It was now four days since John's sentence had been pronounced, and not
to be allowed to swim in the heat of a hot September added to the
severity of the penalty. The heat as usual made tempers hot and
circumstances variously disturbed the household of Grey Pine. Politics
vexed and business troubled the master. Of the one he could not talk to
his wife--of the other he would not at present, hoping for better
business conditions, and feeling that politics and business were now
too nearly related to keep them apart. Ann, his wife, thought him
depressed--a rare mood for him. Perhaps it was the unusual moist heat. He
said, "Yes, yes, dear, one does feel it." She did not guess that the
obvious unhappiness of the lad who had won the soldier's heart was being
felt by Penhallow without his seeing how he could end it and yet not
lessen the value of a just verdict.
Of all those concerned Leila was the one most troubled. On this hot
afternoon she saw John disappear into the forest. When Mrs. Ann came out
on the porch where she had for a minute left the girl, she saw her
sewing-bag on a chair and caught sight of the flowing hair and agile
young figure as she set a hand on the low stone wall of the garden and
was over and lost among the trees. "Leila, Leila," cried Mrs. Ann, "I
told you to finish--" It was useless. "Everything goes wrong to-day,"
she murmured. "Well, school will civilize that young barbarian, and she
must have longer skirts." This was a sore subject and Leila had been
vainly rebellious.
Meanwhile the flying girl overtook John, who had things to think about
and wished to be alone. "Well," he said, with some impatience, "what is
it?"
"Oh, I just wanted a walk, and don't be cross, John."
He looked at her, and perhaps for the first time had the male perception
of the beauty of the disordered hair, the pleading look of the blue eyes,
and the brilliant colour of the eager flushed face. It was the hair--the
wonderful hair. She threw it back as she stood. No one could long be
cross to Leila. Even her resolute aunt was sometimes defeated by her
unconquerable sweetness.
"I am so sorry for you, John," she said.
"Well, I am not, Leila, if you mean that Uncle Jim was hard on me."
"Yes, he was, and I mean to tell him--I do."
"Please not." She said nothing in the way of reply, but only, "Let us go
and see the spring."
"Well, come along."
They wandered far into the untouched forest. "Ah! here it is," she cried.
A spring of water ran out from among the anchoring roots of a huge black
spruce. He stood gazing down at it.
"Oh, Leila, isn't it wonderful?"
"Were you never here before, John?"
"No, never. It seems as if it was born out of the tree. No wonder this
spruce grew so tall and strong. How cold it must keep the old fellow's
toes."
"What queer ideas you have, John." She had not yet the gift of fancy,
long denied to some in the emergent years of approaching womanhood. "I am
tired, John," she said, as she dropped with hands clasped behind her head
and hidden in the glorious abundance of darkening red hair, which lay
around her on the brown pine-needles like the disordered aureole of some
careless-minded saint.
John said, "It is this terrible heat. I never before heard you complain
of being tired."
"Oh, it's just nice tired." She lay still, comfortable, with open eyes
staring up at the intense blue of the September sky seen through the
wide-east limbs of pine and spruce. The little rill, scarce a finger
thickness of water, crawled out lazily between the roots and trickled
away. The girl was in empty-minded enjoyment of the luxury of complete
relaxation of every muscle of her strong young body. The spring was
noiseless, no leaf was astir in all the forest around them. The girl lay
still, a part of the vast quietness.
John Penhallow stood a moment, and then said, "Good gracious! Leila, your
eyes are blue." It was true. When big eyes are wide open staring up at
the comrade blue of the deep blue sky, they win a certain beauty of added
colour like little quiet lakelets under the azure sky when no wind
disturbs their power of reflecting capture.
"Oh, John, and didn't you know my eyes were blue?" She spoke with languid
interest in the fact he announced.
"But," he said, looking down at her as he stood, "they're so--so
very blue."
"Oh, all the Greys have blue eyes."
He laughed gentle laughter and dropped on the pine-needles of the forest
floor. The spring lay between them. He felt, as she did not, the charm of
the stillness. He wanted to find words in which to put his desire for
expression. She broke into his mood of imaginative seekings.
"How cold it is," she said, gathering the water in the cup of her hand,
and then with both hands did better and got a refreshing drink.
"That makes a better cup," he said. "Let us follow the water to the
river."
"It never gets there. It runs into Lonesome Man's swamp, and that's the
end of him."
"Who, Lonesome Man or the spring? And who was Lonesome Man?"
"Nobody knows. What does it matter?"
He watched her toy with the new-born rill, a mere thread of water, build
a Lilliputian dam, and muddle the clear outflow as it broke, and then
build again. He had the thought that she had suddenly become younger,
more like a child, and he himself older.
