Oldfield Part 14

And the young man and the young maid also went the way of all innocent healthy young creatures in ripening summer, thinking little more of the t.i.tanic forces moving the world, than the birds and the bees and the b.u.t.terflies. Lynn was wiser and older than Doris; yet he too was still young, and still far from any real maturity of wisdom. His knowledge of life was such as may be gained by a student who goes through a great university with a definite ambition steadily before him; and who comes from it into the world with a clear, clean, and upright conception of what a man who earnestly means to hold a high place in it should be and should do. But he was only a boy grown tall after all, and he had never seen so beautiful a girl as Doris was, or any one of such indefinable charm or of such ineffable grace.

He looked down at her as she walked by his side one day, going up the big road. They took daily walks together now without objection from any source. Only dear little Miss Judy, with her funny notions of chaperonage--which n.o.body understood any more than many other of the little lady's dainty whims, and which everybody indulged and quietly smiled at, as at many another of her odd, sweet ways--would ever have thought of objecting. It was, indeed, an old, well-established, and highly respected custom of the country for young men and young maids to walk alone together. Seeing them do this, the Oldfield people merely smiled kindly, as kind people do at young lovers anywhere--and sometimes nodded at one another, thus silently saying that all was well, that this was just as it should be. The very fact of these daily walks alone together made everything perfectly open and clear. Even Miss Judy's rigid scruples on the score of propriety gradually relaxed, as Doris and Lynn went so openly and frankly from her side to stroll toward the graveyard, day after day.

From time immemorial the graveyard had been the favorite trysting-place of Oldfield lovers. Perhaps the graveyard of every far-off old village always is the lovers' chosen resort. It is certainly nearly always the most beautiful and the most retired spot, yet it is also usually close by, for in death, as in life, humanity holds closer together in the country than in town, and the dead are not laid so far from the living.

And then, to the young everywhere, death itself always seems so distant that its earthly habitations have no real terrors. No sadness ever comes to happy youth from the mere nearness to the Eternal Silence; nothing of the Great Mystery, vast as the universe and inscrutable as life, ever sounds for the happy young with the sighing of the wind over the long, long, green, green gra.s.s growing only over country graves, the saddening sound which older and less happy ears always hear. None of that unutterable feeling of the pain of living, and the peace of dying, ever wrings the hearts of happy lovers at the moan of the gentlest breeze through the graveyard cedars, where it seems to those who are older and sadder to moan as it never does elsewhere.

Certainly, neither of the two young people, sitting that day on the rustic benches under the tallest cedar, either heard or thought of any of these sad things. Lynn heard mainly the music of the mating birds, and thought mostly of the exquisite curve of the fair cheek almost touching his arm. It was so satiny in its smoothness, so velvety in its softness, and so delicately tinted with the faint, yet warm, glow of rich, rare red, which gleams out of the deep heart of a golden tea-rose.

And the glory of her wonderful hair! He felt, as he looked down upon her radiant head, so close to his shoulder, that he had never realized how wonderful its dazzling crown was, until he saw it now with the wondrous light of the sunset re-gilding its fine gold, and with the south wind ruffling its loveliness into more bewitching disorder. As he gazed, a sudden gust leaped over the far green hilltops and lifted the wide brim of her white hat, thus revealing the full beauty of her face.

Lynn saw it, with a sharp indrawing of his breath. A yearning so keen, so deep and tender, as to cross the narrow border between pleasure and pain, rushed into the young man's heart. It has been said what an ardent lover of beauty he was. The feeling which swept over him now was the yearning that every true lover of the beautiful feels at the sight of great beauty: the hopeless desire to hold it forever unchanged--be it the delicate flush on an exquisite cheek, which must go as quickly as it comes, the freshness of a perfect flower which must fade with the rising of the sun, or the miracle of the dawn which must soon vanish before the noontide glare. Doris seemed to him Beauty's very self, to be worshipped with all his beauty-worshipping soul, not merely a beautiful girl to be loved with all his human young heart.

She wore that day a dress of faded pink muslin, very thin, very soft, very scant, so that it clung close to her slender, supple form--a poor old dress, so old that no one could remember whose it had been first.

The bodice opened daintily at the throat in the pretty old fashion known as "surplice" to the Oldfield people; and on the glimpse of snow which drifted between the modest edges of the opening--where the lily of her fairness lay under the rose of the muslin ruffles, just where the sweet curve of her throat melted into the lovely roundness of her bosom--there nestled a little cross of jet held by a narrow band of black velvet, tied around her neck and whitening its whiteness as jet whitens pearl.

Such a poor little ornament! Such a poor old dress! And yet the picture that they made when Doris wore them!

