TREATS OF CONTRADICTIONS
As Molly passed down the Haunt's Walk, it seemed to her, also, that the
spring had suddenly blossomed. A moment before she had not known
that the path she trod was changing to emerald, that the meadows were
spangled with wild-flowers, that the old oaks on the lawn were blushing
in rose and silver. For weeks these miracles had happened around her,
and she had not noticed. As oblivious to them as old Adam Doolittle was,
she had remembered only that her birthday came on the seventeenth of
April, when, except for some luckless mishap, the promise of the spring
was assured.
A red-winged blackbird darted like a flame across the path in front of
her, and following it into the open, she found Kesiah gathering wild
azalea on the edge of the thicket.
At the girl's approach, the elder woman rose from her stooping posture,
and came forward, wearing a frown, which, after the first minute, Molly
saw was directed at the sunlight, not at herself. Kesiah's long, sallow
face under the hard little curls of her false front, had never
appeared more grotesque than it did in the midst of the delicate spring
landscape. Every fragile blossom, every young leaf, every blade of
grass, flung an insult at her as she stood there frowning fiercely at
the sunbeams. Yet only five minutes before she had suffered a sharp
recrudescence of soul--of that longing for happiness which is a part
of the resurrection of the spring, and which may survive not only the
knowledge of its own fruitlessness, but a belief in the existence of the
very happiness for which it longs. All the unlived romance in her heart
had come to life with the young green around her. Middle-age had not
deadened, it had merely dulled her. For the pang of desire is not,
after all, the divine prerogative of youth, nor has it even a conscious
relation to the possibility of fulfilment. Her soul looked out of her
eyes while she gazed over the azalea in her hand--yet, in spite of the
songs of the poets, the soul in her eyes did not make them beautiful.
"I came down with Jonathan, Molly," she said. "You will doubtless find
him at the brook." For an instant she hesitated in confusion and then
added hurriedly, "We were speaking about you."
"Were you?" asked Molly a little awkwardly, for Kesiah always
embarrassed her.
"We were both saying how much we admired your devotion to your
grandfather. One rarely finds such attachment in the young to the old."
"I have always loved him better than anybody except mother."
"I am sure you have, and it speaks very well for both of you. We are all
much interested in you, Molly."
"It's kind of you to think about me," answered Molly, and her voice was
constrained as it had been when she spoke in the library at Jordan's
Journey.
"We feel a great concern for your future," said Kesiah. "Whatever we can
do to help you, we shall do very gladly. I always felt a peculiar pity
and sympathy for your mother." Her voice choked, for it was, perhaps,
as spontaneous an expression of her emotions as she had ever permitted
herself.
"Thank you, ma'am," replied Molly simply, and the title of respect to
which Reuben had trained her dropped unconsciously from her lips. She
honestly liked Kesiah, though, in common with the rest of her little
world, she had fallen into the habit of regarding her as a person whom
it was hardly worth one's while to consider. Mrs. Gay had so completely
effaced her sister that the rough edges of Kesiah's character were
hardly visible beneath the little lady's enveloping charm.
"It is natural that you should have felt bitterly toward your father,"
began the older woman again in a trembling voice, "but I hope you
realize that the thought of his wrong to you and your mother saddened
his last hours."
To her surprise Molly received the remark almost passionately.
"How could that give me back my mother's ruined life?" she demanded.
"I know, dear, but the fact remains that he was your father---"
"Oh, I don't care in the least about the fact," retorted Molly, with her
pretty rustic attempt at a shrug, which implied, in this case, that the
government of nature, like that of society, rested solely on the consent
of the governed. What was clear to Kesiah was that this rebellion
against the injustice of the universe, as well as against the expiation
of Mr. Jonathan, was the outcome of a strong, though undisciplined,
moral passion within her. In her way, Molly was as stern a moralist as
Sarah Revercomb, but she derived her convictions from no academic system
of ethics. Kesiah had heard of her as a coquette; now she realized that
beneath the coqueteries there was a will of iron.
