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diff --git a/58876-0.txt b/58876-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..39e12a2 --- /dev/null +++ b/58876-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5442 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58876 *** + + + + + + + + + + + + + FASHIONING A PIPE. + + "He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, + From the deep, cool bed of the river. + * * * * * * + "Hacked and hewed as a great god can, + With his hard, bleak steel at the patient reed, + Till there was not a sign of the leaf, indeed, + To prove it fresh from the river. + He cut it short, did the great god Pan, + (How tall it stood in the river!) + Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, + Steadily from the outside ring, + And notched the poor, dry, empty thing + In holes as he sat by the river. + 'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan, + ... 'The only way since gods began + To make sweet music, they could succeed.' + ... Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, + To laugh as he sits by the river, + The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, + For the reed which grows nevermore again + As a reed with the reeds in the river." + --MRS. BARRETT BROWNING. + + + + +[Illustration: Title page] + + + + JUDITH MOORE; + + OR, + + FASHIONING A PIPE. + + + + BY + + JOANNA E. WOOD. + + Author of "The Untempered Wind," etc. + + + + TORONTO: + THE ONTARIO PUBLISHING CO., Limited + 1898. + + + + + Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one + thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight, by THE ONTARIO PUBLISHING + Co., Limited, at the Department of Agriculture, Ottawa. + + + + +JUDITH MOORE. + + + +CHAPTER I. + +"Behold a sower went forth to sow." + + +Andrew Cutler, with his graceful and melancholy red Irish setter at his +heels, walked swiftly across his fields to the "clearing" one morning +late in spring. + +He was clad in the traditional blue jeans of the countryman, and wore +neither coat nor vest; a leathern belt was drawn about his middle. His +shirt, open a bit at the throat, and guiltless of collar and tie, +displayed a neck such as we see modelled in old bronzes, and of much +the same colour; for Andrew Cutler was tanned to the point of being +swart. His head had a somewhat backward pose, expressive of an +independence almost over-accentuated. + +His hair was cropped short, and was of a sun-burnt brown, like his long +moustache. His eyes were blue-grey, that softened to hazel or hardened +to the hue of steel. His nose was aquiline, with the little flattened +plateau on the bridge that we call "Spanish." His chin was strong--the +chin of a man who "manlike, would have his way." + +Mother Nature must laugh in her sleeve at the descriptive names we tack +to her models. This man so completely satisfied the appellation +"aristocratic," that, with the stubbornness of a much-humoured word, it +persists in suggesting itself as the best vehicle to describe this +young farmer, and indeed the combination would be entirely to the +advantage of the adjective, which is often seen in poor company. A +veritable rustic Antinous he was, with broad chest, slim, lithe loins, +and muscles strong as steel. Slung athwart his shoulder was a sack of +coarse brown canvas that bulged with a heavy load; but he strode on, +his balance undisturbed, and presently he stood upon the verge of the +clearing. This was simply a part of the woodland that Andrew was +taking under cultivation. A somewhat unpromising piece it looked, with +its stubborn stumps standing irregularly amid the broken furrows--(for +it had been ploughed, in such fashion as ploughing may be done when one +has to twist around stumps, over stones, and tear through long strong +roots). + +Andrew remembered the ploughing, as he walked across to begin his +sowing, like the good farmer that he was, at the end-rigg. Here was +the stump that had resisted gunpowder, leverage and fire, and that now +was being tortured by saltpetre, charged in a deep augur hole. Well, +it had been a right brave old tree, but the saltpetre would win to the +stout oaken heart yet. It was perhaps a step in the right direction, +this clearing of the woodland, but all progress seems cruel at first. +Here--as he passed over what seemed a particularly smooth bit--the +great stone lay hidden that had broken his ploughshare off with a +crash, and sent him flying from between the plough-stilts. He would +remember that stone for some time! So doubtless would good old Bess, +whose patient brown shoulders had borne the brunt of the shock. + +Ploughing a field is like ploughing the sea--one needs must have a +chart of each to steer safely. That more formidable sea, "whose waves +are years," has no chart. Next winter would see the uprooting of all +these stumps, and the felling of more trees beyond. Next spring the +plough would pass straight from end to end, and the seed-drill would +sow the space which now he was about to sow in the old classic +fashion--as they sowed, in intervals of stormy peace, the grain after +the wooden ploughs on the Swiss hillsides; as Ulysses sowed the salt +upon the seashore; as the sowers sowed the seed in the far-off East, as +has been handed down to us in a matchless allegory. + +He began his task, hand and foot moving in rhythm, and cadenced by the +sharp swish, swish of the grain as it left his hand, spreading fan-wise +over the soil. It takes a strong wrist and a peculiar "knack" to sow +grain well by hand; he had both. + +The dog followed him for a couple of ridges, but, besides the ploughed +ground being distasteful to him (for he was a dainty dog and +fastidious), the buckwheat hit him in the eyes, and his master paid no +heed to him, a combination of circumstances not be borne; hence, he +shortly betook himself to the woodland, where he raised a beautiful +little wild rabbit and coursed after it, until with a final kick of its +furry heels it landed safe beneath a great pile of black walnut logs, +built up criss-cross fashion to mellow for the market. Rufus (named +from "William the Red, surnamed Rufus") returned to his master, not +dejectedly, but with a melancholy contempt for rabbits that would not +"run it out," but took shelter in a sneaking way where they could not +be come at. + +By this time Andrew was well on with his work. The sack beneath his +arm was growing limp, he himself was warm. He paused as a bird flew up +from a turned sod at his feet, and a little search showed the simple +nest of a grey-bird--open to the sun and rain, built guilelessly, +without defence of strategy or strength. + +There is something amiss with the man or woman whose heart is not +touched by a bird's nest--the daintiest possible epitome of love, and +home, and honest work, and self-sacrificing patience. Andrew had +thrashed many a boy for robbing birds' nests, and had discharged a man +in the stress of haying because he knocked down the clay nests of the +swallows from beneath the granary eaves with a long pole. Now he bent +above this nest with curious-tender eyes, touching the spotted eggs +lightly whilst the bird, whose breast had left them warm, flitted to +and fro upon the furrows. He remained but a moment (the bird's anxiety +was cruel) then, fixing the spot in his memory that he might avoid it +in the harrowing, he was about to go on his way, when his ears were +assailed by a succession of the sweetest sounds he had ever heard--note +after note of purest melody, flung forth unsyllabled, full-throated to +the air, inarticulate but eloquent. Again and again it came, liquid, +rich, and with that pathos which perfection always touches. + +At first he could not fix the direction from whence it came. It was as +if the heavens above had opened and showered down music upon his heart +as he had flung forth the seed upon the earth: and indeed there were +two sowings that morning and from each harvests were garnered--first +the bloom and then the fruit thereof. But as he listened longer he +knew it issued from the wood before him. At the first note some +impulse made him snatch off his old felt hat, and he stood there, +bareheaded in the sunshine, as one might stand to whom had come the +pang of inspiration. + +The singer was voicing no composition, only uttering isolated notes, or +short _crescendos_, terminating in notes of exquisite beauty, but +leaving a sense of incompleteness that was so intense us to be almost a +physical pain to him--only forgotten when the next utterance robbed him +of retrospect and filled him with hope. Any one who has heard a +perfect singer practising, knows the sensation. In such fashion the +unseen sirens sang, and men willingly risked death to touch the lips +that had been parted by such melodious breath. + +Andrew still stood, and at last silence fell--a silence he hardly +comprehended at first, so filled was it with the dream of sound that +had passed, so instinct with expectation: but it forced itself upon +him, and then suddenly round him there sounded all the commonplace +noises of life--the croaking of a tree toad, the buzzing of a chance +fly, the far-off shouting of men, and the sounds of birds--all that had +been deadened to his ear by the magic of that voice. + +A voice--then whence? + +In two strides he was over the ploughed ground and in the woods. He +searched through and through it in vain. He looked from its borders at +his own far-off farm-house among its trees, at the gables of the +village of Ovid clustering together, at the tin on the Baptist Church +spire glistening in the midst, at the long low Morris homestead that +nestled in a little hollow beyond his wood: but all was as usual, +nothing new, nothing strange. No angel's glistening wing was to be +seen anywhere. + +Andrew's grain was spent, but the clearing was not yet all sown. So he +went home leaving his task unfinished. From one thing to another was +the rule of his busy life. He gave a cheery word or two to his aunt, +Miss Myers, who kept house for him, and then he was off to town with a +waggon load of implements to be mended in time for the summer work. + +That night a group of typical Ovidians were gathered in the kitchen of +old Sam Symmons' house. + +Sam Symmons lived in a frame house, just at the foot of the incline +which led into the village from the north. Like many of the houses of +Ovid, his was distinctly typical of its owner. A new house was such a +rare thing in Ovid, that the old ones had time to assimilate the +characters of their possessors, and to assume an individuality denied +to the factors of a more rapidly growing place. + +Old Sam's house was a tumble-down, rakish, brave-looking old house, +with shutters erstwhile painted green. They had once given the whole +house quite an air, but their painful lapses in the way of broken +slats, and uneven or lost hinges, now superimposed upon it a look of +indecision. One of the weather-boards at the south corner was loose +and, freed from the nails' restraint, bent outward, as though beckoning +the gazer in. It was a hospitable old house, but wary, too, the ornate +tin tops of the rain troughs round the roof giving it a knowing look. + +The native clematis grew better over the weather-beaten gable than +anywhere else in Ovid, and the Provence roses, without any care +whatever, bloomed better. + +It was as if the house and its environs were making a gallant but +losing light against encroaching time and adverse circumstances. So it +was with old Sam. + +He was an old man. Long before, when Canada's farmers were more than +prosperous, when foreign wars kept the price of food grains high, when +the soil was virgin and unexhausted, when the military spirit still +animated the country, when regulars were in barracks at the nearest +town, when every able man was an eager volunteer, when to drink heavily +and swear deeply upon all occasions marked the man of ease, when the +ladies danced in buckled shoes and _chéne taffetas_, and were +worshipped with chivalrous courtesy and high-flown _sobriquets_--in +those days old Sam Symmons had been known as "Gallant Sam Symmons," and +had been welcomed by many high in the land. + +He had ever been first in a fight, the last upright at the table, a gay +dancer and a courtly flirt. But now he was glad to get an audience of +tolerant villagers to listen to his old tales. For instead of +garnering his money he spent it freely, having ever a generous heart +and open hand, and of late years he had fallen upon evil times, and +gone steadily down hill. Now he had only a strip of barren acres +heavily mortgaged. He married late in life the daughter of a country +doctor. + +They had one child, a girl, whose mother died when she was four years +old. Sam christened his daughter Susanna Matilda. + +In the days of his youth--oh, the halcyon time--these two names had +been the names of the hour. The Mabels, Lilys and Rubys of to-day were +yet unborn. + +Susanna Waring had been the belle of the county, and her lovers were +willing to stake their honour upon her pre-eminence. + +Matilda Buchanan had been called "The Rose of Canada," and when the +Consul, her father, returned to England, she footed it bravely at the +Court of St. James. She married a nobleman there. + +They were long dead, these two beauties. Matilda Buchanan had left all +her pomp, and Susanna Waring had passed away from all her unhappiness, +for she married an officer who treated her brutally. Well, well, old +Sam Symmons, gallant Sam Symmons then, had danced with both of them, +had kissed Miss Waring's hand in a minuet, and knocked a man down for +saying Matilda Buchanan rouged. + +She did--they all did in those days--but it was not for the profane +lips of man to say so. Thus Sam christened his daughter Susanna +Matilda, and felt he had done his duty by her. + +After his wife's death, her cousin, a good enough woman in a negative +sort of way, kept house for him, and brought up the little girl. When +Susanna was eighteen, this woman died; so Sam and his daughter were +left alone. + +As has been said, quite a crowd was gathered in old Sam's kitchen that +night in the last week of May. There was Sam himself, Jack Mackinnon +(a neighbour's hired man and the most noted liar in Ovid), Hiram Green, +Oscar Randall, and Susanna. It may be said here that throughout Ovid +and its environs Susanna's proper name was a dead letter. She was "Sam +Symmons' Suse" to all and sundry. The Ovidian mind was not prone to +poetry: still, this alliterative name seemed to have charms for it, and +perhaps the poetical element in Ovid only required developing: and it +may be that the sibilant triune name found favour because it chimed to +some dormant vein of poesy, unsuspected even by its possessors. + +The occasion calling forth the conclave in Symmons' kitchen was simply +that his old mare was very sick; in fact, dying, as all save Sam +thought. As every man in Ovid prided himself upon his knowledge of +veterinary science, the whole community stirred when it was spread +abroad that there was an equine patient to practise upon. + +Oscar Randall took the dim lantern from the table and went out. He +returned, and all awaited his opinion. + +"Well, Os?" said Jack Mackinnon. + +"If that was my horse--which she ain't, of course--I'd shoot her," said +Oscar, deliberately. + +"Shoot her!" said Jack Mackinnon: "shoot her! Don't you do it, Mister +Symmons. Why, there was old Mr. Pierson wot I worked for in Essex, he +had an old mare, most dreadful old and most terrible sick--sick for +months. One day we drawed her out in a field, to die easy and so's +she'd be easy to bury. Well, by George! she got up, and old Mr. +Pen--him wot I worked for as has the dairy farm--he came along, and he +says to Mr. Pierson, says he, 'Wot'll you take for the mare?' +'Twenty-five dollars,' says the old man. 'She's my mare, then,' says +Mr Pen; 'I'll give you my note for her.' So Mr. Pen took her home and +drove her in his milk-cart: and that spring he sold her two colts for a +hundred dollars apiece, and in the fall he got two hundred dollars for +a little black one; and Mr. Ellis, wot keeps tavern, he bought another +pair of 'em in winter, and gave a sorrel horse and a double cutter for +'em. I tell you, she was a good old mare that, and we drug her out to +die at old Mr. Pierson's, wot I worked for in Essex, and old Mr. Pen, +wot keeps the dairy farm, he came along, and says, 'Wot'll you take for +the mare?' And--" + +"Oh, shut up! Draw it mild, Jack," said Oscar, irascibly. + +"Sam," said Hiram Green, slowly, "have you tried Epsom salts? and +ginger? and saltpetre? and sweet spirits of nitre? and rye? and +asafoetida? and bled her? and given her a bran-mash? and tried +turpentine and salt?" + +"Yes," said Sam, "I have, and she's no better." + +"Now, Sam," said Green, impressively, "did you give her a 'Black's +Condition Powder'?" + +"No, I didn't," said Sam. + +"I thought so," said Green, significantly. + +"Do you keep them in the store?" queried Oscar Randall, aggressively. +He felt aggrieved with Hiram, having himself intended to ask about the +sweet nitre and turpentine. + +"Do you keep them?" he asked again. + +"Yes, I do," admitted Hiram, "and I've brought one along in case Sam +should like to try it." + +This rather crushed Oscar's insinuation as to Hiram's business policy +in suggesting this remedy, so he sat silent, while old Sam and Hiram +Green went out to administer the powder. + +Jack Mackinnon, to whom silence was impossible, with the freedom of +equality prevalent in Ovid, turned to where Suse sat making rick-rack. + +"Wot are you making, Miss Suse?" he began, and without waiting for a +reply, continued: "There was Adah Harris, daughter of old man Harris, +wot was a carpenter and had a market garden, wot I worked for in Essex, +and she was always a-doing things. She was busy every blessed minute, +and I tell you she _was_ smart; she married Henry Haynes wot kept a +blacksmith's shop, wot I worked for: and when I left there, I left my +clothes be, till I got a job, and when I went back after 'em, there was +a new shirt, and two paper collars in a box, and my mother's picture +gone. Now I knowed pretty clost to where them things went--and I'll +have 'em back if I have to steal 'em. Why I thought no end of mother's +picture, it was took standing; I wouldn't have lost that picture for a +fifty-cent piece, and there 'twas gone and my new shirt and two collars +I'd only had two months. I left them at Henry Haynes' wot married Adah +Harris. Old man Harris went carpentering and kept a market garden, +but, pshaw! Talk about squashes, why we growed one squash there took +three men to get it into the waggon, and then we rolled it up a +board--why squashes--" but just then Hiram and old Sam came in. Old +Sam blew the long-lit lantern out. + +"Well, father?" Suse asked. + +"She's dead," said Sam. + +"Dead's a door nail," added Hiram. + +"No!" said Jack, with exaggerated incredulity. + +"You don't say!" said Oscar, in a tone which betrayed a distinct +conflict between self-satisfaction and proper sympathy. He could not +resist adding in a lower key, "I seen as much." + +Soon the trio of visitors departed. Old Sam was smoking a last pipe +when a knock came to the door. He opened it to find Andrew Cutler +without. + +"What's this I hear about your mare?" he asked. "Is she dead?" + +"Yes--couldn't seem to do anything for her," said old Sam, and brave as +he was, his tone was somewhat disheartened. + +"Well, it's too bad, she was a good beast. Better have my little bay +till you look about for another," said Andrew. + +Old Sam's face lightened. "I'll be glad to," he answered. "There's +the orchard field to plough and I'm behindhand already, but"--his old +pride forbidding him to accept too eagerly--"don't you need him?" + +"No, not a bit," said Andrew. "Indeed, I'll be glad if you take him +awhile. He's getting above himself." + +"Well, I'll come along for him in the morning, then," said Sam, +relieved. "What have you been doing to-day?" + +"Sowing buckwheat in the clearing, and went to town with some mending," +replied Andrew. "I'm just getting home." + +"How does the clearing look?" asked Sam. "Free of water?" + +"Yes, it's in good condition." + +"Hiram Green says that there's a boarder up to the Morris place. Did +you see anything of it?" + +"Man or woman?" asked Andrew, with sudden interest. + +"Hiram didn't say. I took it was a man." (Andrew's heart sank.) +"Suse, did Hiram Green say 'twas a man or a woman had come to board +with old Mrs. Morris?" + +"He didn't say," called Suse from an inner room. + +"Well, it's a lonely place to choose, isn't it?" said Andrew. +"Good-night, Mr. Symmons." + +"Good-night, good-night. Thank you kindly," said old Sam. + +The old mare was buried next day in one of Sam's barren fields. + +"Did you get the shoes off her?" Mr. Horne asked as he encountered old +Sam returning from the obsequies with an earthy spade over his rounding +shoulders. + +"No, I didn't," said Sam. + +"Did you save her tail to make a fly brush?" queried Mr. Horne. + +"No," answered old Sam. "I never thought of it." + +"Did you skin her?" asked his questioner bending over. "Did you skin +her?" + +"No," said Sam, thoroughly humiliated. + +"Well," said Mr. Horne with exuberant sarcasm, as he shook his reins +over his team of fat Clydesdales, "It's well you can afford such waste. +I couldn't." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + "Say where + In upper air + Dost hope to find fulfilment of thy dream? + On what far peak seest thou a morning gleam? + Why shall the stars still blind thee unaware? + Why needst thou mount to sing? + Why seek the sun's fierce-tempered glow and glare? + Why shall a soulless impulse prompt thy wing?" + + +The next day Andrew Cutler went to complete the sowing of the clearing. +It was somewhat chill, and he wore an old velveteen coat whose ribbed +surface was sadly rubbed and faded to a dingy russet. More than that, +it was burnt through in several round spots by ashes from his pipes and +cigars. As usual, Rufus followed him, and a very picturesque pair the +two made. + +The air was very clear, the smoke from the village curling bluely up +high to the clouds, no shred of it lingering about the roof trees. He +could see some white pigeons flying about the church spire; and off to +the right, where the river ran, he could see lines of white flashing a +moment in the sun, then falling beyond the trees, and these he knew +were flashes from the shining breasts and wings of the gulls. The +ground had not yet lost the elasticity of spring, and the new grass had +not yet quite overcome the dead growth of the year before. + +It was a buoyant day, and Andrew was in a buoyant mood. He had not +come out without the expectation of hearing more singing, and he +promised himself he would not wait so long before beginning his search +for the singer, whom he took to be the boarder at the Morris house. +However, it seemed as if he was to be disappointed, for the sun grew +strong, the air warm, and no music came to him. + +His sowing was done, and he was just about leaving, when, sweet, clear, +full, the voice of yesterday shook out a few high notes, and then +taking up the words of a song began to sing it in such fashion that +Andrew (who knew the song well) could hardly believe that the sound +issued from mortal lips--it was so flute-like, so liquid. + +Now, Andrew's life had not been one of much dissipation; still, there +were hours in it he did not care to dwell upon, and the memory of every +one of these unworthy hours suddenly smote him with shame. They say +that at death's approach one sees in a second all the sins of his soul +stand forth in crimson blazonry, and perhaps, in that moment, Andrew's +old self died. + +The singer's voice had taken up another song, one he did not know-- + + "Out from yourself! + For your broken heart's vest; + For the peace which you crave; + For the end of your quest; + For the love which can save; + Come! Come to me!" + + +In springing over the fence and making towards where the sound came +from, Andrew hardly seemed as if acting upon his own volition. He had +been summoned: he went. + +After all, there is not much mystery about a girl singing among the +trees, yet Andrew's heart throbbed with something of that hushed tumult +with which we approach some sacred shrine of feeling, or enter upon +some new intense delight. + +He soon saw her, standing with her back against a rough shell-bark +hickory. The cloudy greyness of its rugged stem seemed to intensify +the pallor and accentuate the delicacy of her face. For she was a very +pale-faced, fragile-looking woman who stood there singing: her eyes +were wide and wistful, but not unhappy-looking, only pitiable from the +intense eagerness that seemed to have consumed her. And, in fact, she +was like an overtuned instrument whose tense strings quiver continually. + +She was clad in a dull red gown made in one of the quaint fashions +which _la mode_ has revived of late years. It had many _bizarre_ +broideries of blues and black, touched here and there with +gold--Russian embroidery, its wearer would have called it. As she sang +she made little dramatic gestures with slender hands, and at the last +words of her song's refrain, she stretched forth her arms with a +gesture expressing the infinitude of yearning. + +Her face, so mobile as to be in itself speech, seconded her words by an +inarticulate but powerful plea. It was as though she pleaded with Fate +to manifest its decree at once, and not hold her longer in suspense. +And it was for singing such as this, and for acting such as this, that +the world had crowned her great--Fools who could not see that the head +they crowned was already drooping beneath its lonely burden. Blind +fools who could not see it was the passion of an empty heart, the +yearning of a solitary soul, the unutterable longing of a woman's +nature for love, that rendered her marvellous voice so passionately and +painfully sweet. She herself never suspected it; only she believed +what the doctors had told her manager and teacher, the good man who +wore such big diamonds and used such bad language, that she must have +rest, quiet, complete and absolute change. So she and this man had +come to Canada, and had driven on and on into the heart of the country +till they came to this village in the valley, and there she had elected +to stay--a caprice not nearly so extravagant, and certainly more sweet +and wholesome than the freaks indulged in by some others of her ilk. +So here she was, lying _perdu_, whilst her picture was in every paper +in the country, with marvellous tales of her triumphs abroad and +whispers of the wonderful treat in store for the music-lovers of +America. And her little, good-hearted manager flashed out his biggest +diamonds, swore his worst oaths, hoped the child was getting strong, +and never dreamed he was killing her. + +The "Great God Pan" was all unconscious of his cruelty, was he not, +when he fashioned the pipe out of a river reed? And as he blew through +it the music of the gods, doubtless had good reason for thinking that +never reed had been honoured like unto this reed. + +There are moments in real life, so exotic to the lives into which they +have entered, that one hardly realizes the verity of them till long +after, when the meaning of his own actions struggles through the mists +and confronts him with their consequences. In such moments the most +absurd things in the world seem quite in order, and the commonplace +actions of life assume grotesque importance. So it is in dreams, which +reconcile with magnificent disregard of possibilities, the most +wonderful conditions of person, place and time. Well-- + + "Dreams are true whilst they last + And do we not live in dreams?" + + +This is Andrew's only excuse for accepting so promptly the musical +invitation extended with such feeling! + +"I have come," he said, half dreamily--stepping out from the shelter of +the trees. + +The pale-faced singing siren changed to a startled, blushing girl, and +in swift sequence Andrew's rapt gaze altered to one not altogether +without daring. + +"Oh, so I see," she half gasped, then laughed outright, looking at him +with shy eyes, but mutinously curving lips. The laugh robbed the scene +of its last illusion of mystery. + +Andrew advanced, raising his old felt hat with an instinct of deference +that made the commonplace courtesy charming. + +"I hope I didn't scare you," he said; "but I was working in a field +near here yesterday and heard you singing. To-day I made up my mind to +find you. Do you mind?" + +"Do you know who I am?" she asked. + +"No," he answered; "but I suspect you are the 'Boarder up at old Mis' +Morris's.'" + +"Oh, so a rumour has gone abroad in the land? Yes, I am the boarder; +one would think a boarder was a kind of animal." + +"Yes," assented Andrew. "Old Sam Symmons said he wasn't sure if it was +a man or a woman." + +"I won't be called an 'It'; my name is Judith Moore." + +"How do you do, Miss Judith Moore. My name is Andrew Cutler." + +He had come close to her by this time, and as he looked down upon her +he began to feel an irritating sense of shyness creep over him. She +was such a fantastic little figure in his eyes. And what a queer frock +she had on! Surely on any one else it would be horrid. It didn't look +so bad on her, though; and what a belt for her to wear, this great +burden of metal--a flexible band of silver with, it seemed to him, +dozens of silver ornaments hanging to it by chains of varying lengths! +What nonsense! It seemed to weigh her down. (Andrew was not up in +chatelaines.) Then her feet! But here his masculine horse sense and +the instinct of protection which had awakened in him at the first +startled look from her big wide eyes, made him overstep all polite +bounds and render himself odious to Miss Moore. + +"Why in the world do you wear shoes like these?" he asked. "And such +stockings! and standing on that damp moss! You had better go right +into the house and get on decently heavy shoes." + +This was too much. Miss Judith Moore fancied her own feet, and fancied +open-work silk hose, and high-heeled wisps of shoes. Most of all, she +liked the combination. In fact, in a harmless little way, she rather +liked people to have a chance to appreciate these beauties, and at the +very moment Andrew spoke, she had noted his downward glance and felt a +righteous peace settle upon her. To be well shod is such moral +support, and, lo, this heathen, this wretch, this abominable, +conceited, brazen young farmer, had actually dared to suggest a change; +more than that, he had spoken of "stockings"--disgusting! + +So, with a dignity that reduced Andrew to despair, even whilst it +roused his ire (she was so slight to be such a "defiant little cat" he +told himself), she drew herself up, in a manner to do the traditional +Duchess credit, and left him, saying: + +"Since you don't approve of my feet I'll take them out of your way." + +"You mean they'll take you," said Andrew, wrathfully conscious that she +was, to use a good old figure of speech, "turning up her nose at him." + +"You are extremely rude," she called back. + +"And you are a bad-tempered little thing," he answered. + +So he and his siren, calling names at each other, parted for the first +time. + +Miss Moore went into the little apple orchard behind the Morris +homestead, and watched a tiny chipmunk gathering leaves to line its +nest--at least Judith supposed it was for that. At any rate, it picked +out the dry brown leaves from beneath a maple tree near the gate, sat +up on its hind legs, and pleated the leaf into its mouth deftly. It +took two or three at a time, and looked very comical with the brown +leaves sticking out like fans on each side of its face. She laughed so +long and loudly at this, that Mrs. Morris came to the door to see if +she had hysterics. + +"I met a young man in the woods, Mrs. Morris," said Judith, going up to +her; "a rude, long-legged young man, named Cutler. Who is he?" + +"For the land's sake!" said Mrs. Morris. "Did you meet Andrew Cutler? +I warrant he'd be took down if he heard you say that. He's thought a +good deal of by some people, being on the school board and the council, +for all he's unmarried and young; but he's too big feeling to suit me! +And he don't profess religion, and is forever smokin' and shootin', and +he's got a crank on books--took that off his mother; she was a Myers. +They was U. E. Loyalist stock; got their farms for nothing, of course, +and hung on to them. Andrew owns a fine place, and he's full of cranks +about college farming. Well, 'long-legged'--that's a good one! He is +long-legged, there's no mistake about that. All the Myerses are tall. +There's Hannah Myers as keeps house for Andrew, and she's tall as my +old man, and--for the land's sake, that milk's boiling over!" and Mrs. +Morris departed indoors. Presently, out flew two chickens, a collie +dog, and a cat, wild-eyed and spitting, from which signs Judith +diagnosed that Mrs. Morris had made "things" fly around when she got +inside--a miracle she was an adept at performing. + +Andrew went home to dinner, and came back in the afternoon to harrow +down the grain he had sowed. Mr. Morris came out to talk to him. + +"Who is the girl you've got boarding with you?" asked Andrew. + +"Oh," said Mr. Morris, "I don't just rightly know, but she's a singing +woman of some kind: in the opery, she said. She and a little +black-a-vised chap came driving up the lane one day last week, and +before I just rightly could make out what they were, he was driving off +and she was there for keeps. Next day there came a whole waggon load +of trunks. Going to stay all summer, she says. She's greatly took up +with the country. She wanted to tie ribbons on the cows' horns, and is +bound to learn to make butter. She was going to churn the other day, +and worked the dash about a dozen times, and then she scolded right +sharp at the butter for not coming. Then she got a spoon and tasted +the cream, and she up and says to Mother, 'Why, Mrs. Morris, you've +given me sour cream to churn!' and she was real huffy. She wouldn't +believe that sweet butter came off sour cream, and she just sat, and +never took her eye off that churn till Mother was done with it. She +was bound she wasn't going to be fooled. She's real smart some ways, +though, only she don't eat a mite, and Mother's dreadful afraid her +religion is kind of heathenish. She was looking out the door the other +day, and she says, says she, 'It's a perfect idol!' Mother never let +on, but soon as she went away Mother came out and looked about, and +there was nothing like an idol, except maybe them big queer-marked +stones I got down by the lime springs. What did you call 'em?" + +"Petrifactions," said Andrew. + +"Yes. Well, Mother always had 'em set up against the door steps kind +of tasty, but Mother ain't the one to have no sich temptations around +in any one's way, if they be given to sich, so she just rolled 'em +along and dropped 'em into the cistern." + +Mr. Morris was notoriously long-winded, and sometimes Andrew was not +over-eager to encounter him, but this day Andrew was more than civil. + +"What's she here for, anyhow?" asked he. + +"Her health; she's all drug down, Mother says, and she's full of +cranks. Yesterday she would weed in the garden, and she started out +with as good a pair of gloves on as you ever seen. Well, she stayed +and stayed, and Mother she went out to see if she wanted to come in, +because Mrs. Horne was there (them Hornes are a bad lot!) and she +wanted to visit a spell. Well, she'd got up about _two_ handfuls of +chick-weed, and then sat down and gone sound asleep. All wore out, +Mother says." + +After a bit Mr. Morris departed. He had detailed with great gusto all +the "news" told by Mrs. Horne, or deduced by himself from her +conversation; but Andrew's interest flagged, so presently Mr. Morris +went on his way, if not rejoicing, at least relieved, for it was a boon +to him to get a good listener. + +Andrew went home reflectively. His last conscious thought that night +must have been in some way relative to Miss Judith Moore, her feet and +her temper, for he muttered to himself, half sleeping, half waking: +"Her eyes didn't look like the eyes of a bad-tempered girl:" then "They +were so little I could have held both of them in one hand;" later +still, "I was pretty bad to her about the shoes, women are such dear +little fools." Then this judicially-minded young man slept the sleep +of the just. