THE MIRACLE OF BLOSSOMING
Thebeginning of Lent was the end of all the social gaieties and most of the girls who had flittered through the season with Lloyd fluttered away like a bevy of scattered butterflies to various resorts on the Florida coast. Kitty departed to make her long-talked-of visit to Gay in San Antonio, Katie Mallard went with an invalid aunt to Biloxi, and Lloyd came back to the country. She was almost as much alone as she had been that winter when she had not been allowed to return to Warwick Hall after the Christmas vacation.
True, Allison was at home after her interesting trip abroad, with the MacIntyres, and Lloyd spent many hours at The Beeches. But Raleigh Claiborne's sister from Washington was there on a visit part of the time, and Raleigh himself made several flying trips, and although Allison's engagement made her doubly interesting to the younger girls,it seemed to rise up as a sort of wall between them and their old intimacy. She had so many new interests now that she did not enter quite so heartily into the old ones.
So it came about that Lloyd fell quite naturally into her former habit of dropping in to see Mrs. Bisbee and Mrs. Apwell and all the other old ladies, who welcomed her with open arms. One blowy afternoon in March she took her embroidery and went to sit with Mrs. Bisbee awhile, beside the window that Mrs. Walton had laughingly dubbed the "window in Thrums." The old lady, growing chatty and confidential over her quilt-piecing, seemed so unusually companionable, that Lloyd remarked:
"It really seems as if I'm catching up to you all, Mrs. Bisbee. As I get oldah everybody else gets youngah. Why, this wintah mothah has been just like a sistah. I had no idea she could be so much fun. We do everything togethah now. I help with the housekeeping so that she can hurry through with it early in the mawning and then we practise, piano and harp, or she plays the accompaniments for my songs. And then we read French awhile and we go for long walks and we discuss every subject undah the sun, just as Betty and I used to do. And we plan things to do in the deliciouslylong cosy evenings—surprises, you know, for grandfathah and Papa Jack. I believe I'm enjoying this pah't of my yeah bettah than the first."
Mrs. Bisbee looked out of the window wistfully at nothing.
"That's the way that it used to be here when daughter was at home," she sighed. "Sometimes I think if I'd had the planning of the universe I'd have fixed it differently. Just when your little girl is grown up to be a comfort and a joy, and the best company in the world, some man steps in and takes her away from you. I had daughter to myself only one short year after she got through school. Then she married. Of course it would have been selfish to have stood in the way of her happiness, yet—"
She shook her head with another sigh, and left the sentence unfinished. "I have often wondered how I could have stood it if her marriage had been an unhappy one, like poor Amy Cadwell's. You know her."
"Only slightly," answered Lloyd, recalling a face that always aroused her interest; a face with thin compressed lips and watchful defiant eyes, that seemed to have grown so from the long guarding of a family skeleton.
It was not gossip the way Mrs. Bisbee told thestory, only the plain recital of a sad bit of human history that had fallen under her observation. The cloud of it rested on Lloyd's face as she listened.
"That's the worst thing about growing up," she exclaimed bitterly when Mrs. Bisbee paused, "the finding out that everybody isn't good and happy as I used to think they were. Lately, just these last few months that I've been out in society I've heard so much of people's jealousies and rivalries and meannesses and insincerity, that I'd sometimes be tempted to doubt everybody, if it were not for my own family and some of the people out in this little old Valley that I've trusted all my life.
"There's Minnie Wayland, whose engagement was announced last month to Mistah Maybrick. I don't see how she dares marry when her own fathah and mothah made such a failure of it, that they can't live togethah, and Mistah Maybrick's wife got a divorce from him on account of some dreadful scandal the papahs were full of. I couldn't go up and wish her joy when the othah girls did. She talked about it in such a flippant mattah of business way, as if millions atoned for everything. One of the girls laughed at me for taking it so seriously, and said that matches aren't made in heaven nowadays, and that I'd have to get ovah my old-fashioned Puritanicalnotions and ideals if I expected to keep up with the sma'ht set. I thought for awhile that maybe it was only the sma'ht set who are that way, but what you've just told me about Mrs. Cadwell, and what I've heard lately about several families right in our own little neighbahhood, shows that it'salla bad old world, and these yeahs I've been thinking it so good I've been blind and ignorant. I suppose it's for the best, but I'm sorry sometimes that my eyes have been opened."
Mrs. Bisbee sighed again at her vehemence, and then quite unexpectedly piped up in a thin tremulous voice, with one of the songs of her youth. In a high minor key and full of quavers, it was so ridiculous that they both laughed.
"'I sat beneath a hollow tree,The blast it hollow blew.I thought upon the hollow world,And all its hollow crew.Ambition and its hollow schemes,The hollow hopes we follow,The world and all its hollow dreams—All hollow, hollow, hollow!'"
"That's the way it seems to you now," she said. "It's the reaction. But you mustn't let it make you pessimistic. When you get to feeling like that you'll have to do like old Abraham did, quit looking at allthe sinners in Sodom, and hunt around for the ten good men."
