He was to see her daily during the summer, breathe the same air with her,
commune with her familiarly, and in a measure share the same experiences.
This had been all Sidney Martin’s thought, from the time he left Vashti
Lansing haloed by the yellow after-glow, until the Monday following, when
he entered the avenue leading up to the Lansing house.
This time he and his belongings had been driven over from Brixton. The
drive had been long—a good ten miles, over dusty mountain roads, between
fields crisped and parched by the pitiless sun; but at every turn of the
road Sidney’s fanciful imagination had figured forth a radiant form which
beckoned him on. How sweet the welcoming sign would be when the farewell
gesture had been so gracious! And now he had arrived. When, where would
he see her first? Would the glory of the setting sun have left her face?
Would she—and then he saw her.
In the wide angle made by the wing of the house there grew a great mass
of hollyhocks, perfumeless, passionless flowers, fit for the garden
of Proserpine. They were in full bloom. Not the pin-cushiony, double
flowers of the “improved”—save the mark!—hollyhock, but the exquisite,
transparent, cup-like single ones. In every shade, from crimson to
pink, from salmon to white, from lemon to a rich wine colour, they grew
there, stiff, stately, severe, their greyish green foliage softening
the brilliancy of their blossoms. Scores of yellowish-white butterflies
fluttered about them, sometimes entering boldly to the heart of the
flowers, sometimes poising upon the button-like buds which crowned the
tapering stems. And in the midst of this pure sweetness stood Vashti.
Sidney sprang from the musty carriage and went towards her, going, as it
seemed to him, into a more exalted atmosphere at a step.
And as he saw her then, he saw her ever afterwards—not, perhaps, wholly
as man looks at woman, rather as the enthusiast views perfection, as the
devotee adores the Faith made visible. He saw her not as an individual
woman, but as the glorious typification of her sex.
Ah, mysterious medley of mind and body! Ah, pitiful delusion which
suggests a sequence of spirit and shape!
She gave him her hand cordially enough, not a small hand, but one
exquisitely proportioned to her stature.
“We are so glad to see you,” she said. “Father is in the far-away meadow
at the hay; Mabella will be here in a moment.”
“Is your hand better?” he asked.
“Yes, oh quite!” she replied, pleased that he had remembered.
Temperance and the driver carried the trunk upstairs; the driver departed
and Temperance came to greet Sidney. It was afternoon, and Temperance was
busy at her patchwork. She sewed dexterously while she talked.
“Terrible weather, ain’t it?” she began. “My soul! Seems to me the
Lord’s clean forgot us here. The paint on the shed’s fair blistered,
and the cat’s thin with the heat. The grain’s done for, and the hay’s
no better’n rakings, and as for the roots—well, there’ll be none if it
don’t rain, and do it quick, too. ‘Drink, and praise God,’ the preacher’s
got painted on his well by the way, and the well’s been dry these five
weeks. Look at that sky! It’s dry as bass-wood. My chickings is going
about with their mouths open, and there’s nothing in the ponds but weeds
and frogs. They say frogs grow in water, but I never seen the beat of
the frogs this year. They say the Frenchers eats ’em. It’s a pity our
men couldn’t learn, and we’d pay a sight less for butchers’ meat. My
soul!”—Temperance’s lecture upon the drought was brought to an abrupt
conclusion. Mabella, not seeing Sidney standing in the shadow, had come
stealing up behind Miss Tribbey, and suddenly seizing her round the waist
swung her round in a breathless whirl.
“My soul!” said Miss Tribbey again, releasing herself violently, and
feeling her head and patting her person mechanically, as if to be certain
she was intact. “You ain’t bridle-wise yet, M’bella. It’s cur’us you
don’t seem to get sense.”
Mabella laughed.
Miss Tribbey continued with an ill-sustained show of bad temper, “You kin
laugh, but it’s discouragin’.”
“It is,” agreed Mabella blithely. “I’m like Nathan Peck.”
