"THE WOMAN OF FATE"
At the back of Woodsedge there was a place of green and fragrant
mystery. In former years it had been an orchard, but unlimited sun and
rain had combined, with man's neglect, to reduce it to this state of
ruinous beauty. At one end the trees were so close, the boughs so
intermingled, that their foliage seemed a canopy dense enough to turn
aside the sharpest sun-lance, and the orchard, abutting, as it did, upon
the forest growth belonging to the park, seemed but the more like a
wilderness. For the girls it had many delights, the chief one being that
the unscraped, uncleaned trunks, the unpruned branches, the weedy, seedy
growths by the walls, all provided food in incalculable quantities for
innumerable birds--long before fruit time. Your bird hates the
well-cleaned, scraped-down, poison-washed, eggless, larvaeless orchard of
the commercially inclined farmer; but this seemed to be the general
refectory for all the birds in the county. Baltimore orioles hung a nest
from the tip of an elm bough directly over it. Orchard orioles,
cat-birds, thrushes, and robins took apartments in it. A cuckoo and his
wife dropped an inadequate and slovenly nest into an overgrown shrub,
and though their slim, gray shapes were seldom seen, their "chug, chug,
chug" was so often heard that Lena indignantly declared: "Dem rain
crows cum make great lies in dis country. In de olt country, ven dey
says 't-chug, t-chug,' ten it rain by jiminy! But here dey youst say
't-chug, t-chug' to make you worry mit de clothes dryin'," while the
dainty antics of a jewel-like little redstart filled her with laughter.
"I vork youst behind dat grapevine arbor, und I see him, my Miss Ladies;
and he got von frau--youst so big as my tum, und so qwiet, und he make
to dance und yump before her--und cock de eye at her, und he shiver out
dem orange und black fedders for her to look at, und he svitch de leetle
tail dis vay und dat vay, und she youst look up und say, plain, my Miss
Ladies: 'Gott in himmel! Vas dere eber such a bird-mans as dis von of
mine?'" And though the refectory was visited by warblers of many kinds,
none of them made music sweeter than the innocent laughter of the
sisters over the bird courtship Lena described.
On this particular morning the girls had gone to the tangled old orchard
for secret conclave. The ground was white with spring's snowstorm of
fruit blossoms, and they could feel the petals falling lightly upon
their uncovered heads as they walked. Sybil pulled a monster dandelion,
and, after touching the great golden disc with her lips, she drew the
long stem through her dark hair, leaving the blossom blazing just above
her ear.
"If this was only a rare growth," said she, "how people would rave over
its beauty. Dorothy, take warning--don't be common! Always remember old
gardener Jake's words to us when we were little: 'Make yerselves
skeerce, young ladies, and y'ell be valley'd accordin'.' But what's the
use of trying to teach wisdom to a girl who shows she's chock full of
black superstitions!"
For beyond a doubt Dorothy was earnestly searching for a four-leaf
clover, and presently she held out a five-leaf specimen for Sybil to
look at. But she waved it away, gloomily misquoting: "That clover doth
protest too much, methinks. You will do better to cling to the
three-leaf, that, promising nothing, has no power to disappoint you,
Dorrie!"
"Oh, but I'm looking for the four-leaf for _you_, Sib dear! If I find
it, you will get the introduction you long for without another such
disappointment as yesterday."
"Oh, don't!" cried Sybil, leaning her brow against a tree trunk; "don't
talk about it!" though that was exactly what they had come out there
for--to talk over the failure of Sybil's last, best, most natural
seeming plan for an accidental meeting with the woman of her dreams. She
was busy winking back her tears when Dorothy gave an exclamation, thrust
out her hand to brush aside a big, yellow-belted, booming bumble-bee,
then plucked and held up triumphantly a four-leaf clover, and, her face
all flushed with heat and excitement, she cried: "See that! She's yours,
dear! The Woman of Fate--she's yours! Now you see if she isn't!"
Sybil took the little emblem of good luck, and, putting her arm around
her sister's waist to hug her close, she laughed: "Oh, Dorrie, for a
girl who says her prayers every night and morning, you are the most
superstitious little beast--what's that?"
