THE RETURN OF MEMORY
Of the household at the homestead, one heart sank instead of rejoicing,
at the first sign of the return of memory to Adam Lawton. This one bumped
painfully in the chest of the Cub, as, leaving the room unnoticed, with
face pale as it had not been for months, and unheeding the flapping
sheets of rain that smote and enveloped at the same moment, he fled to
the barn and threw himself with head buried in his arms on the dwindling
haymow that had once sheltered the little fox.
Poor Cub, with the first perfectly lucid utterance of his father all the
old cringing dread had returned, and his manhood again struggled with the
fear that he had believed dead. This, also, after five months of proving
the stuff of which he was made by bitter, patient toil, until day by day
the warring elements were adjusting, the jangling grew fainter, and at
each hammer touch of experience the metal rang more true. If Adam Lawton
could have realized this, and seen his boy with unbiassed clearness, the
loss of money and life itself would have been nothing to the bitterness
that would have come to him as the results of his arbitrary attitude.
The Cub need not have trembled. Remember whatever Adam Lawton might, a
law of life had been broken and their positions were reversed, the leader
must be led, the dictator of another’s free-born will must be protected,
gently dealt with, guarded from trouble, loved pitywise, but never would
he square his shoulders to the world and give and take. Can worse irony
of fate come to any man who has really lived?
An hour after the electric bolt had riven the plane tree planted as a
landmark by the first West, and by its mystic influence cleared Adam
Lawton’s brain, the warm June moon, a line from full, was slowly pushed
edgewise from between the clouds and rolled slantwise above Moosatuk, a
giant coin of gold, fresh and articulate from the mint.
Lucy Dean and Tom Brownell, coming out-of-doors the instant the storm
abated, walked up and down the cobbled path, all oblivious of the puddles
between the stones or of the dripping trees above. Brownell had meantime
entirely forgotten how he came to be where he was, also his friends below
on the river road, whose motive power he represented for the time being,
or the fact that, as the only resting-place in Gilead for the homeless
was a “Commercial Hotel” of small dimensions and still less visible
cleanliness, it would be necessary for them either to sleep in the
touring car or in Gordon.
As the pair for the twentieth time reached the road end of the path and
turned again into the deep, sweet-smelling shadows of the great box
bushes, a buggy turned the corner from the cross-road and came to a halt
by the side gate. A slender male figure in a light suit and cap, leaping
therefrom, attracted their attention, and Brownell exclaimed, “Great
Cæsar! I’ve forgotten those wretches down below and they’ve come for me!
Now for it! right-about face, Lucy!” at the same time by a dexterous turn
of the arm catching her about the waist; for Lucy, whose chief pride
had always been facing the music, whether necessary or not, had started
to bolt, and exhibited as charming a bit of struggling confusion as the
heart of man could desire.
The moonlight struck the man’s face as he came forward. “It’s only
Charlie Ashton,” she said, freeing herself at once, her head raised to
its defiant poise; “as he doesn’t know that I am here, it is his turn to
be surprised!”
Charlie Ashton, the useful and ornamental, did not bear a reputation for
overweening brilliancy; but the moment his eyes rested upon the pair
before him, divided though they now were by a box bush, he divined what
had happened.
“So this was the plot, and the reason you thought the hill would
disagree with the auto, and left us to drown all this time down on that
soaking river road so that you could meet Lucyfer alone,” he cried,
seizing Brownell by the hand and nearly wringing it off, while he aimed a
kiss at his cousin’s cheek, in token of his approval, which by a toss of
the head landed on her chin.
“On my word, Charlie, there was no plot, it was pure accident. I never
dreamed of my luck!”
“Most certainly not!” interrupted Lucy; “otherwise he would have been
safe and sound in Gordon two hours ago, instead of being engaged to me.
He really came here to tell Brooke about the keys, but circumstances
which he could not control (as he did the overland trip) obliged him to
see me first in a place hardly as airy, though quite as secluded, as a
special Pullman vestibule!”
