explain, and by the time the explanation was finished, he was fairly
beaming with delight. One hand was already holding his hat, but the
other was free, and this he now laid upon his heart, bringing his small
heels together in a most impressive bow. And then, smiling and quite
happy again, he picked up the rejected joint of mutton and carried it
back to the cart very cheerfully indeed. The turning over of its
contents was accordingly resumed for some time longer, until old lady
Gordon consented at last to allow the butcher to leave a large roast.
She shouted after him, nevertheless, as he rattled away; telling him at
the top of her strong voice that he need not think that she would take
another piece as tough and lean as this piece was; that he need have no
such expectation the next time he came round.
She told Lynn the story of the Frenchman when the young man had entered
the room in which she always sat and, with her permission, had thrown
himself down on the couch under the window. But she could not answer his
question about Monsieur Beauchamp immediately, because Eunice, the fat
black cook, chanced to come in just at that moment for a consultation
over the dinner, and the meals in old lady Gordon's house were always
the subjects of very grave consideration, requiring a considerable
length of time.
While the mistress and the cook were thus conferring, the young man
gazed carelessly, and yet curiously, around this large low room in which
his grandmother lived, and had spent the greater part of her life; and
in which his father had been born. The low ceiling had been covered with
canvas years before, but the original white of the canvas had long since
turned to a smoky brown. The walls, which had never been plastered, were
also covered with canvas, and afterward had been hung with old-fashioned
wall-paper in hunting scenes. These had faded into a general effect of
hazy dimness, but Lynn's keen young eyes made out the hunters, the
hounds, and the game, as he lay idle with his long arms under his
handsome dark head, wondering what sort of man his grandfather had been.
He had heard it said that rooms are like the people who live in them,
and, recalling the saying, he wondered again whether this room was now
as it used to be in his grandfather's time. There stood his
grandfather's secretary in one corner, still filled with papers, just as
he must have left it. The bed in the opposite corner must also have
stood in the same place for many a year. It had been a very stately
edifice, a magnificent structure, in its day. It even yet upheld a heavy
tester of faded crimson damask, gathered to the centre under a great
golden star of tarnished splendor. It had evidently once been of
imposing height, and it was still of unusual width, but it had lost
something of its height with age, as human beings do. It had been much
too high for old lady Gordon to climb into and out of, as easily as she
liked, when she began to grow stouter and more indolent, and it was not
her way to submit to any inconvenience which she could avoid. So that
the thick mahogany legs of the grand old bed had been sawed off by
degrees--as old lady Gordon's ease required--till it now squatted under
its big, dusty red tester like some absurd turbaned old Turk. Lynn
smiled as he looked at it, letting his gaze wander on to the tall chest
of drawers, to the high-backed split-bottomed chairs, to a great oaken
chest at the foot of the bed--to all the homely, comfortable,
unbeautiful things.
Looking at his grandmother, who was still absorbed in the consultation
with the cook, the young man suddenly felt how like her face his own
was; feeling it with the curiously mingled uneasiness and satisfaction
which come to most of us when we recognize ancestral traits in our own
spirits, our own minds, or our own bodies. She was a large, tall old
woman, still handsome and even shapely, despite her many years and her
great weight. Her chin was square and her forehead broad, yet her
grandson was somehow pleased to think that his own chin was more
delicately rounded, and that his forehead was higher than hers while not
less broad, and that his mouth was clearer cut. Still, the strong
likeness was there, in every one of the features of their two faces and
most of all in their eyes--long, large, deep, thick-lashed,
heavy-browed, and as black as human eyes ever are; and now as old lady
Gordon turned her head, the young man saw with a kind of shock that his
grandmother's eyes were almost as young, too, as his own. For young eyes
in an old face are not a pleasant sight to see. It seems better for the
ageless, unwearied spirit, thus looking out, to have grown old with the
wearied body, so that both together may be ready for the Rest.