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + "If thou art worn and hard beset + With sorrows that thou wouldst forget; + If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep + Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, + Go to the woods and hills; no tears + Dim the sweet looks that nature wears." + + +The village of Ovid lay in a valley hollowed out of an otherwise level +country into a shallow basin. It called those who dwelt to the north +of it, Mountain Hayseeds; and those to the south of it, Swamp +Angels--compliments returned in kind, for the youths of the sections +thus flattered by Ovidian attention always referred to the villagers as +Ovid Idiots. + +For the most part the houses in Ovid clustered closely together. Some +few of them were scattered half way up the sloping hill-sides, but +these dwellings were all built facing the village proper, and besides +being absurdly fore-shortened always wore a deprecating look as if +mutely conscious of their invidious positions. These hills of Ovid +were not very formidable, and from a short distance off, say, from +Andrew Cutler's clearing, one could see over their crests the gables of +the village. + +There were but two long streets in the village, denominated the Front +Street and the Back Street. + +Upon the Front Street stood the two churches, facing each other, being, +however, only in physical juxtaposition, for spiritually they were as +far as the poles apart. The one was a Methodist Church, and bore high +above its door the inscription, _Eva Methodist Church, A.D. 1860_. +This legend must once have been very glaring, seemingly jet black upon +a white surface, but some painter, well disposed to mankind evidently, +had swept his brush laden with white paint over this inscription. The +result was grateful to the eye, even if it did give rise to some +uncertainty as to what the words actually were. Great truths often +come home to one intuitively; perhaps that is how every one knew what +was writ above that door. + +The Baptist Church was stone, and bore only a date, _1854 A.D._, but it +rejoiced in a tin-clad spire that glimmered gayly in the sunlight or +shone cold and chill beneath the wintry moon. + +Between these two churches and the members thereof there was no +animosity, but there was a "feeling." A "feeling" is one of those +intangible, elusive things, of which no acceptable definition can be +given; but every new-comer to Ovid grew into that "feeling" before he +had been there a week. Perhaps some perception of this peculiar +condition may be gathered by considering the various improvements which +took place in the two churches during one autumn in Ovid. + +They were inaugurated by Hiram Green, who presented a stone tie-post to +the Methodist Church. Hiram kept the village grocery store, and had +accepted six stone tie-posts in lieu of certain goods supplied to the +boarding-house at the stone quarries. The boarding-house keeper had +taken them in default of cash from his quarryman boarders. Hiram +erected three of the posts before his shop door, at such short +distances from each other that it precluded the tying up of more than +two horses at a time, and then only to the end posts and facing each +other. Having adorned the path before his house with two others, he, +at the instigation of his wife, presented the sixth to the Methodist +Church. This post was adorned with an iron ring at the top and a +somewhat frisky damsel in rude carving on the side. + +It was a matter of grave consideration whether this carving should be +turned to the street or towards the sidewalk, it being debatable in +which position she would do the most harm. She was finally turned +towards the street, upon the reasonable supposition that persons +driving past would pass more swiftly than persons walking; hence, their +exposure to evil would be briefer. To further mitigate the +demoralizing effect of this bit of stonework, Solomon Ware took a +chisel and carefully obliterated the outlines of the figure, missing +only one foot, which, in terpsichorean fashion, pointed skyward in a +meaningless, disjointed way from a chaos of chisel marks. + +The week following, the Baptists put up two wooden tie-posts, each +surmounted by an iron horse's head. + +Two weeks later a block of wooden steps appeared beside the stone +tie-post, to facilitate those driving to church in alighting from, or +mounting to, their conveyances. This was on Wednesday. By the Sunday +following, its duplicate stood between the wooden tie-posts, with the +additional glory of drab paint. + +A month later a new fence encircled the Methodist temple, and the +Baptist sanctuary was re-shingled. + +As the autumn advanced the Methodist Church had sheds for its horses +erected in the rear of the church. Ere the first snow flew, the +Baptist Church was similarly adorned, and its shed rejoiced in +elaborate scroll work brackets at the dividing posts. + +In November the Baptists held a series of revival meetings, and the +Methodists commenced a weekly service of song. At New Year's the +Methodists raised their pastor's salary fifty dollars a year. In +February the Baptists held a memorial service, and had four ministers +preach upon one Sunday. It is true, as Hester Green took occasion to +remark, that two of them were only students, but the Baptist Church had +vindicated the priority of its establishment, and rested on its +laurels,--besides the spring work was coming on. + +The speech of the Ovidians was not in any sense a dialect peculiar to +themselves. There were, of course, certain words and phrases which +were regular stand-bys, and from which no Ovidian speech was free. For +example, when an Ovidian was out of conversational matter, he did not +let the talk die away, or the argument fall to pieces whilst waiting +for the tardy ideas of his friends to evolve themselves. Far from it. +He simply said, in a tone suitable to the occasion, "Well, it beats +all!" Closer scrutiny will reveal the resources of this phrase. Did +an Ovidian attend a funeral? Then this expression formed the chief +staple of his conversation, and its enunciation ran the gamut of +emotion, from grief to amazement. Did an Ovidian hear a more than +usually spicy piece of gossip? Then he ejaculated the same phrase in a +tone of scandalized enjoyment. Was a subject upon which he could not, +or would not, give a direct opinion under discussion? Then this +non-committal formula answered admirably, entailing no after +responsibility upon the speaker, and yet giving him a pleasant sense of +conversational duty properly performed. + +There were a few idioms, also, dear to the Ovidian mind. To be +"ambitious" meant simply to be energetic; to be "big feeling," "stuck +up," or "toney," meant to be proud (in the sense of despising one's +neighbours); to "conjure," with the accent strongly upon the first +syllable, meant to think over a thing. + +Apart, however, from a dozen or two of these lingual idiosyncrasies, +the Ovidian speech was the ordinary English of Canadian rural +districts, delivered in a peculiar drawling, nasal style, with a +clinging to the last syllable of a word and the last word of a +sentence. The only interest Ovidians had, apart from Ovid and the +dwellers therein, was in watching the progress of the world, as shown +by the trend of Canadian politics; and as Ovid they had always with +them, and the world only when the weekly papers came in, it was natural +they should know Ovid best--and they did. Every one's pet hobby, every +one's worst weakness, every one's ambition, every one's circumstances, +everyone's antipathies, every one's preferences, every one's record and +family record--all this was known and well known, aye, even to the +third generation back. + +But of all Ovidians none knew so much of his fellows' history as did +old Sam Symmons. The one attribute that assured Sam a welcome wherever +he went, was his knowledge of the generation passed away, the fathers +of the present Ovidians: not that his stories were flattering (far from +it), but they were never ill-natured, at least upon Sam's part. It was +true they were illustrative of the weak points of their heroes rather +than their virtues, but then Sam did not make history; he only repeated +it, and he was very impartial. So where a dozen Ovidians were gathered +together, there Sam would be in the midst. + +There was a perilous stimulus about their anticipation. He was sure to +evolve some personal reminiscence from the chaotic mass of his old +memories, and each of the expectant auditors felt that his forebears +might be the subject of it. When Sam did choose a victim, and plunged +into some old tale about his grandfather or father, then all the others +drew in their breath with swift enjoyment of the various points of the +story. There was something Druidical and bard-like in this oral +handing down of history, and it differed from more pretentious history +in one respect. Sam's stories might be oft-repeated, but he never +altered a syllable, never deepened the shading to suit some different +element in his audience, never swerved from the first intent of the +recital, never slurred the truth to let any one off lightly. Perhaps +the reason Sam's stories preserved their identity so well was because +they were tacitly copyrighted; no one ever tried to tell them but +himself, and indeed they would not have sounded the same from other +lips, for Sam spoke of the past as one having authority. + +The loss of his old mare was quite a serious one to Sam, and he went +about a shade more irresolute than he was before. Poor old Sam! He +had had so many blows, big and little, from fate, that it is not to be +wondered at if he did become a little haphazard in his methods of work +and business. + +It is hardly worth while making plans when some evil chance seems to +thwart them every time; even if one works till his stiff old limbs are +trembling with fatigue, it doesn't seem to make much headway against +adverse circumstances; and when fate buffets down even the strongest +guard, how can one poor old man fend off its blows? But if his brave +old heart was shaken a little within him, Sam still turned a resolute +face to the foe. The week after the mare's death, and before he had +got used to the blind horse he had bought to replace her, he found his +way to Hiram Green's store. + +The talk turned on drinking. + +"Yes," said Sam, "there's many a way of drinking"--in a reminiscent +tone--"many a way! When I was young, there were three brothers with +their three wives, doing settlement duty on a grant of land given one +of the officers, in Bruce County. Well, they were fine big fellows, +and their wives were big, strapping, healthy women. Strong, too, they +were, and had good judgment. Why, one of them went one morning to the +wood-pile to get some wood, and when she came back there was a wolf, +lean and hungry (for it had been a bitter winter), standing over the +cradle where her baby lay. Now, what did she do? Run away and yowl? +Not she. Hit it a clip with a billet of wood, and killed it where it +stood. Well, the lads used to drive off forty miles with an ox team +for provisions, and each would bring his keg of rye back with him; but +the women always drank more than their share, and it got to be that +there was mostly no meals ready when the lads got back from felling the +timber. So the lads hit on the plan of tying the kegs to the roof, +where the women could not get at them, and they went away well pleased +with themselves. But they were finely taken down when they got back, +for the women shot holes in the kegs, and caught the whiskey in a +washtub. Yes, yes, there's many a way of drinking. There was your +wife's grand-uncle, now"--suddenly becoming personal in his memory, and +addressing Hiram--"'twas when he was running for reeve the first time, +and he came into Fossil's tavern, and not seeing James Lawson, the +younger, and me, where we sat on the settle by the door, he went up to +the bar to get a drink. He called for whiskey. He had his drink and +laid down the five cents to pay for it. Now, 'twas his way to fill his +glass very full, and Fossil, being a close man, was very grouty at +that. So, out of the five cents, he pushed back a penny. 'Here,' says +he, 'is your change, Mr. Mowbray. I don't charge as much wholesale as +I do for single drinks.' Your wife's grand-uncle did not like that. +'Twas just before the polling day when he got overtaken in liquor one +night at old Squire Fraser's. 'Twas a bright moonlight night, and some +of the lads going home late, also, heard a noise at the village pump, +which, coming at, they saw was your wife's grand-uncle, pulling at the +pump-handle, and saying, with many oaths, 'Come home, Jack: come home. +There will be a sore broil for thee if Mrs. Mowbray see thee. Come +home, Jack: come home.' To which persuasion he put many threats and +moral advisements to Jack to cease from liquor. Jack was his nephew, a +quiet youth, being bred to the pulpit. Well, the boys got hold of both +these tales, and when the voting came on, they would seize at anything, +a tree, a post, or the fence, when your wife's grand-uncle came by, +and, straining at it manfully, would beseech Jack to come home, using +many moral persuasions and many oaths also, as he had done to the pump, +and feigning to weep sore over the stubbornness of Jack's heart. Then +they would say, 'Come home, Jack, and I'll buy thee a drink wholesale +at good, generous Master Fossil's.' Yes, yes"--Sam's voice began to +weaken--"yes, there's many a way of drinking." + +There was a pause. No one ever commented upon Sam's stories; there was +no need. To deprecate them would be to stir up, who knew what, of +oblique reflection upon one's ancestors. For any of those not +immediately interested to interfere would be to invite Sam's attention +to their cases. + +"Did you hear that the school-teacher leaves next week?" asked Hiram. + +"No. Why?" asked Jack Mackinnon, glad of a chance of hearing his own +voice. + +"Because he says he can't afford to keep himself here and his wife in +Toronto on three hundred a year." + +"Then he'd better get," said old Mrs. Slick, as she took the packet of +cream of tartar Hiram was weighing. "He'd better get." She hobbled +out, giving malevolent sniffs at the thought of the teacher's +extravagant ideas. + +"Yes, he's going," continued Hiram. "He's going, and there's a school +meeting to-morrow." + +Andrew Cutler, Hiram Green and Ben Braddon were school trustees, and it +had occurred to each of them that Sam Symmons' Suse would be sure to +apply for the position. She held a county certificate permitting her +to teach for three years. + +"I wonder," Andrew said that morning to his aunt, Miss Hannah Myers, "I +wonder if Suse will know enough to apply for the place." + +"Not she! too empty-headed," said Miss Myers, briskly. "I'll go down +this afternoon and tell her what I think of her, and make her apply." + +"Do," said Andrew, heartily. + +Andrew liked old Sam, and he was a special favourite of the old man's. +Many a long story of election fights and tricks, secrets Sam kept even +yet, of how votes had been gained and lost, many tales of drinking +bouts and more gallant adventures, did old Sam retell for Andrew's +benefit. + +Andrew was not at all worried by Miss Myers' brusqueness of speech. He +knew how kind she was to everybody in her own vinegary way. Tall, +angular, hatchet-faced and sharp-tongued, Hannah Myers had a heart full +of love for every living creature that needed help, only, 'the beggar +at her door had first abuse and then a shilling.' + +And how well the tramps knew the way up to that quaint old kitchen +door, with the uneven flag-stones set in a little court-yard round it! +A table always covered with glistening tin milk-pans stood outside, and +many a good meal had the gentlemen of the road had off that table; +scolded vigorously by Miss Myers whilst they ate, the tirade only +interrupted by sudden journeys she made to find perhaps a pair of +socks, a shirt, or something else she saw they needed: now and then a +surly tramp would answer her back, and she would laugh at him in her +grim way and say, "Hear the man! Why, don't you see, I like to scold +as much as you like to eat; so if you enjoy the one, why mayn't I the +other?" Upon one memorable occasion an ungrateful tramp, (and however +much he may be idealized nowadays, there are instances of the +ingratitude of tramps) attempted to impose upon her, thinking her +alone. He had, unfortunately for him, reckoned without his host. +Andrew suddenly appeared upon the scene, seized his trampship by the +most convenient portion of his attire, and dropped him with quiet, but +forcible, precision into a somewhat unappetizing duck pond near by, +giving him at the same time a picturesque, but somewhat profane, bit of +advice. The fellow took himself off, and Andrew turned his attention +to poor Miss Hannah, who was quivering and trembling and crying as the +meekest and mildest woman might do. Miss Myers' tongue was a +deception, and, as a matter of fact, that and her vinegary aspect were +the only defences she had against imposition, for whilst always +vaunting her hard-heartedness, she was, in reality, the most gullible +of women. + +She never could resist a pedlar: she always bought their trashy wares. +And once, she never forgot it, she burdened herself with a lot of cheap +brassy hairpins and extraordinary glass breast pins. That purchase +fairly haunted her. Get rid of it she couldn't. Did she try to burn +it? Some one came and caught her. Did she intend to throw it away? +She did not dare, she knew some one would find it. She did manage +finally to find a watery hiding-place for it in the horse pond. Even +then its meretricious sparkle assailed her from the mud when the pond +went dry. She related this to Judith Moore, and told her with all +soberness that she should always pity a murderer trying to get rid of +the corpse. + +As Mrs. Morris had told Judith, Miss Myers was of U. E. Loyalist stock. +She might have added that the Cutlers were also. Both families had +been given grants of land in Canada. The property in the Myers family +had been divided and sub-divided amongst a big family connection. Miss +Myers had a little fifty-acre farm as her share of it; it lay some +fifteen miles from Ovid. + +Andrew's farm at Ovid had descended to him through his father and +grandfather, old Captain Cutler, the stern old fighter whose sword, +with its woven crimson sash, hung in the hall of Andrew's house, with +some quaint old pistols and a clumsy musket, relics from Canadian +battle fields. Besides the property in Ovid, Andrew owned another fine +farm and a wide stretch of woodland in Muskoka. These properties +accrued to him through the death of some of his father's relatives. So +Andrew was very well off, in a modest way. The Muskoka property bore +much fine timber, and an enthusiastic "prospector" assailed Andrew, +month in and month out, with tales of the "indications" of minerals he +had found beneath the ferns and mosses of his Muskoka woods. But +Andrew was content with them as they were, with the trees growing +solemnly upward, aspiring to the blue: the wandering streams, a network +of silver tracery, starred here and there by broad discs where one +widened to a little placid lake or where two or more streams, meeting, +gushed together. The sound of their soft confluence and the soughing +of the wind, that without moving the leaves seemed ever to sigh between +the tree trunks, blent into a soft sensation, half sound, half stir, +something perceived nowhere but in the woods, seeming indeed as if +there we were very close to Nature's sweet and beautiful breast, +hearing in this mysterious pulsation the beating of her kindly heart. + +Andrew had grown to be in very close touch with Nature during many +solitary weeks spent in hunting: in long tramps through the Muskoka +woods, shooting the fawn-coloured deers, and the wild fowl that nested +in the tiny lakes; and in many a long night when he lay _perdu_ +watching for lynx, forgetting his quest in the marvel of the stars, or +in wakeful watches, seeing the resinous camp-fire die down to embers +and hearing the shrill laughing of the loon, the weird wail of the +lynx, the cry of the great owl or the call of the coon. Andrew was +past-master of all woodland lore. He had hunted Muskoka through and +through. Many a wild duck's breast and fox's mask, and many a pair of +antlers proved his prowess. + +Besides, he had spent many a winter in northern Quebec, snow-shoeing +over its silent white wastes upon the traces of moose; the intense cold +parching his throat, his half-breed guide padding* along at his side; +sometimes faring royally upon juicy steaks and birds, broiled as only +hunters can broil--not scorched, yet savoured with fire; sometimes upon +a long trail with a bit of frozen bacon in one pocket and a lump of +frozen bread in the other, gnawing a morsel off each with care, so that +he might not break off his moustache which was frozen in a solid mass +with the moisture of his breath. + + +* "Padding" is a term applied by hunters to the silent flat-footed gait +of Indian guides. + + +Andrew often heard people say that one did not feel the intense cold in +these northern regions; he always longed to have them there and let +them try it. He had felt pretty cold up there, only he never +remembered the time when he couldn't hold his gun with naked hands. +That, though, as every one knows, is the mark of a mighty Nimrod. So +soon as his half-breed guide discovered this, he grunted out a guttural +prophecy that the shoot would be good. + +Strange mixtures these guides were; the combination of French suavity +and redskin cunning being a continual wonder to Andrew, accustomed as +he was to less complex types. + +This man who slept sometimes rolled close in the same blankets with him +for warmth, whose woodcraft made his less intuitive knowledge seem +absolute ignorance, whose judgment in matters of the chase was almost +flawless, whose strength and agility would not have shamed a +Greek--this man cooked his meals, washed the dishes, waited upon him +deferentially, and was not to be persuaded to eat at the same time. In +the chase, a hero; in the camp, a slave. + +What tramps those were through the silent solitudes of these untrodden +woods! What moments had been his, when, leaving his guide preparing +the camp for the night, Andrew had gained some high ridge, and pausing, +looked far across the peaks of graduated hills, clad in sombre cedars +weighted down with snow, white, silent, yet instinct with that mystery +which presses upon us pleading for elucidation, and never so strongly +as when we are alone with the unblotted world before us, away from the +signs of man's desecration. There is something very pitiful in that +mute appeal of nature to be understood--like some sweet woman, smitten +into a spell of suffering silence, till such time as the magic word +shall release her. A word she knows, yet cannot, of her own power, +speak. What magical mysteries shall not be revealed when speech is +restored to her! And how her eyes plead and accuse at once! Of a +verity, having ears we hear not: truly, having eyes to see, yet are we +blind! + +For there is some great open secret surely in the universe, that being +deciphered will set all our jangling dreams in chime. It is about us, +around us, above us; the tiniest leaf tells it, the stars of heaven +proclaim it, the water manifests it and the earth declares it, and yet +we do not see it. When we do, it will be some simple vital principle +that we have breathed with the breath of our lips, and handled with the +familiar fingers of the flesh. We will be so unable to conceive of the +world moving on in ignorance of it, that all the wisdom of the ages +past will seem but as the howling of wolves in waste places, or at +best, as the babbling of children that play with dry sand, now letting +it slip through their fingers, leaving them with empty hands, now +getting it in their eyes to torture them, or treading on it with vague +discomfort and unease. + +We have all seen these childish puzzles with hidden faces concealed in +the traceries. How hard it is to find these faces, although we know +they are there! And yet, when found, it is impossible to see anything +else in the picture. They obtrude themselves upon us, and what was +formerly the picture becomes now only the background for what at first +it completely concealed. So everything will but subserve to show us +how palpable the great Central Truth has always been if we could but +find it, _and some one will_. So let us go on bravely, each resolving +"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." There is indeed +within us some spark of the Divine Fire. Let it but once flame fairly +up and we shall be gods indeed, moving in the glory of our own +transfiguration. + +There is no destiny too great for man. + +* * * * * * + +The northern stars are very clear and cold, the northern skies are very +blue and chill, the snowy plains are places meant for thought, and in +the silence of those scenes the soul awakes. + +Andrew bore away with him some reflex of their austerity and intensity, +which tempered his mind as the steel is strengthened. + +His mother's story had been a sad one. She was Miss Myers' elder +sister--Isabella Myers; very like Miss Myers yet very unlike; with all +those resemblances which pronounce two near of kin, yet all those +variations of the type which constitute the difference between beauty +and every-day flesh and blood. + +Isabella had been engaged to a minister's son named Harkness. He was a +young man who justified in every respect the many pleasing proverbs +about ministers' sons: yet, in spite of all, had a leal heart, a +handsome form and face, a tender touch, and a personal magnetism that +enabled him to wring an unwilling consent out of stern old Abraham +Myers to his betrothal with his daughter Isabella. + +These two young folk worshipped each other, and the wedding day was +set. Isabella was to wear a white taffeta frock and white thread +mitts. But troublous times had come to Canada. Young Harkness went to +the war. Isabella and he had a sad, sad parting, for the imaginative +girl was fey of her fate, and clung to him till his heart melted within +him. And as he rode away with a long tress of her dark hair on his +breast, it was not the sunshine alone that made his eyes so bright and +his vision so uncertain. + +It was but a puny affray that in the history of the world's wars, but +it does not take big battles to make men brave and women's hearts ache. +The dark braid had hardly warmed in its place before it was soaked with +the blood of the heart on which it lay. The real Isabella Myers died +then, too. But a pale apathetic woman in her shape and semblance still +went wearily on her way. + +Ten years later they married her to Andrew Cutler, a man considerably +older than herself, and as her father said, "of the old true blue +stock." She gave him a boy and died, well rid of the world. Miss +Hannah Myers came to keep house for her brother-in-law. She brought up +the baby and took charge of the little hide-covered chest which was +full of the books ("poetry books and such," Miss Myers called them) +that young Harkness had given Isabella long before. Andrew Cutler +lived on after his wife's death to a good old age, being killed at last +by falling through the trap-door in his hay-loft. Then Andrew was head +of his house. + +As Andrew grew up, he developed such a strange resemblance to one long +dead, that sometimes, when a movement, gesture, or expression of his +brought it more clearly to Miss Myers' eyes, she felt an eerie thrill +creep over her. She described the sensation as "cold chills." For it +was not a resemblance to his father, or his grandfather, or even to his +mother (although he resembled her, too), but he imaged forth the brave, +handsome, devil-may-care lover of his mother's girlhood, he who had +died ten years before Andrew's birth. Surely the image of that +long-lost lover had been deeply graven on that broken heart. + +"The Cutler house on the hill," as the villagers described it, was +quite a pretentious one in its way. Old Captain Cutler, he of the +sword and sash, had not been penniless, by any means, when he left the +United States, although he left behind him much valuable property. So +when the Canadian Government made him a generous grant, he promptly +spent his money in building a house. Now, the forebears of this +Captain Cutler had come from England, and many a tale his grandfather +had told him of the old farm homestead there, of the garden with +brick-paven walks, and brick-built walls upon which grew the espaliered +fruit, of the old sun-dial beside the larch tree, and the oaken beams +that traversed the plaster of the ceilings, of the flagged kitchen, and +the big fire-places. So here on the hill-top overlooking the valley, +where later Ovid was to be built, Captain Cutler erected his house, a +big stone one with oaken floors, stairways and doors, with heavy +rafters of the same sturdy growth, a wide-flagged kitchen, and a hall +sheathed in wood half way to the roof, with huge open fire-places. He +put a brick wall about his gardens, and over it trained the sprawling +branches of currant bushes--red ones, and white and black. Later on, +hop vines had been planted here and there along the wall; still later, +a row of grape vines had superseded them, and clad the old bricks with +fresh festoons of leaves. This made, when the grapes were ripe, a +beautiful Bacchanal arabesque of purple fruit and brown stem, twisted +tendril and green leaf. + +He laid down narrow brick walks, too, and by them planted +horse-chestnut trees. He put a sun-dial up, a grey stone column with a +round top, whereon was rudely carven the symbols of the hours and a +lob-sided hour-glass; for lack of a larch tree he filched a linden from +the hill-side. + +The garden took in the level plateau on top of the hill, and some of +the slope upon the side farthest from Ovid. The hill-side next the +village was laden with lindens, which in spring were covered in +blossom. Old Captain Cutler sent to England for English ox-heart +cherry trees, and for boxwood, and for hawthorns to plant hedges. + +The cherry trees flourished and perpetuated themselves in generations +of younger trees, the box grew and multiplied, but the hawthorn hedges +were failures. All that remained of them was a few scattered hawthorns +that had long outgrown the status of the hedge row, and become old +gnarled trees. + +Miss Myers was very proud of her flower garden, which was a mass of +circular, oval and diamond-shaped flower beds, bordered by box, spaced +off by narrow bricked walks. There were honeysuckles growing over +old-fashioned wooden trellises; and roses, crown imperials and lemon +lilies; huge clumps of peonies, pink, white and the common crimson; +clove pinks and thyme; lilies of the valley and violets, with bushes of +rosemary and patches of balm; spotted tiger lilies, and a fragrant +white lily called the day lily; little shrubs of the pink flowering +almond, "snow on the mountain," "mist on the hill" and acacia shrubs. +And beside these, many more old-fashioned perennial plants, like queen +of the meadow and thrift; and every summer Andrew brought her +heliotropes, and scented geraniums, and mignonette from town. + +The barns were away down at the foot of the hill. Andrew's men usually +all lived in the village, unless he happened to have hired strangers +for the stress of harvest or haying, or in winter time when they were +needed about the house. + +Miss Myers, as the village phrased it, "kep' help regular," and often +had up old Mrs. Greer from the village, for there was a deal of work to +be done in that house. + +For the rest, Andrew was a practical farmer; it had not occurred to him +that he did not need to work so hard, and the active life did him no +harm. He was up at daylight in summer, and by candle-light in winter. + +He ploughed, sowed, reaped and threshed his grain. And when at the +threshings he sat at the head of the long table, lined on each side +with men "feeding like horses, when you hear them feed," he looked like +some young chief among his serfs, albeit he wore blue jeans and flannel +shirts as they did. + +He did not know himself to be so different from his neighbours as he +was, only he never seemed to contemplate marrying one of their women, +and he pitied them. For they did not recognize the pathos of their own +narrow lives. They did not see their surroundings as he did--the +beauties of the skies above, and of the earth beneath, and the marvel +and mystery of the water. + +Andrew could not have said this was what made him pity them, for he was +one of the inarticulate ones, whose speech is shackled; one of those, +too, who know their own limitations in this way, and feel their +fetters. At times they seemed to weigh his spirit down. