sad sweetness, as a bird lamented the wreck of its hopes which had
followed the cutting of the grass. But the mourner was far afield, so
that its sweet lament was but a soft and distant echo of the world-pain
which forever follows the passing of the Reaper. The young man heeded it
as little as we all heed it, till our own pass under the scythe. He
stopped to lean on the fence, drinking in the beauty and fragrance, thus
unwittingly disturbing the peace and happiness of a robin family which
was dwelling in a near-by blackberry bush. The head of this flowering
house now flew out, protesting with every indignant feather against this
unmannerly intrusion of a mere mortal upon a lady-bird's bower. Trailing
his wings and ruffling his crest, he sidled away along the top of the
fence as if there were nothing interesting among those blossoms for
anybody to spy out--in a word, doing everything a true gentleman should
do under such circumstances, no matter how red his waistcoat may be.
Another robin sang what he thought of the situation, expressing himself
so plainly from the other side of the big road, that even the young man
understood; while still another robin, too far away to know what
shocking things were going on, poured out a rapturous song as though all
living were but revelling in sunshine.
Lynn Gordon turned away, thinking with a smile what a wonderful thing
love must be, since it could so move the gentlest to fierceness, as he
had just seen; and could bring the fiercest to gentleness, as he had
often heard. Smiling at his own idle thoughts, he wandered on. The
loosened petals of the blackberry bloom drifted before him like
snowflakes wafted by the south wind. The rich deep clover field on the
other side of the way was rosy and fragrant with blossoms. The wild
grape, too, was in flower, its elusive aromatic scent flying down from
the wooded hillsides, as though it were the winged, woodland spirit of
fragrance.
Approaching the woods at the foot of the hills, Lynn saw a log cabin,
which he had not seen before, although he knew that the land upon which
it stood was a part of the Gordon estate; part of the lands which would
one day be his own. As his careless glance rested on the cabin, strains
of music coming from it caught and fixed his attention. Some one was
playing an old-fashioned dance tune on a violin, and Lynn unthinkingly
followed the stately measure till he found himself standing unobserved
before the humble dwelling from which it came, free to gaze his fill at
a scene revealed by the open passage between the two low rooms.
The passage walls were spotless with white-wash, and the shadows of the
trees standing close behind showed deeply green beyond. Against these
soft green shadows and on one side of the passage stood the white-haired
Frenchman. His fiddle was under his chin, held tenderly as though it
were a precious thing that he dearly loved. His head was a little on one
side and his eyes were partially closed,--like the birds,--as if he too
were under the spell of his own music. His right arm, jauntily raised,
wielded the bow: his left toe was advanced, then his right, now this
one, now that one--advancing, bowing, retiring--all as solemn as solemn
could be.
And more serious if possible than Monsieur Beauchamp was Doris herself,
facing him from the opposite side of the passage; grave, indeed, as any
wood nymph performing some sacred rite in a sylvan temple. When the
young man saw her first, she stood poised and fluttering, as a butterfly
poises and flutters uncertain whether to alight or to fly. The thin
skirt of the book-muslin party coat, delicately held out at the sides by
the very tips of her fingers, and lightly caught by the soft wind,
spread like the wings of a white bird. The slippers, heel-less and
yellow as buttercups, were thus brought bewitchingly into view--with the
narrow ribbon daintily crossed over the instep and tied around the
ankle--as they darted in and out beneath the fluttering skirt. Her
golden hair, loosed by the dance and the breeze, fell around her
shoulders in a radiant mantle, growing more beautiful with every airy
movement. The exquisite curve of her cheek, nearly always colorless, now
faintly reflected the rose-red of her perfect lips as the snowdrift
reflects the glow of the sunset. Her large dark eyes were lost under her
long dark lashes, and never wandered for an instant from the little
Frenchman's guiding toes. And Doris understood those toes perfectly,
although she knew not a word of the dancing-master's native language,
and not much of her own when spoken by him, as he now mingled the two,
quite carried away by this sudden and late return to his true vocation.
