were off with the boys alone. Don’t apologize. Everybody gets rattled
when they’re held up like this and know that four or five good fellows
have come to an end a few feet ahead of them.
“Pretty well tired out, aren’t you, Helen?” and there came into the room
her father’s oldest friend and business associate, holding her husband
by the arm, and pushing his wife and daughter before him in his
eagerness.
After a few minutes’ aimless prattle the party of three left, having
decided to spend the night on the train, the elderly man making jocular
remarks about leaving the couple to have a _tête-à-tête_ in peace.
Complete silence for a moment, and then, that being the last thing the
woman’s nerves could endure, she said: “Why did you follow me? What
right have you to put me in a position like this after this morning?”
“I did not follow you, for I did not know that you had left Boston.”
“Then it is as Mr. Dale hinted, you were going alone with some men
without even telling me.”
“After this morning, what right had you to know?” The blow that she had
set in motion, but of which she had not before gauged the full power,
struck her squarely between the eyes.
“At least we must assume a part, not make ourselves ridiculous and start
a scandal here to-night among people that are almost relations,
before,—before things are arranged,” she said, on the verge of tears.
“As you please; creating public comment has never been my plan,” he
answered, and drawing a chair to the feeble light, he took a copy of a
comic paper from his pocket and at least feigned to read, while the
woman closed her eyes, and from holding them closed to keep the angry
tears back, finally fell into a sleep of exhaustion where she sat.
An hour passed. Hasleton went out, but as usual, could gather little
absolute knowledge of the wreck. He saw his companions playing poker in
the parlour car; they, having heard of his wife’s presence and deeming
that she had followed him, winked knowingly, and he, having nothing to
explain and much to cover, drifted back to the hotel. Seeing that the
woman slept, he, in his turn, settled himself as well as might be on the
hard sofa, and, cramped and uncomfortable as he was, dozed, being too
much bewildered by the condition of things to plan or even think.
Twelve o’clock was called slowly and almost spitefully, it seemed, by
the clock in Sweezy’s bar and lunch room; usually this was the signal
for closing, but to-night no excise regulations were enforced. Sweezy,
having sold all the eatables that could be procured and most of the
drinkables, was busying himself disposing of people for the night, as it
was not possible to remove the débris and get the track in shape under
four or five hours. He had spent a profitable evening and was,
consequently, in fine joking humour. Peering into the parlour, he saw
the sleeping couple, and not remembering that the woman had entered
alone and asked for a room, he awakened them, giving the man a cheerful
slap on the back to boot. “Be you folks married?” and upon Hasleton’s
giving a sleepy assent, he continued, “All right, then, I kin double you
up and that’ll take the last room, and then I’ll make shake-downs in
here for half a dozen schoolmarms goin’ to a convention. First to the
right at the head of the stairs, sir.” Then, setting a spluttering
candle on the table at the woman’s elbow, as if he naturally expected
her to take the lead, he disappeared.
Helen Hasleton started to her feet, her face lowering and furious. “You
might have prevented this, it’s taking a mean advantage of me,” she
fairly hurled the words at him. “You can go upstairs, I shall stay down
here with the other women.”
Burt rose with difficulty, stiff and aching in every limb, and taking up
the candle, said, “Very well, it seems rude to leave you here among
strangers and without a bed, but under the circumstances, I can only
obey your wish.”
“Obey!” snapped the woman; “there is no such word, or if there is, I do
not understand its meaning. This morning I was to obey you. To-night you
offer at once to make a spectacle of me and obey me. Rubbish! Go back to
the car with your friends and say there was no room for you here.”
Something moved in the alcove, a long shadow fell upon the floor,
followed by the presence of a tall, clean-shaven man in the garments of
a priest, who stood for a moment looking from one to the other.
“There is a word obey, and it will always have a meaning until the world
falls apart. The question is, whom shall we obey and what,” said a deep
but quiet voice in the perfect accents of well-born speech. “If one
woman had not obeyed to-night, you two perhaps, as well as all on board
the train, would have been lying crushed or burned in the river-bed
beyond, dead, distorted, horrible! Jim Bradley, the conductor, pinned in
the wreck, was found by the woman he was to marry, frantic of course to
rescue him. He told her to leave him, to go back and save this train,
and she obeyed. They have carried him to her home and the surgeons are
at work; the end I do not know. I have left them but now, and with them
the two rites of the Church that best could help, belonging to the two
ends of life, marriage that gives her the right to care for him, and to
him the last sacrament.