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +Andrew was eager to see Miss Moore again,--although he felt a masculine +irritation against her for taking umbrage at well-meant and thoroughly +sensible advice. Perhaps at the bottom of this there lay a _soupçon_ +of annoyance with himself, that he had spoken so abruptly to her upon +the subject, mingled with a compassionate remembrance of what Mr. +Morris had told him of her delicacy. He was very glad to find an +excuse to go up to his woods, where they stretched past the Morris +house; and a pretence that he was looking for suitable trees to cut +down for foundations for his hay-stacks, justified him in his own eyes +for strolling among his trees in very leisurely, but apparently +disinterested fashion. He must, however, have been paying some +attention to the house on his right, for when Mrs. Morris ran out from +the old orchard behind the house to the barns, calling, "Father, +Father, where are you? Come here, quick, do, hey Father!" Andrew +promptly responded, leaping over the fence and speedily reaching her +side. + +"What's wrong?" he asked. + +"Land of love! But I'm glad you've come, if she did call you +long-legged: all the better for her now if you be. I hope she ain't +fell by this time. Wonder where Father is. I never seen such a man; +always gone when he's wanted. I declare it beats me where he gets to. +It's enough to drive--" + +"What is it, Mrs. Morris?" demanded Andrew, his heart misgiving him. +"Can't I help?" + +"'Deed you can! And to think of her calling you long-legged, and the +very next day having to depend on you for her life, may be, or to save +one of her own legs being broke--" + +Mrs. Morris got no further. A little faint cry struck Andrew's ears, +coming from the direction of the orchard. + +"For heaven's sake, come on, and show me what's wrong," he cried. +"Don't stand there palavering." + +"Why, sakes alive! Don't you know? Miss Moore got up in a tree and--" + +But by this time they were in the orchard. A glance explained the +situation to Andrew. + +High up on an apple-tree branch stood Miss Moore, clinging with both +arms round a limb above her, her face white as death, her eyes dilated +with fear. A ladder's head was within six inches of her feet. Andrew +was up it in an instant. He knew the trouble. Only last year a hired +man of his had ascended a tree to pick fruit. He was seized with this +ague of dizzy fear, and flinging himself against a stout limb, had held +on like grim death. It took two men to get him down; his terror made +him clasp the tree convulsively. It was days before he was well again. + +Miss Moore had evidently not seen him, nor heard his coming. As he +slipped his arms about her, she gave a great start, and turned to look +at him with eyes which seemed to expect some tangible shape of horror, +evolved out of her illogical and intangible fear. + +When she saw who it was, her eyes filled and her lips trembled. + +"Oh, take me down. Do take me down." + +"Yes, indeed, I will," said Andrew, with quiet assurance. "Let go of +the branch." + +She shuddered. The spell of the vertigo was yet upon her. Her arms +tightened upon the bough. + +"Do take me down," she pleaded childishly. "I'm frightened." + +"My dear, you must loose your hold," said Andrew, steadily. + +Then, with one arm about her, he reached up and one by one undid the +clinging fingers, gathering them into his palm as he did so. With a +force that seemed cruel, he pulled down the slender wrist and placed +her hand upon his shoulder. Her face expressed the agony of dizziness. +With blind instinct she put her other arm about his neck and clasped it +close. He felt her form relax, and braced himself in time to sustain +her dead weight as she fainted. + +The descent of the ladder was easy enough. Andrew had carried many a +bag of wheat up and down his steep granary stairs. The principle of +balancing an inert woman is much the same. He carried her into the +house and laid her down upon the broad home-made couch, covered with +dark brown calico, that stood in the kitchen. Mrs. Morris had talked +volubly during these proceedings, but only after he laid Judith down, +did Andrew begin to hear what she was saying. + +"She does look gashly!" said Mrs. Morris. "Whatever would I do if she +was to be took! And this minute she looks fit for laying out." + +"Goodness alive," said Andrew. "Can't you do anything to bring her to? +Bathe her face, or something?" + +Mrs. Morris flew for water and brought it, trembling. "I say, Andrew, +can't you do it? I'm so shook--I never could bear to touch corpses, +and--" + +Andrew gave her a venomous look, dipped his handkerchief in the water, +and began clumsily to bathe the girl's brow. Her senses were already +reasserting themselves. She put up her hands to her face: they +fluttered nervously. Andrew caught one of them and held it between his +own brown ones, noting that her wrists were red, almost bruised, +creased in rough outline of the apple-tree's bark. + +"Will you give me some water?" she asked. + +Mrs. Morris brought a blue and white cup. Andrew, kneeling on the +braided mat before the couch, slipped his arm under Judith and put the +cup to her lips. She took a mouthful, and fell into a shivering fit of +cold. + +Mrs. Morris rose to this emergency. Ague was an old familiar friend; +"shakes" had no terrors for her. In a moment she had found a thick +coverlet and placed it over Judith. + +"You stay by her," she said to Andrew, "and I'll make her a draught of +hot elderberry syrup in two shakes." + +Then she was off to the lean-to kitchen, and they heard her rattling +among her kettles. Andrew still knelt upon the mat holding Judith's +hand with praiseworthy absent-mindedness. + +"Are you better now?" he asked. + +"Yes," she said, her chin quivering as she tried to keep her teeth from +chattering. "It was so good of you to take me down. So awfully good. +I'm very stupid, but I couldn't help it." + +"Of course you couldn't. I had a man who behaved much worse than you +did in the same situation. Ever so much. Indeed, you behaved very +well." + +There was silence; then Judith began: "Mr. Cutler, I--er--called you a +name to Mrs. Morris the other day." + +"Did you? What did you call me?" + +"Will you forgive me?" + +"Tell me what you called me first." + +"Oh!" + +"Forgiveness is worth that, isn't it?" + +"Oh, yes. I called you--long-legged, and--I think, I said you were +rude." + +Andrew suppressed an inclination to laugh, being minded not to belittle +the value of his absolution. + +"Well," he said, "I'll forgive the first part of it because you see +it's so awfully true, and as for the second, well--I think you meant +'sensible'; anyhow, I forgive you for it all." + +Miss Moore experienced a mental sensation she would have called +"curling up." A pretty cool specimen, this young farmer! She had +thought he would have fallen into faltering excuses. She was really +ill, though faint--cold. Mrs. Morris came in with the steaming cup of +black syrup. Judith had forgotten till that moment that Andrew held +her hand: of course, Andrew had been unconscious of it all along. But +as Mrs. Morris appeared in the door a swift intuition of the state of +affairs came to Judith. She gave a little gesture of withdrawal, and +Andrew released her lingers slowly, rising with praiseworthy calmness +to get himself a chair. + +While Judith tried to drink the hot syrup, Mrs. Morris explained that +Miss Moore had never seen a bird's nest with eggs in it, and there +being an oriole's nest in the apple-tree, "Father" had put up the +ladder for her to see it, and--Andrew knew the rest. + +"Tree fright is a lot worse than stage fright," said Miss Moore: +oracularly, but this was a dark saying to both her listeners. Mrs. +Morris talked and talked. Miss Moore had long since lain back on the +big brown pillow; her face was flushed, her eyes sleepy. Andrew would +have listened to Mrs. Morris forever, provided he could have watched +Miss Moore at the same time. But at length Mrs. Morris rose and moved +towards her summer kitchen, intimating that her chores needed tending +to, so Andrew perforce had to take his leave. + +"Good-bye, just now," he said. "May I come back and take you to see +some birds' nests nearer the ground?" + +"Oh, do," she said. "And I haven't thanked you half enough for helping +me to-day." + +"Indeed you have. Good-bye, just now." + +"Good-bye," she said softly. + +He was just at the door, when a soft but interrogative "Ahem" from the +couch attracted his attention. He turned. Miss Judith Moore did not +look at him, but with cautious precision she drew the dark blue +coverlet up a tiny bit. His eyes became riveted upon the point of a +bronze slipper that gradually grew from the shadow of the covering +until a whole foot was revealed--a foot at a defiant pose and wearing a +little bronze slipper with an exaggeratedly high heel. Andrew's eyes +grew daring, and he half turned. + +Miss Moore seemed to telescope, for head and foot disappeared beneath +the coverlet at once. He paused a moment, and then departed. + +As he went across the fields he thought of the little scene he had +left, and, more shame to him, his thoughts were not concerned wholly +with the bad effects of wearing high heels, nor yet of the impropriety +of Miss Moore's retaliation for his high and mighty granting of +forgiveness. Indeed, as he sat for a moment kicking his heels on the +top bar of the first fence, he was speculating solely as to whether +"they" were open-work or not! He was thinking he would have given his +best gun to be able to tell, and summed up his reflections with a +dissatisfied little growl, "Of all the mean, miserable, stingy +glimpses!" + +As he walked along, his face changed. After climbing the hill-side to +his garden wall, he passed an apple-tree in hill bloom at the gate. He +paused beneath it. His face was pale and serious, his eyes tender. He +thought of Judith's russet head as it had leaned upon his shoulder: he +looked down at his old velvet coat, where it had rested, and fancied +some vague perfume rose from it to his face. He remembered he had held +her in his arms, and recalled the red marks upon her delicate wrists. +Those wrists had been curved about his neck. + +He could not realize the full height and depth of what had come to him, +but his whole being groped for the truth even as he stood beneath the +tree. + +As he walked slowly up the narrow bricked walk to the house, he noticed +how the chestnut roots and the frost together had heaved up the bricks +and rendered the walk irregular. He wondered anxiously if she could +walk over it in those shoes, and as he reached his door, which stood +open under its old-fashioned porch, revealing a dusky cool vista +beyond, he suddenly saw, as in a vision, a woman's shape stand between +the lintels, waiting for him!--a woman with slender hands outstretched +in welcome, grave grey eyes, soft hair, tender lips: the woman he +loved: _his own_. As this last thought, the sweetest thought man's +heart holds, formulated itself in his mind, Andrew knew the truth. He +turned down the path, past the apple-tree, through the lindens again, +and across his fields, until once more he looked upon the house wherein +she rested. He looked at it long from the shelter of his trees, his +whole existence resolved into a chaos of uncertain self-communings, +until a voice like an angel's seemed to whisper of comfort and to sing +of hope. + +Then he went home, and at four o'clock betook himself to the +school-house to attend the meeting in regard to appointing a new +teacher. + +The village school-house stood at the end of the street farthest away +from the Cutler homestead. It was a bleak, stone building, with a +wooden porch--a gaunt, bare, uninviting-looking building, with none of +those picturesque adjuncts of climbing vines and overarching trees, +associated so often with thoughts of a country school. + +It had a perky, self-satisfied little bell-house on top, and its date, +1865, was rudely carved on a big stone in the peak of the north gable. +It had eight windows--three at each side, two at one end. In winter, +the wood for the box stove was always piled up outside before these. +There were always complaints of the school-house being dark in winter, +yet it never occurred to any one to select a different site for the +wood-pile. + +The interior of the school-house corresponded in dinginess to the +outside. The plaster walls were sadly soiled, particularly beneath the +broad window seats, where the children sat kicking their heels whilst +they ate their lunches at noon, for the scholars were drawn principally +from the outlying farm-houses. A long length of irregularly jointed +pipes led the smoke from the box stove at the end to an exit over the +teacher's desk. Little tin pails were hung at intervals along this, to +catch the black liquid distilled from the soot. The other adornments +of the room consisted of a long blackboard, a globe, and some big +lettered tablets, round which the teacher was wont to gather the infant +class and teach them their letters. + +In the politics of a little village like Ovid, the smallest public +measures became magnified to grotesque importance. The usual custom +was for the school trustees to sit in private session first, when any +particular business was to be arranged, say, the selection of a +teacher, and when this was arranged the doors were flung wide and the +meeting was "open." These open school meetings were always well +attended. They were the classes in which embryotic statesmen acquired +the political alphabet, the ABC of political procedure, the manner of +putting a motion, taking a vote, making a nomination, and the correct +order of precedence governing the motions and amendments. There too, +was acquired the first great requisite of a politician,--the art of +saying non-committal things in a most convincing tone of voice, and of +treating with much politeness those whom one held in secret abhorrence. + +There were two offices, those of school trustee and pathmaster, and +these two were equal in power and glory. True, they were barren +honours, but they ofttimes led to better things. The school trustee +had the higher position in one respect: he was chosen by the people at +first hand. The pathmaster, upon the contrary, was appointed by the +Council. It is needless to say the school trustee smiled in calm +superiority at the pathmaster, and the latter in turn felt the making +of the roads wherein the whole community walked, was as holy an office +as the task of guiding the juvenile wanderers into the school, and +seeing that when there, they trod the common road to knowledge, it +being well known that there is no royal road thereto. + +When Andrew arrived at the school-house, the other two trustees, Hiram +Green who kept the village store, and Hen Braddon, were present. They +immediately entered upon a discussion of the teacher question. The +application of Sam Symmons' Suse lay upon the table, written out upon +foolscap paper, in big round hand, with many flourishing capitals, +rejoicing in "shaded" heads and beautifully involved tails. + +"I tell you Suse is a good list with a pen," said Hen Braddon, with +conviction, and the other two agreed. "She ain't no slouch at spelling +either," said Hiram Green. The other two agreed with this also. Then +Andrew took up his parable. + +"Yes," he said, "Suse is quite smart, and being bred right here in Ovid +seems to give her a claim to the school. I suggest we just appoint +her." + +"Well, it's as well to be cautious," said Hiram Green. + +"It'll save advertising," said Hen Braddon. + +"Suppose we just decide on it then," said Andrew. + +"Well," said Hiram Green, "well, I ain't got no objections to Suse as +Suse, but what I think is, two hundred and fifty is enough to pay a +woman for what a man got three hundred." + +Andrew sneered. He didn't have a sweet expression when he did that. + +"Don't you think," he said, gravely--"don't you think Suse might +include cleaning the school-house and lighting the fires in winter for +the two-fifty, being she's a woman?" + +"No," said Hiram, reflectively; "old Mrs. Slick has done it so long." + +"But it would save twenty-five dollars," argued Andrew, with meek +persuasion. + +"Well," said Hiram, "Mrs. Slick needs that. She's owin' already, and +she might's well draw the money off the school taxes as off the +council." + +"Oh, Mrs. Slick is owing, is she?" queried Andrew, with solicitude. "I +hope she pays you all right. Well, about Suse. Being she's a woman, +don't you think you could fix it so's she'd chop the wood for winter? +That would save twelve dollars." + +A nasty red flickered up to Hiram's face. He had thought Andrew's +proposition about the taking care of the school thoroughly genuine. + +"Oh," he said, "I ain't particular whether she gets the three hundred +or the two-fifty, though I hope you won't deny when nomination comes +round that you deliberately threw away fifty dollars of the people's +money." + +"You maybe quite sure I won't deny anything that's true," said Andrew, +hotly. "And as for throwing away the people's money, well--some of the +teachers, so far as I can recollect, got their salaries raised pretty +frequently. Of course, I wasn't on the School Board then, so I only +_heard_ why it was done. I can't say of my own knowledge." + +The fact was that Mr. Hiram Green had several unappetizing daughters, +and, as he had been school trustee almost ever since any one +remembered, it seemed good in his sight that the teachers, over whom he +wielded such paternal authority in such a parental way, should return +the compliment by adopting a filial _rôle_, and become sons not only in +spirit but in name. But, alas, for the vanity of human wishes! the +perfidious teachers had accepted all Hiram's kindness, had slept in the +best bedroom and partaken of his best fruit, had ridden by him to town +and accompanied the Misses Green to tea-meetings and festivals, had +abode in the Green household over Sundays, had gone with them to +church, and at choir practice had faithfully served them, and then, +with the extra money they had been able to save through Hiram's +hospitality and the fortuitous "raise" in their salaries, they had +shaken the dust of Ovid from off their feet, and departed to fresh +fields and pastures new, to marry the girls they had been engaged to +all along or to study for one of the higher professions. Never a one +of them all left a love gauge with a Miss Green, and in the bosom of +the Green family many were the revilings cast upon those teachers, who, +with a goodly countenance and a better appetite, had devoured Mrs. +Green's layer cakes and preserves, feasted upon Hiram's peaches and +driven his horses upon the false pretences of "intentions." However, +in fairness to the teachers, one must remember that "some have +greatness thrust upon them." Foolish, indeed, would be the man who +deliberately offended his trustees, and Hiram's hospitality was usually +somewhat pressingly proffered. + +This last teacher--bad luck to him!--had described himself in his +application as a single man, when at the beginning of the summer +vacation he sent in his certificates for consideration in response to +Hiram's advertisement, and before these holidays had passed he married +and came alone to Ovid to take up school in the autumn, and had eaten +five teas and two dinners at Hiram Green's before he asked the eldest +daughter, with whom he frequently found himself alone, where she +thought he could rent a suitable house for himself and wife. + +"This is very sudden," murmured Miss Green. + +"Well, I don't know," he said, in a practical tone of voice, "I've been +nearly two weeks away from her now, and I can't stand it much longer." + +Miss Green gathered his meaning then, and never another tea did that +teacher sit down to in Hiram Green's, and indeed the atmosphere of Ovid +had been made so frigid for the little smooth-haired, blue-eyed girl he +had married, that he soon sent her away, and finding he could not do +without her, finally sent in his own resignation. The Greens had a big +family connection, and Ovid was made a cold place for those whom they +did not like. The Cutler house on the hill and poor old Sam's stubborn +door were about the only portals in Ovid that an enemy of the Greens +might pass. + +Henry Braddon acted as a soft, effective buffer between Hiram and +Andrew, who both always wanted their own way, and wanted it at once. + +"Best let Suse have the three hundred," said he: "old Reilly will be +foreclosing on Sam soon if he don't raise the money somehow." Now, +Reilly was the local usurer, the one hard-hearted, close-fisted old +Shylock so often found in rural districts; the one man within a radius +of twenty miles who had made a fortune. He was reputedly worth seventy +or eighty thousand dollars; possibly he was worth fifty thousand. But +when that is divided into mortgages, ranging from two or three hundred +dollars up to, perhaps, one or two of five thousand, one can realize +what a power he was in the country side; how many heart-strings he had +tangled in his grasping fingers; from how many couches his shadowy +outstretched hand banished sleep; at how many tables his hollow, gaping +palm was seen, as the children put out their hands for food; before how +many hearths his spectral presence ever sat with a look of anticipatory +proprietorship. He was as cruel as the grave, and as relentless as +time. Not one ten minutes of grace did ever any one get from old +Reilly. The children looked at him with awe as he drove past in his +old-fashioned buggy, a hatchet-faced old man, thin, cold-blooded, with +big knuckly hands holding the reins. Hen Braddon knew what he was +doing when he referred to him. The week before, Hiram Green's brother +had been turned neck and crop out of his farm by this same Reilly. No +fear that Hiram would let him get another "haul" off old Sam if he +could help it. + +"That's so," said Hiram, with alacrity. "Andrew, you just make out the +appointment, will you? and you post it, Hen, when you go home." + +Andrew having gained his point, was generously sorry that he had +twitted Hiram about the salary matter, so in the subsequent open +meeting he let Hiram do all the talking, looking the while at a dark +stain on the ceiling, which a coat of whitewash, put on yearly since he +was a boy, had failed to obliterate. He would never forget how that +ink went up, and that might be the very same old box stove over in the +corner, the one upon which he set that tightly corked bottle of frozen +ink to thaw, taking precaution at the same time to be out of the road +when it exploded. It had been a particularly brilliant "go off" +that--straight up to the ceiling and down in a shower of black +spatters. Andrew could see the fun of it yet, and found himself +involuntarily looking at his palms, as though some traces of the +blisters the teacher's rawhide had raised might still be there. Andrew +recalled many other such like exploits, and looked at his smooth, brown +palms, thinking how many thorough thrashings he had had, when suddenly +a line of poetry he had read some days before, came into his head: + + "Lay thy sweet hands in mine, and trust to me." + + +He sat through the meeting quite oblivious of what was going on, +missing what was one of the finest oratorical flights of Hiram Green's +career. He was speaking of the departing teacher, and he made many +scathing remarks anent the legends and pictures upon the walls, which, +as he brilliantly put it, "indicated an entire and deplorable lack of +discipline upon the part of the present teacher." The said teacher +smiled and said nothing. Had Hiram looked closely at the pictures he +would have found that a good many of the drawings were caricatures of +himself and his family. In one rude picture the four Misses Green were +represented as having hold of a man, who struggled in the midst. By +means of certain facial peculiarities, exaggerated as only a genius or +a school-boy would dare exaggerate, any one in Ovid could have +identified the Misses Green and their victim, a former teacher. One of +the ladies held a coat sleeve she had rent off; another a portion of a +coat-tail; and over this group the artist had printed in fair round +script, "For his garment they cast lots." Under the circumstances the +applicability of this would have been a credit to Du Maurier, and be it +said in defence of the school-boy artist, it was probably written with +no thought of being impious. Your school-boy caricaturist catches the +spirit of the times. + +The participants in the school meeting were just departing from the +school-house doors, when to them came old Sam Symmons. He had just +been told by Suse of her application, and an almost stifling eagerness +was filling his heart. If she got it, it meant so much: but he +presented his usual suave, smiling old face to Hen Braddon and Hiram +Green, and said nothing. As Andrew passed the old man looked at him. +That look of age to green manhood, how pitiful it is! Andrew paused a +moment. "We're going to have an Ovid teacher this time," he said. +"You'll tell Suse, won't you, Mr. Symmons, that her appointment is in +the mails?" + +Poor old Sam! It was harder for him to carry off good fortune with +nonchalance than it was to remain impassive in the face of bad. He had +had so much more practice in the latter form of self-control. He drew +his breath deeply, and his lips quivered a little. Andrew saw this. + +"Don't forget to tell her, Mr. Symmons," he added, and went on his way. + +Forget! + +"Meeting over, Mr. Braddon? Meeting over?" Sam queried, falling into +the irregular ranks of the moving men. "Well, well I remember the time +your grandfather and I were school trustees, and he was a shoemaker, +and a better man with lasts than letters. In his young days he used to +go about from house to house making the shoes. He had regular places +for calling; two pairs a year was the allowance--well, that custom has +long gone by. Anyhow, we were both trustees, and one day we went out +to the Beechwood School, section No. 6 now. Well, the minister was +there, too, and Squire Harkness--both long dead now--brothers they +were. One of the children handed up her slate for your grandfather to +look at, and he, holding it in front of him at arm's length, said, with +consideration seemingly to its merits, 'Fair, very fair,' which was +right enough truly; but when your grandfather held it over to the rest +of us, 'twas plain to be seen he had had the slate upside down. Yes, +he was ambitious, too, your grandfather was, and got on well in the +world; he even bought him a big silver watch. Watches weren't so +plentiful in those days. You didn't get a watch in the pocket of every +suit of clothes you bought then, as the papers would show you do now. +And when we asked your grandfather what time it was, as we would +frequently do, being minded to please him, he would take out his watch, +look at it with consideration, and hold it out to us saying, 'Who'd ha' +thought 'twas that time o' day,' in surprise seemingly, which was right +smart, for he never learned to read time, your grandfather didn't. But +a good business man he was, and a good neighbour, as many a poor body +knew." + +Old Sam and his following straggled in twos and threes up the street, +past Bill Aikins' house, where Bill stood in the doorway smoking, +having just helped his wife Kate, _née_ Horne, hang up the day's +washing, school meetings being in his wife's opinion too provocative of +idleness, the idleness which the devil improves, to be indulged in by +Bill. + +Bill's house, albeit small, had a particularly aggressive look. It had +a door in the centre, and a window with red-painted sash on either +side. These windows always shone effulgently clean. Whether this +brilliancy of pane or the vermilion paint produced the effect, it is +difficult to say, but certain it is that Bill's house always looked as +though it were about to spring on the road, which was, figuratively, +much the same as the attitude of Bill's wife towards him. + +Bill Aikins had originally been a boy brought out by one of the +benevolent English societies, which gather up the scum of their own +cities and trust to the more sparkling atmosphere of the New World to +aerate it into "respectable and useful citizens." Bill Aikins had +taken French leave of the minister with whom the Horne had placed him. +A plenitude of prayers and a paucity of what Bill had called "hot +wittles," decided him upon this step. He wandered to Ovid, and for +many years had been "hired man" to the various farmers within ten miles +of the village. He was a good worker, but lacked ballast, and was +rapidly degenerating into a sot when Kate Horne married him, and, as +the boys expressed it, "brought him up standing." + +The men greeted Bill pleasantly, and Bill responded genially, trying to +look as if he was unconscious of Kate's criticisms upon the men +passing--a somewhat difficult thing to accomplish, as Kate spoke so +loudly from the room behind that her remarks were perfectly audible to +the subjects of them. + +One by one the crowd dwindled away, and then old Sam "putting his best +foot foremost," as he would have said, hurried home and told Suse of +her good fortune. She was very elated, was Suse, and kept murmuring to +herself, "I'll just show them Greens what's what." + +* * * * * * + +Long after the last light had twinkled out in the village, a shaft of +light streamed across the old garden of the house on the hill. For all +the calm of Andrew's heart was gone. The peace of the first acceptance +of the fact that he loved this stranger girl had vanished. He got down +on his knees, reached under the bed and pulled out an old, +old-fashioned little chest, covered with untanned cowhide, whose brown +and white patches were studded with rows of big brass nails. It held +the books over which his mother's pretty dark head had bent so often, +close by that other proud one, which soon lay humbly enough in its +kindred dust. It was no unusual thing for Andrew to spend half the +night poring over these books. There was a fat little copy of +Shakespeare, with ruinously small print; a quaint little leather volume +of Francis Quarles, George Herbert's poetry; Suckling's and a +subscription copy of the Queen's Wake, "dedicated to the Princess +Charlotte by a shepherd in the Highlands of Scotland." These, with a +few others, had formed his mother's library. Getting them out, he +looked for certain passages he knew well--passages that had wrung his +heart before this with their description of unattainable sweetness and +love--passages that had almost made him despair, and yet, not wholly, +for he had dreamed a dream of one day going forth to seek and _find_ a +Beatrice, a Juliet, a Desdemona, a Rosalind--all in one divine +combination of womanhood, worthy to have been addressed in the immortal +sonnets. And, lo! the spring had brought her--would the summer give +her to him? The kindly summer that gives the flower to the bee, the +sun to the flower, the blue sky to the sun, and all the earth to joy. +Surely--and but a mile away Judith slept, dreaming, but not of song. +And over the waters that quickened with insect life, through the air +all astir with the scents and savours of spring, athwart the earth that +was quivering with the growth of all things green--summer came one day +nearer. