LOCKS AND KEYS
Ten days passed, and June was urging the growth of flower and leaf with
ardent breath. Even in the hill country, with its cool nights and winds
that rush down the river valley, the days were sultry, and August lent
her younger sister electric batteries for her relief; and almost every
afternoon the soft, rounded summer clouds that seemed to flock about
Windy Hill, like pasturing sheep, were put to flight by the dun-edged
thunder scud with its whips of lightning.
Robert Stead had now gone his way to the north-west at his friend’s
request, the work indoors and out had settled with an even and soothing
monotony over the West farm, while the Sign of the Fox and its fame were
already relieving Brooke’s anxiety as to the immediate future.
As Lucy paced to and fro along the neatly gravelled walks of the
old-fashioned garden, where the Cub was engaged in “brushing” the long
line of sweet peas, a vocation requiring a knack that he did not possess,
it seemed to her that two months, instead of two weeks, had passed since
her coming. Not that she was in any way bored or discontented, rather
did it seem as if she had always been a part of the household and living
her normal life, while the revelation, indoors and out, of work done by
personal service, instead of by money proxy, had given her active brain
much food for thought of a new though baffling order.
In many other ways also did Lucy feel herself baffled. Upon Robert Stead
she had failed to make the slightest impression, either during the
half-dozen calls he had made at the farm, or upon a ride she had taken in
his company to his lodge on Windy Hill, when he had invited Mrs. Lawton
and Brooke to see his garden and some prints of old masters that they
had been discussing. The Cub being busy, Brooke had driven her mother in
the buggy with old Billy, and Stead, who had ridden down with an extra
saddle-horse in tow, had accompanied Lucy back.
Not that he was discourteous; quite the contrary. He was the polished man
of the world, always polite, with a pretty compliment, too well-rounded
for spontaneity, upon his lips and plenty of intelligent conversation,
as well as chink-filling small talk that prevented dangerous pauses, yet
withal he was inscrutable.
Hardly less so did Lucy find Brooke herself; perfectly free and frank
in their daily intercourse, yet she neither offered nor asked special
confidence. She brightened with all the charm of a born hostess when
Stead came, and he gravitated toward her as naturally; yet when he left,
even for six weeks’ stay, she exhibited no sign of loneliness and threw
herself into her play, which she called the few hours she seized for
painting, with fresh vigour, either working in the old carpenter’s shop,
that by opening a trap door above had a fine north light, or going into
the open fields to use Enoch Fenton’s colts, sheep, or oxen as studies.
It was not strange, however, that Lucy could not fathom the mind of
either maid or man, for did they really know themselves? Stead was
experiencing the conscious coming of a second youth, even before he was
more than in the full vigour of middle life. The period of torpor through
which he had passed was much like the indifference and languid, brooding
time of adolescence before the bite of motive and passion awakens body
and brain and clears the vision; and it was Brooke who blamelessly had
brought all this to pass, Brooke, with her heroism of womanhood that was
none the less subtle and acute because of its elusiveness.
Robert Stead loved her as a man loves but once, no matter how often he
may marry, but this second passion was so different in its elements
from the first that he did not recognize it as such, and consequently,
unchecked, it doubled its hold, even while Lucy was unable to put two and
two together, and piece a single palpable symptom.
In a state of rebellion bordering on disgust, Lucy, who heretofore had
been the sort of woman that had usually obtained anything for which
she had cared to try, and much for which she had not striven, turned
her attention to the farmer-on-shares,—Walther, as she called him, who
was undoubtedly a most filling and picturesque figure in the perfect
series of pictures that grouped themselves between the homestead and the
Moosatuk,—to find him not only difficult but impossible of approach,
and try as she might, she had not yet succeeded in exchanging a word
with him. At the same time many of his doings puzzled her, for though
he was entirely his own master, by the very nature of the half-and-half
agreement, and had nothing to do with the home garden or aught else
about the place, his whole desire seemed to be of use and to serve its
occupants, though unobtrusively.
