PEEPED IN AT HIM.
Blakemore came out on Sunday morning, snapping his watch and complaining
against the pall-bearing march of time. He was full of business. His
pockets were stuffed with papers. He made figures on the backs of
envelopes as he sat at the table. He asked after Milford. His wife said
that the place had somehow lost its charm for Mr. Milford. Mrs. Goodwin
and Miss Strand had seen him in the road. Mrs. Stuvic, standing near,
pressed her lips close together. She shook her head. She did not
understand him, she declared. Lately he had been seen in Antioch. She
did not know what business could have taken him there.
"You may not be supposed to know," said George, making his figures.
"Now you keep still," she replied. "I am supposed to know more than you
think for. I wasn't born yesterday, and I'm goin' to live longer than
any of you, I tell you that."
"It's very natural for us to expect every one else to die," said George.
"It's a pretty hard matter to picture one's self as dead. But the old
fellow is coming along yonder whetting his scythe as he comes."
"George," said his wife, "don't talk to her that way."
"Oh, let him talk," the old woman spoke up. "I don't care what he says.
Goes in at one ear and comes out at the other, with me. I'll live to see
him cold, I'll tell you that."
"Oh, please don't talk that way, Mrs. Stuvic; you give me the shudders.
By the way, Mr. Dorsey has gone back to town, hasn't he?"
"Yes," Mrs. Stuvic answered. "And he owes me, too."
"That's what you say about everybody," George declared. "You'll be
saying it about me, next."
"Well, you did owe me till to-day; and see that you don't do it again.
But that feller Dorsey'll pay. He'll be back again in about two weeks.
He says I've got the finest place in the county."
"The 'peach,'" George whispered, as Mrs. Goodwin and Gunhild came into
the dining-room. His wife pulled at him. The boy wanted to know what he
had said. For a wonder he had not heard. His mind was among the green
apples in the orchard. George bowed to the ladies and began to tell them
about the great improvement in business. The banks had plenty of money
to lend. Real estate, the true pulse of the times, had begun to throb
with a new life. Mrs. Goodwin did not think that there had been any
improvement. The Doctor had written that money was scarce. Every one
complained of slow collections. George asked the Norwegian if there were
any sale for pictures.
"There is no sale for mine," she answered. "I do not expect to sell
any."
"Then," said George, "it's a waste of time to paint them."
"I do not paint," the girl replied. "My ambition was not dressed in
colors."
Mrs. Goodwin smiled upon her, and Mrs. Blakemore drew her husband's
attention to what she termed the bright aptness of the remark. George
said that it did not make any difference whether art was done with a
brush or pencil, it was a waste of time if it failed to sell; and
hereupon Mrs. Stuvic began to sniff as a preliminary to an important
statement.
"A man boarded with me a while last winter that could knock 'em all out
when it comes to makin' pictures with a pen," she said. "He drew a bird
without takin' his pen up from the paper, and it looked for all the
world like it was flyin'. But when that was said all was said. He wan't
no manner account. He went away owin' me. Now, what does he want to go
to Antioch for? I'd just like for somebody to tell me that."
"The man that drew the bird?" George spoke up.
"Oh, you keep still. I mean Milford."
"Probably the woman he's been working for so hard has moved into the
neighborhood," said George. Mrs. Stuvic declared that you never could
tell what a man was working for. No man was worth trusting. She knew;
she had tried them. Milford was no better than the rest of them. Why
didn't he explain himself? Why didn't he stand out where every one could
see him? She had defended him. She was getting tired of it. He had not
rewarded her with his confidence. He came a stranger and had been a
stranger ever since. One of these days he might set fire to the house
and run away.
"You shall not talk about him so," the girl declared. "No one shall
abuse him."
"Good for you," Mrs. Stuvic cried. "I've been fightin' his battles all
along and I'm glad to get some help. Why, she looks like a cat, don't
she? And it's what I like to see, I tell you. But it's usually the way;
a man works for one woman and is took up for and defended by another."
"He is not working for any woman, madam," said Gunhild. "No woman has
any claim on him."
Mrs. Blakemore shook her head. "With that dark, handsome face it would
be difficult long to escape the claim of a woman."
"Come off," said George. "I don't see anything so killing about him."
