Oldfield Part 22

From the darker and more distant trees gradually swelled the twitter of many bird voices, rising into a rapturous chorus as the east became rifted with rose and seamed with silver. Every member of this divine choir was singing his softest and sweetest in celebration of the dawn's eternal renewal of creation. And then, as the rose brightened into royal red, and the silver melted into molten gold, at the nearer approach of sunrise, the oriole--already wearing the sun's golden livery--sent forth his ringing welcome to the king, a greeting so brilliant and so ancient as to make the trumpeter's mediaeval salute to the emperor seem but a poor dull thing of yesterday.

With this heavenly music in his ears and this seeming peace and happiness before his eyes, Lynn Gordon could hear no sound of the sorrow of living, nor could he see any sign of the pain of the world. An unconscious smile even lifted for a moment the weight from his heart as he idly watched a merry couple of nuthatches, those gay "clowns of the green tent of the woods," tumbling up and down a giant elm. He did not see the solitary butcher bird, nature's most cruel executioner, sitting in motionless, sinister silence in the dark depths of a great thorn tree, nature's cruelest scaffold.

As the light grew brighter the young man's eyes followed the wood smoke arising from the tall chimney of the tavern in slender, thin spirals of pale blue, and going straight up to the bluer blue of the warm, windless sky. With the sight, the deep sadness of the night came back suddenly and overwhelmingly. It was not a terrible dream; it was a more terrible reality. Under that old mossy roof, so simple, so peaceful-seeming, lay all that was mortal of the n.o.blest presence, the n.o.blest mind, the n.o.blest heart that this isolated corner of the earth had ever given to the greater world.

Before a tragedy so overwhelming every earnest soul striving in Oldfield stood awed, although it was not given to many to comprehend that the greatest awe which even the simplest felt was for the awful Mystery of Life. Never in the history of the village had its simple people been so slow in taking up the petty burden of daily struggle and strife. It seemed as if the least imaginative must be feeling the littleness of all earthly things.

Even old lady Gordon's look and manner were almost gentle, certainly more gentle than her grandson had ever seen them. Scarcely a word pa.s.sed between the two after bidding each other good morning on meeting at the breakfast table; and she saw him go in silence when the uneaten meal was over. He hastened straight up the road, looking neither to the right nor the left. Doris was with Miss Judy; he knew that she was, because he had haunted the house through the greater part of the terrible night, and, although he had not been able to speak to her, he had seen her shadow on the white curtain of Miss Judy's room. The sight had comforted him somewhat at the moment, but he now was longing more than ever to see her, to speak to her--longing with the unspeakably softened tenderness that comes to love through grief.

And he saw her through the window from Miss Judy's gate. The poor old white curtain, with its quaint border of little s...o...b..a.l.l.s, had been pushed back as far as it would go, much farther than it ever had been before when Miss Judy was lying in the high old bed. There was too desperate need for every wandering breeze, for every straying breath of air, for appearances to be remembered. Miss Judy herself could no longer guard the sacred privacy of that spotless chamber. She could no longer even blush faintly when the doctor laid his s.h.a.ggy head against her hard-laboring little heart, listening for its weak fluttering, and hearing the soft knell of the pericardial murmur. For even this, which rings so harshly from sterner b.r.e.a.s.t.s, rang softly from Miss Judy's gentle breast. Yet it rang unmistakably, nevertheless, and there was nothing more that the doctor could do--nothing save to grieve, and he never stood idle for futile grieving when the suffering needed him elsewhere. After the doctor was gone to other duties, only Miss Sophia sat at the bedside, striving piteously to realize what was happening; and Doris alone hovered silently over it and flitted softly around it; doing the little that she found to do, and holding back her tears for Miss Judy's sake. But many others who loved Miss Judy were already gathering, and waited in the pa.s.sage, looking out at the pa.s.sers-by and shaking their heads speechlessly and sadly at those who paused at the gate to make anxious inquiry.

Lynn Gordon did not enter the house, and he quickly turned his eyes away from the uncurtained window. Even his reverend gaze seemed a profanation of the holiness of that quiet, shadowed old room, whence the soul of a saint was so near taking its flight from the earth. He crossed the narrow strip of front yard with noiseless steps and sat down on a broken bench under the window. He could hear Miss Sophia's heavy breathing as the little sister tried to understand; and he caught the soft rustle of Doris's skirts as the girl moved now and then in her loving ministrations; he could almost hear the swaying of the fan in her hand.