"You must come to us, some day, dear, and let us do what we can to make
you happy," she said. "It would be a pity for all that money to go to
the conversion of the Chinese, who are doubtless quite happy as they
are."
"I wonder why he chose the Chinese?" replied the girl. "They seem so
far away, and there's poor little Mrs. Meadows at Piping Tree who is
starving for bread."
"He was always like that--and so is my sister Angela--the thing that
wasn't in sight was the thing he agonized over." She did not confess
that she had detected a similar weakness in herself, and that, seen the
world over, it is the indubitable mark of the sentimentalist.
Analysis of Mr. Jonathan's character, however, failed to interest his
daughter. She smiled sweetly, but indifferently, and made a movement to
pass on into the meadow. Then, looking into Kesiah's face, she said in
a warmer voice: "If ever you want my help about your store room, Miss
Kesiah, just send for me. When you're ready to change the brine on your
pickles, I'll come down and do it."
"Thank you, Molly," answered the other; "you're a nice light hand for
such things."
In some almost imperceptible manner she felt that the girl had rebuffed
her. The conversation had been pleasant enough, yet Kesiah had meant
to show in it that she considered Molly's position changed since the
evening before; and it was this very suggestion that the girl had tossed
lightly aside--tossed without rudeness or malice, but with a firmness,
a finality, which appeared to settle the question forever. The
acknowledged daughter of Mr. Jonathan Gay was determined that she
should continue to be known merely as the granddaughter of his overseer.
Kesiah's overtures, had been--well, not exactly repulsed, but certainly
ignored; her advice had melted to thin air as soon as it was spoken.
As Molly flitted from her over the young weeds in the meadow, the older
woman stood looking after her with a heaviness, like the weight of
unshed tears, in her eyes. Not the girl's future, but her own, appeared
to her barren of interest, robbed even of hope. The spirit that combats,
she saw, had never been hers--nor had the courage that prevails. For
this reason fate had been hard to her--because she had never yielded to
pressure--because she had stepped by habit rather than choice into the
vacant place. She was a good woman--her heart assured her of this--she
had done her duty no matter what it cost her--and she had possessed,
moreover, a fund of common sense which had aided her not a little in
doing it. It was this common sense that told her now that facts were,
after all, more important than dreams--that the putting up of
pickles was a more useful work in the world than the regretting of
possibilities--that the sordid realities were not less closely woven
into the structure of existence than were the romantic illusions. She
told herself these things, yet in spite of her words she saw her future
stretching away, like her past, amid a multitude of small duties for
which she had neither inclination nor talent. One thing after another,
all just alike, day after day, month after month, year after year.
Nothing ahead of her, and, looking back, nothing behind her that she
would care to stop and remember. "That's life," she said softly to
herself and went on her way, while Molly, glancing back, beheld her only
as a blot on the sunshine.
"Poor Miss Kesiah," the girl thought before she forgot her. "I wonder if
she's ever really lived?"
Then the wonder fled from her mind, for, as a shadow fell over her path,
she looked up, startled, into the eyes of Gay, who had burst suddenly
out of the willows. His face was flushed and he appeared a trifle
annoyed. As he stopped before her, he cut sharply at the weeds with a
small whip he carried.
"Don't, please," she said; "I hate to see people cut off the heads of
innocent things."
"It is rather beastly," her returned, his face clearing. "Did you come
out to find me, cousin?"
"Why should I, Mr. Jonathan?"
"You don't soften the blow--but why 'Mr. Jonathan'?"
"I thought it was your name."
"It's not my name to you--I say, Molly, do you mind my telling you that
you're a brick?"
"Oh, no, not if you feel like it."
"I do feel like it tremendously."
"Then I don't mind in the least," and to prove it she smiled radiantly
into his face. Her smile was the one really beautiful thing about Molly,
but as far as her immediate purpose went it served her as successfully
as a host.
