Oldfield Part 3

"No--no, you mustn't say that," protested Miss Judy.

"I do say it, I mean it, and I intend to abide by it," declared Sidney, laying her knitting on her lap and loosing rings of yarn from her big ball and holding them out at arm's length. "You've always known better what was good for Doris than I ever have. When it comes to a difference of opinion I'm bound to give up."

Miss Judy blushed and looked distressed. "It is really such an important matter," she urged timidly. "A young lady cannot possibly learn how to walk and how to carry herself with real grace, without being taught dancing. If I only had some one to play the tune, I might teach Doris the rudiments myself; or sister Sophia might, if she hadn't that shortness of breath, and if I could play any instrumental piece on the guitar except the Spanish fandango. That tune, however, is not very well suited to the minuet, which is the only dance that we ever learned.

Mother taught us the minuet, because she thought it necessary for all well brought up girls to learn it just for deportment, though she knew we should probably never have an opportunity to dance it in society."

Thus reminded of the many things that they had missed, Miss Judy turned and smiled a little sadly at Miss Sophia, as though it were the sweetest and most natural thing in the world to speak of Miss Sophia's dancing the minuet,--poor, little, round, slow Miss Sophia! And Miss Sophia also thought it sweet and natural, her dull gaze meeting her sister's bright one with confiding love as she murmured the usual vague a.s.sent.

"And did you think to ask Mrs. Gordon whether Mr. Beauchamp--" Miss Judy hesitated at the Frenchman's name, which she p.r.o.nounced as the English p.r.o.nounce it, and delicately touched her forehead.

"She said he was perfectly sane except upon that one subject, and the kindest, honestest soul alive," said Sidney, whisking the ball from under her arm and reeling off more yarn.

Miss Judy's sweet old face and soft blue eyes wore the dreamy look which always came over them when her imagination was stirred. "How romantic it is and how touching, that he should have believed, through all these years of hard work and a menial life, that he is Napoleon's son, the real King of Rome."

"Well, it don't do any harm," Sidney, the practical, said. "He don't dance with his head. It seems to me, too, I've heard that lots of crazy folks were great dancers. Anyway, you may tell him, as soon as you like, that I'll knit his summer socks to pay him for showing Doris how to dance, and you may say that I'll throw in the cotton to boot. I always like to pay the full price for whatever I get. If he still thinks that isn't enough, you might tell him I'm willing to knit his winter ones too, but he's got to furnish the yarn--there's reason in all things."

"You are sure that Mr. Beauchamp used to be a dancing-master?" asked Miss Judy.

"Old lady Gordon told me she had heard something of the kind, but she said she had never paid any attention. She never does pay any attention to anything unless she means to eat it," Sidney said.

"Poor old lady Gordon," sighed Miss Judy. "She hasn't much except her meals _to_ attend to or think about. She must be very, very lonely, all alone in the world."

"I've never seen any sign of her being sorry for herself," responded Sidney, knitting faster, as she always did when warming to her subject.

"I never heard of her making any such sign when her son and only child went away and died without coming back. I never heard or saw her show any anxiety about _his_ son and only child, that she's never laid her eyes on, though he's now a grown man. I never heard a hint from her about him last night--till she had eaten the last ounce of the pound-cake; and drunk the last drop of the blackberry cordial. Then she remembered to tell me that this only grandson of hers is coming at last."

Here was the news! Miss Sophia settled back in her chair with a deep breath of satisfaction. Miss Judy exclaimed in interested surprise. Very few strangers came to Oldfield, consequently the advent of a young gentleman from a distant city was an event indeed. No wonder that Sidney had made as much of it as she could. Miss Judy, and even Miss Sophia, felt the high compliment paid them in being the first to whom Sidney had taken the thrilling intelligence. It was, in fact, the highest expression of Sidney's grat.i.tude to Miss Judy, and fully recognized as such by both the little sisters, who appreciated it accordingly.

