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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef2f0a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #66191 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66191) diff --git a/old/66191-0.txt b/old/66191-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 821205c..0000000 --- a/old/66191-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,16484 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Barren Ground, by Ellen Anderson Gholson -Glasgow - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Barren Ground - -Author: Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow - -Release Date: August 31, 2021 [eBook #66191] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images generously - made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARREN GROUND *** - -BARREN GROUND - - - - -_by_ ELLEN GLASCOW - - - - -GROSSET & DUNLAP _Publishers_ - -_by arrangement with Doubleday Page & Co._ - - - - -CONTENTS - -Part First--Broomsedge -Chapter I -Chapter II -Chapter III -Chapter IV -Chapter V -Chapter VI -Chapter VII -Chapter VIII -Chapter IX -Chapter X -Chapter XI -Chapter XII -Chapter XIII -Chapter XIV -Chapter XV -Chapter XVI - -Part Second--Pine -Chapter I -Chapter II -Chapter III -Chapter IV -Chapter V -Chapter VI -Chapter VII -Chapter VIII -Chapter IX -Chapter X -Chapter XI -Chapter XII -Chapter XIII -Chapter XIV -Chapter XV -Chapter XVI -Chapter XVII -Chapter XVIII -Chapter XIX - -Part Third--Life-everlasting -Chapter I -Chapter II -Chapter III -Chapter IV -Chapter V -Chapter VI -Chapter VII -Chapter VIII -Chapter IX -Chapter X -Chapter XI - - - - -_PART -FIRST_ - - -BROOMSEDGE - - - - -"_A girl in an orange-colored shawl_. . . ." - - - - -BARREN -GROUND - - - - -I - - -A girl in an orange-coloured shawl stood at the window of Pedlar's store -and looked, through the falling snow, at the deserted road. Though she -watched there without moving, her attitude, in its stillness, gave an -impression of arrested flight, as if she were running toward life. - -Bare, starved, desolate, the country closed in about her. The last train -of the day had gone by without stopping, and the station of Pedlar's -Mill was as lonely as the abandoned fields by the track. From the bleak -horizon, where the flatness created an illusion of immensity, the -broomsedge was spreading in a smothered fire over the melancholy brown -of the landscape. Under the falling snow, which melted as soon as it -touched the earth, the colour was veiled and dim; but when the sky -changed the broomsedge changed with it. On clear mornings the waste -places were cinnamon-red in the sunshine. Beneath scudding clouds the -plumes of the bent grasses faded to ivory. During the long spring rains, -a film of yellow-green stole over the burned ground. At autumn sunsets, -when the red light searched the country, the broomsedge caught fire from -the afterglow and blazed out in a splendour of colour. Then the meeting -of earth and sky dissolved in the flaming mist of the horizon. - -At these quiet seasons, the dwellers near Pedlar's Mill felt scarcely -more than a tremor on the surface of life. But on stormy days, when the -wind plunged like a hawk from the swollen clouds, there was a quivering -in the broomsedge, as if coveys of frightened partridges were flying -from the pursuer. Then the quivering would become a ripple and the -ripple would swell presently into rolling waves. The straw would darken -as the gust swooped down, and brighten as it sped on to the shelter of -scrub pine and sassafras bushes. And while the wind bewitched the -solitude, a vague restlessness would stir in the hearts of living things -on the farms, of men, women, and animals. "Broomsage ain't jest wild -stuff. It's a kind of fate," old Matthew Fairlamb used to say. - -Thirty years ago, modern methods of farming, even methods that were -modern in the benighted eighteen-nineties, had not penetrated to this -thinly settled part of Virginia. The soil, impoverished by the war and -the tenant system which followed the war, was still drained of fertility -for the sake of the poor crops it could yield. Spring after spring, the -cultivated ground appeared to shrink into the "old fields," where scrub -pine or oak succeeded broomsedge and sassafras as inevitably as autumn -slipped into winter. Now and then a new start would be made. Some -thrifty settler, a German Catholic, perhaps, who was trying his fortunes -in a staunch Protestant community, would buy a mortgaged farm for a -dollar an acre, and begin to experiment with suspicious, -strange-smelling fertilizers. For a season or two his patch of ground -would respond to the unusual treatment and grow green with promise. Then -the forlorn roads, deep in mud, and the surrounding air of failure, -which was as inescapable as a drought, combined with the cutworm, the -locust, and the tobacco-fly, against the human invader; and where the -brief harvest had been, the perpetual broomsedge would wave. - -The tenant farmers, who had flocked after the ruin of war as buzzards -after a carcass, had immediately picked the featureless landscape as -clean as a skeleton. When the swarming was over only three of the larger -farms at Pedlar's Mill remained undivided in the hands of their original -owners. Though Queen Elizabeth County had never been one of the -aristocratic regions of Virginia, it was settled by sturdy English -yeomen, with a thin but lively sprinkling of the persecuted Protestants -of other nations. Several of these superior pioneers brought blue blood -in their veins, as well as the vigorous fear of God in their hearts; but -the great number arrived, as they remained, "good people," a -comprehensive term, which implies, to Virginians, the exact opposite of -the phrase, "a good family." The good families of the state have -preserved, among other things, custom, history, tradition, romantic -fiction, and the Episcopal Church. The good people, according to the -records of clergymen, which are the only surviving records, have -preserved nothing except themselves. Ignored alike by history and -fiction, they have their inconspicuous place in the social strata midway -between the lower gentility and the upper class of "poor white," a -position which encourages the useful rather than the ornamental public -virtues. - -With the end of free labour and the beginning of the tenant system, -authority passed from the country to the towns. The old men stayed by -the farms, and their daughters withered dutifully beside them; but the -sons of the good people drifted away to the city, where they assumed -control of democracy as well as of the political machine which has made -democracy safe for politics. An era changed, not rudely, but as eras do -change so often, uncomfortably. Power, defying Jeffersonian theory and -adopting Jeffersonian policy, stole again from the few to the many. For -the good people, conforming to the logic of history, proceeded -immediately to enact their preferences, prejudices, habits, and -inhibitions into the laws of the state. - -At Pedlar's Mill, where the old wooden mill, built a hundred years -before by the first miller Pedlar, was now a picturesque ruin, a few -stalwart farmers of Scotch-Irish descent rose above the improvident -crowd of white and black tenants, like native pines above the shallow -wash of the broomsedge. These surviving landowners were obscure branches -of the great Scotch-Irish families of the upper Valley of Virginia. -Detached from the parent tree and driven by chance winds out of the -highlands, they had rooted afresh in the warmer soil of the low country, -where they had conquered the land not by force, but by virtue of the -emphatic argument that lies in fortitude. - -James Ellgood, whose mother was a McNab, owned Green Acres, the -flourishing stock farm on the other side of the railroad. It is true -that an uncle in the far West had left him a small fortune, and for five -years he had put more into the soil than he had got out of it. But in -the end Green Acres had repaid him many times, which proved, as old -Matthew, who was a bit of a philosopher, pointed out, that "it wa'n't -the land that was wrong, but the way you had treated it." - -On the near side of the station, secluded behind a barricade of what -people called the back roads, which were strangled in mud from November -to June, stood Five Oaks, the ruined farm of the Greylocks. Though the -place was still held insecurely in the loose clutches of old Doctor -Greylock, who resembled an inebriated Covenanter, the abandoned acres -were rapidly growing up in sumach, sassafras, and fife-everlasting. The -doctor had been a man of parts and rural prominence in his day; but the -land and scarcity of labour had worn on his nerves, and he was now -slowly drinking himself to death, attended, beyond the social -shadow-line, by an anonymous brood of mulatto offspring. - -Adjoining Five Oaks, and running slightly in front of it on one side, -with a long whitewashed house situated a stone's throw from the main -road, there was Old Farm, which belonged to Joshua Oakley and Eudora -Abernethy, his wife. The Oakleys, as the saying ran in the -neighbourhood, were "land poor." They owned a thousand acres of scrub -pine, scrub oak, and broomsedge, where a single cultivated corner was -like a solitary island in some chaotic sea. - -Early in the nineteenth century, John Calvin Abernethy, a retired -missionary from India and Ceylon, came from the upper Valley into the -region of the Shenandoah, with a neat Scotch-Irish inheritance in his -pocket. His reputation, as historians remark, had preceded him; and his -subsequent career proved that he was not only an eloquent preacher of -the Gospel, but a true explorer of the spirit as well, the last of those -great Presbyterian romantics whose faith ventured on perilous -metaphysical seas in the ark of the Solemn League and Covenant. Since -there was no canny bargain to be driven, at the moment, in the -Shenandoah Valley, John Abernethy regretfully left the highlands for the -flat country, where he picked up presently, at a Dutch auction, the -thousand acres of land and fifty slaves which had belonged to one -William Golden Penner. One may charitably infer that the fifty slaves -constituted a nice point in theology; but with ingenious Presbyterian -logic and circumscribed Presbyterian imagination, John Calvin reconciled -divine grace with a peculiar institution. The fifty slaves he sold -farther south, and the price of black flesh he devoted to the redemption -of black souls in the Congo. Dramatic, yet not altogether lacking in -delicate irony. For he had observed in foreign fields that divine grace -has strange gestures; and life, as even Presbyterians know, is without -logic. To a thrifty theologian, bent on redemption with economy, there -are few points of ethics too fine-spun for splitting. From which it must -not be concluded that the first Virginian Abernethy was unworthy of his -high calling. He was merely, like the rest of us, whether theologians or -laymen, seasoned with the favourite fruit of his age. Though he might -occasionally seek a compromise in simple matters of conduct, realizing -the fall of man and the infirmity of human nature, where matters of -doctrine were concerned his conscience was inflexible. His piety, -running in a narrow groove, was deep and genuine; and he possessed -sufficient integrity, firmness, and frugality to protect his descendants -from decay for at least three generations. A few years after he had -settled near Pedlar's Mill, a small Presbyterian church, built of brick -and whitewashed within and without, rose on the far side of the -railroad, where it stands now at the gate of Green Acres. Conversion, -which had begun as a vocation with John Calvin Abernethy, became a -habit; and with the gradual running to seed of the Methodists in the -community, the Presbyterian faith sprang up and blossomed like a Scotch -thistle in barren ground. - -In his long white house, encircled by the few cultivated fields in the -midst of his still-virgin acres, John Calvin Abernethy lived with -learning, prudence, and piety until he was not far from a hundred. He -had but one son, for unlike the Scotch-Irish of the Valley, his race did -not multiply. The son died in middle age, struck down by an oak he was -felling, and his only child, a daughter, was reared patiently but -sternly by her grandfather. When, in after years, this granddaughter, -whose name was Eudora, fell a victim of one of those natural instincts -which Presbyterian theology has damned but never wholly exterminated, -and married a member of the "poor white" class, who had nothing more to -recommend him than the eyes of a dumb poet and the head of a youthful -John the Baptist, old Abernethy blessed the marriage and avoided, as -far as possible, the connection. Knowing the aptitude of the poor for -futility, he employed his remaining years on earth in accumulating a -comfortable inheritance for his great-grandchildren. When he was dead, -his granddaughter's husband, young Joshua Oakley, worked hard, after the -manner of his class, to lose everything that was left. He was a good man -and a tireless labourer; but that destiny which dogs the footsteps of -ineffectual spirits pursued him from the hour of his birth. His wife, -Eudora, who resembled her grandfather, recovered promptly from the -natural instinct, and revealed shortly afterwards signs of suppressed -religious mania. - -Of this union of the positive and the negative virtues, three children -survived. Two of these were sons, Josiah and Rufus; the other was a -daughter, Dorinda, the girl who, having thrown the orange shawl over her -head, had come out of the store, and stood now with the snow in her face -and her eager gaze on the road. - - - - -II - - -She was a tall girl, not beautiful, scarcely pretty even according to -the waxen type of the 'nineties; but there was a glow of expression, an -April charm, in her face. Her eyes were her one memorable feature. -Large, deep, radiant, they shone beneath her black lashes with a clear -burning colour, as blue as the spring sky after rain. Above them her -jutting eyebrows, very straight and thick, gave a brooding sombreness to -her forehead, where her abundant hair was brushed back in a single dark -wave. In repose her features were too stern, too decisive. Her nose, -powdered with golden freckles, was a trifle square at the nostrils; her -mouth, with its ripe, bee-stung lower lip, was wide and generous; the -pointed curve of her chin revealed, perhaps, too much determination in -its outward thrust. But the rich dark red in her cheeks lent vividness -to her face, and when she smiled her eyes and mouth lighted up as if a -lamp shone within. Against the sordid background of the store, her head -in the brilliant shawl was like some exotic flower. - -Straight, tranquil, thin and fugitive as mist, the snow was falling. -Though the transparent flakes vanished as soon as they reached the -earth, they diffused in their steady flight an impression of evanescence -and unreality. Through this shifting medium the familiar scene appeared -as insubstantial as a pattern of frost on the grass. It was as if the -secret spirit of the land had traced an image on the flat surface, -glimmering, remote, unapproachable, like the expression of an animal -that man has forced into sullen submission. There were hours at -twilight, or beneath the shredded clouds of the sunrise, when the winter -landscape reminded Dorinda of the look in the faces of overworked farm -horses. At such moments she would find herself asking, with the -intellectual thrill of the heretic, "I wonder if everything has a soul?" -The country had been like this, she knew, long before she was born. It -would be like this, she sometimes thought, after she and all those who -were living with her were dead. For the one thing that seemed to her -immutable and everlasting was the poverty of the soil. - -Without knowing that she looked at it, her gaze rested on the bare -station; on the crude frame buildings, like houses that children make -out of blocks; on the gleaming track which ran north and south; on the -old freight car, which was the home of Butcher, the lame negro who -pumped water into the engines; on the litter of chips and shavings and -dried tobacco, stems which strewed the ground between the telegraph -poles and the hitching-rail by the store. Farther away, in the direction -of Whippernock River, she could see the vague shape of the ruined mill, -and beyond this, on the other side of the track, the sunken road winding -in scallops through interminable acres of broomsedge. Though the snow -had fallen continuously since noon, the air was not cold, and the white -glaze on the earth was scarcely heavier than hoar-frost. - -For almost a year now, ever since Mrs. Pedlar had fallen ill of -consumption, and Dorinda had taken her place in the store, the girl had -listened eagerly for the first rumble of the approaching trains. Until -to-day the passing trains had been a part of that expected miracle, the -something different in the future, to which she looked ahead over the -tedious stretch of the present. There was glamour for her in the -receding smoke. There was adventure in the silver-blue of the distance. -The glimpse of a rapidly disappearing face; a glance from strange eyes -that she remembered; the shadowy outline of a gesture; these tenuous -impressions ran like vivid threads in her memory. Her nature, starved -for emotional realities, and nourished on the gossamer substance of -literature, found its only escape in the fabrication of dreams. Though -she had never defined the sensation in words, there were moments when it -seemed to her that her inner life was merely a hidden field in the -landscape, neglected, monotonous, abandoned to solitude, and yet with a -smothered fire, like the wild grass, running through it. At twenty, her -imagination was enkindled by the ardour that makes a woman fall in love -with a religion or an idea. Some day, so ran the bright thread of her -dream, the moving train would stop, and the eyes that had flashed into -hers and passed by would look at her again. Then the stranger who was -not a stranger would say, "I knew your face among a thousand, and I came -back to find you." And the train would rush on with them into the -something different beyond the misty edge of the horizon. Adventure, -happiness, even unhappiness, if it were only different! - -That was yesterday. To-day the miracle had occurred, and the whole of -life had blossomed out like a flower in the sun. She had found romance, -not in imagination, not in the pallid fiction crushed among the tomes in -her great-grandfather's library, but driving on one of the muddy roads -through the broomsedge. To the casual observer there was merely a -personable young man, the son of old Doctor Greylock, making the -scattered rural calls of a profession which his father was too drunk to -pursue. A pleasant young man, intelligent, amiable, still wearing with a -difference the thin veneer of the city. Though he was, perhaps, a trifle -too eager to please, this was a commendable fault, and readily -overlooked in an irreproachable son who had relinquished his ambition in -order to remain with his undeserving old father. Filial devotion was -both esteemed and practised in that pre-Freudian age, before -self-sacrifice had been dethroned from its precarious seat among the -virtues; and to give up one's career for a few months, at most for a -possible year, appeared dutiful rather than dangerous to a generation -that knew not psychoanalysis. - -And he was not only an admirable young man, he was, what admirable young -men frequently are not, attractive as well. His dark red hair, burnished -to a copper glow, grew in a natural wave; his sparkling eyes were -brown-black like chinkapins in the autumn; his skin was tanned and -slightly freckled, with a healthy glow under the surface; his short -moustache, a shade lighter than his hair, lent mystery to a charming, if -serious, mouth, and his smile, indiscriminating in its friendliness, was -wholly delightful. To Dorinda, meeting him in the early morning as she -was walking the two miles from Old Farm to the store, it was as if an -April flush had passed over the waste places. She recognized love with -the infallible certainty of intuition. It was happiness, and yet in some -strange way it was shot through with a burning sensation which was less -pleasure than pain. Though her perceptions were more vivid than they had -ever been, there was an unreality about her surroundings, as if she were -walking in some delicious trance. Beautiful as it was, it seemed to be -vanishing, like a beam of light, in the very moment when she felt it -flooding her heart. Yet this sense of unreality, of elusiveness, made it -more precious. Watching the empty roads, through the veil of snow, she -asked herself every minute, "Will he come this way again? Shall I wait -for him, or shall I let him pass me in the road? Suppose he goes back -another way! Suppose he has forgotten----" - -The door behind her opened, and old Matthew Fairlamb came hobbling out -with the help of his stout hickory stick. Though he was approaching -ninety, he was still vigorous, with a projecting thatch of hair as -colourless as straw and the aquiline profile of a Roman senator. In his -youth, and indeed until his old age, when his son William succeeded him, -he had been the best carpenter at Pedlar's Mill. His eyes were bleared -now, and his gums toothless; but he had never lost his shrewd -Scotch-Irish understanding or his sense of humour, which broke out in -flashes as swift and darting as dry weather lightning. - -"You'd better be startin' home, Dorinda," he remarked as he passed her. -"The snow means to keep up, and yo' Ma will begin to worry about you." -Turning, he peered at her with his cackling laugh. "Yo' face looks like -a May mornin' to my old eyes," he added. "I ain't seen you about here -fur a couple of weeks." - -With her gaze still on the distance, Dorinda answered impatiently, "No, -Ma had one of her bad spells, and I had to help out at home. But no -matter how sick she is she never gives up, and she never worries about -anything smaller than eternal damnation." - -"Yes, she's a pious one," old Matthew conceded. "It's faith, I reckon, -that's kept her goin', sence the Lord must know He ain't made it none -too easy for her." - -"Oh, it's hard work that she lives on," replied Dorinda. "She says if -she were to stop working, she'd drop down dead like a horse that is -winded. She never stops, not even on Sundays, except when she is in -church." - -Old Matthew's hilarity dwindled into a sigh. "Well, thar ain't much rest -to be got out of that," he rejoined sympathetically. "I ain't contendin' -against the doctrine of eternal damnation," he hastened to explain, "but -as long as yo' Ma is obleeged to work so hard, 'tis a pity she ain't got -a mo' restful belief." Then, as he observed her intent gaze, he inquired -suspiciously, "You don't see nary a turnout on the road, do you?" - -The dark red in the girl's cheeks brightened to carnation. "Why, of -course not. I was just watching the snow." - -But his curiosity, once aroused, was as insatiable as avarice. "I don't -reckon you've seen whether young Doctor Greylock has gone by or not?" - -She shook her head, still blushing. "No, I haven't seen him. Is anybody -sick at your place?" - -"It ain't that," returned the old man. "I was just thinkin' he might -give me a lift on the way. It ain't more'n half a mile to my place, but -half a mile looks different to twenty and to eighty-odd years. He's a -spry young chap, and would make a good match for you, Dorinda," he -concluded, in merciless accents. - -Dorinda's head was turned away, but her voice sounded smothered. "You -needn't worry about that." (Why did old age make people so hateful?) "I -haven't seen him but once since he came home." - -"Well, he'll look long befo' he finds a likelier gal than you. I ain't -seen him more than a few times myself; but in these parts, whar young -men are as skeerce as wild turkeys, he won't have to go beggin'. Geneva -Ellgood would take him in a minute, I reckon, an' her Pa is rich enough -to buy her a beau in the city, if she wants one. He! He!" His malicious -cackle choked him. "They do say that young Jason was sweet on her in New -York last summer," he concluded when he had recovered. - -For the first time Dorinda turned her head and looked in his face. "If -everybody believed your gossip, Mr. Fairlamb, nobody at Pedlar's Mill -would be speaking to anybody else." - -Old Matthew's mouth closed like a nut-cracker; but she saw from the -twinkle in his bleared eyes that he had construed her reprimand into a -compliment. "Thar's some of 'em that wouldn't lose much by that," he -returned, after a pause. "But to come back to young Jason, he's got a -job ahead of him if he's goin' to try farmin' at Five Oaks, an' he'll -need either a pile of money or a hard-workin' wife." - -"Oh, he doesn't mean to stay here. As soon as his father dies, he will -go back to New York." - -The detestable cackle broke out again. "The old man ain't dead yit. I've -known some hard drinkers to have long lives, an' thar ain't nothin' more -wearin' on the young than settin' down an' waitin' fur old folks to die. -Young Jason is a pleasant-mannered boy, though he looks a bit too soft -to stand the hard wear of these here roads. I ain't got nothin' to say -aginst him, but if he'd listen to the warnin' of eighty-odd years, he'd -git away before the broomsage ketches him. Thar's one thing sartain -sure, you've got to conquer the land in the beginning, or it'll conquer -you before you're through with it." - -It was all true. She had heard it before, and yet, though she knew it -was true, she refused to believe it. Whether it was true or not, she -told herself passionately, it had no connection with Jason Greylock. The -bright vision she had seen in the road that morning flickered and died -against the sombre monochrome of the landscape. - -"I must go in," she said, turning away. "I haven't time to stand -talking." Old Matthew would never stop, she knew, of his own accord. -When his cackle rose into a laugh the sound reminded her of the distant -_who_--_who_--_whoee_ of an owl. - -"Well, I'll be gittin' along too," replied the old man. "My eyes ain't -all they used to be, and my legs ain't fur behind 'em. Remember me to -yo' Ma, honey, and tell her I'll be lookin' over jest as soon as the mud -holes dry up." - -"Yes, I'll tell her," answered the girl more gently. Old Matthew had -known her great-grandfather; he had added the wings to the house at Old -Farm and built the Presbyterian church on the other side of the track. -In the prime of his life, forty years ago, he had been the last man at -Pedlar's Mill to see Gordon Kane, her mother's missionary lover, who had -died of fever in the Congo. It was old Matthew, Dorinda had heard, who -had broken the news of Kane's death to the weeping Eudora, while she -held her wedding dress in her hands. Disagreeable as he had become, it -was impossible for the girl to forget that his long life was bound up -with three generations of her family. - -When she entered the store, she felt for a moment that she should -suffocate in the heated air from the wood stove at the far end. The -stuffy smell, a mingling of turpentine, varnish, bacon, coffee, and -kerosene oil, was so different from the crystal breath of the falling -snow that it rushed over her like warm ashes, smothering, enveloping. -Yet there was nothing strange to her in the scene or the atmosphere. She -was accustomed to the close, dry heat and to the heavy odours of a place -where everything that one could not raise on a farm was kept and sold. -For eleven months she had worked here side by side with Nathan Pedlar, -and she was familiar with the usual stock-in-trade of a country store. -In a minute she could put her hand on any object from a ploughshare to -a darning needle. - -"You'd better be going home early," said Nathan Pedlar, looking round -from the shelf he was putting in order. "The snow may get heavier toward -sunset." - -He was a tall, lank, scraggy man, with a face that reminded Dorinda of a -clown that she had once seen in a circus. Only the clown's nose was -large and red, and Nathan's looked as if it had been mashed in by a -blow. Aunt Mehitable Green, the coloured midwife, insisted that his -features had been born like other children's, but that his mother had -rolled on him in her sleep when he was a baby, and had flattened his -nose until it would never grow straight again. Though he possessed a -reserve of prodigious strength, he failed to be impressive even as an -example of muscular development. Dorinda had worked with him every day -for eleven months, and yet she found that he had made as little -impression upon her as a pine tree by the roadside. Looking at him, she -saw clearly his gaunt round shoulders beneath the frayed alpaca coat, -his hair and eyebrows and short moustache, all the colour of dingy -rabbit fur, and his small grey eyes with blinking lids; but the moment -after he had passed out of her sight, the memory of him would become as -fluid as water and trickle out of her mind. A kind but absurd man, this -was the way she thought of him, honest, plodding, unassuming, a man -whose "word was as good as his bond," but whose personality was -negligible. The truth about him, though Dorinda never suspected it, was -that he had come into the world a quarter of a century too soon. He was -so far in advance of his age that his position inspired ridicule instead -of respect in his generation. When his lagging age had caught up with -Nathan Pedlar, it had forgotten what its prophet had prophesied. Though -he made a comfortable living out of the store, and had put by enough to -enable him to face old age with equanimity, he was by nature a farmer, -and his little farm near the mill yielded a good harvest. Unlike most -Southern farmers, he was not afraid of a theory, and he was beginning to -realize the value of rotation in crops at a period when a cornfield at -Pedlar's Mill was as permanent as a graveyard. Already he was -experimenting with alfalfa, though even the prosperous James Ellgood -made fun of "the weed with the highfalutin' name from the Middle West." -For it was a part of Nathan's perverse destiny that people asked his -advice with recklessness and accepted it with deliberation. - -"I am going as soon as I speak to Rose Emily," Dorinda replied. "Did the -doctor say she was better this morning?" - -Nathan's hands, which were fumbling among the boxes on the long shelf, -became suddenly still. - -"No, he didn't say so," he answered, without turning. Something in his -tone made Dorinda catch her breath sharply. "He didn't say she was -worse, did he?" - -At this Nathan pushed the boxes away and leaned over the counter to meet -her eyes. His face was bleak with despair, and Dorinda's heart was wrung -as she looked at him. She had often wondered how Rose Emily could have -married him. Poverty would have been happiness, she felt, compared with -so prosaic a marriage; yet she knew that, according to the standards of -Pedlar's Mill, Nathan was an exceptional husband. - -"Perhaps she'll pick up when the spring comes," she added when he did -not reply. - -Nathan shook his head and swallowed as if a pebble had lodged in his -throat. "That's what I'm hoping," he answered. "If she can just get on -her feet again. There's nothing this side of heaven I wouldn't do to -make her well." - -For an instant she was afraid he would break down; but while she -wondered what on earth she could say to comfort him, he turned back to -the boxes. "I must get this place tidied up before night," he said in -his usual tone, with the flat, dry cough which had become chronic. - -While she watched him, Dorinda threw the shawl back on one arm and -revealed her fine dark head. The heavy eyebrows and the clear stern line -of her features stood out as if an edge of light had fallen over them, -leaving the rest of her face in shadow. She was wearing an old tan -ulster, faded and patched in places, and beneath the hem her brown -calico dress and mud-stained country shoes were visible. Even at -Pedlar's Mill the changing fashions were followed respectfully, if -tardily, and in the middle 'nineties women walked the muddy roads in -skirts which either brushed the ground or were held up on one side. But -shabbiness and a deplorable fashion could not conceal the slim, flowing -lines of her figure, with its gallant and spirited carriage. - -"I'm going to say a word or two to Rose Emily before I start," she said -in a cheerful voice. "I don't mind being late." Walking to the end of -the store, beyond the wood stove, which felt like a furnace, she pushed -back a curtain of purple calico, and turned the knob of a door. Inside -the room a woman was sitting up in bed, crocheting a baby's sacque of -pink wool. - -"I thought you'd gone, Dorinda," she said, looking up. "The snow is -getting thicker." - -Propped up among her pillows, winding the pink wool through her fragile -hands, Mrs. Pedlar faced death with the courage of a heroic illusion. -Before her marriage, as Rose Emily Milford, she had taught school in the -little schoolhouse near Pedlar's Mill, and Dorinda had been her -favourite pupil. She was a small, intelligent-looking woman, pitiably -thin, with prominent grey eyes, hair of a peculiar shade of wheaten red, -and a brilliant flush on her high cheek bones. - -Ball after ball of pink wool unwound on the patchwork quilt, and was -crocheted into babies' sacques which she sold in the city; but -crocheting, as she sometimes said, "did not take your mind off things as -well as moving about," and it seemed to her that only since she had been -ill had she begun to learn anything about life. The nearer she came to -death, the more, by some perversity of nature, did she enjoy living. If -death ever entered her mind, it was as an abstraction, like the doctrine -of salvation by faith, never as a reality. Every afternoon she said, "If -it is fine, I shall get up to-morrow." Every morning she sighed happily, -"I think I'll wait till the evening." - -The room was a small one, divided off from the brick store, which -adjoined the new frame house Nathan had built for his bride; and there -was a confusion of colour, for Mrs. Pedlar's surroundings reflected the -feverish optimism of her philosophy. The rag carpet and the patchwork -quilt were as gay as an autumn flower-bed; the kerosene lamp wore a -ballet skirt of crimson crape paper; earthen pots of begonias and -geraniums filled the green wooden stands at the windows. On the -hearthrug, before the open fire, three small children were playing with -paper dolls, while the fourth, a baby of nine months, lay fast asleep in -his crib, with the nipple of a bottle still held tight in his mouth. - -"I'm glad I chose that orange colour for your shawl," said Mrs. Pedlar, -in the excited manner that had come upon her with her rising -temperature. "It goes so well with your black hair. You ought to be glad -you're a big woman," she continued thoughtfully. "Somehow life seems to -go easier with big women. I asked young Doctor Greylock if that wasn't -true, and he said small women seemed to think so." - -Dorinda laughed, and her laughter contained a thrill of joy. Some inward -happiness had bubbled up and overflowed into her voice, her look, and -her shy dreaming movements. There was sweetness for her in hearing of -Jason Greylock; there was ecstasy in the thought that she might meet him -again in the road. Yet the sweetness and the ecstasy were thin and far -off, like music that comes from a distance. It seemed incredible that -anything so wonderful should have happened at Pedlar's Mill. - -In front of the fire, the three children (Minnie May, the eldest, was -only ten) were busy with their paper dolls. They had made a doll's house -out of a cracker box, with the frayed corners of the rug for a garden. -"Now Mrs. Brown has lost her little girl, and she is going to Mrs. -Smith's to look for her," Minnie May was saying impressively. - -"You've got your hands full with those children," remarked Dorinda -because she could think of nothing else that sounded natural. Her mind -was not on the children; it was miles away in an enclosed garden of -wonder and delight; but some casual part of her was still occupying her -familiar place and living her old meaningless life. - -"Yes, but they're good children. They can always amuse themselves. -Minnie May cut those paper dolls out of an old fashion book, and the -younger children are all crazy about them." - -"Minnie May is a great help to you." - -"Yes, she takes after her father. Nathan is the best man that ever -lived. He never thinks of himself a minute." - -"He gave me some sugar for Ma," Dorinda sighed as she answered, for the -thought had stabbed through her like a knife that Rose Emily was dying. -Here we are talking about sugar and paper dolls when she won't live -through the summer. - -"There's a pat of butter too," said Rose Emily. "I told Minnie May to -put it in your basket. I don't see how your mother manages without -butter." - -"We've had to do without it since our cow died last fall. I'm saving up, -after the taxes are paid, to buy one in the spring." Again the thought -stabbed her. "As if cows made any difference when she has only a few -months to live!" Were the trivial things, after all, the important ones? - -"And Mrs. Brown found that her little girl had been run over and killed -in the middle of the road," Minnie May whispered. "So she decided that -all she could do for her was to have a handsome funeral and spend the -ten dollars she'd saved from her chicken money. That's the graveyard, -Bud, down there by the hole in the rug. Lena, stop twistin', or you'll -pull it to pieces." - -"Nathan says you can get a good cow from old Doctor Greylock for thirty -dollars," said Mrs. Pedlar. "He's got one, that Blossom of his, that he -wants to sell." Then an idea occurred to her and she concluded -doubtfully, "Of course, everything may be changed now that Jason has -come back." - -"Yes, of course, everything may be changed," repeated Dorinda, and the -words, though they were merely an echo, filled her with happiness. Life -was burning within her. Even the thought of death, even the knowledge -that her friend would not live through the summer, passed like a shadow -over the flame that consumed her. Everything was a shadow except the -luminous stillness, which was so much deeper than stillness, within her -heart. - -"He is just the same pleasant-mannered boy he used to be when I taught -him," resumed Mrs. Pedlar. "You remember how mischievous he was at -school." - -Dorinda nodded. "I was only there a year with him before he went away." - -"Yes, I'd forgotten. I asked him to-day if he remembered you, and he -said he knew you as soon as he saw you in the road this morning." She -paused for an instant while a vision flickered in her eyes. "It would be -nice if he'd take a fancy to you, Dorinda, and I'm sure you're handsome -enough, with your blue eyes and your high colour, for anybody to fall in -love with, and you're better educated, too, than most city girls, with -all the books you've read. I sent Minnie May to find you while he was -here, but she brought Nathan instead; and the doctor had to hurry off to -old Mrs. Flower, who is dying." - -So they were all pushing them together! It was no wonder, thought -Dorinda, since, as old Matthew said, young men were as scarce as wild -turkeys, and everybody wanted to marry off everybody else. Almost -unconsciously, the power of attraction was increased by an irresistible -force. Since every one, even the intelligent Rose Emily, thought it so -suitable! - -"I've seen him only once since he came home," said the girl. - -"Well, I told him about you, and he was very much interested. I believe -he's a good young man, and he seems so friendly and kindhearted. He -asked after all the coloured people he used to know, and he was so -pleased to hear how well they are getting on. His father couldn't -remember anything about anybody, he told me. I reckon the truth is that -the old doctor is befuddled with drink all the time." She laughed -softly. "Jason has picked up a lot of newfangled ideas," she added. "He -even called broomsedge 'bromegrass' till he found that nobody knew what -he was talking about." - -"Is he going to stay on?" - -"Just for a little while, he says, until he can get the place off his -hands. What he meant but didn't like to say, I suppose, was that he -would stay as long as his father lives. The old man has got Bright's -disease, you know, and he's already had two strokes of paralysis. The -doctor up at the Courthouse says it can't be longer than six months, or -a year at the most." - -Six months or a year! Well, anything might happen, anything did happen -in six months or a year! - -On the floor the children were busily pretending that the oblong hole in -the rug was a grave. "Mrs. Brown bought a crape veil that came all the -way down to the bottom of her skirt," Minnie May was whispering, alert -and animated. "That paper doll in the veil is Mrs. Brown on the way to -the funeral." - -"Well, I'd better be going," Dorinda said, throwing the orange shawl -over her head, while she thought, "I ought to have worn my hat, only the -snow would have ruined my Sunday hat, and the other isn't fit to be -seen." - -Picking up the basket by the door, she looked over her shoulder at Rose -Emily. "If the snow isn't too heavy, I'll be over early to-morrow, and -help you with the children. I hope you'll feel better." - -"Oh, I'm planning to get up in the morning," responded Rose Emily in her -eager voice, smiling happily over the pink wool. - - - - -III - - -Outside, there was a little yard enclosed in white palings to which -farmers tied their horses when the hitching-rail was crowded. Everything -was bare now under the thin coating of snow, and the dried stalks of -summer flowers were protruding forlornly from heaps of straw. Beyond the -small white gate the Old Stage Road, as it was still called, ran past -the cleared ground by the station and dipped into the band of pine woods -beyond the Haney place, which had been divided and let "on shares" to -negro tenants. Within the shadow of the pines, the character of the soil -changed from the red clay on the hills to a sandy loam strewn with pine -needles. - -As Dorinda walked on rapidly, the shawl she wore made a floating orange -cloud against the dim background of earth and sky. The snow was falling -in larger flakes, like a multitude of frozen moths, and beneath the -fluttering white wings the country appeared obscure, solitary, vaguely -menacing. Though the road was quite deserted, except for the scarecrow -figure of Black Tom, the county idiot, who passed her on his way to beg -supper and a night's lodging at the station, the girl was not afraid of -the loneliness. She had two miles to walk, and twilight was already -approaching; but she knew every turn of the road, and she could, as she -sometimes said to herself, "feel her way in the dark of the moon." - -To-night, even if there had been wild beasts in the pines, she would not -have turned back. A winged joy had risen out of the encompassing poverty -and desolation. Though the world was colourless around her, there was a -clear golden light in her mind; and through this light her thoughts were -flying like swallows in the afterglow. Her old dreams had come back -again, but they were different now, since they were infused with the -warm blood of reality. She had found, in her mother's religious -phraseology, a "kingdom of the spirit" to which she could retreat. She -had only to close her eyes and yield herself to this clear golden light -of sensation. She had only to murmur, "I wonder if I shall meet him -again," and immediately the falling snow, the neglected fields, and the -dark pines melted away. She was caught up, she was possessed, by that -flying rapture which was like the swiftness of birds. With a phrase, -with a thought, or by simply emptying her mind of impressions, she could -bring back all the piercing sweetness of surrender. - -And she had discovered the miracle for herself! No one, not even Rose -Emily, had ever hinted to her of this secret ecstasy at the heart of -experience. All around her people were pretending that insignificant -things were the only important things. The eternal gestures of milking -and cooking, of sowing and reaping! Existence, as far as she could see, -was composed of these immemorial habits. Her mother, her father, her -brother, Nathan and Rose Emily, all these persons whom she saw daily -were engaged in this strange conspiracy of dissimulation. Not one of -them had ever betrayed to her this hidden knowledge of life. - -Beyond the old Haney place and the stretch of pines there were the -pastures of Honeycomb Farm, where three old maids, Miss Texanna Snead, -the postmistress, and her sisters Seena and Tabitha, who made dresses, -lived on the ragged remnant of once fertile acres. Recently the younger -brother William had returned from the West with a little property, and -though the fortunes of the sisters were by no means affluent, the fields -by the roadside were beginning to look less forlorn. A few bedraggled -sheep, huddled together beyond the "worm" fence, stared at her through -the hurrying snowflakes. Then, springing to their awkward legs, they -wavered uncertainly for a minute, and at last scampered off, bleating -foolishly. An old horse rested his head on the rails and gazed -meditatively after her as she went by, and across the road several cows -filed slowly on their way from the pasture to the cow-barn. - -"That's a nice cow, that red one," thought Dorinda. "I wish she belonged -to us," and then, with the inconsequence of emotion, "if I meet him, he -will ask if he may drive me home." - -There was the steady _clop-clop_ of a horse's hoofs, and the rapid turning -of wheels in the road behind her. Not for the world would she have -slackened her pace or glanced over her shoulder, though her heart -fluttered in her throat and she felt that she was choking. - -She longed with all her soul to stop and look back; she knew, through -some magnetic current, that he was pursuing her, that in a minute or two -he would overtake her; yet she kept on rapidly, driven by a blind -impulse which was superior to her will. She was facing the moment, which -comes to all women in love, when life, overflowing the artificial -boundaries of reason, yields itself to the primitive direction of -instinct. - -The wheels were grinding on a rocky place in the road. Though she -hurried on, the beating of her heart was so loud in her ears that it -filled the universe. - -"I am going your way," he said, just as she had imagined he would. -"Won't you let me drive you home?" - -She stopped and turned, while all the glimmering light of the snow -gathered in her orange shawl and deepened its hue. Around them the steep -horizon seemed to draw closer. - -"I live at Old Farm," she answered. - -He laughed, and the sound quickened her pulses. She had felt this way in -church sometimes when they sang the hymns she liked best, "Jesus, Lover -of My Soul" or "Nearer, My God, to Thee." - -"Oh, I know you live at Old Farm. You are Dorinda Oakley. Did you think -I'd forgotten you?" - -For an instant a divine dizziness possessed her. Without looking at him, -she saw his eyes, black in the pallid snowflakes, his red hair, just the -colour of the clay in the road, his charming boyish smile, so kind, so -eager, so incredibly pathetic when she remembered it afterwards. She saw -these disturbing details with the sense of familiarity which events -borrow from the dream they repeat. - -"I can't get out," he said, "because the mare is hungry and wants to go -on. But you might get in." - -She shook her head, and just as in every imaginary encounter with him, -she could think of nothing to reply. Though her mind worked clearly -enough at other times, she stood now in a trance between the rail fence, -where the old horse was still watching her, and the wheel ruts in the -road. By some accident, for which nothing in her past experience had -prepared her, all the laws of her being, thought, will, memory, habit, -were suspended. In their place a force which was stronger than all these -things together, a force with which she had never reckoned before, -dominated her being. The powers of life had seized her as an eagle -seizes its prey. - -"Come, get in," he urged, and dumb with happiness, she obeyed him. - -"I remember you very well," he said, smiling into her eyes. "You were -little Dorinda Oakley, and you once poured a bottle of ink on my head to -turn it black." - -"I know--" If she had been talking in her sleep, it could not have -seemed more unreal. At this moment, when of all the occasions in her -life she longed to be most brilliant and animated, she was tongue-tied -by an immobility which was like the drowsiness, only far pleasanter, -that she felt in church on hot August afternoons. - -"You've grown so tall," he resumed presently, "that at first I wondered -a bit. Were your eyes always as big as they are now?" - -Though she was drowning in bliss, she could only gaze at him stupidly. -Why did love, when it came, take away all your ability to enjoy it? - -"I didn't know you were coming back so soon," she said after a struggle. - -"Well, Father got in such a fix I had to," he answered, with a slight -frown which made his face, she thought, more attractive. The haunting -pathos, which she detected but could not explain, looked out of his -eyes; the pathos of heroic weakness confronting insurmountable -obstacles. "Of course it isn't for ever," he said in a surprisingly -cheerful voice. "Father had a second stroke a few weeks ago, and they -sent for me because there was nobody to see that he was taken care of. -But as soon as he gets better, or if he dies," his tone was kind but -impersonal, "I'll go back again and take up my work. I had just got my -degree, and was starting in for a year's experience in a big hospital. -Until I came I thought it was for a few days. The doctor telegraphed -that Father wouldn't last out the week; but he's picked up, and may go -on for a while yet. I can't leave him until he is out of danger, and in -the meantime I'm trying to enlighten the natives. God! what a country! -Nobody seems to ask any more of life than to plod from one bad harvest -to another. They don't know the first principles of farming, except of -course Mr. Ellgood, who has made a success of Green Acres, and that -clownish-looking chap who owns the store. I wonder what the first -Pedlar's were like. The family must have been in the same spot for a -hundred and fifty years." - -"Oh, they've been there always. But most of the other farmers are -tenants. Pa says that's why the land has gone bad. No man will work -himself to death over somebody else's land." - -"That's the curse of the tenant system. Even the negroes become thrifty -when they own a piece of land. And I've noticed, by the way, that they -are the best farmers about here. The negro who owns his ten or twelve -acres is a better manager than the poor white with twice the number." - -"I know," Dorinda assented; but she was not interested in a discussion -of farming. All her life she had heard men talk of farming and of -nothing else. Surely there were other things he could tell her! "I -should think it would be dreary for you," she added, with a woman's -antipathy to the impersonal. - -Turning to her suddenly, he brushed the snow-flakes from the fur robe -over her knees. His gestures, like his personality, were firm, -energetic, and indescribably casual. Against the brooding loneliness of -the country his figure, for all its youthful audacity, appeared trivial -and fugitive. It was as if the landscape waited, plunged in melancholy, -for the passing of a ray of sunshine. Though he had sprung from the -soil, he had returned to it a stranger, and there could be no -sympathetic communion between him and the solitude. Neither as a lover -nor as a conqueror could he hope to possess it in spirit. - -"If I thought it was for ever, I'd take to drink or worse," he replied -carelessly. "One can stand anything for a few weeks or even months; but -a lifetime of this would be--" He broke off and looked at her closely. -"How have you stood it?" he asked. "How does any woman stand it without -going out of her head?" - -Dorinda smiled. "Oh, I'm used to it. I even like it. Hills would make me -feel shut in." - -"Haven't you ever wanted to get away?" - -"I used to think of it all the time. When I first went to the store, I -was listening so hard for the trains that I couldn't hear anything -else." - -"And you got over it?" - -Her lashes fluttered over the burning blue of her eyes. If only he could -know how recently she had got over it! "Yes, I don't feel that way now." - -"You've even kept your health, and your colour. But, of course, you're -young." - -"I'm twenty. When I'm forty I may feel differently. By that time I -shan't have any books left to read." - -He laughed. "By that time you'll probably begin listening again, harder -than ever." He thought for a moment, and then added, with the optimism -of inexperience, "While I'm here I'll try to get a few modern ideas into -the heads of the natives. That will be worth while, I suppose. I ought -to be able to teach them something in a few weeks." - -If she had been older or wiser, she might have smiled at his assurance. -As it was she repeated gently, innocent of ironical intention, "Yes, -that will be worth while." - -It was enough just to sit near him in silence; to watch, through lowered -lashes, the tremor of his smile, the blinking of his eyelids, the way -the pale reddish hair grew on the back of his neck, the indolent grasp -with which he was holding the reins. It was enough, she felt, just to -breathe in the stimulating smell of his cigarettes, so different from -the heavy odour of country tobacco. And outside this enchanted circle in -which they moved, she was aware of the falling snow, of the vague brown -of the fields, of the sharp freshness of the approaching evening, of the -thick familiar scents of the winter twilight. Far away a dog barked. The -mingled effluvia of rotting leaves and manure heaps in barnyards drifted -toward her. From beyond a fence the sound of voices floated. These -things belonged, she knew, to the actual world; they had no place in the -celestial sphere of enchantment. Yet both the actual and the ideal -seemed to occur within her mind. She could not separate the scent of -leaves or the sound of distant voices from the tumult of her thoughts. - -They passed Honeycomb Farm, and sped lightly over a mile of rutted track -to the fork of the Old Stage Road, where a blasted oak of tremendous -height stood beside the ruins of a burned cabin. On the other side of -the way there was the big red gate of Five Oaks, and beyond it a sandy -branch road ran farther on to the old brick house. The snow hid the view -now; but on clear days the red roof and chimneys of the house were -visible above the willow branches of Gooseneck Creek. Usually, as the -mare knew, the doctor's buggy turned in at the big gate; but to-day it -passed by and followed the main road, which dipped and rose and dipped -again on its way to Old Farm. First there was a thin border of woods, -flung off sharply, like an iron fretwork, against the sky; then a strip -of corduroy road and a bridge of logs over a marshy stream; and beyond -the bridge, on the right, stood, the open gate of Dorinda's home. The -mare stumbled and the buggy swerved on the rocky grade to the lawn. - -"That's a bad turn," remarked Jason. - -"I know. Pa is always hoping that he will have time to fix it. We used -to keep the gate shut, but it has sagged so that it has to stay open." - -"They ought to mend the bridge first. Those holes are dangerous for -horses." - -Again she assented. Why, she wondered vaguely, did he emphasize the -obvious? - -Within its grove of trees, in the midst of last summer's weeds, which -were never cut, the long whitewashed house wore a forlorn yet not -inhospitable air. Through the snow the hooded roof looked close and -secretive; but there was the glimmer of a lamp in one of the lower -windows, enormous lilac bushes, which must lend gaiety in April, -clustered about the porch, and the spreading frame wings, added by old -John Calvin Abernethy, still gave an impression of comfort. It was the -ordinary Virginian farm-house of the early nineteenth century, built for -service rather than for beauty; and retaining, because of its -simplicity, a charm which had long since departed from more ambitious -pieces of architecture. - -"So we're home again," said Jason, glancing about him. - -The buggy had come to a stop by the front steps, and regardless of the -mare's impatience, he sprang to the ground and helped the girl to -alight. - -"Yes, it looks bare, doesn't it?" - -She lifted her face to his as she answered, and while he looked down -into her eyes, a quiver passed over his mouth under the short red -moustache. - -"Do you go over every day?" he asked. "Why haven't I met you before?" - -She looked down. "Oh, I had to help out at home. But I've worked in the -store ever since Mrs. Pedlar was taken ill. I get there about eight -usually and stay until just before sunset." - -"For which, I suppose, you receive an extravagant salary?" - -She blushed at his whimsical tone. "They pay me ten dollars a month." - -"Ten dollars a month!" A low whistle escaped his lips. "And you walk -four miles a day to earn it." - -"I don't mind the walk. In good weather I'd rather be out of doors. -Besides somebody usually picks me up." - -"Exactly. As I did this evening. If I hadn't, it would have been after -dark when you got home. Well, I can help you while I'm here," he added -carelessly. "I go that way every day, and I'll look out for you." - -Again the dumbness seized her, and she stood there rooted like a plant, -while he looked at her. For a moment, so intent was his gaze, she felt -that he had forgotten her presence. It was not in the least as if he -were staring at her shawl or her mud-stained ulster, or her broken -shoes; it was not even as if he were looking at her eyes and thinking -how blue they were. No, it was just as if he were seeing something -within his own mind. - -"I've known so few girls," he said presently, as if he were talking to -himself, "but, somehow, you seem different." Then with delightful -irrelevance, he added playfully, "Don't forget me. I shall see you -soon." - -After he had driven away, she stood gazing after him. Again the mare -hesitated, again the wheels crunched on the rocky place. Then the buggy -rolled over the bridge; she heard the sound of his voice as he avoided a -hole; and a minute later the vehicle had disappeared in the border of -leafless woods. - -"_Don't forget me. I shall see you soon._" - -Eight words, and the something different had at last happened to her! -Everything around her appeared fresh and strange and wonderful, as if -she were looking at it clearly for the first time. The snow wrapped her -softly like a mist of happiness. She felt it caressing her cheek, and it -seemed to her, when she moved, that her whole body had grown softer, -lighter, more intensely alive. Her inner life, which had been as bare as -a rock, was suddenly rich with bloom. Never again could she find the -hours dull and empty. "_Don't forget me. I shall see you soon_," sang her -thoughts. - - - - -IV - - -As she stepped on the porch, Rambler, an old black and yellow hound, -with flapping ears and the expression of a pragmatic philosopher, stole -out of the shadows and joined her. - -"You'd better come in or Pa will begin to worry about you," she said, -and her voice startled her because it did not sound as if it were her -own. "I know you've been chasing rabbits again." - -She wondered if the suppressed excitement showed also in her face, and -if her mother, who noticed everything, would detect it. After she had -entered the hall, which smelled of bacon and dried apples, she stopped -and tried to rub the bloom of ecstasy off her cheeks. Then, followed -sedately by Rambler, she passed the closed door of the parlour, which -was opened only for funerals or when the circuit minister was visiting -them, and went into the kitchen at the back of the house. The family -must have heard the wheels, and it was a mercy, she told herself, that -Rufus or Josiah had not come out to meet the buggy. - -"Ma, Rose Emily sent you a pat of butter," she said, "and Nathan gave me -two pounds of brown sugar." - -Her eyes blinked in the light; but it was not the smoky flare of the -lamp on the table that made the big kitchen, with its rough whitewashed -walls, its old-fashioned cooking-stove, its dilapidated pine table and -chairs, its battered pots and pans suspended from nails, its unused -churn standing in the accustomed place on the brick hearth--it was not -the lamp that made the room appear as unfamiliar as if she had never -seen it before. Nor was it the lamp that cast this peculiar haziness, -like a distant perspective, over the members of her family. - -Mrs. Oakley, a tall, lean, angular woman, who had been almost beautiful -for a little while forty years before, placed the coffee-pot on the -table before she turned to look at her daughter. Under her sparse grey -hair, which was strained tightly back and twisted in a small knot on her -head, her face was so worn by suffering that a network of nerves -quivered beneath the pallid veil of her flesh. Religious depression, -from which she still suffered periodically, had refined her features to -austerity. Her pale grey eyes, with their wide fixed stare, appeared to -look out of caverns, and endowed her with the visionary gaze of a -mystic, like the eyes of a saint in a primitive Italian painting. Years -ago, while Dorinda was still a child, her mother had been for weeks at a -stretch what people called "not quite right in her mind," and she had -talked only in whispers because she thought the country was listening. -As long as the spell lasted, it had seemed to the child that the -farm-house crouched like a beaten hound, in the midst of the brown -fields, beneath the menacing solitude. Since then she had never lost the -feeling that the land contained a terrible force, whether for good or -evil she could not tell, and there were hours when the loneliness seemed -to rise in a crested wave and surge over her. - -As she took the basket from her daughter, Mrs. Oakley's features -softened slightly, but she did not smile. Only very young things, -babies, puppies, chickens just out of the shell, made her smile, and -then her smile was more plaintive than cheerful. - -"Rufus can have his buckwheat cakes for breakfast," she said, without -stopping in her movements from the table to the safe and from the safe -to the stove. - -She had worked so hard for so many years that the habit had degenerated -into a disease, and thrift had become a tyrant instead of a slave in her -life. From dawn until after dark she toiled, and then lay sleepless for -hours because of the jerking of her nerves. She was, as she said of -herself, "driven," and it was the tragedy of her lot that all her toil -made so little impression. Though she spent every bit of her strength -there was nothing to show for her struggle. Like the land, which took -everything and gave back nothing, the farm had drained her vitality -without altering its general aspect of decay. - -"That's good!" exclaimed Rufus, a handsome boy of eighteen, with -straight black hair, sparkling brown eyes, and the velvety dark red of -Dorinda's lips and cheeks. He was the youngest child, and after he had -been nursed through a virulent attack of scarlet fever, he had become -the idol of his mother, in spite of a temperamental wildness which she -made the subject of constant prayer. There was ceaseless contention -between him and his elder brother, Josiah, a silent, hardworking man of -thirty, with overhanging eyebrows and a scrubby beard which he seldom -trimmed. After the birth of her first child there had been a sterile -period in Mrs. Oakley's life, when her mental trouble began, and Dorinda -and Rufus both came while she was looking ahead, as she told herself, to -a peaceful middle age unhampered by childbearing. - -"Sit down, Ma," said Dorinda, throwing her shawl on a chair and slipping -out of her ulster, while Flossie, the grey and white cat, rubbed against -her. "You look worn out, and it won't take me a minute. Have you been -helped, Pa?" she asked, turning to the hairy old man at the end of the -table. - -"I ain't had my coffee yet," replied Joshua, raising his head from his -plate. He was a big, humble, slow-witted man, who ate and drank like a -horse, with loud munching noises. As his hair was seldom cut and he -never shaved, he still kept his resemblance to the pictures of John the -Baptist in the family Bible. In place of his youthful comeliness, -however, he wore now an air of having just emerged from the -wilderness. His shoulders were bent and slightly crooked from lifting -heavy burdens, and his face, the little that one could see of it, was -weatherbeaten and wrinkled in deep furrows, like the fissures in a red -clay road after rain. From beneath his shaggy hair his large brown eyes -were bright and wistful with the melancholy that lurks in the eyes of -cripples or of suffering animals. He was a dumb plodding creature who -had as little share in the family life as had the horses, Dan and -Beersheba; but, like the horses, he was always patient and willing to do -whatever was required of him. There were times when Dorinda asked -herself if indeed he had any personal life apart from the seasons and -the crops. Though he was not yet sixty-five, his features, browned and -reddened and seamed by sun and wind, appeared as old as a rock embedded -in earth. All his life he had been a slave to the land, harnessed to the -elemental forces, struggling inarticulately against the blight of -poverty and the barrenness of the soil. Yet Dorinda had never heard him -rebel. His resignation was the earth's passive acceptance of sun or -rain. When his crop failed, or his tobacco was destroyed by frost, he -would drive his plough into the field and begin all over again! "That -tobacco wanted another touch of sun," he would say quietly; or "I'll -make out to cut it a day earlier next year." The earth clung to him; to -his clothes, to the anxious creases in his face, to his finger nails, -and to his heavy boots, which were caked with manure from the stables. -The first time Dorinda remembered his taking her on his knee, the -strong smell of his blue jeans overalls had frightened her to tears, and -she had struggled and screamed. "I reckon my hands are too rough," he -had said timidly, and after that he had never tried to lift her again. -But whenever she thought of him now, his hands, gnarled, twisted, and -earth-stained like the vigorous roots of a tree, and that penetrating -briny smell, were the first things she remembered. His image was -embalmed in that stale odour of the farm as in a preserving fluid. - -"It's snowing faster," Dorinda said, "but it doesn't stay on the -ground." Bending over her father, she covered the corn pone on his plate -with brown gravy. "Maybe it will be clear again by to-morrow," she -went on smoothly. "It's time spring was beginning." - -Joshua's hand, which no amount of scrubbing could free front stain, -closed with a heavy grip on the handle of his knife. "This brown gravy -cert'n'y does taste good, honey," he said. "Yo' Ma's made out mighty -well with no milk or butter." - -A deep tenderness pervaded Dorinda's heart, and this tenderness was but -a single wave of the emotion that flooded her being. "Poor Pa," she -thought, "he has never known anything but work." Oh, how splendid life -was and how hard! Aloud, she said, "I've saved up enough money to buy a -cow in May. After I help you with the taxed and the interest on the -mortgage, I'll still have enough left for the cow. Rose Emily says old -Doctor Greylock will sell us his Blossom!" - -"Then we can have butter and buttermilk with the ash cake!" exclaimed -Rufus. - -"I ain't so sure I'd want to buy that red cow of Doctor Greylock's," -observed Josiah in a surly tone. That was his way, to make an objection -to everything. He had, as his mother sometimes said of him, a good -character but a mean disposition. At twenty he had married a pretty, -light woman, who died with her first child; and now, after a widowerhood -of ten years, he was falling in love with Elvira Snead, a silly young -thing, the daughter of thriftless Adam Snead, a man with scarcely a -shirt to his back or an acre to his name. Though Josiah was hardworking, -painstaking, and frugal, he preferred comeliness to character in a -woman. If it had been Rufus, Dorinda would have found an infatuation for -Elvira easier to understand. Nobody expected Rufus to be anything but -wild, and it was natural for young men to seek pleasures. The boy was -different from his father and his elder brother, who required as little -as cattle; and yet there was nothing for him to do in the long winter -evenings, except sort potatoes or work over his hare traps. The -neighbours were all too far away, and the horses too tired after the -day's work to drag the buggy over the mud-strangled roads. Dorinda could -browse happily among the yellowed pages in old Abernethy's library, -returning again and again to the Waverley Novels, or the exciting Lives -of the Missionaries; but Rufus cared nothing for books and had inherited -his mother's dread of the silence. He was a high-spirited boy, and he -liked pleasure; yet every evening after supper he would tinker with a -farm implement or some new kind of trap until he was sleepy enough for -bed. Then he would march upstairs to the fireless room under the eaves, -where the only warmth came up the chimney from the kitchen beneath. That -was all the life Rufus had ever had, though he looked exactly, Dorinda -thought, like Thaddeus of Warsaw or one of the Scottish Chiefs. - -In the daytime the kitchen was a cheerful room, bright with sunshine -which fell through the mammoth scuppernong grapevine on the back porch. -Then the battered pots and pans grew bright again, the old wood stove -gave out a pleasant song; and the blossomless geraniums, in wooden -boxes, decorated the window-sill. Much of her mother's life was spent in -this room, and as a child Dorinda had played here happily with her -corncob or hickory-nut dolls. Poor as they were, there was never a -speck of dust anywhere. Mrs. Oakley looked down on the "poor white" -class, though she had married into it; and her recoil from her husband's -inefficiency was in the direction of a scrupulous neatness. She knew -that she had thrown herself away, in youth, on a handsome face; yet she -was just enough to admit that her marriage, as marriages go, had not -been unhappy. Her unhappiness, terrible as it had been, went deeper than -any human relation, for she was still fond of Joshua with the maternal -part of her nature while she despised him with her intelligence. He had -made her a good husband; it was not his fault that he could never get -on; everything from the start had been against him; and he had always -done the best that he could. She realized this clearly; but all the -romance in her life, after the death of the young missionary in the -Congo, had turned toward her religion. She could have lived without -Joshua; she could have lived even without Rufus, who was the apple of -her eye; but without her religion, as she had once confessed to Dorinda, -she would have been "lost." Like her daughter, she was subject to -dreams, but her dreams differed from Dorinda's since they came only in -sleep. There were winter nights, after the days of whispering in the -past, when the child Dorinda, startled by the flare of a lantern out in -the darkness, had seen her mother flitting barefooted over the frozen -ground. Shivering with cold and terror, the little girl had crept down -to rouse her fathers who had thrown some garments over his nightshirt, -and picking up the big raccoon-skin coat, had rushed out in pursuit of -his demented wife. A little later Josiah had followed, and then Dorinda; -and Rufus had brought sticks and paper from the kitchen and started a -fire, with shaking hands, in their mother's fireplace. When at last the -two men had led Mrs. Oakley into the house, she had, appeared so -bewildered and benumbed that she seemed scarcely, to know where she had -been. Once Dorinda had overheard Joshua whisper hoarsely to Josiah, "If -I hadn't come up with her in the nick of time, she would have done it"; -but what the thing was they, whispered about the child did not -understand till long afterwards All she knew at the time was that her -mother's "missionary" dream's had come back again; a dream of blue skies -and golden sands, of palm trees on a river's bank, and of black babies -thrown to crocodiles. "I am lost, lost, lost," Mrs. Oakley had murmured -over and over, while she stared straight before her, with a prophetic -gleam in her wide eyes, as if she were seeing unearthly visions. - -They ate to-night, after Joshua had asked grace, in a heavy silence, -which was broken only by the gurgling sounds Joshua and Josiah made over -their coffee-cups. Mrs. Oakley, who was decently if not delicately bred, -had become inured to the depressing tablet manners of her husband and -her elder son. After the first disillusionment of her marriage, she had -confined her efforts at improvement to the two younger children. They -had both, she felt with secret satisfaction, sprung from the finer -strain of the Abernethys; it was as if they had inherited from her that -rarer intellectual medium in which her forbears had attained their -spiritual being. There were hours when it seemed to her that the gulf -between the dominant Scotch-Irish stock of the Valley and the mongrel -breed of "poor white" which produced Joshua was as wide as the abyss -between alien races. Then the image of Joshua as she had first known him -would appear to her, and she would think, in the terms of theology which -were natural to her mind, "It must have been intended, or it wouldn't -have happened." - -While the others were still eating, Mrs. Oakley rose from the food she -had barely tasted, and began to clear the table. The nervous affection -from which she suffered made it impossible for her to sit in one spot -for more than a few minutes. Her nerves jerked her up and started her on -again independently of her will or even of any physical effort. Only -constant movement quieted the twitching which ran like electric wires -through her muscles. - -"Go and lie down, Ma. I'll clear off and wash up," Dorinda said. Her -pity for her mother was stronger to-night than it had ever been, for it -had become a part of the craving for happiness which was overflowing her -soul. Often this starved craving had made her bitter and self-centred -because of the ceaseless gnawing in her breast; but now it was wholly -kind and beneficent. "If you would only stop and rest," she added -tenderly, "your neuralgia would be better." - -"I can't stop," replied Mrs. Oakley, with wintry calm. "I can't see -things going to rack and ruin and not try to prevent it." After a -minute, still moving about, she continued hopelessly, "It rests me to -work." - -"I brought the butter for you," returned Dorinda, in hurt tones, "and -you didn't even touch it." - -Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "I don't mind going without," she responded. -"You must keep it for the boys." - -It was always like that. The girl had sometimes felt that the greatest -cross in her life was her mother's morbid unselfishness. Even her -nagging--and she nagged at them continually--was easier to bear. - -"I've got the water all ready," Mrs. Oakley said, piling dishes on the -tin tray. "I'll get right through the washing up, and then we can have -prayers." - -Family prayers in the evening provided the solitary emotional outlet in -her existence. Only then, while she read aloud one of the more -belligerent Psalms, and bent her rheumatic knees to the rag carpet in -her "chamber," were the frustrated instincts of her being etherealized -into spiritual passion. When the boys rebelled, as they sometimes did, -or Dorinda protested that she was "too busy for prayers," Mrs. Oakley -contended with the earnestness of a Covenanter: "If it wasn't for the -help of my religion, I could never keep going." - -Now, having finished their meal in silence, they gathered in the -chamber, as the big bedroom was called, and waited for evening prayers. -It was the only comfortable room in the house, except the kitchen, and -the family life after working hours was lived in front of the big -fireplace, in which chips, lightwood knots, and hickory logs were burned -from dawn until midnight. Before the flames there was a crooked brass -footman, and the big iron kettle it supported kept up an uninterrupted -hissing noise. In one corner of the room stood a tall rosewood bookcase, -which contained the romantic fiction Dorinda had gleaned from the heavy -theological library in the parlour across the hall. Between the front -windows, which looked out on a cluster of old lilac bushes, there was -the huge walnut bed, with four stout posts and no curtains, and facing -it between the windows, in the opposite walls, a small cabinet of -lacquer-ware which her great-grandfather had brought from the East. In -the morning and afternoon the sunlight fell in splinters over the -variegated design of the rag carpet and the patchwork quilt on the bed, -and picked out the yellow specks in the engravings of John Knox -admonishing Mary Stuart and Martyrs for the Covenant. - -"_The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his -handywork_," read Mrs. Oakley in her high thin voice, with her mystic -gaze passing over the open Bible to the whitewashed wall where the -shadows of the flames wavered. - -Motionless, in her broken splint-bottom chair, scarcely daring to -breathe, Dorinda felt as if she were floating out of the scene into some -world of intenser reality. The faces about her in the shifting firelight -were the faces in a dream, and a dream that was without vividness. She -saw Joshua bending forward, his pipe fallen from his mouth, his hands -clasped between his knees, and his eyes fixed in a pathetic groping -stare, as if he were trying to follow the words. The look was familiar -to her; she had seen it in the wistful expressions of Rambler and of Dan -and Beersheba, the horses; yet it still moved her more deeply than she -had ever been moved by anything except the patient look of her father's -hands. On opposite sides of the fireplace, Josiah and Rufus were dozing, -Josiah sucking his empty pipe as a child sucks a stick of candy, Rufus -playing with the knife he had used to whittle a piece of wood. At the -first words of the Psalm he had stopped work and closed his eyes, while -a pious vacancy washed like a tide over his handsome features. Curled on -the rag carpet, Rambler and Flossie watched each other with wary -intentness, Rambler contemplative and tolerant, Flossie suspicious and -superior. The glow and stillness of the room enclosed the group in a -circle that was like the shadow of a magic lantern. The flames -whispered; the kettle hummed on the brass footman; the sound of Joshua's -heavy breathing went on like a human undercurrent to the cadences of the -Psalm. Outside, in the fields, a dog barked, and Rambler raised his -long, serious head from the rug and listened. A log of wood, charred in -the middle, broke in two and scattered a shower of sparks. - -Prayers were over. Mrs. Oakley rose from her knees; Joshua prodded the -ashes in his pipe; Josiah drew a twist of home-cured tobacco from his -pocket, and cutting off a chew from the end of it, thrust it into his -cheek, where it bulged for the rest of the evening; Rufus picked up a -fishing pole and resumed his whittling. Until bedtime the three men -would sprawl there in the agreeable warmth between the fireplace and the -lamp on the table. Nobody talked; conversation was as alien to them as -music. Drugged with fatigue, they nodded in a vegetable somnolence. Even -in their hours of freedom they could not escape the relentless tyranny -of the soil. - -After putting away the Bible, Mrs. Oakley took out a dozen damask -towels, with Turkey red borders and fringed ends, from her top bureau -drawer and began to look over then. These towels were the possession she -prized most, after the furniture of her grandfather, and they were never -used except when the minister or a visiting elder came to spend the -night. - -"They're turning a little yellow," she remarked presently, when she had -straightened the long fringe and mended a few places. "I reckon I might -as well put them in soak to-night." - -Rufus yawned and laid down his fishing-rod. "There ain't anything for me -to do but go to bed." - -"We all might as well go, I reckon," Joshua agreed drowsily. "It's -gittin' on past eight o'clock, an' if the snow's off the ground, we've -got a hard day ahead of us." - -"I'll put these towels in soak first," his wife responded, "and I've got -a little ironing I want to get through with before I can rest." - -"Not to-night, Ma," Dorinda pleaded. While she spoke she began to yawn -like the others. It was queer the way it kept up as soon as one of them -started. Youth struggled for a time, but in the end it succumbed -inevitably to the narcotic of dullness. - -"I ain't sleepy," replied Mrs. Oakley, "and I like to have something to -do with my hands. I never was one to want to lie in bed unless I was -sleepy. The very minute my head touches the pillow, my eyes pop right -open." - -"But you get up so early." - -"Well, the first crack of light wakes your father, and after he begins -stirring, I am never able to get a wink more of sleep. He was out at the -barn feeding the horses before day this morning." Dorinda sighed. Was -this life? - -"I don't see how you keep it up, Ma," she said, with weary compassion. - -"Oh, I can get along without much sleep. It's different with the rest of -you. Your father is out in the air all day, and you and the boys are -young." - -She went back to the kitchen, with the towels in her hand, while Dorinda -took down one of the lamps from a shelf in the back hall, removed the -cracked chimney, and lighted the wick, which was too short to burn more -than an hour or two. - -The evening was over. It was like every one Dorinda had known in the -past. It was like every one she would know in the future unless--she -caught her breath sharply--unless the miracle happened! - - - - -V - - -The faint grey light crept through the dormer-window and glimmered with -a diffused wanness over the small three-cornered room. Turning -restlessly, Dorinda listened, half awake, to the sound of her mother -moving about in the kitchen below. A cock in the henhouse crowed and was -answered by another. "It isn't day," she thought, and opening her eyes, -she gazed through the window at the big pine on the hill. The sun rose -over the pine; every morning she watched the twisted black boughs, -shaped like a harp, emerge from obscurity. First the vague ripple of -dawn, spreading in circles as if a stone had been cast into the -darkness; then a pearly glimmer in which objects borrowed exaggerated -dimensions; then a blade of light cutting sharply through the pine to -the old pear orchard, where the trees still blossomed profusely in -spring, though they bore only small green pears out of season. After the -edge of brightness, the round red sun would ride up into the heavens and -the day would begin. It was seldom that she saw the sunrise from her -window. Usually, unless she overslept herself and her mother got -breakfast without waking her, the men were in the fields and the two -women were attending to the chickens or cleaning the house before the -branches of the big pine were gilded with light. - -"Poor Ma," Dorinda said, "she wouldn't wake me." But she was not -thinking of her mother. Deep down in her being some blissful memory was -struggling into consciousness. She felt that it was floating there, just -beyond her reach, dim, elusive, enchantingly lovely. Almost she seized -it; then it slipped from her grasp and escaped her, only to return, -still veiled, a little farther off, while she groped after it. A new -happiness. Some precious possession which she had clasped to her heart -while she was falling asleep. Then suddenly the thing that she had half -forgotten came drifting, through unclouded light, into her mind. "_Don't -forget me. I shall see you soon._" - -The sounds in the kitchen grew louder, and the whole house was saturated -with the aroma of coffee and frying bacon. Beyond these familiar scents -and sounds, it seemed to her that she smelt and heard the stirring of -spring in the fields and the woods, that the movement and rumour of life -were sweeping past her in waves of colour, fragrance, and music. - -Springing out of bed, she dressed hurriedly, and decided, while she -shivered at the splash of cold water, that she would clean her shoes -before she went back to the store. The day was just breaking, and the -corner where her pine dressing-table stood was so dark that she was -obliged to light the lamp, which burned with a dying flicker, while she -brushed and coiled her hair. Beneath the dark waving line on her -forehead, where her hair grew in a widow's peak, her eyes were starry -with happiness. Though she was not beautiful, she had her moments of -beauty, and looking at herself in the greenish mirror, which reminded -her of the water in the old mill pond, she realized that this was one of -her moments. Never again would she be twenty and in love for the first -time. - -"If only I had something pretty to wear," she thought, picking up her -skirt of purple calico and slipping it over her head. The longing for -lovely things, the decorative instinct of youth, became as sharp as a -pang. Parting the faded curtains over a row of shelves in one corner, -she took down a pasteboard box, and selected a collar of fine needlework -which had belonged to Eudora Abernethy when she was a girl. For a minute -Dorinda looked at it, strongly tempted. Then the character that showed -in her mouth and chin asserted itself, and she shook her head. "It would -be foolish to wear it to-day," she murmured, and putting it back among -the others, she closed the box and replaced it on the shelf. - -"I'll black my shoes, anyway," she thought, as she hurried downstairs to -breakfast. "Even if they do get muddy again as soon as I step in the -road." - -That was with the surface of her mind. In the depths beneath she was -thinking without words, "Now that he has come, life will never again be -what it was yesterday." - -In the kitchen the lamp had just been put out, and the room was flooded -with the ashen stream of daybreak. Mrs. Oakley was on her knees, putting -a stick of wood into the stove, and the scarlet glare of the flames -tinged her flesh with the colour of rusty iron. After a sleepless night -her neuralgia was worse, and there was a look of agony in the face she -lifted to her daughter. - -"Why didn't you wake me, Ma?" Dorinda asked a little impatiently. "You -aren't fit to get breakfast." - -"I thought you might as well have your sleep out," her mother replied in -a lifeless voice. "I'll have some cakes ready in a minute. I'm just -making a fresh batch for Rufus." - -"You oughtn't have made cakes, as bad as you feel," Dorinda protested. -"Rufus could have gone without just as well as the rest of us." - -Mrs. Oakley struggled to her feet, and picking up the cake lifter, -turned back to the stove. While she stood there against the dull glow, -she appeared scarcely more substantial than a spiral of smoke. - -"Well, we don't have butter every day," she said. "And I can't lie in -bed as long as I've got the strength to be up and doing. Wherever I -turn, I see dirt gathering." - -"No matter how hard you work, the dirt will always be there," Dorinda -persisted. It was useless, she knew, to try to reason with her mother. -One could not reason with either a nervous malady or a moral principle; -but, even though experience had taught her the futility of remonstrance, -there were times when she found it impossible not to scold at a -martyrdom that seemed to her unnecessary. They might as well be living -in the house, she sometimes thought, with the doctrine of -predestination; and like the doctrine of predestination, there was -nothing to be done about it. - -With a sigh of resignation, she turned to her father, who stood at the -window, looking out over the old geraniums that had stopped blooming -years ago. Against the murky dawn his figure appeared as rudimentary as -some prehistoric image of man. - -"Do you think it is going to clear off, Pa?" she asked. - -He looked round at her, prodding the tobacco into his pipe with his -large blunt thumb. "I ain't thinkin', honey," he replied in his thick, -earthy drawl. "The wind's settin' right, but thar's a good-size bank of -clouds over toward the west." - -"You'd better make Rufus take a look at those planting beds up by Hoot -Owl Woods," said Josiah, pushing back his chair and rising from the -table. "One of Doctor Greylock's steers broke loose yesterday and was -tramplin' round up there on our side of the fence." - -Rufus looked up quickly. "Why can't you attend to it yourself?" he -demanded in the truculent tone he always used to his elder brother. - -Josiah, who had reached the door on his way out, stopped and looked back -with a surly expression. With his unshaven face, where the stubby growth -of a beard was just visible, and his short crooked legs, he bore still -some grotesque resemblance to his younger brother, as if the family -pattern had been tried first in caricature. - -"I've got as much as I can do over yonder in the east meadow," he -growled. "You or Pa will have to look after those planting beds." Rufus -frowned while he reached for the last scrap of butter. There would be -none for his mother and Dorinda; but if this fact had occurred to him, -and it probably had not, he would have dismissed it as an unpleasant -reflection. Since he was a small child he had never lacked the courage -of his appetite. - -"What's the use of my trying to do anything when you and Pa are so set -you won't let me have my way about it?" he asked. "I'd have moved those -tobacco beds long ago, if you'd let me." - -"Well, they've always been thar, son," Joshua observed in a peaceable -manner. He stood in the doorway, blowing clouds of smoke over his pipe, -while he scraped the caked mud from his boots. His humble, friendly eyes -looked up timidly, like the eyes of a dog that is uncertain whether he -is about to receive a pat or a blow. "Besides, we ain't got the manure -to waste on new ground," Josiah added, with his churlish frown. "We need -all the stable trash we can rake and scrape for the fields." - -Mrs. Oakley, bringing a plate of fresh cakes as a peace offering, came -over to the table. "Don't you boys begin to fuss again," she pleaded -wearily. "It's just as much as I can do to keep going anyway, and when -you start quarrelling it makes me feel as if I'd be obliged to give up. -You'd just as well take all these cakes, Rufus. I can make some more for -Dorinda by the time she is ready." - -Dorinda, who was eating dry bread with her coffee, made a gesture of -exasperated sympathy. "I don't want any cakes, Ma. I'm going to start -washing up just as soon as you sit down and eat your breakfast. If you'd -try to swallow something, whether you want it or not, your neuralgia -would be better." - -Mrs. Oakley shook her head, while she dragged her body like an empty -garment back to the stove. From the way she moved she seemed to have -neither bone nor muscle, yet her physical flabbiness was sustained, -Dorinda knew, by a force that was indomitable. - -"I don't feel as if I could touch a morsel," she answered, pressing her -fingers over her drawn brow and eyes. - -"Oh, Rufus can eat his head off, but he'll never work to earn his keep," -Josiah grumbled under his breath. - -"Well, I'm not a slave, anyway, like you and Pa," Rufus flared up. "I'd -let the farm rot before it would be my master." - -Josiah had pushed past his father in the doorway. A chill draught blew -in, and out of the draught his slow, growling voice floated back. -"Somebody's got to be a slave. If Ma didn't slave for you, you'd have -to, I reckon, or starve." - -He went out after his father, slamming the door behind him, and Dorinda, -hurriedly finishing her breakfast, rose and began to clear the table. -The sallow light at the window was growing stronger. Outside, there was -the sound of tramping as the horses were led by to the trough at the -well, and the crowing in the henhouse was loud and insistent. The day -had begun. It was like every other day in the past. It would be like -every other day in the future. Suddenly the feeling came over her that -she was caught like a mouse in the trap of life. No matter how -desperately she struggled, she could never escape; she could never be -free. She was held fast by circumstances as by invisible wires of steel. - -Several hours later, when she started to the store, the trapped -sensation vanished, and the gallant youth within her lifted its head. -There was moisture that did not fall in the air. A chain of sullen -clouds in the west soared like peaks through a fog. Straight before her -the red road dipped and rose and dipped again in the monotonous brown of -the landscape. A few ragged crows flapped by over the naked fields. - -Turning at the gate, which was never closed, she looked back at the -house huddled beneath its sloping shingled roof under the boughs of the -old locust trees. The narrow dormer-windows stared like small blinking -eyes, shy and furtive, down on the square Georgian porch, on the flagged -walk bordered by stunted boxwood, on the giant lilac bushes which had -thriven upon neglect, and on the ruined lawn with its dead branches and -its thicket of unmown weeds. In recent years the whitewashed walls had -turned yellow and dingy; the eaves were rotting away where birds nested; -and in June the empty chimneys became so alive with swallows that the -whole place was faintly murmurous, as if summer stirred in the dead wood -as well as in the living boughs. - -Whenever she looked back upon it from a distance, she was visited again -by the image of the house as a frightened thing that waited, shrinking -closer to the earth, for an inevitable disaster. It was, as if the place -had preserved unaltered a mood from which she herself had escaped, and -occasionally this mood awoke in her blood and nerves and flowed through -her again. Recollection. Association. It was morbid, she told herself -sternly, to cherish such fancies; and yet she had never been able -entirely to rid her memory of the fears and dreads of her childhood. -Worse than this even was the haunting thought that the solitude was -alive, that it skulked there in the distance, like a beast that is -waiting for the right moment to spring and devour. - -Bleak, raw, windswept, the morning had begun with a wintry chill. The -snow of yesterday was gone; only an iridescent vapour, as delicate as a -cobweb, was spun over the ground. Already, as she turned and went on -again, the light was changing, and more slowly, as if a veil fluttered -before it was lifted, the expression of the country changed with it. In -the east, an arrow of sunshine, too pallid to be called golden, shot -through the clouds and flashed over the big pine on the hill at the back -of the house. The landscape, which had worn a discouraged aspect, -appeared suddenly to glow under the surface. Veins of green and gold, -like tiny rivulets of spring, glistened in the winter woods and in the -mauve and brown of the fields. The world was familiar, and yet, in some -indescribable way, it was different, shot through with romance as with -the glimmer of phosphorescence. Life, which had drooped, flared up -again, burning clear and strong in Dorinda's heart. It had come back, -that luminous expectancy, that golden mist of sensation. "_Don't forget -me. I shall see you soon_," repeated an inner voice; and immediately she -was lost in an ecstasy without words and without form like the mystic -communion of religion. Love! That was the end of all striving for her -healthy nerves, her vigorous youth, the crown and the fulfilment of -life! At twenty, a future without love appeared to her as intolerable as -the slow martyrdom of her mother. - -Beyond the gate there was the Old Stage Road, and across the road, in -front of the house, ran the pasture, with its winding creek fringed by -willows. Though this stream was smaller than Gooseneck Creek on the -Greylocks' farm, the water never dried even in the severest drought, and -a multitude of silver minnows flashed in ripples over the deep places. -For a quarter of a mile the road divided the pasture from the wide band -of woods on the left, and farther on, though the woods continued, the -rich grass land was fenced off from several abandoned acres, which had -been once planted in corn, but were now overgrown with broomsedge as -high as Dorinda's waist. Sprinkled over the fields, a crop of scrub -pine, grown already to a fair height, stood immovable in the ceaseless -rise and fall of the straw. Though her eyes wandered over the waste -ground as she passed, Dorinda was blind to-day to the colour and the -beauty. What a pity you could never get rid of the broomsedge, she -thought. The more you burned it off and cut it down, the thicker it came -up again next year. - -For a quarter of a mile the road was deserted. Then she came up with a -covered wagon, which had stopped on the edge of the woods, while the -mules munched the few early weeds in the underbrush. She had seen these -vehicles before, for they were known in the neighbourhood as Gospel -wagons. Usually there was a solitary "Gospel rider," an aged man, -travelling alone, and wearing the dilapidated look of a retired -missionary; but to-day there were two of them, an elderly husband and -wife, and though they appeared meagre, chilled and famished, they were -proceeding briskly with their work of nailing texts to the trees by the -wayside. As Dorinda approached, the warning, "Prepare to Meet Thy God," -sprang out at her in thick charcoal. The road to the station was already -covered, she knew, and she wondered if the wagon had passed Jason at the -gate by the fork. - -Hearing her footsteps, one of the missionaries, a woman in a black poke -bonnet, turned and stared at her. - -"Good morning, sister. You are wearing a gay shawl." - -Dorinda laughed. "Well, it is the only gay thing you will find about -here." - -With the hammer still in her hand, the woman, a lank, bedraggled figure -in a trailing skirt of dingy alpaca, scrambled over the ditch to the -road. "Yes, it's a solemn country," she replied. "Is there a place near -by where we can rest and water the mules?" - -"Old Farm is a little way on. I live there, and Ma will be glad to have -you stop." - -Such visitors, she knew, though they made extra work, were the only -diversion in her mother's existence. They came seldom now; only once or -twice in the last few years had the Gospel wagon driven along the Old -Stage Road; but the larger trees still bore a few of the almost -obliterated signs. - -"Then we'll stop and speak a word to her. We'd better be going on, -Brother Tyburn," observed the woman to her companion, who was crawling -over the underbrush. "This don't look as if it was a much travelled -road. Brother Tyburn is my husband," she explained an instant later. "We -met when we were both doing the Lord's work in foreign fields." - -Golden sands. Ancient rivers. Black babies thrown to crocodiles. Her -mother's missionary dream had come to life. - -"Were you ever in Africa?" asked Dorinda. - -"Yes, in the Congo. But we were younger then. After Brother Tyburn lost -his health, we had to give up foreign work. Did you say your house was -just a piece up the road?" - -"A quarter of a mile. After that you won't find anything but a few negro -cabins till you come to the Garlicks' place, three miles farther on." - -The man had already climbed into the wagon and was gathering up the -reins; the mules reluctantly raised their heads from the weeds; and the -woman lifted her skirt and stepped nimbly up on the wheel. After she had -seated herself under the canvas, she leaned down, gesticulating with the -hammer which she still held. - -"Thank you, sister. Have you given a thought to your soul?" Wrapped in -her orange shawl, Dorinda lifted her head with a spirited gesture. - -"I joined the church when I was fifteen," she answered. - -While she spoke she remembered vividly the way grace had come to her, a -softly glowing ecstasy, which flooded her soul and made her feel that -she had entered into the permanent blessedness of the redeemed. It was -like the love she felt now, only more peaceful and far less subject to -pangs of doubt. For a few months this had lasted, while the prosaic -duties of life were infused with a beauty, a light. Then, suddenly, as -mysteriously as it had come, the illumination in her soul had waned and -flickered out like a lamp. Religion had not satisfied. - -The wagon joggled on its way, and floating back, above the rumble of the -wheels, there came presently the words of a hymn, at first clear and -loud, and then growing fainter and thinner as the distance widened. -Often Dorinda had sung the verses in Sunday School. The hymn was a -favourite one of her mother's, and the girl hummed it now under her -breath: - - -"Res-cue the per-ish-ing, care for the dy-ing, - Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave; -Weep o'er the err-ing one, lift up the fall-en, - Tell them of Je-sus, the migh-ty to save. -Res-cue the per-ish-ing, care for the dy-ing, - Je-sus is mer-ci-ful, Je-sus will save." - - -No, religion had not satisfied. - -She was still humming when she reached the fork of the road. Then, -glancing at the red gate of Five Oaks, she saw that Jason Greylock stood -there, with his hand on the bar. - -"I'd just got down to open the gate, when I looked up the road and saw -you coming," he said. "I knew there wasn't another woman about who was -wearing an orange shawl, and if there were, I'd wait for her just out of -curiosity." - -Though he spoke gaily, she felt, without knowing why, that the gaiety -was assumed. He looked as if he had not slept. His fresh colour had -faded; his clothes were rumpled as if he had lain down in them; and -while she walked toward him, she imagined fancifully that his face was -like a drowned thing in the solitude. If she had been older it might -have occurred to her that a nature so impressionable must be lacking in -stability; but, at the moment, joy in his presence drove every sober -reflection from her mind. - -"Is there anything the matter?" she asked, eager to help. - -He looked down while the gate swung back, and she saw a quiver of -disgust cross his mouth under the short moustache. Before replying, he -led his horse into the road and turned back to lower the bar. Then he -held out his hand to help her into the buggy. - -"Do I look as if I'd had no sleep?" he inquired. "Father had a bad -night, and I was up with him till daybreak." - -Then she understood. She had heard tales from Aunt Mehitable, whose -daughter worked at Five Oaks, of the old man's drunken frenzies, and the -way his mulatto brood ran shrieking about the place when he turned on -them with a horsewhip. Would Jason be able to rid the house of this -half-breed swarm and their mother, a handsome, slatternly yellow woman, -with a figure that had grown heavy and shapeless, and a smouldering -resentful gaze? Well, she was sorry for him if he had to put up with -things like that. - -"I am sorry," she responded, and could think of nothing to add to the -words, which sounded flat and empty. In front of her on the blasted oak -she saw the staring black letters of the Gospel riders, "After Death -Comes the Judgment." Depression crept like a fog into her mind. If only -she could think of something to say! While they drove on in silence she -became aware of her body, as if it were a weight which had been fastened -to her and over which she had no control. Her hands and feet felt like -logs. She was in the clutch, she knew, of forces which she did not -understand, which she could not even discern. And these forces had -deprived her of her will at the very moment when they were sweeping her -to a place she could not see by a road that was strange to her. - -"I suppose my nerves aren't what they ought to be," he said presently, -and she knew that he was miles away from her in his thoughts. "They've -always been jumpy ever since I was a child, and a night like that puts -them on edge. Then everything is discouraging around here. I thought -when I first came back that I might be able to wake up the farmers, but -it is uphill ploughing to try to get them out of their rut. Last night I -had planned a meeting in the schoolhouse. For a week I had had notices -up at the store, and I'd got at least a dozen men to promise to come and -listen to what I had to tell them about improved methods of farming. I -intended to begin with crops and sanitation, you know, and to lead off -gradually, as they caught on, to political conditions;--but when I went -over," he laughed bitterly, "there was nobody but Nathan Pedlar and that -idiot boy of John Appleseed's waiting to hear me." - -"I know." She was sympathetic but uncomprehending. "They are in a rut, -but they're satisfied; they don't want to change." He turned to look at -her and his face cleared. "You are the only cheerful sight I've seen -since I got here," he said. - -The light had changed again and her inner mood was changing with the -landscape. A feeling of intimate kinship with the country returned, and -it seemed to her that the colour of the broomsedge was overrunning the -desolate hidden field of her life. Something wild and strong and vivid -was covering the waste places. - -"I am glad," she answered softly. - -"It does me good just to look at you. I ought to be able to do without -companionship, but I can't, not for long. I am dependent upon some human -association, and I haven't had any, nothing that counts, since I came -here. In New York I lived with several men (I've never been much of a -woman's man), and I miss them like the devil. I was getting on well with -my work, too, though I never wanted to study medicine--that was Father's -idea. At first I hoped that I could distract myself by doing some good -while I was here," he concluded moodily; "but last night taught me the -folly of that." - -Though he seemed to her unreasonable, and his efforts at philanthropy as -futile as the usual unsettling processes of reform, she felt -passionately eager to comfort him in his failure. That she might turn -his disappointment to her own advantage had not occurred to her, and -would never occur to her. The instinct that directed her was an -unconscious one and innocent of design. - -"Well, you've just begun," she replied cheerfully. "You can't expect to -do everything in the beginning." - -He laughed. "I knew you'd say that. Even in New York they tell me I try -to hurry nature. I'm easily discouraged, and I take things too hard, I -suppose. Coming back here was a bitter pill, but I had to swallow it. If -I'd been a different sort of chap I might have gone on with my work in -New York, and let Father die alone there at Five Oaks. But when he sent -for me I hadn't the heart or the courage to refuse to come. The truth -is, I've never been able to go ahead. It seems to me, when I look back, -that I've always been balked or bullied out of having what I wanted in -life. I remember once, when I was a little child, I went out with Mother -to gather dewberries, and just as I found the finest briar, all heavy -with fruit, and reached down to pick it, a moccasin snake struck out at -my hand. I got a fit, hysterics or something, and ever since then the -sight of a snake has made me physically sick. Worse than that, whenever -I reach out for anything I particularly want, I have a jumping of the -nerves, just as if I expected a snake to strike. Queer, isn't it? I -wonder how much influence that snake has had on my life?" - -Though he laughed, his laugh was not a natural one and she asked herself -if he could be in earnest. She was still young enough to find it -difficult to distinguish between the ironically wise and the incredibly -foolish. - -"I wish I could help you. I'll do anything in the world I can to help -you," she murmured in a voice as soft as her glance. - -Their eyes met, and she watched the bitterness, the mingling of -disappointment and mortification, fade in the glow of pleasure--or was -it merely excitement?