The warm October weather lay over the Drennen homestead at Warne. This
was a house gigantic and austere, its gray stone walls throwing into
relief its red brick porch, veined with ivy stems, like an Indian’s
face, whose warrior blood is raging, leant against a rock boulder.
Under the shade of the falling vine-fringe Margaret sat, passive and
quiet, on the veranda. From under drooping lids, long-lashed, her
brown eyes looked out with a sort of sweet and sober studiousness.
Her reddish-brown hair appeared the color of old metal beaten by the
hammer here and there into a lighter flick of gold, rolling back from
her straight forehead and caught in a loose, low knot. The corners of
her mouth were lifted a little, giving an extra fulness to sensitive
lips, and the long rise of her cheek, from chin to temple, was without
a dimple.
The haze hung an opal tint over the blue hillsides and lent to nearer
objects a dreamy unreality. The atmosphere reflected Margaret’s mood.
She was conscious of a certain tired numbness. Her acts of the past
few weeks had a sort of elusiveness in perspective, and the old house
at Warne, with its gloomy stables, taciturn servants, its familiar
occupants--even she herself--seemed to possess a curious unreality.
Across the field ran the wavering fringe of willow which marked the
little sluggish brook with the foot-log, where often she had waded,
slim-legged, as a child. There was the old stable loft from which she
had once fallen, hunting for pigeons’ eggs. There were the same gloomy
holes under the eaves, from which awful bat shapes had issued for her
childish shuddering. Only the master of the house was changed, and he
was Melwin Drennen, Lydia’s husband. As a child, he had carried her on
his shoulders over the fields when she had visited the place. She had
liked him unaffectedly, and the great sorrow of his life had hurt her
also.
She was a mere child then, and had heard it with a vague and wondering
pain. It had been a much-talked-of match--that between her cousin and
this man--and it was only a week after the wedding, at this same old
place, that the accident had happened. Lydia had been thrown from her
horse. She was carried back to a house of mourning. The decorations
were taken from the walls, and great surgeons came down from the city
to ponder, shake their heads, and depart. He, loving much, had hoped
against hope. Margaret remembered hearing how he had sat all one night
outside her door, silent, with his head against the wainscoting and his
hands tight together--the night they said she would die.
And that was twelve years ago! She had bettered slightly, grown
stronger, walked a little, then declined again. Now for five years past
her life had been a colorless exchange of bed and reclining-chair,
and, in this period, she had never left the house.
Margaret shivered in the sun as she thought. At intervals she had heard
of his life. “Such a _lovely_ life!” people said. She had thought
of his self-sacrifice and devotion as something very beautiful. It
had been an ever-present ideal to her of spiritual love. In her own
self-dissatisfaction she had flown to this haven instinctively, as to a
dear example. A strange desire to stab herself with the visual presence
of her own lack had possessed her. But in some way the steel had failed
her. She was conscious now of a vague self-reproach that her greater
sorrow was for Melwin and not for the invalid. Surely Lydia was the one
to be sorry for, and yet there was an awfulness about the life he led
that she was coming to feel acutely.
The crying incompletion, the negative hollowness of it, had smote her.
His full life had stopped, like a sluggish stream. His vitality, his
energies, could not go ahead. He was bound through all these years
to the body of this death. Love had broadened his gaze, lifted his
horizon, and then Fate had suddenly reared this crystal, impassable
wall, through which he must ever gaze and ever be denied. He was
condemned still to love her and to watch agonizedly the slender
gradations, the imperceptible stages by which she became less and less
of her old self to him.
Margaret gazed out across the velvet edge of the hills, and felt a
sense of dissatisfaction in the color harmony. A doubt had darkened the
windows of her soul and turned the golden sunlight to a duller chrome.
She was so absorbed that she caught a sharp breath as the French window
behind her clicked raspingly and swung inward on its hinges. It was
Melwin.
He came slowly forward through the window, holding his head slightly
on one side as though he listened for something behind him. She
found herself wondering how he had acquired the habit. His face was
motionless and set, with a peculiar absence of placidity--like a
graven image with topaz eyes. To Margaret it suggested a figure on an
Egyptian bas-relief, and yet he looked much the same, she thought,
as he had ten years before. Perhaps his beard was grayer and he was
more stoop-shouldered, and--yes, his temples looked somehow hollower
and older. He had a way of pausing just before the closing word of a
question, giving it a quaint and unnatural emphasis, and of gazing
above and past one when he spoke or answered. When he had first greeted
her on her arrival, Margaret had turned instinctively in the belief
that he had spoken to some one unperceived behind her.
“Will you go in to--Lydia?” he said, difficultly. “I think she wants
you.”
* * * * *
As Margaret came down the stairway a moment later, tying the ribbons of
her broad hat under her chin, his look of inquiry met her at the door,
and the tinge of eagerness in his lack-lustre eyes faded back into
stolidity again as she told him it was only an errand for Lydia.
She jumped from the piazza and raced around the drive toward the
stables. Creed, the coachman, whose wool was growing gray in a lifetime
of allegiance to the Whiting stock, was standing by the window, holding
a harvest apple for the black, reaching lip and white, impatient teeth
of his favorite charge inside the stall. He dropped his currycomb as he
saw her.
