and smothered whispering of the servants around the windows and doors, all these combined had finally attracted the attention of Lynn Gordon, who was absorbed in reading in his own room overhead, and he now came hurrying downstairs. Entering his grandmother's room, he looked in surprise at the group which he found there; at her, at the constable, and lastly at Eunice, who had stood quietly by throughout the whole controversy with the manner of a coolly disinterested spectator. The officer turned eagerly to Lynn with the relief that every man feels upon the entrance of another man into a difficult business transaction with women.
"Maybe you can persuade your grandmother to let Eunice go," the constable said, addressing him, when a few words had made the matter clear to Lynn. "It is really the quickest way to get her cook back. The county judge is in town; I saw him tying his horse to the tavern hitching-post as I passed coming down here. He'd hurry up the case and get it over in no time to accommodate your grandma, being as they're kinder kin—him and your grandma's folks."
"Mr. Slocum is right, grandmother. That is certainly the quickest way, and the easiest," Lynn said. "Let Eunice go and I'll defend her; I'll take her as my first case,—shall I?" he added smilingly, looking at old lady Gordon.
"I don't care what any of you do, so long as you let me alone and have Eunice back here in time to get my dinner. What have you been up to, anyway?" she said, suddenly turning to Eunice as if the nature of the charge had just occurred to her for the first time. "Well, you'd better be back in plenty of time to boil that blackberry roll, that's all I've got to say to you. Lynn, send somebody to tell Davy,—that's the judge, Judge Thompson,—to tell Davy Thompson that I would be much obliged if he would go to the court-house at once and get this bother over, so that Eunice may be back within an hour. Please ask him to take the trouble to hurry; tell him I asked it. Send Enoch Cotton—where is Enoch, anyway?" she said, glancing over the assemblage of black masks crowding the windows and doors.
Enoch—naturally enough—was not to be found then nor for hours afterward, but another servant was despatched running in his stead; and then the procession moved briskly out through the side gate and on up the big road toward the court-house. Eunice walked behind the officer as manners required, but there was nothing abject in her carriage. She held her head high, feeling glad that she happened to be wearing her gayest bandanna head-handkerchief and that her white apron was still spotlessly clean. Hers was an imposing figure, and she knew it, and consequently bore herself with dignified pride. Her friends, too, began to flock around her as the procession advanced, thus swelling the crowd; and the white people living along the big road came to the doors and windows of their houses to see what was going on.
From the opposite direction approached a much larger and longer procession, headed by Merica, fairly flamboyant in an ecstasy of triumph, and tailed by dusky ragged figures, some of them little black children, trailing in the distance, indistinct as a smoky antique frieze. Merica's forces largely outnumbered Eunice's, as the attacking army nearly always outnumbers the defending force. Merica came marching at the very forefront, as if to the throb of inaudible drums and to the waving of invisible banners. Eunice trod more slowly, as the garrison goes cautiously to man the walls.
There was one tense, dangerous moment when the opposing forces met at the court-house steps; but the judge, the prosecuting attorney, and the prisoner's counsel chanced, luckily, to arrive at the same instant, so that, owing to their restraining presence, the danger passed with no greater violence than an exchange of threatening glances between the contending parties. Side by side the furious factions crowded into the small court-room, and straightway the examining trial of Eunice for attempted murder was then and there begun, without an instant's delay.
And yet everything was done decently and in order. It was a complete surprise to the defence to find that the assault which had taken place in the butter-bean bower was entirely ignored in the indictment. The charge was that Eunice had put poison in the well from which Merica drew water, thereby attempting to kill, to murder, and to do deadly harm etc., to the plaintiff. The prosecuting witness testified that she had heard a noise about daylight; that on going to the well she had found an empty box, which she was certain had contained rat-poison, lying beside it; and that a white powder which she was mortally sure was the rat-poison itself—and nothing else—was plainly to be seen floating on the surface of the water. Such was the case made out by the prosecution. It was not at all what the defence was prepared for, but the prisoner's counsel showed himself to be a person of resources upon sudden demand. He readily admitted that the prosecuting witness might have heard a noise about daylight. There were, as he had himself observed, a great many cats in that part of the village. Also he admitted with equal readiness that she might have found an empty box which had once contained a rat-poison. He pointed out the fact that this particular variety of rat-poison was in such general use in Oldfield,—where rat-poison was one of the necessities of life, not merely one of its luxuries,—that the empty boxes which had contained it were to be found almost anywhere. As for the alleged poison itself, which a notoriously untruthful and untrustworthy witness had just testified to seeing still afloat on the surface of the water in the well, after the acknowledged lapse of several hours—the court could judge the worth of that evidence without any assistance from the defence.
Here Mr. Pettus unexpectedly appeared in the court-room. He kept the rat-poison, as he kept everything in daily Oldfield demand, and he had been hurriedly summoned as an expert witness for the defence, and he now took the stand. He testified to having handled that particular variety of rat-poison in very large quantities for many years. He claimed, on cross-examination, to be perfectly familiar with the kind of box used by the manufacturers of the rat-poison, and he gave it as his opinion that the particular box in question—the one which he then held in his hand, and which he was examining minutely—had been used for several other purposes, and harmless ones, apparently, since being emptied of its original deadly contents. He called the attention of the court to the fact that a particle of sugar still adhered to one corner, while a grain of coffee still lingered in another corner. Finally, when the prisoner's counsel was quite ready for the grand stroke, he allowed the witness—who was an amateur chemist in the line of his business—to testify from his own personal knowledge of the rat-poison that it dissolved instantly upon coming in contact with water.
