"Bad luck again, girlie," he said with an assumption of indifference. "I can't make you Mrs. Senator this time."
"Poor Will!" the wife murmured. "I am sorry, dear."
"You are better?" he asked hastily, struck with her expression. "You must have the doctor."
It was a tardy suggestion, and Laura smiled sadly. The doctor came, however. But all he could do was to hold out those vague hopes which are no comfort to anxious hearts. Before long her mother was sent for, but the dread disease did its rapid work. Laura's great trial to the last was the terrible sense of responsibility that haunted her about the expenses that were being incurred.
"When I am not here, mother, what willhe do? Poor fellow, nobody understands him but me."
A little while afterwards she aroused herself from a fit of musing and murmured:
"This awful feeling of helplessness!—and I tried so hard to set things right. I thought when I had a little income of my own that everything would go well."
"You have killed yourself," said her mother, darting a look of reproach at the unconscious husband, who entered the room at this moment.
"Oh, no, don't say that," Laura whispered. "I only did what I wanted to do. Will and I have been very happy, only——" But neither the mother nor the husband, bending over the bed, heard the rest of the sentence.
Uponthe Virginia side of the Potomac River, five miles across from Washington City whose twinkling lights can be distinctly seen by night, lies a little farm of about twenty-five acres, owned by a widow and her three daughters, Caroline, Minnie and Rosa.
The dwelling is a villa rather than a farm-house, with wide verandas that are the favorite sitting-rooms of the family in summer. The glimpse they catch of the river traffic and of the far-off city gives them a cheerful feeling of nearness to active life, while they are removed from its noise and crowds.
Besides this property Widow Jones had found herself possessed, at her husband's death, of an immense tract of unproductive land down on Chesapeake Bay which could not be sold until
Rosa, the younger girl, now eighteen, came of age. Meanwhile, the taxes vexed her soul.
Hospitable, easy-going and accustomed to consider luxuries positive necessities, the family would have been severely straitened if it had not been for the nicety with which their various talents helped one another out.
Caroline had excellent business ability and managed all the outside affairs. She drew the dividends on their railway stock, parleyed with lawyers, and engaged and settled with the hired men. In the burning August weather, when a dozen red-shirted Negroes were to be cared for, this slender young girl, in flaring straw hat and short gingham dress, mounted her horse and rode up and down the fields, a keen-eyed, cheery, sweet-voiced overseer. Regardless of her own meals she helped old black Jessie prepare the meals for the men in the little cabin, and there was no complaint as to quality or quantity under her liberal rule. She did the marketing also and bought the other supplies. Then Mrs. Jones took up the work, and her deft fingersand good taste converted crude materials into food and raiment for the quartet. She was a notable housekeeper and the best of neighbors, her round, jolly visage being sure to appear at every moment of need, and her chicken broth and jellies lingered pleasantly in the memory of the fretful convalescent.
Minnie's function was the care of all the live animals on the farm. She had unerring judgment concerning mules and horses, understood the peculiarities of cows, and knew everything worth knowing about poultry and bees. She was a plump, happy-looking blonde, with a lovely hand, a neat foot, and a playfully witty tongue that, like her own bees, never stung the wise but kept fools at bay. Alert and busy from morning till night she gave no thought to the admirers who sighed for her smiles, but laughingly turned them over to Rosa, who had, she said, nothing else to do but to make herself charming.
Rosa was the strongest possible contrast to her energetic sisters. Rarely beautiful, andgifted with an artistic faculty that nearly approached genius, she was apparently utterly devoid of ambition or sense of responsibility, and was content to be waited upon and cared for as if she was still the petted infant whose graces had at the outset won the willing service of every one about her.
Her form was of medium height, but so symmetrical that she appeared taller than she was. Her head was borne on her full, white throat with a sort of dreamy grace, bent it almost seemed by the weight of her magnificent tresses, the color of ripe wheat when the sun is shining upon it, and falling a quarter of a yard below her waist. Her eyes were of a deep, dark brown, with the softness of a Newfoundland dog's when he is gazing wistfully at his master. It would have been as impossible to say anything harsh to Rosa, when she opened those great dark eyes and looked at you, as it would be to strike a dove or a gazelle or a sweet young baby. Usually the heavy, blue-veined lids half veiled them, and as her seashell cheekswarmed to their pinkest tone, and her exquisite bow of a mouth fell slightly apart, as she lay, as she loved to do, in the hammock on the west veranda, an artist would have thought her the very embodiment of love's young dream of sweet, maidenly beauty.
She seemed all softness and gentleness. Perhaps only her mother knew what strength of will and temper lay behind Rosa's placid brow and square little chin. There had been some stout tussels between a determined little mother and a rosebud of a baby in the years gone by; and although the match might have seemed an unequal one, the result had always been the same. "A compromise," Major Jones had laughingly called it, meaning, as he explained once in a candid moment, that the rosebud had its own way.
Rosa's way was only passively, not actively objectionable. All she asked was to be let alone; allowed to paint undisturbed in her untidy attic studio when the whim seized her, and to lie in the hammock like a kitten, dozingthe hours away when she did not choose to exert herself. Occasionally she would have spells of helpfulness, and for several days her stool and box of colors would be set up beside the parlor or dining-room doorway, while she decorated the pannels with sprays of wistaria and masses of fern, so true to nature that one wondered where a little country girl had ever learned to paint after such a manner.
One warm afternoon in early September she was sitting on her stool in the hall, which ran through the middle of the house from end to end, putting slow, effective touches to a border above the dado which she had begun in the spring, and with characteristic indifference had left unfinished until now. Caroline, just in from a tour to the orchard, had thrown herself down upon the settee to rest, and was exchanging remarks with her mother about a certain dress trimming which the elder lady had under way when she suddenly broke off to exclaim:
"If there isn't Mr. Brent coming, and not a speck of meat in the house! Now, I supposeI shall have to go to town to market. I should think it was enough for him to be here every Sunday and Wednesday, without dropping upon us between whiles."