--that flamed in his face. - -"Then wear a blue dress the colour of your eyes," he rejoined with the -light-hearted audacity of the day before. - -The difference in his tone was so startling that she blushed and averted -her gaze. - -"I haven't a blue dress," she replied stiffly, while her troubled look -swept the old Haney place as they went past. In a little while they -would reach the station. Even now they were spinning up the long slope, -white as bone dust, that led to the store. - -The change in his tone sent the blood in quivering rushes to her cheeks. -She felt the sound beating in her ears as if it were music. - -"Then beg, borrow, or steal one," he said gaily, "before I see you -again." - -His smile died quickly, as if he were unable to sustain the high note of -merriment, and the inexplicable sadness stole into his look. Was it -substance or shadow, she wondered. Well, whatever it was, it stirred a -profound tenderness in her heart. - - - - -VI - - -When they parted at the station there was a dreaming smile on her lips; -and though she tried to drive it away as she entered the store, she felt -that the smile was still there, hovering about her mouth. A physical -warmth, soft and penetrating, enveloped her like sunshine. And the -miracle (for it was a miracle) had changed her so utterly that she was a -stranger to the Dorinda of yesterday. Where that practical girl had -been, there was now a tremulous creature who felt that she was capable -of unimaginable adventures. How could she reflect upon the virtues of -the red cow she would buy from old Doctor Greylock when she could not -detach her mind from the disturbing image of Doctor Greylock's son? Over -and over, she repeated mechanically, "Thirty dollars for the red cow"; -yet the words might have been spoken by John Appleseed or his idiot boy, -who was lounging near the track, so remote were they from her -consciousness. Thirty dollars! She had saved the money for months. There -would be just that much after the interest on the mortgage was paid. She -had it put away safely in the best pickle-dish in the china press. Ten -dollars a month didn't go far, even if it was "ready money." _Then wear a -blue dress the colour of your eyes. Beg, borrow, or steal one before I -see you again._ From whom or where had the words come? Something within -herself, over which she had no control, was thinking aloud. And as if -her imagination had escaped from darkness into light, a crowd of -impressions revolved in her mind like the swiftly changing colours of a -kaleidoscope. His eyes, black at a distance, brown when you looked into -them. The healthy reddish tan of his skin. The white streak on his neck -under his collar. The way his hair grew in short close waves like a cap. -His straight red lips, with their look of vital and urgent youth. The -fascinating curve of his eyebrows, which bent down when he smiled or -frowned over his deep-set eyes. The way he smiled. The way he laughed. -The way he looked at her. - -Nathan had opened the store and was already sweeping the tracks of mud -from the platform. Somebody was in the store behind him. He talked while -he swept, jerking his scraggy shoulders with an awkward movement. Poor -Nathan, he had as many gestures as a puppet, and they all looked as if -they were worked by strings. - -Then, as she hastened up the steps of the store, there occurred one of -those trivial accidents which make history. Miss Seena Snead, attired -for travelling in her best navy blue lady's cloth and her small lace -bonnet with velvet strings, came out of the door. - -"I'm runnin' down to Richmond to buy some goods and notions," she said. -"Is there any errand I can do for you or yo' Ma?" - -Out of that golden mist, the strange Dorinda who had taken the place of -the real Dorinda, spoke eagerly: "I wonder--oh, I wonder, Miss Seena, if -you could get me a blue dress?" - -"A blue dress? Why, of course I can, honey. Do you want gingham or -calico? I reckon Nathan has got as good blue and white check as you can -find anywhere. I picked it out for him myself." - -Dorinda shook her head. Her eyes were shining and her voice trembled; -but she went on recklessly, driven by this force which she obeyed but -could not understand. "No, not gingham or calico. I don't want anything -useful, Miss Seena. I want cashmere--or nun's veiling. And I don't want -dark blue. I want it exactly the colour of my eyes." - -"Well, I declare!" Miss Seena looked as if she could not believe her -ears. "Whoever heard of matchin' material by yo' eyes?" Then turning -the girl round, she examined her intently. "I ain't never paid much -attention to yo' eyes," she continued, "though I always thought they had -a kind, pleasant look in 'em. But when I come to notice 'em, they're -jest exactly the shade of a blue jay's wing. That won't be hard to -match. I can carry a blue jay's wing in my mind without a particle of -trouble. You want a new dress for spring, I s'pose? It don't matter -whether a girl's a Methodist or an Episcopalian, she's mighty sure to -begin wantin' a new dress when Easter is comin'. Geneva Ellgood ordered -her figured challis yestiddy from one of them big stores in New York. -She picked the pattern out of a fashion paper, and when the goods come, -I'm goin' to spend a week at Green Acres, an' make it up for her. It is -a real pretty pattern, and it calls for yards and yards of stuff. They -say young Doctor Greylock was a beau of hers when she was in New York -last summer, an' I reckon that's why she's buyin' so much finery. -Courtin' is good for milliners, my Ma used to say, even if marriage is -bad for wives. She had a lot of dry fun in her, my Ma had. Geneva is -gettin' a mighty pretty hat too. She's bought a wreath of wheat and -poppies, an' I'm takin' it down to Richmond to put on one of them -stylish new hats with a high bandeau." - -For an instant Dorinda held her breath while a wave of dull sickness -swept over her. At that moment she realized that the innocence of her -girlhood, the ingenuous belief that love brought happiness, had departed -for ever. She was in the thick of life, and the thick of life meant not -peace but a sword in the heart. Though she scarcely knew Geneva Ellgood, -she felt that they were enemies. It was not fair, she told herself -passionately, that one girl should have everything and one nothing! A -primitive impulse struggled like some fierce invader in her mind, among -the orderly instincts and inherited habits of thought. She was startled; -she was frightened; but she was defiant. In a flash the knowledge came -to her that habit and duty and respectability are not the whole of life. -Beyond the beaten road in which her ideas and inclinations had moved, -she had discovered a virgin wilderness of mystery and terror. While she -stood there, listening to the gossip of the dressmaker, the passion that -abides at the heart of all desperation inflamed her mind. She had -learned that love casts its inevitable shadow of pain. - -"I want a hat too, Miss Seena," she said quickly. "A white straw hat -with a wreath of blue flowers round the crown." - -Miss Seena lifted her spectacles to her forehead, and gazed at the girl -inquiringly with her small far-sighted eyes. "I always thought you had -too much character to care about clothes, Dorinda," she said, "but that -jest proves, I reckon, that you never can tell. I s'pose youth is -obleeged to break out sooner or later. But it will cost a good deal, I'm -afraid. Wreaths are right expensive, now that they're so much worn. Yo' -Ma told me the last time I was over thar that you were savin' all you -made to help yo' Pa with the farm." - -Her glance was mild, for she was not unsympathetic (when was a -dressmaker, especially a dressmaker who was at the same time a -sentimental spinster, unsympathetic about clothes?) but she wished to -feel sure that Dorinda would not regret her extravagance after it was -too late. - -"You mustn't think that you can keep up with Geneva, honey," she added -kindly but indiscreetly. "You're prettier than she is, but her Pa's the -richest man anywhar about here, an' I reckon thar ain't much ugliness -that money ain't able to cure." - -The advice was wholesome, but Dorinda frowned and shook her head -stubbornly. The shawl had slipped to her shoulders, and the sunlight, -which was struggling through the clouds, brought out a bluish lustre on -her black hair. Miss Seena, watching her closely, reflected that hair -and eyes like those did not often go together. With this vivid contrast -and the high colour in her lips and cheeks the girl appeared almost too -conspicuous, the dressmaker decided. "It always seemed to me mo' refined -when yo' eyes and hair matched better," she thought, "but I s'pose most -men would call her handsome, even if her features ain't so small as they -ought to be." - -"I'm going to have one nice dress, I don't care what happens," Dorinda -was saying. "I don't care what happens," she repeated obstinately. "I've -got thirty dollars put away, and I want you to buy that dress and hat if -it takes every cent of it. I'm tired of doing without things." - -"Well, I don't reckon they will cost that much," returned Miss Seena, -after a quick sum in mental arithmetic. "You can buy right nice, -double-width nun's veiling for seventy-five cents a yard, and I can get -you a dress, I reckon, by real careful cuttin', out of nine yards. The -fashion books call for ten, but them New York folks don't need to cut -careful. To be sure, these here bell skirts and balloon sleeves take a -heap of, goods, but I s'pose you'll want yours jest as stylish as -Geneva's?" Since the girl was determined to waste her money, it would be -a pity, Miss Seena reflected gently, to spoil the pleasure of her -improvidence. After all, you weren't young and good-looking but such a -little while! - -"I'll do the best I can, honey," she said briskly. "And they'll charge -it to me at Brandywine and Plummer's store, so you don't need to bring -the money till the first of the month. Thar's the train whistlin' now, -and Sister Texanna is waitin' at the track with my basket and things. -Don't you worry, I'll get you jest the very prettiest material I can -find." - -Turning away, the dressmaker hurried with birdlike fluttering steps to -the track, where Dorinda saw the stately figure of Miss Texanna standing -guard beside an indiscriminate collection of parcels. Miss Texanna, -unlike her sisters, had been pretty in her youth, and a dull glamour of -forgotten romance still surrounded her. Though she had never married, -she had had a lover killed in the war, which, as Miss Tabitha had once -remarked, was "almost as good." But Dorinda, while she watched the -approaching train, did not think of the three sisters. "I oughtn't to -have done it," she said to herself, with a feeling of panic, and then -desperately, "Well, I'm going to have one good dress, I don't care what -happens!" - -A few farmers were taking the early train to town, and Dorinda saw that -Geneva Ellgood had driven her father to the station in her little -dogcart with red wheels. She was a plain girl, with a long nose, eyes -the colour of Malaga grapes, and a sallow skin which had the greenish -tinge of anemia. Her flaxen hair, which she arranged elaborately, was -profuse and beautiful, and her smile, though it lacked brightness, was -singularly sweet and appealing. - -As the two girls looked at each other, they nodded carelessly; then -Geneva leaned forward and held out a slip of paper. - -"I wonder if you would mind fixing up this list for me?" she asked in a -friendly tone. "I don't like to leave Neddy, and Bob has gone in to see -if there are any letters." - -Running down the steps, Dorinda took the list from her and glanced over -it. "We haven't got the kind of coffee you want," she said. "It was -ordered two weeks ago, but it hasn't come yet." - -"Well, we'll have to make out with what you have. If you'll wrap up the -things, Bob will bring them out to me." - -She was a shy girl, gentle and amiable, yet there was a barely -perceptible note of condescension in her manner. "Just because she's -rich and I'm poor, she thinks she is better than I am," Dorinda thought -disdainfully, as she went up the steps. - -While she was weighing and measuring the groceries, Bob Ellgood came -from the post office (which consisted of a partition, with a window, in -one corner of the store) and stopped by the counter to speak to her. He -was a heavy, slow-witted young man, kind, temperate, and good-looking in -a robust, beefy fashion. Because he was the eldest son of James Ellgood, -he was regarded as desirable by the girls in the neighbourhood, and -Dorinda remembered that, only a few Sundays ago, she had looked at him -in church and asked herself, with a start of expectancy, "What if he -should be the right one after all?" She laughed softly over the pure -absurdity of the recollection, and a gleam of admiration flickered in -the round, marble-like eyes of the young man. - -"I hope the Greylocks' steer didn't harm your father's plant beds," he -said abruptly. - -"No," she shook her head. "I haven't heard that they suffered." - -Having weighed the sugar, she was pouring it into a paper bag, and his -eyes lingered on the competent way in which her fingers turned down the -opening, secured it firmly, and snipped off the end of the string with -an expert gesture. Only a week ago his attention would have flattered -her, but to-day she had other things to think of, and his admiring -oxlike stare made her impatient. Was that the way things always came, -after you had stopped wanting them? - -"Well, he ought to have a good crop after the work he's put on those -fields," he continued, as she placed the packages in a cracker box and -handed them to him over the counter. - -She shook her head. "No matter how hard you work it always comes back to -the elements in the end. You can't be sure of anything when you have to -depend upon the elements for a living." - -"That's what Father says." He accepted the fatalistic philosophy without -dispute. "After all, the rain and frost and drought, not the farmer, do -most of the farming." He had had a good education, and though his speech -was more provincial than Jason's, it lacked entirely the racy flavour of -Pedlar's Mill. - -With the box under one arm, he was still gazing at her, when the -impatient voice of Geneva rang out from the doorway, and the girl came -hurrying into the store. - -"What are you waiting for, Bob? I thought you were never coming." Then, -as her eyes fell on Dorinda, she added apologetically, "Of course I know -the things were ready, but Bob is always so slow. I've got to hurry back -because Neddy won't stand alone." - -She turned away and went out, while Bob followed with a crestfallen air. - -"As if I cared!" thought Dorinda proudly. "As if I wanted to talk to -him!" - -The train to the north had gone by at five o'clock, and the next one, -which Miss Seena had just taken to Richmond, was the last that would -stop before afternoon. The few farmers who had lounged about the track -were now waiting in the store, while Nathan weighed and measured or -counted small change into callous palms. Here and there a negro in blue -jeans overalls stood patiently, with an expression of wistful -resignation which was characteristic less of an individual than of a -race. There was little talk among the white farmers, and that little was -confined to the crops, or the weather. Rugged, gnarled, earth-stained, -these men were as impersonal as trees or as transcendental philosophers. -In their rustic pride they accepted silence as they accepted poverty or -bad weather, without embarrassment and without humility. If they had -nothing to say, they were capable of sitting for hours, dumb and -unabashed, over their pipes or their "plugs" of tobacco. They could tell -a tale, provided there was one worth the telling, with caustic wit and -robust realism; but the broad jest or the vulgar implication of the -small town was an alien product among them. Not a man of them would have -dared recite an anecdote in Pedlar's store that Dorinda should not have -heard. The transcendental point of view, the habit of thought bred by -communion with earth and sky, had refined the grain while it had -roughened the husk. - -"Do you want me to wait on Mr. Appleseed?" asked Dorinda, glancing past -Nathan to the genial, ruddy old farmer, who was standing near her, with -his idiot son close at his side. As she spoke she lifted the top from -one of the tall jars on the counter, and held out a stick of striped -peppermint candy. "Here's a stick of candy for you, Billy." - -The boy grinned at her with his sagging mouth, and made a snatch at the -candy. - -"Say thanky, son," prompted John Appleseed. - -"Thanky," muttered Billy obediently, slobbering over the candy. - -"No, I'll look after John as soon as I've fixed up this brown sugar," said -Nathan. "I wish you'd take those ducks from Aunt Mehitable Green. She's -been waitin' a long time, and she ain't so young as she used to be. Tell -her I'll allow her seventy-five cents for the pair, if they're good -size. She wants the money's worth in coffee and Jamaica ginger." - -"Why, I didn't know Aunt Mehitable was here!" Glancing quickly about, -she discovered the old woman sitting on a box at the far end of the -room, with the pair of ducks in her lap. "I didn't see you come in, or -I'd have spoken to you before," added the girl, hurrying to her. - -Aunt Mehitable Green had assisted at Dorinda's birth, which had been -unusually difficult, and there was a bond of affection, as well as a -sentimental association, between them. Mrs. Oakley, with her superior -point of view, had always been friendly with the negroes around her. -During Dorinda's childhood both mother and daughter had visited Aunt -Mehitable in her cabin at Whistling Spring, and the old midwife had -invariably returned their simple gifts of food or wine made from -scuppernong grapes, with slips of old-fashioned flowers or "physic" -brewed from the mysterious herbs in her garden. She still bore the -reputation, bestowed half in fear, half in derision, of "a conjure -woman," and not a negro in the county would have offended her. Though -there was a growing scepticism concerning her ability to "throw spells" -or work love charms, even Mrs. Oakley admitted her success in removing -moles and warts and in making cows go dry at the wrong season. She was a -tall, straight negress, with a dark wrinkled face, in which a brooding -look rippled like moonlight on still water, and hair as scant and grey -as lichen on an old stump. Her dress of purple calico was stiffly -starched, and she wore a decent bonnet of black straw which had once -belonged to Mrs. Oakley. The stock she came of was a good one, for, as a -slave, she had belonged to the Cumberlands, who had owned Honeycomb Farm -before it was divided. Though that prosperous family had "run to seed" -and finally disappeared, the slaves belonging to it had sprung up -thriftily, in freedom, on innumerable patches of rented ground. The -Greens, with the Moodys and Plumtrees, represented the coloured -aristocracy of Pedlar's Mill; and Micajah Green, Aunt Mehitable's eldest -son, had recently bought from Nathan Pedlar the farm he had worked, with -intelligence and industry, as a tenant. - -"I hope you didn't walk over here," said Dorinda, for Whistling Spring -was five miles away, on the other side of the Greylocks' farm, beyond -Whippernock River. - -The old woman shook her head, while she began unwrapping the strips of -red flannel on the legs of the ducks. "Naw'm, Micajah brung me over wid -de load er pine in de oxcyart. I ain' seen you en yo' Ma; fur a mont' er -Sundays, honey," she added. - -"I've wanted to get down all winter," answered Dorinda, "but the back -roads are so bad I thought I'd better wait until the mud dried. Are any -of your children living at home with you now?" - -Aunt Mehitable sighed. "De las oner dem is done lef' me, but I ain't -never seed de way yit dat de ole hen kin keep de fledglin's in de -chicken coop. Dey's all done moughty well, en dat's sump'n de Lawd's -erbleeged ter be praised fur. Caze He knows," she added fervently, "de -way I use'n ter torment de Th'one wid pray'r when dey wuz all little." - -"Pa says Micajah is one of the best farmers about here." - -"Dat's so. He sholy is," assented the old midwife. "En Micar he's -steddyin' 'bout horse sickness along wid Marse Kettledrum, de horse -doctah," she continued, "en Moses, he's gwineter wuck on de railroad -ontwel winter, en Abraham, he's helpin' Micajah, en Eliphalet, he's -leasin' a patch er ground f'om Marse Garlick over yonder by Whippernock, -en Jemima, de one I done name arter ole Miss, she's wuckin' at Five Oaks -fur ole Doctah Greylock----" - -"I thought she'd left there long ago," Dorinda broke in. - -"Naw'm, she ain' left dar yit. She wuz fixin' ter git away, caze hit's -been kinder skeery over dar sence de ole doctah's been gittin' so -rambunctious; en Jemima, she ain' gwineter teck er bit er sass f'om dat -ar yaller huzzy, needer. Yas'm, she wuz all fixin' ter leave twell de -young doctah come back, an he axed 'er ter stay on dar en wait on him. -Huh!" she exclaimed abruptly, after a pause, "I 'low dar's gwinter be -some loud bellowin's w'en de young en de ole steer is done lock dere -horns tergedder." With a gesture of supreme disdain, she thrust the two -ducks away from her into Dorinda's hands. "Dar, honey, you teck dese yer -ducks," she said. "I'se moughty glad to lay eyes on you agin, but I'se -erbleeged ter be gittin' erlong back wid Micajah. You tell yo' Ma I'se -comin' ter see 'er jes' ez soon ez de cole spell is done let up. I sholy -is gwineter do hit." - -When the old woman had gone, with the coffee and Jamaica ginger in her -basket, Dorinda hurried into the room at the back of the store, where -Rose Emily and the children were waiting for her. - -"I couldn't get here any sooner," she explained as she entered. "First -Miss Seena Snead and then Aunt Mehitable stopped me. Are you feeling -easier to-day, Rose Emily?" - -Mrs. Pedlar, wrapped in a pink crocheted shawl, with her hectic colour -and her gleaming hair, reminded Dorinda of the big wax doll they had had -in the window of the store last Christmas. She was so brilliant that she -did not look real. - -"Oh, I feel like a different person this morning," she answered. It was -what she always said at the beginning of the day. "I'm sure I shall be -able to get up by evening." - -"I'm so glad," Dorinda responded, as she did every morning. "Wait and -see what the doctor says." - -"Yes, I thought I'd better stay in bed until he comes." She closed her -eyes from weakness, but a moment later, when she opened them, they shone -more brightly than ever. "He said he would stop by." - -For an instant Dorinda hesitated; then she answered in a hushed voice. -"I met him in the road, and he drove me over." - -Rose Emily's face was glowing. "Oh, did he? I'm so glad," she breathed. - -"I'm afraid things aren't going well at Five Oaks," Dorinda pursued in a -troubled voice. "He looked dreadfully worried. It's the old man, I -suppose. Everybody says he's drinking himself to death, and there's that -coloured girl with all those children." - -"Well, he can't live much longer," Rose Emily said hopefully, "and then, -of course, Jason will send them all packing." She reflected, as if she -were trying to recall something that had slipped her memory. "Somebody -was telling me the other day," she continued, "it must have been either -Miss Texanna or Miss Tabitha. Whoever it was thought Jason had made a -mistake to come back. Oh, I remember now! It was Miss Tabitha, and she -called Jason a fool to let his father manage his life. She said he had a -sweet nature, but that he was as light as a feather and a strong wind -could blow him away. Of course she didn't know him." - -"Of course not," Dorinda assented emphatically. - -"Well, I haven't seen him often, but he didn't seem to me to lack -backbone. Anyhow, I'd rather be married to a sweet nature than to a -strong will," she added. Ever since Jason's return, she had hoped so -ardently that he might fall in love with Dorinda that already, according -to her optimistic habit of mind, she regarded the match as assured. - -They were still discussing young Doctor Greylock when Minnie May ran in -to say that Bud "would not mind what she told him," and Mrs. Pedlar -shifted her feverish animation in the direction of her daughter. - -"Tell him if he doesn't do what you say, I'll make his Pa whip him as -soon as the store is closed," she said sternly, for she was a -disciplinarian; and the capable little girl ran out again, wiping her -red and shrivelled hands on the towel she had pinned over her short -dress. - -"I declar that child's a born little mother," Rose Emily continued. "I -don't see how I could ever have pulled through without her." - -Trivial as the incident was, Dorinda never forgot it. Years afterwards -the scene would return to her memory, and she would see again the -sturdy, energetic little figure, with the two thick wheaten red braids -and the towel pinned about her waist, hurrying out of the room. A born -little mother, that was the way Minnie May always appeared to her. - -"Nathan needs me to help. I'd better go back," she said. "I'll look in -every now and then to see how you are." Smoothing her hair with her -hand, she hastened into the store. - -As the morning advanced a line of white and coloured farmers, assembled -by the counter, with the chickens, eggs, and pats of butter which they -had brought to exchange for coffee, molasses, sugar, or simple household -remedies such as Jamaica ginger and Sloan's liniment. Tea was used only -in case of illness, and the brown tin canister on the shelf sometimes -remained empty for weeks. - -Until yesterday Dorinda had regarded the monotonous routine of the store -as one of the dreary, though doubtless beneficial, designs of an -inscrutable Providence. A deep-rooted religious instinct persuaded her, -in spite of secret recoils, that dullness, not pleasure, was the -fundamental law of morality. The truth of the matter, she would probably -have said, was that one did the best one could in a world where duty was -invariably along the line of utmost resistance. But this morning, even -while she performed the empty mechanical gestures, she felt that her -mind had become detached from her body, and was whirling like a -butterfly in some ecstatic dream. Flightiness. That was how it would -have appeared to her mother. Yet, if this were flightiness, she thought, -who would ever choose to be sober? Beauty, colour, sweetness, all the -vital and radiant energy of the spring, vibrated through her. Her ears -were ringing as if she moved in a high wind. Sounds floated to her in -thin strains, from so great a distance that she was obliged to have -questions repeated before they reached her ears. And all the time, while -she weighed chickens and counted eggs and tasted butter, she was aware -that the faint, slow smile clung like an edge of light to her lips. - - - - -VII - - -The morning was well over when Minnie May came running into the store to -ask Dorinda to come to her mother. - -"The doctor is with her," said the child, "and he wants to leave some -directions." - -"Hadn't your father better see him?" Dorinda inquired, longing yet -hesitating. - -"No, you go," answered Nathan before the child could reply. "You're so -much quicker at understanding," he explained, "and you can tell me what -he says after he's gone." - -He looked, for all his immense frame, more bent and colourless and -ineffectual, she thought, than she had ever seen him. What a mean life -he had had! And he was good. There wasn't a better husband and father in -the world than Nathan Pedlar, and for the matter of that, there wasn't a -more honest tradesman. Yet everybody, even his own children, pushed him -aside as if he were of no consequence. - -A few minutes later she was in Rose Emily's room, and her bright gaze -was on the clean-cut youthful figure leaning over her friend. Though she -had known that he would be there, her swift impression of him startled -her by its vividness. It was like this every time that she saw him. -There was an animation, a living quality in his face and smile which -made everything appear lifeless around him. Long afterwards, when she -had both remembered and forgotten, she decided that it was simply the -glamour of the unknown that she had felt in him. In those first months -after his return to Pedlar's Mill, he possessed for her the charm of -distant countries and picturesque enterprises. It was the flavour of -personality, she realized, even then, not of experience. He had -travelled little, yet his presence diffused the perilous thrill of -adventure. - -"This is Dorinda," Rose Emily said; and he looked up and nodded as -casually as if he had never seen her before, or had just parted from -her. Which impression, Dorinda wondered, did he mean to convey? - -"I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a hammock?" he inquired. -"What we need is to get her out on the porch. I've told her that every -time I've seen her." - -"There are several hammocks in the store." As she answered his question, -Dorinda glanced at him doubtfully. In the sickroom he appeared to have -shed his youth as a snake sheds its skin. He might have been any age. He -was brisk, firm, efficient, and as sexless as a machine. - -"Wouldn't it be safer to wait until the weather is milder?" Rose Emily -asked, with an anxious smile. "Cold is so bad for me." - -"Nonsense!" He shook his head with a laugh. "That's the whole trouble -with you. Your lungs are starving for air. If you'd kept out of doors -instead of shutting the windows, you wouldn't be where you are now." - -At this his patient made a timid protest. "Your father always said----" - -He interrupted her brusquely. "My father was good in his generation, but -he belongs to the old school." - -After this he talked on cheerfully, flattering her, chaffing her, while -he made fun of her old-fashioned hygiene and asked innumerable -questions, in a careless manner, about her diet, her medicine, her -diversions, and the deformity of the baby, John Abner, who was born with -a clubfoot. Though it seemed a long time to Dorinda, it was in fact not -more than a quarter of an hour before he said good-bye and nodded to the -girl to follow him out on the porch. - -"I'll show you the very place to hang that hammock," he remarked as he -led the way out of doors. - -Rose Emily stretched out her thin arm to detain him. "Don't you think -I'm getting better every day, Doctor?" - -"Better? Of course you're better." He looked down at her with a smile. -"We'll have you up and out before summer." - -Then he opened the door, and Dorinda obediently followed him outside. - -"How on earth does she breathe in that oven?" he demanded moodily, while -he walked to the far end of the porch. "She'll be dead in three months, -if she doesn't get some fresh air into her lungs. And the children. It's -as bad as murder to keep them in that room." - -He frowned slightly, and with his troubled frown, Dorinda felt that he -receded from her and became a stranger. His face was graver, firmer, -harassed by perplexity. It seemed to her incredible that he had looked -at her that morning with the romantic pathos and the imperative needs of -youth in his eyes. - -"Will she really be up by summer?" she asked, breathless with hope and -surprise. - -"Up?" He lowered his voice and glanced apprehensively over his shoulder. -"Why, she's dying. Don't you know she is dying?" - -"I thought so," her voice broke. "But you told her----" - -"You didn't expect me to tell her the truth, did you? What kind of brute -do you take me for?" - -This new morality, for which neither religious doctrine nor experimental -philosophy had prepared her, stunned her into silence; and in that -silence he repeated, with a gesture of irritation, as if the admission -annoyed him excessively: "She'll be in her grave in six months, but you -couldn't expect me to tell her so." - -"You mean there is no hope?" - -"Not of a cure. Her lungs are too far gone. Of course, if she gets out -of doors, she may linger a little longer than we expect. Air and proper -nourishment work wonders sometimes." - -"But don't you think she ought to have time to prepare?" It was the -question her mother would have asked, and she uttered it regretfully but -firmly. - -"Prepare? You mean for her funeral?" - -"No, I mean for eternity." - -If she had presented some prehistoric fossil for his inspection, he -might have examined it with the same curious interest. - -"For eternity?" he repeated. - -Dorinda wavered. Though honest doubt was not unknown at Pedlar's Mill, -it had seldom resisted successfully the onslaught of orthodox dogma. To -the girl, with her intelligence and independence, many of her mother's -convictions had become merely habits of speech; yet, after all, was not -habit rather than belief the ruling principle of conduct? - -"Will you let her die without time for repentance?" something moved her -to ask. - -"Repentance! Good Lord! What opportunity has she ever had to commit a -pleasure?" - -Then, as if the discussion irritated him, he picked up his medicine case -which he had laid on the railing of the porch. "I'll be passing again -about sundown," he remarked lightly, "and if you're ready to start home, -I'll pick you up as I go by." - -As casually as that! "I'll pick you up as I go by!" Just as if she were -a bag of flour, she told herself in resentful despair. As he went from -her down the path to the gate, she resolved that she would not let him -drive her home if it killed her. - -"I shan't be here at sundown," she called after him in the voice of a -Covenanter. - -He was almost at the gate. Her heart sank like a wounded bird, and then, -recovering its lightness, soared up into the clouds. "Well, I'll manage -to come a little earlier," he responded, with tender gaiety. "Don't -disappoint me." - -The small white gate between the two bare apple trees opened and closed -behind him. He untied the reins from the paling fence, and springing -into his buggy, drove off with a wave of his free hand. "God! What a -life!" he said, looking round while the buggy rolled down the slope in -the direction of the railway track. Standing there, she watched the -wheels rock slightly as they passed over the rails, and then spin on -easily along the road toward Green Acres. After the moving speck had -disappeared in the powder blue of the distance, it seemed to her that it -had left its vivid trail through the waste of the broomsedge. Her face -glowed; her bosom rose and fell quickly; her pulses were beating a -riotous tumult which shut out all other sounds. Suspense, heartache, -disappointment, all were forgotten. Why had no one told her that love -was such happiness? - -Then, suddenly, her mind reproached her for the tumultuous joy. Rose -Emily was dying; yet she could not attune her thoughts to the solemn -fact of mortality. Walking the length of the porch, she opened the door -and went back into the close room. - -"The doctor insists that you must open the windows," she said gravely, -subduing with an effort the blissful note in her voice. - -So far had she been from the actual scene that she was not prepared for -the eagerness in Rose Emily's look. - -"Oh, Dorinda," cried the dying woman, "the doctor was so encouraging!" - -The girl turned her face to the window. "Yes, he was very encouraging." - -"What did he say to you on the porch?" - -"Only that he wanted to have you up before summer." After all, the big -lie was easier than the little one. - -Mrs. Pedlar sighed happily. "I do wish summer would come!" - -Dorinda bent down and straightened the pillow under the brilliant head. -It was hard to die, she thought, when the world was so beautiful. There -could be no drearier lot, she imagined, than marriage with Nathan for a -husband; better by far the drab freedom of the Snead sisters. Yet even -to Rose Emily, married to Nathan, life was not without sweetness. A -warm pity for her friend pervaded Dorinda's heart; pity for all that she -had missed and for the love that she had never known. - -"It won't be long now." What more could she say? - -"Dorinda!" Rose Emily's voice was quivering like the string of a harp. -"Miss Texanna came in for a minute, and she was so excited about the -dress Miss Seena is getting for you in town. Why didn't you tell me?" - -"I wanted to, dear, only I didn't have time." - -"I am so glad you are going to have a new dress. We can perfectly well -make it here, after Miss Seena has cut it out. Sometimes I get tired -crocheting." - -Dorinda's eyes filled with tears. How kind Rose Emily was, how -unselfish, how generous! Always she was thinking of others; always she -was planning or working for the good of her children or Dorinda. Even as -a school teacher she had been like that, sweet, patient, generous to a -fault; and now, when she was dying, she grew nobler instead of peevish -and miserable like other hopelessly ill women. - -"I'd love it," she said, as soon as she could trust herself to reply, -and she added hastily, "I wonder if you could eat a piece of duck -to-morrow. Aunt Mehitable brought a pair of nice fat ones." - -Rose Emily nodded. "Yes, to-morrow. I'd like to see Aunt Mehitable the -next time she comes. She told me once she could conjure this mole off -the back of my neck." - -"Well, you might let her try when you're out again." Tears were beading -Dorinda's lashes, and making some trivial excuse, she ran out of the -room. To be worrying about a little mole when Rose Emily would be dead -before summer was over! - -A little before sunset, when the whistle of the train blew, Dorinda -picked up her shawl and hastened down to the track. Miss Texanna, having -nothing to do but knit in her box of a post office, had caught the -whistle as far away as Turkey Station, and was already waiting between -the big pump and the stranded freight car. "I reckon that's Sister Seena -on the platform," she remarked; and a few minutes later the train -stopped and the dressmaker was swung gallantly to the ground by the -conductor and the brakeman. - -"I've got everything," she said, after the swift descent. "I looked -everywhere, and I bought the prettiest nun's veiling I could find. It's -as near the colour of a blue jay's wing as I ever saw, and I've got some -passementerie that's a perfect match." She was puffing while she walked -up the short slope to the store, but they were the puffs of a victorious -general. "Let's take it right straight into Rose Emily's room," she -added. "She will be just crazy about it." - -When the three of them gathered about Rose Emily's bed, and the yards of -bright, clear blue unrolled on the counterpane, it seemed to Dorinda -that they banished the menacing thought of death. Though she pitied her -friend, she could not be unhappy. Her whole being was vibrating with -some secret, irrepressible hope. A blue dress, nothing more. The merest -trifle in the sum of experience; yet, when she looked back in later -years, it seemed to her that the future was packed into that single -moment as the kernel is packed into the nut. - -"May I leave it here?" she asked, glancing eagerly out of the window. -"The sun has gone down, and I must hurry." Would he wait for her or had -he already gone on without her? - -"We'll start cuttin' the first thing in the mornin'," said Miss Seena, -gloating over the nun's veiling. "Jest try the hat on, Dorinda, before -you go. I declar her own Ma wouldn't know her," she exclaimed, with the -pride of creation. "Nobody would ever have dreamed she was so -good-lookin', would they, Rose Emily? Ain't it jest wonderful what -clothes can do?" - -With that "wonderful" tingling in her blood, Dorinda threw the orange -shawl over her head, and hastened out of the house. She felt as if the -blue waves were bearing her up and sweeping her onward. In all her life -it was the only thing she had ever had that she wanted. Yesterday there -had been nothing, and to-day the world was so rich and full of beauty -that she was dizzy with happiness. It was like a first draught of wine; -it enraptured while it bewildered. - -"I was a little late, and I was afraid you would have gone," Jason said. - -What did he mean by that, she asked herself. Ought she not to have -waited? She had no experience, no training, to guide her. Nothing but -this blind instinct, and how could she tell whether instinct was right -or wrong? - -"Something kept me. I couldn't get away earlier," she answered. "Have -you worked all day?" - -"Yes, but it isn't steady work. For hours at a time the store is empty. -Then they all come together. Of course we have to tidy up in the off -hours," she added, "and when there's nothing else to do I read aloud to -Rose Emily." - -"Are you content? You look happy." - -He was gazing straight ahead of him, and it seemed to her that he was as -impersonal as the Shorter Catechism. She suffered under it, yet she was -powerless, in her innocence, to change it. - -"I don't know. There isn't any use thinking." Were there always these -fluctuations of hope and disappointment? Did nothing last? Was there no -stability in experience? - -"Well, I got caught too," he said presently, as if he had not heard her. -"That's the rotten part of a doctor's life, everything and everybody -catches him. Good Lord! Is there never any end to it? I'd give my head -to get away. I'm not made for the country. It depresses me and lets me -down too easily. I suppose I'm born lazy at bottom, and I need the -contact with other minds to prod me into energy. This is the critical -time too. If I can't get away, I'm doomed for good. Yet what can I do? -I'm tied hand and foot as long as Father is alive." - -"Couldn't you sell the farm?" Her voice sounded thin and colourless in -her ears. - -"How can I? Who would buy? And it isn't only the farm. I wouldn't let -that stand in my way. Father has got into a panic about dying, and he is -afraid to be left alone with the negroes. He made me promise, when I -thought he was on his death-bed, that I wouldn't leave him as long as he -lived. He's got a will of iron--that's the only thing that keeps him -alive--and he's always had his way with me. He broke my spirit, I -suppose, when I was little. And it was the same way with Mother. She -taught me to be afraid of him, and to dodge and parry before I was old -enough to know what I was doing. When a fear like that gets into the -nerves, it's like a disease." He broke off moodily, and then went on -again without waiting for her response. "There's medicine now. I never -wanted to study medicine. I knew I wasn't cut out for it. What I wanted -to do was something entirely different,--but Father had made up his -mind, and in the end he had his way with me. He always gets his way with -me. He's thwarted everything I ever wanted to do as far back as I can -remember. For my good of course. I understand that. But you can ruin -people's lives--especially young people's lives--from the best motives." - -His bitterness welled out in a torrent. It seemed to Dorinda that he had -forgotten her; yet, even though he was unaware of her sympathy, she felt -that she longed to reach out her hand and comfort him. - -"I'm sorry," she said softly, "I'm sorry." - -He looked at her with a laugh. "I oughtn't to have let that out," he -returned. "Something happened to upset me. I'm easy-going enough -generally, but there are some things I can't stand." - -She was curious to know what had happened, what sort of things they were -that he couldn't stand; but after his brief outburst, he did not confide -in her. He was engrossed, she saw, in a recollection he did not divulge; -and, manlike, he made no effort to assume a cheerfulness he did not -feel. The drive was a disappointment to her; yet, in some inexplicable -way, the disappointment increased rather than diminished his power over -her. While she sat there, with her lips closed, she was, shedding her -allurement as prodigally as a flower sheds its fragrance. Gradually, the -afterglow thinned into dusk; the road darkened, and the broomsedge, -subdued by twilight, became impenetrable. - - - - -VIII - - -It was Easter Sunday, and Dorinda, wearing her new clothes with outward -confidence but a perturbed mind, stood on the front porch while she -waited for the horses to be harnessed to the spring wagon. - -Though she was far less handsome in her blue dress and her straw hat -with the wreath of cornflowers than she was in her old tan ulster and -orange shawl, neither she nor Almira Pride her father's niece, who was -going to church with them, was aware of the fact. Easter would not be -acknowledged in the austere service of the church at Pedlar's Mill; but -both women knew that spring would blossom on the head of every girl who -could afford a new hat. Joshua had gone to harness the horses; and while -Mrs. Oakley put on her bonnet and her broadcloth mantle trimmed with -bugles, which she had worn to church ever since Dorinda could remember, -Almira babbled on in a rapture of admiration. - -She was a pink, flabby, irresponsible person, adjusting comfortably the -physical burden of too much flesh to the spiritual repose of too little -mind. All the virtues and the vices of the "poor white" had come to -flower in her. Married at fifteen to a member of a family known as "the -low down Prides," she had been perfectly contented with her lot in a -two-room log cabin and with her husband, a common labourer, having a -taste for whiskey and a disinclination for work, who was looked upon by -his neighbours as "not all there." As the mother of children so numerous -that their father could not be trusted to remember their names, she -still welcomed the yearly addition to her family with the moral serenity -of a rabbit. - -"I declar, Dorrie, I don't see how you got such a stylish flare," she -exclaimed now, without envy and without ambition. "That bell skirt sets -jest perfect!" - -"I hope we got it right," said Dorinda, anxiously, as she turned slowly -round under Almira's gaze. "Is Ike staying with the children?" - -"Yes, we couldn't both leave 'em the same day. Is Uncle Josh hitching -up?" - -"He's coming round right now," said Mrs. Oakley, wafting a pungent, -odour of camphor before her as she appeared. "I'm glad you came over, -Almira. There's plenty of room in the wagon since we've put in the back -seat. Ain't you coming to church with us, Josiah?" - -"No, I ain't," Josiah replied, stubbornly. "When I get a day's rest, I'm -goin' to take it. It don't rest me to be preached to." - -"Well, it ought to," rejoined his mother, with an air of exhausted -piety. "If going to church ain't a rest, I don't know what you call -one." - -But Josiah was in a stubborn and rebellious mood. He was suffering with -toothache, and though he was of the breed, he was not of the temper of -which martyrs are made. "I don't see that yo' religion has done so much -for you," he added irascibly, "or for Pa either." - -In her Sunday clothes, with her buckram-lined skirt spreading about her, -Mrs. Oakley stopped, as she was descending the steps of the porch, and -looked back at her son. "It is the only thing that has kept me going, -Josiah," she answered, and her lip trembled as she repeated the -solitary formula with which experience had provided her. - -"Poor Ma," Dorinda thought while she watched her. "He might a least -leave her the comfort of her religion." - -"There's Uncle Josh now!" exclaimed Almira, who was by instinct a -peacemaker. "Have you got yo' hymn book, Aunt Eudora? I forgot to bring -mine along." - -"It's in my reticule," Mrs. Oakley replied, producing a bag of beaded -black silk, which she had used every Sunday for twenty years. "You'll -get all muddied up, Dorinda, so I brought this old bedquilt for you to -spread over your lap. It's chilly enough, anyway, for your ulster, and -you can leave it with the quilt in the wagon. I can see you shivering -now in that thin nun's veiling." - -"I'm not cold," Dorinda answered valiantly; but she slipped her arms -into the sleeves of the ulster, and accepted obediently the bedquilt -her mother held out. Something, either Josiah's surliness or the slight -chill in the early April air, had dampened her spirits, and she was -realizing that the possession of a new dress does not confer happiness. -Going down the steps, she glanced up doubtfully at the changeable blue -of the sky. "I do hope it is going to stay clear," she murmured. - -Round the corner of the house, she could see Joshua harnessing the -horses, Dan and Beersheba. Dan, the leader, was still champing fodder as -he backed up to the ramshackle vehicle, and while he raised his heavy -hoofs, he turned his gentle, humid gaze on his master. He was a tall, -rawboned animal, slow but sure, as Joshua said proudly, with a flowing -tail, plaited now and tied up with red calico, and the doleful face of a -Presbyterian gone wrong. Beside him, Beersheba, his match in colour but -not in character, moved with a mincing step, and surveyed the Sabbath -prospect with a sportive epicurean eye. Unlike the Southern farmers -around him, and the unimaginative everywhere, who are without feeling -for animals, the better part of Joshua's life was spent with his two -horses; and Dorinda sometimes thought that they were nearer to him than -even his wife and his children. Certainly he was less humble and more at -home in their company. In the midst of his family he seldom spoke, never -unless a question was put to him; but coming upon him unawares in the -fields or by the watering trough, Dorinda had heard him talking to Dan -and Beersheba in the tone a man uses only to the creatures who speak and -understand the intimate language of his heart. - -Always at a disadvantage in his Sunday clothes, which obscured the -patriarchal dignity of his appearance, he looked more hairy and -earthbound than ever this morning. Though he had scrubbed his face -until it shone, the colour of clay and the smell of manure still clung -to him. Only his brown eyes, with their dumb wistfulness, were bright -and living. - -Wrapped in, the old bedquilt, Dorinda jogged sleepily over the familiar -road, which had become so recently the road of happiness. In a dream she -felt the jolting of the wagon; in a dream she heard the creaking of the -wheels, the trotting of the horses, the murmur of wind in the tree-tops, -the piping of birds in the meadows. In a dream she smelt the rich, vital -scents of the ploughed ground, the sharp tang of manure on the -tobacco fields, the stimulating whiff of camphor from her mother's -handkerchief. The trees were still bare in the deep band of woods, -except for the flaming points of the maple and the white and rosy foam -of, the dogwood and redbud; but beside the road patches of grass and -weeds were as vivid as emerald, and where the distance was webbed with -light and shadow, the landscape unrolled like a black and silver -brocade. While she drove on the vague depression drifted away from her -spirits, and she felt that joy mounted in her veins as the sap flowed -upward around her. In this dream, as in a remembered one of her -childhood, she was for ever approaching some magical occasion, and yet -never quite reaching it. She was for ever about to be satisfied, and yet -never satisfied in the end. The dream, like all her dreams, carried her -so far and no farther. At the very point where she needed it most, it -broke off and left her suspended in a world of gossamer unrealities. - -The mud spattered over the quilt in her lap, and she heard her Mother -say in her habitual tone of nervous nagging, "Drive carefully over that -bad place, Joshua. If Elder Pursley stays with us during the missionary -meetings, I'll have to ask Miss Texanna Snead to let us have some of her -milk and butter. They have some fresh cows coming on, and I don't reckon -she would miss it. Anyway, I'll try to pay her back with scuppernong -grapes next September." - -Again the prick in Dorinda's conscience! Though her mind rebelled, her -conscience was incurably Presbyterian, and while she wore the blue dress -gaily enough, she did not doubt that it was the symbol of selfishness. -Between the blue dress and the red cow, she knew, the choice was, in its -essence, one of abstract morality. Neither her father nor her mother had -reproached her; but their magnanimity had served only to sharpen the -sting of reflection. "Well, I reckon you won't be young but once, -daughter," her mother had observed with the dry tolerance of -disillusionment, "and the sooner you get over with it the better," while -her father had stretched out his toil-worn hand and fingered one of the -balloon sleeves. "That looks mighty pretty, honey, an' don't you worry -about not gittin' the red caw. It'll save yo' Ma the trouble of -churnin', an' you kind of lose the taste fur butter when you ain't had -it fur some while." - -"If Elder Pursley can't come, maybe one of the foreign missionaries -will," Dorinda remarked, hoping to cheer her mother and to distract her -mind from the mud holes. - -"Of course we ain't got much to offer them," replied Mrs. Oakley in a -tone of pious humility. "Though I don't reckon things of the flesh count -much with a missionary, and, anyway, I'm going to have a parcel of young -chickens to fry. Well, if we ain't most there! I declare Dan and -Beersheba are getting real sprightly again!" - -In the afternoon, sitting at the window of the spare chamber, to which, -she had been driven by the sultry calm of the Sabbath at Old Farm, -Dorinda asked herself, and could find no answer, why the day had been a -disappointment? She had expected nothing, and yet because nothing had -come, she was dissatisfied and unhappy. Was there no rest anywhere? she -asked without knowing that she asked it. Was love, like life, merely a -passing from shock to shock, with no permanent peace? - -Returning from church, the family had sat down, ill-humoured from -emptiness, to dinner at four o'clock. It was the custom to have dinner -in the middle of the afternoon, and no supper on Sunday; and the men -were expected to gorge themselves into a state of somnolence which -would, as Mrs. Oakley said, "tide them over until breakfast." When the -heavy meal had been dispatched but not digested by the others, Dorinda -(who had scarcely touched the apple dumplings her mother had -solicitously pressed on her) came into the unused bedroom to put away -her hat and dress in the big closet. The spare room, which was kept -scrupulously cleaned and whitewashed, was situated at the back of the -house adjoining Mrs. Oakley's chamber. All the possessions the family -regarded as sacred were preserved here in a faint greenish light and a -stale odour of sanctity. The windows were seldom opened; but Dorinda had -just flung back the shutters, and the view she gazed out upon was like -the coming of spring in an old tapestry. Though the land was not -beautiful, that also had its moments of beauty. - -Immediately in front of her, the pear orchard had flowered a little late -and scattered its frail bloom on the grass. As the sunlight streamed -through the trees, they appeared to float between earth and sky in some -ineffable medium, while the petals on the ground shone and quivered with -a fugitive loveliness, as if a stir or a breath would dissolve the white -fire to dew. Above the orchard, where a twisted path ran up to it, there -was the family graveyard, enclosed by a crumbling fence which had once -been of white palings, and in the centre of the graveyard the big -harp-shaped pine stood out, clear and black, on the low crest of the -hill. It was the tallest pine, people said, in the whole of Queen -Elizabeth County; its rocky base had protected it in its youth; and -later on no one had taken the trouble to uproot it from the primitive -graveyard. In spring the boughs were musical with the songs of birds; on -stormy days the tree rocked back and forth until Mrs. Oakley imagined, -in her bad spells, that she heard the creaking of a gallows; and on hot -summer evenings, when the moon rose round and orange-red above the hill, -the branches reminded Dorinda of the dark flying shape of a witch. - -While she sat there she lived over again the incidents of the morning; -but the vision in her mind was as different from the actual occurrences -as the image of her lover was different from the real Jason Greylock. -Nothing had happened to disappoint her. Absolutely nothing. There was no -reason why she should have been happy yesterday and miserable to-day; -there was no reason except the eternal unreasonableness of love! She had -tried to fix her mind on the sermon, which was a little shorter and no -duller than usual. Sitting on the hard bench which she called a pew, -bending her head over the bare back of the seat in front of her, she had -sought to win spiritual peace by driving a bargain with God. "Give me -happiness, and I----" - -Then before her prayer was completed, the congregation had stood up to -sing, and she had met the eyes of Jason Greylock over the row of humble -heads and proud voices. He was sitting in the Ellgood pew, and of course -it was natural that he should have gone home with the Ellgoods to -dinner. It was, she repeated sternly, perfectly natural. It was -perfectly natural also that he should have forgotten that he had told -her to beg, borrow, or steal a blue dress. In the few minutes when he -had stopped to shake hands with her father and mother in the porch of -the church, he had turned to her and asked, "How did you know that you -ought to wear blue?" Yes, that, like everything else that had happened, -was perfectly natural. For the last few weeks he had driven her to the -store and back every day; he had appeared to have no happiness except in -the hours that he spent with her; he had spoken to her, he had looked at -her, as if he loved her; yet, she repeated obstinately, it was natural -that he should be different on Sunday. Everything had always been -different on Sunday. Since her childhood it had seemed to her that the -movement of all laws, even natural ones, was either suspended or -accelerated on the Sabbath. - -She was thinking of this when the door opened, and Mrs. Oakley, who had -resumed her ordinary clothes without disturbing her consecrated -expression, thrust her head into the room. - -"I've looked everywhere for you, Dorinda. Are you sick?" - -"No, I'm not sick." - -"Has Rufus been teasing you?" - -"No." - -"Has anybody said anything to hurt your feelings? Josiah is grouchy; but -you mustn't mind what he says." - -"Oh, no. He hasn't been any worse than usual. There isn't anything the -matter, Ma." - -"I noticed you didn't half eat your dinner, and your father kind of -thought somebody had hurt your feelings." - -Closing the door behind her, Mrs. Oakley crossed the room and sat down -near her daughter in the best mahogany rocker. Then, observing -that she had disarranged the fall of the purple calico flounce, she rose -and adjusted the slip cover. While she was still on her feet, she went -over to the bed and shook the large feather pillows into shape. After -that, before sitting down again, she stood for a few moments with her -stern gaze wandering about the room, as if she were seeking more dirt to -conquer. But such things did not worry her. They drifted like straws on -the surface of her mind, while her immortal spirit was preoccupied with -a profound and incurable melancholy. - -"I hope you ain't upset in your mind, daughter," she said abruptly. - -Dorinda turned her lucid gaze on her mother. "Ma, whatever made you -marry Pa?" she asked bluntly. - -For an instant the frankness of the question stunned Mrs. Oakley. She -had inherited the impenetrable Scotch reserve on the subject of -sentiment, and it seemed to her, while she pondered the question, that -there were no words in which she could answer her daughter. Both her -vocabulary and her imagination were as innocent of terms of sex as if -she were still an infant learning her alphabet. - -"Well, your father's a mighty good man, Dorinda," she replied evasively. - -"I know he is, but what made you marry him?" - -"He's never given me a cross word in his life," Mrs. Oakley pursued, -working herself up, as she went on, until she sounded as if she were -reciting a Gospel hymn. "I've never heard a complaint from him. There -never was a better worker, and it isn't his fault if things have always -gone against him." - -"I know all that," said Dorinda, as implacable as truth, "but what made -you marry him? Were you ever in love with him?" - -Mrs. Oakley's eyes lost suddenly their look of mystic vision and became -opaque with memories. "I reckon I sort of took a fancy to him," she -responded. - -"Is there ever any reason why people marry?" - -A mild regret flickered into the face of the older woman. "I s'pose they -think they've got one." - -She must have been pretty once, Dorinda thought while she watched her. -She must have been educated to refinements of taste and niceties of -manner; yet marriage had been too strong for her, and had conquered her. - -"I don't see how you've stood it!" she exclaimed, with the indignant -pity of youth. - -Mrs. Oakley's bleak eyes, from which all inner glory had departed, -rested pensively on her daughter. "There ain't but one way to stand -things," she returned slowly. "There ain't but one thing that keeps you -going and keeps a farm going, and that is religion. If you ain't got -religion to lean back on, you'd just as well give up trying to live in -the country." - -"I don't feel that way about religion," Dorinda said obstinately. "I -want to be happy." - -"You're too young yet. Your great-grandfather used to say that most -people never came to God as long as there was anywhere else for them to -go." - -"Was that true of great-grandfather?" - -"It must have been. He told me once that he didn't come to Christ until -he had thirsted for blood." - -To Dorinda this seemed an indirect way to divine grace; but it made her -great-grandfather appear human to her for the only time in her life. - -"But he must have had something else first," she observed logically. -"People always seem to have had something else first, or they wouldn't -have found out how worthless it is. You must have been in love once, -even if you have forgotten it." - -Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "I haven't forgotten it, daughter," she -answered. "It's time you were knowing things, I reckon, or you wouldn't -be asking." - -"Yes, it's time I was knowing things," repeated Dorinda. "You told me -once that great-grandfather tried to keep you from marrying. Then why -did you do it?" - -For a minute or two before she replied the muscles in Mrs. Oakley's face -and throat worked convulsively. "I was so set on your father that I -moped myself into a decline," she said in a voice that was half -strangled. "Those feelings have always gone hard in our family. There -was your great-aunt Dorinda, the one you were named after," she -continued, passing with obvious relief from her personal history. "When -she couldn't get the man she'd set her heart on, she threw herself into -the millstream; but after they fished her out and dried her off, she -sobered down and married somebody else and was as sensible as anybody -until the day of her death. She lived to be upwards of ninety, and your -great-grandfather used to say he prized her advice more than that of any -man he knew. Then there was another sister, Abigail, who went deranged -about some man she hadn't seen but a few times, and they had to put her -away in a room with barred windows. They didn't have good asylums then -to send anybody to. But she got over it too, and went as a missionary -overseas. That all happened in Ireland before your great-grandfather -came to this country. I never saw your great-aunt Dorinda, but she -corresponded regularly, till the day of her death, with your -great-grandfather. I remember his telling me that she used to say -anybody could be a fool once, but only a born fool was ever a fool -twice." - -"I wonder what it was?" said Dorinda wearily. - -Mrs. Oakley sighed. "It's nature, I reckon," she replied, without -reproach but without sympathy. "Grandfather used to say that when a -woman got ready to fall in love the man didn't matter, because she could -drape her feeling over a scarecrow and pretend he was handsome. But, -being a man, I s'pose he had his own way of looking at it; and if it's -woman's nature to take it too hard, it's just as much the nature of man -to take it too easy. The way I've worked it out is that with most women, -when it seems pure foolishness, it ain't really that. It's just the -struggle to get away from things as they are." - -To get away from things as they are! Was this all there was in her -feeling for Jason; the struggle to escape from the endless captivity of -things as they are? In the bleak dawn of reason her dreams withered like -flowers that are blighted by frost. - -"Whatever it is, you haven't a good word for it," she said, vaguely -resentful. - -Mrs. Oakley considered the question impartially. "Well, it ain't -catching and it ain't chronic," she remarked at last, with the temperate -judgment of one who has finished with love. "I've got nothing to say -against marriage, of course," she explained. "Marriage is the Lord's own -institution, and I s'pose it's a good thing as far as it goes. Only," -she added wisely, "it ain't ever going as far as most women try to make -it. You'll be all right married, daughter, if you just make up your mind -that whatever happens, you ain't going to let any man spoil your life." - -The brave words, striking deep under the surface, rang against the vein -of iron in Dorinda's nature. Clear and strong as a bell, she heard the -reverberations of character beneath the wild bloom of emotion. Yes, -whatever happened, she resolved passionately, no man was going to spoil -her life! She could live without Jason; she could live without any man. -The shadows of her great-aunts, Dorinda and Abigail, demented victims of -love, stretched, black and sinister, across the generations. In her -recoil from an inherited frailty, she revolted, with characteristic -energy, to the opposite extreme of frigid disdain. - -"Were all great-grandfather's sisters like that?" she asked hopefully, -remembering that he had had six. - -"Oh, no." Her mother was vague but encouraging. "I don't recollect ever -hearing anything foolish about Rebekah and Priscilla, and even the -others were sensible enough when they had stopped running after men." - -Running after men! The phrase was burned with acid into her memory. Was -that what her mother, who did not know, would think of her? Was that -what Jason, who did know, thought of her now? Her love, which had been -as careless in its freedom as the flight of a bird, became suddenly shy -and self-conscious. She had promised that she would meet him at -Gooseneck Creek after sunset; but she knew now that she could not go, -that something stronger than her desire to be with him was holding her -back. - -After her mother had gone she sat there for hours, with her eyes on the -lengthening shadows over the pear orchard. This something stronger than -her desire was hardening into resolution within her. She would avoid him -in the future wherever she could; she would not look for him at the fork -of the road; she would go to work an hour earlier and return an hour -later in order that she might not appear to throw herself in his way. -Already the inevitable battle between the racial temperament and the -individual will was beginning, and before the evening was over she told -herself that she was victorious. Though her longing drew her like a cord -to Gooseneck Creek, and the quiver of her nerves was as sharp as the -pain of an aching tooth, she stayed in her mother's chamber until -bedtime, and tried unsuccessfully to fix her mind on her -great-grandfather's dry sermon on temperance. When the evening was over -at last, and she went upstairs to her room, she felt as if the blood had -turned back in her veins. In the first fight she had conquered, but it -was one of those victories, she knew without admitting the knowledge, -which are defeats. - - - - -IX - - -In May and June, for a brief season between winter desolation and summer -drought, the starved land flushed into loveliness. Honey-coloured -sunlight. The notes of a hundred birds. A roving sweetness of wild grape -in the air. To Dorinda, whose happiness had come so suddenly that her -imagination was still spinning from the surprise of it, the flowerlike -blue of the sky, the songs of birds, and the elusive scent of the wild -grape, all seemed to be a part of that rich inner world, with its -passionate expectancy and its sense of life burning upward. - -They were to be married in the autumn. Even now, when she repeated the -words, they sounded so unreal that she could scarcely believe them; but -her prudent Scotch mind, which still distrusted ecstasy, had ceased long -ago to distrust Jason's love. The thing she wanted had come, at last, -and it had come, she realized, after she had deliberately turned her -back upon it. She had found happiness, not by seeking it, but by running -away from it. For two weeks she had persisted in her resolution; she had -drawn desperately upon the tough fibre of inherited strength. For two -weeks she had avoided Jason when it was possible, and in avoiding him, -she could not fail to perceive, she had won him. To her direct, -forward-springing nature there was a shock in the discovery that, where -the matter is one of love, honesty is at best a questionable policy. Was -truth, after all, in spite of the exhortations of preachers, a weaker -power than duplicity? Would evasion win in life where frankness would -fail? Then, as passion burned through her like the sunrise, doubt was -extinguished. Since her heart told her that he was securely hers, what -did it matter to her how she had won him? - -For the first time in her life she had ceased longing, ceased striving. -She was as satisfied as Almira to drift with the days toward some -definite haven of the future. Detached, passive, still as a golden lily -in a lily-pond, she surrendered herself to the light and the softness. -Her soul was asleep, and beyond this inner stillness, men and women were -as impersonal as trees walking. There was no vividness, no reality even, -except in this shining place where her mind brooded with folded leaves. -She was no longer afraid of life. The shadows of her great-aunts, -Dorinda and Abigail, were as harmless as witches that have been robbed -of their terror. - -In those months, while her eyes were full of dreams, her immature beauty -bloomed and ripened into its summer splendour. There was a richer gloss -on her hair, which was blue black in the shadow, a velvet softness to -her body, a warmer flush, like the colour of fruit, in her cheeks and -lips. Her artless look wavered and became shy and pensive. Some subtle -magic had transformed her; and if the natural Dorinda still survived -beneath this unreal Dorinda, she was visible only in momentary sparkles -of energy. When she was with Jason she talked little. Expression had -never been easy for her, and now, since silence was so much softer and -sweeter than speech, she sat in an ecstatic dumbness while she drank in -the sound of his voice. Feeling, which had drugged her until only half -of her being was awake, had excited him into an unusual mental activity. -He was animated, eager, weaving endless impracticable schemes, like a -man who is intoxicated but still in command of his faculties. - -"Are you happy?" she asked one August afternoon, while they sat in the -shade of the thin pines which edged the woods beyond Joshua's -tobacco field. It was the question she asked every day, and his answers, -though satisfying to her emotion, were unconvincing to her intelligence. -He loved her as ardently as she loved him; yet she was beginning to -realize that only to a woman are love and happiness interchangeable -terms. Some obscure anxiety working in his mind was stronger than all -her love, all her tenderness. She gave way before it, but never, except -in rare moments of ecstasy, did it yield place to her. - -He smiled. "Of course; but I'll be happier when we can get away. I can't -stand this country. My nerves begin to creep as soon as twilight comes -on." - -The woods behind them, known to the negroes in slavery days as "Hoot Owl -Woods," divided the front of Old Farm from the fallow meadows of Five -Oaks, and stretched westward to the Old Stage Road and the gate at the -fork. In front of the lovers, looking east, a web of blue air hung over -the tobacco field, where the huge plants were turning yellow in the -intense heat. Back and forth in the furrows Joshua and Josiah were -moving slowly, like giant insects, while they searched for the hidden -"suckers" along the thick juicy stalks. Beyond the tobacco field there -was a ragged vegetable garden, where the tomatoes were rotting to pulp -in the sun, and even the leaves of the corn looked wilted. The air was -so breathless that a few languid crows appeared to float like dead -things over the parched country. - -"You don't feel that when you are with me," she said. - -"The trouble is that I can't be with you but a part of the time. There's -this worthless practice. I can't give it up, if I'm to keep on in -medicine, and yet it means that I must spend half my life jogging over -these God-forsaken roads. Then the night!" He shivered with disgust. "If -you only knew, and I'm thankful you don't, what it means to be shut up -in that house. Some nights my father doesn't sleep at all unless he is -drugged into stupor. He wanders about with a horsewhip, looking in every -room and closet for something to flog." - -While he spoke she had a vision of the house, with its dust and cobwebs, -and of the drunken old man, in his nightshirt and bare feet, roaming up -and down the darkened staircase. She could see his bleared eyes, his -purple face, his skinny legs, like the legs of a turkey gobbler, and his -hands, as sharp as claws, lashing out with the horsewhip. The picture -was so vivid that, coming in the midst of her dreamy happiness, it -sickened her. Why did Jason have to stand horrors like that? - -"It can't last much longer," she said. Was it the right thing, she -wondered, or ought she to have kept up the pretence of loving the old -man and dreading his death? Life would be so much simpler, she -reflected, if people would only build on facts, not on shams. - -He shook his head. "Nobody can say. Sometimes I think he can't last but -a few weeks. Then he improves, without apparent reason, and his strength -is amazing. According to everything we know about his condition, he -ought to have died months ago; yet he appears to be getting better now -instead of worse. I believe it is simply a question of will. He is kept -alive by his terror of dying. It's brutal, I know," he added, "to look -forward to anybody's death, especially your own father's; but if you -only knew how my life is eaten away hour by hour." - -"You couldn't make some arrangement?" she asked. "Engage somebody to -stay with him, or--or send him away?" - -"I've thought of that. God knows I've thought of everything. But he -isn't mad, you see. He is as sane as I am except when his craving for -whiskey overcomes his fear of death, and he drinks himself into a -frenzy. He won't have anybody else with him. I am the only human being -who can do anything with him, and strange as it seems, I believe he has -some kind of crazy affection for me in his heart. That's why I've put up -with him so long. Several times I've been ready to leave, with my bags -packed and the buggy at the door, and then he's broken down and wept -like a child and begged me not to desert him. He reminds me then that he -is dying, and that I promised to stick by him until the end. It's -weakness in me to give in, but he broke my will when I was a child, he -and my mother between them, and I can't get over the habit of yielding. -I may be all wrong. Sometimes I know that I am. But, after all, it was a -good impulse that made me promise to stick to him." For an instant he -hesitated, and then added bitterly, "I can't tell you how often in life -I've seen men betrayed by their good impulses." - -"After it is over, you will be glad that you didn't leave him." - -"I don't know. The truth is I'm in an infernal muddle. After all my -medical training, there's a streak of darky superstition somewhere -inside of me. You'd think science would have knocked it out, but it -hasn't. The fact is that I never really cared a hang about science. I -was pushed into medicine, but the only aptitude I have for the -profession is one of personality, and the only interest I feel in it is -a sentimental pleasure in relieving pain. However, I've kept the -superstition all right, and I have a sneaking feeling that if I break my -word and desert the old man, it will come back at me in the end." - -"But you're a wonderful doctor," she murmured, with her face against his -shoulder. "Look at the people you've helped since you've been here." - -He laughed without merriment. "That reminds me of the way I used to -think I'd bring civilization to the natives. I imagined, when I first -came back, that all I had to do was to get people together and tell them -how benighted they were, and that they'd immediately want to see wisdom. -Do you remember the time I put up notices and opened the schoolhouse, -and got only Nathan Pedlar and an idiot boy for an audience? The hardest -thing to believe when you're young is that people will fight to stay in -a rut, but not to get out of it. Well, that was almost six months ago, -and those six months have taught me that any prejudice, even the -prejudice in favour of the one-crop system, is a sacred institution. -Look at the land!" He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the -sun-bleached soil. "Even generations of failure can't teach the farmers -about here that it is impossible to make bread out of straw." - -"Do you think it is really the way they have treated the land?" she -asked. "That's what Nathan is always saying, you know." - -"Oh, the curse started with the tenant system, I'll admit. The tenants -used the land as a stingy man uses a horse he has hired by the month. -But the other farmers, even those who own their farms, are no better now -than the tenants. They've worked and starved the land to a skeleton. Yet -it's still alive, and it could be brought back to health, if they'd have -the sense to treat it as a doctor treats an undernourished human body. -Take Nathan Pedlar and James Ellgood. James Ellgood has made one of the -best stock farms in the state; and that, by the way, is what this -country is best suited for--stock or dairy farms. If I had a little -money I could make a first rate dairy farm out of Five Oaks or Old Farm. -You've got rich pasture land over the other side, and so have we, down -by Whippernock River. It could be made a fine place for cattle, with the -long grazing season and the months when cows could live in the open. Yet -to suggest anything but the antiquated crop system is pure heresy. The -same fields of tobacco that get eaten by worms or killed by frost. The -same fields of corn year in and year out--" he broke off impatiently and -bent his lips down to hers. "I'm talking you to sleep, Dorrie." - -"I like to listen to you," she said, when she had kissed him. "If you -tell them over and over, in time they may believe you." - -"After I'm dead, perhaps. Hasn't Nathan Pedlar told them again and -again? Hasn't he even proved it to them? He's been experimenting with -alfalfa, and he's getting four cuttings now off those fields of his; but -they think he's a fool because he isn't satisfied with one poor crop of -corn." - -"I know. Pa doesn't think anything of alfalfa," she answered. "He says -Nathan is wasting his time raising a weed that cattle won't touch when -it is dry." - -"They all talk that way. Half daft, that's what they call anybody who -wants to step out of the mud or try a new method. Ezra Flower told me -yesterday that Nathan was half daft. No, I want to get away, not to -spend my life as a missionary to the broomsedge. I feel already as if it -were growing over me and strangling the little energy I ever had. That's -the worst of it. If you stay here long enough, the broomsedge claims -you, and you get so lazy you cease to care what becomes of you. There's -failure in the air." - -She remembered what old Matthew had said to her that March afternoon. -"If he'd take the advice of eighty-odd years, he'd git away befo' the -broomsage ketches him." - -Was it true, what the old man believed, that the broomsedge was not only -wild stuff, but a kind of fate? Fear, not for herself, but for Jason, -stabbed through her. - -"You're so easily discouraged," she said tenderly. To her, whose inner -life was a part of the country, poverty had been an inevitable condition -of living, and to fight had seemed as natural as to suffer or to endure. - -"I suppose I am, but I'm made that way. I can't change my temperament," -he replied, with a touch of the fatalism he condemned but could not -resist. - -"Well, I'll help you," she responded cheerfully. "After we are married, -everything will be different. I am not afraid of Five Oaks or of -anything else as long as I have you." - -He was gazing over her head into the bleached distance, and she felt the -tightened pressure of his arms about her. "I'd be all right here, even -at Five Oaks, if you were with me," he answered. "You put something in -me that I need. I don't know what it is--fibre, I suppose, the courage -of living." Suddenly his eyes left the landscape and looked down into -hers. "What I ought to do," he added impulsively, "is to marry you -to-day. We could get the last train to Washington, and be married -to-morrow morning before any one knew of it. Would you come if I asked -you?" - -Her look did not waver. "I'll go anywhere that you ask me to. I'll do -anything that will help you," she answered. Her body straightened as if -its soft curves were moulded by the vein of iron in her soul. - -But his impulse had spent its force in an imaginary flight. "That's what -I'd like to do," he said slowly, while his rosy visions were obliterated -by the first impact with reality. "But there are so many damned things -to consider. There are always so many damned things to consider. First -of all there's the money. I haven't got enough to take us away and keep -us a week. After Father stopped helping me, I started out on my own hook -in New York, and I was just making enough from the hospital to give me a -living. I didn't put by a cent, and, of course, since I've been here -I've made nothing. Down here the doctor gets paid after the undertaker, -or not at all." - -"I've got fifty dollars put away," she returned crisply, determined not -to be discouraged. "And I don't need money. I've never had any." (How -foolish she had been to buy the blue dress when clothes made so little -difference!) "After we're married, I can keep on in the store just the -same." - -He laughed. "Ten dollars a month will hardly keep the fox from the -henhouse." - -Bending his head he began to kiss her in quick light kisses; then, as -his ardour increased, in deeper and longer ones; and at last with a -hungry violence. Though her love was the only thing that was vivid to -her, she had even now, while she felt his arms about her and his lips -seeking hers, the old haunting sense of impermanence, as if the moment, -like the perfect hour of the afternoon, were too bright to endure. -However much she loved him, she could not sink the whole of herself into -emotion; something was left over, and this something watched as a -spectator. Ecstasy streamed through her with the swiftness of light; yet -she never lost completely the feeling that at any instant the glory -might vanish and she might drop back again into the dull grey of -existence. - - - - -X - - -When they parted, and she went home along the edge of the tobacco field, -the sun was beginning to go down, and from the meadows, veiled in -quivering heat, there rose the humming of innumerable insects. The long -drought had scorched the leaves of the trees, and even the needles on -the pines looked rusty against the metallic blue of the sky. In the -fields the summer flowers were dry and brittle, and over the moist -places near the spring, clusters of pale blue butterflies, as fragile as -flower petals, hung motionless. Only the broomsedge thrived in the -furnace of the earth, and sprang up in a running fire over the waste -places. - -As she went by the tobacco field, her father stopped work, for a moment, -and stooped to take a drink of water from the wooden bucket which stood -at the end of the furrow. Before she reached him the steaming odour of -his body, like that of an overheated ox, floated to her. His face, the -colour of red clay, was dripping with sweat, and his shirt of blue -jeans, which was open on his broad, hairy chest, was as wet as if he had -been swimming. There was nothing human about him, except his fine -prophet's head and the humble dignity of one who has kept in close -communion with earth and sky. He had known nothing but toil; he had no -language but the language of toil. - -"Has the drought done much harm, Pa?" she asked. - -With the gourd raised to his lips, Joshua looked round at her. -"Middlin'," he replied hoarsely because of his parched throat. He had -removed his hat while he worked, for fear that the wide brim might -bruise the tender leaves of the tobacco; but resting now for a minute, -he covered his head again from the bladelike rays of the sun. - -"You'll get sunstroke if you go bareheaded," she said anxiously. "The -minister was in the store this morning, and he told me that, if the -drought doesn't break by the end of the week, he's going to put up -prayers for rain in church next Sunday. I wonder if prayer ever brought -rain?" - -Joshua rolled his eyes toward the implacable sky. "Don't it say so in -the Bible, daughter?" - -Dorinda nodded, without pursuing the inquiry. "And what the dry weather -doesn't spoil, the tobacco-worms will. They were as thick as hops -yesterday. It's this way every year unless we have a cool summer; then -the tobacco ripens so late that the frost kills it. Why don't you give -up tobacco next year and sow this field in peas or corn? Jason says the -best method of farming is to change the crop whenever you can." - -Having drained the last drop of tepid water, Joshua tilted the gourd -bottom upward on the rim of the bucket. "I ain't one fur newfangled -ways, honey," he rejoined stubbornly. - -He turned back to his work, and Dorinda went on slowly along the dusty -path that skirted the field. "If I had my way," she was thinking, "I -would do everything differently. I'd try all the crops, one after -another, until I found out which was best." - -As she approached the house, the mingled scents of drying apples and -boiling tomatoes enveloped her; for her mother was working desperately -in an effort to save the ripening fruit and vegetables before the sun -spoiled them. Boards covered with sliced apples were spread on crude -props and decrepit tables, which had been brought out of doors. Above -them a crowd of wasps, hornets, flies, and gnats were whirling madly, -and every now and then Mrs. Oakley darted out from beneath the -scuppernong grapevine and dispersed the delirious swarms with the branch -of a locust tree. Though she insisted that the dry weather had "helped -her neuralgia," she was suffering now from a sun headache, and could -hope for no relief until evening. Her face, with its look of blended -physical pain and spiritual ecstasy, was as parched and ravaged as the -drought-stricken landscape. - -"You got home early to-day, daughter." - -"Yes, it was too hot to walk, and Jason came by sooner than usual." - -"How does Rose Emily stand the heat?" - -"I'm afraid she isn't getting any better," Dorinda's voice trembled. -"Jason says she can't last through another bad hæmorrhage." - -"And all those children," sighed Mrs. Oakley, pressing one hand over her -throbbing eyes and waving the locust branch energetically with the -other. "Well, the Lord's ways are past understanding. I wonder if they -will ever be able to do anything for that baby's clubfoot." - -"I don't know. Jason would like to operate, but Nathan and Rose Emily -won't let him. They are afraid it may make it worse. Poor Rose Emily. I -don't see how she can be so cheerful." - -"It's her faith," said Mrs. Oakley. "She feels she's saved, and she's -nothing more to worry about. I'm sorry for Nathan too," she concluded, -with the compassion of the redeemed for the heathen. "He's a good man, -but he hasn't seen the light like Rose Emily." - -"Yes, he's a good man," Dorinda assented, "but I never understood how -she could marry him." - -Mrs. Oakley dropped the branch, and then picking it up began a more -vigorous attack on the cloud of insects. "I declare, it seems to me -sometimes that the bugs are going to eat up this place. Did you see your -father as you came by?" - -"Yes. He was working bareheaded. I told him he would have sunstroke. I -wish he would try a different crop next year, but he's so set in his -ways." - -"Well, it's being set in a rut, I reckon, that keeps him going. If he -weren't set, he'd have stopped long ago. You've a mighty high colour, -Dorinda. Have you been much in the sun?" - -"I walked across from the woods. When we turned in at the red gate I saw -Miss Tabitha Snead going up the road in her buggy. Did she stop by to -see you?" - -"Yes, she brought me a bucket of fresh buttermilk. I've got it in the -ice-house with the watermelons, so it will be cold for supper. She told -me Geneva Ellgood had gone away for the summer." - -"Oh, she went the first of July. I saw her at the station." - -Mrs. Oakley's gaze was riveted upon an enterprising hornet that had -started out from the crowd and was pursuing a separate investigation of -the tomato juice on her hands. While she watched it, she swallowed hard -as if her throat were too dry. "Miss Tabitha told me that her brother -William went up as far as Washington on the train with Geneva. He's just -back last week, and what do you reckon he said Geneva told him on the -way up?" She broke off and aimed a fatal blow at the hornet. "What with -wasps and bees and hornets and all the thousand and one things that bite -and sting," she observed philosophically, "it's hard to understand how -the Lord ever had time to think of a pest so small as a seed tick. Yet I -believe I'd rather have all the other biting things together. I got some -seed ticks on me when I went down to the old spring in the pasture -yesterday, and they've been eating me up ever since." - -"They are always worse in a drought," Dorinda said, and she asked -curiously: "What was it Geneva told Mr. William?" - -Mrs. Oakley swallowed again. "Of course I know there ain't a bit of -truth in it," she said slowly, as if the words hurt her as she uttered -them. "But William says Geneva told him she was engaged to marry Jason -Greylock. She said he courted her in New York a year ago." - -Dorinda laughed. "Why, how absurd!" she exclaimed. "Miss Tabitha knows -we are to be married in October. Hasn't she watched Miss Seena helping -me with my sewing? I was spending the evening over there last week and -we talked about my marriage. She knows there isn't a word of truth in -it." - -"Oh, she knows. She said she reckoned Geneva must be crazy. There ain't -any harm in it, but I thought maybe I'd better tell you." - -"I don't mind," replied Dorinda, and she laughed again, the exultant -laugh of youth undefeated. "Ma," she asked suddenly, "did you ever want -anything very much in your life?" - -Startled out of her stony resignation, Mrs. Oakley let fall the branch, -and the spinning swarms descended like a veil over the apples. "I'll -have to hang a piece of mosquito netting over these apples," she said. -"There's some we used for curtains in the spare room. Well, I told you -I'd kind of set my heart on your father," she added in a lifeless tone. -"But there's one thing I can tell you, daughter, mighty few folks in -this world ever get what they want." - -"Oh, I mean before you knew Pa, when you were a girl. Didn't you ever -feel that there was only one thing in the world that could make you -happy?" - -Mrs. Oakley pondered the question. "I reckon like most other people I -was afraid of the word happiness," she replied. "But when I was just a -girl, not more than sixteen or seventeen, I felt the call to be a -missionary, and I wanted it, I s'pose, more than I've ever wanted -anything in my life. I reckon it started with my favourite hymn, the -missionary one. Even as a little child I used to think and dream about -India's coral strand and Afric's sunny fountains. That was why I got -engaged to Gordon Kane. I wasn't what you'd call in love with him; but I -believed the Lord had intended me for work in foreign fields, and it -seemed, when Gordon asked me to marry him, that an opportunity had been -put in my way. I had my trunk all packed to go to the Congo to join him. -I was just folding up my wedding-dress of white organdie when they broke -the news to me of his death." She gasped and choked for a moment. "After -that I put the thought of the heathen out of my mind," she continued -when she had recovered her breath. "Your great-grandfather said I was -too young to decide whether I had a special vocation or not, and then -before I came out of mourning, I met your father, and we were married. -For a while I seemed to forget all about the missionary call; but it -came back just before Josiah was born, and I've had it ever since -whenever I'm worried and feel that I'll have to get away from things, or -go clean out of my mind. Then I begin to have that dream about coral -strands and palm trees and ancient rivers and naked black babies thrown -to crocodiles. When it first came I tried to drive it away by hard work, -and that was the way I got in the habit of working to rest my mind. I -was so afraid folks would begin to say I was unhinged." - -"Does it still come back?" asked the girl. - -"Sometimes in my sleep. When I'm awake I never think of it now, except -on missionary Sunday when we sing that hymn." - -"That's why you enjoy sermons about the Holy Land and far-off places." - -"I used to know all those pictures by heart in your great-grandfather's -books about Asia and Africa. It was a wild streak in me, I reckon," she -conceded humbly, "but with the Lord's help, I've managed to stamp it -out." - -A missionary, her mother! For more than forty years this dark and secret -river of her dream had flowed silently beneath the commonplace crust of -experience. "I wonder if there is any of that wildness in me?" thought -the girl, with a sensation of fear, as if the invisible flood were -rushing over her. - -"Did you ever tell Pa?" she asked. - -Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "I never told anybody when I was in my -right mind. I don't believe in telling men more than you're obliged to. -After all, it was nobody's fault the way things turned out," she added, -with scrupulous justice. "I'm going in now to get that mosquito netting. -There's your father coming. I reckon he'd like a drink of fresh water -from the well." - -Following her mother's glance, Dorinda saw her father's bowed figure -toiling along the path on the edge of the vegetable garden. Far beyond -him, where a field had been abandoned because it contained a gall, where -nothing would grow, she could just discern the scalloped reaches of the -broomsedge, rippling, in the lilac-coloured distance, like still water -at sunset. Yes, old Matthew was right. What the broomsedge caught, it -never relinquished. - -Lifting the wooden bucket from the shelf on the back porch, she poured -the stale water over a thin border of portulaca by the steps, and -started at a run for the well. By the time Joshua had reached the house, -she had brought the bucket of sparkling water, and had a gourd ready for -him. - -"You must be worn out, Pa. Don't you want a drink?" - -"That I do, honey." He took the gourd from her, and raised it to his -bearded lips where the sweat hung in drops. "Powerful hot, ain't it?" - -"It's scorching. And you've been up since before day. I'll hunt worms -for you to-morrow." She was thinking, while she spoke, that her father -was no longer young, and that he should try to spare himself. But she -knew that it was futile to remind him of this. He had never spared -himself in her memory, and he would not begin now just because he was -old. The pity of it was that, even if he wore himself out in the effort -to save his crop from the drought or the worms, there was still the -possibility that the first killing frost would come too soon and inflict -as heavy a damage. - -He shook his head with a chuckle of pride. "Thar's no use yo' spilin' -yo' hands. I've hired a parcel of Uncle Toby Moody's little niggers to -hunt 'em in the mornin'. If they kill worms every day till Sunday, I've -promised 'em the biggest watermelon I've got in the ice-house." - -Before going on to feed the horses, he stopped to wash his face in the -tin basin on the back porch. "I declar' I must be gittin' on," he -remarked cheerfully. "I've got shootin' pains through all my j'ints." - -This was nearer a complaint than any speech she had ever heard from him, -and she looked at him anxiously while he dried his face on the roller -towel. "You ought to take things more easily, Pa. The way you work is -enough to kill anybody." - -"Wall, I'll take my ease when the first snow falls," he responded -jocosely. - -"But you won't. You work just as hard in winter." - -"Is that so?" He appeared genuinely surprised. "I never calculated! The -truth is I've got the land on my back, an' it's drivin' me. Land is a -hard driver." - -"And a good steed, they say," she answered. "If you could only get the -better of it." - -He smiled wistfully, and she watched the clay-coloured skin above his -thick beard break into diverging fissures. "We've got to wait for that, -I reckon, till my ship comes in. It takes money to get money, daughter." - -While he trudged away to the stable, Dorinda went up to her room and -changed into a pink gingham dress which Rose Emily had given her a year -ago. The flower-like colour tinged her face when she came downstairs and -found her mother, who had dropped from exhaustion, in a rocking-chair on -the front porch. - -"I felt as if I couldn't stand the kitchen a minute longer." Mrs. Oakley -glanced wearily at her daughter over the palm leaf fan she was waving. -"You ain't going out before supper, Dorinda?" Her damp hair looked as if -it had been plastered over her skull, and in the diminishing light her -pallid features resembled a waxen mask. - -"I can't wait for supper," the girl replied. "I've promised to meet -Jason over by Gooseneck Creek." - -"Well, don't stay out too long after dark. The night air ain't healthy." - -Dorinda laughed. "Jason says that's as much a superstition as the belief -that Aunt Mehitable can make cows go dry. But I shan't be late. Jason -can't stay out long at night, unless somebody is dying, and then he gets -one of the field hands to sleep in the house. It must be terrible over -at Five Oaks." - -"I ain't easy in my mind about your living there with that old man, -daughter. He's been a notorious sinner as far back as I can recollect, -though he was a good enough doctor till he went half crazy from drink. -But even before his wife died, he kept that bright yellow girl, -Idabella, living over there in the old wing of the house. And he's not -only as hard as nails," she concluded, with final condemnation, "he's -close-fisted as well." - -"Poor Jason can't help his father's sins," Dorinda rejoined loyally. -"After all, it's worse on him than it is on anybody else." As she turned -away from the flagged walk, she resolved that the dissolute old man -should not spoil her happiness. - -Her path led by the pear orchard, past the vegetable garden, which was -fenced off from the tobacco field, and continued in an almost -obliterated track through the feathery plumes of the broomsedge. At the -end of the barren acres the thin edge of Hoot Owl Woods began, and after -she had passed this, there would be only a stretch of sandy road between -her and the creek. By the willows she knew the air would be fresh and -moist, and she knew also that Jason was waiting for her in the tall -blue-eyed grasses. - -She went slowly along the path, in a mood so pensive that it might have -been merely a reflection of the summer trance. The vagrant breeze, which -had roamed for a few minutes at sunset, had died down again with the -afterglow. Heat melted like colour into the distance. Not a blade of -grass trembled; the curled leaves on the pear trees were limp and heavy; -even the white turkeys, roosting in a solitary oak near the orchard, -were as motionless as if they were under a spell. As far as she could -see there was not a stir or quiver in the landscape, and the only sounds -that jarred the leaden silence were the monotonous chirping of the -locusts, the discordant croak of a tree-frog, and the staccato shrieks -of the little negroes hunting tobacco-flies. - -The sun had gone down long ago, and the western sky was suffused with -the transparent yellow-green of August evenings. All the light on the -earth had vanished, except the faint glow that was still cast upwards by -the broomsedge. Wave by wave, that symbol of desolation encroached in a -glimmering tide on the darkened boundaries of Old Farm. It was the one -growth in the landscape that thrived on barrenness; the solitary life -that possessed an inexhaustible vitality. To fight it was like fighting -the wild, free principle of nature. Yet they had always fought it. They -had spent their force for generations in the futile endeavour to uproot -it from the soil, as they had striven to uproot all that was wild and -free in the spirit of man. - -At the edge of the woods she paused and looked back. There would be -light enough later, for the golden rim of a moon, paling as it ascended, -was visible through the topmost branches of the big pine in the -graveyard. While she stood there she was visited by a swift perception, -which was less a thought than a feeling, and less a feeling than an -intuitive recognition, that she and her parents were products of the -soil as surely as were the scant crops and the exuberant broomsedge. Had -not the land entered into their souls and shaped their moods into -permanent or impermanent forms? Less a thought than a feeling; but she -went on more rapidly toward the complete joy of the moment in which she -lived. - - - - -XI - - -On the first Sunday in October, Dorinda came out on the porch, with old -Rambler at her side, and looked over the road and the pasture to the -frowning sky. The range of clouds, which had huddled all the afternoon -above the western horizon, was growing darker, and there was a slow -pulsation, like the quiver of invisible wings, in the air. While she -stood there, she wondered if the storm would overtake her before she -reached Whistling Spring. - -"I think I'll risk it," she decided at last. "It's looked this way for -hours, and it won't hurt me to get wet." - -For days she had felt disturbed, and she told herself that her anxiety -had sprung from a definite cause, or, if not from a definite -cause,--well, at least from a plausible reason. Jason had been away for -two weeks, and she had had only one letter. He had promised to write -every day, and she had heard from him once. More than this, when he -left, against his father's wish, he had expected to stay only a week, -and the added days had dragged on without explanation. Of course there -were a dozen reasons why he should not have written. He had gone to -select surgical instruments, and it was probable that he had been kept -busy by professional matters. Her heart made excuses. She repeated -emphatically that there was no need for her to worry; but, in spite of -this insistence, it was useless, she found, to try to argue herself out -of a condition of mind. The only thing was to wait as patiently as she -could for his return. They were to be married in a week; and the hours -before and after her work at the store were spent happily over her -sewing. Mrs. Oakley had neglected her other work in order to help her -daughter with her wedding clothes, and the drawers in Dorinda's walnut -bureau were filled with white, lace-edged garments, made daintily, with -fine, even stitches, by her mother's rheumatic fingers. - -"I shouldn't be satisfied if you didn't have things to start with like -other girls," Mrs. Oakley had remarked, while she pinned a paper pattern -to a width of checked muslin. "I don't want that old doctor to say his -son is marrying a beggar." - -"Well, Jason won't say that," Dorinda had protested. "It would cost less -if I were married in my blue nun's veiling; but Miss Seena thinks a -figured challis would be more suitable." - -"Well, I reckon Miss Seena knows," Mrs. Oakley had agreed. "It ain't -lucky not to have a new dress to be married in, and though I don't set a -bit of store by superstition, it won't do any harm not to run right up -against it." Glancing round at her daughter, she had continued in a tone -of anxiety: "Ain't you feeling well, daughter? You've been looking right -peaked the last day or two, and I noticed you didn't touch any -breakfast." - -"Oh, I'm all right," Dorinda had responded. "I've been worrying about -not hearing from Jason, that's all." As she answered, she had turned -away and dropped into a chair. "I've been bending over all day," she had -explained, "and the weather has been so sultry. It makes me feel kind of -faint." - -"Take a whiff of camphor," Mrs. Oakley had advised. "There's the bottle -right there on the bureau. I get a sinking every now and then myself, so -I like to have it handy. But there ain't a bit of use worrying yourself -sick about Jason. It ain't much more than two weeks since he went away." - -"Two weeks to-morrow, but I haven't heard since the day after he left. I -am worried for fear something has happened." - -"Your father could ask the old doctor?" - -Frowning over the bottle of camphor, Dorinda had pondered the -suggestion. "No, he doesn't like us," she had replied at last. "I doubt -if he'd tell us anything. Jason told me once he wanted him to marry -Geneva Ellgood." - -"You might send a telegram," Mrs. Oakley had offered as the final -resource of desperation. - -Dorinda had flushed through her pallor. "I did yesterday, but there -hasn't been any answer." After a minute's reflection, she had added, "If -it's a good day to-morrow, I think I'll walk down to Whistling Spring in -the evening and see Aunt Mehitable Green. Her daughter Jemima works over -at Five Oaks, and she may have heard something." - -"Then you'd better start right after dinner, and you can get back before -dark," Mrs. Oakley had returned. The word "afternoon" was never used at -Pedlar's Mill, and any hour between twelve o'clock and night was known -as "evening." - -That was yesterday, and standing now on the front porch, Dorinda -considered the prospect. Scorched and blackened by the long summer, the -country was as bare as a conquered province after the march of an -invader. "I'll start anyway," she repeated, and turning, she called out, -"Ma, is there anything I can take Aunt Mehitable?" - -"Doesn't it look as if it were getting ready to rain, Dorinda?" - -"I don't care. If it does, I'll stop somewhere until it is over." - -Entering the hall, the girl paused on the threshold of the room where -her mother sat reading her Bible. - -"Where would you stop?" Mrs. Oakley was nothing if not definite. "There -ain't anybody living on that back road between Five Oaks and Whistling -Spring. It makes me sort of nervous for you to walk down there by -yourself, Dorinda. Can't you get Rufus to go with you?" - -"No, he's gone over to see the Garlick girls, and I don't want him -anyway. I'd rather walk down by myself. Anybody I'd meet on the road -would know who I am. I see them all at the store. May I take a piece of -the molasses pudding we had for dinner?" - -"Yes, there's some left in the cupboard. I was saving it for Rufus, but -you might as well take it. Then there are the last scuppernong grapes on -the shelf. Aunt Mehitable was always mighty fond of scuppernong grapes." - -Going into the kitchen, Dorinda put the molasses pudding into the little -willow basket, and then, covering it with cool grape leaves, laid the -loose grapes on top. A slip of the vine had been given to her -great-grandfather by a missionary from Mexico, and had grown luxuriantly -at Old Farm, clambering over the back porch to the roof of the house. It -was a peculiarity of the scuppernong that the large, pale grapes were -not gathered in a bunch, but dropped grape by grape, as they ripened. -"Is there any message you want to send Aunt Mehitable?" she asked, -returning through the hall. - -On a rag carpet in the centre of her spotless floor, Mrs. Oakley rocked -slowly back and forth while she read aloud one of the Psalms. It was the -only time during the week that she let her body relax; and now that the -whip of nervous energy was suspended, her face looked old, grey, and -hopeless. The dreary afternoon light crept through the half-closed -shutters, and a large blue fly buzzed ceaselessly, with a droning sound, -against the ceiling. - -"Tell her my leg still keeps poorly," she said, "and if she's got any -more of that black liniment, I'd be glad of a bottle. You ain't so spry, -to-day yourself, daughter." - -"I got tired sitting in church," the girl answered, "but the walk will -make me feel better." - -"Be sure you come back if you hear thunder. I don't like your setting -out in the face of a storm. Can you take Rambler?" - -"No, he's old and rheumatic, and it's too far. But I'm all right." -Without waiting for more advice or remonstrance, Dorinda hastened -through the hall and out of the house. - -For the first quarter of a mile, before she reached the red gate at the -fork and turned into the sandy road leading to Five Oaks, her naturally -level spirits drooped under an unusual weight of depression. Then, as -she lifted the bar and passed through the gate, she felt that the -solitude, which had always possessed a mysterious sympathy with her -moods, reached out and received her into itself. Like a beneficent tide, -the loneliness washed over her, smoothing out, as it receded, the vague -apprehensions that had ruffled her thoughts. The austere horizon, flat -and impenetrable beneath the threatening look of the sky; the brown and -yellow splashes of woods in the October landscape; the furtive windings -and recoils of the sunken road; the perturbed murmur and movement of the -broomsedge, so like the restless inlets of an invisible sea,--all these -external objects lost their inanimate character and became as personal, -reserved, and inscrutable as her own mind. So sensitive were her -perceptions, while she walked there alone, that the wall dividing her -individual consciousness from the consciousness of nature vanished with -the thin drift of woodsmoke over the fields. - -The road sank gradually to Gooseneck Creek and then ascended as evenly -to the grounds of Five Oaks. To reach the back road by the short cut, -which saved her a good mile and a half, she was obliged to pass between -the house and the barn, where she caught a glimpse of the old doctor and -heard the sound of a gun fired at intervals. He was shooting, she -surmised, at a chicken hawk, which was hovering low over the barnyard. -Why, she wondered, with all the heavens and the earth around him, had he -placed the stoop-shouldered rustic barn within call of the dwelling -house? The ice-house, three-cornered and red, like all the buildings on -the place, was so near the front porch that one might almost have tossed -the lumps of ice into the hall. Though the red roof, chimneys, and -outbuildings produced, at a distance, an effect of gaiety, she felt that -the colour would become oppressive on hot summer afternoons. Dirt, -mildew, decay everywhere! White turkeys that were discoloured by mould. -Chips, trash, broken bottles littering the yard and the back steps, -which were rotting to pieces. Windows so darkened by dust and cobwebs -that they were like eyes blurred by cataract. Several mulatto babies -crawling, like small, sly animals, over the logs at the woodpile. "Poor -Jason," she thought. "No wonder his nerves are giving way under the -strain." - -She followed the path between the house and the barn, and then, crossing -an old cornfield, turned into the back road, which led, through thick -woods, to Whistling Spring and Whippernock River. After she had lost -sight of the house, she came up with old Matthew Fairlamb, who was -trudging sturdily along, with his hickory stick in his hand and a small -bundle, tied up in a bandanna handkerchief, swinging from his right arm. - -"Are you on your way to see William?" she inquired as she joined him, -for she knew that his son William lived a mile away, on one of the -branch roads that led through to the station. "You must have come quite -a distance out of your way." - -Old Matthew wagged his knowing head. "That's right, gal, I'm gittin' -along to William's now," he replied. "I took dinner over to John -Appleseed's, that's why you find me trampin' through Five Oaks. Ain't -you goin' too fur from home, honey? Thar's a storm brewin' over yonder -in the west, and it'll most likely ketch you." - -"I'm going down to Whistling Spring," Dorinda replied, falling into step -at his side. - -He smacked his old lips. "Then you'll sholy be caught," he rejoined, -with sour pleasure. "It's a matter of five miles or so, ain't it?" - -"That's by the long road. It isn't over four by the short cut through -Five Oaks." - -"Thar ain't nobody but the niggers livin' down by Whistling Spring." - -"I'm going down to see Aunt Mehitable Green. She nursed Ma when she was -sick." - -"I recollect her." Old Matthew wagged again. "She conjured some liver -spots off the face of my son's wife. They used to say she was the best -conjure woman anywhar round here." - -"I know the darkeys are still afraid of her," Dorinda returned. "But she -was good to me when I was little, and I don't believe anything bad about -her." - -"Mebbe not, mebbe not," old Matthew assented. "Anyhow, if she's got a -gift with moles an' warts, thar can't nobody blame her fur practisin' -it. How's yo' weddin' gittin' on, honey? By this time next week you'll -be an old married woman, won't you?" - -Dorinda blushed. "It's hard for me to realize it." - -"Jason's gone away, ain't he?" - -"Yes, he went to New York to buy some instruments." - -"It's a mortal wonder his Pa let him. I hear he keeps as tight a rein on -him as if he'd never growed up. Wall, wall, he didn't ax the advice of -eighty-odd years. But, mark my words, he'll live to regret the day he -come back to Five Oaks." - -"But what else could he do?" the girl protested loyally. "His father -needed him." - -Old Matthew broke into a sly cackle. "Oh, he'll larn, he'll larn. I -ain't contendin'. He's a pleasant-mannered youngster, an' I wish you all -the joy of him you desarve. You ain't heerd from Geneva Ellgood sence -she went away, have you?" - -"Oh, no. She never writes to me." - -"I kind of thought she might have. But to come back to Jason, he's got -everything you want in a man except the one quality that counts with the -land." - -"You speak as if Jason lacked character," she said resentfully. - -"Wall, if he's got it, you'll know it soon," rejoined the disagreeable -old man, "and if he ain't got it, you'll know it sooner. I ain't -contendin'. It don't pay to contend when you're upwards of eighty." He -rolled the words of ill omen like a delicate morsel on his tongue. "This -here is my turnout, honey. Look sharp that you don't git a drenchin'." - -They nodded in the curt fashion of country people, and the old man -tramped off, spitting tobacco juice in the road, while Dorinda hurried -on into the deepening gloom of the woods. She was glad to be free of old -Matthew. He was more like an owl than ever, she thought, with his -ominous _who-who-whoee_. - -Here alone in the woods, with the perpetually moist clay near the stream -underfoot, the thick tent of arching boughs overhead, the aromatic smell -of dampness and rotting leaves in her nostrils, she felt refreshed and -invigorated. After all, why was she anxious? She was securely happy. She -was to be married in a week. She knew beyond question, beyond distrust, -that Jason loved her. For three months she had lived in a state of bliss -so supreme that, like love, it had created the illusion of its own -immortality. Yes, for three months she had been perfectly happy. - -Above, the leaves rustled. Through the interlacing boughs she could see -the grey sky growing darker. The warm scents of the wood were as heavy -as perfumed smoke. - -Presently the trees ended as abruptly as they had begun, and she came -out into the broomsedge which surrounded the negro settlement of -Whistling Spring. A narrow path led between rows of log cabins, each -with its patchwork square of garden, and its clump of gaudy prince's -feather or cockscomb by the doorstep. Aunt Mehitable's cabin stood -withdrawn a little; and when Dorinda reached the door, there was a -mutter of thunder in the clouds, though the storm was still distant and -a silver light edged the horizon. On the stone step a tortoise-shell cat -lay dozing, and a little to one side of the cabin the smouldering embers -of a fire blinked like red eyes under an iron pot, which hung suspended -from a rustic crane made by crossing three sticks. - -In response to the girl's knock on the open door, the cat arched its -back in welcome, and the old negress came hurriedly out of the darkness -inside, wiping her hands on her blue gingham apron. She took Dorinda in -her arms, explaining, while she embraced her, that she had just heated -some water to make a brew of herbs from her garden. - -"Dar ain' no use kindlin' a fire inside er de cabin twell you're -obleeged ter," she remarked. "You ain' lookin' so peart, honey. I've got -a bottle of my brown bitters put away fur yo' Ma, en you ax 'er ter gin -you a dose de fust thing ev'y mawnin'. Yo' Ma knows about'n my brown -bitters daze she's done tuck hit, erlong wid my black liniment. Hit'll -take erway de blue rings unner yo' eyes jes' ez sho', en hit'll fill yo' -cheeks right full er roses agin." - -"I've been worrying," said the girl, sitting down in the chair the old -woman brought. "It's taken my appetite, and made me feel as if I dragged -myself to the store and back every day. Isn't it funny what worry can do -to you, Aunt Mehitable?" - -"Dat 'tis, honey, dat 'tis." - -"I get dizzy too, when I bend over. You haven't got any camphor about, -have you?" - -Aunt Mehitable hastened into the cabin, and brought out a bottle of -camphor. "Yo' Ma gun me dat' de ve'y las' time I wuz at Ole Farm," she -said, removing the stopper, and handing the bottle to Dorinda. "Hit's a -long walk on dis heah peevish sort of er day. You jes' set en res' wile -I git you a swallow uv my blackberry cord'al. Dar ain't nuttin' dat'll -pick you up quicker'n blackberry cord'al w'en it's made right." - -Going indoors again, she came out with the blackberry cordial in a ruby -wineglass which had once belonged to the Cumberlands. "Drink it down -quick, en you'll feel better right befo' you know hit. Huccome you been -worryin', chile, w'en yo is gwineter be mah'ed dis time nex' week?" she -inquired abruptly. - -"I'm afraid something has happened," Dorinda said. "Jason has been away -two weeks, and I haven't had a word since the day after he left. I -thought you might have heard something from Jemima." - -The old woman mumbled through toothless gums. She was wearing a bandanna -handkerchief wrapped tightly about her head, and beneath it a few -grey-green wisps of hair straggled down to meet the dried grass of her -eyebrows. Her face was so old that it looked as if the flesh had been -polished away, and her features shone like black lacquer where the light -struck them. - -"Naw'm, I ain't heerd nuttin'," she replied, "but I'se done been lookin' -fur you all de evelin'. Dar's a lil' bird done tole me you wuz comin'," -she muttered mysteriously. - -"I wasn't sure of it myself till just before I started." - -"I knowed, honey, I knowed," rejoined Aunt Mehitable, leaning against -the smoke-blackened pine by her doorstep, while she fixed her bleared, -witchlike gaze on the girl. There was the dignity in her demeanour that -is inherent in all simple, profound, and elemental forces. The pipe she -had taken out of the pocket of her apron was in her mouth, but the stem -was cold and she mumbled over it without smoking. With her psychic -powers, which were a natural endowment, she combined a dramatic gift -that was not uncommon among the earlier generations of negroes. In -another century Aunt Mehitable would have been either a mystic -philosopher or a religious healer. - -"Can you really see things, Aunt Mehitable?" Dorinda inquired, impressed -but not convinced. - -Aunt Mehitable grunted over her smokeless pipe. "Mebbe I kin en mebbe I -cyan't." - -"They say you can tell about the future?" - -"Hi!" the old negress exclaimed, and continued with assumed -indifference. "Dey sez I kin do a heap mo'n I kin do. But I ain' -steddyin' about'n dat, honey. I knows w'at I knows. I kin teck moles en -warts en liver spots off'n you twell you is jes' ez smooth ez de pa'm er -my han', en ern ennybody's done put a conjure ball ovah yo' do' er -th'owed a ring on de grass fur you to walk in, I kin tell you whar you -mus' go ter jump ovah runnin' water. Ern you is in enny trubble, honey, -hit's mos' likely I kin teck hit erway. Is you stuck full er pins an' -needles in yo' legs an' arms, jes' lak somebody done th'owed a spell on -you?" - -"No, it isn't that," answered Dorinda. "I came because I thought you -might have heard something from Jemima. I'd better be starting back now. -I want to get home, if I can, before the storm breaks----" - -She had risen to her feet, and was turning to look at the clouds in the -west, when the broomsedge plunged forward, like a raging sea, and -engulfed her. She felt the pain and dizziness of the blow; she heard the -thunder of the waves as they crashed together; and she saw the billows, -capped with spray-ike plumes, submerging the cabin, the fields, the -woods, and the silver crescent of the horizon. - - -When she came to herself, it was an hour, a day, or a year afterwards. -She was still on the bare ground, beneath the blackened pine, in front -of Aunt Mehitable's cabin. The tortoise-shell cat still dozed on the -step. The dying embers still blinked under the hanging pot. There was a -pungent smell in her nostrils, as the old woman splashed camphor over -her forehead. Her consciousness was struggling through the fumes which -saturated her brain. - -"Dar now, honey. Don't you worry. Hit's all right," crooned Aunt -Mehitable, bending above her. - -Dorinda sat up slowly, and looked round her. "I believe I fainted," she -said. "I never fainted before." The roar of far-off waters was still in -her ears. - -The old woman held out the ruby wineglass, which she had refilled. -"Hit's all right, honey, hit's all right." - -"It came on so suddenly." Dorinda pushed the glass away after she had -obediently swallowed a few sips. "It was exactly like dying; but I'm -well now. The walk must have been too long on a sultry day." - -"Don't you worry, caze hit's gwineter be all right," crooned Aunt -Mehitable. "I'se done axed de embers en hit's gwineter be all