"I, and my life, are yours, Mistress Jane. Please take me, and let me guard you faithfully.An unnamed dog."
"I, and my life, are yours, Mistress Jane. Please take me, and let me guard you faithfully.
An unnamed dog."
"An unnamed dog!" she cried in delight, giving him a quick, impulsive hug. "Oh, you wonderful creature!" Then held him off at arms' length, his head between her palms in a way that wrinkled the tawny forehead into an expression of profound wisdom. "How would you like to be named—Mac?" she whispered.
He was wagging his stumpy tail, anyway; but one can always give a dog the benefit of a doubt, and she believed that it began to wag more happily. Thus it was settled between them. All the affection which his nature held, which his rearing in a large kennel of other dogs had not permitted him to bestow upon any one master, now sprang to its most perfect development and centered upon this girl. Wherever she was, he was; watchful, ready for a lark, or equally content to lie quietly at her feet.
That afternoon, in trim boots and riding habit, she crossed the porch to her horse which had just been brought around. Mac, in great pretended fury, was grasping the leash end of her crop and tugging at it with savage growls.
"Drop it," she gave his nose a tap. He licked her glove then, and looked up with his head tilted in roguish inquiry. "We must ride over and thank the other Mister Mac," she explained; and a few minutes later they were going at a spirited pace across the meadows to Arden.
With still no news of Tusk Potter, the Colonel had spent a restless day. Earlier, the doughty son of Shadeland Wildon brought the little boy over to see him, followed by Aunt Timmie in her precarious buggy; but it was now afternoon and they had left. Shadows were lengthening, and the cows were mooing at the pasture gate.
Dale, as usual, had spent the day in study. His absorption had made him unconscious of intruders who came into the room. Timmie and the little boy had stopped to say good-bye, and she called his name; even emboldened by his silence to murmur: "Don' you know you'se gwine pop yoh brains a-wu'kin' 'em so hard?"
Bip, who regarded Dale with mysterious interest, made farther advances. He went up close, and looked wonderingly into his face; but at last both he and the old woman left unseen and unheard.
All unconscious of his surroundings, this student was living in other days with the dauntless Pompey. By the aid of the huge dictionary, now seldom opened, he laboriously followed this daring friend of the great Cicero. Since morning he had witnessed the capture of a thousand cities, the slaying or subjugation of a million human beings—and more of this was to come. Had lightning snapped about his head he would not have known it for the wilder sounds of battlefields, scattered between Rome and the Euphrates, possessing his brain.
When Jane arrived, Mac was properly introduced to the old gentleman, who made a great fuss over him and directed her attention to his points of unusual excellence. But Brent, he told her, was not about.
"Dale would like to see him," she said enthusiastically.
"Oh, yes," his face clouded, "I suppose so!"
"What's the matter?" she quickly asked.
"Matter?" he looked up. "Why, nothing, my dear! Nothing, of course!"
But it did not satisfy, and she asked again:
"Has anything happened?—Dale, or anything?"
He must have found some difficulty in evading this direct question, and his hesitation, brief though it was, alarmed her.
"No, my dear. I cannot say that anything has happened. I may be growing a little uncertain of him—that is, I may be afraid—oh, bother! It is nothing but an old man's fancy!"
Nevertheless, when later, calling the mountaineer's name, she stepped through the library window, an element of uncertainty, quite a different sort from that which the Colonel was congratulating himself upon having so deftly hid, filled her heart with a vague foreboding.
Dale was mumbling aloud as he read, and did not hear her; but a slight pressure on his shoulder brought him slowly back from scenes of carnage, and he looked up into her face, smiling down at him.
"Stop awhile, and speak to Mac! Your eyes seem tired!"
"They're not. That was a great man—that Pompey!"
"Great," she agreed, a trifle piqued that he ignored her dog.
"Those fights," he said tensely, "were the biggest things a feller ever did!"
"He did something bigger than conquering men," she told him.
"What?" he challenged.
"The battles won over himself," she answered slowly. "His upright life, his unsullied honor toward all those women whom he made captive. In battles of that kindthere are great generals today. In that respect everyone can be a Pompey. I wish I could feel," she thought again of the Colonel's troubled face, "that you, without any doubt at all, were going to be one!"
"I see what you mean," at last he said, turning back to the book; but instantly pushed it away with a gesture of impatience and gazed moodily into the high polish of the mahogany table, as though somewhere down in its ancient graining an answer might be found to his troubled thoughts.
She watched him, with a curious look of interest.
"I don't understand it," he finally murmured. "By that very teachin', we're branded worse than any kind of beasts. There's somethin' wrong, Miss Jane; there's somethin' wrong!" A soft and peculiar light, which she had often seen when his pupils began to dilate and contract, fitfully crossed and recrossed them.
"I don't think I understandyou," she replied.
"Then look!" he turned quickly. Again the curious light. She felt herself being charmed by it, and wondered if a quail might feel so while crouching before the point of a bird-dog. In a whisper-haunted voice he began to speak; "It's a summer night. A lazy mist hangs in the valley. I can see it—I've seen it most a thousand times! It hangs from the mountain's waist like a skirt on a half dressed woman, and above is all naked in the starlight. The air is still and clear, up thar," he slipped unconsciously into the familiar dialect as he grew more intense, "'n' the mist below is smooth 'n' white. Ye'd think ye could walk acrost on hit. No sign or soundof the world kin touch this place, 'n' one might as well be standin' on some crag that overlooks eternity. Back in a cave a wild-cat wakes, 'n' sniffs the air; 'n' then he yawns, 'n' purrs, 'n' gits up 'n' walks with soft, padded feet ter look out on this silence. He sniffs the air, 'n' purrs agin, then lays his ears down flat 'n' sends a cry a-tearin' 'crost the space. I've seen 'im; I've heerd 'im; I've laid back outen the wind 'n' watched 'im. He crouches 'n' waits. Soft, but nervous-like, his claws dig in 'n' out the airth. Then an answer comes, floatin' like a far-off cry of a child in pain. With ears still tight ag'inst his head, he freezes closter ter the ground, lashin' his stumpy tail from side ter side, 'n' purrin' deeper. Then he cries agin, 'n' waits. Purty soon, from out that mist, the answer comes agin, 'n' like a flash he's gone. Has he done wrong?"