"Why don't you talk, John?" she said.
"I can't. I am wondering about that Lonesome Man and what the trees are
thinking. Don't you feel how still it is? It's disrespectful to gabble
before your betters." He felt it and said it without affectation, but as
usual his mood of wandering thought failed to interest Leila.
"I hate it when it's quiet! I like to hear the wind howl in the pines--"
He expressed his annoyance. "You never want to talk anything but horses
and swimming. Wait till you come back next spring with long skirts--such
a nice well-behaved Miss Grey." He was, in familiar phrase, out of sorts,
with a bit of will to annoy a disappointing companion. His mild effort
had no success.
"Oh, John, it's awful! You ought to be sorry for me. The more you grow up
the more your skirts grow down. Bother their manners! Who cares! Let's go
home. It feels just as if it was Sunday."
"It is, in the woods. Well, come along." He walked on in the silence, she
thinking of that alarming prospect of school, and he of the escaped
slave's secret and, what struck the boy most--the hawk. Never before had
he been told anything which was to be sacredly guarded from others. It
gave him now a pleasant feeling of having been trusted. Suppose Leila had
been told such a thing, how would she feel, and Aunt Ann? He was like a
man who has too large a deposit in a doubtful bank. He was vaguely uneasy
lest he might tell or in some way betray his sense of possessing a
person's confidence.
As they came near the house, Leila said, "Catch me, I'll run you home."
"Tag," he cried.
As they came to the side porch, Ann Penhallow said, "Finish that
handkerchief--now, at once. It is time you were taught other than tom-boy
ways."
John went by into the house. After dinner the Squire had his usual game
of whist, always to the dissatisfaction of Leila, whose thoughts wandered
like birds on the wing, from twig to twig. John usually played far
better, but just now worse than his cousin, and forgot or revoked, to his
uncle's disgust. A man of rather settled habits, now as usual Penhallow
went to his library for the company of the pipe, which Ann disliked, and
the _Tribune_, which she regarded as the organ of Satanic politics.
Seeing both John and her aunt absorbed in their books, Leila passed
quickly back of them, opened the library door, and said softly, "May I
come in, Uncle Jim?"
During the last few days he had missed, and he well knew why, John's
visits and intelligent questions. Leila was welcome. "Why, of course,
pussy cat. Come in. Shut the door; your aunt dislikes the pipe smoke. Sit
down." For some reason she desired to stand. "Don't stand," he said, "sit
down on my knee." She obeyed. "There," he said, "that's comfy. How heavy
you are. Good gracious, child! what am I to do without you?"
"Isn't it awful, Uncle Jim."
"It is--it is. What do you want, my dear? Anything wrong with the
horses?"
"No, sir. It's--John--"
"Oh! it's John. Well, what is it?"
"It isn't John--it's John and the horses--I mean John and Dixy. Patrick
rides Dixy for exercise every day."
"Well, what's the matter? First it's John, then Dixy, then John and Dixy,
and then John and Dixy and Pat."
The girl saw through the amusement he had in teasing her and said with
gravity, "I wish you would be serious, Uncle Jim. I want five minutes of
uninterrupted attention."
The Squire exploded, "Good gracious! that is Ann Grey all over. You must
have heard her say it."
"I did, and you listen, too. Sometimes you don't, Uncle Jim. I guess you
weren't well broke when you were young."
"Great Scott! you minx! Some day a girl I know will have to stand at
attention. Go ahead."
"Pat's ruining Dixy's mouth. You ought to see him sawing at the curb. You
always rode him on the snaffle."
"That boy Pat needs a good licking, Leila."
"But Dixy don't. The fact is, Uncle Jim, you're neglecting the stables
for politics."
"Is that your own wisdom, Miss Grey? What with the weight of wisdom and
years, you're getting heavy. Try a chair."
"No, I'm quite comfy. It was Josiah who told me. He often comes up to
look over the colts, of a Sunday--"
"Nice work for Sunday, Miss Grey."
She made no direct reply. "He told me that horse ought to be ridden
by--by John or you, and no one else. He says the way to ruin a horse is
to have a lot of people ride him like Pat--they're just spoiling Dixy--"
"What! in four days? Nonsense."
"But," said the counsel in the case, "it's to be ten. It isn't about
John, it's Dixy's mouth, uncle."
"Oh, you darling little liar!" Here she kissed him and was silent. "It
won't do," he said. "There's no logic in a kiss, Miss Grey. First comes
Ann Grey and says, too much army discipline; and then you tell me what
that gossiping old darkey says, and then you try the final argument--a
kiss. Can't do it. There will be an end of all discipline. I hate
practical jokes. There!"