It had been only a few mornings after her arrival that Lucy, just at
dawn, looking out of one of her windows (which overlooked the back of the
house, Brooke’s having wholly a river view), discovered the big fellow
setting out a quantity of seedling asters, a task that Brooke had begun
the afternoon before, and darkness had stopped when half accomplished.
Did Brooke know of it, she wondered.
Again, at the same hour, she saw him, hands encased in great leather
mittens, uprooting the vigorous poison ivy and tearing it from the
pasture fences, and at once she remembered that Brooke bore the crusty
burn of contact with it on one hand.
The Cub now and again remarked that Maarten was a brick and helped him
out of lots of tight corners, without even a hint being given, and Lucy
wondered if Brooke saw or understood; apparently she did neither, and yet
the very day after the Cub had thrown down his armful of pea-brush in
disgust at the tottering, inebriate line that rewarded his best efforts,
the brush appeared all set in place, standing like an evenly trimmed
hedge, attractive in its neatness, aside from the crop of fragrant
promise that already was beginning to finger the support clingingly with
its tendrils.
But how was it with Brooke herself? If it is true that filial love or
work in sufficiency can fill life to the brim, then hers was full to
overflowing; yet this is not all,—work, to be the heaven it may be at its
best, demands that the heart be satisfied.
Lorenz she had known less as a man than as an idealist, and it was this
side of his nature that she loved, together with his respectful yet
truth-speaking attitude. Then came the mystic picture, bringing with it
to fan the naturally kindled flame the knowledge that he remembered! No
further word had come from him since the verse of Sisyphus that she had
answered merely by a spray of arbutus blossom, the New England flower of
spring hope, shining through melting snow. Could he interpret it? Perhaps
not.
Sometimes a sense of the unreality of it all and the dream stuff it was
made of came over Brooke, and she wondered if the spell would hold or if
the separation was not more sweet than the reality; but this mood never
lasted long.
Of the patient service of the farmer-on-shares she could no longer be
ignorant, nor of the fact that he drew her eyes toward the landscape
of which he had come to be an inseparable part. Unwittingly she found
herself watching him day by day, though usually as a mere speck in the
distance. At such times she was bewildered, and trembled at herself. Was
it the poise of his head, and an occasional gesture as he stepped back
to look at something that he had done, that reminded her of Lorenz and
confused the two identities for the moment, or had the strain of the long
winter of struggling warped her brain?
Brooke was no analyst who had made the mental dissipation of the
dissection of motives take the place of natural emotion. The ideal of her
nature had its outlet; why not then the real? It was the natural man in
Maarten that drew her, something beneath the surface, obliterating the
bands of caste and the social grades that divided their normal positions,
though for that, except for her father’s disastrous city career, she was
equally born a child of the soil and its heredities.
She avoided the hay-fields, now swept by the June snow-storm of daisies,
and in spite of success and her friend’s companionship, was truly
miserable for the first time, for she could neither understand nor throw
off the spell she felt upon her. Self-respect is not oblivion, and is but
a chilly comforter for youth.
The frequent thunder-showers had forced a new necessity upon the Sign
of the Fox. An open shed at least must be had to protect vehicles that
needed cover, while their occupants were sheltered by either screened
porch or welcomed in the neat kitchen itself; so that an old lumber room
in the cow barn had been cleared, and furnished with rings for tying
up, the drivers upon the upper road being chiefly of horses; for the
chauffeur avoided the steep, uneven hills, which jarred the constitution
of the car of Juggernaut unpleasantly, even in the downward trip.
It chanced a little before this time that a party of young fellows,
headed by Charlie Ashton, in his big Mercedes touring car, built for
long-distance runs, had started for Gordon, where they were in demand
for a tennis tournament. Ashton’s chauffeur turning ill and unfit at
the last moment, they had beat about, and discussed the possibility of
substituting one of their number for the professional, as they all had
more or less experience; and the lot had fallen to Tom Brownell, who had
joined the party for a brief vacation, at the end of which he was to take
the position of city editor of the _Daily Forum_, a well-earned promotion
for which his gift of discerning the true from the merely sensational
peculiarly fitted him.