Presently he became conscious of a familiar scent--faint, pure, delicate, like the spirit of perfume. He did not know at first what it was, but it seemed to float out through the open window; and after a little while he knew it to be the old-fashioned, natural, wholesome sweetness of dried rose leaves, the fragrance which had always clung round Miss Judy's life, the fragrance which would forever cling round her memory.

As he sat there waiting,--as so many were now waiting,--others came and went. Anne Watson crossed the big road before sitting down to the card-table, and stood for a moment at the door, talking in a low tone to some one whom Lynn could not see. But her husband's wistful, restless, compelling gaze followed her, drawing her back, and she did not linger.

Nothing, not even her grateful affection for Miss Judy, could hold her long away from her post; nothing, save death alone, could ever free her from it. And even after death--! What then? Always, Anne Watson was asking herself that question; never was she able so to answer it that her soul was set at rest. She now went slowly and sadly to her place at the card-table, and she did not leave it again that day. But Lynn Gordon, keeping his vigil, saw her strange, mystical gaze wander many times from the burning stake to which she was bound,--a hopeless, tortured captive for life,--to the shadowed peace of the window behind his head. Ah, the inscrutableness of those strange eyes. The eyes of Anne Watson were the eyes of a fanatic, yet none the less the eyes of a martyr.

He glanced now and then at the people who were coming and going so stilly and so sadly through the little broken gate. All gave him a friendly nod in pa.s.sing, no matter whether they knew him or not, for that was the kind custom of the country. But no one stopped to speak to him; all appeared to be too deeply absorbed in their own sad thoughts.

Only Kitty Mills smiled at him, and she did not know that she smiled, for her light heart was heavy enough that day. But she never had known what it was to have her eyes meet other eyes without smiling; and her merry brown ones smiled now of themselves without her knowledge, through mere force of habit. They had been sad indeed an instant before, and her round ruddy cheeks were drawn and pale, and bore traces of tears. She had been tirelessly running back and forth between her own house and Miss Judy's, coming and going more often than any one else, as often, in truth, as she found herself momentarily released from her father-in-law's ceaseless clamor for attention, and as his querulous summons recalled her to her perpetual bondage. His shrill, imperious cry now suddenly made itself distinctly heard through the reigning stillness; through that awesome stillness which reigns wherever death is expected; that stillness which awes all, save the very young, who feel too far away to be afraid, and the very old, who are come too near to heed the awe.

In response to the call Kitty Mills started to run across the big road as she had sped many times that day, and in so doing she encountered Miss Pettus, who had gone home and was now returning in great haste, bearing a small covered dish with the greatest care. At the sight of her the sadness instantly flitted from poor Kitty Mills's face--which was newly wet with tears--and the old quizzical, bantering challenge flashed into it without her dreaming that it was there. But Miss Pettus saw it as quickly as it came, and her fiery temper flared up forthwith, like a flame in a sudden gust of wind. Her sharp little black eyes snapped with all the old fire, although they were red and swollen with weeping and watching the whole night through. Her homely, hard, faithful features stiffened at once with all the old scornful wrath as she caught Kitty Mills looking at the dish.

"_Yes_, it's a chicken for Miss Judy! And no bigger than a bird either--and tenderer too. There's no law--that I know of--against my having late chickens, even if that stubborn old dorminica _won't_ set,"

she said, as fiercely defiant as ever.

She gave the usual contemptuous toss of her head in its gingham sunbonnet, and the accustomed excited swish of her starched calico skirt, as she pa.s.sed Kitty Mills. And then she turned for the parting shot, which she could not even then bring herself to forego:--

"What if I _have_ cooked this chicken for Miss Judy with my own hands?

Don't _I_ know as well as you do that she can't eat it--nor anything else--ever again in this world? And what's that got to do with my cooking this chicken, and thinking that--maybe Miss Judy might feel a little better--if"--with a burst of angry sobbing, "--if she could see Miss Sophia eat it. She always liked that better than anything for herself. You know as well as _I_ do, Kitty Mills, that she always was just that silly and soft!"

