When Theodosia Ford married Wesley Brooke after a courtship of three
years, everybody concerned was satisfied. There was nothing
particularly romantic in either the courtship or marriage. Wesley was
a steady, well-meaning, rather slow fellow, comfortably off. He was
not at all handsome. But Theodosia was a very pretty girl with the
milky colouring of an auburn blonde and large china-blue eyes. She
looked mild and Madonna-like and was known to be sweet-tempered.
Wesley's older brother, Irving Brooke, had married a woman who kept
him in hot water all the time, so Heatherton folks said, but they
thought there was no fear of that with Wesley and Theodosia. They
would get along together all right.
Only old Jim Parmelee shook his head and said, "They might, and then
again they mightn't"; he knew the stock they came of and it was a kind
you could never predict about.
Wesley and Theodosia were third cousins; this meant that old Henry
Ford had been the great-great-grandfather of them both. Jim Parmelee,
who was ninety, had been a small boy when this remote ancestor was
still alive.
"I mind him well," said old Jim on the morning of Theodosia's wedding
day. There was a little group about the blacksmith's forge. Old Jim
was in the centre. He was a fat, twinkling-eyed old man, fresh and
ruddy in spite of his ninety years. "And," he went on, "he was about
the settest man you'd ever see or want to see. When old Henry Ford
made up his mind on any p'int a cyclone wouldn't turn him a
hairsbreadth--no, nor an earthquake neither. Didn't matter a mite how
much he suffered for it--he'd stick to it if it broke his heart. There
was always some story or other going round about old Henry's setness.
The family weren't quite so bad--only Tom. He was Dosia's
great-grandfather, and a regular chip of the old block. Since then
it's cropped out now and again all through the different branches of
the family. I mistrust if Dosia hasn't got a spice of it, and Wes
Brooke too, but mebbe not."
Old Jim was the only croaker. Wesley and Theodosia were married, in
the golden prime of the Indian summer, and settled down on their snug
little farm. Dosia was a beautiful bride, and Wesley's pride in her
was amusingly apparent. He thought nothing too good for her, the
Heatherton people said. It was a sight to make an old heart young to
see him march up the aisle of the church on Sunday in all the glossy
splendour of his wedding suit, his curly black head held high and his
round boyish face shining with happiness, stopping and turning proudly
at his pew to show Theodosia in.
They always sat alone together in the big pew, and Alma Spencer, who
sat behind them, declared that they held each other's hands all
through the service. This lasted until spring; then came a sensation
and scandal, such as decorous Heatherton had not known since the time
Isaac Allen got drunk at Centreville Fair and came home and kicked his
wife.
One evening in early April Wesley came home from the store at "the
Corner," where he had lingered to talk over politics and farming
methods with his cronies. This evening he was later than usual, and
Theodosia had his supper kept warm for him. She met him on the porch
and kissed him. He kissed her in return, and held her to him for a
minute, with her bright head on his shoulder. The frogs were singing
down in the south meadow swamp, and there was a splendour of silvery
moonrise over the wooded Heatherton hills. Theodosia always remembered
that moment.
When they went in, Wesley, full of excitement, began to talk of what
he had heard at the store. Ogden Greene and Tom Cary were going to
sell out and go to Manitoba. There were better chances for a man out
there, he said; in Heatherton he might slave all his life and never
make more than a bare living. Out west he might make a fortune.
Wesley talked on in this strain for some time, rehashing all the
arguments he had heard Greene and Cary use. He had always been rather
disposed to grumble at his limited chances in Heatherton, and now the
great West seemed to stretch before him, full of alluring prospects
and visions. Ogden and Tom wanted him to go too, he said. He had half
a notion to. Heatherton was a stick-in-the-mud sort of place anyhow.
"What say, Dosia?"
He looked across the table at her, his eyes bright and questioning.
Theodosia had listened in silence, as she poured his tea and passed
him her hot, flaky biscuits. There was a little perpendicular wrinkle
between her straight eyebrows.
"I think Ogden and Tom are fools," she said crisply. "They have good
farms here. What do they want to go west for, or you, either? Don't
get silly notions in your head, Wes."
Wesley flushed.
"Wouldn't you go with me, Dosia?" he said, trying to speak lightly.
"No, I wouldn't," said Theodosia, in her calm, sweet voice. Her face
was serene, but the little wrinkle had grown deeper. Old Jim Parmelee
would have known what it meant. He had seen the same expression on
old Henry Ford's face many a time.
Wesley laughed good-humouredly, as if at a child. His heart was
suddenly set on going west, and he was sure he could soon bring
Theodosia around. He did not say anything more about it just then.
Wesley thought he knew how to manage women.
When he broached the subject again, two days later, Theodosia told him
plainly that it was no use. She would never consent to leave
Heatherton and all her friends and go out to the prairies. The idea
was just rank foolishness, and he would soon see that himself.