Brownell knew from Ashton that the Lawtons were located somewhere on the
route they were to take, and ever since his first maladroit interview
with Brooke he had desired to be of some service to her, that should
atone for his blunder.
The pair of keys on which he had stepped that day in leaving the
apartment had always remained, as it were, before his eyes, and after
learning all possible details of the Lawton failure from many sources, he
felt doubly convinced that, if these keys were placed, they might solve
at least one of the many questions unanswered because of Mr. Lawton’s
illness. He had therefore asked Lucy Dean to get them if possible—which
she had done.
Two months of following the faint trail furnished by two thin keys merely
bearing numbers but not even the initials of their makers, had at last
brought about a certain result which might or might not be satisfactory,
but at least warranted him in seeing Brooke, and telling her of his
progress; and this was one of his many motives of touring to Gordon.
He knew, from Lucy herself, that the Lawtons were located in the vicinity
of Gilead, and inquired the nearest way to the homestead, when they
reached the village late in the afternoon. On learning that it was on
the hill road, and as the machine he was driving had had two temper fits
within the hour, Brownell side-tracked it in a pleasant spot on the lower
road, and leaving his companions to spend an hour with their pipes and
the liquid remains of their luncheon, he started afoot up the cross-road.
There had been many people stopping for tea at the Sign of the Fox that
afternoon; in fact, the last trap was only leaving as Brownell turned the
corner, being that of Mrs. Parks, who dined at eight on purpose to have
the sunset hours for driving,—a performance that the Senator could not
understand.
Brownell hesitated a moment, as many others had done, as to which door,
front or side, was the more direct entrance, and deciding upon the
latter, turned the corner of the house and took the cobbled path that ran
between the prim box bushes toward the kitchen door. As he passed under
the window of the little library, the sound of a voice inside made him
stop as abruptly as if a detaining hand had been laid on his shoulder.
“They are at Coronado,—the engagement is announced,—they are to be
married immediately, and instead of coming home with the party go on to
Vancouver and Alaska. Father can no longer be my all in all, yet there is
no one to take his place!” were the words the voice uttered deliberately,
with an accent half mocking, yet with an undercurrent of sadness to one
who understood.
Standing on tiptoe for one brief moment, Brownell saw Lucy Dean’s
clear-cut face through the shielding vines; it was turned away from the
window, and she continued speaking to some one whom he could not see, but
easily divined was Brooke herself.
Recovering his power of motion as quickly as he had lost it, Brownell
darted down the lane toward the barn, and opening the door of the first
outbuilding that he reached, sprang in, closing it quickly behind him
with a heedless bang, in all the guilty trepidation of some peeping Tom
in fear of justice. In reality the being that Brownell most feared at
that moment was himself, as rendered illogical, helpless, and oblivious
of even the carefully planned work of his life, when in close proximity
to Lucy Dean. If she turned and saw him, he knew himself lost, so that
immediate flight was the only hope left.
From the moment he had first met her Brownell had admired her stanch
friendship for Brooke, while her buoyant and frank audacity had soon
fairly swept him off his feet. He had gone to the Dean house many times,
it is true, half because not to do so would have been brutally rude,
half fluttering, moth-in-the-candle fashion and courting a singeing,
until in the close companionship of the six weeks’ journey that had been
proposed, he saw that he would not only be at bay, but completely at the
mercy of that most uncertain of quantities, the motherless daughter of an
influential and wealthy man.
As an institution he had no quarrel with matrimony,—simply it had no
place at present in his somewhat altruistic plan of work. He did not wish
either to love or to marry; to see Lucy had cast him into the former
state, and caused matrimony to fill the entire vista.
What had he to offer—that is, financially? Even with his promotion he
could little more than compete with her father’s _chef_. Of himself he
had but an indifferent opinion, which was unwise, merely his ambitions
were so far ahead of his achievements that he measured his shortcomings
by the discrepancy.