She followed their every motion as thistledown follows the wind:
stepping delicately, advancing coquettishly, courtesying quaintly--as
Miss Judy had taught her,--and retiring, alluring, only to begin over
and over again. It was all as artless, as graceful, and as natural as
the floating of the thistledown; and such a wonderful dance as never was
seen on land or sea, unless--as the young man thought, with the sight
going to his head like royal burgundy--the fairies might have danced
something of the kind on Erin's enchanted moss within the moonlit ring.
On fiddled the old Frenchman and on winged the young girl, both of them
far too deeply absorbed in the serious business in hand to notice the
onlooker, till Miss Judy came, actually running and almost out of
breath. She had seen the young man's approach to the cabin, but she was
too far away to reach it before him, although she had come as quickly as
she possibly could. Hastening, she sharply reproached herself for having
been persuaded to go so far from the cabin to look at Mrs. Beauchamp's
strawberry bed. It was, of course, utterly impossible to have foreseen
this young gentleman's appearance. Nevertheless, she should not have
left Doris, poor child, alone for a moment--none knew that better than
herself. And now to see what had come of her unpardonable
thoughtlessness! What would this stranger think of Doris, or of any well
brought up girl, whom he thus found neglected? At this thought Miss
Judy, for all her mildness, ruffled with indignation as a hen ruffles at
any rough touch upon her soft little chicks. She would try, she said to
herself, to retrieve her mistake. She would do her best to show this
grandson of old lady Gordon--who made fun of everybody--that her Doris
was no ignorant rustic, roaming the woods all forgotten by her proper
guardians. As she ran, much agitated and even alarmed, the little lady
mechanically looked over her shoulder and put her little hands behind
her back to make sure that the point of her neckerchief was precisely
where it should be. She never felt quite equal to a difficult
undertaking until she was certain of the point's exact location, and
now, having learned by long practice to tell with some degree of
certainty by touch,--on account of its being so hard to look in the long
mirror,--she now thought that it was in its proper place, and she
accordingly entered the green-shadowed end of the passage with a very
high air. Her manner was indeed as high and even haughty a manner as
could possibly be assumed by a very small, very gentle old lady, who was
blushing, and trying to get her breath after a rush across a ploughed
field. The greeting which she gave Lynn Gordon was therefore noticeably
cold; also the introduction to Doris was plainly wrung from her by
politeness, and given with marked reluctance. So that the young man, not
understanding in the least, naturally wondered greatly at the change in
the little lady, who had been so winningly gracious on the previous day.
Monsieur Beauchamp's eager hospitality did something to make Lynn feel
less like an unpardonable intruder. And madame, also, was kind in her
matter-of-fact way. She took no notice whatever of her husband's
introducing her as the Empress Maria. Acting as though she had been deaf
she placed chairs for her guests, and then went out to fetch them some
new crab cider in thick glass tumblers on a large deep plate. An
inflexible custom of Oldfield required that a guest should be offered
some kind of refreshment, no matter what the time of day. Fortunately,
there was no rigid rule as to the kind of refreshment; one kind would do
as well as another, provided only that something was offered promptly.
Each Oldfield housekeeper had her own preference, her own specialty.
Miss Pettus might with perfect propriety offer a piece of fried chicken
at three o'clock in the afternoon to a guest who had dined at one; old
lady Gordon might order a full meal at any hour for any one who dropped
in between meals, to her own and everybody else's entire satisfaction;
Miss Judy might serve a handful of gooseberries, either green or ripe,
on her mother's prettiest plate, and the guest always remarked how
pretty it was, whether she dared eat it or not. Mrs. Beauchamp
accordingly felt herself to be uncommonly lucky in having this newly
made, still sweet, crab cider to offer her visitors. She had seen the
time when she had been obliged to hand a glass of toddy, and that, too,
without a sprig of mint or a bit of ice.