"And yet, your Honor, the prosecution rests its case upon the testimony of an ignorant, vindictive savage, who swears—who solemnly testifies under oath, your Honor—that she saw this identical poison, and no other, floating on the surface of the water in the well several hours after she claims to have heard a noise; that it was there, plainly to be seen, several hours after my innocent client is known to have been at work in her mistress's kitchen and was seen in her mistress's garden, openly and constantly in view of the whole community. I can summon any number of unimpeachable witnesses—"
"The declaration is dismissed. The complaint is denied for lack of evidence," said the judge, as seriously as possible. "Call the next case."
"You may go home now, Eunice," said Lynn, smiling.
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," said Eunice, calm as ever, and deliberately dropping a clumsy courtesy.
She courtesied still more clumsily to the court and to Mr. Pettus, and to all the white persons present, and then she turned slowly and ponderously, like some large and heavy royal personage, and she cast openly a high glance of infinite scorn over the humbled heads of her enemies. They might flock like coal-black crows as much as they had a mind to, she remarked in the dialect which they best understood; they were no more to her than the dust of the big road which she had "trompled under foot." She had white folks for her friends, she said triumphantly. With this single parting volley she went slowly and calmly down the court-house steps and set off homeward, bearing herself with all the arrogance of Semiramis returning victorious to Nineveh.
"Well, so you are back in time! No," said old lady Gordon, holding up the turkey-wing fan with a restraining gesture and resuming her novel with a yawn, "I don't want to hear a word about it. I know well enough that you ought to be in the penitentiary. Go on and get my dinner."
At the other end of the village Merica, deeply dejected, utterly crushed, stole toward home close in the shelter of the fence. She was returning entirely alone, as the leader of a lost cause nearly always returns, if he return at all. One by one her followers had dropped away, one disappearing here in a back yard, another vanishing there in a wood-lot, till all were gone. Desertion is the bitter hemlock of defeat that the vanquished are always forced to drink. The board was still off the fence at its farthest corner; Merica had squeezed through the hole on her flamboyant departure, so that Miss Judy might not see her and prevent her going; and she now dragged herself through it again on her downcast coming back, and thus reached the coveted shelter of her own domain and was able to hide her diminished head wholly unobserved by her unsuspicious, gentle little mistress.
"Merica's very quiet this morning. I haven't heard her stirring," Miss Judy said to Miss Sophia, as they sat placidly side by side in their little rocking-chairs—swaying gently—as they so loved to sit. They were talking, too, with that inexhaustible interest in one another's conversation which made their lifelong companionship the beautiful and perfect thing it was.
"Perhaps the poor creature is distressed over the falling down of the bower. She seemed to be real fond of it. And how strange to think there could have been such a violent storm without a drop of rain or our hearing the wind. I thought at first that we might have the bean-poles set up again, but the poles are broken and the vines are actually torn up by the roots. Oh, yes,—going back to what we were discussing before I happened to think of the bower,—I am sure that you are quite right in thinking that Doris's character has developed very rapidly of late. Her ideals really appear surprisingly well formed for so young a girl. And, as you say, there could hardly be anything unsettling now in her reading about the troubles that poor Becky went through. It can hardly do the dear child any harm now even to read about the mistakes which poor Becky made. For you know, sister Sophia, Becky was really good-hearted. You remember that Amelia might have gone sorrowing all her life, but for Becky's being so kind-hearted."
Miss Judy pleaded as though Miss Sophia was some keen and merciless critic from whose stern justice she strove gently to save the innocently erring.
"Just so, sister Judy," responded Miss Sophia, so promptly, so firmly, so comprehensively, so conclusively, that Miss Judy beamed at her, positively radiant with admiration, and sighed a deep sigh of relief and satisfaction at having the long and sorely vexing question thus thoroughly disposed of at last.
About that time of the year an aspect of great, glowing beauty and a feeling of deep, sweet peace always comes to this beautiful, pastoral country.
The long, warm days are then of the rarest gold, and the short, cool nights are of the purest silver. The ripened grain has been garnered, and its golden sheaves no longer tent the rich, broad lands. The tall, tasselling corn now flows free in rippling, murmuring, ever widening silvery seas. The ocean of the vast tobacco fields rolls and rolls its mighty billows of deepening green into the darkening purple haze of the misty horizon. The wooded hillsides are now very still, and dark blue shadows linger all day among the trees—which stir scarcely a leaf—waiting to creep down toward the village at nightfall to meet the snow-white mist loitering over the resting meadows. The birds, too, are resting, half asleep in the heart of the ancient wood; they sing more seldom and their songs are sweeter and softer and come forth touched with a tender melancholy. The very shrilling of the crickets in the long grass sounds less shrill, and seems to rise and fall with the waves of heat. The butterflies, clustering on the commonest wayside weeds like tropical flowers, hardly move their dazzling wings of yellow and white, waving them as languorously as a flower unfurls its petals. And then—in those radiant days—the thistledown also softly spreads its pinions of gossamer silver, and, borne on the breath of the south breeze, it wings its weightless way over all the snow-masses of the elder bloom, and burnishes its lacelike whiteness into the luminous border of the veil which the midsummer heaven lends to the midsummer earth.
The honeysuckle over Tom Watson's window was thinning under the heat and bronzing under the drouth. Its leaves, green-yellow, drifted languidly down to the browning grass of the neglected lawn. So that there was scarcely a cool shadow left to shield the wretchedness of the stricken man, sitting day after day in the spot to which destiny had chained him; or one to cover the sadness of the wife, keeping her hopeless vigil by his side, in open view for every passer-by to see. It was a sight to wring any heart, and the Oldfield people were always kind to one another and always helpful—as simple, poor people are everywhere. But in this sad case there seemed no way to help, nothing that any one could do. No one might penetrate the dumb horror of the sick man's awful gaze, straining all the desolate day through, as long as the light lasted, toward some unseen and unreachable thing, as a wild creature strains dumbly at its chain. No one could pass the silence of Anne's reserve to share, to lessen, or even completely to comprehend the conflict ceaselessly waging within the high, narrow walls of her spirit.