A whole row of Sunday-school lessons rose up in Mrs. Bisbee's mind. She had taught a class for thirty years in the vine-covered stone church whose spire she could see from her window, and Lloyd was used to her startling and unexpected application of Scripture texts.
"Or better still," she continued, "turn your back on entire Sodom, and look away to the plains where the faithful pitched their tents. The world is full of that kind of people to-day as it was then, the faithful who never join themselves to the idols of the heathen, but who tend their flocks and live good peaceful lives, and in all their journeyings, wherever they go,raise an altar to the Lord.
"It's the marriages that are founded onthatrock that never fall," she added reverently, her mind skipping from the tent-dwellers of Genesis to the wise builder in the parables with the ease of long practice. "'And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock.'"
"Sometimes just the wife's part is built on it. She's the only one that raises the altar. Sometimes the man is the one. Of course that's better than allbeing on the sand, and saves many a marriage from being the wreck it would have been if they'd left God out of it altogether. There! I never did think it all out in words quite as straight and clear and convincing to myself before. But I've often had the idea come to me when I'd be sitting in church looking at old Judge Moore's white head in the front pew, and thinking of the troublehe'dhad—the sorrow and accidents and misfortune that have beat onhishouse—and his faith standing up bigger and stronger than ever. Even his wife's death couldn't shake it."
Here she paused to lean nearer the window and nod and smile at some one driving past the house.
"It's Agnes Waring," she explained, as Lloyd looked up too late. "Or Agnes Bond, I should say. I never can remember to call her that, although she's been married over two years. Nowthere'sa happy marriage if ever there was one. The good old-fashioned sort like the Judge's, for they're both of the faithful. And do you know, my dear," she continued lightly, "I shall always hold you responsible for that. It was your making such a picture out of Agnes at that Martha Washington affair that brought her out of her shell and gave John Bond a chance to discover her. Miss Sarah thinks so too.By the way, she was here yesterday, and she told me that she has about consented to break up housekeeping and go to live with Agnes. It's so lonely for her since poor Miss Marietta died."
"Yes, I know," said Lloyd softly, thinking of the happy release that had come to Miss Marietta only the week before.
"Now, there was another case," resumed Mrs. Bisbee. "Nobody who saw her lying there in that beautiful dress that was to have been her wedding gown, and with that wonderful smile lighting up her face, could doubt what sort of a foundation she and Murray Cathright built on. That was a love that outlasted time and reached past even death into eternity itself. So don't you go to doubting that it doesn't exist any more, my dear."
Lloyd made one more call on the way home, stopping in at the Apwalls' with a magazine which Mrs. Bisbee had asked her to leave. Oddly enough the conversation turned to the same subject that she and Mrs. Bisbee had been discussing, but she went away in a very different mood from the one in which she left the first place. Old Mr. Apwall irritated her. He was in one of his sprightly facetious humours, when he delighted in making personal remarks in a teasing way.
"Well, my little lady," he began. "I hear you've had a whole string of admirers dangling in your wake this last year. Oh, you needn't deny it!" he added, shaking a finger at her in a way he considered playful. "We've heard the gossip about that young Texas fellow and that man from the North who nearly wore out his private car coming down to see you every whip-stitch and that old duck from Cincinnati that you refused. Refused them all! Oh, yes, you did, though. We heard about it. But you must remember the story of the lass who went through the forest looking for a straight stick. She kept throwing them away and throwing them away, getting harder to please at every step, until she'd gone through the whole forest, and had to pick up a crooked one at the last."
He laughed childishly at his own tale. "Look out that you don't get a crooked stick!"
Mrs. Apwall broke in sourly. "That's about all there is left lying around to choose from these days, tomynotion. But land sakes, Alexander, quit teasing the child. You talk as if all her chances are gone by and that she's doomed to be an old maid. The happiest lot of all,Isay, for there's no man living but has some crook in him, and most of 'emare all crookedness." She darted a warlike glance in his direction.
Lloyd left as soon as she could get away politely, wondering how they had heard so much of her affairs. She had refused both proposals, but she didn't know that any one outside the family knew anything about it. She wondered now if she had been over particular, for the crook that Mrs. Apwall insisted was in every man was only a slight one in the case of the owner of the private car, principally a matter of little refinements of speech and appearance which one had a right to expect of a man in his position and whose lack argued to a dainty girl like Lloyd some corresponding coarseness of nature. She had seen the other man slightly intoxicated one night at a theatre party, and could never quite forget the maudlin smile with which he poured out complimentary speeches by the wholesale.
The conversation at the Apwalls' brought back two very disagreeable occasions that she did not care to remember, and she made up her mind as she walked rapidly along towards home that it would be many a day before she went back there. They always gave her a gloomy impression of life.