"Men never see killing features in man," his wife replied. "They are
left for softer eyes to discover."
"Oh," he rejoined, looking worriedly at her.
"The 'peach,'" she whispered. "Am I to hear that again?"
He scratched upon an envelope and handed to her the words: "I give in.
Let us call it even and quits."
Mrs. Goodwin looked at Gunhild as if by a new light. Next in importance
to the discovery of genius itself, is the discovery that genius is
picking its way along the briary path of love, lifting a thorny bough in
bloom to peep blushingly from a hiding place, or boldly to tear through
the brambles out into the open, and in honest resentment defy the
wondering gaze of the common eye. It would be a pretty sight to see this
girl in love, the woman mused. She did not wish to see her married to a
man who labored in a field; but it would be delicious to see her love
him and hating herself for it, fighting a rosy battle with her heart.
There was no romance in loving an "available" man; there was no
suffering in it, and how empty was a love that did not swallow a
midnight sob! She asked Gunhild to walk out into the woods with her.
They crossed a low, marshy place where pickerel split the trashy water
in the spring of the year, and strolled up a slope into the woods. They
gathered flowers, talking of things that interested neither of them;
they found an old log covered with moss and here they sat down to rest.
It was always sad to feel that the summer would soon be gone, the
elderly woman said, gazing at a soldierly mullein stalk, nodding its
yellow head. More summers were coming, and the leaves and the flowers
would be the same, the grass as green, the birds as full of happy life;
but the heart could not be turned back to live over the hours and the
days--only, in dreaming, in reminders of the time forever gone. To the
youthful, two summers are twins; to the older, they are relatives; to
the aged, strangers.
"You make me sad when you talk that way," said the girl.
"My dear child, a sadness to-day may be food for sweet reflection in the
future. Indeed, it would even be well for you to suffer now."
"But I do not want to suffer. I do not see the need of it."
"My dear, suffering prepares us for the better life. It makes us more
thankful."
"I do not know that," she said with energy. "Sometimes it may harden us.
We may be kept from food so long that we have no manners when we come to
the table."
"Gunhild, that is a very good remark--a thoughtful remark, true in the
main, but not illustrative of the point I wish to make. But you are so
full of hope that--"
"Full of hope, madam?"
"Yes, the hope that rises from health and strength. You have so much to
look forward to. You might make a brilliant match."
"Then I must hope that sometime I may sell myself?"
"Oh, no, no. I didn't mean that. I mean that you have prospects. Shall I
be plain? You have the prospects of loving one man and marrying another.
That is called a brilliant match, I believe. Or, at least, it is a
feature of nearly all brilliant matches. Don't you think so?"
"I am not supposed to know, madam."
"Not even to please me?"
"Oh, if it please you, I am supposed to know everything."
"Good. Then tell me what you know about Mr. Milford. You understand that
it is my mission to find interest in nearly all--well, I might say, odd
persons. You have met him when I was not with you. And he must have
told you something."
"He has told me nothing that I can repeat."
"Oh, is it that bad?"
"Is what that bad, Mrs. Goodwin? I do not understand what you mean by
that bad. Perhaps what he told me did not make enough impression to be
remembered."
"But didn't he say things you did not remember, but continued to feel?"
"Yes, I believe so. You know that I do not understand men very well. I
do not understand any one very well. They make remarks about him and say
that he is mysterious, but he is plainer to me than any one. Somehow I
feel with him. He has had a hard life, I think, and that brings him
closer to me."
"Ah, my dear, the suffering I spoke of just now."
"But," the girl added, "I do not know that his hard life has made him
any better."
"Perhaps not. But it must have made him more thoughtful. After all, I'm
not so much interested in him. He is one of the characters that throw a
side-light on our lives. He can never take an essential part in our
affairs. Do you think so?"
"I must again say that I do not understand."
"Why, don't you know that we meet many persons, and become quite well
acquainted with them, and yet never feel that they belong to our
atmosphere? They are not necessary to the story of our lives, so to
speak, and yet that atmosphere of which they are not really a part,
would not be wholly complete without them. They stand ready for our
side talks; sometimes they even flip a sentiment at us. We catch it,
trim it with ribbons and hand it back. They keep it; we forget. The
Blakemores are such persons. We may never see them again--may almost
wholly forget them, and yet something that we have said may influence
their lives. And perhaps to Mr. Milford, we are but side-lights. He may
soon be in his saddle again, forgetting that he ever knew us. But are we
to forget him? Has his light been strong enough to dazzle us?"