“Go ’long with you!” said Temperance, tossing her head. “Nathan ain’t
none too brainy, but I never seen any such carryin’s on as them with him!”
Temperance beat a retreat to the kitchen. Mabella laughing turned to
Vashti, and for the first time caught sight of Sidney.
“Oh!” she said with a little gasp; then pulling herself together,
advanced with outstretched hand. The ready rose dyed her cheek. She
looked like some pretty culprit child. Her eyes were blue as a gentian
flower—“Lansing blue” the neighbours called them. Her mouth expressed all
the sweetness of a pure and loving nature. Her air was full of blithe
gaiety. She seemed the incarnation of summery youth. There was something
in her manner, too, of tremulous excitement—as of one not yet knowing
life’s secret, but in sight of the mystery, eager yet afraid of passing
its portal.
Sidney was greatly won by her pretty air of deprecation, which mutely
apologized for the small whirlwind she had created by her entrance.
“Come,” said Vashti to Sidney. “It’s too bad to keep you standing here.”
So they left the hollyhocks.
“Who is Nathan Peck?” asked Sidney of Mabella.
“Temperance Tribbey’s beau,” she said with a little laugh. “They’ve been
keeping company for nineteen years.”
“Don’t they know their own minds yet?”
“Nathan does, but Temperance doesn’t believe in being hasty,” said Vashti
with what, in a less majestic creature, might have been a sneer.
“And to tell the truth she doesn’t want to leave us,” said Mabella, who
invariably found the best motive for other people’s actions. “She’s the
dearest old thing!”
“Father declares,” said Vashti, “that you are to do exactly as you like.
He’s working at the hay. They’re working late now and we take them out
something to eat at four o’clock. If you would like to come with us——”
“Oh, yes,” said Sidney, “I should like it of all things.”
“Well, we’ll be going in half an hour or so. But wouldn’t you like to
see your room? It’s the east chamber. Go up the stairs and turn to the
right; it’s the second door.”
“Thanks,” said Sidney. “I would like to get rid of the dust a bit.”
He went up the dusky oak stair. The house was carefully darkened to keep
out the heat and to discourage the flies. He found his room easily. His
trunk was there. The air was fragrant with the perfume from a nosegay of
sweet peas and mignonette which stood in a willow-pattern bowl of old
blue. Associating each gracious deed with _her_ gracious presence, he
said to himself:
“Vashti—Queen Vashti—has been here.” Then he murmured to himself,
“Vashti!”
“The first sweet name that led
Him down Love’s ways.”
When he descended in flannels a little later, he found the two girls
waiting on the porch. Vashti was sitting on the steps. Mabella was
leading a long-suffering cat up and down by its forepaws, a mode of
progression which evidently did not please the cat, whose tail switched
viciously at each step. It was released as Sidney stepped out of the
hall, and relieved its feelings by deliberately walking over and
scratching the old collie’s nose, as he lay sleepily waiting for the
signal to start. The collie, rudely awakened from his dream, sneezed and
turned an appealing look at Mabella, who caught him by his feathery ears
and expressed her sympathy in words somewhat unintelligible to the human
intellect, but evidently well understood by Bunker.
“Don’t forget them cups,” called Temperance after them. “And don’t spill
all that milk afore you get there. It won’t make the crops grow.” Then
she betook herself indoors, to muse upon the advisability of making hot
biscuits for supper, and to commune with herself upon the absurdity of
men who wore flannel trousers.
“My soul!” she said, in recounting the experience to one of her
neighbours, “it gave me a turn when I saw him in them white things. First
off, I says, ‘He’s forgot to dress himself.’ Then I saw they was white
trousers. Poor crittur! He needs something to set himself off; he’s poor
looking alongside of Lanty.”
