road seemed entirely deserted. Not a human being was in sight--Doris was
sure that there was not, because she had looked and looked in vain, and
had longed and longed that there might be. Nevertheless, as the little
reel started to fall, and Doris darted after it as suddenly and swiftly
as a swallow, there was a young man on horseback directly in front of
the window, appearing as strangely and as unexpectedly as if he had
sprung out of the earth. And, moreover, he was looking straight at
Doris, with hardly more than a couple of rods between them, when she
burst into full view in the broad light of day, appearing like some
beautiful bacchante. The white curtain fell behind her radiant head as
the breeze caught and loosed the golden strands of her hair, and the sun
flashed a greater radiance upon its dazzling crown. She saw him, too,
with a startled uplifting of her great shadowy dark eyes as she bent
forward--while her exquisite face was still smiling at her own innocent
thoughts, and her rose-red lips were still a little apart with the
singing of the old love-song.
The white curtain then swung again into place. It was full of thin spots
which Doris could see through; but she was so startled, and her heart
was beating so fast at first, that she shrunk back without trying to
look. How right her mother had been, after all. That was her first
feeling. When she recovered self-possession enough to peep out, she saw
that the young man's horse was curveting back and forth across the big
road in a most alarming manner. This continued for a surprising length
of time before Doris observed that, whenever the horse seemed about to
stop, the rider touched him with the spur. Such a flash of indignation
went over Doris then as quite swept away the last trace of
embarrassment. How could he do such a cruel and such a meaningless
thing! She wondered still more why he dismounted, and, throwing the
bridle reins over his arm, began walking up and down in front of the
window, gazing closely at the ground as though looking for something
that he had lost. Doris noticed that he glanced at the window every time
he passed it, and she knew that she ought to go out and help him find
what he had lost. That was a matter of course in Oldfield manners. It is
the way of most country people to take a keen and helpful interest in
everything that a neighbor does; and city people deserve less credit
than they claim for their indifference to their neighbor's affairs,
which is too often mere selfishness disguised. Notwithstanding this
local social law Doris did not stir, held motionless by an influence
which she could not understand. She had known at once who the young man
was. Too few strangers came to Oldfield for her to fail to place him
immediately as the grandson of old lady Gordon, the young gentleman from
Boston, whose coming everybody was talking about. She noted through the
worn places in the old curtain how tall he was and how dark and how
handsome. She could not decide what kind of clothes his riding clothes
were. At last he mounted his horse and galloped up the hill, and then
Doris returned serenely to the darning of the book-muslin party coat.
VII
THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA
Within the hour Lynn Gordon rode back down the hill, and passed the
window very slowly, watching the curtain as a star-gazer awaits the
passing of a cloud.
The baffling width of white cotton hung still unstirred; Doris was no
longer sitting behind it, but the young man had no means of knowing that
she had gone. As the hand on the reins unconsciously drew the horse
almost to a standstill, the doctor and his wife left their seats on the
porch of their house over the way, and came out to the gate to speak to
him. They had met him at his grandmother's on the previous evening, and
they had been old friends of his father. Lynn sprang from the saddle
and, leading his horse, crossed the big road to shake hands with them.
"Have you lost something?" asked Mrs. Alexander.
"Oh, no--yes--I have lost a jewel--a pearl," the young man replied
rashly.
The doctor's lady exclaimed in surprise. Jewels were rarely lost or
found in that country. The gems oftenest lost were the sparkling seeds
which flashed out of the jewel-weed; the finest pearls ever found were
those which the mistletoe bore.
"Dear me, what a pity," lamented Mrs. Alexander. "And how was your pearl
set?"
"It wasn't mine. I didn't notice how it was set. Oh, yes, I did. It was
set amid roses and honeysuckle and humming-birds against a field of
spotless snow," Lynn said, still more lightly.
The doctor's wife was not a dull woman. She understood his tone, though
she did not understand what he meant. She had been eagerly scanning the
big road, as far as she could see; thinking that a jewel dropped near by
on the highway--unrolling like a broad band of brown velvet from the far
green hills on the north to the farther green hills on the south--must
sparkle and flash, showing a long way off in such brilliant sunshine.
