On a day in early spring Alan Wayne was summoned to Red Hill. Snow
still hung in the crevices of East Mountain. On the hill the ashes,
after the total eclipse of winter, were meekly donning pale green. The
elms of Elm House were faintly outlined in verdure, and stood like
empty sherry-glasses waiting for warm wine. Farther down the road the
maples stretched out bare, black limbs whose budding tufts of leaves
served only to emphasize the nakedness of the trees. Only the firs, in
a phalanx, scoffed at the general spring cleaning, and looked old and
sullen in consequence.
The colts, driven by Alan Wayne, flashed over the brim of Red Hill to
the level top. Coachman Joe’s jaw was hanging in awe, and so had hung
since Mr. Alan had taken the reins. For the first time in their five
years of equal life the colts had felt the cut of a whip, not in anger,
but as a reproof for breaking. Coachman Joe had braced himself for the
bolt, his hands itching to snatch the reins. But there had been no
bolting, only a sudden settling down to business.
“Couldn’t of got here quicker if he’d let ’em bolt,” said he in
subsequent description to the stable-hand and the cook. He snatched up
a pail of water and poured it steadily on the ground. “Jest like that.
He knew what was in the colts the minute he laid hands on ’em, and when
he pulls ’em up at the barn door there wasn’t a drop left in their
buckets, was there, Arthur?”
“Nary a drop,” said Arthur, stable-hand.
“And his face,” continued the coachman. “Most times Mr. Alan has no
eyes to speak of, but to-day and that time Miss Nance stuck him with
the hat-pin--’member, cook?--his eyes spread like a fire and eat up his
face. This is a black day for the Hill. Somethin’ ’s going to happen.
You mark me.”
In truth Mr. Alan Wayne had been summoned in no equivocal terms and,
for all his haste, it was with nervous step he approached the house.
There was no den, no sanctuary beyond a bedroom, for any one at Maple
House. No one brought work to Red Hill save such work as fitted into
swinging hammocks and leafy bowers. Library opened into living-room and
hall, hall into drawing-room, and drawing-room into the cool shadows
and high lights of half-hidden mahogany and china closets. And here
and there and everywhere doors opened out on to the Hill. It was a
place where summer breezes entered freely and played, sure of a way
out. Hence it was that Maple House as a whole became a tomb on that
memorable spring morning when the colts first felt a master hand--a
tomb where Wayne history was to be made and buried as it had been
before.
Maple House sheltered a mixed brood. J. Y. Wayne, seconded by Mrs. J.
Y., was the head of the family. Their daughter, Nance Sterling, and
her babies represented the direct line, but the orphans, Alan Wayne and
Clematis McAlpin, were on an equal footing as children of the house.
Alan was the only child of J. Y.’s dead brother. Clematis was also of
Wayne blood, but so intricately removed that her exact relation to the
rest of the tribe was never figured out twice to the same conclusion.
Old Captain Wayne, retired from the regular army, was an uncle in a
different degree to every generation of Waynes. He was the only man on
Red Hill who dared call for a whisky and soda when he wanted it.
[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch
“ALONG THE RIBBON OF THE SINGLE ROAD SCURRIED AN OVERLADEN DONKEY”]
When Alan reached the house, Mrs. J. Y. was in her garden across the
road, surveying winter’s ruin, and Nance with her children had borne
the captain off to the farm to see that oft-repeated wonder and always
welcome forerunner of plenty, the quite new calf.
Clematis McAlpin, shy and long-limbed, just at the awkward age when
woman misses being either boy or girl, had disappeared. Where, nobody
knew. She might be bird’s-nesting in the swamp or crying over the
“Idylls of the King” in the barn loft. Certainly she was not in the
house. J. Y. Wayne had seen to that. Stern and rugged of face, he
sat in the library alone and waited for Alan. He heard a distant
screen-door open and slam. Steps echoed through the lonely house. Alan
came and stood before him.
Alan was a man. Without being tall, he looked tall. His shoulders did
not seem broad till you noticed the slimness of his hips. His neck
looked too thin till you saw the strong set of his small head. In a
word, he had the perfect proportion that looks frail and is strong.
As he stood before his uncle, his eyes grew dull. They were slightly
blood-shot in the corners, and with their dullness the clear-cut lines
of his face seemed to take on a perceptible blur.
J. Y. began to speak. He spoke for a long quarter of an hour, and then
summed up all he had said in a few words:
“I’ve been no uncle to you, Alan; I’ve been a father. I’ve tried to
win you, but you were not to be won. I’ve tried to hold you, but it
takes more than a Wayne to hold a Wayne. You have taken the bit with a
vengeance. You have left such a wreckage behind you that we can trace
your life back to the cradle by your failures, all the greater for your
many successes. You’re the first Wayne that ever missed his college
degree. I never asked what they expelled you for, and I don’t want to
know. It must have been bad, bad, for the old school is lenient, and
proud of men that stand as high as you stood in your classes and on the
field. Money--I won’t talk of money, for you thought it was your own.”
For the first time Alan spoke.
“What do you mean, sir?” With the words his slight form straightened,
his eyes blazed, there was a slight quivering of the thin nostrils, and
his features came out clear and strong.
J. Y. dropped his eyes.
“I may have been wrong, Alan,” he said slowly, “but I’ve been your
banker without telling you. Your father didn’t leave much. It saw you
through junior year.”
Alan placed his hands on the desk between them and leaned forward.
“How much have I spent since then--in the last three years?”