right." -The magnetic force emanating from the old negress enveloped the girl, -and she abandoned herself to it as to a mysterious and terrible current -of wisdom. How did Aunt Mehitable know things before other people? she -wondered. She shivered in the warm air, and laid her head on the wizened -shoulder. Of course no one believed in witches any longer; but there was -something queer in the way she could look ahead and tell fortunes. - -"Befo' de week's up you is gwineter be mah'ed," muttered the old woman, -"en dar ain't a livin' soul but Aunt Mehitable gwineter know dat de -chile wuz on de way sooner----" - -"I--" Dorinda began sharply. Rising quickly to her feet, she stood -looking about her like a person who has been dazzled by a flash of -lightning. She was bewildered, but she was less bewildered than she had -been for the last three months. In the illumination of that instant a -hundred mysteries were made plain; but her dominant feeling was one of -sharp awakening from a trance. Swift and savage, animal terror clutched -at her heart. Where was Jason? Suppose he was dead! Suppose he was lost -to her! The longing to see him, the urgent need of his look, of his -touch, of his voice, shuddered through her like a convulsion. It seemed -to her that she could not live unless she could feel the reassuring -pressure of his arms and hear the healing sound of her name on his lips. - -"I must go back," she said. "I'll come again, Aunt Mehitable, but I must -hurry before the storm." - -Breaking away from the old woman's arms, she walked rapidly, as if she -were flying before the approaching storm, through the acres of -broomsedge to the road by which she had come. - - - - -XII - - -On either side of the road the trees grew straight and tall, and overhead -the grey arch of sky looked as if it were hewn out of rock. The pines -were dark as night, but the oaks, the sweet gums, the beeches, and -hickories were turning slowly, and here and there the boughs were -brushed with wine-colour or crimson. Far away, she could hear the rumble -of the storm, and it seemed to her that the noise and burden of living -marched on there at an immeasurable distance. Within the woods there was -the profound silence of sleep. Nothing but the occasional flutter of a -bird or stir of a small animal in the underbrush disturbed the serenity. -The oppressive air stifled her, and she felt that her breath, like the -movement of the wind, was suspended. - -"If I don't hurry, I shall never get out of the woods," she thought. "I -ought not to have come." - -Forgetting the attack of faintness, she quickened her steps into a run, -and stumbled on over the wheel ruts in the road, which was scarcely -wider than a cart track. For a while this stillness was so intense that -she felt as if it were palpitating in smothered throbs like her heart. -The storm was gathering on another planet. So remote it was that the -slow reverberations were echoed across an immensity of silence. The -first mile was past. Then the second. With the ending of the third, she -knew that she should come out into the pasture and the old cornfield at -Five Oaks. - -Presently a few withered leaves fluttered past her, flying through the -narrow tunnel of the woods toward the clearer vista ahead. Immediately -round her the atmosphere was still motionless. Like an alley in a dream -the road, stretched, brown, dim, monotonous, between the tall trees; and -this alley seemed to her unutterably sad, strewn with dead leaves and -haunted by an autumnal taint of decay. The fear in her own mind had -fallen like a blight on her surroundings, as if the external world were -merely a shadow thrown by the subjective processes within her soul. - -Suddenly, without nearer warning, the storm broke. A streak of white -fire split the sky, and the tattered clouds darkened to an angry purple. -The wind, which had been chained at a distance, tore itself free with a -hurtling noise and crashed in gusts through the tree-tops. Overhead, she -heard the snapping of branches, and when she glanced back, it seemed to -her that the withered leaves had gathered violence in pursuit, and were -whirling after her like a bevy of witches. As she came out of the -shelter of the trees, the stream of wind and leaves swept her across the -cornfield, with the patter of rain on her shoulders. Where the road -turned, she saw the red barn and the brick dwelling of Five Oaks, and in -obedience to the wind rather than by the exercise of her own will, she -was driven over the field and the yard to the steps of the back porch. -Her first impression was that the place was deserted; and running up the -steps, she sank into one of the broken chairs on the porch, and shook -the water from her hat while she struggled for breath. On the roof of -the house the rain was beating in drops as hard as pebbles. She heard it -thundering on the shingles; she saw it scattering the chips and straws -by the woodpile, and churning the puddles in the walk until they foamed -with a yeasty scum. The sky was shrouded now in a crape-like pall, and -where the lightning ripped open the blackness, the only colour was that -jagged stain of dull purple. "I'm wet already," she thought. "In another -minute I'd have been soaked through to the skin." Turning her head, she -looked curiously at the home of her lover. - -The thought in her mind was, "You could tell no woman lived here. When I -get the chance, it won't take me long to make things look different." -With the certainty that this "chance" would one day be hers, she forgot -her anxiety and fatigue, and a thrill of joy eased her heart. Yes, -things would be different when she and Jason lived here together and -little children played under the great oaks in the grove. Her fingers -"itched," as she said to herself, to clean up the place and make it tidy -without and within. A rivulet of muddy water was pouring round the -corner of the house, wearing a channel in the gravelled walk, which was -littered with rubbish. Beside the porch there was a giant box-bush, -beneath which several bedraggled white turkeys had taken shelter. She -could see them through the damp twilight of the boughs, shaking drenched -feathers or scratching industriously in the rank mould among the roots. - -Leaning back in her wet clothes, against the splints of the chair, which -sagged on one rocker, she glanced about her at the refuse that -overflowed from the hall. The porch looked as if it had not been swept -for years. There was a pile of dusty bagging in one corner, and, -scattered over the floor, she saw a medley of oil cans, empty -cracker boxes and whiskey bottles, loose spokes of cart wheels, rolls of -barbed wire, and stray remnants of leather harness. "How can any one -live in such confusion?" she thought. Through the doorway, she could -distinguish merely a glimmer of light on the ceiling, from which the -plaster was dropping, and the vague shape of a staircase, which climbed, -steep and slender, to the upper story. It was a fairly good house of its -period, the brick dwelling, with ivy-encrusted wings, which was -preferred by the more prosperous class of Virginia farmers. The -foundation of stone had been well laid; the brick walls were stout and -solid, and though neglect and decay had overtaken it, the house still -preserved, beneath its general air of deterioration, an underlying -character of honesty and thrift. Turning away, she gazed through the -silver mesh of rain, past the barn and the stable, to the drenched -pasture, where a few trees rocked back and forth, and a flock of -frightened sheep huddled together. Where were the farm labourers, she -wondered? What had become of Jemima, who, Aunt Mehitable had said, was -still working here? Two men living alone must keep at least one woman -servant. Had the storm thrown a curse of stagnation over the place, and -made it incapable of movement or sound? She could barely see the sky for -the slanting rain, which drove faster every minute. Was she the only -living thing left, except the cowering sheep in the pasture and the -dripping white turkeys under the box-bush? - -While she was still asking the question, she heard a shuffling step in -the hall behind her, and looking hastily over her shoulder, saw the -figure of the old man blocking the doorway. For an instant his squat -outline, blurred between the dark hall and the sheets of rain, was all -that she distinguished. Then he lurched toward her, peering out of the -gloom. Yesterday, she would have run from him in terror. Before her -visit to Whistling Spring she would have faced the storm rather than the -brooding horror at Five Oaks. But the great fear had absorbed the small -fears as the night absorbs shadows. Nothing mattered to her if she could -only reach Jason. - -"Come in, come in," the old doctor was mumbling, with a dreary effort at -hospitality. - -He held out his palsied hand, and all the evil rumours she had heard -since he had given up his practice and buried himself at Five Oaks -rushed into her mind. It must be true that he had always been a secret -drinker, and that the habit had taken possession now of his faculties. -Though she had known him all her life, the change in him was so -startling that she would scarcely have recognized him. His once robust -figure was wasted and flabby, except for his bloated paunch, which hung -down like a sack of flour; his scraggy throat protruding from the -bristles of his beard reminded the girl of the neck of a buzzard; his -little fiery eyes, above inflamed pouches of skin, flickered and shone, -just as the smouldering embers had flickered and shone under Aunt -Mehitable's pot. And from these small bloodshot eyes something sly and -secretive and malignant looked out at her. Was this, she wondered, what -whiskey and his own evil nature could do to a man? - -"I am on my way back from Whistling Spring," she explained, while she -struggled against the repulsion he aroused in her. "The storm caught me -just as I reached here." - -He smirked with his bloodless old lips, which cracked under the strain. -"Eh? Eh?" he chuckled, cupping his ear in his hand. Then catching hold -of her sleeve, he pulled her persuasively toward the doors "Come in, -come in," he urged. "You're wet through. I've kindled a bit of fire to -dry my boots, and it's still burning. Come in, and dry yourself before -you take cold from the wetting." - -Still clutching her, he stumbled into the hall, glancing uneasily back, -as if he feared that she might slip out of his grasp. On the right a -door stood ajar, and a few knots of resinous pine blazed, with a thin -blue light, in the cavernous fireplace. As he led her over the -threshold, she noticed that the windows were all down, and that the only -shutters left open were those at the back window, against which the -giant box-bush had grown into the shape of a hunchback. There was a film -of dust or wood ashes over the floor and the furniture, and cobwebs were -spun in lacy patterns on the discoloured walls. A demijohn, still half -full of whiskey, stood on the crippled mahogany desk, and a pitcher of -water and several dirty glasses were on a tin tray beside it. Near the -sparkling blaze a leather chair, from which the stuffing protruded, -faced a shabby footstool upholstered in crewel work, and a pile of -hickory logs, chips, and pine knots, over which spiders were crawling. -While Dorinda sat down in the chair he pointed out, and looked nervously -over the dust and dirt that surrounded her, she thought that she had -never seen a room from which the spirit of hope was so irrevocably -banished. How cheerful the room at Pedlar's Mill, where Rose Emily lay -dying, appeared by contrast with this one! What a life Jason's mother -must have led in this place! How had Jason, with his charm, his -fastidiousness, his sensitive nerves, been able to stay here? Her gaze -wandered to the one unshuttered window, where the sheets of rain were -blown back and forth like a curtain. She saw the hunched shoulder of the -box-bush, crouching under the torrent of water which poured down from -the roof. Yet she longed to be out in the storm. Any weather was better -than this close, dark place, so musty in spite of its fire, and this -suffocating stench of whiskey and of things that were never aired. - -"Just a thimbleful of toddy to ward off a chill?" the old man urged, -with his doddering gestures. - -She shook her head, trying to smile. A drop of the stuff in one of those -fly-specked glasses would have sickened her. - -Darkness swept over her with the ebb and flow of the sea. She felt a -gnawing sensation within; there wag a quivering in her elbows; and it -seemed to her that she was dissolving into emptiness. The thin blue -light wavered and vanished and wavered again. When she opened her eyes -the room came out of the shadows in fragments, obscure, glimmering, -remote. On the shingled roof the rain was pattering like a multitude of -tiny feet, the restless bare feet of babies. Terror seized her. She -longed with all her will to escape; but how could she go back into the -storm without an excuse; and what excuse could she find? After all, -repulsive as he appeared, he was still Jason's father. - -"No, thank you," she answered, when he poured a measure of whiskey into -a glass and pushed it toward her. "Aunt Mehitable gave me some -blackberry cordial." After a silence she asked abruptly: "Where is -Jemima?" - -Lifting the glass she had refused, he added a stronger dash to the weak -mixture, and sipped it slowly. "There's nothing better when you're wet -than a little toddy," he muttered. "Jemima is off for the evening, but -she'll be back in time to get supper. I heard her say she was going over -to Plumtree." - -A peal of thunder broke so near that she started to her feet, expecting -to see the window-panes shattered. - -"There, there, don't be afraid," he said, nodding at her over his glass. -"The worst is over now. The rain will have held up before you're dry and -ready to go home." - -It was like a nightmare, the dark, glimmering room, with its dust and -cobwebs, the sinister old man before the blue flames of the pine knots, -the slanting rain over the box-bush, the pattering sound on the roof, -and the thunderbolts which crashed near by and died away in the -distance. Even her body felt numbed, as if she were asleep, and her -feet, when she rose and took a step forward, seemed to be walking on -nothing. It was just as if she knew it was not real, that it was all -visionary and incredible, and as if she stood there waiting until she -should awake. The dampness, too, was not a genuine dampness, but the -sodden atmosphere of a nightmare. - -"Why, it has stopped now!" she exclaimed suddenly. "The storm is over." -Then, because she did not wish to show fear of him, she came nearer and -held her wet dress to the flames. "You won't need a fire much longer," -she said. "It is warmer out of doors than it is inside." - -"That's why I keep the windows down." He looked so dry and brittle, in -spite of the dampness about him, that she thought he would break in -pieces if he moved too quickly. There was no life, no sap, left in his -veins. - -"I'm by myself now," he winked at her. "But it won't be for long. Jason -comes back to-night." - -"To-night!" Joy sang in her voice. But why hadn't he written? Was there -anything wrong? Or was he merely trying to surprise her by his return? - -"You hadn't heard? Well, that proves, I reckon, that I can keep a -secret." He lurched to his feet, balanced himself unsteadily for an -instant, and then stumbled to the window. Beyond him she saw the black -shape of the box-bush, with a flutter of white turkeys among its boughs, -and overhead a triangle of sky, where the grey was washed into a -delicate blue. Yes, the storm was over. - -"They ought to reach the station about now," he said. "When the windows -are open and the wind is in the right direction, you can hear the -whistle of the train." There was malignant pleasure in his tone. "You -didn't know, I s'pose, that he'd gone off to get married?" - -"Married?" She laughed feebly, imagining that he intended a joke. How -dreadful old men were when they tried to be funny! His pointed beard -jerked up and down when he talked, and his little red blinking eyes -stared between his puffed eyelids like a rat's eyes out of a hole. Then -something as black and cold as stale soot floated out from the chimney -and enveloped her. She could scarcely get her breath. If only he would -open the windows. - -"Hasn't he told you that we are to be married next week?" she asked. - -"No, he hasn't told me." He gloated over the words as if they were -whiskey, and she wondered what he was like when he was not drinking, if -that ever happened. He could be open-handed, she had heard, when the -humour struck him. Once, she knew, he had helped Miss Texanna Snead -raise the money for her taxes, and when Aunt Mehitable's cow died he had -given her another. "I had a notion that you and he were sweethearts," he -resumed presently, "and he'd have to look far, I reckon, before he could -pick out a finer girl. He's a pleasant-tempered boy, is Jason, but he -ain't dependable, even if he is my son, so I hope you haven't set too -much store by him. I never heard of him mixing up with girls, except you -and Geneva. That ain't his weakness. The trouble with him is that he was -born white-livered. Even as a child he would go into fits if you showed -him a snake or left him by himself in the dark----" - -"He loves me," she said stoutly, closing her ears and her mind to his -words. - -He nodded. "I don't doubt it, I don't doubt it. He loved you well -enough, I reckon, to want to jilt Geneva; but he found out, when he -tried, that she wasn't as easy to jilt as he thought. He'd courted her -way back yonder last year, when they were in New York together. Later on -he'd have been glad to wriggle out of it; but when Jim and Bob Ellgood -came after him, he turned white-livered again. They took him off and -married him while he was still shaking from fright. A good boy, a -pleasant boy," continued the old man, smacking his dry lips, "but he -ain't of my kidney." - -When he had finished, she gazed at him in a dumbness which had attacked -her like paralysis. She tried to cry out, to tell him that she knew he -lied; but her lips would not move in obedience to her will, and her -throat felt as if it were petrified. Was this the way people felt when -they had a stroke, she found herself thinking. On the surface she was -inanimate; but beneath, in the buried jungle of her consciousness, there -was the stirring of primitive impulses, and this stirring was agony. All -individual differences, all the acquired attributes of civilization, had -turned to wood or stone; yet the racial structure, the savage fibre of -instinct, remained alive in her. - -The room had grown darker. Only the hearth and the evil features of the -old man were picked out by the wavering blue light. She saw his face, -with its short wagging beard and its fiery points of eyes, as one sees -objects under running water. Everything was swimming round her, and -outside, where a cloud had drifted over the triangle of clear sky, the -box-bush and the white turkeys were swimming too. - -"You'll meet 'em on the road if you go by the fork," piped a voice -beneath that shifting surface. "They will be well on the way by the time -you have started." - -Stung awake at last, she thrust out her arm, warding him off. The one -thought in her mind now was to escape, to get out of the room before he -could stop her, to put the house and its terrors behind her. It couldn't -be true. He was drunk. He was lying. He was out of his head. She was -foolish even to listen, foolish to let the lie worry her for an instant. - -Turning quickly, she ran from him out of the room, out of the house, out -of the stagnant air of the place. - -At the beginning of the sandy road, where the water had hollowed a -basin, she met the coloured woman, Idabella, who said "good evening," -after the custom of the country, as she went by. She was a handsome -mulatto, tall, deep-bosomed, superb, and unscrupulous, with the regal -features that occasionally defy ethnology in the women of mixed blood. -Her glossy black hair was worn in a coronet, and she moved with the slow -and arrogant grace which springs from a profound immobility. - -"The dreadful old man," thought Dorinda, as she hurried in the direction -of Gooseneck Creek. "The dreadful, lying old man!" - - - - -XIII - - -The sun had riddled the clouds, and a watery light drenched the trees, -the shrubs, and the bruised weeds. This light, which bathed the external -world in a medium as fluid as rain, penetrated into her thoughts, and -enveloped the images in her mind with a transparent brilliance. - -"It isn't true," she repeated over and over, as she went down the sandy -slope to Gooseneck Creek, and over the bridge of logs in the willows. -When she reached the meadows, rain was still dripping from the -golden-rod and life-everlasting. A rabbit popped up from the briers and -scuttled ahead of her, with his little white tail bobbing jauntily. - -"How funny it looks," she thought, "just as if it were beckoning me to -come on and play. The rain is over, but I am soaked through. Even my -skin is wet. I'll have to dry all my clothes by the kitchen fire, if it -hasn't gone out. What a terrible old man!" Out of nowhere there flashed -into her mind the recollection of a day when she had gone to a dentist -at the County Courthouse to have an aching tooth drawn. All the -way, sitting beside her father, behind Dan and Beersheba, she had kept -repeating, "It won't hurt very much." Strange that she should have -thought of that now! She could see the way Dan and Beersheba had turned, -flopping their ears, and looked round, as if they were trying to show -sympathy; and how the bunches of indigo, fastened on their heads to keep -flies away, had danced fantastically like uprooted bushes. "It isn't -true;" she said now, seeking to fortify her courage as she had tried so -passionately on the drive to the dentist. "When Jason comes back, we -will laugh over it together. He will tell me that I was foolish to be -worried, that it proved I did not trust him. But, of course, I trust -him. When we are married, I will stand between him and the old man as -much as I can. I am not afraid of him. No, I am not afraid," she said -aloud, stopping suddenly in the road as if she had seen a snake in her -path. "When Jason comes back, everything will be right. Yes, everything -will be right," she repeated. "Perhaps the old man suspected something, -and was trying to frighten me. Doctors always know things sooner than -other people. . . . What a dirty place it is! Ma would call it a pig sty. -Well, I can clean it up, bit by bit. Even if the old man doesn't let -anybody touch his den, I can clean the rest of the house. I'll begin -with the porch, and some day, when he is out, I can make Jemima wash -that dreadful floor and the window-panes. The outside is almost as bad -too. The walk looks as if it had never been swept." In order to deaden -this fear, which was gnawing at her heart like a rat, she began to plan -how she would begin cleaning the place and gradually bring system out of -confusion. "A little at a time," she said aloud, as if she were reciting -a phrase in a foreign language. "A little at a time will not upset him." - -At the fork of the road, approaching the red gate, where the thick belt -of woods began, her legs gave way under her, and she knew that she could -go no farther. "I'll have to stop," she thought, "even if the ground is -so wet, I'll have to sit down." Then the unconscious motive, which had -guided her ever since she left Five Oaks, assumed a definite form. "If -he came on that train, he ought to be here in a few minutes," she said. -"The whistle blew a long time ago. Even if he waited for the mail, he -ought to be here in a little while." - -Stepping over the briers into the woods, she looked about for a place to -sit down. An old stump, sodden with water, pushed its way up from the -maze of creepers, and she dropped beside it, while she relapsed into the -suspense that oozed out of the ground and the trees. As long as her -response to this secret fear was merely physical, she was able to keep -her thoughts fixed on empty mechanical movements; but the instant she -admitted the obscure impulse into her mind, the power of determination -seemed to go out of her. She felt weak, unstrung, incapable of rational -effort. - -A thicket of dogwood and redbud trees made a close screen in front of -her, and through the dripping branches, she could see the red gate, and -beyond it the blasted oak and the burned cabin on the other side of the -road. Farther on, within range of her vision, there were the abandoned -acres of broomsedge, and opposite to them she imagined the Sneads' -pasture, with the white and red splotches of cows and the blurred -patches of huddled sheep. - -While she sat there the trembling passed out of her limbs, and the -strength that had forsaken her returned slowly. Removing her hat, she -let the branches play over her face, like the delicate touch of cool, -moist fingers. She felt drenched without and within. The very thoughts -that came and went in her mind were as limp as wet leaves, and blown -like leaves in the capricious stir of the breeze. For a few minutes she -sat there surrounded by a vacancy in which nothing moved but the leaves -and the wind. Without knowing what she thought, without knowing even -what she felt, she abandoned herself to the encompassing darkness. Then, -suddenly, without warning from her mind, this vacancy was flooded with -light and crowded with a multitude of impressions. - -Their first meeting in the road. The way he looked at her. His eyes when -he smiled. The red of his hair. His hand when he touched her. The -feeling of his arms, of his mouth on hers, of the rough surface of his -coat brushing her face. The first time he had kissed her. The last time -he had kissed her. No. It isn't true. It isn't true. Deep down in her -being some isolated point of consciousness, slow, rhythmic, monotonous, -like a swinging pendulum, was ticking over and over: It isn't true. It -isn't true. True. True. It isn't true. On the surface other thoughts -came and went. That horrible old man. A fire in summer. The stench of -drunkenness. Tobacco stains on his white beard. A rat watching her from -a hole. How she hated rats! Did he suspect something, and was he trying -to frighten her? Trying to frighten her. But she would let him see that -she was too strong for him. She was not afraid. . . . The thoughts went -on, coming and going like leaves blown in the wind, now rising, now -fluttering down again. But far away, in a blacker vacancy, the pendulum -still swung to and fro, and she heard the thin, faint ticking of the -solitary point of consciousness: _True. True. It isn't true. It isn't -true--true--true_-- - -No, he couldn't frighten her. She was too sure of herself. Too sure of -Jason, too sure of her happiness. "Too sure of Jason," she repeated -aloud. - -The little sad, watery sun sputtered out like a lantern, and after a few -minutes of wan greyness, shone more clearly, as if it had been relighted -and hung up again in the sky. Colour flowed back into the landscape, -trickling in shallow streams of blue and violet through the nearer -fields and evaporating into dark fire where the broomsedge enkindled -the horizon. She started up quickly, and fell back. When she put her -hand on the slimy moss it felt like a toad. - -Far down the road, somewhere in the vague blur of the distance, there -was the approaching rumble of wheels. She heard the even rise and fall -of the hoofs, the metallic clink of horseshoes striking together, the -jolting over the rock by the Sneads' pasture, the splash of mud in the -bad hole near the burned cabin, and the slip and scramble of the mare as -she stumbled and then, recovering herself, broke into a trot. - -_It isn't true. It isn't true_, ticked the pin point of consciousness. Her -mind was still firm; but her limbs trembled so violently that she -slipped from the stump to the carpet of moss and soaked creepers. -Shutting her eyes, she held fast to the slimy branch of a tree. "When he -turns at the fork, I will look. I will not look until he turns at the -fork." - -The rumble was louder, was nearer. An instant of silence. The buggy was -approaching the fork. It was at the fork. She heard close at hand the -familiar clink of the steel shoes and the sharper squeak of a loosened -screw in the wheel. Rising on the sodden mould, she opened her eyes, -pushed aside the curtain of branches, and looked out through the leaves. -She saw Jason sitting erect, with the reins in his hands. She saw his -burnished red hair, his pale profile, his slightly stooping shoulders, -his mouth which was closed in a hard straight line. Clear and sharp, she -saw him with the vividness of a flash of lightning, and beside him, she -saw the prim, girlish figure and the flaxen head of Geneva Ellgood. - -_It isn't true. It isn't true._ The pendulum was swinging more slowly; and -suddenly the ticking stopped, and then went on in jerks like a clock -that is running down. _It isn't true. It isn't true--true--true._ - -She felt cold and wet. Though she had not lost the faculty of -recollection, she was outside time and space, suspended in ultimate -darkness. There was an abyss around her, and through this abyss wind was -blowing, black wind, which made no sound because it was sweeping through -nothingness. She lay flat in this vacancy, yet she did not fall through -it because she also was nothing. Only her hands, which clutched -wood mould, were alive. There was mould under her finger nails, and the -smell of wet earth filled her nostrils. Everything within her had -stopped. The clock no longer ticked; it had run down. She could not -think, or, if she thought, her thoughts were beyond her consciousness, -skimming like shadows over a frozen lake. Only the surface of her could -feel, only her skin, and this felt as if it would never be warm again. - -"So it is true," she said aloud, and the words, spoken without a thought -behind them, startled her. The instant afterwards she began to come back -to existence; she could feel life passing through her by degrees, first -in her hands and feet, where needles were pricking, then in her limbs, -and at last in her mind and heart. And while life fought its way into -her, something else went out of her for ever--youth, hope, love--and the -going was agony. Her pain became so intolerable that she sprang to her -feet and started running through the woods, like a person who is running -away from a forest fire. Only she knew, while she ran faster and faster, -that the fire was within her breast, and she could not escape it. No -matter how far she ran and how fast, she could not escape it. - -Presently the running shook her senses awake, and her thoughts became -conscious ones. In the silence the shuddering beats of her heart were -like the unsteady blows of a hammer--one, two, one, one, two, two. Her -breath came with a whistling sound, and for a minute she confused it -with the wind in the tree-tops. - -"So this is the end," she said aloud, and then very slowly, "I didn't -know I could feel like this. I didn't know anybody could feel like -this." A phrase of her mother's, coloured with the barbaric imagery of a -Hebrew prophet, was driven, as aimlessly as a wisp of straw, into her -mind: "Your great-grandfather said he never came to Christ till he had -thirsted for blood." Thirsted for blood! She had never known what that -meant. It had seemed to her a strange way to come to Christ, but now she -understood. - -The wet briers tore her legs through her stockings. Branches whipped her -face and bruised its delicate flesh. Once, when she came out of the -woods, she slipped and fell on her hands and knees. The splinters of the -fence pierced her skin when she climbed over the rails. But still she -ran on, trying to escape from the fire within her breast. - - - - -XIV - - -On the front porch, with her hand shielding her eyes from the sunset, -her mother stood and looked out for her. - -"I was watching for you, Dorinda. You must have got caught in the -storm." - -"Just at the beginning. I stopped at Five Oaks." - -"Was anybody there?" - -"Nobody but the old doctor. Jemima was off." - -"Did he say when he expected Jason?" - -"Yes, he told me he might come back this evening." - -Once, long ago, she had heard a ventriloquist at a circus, and her voice -was like the voice that had come out of the chair, the table, or the wax -doll. As she stepped on the porch, her mother examined her closely. -"Well, you're as white as a sheet. Go up and take off your wet things as -quick as you can, and bring 'em down to the fire. Supper'll be ready in -a minute." - -Dorinda tried to smile when she hurried by, but her muscles, she found, -eluded the control of her will, and the smile was twisted into a -smirking grimace. Without trusting herself to meet her mother's eyes, -she went upstairs to her room and took off her rain-soaked clothes, -hanging her skirt and shirtwaist in the closet, and putting her muddy -shoes side by side, as if they were standing at attention on the edge of -the rug. Pushing back the curtain over the row of hooks, she selected an -old blue gingham dress which she had discarded, and put it on, carefully -adjusting the belt, from which the hooks and eyes, were missing, with -the help of a safety pin. All the time, while she performed these -trivial acts, she felt that her intimate personal self had stepped -outside her body, and was watching her from a distance. When she went -downstairs, it was only a marionette, like one of the figures she had -seen as a child in a Punch and Judy show, that descended the stairs and -sat down at the table. She looked at her father and mother, her father -eating so noisily, her mother pouring buttermilk, without spilling a -drop, into the row of glasses, and wondered what she had to do with -these people? Why had she been born in this family and not in another? -Could she have been a changeling that they had picked up? - -"Dorinda stopped at Five Oaks until the storm was over," she heard her -mother say to the others; and suddenly, as if the sound had touched some -secret spring in her mind, she became alive again, and everything was -bathed in the thin blue light of that room at Five Oaks. The pain was -more than she could bear. It was more than anybody could be expected to -bear. In a flash of time it became so violent that she jumped up from -her chair, and began walking up and down as if she were in mortal agony. - -"What's the matter, daughter? Did you come down on your tooth?" inquired -Mrs. Oakley solicitously. - -"No, it isn't that. I don't want any supper," replied the girl, hurrying -out of the room and walking the length of the hall to the front door. "I -must do something," she thought. "If I don't do something, this pain -will go on for ever." - -She had crossed the threshold to the porch, when, wheeling abruptly, she -went back into the hall and from the hall into her mother's chamber, -where the family Bible lap open on the table and the big fly was still -knocking against the ceiling. She had not known that flies lived so -long! It seemed an eternity, not a few hours ago, when her mother had -sat there reading the Psalms and the fly had buzzed in the stillness. -The peaceful room, pervaded by the Sabbath lethargy, with the open Bible -waiting for family prayers, and the battered old furniture arranged in -changeless order, seemed to close over her like a trap. "I must do -something, or this misery will never end," she thought again. But there -was nothing that she could do. There would never be anything that she -could do in her life. It was over. Everything was over, and she might -live to be ninety. "And the child coming too." There also she could find -no escape. "No matter what I do, I can change nothing." Something had -caught her. Life had caught her. She could not get away, no matter how -hard she struggled. A drop of blood fell on her fingers, and glancing -into the mirror, she saw that she had bitten her lip until it bled, yet -she had not felt it. Nothing like that, nothing on the outside of -herself, could ever hurt her again. "If I could only do something," she -said in a whisper, and walked from the chamber to the spare room, and -from the spare room, which looked as if it were hiding something, out -into the hall. Suddenly, like a person moving in delirium, she walked -out of the house, and along the path between the pear orchard and the -vegetable garden. The green afterglow had faded; but a sallow moon was -riding high over the big pine, and gave light enough for her to see her -way. Like a wet sheet the twilight folded about her, clinging to her -arms and legs when she tried to shake herself free from it. She would -have moonlight in the woods, and besides she had nothing to fear. A dry -sob broke from her, hurting her throat. You had reached the worst, she -realized, when you had nothing to fear. - -She followed the path rapidly. By the pear orchard, by the big pine on -the hill, by the tobacco field, through the pasture, and into the dark -belt of woods. Here the smell of wet earth stifled her, and she lived -over again the moment when she had waited there, listening, in the -suspense which was more terrible than any certainty. "I didn't know what -it was when I went through with it," she thought. "I didn't know what it -was until afterwards." Memory, she felt, was gathering like an ulcer in -her mind. If she could not let out the pain, the sore would burst from -its own swelling. "If I don't do something, I shall die," she said -aloud, standing there, on the edge of the woods, among the wet leaves -and rotting mould. Then, swift as an inspiration, there came to her the -knowledge of what she must do. She must find Jason. Yes, she must find -Jason. This knowledge, which was as infallible as instinct, went no -further than the imperative necessity of seeing him. Beyond this, the -impulse gave way, like a bridge that breaks in the middle of a stream. -It left her there, without prop, without direction, hanging over the -black current of emptiness. - -As she hurried on, a bough struck her so sharply that it bruised her -cheek, but she did not feel it. With the act of decision her body had -become so airy and transparent that she was no longer conscious of it as -a drag on her spirit. Though she ought to have been tired, she felt -instead amazingly strong and fresh, amazingly full of vitality. Only now -and then, as she walked rapidly through the willows and over the log -bridge, lights flickered and vanished and flickered again before her -eyes. At first she thought that a million sparks glittered out there in -the moist purple twilight; then she realized that they were not there at -all but within her brain. And these lights, which flitted round her as -she went on, illumined the blind impulse that directed her movements. It -was as if she were harnessed to this impulse and driven by it toward -some end of which she was ignorant, but which she would presently -discern in the fog. - -She moved quickly, with her gaze fixed straight in front of her. The -dusk was gilded with fireflies, but she could not distinguish these -vagrant insects from the roving lights in her brain. The earth underfoot -gave out, when it was crushed, a strong, warm, vital odour. Very near -and loud, there was the hoot of an owl, followed presently by another; -but the cries seemed to be a part of the inner voice which was urging -her on. Her feet slipped on the logs. She recovered herself and went on -more quickly, more lightly, as if her body did not exist, or existed -merely as a cloud. Now she could see the lamps glimmering in the lower -windows of the house. There were lights in the hall, in the dining room, -in the old doctor's retreat; but all the upstairs windows were dark -except for the reflected rays of the moonbeams. Was the old man still -crouching over his fire, she wondered, with his rat eyes watching out of -a hole? - -Around the house there were puddles of water and the piles of trash that -she had seen in the afternoon. Like a fawn, she sped over them and -stopped, unaware of her panting breath, with her eyes on the back door, -which was open. She could see within the hall, where a kerosene lamp was -fastened in a bracket near the staircase. The same heaps of bagging and -boxes and empty bottles were scattered about; the same collection of -rusty guns and broken fishing-poles. For the first time she thought -clearly, while her gaze travelled over these ordinary objects, "Why did -I come? What is the meaning of it? Why am I waiting out here in the -night?" But there was no answer to her question. She could not remember -why she had come, why she was standing there alone, with her eyes on the -open door, watching. Vacancy was around her, was within her; she was -drowning in vacancy. Looking away from the house, she saw that there was -a light in the barn, and that the big musty place was deserted. The -buggy, from which the horse had been taken, was standing near the door, -and one of those formless thoughts which she could not distinguish from -feeling told her that Jason would come out to put it under the shed. "If -I wait here long enough, I shall see him." Though the words were spoken -outside her brain, she knew that she must wait there all night if he did -not come. - -Stepping over the loosened boards of the threshold of the barn, she -glanced about at the disorder, which was like the disorder of the house, -only it seemed to her cleaner because it was less human. Wheat, corn, -fodder. Farming implements. A reaping machine. Medicine for stock. A -jumble of odds and ends that had been thrown out of a tool house. -Against a barrel by the door there was the gun with which the old doctor -had shot the hawk in the afternoon. Her hands moved over it caressingly, -wonderingly. A good gun, not rusty, like everything else on the place. -Jason's probably. Far away over the fields a voice was speaking, and the -sound floated to her, thin and clear as distant chimes. "_He never came -to Christ till he had thirsted for blood._" A strange way--but she knew -now, she understood. - -There was a noise at the house. A figure darkened the lamplight -on the porch; she heard a familiar step; she saw a shadow -approaching. It was Jason, she knew, and as he came toward her, she left -the barn and went out into the moonlight to meet him. She felt calm now, -fresh, strong, relentless; but the ulcer in her mind throbbed as if it -were bursting. Yes, it was Jason. He was coming down the steps. He was -coming along the path to the barn. In a minute he would see her standing -there, another shadow in the moonlight. In a minute he would speak to -her. - -Suddenly, while she stood there in silence, the gun went off in her -hands. She saw the flash; she heard the sound, as if the discharge were -miles away; she smelt the powder. The next instant she felt the tremor -of the shock as the weapon, recoiled in her hands; and she thought -quietly and steadily, "I tried to do it. I wanted to do it." - -"Dorinda," he called out, while the smoke drifted past him, and she saw -his face go as white as paper in the dimness. - -Then, as swiftly as it had come, her resolution went out of her. The gun -slipped from her hands to the ground, and lay there in the mud at her -feet. Her will, with all its throbbing violence, urged her to shoot him -and end the pain in her mind. But something stronger than her conscious -will, stronger than her agony, stronger than her hate, held her -motionless. Every nerve in her body, every drop of her blood, hated him; -yet because of this nameless force within the chaos of her being, she -could not compel her muscles to stoop and pick up the gun at her feet. -Like a dream, like a fantasy of delirium, her resolution vanished, and -she knew that it would not return. "Why am I here? What is the meaning -of it all?" she asked wildly of the emptiness within her soul. - -"Dorinda!" he said again. He had seen her; he had called her name. They -were alone together in the moonlight as they had been when she loved -him. If only she had the power to stoop and pick up the gun! If only she -had the power to make her muscles obey the wish in her heart! If only -she had the power to thrust him out of her life! It was not love, it was -not tenderness, it was not pity even, that held her back. Nothing but -this physical inability to bring her muscles beneath the control of her -will. - -"Dorinda!" he said again incoherently, as if he had been drinking. "So -you know. But you can't know all. Not what I've been through. Not what -I've suffered. Nobody could. It is hell. I tell you I've been through -hell since I left you. I never wanted to do it. You are the one I care -for. I never wanted to marry her. It was something I couldn't help. They -brought pressure on me that I couldn't bear. They made me do it. I was -engaged to her before I came back. It was in New York last summer. She -showed she liked me and it seemed a good thing. Then I met you. I didn't -want to marry her. Before God, Dorinda, I never meant to do it. But I -did it. You will never understand. I told you that I funked things. I -have ever since I can remember. It's the way my mother funked things -with my father. Well, I'm like that, so you oughtn't to blame me so -much. God knows I'd help it if I could. I never meant to throw you over. -It was their fault. They oughtn't to have brought that pressure to bear -on me. They oughtn't to have threatened me. They ought to have let me do -the best I could. Speak to me. Say something, Dorinda----" - -He went on endlessly, overcome by the facile volubility of a weak -nature. Was it in time or in eternity that he was speaking? She thought -that he would never stop; but his words made as little impression on her -as the drip, drip of rain from the eaves. Nothing that he said made any -difference to her. Nothing that he could ever say in the future would -make any difference. In that instant, with a piercing flash of insight, -she saw him as he was, false, vain, contemptible, a coward in bone and -marrow. He had wronged her; he had betrayed her; he had trampled her -pride in the dust; and he had done these things not from brutality, but -from weakness. If there had been strength in his violence, if there had -been one atom of genuine passion in his duplicity, she might have -despised him less even while she hated him more. But weak, vain, wholly -contemptible as she knew him to be, she had given him power over her. -She had placed her life in his hands, and he had ruined it. With the -fury of a strong nature toward a weak one that has triumphed over it, -she longed to destroy him and she knew that she was helpless. Nothing -that she could do would alter a single fact in his future. Even now he -excused himself. Even now he blamed others. - -"I swear I never meant to do it, Dorinda," he repeated more vehemently, -encouraged by her silence. "You won't give me up, will you?" - -Thoughts wheeled like a flight of bats in her mind, swift, vague, dark, -revolving in circles. They were pressing upon her from every side, but -she could distinguish nothing clearly in the thick palpitating darkness. -Impressions skimmed so swiftly over her consciousness that they left no -visible outline. Before she was aware of them they had wheeled away from -her into ultimate chaos. Bats, nothing more. And outside, against the -lighted door of the barn, other bats were revolving. - -While she stood there without thinking, her perceptions of external -objects became acutely alive. She saw Jason's face, chalk-white in the -moonlight; she saw the jerking of his muscles while he talked; she saw -his arm waving with a theatrical gesture, like the arm of an evangelist. -_Drip, drip_, like water from the eaves, she heard the fall of his words, -though the syllables were as meaningless as the rain or the wind. - -She had not spoken since he approached her; and she realized, standing -there in the mud, that she was silent because she could find no words to -utter. There was no vehicle strong enough to endure the storm of pain -and bitterness in her mind. Dumbness had seized her, and though she -struggled to pour out all that she suffered, when she opened her lips to -speak, she could make no audible sound. No, there was nothing that she -could say, there was nothing that she could do. - -"You won't give me up, will you, Dorinda?" he pleaded. - -Turning away, she started back again as rapidly as she had come. Though -he called after her in a whisper, though he followed her as far as the -end of the yard, she did not slacken her pace or look back at him. -Swiftly and steadily, like a woman walking in her sleep, she went down -the narrow sandy road to the creek and over the bridge of logs. There -was a stern beauty in her face and in her tall, straight figure, which -passed, swiftly and unearthly as a phantom, through the moonlight. An -impulse was driving her again, but it was the impulse to escape from his -presence. She was flying now from the vision she had seen of his naked -soul. - -She walked in the moonlight without seeing it; past the frogs in the -bulrushes without hearing them; through the moist woods without smelling -them. Time had stood still for her, space had vanished; there was no -beginning and no end to this solitary aching nerve of experience. She -was aware of nothing outside herself until she entered the house and saw -her mother's chamber, with the open Bible and the big blue fly, which -still buzzed against the ceiling. - -"We're waiting prayers for you, Dorinda. Ain't you coming?" - -"No, I'm not coming. I've got a headache." - -"Why did you go out again?" - -"I thought I heard a coon or something in the henhouse." - -"It might make your head better to hear a chapter of the Bible." - -"No, it won't. I'm not coming. I'm never coming to prayers again." - - - - -XV - - -In the morning she awoke with the feeling that she was lying under a -stone. Something was pressing on her, holding her down when she -struggled to rise, and while she came slowly back to herself, she -realized that this weight was the confused memory of all that had -happened. Yes, it was life. She was caught under it and she couldn't -escape. - -So far only, her muscles had awakened. Sensation was returning by slow -degrees to her limbs; she could feel the quiver of despair in her knees -and elbows; but her mind was still drugged by the stupor of exhaustion. -Recollection was working its way upward to her brain. Deadened as she -was, it astonished her that her muscles should remember more accurately -than her mind, that they should record a separate impression. "Something -dreadful has happened," she found herself saying mechanically. "It will -all come back in a minute." - -While she dragged herself out of bed, she tried to fix her thoughts on -insignificant details. Her shoes were still damp, and she changed them -for a pair her mother had given her a few weeks ago because they drew -her ankles. There was a broken lace. She must remember to buy a new one -at the store. Beyond the window she could see the orchard and the -graveyard, with the big pine on the hill, and farther away the shallow -ripples of the broomsedge. All these things seemed to her fantastic and -meaningless, as if they were painted on air. She recalled now what had -happened last evening; but this also appeared meaningless and unreal, -and she felt that the whole flimsy situation would evaporate at the -first touch of an actual event. She could remember now; but it was a -recollection without accompanying sensation, as inanimate as the -flitting picture cast by a lantern. Some, terrible mistake seemed to -have occurred to her. Just as if she had stepped, for a few dreadful -moments, into a life that was not her own. And all the past, when she -looked back upon it, wore this aspect of unreality. The world in which -she had surrendered her being to love--that world of spring meadows and -pure skies--had receded from her so utterly that she could barely -remember its outlines. By no effort of the imagination could she -recapture the ecstasy. Colours, sounds, scents, she could recall; the -pattern of the horizon; evening skies the colour of mignonette; the -spangled twilight over the bulrushes; but she could not revive a single -wave, a single faint quiver, of emotion. Never would it come back again. -The area of feeling within her soul was parched and blackened, like an -abandoned field after the broomsedge is destroyed. Other things might -put forth; but never again that wild beauty. Around this barren region, -within the dim border of consciousness, there were innumerable surface -impressions, like the tiny tracks that birds make in the snow. She could -still think, she could even remember; but her thoughts, her memories, -were no deeper than the light tracks of birds. - -"Why did it happen? What was the meaning of it?" she asked dully, -sitting on the side of her bed, with her shoe in her hand. A few hours -ago she had loved Jason; now she loved him no longer. All that had drawn -her to him seemed now to drive her away; all that had been desire had -turned into loathing; all that was glowing with flame was now burned out -to cinders. There were women, she knew, who could love even when they -hated; but she was not one of these. The vein of iron in her nature -would never bend, would never break, would never melt completely in any -furnace. "He is weak and a coward," she thought. "How could I love a -coward?" Yes, how could she love a coward? And, strangely enough, when -she despised him most bitterly, she thought not of the wrong he had done -her, not of his treachery and his betrayal of her love, but of the way -he had looked in the moonlight, with his chalk-white face, his jerking -muscles, and his arm waving with the gestures of an evangelist. - -Well, it was all over now. Everything was over but the immediate trouble -that she must face. Memories, impressions, undeveloped sensations that -led to nothing, swarmed upon her from the hidden crevices of her being. -The Old Stage Road. The way it branched at the burned cabin. The blasted -oak with the Gospel sign on it. The clink of the mare's shoes. The -benign faces of Dan and Beersheba as they looked back at her under -bunches of indigo. Work. Never anything but work. Her mother's voice -nagging, always nagging. Coral strands and palm trees and naked black -babies. What was the meaning of it? Jason as he looked last night. Weak, -whining, apologetic, blaming everything and everybody except himself. -His hair plastered in damp streaks on his forehead. His eyes, red and -blinking, as if he had wept. His hands that were never still; nervous -hands, without a firm grip on anything. How she hated him. What had she -ever seen in him to love? Cinders. Nothing left of it but cinders. Not -so much as a spark. Life. That was what it meant. Then, suddenly, the -way he used to look. His eyes when he smiled, crinkling at the corners. -His straight eyebrows brooding like a storm over his brown-black eyes. -The feeling of his hand on her arm. His charm. Yes, his charm that she -had forgotten. Like a breath of air, or a subtle fragrance, she felt his -charm stealing back through her senses, as if minute waves of aromatic -incense were blowing over her nerves. Though she hated him, could so -slight a thing as the memory of his smile awake the familiar vibrations? -Though her mind had broken away from him, was her body still held a -prisoner? And would his power come back always, without warning of its -approach, like the aching of a tooth that one has touched in a sensitive -spot? A few minutes ago she was deadened into the emotional stupor she -called peace. Now, because of a single external image, because of so -trivial a recollection as the way his eyebrows drew down over his eyes, -all the agony of life was beginning again. - -She thrust her foot into the shoe and stood up, flinging back her head -as she went to the mirror to shake out her hair. The stubborn -resolution, which was the controlling motive in her character, shot -through her like a bolt. "Well, there's no use thinking," she said -aloud. "I've got to go through with it." While she combed her hair back -from her forehead, and twisted it into its usual compact knot on her -head, she gazed wonderingly at her face in the mirror. After all she had -suffered it seemed strange to her that her face had not withered and her -hair turned white in a night. But there was scarcely a perceptible -change in her appearance. The line of her hair was still dark and -waving; her eyes were still clear and blue; the velvety colour still -flowed beneath the few golden freckles on her cheeks. Only there was -something in her eyes that had not been there until yesterday. She knew -life now, she reflected, and that showed in her eyes. - -Fastening her dress as she left the room, she hurried downstairs and -into the kitchen where her mother was already busy about breakfast. - -"What do you want me to do, Ma?" - -"Everything's 'most ready. You can call your father and the boys and -then pour out the coffee." - -"Why didn't you wake me?" - -"You're always tired Monday morning, so I thought I'd let you sleep. I -don't see how it is. Sermons rest me. Why didn't you bring your wet -things down to the kitchen last night?" - -"I was so tired I forgot." Would her mother never stop nagging? Would -there never be any quiet? - -She called the men to breakfast, poured out their coffee, and helped her -mother serve the cornbread and bacon. Then she sat down and ate slowly -and deliberately, forcing herself to swallow, as she had forced herself -to take gruel when she had had measles. The agony had died down; she -felt bruised and sore as if she had been beaten; but the intensity of -the pain had settled into a hard substance like lead in her breast. -There was not a ripple of emotion surrounding this island of bitterness -into which her love had resolved; there was only a vast sea of -indifference. The torture would return, she supposed. She was accustomed -now to the fact that it came and went, without reason, like one of her -mother's attacks of neuralgia; but, for the moment, at least, her nerves -had ceased their intolerable vibration. - -After breakfast, when she walked along the road to the store, it seemed -to her that the landscape had lost colour, that the autumn glow had gone -out of the broomsedge. When she came to the fork she found herself -listening for the clink of the mare's shoes, and she resolved that she -would run into the woods or cower down in the brushwood if she heard the -buggy approaching. Never would she see him again, if she could prevent -it. Her mind played with absurd fancies. She imagined him dying, and she -saw herself looking on without pity, refusing to save him, standing -motionless while he drowned before her eyes, or was trampled to death by -steers. No, she would never see him again. - -There was no sound at the fork. She walked on past the burned cabin, -past the Sneads' farm, where the cows looked at her pensively, past the -second belt of woods, and up the bone-white slope to the station. Here -she found the usual sprinkling of passengers for the early train, and in -order to avoid them she went into the store and began arranging the -shelves. In a minute Minnie May came to fetch her, and following the -little girl into the bedroom, Dorinda found Mrs. Pedlar lying flat in -bed, with the pink sacque, which she was too weak to slip on, spread -over her breast. The summer had drained the last reserve of her -strength. She was growing worse every hour, and she was so fragile that -her flesh was like paper. Yet she still kept her vivacity and her eager -interest in details. - -"Oh, Dorinda," she breathed. "It isn't true, is it?" - -Dorinda picked up the sacque and slipped it over the meagre shoulders. -"If you aren't careful, you'll take cold," she said quietly, and then, -after an imperceptible pause. "Yes, it is true." - -"You don't mean he has married Geneva?" - -"Yes, he has married Geneva." - -"Oh, why? But, Dorinda----" - -While Rose Emily was still talking, the girl turned away and went back -into the store. If she didn't work and deaden thought, she couldn't -possibly go through with it. All this numbness was on the surface of her -being, like the insensibility that is produced by a narcotic. It didn't -lessen a single pang underneath, nor alter a solitary fact of -existence. At any minute, without premonition, the effects of the -narcotic might wear off, and she might come back to life again. Coming -back to life, with all that she had to face, would be terrible. Taking -the broom from the corner behind the door, she began sweeping the floor -in hard, long strokes, as if she were sweeping away a mountain of trash; -and into these strokes she put as much as she could of her misery. When -she had finished sweeping the store, she brushed the mud from the -platform and the steps to the pile of refuse which had accumulated at -the back of the house. Then she brought a basin of water and a cake of -soap, and scrubbed the counter and the shelves where the dry goods were -kept. She worked relentlessly, with rigid determination, as if to clean -the store were the one absorbing purpose of her life. - -"What's got into you, Dorinda?" asked Nathan, while he watched her. "You -look as if you'd gone dirt crazy." Dirt crazy! That was what the boys -said of her mother. - -"I get so tired looking at dust," she replied. - -"Dust? I didn't know there was a speck of dust anywhere around. Old -Jubilee swept and dusted this morning." - -With her dripping brush in her hand, Dorinda turned from the shelves she -was washing and looked at him over the counter. She wondered why he had -not spoken of Jason, and some dormant instinct, buried in the morass of -her consciousness, was grateful to him because he had avoided the -subject. He must know. Everybody knew by this time. Yet he had not -alluded by word or look to the wreck of her happiness. Though she did -not think of it at the moment, long afterwards she realized that this -was one of the occasions when Nathan had shown a tactfulness which she -had never imagined that he possessed. - -She finished the shelves, going scrupulously into each crack and corner. -Then, putting the basin and the cake of soap aside, she wiped the -dampness off with a cloth, and arranged the bolts of figured calico and -checked gingham in orderly rows. When this was over she attacked the -pasteboard boxes on the adjoining shelf, cleaning, dusting, reassorting -the contents of each separate box. It was amazing the way dust -collected. Old Jubilee had cleaned the store. Yet here was dirt poked -away in the corners. - -She had made herself cheap, that was the trouble. If you are going to -cheapen yourself, her mother had said, be sure first that the man is not -cheap also. Then, even if you are sure, it pays to be prudent. Prudence -builds no poorhouses--that was her mother again. Oh, if only she had -known when knowledge could have been useful! If only you could live your -life after experience and not before! She knew now how to face -things. . . . - -At that instant, with a stab of anguish, she became alive. Her pain, -which had been merely a dull ache, was suddenly as keen as if a blade -had been driven into her wound. She couldn't bear it. Nobody could bear -it. In a kind of daze she picked up the cloth, the dust pan, the cake of -soap, and carried them to the end of the room. Then, taking down her hat -from a peg behind the door, she put it on and went out of the store and -across the yard to the gate and the road. It seemed to her that if only -she could reach home quickly, she should find that it had all been a -mistake, that something had happened to make the situation less terrible -than it appeared from a distance. What this something was she tried to -imagine. Perhaps the old man had lied. Perhaps Jason was not really -married. Perhaps he hadn't meant her to understand that he was married. -There were so many possibilities, she told herself, that she could not -think of them all. A hundred accidents--anything might have occurred. -Only at the store she felt smothered and shut away, as if she were left -behind by the hours. A deep instinct, like the instinct that drives a -wounded animal to flight, was urging her to go somewhere--anywhere--as -long as it was to a different place. She had made a mistake, she saw -now, to come to the store. At home it would be easier. At home she -should be able to think of some way out of her misery. - -She walked as fast as she could, panting for breath, hurrying over the -bad places in the road, as if the thing she feared were pursuing her. -Down the long slope; through the thin pines; over the mile of red clay -road, broken with mud holes; past the Sneads' pasture, where the sourish -smell of cattle hung perpetually in the air; by the burned cabin at the -fork; and on into the edge of Hoot Owl Woods at the beginning of Old -Farm. When, at last, she struggled over the sagging bridge and up the -rocky grade to the porch, she was almost surprised to find that the -house was not on fire. There was an unnatural aspect, she felt, in the -familiar scene, as of a place that had suffered beneath a tornado and -yet remained unchanged on the surface. And this smiling October serenity -appeared to her to be unendurable. Trembling like a blade of grass, she -stood hesitating on the threshold. "Why did I come?" she asked in -amazement. "What did I expect to find?" - -"Is that you, Dorinda?" called her mother from the kitchen, where she -was washing clothes. A kettle of "sour pickle" was simmering on the -stove, and the air was laden with the pungent aroma. "What on earth is -the matter?" - -"I forgot something." - -"It must have been mighty important. What was it you forgot?" - -The trembling had passed from Dorinda's limbs to her thoughts. She felt -as if she should drop. "I--I can't remember," she answered. - -"Well, I never!" Mrs. Oakley appeared in the doorway, her bare arms -glazed with soapsuds and her face beaded with steam. "You ain't -sick, are you?" - -"No, I remember now. It was a piece of embroidery Rose Emily was doing. -She asked me to bring it." - -"Embroidery? I should think she might have managed to wait till -to-morrow." - -"I didn't mind the walk. It is better than being in the store." - -"Anyway, you'd better rest a bit before you go back. You look real -peaked. Have you got a headache?" So her mother hadn't heard! Who would -be the first one to tell her? - -"A little. It was getting wet yesterday, I reckon." She must say -something. If she didn't, her mother would question her all day. - -"If you'd listened to what I told you," said Mrs. Oakley, "you wouldn't -have got caught in that storm. Before you go upstairs you'd better rub a -little camphor on your forehead." - -She lifted her arms, on which soapsuds had dried like seaweed, and went -back into the kitchen, while Dorinda, without stopping to look for the -camphor, toiled upstairs to her room. Here she flung herself on the bed -and lay staring straight up at the stained ceiling, where wasps were -crawling. One, two, three, she counted them idly. There was a pile of -apples on her mantelpiece. That must have brought them. But she couldn't -lie here. Springing up, she went over to the mirror and began nervously -changing things on her dressing-table. - -Yes, she was ashen about the eyes and her features were thin and drawn. -Her warm colour still held firm, but she was mottled about the mouth -like a person in a high fever. Even her full red lips looked parched and -unnatural. "I am losing my looks," she thought. "I am only twenty and I -look middle-aged." - -Why had she come back? It was worse here than it was at the store. Her -suffering was more intolerable, and she seemed farther away from relief -than she had been while she was cleaning the shelves. Perhaps if she -went back she should find that it was easier. Something might have -happened to change things. At least her mother wouldn't be at the store, -and she dreaded her mother more than anything that she had to face. Yes, -she had made a mistake to come home. - -Going over to the curtain, she pushed it aside and looked at her -dresses, taking them down from the hooks and hanging them back again, as -if she could not remember which one she wanted. Then, in a single flash, -just as it had returned at the store, all the horror rushed over her -afresh, and she turned away and ran out of the room. Any spot, she -realized, was more endurable than the place she was in. - -"You ain't going back already, Dorinda?" called her mother from the -kitchen. - -"Yes, I'm going back. I feel better." - -"It seems to me it wasn't worth your while walking all that way twice. -I'd take my time going back. There ain't a bit of use hurrying like -that. When you come home in the evening, I wish you'd remember to bring -me that box of allspice. You forgot it on Saturday. It seems to me -you're growing mighty forgetful." - -But Dorinda was far down the walk on her way to the gate, and she did -not stop to reply. She retraced her steps rapidly over the bridge and -along the edge of the woods, where the shadows lay thick and cool. -Behind her she heard the bumping of a wagon in the mud holes; but she -did not glance round, for she knew that it was only one of the farmers -on the way to the station. - -"Going to the store?" inquired the man, as he came up with her. "Can I -give you a lift?" - -She shook her head, smiling up at him. "I'm not going back yet awhile, -thank you. I'm out looking for one of our turkeys." - -Stepping out of the road, she waited until the wagon had bumped out of -sight, and then went on, in a bewildered way, as if she could not see -where she was walking. As she approached the fork, her legs refused to -carry her farther, and scrambling on her knees up the bank by the -roadside, she dropped to the ground and abandoned herself to despair. -She couldn't go on and she couldn't sit still. All she could do was to -cower there behind the thicket of brushwood, and let life have its way -with her. She had reached the end of endurance. That was what it meant, -she had reached the end of what she could bear. The trembling, which had -begun in her hands and feet, ran now in threads all over her body. For a -minute her mind was a blank; then fear leaped at her out of the -stillness. Springing to her feet, she looked wildly about, and sank down -again because her legs would not support her. - -"I've got to do something," she thought. "I've got to do something, or -I'll go out of my mind." Never once, in her fright and pain, did the -idea of an appeal to Jason enter her thoughts. No, she had finished with -him for ever. There was no help there, and if there were help in him, -she would die before she would seek it. - -Raising her head, she leaned against the bole of a tree and looked, with -dimmed eyes, at the October morning. Around her she heard the murmurous -rustle of leaves, the liquid notes of a wood robin, like the sprinkling -of rain on the air, the distant shrill chanting of insects; all the -natural country sounds which she would have called silence. Smooth as -silk the shadows lay on the red clay road. Over the sky there was a thin -haze, as if one looked at the sun through smoked glasses. "You've got to -do something," repeated a derisive voice in her brain. "You've got to do -something, or you'll go out of your mind." It seemed to her that the -whole landscape waited, inarticulate but alive, for her decision. - -Despair overwhelmed her; yet through all her misery there persisted a -dim, half conscious recognition that she was living with only a part of -her being. Deep down in her, beneath the rough texture of experience, -her essential self was still superior to her folly and ignorance, was -superior even to the conspiracy of circumstances that hemmed her in. And -she felt that in a little while this essential self would reassert its -power and triumph over disaster. Vague, transitory, comforting, this -premonition brooded above the wilderness of her thoughts. Yes, she was -not broken. She could never be broken while the vein of iron held in her -soul. - -For a long while she sat there by the roadside, with her eyes on the -pale sunshine and the transparent shadows. What would her mother say if -she knew? When would she know? Who would have the courage to tell her? -For twenty years they had lived in the house together, yet they were -still strangers. For twenty years they had not spent a night apart, and -all the time her mother had dreamed of coral strands and palm trees, -while she herself had grown into a thing as strange and far away as -Africa. Were people like this everywhere, all over the world, each one a -universe in one's self separate like the stars in a vast emptiness? - - - - -XVI - - -Far over the autumn fields, she heard the whistle of the train as it -rounded the long curve at the station. Before the sound had floated past -her she had come to one of those impetuous decisions which were -characteristic of her temperament. "I'll go away in the morning," she -resolved. "I'll go on the first train, the one that whistles at sunrise. -If I take that, I can leave the house before light." - -Immediately afterwards, as soon as the idea had taken possession of her, -she felt the renewal of courage in her thoughts. Once that was settled, -she told herself, and there was no turning back, everything would be -easier. Just to go away somewhere. It made no difference where the train -went. She would go to the very end, the farther the better, as long as -her money held out. "I can scrape together almost seventy dollars," she -thought. "Besides the fifty I made at the store, I've saved the twenty -dollars Nathan and Rose Emily gave me for a wedding present. That much -ought to take me somewhere and keep me until I can find something to -do." Her father, she realized with a pang, would have to manage without -her. Perhaps he would be obliged to mortgage the place again. She hoped -he wouldn't have to sell Dan and Beersheba, and she was confident in her -heart that he would never do this. He would sooner part with the roof -over his head. It would be hard on him; but he had Josiah and Rufus, and -after her marriage, it was doubtful if she could have continued to help -him. "Josiah may marry too," she reflected, "and of course Rufus is -always uncertain." Nobody could tell what Rufus might some day take it -into his head to do. Then, because weakness lay in that direction, she -turned her resolute gaze toward her own future. There was no help -outside herself. She knew that the situation, bad as it was now, would -be far worse before it was better. Romantic though she was, she was -endowed mentally with a stubborn aptitude for facing facts, for looking -at life fearlessly; and now that imagination had done its worst, she set -herself to the task of rebuilding her ruined world. All her trouble, she -felt, had come to her from trying to make life over into something it -was not. Dreams, that was the danger. Like her mother she had tried to -find a door in the wall, an escape from the tyranny of things as they -are; and like her mother, she had floundered among visions. Even though -she was miserable now, her misery was solid ground; her feet were firmly -planted among the ancient rocks of experience. She had finished with -romance, as she had finished with Jason, for ever. - -Twisting about on the earth, she pushed aside the branches, and looked -down on Old Farm, folded there so peacefully between the road and the -orchard. Wreathed in sunlight as pale as cowslips, she saw the house -under the yellowing locust trees. Over the roof a few swallows were -curving; from a single chimney smoke rose in a column; there was a -cascade of shadows down the rocky path to the gate. She saw these -blended details, not as she had seen them yesterday or the moment before -she had made her decision, but as one looks on a place which one has -loved and from which one is parting for ever. A bloom of sentiment and -regret coloured the stark outline; and so, she knew, it would remain -indelibly softened in her memory. - -Rising from the ground, she went back over the road to the bridge and up -the rocky grade to the porch. As she drew nearer she saw her mother come -out of the kitchen and go in the direction of the hog-pen, with a basin -of vegetable parings in her hand. For a few minutes at least the house -would be empty! Running indoors and up the two flights of stairs to the -attic, Dorinda brought down an old carpet bag which had belonged first -to her grandfather and then to her mother. Once, when she was a child, -her mother had used it when she had taken her to spend a night in -Richmond, with a distant relative, an old maid, who had died the next -year, and again Josiah and Rufus had carried the bag with them when they -went to the State fair one autumn. Now, while she dusted it inside and -out, and tossed the few papers it contained into a bureau drawer, she -decided that it would hold all the clothes she could take with her. "It -will be heavy, but I'll manage it," she thought, moving softly lest her -mother should return without stopping to gather the eggs in the -henhouse. "I'd just as well pack and get it over," she added. "Anything -is better than sitting down and waiting for something to happen." - -One by one, she smoothed and folded her wedding clothes. Six of -everything; nightgowns, chemises, corset covers, with frills across the -bosom, starched white petticoats, with wide tucked flounces. She looked -at each garment with swimming eyes and a lump like a rock in her throat, -before she laid it away in one of the bulging compartments of the -carpet bag. How fine the stitches were! It was a wonder what her mother -could do with her rheumatic joints. - -Stepping as lightly as she could, she brought her shoes from the closet -and packed them away. Then the dresses, one after another. Two blue -cotton dresses that she wore in the store. The pink gingham Rose Emily -had given her. Would she ever need that again, she wondered. Last of -all, the blue nun's veiling. "It would have been more sensible to have -got it darker," she thought grimly. There wasn't room for the hat; but, -after she had put in her stockings and handkerchiefs and collars, with -the bits of ribbon she sometimes wore at her neck, she folded the orange -shawl and spread it on top of everything else. "That may come in -useful," she added. "You never can tell what the weather will be." It -was October, and everybody said winter came earlier in the North. She -had decided prudently that she would wear her old blue merino, with the -tan ulster and the felt hat she had put away from moths in the spare -room. She could easily steal in and get them out of the closet while her -mother was looking after the pigs or the chickens. - -Well, that was over. After she had closed and strapped the bag, she -pushed it behind the curtain. There was no telling, she reminded -herself, when her mother would poke her nose into places. - -When she went downstairs it was twelve o'clock and the men had come in -from the fields. - -"Why, Dorinda, I didn't know you'd be here to dinner!" her mother -exclaimed. "Is your head bad again?" - -"Yes, I wasn't feeling so well, and there wasn't much to do at the -store." - -"I thought Monday was the busiest day." How like her mother that was! -She could never let a thing drop. Some demon of contradiction impelled -her to find a point of offense everywhere. There was a glass pitcher of -buttermilk on the table. A little boy, the son of William Snead, had -brought it over early in the morning, as soon as Miss Tabitha had -churned. Lifting the pitcher, Dorinda filled the five glasses standing -in a circle at the end of the table. As she handed a glass to her -father, she looked at him with a grave impersonal sentiment, as if he -were a part of the farm that she was leaving. Nothing, not even her -mother's nervous nagging, could annoy her to-day. She felt only a -despairing tenderness, like a mist of tears, in her heart. - -"I'm sorry you ain't well, daughter," Joshua said, as he took the glass -from her hand; and she felt that he had put an incalculable affection -into the words. It was the only remark he made during the meal, and -ordinary as it was, it seemed to bring her closer to him than she had -ever been in her life. Or was it only because she was parting from him -so soon? Everything was precious to her now, precious and indescribably -sad and lovely. If she were to speak a word, she knew that she should -burst into tears. - -In the afternoon, when she had helped her mother hang out the clothes at -the back of the house, she came indoors and waited for an opportunity to -bring down the carpet bag. "Perhaps I've always tried too hard," she -thought wearily. "If I'd just give up and let things drift, it might be -that something would go right." She dropped on the bottom step of the -staircase; but she had no sooner decided to give up the struggle than -she heard her mother's voice telling her that she was going down into -the garden. - -"The last of those tomatoes will spoil if I don't pick them," she said. - -"Do you want me to help you?" Dorinda called back. - -"No, the sun is kind of sickening. You'd better keep out of it. There -ain't much left after the storm, but I might as well use the tomatoes." - -She went out, with the big splint-basket on her arm; and she was -scarcely out of sight before Dorinda had dragged down the carpet bag and -hidden it under the front porch behind one of the primitive rock pillars -of the foundation. It would be impossible, she knew, to bring down the -bag in the morning without waking her mother, who was a light sleeper. -Her father and the boys, drugged by toil in the open, could sleep -through thunder; but her mother would start up and call out at the -scratching of a mouse. After she had hidden the bag, she went back into -the spare room and unwrapped her tan ulster and brown felt hat from the -newspapers which protected them from moths. As she unpinned the parcels, -a smell of mingled camphor and lavender was released on the air, and she -hoped that her mother would not detect it. "If she says anything, I'll -tell her it's time to be wearing my winter clothes," she decided, while -she carried the ulster and hat upstairs to her room. Since she had clung -desperately to the thought of going away, her suffering had been more -endurable; the vehement pain had dulled into an apathetic despair which -deadened every cell of her body. She dreaded the moment when the stupor -would lift and she should think and feel clearly again. - -All night she slept only in restless waves of unconsciousness. The -darkness was broken up into false dawns, and at every deceptive glimmer -she would steal softly to the window and watch for the first splinter of -light. While it was still dark, she dressed herself in the clothes she -had laid by her bed, and then sat waiting for the sound of a crow in the -henhouse. In the early part of the night there was a vaporous moon; but -as the hours wore on, the sky clouded over, and when the day began to -break a fine, slow rain was falling. "I hate so terribly to go," she -thought, while she smoothed her hair and then wrapped up her brush and -comb and slipped them into the pocket of her ulster. "I don't believe -I'll go after all." But she knew, even while she lingered over the idea, -that there was no turning back. - -When she remembered it afterwards it seemed to her that the longest -journey of her life was the one down the dark staircase. In reality her -descent occupied only a few minutes; but the tumult of her emotions, the -startled vigilance of her nerves, crowded these vivid instants with -excitement. She lived years, not moments, while she hung there in the -darkness, expecting the sound of her mother's voice or the vision of a -grey head thrust out of the chamber doorway. What would her mother say -if she discovered her? What would she say when she went upstairs and -found her room empty? At the foot of the staircase Rambler poked his -nose into her hand, and padded after her to the front door. He would -have followed her outside, but stooping over him, she kissed his long -anxious face before she pushed him back into the hall. Her eyes were -heavy with tears as she hurried noiselessly across the porch, down the -steps, and round the angle of the house to the rock pillar where she had -hidden her bag. Not until she had passed through the gate and into the -shadow of the woods, did she rest the heavy bag on the ground and stop -to draw breath. Now, at last, she was safe from discovery. "If nobody -comes by, I'll have to take some of the things out of the bag and try to -carry it," she said aloud, in a desperate effort to cling to practical -details. But it was scarcely likely, she told herself presently, that -nobody would come by. Even on a rainy morning there were always a few -farmers who went out to the station at daybreak. - -While she waited there by the bridge, she seemed to be alone on the -earth. It was a solitude not of the body but of the spirit, vast, -impersonal, and yet burdened, in some strange way, with an -incommunicable regret. The night had released the wild scents of autumn, -and these were mingled with the formless terrors that overshadowed her -mind. She thought without words, enveloped in a despondency as shapeless -as night. - -Up the road there was the measured beat of a trot, followed by the light -rattle of a vehicle beyond the big honey-locust at the pasture bars. -While she watched, the rattle grew louder, accompanied by the jarring -turn of a screw, and a minute later a queer two-wheeled gig, with a hood -like a chicken coop, appeared on the slope by the gate. She knew the -vehicle well; it belonged to Mr. Kettledrum, the veterinarian, and she -had passed it frequently on the road to the station. - -"He will talk me to death," she thought, with dogged patience, "but I -can't help it." - -Lifting the carpet bag, which felt heavier than it had done at the -start, she stepped out into the road and waited until the nodding gig -drew up beside her. Mr. Kettledrum, a gaunt, grizzled man of middle age, -with a beaked nose and a drooping moustache, which was dyed henna-colour -from tobacco, looked down at her with his sharp twinkling eyes. - -"Thanky, Dorinda, I'm as well as common," he replied to her greeting. "I -declar', it looks for all the world as if you was settin' out on a -journey." - -"So I am." Dorinda smiled bravely. "I wonder if you'll give me a lift to -the station?" - -"To be sure, to be sure." In a minute he was out on the ground and had -swung the bag into the gig beside a peculiar kind of medicine case made -of sheepskin. "I'm on my way back from Sam Garlick's, and it'll be more -than a pleasure," he added gallantly, "to have you ride part of the way -with me. Sam sets a heap of store by that two-year-old bay of his, and -he had me over in the night to ease him with colic. Wall, wall, it ain't -an easy life to be either a horse or a horse doctor in this here -on certain world." - -It was easier to laugh than to speak, and his little joke, which was as -ancient and as trustworthy as his two-wheeled gig, started them well on -their way. After all, he was a kind man; her father had had him once or -twice to see Dan or Beersheba; and people said that, at a pinch, he had -been known to treat human beings as successfully as horses. He had a -large family of tow-headed children; and though she had heard recently -that his wife was "pining away," nobody blamed him, for he had been a -good provider, and wives were known occasionally to pine from other -causes than husbands. - -"It's a right good thing I came by when I did," he remarked genially. -"As it happened, I was goin' to stop by anyway for that early train. I -like to allow plenty of time, and I generally unhitch my mare befo' the -train blows. She ain't skittish. Naw, I ain't had no trouble with her; -but she's got what some folks might consider eccentric habits, an' I -ain't takin' no chances. So you say you're goin' off on a journey?" he -inquired, dropping his voice, and she knew by intuition that he was -wondering if he had better allude to Jason's marriage. He would blame -him of course; a man couldn't jilt a woman with impunity at Pedlar's -Mill; but what good would that, or anything else, do her now? - -"Yes, I'm going away." She tried to make her voice steady. - -"On the up train or the down one?" he inquired, as he leaned out of the -gig to squirt a jet of tobacco juice in the road. Upon reflection, he -had abandoned his sympathetic manner and assumed one of facetious -pleasantry. - -"The earliest. The one that goes north. Shall we be in time for it?" - -He pursed his lips beneath the sweeping moustache. "Don't you worry. -We'll git you thar. Whar are you bound for?" - -She spoke quickly. "I'm going to New York." That was the farthest place -that came to her mind. - -"You don't say so?" He appeared astonished. "Then you'll be on the train -all day. You didn't neglect to bring along a snack, did you?" - -A snack? No, she had not thought of one, and she had eaten no breakfast. - -Mr. Kettledrum was regretful but reassuring. "It's always better to -provide something when you set out," he remarked. "An empty stomach -ain't a good travellin' companion; but it's likely enough that the -conductor can git you a bite at one of the stops. Along up the road, at -the junction, thar's generally some niggers with fried chicken legs; but -all the same it's safer to take along a snack when you're goin' to -travel far." - -They were passing the fork of the road. Over the big gate she could see -the ample sweep of the meadows, greenish-grey under the drizzle of rain; -and beyond Gooseneck Creek, the roof and chimneys of Five Oaks made a -red wound in the sky. Seen through the cleft of the trees, the whole -place wore a furtive and hostile air. How miserable the fields looked on -a wet day, miserable and yet as if they were trying to keep up an -appearance. Some natural melancholy in the scene drifted through her -mind and out again into the landscape. She felt anew her kinship with -the desolation and with the rain that fell, fine and soft as mist, over -it all. Even when she went away she would carry a part of it with her. -"That's what life is for most people, I reckon," she thought drearily. -"Just barren ground where they have to struggle to make anything grow." - -"Now, I've never been as far as New York," Mr. Kettledrum was saying in -a sprightly manner. "But from all accounts it must be a fine city. My -brother John's son Harry has lived there for fifteen years. He's got a -job with some wholesale grocers--Bartlett and Tribble. If you run across -him while you're there, be sure to tell him who you are. He'll be glad -of a word from his old uncle. Don't forget the name. Bartlett and -Tribble. They've stores all over the town, Harry says. You can't -possibly miss them." - -They had reached the Sneads' pasture, deserted at this early hour except -for a mare and her colt. A minute later they passed the square brick -house, where the cows were trailing slowly across the lawn in the -direction of the bars which a small coloured boy was lowering. Then came -the mile of bad road, broken by mud holes. On they spun into the thin -woods and out again to the long slope. At the farm her mother was -calling her. There was the smell of frying bacon in the kitchen. Her -father was coming in from the stable. Rufus was slouching into his chair -with a yawn. Steam was pouring from the spout of the big tin coffee-pot -on the table. The glint of light on the stove and the walls. Rambler. -Flossie. . . . She remembered that she had eaten nothing. Hunger seized -her, and worse than hunger, the longing to burst into tears. - -"Wall, here we are. The train's blowing now down at the next station. -You've plenty of time to take it easy while I unhitch the mare." He -helped her to alight, and then, picking up her bag, carried it down to -the track. "You jest stand here whar the train stops," he said. "I'll -take the mare out and be back in a jiffy. You've got your ticket ready, -I reckon?" - -She shook her head. No, she hadn't her ticket; but it didn't matter; she -would get one on the train. It occurred to her, while he stepped off -nimbly on his long legs, which reminded her of stilts, that if she had -not met him in the road, she would have missed the early train north and -have taken the later one that went to Richmond. So small an incident, -and yet the direction in which she was going, and perhaps her whole -future, was changed by it. Well, she knew what was ahead of her, she -thought miserably, while she stood there shivering in the wet. She was -chilled; she was empty; she was heartbroken; yet, in spite of her -wretchedness, hope could not be absent from her courageous heart. The -excitement of her journey was already stirring in her veins, and waiting -there beside the track, in the rain, she began presently to look, not -without confidence, to the future. After all, things might have been -worse. She was young; she was strong; she had seventy dollars pinned -securely inside the bosom of her dress. Dimly she felt that she was -meeting life, at this moment, on its own terms, stripped of illusion, -stripped even of idealism, except the idealism she could wring from the -solid facts of experience. The blow that had shattered her dreams had -let in the cloudless flood of reality. "You can't change the past by -thinking," she told herself stubbornly, "but there must be something -ahead. There must be something in life besides love." - -The train whistled by the mill; the smoke billowed upward and outward; -and the engine rushed toward her. Her knees were trembling so that she -could barely stand; but her eyes were bright with determination, and -there was a smile on her lips. Then, just as the wheels slackened and -stopped, she saw Nathan running down the gradual descent from the store. -Reaching her as she was about to step on the train, he thrust a shoe box -into her hand. - -"You couldn't go so far without a bite of food. I fixed you a little -snack." There was a queer look in his eyes. Absurd as it seemed, for a -minute he reminded her of her father. - -"So Mr. Kettledrum told you I was going away?" - -He nodded. "Take care of yourself. If you want any money, write back for -it. You know we're here, don't you?" - -She smiled up at him with drenched eyes. A moment more and she would -have broken down; but before she had time to reply she was pushed into -the train; and when she looked out of the window, Nathan was waving -cheerfully from the track. "I wonder how I could ever have thought him -so ugly?" she asked herself through her tears. - -The figures at the station wavered, receded, and melted at last into the -transparent screen of the distance. Then the track vanished also, the -deserted mill, the store, the old freight car, and the dim blue edge of -the horizon. All that she could see, when she raised the window and -looked out, was the dull glow of the broomsedge, smothered yet alive -under the sad autumn rain. - - - - -_PART -SECOND_ - - - - -PINE - - - - -"_The big pine was like greenish bronze_. . . ." - - - - -I - - -The big pine was like greenish bronze against the October sky. . . . - -A statue in Central Park had brought it back to her, the pine and the -ruined graveyard and the autumn sunlight raking the meadows. It was a -fortnight since she had come to New York, and in that fortnight she felt -that she had turned into stone. Her shoes were worn thin; her feet -throbbed and ached from walking on hard pavements. There were times, -especially toward evening, when the soles of her feet were edged with -fire, and the pain brought stinging tears to her eyes. Yet she walked -on grimly because it was easier to walk than to wait. Up Fifth Avenue; -down one of the cross streets to the Park, which was, she thought, -merely an imitation of the country; back again to Sixth Avenue; and up -Sixth Avenue until she drifted again over the Park and into the -prison-like streets that ran toward the river. Occasionally she glanced -up to read the name of a street; but the signs told her nothing. Fifth -Avenue she had learned by name, and Broadway, and the dirty street where -she rented a hall room, for fifty cents a day, over a cheap restaurant. -Yesterday, she had asked for work on the other side of the city; but -nobody wanted help in a store, and her obstinate pride insisted that she -would rather starve than take a place as a servant. Twice she had waited -in the restaurant beneath her room; but the dirt and the close smells -had nauseated her, and by the end of the second day she had been too -sick to stand on her feet. After that the waitress whose place she had -taken had returned, and the woman in charge had not wanted her any -longer. "You'd better get used to smells before you try to make a living -in the city," she had said disagreeably. The advice was sound, as -Dorinda knew, and she had no just cause for resentment. Yet there were -moments when it seemed to her that New York would live in her -recollection not as a place but as an odour. - -All day she walked from one stony street to another, stopping to rest -now and then on a bench in one of the squares, where she would sit -motionless for hours, watching the sparrows. Her food, usually a tough -roll and a sausage of dubious tenderness, she bought at the cheapest -place she could find and carried, wrapped in newspaper, to the bench -where she rested. Her only hope, she felt, lay in the dogged instinct -which told her that when things got as bad as they could, they were -obliged, if they changed at all, to change for the better. There was no -self-pity in her thoughts. The unflinching Presbyterian in her blood -steeled her against sentimentality. She would meet life standing and she -would meet it with her eyes open; but she knew that the old buoyant -courage, the flowing outward of the spirit, was over for ever. - -What surprised her, when she was not too tired to think of it, was that -the ever-present sense of sin, which made the female mind in -mid-Victorian literature resemble a page of the more depressing -theology, was entirely absent from her reflections. She was sorry about -the blue dress; she felt remorse because of the cow her mother might -have had; but everything else that had happened was embraced in the -elastic doctrine of predestination. It had to be, she felt, and no -matter how hard she had struggled she could not have prevented it. - -At night, worn out with fatigue, she would go back to the room over the -restaurant. The brakeman on the train had given her the address, and he -had put her in the street car that brought her to the door in Sixth -Avenue. Here also the smells of beer and of the cooking below stairs had -attacked her like nausea. The paper on the walls was torn and stained; -all the trash in the room had been swept under the bed; and when she -started to wash her hands at the rickety washstand in one corner, she -had found a dead cockroach in the pitcher. Turning to the narrow window, -she had dropped into a chair and stared down on the crawling throng in -the street. Disgust, which was more irksome than pain, had rushed over -her. After all the fuss that had been made over it, she had asked in -bitter derision, was this Life? - -Walking up Sixth Avenue one afternoon, she asked this question again. -Something was trying to break her. Life or the will of God, it made no -difference, for one hurt as much as the other. She could not see any use -in the process, but she went on as blindly as a machine that has been -wound up and cannot stop until it has run down. Nothing was alive except -the burning sore of her memory. All the blood of her body had been drawn -into it. Every other emotion--affection, tenderness, sympathy, -sentiment--all these natural approaches to experience had shrivelled up -like nerves that are dead. She was consumed by a solitary anguish; and -beyond this anguish there was nothing but ashes. The taste of ashes was -in her mouth whenever she tried to look ahead or to pretend an interest -in what the future might bring. Though her mind saw Jason as he was, -weak, false, a coward and a hypocrite, he was so firmly knit into her -being that, even when she tore him from her thoughts, she still suffered -from the aching memory of him in her senses. Pedlar's Mill or New York, -what did it matter? The city might have been built of straw, so little -difference did it make to her inescapable pain. - -At first the noises and the strange faces had confused her. Then it -occurred to her that there might be temporary solace in the crowd, that -she might lose herself in the street and drift on wherever the throng -carried her. Her self-confidence returned when she found how easy it was -to pursue her individual life, to retain her secret identity, in the -midst of the city. She discovered presently that when nothing matters -the problem of existence becomes amazingly simple. Fear, which had been -perversely associated with happiness, faded from her mind when despair -entered it. From several unpleasant episodes she had learned to be on -the watch and to repulse advances that were disagreeable; but at such -moments her courage proved to be as vast as her wretchedness. Once an -elderly woman in deep mourning approached her while she sat on a bench -in the Park, and inquired solicitously if she needed employment. In the -beginning the stranger had appeared helpful; but a little conversation -revealed that, in spite of her mourning garb, she was in search of a -daughter of joy. After this several men had followed Dorinda on -different occasions. "Do I look like that kind?" she had asked herself -bitterly. But in each separate instance, when she glanced round at her -pursuer, he had vanished. In a city where joy may be had for a price, -there are few who turn and follow the footsteps of tragedy. Yes, she -could take care of herself. Poverty might prove to be a match for her -strength, but as far as men were concerned, she decided that she had -taken their measure and was no longer afraid of them. - -A surface car clanged threateningly in her ears, and stepping back on -the corner, she looked uncertainly over the block in front of her. While -she hesitated there, a man who had passed turned and stared at her, -arrested by the fresh colour in the face under the old felt hat. Her -cheeks were thinner; there were violet half-moons under her eyes; but -her eyes appeared by contrast larger and more radiantly blue. The -suffering of the last two weeks, fatigue, hunger, and unhappiness had -refined her features and imparted a luminous delicacy to her skin. - -Threading the traffic to the opposite pavement, she turned aimlessly, -without purpose and without conjecture, into one of the gloomy streets. -It was quieter here, and after the clamour and dirt of Sixth Avenue, the -quiet was soothing. Longer shadows stretched over the grey pavement, and -the rows of dingy houses, broken now and then by the battered front of -an inconspicuous shop, reminded her fantastically of acres of -broomsedge. When she had walked several blocks she found that the -character of the street changed slightly, and it occurred to her, as she -glanced indifferently round, that by an accident she had drifted into -the only old-fashioned neighbourhood in New York. Or were there others -and had she been unable to find them? She had stopped, without observing -it, in front of what had once been a flower garden, and had become, in -its forlorn and neglected condition, a refuge for friendless statues and -outcast objects of stone. For a few minutes the strangeness of the scene -attracted her. Then, as the pain in her feet mounted upward to her -knees, she moved on again and paused to look at a collection of battered -mahogany furniture, which had overflowed from a shop to the pavement. "I -wonder what they'll do with that old stuff," she thought idly. "Some of -it is good, too. There's a wardrobe exactly like the one -great-grandfather left." - -She was looking at the mahogany wardrobe, when the door of the shop -widened into a crack, and a grey and white cat, with a pleasant face, -squeezed herself through and came out to watch the sparrows in the -street. - -"She is the image of Flossie," thought Dorinda. Her eyes smarted with -tears, and stooping over, she stroked the cat's arching back, while she -remembered that her mother would be busy at this hour getting supper. - -"Anybody can see you like cats," said a voice behind her; and turning -her head, she saw that a stout middle-aged woman, wearing a black -knitted shawl over a white shirtwaist, was standing in the midst of the -old furniture. Like her cat she had a friendly face and wide-awake eyes -beneath sleek grey and white hair. - -"She is just like one we had at home," Dorinda answered, with her -ingenuous smile. - -"You don't live in New York, then?" remarked the woman, while she -glanced charitably at the girl's faded tan ulster. - -"No, I came from the country two weeks ago. I want to find something to -do." - -The woman folded her shawl tightly over her bosom and shook her head. -"Well, it's hard to get work these days. There are so many walking the -streets in search of it. The city is a bad place to be when you are out -of work." - -Dorinda's heart trembled and sank. "I thought there was always plenty to -do in the city." - -"You did? Well, whoever told you that never tried it, I guess." - -"There are so many stores. I hoped I could find something to do in one -of them." - -"Have you ever worked in a store?" - -"Yes, at home. It was a country store where they kept everything." - -"I know that kind. My father used to keep one up the state." - -As she bent over the cat, Dorinda asked in a voice that she tried to -keep steady. "You don't need any help, do you?" - -The other shook her head sorrowfully. "I wish we did; but times are so -hard that we've had to give up the assistant we had. I'm just out of the -hospital, too, and that took up most of our savings for the last year." -Her large, kind face showed genuine sympathy. "I'd help you if I could," -she continued, "because you've got a look that reminds me of my sister -who went into a convent. She's dead now, but she had those straight -black eyebrows, jutting out just like yours over bright blue eyes. That -sort of colouring ain't so common as it used to be. Anyhow, it made me -think of her as soon as I looked at you. It gave me a start at first. -That's because I'm still weak after the operation, I guess." - -"Was it a bad operation?" - -"Gall stones. One of the worst, they say, when it has gone on as long as -my trouble. Have you ever been in a hospital?" - -Dorinda shook her head. "There wasn't any such thing where I lived. We -always nursed the sick at home. Great-grandfather was bedridden for -years before his death, and my mother nursed him and did all the work -too." - -The woman looked at her with interest. "Well, that's the way you do in -the country, of course," she replied, adding after a moment's -hesitation, "You look pretty tired out. Would you like to come in and -rest a few minutes? I was getting so low in my spirits a little while -ago that I looked out to see if I couldn't find somebody to speak a few -words to. When this sinking feeling comes on me in the afternoon, I -don't like to be by myself. I thought a cup of tea might help me. They -haven't let me touch beer since I went to the hospital, so I'd just put -the kettle on to boil. It ought to be ready about now, and a bite of -something might pick you up as well as me. My mother came from England -and she was always a great one for a cup of tea. 