But Miss Tribbey’s judgment was not to be trusted in respect to masculine
good looks, her one unit of comparison being yellow-haired Lanty Lansing,
who, tall, broad-shouldered and straight-limbed, was a man among a
thousand. Sidney Martin had his fair share of good looks. Under any
circumstances it would have been impossible to take him for anything but
a gentleman, a gentleman by breeding, education, and natural taste. He,
too, was tall like Lanty, but much more slender. He had grey eyes—the
dreamy eyes of Endymion, slender, nervous hands, and graceful gestures.
He walked with something of a scholar’s stoop, and had the pallor of the
student. Above all, his face was irradiate with kindliness towards every
living thing. His eyes had the dilating pupils of those who are dreamers
of dreams. It might be that the ideal would take him greater lengths
than the truth. About his mouth lay always a touch of pity—pity for the
world about him, which, to his eyes, was so blind to the true good, so
bent upon burdening itself with baleful creeds which disintegrated the
universal brotherhood of man.
The three young people, escorted by the collie, left the house, and
turning away from the road, proceeded along a lane which was really a
continuation of the avenue without the grateful shade of the trees. The
dusty way was strewn with fragrant hay which had fallen from the waggons
on their way to the barns. They passed the two broad, shallow ponds,
overgrown, as Miss Tribbey had said, with water-weeds and bulrushes.
Only a shallow, unwholesome little pool of water remained in each;
thirsty birds fluttered about the margin, and, as the three passed, the
frogs plunged into the water from every side. The collie walked sedately
into the middle of one of the pools, then came and shook himself beside
Mabella, spattering her skirts.
The heat was breathless; the earth, beneath the inquisition of the sun,
suffered but was mute. And presently they saw the hay-makers, the two
sweating horses in the mower, the man tossing the windrows into coils.
A great oak tree stood solitary in one corner, and thither the girls
directed their steps; a brown earthen jug of water, covered by the men’s
coats, stood in its shadow. Mabella took off her sunbonnet and waved it
wildly by one string. One of the men sent back an answering shout, and
tossed a forkful of hay into the air. The sun glinted from the burnished
steel of the fork to the yellow hair of its wielder.
“That’s Lanty,” said Mabella to Sidney, with a certain shy personal pride
in her accent.
“Our cousin, Lansing Lansing,” amended Vashti.
“Does he live with you?” asked Sidney.
“No! Oh, no! He has a farm of his own, but his haying is all done, and he
has come over to help Dad.”
“The farmers help each other here, when they can,” said Mabella.
Sidney felt enthusiasm surge within his breast; was not this practical
communism?
The men had left their work and were coming towards them.
“That’s Nathan Peck,” said Mabella, “on the left.”
Sidney saw him; a serious, sunburnt man, with mild, light-coloured eyes
and straight, straggly hair. He was very thin, and wore a woollen muffler
around his neck.
“Do you see that scarf? Temperance gave him that three years ago; he’s
never been seen without it since.” Mabella whispered this hastily to
Sidney.
“Warm devotion, isn’t it?” inquired Sidney as he rose to go and meet his
host.
“Isn’t he fun?” asked Mabella of Vashti.
“It all depends on taste,” said Vashti, indifferently. Mabella did not
hear her. She was gazing at her cousin Lanty as he came towards her some
yards in advance of the others. Clad in blue jeans, with his shirt open
at the throat and his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, Lanty was a man to
win ninety-nine women out of a hundred. The odd woman would see, perhaps,
too great a capacity for enjoyment in his face; too little of self
restraint, too much generosity, too little cool judgment; but if she were
discerning enough, she might pierce yet deeper to that natural nobility
of character which, through miry places and sloughs of despond, would yet
triumphantly set Lanty Lansing upon the solid rock of men’s respect.
“Well—you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said, flinging himself at the
feet of his cousins. “It’s worth working for to get over to the shade—and
you.”
His first words had seemed to address Mabella; his glance took in both
his cousins, and each girl took the meaning of the words home to her
heart, and doled out a niggard portion to the other. Mabella’s confidence
had given place to a shy eagerness to please the man she loved. Her eyes
dwelt upon him, eager to catch each glance, and she felt that as often
as his eyes lighted upon her an unconscious tenderness deepened his voice.