That Lucy delighted to compete with him in a sort of game that Brooke
had called “truth telling” he knew, also that in some way he seemed
to stimulate her wit; but that there was a grain of sentiment in her
practical, and what people thought somewhat hard, nature, he never for a
moment dreamed. Therefore, knowing that if he saw her often the moment
would come when from his own standpoint he must become ridiculous in her
eyes, he had escaped from the overland trip, as he now sought to escape
the sudden and unexpected meeting by flight.
It would soon be dusk, and he could slip back to his companions unseen,
make some easy excuse for not having called, and tell Brooke of his
partial discovery by letter. This flashed through his mind as the door
closed. At the same time he looked about the building that he had
entered, to see if it had another exit, and discovered it to be a poultry
house, the well-white-washed perches of which were crowded by mature,
experienced hens, each wing-capped for the night. In the uncertain light
he made a misstep on the uneven ground, compounded of ashes and broken
lime, that formed the floor, which sent him reeling into the midst of
the feathered multitude, and as he grasped a perch to save himself from
rolling in the dust, he shook off the portly sleepers. A perfect babel of
hen alarm arose as the frightened ladies flew in his face and lodged on
his arms and shoulders in their useless flight.
“Be still,” he called in a husky voice; “for heaven’s sake don’t raise
such a devil of a row—they will take me for a rat or a weasel at the very
least, and set the dogs on me,” and then he laughed when he realized
upon what unintelligent scatterbrains his words had fallen. The windows,
all too small for retreat, were also netted. There was but one door, so
finally, getting his bearings, he made a dive for that, only to find it
firmly fastened by Miss Keith’s anti-chicken-thief spring lock! They say
love laughs at locksmiths, but bitter satire! when before had the device
of one of the craft imprisoned a man flying love, in a fowl house?
Folding his arms, with shoulders squared and jaw set, Brownell waited.
Already he heard the barking of a dog, women’s voices, and steps upon the
porch of the house. Could any position be more preposterous?
* * * * *
Lucy had finished reading her letter, and stood in the porch, watching a
catbird’s fantastic wooing as it paused in the midst of an impassioned
song to jeer, expostulate, coax, and protest all in a breath, now raising
itself tiptoe on an ecstatic high note, and then languishing until it
seemed to melt into the bushes. Every other bird loses self-consciousness
and pours his heart out in the love time, the catbird never; and yet its
compelling fascination lies in that it is always itself.
Lucy laughed softly as she watched the feathered pair, and said to
Tatters, who stood beside her, “Do you know, old fellow, I think if
any one wooes me, he will have to do it all in a breath, and after
hypnotizing me by his rattling, like that bird yonder, secure my hand and
heart before I wake. How I wish I were that lady bird this very minute,
having all this fuss made for me, and sitting perfectly composed in a
bush without a thought to spare for my trousseau!”
Tatters’ answer was a low growl, and then a series of quick barks as the
hubbub in the hennery began.
“I think something is stirring up your poultry; shall I go and see?” Lucy
called, going around under Brooke’s window, for the latter had gone up to
rest a few moments after a tiresome afternoon.
“I guess the hens have only fallen off their perches, and are
frightened,” Brooke answered, coming to the window; “they often do, the
sillies. It cannot be rats or weasels, for that is not Tatters’ animal
bark,—that tone means a man, and no one would be so foolish as to come
prowling before dark.”
Lucy continued to watch the catbird, but on the noise recommencing,
Tatters growled again, and leaving the porch, nose to ground, skirted the
library window, went to the gate, returned, stood under the window for a
second with bristling hair, and then, leading straight to the fowl house,
began tearing at the door.
Interested in his tactics, and thinking the intruder nothing worse than
a prowling cat, Lucy threw the skirt of her flowered dimity over her arm
and crossed the garden to the lane.
“Quiet, Tatters, quiet!” she cautioned, patting his head; “you must let
me attend to this; dogs are not allowed in fowl houses, they have been
known to produce heart disease in susceptible young pullets. Sit down
and watch out!”
Touching the spring, she released the latch, and opening the door
cautiously, lest any fowls escape, she peered in, thus coming instantly
face to face with the caged man! The shock for a moment made her lose her
poise, and she almost tottered as she cried, “Tom Brownell!”