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + "Sweet Spring, full of sweet days and roses, + A box where sweets compacted lie, + My Musick shows ye have your closes, + And all must die." + + +Judith Moore, the operatic singer, was not an ailing woman usually. In +fact, she had very sweet and well-balanced health, but in her make-up +the mental and physical balanced each other so well, and were so +closely allied that any joy or grief--in short, any emotion--reacted +strongly upon her physical organism. Heart and brain, sense and spirit +were close knit. Delicately strung as an Æolian harp, she vibrated too +strongly to the winds that swept over her. As strings grow lax or snap +from being over-taut, so her nerves had failed under the tension of +excitement, and effort, and triumph. Two years before she had made her +_début_ upon the operatic stage in Germany, stepping from the strictest +tutelage to an instant and unquestioned success. Even yet when she +thought of that night her cheeks would flush, her eyes dilate, her head +poise itself more proudly. She recalled it so well. Her manager's +eagerness, that made his dark face almost livid: her own fright: the +mascot thrust hastily into her hand by an old _attaché_ of the +play-house. She remembered all the details of this performance better +than any other--the orchestra and the people: the peculiar, loving +droop of the shoulder with which one of the 'cello players bent above +his sonorous instrument. Then came her effort, and it seemed the next +moment the thunderous applause, the flowers, the deep-throated Hoch! +Hoch! and the joyous cursing of her manager behind the scenes. + +Yes, that was life. + +And as she lived her triumphs over again, she felt the supreme +exaltation of a genius in a great gift, the God-like thrill of mastery, +the glorious certainty of capacity, the birth-pang of creation. There +is no gift so marvellous, so maddening, so divine as the gift of +song--none so evanescent, none so sad. + +This woman inhaled the common ether of a prosaic world, mingled it with +her breath and sent it forth glorified as sound--sound such as nothing +made with men's hands in all the world can produce. She created +something divine, which died even as it was born, and passed into the +silence--silence that has absorbed so many sweet and terrible things. +She sang; she sent forth her heart, her being, her soul from her lips, +like a beautiful unseen dove seeking a sign; and there returned to +her--silence. From all the glorious "choir invisible" that had gone +before there came back no word. And the wonder, and triumph, and pity +of it grew upon her, so that she began to eat her heart out with +loneliness. + +Her voice lifted her up to the gods; when she returned to earth, there +was no loving breast for her to rest upon, no strong hands to sustain +her, no lips to kiss the pain of music from her own, none to seal the +bliss of singing into abiding joy. + +Two years of this, and Judith Moore left it all, and came, in the +summer preceding her American _début_, to this little Canadian village. +She had told her manager, the only person she knew well enough to write +to, that he was not to write. He knew where she was: she would let him +know if she needed him. Let her rest, for just a little, she pleaded. +And he agreed. + +She owed everything she was to this man, who had been a friend of her +father's. Passing through the little town where they were, he had come +to visit them. He found his old friend's funeral leaving the house. +He came back to see the desolate girl. Then followed the discovery of +her voice, and his investment in her as a good speculation. It was +going to prove one, too, though the anxiety of it had given him a grey +hair or two in his black head. Yes, it had been a good speculation +already, for the two years' singing abroad had recouped him for all his +outlay of money. The American season would repay his patience, and the +South American tour, and the winter in Russia--the _impresario's_ plans +stretched far into the future through golden vistas of profit. That +Judith might have other dreams he never considered. + +She herself had no well-defined thought but to excel in her art. She +did not in the least understand what was amiss with her. Not but what +in many dreams by night, and visions by day, she had thought of a +passion that was to transfigure her life; but so used was she to +passing from the reality of life to the dream on the stage, that the +visions and the verities became sadly confused, and so she grew day by +day more eager to attain, more anxious to achieve the highest in her +art, more unsparing of her own efforts, always trembling just on the +threshold of the unknown, always feeling one more upward effort of her +wings would take her to the very pinnacle of song. There surely grew +the balm of sweet content, of satisfaction, of peace. Poor Judith! +For her the real content lay in a green valley, far, far below these +perilous peaks upon which she tottered; whereon no woman may safely +stand, it seems, without a stronger soul beside her to sustain in time +of need. Her happiness lay in a valley where love springs and +happiness flows in streams about the feet, and as she aspired higher +and higher, and rose farther and farther into the rarefied air which +solitary success breathes, she left the Happy Valley farther and +farther behind. + +Had she been less evenly balanced, had her soul been less true, her +heart less tender, she might in time have frozen the woman completely, +and crystallized into the _artiste_ only--or--but to think of Judith +Moore sullying her wings is sacrilege. + +She was full of womanly tenderness and womanly vanities. She had a +thousand little tricks of coquetry and as many balms to ease their +smart. She took a good deal of satisfaction out of her pretty gowns +and her finger nails, and the contemplation of her little feet +becomingly shod had been known to dry her tears. She was essentially +the woman of the past, the woman who created a "type" distinct from +man: the womanly woman, not the hybrid creature of modern cultivation; +the woman of romance. To balance this (for nowadays this doubtless +needs excuse) she had a fund of sympathy great enough to endow every +living thing that suffered with pity. She had certainly that charity +without which all other virtues are as "sounding brass." She sent away +those who came in contact with her the better for their meeting, and +from her eyes there shone a purity of soul that had abashed some men +whose eyes had long forgotten shame. + +Such was Judith Moore. + +When Andrew approached the Morris house, the next day after the +apple-tree episode, he saw from afar a figure in white sitting perched +upon the weather-beaten rail fence which separated his woodland from +the Morris farm. He hastened his steps, his heart beating hotly. +Judith was in a repentant and somewhat shame-faced mood. Upon +reflection it had occurred to her that her behaviour the day before had +been little less than bold. Judith had felt badly over it, and had +even cried a bit, as foolish women will. She was, of course, prepared +to make Andrew suffer for her misdeeds if he in any way showed a +recollection of the incident, and had decided to assume a very haughty +mien if he dared say "feet." + +Andrew's intuitions were not slow, even if he was only a farmer, and +when he greeted her, and she suddenly, sweetly, strangely blushed and +looked up at him half inquiringly, he interpreted it aright. He had +been amused, perhaps aroused, by her impertinence; he was touched by +her unexpressed penitence. + +Miss Judith had on an artful frock: most of her frocks were artful and +well put on, too, which is this great thing. Judith never considered +time thrown away that was spent adorning her "perishing person." This +particular frock was of sheer white wool, and because she had a waist +of the unhygienic type (and rejoiced thereat exceedingly, be it told, +for she was thoroughly unregenerate), she had it girdled with a ribbon, +wound round and round her. It had huge loose sleeves of a kind not +known in Ovid. "Sort of night-gowny looking," Andrew said afterwards, +in describing her appearance to his aunt. How Miss Moore would have +raged at that! Paquin, no less, had made those sleeves. + +She was careful to keep her very toes out of sight this morning, and +when she thought Andrew was not looking, she gave anxious little tugs +at her skirt to cover them yet more securely. Every one of these tugs +Andrew saw, and they raised within him a spirit of deep indignation. +"I wish that skirt would come off in her hand--serve her right if it +did," he said to himself, aggrievedly, whilst apparently listening to +Miss Moore's prophecies regarding the weather. + +"Going to rain in three days?" he said. "How do you know?" + +"Oh," said Miss Moore, with an indescribable look of wisdom, "there was +a big ring round the moon last night, enclosing three stars. That +means in three days it will storm--of course, rain--you'd hardly expect +snow, would you?" Miss Moore spoke a little resentfully as she +concluded, for Andrew did not look impressed. + +"Well, no," agreed Andrew. "Did Mr. Morris tell you that?" + +"Yes: we're going to shear sheep to-morrow." + +"What?" Andrew was amused at the "we." + +"_That_," said Judith, who in spite of her air of knowledge was +somewhat nervous and not quite certain whether she had put it rightly +or not. ("Shear sheep" did sound queer.) + +"Oh, you are. What else?" + +"I'm going to learn to make butter. Mrs. Morris says I have real +'butter hands.' They're so cool. Feel." She laid her hand on his. + +"Yes, lovely," said Andrew, fervently: "but don't you think you ought +to get well before you do all this? Stick to prophesying for a while. +It's easier." + +"Oh, if you're going to laugh at me--" + +"No, indeed." (Miss Moore's brows were knitted.) "I'm not really, +honestly: never thought of such a thing." Then, persuasively, "Don't +you want to come and see a bird's nest?" + +Miss Moore's attempt at bad temper collapsed. + +"I should think I did," she said. + +"Come on, then," said he. + +"Oh, is it on that side? How do I get over?" + +"Let me lift you." + +"No, indeed! Turn your back, and I'll jump." + +"Let--" + +"No!" + +Andrew wheeled on his heel. There was a soft thud and a scramble. He +turned like a flash, but Miss Moore had regained her feet, and stood +waiting with an expression of exaggerated patience on her face. + +"Are you ready?" he asked. + +"Oh, waiting," she answered, with emphasis. + +That walk was the first they ever had together. Neither of them ever +forgot it. At the moment, it seemed to pass in light-hearted chatter: +but beneath all this there was a substratum of eagerness--Judith trying +to get in touch with this new creature at her side, this strong, +unconventional, natural soul, so different from the artificial +creatures she had known; and Andrew feeling his heart going out beyond +control to this girl who walked so unsteadily at his side, stumbling +every now and then from the unaccustomed roughness of the way. These +little feet had evidently had all paths smoothed to them. (He could +not guess how chill those carven pathways were.) How tender her eyes +grew over the wild flowers, and how sweet her lips when, for a moment, +a serious thought came to her! + +The wild flowers were in full luxuriance, and Judith gathered an +armful. They passed a dogwood tree that stood sheeted in its white +blossoms, their petals of the texture of white kid. Andrew got her +some great branches of it, and she insisted upon carrying it herself, +holding all her spoil against her breast with one hand, using the other +to lift her gown now and then, or to pluck more flowers. + +Her face looked out from the flowers with a kind of rapt eagerness upon +it that illumined it like a light. Her enjoyment was so intense as to +be almost painful. They had gone quite a distance from the Morris +house, half the length of Andrew's woods, when they came to a little +hollow. A stream ran through it, but so blocked was its way by the +burrows of moles that it zigzagged across and across the hollow, +seeming almost to form loops at some points. All along its course grew +the tall, pale-mauve water-flag, its spikes of bloom rising from clumps +of sword-like leaves that grew in the stream's edge. At the farther +side of the hollow a mass of wild crab-apple trees were covered with +their fragile pink blooms, and heaped up at one end of the hollow was a +great mass of loose stones, piled there as they had been gathered from +the fields. Dog-tooth violets, which love moisture, grew thickly about +their feet, their yellow and brown blossoms springing from between +pairs of spotted leaves. Where the leaves grew singly, there were no +flowers. Here and there could be seen a blossom of the rarer white +variety, the back of its recurved petals delicately tinged with pink. +Close by the roots of some stumps there were velvety cushions of the +thick green moss so often found in Canadian woods; bryony vines strayed +over these, making a rich brocade in tones of green. Tufts of coarse +ferns grew in the clefts of the stumps, their last year's fronds +withering beside them, the fresh ones just beginning to uncurl. And +framing all this in, there was the curtain of trees in the first +freshness of foliage. + +For a moment, in Judith's mind dream and reality became confused. The +little glade so exactly simulated a well-set scene. There was +something artificial in the piled-up stones: in the stream which made +so much of itself in going such a short distance. It was so usual for +her to stand before the footlights with her arms full of flowers. And +the man at her side--she looked at him, and in a moment realized how +completely and artistically he was in accord with his environment. His +strong, bronzed face, his lithe, tall form, his expression, his dress, +the look of utter comprehension with which his eyes took in the scene, +over which her eyes lingered in detail--all this was apparent to her at +once. She was well used to considering the "value" of this or that +upon the scene, and she told herself the unities were surely satisfied +now. + +"Are you pleased?" he asked. + +"I'm simply charmed," she said. "It is too beautiful to be real." + +"Ah," he said, "that's where you make a mistake. It is only beautiful +enough to be real." + +She looked at him. + +"You are tired," he went on, without waiting for an answer. "I've +brought you too far. Will you sit down?" + +"Yes, I think so. I really am awfully strong, only I soon get tired." + +"Exactly; one of the signs of great strength. Oh, come, don't get +cross." + +"I hate being laughed at; you're bad to me," she said pettishly. + +Andrew was smitten to the heart. He began to think he'd been a brute. + +He took off his coat, making no apology therefor. It did not occur to +him that there was anything wrong in shirt sleeves. He spread it at +the foot of a stump. + +"You sit down there and rest," he said, "and I'll go get you some more +flowers." + +"Don't you want to rest?" she inquired solicitously. + +"No, I'm not tired," he answered gravely. He wouldn't laugh at her +again in a hurry! + +"Well, hurry back." + +So she watched him pick his way across the little hollow to the twisted +and gnarled crab trees. And as she watched there stole over her eager +spirit the first whiff of that peace which was soon to settle so +sweetly upon her heart--a restful recognition of the joy of calm; and +all was blended with the bitter sweet scent of the crab blossoms and +the ineffable savour of spring woods. + +Andrew was soon back at her side with a sheaf of flag lilies and big +branches of apple blooms; and Judith for the first time held real +crab-apple blossoms in her hands, with their perfume, that mingling of +Marah and myrrh, rising to her as incense from a censer. She had long +known the distilled perfume; how different this living fragrance was. +Something of this she told Andrew. + +"Yes," he said, "I understand you exactly. You won't like the +manufactured stuff any more. I never could eat canned salmon after +eating the real article fresh from the stream where I'd caught it." + +Miss Moore looked at him. + +He laughed outright at her expression of disgust. + +"Was it very awful to liken crab blooms to salmon? They're much of the +same colour." + +"Don't dare say another word," said Miss Moore. "You're horrid." + +Andrew reddened and looked a little stiff. + +Miss Moore eyed him furtively. "Mr. Cutler?" + +"Yes." + +"Would you like me to sing to you?" + +Like a child Miss Moore proffered her biggest bribe first. + +"Rather," said Andrew, with emphasis, forgetting his dignity. "I +should think I would." + +Seeing him so eager, Miss Moore was minded to postpone his pleasure a +bit. "What shall I sing?" she asked. + +"Anything--your favourite, anything you like, only sing." And she sang +a song by Rosetti, beginning-- + + "A little while, a little love + The hour yet bears for thee and me + Who have not drawn the veil to see + If still our heaven be lit above." + +And which ends-- + + "Not yet the end; be our lips dumb + In smiles a little season yet, + I'll tell thee, when the end is come, + How we may best forget." + + +When it was over he turned and looked at her as at a marvel. What +manner of woman was this? The one moment a curious child, the next a +proud woman; again, a poor, little tired girl, and then--how should he +name this singing angel. + +Miss Moore was used to homage and applause, and wont to see people +moved by her singing, but never a tribute had been more sweet to her +than the look in this countryman's eyes. + +"I will sing again," she said, and began a little Scotch song. + +Afterwards Miss Moore was sorry about this, and thought bitterly that +she could not, even for an hour, put aside the _rôle_ of the opera +singer seeking to play upon her public. For she had been taught the +value of appealing to sentiment as a factor towards success, and many a +night, after singing the most intricate operas, she had responded to +the _encore_ by singing "Home, Sweet Home" or "Annie Laurie," or some +other simple peasant ballad that touches the heart. It is a trick +_prima donnas_ all have. + +The song she sang Andrew was "Jock o' Hazeldean": the story of the +high-born girl who loved Jock o' Hazeldean. Who was he, we wonder. +This fascinating Jock, of Hazeldean, smacks more of the Merrie +Greenwood than of broad domains. But at any rate he must have been +right worthy to be loved, else such a leal, brave-hearted, beautiful +girl had not loved him. Torn, too, she was between two thoughts--her +family, her plighted troth, riches and--Jock--so that + + "Whene'er she loot + The tears doon fa' + For Jock o' Hazeldean." + + +For she had made up her mind evidently to give him up, but these +treacherous tears betrayed themselves whenever she bent her head, and +when a woman's heart is breaking she cannot always hold her head high. +And in the end they nearly married her to the "Lord of Errington." +But-- + + "The kirk was decked at morning tide, + The tapers glimmered fair, + Both priest and bridegroom wait the bride, + And dame and knight were there. + They sought her then by bower and ha'; + The lady wasna seen-- + She's ower the border, and awa + With Jock o' Hazeldean." + + +Well Judith Moore sang the words of the song, but she did more. Her +vibrant voice expressed all the pathos, the romance, the tenderness, +that lives between the words; and in the last two lines there was a +sort of timorous triumph, as of one who has gained victory over the +world, her family, her own fears, and won to her lover's breast, and +yet trembles in her triumph. Women do not give themselves even to +their best beloved without tears. + +This was in reality the great charm of Judith's singing--a charm no +perfection of method, no quality of tone could have produced. She felt +the full significance of everything she sang, and had that sympathetic +magnetism which creates its own moods in others. That is fascination. +That is the secret of these women at whose power the world has +wondered, whose loves have been the passions of history, whose whims +have legislated the affairs of kingdoms. + +"Don't sing any more," Andrew said when she finished. "I've had enough +for one day. I--" + +"You feel my music as I do myself," she said softly. "It is almost +pain." + +Presently they went back through the woods, more silently than they had +come, and yet happier. Judith looked up at him once or twice with no +veil of laughter on her eyes. He was thrilled with the expression he +found there; now it seemed a steadfast ray of unselfish resolution, +again a yearning so poignant that it almost unnerved him. He showed +her the nest on the furrows. + +"In a little while there will be birds in the nest," he said. + +"Oh, I'll come and watch it every day." + +"You must not come too often or stay too long," he said, "or the bird +will get frightened and forsake her nest--fly away and never come back." + +"Oh, surely not fly away from that nest," Judith cried. To her that +rough little wisp of coiled grass and horsehair represented the +perfection of bird architecture. + +"If you would only come to the house--my house over there on the hill," +said Andrew, flushing a little and very eager; "my aunt would like you +to so much, and I would show you a lot of nests. We have more birds +there" (suddenly feeling very proud of this fact) "than anywhere else +in the county." + +"Oh, I'd like to ever so much," said Judith. "Your aunt?" + +"Suppose I send my aunt over to see you?" said Andrew, quite ignorant +of the etiquette of calls, but hitting it off well in his ignorance. +"She'll come to visit Mrs. Morris, and then, of course, if you care to +see her, she'll be so glad to ask you to come over." + +"Does your aunt visit the Morrises?" asked Judith, with some surprise. + +"Why, of course: we only live a mile away," said Andrew, entirely +oblivious of the compliment to himself. + +"Oh, yes, of course," said Judith, hastily, feeling mean. + +Finally they said "Good-bye." Andrew had gone but a few steps when she +called him. + +"Wait a moment. When do you think your aunt will come?" + +"Soon; not to-morrow, she's going to town. Perhaps next day. Why?" + +"Oh, I want to put on a pretty frock," she said candidly. + +"Well," said Andrew, with conviction, "you can't beat that one." + +Miss Moore went back to the house. A weather-beaten frame house it +was, with a weather-vane in the shape of a horse on top. When the +horse's nose pointed over Judith's window, the wind was east; when it +seemed to gallop in the direction of the kitchen, it was west; when it +made for the village, it was south, and when it looked with a longing +eye, apparently, at the stables, it was north. Mr. Morris explained +this to Judith on an average once a day, but she always got it mixed. + +Mrs. Morris was vigorously making pies when Judith entered. + +"Baking?" said Judith. + +"Yes," said Mrs. Morris, breaking the crisp stalks of rhubarb into +little pieces. "Yes, I'm sure I'm going to have company" (she broke +the last piece of rhubarb with a snap and commenced rolling out her +paste with soft thuds). "Yes, company's coming sure. I dropped my +dishcloth three times this morning, and then the old brahma, he just +stood on that doorstep and crowed for all he was worth. I never knowed +that bird to crow on that doorstep without strange feet soon stood on +it." + +Mrs. Morris covered her pie, and then holding the pie plate upon the +fingers of one hand, dexterously ran a knife around the edge, trimming +off a ring of paste that fell on her arm; then she dabbed it with a +fork and put it in the oven. + +"I want something to put my flowers in," said Judith. "May I take some +of those big earthen jars out there?" pointing to the open door of the +pantry, within which stood some old-fashioned, rough, grey crocks. + +"Yes," said Mrs. Morris, absent-mindedly, as she carefully "tried" a +cake with a straw from the broom to see if it was done; "yes"--then +coming back to sublunary matters as she shut the oven door, "But sake's +alive, child, you don't want them things to put them in! I'll get you +the scissors and some string so you can cut the blows off them apple +branches and make good round bunches, and there's some posy pots I +bought in town one day. I'll get them to put them in." + +Judith's heart sank. She was too afraid of hurting Mrs. Morris' +feelings to say anything, but when that busy woman appeared with some +hideous blue and green and gilt atrocities, a bright thought struck her. + +"Oh, Mrs. Morris," she said, "those are too nice altogether. Just let +me use the jars; those might get broken." + +"Well," said Mrs. Morris, pausing in the door of the sitting-room, +"they be only wild crabs and dogwood blows. It would be a pity to risk +it, maybe." So she took back the vases and replaced the bouquets of +everlastings in them, feeling she had done her duty to her boarder, but +glad that matters had arranged themselves as they had. + +So Judith got out the jars and filled them with great bunches of the +dogwood, which gives such a Japanesque effect of blossom on bare +branch, and with the apple blossoms, the wild iris mingling its dainty +mauve equally well with each. Then she leaned back against the door +jamb (she was sitting on the doorstep), and dreamily listened to Mrs. +Morris. + +What a strange medley of criticism, information, prophecy and humour +the talk of such a woman is, all given forth with no coherence, no +sequence of ideas, the _disjecta membra_ of a thousand gossipy stories, +the flotsam and jetsam of the slow-flowing stream of country life; now +and then hitting off, as if by chance, a word or two which is a +complete characterization of a person or place; now and then piercing +to the heart of some vital human truth; now and then sowing a seed of +scandal to bring forth bitterness; now and then by a pause, a sigh or a +word revealing the griefs of a homely heart, and always perpetuating a +hundred harmless conceits of fancy, signs, warnings, and what Mrs. +Morris called, "omings that mean something." + +Mrs. Morris was popularly considered the most talkative woman in Ovid, +always excepting Bill Aikins' wife who had so far distanced the others +as to fairly outclass them. Sometimes Mrs. Morris wearied Judith to +death with her tongue, but out of the resources of her generous heart, +which always could furnish excuses for everybody, Judith found +palliation for Mrs. Morris' fault. There was a certain plot in the +unkempt little graveyard in Ovid, wherein were five tiny graves; over +each was a coverlet of straggly clove pinks, and each of the little +sleepers had been borne away from the farm-house by the woods. Now and +then, but rarely, Mrs. Morris spoke of these babies. Their united ages +would not have numbered half a dozen years; but Mrs. Morris, with the +strange divination of motherhood, had seen in their infantile ways the +indications of distinctive character, so that each of these dead +children had as individual a place in her memory as though it had +worked and wept and wearied itself into old age. And to Judith this +seemed excuse enough for poor chattering Mrs. Morris. All the breath +other mothers use in speaking to their children, all the time they +spend in silent thought about them and for them, was barren to this +lonely old woman. "Who could wonder then that she wants to talk a +bit?" Judith one day said to Andrew, wistfully, when he was laughing at +Mrs. Morris' tongue. Indeed, Judith's tender eyes pierced deep down +into the depths of these people's hearts. The ugly gossip, the +sneering spite, the malignant whisperings she heard, filled her with a +pity divine enough to drown the disgust which their backbiting and +meanness awakened. The pity of it! she thought, looking at the miracle +of the summer fields beneath the summer sky: the upward aspiration of +every blade of grass, of every tiny twig, of every little Morning Glory +seedling, striving to lift itself up, stretching forth its tendrils +towards anything that would bear it higher: everything reaching towards +the light. And these people, surrounded by the strong silent stimulus +of nature, going with their eyes fixed upon the clods, or at most +raised but to the level of their own heads, striving to grasp some puny +self-glorification, letting the real gold of life run through their +fingers like sand, whilst with eager palms they snatched at the base +alloys which corroded their hands! + +When Judith heard one woman say of another, "She's a most terrible nice +woman. She works like a horse," she did not feel as much like laughing +at the narrowness of the vision which pronounced such judgment, as +weeping, that life had ways which people trod wherein brutish physical +exertion seemed the highest good. It will be seen that Judith had a +tender and discerning eye to penetrate the pains and sorrows of others, +but she could not decipher her own heart yet. It is hard to get one's +self in true perspective. It would indeed be a gift from the gods if +we could see ourselves. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + "He who sings + To fill the highest purpose, need not soar + Above the lintel of the peasant's door." + + +Before the Morris house there stretched a space of unkempt grass, +broken by three or four irregular flower beds, upon which the grass +encroached, from which the flowers sometimes strayed afield. In these +beds were clumps of jonquils--"yeller petticoats," Mrs. Morris called +them--and there were heavy headed daffodils, which, to Judith's +delight, she dubbed daffdowndillies. There were patches of purple +iris, too, and through one of the beds the sturdy roseate stems of the +common pæony were pushing their way. A big bush of flowering currant +was covered with its yellow flowers, murmurous with hundreds of bees, +for they are very sweet. The stems of the florets are bitten off by +children to get a drop of honey in each, just as in the florets of a +clover bloom. + +Up and down the sanded pathway leading to Mrs. Morris' front door paced +Judith Moore, two days after Andrew's visit. She had on a brown frock, +girdled with a filigreed belt of silver gilt; a bunch of jonquils at +her bosom caught together the folds of some soft old lace; her heels +added a good two inches to her stature, and she felt herself to be very +well turned out. + +It was warm: the robins were building nests. Presently one flew by +with a scrap of brilliant red wool, and in a moment or two flew down +from the gable of the house, and regaled itself with a long worm which +it had spied from afar. It despatched its lunch with gusto, cocked its +head on one side, preened the feathers of its wings with its foot, as +one would run the hand through the hair, and then started in on its +house-building again. "From labour to refreshment," thought Judith. + +She herself was in a state of tremulous happiness; her being, freed +from all artificial restraints, released from all conventional bonds, +was unfolding, as naturally as the flower buds to the sunshine; her +thoughts no longer bent exclusively upon her art, no longer dwelling +upon the next triumph, found for themselves new and unexpected +pathways. For the first time she gave herself up to the perilous +pleasure of introspection. In "sessions of sweet silent thought" her +fragmentary dreams and ideals of life, love and nature, were attuning +themselves to a true and eager aspiration to be worthy the best gift of +each. Her heart--well, her heart had not been awakened yet. Like the +great white lilies in Miss Myers' garden, it was yet half asleep, but +stirring within it was the sweetness of spring, of springing life, and +love, and the first poignant sweetness of self-consciousness. The +lilies were yet only putting forth feeble leaves, as if to test what +manner of upper world wooed them to put forth a blossom. So the little +tender impulses of Judith's heart were yet very timorous. But the +lilies would bloom in good time--and the heart? + +Judith was still pacing back and forth when a tall, angular figure, in +a black cashmere gown and a broad black shade hat, appeared in the +gateway, followed decorously by a melancholy red setter, whose +melancholy and good manners vanished simultaneously as a cat, walking +speculatively round the corner of the house, caught his eye. Rufus +vanished, with the cat in a good lead. Rufus' acceptance of the +possibilities of the situation had been so prompt, the cat's transition +from a dreamer to a fugitive had been so sudden that Judith forgot the +propitiatory smile with which she had intended to greet Miss Myers, and +gave a regular peal of laughter. + +Miss Myers had come to call, or, as she herself put it, had "come to +visit a spell with Mrs. Morris." + +"Oh, the poor cat!" said Judith, not knowing very well what to say, and +getting rather red. + +"Is it your cat? I'm real sorry. Rufus is always hard on cats. +There's one cat in the village though--but there, you must be the +boarder. I'm real glad to see you." + +"Yes," said Judith, "I'm Judith Moore, and you must be Miss Myers; I +know you by the dog." + +Then a quick sense of the vision she had just had of Rufus, the eager +outstretched nose, the flying heels whisking past the side of the +house, the cat's hysteric spitting as she turned and fled--this made +Judith catch her breath. + +Miss Myers laughed grimly. It was her fortune always to look grim, +even when she wept. Afterwards, Judith knew that Miss Myers had +thoroughly appreciated the humour of the situation, and had loved +Judith "from the minute I set eyes on her," as Miss Myers said. +Perhaps, out of loyalty to Andrew, Miss Myers exaggerated a little her +first feeling toward Judith, but for that kindly exaggeration one could +gather her in one's arms. + +Great indeed must be the love of that woman who is willing to accept, +nay, even help, to win the woman who is to displace her in the +affections of one with whom she has from babyhood been first. And that +is the doom of all women who rear children, whether their own or not; +to nurse them, watch them, pray for them, painfully perhaps: keep them +as pure as may be; make them as true as possible: and then some day +have them bring a stranger, a boy or girl, of whom they have bereft +some other woman, and say, "Look, this is my best beloved." Is not +that a great reward for which to fast, and thirst, and labour? And yet +that is the good guerdon gained by many a woman whose name, if but +granted the right meed of praise, would be written in letters of gold +on a silver sky. + +Recognizing this; what tenderness should not be felt towards such +women, what gratitude accorded them for the good gift they have +rendered up? + +Mrs. Morris came fussily to the door. "Miss Myers, let me make you +acquainted with Miss Moore. Come right in; sit down. Won't take off +your things? Well, now, that's real mean! I quite expected you'd come +for a good visit. Whatever be these dogs a-yelping at? Well, it beats +all! Just look at 'em," pointing out at the sitting-room window, which +gave a view of the orchard. + +In the cleft of an apple-tree, just beyond the reach of the dogs' +leaps, sat the cat, an insulting indifference expressed in every line +of her crouching shape, turning a calm countenance to her impotent +foes. The collie, seduced by the example of Rufus, had cast aside the +veneer of amity overlying his natural instinct, and now careered round +and round the tree trunk, making futile leaps at the cat; whilst Rufus +stood uttering the characteristically mournful bark of his breed, and +waving his feathery tail as if courtesy might induce the cat to descend +and be worried. However, the cat was an old-stager. Her narrowed eyes +gleamed venomously, and she thought evil thoughts, but that was all. + +"Old Tab 'll tire them dogs out before they get through with her," said +Mrs. Morris, placidly; and sometime later, when the ladies looked forth +again, the cat was delicately walking along the top of the board fence, +and the two dogs were in full cry after a squirrel. It is probable +that those dogs, before they slept that night, wondered many a time and +oft what trees were created for, if not specially intended to deprive +decent dogs of a little legitimate sport. + +Mrs. Morris, when she had no company, occupied her spare time in +"teaming" the wool shorn from the sheep, preparatory to sending it to +the woollen mill; but she did not bring this work into the +sitting-room. She brought in her braided mat. First she sewed strips +of cloth together, and when she had three differently coloured balls +made, she braided them into a flat strand, then she sewed that round +and round, till it grew into a mat. All the rag carpets in Mrs. +Morris' house were bestrewn with these mats, placed at irregular +intervals, but practice and instinct so guided Mrs. Morris' feet, that +she never, by any chance, no matter how engrossed she might be in other +matters, stepped upon a space of carpet. There was something very +interesting about this. She did it so unconsciously, so accurately, +like an erratic automaton. It is true this practice did not conduce to +a Delsartean evenness of step: and indeed, Mrs. Morris, when walking +through the fields, or along the road, carried in her gait the +_replica_ of the floor plan of her first three rooms. Through the +front room, the sitting-room, the kitchen, that was the course she +mapped upon the road she travelled again and again. The wily Vivien +would not have won readily the secret of Mrs. Morris' woven paces. + +Miss Myers took off her shade hat and held it on her lap. Judith sat +prettily erect, bending forward now and then, as if alert to answer +Miss Myers' commonplaces--a flattering attitude that. Mrs. Morris +braided her strands firmly, looking benignantly over her spectacles, +which, having slipped down to the very point of her nose, by some +miracle preserved a tentative hold. Their precarious position gave +Miss Myers "nerves." She clasped her thin hands tightly "to stiddy +herself up." + +They talked of the every-day incidents of their homely lives. The +first question that came up was house-cleaning, a very vital matter to +the country housewife in spring and autumn. Of course, these two +women, being notable house-keepers, had theirs done long ago, but there +were others--well, neither of these ladies wished to make remarks, +least of all about their neighbours, still-- + +Then they discussed the proper time for picking the geese (that is, +denuding the live geese of the feathers they