Old lady Gordon noticed her grandson's gaze, as soon as Eunice had gone
from the room, and recognized the admiration which partly occupied his
thoughts. She accordingly smiled at him, settling comfortably back in
her broad, low rocking-chair. She wore a loose flowing wrapper of fine
white muslin, as she always did in warm weather. In the winter she
always wore the same garment made of fine white wool, covering it with a
long black cloak on the rare occasions upon which she left the house
during cold weather. It was a most unusual dress and one of peculiar
distinction, but old lady Gordon took neither of these facts into the
slightest account. She wore the fine white muslin in the summer because
it was cooler than anything else; and she wore the white wool in the
winter for the reason that, while warm and soft, it would wash with less
trouble than colored stuffs, when she dropped things on it at the table,
as she did at almost every meal. It is, perhaps, often just as well that
we cannot know the causes which bring about many pleasing and even
poetic results. Old lady Gordon's servants, especially Dilsey the
washerwoman, held opinions somewhat different from hers concerning the
greater convenience of constantly wearing white in winter as well as in
summer. But old lady Gordon never took that into account either; neither
that nor anything whatsoever that ever touched her own comfort at all
adversely.
"Come and hand me my bag, I want a cough-drop," she said to Lynn that
day, yawning. "It's too far round on the back of the chair for me to
reach it."
Lynn sprang to serve her and handed her the bag. It was the first time
that he had seen it; that is to say, it was the first time that he had
really observed the bag; he must, of course, have seen it, since no one
ever saw old lady Gordon without it. During the day it always hung on
the back of the chair in which she sat when not at the table; when she
sat at the table it always hung on the knob of the dining-room chair.
Through the night it always swung from the post of her bed close to her
hand. When she drove out in her ancient coach the bag went with her. And
a wonderful bag it was! There were many more things in it than mere
cough-drops. There were various other sorts of drops--drops for the
gouty pain which sometimes assailed old lady Gordon's toe, and drops of
good old brandy for cramp after over-eating. And there were candles and
matches, all ready for lighting if she should chance to grow wakeful
through the night, and always plenty of novels; and numerous simple
toilet articles, such as a hairbrush and comb, together with biscuits
and hair-oil and tea-cakes and handkerchiefs and an occasional piece of
pie. It would indeed be hard to think of anything that old lady Gordon
could have needed or desired, during the day or the night; or even have
fancied that she wanted, without finding it ready to her hand in that
wonderful bag. There was a hand-bell in it, too, though the bell usually
lay at the very bottom of the bag, under everything else, because there
was hardly ever any occasion for ringing it. The bag was a very gradual
evolution, like most complete inventions. Old lady Gordon herself had
given a good deal of thought for a good many years to the bringing of it
to its ultimate state of perfection; and Eunice the cook and Patsey the
housemaid had both concentrated their attention upon it more and more as
the mistress's wants and demands increased; until it had now become so
comprehensive that Eunice rarely had to be summoned out of her cabin, at
midnight, to give old lady Gordon a lunch; and Patsey was able, as a
rule, to sleep the whole night through on her pallet in the passage
outside the mistress's door; no matter whether that lady might suddenly
crave refreshment, or whether several kinds of drops might be needed in
consequence of a too hearty supper.
When old lady Gordon had taken the cough-drops out of the bag, and Lynn
had replaced it on the back of her chair, within easier reach, she
answered his question, which he had almost forgotten in his wondering
observation of the bag.
"You were asking about little Beauchamp," she said. "Your grandfather
found him somewhere and brought him home with him a long time ago. He
has been here ever since. I don't remember how long ago that was. I
don't know anything about him before he came. I hardly noticed him, in
fact, until after your grandfather's death, when I found him useful in
helping me manage the farm."
The grandson looked at the grandmother in silence, paying little heed to
what she was saying of the Frenchman. He was wondering why she said
"your grandfather" instead of saying "my husband." He had already noted
that she invariably said "your father" instead of saying "my son." He
knew little of women's ways, having lost his mother before he could
remember, so that his life had been mostly among men, and he knew
nothing whatever of his grandmother. Yet he felt, nevertheless, that a
wife and mother who had loved her husband and her son would not speak of
them to her grandson as "your grandfather" and "your father," as his
grandmother did. He had also a curious, half-amused, half-indignant
feeling that her doing so was intended to make him feel somehow
responsible for something which she disliked, and did not wish to assume
responsibility for herself.
