Sidney, knitting faster, as she always did when warming to her subject.
"I never heard of her making any such sign when her son and only child
went away and died without coming back. I never heard or saw her show
any anxiety about _his_ son and only child, that she's never laid her
eyes on, though he's now a grown man. I never heard a hint from her
about him last night--till she had eaten the last ounce of the
pound-cake; and drunk the last drop of the blackberry cordial. Then she
remembered to tell me that this only grandson of hers is coming at
last."
Here was the news! Miss Sophia settled back in her chair with a deep
breath of satisfaction. Miss Judy exclaimed in interested surprise. Very
few strangers came to Oldfield, consequently the advent of a young
gentleman from a distant city was an event indeed. No wonder that Sidney
had made as much of it as she could. Miss Judy, and even Miss Sophia,
felt the high compliment paid them in being the first to whom Sidney had
taken the thrilling intelligence. It was, in fact, the highest
expression of Sidney's gratitude to Miss Judy, and fully recognized as
such by both the little sisters, who appreciated it accordingly.
When Sidney was gone on her way to distribute the great news at the
various points which promised the largest results, Miss Judy went into
the darkened parlor, the other of the two large rooms which the house
contained. It was rarely opened, and never used except when, at long and
rare intervals, a formal caller, of whom there were not many in that
country, was invited to enter it and to feel the way to a chilly,
slippery seat. There were two good reasons for the room's disuse. One
was that social preeminence in the Pennyroyal Region demanded a dark and
disused parlor, although it did not militate against a bed in the living
room. Formal visitors expected to grope their way through impenetrable
gloom to invisible seats. Accidents sometimes happened, it is true, as
when, upon one occasion, old lady Gordon, in calling upon Miss Judy
shortly before Major Bramwell left for Virginia, sat down in a large
chair, without being aware that it was already occupied by the major,
who was a very small man. The second good reason for the room's not
being used was that in cool weather Miss Judy could not get fuel for
another fire. It was all that Merica could do, all the year round, to
find enough wood for one fire; the stray sticks dropped from passing
wagons, an occasional branch fallen from the old locust trees which
lined the big road, and the regular basket of chips picked up behind the
cabinet-maker's shop, barely sufficing to keep up a small blaze in the
corner of the fireplace in the living room, which was also the sisters'
bedroom.
Miss Judy groped her way cautiously through the darkness of the chilly
parlor, and raised the shades far enough to let in a slender shaft of
sunlight. She looked around the room with a soft sigh. It was so full of
sad and tender memories, and so empty of everything else. The portraits
of her father and mother, painted very young, hung side by side over the
tall mantelpiece. The intelligent force of her father's face and the
soft beauty of her mother's came back to Miss Judy anew whenever she
looked at their likenesses. On the opposite walls hung the portraits of
her paternal grandfather and grandmother, painted when they were very
old. The old gentleman, a judge under the crown in Virginia, had been
painted in his wig and gown. His fine face was hard and stern, and Miss
Judy often wondered whether he ever had forgiven his son for fighting
against the king and the mother country. The old lady's face was as
sweet and gentle as Miss Judy's own, and there was a charming
resemblance between the pictured and the living features. But the
grandmother's face wore an expression of unhappiness, and the
granddaughter's was never unhappy, although it was sometimes sad for the
unhappiness of others and the pain of the world.
The portraits had been taken out of their frames, so that they might be
brought over the Alleghanies with less difficulty. They had never been
reframed, and there was something inexpressibly melancholy in their
hanging thus, quite unshielded, against the rough, whitewashed logs.
Melancholy, vague and far-off, pervaded indeed the whole atmosphere of
the shadowed room. It floated out from a broken vase of parian marble
which was filled with dried rose leaves, brown and crumbling, yet still
sending forth that sweetest, purest, loneliest, and saddest of scents.
It clung about the angular, empty arms of the few old chairs, dim with
brocade of faded splendor. It lay on the long old sofa--with its high
back and its sunken springs--like the wan ghost of some bright dream
that had never come true. But the tenderest and subtlest sadness came
from the fading sampler which Miss Judy's mother had worked in those
endless days of exile in the wilderness. Ah, the silent suffering, the
patient endurance, the uncomplaining disappointment, wrought into those
numberless stitches! And yet, with all, perhaps bits of brightness
too,--a touch of rose-color here, and a hint of gold there--such as a
sweet woman weaves into the grayest fabric of life.