"Let Jessie kill a chicken," suggested Mrs. Jones, soothingly.
"But you know he doesn't eat chickens. If he was like any civilized American he would. But nothing except a round of raw beef satisfies his English appetite!"
But despite this small grumble, she smiled cordially as a good-looking, middle-aged man with a vigorous, florid face, set off by a pair of heavy black whiskers, came briskly up the path and included all of them in a general, informal bow.
"Do you like omelet?" she asked reflectively, as he took a seat near Rosa, and began commenting upon her work with an easy censorship which was evidently not disagreeable to her.
He gave a little shudder. "'I'll no pullet sperm in my brew,'" he quoted.
"Oh, I might have known you for a Falstaff," retorted Caroline, rising. "Well, Mamma, I'm off."
"Not on my account, Miss Caroline. See here, I've brought my animal diet with me, knowing that you ladies subsist on tea and fruit when I'm not about." And from his coat pocket he drew a roll of brown paper, three-quarters of a yard long, and held it out.
"Prime bologna," he added, complacently, as both mother and daughter laughed heartily, and Rosa turned to give one of her slow, sweet smiles.
Brent was a "family friend." The major had made his acquaintance at his club and brought him home to dine one day when Rosa was a winsome, tumbling baby; and although he had grown grayer and stouter during the years he had been coming out to the farm, ostensibly to oversee Rosa's painting—for which he never would hear of compensation—he had not faltered in a certain purpose conceived soon after that first visit, and as unsuspectedby Mrs. Jones and her two elder daughters as it was patent to Rosa herself.
There were some rare affinities between them, even aside from their painting. Brent's British phlegm was mellowed by a luxuriance of imagination that he had inherited from an East Indian mother. His temperament was a mixture of vigor, warmth and languor; and while he was not in the least degree adaptable, he had a faculty of changing the atmosphere of a company to suit himself; so that if others were not pleased it seemed to be they, not he, who was out of place. If they yielded up their individuality to his, well and good; if not, they dropped out of the talk; that was all. Brent was a fluent and entertaining talker. He liked to tell stories of tiger hunts and other jungle pastimes; and Rosa, reclining with her dreamy eyes half shut, liked to listen and feel herself pleasantly thrilled and excited without other necessity than to give up her mind to follow where he led.
Her education had been desultory and superficial.Brent had played the largest part in it, and he had molded her nature at his pleasure by catering to certain biases that he had perceived to be unchangeable, and for the rest giving her the side of life and affairs which he preferred her to believe. What other experiences he had had besides those he chose to tell them, these innocent women neither conjectured nor troubled themselves to inquire. It was enough that he had been "the major's friend."
He had lodgings in town, but his landlady scarcely ever saw him; for when he was not roaming around upon one of his sketching tours he seemed to live in the Corcoran Art Gallery, where Rosa painted under his superintendence several hours each week. He had really devoted himself to the girl's development with a zeal beyond what would have appeared to be necessary in the "family friend." Perhaps Rosa thanked him in private, for she never did so before the others. She treated him always with the same indolent familiarity, and acceptedhis advice, his help and his devotion as a mere matter of course; but she generally did as he bade her.
This afternoon she continued to fill in her charcoal outlines until she grew tired, and then, dropping her brushes, slipped to a cushion and, crossing her hands behind her head, leaned back and looked up at him like a weary seraph.
"Lazy child," said Brent, smiling, and taking her dropped brushes. "That stem is well done, Rosa; but I want you to leave flowers for a while and begin on that study of the nurse and child. It is time for you to begin to think less of technic and study the masters. I wish you could go abroad now."
"You have made me think of nothing but technic," said the girl.
"Certainly. There are many stages in art, and that is the preliminary one. But you are now to make an advance. How little you realize your advantages. If I had your genius!"
"I realize one advantage—having you for a teacher," she said in a low tone.
The others had dropped away, and they were by themselves.
Brent moved closer to her. "Have you thought of what I talked to you about?"
"It's no use to talk about that; I rather think they expect me to make a great match, some time. Mamma wouldn't consider you eligible, you know," she drawled, softly, with smooth, matchless insolence.
Brent looked at her with an expression she did not understand; but she never troubled herself about what was beyond her easy comprehension. And herein Brent had vastly the advantage; he understood her to the depths of her nature, and he knew perfectly that he had made himself an essential part of her existence. But he was wise enough to be patient. For the present he allowed her to waive the subject aside; nor did he betray even by the quiver of an eyelash that she had wounded his self-love. Indeed, their temperaments were much alike, and neither one was troubled with sensitiveness. Of the two the robust, mastiff-like manhad more than the brown-eyed angel, who now took to the hammock and left him to finish her work; for it was as natural for him to work as it was for her to be idle.
"You must get settled in town early this fall," he said to the mother, when the family had assembled again on the veranda after dinner. "I have laid out a good winter's work for Rosa at the gallery, and I want her to start as soon as possible."
"Mr. Brent, I admire your coolness," commented Caroline. "If you expect Rosa to put in a steady winter's work you must have suddenly created a remarkable change in her."
"I really don't see how we are to go to town at all this winter," said Mrs. Jones, wrinkling her pretty forehead. "The Farleys haven't yet positively pledged themselves to take the place, as we depended on their doing; and of course we can't go unless we let this house."
"Oh, the Farleys will take the place," said Brent confidently. "And there is a nice little house on "H" Street that will be vacant aboutthe first of October. I wish you would go in to-morrow and look at it."
"Give me the address," said Caroline. "I have to go in town to-morrow, and I'll take a peep at it. Then, if it seems worth while for you to take the trouble, mamma dear, you can go in next week."
"Only don't let it slip through your fingers," counseled Brent. "Rosa, don't you want to take a little walk up the hill and see the sunset?"
"Get the wheelbarrow!" said Minnie, briskly. "You'll never get Rosa to climb the hill."