Looking at her, Lynn knew well enough that he had but to loose his firm hold upon himself ever so little, to love her as he might never be able to love another woman. He never had seen, and never expected to see, such beauty as this of Doris's, for the true lover of beauty knows its rarity. And nothing else in the world so appealed to him; no charm of mind, or heart, or spirit, could ever quite make up for the lack of it, notwithstanding that he valued these qualities also, and held them higher than thoughtless youth often holds them. And yet, despite his frank recognition of the truth, he still had no thought of allowing himself to love Doris Wendall. Perhaps, all unsuspected even by himself, the instinct of the Brahmin was in him too; of a certainty, what is bred in the bone is apt to come out in the flesh. But if this were true, if he were influenced by any feeling of caste, he certainly did not suspect it. He was not vain, with the common, harmless vanity of most young men; nor was there in him any unbecoming pride of birth or position. He thought that he was held back solely by his determination to let nothing turn him from his life plans. He was wholly sincere in believing that he was strong enough to stand firm, to keep himself from loving Doris, as he knew he could love her. The thought that she might love him had never crossed his mind. The thought of being able to win her was as far from him as the thought of reaching out his arms to gather a star--so high above all earthly things had his beauty-worship enshrined her.

"I wonder what you are thinking about," he said suddenly, that day, with his eyes still on the curve of her cheek. "Of late I have begun to believe that you don't any longer think Miss Judy's thoughts exclusively," he went on, banteringly, in the freedom which now existed between them. "More than once I have seen unmistakable signs of thoughts of your own, thoughts which, moreover, were not in the least like Miss Judy's."

Doris turned with a dimpling smile, and lifted her wide-open, frank brown eyes to his darker ones. "You must not laugh at dear Miss Judy. I never allow anybody to do that. I can only wish my thoughts were always as good and sweet as hers."

"I haven't made any comparison. I've merely mentioned a difference,"

Lynn said, laughing teasingly, in the hope that the rare tinge of color might linger longer on her fair cheek.

And yet, in a way, he had been quite in earnest in what he had said. It was a fact that he had marked a great change in Doris, that he had come gradually to see that a simple, sound strength of mind, a sort of wholesome common sense, lay under her gentle purity as solid white rock lies under a limpid brook.

"Well, it is quite true, I suppose, that Miss Judy never thought, in all her life, of what I was thinking of just then, and what I have been thinking of a great deal lately," Doris said, slowly, shyly, as if approaching a difficult subject.

"And what is that? What were you thinking or dreaming of, when I awakened you just now," the young man asked.

"I wasn't dreaming at all. I was wide awake. I was wondering how--" with an effort, after a momentary hesitation, and in a tone so low that he barely heard, "how a girl might earn a living for several persons--for a whole family." And then, after a longer pause, a quick breath, and a sudden deepening of the rare red of her cheek, "So that her mother need not work so hard."

It was the first time that she had spoken to him of this secret wish, so long cherished. She had, indeed, seldom mentioned her mother to him in any manner whatever. The reserve was not in the least because she was ashamed of her--such a feeling was unknown to Doris. She respected her mother and loved her, knowing, as no one else could know, how good a mother she was, how utterly unselfish, how absolutely upright, before the perpetual necessity which drove her to earn the family's bread in the only way that she knew. With her whole heart Doris loved and honored her mother. But, alas! their tastes were so unlike, their thoughts were so different, their whole lives were so far apart. And neither love nor honor nor any other of all the tenderest, n.o.blest feelings of the truest heart, can ever bring together those whom cruel nature has set forever apart. For it is one of the mysteries of the sorrow of living that the deep rivers of many earnest lives are thus set to run side by side, and yet forbidden ever to mingle from the beginning to the end; from the unknown fountain of life to the unsounded sea of death.

Lynn had noticed more than once that a shadow fell over Doris's gentle spirits whenever, on their strolls together, they caught a glimpse of Sidney. It was usually in the distance that they saw her, going up or down the big road, with her long, free, fearless step, her bonnet on the back of her head, and her knitting-needles flying as she walked. For, notwithstanding that Lynn had gone to her house almost daily now for weeks past, she had managed, by hook or by crook,--as she would have expressed it,--to hold to her original intention of keeping out of the way, of giving him a fair field and no favor, as she said to herself.

Yet the young man had gathered, nevertheless, although he scarcely knew how, a tolerably correct impression of the compelling personality of Doris's mother. Little by little he had begun, consequently, to perceive the unusual and contending influences which had made this beautiful girl what she was; and the knowledge caused him to wonder what she would become, now that she was beginning to be herself, now that the strong forces of her own character were already in revolt.

He had also divined something of Doris's dislike of her mother's means of earning a living; but he was still far from knowing how strong the feeling was, or that it had grown with her growth, gradually and steadily, until it had taken a great sudden leap--thus coming as close to bitterness as her gentle nature could ever come--soon after she had met himself. Nor had he observed that day, as they climbed the hillside to the graveyard, that Doris had seen her mother far off and that a shadow had fallen at once over the brightness of her innocent talk, through which a soft gayety often shone as color gleams out of the whiteness of the pearl.

