After the day when, alone upon the hillside, Sidney watched Len Simpson’s
funeral wind along the narrow ways of Dole, there ensued for him a sweet
calm interlude—a tranquil period, yet surcharged with potentialities.
It was the space between the casting of the grain into the ground and
the first blade. At such a time there is no stir upon the surface of the
earth, yet in its brown bosom the vital germinal growths are beginning;
the husk of individuality is bursting, the tap-root of deeper sympathy
is searching for sustenance; and at last upon some happy morning a green
glow gladdens the sky, and we say: “Lo, the new grain!” and offer thanks
for the promise of the gracious harvest.
But all the after-vigour of the plant depends upon that silent time
in the darkness. So the whole fabric of Sidney’s after-life was built
up from the beginnings made in that uneventful month, whose days are
difficult to chronicle, as beads which slip adown the string and mingle
with each other are to count. It passed like a lover’s dream to Sidney,
to be remembered afterwards as a season of peace and happiness whose
source and sense eluded analysis.
The calm happiness which encompassed the lives of Mabella and Lanty lay
like a benediction upon the house, and the hearts beneath its benison
rested for the moment like a congregation hushed after the last Amen, and
not yet surrendered again to the worldly cares and sordid joys which wait
without the sanctuary doors.
But as one of the peaceful congregation may writhe in the hair shirt of
personal perplexity, so Vashti Lansing beneath her calm smile suffered
agonies in those days.
Is there any torture more poignant than the cry of “Peace, Peace” when
there is no Peace?
She was very pale, the insolently perfect oval of her face had fined a
little, there was a hint of a break in the suave curve of her cheek, and
this, albeit an imperfection, lent her beauty a new and subtle charm of
appeal.
She was very quiet, too, and now and then a tender wistfulness dimmed her
eyes, softening the majesty of her brow alluringly. When Sidney saw this
he felt his heart go out to her more strongly than ever.
“Unconsciously,” he said to himself, “her sweet, strong nature covets
the joy of loving and being loved”; and there welled up within him that
indulgent and protective tenderness which all good men feel for the
women they love.
Vashti Lansing had never appeared so gentle, so womanly, so good, as at
this juncture when all the evil within her was rising, and gathering,
and forming into malevolent purposes. Some deadly creatures take to
themselves the semblance of flowers that they may sting their victims
unaware.
Mabella and Lanty were together continually. It was very pretty to see
her shy eagerness for his coming, his open happiness at her presence.
Temperance was always busy with her housework, to which was added now the
cutting and hemming of Mabella’s household linen. For Temperance had long
saved egg-money and butter-money for such an emergency, and, delighted
at the prospective union of her two favourites, she fell to the work
eagerly. Mabella tried to help, but her usually busy fingers were rather
idle during those first halcyon days. She let her hands fall in her lap
with the needle between her fingers, and slipped away into a dream,
leaving all earthly considerations far behind. If a word or a smile
reminded her that mortals were peeping into her paradise, she would rise
and steal away to the little shadowy room, from the windows of which she
had seen him waiting in Mullein meadow, and there, chiding herself for
over great delight, she would strive to bring down her great joy to the
basis of every-day fact. “We love each other,” she would say, stating
the fact in bold terms, “we love each other,” and by the time she had
said it twice her face would shine again with the glory of the thought,
and the words ceased to become words to her, and became only the sighing
of Love’s mouth. What a simple figure Mabella Lansing presents upon the
little stage whereon these people trod, beside the splendid and forceful
personality of her cousin Vashti! What an ordinary and commonplace
product of ordinary and commonplace conditions Lanty Lansing seems beside
Sidney Martin, supersensitive, morbidly idealistic, a Sir Galahad,
bearing the white flower of a stainless life and giving it into the hands
of a wicked woman to work her will upon it!
Yet though the love of Mabella and Lanty was but “the homespun dream of
simple folk,” still the very gladness of it makes it precious in this
world, where even the divine passion has grown a little hum-drum, and
where the ashes lie whitely upon the divine fires.
But perhaps the world will shake off its lethargy when the new century
begins, and even now there may be smiling in his cradle the Shakespeare
whose breath shall blow the embers again into flame. Surely it is simple,
natural kindly souls like Mabella and Lanty who perpetuate fidelity,
honour and trust upon the earth; and eager, pure, unselfish souls like
Sidney Martin who transmit the glorious impetus of aspiration from one
generation to another.