The roads were so muddy that she had to take to the railroad track, stepping from one cross-tie toanother to avoid the sharp cinders between. Presently she found herself walking along the rail as she and Betty used to do on the way to school, balancing themselves with outstretched arms and counting how many steps they could take without slipping off. That was the way she and Rob had taken their walk the week before. It had been too muddy to go anywhere save along the track and they had walked the cross-ties for two miles in the face of a keen March wind. It was soft and balmy to-day, fluttering her hair and skirts in a playful way wholly unlike the boisterous flapping with which it had ushered in the month.
As she went along she peered into fence corners and up at the budding branches, happy over every sign of spring. If the roads were dry enough by the end of the week she and Rob intended to take a long tramp through Tanglewood in search of wild flowers. Anemones, harebells and spiderwort, foxgloves and dog-tooth violets, she knew them all, and the haunts where they came the earliest. She rarely gathered them, but went from one hiding-place to another for a glimpse of their shy faces, welcoming them as she would old friends. Lloyd loved the woods like an Indian, and one of the most satisfactory things about Rob's companionship wasthat he enjoyed them in the same way. Often they tramped along, scarcely saying a word a mile, finding the vibrant silences of the wood better than speech, and their mutual pleasure in them sufficient. After the winter in town, which had been an unusually cold and severe one, Lloyd longed for the beginning of spring, and from the call of the first robin and the budding of the first pussy-willow, spent as much time as possible out of doors.
April came in with a week of sunny days which hurried everything into luxuriant leafage and bud. When Rob came over one warm day for his usual Sunday afternoon walk, the whole world seemed so near the verge of bursting into full bloom that the very air was aquiver with its half-whispered secrets. Faint delicious odours stole up from the moist earth and the green growing things that crowded up out of it. Even the old locusts, conscious of a hidden wealth of sweetness which was soon to make a glory of their gnarled branches, nodded in sympathy with all that was young and riotous.
There were so many things to discover near at hand that Lloyd and Rob sauntered about the place first, before starting farther afield. There were spring beauties covering the little knolls in thepasture, like a fall of rosy snow. There were violets down by the ice-house, and early columbines starting out from the crevices of the rockery, holding up slender stems, whereon by and bye their airy blossoms would poise like a flock of light-winged butterflies. Lloyd, happy over every tiny frond she found unfolding itself in the fern bed, and every yellow dandelion that added its mite of gold to the young year's coffers, was so absorbed in her quest that she did not notice any difference in Rob's manner.
He walked along beside her, saying little, but with the same air of repressed eagerness that the whole April day seemed to share, as if like the locusts, he too was conscious of some inner wealth of bloom, some secret happiness whose time for sharing with the spring had not yet come. Once when he answered her enthusiastic discovery of a snowdrop with only an absent-minded monosyllable, she glanced up at him curiously. There was such a light in his eyes and such an unwonted tenderness in his expression that she wondered what he could be thinking about.
Across the pasture they went, down through the orchard where the peach-trees were turning pink and the clusters of tiny white plum buds were alreadycalling the bees, and around again to the beech-grove at the back of the house. It was a sweet flower-starred way, and Lloyd, bubbling over with the spirit of the hour, began to hum a happy little tune. Suddenly she stopped short in the path, turning her head slightly with the alert motion of a young fawn.
"What is it that smells so delicious?" she demanded. "It's almost heavenly, it's so sweet." Then after another long indrawn breath, "I'd think it was lilies-of-the-valley if it were any place but out heah on the edge of the wood-lot. Theycouldn'tbe way out heah. It must be some rare kind of wild flowah we've nevah discovered."
Leaving the path, they both began searching through the underbrush, pushing aside the dead leaves, and stooping now and then to examine some plant that did not seem entirely familiar.
"I'm positive it's awhiteflowah," declared Lloyd, closing her eyes and drawing in another breath of the faint, elusive fragrance. "Only a white flowah could have such an ethereal odah. It makes you think of white things, doesn't it? Snow crystals and angel wings! Oh, theyarelilies-of-the-valley!" she cried the next instant, stoopingover a bed of green from which Rob was raking the dead leaves with a stick.
"And don't you remembah now," she cried, her eyes like eager stars as she recalled the incident, "weplanted them heah ourselves, yeahs ago. I remembah digging up a whole apronful of some thrifty green things out of the flowah bed undah yoah mothah's window and lugging them ovah home all the way from Oaklea. You planted them in this place for me, because we thought we'd build a play-house heah, but aftahwards we changed our minds and built it by the grape-vine swing."
"It seems to me I do have a faint recollection of something of that sort," Rob answered. "I know I had a row with Unc' Andy once for digging up some of his pet borders and transplanting them over here, but I didn't know they were lilies."
"I suppose we didn't know because we nevah happened to wandah this way aftahward when they were in bloom," she continued, seating herself beside them and parting the thickest sheaths of green to reveal the perfect white flowers hidden away among them. Throwing aside her hat, she bent over to thrust her face into their midst, revelling in the purity and exquisite fragrance.
"There's nothing like them!" she exclaimed, sointent on the beauty of the tiny white bells that she did not see the expression with which Rob was looking down on her. There was a likeness between the two, he was thinking, the white-gowned girl and the white, white blossoms. They seemed spiritually akin. She touched one of the racemes softly.
