Jim Dodge had been hoeing potatoes all day. It was hard, monotonous
work, and he secretly detested it. But the hunting season was far away,
and the growing potatoes were grievously beset by weeds; so he had cut
and thrust with his sharp-bladed hoe from early morning till the sun
burned the crest of the great high-shouldered hill which appeared to
close in the valley like a rampart, off Grenoble way. As a matter of
fact, the brawling stream which gave Brookville its name successfully
skirted the hill by a narrow margin which likewise afforded space for
the state road.
But the young man was not considering either the geographical contours
of the country at large or the refreshed and renovated potato field,
with its serried ranks of low-growing plants, as he tramped heavily
crosslots toward the house. At noon, when he came in to dinner, in
response to the wideflung summons of the tin horn which hung by the
back door, he had found the two women of his household in a pleasurable
state of excitement.
“We’ve got our share, Jim!” proclaimed Mrs. Dodge, a bright red spot
glowing on either thin cheek. “See! here’s the check; it came in the
mail this morning.”
And she spread a crackling bit of paper under her son’s eyes.
“I was some surprised to get it so soon,” she added. “Folks ain’t
generally in any great hurry to part with their money. But they do say
Miss Orr paid right down for the place—never even asked ’em for any
sort of terms; and th’ land knows they’d have been glad to given them
to her, or to anybody that had bought the place these dozen years back.
Likely she didn’t know that.”
Jim scowled at the check.
“How much did she pay for the place?” he demanded. “It must have been a
lot more than it was worth, judging from this.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Dodge replied. “And I dunno as I care
particularly, as long’s we’ve got our share of it.”
She was swaying back and forth in a squeaky old rocking-chair, the
check clasped in both thin hands.
“Shall we bank it, children; or draw it all out in cash? Fanny needs
new clothes; so do you, Jim. And I’ve got to have a new carpet, or
something, for the parlor. Those skins of wild animals you brought in
are all right, Jim, if one can’t get anything better. I suppose we’d
ought to be prudent and saving; but I declare we haven’t had any money
to speak of, for so long—”
Mrs. Dodge’s faded eyes were glowing with joy; she spread the check
upon her lap and gazed at it smilingly.
“I declare it’s the biggest surprise I’ve had in all my life!”
“Let’s spend every cent of it,” proposed Fanny recklessly. “We didn’t
know we were going to have it. We can scrub along afterward the same as
we always have. Let’s divide it into four parts: one for the house—to
fix it up—and one for each of us, to spend any way we like. What do you
say, Jim?”
“I shouldn’t wonder if Mrs. Deacon Whittle would furnish up her best
parlor something elegant,” surmised Mrs. Dodge. “She’s always said she
was goin’ to have gilt paper and marble tops and electric blue plush
upholstered furniture. I guess that’ll be the last fair we’ll ever have
in that house. She wouldn’t have everybody trampin’ over her flowered
Body-Brussels. I suppose _we_ might buy some plush furniture; but I
don’t know as I’d care for electric blue. What do you think, son?”
Jim Dodge sat sprawled out in his chair before the half-set table. At
this picture of magnificence, about to be realized in the abode of
Deacon Amos Whittle, he gave vent to an inarticulate growl.
“What’s the matter with you, Jim?” shrilled his mother, whose
perpetually jangled nerves were capable of strange dissonances.
“Anybody’d suppose you wasn’t pleased at having the old Bolton place
sold at last, and a little bit of all that’s been owing to us since
before your poor father died, paid off. My! If we was to have all that
was coming to us by rights, with the interest money—”
“I’m hungry and tired, mother, and I want my dinner,” said Jim
brusquely. “That check won’t hoe the potatoes; so I guess I’ll have to
do it, same as usual.”
“For pity sake, Fanny!” cried his mother, “did you put the vegetables
over to boil? I ain’t thought of anything since this check came.”
It appeared that Fanny had been less forgetful.
After his belated dinner, Jim had gone back to his potatoes, leaving
his mother and sister deep in discussion over the comparative virtues
of Nottingham lace and plain muslin, made up with ruffles, for parlor
curtains.
“I really believe I’d rather spend more on the house than on clo’es at
my age,” he heard his mother saying, happily, as he strode away.
All during the afternoon, to the clink of myriad small stones against
the busy blade of his hoe, Jim thought about Lydia Orr. He could not
help seeing that it was to Lydia he owed the prospect of a much needed
suit of clothes. It would be Lydia who hung curtains, of whatever sort,
in their shabby best room. And no other than Lydia was to furnish Mrs.