“And yet you stand there, man and woman, and bicker and create falsity
from empty words, forgetting that nothing can transpose right and wrong.
Shame on you both!”
For several moments no one moved; then Hasleton replaced the candle on
the table, as he saw the outlines of the man’s face, young in spite of
gauntness and close-cropped gray hair, and in his astonishment almost
whispered, “John Anthony!”
“Father John,” corrected the voice calmly, but in a tone that forbade
further questioning, though recognition gleamed in his own eyes; for
John Anthony had been a college mate of Hasleton’s, who, though always
serious, had, ten years before, suddenly, and to the world in general
unaccountably, given up the brilliant promise of public life for the
priesthood. Two men alone knew that the first motive for his course lay
in that it was the only immovable barrier he could place between his
nature and temptation,—the mad infatuation of a beautiful married
woman, whose husband was his friend.
As all this flashed through Hasleton’s brain, he lowered his gaze and
stood with bowed head. A few more seconds passed. The woman’s clenched
hands relaxed, and raising her eyes, she met those of Father John that
had never moved from her face, and in their depth her woman’s instinct
saw both comprehension and the scars of conquered temptation. Then she
took the candlestick from the table and crossing the room slowly, went
up the narrow, uncarpeted stairs, step by step.
As Hasleton raised his eyes again to Father John’s face, their hands met
in a tense clasp that told its tale to each. No words were spoken, and
Hasleton, in turn, went up the creaking stairs.
* * * * *
Five years passed, and Hattertown looked much the same as of old. The
factory ruins were now but a heap of wood dust where vagrant hens
scratched for slugs. The Milk Freight still ran on the siding every
evening, but Jim Bradley was not the conductor, neither did Miranda
Banks teach the school at the corners.
In one of the offices of an important station of the Sky Line Railroad
works a short, thick-set man, to whom many others defer as their
manager; his face is strong and cheerful, but after noting his chin
lines, very few bigger men would try to browbeat him in spite of the
fact that he moves with a crutch, one leg being shortened almost to the
thigh.
The working day ends, and going downstairs, the man sees a horse and low
buggy driven by a trim woman with glorious ruddy-gold hair turn toward
the platform. She, smiling a welcome, moves the tiny girl beside her to
make place; and the horse, taking his own head, trots to a quiet by-way
apart from the main road that leads past stately country places.
“Where is Jimmy this afternoon? I hope he hasn’t been cutting up,
Randy,” said the father, questioningly.
“Oh, no, but we’ve company at home that I left him to entertain. Guess
who?”
“Your mother?”
“No, Father John, and only think of it, he’s going to stay two days
before he goes up to the Hasletons’ for his usual August visit. On
hearing of it, Mrs. Hasleton brought me some flowers and fruit this
afternoon, and when she had seen the house, asked me if I would let her
John and little Helen come to me of mornings this winter and learn to
read and spell with Jimmy. She said that she knew I had taught school in
the old-fashioned way, and that she preferred it to kindergarten methods
for the boy. Think of my being able to teach the Hasletons’ children
anything. Isn’t it splendid, Jim? How pleased Ma will be.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Jim Bradley, closing one hand over those
that held the reins, “but I know something, or rather somebody, else
that is splendid, even if she couldn’t just at first make up her mind
which end of the line she’d live at.”
Miranda Bradley, not one whit abashed, laughed softly. “It wasn’t really
a matter for me to decide which end, was it, Jim, since Hasleton Manor
Station happens to be almost in the middle?”
Thus it came about that neither the remote hamlet of Hattertown nor a
bleak February day was without influence on vital things.
III
THE VANDOO
=MARCH=—THE MOON OF SNOW BLINDNESS
“How can you ask me to invite her?” I said, looking up from a letter
Evan had a moment before handed me to read, and blinking at him
reproachfully; for I had been driving about with father all the
afternoon with the brightening March sun reflected by ice-coated March
snow in my eyes, until the lids seemed to be controlled by rusty wires
and everything was enveloped in rainbow-hued mist through which black
spots danced.
