CHAPTER I_The Heart of Arethusa

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THE HEART OF ARETHUSA

FRANCES BARTON FOX

With a Frontispiece by F. W. Read

[Illustration: ARETHUSA]

Boston

Small, Maynard and Company

Publishers

By Small, Maynard & Company

(Incorporated)

GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN

Who found me young; full ignorant of the trade

To which my soul aspired. So it was she made,

With friendly kindness of a generous heart,

Some of her busy hours to know still worthier aim;

Seeing that I learned a trifle of the writing game.

And in what I've written, she has had her part.

CONTENTS

I XIV

II XV

III XVI

IV XVII

V XVIII

VI XIX

VII XX

VIII XXI

IX XXII

X XXIII

XI XXIV

XII XV

XIII

THE HEART OF ARETHUSA

CHAPTER I

At the end of a long, straight avenue of symmetrically developed water

maple trees (the trunks of all the trees whitewashed to precisely the

same height from the ground) the house gleamed creamy-white, directly

facing the Pike. Its broad front door came exactly within the middle

distance of this vista of maples, as though the long-ago builder had

known that Miss Eliza's orderly soul would have suffered much

unhappiness had it swerved a fraction from the centre and, looking

forward to the time when she should rule at the Farm, had planned it

all to save her the trouble of a change. Miss Eliza would have been

sorely tempted to move either the house or the avenue, had not the

front door been so placed as to be viewed from the exact middle of that

avenue; such was her passion for neatness and precision.

And there was not a weed nor a ragged-looking patch of grass in the

whole length of the brown dirt road between those evenly grown maples;

nor a weed nor a ragged-looking patch of grass in the whole of the

front yard, enclosed in its white board fence with the one flat board

laid all around the top.

This was a board whose position and height from the ground had always

made it irresistible to Arethusa. It had been one of the chief delights

of an active childhood and adolescence to walk it as far as possible

before falling off. The day she had negotiated the entire fence without

once losing her balance, to return in triumph to the stile where

Timothy awaited her, marked an epoch in her development; for it was the

last stronghold of Timothy's achievements, as should properly

distinguish the boy from the girl, which had thus far held out against

her. And it was quite a long way around the top of that fence; the yard

was large.

There was no gate into the yard. Those who came to call at the Farm on

wheels stopped their vehicle at the end of the avenue outside, by the

worn hitching-post with its iron chain and ring, and climbed an

old-fashioned stile right from the carriage-block to a straight walk of

bricks, laid in a queer criss-cross pattern, that led up to the house.

It was a low-built house, wide-flung, the eaves coming close down over

the second-story windows: and one might almost have stepped from the

windows of the first floor directly out on to the flagged walk that ran

along the whole front. It had a curious appearance of having grown

where it was. One could imagine, without very much effort, that it had

not been built as were other houses, but had grown up gradually like

some queer sort of solid plant.

The pillars of the small front porch were covered thick with a white

clematis in full bloom, the pride of Miss Eliza's heart; and well might

she be proud, for no other clematis for miles around ever bloomed so

profusely or so largely. Flowers nodded gayly in the smallest of formal

gardens at one end of the house and honeysuckle vines clambered over

frames by the summer-house sheltering the cistern at the other end; but

both vines and flowers climbed and nodded in the most orderly manner,

for they were all Miss Eliza's plants.

The house was painted every other spring, painted this creamy-white,

and it always seemed a cleaner white than any other white house in the

country, no matter if those others were painted just as often. The

outside shutters to the twinkling square-paned windows were green, a

rich, dark green, that had not been changed since time began for the

Farm. On the second day of May every other year (unless that day fell

on Sunday) John Gibson drove out from town and began painting at the

Farm. If it rained, he painted inside the porches first; but he put one

coat of paint all over everything paintable before he was through. He

always stayed out at the Farm until his work was done, and then he

drove back to town again, to wait until the then two-years' distant

second day of May should bring him back.

And everything that was done on the Farm was done in just such

well-grooved ruts of habit.

* * * * *

It had been unbearably hot and close all day long.

The brazen, hard-blue sky had seemed to be pressing a blanket of thick,

humid air closer and closer to the earth as if bent upon the

suffocation of everything living. Everybody at the Farm had been sure

it was brewing a storm. They had hoped a good rainstorm; and now ... It

was almost come.