'Put the kettle on,' -she used to say, 'I'm feeling low in my spirits.' Day or night it didn't -make any difference. Whenever she felt herself getting low she used to -have her tea." - -She led the way, the cat following, through the shop to a corner at the -back, where she could still watch the door and the pavement. Here a -kettle was humming on a small gas stove; and a quaint little table, with -a red damask cloth over it, was laid for tea. There were cups and -saucers, a tea set, and a wooden caddy with a castle painted on the -side. "It looks old-fashioned, I know, but we are old-fashioned folks, -and my husband sometimes says that we haven't got any business in the -progressive 'nineties. Everything's too advanced for us now, even -religion. I guess it's living so much with old furniture and things that -were made in the last century." - -Dorinda smiled at her gratefully and sat down beside the little red -cloth, with her smarting feet crossed under the table. If only she might -take off her shoes, she thought, she could begin to be comfortable. At -Pedlar's Mill tea was not used except in illness or bereavement, and she -was not prepared for the immediate consolation it afforded her. Strange -that a single cup of tea and a buttered muffin from a bakery should -revive her courage! After all, the city wasn't so stony and inhospitable -as she had believed. People were friendly here, if you found the right -ones, just as they were in the country. They liked cats too. She -remembered that she had seen a number of cats in New York, and they all -looked contented and prosperous. It was pleasant in the little room, -with its restful air of another period; but at last tea was over, and -she thanked the woman and rose to leave. "I can't tell you the good it's -done me," she said, and added plaintively, "Do you know of any place -where I might find work?" - -The woman--her name, she said, was Garvey--bent her head in meditation -over the tea-pot. "I do know a woman who wants a plain seamstress for a -few weeks," she said at last a trifle dubiously, for, in spite of her -kindness, she was a cautious body. "The girl she had went to the -hospital the day I came out, and she has never been suited since then. -Do you know how to sew?" - -"I've helped make children's dresses, and of course my own clothes," -Dorinda added apologetically. "You see, I never had much to make them -out of." - -"I see," Mrs. Garvey assented, without additional comment. After -pondering a minute or two, she continued cheerfully, "Well, you might -suit. I can't tell, but I'd like to help you. It's hard being without -friends in a big city, and the more I talk to you, the more you remind -me of my sister. I'll write down the address for you anyway. It's -somewhere in West Twenty-third Street. You know your way about, don't -you?" - -"Oh, I'll find it. People are good about directing me, especially the -policemen." - -"Well, be sure you don't go until after six o'clock. Then the other -girls will be gone, and she will have more time to attend to you. But -you mustn't set your heart on this place. She may have taken on someone -since I talked with her." - -Dorinda smiled. No, she wouldn't set her heart on it. "I'll go and sit -in a park while I'm waiting," she replied gratefully. "If I'm going to -be a dressmaker, I ought to notice what women are wearing." - -With the slip of paper in her purse, and her purse slipped into the -bosom of her dress, she left the shop and followed the street back to -Fifth Avenue. The hour spent with the stranger had restored her -confidence and there was no shadow of discouragement in her mind. -Something told her, she would have said, that her troubles were -beginning to mend. "I can sew well enough when I try, even if I don't -like it," she thought. "Ma taught me how to make neat buttonholes, and I -can run up a seam as well as any one." - -As she approached Fifth Avenue she began to observe the way the women -were dressed, and for the first time since she left Pedlar's Mill she -felt old-fashioned and provincial. The younger women who passed her were -all wearing enormous balloon sleeves and bell skirts, which were held up -with the newest twist by tightly gloved hands. Now and then, she -noticed, the sleeves were made of a different material from the dress, -but the gloves were invariably of white kid, and the small coquettish -hats were perched very high above crisply waved hair which was worn -close at the temples. - -In spite of her blistered feet, she walked on rapidly, lifting her face -to the wind, which blew strong and fresh over the lengthening shadows. -How high and smooth and round the sky looked over the steep brown -houses! Presently, from a hotel of grey stone, as gloomy as a prison, a -gaily dressed girl flitted out into a hansom cab which was waiting in -front of the door. There was a vision of prune-coloured velvet sleeves -in a dress of grey satin, of a skirt that rustled in eddying folds over -the pavement, and of a jingling gold chatelaine attached to the front of -a pointed basque. "How happy she must be," Dorinda thought, "dressed -like that, and with everything on earth that she wants!" - -She had turned to move on again, when a man carrying a basket of -evergreens brushed against her, and she saw that he was engaged in -replenishing the stone window boxes on the ground floor of the hotel. As -she passed, a whiff of wet earth penetrated her thoughts, and -immediately, in a miracle of recollection, she was back at Five Oaks in -the old doctor's retreat. Every detail of that stormy afternoon started -awake as if it had been released from a spell of enchantment. She saw -the darkened room, lighted by the thin blue flame from the resinous -pine; she saw the one unshuttered window, with the hunched box-bush and -the white turkeys beyond; she heard the melancholy patter of the rain on -the shingled roof; and she watched the old man's face, every line and -blotch distorted by the quivering light, while he wagged his drunken -head at her. A shudder jerked through her limbs. Her memory, which was -beginning to heal, was suddenly raw again. Would she never be free? Was -she doomed to bear that moment of all the moments in her life wherever -she went? Her courage faded now as if the sun had gone under a cloud. -She had been dragged back by the wind, by an odour, into the suffocating -atmosphere of the past. Though her body was walking the city street, in -her memory she was rushing out of that old house at Five Oaks. She was -running into the mist; she was hurrying down the sandy road through the -bulrushes; she was crouching by the old stump, with the wet leaves in -her face and that suspense more terrible than any certainty in her mind. -She listened again for the turn of the wheels, the clink of the mare's -shoes; the slip and scramble in the mud holes; the hollow sound of hoofs -striking on rock. . . . - -Never in her life had she been so tired. In an effort to shake her -thoughts free from despair, she quickened her pace, and looked about for -a bench where she could rest. On the opposite side of Fifth Avenue a row -of cab horses waited near a statue under some fine old trees. She had -never seen the name of the square, but it appeared restful in the -afternoon light; and crossing the street, she found a place in the shade -on a deserted bench. It was five o'clock now, and Mrs. Garvey had told -her not to go to see the dressmaker until six. Well, it was a relief to -sit down. Slipping off her shoes, she pushed them under the bench and -spread her wide skirt over her feet. The quiet was pleasant in the -moving shadows of the trees. From where and how far, she wondered, did -the people come who were lounging on the benches around her? So many -people in New York were always resting, but she concluded that they must -have money put by or they couldn't afford to spend so much time doing -nothing. - -Gradually, while she sat there, watching the sparrows fluttering round -the nose bags of the horses, hollow phrases, without meaning and without -sequence, swarmed into her mind. Five o'clock. At home her mother would -be getting ready for supper. That grey and white cat had made her think -of Flossie. They were alike as two peas. Remembering the old man had -upset her. She must put him out of her mind. You couldn't change things -by thinking. How could horses feed in those nose bags? What would Dan -and Beersheba think of them? There was another woman with velvet sleeves -in a silk dress. How Miss Seena would exclaim if you told her that so -many women were wearing sleeves of different material from their -dresses! That flaring collar of lace was pretty though. . . . The way -the old man had leered at her over the whiskey bottle. "He's coming back -this evening. He went away to be married." No, she must stop thinking -about it. If she could only blot it all out of her memory. The buildings -in New York were so high. She wondered people weren't afraid to go to -the top of them. There was a poor-looking old man on the bench by the -fountain. In rags and with the soles dropping away from his shoes. -People were rich in New York, but they were poor too. Nobody but Black -Tom, the county idiot, wore rags like that at Pedlar's Mill. How her -feet ached! Would they ever stop hurting? . . . "He went away to be -married. He went away to be married." How dark the room was growing, and -how black the box-bush looked in the slanting rain beyond the window. -Feet were pattering on the shingled roof, or was it only the rain? . . . -It was getting late. Almost time to go to the dressmaker's. Suppose the -dressmaker were to take a fancy to her. Such things happened in books. -"You are the very girl I am looking for. One who isn't afraid to work." -There was a fortune, she had heard, in dressmaking in New York. Miss -Seena knew of a dressmaker who kept her own carriage. . . . How funny -those lights were coming out in the street! They were winking at her, -one after another. It was time to be going; but she didn't feel as if -she could stir a step. Her knees and elbows were full of pins and -needles. It's resting that makes you know how tired you are, her mother -used to say. . . . - -Suddenly nausea washed over her like black water, rising from her body -to her exhausted brain. She could scarcely sit there, holding tight to -the bench, while this icy tide swept her out into an ocean of space. The -noises of the city grew fainter, receding from her into the grey fog -which muffled the sky, the lights, the tall buildings, the vehicles in -the street. It would be dreadful if she were sick here in the square, -with that ugly old man and all the cab drivers staring at her. . . . Then -the sickness passed as quickly as it had come; and leaning back against -the bench, she closed her eyes until she should be able to get up and -start on again. After a minute or two, she felt so much better that she -slipped her feet into her shoes, fastened the buttons with a hairpin, -and rising slowly and awkwardly, walked across the square to the nearest -corner. - -The noises, which had almost died away, became gradually louder. There -was a tumult of drums in the air, but she could not tell whether the -beating was in her ears or a parade was marching by somewhere in the -distance. Evidently it was a procession, though she could see nothing -except the moving line of vehicles in the street, which had left the -ground and were swimming in some opaque medium between earth and sky. -"How queer everything looks," she thought. "It must be the lights that -never stop winking." - -She put her foot cautiously down from the curb, imagining, though she -could not see it, that the street must be somewhere in front of her. As -she made a step forward into the traffic, the sickness swept over her -again, and an earthquake seemed to fling the pavement up against the -back of her head. She saw the lights splinter like glass when it is -smashed; she heard the drums of the invisible procession marching toward -her; she tried to struggle up, to call out, to move her arms, and with -the effort, she dropped into unconsciousness. - - - - -II - - -She opened her eyes and looked at the white walls, white beds, white -screens, white sunlight through the windows, and women in white caps and -dresses moving silently about with white vessels in their hands. - -"Why, this must be a hospital," she thought. "How on earth did I come -here?" - -Her arm, lying outside the sheet, looked blue and cold and felt as if it -did not belong to her. She could not turn her head because it was -bandaged, and when, after an eternity of effort, she succeeded in -lifting her hand, she discovered that her hair had been cut away on one -side. Closing her eyes again, she lay without thinking, without -stirring, without feeling, while she let life cover her slowly in a warm -flood. The blessed relief was that nothing mattered; nothing that had -happened or could ever happen mattered at all. After the months when she -had cared so intensely, it was like the peace of the Sabbath not to care -any longer, neither to worry nor to wonder about the future. - -"I must have hurt myself when I fell," she said. - -To her surprise a voice close by the bed answered, "Yes, you fainted in -the street and a cab struck you. You have been ill, but you're getting -all right now." - -A man was standing beside her, a large, ruddy, genial-looking man, with -a brown beard and the kindest eyes she had ever seen. He wore a red and -black tie and there was a square gold medal hanging from his -watch chain. - -"Have I been here long?" she asked, and her voice sounded so queer that -she couldn't believe it had come out of her lips. - -"A week to-day. It will be another week at least before you're strong -enough to be out." - -"Was I very ill?" - -"At first. We had to operate. That's why your head is shaved on one -side. But you came through splendidly," he added in his hearty manner. -"You have a superb constitution." - -For an instant she pondered this. "Are you the doctor?" she inquired -presently. - -"I am Doctor Faraday." His hand was on her wrist and he was smiling at -her as if he hadn't a care or a qualm. - -She wondered if he knew anything about her. He appeared so big and wise -and strong that he might have known all there was to know about -everybody. - -"Is there anything that worries you?" he asked gently, with his air of -taking the world and all it contained as an inexhaustible joke. She -shook her head as well as she could for the bandages, which made all her -movements seem clumsy and unnatural. "I was just thinking----" - -"Do you remember where you were going when you were knocked down?" - -She met his eyes candidly, yielding her will to the genial strength of -his personality. "I was looking for work. There was a dressmaker in West -Twenty-third Street. She will have filled the place by now." - -"You mustn't worry about that." She liked the way the wrinkles gathered -about his merry grey eyes. "Don't worry about anything. We'll see that -you have something to do as soon as you're strong enough. Meanwhile, -just lie still and get well. Keep a stiff upper lip," he concluded, with -a subdued laugh which would have boomed out if he hadn't suppressed it. -"That's the only way to meet life. Keep a stiff upper lip," he concluded -with a subdued laugh which would have boomed out if he hadn't suppressed -it. "That's the only way to meet life. Keep a stiff upper lip." - -"I can't help thinking,"--she glanced weakly about the room, where the -white iron beds--they were the smallest beds she had ever seen--stood in -a row. "Is this a charity place?" - -"Now, I told you not to worry. No, we don't call it charity, but there -is no charge for those who need treatment and cannot afford to pay for -it. We don't expect you to be one of the rich patients. Is there -anything else?" - -She tried again to shake her head. All at once she had forgotten what -she wanted to know. She was too weak to remember things, even important -things. There was a pain at the back of her head, and this pain was -shooting in wires down her neck and through her shoulders to her spine. -Nothing made any difference. - -"Don't make an effort. Don't try to talk," he said, and turned away to -one of the beds by the door. - -Hours later, when one of the nurses brought her a cup of broth, she -struggled to speak collectedly. "What did the doctor tell me his name -is? I don't seem to remember things." - -"That's because you're still weak. His name is Faraday. He is a -celebrated surgeon, and he operated on you because he brought you to the -hospital. He was driving by when you were struck. The operation saved -your life." - -"Does he come often?" - -"Not as a rule. He hasn't time to visit the patients. But he is -interested in your case. It is an unusual one, and he is very much -interested." - -"Does he know who I am?" - -"Yes, the woman you rented a room from read about the accident in the -papers, and came to identify you. Can you remember anything of this last -week?" - -"Only that my head hurt me. Yes, and figures passing to and fro against -white walls." - -"It was a wonder you weren't killed. But you're all right now. You'll be -as well as you ever were in a little while." - -"I feel so queer with my head shaved. I can feel it even with the -bandages." - -"That will soon be well, and the scar won't show at all under your hair. -You've everything to be thankful for," the nurse concluded in a brisk -professional tone. - -Dorinda was gazing up at her with a strange, groping expression. Her -eyes, large, blue, and wistful in the pallor of her face, appeared to -have drained all the vitality from her body. "There was something I -wanted to ask the doctor," she began. "I don't seem to be able to -remember what it was. . . ." - -"Don't remember," replied the nurse with authority. She hesitated an -instant, and stared down into the empty cup. Then, after reflection, she -continued clearly and firmly, "It won't hurt you to know that you have -been very ill, now that you are getting well again?" - -Dorinda's features, except for her appealing eyes, were without -expression. Yes, she remembered now; she knew what she had wished to -ask, "Oh, no, it won't hurt me," she answered. - -"Well, I thought you'd take it sensibly." After waiting a moment to -watch the effect of her words, the nurse turned away and walked briskly -out of the ward. - -Lying there in her narrow bed, Dorinda repeated slowly, "I thought you -would feel that way about it." Words, like ideas, were dribbling back -into her mind; but she seemed to be learning them all over again. -Relief, in which there was a shade of inexplicable regret, tinged her -thoughts. She would have liked a child if it had been all hers, with -nothing to remind her of Jason. For a second she had a vision of it, -round, fair and rosy. Then, "it might have had red hair," she reminded -herself, "and I should have hated it." - -Relief and regret faded together. She closed her eyes and lay helpless, -while the stream of memory, now muddy, now clear, flowed through her -into darkness. At first this stream was mere swirling blackness, swift, -deep, torrential as a river in flood. Then gradually the rushing noise -passed away, and the stream became lighter and clearer, and bore -fragmentary, rapidly moving images on its surface. Some of these images -floated through her in obscurity; others shone out brightly and steadily -as long as they remained within range of her vision; but one and all, -they came in fragments and floated on before she could grasp the -complete outline. Nothing was whole. Nothing lasted. Nothing was related -to anything else. - -Thirst. Would they soon bring her something to drink? The old well -bucket at home. The mossy brim; the cool slippery feeling of the sides; -the turning of the rope as it went down; the dark greenish depths, when -one looked over, with the gleaming ripple, like a drowned star, at the -bottom. Cool places. Violets growing in hollows. A hollow at Whistling -Spring, where she had stepped on a snake in the tall weeds. What was it -she couldn't remember about snakes? Something important, but she had -forgotten it. "I've always funked things." Who said that? Why was that -woman moaning so behind the screen in the corner? . . . The snake had come -back now. Jason had put his hand on a snake, and that was why everything -else had happened. If Jason hadn't put his hand on a snake when he was a -child, he would never have deserted her, she would never have been -picked up in the street, she would not be lying now in a hospital with -half of her hair shaved away. How ridiculous that sounded when one -thought of it; yet it was true. What was it her mother said so often? -The ways of Providence are past finding out. . . . The nurse again. Oh, -yes, water. . . . - -The morning when she sat up for the first time, Doctor Faraday stayed -longer than usual and asked her a number of questions. She felt quite at -home with him. "When any one has saved your life, I suppose he feels -that you have a claim on him," she thought; and she replied as -accurately as she could to whatever he asked. Naturally reticent, she -found now that she suffered from a nervous inability to express any -emotion. She could talk freely of external objects, of the hospital, the -nurses, the other patients in the ward; but constraint sealed her lips -when she endeavoured to put feeling into words. - -"When you are discharged, I think we can find a place for you," said -Doctor Faraday. "My wife is coming to talk to you. We've been looking -for a girl to stay in my office in the morning and help with the -children in the afternoon. Not a nurse, you know. The office nurse has -other duties; but some one to receive the patients and make -appointments." - -She looked at him incredulously. "You aren't just making it up?" With a -laugh he ignored the question. "You haven't any plans?" - -"Oh, no. It will be too late to go to the dressmaker, and besides she -might not have wanted me." - -"You are sure you don't wish to go home?" - -She gazed at his firm fleshy face, over which the clean shining skin was -drawn so smoothly that it looked as if it were stretched; the thick -brown hair, just going grey and divided by a pink part in the centre; -the crisp beard, clipped close on the cheeks and rounding to a point at -the chin. Yes, she liked his face. It was a comfortable face to watch, -and she had never seen hands like his before, large, strong, -mysteriously beneficent hands. - -"No," she answered in her reserved voice, "I can't go back yet." - -If she went back, she should be obliged to face the red chimneys of Five -Oaks, the burned cabin, and the place where she had sat and waited for -Jason's return. These things were still there, perpetual and unchanged. - -"I've talked to my wife about you," Doctor Faraday said. "I believe you -are a good girl, and we both wish to help you to lead a good life." - -"You've been so kind," she responded. "I can't tell you what I feel, but -I do feel that. I want you to know." - -"My dear girl." He bent over and touched her hand. "I know it. If you'd -had as much experience with emotional women as I've had, you'd -understand the blessedness of reserve. Wait till you see my wife. You'll -find her easy to talk to. Every one does." - -A few mornings afterwards, as she was preparing to get up, Mrs. Faraday -came and sat by the little bed. She was a plump, maternal-looking woman, -with an ample figure, which did not conform to the wasp waist of the -period, and a round pink face, to which her tightly crimped hair and -small fashionable hat lent an air of astonishment, as if she were -thinking continually, "I didn't know I looked like this." Her mantle was -of claret-coloured broadcloth heavily garnished with passementerie, and -she wore very short white kid gloves, above which her plump wrists -bulged in infantile creases. While she sat there, panting a little from -her tight stays and her unnatural elegance, Dorinda gazed at her -sympathetically and thought it was a pity that she did her hair in a way -that made her temples look skinned. - -"Doctor Faraday is very much interested in your case," she began in a -voice that was as fresh and sweet as her complexion. "He has been so -kind to me." - -"We both wish to help you, and we think it might be good for you to take -the place in his office for a little while--a few weeks," she added -cautiously, "until you are able to find something else. In that way the -doctor can keep an eye on you until you are well again. Of course the -work will be light. He has a nurse and a secretary. However, you could -help with the children after the office hours are over. The nurse and -Miss Murray, the governess, take them to the Park every afternoon; but -there are six of them, and we can't have too much help. That's a large -family for New York," she finished gaily. - -"We have much larger ones at Pedlar's Mill. The Garlicks were twelve -until one died last year, and old Mrs. Flower, the Mother of the -auctioneer, had thirteen children." - -"You like children?" - -"Oh, yes, I like children." She couldn't put any enthusiasm into her -voice, and she hated herself for the lack of it. She was dead, turned -into stone or wood, and she didn't really care about anything. Did she -or did she not like children? She couldn't have answered the question -truthfully if her life had depended upon it. In her other existence she -had liked them; but that was so long ago and far away that it had no -connection with her now. - -"Then that is settled." What a happy manner Mrs. Faraday had! "The nurse -tells me you are leaving to-morrow. Will you come straight to us or -would you like a day to yourself?" - -"A day to myself, if you don't mind. I ought to get a dress, oughtn't -I?" - -"Oh, any plain simple dress will do. Navy blue poplin with white linen -collar and cuffs would be nice. But don't tire yourself or spend any -money you can't afford. Well arrange all that later." - -Mrs. Faraday had risen and was holding out one firmly gloved hand. As -she grasped it, Dorinda could feel the soft flesh beneath the deeply -embedded buttons. "Then I'll look for you day after to-morrow," said the -older woman in her sprightly tone. "Navy blue will look well on you with -your hair and eyes," she added encouragingly. "I always liked blue eyes -and black hair." - -Dorinda smiled up at her. "And now half my hair is gone. I must look a -fright, and the scar isn't even hidden. I'll be marked all my life." - -"Oh, but your hair will come back thicker than ever. Even now your scalp -is covered, and in a little while no one will know that there is a -scar." She beamed down on the bed. "Here is the address. Have you a -place you can put the card, so it won't slip away?" - -"I've got my purse under my pillow." As Dorinda drew out the little -leather bag, and slipped the card into it, she thought wearily, "How -funny it is that this should have happened to me." - -Since her illness, the whole of life, all she had gone through, all she -saw around her, all feeling everywhere, appeared less tragic than -ludicrous. Though her capacity for emotion was dead, some diabolical -sense of humour had sprung up like, fireweed from the ruins. She could -laugh at everything now, but it was ironic laughter. - - - - -III - - -Her first thought, when she opened her eyes the next morning, was that -she was free to leave the hospital as soon as she pleased. If only she -might have stayed there until she died, tranquil, indifferent, with -nothing left but this sardonic humour. A little later, as she glanced at -the other patients in the ward, at the woman who moaned incessantly and -at the young girl, with flaming red hair, who had lost her leg in an -accident, she told herself that there were people in the world who were -worse off than she was. Through the high window she could see that the -sky was clear, and that a strong breeze was blowing a flag on the top of -a grey tower. She was glad it was not raining. It would have been a pity -to go back into the world on a wet day. - -After she had had her breakfast, and a glib young doctor had given her -some directions, she got out of bed and a pupil nurse helped her to -dress. They had arranged, she discovered presently, that a friend of one -of the other patients--the moaning woman, it soon appeared--should go -with her as far as her lodging-house. That was the stranger's way also, -and she had promised to see that Dorinda reached her room safely. - -"Do they know that you are coming?" - -"Yes, the nurse telephoned for me. I can get the sane room, and they've -put my bag in it." - -"Well, I'll be glad to go with you," said the woman, a depressed-looking -person, in rusty mourning. "You must be careful about crossing the -street while you're so weak." - -"I don't feel as if I could walk a step," Dorinda answered, sinking into -a chair while she dressed. - -Her street clothes were so uncomfortable that she wondered how she could -ever have worn them. Her stockings were too large, and the feet of them -were drawn out of shape; her dress felt as if it weighed tons. But her -hair troubled her most. No matter how hard she tried, she could not make -it look neat. So much of it had been cut away on the right side that she -was obliged to wind what was left into a thin twist and fasten it like a -wreath round her head. Her face was thin and pallid, just the shape and -colour of an egg, she thought despondently, and "I'm all eyes," she -added, while she gazed at herself in the small mirror. - -It was late afternoon when she left the hospital, leaning on the arm of -the stranger, who remarked with every other step, "I hope you ain't -beginning to feel faint," or, "You'd better take it more slowly." The -bereaved woman was provided with a collection of gruesome anecdotes, -which she related with relish while they crept along the cross street in -the direction of Sixth Avenue. "There ain't much I don't know about -operations," she concluded at the end of her recital. - -As the air brushed her face, Dorinda's first sensation was a physical -response to the invigorating frostiness. Then it seemed to her that -whenever she took a step forward the pavement rose slightly and slid up -to meet her. In so short a time she had forgotten the way to walk, and -she felt troubled because in her case the law of gravitation appeared to -be arbitrarily suspended. When she put her foot out, she did not know, -she told herself, whether it would have the weight to come down or would -go floating up into the air. "Could anything have happened to my brain," -she wondered, "when I was struck on the head?" In a little while, -however, the sensation of lightness gave place to the more familiar one -of strained muscles. Though she could walk easily now, she was beginning -to feel very tired, and she could barely do more than crawl over the -long block. - -A high wind was blowing from the west, billowing the sleeves and skirts -of women's dresses, whipping the dust into waves, and tossing the gay -streamers in Fifth Avenue. The sunlight appeared to splinter as it -struck against the crystal blue of the sky and to scatter a shower of -sparkling drops on the city. Though it was all bright, gay, beautiful, -to Dorinda the scene might have been made of glass in the windy hollow -of the universe. "I'm dried up at the core," she thought, "and yet, I've -got to go on pretending that I'm alive, that I'm like other people." She -felt nothing; she expected nothing; she desired nothing; and this -insensibility, which was worse than pain, had attacked her body as well -as her heart and mind. "If somebody were to stick a pin in me, I -shouldn't feel it," she told herself. "I'm no better than a dead tree -walking." - -At the corner of Sixth Avenue, a gust of wind struck her sharply, and -still leaning on the arm of her companion, she drew back into the -shelter of a shop. - -"Let's stand here until the next car comes." - -"Do you feel any worse?" - -"No, not worse, only different." - -"I've known 'em to faint dead away the first time they left the -hospital." - -"Well, I've no idea of fainting. Just tell me when you see the right car -coming." - -The thing that worried her most, and she had puzzled over this from the -minute she came down the steps of the hospital, was the curious -impression in her mind that she had seen everything and everybody -before. Every face was familiar to her. She seemed to have known each -person who passed her in some former time and place, which she dimly -remembered; and each reminded her, in some vague resemblance of contour, -feature, or shifting expression, of the way Jason had looked when she -first loved him. "Just as I was trying to forget him," she thought, with -irritation, "everybody begins to look like him." - -When the car came, and she got on and found a seat beside a fat German, -who was buried in his newspaper, this senseless irritation still -persisted. "Maybe if I stop looking at their faces and keep my eyes -fixed on their clothes, the resemblance will pass away," she told -herself resolutely. "What a funny hat, just like a cabbage, that woman -is wearing, and the man with her has on a tie like a little boy's. He -must be an artist. I read in some book that artists wore velvet coats -and flowing ties." Then, inadvertently, she raised her eyes to the face -of the stranger, and discovered that he was gazing at her with a look -that reminded her of Jason. Even the fat German wore a familiar -expression when he turned to touch the bell and glanced down at her as -he rose to go out of the car. - -At the lodging-house, where she had to explain her case all over again, -she was still haunted by this delusive resemblance. There might have -been a general disintegration and reassembling of personalities since -she had gone to the hospital, and she felt that she had seen them all -before in other circumstances and other periods. - -Alone, at last, in her little room, she dropped wearily on the hard bed, -which, like the wife of the proprietor, bulged in the wrong places, and -lay, without seeing or hearing, surrendered to the grey hollowness of -existence. Sheer physical weakness kept her motionless for an hour; and -when at the end of that time, she lifted her hands to take off her hat, -she felt as if she were recovering from the effects of an anæsthetic. -Gradually, as the stupor wore off, she became aware of the objects -around her; of the hissing gas jet, which burned in the daytime; of the -dirty carpet, with an ink splotch in the centre; of the unsteady -washstand that creaked under its own weight; of the stale ashes of a -cigar in the top of the soap dish; of the sharp ridge down the middle of -the bed on which she was lying. And she thought clearly, "No matter how -bad it is, I've got to go through with it." - -The hardest thing, she knew, that she had to face was not the wreck of -her happiness, but the loss of a vital interest in life. Even people who -were unhappy retained sometimes sufficient interest in the mere husk of -experience to make life not only endurable but even diverting. With her, -however, she felt that she had nothing to expect and nothing to lose. -One idea had possessed her so completely that now, when it had been torn -out from the roots like a dying nerve, there was no substitute for -happiness that she could put in its place. "I've finished with love," -she repeated over and over. "I've finished with love, and until I find -something else to fill my life, I shall be only an empty shell. . . ." - -Rising from the bed, she opened her bag and unfolded her dresses. None -of them would do for New York, she realized. All of them, she saw now, -were absurd and countrified. As she shook out the blue nun's veiling, -she said to herself, "If I hadn't bought this dress, perhaps he would -never have fallen in love with me, and than I should still be living at -Old Farm, and Ma would have her cow and nothing would have happened that -has happened." She laughed with the perverse humour that she had brought -back out of the depths of unconsciousness. If only one could get outside -of it and stand a little way off, how ridiculous almost any situation in -life would appear! Even those moments when she had waited in anguish at -the fork of the road were tinged with irony when they revived now in her -memory. "All the same I wouldn't go through them again for anything that -life could offer," she thought. - - - - -IV - - -Dorinda stood in Doctor Faraday's office and looked out into East -Thirty-seventh Street. Beneath her there was a grey pavement swept by -wind and a few pale bars of sunshine. She saw the curved iron railing of -the porch and the steps of the area, where an ashcan, still unemptied, -awaited the call of the ashcart. A fourwheeler, driven by a stout, -red-faced driver, was passing in the street; at the corner an Italian -youth with a hunchback was selling shoe-strings; on the pavement in -front of the house, a maltese cat, wearing a bell on a red ribbon, -sunned himself lazily while he licked the fur on his stomach. Overhead, -the vault of the sky appeared remote, colourless, as impenetrable as -stone. - -When she turned into the house, she knew to weariness what she should -find awaiting her. A narrow oval room, with sand-coloured walls, -curtains of brown damask, and furniture of weathered oak, which was -carved and twisted out of all resemblance to her mother's cherished -pieces of mahogany. On the long tables piles of old magazines lay in -orderly rows. In the fireplace three neat gas logs shed a yellow flame -shot with blue sparkles. Very far apart, three patients were sitting, -with strained expectant eyes turned in the direction of the folding -doors which led into the inner office. In the last two years she had -learned to know the office and the street outside as if they were books -which she had studied at school. - -Standing there, she thought idly of her new dress of navy blue poplin. -She knew that she looked well in it, that the severe white linen collar -and cuffs suited the grave oval of her face. Though she had lost her -girlish softness and bloom, she had gained immeasurably in dignity and -distinction, and people, she noticed, turned to look at her now when she -went out alone in the street. The severe indifference of her expression -emphasized the richness of her lips and the vivid contrast of her -colouring. Her eyes had lost their springtime look, but they were still -deeply blue beneath the black, shadows of her lashes. Young as she was -she had acquired the ripe wisdom and the serene self-confidence of -maturity; she had attained the immunity from apprehension which comes to -those only who can never endure the worst again. Yet she was not -unhappy. In the security of her disenchantment there was the quiet that -follows a storm. - -While she waited there for the sound of the doctor's bell, she thought -dispassionately of what the last two years had meant in her life. -Everything and nothing! Her outward existence had been altered by them, -but to her deeper self they had been scarcely more than dust blowing -across her face. Dust blowing, that was all they had meant to her! - -She lived the period over again in her recollection, as she might have -lived over one of the plays she had seen. She thought of the Faradays; -of her diffidence, of their kindness; of the English governess and the -French teacher, neither of whose speech was intelligible to her. She -recalled the morning breakfasts; the walks in the Park in the afternoon; -her nervous dread of the office; her first mistakes; the patience of the -doctor and Mrs. Faraday; the way she had gradually become one of the -family circle; the six small children, and especially the little girl -Penelope, who had taken a fancy to her from the beginning; the two -summers when she had gone to Maine with the family; the bathing, and how -strange she had felt coming out on the beach with no shoes on and skirts -up to her knees. Then she thought of Penelope's illness; of the sudden -attack of pneumonia while Mrs. Faraday was in bed with influenza; of the -days and nights of nursing because Penelope cried for her and refused to -take her medicine from the trained nurse; of the night when they thought -the child was dying, and how she had sat by the bed until the crisis at -dawn. Then of the crisis when it came. The quieter breathing; the way -the tiny hand fluttered in hers; the band of steel that loosened about -her heart; and Mrs. Faraday crying from her bed, "Dorinda, we can never -forget what you have done! You must stay with us always!" After that she -had grown closer to them. Where else could she go? Nowhere, unless she -went back to Pedlar's Mill, and that, she felt, was still impossible. -Some day she might go back again. Not yet, but some day, when her hate -was as dead as her love. There were moments when she missed Old Farm, -vivid moments when she smelt growing things in the Park, when she longed -with all her heart for a sight of the April fields and the pear orchard -in bloom and the big pine where birds were singing. But the broomsedge -she tried to forget. The broomsedge was too much alive. She felt that -she hated it because it would make her suffer again. - -They missed her at home, she knew. Her father had not been well. He was -getting old. Every month she sent him half of her salary. They would not -have had that much if she had stayed at Pedlar's Mill; and then there -was the extra money at Christmas. Last Christmas the doctor had given -her a check for fifty dollars, and after Penelope's illness, they had -wished to give her more, but she had refused to let them pay her for -nursing the child. . . . There was a cow at home now, not the red one of -Doctor Greylock's, but a Jersey her father had bought from James -Ellgood. Her father's tobacco crop had done well last year, and he had -mended some of the fences. When the mortgage came due, she hoped he -would be able to meet it. She wondered if life had changed there at all. -Rose Emily was dead--that would make a difference to her. And Jason's -father, that horrible old man, was actually dying, her mother had -written. . . . - -The doctor's bell rang, and she turned, while the folding doors opened, -to usher the next patient into the private office. Two women went in -together, while the doctor's assistant, a young physician named Burch, -led the remaining patient away for examination. She had grown to know -the young doctor well, and since last summer, when he spent his vacation -in Maine, she had suspected that he was on the verge, of falling in love -with her. Cautious, deliberate, methodical, he was in no danger, she -felt, of plunging precipitately into marriage. Doctor Faraday approved, -she was aware, and his wife had done all in her power to make the match; -but Dorinda had felt nothing stronger than temperate liking. Richard -Burch was not ugly; he was even attractive looking after you got used to -his features. He had a short, rather stocky figure, and a square, not -uninteresting face, a good face, Mrs. Faraday called it. Almost any girl -who had the will to love might have argued herself into loving him. That -emotion was, in part at least, the result of a will to love, Dorinda had -learned in the last two years, since she had picked up more or less of -the patter of science; and the last thing she wished to do, she assured -herself, was ever to live through the destructive process again. With a -complete absence of self-deception, she could ask herself now if she had -been in love with love when she met Jason Greylock, and if any other -reasonably attractive man would have answered as well in his place. Was -it the moment, after all, and not the man, that really mattered? If Bob -Ellgood had shown that admiring interest in her the year before instead -of the day after she met Jason, would her life have been different? Did -the importunate necessity exist in the imagination, and were you -compelled to work it out into experience before you could settle down to -the serious business of life? - -She looked round as the door opened, and saw Doctor Burch coming out -with the two women patients. - -"At ten to-morrow," the elder woman said, as she slipped on her fur -coat. - -"Ten to-morrow," Dorinda repeated mechanically, while she went over to -the desk and wrote down the appointment in the office book. When she -turned away, the woman had gone, and Doctor Burch was gazing at her with -his twinkling, near-sighted eyes from behind rimless eyeglasses. - -"There's one more to come," she observed in a brisk, professional tone. - -"One more?" - -"Patient, I mean." - -"Oh, yes. That will finish them till we go out. You ought to thank your -stars you don't have to make calls." - -"Yes. I get tired listening to complaints." - -He smiled. "You aren't sympathetic?" - -She thought of Rose Emily. "Well, I've seen so much real misery." - -"It's real enough everywhere." - -"Yes, I know. I suppose the truth is that life doesn't seem to me to be -worth all the fuss they make over it. The more they suffer, the harder -they appear to cling to living. I believe in facing what you have to -face and making as little fuss about it as possible." - -"I've noticed that. You hate fussiness." - -She assented gravely. "When you've been very poor, you realize that it -is the greatest extravagance." - -"You've been very poor, then?" - -"Almost everybody is poor at Pedlar's Mill. The Ellgoods are the only -people who have prospered. The rest of us have had to wring whatever -we've had out of barren ground. It was a struggle to make anything -grow." - -"Well, your face gives you away," he said thoughtfully. "Any nerve -specialist could tell you that you are made up of contradictions. You've -got the most romantic eyes I ever saw--they are as deep as an autumn -twilight--and the sternest mouth. Your eyes are gentle and your mouth is -hard--too hard, if you don't mind my saying so." - -"Oh, I don't mind. People say we make our mouths. I heard Doctor Faraday -tell a woman that a few days ago. But it isn't true. Life makes us and -breaks us. We don't make life. The best we can do is to bear it." - -"And you do that jolly well." - -She did not smile as she answered. "Oh, I'm satisfied. I'm not -unhappy--except in spots," she corrected herself. - -"Yet you have very little pleasure. You never go out." - -"Yes, I do--sometimes. Every now and then Mrs. Faraday takes me to the -theatre." - -"Do you ever go to hear music?" - -"No, Mrs. Faraday doesn't care for it." She laughed. "The best I've ever -heard was a band in the street." - -For an instant he hesitated, and she wondered what was coming. Then he -said persuasively: "There's a good concert to-morrow. Would you care to -come?" - -She glanced at him inquiringly. "Sunday afternoon?" - -"Yes, there's this new pianist, Krause. You aren't too pious, are you?" - -"I'm not pious at all." A satirical memory sifted through her mind, and -she heard her own voice saying, "Will you let her die without giving her -time to prepare?" - -"Then I'll come for you at half-past two. We'll hear the concert, and -then have tea somewhere, or a stroll in the Park." - -When he had gone, she put the office in order, and then waited until the -last patient should leave. After all, why shouldn't she try to find some -pleasure in life? Her hesitation had come, she felt, from a nervous -avoidance of crowds, a shrinking from any change in her secluded manner -of living. She hummed a line from one of the Gospel hymns. "Rescue the -perishing, care for the dying." - -"How ignorant he will think me when he discovers I have never heard any -music. I am ignorant, yet I am educated compared to what I was two years -ago. I know life now, and that is a great deal." - -The patient came out and left, and in a few minutes Doctor Faraday -passed through the room on his way to put on his overcoat. - -"Are you going out before lunch?" she asked, because she knew Mrs. -Faraday hated to have him miss his meals. - -"Yes, I can't wait, but I'll light a cigar." - -He took out one of the long slender cigars he preferred, and stopped in -front of her while she struck a match and held her hand by the flame. - -"That's a suitable young man, Dorinda," he remarked irrelevantly, with -his whimsical smile. - -"Young man?" She glanced up inquiringly. Though her sense of humour had -developed almost morbidly, she had discovered that it was of a wilder -variety than Doctor Faraday's. - -"I think, my dear girl," he explained, "that you could go farther and do -worse than take Richard. If I'm not mistaken, he has a future before -him." - -She laughed. "There wouldn't be much for me in that sort of future." - -"But there might be in the results." Then he grew serious. "He is -interested in you, and I hope something will come of it." - -A pricking sensation in her nerves made her start away from him. - -"Don't," she said sharply. "I've finished with all that sort of thing." -"Not for good. You are too young." - -"Yes, for good. I can't explain what I mean, but the very thought of -that makes me--well, sick all over." - -Her face had gone white, and struck by the change, he looked at her -closely. "Some women," he said, "are affected that way by a shock." - -"You mean by a blow on the head?" - -"No, I don't mean a physical blow. I mean an emotional shock. Such a -thing may produce a nervous revulsion." - -"Well, that has happened to me." - -He laid his hand on her shoulder. "It will pass probably. You are -handsomer than ever. It is natural that you should need love." - -A wave of aversion swept over her face. "But 'I don't need it. I am -through with all that." - -He looked at her gravely. "And you will fill your life--with what?" - -She laughed derisively. How little men knew! "With something better than -broomsedge. That's the first thing that puts out on barren soil, just -broomsedge. Then that goes and pines come to stay--pines and -life-everlasting. You won't understand," she explained lightly. "I was -talking to Doctor Burch about Pedlar's Mill just before you came in, and -I told him we had to get our living from barren ground." - -He patted her shoulder. "Well, I hope that, too, will pass," he answered -as he turned to put on his overcoat. - -She remembered his words the next day while she sat in the concert -hall waiting for the music to begin. At first she had tried to -make out the names on the programme, desisting presently because -they confused her. Beethoven. Bach. Chopin. She went over the -others again, stumbling because she could make nothing of the syllables. -A-p-p-a-s-s-i-o-n-a-t-a. What did the strange word mean? -P-a-t-h-é-tique--that she could dimly grasp. Sonata? Nocturne? What -did the strange words mean? How could she be expected to know she had -never heard them before? - -Suddenly, while she struggled over the letters, the music floated toward -her from the cool twilight of the distance. This was not music, she -thought in surprise, but the sound of a storm coming up through the tall -pines at Old Farm. She had heard this singing melody a thousand times, -on autumn afternoons, in the woods. Then, as it drew nearer, the harmony -changed from sound into sensation; and from pure sensation, rippling in -wave after wave like a river, it was merged and lost in her -consciousness. - -In the beginning, while she sat there, rapt in startled apprehension, -she thought of innumerable things she had forgotten; detached incidents, -impressions which glittered sharply, edged with light, against the -mosaic of her recollections. Mellow sunshine, sparkling like new cider, -streamed over her. Music, which she had imagined to be sound only, was -changing into colour. She saw it first in delicate green and amber; then -in violent clashes of red and purple; but she saw it always as vividly -as if it reached her brain through her eyes. She thought first of the -evening sky over the bulrushes; of the grass after rain in the pasture; -of the pear trees breaking with the dawn from palest green into white. -Then the colours changed, and she remembered sunsets over the -broomsedge. The glow cast upward from the earth as if the wild grass -were burning. The bough of a black-gum tree emblazoned in scarlet on the -blue sky. The purple mist of autumn twilight, like the bloom on a grape. -The road home through the abandoned fields. The solitary star in a sky -which was stained the colour of ripe fruit. The white farm-house. The -shingled roof like a hood. Swallows flying. Swallows everywhere, a world -of swallows spinning like curved blades in the afterglow. - -With the flight of wings, ecstasy quivered over her, while sound and -colour were transformed into rhythms of feeling. Pure sensation held and -tortured her. She felt the music playing on her nerves as the wind plays -on a harp; she felt it shatter her nerves like broken string, and sweep -on crashing, ploughing through the labyrinth of her soul. Down there, in -the deep below the depths of her being, she felt it tearing her vitals. -Down there, in the buried jungle, where her thoughts had never -penetrated, she felt it destroying the hidden roots of her life. In this -darkness there was no colour; there was no glimmer of twilight; there -was only the maze of inarticulate agony. . . . - -Now it was dying away. Now it was returning. Something that she had -thought dead was coming to life again. Something that she had buried out -of sight under the earth was pushing upward in anguish. Something that -she had defeated was marching as a conqueror over her life. Suddenly she -was pierced by a thousand splinters of crystal sound. Little quivers of -light ran over her. Beads of pain broke out on her forehead and her -lips. She clenched her hands together, and forced her body back into her -chair. "I've got to stand it. No matter what it does to me, I've got to -stand it." - - - - -V - - -"I am afraid you found it difficult," Doctor Burch said, when it was -over. "It wasn't an easy programme. I wish there had been more of -Krause." - -"I'm not sure I liked it," she answered wearily. "I feel as if I had -ploughed a field. It made me savage, just the way moonlight used to when -I was growing up." - -"That is the pure essence of sensation. Now, I never get that response -to music. To me it is little more than an intellectual exercise. The -greatest musician I ever knew told me once that his knowledge of the -theory of music had, in a way, spoiled his complete enjoyment of a -concert." - -She had refused tea, and they had strolled in the direction of the Park. -As she left the concert hall, it had seemed to her that she was stifling -for air, and now, when they entered the Park, she threw back her head -and breathed quickly, with her gaze on the bright chain of sky threading -the tree-tops. - -"This smells like November at Old Farm," she said. "Whenever I smell the -country, I want to go home." - -"Yours is a large farm?" - -She laughed. "A thousand acres and we couldn't afford to buy a cow. Do -you know what it means to be land poor? After the war my father couldn't -hire labour, so he had to let all the land go bad, as we say, except the -little he could cultivate himself. The rest has run to old fields. -Everything is eaten up by the taxes and the mortgage. There are pines, -of course, and Nathan Pedlar tells us if we let the timber stand, it -will one day be valuable. Now we can't get a good price because the -roads are so bad it takes too many mules to haul it away. Once in a -while, we sell some trees to pay the taxes, but they bring so little. My -father cut down seven beautiful poplars at Poplar Spring; but when he -sold them he couldn't get but a dollar and a half for each one where it -fell. It doesn't seem worth while destroying trees for that." - -"What do you do with the abandoned fields?" - -"Nothing. Some people turn sheep into them, but my father says that -doesn't pay. The fields run to broomsedge and life-everlasting, and in -time pine and scrub oak get a good start." - -"But they can be reclaimed. The land can be brought back, if it is well -treated." - -"I know, but that takes labour; and Father and Josiah have as much work -as they can manage. There isn't any money to pay the wages of hands. -We've got some good pastures too. If only there was something to begin -with, we might have a dairy farm. Nathan Pedlar says, or a stock farm -like James Ellgood's. I wish I knew the science of farming," she -concluded earnestly. "Doctor Faraday says it is as much a science as -medicine." - -It was The first time he had seen her deeply interested. Strange, the -hold the country could get over one! - -"Is there any way I could learn farming from books?" Dorinda asked -before he could reply. "I mean learn the modern ways of getting the best -out of the soil?" - -He smiled. "It all comes back to chemistry, doesn't it? That, I imagine, -is what Doctor Faraday meant--the chemistry of agriculture. Yes, there -are books you can study. I'll get you a list from a friend of mine who -is a professor in the University of Wisconsin. By the way, he is to give -a lecture on that very subject in New York next month. There is to be a -series of lectures. I'll find out about it and take you if you'll go -with me. You must remember, though, that practical experience is always -the best teacher." - -She shook her head. "We have the experience of generations, and it has -taught us nothing except to do things the way we've always done them. -Mother used to say that the only land she would ever cultivate, if she -had to choose over again, is the land of Canaan where - - - 'generous fruits that never fail, - On trees immortal grow!'" - - -He laughed. "I think I'd like your mother." - -The casual remark arrested her. Would he really like her mother, she -wondered, with her caustic humour, her driven energy, her periodical -neuralgia, and her perpetual melancholy? Had he ever known any one who -resembled her? Had he ever known any woman whose life was so empty? - -"Poor Ma!"--She corrected herself: "Poor Mother, the farm has eaten away -her life. It caught her when she was young, and she was never able to -get free." - -"Doesn't she care for it?" - -"I don't know. I sometimes think she hates it, but I know it would kill -her to leave it. It is like a bad heart. You may suffer from it, but it -is your life, and it would kill you to lose it." She broke off, pondered -deeply for a few moments, and then added impulsively, "If I had the -money, I'd go back and start a dairy farm there." - -While she spoke a vision glimmered between the windy dusk in the Park -and the orange light of the afterglow. She saw it with an intensity, an -eagerness that was breathless;--the fields, the roads, the white gate, -the long low house, the lamp shining in the front window. For the first -time she could think of Old Farm without invoking the image of Jason. -For the first time since she had left home, she felt that earlier and -deeper associations were reaching out to her, that they were groping -after her, like the tendrils of vines, through the darkness and violence -of her later memories. Earlier and deeper associations, rooted there in -the earth, were drawing her back across time and space and -forgetfulness. Passion stirred again in her heart; but it was passion -transfigured, recoiling from the personal to the impersonal object. It -seemed to her, walking there in the blue twilight, that the music had -released some imprisoned force in the depths of her being, and that this -force was spreading out over the world, that it was growing wider and -thinner until it covered all the desolate country at Old Farm. With a -shock of joy, she realized that she was no longer benumbed, that she had -come to life again. She had come to life again, but how differently! - -"I feel as if the farm were calling to me to come back and help it," she -said. - -That night she dreamed of Pedlar's Mill. She dreamed that she was -ploughing one of the abandoned fields, where the ghostly scent of the -life-everlasting reminded her of the smell of her mother's flowered -bandbox when she took it out of the closet on Sunday mornings--the aroma -of countless dead and forgotten Sabbaths. Dan and Beersheba were -harnessed to the plough, and when they had finished one furrow, they -turned and looked back at her before they began another. "You'll never -get this done if you plough a hundred years," they said, "because there -is nothing here but thistles, and you can't plough thistles under." Then -she looked round her and saw that they were right. As far as she could -see, on every side, the field was filled with prickly purple thistles, -and every thistle was wearing the face of Jason. A million thistles, and -every thistle looked up at her with the eyes of Jason! She turned the -plough where they grew thickest, trampling them down, uprooting them, -ploughing them under with all her strength; but always when they went -into the soil, they cropped up again. Millions of purple flaunting -heads! Millions of faces! They sprang up everywhere; in the deep furrow -that the plough had cut; in the dun-coloured clods of the upturned -earth; under the feet of the horses; under her own feet, springing back, -as if they were set on wire stems, as soon as she had crushed them into -the ground. "I am going to plough them under, if it kills me," she said -aloud; and then she awoke. A chill wind was blowing the white curtains -at the window. Was it only her imagination, or did the wind, blowing -over the city, bring the fragrance of pine and life-everlasting? For an -instant, scarcely longer than a quick breath, she felt a sensation of -physical nearness, as if some one had touched her. Then it vanished, -leaving her in a shudder of memory. It was not love; of this she was -positive. Was it hate which had assumed, in the moment between sleep and -waking, the physical intensity of love? It was the first time she had -dreamed of Jason. Long after she had ceased to think of him, she told -herself resentfully. - -The next morning, when office hours were over, she went to the library -and asked for a list of books on dairy farming. She read with eagerness -every one that was given to her, patiently making notes, keeping in her -mind the peculiar situation at Old Farm. When Doctor Burch arranged for -the course of lectures, she attended them regularly, adding, with -diligence, whatever she could to her knowledge of methods; gleaning, -winnowing, storing away in her memory the facts which she thought might -some day be useful. Before her always were the neglected fields. She saw -the renewal of promise in the land; the sowing of the grain, the -springing up, the ripening, the immemorial celebration of the harvest. -She saw the yellowing waves of wheat, the poetic even swath falling -after the mower. "All that land," she thought, "all that land wasted!" -The possibility of the dairy farm haunted her mind. Enterprise, -industry, and a little capital with which to begin! That was all that -one needed. If she could start with a few cows, six perhaps, and do all -the work of the dairy herself, it might be managed. But Old Farm must be -made to pay, she decided emphatically. Old Farm with a thousand acres -could supply sufficient pasture and fodder for as many cows as she would -ever be likely to own. "If I could get the labour it wouldn't be so -hard," she thought one day, while she was sitting by the window in the -nursery. "If I could buy the cows and hire a little extra labour, it -wouldn't be impossible to make a success." Then her spirit drooped. "You -can't do anything without a little money," she thought, and laughed -aloud. "Not much, but a little makes all the difference." - -"What are you laughing at, Dorinda?" asked Mrs. Faraday, turning from -the crib, where she was bending over the baby. - -"I was thinking I'd give anything I've got for six--no, a dozen cows." - -"Cows?" - -"At Old Farm. It hurts me to think of all that land wasted." - -"It is a pity. I suppose it was good land once?" - -"In great-grandfather's day it was one of the best farms in that part of -the country. Of course he never cultivated much of it. He let a lot of -it stand in timber. That's what we paid the taxes with right after the -war. Father and Josiah do the best they can," she added, "but everything -is always against them. Some people are like that, you know." - -"It's a bad way to be," commented Mrs. Faraday, and she asked presently, -"What would you like to do with the farm?" - -Dorinda's cheeks flushed as she answered. "First, if I had the money, -I'd try to bring up the fields. I'd sow cowpeas and turn them under -this year wherever I could. Then I'd add to the pasture. We can easily -do that, and in a little while we could get a good stand of grass. Then -I'd buy some cows from James Ellgood, some of his Jerseys, and try to -set up a dairy farm, a very little one, but I wouldn't let anybody touch -the milk and butter except Mother and myself. I wouldn't be satisfied -with anything that wasn't better than the best," she concluded, with an -energy that was characteristic of the earlier Dorinda. - -"And you'd sell your butter--where?" - -For an instant this dampened the girl's enthusiasm. How funny that she -had never once thought of that! - -"Oh, well, we're near enough to Richmond or Washington," she said. "The -road to the station is bad, but it is only two miles. We could churn one -day and send the butter out before sunrise the next morning." - -Mrs. Faraday looked at her sympathetically. "I could help you in -Washington," she said. "I've a friend there who owns one of the biggest -hotels. The manager would take your butter, I know, and eggs too, if -they are the very best that can be bought. And you'd ask a large price. -People are always willing to pay for the best." - -Dorinda sighed. "It's just like a fairy tale," she said, "but, of -course, it is utterly out of the question." - -"Well, I don't see why." Mrs. Faraday lifted the baby from the crib and -sat down to nurse it. "We would lend you the money you needed to start -with. After all you've done for Penelope, we'd be only too glad to do -that in return. But it would be drudgery, even if you succeeded, and you -ought not to look forward to that. You ought to marry, my dear." - -Dorinda flinched. "Oh, I've finished with all that!" - -"But you haven't. You're too young to give up that side of life." - -"I don't care. I'm through with it," repeated Dorinda, and she meant it. - -"Well, just remember that we are ready to help you at any time. It would -mean nothing to us to invest a few thousand dollars in your farm. You -could pay us back when you succeeded." - -"And I could pay you interest all the time." - -"Of course--if it would make you feel easier. Only don't let your -foolish pride stand in the way of achieving something in the end." - -Dorinda gazed thoughtfully out of the window. Her pride was foolish, she -supposed, but it was all that she had. With nothing else to fall back -on, she had taken refuge in an exaggerated sense of independence. - -"You are so capable," Mrs. Faraday was saying, "that I am sure you will -never fail in anything that you undertake. The doctor was telling me -only yesterday that, for a woman without special training, your -efficiency is really remarkable. It isn't often the girls of your age -are so practical." - -A laugh without merriment broke from Dorinda's lips. "That would please -my mother," she said. "They used to say at Old Farm that my head was -full of notions." - -"Most young girls' are. But you were fortunate to settle down as -soon as you did." - -Without replying, Dorinda stared at the baby in Mrs. Faraday's arms. It -was a fat, pink baby, with a round face in which the features were like -tiny flowers, and a bald head, as clear and smooth as an egg shell. When -it laughed back at her, the pink face crumpled up and it gurgled with -toothless gums. - -"If you've ever been poor, you can't get over the dread of having to -borrow," she answered after a pause. - -For the next few months, while she read books and attended lectures -without understanding them, the idea of the country worked like leaven -in Dorinda's imagination. Gradually, though she was unprepared for the -change in her attitude, some involuntary force was driving her back to -Old Farm. Problems that had appeared inexplicable became as simple as -arithmetic; obstacles that had looked like mountains evaporated into -mist as she approached them. "I couldn't let them do it," she would -declare, adding a minute later, with weakening obstinacy, "After all, it -isn't as if they were giving me the money. I can always pay them in the -end, even if I have to mortgage the farm." - -As the winter passed, she saw more and more of Burch. She liked him; she -enjoyed her walks with him; his friendship had become a substantial -interest in her life; but she realized now and then, when he -accidentally touched her hand, that every nerve in her body said, "So -far and no farther" to human intercourse. Her revulsion from the -physical aspect of love was a matter of the nerves, she knew, for more -than two years under the roof of a great surgeon had taught her -something deeper than the patter of science. Yet, though her shrinking -was of the nerves only, it was none the less real. One side of her was -still dead. The insensibility of the last two years, which had made her -tell herself at moments that she could not feel the prick of a pin in -her flesh, had worn off slowly from that area of her mind which was -superior to the emotions. But the thought of love, the faintest reminder -of its potency, filled her with aversion, with an inexpressible -weariness. She simply could not bear, she told herself bluntly, to be -touched. - -"There must be something in life besides love," she thought, in revolt -from the universal harping upon a single string. Watching the people in -the street, she would find herself thinking, "That woman looks as if she -lived without love, but she doesn't look unhappy. She must have found -something else." Then, with the vision of Old Farm in her mind, she -would reflect exultantly: "There is something else for me also. Love -isn't everything." - -"Do you know, I've almost decided to go home," she said to Doctor Burch -one day in April, when they were sitting in the Park. "Did you see those -lilacs in the florists' windows as we passed? It is lilac time at Old -Farm now, and the big bushes in the corner of the west wing are all in -bloom. They are so old that they reach to the roof, and the catbirds -build in them every year." She lifted her head and looked at the -delicate pattern of the elms against the pale sky. How cold and thin -spring was in the North! - -"You mean you'll go back and begin farming?" - -"I mean I can't stay away any longer. I'm part of it. I belong to the -abandoned fields." - -"Will you let me come?" he asked abruptly. - -Her hand lay, palm upward, in her lap, and as he asked the question, his -fingers closed caressingly over hers. Instantly the alarm began in her -nerves; she felt the warning quiver dart through them like the vibration -in a wire. Her nerves, not her heart, repulsed him. She might even love -him, she thought, if only he could keep at a distance; if he would never -touch her; if he would remain contented and aloof, neither giving nor -demanding the signs of emotion. But at the first gesture of approach -every cell in her body sprang on the defensive. - -"You wouldn't be comfortable," she said, while an expression that was -almost hostile crept over her full red mouth. "It is so different from -anything you have known." - -His smile was winning. "I shouldn't mind that if you wanted me." - -She looked over his head at the elm boughs arching against the sky. Yes, -it was lilac time in Virginia. She saw the rich clusters drooping beside -the whitewashed walls, under the grey eaves where wrens were building. -The door was open, and the fragrance swept the clean, bare hall, with -the open door at, the other end, beyond which the green slope swelled -upward to the pear orchard. Over all, there was the big pine on the -hill, brushing the quiet sky like a bird's outstretched wing. How -peaceful it seemed. After the storm through which she had passed, -tranquillity meant happiness. - -The silence had grown intimate, tender, provocative; and for a moment -she had a feeling of relaxation from tension, as if the iron in her soul -were dissolving. Then the pressure of his fingers tightened, and she -shivered and drew away her hand. - -"You don't like me to touch you?" he asked, and there was a hurt look in -his eyes. - -She shook her head. "I don't like anybody to touch me." - -"Are you as hard as that?" - -"I suppose I am hard, but I can't change." - -"Not if I wait? I can wait as long as you make me." - -"It wouldn't make any difference. Waiting wouldn't change me. I've -finished with all that." - -She rose because the thought of Jason had come to her out of the vision -of Old Farm; and though she no longer loved him, though she hated him, -this thought was so unexpected and yet so real that it was as if he had -actually walked into her presence. He was nothing to her, but his -influence still affected her life; he was buried somewhere in her -consciousness, like a secret enemy who could spring out of the -wilderness and strike when she was defenseless. - -On the hall table, when she entered the house, she found a letter, -addressed in the pale, repressed handwriting of her mother. As she went -upstairs she tore it open, and dropping into a chair by the window of -her room, she read the closely written sheets by the last gleam of -daylight. - - -_My dear Daughter_: - -I hate to have to send you bad news, but your father had a stroke last -Saturday while he was ploughing the tobacco field. He had not been well -for several days, but you know he never complains, and he did not stop -work till he dropped in the field. Josiah and Rufus had to pick him up -between them and bring him into the house. - -We sent straight for the doctor. Rufus saddled Beersheba and rode to -Pedlar's Mill, and Nathan sent word to Doctor Stout up near the -Courthouse. It was more than two hours before the doctor got here, but -your father had not come to himself. The doctor says he will never be up -again, and if you want to see him alive, you had better come as soon as -you can. We do everything that is possible, and Nathan has been the -greatest help in the world. I don't know what I should do without him. -Josiah spends the nights here. Since his marriage he has lived, as I -wrote you, in that place over beyond Plumtree, but he is real good about -helping, and so is Elvira. She has offered to help me nurse, but she is -so flighty that I had rather have Aunt Mehitable's granddaughter, -Fluvanna Moody. Fluvanna comes every day. She is a mighty good nurse and -your father likes to have her around, even if she is one of the new -order of darkeys. I believe she takes after Aunt Mehitable more than any -of the other grandchildren. Your father does not give any trouble, and -he has not spoken but twice since his fall. It is right hard to -understand what he says--he speaks so thickly--but Fluvanna and I both -think he was asking for you. - -The farm is going on just the same. Rufus hates the work here, and wants -to go to the city. A week before his stroke your father was offered a -thousand dollars for the timber between Poplar Spring and the back gate. -Nathan advised him to hold on a little longer, but I reckon we will have -to sell it now to pay for your father's sickness. The cow is a great -comfort. Your father cannot take any solid food. I give him a little -milk and a few swallows of chicken broth. Mrs. Garlick sent him some -chicken broth yesterday, and one of the Miss Sneads comes over with -something every day. - -Your affectionate mother, - -EUDORA ABERNETHY OAKLEY. - - -So, after all, the decision had been taken out of her hands. Life was -treating her still as if she were a straw in the wind, a leaf on a -stream. The invisible processes which had swept her away were sweeping -her back again. While she sat there with the letter in her hand, she had -the feeling that she was caught in the whirlpool of universal anarchy, -and that she could not by any effort of her will bring order out of -chaos. - -"Poor Pa." This was her first thought, and she used instinctively the -name that had been on her lips as a child. So this was the end for him, -and what had he ever had? He had known nothing except toil. Suddenly, as -if the fact added an intolerable poignancy to her grief, she remembered -that he had never learned even to read and write. He could sign his -name, that was all. When he was a child the "poor white" was expected to -remain unlettered, and in later years the knowledge her mother had -taught him had not, as he used to say apologetically, "stuck by him." - -Rising quickly, she put the letter aside and began folding her clothes. - - - - -VI - - -As the train rushed through the familiar country, Dorinda counted the -new patches of ploughed ground in the landscape. "James Ellgood must be -trying to reclaim all his old fields," she thought. - -The sun had not yet risen above the fretwork of trees on the -horizon, but the broomsedge had felt the approach of day and was -flying upward to meet it. Out of the east, she saw gradually emerge -the serpentine curves of Whippernock River; then the clouds of blown -smoke, the irregular pattern of the farms, and the buildings of the -station, which wore a startled and half-awake air in the dawn. - -After more than two years how strange it felt to be back again! -To be back again just as if nothing had happened! How small the -station looked, and how desolate, stranded like a wrecked ship -in the broomsedge. What isolation! What barrenness! In her memory -the horizon had been so much wider, the road so much longer, the band of -woods so much deeper. It seemed to her that the landscape must have -diminished in an incredible way since she had left it. Even the untidy -look of the station; the litter of shavings and tobacco stems; the -shabbiness and crudeness of the country people meeting the train; the -disreputable rags of Butcher, the lame negro, who lived in the freight -car; the very fowls scratching in the dust of the cleared space;--all -these characteristic details were uglier and more trivial than she had -remembered them. A sense of loneliness swept her thoughts, as if the -solitude had blown over her like smoke. She realized that the Pedlar's -Mill of her mind and the Pedlar's Mill of actuality were two different -places. She was returning home, and she felt as strange as she had felt -in New York. Well, at least she had not crawled back. She had returned -with her head held high, as she had resolved that she would. - -The whistle was sounding again, and the brakeman was hastily gathering -her bags. She followed him to the platform, where the conductor stood -waiting, the same conductor who had helped her into the train the -morning she had gone away. He did not recognize her, and for some -obscure reason, she felt flattered because he had forgotten her. - -The train was stopping slowly. The faces of the assembled farmers -started out so close to the track that they gave her a shock. There was -Jim Ellgood ready to leave for Richmond; there was Mr. Garlick meeting -somebody, his daughter probably; there was Mr. Kettledrum, looking as -stringy and run-to-seed, as if he had not moved out of his wheelrut -since the morning he had picked her up in the rain. In the little group -she saw Rufus, slender, handsome, sullen as ever. How black his eyes -were, and how becoming the dark red was in his cheeks! Then, as the -train reached the station, she saw Nathan Pedlar running down to the -track with the mail bag in his hand. Just at the last minute, but always -in time--how like Nathan that was! - -The conductor, with one foot on the step, was swinging his free leg -while he felt for the ground. She put up her hand, hurriedly arranging -her small blue hat with the flowing chiffon veil. Then she lifted the -folds of her skirt as the conductor, who was firmly planted now on the -earth, helped her to alight. Her heart was sad for her father, but -beneath the sadness her indomitable pride supported her. Yes, she had -come back unashamed. She might not return as a conqueror, but she had -returned undefeated. They were looking at her as she stepped to the -ground, and she felt, with a thrill of satisfaction, that, in her navy -blue poplin with the chiffon veil framing her face (hanging veils were -much worn in New York that year) she was worthy of the surprised glances -they cast at her. A little thinner, a little paler, less girlish but -more striking, than she had been when she went away. Her height gave her -dignity, and this dignity was reflected in her vivid blue eyes, with -their unflinching and slightly arrogant gaze. Romantic eyes, Burch had -called them, and she had wondered what he meant, for surely there was -little romance left now in her mind. If experience had taught her -nothing else, it had at least made her a realist. She had learned to -take things as they are, and that, as Burch had once remarked -whimsically, "in the long run fustian wears better than velvet." She had -learned, too, she told herself in the first moments of her homecoming, -that so long as she could rule her own mind she was not afraid of the -forces without. - -They had gathered round her. She was smiling and shaking the -outstretched hands. "Well, it looked as if we'd about lost you for -good." "You've been gone two years, ain't you?" "Hardly know Pedlar's -Mill, I reckon, since Nathan's painted the store red?" "I saw her -off," Mr. Kettledrum was saying over and over. "I saw her -off. A good long visit, warn't it?" - -Moving out of the throng, she kissed Rufus, who looked dejected and -resentful. - -"How is Pa, Rufus?" - -"There ain't any change. The doctor says he may drag on this way for -several weeks, or he may go suddenly at any time." - -"Well, we'd better start right on." Walking quickly up the slope to -where the old buggy was standing, she put her arms round Dan's neck and -laid her cheek against him. "He knows me," she said, "dear old Dan, he -hasn't forgotten me. Is there anything you want for Ma at the store?" - -"She gave me a list. I left it with Minnie May." - -"Minnie May doesn't work in the store, does she? Who looks after the -children?" - -"She does. She does everything." - -"Well, it's a shame. She oughtn't to, and only thirteen. I'll speak to -Nathan about it." - -At her commanding tone, Rufus grinned. "You've come back looking as if -you could run the world, Dorinda," he observed, with envy. "I wish I -could go away. I'd start to-morrow, if it wasn't for Pa." - -"Yes, that's why I came back. We can't leave Pa and Ma now. But it's -hard on you, Rufus." - -"You bet it is! It's my turn to get away next." - -She assented. "I know it. If the time comes when Pa can do without you, -I'll help you to go. You'll never make much of a farmer." - -He stared moodily at the road, but she could see that her promise had -encouraged him. "There's nothing in it," he answered. "I believe it is -the meanest work ever made. You may slave till you drop, and there's -never anything to show for it. Look at Pa." - -"Pa never had a chance. He grew up at the wrong time. But all farming -isn't bad. Suppose we had a dairy farm?" - -He grinned again. "O Lord! with one cow! You're out of your head!" - -"Perhaps. Anyway, I've come back to see what I can do." - -Her glance wavered as Nathan, having dashed into the store with the mail -bag, came toward them with the kind of lope that he used when he was in -a hurry. "I didn't get a chance to speak to you at the train, Dorinda," -he said, "but all the same I'm glad you're home again. The children want -to get a peek at you in your city clothes. Minnie May's gone crazy about -your veil." - -In two years he had altered as little as the landscape. Lank, -sand-coloured, with his loping, stride, his hands that were all -knuckles, and his kindly clown's face under hair that was as short as -rubbed-off fur, he appeared to her, just as he used to do, as both -efficient and negligible. Poor Nathan, how unattractive he was, but how -good and faithful! Clean, too, notwithstanding the fact that he never -stopped working. His face and neck looked well scrubbed, and his blue -cotton shirt was still smelling of starch and ironing. The memory of the -lunch he had given her when she went away was in her mind as she held -out her hand to him and then stooped to kiss the children, one after -another. How they must miss their mother, these children! She must do -something for Minnie May, who had the stunted look of overworked -childhood. Nathan was well off for Pedlar's Mill, yet he let the little -girl work like a servant. It was simply that he did not know, and she -would make it her business, she told herself firmly, to instruct him. -Minnie May was a nice, earnest child, with the look of her mother. She -would be almost pretty, too, if she could get that driven expression out -of her pinched little face. Her hair was really lovely, wheaten red like -Rose Emily's, only it needed brushing, and she wore it dragged back from -her forehead where, at thirteen, wrinkles were already forming. Yes, -Dorinda decided, she would certainly speak to Nathan. - -"You look fine, Dorinda," he was saying while he stared at her. - -"She is like a paper doll in a book," Minnie May exclaimed. "One of -those fashion books Miss Seena Snead has." - -The three smaller children were staring with wide open eyes and mouths, -and John Abner, the baby, she remembered, with the clubfoot, was holding -a slice of bread and butter in both hands. He limped badly when he -walked, she noticed. What a job it must be keeping these children washed -and dressed. - -"Are you the nurse too, Minnie May?" she inquired. - -"Yes, I do everything," the little girl replied proudly, wrinkling her -forehead. "We had a coloured girl, but the children didn't like her and -wouldn't mind her." - -Dorinda turned to Nathan. "It's too much, Nathan. You oughtn't to let -her do it." - -"I tell her not to slave so hard," he answered helplessly. "But it -doesn't do any good. She promised her mother that she would take care of -the children." - -"But Rose Emily never meant this. It is making an old woman of the child -before she grows up." - -"I can't help it. She's as stubborn as a mule about it. Maybe you can do -something." - -Dorinda nodded with her capable air. "Well, I'll fix it." She looked -cool, composed, and competent, the picture of dignified self-reliance, -as she stepped between the muddy wheels of the dilapidated buggy. - -"I hope you'll find your father better," Nathan said. "I'll come over -later in the day and see if there is anything I can help about." She -smiled gratefully over her shoulder, and Rufus remarked, in his sullen, -suppressed voice, as they drove off, "He's been over every single -evening since Pa had his stroke." - -"Nobody ever had a kinder heart," Dorinda responded absently, for she -was not thinking of Nathan. - -As the buggy jolted down the slope to the pine woods, a dogcart passed -them on the way to the station, and she recognized Geneva Greylock. She -was driving the dogcart with red wheels which she had used before her -marriage; she was wearing the same jaunty clothes; but the change in her -appearance made Dorinda turn to glance back at her. Though she was still -in her early twenties, she looked like a middle-aged woman. Her sallow -cheeks had fallen in, her long nose was bony and reddened at the tip, -and her abundant flaxen hair was lustreless and untidy. - -"How soon blondes break," Dorinda said aloud, and she thought, "Two -years of marriage have made an old woman of her." - -"Yes, she's lost what looks she ever had," returned Rufus. "She was -always delicate, they say, and now her health has gone entirely. It's -the life she leads, I reckon. Folks say he is beginning to follow in his -father's footsteps. That's why the new doctor up by the Courthouse is -getting all his practice." When he spoke of Jason he carefully refrained -from calling his name. - -"Are there any children?" Dorinda asked. Her spirits were drooping; but -this depression, as far as she was aware, had no connection with Jason. -Not her own regret, but the futility of things in general, oppressed her -with a feeling of gloom. - -"Not that I ever heard of," Rufus replied. "To tell the truth I never -hear anybody mention his name. You can ask Nathan. He knows everything -about everybody." He shut his sullen lips tight, and stared straight -ahead of him. - -"Oh, it doesn't matter. I was merely wondering why her health had -failed." - -They had come out of the woods, and the wheels were creaking over the -dried mudholes. The sun had risen through a drift of cloud, and beneath -the violet rim an iridescent light rained over the abandoned fields. -While they drove on, it seemed to Dorinda that it was like moving within -the heart of an opal. Every young green leaf, every dew-drenched weed, -every silken cobweb, every brilliant bird, or gauzy insect,--all these -things were illuminated and bedizened with colour. Only the immense -black shadow of the horse and buggy raced sombrely over the broomsedge -by the roadside. - -"Nothing has changed," Dorinda thought. "Nothing has changed but -myself." - -Yes, it was all familiar, but it was different, and this difference -existed only within herself. All that she had suffered was still with -her. It was not an episode that she had left behind in the distance; it -was a living part of her nature. Even if she worked her unhappiness into -the soil; even if she cut down and burned it off with the broomsedge, -it would still spring up again in the place where it had been. Already, -before she had reached the house, the past was settling over her like -grey dust. - -They passed the Sneads' red brick house with white columns. The same -flowers bloomed in the borders; the same shrubs grew on the lawn; the -same clothes appeared to hang perpetually on the same clothes-line at -the corner of the back porch. In the pasture, the friendly faces of cows -looked at her over the rail fence, and she remembered that two years -ago, as she went by, she had seen them filing to the well trough. In a -few minutes she would pass the burned cabin and the oak with the fading -Gospel sign fastened to its bark. Her heart trembled. The racing shadow -by the road appeared to stretch over the sunrise. She felt again the -chill of despair, the involuntary shudder of her pulses. Then she lifted -her eyes with a resolute gesture and confronted remembrance. - -The place was unchanged. The deep wheelruts where the road forked; the -flat rock on which the mare slipped; the cluster of dogwood which -screened the spot where she had waited for Jason's return; the very -branch she had pushed aside,--not one of these things had altered. Only -the fire in her heart had gone out. The scene was different to her -because the eyes with which she looked on it had grown clearer. The -stone was merely a stone; the road was nothing more than a road to her -now. Over the gate, she could see the willows of Gooseneck Creek. Beyond -them the tall chimneys of Five Oaks lay like red smears on the -changeable blue of the sky. - -After they had left the fork, Dan quickened his pace. - -"The fence has been mended, I see, Rufus." - -"Yes, we had so much trouble with the cow straying. Pa was trying to get -all the fences near the house patched before fall. We were using the -rails that were left over from the timber he sold." - -"Those weren't the woods Ma wrote me about?" She could never think of -living trees as timber. - -"No, he is holding on to that in hope of getting a better price." - -They travelled the last quarter of a mile without speaking, and not -until the buggy had turned in at the gate and driven up the rocky grade -to the porch, did Dorinda ask if her father expected her. - -"Yes, Ma told him, but she wasn't sure that he understood. He was awake -before I left the place and Ma was seeing about breakfast." - -"Haven't you had any yet?" - -"Yes, I had a bite before I started. I'm no friend to an empty stomach, -and I reckon I can manage a little something after I've turned Dan into -the pasture. Pa was ploughing the tobacco field when he had his stroke, -but he had decided not to plant tobacco there this year. We're going to -try corn." - -"I'm glad he's given up tobacco." - -"He hasn't. Not entirely. But it takes more manure than he can spare -this year. Well, we're here at last. Is that you, Ma?" he shouted, as -the wheel scraped against the "rockery" by the steps. - -At his second call, the door opened and Mrs. Oakley ran out on the -porch. - -"So you've come, daughter," she said, and stood wiping her hands on her -apron while she waited for Dorinda to alight. How old she had grown, -thought the girl, with a clutch at her heart. Only the visionary eyes -looked out of the ravaged face through a film of despair, as stars shine -through a fog. - - - - -VII - - -Jumping out of the buggy, Dorinda took her mother into her arms; but -while she pressed her lips to the wrinkled cheek, it occurred to her -that it was like kissing a withered leaf. - -"How is Pa?" she asked in an effort to conceal the embarrassment they -both felt. - -"About the same. I don't see any change." - -"May I speak to him now?" - -"You'd better have your breakfast first. I've got breakfast ready for -you." - -"In a minute, but I'd like just to say a word to him. Oh, there's dear -old Rambler." She stooped to caress the hound. "I don't see Flossie." - -"I reckon she's up at the barn hunting mice. She had a new set of -kittens, but we had to drown all but one. We couldn't feed so many -cats." - -Embarrassment was passing away. How much had her mother known, she -wondered; how much had she suspected? - -"Well, I shan't be a minute," the girl said. "Is he in the chamber?" - -"Yes, he hasn't been out of bed since his stroke. Go right in. I don't -know whether he'll recognize you or not." - -Pushing the door open, Dorinda went in, followed by Rambler, walking -stiffly. The room was flooded with morning sunlight, for the green -outside shutters were open, and the window was raised that looked on the -pear orchard and the crooked path to the graveyard. It was all just as -she remembered it, except that in her recollection the big bed was -empty, and now her father lay supine on one side of it, with his head -resting upon the two feather pillows. There was a grotesque look in his -face, as if it had been pulled out of shape by some sudden twist, but -his inquiring brown eyes, with their wistful pathos, seemed to be -asking, "Why has it happened? What is the meaning of it all?" When she -bent over and touched his forehead with her lips, she saw that he could -not move himself, not even his head, not even his hand. Fallen and -helpless, he lay there like a pine tree that has been torn up by the -roots. - -"I've come back to help take care of you, Pa." - -His lips quivered, and she apprehended rather than heard what he said. - -"I'm glad to see you again, daughter." - -Dropping into the chair by the bedside, she laid her arms gently about -him. "You don't suffer, do you?" - -How immeasurably far away he seemed! How futile was any endeavour to -reach him! Then she remembered that he had always been far away, that he -had always stood just outside the circle in which they lived, as if he -were a member of some affectionate but inarticulate animal kingdom. - -He tried to smile, but the effort only accentuated the crooked line of -his mouth. - -"No, I don't suffer." For a moment he was silent; then he added in an -almost inaudible tone: "It's sort of restful." - -A leaden weight of tears fell on her heart. Not his death, but his life -seemed to her more than she could bear. What was her pain, her -wretchedness, compared to his monotony of toil? What was any pain, any -wretchedness, compared to the emptiness of his life? - -For a little while she talked on cheerfully, telling him of the lectures -she had heard and the books she had read, and of all the plans she had -made to help him with the farm. - -"I've borrowed some money to start with, and we'll make something of it -yet, Pa," she said brightly. - -His lips moved, but she could not understand what he said. Straining her -ears, she bent over him. For an instant it seemed to her that his tone -became clearer, and that he was on the point of speaking aloud; then the -struggle ceased, and he lay looking at her with his expression of mute -resignation. - -After this, though she tried to interest him in her plans, she saw that -his attention was beginning to wander. Every now and then he made an -effort to follow her, while a bewildered expression crept into his face; -but it was only for a minute at a time that he could fix his mind on -what she was saying, and when the strain became too great for him, his -gaze wandered to the open window and the harp-shaped pine, which -towered, dark as night, against the morning blue of the sky. - -"Well, I'll go to breakfast now," she said, as carelessly as she could. -"Ma has it ready for me." - -Rising from her chair, she stood looking down on him with misty eyes. -After all, the pathos of life was worse than the tragedy. "Is the light -too strong?" she asked, as she turned away. "Shall I close one of the -shutters?" - -At first he did not follow her, his thoughts had roved so far away, and -she repeated her question in another form. "Does the sun hurt your -eyes?" - -A smile wrung his lips. "No, I like to see the big pine," he answered; -and stealing out noiselessly, she left him alone with the tree and the -sky. - -In the kitchen her mother stood over her while she ate, watching every -mouthful with the eyes of repressed and hungry devotion. - -"You ain't so plump as you were, Dorinda, but you've kept your high -colour." - -"Oh, I'm well enough, but you look worn out, Ma." - -Mrs. Oakley hurried to the stove and back again. "Let me give you -another slice of bacon. You must be empty after that long trip. Well, of -course, I've had a good deal on me since your father got sick. Until -Fluvanna came, I didn't have anybody but Elvira to help me, and though -she was willing to do what she could, her fingers were all thumbs when -it came to making up a bed or moving things in a sickroom." - -"I can take most of the burden off you now. You know I learned a good -deal about illness when I was with Doctor Faraday." - -"Yes, you'll be a comfort, I know, but you're going back again as soon -as your father begins to mend, ain't you?" - -Dorinda shook her head with a smile, which, she told herself, looked -braver than it felt. "No, I'm not going back. I'd sooner stay here and -try to make something out of the farm. A thousand acres of land ought -not to be allowed to run to broomsedge like an old field." - -"Heaven knows we've tried, daughter. Nobody ever worked harder than your -father, and whatever came of it?" - -"Poor Pa. I know, but he came after the war when there wasn't any money -or any labourers." - -She told of the money Doctor Faraday would lend her, and of the hotel in -Washington which would take all the butter she could make. "But it must -be as good as the best," she explained, with a laugh. "I'm going over to -Green Acres to buy seven Jersey cows. Seven is a lucky number for me, so -I am going to start with it." - -"You'll have to have some help, then." - -"Not at first. Of course I'll need a boy for the barnyard, but I am -going to do the milking and all the work of the dairy myself. You can -help me with the skimming until we get a separator, and when Fluvanna -isn't waiting on Pa, she can lend a hand at the churning." - -Mrs. Oakley shook her head drearily. "You haven't tried it, Dorinda." - -"I know I haven't, but I'm going to. I learned a lot in the hospital, -and the chief thing was that it is slighting that has ruined us, white -and black alike, in the South. Hasn't Fluvanna got a brother Nimrod that -I could hire?" she asked more definitely. - -"Yes, and he's a good boy too. Fluvanna had him over here one day last -week chopping wood when Rufus was out in the field ploughing. That's a -thrifty family, the Moodys. I never saw a darkey that had as much vim as -Fluvanna. And she belongs to the new order too. I always thought it -spoiled them to learn to read and write till I hired her. She's got all -the sense Aunt Mehitable had, and she's picked up some education -besides. I declare, she talks better than a lot of white people I know." - -"I wonder if she'd stay on and help me with the farm?" Dorinda asked. "I -mean," she added, while her face clouded, "after Pa is up again." Though -she knew that her father would never be up again, she united with her -mother in evading the fact. - -"Oh, I'm sure she will," Mrs. Oakley responded, with eagerness. "She has -been helping me with my white Leghorns. All the hens are laying well. I -am setting Eva and Ida now." - -"You didn't have them when I was here." - -"No, Juliet hatched them. You remember Juliet? She was the first white -Leghorn hen I ever had." - -"Yes, I remember her. Have you got her still?" - -Mrs. Oakley sighed. "No, a coon broke into the henhouse last winter and -killed her. She was a good hen, if I ever had one." It was amazing to -Dorinda the way her mother knew every fowl on the place by name. To be -sure, there were only a dozen or so; but these white Leghorns all looked -exactly alike to the girl, though Mrs. Oakley could tell each one at a -distance and was intimately acquainted with the peculiarities of every -rooster and hen that she owned. - -"I'd like to get a hundred and fifty white Leghorns, if we could look -after them," Dorinda said thoughtfully. "That's one good way to make -money." - -A ray of light, which was less a flush than a warmer pallor, flickered -across Mrs. Oakley's wan features. While her mother's interest was -awakening, Dorinda felt that her own was slowly drugged by the poverty -of her surroundings. The sunlight bathing the ragged lawn only -intensified the aspect of destitution. Colour, diversity, animation, all -these were a part of the world she had relinquished. Pushing her chair -away from the table, she went to the back door and stood gazing out over -the woodpile in the direction of the well-house. A few cultivated acres -in the midst of an encroaching waste land! From the broomsedge and the -flat horizon, loneliness rose and washed over her. Loneliness, nothing -more! The same loneliness that she had feared and hated as a child; the -same loneliness from which she had tried to escape in flights of -emotion. Food, work, sleep, that was life as her father and mother had -known it, and that life was to be hers in the future. For an instant it -seemed to her that she must break down. Then, lifting her head with a -characteristic gesture of defiance, she turned back into the room. "I'd -better start straight about it," she said aloud, smiling at Mrs. -Oakley's startled look. - -"Did you say anything, Dorinda? I believe I've got something wrong with -my ears." - -"I said I was going upstairs to change my dress. The same old room, I -suppose?" - -"Yes, I fixed the same room for you." - -While she cleared off the table, Mrs. Oakley gazed after her daughter -with a perplexed and anxious expression. Dorinda in her flowing veil, -with her air of worldly knowledge and disillusioned experience, had awed -and impressed her. Was it possible that she had created this superior -intelligence, that she had actually brought this paragon of efficiency -into the world? "Well, I hope it will turn out the way you want it," she -remarked presently to her daughter's retreating back, "but, in my time, -I've watched many a big bloom that brought forth mighty small fruit." - -At sunset, when Nathan Pedlar came for his daily visit, Dorinda walked -over a part of the farm with him. He was wearing his Sunday suit of -clothes, and though this emphasized his grotesqueness, it increased also -the air of having been well scrubbed and brushed which had distinguished -him from the other farmers at the station. Since his wife's death he had -prospered, as widowers were so frequently known to do, Dorinda -reflected; and now that he was able to employ an assistant, he was not -closely confined to the store. Though his neighing laugh still irritated -the girl, she found herself regarding his deficiencies more leniently. -After all, he was not to blame for the way he looked; he was not even to -blame, she conceded less readily, for the things that he thought funny. -Since that fantastic humour had taken root in her mind, she had been -continually puzzled by the variety of obvious facts which people, and -especially men, found amusing. She could not, to save her life, laugh at -the spectacles they enjoyed, nor did the freakish destiny that provoked -her to merriment appear to divert them at all. From the cool and -detached point of view she had attained, life appeared to her to be -essentially comic; but comic acts, whether presented in the theatre or -in the waggish hilarity of Pedlar's Mill, seemed to her merely -depressing. She was not amused by the classic jokes of the period, which -were perpetually embodied in a married man who was too fat or an -unmarried woman who was too thin. Flesh or the lack of it, hats or the -pursuit of them, crockery or the breaking of it; none of these common -impediments to happiness possessed, for her, the genuine qualities of -mirth. But reprehensible though she knew it to be, she could not recall -the misguided earnestness of her girlhood without the pricking of -ridicule; and the image of mankind strutting with pompous solemnity into -the inevitable abyss impressed her as the very spirit of comedy. Tragic -but comic, too, as most tragedy was. Would it ever pass, she wondered, -this capricious and lonely laughter? - -"I can't help it," she thought, walking by Nathan's side, and listening -soberly to his story of a coloured woman who had tried to make him pay -an additional price for a chicken with three legs. "I can't help it if -they, not the things they laugh at, seem funny to me." - -It was a misty, lilac-scented afternoon in April. The sun shone softly -when it began to go down, as if it were caught in a silver scarf, and -the grass in the pear orchard was white with drifting blossoms. Those -old trees always bloomed late, she remembered, and the ground was still -snowy with fallen petals when the lilac bushes by the west wing were -breaking into flower. - -As she followed the beaten track by the orchard, her gaze swept the -ploughed fields, where the upturned earth was changing from chocolate to -purple as the light faded. Around her the farm spread out like an open -fan, ploughed ground melting into waste land, fields sinking into -neglected pasture, pasture rising gradually into the dark belt of the -pines. She knew that the place was more to her than soil to be -cultivated; that it was the birthplace and burial ground of hopes, -desires, and disappointments. The old feeling that the land thought and -felt, that it possessed a secret personal life of its own, brushed her -mood as it sped lightly by. - -"All this and just waste, waste, waste," she said slowly. - -Nathan glanced up at the big pine on the hill. "Ever think of cutting -that tree down for timber?" he inquired. - -She shook her head. "It's the only thing Pa likes to watch now. He loves -it." - -Nathan neighed under his breath, with the sound Dan gave when he saw -clover. - -"Well, I kind of know how he feels. I like a big tree myself." - -"Sometimes in stormy weather that pine is like a rocky crag with the sea -beating against it," Dorinda said. "I used to remember it up in Maine. I -suppose that is why Pa likes to look at it. All the meaning of his life -has gone into it, and all the meaning of the country. Endurance, that's -what it is." - -"What a fancy you've got," Nathan answered admiringly, "and always had -even when you were a child. But you're right about endurance. This farm -looks to me as if it had endured about as much as it can stand." - -"Oh, I'm going to change all that." - -"Then you'd better get busy." - -"I'll begin to-morrow, if you'll send me some field hands." She stopped -and made a gesture, full of vital energy, in the direction of the road. -"I want to make a new pasture out of that eighteen-acre field next to -the old one." - -"It has run to broomsedge now, hasn't it?" - -"Yes, but it used to be a cornfield in great-grandfather's day. If you -can get me the hands, I'll start them clearing it off the first thing in -the morning." - -He chuckled with enjoyment. "Oh, I'll get you anything you want, but the -niggers won't work for nothing, you know." - -"I've borrowed two thousand dollars. That ought to help, oughtn't it?" -She wished he wouldn't say "niggers." That scornful label was already -archaic, except among the poorest of the "poor white class" at Pedlar's -Mill. - -"Two thousand dollars!" he ejaculated. "Well, that ought to go some -way." - -"I'll have to spend a good deal for cows," she explained. "How much will -they ask at Green Acres?" - -For a minute he hesitated. "That's a fine Jersey herd," he replied -presently. "I don't reckon they'll take less than a hundred dollars for -a good cow. You can get scrub cows cheaper, but you want good ones." - -"Oh, yes. I want good ones." - -"Well, seeing it's you, Jim Ellgood may let you have them for less. I -don't know; but he got a hundred and fifty for those he sold at the -fair. One of his young bulls took the blue ribbon, you know." - -She nodded. "I'm going over to see him to-morrow, if Pa doesn't get -worse." - -"Jim's a first-rate land doctor. He'll tell you what to do with that old -field." - -"Why, everybody says you're as good a farmer as James Ellgood." - -"Oh, no, I'm not. Not by a long way. He spends a lot of money on -phosphate and nitrate of soda; but in the end he gets it back again. He -reclaimed some bad land several years ago and made it yield forty -bushels an acre. For several years he kept sowing cowpeas and turning -them under. Then he sowed sweet clover with lime, and when it was in -full bloom, he turned that under too. Takes money, his method, but it -pays in the long run. He has just begun using alfalfa; but you watch and -he'll get five cuttings from it in no time. I get four, and Jim always -goes me one better." - -She was listening to him, for the first time in her life, with attention -and interest. It was surprising, she reflected, what a bond of sympathy -farming could make. He was as dull probably as he had ever been; but his -dullness had ceased now to bore her. "I'll find him useful, anyhow," she -thought; and usefulness, she was to discover presently, makes an even -firmer bond than an interest in farming. Her mind was filled with her -new vocation, and just as in that earlier period she had had ears for -any one who would speak to her of Jason, so she listened now to whoever -displayed the time and the inclination to talk of Old Farm. After all, -how much mental tolerance, she wondered, was based upon the devouring -egoism at the heart of all human nature? It was a question her -great-grandfather might have asked, for though she had burst the cocoon -of his theology, her mind was still entangled in the misty cobwebs of -his dialectics. Yes, she had always deluded herself with the belief that -the superior Rose Emily had made it possible for her to think tolerantly -of Nathan. Yet, deprived of that advantage, and left to flounder on -without intelligent guidance, he had become, Dorinda admitted -thoughtfully, more likable than ever. For the first time it occurred to -her that a marriage too much above one may become as great an obstacle -as a marriage too much below one. - -"How big is Green Acres?" she asked, keenly interested. - -Nathan's gaze sought the horizon. Before he replied he spat -a wad of tobacco from his mouth, while she looked vaguely over -the fields. - -"Counting the -wasteland, it's near about fourteen hundred acres, -I reckon," he answered. "If Old Farm and Five Oaks were thrown -together, they'd more than balance Jim's land." - -"Are they doing anything over at Five Oaks?" - -"It don't look so, does it?" He waved his arm vaguely toward the blur of -spring foliage in the southeast. "I ain't heard any talk of it lately." -His tone had taken a sharper edge, and Dorinda knew he was thinking that -Jason had jilted her. People would always remember that whenever they -heard her name or Jason's. If they both lived to be old persons, and -never spoke to each other again, they could never dissolve that -intangible bond. In some subtle fashion, which she resented, she and -Jason were eternally joined together. - -"If they don't look sharp," Nathan concluded without glancing at her, -"the place will slip through their fingers. The old man has a big -mortgage on it. I took a share of it myself, and some day, if Jason -keeps going downhill, there'll be a foreclosure right over his head." - -A flame passed over Dorinda's face. So vivid was the sensation that she -felt as if they were encircled by burning grass. Ambition, which had -been formless and remote, became definite and immediate. - -"I'd give ten years of my life to own Five Oaks," she said. - -"You would?" The wish appeared to amuse him. "Looks as if you were -beginning to count your chickens before they're hatched." - -"Yes, it's absurd; but all the same I'd give ten years of my life to own -Five Oaks." - -The colour burned in her face and in her blue eyes which were looking -straight at the sunset. She appeared suddenly taller, stronger, more -imperious in her demands of life. - -"If we ever foreclose the mortgage, I'll bid in the farm for you," he -returned, with admiring facetiousness. A flush like the stain of -pokeberry juice was spreading over his leathery skin. - -She nodded gravely. "By that time I may be able to buy it. If hard work -can get you anywhere on a farm, I am going to be one of the best farmers -in this country." - -"Is Rufus to have any hand in it? You won't get far with Rufus." - -"No, he hates it. He is going to the city next winter. There won't be -anybody but Pa and me to manage." Her voice faltered from its dominant -note. Would there be her father? - -"Well, I'll help you," he promised, "all' I can. I've learned a little -by failing. That's as much as most farmers can say." When he dropped the -personal tone and began to talk of the things he knew, there was a -rustic dignity in his ugliness. After all, she could depend on him, and -that meant a good deal to her as a farmer. Rose Emily, she remembered, -used to say that you never realized Nathan's value until you tried -depending upon other people. The vision of Rose Emily illuminated her -thoughts like the last flare of the sunset. How brave she was, and how -brilliant! Though Nathan had loved her and been faithful to her while -she lived, after her death he had ceased to think of her with the mental -alacrity which appeared to overtake the emotions of the faithful and the -unfaithful alike. Already, she felt, Rose Emily was becoming nearer to -her than to Nathan. Nathan had lost a wife; but as the years passed her -friend would begin to live more vitally in her memory. - -They followed the band of pines and crossed an old hayfield, where a -flock of meadow-larks drifted up from the grass and scattered with a -flutter of white tail feathers. It was the thrushes' hour, and the -trees, reaching tall and straight up into the golden air, were as -musical as harps. She had forgotten Nathan now, and while she walked on -rapidly she was thinking that she would divide the farm into five -separate parts, leaving the larger part still abandoned. "I must go -slowly," she thought. "If I overdo it in the beginning, I'll spoil -everything." - -"You're up against something," Nathan was saying facetiously but firmly. -"This used to be good land in your great-grandfather's day, and some of -it ain't gone so bad but a thorough fertilizing would bring it back. -Your father did all he could, but one man ain't a team. He had to work -uphill with every darn thing, including the elements, against him." - -"Yes, of course Pa did all he could." She had spoken the words so often -that they sounded now as hollow as a refrain. Yet they were true. Her -father had done all that one man could do on the farm. Yet the farm had -conquered him in the end and eaten away his strength. - -They were approaching Poplar Spring, where a silver vein of a stream -trickled over the flat grey rocks. The smell of wet leaves floated -toward her, and instantly the quiet moment snapped in two as if a blow -had divided it. Half of her mind was here, watching the meadow-larks -skimming over the fields, and the other half crouched under the dripping -boughs by the fork of the road. Only the imaginary half seemed more -real, more physical even, than the actual one. Not her mind, she felt -with horror, but her senses, her nerves, and the very corpuscles of her -blood, remembered the agony. - -"I think I'll go back," she said, turning quickly. "Ma might want me to -help her." - -"You look tired," he returned, with the consideration which Rose Emily -had disciplined into a habit. "Would you like to sit down and rest?" - -"No, I'd better go back." - -They walked to the house in silence, and she scarcely heard him when he -said, "Good night," at the porch. - -"I hope you'll find your father better." - -"Yes, I hope I'll find him better." - -"If there's anything I can do, let me know." - -"If there is, I'll let you know." - -As he stepped into his buggy, he turned and called out, "I'll try to get -word to the hands to-night, and send them over the first thing in the -morning." - -What hands? What did they matter? What did anything matter? It seemed to -her suddenly that, not only her love for Jason, but everything, the -whole of life, was a mistake. Even her best endeavours, even her return -to the farm--"It might have been better if I'd decided differently," she -thought wearily; but when she tried to be definite, to imagine some -other decision she might have made, nothing occurred to her. Something? -But what? Where? She saw no other way, and she felt blindly that she -should never see one. - -"I'm tired," she thought, "and this makes me weak. Weakness doesn't help -anything." For an instant this thought held her; then it occurred to her -that, in the years to come, she would be continually tired; and that, -tired or not, she must fight against weakness. "I've got to go straight -ahead, no matter how I feel." - - - - -VIII - - -"Ebenezer Green?" - -"Dat's me." - -"Peter Plumtree?" - -"Dat's me." - -"Toby Jackson?" - -"Dat's me, Miss D'rindy." - -"Rapidan Finley?" - -"Dat's me." - -She was calling the names of the field hands, and while she went over -the list, her mind was busily assorting and grouping the faces before -her. Yes, she knew them all. Ever since she could remember they had been -a part of the country; she had passed them in the road every week, or -seen them in the vegetable patches in front of their cabins. Like her -mother, she was endowed with an intuitive understanding of the negroes; -she would always know how to keep on friendly terms with that immature -but not ungenerous race. Slavery in Queen Elizabeth County had rested -more lightly than elsewhere. The religion that made people hard to -themselves, her mother had often pointed out, made them impartially just -to their dependents; and like most generalizations, this one was elastic -enough to cover the particular instance. It was true that the coloured -people about Pedlar's Mill were as industrious and as prosperous as any -in the South, and that, within what their white neighbours called -reasonable bounds, there was, at the end of the nineteenth century, -little prejudice against them. Here and there a thriftless farmer, such -as Ike Pryde or Adam Snead, would display a fitful jealousy of Micajah -Green, who had turned a few barren acres into a flourishing farm; but -the better class of farmers preferred the intelligent coloured neighbour -to the ignorant white one. Both were social inferiors; but where the -matter was one solely of farming, the advantages would usually fall to -the more diligent. As for the negroes themselves, they lived contentedly -enough as inferiors though not dependents. In spite of the influence of -Aunt Mehitable Green, they had not yet learned to think as a race, and -the individual negro still attached himself instinctively to the -superior powers. - -"I remember you well, Ebenezer," she said; "you have a sister, Mary Joe. -I want her to help look after my henhouse." She laughed as she spoke -because she knew that the negroes would work twice as well for an -employer who laughed easily; but she wondered if they detected the -hollowness of the sound. It occurred to her, as she looked at the doomed -broomsedge across the road, that farming, like love, might prove -presently to be no laughing matter. - -Turning back toward the house, she met her mother, who was coming out -with a basin of cornmeal dough for the chickens. The sun had just risen, -and there was a sparkling freshness over the earth and in the luminous -globe of the sky. She had slept well, and with the morning weakness had -vanished. The wild part of her had perished like burned grass; out of -nothing, into nothing, that was the way of it. Now, armoured in reason, -she was ready to meet life on its own terms. - -"Do you know where Rufus is?" she asked. "I want him to see the hands -start work in the eighteen-acre field." - -Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "I don't know. I thought he was going to -finish ploughing the tobacco field, but I saw him start off right after -breakfast with Ike Pryde. It seems they found honey in a big oak over by -Hoot Owl Woods, and they've set off with an axe to cut down the tree." - -"Oh, the fool, the fool!" Dorinda exclaimed, and determined that she -would expect nothing more from Rufus. - -"Well, you know how men are," returned her mother, with unpolemical -wisdom. "They'll seize any excuse to stop work and cut down a tree." - -"I do know. But to cut down a big oak, and for honey!" - -The old woman scattered dough on the ground with an impartial hand. -"Rufus has got a mighty sweet tooth," she remarked. - -"So has Pa, but you never found him making an excuse to stop work." - -"I know. Your Pa always put his wishes aside. There ain't many men you -can say that of." Though she sighed over the fact, she accepted it as -one of the natural or acquired privileges of the male; and she felt that -these were too numerous to justify a special grievance against a -particular one. Even acquiescence with a sigh is easier than argument -when one is worn out with neuralgia and worse things. A frost had -blighted her impulse of opposition, and this seemed to Dorinda one of -the surest signs that her mother was failing. There were moments when it -would have been a relief to be contradicted. - -"Well, I'll have to do it myself. Because I am a woman the hands will -expect me to shirk, and I must show them that I know what I am about." - -"I'll help you all I can, daughter." - -"I know you will." Dorinda's conscience reproached her for her -impatience. "You will be wonderful with the hens, and I'll get -Ebenezer's sister Mary Joe to help you. She must be fourteen or -fifteen." - -"Yes, she's a real bright girl," Mrs. Oakley remarked, without -enthusiasm. She had scarcely closed her eyes all night, and bright -coloured girls, even when they helped in the henhouse, left her -indifferent. "I'm going down in the garden to see if I can find a mess -of turnip salad," she added after a pause, in which she scooped the last -remnant of dough out of the basin and flung it into the midst of the -brood of chickens. - -"Let me go while you sit with Pa. I was coming in to see about him -before I went down to the field where they are working." - -Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "No, I can't keep still in the daytime. It's -hard enough having to do it at night. Fluvanna couldn't get over early -to-day; but she sent her little sister Ruby, and she is keeping the -flies off your father's face. That's all anybody can do for him now." - -"Well, I'll speak to him anyway. Then I'll see after the hands." - -Mrs. Oakley raised her eyes to her daughter's face. "You've brought back -a heap of vim, Dorinda," she said dispassionately, "but I reckon you've -been away from the farm too long to know what it's like." - -She put the basin down on a bench, picked up a blue gingham sunbonnet -she had laid there when she came out, and started, with her nervous -walk, to the garden at the end of the yard. - -In her father's room, Dorinda found a small coloured girl, in a pink -calico slip, perched on a high stool by the bedside. Her bare feet -clutched