It was quite as much a part of Oldfield manners to accept the
refreshment as to offer it. Miss Judy took her glass of cider and sipped
it daintily, saying how nice it was, yet managing while doing this to
make it quite plain that the intruder was meant to feel that _he_ had no
share in the sweet graciousness extended to her hostess. The eyes of the
two young people met involuntarily, and although Doris, coloring,
dropped her eyes in confusion, Lynn saw the sudden dimpling of her
cheek. It was the second time they had looked at each other; Doris had
given him one startled, fleeting glance, with a frightened exclamation
and a hurried dropping of skirts, when she had first seen him standing
in front of the passage, looking at her as she danced. He now found no
opportunity to speak to her. Miss Judy arose to take Doris away as soon
as courtesy would allow her to do so without seeming to slight Mrs.
Beauchamp's cider. She was ever more careful of the feelings of her
inferiors than of her equals, if that were possible. She was quite
determined, nevertheless, to withdraw at once. The lesson might be
resumed another day, she said to Monsieur Beauchamp, gently but firmly,
adding that Miss Wendall's mother and uncle were doubtless expecting
her. And this Miss Judy said loftily, almost haughtily, in a tone
calculated to inform the young gentleman that Miss Wendall's mother and
uncle were personages to be reckoned with. As Miss Judy left her seat,
Doris also arose and started to get her hat, which was hanging against
the wall. Lynn Gordon eagerly sprang up and took it down and handed it
to her. He had no thought, however, of accepting his dismissal, when
Miss Judy, after taking leave of the dancing-master and his wife with a
grand little air which puzzled the worthy pair exceedingly, merely
inclined her head stiffly in his direction. Instead, he coolly went
before her and Doris to the gate, and, after holding it open till they
had passed out, calmly followed them, carefully taking his place by Miss
Judy's side, and away from Doris.
For a few paces Miss Judy was silent with surprise, rigid with
displeasure. She went, carrying her little head very high indeed, and
taking dainty, mincing steps. She held up the front of her black
bombazine by a delicately small pinch of the cloth between her
forefinger and thumb, and her little finger was very elegantly crooked.
Her sweet face was set as a flint. She was stern in the determination to
set Doris right in the estimation of old lady Gordon's grandson--this
handsome, mannerly, young gentleman, who might nevertheless have his
grandmother's disposition as well as her features, for all Miss Judy
knew. Yet her stiffness began to thaw under Lynn's genial frankness as a
light frost melts under a warm sun. He was tactful considering his age,
his inexperience, and especially his sex--if tact be ever a matter of
age and experience, as it is almost always one of sex. He had, too, a
gay, boyish way about him which was very winning, and which gradually
disarmed gentle Miss Judy almost completely within the length of a
couple of rods. Within three rods she began to talk quite naturally, the
only lingering sign of her mildly fixed purpose being the unusually
didactic turn of her remarks.
"You know, I presume, Mr. Gordon," she said primly and with significant
distinctness, as one who weighs her words, "that this is the oldest
portion of Kentucky. There is, as I am well aware, a widespread but
erroneous impression that the Blue Grass Region is older than this; but
no well-read person could possibly fall into such an unaccountable
error. The real Kentucky pioneer was Thomas Walker, who came from
Virginia through Cumberland Gap into the south-eastern part of the state
in 1750, and made explorations coming this way;--not Daniel Boone, who
first entered the northern and middle part of it as late as 1769. The
Blue Grass people are not to blame, perhaps, for honestly believing
their section to be the oldest in Kentucky, since most of them have been
brought up to believe it; but it is really surprising that, with a good
many reading citizens who know something of history, they should cling
to this extraordinary misbelief in opposition to all written and
unwritten history of the state. The first house, too, was built here in
the Pennyroyal Region, near Green River. Why, my dear sir, I can give
you personal assurance that the ruins of this first house in Kentucky
are still to be seen. I have never seen them myself," added Miss Judy,
scrupulously; "but many friends of mine have seen them."
When the young man had shown himself to be as much surprised and
impressed as she thought he should be, Miss Judy went on with growing
confidence. She called his further attention to the fact that this Green
River country was also the sole region of Virginia's military grants to
her officers of the Revolution. Miss Judy cautiously disclaimed any
knowledge of what the mother state might have done for the soldiers of
the line--with a soft touch of condescension. But she spoke with
authority in saying that Virginia had never granted a foot of
land--north of Green River--to any officer of the War of Independence.