Down on the horizon the clouds were piling up in great black and dark

grey masses, with here and there a lighter grey that showed ominously

against its darker background; cloud masses shot through every now and

then with an angry-looking red or orange flash that was immediately

answered by a low rumble of ever nearing thunder.

The wind had risen, after this gasping day without a breath of air

stirring anywhere, and now it blew refreshingly cold and clear almost

directly from the north.

It flattened the long parched grass in the yard. It danced the leaves

on the trees about so gayly and so madly as they turned their more

prominently veined sides to view (which Arethusa knew was almost a sure

indication of rain), it did not seem possible their slender stems could

hold them to the bending and twisting branches. Indeed, some of them

could not hold on and the wind gathered these up and carried them along

with bits of twigs and grass to pile up in the fence corners and wait

for that sorely needed drink of water there. A garden chair in front of

the house rocked violently as though some restless ghost were occupying

it and then overturned with a crash. The dust gathered up in the brown

dirt road in great swirls and whirled away like miniature

cyclone-clouds in their funnel shape towards the Pike to meet other

swirls of a lighter dust and go whirling still farther away, until the

wind grew tired of such sport and dropped them. The birds' nest in the

north cornice which Miss Eliza had been after for weeks blew down, and

the straw and bits of feathers were scattered all over the yard; but

only to be caught again by the wind and carried on somewhere else. The

green shutters on the house swung out on their fastenings as far as

they could and then banged back against the house with a tiny crash of

sound.

There seemed nothing that the wind overlooked. Even the clouds, as they

piled higher and higher and blacker and blacker, had the appearance of

being driven by the wind, nearer and nearer the Farm.

Arethusa ran out of the front door and down the long, flagged walk

towards the quince bushes, far at the very end of the yard, to meet

the storm. She held out her arms to the wind and drank in great deep

breaths of its refreshing coolness. It tossed her skirts about her and

blew the great rope of coppery red hair which ordinarily hung loosely

plaited down her back so that it streamed straight out behind her just

like a candle flame.

Of all the things that happened with which she was acquainted, Arethusa

loved best a thunder-storm. She felt no slightest tinge of fear; to be

out of doors in the wind and rain with thunder crashing and rolling

and great flashes of lightning splitting wide the heavens, every now

and then, left nothing to be desired towards the perfection of the

situation. She had sometimes fancied, after an unusually wide and

vivid flash, that she had really been able to see a wee bit of a way

into that Heavenly City which she had been taught was high above her,

behind all that sky, in the blinding brightness.

But Arethusa's aunts had altogether different ideas, not one of them

(save perhaps Miss Asenath, somewhat) understanding in the least this

strange and illogical desire to watch the play of the elements out of

doors when she could be safe inside a house. It was always their very

first move, when a storm was threatened, to bid her remain indoors.

To-day though, so far, the gods had seemed to be with her; she had

escaped without being seen. And if her luck continued to hold, she

might get clear away to Miss Asenath's Woods before her Aunt 'Liza

caught her and haled her back. For they had not had such a glorious

storm as this would be, if its promise were made good, for months and

months.

There was a flash of lightning that seemed to play all about the girl

running swiftly down the walk; a crash of thunder that seemed to make

every window pane in the house rattle in echo, and a few, big,

splashing drops of rain fell.

Arethusa stretched her arms high and stood on tiptoe to meet them. She

shook her hair loose from its plait and threw back her head, loving it

all--the wind and the dark sky and the tense feeling of readiness for

the storm with which everything seemed charged--with an almost pagan

joy. She even began a dance, a fantastic sort of lonely quadrille (if

it could be given any special name), there on the flagged walk by the

end of the house.

"'Thusa!"

The call came very faint and far away.

Then--"'Thusa!"

Louder this time, and much nearer, but Arethusa heeded it not if she

heard; her dance continued uninterrupted. She swayed like a tall lily

to the wind, with a few little steps one way and then a few little

steps the other; holding out her cotton skirts; her hair blown all

about her like a great, red cloud. There was something elfin, something

wild and woodsy, in her manner of dancing; the nymph whose name she

bore might so have welcomed a storm in her woods of ancient Greece.

Then--"A----r--e-thusa!"

And Miss Eliza Redfield's own energetic little person, as trig and trim

as a tiny ship with all sails closely reefed, even in this boisterous

wind, bore down upon her niece. Miss Eliza's grey crown of glory,

parted in the middle with precision and to the exactitude of a hair,

was totally unruffled and remained drawn down across her forehead in

smooth, satiny bands of an evenness and rigidity which no other hair,

save Miss Eliza's, could possibly have.