"Do you know any girls who work? That is what I was thinking about," she went on timidly, turning her eyes away and looking toward the hills enfolding the valley; the near green hills beyond which she had never been, the far empurpled hills r.i.m.m.i.n.g all that she knew of the world.

"_Do_ you know any working girls?" she repeated. "White girls, I mean, of course. I was wondering--I thought that if so--perhaps you might know what kind of work they do. The kind of work that might be done by a young gentlewoman of good breeding."

It was quaintly charming to hear the last thing that Miss Judy would have thought of, or dreamed of saying, so staidly uttered, in that little lady's own prim manner and in that little lady's own old-fashioned words. Lynn could not help smiling, although there was no doubting Doris's earnestness, and notwithstanding that there was something in her look and tone which touched him.

"I'll have to think," he said, half in jest and half in earnest. "No, on the spur of the moment, I am almost sure that I don't know any working girl who might be described in just those terms. There are doubtless many working girls who are ladies, but they would scarcely be likely to call themselves by such an antiquated name. They wouldn't even know themselves by so antiquated a description."

She did not smile; silently, gravely, she turned her dark eyes on his face; her own face was lovelier than ever in its wistfulness, and her dark eyes softer than ever in their unconscious appeal.

"But I am in earnest," she persisted. "Have you ever known any--any girl--like me--who worked?"

His eyes were grave too, now, and they were looking straight down into hers. "I have known very few girls of any kind," he said gently. "And I have never known one--in the least like you."

A rosy light, bright as the reflection of the sunset's glow, flashed over her face and beamed from her eyes. She did not know why she suddenly felt so happy. She bent down in sweet confusion and gathered a handful of the long, green gra.s.s, and began braiding the emerald blades with trembling fingers. Lynn watched her hands in the false security of his own strength, heedless of the spell which they were innocently weaving. He followed every movement of the little white fingers, so delicately tapering and so exquisitely tipped with rose and pearl; and he saw--as he saw all beauty--the rosy velvet of the soft little palms, and then his greedy gaze roved further and fed upon the perfection of the small feet which neither the poor little slippers nor the long gra.s.s could hide. The intensity of his gaze unconsciously brought a sort of nervous flutter into the little hands; the girl felt it, although she was not thinking of it, and her hands dropped suddenly on her lap. Her gaze, uplifted, met his again, helplessly entreating, almost with the look of a frightened child groping its way through the dark.

"But there must be girls who work. I must find out what they do. I must learn how to do it too--whatever it is. Won't you help me?"

Her lips were quivering and her eyes were full of tears.

"My dear child! Dear, dear Doris! How can I help you? You to enter the arena to struggle with brutal gladiators for the spoils which belong to the strongest and the fiercest? Help _you_ to do this--you soft, lovely, tender little thing!"

He did not know that love thrilled in every tone of his voice, that pa.s.sion barbed his words, winging them straight home to the girl's awakened heart. He did not know that--for her--love all at once shone out of his eyes, dazzlingly, blindingly, as a great wide door opens suddenly upon a chilly twilight, revealing all the alluring warmth, all the glowing flame of the home firelight within.

"Dear little one," he went on, blindly, with infinite tenderness, "the only work appointed for one like you is to make a paradise out of a home. A woman like you was created to be carried over life's rough places in a good man's strong arms. There is only one place in the world for you. Only one--only the warm, sweet corner of the household fire, safe behind the heads of children."

Doris was leaning toward him with her transparent face upturned, and he saw a sudden tender light tremble over its sweetness as dawning sunbeams run over rippling water, and--startled, fascinated, awed--he watched its deepening wonder, its growing radiance, its wondrous illumination, as the white curtain fell away from the lighted shrine of a spotless soul.

There now followed an instant's tense waiting, with the girl's rose-red lips apart and a-quiver; with the starry darkness of her eyes softly aglow, as the evening star glows through the warm twilight; with her exquisite face sensitively alight, as the spring's tender new leaves stir, and dimple, and shimmer under a sudden shower of golden sunlight,--and then swiftly a shadow fell, as a wind-swept cloud covers the sun, sweeping all the quivering sunbeams out of sight.

Unexpectedly as a swallow darts downward, Doris bent to gather up the forgotten braid of long green gra.s.s. Lifting it with a queer little laugh, she held it out to him with a movement which was almost mocking and wholly unlike her gentle self. Her dark eyes, grown suddenly very bright, seemed actually to be laughing at him.

"Is this the kind of braids that the mermaids wear hanging down their backs?" she said, lightly. "No, I remember that their locks of seaweed flow loose, but I am sure that they are no greener than this."