All this Theodosia said calmly and sweetly, without any trace of
temper or irritation. Wesley still believed that he could persuade her
and he tried perseveringly for a fortnight. By the end of that time he
discovered that Theodosia was not a great-great-granddaughter of old
Henry Ford for nothing.
Not that Theodosia ever got angry. Neither did she laugh at him. She
met his arguments and pleadings seriously enough, but she never
wavered.
"If you go to Manitoba, Wes, you'll go alone," she said. "I'll never
go, so there is no use in any more talking."
Wesley was a descendant of old Henry Ford too. Theodosia's unexpected
opposition roused all the latent stubbornness of his nature. He went
over to Centreville oftener, and kept his blood at fever heat talking
to Greene and Cary, who wanted him to go with them and spared no pains
at inducement.
The matter was gossiped about in Heatherton, of course. People knew
that Wesley Brooke had caught "the western fever," and wanted to sell
out and go to Manitoba, while Theodosia was opposed to it. They
thought Dosia would have to give in in the end, but said it was a pity
Wes Brooke couldn't be contented to stay where he was well off.
Theodosia's family naturally sided with her and tried to dissuade
Wesley. But he was mastered by that resentful irritation, roused in a
man by opposition where he thinks he should be master, which will
drive him into any cause.
One day he told Theodosia that he was going. She was working her
butter in her little, snowy-clean dairy under the great willows by the
well. Wesley was standing in the doorway, his stout, broad-shouldered
figure filling up the sunlit space. He was frowning and sullen.
"I'm going west in two weeks' time with the boys, Dosia," he said
stubbornly. "You can come with me or stay here--just exactly as you
please. But I'm going."
Theodosia went on spatting her balls of golden butter on the print in
silence. She was looking very neat and pretty in her big white apron,
her sleeves rolled up high above her plump, dimpled elbows, and her
ruddy hair curling about her face and her white throat. She looked as
pliable as her butter.
Her silence angered her husband. He shuffled impatiently.
"Well, what have you to say, Dosia?"
"Nothing," said Theodosia. "If you have made up your mind to go, go
you will, I suppose. But I will not. There is no use in talking. We've
been over the ground often enough, Wes. The matter is settled."
Up to that moment Wesley had always believed that his wife would yield
at last, when she saw that he was determined. Now he realized that she
never would. Under that exterior of milky, dimpled flesh and calm blue
eyes was all the iron will of old dead and forgotten Henry Ford. This
mildest and meekest of girls and wives was not to be moved a
hairsbreadth by all argument or entreaty, or insistence on a husband's
rights.
A great, sudden anger came over the man. He lifted his hand and for
one moment it seemed to Theodosia as if he meant to strike her. Then
he dropped it with the first oath that had ever crossed his lips.
"You listen to me," he said thickly. "If you won't go with me I'll
never come back here--never. When you want to do your duty as a wife
you can come to me. But I'll never come back."
He turned on his heel and strode away. Theodosia kept on spatting her
butter. The little perpendicular wrinkle had come between her brows
again. At that moment an odd, almost uncanny resemblance to the old
portrait of her great-great-grandfather, which hung on the parlour
wall at home, came out on her girlish face.
The fortnight passed by. Wesley was silent and sullen, never speaking
to his wife when he could avoid it. Theodosia was as sweet and serene
as ever. She made an extra supply of shirts and socks for him, put up
his lunch basket, and packed his trunk carefully. But she never spoke
of his journey.
He did not sell his farm. Irving Brooke rented it. Theodosia was to
live in the house. The business arrangements were simple and soon
concluded.
Heatherton folks gossiped a great deal. They all condemned Theodosia.
Even her own people sided against her now. They hated to be mixed up
in a local scandal, and since Wes was bound to go they told Theodosia
that it was her duty to go with him, no matter how much she disliked
it. It would be disgraceful not to. They might as well have talked to
the four winds. Theodosia was immoveable. They coaxed and argued and
blamed--it all came to the same thing. Even those of them who could be
"set" enough themselves on occasion could not understand Theodosia,
who had always been so tractable. They finally gave up, as Wesley had
done, baffled. Time would bring her to her senses, they said; you just
had to leave that still, stubborn kind alone.
On the morning of Wesley's departure Theodosia arose at sunrise and
prepared a tempting breakfast. Irving Brooke's oldest son, Stanley,
who was to drive Wesley to the station, came over early with his
express wagon. Wesley's trunk, corded and labelled, stood on the back
platform. The breakfast was a very silent meal. When it was over
Wesley put on his hat and overcoat and went to the door, around which
Theodosia's morning-glory vines were beginning to twine. The sun was
not yet above the trees and the long shadows lay on the dewy grass.
