The next day dawned with pale rain-bleached skies and fresh sweet odours
of reanimated vegetation, but it dawned heavily for Sidney Martin. During
the drive home from the church the evening before they had all been
somewhat silent.
“Are you studyin’ for the ministry?” old Mr. Lansing had asked.
“No—oh no,” said Sidney, flushing unseen in the dark.
“It seems like you had a call,” said old Lansing, wishing he had not said
quite so positively at the church that his visitor was qualifying for the
service of God, and certainly from Mr. Lansing’s point of view he was
justified in his assertion.
Young men in delicate health who could pray as Sidney Martin had prayed
seemed to be the real ministerial material.
“Wouldn’t you like to be the minister?” asked Vashti.
People in Dole usually employed the definite article in referring to men
of the cloth. To the Dole mind it smacked of irreverence to say “a”
minister, as if there were herds of them as there is of common clay.
There was a _soupçon_ of surprise in Vashti’s tones. How quickly the acid
of deception permeates the fabric of thought!
“I have no call to the ministry,” answered Sidney—employing the slang of
the cult glibly to please the woman whom he loved.
“But if you felt you were called you would let nothing stand in your
way—would you?”
“No,” said Sidney, glad of an opportunity to say an honest word frankly.
“No.”
There was little else said. When they came to the cross-road Mr. Lansing
halted and Nathan Peck got out of the waggon to walk down the Brixton
road the quarter of a mile to where he lived with his mother.
He stood a lank ungraceful shape in the gloom.
“Here, Nat,” said Temperance, “take my umbrell.”
“Not by a jugful,” he said. “Why, Temp’rins! you’d be soaked clean
through.”
“Temperance can come under my umbrella,” said Mabella, divining the
pleasure it would give Temperance to yield up hers to Nathan.
“I’ve got my muffler on,” said Nathan stoutly.
“Here!” said Temperance, a trifle imperatively. “Good-night, Nat.”
The bays pulling at the reins started forward and Nat was left with the
umbrella.
“Would you care to offer a few words of thanks for the vouchsafed
blessing?” asked Mr. Lansing, with a laudable desire to make his saintly
guest comfortable, entering the house after putting the bays in their
stable.
“Blessing!” echoed Temperance irascibly. “He’s had enough of blessings
this night, I’m thinkin’; it’s boneset tea he needs now.”
“Woman!” said Mr. Lansing. Vashti looked her cold displeasure. The word
and the look did not disturb Temperance.
“Lend a hand, M’bella,” said she; “we’ll go and get them yarbs.”
“Oh—thank you, Miss Tribbey,” said Sidney, feeling strangely comforted by
this motherly old maid’s attentions. “But——”
Temperance cut him short, looking at him with grim kindness and heeding
his protest not at all.
“Your face is as pale as buttermilk,” she began. “Now what you’ll do is
to go upstairs and go to bed. Mind shut your window down, for rain after
a drought is terrible penetratin’. When this boneset tea has drawed Mr.
Lansing ’ill bring it up to you.”
Mabella was bustling about getting a lamp to go to the garret for the
herbs.
“You are very good,” Sidney said to her as one might praise a willing
child.
“Light heart makes light foot,” said Temperance oracularly. Mabella
smiled brightly and blushed.
Vashti standing with the dark folds of her cloak slipping down about her
superb figure, noted the blush, and connecting it with the eagerness
of Mabella’s aid to Temperance concluded that Mabella was casting eyes
upon Sidney. Vashti’s eyes grew deep and sombre. A pale smile curled her
sculptural lips; such a smile as Mona Lisa wears in her portraits.
Mabella’s coquetries against her power! Bah! a sneer flickered across her
countenance, erasing expression from it as acid cleans metal of stain.
But she was shaken with silent rage at the mere idea. She let her white
lids fall over her full eyes for a moment; then crossed to where Sidney
stood. She always seemed to move slowly, because of her long gliding
paces, which in reality bore her swiftly forward. She looked into his
eyes. “I am so sorry,” she said—her voice, always beautiful, seemed to
his greedy ears more than exquisite now—
“I am so sorry you are not well. You will go upstairs, won’t you, and
take what Temperance sends you? You are not suffering?”
