When Jane woke the next morning a bluebird was singing outside of the
window: she tried to mimic him before she was out of bed, and sang scraps
of songs to herself as she dressed. The captain heard her in his room
below, but pretended to be asleep when she came down as usual to lay out
his clothes, for, although she insisted that her father should have Dave as
a valet, she left him but little to do.
Watching her from under the covers, the captain saw that she had left off
the black snood and tied her hair with a band of rose-colored ribbon. Her
lips were ruddy and her eyes alight: once or twice she laughed to herself.
"What high day or holiday is it, Jane?"
"Oh, every day is a high day now!" running to kiss him. "I was just
thinking how comfortable money is, and how glad I am that we have it,"
glancing about delighted at his luxurious toilet appointments before the
low wood-fire. Then she spread out his dressing-gown and velvet
smoking-cap, and eyed with her head on one side the fine shirt and its
costly studs.
"Do you remember the rag-carpet in your room which we thought such a
triumph? and the old tin shaving-cup? Now, my lord, look out upon your
estate!" opening the window. "Your musicians have come to waken you, and
your servitors stand without," as Buff tapped at the door with hot water.
"He is as comfortable as a baby wrapped in lamb's wool," she thought as she
ran down the stairs. "And this air is so pure and the sun so bright! Oh, he
must grow strong here! Anybody would be cured here--anybody!"
The captain followed her to the barnyard. It was one of her inexorable
prescriptions for him that he should drink a glass of warm milk-punch
before breakfast, and smell the cow's breath during the operation. She was
milking the white cow herself, while the pseudo sempstress, Nichols, waited
with the goblet, and the bandy-legged shoemaker, Twiss, stood on guard,
eyeing Brindle's horns suspiciously.
"Now the glass! These are the strippings. Oh you'll soon learn, Betty!
You'll make butter as well as you used to make dresses badly."
The little widow and Twiss laughed, as they always did at Jane's weak
jokes, and took the punch to the captain. She was the finest wit of her day
in their eyes. The hostler's boy ran down from the stable to speak to her.
She thought he had as innocent a face as she had ever seen. No doubt he
would have gone to perdition if Neckart had not rescued him. She stopped to
talk to him with beaming eyes, and meeting Betty's toddling baby took it up
and tossed it in the air, and then walked on, carrying the soft little
thing in her arms. The farm was like the Happy Valley this morning! God was
so good to her! She could warm and comfort all these people. Then she
turned into the woods and sat down on a fallen log. It was the place where
they had stopped to rest yesterday, Neckart lying at her feet. There was
the imprint still in the dead moss where his arm had lain. She looked
guiltily about, and then laid her hand in the broken moss with a quick
passionate touch. The baby caught her chin in its fingers. She hugged it to
her breast, and kissed it again and again. From the hemlock overhead a
tanager suddenly flashed up into the air with a shrill peal of song. Jane
looked up, her face and throat dyed crimson. Did he know? She glanced down
at the grass, at the friendly trees all alive with rustling and chirping.
The sky overhead was so deep and warm a blue to-day. It seemed as if they
all knew that he loved her.
The captain found Mr. Neckart standing on the stoop listening to some sound
that came up from the woods.
"It is Jane singing," he said. "You would not hear her once in a year.
Hereditary gift! In the old Swedish annals we read of the remarkable voices
of the Svens."
"I never heard her sing before." Yet he had known at once that it was she.
It was the most joyous of songs, but there was a foreboding pathos in the
voice which moved him as no other sound had ever done.
"You are not going before breakfast?" cried the captain.
"Yes, and I shall not be able to come again for a long time. Say to Miss
Swendon--But no. I will go and bid her good-bye."
He met her as she was crossing the plank thrown across the brook, and they
stopped by the little hand-rail, not looking directly at each other: "I
came to bid you good-morning."
"Do you take the early train, then?"
"Yes." He did not mean to tell her that he would not come again. The more
ordinary their parting the sooner she would forget it and him. He had
thought the matter out during the night, and being a man who was apt to
under-rate himself, was convinced that the feeling which she had betrayed
was but that transient flush of preference which any very young and
innocent girl is apt to give to the first man of whom she makes a
companion.