"It's a miracle, isn't it!" she said in a low, reverent tone.
"A miracle that anything so sweet and white and perfect can suddenly come into being like this. It must have made those old lily bulbs wondah at themselves the first time they unfolded and woke up to find that such a heavenly thing had happened to them,—their hearts filled with this unearthly beauty and sweetness. Don't you suppose it made the whole world seem different, that they're not yet done wondering ovah the surprise and joy of it?"
She said it with a shy side-glance as if half-afraid he would laugh at such a childish fancy. Then she looked up startled, at the unexpected intensity of his answer.
"Iknowit made the whole world different," he said in such a strange exultant voice that she hardly knew it for Rob's. Dropping to one knee beside herhe singled out one of the lilies just beginning to burst from its sheath, and folded it close shut again in its green leaves.
"Look!" he said in the same exultant voice. "That's the way I've been for years, with something hidden away in my heart, unrecognized at first, then its sweetness only half-guessed at. And I kept it hid, and I thought never to tell you. But this morning in church it happened tome, this miracle of blossoming. I was sitting looking at you as I've done a thousand times before, and all of a sudden it came over me, just as sweet and unexpected as the bursting of these lilies, the knowledge that life is dear and the world beautiful becauseyouare in it. I think I've always held the thought of you in my heart, Lloyd, but it has come to such full flower now, dear, I couldn't hide it from you long, even if I tried. It seems to me now that all of my life must have been a gradual growing up for this one thing—to love you!"
Then his face, glowing with an eager gladness that almost transfigured it, paled a little before the mute misery in hers.
"Oh, Rob!" she stammered, finding it hard to believe that she had heard aright. "Don'ttell methat! I've always loved you deahly, but notthatway." Then as she saw all the light fade out of his eyes and his face settle into grim stern lines, she reached out both hands crying, "Oh, you deah old Bobby! I wouldn't have had it happen for the world! I can'tbeahto hurt you this way!"
Her eyes filled and two big tears splashed down on the hands she had thrust impulsively into his. With a gentleness that stirred her even more than his words had done, he bent and touched them with his lips.
"Never mind, dear," he said with a great tenderness that brought a sob up into her throat. "Don't think of it any more if it makes you unhappy. If you could have loved me it would have been heaven, but as you can't we won't talk about it any more. And—I still have my miracle. Nothing can change that."
She could not answer, the tears came crowding so fast, and as they walked back towards the house together all the brightness seemed to have dropped out of the April day. The sweetness of the lilies still followed them, however, and when she glanced around, wondering why, she saw that Rob still held the one he had knelt to pick for her. He twirled itabsently in his fingers, but as they parted at the steps he held it out to her with a smile so tender and full of understanding, that another sob came up in her throat and she took it without a word.
THE ROYAL MANTLE
Theweek that followed was an unhappy one for Lloyd. Everywhere she went it seemed to her that lilies-of-the-valley were thrust into her face. On the way to town people got on the car at nearly every station with great bunches of them that they were carrying to offices or to their friends. The florists' windows were full of them. Men passed her on the street wearing them on their coats, and even the little shop-girl, who waited on her at the ribbon counter, had them stuck in her belt. When she called at Mrs. Bisbee's there was a box of them growing on her window-sill, and at home the whole house was permeated by the fragrance that floated out from the great crystal bowl on the library table. She could not get away from them, and they kept Rob constantly in her thoughts.
She told herself that she had never known anything quite so considerate and sweet as the wayhe had taken her answer. The more she thought of his quick putting aside of self in order that she might not be unhappy, the more it grieved her that he must be disappointed. She did not see him again until the following Sunday. He came into church behind the old Judge and Mrs. Moore, and Lloyd dropped her eyes to her hymn-book, her heart in such a flutter that it sent a queer little tingle all over her. She was afraid to meet his glance, for fear the consciousness of their last meeting would send the telltale red to her face.
In the pew just behind the Moores' sat Katie Mallard with a girl from Frankfort, who was visiting her, and as Rob took his seat Lloyd saw the guest's pretty eyes fixed inquiringly on him. Then she whispered something to Katie behind her fan. Instantly the wonder crossed Lloyd's mind what the newcomer thought of him, and then she wondered how he would appear to her if she could see him with the eyes of a stranger, without the intimate knowledge their long acquaintance had given her.
She stole a glance in his direction, as the organist pulled out the stops and struck the opening chords of the voluntary. He was certainly good to look at, and, she concluded, the veriest stranger,if he were any judge at all of such things, must see at a glance that his was a strong character, that he would scorn to do a dishonourable thing and that the years behind him were clean and honest. Then with a start she realized that she had been holding him up to her silver yardstick, and that he not only met its three requirements, but went far beyond. He had family, social position, everything that her father had desired for her save wealth, and she remembered how earnestly he had added, on that solemn watch-night, "but all these are nothing when weighed in the balance with the love of an honest man."