would otherwise lose), and +both had often noticed the wilful waste of the Greens, in letting their +geese go unplucked, so that the village street was snowed with wasted +feathers which floated about in the air, or sailed, the most fragile of +crafts, in the little water-cressed stream. This led naturally to the +mysterious disappearance of Hiram Green's twelve geese, a story retold +for Judith's benefit. + +Once when Hiram Green was breaking in a colt in his barn-yard, the dogs +frightened it, and between Hiram's shouts, the dogs' barks and the +colt's plunging, the geese, twelve in number, took unto themselves +wings and flew away. The fact that they were able to do this reflected +directly upon Hiram's management, and pronounced it poor, for, of +course, he should have taken the precaution of clipping the feathers of +one wing, as every one did, to prevent just such losses. However, the +geese flew away. In the excitement of the moment the direction of +their flight was unnoted, but willing volunteers spread the news, and +defined the ownership of any stray geese which might be found. The +Hornes lived in a house very near the crest of the hill upon the south; +so near to the top was it, that it gave the impression of wanting to +sneak away out of sight of the village. It seemed to withdraw itself +from the village gaze, and had a secretive and uncommunicative look. +Perhaps the house did not really deserve this description, but popular +opinion accorded it. The Hornes were aliens to Ovid: no one knew much +about them, and that in itself is a grievance in such a place as Ovid. +Well, a zealous searcher for the geese inquired of Mrs. Horne for +tidings of them. Mrs. Horne, standing upon her doorstep, regretted +Hiram's loss and deplored not having seen them. The messenger +departed. But "people talked" as people will when such coincidences +occur--when on the next market day Mr. Horne sold twelve fine fat +geese, whilst his own pursued the even tenor of their way unmolested. + +There was no proof of mal-appropriation, for a dead goose does not +usually bear many distinctive marks of individuality--still, people +talked. And the next day, when Mrs. Horne bought ticking in Hiram's +store, to make a couple of pillows, Hiram felt aggrieved as he tied it +up, and vaguely wondered if this was not "seething the kid in its +mother's milk." Neither Miss Myers nor Mrs. Morris committed herself +to any definite expression of opinion as to the Hornes' responsibility +in the matter, for neither of them wished to give the other the +opportunity of quoting her verdict, but they shook their heads at each +other, and raised their eyebrows and pursed up their lips, and then +abruptly branched off to another question, which happened to be whether +or not it was advisable to soak carrot seeds in water before +planting--the implied decision in the goose question amounting +practically to the "Not Proven" verdict of the Scotch courts, than +which nothing is more damning. + +At last Mrs. Morris' spectacles did fall off, and Miss Myers' nervous +start had a good deal of relief in it. A crisis is best over. + +Old Mr. Morris came in, and began to discuss the death of Sam Symmons' +mare. Not having been present at the consultation regarding her, he +was absolutely certain that she had not been accorded the proper +treatment. "Might have been the right treatment for an ellefung, but +not for a hoss, no, not for a hoss, not by no means." Then he gave a +long and critical dissertation upon the merits of each remedy used, +proving conclusively, at least to himself, that in the case of Sam's +mare they were all so much poison. Miss Myers must come out and see +his sorrel filly. "There was a filly like a filly, not such another in +the country!" So they all strolled out to the board fence, and looked +at the clean-limbed little sorrel, whilst Mr. Morris dilated upon her +good points. A man is always frankly and irrepressibly egotistical +upon two subjects--his horses and his judgment. + +Miss Myers did not go back to the house, and Mrs. Morris and Judith +strolled with her to the gate. They bade each other good-bye there, +Miss Myers sniffing at a twig of lemon balm which she had gathered. +Judith and Mrs. Morris were to visit Miss Myers two days later. + +Little had been said about Andrew, but enough to show Judith that he +was the very apple of Miss Myers' eye. + +"Sarah Myers thinks a powerful sight of Andrew Cutler," said Mrs. +Morris. "It seems sort of heathenish to be so set on any one. I don't +hold with it. Well, if you hain't got no children to laugh with, you +hain't got none to cry over." The yearning of her empty mother-heart +had taught her this pitiable philosophy. + +* * * * * * + +It was three o'clock when Mrs. Morris and Judith reached the Cutler +house on the hill. + +Mr. Morris had driven them as far as the village in the democrat +waggon. He stopped at the blacksmith shop, and they alighted, to walk +through the village to their destination, whilst he went on an errand +to town. There were very few people to be seen on the village streets. + +Tommy Slick and his dog Nip met them. Tommy looked very guileless, +with round face, beautifully tinted white and pink, big clear eyes and +"lips depressed, as he were meek." In his hands he carried a horse's +halter and a tin pail. Nip followed, with limply hanging tail, lowered +nose and hunched up shoulders, but an expression not so wholly +deprecating as his attitude. When Tommy looked meek, and Nip innocent, +it behooved the village to be wary; there was some mischief afoot. + +"There's that Slick limb," said Mrs. Morris. "I'll be bound he ain't +up to no good: and that dog of his, look at it!" + +"It looks hungry," said Judith. + +"Then I'll go bail there's no vittles in the village if that dog's +going empty," said Mrs. Morris. (Some memory seemed struggling for +utterance.) + +Judith changed the subject and took up Tommy's case. + +"He looks a nice little chap, and he's got a lovely complexion," said +she. + +"It don't matter how he's complected. He's a Slick," said Mrs. Morris, +with decision. "And being a Slick ain't no recommend for a church +member; he's got brothers that has been in gaol, that young one has; +there's Indian blood in the Slicks. Did you hear any noise when Tommy +passed? No, nor you never will. He goes pad, pad along, regular +flat-footed Indian fashion--all the Slicks do--no good honest +heel-and-toe about them. One of his sisters, the one married over +Kneeland way, is just like a squaw for all the world. They say it was +the great-great grandmother on the Slick side was a squaw--she came +from near Brantford." + +"I thought Indians were all dark-skinned," ventured Judith, "and that +boy certainly--" + +"Well, if his face ain't complected like them, you can depend on it his +heart is," interrupted Mrs. Morris, in a tone suggestive of rising +temper. + +"There's the Slick house now," she said in a voice which indicated that +the name of Slick was malodorous to her. She pointed to a rickety, +rough plaster house which they were passing. In the doorway stood a +frowsy woman, her arms akimbo, her fingers and palms stained a deep +purple. + +"Good afternoon, Mrs. Slick. Been dyeing?" said Mrs. Morris, affably, +as they came abreast of her. + +"Good day. Yes," said the woman, curtly. + +Upon the clothes-line at the end of the house some garments, dipped in +purple dye, hung drying. + +"Them 'll streak when they dry," said Mrs. Morris, in the +discriminating tone of one who knows. + +Judith wondered vaguely where she had seen that peculiar purple colour; +later she remembered that the outside of the tin pail Tommy Slick +carried, had been smeared with it. + +Hiram Green greeted them from his shop door as they passed, and Bill +Aikins' wife gave them a brisk salutation, without pausing in her work +of "sweeping up" her door steps. They passed the school-house; the +children were out at recess. Mrs. Morris' brow contracted, and her +voice was a little querulous when she spoke next. + +"Seems to me children grow powerful noisy these times," she said. "I +disremember that they used to be so when I was little." + +They turned the corner. Hiram Green's house was the last one in the +village. It was a brick house, built flush with the street. It had +six windows in front, and these windows had been considered very +original and genteel, when Hiram had them put in. For, instead of +being the ordinary oblong windows, the tops of these were semicircular. +Hiram had intended at first to have the semicircle filled with glass, +but decided, from economic reasons, to substitute wood. These wooden +tops conveyed the impression of the windows having eyebrows, and gave a +supercilious air to the whole house, which was a very good indication +of the attitude of Hiram Green and his daughters to their neighbours. +There _was_ a Mrs. Green, but she was one of those hard-worked +nonentities, never considered in the polity of the household save as a +labour-saving agent. The Misses Green were usually to be seen on a +fine afternoon either on the "stoop," or by the open parlour windows. +Mrs. Green was never visible; she was obliterated beneath the burden of +work she bore upon her patient shoulders. + +The Misses Green were out in force as Judith and Mrs. Morris went by. +Enshrined in their midst was a sallow young Methodist clergyman, +somewhat meagre-looking, but with a countenance full of content. He +fairly gaped after Judith. Mrs. Morris greeted the Misses Green +coldly. She did not like them. Their mother and Mrs. Morris had been +friends in girlhood, and Mrs. Morris had a poor opinion of her old +friend's daughters. "Hester Green's got no spunk or she would not +stand it," she said with asperity, and added, "Poor thing!" + +Mrs. Green's wistful eyes looked at them from the kitchen window, where +she was frying crullers for the minister's tea. But she did not think +of her own lot as being harder than Mrs. Morris'--far from it. + +"Poor Jane, trapesing along with a strange girl, and me got four +daughters," she said to herself, and dropped a bit of potato into the +bubbling fat to see if it was at the proper temperature. + +Perhaps Mrs. Green's daughters as well as their "ways" were rocks of +offence to Mrs. Morris, yet they were truly a poor possession to covet. + +A short walk, and then Judith and Mrs. Morris were at the foot of the +hill-side. They entered Andrew's domain; and found, as they closed the +gate, that Miss Myers and Andrew had come to meet them. + +Andrew had longed intensely during the four days just gone to see +Judith again. So extravagant had his desire for this been, that when +he saw her coming afar off, he felt almost a regret. The anticipation +had been so satisfying that he felt a stifled fear, lest the vision he +found to surpass the real. But when she gave him her hand, and looked +at him, straight from her honest eyes into his--well, then he knew no +dream could be so dear as the sweet reality. And from that moment the +world put on a different countenance to those two--the sky, the water, +the clouds, and the earth's bloom-scented face all changed. + +As they turned to follow Miss Myers and Mrs. Morris they were a little +silent. A quieting hand seemed to have been laid in benediction upon +their hasty pulses. An awe, not of each other, but of the holy realm +they felt they were entering, fell upon them. From the portals of that +Promised Land there seemed to issue a gentle but compelling voice, +bidding them tread gently, for the place whereon they stood was holy +ground. In Andrew's heart there surged a new strength, a strong tide +of resolution. In Judith's heart there sprang to life many sweet +hopes, savoured and sanctified almost to pain, by a new sweet fear. + +Their voices softened. Andrew's tones seemed informed with a new +meaning. Judith's accents held a hint of appeal. + +But this transformation was unacknowledged by each of them. Judith's +eyes still met his bravely, and he constrained himself to self-control. +But what a glorified place that linden-laden hill-side had become! + +Judith laughed out happily. + +"I am happy!" she said, out of sheer light-heartedness. "Are you?" + +Andrew drew his breath in swiftly, and closed his lips firmly a moment, +as to repress some words that strove for utterance. + +"Yes, I should think I am," he said. + +They passed under the apple-tree by the garden gate. Its petals seemed +almost spent--the life of the apple blossom is short. But how much +sweeter the spot, and the tree, when she stood beneath it, than ever it +had been before in all its glory and bloom! They were in the garden; +the old sun-dial with the linden tree beside it stood in the sunshine. +Judith's eyes filled with happy tears, which Andrew did not see; he +only thought her eyes were bright. It seemed to her that her spirit +had found its natal place here on the hill. These aromatic breaths +from the box, the perfume of the violets, the odour of the cherry +blossom, the sound of the birds, the rustle of the leaves--surely these +were the scents and sounds of home. + +"Do you know what Mrs. Browning says of such a tree?" she asked. + +"No: tell me." + +"I do not know if I can remember it. I'll try. I--" (She was +nervous--she who had sung to the Kaiser!) Then she repeated, her voice +trembling a little-- + + "Here a linden tree stood, bright'ning + All adown its silver rind; + For as some trees draw the lightning, + So this true, unto my mind, + Drew to earth the blessed sunshine + From the sky where it was shrined." + + +"I think it is you who have drawn down the sunshine," he said. +"Anyhow, it is always sunshine where you are." + +She was amazed at the joy which flooded her heart at this commonplace +compliment. They loitered about the garden until Miss Myers summoned +them to tea. Judith came in almost shyly before these two country +women, who, to tell the truth, had felt the freer to enjoy themselves +in her absence. + +Miss Myers took her into a bedroom to lay off her hat. It was cool, +quiet, large, with corners already growing dusky in the fading light. +A huge bed heaped high with feathers was covered with a snowy coverlet. +Some tall geraniums with fragrant, fern-like leaves stood in the +windows: a dark, polished table filled one angle. The mirror, a little +square of dim glass, was set in a polished mahogany frame, and placed +upon a high chest of drawers of the same rich dusky wood. + +There was something pure, still, almost ascetic, in the large bare +room. Its spotlessness seemed to diffuse a sense of restful peace. +One would have said no weary eyes had ever held vain vigil here, that +no restless heart had here sought slumber without finding it. + +Judith somehow felt like lowering her voice. She took off her hat and +patted her hair solicitously as every normal woman does. She could +only see her face in the mirror, nothing more, not even the purple and +yellow pansies in the breast of her yellow frock. She touched them +gently. Andrew had picked them for her in the garden. + +"Am I right?" she asked, looking at Miss Myers. + +"Couldn't be improved," said Miss Myers, heartily, upon whom Judith's +interest in the garden and evident desire to please had made quite an +impression in the last few minutes. + +So they went back to the sitting-room together, when Miss Myers excused +herself for a few minutes whilst she went to give the finishing touches +to her table--to see that the girl had set it properly, get out the +best china and the silver teapot, the richest fruit-cake, the finest +canned peaches, and fill the cream ewer with the thickest of cream. + +Andrew was leaning against a window casement as Judith entered the +room. The broad window-sills were full of flowers; the heavy old red +curtains were pushed far back to the sills, making a dusky background +for Andrew's tall figure in its rusty velveteens. Judith advanced +toward him, her yellow frock looking almost white in the waning light, +the purple heartsease a dark blot upon her breast. + +"Isn't that plant pretty?" she asked Mrs. Morris, feeling a nervous +desire to include her in the conversation--she felt so much alone with +Andrew. + +"Which?" asked Mrs. Morris, joining them at the window. "The 'Aaron's +Beard' or the 'Jacob's Ladder'?" + +"I mean this hanging plant," said Judith. + +"Oh, the 'Mother of Millions'; yes, it's real handsome," said Mrs. +Morris, looking at the luxuriant pot of Kenilworth Ivy over which +Judith was bending. + +"What a funny name!" said Judith. + +"Oh, it don't make much difference about the names of 'em," returned +Mrs. Morris. "Only so long as you know 'em by 'em." + +Miss Myers entered, and they followed her to the dining-room. + +Miss Myers was reputedly the most forehanded house-keeper in Ovid, and +supposed to set the best table of any one in the village, "and no +thanks to her for it; she's got plenty to do with"--as her neighbours +often said. But in spite of her liberal house-keeping, Miss Myers +"looked well to the ways of her household"; there were no small +channels of waste permitted under her _régime_. + +Judith was charmed with everything--the chicken and ham, which Andrew +deftly dispensed; the huge glass dish of peaches, preserved whole, and +with a few long green peach-leaves put with them to flavour them; the +snowy white cream-cheese set on a bed of parsley: the young lettuce +fresh gathered from the garden (of which Mrs. Morris said later, "It +was just murdering them lettuce to pick 'em so young"): the black fruit +cake: and the bread browned in Miss Myers' brick oven. + +A cat sprang upon the sill of the open window, and after some pretence +of surprise (at which Andrew raised his eyebrows and looked at Judith), +Miss Myers gave it a saucer of milk on the window-ledge. Strangely +enough there happened to be an extra saucer handy. Judith sat +demurely, feeling that there never had been such a joke as she and +Andrew perceived in Miss Myers' poor pretence of astonishment at the +cat's daring. The cat finished her milk, and sat washing her face +industriously. + +Rufus sat sedately beside his master's chair, with a look almost of +sanctity in his big hazel eyes. Rufus never begged, but he shifted his +forepaws uneasily and swept his banner of a tail along the floor, +mutely importunate. Later on Judith learned this was the regular +performance of these two favourites. There were other dogs about the +place, and barn cats in plenty, but these two chosen ones had the high +seats in the synagogue. + +There were antlers between the windows, and over the side table, and +above the doors; a trophy of wild ducks and water fowl was mounted upon +a beautiful hard-wood panel; foxes' masks grinned from the corners. +And when they passed out to the hall, there was the old musket, the +sword with its crimson sash, a pair of rusty spurs and a cartridge +belt, all hung upon the huge horns of the one moose which Andrew's gun +had brought down. + +An incident at the table had disturbed Judith very much. In response +to a request for salt, she had handed Andrew some, and Mrs. Morris +promptly said: + +"Well, you shouldn't have done that. That's a bad oming. 'Help one to +salt, help them to sorrow.' That's terrible unlucky." + +"Oh, Mr. Cutler," said Judith, "do you think I've given you sorrow?" + +"No," said Andrew. "No, indeed; I don't believe any of those old +sayings." Miss Myers was silent. + +"Well," said Mrs. Morris, "I don't know; them things seems bore out +sometimes. There was young Henry Braddon; he keeps post-office now" +(this to Judith) "and one day his mother gave him some salt to salt the +cattle. 'Help one to salt, help one to sorrow,' says he, and off he +went, and when he come back his mother lay in the porch, took with the +stroke she died of." + +Judith's face was pale and startled. + +"Seems to me," said Andrew, dryly, feeling as if he would like to choke +Mrs. Morris--"seems to me the brunt of that bad luck fell on her." + +"I wish I'd never seen salt," said Judith. "Do you think any bad luck +will come of it?" + +"Nonsense," said Andrew, and somehow his manlike scorn did much to +reassure Judith, but when the others were not looking, she pushed the +offending salt as far as possible from her. + +Mr. Morris was to call for them, and he arrived very soon, but in the +meantime the evening had grown a little chill, and Judith had no wrap. +She denied feeling cold, but as they stood in the porch she shivered. +Andrew ran in and brought out a huge homespun shawl and bundled her up +in it; her face, in contrast to its heavy rough folds, looked very +delicate and white. + +She was seated alone in the second seat of the democrat waggon. Andrew +came to her side; his eyes were nearly on a level with hers. + +"You never showed me the birds' nests!" she said. + +"Oh, you must come back and see those," he said eagerly. "You will +come back?" + +"As often as Miss Myers will let me," said Judith, unaffectedly. +"And"--she coloured a little---"you'll come and see my bird's nest in +the field?" + +"Yes, to-morrow," said Andrew. + +Mr. Morris shook the reins over the old sorrel. Judith bent over +giving Andrew her hand. + +"Mr. Cutler," she said hastily, "you don't think I gave you sorrow?" + +"No," he said, some deep feeling making his voice intense in its quiet +strength. "No, you give me--" The old sorrel was eager to get back to +her slim-fetlocked daughter, and she sprang forward. Judith's hand +seemed torn from him; his sentence was left incomplete. + +"Good-night," he said. + +"Good-night, good-night," called Judith in return. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + "Yet love, mere love, is beautiful indeed, + And worthy of acceptation." + + +Next day the village was stirred to its depths when Hiram Green passed +through the streets, bringing from his pasture his white horse, striped +with purple paint, or dye, until it looked like an exotic zebra. + +With this horse he brought his groceries from town; behind it many a +school-teacher had driven in vainglorious ease. Hiram had gone for it +that day with intent to do the little Methodist parson honour, by +taking him for a drive, a plan necessarily postponed by the hilarious +appearance of the horse, which looked out from a pair of artistically +drawn purple spectacles upon the excitement which its appearance +created. + +Hiram was furious, the Misses Green were rampant, the parson piously +indignant, and even meek Mrs. Green lifted up her voice in wrath. + +The horse was escorted to the barn-yard, to be subjected to such a +course of scrubbing as never fell to the lot of an Ovidian horse +before; but aniline dyes are hard to eradicate. That day, and for many +days after, the horse went about contentedly in a pale purple coat. + +There was no direct evidence to convict any one of the prank; but Hiram +had refused to give the Slick family any further credit at his store, +and from the clothes-line of the Slick house, some garments, dipped in +purple dye, flaunted derisively in the breeze. Tommy Slick and Nip +went about looking as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths; and all +Mrs. Slick was ever heard to say about the matter was: + +"Let 'em come to me and just as much as hint that Tommy done it! +I'll--but just let 'em once, that's all." + +And whilst nobody showed a disposition to hinder any one else from +making the accusation, still no one volunteered to voice the general +opinion regarding the matter to Mrs. Slick. Besides, secretly, every +one felt a sort of sneaking satisfaction over the matter. + +Andrew and Judith, to confess the truth, thought it a huge joke, and at +Judith's instigation, they made a long journey across the fields to +Hiram's pasture lot, to see the horse; and when they beheld him +placidly purple, munching away in supreme content, they laughed till +their voices rang out through the wood. + +Judith recalled the purple smears on Tommy's pail the day she had met +him, and felt an unholy joy of participation in the plot. Judith +didn't like the Greens. As she and Mrs. Morris passed them going to +Andrew's, one sentence had rung out clearly to Judith's ears: "My! +Ain't she pinched!" That was enough. The Greens never found favour in +the eyes of Judith. + +Andrew, as he had promised to do, went to see Judith's bird's nest the +day after her visit to his farm. At that meeting, and in many more +such sweet hours which followed, Judith and Andrew lived in the joy of +the moment. Their hearts were young, the world was fresh and fair; the +one loved deeply, and the other--well--for the time she had forgotten +her ambition, forgotten the marvellous gift that made holy the air she +breathed, or only remembered it for the pleasure it gave this young +countryman; she had forgotten that her name was famous, whispered from +lip to lip throughout the musical world; she had forgotten the +intoxication of success, the wine of applause; she had forgotten the +great debt she owed the man who had made her what she was, a debt that +she could only requite in one way, by singing. So surely she must have +sipped some Nepenthe of present happiness or future hope! Lotos lands +are very sweet, but rarely so satisfying as these two found them. + +It seems to outrage our sense of proportion, to think of a young farmer +aspiring to the hand of one who showed every promise of being the +world's _prima donna_. To us it seems grotesque almost, and Andrew +seems ridiculously egotistical in hoping that this song-bird would +abide in his love-woven cage of rushes, when the doors of so many +golden nets were open to her. But Andrew's daring was perhaps +excusable. + +It is true, her voice had led him to her first, and he always heard it +as a devotee might hear the voices of angels strike through his +prayers; but after that first meeting, Andrew had always seen the +_woman_ in her, not the songstress. He did not love her for her +singing, her beauty, nor her gentle breeding. He loved her for +herself--the truest love of all. For a love founded upon any gift is a +frail thing, a banner hung upon a reed. The reed may break, and the +banner no longer lifted up may not care to enwrap the broken stem which +before upheld it. What does England's greatest woman poet say? + + "If thou must love me, let it be for naught + Except for love's sake only." + + +"For love's sake only"--that should be the supreme reason of every +passion. Love, "the fulfilling of the law," the beginning and end of +all things. + +And thus, inasmuch as this great justification was his, Andrew was +justified. + +Nor did he seek with rude hands to snatch his happiness hastily. As +one pauses with hushed heart, when he comes in woodland places upon +some new sweet flower, or sees through a cleft of the mountains the +glory of the sun, or gathers to his breast some soul-satisfying truth, +so Andrew paused ere raising the cup of this great joy to his lips. He +felt he must purify his hands ere he advanced to stretch them forth for +the draught. And should it be denied him? + +Thought ceased there--beyond was chaos. + +And Judith gathered the flowers of the hour with eager fingers, +trembling with new joy, finding in their perfume complete satisfaction, +looking neither before nor after, as a butterfly revels in the +sunshine, forgetting the chill of by-gone days, unrecking of the bitter +blasts to come. + +The days became weeks, and the earth grew glad with fruits and flowers +and growing grain. During all this time Judith was learning of the +people about her, prying with her tender eyes into the pathos of their +narrow lives, appreciating keenly the unconscious humour displayed in +their processes of thought, marvelling at their stolid disregard of the +Beautiful. + +Rufus and the grey cat knew her well, and Miss Myers was devoted to her. + +Mrs. Morris and Miss Myers had grounded her thoroughly in the family +history of the villagers, and she knew as much about them as about the +others, for Miss Myers told her about Mrs. Morris, and _vice versa_. + +And Judith had developed a keen interest in all the doings of the +village people, of whom old Sam Symmons was her favourite, the +redoubtable Tommy Slick being a good second. Old Sam liked her, and +prophesied freely that she would soon be mistress of Andrew Cutler's +house. Suse pretended not to be much impressed with Judith; it was not +to be expected that any marriageable girl in the neighbourhood would +particularly admire the strange woman who had led away captive the most +eligible man for miles around, and, besides, Suse had a love affair of +her own upon her hands. The rest of the village girls contented +themselves with giggling when Andrew and Judith passed, whispering +among themselves that "There didn't seem to be much sign of Miss Myers +moving out, and if she was going to live with Andrew and his wife, it +was as well he hadn't chosen any of _them_, for _they_ wouldn't stand +_that_"--reflections which consoled them very much evidently, and +which, being entirely harmless to any one else, were quite admissible. + +Judith thought this rustic life very quaint and idyllic to look +at--like one of Hardy's stories, only hearing the same relation to a +story that a game of chess, played as they play it sometimes in the +East, with living pawns, does to the more prosaic pastime pondered over +upon a table. + +The village appealed to her as a skilfully set scene, begirt by a +beautiful background of changing fields and sky--a stage whereon was +enacted an interminable drama, in whose scenes all the constituents of +humble life were blended. + +It never occurred to her that she was the heroine of the story--the +queen of the animated chess board, an actress in the life play. Poor +Judith! She thought herself only a spectator, and, as such, deemed +herself secure from all the pains and penalties of the play. + +Judith always laughed, though sometimes for shame she strove to hide +the laughter when Tommy Slick was before the footlights. Tommy had +been making a hilarious record for himself at school. To begin with, +Tommy was nearly ten years old, and had been allowed to run wild at +home, hence he was utterly ignorant of the world of letters, but wide +awake to the vital facts in the world of men: for Tommy's intellect was +precocious and practical. + +Tommy's father was wont to say of this, his youngest hope, "Tommy +hain't much of a letter sharp, but he'd be good on a horse trade," and +his judgment was about correct. His mother, as a preliminary to +Tommy's appearance, called upon Suse, and informed her that "Tommy was +a right smart young un, but delikit." Of the first fact Suse was well +aware: of the truth of the latter statement she never could convince +herself. Did she not, in common with the rest of the village, remember +well the day when Tommy and his father furnished forth entertainment +for the whole community? The fashion of it did not suggest any extreme +debility upon Tommy's part. It was in this wise: + +One day Tommy, having incited his irascible father even more than +usual, perceived blood in his parent's eye, and concluded to run. The +chase led up the village street, to the vacant lot where the old store +had been burned down. The fleet and flying Tommy, turning here, had +perceived his father in full pursuit, and, evidently doubting his own +staying powers, had taken to a tree, shinning up a tall, slender, +swaying poplar with precocious celerity. He climbed to the very top, +and, undaunted by the slenderness of his perch (for the tree bent +beneath his weight as a stalk of grain beneath a bird), clung +comfortably there, whilst his father, unable to follow up the slender +stem, stood at the foot, and alternately threatened, cajoled and +cursed. When he resorted to swearing as a safety valve for his wrath, +Tommy exchanged oaths genially and freely with him, until Slick, Sen., +in a paroxysm of rage, shook the tree continuously and violently, so +that Tommy took an earthward flight, fortunately for him landing on a +pile of old straw. + +His father, somewhat cooled down by the spectacle of Tommy shooting +through the air, approached him, and as a preliminary, asked him if he +was hurt. This gave Tommy an opportunity which he at once improved. +He made no reply. + +And thereupon Suse and the rest of the Ovidians were regaled by seeing +Tommy's father carrying his son home tenderly, stepping carefully so as +not to jar the presumably broken bones. + +This progress Tommy rendered as arduous as possible, by lying perfectly +limp in his father's arms; in fact, making himself dead weight, and +letting his long legs dangle helplessly down, to meet his father's +knee-caps, or shins, at every step, with the brass toes of his heavy +boots. It was not reported that Tommy suffered much from this +experience. + +Tommy had a fine fund of profanity, which served as a spicy garnish to +his deep sense of humour, a genial and easy self-possession, unfailing +confidence in his own powers, and a dog he was willing to back against +any other in the village, except Hiram Green's brindle bull pup. + +The first day Tommy went to school, Suse had the "infant" class up +before one of the alphabet tablets by the window, and Tommy, affable +and completely at ease, came with them. Most children--Ovidian +children--when they came to school for the first time, were somewhat +abashed by the novelty of their surroundings, given to starting at +every sound, stumbling over the legs of desks, and getting hopelessly +entangled with the other pupils, in their efforts to obliterate +themselves from the teacher's notice. Not so, Tommy. No teacher ever +born had terrors for him; the legs outstretched to trip him on his way +up the aisle, were withdrawn, tingling from the kicks of Tommy's brass +toes. When he was half-way up the aisle, it occurred to him to take a +short-cut, so he wriggled between two desks, and landed with a slide +over the third, to find most of the class assembled. A sharp pinch of +an arm, his elbow applied vigorously to a side, a vicious kick upon a +shin, cleared his way of three boys. Then he planted himself at the +head of the class, next Suse, and prepared to receive the seeds of +knowledge. + +But his eyes wandered, first with a look all about, then abstractedly +to the window. But the abstraction vanished, and a look of intense +eagerness made his eyes bright, as they bent in absorbed interest upon +one spot, where his disreputable dog, who had followed him to school, +_à la_ Mary's sheep, was harassing the life out of a fat and grunting +pig, which he had, in his own proper person, surrounded: for, heading +off the pig in whatever direction she turned, he seemingly converted +himself into twenty disreputable dogs. Having bewildered the pig with +a few lightning rushes round it, with a sharp nip at its tail, ears, or +nose, as he could best get in a flying bite, he planted himself like a +lion in the way, and yelped red-mouthed derision and