Up to the beginning of this strife Anne's heart and soul had gone more nearly abreast, more evenly side by side, than most women's hearts and souls are able to go through life. The one nearly always goes before the other in every true woman's breast. And the path of Anne's spirit was very narrow, much narrower than that in which most women tread; so that, at this last steep pass, there was not room for both to go together, and thus her heart and her soul were forced to strive, the one with the other, for the right of way. There was never a moment's doubt in Anne's single, simple, and most strenuous mind as to which should lead. Now, as always, the road between right and wrong lay straight, clear, and open before her feet. There never was the slightest danger of her wandering or wavering. But oh, the agonized wringing of her heart, the almost unendurable travail of her soul—in this death struggle for her husband's salvation! And yet she suffered the anguish unflinchingly, her very love forbidding her conscience to yield, to barter the hope of the life everlasting for the relief of a few broken years. And every day the conflict grew fiercer as her husband's growing strength increased his piteously powerless resistance to restraint, and fed the flame of his desire for cards, now as strong as any ruling passion ever was in death. Impassive as Anne was by nature, she used sometimes to wonder if she would be able to bear it any longer and live. Her heart was breaking, her soul was almost at bay, so desperate was the strife between the two.
It is one of life's cruel ironies that the deepest feeling must often find trivial and even absurd expression. In poor Anne's first blind casting about for something to divert her husband's thoughts, in her first futile trying to remember what he used to like,—and she had known very little of his tastes in the days of his strength,—the recollection of seeing him read the county newspaper, which was published weekly in a neighboring town, came suddenly out of the mists of her memory. She sent for the paper and tried to read it to him, beginning at the top line of the first column and going straight through to the last line on the last page, fearing lest she might miss the article which he most wanted to hear. But Anne was not a good reader, and a clouded mind and a racked body do not make a patient listener. Tom gave no sign and he did not try to speak; but Anne saw his miserable, unresting eyes wander away to the far-off purpled hills, beyond which lay the free, bright world; and his thoughts—but who dare wonder whither his thoughts wandered?
After the failure in the reading of the newspaper, Anne turned to books. There were no new books in Oldfield, had poor Anne known the new from the old, and there were few of any kind. Miss Judy had more than any one else, and she was eager in offering all that had belonged to her father, as well as the handful of more recent ones gathered by her own simple tastes; and these last she urged upon Anne as being lighter and more cheerful, and consequently more suited to the cheering of an invalid. She was quite sure, so she said, smiling to hearten Anne, that Tom would like to hear about Becky; he had always liked lively, good-hearted people—like himself. But Anne instinctively chose the major's books instead, shrinking from all lightness as unsuited to her husband's need, and believing, as a woman of her type usually believes, that a man is most interested in what she herself least understands.
When the reading of the dry old books had failed even more completely, if possible, than the reading of the newspaper, Anne tried to talk to her husband; and that was the hardest of all. She had always been a silent woman, well named "still-tongued"; and now that her sad heart lay in her bosom like lead, she found less and less to say, so that this last attempt was the most complete and the saddest of her many repeated defeats. It was then, when at the end of her own resources, that she held to Sidney's hand, and asked with her appealing eyes for the help which she knew not how to beg with her lips. After this Sidney went every day to see Tom, and told him, as amusingly as she could tell anything, of everything that was going on, no matter whether he listened or not. And she also sent Doris, who went often (taking Miss Judy's guitar at that little lady's suggestion) to sing to the invalid, and who was careful to choose her gayest songs and to play nothing less cheerful than the Spanish fandango; and it really seemed, once in a while, as if a light came into the sick man's darkened gaze as it rested upon the girl as she tinkled the old guitar, with the broad blue ribbon falling around her beautiful shoulders.
The whole village was, in truth, unwearying in its kindness all the long days, through all those long months; but there were, nevertheless, the lonely hours of the endless nights to be passed alone, when the desperate husband and the despairing wife dumbly faced the appalling future,—a burning, unlighted, empty desert,—stretching perhaps through many terrible years. And even then Anne stood firm, with her sad, steady eyes ever on the white heights which she saw beyond the black gulf, wherein she strove perpetually with the powers of darkness for her husband's soul.
She never left him now for a moment, night or day, except when there was preaching in her own church and her faith required the "breaking of bread"; and at rare long intervals to go to prayer-meeting, when she felt her strength failing and hoped to find in the prayers of others new strength for her own ceaseless petitions. One night of midsummer, when the bell began to ring for prayer-meeting, she felt that she must go. She accordingly arose—reluctantly as she always left him—and went into the bedroom and put on her quakerish bonnet. Then she came back and stood before her husband, seeking wistfully to do something more for his comfort before leaving him, as she never forgot to try to do. She turned the cushions at his back to make them softer, and moved the pillows behind his head so that it might rest easier, and straightened the cover over his powerless knees. These poor things, which she always did, were all that she ever could do. She would return soon, as soon as she could, she said, as she always said, bending down to press her pale lips to his scarred forehead. At the gate she stopped and lingered, looking back, as she always looked, sorely loath still to leave him even for an hour of uplifting prayer.
