THE DECISION OF MISS KEITH
It was while mistress and dog were thus absorbed that Dr. Russell, gun
on shoulder, and grouse dangling from his fingers, came up the side road
on the south that separated house and garden plot from the barn and
outbuildings, that stood close to the lane edge, facing it, like a row of
precise soldiers drawn up to give salute.
He expected that at his first footfall on the side porch his coming would
be heralded by short, percussive barks,—Tatters’ greeting to his friends.
He knocked twice, then tried the yielding door-knob, and entered the
kitchen, where various saucepans, boiling over madly and deluging the
polished stove with an impromptu pottage, told of some sort of domestic
lapse. Crossing the hallway, guided by a light streak toward the first
open door, he entered the sitting room at the moment that Miss Keith had
raised her wet eyes from Tatters’ head, and was alternately rubbing them
with her handkerchief, held in one hand, and looking at her answer to the
disturbing letter, held in the other.
“Why, what is the matter, Miss Keith,—bad news or a love letter?” the
doctor asked with the easy cheerfulness that showed how little real
anxiety lay beneath the question. “The carrier said that you wished to
see me to-day, and so I’ve come down, but I’d no idea that it was about a
tearful matter, and one in which Tatters was too much involved to ‘watch
out’ as usual.”
Taken thus unawares, an aggressive expression crossed Miss Keith’s face
for an instant, but immediately disappeared under the influence of the
doctor’s smile, and, quickly recovering, she answered, as she gave her
hands into his hearty grasp: “It is both bad news _and_ a letter. To-day
is my fiftieth birthday,—you see I do not believe in belying the Lord’s
work and concealing one’s age as some do,—and I’ve had a letter that I
want man’s counsel upon.” Then, as a sound of liquid hissing on a hot
stove and the smell of burning food came from the hallway, she remembered
the time of day, the dinner in peril, and her duties as housekeeper,
at the same moment, and mumbling a hasty apology, fled to the kitchen,
followed by the doctor, who, after making the grouse serve as a birthday
offering, wisely retired to the sitting room until dinner should be ready.
Once there, he made a few rapid but direct observations, beginning with
the First Cause on the mantel-shelf.
Then, as he saw the two letters on the desk, one envelope hastily torn
open and bearing the signs of much handling, the other carefully sealed
and lying face downward, he chuckled to himself. “Woman all through,
Miss Keith, in spite of everything. Ten to one she has made up her mind
and answered her letter while she was waiting for me to come and advise
with her about it. At the same time, when the dinner is off her mind, she
will tell me the whole story, and discuss it from the very beginning, for
the mere pleasure of it; but no matter what I may say, she will post the
letter already written.” Then, going over to the bookcase that topped
the desk, he unlocked the diamond-paned door, and pulling out a book at
random, which proved to be a dingy copy of Hogg’s “Shepherd’s Calendar,”
he resigned himself to the inevitable drowsiness born of the volume and
his long walk, and stretching himself on the wide haircloth sofa, was
soon taking the “forty winks” that should sharpen his wits for the coming
interview.
Fortunately he awoke before Miss Keith came to call him, for she had
scant respect for either man or woman who was caught napping in broad
daylight; and together they went out to the wide kitchen that served also
as a cheerful dining room, with its long double window filled with plants
and beau-pot of gay chrysanthemums on the table, the doctor meanwhile
offering Miss Keith his arm, half with natural, courtly deference, half
in mischief, a frequent mood of his that old friends understood and loved.
At first Miss Keith, speaking clearly for the sake of breaking silence,
appeared nervous. The talk ran lightly in general channels,—the glorious
season, the shooting, the way in which the trolley line had turned the
horse traffic from the turnpike to the upper road, and how much more life
passed the West farm, Miss Keith telling that sometimes of an afternoon
a dozen pleasure vehicles on the way from Stonebridge to Gordon, or the
reverse, would stop on the plateau under the pines, combining a resting
spell for horses with their drivers’ enjoyment of the view.
Next Silent Stead and his bachelor housekeeping on Windy Hill followed
in natural sequence. Did the doctor know the real story about Stead’s
dead wife, or if it were true that he was going away, back to his work
as civil engineer again? Many visitors, men of weight from Gordon, had
called on him that season, and the letter carrier said he had many thick
letters with great red seals, and it was whispered that he was wanted to
direct some new railway enterprise in the far West.
No, Dr. Russell could not answer, other than to wish the gossip that sent
his friend back to the world’s work might foreshadow the truth.