"It's her!" answered Dorothy, in ungrammatical delight; and Sybil,
catching some of her spirit, held the little emblem above her head,
crying, laughingly: "Now let the poor leaf get in its fine work!"
The words were scarcely out of her lips when clear and sharp there rose
the sound of metal's ringing blow against stone, followed by a quick
"Ho--la" in a woman's voice, and the instant stoppage of the regular
"click-klack, click-klack" of a trotting horse.
Down under the gigantic willow--his favorite tree--had been sitting John
Lawton, reading his paper, and now the girls saw him rise and hasten out
to Broadway; saw him, with hat off, speaking to the fretful chestnut and
his blue habited rider, who pointed backward with her crop. The watching
girls, without hesitation, clambered over the low stone wall and came
nearer. They made out that their father remonstrated, and the woman
laughed. And then they caught from her the words: "Very kind, and in
half an hour," and she was away again; but this time the
"clipperty-clapperty-clip" told that she rode at a gallop. The girls
fairly tore down the hill, crying "Papa--papa! what was it? Tell us
about it!" But first he pointed to the disappearing pair, saying: "Look
at that--that's not bad riding for a woman to do without a stirrup!"
"Without a stirrup?" questioned the girls. "Why, what do you mean,
papa?"
"Just what I say. I told her it wasn't safe, but she says it's a poor
horsewoman who can't ride from balance, and on she went; but she's--just
wait a bit," he broke off, "I'll be back in a moment;" and he went down
the road, crossed over to a large stone at the roadside, and, stooping,
picked something up. Returning, the girls saw that he carried a woman's
stirrup.
"That's what we heard clear up in the orchard!" said Sybil.
"Is she going to send for it?" asked Dorothy.
Sybil's very breath was suspended as she waited for the answer. How slow
he was about it! At last, feeling in his pocket for a bit of twine, he
replied:
"No; she's going to stop here and pick it up on her way home."
Sybil went white for an instant, then flushed red from brow to chin.
Dorothy squeezed her hand sympathetically. Mr. Lawton took up the
stirrup and examined the leather straps critically.
"I'm going to try to tie this thing on when she comes back. She rides
all right enough for looks without it, but if that horse should shy, and
I don't believe he's a bit above it, for he's as nervous as a headachy
woman, she might be unseated, so I'm going----"
The girls did not wait for him to finish, but hand in hand they made a
rush for the house, and flew up the outraged and groaning old stairs, to
bathe their flushed faces and to brush into propriety certain flying
locks of hair, and, in old-time parlance, to "prink" themselves
generally for the coming interview. As they hastened down again they
were disappointed to see their father standing at the gate.
"Oh!" cried Dorothy, "why did he not stay here and let her ride up to
the porch for the stirrup. Then we could have appeared naturally and as
a matter of course; now----"
"Now!" broke in Sybil, "as a matter of course we'll appear unnaturally,
thrusting ourselves forward like ill-bred children! Oh, let's run down
and bring papa back!"
And away they started, but almost immediately the
"clipperty-clapperty-clip" of the approaching horse was heard, and they
stopped. Dorothy, noting how swiftly the color came and went on her
sister's cheek, said, piteously: "I wonder if--oh, I hope she will be
nice, dear!"
"Nice?" repeated Sybil, savagely. "Why should she be nice? She is on the
top wave of success--we're two little nobodies! Why nice, pray? But my
pride is pushed well down in my pocket, Dorrie, and, if need be, I'll
grovel for the help she alone can give me!"
She said no more, for the horse had already been pulled up, and with a
laugh Miss Morrell held out her hand for the broken stirrup; but with
almost incredible determination Mr. Lawton not only refused to give it
up, but, leading the horse into the willow's dense shade, he produced an
old awl and some twine, at sight of which the rider smilingly lifted her
knee from the pommel and twisted about in the saddle, to give him a
chance to find the broken strap--and the girls looked at her in
amazement.