Miss Pettus went on toward the gate, and Lynn Gordon got up to open it for her, some pa.s.ser-by having thoughtlessly dropped over the post the loop of faded blue ribbon which served in the place of a latch. How like Miss Judy that poor little sc.r.a.p of daintiness was! As he stood holding the gate back for Miss Pettus to pa.s.s, seeing that her hands were full, he heard the rumble of wheels, the rattle of some approaching vehicle.

The great, brown cloud of dust lifted, drifting farther down the big road, and out of it came an old-fashioned buggy drawn by an old gray horse. This was driven by a white-haired negro, who had once been Colonel Fielding's coachman, and who was now long since become his nurse. Beside the driver sat the colonel himself, and Lynn sprang to a.s.sist him in getting down from the buggy; but the negro made a sly restraining gesture, and when the young man came near he saw that the colonel's beautiful old head was shaking strangely, and that his fine old eyes appeared not to see what they were resting upon. The colonel gazed vaguely down at Lynn before he spoke:--

"Ah, yes--my compliments to little Mistress Judy. _That_ was what I came to say. Will you be so very kind, young sir, as to give my compliments to the elder of the major's daughters, and also to the major himself?

Say, if you please, that Colonel Fielding has called this morning to pay his compliments to her and to her honored father. A man of honor, sir, a soldier, and a gentleman. Gad--sir--what more would you have? What more could any man be?" he said, suddenly turning upon his servant with a piteous touch of bewildered asperity.

"_Toe_-be-sh.o.r.e, sir! _Toe_-be-sh.o.r.e!" said the old negro, soothingly.

"I--I seem--to disremember something," the colonel went on, forgetting this momentary, formless annoyance. He sat still and silent for a s.p.a.ce, trying to remember why he had come. He put his shapely hand to his high forehead in mild confusion. His thick, curling, silver hair fell around his face and upon his shoulders in rather wild disorder.

"Little Judy is a mighty pretty girl--delicate, sweet, and fair as a sweet-brier blossom. No prettier nor sweeter girl ever footed the Virginia Reel in this whole Pennyroyal Region. You will give her and her honored father my message, if you please, young sir. 'Colonel Fielding's compliments and also Miss Alice Fielding's compliments to Major Bramwell and his daughter.' You will not forget?"

"I will not forget, sir," said Lynn Gordon, as steadily as he could speak.

"And--and what else was it? What else did I come for? Tell me this instant, you black rascal!" the colonel now cried, again turning upon his servant in excited, displeased bewilderment. "What do you mean--I say, sir--by sitting there without saying a word? What was it I wanted to say about that young John Stanley, who's eternally hanging round my house? What did somebody tell me about him--only this morning? What's the matter with you, can't you speak, boy?"

The old negro's heavy lips were trembling so that he could not have spoken had there been anything to say. He sat bolt upright, gazing straight before him at the dust of the deserted highway; his ragged coat was as carefully b.u.t.toned as his fine livery used to be; he held the reins--broken and spliced with rope--over the poor old horse, which stood with a dejected droop, precisely as he used to hold the fine, strong, lines over his master's spirited bays.

"Well--drive on home, then," the colonel said, after a moment's hesitation, suddenly recovering his usual mildness. "Perhaps I may remember--and if so you may fetch me back."

Lynn watched the buggy disappear amid the thickening clouds of dust, and when it was out of sight he turned with a sigh toward the people who were still coming and going, looking sadder when they went than when they came. He was surprised to see how many were pa.s.sing through that humble little broken gate, with its pathetic fastening of a loop of faded ribbon, too weak to bar a b.u.t.terfly. He had not thought there were so many in all Oldfield, counting both black and white, for both were now coming and going. He presently realized that some of these sad comers and sadder goers were not Oldfield people, that some lived farther away, and this knowledge filled him with greater surprise. For he would not have supposed that Miss Judy was known by any one beyond the compa.s.sing hills, so completely had her life seemed bound about by the wooded borders of the village. He had never known until now how far-reaching the influence of gentleness may be; he had never realized until this moment that goodness always wins more friends than greatness.