Miss Judy, sighing again, although she could not have told why she
always sighed on entering the darkened parlor, now knelt down beside the
sofa, and drew a small box from beneath it. But she did not open the box
at once; instead, she seated herself on the floor and sat still for a
space holding the box in her hand, as if she shrank from seeing its
contents. At length, slowly untying the discolored cord that bound the
box, she lifted the cover, and took out a pair of satin slippers. They
had once been white, but they were now as yellow as old ivory, and the
narrow ribbon intended to cross over the instep and to tie around the
ankle had deepened almost into the tint of the withered primrose. The
slippers were heel-less, and altogether of an antiquated fashion, but
Miss Judy did not know that they were. She was doubtful only about the
size, for they seemed very small even to her; and she thought, with
tender pride, how much taller Doris was than she had ever been, even
before she had begun to stoop a little in the shoulders. Turning the
slippers this way and that, she regarded them anxiously, with her curly
head on one side, until she at last made up her mind that Doris could
wear them. They might be rather a snug fit, but they would stay on,
while Doris was dancing, all the better for fitting snugly. Yet Miss
Judy still sat motionless, holding the slippers, and looking down at
them, long after reaching this conclusion. The most unselfish of women,
she was, nevertheless, a truly womanly woman. She could not surrender
the last symbol of a wasted youth without many lingering pangs.
VI
LYNN GORDON
The slippers had belonged to a white dress which Miss Judy used to call
her book-muslin party coat, and this treasure was already in Doris's
possession. It had been very fine in its first soft whiteness, and now,
mellowed by time, as the slippers were, into the hue of old ivory, and
darned all over, it was like some rare and exquisite old lace. Doris
thought it the prettiest thing that she had ever seen; certainly it was
the prettiest that she had ever owned. When, therefore, the slippers
came to join it as a complete surprise, she took the party coat out of
its careful wrappings, and, after a close search, was delighted to find
one or two gauzy spaces still undarned. It was a delight merely to touch
the old muslin. She held it against her cheek--which was softer and
fairer still, though Doris thought nothing of that--giving it a loving
little pat before laying it down. There were household duties to be done
ere Doris would be free to get her invisible needle and her gossamer
thread, and to begin the airy weaving of the cobwebs.
There was only one room and a loft to be put in order, but Doris always
did it while her mother was busy in the kitchen, getting ready for the
day's professional round. Sidney was exceedingly particular about the
cleaning of her house, insisting that the "rising sun" of the red and
yellow calico quilt should always be precisely in the middle of the
feather bed, and that the gorgeous border of sun-rays should be even all
around the edges. The long, narrow pillow-cases, ruffled across the
ends, must also hang just so far down the bed's sides--and no farther.
The home-made rug, too, had its exact place, and there must never be a
speck of dust anywhere.
The house was said to be the cleanest in Oldfield, where all the houses
were clean. Some people believed that Sidney scrubbed the log walls
inside and outside every spring, before whitewashing them within and
without. Be that as it may, the poor home had, at all events, the fresh
neatness which invests even poverty with refinement.
Doris slighted nothing that morning, although she was naturally
impatient to go back to the book-muslin. Yet it seemed to take longer to
get the house in perfect order than ever before. The trundle-bed in
which Kate and Billy slept was particularly contrary, and it really
looked, for a time, as if Doris would never be able to get it entirely
out of sight under the big bed. It was settled at last, however, and she
had taken up the party coat and had seated herself beside the window,
when her mother entered the room.
Sidney cast a sharp glance at the white cotton window curtain to see if
it were drawn exactly to the middle of the middle pane, or rather to the
hair line, which the middle of the middle pane would have reached, had
Doris not put the sash up. Sidney, rigid in her rudimentary ideas of
propriety, considered it improper for a young girl to sit unshielded
before a window in full view from the highway. It made no difference to
Sidney that nobody ever passed the window, except as the neighbors went
to and fro, or an occasional farmer came to the village on business.