It is hands like theirs which crown the years with enduring chaplets,
and brush from the brow of the aging century the dishonouring garland of
senile sins which are like toadstools, the efflorescence of decay.
Old Mr. Lansing having become better acquainted with Sidney, had ceased
to regard him as “company,” and had relapsed comfortably into his own
ways. Reading his weekly paper, gossiping with Nathan Peck (who, being
the village carpenter, always knew the latest news), and going to bed
when the grey died out of the twilight sky.
Vashti and Sidney were thus left much to themselves.
The “odd” horse having effectually lamed herself by stepping on a nail,
driving her was out of the question. To break a team upon any frivolous
pretext would have been a scandal in Dole, so Vashti and Sidney were kept
busy going errands. They went to the post office twice a week; they made
pilgrimages out to the far-away hill pastures, where the young cattle
grazed, to count them, and report upon the depth of water in the little
brown pool where they drank.
What glorious days these were to Sidney; what rapture to stand upon some
little eminence with the wind, “austere and pure,” blowing across the
valley upon their faces; with Vashti beside him, her eyes meeting his
with sweet serenity, or looking vaguely forth far across the country,
as if to seek out some haven remote from lesser mortals. So Sidney
translated her thoughts, but in the original there was writ only bitter
speculation as to whether _they_ were together—if his arm embraced her,
if their lips—Ah! it was of no remote haven that woman dreamed.
They gathered great fragrant bunches of spearmint and tansy, smartweed
and pennyroyal for Temperance, searching for the scented herbs as
children search for joy; and as the memory of childish pleasure lingers
long with us, so the perfume of the aromatic herbs clung about Vashti’s
garments and Sidney’s sleeves. Never again could Sidney know the
wholesome odour of any of these plants without seeing Vashti, her tall
figure in its faded blue gown standing straight and strong against the
sunlight, with a huge bunch of greyish-green clasped to her breast, above
which her face, fit for Burne-Jones’ most mystic, most beautiful maiden,
shone out palely. About her was no mystery of birth or circumstance, no
halo of romantic environment, but her whole personality was eloquent of
mystery, the sphinx-like riddle of sex presented in a new and strongly
individualized type.
Their many expeditions together begot a sense of companionship which
was inexpressibly precious to Sidney. True, as he realized, it sprang
rather from circumstances than from the manifestation of any personal
predilection upon Vashti’s part; and yet, humble as he was before the
woman he loved so blindly, he could not but be aware that she brightened
perceptibly at his approach, and was always very willing to undertake any
message or errand with him.
So she fooled him exquisitely, solacing her wounded pride thus. Whilst
he, too great-hearted to pry for petty faults, dowered her lavishly from
the generosity of his own noble nature, with all the classic virtues.
With what reverent fingers we hang virtues upon the lay figures of our
imagination! How we becrown them, and worship them and offer them the
incense of our efforts! Yet, it is pleasant pastime, and sanctifying too,
for incense purely offered hallows the hand which gives it, perchance
more than the God to whom its smokes ascend.
All this is well, and though the world gape and wonder at our adorations,
what is that to the devotee? Only, to some of us comes the hour when with
trembling hands we must undrape our false gods, lay bare their feet of
clay to jeering eyes, fold away the rich draperies in which our love has
clothed them as a mother folds and hides away the garments her dead child
wore, and carry the manikins to the grave.
Happy for us if we can bury our dead decently; but bury them never so
deep, they rise and walk down the vistas of our happiest hours, infecting
their sunshine with the pollution of dead faith.
During these long walks together Vashti and Sidney talked much, and of
more vital subjects than are generally discussed between young men and
women. The fashionable chit-chat about theatres and plays, receptions and
fashions was utterly missed from their calendar of subjects.
Now and then, Sidney, being a man, could not forbear to let her know
how beautiful he found her; but empty compliment, the clipped coin of
conversational commerce, he did not offer her; nothing but pure gold
minted by her sweet looks in his heart was worthy of her acceptance. Thus
they fell back upon the old immortal themes which have been discussed
since the world began. They looked at life from widely different
standpoints, but their conclusions were equally forceful.
Vashti Lansing had nothing of the simpering school-girl about her, and
none of the fear which makes women reticent sometimes when speech would
be golden.