Her wonderful eyes seemed wells of womanly concern for him. They searched
his as if eager to be assured that there was no other ill troubling him
than was apparent. A happy tremor thrilled his heart.
“I shall be quite well, I hope, in the morning,” he said. “I have bad
headaches sometimes. This is the beginning of one I suppose.”
He shivered with cold.
“Ah!” she said, “you must go away at once. I’m afraid you feel worse
than you will admit. If it was only your head I might help to cure it;
but really you had better go—” she looked at him—was it compellingly or
pleadingly? “Go,” she half whispered, with obvious entreaty in her eyes;
then she veiled it with a smile of mock deprecation, as if—his heart
stood still with delight—as if she was loathe to see him go—yet for
_his_ sake wished it. Temperance and Mabella having been to the garret
where the herbs were hung to dry, re-entered the kitchen in time to hear
Vashti’s good-night words.
“It’s a deal easier,” said Temperance, in the course of a circumstantial
account of the occurrence later on. “It’s a deal easier to say ‘Go’ with
a dying-duck expression, turning up the whites of your eyes, than to go
yourself up them stairs and that pesky ladder to the garret for yarbs.”
Fortunately Sidney never knew of Temperance’s profane criticisms upon his
goddess.
“Yes—I will go,” he said to Vashti. He spoke vaguely, as of one hardly
awake to the realities about him; and indeed he was stunned by the glory
that suddenly had shone in upon him when her feigned solicitude made his
heart leap.
“You are very good,” he said.
“Ah, no—” said Vashti simply, but her eyes were eloquent. Girlish
coquetries became subtle sorceries as she employed them.
The boneset tea had been duly despatched, but morning found him racked
by an intolerable headache, that acme of nervous pain of which only
supra-sensitive folk know. He half staggered as he sought the porch.
Temperance came to him presently.
“How do you feel this mornin’?” she asked.
He looked at her, his blood-shot eyes dizzy with pain.
“I’m not over well,” he said. “My head——”
“I’ll bring your breakfast here,” said Temperance and departed. He sat
down upon the porch step and leaned against the pillar, the same against
which Vashti had stood that night in the after-glow. The thought was
pleasant, but it was better to open his eyes and see standing before him,
strong and calm, the Queen of his dreams.
“Don’t rise,” she said. “Is it your head?”
“Yes,” he said, half closing his eyes again, for her form seemed to be
reeling across his vision. “Yes.”
“What do you do for these headaches?” asked Vashti.
“Oh, bromides and endurance,” he said.
“Well—wait till you breakfast and I’ll try it I can cure it,” said
Vashti. “Here is Temperance coming.”
Temperance and her tray arrived at the moment. Temperance put it down on
the step and went down the sandy garden paths whilst he ate, pulling up a
weed there, straightening a flower here. Mabella came out to the porch,
or rather came and stood in the wide doorway a moment. Mabella had on her
pink dress—at that time in the morning! Vashti’s eyes grew sombre for
an instant; she liked battle, but not presumption, and surely if, from
whatever motive, she chose to smile upon Sidney, it was not for Mabella
to oppose herself and her charms to _her_ will.
Temperance came back for the tray, which she found untouched, save for
the tea which Sidney had drunk so eagerly.
“Where is Mr. Lansing?” asked Sidney, as Temperance stood holding the
tray under one arm with its edge resting upon her hip. “He will think I
am very lazy.”
“He’s gone over to Brixton to find out when The Body will arrive,” said
Temperance.
Poor Len! In life he had been “that Len Simpson,” and not one of his
neighbours would have crossed the threshold to greet him, unless prompted
by that curiosity which leads us to pry into the misdeeds of others. Now
he was a Body, and more than one of the Dole people had left early like
Mr. Lansing upon the odd chance of meeting his corpse at Brixton.
Ah, poor, inconsistent humanity which fills dead hands with flowers
and denies eager palms one rose, and doubtless these things must be.
Yet we can imagine that a higher race than we might well make mock of
our too severe judgments—our uncomprehending judgments, and our tardy
tendernesses.