"I never thought of asking your grandfather where he found him," old
lady Gordon went on indifferently. "Most likely it was in New Orleans.
The few foreigners in this country mostly came from there. Your
grandfather used to go there pretty often with flatboat-loads of horses.
But it doesn't matter where Beauchamp came from in the first place. He's
mighty useful to me now, wherever it was. I really don't see how I could
get along without him. He is a faithful, honest, industrious little
soul. Of course that bat in his belfry flies out now and then--as you
saw and heard. I try to remember it, but I forget sometimes. And how
could a body guard against such an unheard-of thing as that was?" She
laughed lazily, fanning herself with the turkey-wing, and rocking slowly
and heavily. "He isn't a bit luny about anything else, and he is just as
useful to me as if he didn't believe he was the son of Napoleon
Bonaparte. I don't care if he thinks he's Julius Caesar himself. What's
the odds--since it never interferes with his work? And his wife's a
treasure too, in a different way. There's nothing French or flighty
about her. She belongs around here--somewhere in the Pennyroyal Region.
I don't know or remember where he picked her up. She is a great,
slow-witted, homely, slab-sided drudge, almost twice his size. And such
a worker! She never turns her head when he calls her the 'Empress
Maria.' She just goes straight along, hoeing the garden and making
butter. But--all the same--she thinks the sun rises and sets in him."
The young man laughed. "Fine! And he no doubt thinks she hung the moon."
His grandmother looked at him more attentively than she had done
hitherto. She had never been thrown with men of quick mind, and was not
accustomed to such ready response. She liked quickness of perception as
she liked all bright and pleasant things; and she disliked slowness of
understanding as she disliked everything tiresome--like the sybarite
that she was.
"Certainly he does. That's always the way," she in turn responded,
smilingly. "The worse mated the married seem to be--to outsiders, the
better they appear to suit one another. Talk about 'careful, judicious
selection!'" Old lady Gordon made an inarticulate but eloquent sound of
scornful incredulity. "If you were to rush out there in the big road
this minute--with your eyes shut--and seize the first passer-by, you
would have just as much chance of knowing what you were doing--what you
were getting--as you ever will have!"
Lynn wondered again what sort of a man his grandfather could have been.
And his young mother, whom he had never known? Had this cynical old
woman disapproved of her, had she been unkind to her? There is always
something repellent to wholesome youth in the cynicism of the old.
Feeling this, Lynn said rather coldly that he had thought little of such
matters, he had been too much absorbed in other things, in laying life
plans which must be quite apart from all thoughts of love and marriage
for a good many years. The mere mention of these cherished plans brought
a flush to his dark cheeks, and caused him to sit more proudly erect.
They were seldom far absent from his mind, and the main thought lying
nearest the heart is never long unspoken by frank young lips. It was
less than a year since he had been graduated from the Harvard Law
School, but his deep-laid plans lay far back of his graduation. He could
hardly remember when he had not seen the path of his ambition straight
and distinct before him. It was a steep one, to be sure, and hard and
long, as the road to the heights must ever be. But he had faced all this
wholly undaunted, knowing the power within himself, and the additional
strength which fortune had given him. Yet he was a modest young fellow,
and simple-hearted as well as single-minded. There was in him little
vanity in his personal gifts, little pride in his inherited possessions.
He simply recognized these as lucky accidents, for which he could claim
no credit; holding them merely as the means whereby he might hope, more
confidently than most young men, to reach the utmost limit of his
ambition. The right to practise law was already his, and the rest of the
way upward must open as he pressed earnestly and untiringly onward,--the
bar, the bench, the supreme bench, those must be within the winning of
any man having fair ability, unbounded capacity for hard work, and
abundant means to wait for its fruition; and he knew himself to be
possessed of all these. This seemed to him the highest ambition possible
to an American, as perhaps it was, in those days when the ermine was
still held unspotted, high above the mire of politics.