But Brent continued to look smilingly at Rosa, and, somewhat to their surprise, she got up and went with him. As they began to climb the gentle slope he took hold of her arm, and she leaned against him with the same unconcern with which she would have accepted aid from one of her sisters. They were gone half an hour, and when they came back a close observer might have noted a satisfied look in Brent's face. He had made a slight, veryslight, advance in his plans, whatever they were.
It was in accordance with them that the family moved into the little house on "H" Street within a fortnight. Every afternoon saw Rosa seated before a Corot in the main gallery of the Corcoran Art Building, and for at least two hours she was busily occupied. Just how it came about no one could have said. Perhaps Rosa herself was not aware of the tightening of a leash which had been woven securely about her, and that had guided and now held her to certain duties. Once, as he sat beside her, painting away upon his small canvas with those minute, exquisite touches which characterized his style, Brent said, with some significance:
"You work very well under direction, Rosa; but you wouldn't set a stroke if I were not here, would you?"
She laughed, and turned her eyes upon him inquiringly. "Wouldn't I?" she asked; "ah, well, perhaps not. But then, you see, youarehere."
"You have grown so used to having me always at hand, that you couldn't get on at all without me, could you?"
"Get on without you?" she repeated. "Why, I never thought of it."
The next day he let her think of it. For a week he was absent on a sketching tour. When he returned he discovered that she had taken a vacation also; and then, for the first time in her life, he said a few stern words to her. They were very few, and without any hint of anger; but the girl crimsoned, and opened her eyes pathetically. Any other man would have been self-condemned; but Brent, while instantly resuming his usual manner, did not lessen the effect of his rebuke; and from this time her manner toward him began to undergo a change. It was imperceptible to others, but apparent to Brent. She was no longer so sweetly insolent to him; she was more timid, more tractable; and she attended more steadily to her work, seeming to set a new value upon the praise of which he had always been lavish.
The winter passed and the enervating air of April crept over the city. One afternoon Rosa threw down her brushes petulantly, exclaiming that she could not make another stroke.
Brent quietly gathered her implements and his own and stored them neatly away. Then he laid his hand over hers and said, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone:
"Let's go and get married, Rosa?"
For a minute they looked at one another in silence. Then her eyes dropped to her dress, a pink print, fresh and crisp under the great gray apron which she had begun to untie.
"What! In a calico dress?" she said.
"Yes, just as you are; and now."
"What will they say at home?"
"Think how much trouble we are going to save your mother. We will tell them this evening. Come, Rosa, I have been waiting for you a good many years; don't keep me waiting any longer."
"It is dreadfully absurd," she observed. "What will you do with me?"
"Take you abroad next week, and when we come back settle you down in the prettiest little house you ever saw. I have bought one up on Capitol Hill, and you shall be its little mistress."
"I don't like housekeeping," remarked Rosa; but she was walking with him toward the door. Suddenly she stopped. "We can't get married without a license, can we?"
"I have the license," said Brent, touching his waistcoat pocket. "I got it yesterday."
"It seems to me," she said, pouting a little, "You were rather premature. How did you know I would have you?"
"I believed in my lucky star. We were meant for each other, my dear."
She was silent after this. They walked half-a-dozen squares and stopped before a house next to a church. As Brent rang the bell he saw that the girl was trembling slightly, and he lost no time in getting her into the parlor, where a puzzled minister came to them a moment or so later. Brent explained and producedthe license. Rosa was nineteen and her father was not living. There was no delay, and in the presence of the minister's wife and daughter (who took the bride for a pretty servant girl and were condescending) the ceremony was performed. But for the heavy ring that encircled her finger the girl might have believed that she was dreaming, as Brent drew her out of the house again and hailed a passing horse-car to take them to her mother's house.
Minnie opened the door, and through the dusk her quick eyes perceived something unusual in her sister; but Brent, giving her no time for questions, drew his wife into the little parlor, where the widow sat with her sewing.
"Mrs. Jones," he said calmly, "Rosa and I are married." As she got up hastily, the color rushing to her face, he added, "I believe my old friend the major would not have refused to give me his daughter."
It was a stroke of genius. Instead of uttering the angry words upon her lips the widow fell back upon her chair, crying. The major,dead, was not less the family oracle; and even the girls, who had burst into exclamations, and were not to be repressed for half an hour or so, felt that, irregular and shocking as the affair was, yet there was within it a grain of amelioration.
"But that she should have got married in a sixpenny calico!" exclaimed Caroline, tearfully. "I never shall get over that."
"I will buy her a gown or two in Paris," said the new brother-in-law. "We shall sail next week, and be gone a year, or perhaps longer."
But three years passed before the little house on Capitol Hill had to be vacated by its tenant in favor of the owners, who walked in upon the Jones family one day, when the harvest apples were ripe, and the two girls sat upon the porch of the farm-house paring a bowlful of them for supper.
"What is the change in Rosa?" mother and sisters asked each other when the pair had gone back to town the next morning. Mrs. Brent was even more beautiful than she had been asa girl. She did not look unhappy. Yet there was a difference.
The family found out what it meant when they began to visit the little house in town. Rosa had found another guide than her own sweet will. She no longer idled the days away, but sat patiently upon her little stool and painted from morning till late in the afternoon, while Brent—the personification of vigilance—hovered about, pipe in mouth, seeing to the thousand and one things about the house, which, except for his superintendence, kept itself, and dividing the rest of his attention between Rosa's canvas and his own.
"Do you know," said Caroline, indignantly, "that Rosa—our lazy little Rosa—has made fifteen hundred dollars the past year, while Brent has only made three hundred?"
"That's what he married her for," said Minnie, with a rapid inspiration. "I wondered what impelled him. I thought it wasn't love."
"My dear, he seems very fond of her," saidMrs. Jones, divided between a wish to cry and a wish to make the best of it.
"Heisfond of her," declared Caroline, "and she's fond of him. But if ever a girl found a master she has. He makes her work as I never expected to see Rosa work. Not at housework, dear me, no! She is not to waste her precious strength on such things. She is to devote herself to art, which is to makeherreputation andhisliving. That's all there is to it."