"I shall not forget him, madam."
"Then he may have made himself essential to the story of your life."
"He has made himself a part of my recollection."
"No more than that? Sometimes we recall because it is no trouble, and
sometimes we remember with pain. You know, Gunhild, that I think a great
deal of you."
"I can never forget that. It is an obligation--"
"Now, my child, I don't want you to look at it that way. You must not.
What I have done has given me pleasure. And if I deserve any reward, it
is--well, frankness."
"You deserve more than that--gratitude."
"Then let frankness be an expression of gratitude. Are you in love with
that man?"
"Madam, a long time ago I used to slip to the door of the dining-room of
the little hotel in the West and peep in at him. They said he was bad,
that he would kill; but he came like a cavalier, with his spurs
jingling, and fascinated me. I felt that my own spirit if turned loose
would be as wild as his, for had not my forefathers fought on the sea
till the waves were bloody about them, and had they not dashed madly
into wild lands? I peeped in at him; I did not speak to him; but I
watched for his coming. And late at night I have lain awake to hear his
wild song in the bar-room, just below me. One day I met him in the
passage-way, and looked into his eyes, with my heart in my own, I
feared; and I did not see him again till I came out here. I did not know
his name. They called him Hell-in-the-Mud."
Mrs. Goodwin did not remain quiet to hear the story. With many
exclamations, she walked up and down, sometimes with her back toward the
girl sitting on the log, her hands in her lap, lying dreamily; sometimes
she wheeled about and stood wide of eye and with mouth open.
"Well, who ever heard of the like? But are you sure he is the same man?"
"Yes. I did not remind him that I had seen him there. He said that he
had seen me--he said--"
"But what did he say? You must keep nothing back now. It would spoil
everything. What did he say?"
"He said that he got on his horse and galloped away--from me. He said
that he did not want to be--be tangled up."
"Well, well, who ever heard of such a thing? And you have met out here.
Has he asked you to marry him?"
"No, and I do not think he will. I must not marry him."
"But you love him."
"Bitterly, madam."
"Oh, isn't that sweet--I mean, how peculiar a situation it is! No, you
can't think of marrying him. It wouldn't at all do. I don't believe he
could live tied down to one place. It is a first love and must live only
as a romance. It will help you in your art. It will be an inspiration to
all your after life, a poem to recite to your daughter in the years to
come. I had one, my dear. He was wild, wholly impossible, you might say.
And I was foolish enough to have married him, but my mother--she married
me to the dear Doctor. And how fortunate it was for both of us, I mean
for me and for Arthur! He threw himself away."
"But he might not have thrown himself away, madam, if you had married
him."
"Oh, yes, he was really thrown away before I met him. My mother was
right. She knew. She had married the opposite to her romance."
"But are women never to marry the men they love?"
"Oh, yes, to be sure. We all love our husbands. But we ought not to
marry our first love. That would be absurd. It would leave our after
life without a sweet regret. My dear, romantic love is one thing and
marriage is another. Love is a distress and marriage is business. That's
what the Doctor says."
"And pardon me, madam, but he lives it."
"How? What do you mean?"
"Why, you are his business partner. You take care of his house. If you
are not there your servants keep the house. He may be pleased to see
you, but there is never any joy in his eyes--or yours. You are
dissatisfied with life. You try to make yourself believe you are not,
but you are. You look about for something, all the time. If you and the
Doctor should fail in business, you would grow tired of each other. You
told me to be frank."
"Oh, yes, but you must not believe that. I think the world of him. I
don't see how I could live without him. He is absolutely necessary to
me. But he wasn't my romance. And I am glad of it. I couldn't dream over
him if he were. But your story. It almost upsets me. Got on his horse
and rode away! It is evident that he didn't want a romance. What wise
man could have warned him against it? I am glad you told me, my dear. I
can be of a great deal of assistance to you. Suppose we go back to the
house. Well, well, you have given me a surprise."