“You will make your passes for Mr. Martin, won’t you, Vashti?” said
Mabella, “and Temperance and I will see that you are left quiet. Vashti
is a witch, you know,” she continued to Sidney; “she will steal your
headache with the tips of her fingers.”
Temperance snorted and entered the house without more ado.
Mabella nodded and smiled and followed her.
“I can’t abear them passes and performances,” said Temperance to
Mabella. “It gives me the shivers. Vashti commenced on me onct when I
had neuralgia and I was asettin’ there thinkin’ when I got better I’d
make some new pillars out of the geese feathers, and all at onct Vashti’s
eyes began to grow bigger and bigger—just like a cat’s. They’re cat green
Vashti’s eyes is, call ’em what you like—and her hands apassin’ over my
forrit was just like cat’s paws, afeelin’ and afeelin’ before it digs its
claws in. My! I expected every minnit to feel ’em in my brains, and with
it all I was that sleepy. No, for me I’ll stick to camfire and sich.”
“Who’s a silly, Temperance?” demanded Mabella.
“You ain’t bridle-wise yet,” said Temperance, using her accustomed
formula of rebuke. And Mabella laughed aloud in defiance of reproof.
The girl’s heart sang in her breast, for when Lanty helped her into her
waterproof the night before he had whispered—
“At seven to-morrow night in Mullein meadow.”
She had smiled consent.
Would this long day never pass?
Vashti and Sidney were thus left solitary upon the shaded porch.
“Can you really cure headaches?” he said.
“We will see,” she answered. “But I think you had better sit in that
chair.” He sat down in the rocking-chair she indicated. It was very low.
As she knelt upon the top step before it her head was on a level with
his. How beautiful she was, he thought. How divine the strong white
column of her throat, exposed down to the little hollow which the French
call Love’s bed, creased softly by the rings of Venus’ necklace.
“I wouldn’t think much if I were you,” she said, “or at least, not of
many things.”
“I will think of you,” he said, feeling venturesome as an indulged child.
“Ah,” she said; “your cure will be quick,” and then bending gracefully
forward she began making simple strokes across his forehead, letting her
finger-tips touch lightly together between his eyebrows, and drawing
them softly, as if with a persuasive sweep, to either side. There was
much magnetism in that splendid frame of hers, and much potency in her
will, and much subtle suggestion in those caressing finger-tips.
“Close your eyes if the light wearies them,” she said softly, but he
strove to keep them open to catch glimpses of her regal face, between the
passages of the hands, so calm in the tensity of its expression. After a
little while his eyelids began to weigh heavily upon his eyes.
The grey—or was it green?—orbs watching him flashed between the moving
fingers like the sun through bars of ivory. He still watched their gleam
intently; seen fitfully thus their radiance grew brighter, brighter, till
it blasted vision.
“Close your eyes,” he heard a voice say, as from far, far away.
“You will be tired,” he muttered, stirring, but his eyes closed. His head
fell back against the back of the chair, and strong Vashti Lansing sank
back also, pale and trembling.
“Oh!” she said, speaking numbly to herself—“Oh! how long it was. I
thought he would never sleep—I,” she paused and looked at the sleeping
man with pale wrath upon her face; “to think he should have resisted
so—I”—she leaned back, worn out, it seemed, and regarded Sidney with
venomous, half-closed eyes, and he slept, and sleeping, smiled—for his
last thoughts had been of her.
The time which had seemed so long to Vashti had passed like the dream of
a moment to him—a dream in which her form had filled the stage of his
mind, yet not so completely as to exclude some struggles of the entrapped
intelligence against the narcotic of her waving hands. The trained
mind by mere mechanical instinct had striven against the encroaching
numbness, but Sidney’s volition had been consciously passive, and the
intelligence left to struggle alone was tangled in the web of dreams.
Vashti sat listlessly upon the step for some time—like a sleek, beautiful
cat watching a mouse. Then she rose and went within doors to perform her
share of the household duties very languidly.
The three women dined alone at twelve o’clock, for Mr. Lansing had not
returned, and Sidney still slept. After dinner Vashti disappeared, going
to her room and throwing herself heavily upon her old-fashioned couch;
she also slept.