If he thought to finish the matter thus, he much undervalued the
ingenuity and persistency of the young Portia who was now conducting the
case.
"Suppose you take a chair, Miss Grey. It is rather warm to provide
permanent human seats for stout young women--"
"I'm not stout," said Leila with emphasis, accepting the hint by dropping
with coiled legs upon a cushion at his feet. "I'm not stout. I weigh one
hundred and thirty and a half pounds. And oh! isn't it hot. I haven't had
a swim for--oh, at least five days counting Sunday." The pool was kept
free until noon for Leila and her aunt.
"Why didn't you swim?" he asked lightly, being too intellectually busy
clearing his pipe to see where the leading counsel was conducting him.
"Why, Uncle Jim, I wouldn't swim if John wasn't allowed too; I just
couldn't. I'm going to bed--but, please, don't let Pat ride Dixy."
"I can attend to my stables, Miss Grey. John won't die of heat for want
of a swim. You don't seem to concern yourself with those equally
overbaked young scamps in Westways."
"Uncle Jim, you're just real mean to-night. Josiah told me yesterday that
my cousin beat Tom McGregor because he said it was mean of you to stop
the swimming. John said it was just, and Tom said he was a liar, and--oh,
my! John licked him--wish I'd seen it."
This was news quite to his liking. He made no reply, lost in wonder over
the ways of the mind male and female.
"You ought to be ashamed, you a girl, to want to see a fight. It's time
you went to school. Isn't the rector on the porch? I thought I heard
him."
Now, of late Leila had got to that stage of the game of
thought-interchange when the young proudly use newly acquired
word-counters. "I think, Uncle Jim, you're--you're irreverent."
The Squire shut the door on all outward show of mirth, and said gravely,
"Isn't it pronounced irrelevant, my dear Miss Malaprop?"
"Yes--yes," said Leila. "That's a word John uses. It's just short for
'flying the track'!"
"Any other stable slang, Leila?"
He was by habit averse to changing his decisions, and outside of Ann
Penhallow's range of authority the Squire's discipline was undisputed and
his decrees obeyed. He had been pleased and gaily amused for this half
hour, but was of a mind to leave unchanged the penalties he had
inflicted.
"Are you through, with this nonsense, Leila?" he said as he rose. "Is
this an ingenious little game set up between you and John?" To his utter
amazement she began to cry.
"By George!" he said, "don't cry," which is what a kind man always says
when presented with the riddle of tears.
She drew a brown fist across her wet cheeks and said indignantly, "My
cousin is a gentleman."
She turned to go by him. "No, dear, wait a moment." He held her arm.
"Please, let me go. When John first came, you said he was a prig--and
if he would just do some boy-mischief and kick up his heels like a
two-year-old with some fun in him--you said he was a sort of
girl-boy--" There were for punctuation sobs and silences.
"And where did you get all this about a prig?" he broke in, amazed.
"Oh, I heard you tell Aunt Ann. And now," said Portia, "the first time he
does a real nice jolly piece of mischief you come down on him like--like
a thousand of bricks." Her slang was reserved for the Squire, as he well
knew.
The blue eyes shining with tears looked up from under the glorious
disorder of the mass of hair. It was too much for the man.
"How darned logical you are!" He acknowledged some consciousness of
having been inconsistent. He had said one thing and done another. "You
are worse than your aunt." Then Leila knew that Ann Penhallow had talked
to the Squire. "Well," he said, "what's your opinion, Miss Grey?"
"I think you're distanced."
"What--what! Wait a little. You may tell that young man to ride when he
pleases and to swim, and to tell those scamps it's too hot to deprive
them of the use of the pool. There, now get out!"
"But--Uncle Jim--I--can't. Oh, I really can't. You've got to do it
yourself." This he much disliked to do.
"I hear your aunt calling. Mr. Rivers is going."
She kissed him. "Now, don't wait, Uncle Jim, and don't scold John. He's
been no use for these four days. Goodnight," and she left him.
"Well, well," he said, "I suppose I've got to do it."
He found Ann alone.
"About John! I can't stand up against you two. He is to be let off about
the riding and swimming. I think you may find it pleasant to tell him, my
dear."
She said gravely, "It will come with more propriety from you; but I do
think you are right." Then he knew that he had to do it himself.
"Very well, dear," he said. "How that girl is developing. It is time she
had other company than John, but Lord! how I shall miss her--"
"And I, James."
