THE TRODDEN WAY
There came the indeterminate year when Ruhannah finished school and
there was no money available to send her elsewhere for further
embellishment, no farther horizon than the sky over the Gayfield
hills, no other perspective than the main street of Gayfield with the
knitting mill at the end of it.
So into Gayfield Mill the girl walked, and found a place immediately
among the unskilled. And her career appeared to be predetermined now,
and her destiny a simple one--to work, to share the toil and the
gaieties of Gayfield with the majority of the other girls she knew; to
marry, ultimately, some boy, some clerk in one of the Gayfield stores,
some farmer lad, perhaps, possibly a school teacher or a local lawyer
or physician, or possibly the head of some department in the mill, or
maybe a minister--she was sufficiently well bred and educated for any
one of these.
* * * * *
The winter of her seventeenth year found her still very much a child
at heart, physically backward, a late adolescent, a little shy,
inclined to silences, romantic, sensitive to all beauty, and
passionately expressing herself only when curled up by the stove with
her pencil and the red light of the coals falling athwart the slim
hand that guided it.
She went sometimes to village parties, learned very easily to dance,
had no preferences among the youths of Gayfield, no romances. For
that matter, while she was liked and even furtively admired, her
slight shyness, reticence, and a vague, indefinite something about her
seemed to discourage familiar rustic gallantry. Also, she was as thin
and awkward as an overgrown lad, not thought to be pretty, known to be
poor. But for all that more than one young man was vaguely haunted at
intervals by some memory of her grey eyes and the peculiar sweetness
of her mouth, forgetting for the moment several freckles on the
delicate bridge of her nose and several more on her sun-tanned
cheeks.
She had an agreeable time that winter, enchanted to learn dancing,
happy at "showers" and parties, at sleigh rides and "chicken suppers,"
and the various species of village gaiety which ranged from moving
pictures every Thursday and Saturday nights to church entertainments,
amateur theatricals at the town hall, and lectures under the auspices
of the aristocratic D. O. F.--Daughters of the Old Frontier.
But she never saw any boy she preferred to any other, never was
conscious of being preferred, excepting once--and she was not quite
certain about that.
It was old Dick Neeland's son, Jim--vaguely understood to have been
for several years in Paris studying art--and who now turned up in
Gayfield during Christmas week.
Ruhannah remembered seeing him on several occasions when she was a
little child. He was usually tramping across country with his sturdy
father, Dick Neeland of Neeland's Mills--an odd, picturesque pair with
their setter dogs and burnished guns, and old Dick's face as red as a
wrinkled winter apple, and his hair snow-white.
There was six years' difference between their ages, Jim Neeland's and
hers, and she had always considered him a grown and formidable man in
those days. But that winter, when somebody at the movies pointed him
out to her, she was surprised to find him no older than the other
youths she skated with and danced with.
Afterward, at a noisy village party, she saw him dancing with every
girl in town, and the drop of Irish blood in this handsome, careless
young fellow established him at once as a fascinating favourite.
Rue became quite tremulous over the prospect of dancing with him.
Presently her turn came; she rose with a sudden odd loss of
self-possession as he was presented, stood dumb, shy, unresponsive,
suffered him to lead her out, became slowly conscious that he danced
rather badly. But awe of him persisted even when he trod on her
slender foot.
He brought her an ice afterward, and seated himself beside her.
"I'm a clumsy dancer," he said. "How many times did I spike you?"
She flushed and would have found a pleasant word to reassure him, but
discovered nothing to say, it being perfectly patent to them both that
she had retired from the floor with a slight limp.
"I'm a steam roller," he repeated carelessly. "But you dance very
well, don't you?"
"I have only learned to dance this winter."
"I thought you an expert. Do you live here?"
"Yes.... I mean I live at Brookhollow."
"Funny. I don't remember you. Besides, I don't know your name--people
mumble so when they introduce a man."
"I'm Ruhannah Carew."
"Carew," he repeated, while a crease came between his eyebrows. "Of
Brookhollow---- Oh, I know! Your father is the retired missionary--red
house facing the bridge."