At the same time Tatters, seeing the strange man, sprang forward, and to
keep him back Lucy stepped inside the sill-less door; his weight as he
sprung closed it with a snap, making her in turn a prisoner.
“I thought you were in New York! What are you doing here?” she flashed,
regaining her poise and colour at the same time.
“And I thought that you were in California,” retorted Brownell,
carelessly, hands in pockets, holding sentiment down hard.
“Then you did not come here to see me?”
“On the contrary, I came to see Miss Lawton! Are you usually to be found
in chicken houses?”
“Ah, she _is_, then? Suppose, as we must put up with each other’s society
until Tatters leads Brooke to our rescue, that we play the truth game to
kill time,—you know that truth can be trusted to kill almost anything
nowadays; I will ask the first question. Did you give up the California
trip because you wished to avoid me?”
“Yes, but not in exactly the way—Yes, I did,” this with an emphatic nod.
“It is my turn. Why did you not go to California?”
“Because—because—” and the eloquent Lucy became suddenly tongue-tied.
“Because of a prospective stepmother, was it not?” assisted Brownell,
feeling an instant warmth about his heart, as her defiance relaxed.
“No, it was because you were not going—that is, because my feelings, my
pride, were hurt,” and again she raised her head with a defiant glance,
adding hastily, “Now my turn. Why did you wish to see Brooke, and if you
came to see her, why are you found hiding in the fowl house?”
“I came because I have learned something about those mysterious keys.
They belong to a box in a little-known safe deposit company in Brooklyn,
and the name of the lessee is not Lawton; further, they would not tell
me, nor can I go on without some aid from the family. Does this errand
meet with your approval?”
“Then the keys do belong to something! Come quick, Brooke, let us out
and hear the news!” called Lucy, pounding on the door; but no response
came,—only a growl, not from Tatters, but from the unseen thunder-shower
that was, as usual, making its way over Windy Hill.
“As to your last question,” continued Brownell, without heeding the
interruption, “I was passing a window on the way to the side door when I
heard a familiar voice reading a letter. One look confirmed my suspicion,
and, like a wise brute in danger, I made for the nearest cover, not
expecting to be made a prisoner, but to get off unseen!”
“Why do you avoid me? What have I done to make you hate me so?” Lucy
almost whispered, a little break creeping into her voice that made
Brownell start forward.
“Why? Because a sane man usually avoids a danger of which he has had many
warnings. Don’t look at me like that, Lucy, and for God’s sake take your
hand off my shoulder, or you’ll make me forget my self-respect and let
myself go, only to be mocked by a woman!”
But Lucy did not move her eyes or her hand, while its mate stole to his
other shoulder.
“Talking of self-respect,” she said slowly, but with an indescribable
tender archness of accent, “why do you wish to make me lose mine by
forcing me to throw myself into your arms? See, I am braver than you, I
do not fear to be mocked by a man!”
“Lucy!”
“Tom!”
Those were the only two intelligible words of the rush that followed,
but even the catbird in the syringa bush, had his eye and ear been turned
that way, might have taken a lesson in rapid and complete wooing and
winning.
A patter of rain on the roof, another growl, and a flash caused Brooke
to hasten out to the porch to look for her friend, while Tatters still
barked and clawed at the door of the poultry house. Opening the door, she
spied Lucy, who, for the moment, had pushed Brownell into the darkness
behind her.
“So you looked for cats and weasels, and the door slammed on you!” she
cried, dragging Lucy out by the wrist, and brushing away the whitewash
that powdered her dark hair. “Hurry back to the house, for you know that
neither one of us has a love of thunder-storms!”
“You were right, Brooke, it was not Tatters’ animal bark,—it was a man
that frightened the fowls,” answered Lucy, still holding back.
“A man! Then why do you stay out here in the dusk? Who was it? You are
laughing,—it must have been Adam playing a trick on us!”