He paused, still looking at her; and she, too strangely fascinated to turn away her eyes, stared back with parted lips.
"When the fu'st red bars of dawn flash up the sky," he went on, in the same mysterious voice, "showin' folks down in the valley that a day has come, a bird pulls his head out from his wing, 'n' blinks. I've seen 'em; I've laid 'n' watched 'em 'most a thousand times. He blinks agin, 'n' finds hisse'f a-lookin' squar in ter a pair of twinklin' eyes that seems ter've been awake all night, jest a-watchin', with sly longin', from 'tween two leaves. Maybe he'd seen those eyes afore, but not jest like this. Maybe only yestidday he passed 'em by—or even drove 'em away from food;—butsomethin' strange is in 'em now, somethin' strange that happened in the night. So he gives a jump at 'em, jest like a spring he didn't know was in his legs had been let loose; 'n' she laughs 'n' flies away, I've seen it happen 'most a thousand times. From tree ter tree, from bush ter bush, he follers. He stops; she stops. But when he tries agin, she flies. The next day they're buildin' a nest. Have they done wrong?"
He paused, but she did not take her eyes from his face. She might not have known his voice had ceased by the way she looked deep into his pupils—deep into the realm of his fancies. When he did speak again his words were scarcely audible:
"Whether I'm in this misty valley, or up in those scarred rocks 'n' crags—wherever I happen ter be—'n' send my call out ter space, I reckon I've got ter go when the answer comes floatin' back ter me:—whenever a dawn brings two eyes that have been watchin' fer no one else but me, I reckon I've got ter follow in jest that very way! We weren't made ter put up a fight when that call comes—fer that call don't mean fight, Miss Jane; it means surrender!"
"Oh, my mountain poet," she murmured, leaning gracefully nearer, "how can you wear a modern harness with such a soul! But we cannot live simply, as the animals and birds! Do you not see that a higher civilization has taught us the greater meaning of these things?"
"No," he answered bluntly. "That call is the greatest meaning. Nothin' don't stand one, two, three to it! If civilization chokes it, then civilization is wrong!"
A feeling of conflict stirred in her. Here was this towering young god whom the Great Chiseller had made so awkward, so uncontrollably selfish, yet otherwise so fine, and he was deliberately leaving the one path of all others which she had believed him most sure to follow. Ruth had sent him to her untarnished, and now, while in her keeping, he was drifting away! How could she ever answer those blind eyes if they questioned her with their calm, sightless stare? Her hand left his chair and rested lightly on his shoulder, and the voice which spoke to him seemed almost hard:
"You are stumbling into a false reasoning! Civilization does not choke the cry; it only directs the way men and women shall answer! You are not forgetting your Sunlight Patch, are you?"
He started to speak, but changed his mind; while, without being noticed, she bent nearer, intently watching.
"Well?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said with a touch of uncertainty, "I reckon maybe it's all wrong up at Sunlight Patch, too!"
Tremendously moved, startled, fearful lest he drift entirely from her reach, she slipped still lower and looked up into his face.
"What does this mean?" she asked. "What has happened to you, boy?"
Mac, feeling that something had gone wrong, came over and pushed his head beneath her arm; and with this she held him, while her other hand impulsively caughtDale's sleeve. A feeling of protectorship, a faint consciousness of motherhood, gave her face an exquisite look of entreaty. What men's lives might be had never taken a definite place in her mind, for she had accepted much and passed over more. But she was not pleading now so much for him, as she was for the trust that had been imposed in her—the knowledge that her honor was answerable to the giver of that trust!
"You will not forget your Sunlight Patch, Dale?" she whispered. "You will promise me this?"
Slowly the answer for which she hoped began to frame itself upon his lips, and would have been spoken, had not Brent at this moment entered in search of the mountaineer, and got well within the room before seeing her.
She arose quietly, entirely free of self-consciousness, and was about to make a sign for him to wait until the promise should be put in words. But he was receiving altogether a different impression of the scene.
Yet, whatever his surprise, or the pain it brought, he was too well bred to be taken unawares, and immediately crossed to the shelves as though his errand were a book. The room was so large, and so deeply shadowed near the door, that he might do this; and, indeed, hoped she would believe herself to have been unobserved.
But the ruse had not deceived her. It had, instead, merely reflected his own thought; and, as this understanding flashed through her mind, she started forward, hurt;—but as quickly halted in confusion.
Rather hastily he took out the first book his fingerstouched and was starting back, when again she made as if to follow; but once more stopped before the humiliation of having considered it even necessary to explain to him. Yet one of her hands was still held out, a picture of desperate protest.
Of course he did not see this, for his eyes had not dared to turn in her direction after their first unforunate glance. Thus he went into the hall, and an instant later she was staring at the vacant door, now rapidly becoming blurred.
She gave one backward glance at Dale, but he had forgotten her existence and was poring over the battles of Pompey. Such indifference did not hurt her now:—it was the emptiness of that door! Still staring, silently beating her hands together in impotent rage, her face burning with mortification, two big tears rolled down her cheeks and fell upon the rug. Mac whined. He did not understand—he only felt.
"Mac," she sobbed hysterically, "I wish you—could say all—all those things that go—with damn and hell!" then passionately ran from the room, and came up plump into the Colonel's ample waistcoat.
"My God!" the old gentleman cried.
"Oh!" she gasped.
"Ah, 'tis you!" he said, his arms still about her. "I thought it was a wild-cat!"
"I thought it was a bear," she sobbed.
"What? Crying? My dear, how is this?" he asked in alarm.
"I can't tell you," she murmured to his cravat.
"Can't tell me! But I say you shall!" he hotly commanded.
"I'll never do anything—when you say shall," she retorted brokenly.
"God bless my soul," he sputtered. "I want you to understand that you'll do anything whether I say shall or not, when I find you crying!"