Now, however, she knew that Lynn was not in earnest, and she turned with
a smile on her own face to meet the laughing frankness of his fine dark
eyes. But a glance was just passing between the young man and the older
man, and she caught that also, with the vague, helpless uneasiness,
tinged with resentment, which every woman feels at seeing a sign of the
freemasonry of men.
But a doctor's wife learns to overlook a good many things which she
would like to have explained, if she be a sensible woman, as Mrs.
Alexander was. This one merely said:--
"You are a joker, I see, as your father was. Nobody ever could tell when
he was serious. Come in and sit with us. It's nice and cool these early
mornings on the porch. Tie your horse to the fence. I thought when I saw
you getting down from the saddle, that you meant to hitch him to
Sidney's, and I was just going to call and ask you to tie him to ours
instead. The doctor's horses pull boards off our fences every day, but
it doesn't matter, because he keeps somebody to nail them on again;
while Sidney has nobody but herself to depend upon."
"And even the resourceful Sidney--being a woman--can't drive a nail,"
remarked the doctor, deliberately.
He knew how well worn the truism was, but he used it designedly, as a
toreador uses his scarf. He liked to see his wife flare up. Her kind
eyes grew so bright and her wholesome cheeks so red, and it was always
so delightfully easy to get her in a good humor again. It is a tendency
which is very common in large men with amiable little wives like Mrs.
Alexander, and one which is very uncommon in smaller men with wives of a
different disposition.
Lynn Gordon, as an unmarried man, naturally knew nothing of these
matters and blundered on, disappointing the doctor's confident
expectations by asking the lady a question, which turned her attention
in another direction. He inquired who Sidney was, seeing an opportunity
for learning something about the girl behind the silver poplars.
There was no subject upon which Mrs. Alexander was more willing to talk,
nor one upon which she could talk more eloquently, and she accordingly
began at once to give Lynn the history of Sidney Wendall, whom she held
to be a most interesting as well as a most admirable and remarkable
character. It was no easy or simple thing, so the doctor's wife said,
for a woman of the Pennyroyal Region to earn a family's living. In that
country no white woman could work outside her own home (were there
anything for her to do) on account of coming into competition with black
laborers. And Sidney had received no training to lift her above the
laboring class, having had even less than the average country education.
And yet, as the doctor's wife pointed out, she had managed to maintain
her family and herself in reasonable comfort and universal respect. It
was all very well for the men to laugh at Sidney and make fun of her
news and her gossip. It was all very well for them to say--as the doctor
said, according to his wife, who flashed her eyes at him--that Sidney
made her news out of the whole cloth when she did not get it over the
grapevine telegraph. Everybody knew how hard men always were on any
woman who was not pretty. As though poor Sidney could help the length of
her own nose! Let the mean men make fun as much as they pleased! The
indignant lady would like, so she said, to see one of them who had done
his duty in the world more nobly than Sidney had done hers. She would
also like, so she declared, to see one of them who kept as strict guard
over what he said about his neighbors, and who was as free from
evil-speaking and mischief-making, as Sidney was--for all her talking
that they were always so ready to ridicule.
The doctor leaned back in his chair, beaming at his wife. He was very
proud of her when she talked and looked as she was doing now, and he was
truly sorry when she was compelled to pause for sheer lack of breath.
"I am afraid I don't know the lady of whom you are speaking," Lynn said,
as soon as he had a chance to speak. "I haven't been here, you know,
since I could remember. Do you mean some one who lives over there in the
house behind those silver poplars?" And then, he added artfully, "It
seems to be deserted."
"There is where Sidney Wendall lives, but she is never at home in the
daytime. Her business takes her out. But Doris, the eldest daughter, is
at home. She has always taken care of the house and the other children,
and even of Uncle Watty. She used to do it when she wasn't so high," the
doctor's wife said, holding her hand about three feet from the porch
floor. "Such a lovely, golden-haired, dark-eyed, delicate little
changeling, in that homely, rude, rough-and-tumble brood."
