Country Neighbors Part 21

Dorcas looked past her up the garden walk and at the porch where Alida sat rocking back and forth, her hands busy as ever with her delicate work.

"Alida!" she called softly. "'Lida, you come here a minute. I want to speak to you."

Alida laid down her work with care and placed her thimble in the basket.

Then she came along the garden path, swaying and floating as she always walked, her pretty head moving rhythmically.

"'Lida, you come a step or two with me," said Dorcas gently, when the girl was at the gate. "I want to speak to you."

Alida opened the gate and, without a glance at her mother, stepped out upon the dusty path. People said Mrs. Roe talked so much that everybody had long ago done listening to her, and perhaps she had done expecting it.

"You'd ought to have suthin' over your head," she called to Alida.

"You'll be 's black as an Injun."

Dorcas took a long stride into the roadside tangle and broke off a branch of thick-leaved elder. She gave it to Alida, and the girl gravely shaded herself with it from the defacing sun. They walked along together in silence for a moment, and Dorcas frankly studied Alida's face. There was no sign of grief upon it, of loneliness, of discontent. The skin was like a rose, a fainter, pinker rose than Dorcas had ever seen. The soft lips kept their lovely curve.

"'Lida," she breathed, "what you goin' to do to-night?"

"I don't know," said Alida, in her even voice. "Sometimes I sew, when it ain't too hot. I'm makin' me a dotted muslin."

Dorcas found her own heart beating fast. The excitement of it all, of life itself, the bliss, the pain and loss, came keenly on her. She thought of the days that had gone to buying this thing of prettiness, the strained muscles, the racing blood and thrilling brain, the sweat and toil of it, and something choked her to think that now the pretty thing was almost won. Newell would have it, his heart's desire, and in thirty years perhaps it would look like Alida's mother with that shallow mouth. Yet her simple faithfulness was a part of her own blood, and she could not deny him what was his.

"Alida," she said, in an eloquent throb, "do you--do you like him?"

"Who?" asked Alida calmly, turning clear eyes upon her.

Dorcas laughed shamefacedly.

"I don't know hardly what I'm talkin' about," she said. "I've worked pretty hard to-day. 'Lida, if there was anybody you liked, anybody you want to talk things over with--well"--she paused to laugh a little--"well, if I were you, I should just put on my blue dress, the one with the pink rosebuds, an' walk along this road down to the pine grove an' back again."

"The idea!" said Alida, from an unbroken calm. "I should think you were crazy."

Dorcas stopped in the road, decisively, as if the moment had come for them to part.

"That's what I should do, 'Lida," she said, "to-night, every night along about eight, till it happens. An' I should wear my blue."

Alida turned away, as if she felt something unmaidenly in the suggestion and might well remove herself; yet Dorcas knew she would remember. They had separated, and when they were a dozen paces apart, Dorcas called again:--

"'Lida!"

Alida turned. Again Dorcas spoke shyly, from the weight of her great task.

"'Lida, Newell Bond's sellin' off Sunset Hill. He's doin' well for himself."

"Is he?" returned Alida primly. "I hadn't heard of it." Then she turned and, keeping her feet carefully from the dust, went on again.

It seemed to Dorcas that night as if she could not wait to finish the bowl of bread and milk that made her supper, and to put on her white muslin and seat herself by the window. She felt as if the world were rushing fast, the flowers in the garden hurrying to open, the sun to get into the sky and make it redder than ever it had been before, and all happy people to be happier. Something seemed sweeping after her, and she dared not turn and look it in the face. But her heart told her it was the moment that would come after her work had been accomplished and Newell had found Alida. As if she had known it would be so, she saw him coming down the road and called to him. He was walking very fast, his head up, and his hands, she presently saw, clenched as they swung.

"Newell!" she cried, "come in."

He strode up the path and she rose to meet him. She remembered now that she had many things to tell him, and the knowledge of them choked her.

"Newell," she began, "you mustn't go--I don't know where you're goin'--but down that way, you mustn't go till eight o'clock. An' then I guess you'll see her. It'll be better than the house, because her mother's there. Why," her voice faltered and she ended breathlessly, "what makes you look so?"

He looked like wrath. It was upon his knotted brow, the iron lips, and in the blazing of his eyes.

"What's this I've been told?" he said, in a voice she had never heard from him, "about Clayton Rand?"

She laughed, relieved and pleased at her own cleverness.

"It's all right, Newell," she called gleefully. "He hasn't been there for two weeks. He's comin' to-night to take me to ride, an' I'll make him go the turnpike road, an' she'll be down by Pine Hollow, an' you can snap her up under her mother's nose--an' she's got on her blue."

Newell put out his hands and grasped her wrists. He held them tight and looked at her. She gazed back in wonder. In all the months of his repining she had not seen him so, full of warm pa.s.sion, of a steady purpose.

"Dorcas," he said, "I won't have it!"

She answered in pure wonder and with great simplicity:--

"What, Newell? What won't you have?"

He spoke slowly, leaving intervals between the words.

"I won't have you ridin' with him, nor walkin' with him, nor with any man. If I'd known it, I'd put a stop to it before. Why, Dorcas, don't you know whose girl you are? You're mine."

Floods of color went over her face, and she looked down. Then, as he was silent, she had to speak.

"Newell," she said, "I only meant--I thought maybe I might help you--"

There she had to look at him, and found his eyes upon her in a grave sweetness she could hardly understand. No such flower had bloomed for her in her whole life.

"Why, Dorcas," he said, "think how we've worked together! What do you s'pose we worked so for?"

Alida's name rose to her lips, but her tongue refused to speak. At that moment it seemed too slight a word to say.

"'Twas so we could find out where we stood," the grave voice went on.

"That was it."

She felt breathless, as if they had together been pursuing some slight thing, a b.u.t.terfly, a bubble, and now, when it was under their hands, they saw that the thing itself was not what mattered. It was the race.

They had kept step, and still together now, they had run into a safe and happy place.

There was the beat of hoofs upon the road.

"Stay here," she breathed. "I can't go with him. I'll tell him so."

She ran out and down the path, a swift Atalanta, her white skirts floating. Clayton Rand was at the gate. Even in the instant of his smiling at her she realized that the smile was that of one who is expectant of a pleasure, but only of the pleasure itself, he does not care with whom. Her eyes glowed upon him, her brown cheeks were red with dancing blood.

"I can't go," she said, in a full, ecstatic voice. "Thank you ever so much. I can't ever go again. See!" she pointed down the road. "Don't she look pretty in among the trees? That's 'Lida. She's got on her blue."

She turned and hastened up the path again. At the door she paused to look once again at the spot of blue through the vista of summer green.

It was moving. It was mounting into Clayton Rand's wagon. Then Dorcas went in where Newell was waiting to kiss her.