It has been said that to know the Bible and Shakespeare is to have a
good English vocabulary. Vashti did not know Shakespeare, but she knew
her Bible thoroughly. Her speech, unweakened by the modern catch-words
which, if expressive, are yet extraneous and dangerous growths, had
all the trenchant force of the old Anglo-Saxon, with much in it too of
imagery and beauty; for she did not fear to use such metaphors as nature
or life suggested. Steeped in the stern Mosaic law, she knew well the
stately periods of its prophets. The gentle Christ-creed of forgiveness
did not find favour in her sight. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth” was a judgment which she said only timorous souls feared. She
read with grim delight the tales of the kings, with their feet upon
their captives’ necks; an evil sympathy with their triumph lighted her
eyes with wicked light. What a spouse she would have been for one of
these cruel kings! she thought sometimes. And she applied a relentless
utilitarian philosophy to life. The weakest go to the wall and the
strong triumph. She accepted that with the stoicism which springs from
conscious strength, but in her system she rather confused strength with
righteousness. She watched the movings of life about her with cold,
curious eyes, and yet her philosophy of life was but an expanded egotism.
She comprehended only those sets of actions which might have taken
place had she given free rein to her own inclinations; she judged of
all motives by the repressed impulses of her own bosom. She scrutinized
others unsparingly, prying into the most sacred griefs, the most holy joy
without shame or remorse, and she did not spare herself more than others.
The dim, terrifying impulses and visions which girls put behind them,
shudderingly and uncomprehendingly, hiding them away with the other
spectres which people the realm of the unknown, until such time as life’s
meanings shall be expounded in a sacred mystery play of sense and spirit,
she marshalled forth into the light of day and considered calmly and
cynically.
She applied the foot-rule of her own lymphatic temperament to the morals
of her fellows and was never disappointed when they fell short. She was
well versed in all the wisdom of the Pharisees, and at the sewing circle
talked always to the older women, and was never found in the corner where
the clear-eyed girls whispered together.
And quickening and vitalizing all her existence there was that sense
of Power. Power uncomprehended, undeveloped, yet there; and as a
thunder-cloud gives premonition of its potent force even before the
brand leaps from its cloudy sheath, so Vashti Lansing’s personality was
instinct with potentiality.
This was the woman Sidney Martin, idealist and dreamer, loved.
The days sped swiftly, the present lapsing into the past, the future
flying forward with the unique tirelessness of time.
How wrong to typify Time with hoary head and tottering limbs. Crowned
with the vigour of eternal youth, does he not leap forward triumphantly
like the messenger of the gods fresh plumed with flame? Ah, he is not
old, but young and swift. Strive if you will to stay his flight for but
one single precious instant, stretch forth your hand while yet his wings
brush your face, and ere the fingers may close upon his pinions, he is
gone, leaving but the _largesse_ of lost days.
* * * * *
The harvest was done, the ploughshare and the harrow were tossing the
earthy bed for the new grain. Day after day, through the clear air, there
came from different points the blowing of the traction engine which
dragged the one threshing mill in the section from farm to farm.
It was the custom of the neighbourhood that the farmers should assist
each other with the threshing. Sidney was charmed when he heard this—how
idyllic it was this community of helpful effort! To be strictly truthful,
this custom had its genesis in less worthy reasons than he imagined, the
simple fact being that in the little hide-bound community there were
no odd men left unemployed, therefore as labour could not be hired the
farmers perforce clubbed their efforts.
“I say, girls,” said Lanty, rushing out from his uncle’s big barn to
where the two girls and Sidney stood beside the engine, “I say, isn’t
that engine exactly like Mrs. Ranger in church?” His face was begrimed
with dust, thistle-down rested whitely upon his yellow hair, his blue
eyes were alight with hope and happiness and that exaltation which a
strong man feels in effort. The girls shook their heads warningly, but
laughed.
The traction engine, its wheels shackled, puffed and panted with a
ludicrous simulation of bottled-up energy, and to the minds of the three
young people it was decidedly suggestive of the irate patience expressed
in Mrs. Ranger’s attitude when placed in conditions where she could not
answer back.
Nathan Peck, watching the engine, stored up the saying for Temperance’s
delectation, and wished she had come out with the girls.
Above the rattle and hum of the threshing mill sounded the hoarse voices
of the men shouting jokes at each other—threshing time being always a
jovial season. A good or bad harvest meant often life or death to these
people; but, having done their best, they could but accept the results.
It was a point of honour to accept unflinchingly the verdict of a poor
yield, yet many wives could tell of despairing hours when, after their
neighbours had departed, husband and wife essayed to reconcile ways and
means.