He said something of this to the doctor's wife, when she came softly after an hour had pa.s.sed and silently sat down beside him on the bench under the window. She did not reply at once, but she took his hand and pressed it with the sympathy which common trouble begets in every feeling heart. She did not know how keenly he was craving sympathy, how sorely he himself was needing it, how bruised and broken he was by the spiritual crisis--the greatest of his life--through which he was pa.s.sing so hardly. It was only that her tender heart was tenderer than ever, because she had come direct from the tavern.

Thus the two sat for a few moments in silence, listening to the soft sounds which came at long intervals from the shadowed quiet within Miss Judy's room. At length the doctor's wife began to talk in the hushed tone which the feeling use near the dying--who appear to hear nothing but the Call; and near the dead--who appear to hear nothing--nothing for evermore. She said that Miss Judy had not been told of the judge's death; and that she mercifully knew nothing of the horror which had gone before the tragedy. There was no need now that she ever should know, so the doctor's wife said, with filling eyes. It would be time enough when the two met on the Other Side. And then--with that resistless reaching toward the unknowable, which always moves us when we feel the Mystery near, so near that it appears as if we have but to put out our hand to seize the invisible black wings which forever elude mortal grasp--she asked him if he believed that Miss Judy would know even then. She, herself, she said, could not see how a soul as gentle as the soft one then fluttering to escape its frail earthly prison, or how a soul as just as the one which had already found sacrificial release from a life of suffering, could be happy in heaven if it still knew the pain and the wrong and the cruelty of this world. But, however that might be, all would surely be well hereafter with these two. The doctor's wife, rising to go back to the tavern, where other sad duties were yet waiting to be done, declared this with conviction. These two had not had their just share of happiness here; in fairness it must be awaiting them elsewhere, she concluded, lapsing into the simple audacity of everyday faith.

Lynn walked with her a little way along the big road, and when she had gone some distance and he still stood looking after her, he heard again the sound of wheels and saw a vehicle approaching through the clouds of dust. He thought at first that the colonel had "remembered" and was returning; but as the dust-clouds shifted he recognized his grandmother's coach with a start of surprise, and a feeling very like alarm came over him as he saw that she herself, erect, ma.s.sive, white-robed, sat within the coach. He waited, standing still till the coach drew nearer, and then went outside and turned down the folding steps--from which the little black boy sprang--and a.s.sisted her to descend. But he did not speak, nor did she. Silently he offered his arm and she took it as silently as it had been offered, and they went together toward the pa.s.sage door. It touched him to see with what difficulty she walked. It moved him thus to realize suddenly how old she was. It seemed to him that age was a very pitiful thing. Yet it also impressed him to see what a fine, stately personage she still was; to read in the respectful eyes which followed her that she was still the great lady of the country, as she always had been.

The abrupt withdrawal of her hand from his arm when they reached the door told him that she did not wish him to enter the house with her, and he as abruptly drew back, feeling the blood rush to his face as Sidney came out of Miss Judy's room to receive his grandmother. Returning to his seat on the bench under the window, he tried not to strain his ears toward what was pa.s.sing within the room, and he heard only the indistinct murmur of voices. But he could not help wondering miserably why his grandmother had come. He knew her too well to think that she had been induced to come by pure fondness for Miss Judy, such as had brought all these other people, who were so patiently waiting with heavy hearts and wet eyes. The sudden thought of Doris--a formless fear for her--made him leap to his feet. And then he put away the vague alarm as unworthy of the rough justice, the haughty generosity, of his grandmother's character. He sat down humbly, ashamed of his pa.s.sing suspicion, to wait with such patience and composure as he might muster till she should come from Miss Judy's room. But the intensity of his suspense became almost unendurable before it was ended. When his grandmother finally appeared in the pa.s.sage door, he sprang up with a nervous start and hurried to help her to the coach. Again they were both silent until she was comfortably settled on the easy cushions, silent even until the bag had been rehung closer to her hand, and the little black boy was again seated on the refolded step. Then she told him, speaking slowly and gruffly as though she found the few words hard and bitter to utter, that Miss Judy had asked her to send him to the bedside. When this had been said, and he had made no reply, old lady Gordon sat still and silent for a moment, looking grimly straight ahead, as if there were something else which she wished to say. But if so it was never said; she suddenly and roughly ordered Enoch Cotton to drive her home, and went away--poor old lady Gordon--without a single backward glance.

