"I don't like the look of you," said Mrs. Donovan.
"Then you're hard to please." Neil turned at the foot of the steps to
say, trying to smile as he said it. "Harder than I am. I do like the
look of you."
The Donovans, mother and son, were both quite sufficiently attractive to
the eye at that moment. This was the second day of September, and also
the second day of the county fair in Madison, five miles away--the big
day of the fair, and Neil's uncle had been up at dawn to escort the
younger Bradys there in a borrowed rig, and in the company of at least
half Green River in equipages of varied style and state of repair. Neil
had slept late, breakfasted sketchily, and dined elaborately alone with
his mother. Now the long, still, sunny afternoon was half over, and she
stood in the kitchen door, watching him start for town.
The kitchen, newly painted this year, looked empty and unnaturally neat
behind her, but friendly and lived in, too, with the old, creaking
rocker pulled to an inviting angle at the window overlooking the marsh,
and a sofa under the other window, its worn upholstery covered freshly
with turkey-red; one splash of clear colour, sketched in boldly, just in
the corner where it satisfied the eye. Her neighbours did not take this
humble fabric seriously for decorative purposes; indeed, they would not
have permitted a sofa in the kitchen at all, but her neighbours were not
of her gracious race. They could not wear a plain and necessary white
apron like the completing touch to a correct toilette assumed
deliberately. Mrs. Donovan could, and she did to-day. Also her brown
hair, dulled to a softer, more indefinite brown by its sprinkling of
white, rippled softly about her low forehead, and her dress was faded to
a tender, vague blue like the blue of her eyes. Her eyes, almost on a
level with Neil's as she stood on the step above him, had the charm that
was peculiarly their own to-day, cloudy as they were with the faraway
look of a race that believes in fairies, but warm and human, too, with
an intimate mother look of concern for Neil.
Neil met it steadily, not a sullen boy as he would have been under that
questioning a year ago, not resenting it at all, but keeping his secrets
deliberately. It had always been hard for her to make him answer
questions. It was not even easy for her to ask them now.
"You don't sleep," she began.
"Neither do you, if you've been catching me at it," reasoned her son
correctly.
"You work too hard." She had made an accusation that he could not deny,
so he only smiled his quick, flashing smile. "You won't even take a day
to yourself."
"I'll have the office and most of the town to myself this afternoon.
I'll have to go. I've got something special to look into."
"Where's Charlie?" she demanded at once.
"Oh, he's not troubling me to-day. He's safe at Madison with his new
mare. He'll break loose there, then come home and repent and stay
straight for weeks and make no trouble for me. He's due to break loose.
He's been good too long--too good to be true. He was in fine form last
night." Mr. Charlie Brady's cousin grinned reminiscently.
"What do you mean?"
"He gave me quite a little side talk on good form in dress and diction.
Charlie claims I won't make an orator, and he don't like my taste in
ties."
"Who does he think he is?" flashed Mr. Brady's aunt indignantly.
"Who do you think he is?" her son inquired unexpectedly. "For whatever
you think, that's me. I'm no better than Charlie."
"Charlie?" Mrs. Donovan gasped, and then plunged into an indignant
defence of her son, not pausing to take breath.
"You?" she began. "You that's planted firm on the ladder and right-hand
to the Judge already, and him getting older every day, and Theodore Burr
just kept on in the office because Everard's after Burr's wife. So he
is, and the town knows it, and Theodore'll wake up to it soon. A fine
partner Theodore is for the Judge, poor boy, but he's a good boy, too,
though none too strong in the head; Lil Burr is a good girl, too, and
she'd make a good wife to Theodore if she could be left to herself.
She'd make it up with Theodore, as many a girl has done that's got more
for her husband to forgive than Lil.
"Poor Lil. Her head's high above me now, but the time was she cried on
my shoulder; crying for Charlie, she was, before ever Charlie took up
with Maggie and Lil with Theodore; when the four of them were all young
together, and the one as good as the other. Young they were, and the
hearts of them young--wild, doubtful hearts. Many's the time Lil would
come to me then, here in this same kitchen, and go down on her knees,
her that was tall and a fine figure of a girl, and cling onto me, crying
her heart out; crying she was for all the world like--like----"
Mrs. Donovan checked herself abruptly with shrewd eyes upon her son.
"Like young things do cry, and tell you their troubles in tears, not
words." She ended somewhat vaguely, and came quickly back to her main
subject again.