"Perhaps it is not the worst thing that could have happened to her," mused Minnie. "There is a kind of nature that needs to be compelled to make the best of itself."
"Don't you want some brute of an Englishman to compel you to make the best of yourself?" snapped Caroline.
"No," answered Minnie, quietly. "What would do for Rosa would never suit me."
"Well, I think we had better go in and take some peaches and straighten up that disorderly house," said the elder sister.
They found Rosa sitting absorbed over a beautiful screen which was a piece of ordered work, to cost a hundred and fifty dollars, while Brent stood at the kitchen door, smoking placidly as he contemplated a tableful of unwashed dishes.
"Come in, sisters both," he said, gaily. "But don't stop Rosa just now; she hates to be interrupted when she is at work."
"Andwho is that tall young man in the store, who stood there as if nothing could induce him to take his hands from his pockets?"
Miss Stretton's companion looked as if he were mystified by her scornful tone. "That's Albert Johnson," he answered in his matter-of-fact way. "He's only been back hyar about six months. A couple o' years ago he went down to Texas and made about five hundred dollars, and then, all to onct, he turned up hyar again. He's nephew to old Johnson, and stays in th' store, mostly."
"Doing what?" asked Miss Stretton, crisply.
"Why, doin' whatever's to do," answered Jerry Douglas with his thin laugh. He was a tall, bony youth, with gray eyes and a delicate mouth. Although unformed and shy, there
was a hint of character about him; which was the reason why Miss Stretton gave him the honor of her company that morning on his trip to Stoneyton. It was partly in pursuance of her amiable wish to draw him out, and partly because she liked the ride on horseback. She was usually talkative, but now they ambled along the dusty pike in silence.
"Ah—I jest thought of it, Miss Julia," Jerry said suddenly. "Old Johnson's got a nice horse he might let you have. Bert's been ridin' it since he come back, but he can't want it all th' time. I'll see if I kin git it fur you, if you say so."
"Of course I say so, Jerry," retorted Miss Stretton, coming out of her brown study and turning her bright blue eyes upon him. "And why didn't you think of it before? But I know it takes you Virginia young men a long time."
Young Douglas laughed again uneasily. "I s'pose we're ruther backward compared to th' men you know, but you must recollect we'vebeen under a cloud since th' war. We haven't got eddication, and consequently we feel at a disadvantage. Me, now, I've been to school, but what do I know? Th' only thing's fur me to go ter Texas."
"Yes, and make a little money and come back again and loaf around till it is spent," commented the girl inwardly. But she said aloud, "Don't be disheartened, Jerry. It isn't what we know that counts; it's what we do."
"What I want t' do is t' make money," Jerry muttered; "only th' people home won't let me go 'way."
"Your time will come if you don't give up, never fear," she returned kindly, as they rode up to the stile and he awkwardly helped her off the great plow-horse.
She stood at the gate for a minute, watching the angular, boyish figure lead the horse to the stable, heard the rough but not unkindly, "Go in thar, now, Victor—stand, sir!" And then all was still.
In front of the low frame-house was a small,trim garden, with two beds of red geranium bordered by bits of whitened oyster-shells. Behind, lay the fields; to the left, the stable, pig-sty and orchard. On the right, was an unkempt bit of woods, thick with undergrowth. Some day they were going to cut out that undergrowth, which obstructed the fine view of the hills beyond.
"Some day," mused Miss Stretton, "great things are to be done!" And yet she was not without pity as she contemplated the few acres of worn-out land, the meager cattle, the small, uncertain fruit-crop which made the living of the worthy lady, Mrs. Douglas, and her sluggish, semi-invalid husband. This summer they had for the first time followed the example of their neighbors and augmented their income by taking two summer boarders; there was not room for more.
Two or three days went by, and Jerry had apparently done nothing about the horse. Miss Stretton's dearest wish was to hire an animal on which she might take her daily rideswith credit to herself and less jarring of her bones. The great beast now at her service resembled some creature in process of transformation to some other species, so shambling, so long-mouthed, so ashamed of his own appearance did he seem. But, rendered desperate by Jerry's procrastination, she mounted Prince one morning and turned toward the village.
"You have shaken me to pieces—you, Prince!" she said reproachfully as she stopped him in front of the store.
Stoneyton was perhaps the very smallest village ever dignified by the name. There was a church, the store, and two neighboring houses, one beside the store and one just across the narrow street. Two swaying elms almost covered this space with their low-hanging branches, and a broken wagon shaft lying in the way made it difficult for a vehicle to turn there. A cart and horse now stood in the road, its driver absent. There was, for a rarity, no one on the stoop; all was unusually still; and Miss Stretton, waiting impatiently until the driver shouldcome out and start off, leaving the road again a thoroughfare, sat still on her tall steed, and let her eyes roam dreamily around on the well-known but ever-pleasing landscape.
The customer came out, and with her came young Mr. Johnson, who stowed away her parcels, helped her into the wagon, and handed her the reins before he turned to the pretty girl with a tinge of color still dyeing his brown cheek.
"Is—your uncle in?" asked Miss Stretton sweetly.
He was very sorry, but his uncle had gone to Port Royal that morning to see a sick sister. Could he do anything for her?
"Well," she said, hesitating, "I suppose you might do just as well, only—I had expected to talk with your uncle."
Young Johnson looked puzzled but admiring. It was the admiration in his splendid dark eyes that embarrassed her. To the city girls who came up to the mountain every one of these little country stores, and every farmwhich boasted a son or two of some old, impoverished family, furnished an escort to dances and picnics, and the beau of a summer. Miss Stretton was not exempt from girlish weaknesses, and as the handsome countryman stood there waiting for her probable order for ribbons or candy or stationery, she wished that she could settle her little matter of business with some one else.
But she took it like a douche at last, all at once. "Jerry told me that your uncle has a nice riding-horse, and I want one for a month or so. Would he hire it? Could I arrange the matter with you?"