the round of the stool; her eyes, like black beads, roved -ceaselessly from the wall to the floor; and her thin monkey-like hand -waved a palm-leaf fan to and fro over Joshua's immovable features. - -"Good morning, Ruby. Has Pa moved since you've been here?" - -"Gwamawnin'. Naw'm, he ain' don ez much ez bat 'is eyelids." - -Dorinda caught the fan away from her. "Don't you go to school in the -mornings?" she inquired, after a pause in which she tried to think of -something to say. - -"Dar ain' none." - -"Aren't you learning to read and write?" - -"Yes'm. Fluvanna she knows, en she's larnin' me." - -"Well, run away now, and come back when I call you." - -The little girl ran out gladly, and Dorinda took her place on the stool -and brushed the flies away with slow, firm waves of the fan. -Immediately, as soon as she had settled herself, something of her -mother's restlessness rushed over her, and she felt a hysterical longing -to get up and move about or to go out into the air. "If I feel this -way," she thought, "what must it mean to poor Pa to lie there like -that?" - -Since the hour of her return he had not appeared to recognize her. He -was beyond reach of any help, of any voice, of any hand, lost in some -mental wilderness which was more impenetrable than the jungles of earth. -Though he was apparently not unconscious, he was beyond all awareness. -His eyes never left the great pine, and once when his wife had started -to close the shutters, a frown had gathered on his forehead and lingered -there until she had desisted and turned away from the window. Then his -face had cleared and the look of hard-earned rest had returned to his -features. - -While she sat there, Dorinda began counting imaginary chickens, a method -of collecting her thoughts which she had learned as a child from Aunt -Mehitable. She was still counting the fictitious flock when Joshua -opened his eyes and looked straight up at her with an expression of -startled wonder and surprise, as if he were on the point of speaking. - -"What is it?" she asked, bending nearer. - -His lips moved, and for an instant she was visited by an indescribable -sensation. He was so near to her that she seemed, in the same moment, -never to have known him before and yet to know him completely. She felt -that he was trying to speak some words that would make everything clear -and simple between them, that would explain away all the mistakes and -misunderstandings of life. - -"What is it?" she repeated, breathless with hope. - -Again his lips moved slightly; but no sound came, and the look of wonder -and surprise faded slowly out of his face. His eyes closed, and a minute -later his heavy breathing told her that he had relapsed into stupor. - -"I must ask him when he wakes," she thought. "I must ask him what he -wanted to tell me." - -After dinner she hunted for Rufus again, but he had not, it appeared, -returned to the farm. - -"I reckon he went home with Ike Pryde," his mother said. "He's been -seeing too much of Ike, and I'm afraid it ain't good for him. The last -time Almira was over here she told me Ike was drinking again." She was -worried and anxious, and the twitching was worse in her face. "I declare -I don't see how Almira can put up with him," she said. - -"Then I'll have to harness Dan myself," Dorinda replied. "I've got on my -best dress, so I hoped Rufus would drag out the buggy. I'm going over to -Green Acres." - -"I was wondering what you'd put on your blue poplin for," Mrs. Oakley -returned. "I'd think that hanging veil would get in your way; but if -you're going over to the Ellgoods', I'm glad you dressed up. Fluvanna, I -reckon, will hitch up the buggy for you." - -Fluvanna, emerging from the kitchen, offered eagerly to look for Dan in -the pasture. "He ain't got away," she said, "for I saw him at the bars -jest a minute ago." She had gone to school whenever there was one for -coloured children in the neighbourhood, and though her speech was still -picturesque, she had discarded the pure dialect of Aunt Mehitable and -her generation. "Don't you worry, Miss Dorinda," she added, hurrying -down the path to the pasture. - -"I tell Fluvanna that her sunny disposition is worth a fortune," Mrs. -Oakley remarked. "She never gets put out about anything." - -"I believe she'll be a great comfort to us," Dorinda returned -thoughtfully. She liked the girl's pleasant brown face, as glossy as a -chestnut, her shining black eyes, and her perfect teeth, which showed -always, for she never stopped smiling. "Just to have anybody look -intelligent is a relief." - -"Well, you'll find that Fluvanna has plenty of sense. Of course she -slights things when she can, but she is always willing and -good-humoured. You don't often find a hard worker, white or black, with -a sunny temper." - -They were still discussing her when Fluvanna drove up in the buggy and -descended to offer the dilapidated reins to Dorinda. - -"Thank you, Fluvanna. I declare this buggy looks as if it hadn't been -washed off for a year." - -Fluvanna, who had not observed the mud, turned her beaming eyes on the -buggy and perceived that it was dirty. - -"I'll come over the first thing in the mawnin' an' wash it for you," she -promised. "There ain't a bit of use dependin' on Mr. Rufus. He won't do -nothin'." - -Dorinda gathered up the reins, settled herself on the bagging which -covered the seat, and turned Dan's head kindly but firmly away from the -pasture. - -"I wonder if things used to look as dilapidated, only I didn't notice -them so much," she thought. - - - - -IX - - -Dan travelled slowly, and the Ellgoods lived three miles on the other -side of Pedlar's Mill. Green Acres was the largest stock farm in the -county; but what impressed Dorinda more than the size was the general -air of thrift which hovered over the pastures, the deep green meadows, -and the white buildings clustering about the red brick house. - -"I couldn't have anything like this in a hundred years," she thought -cheerlessly. Her scheme, which had appeared so promising when she -surveyed it from Central Park, presented, at a closer view, innumerable -obstacles. There was not one chance in a thousand, she told herself now, -that the venture would lead anywhere except into a bog. "But I'm in it -now, and I must see it through," she concluded, with less audacity than -determination. "I'll not give up as long as there is breath left in my -body." Rolling in mud-caked wheels up the neat drive to the house, she -resolved stubbornly that no one, least of all James Ellgood, should -suspect that she had lost heart in her enterprise. - -James Ellgood was at Queen Elizabeth Courthouse for the day; but Bob, -his son, who had recently brought home a dissatisfied and delicate wife -from a hospital in Baltimore, was on the front porch awaiting his -visitor. When she appeared in sight, he threw away the match he was -striking on his boot, and after thrusting his old brier pipe into his -pocket, descended the steps and came across the drive to the buggy. -Nathan would have smoked, or still worse have chewed, Dorinda knew, -while he received her; but inconsistently enough, she did not like him -the less for his boorishness. Utility, not punctilio, was what she -required of men at this turning point in her career. - -While Bob Ellgood held out his hand, she could see her reflection in his -large, placid eyes as clearly as if her features were mirrored in the -old mill pond. It gave her pleasure to feel that she was more -distinguished, if less desirable, than she had been two years ago; but -her pleasure was as impersonal as her errand. She had no wish to attract -this heavy, masterful farmer, who reminded her of a sleek, mild-mannered -Jersey bull; no wish, at least, to attract him beyond the point where -his admiration might help her to drive a bargain in cows. Gazing -critically at his handsome face, she remembered the Sunday mornings when -she had watched him in church and had wished with all her heart that he -would turn his eyes in her direction. Then he had not so much as glanced -at her over his hymn book, his slow mind was probably revolving round -his engagement; but now she felt instinctively that he was ready to -catch fire from a look or a word. The absurd twist of an idea jerked -into her mind. "He would have suited me better than Jason, and I should -have suited him better than the woman he married." Well, that was the -way the eternal purpose worked, she supposed, but it seemed to her a -cumbersome and blundering method. - -"Nathan told me you wanted to buy some cows," he was saying, for he was -as single-minded as other successful men, only more so. "I picked out -seven fine ones this morning and had them brought up to the small -pasture. They'll be at the bars now, and you can look them over. There -isn't a better breed than the Jersey, that's what we think, and these -young cows are as good as any you'll find." - -At the bars of the pasture, where a weeping willow dipped over the -watering trough, the Jerseys were standing in a row, satin-coated, -fawn-eyed, with breath like new-mown hay. What beauties they were, -thought Dorinda, swept away in spite of her determination to bargain. -When Bob told her the names she repeated them in blissful accents. -"Rose. Sweetbriar. Hollyhock. Pansy. Daisy. Violet. Verbena." To think -that she, who had never owned anything, should actually possess these -adorable creatures! Even the price, which seemed to her excessively -high, could not spoil her delight. A hundred dollars for each cow, Bob -explained, was a third less than they would bring at the fair next -autumn. - -"I am glad you are going into the dairy business," he proceeded. "I -always said this country would do for dairy farming, though it takes -more money, of course, to start a dairy farm than it does just to plant -crops. The cows ain't all of it, you know. You ought to raise your own -hay and the corn you need for silage. Borrow money, too, if you haven't -got it, to drain and tile your fields. It will pay you back in the long -run, for I doubt if you will get any good clover until you put ditches -in your land. All that takes money, of course," he continued, with -depressing accuracy, "but it is the only way to make anything out of a -farm. Father says there ain't but one way to learn to do anything, and -that's the right way." - -"I know," Dorinda assented. Her tone was confident, but it seemed to her -while she spoke that she was being buried under the impoverished acres -of Old Farm. - -"And there's machinery," he added. "Father borrowed money after the war -to buy new machinery. When he came home after Appomattox, all the farm -implements were either lost or good for nothing. He went in debt and -bought the newest inventions, and that was the beginning of his success. -The legacy from Uncle Mitchell came after he was well started, and he -always says he could have got on without it, though perhaps not on so -large a scale." - -"Well, I'll borrow," said Dorinda defiantly. "We've always been afraid -of debt; but I've already borrowed two thousand dollars, and if I need -more, I'll try to get it. Nathan is going to pick up whatever machinery -he can at auction. That will be less than half the actual cost, he -says." - -He was looking at her now with keen, impersonal admiration. Just as if -she had been a man, she thought, with a glow of triumph. Though the -sensation was without the excitement of sex vanity, she found that it -was quite as gratifying, and, she suspected, more durable. Already he -had forgotten the momentary physical appeal she had made to him in the -beginning; and she felt that his respect for her was based upon what he -believed to be her character. "It isn't what I am really that matters," -she thought. "It is just the impression I make on his mind or senses. -Men are all like that, I suppose. They don't know you. They don't even -wish to know you. They are interested in nothing on earth but their own -reactions." And she remembered suddenly that Jason had once generalized -like this about women, and that she was merely copying what he had said. -How stupid generalizations were, and how deceptive! - -"I hope you'll make a success of it," Bob said. "I like women who take -hold of things and aren't afraid of work when they have to do it. That's -the right spirit." A moody frown contracted his fore head, and she knew -that he was thinking of his wife, though he added after a moment's -hesitation, "Look at my sister now. She's as young as you are and she -lies round all day like an old woman." - -"Perhaps it's her health," Dorinda suggested, moving away. - -"Why shouldn't she be healthy? We're all healthy enough, Heaven knows! -Not that I wonder at it," he continued thoughtlessly, "when I remember -that she was such a fool as to fall in love with Jason Greylock." The -next instant a purple flush dyed his face, and she could see his -thoughts rising like fish to the fluid surface of his mind. "Not that he -ill-treats her. He knows Father wouldn't stand for that," he added -hurriedly, caught in the net he had unconsciously spread. "But his -laziness is bred in the bone, and he's the sort that will let apples rot -on the ground rather than pick them up." - -"I know," Dorinda said, and she did. That was what her mother called the -mental malaria of the country. - -"Well, it's the blood, I reckon," he conceded more tolerantly. "There's -enough to work against without having to struggle to get the better of -your own blood. Come this way," he continued, leading her to a different -pasture, "I want you to have a look at our prize bull. Five blue ribbons -already; and we've a yearling that promises to be still finer. A beauty, -isn't he?" - -Dorinda gazed at the bull with admiration and envy, while he returned -her look with royal, inscrutable eyes. "I wonder if I shall ever own a -creature like that?" she thought. "He looks as if he owned everything -and yet despised it," she said aloud. - -Bob laughed. "Yes, he's got a high-and-mighty air, hasn't he? By the -way, those Jerseys have never been milked by a woman. I don't know how -they'll take to it. Will you hire a man?" - -"Not at first. Until I get started well, I'm going to do my own milking. -I can put on Rufus's overalls, and when I milk myself I can be sure of -the way the cows are handled. With negroes you can never tell. Nathan -says they let his cows go dry because they don't take the trouble to -milk them thoroughly. And they won't be clean, no matter how much you -talk to them. When I tell them I'm going to keep my cows washed and -brushed and the stalls free from a speck of dirt, they think it's a -joke." - -"That's the trouble. Cleanliness is a joke with most of the farmers -about here, but it's the first step to success in dairy farming. It -keeps down disease, especially contagious abortion, better than anything -else. Yes, you've got the right idea. It means hard work, of course, -though you'll find it's worth while in the end." - -"Oh, I don't mind work. What else is there in life?" - -His eyes were shining as he looked at her. "Well, I wish my wife had a -little of your spirit. It isn't only that she's delicate. I believe that -she's afraid of everything in the country from a grasshopper to an ox." - -"She didn't grow up on a farm. That makes a difference." He sighed. -"Yes, it does make a difference." - -"Well, it's a pity. I'm glad I don't have to struggle with fear." A -little later, as she drove across the railway tracks and down the long -slope in the direction of Old Farm, she reflected dispassionately upon -the crookedness of human affairs. Why had that honest farmer, robust, -handsome, without an idea above bulls and clover, mated with a woman who -was afraid of a grasshopper? And why had she, in whom life burned so -strong and bright, wasted her vital energy on the mere husk of a man? -Why, above all, should Nature move so unintelligently in the matter of -instinct? Did this circle of reasoning lead back inevitably, she -wondered, to the steadfast doctrine of original sin? "The truth is we -always want what is bad for us, I suppose," she concluded, and gave up -the riddle. - -Just beyond the station, in front of the "old Haney place," she met -William Fairlamb, and stopped to ask him about repairing the cow-barn -and the henhouse. He was a tall, stooped, old-looking young man, with -shaggy flaxen hair and round grey eyes as opaque as pebbles. Though his -expression was stupid, he had intelligence above the ordinary, and was -the best carpenter at Pedlar's Mill. - -"If you're going to keep cows, you'd better see that Doctor Greylock -mends his fences," he said, after he had promised to begin on the -cow-barn as soon as he had finished his contract with Ezra Flower. "That -old black steer of his is a public nuisance. I've had him wandering over -my wheat-fields all winter. It's a mortal shame the way the Greylocks -are letting that farm peter out." - -"Yes, it's a shame," she agreed, and drove on again. Wherever she -turned, it appeared that she was to be met by a reminder that Jason was -living so near her. "If only he were dead," she thought, as impersonally -as if she were thinking of the black steer that trampled the ploughed -fields. "I shall have to go on hearing about him now until the end of my -days." - -There was no regret, she told herself, left in her memory; yet whenever -she heard his name, or recalled his existence, her spirits flagged -beneath an overpowering sense of futility. At such moments, she was -obliged to spur her body into action. "It will be like this always, -until one of us is dead," she reflected. Though she neither loved nor -hated him now, the thought of him, which still lived on in some obscure -chamber of her mind, was sufficient to disturb and disarrange her whole -inner life. The part of her consciousness that she could control she had -released from his influence; but there were innate impulses which were -independent of her will or her emotions; and in these blind instincts of -her being there were even now occasional flashes of longing. While she -was awake she could escape him; but at night, when she slept, she would -live over again all the happiest hours she had spent with him. Never the -pain, never the cruelty of the past; only the beauty and the -unforgettable ecstasy came back to her in her dreams. - -As she drove out of the woods the sun was sinking beyond the cleft of -the road, and a slow procession of shadows was moving across the -broomsedge, where little waves of light quivered and disappeared and -quivered again like ripples in running water. While she passed on, the -expression of the landscape faded from tranquil brightness to the look -of unresisting fortitude which it had worn as far back as she could -remember. In her heart also she felt that the brightness quivered and -died. With her drooping energy, weariness had crept over her; but out of -weariness, she passed presently, like the country, into a mood of -endurance. She realized, without despair, that the general aspect of her -life would be one of unbroken monotony. Enthusiasm would not last. -Energy would not last. Cheerfulness, buoyancy, interest, not one of -these qualities would last as long as she needed it. Nothing would last -through to the end except courage. - -Her gaze was on the horizon. The reins, tied together with a bit of -rope, were held loosely in her hands. With every turn of the wheel, a -shower of dried mud was scattered over her clothes. So completely lost -was she in memory that at first she barely heard the noise of an -approaching rider, and the hollow sound of horseshoes striking on rock. -Even before her mind became aware of Jason's approach, her startled -senses leaped toward him. Her body bent for an instant, and then sprang -back like a steel wire. With an impassive face, and a torment of memory -in her heart, she sat staring far ahead, at the blur of road by the -cabin. She was back again within the prison of that moment which was -eternal; yet there was no sign of suffering in the blank look of her -eyes. Her hand did not tremble; the loosened reins did not waver; and -when a voice called her name, she did not reveal by the quiver of an -eyelash that she listened. - -"Dorinda! Dorinda, let me speak to you!" - -She raised her eyes from the road and looked beyond the waving -broomsedge to the topaz-coloured light on the western horizon. The -longing to look in his face, to turn and rend him with her scorn, was as -sharp as a blade; but some deep instinct told her that if she yielded to -the impulse, the struggle was lost. To recognize his existence was to -restore, in a measure, his power over her life. Only by keeping him -outside her waking moments could she win freedom. - -"Dorinda, you are hard. Dorinda----" - -They were side by side now in the road. If he had reached out his hand, -he could have touched her. If she had turned her head, she might have -looked into his eyes. But she did not turn; she did not withdraw her -gaze from the landscape; she did not relax in the weakest muscle from -her attitude of unyielding disdain. Though he were to ride all the way -home with her, she told herself, he could not force her to speak to him. -No matter what he did, he could never make her speak to him or look at -him again! - -The sunken places in the road retarded him, and when he reached her side -again, they were passing the burned cabin. For an instant, when they -approached the fork, he hesitated, as if he were tempted to follow her -still farther. Then, deciding abruptly, he wheeled about and alighted to -open the red gate of Five Oaks. - -"I'll see you again," he called back. - -For a few minutes after he had disappeared, she sat rigidly erect, as if -she had been frozen into her attitude of repulsion. Then, suddenly, she -gave way; a shudder seized her limbs, and the reins slipped from her -hands to the bottom of the buggy. She was like a person who has escaped -some fearful calamity, and who has not realized the danger until it is -over. When the trembling had passed, she stooped and picked up the -reins. "It will be easier next time," she said, and a moment later, "I -suppose I've got to get used to it. You can get used to anything if you -have to." A dull misery stupefied her thoughts, and she was without -clear perception of what the meeting had meant to her. "I can't -understand why I suffer so," she pondered. "I can't understand how a -person you despise can make you so unhappy." - -As she drew nearer home, Dan quickened his pace, and the buggy rattled -over the bridge and up the rocky slope to the stable. The glow had faded -from the west, and the long white house glimmered through the twilight, -which was settling like silver dust over the landscape. A banner of -smoke drooped low over a single chimney. Beyond the roof the budding -trees appeared as diaphanous as mist against the greenish-blue of the -sky. In the window of the west wing a lamp was shining. So she had seen -it on innumerable evenings in the past; so she would see it, if she -lived, on innumerable evenings in the future. - -Then, just as she was about to drive on to the stable, she observed that -shadows were moving to and fro beyond the single lighted window. Though -the outward aspect of the house was unchanged, there was, nevertheless, -a subtle alteration in its spirit. For an instant, while she hesitated, -there seemed to her an ominous message in these hurried shadows and this -absence of noise. Her throat tightened, and she sprang from the buggy as -the door opened and Rufus came out. - -"He died a few minutes ago," he said. - -A few minutes ago! "I'll never know now what he tried to tell me," she -thought. "No matter how long I live, I shall never know." - - - - -X - - -After the last prayer, the earth was shovelled back into the hollow -beneath the great pine in the graveyard, and the movement of the farm -began again with scarcely a break in its monotony. Joshua Oakley had -sacrificed his life to the land, and yet, or so it seemed to Dorinda, -his death made as little difference as if a tree had fallen and rotted -back into the soil. Even her own sorrow was a sense of pity rather than -a personal grief. - -When the neighbours had driven solemnly out of the gate, the family -assembled in Mrs. Oakley's chamber and gazed through the window to the -graveyard on the hill, as if they were waiting expectantly for the dead -man to rise and return to his work. The only change would be, they -acknowledged, that two hired labourers would grumble over a division of -the toil which Joshua had performed alone and without a complaint. The -farm had always belonged to Mrs. Oakley; but in order that her authority -might be assured, Joshua had made a will a few months before his death -and had left her the farm implements and the horses. Dissimilar as her -parents had appeared to be, there was a bond between them which Dorinda -felt without comprehending. This was the growth of habit, she supposed, -or the tenacious clinging of happy memories which had survived the frost -of experience. In his dumb way, Joshua had been proud of his wife, and -Eudora had depended upon her husband for more substantial qualities than -those of sentiment. He had been useful to her in the practical details -of living, and she was feeling his loss as one feels the loss of a -faculty. Here was another proof, Dorinda reflected, of the varied -texture of life, another reminder of her folly in attempting to weave -durable happiness out of a single thread of emotion. - -"I don't see how we'll manage to get on without him," said Mrs. Oakley, -who looked gaunt and bleached in the old mourning she had worn for her -dead children. - -"I reckon it means I'll have to stay on here," Rufus muttered in a tone -of sullen rebellion. "I'll have to give up that job Tom Garlick promised -me next winter in New York. It's darn luck, that's what I call it." - -"Oh, no, you mustn't stay," Dorinda urged. "Ma and I can get on -perfectly by ourselves. It won't make any difference if you go in the -fall." - -"You'd better take Dorinda's advice and get away, Rufus." Though Mrs. -Oakley spoke in a quiet voice, her face had gone grey at the thought of -losing Rufus also. - -"Well, I'm afraid I can't help you now," said Josiah, glancing furtively -at his wife, who had proved to be a termagant with generous impulses -which were brief but explosive. - -"Of course your Ma could always come to live with us," suggested Elvira, -obeying the briefest of these impulses. "She'd find plenty to do looking -after the chickens, and the children would keep her from being -lonesome." - -Mrs. Oakley's eyes filled with tears. The old hound, having outlived his -master, lay at her feet, and stooping over she stroked his head with a -trembling hand. "But what would become of the farm?" she asked in a -voice that quavered. "I want to die on the farm where I was born." - -"We'll stay here alone, Ma and I," Dorinda declared, with the stern -integrity she had won from transgression. "The farm belongs to Ma, and -she and I can take care of it. We don't need a man," she added crisply. -"If I couldn't do better than the men about here, I'd be a mighty poor -farmer." - -Elvira breathed more freely, and the wrinkles vanished from Josiah's -forehead. As for Rufus, he had lost interest in the discussion as soon -as it was decided that he might leave the farm in the autumn. - -"I'm sure none of us would want to take Ma against her will," Elvira -said, relieved and conciliatory because her generosity had been wasted. -"The place belongs to her anyway, so the rest of us haven't anything to -say about what she does with it." With a habitual jerk, which had -annoyed Dorinda the first moment she saw her, the girl adjusted the belt -of her skirt and rested her hands on her rapidly spreading hips. - -"You needn't worry about Ma," Dorinda rejoined firmly. "I am going to -take care of her." Her one wish, she felt, was to get Elvira and Josiah -out of the house. Even Rufus was less depressing. Rufus at least had -good looks; but Josiah and Elvira existed in her mind only as appalling -examples of inherent futility. While she looked at Josiah, it seemed to -her that failure oozed out of the very pores of his skin. Though he -worked from morning till night, he was hampered by a fumbling slowness -which reminded Dorinda of the efforts of a half-witted person. Yet her -father, in spite of his ignorance, had possessed an industry that was -tireless, while her mother was afflicted by a veritable mania of energy. -Was it a matter of circumstances, after all, not of heredity? Had the -more active strain succumbed at last to the climatic inertia? Well, if -the fight had narrowed down to one between herself and her surroundings, -she was determined to conquer. Beneath her sombre brows her eyes looked -out like caged bluebirds. She was wearing a black calico dress which had -once belonged to Miss Seena Snead, and the mourning brought out vividly -the dusk of her hair and the bright red of her lips. "There's no use -talking to me. I've made up my mind," she said. - -An hour later, when Josiah and Elvira had gone home, Dorinda helped her -mother to take off her mourning and straighten the chamber in which -Joshua had lain. - -"It's the smell of mourning I can't stand," said the girl, while she -folded the crape veil and laid it away in the bandbox. "Do you think -I'll have to wear it?" - -"It wouldn't be respectful not to," Mrs. Oakley replied, and she asked -after a minute: "What do you want with those overalls of Rufus's that -you took upstairs?" - -Dorinda turned from the wardrobe and looked at her. "They are old ones -I'm patching," she answered. "I am going to wear them when I'm milking. -Those Jerseys have never been milked by a woman." - -"I s'pose they'd get used to it." - -"They might, but it's easier for me to wear overalls than to break them. -You can't farm in skirts anyway." - -"You ain't going to wear them on the farm, are you?" - -"If I can farm better in them, I'm going to wear them." - -Mrs. Oakley sighed. "Well, I hope nobody will see you." - -"I don't care," Dorinda replied stubbornly. "I'm going to milk my cows -my own way. I've got some common sense," she added sternly, "and I'm the -only person, man or woman, in the county who has." - -The old woman's face was as inanimate as a mask, but her eyes were -fixed, with their look of prophetic doom, on the great pine in the -graveyard. "I can't help thinking," she murmured, "how your father used -to lie here day after day and look at that big pine. It seems as if that -tree meant more to him than anything human." - -Dorinda followed her gaze. "In a way it did," she said slowly, as if -some inscrutable mystery were dissolving in a flood of surprise. "In a -different way." - -With a band of crape in her hands, Mrs. Oakley stared up at the -harp-shaped boughs. "I reckon it's a heathenish way to think about -things," she observed presently, "but I can't help feeling there's a -heap of comfort in it." - -When the room had been cleaned and the mourning pinned up again in -newspapers, Dorinda begged her mother to rest before Rufus came back to -supper. - -"I couldn't, daughter, not with all I've got on my mind," Mrs. Oakley -replied firmly. "I remember when the doctor tried to get your father to -give up for a while, he'd shake his head and answer, 'Doctor, I don't -know how to stop.' That's the trouble with me, I reckon. I don't know -how to stop." - -"If you choose to kill yourself, I don't see how I can prevent it." -Dorinda's voice wavered with exasperation. If only her mother would -listen to reason, she felt, both of their lives would be so much easier. -But did mothers ever listen to reason? "I'm going to walk up to Poplar -Spring and look at the woods you wrote me about," she added. "I hope we -shan't have to sell them and put the money into the land." - -"Your father was holding on to that timber to bury us with. There are -all the funeral expenses to come." - -"Yes, I know." Dorinda regarded her thoughtfully. "Poor Pa, it was all -he had and he wanted to hold on to it. But, you see,"--her tone -sharpened to the bitter edge of desperation--"I am depending upon my -butter to bury us both, and who knows but your chickens may supply us -with tombstones." - -"I hope New York didn't turn you into a scoffer, Dorinda." - -Dorinda laughed. "New York didn't get a chance, Ma. Pedlar's Mill had -done it first." - -"Well, there ain't anything too solemn for some folks to joke about. You -ain't goin' out in Seena Snead's black dress, are you?" - -"She's gone out of mourning, so she gave it to me." - -"I'd think you'd hate to take charity." - -There were times when it seemed to Dorinda that she could not breathe -within the stark limitations of her mother's point of view. As she ran -out of the room and the house, without heeding Mrs. Oakley's request -that she should wear a hat at least on the day of the funeral, she asked -herself if this aimless nagging was all that she could expect in the -future. She was fond of her mother; but fondness, strangely enough, did -not seem to make it easier for people to bear one another's tempers. - -The path to Poplar Spring ran beside the eighteen-acre field, and she -stopped amid the dusty fennel and ragweed to inspect the work of the -last two days. The broomsedge had been partly cut down and burned, and -the blackened ruins waited now for the final obliteration. "It will be -hard work to get good grass here," she thought, "but if I keep turning -cowpeas under, I may bring up the soil in time." In the pasture, beyond -a rail fence, the grass was rank and high, for only Dan and Beersheba -had grazed there for the last four or five years. The solitary cow, when -they were fortunate as to own one, lived on the lawn or what was called -"the home field," where Mrs. Oakley milked in summer. Across the road -she saw the scantily fenced west meadow, where her father had sown his -winter wheat, and her eyes filled with tears as she gazed on the -sprinkling of green over the earth. While she stood there she remembered -the look on his face when he lay in his coffin; a look which was -austere, inaccessible, with a reproachful wonder beneath its mask of -solemnity, as if he were still asking life why it had crushed him. -"Whatever I give, the farm will be always mine," she thought. "That was -the way he felt. The farm isn't human and it won't make you suffer. Only -human things break your heart." Everything appeared so simple when she -regarded it through the film of sentiment that obscured her judgment. -Kinship with the land was filtered through her blood into her brain; and -she knew that this transfigured instinct was blended of pity, memory, -and passion. Dimly, she felt that only through this fresh emotion could -she attain permanent liberation of spirit. - -Moving away, she followed the path which threaded the scrub pines on the -border of the broomsedge. Presently she distinguished the blur of Poplar -Spring in the distance, and toward the east the acres of fair timber -which had matured since her great-grandfather's death. In her new -reverence for her father she shrank from cutting down the tall trees. -"It would be slaughter," she said to herself. "I'll let the woods stand -as long as I can." - -Overhead, the pines were soughing in a light wind, and for a moment or -two the sound of footsteps behind her was scarcely louder than the -whispering trees. Then, with a start, she realized that she was -followed, and glancing round, she saw Jason walking over the scarred -field. - -"I know you didn't want me at the funeral, Dorinda," he said, "but it -was all I could do to show my respect for your father. He was one of the -best men who ever lived." - -Her breast quivered with pain, but she moved on without appearing to be -aware of his presence. - -"I was afraid you were angry because I came," he continued. - -At this her pride was swallowed up in bitterness, and she stopped and -looked back. "You had no right to come. You knew I did not want you -there." - -Without replying to her charge, he stared at her as if he were amazed by -the change in her face. "This is the first time you've looked at me -since you came home," he said. "You've treated me as if I were the dirt -under your feet." - -Her hand was on the slender bough of a pine, and stripping the needles -from the branch, she flung them out on the wind with a passionate -gesture. Over the chaos in her mind there darted the shadow of a regret. -"If only I had killed him that night!" - -"Even now, you won't let your eyes rest on me," he complained. "If you'd -given me a chance, I'd have done anything you wanted. But you never gave -me a chance. You never listened." - -Her gaze, which had been fixed on the horizon beyond him, swept back to -his face. "Your following me won't make me listen." - -"If only you knew what I've suffered." - -She was looking at him now with merciless eyes. For this thing she had -ruined her life! Then, before the thought had left her mind, she -realized that in his presence, with her eyes on his face, she was -farther away from him than she had been in New York. Yesterday, he had -had power over her senses; to-morrow, he might have power again over her -memory; but at this instant, while they stood there, so close together -that she could almost feel his breath on her face, her senses and her -memory alike were delivered from the old torment of love. - -"My nerve is going," he said weakly, attempting to soften her. "I've -started drinking like Father." - -Looking at him, she admitted that it was only her feeling for him, not -the man himself, that had changed. Superficially, in spite of excessive -drinking, he was as attractive as he had ever been; yet this appeal, -which she had found so irresistible two years ago, failed now to awaken -the faintest tremor in her heart. The contrast between his brown-black -eyes and his red hair seemed to her artificial: there was something -repellent to her in the gleam of his white teeth through his short red -moustache. These were the physical details that had once affected her so -deeply; these traits which she saw now, for the first time, in the -spectral light of disenchantment. - -"Can you never understand," she asked suddenly, "that I don't hate you -because you mean to me--just nothing." - -"You are sending me straight to the dogs." - -She laughed. How theatrical men were! Beneath her ridicule, she felt the -cruelty which gnaws like a worm at the heart of emotion in its decay. - -"Why should I care?" she demanded. - -"You mean you wouldn't care if I were to die a drunkard like my father?" -His voice trembled, and she saw that he was wrestling with man's -inability to believe that a woman's love can perish while his own still -survives. - -"No, I shouldn't care." - -"You're hard, Dorinda, as hard as a stone." - -Her smile was exultant. "Yes, I am hard. I'm through with soft things." - -Turning her back on him, she walked rapidly away over the ploughed -ground in the direction of the house. Oh, if the women who wanted love -could only know the infinite relief of having love over! - - - - -XI - - -On an afternoon in October, Dorinda stood under the harp-shaped pine in -the graveyard and looked down on the farm. - -The drift of autumn was in the air; the shadows from the west were -growing longer; and in a little while Nimrod, the farm boy, would let -down the bars by the watering-trough, and the seven Jersey cows would -file sleepily across the road and the lawn to the cow-barn. At the first -glimpse of Nimrod she would run down and slip into her overalls. Ever -since the cows had come from Green Acres, she had milked them morning -and evening, and she was wondering now how many more she could handle -with only Fluvanna to help her. Only by doing the work herself and -keeping a relentless eye on every detail, could she hope to succeed in -the end. If she were once weak enough to compromise with the natural -carelessness of the negroes, she knew that the pails and pans would not -be properly scalded, and the milk would begin to lose its quality. -Fluvanna was the superior of most ignorant white women; but even -Fluvanna, though she was, as Dorinda said to herself, one in a thousand, -would slight her work as soon as she was given authority over others. -There were times when it seemed to Dorinda that this instinct to slight -was indigenous to the soil of the South. In the last six months she had -felt the temptation herself. There had been hours of weariness when it -had seemed to her that it was better to be swift and casual than to be -slow and thorough; but she had always suppressed the impulse before it -was translated into outward negligence. Would her power of resistance -survive, she wondered, or would it yield inevitably to the surrounding -drought of energy? - -Six months were gone now, and how hard she had worked! She thought of -the mornings when she had risen before day, eaten a hurried breakfast by -the crack of dawn, and milked the cows by the summer sunrise. From the -moment the warm milk frothed into the pails until the creamy butter was -patted into moulds and stamped with the name Old Farm beneath the device -of a harp-shaped pine, there was not a minute detail of the work that -was left to others. Even the scalding of the churns, the straining and -skimming of the milk in the old-fashioned way without a separator,--all -these simple tasks came under her watchful eyes. When the first supply -of butter was sent off, she waited with nervous dread for the verdict. -The price had seemed extravagant, for selling directly to her customer -she had asked thirty cents a pound, while butter in Pedlar's store was -never higher than ninepence in summer and a shilling in winter, measured -in the old English terms which were still commonly used in Queen -Elizabeth County. - -"It seems a mighty high price," her mother had objected. - -"I know, but Mrs. Faraday told me to ask more. She said the dairy would -get a dollar a pound for the very best. Some people are always ready to -pay a high price, and they value a thing more if they pay too much for -it. I found out all I could about butter making in New York, and I'm -sure nobody could have taken more trouble. It tasted like flowers." - -"Well, perhaps--" Mrs. Oakley had sounded dubious. "We'll wait and see." - -When the letter and check came together, Dorinda's spirits had soared on -wings. The hotel and the dairy would take all that she could supply of -that quality; and though she had known that her success was less -fortuitous than appeared on the surface, she had not paused to inquire -whether it was owing to influence or to accident. "If everything goes -well, I'll have twenty-five cows by next fall," she said hopefully, "and -Ebenezer and Mary Joe Green to help Fluvanna." - -"You always jump so far ahead, Dorinda." - -"I'm made that way. I can't help it. If I didn't live in the future, I -couldn't stand things as they are." - -Now, in the soft afternoon light, she stretched her arms over her head -with a gesture of healthy fatigue. The aromatic scent of the pine was in -her nostrils. In the sun-steeped meadows below there was the murmurous -chanting of grasshoppers. At the hour she felt peaceful and pleasantly -drowsy, and all her troubles were lost in the sensation of physical -ease. She was thinner than ever; her muscles were hard and elastic; the -colour of her skin was burned to a pale amber; and the curves of her -rich mouth were firmer and less appealingly feminine. In a few years the -work of the farm would probably coarsen her features; but at -twenty-three she was still young enough to ripen to a maturer beauty. -Though her hands were roughened by work and the nails were stained and -broken, she wasted no regret upon the disfigurement of her body as long -as her senses remained benumbed by toil. She slept now without dreaming. -This alone seemed to her to be worth any sacrifice of external softness. - -Her glance travelled over the cornfield, where the shocks were gathered -in rows amid the stubble, and she reflected that the harvest had been -better than usual. Then her eyes passed along the orchard path to the -new cow-barn, and she watched the figure of William Fairlamb climbing -down from the roof. An agreeable sense of possession stole into her -mind, while she looked from the cow-barn to the back of the house, and -saw her mother moving along the path from the porch. There were a -hundred and fifty hens in the poultry yard now, and it seemed to Dorinda -that the old woman's happiness had simmered down into an enjoyment of -chickens. Though she still worshipped Rufus, he was only a -disappointment and an increasing anxiety. Of late he had done no work on -the farm; his days were spent in hunting with Ike Pryde or Adam Snead, -and it was evident to Dorinda that he was beginning to drink too much -bad whiskey. It would be a relief, she felt, when November came and he -went away for the winter. - -Turning her head, as she prepared to leave the graveyard, she glanced -beyond the many-coloured autumn scene to the distant chimneys of Five -Oaks. How far-off was the time when the sight of those red chimneys -against a blue or grey sky would not stab into her heart? Her love was -dead; and her regret clung less to the thought that love had ended in -disappointment than to the supreme tragedy that love ended at all. -Nothing endured. Everything perished of its own inner decay. That, after -all, was the gnawing worm at the heart of experience. If either her love -or her hatred had lasted, she would have found less bitterness in the -savour of life. - -For the first few weeks after her meeting with Jason on the edge of the -pines, she had been enveloped in profound peace. Then, gradually, it -seemed to her that the farther she moved away from him in reality, the -closer he approached to her hidden life. As the days went by, the -freedom she had won in his presence wore off like the effects of an -anodyne, and the bondage of the nerves and the senses began to tighten -again. Never, since she had looked into his face and had told herself -that she was indifferent, had she known complete disillusionment. The -trouble was, she discovered, that instead of remembering him as she had -last seen him, her imagination created images which her reason denied. -Not only her pain, but the very memory of pain that had once been, could -leave, she found, a physical soreness. - -Beyond the fields and the road the sun was sinking lower, and the -western sky was stained with the colour of autumn fruits. While she -watched the clouds, Dorinda remembered the heart of a pomegranate that -she had seen in a window in New York; and immediately she was swept by a -longing for the sights and sounds of the city. "There's no use thinking -of that now," she said to herself, as she left the brow of the hill and -walked down the path through the orchard. "Like so many other things, it -is only when you look back on it that you seem to want it. While I was -in New York I was longing to be away. There comes Nimrod with the cows, -and Fluvanna bringing the milk pails." - -On the back porch her mother was drying apples, for the apple crop had -been good, and the cellar was already stored with russets and winesaps. - -"We ought to have dried apples enough to last us till next year," Mrs. -Oakley remarked, while she wiped the discoloured blade of the knife on -her apron. "The whole time I was slicing these apples, I couldn't help -thinking how partial your father was to dried fruit, and last fall there -were hardly any apples fit to keep." Raising her hand to her eyes, she -squinted in the direction from which her daughter had come. "I can't -make out who that is running across the cornfield, but whoever it is, -he's in a mighty big hurry." - -Dorinda followed her gaze. "It's Rufus. He looks as if something were -after him." - -Mrs. Oakley's face was twisted into what was called her "neuralgic -look." "He promised me to mend that churn before night," she said in a -dissatisfied tone. "But I haven't laid eyes on him since dinner time. He -goes too much in bad company. I haven't got a particle of use for Ike -Pryde and those two Kittery boys over by Plumtree." - -Dorinda nodded. "I'm glad he is going away. The sooner, the better." - -"I reckon he has just recollected the churn." Mrs. Oakley's tone was -without conviction, and she added presently, "He certainly does look -scared, doesn't he?" - -"I wonder what could have frightened him?" As the boy drew nearer, -Dorinda saw that he was panting for breath and that his usually florid -face was blanched to a leaden pallor. "What on earth has happened, -Rufus?" she called sharply. - -He waved angrily to her to be silent. His palmetto hat was in his hand, -and when he reached the porch, he hurled it through the open door into -the hall. Though his breath came in gasps as if he were stifling for -air, he picked up a hammer from one of the benches, and without stopping -to rest, bent over the broken churn at the side of the step. - -"What on earth has happened, Rufus?" Dorinda asked again. She saw that -her mother was trembling with apprehension, and the sight exasperated -her against Rufus. - -"You ought to have let me go away last spring," the boy replied in a -truculent tone. He lifted the hammer above his head and, still wheezing -from his race, drove a nail crookedly into the bottom of the churn. His -hand trembled, and Dorinda noticed that the swinging blow fell unevenly. - -"You haven't done anything you oughtn't to, have you, son?" his mother -inquired shrilly. - -Rufus turned his head and stared at her in moody silence. Though his -handsome face wore his usual sulky frown, Dorinda suspected that his -resentful manner was a veil that covered an inner disturbance. His dark -eyes held a smouldering fire, as if fear were waiting to leap out at a -sound, and the hand in which he clutched the hammer had never stopped -shaking. - -"Don't you let on I wasn't here, no matter who asks you," he said -doggedly. "It wasn't my fault anyway. There isn't anybody coming, is -there?" - -"No, that's Nimrod bringing up the cows," Dorinda rejoined impatiently. -"I must put on my overalls." - -Whatever happened, the cows must be milked, she reflected as she entered -the house. This morning and evening ritual of the farm had become as -inexorable as law. Hearts might be broken, men might live or die, but -the cows must be milked. - -When she came back from the dairy, Rufus had disappeared, but her -mother, who was preparing supper, beckoned her into the kitchen. "I -haven't found out yet what's the matter," whispered the old woman. "He -won't open his mouth, though I can see that he's terribly upset about -something. I'm worried right sick." - -"He's probably got into a quarrel with somebody. You know how -overbearing he is." - -"I reckon I spoiled him." Mrs. Oakley's lip trembled while she poured a -little coffee into a cup and then poured it back again into the -coffee-pot. "Your father used to tell me I made a difference because he -was the youngest. I s'pose I oughtn't to have done it, but it's hard to -see how I could have helped it. He was a mighty taking child, was -Rufus." - -"Where is he now?" - -"Up in his room. I've called him to supper. He's loaded his gun again, -but he didn't seem to want me to notice, and he's put it back in the -corner behind the door." - -"Oh, well, try not to worry about it, Ma. Some fool's play most likely. -Can I help you get supper? I'll be straight back as soon as I've slipped -out of these overalls. There's a lot of work for me afterwards in the -dairy." - -She ran upstairs to her room, and on the way down, as she passed Rufus's -door, she called cheerfully, "Rufus, aren't you coming to supper?" - -To her surprise, his door opened immediately, as if he had been hiding -behind it, and he came out and followed her meekly downstairs into the -kitchen. His excitement had apparently left him, but his healthy colour -had not returned and his eyes looked strained and bloodshot. Bad -whiskey, she thought, though she said as amiably as she could, "If I -were you, I'd go to New York next week even if the job isn't ready." - -He looked at her gratefully. "I was just thinking I'd better do that." - -His manner was so conciliatory that it made her vaguely uneasy. Jason -had been like that, she remembered, in the weeks before he had jilted -her, and, unjustly or not, she had come to regard suavity in men with -suspicion. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Rufus if he had got -into a scrape; but she decided, as she brought his supper to the table, -that it was a situation which she had better ignore. No good had ever -come, she reflected with the ripe wisdom of experience, of putting -questions to a man. What men wished you to know, and occasionally what -they did not wish you to know, they would divulge in their own good -time. Her mother, she knew, had spent her life trying to make men over, -and what had come of her efforts except more trouble and stiffer -material to work on? - -When she sat down at the table, she expected her mother to begin her -usual interrogation; but the old woman allowed Rufus to finish his -supper undisturbed. Even when the last cake was lifted from the -gridiron, and Mrs. Oakley dropped into her chair behind the tin -coffee-pot, she was still silent. The cords in her throat twitched and -strained when she raised a cup to her lips, and after a vain effort to -swallow, she pushed her plate away with the food untasted. - -"Poor Ma," thought the girl, watching the drawn grey face, where the -veins in the temples bulged in knots of pain, "can she never have -peace?" A longing seized her to fold the spare frame in her young arms -and speak comforting words; but the habit of reserve was like an iron -mould from which she could not break away. Nothing but death was strong -enough to shatter that inherited restraint and resolve it into -tenderness. While words of affection struggled to her lips, all she said -was, "You look worn out. Is your neuralgia worse?" - -"No, it ain't worse. I've got a stabbing pain in my temple, that's all." - -Rising from her chair, she began to mix cornbread and gravy for Rambler -and Flossie. Though she tottered when she moved, she put aside Dorinda's -offer of help. "I'm used to doing things," she said, without stopping -for an instant. "You and Rufus had better go along about what you want -to do." - -The hound and the cat were at her skirts, and she had just put the tin -plates down for them and taken up the empty dish, when there was a sound -of wheels on the rocks outside, and Dorinda, who was watching Rufus, saw -him turn a muddy grey, like the discoloured whitewash on the walls. - -"Don't you let on that I was off this afternoon, Ma," he whispered -hoarsely. - -"I declare, Rufus, you talk as if you were crazy," snapped Mrs. Oakley, -flinching from a dart of neuralgia. Though her tone was merely one of -irritation, her hands trembled so violently that the china dish she was -holding dropped to the floor and crashed into bits. "This china never -was a particle of account!" she exclaimed, as she bent over to pick up -the pieces. - -"I wonder who it can be this time of night?" Dorinda said more lightly -than she would have believed possible. - -"Maybe I'd better go," Rufus jerked out. - -"You sit right down, son," his mother retorted tartly. - -Going into the hall, Dorinda opened the front door and stood waiting in -the square of lamplight on the threshold. It was a dark night, for the -moon had not yet risen, and all that she could distinguish was what -appeared to be the single shape of a horse and buggy. Only when the -vehicle had jogged up the slope among the trees, and the driver had -alighted and ascended the steps of the porch, did she recognize the -squat shape and flabby features of Amos Wigfall, the sheriff. She had -known him at the store in his political capacity as the familiar of -every voter; yet friendly as he had always appeared to be, she could not -repress a feeling of apprehension while she held out her hand. People, -especially farmers, she knew, did not venture out, except with good -reason, on bad roads after dark. - -"Why, it's you, Mr. Wigfall!" she exclaimed, with cheerful hospitality. -"Ma, Mr. Wigfall is here. I hope you've got some supper for him." And -all the time she was thinking, "I might have known Rufus had done -something foolish. Poor Ma!" - -The sheriff heaved his bulky figure into the house. "I ain't come to -supper, Dorinda," he said heartily. "Don't you go and get yo' Ma upset. -I don't reckon it's anything to worry about. I wouldn't have come if I -could have helped it." - -Still grasping the girl's hand, he stood blinking apologetically in the -glare of the lamp. His face was so bloated and so unctuous that it might -have been the living embodiment of the fee system upon which it had -fattened. He was chewing tobacco as he spoke, and wheeling abruptly he -spat a wad into the night before he followed Dorinda down the hall to -the kitchen. "The fact is I've come about Rufus," he explained, adding, -"I hope I ain't intrudin', mum," as he whipped off his old slouch hat -with an air of gallantry which reminded Dorinda of the burlesque of some -royal cavalier. - -"Oh, no, you ain't intruding, Mr. Wigfall," Mrs. Oakley replied. "What -was it you said about Rufus?" - -"He said he was sure it wasn't anything to worry about," Dorinda -hastened to explain. She did not glance at Rufus while she spoke, yet -she was aware that he had risen and was scowling at their visitor. - -"Wall, as between friends," the sheriff remarked ingratiatingly, "I hope -thar ain't a particle of truth in the charge; but Peter Kittery was -found dead over by Whistling Spring this evening, and Jacob has got it -into his head that 'twas Rufus that shot him." - -"It's a lie!" Rufus shouted furiously. "I never went near Whistling -Spring this evening. Ma knows I was mending her churn for her from -dinner till supper time." - -"Wall, I'm downright glad of that, son," Mr. Wigfall returned, and he -looked as if he meant it, fee or no fee. "Yo' Pa was a good friend to me -when he got a chance, and I shouldn't like to see his son mixed up in a -bad business. Jacob says you and Peter had a fuss over cards last night -at the store. But if you ain't been near Whistling Spring," he -concluded, with triumphant logic, "it stands to reason that you couldn't -have done it. You jest let him come along with me, mum," he added after -a pause, as he turned to Mrs. Oakley. "I'll take good care of him, and -send him back to you as soon as the hearing is over to-morrow. Thar -ain't no need for you to worry a mite." - -"I never saw Peter after last night!" Rufus cried out in a storm of rage -and terror. "I never went near Whistling Spring. Ma knows I was working -over her old churn all the evening." - -His words and his tone struck with a chill against Dorinda's heart. Why -couldn't the boy be silent? Why was he obliged, through some obliquity -of nature, invariably to appear as a braggart and a bully? While she -stood there listening to his furious denial of guilt, she was as -positive that he had killed Peter Kittery as if she had been on the -spot. - -For a minute there was silence; then a new voice began to speak, a voice -so faint and yet so shrill that it was like the far-off whistle of a -train. At first the girl did not recognize her mother's tone, and she -glanced quickly at the door with the idea that a stranger might have -entered after the sheriff. - -"It couldn't have been Rufus," the old woman said, with that whistling -noise. "Rufus was here with me straight on from dinner time till supper. -I had him mending my old churn because I didn't want to use one of -Dorinda's new ones. Dorinda went off in the fields to watch the hands," -she continued firmly, "but Rufus was right here with me the whole -evening." - -When she had finished speaking, she reached for a chair and sat down -suddenly, as if her legs had failed her. Rufus broke into a nervous -laugh which had an indecent sound, Dorinda thought, and Mr. Wigfall -heaved a loud sigh of relief. - -"Wall, you jest come over to-morrow and tell that to the magistrate," he -said effusively. "I don't reckon there could be a better witness for -anybody. Thar ain't nobody round Pedlar's Mill that would be likely to -dispute yo' word." Slinging his arm, he gave Rufus a hearty slap on the -back. "I'm sorry I've got to take you along with me, son, but I hope you -won't bear me any grudge. It won't hurt you to spend a night away from -yo' Ma, and my wife, she'll be glad to have you sample her buckwheat -cakes. I hope you're having good luck with your chickens," he remarked -to Mrs. Oakley as an afterthought. "My wife has been meaning to get over -and look at yo' white leghorns." - -"Tell her I'll be real glad to see her whenever she can get over," Mrs. -Oakley replied, as she made an effort to struggle to her feet. "Ain't -you going to take any clean clothes to wear to-morrow, Rufus? That shirt -looks right mussed." - -Rufus shook his head. "No, I'm not. If they want me, they can take me as -I am." - -"Wall, he looks all right to me," the sheriff observed, with jovial -mirth. "I'll expect you about noon," he said, as he shook hands. "Don't -you lose a minute's sleep. Thar ain't nothing in the world for you to -worry about." - -Picking up the kerosene lamp from the table, Dorinda went out on the -porch to light the way to the gate. "There's a bad place near the -'rockery,'" she cautioned. - -He had climbed heavily into the buggy, and Rufus was in the act of -mounting between the wheels, when Mrs. Oakley came out of the house and -thrust a parcel wrapped in newspaper into the boy's hand. "There's a -clean collar and your comb," she said, drawing quickly back. "Be sure -not to forget them in the morning." - - - - -XII - - -Standing there on the porch, with the light from the lamp she held -flaring out against the silver black of the night sky, Dorinda watched -the buggy crawling down the dangerous road to the gate. Something dark -and cold had settled over her thoughts. She could not shake it off -though she told herself that it was unreasonable for her to feel so -despondent. As if despondency, she added, were the product of reason! - -Mother love was a wonderful thing, she reflected, a wonderful and a -ruinous thing! It was mother love that had helped to make Rufus the -mortal failure he was, and it was mother love that was now accepting, as -a sacrifice, the results of this failure. Mrs. Oakley was a pious and -God-fearing woman, whose daily life was lived beneath the ominous shadow -of the wrath to come; yet she had deliberately perjured herself in order -that a worthless boy might escape the punishment which she knew he -deserved. - -"I'm not like that," Dorinda thought. "I couldn't have done it." At the -bottom of her heart, in spite of her kinship to Rufus, there was an -outraged sense, not so much of justice as of economy. The lie appeared -to her less sinful than wasted. After all, why should not Rufus be held -responsible for his own wickedness? She was shocked; she was -unsympathetic; she was curiously exasperated. Her mother's attitude to -Rufus impressed her as sentimental rather than unselfish; and she saw in -this painful occurrence merely one of the first fruits of that long -weakness. Since she had been brought so close to reality she had had -less patience with evasive idealism. "I suppose I'm different from other -women," she meditated. "I may have lost feeling, or else it was left out -of me when I was born. Some women would have gone on loving Jason no -matter how he treated them; but I'm not made that way. There's something -deep down in me that I value more than love or happiness or anything -outside myself. It may be only pride, but it comes first of all." - -The buggy had disappeared into the night, and lowering the lamp, she -turned and entered the house. As she closed the door the mocking screech -of an owl floated in, and she felt that the frost was slipping over the -threshold. All the ancient superstitions of the country gathered in her -mind. It was foolish, she knew, to let herself remember these things at -such a time; but she had lost control of her imagination, which galloped -ahead dragging her reason after it. - -In the kitchen she found her mother bending over the dish-pan with her -arms plunged in soapsuds. - -"Come to bed, Ma. I'll finish the dishes." - -To her surprise, Mrs. Oakley did not resist. The spirit of opposition -was crushed out of her, and she tottered as she turned away to wipe her -hands on a cup towel. - -"I reckon I'd better," she answered meekly. "I don't feel as if I could -stand on my feet another minute." - -Putting her strong young arm about her, Dorinda led her across the hall -into her bedroom. While the girl struck a match and lighted the lamp on -the table, she saw that her mother was shaking as if she had been -stricken with palsy. - -"I'll help you undress, Ma." - -"I can manage everything but my shoes, daughter. My fingers are too -swollen to unbutton them." - -"Don't you worry. I'll put you to bed." As she turned down the bed and -smoothed out the coarse sheets and the patchwork quilt, it seemed to -Dorinda that the inanimate objects in the room had borrowed pathos from -their human companions. All the stitches that had gone into this quilt, -happy stitches, sad stitches, stitches that had ended in nothing! Her -eyes filled with tears, and she looked quickly away. What was it in -houses and furniture that made them come to life in hours of suspense -and tear at the heartstrings? - -Mrs. Oakley was undressing slowly, folding each worn, carefully mended -garment before she placed it on a chair near the foot of the bed. - -"Do you reckon they will do anything to Rufus?" she asked presently in a -quavering voice. - -She had released her hair from the tight coil at the back of her head, -and it hung now, combed and plaited by Dorinda, in a thin grey braid on -her shoulders. The childish arrangement gave a fantastic air to the -shadow on the whitewashed wall. - -"Not after what you said. Didn't you hear Mr. Wigfall tell you that he -was taking him just for the night?" - -Mrs. Oakley turned her head, and the shadow at her back turned with her. -"Yes, I heard him. Well, if the Lord will give me strength to go through -with it, I'll never ask for anything else." - -"He'll be more likely to help you if you get some sleep and stop -worrying. The Lord helps good sleepers." Though she spoke flippantly, -she was frightened by the look in her mother's face. - -"I don't feel as if I could close my eyes." Mrs. Oakley had climbed into -bed, and was lying, straight and stiff as an effigy, under the quilt. -"Don't you think it would be a comfort if we were to read a chapter in -the Bible?" - -Dorinda broke into a dry little laugh. "No, I don't. The only comforting -thing I can imagine is to get my head on a pillow. I've got seven cows -to milk by sunrise, and that is no easy job." - -"Yes, you'd better go," her mother assented reluctantly, and she added -with a sigh, "I can't help feeling that something dreadful is going to -happen." - -"You won't prevent it by lying awake. Don't get up in the morning until -you're obliged to milk the cows before day and get Fluvanna to help -about breakfast as soon as she comes. It's a long way to Queen Elizabeth -Courthouse, and we'll have to allow plenty of time for the horses. Do -you want anything more?" She resisted an impulse to stoop and kiss the -wrinkled cheek because she knew that the unusual exhibition of -tenderness would embarrass them both. "Shall I put out the lamp for -you?" - -"No, I like a little light. You can see so many things in the dark after -the fire goes out." - -Dorinda moved away as noiselessly as she could; but she had barely -crossed the hall before she heard a muffled sound in the room, and knew -that her mother was out of bed and on her knees. "I can't do anything," -thought the girl desperately. "It is going to kill her, and I can't do -anything to prevent it." Every muscle in her body ached from the strain -of the day while she washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen for the -next morning. She realized that she should have to do most of her farm -work before sunrise, and she decided that, in case Fluvanna came late, -it would be well to put out whatever she needed for breakfast. After -that--well, even if Rufus had murdered somebody, she couldn't keep awake -any longer. - -In the morning, when she came back into the house after milking, she -found that her mother was already in the kitchen, and that a pot of -coffee was bubbling on the stove. Of course Fluvanna, on the day when -she was particularly needed, had contrived to be late. - -"I told you not to worry about breakfast, Ma," Dorinda said, provoked in -spite of her pity. - -"I know you did, but I couldn't lie in bed any longer. I was so afraid -you might oversleep yourself and not wake me in time." She was the -victim of a nervous apprehension lest they should be too late for the -magistrate, and it was futile to attempt to reason her out of her folly. -"You sit right down in your overalls and drink your coffee while it's -hot," she continued, stirring restlessly. "I've got some fried eggs and -bacon to keep up your strength." - -"My strength is all right." Dorinda washed her hands and then came over -to the table where breakfast was waiting for her. "The sun isn't up yet, -and we can't start before day." - -"Well, I wanted to be ready in plenty of time. You'll have to be away -from the farm all day, won't you?" - -"I don't know," Dorinda rejoined briskly. "Fluvanna and Nimrod will have -to manage the best they can. I'm not going to worry about it. People can -always be spared easier than they think they can." - -Her animation, however, was wasted, for her mother was not following -her. Mrs. Oakley had grown so restless that she could not sit still at -the table, and she jumped up and ran to the stove or the safe whenever -she could find an excuse. She wore the strained expression of a person -who is listening for an expected sound and is afraid of missing it by a -moment of inadvertence. Already, before lighting the stove, she had put -on her Sunday dress of black alpaca, and had protected it in front by an -apron of checked blue and white gingham. If she had had the courage, -Dorinda suspected, she would have cooked breakfast in her widow's -bonnet, with the streamer of rusty crape at her back. - -"Is that somebody going along the road?" she inquired whenever Dorinda -looked up from her plate. - -"No, I don't hear anybody," the girl replied patiently. "Try to eat -something, or you'll be sick." - -Mrs. Oakley obediently lifted a bit of egg on her fork, and then put it -down again before it had touched her lips. "I don't feel as if I could -swallow a morsel." - -"Drink a little coffee anyway," Dorinda pleaded. - -Again the old woman made a futile effort to swallow. "I don't know what -can be the matter with me," she said, "but my throat feels as if it were -paralyzed." - -"Well, I'll fix up a snack for you, and you can nibble at it on the way. -Somebody will be sure to ask us to dinner. Now, I'll clear the table -before I get ready." - -But, after all, Dorinda was left at home for the day. Just as Nimrod, -animated by misfortune, was leading Dan and Beersheba out to the wagon, -a buggy drove briskly into the yard, and Nathan Pedlar alighted. - -"I kind of thought you'd want a man with your Ma, Dorinda," he -explained, "so I left Bob Shafer in charge of the store and came right -over. Rufus spoke to me as he was going by with the sheriff last night, -and I told him I'd take his Ma to the Courthouse." - -Though Dorinda was doubtful at first, Mrs. Oakley responded immediately. -In spite of her protracted experience with masculine helplessness, she -had not lost her confidence in the male as a strong prop in the hour of -adversity. "I can't tell you how thankful I am to have you, Nathan," she -replied eagerly. "Dorinda had just as well stay at home and look after -the farm." - -"Don't you think I'd better go too, Ma?" the girl asked, not without a -tinge of exasperation in her tone. It seemed absurd to her that her -mother should prefer to have Nathan Pedlar stand by her simply because -he happened to be a man. - -"I don't believe she'll need you, Dorinda," remarked Nathan, who, like -Nimrod, was inspired by adversity. "But if you feel you'd like to come, -I reckon we can all three squeeze into my buggy." - -"There ain't a bit of use in your going," Mrs. Oakley insisted. "You -just stay right here and take care of things." - -"Well, I won't go." Dorinda gave way after a resistance that was only -half hearted. "Take care of her, Nathan, and make her eat something -before she gets there."' - -Running into the house, she wrapped two buttered rolls and boiled eggs -in a red and white napkin, and put them into a little basket. Then she -added a bottle of blackberry wine, and carried the basket out to the -buggy, while Mrs. Oakley tied on her bonnet with trembling hands. - -"Where's my bottle of camphor, Dorinda?" - -"Here it is, Ma, in your reticule. Be sure and take a little blackberry -wine if you feel faint." Not until she had watched the buggy drive -through the gate and out on the road, where the sun was coming up in a -ball of fire, did the girl understand what a relief it was not to go. "I -believe she'd rather have Nathan," she decided, as she went upstairs to -change into her old gingham dress, "because he doesn't know that she is -not telling the truth." - -When she thought of it afterwards, that day towered like a mountain in -the cloudy background of her life. Alone on the farm, for the first time -in her recollection, she felt forlorn and isolated. It was impossible -for her to keep her mind fixed on her tasks. Restlessness, like an -inarticulate longing, pricked at her nerves. When the morning work in -the dairy was over, she wandered about the farm, directing the work in -the fields, and stopping for a minute or two to talk with old Matthew -Fairlamb, who was handing up the shingles to his son William on the roof -of the new barn. At a little distance the old house of the overseer, -which had been used as a tobacco barn since her great-grandfather's -death, was being cleaned and repaired for Jonas Walsh (one of the "poor -Walshes") who had undertaken to work as a manager in return for a living -and a share of the crops. After Rufus went, Mrs. Oakley insisted, a -white man and his family would be required on the place, and though -Dorinda preferred loneliness to such company, she found it less wearing -to yield to her mother than to argue against her opinion. "Mrs. Walsh -will be company for Ma, anyway," she said to herself. "Even if she is -slatternly, they will still have chickens in common." - -"Do you think Jonas will be useful?" she inquired of old Matthew, while -she paused to watch the expert shingling of the roof. - -Old Matthew made a dubious gesture, "Mebbe he will, an' mebbe he won't. -I ain't prophesyin'." - -"Well, he can shoot anyhow," William observed cynically, as he stooped -down for the shingles his father held up. "He's got a gun and a coon -dog." - -"But I need him to work. How can you make a living out of the land -unless you work it?" - -Old Matthew chuckled. "The trouble with this here land is that tobaccy -has worn it out. I ain't never seen the land yit that it wouldn't wear -out if you gave it a chance. You take my advice, Dorindy, and don't have -nothin' more to do with tobaccy. As long as you don't smoke and don't -chaw, thar ain't no call for you to put up with it." - -"I won't," Dorinda replied with determination. "All the tobacco fields -are giving way to cowpeas." - -"I see you're making a new field alongside of the old one." - -"Yes. I sowed sweet clover with lime, and turned the clover under when -it was in bloom. I can't afford to do that again. It was an experiment, -but it improved the land." - -"You're right thar, honey. Put yo' heart in the land. The land is the -only thing that will stay by you." - -She smiled and passed on, stopping to say a few words to Mary Joe Green -at the door of the henhouse. Though she was aware that her aimless -movements accomplished nothing, she could not settle down to the steady -work which was awaiting her. The sound of a wagon in the road shook her -nerves into a quiver of fear, and she started whenever a bird flew -overhead or an acorn dropped on the dead leaves at her feet. At dinner -time she did not kindle a fire in the stove, but drank a glass of -buttermilk and ate a "pone" of cornbread while she stood on the front -porch and looked at the road. One moment she wished that she had gone -with her mother to the Courthouse, and the next she was glad that she -had waited at home. Whatever Rufus's fate might be, she felt that the -mental strain would be the end of her mother. Even if Rufus were to go -free, Mrs. Oakley's conscience would torment her to death. - -As the day declined the place became insupportable to her, and leaving -the house, she walked across the yard to the gate, with Rambler and -Flossie trailing at her heels. The road under the honey locust tree was -strewn with oblong brown pods, as glossy as satin, and treading over -them, she walked slowly past the bridge and up the shaded slope between -the pasture and the band of Hoot Owl Woods. In the pasture she could see -the Jerseys gathered by the stream under the willows, and now and then a -silver tinkle of cowbells floated over the trumpet vine on the fence. - -It was a rich October afternoon, with a sky of burnished blue and an air -of carnival in the wine-red and ashen-bronze of the woods. For an -instant the brightness hurt her eyes, and when she opened them it seemed -to her that the autumnal radiance fluttered like a blown shawl over the -changeless structure of the landscape. Beneath the fugitive beauty the -stern features of the country had not softened. - -She walked on, still followed by Rambler and Flossie, beyond the woods -to the fork of the road. Looking away from the gate of Five Oaks, she -kept her eyes on the acres of broomsedge belonging to Honeycomb Farm. -The stretch of road beyond the burned cabin was deserted, and the only -sound was the monotonous droning of insects and the dropping of -persimmons or acorns on the dead leaves under the trees. Far away, in -the direction of Old Farm, the shocked corn on the hill was swimming in -a rain of apricot-coloured lights. "If only it would last," she thought, -"things would not be so hard to bear. But it is like happiness. Before -you know that you have found it, it goes." - -Turning away, because beauty was like a knife in her heart, she called -Rambler back to her side. In the middle of the road, bathed in the -apricot-coloured glow, Flossie was sitting, and farther on, she saw the -figures of old Matthew and William Fairlamb on their way home from work. -When they reached her they spoke without stopping. - -"Good evening. We'll be over bright and early to-morrow." - -"Good evening to you both. There won't be a killing frost to-night, will -there?" - -"Not enough to hurt. Thar ain't nothin' but flowers left out by this -time, I reckon." - -Old Matthew's cheeks were as red as winter apples, and his eyes twinkled -like black haws in their sockets. "He! He! When thar ain't nothin' to -hurt, we've no need to worry!" - -As they trudged away, she turned and looked after them. She wanted to -ask what they had heard of the shooting; but she resisted the impulse -until they were too far away for her words to reach them. Standing -there, while the two figures dwindled gradually into the blue distance, -she was visited again by the feeling that the moment was significant, if -only she could discover the meaning of it before it eluded her. Strange -how often that sensation returned to her now! Everything at which she -gazed; the frosted brown and yellow and wine-red of the landscape; the -shocked corn against the sunset; the figures of the two men diminishing -in the vague smear of the road; all these images were steeped in an -illusion of mystery. "I've let myself get wrought up over nothing," she -thought, with an endeavour to be reasonable. - -By the time she came within sight of the house again the afterglow was -paling, and a chill had crept through the thick shawl that she wore. -Perhaps, in spite of old Matthew, there would be a heavy frost before -morning, and she was glad to reflect that only the few summer flowers in -her mother's rockery would be blighted. Smoke was rising from two of the -chimneys, and she knew that Mary Joe had kindled fires in the kitchen -and in her mother's chamber. Already Fluvanna would be well on with the -milking. It was the first time Dorinda had trusted it to the girl and -Nimrod, and she hoped that there would be nothing to find fault with -when she went out to the barn. - -Two hours later, when the milking and the straining were both over, she -hurried out of the dairy at the noise of wheels in the darkness. As the -buggy drew up to the steps, she saw that her mother was seated between -Rufus and Nathan; and even before she caught the words they shouted, she -understood that the boy had been discharged. It was what she had -expected; yet after the assurance reached her, her anxiety was still as -heavy as it had been all day. When her eyes fell on her mother's -shrunken figure she realized that the old woman must have paid a fearful -price for her son's freedom. "She looks bled," the girl thought -bitterly. "She looks as if she would crumble to a handful of dust if you -touched her." A hot anger against Rufus flamed in her heart. Then she -saw that the boy was shaking with emotion, and her anger was smothered -in pity. After all, who was to blame? Who was ever to blame in life? - -"It's all right, Dorinda," Nathan said, as he helped Mrs. Oakley to the -ground and up on the porch. "Your Ma held up splendidly, but it's been -too much for her. She's worn clean out, I reckon." - -"I wish you'd been there to see the way she did it," Rufus added. -"Nobody said a word after she got through." Had he actually forgotten, -Dorinda asked herself, that his mother had sworn to a lie in order to -save him? - - - - -XIII - - -For the second time in her life Mrs. Oakley allowed herself to be put to -bed without protest. She hung limp and cold when they placed her in a -chair, and watched her children with vacant eyes while Rufus piled fresh -logs on the fire and Dorinda brought bottles of hot water wrapped in her -orange shawl. When the grey flannelette nightgown was slipped over her -shoulders, the old woman spoke for the first time since she had entered -the house. - -"Dorinda, the Lord gave me strength." - -"They have killed her," the girl thought resentfully; but she said only, -"Now you must get to bed as quick as you can." - -Mrs. Oakley stared up at her with eyes that were wind-swept in their -bleakness. Her face looked flattened and drawn to one side, as if some -tremendous pressure had just been removed. "I reckon I'd better," she -answered listlessly. - -"You must try to eat something. Fluvanna is making you some tea and -toast." - -"I ain't sick enough for tea." - -"Then I'll make you a cream toddy. There's some nice cream I saved for -you." - -While Dorinda was speaking she leaned over the bed and wrapped the -clammy feet in the orange shawl. "Can you feel the hot water bottles?" -she asked. The feet that she warmed so carefully were as stiff already, -she told herself in terror, as if they belonged to a corpse. Neither -the hot water nor the blazing fire could put any warmth into the -shivering body. - -"Yes, I feel them, but I'm sort of numbed." - -"Now I'll make the toddy. I've got some whiskey put away where Rufus -couldn't find it. If Fluvanna brings your supper, try to eat the egg -anyway." - -"I'll try, but I feel as if I couldn't keep it down," Mrs. Oakley -replied submissively. - -Flames were leaping up the chimney, and the shadows had melted into the -cheerful light. When Dorinda returned with the cream toddy, Mrs. Oakley -drank it eagerly, and with the stimulant of the whiskey in her veins, -she was able to sit up in bed and eat the supper Fluvanna had prepared. -It was long after the coloured girl's hour for going home, but the -excitement had braced her to self-sacrifice, and she had offered to stay -on for the night. "I can make up a pallet jest as easy as not in yo' -Ma's room," she said to Dorinda, "an' I'll fix Mr. Rufus' breakfast for -him, so he can catch the train befo' day." - -There were few negroes who did' not develop character, either good or -bad, in a crisis, Dorinda reflected a little later as she went out to -the dairy. Though there was no need for her to visit the dairy, since -Fluvanna and Nimrod had finished the work, she felt that she could not -sleep soundly until she had inspected the milk. Was this merely what -Rufus called "woman's fussiness," she wondered, or was it the kind of -nervous mania that afflicted even the most successful farmer? - -The brilliant autumn day had declined into a wan evening. From the dark -fields the wind brought the trail of woodsmoke mingled with the -effluvium of rotting leaves; and this scent invaded her thoughts like -the odour of melancholy. Not even the frosty air or the fragrant breath -of the cows in the barn could dispel the lethargy which had crept over -her. "I'm tired out," she reasoned. "I've been going too hard the last -six months, and I feel the strain as soon as I stop." Though she was -saddened by the haunting pathos of life, she did not feel the intimate -pang of grief. All that, it seemed to her, was over for ever. The power -to pity was still hers, for compassion is a detached impulse, but she -had lot beyond recall the gift of poignant emotion. Nothing had -penetrated that dead region around her heart. Not her father's death, -not her mother's illness--nothing. Drought had withered her, she told -herself cynically, and the locust had eaten away the green of her -spirit. - -In the morning, Rufus went off on the early train, and Dorinda drew a -breath of relief as she turned back to her work. The shock of the -tragedy appeared to have cleared the boy's temper, and he showed genuine -distress when he parted from his mother. "I feel as if I'd never see her -again," he said to Dorinda on the porch, while he was waiting for the -farmer who had promised to stop for him on the way to the station. - -Dorinda shook her head. Helplessness in the face of misery acted always -as an irritant on her nerves. "You never can tell," she replied. "But -remember all you have cost her and try to keep straight in the future." - -"I swear I'll never give her another minute's worry," he responded, -stuffing his handkerchief into his pocket. - -Perhaps he meant it; but it seemed to Dorinda that his repentance, like -his gift with tools, was too facile. "Whatever comes of this, it has -been the death of Ma," she thought, as she went into the house. - -When the day's churning was over, and she was in her mother's room, the -new doctor from the Courthouse arrived with his instruments and his -medicine case. He was a brisk, very ugly young man, with an awkward -raw-boned figure, and an honest face which was covered with unsightly -freckles. As different from Jason as any man could well be! He had risen -by sheer ability from the poorer class, and already, notwithstanding his -plain appearance and uncompromising honesty, he had built up a better -practice than the hereditary one of the Greylocks. For one thing, he -insisted upon having his fees paid, and it was natural, Dorinda had -discovered, to value advice more highly when it was not given away. - -As the doctor sat down beside Mrs. Oakley's bed, she opened her eyes and -looked at him without surprise and without welcome. Her bed was smooth -and spotlessly clean; the best quilt of log-cabin design lay over her -feet; and she was wearing a new nightgown which was buttoned closely -about her neck. Without her clothes, she had the look, in spite of her -ravaged face, of a very old child. - -"I've never spent a day in bed in my life, doctor," she said, "except -when my children were born." - -"I know," he rejoined, with dry sympathy. "That is the trouble." - -He did not waste words, but bent over immediately to begin his -examination; and when it was over, he merely patted the old woman's -shoulder before packing away his instruments. - -"You'll have to stay in bed a while now," he said, as he stood up with -his case in his hands. "I'll leave some medicine with your daughter; but -it isn't medicine you need; it is rest." - -Her groping gaze followed him with irrepressible weariness. "I don't -know what will become of the chickens," she said. "I reckon everything -will go to rack and ruin, but I can't help it. I've done all I could." - -He turned on the threshold. "My dear Mrs. Oakley, you couldn't get up if -you tried. Your strength has given out." - -She smiled indifferently. All the nervous energy upon which she had -lived for forty years was exhausted. There was nothing now but the -machine which was rapidly running down. "Yes, I reckon I'm worn out," -she responded, and turned her face to the wall. - -Not until they had left the porch and crossed the trodden ragweed to -where the buggy was waiting, did Dorinda summon the courage to ask a -question. - -"Is she seriously ill, doctor?" - -At her words he stopped and looked straight into her eyes, a look as -bare and keen as a blade. "She isn't ill at all in the strict sense of -the word," he answered. "She told the truth when she said that she was -worn out." - -"Then she will never be up again?" - -"One never knows. But I think this is the beginning of the end." He -hesitated, and added regretfully, "I ought not to put it so bluntly." - -She shook her head. "I'd rather know. Poor Ma! She is only sixty-two. It -has come so suddenly." - -"Suddenly." The word broke from him like an oath. "Why, the woman in -there has been dying for twenty years!" - -Her eyes were stony while she watched him mount into his buggy and turn -the horse's head toward the gate. The wheels spun over the rocks and out -into the road, as if they were revolving over the ice in her heart. -Would nothing thaw the frozen lake that enveloped her being? Would she -never again become living and human? The old sense of the hollowness of -reality had revived. Though she knew it was her mother of whom they had -been speaking, the words awoke only echoes in her thoughts. She longed -with all her soul to suffer acutely; yet she could feel nothing within -this colourless void in which she was imprisoned. - -When the buggy had disappeared, she retraced her steps to the house and -entered her mother's room with a smile on her lips. - -"You'll have to rest now, Ma, no matter how you hate it." - -At Dorinda's cheerful voice, the old woman turned over and looked at her -daughter as if she were a stranger. - -"I don't know how you'll manage," she answered; but her tone was -perfunctory. - -"Oh, we'll manage all right. Don't you worry. Just try to get well, Ma." - -A change of expression rippled like a shadow over the grey features, and -passed without leaving a trace. "I was afraid maybe the doctor didn't -think I was sick enough to stay in bed. I know I ain't exactly sick, but -I seem to have given way. I reckon Mary Joe can look after the chickens -till I'm able to be up." - -After this she fell into a doze from which she did not awaken until -Dorinda brought her favourite dinner of jowl and turnip salad. - -"The doctor says you must eat, Ma, or you'll never get back your -strength." - -"I know I ought to, daughter, but I feel as if something was choking -me." - -Day after day, month after month. Nothing else all through the autumn -and winter. - -Though Mrs. Oakley lived more than a year longer, she was never able -again to leave her bed. For the greater part of the time she lay, silent -and inert, in a state between waking and sleeping, unconcerned after all -her fruitless endeavours. Rufus, she never asked for, and when his -letters were read to her, she would smile vaguely and turn away as if -she had ceased to be interested. Old Rambler spent his days on a mat at -the side of her bed, and Flossie lay curled up on the patchwork quilt -over her feet. If they were absent long, she would begin to move -restlessly, and beg presently that they should be brought back. At the -end, they were the only companions that she desired, for, as she said -once, they "did not bother her with questions." The tragedy to Dorinda -was not so much in her mother's slow dying as in her unconditional -surrender to decay. For more than forty years she had fought her -dauntless fight against the sordid actuality, and at the last she -appeared to become completely reconciled to her twin enemies, poverty -and dirt. Nothing made any difference to her now, and because nothing -made any difference to her, dying was the happiest part of her life. - -"There ain't any use struggling," she said once, while Dorinda was -cleaning her room, and after a long pause, "It doesn't seem just right -that we have to be born. It ain't worth all the trouble we go through." - -But there were other days when her inextinguishable energy would flare -up in sparks, and she would insist upon sitting up in bed while the -white Leghorns flocked by the window. Then she would recognize her -favourite hens and call them by name; and once she had Romeo, the prize -rooster, brought into her room, and kept him under her eyes, until he -began to strut and behave indelicately, when she "shooed" him out in her -old peremptory manner. Frequently, in the last few months, she asked to -have Dan and Beersheba led to her window. Tears would come into her eyes -while the long sad faces of the horses looked at her through the panes, -and she would murmur plaintively, "There's a heap of understanding in -animals. You'll never let those horses want, will you, daughter?" - -"Never, Ma. In a few years, if nothing happens, I'll turn them out to -pasture for the rest of their lives." - -Mrs. Oakley would smile as if she had forgotten, and after a long -silence, she would begin talking in an animated voice of her girlhood -and her parents. As the weeks went by, all the years of her marriage and -motherhood vanished from her memory, and her mind returned to her early -youth when she was engaged to the young missionary. Her old tropical -dream came back to her; in her sleep she would ramble on about palm -trees and crocodiles and ebony babies. "I declare, it seems just as if -I'd been there," she said one morning. "It's queer how much more real -dreams can be than the things you're going through." - -At the end of the year, in the middle of the night before she died, she -awoke Dorinda, and talked for a long time about the heathen and the -sacrifices that Presbyterian missionaries had made to bring them to -Christ. "Your great-grandfather was a wonderful scholar," she said, "and -I reckon that's where you get most of your sense. I s'pose missionaries -have to be scholars. They need something besides religion to fall back -on in their old age." Never once did she allude to anything that had -occurred since her marriage, and she appeared to have forgotten that she -had ever known Joshua. - -The next afternoon she died in her sleep while Nathan was sitting beside -her bed. For a few minutes Dorinda broke down and wept, less from grief -than from the knowledge that grief was expected of her; and Nathan, who -was always at his best in the house of mourning, won her everlasting -gratitude by his behaviour. She found herself depending upon him as if -he had been some ideal elder brother such as she had never known. So -naturally that fate seemed to have arranged it on purpose, he assumed -authority over the household and the funeral. He thought of everything, -and everybody deferred to him. Funerals were the only occasions when he -had ever risen to dignity, and though he had sincerely liked Mrs. -Oakley, the few days before her burial were among the pleasantest that -he had ever spent in his life. - -"I shall never forget how good you have been," Dorinda said, when it was -over. "I don't know what I should have done without you." And though the -words were spoken impulsively, as a matter of fact she never, in the -future, forgot Nathan's kindness. It was a mark of her proud and -self-sufficient nature that she could not forget either gratitude or -resentment. - -When he had driven away, she turned to Fluvanna, who was picking up bits -of rusty crape from the floor of the porch. - -"I really don't know what we should have done without him," she remarked -over again. - -"If you ax me, Miss Dorinda, he is one handy man at a funeral," answered -Fluvanna, who relapsed into dialect on tragic or perilous occasions. "I -was thinkin' right along how pleased yo' Ma would have been if she could -have seen him, for she cert'n'y did like handy folks about her." - -"Poor Ma, I wish she could have had the chickens a few years earlier," -Dorinda sighed. "To think of the years she went without a cow." - -"Well, she enjoyed 'em while she had 'em," Fluvanna responded fervently. -"Have you thought yet what you're goin' to do, Miss Dorinda?" - -"Yes, I've thought. The farm is mine. Ma left it to me, and I'm going to -stay on as we are." - -"Just you and me? Won't you get lonesome without some white folks?" - -"After Jonas Walsh moves out of the overseer's house, I'll engage Martin -Flower, who is a better farmer, and has a sensible wife. Mary Joe can -take care of the chickens, and I'm going to hire her brother Ebenezer to -help Nimrod with the cows. If everything goes well this winter, I'll be -ready to start a real dairy in the spring. Then I'll need more hands, so -we shan't be lonely." - -"Naw'm, I don't reckon we'll, get lonesome, not the way we work," -Fluvanna agreed. "I ain' never seen no man work as hard as you do, Miss -Dorinda. Yo' Ma told me befo' she passed away that you had stayin' power -and she reckoned that you was the only one of the family that had. -Sprightliness don't git you far, she said, unless you've got stayin' -power enough to keep you after you git thar. Well, it's all your'n now, -ain't it?" she inquired placidly, as Dorinda's eyes swept the horizon. - -"Yes, it's all mine." Walking over to the edge of the porch, Dorinda -looked across the vague, glimmering fields. Another autumn had gone. -Another sunset like the heart of a pomegranate was fading out in the -west. Again the wandering scents of wood smoke and rotting leaves came -and went on the wind. - -For an instant, the permanence of material things, the inexorable -triumph of fact over emotion, appeared to be the only reality. These -things had been ageless when her mother was young; they would be still -ageless when she herself had become an old woman. Over the immutable -landscape human lives drifted and vanished like shadows. - - - - -XIV - - -When she looked back on the years that followed her mother's death, -Dorinda could remember nothing but work. Out of a fog of recollection -there protruded bare outlines which she recognized as the milestones of -her prosperity. She saw clearly the autumn she had turned the -eighteen-acre field into pasture; the failure of her first experiment -with ensilage; the building of the new dairy and cow-barns; the gradual -increase of her seven cows into a herd. Certain dates stood out in her -farm calendar. The year the blight had fallen on her cornfield and she -had had to buy fodder from James Ellgood; the year she had first planted -alfalfa; the year she had lost a number of her cows from contagious -abortion; the year she had reclaimed the fields beyond Poplar Spring; -the year her first prize bull had won three blue ribbons. With the slow -return of fertility to the soil, she had passed, by an unconscious -process, into mute acquiescence with the inevitable. The bitter irony of -her point of view had shaded into a cheerful cynicism which formed a -protective covering over her mind and heart. She had worked relentlessly -through the years; but it was work that she had enjoyed, and above all -it was work that had created anew the surroundings amid which she lived. -In a changed form her mother's frustrated passion to redeem the world -was finding concrete expression. - -At thirty-three, the perspective of the last ten years was incredibly -shortened. All the cold starry mornings when she had awakened before day -and crept out to the barn by lantern light to attend to the milking, -appeared to her now as a solitary frozen dawn. All the bleak winters, -all the scorching summers, were a single day; all the evenings, when she -had dreamed half asleep in the firelit dusk, were a single night. She -could not separate these years into seasons. In her long retrospect they -were crystallized into one flawless pattern. - -Through those ten years, while she struggled to free the farm from debt, -she had scrimped and saved like a miser; and this habit of saving, she -knew, would cling to her for the rest of her life. She went without -butter; she drank only buttermilk, in order that she might keep nothing -back from the market. Her clothes were patched and mended as long as -they held together, and she had stopped going to church because her -pride would not suffer her to appear there in overalls, or in the faded -calico dresses she wore in the house. Though she was obliged to hire -women to help her with the milking and in the dairy, she herself worked -harder than any of them. Nothing, she told herself grimly, could elude -her vigilance. In her passionate recoil from the thriftlessness of the -poor, she had developed a nervous dread of indolence which reminded her -of her mother. She went to bed, stupefied by fatigue, as soon as the -last pound of butter was wrapped for the early train; yet she was up -again before the break of day while the hands were still sleeping. And -only Fluvanna, who lived in the house with her now, knew the hours she -spent beside her lamp counting the pounds of butter and the number of -eggs she had sent to market. If only she could save enough to pay off -the mortgage and return the money she had borrowed from the Faradays, -she felt that she should begin to breathe freely for the first time in -her life. - -And there was more than hard work in her struggle; there was unflagging -enterprise as well. Her father had worked harder than she could ever do, -toiling summer and winter, day and night, over the crops, which always -failed because they were expected to thrive on so little. She remembered -him perpetually hauling manure or shredding fodder, until he loomed in -her memory as a titanic image of the labourer who labours without hope. -"The truth is, I would rather have failed at the start than have gone on -like that," she thought. "I was able to take risks because I was too -unhappy to be afraid." Yes, she had had the courage of desperation, and -that had saved her from failure. Without borrowed money, without the -courage to borrow money, she could never have made the farm even a -moderate success. This had required not only perseverance but audacity -as well; and it had required audacity again to permeate the methodical -science of farming with the spirit of adventure. Interest, excitement -even, must be instilled into the heartless routine. The hours of work -never varied. Chores were done by necessity, as in the old days without -system, but by the stroke of the clock. Each milker had her own place, -and milked always the same cows. After the first trial or two, Dorinda -had yielded to the reluctance of the cow when her accustomed milker was -changed. She had borrowed money again, "hiring money" they called it at -Pedlar's Mill, to buy her first Jersey bull; but the daughters of that -bull were still her best butter-making cows. - -Gradually, as the years passed, her human associations narrowed down to -Fluvanna's companionship and the Sunday afternoon visits of Nathan -Pedlar and his children. The best years of her youth, while her beauty -resisted hard work and sun and wind, were shared only with the coloured -woman with whom she lived. She had prophesied long ago that Fluvanna -would be a comfort to her, and the prophecy was completely fulfilled. -The affection between the two women had outgrown the slender tie of -mistress and maid, and had become as strong and elastic as the bond that -holds relatives together. They knew each other's daily lives; they -shared the one absorbing interest in the farm; they trusted each other -without discretion and without reserve. Fluvanna respected and adored -her mistress; and Dorinda, with an inherited feeling of condescension, -was sincerely attached to her servant. Though Dorinda still guarded the -reason of her flight to New York, she did this less from dread of -Fluvanna's suspecting the truth than from secret terror of the -enervating thought of the past. That was over and done with, and every -instinct of her nature warned her to let dead bones lie buried. -Sometimes on winter nights, when the snow was falling or the rain -blowing in gusts beyond the window, the two women would sit for an hour, -when work was over, in front of the log fire in Dorinda's room which had -once been her mother's chamber. Then they would talk sympathetically of -the cows and the hens, and occasionally they would speak of Fluvanna's -love affairs and of Dorinda's years in the city. The coloured girl would -ask eager questions in the improved grammar her mistress had taught her. -"I don't see how you could bear to come back to this poky place. But, of -course, when yo' Pap died somebody had to be here to look after things. -I don't reckon you'll ever go back, will you?" - -"No, I shall never go back. I had enough of it when I was there." - -"Wouldn't you rather look at the sights up there than at cows and -chickens?" - -Dorinda would shake her head thoughtfully. "Not if they are my cows and -chickens." - -In this reply, which was as invariable as a formula, she touched -unerringly the keynote of her character. The farm belonged to her, and -the knowledge aroused a fierce sense of possession. To protect, to lift -up, rebuild and restore, these impulses formed the deepest obligation -her nature could feel. - -Though she talked frankly to Nathan about the farm and the debts which -had once encumbered it, she had never given him her confidence as -generously as she had bestowed it on Fluvanna. Kind as he had been, the -fact that he was a man and a widower made an impalpable, and she told -herself ridiculous, barrier between them. She had grown to depend upon -him, but it was a practical dependence, as devoid of sentiment as her -dependence upon the clock or the calendar. If he had dropped out of her -life, she would have missed him about the barn and the stable; and it -would have been difficult, she admitted, to manage the farm without his -advice. There were the children, too, particularly the younger boy, who -had been born with a clubfoot. The one human emotion left in Dorinda's -heart, she sometimes thought, was her affection for Rose Emily's boy, -John Abner. - -If he had been her own son he could not have been closer to her; and his -infirmity awakened the ardent compassion that love assumed in her strong -and rather arrogant nature. Though he was barely fourteen, he was more -congenial with her than any grown person at Pedlar's Mill. He devoured -books as she used to do when she was a girl, and he was already -developing into a capable farmer. Years ago she had given Nathan no -peace until he had taken the child to town and had had an operation -performed on his crippled foot; and when no improvement had resulted, -she had insisted that he should have John Abner's shoes made from -measurements. As a little girl, her mother had always said to her that -she preferred lame ducks to well ones; and John Abner was the only lame -duck that had ever come naturally into her life. Fortunately, he was a -boy of deep, though reserved, affections, and he returned in his -reticent way the tenderness Dorinda lavished upon him. Minnie May, who -had grown into a plain girl of much character, had been jealous at -first; but a little later, when she became engaged to be married, she -was prudently reconciled to the difference Dorinda made in her life. The -two other children, though they were both healthy and handsome, with a -dash of Rose Emily's fire and spirit, were received as lightly and -forgotten as quickly as warm days in winter or cool ones in summer. The -girl Lena, who had just turned seventeen, was a pretty, vain, and -flirtatious creature, with a head "as thick with beaux," Fluvanna -observed, "as a brier patch with briers"; and the boy, Bertie, -familiarly called "Bud," was earning a good salary in a wholesale -grocery store in the city. It was pleasant to have Nathan and the -children come over every week; but John Abner was the only one Dorinda -missed when accident or bad weather kept them away. In the beginning -they had visited her in the afternoons, and she had had nothing better -to offer them than popcorn or roasted apples and chestnuts; but as the -years passed and debts were paid, there was less need of rigid economy, -and she had drifted into the habit of having the family with her at -Sunday dinner. This had gradually become the one abundant meal of the -week, and she and Fluvanna both looked forward to it with the keen -anticipation of deferred appetite. - -The work was so exacting and her nerves so blessedly benumbed by toil, -that Dorinda seldom stopped to ask herself if she were satisfied with -her lot. Had the question been put to her, she would probably have -dismissed it with the retort that she "had no time to worry about things -like that." On the surface her days were crowded with more or less -interesting tasks; but in her buried life there were hours when the old -discontent awoke with the autumn wind in the broomsedge. At such moments -she would feel that life had cheated her, and she would long -passionately for something bright and beautiful that she had missed. Not -love again! No, never again the love that she had known! What she longed -for was the something different, the something indestructibly desirable -and satisfying. Then there would return the blind sense of a purpose in -existence which had evaded her search. The encompassing dullness would -melt like a cloud, and she would grasp a meaning beneath the deceptions -and the cruelties of the past. But this feeling was as fugitive as all -others, and when it vanished it left not the glorified horizon, but -simply the long day's work to be done. - -Years had passed now, and she had stopped thinking of Jason. Since she -never left the farm, she was spared the accident of a meeting, and she -had excluded him for so long from her consciousness that his memory had -appeared to acquiesce in the banishment. For the first two or three -years after her return, she had lived in dread of seeing him again in -the flesh, or of having his image awake to life in her mind. She had -been afraid to go to sleep, because in her dreams she was still -defenseless against him; and after her love for him had died, her fear -had remained embedded in hatred. But that had passed also, and she had -ceased to remember him, except when Nathan or one of the labourers on -the farm mentioned his name. - -"Doctor Stout is taking all Jason's practice," Nathan said one day. -"That comes, I reckon, of trying to please everybody." - -"I thought drink was his ruin," Dorinda rejoined indifferently. - -"Of course drink helped it along, though it began farther back with his -being so pleasant that you couldn't believe what he said. At first folks -liked it, but after a while they began to see through it. By the way, -his wife has been acting kind of queer. They say she's got a screw loose -somewhere in her brain." - -"I know," was all that Dorinda answered, but she thought, "And I once -wished I could be in her place!" - -She remembered the way Geneva had slipped up behind her one afternoon in -an old field where broomsedge was burning, and had talked in a rambling, -excited manner about her marriage and how blissfully happy they both -were. "Not that we shouldn't like a child," she had continued, with a -grimace which had begun as a smile, "but we can't expect to have -everything, and we are blissfully happy. Blissfully happy!" she had -screamed out suddenly in her high, cracked voice. At the time Dorinda -had been puzzled, but now she understood and was sorry. The staring -face, with its greenish skin and too prominent eyes, framed in the -beautiful flaxen hair, softened her heart. "At least Geneva was not to -blame, yet she is the one who is punished most," she thought; and this -seemed to her another proof of the remorseless injustice of destiny. "I -suppose the Lord knew what was best for me," she said to herself in the -pious idiom her mother had used; but, as the phrase soared in her mind, -it was as empty as a balloon. When she remembered her girlhood now, she -would think contemptuously, "How could I ever have had so little sense?" -Were all girls as foolish, she wondered, or was she exceptional in her -romantic ignorance of life? - -Without warning, after not thinking of Jason for years, she dreamed of -him one night. She dreamed of him, not as she knew that he was to-day, -but as she had once believed him to be. For a moment, through the -irresistible force of illusion, she was caught again, she was imprisoned -in the agony of that old passion. In her dream she saw herself fleeing -from some invisible pursuer through illimitable deserts of broomsedge. -Though she dared not look back, she could hear the rush of footsteps -behind her; she could almost feel the breath of the hunter on her neck. -For minutes that were an eternity the flight endured. Then as she -dropped to her knees, with her strength exhausted, she was caught up in -the arms of the pursuer, and looking up, felt Jason's lips pressed to -hers. - -There was thunder in her ears when she awoke. Springing out of bed, she -ran in her nightgown to the window and threw the shutters wide open. -Outside, beneath a dappled sky, she saw the frosted November fields and -the dark trees flung off sharply, like flying buttresses, between the -hill and the horizon. The wind cut through her gown; far away in the -moonlight an owl hooted. Gradually, while she stood shivering in the -frosty air, the terror of her dream faded and ice froze again over her -heart. - -Through ten years of hard work and self-denial the firm, clear surface -of her beauty remained unroughened. Then one October morning, Fluvanna, -looking at her in the sunlight, exclaimed, "Miss Dorindy, you're too -young to have crow's feet!" - -Crow's feet! She turned with a start from the brood of white turkeys she -was counting. Yes, she was too young, she was only thirty-three, but she -was already beginning to break. Youth was going! Youth was going, the -words echoed and reechoed through the emptiness of the future. Week by -week, month by month, year by year, youth was slipping away; and she had -never known the completeness, the fulfilment, that she had expected of -life. Even now, she could not tell herself, she did not know, what it -was that she had missed. It was not love, nor was it motherhood. No, the -need went deeper than nature. It lay so deep, so far down in her hidden -life, that the roots of it were lost in the rich darkness. Though she -felt these things vaguely, without thinking that she felt them, it -seemed to her, standing there with her gaze on the brood of white -turkeys, that all she had ever hoped for or believed in was eluding her -grasp. In a little while, with happiness still undiscovered, she would -be as wrinkled and grey as her mother. Only her mother's restless habit -of work would remain to fill the vacancy of her days. - -"I've been working too hard, Fluvanna," she said, "and what do I get out -of it?" - -"You oughtn't to let yo'self go, Miss Dorindy. There ain't any use in -the world for you to slave and stint the way you do. You ought to go -about mo' and begin to take notice." - -Dorinda laughed. "You talk as if I were a widower." - -"Naw'm, I ain't. No widower ever lived the way you do." - -"It's true. I haven't bought a good dress or been anywhere for ten -years." - -"Thar ain't a particle of use in it. You'll be old and dried up soon -enough. What's the use of being young and proud if you