J. Y. kept his eyes down.
“You know more or less, Alan. We won’t talk about that. I was trying
to hold you, but to-day I give it up. I’ve got one more thing to tell
you, though, and there are mighty few people that know it. The Hill’s
battles have never entered the field of gossip. Seven years before you
were born, my father--your grandfather--turned me out. It was from this
room. He said I had started the name of Wayne on the road to shame and
that I could go with it. He gave me five hundred dollars. I took it and
went. I sank low with the name, but in the end I brought it back, and
to-day it stands high on both sides of the water. I’m not a happy man,
as you know, for all that. You see, though I brought the name back in
the end, I never saw your grandfather again, and he never knew.
“Here are five hundred dollars. It’s the last money you’ll ever have
from me; but whatever you do, whatever happens, remember this: Red Hill
does not belong to a Lansing or to a Wayne or to an Elton. It is the
eternal mother of us all. Broken or mended, Lansings and Waynes have
come back to the Hill through generations. City of refuge or harbor of
peace, it’s all one to the Hill. Remember that.”
He laid the crisp notes on the desk. Alan half turned toward the door,
but stepped back again. His eyes and face were dull once more. He
picked up the bills and slowly counted them.
“I shall return the money, sir,” he said and walked out.
He went to the stables and ordered the pony and cart for the afternoon
train. As he came out he saw Nance, the children, and the captain
coming slowly up Long Lane from the farm. He dodged back into the
barn through the orchard and across the lawn. Mrs. J. Y. stood in the
garden directing the relaying of flower-beds. Alan made a circuit. As
he stepped into the road, swift steps came toward him. He wheeled, and
faced Clem coming at full run. He turned his back on her and started
away. The swift steps stopped so suddenly that he looked around. Clem
was standing stock-still, one awkward, lanky leg half crooked as though
it were still running. Her skirts were absurdly short. Her little
fists, brown and scratched, pressed her sides. Her dark hair hung in a
tangled mat over a thin, pointed face. Her eyes were large and shadowy.
Two tears had started from them, and were crawling down soiled cheeks.
She was quivering all over like a woman struck.
Alan swung around, and strode up to her. He put one arm about her thin
form and drew her to him.
“Don’t cry, Clem,” he said, “don’t cry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
For one moment she clung to him and buried her face against his coat.
Then she looked up and smiled through wet eyes.
“Alan, I’m _so_ glad you’ve come!”
Alan caught her hand, and together they walked down the road to the
old church. The great door was locked. Alan loosened the fastening of
a shutter, sprang in through the window, and drew Clem after him. They
climbed to the belfry. From the belfry one saw the whole world, with
Red Hill as its center. Alan was disappointed. The Hill was still half
naked, almost bleak. Maple House and Elm House shone brazenly white
through budding trees. They looked as though they had crawled closer
to the road during the winter. The Firs, with its black border of last
year’s foliage, looked funereal. Alan turned from the scene, but Clem’s
little hand drew him back.
[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch
“HER SKIRTS WERE ABSURDLY SHORT. HER LITTLE FISTS, BROWN AND SCRATCHED,
PRESSED HER SIDES”]
Clematis McAlpin had happened between generations. Alan, Nance, Gerry
Lansing, and their friends had been too old for her, and Nance’s
children were too young. There were Elton children of about her age,
but for years they had been abroad. Consequently, Clem had grown to
fifteen in a sort of loneliness not uncommon with single children who
can just remember the good times the half-generation before them used
to have by reason of their numbers. This loneliness had given her in
certain ways a precocious development while it left her subdued and shy
even when among her familiars. But she was shy without fear, and her
shyness itself had a flower-like sweetness that made a bold appeal.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Alan?” she said. “Yesterday it was cold and it
rained and the Hill was black--_black_, like the Firs. To-day all the
trees are fuzzy with green, and it’s warm. Yesterday was so lonely, and
to-day you are here.”
Alan looked down at the child with glowing eyes.
“And, do you know, this summer Gerry Lansing and Mrs. Gerry are coming.
I’ve never seen her since that day they were married. Do you think it’s
all right for me to call her Mrs. Gerry, like everybody does?”
Alan considered the point gravely.
“Yes, I think that’s the best thing you could call her.”
“Perhaps when I’m really grown up I can call her Alix. I think Alix is
such a _pretty_ name, don’t you?”
Clem flashed a look at Alan, and he nodded; then, with an impulsive
movement she drew close to him in the half-wheedling way of woman about
to ask a favor.
“Alan, they let me ride old Dubbs when he isn’t plowing. The old donkey
she’s so fat now she can hardly carry the babies. Some day when you’re
not in a _great_ hurry will you let me ride with you?”
Alan started down the ladder.
“Some day, perhaps, Clem,” he muttered. “Not this summer. Come on.”
When they had left the church, he drew out his watch and started. “Run
along and play, Clem.” He left her and hurried to the barn.
Joe was waiting.
“Have we time for the long road, Joe?” asked Alan as he climbed into
the cart.
“Oh, yes, sir, especially if you drive, Mr. Alan.”
“I don’t want to drive. Let him go and jump in.”
The coachman gave the pony his head, climbed in, and took the reins.
The cart swung out, and down the lane.
“Alan! Alan!”
Alan recognized Clem’s voice and turned. She was racing across a corner
of the pasture. Her short skirts flounced madly above her ungainly
legs. She tried to take the low stone wall in her stride. Her foot
caught in a vine, and she pitched headlong into the weeds and grass at
the roadside.
Alan leaped from the cart and picked her up, quivering, sobbing, and
breathless.
“Alan,” she gasped, “you’re not going away?”
Alan half shook her as he drew her thin body close to him.
“Clem,” he said, “you mustn’t. Do you hear? You mustn’t. Do you think I
_want_ to go away?”
Clem stifled her sobs and looked up at him with a sudden gravity in her
elfish face. She threw her bare arms around his neck.
“Good-by, Alan.”
He stooped and kissed her.