Clouds of golden dust, starred here and there by a silver thistle-down,
shimmered out of the barn door; there was an aroma of crushed straw, a
scent of charred wood from the engine fire, a sense of eager, healthy
life.
The swallows flew agitatedly above the barn, yearning over their clay
nests beneath its eaves.
“What are you doing?” asked Vashti.
“Measuring,” said Lanty. “Uncle said he’d take the bushel for a little
though when he saw your petticoats out here——”
“Who’s in the mow?”
“Ab Ranger is cutting bands, and he’s let my bone-handled pruning knife
go through the mill; Tom Shinar is feeding; there’s three on the mow and
four on the stack.”
“How is it turning out?”
“Splendidly, no straw to speak of, but finely headed—like you, Mabella,”
he whispered, blushing through the dust.
“Come on here, Lanty,” roared a voice from the barn. “You can spark in
the noon-spell if you want to.”
A laugh followed. Mabella blushed hotly, and as a maiden is expected to
do under the circumstances, looked absently into vacancy.
“Well, you’ll be too busy eating in the noon-spell to notice,” Lanty
called back to the unseen speaker. This, being the retort courteous, was
received with applause.
“Well, I must go, girls; uncle’s back will be aching by this time toteing
that bushel. I hope you’ve made heaps of good things for dinner, we’re
all hungry as hunters.”
“Trust Temperance for that,” said Sidney.
“Yes, indeed,” said Lanty. “Ta-ta, girls.”
“Lanty,” said Mabella, “be careful of the belt.”
“Surely,” he said, his voice softening. The next moment his strong, lithe
figure had swung jauntily through the narrow space between the broad
whirling belt and the door.
“Nathan,” said Mabella, “Temperance wants you to get someone to mind the
engine for ten minutes before dinner, so that you can come round and
carve the meat.”
“I’ll be there,” said Nathan, then he added with an irrepressible and
comical self-importance:
“Meat ain’t worth puttin’ teeth into if it ain’t cut up proper.”
“That’s very true,” said Sidney, who felt a great kindliness in his heart
for this patient lover.
“Well,” said Mabella briskly, “I’m going round to help set the table.”
Having seen Lanty, Mabella wished to get off alone to think over his
perfections, which impressed her afresh each time she saw him.
“O! can’t you come for a little wander?” asked Sidney of Vashti. “There’s
nothing to be done in the house; besides, that imp from the preacher’s is
there, and I’m sure she is a host in herself.”
“Yes,” said Vashti, her voice more than usually vibrant. “Yes, I will
come.”
She was very pale. She turned away as Jephthah’s daughter turned from the
promise of her bridal bower. For, during these few minutes of idle speech
amid the whirr of the threshing mill, Vashti Lansing had taken her final
decision. She would marry Sidney Martin; but on her own terms, she added
to herself. And then she went with him across the stubble, where the
late rains had made a phantom spring of fresh green grass and over-eager
weeds, which were putting forth their tender tops only to be a prey to
the first sneering frost.
Ah, how futile and inconsequent it is to trace laboriously the windings
of cause and effect; a touch often sends one over the precipice, and a
smile, a sigh or a silence brings us face to face with Fate. Can we by
searching find these things?
And Sidney, too, felt the fateful words trembling upon his lips, a keen
envy of personal happiness possessed this man, who so rarely sought his
own good. A great longing to stand as Lanty had stood, with the promise
of life’s fulfilment at his side.
Sidney and the woman beside him walked across the stubble to where a
little belt of scrubby oaks followed the course of a ditch between two
fields; here and there a vivid red patch against the underwood showed a
dogwood bush. Here and there an elm tree sprang up spire-like above the
lower oaks.
“See,” said Sidney, “that row of elm trees. Can you not fancy that
upon just some such day as this the seed was sown? Does it not give a
delightful sense of the continuity and endurance of nature’s miracles
to think that a gentle wind, such as now stirs their topmost leaves,
chased the seed vessel playfully along the ground? The wind laughed then,
thinking it was making fine sport of its little playfellow, but see, at
every pause a seed was dropped, and like an egotistical king who marks
the stages of his journey, the fragile cluster of seed has left its
memento. You have seen the seed of the elm tree?”
“Yes, it resembles a hop. I suppose the seeds are between the little
scales. I can fancy it fluttering along the ground like yon leaf.”