don't strut?" - -Yes, Fluvanna was right. What was the use? She had made a success of her -undertaking; but it was inadequate because there were no spectators of -her triumph. She had kept so close to the farm that her neighbours knew -her only as a dim figure against the horizon, a moving shape among -corn shocks and hay ricks in the flat landscape, an image that vanished -with these inanimate objects in the lengthening perspective. Even in the -thin and isolated community in which she lived, she did not stand out, -clearly projected, like James Ellgood; perhaps, for the simple reason, -she told herself now, that she had drilled her energy down into the soil -instead of training it upward. - -"I believe you're right, Fluvanna," she said. "Now that we're out of -debt and things are going fairly well, I ought to try to get something -out of life while I'm still young." - -After the turkeys were counted, she left Fluvanna to turn them out into -the woods, and going into her bedroom, looked at herself in the mirror -which had once belonged to her mother. While she stared into the glass -it seemed to her that another face was watching her beyond her -reflection, a face that was drawn and pallid, with a corded neck and the -famished eyes of a disappointed dreamer. Well, she would never become -like that if she could prevent it. She would never let disappointment -eat away the heart in her bosom. - -She was still handsome. The grave oval of her face, the fine austerity -of its modelling, would remain noble even after she became an old woman -and the warm colour of the flesh was mottled and stained with yellow. It -was true that lines were forming about her eyes; but the eyes themselves -were as deeply blue as the autumn sky, and though her skin had coarsened -in the last ten years, the dark red of her cheeks and lips was as vivid -as ever. Her black hair was still abundant, though it had lost its gloss -in the sunshine. In spite of hard work, or because of it, her tall, -straight figure had kept the slender hips and the pointed breasts of a -goddess. She did not look young for her age; the sunny bloom, like the -down on a peach, had hardened to the glaze of maturity; but she had not -lost the April charm of her expression. "For all I've ever had, I might -as well have been born plain," she thought. - - - - -XV - - -That afternoon she harnessed Molly, the new mare, to the buggy, and -accompanied by Ranger, son of Rambler, drove over to Honeycomb Farm. - -"I want a dress to wear to church," she said to Miss Seena, "something -good that will last." - -"Then you're going to church again? I must say it is time." Rawboned, -wintry, rheumatic, the dressmaker was still an authority. - -"The roads were so bad." To her surprise, Dorinda found herself becoming -apologetic. "I couldn't take the teams out on Sundays, but I've bought a -chestnut mare for my own use, and I'll begin going again." - -"Well, I'm glad you ain't a confirmed backslider. What sort of material -had you thought of?" - -Dorinda reflected. "Something handsome. Silk--no, satin. That shines -more." - -"Why don't you order it out of a catalogue? My fingers have got so stiff -I've had to give up sewin' the last few months. They put everything in -catalogues now." Miss Seena selected one from the pile on the table and -opened it as she spoke. "You'll want blue, I reckon. You were always -partial to blue." - -Dorinda frowned. "No, not blue. Any colour but blue." - -"I thought you favoured it. Do you recollect the dress I bought to match -yo' eyes one spring when you were a girl? My, but you did look well in -it!" - -"Isn't there any other colour worn?" - -"Well, there's brown. The fashion books speak highly of brown this year. -Black's real stylish too. With yo' bright complexion black ought to go -mighty well. You'd better order this model. It is the newest style." She -pointed to a picture which seemed to Dorinda to be the extreme of -fashion. "Them box pleats and pointed basques is the latest thing. I -reckon you'll have to get a new corset," she concluded sharply, looking -the girl up and down. "These styles don't set well unless they're worn -over a straight font." - -"Then I'll get one." Dorinda was prepared for any discomfort. "And I -need a coat--and a hat, a big one with a feather." - -"You want a willow plume. They're all the rage this season, and a long -coat of seal plush. There're some handsome ones in the front of that -catalogue. Seal plush is goin' to be mo' worn than fur, all the fashion -books say." - -After the choice was made and the letter written by the cramped fingers -of the dressmaker, Dorinda drove home consoled by the discovery that -crow's feet make, after all, less difference than clothes in one's -happiness, Strange how a little thing like a new dress could lift up -one's spirits! Her changed mood persisted until she approached the fork -of the road and saw a woman's figure against the dying flare of the sun. -As she reached the spot, the woman came down into the middle of the -road, and she recognized Geneva Greylock. - -"I want to talk to you, Dorinda," Geneva began, with a trill of -laughter. "Won't you stop and listen?" - -She was wearing a thin summer dress, though the air was sharp, and round -her waist she had tied a faded blue sash with streamers which blew out -in the wind. Her face, in its masklike immobility, resembled the face of -a dead woman. Only her gleaming flaxen hair was alive. - -"I'm afraid it's too late," Dorinda replied as pleasantly as she could. -"Supper will be waiting, and besides you ought not to be out in that -dress. You will catch your death of cold." - -Geneva shook her head, while that expressionless laughter trickled in a -stream from her lips. "I'm not cold," she answered. "I'm so happy that I -must talk to somebody. It is our wedding anniversary, and I'm obliged to -tell somebody how blissfully happy we are. Jason went to sleep right -after dinner, and he hasn't waked up yet, so I had to come out and find -somebody to talk to. I've got a secret that nobody knows, not even -Jason." - -So it was the same thing over again! Her eyes looked as if they would -leap out of her head, they were so staring and famished. "I'll tell you -what I'll do," Dorinda responded, her voice softened by pity. "If you'll -get into the buggy, I'll drive you down to Gooseneck Creek. That will be -halfway home." This was what marriage to Jason had brought, and yet -there had been a time when she would have given her life to have been -married to him for a single year. - -"Oh, will you?" Geneva sprang up on the step and into the buggy. She was -so thin that her bones seemed to rattle as she moved, and there were -hollows in her chest and between her shoulder blades. "Then I can tell -you my secret." - -"I wouldn't if I were you. I've got to keep an eye on the road, so I -can't talk." - -For a few minutes Geneva rambled on in her strained voice as if she had -not heard her. Then pausing, she asked abruptly, "Why did you never like -me, Dorinda? I always wanted to be friends with you." - -"I like you. I do like you." - -Geneva shook her head. "You never liked me because you loved Jason. -Jason jilted you." She broke into her cracked laugh again. "You don't -know, but there are worse things than being jilted." - -Anger flamed up in Dorinda's heart, but it died down before she allowed -herself to reply. "I suppose there are," she said at last. "That was -long ago, anyhow. So long that it doesn't matter what happened." Poor -demented creature, she thought, how many months would it be before they -put her away? - -Suddenly Geneva leaned toward her and began to whisper so rapidly that -Dorinda could scarcely follow her words. "If I tell you my secret, will -you promise never to repeat it? When you hear it, you will know there -are worse things than being jilted. I had a baby, and Jason killed it. -He killed it as soon as it was born and buried it in the garden. He -doesn't know that I saw him. He thinks that I was asleep, but I found -the grave under the lilac bushes at the end of the garden path. Now, we -are going to have another baby, and I'm afraid he will kill this one -too. That's why I pretend to be so blissfully happy. Blissfully happy," -she cried out in a high voice as she jumped over the wheel before the -buggy came to a stop. Yes, they would probably have to send her away -very soon. "I wish I had been kinder to her when I had the chance," -Dorinda thought, as she turned the mare toward home. - -The next Sunday afternoon she asked Nathan for news of Geneva. It was -easy for her to speak of the Greylocks now since that dreadful encounter -had obliterated even the memory of jealousy. - -"Every six months or so she's taken like that," Nathan answered. "Then -she goes clean out of her head; but they say it isn't as bad as the -moping in between the attacks." - -"Is there nothing that can be done?" - -"Oh, they'll have to put her away, sooner or later. Her father has tried -his best to get her to leave Jason, but she won't hear of it when she's -in her right mind. Once he took her home while she was deranged and kept -her in a room with barred windows. It didn't last, however, and as soon -as she came to her senses, she insisted on going back to Jason. They -lead a cat-and-dog life together, and when she is out of her head she -runs about telling everybody that she had a child and he murdered it." - -"Poor thing," said Dorinda. "She told me too." - -"That's when she's crazy. As soon as she gets her senses again, you -can't make her leave him." - -For a few minutes Dorinda was silent. When she spoke it was to remark -irrelevantly, "How little human beings know what is best for them." - -"I didn't understand what you said, Dorinda." - -"No matter. I was only thinking aloud." - -It was a mellow October afternoon, and around them the fields were -resting after a fair harvest. As far as she could see, east, north, -west, the land belonged to her. Only toward the south there were the -pale green willows of Gooseneck Creek, and beyond the feathery edge she -saw the red chimneys of Five Oaks. But for those chimneys she would have -felt that the whole horizon was hers! - -"They say Five Oaks will come under the hammer before long." Nathan's -gaze also was on the red smears in the sky. "It's mortgaged now for as -much as it'll ever bring, and there's trouble about the taxes." - -A wild idea shot into her mind. "I suppose it will bring a good deal?" - -"If it is put up at a forced sale, it will probably go for a song. -Nobody is buying land now. Amos Wigfall bought the old Haney place five -years ago for a dollar an acre. Some day, if he looks out, it will be -worth a hundred." - -She looked at him with calculating eyes. "If I could buy Five Oaks, my -farm would be as big as Green Acres." - -His neighing laugh broke out. "Good Lord, Dorinda, what would you do -with it?" - -"I don't know what I'd do with it, but I want it. I'd give ten years of -my life for the chance of owning Five Oaks before I die." - -His laugh dropped to a chuckle. "Now, that's downright queer because -I've been studying about bidding on it myself. It looks to me as if that -would be the only way to save my money." - -"Well, I'd rather you'd own it than anybody else," she said grudgingly. -"But I'm going to the sale when it comes, and if I'm able to sell my -prize bull, I'm going to bid against you. I've got almost five thousand -dollars in bank." - -"You'd better leave it there for the present. I wouldn't bid a cent on -the place if it wasn't for the fact that I own most of it already. It's -going to be hard to make anybody buy it. Just you wait and see." - -"What will become of Jason?" she inquired abruptly. - -Nathan looked dubious. "He'll go to work for James Ellgood, I reckon, or -more likely drink himself out of the way. But he's been doing better of -late, I hear. He was at church last Sunday in the Ellgood pew, looking -all spruced up, as if he hadn't smelt whiskey for a month." - -Her next words came quickly, as if she were afraid of drawing them back -before they escaped. "Why didn't he ever go away after his father died?" - -"He'd lost the wish, I reckon. Things happen like that sometimes. The -old man hung on to him until all the sap was drained dry." - -"His father died years ago." - -"It must be going on nine years or so." He stopped to calculate as he -did when he was adding up an account in the store. "Well, I reckon he'd -used up all his energy in wishing to get away. When the chance came, he -didn't have enough spirit left to take advantage' of it." He sighed. -"I've seen that happen I can't tell you how many times." - -She looked away from him, and for a few minutes there was silence. Then -he made a sound between a gasp and a chuckle, and turning to glance at -him, she met an expression which she had never before seen in his face. -Her nerves shivered into repulsion, while she drew farther away. Why -were men so unaccountable? she asked herself in annoyance. - -"I was just thinking," he stammered. - -She regarded him with severity. After all, no one took Nathan seriously. - -"I was just thinking," he began again, "that if you could make up your -mind to marry me, we might throw the two farms into one." - -"To marry you?" She stared at him incredulously. "Are you out of your -head?" - -He broke into an embarrassed laugh. "I reckon it sounds like that at -first," he admitted, "but I hoped you might get used to the idea if you -thought it over. It ain't as if I were a poor man. I'm about as -well-to-do as anybody round Pedlar's Mill, if you leave out James -Ellgood, and he's got a wife already, besides being too old. I ain't so -young as you, I know; but I'm a long ways younger than James Ellgood. -There ain't more than ten years' difference between us, and I think all -the world of you. You might have things your own way just as you're -doing now. I wouldn't want to interfere with you." - -She was still gazing at him as if he were distraught. "I can't imagine," -she replied sternly, "how you ever came to think of such a thing.". It -was absurd; it was incredible; and yet she supposed that even stranger -things had happened! She had seen enough of the world to know that you -took your husband, as Fluvanna observed, where you found him, and she -was troubled by few illusions about marriage. - -His face turned the colour of beet juice while he looked at her with -humble, imploring eyes, like the eyes of young Ranger when they were -training him. "I was just thinking how useful I could be on the farm," -he said apologetically. "You seemed so set on owning Five Oaks, and then -you like to have the children about." - -The incredulity faded from her face. "I do like to have the children -about." - -"Well, you know I'd never put myself in your way. You could have both -the farms to manage just as you like. I'd buy Five Oaks whenever it was -sold." - -"Yes, the two farms could be thrown together--or farmed separately." Her -mind was still working over Five Oaks, not over the question of -marriage. - -"Then couldn't you get used to the idea, Dorinda?" - -His tone rather than his words awoke her with a start, to his meaning. -"The idea! You mean marriage? No, I couldn't do it. There's no use -thinking about it." - -His face scarcely changed, so little had he dared hope for her consent. -"Well, I won't press you," he said after a minute, "but if the time ever -comes----" - -She shook her head emphatically. "The time will never come. Don't let -that thought get into your head." - -While she spoke her dispassionate gaze examined him, and she asked -herself, with a tinge of amusement, why the idea of marrying him did not -startle her more. He was ridiculous; he was uncouth; he was the last man -on earth, she told herself firmly, who could ever have inspired her with -the shadow of sentiment. Only after she had speculated upon these -decisive objections did she begin to realize that absence of emotion was -the only appeal any marriage could make to her. Her nerves or her senses -would have revolted from the first hint of passion. The only marriage -she could tolerate, she reflected grimly, was one which attempted no -swift excursions into emotion, no flights beyond the logical barriers of -the three dimensions. - -"Of course, I'm not your equal," Nathan said abruptly. "You're a scholar -like your great-grandfather, and you've read all his books. You know a -lot of things I never heard of." - -Dorinda laughed. "Much good books ever did me!" Much good indeed, she -reflected. "There's no use thinking about it; I could never do it," she -repeated in a tone of harsh finality, as she turned to walk homeward. - - - - -XVI - - -Two weeks later, one Saturday afternoon, Miss Seena brought over the new -clothes; and Dorinda sat up until midnight, taking up the belt and -letting down the hem of the black satin dress. When s put it on the next -morning and listened to Fluvanna's admiring, ejaculations, she -remembered the day she had first worn the blue nun's veiling and the -drive to church sitting beside Almira Pryde in the old carryall. - -"You look like a queen, Miss Dorinda," Fluvanna exclaimed. "Thar ain't -nothin'----" - -"Anything, Fluvanna." - -"There ain't anything that gives you such an air as one of them -willow plumes." - -"Those, Fluvanna. Yes, it does look nice," Dorinda assented, after the -correction. "I'm glad I got it black. It makes me look older, but there -isn't anything so distinguished." - -A few hours afterwards, while she walked slowly up the aisle in church, -she felt rather than saw that the congregation, forgetting to stand up -to sing, sat motionless and stared at her from the pews. For the first -time in her life she tasted the intoxicating flavour of power. On the -farm, success was translated into well-tilled acres or golden pounds of -butter; but here, with these astonished eyes on her, she discovered that -it contained a quality more satisfying than any material fact. What it -measured was the difference between the past which Jason had ruined and -the present which she had triumphantly built on the ruins he had left. -In spite of everything that had happened, in spite of his betrayal of -her faith and the black despair that had wiped love out of her heart, -she, not he, was to-day the victor over life! - -As she marched up the aisle, in her handsome, commonplace clothes, she -might have been a contented rustic beauty whose first youth was slowly -slipping away. A warm flush dyed her cheeks; her eyes were like blue -stars beneath the projecting shadow of her eyebrows; she carried the -willow plume high above the dusky cloud of her hair; and the luxurious -swish-swish of her satin skirt was as loud as the sound of wind in the -grass. Not until she reached the pew where she used to sit between her -father and mother, did she drop her eyes to the level of the -congregation and discover that Jason was sitting with the Ellgoods under -the high west window. She had not seen him face to face since the -afternoon of her father's funeral, more than ten years ago, and he -looked ages older, she thought, than she had remembered him. His skin -had lost the clear red-brown of health and acquired a leathery texture. -Though his hair was still red, there was a rusty edge where the light -fell on it. His moustache, which was too long, drooped in bedraggled -ends over his chin, as if he had fallen into the habit of chewing -tobacco--he who had always been so fastidious! He was dressed neatly -enough in his Sunday clothes; but sitting there in the broad band of -sunlight, he reminded Dorinda of a tree when the sap has dried, with the -brittle ashen brown leaves still clinging to the boughs. Even his hands, -which shook a little as they held the hymn book open in front of his -wife, were the hands of a man whose grasp had slackened. He was not yet -forty, but life had already used him up and flung him aside. - -Suddenly, he raised his eyes from the book and their glances met and -crossed before they fell away again to the printed lines. In that -instant, something passed between them which could never be uttered -because it was profounder than speech. Resolute, imperious, her gaze -swept him! While her eyes, as hard and cold as a frozen lake, gave back -his reflection, she felt, with a shiver of terror, that the past had -never died, that it existed eternally as a wave in the sea of her -consciousness. Memory was there, flowing on, strong, silent, resistless, -with no fresher tides of emotion to sweep over and engulf it in the -flood of experience. In her whole life there had been only that one man. -He had held her in his arms. He would remain always an inseparable part -of her being. . . . Resentment struggled within her. All the strength of -her spirit rebelled against the tyranny of the past, against the burden -of a physical fact, which she dragged after her like a dead fish in a -net. She saw him harshly as he was, and she despised herself because she -had ever imagined him tenderly as he was not. As she opened her mouth to -sing, it seemed to her that she was choked with the effluvium of the old -despair. She shut her eyes while her voice rose with the hymn. Rain on -the shingled roof; rain on the bare red earth; rain on the humped -box-bush; rain on the bedraggled feathers of white turkeys. The face of -the old man emerging from the blue light in the room, mottled, flabby, -repellent. Memories like that. He meant nothing more to her now. Only -the beauty that had turned into ugliness. Only the happiness of which -she had been cheated. . . . - -She was the last one to come out of church, and by the time she had -spoken to the minister and a few of the older members who stopped to -welcome her, the Ellgoods had driven away. She was glad that she did not -see Jason again; for the sight of him, though it no longer stirred her -heart, left that disagreeable pricking sensation in the nervous fibre of -her body. - -Nathan and the children were waiting for her at the gate of the -churchyard, and she drove home with John Abner, while the others -followed in Nathan's new surrey with the fringed top. - -"You look good enough to eat, Dorinda," the boy said admiringly. "You -ought to keep dressed up all the time." - -She smiled down on him. "Much work I'd do on the farm! Ten years ago -they almost turned me out of church because I milked in overalls; but -they forgot that this morning when I went back wearing a willow plume." - -There was no one in the world who adored her as uncritically as did this -boy with the clubfoot. He was a good boy, she knew, with a streak of -morbid melancholy which was curiously attractive to her adventurous -temperament. His face, with its bulging forehead and deep dark eyes, -hiding stars of light in them like gleams at the bottom of a well, was -an unusual one for a country boy, and made her wonder at times if there -could be more in him than any one suspected. In his childhood his -clubfoot had been a torment to him, and for this reason he had kept away -from the rough sports of other children. - -"You'd rather farm than do anything else, wouldn't you, John Abner?" she -asked abruptly. - -"Except read. I'm glad winter is coming, so I can stay in the house and -read." - -"You wouldn't like to go to boarding school in the city?" - -He shook his head, flinching as if from the cut of a whip. "Not with the -other boys. I'd rather stay in the country with Father and you and the -animals." His sympathetic understanding of animals was one of the -strongest bonds between them. From his birth he had known what it was to -suffer and endure. - -"I hoped that the new kind of shoe would make it easier for you," she -said presently. "Is it comfortable?" - -"If it weren't so heavy. They are all heavy." - -She sighed, for her heart was drooping with pity. John Abner had -penetrated the armour of her arrogance in its one weak spot, which was -her diffused maternal instinct. The longing to protect the helpless was -still alive in her. - -At home they found Fluvanna in a clean apron, with a blazing; fire and a -lavish Sunday dinner awaiting them. Roast duck with apple sauce, candied -sweet potatoes, tomatoes stewed with brown sugar, and plum pudding, -which was Nathan's favourite sweet. True, it was the one abundant meal -of the week; but while she sat at the head of her table listening to the -chatter of happy children, Dorinda remembered the frugal Sunday dinners -of her mother and father, and her eyes smarted with tears. That, she had -learned, was the hidden sting of success; it rubbed old sores with the -salt of regret until they were raw again. - -In the hall, after dinner, while Dorinda was fastening a worn blue cape -over her satin dress, Nathan stood gazing thoughtfully up the staircase. - -"Have you ever thought of putting a stove in the back hall, Dorinda?" he -asked. "It would make a lot of difference in the comfort of the house, -and it would help heat the bedrooms upstairs." - -She turned and gazed at him, surprised at this fresh proof of his -ingenuity. Yes, it was a good idea; she wondered why she had never -thought of it herself. Indeed, since he had mentioned it, it seemed to -her that it was what she had always intended to do. - -"If only we could have had it in Ma's lifetime," she said. "It would -have been such a help to her neuralgia." - -"Yes, that's the trouble about getting comforts. We always remember that -other people went without them. I've got the carpets now that Rose Emily -wanted." After all, no one but Nathan had ever really understood her. -With the thought she asked herself incredulously if understanding had -anything whatever to do with love? Did people who loved ever understand? -Wasn't the misunderstanding even a part of love's divine madness? - -"Yes, I ought to have done it long ago," she murmured inattentively. - -"I'll order one, if you want me to. There's a catalogue at the store, -and I can get it at a discount. There are all sorts of contrivances for -saving fuel, too, so it won't cost as much as you'd imagine. These -newfangled stoves give twice as much heat as an open fire, and don't -burn one fourth as much fuel. It's a close sort of heat. You wouldn't -like it in your chamber, but it would be the very thing for this hall." - -While they went out of doors together, she meditated upon the fact of -his usefulness. He was always thinking of ways and means to be -comfortable or economical before they occurred to her or to anyone else, -and he had what he called a knack for mending anything that was broken. -He was kind; he was honest in every fibre; he was neat in his appearance -for a farmer; and he was, she reflected cynically, almost emasculate in -his unselfishness. To be sure, he had habits which she disliked; but, as -she told herself with dispassionate realism, one couldn't have -everything. It never occurred to her that these habits might be broken -by marriage, for she was wise enough to perceive that a man's habits are -more firmly rooted than his emotions. What she felt was that in exchange -for his helpfulness she might learn to tolerate the things to which she -objected. What good ever came, she demanded impatiently, of trying to -make any one over? Hadn't her mother tried for forty years to make her -father stop chewing tobacco, and yet it was the last thing that he -relinquished. No, she had few illusions remaining. Though she still told -herself inflexibly that she could never make up her mind to marry -Nathan, she felt, in spite of her will, that the insidious force of -logic was gradually undermining her scruples. She had suffered too much -from love in the past ever to walk again with open eyes into the -furnace. Sex emotion, she repeated grimly, was as dead as a burned-out -cinder in her heart. But respect she could still feel, and a marriage -founded upon respect and expediency might offer an available refuge from -loneliness. As she grew older, the thing she feared most was not death, -not poverty even, but the lonely fireside. - -She walked on, disheartened by indecision, and Nathan was obliged to -repeat his question twice before she heard what he was saying. - -"Have you thought over what I asked you, Dorinda?" She shook her head. -"There's no use thinking." - -His only answer was a comical sigh, and after a long pause she repeated -more sharply, "There's no use thinking about that." - -Some hidden edge to her tone made him glance at her quickly. This was -another moment when the keenness of Nathan's perceptions surprised her. - -"You'd be just as free as you are now," he said discreetly but -hopefully. - -"I couldn't stand any love-making." Though the light bloomed on her lips -and cheeks, her eyes darkened with memory. - -He sighed again less hopefully. What a pity it was, she thought, that -everything about him grew in the wrong way; his hair like moth-eaten -fur, his flat clownish features; his long moustache which always -reminded her of bleached grass. Well, even so, you couldn't have -everything. If the outward man had been more attractive, the inward one, -she acknowledged, would have been less humble; and when all was said and -done, few virtues are more comfortable to live with than humility. - -"It doesn't do any good to keep thinking of that," she reiterated -firmly, but the firmness had oozed from her mind into her manner. The -fact that she needed Nathan on the farm was driven home to her every day -of her life. Without him, she would never become anything more than a -farmer who was extraordinary chiefly in being a woman as well; and this -provoking disadvantage was a continual annoyance. Her life, in spite of -the companionship of Fluvanna, was an empty one, and as the shadow of -middle age grew longer, she would become more and more solitary. - -They had reached the high ground by the graveyard, and over Gooseneck -Creek she saw the red chimneys of Five Oaks. At the sight a suffering -thought awoke and throbbed in her brain. - -"I'll never interfere with you, Dorinda," Nathan said in a husky tone. - -She turned suddenly and looked into his eyes. "It doesn't do any good to -keep thinking about it," she insisted in an expressionless voice as if -she were reciting a phrase she had learned by heart. - - - - -XVII - - -The exact moment of her yielding was so vague that she could never -remember it; but three weeks later they drove over to the Presbyterian -church at Pedlar's Mill and were married. Until the evening before she -had told no one but Fluvanna; and only the pastor's wife, a farmer or -two, and Nathan's children, witnessed the marriage. As they stood -together before the old minister, a shadowy fear fluttered into -Dorinda's mind, and she longed to turn and run back to the safe -loneliness of Old Farm. "Can it be possible," she asked herself, "that I -am doing this thing?" She seemed to be standing apart as a spectator -while she watched some other woman married to Nathan. - -When it was over the few farmers came up to shake hands with her; but -their manner was repressed and unnatural, and even the children had -become bashful and constrained. - -"Wall, you was wise to git it over," John Appleseed said. "I don't -favour marryin' fur a woman as long as she's got a better means of -provision; but it's fortunate we don't all harbour the same opinions." - -He had attended with his idiot son, who was now a man of twenty-five, -but still retained his fondness for a crowd or a noise. While she looked -into his vacant face, Dorinda recalled Jason's ineffectual endeavours to -enlighten the natives, and the lecture on farming that he had delivered -to Nathan Pedlar and Billy. Appleseed, the idiot. Poor Jason! After -all, he had had his tragedy. - -"Nobody wants to hear croaking at a wedding, John," William Fairlamb -remarked genially. - -"Oh, I don't mind him." Dorinda laughed, but the laugh went no deeper -than her throat. Terror had seized her, the ancient panic quiver of the -hunted, and her face wore a strained and absent look as if she were -listening to some far-off music in the broomsedge. "How did I ever come -to do such a thing?" a voice like a song was asking over and over. - -On the drive home she could think of nothing to say. Her mind, which was -usually crowded with ideas, had become as blank as a wall, and she sat -gazing in silence over the head of the brisk young mare Nathan was -driving. So small a thing as the fact that Nathan was holding the reins -made her feel stiff and uncomfortable. - -As they passed the old mill, Geneva Greylock came running out of the -ruins and waved a blue scarf in the air. They could not see her face -clearly; but there was a distraught intensity in the lines of her thin -figure and in the violent gestures of her arms beneath the flying curves -of blue silk, which wound about her like a ribbon of autumn sky. - -"She's getting worse every day," Nathan said, glancing toward her as -they spun past. "It won't be long now before they have to send her to -the asylum. Last Sunday, when the minister was taking dinner with James -Ellgood, Geneva went round the table and poured molasses into every -soup plate. When they asked her why she had done it, she said she was -trying to make life sweeter." - -"Poor thing," Dorinda sighed. "She was always ailing." - -It was a brown afternoon in November, with a smoky sky and a strong, -clean wind which rushed in a droning measure through the broomsedge. All -the leaves had fallen and been swept in wind drifts under the rail -fences. The only animate shapes in the landscape were the buzzards -flocking toward a dead sheep in the pasture. - -"Did you tell the children to come straight over?" Nathan inquired -presently. - -"Yes, I've got their rooms ready. I had paper put on the walls instead -of whitewash, and they look very nice. The new stove heats them, -comfortably." - -"You mustn't let my children bother you, Dorinda." - -"Oh, no. I'm glad to have them. They will be company for me. We can -begin reading again at night." - -The mare trotted briskly, and the edge of the wind felt like ice on -Dorinda's face. "It's turning much colder," she said after a long pause. - -"Yes, there'll be a hard frost to-night if it clears." - -She turned away from him, lifting her gaze to the sky where broken -clouds were driven rapidly toward the south. A sword of light was thrust -suddenly through the greyness, and she said slowly, as if the words were -of profound significance, "The wind seems to be changing." Always -responsive to her surroundings, she told herself that the landscape -looked as if it were running away from the wind. "Does it really look -this way or is it only in my mind," she thought, as they went on past -the fork. Of course, if she had to go over it again, she could never -bring herself to be married; but since she had walked into the marriage -with open eyes, all she could do now was to endeavour to make the best -of her mistake. Nathan was a good man and--well, you couldn't have -everything! Youth, with its troubled rapture and its unsatisfied -craving, was well over. Green evening skies. The scent of wild grape. -The flutter of the heart like a caged bird. Feet flying toward -happiness. . . . Yes, he was a good man, and you couldn't have -everything. - -When she reached the farm she left Nathan to build up the fire in the -hall stove, and ran upstairs to put the finishing touches to the -bedrooms she had prepared for the children. Everything was in order. -There was nothing that she could find to do; yet she lingered to -straighten a picture or change the position of a chair until she heard -wheels approaching. Then, after she ran downstairs and exchanged -embarrassed greetings, she visited the henhouse and the barn before she -went into the kitchen to help Fluvanna with supper. All the work of the -farm, so heavy and engrossing on other days that it made her a slave to -routine, was suspended like a clock after the hour has struck. - -"Do you want me to make the hard sauce for the plum pudding, Fluvanna?" - -"Naw, Miss Dorindy, there ain't nothin' on earth for you to bother yo' -head with to-day. Miss Minnie May has made it, and she's helping me as -much as I want. You sit right down in the parlour and wait till supper -is ready. I don't see," she concluded in a faultfinding tone, "why -anybody wanted to have a poky wedding like this. There ain't even a -fiddle to make things lively." - -Dorinda went out, but not into the parlour. As she passed through the -hall she caught a glimpse of Nathan, in his new suit of grey tweed, -sitting bolt upright in the best chair, while he slowly turned the -leaves of the family Bible. No, she had always disliked the parlour, in -spite of her great-grandfather's library which almost covered the walls. -Would it be possible, she wondered, to turn the room into a more -comfortable and cheerful place? Yet she shrank from making any definite -change. Though she hated the furniture and the air of chill repose in -which it had weathered the years, she could not banish the feeling that -it was dedicated to the ancestral spirits of her family. - -As she opened the back door, which admitted a gust of wind and a shower -of brown leaves, she heard Nimrod laughing with Fluvanna in the kitchen. -"Ef'n you ax me, it mought ez well be anybody's wedding ez hem. I lay she -ain' never so much as smelt dat ar wedding cake." Immediately, -Fluvanna's more educated accents responded, "I declare I couldn't help -feelin' all the time that I was baking a cake for a corpse." - -"How in the world did I ever do it?" Dorinda asked herself for the -hundredth time; and she pictured the years ahead as an interminable -desert of time in which Nathan would sit like a visitor in the parlour -and perpetually turn the leaves of the family Bible. Nothing but the -first day that she had had young Ranger as an untrained puppy on her -hands had ever seemed to her so endless. "I don't see how I'm going to -stand it for the rest of my life," she thought. A different wedding day -from the one of which she had dreamed long ago! But then, as she had -learned through hard experience, imagination is a creative principle and -depends little upon the raw material of life. Nothing, she supposed, -ever happened exactly as you hoped that it would. - -Supper was a dreary affair. The children were restless and awkward, and -even the wedding cake, which Fluvanna had baked in secret, and over -which she had lamented with Nimrod, was lumpy and heavy. Nathan -endeavoured to enliven the meal by a few foolish jokes badly told, and -when even Dorinda, who felt sorry for him, forgot to laugh, he stared at -her with humble, sheepish eyes while he relapsed into silence. It was a -relief when Bud, of Gargantuan appetite, refused a fifth slice of the -indigestible cake, and the last piece was wrapped in a napkin and put -away for Billy Appleseed. - -"Are you going to have suppers like this every night?" Bud, the -facetious, inquired, giving his stomach a comical pat. - -For the first time a laugh unforced and unafraid broke from Dorinda and -Nathan. After all, she concluded more hopefully, it was possible that -the children might make the house brighter. "I like it over here better -than I do at home," John Abner said. "It's farther away." - -"Farther away from what?" asked Nathan, who was trying to appear easy -and flippant. - -"Oh, I don't know. Farther away from school, I reckon." - -"I wouldn't want to go back to the city if we could have plum pudding -every night till Christmas," Bud persisted. - -Dorinda shook her head. "Oh, you greedy boy!" she exclaimed, smiling. -"When you are a little older you'll learn that you can't have -everything." - -When supper was over she put on her overalls and lighted her lantern, -for the short November day was already closing in. She knew that the -milkers were probably slighting their work, and it made her restless to -think that the cows might not have been handled properly. The negroes -were cheerful and willing workers, but ten years of patient discipline -on her part had failed to overcome their natural preference for the -easiest way. - -"You ain't going out again, are you, Dorinda?" Nathan asked anxiously, -while he watched her preparations. - -"Yes, we had supper early so Fluvanna and Mary Joe could help with the -milking, but I'd better go out and see what they are doing. There's a -lot to do in the dairy and the darkeys are still a little afraid of the -new machinery." - -Nathan laughed good-humouredly. "I might as well help you. Dairy work is -the sort that won't keep." - -"No, it won't wait. The butter has to be packed for the early train." - -"That means you'll be up before daybreak?" - -She nodded impatiently. "Well, you're used to that. Don't you breakfast -by candlelight in winter?" - -"Yes, I'm used to it. I'll come out now and help." - -"I don't want you. There's plenty of work for you in the fields, but I -don't want you meddling in my dairy." - -For the first time she understood what work had meant in her mother's -life; the flight of the mind from thought into action. To have Nathan -hanging round her in the dairy was the last thing, she said to herself, -that she had anticipated in marriage. - -"Of course, I didn't mean to interfere with you." He fell back into the -house, and with a sigh of relief she fled out to the new cow-barn, where -the last milkers still lingered and chatted over the wedding. As she -passed into the heavy atmosphere and inhaled the pasture-scented breath -of the cows, she felt that a soothing vapour had blown over her nerves. - -"I declar, Miss Dorindy, you mought jes' ez well not be mah'ed at all," -Nimrod remarked dolefully. - -"Well, I won't let it interfere with my work. No man is going to do -that." - -Mary Joe bridled and giggled; for, being an engaging mulatto girl, she -knew all that could be told of the interference of men. "Naw'm, dat dey -ain't, nor breck yo' heart needer. Hit's a pity we ain't all ez -strong-minded ez you is." - -Dorinda laughed. "Break my heart? I should think not," she replied. And -she meant what she said while she was saying it. One man had ruined her -life; but no other man should interfere with it. She was encased in -wounded pride as in defensive armour. - -One of the other milkers, a big black woman named Saphira, smiled -approvingly. "Hi! Dat's moughty sassy, Miss Dorindy," she exclaimed, -"but hit ain't natur!" - -After the milkers had gone home, Dorinda went into the dairy with -Fluvanna and Mary Joe and worked until nearly midnight. Usually, she had -finished by nine o'clock, at the latest, but to-night there were a dozen -extra tasks for her willing hands to perform. As the hours went on she -became so particular and so sharply critical that the two coloured women -were driven to tears. "Ef'n you ax me, hit's a good thing she cyarn't -git mah'd but oncet," muttered Mary Joe, as she was leaving. - -At midnight, when there was nothing else that she could find to do and -her limbs were aching from fatigue, Dorinda went back into the house and -locked the hall door which Nathan had left unfastened. The lamp on the -bracket by the staircase was flaring up, and she stopped to lower the -wick, while Ranger rose from his bed on a mat by the door and sidled up -to her. - -"Is that you, Dorinda?" whispered a voice from beyond the bend in the -staircase. "Do you work this late every night?" When she looked up, she -saw Minnie May blinking down on her. - -"No, not every night. We had put off the dairy work so that Fluvanna -could go to the--" Her tongue stumbled over the word "wedding," so she -said "church" instead. - -Holding her red flannel wrapper together over her flat girlish breast, -Minnie May stole noiselessly down the staircase. Her pale red hair hung -in a tight pigtail down her back, and the wrinkles of premature middle -age were visible in her young forehead. She was a girl who had, as -Fluvanna tartly observed, "run to character instead of looks." - -"I tried to wait up for you," she said, "but you were so long coming, -and Pa wouldn't let me go out to the dairy. Mr. Garlick stopped by long -enough to tell us about Geneva Greylock, and I thought you ought to know -it. She threw herself into the old millpond this evening and was -drowned." - -"Drowned?" Dorinda's voice was colourless. "Why, she waved to us as we -came by." While she spoke, it seemed to her that she could never stop -seeing the blue scarf flying round the distraught figure with its -violent gestures. - -"I know. John Appleseed saw her, but he didn't tell anybody, and when -they missed her they didn't know where to look. It was the Haneys' -little boy who saw the blue scarf floating on the pond when he was -playing by the mill-wheel. For months, they say, she had gone about -telling everybody that Jason had murdered her baby; but, of course, it -was just a delusion." - -"Poor thing." Dorinda turned away and went over to the wood stove where -the fire was quite dead. "There was something wrong with her. Even as a -girl she was always moping." Out of the fog of weariness there drifted a -vision of the red chimneys of Five Oaks. So, like an old wound that -begins to ache, the memory of Jason was thrust back into her life. - -"Haven't you been to sleep, Minnie May?" - -"No, I was listening for you. You came in so softly I hardly heard you." - -"Well, you'd better go to bed. We have breakfast at five o'clock." - -"Oh, I don't mind. I wake early, and I'll get up and help you pack the -butter." - -As the girl went up the stairs, Dorinda opened the door of her room and -stepped over the threshold. The fire had been freshly made up and a -pleasant ruddiness suffused the large quaintly furnished chamber where -her parents had lived and died. Nathan had tried to keep the room warm -and to sit up for her; but overcome at last by the loneliness and the -firelight, he had fallen asleep on the big couch by the hearth. Having -removed only his coat, he lay stretched out on his back, snoring -slightly, with his jaw drooping above his magenta tie and his glazed -collar. His features wore the defenseless look which sleep brings to men -and women alike, and she felt, with a pang of sympathy, that he was at -her mercy because he cared while she was indifferent. She would be -always, she realized, the stronger of the two; for it seemed to her one -of the inconsistencies of human nature that strength should be measured -by indifference rather than by love. - -Picking up the old grey blanket from the foot of the bed, she spread it -over him so gently that he did not stir in his sleep. The honesty she -had felt in him from the beginning was the single attribute that -survived in unconsciousness. If only she could remember his goodness and -forget his absurdity, life would be so much easier. - -Too tired to do more than let down her hair and slip into a wrapper, she -dropped on the bed and drew the patchwork quilt up to her chin. As the -firelight flickered over her face, she remembered the night when Rufus -was arrested. Now, as then, she felt that the end of endurance was -reached. "Even if I am married to Nathan and Geneva has drowned herself, -I can't keep awake any longer." - - - - -XVIII - - -Up by the barn John Appleseed's threshing machine was droning like a -gigantic swarm of June beetles. After a rainy spring the sky had cleared -with the beginning of summer, and as the weeks went on, the weather -remained warm and dry for the wheat harvest. - -Standing on the porch, with her curved palm screening her eyes, Dorinda -watched for Nathan to leave the threshing and come home to dinner. All -the morning Fluvanna had been baking wheaten bread for the white men and -corn pone for the coloured hands, who had their midday meal out under -the locust trees at the back of the house. It was five years since the -night of her wedding day, when Nathan had fallen asleep by the fire, and -never in those five years had she known a season of such bountiful -crops. - -As she watched there in the sunlight, she looked exactly what she was in -reality, a handsome, still youthful woman of thirty-eight, who had been -hardened but not embittered by experience. Her tall straight figure had -thickened; there was a silver sheen on the hair over her temples, and -lines had gathered in the russet glow of her skin. Repose, dignity, -independence, these were the attributes with which she faced middle age, -for the lines in her face were marks of character, not of emotion. She -had long ago ceased to worry over wrinkles. Though she clung to youth, -it was youth of the arteries and the spirit. Her happiness was -independent, she felt, of the admiration of men, and her value as a -human being was founded upon a durable, if an intangible, basis. Since -she had proved that she could farm as well as a man there was less need -for her to endeavour to fascinate as a woman. Yet, as she occasionally -observed with surprise, in discouraging the sentimental advances of men, -she had employed the most successful means of holding their interest. -When all was said and done, was she not the only woman at Pedlar's Mill -who did not stoop habitually to falsehood and subterfuge to gain her -end? - -Looking back from the secure place where she stood, she could afford to -smile at the perturbation of spirit which had attended her wedding. -Marriage had made, after all, little difference in the orderly precision -of her days. She held the reins of her life too firmly grasped ever to -relinquish them to another; and as she had foreseen on her -wedding night, she possessed an incalculable advantage in merely liking -Nathan while he loved her. On her side at least marriage had begun where -it so often ends happily, in charity of mind. Though she could not love, -she had chosen the best substitute for love, which is tolerance. - -After five years of marriage, Nathan was scarcely more than a superior -hired man on the farm. Dorinda still smiled at his jokes; she still -considered his appetite; she still spoke of him respectfully to the -children as "your father"; but he had no part, he had never had any -part, in her life. It was his misfortune, perhaps, that by demanding -nothing, he existed as an individual through generosity alone. Yet -humble as he was in the house, his repressions fell away from him as -soon as he was out on the farm. The mechanical gesture of sowing or -reaping released his spiritual stature from the restraints that crippled -it in the flesh. Contact with the soil dissolved his humility, as -alcohol dissolved the inhibitions which had made Rufus when he was sober -colourless and ineffectual in comparison with Rufus when he was drunk. -Farming was Nathan's solitary outlet, for he did not drink and he had -observed scrupulously his promise not to encroach on Dorinda's freedom. -He left her at liberty, as he often reminded her, to have things her own -way, and nothing in his nature, except his habits, was strong enough to -resist her. Though she had been able to break him of chewing tobacco in -the house, he still drank his coffee from his saucer and sat with his -feet on the railing of the porch. Yet he was an easy man, she reflected, -to live with, and for a woman who was growing arrogant with prosperity, -an easy man was essential. At thirty-eight her philosophy had -crystallized into the axiom, "you can't have everything." - -In the midst of the abandoned acres the broad cultivated fields were -rich and smiling. Where the broomsedge had run wild a few years ago, the -young corn was waving, or the ragged furrows of the harvest wheat were -overflowing with feathery green. In the pasture, if she had looked from -the front porch instead of from the back one, she would have seen the -velvety flanks of the cattle standing knee deep in grass. At her feet, a -flock of white Leghorns, direct descendants of Romeo and Juliet, were -scratching busily in the sheepmint. - -Lifting her hand from her eyes, she brushed a lock of hair back from her -forehead and glanced down at the blue and white gingham dress she had -put on for dinner. Of late she had fallen into the habit of powdering -her face with her pink flannel starch bag and changing into a clean -dress before dinner. Her life, she knew, was becoming simplified into an -unbreakable chain of habits, a series of orderly actions at regular -hours. Vaguely, she thought of herself as a happy woman; yet she was -aware that this monotony of contentment had no relation to what she had -called happiness in her youth. It was better perhaps; it was certainly -as good; but it measured all the difference between youth and maturity. -She was not old. At thirty-eight, she was still young; and there were -moments in the spring when her tranquillity was shot through with arrows -of flame. Her romantic ardour lay buried under the years, but she -realized now and then that it was still living. - -"Dar dey is!" exclaimed Nimrod behind her, and immediately afterwards -she heard Fluvanna's voice inquiring if it "wasn't time to begin dishing -up dinner?" - -Across the fields the men were walking slowly, Nathan and John Appleseed -a little ahead, the others straggling behind them, with John Abner -limping alone at a distance. She would have recognized Nathan's loping -walk as far-off as she could distinguish his figure, and John Abner's -limp never failed to awaken a sympathetic feeling in her bosom. Of the -four children, he was the only one who had grown into her life. Minnie -May was married and the unselfish mother of an anæmic tow-headed brood; -Bud was working his way to the head of the wholesale grocery business; -and Lena had developed into a pretty, vain, empty-headed girl, who had -been engaged half a dozen times, but had always changed her mind before -it was too late. She attracted men as naturally as honey attracts flies, -and since she was troubled by neither religion nor morality, her -stepmother's only hope was "to get her safely married before anything -happened." For John Abner, Dorinda felt no anxiety beyond the maternal -one which arose from his lameness and his delicate health. He had been a -comfort to her ever since he had come to the farm; and yet, in spite of -John Abner and the knowledge that she had married from fear of a -solitary old age, she realized that she was still lonely. Evidently, -whatever else marriage might prevent, it was not a remedy for isolation -of spirit. - -As Nathan reached the porch he fumbled in the pocket of his overalls and -drew out a greasy paper. - -"John Appleseed brought me this notice about Five Oaks," he said. "Jason -has never paid his taxes, and the farm is to be sold on the tenth of -August. I saw the notice at the store yesterday, but I didn't stop long -enough to take it in." Though Nathan still owned the general store at -Pedlar's Mill, he had placed a manager in charge of it a few years ago. - -The tenth of August! It seemed a long time to wait. Though Dorinda had -expected the sale for the last five years, she told herself that it -seemed a long time to wait. There was not the slightest surprise for her -in Nathan's announcement. She had known for months that neither the -taxes nor the interest on the mortgage could be paid, and that the farm -would soon be sold at public auction. But with the inherent perversity -of human nature, she felt now that the bare statement of the foreclosure -had startled her out of a sleep. When the men had gone to wash their -hands at the well, she lingered on the porch and gazed over the -harvested fields and the low curve of the hill in the direction of Five -Oaks. Peace surrounded her; peace was within her mind and heart; yet the -past clung to her like an odour and she could not brush it away. - -"It looks mighty like we'll get Five Oaks at last," Nathan said that -night when they were alone. "To save my soul I can't see why you're so -set on it, but when a woman wants a thing as much as that, it looks as -if Providence couldn't hold out against her." - -"Is there any chance of James Ellgood bidding it in?" This had been her -secret dread ever since she had heard of the sale. Suppose James -Ellgood, who could go as high as he liked, should begin bidding against -her! - -"There ain't one chance in a million that Jim will lift a finger. He's -hated Jason ever since Geneva drowned herself--and before too." - -"When he loses his farm, do you know what he will do? Jason Greylock, I -mean." - -"He'll still own that little old house in the woods across Whippernock -River. Maybe he'll go down there to live. There ain't much land -belonging to it, but he's given up farming anyway same he's taken to -drink. The two things don't work together." - -"He's his father all over again," Dorinda said, with a shiver of -repulsion. - -"Yes, it looks like it." Nathan's tone was more compassionate. "John -Appleseed saw him a few days ago when he was over there with Tom Snead -looking for a foxhound puppy he'd lost. The dirt would have given you a -fit, Dorinda, he said. There was a slatternly looking coloured wench -getting dinner; but she had thrown all the vegetable peelings out into -the yard, and the front hall was stacked with kindling wood." - -"Did he see Jason?" - -"Yes, he came out when he heard the noise and asked what they wanted. -The old man is getting the best of him, John Appleseed said." - -"And while his father was alive, he hated him so." - -"Well, it's often like that, I reckon. Maybe he hated him all the more -because he felt he was like him." Nathan shook his head as if he were -dislodging a gnat. "I must say, for my part, I'd have picked the old man -of the two. At least he wasn't white-livered." - -White-livered! It seemed to Dorinda that the old man himself was -speaking to her out of his grave. Even he, steeped in iniquity, had -scorned Jason because he lacked the courage of his wickedness. - -Not for years had she heard directly of the Greylocks, and while she -listened she felt that the streak of cruelty in her own nature was -slowly appeased. - -"I wonder why he never went North again?" Nathan said, as he rose to -undress. "I remember he told me once years ago that all he wanted was a -quiet life. He didn't care a damn for the farm, he said, he'd always -hated it." - -Yes, it was true, he had always hated it. Through his whole life he had -been tied by his own nature to the thing that he hated. - -When the tenth of August came, Dorinda put on her best dress, a navy -blue and white foulard which Leona Prince, the new dressmaker, had cut -after the fashionable "Princesse style." She was waiting on the porch -when Nathan, who had just removed his overalls, looked out of the window -to ask if they were going to walk. - -"No, let's have the surrey." For a reason which she did not stop to -define she preferred the long way by the road to the short cut over the -fields. "Lena wants to go with us." - -Nathan whistled. "What on earth has she got up her sleeve now?" - -If she had spoken the thought in her mind, Dorinda would have replied -tartly, "She wants to go because she thinks men will be there"; but -instead she answered simply, "Oh, she's always ready to go anywhere." - -"Well, can't she walk? It ain't over a mile by the short cut." - -"She's afraid of seed ticks. Besides, she's putting on her flowered -organdie." - -"What on earth?" Nathan demanded a second time. Then, after a meditative -pause, he added logically, "I reckon she's got her eye open for young -Jim Ellgood, but she'll be disappointed." - -Lena had recently turned her seductions in a new direction; and Dorinda -was divided between pity for the victim, a nice boy of twenty, and the -fervent hope that Lena might be safely, if not permanently, settled. To -be sure, young Jim had given no sign as yet of responding to her -energetic advances; but the girl had never failed when she had gone -about her business in a whole-hearted fashion, and Dorinda remained -optimistic though vaguely uneasy about the results. Of course her -step-daughter was the last wife in the world for a farmer. Scheming, -capricious, dangerously oversexed, and underworked, she had revealed of -late a chronic habit of dissimulation, and it was impossible to decide -whether she was lying for diversion or speaking the truth from -necessity. Yet none of these moral imperfections appeared to detract an -iota from the advantage of a face like an infant Aphrodite, vacant but -perfect as the inside of a shell. A deplorable waste of any good man's -affection, thought Dorinda. However, she had ceased long ago to worry -over what she could not prevent, and she had observed that the strongest -desires are directed almost invariably toward the least desirable. - -"I am not sure that it is young Jim," she said, firm but indefinite. -"Anyhow, you'll have to hitch up the surrey. The weeds would tear that -dress to pieces." - -When she spoke in that tone, she knew that Nathan never waited to argue. -"All right. I turned the horses out to graze, but I'll see if I can find -them." He went off obediently enough, after protesting again that it -wasn't a mile by the short cut through the woods. Though Nathan always -gave in to her wishes, he seldom gave in without grumbling. - -It took him a quarter of an hour of hard hunting to catch the horses; -but by the time Lena was ready, he appeared at the dour with the surrey. - -"If you don't hurry up and come on, the sale will be over before we get -there," he remarked in the casual tone of a man who is not interested in -the result. - -"Why, I thought we had plenty of time," Dorinda replied; but she hurried -Lena down the steps and into the vehicle, in spite of the girl's -complaint that the ruffles on her skirt would be ruined if she did not -spread a robe over the seat. Not until they had started off at a brisk -pace and were well on the road, did Dorinda's heart stop its rapid -pulsation. Suppose her own stupid folly in withstanding Nathan should -cost her the possession of Five Oaks! - - - - -XIX - - -Up the long shady slope; into the branch road by the fork; between the -wastes of Joe-Pyeweed and life-everlasting; over the rotting bridge -across Gooseneck Creek, where the dragon-flies swarmed above the partly -dried stream; up the rutted track through last year's corn stubble; and -past the broken fences of the farmyard to the group of indifferent -farmers gathered on benches, chairs, and upturned cracker boxes, under -the fine old oaks. All through the drive something invisible was -whipping her on, as if the memory of wet branches stung her face in the -blue August weather. A question was beating unanswered at the back of -her brain. Why, since she neither loved nor hated Jason, should she long -so passionately to own the place where he lived? Was it merely that the -possession of Five Oaks would complete her victory and his degradation? -Or was it simply that feeling like hers never died, that it returned -again and again, in some changed form, to the place where it had first -taken root? - -When she reached the lawn, Ezra Flower, the auctioneer, was intoning -from the front porch to the gathering under the trees. He was a fat -little man, with a beard which stood out like ruffled grey feathers and -the impudent manner of a bedraggled sparrow. From his scolding tone, -Dorinda inferred that the bidding had been fainthearted. Nobody wanted -land, for land was the one thing that everybody owned and could not give -away. While Nathan drove on to the side of the house, Dorinda walked -quickly over to a chair a farmer was relinquishing. Only after she had -seated herself between John Appleseed and William Fairlamb, did she -glance round and observe that Lena had not followed her, but had stopped -among the younger men and boys who were sprawling over the grass. -Already the girl was rolling her eyes and giggling without modesty. -Well, what did it matter? Dorinda had tried, she felt sincerely, to do -her duty by Nathan and his children; but it was impossible for any -stepmother to be responsible for the character of a girl who possessed -none. A stern expression forced her lips together, and she looked away -to the twitching figure of Ezra Flower. - -Still the auctioneer droned on, eliciting now and then responses as curt -as oaths. Presently she heard Nathan's dry cough and his slow emphatic -voice rasping out the words, "Three thousand dollars!" The bidding was -about to begin in earnest, she saw, and a chill sensation ran over her -as she settled her flaring skirt in the rush-bottomed chair. - -While she sat there, listening to the rise and fall of the bidding, she -tried to keep her mind firmly fixed on the objects before her. Overhead, -the sky was of larkspur blue. Far away in the glittering fields, she -heard the shrill chorus of grasshoppers chiming in with the monotonous -hum of the auctioneer's voice. In the nearer meadow clouds of golden -pollen were drifting like swarms of devouring insects. Over the grass on -the lawn a flock of white turkeys moved in a sedate procession. - -Yes, what had happened had happened, she told herself, and was over. Her -affair was not with the past; it was not with the future. The only thing -that concerned her vitally was the moment in which she was living. Only -by keeping her mind close to the immediate present could she prevent her -thoughts from slipping back into the abyss. Even now there were hours -when memory seemed to be dragging her into the past; and when this -occurred, a sense of weakness, of futility, of distaste for living, -would sweep over her like a malady. To look back, she knew, meant the -frustration of effort. To go on, taking the moment as it came, -surmounting the obstacles, one by one, as they confronted her; to lavish -her vital energy on permanent, not fugitive, endeavours,--these were the -resolves which had carried her triumphantly over the years. - -"Six thousand dollars," sang the auctioneer. "Going--going--going for six -thousand dollars. Only six thousand dollars. Will nobody bid more? Not a -quarter of what it is worth. Will nobody bid more for this fine old -farm? Going--going--what? Nobody bids more? Going--going--gone for six -thousand dollars!" - -She rose and went over to where Nathan stood surrounded by a few -farmers, who were trying in vain to pretend that they did not think him -a fool. "Should have thought you had as much land as you knew what to do -with," John Appleseed was saying, as she approached. "What are you going -to do with Five Oaks, now you've got it? Eat it, I reckon?" - -"It ain't mine. I bid on it for my wife," Nathan replied stubbornly. -"She was so set on it I couldn't hold out against her." - -Yes, Nathan was a good man, there was no denying it. Feeling nearer to -him than she had ever felt in her life, she moved over to his side and -slipped her hand through his arm. - -"Wall, she got it dirt cheap," the auctioneer declared. "Dirt cheap, if -I do say so." - -"I don't see what you want with two farms, ma'am," chuckled Mr. -Kettledrum, the veterinarian. "It looks as if you was goin' to live on -one an' let Nathan live by himself on the other." - -Then the faint-hearted bidders mounted their horses or stepped into -their buggies, while Ezra Flower invited the new owners into the house. -"Come right in an' clinch the sale with Doctor Greylock. He's settin' -right there now with the papers to draw up," he added persuasively, as -Dorinda hung back. - -Beckoning Lena to follow them, Dorinda went up the steps with Nathan and -entered the hall. Only once before had she been inside the house; but -every detail of the interior had bitten into her memory. She knew the -bend in the staircase down which the old man had roamed with his whip at -night. She had never forgotten the litter of dust in the corners; the -guns and fishing-poles crowded behind the door; the collection of hats -on the table and sofa; the empty whiskey bottles arranged in a row by -the wainscoting. Above all, she remembered the stale odour of -degeneration, of mingled whiskey and tobacco, which saturated the walls. -Eighteen years ago, and nothing, not even that odour, had changed! In -those eighteen years she had spent her youth and had restored dead land -to life; but this house in which Jason had lived was still sunk in -immovable sloth and decay. - -Ezra Flower passed, with his sprightly sparrow-like twitter, through the -hall, and flung open the door of a room on the right--the room in which -she had sat with the drunken old man while the storm broke outside. -Jason, she saw, was standing on the very spot in the rug where his -father had stood that afternoon in November. - -As she crossed the threshold, it seemed to her that the room shifted and -came forward to meet her. She heard Nathan's voice saying meaningless -words. Then Jason took her hand and dropped it so limply that it might -have been a dead leaf. - -"Won't you sit down?" he asked courteously, for he had evidently kept -sober until the sale could be concluded. "So you've bought Five Oaks," -he continued, as indifferently as if he were speaking of corn or wheat. -"Well, it's never been any use to me, and I'm not sorry to get rid of -it. But I don't see what you're going to do with it. Isn't one farm as -much as you're able to manage?" As he finished, he pushed a decanter of -whiskey in the direction of Nathan. "We might as well have a drink over -it anyway." - -Yes, nothing had altered. It might have been the same dust that lay in a -film over the floor, the furniture and the walls. It might have been the -same pile of old newspapers on the table. It might have been the same -spot of grease on the table cover; the same rattrap baited with a piece -of greenish cheese in one corner; the same light falling obliquely -through the speckled window-panes. She would not have been surprised, -when she turned her head, to see the sheets of rain blowing out like a -curtain over the hunched box-bush. - -Jason laughed, and the sound had a sardonic merriment. She had never -thought that he resembled the old man, and she told herself now, while -she watched him, that it was only the bad light or a trick of memory -which gave him the discouraged and desperate air of his father. In -looking at him she seemed not to brush aside, but to gather together all -the years that had gone. Why had she ever loved him? What was there in -this one man that was different from all other men whom she had known? -Once she had beheld him within a magic circle of wonder and delight, -divided and set apart from the surrounding dullness of existence. Now -the dullness had swept over him as the waste flows over the abandoned -fields. - -He leaned back in his chair, glancing from Nathan to Ezra Flower with -morose and weary eyes. His face, which had been charming in youth, was -now spiritless and inert. There were yellow blotches under his eyes; his -eyelids were puffed and heavy; his features were swollen and leaden in -colour; and even his hair, which had once been so alive, was as sandy -and brittle as straw. Yes, the broomsedge had grown over him. - -For a minute she scarcely heard what they were saying; then the details -of the sale were discussed, and she made an effort to follow the words. -When, presently, Nathan asked her to sign a paper, she turned -automatically and wrote her name in the race that Ezra Flower pointed -out to her. As she laid down the pen, she saw that Jason was smiling, -and for an instant a glimmer of his old bright charm shone in his -expression. She wished that he had not smiled. Then, with the wish still -in her mind, she saw that he was smiling, not at her, but at Lena. His -heavy gaze turned Lena as instinctively as the eyes turn to a flaring -lamp in a darkened room. His look was not amorous, for drink, Dorinda -knew, not sex, was his preoccupation; but, while she watched it, a -sensation of physical nausea attacked her. - -Rising from her chair, she stood waiting for Nathan to finish the -discussion. It was agreed, she understood vaguely, that Jason should -leave the farm the first day of October, and that Nathan should take over -the better part of the furniture. "I'll be glad to get rid of it," Jason -remarked agreeably enough, "and I hope that you will make more out of the -farm than I ever did. All I can say that it ruined me. If I had been -hard-hearted about it instead of soft, I'd be a different man from the -one I am to-day." - -"Yes, you weren't cut out for a farmer," Nathan rejoined mildly, and he -added with one of his untimely jests, "Now, is you'd been as thrifty as -my wife, you'd have found a way to make two leaves of alfalfa grow where -there wasn't even one blade of grass before." - -At this, for the first time, Jason looked at her attentively, and she -knew from his gaze that his interest in her was as casual as his -interest in Nathan. With his look, she felt that the part of her that -was sex withered and died; but something more ancient than sex came to -her rescue, and this was the instinct of self-preservation which had -made her resolve in her youth that no man should spoil her rife. In the -matter of sex, he had won; matched merely as human beings, as man to -man, she knew that she was the stronger. Though she did not realize its -significance, the moment was a crisis in her experience; for when it had -passed she had discarded for ever the allurements of youth. She felt -securely middle-aged, but it was the middle age of triumphant -independence. - -Jason's glance had wandered from her to Nathan, and she detected the -flicker of ridicule in his smile. Anger seized her at the suspicion that -he was mocking them, and with the anger a passionate loyalty to Nathan -welled up in her heart. She saw Nathan as clearly as Jason saw him, but -she saw also something fine and magnanimous in his character which Jason -could never see because he was blind to nobility. "I don't care," she -thought indignantly, "he is worth twenty of Jason." Obeying a protective -impulse, she moved nearer to her husband and laid her hand on his arm. -It was the second time that afternoon that she had drawn closer to him -of her own accord. - -"Well, I reckon we'd better be starting home," Nathan said, as he held -out his hand in simple good will. "I hope you'll make out all right -where you're going." - -"All I ask is a quiet life," Jason repeated. Then, as they were leaving -the room, his eyes roved back to Lena and clung to her face as if he -hated to see the last of her. "Take good care of that daughter of -yours," he advised. "She's the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life." - -"Well, she ain't bad-looking," Nathan retorted with spirit, "but she -can't hold a candle to the way her mother and Dorinda looked when they -were her age." - -Without touching Jason's hand again, Dorinda walked quickly down the -hall and out of the house. Not until they were driving over Gooseneck -Creek, did it occur to her that she had not opened her lips at Five -Oaks. - -"I hope you're satisfied, Dorinda," Nathan remarked, with hilarity. - -"Yes, I'm satisfied." - -"I fancied you looked kind of down in the mouth while we were in the -room. You ain't changed your mind about wanting the farm, have you?" - -"Oh, no, I haven't changed my mind." - -"I'm glad of that. You never can tell about a woman. He seemed to think -that Lena was good to look at." - -Though she had believed that her anger was over, the embers grew red and -then grey again. Middle age as an attitude of mind might enjoy an -immunity from peril, but it suffered, she found, from the disadvantages -of an unstable equilibrium. - -"I wonder if he has forgotten Geneva," she observed irrelevantly. - -At the reminder of that tragic figure Nathan's hilarity died. "When a -thing like that has happened to a man," he responded, "he doesn't -usually keep the dry bones lying around to look at." - -The sun was beginning to go down and the sandy stretch of road, where -the shadow of the surrey glided ahead of them, glittered like silver. -After the intense heat of the day the fitful breeze was as torrid as the -air from an oven. - -"John Abner promised he would drive me over to the ice cream festival at -the church," Lena said hopefully. There were pearly beads on her -shell-like brow and Nathan's leathery face was streaming with -perspiration. - -"Poor John Abner! It is so hot and he will be tired!" protested Dorinda, -though she was aware that any protest was futile, for Lena possessed the -obstinacy peculiar to many weak-minded women. - -"He needn't stay," retorted the girl. "Somebody will be sure to bring me -home." She pressed her pink lips together and smiled with the secret -wisdom of instinct. - -As soon as they reached the house Dorinda slipped into her gingham dress -and hurried out to the barn. Milking had already begun, but she knew -that it would proceed with negligence if she were long absent. In -summer, as in winter, they had supper after dark, and for a little while -when the meal was over she liked to rest on the porch with Nathan and -John Abner. To-night, John Abner was away with Lena, and when Dorinda -came out into the air, she dropped, with a sigh of relief, into the -hammock beneath the climbing rose Nathan had planted. - -"I never felt anything like the heat," she said, "there's not a breath -anywhere." - -Nathan stirred in the darkness and removed his pipe from his mouth. -"Yes, if it don't break soon, the drought will go hard with the crops." - -"And with the dairy too. The ice melts so fast I can't keep the butter -firm." - -She leaned back, breathing in the scent of his pipe. The protective -feeling, so closely akin to tenderness, which had awakened in her heart -at Five Oaks, had not entirely vanished, and she felt nearer to her -husband, sitting there in the moonlight of her thoughts, than she had -felt since her marriage. Even that moment at Five Oaks when Jason had -laughed at him had not brought him so close. She longed to tell him this -because she knew how much the knowledge of it would mean to him; yet she -could find no words delicate enough to convey this new sense of his -importance in her life. The only words at her command were those that -had struggled in her mind over at Five Oaks: "He is worth twenty of -Jason," and these were not words that could be spoken aloud. - -"There goes a shooting star!" Nathan exclaimed suddenly out of the -stillness. - -"And another," she added, after a brief silence. - -"I wonder what becomes of them," he continued presently. "When you stop -to think of it, it's odd what becomes of everything. It makes the -universe seem like a scrap heap." - -She left the hammock and sat down on the step at his feet. "That reminds -me of all the trash over at Five Oaks. What in the world can we do with -it? Doesn't that screech owl sound as if he were close by us." - -"Well, we'll have to put a manager on that farm, I reckon. We can't look -after both farms and make anything of them. I never heard so many -tree frogs as we've had this summer. What with the locusts and the -katydids you can't hear yourself talk. But it's right pleasant sitting -here like this, ain't it?" - -"Yes, it's pleasant." She tried to say something affectionate and gave -up the effort. "I like to think that Five Oaks belongs to us." Her -accent on the "us" was the best that she could do in the matter of -sentiment; yet she was sure that he understood her mood and was touched -by its gentleness. - -They talked until late, planning changes in the old farm and -improvements in the new one. It was an evening that she liked to -remember as long as she lived. Whenever she looked back on it -afterwards, it seemed to lie there like a fertile valley in the arid -monotony of her life. - - - - -_PART -THIRD_ - - - - -LIFE-EVERLASTING - - - - -"_For the next few years_. . . ." - - - - -I - - -For the next few years she gave herself completely to Five Oaks. Only by -giving herself completely, only by enriching the land with her abundant -vitality, could she hope to restore the farm. Reclaiming the abandoned -fields had become less a reasonable purpose than a devouring passion in -her mind and heart. Old Farm was managed by Nathan now, and since he had -let his own place to a thrifty German tenant, he had, as Dorinda -frequently reminded him, "all the time in the world on his hands." The -dairy work, which had prospered when three trains a day were run between -Washington and the South, still remained under her supervision; but all -the hours that she could spare were spent on the freshly ploughed acres -of Five Oaks. Over these acres she toiled as resolutely as the pioneer -must have toiled when he snatched a home from the wilderness. Though she -had installed Martin Flower in the house, she had rejected Nathan's idea -of letting the farm "on shares" to the tenant. This was the only -disagreement she had ever had with Nathan, and he had yielded at last to -the habit of, command which had fastened upon her. As she grew older she -clung to authority as imperiously as a king who refuses to abdicate. -There were moments in these years when, arrested by some sudden check on -her arrogance, she stopped to wonder if any man less confirmed in -humility than Nathan could have stood her as a wife. But, immediately -afterwards, she would reflect, with the faint bitterness which still -flavoured her opinion of love, that if she had married another man, he -might not have found her overbearing. - -Though the gentleness of mood which had stolen over her that August -evening had not entirely departed, it lingered above the bare reason of -her mind as a tender flush might linger over the austere pattern of the -landscape. After that evening she had drawn no nearer to her husband, -yet she had felt no particular impulse to stand farther away. Their -association had touched its highest point in the soft darkness of that -night, and she knew that they could never again reach the peak of -consciousness together. But the quiet friendliness of their intercourse -was not disturbed by Dorinda's interest in Five Oaks; and when, after a -longer pursuit and a fiercer capture than usual, Lena finally married -young Jim Ellgood, the days at Old Farm assumed the aspect of bright -serenity which passes so often for happiness. Though Dorinda was not -happy in the old thrilling sense of the word, she drifted, as middle age -wore on, into a philosophy of acquiescence. John Abner was still her -favourite companion, and he shared her ardent interest in Five Oaks. In -time, she hoped he would marry some girl whom she herself should select, -and that they would live with their children at Old Farm. When she -suggested this to Nathan, he chuckled under his breath. - -"It wouldn't surprise me if he wanted his head when he comes to -marrying," he observed. - -"Of course you think I am high-handed," she rejoined. - -"Well, it don't make any difference to me what you are. And as long as -you can manage me," he added, "you needn't worry about not keeping your -hand in." - -"It's for your own good anyway," she retorted. "You're too easy-going -with everybody." - -"I know it, honey. I ain't complaining." - -He was refilling his pipe from his shabby old pouch of tobacco, and -while he prodded the bowl with his thumb, he lifted his eyes and looked -at her with his sheepish smile. - -"I heard 'em talking about Jason Greylock yesterday at the store," he -said. - -She made a gesture of aversion. "What did they say?" - -"Not much that I can recollect. Only that he is too lazy to come for his -mail. He has buried himself in that house in the woods across -Whippernock River, and he sometimes lets a whole month go by without -coming to the post office." - -"Perhaps he hasn't any way of getting over." - -"He's still got his horse and buggy. I doubt if he's really as poor as -he makes out. He hires Aunt Mehaley Plumtree to cook for him and look -after the poultry. She comes every morning and stays till dark." - -"To think of coming down to that after Five Oaks!" - -"Well, the country goes against you when you ain't cut out for a farmer. -Since the old man brought him back from the North, I reckon Jason has -had a hard row to hoe." - -"He wasn't obliged to stay here," she observed scornfully. - -"No, but he was always too easy-going. A pleasant enough fellow when he -was a boy; but soon ripe, soon rotten." - -"Oh, I give it up." Dorinda was untying her apron while she answered. -"He isn't worth all the time we've wasted talking about him." - -"Good Lord, Dorinda! You haven't been sitting here ten minutes." - -"Well, ten minutes will pick a bushel, as Ebenezer says. They are -waiting for me over at Five Oaks." - -This was the secret of her contentment, she knew, breathless activity. -If she was satisfied with her life, it was only because she never -stopped long enough in her work to imagine the kind of life she should -have preferred. While her health was good and her energy unimpaired, she -had no time for discontent. If she had looked for it, she sometimes told -herself, she could have found sufficient cause for unhappiness; but she -was careful not to look for it. - -In these years there were brief periods when her old dreams awakened. -Beauty that seemed too fugitive to be real was still more a torment than -a delight to her. The moon rising over the harp-shaped pine; the shocked -corn against the red sunsets of autumn; the mulberry-coloured twilights -of winter;--while she watched these things the past would glow again -with the fitful incandescence of memory. But the inner warmth died with -the external beauty, and she dismissed the longing as weakness. "You -know where that sort of thing leads you," she would tell herself -sternly. "Three months of love, and you pay for it with all the rest of -your life." - -Looking round at other women, she could not see that they were -better off in the matter of love than she was herself. Even the few -who had married the men they had chosen had paid for it--or so it -appeared to her--with a lifetime of physical drudgery or emotional -disappointment. She supposed they had compensations that she could not -discover--otherwise how could they have borne with their lives?--but -there was lot one among them with whom she would have changed places. -Those who had been most deeply in love appeared to her to have become -most bitterly disenchanted. - -"I've a lot to be thankful for," she would repeat, while she went out to -struggle against he scrub pine or broomsedge. - -At Five Oaks, during those first seasons, she converted her repressed -energy into the work of destruction. She would watch the reclaiming of -the waste places, the burning of the broomsedge, the grubbing up of the -pin and the sassafras, as if the fire and smoke were clearing her life -of its illusions. Her nightmare dream of ploughing under the thistles -was translated into the actual event. Perhaps, as the years went by, the -reality would follow the dream into oblivion. At thirty she had looked -forward to forty, as the time of her release from van expectation; but -when forty came, she pushed the horizon of her freedom still farther -away. "Perhaps at fifty I shall be rid of it for ever," she thought. - -The winter had begin with a heavy snowstorm in December, and the week -before Christmas Nathan went to bed with a cold which left him with at -abscess in one of his teeth. There was no dental surgeon nearer than -Richmond, and Doctor Stout had advised him to go to the city and have -the tooth out as quickly as possible. "You won't lave a minute's peace -until you do," the doctor added decisively. - -That was weeks ago, for Nathan had deferred the evil day until the -twentieth of January when he was required as a witness in a lawsuit Bob -Ellgood was bringing against the railroad. "As long as I've got to go to -Richmond anyway, I might as well wait and kill two birds with one -store," he said. - -A few days before the case was called his toothache began again with -violence, and for two nights he had walked the floor in agony. - -"You will be so thankful afterwards that it is over!" Dorinda assured -him encouragingly. - -She was busily seeding raisins for a plum pudding, and she paused long -enough in her task to glance out of the window and shake her head. -Though her forty-second birthday had just gone, the wintry flush in her -cheeks and the imperious carriage of her head still created, at a little -distance, the aspect of youth. There was a white lock on her forehead; -but the premature greyness appeared theatrical rather than elderly above -the intense blue of her eyes. "You look as good to me as you ever did," -Nathan had said to her on her birthday. - -As she turned from the window and put down the bowl of raisins, a frown -wrinkled her forehead. "I wonder if it will ever stop snowing?" she -said. - -For days the weather had been bitterly cold, and the bare country had -frozen under a leaden sky. Then at sunset the evening before a red fire -had streamed over the rim of the horizon, and in the night snow had -begun to fall. When Dorinda had gone out to the barn at five o'clock, -she had found the landscape covered with a white blanket and deep drifts -at the corners of the house and on the north side of the well and the -woodpile. The blackness had been so thick that she had been obliged to -walk in the flitting circle of light her lantern had cast on the ground. -She had already sent off the butter to meet the five o'clock train to -Washington; but Nimrod had overslept himself, and Nathan had hurried to -the cabin to wake him, while John Abner had harnessed the horses to the -wagon. Even then the coloured boy had had to take his breakfast with him -and eat it at the station. If the train had been delayed, the butter -would not have reached Washington until the day was well advanced. - -All the morning and afternoon the flakes were driven in the high wind. -Though Dorinda could see only a few feet in front of her, she knew that -the dim fleecy shapes huddled on the lawn were not sheep but lilac -bushes and flower-beds. The animals and the birds had long ago fled to -shelter. As soon as the snow stopped falling the crows would begin -flying over the fields; but now the world appeared as deserted as if it -were the dawn of creation. In the kitchen, where she stayed when she was -not obliged to be in the dairy, there was an ashen light which gave -everything, even the shining pots and pans, an air of surprise. -Fluvanna, who was stirring the mixture for the plum pudding, sat as -close to the stove as she could push her chair, and shivered beneath her -shawl of knitted grey wool. - -"Well, I reckon I'll be glad to get it over," Nathan said in a mournful -voice. "I've stood it' about as long as I can." - -He had dropped disconsolately into a chair by the table, and sat with -his hands hanging helplessly between his knees. His face was tied up in -a white silk handkerchief which Dorinda had given him at Christmas, and -while she looked at him with sympathy, she could not repress a smile at -the comical figure he made. Like a sick sheep! That was the way he -always looked when anything hurt him. He was a good man; she was -sincerely attached to him; but there was no use denying that he looked -like a sick sheep. - -"Nimrod can drive you over with the butter in the morning," she -rejoined. "Then you can have your tooth pulled before you have to go to -court." - -Afterwards, when she recalled this conversation, the ashen light of the -kitchen flooded her mind. A small thing like that to decide all one's -future! Yet it seemed to her that it was always the little things, not -the big ones, that influenced destiny; the fortuitous occurrence instead -of the memorable occasion. The incident of his going was apparently as -trivial as her meeting with Jason in the road, as the failure of her aim -when the gun had gone off, as the particular place and moment when she -had fallen down in Fifth Avenue. These accidents had changed utterly the -course of her life. Yet none of them could she have foreseen and -prevented; and only once, she felt, in that hospital in New York, had -the accident or the device of fortune been in her favour. - -"Yes, I'll do it," Nathan repeated firmly. "Ebenezer or Nimrod can meet -the evening train. That ought to get me home in time for supper." - -"If this keeps up," Dorinda observed, "everything will be late." - -In the morning, as she had foreseen, everything was an hour later than -usual. "The train is obliged to be behindhand," she thought, "so it -won't really matter." Though it was still snowing, the wind had dropped -and the stainless white lay like swan's-down over the country. All that -Dorinda could see was the world within the moving circle of the lantern; -but imagination swept beyond to the desolate beauty of the scene. "I'd -like to go over with you," she said, when they had finished breakfast, -"only the roads will be so heavy I oughtn't to add anything on the -horses." - -"It will be pretty hard driving," Nathan returned. "I hope I shan't take -cold in my tooth." - -"Oh, I can wrap up your face in a shawl, and I've got out that old -sheepskin Pa used to use. You couldn't suffer more than you did last -night. Doctor Stout says the trouble isn't from cold but from -infection." - -He shook his head dolefully. "No, I couldn't stand another night as bad -as that. The train will be warm anyhow, and even the drive won't be much -worse than the barn was this morning. Jim Ellgood has his barn heated. I -wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea for us to heat ours next year. -Milking ain't much fun when your hands are frostbitten." - -"Yes, it would be a good idea," she conceded inattentively, while she -brought a pencil and a piece of paper and made a list of the things she -wished him to buy in town. "You may hear something about the war in -Europe," she added, in the hope of diverting his mind from the pain in -his tooth. Nathan was the only man at Pedlar's Mill who had taken the -trouble to study the battles in France, and even Dorinda, though she -made no comment, thought he was going too far when he brought home an -immense new map of Europe and spent his evenings following the march of -the German Army. Already lie had prophesied that we should be drawn into -the war before it was over; but like his other prophecies, this one was -too farsighted to be heeded by his neighbours. - -When it was time for him to start, and Nimrod had brought the wagon to -the door, she wrapped Nathan's face in her grey woollen scarf and tied -the ends in a knot at the back of his head. "You can get somebody to -undo you at the station." - -He smiled ruefully. "No, I don't reckon I'd better get on the train tied -up like this. I must look funny." - -"It doesn't matter how you look," she responded; but she could not keep -back a laugh. - -As the wagon ploughed through the snow, she stood there, with her shawl -wrapped tightly over her bosom and the lantern held out into the -blackness before dawn. The air was alive with a multitude of whirling -flakes, which descended swiftly and sped off into the space beyond the -glimmer of her lantern. After the wagon had disappeared the silence was -so profound that she could almost hear the breathless flight of the -snow-flakes from the veiled immensity of the sky. By the glow of the -lantern she could just distinguish the ghostly images of trees rising -abruptly out of the shrouded stillness of the landscape. While she -lingered there it seemed to her that the earth and air and her own being -were purified and exalted into some frigid zone of the spirit. Humanity, -with its irksome responsibilities and its unprofitable desires, dropped -away from her; but when she turned and entered the house, it was waiting -in the ashen light to retard her endeavours. - - - - -II - - -In the kitchen John Abner was lingering over his breakfast, and Fluvanna -was frying bacon and eggs, while she complained of the weather in a -cheerful voice. - -"Are the cows all right?" Dorinda inquired of her stepson. Until the -storm was over, the cows must be kept up, and John Abner, who was a -diligent farmer, had been out to feed and water them. - -"Yes, but it's rough on them. It's still as black as pitch, but the -sooner we get the milking over the better. The hands are always late on -a morning like this." - -Dorinda glanced at the tin clock on the shelf. "It isn't five o'clock -yet. We'll start as soon as you finish breakfast whether the other -milkers have come or not. The cows can't wait on the storm." - -"It's a pity Father had to go to town to-day." - -"It may be fortunate that something decided him. The doctor said he -wouldn't be any better until he had that tooth out. He walked the floor -all night with whiskey in his mouth." - -The smile that came into Dorinda's eyes when she looked at her stepson -made her face appear girlish, in spite of its roughened skin and the -lines which were deeper in winter. "I see the lanterns outside now," she -added. "The women must be on the way to the milking." Wrapping her shawl -over her head, she took down a coat of raccoon skins, which was hanging -behind the door, and slipped her arms into the shapeless sleeves. Then -going out on the back porch, she felt under a snow-laden bench for the -overshoes she had left there last evening. Dawn was still far away, and -in the opaque darkness she could see the lanterns crawling like frozen -glowworms through the whirling snow, which was blown and scattered in -the glimmering circles of light. - -In one of the long low buildings where the milk cows were sheltered, she -found a few grotesquely arrayed milkers. From the beginning she had -employed only women milkers, inspired by a firm, though illogical, -belief in their superior neatness. Yet she had supplemented faith with -incessant admonition, and this was, perhaps, the reason that the women -wore this morning neat caps and aprons above a motley of borrowed or -invented raiment. When she entered, stepping carefully over the mixture -of snow and manure on the threshold, they greeted her with grumbling -complaints of the weather; but before the work was well started they had -thawed in the contagious warmth of her personality, and were chattering -like a flock of blackbirds in a cherry tree. Since it is the law of -African nature to expand in the sunshine, she was particular never to -wear a dismal face over her work. - -For the first minute, while she hung the lantern on the nail over her -head, she felt that the meadow-scented breath of the cows was woven into -an impalpable vision of summer. Though she shivered outwardly in the -harsh glare of light, a window in her mind opened suddenly, and she saw -Jason coming toward her through the yellow-green of August evenings. As -with her mother's missionary dream, these visitations of the past -depended less upon her mood, she had discovered, than upon some fugitive -quality in time or place which evoked them from the shadows of memory. -Concealing a shiver of distaste, she turned away and bent over a -milk pail. - -"Your fingers are stiff, Jessie, let me try her a moment." - -Hours later, when light had come and the work of the dairy was over for -the morning, she went back into the house, and the ashen light went with -her over the threshold. Fluvanna was busy with dinner, and a pointer -puppy named Pat was fast asleep by the stove. Young Ranger, the son of -old Ranger, lay on a mat by the door, and though many Flossies had -passed away, there was always a grey and white cat bearing the name to -get under one's feet between the stove and the cupboard. The room, -Dorinda told herself, was more cheerful than it had ever been. She -remembered that her mother could never afford curtains for the windows, -and that Fluvanna had laughed at her when she had bought barred muslin -and edged it with ruffles. "Good Lord, Miss Dorinda, who ever heard -tell!" the girl exclaimed. Yet, in the end, the curtains, with other -innovations, had become a part of the established order of living. Why -was it so difficult, she wondered, to bring people to accept either a -new idea or a new object? Nathan was the only man at Pedlar's Mill who -lived in the future, and Nathan had always been ridiculed by his -neighbours. The telephone, the modern churn, and the separator, what a -protracted battle he had fought for each of these labour-saving -inventions! He was talking now of the time when they would have an -electric plant on the farm and all the cows would be milked and the -cream separated by electricity. Was this only the fancy of a visionary, -or, like so many of Nathan's imaginary devices, would it come true in -the end? - -At twelve o'clock John Abner came in for dinner, and, after a hurried -meal, went out to help clear away the snow from the outbuildings. As -there was no immediate work to be done, Dorinda sat down before the fire -in her bedroom and turning to her workbasket, slipped her darning-egg -into one of Nathan's socks. She disliked darning, and because she -disliked it she never permitted herself to neglect it. Her passionate -revolt from the inertia of the land had permeated the simplest details -of living. The qualities with which she had triumphed over the abandoned -fields were the virtues of the pioneers who had triumphed over life. - -The room was quiet except for the crackling of the flames and the -brushing of an old pear-tree against the window. In the warmth of the -firelight the glimpse of the snow-covered country produced a sensation -of physical comfort, which stole over her like the Sabbath peace for -which her mother had yearned. Lifting her eyes from her darning, she -glanced over the long wainscoted room, where the only changes were the -comforts that Nathan had added. The thick carpet, the soft blankets, the -easy chair in which she was rocking,--if only her mother had lived long -enough to enjoy these things! Then the thought came to her that, if her -parents had been denied material gifts, they had possessed a spiritual -luxury which she herself had never attained. She had inherited, she -realized, the religious habit of mind without the religious heart; for -the instinct of piety had worn too thin to cover the generations. -Conviction! That, at least, they had never surrendered. The glow of -religious certitude had never faded for them into the pallor of moral -necessity. For them, the hard, round words in her great-grandfather's -books were not as hollow as globes. Her gaze travelled slowly over the -rows of discoloured bindings in the bookcases, and she remembered the -rainy days in her childhood when, having exhausted the lighter treasures -of adventure, she had ploughed desperately in the dry and stubborn acres -of theology. After all, was the mental harvest as barren as she had -believed? Firmness of purpose, independence of character, courage of -living, these attributes, if they were not hers by inheritance, she had -gleaned from those heavy furrows of her great-grandfather's sowing. -"Once a Presbyterian, always a Presbyterian," her mother had said when -she was dying. - -As the afternoon wore on she grew restless from inaction, and the ruddy -firelight, which had been so pleasant after the cold morning, became -oppressive. Putting her work basket aside, she went out into the hall -and opened the back door, where Ebenezer, with a comforter of crimson -wool tied over his head and ears, was shovelling the snowdrifts away -from the angle of the porch. At a distance other men were digging out -the paths to the barn, and the narrow flagged walk to the dairy was -already hollowed into a gully between high white banks. - -Ebenezer, a big, very black negro, with an infinite capacity for rest -and the mournful gaze of an evangelist, wielded his shovel vigorously at -the sound of the opening door, while he hummed in a bass voice which was -like the drone of a tremendous beehive. He was subject to intervals of -dreaminess when he would stop work for ten minutes at a time; but the -only attention Dorinda had bestowed on his slackness was a mild wonder -if he could be thinking. - -"Try to get that snow away before dark, Ebenezer," she said, "and tell -Nimrod he must start earlier than usual to meet the evening train." - -Turning back into the empty hall, she was surprised to find that she had -begun to miss Nathan. It was the first time since her marriage that he -had spent a whole day away from the farm, and she realized that she -should be glad to have him in the house again. The discovery was so -unexpected that it startled her into gravity, and passing the kitchen, -where she saw Fluvanna poking wood into the open door of the stove, she -walked slowly into her room and stood looking about her as if a fresh -light had fallen across her surroundings. Yes, incredible as it was, she -really missed Nathan! Though she had never loved him, after nine years -of marriage she still liked him with a strong and durable liking. It was -a tribute, she realized, to her husband's character that this negative -attachment should have remained superior to the universal law of -diminishing returns. No woman, she told herself, could have lived for -nine years with so good a man as Nathan and not have grown fond of him. -She recognized his disadvantages as clearly as ever; yet recognizing -them made little difference in her affection. She liked him because, in -spite of his unattractiveness, he possessed a moral integrity which she -respected and a magnanimity which she admired. He had accepted her -austerity of demeanour as philosophically as he accepted a bad season; -and to love but to refrain from the demands of love, was the surest way -he could have taken to win her ungrudging esteem. - -When she went out to remind Nimrod that he must start earlier to meet -the six o'clock train, the snow was light and feathery on the surface, -and the air was growing gradually milder. At sunset the sky was -shattered by a spear of sunshine which pierced the wall of clouds in the -west. Between that golden lance and the solitary roof under which she -stood swept the monotonous fields of snow. - -"If it clears, there'll be a good moon to-night," she thought. - -When the milking hour came she yielded to the persuasions of John Abner -and did not go out to the barn. "It is time you learned that nobody is -indispensable," he said, half sternly, half jestingly. "There are mighty -few jobs that a full-grown man can't do as well as a woman, and loafing -round a cow-barn in wintertime isn't one of them." - -"The negroes get so careless," she urged, "if they aren't watched." - -He was standing in front of the fire, and while he held out his stout -boots, one by one, to the flames, the snow in the creases of the leather -melted and ran down on the hearth. The smell of country life in -winter--a mingled odour of leather, manure, harness oil, tobacco, and -burning leaves--was diffused by the heat and floated out with a puff of -smoke from the chimney. His features, seen in profile against the -firelight, reminded her of Jason. John Abner was not really like him, -she knew; but there were traits in every man, tricks of expression, of -gesture, of movement, which brought Jason to life again in her thoughts. -Twenty-two years ago she had known him! Twenty-two years filled to -overflowing with dominant interests; and yet she could see his face as -distinctly as she had seen it that first morning in the russet glow of -the broomsedge. Dust now, she told herself, nothing more. Her memories -of him were no better than deserted wasps' nests; but these dry and -brittle ruins still clung there amid the cobwebs, in some obscure corner -of her mind, and she could not brush them away. Neither regret nor -sentiment had preserved them, and yet they had outlasted both sentiment -and regret. - -With a start of exasperation, she tore her mind from the past and -glanced down at John Abner's clubfoot. "Are those boots comfortable?" -she asked gently. - -"Oh, they do as well as any," he replied irritably. Though any reference -to his deformity annoyed him, there were times when she felt obliged to -allude to it as a factor in his career. For good or ill, that clubfoot, -like the mark of Jason in her life, had been his destiny. With his -unusual gifts and without the sensitive shrinking from crowds which his -lameness had developed into a disease, he might have achieved success in -any profession that he had chosen. "You stay by the fire," he added, -"while I take a turn at the bossing." - -She nodded. "Very well, I'll be in the dairy when you are ready for me." - -"I'll manage the whole business if you'll let me." - -"But I shan't let you." She was smiling as she answered, and she -perceived from his face that he was big enough to respect her for her -inflexible purpose. While authority was still hers she would cling to it -as stubbornly as she had toiled to attain it. - -He went out laughing, and she dropped back in her chair to wait until -the hour came for her work in the dairy. John Abner was right, of -course. One of the exasperating things about men, she reflected, was -that they were so often right. It was perfectly true that she could not -stay young for ever, and at forty-two, after twenty years of arduous -toil, she ought to think of the future and take the beginning of the -hill more gradually. Though she was as strong, as vital, as young, in -her arteries at least, as she had ever been, she could not, she -realized, defend herself from the inevitable wearing down of the years. -Her eyes wandered to the mirror in the bureau which had belonged to her -mother, and it seemed to her that, sitting there in the ruddy firelight, -the magic of youth enveloped her again with a springtime freshness. Her -eyes looked so young in the dimness that they bathed her greying hair, -her weatherbeaten skin, and her tall, strong figure, which was becoming -a little dry, a trifle inelastic, in the celestial blueness of a May -morning. - -"I wonder if it is because I've missed everything I really wanted that I -cannot grow old?" she asked herself with a start. - -It was seven o'clock when she returned from the dairy, and John Abner -was already in the kitchen demanding his supper. - -"The train is certain to be hours late," he said. "There's no use -waiting any longer for Father." - -"Yes, we might as well have supper. I can cook something for him when he -comes." - -"I saw Mr. Garlick going over a few minutes ago. His daughter, Molly, -went down yesterday with young Mrs. Ellgood to a concert. Mrs. Ellgood -has always been crazy about music. Did you ever hear her play on the -violin?" - -"No, I never went anywhere even before I was married. I'm glad she's -coming up with your father. He always liked her in spite of the fact -that she despises the country." - -When supper was over, and John Abner had eaten with an amazing appetite, -they went back into her bedroom and sat down to wait before the fire. -Though she had never been what Nathan called "an easy talker," she could -always find something to say to her stepson; and they talked now, not -only of the farm, the spring planting, the new tractor-plough they had -ordered, but of books and distant countries and the absurd illustrations -in the Lives of the Missionaries, which John Abner was reading for the -fourth time. - -"Alfalfa has been the making of Five Oaks," Dorinda said. "It's a shame -Pa never knew of it." - -"I wonder if Doctor Greylock ever comes back to his farm. If he does, he -must be sorry he lost it." - -"Well, he ruined the place, he and his father before him. It was no -better than waste land when we bought it." - -John Abner bent over to caress the head of the pointer. "I can't blame -anybody for wanting to quit," he said. "There's a lot to be said for -those missionary chaps. They were the real adventurers, I sometimes -think." - -He rose from his chair and shook himself. "Why, it's almost ten o'clock. -There's no use staying up any longer. If we've got to wake before five, -it is time we were both asleep." - -"I believe I hear the buggy now." Dorinda bent her ear listening. "Isn't -that a noise on the bridge? Or is it only another branch cracking?" - -"You can't hear wheels in this snow. But I'll go out and take a look -round. There's a fine moon coming up." - -When he had unbarred the front door, she slipped into her raccoon coat -and overshoes, and flung her knitted shawl over her head. After a minute -or two, she saw John Abner's figure moving among the shrouded trees to -the gate, and descending the steps as carefully as she could, she -followed slowly in the direction he had taken. By the time she was -midway down the walk, he had disappeared up the frozen road. Except for -the lighted house at her back she might have been alone in a stainless -world before the creation of life. A cold white moon was shedding a -silver lustre over the landscape, which appeared as transparent as glass -against the impenetrable horizon. Even the house, when she glanced round -at it, might have been only a shadow, so unreal, so visionary, it looked -in the unearthly light of the snow. While she lingered there it seemed -to her that the movement of the air, the earth, and the stars, was -suspended. Substance and shadow melted into each other and into the -vastness of space. Not a track blurred the ground, not a cloud trembled -in the sky, not a murmur of life broke the stillness. - -Presently, as she drew nearer the gate, a moving shape flitted in from -the trees by the road, and John Abner called to her that the buggy was -in sight. "I'll wait and bed down the mare," he said. "Nimrod will be -pretty hungry, I reckon, and he won't look after her properly." - -"Well, I'll go right in and fix supper for both of them." - -Without waiting for the vehicle, she hurried into the house and -replenished the fire in the stove. Thin, while she broke the eggs and -put on water to boil for coffee, she told herself that Nathan's coffee -habit was as incurable as a taste for whiskey. The wood had caught and -the fire was burning well when John Abner appeared suddenly in the -doorway. He looked sleepy and a trifle disturbed. - -"That wasn't Father after all," he said. "They told Nimrod there wasn't -any use waiting longer. He was shaking with cold, so I sent him to bed. -As soon as I've made the mare comfortable, I'll come and tell you all -about it." - -"I was just scrambling some eggs. I wish you'd eat them. I hate to waste -things." - -"All right. I'll be back in a jiffy." - -He ran out as quickly as his lameness would permit, and she arranged the -supper on the table. After all, if Nathan wasn't coming home to-night, -John Abner might as well eat the eggs she had scrambled. There was no -sense in wasting good food. - -After attending to the mare the boy came in and began walking up and -down the floor of the kitchen. He did not sit down at the table, though -Dorinda was bringing the steaming skillet from the stove. "It's a -nuisance all the wires are down," he said presently. - -"Yes, but for that we might telephone." - -"The telegraph wires have fallen too. Nimrod said they didn't know much -more at the store than we do." - -"Well, you'd better sit down and eat this while it's hot. It doesn't do -any good to worry about things." - -"One of the coloured men, Elisha Moody, told Nimrod he would be coming -home in an hour, and he would stop and tell us the news. Mr. Garlick is -going to wait at the station until his daughter comes." - -"The news?" she asked vaguely. For the first time the idea occurred to -her that John Abner was holding back what he had heard. "Doesn't Nimrod -know when the train is expected?" - -"Nobody knows. The wires are broken, but the train from Washington went -down and came up again with news of a wreck down the road. I don't know -whether it is Father's train or another, Nimrod was all mixed up about -it. He couldn't tell me anything except that something had happened. The -thing that impressed Nimrod most was that all the freight men carried -axes. He kept repeating that over and over." - -"Axes?" Dorinda's mind had stopped working. She stood there in the -middle of the kitchen floor, with the coffee-pot in her hand, and -repeated the word as if it were strange to her. Behind her the fire -crackled, and the pots of rose-geraniums she had brought away from the -window-sill stood in an orderly row on the brick hearth. - -"I suppose they had to cut the coaches away from the track," replied -John Abner indefinitely. "Elisha will tell us more when he stops by. -He's got more sense than Nimrod, who was scared out of his wits." - -"I would have given him some supper. Why didn't he come in?" - -"He said his wife was waiting for him and he wanted to get to his -cabin." - -Dorinda poured out the coffee and carried the pot back to the stove. -"I'm afraid your father will