The young man then turned swiftly and went softly into Miss Judy's room, as the reverential enter a holy place. Doris, bending over the bed, did not see him come. Miss Sophia was dozing, worn out with watching and grief and--most of all--with trying to understand. Sidney sat motionless in the farthest corner of the quiet, shadowy old room, where the shadows were deepest. The only sound was the hushed murmur of the voices of the many others who loved Miss Judy and who watched and waited without; some in the parlor, which had been opened wide at last, others in the pa.s.sage, and more in the yard.

The little figure on the big bed lay motionless and with closed eyes.

Such a little creature, so white, so beautiful, so wonderfully young--almost like a child, with the soft rings of silver hair wreathing the border of the snowy cap, and the little arms which always had been so strong for burdens, and the little, little hands, which always had been so busy for everybody but herself, resting now--as still and cold as snowflakes--on the deep blue of the old quilt. Looking down with dim sight and swelling heart, Lynn thought of the Divine Bambino lying asleep on its azure shield; he could think of nothing else so unearthly in its loveliness.

The blue eyes opened as if Miss Judy had felt his presence, and the flicker of a smile went over the sweet, quiet face. The young man, leaning down, thought that she murmured something in apology, that she tried to say something about a gentlewoman's bedchamber. But the words were so faintly uttered, and the pauses between were so long, that he could not be sure.

"Dear Miss Judy, is there anything--anything in the whole world--that I can do?" he said, with all his heart.

"It is about the selling of the house. We can't depend on John Stanley to sell it--to pay himself," panted Miss Judy with long, anguished waits between the words, almost between the breaths.

There was a still longer pause after this, a still longer wait for a slow wandering breeze to bring the needed breath.

"Dear John," Miss Judy murmured, when she could speak again, "he must not know--till the note is paid. He doesn't quite realize what is due our father. You must overlook it, sister Sophia. He means only to be kind--so, so kind."

"Just so, sister Judy," replied poor Miss Sophia, through the habit of a long lifetime, not knowing what she said.

"Dear John. Dear John," Miss Judy said again, hardly louder than her fluttering breath.

There was a slight movement of her hand, and although the nerveless, cold little fingers fell powerless on the old blue quilt, the girl who hung over her knew what the movement meant. Doris understood that Miss Judy wished to have the judge's letter read to her again; but before it could be drawn from beneath the pillow the blue eyes were closed, and Miss Judy seemed softly to fall asleep. In the deep silence which followed the shadowed room was filled with the hushed hum of the voices of the people waiting outside.

It seemed to the watchers a long time before Miss Judy's blue eyes opened gently, yet suddenly and with a clearer look. It was a look quite like her old sweet self. There was in it even a fleeting expression almost like her old innocent artfulness.

"I hope you won't mind--the--trouble," she said, going on after a long pause, after waiting for her reluctant breath to return; after waiting for her true heart to beat once more. "I--should like--you--to--to consult Doris--often."

The blue eyes wandered from the young man's face to the golden head bowed at the bedside. At least the young man thought so, but his own eyes were very dim, his own heart was beating very, very fast, and he could not see very clearly.

"I will do all that you wish, as nearly as I can," he said tremulously.

"But--dear Miss Judy, have you considered? This is your sister's home--all that she has in the world."

Miss Judy's little hand tried to creep toward her sister's, but its strength failing Doris tenderly took it in hers and laid it on Miss Sophia's. Yet even then, when it had grown cold--with the coldness that never pa.s.ses, and had become weak with the weakness that can never gain strength--it made a slight protecting movement.

"Sister Sophia--isn't--willing--to keep what is--not--our own. And Doris--"

There now followed so long a pause that Doris, who had been quiet and calm in her self-control up to this moment, thought it too late for her grief to disturb Miss Judy--believed it to be time to say quickly what she wished to say, if Miss Judy ever were to hear--and, dropping all guard, she burst into a pa.s.sion of protest and weeping.

"Oh, you do believe that I can do what I have promised, dear, dear Miss Judy. You surely believe that I can do what I have promised!" she cried.