I
Sophy spent the winter that followed her husband's death in the little
cottage at Bonchurch. Her one desire, after Cecil's body had been laid
in the Chapel-crypt at Dynehurst, was to return "to her own land and her
own people." But Bellamy had warned her against an autumn crossing for
Bobby, and the sudden change to a severer climate. At first she could
not bring herself to walk or ride--the sight of blue water sparkling in
the sun was so dreadful to her. And it grew to be almost an
hallucination that, whenever she looked on it, she saw also a yellow
chair, bobbing drolly to the motion of the waves. Little by little she
dominated this aversion from the sea. Had it been a lake near which
Bonchurch lay, she could not have borne it. But here, after two months,
she began to ride daily, and gradually grew strong again.
It was on a lovely day in June when she reached the little country
station of Sweet-Waters. The chuckle of Sweet-Water creek, that just
here made a special music among crowding stones, rose dearly familiar.
And there--there were her Mountains! Tears shut them out for a moment.
Before she could see them clearly again, Charlotte's arms were round
her. They clung together speechless.
"Oh!" murmured Sophy at last, her face buried in Charlotte's neck. "Oh,
Chartie ... how you smell of _home_!"
This made them both laugh. But they were crying, too. The sisters loved
each other as twins sometimes do, though they were not twins. Charlotte
was eight years older than Sophy. And there, in the broad afternoon
sunlight, Sophy again buried her face in her sister's neck to savour the
sweet "home" fragrance.
Then she put Bobby in Charlotte's arms. Now Charlotte was afraid to
speak. She pressed the boy to her in silence. At last she said:
"He has your eyes, darling," adding: "_I've_ a new boy to show you, too,
you know."
The long, grave shadows of late afternoon, in which there was no
sadness, only the serene beauty of sleep, lay over the rolling fields
through which the sisters drove homeward, hand in hand. Each native tree
and wild-flower went to Sophy's heart. She so loved this friendly,
smiling country, that almost she believed it "loved her back again," as
children say. The silver-poplars along the road glittered whitely in a
soft breeze. The sky changed to sheeted gold above the bluish mountains.
As they turned in at the lawn of Sweet-Waters, the old box-shrubs
scraped against the carriage in a way that meant home, and only home.
Nowhere else in the world were box-trees set so close together on a
driveway, that carriages could not pass without being brushed by the
stiff leaves.
Sophy smiled, catching at a sprig as they passed, and Charlotte, also
smiling, said:
"Yes. Joe is still promising me to clip them properly."
The old red-brick of the house now glowed on them between the boughs of
tulip-trees and horse-chestnuts. They passed the clump of great acacia
trees, where stood the round, green tables, covered with pots of pink
and white geraniums. Sophy recalled that day when the London
window-boxes had brought this memory of home. Now she was here. Home was
reality--London the memory.
Judge Macon came down the front steps and took her in his arms as though
she had been in truth his sister. He was much moved. Somehow to see her
in the dull black of widow's weeds struck him as unnatural. Like most
men, he hated "mourning." It hurt him to see her brightness thus
quenched with crepe.
"Doggone it, Chartie," he said to his wife that night when they were
alone, "get that black off of our Sophy as soon as you can. For the
Lord's sake, get _some_ of it off right away. A human being can't go
through a Virginia summer draped like a hearse!"
Charlotte said:
"Oh, Joe, _don't_ talk so gruesomely. She'll wear white I'm sure--poor
darling."
Then she went to his shoulder and cried frankly.
"I hate it as much as you do," she said. "It almost makes me 'lose my
religion' to think of Sophy's being a widow. Don't you know how we--how
_every one_--always thought of Sophy as being brilliant and happy?"
"Yes, yes; so we did, so we did," he soothed her. Then he added soberly:
"But those are just the people who seem to attract misfortune ... like
lightning-rods," he concluded quaintly.
* * * * *
As soon as they had reached the house, Charlotte took Sophy upstairs to
show her the nursery she had arranged for Bobby, and the old nursery
just across the hall, that she and Sophy used to share together, and
which was now to be her sister's bedroom. Even then Charlotte had
ventured to suggest timidly:
"Won't you change to something cooler, dear?"