The wet leaves were flickering on the old maples that grew along the
fence between the yard and the clover field beyond. The skies were all
pearly blue, cleanswept of clouds. From the little farmhouse the green
meadows sloped down to the valley, where a blue haze wound in and out
like a glistening ribbon.
Theodosia went out and stood looking inscrutably on, while Wesley and
Irving hoisted the trunk into the wagon and tied it. Then Wesley came
up the porch steps and looked at her.
"Dosia," he said a little huskily, "I said I wouldn't ask you to go
again, but I will. Will you come with me yet?"
"No," said Theodosia gently.
He held out his hand. He did not offer to kiss her.
"Goodbye, Dosia."
"Goodbye, Wes."
There was no tremor of an eyelash with her. Wesley smiled bitterly and
turned away. When the wagon reached the end of the little lane he
turned and looked back for the last time. Through all the years that
followed he carried with him the picture of his wife as he saw her
then, standing amid the airy shadows and wavering golden lights of the
morning, the wind blowing the skirt of her pale blue wrapper about
her feet and ruffling the locks of her bright hair into a delicate
golden cloud. Then the wagon disappeared around a curve in the road,
and Theodosia turned and went back into her desolate home.
For a time there was a great buzz of gossip over the affair. People
wondered over it. Old Jim Parmelee understood better than the others.
When he met Theodosia he looked at her with a curious twinkle in his
keen old eyes.
"Looks as if a man could bend her any way he'd a mind to, doesn't
she?" he said. "Looks is deceiving. It'll come out in her face by and
by--she's too young yet, but it's there. It does seem unnatteral to
see a woman so stubborn--you'd kinder look for it more in a man."
Wesley wrote a brief letter to Theodosia when he reached his
destination. He said he was well and was looking about for the best
place to settle. He liked the country fine. He was at a place called
Red Butte and guessed he'd locate there.
Two weeks later he wrote again. He had taken up a claim of three
hundred acres. Greene and Cary had done the same. They were his
nearest neighbours and were three miles away. He had knocked up a
little shack, was learning to cook his own meals, and was very busy.
He thought the country was a grand one and the prospects good.
Theodosia answered his letter and told him all the Heatherton news.
She signed herself "Theodosia Brooke," but otherwise there was
nothing in the letter to indicate that it was written by a wife to
her husband.
At the end of a year Wesley wrote and once more asked her to go out to
him. He was getting on well, and was sure she would like the place. It
was a little rough, to be sure, but time would improve that.
"Won't you let bygones be bygones, Dosia?" he wrote, "and come out to
me. Do, my dear wife."
Theodosia wrote back, refusing to go. She never got any reply, nor did
she write again.
People had given up talking about the matter and asking Theodosia when
she was going out to Wes. Heatherton had grown used to the chronic
scandal within its decorous borders. Theodosia never spoke of her
husband to anyone, and it was known that they did not correspond. She
took her youngest sister to live with her. She had her garden and hens
and a cow. The farm brought her enough to live on, and she was always
busy.
* * * * *
When fifteen years had gone by there were naturally some changes in
Heatherton, sleepy and; unprogressive as it was. Most of the old
people were in the little hillside burying-ground that fronted the
sunrise. Old Jim Parmelee was there with his recollections of four
generations. Men and women who had been in their prime when Wesley
went away were old now and the children were grown up and married.
Theodosia was thirty-five and was nothing like! the slim, dimpled girl
who had stood on the porch steps and watched her husband drive away
that morning fifteen years ago. She was stout and comely; the auburn
hair was darker and arched away from her face in smooth, shining waves
instead of the old-time curls. Her face was unlined and
fresh-coloured, but no woman could live in subjection to her own
unbending will for so many years and not show it. Nobody, looking at
Theodosia now, would have found it hard to believe that a woman with
such a determined, immoveable face could stick to a course of conduct
in defiance of circumstances.
Wesley Brooke was almost forgotten. People knew, through
correspondents of Greene and Cary, that he had prospered and grown
rich. The curious old story had crystallized into accepted history.
A life may go on without ripple or disturbance for so many years that
it may seem to have settled into a lasting calm; then a sudden wind of
passion may sweep over it and leave behind a wake of tempestuous
waters. Such a time came at last to Theodosia.
One day in August Mrs. Emory Merritt dropped in. Emory Merritt's
sister was Ogden Greene's wife, and the Merritts kept up an occasional
correspondence with her. Hence, Cecilia Merritt always knew what was
to be known about Wesley Brooke, and always told Theodosia because she
had never been expressly forbidden to do so.
Today she looked slightly excited. Secretly she was wondering if the
news she brought would have any effect whatever on Theodosia's
impassive calm.
"Do you know, Dosia, Wesley's real sick? In fact, Phoebe Greene says
they have very poor hopes of him. He was kind of ailing all the
spring, it seems, and about a month ago he was took down with some
kind of slow fever they have out there. Phoebe says they have a hired
nurse from the nearest town and a good doctor, but she reckons he
won't get over it. That fever goes awful hard with a man of his
years."