"Yes."
"Certainly," he said, taking another look at her; "you're the little
girl daddy and I used to see across the fields when we were shooting
woodcock in the willows."
"I remember you," she said.
"I remember _you_!"
She coloured gratefully.
"Because," he added, "dad and I were always afraid you'd wander into
range and we'd pepper you from the bushes. You've grown a lot, haven't
you?" He had a nice, direct smile though his speech and manners were a
trifle breezy, confident, and _sans façon_. But he was at that
age--which succeeds the age of bumptiousness--with life and career
before him, attainment, realisation, success, everything the mystery
of life holds for a young man who has just flung open the gates and
who takes the magic road to the future with a stride instead of his
accustomed pace.
He was already a man with a profession, and meant that she should
become aware of it.
* * * * *
Later in the evening somebody told her what a _personage_ he had
become, and she became even more deeply thrilled, impressed, and
tremulously desirous that he should seek her out again, not venturing
to seek him, not dreaming of encouraging him to notice her by glance
or attitude--not even knowing, as yet, how to do such things. She
thought he had already forgotten her existence.
But that this thin, freckled young thing with grey eyes ought to
learn how much of a man he was remained somewhere in the back of
Neeland's head; and when he heard his hostess say that somebody would
have to see Rue Carew home, he offered to do it. And presently went
over and asked the girl if he might--not too patronisingly.
In the cutter, under fur, with the moonlight electrically brilliant
and the world buried in white, she ventured to speak of his art,
timidly, as in the presence of the very great.
"Oh, yes," he said. "I studied in Paris. Wish I were back there. But
I've got to draw for magazines and illustrated papers; got to make a
living, you see. I teach at the Art League, too."
"How happy you must be in your career!" she said, devoutly meaning it,
knowing no better than to say it.
"It's a business," he corrected her, kindly.
"But--yes--but it is art, too."
"Oh, art!" he laughed. It was the fashion that year to shrug when art
was mentioned--reaction from too much gabble.
"We don't busy ourselves with art; we busy ourselves with business.
When they use my stuff I feel I'm getting on. You see," he admitted
with reluctant honesty, "I'm young at it yet--I haven't had very much
of my stuff in magazines yet."
After a silence, cursed by an instinctive truthfulness which always
spoiled any little plan to swagger:
"I've had several--well, about a dozen pictures reproduced."
One picture accepted by any magazine would have awed her sufficiently.
The mere fact that he was an artist had been enough to impress her.
"Do you care for that sort of thing--drawing, painting, I mean?" he
inquired kindly.
She drew a quick breath, steadied her voice, and said she did.
"Perhaps you may turn out stuff yourself some day."
She scarcely knew how to take the word "stuff." Vaguely she surmised
it to be professional vernacular.
She admitted shyly that she cared for nothing so much as drawing, that
she longed for instruction, but that such a dream was hopeless.
At first he did not comprehend that poverty barred the way to her; he
urged her to cultivate her talent, bestowed advice concerning the Art
League, boarding houses, studios, ways, means, and ends, until she
felt obliged to tell him how far beyond her means such magic
splendours lay.
He remained silent, sorry for her, thinking also that the chances were
against her having any particular talent, consoling a heart that was
unusually sympathetic and tender with the conclusion that this girl
would be happier here in Brookhollow than scratching around the
purlieus of New York to make both ends meet.
"It's a tough deal," he remarked abruptly. "--I mean this art stuff.
You work like the dickens and kick your heels in ante-rooms. If they
take your stuff they send you back to alter it or redraw it. _I_ don't
know how anybody makes a living at it--in the beginning."
"Don't _you_?"
"I? No." He reddened; but she could not notice it in the moonlight.
"No," he repeated; "I have an allowance from my father. I'm new at it
yet."
"Couldn't a man--a girl--support herself by drawing pictures for
magazines?" she inquired tremulously.
"Oh, well, of course there are some who have arrived--and they manage
to get on. Some even make wads, you know."
