CHAPTER II
ONa day in early spring Alan Wayne was summoned to Red Hill. Snow still hung in the crevices of East Mountain. On the hill the ashes, after the total eclipse of winter, were meekly donning pale green. The elms of Elm House were faintly outlined in verdure, and stood like empty sherry-glasses waiting for warm wine. Farther down the road the maples stretched out bare, black limbs whose budding tufts of leaves served only to emphasize the nakedness of the trees. Only the firs, in a phalanx, scoffed at the general spring cleaning, and looked old and sullen in consequence.
The colts, driven by Alan Wayne, flashed over the brim of Red Hill to the level top. Coachman Joe’s jaw was hanging in awe, and so had hung since Mr. Alan had taken the reins. For the first time in their five years of equal life the colts had felt the cut of a whip, not in anger, but as a reproof for breaking. Coachman Joe had braced himself for the bolt, his hands itching to snatch the reins. But there had been no bolting, only a sudden settling down to business.
“Couldn’t of got here quicker if he’d let ’em bolt,” said he in subsequent description to the stable-hand and the cook. He snatched up a pail of water and poured it steadily on the ground. “Jest like that. He knew what was in the colts the minute he laid hands on ’em, and when he pulls ’em up at the barn door there wasn’t a drop left in their buckets, was there, Arthur?”
“Nary a drop,” said Arthur, stable-hand.
“And his face,” continued the coachman. “Most times Mr. Alan has no eyes to speak of, but to-day and that time Miss Nance stuck him with the hat-pin—’member, cook?—his eyes spread like a fire and eat up his face. This is a black day for the Hill. Somethin’ ’s going to happen. You mark me.”
In truth Mr. Alan Wayne had been summoned in no equivocal terms and, for all his haste, it was with nervous step he approached the house.
There was no den, no sanctuary beyond a bedroom, for any one at Maple House. No one brought work to Red Hill save such work as fitted into swinging hammocks and leafy bowers. Library opened into living-room and hall, hall into drawing-room, and drawing-room into the cool shadows and high lights of half-hidden mahogany and china closets. And here and there and everywhere doors opened out on to the Hill. It was a place where summer breezes entered freely and played, sure of a way out. Hence it was that Maple House as a whole became a tomb on that memorable spring morning when the colts first felt a master hand—a tomb where Wayne history was to be made and buried as it had been before.
Maple House sheltered a mixed brood. J. Y. Wayne, seconded by Mrs. J. Y., was the head of the family. Their daughter, Nance Sterling, and her babies represented the direct line, but the orphans, Alan Wayne and Clematis McAlpin, were on an equal footing as children of the house. Alan was the only child of J. Y.’s dead brother. Clematis was also of Wayne blood, but so intricately removed that her exact relation to the rest of the tribe was never figured out twice to the same conclusion. Old Captain Wayne, retired from the regular army, was an uncle in a different degree to every generation of Waynes. He was the only man on Red Hill who dared call for a whisky and soda when he wanted it.
Drawn by Reginald Birch“ALONG THE RIBBON OF THE SINGLE ROAD SCURRIED AN OVERLADEN DONKEY”
Drawn by Reginald Birch
“ALONG THE RIBBON OF THE SINGLE ROAD SCURRIED AN OVERLADEN DONKEY”
When Alan reached the house, Mrs. J. Y. was in her garden across the road, surveying winter’s ruin, and Nance with her children had borne the captain off to the farm to see that oft-repeated wonder and always welcome forerunner of plenty, the quite new calf.
Clematis McAlpin, shy and long-limbed, just at the awkward age when woman misses being either boy or girl, had disappeared. Where, nobody knew. She might be bird’s-nesting in the swamp or crying over the “Idylls of the King” in the barn loft. Certainly she was not in the house. J. Y. Wayne had seen to that. Stern and rugged of face, he sat in the library alone and waited for Alan. He heard a distant screen-door open and slam. Steps echoed through the lonely house. Alan came and stood before him.
Alan was a man. Without being tall, he looked tall. His shoulders did not seem broad till you noticed the slimness of his hips. His neck looked too thin till you saw the strong set of his small head. In a word, he had the perfect proportion that looks frail and is strong. As he stood before his uncle, his eyes grew dull. They were slightly blood-shot in the corners, and with their dullness the clear-cut lines of his face seemed to take on a perceptible blur.
J. Y. began to speak. He spoke for a long quarter of an hour, and then summed up all he had said in a few words:
“I’ve been no uncle to you, Alan; I’ve been a father. I’ve tried to win you, but you were not to be won. I’ve tried to hold you, but it takes more than a Wayne to hold a Wayne. You have taken the bit with a vengeance. You have left such a wreckage behind you that we can trace your life back to the cradle by your failures, all the greater for your many successes. You’re the first Wayne that ever missed his college degree. I never asked what they expelled you for, and I don’t want to know. It must have been bad, bad, for the old school is lenient, and proud of men that stand as high as you stood in your classes and on the field. Money—I won’t talk of money, for you thought it was your own.”
For the first time Alan spoke.
“What do you mean, sir?” With the words his slight form straightened, his eyes blazed, there was a slight quivering of the thin nostrils, and his features came out clear and strong.
J. Y. dropped his eyes.
“I may have been wrong, Alan,” he said slowly, “but I’ve been your banker without telling you. Your father didn’t leave much. It saw you through junior year.”
Alan placed his hands on the desk between them and leaned forward.
“How much have I spent since then—in the last three years?”