insult at the +impotent foe, who was too fat to follow, either mentally or bodily, the +gyrations of its agile tormentor. + +"Tommy!" said Suse. (Tommy paid no heed.) "Tommy!" repeated she, more +imperatively. (No sign from Tommy.) "Tommy Slick!!" accentuating her +voice by a sharp rap of her pointer on a desk. Just then the owner of +the pig came along, kicked Nip, and Tommy came back to sublunary +affairs. + +"All right, Suse," he said obligingly, "I'm yer man." + +At that Suse felt the foundations of her throne tottering. + +In the afternoon, mindful of the temptations of the window, she had +Tommy's class up before the blackboard, where, printing the alphabet a +letter at a time, she made the class name them. Tommy kept his +attention pretty closely fixed until N was reached; then he became +absent-minded. He was meditating his revenge upon the pig's owner for +kicking Nip. The only step he had decided upon was to try conclusions, +immediately after school, with the man's son. The latter was two years +older than Tommy, and a good half-head taller, but Tommy never +considered such paltry details when an affront to Nip was to be wiped +out. + +Tommy's mind was engrossed with further plans when Suse, after +elaborately executing a capital S upon the blackboard, addressed him, +not without some trepidation. + +"Tommy, that's S." (No response.) + +"Tommy," she said with angry dignity, "you must look at the blackboard. +That letter is S." + +"Oh, is it?" said Tommy, in a pleasantly interested tone, "I always did +wonder what the little crooked devil was." For the remainder of +Tommy's first day at school Suse felt that her glory was a delusion and +a snare. + +Judith carefully concealed from Mrs. Morris her enjoyment of Tommy's +pranks, the former having no patience with "them two imps," as she +designated Tommy and Nip. For, once, Mrs. Morris had been expecting +company, and the better to entertain them, had baked a batch of pumpkin +pies, it being the season when such delicacies were in order. She set +them out on a bench in the front porch to cool, taking the precaution +to make sure that the collie and the cat were safe in the kitchen. + +When Mrs. Morris returned, some half-hour later, she found a row of +empty pie plates, and sitting beside them, looking at them with the +dissatisfied expression of a dog still hungry, was Tommy Slick's dog +Nip. Nip fled from the face of Mrs. Morris towards Andrew's woods, +where Tommy was gathering hickory nuts, sped upon his way by an earthen +flower pot flung with a vigorous but inaccurate hand. Ever since that +day Mrs. Morris had cherished a deep hatred of Tommy and his dog. + +Judith, as the days passed, was very happy; but happy in a blind, +unreasoning fashion. With persistent self-delusion she put behind her +the fact that this dream-like summer was but an interlude in her life. +True, at first she persistently took short views, and only interested +herself in matters a day or two beyond the present, but gradually she +slipped into the habit of speaking and thinking as if she were to be +there always. + +Now and then there were times when the colder light of reason showed +her plainly how factitious this evanescent happiness was. These moods +came upon her like so many physical shocks, leaving her feeling much +older, much quieter, robbing her life of radiance and giving her almost +a distaste for the simple scenes which had created delusions which bade +fair to cost her so dear. Sometimes when the clear radiance of the +moon shone in upon her at night, she lay and thought of the brilliant +scenes, the well-nigh certain triumphs which awaited her--for, immature +as she might be in some things, she was mistress of her art and _knew_ +it, but her cheeks no longer flushed as they had wont to do, her eyes +no longer kindled at the dream: instead, her face set into a cold +dignity and her eyes looked out in the moonlight, out into the future +with a look of prescient martyrdom--the martyrdom of lonely Genius! +The look of those whose brows smooth themselves for the crown of +solitary success, that coronal which has so often crushed its wearer, +so often obscured the eyes it overshadowed, so that they no longer +beheld peace and joy! + +But at the first sound of Andrew's footsteps, always eager, hasty, +hopeful as they approached her, these shadows vanished, and in their +place shone the dawn of a newer light. + +She had never before been considered as a woman, but always as a +singer; and her womanhood recognizing the tribute paid to it, stirred +into life, responded to the feeling which evoked it, and demanded right +of way. + +There is something dominant in the woman-heart when roused. Judith's +nature held deeper depths than she herself wot of--sweet springs for +the lilies of love to grow in; reservoirs of feeling, long unsuspected, +but now brimming to the brink, threatening to break every barrier, and +flood their way over the ruin of her life schemes, her painfully +constructed temple of Art, the airy fabric of her ambition; but one +obstacle could not be swept aside--the benefits received. When Judith +thought of what she owed her manager, then her heart grew faint within +her; but, as excessive pain at length numbs sensation, so this thought +became one of the accepted facts of her life, the life she was enjoying +so much. + +And the days were so long, and so sweet, that it seemed impossible that +the end would ever come. But it was already midsummer, the harvest +fields were brightening beneath the sun, the little school-house was +closed for the summer holidays; from the orchards came the odour of +ripe harvest apples, and the sun-bonneted women gathered wild +raspberries from the fences, or picked currants in the garden. + +And Judith had herself grown infinitely charming; for she was not +letting all the sunshine slip from her. As the ruby crystal holds the +rays which gives it its roseate charm, so Judith was absorbing the +beauties about her, and giving them forth in a gentle radiation of +womanly graces. + +When one part of a nature is nurtured to the exclusion of the rest, it +is not strange that the whole suffers somewhat. Judith, taught only to +sing, to look well, to win applause by merit, or clever finesse, had +known perhaps too little of real womanliness, save the intuitional +impulses of her strong, sweet nature. She was wont to be a little +petulant, a little self-absorbed, and a little, just a little, +arrogant. These blemishes had been chastened into a sweet womanliness, +capricious perhaps, but charming. Not but what there were tempests in +her summer. As the summer showers swept across the fields, so tears +crossed her happy dream. + +The interest she took in every detail of his daily occupation amused +and touched Andrew very much, but now and then he, in a measure, +misunderstood her, which was not wonderful, considering how widely +severed their modes of life and methods of thought had been. Once he +laughed at some views she was expressing, grave conclusions she had +arrived at after long thought and minute observation. Andrew laughed +outright. Her remarks related to one of the simplest facts of outdoor +life, always so well known to Andrew that he hardly apprehended the +marvel of it. At his laugh the colour flooded her face, tears sprang +to her eyes, she was wounded to the quick. She tried to disguise her +feelings as bravely as possible, fighting off a burst of hysteric +tears, making commonplace remarks in a tone strained and muffled by +reason of the lump in her throat. Andrew's heart ached with regret. +He wanted to take her in his arms, and holding her to his breast win +from her a silent pardon, offer her a mute but eloquent apology. He +dare not yet. A quick sense of her childishness in some matters came +to him, a knowledge that if ever he won her, he must be prepared to be +patient, prepared to learn much, to teach her many things. Judith saw +that he had noticed her distress, knew he was sorry, and tried in an +unselfish woman's way, to make him think that she had not minded. The +very tenderness which Andrew's voice and manner assumed, pressed home +the sting of that laugh. As they parted that night, the tears were +heavy beneath Judith's lids. For a fleeting moment as they said +good-night, she looked at him. She was standing within the shadow of +the porch, but the star-shine revealed those tears. + +"My poor little girl, I'm so sorry," said Andrew, his dark face pale in +the dusk. + +"It doesn't matter, really. I think my head aches--I mean--good +night," she said. + +"You are not angry?" Andrew's voice was chill with despair, regret. + +"No, no--oh, I'm not angry, not a bit, I--" He caught her hands, her +composure was failing her. + +"Oh, _do_ let me go," she half whispered, "you are bad to me." Then +she fled. Andrew turned away, white to the lips. + +When they met again, the joy of seeing each other made them happy. +Judith was so lovingly eager to make him forget her last words to him, +he was so tenderly anxious not to wound her, and each was a little in +awe of the other. For they had learned one of the most sacred lessons +of love, learned what a terrible power to inflict suffering each held +over the other. But their love was sanctified by this dual +illumination, and as their eyes met, a little shyly, now and then, +there seemed to pass between them a two-fold message, a promise and a +plea. + +And they parted again, with definite words of love still unspoken. + +But the time was not far off. Andrew's arms were yearning for their +birthright, and Judith's head was weary for his breast. + +Yet fears assailed her, too. One's head may be sore aweary for the +pillow, yet the thought of frightsome dreams may make one tremble on +the verge of rest, and hesitate ere yielding to the sweetest slumber. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + "Ho, ye who seek saving, + Go no further. Come hither, for have we not found it? + Here is the House of Fulfilment of Craving; + Here is the Cup with the roses around it, + The world's wound well healed, and the balm that + hath bound it." + + +"I'm going to church next Sunday," said Judith to Andrew, as they +walked through the chestnut woods. It was evening. Far away beyond +the level fields an after-glow opulent in gold was streaming up over +the sky--a radiance, living, like the memory of love, long after its +source had vanished from the view. The day had been intensely warm, +and the wood was full of the pungent odours of leaves, mingled with the +sweeter scent of dying wild roses. + +Coming to them faintly from far-off fields they could hear the lowing +of thirsty cows, eager to be let out of their pastures to the ponds. +And from the grass meadow which bordered the chestnut woods came the +crop, cropping of Andrew's horses grazing greedily, now that the heat +of the day had declined. + +Judith wore a white frock, and had a bunch of somewhat limp-looking +ferns in her hand. It was impossible for her to leave the woods +without some spoil. Andrew walked by her side, tall and brown, his cap +pushed far back upon his head, a measureless content within his eyes. +Rufus followed sedately, keeping a wary lookout from the corner of his +eye for squirrels and rabbits. + +Sleepy, white-winged moths were fluttering aimlessly hither and thither +amid the grasses, and now and then a bird's call rang through the trees. + +"Going to church?" said Andrew. "Isn't that a new idea?" + +"Yes," said Judith, a little wistfully. "Mrs. Morris wants me to, +and--I wish I was good." + +Andrew's face was very tender as he turned towards her. "I don't think +you are such a great sinner." + +She looked at him half happily, half doubtfully. "Well, I'm going +anyhow; Mrs. Morris seems so anxious about it." + +"I'll go, too, then." + +"Oh, will you?" + +"Yes." + +They walked on a few moments in silence; then Andrew said: + +"Will you sing in church?" + +"Oh," said Judith, "they'll have singing! I hadn't thought of it. +Yes, I'll sing with the rest." + +Andrew chuckled. + +"What is it?" demanded Miss Moore, drawing her level brows together in +interrogation. + +"Oh, nothing," said Andrew. + +"Yes, it is something." + +"No, really." + +"You were laughing at me." + +"No, honestly, I wasn't." + +"Certain?" Miss Moore looked at him suspiciously. + +"Come and look at the horses," said Andrew. + +So they crossed from the path, through the narrow belt of trees to the +pasture fence, and presently, in answer to Andrew's calls, the horses +came trotting up one by one, standing shyly and sniffing with +outstretched noses at Andrew's hand. He crossed the fence into the +field and fed them with bunches of grass. Judith looked on longingly. + +"Could I come over?" she asked doubtfully. + +"Yes, indeed," he said. "Do." + +"Turn your back, then." + +Andrew obeyed promptly, and Miss Moore mounted slowly to the top rail, +where she stood uncertainly a moment. It slipped, she gave a little +cry, and the next instant Andrew had lifted her lightly down. He held +her for a second in his arms; each felt the tremour of the other's +heart, and then she was released and was standing trembling by his +side. The horses pricked their ears and eyed her nervously, and Andrew +gazed down at her with his heart in his eyes. + +She held out one of her ferns to the horses, shrinking a little closer +to Andrew as they drew near to sniff at it with their velvety muzzles. +One after another lipped at the fern, but would not take it. + +"They won't eat that," said Andrew, and his voice was very gentle. +"Offer them this." + +So Judith held out the grass he gave her, catching hold of his sleeve +like a child for protection when his big Clydesdale colt stretched out +his head towards her. And presently the horses left them one by one, +till all were gone except Andrew's clean-limbed bay, upon whose back +the wet mark of the saddle was yet visible, for Andrew had ridden into +town that afternoon. And Judith grew bolder and patted its soft nose +and beautiful neck, and Andrew watching her thought that nowhere, +surely nowhere, in all the wide world was there a sweeter woman than +this. And he longed to question the universe, if within all its realm +there was anything so lovely as the fragile hands which showed so white +against Rob Roy's arching neck. + +The twilight deepened. A little wistful wind rippled through the long +meadow-grass. + +"We must go," said Andrew, "or the dew will wet you." + +"Oh, it wouldn't hurt me," said Judith. + +"Better not risk it," said Andrew. So they walked along within the +meadow to the gate, Rob Roy following them, every now and then touching +Andrew's shoulder with his outstretched nose. He stood whilst the bars +were taken down, and whinnied softly as they left him. "What a dear +fellow he is," said Judith. + +They soon reached the Morris house, where Mr. Morris was mending a +bridle on the doorstep, and Mrs. Morris in the fading light was busy +carrying out a plan to frustrate the assaults of the chickens upon her +flower beds: for every chicken in Mrs. Morris's possession seemed +inspired with an evil desire to scratch up her seedlings so soon as she +transplanted them from the boxes in the kitchen to the beds in front of +the house. So between the rows of balsams and marigolds and amongst +the ruby-stemmed seedlings of the prince's feather, Mrs. Morris had +stuck in bits of shingles. + +"There," said Mrs. Morris, straightening herself after plunging her +last piece into the earth. "There! I guess them chickens has got +their work cut out for them before they root out them plants. They do +seem to be possessed by evil speerits, them chickens! That's the third +planting of marigolds, and what prince's feather there is left is only +what sowed itself last year and came up late. My sakes! wasn't it hot +in town to-day, Andrew?" + +"Yes," said Andrew, from where he stood leaning against the porch. + +Judith was standing by Mrs. Morris, looking at the flower beds where +each little seedling was surrounded by a palisade of narrow strips of +shingle. + +Mrs. Morris brought out some chairs, and they sat talking in the dusk +while the summer moon grew out of the horizon, and slowly, slowly +sailed aloft, paling as it attained its height, till from a glowing +disk of yellow it changed to a shadowless silver shield. + +"Won't you sing to us, Miss Moore?" asked Andrew. + +"Yes, do," urged Mrs. Morris. + +"What will I sing!" asked Judith, but without waiting for an answer +began. She sang an Italian love-song, a masterpiece of passion and +pain--sang it as perhaps no living woman could sing it, making music in +such fashion that the hearts of her hearers were melted within them, +voicing in it all the timorous new joy, the half-happy fears that +filled her heart, with somewhat of the poignant pathos of renunciation. +Some one says, "Music is the counterpart of life in spirit speech," and +it would seem that in one perfect song there may be condensed all the +emotion of life and love, all the pathos of pain and parting. As the +song died away Andrew gave a long sigh. The pleasure of such music +ofttimes prolongs itself to pain. Perhaps it was some recognition of +the great value of Judith's gift of song, perhaps it was because she +sang familiarly an unknown tongue that made Andrew suddenly feel the +chill of a great gulf fixed between them. The arms which had held her +for a moment in the pasture-field yearned with ineffable longing for a +joy denied them. + +But Judith was singing again, "The Angels' Serenade," one of the +loveliest things ever written. When she finished there was a silence. +Mrs. Morris' hard-worked hands were clasped tremblingly together, tears +were streaming over her face, her heart was yearning towards the little +mounds in the unkempt churchyard. + +"Hannah," said her grey-haired husband, laying his hand upon her +shoulder. Their eyes met. That was all; but dumbly they had shared +the cup of their sorrow. A bitter communion, one would say, yet good +to make strong the spirit, as the bitter barks strengthen the body. + +And a few minutes later Mrs. Morris slipped away into the house, +perhaps to open that shrine where were hidden some tiny half-worn +garments, perhaps out of sympathy for the two young people who might +wish to be alone; and when Judith began to sing again, she and Andrew +were alone, for Mr. Morris, with lumbering attempts at caution, had +followed his wife. + +Andrew's heart was aching with inexplicable pain. Judith was singing +an old theme, composed long since by some frocked and cowled musician, +whose rigid vows and barren life could not quite suppress the dream of +music within his soul. It was a simple and austere melody, yet endued +with a peculiar pathos, the yearning of a defrauded life for the joy +that should have crowned it, the regret of a barren present for a +fruitful past, the wail of the must be for the might have been. + +And as she sang, the gulf which Andrew had perceived between them +widened into a great black sea, across which her voice came to him +where he stood alone forever upon the shore; and just as the pain grew +too poignant to be borne, a bat darted near them, Judith gave a +frightened cry and fled to his side, and the gulf was bridged in a +second by a strong strand knit of a woman's foolish fear and a man's +reassuring word. + +And soon a light shone down from an upstairs window. Judith started +up. "You must go straight away home," she said, "Mrs. Morris has gone +to her room." + +"Come as far as the gate with me," said Andrew, and she went. But +after they had talked a moment Judith remembered the bats, so, of +course, Andrew had to take her back to the porch in safety. + +At length he was forced to go, so with a last "good-night," and a last +long look into her eyes, he strode away to his home on the hill. + +The leaves of the chestnut trees were rustling in uncertain flaws of +wind; the crickets were creaking eerily from out the darkness; the +fields, all pearled with dew, shimmered in the moonlight. + +It was a solitary hour. But Andrew's heart was light within his +breast; Judith's eyes had been very sweet when she said "Good-night." + +And Judith climbed the blue-painted wooden stairs to her little +corner-room, and lay long awake, forgetting the promise of her great +future, forgetting the efforts of the past, forgetting the debt she +owed her manager, only knowing that she loved and was beloved again, +only recalling the eyes this brown young farmer had bent upon her, only +remembering the tender strength of his arms, as, for a moment, they had +encircled her. A simple dream this? Perhaps. But let such a vision +once weave itself into the fabric of a life, and all else will seem +poor and mean beside it. + +It was a beautiful sunshiny Sunday as Judith stood in the porch waiting +for Mrs. Morris, who presently appeared, clad in a black calico with +white spots on it, black silk gloves and a bonnet with a purple flower. + +Judith had dressed herself in a little frock of pale green linen, and +her face bloomed like a rose above it. Her hat and parasol were of the +same cool tint as her frock, and as the walk in the sunshine flushed +her cheeks with unaccustomed colour, she looked much like a sweet pink +flower set in green leaves; at least, so Andrew thought when he saw her +entering the church beside Mrs. Morris. + +The Methodist church was slowly filling with women and children. Sam +Symmons' Suse had just gone in, and the Misses Green were but a few +yards behind. The men in Ovid had an evil habit of standing along the +sides of the churches talking whilst the first hymn was being sung; and +frequently, if there was any particularly interesting topic on hand, +till the first prayer was offered. In winter the sunny side was +chosen; in summer they availed themselves of the scanty shade afforded +by the slanting eaves, standing, their heads and shoulders in shadow, +their freshly polished shoes glistening in the sun, their jaws moving +rhythmically as they chewed their wads of "black strap." A remark made +at one end of the row percolated slowly to the other, each man +judicially revolving it in his mind and voicing his opinion in +deliberate nasal tones. + + "Lord, a little band and lowly, + We have come to worship thee, + Thou art great and high and holy, + Oh! how solemn we should be." + + +So the women and children sang inside, accompanied by a wheezy +melodeon. They heightened the effect by emphasizing the adjectives +strongly and singing "soll_um_" with great unanimity in the last line. + +Andrew listened for Judith's voice, but evidently she had concluded not +to sing. Andrew was disappointed. He had been looking forward in high +glee to watching the amazement of his neighbours when they heard that +marvellous voice. The truth was, Judith had not seen him where he +stood beside the church, and was too busy looking about surreptitiously +to see if he had fulfilled his promise about coming, to think of the +singing either one way or the other. And when she saw Miss Myers +sitting stiffly alone in the corner of a pew near the front, her heart +sank like lead, and all her happy eagerness over the service departed. +She was piqued, too, and began to feel a nasty heartache stirring +within her breast. + +The singing was over. An interspace of quiet betokened to those +outside that the prayer was in progress, and a rustling of leaves and +settling of dresses proclaimed the fact that the preacher and his +congregation wore ready for the serious business of the day, the +proceedings up to this point being tacitly regarded as the preliminary +canter before the weekly contest with Original Sin, that dark horse +which, ridden by that knowing jockey, Opportunity, wins so many races +for the Evil One. At this juncture the men came in one by one, each +trying to look as uninterested in his neighbours as possible, to give +the impression that this influx of the male element was purely +accidental and not the result of concerted movement. + +It is somewhat doubtful if this impression was conveyed to the +preacher, as the same circumstance had occurred every Sunday since he +had been there; and certainly it deluded none of the women, who, well +aware of the gossiping tendencies of their men, never held themselves +at the approved "attention" attitude till this stage in the +proceedings, but who then waxed marvellously stiff as to posture, and +marvellously meek as to expression. + +When Judith looked up next time, it was to meet two eager, grey eyes +looking at her from Miss Myers' pew, and all at once the incipient +heartache vanished, a calm of sweet content fell upon her spirit. She +looked around, and apprehended all the poignant blending of pathos and +absurdity about her. Her eyes softened as they fell upon old Sam +Symmons' hard-wrought hands resting on the top of his stout stick, and +lighted as she saw Tommy Slick's rose and white face and impish eyes +showing above the door of a centre pew. Her tender eyes sought out and +read the story of the deep-lined faces about her, and a great pity for +their narrow lives filled her. + +The sermon was just begun when the green baize door swung back a +little, and an investigating dog entered. He was one of those nosing, +prying, peering dogs which seem to typify so exactly the attitude of +some people towards their neighbours' affairs. He peregrinated through +the pews, around the melodeon, up and down the aisle, and then turned +his canine attention to the preacher's reading desk. The preacher +became manifestly uneasy; all his sensitiveness slowly centred in his +heels, round which the dog sniffed. Judith, whose sense of the +humorous was painfully acute, gave one glance at Andrew, and then +became absorbed in trying to control her laughter. The dog still +lingered where he was. The preacher's face was flushed; his words +faltered. Every one felt that some one else should do something. + +At length, after many significant gestures and nudges from his wife, +Hiram Green rose and approached the dog with outstretched hand, rubbing +his fingers together in the manner which we imagine impresses a dumb +animal with a deep sense of pacific intentions. The dog backed away. +Hiram followed as the dog retreated. It paused, wagging its tail +doubtfully. Hiram sat down on his toes and patted his knee in a +wheedling manner with one hand, whilst with the other he made ready to +grasp his prey. The dog came a little nearer. + +Hiram grasped--but grasped short; his fingers met on empty air, and he +nearly overbalanced. For the moment he had the wild feeling a person +experiences when a rocking-chair goes over with him--a sort of gasping +clutch at _terra firma_. + +Judith was nearly in tears from agonies of suppressed laughter, +knowing, as she did, that Andrew was waiting to catch her eye. That, +she felt, would finish matters so far as she was concerned; a sense of +companionship makes one's appreciation of a joke painfully intense. + +Hiram was conscious that the Sunday School in the gallery was red with +suppressed excitement; that his neighbours' interest in the sermon was +purely perfunctory; he even had a horrible thought that the preacher +himself was laughing at him. In this he was wrong; the preacher was +nearly distracted, having lost the thread of his sermon, and was +maundering wildly on, hoping to disentangle his argument before Hiram +caught the dog. + +Hiram, grown desperate, added to his alluring gestures the blandishment +of half-voiced words, which sounded like "Poor dog," "Good dog," but +which meant, "You infernal brute." The dog succumbed at length, its +last suspicions allayed by this specious use of the gift it did not +possess, and presently the congregation was edified by seeing Hiram, +flushed, but with an expression of great loving-kindness, carry the dog +gently down the aisle. Slowly and softly Hiram carried him until near +the door, when circumstances made him accelerate his speed, for the dog +was Tommy Slick's Nip, a shiny, smooth-coated dog, and Hiram's hold was +gradually slipping. He had an unpleasant but confident premonition +that the dog would reach for him, as dogs are prone to do, when his +fingers got to the tender spot beneath the forepaws. However, he +reached and passed the baize door in safety, and in the second which +followed, the congregation, with the sigh with which one relinquishes +an acme of intense and pleasurable excitement, turned its attention to +the preacher. At that moment there came a shrill and ear-splitting +yelp. Hiram had taken the dog to the top of the steps, and applied his +foot in the manner most likely to speed the parting guest. Hiram +entered and took his place with a very red face. He felt dimly that +the yelp was a criticism upon the smile with which he carried the dog +out. To Hiram that sermon did not tend to edification. + +That particular Sunday was a memorable one in Ovid. The congregation +had just gathered itself together after the incident of the dog, when +the preacher announced the hymn. It was one of the few really +beautiful hymns, "Lead, kindly Light." + +Judith rose to sing with the rest, and with the second word her voice +joined with the others, dominating them as the matin song of the lark +might pierce through the chatter of sparrows along the eaves. When +Judith opened her lips to sing, music possessed her, and, a true +artiste to her finger-tips, she never sang carelessly. Absorbed in her +book--for she did not know the words--she sang on. The people looked +and wondered, and one by one the voices died away, the wheezy notes of +the melodeon faltered forth from beneath the second Miss Green's +uncertain fingers, and Judith sang on serenely, standing erect, her +head held high, her soft throat throbbing like a bird's. Outside the +air was golden with yellow sunshine, within it was cool and darkened. +A rift of light slanted through the closed shutters of the window near +which Judith stood; thousands of little motes danced in it, specks and +gleams of gold. Through the open windows there came the odour of dried +grass, and every now and then a flaw of wind brought a whiff from Oscar +Randall's field of white clover. Andrew had laughed in the meadow as +he thought of Judith's voice electrifying the people in the church, but +he had forgotten that he himself was not secure against its charm. +Laughter was far from his thoughts now. + + "Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, + Lead thou me on. + The night is dark, and I am far from home; + Lead thou me on." + + +The words, upborne upon the wings of matchless song, seemed to soar far +beyond the confines of the little church, taking with them the +inarticulate trust and hope and confidence of all these humble folk. + +The preacher sat looking at her, pale and entranced. This singing +seemed suddenly to open a long-closed door in his life, so that once +more he looked down that chimerical vista from out the misty distances +of which illusive hands beckoned him on to brighter things. He had +once dreamed of a loftier destiny than the life of a Methodist +preacher, but that was long past; still it was sweet to recall so +vividly the season when his spirit had wings. He sat before his +congregation, a tall, spare man, large of bone and awkward, with a +countenance upon which self-denial had graven deep cruel lines, a brow +that had weathered many bitter blasts. In type he was near allied to +the people before him, the last man, one would fancy, whom dreams would +visit. And yet, as he listened to this stranger girl, singing alone in +the midst of his congregation, there fell deeply upon him the trance of +dead delight; the simple panorama of his past spread itself before his +eyes, blotting out the faces before him as a shimmering mist obscures +an unlovely scene. + +It was a very simple vision, a "homespun dream of simple folk." He saw +a rosy-cheeked village girl, for whose sake he as a village lad had +worked and toiled and slaved. He had fought for education and success +that he might lay them at her feet. He had kept her waiting long. She +was only a poor, pretty girl, and she had other lovers. One night, +when her lover in a garret in the city was poring over his books, his +head aching, his heart faltering, yet persevering as much for her sake +as for the sake of his faith, she, driving home from a dance through +dewy lanes and softly-shadowed country roads, promised to marry the +farmer's son who was taking her home. + +The news reached him in his garret, and something flickered out of his +face which never shone there again. But with the tenacity of his race +he stuck to his work. His heart was in the green fields always, and he +had come from a long line of country men and women. He had no +inherited capacity for learning, but he got through his course somehow, +and became an accredited minister, and the day he was ordained the news +of her death reached him, and that was all. He had never censured her; +in his thoughts she had ever been an angel of sweetness and goodness, +and as Judith sang, all these things rushed back upon his heart. It +was with a very white face and a very soft voice that he rose to +address his people, and he spoke home to their hearts, for he knew +whereof he spake when he dealt with the pains and trials and troubles +of their lives. He was only the height of his platform removed from +them, and he had paid dearly for his paltry elevation, but from its +height he saw, far off perhaps, but clear, the shining of a great +light, and with ineloquent, slow speech he strove to translate its +glory and its promise to the people before him. + +Church was over; the people pressed slowly along the aisle into the +palpitant warmth of the summer afternoon. Miss Myers came up to Judith +when she stood for a moment at the door, and invited her to go home +with them to the house on the hill, and Judith, nothing loath, +consented. So presently she and Andrew, with Miss Myers, were walking +through the slumberous little streets of the village. + +As they drew near the house of Bill Aikins, they caught sight of him +sitting on the doorstep peeling potatoes, beads of perspiration upon +his brow, for he was suffering sorely from Kate's weekly infliction of +a white shirt. + +Bill had "a little wee face, with a little yellow beard, a +Cain-coloured beard," and usually wore a deprecatory smile upon his +countenance. He was possessed of a perfect temper, and whatever his +lot might seem to others, to himself it was all that could be desired. +To be the husband of such a woman, could man desire a better fate? +And, indeed, Kate Aikins was a fine-looking woman, tall and straight. +Old Sam Symmons often said she was a "gallant figure of a woman." + +As they passed the house they heard Kate's voice sounding shrilly from +within: + +"He did _what_! Weighed the paper with the cheese? And you stood by +and never said a word? I'll be bound! Well, 'a fool and his money is +soon parted.' There's