"Well, the horse is mine, in fact. Uncle made a present of it to me," explained Albert, kicking a little stone in the road.
"Oh!" said the young lady. The affair was now a nuisance to both of them. For her part, she felt that, if she proceeded, there must ensue some pecuniary loss in the transaction; she must be large and uncalculating. On the other hand, Albert shrank from the mention ofdollars and cents, although if the matter had been conducted through a third party, he would not have hesitated to make something out of the Yankee girl. Being a Virginian, he could not now put a cool, business face upon it. It occurred to him that he would like to drive her down to the hop at Berryville to-morrow night. How would it look to make bargains before tendering an invitation!
He looked up and down the road; the soft breeze from over the hills just rustled the leaves, the low grunt of a porker reached their ears from around the house, a dog barked somewhere, but no figure disturbed the scene; nobody was coming, they must talk it out.
"Well?" she interrogated impatiently. She looked very graceful and saucy. He glanced upward and caught her fleeting smile.
"I'll tell you what, Miss Stretton," he said with the relief of an inspiration, "you mustn't make bargains in the dark. Try my Sultana to-morrow, and if she goes to suit you, we'll talk further."
"All right, Mr. Johnson, and I'm extremely obliged to you." She was grateful for the suggestion; Jerry should be messenger next time.
They were now at ease and could look one another frankly in the face. Each knew the other well by hearsay. Who did not know of the Johnson family, who had lived on the same fine old place for a hundred years and more? And to which of the inquisitive natives was the affable young lady a stranger when she had been staying for a fortnight at the Douglas farm? It was quite conventional for them to call each other by name and to linger a few minutes talking.
She rode off finally, with a charming smile, and Albert went into the dingy store whistling, with his hands in his pockets; handsome and lazy, and with nothing better to do than to recline on the counter and recollect each detail of the conversation.
The next morning he made taking the horse over an excuse for a call, and obtained her promise to go with him to the hop. Every onewent; the road was gay with vehicles of every description, and on the ten-mile drive there and back their acquaintance grew old. If Miss Stretton knew how to talk, Albert could listen eloquently.
Afterward she tried to recall something sensible and original in his talk, which would account for the pleasure she had taken in his company, but there was nothing in her memory save confused impressions of what he must have meant.
"What a shame," she said to herself vehemently, "for a young man of intelligence and versatility—he knows many things and could know more if he tried—to be playing fifth wheel to a coach on a stupid country road—clerk in that little store which a girl of twelve could manage alone!"
And as soon as the chance came, she told him this, indirectly, and with many a friendly ameliorating glance. Albert took her lecture meekly. It came one morning when they were riding together. She had found Sultana delightful,and he had made a joking bargain, letting her ride if he might ride with her when he had time and his mother's horse could be spared from the farm. And so this little matter was adjusted without any reference to money.
It was rare pleasure to the city girl to gallop over the open country of a fair August morning before the sun grew red; the fresh breeze from the Blue Ridges colored her cheeks and lighted up her eyes, while it filled her mind with longings, arousing her energy.
"It is energy that you young men lack," she admonished him in a sweet, deferential tone. "Energy! Chalk it up on the fences, and spell it out as you saunter along these dull little country lanes."
Albert thought best to treat it as a joke, but that only made her more earnest. Then he changed his tactics, and met the reproach by a degree of pathetic admission that unsettled her.
She found it a fascinating pastime to chide this handsome idler for making little use of hisabilities and she longed to be able to exert a strongly stimulating influence. But when he told her that, on the whole, he enjoyed his life as it was and had no wish to change it, that there was virtue in contentment and that he appreciated his lot, much as she seemed to despise it——
"I didn't say I despised it!" she exclaimed, abashed, her airy ambitions seeming for an instant less grand. But when she looked at her young Alcibiades, lost in the luxury of peace, she pined to send him forth among men to do battle for the things men care to win. And yet the girl had such tact that her touch did not irritate. The young Southerner felt her thrilling tones move him pleasantly; she cooled his languid breath like a fresh North wind coming in the summer heat. Throughout, his face wore the same look of rich, indolent peace. One day, however, he opened his splendid, dark eyes wide, and asked her just what she would have a man do to prove himself a man.
Miss Stretton was as vague and inexperiencedas women usually are who urge extraordinary feats upon men in whom they are interested. But not to seem foolish, she took the matter into consideration.
"I'll give you time," he said, laughing when she hesitated, "but—you have been so hard on me, Miss Julia, that I really must press the question home."
After this she listened to the reports about him, and heard much of his sweet temper under provocation—to which, she owned, she herself could testify—of his kindness of heart, his courage, his goodness to his feeble mother. The country people relied upon him; his moral character was spotless. Yet, even while she learned to admire him, she was not satisfied. Seeing her gem thus proved real, made her the more determined to bring out its luster.
His question was carried gravely in her mind, and she forbore to resume the subject until she could say something wise and practical.
They met often, there were so many affairs during the summer to bring them together,hops, drives, and picnics, and then the camp-meetings, which brought out all the county. She saw him sometimes in attendance on his mother there, always gentlemanly and good, where the other boys were openly rowdy. She saw him in the store, always patient with the freaks of customers and with the cross humors of his uncle.
And one day she met him (and her heart was touched) carrying along the road a little crying child, whose bare toes were crinkled up with the hurt from a sharp stone. The ragamuffin sat perched upon the broad shoulder and peered down at the lady with eyes of cerulean blue. He hugged his friend a little closer but with undiminished confidence. Albert colored slightly, but walked along beside the stylish girl without apologizing for his burden.
"Can't I do something for the little fellow?" she asked gently, and being used to children (she was a school teacher), she saw in a minute what the matter was, and taking from her purse a piece of court-plaster, she made Albert set himdown while she applied it to the cut. If her fingers shrank from the dirty little foot neither of her watchers saw it.
"There, little man, does that feel better?"