"I am not speaking of lands that may have been bought by officers from
the Indians, or of lands that may have been taken up by officers as by
other settlers. Lands so acquired are doubtless scattered all over the
state. I am speaking only of grants of lands in Kentucky, given by
Virginia to her officers of the Revolution for military services.
These--one and all--were given here, in this Pennyroyal Region, and
nowhere else; it was here, therefore, that those distinguished soldiers
came to live and to die, after doing their duty to their country. And it
was their coming that made this Pennyroyal Region so utterly unlike the
rest of Kentucky."
"Indeed! Yes, I see," responded Lynn Gordon, with his eyes on Doris's
dimpling cheek.
And then Miss Judy's soft heart suddenly smote her with the feeling that
she had perhaps been too severe. She had unconsciously been stepping
more and more mincingly, holding the pinch of black bombazine higher and
higher, and crooking her little finger more and more jauntily.
"I have been told that there are some perfectly sincere persons living
in the Blue Grass Region who honestly believe that their estates were
granted to an officer ancestor for service in the Revolution. And these
deluded persons are not so much to be blamed as to be pitied for being
brought up to believe something that is not true. It is their
misfortune, not their fault, poor things!"
Sure now that she was growing harsh indeed and almost cruel, Miss Judy
gracefully turned the talk in a less serious direction, toward one which
was, nevertheless, still calculated to impress this stranger with the
character of the country.
"Of course you know the heraldic herb of the Pennyroyal Region," she
said smilingly, as she pointed to an humble, unpretentious bunch of
rather rusty green, growing thick all along the wayside. "We who live in
it are fond of it and proud of it too, as fond and proud of it as
England ever was of the rose, or France of the lily, or Scotland of the
thistle, or even Ireland of the shamrock."
"How interesting," said the young man, still looking at Doris--not at
the pennyroyal.
Doris glanced also at him, feeling great pride in Miss Judy's easy
acquaintance with heraldic matters, and wishing to see if he were as
much impressed as she thought he ought to be.
"Yes, I think it _is_ interesting," continued Miss Judy, making her
small mouth smaller by pursing it up in the dainty way that she would
have ascribed as primping. "In fact, the pennyroyal has long been of far
greater importance to the world at large than might be supposed by those
who have not looked into the subject. You know, I presume, that many of
the old English poets have mentioned it in their most famous works, and
always with the greatest respect."
"Indeed," exclaimed the young man again, with his gaze fixed upon the
sweet curve of Doris's velvet cheek.
"Chaucer and Dryden and Drayton and Spenser--every one of these fathers
of English poesy has something to say of the pennyroyal," Miss Judy went
on airily, still quite firmly resolved to let old lady Gordon's grandson
see--no matter how polite he might be--that Doris's friends were
well-read and cultured persons, however much to the contrary his first
impression may have been. "Their mentions of it are mostly very
mysterious, though; they speak of it as 'a charming, enchanting,
bewitching herb.' All of them, indeed, describe it in that manner, if I
remember correctly--though one does forget so easily," the little lady
added, as if she read Chaucer and Dryden and Drayton and Spenser every
day of her life. "I am quite sure, however, that Drayton refers to it
'in sorceries excelling.' And I also seem distinctly to recall the
witches of _The Faerie Queene_ as cleansing themselves of evil magic by
a bath of pennyroyal once a year--I don't, though, recollect what they
bathed in during the rest of the time. Spenser calls it out of its true
name, however, as I remember his reference to it. He says that the
witches bathed in 'origane and thyme'; but everybody knows well enough
that origane was the pennyroyal's name in Spenser's day. Chaucer and
Drayton knew it in their time as 'lunarie,' but they all meant neither
more nor less than our own pennyroyal and nothing else."