"By George, I like your devotion to the old chap!" he exclaimed. "I hope
a girl will stick by me as squarely when I am beginning to totter."
"Have you ever been as good to one?" she asked quite seriously, and
wondered why he laughed.
"Well, I doubt if I ever have, but I'd like very much to begin."
"You're not a grandfather, Mr. Jonathan."
"No, I'm not a grandfather--but, when I come to think of it, I'm a
cousin."
She accepted this with composure. "Are you?" she inquired indifferently
after a minute.
While she spoke he asked himself if she were really dull, or if she
had already learned to fence with her exrustic weapons? Her face was
brimming with expression, but, as he reminded himself, one never could
tell.
"I haven't any cousin but you, Molly. Don't you think you can agree to
take me?"
She shook her head, and he saw, or imagined he saw, the shadow of her
indignant surprise darken her features.
"I've never thought of you as my cousin," she answered.
"But I am, Molly."
"I don't think of you so," she retorted. Again, as in the case
of Kesiah's advances, she was refusing to constitute a law by her
acknowledgment.
"Don't you think if you tried very hard you might begin to?"
"Why should I try?"
"Well, suppose we say just because I want you to."
"That wouldn't help me. I can't feel that it would make any difference."
"What I want, you mean?"
"Yes, what you want."
"Aren't you a shade more tolerant of my existence than you were at
first?"
"I suppose so, but I've never thought about it--any more than I've
thought of this ten thousand a year. It's all outside of my life, but
grandfather's in it."
"Don't you ever feel that you'd like to get outside of it yourself? The
world's a big place."
For the first time she appeared attentive to his words.
"I've often wondered what it was like--especially the cities--New York,
Paris, London. Paris is the best, isn't it?"
"Yes, Paris is the best to me. Have you ever thought that you'd like to
wear pretty gowns and drive through a green park in the spring--filled
with other carriages in which are wonderful women?"
"But I'd feel so miserable and countrified," she answered. "Are they any
happier than I am--those wonderful women?"
"Perhaps not so happy--there's a green-eyed dragon gnawing at the hearts
of most of them, and you, my nut-brown beauty, have never felt his
fangs."
"I'd like to see them," she said after a minute, and moved slowly
onward.
"Some day you may. Look here, Molly," he burst out impulsively, "I'm not
going to be sentimental about you. I haven't the least idea of making
love to you--I've had enough of that sort of rot, God knows--but I do
like you tremendously, and I want to stand to you as a big brother. I
never had a sister, you know," he added.
Something earnest and tender in his voice touched her generosity, which
overflowed so easily.
"And I never had a brother," she rejoined.
"Then, that's where I'll come in, little cousin," he answered gently,
and drawing her to him, kissed her cheek with a caress which surprised
him by its unlikeness to the ordinary manifestations of love.
His hand was still on her shoulder, when he felt her start back from his
grasp, and, turning quickly in the direction of her glance, he saw the
miller looking at them from the thicket on the opposite side of the
brook. The anger in Abel's face had distorted his handsome features
until they appeared swollen as if from drink, and for a single instant
Gay imagined that it was indeed whisky and not passion that had wrought
so brutal a change in him.
"So you've made a fool of me, too, Molly?" he said when he had swung
over the stream and stood facing her.
"You're all wrong, Revercomb," began Gay, and stopped the next instant,
because Molly's hand had shot out to silence him.
"Will you be quiet?" she flung at him impatiently; and then fixing her
eyes on Abel, she waited silently for him to finish his speech. That
her lover's fiery temper had aroused her own, Gay realized as soon as he
turned to her. Her face was pale, but her eyes blazed and never had he
felt so strongly the tie of blood that united them as he did while she
stood there waiting for Abel's accusations with a gesture which appeared
to fling them back in disdain.
