The Man in Lonely Land Part 13

"A hearty welcome to Virginia, sir! A hearty welcome! We're happy to have you in our home! Here, Claudia, you drive Mr. Laine in the small sleigh, and I'll take the boys in the big one. Are you ready?

Look at that rascal Jim dancing a horn-pipe instead of filling that wagon! We're glad to know you, sir, glad to have you!" And for the third time Laine's hands were shaken well by the ruddy-faced, white-haired old gentleman, with the twinkling, faded blue eyes, and old-fashioned clothes; shaken until they hurt. He was no longer a stranger. The touch of hands, the sound of voice, and a something without name had made him one of them, and that of which he had once been doubtful he knew was true.

Ahead of them his fellow-travelers, one a Keith cousin and the other a friend, waved back and disappeared in a bend of the road; and as Claudia took up the reins he turned toward her.

"Have you been waiting long? Are you sure you are not cold?" he asked.

"Cold! On a day like this?" The color in her face was brilliant.

"We don't often have weather of this sort, and to stay indoors is impossible. I love it! It's so Christmasy, if it isn't Southern.

Did you have a very dreadful trip down? It takes courage to make it."

"Courage!" He laughed and tucked the robe closer around her. "It was the most interesting trip I ever took. This is a very beautiful country."

"We think it is." She turned slightly and looked around her. The road from the boat-landing wound gradually up the incline to the ridge above the river; and as they reached its top the view of the latter was unbroken, and broad and blue it stretched between its snow-clad banks, serene and silent.

Laine's eyes swept the scene before him. The brilliant sunshine on field and river and winding road for a moment was blinding. The biting air stung his face, and life seemed suddenly a splendid, joyous thing. The girl beside him was looking ahead, as if at something to be seen there; and again he turned to her.

"You love it here?"

"Love it?" Her eyes were raised to his. "Everything in it, of it, about it!" With her left hand she brushed away the strands of hair the wind had blown across her eyes. "It is my home."

"A woman can make a home anywhere. A man--"

"No, she can't--that is, I couldn't. I'd smother in New York. It is wonderful to go to. I love its stir and color and the splendid things it is doing; but you can't listen to the wind in the trees, or watch the stars come out, or let your other self have a chance." She turned to him. "We're very slow and queer down here. Are you sure you won't mind coming for Christmas?"

Laine leaned forward and straightened the robe, and out of his face the color faded. He was only one of the several guests. "You are very good to let me come," he said, quietly. "I have not thanked you. I don't know how to thank you. Christmas by one's self--"

"Is unrighteous!" She nodded gaily and touched the horse with the whip. "There's Elmwood! There's my home! Please like Virginia, Mr.

Vermont man!"

Before he could answer, the sleigh stopped at the entrance to the road leading to the big house, and at the door of the little lodge by the always-open gate stood a short, stout colored woman, hands on her hips, and on her head a gaily colored kerchief.

Laine was introduced. Mammy Malaprop was known by reputation, but no words could make of Malaprop a picture, and in deep delight Laine watched her as she curtsied in a manner all her own.

"How you do, suh! How you do! A superfluous Christmas to you, suh!

I'm sorry you didn't git heah 'fore de war. Livin' nowadays ain't more'n shucks from de corn of what it used to be. Is dey all heah now, Miss Claudia?"

"I believe so. I am going to bring Mr. Laine down for some hoe-cakes and b.u.t.termilk after Christmas, and you might tell him some of the stories you used to tell us when we were children. He lives in New York, and--"

"He do! I hope he got himself petrified on the way down, for they tell me 'tis a den of promiscuity, and all the nations of the earth done took their seats in it. I knowed a woman who lived there once.

She near 'bout work herself to death, and she say she couldn't have stood it if it hadn't been for the hopes of a glorious immorality what was awaitin' her when she died--" And Mammy Malaprop's hands waved cheerfully until the sleigh was lost to sight.