Sidney was firm, and Doris, the gentle and yielding, did as she was told
to do. The coarse white curtain was accordingly now in its proper place.
Sidney noted the fact, as she cast a sweeping glance around the room,
seeking the speck of dust which she seldom found and which never escaped
her keen eyes. Doris put the book-muslin aside and arose as her mother
came in, and she now stood awaiting directions for the management of the
household during the day. Sidney's professional absences lasted from
nine in the morning until six in the evening every day, winter and
summer, the whole year round, Sunday alone excepted. During these
prolonged absences the care of the family rested upon Doris's young
shoulders, and had done so ever since she could remember. It may have
been this which gave her the little air of dignity which set so
charmingly on her radiant youth. She now listened to her mother's
directions, gravely, attentively, respectfully, as she always did.
"Everything is spick and span in the kitchen," Sidney said, setting the
broom on end behind the door and rolling down the sleeves over her
strong arms. "Make the children stay in the back yard till the school
bell rings. Don't let them go in the kitchen. They clutter up things
like two little pigs. And don't let them get at the cake that Anne
Watson sent. We'll keep that for Sunday dinner. It's mighty light and
nice. It lays awful heavy on my conscience, though. I really ought to go
to see poor Tom this very day. I ought to go there every day and try to
cheer him up. But I've got so many places engaged that I actually don't
know where to go first. Remember--don't let the children touch the cake.
Give 'em a slice apiece of that pie of Miss Pettus's. And there will be
plenty of Kitty Mills's cold ham for them and for Uncle Watty too."
"Yes'm," answered Doris, assenting to everything which her mother told
her to do or not to do. Trained by Miss Judy, she would no more have
thought of speaking to an older person or to any one whom she respected,
without saying "sir" or "madam," than a well-bred French girl would
think of doing such a thing. Miss Judy and Doris had never heard of its
being "servile" to do this. They both considered it an essential part of
good manners and gentle breeding. Many old-fashioned folks in the
Pennyroyal Region still think so.
Untying her gingham apron, and hanging it beside the broom, Sidney put
on her sunbonnet, and, firmly settling her ball of yarn under her left
arm, began to knit as she left the door-step on which Doris stood
looking after her.
Sidney paused for a moment at the gate after dropping the loop of string
over the post, and looked up at the little window in the loft.
"It would, I reckon, be better to let your Uncle Watty sleep as long as
he likes. He's kinder out of the way up there, and better off asleep
than awake, poor soul, when he hasn't got any red cedar to whittle. I
noticed yesterday that he had whittled up his last stick. He never knows
what to do with himself when he's out of cedar. I'll try to get him
some. Maybe old lady Gordon's black gardener Enoch Cotton will fetch
some from the woods, if I promise to knit him a pair of socks."
An expression flitted over Doris's face, telling her thoughts. Sidney,
seeing it, felt in duty bound to rebuke it.
"Now, Doris--mind what I say--as young folks do old folks, so other
young folks will do them when their turn comes. I never knew it to fail.
We all get what we give, no more, no less. It always works even in the
end, though it may not seem so as we go along. See that your Uncle
Watty's breakfast is real nice and hot. Make him some milk toast out of
Mrs. Alexander's salt-rising--if it's too hard for his gums. Old lady
Gordon said she would have Eunice fetch me a bucket of milk every day.
You won't forget?"
Doris again said "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am" in the proper place,
listening throughout with the greatest attention and respect, and trying
very hard not to think about the book-muslin party coat.
Sidney twitched the string which held the gate to the post, to make sure
that it was firmly tied. "That crumpled-horn of Colonel Fielding's could
pick a lock with her horns. Now remember about Uncle Watty. He's had a
hard time, poor old man, ever since his leg was broken. If Dr. Alexander
had been here, it would have been different. I should just like to give
that fool of a travelling doctor a piece of my mind. Him a-pretending to
know what he was about, and a-setting your poor Uncle Watty's broken leg
east and _west_, instead of north and _south_!"