He went out for the walk he generally took before bed-time. She lingered,
putting things in order on her work-table, wondering what Leila could
have said to thus influence a man the village described as "set in his
ways." She was curious to know, but not of a mind to question Leila.
Before going to bed, she went to her own sitting-room on the left of the
hall. It was sacred to domestic and church business. It held a few books
and was secured by long custom from men's tobacco smoke. She sat down and
wrote to her cousin, George Grey.
"DEAR GEORGE: If politics do not keep you, we shall look for you this
month. There are colts to criticize and talk over, Leila is eager to see
her unknown cousin before she goes to school near Baltimore this
September.
"I believe this town will go for Buchanan, but I am not sure. James and
I, as you know, never talk politics. I am distressed to believe as I do
that he will vote for Fremont; that 'the great, the appalling issue,' as
Mr. Buchanan says, 'is union or disunion' does not seem to affect him. I
read Forney's paper, and James reads that wild abolition _Tribune_. It is
very dreadful, and I am without any one I can talk to. My much loved
rector is an extreme antislavery man.
"Yours always,
ANN PENHALLOW.
"I am not at all sure of you. Be certain to let us know when to expect
you. You know you are--well, I leave your social conscience to say what.
"Yours sincerely,
ANN PENHALLOW."
At breakfast Ann Penhallow sat down to the coffee-urn distributing
cheerful good-mornings. The Squire murmured absently over his napkin,
"May the Lord make us thankful for this and all the blessings of life."
He occasionally varied his grace, and sometimes to Ann's amazement. Why
should he ask to be made thankful, she reflected. These occasional slips
and variations on the simple phrase of gratitude she had come to
recognize as signs of preoccupation, and now glanced at her husband,
anxious always when he was concerned. Then, as he turned to John, she
understood that between his trained belief in the usefulness of
inexorable discipline and an almost womanly tenderness of affection the
heart had somehow won. She knew him well and at times read with ease the
signs of distress and annoyance or resolute decision. Usually he was gay
and merry at breakfast, chaffing the children and eating with the
appetite of a man who was using and renewing his tissues in a wholesome
way. Now he was silent, absent, and ate little. He was the victim of a
combination of annoyances. Had he been wise to commit himself to a
reversal of his sentence? Other and more important matters troubled him,
but as usual where bothers come in battalions it is the lesser
skirmishers who are felt for the moment.
"I see in the hall, Ann," he said, "a letter for George Grey--I will mail
it. When does he come?"
"I do not know."
"John," he said, "you will oblige me by riding to the mill and asking Dr.
McGregor to come to Westways and see old Josiah. Of course, he will
charge it to me." The Squire was a little ashamed of this indirect
confession of retreat.
John looked up, hesitated a moment, and said, "What horse, sir?"
"Dixy, of course."
"Another cup, James," said Mrs. Ann tranquilly amused.
John rose, went around the table to his uncle, and said in his finest
manner, "I am greatly obliged, sir."
"Oh, nonsense! He's rather fresh, take care."
Then Leila said, "It's very hot, Uncle Jim."
"You small fiend," said Penhallow. "Hot! On your way, John, tell those
rascals at Westways they may use the pond." The faint smile on Ann
Penhallow's face somehow set the whole business in an agreeably humorous
light. The Squire broke into the relief of laughter and rose saying, "Get
out of this, all of you, if you want to keep your scalps."
John went to the stable not quite pleased. He had felt that his
punishment for a boy-frolic and the unexpected results of Billy's alarm
had been pretty large. His aunt had not said so to him, but had made it
clear to her husband that the penalty was quite disproportioned to the
size of the offence; a remark which had made him the more resolute not to
disturb the course of justice; and now this chit of a girl had made him
seem like an irresolute fool, and he would have to explain to Rivers, who
would laugh. As he went out of the hall-door, he felt a pretty rough
little paw in his hand and heard a whisper. "You're just the dearest
thing ever was."
Concerning John Penhallow, it is to be said that he did not understand
why he was let off so easily. He had a suspicion that Leila was
somehow concerned, and also the feeling that he would rather have
suffered to the end. However, it would be rather good fun to announce
this swimming-permit to the boys.
Seeing from his shop door John riding down the avenue, Josiah came
limping across the road. He leaned on the gate facing the boy and looking
over the horse and rider with the pleasure of one who, as the Squire
liked to say, knew when horse-flesh and man-flesh were suitably matched.
"Girth's a bit slack, Master John. Always look it over, sir, before you
mount."
"Thanks, Josiah. Open the gate, please. How lame you are. I am to send
the doctor to look after you and Peter Lamb."