“Yes,” he said, delightedly, and then, pleased with her comprehension of
his thought, he looked far across the field. After all Mabella had not
been in such a hurry to get to the house. She was running up and down
like a child with the little brown calves in their special paddock near
the house. Her sunbonnet was in her hand, her hair glittered in the sun
like ripe wheat. From her Sidney’s eyes turned to Vashti, and his very
heart stood still, for dimming the splendour of her eyes two great tears
hung between her eyelids. There was no quiver of lip or cheek, no tremour
of suppressed sobs; her bosom seemed frozen, so statuesque was her pose.
“Vashti!” he said. It was the first time he had called her by name—used
thus the one word was eloquent.
“Don’t!” she said. “I—will—come—back to the house presently.”
Sidney, his heart wrung, took his dismissal without further speech. He
went a few steps from her, then turning went swiftly back.
Her tense attitude had relaxed. She was leaning against the grey bars of
the fence, a crimsoned bramble twining round one of the upright supports
hung above her as a vivid garland.
“Vashti!” he cried, “I can’t leave you like this.”
“Not if I wish it?” she asked, and gave him a fleeting smile, beautiful
as the opalescent glimmer of the sun through rain.
It shook the man to his soul. He stood for a moment blinded by the
glamour of her beauty, then left her again. This time he did not look
behind, but strode triumphantly across the fields, for he felt that smile
had given him definite hope.
Sidney, despite his perfections, was only man. For a moment he had
forgotten her tears; then remembering, he said to himself that soon he
would kiss away all tears from her eyes.
The best of men are prone to consider their kisses a panacea for all
woman’s ills. Perhaps, with the irrefutable logic of the homœopathists,
they argue that what produces an ill will cure it!
“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean;
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rite in the heart and gather to the eyes
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.”
The lines sprang spontaneously to his lips. This was the secret of
Vashti’s tears. How often he had felt that almost intolerable regret,
begotten by the recognition of the evanescence of beauty. And Vashti with
her splendid natural soul must feel with treble keenness all these things.
Doubtless to her the crimsoning of the leaves was as the hectic flush
upon an ailing child’s cheek to mother eyes. “_The days that are no
more_,” ah! could it be she thought of the days when the grain was
growing high, the first days of their companionship? Deluding himself
thus with futile fancies he turned slowly, slowly towards the house,
arriving to find Vashti already there in the midst of the housewifely
bustle.
Whilst the visionary Vashti bore him company, the real Vashti had passed
him unseen. So it was ever. The real Vashti eluded his vision; her place
was filled by a mimic Vashti created of an ideal and his love, and
tricked out in all the virtues.
At the house every one was busy. The preparations for dinner were
approaching a crisis. Temperance, with a look of ineffable importance
such as only a managing and forehanded woman can wear upon such an
occasion, was cutting pies, piling plates with biscuits, arranging
pickles in glass dishes, and between whiles taking flights to the oven,
where a huge roast was browning.
Mabella was arranging the table with knives and forks; she reckoned up,
six or eight times, the number of people to set for, substracted two for
the ends, and divided to find how many for each side. Mabella had no head
for figures, so she made a mistake in this process; but as the basis of
her calculation was wrong the result was correct. An unexpected thing!
But Mabella, cheerfully confident in her methods, had no thought of all
this; she trotted about the table with the gladness of one who does not
save steps.
Vashti was bringing chairs out from the other rooms to complement
the number in the kitchen; and Sally, the preacher’s handmaiden, was
arranging the tin basins with soap and water for the men to wash in,
and varying the monotony by tantalizing the chained-up mastiff till he
was nearly crazed to get at her, drawing back to his kennel door and
launching himself forward with magnificent disregard of the chain which
at each attempt jerked him off his feet.
Sidney leaned against the door-jamb watching the homely scene with just
the faintest tinge of proud proprietorship in his eyes when they rested
upon Vashti.
Presently she came and stood before him. Her figure was so suavely
graceful that her most ordinary movements took on an artistic
significance. Just now her attitude was that of a queen who fain would
ape the serving maid, but who could not cast aside her sovereignty.
“Will you sit down with the men?” she asked.
“Your father does, doesn’t he?”
“Indeed, yes.”
“Then I will also.”
“Then I’ll wait on you,” she said, and primmed her mouth into a
quasi-humble expression.
“If you do——” his grey eyes dilated.
“Yes.”
Just then Nathan came round from the barn.
“They’ll be here in ten minutes,” said Vashti, and hurried away.