And yet, notwithstanding these lofty aims and matured plans, Lynn Gordon
was very young, hardly more than a boy, after all, in many things, so
that he soon began to talk with boyish openness of the herculean task
which he thus had set himself in sober earnest. His grandmother listened
with such intense interest, such thorough understanding, and such
complete sympathy as surprised herself far more than it surprised her
grandson. She was taken wholly unawares,--not dreaming of finding him
anything like this,--having looked forward to his coming with but
lukewarm enthusiasm.
The old who have been disappointed in almost everything that they have
ever set their hearts upon, cease, after a while, to expect anything,
and learn to shield themselves against further disappointment by real or
assumed indifference. Old lady Gordon in her fierce pride had never
owned, even to herself, how deep and bitter and lasting had been her
disappointment in her own son. It counted for nothing with her that he
had been what many would have considered a good man, though not an
intellectual man in the estimation of any one. To his mother his
goodness had seemed but the negative virtue of an undecided character
and a mediocre mind. For the best love of a nature like hers cannot be
born of mere toleration, even in a mother's heart. This mother--being
what she was--might perhaps have come nearer to forgiving the things
which were lacking, had this only child been a daughter. A woman like
old lady Gordon never expects much of another woman, even though she be
her own daughter. But she always expects everything of every man,
especially when he belongs to her own family, and thus it was that old
lady Gordon never could wholly forgive her only son. Least of all could
she ever quite forgive him for being his father over again; an almost
unpardonable offence which other poorly gifted children have committed
in the eyes of other embittered mothers, who have illogically expected,
as poor old lady Gordon had expected, to gather figs from thistles.
When she had first faced the truth in the prime of life, her fierce
pride had raised the iron shield of pretended indifference, and she had
upheld it so long that it had gradually grown into the rusty armor of
age's insensibility. And yet, through all its steely coldness, the young
man's warm words now struck fire. A deep glow came into the impassive,
handsome old face, and a warm light into the hard, fine old eyes, as she
looked at this spirited, strong, determined, capable young fellow, with
his brilliant face aglow, and his intelligent eyes alight. She suddenly
felt him to be much more her own spirit and flesh and blood than his
father had ever been. It seemed for an instant as if her own strenuous
youth, with its impassioned visions of conquest--so long forgotten--came
rushing back through the eloquent lips of her grandson.
IX
A ROMANTIC REGION
But, alas, the habits of age are always fixed, and its enthusiasms are
mostly fleeting. At breakfast, on the next morning, old lady Gordon was
as stolidly absorbed in the food which she was eating as she usually was
in her meals. Her cynicism, her indifference, too, had all come back.
Both came promptly into play, when Lynn chanced to remember his promise
to play cards with the sick man, and mentioned it, which he had
forgotten to do on the day before, in the intenser interest of the talk
about his own future. The old lady smiled sardonically and chewed on
deliberately, while the young man gave an account of what had taken
place at the doctor's house.
"Anne won't allow it," she finally said. "If anything could have changed
her or have taken the nonsense out of her, it would have been seeing Tom
go to destruction, mainly because she went to meeting. A woman like Anne
takes to religion just as immoderately as a man like Tom takes to
gambling."
Lynn did not speak at once. He was feeling the uneasiness which comes
over right-minded youth at any sign of irreligion in the old.
"I thought every man liked his wife to go to church, however seldom he
might go himself," he finally advanced hesitatingly.
"And so he does, when he doesn't happen to want her to stay at home,"
said old lady Gordon, with a cynical laugh. "But I've never known a
husband pious enough to like his wife's religion to interfere with his
own comfort or wishes. And Tom really needed Anne a good deal more than
her church did. There are men who are as sure to go wrong if their wives
leave them alone, as ships are to drift without their rudders--and Tom
Watson was one of these. He had little or no intellectual
resources,--none at all, probably, within himself,--and he was
consequently entirely dependent upon companionship. That sort of male
animal always is, and if he can't get good company he takes bad, simply
because he has to have company of some kind. Every sensible woman
understands that sort of man, especially if she is married to him; and
she knows, too, just what she's got to do, unless she's willing to take
the certain consequences of not doing it. Any other woman than Anne
would have thought she was lucky when Tom didn't take to anything worse
than cards."