"I wants ter b' toted," said the urchin, irrelevantly.
"Of course," said Albert, shouldering him again. "Didn't I promise to carry you clear home? But if the lady had done something for me, I'd have thanked her, heh?"
But the child's face expressed only a vacant sort of contentment.
And they all went on together until they reached a poor house where a woman stood at the door, looking anxiously up and down the road. As her boy was brought to her, she caught him up, with a shake and a kiss delivered simultaneously.
"That's jus' like ye, Albert," she said gruffly. "I've been ter'ble worried fur th' past hour—feared he'd got runned over. Yer ma well?"
"Middling, thank you, Mrs. Smithers."
Then he rubbed his handkerchief over hisforehead and asked Miss Stretton if she was going "to town" this hot day.
"Yes, I'm trying to walk off a restless fit, and I have a letter to mail."
"Better give that to me. See, I've picked up three or four along the road and got half-a-dozen commissions—hope I shan't forget 'em."
"Are you general errand-boy?" she demanded impatiently.
"You wouldn't want me to be unneighborly? Besides," he added with a twinkle in his eye, "I thought you found fault with me for not being useful!"
"Oh, no, not in that way. Don't you suppose I see that you are useful here, that everybody likes you and depends upon you—but it is such a waste of yourself to be busied with such little things—there are larger places to be filled elsewhere——"
"And larger men to fill them," he said seriously. "There ain't as much to me as you suppose. It seems to me my place is here, right in this little sleepy village. I can be ahelp to my uncle and to others, and my mother can't do without me."
"Oh!" she cried sharply. This was a stumbling-block she had to recognize. Yet she found that he hardly understood her. She wanted to stir him up to discontent with himself and his surroundings, so that he might be led to enlarge his mental outlook. The thing was for him first to become enlightened, aspiring, superior to his friends—action would follow.
Although it is hard for a man to follow the rapid deviations of a woman's mind, yet the most phlegmatic have their moments of insight. Miss Stretton had revealed a great deal more than she was aware to the young countryman, and he was less dull than he seemed. It came to him that there was something that he wanted to say, but all his ideas grew confused as he thought. He looked around with an uncertain, wistful gaze. He was only a poor man, surrounded by commonplace, meager things; advantages had been lacking to him; perhaps, as she had said, he had not improvedhis chances. And yet it seemed to him that he had done his duty.
"I know our farmers' lives up here must seem mean to you," he said slowly, "poor and small. You think we might do more and make more out of ourselves. Well, maybe we might. I think that, after a while, we'll find new things to do. I thought once I'd strike out, and I went to Texas. But can you fancy what life is down there among the cattle-drovers? I couldn't stand it, Miss Stretton. I didn't love money well enough to sink myself quite so low. And so I came back. Maybe you think I lay 'round a heap, but I do all that comes in my way, and somebody'd have to do it. If I was ambitious, I s'pose I'd want to be something else besides a country storekeeper, but it seems to me there's more love in my heart for this poor land and for my neighbors than for anything else. I'm not of a restless disposition, and yet I've got my share of pride. I'm not old yet,"—the fine figure straightening a little, involuntarily—"and maybe after a whilesomething else will come to me that I can do."
"And you are content to wait for it—the chance—to come, are you?" she asked, bending her earnest gaze upon him.
"I won't quote the only bit of Milton I remember, but I believe I serve a useful purpose even while I wait for promotion—that is, what you think promotion."
The girl was silenced. She could not exactly understand how a man could be like this, yet in the midst of her defeat was a feeling of triumph in him. Through thefar nienteher energetic mind had so despised there came the gleam of a fine thought, a real purpose, before which her woman's nature bowed, rejoicing. Obeying a common impulse, they lingered in the lane.
"They need a new teacher in this district," said Albert abruptly, and looking full at her. "If it is your mission to put energy into us, why not begin the missionary work there? Take the boys young."
She had no reply to this but a look of reproach. He had put away her friendship for himself, he recommended her to other matters. Tacitly, he implied that she was incapable of the sacrifice involved in his suggestion. It was ironical.
She turned to walk on, but Albert started and caught her hand. "Don't be angry, Miss Julia! I only meant that it would be less dangerous with them than it has been with me. I—I am more stirred than you would like me to be——"
His blazing eyes transfixed her. For an instant she stared, then drew her hand away and put it up to her face.
"Yes," he continued brokenly, "I know it's no use to speak, you couldn't condescend to this paltry existence—you want the fulness and brightness of the city,—the company of an educated man. There isn't anything about me that's fit to associate with you. Well? I must beg pardon, I s'pose, and yet I couldn't forbear letting you know that, while you've beentrying to put some vim into the lazy country fellow, you've waked up his heart, at least."
Miss Stretton uncovered her face. They confronted one another—the bright, sweet girl, the handsome youth, aglow with passion.
The land was poverty-stricken, the promise small, but there was freshness, beauty, peace all about. "He is good, he is noble," she thought. There crept into her face something that amazed him, but he did not stop to wonder at it. He saw fortune sweeping down a shower of gold at his feet, and it was no time to question her beneficence. By a step he lessened the little distance between them, and the two shadows melted into one along the sunny lane.
"You are far brighter than I, Julia," he murmured after a while, "though your reasoning has never moved me any. But if you love me!—I think you will do whatever you wish with me."
"I didn't mean this, at all," she returned, her lovely face sparkling with tears and smiles both at once. In her heart she felt that it washer nature, not his, which the future might change.
Yet, when they concluded to walk on to the store, she looked about with a sense of responsibility and an eye to changes to come, while he—his face flushed with happiness—lounged beside her in the old indolent way—unreproved.
Inthe clean, large kitchen of a Virginia farm-house sat an old woman alone, knitting. She had been pretty once; fifty years ago that wrinkled yellow skin had been called "creamy," and the scant gray hair drawn back under the plain cap had been a shower of brown curls. And she had coquetted with Judge Holt and turned away from him at the last to marry plain Nathan Bennett, living with him in rare contentment for two-score years, and then coming to spend the remnant of her days with her daughter Ann. Now Ann, too, was gone, and only the children were left; Ben and Nancy, and her own adopted child, Lura Ann.