Night was near. The last red gold of the sunset had paled from the highest, farthest hilltop, where the graveyard lay. The tombstones—the new white ones that stood so straight, the older gray ones that leaned, the oldest brown ones that had fallen—all were dim now in the soft glory of the afterglow, as many of the cold, hard things of this world are softened by the tender light from the world above. The dusk was already creeping down the darkling arches of the wooded hillsides. Mists were already arising from the low-lying meadows, trailing long white cloud-fleeces, all starred with fireflies, thus making a new heaven of the old earth.
Through the gloaming and the stillness Anne's lonely figure went steadily, swiftly onward toward the church. Lynn Gordon noted the tense paleness and the strange exaltation of her still face, when he met and passed her on the big road, faint as the light was, and the sight of it touched him, though his own mind was lightly at peace and his own heart was over-flowing with thoughtless happiness. The impression of suffering that her face had given him was still in his mind when he drew near the window beside which the sick man sat, and because of it, or some other motive that he did not stop to fathom, he suddenly stood still, and after a hesitating pause, and a longing glance toward the silver poplars, he opened the gate and crossed the yard and went to the window to speak to Tom Watson. Nothing was farther from his thoughts than any intent of going into the house—as he told the doctor afterwards when speaking of what followed.
"It was like mesmerism. I have not the vaguest idea of how it really happened. His awful eyes drew me, when I didn't want to go. They dragged me into that house as if a giant hand had been laid upon my collar. The first thing that I knew the negro boy who waits on Watson had set out a table and put the lamp on it, and had laid a pack of cards between him and me." The young man shuddered at the recollection. "I hope I may never again see anything like that poor wretch's face when his palsied hands first touched the cards which I dealt him. I tried to remind myself that there couldn't be any harm in such a game and that there might be some good. But to see such a passion as his for gambling looking out of a dead man's face is a sight which I hope never to look upon again."
The lamplight shone far down the big road that night, and Anne saw it almost as soon as she left the meeting-house on her lonely way home. At the sight her heavy heart seemed to leap as if it would escape from its cell of pain; and then, faint with deadly fear, it seemed to fall back as though it could never beat again. Too near to fainting to stand, she sat down on the roadside, and remained without moving for a long time. She was all alone in the darkness, no one else was going her way; and no one passed along the deserted thoroughfare. She knew at once what the streaming lamplight meant; and she tried to think what was best to do, now that the worst was come. She arose tremblingly at last, when she had rallied strength enough, and she went on feebly through the still blackness of the night, like a woman suddenly stricken with great age. She did not know that she was weeping, and the great, slow, heavy tears of the rarely moved fell unheeded down her white cheeks. The gate was open, as Lynn Gordon had left it, and she entered the yard noiselessly, passing the window like an unseen shadow and with an averted face. On the steps at the back of the house she sank down almost prone and lay motionless, hardly conscious, she knew not for how long. The heavy tears still fell silently and unnoticed, as the hardest rain falls without storm. She was trying to think, but she could not; she could do nothing but pray. And she prayed—praying as one having great faith does pray when a tidal wave from life's troubled sea sweeps over a stranded soul. For Anne's faith stood, even now, firm as a mighty rock anchored to the foundations of the earth. And through all the darkness and turmoil of this supreme spiritual stress a single ray of white light shone steadily as a beacon to her tossed spirit. The abomination had not come through any weakness of hers; her faith had not yielded to her love.
The next perfect day had worn slowly to another glorious sunset when Anne went again down the big road, but this time toward the Gordon place. Lynn saw her coming, and he arose from his seat on the porch, where he chanced to be sitting alone with his cigar, and went to meet her, thinking how foolish it was for him to be smitten at the first sight of her by a sense of guilt and a painful conviction of having done her an injury. He tried to throw off the feeling with a smile, as he stood holding open the gate for her to enter.
There was no answering smile on Anne's pale face, yet its perfect calmness and the steadiness of her clear gaze reassured him somewhat. Her voice also was quite calm and steady when she said that she could not come in to see his grandmother, as he invited her to do; and after a momentary hesitation added that she had come solely to give him a message from her husband—one that she could not send by any one else.
"Tom has sent me to ask if you will play cards with him again to-night," she said deliberately, in a curiously level tone, as if weighing every word, and with her clear eyes fixed with singular intensity on the young man's face.
"Why—of course I will—I'll be delighted to," Lynn responded eagerly, with much relief. He had not expected her to say anything of this kind. "But, my dear Mrs. Watson, you needn't have taken the trouble to come all this distance yourself to ask me. I should have come willingly, no matter who had brought the request. Mr. Watson had only to tell me when he wished me to come."
"That is why I came. I wanted to make sure that you would come just the same, whether I asked you or not," said Anne, still looking at him with her luminous clearness of gaze, the white light behind her eyes shining high and bright.
"Certainly," he replied quickly, made uneasy by her look, though he knew not why and did not in the least understand what was in the mind of this quiet woman of few words.
She stood silent for a moment, so frail, so pale, under the gloom of the low, dark boughs of the cypress tree, that she seemed more spirit than flesh. Then she silently turned away her clear eyes, in which sorrow lay heavy as stones at the bottom of a still crystal pool. She stood for a moment silently looking far over the shadowed fields, above which the white banners of mist were already afloat on the evening breeze. Her inscrutable gaze then wandered toward the cloud mountains towering in the west, their snowy summits rifted by rivers of molten gold, and flooding the peaceful earth with unearthly beauty.
"Until I knew whether anything that I could say or do would make any difference—about your coming—I could not see my way," she said, turning back, her strange eyes again looking straight into his perplexed eyes. "Now that you have told me, I must do what is right—as nearly as I can."