From the public road skirting the Elmwood land the private one, tree-bordered by century-old elms, leading to the terraced lawn, wound for some three-quarters of a mile, and as they approached the house Laine saw it was architecturally of a type unseen before. The central building, broad, two stories high, with sloping roof and deep-pillared portico, by itself would not have been unusual; but the slightly semi-circular corridors connecting it with the two wings gave it a grace and beauty seldom found in the straight lines of the period in which it had been built, and the effect was impressive. At the foot of the terrace a little colored boy was blowing ardently a little trumpet, giving shrill greeting to the stranger guest, and as they came closer he took off his hat and held it in his hand.

"All right, Gabriel." Claudia nodded to the boy. "Run on, now, and tell Jeptha to come for the horse." She laughed in Laine's puzzled eyes. "He's Mammy Malaprop's grandson. He thinks he's the real Gabriel and it's his duty to blow. He sings like an angel, but can't learn to spell his name. There they are!" She waved her hand gaily to the group on the porch.

As he saw them Laine thought of Claudia's arrival in New York, and his face flushed. The men came down the steps, and a moment later he was presented to Claudia's mother, gracious, gentle, and of a dignity fine and sweet; to her sister, home for the holidays with her husband and children; to an engineer cousin from the West, and a girl from Philadelphia; and once more his hands were shaken by Colonel Bushrod Ball. It was a Christmas guest who was being welcomed, not Winthrop Laine alone, and he wondered if he were indeed himself.

More than once he wondered before the day was done. Under the leadership of the Colonel the men were shown their rooms, by way of the dining-room, for, like Moses, Uncle Bushrod believed inward cheer essential after outdoor chill; and, moreover, the apple toddy must be tested. It was an old world he was in, but to him a very new one.

The happy stir of Christmas preparations, the coming and going of friends and neighbors, the informality and absence of pretense, the gay chatter and genuine interest, was warm and sweet; and as one who watches a play he wondered at it, and something long thought dead thrilled and throbbed and stirred within him.

In former days the house had doubtless been the scene of lavish living, he thought from time to time, and he would have liked to explore the many rooms with their polished floors and deep window-seats, their carved paneling and marble mantels; and when, in the afternoon, he found himself alone for a few minutes in the vast hall, he paced off its sixty feet of length and its twenty of width to know their number, studied the winding staircase with its white pilasters and mahogany rails, scanned hurriedly the portraits in their tarnished frames, some with the signatures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, some with Stuart, and others of lesser fame, which hung above the wainscoted walls; and as he looked he did not wonder at Claudia's love for her home.

"You care for these things, too, do you?"

The voice behind made him turn quickly. The girl from Philadelphia nodded to him and hugged her crossed arms closely to her bosom. "I don't. That is, not in weather like this, I don't. Ancestral halls sound well, but, unheated, they're horrors. I'm frozen, and the doors are open, of course. Have you been in the big parlors? Some pretty things are in them, but faded and rather shabby now. Why don't you go in the library? There's a roaring fire in there, and a chair you can sit on. Every other one in the house has something in it."

Laine followed the girl into the library, and as she held her hands to the blaze she motioned him to sit down. "I don't believe anybody in the world is as crazy about Christmas as Claudia. She gets the whole county on the jump, and to-morrow night everything in it will be here. Giving is all right, but Claudia takes it too far. The house needs painting, and a furnace would make it a different place, but she will do nothing until she has the money in the bank to pay for it; and yet she will give everybody within miles a Christmas present. When she took hold of things the place was dreadfully mortgaged, and she's paid off every dollar; but, for chance, stock-markets aren't in it with farming. Isn't that a pretty old desk? I could sell lots of this furniture for them and get big money for it, but I don't dare say so. They never talk money here. My room hasn't a piece of carpet on it, and one of those old Joshua Reynoldses in the hall would get so many things the house needs. I'm a Philistine, I guess, as well as a Philadelphian, and I like new things: plenty of bath-rooms and electric lights and steam heat. I don't blame them for not selling the old silver and china or the dining-room furniture, though it needs doing over pretty badly; but some of those old periwigged pictures I'd sell in a minute. Plenty of people would pay well for ancestors, and it's about all they've got down here. h.e.l.lo, Claudia; we were just talking about you!"