Ashton, scenting a mystery, but being too wary to press his cousin for
the clew, gave Brownell’s hand a final wring, saying, without being in
the least aware of his play upon words, “She’s a match for you, old man,
stubborn as you are—yes, and more than a match, and you have my profound
sympathy; but do have pity on us to-night and pilot us into Gordon, for
we are damp and hungry and sleepy, and this old plug is all I could get
at the stable. To-morrow you shall have the confounded car for the rest
of the week to return here in, choose your passenger, and go and break
down in the wildest cross-road of this confounded hill country. I’ll
even give you leave to ruin a tire, or if the worst comes to the worst,
wrench the steering gear, though I hope that won’t be necessary. Cheer
up, Lucyfer, it isn’t nine o’clock yet, and he can have a good sleep and
be back in twelve hours. I’ll go in and see the ladies a moment while you
do the finals!”
“I shall write to father to-night,” Lucy said abruptly, as the door
closed upon Ashton, and Pam, who had been waiting to get out, began
bounding about her friend, giving yelps of joy. “What do you suppose he
will say?”
Brownell began to speak, then paused, setting his teeth, and raising
Lucy’s chin gently, looked steadily in her face—“He will say one of two
things, according to his mood. Either that, resenting a stepmother, you
have thrown yourself away upon the first fellow who chanced by; or that
you have met the man who is to be, what he could not, ‘all in all’—that
you have found your mate!”
And Lucy, pale with feeling, a different pallor from that the moonlight
gives, returned his gaze fearlessly, proudly, and from the lips that met
his bitterness vanished, while truth remained. He was indeed her mate,
her match, the first of many suitors, rich and poor alike, who had wooed
her, man to woman, without thought or apology of money.
The second day after the great storm, for such it came to be
called, its erratic course through the hill country being blazed by
lightning-splintered trees and gullied watercourses, Dr. Russell came and
with him the Lawtons’ lawyer. Little by little the various happenings
were made clear, his situation and as far as might be his presence at
the farm explained, while, as the days went by, slowly the jarred brain
fitted the links in the chain of memory. But Dr. Russell said truly, that
Adam Lawton’s grit and grip were broken once for all, desire of power was
dead and in its place came desire of peace. Soon the little pottering
details of the farm, despised in youth, seemed dearer than aught else,
and he would sit for hours in his wheel-chair, training a vine or busied
with harness buckles in the barn. Nothing, however, would induce him to
allow his chair to go outside the gate, or to drive about the country or
to the village with Adam or Brooke upon their many errands.
Side-tracked though he was to many eyes, one of his selves, the one
unknown,—for most of us have two,—came back to him through kinship
with the soil; and at his first words of pride in and praise of Adam’s
usefulness, the boy had fled away to the rick again, great sobs tearing
his throat, but in this tempest lay no dread, and with those tears the
Cub cast off his nickname and leaped a year in manhood.
Toward his wife Adam Lawton was all tenderness, as in the early years,
and once more he called her Mela. But instead of the protective pride of
lover to sweetheart, it was the twofold, leaning quality, that makes some
men as they age seek the mother element in their wives and rest upon it.
Before July came round the little property of Mrs. Lawton and Brooke,
together with the farm deed and the jewels, was restored to them. In all
it made an annual sixteen hundred dollars, less by many times than either
woman had spent for clothing or the many little luxuries and nothings
that smooth and beautify the daily life—yet for their station they had
been frugal women, though always generous.
This money did not lessen Brooke’s determination or endeavour; it simply
turned striving to possibility of life in the composite household.
Neither, had the sum been ten times what it was, would any of the three,
mother, daughter, son, have cared to give up the work and with it motive;
simply Brooke could now dream more than day-dreams of her art. Rosius,
the animal painter, had built a studio at Gordon, and, after seeing a
head that Brooke had done of Senator Parks’s prize bull, he had replaced
his usual shrugging lethargy toward amateurs by enthusiasm, offered to
criticise her work throughout the season, and take her as a student of
animal anatomy in his winter studio in Washington, where the models
of the Zoo would be open to her, saying, “You feel, you understand,
you catch the thought, the meaning in the eyes,—this must be born, not
taught, all the rest only means much work and is learnable.”