catch his death of cold," she said -anxiously, "and with that tooth out!" - -She was fortified by a serene confidence in Nathan's ability to take -care of himself. The only uneasiness she felt was on account of the -abscess. With all his good judgment, when it came to toothache he was no -braver than a child. - -John Abner seemed glad to get the hot coffee. "You might as well keep -some for Elisha," he suggested. "It's almost time he was coming and I -know he'll be thankful for something hot." - -Though he ate and drank as if he were hungry, there was a worried look -in his face, and he kept turning his head in the direction of the road. - -"I don't suppose it's anything really serious," Dorinda remarked -reassuringly. "If it had been, we should certainly have heard it -sooner." - -Dropping into a chair beside him, she raised a cup of coffee and drank -it slowly in sips. Presently, notwithstanding her effort to minimize the -cause for alarm, she became aware that anxiety was stealing over her as -if it emanated from her surroundings. She felt it first in the creeping -sensation which ran like spiders over her flesh; then in an almost -imperceptible twitching of her muscles; and at last in a delicate -vibration of her nerves, as if a message were passing over electric -wires in her body. Then, suddenly, the fear mounted to her brain, and -she found herself listening like John Abner for the crunching of wheels -in the snow. - -"Do you hear anybody, John Abner?" - -"A branch snapped, that was all. I'll make up the fire in your chamber. -It's more comfortable in there." - -After he had gone into the bedroom, she fed the two dogs and the cat -before she washed the dishes and placed the coffee where it would keep -hot for Elisha. As she was leaving the kitchen she noticed the -rose-geraniums and moved the pots farther away from the heat. "If we are -going to keep up the fire, it will be too warm for them there," she -thought. - - - - -III - - -The log fire was blazing in her bedroom, and John Abner stood before the -window which looked on the gate and the road. - -"The panes are so frosted you can't see your hand before you," he said, -as she entered. - -Standing there beside him, she gazed through the leafless boughs of the -lilac bushes. "No, even the moonlight doesn't help you," she answered. -"It must be bitterly cold in the road. I hope the mare got warm again." - -"Yes, I covered her up. Nimrod had some whiskey and he was going to make -a hot toddy." John Abner shivered in the icy draught that crept in -through the loose window sashes. "Hadn't you better lie down?" he asked, -turning back to the fire. "It won't be long now." - -She shook her head. "That coffee will keep me awake. Lie down on the -couch, and I'll listen for Elisha. I drew up the shades, so he will know -we haven't gone to bed." - -For a few minutes he resisted her, his eyes blinking in the firelight -while he struggled to bite back a yawn. Then he gave up and flung -himself down on the big soft couch. "It would take something stronger -than coffee to keep me awake to-night," he said. "If I drop off, will -you wake me?" - -"If there is any news. But you will hear Elisha when he comes." He -laughed drowsily. "I believe I could sleep straight through Judgment -Day." - -Taking the quilt from the bed, she covered him carefully from head to -foot. As she tucked him in, she remembered her wedding night when she -had found Nathan asleep on the couch in front of the fire. "If he hadn't -been like that, I couldn't have stood him," she thought. - -Sinking into the easiest chair by the flames, she picked up the sock she -had partly darned in the afternoon. Then, observing that the lamp was -shining in John Abner's face, she lowered the wick and folding the sock, -replaced it in her work basket. The chair creaked gently as she rocked, -and fearing the noise might disturb him, she sat motionless, with her -eyes on the hickory logs and her foot touching the neck of the pointer. - -While she sat there she recalled, with one of the irresponsible flashes -of memory which revived only when she was inactive, the afternoon when -she had waited in the dripping woods to see Jason drive home with -Geneva. She was a girl then; now she was a woman and middle-aged; yet -there was an intolerable quality in all suspense which made it alike. -Compared to those moments, this waiting was as the dead to the living -agony. "Suppose I had married Jason and he was on that train, could I -sit here like this?" she asked herself. "Suppose I had married Jason -instead of Nathan, would marriage have been different?" - -Then, because the question was useless and she had no room for useless -things in her practical mind, she put it sternly away from her, and -rising, slipped into her coat and went out of the house. Closing the -door softly, she passed out on the porch and down the frozen steps to -the lawn. The snow was slippery in thin places, and she knew that Elisha -would try to keep to the road where the deep drifts were less dangerous. -Advancing cautiously, she moved in the direction of the gate, but she -had gone only a few steps when she saw Elisha's old spring wagon rolling -over the bridge. Quickening her steps dangerously, she ran over the -slippery ground. - -"I've kept some hot coffee for you, Uncle Elisha. Can't you come into -the kitchen and get something to eat?" - -"Naw'm, I reckon I'd better be gittin' erlong home. My ole grey mare, -she's had jes' about enuff er dis yeah wedder, en she's kinder hankerin' -fur de stable." - -"We can keep her here. There's plenty of room in the stable, and you can -spend the night with Ebenezer." - -"Thanky, Miss Dorindy, bofe un us sutney would be glad uv er spell er -res'. My son Jasper, he's on dat ar train dat's done been stalled down -de track, an' I'se gwine out agin about'n sunup." - -"Have they heard anything yet?" asked Dorinda, while the wagon crawled -over the snags of roots in the direction of the stable. - -Elisha shook his muffled head. "Dey don' know nuttin', Miss Dorindy, -dat's de Gospel trufe, dey don' know nuttin' 'tall. Dar's a train done -come down Pom de Norf, en hit's gwine on wid whatevah dey could git -abo'd hit. Hi! Dey's got axes erlong, en I 'low dar ain' nary a one un -um dat kin handle an axe like my Jasper." - -"I'm afraid it's a bad wreck," Dorinda said uneasily. - -"Yas'm, dar's a wreck somewhar, sho 'nuff, but dey don' know nuttin' -out dar at de station. All de wires is down, ev'y las' one un um, en dar -ain' nobody done come erlong back dat went down de road. Ef'n you'll -lemme res' de night heah, me en de mare'll go out agin befo' sunup." - -"There's all the room in the world, Uncle Elisha. Wait, and I'll give -you a lantern to take to the stable." She went indoors and returned in a -few minutes with a light swinging from her hand. "As soon as you've -attended to your mare, come in and I'll have something for you to eat." - -As she passed her bedroom on the way to the kitchen she saw that John -Abner was still sleeping, and she did not stop to arouse him. Why should -she disturb his slumber when there was nothing definite that she could -tell him? Instead, she hastened about her preparations for Elisha's -supper, and by the time the old negro came in from bedding the mare, the -bacon and eggs were on the table. Withdrawing to a safe distance from -the stove, he thawed his frostbitten hands and feet, while his grizzled -head emerged like some gigantic caterpillar from the chrysalis of shawls -he had wound about him. - -"Were there many people at the station?" she inquired presently. - -"Naw'm, hit was too fur fur mos' folks. Marse John Garlick, he wuz -spendin' de night in de sto', en so was Marse Jim Ellgood. Young Marse -Bob en his wife wuz bofe un um on de train." - -"Well, make a good supper. Then you can go up to Ebenezer's. I saw smoke -coming out of his chimney, so it will be warm there." - -Because she knew that he would enjoy his supper more if he were -permitted to eat it alone, she went back to the fire in her bedroom -where John Abner was still sleeping. She watched there in the silence -until she heard Elisha exclaim, "Good night, Miss Dorindy!" and go out, -shutting the back door behind him. Then she locked up the house, and -after lowering the wick of the hall lamp, touched John Abner on the -shoulder. - -"You'd better go to bed. In a little while you will have to be up -again." - -He opened his eyes and sat up, blinking at the firelight. "I could have -slept on into next week." - -"Well, don't wake up. Go straight upstairs." - -"Did Elisha ever come?" - -"Yes, he put his mare in the stable and went up to spend the night with -Ebenezer." - -"What did he tell you?" - -"Only that they haven't found out anything definite at the station. You -know how cut off everything is when the wires are down. Mr. Garlick and -James Ellgood are both waiting out there all night." - -"Then it was Father's train. It must have been a bad wreck." - -"I'm afraid so. This suspense is so baffling. Anything in the world -might happen, and we shouldn't know of it until the next day." - -Her face was pale and drawn, and while she spoke, she shivered, not from -cold but from anxiety. She saw John Abner glance quickly toward the -front window and she knew that he, like herself, was feeling all the -terror of primitive isolation. How did people stand it when they were -actually cut off by the desert or the frozen North from communication -with their kind? - -"You know now what it must have been like in the old days before we had -the telegraph and the telephone," she said. "Pedlar's Mill was scarcely -more than a stopping place in the wilderness, and my mother would be -shut in for days without a sign from the outer world." - -"I never thought of it before," said John Abner, "but it must have been -pretty rough on her. The roads were no better than frozen bogs, so she -couldn't get anywhere if she wanted to." - -"That was why she got her mania for work. The winter loneliness; she -said, was more than she could endure without losing her mind. She had to -move about to make company for herself. There were weeks at a time, she -told me once, when the roads were so bad that nobody went by, not even -Mr. Garlick, or an occasional negro. During the war the trains stopped -running on this branch road, and afterwards there were only two trains -passing a day." - -"I suppose it was always better on the other side of the railroad." - -"They're nearer the highway, of course, though that was bad enough when -Ma was first married. Over here the roads were never mended unless a few -of the farmers agreed to give so much labour, either of slaves or free -negroes. Then, after the contract was made, something invariably got in -the way and it fell through. Somebody died or fell ill or lost all his -crops. You know how indisposed tenant farmers are to doing their share -of work." - -"And there wasn't even a store at Pedlar's Mill until Father started -one?" - -"Nothing but the mill. That was there as far back as anybody could -remember, and there was always a Pedlar for a miller. The farmers from -this side took corn there to be ground, and sometimes they would trade -it for sugar or molasses. But the only store was far up at the -Courthouse. People bought their winter supplies when they went to town -to sell tobacco. All the tobacco money went for coffee and sugar and -clothes. That was why Pa raised a crop every year to the end of his -life." - -John Abner rose and stretched himself. "Well, I'm precious glad I live -in the days of the telephone and the telegraph, with the hope of owning -an automobile when they get cheaper." Going over to the window, he held -his hand over his eyes and peered out. "You can't see a thing but snow. -We might as well be dead and buried under it. Shall I take the butter -over in the morning?" - -"No, I'd like to go myself. You'd better stay and look after the -milking." How inexorable were the trivial necessities of the farm! -Anxieties might come and go, but the milking would not wait upon life or -death. Not until John Abner had gone upstairs did she perceive that she -had been talking, as her mother would have said, "to make company for -herself." "I've almost lost my taste for books," she thought, "and I -used to be such a hungry reader." - -After putting a fresh log on the fire, she flung herself on the bed, -without undressing, and lay perfectly still while a nervous tremor, like -the suspension of a drawn breath, crept over her. Toward daybreak, when -the crashing of a dead branch on one of the locust trees sounded as if -it had fallen on the roof, she realized that she was straining every -sense for the noise of an approaching vehicle in the road. Then, rising -hurriedly, she threw open the window and leaned out into the night. -Nothing there. Only the lacquered darkness and the moon turning to a -faint yellow-green over the fields of snow! - -At four o'clock she went into the kitchen and began preparations for -breakfast. When the coffee was ground, the water poured over it in the -coffee-pot, and the butterbread mixed and put into the baking dish, she -returned to her room and finished her dressing. By the time John Abner -came down to go out to the cow-barn, she was waiting with her hat on and -a pile of sheepskin rugs at her feet. - -"I suppose we might as well send the butter out. Fluvanna has it ready," -she said, watching him while he lighted his lantern from the lamp on the -breakfast table. "If the trains have begun running again, they will -expect it in Washington." - -"It won't hurt anyway to take it along. I'll tell Nimrod to hitch up." - -They both spoke as if the wreck had been merely a temporary -inconvenience which was over. Vaguely, there swam through Dorinda's mind -the image of her mother cooking breakfast in her best dress before she -went to the Courthouse. The old woman had worn the same expression of -desperate hopefulness that Dorinda felt now spreading like a mask of -beeswax over her own features. Already, though it was still dark, the -life of the farm was stirring. As John Abner went out, she saw the stars -of lanterns swinging away into the night, and when he returned to -breakfast, Fluvanna was in the kitchen busily frying bacon and eggs. -Before they had finished the meal, Nimrod appeared to say that the wagon -was waiting, and rising hastily Dorinda slipped on her raccoon-skin -coat. - -"We'd better start," she said. "Give Uncle Elisha his breakfast, and -tell him we will bring Jasper back with us. Keep the kettle on, so you -can make coffee for Mr. Nathan as soon as he gets here." - -Hurrying out, she climbed into the heavy wagon, and they started -carefully down the slippery grade to the road. As they turned out of the -gate, the wheels slid over the embedded rocks to the frozen ruts in the -snow. Only a circle of road immediately in front of them was visible, -and while the wagon rolled on, this spot of ground appeared to travel -with them, never changing and never lingering in its passage. Into this -illuminated circle tiny tracks of birds drifted and vanished like magic -signs. - -Presently, as they drew nearer Pedlar's Mill, a glimmer, so faint that -it was scarcely more than a ripple on the surface of black waters, -quivered in the darkness around them. With this ripple, a formless -transparency floated up in the east, as a luminous mist swims up before -an approaching candle. Out of this brightness, the landscape dawned in -fragments, like dissolving views of the Arctic Circle. The sky was -muffled overhead, but just as they reached the station a pale glow -suffused the clouds beyond the ruined mill on the horizon. - -"If the train was on time, it must have gone by an hour ago," Dorinda -said, but she knew that there was no chance of its having gone by. - -"Hit's gwinter thaw, sho' nuff, befo' sundown," Nimrod rejoined, -speaking for the first time since they started. - -"Yes, it's getting milder." - -At that hour, in the bitter dawn, the station looked lonelier and more -forsaken than ever. Hemmed in by the level sea of ice, the old warehouse -and platform were flung there like dead driftwood. Even the red streak -in the sky made the winter desolation appear more desolate. - -At first she could distinguish no moving figures; but when they came -nearer, she saw a small group of men gathered round an object which she -had mistaken in the distance for one of the deserted freight cars. - -Now she saw that this object was a train of a single coach, with an -engine attached, and that the men were moving dark masses from the car -to crude stretchers laid out on the snow. - -"The trains are running again," Dorinda said hoarsely. "They must have -got the track cleared." - -"I hope dey's gwinter teck dis yeah budder," Nimrod returned. "Git up -heah, hosses! We ain' got no mo' time to poke." - -A chill passed down Dorinda's spine; but she was unaware of the cause -that produced it, and her mind was vacant of thought. Then, while the -wagon jolted up the slope, some empty words darted into her -consciousness. "Something has happened. I feel that something has -happened." - -"Do you see anybody that you know, Nimrod?" - -"Naw'm, I cyarn see nobody." Then he added excitedly, "But dar's -somebody a-comin'. Ain' he ole Marse Jim Ellgood?" - -The horses stopped by the fence and began nuzzling the snow, -while Nimrod dropped the reins and jumped down to lift out the -butter. Standing up in the wagon, Dorinda beat her chilled hands -together. Her limbs felt stiff with cold, and for a moment they -refused to obey her will. Then recovering control of herself, -she stepped down from the wagon and followed Nimrod in the -direction of the store. Immediately, she was aware of a bustle about the -track, and she thought, "How much human beings are like turkeys!" The -group of men had separated as she approached, and two figures came -forward to meet her across the snow. One was a stranger; the other, -though it took her an instant to recognize him, was Bob Ellgood. "Why, -he looks like an old man," she said to herself. "He looks as old as his -father." The ruddy, masterful features were scorched and smoke-stained, -and the curling fair hair was burned to the colour of singed broomsedge. -Even his eyes looked burned, and one of his hands was rolled in a -bandage. - -She stopped abruptly and stood motionless. Though she was without -definite fear, an obscure dread was beating against the wall of her -consciousness. "Something has happened. Something has happened. -Something has happened." Her mind seemed to have no relation to herself, -to her feelings, to her beliefs, to her affections. It was only an empty -shed; and the darkness of this shed was filled suddenly with the sound -of swallows fluttering. - -When Bob Ellgood reached her, he held out his unbandaged hand. "Father -and I were just going over to your place, Mrs. Pedlar," he said. "We -wanted to be the first to see you. We wanted you to hear of Nathan from -us----" - -"Then he is dead," she said quietly. It had never seemed possible to her -that Nathan could die. He had not mattered enough for that. But now he -was dead. - -"He died a hero," a stranger, whom she had never seen before, said -earnestly. - -"Yes, he died a hero," Bob Ellgood snatched the words away from the -other. "That is what we wish you to know and to feel as long as you -live. He gave his life for others. He had got free, without a scratch, -and he went back into the wreck. The train had gone over the embankment. -It was burning and women were screaming. He went down because he was -strong. He went down and he never came back." - -"God! Those shrieks!" exclaimed the strange man. "I'll hear them all my -life. As long as I live, I'll never stop hearing them." - -"He got free?" she repeated stupidly. - -"But he went back. He got an axe from somebody, and he went back because -he was strong. He was cutting the car away to get a woman out. He did -get her out----" He broke off and added hastily, "When we found him, he -was quite dead. . . ." - -Dorinda stared at him vacantly, seeing nothing but his blackened -features and the scorched place on his head. "Will they bring him to the -farm?" she asked. - -"If you wish it." Bob's voice was shaken. "But we feel that we should -like him to rest in the churchyard." - -Silently, scarcely knowing what he asked, she assented. So Nathan had -forced people to take him seriously, even though he had to die before -they would do it. Was it worth it? she wondered. Would it have pleased -him if he had known? - -"May I go to the church? Have they taken him there?" - -She saw that Bob hesitated before he answered. "I hope you won't see -him," he replied after a minute. "We believe he was killed instantly, -but----" He broke off and then went on desperately, "If you will go home -and leave the arrangements to us, we promise you that everything shall -be as he would have wished. We should like him to have the funeral of a -hero." - -"The funeral of a hero!" she echoed. She did not know, she could not -imagine what kind of funeral that would be; but she felt intuitively -that Nathan would have liked it, and that she had no right to deny him -the funeral that he would have liked. - -Without replying in words, she bent her head and turned back to the -wagon, where a completely demoralized Nimrod awaited her. A stunned -sensation held her emotions imprisoned, and a few minutes later, as she -drove homeward, it occurred to her that she was proving unequal again to -one of the supreme occasions of her life. Emotionally, would she always -prove unequal to the demands of life? She was not feeling what she knew -that she ought to feel; she was not feeling what she knew that they -expected of her. Her stern judgment told her that she was a hypocrite; -but it was hypocrisy against which she was inert and helpless. Though -she was overwhelmed by the general tragedy, she was without a keen sense -of widowhood. Something within her soul, that thin clear flame which was -herself, remained unshaken by her loss, as it had remained unshaken by -every tragedy but one in her life. She was leaving Nathan, with regret -but not with grief, to his belated popularity. How could she begrudge -him in death the thing that he had wanted most when he was alive? Yes, -beholding him as she did with compassion but without pretense, she knew -that he would have enjoyed the funeral of a hero. - - - - -IV - - -Waking in the blackness before dawn, she heard John Abner come -downstairs and stop in the hall to light his lantern. - -"I ought to go out to the milking," she thought, and then more slowly, -"I can't believe that Nathan is dead." - -Would the idea ever grow familiar to her? Could she ever live with the -fact, acknowledged and yet unregarded, as she had lived with the fact of -her marriage? "There never was a better man in the world," she said -aloud. Here on the farm she found herself missing him with the first -vague sense of loss. The insensibility which had protected her at the -station disappeared when her mind dwelt on his good qualities,--his -kindness, his charity, his broad tolerance of her prejudices. She knew -that she should miss him more and more in all the details of the farm, -and that she should begin to sorrow for him as soon as she had time to -realize that she had lost him for ever. Yesterday was a void in her -mind. When she thought of the long day after her return from the -station, she could remember only the incredible tenderness of John -Abner, and the visit in the afternoon from James Ellgood, who had told -her that the news of the wreck had just travelled as far as the farms -beyond Whippernock River, and that the absent minister was returning at -midnight. - -On this, the second day after Nathan's death, the primitive ceremonies -of the funeral began. The earliest and one of the most depressing signs -of mourning was the loud demoralization of the negroes, who rose to the -funeral as fish to bait, and became immediately incapable of any work -except lamenting the dead. As long as there was hope left in tragedy, -they were able to brace themselves to Herculean exertions; but -superstition enslaved them as soon as death entered the house. The cows, -of course, had to be milked; but with the exception of the milking and -the necessary feeding of the stock, the place was like an abandoned farm -until the burial was over. Though Nathan's charred body remained at -Pedlar's Mill, the pall of mourning extended to Old Farm. John Abner had -even suggested sending a telegram to the hotel and the dairy in -Washington and letting the milk spoil; but the thought of all the good -cream that would be thrown away was too much for Dorinda's economical -instincts, and she had checked the impulse with the reminder that Nathan -had hated a waste. Yes, he had hated a waste, it is true, but he had -also loved a funeral. She remembered her mother's death, and the -completeness, the perfection, of his arrangements. - -"Am I too hard?" Dorinda asked herself. "Ought I not to see that -everything gets so upset? After all, as Fluvanna says, a person does not -die but once." The small ironic demon of her sagacity concluded, in -spite of her will: "It is a good thing, or there wouldn't be any room -left for life." - -Breakfast was no sooner over than she was engulfed in a continuous -deluge of sympathy. She was up in the attic with Fluvanna, going over -the black things which had been left from the mourning of her parents, -when the coloured woman glanced out of the dormer-window and gasped -breathlessly. "Thar they are, Miss Dorinda. You hurry up and get into -that black bombazine befo' they catch you out of mournin'." - -She held up a dingy dress which had once belonged to Mrs. Oakley, and -Dorinda slipped into it with the feeling that she was preparing for her -own coffin. As she was about to go down to meet her callers, Fluvanna -unfolded and shook out before her the crape veil which had been worn by -two generations of widows. Her grandmother had bought it in more -affluent circumstances, and after her death, for she had been one of the -perpetual widows of the South, it had lain packed away in camphor until -Mrs. Oakley was ready for it. Now it was Dorinda's turn, and a shiver -went through her heart as she inhaled the rusty smell of bereavement. - -"You'll have to get a new veil after the burial," Fluvanna observed, -"but I reckon you can make out with this crape until that is over. It -has turned real brown, but there won't many people notice it in church." - -Putting the proffered veil aside, Dorinda hastened downstairs, after -reminding Fluvanna that she must make coffee in case the visitors -expected something to eat. - -"If only they would leave the dignity and take away the sordidness of -death," she thought. - -At the foot of the staircase, Miss Seena Snead was waiting for her with -a black serge dress that she had borrowed from one of the neighbours. - -"What in the world have you got on, Dorinda?" she asked, while the tears -brimmed over her kind old eyes. "I declare it looks as if it was made -befo' the Flood. I no sooner heard of po' Nathan's death than I began to -study about where I could find a good black dress for you to wear to the -funeral. I wasn't a bit surprised that Nathan turned out to be such a -hero. I always knew there was a lot mo' in him than some folks -suspected. Then, while I was in the midst of trying to recollect who had -died last year, young Mrs. John Garlick drove into our yard with this -dress and a widow's bonnet in her arms. She told me she's stoutened so -she couldn't make the dress meet on her, and she'd be obliged if you'd -do her the favour to wear it. The bonnet she sent along because it's a -widow's bonnet anyway, and she can't wear it herself until she loses -John. That makes her sort of superstitious about keepin' it put away as -if she were saving it for a purpose. John bought it for her in New York -when she lost her mother. Wasn't that like a man all over again, to go -and buy his wife a bonnet with a widow's ruche when her mother died?" - -"I'm much obliged to her," Dorinda replied stiffly, taking the bonnet -out of the bandbox. - -"It'll be real becomin' to you," Miss Seena exclaimed consolingly. -Though her tears were still streaming for Nathan, her imagination had -already envisaged Dorinda as a widow in weeds. "It makes you look mo' -strikin' than colours. There ain't nothin' you can wear so conspicuous -as crape, my po' Ma used to say." - -Dorinda put on the dress and stood straight and still in the middle of -her bedroom floor while the dressmaker let down the hem and took a pleat -in the belt. "I've never seen anybody keep her figger so well as you've -done," remarked Miss Seena. "It's stayin' out of doors an' movin' about -so much, I reckon. My Ma used to say that when you get on in life, you -have to choose between keepin' yo' face or yo' figger; but it looks as -if you had managed to preserve both of 'em mighty well. You get sort of -chapped and weatherbeaten in the winter time, an' the lines show mo' -than they ought to, but that high colour keeps 'em from bein' too -marked. You're forty now, ain't you, Dorinda?" - -"Forty-two. It's hard sometimes for me to believe it." - -"Well, you're the hard kind that don't wear away soon. Look at Geneva -Ellgood, poor thing. She broke almost as quick as she grew." - -Dorinda sighed. "She needed love too much ever to find it," and she -thought, "The surest way of winning love is to look as if you didn't -need it." - -"Everybody knew that it was Jim Ellgood that made Jason marry her, and -folks about here were mighty mad with him for throwing you over. It was -that mo' than drink that ruined his practice because people didn't want -a man to doctor them who hadn't behaved honourable. He began to go -downhill right after that, and he and Geneva lived like cat and dog -befo' she drowned herself. Jason is about as bad off now as she was, -tho' men don't ever seem to get the craze that they're goin' to have a -baby. But he's got a screw loose, or he wouldn't live way back yonder in -the woods, with nobody but an old coloured woman to look after him." She -was kneeling on the floor pinning up Dorinda's skirt, with the help of -the red pincushion, shaped like a tomato, which she wore fastened to the -bosom of her dress. "It was fortunate for you that Geneva got him," she -concluded, "and that you waited and took Nathan instead. You must find a -heap of comfort in feeling that you're the widow of a hero." - -The widow of a hero! Already Nathan's spirit, disencumbered of the gross -impediment of the flesh, was an influence to be reckoned with. Alive, he -had been negligible, but once safely dead, he had acquired a tremendous -advantage. - -"I believe I'll drop if I have to stand a minute longer," Dorinda said -in a fainting voice. - -Miss Seena was immediately solicitous. "Poor child, I reckon the shock -must have unnerved you. You lie right down, and I'll have this dress -ready befo' the minister gets here." - -At last the dressmaker stopped talking and settled down to her work, and -in the afternoon, when the Ellgoods came with the minister to tell -Dorinda of the arrangements for the funeral, she received them in the -black serge dress with a bit of crape at her throat. A fire was burning -in the parlour beneath the two black basalt urns on the mantelpiece and -the speckled engraving on the wall above. While she was still shaking -hands with the Ellgoods, a stream of people, led by Minnie May and Bud, -poured into the hall. Minnie May had brought her six children with her, -and the smaller ones immediately began to play with their dolls behind -the rosewood sofa in the corner, while the eldest boy fingered the books -which ran halfway up the walls on three sides of the room. - -"Don't you think I ought to make them stop?" Minnie May asked presently. -"They'd be more at home, anyway, in the kitchen where Fluvanna is making -gingerbread for them." - -"Tell Fluvanna not to forget to bring in some blackberry wine and cake," -Dorinda whispered in reply. - -Before she had spoken to her first visitors, the parlour was crowded; -and John Abner was obliged to bring chairs from the spare room. "To -think of my having to wear a bonnet with a widow's ruche!" Dorinda found -herself thinking, while she was condoled with in husky accents by the -old minister. "If they'd go away and let me have time to think, I might -feel; but I can't feel anything as long as they're all talking to me." -Though most of the faces were familiar to her, and some of them she had -passed in the road ever since her childhood, there were several persons -whom she did not seem to remember. These, she discovered presently, were -strangers who had been on the wrecked train with Nathan. Two of them he -had rescued from the burning cars at the cost of his life. - -Bad as the roads were, only the tenant farmers who lived beyond -Whippernock River had been prevented from coming. The bridge had been -damaged by the storm, and the thawing ice had made the shallow stream -unfordable. Old Mr. Kettledrum, who had given up his practice and become -"the mail rider" for the new rural delivery had been almost swept away -when he had tried to cross at the ford. Even Willow Creek was so high -that the log bridge had been torn to pieces by the flood. Yet neither -flood nor snow had held the neighbouring farmers at home. White and -black, rich and poor, they had turned out to visit the widow of a hero -in her affliction. Even Mr. Kettledrum had sent word that, undaunted by -his narrow escape from drowning, he had driven round the circuit in -order to bring Dorinda the morning papers. - -"To think that all this should be about Nathan," Dorinda said to -herself, while she sat there with the newspaper James Ellgood had given -her in her lap. - - -"HERO ON WRECKED TRAIN GIVES HIS LIFE FOR OTHERS -DESCENDANT OF FIRST MILLER OF PEDLAR'S MILL DIES -AFTER SAVING WOMEN AND CHILDREN. -MONUMENT TO BE ERECTED IN CHURCHYARD AT PEDLAR'S -MILL." - - -After this there was a list of contributions for the monument, -beginning with one thousand dollars, which had been subscribed by -an anonymous stranger from the North. - -Yes, dreadful as it was, she couldn't get over the feeling that there -was something unreal and theatrical in the event. She might have been on -the stage at a school festival, listening to all these people declaiming -selections from Shakespeare. Nathan's heroism sounded to her as -unnatural as the way things happened in Shakespeare. She felt ashamed of -herself. Had she failed Nathan in his death because she could not -recognize him in what she thought of vaguely as his heroic part? Well, -ashamed or not, she simply could not take it in. If you could once take -it in, she said to herself stupidly, the whole of life would be -different; yet, for the moment, she was too stunned, too confused, to -credit the incredible. The tragedy appeared too magnificent to be true. - -The minister was an old man. He had known Dorinda's mother when they -were both young; he had known Nathan when he was a child; and he wheezed -now with distress when he talked of him. His face was as grey and -inflexible as a rock, Dorinda thought, though his voice reminded her of -a purling brook. Over his bulging forehead his limp white hair hung in -loose strands which curled at the ends. She had not seen him for years -outside the pulpit, and it embarrassed her that he should stand on a -level with her and wipe his eyes on the shreds of a silk handkerchief. -While he rambled on, she looked beyond him and saw all those persons, -some of whom were unknown to her, moving about the parlour, which was as -sacred to her as a tombstone. They were whispering, too, among -themselves, and she knew that they were speaking of Nathan in the -sanctimonious tone which they had consecrated to missionaries who had -died at their posts or to distinguished generals of the Confederacy. She -observed John Abner go out to help put up the horses, and glancing out -of the window, she saw Fluvanna coming from the henhouse with a bunch -of fowls in her hands. With her usual foresight, the girl, who had kept -her head better than the other negroes, was preparing supper for the -multitude. - -The old minister had finished once, but he was beginning again in a -florid oratorical style. How long would he go on, she wondered, and -would it be like this at the funeral? There was much to be said, she -conceded, for the Episcopal service which circumscribed the rhetoric of -clergymen. When at last he sat down, wiping his glasses, in the -cushioned rocking-chair close to the fire, Bob Ellgood stood up and -explained the funeral arrangements as if he wished her to understand -that they were to be worthy of Nathan. This was Wednesday, and the -public funeral, the funeral of a hero, would be held at three o'clock on -Friday afternoon. Then he handed her a list of the pallbearers, many of -them merely "honorary," Dorinda perceived, and among them there were -several names that she did not know. - -"They were on the wrecked train," Bob replied to her question, "and wish -to pay this last mark of respect." These were the men, he told her, who -had started the list of contributions. "It is our idea to build a -monument by public subscription," he concluded, "over his grave in the -churchyard. Then future generations will remember his heroism." - -"Poor Nathan," she thought, while her eyes filled with tears. "If only -he could hear what they are saying." There had never been a monument -erected by public subscription at Pedlar's Mill, and she could not help -thinking how pleased Nathan would have been if he could have taken an -active part in the plan. Well, some people had to wait until they were -dead to get the things that would have made them happy while they were -living. - -As soon as Bob Ellgood stopped speaking, a general droning began in the -room, and she grasped, after an instant of confusion, that everybody was -trying to tell her of some boyish act of generosity which was still -remembered. These recollections, beginning with a single anecdote -related in the cracked voice of the minister, gathered fulness of tone -as they multiplied, until the room resounded with a chorus of praise. -Was it possible that Nathan had done all these noble things and that she -had never heard of them? Was it possible that so many persons had seen -the greatness of his nature, and yet the community in which he lived had -continued to treat him as more or less of a clown? Over and over, she -heard the emphatic refrain, "I always thought there was a heap more in -Nathan Pedlar than people made out." - -Sitting there in the midst of the belated appreciation, it seemed to -Dorinda that the shape of an idea emerged gradually out of the fog of -words. All his life Nathan had been misunderstood. Though she was -unaware of the exact moment when the apotheosis occurred, she realized -presently that she had witnessed the transformation of a human being -into a legend. After to-day, it was impossible that she should ever -think of Nathan as unromantically as she thought of him while he was -alive. Death had not only ennobled, it had superbly exalted him. In this -chant of praise, there was no reminder of his insignificance. Could it -be that she alone had failed to recognize the beauty of his character -beneath his inappropriate surface? Had she alone misunderstood and -belittled him in her mind? Her heart swelled until it seemed to her that -she was choking. When she remembered her husband now, it was the inward, -not the outward, man that she recalled. - -"I reckon he warn't mo' than eight years old when he took that whipping -for stealing old man Haney's cherries rather than tell on Sandy Moody's -little boy Sam," Ezra Flower, the auctioneer, was reciting. "I can see -the way he stood up and took the lashing without a whimper, and the -other boys teasing him and calling him a clown on account of hid broken -nose. Yes, ma'am, I always knew thar was a heap mo' in Nathan Pedlar -than most folks made out." - -The warm room, the firelight, the humming voices, faded into a mist. -Beyond the window-panes, which flamed with a reflected glow, Dorinda saw -the white fields and against the fields there flickered a vision of the -room in which she was sitting. Out of this vision, the prayer of the -minister stole over her like some soporific influence. An inescapable -power of suggestion, as intense yet as diffused as firelight, was -reassembling her thoughts of the past. "Yes, there was more in Nathan -than anybody ever suspected," she found herself repeating. - -With one of those sudden changes that come in Virginia, the day of -Nathan's funeral brought a foretaste of spring. The snow had melted so -rapidly that the roads were flowing like brooks, and Whippernock River, -with its damaged bridge, was still impassable. But an April languor was -in the air, and the sky over the wintry fields was as soft as clouds of -blue and white hyacinths. Though a number of farmers who lived beyond -Whippernock River had been unable to come to the funeral, people had -arrived by train from the city and in every vehicle that could roll on -wheels from the near side of the railroad. The little church was crowded -to suffocation while the minister read his short text and preached his -long sermon on the beauty of self-sacrifice. When the last hymn was sung -with gasps of emotional tension, and the congregation flocked out into -the churchyard, with Nathan in his flower-banked coffin and Dorinda -hidden in her widow's weeds, a wave of grief spread like a contagious -affliction over the throng. With her head reverently bowed, Dorinda -tried to attend only to the words of the minister, to see only the open -grave at her feet, with the piles of red clay surrounding the oblong -hole. Yet her senses, according to their deplorable habit in a crisis, -became extraordinarily alive, and every trivial detail of the scene -glittered within her mind. She saw the blanched and harrowed face of the -minister, who prayed with closed eyes and violent gestures as if he were -wrestling with God; she saw the nodding black plumes of Miss Texanna -Snead, and remembered that Nathan had once called her "a plumed hearse." -She saw the gaping mouths of the children, whom their mothers, in the -excitement of the occasion, had neglected to wash; she saw even the -predatory brood of chickens which had invaded the graveyard and was -scratching upon the graves. The ground at her feet was heaped with -flowers, and among the floral crosses and wreaths and pillows, she -observed the design of a railway engine made of red and white -carnations, and tried to recall the names on the card. Long after she -had forgotten every word of the prayer, she could still see that -preposterous floral engine and smell the strong scent of fading -carnations. - -Standing there beside the open grave, recollections blew in and out of -her mind like chaff in the wind. Her first sermon. The old minister -praying with eyes so tightly shut that they looked like slits made by a -penknife. The way her feet could not reach the floor. Peppermints in a -paper bag to keep her quiet. Her mother smelling of soap and camphor. -Missionaries in the front pew. The saving of black babies. The way she -had yawned and stretched. Nathan was there then, a big boy who sang, -with a voice as shrill as a grasshopper, in the choir. Rose Emily too. -How pretty she was. Then Rose Emily as she lay dying with the happy -light in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks. Twenty-two years ago! -Well, she had done her best by Rose Emily's children. - -Afterwards, when she drove home with John Abner, she found that, though -they had buried the actual Nathan in the churchyard, the legendary -Nathan of prayer and sermon still accompanied them. - -"I wish Father could have heard what they said of him," John Abner -remarked, with detached reverence, as he might have spoken of one of the -public characters in the Bible. "It would please him to know what they -thought of him after he was gone." - -"Perhaps he does know," Dorinda responded. - -For a few moments they talked of this; of the way death so often makes -you understand people better than life; of the sermon and the flowers, -and the general mourning. - -"Did you see Jacob Moody there?" asked John Abner presently. "He used to -work for Father before we moved to Old Farm, and Jacob told me he swam -Whippernock River to come to the funeral." - -Dorinda wiped her eyes. "Things like that would have touched Nathan. I -never saw any one get on better with the coloured people. It was because -he was so just, I suppose." - -"Those were Jacob's very words. 'Mr. Nathan was the justest white man I -ever saw,' he said. Put back that heavy veil, Dorinda. It is enough to -smother you. There now. That's better. Your face looks like the moon -when it comes out of a cloud." - -Dorinda smiled. "Even that old German who has just moved into the Haney -place was there. I wonder what he thinks now of Germany? We shan't hear -anything about the war after this. I used to tell your father he -couldn't have felt more strongly if it had been fought at Old Farm." - -"I was beginning to get interested myself," John Abner returned. "I'll -try to follow it on the map just as he did in the evenings. Well, it -will be over before next winter, I reckon." - -"And all that waste so unnecessary!" Dorinda exclaimed. - -They were turning in at the gate by the bridge. Straight ahead, she saw -the house, with the smoke flying like banners from the chimneys. On the -hill beyond, the big pine was dark against the blue and white of the -sky. - - - - -V - - -Although Dorinda would have been astonished had she discovered it, the -years after Nathan's death were the richest and happiest of her life. -They were years of relentless endeavour, for a world war was fought and -won with the help of the farmers; but they were years which rushed over -her like weathered leaves in a storm. To the end, the war came no nearer -to her than a battle in history. There was none of the flame-like -vividness that suffused her mother's memories of the starving years and -the burning houses of the Confederacy. Only when she saw victory in -terms of crops, not battles, could she feel that she was part of it. - -In the beginning the Germans had seemed less a mortal enemy than an evil -spirit at large, and she had fought them as her great-grandfather might -have fought a heresy or a pestilence. That men should destroy one -another appeared to her less incredible than that they should -deliberately destroy the resources which made life endurable. That they -should destroy in a day, in an hour, the materials which she was -sacrificing her youth to provide! At night, lying in bed with limbs that -ached so she could not sleep, and a mind that was a blank from -exhaustion, she would hear the rotation of crops drumming deliriously in -her thoughts. Potatoes. Corn. Wheat. Cow-peas. Clover. Alfalfa. And back -again. Alfalfa. Cowpeas. Potatoes. Corn. Wheat. Clover. That was all the -seasons meant to her, one after one. Her youth was going, she knew; but -youth had brought so little that age could take away, why should she -regret it? The hair on her temples had turned from grey to white; her -skin, beneath its warm flush, was creased with lines and roughened from -exposure; but her eyes were still bright and clear, though the caged -look had gone out of them. - -What she felt most, as the struggle went on, was the failure of -elasticity. The tyranny of detail was more exacting, and she rebounded -less quickly from disappointment. Notwithstanding what Doctor Faraday -had called her "superb constitution," her health began to cause her -uneasiness. "The war has done this," she thought, "and if it has cost me -my youth, imagine what it has cost the men who are fighting." It was a -necessary folly, she supposed, but it was a folly against which she -rebelled. Had humanity been trying unwisely to hurry evolution, and had -the crust of civilization proved too thin to restrain the outbreak of -volcanic impulses? Her two years with Doctor Faraday had accustomed her -to the biological interpretation of history. "And the worst thing about -the war," she concluded grimly, "is not the fighting. It is not even the -murder and plunder of the weaker. The worst thing about it is the number -of people, both men and women, who enjoy it, who embark upon it as upon -a colossal adventure." - -If John Abner had gone to France, the war would have come closer to her; -but John Abner was tied by his clubfoot to the farm. The crowning -humiliation of his life came, she knew, when he watched the other boys -from Pedlar's Mill start off for the training camp. Her pity for him was -stronger than her relief that she could keep him, and she wished with -all her heart that he could have gone. "You will be more useful on the -farm," she said consolingly, as they turned away; but he only shook his -head and stared mutely after the receding train. What John Abner -desired, she saw, was not usefulness but glory. - -Of the boys they saw go, a few were killed; but they were boys whom she -knew only by sight. Two of Josiah's sons went, and one died of influenza -after he had been decorated three times; but this boy had lived away so -long that she did not feel close to him. Bob Ellgood's second son -returned a nervous wreck from shell shock, and whenever Dorinda saw him -on the porch at Green Acres, trying to make baskets of straw, she would -feel that her heart was melting in pity. But even then the war did not -actually touch her. Her nearest approach to the fighting was when -Fluvanna's son Jubal died in a French hospital, and she was obliged to -read the later aloud because Fluvanna was too distressed to spell out -the words. Dorinda had known Jubal from his babyhood. He had grows up on -the farm, and she had taught him to read. The day the news came the two -women worked until they were ready to drop from exhaustion. Work had -always been Dorinda's salvation. It was saving her now from the war as -it had once saved her from the memory of Jason. - -With the return of -peace, she had hoped that the daily life on the farm would slip back -into orderly grooves; but before the end of the first year she -discovered that the demoralization of peace was more difficult to combat -than the madness of war. There was no longer an ecstatic patriotism to -inspire one to fabulous exploits. The world that had been organized for -destruction appeared to her to become as completely disorganized for -folly. Even at Pedlar's Mill there were ripples of the general -disintegration. What was left now, she demanded moodily, of that -hysterical war rapture, except an aversion from work and the high cost -of everything? The excessive wages paid for unskilled labour were -ruinous to the farmer; for the field hands who had earned six dollars a -day from the Government were not satisfied to drive a plough for the -small sum that had enabled her to reclaim the abandoned meadows of Five -Oaks. One by one, she watched the fields of the tenant farmers drop back -into broomsedge and sassafras. She was using two tractor-ploughs on the -farm; but the roads were almost impassable again because none of the -negroes could be persuaded to work on them. Even when she employed men -to repair the strip of corduroy road between the bridge and the fork, it -was impossible to keep the bad places firm enough for any car heavier -than a Ford to travel over them. Yet these years, which she had believed -would mean the end of her prosperity, passed over her also and were -gone. - -After all, the men farmers had suffered more. James Ellgood allowed his -outlying fields to run to waste again because he could not find -labourers to till them. Old John Appleseed gave up his market garden -after he had lost all his vegetables one spring when he was ill and -there was nobody to gather them. It was in such a difficulty that -Dorinda was aided by a gift she had never depended on in the past, and -this was her faculty for "getting on," as she would have called it, with -the negroes. Unlike James Ellgood, who was inclined to truculence, she -had preserved her mother's friendly relations with the established -coloured families at Pedlar's Mill. When the scarcity of labour came, -the clan of Moodys provided the field workers that she required. The -Moodys, the Plumtrees, and the Greens, were scattered on thrifty little -farms from the settlement of Plumtree to the land beyond Whippernock -River; yet, one and all, they were attached by ties of kindred to the -descendants of Aunt Mehitable. In a winter of frozen roads and a -disastrous epidemic of influenza, the relatives of Aunt Mehitable, who -had died long ago, sent pleading messages to Dorinda, and she gave -generously of the peach brandy and blackberry cordial she had inherited -from her mother. There was scarcely a cabin that the pestilence did not -enter, and wherever it passed, Dorinda followed on Snowbird, her big -white horse with the flowing mane and the plaited tail which had never -been docked. That was a ghastly winter. From November to March the -landscape wore the spectral and distraught aspect of one of the -engravings after Doré in her mother's Bible. Doctor Stout was still in -France, and there was no physician but Jason Greylock at Pedlar's Mill. -Dorinda met him sometimes going or returning on horseback from a -desperate case; but he appeared either not to recognize her or to have -forgotten her name. People said that he was still a good doctor when he -had his senses about him. The pity was that he was often too drunk to -know what he was doing. He looked an old man, for his skin was drawn and -wrinkled, the pouches under his eyes were inflamed with purple, and -there were clusters of congested veins in his cheeks. - -One afternoon, when the epidemic was at its worst, she rode up to the -door of one of the humbler cabins and met him coming away. - -"You ought not to go in there," he said shortly, for he was sober at -last. "Two children have just died of pneumonia, and the others are ill. -They are the worst cases I've seen." - -Mounted on her white horse, like some mature Joan of Arc, she glanced -down on him. Her face was expressionless but for its usual look of -dauntless fortitude. She was thinking, "At last I shall have to speak to -him, and it makes no difference to me whether I speak to him or not." It -was a quarter of a century since she had driven home with him that -February afternoon. A quarter of a century, and she had not forgotten! -Well, when you have only the solitude to distract you, your memory is -obliged to be long! - -"I am not afraid," she replied in level tones, after she had dismounted -and tethered Snowbird to the branch of a tree. "Are you?" - -While he could wrap himself in his professional manner, it occurred to -her that he was not without dignity. Even though there were only the -rags of it left, he was less at her mercy than he would have been in the -character of a remembered lover. For an instant it seemed to her that he -waited for her question to sink in. Then he answered with the sound of a -laugh that had been bitten back. - -"I? No. What have I to fear?" - -Her smile was as sharp as a blade. "There is always something, isn't -there, even if it is only the memory of fear?" - -"You think, then, that I was always a coward?" Yes, he was sober enough -now, restrained by those shreds of professional responsibility which was -the only responsibility he had ever acknowledged. - -She laughed. "I stopped thinking of you twenty-five years ago." - -"I know." He looked as if he were impressed by her words. "You took the -best man, after all. There was more in Nathan than anybody realized." - -"Every one says that now." - -"Well, it's true even if every one says it. You married a good man." - -It was her hour of triumph; and though it was her hour of triumph, she -knew that, like everything else in her life, it had come too late. A -quarter of a century outlasts expectancy. The old pang was dead now, and -with it the old bitterness. It made no difference any longer. Nothing -that he could say or do would make any difference. She had outlived both -love and hatred. She had outlived every emotion toward him except -disgust. That last scene at Five Oaks returned to her, and her lips -twisted with aversion. "Yes, I married a hero," she rejoined, and she -added to herself, "If only Nathan could hear me!" - -"You made your life in spite of me. I'm glad of that." - -She laughed again. How little men knew of women! Even Nathan, who had -loved her, had never seen her as she was. "Yes, I made my life in spite -of you." - -"It was too much, I suppose, to expect you to understand how I failed. I -never ran after women. That wasn't my weakness. I never wanted to do any -of the things I did. I never wanted to throw you over. I never wanted to -marry Geneva. I never wanted to ruin either of your lives. I never -wanted to stay in this God-forsaken solitude. I never wanted to let -drink get a hold on me. I did not want to do a single one of these -things; but I did them, every one. And you will never understand how -that could be." - -She shook her head. "It doesn't matter now. It isn't worth thinking -about." - -"All the same I wish you could understand that I was not the kind of man -to do the things that I did. I was a different sort of fellow entirely. -But what I was never seemed strong enough to withstand the pull of what -I was not. Of course, you'll never see that. You'll just go on thinking -I was born rotten inside. Perhaps you're right. I don't know. I can't -work it out." - -She looked through him and beyond him to the brown solitude of the -winter fields. The sunken roads were swimming in melted snow; the bushes -were like soaked rags; the trees were dripping with a fluid moisture -which was heavier than rain. From the sodden ground a vapour steamed up -and floated like a miasma on the motionless air. - -"Men like you ought to have been sent to the war," she said. "They -wouldn't take me. I was too old, and besides I've got the drink habit." - -"And you blame somebody else for that, I suppose?" - -"No, I don't blame anybody. I don't blame anybody for anything. Least of -all myself. It was the way things turned out. Strange as it may seem to -you, I always did the best that I could. If Father had died sooner, it -might have been different. But everything happened too late. The -broomsedge grew over me before I could get away." - -Exultation flared up and then died down to ashes. "You ruined Five Oaks, -and I saved it," she said. - -"Yes, you have done well with the farm." Twenty-five years of toil and -self-denial, and in the end only: "You have done well with the farm!" - -"That shows what you can do even with poor land when you put your heart -into it," he added. - -"Not the heart, but the head," she retorted sharply, as she went past -him into the cabin. - - - - -VI - - -When the spring came and the epidemic was over, she had won the loyal -friendship of the poorer tenant farmers and the negro landowners; but -her energy and her resilience were less than they had ever been in her -life. - -Machinery could not work alone, and even tractor-ploughs were obliged to -be guided. She had installed an electric plant, and whenever it was -possible, she had replaced hand labour by electricity. In the beginning -she had dreaded the cost, but it was not long before she realized that -the mysterious agency had been her safest investment. The separator in -the dairy was run by electricity. With the touch of a button the skimmed -milk was carried by pipes to the calf-yard or the hog-pen. Pumping, -washing, churning, cooling the air in summer and warming it in winter, -all these back-breaking tasks were entrusted to the invisible power -which possessed the energy of human labour without the nerves that too -often impeded it, and made it so uncertain a force. - -"What would Pa say if he could see so many cows milked by machinery?" -she asked John Abner, after the first experiment with electricity in the -cow-barn. - -"Do you think it will help much in milking?" - -"In the end it may. The young cows don't mind it, but you'll never get -the old ones to put up with it." - -"Then until the young ones have turned into the old ones, we'll have to -take whatever milkers we can find. Cows must be milked twice a day, and -no darkey wants to work more than three times a week." - -"They're still living on their war wages. If I ran this farm the way men -manage the Government, we'd be over head and ears in debt. Perhaps," she -suggested hopefully, "when the negroes have spent all they've saved up, -they'll begin to feel like working." - -John Abner grinned. "Perhaps. But it takes a long time to starve a -darkey." - -"Well, I'll see what Fluvanna can do about it," Dorinda retorted. She -did not smile at his jest because the problem, she felt, was a serious -one. The negro, who was by temperament a happiness hunter, could pursue -the small game of amusement, she was aware, with an unflagging pace. -Without labourers, the farms she had reclaimed with incalculable effort -would sink again into waste land. "Yes, I'll see what Fluvanna can do," -she repeated. - -In the end, it was Fluvanna who, with the assistance of the patriarchs -among the Moodys, the Greens, and the Plumtrees, drove the inveterate -pleasure-seekers back to the plough. Looking at the coloured woman, -generous, brisk, smiling, with her plump brown cheeks and her bright -slanting eyes, Dorinda would ask herself how she could have managed the -farm without Fluvanna. "Heaven knows what I should have done if I had -not had a pleasant disposition about me," she said. In return for -Fluvanna's sunny sympathy and her cheerful alacrity, which never -faltered, Dorinda had discreetly overlooked an occasional slackening of -industry. - -Though the years were hard ones, she was more contented than she had -ever been. The restless expectancy had ceased, and with it the -indefinite longing which had awakened with the scent of spring rains on -the grass, or the sound of the autumn wind in the broomsedge. Even the -vision of something different in the future, that illusion of -approaching happiness which she had believed as indestructible as hope -itself, had dissolved as the glimmer of swamp fires dissolves in the -twilight. She knew now that life would never be different. Experience, -like love, would always be inadequate to the living soul. What the -imperfect actuality was to-day, it would be to-morrow and the day after; -but there was rest now, not disquietude, in the knowledge. The strain -and the hard work of the war had tired her nerves, and she looked -forward to the ample leisure of the time when she could expect nothing. -Since Nathan's death she had lost the feeling that life had cheated her. -It was true that she had missed love; but at the first stir of regret -she would shake her head and remind herself that "you couldn't have -everything," and that, after all, it was something to have married a -hero. Nathan's victorious death had filled the aching void in her heart. -Where the human being had failed her, the heroic legend had satisfied. - -As she grew older, it seemed to her that men as husbands and lovers were -scarcely less inadequate than love. Only men as heroes, dedicated to the -service of an ideal, were worthy, she felt, of the injudicious -sentiments women lavished upon them. At twenty, seeking happiness, she -had been more unhappy, she told herself, than other women; but at fifty, -she knew that she was far happier. The difference was that at twenty her -happiness had depended upon love, and at fifty it depended upon nothing -but herself and the land. To the land, she had given her mind and heart -with the abandonment that she had found disastrous in any human -relation. "I may have missed something, but I've gained more," she -thought, "and what I've gained nobody can take away from me." - -Without John Abner, who was much to her, though not so much as she had -once believed he would be, and the indispensable memory of Nathan to -fall back upon, she sometimes wondered what her middle years would have -brought to her. John Abner, it is true, was subject to moods, and -recently he had been warped by a disappointment in love; but even if he -was not always easy to live with, she knew that, in his eccentric -fashion, he was attached to her. With Nathan, it was different. In the -years that had passed since his death, he had provided her with the -single verity which is essential to the happiness of a woman no longer -young, and that is a romantic background for her life. The power of -mental suggestion, which is stronger than all other influences in the -world of emotion, had cultivated around her this picturesque myth of -Nathan. No one spoke to her now of his ugliness, his crudeness, his -reputation as a laughing-stock; but whenever she went to church, she -beheld the imposing monument which public sentiment had placed over his -grave. Every soldier who went from Pedlar's Mill was reminded by -fire-breathing orators that the heroes of war must be worthy of the hero -of peace. Every appeal from the Red Cross in the county bore his name as -an ornament. As time went on this legend, which had sprung from simple -goodness, gathered a patina of tradition as a tombstone gathers moss. -Yes, it was something, Dorinda assured her rebellious heart, to have -been married to a hero. - -In these years she might have married again; but a distaste for physical -love, more than the rigid necessity of her lot, kept her a widow. When, -a year after his wife's death, Bob Ellgood began, according to the -custom of the country, to motor over to Old Farm on Sunday, she was at -first flattered, then disturbed, and at last frankly provoked. Walking -through the pasture with him one afternoon in April, she reflected, not -without chagrin, that this also was one of the blessings that had come -at the wrong time. "Thirty years ago, before I knew Jason, I could have -loved him," she thought; and she remembered the Sunday mornings in -church when she had gazed longingly at his profile and had asked -herself, "Can he be the right one, after all?" She had wanted him then -with some sudden cobweb of fancy, which had been spun by an insatiable -hunger for life. If he had turned to her at that moment, she would have -loved him instead of Jason, and the future, which was now the past, -would have been different. But he had not wanted her then; he had first -to make a disappointing marriage, and by the time he had discovered his -mistake, it was too late to begin over again. Well, that was the way -things happened in life! - -"Why won't you marry me, Dorinda?" he asked, wheeling abruptly round -from the pasture bars. - -Startled, she cast about for a reason which might appear plausible to -his masculine vanity. Was there a reason? Had she any reason behind her -resolve, or was aversion as physical a process as first love? Once he -had been handsome, a young blond giant, and now he was coarsened and -beefy, with a neck like a bull's and a rapidly spreading girth. There -was a purple flush in his face and puckers of flesh between his collar -and his slightly receding chin. This, also, was the way things happened, -she knew. Yet, after a moment's compassionate regard, she discerned that -he wore his unalluring age as easily as he had once worn his engaging -youth. He appeared unaware even that it might be a disadvantage in -courtship. - -"Suppose I looked like that?" she said to herself, and then, "Perhaps -women are more fastidious than they used to be, but men have not yet -found it out. Or is it simply because I am independent and don't have to -marry for support that I can pick and refuse?" - -"Have you decided why you won't marry me?" he inquired presently. - -He was smiling at her, and it seemed to her--or was it only her -imagination?--that a gleam, like the star in the eyes of her prize bull, -flickered and went out in his glance. His face was so close to her that -for an instant she believed he was going to kiss her. Not that look! -something cried in her heart. Oh, never that look again! - -"I can't tell," she answered, walking on again. "There isn't any reason. -I've finished with all that." - -He was undismayed. "I'll keep on. I'm not in a hurry." Actually at -fifty-five, he was not in a hurry. - -"It isn't any use," she replied as firmly as she could. "It isn't the -least use in the world." - -"Well, I'll keep on anyway." - -In the end, though she had spoken with decision, she had failed to -convince him. That had been two years ago, and he still came in his big -car every Sunday afternoon. But as he had warned her, he was not in a -hurry, and his courtship was as deliberate as his general habit of body. - -Although it seemed to her that she had grown wiser with the years, she -had never entirely abandoned her futile effort to find a meaning in -life. Hours had come and gone when she had felt that there was no -permanent design beneath the fragile tissue of experience; but the moral -fibre that had stiffened the necks of martyrs lay deeply embedded in her -character if not in her opinions. She was saved from the aridness of -infidelity by that robust common sense which had preserved her from the -sloppiness of indiscriminate belief. After all, it was not religion; it -was not philosophy; it was nothing outside her own being that had -delivered her from evil. The vein of iron which had supported her -through adversity was merely the instinct older than herself, stronger -than circumstances, deeper than the shifting surface of emotion; the -instinct that had said, "I will not be broken." Though the words of the -covenant had altered, the ancient mettle still infused its spirit. - -There were winter nights, in front of her sinking fire, when she would -live over the romantic folly and the thwarted aims of her youth. Then, -through what appeared to be an endless vista, she would survey the -irreconcilable difference between character and conduct. In her own life -she could trace no logical connection between being and behaviour, -between the thing that she was in herself and the things she had done. -She thought of herself as a good woman (there were few better ones, she -would have said honestly) yet in her girlhood she had been betrayed by -love and saved by the simplest accident from murder. Surely these were -both flagrant transgressions according to every code of morality! They -were acts, she knew, which she would have condemned in another; but in -her memory they appeared as inevitable as the rest of her conduct, and -she could not unravel them from the frayed warp-and-woof of the past. And -she saw now that the strong impulses which had once wrecked her -happiness were the forces that had enabled her to rebuild her life out -of the ruins. The reckless courage that had started her on the dubious -enterprise of her life had hardened at last into the fortitude with -which she had triumphed over the unprofitable end Of her adventure. Good -and bad, right and wrong, they were all tangled together. "How can I -tell," she could ask, "what I should have done if I had not been -myself?" - - - - -VII - - -Riding slowly down the road from Five Oaks to Gooseneck Creek, Dorinda -watched the few sheep browsing among the lengthening shadows of the -October afternoon. Beyond them the life-everlasting broke in silver -waves against the dim blue horizon. Over the whole landscape, with its -flat meadows, its low rounded hill in the east, its crawling -rust-coloured roads, hung a faint, hazy drift, as inaudible as the dying -quiver of insects. Passing at a walk on her white horse against the rich -autumn sunset, she reached the log bridge at the creek and kept on -toward the fork of the road. She had taken the longer way home in order -that she might inspect the new gate which William Fairlamb had finished. -Round her, as evanescent as the last flare of day, there was this -quivering haze, which was half dreamlike and half the tremor of -perishing things. Nature drifting into rest; flowers drifting into dust; -grasshoppers drifting into death; faint sunshine drifting into darkness. -And in her own mind shadowy images or impressions drifting into -thoughts. - -It was five years now since the war had ended, and in those years she -had recovered both her inward confidence and her outward prosperity. The -misfortunes that had threatened the two farms had passed over her like -wild geese. Even the labour question had been lessened, if not solved, -by the application of electricity and gasoline. She had made a name that -was not unknown among the farmers of the state; she had reclaimed two -unproductive farms from the clutch of broomsedge and sassafras. In -shallow soil, where her father had ploughed only six inches deep, she -was now raising rich and abundant crops. Her dairy, she knew, was as -well managed, her butter as good, as any that could be found in the -country. The products of her dairy, with the name Old Farm stamped under -the device of the harp-shaped pine, were bringing the highest prices in -the market. She could smile now, with her butter selling in the -Washington dairy at a dollar a pound, over the timidity with which she -had, modestly asked thirty cents in the beginning. By that subtle -combination of prudence and imprudence which she called character, she -had turned disappointment into contentment and failure into success. - -Riding there in the silver gleams which flashed up from the -life-everlasting, she appeared, after the hard years, to have ripened -into the last mellowness of maturity. Though her figure in the -shirtwaist and knickerbockers of brown corduroy was no longer youthful, -it was still shapely. The texture of her skin was rough and hard like -the rind of winter fruit, but the dark red had not faded, and her eyes -beneath the whitened hair were still as blue as a jay bird's wing. -Though she did not look young for her fifty years, she looked as if the -years had been victorious ones. - -As she opened the new gate, and passing through, turned to close it -behind her, she heard the sound of approaching wheels, and saw the -piebald horse and peculiar gig of Mr. Kettledrum ascending from the dip -in the road. When he reached her they stopped to speak, after the manner -of the country, and the old "mail rider," who was just returning on his -circuit of twenty-six miles, described, with sprightliness, the -condition of the roads over which he had travelled. - -"Three big trees blew down on the Whippernock road the other night," he -said, "and I reckon they'll lie thar until they rot if the farmers down -that way don't cut them up for logs to burn. The Government sent an -inspector down last week and he rode over my circuit along with me." A -note of pride crept into his quavering voice. "He told me he'd never -seen any worse roads in the whole course of his recollection. No, ma'am, -not in the whole course of his recollection." - -"I hope he'll do something about them. After all, the Government is -responsible for the rural delivery." - -Mr. Kettledrum shook his head. "I ain't lookin' for nothin' to be done, -at least not in my time. It don't look as if the Government can afford -to inspect and improve too, particularly when they're inspectin' the -roads where mostly Democrats travel. But it was a real comfort to know -he thought it was the worst mail road he'd ever laid eyes on in the -whole course of his recollection." - -"I've been trying to get some of the negroes to mend this bad place -before winter. The only way is for the farmers to keep their own roads -in repair. The state started to improve the road between Pedlar's Mill -and Turkey Station, and all it did was to cut down every last one of the -trees. There isn't a patch of shade left there." - -"That's true. I know it, ma'am," assented Mr. Kettledrum, who liked to -talk of the road, as a man likes to talk of an affliction. "Don't I -travel that road between ten and two o'clock on hot August days?" Then -his face saddened to the look of stoical resignation with which men -survey the misfortunes of others. "When I come along thar this mornin' -they was bringin' Jason Greylock away from his house in the woods, and I -stopped for a word with him. He was too weak to speak out loud, but he -made a sign to say that he knew me. If thar ever was a wasted life, I -reckon it was Jason's, though he started out with such promise. Bad -blood, bad blood, and nothin' to counteract the taint of it." - -"Where were they taking him?" Dorinda inquired indifferently; and -turning, she glanced over the autumn fields to the red chimneys of Five -Oaks. The house was occupied now by Martin Flower, the manager, and -smoke was rising in a slender column from the roof. Mr. Kettledrum -cleared his throat. "I thought perhaps they'd sent word to you. Mr. -Wigfall told me they was comin' over to ask if you could make a place -for Jason at Five Oaks. They seemed to think you owed him a lodgin' on -the farm considerin' you bought it so cheap and made so much money out -of it." - -A flush of anger stained Dorinda's forehead and her eyes burned. "I owe -him nothing," she answered. "The place was sold at public auction after -he had let it run to seed, and my husband bought it fairly for what he -bid. If I did well, it is because I toiled like a field-hand to restore -what the Greylocks had ruined." She broke off with a gasp, as if she had -been running away from herself. The old "mail rider," she saw after a -moment, stared at her in surprise. - -"Yas'm, I'm sorry I spoke, ma'am," he replied mildly. "You've -earned the right to whatever you have, that thar ain't no disputin'. -I was just thinkin' as I come along what a pleasant surprise -it would be to your Pa if he could come back an' see all those -barns and dairy-houses, to say nothin' of that fine windmill an' -electric plant." - -Dorinda sighed. "Poor Pa. My only regret is that he couldn't share in -the prosperity. He worked harder than I did, but he never saw any -results. It has taken me thirty years." Yes, she was fifty now, and it -had taken her thirty years. - -"You've kept the old house just as it was in his day. Wall, I favour a -shingled roof, myself, even if it does burn quicker when it ketches -fire. But thar's something unfeeling to me about one of these here slate -roofs. They ain't friendly to swallows, an' I like to see swallows -flyin' over my head at sunset." - -"Yes, a slate roof is almost as ugly as a tin one." She regarded him -steadily for a minute while she bent over to stroke Snowbird's neck. The -light struck her face obliquely through the fiery branch of a black-gum -tree, and if Mr. Kettledrum had been gifted with imagination, he would -have seen the look of something winged yet caged flutter into her blue -eyes. - -"What is the matter with Doctor Greylock?" she asked. - -In Mr. Kettledrum, who was wafted off on waves of agreeable -retrospection, the sudden question produced mental confusion. He was -past the sportive period when one can think without effort of two things -at the same time. "Eh, ma'am?" he rejoined, cupping one gnarled hand -over his ear. - -"I asked you what was the matter with Doctor Greylock?" - -"Oh, Doctor Greylock! Thar's no disputin', ma'am, that you owe him -nothin' in the matter of Five Oaks." - -"I haven't seen him for five years," she said with deliberate slowness. -"I thought he was still living in that house by Whippernock River." - -"So he was till this morning; that's what they told me. But it seems -they've heard nothing of him since Aunt Mehaley Plumtree stopped doin' -for him six months ago because he told her he didn't have the money to -pay her wages. He'd put everything he had, which was mighty little, I -reckon, in some wild-cat scheme of oil wells in Mexico, and they'd -either burst or leaked, if they ever was thar in the beginnin', which I -doubt. Everybody knows he never paid his taxes, but that thar little old -place in the backwoods wasn't worth a cent, so nobody troubled about -tryin' to collect 'em. Anyhow, he had to do for himself ever since Aunt -Mehaley left him, an' he's been gittin' sicker an' sicker with -consumption all the time. When Ike Pryde was over that way squirrel -huntin' yesterday, he stopped in thar an' found Jason out of his head, -without a bite to eat in the house. The whole place, henhouse and all, -Ike said, was as bare as the pa'm of his hand. Wall, he ran home an' got -his wife to come over, and she did the best she could till they could -lay hands on the sheriff. Jason had just kept alive on whiskey and some -persimmons he'd managed to pick up from the ground. He must have been -that way for weeks." - -The colour had ebbed from Dorinda's cheeks and she looked as if she had -withered. There was no distress in her mind, only a cloud of horror -through which she could not see clearly. She lifted her hand and drew it -across her eyes, brushing away the mist that obscured them. There was -nothing there. Nothing but the drooping shadows over the road, the -shocked corn against the sunset, the blur of scarlet and gold and -wine-colour in the woods. There was no horror in these things; yet while -she looked at them they became alive and struck out at her like a -serpent. - -"I have no sympathy to waste on him," she said harshly, and then, "Won't -James Ellgood take care of him?" - -Mr. Kettledrum shook his head, vaguely apologetic. "Not James. He hates -him like poison. Maybe thar's something in the notion that Jason drove -his wife crazy. I ain't takin' sides. But like most soft-hearted men -James is like a rock when he gets set against a thing. Thar wa'n't no -place for Jason to go but the poorhouse. The old women thar can look -after him when he needs it." - -"Well, you can't blame James Ellgood," Dorinda replied. "As far as I can -see nobody owes Jason Greylock anything but trouble." - -She was determined not to make excuses for him simply because he was -dying. Everybody died sooner or later, and the vein of posthumous -sentiment was not, she told herself sharply now, her affliction. Nothing -was altered in the past because Jason had drunk himself into the -poorhouse or the grave. Nothing was altered, she repeated, and yet she -could not see the past any longer because of the present. Neither love -nor hate but the poorhouse was the reality. - -"It is a hard thing to have to die in the poorhouse," she said. - -"So 'tis, ma'am," assented Mr. Kettledrum, who had stinted himself all -his life in the hope of attaining an honourable old age. "But he's -light-headed most of the time and don't know it. Anyhow," he continued -astutely, "it ain't so hard on him as it would be on a man who had lived -more respectable. He wasted mo' on drink, I reckon, than it would cost -to bury him decently." - -"That's the dreadful part of it. It would be easier to help a man you -didn't despise." She rode on a few paces and then turned back to the -side of the gig. "If you see Mr. Wigfall at the station, tell him I'll -give him what he needs for Doctor Greylock, but I cannot have him at -Five Oaks." - -"I'll tell him," Mr. Kettledrum rejoined, and he added impulsively for -one of his unhurried observations, "You carry yo' years well, if you -don't mind my remarkin' on it." - -She smiled. "That's because I never think of them. Most women want their -youth back again; but I wouldn't have mine at any price. The worst years -of my life are behind me, and my best ones ahead." - -"You look it," the old man agreed, and then, without reason, he sighed. -"Ah, I recollect you thirty years ago, when they used to say you had a -face like a May mornin'. Not that you ain't a fine figure of a woman -now; but as we old men get on in years, our thoughts turn backward and -we like to dwell on young things. Thirty years ago you looked as if -sugar wouldn't melt in yo' mouth." - -He drove on regretfully, while Dorinda, on Snowbird, trotted homeward. -The light on the shocked corn was so faint that it waned to a shadow -while she looked at it. A flock of wild geese curved like blown smoke in -the afterglow. Immersed in this twilight as in the sadness of memory, -she gazed at the autumn scene, with the small gold leaves on the locust -trees, the windmill beyond the house, and the flickering of firelight in -the west wing. A prosperous farm to-day, a casual observer would have -remarked; but to Dorinda, who never forgot, the whole place wore the -look of wistful brooding which she remembered whenever she thought of -her father. - -Her exultation over Jason's ruinous end had diminished now into an -impersonal pity. She had longed to punish him for his treachery; she had -hated him for years, until she had discovered that hatred is energy -wasted; but in all her past dreams of retribution, she had never once -thought of the poorhouse. Even as a question of justice, it seemed to -her that the poorhouse was excessive. That terror of indigence which is -inherent in self-respecting poverty was deeply bred in her nature, and -she knew that her humbler neighbours were haunted by fear of charity as -one is haunted by fear of smallpox in a pestilence. Yes, whatever he -deserved, the poorhouse was too much. Though the horror of his fate did -not lessen the wrong he had done, by some curious alchemy of imagination -it reduced the sum of human passions to insignificance. What did -anything invisible matter at the gate of the poorhouse? - -Though her first impulse, derived from Presbyterian theology, was to -regard his downfall as a belated example of Divine vengeance, her -invincible common sense reminded her that Divine vengeance is seldom so -logical in its judgments. No, he had not ended in the poorhouse because -he had betrayed her. On the contrary, she saw that he had betrayed her -because of that intrinsic weakness in his nature which would have -brought him to disaster even if he had walked in the path of exemplary -virtue. "His betrayal of me was merely an incident," she thought. "Drink -was an incident. If he had been stronger, he might have done all these -things and yet have escaped punishment." For it was not sin that was -punished in this world or the next; it was failure. Good failure or bad -failure, it made no difference, for nature abhorred both. "Poor Jason," -she said to herself, with contemptuous pity. "He was neither good enough -nor bad enough, that was the trouble." - - - - -VIII - - -As she stepped on the porch, the door opened and John Abner came out, -accompanied by Amos Wigfall and one of the tenant farmers, Samuel Larch, -who lived on the far side of Pedlar's Mill. John Abner looked morose, -but this had become his habitual expression since he had been crossed in -love, and she was less disturbed by it than she was by the anxious -suavity on the face of the sheriff. - -"I was admirin' yo' improvements," Mr. Wigfall remarked. "Thar's been a -heap of changes since the old days when yo' Pa an' Ma lived here." - -She met his wandering glance and held it firmly. "I saw Mr. Kettledrum -and he gave me your message." - -The sheriff's flabby face stiffened. "My message, ma'am?" - -"About Doctor Greylock. I cannot have him at Five Oaks. He has no claim -on me." Hesitating an instant, she repeated slowly, weighing each -separate syllable, "He has no claim on me, but I will pay you whatever -you need to keep him out of the poorhouse." - -Mr. Wigfall uttered an obsequious noise which might have been either a -bray or a cough. "I don't reckon thar's a mo' charitable-minded lady in -the county, ma'am. It ain't often that you refuse to help an' when you -do, you're likely to have a good reason." - -"Well, I'm ready to help Doctor Greylock," Dorinda rejoined impatiently, -"but there's no sense in the notion that I owe him something because he -ruined Five Oaks and I saved it." - -"Naw'm, thar cert'n'y ain't no sense in that," Mr. Wigfall conceded with -suspicious alacrity. - -"He thinks we might let him live in one of the unused wings," John Abner -explained. "Of course that will mean we'll have to provide for him too, -and as you say he hasn't really the shadow of a claim on us. Poor -devil!" - -"The idea has got about that he's dangerous from drink," said Mr. -Wigfall, "and thar wouldn't nobody take him in, pay or no pay. The -choice was between the county gaol an' the poorhouse, an' considerin' -everything the poorhouse seemed mo' hospitable. Doctor Stout can look -after him thar, and a bunch of female paupers can take turns at the -nursing." - -"If he's still out of his head, you can hardly expect Martin Flower to -want him at Five Oaks," John Abner suggested. - -"Oh, he's come to himself now," Samuel Larch rejoined before the sheriff -could reply. "I was the first to git to him after Ike Pryde brought -word, an' when I first clapped eyes on him he was clean out of his -senses. But even then he was as weak as a baby an' he couldn't have -lifted a finger against you. Soon as he had a few swallows of soup and a -little brandy, he began to pick up, an' by the time he'd been fed -regular he could talk like himself again. Doctor Stout thinks he'll hang -on a few months longer if he gets plenty of milk an' fresh eggs." - -"Well, I imagine he isn't likely to get them in the poorhouse," John -Abner observed, with his sarcastic smile. - -"Of course there isn't the slightest reason why we should help him," -Dorinda insisted, as if the deprecating sheriff had started an argument. -After a moment's silence she added in a sharper tone, "But you can't -possibly let him die in the poorhouse." - -Mr. Wigfall, who had occupied a position of authority long enough to -feel uncomfortable when he was displaced, shuffled his feet in the rocky -path while he fingered uneasily the brim of his hat. "Naw'm," he replied -with as much dignity as he could command, and a few minutes later, he -repeated in a louder voice, "Naw'm." - -Dorinda looked over his head at John Abner. - -"It isn't human," she began, and, correcting herself, continued more -deliberately: "It isn't Christian to let a man die in the poorhouse -because he has lost all he had." - -The two men nodded vacantly, and only John Abner appeared unimpressed by -her piety. - -"Naw'm, it cert'n'y ain't Christian," Mr. Wigfall agreed, with a -promptness that was disconcerting. - -"He can't possibly be looked after there," Dorinda resumed, as if she -had not been interrupted. - -"Naw'm, he can't be looked after thar." - -For an instant she hesitated. Though she understood that her decision -was a vital one, she felt as remote and impersonal to it as if it were -one of those historic battles in France, which cost so much and yet were -so far away. It even occurred to her, as it had occurred so often during -the war, that men were never happy except when they were making trouble. -Of course Jason could not be left in the poorhouse. Having acknowledged -this much, she, to whom efficiency had become a second nature, was -irritated because these slow-witted country officials appeared helpless -to move in the matter. - -"There isn't any call to worry Martin Flower's wife," she said. "She's -ailing, anyway, and it would put her out to have a sick man, even if he -were sober, in the house. You'll have to bring him here until you can -make some other arrangement. It is true," she repeated harshly, "that he -hasn't the shadow of a claim on us; but we have plenty of milk and eggs, -and for a few weeks he may have the spare room on the first floor." - -Mr. Wigfall gasped before he could articulate. Though he had prayed -fervently to have the burden of an extra pauper, especially a pauper who -had known better days and acquired the habit of drink, removed from his -shoulders, he had never imagined, from his acquaintance with the -leisurely methods of Providence, that his prayer would be so speedily -answered. While he stared at Dorinda, his mute relief was as obvious as -if he had uttered it at the top of his voice. - -"He's glad to wash his hands of him," she thought, and then: "Who -wouldn't be?" - -"I don't reckon anybody will dispute yo' charity, Mrs. Pedlar," Samuel -Larch was wheezing out. "Thar ain't nobody stands any higher to-day in -this here community than you do. You're hard on the surface, as my wife -says, but you're human enough when you're whittled down to the core." - -Dorinda smiled, but her eyes were tired and wrinkles showed in her ruddy -skin. If they knew! If only they knew! she reflected; and she wondered -if many other reputations were founded like hers upon a flattering -ignorance of fact. - -"Tell your wife it is hard things that wear well," she responded. "After -all, somebody has to bear the burden, and I am better able to do it than -any of the rest of you, except perhaps," she concluded indifferently, -"James Ellgood." - -"Yas'm. I'm downright glad you take that sensible view of it," the -sheriff replied, as soon as he was capable of speaking. "Everybody about -here knows that when they come to you, they'll get justice." - -Justice! That was Nathan's favourite word, she remembered. She could -hear him saying as plainly as if he were present, "Any man has a right, -Dorinda, to demand justice." Strange how often Nathan's words, which she -had scarcely heeded when he was alive, returned to her in moments of -difficulty or indecision. Only in the last few years had she begun to -realize her mental dependence upon Nathan. - -"I reckon we can manage to get him over here to-morrow evening," Samuel -Larch was saying. "Thar ain't no call for you to send all the way to the -poorhouse. Maybe Reuben Fain will let us have that auto-wagon of his." - -"Oh, I'll come for him in the big car in the morning," Dorinda replied. -"It isn't my way to do things by halves." - -The sheriff nodded. "Naw'm, it ain't yo' way to do things by halves," he -echoed thankfully. - -After the two men were out of sight, she turned apologetically to John -Abner. Although he said little, for he was never a great talker, she had -observed that his face wore a look of severe disapprobation. - -"There wasn't anything else to do, was there, John Abner?" she asked, in -the deferential tone she reserved for a crisis. It was not often that -Dorinda deferred, and on the rare occasions when she did so, she was -able to administer a more piquant flattery than the naturally clinging -woman has at her command. - -"It looks to me as if they were letting you down," John Abner rejoined -moodily; but his face cleared under her persuasion. After all, what he -liked best was to be treated as an authority not only on farming, but on -human nature as well. The fact that he had lived as a recluse, and knew -nothing whatever of life, did not interfere with the sincerity of his -claim to profound wisdom. Men were so immature, she found herself -thinking; and they were never so immature as when they strutted most -with importance. Since the emotional disaster of her youth, she had been -incapable of either loving or hating without a caustic reservation; and -she felt that the hidden flaw in her relations with men was her -inability to treat a delusion of superiority as if it were a moral -principle. This was a small indulgence, she imagined, to a woman who -loved passionately; but to one who had safely finished with love and -attained the calm judgment of the disillusioned, it was an indulgence -which might prove to be particularly irksome. - -Slipping her arm through John Abner's, she walked with him into the -house. "Well, of course, in a way you're right; but after all, even if -they are imposing on us, we couldn't very well refuse to do anything." - -Though the two farms would go to John Abner at her death, there were -moments when, notwithstanding his affection for her, she suspected -uncomfortably that he would like complete authority while she was -living. Not that he was ever disagreeable or ungenerous about the way -she managed him. He was, she knew, honestly devoted to her, and he -admired her without the pity that had always tempered her admiration for -him. But he shared, she told herself, with all males who were not -milksops, the masculine instinct to domineer over the opposite sex. - -"Well, if it's anybody's business, it's James Ellgood's," he protested. - -She raised her straight grey eyebrows with a quizzical smile. "All the -same you can hardly blame James Ellgood for not making it his business. -Nothing will ever let him forget that Jason drove Geneva out of her -mind." - -"Well, perhaps he did, but there was no law to punish him." - -"That's what James Ellgood feels, of course, and I suppose he is right. -If it were simply a question of punishment----" - -"You mean it's more than that?" - -"Well, isn't it?" She had learned that she could always win him to her -point of view by disguising a naked fact in the paraphernalia of -philosophy. "From our side, I suppose it's one of humanity." Though she -despised sophistry as heartily as she despised indirectness, she could -bend both to her purpose when it was a matter of compulsion. - -"If you mean that our humanity is more important than his punishment?" -he returned in a mollified tone. - -"Yes, I do mean that. You have said it so often yourself." That would -finish his opposition, she knew, and without his opposition, life on the -farm would be easier for the next two or three weeks. - -"Won't it make a lot of trouble?" he inquired. - -She frowned. "I'm afraid it will. Of course, if he gets better, he can -move over to Five Oaks, and anyway the authorities ought to make some -kind of provision for him. We can't be expected to take over the -poor farm." Her tone was suddenly bitter with memory; but she concluded -hastily: "In the meantime, I'll warm the spare room and get it ready. If -the doctor says he must have fresh air, we can move his bed out on the -back porch." - -John Abner looked resentful. "I'm sorry for the poor devil, of course, -even if he did drive his wife crazy; but I don't see the sense in -turning the place upside down for somebody who hasn't the slightest -claim on you. He isn't even a poor relation." - -"He isn't anybody's poor relation, that's the trouble." - -"I'm not so sure." John Abner could be brutally candid at times. "There -are a lot of Idabella's mulatto children still hanging about Five Oaks." - -She shivered with disgust. "What the law doesn't acknowledge, I suppose -it doesn't bother about." - -"Well, it isn't any business of mine," John Abner said, after -deliberation. "If you choose to bring him here, of course you have the -right. But I hope you aren't going to wear yourself out waiting on him. -You've got no moderation in such things. After Snowbird's sickness last -winter, you didn't look like yourself." - -She shook her head. "I'd do much more for Snowbird. But I shan't wait on -him. I'll get Fluvanna's sister, Mirandy. She's an old woman, and a good -hand with sick people, even if she hasn't any sense in the dairy." As -she finished, she heard a voice in her mind asking distinctly, "Why am I -doing this? Why should I take the trouble?" And there wasn't any answer. -Even when she dragged her mind for an excuse or even an idea, she could -not unearth one. She had stopped loving Jason thirty years ago; she had -stopped hating him at an indefinite period; she had stopped even -remembering that he was alive; yet she could not, without doing violence -to her own nature, let him die in the poorhouse. After all, it was not -her feeling or lack of feeling for him, it was the poorhouse and her -horror of the poorhouse that decided his fate. - -"I'll have to go with you," John Abner was saying. "You can't manage it -by yourself." - -"No. I'd rather have you. If we start right after dinner, that ought to -bring us back before the milking is over. The road is rough, I'm afraid. -We'll have to take some pillows in the back of the car." - -"If he's bad off, perhaps Doctor Stout won't let him come," John Abner -suggested hopefully. - -"Well, we'll stop at the doctor's house on the way. That's why I want to -start early." - -That night, after the last of the day's work was over, they sat in front -of Dorinda's fire and talked as they used to talk when John Abner was a -boy and had not been warped by disappointment. Their thoughts were in -the future, not in the past, and Dorinda's visions were coloured by the -optimism which she had won more from perseverance than from any -convincing lesson of experience. Because of the very defects of his -qualities, John Abner suited her. It was true that his companionship had -its imperfections; but she would not have exchanged his sullen reticence -for the golden fluency of the new minister at Pedlar's Mill. Her -stepson's personality was attractive to her, for he gave an impression -of inexhaustible strength in reserve; and in the matter of disposition -he influenced her less as an example than as a warning, which, after -all, she reflected, was the kind of influence she needed. - -"When all is said, we are as contented as we could expect to be," she -remarked, when he rose to go upstairs. "If you don't marry, we'll have a -pleasant old age by the fireside." - -He laughed shortly, for he was in one of his gentler moods. There was a -charm, she thought, in his long thin features, his sallow skin with -bluish shadows about the mouth, his squinting eyes, and his straight -black hair which fell in stringy locks over his forehead. - -"You may marry again yourself," he said abruptly. "You aren't as -handsome as you used to be, but you're still better-looking than anybody -about here." - -She shook her head obstinately. "With white hair and wrinkles!" - -"Well, there's more than white hair and wrinkles. I don't know what it -is, but it's there," he answered, as he turned away and went out of the -room. - -In the morning she awoke with a feeling of despondency. Dread had come -over her while she slept, and she felt it dragging at her memory after -she had opened her eyes. Why had she yielded to that erratic impulse the -evening before? Why had she allowed those two men to impose on her? "If -is because I am a woman," she thought. "If I were a man, they would -never have dared." Yes, John Abner was right (here was another instance -of how right he so often was) and the county authorities had taken -advantage of her weakness. "Well, I've let myself in for it now, and -I'll have to go through with it," she said aloud, as she got out of bed -and began dressing. - -At breakfast, while she tried to eat and could not because of the lump -in her throat, she reminded herself of her mother on the day of her -journey to the Courthouse. "All I need is a crape veil and a -handkerchief scented with camphor," she said, with a laugh. - -"What are you talking about, Dorinda?" John Abner asked, with a frown. - -"I was thinking of my mother. Poor Ma! She'd be living now if she hadn't -worried so." - -"Well, she'd be nearly a hundred, I reckon. And don't you begin -worrying. Are you out of temper because you let those men put something -over on you?" - -"I don't know. It seems different this morning. I can't see why I did -it." - -"I heard the men talking about it in the barn. Somebody, the sheriff, I -reckon, had told Martin Flower, and he said you'd bitten off more than -you could chew." - -Dorinda flushed angrily. "When I want Martin Flower's interference, I'll -ask for it." - -Already a message had gone to Mirandy, and the old negress was waiting -outside for directions when breakfast was over. The floor and the -woodwork of the spare room must be scrubbed; the bed thoroughly aired -before it was made up; a fire kindled in the big fireplace; and the -red-bordered towels, which her mother had reserved for the visiting -elder, must be hung on the towel-rack. Last of all, Mirandy must -remember to keep a kettle boiling day and night on the brass footman. - -"I wonder why I am doing all this?" Dorinda asked herself. Was it, as -she believed, from impersonal compassion? Or was it because her first -lover, merely because he had been the first, was impressed eternally on -the unconscious cells of her being? "No, I'm not doing it for Jason," -she answered. "Even if I had never loved him, I couldn't let the man who -had owned Five Oaks die in the poorhouse." - -"Before we bring him here," John Abner said, "you'd better warn Aunt -Mirandy that consumption is catching." He shook his head with a sardonic -smile. "I'm afraid he's going to be a nuisance; but I believe you would -have done the same thing if it had been smallpox." - -She looked at him with inscrutable eyes. "I was never afraid of taking -things." - -"But you don't even like Jason Greylock." - -"Like him? Who could? What has that to do with the poorhouse?" - -A look of rare tenderness, for he was not often tender, came into John -Abner's eyes while he squinted at her over the table. "Well, you're a -big woman, Dorinda, even if you're trying at times. There's an extra -dimension in you somewhere." - -Though praise from John Abner was one of the things that pleased her -most, she was incapable, she knew, of draining the sweetness of the -moment before it escaped her. When happiness came to her she had always -the feeling that she was too dull or too slow to realize it completely -until it was, over, when she responded to the memory as she had never -responded to the actual occurrence. - -"You're very good to me, John Abner," she answered. Her words were -insufficient, but the habit of reticence was, as usual, too strong for -her. - -For hours she went about her work with the thoroughness that she exacted -of herself on days of mental disturbance. Not until the car was waiting -at the door, and Fluvanna was hastening out with robes and pillows, did -Dorinda turn aside from her ordinary activities, and go into the room -she had selected for Jason. Yes, everything was in order. The floor and -walls were clean; the windows had been closed after an airing; and the -fire burned brightly on the sunken stones in the fireplace. Even the big -iron kettle steamed away on the footman. There was soap in the soap-dish -on the washstand; an abundance of soft warm blankets covered the bed; on -the candlestand stood a blue thermos bottle, and her mother's Bible lay -beside it, with the purple bookmarker she had embroidered marking a -favourite text. "It ought to seem pleasant," she thought, "after the -poorhouse." - -Outside, she found John Abner at the wheel of the car and Fluvanna -arranging the pillows on the back seat. - -"Would you like to drive, Dorinda?" - -"No, but I'll sit in front with you. When we come back, one of us will -have to sit with him, and I'd rather it would be you." - - - - -IX - - -They talked little on the long drive. John Abner was intent on the -wheel, and Dorinda held her cape closely about her, and gazed straight -ahead at the twisted road and the hazy brightness of the October -landscape. A veil of glittering dust drifted up from the meadows of -life-everlasting; in the underbrush by the fences, sumach and sassafras -made splashes of crimson and wine-colour; farther away, the changing -woods were tossed in broken masses against the cloudless arch of the -sky. - -As they approached the Courthouse, the country was less thinly settled, -and throngs of barefooted children ran beside the car and offered -bunches of prince's feather and cockscomb. In some of the fields men -were ploughing, and among them Dorinda observed the phlegmatic faces of -Swedes or Germans. As the car sped by, they stopped in their ploughing -or cutting, and turned to stare curiously like slow-witted animals. Over -all was the blue haze of October and the drifting silver pollen of -life-everlasting. - -At Doctor Stout's, a new green and white cottage near the road, which -looked as trivial as a butterfly on the edge of the autumnal solitude, -they were told that the doctor had already gone to the poorhouse. - -"He was that upset he couldn't sleep last night," said Mrs. Stout, a -pretty, plump, deep-bosomed woman, in a pink and white gingham dress and -a starched apron. "It seemed to prey on him to think of Doctor Greylock, -who used to have the best practice around here, dying up yonder in the -poorhouse. He was so promising, too, they say, when he came back, and -his people owned that big place over near Pedlar's Mill. Drink was his -ruin, I reckon, and that made it so hard, for everybody was afraid to -take in a man that was out of his head. I couldn't have had him here on -account of the children and measles just broken out yesterday. But there -ought to be some way of caring for sick and crazy people without sending -them to the poorhouse. And now with all the poorhouses going, there soon -won't be any place for them but the gaol." She was a voluble person, but -at last the flow of words stopped, and they drove on between dusty -borders of sassafras. - -"Is it true that Doctor Stout was born in a poorhouse?" Dorinda asked -presently. - -"Nobody knows. It doesn't surprise me to hear that he was." - -"And now Jason is dying in one. Is that the result of character or -merely accident, I wonder?" - -"Of both probably," John Abner rejoined. "I've read of too many decent -human beings going on the rocks to believe the fable that virtue alone -will get you anywhere, unless it is to the poorhouse instead of the -gaol." - -"There it must be now," Dorinda exclaimed, pointing to the right of the -road. "Do we turn in over that ditch?" - -"It seems to be the only way. Hey! Get out of the road there!" shouted -John Abner to a skulking black and tan foxhound. - -Withdrawn from the road, behind the fallen planks which had once made a -fence, the poorhouse sprawled there, in the midst of the -life-everlasting, like the sun-bleached skeleton of an animal which -buzzards had picked clean of flesh. The walls and roof were covered with -whitewash; there was whitewash on the smooth, round stones that bordered -the path to the door; and the few starved cedar trees in the yard were -whitewashed to the thin foliage at their tops. At one side, a few coarse -garments were fluttering from clothes-lines, and several decrepit -paupers were spreading wet things on the bushes that grew by the back -porch. - -Like other relics of an abruptly changing era, the county poorhouse -possessed both the advantages and the disadvantages of desuetude. The -seven aged paupers and the one indigent young mother who now accepted -its charity were neglected, it is true, but they were neglected in -freedom. Where there was no system there was less room for interference. -If the coarse clothes were thin, they were as varied as the tempers or -the inclinations of the paupers. Though the fare was mean, the -complaints over it were bountiful. It is hard to be a pauper; it is -particularly hard to be an aged pauper; but if these nine inmates -(including the week-old infant) could have chosen between liberty and -fraternity, they would probably have preferred the scant food and the -rough clothes to the neat livery of dependence. Dorinda, however, -perceived none of the varied blessings attendant upon orderless -destitution. All she saw was the ramshackle building and the whitewashed -cedars, which reminded her vaguely of missionary stories of the fences -of dry bones surrounding the huts of Ethiopian kings. "It looks as bare -as the palm of my hand," she said aloud. - -The doctor's Ford car was standing in front of the door, with one wheel -in a mudhole and one in a pile of trash; and when they stopped, an old -woman, who was hanging the wash to dry on the bushes, put down the wet -clothes and came over to meet them. She was so old that her skin was -like bark; her mouth was closed as tight as a nutcracker over her -toothless gums; and her small red eyes flickered between eyelids which -looked as if they had worn away. As she mumbled at them, she wiped her -steaming wet hands on her skirt. - -"You ain't got any sweet stuff, is you, honey?" she whined, until the -doctor appeared at the door and beckoned them round the corner of the -house where the sunshine was falling. As usual he looked brisk, kind, -incurably sanguine. - -"There is no longer any question. These county poorhouses must go," he -said, as they followed the beaten track which wound by the side of the -building. "It costs the county not a cent under two thousand dollars a -year to keep this place open for these eight inmates. It would be -cheaper in the end to board them at the City Home where there is some -system about the way things are managed." Then he lowered his voice, -which had been high and peremptory, as if he wished to be overheard. "We -brought Doctor Greylock here because he couldn't be left alone, and none -of the negroes would go near him. There's a scare about him, though he's -perfectly harmless. A little out of his dead now and then, but too weak -to hurt anybody even if he tried." - -"Is he delirious now?" - -"No, he's in his senses this morning, and quiet--you'll find him as -quiet as you could wish. Is there anybody to look after him at Five -Oaks?" - -"We're not taking him to Five Oaks. There's no place for him there. But -I've got a nurse for him, Aunt Mirandy Moody. She knows how to take care -of the sick, and I believe the can manage him." - -"Oh, anybody can manage him now," Doctor Stout said reassuringly. - -A tremor of weakness passed over Dorinda. She felt that her knees and -elbows were shaking, and there was a meaningless noise in her ears. Was -it Jason of whom they were speaking? No, it was not Jason, for it seemed -to her that Jason had died long ago, so long ago that she couldn't -remember him. She was standing by the wall of the poorhouse, and an -obscure pauper, somebody who could be "easily managed," was dying -within. She dropped her eyelids to shut out the brown cloud, as thick as -the smoke of burning leaves, which rolled up from the meadows. When she -opened her eyes again the sunshine on the whitewashed wall dazzled her. -If only she had known! If only she could have looked ahead to this -moment! Those summer evenings thirty years ago, and this autumn day -beside the wall of the poorhouse! The whitewashed cedars, the sunken -road, the flat fields, the ridged earth where labourers moved slowly, -and over all the glittering dust of life-everlasting. - -"He ought to drink as much milk as he can," Doctor Stout was saying in -his professional voice. "And eggs when he will take them. Every two -hours he should have nourishment in some form, and an eggnog with -whiskey three or four times a day. You can't expect him to do without -whiskey. I've got a bottle for you to take back with you. He may need -some on the way if he seems to be losing strength." - -She nodded. "I learned a little when I was a girl in a doctor's office -in New York; but everything has changed since the war. You'll come over -to-morrow?" - -"I'll drop in whenever I am called that way. If he gets much worse, you -can telephone me. I feel that he has a professional claim on me." - -The weakness had gone now. She felt courageous and full of vitality, as -if the rich blood had surged up through her veins. With the return of -strength, her self-reliance, her calm efficiency, revived. She was -facing the present now, not the past, and she faced it imperiously. - -"You think he is able to be moved?" she asked. - -"Even if it is a risk,"--he met her gaze candidly,--"wouldn't anything -be better than to die in this place?" - -She acquiesced by a gesture. Then, threading her way between the stunted -rosebushes, she spoke in a smothered voice, "Is he ready to go with -us?" - -"He is waiting on the back porch. It's sunny there." - -"The car is open, you know, but John Abner is putting up the top." - -"Fresh air won't hurt him. You've plenty of rugs, I suppose, and he'll -need pillows." - -"I've thought of that. You can fix the back seat like a bed. Of course -we shall drive very slowly." Glancing up at the sun, she concluded in -her capable manner: "It's time we were starting. John Abner and I both -have work to do on the farm." - -Doctor Stout bent an admiring gaze on her, and she knew from his look -that he was thinking, "Sensible woman. No damned mushiness about her." -Aloud, he said, "He is ready to go. You'll find that he doesn't say -much. When a man has touched the bottom of things, there isn't much talk -left in him. But I think he'll be glad to get away." - -"Well, I'll see what I can do." Stepping in front of him, she turned the -sharp angle of the wall and saw Jason lying on a shuck mattress in the -sunshine. Beneath his head there was a pile of cotton bags