Whittle’s empty parlor. She had already given the minister a new
long-tailed coat, as Jim chose to characterize the ministerial black.
His cheeks burned under the slanting rays of the afternoon sun with
something deeper than an added coat of tan. Why should Lydia Orr—that
slip of a girl, with the eyes of a baby, or a saint—do all this? Jim
found himself unable to believe that she really wanted the Bolton
place. Why, the house was an uninhabitable ruin! It would cost
thousands of dollars to rebuild it.
He set his jaw savagely as he recalled his late conversation with
Deacon Whittle. “The cheating old skinflint,” as he mentally termed
that worthy pillar of the church, had, he was sure, bamboozled the girl
into buying a well-nigh worthless property, at a scandalous price. It
was a shame! He, Jim Dodge, even now burned with the shame of it. He
pondered briefly the possibilities of taking from his mother the check,
which represented the _pro rata_ share of the Dodge estate, and
returning it to Lydia Orr. Reluctantly he abandoned this quixotic
scheme. The swindle—for as such he chose to view it—had already been
accomplished. Other people would not return their checks. On the
contrary, there would be new and fertile schemes set on foot to part
the unworldly stranger and her money.
He flung down his hoe in disgust and straightened his aching shoulders.
The whole sordid transaction put him in mind of the greedy onslaught of
a horde of hungry ants on a beautiful, defenseless flower, its torn
corolla exuding sweetness.... And there must be some sort of reason
behind it. Why had Lydia Orr come to Brookville?
And here, unwittingly, Jim’s blind conjectures followed those of Wesley
Elliot. He had told Lydia Orr he meant to call upon her. That he had
not yet accomplished his purpose had been due to the watchfulness of
Mrs. Solomon Black. On the two occasions when he had rung Mrs. Black’s
front door-bell, that lady herself had appeared in response to its
summons. On both occasions she had informed Mr. Dodge tartly that Miss
Orr wasn’t at home.
On the occasion of his second disappointment he had offered to await
the young lady’s home-coming.
“There ain’t no use of that, Jim,” Mrs. Black had assured him. “Miss
Orr’s gone t’ Boston to stay two days.”
Then she had unlatched her close-shut lips to add: “She goes there
frequent, on business.”
Her eyes appeared to inform him further that Miss Orr’s business, of
whatever nature, was none of _his_ business and never would be.
“That old girl is down on me for some reason or other,” he told himself
ruefully, as he walked away for the second time. But he was none the
less resolved to pursue his hopefully nascent friendship with Lydia
Orr.
He was thinking of her vaguely as he walked toward the house which had
been his father’s, and where he and Fanny had been born. It was little
and low and old, as he viewed it indifferently in the fading light of
the sunset sky. Its walls had needed painting so long, that for years
nobody had even mentioned the subject. Its picturesquely mossy roof
leaked. But a leaky roof was a commonplace in Brookville. It was
customary to set rusty tin pans, their holes stopped with rags, under
such spots as actually let in water; the emptying of the pans being a
regular household “chore.” Somehow, he found himself disliking to
enter; his mother and Fanny would still be talking about the
disposition of Lydia Orr’s money. To his relief he found his sister
alone in the kitchen, which served as a general living room. The small
square table neatly spread for two stood against the wall; Fanny was
standing by the window, her face close to the pane, and apparently
intent upon the prospect without, which comprised a grassy stretch of
yard flanked by a dull rampart of over-grown lilac bushes.
“Where’s mother?” inquired Jim, as he hung his hat on the accustomed
nail.
“She went down to the village,” said Fanny, turning her back on the
window with suspicious haste. “There was a meeting of the sewing
society at Mrs. Daggett’s.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Jim. “What an opportunity!”
“Opportunity?” echoed Fanny vaguely.
“Yes; for talking it over. Can’t you imagine the clack of tongues; the
‘I says to _her_,’ and ‘she told _me_,’ and ‘what _do_ you think!’”
“Don’t be sarcastic and disagreeable, Jim,” advised Fanny, with some
heat. “When you think of it, it _is_ a wonder—that girl coming here the
way she did; buying out the fair, just as everybody was discouraged
over it. And now—”
“How do you explain it, Fan?” asked her brother.
“Explain it? I can’t explain it. Nobody seems to know anything about
her, except that she’s from Boston and seems to have heaps of money.”
Jim was wiping his hands on the roller-towel behind the door.
“I had a chance to annex a little more of Miss Orr’s money today,” he
observed grimly. “But I haven’t made up my mind yet whether to do it,
or not.”