When Sidney was gone on her way to distribute the great news at the various points which promised the largest results, Miss Judy went into the darkened parlor, the other of the two large rooms which the house contained. It was rarely opened, and never used except when, at long and rare intervals, a formal caller, of whom there were not many in that country, was invited to enter it and to feel the way to a chilly, slippery seat. There were two good reasons for the room's disuse. One was that social preeminence in the Pennyroyal Region demanded a dark and disused parlor, although it did not militate against a bed in the living room. Formal visitors expected to grope their way through impenetrable gloom to invisible seats. Accidents sometimes happened, it is true, as when, upon one occasion, old lady Gordon, in calling upon Miss Judy shortly before Major Bramwell left for Virginia, sat down in a large chair, without being aware that it was already occupied by the major, who was a very small man. The second good reason for the room's not being used was that in cool weather Miss Judy could not get fuel for another fire. It was all that Merica could do, all the year round, to find enough wood for one fire; the stray sticks dropped from pa.s.sing wagons, an occasional branch fallen from the old locust trees which lined the big road, and the regular basket of chips picked up behind the cabinet-maker's shop, barely sufficing to keep up a small blaze in the corner of the fireplace in the living room, which was also the sisters'

bedroom.

Miss Judy groped her way cautiously through the darkness of the chilly parlor, and raised the shades far enough to let in a slender shaft of sunlight. She looked around the room with a soft sigh. It was so full of sad and tender memories, and so empty of everything else. The portraits of her father and mother, painted very young, hung side by side over the tall mantelpiece. The intelligent force of her father's face and the soft beauty of her mother's came back to Miss Judy anew whenever she looked at their likenesses. On the opposite walls hung the portraits of her paternal grandfather and grandmother, painted when they were very old. The old gentleman, a judge under the crown in Virginia, had been painted in his wig and gown. His fine face was hard and stern, and Miss Judy often wondered whether he ever had forgiven his son for fighting against the king and the mother country. The old lady's face was as sweet and gentle as Miss Judy's own, and there was a charming resemblance between the pictured and the living features. But the grandmother's face wore an expression of unhappiness, and the granddaughter's was never unhappy, although it was sometimes sad for the unhappiness of others and the pain of the world.

The portraits had been taken out of their frames, so that they might be brought over the Alleghanies with less difficulty. They had never been reframed, and there was something inexpressibly melancholy in their hanging thus, quite unshielded, against the rough, whitewashed logs.

Melancholy, vague and far-off, pervaded indeed the whole atmosphere of the shadowed room. It floated out from a broken vase of parian marble which was filled with dried rose leaves, brown and crumbling, yet still sending forth that sweetest, purest, loneliest, and saddest of scents.

It clung about the angular, empty arms of the few old chairs, dim with brocade of faded splendor. It lay on the long old sofa--with its high back and its sunken springs--like the wan ghost of some bright dream that had never come true. But the tenderest and subtlest sadness came from the fading sampler which Miss Judy's mother had worked in those endless days of exile in the wilderness. Ah, the silent suffering, the patient endurance, the uncomplaining disappointment, wrought into those numberless st.i.tches! And yet, with all, perhaps bits of brightness too,--a touch of rose-color here, and a hint of gold there--such as a sweet woman weaves into the grayest fabric of life.

Miss Judy, sighing again, although she could not have told why she always sighed on entering the darkened parlor, now knelt down beside the sofa, and drew a small box from beneath it. But she did not open the box at once; instead, she seated herself on the floor and sat still for a s.p.a.ce holding the box in her hand, as if she shrank from seeing its contents. At length, slowly untying the discolored cord that bound the box, she lifted the cover, and took out a pair of satin slippers. They had once been white, but they were now as yellow as old ivory, and the narrow ribbon intended to cross over the instep and to tie around the ankle had deepened almost into the tint of the withered primrose. The slippers were heel-less, and altogether of an antiquated fashion, but Miss Judy did not know that they were. She was doubtful only about the size, for they seemed very small even to her; and she thought, with tender pride, how much taller Doris was than she had ever been, even before she had begun to stoop a little in the shoulders. Turning the slippers this way and that, she regarded them anxiously, with her curly head on one side, until she at last made up her mind that Doris could wear them. They might be rather a snug fit, but they would stay on, while Doris was dancing, all the better for fitting snugly. Yet Miss Judy still sat motionless, holding the slippers, and looking down at them, long after reaching this conclusion. The most unselfish of women, she was, nevertheless, a truly womanly woman. She could not surrender the last symbol of a wasted youth without many lingering pangs.