"I don't understand," faltered the young man. "Would you like me to come with you now—at once? I am quite ready."
"I can't let you—or any one—do for my husband what I am not willing to do for him myself. I can't ask another to commit sin for him in my stead. If it must be done, it isIwho must do it—not any one else."
She spoke calmly, but with infinite sadness, and her pale face turned a shade paler, if it could be paler than it had been when she first appeared beneath the gloomy cypress boughs.
The young man was startled, bewildered, touched. He no longer felt like smiling at Anne's taking the matter seriously; there was no longer anything absurd in her attitude. His impulsive heart, always quick to see and to respond to the real, the fine, and the high, filled now with a sudden rush of sympathy for this quiet woman with the white face and the spare speech, for all her narrow mind and her stern faith.
"But, my dear madam, you don't know how to play cards, do you?" he protested confusedly, at a loss what to say or to do.
"No," said Anne, with an involuntary movement of shrinking. "But I thought—I can't see my way. It is the first time. I don't seem to be able to tell right from wrong. But I thought that if—if you would teach me—that is if it wouldn't be wrong for me to ask you—even to do that!"
"How could it be wrong?" he said gently. "I have never thought that there was any harm in card-playing merely for amusement. I will gladly teach you what I know, which isn't a great deal, nor hard to learn."
"The path is dark before my feet. I can only stumble on till the light be given," murmured Anne, as if thinking aloud, even as though she were praying.
"Let's go now," said Lynn, taking a sudden resolution. "If you are not yet satisfied, we can talk it all over as we walk along."
Anne assented silently; they passed out from beneath the shadow of the cypress tree and went on their way up the deserted, darkened big road, but neither found another word to say. The light of the lamp, awaiting the game on the sick man's table, already shone far to meet them, and when its beams fell on Anne's face Lynn turned his eyes away.
But she did not falter; she led the way through the gate and straight into the room where that awful, dumb figure sat, striving to shuffle the cards with its poor palsied hands, and with the gambler's terrible eagerness flaming in his eyes. Anne laid off her bonnet, and without speaking took the player's place opposite her husband.
Lynn was as silent as Anne herself, but he quietly placed himself, standing, beside her, thinking as he did this and glanced at her that the look of exaltation on Anne's white, still face must have been the look that the martyrs wore when they entered the arena to confront the wild beasts. He felt awed by the solemnity of the scene. He hardly dared move or speak, it so weighed upon him, but he explained the rules and the terms of the game as simply and as briefly as he could. He never forgot the sudden dilation of Anne's eyes and the dimness that followed, as though the white light behind them had suddenly flared high before going out, when he first put the cards in her hands and the game began.
"You must draw—you draw to a straight flush. Mr. Watson stands pat," said Lynn, in a hushed tone, feeling as if he were desecrating some holy place—starting at the sound of his own voice as though it sounded through a cathedral.
"I draw to a straight flush. Mr. Watson stands pat," repeated Anne's pale lips, as a pious soul in extremity might murmur a Latin prayer which it did not understand.
"Now you raise him," prompted Lynn.
"Now I raise you," echoed Anne.
"Ah, he calls you and takes the pot."
"He calls me and takes the pot."
Thus begun, the game went on by surer degrees through the terrible hours of the horrible night, till a later bedtime than Tom Watson had known since he had ceased to be the keeper of his own time. The next morning it was resumed as soon as breakfast was over, and continued day after day and night after night. The teacher wearied after the first day, though he came oftener than he might have been expected to come, since he was young and happy, and there were other and pleasanter things drawing him away. But Anne learned fast—faster, perhaps, than she had ever learned anything else. There are few things that the slowest-witted woman cannot learn when her whole heart and soul hang upon the learning. It was therefore not long before she could play alone, after a fashion, and from that time on she played ceaselessly through every waking moment, stopping only for the meals that neither husband nor wife could eat. So that every morning Anne sat down to the card-table, silently imploring pardon for the sin which she was about to commit; every night she lay wearily down on her sleepless bed, praying for forgiveness for the sin which she had committed during the day. And always Anne played with the unaltered belief—firm as her belief in the plan of salvation—that she staked on every game the relief of her husband's body against the saving of his soul.
Thus it was that all the peace and beauty of those glorious midsummer days brought neither rest nor pleasure to Anne.
The quiet awakening of the tranquil world, soft as the tenderest trembling of a harp; the first musical tinkling that came murmuring up from the misty meadows with the earliest stirring of the flocks and herds; the gentle calling of the dumb creatures; the aerial flute notes wafted down the leafy arches of the dew-wet woods; the palest glory of the dawn coming for the perpetual refreshment of the earth; the final coronation of the Day King with the marshalling of his dazzling lances through the royal red and gold of the hilltops,—all these wonders of a marvellously beautiful world were to Anne but the dreaded daily summons to the renewal of a hopeless conflict.
It was like her never to think of sitting elsewhere than in the old place—at her husband's side by the open window—after beginning to play cards. It would have been utterly unlike her to have thought of doing anything else, to have considered for a moment what her neighbors might think or say. For hers was a nature condemned at its creation to a loneliness even greater than that in which every soul must forever dwell apart. All her life she had lived as one alone on a desert island. Now, under this supreme anguish of living, the amazed gaze of the whole world, its approval or its disapproval, would have been to her—had she thought of it—no more than the moaning of the winter wind through the graveyard cedars.