“Is it possible that you have read the letter? Hear what she writes:
‘Terry says that you live in the country and that you wouldn’t leave
your home for anything in the world. I want to live in the country
because I was born in the West and lived on a ranch until I was well
grown, and I haven’t yet found a city big enough to give me elbow-room,
much less a comb in a twelve-story beehive, which in New York it seems
is the only available shelter for people like Terry and myself. Besides,
I want room for a riding horse and pasture to turn him out.
“‘We’ve been looking at country places ever since we were married last
March, for Uncle Sandy has promised to buy me a home when I want to
settle, but he doesn’t believe in paying rent; we’ve seen many that
would do, but that isn’t what I want. If we buy a house it must be one
that can—not only make me buy it as a matter of course, but that will
hypnotize me so that I shall never wish, or be able to get away from it
again. Uncle Sandy told me long ago that this was the only way to be
sure about choosing one’s husband, and I know he’s right, because though
there were plenty of men about, I could do very well without them, one
and all, until Terry’s horse stepped into a (prairie) dog’s hole,
throwing him so that his ankle buckled, and they brought him up to the
ranch because Uncle Sandy is a sort of natural bonesetter. That was in
March, too. March has always been a good month to me: that’s why, this
year, I’m building on striking a home in the month. If we don’t, I
foresee a wandering life and bad days for Terry ahead! [“She is
certainly frank,” I interjected.]
“‘I want to see your place and, if possible, find out what it is that
makes you hug it so close, and I want to see it soon; so if you will
please engage a room for us at the nearest hotel, Terry and I will go
down for Sunday, and I can wait behind a bit and look around the
neighbourhood.
“‘I’ve been at him about this for a month, but he always forgets to ask
when he sees you. Then, too, the poor boy is a bit discouraged; we’ve
been to so many places that we know the railway time-tables of all the
villages within an hour of the city as well as we know our twice twos.
He thinks the only possible way to be satisfied is to inherit a place,
and “feel the blood of your people in the soil” as he puts it. But how
can we? I’ve no people but Uncle Sandy at the ranch, which is several
thousand miles inconvenient to Terry’s work, and his people are in the
old country, where, at best, the family nest, though decidedly a last
year’s one, was overfull, and dropped him out (he says you’ll appreciate
that). So you see, we’ve both got to start and make believe until it
seems natural.
“‘I hope I’m not putting you to trouble, but in the West we’re always
glad to step out for a prospective homesteader.
“‘Sincerely, your possible neighbour,
“‘VESTA DONELLY.’”
* * * * *
“I didn’t suppose it would put you out very much to have a jolly sort of
girl here for a few days at this dull time of the year,” said Evan,
regretfully, rather than apologetically, and dodging the real issue.
“It isn’t the trouble. I would welcome any one with open arms who cared
to come here in the first three weeks of March (as to the fourth week,
barring a blizzard, my mind goes back to the earth and revels in the
task of keeping the temperature of the hot-beds equable, an occupation
not naturally appreciated by company). But knowing the country as we do,
can you possibly consider March a good month for exploiting real estate?
Especially a March like the present, that starts by being snowbound in
the fields, and so sloppy in the roads that the wheels of anything but
father’s stanhope are mired and won’t go round, while down in the valley
the light sleigh almost turned into a boat and floated this morning.
“There is nothing attractive of any kind that I know of for sale, and if
there were, it would repel people at this season. Even the Cortrights’
trim, lovely house, standing between the great oaks, looked, this
afternoon, like a belated and bedraggled straggler, propped up between
two policemen waiting for the patrol wagon to come for it. Besides, at
best, this Mrs. Terence Donelly is looking for the impossible with true
Western fervour.
“One must grow up with a place and feel rooted in its earth to love it
in March; she won’t have the ghost of an idea what the garden means to
us by looking at it now, for it isn’t there, only its spirit, and that,
like everything dead, is invisible except to the eyes of those that
love.
“What is Vesta like? How old is she, and who were her people?” I asked,
for optimistic Evan was beginning to look depressed, which is something
wholly against the rule.
