“STAY IN THE FIELD, OH, WARRIOR!”
Mrs. Follette had been born in Maryland with a tradition of
aristocratic blood. It was this tradition which had upheld her through
years of poverty after the Civil War. A close scanning of the family
tree might have disclosed ancestors who had worked with their hands.
But these, Mrs. Follette’s family had chosen to ignore in favor of
one grandfather who had held Colonial office, and who had since been
magnified into a personage.
On such slight foundation, Mrs. Follette had erected high towers of
social importance. As a wife of a government clerk, her income was
limited, but she lived on a farm, back of Sherwood Park, which she had
inherited from her father. The farm was called Castle Manor, which
dignified it in the eyes of the county. Mrs. Follette’s friends were
among the old families who had occupied the land for many generations.
She would have nothing to do with the people of Sherwood Park. She held
that all suburbs are negligible socially. People came to them from
anywhere and went from them to be swallowed up in obscurity. There was
no stability. She made an exception, only, of the Baldwin Barneses.
There was good Maryland blood back of them, and more than that, a
Virginia Governor. To be sure they did not care for these things; old
Baldwin’s democracy had been almost appalling. But they were, none the
less, worth while.
Mr. Follette, during his lifetime, had walked a mile each morning to
take the train at Sherwood Park, and had walked back a mile each night,
until at last he had tired of two peripatetic miles a day, and of eight
hours at his desk, and of eternally putting on his dinner coat when
there was no one to see, and like old Baldwin Barnes, he had laid him
down with a will.
At his death all income stopped, and Mrs. Follette had found herself
on a somewhat lonely peak of exclusiveness. She could not afford to
go with her richer neighbors, and she refused to consider Sherwood
seriously. Now and then, however, she accepted invitations from old
friends, and in return offered such simple hospitality as she could
afford without self-consciousness. She might be a snob, but she was,
to those whom she permitted to cross her threshold, an incomparable
hostess. She gave what she had without apology.
She had, too, a sort of admirable courage. Her ambitions had been
wrapped up in her son. What her father might have been, Evans was to
be. They had scrimped and saved that he might go to college and study
law. Then, at that first dreadful cry from across the seas, he had
gone. There had been long months of fighting. He had left her in the
flower of his youth, a wonder-lad, with none to match him among his
friends. He had come back crushed and broken. He, whose career lay
so close to his heart--could do now no sustained work. Mentally and
physically he must rest. He might be years in getting back. He would
never get back to gay and gallant boyhood. That was gone forever.
Yet if Mrs. Follette’s heart had failed her at times, she had never
shown it. She was making the farm pay for itself. She supplied the
people of Sherwood Park and surrounding estates with milk. But she
never was in any sense--a milkwoman. It was, rather, as if in selling
her milk she distributed favors. It was on this income that she
subsisted, she and her son.
It was because of Mrs. Follette’s social complexes that Jane had been
forced to limit her invitations for the Thanksgiving dinner. She would
have preferred more people to liven things up for Evans and Baldy, but
Mrs. Follette’s prejudices had to be considered.
Evans, democratic, like his father, laughed at his mother’s
assumptions. But he rarely in these days set himself against her. It
involved always a contest, and he was tired of fighting.
That was why he had asked Jane to help him in the stand he had taken
against the New York trip. He felt that he could never hold out against
his mother’s arguments.
“She’d keep eternally at it, and I’d have to give in,” he told himself
with the irritability which was so new to him and so surprising. As a
boy he had been good-tempered even in moments of disagreement with his
mother.
Going down to luncheon, he hoped the subject would not come up. The
afternoon was before him, and Jane. He wanted no cloud to mar it.
On the steps he passed Mary, his mother’s maid, making the house
immaculate for the guests of to-morrow. She was singing an old song,
linking herself musically with the black men of generations back. Mary
was over sixty, and her voice was thin and piping. Yet there was, after
all, a sort of fierce power in that thin and piping voice.
“Stay in the fiel’,
Stay in the fiel’, oh, wah-yah--
Stay in the fiel’
Till the wah is ended.”
Again Evans felt that sense of unaccountable irritation. He wished that
Mary wouldn’t sing....
Later as he and Jane swung along together in the clear cold Jane said:
“I’ve such a lot to tell you----”
She told it in her whimsical way--Baldy’s adventure, Frederick Towne’s
visit, the basket of fruit.
“Baldy is simply mad about Edith Towne. He hasn’t been able to talk
of anything else. Of course, he’ll have to get over it but he isn’t
looking ahead.”
“Why should he get over it?”
Her chin went up. “He’s a clerk in the departments, and she
a--plutocrat----”
“Perhaps she won’t look at it like that.”
“Oh, but she has _men_ at her feet. And Baldy’s a boy. Evans, if I had
lovely dresses ’n’ everything, I’d have men at my feet.”
“Why should you want them at your feet?”
“Every woman does. We want to grind ’em under our heels,” she stamped
in the snow to show him; “but Baldy and I are a pair of Cinderellas,
minus--godmothers----”
She was in a gay mood. She was wrapped in her old orange cape, and the
sun, breaking the bank of sullen clouds in the west, seemed to turn her
lithe young body into flame.
“Don’t you _love_ a day like this, Evans?” She pressed forward up the
hill with all her strength. Evans followed, panting. At the top they
sat down for a moment on an old log--which faced the long aisles of
snow between thin black trees. The vista was clear-cut and almost
artificial in its restraint of color and its wide bare spaces.
Evans’ little dog, Rusty, ran back and forth--following this trail and
that. Finally in pursuit of a rabbit, he was led far afield. They
heard him barking madly in the distance. It was the only sound in the
stillness.