truth in them old sayings yet. The idea of you +being scared to speak to Hi. Green and him cheating you before your +very face! Land sakes! What's he I wonder? Next time you go to buy +cheese you take paper with you. He asks enough for the cheese without +paying for paper." + +As they got beyond hearing, Judith's face burned out of sympathy for +Bill's embarrassment. However, Bill was in nowise troubled. He knew +his wife would be quite as ready to express herself towards any one +else in the village as to himself, and a philosophy born of that +reflection entirely prevented Bill from feeling in any degree abashed +by strangers enjoying his wife's eloquence. + +It was only two days since she had announced to him with much +satisfaction that she had "just told Sarah Myers what she thought of +her," and she had expressed a longing desire of late to have a five +minutes' talk with Andrew Cutler, relative to some supposed slight he +had put upon her. The whole village was well aware of many instances +of Bill's discomfiture when Kate first married him and undertook his +reformation. + +There was the day when Bill, well on towards being thoroughly drunk, +was returning home down the village street, walking carelessly through +the deep slush of early spring. Kate met him. She, if truth be told, +was on the lookout for him, having despatched him more than two hours +before to get some starch from the store. + +Between waiting for the starch and waiting for Bill, Kate was wroth +when she opened the door to begin her search. By an unlucky chance, +her first step took her over the ankles in icy slush, which, strange to +say, instead of cooling her wrath, raised it to white heat. Therefore, +when she, carefully picking her way up one side of the street, beheld +Bill advancing down the other, regardless of mud and slush, she paused +in disgust, until he was nearly opposite to her, and then ejaculated in +a tone of deepest disbelief in her own vision--"Bill! is that you?" + +"No," promptly replied Bill, "nor nobody like me either;" with which +the valiant Bill had resumed his way, feeling proud that he had not +only dismissed certainty but even suspicion of his identity from Kate's +mind. + +Before long he was a sadder and for the nonce, a wiser man, for Kate +reached home as soon as he did, and thereupon gave him to understand in +a very unmistakable way that he was her property and she knew it. + +All Ovid remembered this, and indeed could not well forget it, for +every wash-day, when starch naturally cropped up as one of the +circumstances attendant upon the event of washing, Kate might have been +heard by any passer-by giving Bill a full and dramatic account of the +occurrence, with preface upon drunkenness in general, and appendix upon +Bill's phases of the vice in particular, and copious addenda, of +contempt, contumely and vituperation. Bill listened, marvelling and +admiring, for her flow of language was a great source of pride to Bill, +albeit directed at himself. + +Indeed, he sacrificed his comfort willingly to enjoy the mental treat +her angry eloquence afforded him. There had been times, however, when +Kate's lessons had taken a more practical and infinitely less +entertaining form. It was one of these which effected Bill's final +reformation. The memory of it brought smiles to the lips of Ovidians, +young or old, whenever they met Bill. + +With all good managers in Ovid, it is the custom to salt down a small +barrel of herrings in autumn. These they buy from their fisherman +neighbours for a dollar per hundred. Now Kate, who was certainly, as +even her enemies admitted, a forehanded woman, sent Bill with a silver +dollar, to get her a hundred herrings, one day when the proper season +came around. With this Bill duly proceeded to the fishermen, paid his +dollar and got his herrings. As he turned to go, Sam Turner shouted an +invitation to him to come down at night and have a share of the beer +which was to be on tap at the Upper Fishing Station. Bill assented and +went his way. + +After his six o'clock supper, he told Kate he was going to get his saw +sharpened at the blacksmith shop, and so set out. He left the saw at +the blacksmith's, then smartened his pace along the street, down the +steep incline to the river's edge, carefully along the river path until +he disappeared into the fisherman's little hut. + +The door was closed, then Bill, Sam Turner, and some half-dozen others +gathered round the keg of smuggled beer, and all went merry as the +traditional wedding bell. + +About half-past eleven, Bill and the others emerged. The cask was +empty--their condition the antithesis of the cask's. Lurching, +stumbling, falling, sliding along the river path; scrambling, crawling, +climbing up the banks to the level, then along the street to Bill's +home. All this took time, and it was the hour when ghosts do walk ere +they neared Bill's door. A dim light gleamed in the window. "Beacon +tha' lights me home, boys," said Bill, who, having passed the +transitory phases of moroseness and pugnaciousness, to the higher state +of tears and courage, had now reached the acme of sentiment and +drunkenness simultaneously, and was ready, as he expressed several +times on the way up the bank in a voice which came from different +attitudes, as the speaker stood upright, crept, or lay flat, "To kish +Kate and fight for the country b'gosh." Bill and his friends +approached the door. Bill gently tried it. It was locked, so Bill +said. They each tried it in turn, and each pronounced it locked in a +voice betokening a strange and new discovery. They each knocked in +turn--silence. They each kicked in turn--silence. Then Bill said in a +lordly way, "Kate, open the door!" adding in an aside to his fellows, +"I'll forgive her, kish her, make her happy." Then again, "Kate, open +the door!" + +Kate did open the door, with such abrupt and unexpected suddenness that +Bill, standing before it, balanced back on his heels and raised his +outspread hands. His _confreres_ were preparing to make back-stays of +themselves to brace Bill up, when Kate's hand and arm reached forth, +and, with one single movement, as Sam Turner afterwards graphically +described her action, "yanked" Bill into the house and slammed the door. + +There was silence for a moment, followed by a slow sliding sound. His +late companions surrounded the two uncurtained windows and prepared to +watch events. + +Bill had slowly slid down, until he was now in a sitting posture on the +floor, with his back against the door. Kate had vanished; she soon +entered from the back of the house bringing two pails of water, with +which she proceeded deliberately to give Bill a cold bath. Bill said +several times in a weak voice, "Kish me, Kate," but Kate, preserving an +admirable silence, continued the deluge until Bill, with some show of +sobriety and nimbleness, arose. By this time the water was pouring out +beneath the door, and the watchers outside were shivering +sympathetically. As Bill rose, he certainly looked miserable enough to +excite pity, even in Kate's heart; but the worst was not yet. + +Disregarding the water streaming on the floor, Kate proceeded to +arrange two chairs, with an accompaniment of cloths, knives, salt, and +a small keg. Lastly, she produced two baskets of herrings. It was now +evident to the horrified watchers that her dire purpose was to make +Bill clean, wash, and salt down the hundred herrings then and there. +And such was the case. The watchers stayed until eyes and limbs were +weary, and then crept away awe-struck at the terrors of matrimony, and +deeply impressed by Kate's moral supremacy. + +And Bill worked and worked. His hand was unsteady, and his blood +flowed freely from numerous cuts to mingle with the herrings. He +scraped and scraped, and bedaubed himself with scales. He salted and +salted, and the salt bit his many cuts. But Kate was inexorable. +Every herring was cleaned, scaled, washed, salted and packed, and the +_débris_ thoroughly cleaned up before the miserable, white-faced, +repentant Bill was allowed to rest, and during it all Kate talked and +talked and talked. From that night Bill was a changed man, and his +admiration for Kate became more than ever pronounced. + +Every time one of those herring appeared on the table, Kate gave Bill a +_résumé_ of the whole affair, with variations upon her theme, which her +vivid and fertile imagination suggested. After the herrings were +finished, she revived the subject whenever the names of any of those +with him that night, fish, the river, or the fishing station were +mentioned. These were the regular cogent subjects. But any reference +to salted meats, cold water, late hours, etc., was very apt to draw +forth a like narration, so that a day rarely passed without Bill's +memory being refreshed thus, which was indeed a work of supererogation, +for Bill never forgot it. + +Andrew and Miss Myers recited many such tales for Judith's edification +as they walked up to the Cutler house, and whilst they sat at table. + +But later on, when Miss Myers hastened off to count the eggs which had +been brought in, to see if her chickens were properly fed, and to +generally look after the ways of her household, the talk fell into +other channels. + +Andrew and Judith talked seriously, looking into each other's eyes with +no veil upon their own, each drinking deeply of the peaceful rapture of +the hour. The scents from the old garden filled their nostrils, the +breath from the box diffused through the other odours a thread of fresh +bitterness, savouring them from satiety. + +A great clematis hung at one side of the porch, the deep green of its +leaves set close with purple stars. Upon the other side a Tartarean +honeysuckle was covered with coral-coloured buds. Far off in one +corner they could see a blur of gold where the thorny Scotch roses were +a mass of bloom. + +They sat long talking, and presently Miss Myers came round the corner +of the house with her dress tucked up about her and the servant girl +following with water pails; and soon the scent of fresh moist earth was +mingled with the fragrance of the flowers. + +Rufus lay at their feet, looking up at them with wistful, hazel eyes. +It was a simple scene, yet in it was being enacted a drama of delight. + +There is no sweeter time in a woman's life than the first hours of a +mutual love ere speech has profaned it. Judith was having her halcyon +hour now, and she rejoiced in it with sweet natural happiness. The +memory of her greatness had all but faded from her memory; now and then +from sleep's horizon it pointed a threatening finger at her; now and +then in morning dreams she recalled it vaguely, the wraith of a not +unhappy season. But she had no fear of it. Her only apprehension was +that she had misread the message in Andrew's ardent eyes, and that fear +only lived when they were apart, for, as she welcomed him upon the old +weather-beaten doorstep, where the spent petals of the loose-leaved +climbing roses lay, blots of crimson on the grey, or bade him farewell +at the gate where the white syringas surrounded them with the odour of +orange blossoms, she found in his eyes the strength and blessing of a +deep and perfect love. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + "Now, if this earthly love has power to make + Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake + Ambitions from their memories, and brim + Their measure of content: what merest whim + Seems all this poor endeavour after fame." + + +One day Judith, who had been in the village, went up to see Miss Myers. +It was intensely warm. To the eye the air seemed to quiver with heat; +a brazen sun shone in a cloudless sky; the birds were still; nature was +dumb; the only sounds which broke the stillness were echoes of enforced +toil. As Judith walked along the lanes, now grown deep in grass, the +fragrance of over-ripe clover came to her in waves of satiating +sweetness. The birds she startled uttered no cry, but flew heavily to +some near perch and sat there languidly, with feathers ruffled on their +little heads, their tiny bills apart as if they gasped for breath, +their wings drooping loosely with parted feathers at their sides. + +When she reached the house on the hill, she went straight through the +hall to the kitchen, for she had long ago been given the liberty of the +house. + +Miss Myers bustled up with grim kindness, took away her hat, made her +sit by the window, and brought her a great cool goblet of raspberry +syrup in water. It was very cool in this big kitchen. The windows +were heavily hung with Virginian Creeper, and the stove was in the +summer kitchen. Rufus lay stretched in one corner, his ears flapping +as he snatched irascibly at a tormenting fly. + +Miss Myers had been a little upset when Judith entered, and she +proceeded to tell Judith her worries. She had come out to inspect the +kitchen work, and found her milk pans set out without their bunches of +grass. + +"A silly notion of Sarah Myers," the Ovid women called it, but it was a +dainty one nevertheless--one Miss Myers' mother and mother's mother had +always observed, since ever the first Myers left the meadows of Devon. +This notion was that all summer long Miss Myers insisted that the +polished milk pans, when set out to sweeten in the sun, should each +have a bunch of fresh grass or clover put in it, to wither in the pan. +She declared it gave sweetness and flavour to the milk. + +Miss Myers had many dainty ways in her house-keeping. The glossy linen +sheets were laid away with clusters of sweet clover in their folds. +Her snowy blankets were packed with cedar sprigs. Her table linen was +fragrant all summer with the stolen perfume of violets or rose leaves +strewn with them in the linen drawer. And in the winter there were +twigs of lemon thyme and lemon verbena there, carefully dried for that +purpose. "All notions," the villagers said contemptuously, adding +something about old maids. Nevertheless, these notions savoured the +whole household with sweetness, and seemed to add beauty to the more +prosaic details of every-day work. + +Since Judith had come so frequently to the house, there had always been +flowers upon the dining table and in the parlour, and in the big dim +bedroom. + +Hot as it was, Miss Myers was ready to go out and patrol the garden, +which, subdued beneath the sun's caresses, lay exhaling a hundred +varied scents. The tall white lilies were in bloom at last, ineffably +lovely, with golden hearts and petals whose edges were silvery in the +sunshine. + +When Andrew returned at night from his fields, his strong face a little +weary, his eyes restless and eager, the first sight that met his vision +was Judith Moore,--Judith, in a simple dark blue frock, standing in the +doorway of his home, and looking--he dared hope--for him. She looked +so consonant with the old house and the flowerful garden that Andrew +felt no other presence in the world would have completed the picture so +well. + +How sweet to see a woman waiting there for him! Even as he had +dreamed. He stood some time and watched her, himself unobserved. How +sweet and calm her face was--yet anticipative, content--yet eager! He +looked at her long across the narrow space from where he stood, and in +after days recalled her untroubled beauty very clearly. + +He tried to note in detail the form of her features, but he could only +think of her faithful eyes, the beauty of her honest smile, the promise +of her mouth, with the deep hollow between the lower lip and the +dimpled hillock of her chin, which is, they say, the truest indication +of a woman's capacity for real love, just as heavy eyelids denote +modesty, and thin nostrils delicacy of the senses. + +Some sympathy, some subtle mental influence, made Judith flush and look +about her. Andrew slipped around the corner of the house, to come +behind her in a few minutes rid of the day's dust. He touched her +gently on the shoulder. She started, yet laughed. "I knew you were +coming," she said; "I did not hear you, but I was certain of it." + +After tea, they three (for Judith felt shy of Andrew to-night, and +clung to Miss Myers, and gently compelled her to step forth with them) +walked up and down the garden walks. + +The flowers, their fragrance freshened by the dew, flung forth their +odours royally. The birds, revived by the coolness, were singing their +deferred songs. An oriole's liquid note was answered from the lindens; +the robins were flying about from tree to tree with happy confidence; +some Phoebe birds were fluttering about the porch; sparrows were +wrangling in the box; a humming-bird was darting from bed to bed; +emerald-throated, ruby-crested, it vibrated from flower to flower, +itself like an animated vagrant blossom; the swallows were darting in +long, graceful flights high in air, or soaring in slanting circles over +the barns, where their nests were; now and then, flying slowly +homeward, a crow crossed their vision, a shadow on the sky. + +The heavy toads hopped lumberingly forth from their hiding-places to +search for slugs; a tree toad gave its shrill call from a cedar tree. +Andrew had once shown Judith one, clinging like a lichen to the bark, +and of much the same greyish-green colour. The crickets sang shrilly +and sweetly, like boy sopranos in a vestured choir; the frogs, in a +far-off pond, added their unfinished notes to Nature's vespers; bats +flew silently and weirdly overhead. + +"Do you know what the frogs say?" asked Andrew of Judith. + +"No; what?" she asked, looking up so eagerly, so trustingly, that a +smile twitched the corners of his mouth, even as he longed to gather +her in his arms. + +"The little frogs with the shrill voices say, 'Cut across! cut across! +cut across!' The wise old frogs, the big ones, with the bass voices, +say, 'Go round! go round! go round!'" + +Judith listened, her eyes big with interest. "Why, so they do," she +said, and looked at him as at a wizard revealing a mystery. + +Miss Myers laughed, her grimness tempered by a tear. "Tell her about +the mill-pond frogs, Andrew," she said. + +"Oh, well, the frogs in the mill-pond over beyond Ovid, used to say, +'Old Andy Anderson is a thief! Old Andy Anderson is a thief!' and no +one paid any attention; but after a while people found out he was +cheating them, not giving them the proper weight of flour, and so on, +for their grists. Then they found the frogs were telling the truth." + +"Mr. Cutler," said Judith, "did people know what the frogs said before +they found out that the miller stole?" + +"Well," admitted Andrew, laughing a little, "I don't believe they did." + +In the instance of the mill-pond frogs the oracle was fitted to the +event, as it has been in other cases. + +Later the dusk fell, and the moon slowly soared aloft; a midsummer +moon, indescribably lovely; such a moon as is seen once in a +lifetime--pale, perfect, lustrous as frosted silver, white as +unsmirched snow, seeming to be embossed upon the sky. Such a moon +haunted Keats, inspired Shelley, whispered a suggestion of kinship to +Philip Sidney, and long, long ago, shone upon the Avon. + +And beneath this moon, intense as white flame, pure as a snow crystal, +Judith Moore and Andrew Cutler began their walk to the farmhouse by the +wood. Judith held her skirts gathered up about her from the dew; she +was bareheaded, her broad hat hanging on her arm. They had to pass +along a path deep shadowed in trees. Judith started nervously at some +sound; that start vibrated to Andrew's heart. He drew her arm within +his, and Judith walked dreamily on, feeling secure against the world +and all its fears. They emerged into the moonlight, and stopped where +Andrew had constructed a rude stile over the rail fence, for Judith's +convenience. Their eyes met in the moonlight, each knew the hour had +come, and the heart of each leaped to its destiny. + +"Judith," said Andrew, very softly. + +"Yes," she whispered. + +"What is the sweetest time in all the world?" + +She paused a moment; then, as a flower bends to the sun, as a flame +follows the air, she swayed slowly towards him. "Now," she breathed, +her heart in the word. + +And the next moment she was in his arms; their lips had met. + +From the shadows of the wood they had passed came the silvery call of +the cat-bird that sings to the moon--and they two had drunk of "life's +great cup of wonder;" only a sip perhaps, but their mouths had touched +the golden brim, their lips had been dipped in its priceless nectar +(the true nectar of the fabled gods!) and their nostrils had known the +sweets of its ineffable perfume. + +So they stood, heart to heart. All that the world comprehended for +Andrew was now in the circle of his arms. And Judith? All her world +throbbed in Andrew's breast. + +And for both there was no other universe but the heaven of their mutual +love,--a heaven shut in and hedged about by two strong tender arms; a +heaven sustained by two hands that fluttered pleadingly upon Andrew's +breast. Not strong hands these, but strong enough to hold in +safe-keeping the treasure-trove of a good man's love! + +And their talk? Well, there are some sacred old-fashioned words, +tender words, such as our fathers whispered to our mothers long ago, +such as _their_ fathers, and their fathers' fathers, wooed and won +their wives with, such as their wives whispered back with trembling +lips--these words passed between Andrew and Judith. We all dream these +words. Some few happy ones hear them; some brave true souls have +spoken them; and from some of us even their echo has departed, to be +merged in unending silence. So we will not write them here. + +And at last they parted. Andrew strode slowly homeward, his face +glorified, stopping now and then to fancy he held her once more against +his breast, feeling again the fragrance of her hair, hearing in the +happy throbs of his heart her trembling words saying that she loved him. + +_Loved him_! The mystery and magic of its meaning wrought into his +heart, until it seemed too small to hold its store of joy. He took off +his cap in the moonlight, and looked to the heavens a voiceless +aspiration to be worthy. + +And well might Andrew Cutler bare his brow, for there had been given +into his hands the holiest chalice man's lips know, the heart of a good +woman! Well might Judith Moore, in a burst of happy tears, vow vows to +be worthy, resolving to be better, stronger, nobler, for she had been +given that great gift for which, we are told, thanks should be +rendered, fasting--the gift of a good man's love! + +* * * * * * + +"MY DEAR MASTER,--After all, you see, I am the one to write first, and +I am afraid you will be very angry when you read my letter. But I hope +you will forgive me. I will tell you now, at once, what it is, and +while you read my letter try to forget I am Judith Moore the opera +singer, and remember only that I am a woman first and foremost. And a +woman needs love, and I have found it, and cannot bear to give it up, +as I must, if I come back to you--to the stage. So, will you set me +free? Will you let me stay here? Will you let me stop singing and be +forgotten? I know how dreadful this will seem to you, how ungrateful I +will appear, how ignoble to give up my art for what you will call 'a +passion'; but oh, dear master! you cannot know all this is to me, this +love. It is _everything_, health, happiness, hope, all. And it is not +that I have forgotten your gifts; indeed, indeed, no. It is that I am +so sure of your great generosity, that I want you to be still more +generous; to add one more gift, the supreme one. For in spite of what +I've said it all rests in your hands. I know what you have spent on +me, in money alone, besides your continual thought for me. I know how +patient you have been, letting me save my voice till it was mature and +strong. I know you will have horrible forfeits to pay on the lease of +the opera house, and then all the chorus on your hands, and the +terrible advertising for this American season. I know the horrible +_fiasco_ it will seem to the public, and how your jealous rivals will +make capital out of the mythical _prima donna_ who did not materialize. +But all this is the price of a woman's whole life, the purchase money +of a life's happiness. Will you help pay it? For I will do what I +can. There is the money you gave me after the Continental season. It +is untouched; take that. And there are my jewels--all these gifts, you +know--in the vault. I send you the order for those. And the man I +love may be richer yet, and I will say to him, 'I owe a dear friend a +debt,' and you shall have, year by year, all we can send. Does it not +seem that in time I might make it up? And the artistic disappointment +you feel, oh, master! To lose my art seems indeed a crucifixion to me, +but in that there is hope of resurrection. To lose my love would be +unending death. + +"I know myself well now. I am a woman full-grown within these last +weeks, and even as I write I know that I will have many bitter regrets, +many sad hours thinking of my music; but what are these hours compared +with an unceasing pain such as will be mine if you say no to my dream? +Of course, I know I am bound to you by no contract; but the confidence +you have shown in me binds me with a firmer bond, and if you feel you +cannot release me I will do my best, my very best to realize your +hopes. You know I am honourable enough for that. But one thing, dear +master, I lay upon you. If you come for me, taking me away from my +happiness, remember never to speak to me of it, never refer to this +letter, never tell me your reasons for refusing the boon I crave from +you on my knees. If I see you I shall know I have asked too much, and +that it has been denied me. There is but one thing more. The man, my +man, is utterly ignorant of my money value. He sees in me only a woman +to love, take care of, and work for. He does not know that I can earn +more in a week than he in years. He realizes most keenly the beauty of +music, but he does not know what it brings in the markets of the world. +I would ask him to let me sing, but I know well that such singing as +mine demands the consecration of all; when I sell my voice, the body, +the heart, the soul goes with it, all subordinated to the voice. That +would not do. He has given all, he must and shall have all in return, +all I have to give, or nothing. He knows me only as a woman who came +here for rest, quiet and health; he does not dream my name is billed +about the city on coloured posters, talked of as a common possession by +every one--does not know the papers are full of my doings or +intentions. So you see it is myself he loves. And now, master, this +is good-bye. Good-bye to you and the old life, which, before I knew +any better, seemed the best of all. I hope I may some time see you +again, but not till I can greet you without too great joy in my +release, without too keen pain for my music. + +"Send me a line and tell me I am free, and believe me, ever and ever, +Judith Moore, your own grateful little girl. + +"P.S.--I have said nothing of my gratitude to you, but this letter +means that or nothing. Means that I am so sensible of what I owe to +you that I will give up my very life showing you that I do not forget +your long-continued kindness. J. M." + +This was the letter the post took away from Ovid next morning, a letter +written not without tears. + +* * * * * * + +After the music of the gods has once been breathed through a Pipe, it +is never quite content to echo common sounds, not even if its heart be +given back to it, and it be born again a growing reed among its +fellows; even if it echoes back the soughing of the summer wind, and is +never torn by the tempest; even if it grows continually in the +sunshine, and never bends its head beneath the blast; even if it be +crowned with brown tassels, and all men call it beautiful. It still +has the hungry longing, the dissatisfied yearning, the pain that comes +of remembered greatness, even if that greatness was bought at bitter +cost. The true gods may well + + "Sigh for the cost and pain, + For the reed which grows never more again + As a reed with the reeds in the river." + +For that pain is poignant, and perhaps more of us endure it than is +imagined. It may be, these inexplicable yearnings of our souls for +some vague good, these bitter times when not even life seems sweet, +these regrets for what we have not known, for what we think we have +never been, for what is not, these may be dim memories from ages back, +from the times when the voices of the gods spake through men, and men +gave heed to them, and, unmindful of their own personal pain, +proclaimed to man the messages of the gods. And though this birthright +brings pain with it, yet we, growing like other reeds, and proud as +they of our brown tassels, or sorrowing, like them, for our lack, are +proud also to know that of our kind the gods chose their instruments +for the making known of their music to men. The yearning for the +divine breath may be better borne than the cruel _afflatus_ it imparts, +and yet we are glad that once we were not unworthy to be so tried, and +not all rejoiced that the keener pain, the higher honour, is taken from +us. + +* * * * * * + +Sometimes before a great storm an illusive hush holds sway, a perilous +peace falls upon the face of nature. With it, a mysterious light +irradiates the sky; a solemn sunshine, prophetic of after rains, the +forerunner of tempest--a luminous warning of wrath to come. In some +such fashion surely the face of the angel shone when he, as the writers +of tales tell us, drove our parents out of Paradise. + +It was this illusory illumination that gilded the lives of Judith Moore +and Andrew Cutler at this time. How few of us read the rain behind the +radiance! + +They were both happy. As a parched plant vibrates in all its leaves, +stirs and quickens when given water that means life to it, so Judith +Moore's whole being trembled beneath its baptism of love. For she +seems to have had no doubt that her manager--her "master," as she +lovingly called him--would grant her request. Already her past life, +with all its work, and waiting, and triumph, seemed but a dim dream, +her present hope the only reality. She ran about the Morris house so +lightly that it seemed to Mrs. Morris she heard the patter of +children's feet, the sweetest sound that ever wove itself into this +simple woman's dreams. + +Judith's heart was ever across the fields with her lover, and she "sang +his name instead of a song," and found it surpassing sweet. And +Andrew's heart and head were both busy with loving plans for Judith. + +The Muskoka woods might go, and their green mosses be torn for +minerals! No more long, lonely hunts for him! He must reap golden +harvests wherever he might for Judith, now. He knew all her +insufficiencies as a housewife, which poor Judith felt very humble in +confessing; and it gave Andrew great joy, in a modest way, that he +would be able to let her be quite free of them. + +And he had higher dreams. Politics offers a wide arena for ambition. +Its sands may have been soiled by the blood of victims, trodden by the +feet of hirelings, defiled by the struggles of mercenaries; but there +are yet some godlike gladiators left, who war for right; there are yet +noble strifes, and few to fight them; and Andrew, in whose heart +patriotism was as a flaming fire, resolved to dedicate himself for the +fray. To win glory for Judith, to do something to savour his life that +it might be worthy of her acceptance, that it might leave some +fragrance upon the tender hands that held it--that was his aim, and he +felt he would not fail. + +No inherent force can be very great and not give its possessor a thrill +of power. Andrew felt within him that which meant mastery of men. And +in spite of difficulties and obstacles, Andrew at last won the wreath +to which he had aspired in the first flush of his hope and joy. + +But that was after. + +* * * * * * + +One day, a week after Judith had sent the letter, a group of Ovidians +were in Hiram Green's store. There was old Sam Symmons, Jack +Mackinnon, Oscar Randall (who, together with his hopes of political +preferment, aspired to the hand of Sam Symmons' Suse), and Bill Aikins. +The latter would "catch it," as he well knew, when he got home, for +loitering in the store, and therefore, with some vague thought of +palliating his offence, forbore to make himself comfortable, but stood +uneasily by the door, jostled by each person who came in, pushed by +each who went out. + +Jack Mackinnon was speaking, his thin dark face wreathed in smiles. + +"How d'ye like the blind horse, Mr. Symmons? I tell ye blind horses +are smart sometimes! There was one Frank Peters, wot I worked for in +Essex, owned, and he never would eat black oats. Critters has their +likes and dislikes same as people. I once knowed a dog--but that blind +horse--well, he'd never eat black oats when he had his sight--went +blind along of drawing heavy loads--doctored him all winter--t'wasn't +any use, sight gone, gone complete--well, as I said, he wouldn't eat +black oats when he had his sight, and when, the horse was blind, sir, +he knowed the difference between black oats and white, yes, just the +same as when he had his sight. You couldn't timpt that horse to eat +black oats, then or no time, he wouldn't so much as nose at 'em, no +sir. You couldn't fool that horse on oats. But pshaw! blind horses! +why Henry Acres wot I worked for in Essex--" + +"Oh, shut up, Jack!" said Hiram, and Jack accepted his quietus +good-naturedly, quite unabashed. + +The village arithmetician had once taken the trouble to calculate how +long Jack Mackinnon must have worked in Essex, deducing the amount from +Jack's account of the number of years he had worked for different +people there. The result showed Jack must have spent some hundred and +sixty years in Essex if all his tales were true; and Jack always +repudiated with scorn any question of his veracity, hoping, with great +fervour and solemnity, that he "drop down dead in his tracks" if he was +lying, a judgment which never overtook him. + +The talk turned upon politics, as it always did if Oscar Randall was +there, and old Sam Symmons was soon holding forth. + +"Yes," he said, "yes, the old elections were wont to be rare times. I +do remember at one election, near the close of the polls, beguiling +Ezra Thompson to a barn, and there two of us held him, by main strength +and bodily force, till the polls were closed. Truly he was an angry +and profane man when we set him free"--here came a reminiscent chuckle, +cut short to answer Oscar Randall's tentative question. + +"Trouble? Get us into trouble? Yes, of a private kind. Ezra Thompson +and I fought that question with our fists some seventeen times, and the +lad with me had much the same number of bouts over it. But we neither +of us begrudged him satisfaction. In those days a man took +satisfaction out of his enemy's skin; he didn't sneak away to lawyers +to bleed him in his pocket. No, no. + +"Yes, 'twere a great election that! Twas the time Mr. Brown ran +against Mr. Salmon. Now, it was told of Mr. Salmon, that though of +good presence, and very high and mighty towards his neighbours, yet he +was ignorant; and when his election came on, it was told of him how he +met an English gentleman on the train once, who, wishing to learn of +Canada, spoke at length with Mr. Salmon, and in the course of the talk +(during which Mr. Salmon was much puffed up), the English gentleman +said to him: 'And have you many reptiles in Canada?' 