They had seen her often at the theatre--had wept themselves sick over
her stage heart-break and death; but now they saw no faintest trace of
that moving actress in the pleasant-faced woman before them--a
fair-complexioned, wholesome-looking woman, with lots of brown hair,
that had glittering threads all through and through it that were
accentuated by the blackness of the velvet derby-cap she wore. Her
straight nose was a little too short, her cheek-bones a little too high,
her mouth a little too wide; in fact, she had escaped being a beauty so
easily that one could not help feeling she had never been in danger. All
of which did not prevent her from being adored by women. Presently Mr.
Lawton called: "Girls, come here and help me a moment! One of you keep
this horse still and the other hold Miss Morrell's habit out of the way
for me."
Dorothy, forgetting her timidity, ran to the big chestnut's head, so
that her sister might take the place nearest to the rider; and as Sybil
held the habit's folds out of her father's way, she raised such
passionately pleading dark eyes that the actress, ever sensitive to
human emotions, felt her heart give a quickened throb, and said to
herself: "What on earth is it this girl is demanding of me?" Then she
spoke: "I beg your pardon, sir, but if these are your young daughters,
will you not introduce them to me?"
And John Lawton, who had the twine between his lips and the awl just
piercing the strap, jerked his head to the right, and mumbled: "M--m--my
oldest daughter, Sybil," then jerked it to the left, with: "M--m--my
youngest daughter, Dorothy--Miss Morrell."
And pulling off her loose riding-glove, Miss Morrell gave her hand to
each of the girls with a close, warm pressure of the long, nervous
fingers that was like the greeting of an old friend.
Dorothy chatted away, asking the name of the horse and making
extravagant love to him. But what had happened to Sybil--the voluble,
sometimes the sharp? She stood there dumb, and apparently unable to take
her pleading eyes from the smiling face above her. At last the job was
finished, and as Mr. Lawton placed the bronze-booted foot in the stirrup
Miss Morrell's sigh of comfort and exclamation: "Ah, it does feel good
to have it again, after all!" made that melancholy old gentleman laugh
aloud from sheer self-satisfaction; and then, as she gathered up her
reins, she gayly remarked: "Young ladies, since your father has
introduced you by your first names only, perhaps you will now introduce
him to me?"
And with much laughter they each took him by a hand and presented him in
full name--"Mr. John W. Lawton."
Still feeling Sybil's glance, and being well used to adoring girls,
Claire Morrell said, after thanking him for his kindness: "Mr. Lawton, I
live just opposite, on Riverdale Avenue. If you go so far afield, will
you not call upon me?" Then, touching the fading dandelion with her
crop, she added: "I see you are fond of flowers. Perhaps your father
will permit you and Miss Dorothy to come over some day and take a look
at my posies?"
The color rushed over Sybil's face and her eyes fairly blazed in sudden
joy, and the actress felt she had at least partly translated that
beseeching gaze. Dorothy accepted the invitation very prettily for
herself and sister, Mr. Lawton raised his hat, and as the actress
wheeled her horse about her white glove fell to the ground and she rode
on, leaving it there. Dorothy snatched it up and passed it to Sybil,
while John Lawton looked after the rider and remarked, with emphasis: "A
charming woman!"
And Dorothy answered, excitedly: "I always thought actresses had to be
pretty women, though at night even this Miss Morrell looks----"
"Never mind what she looks!" interrupted her father. "She's a charming
woman! You must go over some day and see her at home!" And he returned
to his paper under the willow.
Dorothy went at once to her mother to give that lady a voluminous and
detailed account of what had happened, and to be cross-examined at great
length as to the make of the actress's habit, the quality of her horse,
and the condition of her complexion, greatly doubting, as she did,
Dorothy's assertion as to its naturalness. But Sybil fled upstairs and
flung herself across the bed and pressed her hot cheek against the
crumpled rein-rubbed glove. Her wish had been granted, and all had
happened so unexpectedly. Nervous, foolish, joyful tears ran down her
cheeks, and, as she recalled the comprehending blue eyes of her Woman of
Fate, she knew in her heart that she had found help.