"I might have known 'twas all fool's play with you--I might have known
you had flirted too much to settle down to an honest love," said Abel,
breathing hard between his word as if each one were torn from him with a
physical wrench at his heart. In losing his self-possession he had
lost his judgment as well, and, grasping something of his love from the
sincerity of his emotion, Gay made another ineffectual effort to present
the situation in a fairer light.
"If you would only listen, my good fellow--if you would only let me
explain things---" he began.
"Will you be quiet?" said Molly a second time, and then facing him
passionately she threw him a gesture of dismissal. "If you want to
please me, you will go."
"And leave you alone with him?"
She laughed. "Do you think I'm afraid of an angry man, or that I've
never seen one before?"
With that he obeyed her, turning from time to time on his way over the
meadow to make sure that she did not need his support. In spite of the
utter unreasonableness of the affair, in some unaccountable way his
sympathies were on the side of the miller. The fellow was a boor, of
course, but, by Jove! he was a magnificent boor. It had been long since
Gay had seen such an outburst of primitive feeling--long since he had
come so close to the good red earth on which we walk and of which we are
made.
"You're out of your head, Abel," said Molly--Gay turned away from
them--and the tone in which she spoke was hardly calculated to bring him
back to the place he had deserted. "You will say things you'll regret,
but I'll never forgive."
"I'm sick of your eternal forgiveness," he retorted. "I've been forgiven
every time you got into a temper, and I suppose I'll be forgiven next
every time you are kissed." The "rousing" which had threatened every
Revercomb was upon him at last.
"Well, as a matter of fact it is time enough for you to forgive me when
I ask you to," she returned.
"You needn't ask. It's too much this time, and I'll be damned before I
will do it."
Bending over a grey skeleton of last year's golden-rod, she caressed it
gently, without breaking its ghostly bloom. Years afterward, when she
had forgotten every word he uttered, she could still see that dried
spray of golden-rod growing against the April sky--she could still hear
a bluebird that sang three short notes and stopped in the willows. In
the quiet air their anger seemed to rush together as she had sometimes
thought their love had rushed to a meeting.
"You have neither the right to forgive me nor to judge me," she said.
"Do you think I care what a man imagines of me who believes a thing
against me as easily as you do. If you went on your knees to me now I
should never explain--and if I chose to kiss every man in the county,"
she concluded in an outburst of passion, "you have nothing to do with
it!"
"Explain? How can a girl explain a man's kissing her, except by saying
she let him do it?"
"I did let him do it," she gasped.
For an instant they gazed at each other in an anger more violent in its
manifestation than their love had been. An observer, noticing them for
the first time, would have concluded that they had hated each other for
years, not that they had been lovers only a few minutes before. Nature,
having wearied of her play, was destroying her playthings.
"I would marry no man on earth who wouldn't believe me in spite of
that--and everything else," she said.
"Do you expect a man to believe you in spite of his eyes?"
"Eyes, ears--everything! Do you think I'd have turned on you like that
before I had heard you?"
A sob, not of pity, but of rage, burst from her lips, and the sound
sobered him more completely than her accusations had done. Her temper he
could withstand, but that little childish sob, bitten back almost before
it escaped, brought him again on his knees to her.
"I can't understand--oh, Molly, don't you see I am in torment?" he
cried.
But the veil of softness was gone now, and the cruelty that is bound up
in some inexplicable way in all violent emotion--even in the emotion of
love--showed itself on the surface.
"Then stay there, for you've made it for yourself," she answered, and
turned away from him. As his voice called her again, she broke into a
run, flying before him over the green meadow until she reached the lawn
of Jordan's Journey, and his pursuit ended. Then, hurrying through the
orchard and up the flagged walk, she ascended the steps, and bent over
Reuben in his chair.
"Grandfather, I am back. Are you asleep?"
The robin that had flown from the railing at her approach swung on the
bough of an apple-tree and regarded her with attention.
"Grandfather," she said again, touching him, "oh, grandfather, wake up!"