"Is this beautiful Doris a child still?" inquired the young man,
deceitfully leading on nearer to what he wished to learn.
"Oh, no. I was speaking of years ago. Doris is about grown now, and
prettier than ever. You'll be sure to see her. There are very few young
ladies in Oldfield. She seldom goes out, though. She stays close at home
and takes care of things just as she always has done. It must be a
lonely, dreary life for a girl,--and such a beauty too,--but she never
seems to mind it. I heard her singing this morning about the time that
you rode up."
"I met Sidney coming out of the Watsons' gate when I went in to see Tom
in passing," the doctor said suddenly, and with a different manner. "I
wish, Jane, that you would ask Sidney, the first time you see her, to go
there as often as she can. Send her something, and tell her that I think
her going would cheer up Tom."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Alexander, scathingly. "Then Sidney's 'gab,' as
you ungrateful men call it, has its uses after all!"
"I am not jesting now, my dear. I am seriously disturbed about Tom
Watson. So far as I am able to judge, there is nothing more that surgery
or medicine can do for him. The time has come, now when we have done our
utmost for his body, that we must find some relief for his mind. He must
not be allowed to sit there propped up by the window, staring out at the
big road, and never trying to speak even the few indistinct words that
he might utter, and always brooding, brooding--over his own awful
condition, I'm afraid."
"Well, I've done what I could," said the doctor's wife, quickly, as
though her husband's words bore some unspoken reproach. "I know my
double duty to a neighbor and a patient of yours, John. But I can't go
to see Tom Watson again. You never saw such a sad sight, Mr. Gordon. I
actually dream about it after I have seen him. That is where the Watsons
live," she said, pointing to the house. "I go every morning to the cross
fence between our house and theirs, taking some little thing for Tom
just to show that I have been thinking about him, and I call Anne to the
other side of the fence and ask her how he is. But doing even that hurts
her and hurts me, for she knows that I know that he never can be any
better."
"And I think he knows it too. That is the most terrible thing of all,"
the doctor said, musingly, as if turning over ways and means in his
mind.
Mrs. Alexander looked at Lynn with a sudden dimness shadowing the
brightness of her kind eyes. "You don't know the Oldfield people, Mr.
Gordon, though you are really one of us. Unless you had known Tom Watson
as we knew him, you can hardly understand how terrible and how strange
his present condition seems to us. He used to be a great, strong, noisy,
reckless, hot-tempered dare-devil, but as tender-hearted as a child and
liked by everybody, black and white, big and little, in the whole
country."
A sudden recollection caused her to smile at her husband, forgetting
that she had just been scolding him and that he richly deserved it:--
"You remember, John, that time when Tom kept those bear cubs tied up in
his back lot. One day the biggest of them got loose and caught Sidney as
she was going home with a pitcher of milk which Anne had given her.
Sidney was almost scared out of her wits, and screamed as loud as she
could, till the bear squeezed her so tight that she couldn't make
another sound. But she never let go the pitcher--never even loosed her
grip--and kept on holding it out of the cub's reach, long after she
couldn't scream any more. Tom went running. Can't you see him now, John?
and hear him shouting at every jump: 'Let go, Sid. Good Gad--woman! are
you going to let the bear hug the life out of you before you'll give him
that spoonful of milk?'"
"And to think of poor Tom as he is now;" she went on presently, the
smile fading. "I will speak to Sidney as you suggest, John. I will send
her a basket of sweet potatoes and urge her to go as often as she can.
Anne would never think of asking any one to come, but I know she would
be pleased to have Sidney drop in. She's always like a fresh breeze on a
hot day even to well folks. She told me, however, the other morning that
Tom Watson never seemed to notice anything that she had to say. She said
that, no matter how hard she tried to entertain him, he kept on staring
out at the empty big road, just sitting there, not trying to speak, and
looking like a dead man only for his restless, burning eyes."