Temperance, flushed with housewifely pride, had the big carving
platter ready with the steel beside it. The latter was a concession to
appearances, for Temperance always sharpened the knife for Nathan in a
peculiar fashion of her own. When Nathan entered she was sharpening it
vigorously on the back of the kitchen stove.
“Well,” said Nathan, “here I be; where’s the water?” He had seen the
basins upon the apple-tree blocks, where they had stood for time out
of mind at the Lansing threshings, but he thought Temperance might be
prompted to come and get it for him.
Temperance paused in the sharpening process, but at that moment a
tow-head appeared at the door.
“Here ’tis, Mr. Peck,” said Sally, “right here under the shade; fresh
water, sweet water, well water. Come up, run up, tumble up, anyway t’ get
up; here’s where you gits water. Step up, ladies and gents. Everything
inside as represented on the banners, and all without money and without
price,” concluded Sally, putting a frosting of the parsonage piety upon
the vernacular of the Blueberry Alley dime shows. Mabella, Vashti and
Sidney laughed. Temperance resumed her knife-sharpening with a click.
“That child will come to no good end,” she said to Nathan, when he
re-entered.
“She won’t,” agreed Nathan with some asperity; his waistcoat and shirt
were drenched. He had asked Sally rashly to pour a dipper of water on his
head to “rense him off.” Sally complied with alacrity, only she emptied a
pailful over his bent head instead of a dipperful.
“Drat that young ’un,” said Temperance, enraged at this. “I believe, I
really do, that Mrs. Didymus sent her over here to be shet of her for a
day, and if this is a sample of her doin’s I don’t know as I blame Mrs.
Didymus, but if there’s any more goin’s on I’ll trapse her back quicker.”
By this time the roast was out of the oven, and Nathan began his work
with the enthusiasm of an artist.
Nathan was always greatly in demand when there was any carving to be
done, and he was very proud in a candid childish way of his proficiency.
Perhaps his practice with the plane and the drawknife stood him in good
stead, for certainly Temperance was justified in thinking proudly that no
man could carve like her Nat.
“They’ve blew,” announced Sally, tumbling into the kitchen in great
excitement. This was somewhat unnecessary information as the whistle was
making itself perfectly audible; ere its shrill echo died away the men,
begrimed and laughing, came round the corner of the barn and were soon
spluttering in the basins.
Lanty came into the back kitchen, but the voice of one of the men brought
him out of his retreat, and in five minutes they were all at table.
Old Lansing at one end with Sidney at one side. Lanty at the other end
with Nathan beside him.
“Open the ball, Nat,” said Lanty, passing Nathan the platter. Nathan
helped himself with the deprecating modesty of one compelled to pronounce
judgment upon his own handiwork; then the platter made the round of the
table in pursuit of the one which had started from Mr. Lansing’s end.
“Guess you had something to do with this, Nat,” said Ab Ranger. “I know
your shavings.”
Nathan admitted the impeachment.
“Well,” said Sidney, “we can’t beat that in Boston.”
And Nathan ate vigorously to hide his embarrassment. The girls flitted
about seeing everyone was supplied. Did calm-eyed Vashti know what she
did, when she bent over between Sidney and her father ostensibly to
remove an empty plate, and let her palm rest as if by chance for a moment
on Sidney’s shoulder? Did ever electricity shoot and tingle through the
veins like that touch? He watched her as she passed serenely along the
other side of the table, and longed for the moment when he might have
speech with her.
Temperance poured the tea and coffee in the back kitchen. Sally performed
prodigies in carrying it to the table, and grimacing, as she set it down,
behind the unconscious backs of the recipients.
Sidney won golden opinions at this dinner by his frank friendliness.
“He ain’t big feelin’, that’s one thing,” the men said to one another as
they swaggered out to rest the noon-spell under the trees.
Lanty and Sidney with great affectation of helpfulness asked the girls
to stand aside and watch them clear the table. Temperance was not to be
seen, they would surprise her when she arrived. They succeeded beyond
their expectations.
“It isn’t such a job to clear a table as you’d think,” said Sidney
complacently to Lanty.
“No, ’tain’t for a fact. I’ve seen girls take half an hour at it.”
The two young men had cleared the table by removing the dishes and
_débris_ indiscriminately and depositing them upon the table in the back
kitchen.
When Temperance returned from a little chat with Nathan beside the smoke
house, she eyed the chaos upon the table wrathfully.