And yet, naturally enough, this utter unconsciousness upon Anne's part did not lessen in the least the shock which the entire community felt on seeing her—Anne Watson—of all women in all the world at the card-table by the open window, in view of everybody passing along the big road! Those who first saw the incredible sight could scarcely believe their own eyes. Those who first heard of it utterly refused to credit it until they had made a special trip up and down the big road, twice passing the window, in order to see and to make sure for themselves. And then, when there was no longer room for doubt or dispute, a sort of panic seized the good people of Oldfield. With this appalling backsliding of Anne Watson's the whole religious and social fabric seemed suddenly going to pieces.
Only Lynn Gordon and the doctor knew the truth. Lynn had not told his grandmother of Anne's visit nor of her request. His grandmother was not one to whom he would have spoken of anything which had touched him keenly or moved him deeply. And he had even not told Doris, whom he would most naturally have trusted, certain of being understood, certain, too, of sympathy for Anne. A feeling of delicate consideration for Anne, a sense that she had trusted him, only because she could not do otherwise, that she had opened her reserved heart to him, who was almost a stranger, only because she was forced to do it, under terrible necessity,—all these mingled feelings had a part in holding him silent. To the doctor alone he felt that he should give a full account of what had taken place. But when he tried to tell even him, Lynn unexpectedly found it very hard to make Anne's motives and position as clear to another person as he had felt them to be. He realized for the first time that she had somehow made him feel much more than she had been able to put into words. She had so few words—poor Anne—and the few that she had were meagre indeed. The impulsive, warm-hearted young fellow stammered, and reddened, and laughed at himself, in a manly embarrassment that was a pleasant thing to see, as he tried clumsily to put the matter before the doctor in its true light, and in a way to do justice to Anne. Fortunately the doctor understood at once, and might have understood had the young man said even less than he finally found to say. That friend of humanity had learned something of Anne's character during her husband's long illness. Two earnest natures, stripped for a shoulder to shoulder contest with death over a sick-bed, come as near, perhaps, to knowing one another as any two souls may ever approach. A doctor's very calling, moreover, must reveal to him—as hardly the confessional can reveal to another man—the winding mazes of the simplest, sincerest woman's conscience.
When the doctor went home after talking with Lynn, he tried to show his wife that there was no occasion for the widespread excitement over this unaccountable change in Anne. He hoped that an off-hand word to his wife might have some effect in settling the swirl of gossip which circled the village, faster and faster, with Anne's continued appearance at the card-table, as the continual casting of pebbles agitates a stagnant pool. But Mrs. Alexander, good, kind, charitable woman though she was, could only sigh and shake her head. She said that she had never understood Anne, but that she had always respected her sincerity, no matter how widely she herself might differ in opinion. But what could anybody think or say of Anne's sincerity now? The doctor's wife cast a shocked, frightened, glance at the Watson house. Such open, flagrant backsliding really was enough to make the lightning strike.
And Mrs. Alexander's view was the one held by most of the Oldfield ladies, all of whom took the incomprehensible affair much to heart. Only Miss Judy and Kitty Mills saw nothing to alarm, nothing to wonder at, nothing in the least unnatural in Anne's change of attitude. But then, Miss Judy was well known to believe that everybody always had some praiseworthy motive for everything, if others were only clear-sighted enough to perceive it. Her pure mind was a flawless crystal, reflecting every ray of light from many exquisite prisms, but sending nothing out of actual darkness. And no one ever regarded seriously the views of Kitty Mills, who was notoriously willing for every one to do precisely as he liked, as nearly as he could, without any explanation or any reason whatever, so that her opinion had the very slight value which usually pertains to the opinions of the easily pleased. All the other Oldfield ladies were too deeply shocked, too utterly amazed, to know what to think, or what to say, or what to do. They could only gather in solemn, excited conclave at one another's houses, and discuss the situation daily and almost hourly, with growing wonder and bated breath.
Sidney was, of course, the central figure in this, as in all other things vital to the life of the village. As much at a loss for once as the dullest, she held nevertheless to her high esteem for Anne, and in canvassing the strangeness of the latter's conduct from house to house, as she felt compelled to canvass it, she invariably spoke of her with great kindness, even while admitting that it would be hard for a Philadelphia lawyer to find out what Anne meant by whirling round like a weathercock. It is likely that Sidney took off her bonnet and let down her hair oftener, and shook it out harder, and twisted it up tighter, at this time, than at any other period of her entire professional career. She used, indeed, to stop all along the big road—anywhere—and hang her bonnet on the fence, while she shook her hair down and twisted it up again; and her knitting-needles flew faster than they had ever done before or ever did afterward. One day, as she happened to be entering the doctor's gate to keep an important engagement with Mrs. Alexander, she saw Miss Pettus standing before the Watson house, gazing at the window,—which had now become the stage of a mystery play,—and not only gazing, but staring as if some dreadful sight had suddenly turned her to stone. Sidney called to her, but she did not turn or respond in any way for some minutes; and when she finally joined Sidney and the doctor's wife on the latter's porch, where they were sitting, she was really pale from agitation and actually sputtering with excitement.
"Chips!" she gasped, sinking into a chair. "Poker chips. I saw 'em with my own eyes and heard 'em with my own ears! I give you both my sacred word as a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in good standing."
"Poker chips are neither here nor there," said Sidney, in the lofty, judicial tone which she had maintained throughout the controversy.
She eyed Miss Pettus, however, silently and a little severely, as she loosed several rounds of yarn from her big ball, and held them out and deliberately shook them apart at arm's length. It did not please her to hear of poker chips—or anything else of interest—through Miss Pettus or any other person. It was her own special and exclusive province to discover and distribute the news. She felt much as the editor of a great daily newspaper might feel if some casual passer-by should drop in to tell him of the day's greatest public event.