The situation was perfectly apparent to Sidney when he arrived with old
Lansing a moment later. Yet Vashti Lansing’s blinded eyes saw nothing
of it. Rapt in a superb egotism, she erred much in underestimating
her fellows. A more dangerous thing, perhaps, than to over-estimate
ourselves. Some instinct made her aware of the splendour of her form;
besides that, the women of her race had all been mageful creatures. She
had an unfaltering belief in the potentiality of her own will. Long ago
they had burned one of her forbears as a witch-woman. They said she
caused her spirit to enter into her victims and commit crimes, crimes
which were naively calculated to tend to the worldly advantage of the
witch. Vashti thought of her martyred ancestress often; she herself
sometimes felt a weird sensation as of illimitable will power, as of an
intelligence apart from her normal mind, an intelligence which wormed out
the secrets of those about her, and made the fixed regard of her large
full eyes terrible. The film of vanity dimmed them somewhat, but when
some rude hand should rend that veil away, their regard might be blasting.
Lanty’s wide hat was cast with apparent carelessness upon the grass
between him and Mabella; their fingers were interlaced beneath it, or,
rather, Mabella’s trembling fingers nestled in Lanty’s palm. He held
them tighter and tighter. A little tremor from her heart communicated
with his heart as the electric spark traverses the cable. At the same
instant they looked at each other, and read life’s meanings in each
other’s eyes. For the moment—unfaltering, steadfast, penetrating—blue
eyes met the blue. There was the pause of a heart-beat. Then Mabella’s
filmed with sudden self-consciousness, and triumph lighted the man’s
bolder eyes. Mabella almost wrenched her hand free and raised it
involuntarily to where her heart, grown too great with its treasure
of love, throbbed heavily. Lanty rose to his feet, bareheaded in the
sunshine, blinded by the glory and promise of the love he had seen in
those kindred eyes. He stood for a moment looking down at her; she looked
back at him. Her lips were tremulous, but there was an appealing trust in
their sweetness. Lanty could not trust himself farther.
“I’ll be off to my hay,” he said in vibrant tones. “I hope to see a great
deal of you,” he added, turning to Sidney. “You must come over and see
me; whenever you want a horse to ride, there’s one at your disposal.
Good-bye, girls, till supper time. Good-bye, Mabella.” She looked at
him, and he went off to his work, scarce believing in his own happiness,
seeing all golden about him, all fair before him—and this passed amid a
group of people, one at least of whom should have had sharp eyes.
One person indeed had noted all—Nathan Peck’s light eyes were eloquent
of mute sympathy. He, good soul, loved bustling Temperance Tribbey with
all his being. Whilst Lanty and Mabella had rested with their hands
clasped beneath the old wide hat, Nathan’s gnarled fingers had caressed
the ends of his muffler. Temperance was always and invariably right, that
went without saying, and yet—nineteen years!—surely she was a little
hard on them both? Nathan rose with something like a sigh, and proceeded
to his work thoughtfully. Sidney talked to Mr. Lansing and feasted his
eyes on the suave grace of his daughter. Mabella, her heart too full
for careless speech, rose, and, under pretence of chasing the collie,
contrived to start down the lane alone. As she reached the bend which
would hide her from Lanty, she turned. He was leaning upon his fork,
gazing after her. She waved her hand swiftly to him, then turned abruptly
and proceeded upon her way, a demure little figure in her pink sunbonnet.
Life stretched before her in a new aspect; the gate was opened, but the
way was unfamiliar, and her feet faltered before it. She arrived home
very soon, and sought Temperance in the kitchen.
Temperance was watering her geraniums in the window, and thinking a small
kitchen of her own would be more cosy than the great kitchen of Lansing
House.