"That sounds funny," she began to laugh, just a little. Then he began to laugh.
She took his hand after this and led him across the hall into the "long room," and when they emerged ten minutes later there were no signs of tears.
"Never fear," he chuckled, "I'll tell him this very night."
"Oh, but you mustn't tell him," she said, aghast. "I only want him to understand!"
"I see, I see," he pinched her cheek, "You only want him to understand. Well, he shall understand this very night, then."
"And you'll thank him for sending me Mac?"
"Yes, yes, I'll thank him, never fear. Wait now, till I order my horse; I'm going to ride home with you."
"It isn't dark yet, and I'm not afraid with Mac," she demurred.
"It is nearly dark, and I'm very much afraid," he bowed gallantly, "that I'll too soon be forgot for this airedale gentleman if you go alone."
Shortly after breakfast next day the Colonel dispatched Uncle Zack and his mule with a note to Jane. He might have telephoned this message, which simply read: "He understands, with an amplitude of grace which ill befits him. Come over this morning and straighten Lizzie out with her preserving. I hear that she is skinning every negro on the place, and I greatly fear for them, or her."
But, no; this must be on a written page and delivered by hand, for the old Colonel averred that no gentleman should assume to shriek his voice by mechanical device into the ear of a gentlewoman. In cases of illness, accident or fire, or perhaps in pressing business needs, the telephone had its uses; but afaux pasof the first order was to employ it socially.
So Zack's mule ambled down the pike and home again, bringing a reply which sparkled with merriment between its lines: "You have the maternal instinct of that lady who lived in a shoe! I'll be over to soothe Miss Liz and her poor, flayed darkies."
Arriving some hours later, she and Mac went directly to the shed where bright copper kettles were hanging ina row above the old fashioned, stone oven fires. Several negro women were moving quickly and silently about, frightened and getting into each other's way. But now, as she drew near, there was a commotion, and she saw Miss Liz actually lay hands upon a girl of about seventeen and roughly draw her away from one of the simmering pots. Unobserved, and in utter amazement, Jane stood and stared at them.
"What were you about to do?" Miss Liz cried excitedly.
"I—I drapped de spoon in," the girl began to whimper.
"And were going to thrust in your hand and get it scalded to the bone?"
"I'se—I'se 'feerd you'd scold," she put her head down in her arm.
"Now, Amanda," Miss Liz looked at her reprovingly, "if you think I've nothing to do but sit up nights making poultices on account of your idiocy, you're very much mistaken! What does a spoon in the preserves amount to compared with your suffering?—and my suffering, when I'll be dead for sleep with nursing you? What do you all mean," she turned angrily upon the others, "by standing there and letting her attempt such a thing?"
"'Deed, I didn' see her, Miss Liz!" several voices were raised in protest.
"Of course, you didn't see her! You never see anything! I must be your eyes as well as your brains, you lazy pieces! Here, Amanda, take this handful of cherries and go out there under the trees and eat them; and don'tswallow the seeds, either, or I'll be sitting up with you yet!"
Jane came on then, and Miss Liz gratefully recited the multitude of grievances which had beset her since early morning. This seemed such a vast relief that she yielded to persuasion and left for a little rest. A few minutes later the shed was animated with a buzz of happy voices, fingers, more skilled than Miss Liz had given herself the opportunity of realizing, now traveled with twice their former speed, and into the simmering kettles was being cooked a geniality which all preserves must have to be appreciated.
Half an hour later, leaving this crew in splendid working order, she walked slowly around to the front of the house. Out before her, in the shaded group of rustic chairs, sat the Colonel and Brent, somewhat apart from, but facing, Miss Liz, who seemed to be holding them at bay. Had the men been alone Jane might doubtless have gone indoors and sought the commander of the kettles, for she did not care to see Brent just at once. But the human dice had fallen otherwise, and there seemed no alternative but straight ahead.
As she drew near she noticed that Miss Liz's cheeks were flushed with some new excitement, and guessed she was being worried by a process of serious teasing. Her eyes then sought the reason for this and discovered it in two julep goblets, cuddled guiltily behind a nearby tree. For as Miss Liz had come across the lawn to join them half an hour earlier, this refreshment was hurried out of sight—the Colonel's resolution of independence notwithstanding—and now, before the ice could entirely melt, Brent, by a polite tirade against the prim old lady's pet hobby, trusted her increasing wrath to clarify the situation by routing her housewards. While he and the Colonel knew this would inevitably come, her anger was not yet at sufficient heat, and she held her ground with defiance bristling from every stiff fold of her black silk dress.
Jane gave the men a reproachful look, and Brent's face flushed when he saw her eyes hover about the juleps; but she entered their scheme by asking:
"Why does everyone seem so serious?"
"My dear," Miss Liz began to fire, "your father had suggested a Fourth of July celebration—a most fitting tribute to our departed heroes—but I regret to say that two not very high minded gentlemen—" The lorgnette, turned first upon the Colonel and then on Brent, completed her indictment.
"I'm sure we are misunderstood," Brent murmured, but the Colonel maintained a discreet silence.
"Can it be, Mr. McElroy," she glared at him with straightening lips, "that I misunderstood you to say George Washington was not a paragon of truth?"
"You mean a bird?" he innocently asked.
"A bird, sir?" the black dress gave a startled rustle.
"Excuse me; I thought you said ptarmigan."
The conventional old Colonel committed a very deplorable breach of etiquette—he snickered; but twisted it into a lusty cough, gutturally explaining:
"Really, my cold!"
"Mr. McElroy," she turned severely to Jane, "has been blaspheming—blaspheming the traditions of our noble heroes! My dear, it is positively disgusting!"
"The subject is quite a closed book to him," Jane sweetly replied, and the Colonel was threatened with another coughing spell.
"I didn't say anything against heroes," the engineer explained, "except that none of them can measure up to our heroines."
But from the toss of Miss Liz's head this had not brought him a grain of grace.
"What hero did I malign?"
"You said," she snapped, "that Washington was neither truthful nor honest!"