“Laws!” she said. “Of all the messes! Lanty Lansing, ain’t you ashamed
to be so redecklus? And them girls standin’ gawkin’ and laughin’! As for
you,” eyeing Sidney severely, “I should ha’ thought you’d more sense, but
blessed is them that has no expectations! Lanty! Are you or are you not
feedin’ that brute with good roast? Where’s the cold meat fer supper to
come from, I’d like to know?”
No one volunteered a response till suddenly Sally piped forth in her thin
reedy voice:
“Take no heed for the morrow what ye shall eat, or——”
“You blasphemous brat!” said Temperance, her wrath diverted to another
channel.
Sally subsided into silent contemplation of the dish of pickled beets
from which she was helping herself with pink-stained fingers. Temperance
was not Mrs. Didymus, and Sally in many combats in Blueberry Alley had
learned to gauge her antagonists.
The offended Miss Tribbey left the back kitchen in indignant silence
and set about arranging the table for her own and the girls’ dinner,
murmuring to herself meanwhile a monologue of which such words as
“messes,” “sinful,” “waste,” and “want o’ sense,” were distinctly audible.
“I don’t believe that was really an unqualified success,” said Sidney to
Lanty.
“No,” said Lanty, “I don’t believe it was. What did you mix everything up
for?”
“How did I know they were to be separated? What did you feed the dog with
the roast for?”
“Did you ever see such an imp as that Sally?”
“Never,” said Sidney. “But Temperance squelched her!”
“She did,” said Lanty. “I say, wasn’t she ripping?”
Meanwhile Temperance’s short-lived wrath had died away, and she was
pressing food upon Sally in quantities calculated to appal any but a
Blueberry Alley child.
Temperance rose in the midst of her second cup of tea, and, going up
stairs, came down with a large fresh bandana handkerchief. She went out
to where Lanty and Sidney stood talking.
“Here’s the handkerchief you wanted to keep the dust out of your back,”
she said with ill-assumed hauteur. Lanty took it with laughing penitence
on his face.
“I say, Aunty,” he said, “would you ask Mabella to put it on?”
Miss Tribbey’s severity relaxed; a vain-glorious satisfaction stole over
her face in a smirk. To have Lanty call her Aunty!
Certainly Lanty Lansing “had a way” with women that was well-nigh
irresistible.
“Yes,” she said, then with comical apology, she addressed herself to
Sidney. “Them children is a most tormented trouble, ’specially when they
meddle with things they don’t know nothing about.”
“That’s so,” agreed Sidney with emphasis, and Temperance, highly
delighted with her Parthian shot at him, departed.
And presently Mabella came to the door, a _riante_ little figure, and
demanded with mutinous affectation of indifference:
“Did any one want me?”
“Yes, badly,” said Sidney, and took himself off to the garden, laughing.
“That’s true,” said Lanty. “I did want you badly.”
Her eyes were wavering beneath his masterful regard, but she said—“Oh,
you _did_ want me! Don’t you now?” The words were brave, but her eyes
fell.
“Mabella,” he said—silence. “Mabella, look at me.” Slowly she raised her
eyes and crimsoned. “Do you know now?” he asked lovingly. “Ah, what a
wicked teasing bird it is when its wings are free, but after all they are
gone to the barn and——” he advanced a step.
“Lanty!” said Mabella, and in an instant he was grave.
“Dear girl,” he said, “you don’t think I would do anything to make you
feel badly?”
The warning shriek of the whistle came to them.
“See, tie this round my neck, will you?”
She folded it with an adorable air of anxiety and precision, and stood on
tiptoe to lay it on his shoulders and again on tiptoe to knot it under
his chin, a process Lanty rendered arduous by putting down his chin and
imprisoning her hands, a performance he found most satisfying. But at
length he was off, and Mabella watched him round the corner of the barn,
and then went indoors to attack the chaos upon the table with a good
heart.
“Where’s Vashti?” she asked.
“Spooning her young man in the garding,” said Sally, emerging from her
shell.
“Of all the impses I ever see!” ejaculated Temperance. “G’long and fetch
in some wood.” Sally departed.
“Vashti’s in the garden peeling apples for supper,” continued Temperance
to Mabella, with an attempt at unconsciousness. Mabella gave her a hug.
“It’s a sugar plum for Mr. Martin because you were bad to him, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Lanty’s had his——”
Mabella blushed, and an irrepressible ripple of laughter broke from her.
“Well, you needn’t laugh,” said Temperance. “Mr. Martin thinks Vashti’s
just about right. Well, there’s no accountin’ for taste. ‘Everyone to
their taste,’ as the old woman said when she kissed her cow.”