Active Temperance fell to her patchwork so soon as her dinner dishes
were done, sitting, a comfortable, homely figure, in her calico dress
and white apron. Now pursing her lips as she pleated in the seams firmly
between her finger and thumb; now relaxing into grim smiles at her
thoughts, but always doing with all her might the task in hand.
Mabella essayed her crochet, tried to read, rearranged her hair till her
arms ached from holding them up, and found with all these employments the
afternoon insupportably long.
About three o’clock in the afternoon Vashti, cool and calm, descended the
stairs and went out upon the porch. As she crossed the threshold, Sidney,
lying still as she had left him hours before in the low chair, opened
his eyes and looked up into her face. She returned the look—neither for
a moment spoke. A sudden deep hush seemed to have fallen upon, about
them. Had he awakened from his dream, or had she entered it to make
the dream world real with her presence? About them was all the shadowy
_verdâtre_ of trees and vines. Sidney had forgotten where he was—all
earthly circumstances faded before the great fact of her presence. He was
conscious only that he was Man, and that Woman, glorified and like unto
the gods for beauty, stood before him. Were they then gods together?
“Is your head better?” she asked; her full tones did not jar upon the
eloquent silence, but her words reminded him that he was mortal.
“I had forgotten it,” he said. “I must think before I can tell.”
She laughed—just one or two notes fluted forth, but in their cadence was
the soul of music. It was as if mirth, self-wrought, bubbled up beneath
the dignity of this stately creature, as the living spring laps against
the marble basin which surrounds it; and as the tinkle of the spring has
more in it than melody, so Vashti Lansing’s laughter was instinct with
more than amusement. There was in it the thrill of triumph, the timbre of
mockery, and the subtlety of invitation.
“Then,” she said, “we will take it for granted that it is better. You are
like father and the thistles in his fingers. He often tells me how he has
been tormented by some thistle, and when I go to take it out, he has to
search the fingers of each hand before he can find out where it is. He
sometimes cannot even tell which hand it’s in.”
“Well,” said Sidney; “I am like your father. I’ve lost my head.”
“But if it ached,” said she; “it was a happy loss.”
“I hope it will be a happy loss,” he said wistfully.
She smiled gently and let fall her eyelids; no flicker of colour touched
her cheeks, nor was there any suggestion of shyness in her countenance.
Thus a goddess might veil her eyes that her purposes might not be read
until such time as she willed to reveal them.
Mabella heard voices upon the porch and came flying out.
Sidney could not find it in his heart to be impatient with this
bright-faced girl, whose heart was so full of tenderness to all living
things that little loving syllables crept into her daily speech, and
“dear” dropped from her lips as gently and naturally as the petals of
a flower fall upon the grass, and as the flower petals brighten for a
little the weed at the flower’s foot, so Mabella’s sweet ways gladdened
the hearts of those about her.
“Ah, Mr. Martin,” she said, “so you are awake! Was I a true prophet?
Yes—I’m sure of it! Vashti’s finger-tips did steal the ache, didn’t they?
They’re too clever to be safe with one’s purse. But see—have you had
anything to eat? No? Why, Vashti,” in tones of quick concern, “he must
be faint for want of something to eat.” She was gone in a moment. With
Mabella to know a want was to endeavour to supply it. Ere there was time
for further speech between Sidney and Vashti, Temperance had come out.
Her shrewd, kindly face banished the last shreds of his dreams. The pearl
portal closed upon the fair imageries of his imagination and he awoke,
and with his first really waking thought the events of the night before
ranged themselves before his mental vision. As he lay awake in the night
he had decided that come what may he must put on a bold front before the
awkward situation he had created for himself. But if the courage which
springs from conscious righteousness is cumulative, the courage which is
evolved from the necessities of a false position is self-disintegrating.
Sidney felt bitterly that he feared the face of his fellows.
“Eat something,” said Temperance, urging the bread and milk upon him;
“eat something. When I was took with the M’lary I never shook it off a
bit till I begun to eat. It’s them citified messes that has spoiled yer
stummick. Picks of this and dabs of that, and not knowin’ even if it’s
home-fed pork, or pork that’s made its livin’ rootin’ in snake pastures,
that you’re eatin’. My soul! It goes agin me to think of it; but there,
what kin ye expect from people that eats their dinners as I’ve heard tell
at six o’clock at night?”