"W-wads?" she repeated, mystified.
"I mean a lot of money. There's that girl on the _Star_, Jean
Throssel, who makes all kinds of wealth, they say, out of her spidery,
filmy girls in ringlets and cheesecloth dinner gowns."
"Oh!"
"Yes, Jean Throssel, and that Waythorne girl, Belinda Waythorne, you
know--does all that stuff for _The Looking Glass_--futurist graft, no
mouths on her people--she makes _hers_, I understand."
It was rather difficult for Rue to follow him amid the vernacular
mazes.
"Then, of course," he continued, "men like Alexander Fairless and
Philip Lightwood who imitates him, make fortunes out of their drawing.
I could name a dozen, perhaps. But the rest--hard sledding, Miss
Carew!"
"Is it _very_ hard?"
"Well, I don't know what on earth I'd do if dad didn't back me as his
fancy."
"A father ought to, if he can afford it."
"Oh, I'll pay my way some day. It's in me. I feel it; I know it. I'll
make plenty of money," he assured her confidently.
"I'm sure you will."
"Thank you," he smiled. "My friends tell me I've got it in me. I have
one friend in particular--the Princess Mistchenka--who has all kinds
of confidence in my future. When I'm blue she bolsters me up. She's
quite wonderful. I owe her a lot for asking me to her Sunday nights
and for giving me her friendship."
"A--a princess?" whispered the girl, who had drawn pictures of
thousands but was a little startled to realise that such fabled
creatures really exist.
"Is she _very_ beautiful?" she added.
"She's tremendously pretty."
"Her--clothes are very beautiful, I suppose," ventured Rue.
"Well--they're very--smart. Everything about her is smart. Her Sunday
night suppers are wonderful. You meet people who do things--all
sorts--everybody who is somebody."
He turned to her frankly:
"I think myself very lucky that the Princess Mistchenka should be my
friend, because, honestly, Miss Carew, I don't see what there is in me
to interest such a woman."
Rue thought she could see, but remained silent.
"If I had my way," said Neeland, a few moments later, "I'd drop
illustrating and paint battle scenes. But it wouldn't pay, you see."
"Couldn't you support yourself by painting battles?"
"Not yet," he said honestly. "Of course I have hopes--intentions----"
he laughed, drew his reins; the silvery chimes clashed and jingled and
flashed in the moonlight; they had arrived.
At the door he said:
"I hope some day you'll have a chance to take lessons. Thank you for
dancing with me.... If you ever do come to New York to study, I hope
you'll let me know."
"Yes," she said, "I will."
He was halfway to his sleigh, looked back, saw her looking back as she
entered the lighted doorway.
"Good night, Rue," he said impulsively, warmly sorry for her.
"Good night," she said.
The drop of Irish blood in him prompted him to go back to where she
stood framed in the lighted doorway. And the same drop was no doubt
responsible for his taking her by the waist and tilting back her head
in its fur hood and kissing her soft, warm lips.
She looked up at him in a flushed, bewildered sort of way, not
resisting; but his eyes were so gay and mischievous, and his quick
smile so engaging that a breathless, uncertain smile began to edge her
lips; and it remained stamped there, stiffening even after he had
jumped into his cutter and had driven away, jingling joyously out into
the dazzling moonshine.
* * * * *
In bed, the window open, and the covers pulled to her chin, Rue lay
wakeful, living over again the pleasures of the evening; and Neeland's
face was always before her open eyes, and his pleasant voice seemed to
be sounding in her ears. As for the kiss, it did not trouble her.
Girls she went with were not infrequently so saluted by boys. That,
being her own first experience, was important only in that degree. And
she shyly thought the experience agreeable. And, as she recalled,
revived, and considered all that Neeland had said, it seemed to her
that this young man led an enchanted life and that such as he were
indeed companions fit for princesses.
"Princess Mistchenka," she repeated aloud to herself. And somehow it
sounded vaguely familiar to the girl, as though somewhere, long ago,
she had heard another voice pronounce the name.