The Ancient Law Part 19

"Well, you're both easy to live in the house with, I admit that."

"And we're both perfectly amiable as long as everybody agrees with us and n.o.body crosses us," he added.

"I shouldn't like to cross you," she said, laughing, "but then why should I? Isn't it very pleasant as it is now?"

"Yes, it is very pleasant as it is now," he repeated slowly.

Turning away from her he stood looking in silence over the tall corn to the amber light that fell beyond the clear outline of a distant hill.

The a.s.sociation was, as she had just said, very pleasant in his thoughts, and the temptation he felt now was to drift on with the summer, leaving events to shape themselves as they would in the future.

What harm, he demanded, could come of any relation so healthful, so simple as this?

"I used to make dolls of ears of corn when I was little," said Emily, laughing; "they were the only ones I had except those Beverly carved for me out of hickory nuts. The one with yellow ta.s.sels I named Princess Goldylocks until she began to turn brown and then I called her Princess Fadeaway."

At her voice, which sounded as girlish in his imagination as the voice of Alice when he had last heard it, he started and looked quickly back from the sunset into her face.

"Has it ever occurred to you," he asked, "how little--how very little you know of me? By you I mean all of you, especially your brother and Mrs. Brooke."

Her glowing face questioned him for a moment.

"But what is knowledge," she demanded, "if it isn't just feeling, after all?"

"I wonder why under heaven you took me in?" he went on, leaving her words unanswered.

Had Mrs. Brooke stood in Emily's place, she would probably have replied quite effectively, "because the grocer's bill had come for the fifth time"; but the girl had learned to wear her sincerity in a less conspicuous fashion, so she responded to his question merely by a polite evasion.

"We have certainly had no cause to regret it," was what she said.

"What I wanted to say to you in the beginning and couldn't, was just this," he resumed, choosing his words with a deliberation which sounded strained and unnatural, "I suppose it can't make any difference to you--it doesn't really concern you, of course--that's what I felt--but,"

he hesitated an instant and then went on more rapidly, "my daughter's birthday is to-day. She is fifteen years old and it is seven years since I saw her."

"Seven years?" repeated Emily, as she bent over and carefully selected a ripe tomato.

"Doubtless I shouldn't know her if I were to pa.s.s her in the street," he pursued, after a minute. "But it's worse than that and it's harder--for it's as many years since I saw my wife."

She had not lifted her head from the basket, and he felt suddenly that her stillness was not the stillness of flesh, but of marble.

"Perhaps I ought to have told you all this before," he went on again, "perhaps it wasn't fair to let you take me in in ignorance of this and of much else?"

Raising her head, she stood looking into his face with her kind, brown eyes.

"But how could these things possibly affect us?" she asked, smiling slightly.

"No," he replied slowly, "they didn't affect you, of course--they don't now. It made no difference to any of you, I thought. How could it make any?"

"No, it makes no difference to any of us," she repeated quietly.

"Then, perhaps, I've been wrong in telling you this to-day?"

She shook her head. "Not in telling me, but," she drew a long breath, "it might be as well not to speak of it to Beverly or Amelia--at least for a while."

"You mean they would regret their kindness?"

"It would make them uncomfortable--they are very old-fashioned in their views. I don't know just how to put it, but it seems to them--oh, a terrible thing for a husband and wife to live apart."

"Well, I shan't speak of it, of course--but would it not be better for me to return immediately to Tappahannock?"

For an instant she hesitated. "It would be very dreadful at Mrs.

Twine's."

"I know it," he answered, "but I'm ready to go back, this minute if you should prefer it."

"But I shouldn't," she rejoined in her energetic manner. "Why should I, indeed? It is much wiser for you to stay here until the end of the summer."

When she had finished he looked at her a moment without replying. The light had grown very faint and through the thin mist that floated up from the fields her features appeared drawn and pallid.

"What I can't make you understand is that even though it is all my fault--every bit my fault from the beginning--yet I have never really wanted to do evil in my heart. Though I've done wrong, I've always wanted to do right."

If she heard his words they made little impression upon her, for going out into the walk, she started, without speaking, in the direction of the house. Then, when she had moved a few steps from him, she stopped and looked back as if she had forgotten something that had been in her thoughts.

"I meant to tell you that I hope--I pray it will come right again," she said.

"I thank you," he answered, and drew back into the corn so that she might go on alone.

A moment later as Emily walked rapidly down the garden path, it seemed to her that the distance between the gate and the house covered an immeasurable s.p.a.ce. Her one hope was that she might go to her room for at least the single hour before supper, and that there, behind a locked door with her head buried in the pillows, she might shed the hot tears which she felt pressing against her eyelids.

Entering the hall, she had started swiftly up the staircase, with the basket of tomatoes still on her arm, when Mrs. Brooke intercepted her by descending like a phantom from the darkened bend.

"O Emily, I've been looking for you for twenty minutes," she cried in despairing tones. "The biscuits refused to rise and Aunt Mehitable is in a temper. Will you run straight out to the kitchen and beat up a few quick m.u.f.fins for supper."

Drawing back into the corner of the staircase, Emily glanced down upon the tomatoes lying in the bottom of the basket; then without raising her eyes she spoke in a voice which might have uttered appropriately a lament upon the universal tragedy of her s.e.x.

"I suppose I may as well make them plain?" she said.

CHAPTER V

TREATS OF A GREAT Pa.s.sION IN A SIMPLE SOUL

FOR several weeks in August Ordway did not go into Tappahannock, and during his vacation from the warehouse he made himself useful in a number of small ways upon the farm. The lawn was trimmed, the broken fences mended, the garden kept clear of wiregra.s.s, and even Mrs.

Brooke's "rockery" of portulaca, with which she had decorated a mouldering stump, received a sufficient share of his attention to cause the withered plants to grow green again and blossom in profusion. When the long, hot days had drawn to a close, he would go out with a watering-pot and sprinkle the beds of petunias and geraniums which Emily had planted in the bare spots beside the steps.

"The truth is I was made for this sort of thing, you know," he remarked to her one day. "If it went on forever I should never get bored or tired."

Something candid and boyish in his tone caused her to look up at him quickly with a wondering glance. Since the confession of his marriage her manner to him had changed but little, yet she was aware, with a strange irritation against herself, that she never heard his voice or met his eyes without remembering instantly that he had a wife whom he had not seen for seven years. The mystery of the estrangement was as great to her as it had ever been, for since that afternoon in the garden he had not referred again to the subject; and judging the marriage relation by the social code of Beverly and Amelia, she had surmised that some tremendous tragedy had been the prelude to a separation of so many years. As he lifted the watering-pot he had turned a little away from her, and while her eyes rested upon his thick dark hair, powdered heavily with gray above the temples, and upon the strong, sunburnt features of his profile, she asked herself in perplexity where that other woman was and if it were possible that she had forsaken him? "I wonder what she is like and if she is pretty or plain?" she thought. "I almost hope she isn't pretty, and yet it's horrid of me and I wonder why I hope so? What can it matter since he hasn't seen her for seven years, and if he ever sees her again, she will probably be no longer young. I suppose he isn't young, and yet I've never thought so before and somehow it doesn't seem to matter. No, I'm sure his wife is beautiful," she reflected a moment later, as a punishment for her uncharitable beginning, "and she has fair hair, I hope, and a lovely white skin and hands that are always soft and delicate. Yes, that is how it is and I am very glad," she concluded resolutely. And it seemed to her that she could see distinctly this woman whom she had imagined and brought to life.