PROUD
LADY
I
Across the ringing of the church bells came the whistle of the train.
Mary Lavinia, standing in the doorway, watched her mother go down the
walk to the gate. Mrs. Lowell's broad back, clad in black silk, her
black bonnet stiffly trimmed with purple pansies, bristled with anger.
She opened the gate and slammed it behind her. The wooden sidewalk
echoed her heavy tread. She went down the street out of sight, without
looking back.
The slow melancholy bells were still sounding, but now they stopped.
Mrs. Lowell would be late to church. Mary listened, holding her breath.
She heard the noise of the train. Now it whistled again, at the
crossing, now it was coming into town--white puffs of smoke rose over
the trees. The engine-bell clanked, and the shrill sound of escaping
steam signalled its stopping.
Mary listened, but there was no cheering, though a number of people had
gone to the depot to welcome the little knot of returning soldiers. She
remembered the day, three years before, when the company raised in the
town had marched to the train--there was plenty of cheering then. Now
perhaps half a dozen of those men were coming back. The war was over,
but the rest of them had been left on southern battle-fields.
Mary stood looking out at the light brilliant green of the trees in the
yard. It was very quiet all around her. The house always seemed quiet
when her mother was out of it, and now there was a lull after the
storm. But she was breathing quickly, intent, listening, shivering a
little in her light print dress. The spring sunlight had little warmth,
the air was sharp, with a damp sweetness. In the silence, she heard the
rustling of a paper and the sound of a slight cough, behind a closed
door. Her father was there, in his office. He would have gone to meet
the train, she knew, but that these were his office-hours. But she
couldn't have gone--and neither could she go to church, however angry
her mother might be. A light flush rose in her cheeks, as she stood
expectant.
She was beautiful--tall, slender, but with broad shoulders and a
straight proud way of holding herself. Her thick hair, of bright
auburn, with a natural small ripple, parted in the middle, was drawn
down over her ears into a heavy knot. She was dazzlingly fair, with a
few freckles on her high cheek-bones, with large clear grey eyes, with
scarlet, finely-cut lips. She looked mature for her twenty years and
yet completely virginal, untouched, unmoved. But her face expressed
very little of what she might be thinking or feeling. It was like a
calm mask--there was not a line in it, there was no record to be read.
Footsteps began to echo down the wooden walk, and voices. She went into
the house and shut the door. In the office she heard a chair pushed
back, and as she did not want to speak to her father just then, she
walked quickly and lightly out through the big bright kitchen into the
garden at the back of the house, slipping on as she went a blue coat
that she had taken from the hall.
The garden was long and narrow, bounded by rail fences along which was
set close together lilac bushes and other flowering shrubs of twenty
years' growth. It was carefully laid out, in neat squares or oblongs,
separated by rows of currant and gooseberry bushes or by grass-paths.
The fresh turned earth in the beds looked dark and rich. All the bushes
and shrubs were covered with light-green leaves. Bordering the central
path were two narrow beds of tulips, narcissus, jonquils, flowering in
thick bands of colour. At the end of the garden was a small orchard of
apple, cherry and peach trees, some of them in bloom. In summer there
was shade and seclusion here, but now there was no place to hide. Mary
stopped a moment, looking back at the house, then opened a gate and in
a panic fled out into the pasture. She was well aware that she ought
to be in the house, that the minister was coming to dinner, that the
roast would probably burn, but above all that some one was coming for
her, that they would be calling her any moment; so she hurried on, up
a slight rise of ground, over the top of it, and there she was out of
sight.
The pasture stretched all about her, dotted with cattle nibbling the
short green grass. Below, the ground fell suddenly, and there was a
large pond. It was very deep, with a treacherous mud bottom near the
shores. Willows encircled it, and on the farther side marshes blended
it with the land. The water had a colour of its own, almost always
dark--now it was a dull blue, deeper than the light April sky. Beyond
it on every side was the prairie, flat, unbroken to the skyline. Trees,
fields, houses, scattered over it, seemed insignificant, did not
interrupt its monotony. It rolled away in long low wavering lines,
endless and sombre, like a dark sea.
* * * * *
A faint call from the direction of the house--that was her father's
gentle voice. Then a shout, lusty and clear--her name, shouted out over
the hill for the whole town to hear! Mary started, a confused cloud of
feelings made her heart beat heavily. But she stood still. In another
moment a man appeared at the top of the rise and came plunging down
toward her. In his blue uniform--cap tilted over one eye--just the
same! He caught her in his arms and kissed her, laughing, repeating
her name over and over, and kissed her again and again. Mary did not
return his kisses, but bowed her head to the storm. Released at last
from the tight clasp against his breast, but still held by his hands
on her shoulders, she looked at him, and he at her--their eyes were on
a level. But his eyes were full of an intoxication of joy, excited,
almost blinded, though they seemed to be searching her face keenly,
from brow to lips. Mary's eyes were clear. She saw the sword-cut on his
left cheek, a thin red scar--that was new to her. She saw that he was
thinner and the brown of his face was paler--he had been wounded and
in hospital since she had seen him. She saw what had always repelled
her--what she thought of vaguely as weakness, in his mouth and chin.
But then she saw too the crisp black hair brushed back from his square
forehead, the black eyebrows, sharp beautiful curves--and the long
narrow blue eyes--and these she loved, she did not know why, but they
had some strange appeal to her, something foreign, come from far away.
She never could look at those eyes without tenderness. Now she put up
her hands on his shoulders and bent toward him, and tenderness glowed
like a light through the mask. At that moment she did not look cold.
He could not say anything except, "Oh, Mary! Mary!" And Mary did not
speak either, but only smiled. They sat down together on a stone in
the pasture. The young soldier held her hands in his clasp, his arm
around her, as though he could never let her go again. His heart
was overflowing. He held her clasped against him and stared at the
dull-blue water. This was like a dream. Many a time, on the bivouac,
on the march when he dozed from fatigue in his saddle, he had dreamed
vividly of Mary, he had felt her near him as now. He half expected to
wake and hear again the tramp of marching men, the jingle of the chains
of his battery behind him. The present, the future, were a dream, he
was living in the past. He had thought of Mary when the shell burst
among his guns. "This is death," he had thought too, wounded in the hip
by a fragment of shell, deluged with blood from the man killed beside
him. He had taken the place of the gunner and served his gun. That was
at the Wilderness. Yes, he had held them back, and brought off his
whole battery. "Distinguished gallantry." ...
He sighed, and touched Mary's bright hair with his lips, and was
surprised that she did not vanish. Was it true, that life was over,
"Daredevil Carlin" was no more, his occupation gone? Then he must begin
the world at twenty-five, with empty hands. He turned and looked at the
woman beside him. It was hard to realize that now his life would be
with her, that what he had so longed for was his.