Lynn was glad when the breakfast was over. He did not like his
grandmother in this mood nearly so well as he had liked her in the
kindly responsive one of the night before; and yet, although he knew her
but slightly, he felt sure that this mood was more natural, or, at all
events, more habitual, to her, than the other. It was most likely this
instinctive feeling which had unconsciously kept him--during the talk
with her on the previous day--from speaking of the beautiful girl whom
he had seen. He now felt more distinctly, though still without knowing
why, that he did not wish to hear his grandmother speak of her or of her
environment, as he now knew that the old lady would speak. He already
understood enough, remembering the kind things which the doctor's lady
had told him, to anticipate the different presentation of the widow
Wendall and her family that his grandmother would certainly make.
He left her as soon as he could, offering his engagement with Dr.
Alexander as a ready excuse. Passing out into the quiet, empty big road,
he walked along under the old locust trees which lined one side of the
way. The locusts were flowering, and the long clusters of pure white
flowers, swinging among the dull gray-green of the feathery foliage,
filled the fresh air of the May morning with wholesome sweetness. The
shrubs in the yards, bordering the length of the big road with the vivid
verdure of new leaves, were also in bloom. The young man smelled the
honeysuckle blossoming thick over the sick man's window, but he did not
look that way. He looked, naturally enough, in the opposite direction,
where the silver poplars stood, since the interests and the sympathies
of youth must always lie on the other side of life's big road, away from
all affliction and pain.
He was not sorry to find that the doctor had gone into the country in
answer to an urgent call, and that the visit to the invalid consequently
must be postponed. He was sorry, however, to see the white curtain of
the house behind the poplars hanging precisely as it had hung on the
previous day; and, although he walked to the top of the hill beyond the
house and, turning, strolled slowly back again in front of the window,
he had no second glimpse of Doris. Thus idly strolling, he went along
the big road, stopping now and then to lean over a fence to look at the
hyacinths and tulips, which were at their sweetest and brightest in most
of the front yards; or to linger beside the rosy clover fields to drink
in the fragrance and to watch the vernal happiness of the birds. He
paused occasionally to lift his hat smilingly to the friendly faces
which smiled at him from the vine-wreathed windows and the wide-open
doors; but, loiter as he might, he saw nothing more of the girl of whom
he was thinking and hoping to meet, and although he delayed his return
as long as he could, he was still back at his grandmother's house all
too soon.
No one could walk through Oldfield a second time on the same morning
without a visible or audible explanation to a public who had plenty of
leisure to note the few passers-by, and to speculate upon their possible
destination, and to discuss the most probable reasons for their going up
or coming down the big road. Lynn had an instinctive perception of this,
little as he knew of the life of the village. Accordingly he now paused
uncertainly at his grandmother's gate and stood still, not knowing what
to do with the perfect day, with the ideal Ides of May.
Looking idly toward the northern hilltops, he saw the figure of a
horseman suddenly break the sky line and rush galloping downward into
the village. Onward thundered the big black horse and his strange rider,
sweeping by like a whirlwind, and speeding on and on, till they vanished
over the southern hilltops. A light cloud of dust floated for a moment
between the farthest green and the farthest blue, and then that too
disappeared, and the coming and going of the wild apparition might well
have been some trick of a fantastic imagination. And yet Lynn had
received a curiously distinct impression of the man's appearance in this
space of time, brief almost as a lightning flash. He had seen the
foreign dress, the great boots so long that they were slit to the knee;
the blood-red handkerchief tied loosely around the neck, and, most
distinctly of all, the sinister expression of the dark, deeply lined
face and the wildness of the black eyes under the wide, flapping, soft
brim of the large sombrero hat. Altogether it was so strange, so unreal
an interruption of the peace of this pastoral spot, that the young man
could only stand silent gazing after it in bewildered surprise.
"That's Alvarado! You've seen one of the sights of the country," his
grandmother called out to him from her place by the window.
"Who is Alvarado?" he asked, when he had entered the room.
"That is a question which a good many people have been asking for a good
many years, and nobody has ever had a satisfactory answer," old lady
Gordon replied.