As the three walked slowly up the big road under the flowering locusts,
Miss Judy, relenting more and more, gradually became quite her sweet,
friendly self. She finally admitted, with the gentle frankness natural
to her, that she had never quite been able to understand these
mysterious poetic references to such a simple homely thing as the
pennyroyal, which she had known ever since she could remember. She now
freely acknowledged that its character must have altered with the
passing of the ages, or must have been changed by the coming from the
old world to the new. And yet, on the other hand,--as she pointed out to
the young man in a tone of confidence,--there were the famous old
simplists, belonging to the very time and the very country of these
fathers of poetry, who had known and prized an herb which was much like
the pennyroyal of to-day, and which they had called "honesty."
"This certainly must have been identical with our own heraldic
pennyroyal," Miss Judy declared. "For that surely is the honestest
little thing growing out of the earth. So upright, so downright. So
absolutely uncompromising! Sturdy, erect, wholesome, useful, clean,
bristly, and square of stem, it holds its rough leaves steady and level
at the full height of its reach; standing thus, it never bends; falling,
it always goes the whole way down; pulled up, its roots come all at
once. So that there is no half-heartedness of any sort in this most
characteristic product of southwestern Kentucky."
There was a shade of uneasiness in the proud glance which Doris now
stole at Lynn, with a sudden uplifting of her lovely dark eyes. He could
but admire Miss Judy's learning, she thought, and yet she could not help
seeing, with a tender sense of humor, how exquisitely quaint the little
lady's manner was.
Lynn grew bold, reading the look and the unconscious, embarrassed, half
smile. "But, Miss Bramwell, pray tell me, does not the pennyroyal belong
to the whole state? I have always taken it to be a member of the mint
family."
Miss Judy, stepping still more mincingly, and holding the pinch of black
bombazine higher than ever, tossed her little head as she acknowledged
the possibility of a distant relationship. She intimated that she
considered this too far off to count, even in Kentucky, where kinship
appeared to stretch farther than anywhere else in the world. And she
forthwith repudiated for the sturdy pennyroyal all the traits and the
habits of the whole disreputable mint tribe--root and branch.
"Never under any circumstances will the honest pennyroyal be found
lolling supinely in the low, shady, wet haunts of the mint. The true
pennyroyal--you should know, my dear sir--stands high and dry, straight
out in the open. And it stands on its native heath, too," Miss Judy
said, smiling herself now, and quite forgetting all discomfiture and all
displeasure. "The pennyroyal never had to be fetched from somewhere
else--as the blue grass was--to give _its_ name to _its_ region!"
They had reached Miss Judy's gate by this time, and when Lynn
mechanically opened it, the little lady passed through it before she
realized that propriety required her to go all the way home with Doris,
since the young gentleman evidently did not intend stopping short of
Sidney's threshold. But the shyness which was natural to her, and which
had dropped away from her only at Doris's need, suddenly came over her
again. She stood still, uneasy, blushing, and gazing after the young
couple who were strolling on under the flowering locusts. A look of
apprehension quickly clouded the blue of her sweet old eyes with real
distress. It was clearly wrong for her to have left them. She had made
another mistake; her neglect had again placed Doris in a false light. It
would be hard, indeed, to set this worst remissness right. She would
gladly have called to Doris even then, had she not feared to embarrass
her further. The tears welled up, but she brushed them away, so that not
one step of the young people's progress up the hill might be lost to her
wistful sight. Suddenly she cried out in such dismay that Miss Sophia,
dozing as usual, was startled wide awake, and came to see what was the
matter, as soon as she could rise from her chair and reach the door.
"Look at that poor, dear child!" cried Miss Judy, quite overcome. "Just
see what she is doing, sister Sophia! And that, too, is all my fault.
How was Doris--dear, dear little one--to know that she must never dream
of taking off her gloves in the presence of a gentleman, when I have
never thought to point out to her the indelicacy of doing such a thing?"
And Doris would not know what to do when they reached the house. If
Sidney were only at home, it would not be so bad--so Miss Judy said. But
Sidney was sure to be out "on-the-pad," as she herself described her
professional rounds, never suspecting that she might be using a
corruption from the French of _en balade_. Miss Judy knew Sidney's
habits too well to hope for any help from the chance of her being at
home. She--dear little lady--was quite in tears now and almost ready to
wring her hands.