Cecilia Merritt, who was the fastest talker in Heatherton, had got
this out before she was brought up by a queer sound, half gasp, half
cry, from Theodosia. The latter looked as if someone had struck her a
physical blow.
"Mercy, Dosia, you ain't going to faint! I didn't suppose you'd care.
You never seemed to care."
"Did you say," asked Theodosia thickly, "that Wesley was sick--dying?"
"Well, that's what Phoebe said. She may be mistaken. Dosia Brooke,
you're a queer woman. I never could make you out and I never expect
to. I guess only the Lord who made you can translate you."
Theodosia stood up. The sun was getting low, and the valley beneath
them, ripening to harvest, was like a river of gold. She folded up her
sewing with a steady hand.
"It's five o'clock, so I'll ask you to excuse me, Cecilia. I have a
good deal to attend to. You can ask Emory if he'll drive me to the
station in the morning. I'm going out to Wes."
"Well, for the land's sake," said Cecilia Merritt feebly, as she tied
on her gingham sunbonnet. She got up and went home in a daze.
Theodosia packed her trunk and worked all night, dry-eyed, with agony
and fear tearing at her heart. The iron will had snapped at last, like
a broken reed, and fierce self-condemnation seized on her. "I've been
a wicked woman," she moaned.
A week from that day Theodosia climbed down from the dusty stage that
had brought her from the station over the prairies to the
unpretentious little house where Wesley Brooke lived. A young girl, so
like what Ogden Greene's wife had been fifteen years before that
Theodosia involuntarily exclaimed, "Phoebe," came to the door. Beyond
her, Theodosia saw the white-capped nurse.
Her voice trembled.
"Does--does Wesley Brooke live here?" she asked.
The girl nodded.
"Yes. But he is very ill at present. Nobody is allowed to see him."
Theodosia put up her hand and loosened her bonnet strings as if they
were choking her. She had been sick with the fear that Wesley would be
dead before she got to him. The relief was almost overwhelming.
"But I must see him," she cried hysterically--she, the calm,
easy-going Dosia, hysterical--"I am his wife--and oh, if he had died
before I got here!"
The nurse came forward.
"In that case I suppose you must," she conceded. "But he does not
expect you. I must prepare him for the surprise."
She turned to the door of a room opening off the kitchen, but
Theodosia, who had hardly heard her, was before her. She was inside
the room before the nurse could prevent her. Then she stood, afraid
and trembling, her eyes searching the dim apartment hungrily.
When they fell on the occupant of the bed Theodosia started in bitter
surprise. All unconsciously she had been expecting to find Wesley as
he had been when they parted. Could this gaunt, haggard creature, with
the unkempt beard and prematurely grey hair and the hollow, beseeching
eyes, be the ruddy, boyish-faced husband of her youth? She gave a
choking cry of pain and shame, and the sick man turned his head. Their
eyes met.
Amazement, incredulity, hope, dread, all flashed in succession over
Wesley Brooke's lined face. He raised himself feebly up.
"Dosia," he murmured.
Theodosia staggered across the room and fell on her knees by the bed.
She clasped his head to her breast and kissed him again and again.
"Oh, Wes, Wes, can you forgive me? I've been a wicked, stubborn
woman--and I've spoiled our lives. Forgive me."
He held his thin trembling arms around her and devoured her face with
his eyes.
"Dosia, when did you come? Did you know I was sick?"
"Wes, I can't talk till you say you've forgiven me."
"Oh, Dosia, you have just as much to forgive. We were both too set. I
should have been more considerate."
"Just say, I forgive you, Dosia,'" she entreated.
"I forgive you, Dosia," he said gently, "and oh, it's so good to see
you once more, darling. There hasn't been an hour since I left you
that I haven't longed for your sweet face. If I had thought you really
cared I'd have gone back. But I thought you didn't. It broke my heart.
You did though, didn't you?"
"Oh, yes, yes, yes," she said, holding him more closely, with her
tears falling.
When the young doctor from Red Butte came that evening he found a
great improvement in his patient. Joy and happiness, those world-old
physicians, had done what drugs and medicines had failed to do.
"I'm going to get better, Doc," said Wesley. "My wife has come and
she's going to stay. You didn't know I was married, did you? I'll tell
you the story some day. I proposed going back east, but Dosia says
she'd rather stay here. I'm the happiest man in Red Butte, Doc."
He squeezed Theodosia's hand as he had used to do long ago in
Heatherton church, and Dosia smiled down at him. There were no
dimples now, but her smile was very sweet. The ghostly finger of old
Henry Ford, pointing down through the generations, had lost its power
to brand with its malediction the life of these, his descendants.
Wesley and Theodosia had joined hands with their long-lost happiness.