"You that can walk into the big rally next week and sit with the men
that count, and whisper and talk to them, and hold your head high, with
nothing against you, and will be sitting up on the platform soon, with
the best of them, and be mayor yet, like Everard's going to be, or
governor, maybe--you to compare yourself with Charlie, if he is my
half-sister's own son. He's a drunken good-for-nothing. He's got no
spirit in him if he'll stay here at all, where he's ashamed himself and
make a show of himself. How is it he's able to stay? Where does he get
the money he spends? This town don't pay it to him. Who does?"
"What put that into your head?" her son asked sharply.
"There's talk enough of it, and there'll be more. The whole town will be
asking soon."
"The town asks a lot of questions it don't dare hear the answers to,"
said Neil softly, unregarded. His mother returned to her grievance:
"You to be likening yourself to Charlie."
"When Charlie was twenty-five," Neil began slowly, "he was where I will
be then, or better. The Judge was a friend to him, too, and the Judge
was a better friend then to have. Charlie was setting up for himself,
well thought of. My own father trusted him. When I was a boy and not
grown, Charlie was a son to him, and more. He was a better spoken lawyer
than I'll ever make, quick and smooth with his tongue, and he was fine
appearing, and put up a better front than I do. I've gone part of the
road that Charlie went. What will stop me from going the whole road?
What's beat Charlie is strong enough to beat me.... Don't look so
scared, mother. I don't want to scare you. I only want you to be fair to
Charlie."
"His heart's broke," she conceded, melting. "He's nothing with Maggie
gone."
"His heart's broke, but that's not what beat him," her son stated with
authority. "He was beat before."
"When?"
"He was beat," Neil stated deliberately, "when Everard moved to Green
River."
This was a sweeping statement, but Neil did not qualify it. He dropped
the subject and stood silent, turning absent eyes upon the green expanse
of marshy field that had been the starting-place of all his dreams when
he was a dream-struck, gazing boy. His mother's eyes followed his,
growing cloudier and soft as if even now she could read them there.
"Rests your eyes," Neil said, after a minute; "looks pretty, too, in the
sun. It's a pretty green. We'll drain it, perhaps, by the time I'm mayor
or governor. It might pay. I'll be going now."
"Neil, when did you see her last?" asked his mother suddenly.
"See who?" he muttered, and then flushed, and straightened himself, and
met her eyes bravely.
"I saw Judith yesterday," he said, "on Main Street, and--she cut me."
"Did she walk past you?"
"No, she wouldn't do that. She pretended not to see me, but she saw me,
all right. She passed me in an automobile."
"Whose?"
"One of Everard's."
"Was he with her?"
"Yes."
"Neil," his mother began a little breathlessly, "I want to tell you
something. I've said hard things to you, and they weren't deserved. I
know it now, and I'm sorry. I want to take them all back. I've said hard
things about Judith Randall."
She hurried on, afraid of being stopped, but he made no move to stop
her. He listened courteously, his face not changing.
"Neil, she's not what I thought. There's no harm in her. There's no
pride in her. She's just lonesome. She's just a young, young girl. She's
sweet-spoken and sweet-faced. Neil, from all I hear----"
"You didn't hear all this direct from--Judith, then?"
"Judith?" she hesitated, flashing a questioning glance at him. "Is it
likely? How would I get the chance? But from all I hear, she's too good
for Everard and the like. And she's not safe with them. She needs----"
"What?" interrupted her son gravely, with the air of seeking information
on a subject quite strange to him and rather distasteful. But she tried
to go on.
"--Judith needs--any one that's fond of her, any one that she's fond of,
to be good to her now. I've seen her, and it's in the eyes of her. No
man ever knows just what a woman is grieving for, but that's all one if
he'll comfort her when she's grieving. She needs----"
Neil's eyes were expressionless. She sighed and put her two hands on his
shoulders. "Have it your own way," she said. "I'll say no more."
Neil caught at one of the hands on his shoulders and kissed it.
"For one thing," he said, "Judith or any girl needs a mother with a
heart in her--like I've got, but you're the one in the world. I'm
going."
But he did not go at once. Standing beside her, suddenly awkward and
shy, he first gave her the confidence that she could not force from him,
all in one generous breathless burst of words.
"Mother, Charlie's not the only one with his heart broke. But
heart-break isn't the worst thing I've got to bear. There's something
else. I can't tell you. I'd rather bear it alone. I've got to.
Good-bye."
Then he left her standing still in the door, shading her cloudy blue
eyes with one small hand and looking after him. He swung into the dusty
road and, keeping his head high and his eyes straight ahead, undazzled
by the sharp sunlight of mid-afternoon on the long stretch of unshaded
way, passed out of sight toward Green River.