If all went well and the Sign of the Fox remained her talisman, who knew
but the fund might grow, her father become strong enough to be house
man in more than name, Adam might have some education even if Stead
returned to work, and she herself could steal a month or two in the dead
season?—for the Parkses would be in Washington, and both the Senator and
his wife took an interest in her work, not born of desire to patronize.
Presently Adam Lawton began to read a little and could move slowly from
porch to garden seat, steadied by canes, and attend to many of his wants.
Then one glad day Mrs. Fenton had come down in her wheel-chair, and by
sheer force of will broke the home-staying spell by coaxing him to drive
back to a country boiled dinner with her, saying, “Don’t you remember,
Adam, when we were boy and girl together, and I said I’d go to your
father’s barn-raising dance with whichever of you boys could lift himself
up and touch his chin to the schoolroom door frame, three times? Some
boys couldn’t claw, and some got a grip and let go, while some wanted
boosting. You were the smallest, yet you got a hold and lifted yourself
slowlike, inch by inch, until you got there. That’s the way now, Adam!
You’ve had your tumble, and naturally you’ve got to help lift yourself!”
Was it what rural folks call a good growing season, or did love and
labour brighten and sweeten the simple garden flowers beyond their wont?
Who can say? Adam had made some corner brackets for the vine-screened
“tea room” porch, which Brooke had covered with tufts of gray moss and
coral-capped lichens, and here every day she placed, as well as on the
table, quaint stone jugs and lustre pitchers, rescued from the high top
shelf of Grandma West’s dresser, filled them with sweet peas, Madonna
lilies, mignonette, sweet-william, and clove pinks, and kept long sprays
of sweet syringa, lilacs, snowballs, lemon-lilies, foxgloves, larkspur,
hollyhocks, according to the season, in an old stone churn raised upon a
bench before the kitchen window end to veil it.
Not only did the garden yield its best to those who paused for
refreshment in passing by, but Brooke’s measure of added liberty, scant
though it was, gave her a breathing time to go abroad for flowers of
roadside, wood, and the rank river meadows; and while her eyes and hands
were busy with the blossoms, her soul drank in the beauty of the scenes
beyond, her heart beat strong, and her whole nature seemed to expand and
perfect itself in the growth and perfecting of the earth about her.
It was on the return from one of these walks through the river meadows,
arms laden with blue fleur-de-lis and golden sundrops gathered to the
tinkling music of soaring bobolinks, that she met the postman turning up
the cross-road from the lower pike, and he begged that she would take the
mail, as he had none this afternoon for any other on that branch and his
horse was lame.
Good-naturedly she turned up a corner of her skirt to act as mail pouch,
for the papers, circulars, and what not made quite a budget.
Reaching the boundary of her land when halfway uphill, and being
wrist-cramped by the double load, she dropped her flowers and mail, and
sitting in the shade began to sort it. Behind her was the rye field, and
the wind curling across the crisping ears, now gold-green, made sound as
of a gently rising tide on pebbled shores, while as she leaned against
the bank the bayberry, sweet-gale, and hay ferns breathed their wild
fragrance.
Oh, what a day it was! June dominance and rush yielding to the more
finished manners of July—nothing was lacking! That is, nothing
attainable; the love of things seemed to eclipse the love of people.
Ah, no, not quite, for as she gazed idly at the letters in her lap, her
heart gave a great throb, and one square package lurched and slid between
her trembling fingers, for the address on it was written in Ashton’s
eccentric hand. Picking it up, she laid the others by, and steadying
herself deliberately broke the seal, for it was sealed endwise with
wax. Inside was a double-folded piece of foreign-looking paper, but no
other address or postmark, the transit cover evidently having been torn
or soiled, and not a written word of any sort in view. Within its folds
a little square of millboard, the duplicate of that which had borne
her picture, only from this looked forth the face of Lorenz himself,
standing in a doorway, clad in his loose blouse, palette and brush in
hand. The heavy thatch of hair shaded his forehead deeply, the face was
thinner than she remembered it, the chin under the thick mustache more
determined, the jaw set with a depth of purpose, while the eyes looked
half away as if seeking inspiration and yet followed her everywhere,
until Brooke covered them with her hand a moment as if to escape the too
tense gaze of a real presence.