She longed to see Sophy in white blouse and duck skirt as in old days.
She opened a closet door, suggestively. "There are some of your summer
things hanging here just as they used to. Mammy Nan did them up for you
herself."
Sophy stood with her arm about Charlotte's waist, looking at the freshly
laundered, white skirts that she had worn as a girl. They seemed like
ghosts to her, gleaming there in the dim closet--phantoms of her dead
self--of that joyous, exultant, "cock-sure" girl that had been herself
and could never come to life again. A new sadness came over her like the
sadness with which we look on the garments of the dead.
"No--I don't think I'll change, Chartie," she said gently. "This gown I
have on is really cool."
And she picked up a fold of her thin, crepe skirt that Charlotte might
see for herself. She did not realise that it was the blackness of her
dress that Charlotte wanted changed. She was so used to wearing black
now that she felt more at ease in it. It had become a sort of uniform.
She was one of the army of sorrow. To wear its prescribed black made her
feel less conspicuous. The repellent custom of "mourning" has this
illogical consolation for its adherents.
But her sadness faded as she looked round the familiar room. The very
smell of it was the same. A scent of India matting and beeswax, and the
Russia leather of her sets of Shakespeare and Chaucer. She went from
object to object, touching them lovingly. Colour had come to her face.
Her grey eyes shone dark. She stood at the foot of the green bed with
its painted birds-of-Paradise, now but faint blurs of gold and crimson,
looking lovingly at its fluted pillow-slips and coverlet of old, white
"honey-comb."
"What happy dreams we've dreamed there, Chartie!" she murmured. "We were
such happy things."
Charlotte called from the window for Mammy Nan to bring the youngest of
her three sons to see "Miss Sophy." This was William Taliaferro, usually
called "Winks," Bobby's senior by three months. Jack and Joey were still
out somewhere on the farm. Winks had his mother's yellow-hazel eyes,
dark curls, and decision of character. He accepted Sophy for an aunt,
after some solemn pondering, and allowed her to take him in her arms.
She bore him across the hall to "make friends" with his new cousin. It
was delightful to see the two youngsters "taking stock" of each other.
Like two young cockerels they stood, fronting each other, heads down,
thumbs home to the hilt in red mouths, hackles ready to rise at the
least sign--round eyes fixed on round eyes. Bobby was the first to
remove a glistening thumb. His delicious little grin shone forth.
"Bobby boy!" he announced. "P'ay sogers!"
Winks considered a second longer. Then he, too, removed his thumb.
"Mh-mh," he assented, and allowed Bobby to take him by the hand. They
trotted off like brothers born, to play with the tin soldiers that Rosa
had already unpacked.
"_Che amorini!_" sighed she, looking after them with clasped hands. She
did not ask more of life than two such _bambini_ to adore. Rosa's was
the true mother-heart. Whether born of her own flesh or of another's,
children were all in all to her.
Though Sophy felt so dusty from her journey, she would not take the time
for a tub, from these first, wondrous hours of homecoming. She longed to
be out in the old grounds. Charlotte left her at last, to "see about
supper." How the familiar phrase warmed Sophy's heart! She peeped again
into the nursery before going down. She had worried a little as to how
Rosa would "get on" with the darkies. She need not have done so. She
found the dear old negress and the Lombard peasant woman sitting side
by side. Rosa looked up as she entered, and patted Mammy Nan's rather
embarrassed, satiny-brown face.
"Ees goo-ood," she cooed. "_La Mora e molto buona ... molto simpatica._"
To hear Mammy Nan called "the Moor" made Sophy smile. She stood there
smiling at them.
"Rosa's a mighty nice woman, Mammy," she said, slipping easily into the
vernacular.
"She sho' do 'pear so," agreed Mammy Nan, amiable but nervous. It seemed
so very peculiar to her to have a strange "white 'ooman" patting her
cheek and calling her "Cara," when her name was Ann.