This greatest of all had been given her, but she could not accept because—well, she didn't know why—but probably because it was justBobbywho had offered it, and she couldn't think ofhimas being the one the stars had destined for her—a boy that she had made mud pies with. The old Hildegarde story had been good for her in many ways, but it had made the prince of her dreams a vague personality unlike any man she had ever met. She had never put into words, even to herself, what she expected him to be like, but the shadowy image that her imagination sometimes held up had no flaw like ordinary mortals, no humanfaults and failings. And she would know him when he came, in some strange, mysterious way that needed no speech—his coming would be heralded like Hebe's: "Before her ran an influence sweet, that bowed my heart like barley bending."
The congregation rose for the Gloria and her eyes met Rob's. For one instant in the quick lighting of his face she had a revelation of all that his "miracle of blossoming" meant to him, then he flashed her a reassuring smile that seemed to say: "Never mind, old chum. We'll go on just as we've always done."
That she had interpreted it aright Lloyd knew when he came that afternoon as usual and proposed a walk over past the Lindsey Cabin. He seemed to have put himself into her place so fully that he understood just how she felt towards him; knew that it hurt her to have to withhold the one great thing he desired, and that his friendship was still as dear to her as ever. So with a fine consideration that she was quick to appreciate, he came back to his old place so naturally, and as such a matter of course, that it put her at her ease with him and made it possible for her to ignore the episode of the lilies as if it had never been.
May came with its locust blossoms and the birthdayanniversary that made her "old and twenty." One of her gifts was a beautiful saddle-horse, and she began her daily rides again. Several times when Rob could arrange to leave town earlier than usual he rode with her.
Early in June Betty wrote that she was going up into the pine woods of Maine for her vacation. She had been offered a position to teach an hour a day in a sort of summer school, a girls' camp, and the position had too many advantages to refuse. She would be back in time for a week or ten days at The Locusts before the opening of the fall term at Warwick Hall. Lloyd, who had looked forward to Betty's companionship for the entire summer, was sorely disappointed. The same day that that letter came, Rob told her that he was going away for awhile. Some investments his father had made years ago had turned out to be worth investigating, and he was sure he could dispose of them advantageously. At any rate he was going to Birmingham to try. He might be back in a week or two, and he might be away the entire month of June. If Betty had been at home probably Lloyd would not have missed him at all, but because she had to take so many of her walks and rides alone, he was often in her thoughts.
"I can't expect to have every summah as gay as last one was," she said to herself one morning, as she busied herself about her room, changing the arrangement of the pictures. She leaned over to dust the ones above her low bookcase. They ran in a long panel, just above it, the series of garden fancies that Leland Harcourt had suggested. It was on a June morning like this almost a year ago that she had posed for some of them in Doctor Shelby's old garden. It seemed at least four times as long as that. She had grown so much older and wiser. She stooped to look again at the picture of Darby and Joan, under which was written, "Hand in hand while our hair is gray." As she passed her duster lightly over the glass which covered the two dear old faces, she remembered that next week this devoted couple were to celebrate their golden wedding, and that she had promised to let them "borrow" her for a whole week before, to help with the preparations.
An hour later she was opening the gate that led to the old-fashioned door where the ugly little Chinese idol still kept guard and held it open. She found Mrs. Shelby out on her cool upper piazza, behind the moon-vines, in a low sewing chair. She was stitching daintily away on a bit of fine linen."A wristband for one of Richard's shirts," she explained, after her first moments of delighted greeting. "And I'll go right on with it, for I'm making him a set all by hand for my anniversary present to him. He's always been so proud of my needlework and had so much sentiment for the things I've made myself. I can't begin to tell you how glad I am to have you here. I've been sitting here all morning thinking that if my little Alicia had lived what an interest she would have taken in all my preparations. I keep forgetting that she wouldn't be a young girl like you. It's Alicia's granddaughter who would have been your age."
It took only a question or two to open the gates into this gentle old soul's happy yesterdays, and Lloyd listened and questioned, enjoying the quiet romance that she gathered bit by bit as one gathers the posies of an old garden and clasps them into a full-rounded nosegay.
"Aunt Alicia," she asked presently, "were yousuahat the time that you were making no mistake? Didn't you have any doubts or misgivings about the doctah's being the right one?"
Mrs. Shelby laughed. "I must confess that I was a very silly girl who had read so many sentimental stories that my head was full of dreams ofsome faultless being who should appear like the prince to the Sleeping Beauty and change the whole world for me with a kiss. It was a long time before I could recognize him in the disguise of a poor country doctor. But I think we are apt to be that way about most things in life, my dear. Familiarity disguises the real worth of most of our blessings. We don't appreciate them till we are forced to miss them for awhile."
"But what finally showed you?" persisted Lloyd. "What made you see through the disguise?"
"Oh, my dear," laughed Mrs. Shelby again. "I couldn't explain a thing like that! How do these moon-flowers know what calls them to open, or the tide when it is time to rise? Theyfeelit, I suppose. They justknow!That is the way it was with me."