'No,' said Mr. +Salmon (and a pompous man he was, very)--'No, we have very few +reptiles, only a few foxes.' It was Mr. Salmon, too, who once refused +when he was J.P. to look into the case of a poor man whose horse's leg +had been broken in a bad culvert. And the man cried in a gust of rage: +'What! did you not swear to see justice done? and now you won't +consider this?' 'Swear,' said Mr. Salmon, 'I did no such thing. I +only took my affidavit.'" Old Sam's voice died away. + +Hiram spoke from behind the counter. "The roadmasters do bring the +country into terrible expenses. Look at the bill of costs that's been +run up in that case at Jamestown." + +"Yes," said Oscar Randall, as one having authority, "the people's money +is wasted in this country with an awful disregard of the public +welfare." + +"You're right there, Os." "Now you bet your head's level." "Don't you +mistake yourself, it's level!" "I tell you, you just hit the nail on +the head that time!" + +When this chorus subsided, Mr. Horne, who had just entered, said: + +"What do you think of that concession, Os, out back of Braddon's?" + +"There is no doubt," said Oscar, promptly, "but that is a question +which must be adjusted. It is such internal disputes as these which +weaken and destroy the unity of the country, and lay us open to an +unexpected attack from the States, which we, by reason of disunion and +strife, would be unable to cope with." + +The house, composed of Hiram on his sugar barrel, Sam in the one chair, +Jack Mackinnon on a cracker box, and a row of men braced against the +counters on each side, fairly rose at this. Clearly Oscar Randall had +the makings of a great speaker in him! + +But Mr. Horne was a man of slow mental methods, who always decided one +point before he left it for another. He waited till the chorus of +"That's so; that's the ticket," "Bet your life; _that's_ the way to +talk," "Let 'em try it; we'd be ready for 'em" (this last from Jack +Mackinnon who was a volunteer) had died away, when he said: + +"That's right, Os; you're right there, right enough; but what do you +think--ought it to be closed or should it be opened?" + +"I think," said Oscar, slowly, and with confidential emphasis--"I +think, as every patriotic and honest man thinks, that the rights of the +people must be preserved." + +A diversion occurred here. A shout from the roadway took them all out. +Before the door stood a carriage with a little black-a-vised man in it; +and behind that, an express waggon, beside the driver of which sat a +perky-looking woman, different from anything ever seen in Ovid, for +French maids of the real Parisian stripe were not apt to visit this +village often. + +"The way to old man Morris'? yes," said Oscar Randall, and proceeded to +give minute directions. + +The little cavalcade started again, the gentleman leaning back in the +carriage, murmuring to himself: + +"Now, I wonder which of these specimens he was." + +* * * * * * + +And at that moment Andrew Cutler and Judith Moore were taking farewell, +for a few hours as they thought, beneath the shadows of Andrew's +chestnut trees. + +"Darling," he whispered, holding her gently to him, "my arms seem +always aching for you when we are parted; my heart cries for you +continually. Judith, dear little girl, you won't make me wait too +long?" + +She clung to him silently, hiding her face on his arm. A tremour shook +her; after all he was a man, the dominant creature of the world. True, +he trembled at her voice and touch now--but then, after? + +"Andrew," she whispered, "will you be good to me?" + +"Trust me, dear, and see," he whispered back. + +"You know I have no one but myself," she said, putting back her head +and looking at him with pale cheeks and tear-rilled eyes. "If you are +cruel to me or harsh to me: if you make love a burden, not a boon, I +will have no one to turn to. I--" she stopped with quivering lips. + +"My own girl," he said, "trust me. I know I am rough compared to you, +but I will be tender. I know my man's ways frighten you, but it shall +be all my thought to make you trust me. Give me your presence always, +that's all I ask--to see you, feel you near, hear you about the house, +have your farewells when I go away, your welcome when I return, your +encouragement in what I undertake, your sympathy in what I do. That +means heaven to me, but only when you are happy in it. Dearest, you +don't think I would be bad to you?" + +And Judith, in a storm of sobs that seemed to melt away all the icy +doubts and fears that had assailed her, laid her head upon his breast, +and promised that soon, very soon, she would go to the house on the +hill never to leave it; and, when she had grown calmer with a deeper +peace than she had yet known, he left her--there, in the shadow of the +trees--to return in a few hours. + +And Judith stole into the kitchen door and up to her room, to find her +French maid packing her trunks and be told that "Monsieur awaited her +in the _salon_." + +* * * * * * + +Her vow had been required of her--that was all she could think, and she +prepared herself to keep it. + +The manager was clever and adroit in his way. He kept Mrs. Morris busy +with him, so that she did not see Judith till she entered to say she +was ready; and then, as Mrs. Morris told afterward, she got a "turn." +For the Judith who came to say "good-bye," was the same Judith who +greeted her at first, gracefully languid, pale, self-composed, and +somewhat artificially, if charmingly, courteous. + +"There was some difference," Mrs. Morris said, "but I can't just say +what." + +The difference was that Judith had come a girl, and left a woman. + +So for the last time Judith crossed the little garden, feeling +strangely unfamiliar with the homely flowers she passed. In the +meantime the drivers of the conveyances had conferred with Mr. Morris, +and the shorter road they took to the railway station was directly away +from the village, away from the house on the hill. + +They caught a glimpse of it as they turned a corner, and suddenly +Judith seemed to feel the scent of white lilies, and hear an evening +chorus of nature's composition. Her hand held tightly a little +envelope, in which she had hurriedly slipped something before she left +her room. + +She was thinking how she could drop it unobserved, when from the shadow +of some wild plum trees there issued a disreputable dog--Nip--with +Tommy Slick behind him, a basket of wild plums in his hand. + +She interrupted the manager's flow of news to say-- + +"Do stop the man a minute, I want to speak to that boy." + +"I'll call him." + +"No, no; I'll get out," she said. + +So without more ado he stopped the carriage; the whims of a _prima +donna_ must needs be respected. + +She got out and ran back to Tommy, who greeted her with a grin. + +"Tommy," she said, "you like me, don't you? And you like Andrew +Cutler? Now, will you do something for me that no one else in the +world can do?" + +"I'll do it," said Tommy, with business-like brevity. + +"And you will not breathe it to any living soul?" + +"I kin keep my mouth shut," said Tommy. "Often had to." + +"Then," said Judith, "I'll trust you. Give this to Andrew Cutler; if +you run you will catch him in his chestnut woods. Try to get there +quickly, and meet him before he gets near Morris'. Give him this, and +say: 'She has gone away! she sends all her love and this.'" + +Tommy's impish face had a look of concern beyond his years. Tears were +running down Judith's face. + +"Say, be you never coming back?" + +"Never, never, Tommy!" said Judith. "Good-bye." + +* * * * * * + +So in due time Andrew Cutler received from Tommy Slick's fruit-stained +hand an envelope containing one long bright lock of hair, and a message +sent with it; and was told also of the few other words that passed, and +of Judith's tears. And Tommy having delivered his message, and seen +the look on Andrew's face, dug his knuckles into his eyes, and with a +veritable howl of grief fled away back as he had come; and Andrew +suddenly looked about and found life emptied of all joy. + +Judith seemed so very calm as the weeks went by, that her manager told +himself he had been a fool to worry so that night--after he returned +her letter to the post-office, and decided to go and fetch her from +Ovid. He had sent it back, so that if she had refused to come, +or--yes! he had thought of that, being so imbued with stage ways--if +she had hinted at killing herself, he might declare with clean hands +that he was guiltless, that he had never had her letter, that some one +else had got it and sent it back to the Dead Letter office. But, after +all, how foolish he was, he thought, watching Judith smile, and reply +prettily to the courtesies of some guests whom he had just introduced +to her. But then, her letter had seemed full of meaning! Well, that +letter was doubtless a manifestation of the stage-craft with which she +was thoroughly saturated! So he comforted himself. And meanwhile, +Judith was learning that "Face joy's a costly mask to wear," and asking +wearily of each day that dawned, "_Is not my destiny complete? Have I +not lived? Have I not loved? What more?_" + +And the time for her American _début_ drew on. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +"Glory itself can be, for a woman, only a loud and bitter cry for +happiness."--_Madame de Stael_. + + +Judith Moore made a triumphant success of her first American season. + +She was lauded to the skies. An ocean of praise was poured in +libations before her; its ripples spread across the Atlantic, to break +in an ominous wave at Patti's feet, and Patti seeing it, perhaps +feeling the chill of its encroachment, determined immediately upon +another American tour. + +There is a picture of Judith Moore painted at this time by one of the +deftest masters of facial portraiture. Sittings were given for this +whilst past applause was echoing in her ears, with newer shouts +awaiting her in an hour or two; but the woman pictured upon this canvas +is neither hearkening to past applause, nor anticipating new honour. +She is absorbed in the dream of some sweet past, silent in the face of +some unachieved joy, the whole face illumined, by an after-glow from +some light of other days--a first radiance of a morn that never breaks. +It shows a woman with wide, wistful, grey eyes--eyes which had wept, +and lips that denied and defied the tears, a brow whereon triumph and +grief had warred for mastery and merged at length into patient +endurance; but the head is proudly poised, as a head should be that +bears a crown. Even a thorny one confers and demands honour. If this +woman bore a cross, she did not flaunt it in the face of men; she bore +it hidden in her heart, and drew it out in secret places to wash her +heart's blood from it with her tears. Tears are the salt of love that +savour it to time everlasting. + +It was the fashion to say that Miss Moore dwelt upon the heights to +which her genius of song raised her, that from the peaks of success she +looked down contemptuously upon all beneath. Alas! They could not +tell how icy these pinnacles were! The roseate glow cast upon the +"eternal snows" may look very beautiful, but the humblest hearth where +love lights the fire is warmer. + +She felt, indeed, the exaltation of genius, but upon every side she +looked forth into the void. She was possessed again by that agony of +vertigo that had seized her among the apple blooms; now, as then, she +stood among blossoms; now, as then, her heart sickened within her. But +there was one deadly difference; there was no strong arm to take her +down. Indeed, it seemed to her even the ladder was gone. Could any +man forgive the perfidy of which she had been guilty? Many a hand was +outstretched to her, some that would have soiled her own had she +clasped them, others she might have met honestly, palm to palm. She +brushed gently past them all; if some of them tugged at her skirts, it +only gave her some discomfort and pity for their pleading, but no pain. + +Her manager was most enthusiastic over her. He remembered guiltily a +letter he had opened and read, a letter he sent back to the post-office +with apologies--"he was sorry, the letter was not for him"--a letter +which even now was slowly threading its way back through the Dead +Letter office pigeon-holes to an undreamed destination. + +He was working her too hard, though--so musical people whispered among +themselves. She had always needed the curb and not the spur. Of +course, it was a great thing to get such a hold upon the public in +one's first season, with the sure knowledge that she would have to bid +against Patti in her next one; still, all these encores, and Sunday +concerts and extra musicales were felt to be too much. And one or two +men, whose souls were sensitive, ceased going to hear Miss Moore. +There was something of agony, personal agony, mingling with the passion +of her voice. One of these men shuddered, when some one, using a +hackneyed simile, spoke of her as a human nightingale. There came to +his fanciful imagination the old myth of the nightingale that sings +with her breast against a thorn. It seemed somehow to him that this +woman had grown delirate with the pain, and pressed sorer and sorer +upon her thorn. He thought, too, of the birds whose eyes they blind +that they may sing better; of the dove that bears + + ... "thro' heaven a tale of woe, + Some dolorous message knit below + The wild pulsation of her wings." + + +He thought of the swan's song of death, and of the reed that the "Great +God Pan" wrenched from its river home to fashion forth a Pipe. The +American papers laughed a good deal at this man, caricaturing him as +the poet of soulful lilies and yearning souls, hinting that he would +like to inaugurate a pre-Raphaelesque era in America _à la_ Burne +Jones. He read these things sometimes. They flushed his thin cheeks, +but did not trouble his eyes--those eyes that mirrored forth the soul +of the mystic. He was right about Judith Moore. + +She bowed her head to accept the last accolade of Genius--grief. She +had partaken of pain--that chrism which, laid upon poetic lips, +sanctifies their words to immortality, but which savours the breath +they breathe with the bitterness of death. Byron, Shelley, Keats, +Rossetti (how many we might name!) have partaken of that sacrament. +But what matter for the Pipe, so that the world, when it has time to +listen, may hear sweet singing? The world, in its way, was very good +to Judith Moore. It gave her the sweet smile of its approval right +royally; it gave her all its luxuries, all its praise, and this Judith +did not pretend not to enjoy. But she enjoyed it as one does who +drinks what he knows will kill him, yet continues the draught, that in +its intoxication he may forget the doom it brings. + +Judith was seen everywhere, for she availed herself of all the +privileges which her genius, her beauty, her untarnished fame won for +her. She was pointed out wherever she went; sometimes when a crush of +carriages held her own imprisoned, she would hear a whisper from lip to +lip, "Look! look! There is Judith Moore." Nothing further was needed; +every one knew Judith Moore. And Judith treated the world as it +deserved of her. She dressed herself beautifully for it, and smiled +and sang to it, and exhibited herself to it everywhere. Everywhere, +for she was striving to so tire her spirit that when she was alone it +might at least be numb, if not at rest. In vain! That ardent, tender +spirit was yet indomitable. The body, the slender, beautiful body it +animated, might be sore aweary, but so soon as Judith was alone her +spirit fled far away, back to the place of its rejoicing; back to the +village in the valley, where it was always spring or summertide; back +to the old rail fences with the tangled weeds about them; back to the +apple blooms; back to the brown furrows where the grey birds nested; +back to the lindens and the chestnuts, and there, hour after hour, her +spirit held voiceless commune with that other. Her spirit well might +be comforted, but Judith strained listening ears to hear one tender +word, wearied her eyes searching for the semblance of a face, stretched +forth trembling hands for comfort, and, overcome at last, let them +fall, empty. + +The opera season closed, and an incident that made some talk put the +period to Judith's first American season. Judith had sung as she never +sang before. Her voice seemed to transcend the limits of human +capability, and become something independent of her lips, something +sentient, springing ever higher and higher. + +The man in whose heart she was likened to the pierced nightingale, the +blinded lark, the mourning dove, the dying swan, had come to listen to +her. At her last appearance there was a roar of applause, a wave of +laudation that seemed as if it might carry her off her feet. There is +something thrilling, inspiring, almost weird in the union of human +voices, something that stirs the imagination, something that never +grows old to us, for it never becomes familiar. Usually they jar and +jangle across each other as children babble, each fretting for his own +toy, so that we almost forget what the power of union is. In praise or +blame it makes the world tremble. + +She made no pretence of retiring for the encore. She made no sign to +the musicians. She did not assume the pose, familiar to them, for any +of her songs. They sat silent, spellbound with the audience. She +stepped slowly forward, stretched forth her arms, and sang +unaccompanied, what seemed an invocation to the better Ego of every +soul present, a song she had been wont to sing to Andrew: + + "Out from yourself! + Out from the past with its wrecks and contrition, + Out from the dull discontentment of now, + Out from the future's false-speaking ambition, + Out from yourself! + For your broken heart's rest; + For the peace which you crave; + For the end of your quest; + For the love which can save; + Come! Come to me!" + + +Those who heard that song never forgot it. And one man, at least, +never forgot the expression upon the woman's face as she sang. Rapt as +of a sibyl who conjures away an evil spirit; winning as a woman who +promises all things; informed with the intensity of one who bids her +will go forth to accomplish her desire--she held her last pose a +moment. The house "rose at her." Even as they cheered a change +overspread her face. It grew glorified, exultant, tremulously eager, +as of one who feels the pinions of his soul stirring for flight--for +flight to longed-for shores. With that look upon her face she fell. + +* * * * * * + +Far away from New York, in the silent spaces of a virgin forest, a man +was lying on the snow, his gun beneath his arm ready for use. But he +was keeping no lookout for game. His eyes were fixed upon an open +space amid the tree tops, where a solitary star twinkled desolately. +His face was thin; his eyes burned; the snows, the silence, nor the +solitude could calm that throbbing at his heart, could cool the fever +in his veins. He thought of Judith, and, thinking of her, loved her. +It was true she had left him, left him with his kisses warm upon her +lips, but--he loved her. It was hard for him to imagine a force strong +enough to constrain her to go. It was difficult, having no clue, to +conceive of circumstances that would justify her silent desertion, but +somehow Andrew, out of the depths of his steadfast heart, found excuses +for her. Sometimes the fantastic thought that she was bound in +loveless marriage came to him, but he put it by. He remembered her +eyes, the misgivings that had assailed her, the tender abandon of her +trust in him. No, she was not married. Where was she? It was not her +wish that he should know. He hoped her little feet trod pleasant +paths. Oh, Judith, Judith! Then, explain it as we may, or leave it +still a mystery, there came to him, faint, aëry, bodilessly, the words +of a song--a song that ended in a plea, "Come! Come to me," and when +it died away, Andrew Cutler sprang to his feet with a cry that echoed +far between the icy tree trunks of the forest, "I come, I come." And +that same night, at the same hour, at the same pulse of the hour, +Judith Moore, with a look of ineffable joy upon her face, fell fainting +upon the stage. + + "So may love, although 'tis understood + The mere commingling of passionate breath, + Produce more than our searching witnesseth." + + +Next day Andrew started back to Ovid, arriving in a state of feverish +expectancy. No tidings of Judith there; and he knew not where to seek. +That pleading voice still rang in his ears; by night, by day, it urged +the message it had brought to him in the depths of far-off Muskoka, and +by day and night he promised it peace, if he could only, only know +where to go. + +Time passed. + +* * * * * * + +The voice was dumb now. Only an acme of surpassing love can wing the +will through space, and then only perhaps once in a lifetime does such +a supreme moment come, and the will behind this love was shattered, for +Judith Moore lay sick unto death, was tossing in the delirium of fever, +or lying for days sunk in an apathy which words could not pierce. The +papers were filled with accounts of her strange illness, daily +bulletins of her condition appeared, her manager was showered with +opprobrium for overworking her. She was dying. The best doctors said +that the miracle was that she had lasted so long. Her little +dark-faced manager went about feeling like a murderer, a Shylock, and a +Judas, in one. The more so, as he felt he had given her the death-blow +in one stroke--when he disregarded that letter. If he had only +overworked her, he told himself he would have had no regrets. He would +have made any reparation he could, but how on earth was he to find the +yokel she was in love with? And what a battle she was having; and yet +it was not such a very long one--from latest winter to spring. + +Andrew was half crazed with love, which, since that winter night, had +become almost unendurable through anxiety. + +Now it was spring, and as he walked through his woods to the Morris +house, he passed the crab-apple-trees in full bloom. He often went up +to talk to garrulous Mrs. Morris. The little details she let fall +about Judith were pearls of great price to him. + +This day he was hardly within the door before Mrs. Morris said: + +"Land sakes! but you're just the very person I was wanting to see. +There's a gov'iment letter come to Miss Moore yesterday, and I thought +you'd maybe know where to send it." + +"Yes," said Andrew, feeling that the sign had come at last. "Give it +me, and I'll see she gets it." + +He took it, and with scarce a word went away, leaving Mrs. Morris +considerably upset by his abruptness. + +He only waited to get within the shadow of his woods before he tore it +open. One reading of her pleading letter to her manager sufficed. +Judith was his again. He knew where to find her. New York!--that was +not so very far off. He knew when the trains started, and rapidly made +his plans. She was such a child! and she liked his old velveteen coat +and the big, battered felt hat; he would wear them; she would be +pleased; and as he came within sight of the crab-apple-trees a happy +thought came to him. He took his knife and cut a huge bundle of +flowers, taking off the branches where the flowers were only in bud. + +Then he went home. + +His aunt heard his hurried explanation, and bound a great roll of wet +moss about the ends of the branches. + +"They'll look queer, Andrew," she said. + +"Never mind how they'll look," said Andrew, happily; "she'll like 'em." + +He was soon on the train, a picturesque figure in tweed, with an old +velveteen coat, a wide shabby felt hat, and an enormous bunch of pink +flowers. Andrew was entirely oblivious of, and indifferent to, +comment. He got hold of a train-man, gave him a dollar and got a +pailful of water from him, arranged his flowers in it, put it in the +baggage-car and sat by it all night. "A queer duck," the trainmen said. + +As the Canadian trains reach New York, the morning papers come aboard. +Andrew bought one of each, and sat down turning them over with +tremulous hands to search for a sign. He had not far to seek--"JUDITH +MOORE DYING, THE END APPROACHING." That was what he read in big "scare +head" type; that, and its narrations in the other papers, with the +usual platitudes telling of the "short but bright career," and so on. +With the calm of despair he searched for definite information as to +where she was. It seemed every one knew so well that definite detail +was superfluous. But at last, in a different part of the paper, he +found: "In the corridors of the Brittany Hotel last night, Miss Moore's +manager, who had just left her bedside, said all hope was gone." The +train was in New York, slowing up in the Grand Central station by the +time he found this. He wrapped a couple of handkerchiefs round the +stems of his flowers, got into the first carriage he came to, saying +only "the Brittany Hotel." He thought the cabman might know where to +go. The cabman, of course, did, and ere many minutes he was in the +office of the magnificent hotel. + +He knew nothing of conventional procedure, and if he had, it would not +have mattered to him then. He went straight to the desk. + +"Is Miss Moore alive?" he asked. + +"Yes, I think so, but--" + +"I want to go to her at once." + +The clerk comprehended, and a bell-boy raced before Andrew to a door +whose handle was muffled. He knocked very softly. "Go," said Andrew, +and he stood alone waiting for the door to open. It would be impious +to speak of the agony which knit his soul and heart to endurance, +whilst he waited the word from within. + +The door opened. A miserable little man stood there. When he saw +Andrew, he said without astonishment: + +"You're in time to speak to her. Go in." + +Andrew advanced to an open door. The little man followed through the +outer room. He beckoned to two others within the sick-room, a +white-capped woman and a doctor. They saw, understood, and Andrew went +up to the bed alone with the door closed behind him. + +"Judith," he said, "my own little girl." + +A long tremour shook the slight form under the coverlets, and +then--then he was on his knees with the flowers flung all across the +bed and his arms about her. And Judith? Poor Judith's eyes were wide +and frightened, for she thought the change had come that she had waited +for, expected, even longed for; she thought this was Death, and even +although the crab blooms were there, and Andrew, still it was awesome. +Yet Death should have brought white flowers, not apple blooms such as +grew in Andrew's woods. And were Death's arms ever so sustaining, so +tender, so warm as these? And surely Death did not come garbed in +shabby, smoky velveteen, nor bend above his victims a brown passionate +face wet with tears? + +"Andrew, it's you, and you're crying," and then followed a faint +whisper of delight--from her--for Andrew's courage and calm were gone +at last. He could not speak. And once more she smiled at him the old +womanly smile, from the old honest eyes, and stretched forth feeble +fingers striving to reach about his neck. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +_L'ENVOI._ + + "Fair love that led home." + + +Judith Moore did not die. She had fallen asleep that day with her +fingers trembling about Andrew's sunburnt hair. He held her tenderly +till a deeper sleep weighted down those clinging hands, and they fell. + +He watched by her, without movement, almost without breathing, with the +look on his face as of one who battles with Death, pitting all the +splendid vitality of his being against the enemy, casting the mantle of +his brave soul, strong will and perfect love about the trembling will +and failing heart that were so nearly vanquished. + +Indeed, so completely did Andrew identify himself during those silent +hours with the woman he loved, that ever after she had some fleeting +touches of his courage, and he had always an intuitional tenderness +towards a woman's illogical weakness. + +The fusion of these two natures took place not in those sweet after +hours of passion, lint in that silent room, into which now and then +there peeped a white-capped nurse or a black-a-vised little man, who +saw always a great mass of fading pink blooms, a pair of broad +shoulders in shabby velveteen bent tenderly over the shadowy outline of +a little head sunk deep in the pillow. + +After this supreme crisis there came a week or two of slow +convalescence, and then a wedding that no one thought much of, +regarding it merely as one of the prescribed formalities, like the +buying of the railroad tickets, necessary before Andrew could take her +away--away back to the village in the valley, to the old stone +farm-house, to the homely flowers, the lindens on the hill, to Rufus +and Miss Myers, where, for a time, she was not a wife at all, only a +poor little wind-tossed song-bird blown to their bosoms for a refuge. + +But that all changed. + +Andrew wooed again a charming, capricious woman, walking by her +adoringly over the old bricked walks beneath the horse-chestnuts, his +very soul trembling with the love her voice and touch awakened: and she +was playfully proud of her power, until suddenly some quick sense of +the dominance of the love she aroused frightened her, and she turned to +hide from him in his arms, tremblingly afraid, no longer asking love, +but pleading against it. + +Time passes with them. The old farm-house has had some architectural +additions--a tiny conservatory, a long dining-room, with quaint porches +and latticed windows: for Andrew and his wife appreciate too keenly the +beauties of their home to mar its character by modernizing it. Andrew +has learned to wear evening clothes as easily as he does his old +velveteens, and--_O si sic omnia!_--himself often buys the little +high-heeled shoes in which Judith's heart delights, for Judith never +put off the old Eve of her harmless vanities. + +Every winter Andrew and his wife go to town for a while, and visitors +come to the farm-house who fairly electrify the village with their +"cranks." + +The best known of these is a little black-a-vised man with big +diamonds, a profane tongue and a guilty but "thankful 'eart." He +cherishes, so he says, a hopeless passion for Miss Myers, and indeed +Miss Myers likes the new _régime_ very well, for she was never ousted +from the house-keeping department, and if it was a glory and a credit +to manage well for Andrew and herself, how much greater it is to cast +honour over a board where such fine people as Judith's friends sit +daily. + +Andrew is secretly very proud that all these fine folk should come and +see how happy Judith is. Only once did he have any difference with any +of them. That was when Judith first regained her strength and her old +manager came to see her. He had a brand-new scheme for Judith's +benefit in his brain. She was to sing in grand concerts, and he had +all her tour mapped out. He was good enough to say Andrew could come +along. Andrew held brief and bitter speech with him, and then went to +Judith. He could see how strong the old glamour yet was. He took her +in his arms, and after a long, tender discussion she gave him the +promise he was pleading for, never more to sing in public, a decision +which made Andrew her slave forever, although it wrung his heart to see +what this renunciation cost her. He felt it was right. Poor, +high-strung Judith needed a steady hand upon the rein of her eager +spirit, else it would have soon carried her beyond her strength. And +so, ringing about an old farm-house, or through the chestnut woods, or +below the lindens on the hill-side, there often sounds a voice once +echoed by the _bravos_ of the world. Perhaps the aspiration it awakens +in one strong soul is better applause. + +So Andrew and Judith live on, they two and Miss Myers, as nearly happy +as mortals may be. Heaven would be entirely illogical if such as they +two had no heartaches. + +Sometimes Judith steals away from Miss Myers and Andrew and thinks of +the old days, the first efforts, the hopes, the fears, the strife and +the success--the glorious success that might have been many times +repeated: that might, as base metals might be transmuted into gold, +have become fame. A nasty heartache gnaws in her breast, her face +pales, her eyes grow wide and eager. At such times Andrew knows well +the struggle that rends her tender heart, and he soon searches her out: +and upon his breast, beneath the spell of his worship her restless +spirit quiets itself to peace. What might be a tragedy of distrust is +made a bond of stronger union by perfect confidence. But Judith's face +will always bear the traces of these times. + +When a coal is carried from the Divine Fire and laid upon mortal lips, +it must be blown into a flame to illumine the world, or it sears the +lips it touches. The gods will not have their gifts disregarded. They +care little that the mortal breath may be too weak to sustain the +flame, though it perish in the effort. Indeed, the gods forgive that, +and sometimes spare a little of their glory to gild a grave. But let +the breath they demand be stolen for our own sighs or sobs, or stifled +by dear-bought kisses, and they give swift recompense of pain. Judith +had borne that smart. + +Andrew, too, has unfulfilled dreams, as Judith knows when she sees his +eyes grow wistful as they rest upon the faces of children. And Judith +goes to him then, and lays her head upon his arm with an apology so +poignant, a love so perfect in her grey eyes, that he forgets +everything in the marvel that this woman is his. And thus with each of +them, the little shadows only serve to enhance the sunshine. Their +life is a glorious reality; their love a poem. Together they know no +pain from the past, no regret for the present, no fear for the future. +They sometimes even dare to dream that their love will bestow upon them +its own immortality--that through eternity they will be as they are +now, together and happy. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Judith Moore; or, Fashioning a Pipe, by +Joanna E. Wood + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58876 *** |