Claudia put down the armful of red roses she was carrying and began to fill a tall vase with them. "Did you say anything that wasn't nice?" She bit a piece of stem off. "If you did, it wasn't so." She turned to Laine. "You ought to see mother. She rarely has such flowers as you brought down--You have made her so happy. It was very good of you."

"Good!" The girl from Philadelphia went out of the room. "If only--" In his eyes no longer was restraint, and Claudia turned her head as if listening to something outside.

"I believe mother is calling me," she said. "Would you mind telling her, Mr. Laine, I am coming right away?"

XIX

CHRISTMAS

Laine looked at his watch. Twenty minutes past twelve. Christmas was over. Two days after were over also, and in the morning most of the guests were going away.

From the basket by the hearth he threw a fresh log on the smoldering fire, lifted it with his foot farther back on the hot ashes, drew the old-fashioned arm-chair closer to the fender, and, turning down the light from the lamp on the pie-crust table near the mantel, sat down and lighted a fresh cigar.

It had been very beautiful, very wonderful, this Christmas in the country. Its memories would go with him through life, and yet he must go away and say no word of what he had meant to say to Claudia.

Very definitely he had understood, from the day of his arrival, that to tell her of his love would be a violation of a code to which the directness of his nature had given little thought in the reaction of feeling which had possessed him when he read her note. He was a guest by invitation, and to speak now would be beyond pardon. In his heart was no room for humor, and yet a comic side of the situation in which he found himself was undeniable. The contrast it afforded to former opportunities was absurdly sharp and determined, and the irony of the little G.o.d's way of doing things was irritatingly manifest.

If in Claudia's heart was knowledge of the secret in his, she masked it well. Warmly cordial, coolly impersonal, frankly unconscious, she had never avoided him, and still had so managed that they were never alone together. Hands clasped loosely, he leaned forward and stared into the heart of the blazing logs. Of course she knew. All women know when they are loved. No. The log fell apart, and its burning flame glowed rich and red. She had not known, or she would not have asked him to Elmwood. Merely as she would ask any other lonely man in whom she felt a kindly interest, she had asked him, and, thus far, her home was the love of her life. In a thousand ways he had felt it, seen it, understood it; and the man who would take her from it must awaken within her that which as yet was still asleep.

The days just past had been miserably happy. Before others light laughter and gay speech. In his heart surrender and suppliance, and before him always the necessity of silence until he could come again, and he must go that he might come again.

One by one, pictures of recent experiences pa.s.sed before him, experiences of simple, happy, homelike living; and things he had almost forgotten to believe in seemed real and true once more. A new sense of values, a new understanding of the essentials of life, had been born again; and something growing cold and cynical had warmed and softened.

In the big hall he had helped the others put up the fragrant spruce pine-tree which reached to the ceiling, helped to dress it midst jolly chatter and joyous confusion, helped to hide the innumerable presents for the morrow's findings; and on Christmas morning had as eagerly dumped the contents of his stocking as had Jack and Janet, or the men who had come from busy city lives to be boys again, or as Claudia herself, who could not see with what her own was filled, for the constant demand that she should come here and there, and see this and that, or do what no one else was able to.

Slipping down farther in his chair, Laine put his feet on the fender and with half-shut eyes saw other pictures in the fire. The gray dawn of Christmas morning came again, and he seemed to hear the clear, childish voice below his window. Half asleep, he had stirred and wondered what it was, then sat up to listen. The quaint words of the old carols he knew well, but never had he heard them sung as Gabriel was singing them. Shrill and sweet in the crisp, cold air, the voice sounded first as if far away and then very near, and he knew the boy was walking up and down below each window that all might hear alike.

As Joseph was a-walking He heard the angels sing, This night there shall be born Our heavenly King.

Here and there, in a verse from one carol joined almost in the same breath to another he went from:

G.o.d rest you, merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay.

Remember Christ, our Saviour, Was born on Christmas Day.

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