"Poker chips are neither here nor there," she repeated coolly, and almost contemptuously, as one looking to larger things. "No matter what Anne Watson does, and no matter how she does it, there's one thing that you may always be sure of, Miss Pettus, and that is—that she believes she is doing right."
"Who said she didn't?" retorted Miss Pettus. "Have I said anything about the right or wrong of it? I don't care anything about the right or wrong of card-playing. Some folks think one way and some another—and they may go on thinking so for all me. What I do say is that a body ought to stick to what she does believe, whatever it is, no matter whether she's a Methodist like me or a Christian like Anne."
"Well—'pon my word!" exclaimed Sidney, seeing a chance for reprisal, and furtively winking the eye next to the doctor's wife. "To hear you talk, Miss Pettus, folks would think there wasn't anybody but Methodists and Christians. Where, pray, do the rest of us come in? There's Jane there—a Cumberland Presbyterian, dyed blue in the wool. Yonder's Miss Judy, an Episcopalian of the highest latitude and the greatest longitude, and a-training Doris to be just like her. And here am I—a Baptist—a Baptist born and a Baptist bred—and a Whiskey Baptist at that."
"If I were you, Sidney Wendall," replied Miss Pettus, with offended dignity, "I wouldn't make fun of my own religion if I did make fun of every other earthly thing I came across. You know as well as I do, and as Jane here does, that there is no such thing as a Whiskey Baptist—and never was and never will be."
"No such thing as a Whiskey Baptist?" exclaimed Sidney, pretending to be wholly in earnest, and slyly winking again at the doctor's wife. "Then what, may I ask, would you have called my own father and his only brother—two church members in good and regular standing, and two as good and highly respected citizens as this Pennyroyal Region ever had, to boot? What else could you call them, I ask you, 'Mandy Pettus? Didn't they always pay their debts on the stroke of the town clock, and to a hundred cents on the dollar? Didn't they always vote the straight Democratic ticket for fifty years, without ever a scratch from end to end? Didn't they always get drunk on every county court day of their lives, and keep sober all the rest of the year? No Whiskey Baptists indeed!"
"What's all that tirade got to do with what I said about Anne's—and everybody's—being what they pretend to be?" fumed Miss Pettus. "That's what I said and what I'll keep on saying as long as I have the breath to speak my honest mind. And I'll say it about anybody, no matter who, just the same. Chopping and changing till a body don't know where to find you, looks to me just as bad in one denomination as another. And levity in those who ought to be serious-minded is levity to me wherever I find it. Now, look at our own circuit rider, only last Sunday! After that powerful sermon which warmed up the whole town, and shook the dry bones, what did he do?—right out of the pulpit, too,—but stop and hang over the fence like a schoolboy for a laughing confab with Kitty Mills! There she was, of course, standing out in the broiling sun with nothing but her apron thrown over her silly head, while you could hear old man Mills scolding her, the whole blessed time, at the top of his peevish voice. It was perfectly scandalous and nothing but scandalous to see such goings-on on the Lord's Day. Kitty was telling him about her late young turkeys getting out in that last hard rain and holding up their heads with their mouths wide open, till the last one of them drowned. As if there was anything uncommon or funny in that; as if everybody didn't know that young turkeys always did that whenever they got a chance. And the simpletons were both laughing as if they'd never heard such a joke, and as if it had been Monday instead of Sunday, and the circuit rider hadn't had any good work to do."
"Maybe he thinks that is a part of his good work," said the doctor's wife, gently. "Kitty Mills surely needs all the kindness she can get outside her own family, poor thing, though she doesn't seem to know it."
Sidney smiled at a sudden recollection. "I passed there yesterday, in the heat of the day, and saw her in the garden bending over and pulling the weeds out of her handful of vegetables. It made me real uneasy to look at her leaning down so long and steady, and her so short and stout, and I said so. But she only laughed till she cried, and declared there wasn't any danger except to her corset-boards. Then, when she could speak for laughing, she said she had saved almost enough to stick her bunch peas. And,—if you'll believe it,—Sam left the garden gate open last night, and the pigs got in and eat every one of 'em up."
"The corset-boards?" gasped Miss Pettus, in a tone of blank amazement, which implied, nevertheless, that she would not be in the least surprised at anything happening to Kitty Mills.
Sidney eyed Miss Pettus humorously, as she loosed more rounds of yarn from her big ball, holding it out again at arm's length; but there was no time for any reply had she thought it worth while to make one, for Mrs. Alexander's cook appeared in the doorway just at that moment, to say that supper was ready, and, following the hostess, the guest went to enjoy it without allowing it to grow cold. The table had been set on the back porch, which was on the side of the house that was most pleasant at that hour. And a truly pleasant place it was, with its whitewashed pillars, its cool green curtains of Madeira vine, so waxen of leaf and so frost-like in flower, and with its green and restful environment of grass and fruit trees. The table stood directly before the back door of the open passage. Sidney's seat faced the big road, and she had scarcely seated herself, when, chancing to glance up, she saw Lynn and Doris as they passed, going along the big road. She said nothing, however, of having seen them; she was always reserved about her own private affairs, and then she was still holding fast to her early determination to leave the young couple entirely free to follow the natural lead of their own hearts. But the glimpse of them reminded her of an uneasy suspicion that old lady Gordon was not so minded, a suspicion which had occurred to her that day for the first time. Now, therefore, with the unhesitating decision characteristic of her in all things, she resolved, then and there, to talk it over with Miss Judy as soon as she could get away from the supper table.