“Adam! Oh, no, it is the man I am going to marry! Brooke Lawton—Tom
Brownell! I believe, by the way, you have never before been properly
introduced!” and the next flash saw three figures, followed by a joyous
dog, scudding toward the house under a burst of rain.
* * * * *
While the storm raged it was impossible either for Brownell to regain
his companions or to communicate with them in any way, while the
probabilities pointed to the chance of their having returned to Bisbee’s
stable for shelter at the first signs of the storm.
At the supper table Lucy’s radiance was so dazzling that no one could
pretend to ignore it. The Cub, to whom Brownell was of course a stranger,
was inclined to be resentful and clumsily sarcastic, but as the elder man
had both tact and magnetism, he speedily concluded that it was better to
have a new friend than an unnecessary enemy. Mrs. Lawton and Miss Keith
were made partakers of the news by mere inference before the formal words
were spoken, and Brownell at once became a friend of the family, even
before the matter of the keys and his diligence in their interest came
up. Brownell took the bits of metal from his pocket and laid them on the
table beside him, as he told of his idea that, being paired and of the
type that is used by safety-vault companies, they might in some way be
connected with the personal belongings of Mrs. Lawton and Brooke; how
that by chance he had seen keys of a similar pattern in the pocket of a
friend, but, in locating the company, had found the name given by the man
renting the box to be West and not Lawton!
“That was grandmother’s maiden name, and this is the West homestead,”
said Brooke, in a tense whisper. “The keys must have something to do with
father and all of us, if we can only fathom how!”
“If West is a family name, the rest must unravel in time,” said Brownell,
looking eagerly toward Adam Lawton, who, sitting as usual in his
wheel-chair at the foot of the table, had turned slightly toward the
young man, idly fingering the keys, his eyes fixed on the distance.
The circular storm, that had veered off for a time, now returned with
renewed fury. Pam jumped into Lucy’s lap and hid her head under the
table-cloth. Miss Keith fled to her room and bounced into the middle of
her feather-bed, to “keep her feet off the floor,” as she said. Lucy held
Tom tightly by the hand, while even Mrs. Lawton and Brooke grew pale and
the Cub feigned an indifference that he was far from feeling, for the
effect of the air charged with electricity was palpable and not to be
ignored.
There came a moment when a series of explosions followed one another like
pistol shots, next a scathing flash and a deafening report, and at the
same instant a sound of ripping and tearing in front of the house, while
a sulphurous odour filled the room.
Tatters, who was huddled close to Brooke, raised his head and gave a
weird howl, and for a moment no one had either power of speech or motion.
Brownell was the first to recover, and going quickly to the front door,
he threw it open and looked out The giant button-ball inside the fence
was split from crown to trunk, and great twisted splinters littered the
short grass; but the old pine, holding the Sign of the Fox upon one of
its gnarled arms, stood safe and intact like a good omen.
“Look at father!” were Brooke’s first words, spoken as Brownell returned,
and the entire group about the table watched him in wonder.
At the flash his eyes had closed and a tremor passed over him, but when
he opened them again, a new intelligence was there. Slowly he looked
about; then, noticing the keys, that had remained between his fingers, he
clasped them tightly with an exclamation of satisfaction, and, turning
toward his wife, who had drawn close to his chair, said slowly, with
perfect articulation, yet hesitatingly, as if each word suggested its
neighbour: “Mela, here are those keys of the new box that I hired to-day
to hold your little belongings. I—seem—to—have—dreamed—that I—lost—them!
I may have a business ordeal—to go through—and what little belongs to
you—and—daughter must be put apart—in—safety. I took—this—in the name—of
Adam West, and to-morrow Brooke must go—also—to be recognized—Where am I?
how—did I come here at the old home?” Slipping from her chair, Brooke
went to her mother, and gently, each holding a hand, they wheeled the
chair back to the familiar bedroom, so that neither place nor people
should cause the return of memory to rush too swiftly and overtax itself.
Brooke left her father and mother together there, and going to the
library, wrote a brief note to Dr. Russell, asking his guidance in this
new crisis that might mean so much or so little.