VI

LYNN GORDON

The slippers had belonged to a white dress which Miss Judy used to call her book-muslin party coat, and this treasure was already in Doris's possession. It had been very fine in its first soft whiteness, and now, mellowed by time, as the slippers were, into the hue of old ivory, and darned all over, it was like some rare and exquisite old lace. Doris thought it the prettiest thing that she had ever seen; certainly it was the prettiest that she had ever owned. When, therefore, the slippers came to join it as a complete surprise, she took the party coat out of its careful wrappings, and, after a close search, was delighted to find one or two gauzy s.p.a.ces still undarned. It was a delight merely to touch the old muslin. She held it against her cheek--which was softer and fairer still, though Doris thought nothing of that--giving it a loving little pat before laying it down. There were household duties to be done ere Doris would be free to get her invisible needle and her gossamer thread, and to begin the airy weaving of the cobwebs.

There was only one room and a loft to be put in order, but Doris always did it while her mother was busy in the kitchen, getting ready for the day's professional round. Sidney was exceedingly particular about the cleaning of her house, insisting that the "rising sun" of the red and yellow calico quilt should always be precisely in the middle of the feather bed, and that the gorgeous border of sun-rays should be even all around the edges. The long, narrow pillow-cases, ruffled across the ends, must also hang just so far down the bed's sides--and no farther.

The home-made rug, too, had its exact place, and there must never be a speck of dust anywhere.

The house was said to be the cleanest in Oldfield, where all the houses were clean. Some people believed that Sidney scrubbed the log walls inside and outside every spring, before whitewashing them within and without. Be that as it may, the poor home had, at all events, the fresh neatness which invests even poverty with refinement.

Doris slighted nothing that morning, although she was naturally impatient to go back to the book-muslin. Yet it seemed to take longer to get the house in perfect order than ever before. The trundle-bed in which Kate and Billy slept was particularly contrary, and it really looked, for a time, as if Doris would never be able to get it entirely out of sight under the big bed. It was settled at last, however, and she had taken up the party coat and had seated herself beside the window, when her mother entered the room.

Sidney cast a sharp glance at the white cotton window curtain to see if it were drawn exactly to the middle of the middle pane, or rather to the hair line, which the middle of the middle pane would have reached, had Doris not put the sash up. Sidney, rigid in her rudimentary ideas of propriety, considered it improper for a young girl to sit unshielded before a window in full view from the highway. It made no difference to Sidney that n.o.body ever pa.s.sed the window, except as the neighbors went to and fro, or an occasional farmer came to the village on business.

Sidney was firm, and Doris, the gentle and yielding, did as she was told to do. The coa.r.s.e white curtain was accordingly now in its proper place.

Sidney noted the fact, as she cast a sweeping glance around the room, seeking the speck of dust which she seldom found and which never escaped her keen eyes. Doris put the book-muslin aside and arose as her mother came in, and she now stood awaiting directions for the management of the household during the day. Sidney's professional absences lasted from nine in the morning until six in the evening every day, winter and summer, the whole year round, Sunday alone excepted. During these prolonged absences the care of the family rested upon Doris's young shoulders, and had done so ever since she could remember. It may have been this which gave her the little air of dignity which set so charmingly on her radiant youth. She now listened to her mother's directions, gravely, attentively, respectfully, as she always did.

"Everything is spick and span in the kitchen," Sidney said, setting the broom on end behind the door and rolling down the sleeves over her strong arms. "Make the children stay in the back yard till the school bell rings. Don't let them go in the kitchen. They clutter up things like two little pigs. And don't let them get at the cake that Anne Watson sent. We'll keep that for Sunday dinner. It's mighty light and nice. It lays awful heavy on my conscience, though. I really ought to go to see poor Tom this very day. I ought to go there every day and try to cheer him up. But I've got so many places engaged that I actually don't know where to go first. Remember--don't let the children touch the cake.

Give 'em a slice apiece of that pie of Miss Pettus's. And there will be plenty of Kitty Mills's cold ham for them and for Uncle Watty too."

"Yes'm," answered Doris, a.s.senting to everything which her mother told her to do or not to do. Trained by Miss Judy, she would no more have thought of speaking to an older person or to any one whom she respected, without saying "sir" or "madam," than a well-bred French girl would think of doing such a thing. Miss Judy and Doris had never heard of its being "servile" to do this. They both considered it an essential part of good manners and gentle breeding. Many old-fashioned folks in the Pennyroyal Region still think so.