“Mornin’, Miss Marg’et. Want me fur sump’n?”
“No, I only came for Mrs. Drennen to see how Sempire’s foot is. She
says he stepped on a stone.”
The black face puckered with a puzzled look, that broadened into a
smile the next instant.
“Marse Drennen done tole dat to Miss Liddy ez a skuse fo’ he not ridin’
mo’. She all de time tryin’ to mek he git out an’ gallavant. He ain’t
nuver gwine do dat no mo’. Miss Liddy, she al’ays worryin’ feared Marse
Drennen moutn’t joy heseff, an’ he al’ays worryin’ cause she worryin’.
She mek up all kinds ob things fur he to do dat way, an’ he jes humor
her to think he do ’em, an’ she nuver know no diffunce.”
Margaret had seated herself on the step and was looking up. “You’ve
always been with her, haven’t you?”
Creed smiled to the limit of his heavy lips. “’Deed I hev. When Miss
Liddy wuz married she purty nigh fou’t to fotch me wid her. Her ole
maid sister, she wantter keep me wid dee all back dar in New O’leens.
You see I knowed Miss Liddy when she warn’t a hour ole an’ no bigger’n
a teapot.
“Meh mammy wuz nussin’ de li’l mite in her lap wid a hank’cher ober
her, an’ I tip in right sorf to cyar a hick’ry lorg an’ drap on de
fiah. Dat li’l han’ upped an’ pull de hank’cher offen her face an’ look
at me till I git cl’ar th’oo de do’. She wuz de peartest, forward’st
young ’un! An’ she growed up lak she started, too. Marse Drennen he
proud lak a peacock when he come down dyar frum de Norf an’ cyared her
off wid he.”
“I remember how pretty she was.” Margaret spoke softly.
“Does yo’ sho ’nuff? She wuz jes ’bout yo’ age den. Her ha’r wuz de
color ob a gole dollar, an’ her eyes wuz blue ez a catbird’s aig. She
wuz strong as a saplin’, an’ she walk high lak a hoss whut done tuck de
blue ribbon et de fa’r.”
Sempire arched his shining neck and whinnied gently for another apple.
Creed stroked the intelligent face affectionately. “Whut mek yo’ go
juckin’ dat way?” he said. “Cyarn’t you see I’se talkin’ to de ledy?”
He looked into the fresh young face beneath the straw hat with its
nodding poppies and drew a deep breath.
“It do hurt me, honey, to see de change! Don’t keer how hard I wucks,
I feels lonesome to see how de laugh an’ song done died in her froat.
’Twuz jes one stumble dat done it. She an’ Marse Drennen wuz gallopin’
on befo’ de yuthers. Pres’n’y she look back to see ef I wuz comin’.
De win’ wuz blowin’ her purty ha’r ’bout ev’y way, an’ her eyes wuz
sparklin’ jes lak de sun on de ice in de waggin ruts. Jes dat minit de
hoss slip, an’ I holler an’ he done drap in er heap on he knees, an’
Miss Liddy she fall er li’l way off an’ lay still.
“Seem lak meh heart jump up in meh mouf. I wuz de fust one dyar. She
wuz layin’ wid her ha’r ober her face an’ her po’ li’l back all bent up
agin de groun’!
“Marse Drennen he go on turrible. He kneel down dyar in de road an’
kiss her awful, an’ beg her to open her eyes, an’ say he gwine kill
dat hoss sho’. Den we cyared her back to de house, an’ she nuver know
nuttin’ fo’ days an’ days. De gre’t doctors do nuttin’ fer her. She jes
lay an’ lay, an’ et seem lak she couldn’t move, only her haid. Marse
Drennen he nuver leabe her. He jes set in de cheer an’ rock heseff
back an’ forf lak a baby an’ look at her an’ moan same’s he feelin’ et
too.
“He don’ nuver git ober et no mo’. Peers lak she’d git erlong better
now ef he didn’t grieve so. He hole he haid up al’ays when he roun’
her. He wuz bleeged to do dat, to keep her from seein’ he disapp’inted,
’cause she wuz al’ays sickly an’ in baid to nuver rekiver. He face
sorter light up wid her lookin’ on, an’ he try to cheer her up, meckin’
out dat tain’ meek no diffunce. Hit did, do’! He git out o’ her sight,
he look so moanful; he ain’t jolly an’ laughin’ lak when he wuz down
Souf co’tin’, an’ I hole he hoss till way late.
“She al’ays thinkin’ ob him now, an’ he don’ keer fer nuttin’--jes sit
wid he chin in bofe han’s on de po’ch lookin’ down. He heart done got
numbed. Seems lak de blood done dried up in he veins an’ some time he
gwine to shribble up lak er daid tree whut nuver gwine show no red an’
yaller leabes no mo’. He jes live al’ays lak he done los’ sump’n he
couldn’ fin’ nowhar.”
Margaret arose from the step as he paused and turned his dusky face
away to pick up the fallen currycomb.
As she walked back to the house Melwin’s figure as she had seen him on
the porch rose before her memory--the face of a sleeper, with the look
of another man in another life. Before her misty eyes it hung like a
suspended mask against the background of the drab stone walls.