Hoofs sounded on the road, and there passed by Enoch Fenton with his
horse-rake, coming in neighbourly fashion to help the farmer-on-shares
gather up the timothy hay from its last sunning to house it before
nightfall; to-morrow it would be turn about, according to country lore.
Seeing Brooke he stopped, and after making the usual crop and weather
epigrams, said: “That there man of our’n is right smart and steady, but
he hustles too much and he’s losing girth—’fore summer’s out he’ll be
slim enough to swim through an eel run. I’ve advised him, if he’s goin’
to follow the soil, to locate farther north, but he seems unsettled and
I reckon he’ll move on after leaf-fall,—they mostly do, the smart ones,
besides which he acts as if the girl he’s waitin’ fer wasn’t comin’. If
she don’t, she’s a silly, for I nary seen a man with two strong hands hev
such a wise head!
“Say, but you look sort of like a picter setting there with all them
posies, something like the one on the calendar they give with the ‘Rise
up bake powder’ when you’ve bought six cans. It’s called ‘The Love
Letter,’ only the girl’s got red heels to her shoes and powered-up hair,
besides which they’d bought her too small a pattern for her waist to
piece it well up in front!
“Want ter know! I bet it’s a love letter, his picter and all, and I’m
right glad on’t!” Then farmer Fenton chirruped to his horses and went his
way, laughing to himself, and turning the tobacco from cheek to cheek
with relish, for Brooke had reddened under his banter, and in trying
to save the sliding letters in her lap had not only dropped them, but
the picture as well (which the farmer barely saw, having no glasses).
When she stooped to gather them up, and slipped the picture inside her
blouse for safer keeping, a second shadow crossed the road—that of Henry
Maarten, following the brook path to the hay-field, but if he saw her in
the sheltered bank nook he made no sign; neither did Brooke, but huddled
there among the ferns elated, disappointed, and quite bewildered, until
the sound of hoof and wheel had died away, and she knew that both men
were well within the fence.
The words that Enoch Fenton muttered as he walked, talking to himself
in lengthy monologue, after the style of those much alone, were these:
“Bob Stead! by gosh, he’s been away a month, and what’s more likely than
he’s sent his picter and writes reglar? Anyhow, all the women folks this
side of Windy Hill and further has planned it so, and so it’s bound to
be! Besides which our darter’s boy, Willie, was lookin’ fer wintergreen
for mother’s rheumatiz up in North Woods beyond Stony Guzzle two months
back, and he spied a couple settin’ by the stream a-holdin’ hands and
eatin’ apples. Now if that ain’t courtin’—what is? Though it’s only jest
likely hit and miss, wife and Sairy Ann Williams met and pieced together
who they wuz. He’s a mum sort, but that’s the kind it takes a girl to
get goin’, and he’s well set up, funds and all, though oldish! Well, she
might do worse seein’ she’s had a taste o’ pinchin’,” and selecting a
fine spear of timothy with which to pick his teeth, Fenton reversed the
rake and mounted.
Adam had written to Stead several times since his going away, and
received cheerful, though brief, replies, which, however, said nothing
definite as to his return, and though the time mentioned was a month, the
term might be merely nominal. All the household had missed him in their
different ways, the Cub with almost girlish sentiment, Mrs. Lawton as a
link with the state of life that was, and Brooke chiefly because she was
entirely used to him and associated him with so much that had given hope
and eased the winter rigour, that the friendship to her had become almost
the easy intimacy of relationship.
It was an afternoon early in July that Brooke was searching along the
foot-path in the hemlock woods above the Fenton’s for the flowers of
pipsissewa, with their wax petals and spicy wood fragrance, when the
snapping of twigs made her turn, and striding down the hill, straight
into the light, with quick, elastic step, came Robert Stead, a new, alert
expression on his well-tanned face that wiped at least half a dozen years
from his time record.
Brooke was surprised and also frankly glad. Dropping her flowers, she
held out both her hands and told him so.
