That night Dryfoos was wakened from his after-dinner nap by the sound of
gay talk and nervous giggling in the drawing-room. The talk, which was
Christine's, and the giggling, which was Mela's, were intershot with the
heavier tones of a man's voice; and Dryfoos lay awhile on the leathern
lounge in his library, trying to make out whether he knew the voice. His
wife sat in a deep chair before the fire, with her eyes on his face,
waiting for him to wake.
"Who is that out there?" he asked, without opening his eyes.
"Indeed, indeed, I don't know, Jacob," his wife answered. "I reckon it's
just some visitor of the girls'."
"Was I snoring?"
"Not a bit. You was sleeping as quiet! I did hate to have 'em wake you,
and I was just goin' out to shoo them. They've been playin' something,
and that made them laugh."
"I didn't know but I had snored," said the old man, sitting up.
"No," said his wife. Then she asked, wistfully, "Was you out at the old
place, Jacob?"
"Yes."
"Did it look natural?"
"Yes; mostly. They're sinking the wells down in the woods pasture."
"And--the children's graves?"
"They haven't touched that part. But I reckon we got to have 'em moved to
the cemetery. I bought a lot."
The old woman began softly to weep. "It does seem too hard that they
can't be let to rest in peace, pore little things. I wanted you and me to
lay there, too, when our time come, Jacob. Just there, back o' the
beehives and under them shoomakes--my, I can see the very place! And I
don't believe I'll ever feel at home anywheres else. I woon't know where
I am when the trumpet sounds. I have to think before I can tell where the
east is in New York; and what if I should git faced the wrong way when I
raise? Jacob, I wonder you could sell it!" Her head shook, and the
firelight shone on her tears as she searched the folds of her dress for
her pocket.
A peal of laughter came from the drawing-room, and then the sound of
chords struck on the piano.
"Hush! Don't you cry, 'Liz'beth!" said Dryfoos. "Here; take my
handkerchief. I've got a nice lot in the cemetery, and I'm goin' to have
a monument, with two lambs on it--like the one you always liked so much.
It ain't the fashion, any more, to have family buryin' grounds; they're
collectin' 'em into the cemeteries, all round."
"I reckon I got to bear it," said his wife, muffling her face in his
handkerchief. "And I suppose the Lord kin find me, wherever I am. But I
always did want to lay just there. You mind how we used to go out and set
there, after milkin', and watch the sun go down, and talk about where
their angels was, and try to figger it out?"
"I remember, 'Liz'beth."
The man's voice in the drawing-room sang a snatch of French song,
insolent, mocking, salient; and then Christine's attempted the same
strain, and another cry of laughter from Mela followed.
"Well, I always did expect to lay there. But I reckon it's all right. It
won't be a great while, now, anyway. Jacob, I don't believe I'm a-goin'
to live very long. I know it don't agree with me here."
"Oh, I guess it does, 'Liz'beth. You're just a little pulled down with
the weather. It's coming spring, and you feel it; but the doctor says
you're all right. I stopped in, on the way up, and he says so."
"I reckon he don't know everything," the old woman persisted: "I've been
runnin' down ever since we left Moffitt, and I didn't feel any too well
there, even. It's a very strange thing, Jacob, that the richer you git,
the less you ain't able to stay where you want to, dead or alive."
"It's for the children we do it," said Dryfoos. "We got to give them
their chance in the world."
"Oh, the world! They ought to bear the yoke in their youth, like we done.
I know it's what Coonrod would like to do."
Dryfoos got upon his feet. "If Coonrod 'll mind his own business, and do
what I want him to, he'll have yoke enough to bear." He moved from his
wife, without further effort to comfort her, and pottered heavily out
into the dining-room. Beyond its obscurity stretched the glitter of the
deep drawing-room. His feet, in their broad, flat slippers, made no sound
on the dense carpet, and he came unseen upon the little group there near
the piano. Mela perched upon the stool with her back to the keys, and
Beaton bent over Christine, who sat with a banjo in her lap, letting him
take her hands and put them in the right place on the instrument. Her
face was radiant with happiness, and Mela was watching her with foolish,
unselfish pleasure in her bliss.
There was nothing wrong in the affair to a man of Dryfoos's traditions
and perceptions, and if it had been at home in the farm sitting-room, or
even in his parlor at Moffitt, he would not have minded a young man's
placing his daughter's hands on a banjo, or even holding them there; it
would have seemed a proper, attention from him if he was courting her.
But here, in such a house as this, with the daughter of a man who had
made as much money as he had, he did not know but it was a liberty. He
felt the angry doubt of it which beset him in regard to so many
experiences of his changed life; he wanted to show his sense of it, if it
was a liberty, but he did not know how, and he did not know that it was
so. Besides, he could not help a touch of the pleasure in Christine's
happiness which Mela showed; and he would have gone back to the library,
if he could, without being discovered.
But Beaton had seen him, and Dryfoos, with a nonchalant nod to the young
man, came forward. "What you got there, Christine?"
"A banjo," said the girl, blushing in her father's presence.