The big black man opened the gate and adjusted the girth. "That's right
now. I've got the worst rheumatics I ever did have. Peter Lamb's sick
too. That's apple-whisky. The Squire's mighty patient with that man,
because his mother nursed the Squire when he was a baby. They're near of
an age, but you wouldn't think it to look at Peter and the Captain;
whisky does hurry up Old Time a lot." And so John got the town gossip.
"I ain't no faith in doctorin' rheumatics; wouldn't have him now if I
hadn't lost my old buck-eye. My rabbit-foot's turned grey this week.
That's a sign of trouble."
John laughed and rode from the gate on which Leila had invited him to
indulge in the luxury of swinging. It seemed years ago since she had sung
to his astonishment the lyric of the gate. She appeared to him now not
much older. And how completely he felt at home. He rode along the old
pike through Westways, nodding to Mrs. Lamb, the mother of the scamp whom
the Squire was every now and then saving from the consequences of the
combination of a revengeful nature and bad whisky. Then Billy hailed John
with malicious simplicity.
"Halloa!--John--can't swim--can't swim--ho, ho!"
The butcher's small boy was loading meat on a cart. John stayed to say a
word to him, pleased to have the chance, as the boy grinned at Billy's
mocking malice. "Halloa! Pole," he called. "My uncle says we fellows may
swim. Tell the other fellows."
"Gosh! but that's good--John. I'll tell 'em."
John rode on and fell to thinking of Leila, with some humiliating
suspicion in regard to her share in the Squire's change of mind; or was
it Aunt Ann's influence? And why did he himself not altogether like it?
Why should his aunt and Leila interfere? He wished they had let the
matter alone. What had a girl to do with it? He was again conscious that
he felt of a sudden older than Leila, and did not fully realize that in
the race of life he had gone swiftly past her during these few months,
and that in the next year she in turn would sweep past him in the
developmental changes of life. Now she seemed to him more timid, more
childlike than usual; but long thinkings are not of the psychic habits of
normal youth, and Dixy recovered his attention.
He satisfied the well-bred horse, who of late had been losing his temper
in the society of a rough groom, ignorant of the necessity for good
manners with horses. Neither strange noises nor machines disturbed Dixy
as John rode through the busy iron-mills to the door of a small brick
house, so well known that no sign announced it as the home of the only
medical man available at the mills or in Westways. John tied Dixy to the
hitching-post, gnawed by the doctor's horse during long hours of waiting
on an unpunctual man.
The doors were open, and as John entered he was aware of an odour of
drugs and saw Dr. McGregor sound asleep in an armchair, a red silk
handkerchief over his bald head, and a swarm of disappointed flies
hovering above him. In the back room the clink and rattle of a pestle and
mortar ceased as Tom appeared.
John, in high good-humour, said, "Good afternoon, Tom. My uncle has let
up on the swimming. He asked me to let you fellows know."
"It's about time," said Tom crossly. "After all it was your fault and we
had to pay for it."
"Now, Tom, you made me pretty angry when you talked to me the other day,
and if you want to get me into another row, I won't object; but I was not
asked for any names, and I did not put the blame on any one. Can't you
believe a fellow?"
"No, I can't. If that parson hadn't come, I'd have licked you."
"Perhaps," said John.
"Isn't any perhaps about it. You look out, that's all."
John laughed. He was just now what the Squire described as horse-happy
and indisposed to quarrel. "Suppose you wake up the old gentleman. He
_can_ snore."
Tom shook the doctor's shoulder, "Wake up, Dad. Here's John Penhallow."
The Doctor sat up and pulled off his handkerchief. The flies fell upon
his bald pate. "Darn the flies," he said. "What is it, John?"
"My uncle wants you to come to Westways to-morrow and doctor old Josiah's
rheumatism."
"I'll come."
"He wants you to look after Peter Lamb. He's been drinking again."
"What! that whisky-rotted scamp. It's pure waste of time. How the same
milk came to feed the Squire and that beast the Lord knows. He has no
more morals than a tom-cat. I'll come, but it's waste of good doctoring."
Here he turned his rising temper on Tom. "You and my boy have been having
a fight. You licked him and saved me the trouble. I heard from Mr.
Rivers what Tom said."
"It was no one's business but Tom's and mine," returned John much amused
to know that the peaceful rector must have watched the fight and
overheard what caused it. Tom scowled, and the peacemaking old doctor got
up, adding, "Be more gentle with Tom next time."
Tom knew better than to reply and went back to pill-making furious and
humiliated.
"Good-bye, John," said the Doctor. "I'll see the Squire after I have
doctored that whisky sponge." Then John rode home on Dixy.