Untying her gingham ap.r.o.n, and hanging it beside the broom, Sidney put on her sunbonnet, and, firmly settling her ball of yarn under her left arm, began to knit as she left the door-step on which Doris stood looking after her.

Sidney paused for a moment at the gate after dropping the loop of string over the post, and looked up at the little window in the loft.

"It would, I reckon, be better to let your Uncle Watty sleep as long as he likes. He's kinder out of the way up there, and better off asleep than awake, poor soul, when he hasn't got any red cedar to whittle. I noticed yesterday that he had whittled up his last stick. He never knows what to do with himself when he's out of cedar. I'll try to get him some. Maybe old lady Gordon's black gardener Enoch Cotton will fetch some from the woods, if I promise to knit him a pair of socks."

An expression flitted over Doris's face, telling her thoughts. Sidney, seeing it, felt in duty bound to rebuke it.

"Now, Doris--mind what I say--as young folks do old folks, so other young folks will do them when their turn comes. I never knew it to fail.

We all get what we give, no more, no less. It always works even in the end, though it may not seem so as we go along. See that your Uncle Watty's breakfast is real nice and hot. Make him some milk toast out of Mrs. Alexander's salt-rising--if it's too hard for his gums. Old lady Gordon said she would have Eunice fetch me a bucket of milk every day.

You won't forget?"

Doris again said "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am" in the proper place, listening throughout with the greatest attention and respect, and trying very hard not to think about the book-muslin party coat.

Sidney twitched the string which held the gate to the post, to make sure that it was firmly tied. "That crumpled-horn of Colonel Fielding's could pick a lock with her horns. Now remember about Uncle Watty. He's had a hard time, poor old man, ever since his leg was broken. If Dr. Alexander had been here, it would have been different. I should just like to give that fool of a travelling doctor a piece of my mind. Him a-pretending to know what he was about, and a-setting your poor Uncle Watty's broken leg east and _west_, instead of north and _south_!"

Doris's cheek dimpled, but she answered dutifully as before. She had her own opinion as to how much the lat.i.tude or longitude of Uncle Watty's left leg had to do with his general disability. She could remember him before the leg was broken, and she had never known him to do anything except whittle a stick of red cedar. Youth, at its gentlest, is apt to be hard in its judgment of age's shortcomings. Doris knew how good her mother was as she watched her walking down the big road, with her long, free, swinging stride, with her sunbonnet on the back of her head, and her knitting-needles flashing in the sun. But she wondered if there were no other way. She hated to see her set out on these rounds, she had hated it ever since she could remember, and had gone on hating it as vehemently as it was in her gentle nature to hate anything. The mother never had been able to make Doris see from her own point of view, and Doris had never been able to make her mother understand the intensity of her own sensitiveness, or the soreness of her silent pride. Many a day, as Doris sat sewing beside the window in seeming contentment, she was restlessly seeking some means of escape; almost continually she was trying to find a way to lift the burden from her mother--striving to see something wholly different that she herself might do. Going back to her book-muslin on that morning, she was wondering whether Mrs. Watson or Mrs. Alexander might not need some needle-work done. Perhaps she could earn a little money in that way, and they could live on very little. But hers was not a brooding disposition, and she was soon singing over the old party coat. Then the school bell reminded her that the children's faces and hands must be washed before they went to school; and by the time they were sent off down the big road, Uncle Watty was ready for his breakfast. Doris carried out her mother's directions to the letter. She poured his coffee, and sat respectfully waiting until he had finished eating, and then she washed the dishes, and put them away.

Returning to her seat by the window, she glanced now and then at Uncle Watty, who had seated himself under the blossoming plum tree to enjoy a leisurely, luxurious pipe of tobacco, having recently swapped a b.u.t.ter paddle, which he had whittled out of red cedar, for a fine old "hand" of the precious weed. It was, however, most unusual for Uncle Watty's whittling to a.s.sume any useful shape, or, indeed, any shape at all.