Sidney ate his portion humbly whilst Temperance harangued him. He looked
up at her, smiling in a way which transfigured his grave, thin face.
“I’m a bother to you, am I not, Miss Tribbey? But it’s my bringing up
that’s responsible for my sins, I assure you. My intentions are good, and
I’m sure between your cooking and your kindness I shall be a proverb for
fatness before I go away.”
“Soft words butter no parsnips,” said Temperance with affected
indifference. “Fair words won’t fill a flour-barrel, nor talking do you
as much good as eatin’,” with which she marched off greatly delighted.
Mabella seeing a chance to tease her, followed:
“If you make eyes at Mr. Martin like that I’ll tell Nathan Peck,” Sidney
heard her say.
“My soul! Mabella, you’ve no sense, but, mind you, it’s true every word I
said. I tell you I ain’t often in town, but when I am I eat their messes
with long teeth.”
Sidney moved his camp from the porch to the hammock which was suspended
between two apple trees in the corner of the garden. Mabella brought out
her sewing, and Vashti her netting, and Sidney spent the remnant of the
waning afternoon watching the suave movements of Vashti’s arm as, holding
her work with one foot, she sent her wooden mesh dexterously into the
loops of a hammock such as he was lying in; and at length the shadows
lengthened on the grass, and Temperance called that supper was ready.
Mabella Lansing never forgot that repast. It was the passover partaken
of whilst she was girded to go forth from girlhood to womanhood, from a
paradise of ignorance to the knowledge of good and evil. The anticipation
of a new love made these time-tried ones doubly dear. She forgot to eat
and dwelt lingeringly upon the faces about her; faces which had shone
kindly upon her since she was a little child. The time which had crept so
slowly on the dial all day long now seemed to hasten on, as if to some
longed-for hour which was to bring a great new blessing in its span.
In retrospect of “the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,” do we
not all single out from them one hour becrowned above all others; one
hour in marking which the sands of memory’s glass run goldenly? Amidst
the dead sweetness of buried hours is there not always one whose rose it
amaranthine? One, which in the garlands of the past retains ever the
perfume of the living flower, shaming the faint scent of dead delights?
One hour in which the wings of our spirits touched others and both burst
forth in flame? And the chrism of this hour was visible upon the brow
of Mabella Lansing. She was sealed as one worthy of initiation into its
fateful mysteries. How far away she seemed from those about her; their
voices came to her faintly as farewells across the widening strip of
water which parts the ship from shore.
“Did you find out about Len Simpson’s funeral?” asked Vashti of her
father.
“Yes—the buryin’s to-morrow, and it seems Len was terrible well thought
of amongst the play-actin’ folk, and they’ve sent up a hull load of
flowers along with the body, and there’s a depitation comin’ to-morrow to
the buryin’ and they say there’s considerable money comin’ to Len and of
course his father’ll get it. I don’t know if he’ll buy that spring medder
of Mr. Ellis, or if he’ll pay the mortgage on the old place, but anyhow
it’ll be a big lift to him.”
“Why, is it as much as that?” asked Vashti incredulously.
“So they say,” said her father.
“Lands sake!” said Temperance. “It seems like blood-money to me. Pore
Len!”
As they all rose from the table, Mabella managed to slip away to her
room, to spend the few moments before her tryst, alone. She looked out
of her window and saw afar amid the boulders of Mullein meadow a form she
knew, and the next moment she fled breathlessly from the front porch. A
more sophisticated woman would have waited till the trysting time had
come, but Mabella’s heart was her helm in those days and she followed its
guiding blindly, and it turned towards Lanty waiting there for her. _For
her._ O! the intoxication of the thought! O! the gladness of the earth!
the delight of feeling life pulsing through young veins!