Doris's cheek dimpled, but she answered dutifully as before. She had her
own opinion as to how much the latitude or longitude of Uncle Watty's
left leg had to do with his general disability. She could remember him
before the leg was broken, and she had never known him to do anything
except whittle a stick of red cedar. Youth, at its gentlest, is apt to
be hard in its judgment of age's shortcomings. Doris knew how good her
mother was as she watched her walking down the big road, with her long,
free, swinging stride, with her sunbonnet on the back of her head, and
her knitting-needles flashing in the sun. But she wondered if there were
no other way. She hated to see her set out on these rounds, she had
hated it ever since she could remember, and had gone on hating it as
vehemently as it was in her gentle nature to hate anything. The mother
never had been able to make Doris see from her own point of view, and
Doris had never been able to make her mother understand the intensity of
her own sensitiveness, or the soreness of her silent pride. Many a day,
as Doris sat sewing beside the window in seeming contentment, she was
restlessly seeking some means of escape; almost continually she was
trying to find a way to lift the burden from her mother--striving to see
something wholly different that she herself might do. Going back to her
book-muslin on that morning, she was wondering whether Mrs. Watson or
Mrs. Alexander might not need some needle-work done. Perhaps she could
earn a little money in that way, and they could live on very little. But
hers was not a brooding disposition, and she was soon singing over the
old party coat. Then the school bell reminded her that the children's
faces and hands must be washed before they went to school; and by the
time they were sent off down the big road, Uncle Watty was ready for his
breakfast. Doris carried out her mother's directions to the letter. She
poured his coffee, and sat respectfully waiting until he had finished
eating, and then she washed the dishes, and put them away.
Returning to her seat by the window, she glanced now and then at Uncle
Watty, who had seated himself under the blossoming plum tree to enjoy a
leisurely, luxurious pipe of tobacco, having recently swapped a butter
paddle, which he had whittled out of red cedar, for a fine old "hand" of
the precious weed. It was, however, most unusual for Uncle Watty's
whittling to assume any useful shape, or, indeed, any shape at all.
Every morning, except Sunday, he hobbled off down the big road, to take
his seat before the store door on an empty goods-box, with his
pocket-knife and his stick of red cedar, ready for whittling. Year after
year, the box and Uncle Watty were always in the same spot, moving only
to follow the sun in winter and the shade in summer; and the heap of red
cedar shavings always grew steadily, ever undisturbed save as the winds
scattered them, and the rains beat them into the earth. When Uncle Watty
finally came hobbling around the corner of the house that day, and went
away in the direction of the store, Doris looked after him,
wondering--rather carelessly, and a little harshly, after the manner of
the young and untried--what could be the meaning of an existence which
left a trail of red cedar shavings as the sole mark of its path through
life. But that perplexing thought also passed as the other had done. She
began thinking of the dancing lessons, growing more and more absorbed in
the darning of the party coat. She wished she knew whether Miss Judy had
ever worn it to a real dancing party. She had never heard of one's being
given in Oldfield, excepting of course the famous ball at the
Fielding's, near the jail, on the night that the prisoner escaped; long,
long before she was born. Most of the Oldfield people thought it a sin
to dance. Miss Judy must have looked very pretty in the book-muslin.
Doris laid it on her lap, and, turning to the window, gave the curtain
an impatient toss, pushing it to one side. There was no use in keeping
it half drawn when never a soul ever went by. And the sun was shining,
almost with the warmth of midsummer, on this glorious May-day. When the
spring was still farther advanced, when the leaves were larger on the
two tall silver poplars standing beside the gate, lifting a shimmering
white screen from the soft green earth to the softer blue sky; when the
climbing roses, already blooming all over the snowy walls, were more
thickly festooned; when the Italian honeysuckle hung its rich bronze
garlands and its fragrant bloom from the very eaves of the mossy
roof--then Doris might push the curtain farther back, but not before, no
matter how brilliantly the sun shone or how entirely deserted the big
road was. As Doris sat sewing and thinking, it seemed to her that her
mother was unnecessarily strict. She had even thought it wrong to allow
her to learn to dance. Miss Judy had found much difficulty in persuading
her. However, she had consented at last, and presently Doris, all alone
in the old house, began singing blithely, oblivious of everything except
the anticipation of the dancing lessons and the pleasure of darning the
party coat. The song was one of Allan Ramsay's, a languishing love-song
which Miss Judy's mother had sung. But as Doris's thoughts danced to
inaudible music, and her needle flew daintily in and out of the soft old
muslin, the words and the tune soon tripped to a gayer measure than they
had, perhaps, ever known before.