Terence Donelly was a college chum of Evan’s at Oxford, and is as
fascinating and warm-hearted as only a well-bred Irishman knows how to
be. He had visited us many times before the Western trip that had
buckled into double harness a spirited roadster who had travelled
straight and true in single harness without either check-rein or
blinders for nearly forty years. Consequently, Mrs. Terence was an
object of an interest that became intense upon the thought of meeting
her.
“She is small, her hair is light brown and her eyes flash and dance so
that I don’t remember anything else about them,” said Evan, slowly,
shutting his eyes, as if searching his memory for an accurate picture.
“I happen to know that she is twenty-six, though she does not look it by
five or six years. I haven’t made up my mind about her disposition; one
moment she has an almost pathetic expression as though she needed
sympathy and protection, and then her eyes blaze, and she runs her hand
through her front hair until it stands on end, and she reminds one of
something as unapproachable as a coil of slender live wire.
“Her people? Her father was a Californian, but her mother was an Eastern
woman by descent, the daughter of a Judge Morland who came from
Massachusetts, and, like many another boy, tired of farm life, taught
school to get his education, and then by the same process worked his way
out West. Terry has tried to look up the family to please his wife, who
seems very lonely in spite of all her independence, but there is no one
left. That is why I thought you might cheer her up from the woman’s side
of things if they settled here. She is unconventional enough to satisfy
you, I’ll warrant, and would be delighted to go up in the attic on a wet
day and dream pussy willows, and the fact that hers may be the western
species of the tree would be a sort of tonic for the dreams.”
“You must have said something to Terry about his wife’s coming here,” I
announced, when he had ended.
“I may have,” Evan answered. “The poor fellow is worried because she is
getting restless, and hasn’t a woman friend in New York, and I thought
if she could meet the Cortrights and Bradfords, Sukey Latham and the
rest, the air might clear in a twinkling.”
“I’ll write to her to-night; imagine you and me, married only a year and
living in Chicago or San Francisco, father dead, and not even Aunt Lot
or Martha Saunders to turn either against or to, and no home to which to
return! _What_ a wretched time you would be having with me!
Nevertheless, upon your head be the failure to find in this
neighbourhood the ideal house built around a magnet.”
“Oh, if you once get her here something will be sure to turn up,” said
Evan. “She may find a few bits of old furniture, or a bargain in a jug
or spoon up at Tucker’s curiosity shop; he’s had a dull season, and the
Donellys are keen about getting old Colony things so that when they find
_the_ house they may have the fittings, as they seem to take it for
granted the house will match.”
Father, who had come in while we were talking, stood with his back to
the study fire rubbing his hands together as if it were midwinter, while
the sleepy dogs only roused enough to wag their tails drowsily, take a
comfortable yawn that arched their backs, easing the muscles, then
settled down again.
“Is it thawing or freezing?” I asked, crossing the hall to him.
“Both,” he answered, laughing, “one overhead, the other underfoot; a
fine climate this, to test the vigour of the New England people. I’ve
just come down from the Dearborn farm from visiting old man Becker, who
is racked by grippy pains. He says there is more snow in the south
meadow than any spring since the old deacon died, and that is forty
years and he reckons March is ‘no good to anybody but for plotting and
planning.’ He gave me this handbill yesterday, which owing to the
weather, it’s several days in advance of its being posted. I was
reminded of it by hearing the words ‘bargains in jugs and old spoons’;”
and father pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from his side pocket,
which, being spread upon the table, took the form of a tree poster that
read as follows:—
“VANDOO! PART I
“The entire goods and chattels belonging to the estate of Sarah
Dearborn deceased, will be disposed of on the premises by public
vandoo on the 12th of March, or if stormy, the first fair day
thereafter. Goods will go to the highest bidder and must be paid
for at time of purchase and removed within two days.
“A list of the property may be seen on the premises.
“A grand chance for the friends of the late estimable lady to
obtain souvenirs.”
“VANDOO! PART II
“On Friday, March 15, the real estate belonging to the estate of
the late Sarah Dearborn, as follows: Parcel I consisting of one
two-story oak-framed dwelling with attic, wood-shed, and
buttery, two barns and smaller out-buildings, and seventeen
acres of land, the same comprising the homestead and to be sold
together. Parcel II, ten acres of woodland situated on the Ridge
Road, Parcel III, ten acres of salt meadow, Parcel IV, forty
acres of plowed and grass land being known as the South Meadows.