He took the braid and stared at it unseeingly, as if it had been in truth some such marvel as a mermaid's hair. He did not see that she hardly knew what she was saying. In a crisis such as this it is nearly always the woman who first recovers herself, no matter how young and innocent she may be, nor how wise the man in the ways of the world. And Lynn Gordon was young, too, and far from being wise--almost as far as Doris Wendall was. He knew little of women; he had not had experience to teach him the subtlety of the simplest feminine creature; he had forgotten for the moment that even the dove is artful enough to lure danger away from her love secret.

He himself was agitated, confused, perplexed, and, most distinctly and painfully of all, he was wounded by a vague sense of injury--really hurt by a feeling that Doris had trifled with him, that she had not met his sincerity with the earnestness which he felt that he had a right to expect. He had spoken from his very heart; he had meant every word that he had said,--meant it as tenderly and as truly as the fondest, most faithful of elder brothers could speak to the most well-beloved of sisters. And yet Doris had turned from him carelessly, almost floutingly, with this light, meaningless talk about the mermaid's hair.

In offended, wounded silence he gave the braided gra.s.s again into her hand, and she took it laughingly, and looked at it absently for a moment,--at this long, long, green, green gra.s.s springing from human dust,--and then she tossed it into the air so that the wind caught it, bore it a little way, and, tiring, softly laid it down on a tombstone, thus giving back its own to the dead.

Doris stood up, and the breeze bent the faded muslin about her slender young body in longer and more enchanting curves. She pointed, still smiling, to the purple clouds now pinnacling the west, and said that it was time to be going homeward. As they went down the gra.s.sy path which wound around the hillside, she talked quietly of indifferent things, much as she always did, somewhat less at random, perhaps, yet with all the accustomed gentleness and kindness and brightness and sweetness.

So that, although Lynn had little to say in response, his composure came back and his feeling of injury went away. By the time they had reached the silver poplars, dulled under the falling dusk, the chill had entirely pa.s.sed, and happiness again warmed his honest heart. For such is the foolishness of love that knoweth not itself. For such a dull fellow is this giant Ambition, who must ever be vanquished by Love, the boy.

XVIII

AN EMBARRa.s.sING ACCIDENT

The fluttering of Miss Judy's heart still kept her from fixing a day for the tea-party, anxious as she was to do so. Certain small domestic irregularities also interfered with her plan. For some time past she had been much disturbed and perplexed by Merica's disappearing at unusual hours and in a most unaccountable manner, so that her simple and methodical household affairs had lately become gravely disordered.

On the morning after she had seen Doris and Lynn returning through the fragrant dusk from their visit to the graveyard, she felt so happy and strong that she resolved to give the tea-party on the following day, no matter how her heart might misbehave. It was really silly, as she said to Miss Sophia, to give up important things merely because your heart tried, every now and then, to jump out of your mouth and sometimes would hardly beat at all. It was so silly that she did not intend to do it any longer. But on going to the kitchen, in order to put her plans in motion at once, she was dismayed to find Merica missing, as she had been very often of late. Miss Judy saw, too, that the fire had not been kindled behind the gooseberry bushes; that not a single spiral of blue smoke arose above the thick green screen. She consequently began worrying in her mild way, wondering where Merica could be, and what the girl could mean by such unheard-of neglect of duty, especially on Monday morning.

Hurrying around the house, the little lady went to the gate and looked anxiously up and down the big road. No one was in sight except Tom Watson, sitting in his accustomed place; but the sight of him always brought Miss Judy to an humble and almost frightened sense of her own mercies. She shook her head, and then bent it reverently, making with her little hand an unconscious gesture, which called up thoughts of the sign of the cross.

Ashamed to be worrying over such a small matter with Tom Watson's affliction in view, she forgot all about Merica, and, following her instinct to do something for those who were suffering, she went into the house to hold a consultation with Miss Sophia as to whether they had anything which they might send to Tom Watson, since they could do nothing else for him.

"There's that pretty tender little head of late lettuce," said Miss Judy, tentatively. "I am afraid, though, that Tom won't care much about it, but I can't think of anything else. And it's only to show our sympathy, anyway," she pleaded, seeing the reluctance in Miss Sophia's face and misunderstanding its meaning. "It would really make quite a picture if we were to put it on mother's best china plate, the one with the wreath of roses. And it would please poor Anne, whether poor Tom notice or not."

So busy was Miss Judy by this time, bustling about, preparing the little offering, that she hardly observed Merica's sudden reappearance, and did not think to hold her to an accounting for her absence. Merely telling her to make haste in starting the fire behind the gooseberry bushes, so that she might run across the big road with the plate of lettuce as soon as possible, Miss Judy thought only of giving pleasure to her neighbors.