"Oh, now, I couldn't have!" he protested. "I merely said, in regard to the cherry tree episode, his intention was not only to cut, but to run. You've heard the expression 'cut and run'? Well, we get it from George."
"Your surmises are intolerable!"
"Miss Liz, it isn't fair to condemn until you hear me!" It was the tone of a much misunderstood penitent, and she hesitated. "I'll leave it to the Colonel," he was continuing, but the old gentleman briskly interrupted:
"You'll do nothing of the kind, sir!"
"Then I'll leave it to Jane—she may have some remote idea of history—if I'm scandalizing your hero by saying he never set us the extraordinary example you think. He was just a normal boy, a considerate boy, and had no intention of worrying the family about that tree; but it so happened that before he had time to sweepup the chips—which shows he was a tidy boy!—his governor swooped right down on top of him, you might say, and the game was up. George had cut, you see, Miss Liz, but he couldn't run—and here's where he showed himself the genius which ultimately resulted in our independence. He knew in a flash that this was a tight place; it was an awful tight place; in fact, you might say it pretty nearly squeezed him all over. There was the prostrate tree, right before the old gentleman's eyes; and there was the old gentleman, mad as hops, with his cane trembling in the air. There wasn't another boy, or even another hatchet, in fifteen miles—and little George's mind analyzed the full significance of that fact. It didn't take him a second to see how the situation had to be handled; so, really, Miss Liz, I think our lesson should be drawn, not from his love of truth, but from his quick and accurate judgment. In all the English language there was just one thing for him to say, and he said it. That's genius, Miss Liz—but not always veracity."
"Some persons may think that way," she compressed her lips, taking care to give the proper emphasis to persons. "There is no accounting for the benighted mind. Thanks be to God that every man, woman and child of intelligence knows otherwise."
Delivering herself of this, she calmly folded her hands and smiled at Jane with an expression of triumph. Brent took a fleeting glance toward the juleps.
But something now smote the Colonel's conscience. She looked so thin and frail! He remembered, too, the suspicious watering of Zack's bad eye, and what his goodeye had seen in the "long room." In a gentle voice he said:
"My dear, I hear that the sisters are asking where good cherries may be had. It seems the convent would put up a certain cordial; and, if you are passing there, would you inquire how many bushels they wish, and say you will send them over with your compliments?"
"Thank you, John," she looked forgivingly across at him. "If Jane would like, we may go now. The cherries are at their primest state. I shall stop a moment," she turned and took Jane's arm, "to see how our preserving goes, my dear. Can we be home for luncheon? And will you remain to have it with us?"
Even before they had quite disappeared, Brent rescued the still palatable juleps, and he and the Colonel were testing them.
"She's a good soul," the old gentleman murmured. "I'm glad for her sake that Zack remained discreet the other day."
"I'm glad for all our sakes," Brent gravely nodded. "Though I suppose he wouldn't have done it under any circumstances."
"He's a perspicacious nigger," the Colonel chuckled. In a moment he spoke more soberly: "I've been in town every day, and have heard no single word about Potter. Do you suppose he's dead somewhere in the hills?"
"Oh, no," Brent evasively answered. "He's all right. A shot at him would scare him away for a month. He has too much on his conscience."
"Well, I shall persist," the old gentleman sighed.
They were leaning back—just as two contented idlers in the shade; but each with a weight upon his heart to rob it of that needed peace which makes for perfect days. Yet, Brent could hardly now be called an idler. He had worked late the night before plotting his field notes, and the afternoon would be devoted to this same pursuit. Finally he said:
"Suppose I had killed Tusk! Would you stand by me?"
"Yes, sir," the old gentleman opened his eyes, "I would stand by you with a shot gun until I had the satisfaction of seeing you safely locked up in jail."
A longer pause.
"Assuming that I'd acted in self defense, would there be much of a stir about it?"
"Hm," came the noncommital response, but this time with closed eyes, for the Master of Arden had passed the point of active interest.
It was a morning to invite sleep. No leaf stirred, but the shaded air was fresh and comforting. Great cumulus clouds lazily, ponderously, glided across the sky, prototypes of nomadic wandering. Somewhere back by the stables a mellow farm bell proclaimed across the smiling fields the hour of noon; then negroes straightened up from the rows of young tobacco, stretched their tired backs, and in groups wandered toward a cool spring where their dinner buckets had been left. Yet it was some little while before the Colonel's midday meal.
Again Brent asked (or perhaps he only thought, for thoughts have a knack of seeming loud to those at the threshold of Nod):
"I wonder how it would feel to stop drinking and buckle all the way down?"
No answer.
"If she could only care for me—after I've wiped the bad spots out!"
No answer.
"But I'm such a pup—and what a devilishly sweet miracle she is!"
Still no answer, so he may have been only thinking, after all. At any rate, the Colonel remained steeped in tranquil apathy.
The messengers to the convent, returning somewhat late, caught sight of the men beneath the trees and went that way in order to bring them in for luncheon. But as they approached, Jane stopped. She saw the immaculately white pleated bosom of the Colonel's shirt bulging out to support his chin, which rested firmly and comfortably in it. Then her eyes went to Brent, occupying three chairs for himself and his legs, while one arm hung inertly to the ground and his head lolled back in childish abandon. She smiled. But this was not what had stopped her. By the hand of each of these sleeping men, in glaring, accusing sight, stood a julep goblet.
Miss Liz, now wondering at her hesitation, was making ready to raise the terrifying lorgnette, and this would have spelled disaster. Those penetrating lenses would never have missed the dazzling light reflected from thattraitorous silver. Smiling again, though with a dull heart ache as her gaze still lingered on the sprawling Brent, she took Miss Liz's wrist in the nick of time, saying:
"They're asleep. Let's go in first and brush off." She knew the invariable appeal which "brushing off" had for prim Miss Liz.
Soon the dainty chimes, manipulated in the front hall to the enduring joy of Uncle Zack, fell upon the sleeping ears in vain, and the old servant came across the lawn to call them. He also stopped, in dumb amazement, then hastened forward to gather the telltale evidence beneath his jacket. This aroused the Colonel and, after him, Brent, who looked up blinking.