Every morning, except Sunday, he hobbled off down the big road, to take his seat before the store door on an empty goods-box, with his pocket-knife and his stick of red cedar, ready for whittling. Year after year, the box and Uncle Watty were always in the same spot, moving only to follow the sun in winter and the shade in summer; and the heap of red cedar shavings always grew steadily, ever undisturbed save as the winds scattered them, and the rains beat them into the earth. When Uncle Watty finally came hobbling around the corner of the house that day, and went away in the direction of the store, Doris looked after him, wondering--rather carelessly, and a little harshly, after the manner of the young and untried--what could be the meaning of an existence which left a trail of red cedar shavings as the sole mark of its path through life. But that perplexing thought also pa.s.sed as the other had done. She began thinking of the dancing lessons, growing more and more absorbed in the darning of the party coat. She wished she knew whether Miss Judy had ever worn it to a real dancing party. She had never heard of one's being given in Oldfield, excepting of course the famous ball at the Fielding's, near the jail, on the night that the prisoner escaped; long, long before she was born. Most of the Oldfield people thought it a sin to dance. Miss Judy must have looked very pretty in the book-muslin.

Doris laid it on her lap, and, turning to the window, gave the curtain an impatient toss, pushing it to one side. There was no use in keeping it half drawn when never a soul ever went by. And the sun was shining, almost with the warmth of midsummer, on this glorious May-day. When the spring was still farther advanced, when the leaves were larger on the two tall silver poplars standing beside the gate, lifting a shimmering white screen from the soft green earth to the softer blue sky; when the climbing roses, already blooming all over the snowy walls, were more thickly festooned; when the Italian honeysuckle hung its rich bronze garlands and its fragrant bloom from the very eaves of the mossy roof--then Doris might push the curtain farther back, but not before, no matter how brilliantly the sun shone or how entirely deserted the big road was. As Doris sat sewing and thinking, it seemed to her that her mother was unnecessarily strict. She had even thought it wrong to allow her to learn to dance. Miss Judy had found much difficulty in persuading her. However, she had consented at last, and presently Doris, all alone in the old house, began singing blithely, oblivious of everything except the antic.i.p.ation of the dancing lessons and the pleasure of darning the party coat. The song was one of Allan Ramsay's, a languishing love-song which Miss Judy's mother had sung. But as Doris's thoughts danced to inaudible music, and her needle flew daintily in and out of the soft old muslin, the words and the tune soon tripped to a gayer measure than they had, perhaps, ever known before.

The birds, too, were lilting gayly on that perfect May morning. A couple of flycatchers were breakfasting in mid-air. It is impossible to conceive of a daintier way to satisfy hunger; as a Kentucky poet has said: "It is, apparently, all color and rhythm--with green boughs and violet sky for canopy, the pure air for a table--and in its midst the sweet bouquet of the woods." And the flycatcher was but one of many beautiful melodious creatures thronging between heaven and earth. Brown thrashers by twos and fours flitted back and forth across the big road, leaving one green wheat-field for another of still richer verdure. A happy pair of orioles, flashing orange and black, were darting--bright as flame and light as smoke--through the tallest silver poplar, building an air-castle almost as wonderful, and nearly as fragile, as those that young human lovers build. With the fetching of each fine fibre, the husband fairly turned upside down, and hung by his feet, while singing his pride and delight. The wife, more modestly happy, quietly rested her soft breast on the unstable nest--with all a woman's trust--as though the home were founded upon a rock, as all homes should be, and hung not by a frail thread at the hazardous tip of an unsteady bough as--alas!--so many homes do. It was steady enough just now, when love was new and the spring was mild, and only the southern breeze stirred the white-lined leaves with a silken rustle. The soft cooing of the unseen doves sounded far off. The bees merely murmured among the honeysuckle blooms. The humming-bird, which was raying rubies and emeralds from the hearts of the roses, came and went as softly as the south wind.

Doris smiled at the sylvan housekeeping of the orioles, which she watched for awhile, letting her sewing rest on her lap. But tiring soon of the little drama of the silver poplar, as we always tire of the happiness of others, the girl's eyes wandered wistfully through the fragrant loneliness to the wooded hills which gently folded the drowsy village. The trees, delicately green, almost silver gray, in their tender foliage, were still fringed by the snow of the dogwood, and the misty beauty of the red buds; and the cool, leafy vistas, sloping gently down toward the village, met the sea of blossoming orchards, breaking in wide, deep waves of pink and white foam at the foot of the hills. But Doris had seen those same trees, and hillsides, and orchards every May-time of her eighteen years, and sameness, however grateful to older eyes, has never a great charm for youth.