These pieces will be sold together or separate to suit the
bidder.
“Grand chance to secure high land for building lots, with a land
boom and a trolley only a few miles away and coming nearer! Come
one! come all!
“These two important vandoos are under the management of Joshua
Hanks, licensed auctioneer and attorney for the Executors.
“Oaklands, March, 19—.”
“Here is something, I’m sure, that will interest Mrs. Terry,” said Evan,
who had followed me; “naturally she will not care for the house, for it
is low and rambling, but it will be a chance to go to an auction sale
conducted with strict hill-country etiquette, unless I’m mistaken, for
even the leading word, ‘Vendue,’ is spelled according to the local
pronunciation. It is always as good as a play to hear Hanks conduct a
sale, he is all commercial bathos. Don’t you remember going with me,
Barbara, to an auction on the Ridge where some one complained that a
certain cow was damaged, and not sound as represented because she had a
broken horn, and Hanks gave a thrilling account of how the horn was
broken and tried to prove added value from the happening?”
“But, father,” I asked, “why is the Dearborn farm to be sold? I thought
Miss Sallie had pinched and denied herself even ordinary comforts the
last half of her life to leave the place, with a little sum for keeping
it up, to some grandnephews.”
“It is one of the many cases that come to us all, and especially into
the life of a country doctor, that prove how foolish it is for people to
make plans for those who come after them, or pinch or save beyond the
ordinary bounds of prudence,” answered father. “I knew Sallie Dearborn
for upwards of fifty years. The Lord intended her for a woman to love
and be loved, yet a streak of obstinate martyrdom from first to last
made her lose her chances of happiness one after another, because to
accept them would interfere with some elaborate and prudent plan she had
made either for indefinite posterity, or more often merely on general
principles of thrift.
“After the old people died, they say that Sallie had a chance to marry a
promising young fellow and go out into the world, but to have withdrawn
her interest in the land at that time would have hindered her two
brothers, and after a controversy that no one understood, the lover went
away.
“Presently one brother died, and the other, having married a delicate
wife, broke away from the farm to go to the southwest. For years Sallie
toiled and scrimped to pay him his portion and keep the place of five
generations ‘in the family.’ She has even paid her farmer Becker and his
wife with _post obits_, that she might leave a money equivalent of the
farm in the bank so that the two nephews might have equal portions
without selling the homestead and furnishings. The first choice going to
the elder, with many directions as to the handing of it down being left
to the one who takes it and its quaint furnishings.
“Now, as it turns out, neither man wishes the farm or fixings, nor has
sufficient interest in their fate even to bring them here to oversee
affairs, and everything available is to be sold without reserve and
turned into money!
“Deborah Becker, who lived with Miss Sallie as companion more than
helper these forty years, is almost heart-broken, and told me this
afternoon that such a happening had never entered Miss Sallie’s head,
for that not long before her last illness, she even sent for samples of
wall-paper, labelled and put them away in the old mahogany desk of the
Squire’s that always stood in the best room; this paper for the guest
room, that for the parlour, as a guide for the doing over of the house
when ‘one of the boys’ should take it.”
“Timothy Saunders’ saying is true, ‘The future’s a kittle mare that
travels best her ain gate and lacking both bit and bridle,’” I said,
“but yet it is pathetic when one has sacrificed everything to a sort of
old country land-pride, to have it come to naught. Didn’t she leave you
a letter of some sort, father, that was to remain sealed a year until
everything was settled?”
“Yes, Barbara, a sealed letter enclosing a key; the key of the old desk,
which the will says is to be disposed of according to directions given
me. I hope it may give rise to no complications. Who that saw Sallie
Dearborn during the last half of her life would dream that she was once
full of woman’s romance crossed with chivalry? These have seen her grim,
calculating, measuring every egg or berry that she sold; sending her
weekly paper to the Bridgeton Hospital, but first cutting the white
margins therefrom, and rolling them into lamplighters to save matches at
two cents a box!”
* * * * *