"For de Lawd sake," the old darky frowned on them with all the severity of his five-feet-one, "don' you-all know Miss Liz is done got back!—an' heah you is sleepin' wid dese globuts a-settin' out in plain sight! I never seed sich reckerless doin's since I'se bawned—an' Marse Brent ain't no moh'n smelt his'n, at dat! Luncheon is sarved, Marse John," he added, with his usual formality.
"By Jove, Colonel," Brent laughed, "they might have caught us nicely!"
"It's God's truth, sir," the old gentleman chuckled, taking his arm and starting toward the house.
The late azure twilights and early salmon dawns of June merged into July with no more ado than a changed date line on the Colonel's morning paper. Days were of little concern at Arden, other than being days—as the library calendar now gave accusing evidence by pointing at the previous May. Miss Liz, to be sure, was invariably aware when Sundays came; being told by that unnamable pressure of peace which to most women would proclaim the Sabbath even in places of utter solitude. Otherwise, the weeks might be composed of Mondays or Fridays, since school had been out.
Jane, this particular morning playing with Bip and Mac somewhat apart from the Colonel and Brent who were engrossed in a game of chess, had been critically alive to the Sunday habits of these two families which had come to mean so much to her; especially in relation to the little boy. Miss Liz not only supported her, but freely expressed her indignation at the child's parental indifference, and that good lady's tone was one of deepest injury whenever the subject was mentioned. For she had indeed tried to awaken Bip's spiritual mind two days after he was born, by sending him an embroidered bib with a baby blue motto: "I thank the Lord for what Ieat—Soup and mush and bread and meat!" If he grew into an ungrateful man, she, at least, had done her duty! Bob paid small attention to matters of church, and Ann had easily acquired the negative enthusiasm of her father who frankly admitted he could not keep from going to sleep, even during the best of sermons. Yet, although he lived by this benighted declaration, he was known as a Christian gentleman—of the kind whose hands were never so tightly clasped in prayer that they could not reach his pocket.
Jane now looked up as, with a delighted laugh, the Colonel leaned back; while Brent, in pretended irritation, mussed the chess men in disorder over the board.
"Fifteen moves, sir!" the old gentleman cried. "That's a beat you'll not forget!"
"It's the worst I ever had," Brent admitted. "You can't do it again!"
"I'll bet you I can, sir," the old gentleman declared, then whispering, "after a julep!"
"Whew!" Brent gave a long, clear, incredulous whistle, and called over to Jane: "Did you hear this boaster?"
But the whistle had a more subtle intention than emphasis, and within doors Uncle Zack, dozing in a kitchen chair, became at once active. This newly inaugurated signal immeasurably pleased the Colonel, who could not himself whistle.
"Do either of you know it's Sunday?" she asked.
"By Jove, now, it isn't, is it?" Brent looked at her in concern.
"And I'm going to church," she continued. "Would you like to go, Colonel?"
The old gentleman cleared his throat and began searching closely over the table for his glasses, which weren't there.
"I should say he's just about crazy to go," Brent watched him. "Don't speak for a minute, or he'll die of joy. How ingenious you are in planning his amusements!"
"More amusement is coming, I should judge, from the dulcetness of your whistle," she drily observed.
The men exchanged sheepish glances. Brent laughed.
"Admitted," he said. "But it was not you we were trying to deceive. If you tell us how you knew, I'll tie the Colonel on a horse and let you lead him to the altar. She must be a witch, sir!"
"She is, indeed. A charming one, who bewitched me the very first moment I laid eyes on her—and there's been no change in my condition since, madam," the old gentleman bowed to her with courtly grace.
"Then," Brent tried to corner him, "until you admit yourself de-charmed, church this morning is your only alternative."
"It would be a very good place for your soul, young man," he sternly retorted. "When I was a gay spark, ladies of—of almost the same loveliness," he bowed again, "were kept busy weeks in advance accepting my invitations to church, sir! The very rocks and rills of our beloved Commonwealth would strike me dead, sir,if I had permitted so enchanting an opportunity to escape!" And once more he bowed low before her.
"Mistress Jane," Brent sprang to his feet and bent double with an abandon that the Colonel's old bones would have resented, "will you adorn my buggy as far as the meetin'-house?"
"You overwhelm me," she murmured.
"And, will you tell us, O gracious bewitcher, how you knew what I was whistling for?"
"Help me up and I will," her hands went out to him. "When you whistled, Uncle Zack yelled: 'I'se fixin' 'em!'"
"I shall have that nigger shot," the Colonel cried in delight. "Suppose poor, dear Lizzie had been here!"
"What time shall we start?" she turned to Brent, seeing Zack on his way from the house, and somehow feeling that she could not stay just then. Her aversion for this was increasing. She did not know how firmly, how stubbornly, Brent had begun to shut down on his own indulgences.
"Any time you say," he agreeably answered. "Is it town?"
"No, the convent chapel."
"But—er—you'll forgive my wretched memory if I can't seem to recall when these things take up?"
"Five o'clock, over there," she smiled.
"Five! I never heard of such an hour for church, did you, Colonel?"
"Most certainly, sir!" His affirmation suggested along personal acquaintance with such matters. "They always begin at five!"
Jane gave him a quick, twinkling glance, but only added:
"I thought the vesper service might be cooler, and a pleasanter drive. We ought to start a little after four, don't you think so? And we'll take Bip, and Dale."
"I wouldn't stop there," Brent moodily suggested.
"I think that will be enough for one day," she laughed. "They're the principal ones whom—not who ought to go, you understand, but whom I want to go."
"But Bip is too young," he protested.
"'Suffer the little children—'" she said prettily.
"He'll go to sleep!"
"Then you may hold him."
"Maybe he'll snore!"
"Then you have my permission to choke him," she laughed.
Yet, he was very much in a pout, and staring gloomily at the ground.
"You'll be awfully crowded," he said at last, "with Dale in the buggy, too!"