“As this is the first word from you in five long weeks, it is well that
it is a kind one,” he replied. Then, holding her off, he looked at her
as if to make sure it was she herself, and not the masquerading gypsy
girl whose image always rose and came between them when he met her
out-of-doors.
“Ah, so much has happened since then! but Adam has written it all, except
perhaps that now I may hope to go to Washington for next winter to study.
That is quite far off, however, so tell me about yourself, also how
working has agreed with you!” she added mischievously.
“Work! They tell the truth—those that call it the master-word that
unlocks all barriers! Child, child, do you know what you have done for me
by acting and teaching it, so that now to me life, that was ended (as far
as joy is life), has but begun?
“Not only the desire for work, but the motive, came from you—is you! You
have the magic crystal of youth, I hold anew the power to shield it;
you have the fire of genius, I the fuel to feed its flame! Come to me,
Brooke; with you only I can forget, forgive! Redeem the past for me!”
As he paused with arms extended, Brooke shrank backward against the trunk
of a great hemlock, bewildered, dizzy almost, by the sudden fierceness
of his passion, confounded by the meaning that now banished what was
friendship. She moistened her lips nervously and tried to speak, but
found no words.
Hardly noticing her silence, he swept on: “Listen, and you will believe
that I know love at last. Ever since the day I met you by the trout
stream, I have understood how Helen could give up all to save her lover.
Why do you shrink? Is it all too sudden, my rebirth? Did you not even
guess?”
Brooke steadied herself with difficulty and merely shook her head. Stead
leaned toward her and would have clasped her in his arms, but something
in her face held him at bay.
“What is it, child? for God’s sake, don’t look so! I have frightened
you! You welcomed me as a friend, why not a lover? Am I then too old for
that?” and for an instant an iron frown drove the radiance from his face.
Slowly Brooke began to realize that he was offering her his love,
his protection to them all. It meant pleasant companionship, no more
struggling, certainty and reasonable ease, time for study. For an instant
she felt weary, overcome, vanquished, and the relief within her grasp
seemed almost sweet. The next moment her woman’s nature, frank and real,
knew that this was not all, and faltering, yet gaining courage as she
spoke, she answered:—
“That is not it; you do seem old to me, but if I had loved you, I should
not think of that or know it—only that I loved you.”
“And how can you know that you do not? you with the transparent nature of
a child, how can you judge of these things as well as those who have been
tried by fire? Unless—” and his voice dropped and the colour died from
his face, leaving it an earthy gray under its coat of tan—“unless there
is some one else this time as there was before. Is there this some one,
Brooke, and has he stood proof as well?”
Brooke’s pallor left her, and strength came to limb and voice. Stepping
quickly toward him, she laid her hands on his that were now held
clenched, and looking into his face said, in a voice quivering with
coming tears: “I need your pity, too. There is another, Robert Stead, but
he does not and may never know.”
“God help us both,” he murmured, and stooping almost reverently, pressed
the kiss upon the folded hands with which a moment before he would have
sought to kindle the fire in her lips.
For many moments they stood thus, and then Brooke said, with difficulty,
“You will come sometimes to see my mother and Adam? Oh, do not let my
blindness make you cast him off!”
“Yes and no—” Stead answered, as they turned and walked mechanically down
the wood lane toward the highway.
Once in the open he paused and said, in a voice so low and trembling that
it was but a whisper, “I have a report to make to-night, but to-morrow
I will go to see your mother.” Then, taking her hand gently: “Do not
grieve, gentle one, I was blind too; we are all blind when the heart’s
eye is satisfied. At worst, you have done more than you know for me;
now, the motive lacking, I shall try to work for work’s sake—and—”
pointing eastward—“I shall still share with you the River Kingdom!”
No word of this ordeal ever passed the lips of Brooke, but it lay heavily
upon her, for she was of the sort who feel that love, honestly proffered,
even if unsought, carries an eternal obligation. Yet some one else had
seen and shared the secret that lay buried between them, and read the
meaning amiss. The farmer-on-shares had crossed the path below on his way
from Enoch Fenton’s rye-field at the moment that Stead had stooped to
kiss Brooke’s folded hands.