She smoothed down her neat gray cashmere gown, which had been her "second best" dress since Ann's death, and leaned back more comfortably
against the cushioned surface of the splint rocking-chair.
"They're good children," she said to herself,—"excepting Nancy. And she's not so bad as might be." She cast a satisfied glance at the meadows and fields stretching as far as her eyes could reach, and then looked lovingly at the dwarf apple-trees whose branches pressed against the window-shutters. Some of the pink blossoms lay on the ledge. It was May. The flies were buzzing, the sparrows twittering, as they stole cotton from the body of a doll lying in the yard and flew up to the roof with it.
A little girl came around the house and picked up the doll, shook it, looked up at the eaves where the mother sparrow sat, muttered something in an angry tone, and entered the house, singing. She sang: "The apples were ripe and beginning to fall, beginning to fall!"
"Ah, yes," said her grandmother, "you'll see the apples fall a many times, but I shall scarcely see 'em more'n once more—once or twice more, at most. Well, well, I'll be contented to dieif only I can live to see my boy and Lura Ann——" then she stopped, meeting the child's bright eyes.
"Lura Ann is going to marry Sackford Moss," said the child.
An angry flush came over the old woman's thin face; she jerked her knitting, and one of her needles fell to the floor.
"Now you're mad, granny, and it's wicked to be mad, so I shan't hand you your knitting-needle," sang the little girl, in a silvery voice.
"Then you'll have no stockings to wear when the biting frost comes; but you don't care—you don't care. 'Tis a generation that thinks not of the future, but works its will in the present," moaned the old woman, folding her hands together hard.
"I'll hand you your needle if you'll tell Lura Ann to make waffles for supper," said the sharp child; but her grandmother looked upon her with disfavor and did not reply. After a moment the little girl came quietly forward and laid the needle on her lap, but the old womandid not resume her knitting. She sat with her hands folded, and looked at intervals out of the window, but with a much-wrinkled brow.
A door opened, and Lura Ann came in with a wide straw hat on. She was tall, slim, and fair, with deep gray eyes, heavy-lidded and long-lashed, and a little red mouth whose short upper lip just raised itself enough to give a glimpse of small, pearly teeth. She looked shy and sweet.
"I am going to town, grandaunt," she said, timidly. "Shall I bring you some more yarn?"
The old woman straightened herself and looked sternly at the maiden. "Be you a-going to marry Sackford Moss?" she asked shrilly.
The pretty lips closed together, and no answer came from them.
"She's going to buy her wedding-gown now," cried the child, getting up quickly from her stool. "Say, Lura Ann, can I go with you?"
"You stay right hyar, Nancy, and take care of granny," said Lura Ann, with some severity.Then she went out, murmuring to herself: "They all think the same thing."
She walked steadily out through the front gate and along the road to town. It was two miles distant, and the air was close and dusty. Her little black shoes were soon specked, and the hem of her dress gathered soil by dipping against them. The blue merino scarf over her shoulders made her too warm, but she did not dare take it off, because it covered a large patch under her arm.
A handsome road-wagon, drawn by a pair of bay horses, dashed up suddenly beside her. The driver leaned forward and touched his hat with an air of devotion.
"Just in time, Lura Ann," he cried, gaily. "Come, get in, and I'll drive you to town and wherever else you want to go."
"No, I thank you," said Lura Ann.
But he got down and urged her cordially. The high, shaded seat looked delightful. The fine horses tossed their heads and pawed impatiently. The long road stretched out, hotand dusty. Walking she would get to town looking like a fright, and it would take much longer. The last consideration had a weight known to nobody but herself. She let Sackford help her up into the seat and draw the linen duster over her knees. Covertly he examined her dress.
"Going to shop?" he asked; adding carelessly: "Burns has got in quite a lot of new goods. My sisters were in last week and bought a carriage load. But they are nothing to what is in the city. I am going to the city soon. Emily has been teasing me to buy her a lace dress. How pretty you would look in a lace dress, Lura Ann, with a little lace bonnet on your soft brown hair, trimmed with rosebuds just the color of your lips!"
Lura Ann's cheeks grew pinker than the bunch of apple blossoms at her throat. "Your sisters and I air different people," she said, in her plaintive, soft voice.
Sackford feasted his eyes in the blush. The veins in his short, thick neck began to swell,and he shifted the reins to his right hand and laid the left across the back of the seat. But Lura Ann sat up very straight.
"Lean back and be comfortable," he urged.
"Take away your arm then, please," faltered Lura Ann. And just then Ben Falconer, coming across a field in his coarse working clothes, saw her drooping with the blush upon her cheek and Sackford's arm about her waist. He stood still, and looked after the handsome team with a frown and a sigh. Lura Ann had not seen him, but Sackford had, and secretly blessed the hour. Yet he did not dare kiss Lura Ann, as he had intended.
"Where shall I take you first?" he asked, as they entered the town.
"To Mr. Wright's, if you please."
"Of course—he holds some little money belonging to her, I've heard," thought Sackford.
"Don't wait for me," she said, but he waited, and she was gone a long time. When she came out she was pale, as if she had been worried.Yet she looked resolute, and spoke in a tone that had lost all its timidity.
"Take me to the old red brick house at the end of the street," she said, eagerly, "and oh be quick!"
"Why, what's the attraction in that old rookery—a new milliner?" jested Sackford. He could not conceive the idea of a woman's being interested in anything but clothes.
Lura Ann's slim hand closed tightly under her shawl about the old purse that had come out empty and was now full to bursting with currency. Five hundred dollars! She was of age to-day, and had drawn it in her own name, every cent. Milliner! Yes, her hat was shabby, but no matter about that.