"We'll take the surrey."
"And he'll be bored stiff!"
"Not from hearing complimentary things said to me," she gently rebuked him.
"Oh, Jane, be a sport and let's go alone! I'm worth saving, ain't I, Colonel?"
"You can't prove it by me, you rogue," the old gentleman asserted.
"I may think about it," she compromised, smiling over her shoulder as she turned away.
They drew up to the table and arranged the chess board. Zack stood waiting for the goblets, having no intention to leave these treacherous exhibits again at large should a spirit of fatigue overtake the players. So there was a prolonged pause while the men fortified themselves for the coming fray, and when the Colonel noisily sucked the very last drop through the cooling ice—and took a piece of this in his mouth to crunch—he leaned back with a sigh of satisfaction. Zack, as he walked slowly away, also sighed, but it held a curious mixture of perplexity and anticipation: perplexity, because Brent had scarcely drunk a third of his julep, and anticipation for an obvious reason.
"All the same," the engineer announced when they were alone, "Bip is too young!"
"Of course, he's too young," the Colonel heartily agreed. "Anybody's too young, or too old, or too something, when it comes to being third person on such a pleasant prospect. I would stand no intrusion, sir!"
"I didn't mean just that," Brent flushed.
"Certainly not, you altruistic and good natured liar," the old gentleman chuckled. "Come, sir; here goes pawn to King four! Now be on your guard!"
"To King four," Brent replied, leaning over and pushing out his own King's pawn.
They had not been playing many minutes when the Colonel, pausing to light a cigar, looked up with a start of surprise. Brent wheeled about and there stood TomHewlet, swaying awkwardly and weeping. It was uncanny the way he had approached so near without being heard.
"Well, Tom," the Colonel asked sharply, "what do you want?"
"I just want to call it quits, Cunnel. I ain't done nuthin' to be locked up for!"
"You're very drunk," the old gentleman thundered. "I'm surprised you would approach my place in such a condition!"
"There wasn't no other way, Cunnel. I'm sorry, I am, 'bout what I aimed to do—an' I won't no moh, if Mister McElroy'll let up! I'm a hard workin' man, an' got a big fam'ly to keer for!"
"Do you know what he's talking about?" the old gentleman asked Brent.
"I told you some of it the other day—but I think an approaching delirium tremens is partially responsible for this!"
"Ah, so you did! Tom, you tried to practice blackmail!" The Colonel's eyes were glowering.
"But I ain't no moh," Hewlet turned his back and began anew to weep. "Don't do nuthin' to me!"
Brent motioned the Colonel to let him speak.
"Tom," he said, "Mister Dulany and I have been looking for you, to buy your farm, so you can move to Missouri where your brother is." He paused so Tom could grasp this. "You don't have to sell, and we won't force you against your will." He paused again. "But if you stay here, and want me to let up on you, you'llhave to stop drinking; and report to the Colonel every day for a month—"
"For six months," the Colonel corrected.
"—for six months," Brent continued, "so he can see if you're sober. Also, you must plow up your weeds and get the farm in shape. Either of these plans is open for twenty-four hours. Take tonight to think it over, and tell us tomorrow."
"Gawd, I'll go to Missoury if I can sell the farm!" he cried.
"That's better. How much is it worth, Colonel?"
"It's good land," the old gentleman answered. "I'll give a hundred and fifty an acre, because it adjoins me."
"How much is it mortgaged for?" Brent turned to Hewlet, who seemed surprised at the question.
"Nuthin'," he doggedly answered.
"You might as well tell the truth; we're bound to know it!"
"Nuthin', I said," he looked shiftily down. "'N' I don't take no hund'ed 'n' fifty a acre, neither—from no railroad!"
"The same old hold-up," Brent murmured across the chess board.
But the Colonel, still obsessed by the old aching worry, was just then engrossed with another thought. Clearing his throat, he said—trying to do it casually:
"By the way, Tom, where is Tusk Potter?"
"I don't know, Cunnel; I ain't seen 'im for a 'coon's age."
"Oh, nothing at all, nothing at all," the old gentlemanhastily added, as though Tom had asked why he wanted to know.
"Well, how about our proposition?" Brent inquired.
"It's wu'th three hund'ed a acre," he grumbled.
"One-fifty is our price, Tom. Think it over before we change our minds!"
"Aw, hell," he sneered, "you can't bluff me!"
"Get off of my place, you drunken scoundrel!" the Colonel, towering with rage, sprang up reaching for his cane.
But Tom, panic stricken, had turned and fled.
Sighing, the old gentleman dropped back into his chair.
"Let me see—where are we!" he said, looking closely at the board. "You'd moved your Queen to her Bishop's second, hadn't you? Ah, yes! Then my Bishop takes your Bishop's pawn, and checks. Now, sir, watch out! I'm coming after you in good earnest!"
As it happened no one intruded upon the drive to church. When four o'clock came around Bip had taken Mac down on the creek with Bob and Mesmie, to hunt under the stones for crawfish.
The Colonel disappeared shortly after dinner for his nap, and Brent sat alone under the trees indulging several rather curious speculations. His eyes were closed, though in no sense was he sleepy. He was thinking of a force; a new, an entirely new force; a perplexing force that each day more determinedly gripped and held him. He had at last taken his character into his hands and was contemplating its remodelling.
There comes a time to the life of every man when heshall sit in hollow solitude and gaze upon the error of his way. To some this may be at the bud, with every outlook forward; to others, not till they are well along the path of yellow leaves. For it is not man who makes this moment. Circumstance, pure and simple, leads to his sublime communion, and circumstance is of the earth. A man may sin, and keep on sinning with never a qualm, till reality sends in the bill. Then it is as if he had stepped upon a corpse at night, and he is shocked beyond his strength to move. Whether this be the specter of public shame, of physical decay, or the ruin of a fellow, and however far along the highway of his life it may appear, there still must come that hour to each who has unworthily yielded, when he stands appalled; that hour when he raises eyes and arms in mute despair up, up—somewhere. This is God's hour; then is where His mercy conquers. But grim realities are not required to touch all hearts. It does not need the jail, it does not need the fiery lash of a ruined woman's pleading, it does not need the death-bed of one beloved; because the Kingdom of Earth is such that just a pair of eyes, a damask cheek, the murmuring of a name at twilight, may grow beneath some magic dew into a power that holds one hand upon the Throne and with the other meets mankind. Love!—another son of God; sometimes welcomed, sometimes cherished, sometimes flattered, sometimes crucified!