"There is nothing in me likely to win enduring love from her. A more
intellectual woman, indeed--" He had gone over the argument again and
again. When he was out of sight her fancy would soon turn to this new
lover, so much better suited to her in every respect. For himself--But he
had no right, to think of himself. He struck that thought down fiercely
again as they stood together on the bridge. No more right than he would
have, were he dead, to drag down this young creature into his grave.
He patted the child on the head as it clung to her dress, and talked of the
chance of more rain with perfect correctness and civility; and when Jane
managed to raise her eyes to his face she found it grave and preoccupied,
as it usually was over the morning papers. He saw Van Ness coming smiling
to meet her.
"It is time for me to go," he said, his eyes passing slowly over her: then
with a hasty bow, not touching her hand, he struck through the woods to the
station, thinking as he went how she was standing then on the bridge in the
sunshine, with the man whom she would marry beside her. She looked after
him, her eyes full of still, deep content. He loved her. She had forgotten
everything else.
"A perfect morning, Miss Swendon," said Mr. Van Ness, stroking his
magnificent golden beard. "You see just this deep azure sky above the
Sandwich Islands. Now, I remember watching such a dawn on Mauna Loa. Ah-h,
_you_ would have appreciated that. Our friend has gone, eh? Most active,
energetic man! I heard him tell your father he should not return soon
again."
"Not return?" stopping in her slow walk.
"No. It really must be impossible for an editor to spare time often for
visits to even such an Arcadia as this. No stock market or political news
in Arcadia, eh?" with a benevolent gurgle of a laugh. "Business! business!
Miss Swendon. Ah, how it engrosses the majority of men!" shaking his head
ponderously.
She said nothing. It was as if she had been suddenly wakened out of a dream
in the crowd of a dusty market-place. He had gone back to the world, to his
real business and his real trouble. She, with her love and her intended
cure for him, was a silly fool wandering in a fantastic Arcadia.
Miss Fleming was walking up and down on the porch as they came up, more
carefully dressed than usual. The captain had just told her that Neckart
had gone.
"Ah? I'm very sorry," carelessly. "I should have been glad to see him
again. Though no doubt he has forgotten me."
She went forward to meet Jane with a smile, but a withered gray look under
her eyes. "I have been making a tour of your principality," she said as
they went in to breakfast. "I see you have brought out a colony of
Philadelphia paupers. Twiss, and Betty, and the rest."
"They were not paupers," said Jane, taking her place behind the urn. "Did
you see into what a great boy Top has grown? And Peter?" It gave her a warm
glow at heart to remember these people just now. At least, there her care
had not been fantastic or thrown away.
"I hardly expected you to take up the rôle of guardian angel. It requires
study, after all, to play it successfully," pursued Cornelia with an
amiable smile, cutting her butter viciously.--"Very young girls are apt to
be impetuous in their charities, and damage more than they help," turning
to the judge. "These poor people, for instance. Betty had her kinsfolk
about her in Philadelphia, her church and her gossips. She complained
bitterly to me this morning that she 'had no company here but the cows:
Miss Swendon might as well have whisked her off into a haythen desart.'"
"She complained to you!" cried the captain. "Why, the trouble and money
which Jane has given to that woman and her family! They were starving, I
assure you!"
Jane listened at first with her usual quiet good-humor. Miss Fleming's
waspish temper generally amused her, as it would have done a man (if he was
not her husband). But she began to grow anxious.
"You really think Betty is not contented here?" her hand a little unsteady
as she poured the cream into the cups.
"Contented? She seems miserable enough. Home is home, you know, if it is
only a cellar and starvation. But perhaps"--with a shrug--"that class of
Irish are never happy without a grievance. Now, Twiss, it appears to me,
has just ground for complaint.--A shoemaker," turning to the judge a face
beaming with fun, "whom this young lady has transported and set down in
charge of gardens and hot-houses. He does not know a hoe from a mower, and
he is too old to learn. He had a good trade: now he has nothing."
"But he could not live by his trade," cried Jane.
"Well, cobbling is looking up now. In any case, you have pauperized him."
"That's bad--bad! Now, in Virginia we used to feed everybody who came
along!" said the judge, shaking his head. "But I've learned wisdom in the
cities. Every bit of bread given to a beggar degrades human nature and rots
society to the core."
"But suppose he is starving?" urged the captain. "The Good Samaritan wasn't
afraid of pauperizing that poor devil on the road."