J. Y. kept his eyes down.
“You know more or less, Alan. We won’t talk about that. I was trying to hold you, but to-day I give it up. I’ve got one more thing to tell you, though, and there are mighty few people that know it. The Hill’s battles have never entered the field of gossip. Seven years before you were born, my father—your grandfather—turned me out. It was from this room. He said I had started the name of Wayne on the road to shame and that I could go with it. He gave me five hundred dollars. I took it and went. I sank low with the name, but in the end I brought it back, and to-day it stands high on both sides of the water. I’m not a happy man, as you know, for all that. You see, though I brought the name back in the end, I never saw your grandfather again, and he never knew.
“Here are five hundred dollars. It’s the last money you’ll ever have from me; but whatever you do, whatever happens, remember this: Red Hill does not belong to a Lansing or to a Wayne or to an Elton. It is the eternal mother of us all. Broken or mended, Lansings and Waynes have come back to the Hill through generations. City of refuge or harbor of peace, it’s all one to the Hill. Remember that.”
He laid the crisp notes on the desk. Alan half turned toward the door, but stepped back again. His eyes and face were dull once more. He picked up the bills and slowly counted them.
“I shall return the money, sir,” he said and walked out.
He went to the stables and ordered the pony and cart for the afternoon train. As he came out he saw Nance, the children, and the captain coming slowly up Long Lane from the farm. He dodged back into the barn through the orchard and across the lawn. Mrs. J. Y. stood in the garden directing the relaying of flower-beds. Alan made a circuit. As he stepped into the road, swift steps came toward him. He wheeled, and faced Clem coming at full run. He turned his back on her and started away. The swift steps stopped so suddenly that he looked around. Clem was standing stock-still, one awkward, lanky leg half crooked as though it were still running. Her skirts were absurdly short. Her little fists, brown and scratched, pressed her sides. Her dark hair hung in a tangled mat over a thin, pointed face. Her eyes were large and shadowy. Two tears had started from them, and were crawling down soiled cheeks. She was quivering all over like a woman struck.
Alan swung around, and strode up to her. He put one arm about her thin form and drew her to him.
“Don’t cry, Clem,” he said, “don’t cry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
For one moment she clung to him and buried her face against his coat. Then she looked up and smiled through wet eyes.
“Alan, I’msoglad you’ve come!”
Alan caught her hand, and together they walked down the road to the old church. The great door was locked. Alan loosened the fastening of a shutter, sprang in through the window, and drew Clem after him. They climbed to the belfry. From the belfry one saw the whole world, with Red Hill as its center. Alan was disappointed. The Hill was still half naked, almost bleak. Maple House andElm House shone brazenly white through budding trees. They looked as though they had crawled closer to the road during the winter. The Firs, with its black border of last year’s foliage, looked funereal. Alan turned from the scene, but Clem’s little hand drew him back.
Drawn by Reginald Birch“HER SKIRTS WERE ABSURDLY SHORT. HER LITTLE FISTS, BROWN AND SCRATCHED, PRESSED HER SIDES”
Drawn by Reginald Birch
“HER SKIRTS WERE ABSURDLY SHORT. HER LITTLE FISTS, BROWN AND SCRATCHED, PRESSED HER SIDES”
Clematis McAlpin had happened between generations. Alan, Nance, Gerry Lansing, and their friends had been too old for her, and Nance’s children were too young. There were Elton children of about her age, but for years they had been abroad. Consequently, Clem had grown to fifteen in a sort of loneliness not uncommon with single children who can just remember the good times the half-generation before them used to have by reason of their numbers. This loneliness had given her in certain ways a precocious development while it left her subdued and shy even when among her familiars. But she was shy without fear, and her shyness itself had a flower-like sweetness that made a bold appeal.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Alan?” she said. “Yesterday it was cold and it rained and the Hill was black—black, like the Firs. To-day all the trees are fuzzy with green, and it’s warm. Yesterday was so lonely, and to-day you are here.”
Alan looked down at the child with glowing eyes.
“And, do you know, this summer Gerry Lansing and Mrs. Gerry are coming. I’ve never seen her since that day they were married. Do you think it’s all right for me to call her Mrs. Gerry, like everybody does?”
Alan considered the point gravely.
“Yes, I think that’s the best thing you could call her.”
“Perhaps when I’m really grown up I can call her Alix. I think Alix is such aprettyname, don’t you?”
Clem flashed a look at Alan, and he nodded; then, with an impulsive movement she drew close to him in the half-wheedling way of woman about to ask a favor.
“Alan, they let me ride old Dubbs when he isn’t plowing. The old donkey she’s so fat now she can hardly carry the babies. Some day when you’re not in agreathurry will you let me ride with you?”
Alan started down the ladder.
“Some day, perhaps, Clem,” he muttered. “Not this summer. Come on.” When they had left the church, he drew out his watch and started. “Run along and play, Clem.” He left her and hurried to the barn.
Joe was waiting.
“Have we time for the long road, Joe?” asked Alan as he climbed into the cart.
“Oh, yes, sir, especially if you drive, Mr. Alan.”
“I don’t want to drive. Let him go and jump in.”
The coachman gave the pony his head, climbed in, and took the reins. The cart swung out, and down the lane.
“Alan! Alan!”
Alan recognized Clem’s voice and turned. She was racing across a corner of the pasture. Her short skirts flounced madly above her ungainly legs. She tried to take the low stone wall in her stride. Her foot caught in a vine, and she pitched headlong into the weeds and grass at the roadside.
Alan leaped from the cart and picked her up, quivering, sobbing, and breathless.
“Alan,” she gasped, “you’re not going away?”
Alan half shook her as he drew her thin body close to him.
“Clem,” he said, “you mustn’t. Do you hear? You mustn’t. Do you think Iwantto go away?”
Clem stifled her sobs and looked up at him with a sudden gravity in her elfish face. She threw her bare arms around his neck.
“Good-by, Alan.”
He stooped and kissed her.