Brent clenched his teeth. In years his own outlook was across the sprouting fields of life, but to his hope of winning Jane he could gaze only back along the pathof yellow leaves. He realized how truly this was of his own doing, and unsparingly laid the blame at its rightful place. With whatever sincerity he might curse his follies, with whatever fierce pleasure he would strangle them for her sake, their abandonment now could not weld that link which would have united the chains of their destinies. Too late! The utter hopelessness of this made him groan aloud, as he had the first night they met in the circle of cedars; then, from a false and poisonous pride; now, from humility and a man's honest grief.
The sound of wheels brought him back to the time and place. He looked up, shaking off the spell; but his hands were tightly shut, as if he might be gripping the last tatters of abandoned hope. With a quick gesture he made as though to wrap them close about him, and then smiled at the realism into which his earnestness was leading.
Jane was standing on the porch, waiting; and a darky had brought around Brent's own horse and buggy. Some time before this, loud calls from the house and faintly returned answers from the creek had apprized him of Bip's shameless truancy; but he was fully expecting the mountaineer to go with them until this very minute when he saw what character of vehicle stood before the house. He arose and crossed to her, casually asking:
"Where's Dale?"
Two lights crossed the lenses of her eyes, but no timer could have caught them.
"Where?" she asked. "Who knows? He's so utterly oblivious to everything, living in an age so longbefore the Christian era, that it would be a paradox to take him into a latter-day church."
While speaking she had come down the steps. He helped her in and settled himself comfortably beside her.
"Did you notice how he flew from the dinner table straight back to his books?" she asked, as they turned out of the gate. "When I looked over his shoulder a while ago he was with Cicero again. He adores Cicero!"
"I'm beginning to like old Cis myself," Brent forced a grin and let the horse out a step. "Never knew he could be such a good friend till now. Crawfish and Cicero!—henceforth my amulets!"
But he was not happy, and she knew it. To deceive her he was play-acting, and she knew this, too.
The sun lay behind them, and the afternoon was rich with every enticing charm. The chapel, in modest seclusion, stood off in the valley, and was reached from Arden by a typical country lane—as narrow as it was noiseless—rising and dipping through miles and miles of rolling fields and woods. Its sides were thickly woven vines, and younger trees and shrubs, which gave out a woody fragrance; especially in the cooler, damper places sloping down to meet and pass beneath some small, clear stream.
This valley was in its most languid mood. Bluegrass stood ripe in the pastures, each stem tilting wearily beneath a burden of seed. Wheat was in the shock, and its sheaves leaned against each other as though fatigued with having brought so large a yield; while the golden fields of stubble lent a softer tone to the sturdy corn, orthe less mature hemp and tobacco. It was a season when at morning the harvester's call, or at noon the wood-dove's melancholy note, or at evening the low of Jersey herds, were irresistible invitations to poetic drowsiness.
Brent slowly turned and looked at her. Up to this time he had been speaking only of indifferent things.
"I think it is all I can do to keep from making love to you!"
Her heart gave a bound as she recognised, not the bantering, but a very serious, Brent had spoken. Yet she managed, even if a trifle late, to answer frankly:
"You already do so many useless things;—I wouldn't, Brent!"
"I call that a diplomatic master-stroke," he smiled. "But it's insufficient."
"Then appropriate," she added.
"I accept your judgment," he slowly replied, "because your judgment is fair. Insufficient is the very word, and appropriate to everything I've ever done, or have a right to expect from you. I was thinking it out this afternoon before we started. So you've rebuked me, Lady Wonderful, better than you know."
She was not quite following this—rather was she hoping he would stop. The afternoon was too enticing—too charged with a dangerous spell. She saw warning signals being waved at her from all directions. The deep, sincere tone of his voice was one; two little ground squirrels watching them from a mossy ledge of rock—two white butterflies fanning a lace-weed bloom—two majestic birds, with moveless, outstretched wings, weaving graceful aerial figures far up in the sky—made only a part of the afternoon which spoke to her. Everything which rested in the charm of this day, waved to her sweet warnings!
"Do you know what the country is saying?" she asked quickly.
"What the country is saying?" he repeated after her.
"Yes, this country, all about us, everywhere! It's telling me something, and I just wondered if you could be getting the message, too."
He pretended to be listening.
"I can hear a brown thrasher warbling to me how much we love you! Is that what you mean?"
"I wish you would be serious," she said—being, in fact, very far from the wish. "The day is so lovely, so abundant with a nameless something which comes to so few days, that it's asking if you won't try not to spoil it with silly misrelations. Can't you hear it, now?"
"There's no doubt about my hearing it now," he gloomily admitted. "I suppose we should have brought Dale, after all!"
"Don't spoil it in another way," she laughed. "You're such a—I was about to say kid, but that's slangy, and I detest it. You're slangy—awfully, Brent—aren't you!"
In spite of himself his face relaxed into a grin. There was no resisting Jane's appeals, and if she wanted now to be quiet, or talk about anything under the sun, at this admirable day's request, he was, for the time being, willing. He told her this, and it is one of the anomalies ofhuman infelicity that she felt a tinge of disappointment at his ready acquiescence.
"I've always loved this lane," she murmured, after not too long a pause. "Isn't it the soul of peace?"
"Peace? How can you?" he looked down at her. "See the struggle! Honeysuckle, trumpet-vine, poison-ivy, wild-grape, alder—and everything else which I can't name—crowding and tangling and choking out each other's lives! You call it peace?"