And thus it was that as Lanty paced back and forth in patient impatience
within a little space hedged in by great boulders, his heart suddenly
thrilled within him as the needle trembles towards the unseen magnet;
he looked up at the evening sky as one might look upon whom the spirit
was descending, and then, turning instinctively, he saw a shy figure
standing between two great boulders. He cast his hat to the ground and
went towards her, bare browed, and, holding out his arms, uttered a sound
of delight. Was it a prayer—a name, or a plea? And with a little happy,
frightened cry of “Lansing, Lansing,” Mabella fled to him. Nestling close
to his throbbing heart, close indeed, as if she was fain to hide even
from these tender eyes, which, dimmed with great joy, looked upon her so
worshippingly. There are certain greetings and farewells which may not be
writ out in words, and these untranslatable messages winged their way
from heart to heart between these two.
The grey heaven bent above them as if in benediction. The stern outlines
of the old boulders faded into the dusk which seemed to enwrap them
as if eager to mitigate their severity. The soft greys of the barren
landscape, the tender paleness of the sky, seemed to hold the two lovers
in a mystic embrace, isolating them in the radiance of their own love,
even as the circumstances of a United Destiny were to hedge these two for
ever from the world. There were jagged stones hidden by the tender mists
of twilight, and bitter herbs and thistles grew unseen about them, but to
their eyes the barren reaches of Mullein meadow blossomed like a rose.
Doubtless, they two, like all we mortals, would some day “fall upon the
thorns of life and bleed,” but together surely no terror would overcome
them nor any despair make its home in their hearts, so long as across
the chasms in the life-road they could touch each other’s hands. The
first rapture of their meeting vanished, as a bird soaring in the blue
disappears from vision, which yet does not feel a sense of loss, because
though the eye sees not the heart knows that afar in the empyrean the
triumphant wings still beat.
“Mabella—my Mabella. You love me?”
“Oh, so much, so very much—and, Lanty, you like me?”
“Like! Oh, Mabella, since that day in the hayfield when I _knew_, you
can’t imagine what life has seemed to me since then—surely it is ages
ago, and how I have thought of you! Dear, I can’t say all I mean—but you
know—Mabella, _you know_, don’t you, sweetheart?”
“I hope so,” she said sweetly, and then, with the inconsequence of women,
her eyes filled with tears.
“Lanty—you—you will be good to me?”
“May God treat me as I treat you,” said Lanty solemnly.
There was a pause, such a pause as when the sacramental wine dies upon
the palate.
“I did not doubt you, Lanty.”
“No, sweet one,” he said; “I understand all about it. I will be good to
you and take care of you, and, oh, my own dear girl, I am so happy.”
“And I——”
And then lighter talk possessed them, and they recounted incidents,
which, with the happy egotism of lovers, they chose to consider as
important events because they had a special significance for them. The
path to love is like a sea voyage. There are always more remarkable
occurrences and extraordinary coincidences in one’s own experience than
in anyone else’s, and these two were no exception to the rule. They
discovered that upon several notable occasions they had been thinking
_exactly_ the same thing, and upon other occasions each had known
_exactly_ what the other was going to say before the words were uttered,
and they talked on until they were environed in an atmosphere of wonder
and awe, and looked upon each other startled by the recognition of their
superiority, and the world was but a little place compared with the
vastness of each other’s eyes.
The dusk crept closer to them, the wings of night waved nearer and
nearer, and Mabella, resting in Lanty’s arms, sought his eyes for all
light, and as they stood thus two other pairs of eyes watched them.
When Mabella had disappeared so promptly after supper, suspicion had
stirred uneasily in Vashti’s heart.
“Do you want me to help with the dishes?” she asked Temperance; “Mabella
seems to have gotten herself out of sight.”
“No,” said Temperance, who was expecting Nathan, “I’ll finish up that
handful of dishes and everything else there is to do in half an hour.”
Vashti betook herself to the garden expecting to find Mabella and Sidney
there.
Both were gone.
Sidney, so soon as Vashti’s personal influence was disturbed by the
presence of others, fell again into a chaos of self-communings, and the
devil which lurked there drove him forth into the wilderness; walking
with the hopeless desire of escaping from himself he, ere long, found
he was amid the barrenness of Mullein meadow. He wandered up and down
amid its grotesque boulders till suddenly there came to him a sense of
trespass.