Then the doctor took the lead, asking home questions about Mr. Lawton and
the other kin, saying, “I met your Cousin Adam last winter in New York
one evening at the Century, where Martin Cortright introduced us. His is
a keen and interesting face, though rather nerve-worn. As he stood among
a group of financiers, that also deal liberally by the various arts, his
eyes roved about, dilating and contracting strangely, as if they followed
the workings of a dozen thoughts each minute, though otherwise his face
remained unchanged and he never moved a muscle.
“Did I like him? He is not easy to approach, and it was only when I
told him that, though living at Oaklands, I go inland every autumn for
the hunting, and know Gilead well, also his Cousin Keith and West farm,
where I had once seen his daughter Brooke, that his eye brightened and
he showed any interest, while at the same moment some one whom he had
evidently been watching broke away from a distant group, and, your cousin
darting off to join him, our talk ceased.”
“If Adam cares for anything but money-making, which I’ve sometimes
doubted, it is for Brooke,” said Miss Keith, quite at her ease again,
the coffee that she was pouring being fully up to its reputation. “In
fact, he deeded this farm to her on her twenty-first birthday, all on the
strength of her girlish whim and talk long ago about the _River Kingdom_.
This also makes me feel uncertain about my stay here. What if Brooke
should marry and _he_ should wish her to sell the place? Not that Adam
has ever said a word to me about the transfer, and he pays the taxes and
what not just the same, but Job Farrish was looking up his boundaries
last spring and saw the deed recorded in the Town House. In fact, Adam
himself never writes nowadays, his secretary does it all; and even Brooke
has only written once this year, and that was when I said the gutter
having leaked, the north room needed new paper, and she sent it—pretty it
is, too, wild roses running through a rustic lattice—she’s always had an
open eye for colour.”
“What! is that gypsy child twenty-one?” exclaimed the doctor in surprise,
pushing back his chair so as to pull Tatters’ head between his knees and
stroke his ears, at the same time that he drew his coffee cup toward
him, sniffing the subtle aroma, only second in his nostrils to that of
the fresh earth in spring and his beloved pipe. “It seems but a year or
so since she was roving about the lane with her hair flying and Tatters
after her,—the two were inseparable.”
“Twenty-one! Why, Dr. Russell, that time was eight years ago, the second
autumn you came up to hunt with Silent Stead. She’s turned _twenty-four_,
and that Tatters was this one’s uncle; they say there has been a dog of
the name in the family this hundred years and more.
“Yes, Brooke was twenty-four last May, and it seems now that they should
call her by her rightful Christian name, Pamela, instead of that absurd
one that might as well be stick or stone. You did not know she had any
other? Oh, it is her middle name to be sure—Pamela Brooke Lawton. Her
mother was one of the proud old Virginia Brookes, and they say, failing
of male heirs in the South, they often call a daughter by her mother’s
maiden name. Mannish and affected though, I call it, still I must own
it did suit her eight years ago, for she had as many ways and turns and
deep and shallow places as that little stream on Windy Hill that begins
in only a thread that wouldn’t move a fern, and then widens to the Glen
Mill-pond, and saws all the wood hereabouts and grinds the flour for
Gilead.
“Yes, she has been here several times, though never to stay long; mostly
she came with her great friend, Lucy Dean, when they were at school
at Farmington. I never liked _her_ though, she had a way of asking
point-blank questions and calling a spade a spade that sent a chill
through you.”
“And what has Brooke been doing since she’s been a woman grown? What, for
the last four years?” asked the doctor, returning to the present with new
interest at sound of Brooke’s name.
“Let me see,” and Miss Keith began counting on her fingers; “after
Brooke left school, she and her mother and father, with the Dean girl
and the Cub, spent one summer travelling in the West,—Adam was nosing
out some scheme or other. Then the women folks went to Europe for a year
or more, leaving young Adam, the Cub,—that’s what they call the boy, and
I must say, poor lad, he does seem a misfit and hard to manage,—at a
military boarding-school somewhere.
“The Dean girl had a voice that her people thought worth the training,
though I never heard what became of it after, and Brooke wanted to go on
with her painting. Oh, yes, she does really paint—doesn’t just dabble
colours together like a marble cake, such as most pictures are, and call
it Art. Why, she got a prize, they say, in a New York exhibition for a
picture of some children eating cherries. I’ve got a photograph of it,
that she sent me, on my bureau. It’s fine work, good judges say; all the
same, to my eye it lacks one thing—it doesn’t look just quite alive. If
she was poor and had to work and kept on, I guess she’d get somewhere;
but now she’s at home again, and in society, and not being in need of
money, I suppose she’ll let the painting slip, except maybe to make candy
boxes for charity fairs and such.