"And yet he may live for years just as he is now," the doctor said. "But
we must not give up trying to help him because he can never be any
better. I must devise some sort of relief. It will not do to let him sit
there, like that, all day, day after day--maybe for years. I tried this
morning to find out what he was thinking about. I also tried to learn
from Anne what his tastes were, what sort of things he had liked or was
interested in before he met with the accident. His sight is much
impaired, and he seems never to have been anything of a reader. I doubt
whether he ever had any indoor interests, except playing cards. All that
I can remember is that he used to gamble like the very devil."
"Shame on you, John, to be raking up that against the poor fellow, as he
is now," protested the doctor's wife, indignantly.
"Nonsense! Who's raking anything up?" the doctor responded. "I was
merely trying to think of some way of diverting his mind. I thought
perhaps a game of cards--"
The doctor's wife uttered a smothered little shriek: "John _Alexander_!
What are you thinking of to speak of card-playing in Anne Watson's
house?"
The doctor grew calmly judicial, as all good husbands grow when their
wives become unduly excited. "I am well aware of Anne's prejudice. I
know precisely how strong--"
"Strong!" repeated his wife, interrupting him. "It's the strongest
thing--the only really strong thing--_in_ Anne--that, and her religion.
Her horror of card-playing is a part of her religion. It's bred in her
bone. She got it from her father, the elder. Some people thought he was
actually out of his head about cards. And Anne believes as firmly as he
believed it, that cards are Satan's chief weapon, and that even to touch
them is to imperil the soul. She believes it as firmly as she believes
in baptism for the remission of sins; as firmly as she believes that
there is a heaven and a hell."
All this breathless outpouring the doctor waved aside: "As I have
already said, my dear, I know perfectly well what Anne's feeling used to
be. Now, however, in Tom's hopeless condition she will, of course, look
at the matter with more reason."
"Now _isn't_ that like a man?" appealed Mrs. Alexander, to no one in
particular, since she could hardly appeal to her visitor against his own
sex. "Wouldn't anybody but a man know that Anne would only stand the
firmer for that very reason? Any woman would see in a moment that the
very fact of Anne's knowing that her husband's mortal life was
hopelessly wrecked, could not fail to increase her resistance against a
thing which she believes must lose him the life everlasting."
The doctor took his feet down from the porch railing, and tapped his
pipe against the post with an unnecessary amount of noise. Lynn Gordon
looked hard at the silver poplars on the other side of the big road.
Different men have different ways of giving outward expression to the
embarrassment which every man feels at a woman's innocent frankness
regarding spiritual things. Neither of these men spoke for a space. The
doctor was casting about for the surest and swiftest way of fetching his
wife back to some ground on which he felt rather more at home, and
decidedly more secure of his own footing.
"Anne knew that Tom was a born gambler; she knew it before she married
him. Nobody but a woman--a fanatical visionary like Anne--would have
been foolish enough to expect to change a leopard's spots."
"It doesn't strike me as particularly foolish for Anne--or for any other
woman--to expect her husband to keep his promise not to get any _new_
spots," the lady retorted, with all the promptness and spirit that her
husband anticipated.
The doctor glanced at the young man as triumphantly as he dared, and the
young man returned the doctor's glance as non-committally as he could.
They had both often observed before this, as most observant people
observe at some period of their lives, that while a man will defend
another man whenever he can, regardless of his own feelings toward the
individual, he has never a word to say in defence of men; and that,
while a woman will seldom defend another woman without strong personal
reasons, she is always ready, _cap-a-pie_, to defend women, through
thick and thin.
Nevertheless, the doctor was again a trifle disappointed to find his
wife content with firing a single shot, and he presently said, trying to
urge her on:--
"I have not disputed the fact that Anne Watson is a good woman. Tom no
doubt made the promises that such men always make when they want to win
some pretty girl, and he doubtless hoped to be strong enough to keep
them. But I cannot allow a patient of mine to die or to fall into
melancholy because he has failed to keep promises that many good men
break; or because his wife lacks common sense; no matter how good she
may be or what sort of religion she may be living up to. If Tom wants to
play cards,--as I think that he does, as I am nearly sure that he
does,--I shall certainly find him a partner if I can. I would play with
him myself if I knew how."