Lloyd came again next day prepared to spend the week. It would be hard to tell who enjoyed the visit the most. Gentle Aunt Alicia fluttered around, hugging the sweet pretence to her heart that for this little space at least she had a real own daughter beside her, hers to call upon for any service that the little Alicia would have gladly tendered. The old doctor spent every moment he could spare from his office in the spacious screened porch leadingfrom the kitchen, where all the preparations were carried gaily forward.
Here, after the invitations were sent, Lloyd spent her time. Under her supervision the old satin wedding gown was brought out and aired and pressed and slightly altered. Its white folds had turned to a mellow ivory in the years it had been laid away, just as the sentiment which cherished it had grown deeper and richer with time. Once as Lloyd intercepted a glance the old doctor exchanged with his wife as they brought out these reminders of their far-away bridal, it made her feel that she was touching with intimate fingers the heart of a sweet and tender old romance.
From the yellowed pages of an old diary, she read a description of the original wedding feast, and with an enthusiasm which went ahead of Mrs. Shelby's own prepared to copy it in every detail for the golden wedding. Jellies and cakes and salads, candied rose-leaves and rare spiced confections that had graced the first were all reproduced for this great occasion. Lloyd beat eggs and shelled nuts and stirred icing with a zest, while she planned the decorations and gave orders right and left to a household who joyed to do her bidding.
It was not until next to the last great day thatMrs. Shelby made the discovery they had overlooked a certain gold-cake, whose recipe was missing. "And I don't suppose it's to be found anywhere in the Valley," she mourned, "unless they've kept Phronie Moore's old cook-book. She was one of my bridesmaids, and she made it with her own hands. It was one of her own special recipes that she was noted for, and I wouldn't have lost it for anything."
"You know the Judge must have kept it, Alicia," the old doctor gently insisted. "You know the slightest thing she ever handled was sacred to him, and it stands to reason that anything she'd taken so much pride in, and written every page with her own hands, as you say, would be preserved. No doubt his daughter-in-law can find it for you without the least trouble."
"Even if she could I wouldn't want to borrow it," began Mrs. Shelby, but Lloyd interrupted briskly. "I'll fix it all right for you, Aunt Alicia. I'll run right ovah to Oaklea as soon as Daphne gets this in the oven, and ask Mrs. Moore to let me copy the recipe for you."
So that is how it came about that late that afternoon, Lloyd opened the great iron gate at Oaklea, and, following the familiar path under the giantoaks, reached the house to which she had long been a stranger.
Rob's dog, a fine Gordon setter, came out with a boisterous barking, but seeing who it was, leaped up, licking her hands and wagging a friendly welcome. It seemed as if Rob ought to be somewhere near. Everything about the place suggested him. A familiar wide-brimmed gray hat lay on the hall table, his riding-whip beside it. Up-stairs whither the coloured maid led her, there were other reminders of him: Indian clubs and a tennis racquet in a corner of the hall, and a cabinet holding the various collections that had been his fads from time to time.
"Come in here, dear," called Mrs. Moore from the depths of a sleepy hollow chair. "I'm too tired to move, so I knew you'd excuse my sending down for you to come up-stairs."
It was Rob's room into which she was ushered. Mrs. Moore held out both cordial hands without rising, and drew her down for a kiss.
"Rob's coming home to-night," she explained, "so of course everything had to be swept and garnished for so grand an occasion, and I've nearly used myself up making things fine in his honour."
Her eyes filled with tears. "It's the first timehe's been away since the dear 'Daddy' left us, and I had no idea four weeks could be such an age. I'm so excited and happy over his coming that I can scarcely talk about it calmly. But you know what a dear good son my 'Robin Adair' is to me, so you can make allowances for a fond mother's foolishness."
It was some moments before Lloyd had an opportunity to make known her errand, apologizing profusely for putting her to any exertion when she was so tired.
"Oh, it's no trouble," answered Mrs. Moore. "I think I know right where to put my hand on the book in father's room. I'll step across the hall and see."
Left to herself Lloyd gave a shy glance around the room, remembering the time when it had been a familiar playground, but now she had an embarrassed sense of intruding. Many an hour she had spent romping in it while Mom Beck and Dinah gossiped by the fire. They had had their menagerie and lions' den in that curtained alcove. Here on the hard-wood floor between the chimney-corner and the window they had chalked the ring for their marble games. She leaned over and examined the floor at her feet with a smile. Those were undoubtedlythe dents that their top-spinning had left. Mom Beck had told them at the time, no amount of polishing could ever wipe out such holes.
The little tin soldiers that used to stand guard on the window-sill had given place to other things now. The rocking-horse that had carried them such long journeys of adventure together had been stabled for years in the attic at The Locusts. College trophies and pennants hung on the walls. A rifle and a shotgun stood in the corner where a wooden gun and a toy sword used to stay. The low table and the picture books had given place to a massive desk and rows on rows of heavy volumes bound in leather.