They had reached a crest of a hill and, down in front of them half a mile on, stood the chapel, so snugly placed that only its little cross could be seen above the tree-tops, summoning the indolent country-side to prayer. With her eyes resting on it, she answered:
"The approach to your devotions seems to have made you pessimistic."
"My devotions are here, at my side," he said in a low voice. "And my pessimism is caused by the true glass of my nature being held honestly before my eyes. It started cutting up this way today after you left us, and ever since I've not been able to spare myself. I don't know how to make you understand it—perhaps you don't want to understand it—but the two sides of this lane seem so peculiarly expressive of my life that I see no peace in them at all."
"The lane might not be so attractive without a medley of rioting things," she answered dreamily. "Yet, it could be improved by cutting out the poison-ivy!"
"If that were cut out of the lane I mean, there wouldbe little left. It seems to have taken possession of—of my lane!"
"Are there not gardeners," she smiled a wee bit tenderly up at him, "who know how it could be done?"
"But I have no gardener." The wistfulness in his voice checked her smile.
They were at the chapel now, and he drove beneath the grove of trees, helped her down, and then unchecked and tied the horse near a few others already there. She waited. Slowly they went up to the silent door, but on its threshold he touched her arm.
"May I find a gardener?" He was looking down with a strong appeal in his eyes.
"For your sake, do," she hurriedly whispered, and went in.
They were early, and the chapel seemed to be dozing in a cool gloom which was softly set in motion as she glided, like a graceful shadow, up the aisle. He followed with more sturdy strides. So very quiet and vault-like was the place, that each worshipper there before them could be heard turning to see who came; and when he finally stretched back in the pew of her selection, the creaking of its heavy walnut joints let loose the echoes of a hundred years.
She had knelt, but he sat back watching her. The slowly westering sun, piercing the outside branches and filtering a gleam of rose through one of the gothic windows, touched her raised face that was in no need of color. And while she gazed upon the crucifix, he lookedtenderly upon her who was typifying the most lovely purity he had to that time known.
A man entered, carrying a babe, and demurely followed by his wife. They sat in the pew across; the woman coughed, and again the nave, the ceiling and the altar were filled with hollow echoes. But other worshippers now came, and their arrival seemed fully to arouse the little chapel for its service, dispelling its ghostly sounds for the rustlings of life.
In the midst of this Brent picked up a book of prayer, and on its first page wrote: "And not for your sake?"—then passed it to her with the pencil.
She read it, closed the place on the tip of her gloved finger, and slowly raised her eyes full again upon the crucifix. The pencil slipped from her lap and rolled beneath the pew, but when he moved to recover it she shook her head;—and whatever the answer might have been remained a secret between herself and the torn Christ.
Someone moved behind the chancel rail, touching with a lighted taper the wick of each holy candle until the altar sparkled with a score of tiny flames. She thought of his altar—his secret altar, and its tiny taper flame.
Now the man across from them laid his sleeping baby in its mother's lap, quietly and awkwardly arose, and tiptoed out. He appeared again in the choir loft, removed his coat and waistcoat, spat upon his hands and grasped the bellows handle. Over this once, twice, thrice he bent, as though bowing before a symbol of the Trinity, and throughout the church fluttered a low, trembling sigh of the organ, as it breathed its first deep breaths of lifesince the morning service. It was not a mighty instrument, but the nun who demurely came and sat upon the bench, now touched the keys, and its harmonies held the little chapel in the grove enthralled.
The sun was almost down as they turned homeward. It was the same drive, except that the cool of evening was in the air, and a heavier fragrance came from the tangles on either side.
"Forgive me if I'm quiet," she said. "I haven't been to church for so shamefully long, and it so recalls the sweet years spent across there in the convent, that—that I suppose I'm moody."
"I believe I understand almost how you feel. But do you know what I thought when the light was shining through that window on your face?"
"Oh, please, Brent," her voice trembled, "I'm not a bit ready for you to tell me anything you think about me—ever!"
He saw a mist in her eyes, and for awhile kept silent.
"I wonder why it is," he gently asked, "that men stand in such awe of a girl's tears?"
"It isn't the tears, I believe," she tried to laugh, "but intuitively in awe of the mysterious things which cause them. Women must be very silly about it. I know I'm getting to be, for in all my life I've never wanted to cry so many times as this summer. Maybe it's nerves. But sometimes we do feel so helpless that just the sheer weight of sorrow, or the buoyancy of happiness, will sort of press tears from our eyes, in spite of ourselves."
"Which of those hidden forces has caused these?"
"Neither," she looked brightly up at him. "There aren't any tears, you see."
After they had gone another mile in silence, he drily observed:
"Church hasn't left a very salubrious effect on us. It's made me feel as desolate as a haunted house, and the only impression I brought away is that a man must spit on his hands to pump an organ. Funny sort of a stunt, wasn't it—having him come up out of the audience that way?"
"It didn't seem strange to me, Brent. You're probably too literal."
"There isn't such a tremendous scope for the poetic, when a rube wiggles out of his clothes right in the pulpit, you might say!"
"Audience and pulpit," she gaily cried. "What a born churchman you are! But, Brent," her voice grew wondrously sincere, "there was something more to it: the simplicity with which that farmer, whose boots have been in the soil for six days, could merge so actually into those things which make for ideality! How few of us who cannot play an organ would deign to offer ourselves as pumpers for its prosy bellows! Think of the music we are denying ourselves, and others about us, merely because we lack the kind of spirit to take off our coats and," she looked whimsically up at him, "spit on our hands before the world!"
She knew that he was listening, but little suspected how much her words had moved him until he spoke. There was a depth of passion in his voice which she had neverheard except upon that one day when he called her as she was going toward the house.
"What eyes have you? To what white heights do you dare climb? You seem literally to push away the clouds and gaze straight through that dome which marks the farthest limit of my imaginings! You seem to tear it with your hands, and look through!—you put your lips to the rift and whisper with the angels!—and you always bring a little something back which does men good! Oh, Jane, Jane! How honestly I wish—"
But he did not finish the wish, and in another few minutes they were at Flat Rock, with Bob welcoming them and helping her to alight.