Fanny laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
“If you don’t, somebody else will,” she replied. “It was Deacon
Whittle, wasn’t it? He stopped at the house this afternoon and wanted
to know where to find you.”
“They’re going right to work on the old place, and there’s plenty to do
for everybody, including yours truly, at four dollars a day.”
“What sort of work?” inquired Fanny.
“All sorts: pulling down and building up; clearing away and replanting.
The place is a jungle, you know. But four dollars a day! It’s like
taking candy from a baby.”
“It sounds like a great deal,” said the girl. “But why shouldn’t you do
it?”
Jim laughed.
“Why, indeed? I might earn enough to put a shingle or two on our own
roof. It looks like honest money; but—”
Fanny was busy putting the finishing touches to the supper table.
“Mother’s going to stop for tea at Mrs. Daggett’s, and go to prayer
meeting afterward,” she said. “We may as well eat.”
The two sat down, facing each other.
“What did you mean, Jim?” asked Fanny, as she passed the bread plate to
her brother. “You said, ‘It looks like honest money; but—’”
“I guess I’m a fool,” he grumbled; “but there’s something about the
whole business I don’t like.... Have some of this apple sauce, Fan?”
The girl passed her plate for a spoonful of the thick compound, and in
return shoved the home-dried beef toward her brother.
“I don’t see anything queer about it,” she replied dully. “I suppose a
person with money might come to Brookville and want to buy a house. The
old Bolton place used to be beautiful, mother says. I suppose it can be
again. And if she chooses to spend her money that way—”
“That’s just the point I can’t see: why on earth should she want to
saddle herself with a proposition like that?”
Fanny’s mute lips trembled. She was thinking she knew very well why
Lydia Orr had chosen to come to Brookville: in some way unknown to
Fanny, Miss Orr had chanced to meet the incomparable Wesley Elliot, and
had straightway set her affections upon him. Fanny had been thinking it
over, ever since the night of the social at Mrs. Solomon Black’s. Up to
the moment when Wesley—she couldn’t help calling him Wesley still—had
left her, on pretense of fetching a chair, she had instantly divined
that it was a pretense, and of course he had not returned. Her cheeks
tingled hotly as she recalled the way in which Joyce Fulsom had
remarked the plate of melting ice cream on the top shelf of Mrs.
Black’s what-not:
“I guess Mr. Elliot forgot his cream,” the girl had said, with a spark
of malice. “I saw him out in the yard awhile ago talking to that Miss
Orr.”
Fanny had humiliated herself still further by pretending she didn’t
know it was the minister who had left his ice cream to dissolve in a
pink and brown puddle of sweetness. Whereat Joyce Fulsom had giggled
disagreeably.
“Better keep your eye on him, Fan,” she had advised.
Of course she couldn’t speak of this to Jim; but it was all plain
enough to her.
“I’m going down to the village for awhile, Fan,” her brother said, as
he arose from the table. But he did not, as was his custom, invite her
to accompany him.
After Jim had gone, Fanny washed the dishes with mechanical swiftness.
Her mother had asked her if she would come to prayer meeting, and walk
home with her afterwards. Not that Mrs. Dodge was timid; the
neighborhood of Brookville had never been haunted after nightfall by
anything more dangerous than whippoorwills and frogs. A plaintive
chorus of night sounds greeted the girl, as she stepped out into the
darkness. How sweet the honeysuckle and late roses smelled under the
dew! Fanny walked slowly across the yard to the old summer-house, where
the minister had asked her to call him Wesley, and sat down. It was
very dark under the thick-growing vines, and after awhile tranquillity
of a sort stole over the girl’s spirit. She gazed out into the dim
spaces beyond the summer-house and thought, with a curious detachment,
of all that had happened. It was as if she had grown old and was
looking back calmly to a girlhood long since past. She could almost
smile at the recollection of herself stifling her sobs in her pillow,
lest Jim should hear.
“Why should I care for him?” she asked herself wonderingly; and could
not tell.
Then all at once she found herself weeping softly, her head on the
rickety table.
Jim Dodge, too intently absorbed in his own confused thoughts to pay
much attention to Fanny, had walked resolutely in the direction of Mrs.
Solomon Black’s house; from which, he reflected, the minister would be
obliged to absent himself for at least an hour. He hoped Mrs. Black had
not induced Lydia to go to the prayer meeting with her. Why any one
should voluntarily go to a prayer meeting passed his comprehension. Jim
had once attended what was known as a “protracted meeting,” for the
sole purpose of pleasing his mother, who all at once had appeared
tearfully anxious about his “soul.” He had not enjoyed the experience.