Then she recognized several things belonging to a later period. There was the shaving-paper case she made him the day he bought his first razor. She had been so proud of the monogram she burnt into the leather. It looked decidedly amateurish to her now. On the leather couch among its many cushions was the pillow she had embroidered in his fraternity colours and sent to him while he was at college.
Between the front windows where the desk stood, and just above it, ran four long rows of photographs set in narrow panels. Most of them weregroup pictures, the first dating back to the time of her first house-party, and ending with some that had been taken the week of Eugenia's wedding. It was like a serial story of all their good times, and hastily changing her seat she leaned her elbows on the desk for another look. But the nearer view revealed something that she had not seen at the first glance.Shewas the central figure of every group. It washerface that one noticed first, laughing back from every picture.
Abashed at her discovery, she scuttled back to her former seat, but not before her quick glance had showed her another photograph on the desk, in a silver frame. It was the last one Miss Marks had taken of her, in her commencement gown. She did not know that Rob had one of them. She had not given it to him.
Mrs. Moore called out something to her from across the hall, and as she turned to reply she faced still another picture of herself, this one in an old-fashioned silver locket swinging from the side of the mirror. It was the Princess Winsome with the dove. She was afraid to look any further. She felt like an eavesdropper, for the very walls were calling out to her those words of Rob's that she had been trying for weeks to forget: "All my life seemsto have been a growing up for this one thing—to love you!"
She sprang up with the impulse to leave the room, to get away from these telltale voices that she had no right to listen to. But just then Mrs. Moore came back with the book.
"You can copy it here at the desk," she said, laying out a sheet of paper and Rob's big heavy-handled pen. She did not sit down while Lloyd wrote the few lines, but stood with her hand on the back of the chair till she had finished. Then she said with an amused smile, "I want to show you something funny, Lloyd. I came across it this morning while I was looking over some old things of Rob's. It's your first piece of needlework. You made it over here one rainy day under Mom Beck's instructions. It's so long ago I suppose you've forgotten, but I remember that Rob tried to make one too, and stuck his fingers so often that he cried and gave it up, and you gave him yours to comfort him."
Opening a box which she brought from some drawer, she took out a sorry little pin-cushion. All puckered and drawn, its long straggling stitches scarcely kept in place the cotton with which it was stuffed. The faded blue silk was streaked and dirty as if it had been used for a foot-ball at some stageof its existence, and the pins that formed the crooked letter L had rusted in their places. But that it was accounted something precious, one could see from the way in which it was tied and wrapped and carefully put away in this box by itself.
It was a relief to Lloyd to find that Mrs. Moore did not attach any significance to the fact that Rob thus treasured her old gift. She only laughed and said he was like her in that regard. She couldn't bear to throw away anything connected with his childhood. Only that morning she had come across the little blue shoes that he had learned to walk in, and nearly cried over them, they recalled so plainly those happy days.
"We are both full of sentiment for old things," she continued. "I believe it will hurt him nearly as much as me if we decide to leave Oaklea and try to make a home somewhere else."
"Leave Oaklea!" repeated Lloyd wonderingly.
"Yes, Rob has had such a splendid opening offered him in Birmingham that he has been strongly tempted to move there. Oh, I haven't told you the good news, have I! He succeeded in selling that property to a big corporation that needed it to extend their manufactories, and was able to get such a fine figure for it that now he can give up thathorrid grind in the hardware business and go away in the fall for the last year of his law course. He has studied so hard with his grandfather that this one year is all that is necessary, and he will be the youngest lawyer to be admitted to the Louisville bar when he gets through. His grandfather is prouder of that possibility than anything else connected with the boy."
"But about your going away," began Lloyd, anxiously, when she had expressed proper interest in the news. "Oaklea won't be the same place with strangahs living heah. I can't imagine such a thing."
"It isn't settled yet," Mrs. Moore answered cheerfully, and then rambled on to some other topic. But Lloyd heard no word of what she was saying. A sudden panic had seized her at the possibility of Rob's being taken out of her life for ever. The bare thought gave her a sinking of the heart and a sense of desolation such as a little child might have at being left alone in the dark. As she sat there trying to imagine how it would seem never to see him again, such a revelation of her own self came to her that it sent the colour surging up in her face and set her heart to fluttering like a startled bird. She knew now for whom she had been weaving allthese years. This moment of self insight had torn away the disguise.Her Prince had come into his kingdom!
A pause in Mrs. Moore's remarks brought the embarrassing knowledge that she had not heard the question whose reply was being waited for, and she started to stammer some incoherent excuse, when a shrill whistle from below made them both start. The familiar sound was followed by a joyous barking from the Gordon setter, and then Rob's voice called gaily, "Where are you, mother? Six whole hours ahead of time, just to surprise you!"
Mrs. Moore sprang up, all her weariness forgotten, and ran down-stairs to meet him. Lloyd stood hesitating in the middle of the floor. She didn't want to intrude on this meeting, yet she couldn't stay there in his room, the room that babbled his secrets and reflected him on every side like a mirror. Still hesitating, then going forward and halting again, she reached the landing midway on the stairs and saw him standing with his arm around his mother, who had forgotten everything else save the joy of his return.