Sackford was smiling to himself at her excitement as he helped her out on to the stone step before the old red brick house. She rang the bell, and there was no response. Her courage seemed to be oozing away as she waited.
"Better come back," called Sackford. Butshe shook her head and applied herself to the bell again. After a moment a shuffling step approached and the door opened a few inches, allowing a man's head to be seen. He was old and grim-looking. Lura Ann said something low and timidly, and after a look of keen scrutiny he let her in.
Sackford felt an indescribable reluctance to have her go in.
After about five minutes she appeared at the door with a paper in her hand, and beckoned him. He sprang out quickly, tied his horses, and stepped into the hall beside her.
"Oh, please see if that is all right," she entreated, putting a legal paper in his hand. "You are a lawyer, andhe—this gentleman, said to let you see it."
Sackford glanced from it to her, saw her total unconsciousness of anything out of the way, frowned, bit his lip, and examined the document with care.
"It is all right," he then said. "It is a full release. Is this what you want?"
"Yes, oh, yes, thank you! and I am much obliged to you, sir," she added, sweetly, to the grim old man who stood looking on from the background.
He bowed sardonically. "The obligation is on my side, young lady," he said.
"By Jove! It is on somebody else's side," thought Sackford, as he put Lura Ann back into the vehicle; adding, aloud, "I don't like this."
"Ah, but you don't know," said Lura Ann, pleadingly. Her long lashes grew moist. "It is the wish of grandaunt's heart to have the farm free from this mortgage. I always felt as if the debt had been made because of me. She took me when father died—I was a tiny child of three—and oh, they have always been so good to me!"
Sackford's frown did not soften. It was surprising how surly his shrewd, coarse face became. "But whoseisthe farm?" he asked. "That release was made out to Ben Falconer."
"Yes, but it is just the same. Grandauntmade over her share of the farm to him, and he cares for all of us. He is the best man in the world—my cousin Ben."
"The world—what do you know of the world?" said Sackford. "But, see here, Lura Ann, do you understand? You have given away all your little fortune and left yourself penniless."
"Yes," said Lura Ann, simply. There was something in her face that checked further speech upon his part. She was a foolish, improvident child, and rather too confiding toward this cousin Ben of hers, but she was very pretty—wonderfully pretty—and, after all, he had money enough. If five hundred dollars had rid her of her sense of obligation, the price was cheap. A sigh came here, for Sackford Moss did not love to part with money. But feeling that he had better put this subject out of his mind, he smoothed his face and tried to regain his former jovial, easy bearing. Lura Ann heard his talk as if it sounded from a far-off country. But suddenly there was a question;it brought her with a start to a sense of her surroundings. His face was bent down close to hers; his breath—she shuddered and turned her head. Then the answer came, clear and final. What could he do after that but whip up the horses and hasten on?
At the farm gate he let her down and drove away without a backward glance. A spray of withered apple blossoms fell from her dress into the dust, and his wheel passed over it.
But she walked up the path with a step like the toss of thistledown and a heart as light.
The old woman was again looking from the window. She nodded kindly, but her brow was careworn. "Nancy laid the fire," she said. "It's five o'clock. I think it's going to rain. Ben has worked too hard lately. He's in his room with a headache."
"I'll get tea in a minute," said Lura Ann. "But first, grandaunt, look hyar!" She laid off her hat and scarf, and came and knelt on the stool at the old woman's feet. "See," and she opened the paper. "It is a release fromthe mortgage! It is my gift to you, grandaunt, bought with the money uncle left me. The farm is free!"
The old woman's hands trembled as she laid them on the beautiful young head. "The Lord bless you, child!" she murmured. But in a moment came the after-thought. "Lura Ann, it has taken everything!" she exclaimed. "You haven't a dollar left to buy your wedding-gown!"
The stair door opened, and Ben came down from his room, carrying a little hand-mirror in a carved wooden frame. He was a fine specimen of young manhood, tall, straight, and strong. His dark brown eyes showed intelligence and depth of feeling. Over his features—naturally good—was now cast the reflection of that victory which makes a man "greater than he that taketh a city." He advanced with an air of cheerfulness.
"Lura Ann, I did not forget that this is your birthday. I carved this frame for you myself, and I wish you——"
"Ben!" cried his grandmother. "Lura Ann has bought off the mortgage!"
"And I'm going to light the fire with it," cried Lura Ann a little tremulously, and springing up.
But Ben came and took it from her quickly. He did not comprehend the legal phrases as Sackford had done, but he gathered the sense. His fine eyes began to brighten and glow as they rested on his cousin's face, now averted and blushing.
"Lura Ann, let me see your wedding-gown," exclaimed Nancy, coming in; and Lura Ann grew rose red, but she made a violent effort to free herself from this wretched mistake.
"I haven't got any—I'm not going to have any!" she cried hysterically, turning to strike a match to the fire. "What do I want of a wedding-gown when I'm not going to be married?"
"But Sackford Moss said——" began Nancy, with staring eyes.
"Bother Sackford Moss!" said Lura Ann,pettishly, trembling with nervousness under Ben's grave eyes.
"He said he was going to take you away from us!" finished the persistent child.
"Well, he isn't!" said Lura Ann emphatically. Then she would have liked to flee to her room, but Ben was still standing before her.
"Nancy," he said, in singularly happy tones, "go, get in the young chickens, quick. Don't you see how fast the rain is coming?" And Nancy, who always obeyed her brother, went.
Then Ben, conscious of the whole evening before him, let Lura Ann get supper and clear it away, before supplementing by a single word the tender, hopeful look in his eyes.
But an hour later, when the shower had passed, they stood together on the stoop, which was covered with fallen apple blossoms. The clouds were gone and the sky was clear blue, except for a trail of gold in the west. The fields lay green and wet. They looked at sky and fields, and at last into each other's eyes, and there their gaze rested.
"How sweet the air is after the rain," said the old woman.
"It is the apple blossoms," said Ben, from the stoop; and gathering up a handful he let them fall in a shower over Lura Ann's head.
THE END.