“Are you saved, my dear young brother?” Deacon Whittle had inquired of
him, in his snuffling, whining, peculiarly objectionable tone.
“From what, Deacon?” Jim had blandly inquired. “You in for it, too?”
Whereat the Deacon had piously shaken his head and referred him to the
“mourner’s pew,” with the hope that he might even yet be plucked as a
brand from the burning.
Lydia had not gone to the prayer meeting. She was sitting on the
piazza, quite alone. She arose when her determined visitor boldly
walked up the steps.
“Oh, it is you!” said she.
An unreasonable feeling of elation arose in the young man’s breast.
“Did you think I wasn’t coming?” he inquired, with all the egotism of
which he had been justly accused.
He did not wait for her reply; but proceeded with considerable humor to
describe his previous unsuccessful attempts to see her.
“I suppose,” he added, “Mrs. Solomon Black has kindly warned you
against me?”
She could not deny it; so smiled instead.
“Well,” said the young man, “I give you my word I’m not a villain: I
neither drink, steal, nor gamble. But I’m not a saint, after the
prescribed Brookville pattern.”
He appeared rather proud of the fact, she thought. Aloud she said, with
pardonable curiosity:
“What is the Brookville pattern? I ought to know, since I am to live
here.”
At this he dropped his bantering tone.
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said gravely.
“You mean—?”
“About your buying the old Bolton place and paying such a preposterous
price for it, and all the rest, including the minister’s back-pay.”
She remained silent, playing with the ribbon of her sash.
“I have a sort of inward conviction that you’re not doing it because
you think Brookville is such a pleasant place to live in,” he went on,
keenly observant of the sudden color fluttering in her cheeks, revealed
by the light of Mrs. Solomon Black’s parlor lamp which stood on a stand
just inside the carefully screened window. “It looks,” he finished, “as
if you—well; it may be a queer thing for me to say; but I’ll tell you
frankly that when mother showed me the check she got today I felt that
it was—charity.”
She shook her head.
“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “You are quite, quite in the wrong.”
“But you can’t make me believe that with all your money—pardon me for
mentioning what everybody in the village is talking about— You’ll have
to convince me that the old Bolton place has oil under it, or coal or
diamonds, before I—”
“Why should you need to be convinced of anything so unlikely?” she
asked, with gentle coldness.
He reddened angrily.
“Of course it’s none of my business,” he conceded.
“I didn’t mean that. But, naturally, I could have no idea of coal or
oil—”
“Well; I won’t work for you at any four dollars a day,” he said loudly.
“I thought I’d like to tell you.”
“I don’t want you to,” she said. “Didn’t Deacon Whittle give you my
message?”
He got hurriedly to his feet with a muttered exclamation.
“Please sit down, Mr. Dodge,” she bade him tranquilly. “I’ve been
wanting to see you all day. But there are so few telephones in
Brookville it is difficult to get word to people.”
He eyed her with stubborn resentment.
“What I meant to say was that four dollars a day is too much! Don’t you
know anything about the value of money, Miss Orr? Somebody ought to
have common honesty enough to inform you that there are plenty of men
in Brookville who would be thankful to work for two dollars a day. I
would, for one; and I won’t take a cent more.”
She was frowning a little over these statements. The stalwart young man
in shabby clothes who sat facing her under the light of Mrs. Solomon
Black’s well-trimmed lamp appeared to puzzle her.
“But why shouldn’t you want to earn all you can?” she propounded at
last. “Isn’t there anything you need to use money for?”
“Oh, just a few things,” he admitted grudgingly. “I suppose you’ve
noticed that I’m not exactly the glass of fashion and the mold of
form.”
He was instantly ashamed of himself for the crude personality.
“You must think I’m a fool!” burst from him, under the sting of his
self-inflicted lash.
She smiled and shook her head.
“I’m not at all the sort of person you appear to think me,” she said.
Her grave blue eyes looked straight into his. “But don’t let’s waste
time trying to be clever: I want to ask you if you are willing, for a
fair salary, to take charge of the outdoor improvements at Bolton
House.”
She colored swiftly at sight of the quizzical lift of his brows.
“I’ve decided to call my place ‘Bolton House’ for several reasons,” she
went on rapidly: “for one thing, everybody has always called it the
Bolton place, so it will be easier for the workmen and everybody to
know what place is meant. Besides, I—”
“Yes; but the name of Bolton has an ill-omened sound in Brookville
ears,” he objected. “You’ve no idea how people here hate that man.”