But it was never easy for Sidney to get away; a hostess, paying the stipulated price of a high-priced entertainer, rightfully expects to get the worth of her fee. No one knew this better than Sidney herself, and she accordingly so exerted her utmost ability, so put forth her most brilliant talent, that she fully made up for the shortened time; and the only regret upon the part of the hostess was that such a delightful entertainment should ever come to an end. Miss Pettus, also, was sorry to have Sidney go; and, now quite restored to good humor, she whispered to her, as they parted at the gate,—one going up the big road and one going down,—that she meant to send Kitty Mills a couple of young turkeys that very night, just to keep her from behaving so like a simpleton the next time the circuit rider went by, and just to make her see how shamefully she had behaved about that stubborn old dorminica.
Out into the dim, dusty highway Sidney now swung, with her long, free, fearless, independent step, which seemed to ask nothing of life and the world but to be allowed to go her own way; walking and knitting as fast as though the dusk had been daylight. Reaching Miss Judy's house she found the little sisters sitting happily side by side just within the open door of the unlighted passage, as they always were to be found at that time on the summer evenings. Miss Judy was talking in her soft, bright little way, which reminded the listener of the chirruping of a happy bird; and Miss Sophia was listening with enthralled interest between lapses of unconscious nodding. And now, as always when they talked together, both had the eager manner of having never before had a really satisfying opportunity to exchange vividly novel views and intensely interesting experiences, so that they hardly knew how to make enough of this truly delightful chance.
They were glad, nevertheless, to greet Sidney, as everybody always was; and Miss Judy said, as soon as Sidney had come within speaking distance, that Lynn and Doris had stopped for a moment to ask how she was feeling, and that she had told them she felt almost strong again,—nearly sure, indeed, of being able to give the tea-party on the coming Thursday.
"I am really mortified at not having given it before this time," she went on, blushing unseen in the gloaming. "It does seem too bad, this spoiling of lovely plans just on account of a foolish shortness of breath. It was such a disappointment to sister Sophia, not to have the tea-party while the blush roses were in bloom, for they match mother's best cups and saucers perfectly. And then came the cinnamon roses—they might have done fairly well, though they are not quite so delicate a shade, but they also have bloomed and faded long ago. Now the hundred-leaf roses will have to do—as I was just saying to sister Sophia when you came, Sidney—although their hearts are rather too dark to be as pretty as the others would have been. But we must give the tea-party anyway, blush roses or no blush roses, without any more delay, since I have thoughtlessly mentioned it to old lady Gordon, who never makes any allowances and who is rather critical."
"Oh, you told her, did you?" exclaimed Sidney. "Then that accounts for what I came to see you about."
"I felt that it was due to Doris that I should tell her; that she should know that only circumstances over which we had no control have so far prevented our paying the dear child the compliment of a formal introduction to society," said Miss Judy, with her pretty, comical, society air.
"Well, it explains what old Lady Gordon said to me without rhyme or reason when she met me on the big road yesterday—stopping her coach in the middle of the big road to do it, too,—something that she never took the trouble to think of before."
Sidney leaned forward and peered up and down the highway to make sure that no one was within hearing, and she listened for an instant to Miss Sophia's deep breathing in the still darkness of the passage.
"Now, mark my words, Miss Judy," she then said, in a guarded undertone. "That old Hessian means to interfere. She is going to make trouble. I feel it in my bones."
"Why?" cried Miss Judy, startled and bewildered. "What do you mean, Sidney? What did she say?"
"She said—without rhyme or reason, as I've told you—that her grandson was going away very soon to begin the practice of his profession, and that he hadn't any time to waste on any nonsense, like old women's silly tea-parties. She didn't call him by his name, either, as she always has called him heretofore. She called him 'my grandson,' in that high and mighty, stand-off-and-keep-your-place way that she knows how to put on, when she wants to and ain't too lazy. Now, mark my word, Miss Judy. Trouble's a-coming!"
"Oh, how could any one be unkind to that dear child," cried Miss Judy, almost in tears.
"I'd like to see anybody try it, while I'm 'round," said Sidney, with the fierceness that appears in the humblest barnyard hen when her chick is touched. "I'm all ready and a-waiting. Just let old lady Gordon so much as bat her eye and I'll give her goss. I'll tell her the Lord's truth, if she never heard it before. I'll tell her to her face that no Gordon that ever stepped ever was, or ever will be, fit to dust my Doris's shoes, so far as being good goes—or smart and good-looking either. This young Gordon is decent enough, I reckon, as young men go. And his father went pretty straight because he hadn't the spunk or the strength to go crooked. He was like a toad under a harrow, poor soul! He was so tame that he'd eat out of your hand. But even that old Hessian never harrowed or tamed the old man, who was a match for her. No-siree! Not while he had the strength to hop over a straw. Why, the whole woods were full of his wild colts."
"Ah, indeed! I never knew that the old gentleman ever had any interest in horses," Miss Judy murmured absently, almost tearfully, not thinking in the least of what she was saying.
"That was a long time ago," said Sidney hastily, remembering suddenly to whom she was speaking. "What the old folks were in their young days is neither here nor there. It makes no difference now. This young Gordon seems to be a fine young fellow, but, fine or coarse, all that I ask of that old Hessian, or of anybody, is to do as I do, and to let him and Doris alone, and not to meddle; just to give the two young things a fair field and no favor. And that's what she and everybody's got to do, too, or walk over Sidney Wendall's dead body."
"Don't—don't," entreated Miss Judy's soft voice, coming out of the quiet darkness with a tremulous gentleness, and telling of the tender tears in her blue eyes. "Let not your heart be troubled, dear friend. All will be well with the child. All is sure to come right at last, if we are but as patient and as trusting and as true and as faithful and as loving—above all as loving—as we should be. For loveis now—as it was in the beginning, and ever shall be—the strongest thing in the world."