“Put off thy shoes from off thy feet for the place whereon thou standest
is holy ground,” his intuitions whispered to him. He raised his
eyes—looked out from his own heart and saw Lanty with Mabella within his
arms, her eyes raised to his radiant with the ineffable trust of first
love. Sidney stood spellbound, his heart aching within him. How sorely
he envied the title-deeds to this enchanted country they had found, and
possessed by divine right. Surely that meek man Moses endured sore agony
as, foot-weary after long wandering, he looked upon the promised land,
and looked only. It is indeed bitter to look at happiness through another
man’s eyes.
Sidney lingered some little time, till of their sacred talk one syllable
came to him clearly; then he realized the sacrilege of listening, and
departed; but surely the sky was very dark towards which he turned. Yet
as he searched the sombre clouds before him the needle-like rays of a
tiny star shone out environed by the darkness, and Sidney lighted a
little lamp of hope at its beam.
When Vashti found the garden empty as last year’s nests she never paused,
but turning fled up to the little garret cupola whose windowed sides
gave a view for a long distance in every direction, and hardly had she
climbed to this eyrie before she saw two figures in Mullein meadow.
That was enough.
Vashti did not wait to study the picture in detail. Gathering her skirts
in her hand she sped down the stairs through the garden and down the road
like a whirlwind. Her thwarted will shook her whole being as a birch
trembles in the breeze. Mabella had dared! When _she_ had smiled upon
him! As Vashti ran down the road she promised herself that she would
give both Sidney and Mabella a lesson. Mabella would be presuming to
Lanty next! So Vashti soliloquised within her angry soul as she climbed
the stone fence of Mullein meadow and crept noiselessly towards where
she expected to find Mabella and Sidney. She advanced stealthily, paying
all heed to caution, and after duly ensconcing herself behind a boulder
which she knew commanded a view of the little hollow she looked—and
saw.... and controlled herself sufficiently not to scream aloud in rage;
but vitriolic anger seethed within her heart, and for the time denied
outlet, burned and cankered and tortured the breast which contained it.
The first desire of her dominant nature was to fling herself before them
in a wild accession of rage, and open upon them the floodgates of speech,
but Vashti Lansing was not without a heritage of self-control. Long ago
when her ancestress had been on trial for witchery, cruel persuasion had
been used to make her speak—in vain. The torment of the modern Vashti
was greater and keener, inasmuch as it came from within; alas! we are
told, it is that which defileth; every proud drop of blood in Vashti’s
veins urged her to mocking speech; beneath the iron curb of her will she
was mute, but the victory cost dear. So as Lilith, the snake-wife of
Adam, may have lain in the shadows of Paradise watching the happiness of
God-given Eve, Vashti Lansing stayed and watched sombrely, ominously, the
joy of these two, and cursed them, vowing them evil, and promising the
devil within her the glut of a full revenge—revenge for what?
Lanty had never given her cause to think he loved her, and Mabella had
only veiled her love with shyness, not hidden it with guile—but—Vashti
Lansing was supremely illogical. They had transgressed the unwritten
statutes of her will. Did not that suffice to make them sinners above all
others?—besides, like the poison which festers in the already wide wound,
she realized in those moments of supreme mental activity that she loved
Lanty, as women such as she love men, tigerishly, selfishly—Ah! they
should suffer even as she suffered! She dropped her face in her hands,
enduring the mortal agony of her baulked will, her misplaced, evil love,
her bruised self-confidence, and shattering rage. And when she raised her
head once more the scene had grown dark, the grassy stage whereon two
mortals had lately mimed it in the guise of gods was empty, and she was
alone.
She rose slowly to her feet wringing her hands in mute wrath. She looked
around at the dreary field wherein she had endured such agony. Oh, that
some yet more bitter blight than barrenness might fall upon it—some
pest of noxious plants, some plague of poisonous serpents; oh, that
she knew a curse potent enough to blast the grass upon which they had
stood! But nature sanctifies herself; our curses are useless against her
righteousness and rattle back upon our own heads like peas cast against a
breast-plate of steel.
She entered the house calmly as was her wont. Within her heart was a
Hades of rage; upon her brow the glamoured eyes of Sidney Martin saw the
spectral gleam of the star of promise.