“It all happened so long ago, I should think they might forgive him by
now,” she offered, after a pause.
“I wouldn’t call my house after a thief,” he said strongly. “There are
hundreds of prettier names. Why not—Pine Court, for example?”
“You haven’t told me yet if you will accept the position I spoke of.”
He passed his hand over his clean-shaven chin, a trick he had inherited
from his father, and surveyed her steadily from under meditative brows.
“In the first place, I’m not a landscape gardener, Miss Orr,” he
stated. “That’s the sort of man you want. You can get one in Boston,
who’ll group your evergreens, open vistas, build pergolas and all that
sort of thing.”
“You appear to know exactly what I want,” she laughed.
“Perhaps I do,” he defied her.
“But, seriously, I don’t want and won’t have a landscape-gardener from
Boston—with due deference to your well-formed opinions, Mr. Dodge. I
intend to mess around myself, and change my mind every other day about
all sorts of things. I want to work things out, not on paper in cold
black and white; but in terms of growing things—wild things out of the
woods. You understand, I’m sure.”
The dawning light in his eyes told her that he did.
“But I’ve had no experience,” he hesitated. “Besides, I’ve considerable
farm-work of my own to do. I’ve been hoeing potatoes all day. Tomorrow
I shall have to go into the cornfield, or lose my crop. Time, tide and
weeds wait for no man.”
“I supposed you were a hunter,” she said. “I thought—”
He laughed unpleasantly.
“Oh, I see,” he interrupted rudely: “you supposed, in other words, that
I was an idle chap, addicted to wandering about the woods, a gun on my
shoulder, a cur—quite as much of a ne’er-do-well as myself—at my heels.
Of course Deacon Whittle and Mrs. Solomon Black have told you all about
it. And since you’ve set about reforming Brookville, you thought you’d
begin with me. Well, I’m obliged to you; but—”
The girl arose trembling to her feet.
“You are not kind!” she cried. “You are not kind!”
They stood for an instant, gazing into each other’s eyes during one of
those flashes of time which sometimes count for years.
“Forgive me,” he muttered huskily. “I’m a brute at best; but I had no
business to speak to you as I did.”
“But why did you say—what made you ever think I’d set about
reforming—that is what you said—_reforming_—Brookville? I never thought
of such a thing! How could I?”
He hung his head, abashed by the lightning in her mild eyes.
She clasped her small, fair hands and bent toward him.
“And you said you wanted to be—friends. I hoped—”
“I do,” he said gruffly. “I’ve told you I’m ashamed of myself.”
She drew back, sighing deeply.
“I don’t want you to feel—ashamed,” she said, in a sweet, tired voice.
“But I wish—”
“Tell me!” he urged, when she did not finish her sentence.
“Do you think everybody is going to misunderstand me, as you have?” she
asked, somewhat piteously. “Is it so strange and unheard of a thing for
a woman to want a home and—and friends? Isn’t it allowable for a person
who has money to want to pay fair wages? Why should I scrimp and haggle
and screw, when I want most of all to be generous?”
“Because,” he told her seriously, “scrimping, haggling and screwing
have been the fashion for so long, the other thing rouses mean
suspicions by its very novelty. It’s too good to be true; that’s all.”
“You mean people will suspect—they’ll think there’s something—”
She stood before him, her hands fallen at her sides, her eyes downcast.
“I confess I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t an ulterior motive,” he
said honestly. “That’s where I was less noble than you.”
She flashed a sudden strange look at him.
“There is,” she breathed. “I’m going to be honest—with you. I have—an
ulterior motive.”
“Will you tell me what it is?”
Her lips formed the single word of denial.
He gazed at her in silence for a moment.
“I’m going to accept the post you just offered me, Miss Orr; at any
salary you think I’m worth,” he said gravely.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Steps and the sound of voices floated across the picket fence. The gate
rasped on its rusted hinges; then slammed shut.
“If I was you, Mr. Elliot,” came the penetrating accents of Mrs.
Solomon Black’s voice, “I should hire a reg’lar reviv’list along in th’
fall, after preservin’ an’ house-cleanin’ time. We need an outpourin’
of grace, right here in Brookville; and we can’t get it no other way.”
And the minister’s cultured voice in reply:
“I shall give your suggestion the most careful consideration, Mrs.
Black, between now and the autumn season.”
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Jim Dodge; “this is no place for me! Good
night, Miss Orr!”
She laid her hand in his.
“You can trust me,” he said briefly, and became on the instant a
flitting shadow among the lilac bushes, lightly vaulting over the fence
and mingling with the darker shadows beyond.