Then he glanced up and saw her standing there, one hand on the polished rail, and her white dress trailing down the steps behind her. And the lateafternoon sunshine stealing through the amber medallion window above her rested with such soft touch on her fair hair that it seemed that a halo of dim gold surrounded her. For an instant he thought he must be dreaming, and stood gazing at her with a look of happy wonder as if this were only another vision of the dream-saint always enshrined in his heart.
But his next glance showed him that it was Lloyd in reality, for at his adoring gaze she went all rosy red, and looked away in shy confusion. Stopping only for the briefest greeting, she hurried past him, saying that Aunt Alicia was waiting, and the wonderful cake wouldn't be done in time, that his mother would tell him about it, and she'd see him at the wedding to-morrow.
What happened afterward was all a sort of golden haze to Lloyd. The afternoon of the anniversary came and went. She greeted the guests who came in a constant stream with their gifts and good wishes. She sang the old songs when they asked her to, she saw that every one was served to the sumptuous refreshments in the dining-room; she played her rôle of daughter of the house to such perfection that Aunt Alicia caught her hand gratefully every time she passed, and followed herwith loving eyes as she flitted from room to room. She carried away the impression that it was all a beautiful sacred occasion, for the whole Valley bared its heart for that little space to show its love for the good doctor who for half a century had been its standby in its times of stress and anxiety and bitter bereavement.
Yet the only moment that stood out quite clearly was the one when Rob passed down the receiving line and stopped for a word about the perfect June day, and how sweet the white-haired bride of fifty years looked in her old-time satin gown and white roses. Lloyd had answered gaily, fluttering her fan and adjusting the slender bracelet on her arm, in a careless way, but she had not looked up at him in her usual straightforward fashion.
The festivities were not extended into the evening. Because Aunt Alicia was not strong the invitations were only for the afternoon, and by sundown the last guest had departed. Even Lloyd went, saying merrily that she left them to begin their second honeymoon, but that she would be back next morning to help put things in order.
There was company at The Locusts that night, some business acquaintances of Mr. Sherman's whom he had invited to dinner, and who were interestedin nothing but statistics about the South and other like stupid things. Tired by the day's exhausting demands, Lloyd left them when they went into the drawing-room, and stepping out on the porch sat down on the steps. The moon was coming up, turning the locusts to silver.
Presently she heard the sound of hoof-beats down the pike, and as she listened a solitary horseman turned in at the gate. She was not expecting Rob, but even at that distance she recognized the familiar slouch of his broad-brimmed hat and the erect way he sat in the saddle. And she knew before a word was spoken, the moment he dismounted and stood before her that he had not come for a call, only to bring some message. But he did not deliver it at once, only asked who the guests were, and sat down beside her on the steps and talked about the trivial happenings of the afternoon.
Then a few minutes later she was walking along beside him under the locusts. The moonlight lay in silver patches among the black shadows and the air was heavy with the breath of roses. They stopped at the old measuring tree, and Rob dropped the light tone in which he had been jesting, and his face grew tense in his deep earnestness.
"It's no use trying any longer, Lloyd," he saidabruptly. "I can't give you up. The golden wedding to-day was too much for me." He took a step nearer. "Dear, isn't thereanythingI could do to make myself worthier in your sight? In the old days knights could go out andprovetheir valour and fealty. Couldn't you give me some such chance? Set me a task? I'd go to the world's end to do it!"
Lloyd did not answer for a moment. Leaning against the trunk of the gnarled locust, she stood idly tracing the outline of the four-leaf clover that he had cut beside the date the last time they measured there. Then she said in a low tone:
"Yes, you can bring me the diamond leaf that we've talked about so often. By that token you'd prove that you were not only a true knight, but that all these yeahs you've been my prince in disguise."
He smiled ruefully, thinking she had purposely set him a hopeless task. They had read the legend together, and he knew full well that Abdallah found the diamond leaf of happiness only in Paradise, but he took out his watch and opened the back of the case, saying hopefully, "My lucky charm has never failed me yet, how long will you give me to find it?"
She held out her hand for the little talisman, the four-leaf clover she had given him so many years ago, but as he picked it up, the dry leaves crumbled to dust at his touch, and only one fell unbroken into her outstretched palm.
"My good omen has failed me when I needed it most!" he said bitterly, but Lloyd answered shyly, "No, don't you see? This is thefo'thleaf. You have brought me what I asked for."
For an instant he stood there, an incredulous joy dawning in his face, then grasping the little hand that closed over the clover, he asked wonderingly, "And my unworthy shoulders really fit your royal mantlenow, dear? You are sure?"
She looked up at him then, not a doubt in her trusting face as she slowly made answer, "Yes, Rob, 'as the falcon's feathahs fit the falcon!'"
And then the old locusts, looking down on the ending of a story that they had watched from its beginning, stopped their swaying for a space, with a soft "Sh!" each to each as one lays finger on lip in holy places.