She pushed her shiny glasses to the end of her sharp, little nose and

over them surveyed the disheveled maiden before her.

"What are you doing?" she asked crisply.

Arethusa turned her glowing face to her aunt, but without pausing in

her dance. "Oh, this glorious storm, Aunt 'Liza! I ..."

Miss Eliza waved her hand. "You need not answer. I can see quite

plainly, for myself, it is something foolish. You should not be out

here. Come on into the house, Arethusa. Your Aunt 'Titia and I and your

Aunt 'Senath wish to talk to you. In the sitting-room."

"Oh, not right now, Aunt 'Liza, please! Can't I ..."

"No, you can't. Come on into the house. How many times do you have to

be told a thing, Arethusa? You know very well how much your Aunt 'Titia

objects to your running around in a storm in this outlandish way!"

"Oh, but Aunt 'Liza, it's not storming yet. Just thundering a little,"

pleaded Arethusa. "Please let me stay out until it really begins.

Please! I'll come right in then. I promise. Please!"

"_Arethusa!_"

And this effectually nipped in the bud Arethusa's faint little effort

to have her own way.

But it would have been nipped effectually sooner or later, for no one

ever dreamed of standing up for long against Miss Eliza, or of being so

rash as to contemplate such as actual disobedience. Although her

stature was that of a child and her figure slight in proportion, she

concentrated as much energy and leadership in those four feet eleven

inches, as if the figures had been reversed.

Blish, the negro boy who did all the hardest and heaviest work around

the house, inside and out, and who stood six feet three in his

stockings, hung his head abjectly as before an offended Goliath when

his diminutive mistress scolded him for a task she considered

slightingly performed. Blish had an honest and ingrained terror of Miss

Eliza's wrath and the lashings she could give with her tongue: and he

was not alone among those on the Farm in this terror.

So Arethusa abandoned her dance and, with her hair still hanging,

meekly followed Miss Eliza towards the front door.

"We have had a letter from your father," began Miss Eliza, as this

strange Indian-file procession of very tiny old lady and very tall

young girl proceeded back along the flagged walk on which it had issued

forth in distinct sections such a short while before.

"_Oh!_" Arethusa lunged forward and grabbed Miss Eliza around her

neck. "When, Aunt 'Liza? When? This morning? What did he say? Why

didn't you tell me? Did he say anything for me? Oh, Aunt 'Liza, what

did he say?"

These staccato questions were poured forth as fast as it is possible

for human lips to utter words.

Miss Eliza extricated herself from the embrace without interrupting her

progress.

"We considered it best, your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath,"

(She never spoke of herself and Arethusa's other great-aunts in any

different way or order, and why, no one could tell) "to discuss it

thoroughly among ourselves before we said anything to you about it. It

was a very unexpected letter; almost a shock, I might say, the

contents. It came yesterday afternoon. I wish, Arethusa, that you would

learn not to be so violent. You could have asked me about it without

nearly strangling me."

Every fibre of Arethusa's body quivered with impatience. What little

self-control she had, and Miss Eliza would have named it none at all,

was only managed with the greatest difficulty. Behind her aunt's

leadership she proceeded with little hops and skips. Her tongue burned

with all the rest of those questions she was so longing to ask.

A Letter from Father in the house ever since yesterday afternoon, and

she had not even seen it! It was the one time in weeks that she had not

gone down to the mail-box for the mail! So it always happened!

Suddenly Miss Eliza turned.

"You make me so nervous, Arethusa, jumping up and down that way behind

me, I could scream! Can't you _walk_!" Then she added, half to herself

and rather irrelevantly too, considering the gist of the foregoing

conversation. "I must say that I question very strongly the wisdom of

Sister 'Titia's decision."

All decisions were, nine cases out of ten, wholly Miss Eliza's; but in

conversation responsibility for them was generally shifted to Miss

Letitia.

Arethusa made a noble effort to compose herself and did her very utmost

to walk as she had been requested.

From long experience of her aunt, she knew it would do no earthly good

to ask a single one of those questions she so desired to have answered.

Miss Eliza told a person all that was necessary when she was quite

ready for it, herself, and without the least regard as to the state of

feverish impatience to which such a proceeding might bring a

petitioner. And very often, Arethusa had also discovered, questioning

delayed the wished-for loosening of Miss Eliza's tongue.