“Jane,” Evans said, “do you remember the last time we were here?”
“Yes.” The light went out of her eyes.
“As I look back it was heaven, Jane. I’d give anything on God’s earth
if I was where I was then.”
All the blood was drained from her face. “Evans, you wouldn’t,”
passionately, “you wouldn’t give up those three years in France----”
He sat very still. Then he said tensely, “No, I wouldn’t, even though
it has made me lose you--Jane----”
“You mustn’t say such things----”
“I must. Don’t I know? You were such an unawakened little thing, my
dear. But I could have--waked you. And I can’t wake you now. That’s my
tragedy. You’ll never wake up--for me----”
“Don’t----”
“Well, it’s true. Why not say it? I’ve come back a--scarecrow, the
shadow of a man. And you’re just where I left you--only lovelier--more
of a woman--more to be worshipped--Jane----”
As he caught her hand up in his, she had a sudden flashing vision of
him as he had been when he last sat with her in the grove--the swing
of his strong figure, his bare head borrowing gold from the sun--the
touch of assurance which had been so compelling.
“I never knew that you cared----”
“I knew it, but not as I did after your wonderful letters to me over
there. I felt, if I ever came back, I’d move heaven and earth.” He
stopped. “But I came back--different. And I haven’t any right to say
these things to you. I’m not going to say them--Jane. It might spoil
our--friendship.”
“Nothing can spoil our friendship, Evans----”
He laid his hand on hers. “Then you are mine--until somebody comes
along and claims you?”
“There isn’t anybody else,” she turned her fingers up to meet his, “so
don’t worry, old dear,” she smiled at him but her lashes were wet. Her
hand was warm in his and she let it stay there, and after a while she
said, “I have sometimes thought that if it would make you happy, I
might----”
“Might--love me?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t say it for that. I just had to have the
truth between us. And I don’t want--pity. If--if I ever get back--I’ll
make you love me, Jane.” There was a hint of his old masterfulness--and
she was thrilled by it.
She withdrew her hand and stood up. “Then I’ll--pray--that you--get
back----”
“Do you mean it, Janey?”
“I mean it, Evans.”
“Then pray good and hard, my dear, for I’m going to do it.”
They smiled at each other, but it was a sacred moment.
The things they did after that were rendered unimportant by the haze of
enchantment which hung over Evans’ revelation. No man can tell a woman
that he loves her, no woman can listen, without a throbbing sense of
the magnitude of the thing which has happened. From such beginnings is
written the history of humanity.
Deep in a hollow where the wind had swept up the snow, and left the
ground bare they found crowfoot in an emerald carpet--there were holly
branches dripping red berries like blood on the white drifts. They
filled their arms, and at last they were ready to go.
Evans whistled for Rusty but the little dog did not come. “He’ll find
us; he knows every inch of the way.”
But Rusty did not find them, and they were on the ridge when that first
awful cry came to them.
Jane clutched Evans. “What is it--oh, what _is_ it?”
He swallowed twice before he could speak. “It’s--Rusty--one of those
steel traps”--he was panting now--his forehead wet--“the negroes
put them around for rabbits----” Again that frenzied cry broke the
stillness. “They’re hellish things----”
Jane began to run in the direction of the sound. “Come on, Evans--oh,
come quick----”
He stumbled after her. At last he caught at her dress and held her. “If
he’s hurt I can’t stand it.”
It was dreadful to see him. Jane felt as if clutched by a nightmare.
“Stay here, and don’t worry. I’ll get him out----”
It was a cruel thing to face. There was blood and that little trembling
body. The cry reduced now to an agonized whimpering. How she opened
the trap she never knew, but she did open it, and made a bandage from
her blouse which she tore from her shoulders regardless of the cold.
And after what seemed to be ages, she staggered back to Evans with
her dreadful burden wrapped in her cape. “We’ve got to get him to a
veterinary. Run down to the road and see if there’s a car in sight.”
There was a car, and when Evans stopped it, two men came charging up
the bank. Jane gave the dog into the arms of one of them. “You’ll have
to go with them, Evans,” she said and wrapped herself more closely in
her cape. “There are several doctors at Rockville. You’d better ask the
station-master about the veterinary.”
After they had gone, she stood there on the ridge and watched the car
out of sight. She felt stunned and hysterical. It had been awful to see
Rusty, but the most awful thing was that vision of Evans stumbling
through the snow. A broken body is for tears--a broken spirit is beyond
tears.
She shuddered and pressed her hands against her eyes. Then she went
down the hill and across the road in the darkening twilight. She crept
into the house. Baldy must not see her; there was blood on her cape and
her clothes were torn, and Baldy would ask questions, and he would call
Evans a--coward....
* * * * *
It was late when Evans came to Castle Manor with his dog in his arms.
Rusty was comfortable and he had wagged a grateful tail. The pain had
gone out of his eyes and the veterinary had said that in a few days the
wound would heal. There were no vital parts affected--and he would give
some medicine which would prevent further suffering.
Mrs. Follette was out, and old Mary was in the kitchen, singing. She
stopped her song as Evans came through. He asked her to help him and
she brought a square, deep basket and made Rusty a bed.
“You-all jes’ put him heah by the fiah, and I’ll look atter him.”
Evans shook his head. “I want him in my room. I’ll take care of him in
the night.”
He carried the dog up-stairs with him, knelt beside him, drew hard deep
breaths as the little fellow licked his hand.
“What kind of a man am I?” Evans said sharply in the silence. “God,
what kind of a man?”
Through the still house came old Mary’s thin and piping song:
“Stay in the fiel’,
Stay in the fiel’, oh, wah-yah--
Stay in the fiel’
Till the wah is ended.”
Evans got up and shut the door....