"Let me do it, doctor," said Lynn. "I know something about several
games. It would give me real pleasure to do anything in my power for
your patient."
Mrs. Alexander said nothing more in opposition; she merely looked her
thoughts. When, therefore, it was arranged, as the young man was
leaving, that he should come on the following morning to go with the
doctor to see Tom Watson about the game of cards, the lady merely gave
her smooth auburn head a side-wise toss, as if to say they would all see
how it turned out.
VIII
AT OLD LADY GORDON'S
Lynn rode slowly by the Watson house, thinking of its tragedy, which had
thus touched him so soon after his coming to this quiet village, the
seeming abode of peace. It was his first partial realization that the
folded green hills cannot shut away the pain of the world. He was too
young and too strong, and had not suffered enough in mind or body, to
know that quiet and peace only make the heart ache more keenly with the
sorrow of living.
And this was no more even now than a partial perception. He was but
twenty-two, yet in the springtime of life; and the earth also was still
in the season of its perpetual youth. The green of new leafage now
tinted the thinning white of the blossoming orchards; the green and the
white and the last rosy sweetness of apple blossoms were yet melting
slowly into the rich verdure of the hillsides. But the snowy spray of
all the exquisite flowering drifted fast before the incoming summer
tide. Already the wild flowers were almost done blooming in the woods,
and the scented meadows were growing red with clover blossoms.
The largest, richest fields lying on both sides of the big road,
knee-deep in clover and dotted with cattle, belonged to the Gordon
estate. Ultimately they would all be his own, but he was not thinking of
this as he looked at them that day. He had never thought of making
Oldfield his home, having long cherished other plans. Yet, as he looked
at the old house, it was a pleasant sight on that May morning, with its
low white walls bowered in dense shrubbery and its mossy roof overhung
by giant elms. There were many maples, also, and a cypress tree stood
beside the gate, swinging its sombre plumes so close to the ground that
the young man did not see a cart standing before the gate until he was
almost upon it. Coming nearer, he saw that it belonged to a butcher who
had driven in from the country, and that it was well filled with his
wares. The butcher stood astride a plank which had been laid across the
front wheels, and he was busily engaged in turning over the pieces of
meat, evidently seeking something to please the mistress of the house.
Old lady Gordon sat at the open window in her accustomed place, looking
grimly on; and the small Frenchman who managed her farm waited beside
the cart, standing in silence, glancing anxiously from its contents to
the mistress and back again. The butcher scowled, as he tossed the
steaks, the joints, and roasts about, thinking angrily how much more
trouble it always was to please old lady Gordon than all the rest of the
easy-going people living along his semi-weekly route. Finally, however,
he found a piece which seemed promising, and he handed it to the small
Frenchman, who took the huge joint,--holding it as if it were a
sword,--and jauntily carried it across the lawn to the window and held
it up for the mistress to decide upon. She gave only one contemptuous
glance at it; one was enough to cause its rejection with great scorn.
"No, I won't have that!" she called out in her loud, deep, imperious
voice, speaking to the butcher over her manager's head. "How many times
must I tell you that I don't like the bony parts?"
Monsieur Beauchamp suddenly dropped the joint as if it had burnt him,
and started as if he had been stung. His face flushed scarlet, and he
drew himself up to his fullest height.
"Ah, madame," he said poignantly yet proudly, "I am stab to ze soul to
hear you say zat you do not like ze Bonapartes!"
"For gracious' sake!" old lady Gordon exclaimed, taken quite off her
guard; and dropping her turkey-wing fan in her start of amazement.
In another moment she remembered, and forthwith did what she could to
soothe the little Frenchman's deeply wounded feelings. She turned away
her head as her grandson drew near, and put up the turkey-wing fan to
hide the smile which she could not control, when her gaze chanced to
meet his as he looked on, a silent and interested spectator of the
scene.
"Why, Mister Beauchamp," she said, quite gravely, as soon as she could
speak at all, "I am amazed at your thinking that I meant any disrespect
to your relations. How in the world could you think such a thing? I give
you my word of honor, that I have always believed the Bonapartes to be
the only human beings ever created expressly to rule over the French."