“Temperance!” said Mabella, “you don’t mean——”
Temperance nodded oracularly, “Nathan thinks so too.”
“Well!” said Mabella, and relapsed into silence. Here was news for Lanty.
If Nathan and Temperance thought so it must be so. A fellow feeling not
only makes us kind but often very acute; and in all Dole there were no
such keen eyes for any “goin’s on” (as courtship was disrespectfully
designated) as those of Temperance and Nathan.
“Love, it is a funny thing;
It puzzles the young and the old;
It’s much like a dish of boarding-house hash,
And many a man gets sold.”
Sally’s falsetto voiced this choice ditty with unction, as she entered
with an enormous load of wood in her thin arms. She deposited the wood
with a bang.
“Sakes!” said Temperance. “I wonder if she sings them songs to the
preacher?”
Whereupon Sally, in vindication of her judgment, began a lugubrious hymn.
“Stop it,” said Temperance. Sally stopped.
Beneath the trees Vashti peeled her apples busily, the narrow parings
of the greenings twined about her white wrist, the thin slices fell
with little splashes into the bowl of water which was to prevent them
turning brown before being cooked. Miss Tribbey’s apple-sauce was always
like white foam. A voyaging wasp came, and settling upon the cores was
very soon drunk, so that he was an easy prey to a half dozen ants which
wandered by that way. The distant buzz of the threshing mill filled the
air with a drowsy murmur as if thousands of bees hummed above a myriad
flowers, here and there a thistle-down floated glistening in the sun. The
scent of the overblown flowers mingled with the odour of the apples.
“Are we done now?” asked Sidney, as she laid down the knife.
“We are,” she said with meaning emphasis. “Do you feel very tired after
your exertions?”
“Not so tired as you’d imagine,” said Sidney. “The truth is I couldn’t
bring myself to offer my services, for if you had accepted them I would
have had to look at the apples instead of at you, and I did not have
strength to make the sacrifice.”
“Could you make sacrifices?” she asked.
“Try me,” he half whispered. There was a tense moment. Mabella’s voice
came ringing from the house, the whirr of the threshing mill suddenly
seemed near at hand, and through it there came Lanty’s voice shouting
some directions to the men on the stack.
“Perhaps I may some day,” she said.
“You know,” he said, his voice enchaining her attention even as she
strove with bitter thought, “you know you will have the opportunity to
ask anything, everything of me.”
“Ah, how should I know?” she said, as one who has not deigned to observe
too much.
Sally, sent out for the apples, appeared round the corner of the house.
“Promise me,” said Sidney, “that you will come for a walk after supper;
promise.”
For an instant the boulders of Mullein meadow and the dimness of the
twilight sky blotted out the crimson of the Virginia creeper on the porch
which flamed in the sun.
“I will come,” she said.
“Ah——” he said no more.
“Sorry t’interrupt,” said Sally genially, as she stood beside them. “But
painful as the duty is it must be did; but don’t mind me, I’m blind in
one eye and can’t see out of the other.”
“Sally,” said Sidney very gently, “you talk too much.”
For the first time in her life Sally blushed, and gathering up the apples
and the parings departed abashed.
“You are not going in?” he said rising as Vashti stood up.
She held up her hands. “I must wash my hands,” she said, “and I want to
rest a little.”
The slightest hint of fatigue or illness in the splendid creature before
him always touched him strangely. It was like a sudden assertion of the
human in something divine.
“Do,” he said; “and Vashti,” using her name with happy boldness, “you
won’t forget your promise.”
“I never forget,” she said, simply and sweetly.
He stood bareheaded watching while she entered. Then looking about, he
suddenly noticed that in the garden the summer flowers were overspent,
the little battalion of ants tugged viciously at their victim, whose
yellow and black had shone so gallantly in the sunlight as he lighted
down to sip the apple juice. The whirr of the threshing machine made
melancholy cadences which sighed through the trees; and all at once the
whole scene darkened.
It was only that the sun had dipped beyond the house, and the crimson
Virginia creeper seemed in the shadow to be more brown than red, two or
three of its leaves fell desolately to the earth, as dreams die when hope
is withdrawn.
And Sidney, with the fatuity of lovers, said, “She has taken the glow
with her.”
But the torch which lighted Vashti Lansing’s way was not filched from
flowers and sunshine, but shone fed with the evil oils of anger and
revenge, baulked will and disappointed love.