“Temperance,” said Mabella, catching hold of a corner of Miss Tribbey’s
apron, “Temperance, you weren’t cross this afternoon when I pulled you
about?”
Miss Temperance looked at her, and set down the old tea-pot which she
used as a watering-can.
“Say?” insisted Mabella, pleating up the corner of the apron.
“What ails the child?” said Temperance—a sudden memory of Mabella’s
childhood coming to her, again she saw her a yellow-haired baby with
irresistible ways.
“But did you mind?” asked Mabella, her lips beginning to quiver.
“Bless it! No, indeed. My lamb, what kind of a cross old stick do you
think I am?”
“Temperance, are you _very_ fond of Nathan?”
“My soul!” said Temperance. “What next—Nathan?”
“Because you ought to be if you’re not,” said Mabella. “Oh, you ought to
be. When a person cares about one you ought to love them—_love_ them with
all your soul. It’s so little to give in return; so——” and then Mabella
was in Miss Tribbey’s arms, crying as if her heart would break.
And blustering Miss Tribbey petted her and quieted her, and got her out
of the way before Vashti and Sidney entered with the dishes from the
field, taking her upstairs and putting her to bed as she had done long
before when Mabella was a little motherless baby.
“You lay still there,” said Temperance, pausing by the door. “You lay
still there, and I’ll fetch up your tea.”
“You’re a dear,” said Mabella with a catch in her voice.
Miss Tribbey departed. Wise in her kind old fashion she asked no
questions. Miss Tribbey had been young in years like Mabella once, and
her heart was young yet.
“Pore girl!” said Temperance to herself, resuming the watering of her
geraniums. “Pore Mabella! She ain’t got no mother.”
Perhaps all the dew which fell upon the geraniums did not come from the
old tea-pot. Miss Tribbey’s mother had been alive when lanky Nathan Peck
began “keeping company” with Temperance. Up-stairs in a certain box there
yet were quilts that she had “patched” in anticipation of the wedding
which Miss Tribbey’s sense of duty had deferred all these years.
Miss Tribbey sighed, and went and carefully considered her countenance
in the little square of greenish glass which served as a mirror in her
kitchen. She turned away with something like a sob in her throat. “I’m
losin’ my looks,” she said. Then after a moment’s pause she drew herself
a little more erect, and going to a drawer put on a huge and fresh white
apron. She was meeting the ravages of Time with the defences at her
disposal. Brave Temperance!
When some two hours later Nathan Peck entered for his supper with the
others, he thought that never, surely in all the world, could there be a
more soul-satisfying sight than his “Temp’rins.”
“She beats all the young ’uns yet, by jing, if she don’t!” he said to
himself as he soused himself with soap and water by the door before he
came in.
“Here’s the comb, Nat,” said Temperance, handing him that useful article.
He took it, combed his straggly hair straight down over his eyes, and
then looked at Temperance appealingly through the ragged fringe.
Temperance’s heart was very soft to-night. She took the comb and parted
his hair. When she had finished, she let the palm of her hand smooth
over the top and rest an instant. He caught it, and the two looked at
each other. What were years and hard-wrought hands to them? They saw
themselves young and beautiful in each other’s eyes. That sufficed them.
Meanwhile Lanty had passed through the kitchen to the front porch, and
not finding Mabella there had come back to the kitchen.
“Well, Temperance,” he said cheerily, “how’s the world using you? And
Temperance—where’s Mabella?”
“She’s layin’ down,” said Temperance; “she had a sort o’ spell when she
came in and I made her go to bed.”
“What kind of a spell?” demanded Lanty, his heart standing still.
“Nerves,” said Miss Tribbey briefly, avoiding the anxious blue eyes of
her favourite. She did not know how far matters had gone, nor how clear
an understanding there was between the young people. Miss Tribbey was too
staunch a woman to betray her sex even in a good cause (and the making
of a match between these two Miss Tribbey regarded as a distinctly good
cause).
“Is it—is it her head?” asked Lanty miserably.