Doris's eyes came back to the book-muslin with a keener interest. As she sat there, sewing and singing, in the soft light that filtered through the old curtain, the girl was beautiful, almost tragically beautiful, for her uncertain place in the world. Her slender throat, like the stem of a white flower, arose from the faded brown of her dress as an Easter lily unfolds from its dull sheath. Her radiant hair, yellow as new-blown marigolds, cl.u.s.tered thick and soft about her fair forehead, as the rich pollen falls on the lily's satin. Her delicate brows were dark and straight; and her curling lashes, darker still, threw bewitching shadows around her large, brown eyes. Her face was pale with a warm pallor infinitely fairer than any mere fairness. Her lips, which were a little full, but exquisite in shape and sweetness, were tinted as delicately as blush roses. Her small, white hands, with their rosy palms and tapering fingers, bore no traces of hard work. But Doris was not thinking of her hands as, without turning her head, she put out one of them for another length of thread. The spool was a very small one, and it stood rather unsteadily on the uneven ledge of the window, and it rolled when Doris touched it. Instinctively she tried to catch it, and to keep it from falling to the ground outside the window. She had been reared to neatness and order, and to economy which valued even a reel of cotton too much to see it needlessly soiled. Of course Doris tried to catch the falling spool,--and that was the way everything began! It was all as simple and natural and purely accidental as anything could have been.

And yet at the same time it was one of those inscrutable happenings which make the steadiest of us seem but feathers in the wind of destiny.

Only a moment before that foolish little spool began to roll, the big road seemed entirely deserted. Not a human being was in sight--Doris was sure that there was not, because she had looked and looked in vain, and had longed and longed that there might be. Nevertheless, as the little reel started to fall, and Doris darted after it as suddenly and swiftly as a swallow, there was a young man on horseback directly in front of the window, appearing as strangely and as unexpectedly as if he had sprung out of the earth. And, moreover, he was looking straight at Doris, with hardly more than a couple of rods between them, when she burst into full view in the broad light of day, appearing like some beautiful bacchante. The white curtain fell behind her radiant head as the breeze caught and loosed the golden strands of her hair, and the sun flashed a greater radiance upon its dazzling crown. She saw him, too, with a startled uplifting of her great shadowy dark eyes as she bent forward--while her exquisite face was still smiling at her own innocent thoughts, and her rose-red lips were still a little apart with the singing of the old love-song.

The white curtain then swung again into place. It was full of thin spots which Doris could see through; but she was so startled, and her heart was beating so fast at first, that she shrunk back without trying to look. How right her mother had been, after all. That was her first feeling. When she recovered self-possession enough to peep out, she saw that the young man's horse was curveting back and forth across the big road in a most alarming manner. This continued for a surprising length of time before Doris observed that, whenever the horse seemed about to stop, the rider touched him with the spur. Such a flash of indignation went over Doris then as quite swept away the last trace of embarra.s.sment. How could he do such a cruel and such a meaningless thing! She wondered still more why he dismounted, and, throwing the bridle reins over his arm, began walking up and down in front of the window, gazing closely at the ground as though looking for something that he had lost. Doris noticed that he glanced at the window every time he pa.s.sed it, and she knew that she ought to go out and help him find what he had lost. That was a matter of course in Oldfield manners. It is the way of most country people to take a keen and helpful interest in everything that a neighbor does; and city people deserve less credit than they claim for their indifference to their neighbor's affairs, which is too often mere selfishness disguised. Notwithstanding this local social law Doris did not stir, held motionless by an influence which she could not understand. She had known at once who the young man was. Too few strangers came to Oldfield for her to fail to place him immediately as the grandson of old lady Gordon, the young gentleman from Boston, whose coming everybody was talking about. She noted through the worn places in the old curtain how tall he was and how dark and how handsome. She could not decide what kind of clothes his riding clothes were. At last he mounted his horse and galloped up the hill, and then Doris returned serenely to the darning of the book-muslin party coat.