The birds, too, were lilting gayly on that perfect May morning. A couple
of flycatchers were breakfasting in mid-air. It is impossible to
conceive of a daintier way to satisfy hunger; as a Kentucky poet has
said: "It is, apparently, all color and rhythm--with green boughs and
violet sky for canopy, the pure air for a table--and in its midst the
sweet bouquet of the woods." And the flycatcher was but one of many
beautiful melodious creatures thronging between heaven and earth. Brown
thrashers by twos and fours flitted back and forth across the big road,
leaving one green wheat-field for another of still richer verdure. A
happy pair of orioles, flashing orange and black, were darting--bright
as flame and light as smoke--through the tallest silver poplar, building
an air-castle almost as wonderful, and nearly as fragile, as those that
young human lovers build. With the fetching of each fine fibre, the
husband fairly turned upside down, and hung by his feet, while singing
his pride and delight. The wife, more modestly happy, quietly rested her
soft breast on the unstable nest--with all a woman's trust--as though
the home were founded upon a rock, as all homes should be, and hung not
by a frail thread at the hazardous tip of an unsteady bough
as--alas!--so many homes do. It was steady enough just now, when love
was new and the spring was mild, and only the southern breeze stirred
the white-lined leaves with a silken rustle. The soft cooing of the
unseen doves sounded far off. The bees merely murmured among the
honeysuckle blooms. The humming-bird, which was raying rubies and
emeralds from the hearts of the roses, came and went as softly as the
south wind.
Doris smiled at the sylvan housekeeping of the orioles, which she
watched for awhile, letting her sewing rest on her lap. But tiring soon
of the little drama of the silver poplar, as we always tire of the
happiness of others, the girl's eyes wandered wistfully through the
fragrant loneliness to the wooded hills which gently folded the drowsy
village. The trees, delicately green, almost silver gray, in their
tender foliage, were still fringed by the snow of the dogwood, and the
misty beauty of the red buds; and the cool, leafy vistas, sloping gently
down toward the village, met the sea of blossoming orchards, breaking in
wide, deep waves of pink and white foam at the foot of the hills. But
Doris had seen those same trees, and hillsides, and orchards every
May-time of her eighteen years, and sameness, however grateful to older
eyes, has never a great charm for youth.
Doris's eyes came back to the book-muslin with a keener interest. As she
sat there, sewing and singing, in the soft light that filtered through
the old curtain, the girl was beautiful, almost tragically beautiful,
for her uncertain place in the world. Her slender throat, like the stem
of a white flower, arose from the faded brown of her dress as an Easter
lily unfolds from its dull sheath. Her radiant hair, yellow as new-blown
marigolds, clustered thick and soft about her fair forehead, as the rich
pollen falls on the lily's satin. Her delicate brows were dark and
straight; and her curling lashes, darker still, threw bewitching shadows
around her large, brown eyes. Her face was pale with a warm pallor
infinitely fairer than any mere fairness. Her lips, which were a little
full, but exquisite in shape and sweetness, were tinted as delicately as
blush roses. Her small, white hands, with their rosy palms and tapering
fingers, bore no traces of hard work. But Doris was not thinking of her
hands as, without turning her head, she put out one of them for another
length of thread. The spool was a very small one, and it stood rather
unsteadily on the uneven ledge of the window, and it rolled when Doris
touched it. Instinctively she tried to catch it, and to keep it from
falling to the ground outside the window. She had been reared to
neatness and order, and to economy which valued even a reel of cotton
too much to see it needlessly soiled. Of course Doris tried to catch the
falling spool,--and that was the way everything began! It was all as
simple and natural and purely accidental as anything could have been.
And yet at the same time it was one of those inscrutable happenings
which make the steadiest of us seem but feathers in the wind of destiny.