Miss Temperance eyed him severely—but she had misjudged her own strength.
“It’s jist nothin’ but nerves,” she said—“girls’ nerves; they’re
naterally nervous, girls is, and M’bella ain’t one of your coarse-grained
sort. She’s easily upset and tender-hearted as a chicken. My soul! how
all the brute beasts love her and how she sets store by them. I tell
you that girl can’t pass a hen without sayin’ something pleasant to it.
She’ll be all right to-morrow; but Lanty”—she quickened her speech as
they heard steps coming to the kitchen—“Lanty, she’s got no mother.”
Lanty caught her hand—“I’ll be everything to her, if she’ll let me,” he
said.
Then the others came in. Vashti, her father, and Sidney from the porch,
and Nathan from the back doorsteps, where he had been hugging his
happiness by himself.
“Where’s M’bella?” demanded her uncle as they sat down. Vashti looked at
Temperance for the answer.
“She’s layin’ down—got a headache with the heat.”
Nathan looked up with such sparkling intelligence that Miss Tribbey was
forced to reduce him by a look. So he obliterated all expression from his
face and fell to his supper with a gusto.
“Well, I declare,” said the old man; “she must be terrible bad if she
couldn’t stay up for Mr. Martin’s first meal with us.”
“Oh, you mustn’t mind me,” said Sidney hastily, “and I do wish you would
call me something a little more familiar than ‘Mr. Martin.’ My father
always called me Sid.”
“Sid you are, then,” said old Lansing heartily; “it’s mighty handy, that
name. If there’s anything I hate it’s a name a mile long. Nothing like
a short name for a dog or a person, I say. For horses and sich it don’t
matter much, but when you want t’ call a dog there’s nothing like a good
plain name.” The old man ran on garrulously, now and then arresting
himself to say the others were quiet. Considering that their quietude was
somewhat compulsory, as he talked all the time, it was rather astonishing
he found it food for comment.
“Well—M’bella do miss considerable,” he said; “she’s always got something
to say, M’bella has. Sometimes ’taint over-wise, but it’s always
well-meaning. M’bella ain’t one of your bristle-tongued women. I tell you
I’ve known women with rougher tongues than a cat’s.”
“Men’s tongues is a good deal like dogs’, I notice,” said Miss Temperance
scathingly—“that long they can’t keep ’em between their teeth. Mighty
loose hung, men’s tongues is.”
“When is the Special Meeting, father?” asked Vashti. Sidney thought how
gratefully her soft voice sounded across the strident tones of her father
and Temperance.
“Wednesday night,” he answered. “You’ll go, Sid? And you’ll be there,
Lansing?” The last words were spoken in a tone which challenged denial.
But Lanty was in a mood of Quakerish peace. He simply nodded. Old Lansing
looked very pleased.
“Special meeting!” said Sidney. “What for? What sort of meeting?”
“To pray for rain,” said Vashti. “If we do not have rain, the poor people
will be ruined and all of us will suffer. Already the hay is lost; we
should have had the meeting earlier.”
“Then you think—you believe—you believe the meeting will do good?”
“I believe in the answer to prayer,” she said a little coldly; “my father
is senior deacon in the church.”
This seemed hardly a reason for her personal beliefs, but Sidney did not
say so.
He began to see her in a new light—a noble daughter of a tottering faith.
And as one admires the devotion of a daughter to an unworthy parent, so
he admired Vashti in this guise also. The loyalty which made her blind to
the faults of a creed was perhaps more admirable than a clearer vision
which would have made her a renegade to the faith of her fathers. So
Sidney Martin thought as they sat out on the front porch, watching the
fireflies flitting in the darkness, living sparks of light, and listening
to the cadence of Lanty’s violin as he played snatches of old love songs,
putting his heart into them—for a little time before he had heard a
window softly raised, and he knew that Mabella, too timorous to meet him
face to face yet, was listening to and drinking in the message of his
music.