"Let him starve. He will have preserved his self-respect. The Good
Samaritan knew nothing of political economy, sir."
Jane left her breakfast untasted. She understood nothing about political
economy, but she saw that she had done irreparable injury to these people
whom she had tried to serve--God knew with what anxiety and tenderness of
heart. In one case, at least, there had been no mistake.
"Did you see Phil?" she said, turning with brightening countenance to Miss
Fleming. "We intend to have Phil educated. He is such a keen-witted little
fellow."
Miss Fleming laughed outright now: "Mr. Neckart's protégé? Yes, I saw him.
He has been stealing tobacco and money from Dave, it appears, ever since he
came, and was found out this morning. There was a horrible row in the
stable as I passed."
"Of course he stole!" said the judge triumphantly. "I tell you, the more
efforts you make to reform the dangerous classes the more hardened you will
grow. It's hopeless--hopeless!"
Her other listeners each promptly presented their theory. Like all
intelligent Americans, they were provided with theories on every social
problem, and were ready to hang it on an individual stable-boy or any other
nail of a fact which might offer. Jane alone sat silent. She did not hear
when her father spoke to her once or twice.
"You are disappointed," Mr. Van Ness's soft soothing voice murmured in her
ear. "I know how these baffled efforts chill the heart. I will explain to
you the machinery which I propose to bring to bear on these classes."
"I don't know anything about machinery or classes. Twiss and Betty were
friends of mine, and I tried to help them, and have failed."
Miss Fleming, who was watching her furtively, saw her dull eyes raised
presently and rest on the captain, who with a red face and bursts of
laughter was telling one of his interminable stories.
"This girl," Cornelia said to herself, "has everything which I have
not--beauty, wealth, Bruce Neckart's love. Yet she looks at that weak old
man as if he were all that was left her in the world." She had put Jane
before on the general basis of antipathy which she had to everything in the
world that was not masculine, but the feeling had kindled since last night
into active dislike.
When breakfast was over and their guests had gone to their rooms to make
ready to meet the train, Jane decoyed the captain away to Bruno's kennel,
where he was tied during Mr. Van Ness's stay. Once out of sight she retied
his cravat, arranged his white hair to her liking, stroked his sunken
cheeks. Here was something actual and real. She knew now that she had never
had anything that was truly her own but the kind foolish face looking down
on her. She never would have anything more. Only an hour ago life had
opened for her wide and fair as the dawn: now it had narrowed to this old
hand in hers, to his breath, that came and went--O God, how feebly!
"You are looking stronger to-day, father. You are gaining every day. Oh
that is quite certain! Very soon we shall have you as well and strong as
you were at forty."
What if she had not had money this last year? He never could have lived
through it. God had been kind to her--kind! She pressed his hand to her
breast with a quick glance out to the bright sky. The Captain saw her chin
quivering. His own thoughts ran partly in the same line as hers.
"Oh, I'm gaining, no doubt of it. Though I never could have pulled through
this year if we had had to live in the old way. God bless Will Laidley for
leaving the money as he did!"
"It was not his to leave otherwise!" she cried indignantly.
"Tut, tut, Jane! Of course it was his. By every law. He could have flung it
away where he chose; and he had a perfect right to do it."
It was not God who had been kind to her, then: it was only that she had
stolen the money?
"Come, Jenny: we must go back to the house."
"In a moment, father. Go on: I will follow you."
She walked up and down the tan-bark path for a while. She was sure of
nothing. Wherever she had done what seemed to her right and natural, she
was barred and checked by the world's laws and experience. She had brought
these starving wretches out of a hell upon earth into this paradise, and
even they laughed at her want of wisdom: the very money which was her own
in the sight of God, and which had lengthened her father's life, ought to
be given back to-day to the poor, its rightful owners. If there was any
other cause for her to fight blindly against the narrow matter-of-fact
routine which ruled her life, she did not name it even to herself.
Looking toward the house, she saw her father escorting their guests to the
gate, where the carriage waited, David resplendent on the box. The captain
walked with a feeble kind of swagger: his voice came back to her in weak
gusts of laughter. She laid her hand on a tree, glancing about her with a
firm sense of possession. "The property is mine," she said, "and I'll keep
it as long as he lives, if all the paupers in the United States were
starving at the gates!"