“Adam’s always been too busy ever to have much of a settled home. They
travelled about mostly of summers, and since they left the house down
town two years ago, where the children were born, they’ve lived in a big
sort of apartment arrangement, half flat, half hotel, as near as I can
make it out—‘It gives mamma no responsibility,’ Brooke wrote in telling
of it. But without some responsibility you can’t get much home comfort,
to my thinking.
“Now that Brooke is educated and at home, I hear her father is building a
big city house and another down by the sea somewhere, and so perhaps—when
he has money enough—he will slow up and take a rest. The Lawtons and
Wests are both long-lived, and Adam never drank or dissipated, I guess;
but I should think at the pace he’s trotted these thirty years he’d be
footsore by this, and like a back-stairs sitting room out of reach, and a
loose pair of slippers.”
Miss Keith grew more careless of her speech as she warmed to her subject,
and Dr. Russell laughed outright at the idea of the Adam Lawton whom he
had met, tall and distinguished, a bundle of steel nerves bound by will
power, sitting to rest anywhere, much less in loose slippers out of the
sound of the Whirlpool’s eddying.
The fussy little clock in the sitting room, after making many futile
remarks, like a choking _do-re-mi_, landed fairly on _do_, and struck
four! Then Miss Keith, saying casually that she must skim the milk at
five, began to unfold her plan matrimonial.
She did not read Mrs. Dow’s letter to the doctor, but spoke from memory,
with which an unexpected quality of imagination blended with dangerous
frequency.
Alack a day! How often are the overworked three graces, Faith, Hope, and
Charity, pushed into the place of Truth, Experience, and Common Sense,
and forced to bear responsibility not theirs!
When Miss Keith had finished, the good doctor naturally supposed that she
had received a direct proposal from an old-time lover who, once rejected,
had married some one else in pique. Also that the making of the sister’s
home the meeting place was her own idea, born of her maidenly regard of
the proprieties, which regard he well knew usually strengthens in inverse
proportion to the need for it!
Finally, as he arose to go, she said, hovering tremulously between
kitchen and sitting room, “Now that I know that you agree with me, I will
ask one favour more. I have a letter that I would like to have posted in
Gilead by your hand; these outdoor letter boxes sometimes leak, you know.
Then I shall sleep content.”
“Most certainly,” said the doctor, turning back, a smile crossing his
face and lurking at his mouth corners at this latest of many vocations
given him—that of Cupid’s postman, though he could not but admit that his
age made him a peculiarly suitable assistant in such a belated wooing.
As he took the letter, he involuntarily turned it face upward, and
glanced at the address, saying in a dubious tone, his eyebrows raised:
“Mrs. Dow? Why not James White himself?” Then adding, with a touch of
irony in his voice that Miss Keith missed, “Is his sister acting the
kindly part of go-between? Ah, so! Well, Miss Keith, no one but yourself
can settle so delicate a matter finally, _but_ one thing promise me: go
to Boston, if you will; jig and jostle, hear reform lectures and eat
health food, and see life if you must; but for God’s sake, woman, don’t
commit yourself until you have seen the ‘_sweet children_’ and the man!
Photographs can lie, as well as tongues!” Then, fearing he had been too
harsh, he added kindly, “If you find that Tatters can’t transfer himself,
as you call it, let me know,—there is always room for one more dog at
Oaklands, and Barbara will pamper him.”
That night Miss Keith, buoyed by the doctor’s talk and a man’s recent
presence in the house, albeit it was temporary, was in an exalted mood
and trod on air. Already she saw visions of the future, and kept saying
to herself, “I will do and see so and so when I go to Boston.”
When she lit her candle and went upstairs, she took the First Cause
from the mantel and bore him with her. Where should she put him? Her
dresser seemed too intimate a place; the spare room album, too remote.
Finally she placed the photograph against the puffs and quills of the
pillow-shams of the best room bed and then fled to her own chamber, where
she blew out the candle and undressed in the dark, or, rather, by the
half moonlight, saying aloud, as she got into bed, “Thank fortune for one
thing, I’ve kept my own hair and teeth, and such as I am there is nothing
of me that takes off.” And though the remark was apropos of nothing in
particular, a wave of hot colour covered her face at the words, and she
buried her head in her pillow and tried to sleep. This she didn’t do,
for Tatters, whom she had utterly forgotten for the first time, and shut
out when she closed the door, resented being forced to sleep out on
the porch at such a frosty time, and at intervals throughout the night
bayed dismally at the moon, thereby calling to her mind an old ballad of
chilling and ominous portent.