stuffed with -feathers and tied at the ends. Several patchwork quilts were spread over -him, and one of the old women was covering his feet as Dorinda -approached. His eyes were closed, and if he heard her footsteps on the -ground, he made no sign. A chain of shadows cast by the drying clothes -on the line fell over him, and these intangible fetters seemed to her -the only bond linking him to existence. While she looked down on him, -all connection between him and the man she had once loved was severed as -completely as the chain of shadows when the wind moved the clothesline. - -He lay straight and stiff under the quilts, and above the variegated -pattern his features protruded, shrivelled, inanimate, expressionless, -like the face of a mummy that would crumble to dust at a touch. His eyes -beneath his closed lids were sunk in hollows from which the yellow -stains spilled over on his bluish cheeks. The chin under the short -stubble of beard was thrust out as if it would pierce the withered skin. -It was not the face of Jason Greylock. What she looked on was merely a -blank collection of features from which poverty and illness had drained -all human intelligence. Turning away, she saw through a mist the -doddering old woman who was fussing about the mattress and the decrepit -manager who was too ancient and incompetent for more serious employment. - -"They've come for you. We'll get you away," Doctor Stout said in his -cheerful tones which rang with an artificial resonance. Then he turned -to Dorinda. "The stimulant is wearing off. He'll need something stronger -before he is able to start." - -At the words, Jason opened his eyes and looked straight up at the sky. -"I am thirsty," he said, while his hand made an empty claw-like gesture. -If he were aware of their figures, she realized that they meant nothing -to him. He had withdrawn from the external world into the darkness of -some labyrinth where physical sensations were the only realities. While -she watched him it came over her with a shock that the last thing to die -in a human being is not thought, is not even spirit, but sensation. - -One of the old women, who appeared to be in authority, brought a glass -of blue milk, and taking a flask from his pocket the doctor added a -measure of whiskey. Then lifting Jason's head, he held the glass to his -lips. - -Suddenly, it seemed to Dorinda that her impressions of the actual scene -dissolved and slipped like quicksilver from her mind. She ceased to -look, ceased to think, overcome by an emotion which was not grief, -though it was the very essence of sadness. Closing her eyes, she waited -for some sound or touch that would restore the fading glow of her -reason. Why was she here? Where was it leading her? What was the meaning -of it all? - -She heard a strangled voice gasp, "You're hurting me," and looking round -she saw that the doctor and John Abner were carrying Jason to the car. - -"You'll feel better presently," the doctor said soothingly. "I'll give -you something for the pain." - -Like an automaton, she followed them; like an automaton, she stepped -into the car and took her place by Jason's side on the back seat. She -had intended to drive home, but she knew that she was incapable of -controlling the big car. "Some one had better be back here with him," -the doctor had insisted, and she had obeyed his directions in silence. -"I've put the whiskey under the rug. Give him an eggnog as soon as you -put him to bed." - -The car started slowly, and they had driven for some miles before she -found sufficient courage to turn and look at the figure beside her. -Dazed by the sedative, he was staring straight in front of him, -oblivious of the autumn sunshine, oblivious of the uninteresting -country, oblivious of her presence, lost beyond reach in that dark -labyrinth of sensation. His face was the face of one who had come to the -edge of the world and looked over. It expressed not pain, not despair -even, but nothingness. A grey woollen comforter was tied over his head, -and his features appeared to have fallen away beneath the mummy-like -covering. He was neither young nor old, she saw; he was over and done -with, a thing with which time had finished. And he was a stranger to -her! She had never loved him; she had never known him until to-day. The -weight on her heart was so heavy that it was suffocating her. Again she -thought: "Why am I here? What is the meaning of it all?" Again she felt -as she had felt at her father's death: "The pathos of life is worse than -the tragedy." - -They drove on in silence; but it was a silence that reverberated like -thunder in her brain. Nothing and everything was over. Ahead of her the -road sank between the autumn fields and the brilliant patches of woods. -The blue haze swam before her in the direction of the river. They passed -the same ragged white and black children, who held up the same withered -flowers. The same labourers were at work in the fields, bent in the same -gestures of ploughing. As they went by a house set far back from the -road, with a little crooked path leading up to a white wicket-gate, she -imagined herself walking up the path and through the wicket-gate into -another life. - -John Abner looked back. "Am I going too fast? He coughs as if he were -choking." - -She turned to Jason and replaced a pillow which had slipped from under -his head. His boots, with lumps of red clay still clinging to them, were -stretched out stiffly on the pile of rugs. And those worn boots with the -earth on the soles seemed to her so poignantly moving that her eyes -filled with tears. His cough stopped, and she spoke to him in a raised -voice as if he were at a distance, "Are you suffering now?" - -If he heard her, he made no response. It seemed to her while she looked -at him that he was in reality at a distance, that everything but the -shell of physical pain in which he was imprisoned had already perished. -She wondered if he remembered her, or if her image had dropped from him, -with other material objects, in that blind wilderness. From his apathy, -she might have been no more to him than one of the old women in the -poorhouse. A shiver ran over her, as if she had been touched by a dead -hand. Youth, beauty, victory, revenge,--what did any of these things -signify before the inevitable triumph of time? - -Yes, time had revenged her. If she had stood still, if she had not -lifted a finger to help, time would still have revenged her; for time, -she saw, always revenges one. She thought of the hot agony of that other -October afternoon. Of the patter of rain on the roof. Of the smell of -wet grass underfoot. Of the sodden sky. Of the branches whipping her -face. - -They passed the station, where a train had just gone by; they passed the -old Haney place, where the new German tenant was ploughing; they passed -Honeycomb Farm and the fork of the road, where the burned cabin and the -blasted oak used to be. The new gate stood there now, and beyond it, -there was the sandy road through the meadows of Joe-Pyeweed and -life-everlasting. Against the sky, she could still see unchanged the -chimneys of Five Oaks. Then they spun easily down the wooded slope, -crawled over the patch of corduroy road, and, turning in at the bridge, -rolled up to the front porch of Old Farm. - -"Well, we got him here," John Abner said, with a breath of relief. - -As they helped Jason to alight, it seemed to Dorinda that his bones were -crumbling beneath her touch. If she had awakened to find that the whole -afternoon had been a nightmare, she would have felt no surprise. Even -the quiet house, with its air of patient expectancy, startled her by its -strangeness. - -Mirandy, a big, strong, compassionate old negress, who was born for a -nurse but had missed her vocation until she was too old to profit by it, -came out to help, and among them they carried Jason into the spare room -and put him to bed. His clothes were so soiled and ragged that John -Abner went upstairs and brought down some woollen things of his own. A -fire blazed in the cavernous fireplace. Ripples of light and shadow -danced over the yellow walls. The whole room smelt of burning logs and -of the branches of pine on the mantelpiece. Warmth, peace, comfort, -enfolded them as they entered. - -When they had undressed Jason and covered him up warmly, Dorinda brought -the eggnog, and Mirandy slipped her arm under the pillow and raised his -head while he drank it. The tormented look had gone from his face. About -his mouth the outline of a smile flickered. - -"It feels good," he said, and closed his eyes as the glass was taken -away. - -"You'll eat some supper?" - -"Yes, I'll eat some supper." - -"You're not in pain now?" - -"No, I'm not in pain now." - -He spoke in a dazed way, like a child that is repeating words it does -not understand. Had he forgotten that he had known her? Or had he -reached the depths from which all memories appear as frail as the bloom -on a tree? She did not know. She would never know probably. She had lost -even the wish to know. Whether he had loved her or not made no -difference. It made no difference whether or not he remembered. In that -instant beside the poorhouse wall, the old Jason had been submerged and -lost in this new Jason who was a stranger. Not in thirty years but in a -single minute, she had lost him. Stripped of associations, stripped of -sentiment, this new Jason was protected only by the intolerable pathos -of life. How futile, how unnecessary, it had all been,--her love, her -suffering, her bitterness. - -He opened his eyes and looked at her. - -"This isn't Five Oaks?" - -"No, it is Old Farm." - -"Old Farm? That is the Oakley place. Am I going to stay here?" - -"Until you are better." - -"Until I am better," he repeated. - -"Are you comfortable now?" - -He closed his eyes again. "Yes, it feels good." - -"In a little while I'll give you some veronal and you will sleep." - -A change passed over his face and he sighed, "I'd like to sleep." - -She drew back and turned to go out of the room. Yes, the connection -between youth and middle age was broken for ever. - - - - -X - - -In the night she heard him coughing, and slipping into her flannel -wrapper, she went into the kitchen and beat up an egg with milk and -brandy. When she took it into his room, he appeared feverish and asked -for veronal. "But the brandy will undo it," he added mechanically. His -face was flushed and when she touched his hand it was burning. "Is it -near day?" he inquired. - -"No, it is only one o'clock. I thought you were sleeping." - -"I was, but I wake up this way. I've done it every night for months." - -She gave him veronal, and then raised his head while he sipped the -eggnog. "An owl has been hooting so loud I thought it was at the -window," he said, looking up at her over the rim of the glass. - -"It's up in the big pine. You've been dreaming." - -The fire had burned down to a few embers, which flickered out when she -tried to stir them to life. A dim light from the screened lamp on the -floor behind the chintz-covered chair left the bed and his uncovered -face in shadow. - -"Do you feel better?" she asked, as she was turning away. - -"Yes, I feel better." His eyes followed her from the shadow with a -glance of mute interrogation. - -"I'll put this stick by your bed." She went out into the hall and came -back with one of John Abner's hickory sticks. "If you want anything or -feel nervous, knock on the wall. I am a light sleeper, and Mirandy is in -the room off the kitchen." - -She waited, but he did not answer. Had he understood her, or was he -incapable of grasping the meaning of sounds? It was like the -inconsistency of life, she thought, that he, who once had been so -voluble, should have become almost inarticulate at the end. She knew -that he was trying to give as little trouble as possible, yet he seemed -unable to put his wish into words. - -Before going out, she made one last effort with the embers, but the wood -she threw into the fireplace did not catch. When she went over to the -bed again, Jason was lying with closed eyes. "He doesn't look as if he -could last much longer," she thought dispassionately. - -The still October days drifted by, hazy, mellow, declining into the rich -light of the sunsets. With the dry weather and sufficient food after -starvation, Jason appeared to improve. The old wheel-chair which had once -belonged to Rose Emily was brought down from the attic, and he sat out, -muffled in rugs, on bright afternoons. He liked his meals, though he -never asked for them. Sometimes, after a hard spell of coughing, he -would say, "How long is it before I have my eggnog?"; yet he never -attempted to hasten the hour. Twice, after a severe hæmorrhage, they -believed he was dying, but he recovered and was wheeled out again on the -lawn. Day after day, he sat there in the sunshine, passive, silent, -wrapped in a curious remoteness which was like the armour of an -inscrutable reserve. Yet it was not reserve, she felt instinctively. It -was something thinner; vaguer, something as impalpable as a shadow. It -was, she realized suddenly one day, an emptiness of spirit. He was -silent because there was nothing left in him to be uttered. He was -remote because he had lost all connection with his surroundings, with -events, with the material structure of living. Through the autumn days -he would sit there, propped on pillows, in his wheel-chair between the -half-bared lilac bushes and the "rockery," where Mrs. Oakley had planted -portulaca over an old stump. His head would sink down into the rugs, and -his unseeing eyes would gaze up the road to the starry fields of the -life-everlasting. Behind him there was the porch and the long grey roof -where swallows were wheeling. From the locust trees by the wings a rain -of small yellow leaves fell slowly and steadily in the windless air, -turning once as they left the stem, and drifting down to the flagged -walk and the borders of sheepmint and wire-grass. His figure, bowed -under the rugs, seemed to her to become merely another object in the -landscape. He was as inanimate as the fields or the trees; and yet he -made the solitude more lonely and the autumn dreaminess more pensive. -His features had the scarred and seared look that is left in the faces -of men who had fought their way out of a forest fire. Only the look that -Jason wore now had passed from struggle into defeat. He appeared to be -waiting, without fear and without hope, for whatever might happen. "I've -seen so many people die," she thought, and then, "In fifty years many -people must die." - -She had come home this afternoon a little earlier than usual, and, still -in riding breeches, she stood by the porch and looked down on the inert -figure in the wheel-chair. Jason's eyes were open, but she could not -tell whether he saw her or not. The mask of his features was as blank as -if an indestructible glaze were spread over his face; and he stared -straight before him, searching the road and the distant fields of -life-everlasting for something that was not there. Though his -helplessness was his only hold on her, she felt that it had become too -poignant for her to bear. If only he would speak! If only he would -complain! If only he would say what he was seeking! In the faint -sunshine, beneath the ceaseless rain of leaves, he gathered, a deeper -meaning, a fresher significance. A glamour of sadness enveloped him. For -an instant the memory of the Jason she had first known flickered over -him like a vanishing ray of sunlight. As the gleam faded, she felt that -he was passing with it into some unearthly medium where she could not -follow. It was, she told herself, only the endless riddle of mortality, -renewed again and yet again in each human being. It was the old baffling -sense of a secret meaning in the universe, of a reality beneath the -actuality, of a deep profounder than the deeps of experience. The -reserve of even one human being was impenetrable; the reserve of every -human being was impenetrable. Of what was he thinking? she wondered, and -knew that she could never discover. Had he loved her in the past, or had -his desire for her been merely a hunger? Would he have been faithful to -her if stronger forces had not swept him away? Which was the accident, -his love or his faithlessness? When it was over, had she dropped out of -his life, or had she continued to exist as a permanent influence? Was he -better or worse than she had believed him to be? She had never known, -and now she could never know. The truth would always elude her. She -could never wring his secret from this empty shell which was as -unfathomable as the sea. She felt that the mystery was killing her, and -she knew that it was a mystery which could never be solved. - -She tried to ask, "How much did I mean in your life?" an found herself -reciting, parrot-like, "Do you feel any pain?" - -He shook his head, without looking at her. His gaze was still on the -road where it dipped at the bridge and travelled upward into the dreamy -distance. - -"Are you ready for your eggnog?" The effort to make her voice sound -light and natural brought tears to her eyes. - -At last she had touched him. The quiver of appetite stole over his face, -and he turned his eyes, which were dark with pain, away from the road. -"Is it almost time?" This was what he lived for now, an egg with milk -and whiskey every four hours. - -"It must be nearly. I'll go and see." As she still lingered, the quiver -on his face deepened into a look of impatience, and he repeated eagerly, -"You will go and see?" - -"In a minute. Has the doctor been here?" - -"Nobody has been here. A few people went by in the road, but they did not -stop." - -"Something must have prevented the doctor. He will come to-morrow." - -"It makes no difference. I am a doctor." - -A thought occurred to her while she watched him. "Would you rather be at -Five Oaks? It might be managed." - -He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. You are good to me here. I don't -know why." He broke off with a rough, grating cough which sounded like -the blows of a hammer. A few minutes afterwards, when the spell of -coughing was over, he repeated, so mechanically that the words seemed to -reach no deeper than his lips, "I don't know why." - -He had not said as much as this since she had brought him to Old Farm, -and while she listened a piercing light flashed into her mind, as if a -lantern had been turned without warning on a dark road. In this light, -all the hidden cells of her memory were illuminated. Things she had -forgotten; things she had only dimly perceived when they were present; -swift impulses; unacknowledged desires; flitting impressions like the -shadow of a bird on still water,--all these indefinite longings started -out vividly from the penumbra of darkness. As this circle of light -widened, she saw Jason as she had first seen him more than thirty years -ago, on that morning in winter. She saw his dark red hair, his -brown-black eyes, his gay and charming smile with its indiscriminate -friendliness. Time appeared to stand still at that instant. Beyond this -enkindled vision there was only the fall of the locust leaves, spinning -like golden coins which grew dull and tarnished as soon as they reached -the ground. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the vision faded and the -light flickered out. There remained this stranger, huddled beneath the -rugs in the wheel-chair, and around him the melancholy stillness of the -October afternoon. - -"People have to be kind to each other sometimes," she answered. - -His brief animation had passed. He seemed to have forgotten his words as -soon as he had uttered them. The blank despair was in his eyes again as -he fixed them on the empty road, searching--searching. His face, so -scarred and burned out by an inner fire, wore a lost and abstracted -look, as if he were listening for some sound at a distance. - -"I'll bring the eggnog in a minute," she added hastily, and went into -the house. She felt embarrassed by her rugged health, and by her firm -and energetic figure when she contrasted it with his diminished frame. -Yet her pity, she knew, could make no impression on vacancy. - -As the weeks passed, she grew to look for his chair when she returned -from work in the fields. There was no eagerness, no anxiety even. There -was merely the wonder if she should still find him in the pale afternoon -sunshine, watching the road for something that never came. If he had -been absent, she would scarcely have missed him; yet, in a way, his -wheel-chair made the lawn, or the fireside on wet days, more homelike. -He was a poor thing, she felt, to look forward to, but at least he was -dependent upon her compassion. - -Then one afternoon in November, when she returned, riding her white -horse through the flame and dusk of the sunset, she saw that the -wheel-chair was not in its accustomed place between the porch and the -"rockery." When she had dismounted at the stable door and watched the -bedding down of Snowbird, she walked slowly back to the house. Even -before she met Mirandy running to look for her, she knew that Jason was -dead. - -"He 'uz settin' out dar de hull evelin'," began Mirandy, who being old -still spoke the vivid dialect of her ancestors. "He sot out dar jes' lak -he's done day in an' day out w'ile I wuz gittin' thoo wid de ironin'. -Den w'en de time come fuh his eggnog, I beat it up jes' ez light, en -tuck it out dar ter de cheer, en dar he wuz layin' back, stone daid, wid -de blood all ovah de rugs en de grass. He died jes' ez quick ez ern he -ain' nevah ketched on ter w'at wuz gwinter happen. 'Fo' de Lawd, hit -wa'n't my fault, Miss Dorindy. I 'uz jes' gittin' erlong thoo wid de -ironin', lak you done tole me." - -"No, it wasn't your fault, Mirandy. Have you telephoned for the doctor?" - -"Yas'm, Fluvanna, she done phone fuh 'im right straight away. We is done -laid 'im out on de baid. You'd 'low jes' ter look at 'im dat hit wuz a -moughty pleasant surprise ter find out dat he wuz sholy daid." - -Turning away from her, Dorinda went into the spare room, where the fire -was out, and in deference to one of Aunt Mehitable's superstitions, -Mirandy had draped white sheets over the furniture and the pictures. The -windows were wide open. In the graveyard on the curve of the hill, she -could see the great pine towering against the evening sky. A stray sheep -was bleating somewhere in the meadow, and it seemed to her that the -sound filled the universe. - -So at last he was dead. He was dead, and she could never know whether or -not he remembered. She could never know how much or how little she had -meant in his life. And more tragic than the mystery that surrounded him -at the end, was the fact that neither the mystery nor his end made any -difference. The passion that had ruined her life thirty years ago was -nothing, was less than nothing, to her to-day. She was not glad that he -was dead. She was not sorry that he had died alone. - -Turning back the end of the sheet, she looked down on his face. Despair -had passed out of it. The scarred and burned look of his features had -faded into serenity. Death had wiped out the marks of the years, and had -restored, for an instant, the bright illusion of youth. He wore, as he -lay there with closed eyes, an expression that was noble and generous, -as if he had been arrested in some magnanimous gesture. This was what -death could do to one. He had wasted his life, he had destroyed her -youth; yet, in a few hours, death had thrown over him an aspect of -magnanimity. - -She was standing there when John Abner came in from milking and joined -her. "Poor devil," he said. "I suppose it's the best thing that could -have happened." - -"Yes, it's the best thing." - -"Is there anybody we'd better get a message to?" - -"No one I can remember. He had lost all his friends." - -"Has the doctor been here?" - -"Not yet, but Fluvanna telephoned for him." - -"Then we might as well have the funeral to-morrow. There is no reason to -postpone it. He's been dying for months." - -Yes, he had been dying for months; yet, she realized now, his death had -come to her with a shock. Though the moment had been approaching so -long, she felt that it had taken her by surprise, that she had not had -sufficient time to prepare. - -"Of course, it isn't as if we could be expected to feel it," John Abner -said, reasonably enough, and she repeated vacantly: "No, of course it -isn't." - - - - -XI - - -The next afternoon, standing beneath an inclement sky in the overgrown -graveyard at Five Oaks, she wondered how, even after thirty years, she -could have become so insensible. - -There had been rain in the night, and the weather was raw and wintry, -with a savage wind which prowled at a distance in the fields and woods. -Over the graveyard, where the sunken graves were almost obliterated by -periwinkle, the dead leaves were piled in sodden drifts which gave like -moss underfoot. The paling fence had rotted away, and white turkeys were -scratching in the weeds that edged the enclosure. Dampness floated down -in a grey vapour from the boughs of the trees. When the new minister -opened his mouth to speak his breath clung like frost to his drooping -moustache. Yet, bad as the day was, either compassion or curiosity had -drawn the nearer farmers and their families to Five Oaks, and a little -gathering of men and women who remembered the Greylocks in their -prosperity watched the lowering of Jason's body into the earth. In the -freshly ploughed field beyond, Mirandy and Fluvanna stood among an -inquisitive crowd of white and coloured children. - -More than thirty years ago. More than thirty years of effort and -self-sacrifice--for what? Was there an unfulfilled purpose, or was it -only another delusion of life? The moaning wind plunged down on the dead -leaves and drove them in eddying gusts over the fields, over the road, -and into the open grave. It seemed to her that the sound of the autumn -wind, now rising, now sinking, now almost dying away, was sweeping her -also into the grave at her feet. She had no control over her memories; -she had no control over her thoughts. They stirred and scattered, as -aimless, as inanimate, as the dead leaves on the ground. Memories that -had outlived emotions, as empty as withered husks, were released from -their hidden graves, and tossed wildly to and fro in her mind. Little -things that she had forgotten. Little things that mean nothing when they -happen and break the heart when they are remembered. She felt no sorrow -for Jason. He was nothing to her; he had always been nothing; yet her -lost youth was everything. What she mourned was not the love that she -had had and lost, but the love that she had never had. Impressions -drifted through her thoughts, vague, swift, meaningless, without form or -substance. . . . - -Out of this whirling chaos in her mind, Jason's face emerged like the -face of a marionette. Then dissolving as quickly as it had formed, it -reappeared as the face of Nathan, and vanished again to assume the -features of Richard Burch, of Bob Ellgood, and of every man she had ever -known closely or remotely in her life. They meant nothing. They had no -significance, these dissolving faces; yet as thick and fast as dead -leaves they whirled and danced there, disappearing and reassembling in -the vacancy of her thoughts. Faces. Ghosts. Dreams. Regrets. Old -vibrations that were incomplete. Unconscious impulses which had never -quivered into being. All the things that she might have known and had -never known in her life. - -The minister's voice ceased at last. Since he had never seen Jason he -had trusted, perhaps imprudently, to his imagination, and Dorinda -wondered how he could have found so much to say of a life that was so -empty. She bent her head in prayer, and a few minutes afterwards, she -heard the thud of earth falling from the spade to the coffin. The red -clay fell in lumps, dark, firm, heavy, smelling of autumn. It fell -without breaking or scattering, and it fell with the sound of -inevitableness, of finality. For an eternity, she heard the thuds on the -coffin. Then the voice of the minister rose again in the benediction, -and she watched, as in a trance, John Abner bring the two flat stones -from the edge of the ploughed field and place them at the head and foot -of the grave. - -She turned away, and became aware presently that the clergyman had -followed her and was speaking. "It is a sad occasion, Mrs. Pedlar," he -said, and coughed because her blank face startled the end of his remark -out of his mind. "A sad occasion," he repeated, stammering. - -"All funerals are sad occasions," she responded, and then asked: "Will -you come to the house for a cup of coffee?" - -She hoped he would refuse, and he did refuse after a brief hesitation. -He had a sick call to make near by, and already the day was closing in. -While he held her hand he spoke with unction of her generosity. Wherever -he went, he said, he heard of her good works. This, he realized, was a -concrete example of her many virtues, and he reminded her hopefully that -the greatest of these is charity. Then he went off in his Ford car, and -Dorinda stood where he had left her and stared after him as if she were -rooted there in the damp periwinkle. - -"The wind is cutting. Come away," John Abner urged, taking her arm. -"Funerals are always depressing, but you did what you could." It was -true. She had done what she could, and she realized that this, also, -would not make any difference. - -She walked away very slowly because she found that her knees were stiff -when she attempted to move. It was while she was treading on the spongy -earth at the edge of the ploughed field that she saw life crumble like a -mountain of cinders and roll over her. She was suffocated, she was -buried alive beneath an emptiness, a negation of effort, beside which -the vital tragedy of her youth appeared almost happiness. Not pain, not -disappointment, but the futility of all things was crushing her spirit. -She knew now the passive despair of maturity which made her past -suffering seem enviable to her when she looked back on it after thirty -years. Youth can never know the worst, she understood, because the worst -that one can know is the end of expectancy. - -Smothered in this mountain of cinders, she walked to the old buggy and -stepped between the wheels to the front seat. A minute later they drove -past the barn where she would have killed Jason if her hand had not -wavered. Past the house where she had felt her heart crouching in animal -terror before the evil old man. Through the woods where the wet boughs -had stung her face. Rain. Rain. The sound of rain beating into her -memory. Rain on the shingled roof, pattering like the bare feet of -children. Rain on the hunched box-bush and the white turkeys. Rain on -the sandy road. Rain on the fork of the road, on the crushed leaves -smelling of autumn. Everything was before her then. There is no finality -when one is young. Though they had been unendurable while she had passed -through them, those years of her youth were edged now with a flame of -regret. She felt that she would give all the future if she could live -over the past again and live it differently. How small a thing her life -appeared when she looked back on it through the narrow vista of time! It -was too late now, she knew, for her youth was gone. Yet because it was -too late and her youth was gone, she felt that the only thing that made -life worth living was the love that she had never known and the -happiness that she had missed. - -When she reached the house she went to her room in silence, and sank on -a couch in front of the fire as if she were sinking out of existence. -Fluvanna, finding her there a little later, helped to undress her and -went to tell John Abner that she was ill enough to have the doctor -summoned. Hearing her from the hall, Dorinda did not take the trouble to -contradict. The doctor did not matter. Illness did not matter. Nothing -mattered but the things of which life had cheated her. - -Lying there in the shadowy firelight of the room, she heard the wind -wailing about the corners of the house and rustling in the old chimneys. -She saw the crooked shape of a bough etched on the window-panes, and she -listened for the soft thud of the branches beneath the sobbing violence -of the storm. Though the room was bright and warm, a chill was striking -through her flesh to the marrow of her bones. Shivering by the fire, she -drew the blankets close to her chin. - -The door opened and John Abner came in. "Can't you eat any supper, -Dorinda?" - -Behind him, in the glare of lamplight, she saw Fluvanna with a tray in -her hands. The blue and white china and the Rebekah-at-the-well tea-pot -lunged toward her. - -"No, I can't eat a mouthful." Then changing her mind, she sat up on the -couch and asked for tea. When they poured it out for her, she drank -three cups. - -"You got a chill, Dorinda. It was raw and wet out there." - -"Yes, I got a chill," she replied; but it was the chill of despair she -meant. - -"The wind is rising. We are going to have a bad storm. I suppose I'd -better go out again and take a look." - -After he had gone, she lay there still shivering beneath the blankets, -with her eyes on the low white ceiling, where the firelight made -shimmering patterns. Outside, the wind grew louder. She heard it now at -a distance, howling like a pack of wolves in the meadow. She heard it -whistling round the eaves of the house and whining at the sills of the -doors. All night the gusts shook the roof and the chimneys, and all -night she lay there staring up at the wavering shadows of the flames. - -And the youth that she had never had, the youth that might have been -hers and was not, came back, in delusive mockery, to torment her. It was -as if the sardonic powers of life assumed, before they vanished for -ever, all the enchanting shapes of her dreams. She remembered the past, -not as she had found it, but as she had once imagined that it might be. -She saw Jason, not as she had seen him yesterday or last year, but as he -was when she had first loved him. Though she tried to think of him as -broken, ruined, and repellent, through some perversity of recollection, -he returned to her in the radiance of that old summer. He returned to -her young, ardent, with the glow of happiness in his eyes and the smile -of his youth, that smile of mystery and pathos, on his lips. In that -hour of memory the work of thirty years was nothing. Time was nothing. -Reality was nothing. Success, achievement, victory over fate, all these -things were nothing beside that imperishable illusion. Love was the only -thing that made life desirable, and love was irrevocably lost to her. - -Toward morning she fell asleep, and when she awoke at dawn the wind had -lulled and a crystal light was flooding the room. Within herself also -the storm was over. Life had washed over her while she slept, and she -was caught again in the tide of material things. Rising from the couch, -she bathed and dressed and went out of doors into the clear flame of the -sunrise. - -Around her the earth smelt of dawn. After the stormy night the day was -breaking, crisp, fair, windless, with the frost of a mirage on the -distant horizon. The trees were bare overhead. Bronze, yellow, crimson -and wine-colour, the wet leaves strewed the flagged walk and the grass. -Against the eastern sky the boughs of the harp-shaped pine were -emblazoned in gold. - -Turning slowly, she moved down the walk to the gate, where, far up the -road, she could see the white fire of the life-everlasting. The storm -and the hag-ridden dreams of the night were over, and the land which she -had forgotten was waiting to take her back to its heart. Endurance. -Fortitude. The spirit of the land was flowing into her, and her own -spirit, strengthened and refreshed, was flowing out again toward life. -This was the permanent self, she knew. This was what remained to her -after the years had taken their bloom. She would find happiness again. -Not the happiness for which she had once longed, but the serenity of -mind which is above the conflict of frustrated desires. Old regrets -might awaken again, but as the years went on, they would come rarely and -they would grow weaker. "Put your heart in the land," old Matthew had -said to her. "The land is the only thing that will stay by you." Yes, -the land would stay by her. Her eyes wandered from far horizon to -horizon. Again she felt the quickening of that sympathy which was deeper -than all other emotions of her heart, which love had overcome only for -an hour and life had been powerless to conquer in the end, the living -communion with the earth under her feet. While the soil endured, while -the seasons bloomed and dropped, while the ancient, beneficent ritual of -sowing and reaping moved in the fields, she knew that she could never -despair of contentment. - -Strange, how her courage had revived with the sun! She saw now, as she -had seen in the night, that life is never what one dreamed, that it is -seldom what one desired; yet for the vital spirit and the eager mind, -the future will always hold the search for buried treasure and the -possibilities of high adventure. Though in a measure destiny had -defeated her, for it had given her none of the gifts she had asked of -it, still her failure was one of those defeats, she realized, which are -victories. At middle age, she faced the future without romantic glamour, -but she faced it with integrity of vision. The best of life, she told -herself with clear-eyed wisdom, was ahead of her. She saw other autumns -like this one, hazy, bountiful in harvests, mellowing through the blue -sheen of air into the red afterglow of winter; she saw the coral-tinted -buds of the spring opening into the profusion of summer; and she saw the -rim of the harvest moon shining orange-yellow through the boughs of the -harp-shaped pine. Though she remembered the time when loveliness was -like a sword in her heart, she knew now that where beauty exists the -understanding soul can never remain desolate. - -A call came from the house, and turning at the gate, she went back to -meet John Abner, who was limping toward her over the dead leaves in the -walk. His long black shadow ran ahead of him, and while he approached -her, he looked as if he were pursuing some transparent image of himself. - -"You are yourself again," he said, as he reached her. "Last night I was -disturbed about you. I was afraid you'd got a bad chill." - -"It went in the night. The storm wore on my nerves, but it was over by -morning." Then before he could reply, she added impulsively, "Bear with, -my fancies now, John Abner. When I am gone, both farms will be yours." - -"Mine?" John Abner laughed as he looked at her. "Why, you may marry -again. They are saying at Pedlar's Mill that you may have Bob Ellgood -for the lifting of a finger." - -Dorinda smiled, and her smile was pensive, ironic, and infinitely wise. -"Oh, I've finished with all that," she rejoined. "I am thankful to have -finished with all that." - - - - -THE END - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARREN GROUND *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Barren Ground</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 31, 2021 [eBook #66191]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARREN GROUND ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/barren_cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<h1>BARREN GROUND</h1> - - - - -<h4><i>by</i></h4> <h2>ELLEN GLASCOW</h2> - - - - -<h4>GROSSET & DUNLAP <i>Publishers</i></h4> - -<h5><i>by arrangement with Doubleday Page & Co.</i></h5> - - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<h4>CONTENTS</h4> - -<p class="nind"><a href="#chap01">Part First—Broomsedge</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#I">I</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#II">II</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#III">III</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#IV">IV</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#V">V</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#VI">VI</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#VII">VII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#VIII">VIII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#IX">IX</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#X">X</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XI">XI</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XII">XII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XIII">XIII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XIV">XIV</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XV">XV</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XVI">XVI</a><br /> -<br /> -<a href="#chap02">Part Second—Pine</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#I_I">I</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#II_I">II</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#III_I">III</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#IV_I">IV</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#V_I">V</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#VI_I">VI</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#VII_I">VII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#VIII_I">VIII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#IX_I">IX</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#X_I">X</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XI_I">XI</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XII_I">XII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XIII_I">XIII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XIV_I">XIV</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XV_I">XV</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XVI_I">XVI</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XVII_I">XVII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XVIII_I">XVIII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XIX_I">XIX</a><br /> -<br /> -<a href="#chap03">Part Third—Life-everlasting</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#I_II">I</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#II_II">II</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#III_II">III</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#IV_II">IV</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#V_II">V</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#VI_II">VI</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#VII_II">VII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#VIII_II">VIII</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#IX_II">IX</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#X_II">X</a><br /> -Chapter <a href="#XI_II">XI</a></p> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<h4><a id="chap01"></a></h4> - -<h4><i>PART FIRST</i> -<br /><br /> -BROOMSEDGE</h4> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<p> -"<i>A girl in an orange-colored shawl</i>. . . ." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>BARREN<br /> -GROUND</h4> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="I">I</a></h4> - -<p> -A girl in an orange-coloured shawl stood at the window of Pedlar's store -and looked, through the falling snow, at the deserted road. Though she -watched there without moving, her attitude, in its stillness, gave an -impression of arrested flight, as if she were running toward life. -</p> - -<p> -Bare, starved, desolate, the country closed in about her. The last train -of the day had gone by without stopping, and the station of Pedlar's -Mill was as lonely as the abandoned fields by the track. From the bleak -horizon, where the flatness created an illusion of immensity, the -broomsedge was spreading in a smothered fire over the melancholy brown -of the landscape. Under the falling snow, which melted as soon as it -touched the earth, the colour was veiled and dim; but when the sky -changed the broomsedge changed with it. On clear mornings the waste -places were cinnamon-red in the sunshine. Beneath scudding clouds the -plumes of the bent grasses faded to ivory. During the long spring rains, -a film of yellow-green stole over the burned ground. At autumn sunsets, -when the red light searched the country, the broomsedge caught fire from -the afterglow and blazed out in a splendour of colour. Then the meeting -of earth and sky dissolved in the flaming mist of the horizon. -</p> - -<p> -At these quiet seasons, the dwellers near Pedlar's Mill felt scarcely -more than a tremor on the surface of life. But on stormy days, when the -wind plunged like a hawk from the swollen clouds, there was a quivering -in the broomsedge, as if coveys of frightened partridges were flying -from the pursuer. Then the quivering would become a ripple and the -ripple would swell presently into rolling waves. The straw would darken -as the gust swooped down, and brighten as it sped on to the shelter of -scrub pine and sassafras bushes. And while the wind bewitched the -solitude, a vague restlessness would stir in the hearts of living things -on the farms, of men, women, and animals. "Broomsage ain't jest wild -stuff. It's a kind of fate," old Matthew Fairlamb used to say. -</p> - -<p> -Thirty years ago, modern methods of farming, even methods that were -modern in the benighted eighteen-nineties, had not penetrated to this -thinly settled part of Virginia. The soil, impoverished by the war and -the tenant system which followed the war, was still drained of fertility -for the sake of the poor crops it could yield. Spring after spring, the -cultivated ground appeared to shrink into the "old fields," where scrub -pine or oak succeeded broomsedge and sassafras as inevitably as autumn -slipped into winter. Now and then a new start would be made. Some -thrifty settler, a German Catholic, perhaps, who was trying his fortunes -in a staunch Protestant community, would buy a mortgaged farm for a -dollar an acre, and begin to experiment with suspicious, -strange-smelling fertilizers. For a season or two his patch of ground -would respond to the unusual treatment and grow green with promise. Then -the forlorn roads, deep in mud, and the surrounding air of failure, -which was as inescapable as a drought, combined with the cutworm, the -locust, and the tobacco-fly, against the human invader; and where the -brief harvest had been, the perpetual broomsedge would wave. -</p> - -<p> -The tenant farmers, who had flocked after the ruin of war as buzzards -after a carcass, had immediately picked the featureless landscape as -clean as a skeleton. When the swarming was over only three of the larger -farms at Pedlar's Mill remained undivided in the hands of their original -owners. Though Queen Elizabeth County had never been one of the -aristocratic regions of Virginia, it was settled by sturdy English -yeomen, with a thin but lively sprinkling of the persecuted Protestants -of other nations. Several of these superior pioneers brought blue blood -in their veins, as well as the vigorous fear of God in their hearts; but -the great number arrived, as they remained, "good people," a -comprehensive term, which implies, to Virginians, the exact opposite of -the phrase, "a good family." The good families of the state have -preserved, among other things, custom, history, tradition, romantic -fiction, and the Episcopal Church. The good people, according to the -records of clergymen, which are the only surviving records, have -preserved nothing except themselves. Ignored alike by history and -fiction, they have their inconspicuous place in the social strata midway -between the lower gentility and the upper class of "poor white," a -position which encourages the useful rather than the ornamental public -virtues. -</p> - -<p> -With the end of free labour and the beginning of the tenant system, -authority passed from the country to the towns. The old men stayed by -the farms, and their daughters withered dutifully beside them; but the -sons of the good people drifted away to the city, where they assumed -control of democracy as well as of the political machine which has made -democracy safe for politics. An era changed, not rudely, but as eras do -change so often, uncomfortably. Power, defying Jeffersonian theory and -adopting Jeffersonian policy, stole again from the few to the many. For -the good people, conforming to the logic of history, proceeded -immediately to enact their preferences, prejudices, habits, and -inhibitions into the laws of the state. -</p> - -<p> -At Pedlar's Mill, where the old wooden mill, built a hundred years -before by the first miller Pedlar, was now a picturesque ruin, a few -stalwart farmers of Scotch-Irish descent rose above the improvident -crowd of white and black tenants, like native pines above the shallow -wash of the broomsedge. These surviving landowners were obscure branches -of the great Scotch-Irish families of the upper Valley of Virginia. -Detached from the parent tree and driven by chance winds out of the -highlands, they had rooted afresh in the warmer soil of the low country, -where they had conquered the land not by force, but by virtue of the -emphatic argument that lies in fortitude. -</p> - -<p> -James Ellgood, whose mother was a McNab, owned Green Acres, the -flourishing stock farm on the other side of the railroad. It is true -that an uncle in the far West had left him a small fortune, and for five -years he had put more into the soil than he had got out of it. But in -the end Green Acres had repaid him many times, which proved, as old -Matthew, who was a bit of a philosopher, pointed out, that "it wa'n't -the land that was wrong, but the way you had treated it." -</p> - -<p> -On the near side of the station, secluded behind a barricade of what -people called the back roads, which were strangled in mud from November -to June, stood Five Oaks, the ruined farm of the Greylocks. Though the -place was still held insecurely in the loose clutches of old Doctor -Greylock, who resembled an inebriated Covenanter, the abandoned acres -were rapidly growing up in sumach, sassafras, and fife-everlasting. The -doctor had been a man of parts and rural prominence in his day; but the -land and scarcity of labour had worn on his nerves, and he was now -slowly drinking himself to death, attended, beyond the social -shadow-line, by an anonymous brood of mulatto offspring. -</p> - -<p> -Adjoining Five Oaks, and running slightly in front of it on one side, -with a long whitewashed house situated a stone's throw from the main -road, there was Old Farm, which belonged to Joshua Oakley and Eudora -Abernethy, his wife. The Oakleys, as the saying ran in the -neighbourhood, were "land poor." They owned a thousand acres of scrub -pine, scrub oak, and broomsedge, where a single cultivated corner was -like a solitary island in some chaotic sea. -</p> - -<p> -Early in the nineteenth century, John Calvin Abernethy, a retired -missionary from India and Ceylon, came from the upper Valley into the -region of the Shenandoah, with a neat Scotch-Irish inheritance in his -pocket. His reputation, as historians remark, had preceded him; and his -subsequent career proved that he was not only an eloquent preacher of -the Gospel, but a true explorer of the spirit as well, the last of those -great Presbyterian romantics whose faith ventured on perilous -metaphysical seas in the ark of the Solemn League and Covenant. Since -there was no canny bargain to be driven, at the moment, in the -Shenandoah Valley, John Abernethy regretfully left the highlands for the -flat country, where he picked up presently, at a Dutch auction, the -thousand acres of land and fifty slaves which had belonged to one -William Golden Penner. One may charitably infer that the fifty slaves -constituted a nice point in theology; but with ingenious Presbyterian -logic and circumscribed Presbyterian imagination, John Calvin reconciled -divine grace with a peculiar institution. The fifty slaves he sold -farther south, and the price of black flesh he devoted to the redemption -of black souls in the Congo. Dramatic, yet not altogether lacking in -delicate irony. For he had observed in foreign fields that divine grace -has strange gestures; and life, as even Presbyterians know, is without -logic. To a thrifty theologian, bent on redemption with economy, there -are few points of ethics too fine-spun for splitting. From which it must -not be concluded that the first Virginian Abernethy was unworthy of his -high calling. He was merely, like the rest of us, whether theologians or -laymen, seasoned with the favourite fruit of his age. Though he might -occasionally seek a compromise in simple matters of conduct, realizing -the fall of man and the infirmity of human nature, where matters of -doctrine were concerned his conscience was inflexible. His piety, -running in a narrow groove, was deep and genuine; and he possessed -sufficient integrity, firmness, and frugality to protect his descendants -from decay for at least three generations. A few years after he had -settled near Pedlar's Mill, a small Presbyterian church, built of brick -and whitewashed within and without, rose on the far side of the -railroad, where it stands now at the gate of Green Acres. Conversion, -which had begun as a vocation with John Calvin Abernethy, became a -habit; and with the gradual running to seed of the Methodists in the -community, the Presbyterian faith sprang up and blossomed like a Scotch -thistle in barren ground. -</p> - -<p> -In his long white house, encircled by the few cultivated fields in the -midst of his still-virgin acres, John Calvin Abernethy lived with -learning, prudence, and piety until he was not far from a hundred. He -had but one son, for unlike the Scotch-Irish of the Valley, his race did -not multiply. The son died in middle age, struck down by an oak he was -felling, and his only child, a daughter, was reared patiently but -sternly by her grandfather. When, in after years, this granddaughter, -whose name was Eudora, fell a victim of one of those natural instincts -which Presbyterian theology has damned but never wholly exterminated, -and married a member of the "poor white" class, who had nothing more to -recommend him than the eyes of a dumb poet and the head of a youthful -John the Baptist, old Abernethy blessed the marriage and avoided, as -far as possible, the connection. Knowing the aptitude of the poor for -futility, he employed his remaining years on earth in accumulating a -comfortable inheritance for his great-grandchildren. When he was dead, -his granddaughter's husband, young Joshua Oakley, worked hard, after the -manner of his class, to lose everything that was left. He was a good man -and a tireless labourer; but that destiny which dogs the footsteps of -ineffectual spirits pursued him from the hour of his birth. His wife, -Eudora, who resembled her grandfather, recovered promptly from the -natural instinct, and revealed shortly afterwards signs of suppressed -religious mania. -</p> - -<p> -Of this union of the positive and the negative virtues, three children -survived. Two of these were sons, Josiah and Rufus; the other was a -daughter, Dorinda, the girl who, having thrown the orange shawl over her -head, had come out of the store, and stood now with the snow in her face -and her eager gaze on the road. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="II">II</a></h4> - -<p> -She was a tall girl, not beautiful, scarcely pretty even according to -the waxen type of the 'nineties; but there was a glow of expression, an -April charm, in her face. Her eyes were her one memorable feature. -Large, deep, radiant, they shone beneath her black lashes with a clear -burning colour, as blue as the spring sky after rain. Above them her -jutting eyebrows, very straight and thick, gave a brooding sombreness to -her forehead, where her abundant hair was brushed back in a single dark -wave. In repose her features were too stern, too decisive. Her nose, -powdered with golden freckles, was a trifle square at the nostrils; her -mouth, with its ripe, bee-stung lower lip, was wide and generous; the -pointed curve of her chin revealed, perhaps, too much determination in -its outward thrust. But the rich dark red in her cheeks lent vividness -to her face, and when she smiled her eyes and mouth lighted up as if a -lamp shone within. Against the sordid background of the store, her head -in the brilliant shawl was like some exotic flower. -</p> - -<p> -Straight, tranquil, thin and fugitive as mist, the snow was falling. -Though the transparent flakes vanished as soon as they reached the -earth, they diffused in their steady flight an impression of evanescence -and unreality. Through this shifting medium the familiar scene appeared -as insubstantial as a pattern of frost on the grass. It was as if the -secret spirit of the land had traced an image on the flat surface, -glimmering, remote, unapproachable, like the expression of an animal -that man has forced into sullen submission. There were hours at -twilight, or beneath the shredded clouds of the sunrise, when the winter -landscape reminded Dorinda of the look in the faces of overworked farm -horses. At such moments she would find herself asking, with the -intellectual thrill of the heretic, "I wonder if everything has a soul?" -The country had been like this, she knew, long before she was born. It -would be like this, she sometimes thought, after she and all those who -were living with her were dead. For the one thing that seemed to her -immutable and everlasting was the poverty of the soil. -</p> - -<p> -Without knowing that she looked at it, her gaze rested on the bare -station; on the crude frame buildings, like houses that children make -out of blocks; on the gleaming track which ran north and south; on the -old freight car, which was the home of Butcher, the lame negro who -pumped water into the engines; on the litter of chips and shavings and -dried tobacco, stems which strewed the ground between the telegraph -poles and the hitching-rail by the store. Farther away, in the direction -of Whippernock River, she could see the vague shape of the ruined mill, -and beyond this, on the other side of the track, the sunken road winding -in scallops through interminable acres of broomsedge. Though the snow -had fallen continuously since noon, the air was not cold, and the white -glaze on the earth was scarcely heavier than hoar-frost. -</p> - -<p> -For almost a year now, ever since Mrs. Pedlar had fallen ill of -consumption, and Dorinda had taken her place in the store, the girl had -listened eagerly for the first rumble of the approaching trains. Until -to-day the passing trains had been a part of that expected miracle, the -something different in the future, to which she looked ahead over the -tedious stretch of the present. There was glamour for her in the -receding smoke. There was adventure in the silver-blue of the distance. -The glimpse of a rapidly disappearing face; a glance from strange eyes -that she remembered; the shadowy outline of a gesture; these tenuous -impressions ran like vivid threads in her memory. Her nature, starved -for emotional realities, and nourished on the gossamer substance of -literature, found its only escape in the fabrication of dreams. Though -she had never defined the sensation in words, there were moments when it -seemed to her that her inner life was merely a hidden field in the -landscape, neglected, monotonous, abandoned to solitude, and yet with a -smothered fire, like the wild grass, running through it. At twenty, her -imagination was enkindled by the ardour that makes a woman fall in love -with a religion or an idea. Some day, so ran the bright thread of her -dream, the moving train would stop, and the eyes that had flashed into -hers and passed by would look at her again. Then the stranger who was -not a stranger would say, "I knew your face among a thousand, and I came -back to find you." And the train would rush on with them into the -something different beyond the misty edge of the horizon. Adventure, -happiness, even unhappiness, if it were only different! -</p> - -<p> -That was yesterday. To-day the miracle had occurred, and the whole of -life had blossomed out like a flower in the sun. She had found romance, -not in imagination, not in the pallid fiction crushed among the tomes in -her great-grandfather's library, but driving on one of the muddy roads -through the broomsedge. To the casual observer there was merely a -personable young man, the son of old Doctor Greylock, making the -scattered rural calls of a profession which his father was too drunk to -pursue. A pleasant young man, intelligent, amiable, still wearing with a -difference the thin veneer of the city. Though he was, perhaps, a trifle -too eager to please, this was a commendable fault, and readily -overlooked in an irreproachable son who had relinquished his ambition in -order to remain with his undeserving old father. Filial devotion was -both esteemed and practised in that pre-Freudian age, before -self-sacrifice had been dethroned from its precarious seat among the -virtues; and to give up one's career for a few months, at most for a -possible year, appeared dutiful rather than dangerous to a generation -that knew not psychoanalysis. -</p> - -<p> -And he was not only an admirable young man, he was, what admirable young -men frequently are not, attractive as well. His dark red hair, burnished -to a copper glow, grew in a natural wave; his sparkling eyes were -brown-black like chinkapins in the autumn; his skin was tanned and -slightly freckled, with a healthy glow under the surface; his short -moustache, a shade lighter than his hair, lent mystery to a charming, if -serious, mouth, and his smile, indiscriminating in its friendliness, was -wholly delightful. To Dorinda, meeting him in the early morning as she -was walking the two miles from Old Farm to the store, it was as if an -April flush had passed over the waste places. She recognized love with -the infallible certainty of intuition. It was happiness, and yet in some -strange way it was shot through with a burning sensation which was less -pleasure than pain. Though her perceptions were more vivid than they had -ever been, there was an unreality about her surroundings, as if she were -walking in some delicious trance. Beautiful as it was, it seemed to be -vanishing, like a beam of light, in the very moment when she felt it -flooding her heart. Yet this sense of unreality, of elusiveness, made it -more precious. Watching the empty roads, through the veil of snow, she -asked herself every minute, "Will he come this way again? Shall I wait -for him, or shall I let him pass me in the road? Suppose he goes back -another way! Suppose he has forgotten——" -</p> - -<p> -The door behind her opened, and old Matthew Fairlamb came hobbling out -with the help of his stout hickory stick. Though he was approaching -ninety, he was still vigorous, with a projecting thatch of hair as -colourless as straw and the aquiline profile of a Roman senator. In his -youth, and indeed until his old age, when his son William succeeded him, -he had been the best carpenter at Pedlar's Mill. His eyes were bleared -now, and his gums toothless; but he had never lost his shrewd -Scotch-Irish understanding or his sense of humour, which broke out in -flashes as swift and darting as dry weather lightning. -</p> - -<p> -"You'd better be startin' home, Dorinda," he remarked as he passed her. -"The snow means to keep up, and yo' Ma will begin to worry about you." -Turning, he peered at her with his cackling laugh. "Yo' face looks like -a May mornin' to my old eyes," he added. "I ain't seen you about here -fur a couple of weeks." -</p> - -<p> -With her gaze still on the distance, Dorinda answered impatiently, "No, -Ma had one of her bad spells, and I had to help out at home. But no -matter how sick she is she never gives up, and she never worries about -anything smaller than eternal damnation." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, she's a pious one," old Matthew conceded. "It's faith, I reckon, -that's kept her goin', sence the Lord must know He ain't made it none -too easy for her." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, it's hard work that she lives on," replied Dorinda. "She says if -she were to stop working, she'd drop down dead like a horse that is -winded. She never stops, not even on Sundays, except when she is in -church." -</p> - -<p> -Old Matthew's hilarity dwindled into a sigh. "Well, thar ain't much rest -to be got out of that," he rejoined sympathetically. "I ain't contendin' -against the doctrine of eternal damnation," he hastened to explain, "but -as long as yo' Ma is obleeged to work so hard, 'tis a pity she ain't got -a mo' restful belief." Then, as he observed her intent gaze, he inquired -suspiciously, "You don't see nary a turnout on the road, do you?" -</p> - -<p> -The dark red in the girl's cheeks brightened to carnation. "Why, of -course not. I was just watching the snow." -</p> - -<p> -But his curiosity, once aroused, was as insatiable as avarice. "I don't -reckon you've seen whether young Doctor Greylock has gone by or not?" -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head, still blushing. "No, I haven't seen him. Is anybody -sick at your place?" -</p> - -<p> -"It ain't that," returned the old man. "I was just thinkin' he might -give me a lift on the way. It ain't more'n half a mile to my place, but -half a mile looks different to twenty and to eighty-odd years. He's a -spry young chap, and would make a good match for you, Dorinda," he -concluded, in merciless accents. -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda's head was turned away, but her voice sounded smothered. "You -needn't worry about that." (Why did old age make people so hateful?) "I -haven't seen him but once since he came home." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, he'll look long befo' he finds a likelier gal than you. I ain't -seen him more than a few times myself; but in these parts, whar young -men are as skeerce as wild turkeys, he won't have to go beggin'. Geneva -Ellgood would take him in a minute, I reckon, an' her Pa is rich enough -to buy her a beau in the city, if she wants one. He! He!" His malicious -cackle choked him. "They do say that young Jason was sweet on her in New -York last summer," he concluded when he had recovered. -</p> - -<p> -For the first time Dorinda turned her head and looked in his face. "If -everybody believed your gossip, Mr. Fairlamb, nobody at Pedlar's Mill -would be speaking to anybody else." -</p> - -<p> -Old Matthew's mouth closed like a nut-cracker; but she saw from the -twinkle in his bleared eyes that he had construed her reprimand into a -compliment. "Thar's some of 'em that wouldn't lose much by that," he -returned, after a pause. "But to come back to young Jason, he's got a -job ahead of him if he's goin' to try farmin' at Five Oaks, an' he'll -need either a pile of money or a hard-workin' wife." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, he doesn't mean to stay here. As soon as his father dies, he will -go back to New York." -</p> - -<p> -The detestable cackle broke out again. "The old man ain't dead yit. I've -known some hard drinkers to have long lives, an' thar ain't nothin' more -wearin' on the young than settin' down an' waitin' fur old folks to die. -Young Jason is a pleasant-mannered boy, though he looks a bit too soft -to stand the hard wear of these here roads. I ain't got nothin' to say -aginst him, but if he'd listen to the warnin' of eighty-odd years, he'd -git away before the broomsage ketches him. Thar's one thing sartain -sure, you've got to conquer the land in the beginning, or it'll conquer -you before you're through with it." -</p> - -<p> -It was all true. She had heard it before, and yet, though she knew it -was true, she refused to believe it. Whether it was true or not, she -told herself passionately, it had no connection with Jason Greylock. The -bright vision she had seen in the road that morning flickered and died -against the sombre monochrome of the landscape. -</p> - -<p> -"I must go in," she said, turning away. "I haven't time to stand -talking." Old Matthew would never stop, she knew, of his own accord. -When his cackle rose into a laugh the sound reminded her of the distant -<i>who</i>—<i>who</i>—<i>whoee</i> of an owl. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll be gittin' along too," replied the old man. "My eyes ain't -all they used to be, and my legs ain't fur behind 'em. Remember me to -yo' Ma, honey, and tell her I'll be lookin' over jest as soon as the mud -holes dry up." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I'll tell her," answered the girl more gently. Old Matthew had -known her great-grandfather; he had added the wings to the house at Old -Farm and built the Presbyterian church on the other side of the track. -In the prime of his life, forty years ago, he had been the last man at -Pedlar's Mill to see Gordon Kane, her mother's missionary lover, who had -died of fever in the Congo. It was old Matthew, Dorinda had heard, who -had broken the news of Kane's death to the weeping Eudora, while she -held her wedding dress in her hands. Disagreeable as he had become, it -was impossible for the girl to forget that his long life was bound up -with three generations of her family. -</p> - -<p> -When she entered the store, she felt for a moment that she should -suffocate in the heated air from the wood stove at the far end. The -stuffy smell, a mingling of turpentine, varnish, bacon, coffee, and -kerosene oil, was so different from the crystal breath of the falling -snow that it rushed over her like warm ashes, smothering, enveloping. -Yet there was nothing strange to her in the scene or the atmosphere. She -was accustomed to the close, dry heat and to the heavy odours of a place -where everything that one could not raise on a farm was kept and sold. -For eleven months she had worked here side by side with Nathan Pedlar, -and she was familiar with the usual stock-in-trade of a country store. -In a minute she could put her hand on any object from a ploughshare to -a darning needle. -</p> - -<p> -"You'd better be going home early," said Nathan Pedlar, looking round -from the shelf he was putting in order. "The snow may get heavier toward -sunset." -</p> - -<p> -He was a tall, lank, scraggy man, with a face that reminded Dorinda of a -clown that she had once seen in a circus. Only the clown's nose was -large and red, and Nathan's looked as if it had been mashed in by a -blow. Aunt Mehitable Green, the coloured midwife, insisted that his -features had been born like other children's, but that his mother had -rolled on him in her sleep when he was a baby, and had flattened his -nose until it would never grow straight again. Though he possessed a -reserve of prodigious strength, he failed to be impressive even as an -example of muscular development. Dorinda had worked with him every day -for eleven months, and yet she found that he had made as little -impression upon her as a pine tree by the roadside. Looking at him, she -saw clearly his gaunt round shoulders beneath the frayed alpaca coat, -his hair and eyebrows and short moustache, all the colour of dingy -rabbit fur, and his small grey eyes with blinking lids; but the moment -after he had passed out of her sight, the memory of him would become as -fluid as water and trickle out of her mind. A kind but absurd man, this -was the way she thought of him, honest, plodding, unassuming, a man -whose "word was as good as his bond," but whose personality was -negligible. The truth about him, though Dorinda never suspected it, was -that he had come into the world a quarter of a century too soon. He was -so far in advance of his age that his position inspired ridicule instead -of respect in his generation. When his lagging age had caught up with -Nathan Pedlar, it had forgotten what its prophet had prophesied. Though -he made a comfortable living out of the store, and had put by enough to -enable him to face old age with equanimity, he was by nature a farmer, -and his little farm near the mill yielded a good harvest. Unlike most -Southern farmers, he was not afraid of a theory, and he was beginning to -realize the value of rotation in crops at a period when a cornfield at -Pedlar's Mill was as permanent as a graveyard. Already he was -experimenting with alfalfa, though even the prosperous James Ellgood -made fun of "the weed with the highfalutin' name from the Middle West." -For it was a part of Nathan's perverse destiny that people asked his -advice with recklessness and accepted it with deliberation. -</p> - -<p> -"I am going as soon as I speak to Rose Emily," Dorinda replied. "Did the -doctor say she was better this morning?" -</p> - -<p> -Nathan's hands, which were fumbling among the boxes on the long shelf, -became suddenly still. -</p> - -<p> -"No, he didn't say so," he answered, without turning. Something in his -tone made Dorinda catch her breath sharply. "He didn't say she was -worse, did he?" -</p> - -<p> -At this Nathan pushed the boxes away and leaned over the counter to meet -her eyes. His face was bleak with despair, and Dorinda's heart was wrung -as she looked at him. She had often wondered how Rose Emily could have -married him. Poverty would have been happiness, she felt, compared with -so prosaic a marriage; yet she knew that, according to the standards of -Pedlar's Mill, Nathan was an exceptional husband. -</p> - -<p> -"Perhaps she'll pick up when the spring comes," she added when he did -not reply. -</p> - -<p> -Nathan shook his head and swallowed as if a pebble had lodged in his -throat. "That's what I'm hoping," he answered. "If she can just get on -her feet again. There's nothing this side of heaven I wouldn't do to -make her well." -</p> - -<p> -For an instant she was afraid he would break down; but while she -wondered what on earth she could say to comfort him, he turned back to -the boxes. "I must get this place tidied up before night," he said in -his usual tone, with the flat, dry cough which had become chronic. -</p> - -<p> -While she watched him, Dorinda threw the shawl back on one arm and -revealed her fine dark head. The heavy eyebrows and the clear stern line -of her features stood out as if an edge of light had fallen over them, -leaving the rest of her face in shadow. She was wearing an old tan -ulster, faded and patched in places, and beneath the hem her brown -calico dress and mud-stained country shoes were visible. Even at -Pedlar's Mill the changing fashions were followed respectfully, if -tardily, and in the middle 'nineties women walked the muddy roads in -skirts which either brushed the ground or were held up on one side. But -shabbiness and a deplorable fashion could not conceal the slim, flowing -lines of her figure, with its gallant and spirited carriage. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm going to say a word or two to Rose Emily before I start," she said -in a cheerful voice. "I don't mind being late." Walking to the end of -the store, beyond the wood stove, which felt like a furnace, she pushed -back a curtain of purple calico, and turned the knob of a door. Inside -the room a woman was sitting up in bed, crocheting a baby's sacque of -pink wool. -</p> - -<p> -"I thought you'd gone, Dorinda," she said, looking up. "The snow is -getting thicker." -</p> - -<p> -Propped up among her pillows, winding the pink wool through her fragile -hands, Mrs. Pedlar faced death with the courage of a heroic illusion. -Before her marriage, as Rose Emily Milford, she had taught school in the -little schoolhouse near Pedlar's Mill, and Dorinda had been her -favourite pupil. She was a small, intelligent-looking woman, pitiably -thin, with prominent grey eyes, hair of a peculiar shade of wheaten red, -and a brilliant flush on her high cheek bones. -</p> - -<p> -Ball after ball of pink wool unwound on the patchwork quilt, and was -crocheted into babies' sacques which she sold in the city; but -crocheting, as she sometimes said, "did not take your mind off things as -well as moving about," and it seemed to her that only since she had been -ill had she begun to learn anything about life. The nearer she came to -death, the more, by some perversity of nature, did she enjoy living. If -death ever entered her mind, it was as an abstraction, like the doctrine -of salvation by faith, never as a reality. Every afternoon she said, "If -it is fine, I shall get up to-morrow." Every morning she sighed happily, -"I think I'll wait till the evening." -</p> - -<p> -The room was a small one, divided off from the brick store, which -adjoined the new frame house Nathan had built for his bride; and there -was a confusion of colour, for Mrs. Pedlar's surroundings reflected the -feverish optimism of her philosophy. The rag carpet and the patchwork -quilt were as gay as an autumn flower-bed; the kerosene lamp wore a -ballet skirt of crimson crape paper; earthen pots of begonias and -geraniums filled the green wooden stands at the windows. On the -hearthrug, before the open fire, three small children were playing with -paper dolls, while the fourth, a baby of nine months, lay fast asleep in -his crib, with the nipple of a bottle still held tight in his mouth. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm glad I chose that orange colour for your shawl," said Mrs. Pedlar, -in the excited manner that had come upon her with her rising -temperature. "It goes so well with your black hair. You ought to be glad -you're a big woman," she continued thoughtfully. "Somehow life seems to -go easier with big women. I asked young Doctor Greylock if that wasn't -true, and he said small women seemed to think so." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda laughed, and her laughter contained a thrill of joy. Some inward -happiness had bubbled up and overflowed into her voice, her look, and -her shy dreaming movements. There was sweetness for her in hearing of -Jason Greylock; there was ecstasy in the thought that she might meet him -again in the road. Yet the sweetness and the ecstasy were thin and far -off, like music that comes from a distance. It seemed incredible that -anything so wonderful should have happened at Pedlar's Mill. -</p> - -<p> -In front of the fire, the three children (Minnie May, the eldest, was -only ten) were busy with their paper dolls. They had made a doll's house -out of a cracker box, with the frayed corners of the rug for a garden. -"Now Mrs. Brown has lost her little girl, and she is going to Mrs. -Smith's to look for her," Minnie May was saying impressively. -</p> - -<p> -"You've got your hands full with those children," remarked Dorinda -because she could think of nothing else that sounded natural. Her mind -was not on the children; it was miles away in an enclosed garden of -wonder and delight; but some casual part of her was still occupying her -familiar place and living her old meaningless life. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, but they're good children. They can always amuse themselves. -Minnie May cut those paper dolls out of an old fashion book, and the -younger children are all crazy about them." -</p> - -<p> -"Minnie May is a great help to you." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, she takes after her father. Nathan is the best man that ever -lived. He never thinks of himself a minute." -</p> - -<p> -"He gave me some sugar for Ma," Dorinda sighed as she answered, for the -thought had stabbed through her like a knife that Rose Emily was dying. -Here we are talking about sugar and paper dolls when she won't live -through the summer. -</p> - -<p> -"There's a pat of butter too," said Rose Emily. "I told Minnie May to -put it in your basket. I don't see how your mother manages without -butter." -</p> - -<p> -"We've had to do without it since our cow died last fall. I'm saving up, -after the taxes are paid, to buy one in the spring." Again the thought -stabbed her. "As if cows made any difference when she has only a few -months to live!" Were the trivial things, after all, the important ones? -</p> - -<p> -"And Mrs. Brown found that her little girl had been run over and killed -in the middle of the road," Minnie May whispered. "So she decided that -all she could do for her was to have a handsome funeral and spend the -ten dollars she'd saved from her chicken money. That's the graveyard, -Bud, down there by the hole in the rug. Lena, stop twistin', or you'll -pull it to pieces." -</p> - -<p> -"Nathan says you can get a good cow from old Doctor Greylock for thirty -dollars," said Mrs. Pedlar. "He's got one, that Blossom of his, that he -wants to sell." Then an idea occurred to her and she concluded -doubtfully, "Of course, everything may be changed now that Jason has -come back." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, of course, everything may be changed," repeated Dorinda, and the -words, though they were merely an echo, filled her with happiness. Life -was burning within her. Even the thought of death, even the knowledge -that her friend would not live through the summer, passed like a shadow -over the flame that consumed her. Everything was a shadow except the -luminous stillness, which was so much deeper than stillness, within her -heart. -</p> - -<p> -"He is just the same pleasant-mannered boy he used to be when I taught -him," resumed Mrs. Pedlar. "You remember how mischievous he was at -school." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda nodded. "I was only there a year with him before he went away." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I'd forgotten. I asked him to-day if he remembered you, and he -said he knew you as soon as he saw you in the road this morning." She -paused for an instant while a vision flickered in her eyes. "It would be -nice if he'd take a fancy to you, Dorinda, and I'm sure you're handsome -enough, with your blue eyes and your high colour, for anybody to fall in -love with, and you're better educated, too, than most city girls, with -all the books you've read. I sent Minnie May to find you while he was -here, but she brought Nathan instead; and the doctor had to hurry off to -old Mrs. Flower, who is dying." -</p> - -<p> -So they were all pushing them together! It was no wonder, thought -Dorinda, since, as old Matthew said, young men were as scarce as wild -turkeys, and everybody wanted to marry off everybody else. Almost -unconsciously, the power of attraction was increased by an irresistible -force. Since every one, even the intelligent Rose Emily, thought it so -suitable! -</p> - -<p> -"I've seen him only once since he came home," said the girl. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I told him about you, and he was very much interested. I believe -he's a good young man, and he seems so friendly and kindhearted. He -asked after all the coloured people he used to know, and he was so -pleased to hear how well they are getting on. His father couldn't -remember anything about anybody, he told me. I reckon the truth is that -the old doctor is befuddled with drink all the time." She laughed -softly. "Jason has picked up a lot of newfangled ideas," she added. "He -even called broomsedge 'bromegrass' till he found that nobody knew what -he was talking about." -</p> - -<p> -"Is he going to stay on?" -</p> - -<p> -"Just for a little while, he says, until he can get the place off his -hands. What he meant but didn't like to say, I suppose, was that he -would stay as long as his father lives. The old man has got Bright's -disease, you know, and he's already had two strokes of paralysis. The -doctor up at the Courthouse says it can't be longer than six months, or -a year at the most." -</p> - -<p> -Six months or a year! Well, anything might happen, anything did happen -in six months or a year! -</p> - -<p> -On the floor the children were busily pretending that the oblong hole in -the rug was a grave. "Mrs. Brown bought a crape veil that came all the -way down to the bottom of her skirt," Minnie May was whispering, alert -and animated. "That paper doll in the veil is Mrs. Brown on the way to -the funeral." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'd better be going," Dorinda said, throwing the orange shawl -over her head, while she thought, "I ought to have worn my hat, only the -snow would have ruined my Sunday hat, and the other isn't fit to be -seen." -</p> - -<p> -Picking up the basket by the door, she looked over her shoulder at Rose -Emily. "If the snow isn't too heavy, I'll be over early to-morrow, and -help you with the children. I hope you'll feel better." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I'm planning to get up in the morning," responded Rose Emily in her -eager voice, smiling happily over the pink wool. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="III">III</a></h4> - -<p> -Outside, there was a little yard enclosed in white palings to which -farmers tied their horses when the hitching-rail was crowded. Everything -was bare now under the thin coating of snow, and the dried stalks of -summer flowers were protruding forlornly from heaps of straw. Beyond the -small white gate the Old Stage Road, as it was still called, ran past -the cleared ground by the station and dipped into the band of pine woods -beyond the Haney place, which had been divided and let "on shares" to -negro tenants. Within the shadow of the pines, the character of the soil -changed from the red clay on the hills to a sandy loam strewn with pine -needles. -</p> - -<p> -As Dorinda walked on rapidly, the shawl she wore made a floating orange -cloud against the dim background of earth and sky. The snow was falling -in larger flakes, like a multitude of frozen moths, and beneath the -fluttering white wings the country appeared obscure, solitary, vaguely -menacing. Though the road was quite deserted, except for the scarecrow -figure of Black Tom, the county idiot, who passed her on his way to beg -supper and a night's lodging at the station, the girl was not afraid of -the loneliness. She had two miles to walk, and twilight was already -approaching; but she knew every turn of the road, and she could, as she -sometimes said to herself, "feel her way in the dark of the moon." -</p> - -<p> -To-night, even if there had been wild beasts in the pines, she would not -have turned back. A winged joy had risen out of the encompassing poverty -and desolation. Though the world was colourless around her, there was a -clear golden light in her mind; and through this light her thoughts were -flying like swallows in the afterglow. Her old dreams had come back -again, but they were different now, since they were infused with the -warm blood of reality. She had found, in her mother's religious -phraseology, a "kingdom of the spirit" to which she could retreat. She -had only to close her eyes and yield herself to this clear golden light -of sensation. She had only to murmur, "I wonder if I shall meet him -again," and immediately the falling snow, the neglected fields, and the -dark pines melted away. She was caught up, she was possessed, by that -flying rapture which was like the swiftness of birds. With a phrase, -with a thought, or by simply emptying her mind of impressions, she could -bring back all the piercing sweetness of surrender. -</p> - -<p> -And she had discovered the miracle for herself! No one, not even Rose -Emily, had ever hinted to her of this secret ecstasy at the heart of -experience. All around her people were pretending that insignificant -things were the only important things. The eternal gestures of milking -and cooking, of sowing and reaping! Existence, as far as she could see, -was composed of these immemorial habits. Her mother, her father, her -brother, Nathan and Rose Emily, all these persons whom she saw daily -were engaged in this strange conspiracy of dissimulation. Not one of -them had ever betrayed to her this hidden knowledge of life. -</p> - -<p> -Beyond the old Haney place and the stretch of pines there were the -pastures of Honeycomb Farm, where three old maids, Miss Texanna Snead, -the postmistress, and her sisters Seena and Tabitha, who made dresses, -lived on the ragged remnant of once fertile acres. Recently the younger -brother William had returned from the West with a little property, and -though the fortunes of the sisters were by no means affluent, the fields -by the roadside were beginning to look less forlorn. A few bedraggled -sheep, huddled together beyond the "worm" fence, stared at her through -the hurrying snowflakes. Then, springing to their awkward legs, they -wavered uncertainly for a minute, and at last scampered off, bleating -foolishly. An old horse rested his head on the rails and gazed -meditatively after her as she went by, and across the road several cows -filed slowly on their way from the pasture to the cow-barn. -</p> - -<p> -"That's a nice cow, that red one," thought Dorinda. "I wish she belonged -to us," and then, with the inconsequence of emotion, "if I meet him, he -will ask if he may drive me home." -</p> - -<p> -There was the steady <i>clop-clop</i> of a horse's hoofs, and the rapid -turning of wheels in the road behind her. Not for the world would she have -slackened her pace or glanced over her shoulder, though her heart -fluttered in her throat and she felt that she was choking. -</p> - -<p> -She longed with all her soul to stop and look back; she knew, through -some magnetic current, that he was pursuing her, that in a minute or two -he would overtake her; yet she kept on rapidly, driven by a blind -impulse which was superior to her will. She was facing the moment, which -comes to all women in love, when life, overflowing the artificial -boundaries of reason, yields itself to the primitive direction of -instinct. -</p> - -<p> -The wheels were grinding on a rocky place in the road. Though she -hurried on, the beating of her heart was so loud in her ears that it -filled the universe. -</p> - -<p> -"I am going your way," he said, just as she had imagined he would. -"Won't you let me drive you home?" -</p> - -<p> -She stopped and turned, while all the glimmering light of the snow -gathered in her orange shawl and deepened its hue. Around them the steep -horizon seemed to draw closer. -</p> - -<p> -"I live at Old Farm," she answered. -</p> - -<p> -He laughed, and the sound quickened her pulses. She had felt this way in -church sometimes when they sang the hymns she liked best, "Jesus, Lover -of My Soul" or "Nearer, My God, to Thee." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I know you live at Old Farm. You are Dorinda Oakley. Did you think -I'd forgotten you?" -</p> - -<p> -For an instant a divine dizziness possessed her. Without looking at him, -she saw his eyes, black in the pallid snowflakes, his red hair, just the -colour of the clay in the road, his charming boyish smile, so kind, so -eager, so incredibly pathetic when she remembered it afterwards. She saw -these disturbing details with the sense of familiarity which events -borrow from the dream they repeat. -</p> - -<p> -"I can't get out," he said, "because the mare is hungry and wants to go -on. But you might get in." -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head, and just as in every imaginary encounter with him, -she could think of nothing to reply. Though her mind worked clearly -enough at other times, she stood now in a trance between the rail fence, -where the old horse was still watching her, and the wheel ruts in the -road. By some accident, for which nothing in her past experience had -prepared her, all the laws of her being, thought, will, memory, habit, -were suspended. In their place a force which was stronger than all these -things together, a force with which she had never reckoned before, -dominated her being. The powers of life had seized her as an eagle -seizes its prey. -</p> - -<p> -"Come, get in," he urged, and dumb with happiness, she obeyed him. -</p> - -<p> -"I remember you very well," he said, smiling into her eyes. "You were -little Dorinda Oakley, and you once poured a bottle of ink on my head to -turn it black." -</p> - -<p> -"I know—" If she had been talking in her sleep, it could not have -seemed more unreal. At this moment, when of all the occasions in her -life she longed to be most brilliant and animated, she was tongue-tied -by an immobility which was like the drowsiness, only far pleasanter, -that she felt in church on hot August afternoons. -</p> - -<p> -"You've grown so tall," he resumed presently, "that at first I wondered -a bit. Were your eyes always as big as they are now?" -</p> - -<p> -Though she was drowning in bliss, she could only gaze at him stupidly. -Why did love, when it came, take away all your ability to enjoy it? -</p> - -<p> -"I didn't know you were coming back so soon," she said after a struggle. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, Father got in such a fix I had to," he answered, with a slight -frown which made his face, she thought, more attractive. The haunting -pathos, which she detected but could not explain, looked out of his -eyes; the pathos of heroic weakness confronting insurmountable -obstacles. "Of course it isn't for ever," he said in a surprisingly -cheerful voice. "Father had a second stroke a few weeks ago, and they -sent for me because there was nobody to see that he was taken care of. -But as soon as he gets better, or if he dies," his tone was kind but -impersonal, "I'll go back again and take up my work. I had just got my -degree, and was starting in for a year's experience in a big hospital. -Until I came I thought it was for a few days. The doctor telegraphed -that Father wouldn't last out the week; but he's picked up, and may go -on for a while yet. I can't leave him until he is out of danger, and in -the meantime I'm trying to enlighten the natives. God! what a country! -Nobody seems to ask any more of life than to plod from one bad harvest -to another. They don't know the first principles of farming, except of -course Mr. Ellgood, who has made a success of Green Acres, and that -clownish-looking chap who owns the store. I wonder what the first -Pedlar's were like. The family must have been in the same spot for a -hundred and fifty years." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, they've been there always. But most of the other farmers are -tenants. Pa says that's why the land has gone bad. No man will work -himself to death over somebody else's land." -</p> - -<p> -"That's the curse of the tenant system. Even the negroes become thrifty -when they own a piece of land. And I've noticed, by the way, that they -are the best farmers about here. The negro who owns his ten or twelve -acres is a better manager than the poor white with twice the number." -</p> - -<p> -"I know," Dorinda assented; but she was not interested in a discussion -of farming. All her life she had heard men talk of farming and of -nothing else. Surely there were other things he could tell her! "I -should think it would be dreary for you," she added, with a woman's -antipathy to the impersonal. -</p> - -<p> -Turning to her suddenly, he brushed the snow-flakes from the fur robe -over her knees. His gestures, like his personality, were firm, -energetic, and indescribably casual. Against the brooding loneliness of -the country his figure, for all its youthful audacity, appeared trivial -and fugitive. It was as if the landscape waited, plunged in melancholy, -for the passing of a ray of sunshine. Though he had sprung from the -soil, he had returned to it a stranger, and there could be no -sympathetic communion between him and the solitude. Neither as a lover -nor as a conqueror could he hope to possess it in spirit. -</p> - -<p> -"If I thought it was for ever, I'd take to drink or worse," he replied -carelessly. "One can stand anything for a few weeks or even months; but -a lifetime of this would be—" He broke off and looked at her -closely. "How have you stood it?" he asked. "How does any woman stand it -without going out of her head?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda smiled. "Oh, I'm used to it. I even like it. Hills would make me -feel shut in." -</p> - -<p> -"Haven't you ever wanted to get away?" -</p> - -<p> -"I used to think of it all the time. When I first went to the store, I -was listening so hard for the trains that I couldn't hear anything -else." -</p> - -<p> -"And you got over it?" -</p> - -<p> -Her lashes fluttered over the burning blue of her eyes. If only he could -know how recently she had got over it! "Yes, I don't feel that way now." -</p> - -<p> -"You've even kept your health, and your colour. But, of course, you're -young." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm twenty. When I'm forty I may feel differently. By that time I -shan't have any books left to read." -</p> - -<p> -He laughed. "By that time you'll probably begin listening again, harder -than ever." He thought for a moment, and then added, with the optimism -of inexperience, "While I'm here I'll try to get a few modern ideas into -the heads of the natives. That will be worth while, I suppose. I ought -to be able to teach them something in a few weeks." -</p> - -<p> -If she had been older or wiser, she might have smiled at his assurance. -As it was she repeated gently, innocent of ironical intention, "Yes, -that will be worth while." -</p> - -<p> -It was enough just to sit near him in silence; to watch, through lowered -lashes, the tremor of his smile, the blinking of his eyelids, the way -the pale reddish hair grew on the back of his neck, the indolent grasp -with which he was holding the reins. It was enough, she felt, just to -breathe in the stimulating smell of his cigarettes, so different from -the heavy odour of country tobacco. And outside this enchanted circle in -which they moved, she was aware of the falling snow, of the vague brown -of the fields, of the sharp freshness of the approaching evening, of the -thick familiar scents of the winter twilight. Far away a dog barked. The -mingled effluvia of rotting leaves and manure heaps in barnyards drifted -toward her. From beyond a fence the sound of voices floated. These -things belonged, she knew, to the actual world; they had no place in the -celestial sphere of enchantment. Yet both the actual and the ideal -seemed to occur within her mind. She could not separate the scent of -leaves or the sound of distant voices from the tumult of her thoughts. -</p> - -<p> -They passed Honeycomb Farm, and sped lightly over a mile of rutted track -to the fork of the Old Stage Road, where a blasted oak of tremendous -height stood beside the ruins of a burned cabin. On the other side of -the way there was the big red gate of Five Oaks, and beyond it a sandy -branch road ran farther on to the old brick house. The snow hid the view -now; but on clear days the red roof and chimneys of the house were -visible above the willow branches of Gooseneck Creek. Usually, as the -mare knew, the doctor's buggy turned in at the big gate; but to-day it -passed by and followed the main road, which dipped and rose and dipped -again on its way to Old Farm. First there was a thin border of woods, -flung off sharply, like an iron fretwork, against the sky; then a strip -of corduroy road and a bridge of logs over a marshy stream; and beyond -the bridge, on the right, stood, the open gate of Dorinda's home. The -mare stumbled and the buggy swerved on the rocky grade to the lawn. -</p> - -<p> -"That's a bad turn," remarked Jason. -</p> - -<p> -"I know. Pa is always hoping that he will have time to fix it. We used -to keep the gate shut, but it has sagged so that it has to stay open." -</p> - -<p> -"They ought to mend the bridge first. Those holes are dangerous for -horses." -</p> - -<p> -Again she assented. Why, she wondered vaguely, did he emphasize the -obvious? -</p> - -<p> -Within its grove of trees, in the midst of last summer's weeds, which -were never cut, the long whitewashed house wore a forlorn yet not -inhospitable air. Through the snow the hooded roof looked close and -secretive; but there was the glimmer of a lamp in one of the lower -windows, enormous lilac bushes, which must lend gaiety in April, -clustered about the porch, and the spreading frame wings, added by old -John Calvin Abernethy, still gave an impression of comfort. It was the -ordinary Virginian farm-house of the early nineteenth century, built for -service rather than for beauty; and retaining, because of its -simplicity, a charm which had long since departed from more ambitious -pieces of architecture. -</p> - -<p> -"So we're home again," said Jason, glancing about him. -</p> - -<p> -The buggy had come to a stop by the front steps, and regardless of the -mare's impatience, he sprang to the ground and helped the girl to -alight. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it looks bare, doesn't it?" -</p> - -<p> -She lifted her face to his as she answered, and while he looked down -into her eyes, a quiver passed over his mouth under the short red -moustache. -</p> - -<p> -"Do you go over every day?" he asked. "Why haven't I met you before?" -</p> - -<p> -She looked down. "Oh, I had to help out at home. But I've worked in the -store ever since Mrs. Pedlar was taken ill. I get there about eight -usually and stay until just before sunset." -</p> - -<p> -"For which, I suppose, you receive an extravagant salary?" -</p> - -<p> -She blushed at his whimsical tone. "They pay me ten dollars a month." -</p> - -<p> -"Ten dollars a month!" A low whistle escaped his lips. "And you walk -four miles a day to earn it." -</p> - -<p> -"I don't mind the walk. In good weather I'd rather be out of doors. -Besides somebody usually picks me up." -</p> - -<p> -"Exactly. As I did this evening. If I hadn't, it would have been after -dark when you got home. Well, I can help you while I'm here," he added -carelessly. "I go that way every day, and I'll look out for you." -</p> - -<p> -Again the dumbness seized her, and she stood there rooted like a plant, -while he looked at her. For a moment, so intent was his gaze, she felt -that he had forgotten her presence. It was not in the least as if he -were staring at her shawl or her mud-stained ulster, or her broken -shoes; it was not even as if he were looking at her eyes and thinking -how blue they were. No, it was just as if he were seeing something -within his own mind. -</p> - -<p> -"I've known so few girls," he said presently, as if he were talking to -himself, "but, somehow, you seem different." Then with delightful -irrelevance, he added playfully, "Don't forget me. I shall see you -soon." -</p> - -<p> -After he had driven away, she stood gazing after him. Again the mare -hesitated, again the wheels crunched on the rocky place. Then the buggy -rolled over the bridge; she heard the sound of his voice as he avoided a -hole; and a minute later the vehicle had disappeared in the border of -leafless woods. -</p> - -<p> -"<i>Don't forget me. I shall see you soon.</i>" -</p> - -<p> -Eight words, and the something different had at last happened to her! -Everything around her appeared fresh and strange and wonderful, as if -she were looking at it clearly for the first time. The snow wrapped her -softly like a mist of happiness. She felt it caressing her cheek, and it -seemed to her, when she moved, that her whole body had grown softer, -lighter, more intensely alive. Her inner life, which had been as bare as -a rock, was suddenly rich with bloom. Never again could she find the -hours dull and empty. "<i>Don't forget me. I shall see you soon</i>," sang -her thoughts. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="IV">IV</a></h4> - -<p> -As she stepped on the porch, Rambler, an old black and yellow hound, -with flapping ears and the expression of a pragmatic philosopher, stole -out of the shadows and joined her. -</p> - -<p> -"You'd better come in or Pa will begin to worry about you," she said, -and her voice startled her because it did not sound as if it were her -own. "I know you've been chasing rabbits again." -</p> - -<p> -She wondered if the suppressed excitement showed also in her face, and -if her mother, who noticed everything, would detect it. After she had -entered the hall, which smelled of bacon and dried apples, she stopped -and tried to rub the bloom of ecstasy off her cheeks. Then, followed -sedately by Rambler, she passed the closed door of the parlour, which -was opened only for funerals or when the circuit minister was visiting -them, and went into the kitchen at the back of the house. The family -must have heard the wheels, and it was a mercy, she told herself, that -Rufus or Josiah had not come out to meet the buggy. -</p> - -<p> -"Ma, Rose Emily sent you a pat of butter," she said, "and Nathan gave me -two pounds of brown sugar." -</p> - -<p> -Her eyes blinked in the light; but it was not the smoky flare of the -lamp on the table that made the big kitchen, with its rough whitewashed -walls, its old-fashioned cooking-stove, its dilapidated pine table and -chairs, its battered pots and pans suspended from nails, its unused -churn standing in the accustomed place on the brick hearth— it was -not the lamp that made the room appear as unfamiliar as if she had never -seen it before. Nor was it the lamp that cast this peculiar haziness, -like a distant perspective, over the members of her family. -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley, a tall, lean, angular woman, who had been almost beautiful -for a little while forty years before, placed the coffee-pot on the -table before she turned to look at her daughter. Under her sparse grey -hair, which was strained tightly back and twisted in a small knot on her -head, her face was so worn by suffering that a network of nerves -quivered beneath the pallid veil of her flesh. Religious depression, -from which she still suffered periodically, had refined her features to -austerity. Her pale grey eyes, with their wide fixed stare, appeared to -look out of caverns, and endowed her with the visionary gaze of a -mystic, like the eyes of a saint in a primitive Italian painting. Years -ago, while Dorinda was still a child, her mother had been for weeks at a -stretch what people called "not quite right in her mind," and she had -talked only in whispers because she thought the country was listening. -As long as the spell lasted, it had seemed to the child that the -farm-house crouched like a beaten hound, in the midst of the brown -fields, beneath the menacing solitude. Since then she had never lost the -feeling that the land contained a terrible force, whether for good or -evil she could not tell, and there were hours when the loneliness seemed -to rise in a crested wave and surge over her. -</p> - -<p> -As she took the basket from her daughter, Mrs. Oakley's features -softened slightly, but she did not smile. Only very young things, -babies, puppies, chickens just out of the shell, made her smile, and -then her smile was more plaintive than cheerful. -</p> - -<p> -"Rufus can have his buckwheat cakes for breakfast," she said, without -stopping in her movements from the table to the safe and from the safe -to the stove. -</p> - -<p> -She had worked so hard for so many years that the habit had degenerated -into a disease, and thrift had become a tyrant instead of a slave in her -life. From dawn until after dark she toiled, and then lay sleepless for -hours because of the jerking of her nerves. She was, as she said of -herself, "driven," and it was the tragedy of her lot that all her toil -made so little impression. Though she spent every bit of her strength -there was nothing to show for her struggle. Like the land, which took -everything and gave back nothing, the farm had drained her vitality -without altering its general aspect of decay. -</p> - -<p> -"That's good!" exclaimed Rufus, a handsome boy of eighteen, with -straight black hair, sparkling brown eyes, and the velvety dark red of -Dorinda's lips and cheeks. He was the youngest child, and after he had -been nursed through a virulent attack of scarlet fever, he had become -the idol of his mother, in spite of a temperamental wildness which she -made the subject of constant prayer. There was ceaseless contention -between him and his elder brother, Josiah, a silent, hardworking man of -thirty, with overhanging eyebrows and a scrubby beard which he seldom -trimmed. After the birth of her first child there had been a sterile -period in Mrs. Oakley's life, when her mental trouble began, and Dorinda -and Rufus both came while she was looking ahead, as she told herself, to -a peaceful middle age unhampered by childbearing. -</p> - -<p> -"Sit down, Ma," said Dorinda, throwing her shawl on a chair and slipping -out of her ulster, while Flossie, the grey and white cat, rubbed against -her. "You look worn out, and it won't take me a minute. Have you been -helped, Pa?" she asked, turning to the hairy old man at the end of the -table. -</p> - -<p> -"I ain't had my coffee yet," replied Joshua, raising his head from his -plate. He was a big, humble, slow-witted man, who ate and drank like a -horse, with loud munching noises. As his hair was seldom cut and he -never shaved, he still kept his resemblance to the pictures of John the -Baptist in the family Bible. In place of his youthful comeliness, -however, he wore now an air of having just emerged from the -wilderness. His shoulders were bent and slightly crooked from lifting -heavy burdens, and his face, the little that one could see of it, was -weatherbeaten and wrinkled in deep furrows, like the fissures in a red -clay road after rain. From beneath his shaggy hair his large brown eyes -were bright and wistful with the melancholy that lurks in the eyes of -cripples or of suffering animals. He was a dumb plodding creature who -had as little share in the family life as had the horses, Dan and -Beersheba; but, like the horses, he was always patient and willing to do -whatever was required of him. There were times when Dorinda asked -herself if indeed he had any personal life apart from the seasons and -the crops. Though he was not yet sixty-five, his features, browned and -reddened and seamed by sun and wind, appeared as old as a rock embedded -in earth. All his life he had been a slave to the land, harnessed to the -elemental forces, struggling inarticulately against the blight of -poverty and the barrenness of the soil. Yet Dorinda had never heard him -rebel. His resignation was the earth's passive acceptance of sun or -rain. When his crop failed, or his tobacco was destroyed by frost, he -would drive his plough into the field and begin all over again! "That -tobacco wanted another touch of sun," he would say quietly; or "I'll -make out to cut it a day earlier next year." The earth clung to him; to -his clothes, to the anxious creases in his face, to his finger nails, -and to his heavy boots, which were caked with manure from the stables. -The first time Dorinda remembered his taking her on his knee, the -strong smell of his blue jeans overalls had frightened her to tears, and -she had struggled and screamed. "I reckon my hands are too rough," he -had said timidly, and after that he had never tried to lift her again. -But whenever she thought of him now, his hands, gnarled, twisted, and -earth-stained like the vigorous roots of a tree, and that penetrating -briny smell, were the first things she remembered. His image was -embalmed in that stale odour of the farm as in a preserving fluid. -</p> - -<p> -"It's snowing faster," Dorinda said, "but it doesn't stay on the -ground." Bending over her father, she covered the corn pone on his plate -with brown gravy. "Maybe it will be clear again by to-morrow," she -went on smoothly. "It's time spring was beginning." -</p> - -<p> -Joshua's hand, which no amount of scrubbing could free front stain, -closed with a heavy grip on the handle of his knife. "This brown gravy -cert'n'y does taste good, honey," he said. "Yo' Ma's made out mighty -well with no milk or butter." -</p> - -<p> -A deep tenderness pervaded Dorinda's heart, and this tenderness was but -a single wave of the emotion that flooded her being. "Poor Pa," she -thought, "he has never known anything but work." Oh, how splendid life -was and how hard! Aloud, she said, "I've saved up enough money to buy a -cow in May. After I help you with the taxed and the interest on the -mortgage, I'll still have enough left for the cow. Rose Emily says old -Doctor Greylock will sell us his Blossom!" -</p> - -<p> -"Then we can have butter and buttermilk with the ash cake!" exclaimed -Rufus. -</p> - -<p> -"I ain't so sure I'd want to buy that red cow of Doctor Greylock's," -observed Josiah in a surly tone. That was his way, to make an objection -to everything. He had, as his mother sometimes said of him, a good -character but a mean disposition. At twenty he had married a pretty, -light woman, who died with her first child; and now, after a widowerhood -of ten years, he was falling in love with Elvira Snead, a silly young -thing, the daughter of thriftless Adam Snead, a man with scarcely a -shirt to his back or an acre to his name. Though Josiah was hardworking, -painstaking, and frugal, he preferred comeliness to character in a -woman. If it had been Rufus, Dorinda would have found an infatuation for -Elvira easier to understand. Nobody expected Rufus to be anything but -wild, and it was natural for young men to seek pleasures. The boy was -different from his father and his elder brother, who required as little -as cattle; and yet there was nothing for him to do in the long winter -evenings, except sort potatoes or work over his hare traps. The -neighbours were all too far away, and the horses too tired after the -day's work to drag the buggy over the mud-strangled roads. Dorinda could -browse happily among the yellowed pages in old Abernethy's library, -returning again and again to the Waverley Novels, or the exciting Lives -of the Missionaries; but Rufus cared nothing for books and had inherited -his mother's dread of the silence. He was a high-spirited boy, and he -liked pleasure; yet every evening after supper he would tinker with a -farm implement or some new kind of trap until he was sleepy enough for -bed. Then he would march upstairs to the fireless room under the eaves, -where the only warmth came up the chimney from the kitchen beneath. That -was all the life Rufus had ever had, though he looked exactly, Dorinda -thought, like Thaddeus of Warsaw or one of the Scottish Chiefs. -</p> - -<p> -In the daytime the kitchen was a cheerful room, bright with sunshine -which fell through the mammoth scuppernong grapevine on the back porch. -Then the battered pots and pans grew bright again, the old wood stove -gave out a pleasant song; and the blossomless geraniums, in wooden -boxes, decorated the window-sill. Much of her mother's life was spent in -this room, and as a child Dorinda had played here happily with her -corncob or hickory-nut dolls. Poor as they were, there was never a -speck of dust anywhere. Mrs. Oakley looked down on the "poor white" -class, though she had married into it; and her recoil from her husband's -inefficiency was in the direction of a scrupulous neatness. She knew -that she had thrown herself away, in youth, on a handsome face; yet she -was just enough to admit that her marriage, as marriages go, had not -been unhappy. Her unhappiness, terrible as it had been, went deeper than -any human relation, for she was still fond of Joshua with the maternal -part of her nature while she despised him with her intelligence. He had -made her a good husband; it was not his fault that he could never get -on; everything from the start had been against him; and he had always -done the best that he could. She realized this clearly; but all the -romance in her life, after the death of the young missionary in the -Congo, had turned toward her religion. She could have lived without -Joshua; she could have lived even without Rufus, who was the apple of -her eye; but without her religion, as she had once confessed to Dorinda, -she would have been "lost." Like her daughter, she was subject to -dreams, but her dreams differed from Dorinda's since they came only in -sleep. There were winter nights, after the days of whispering in the -past, when the child Dorinda, startled by the flare of a lantern out in -the darkness, had seen her mother flitting barefooted over the frozen -ground. Shivering with cold and terror, the little girl had crept down -to rouse her fathers who had thrown some garments over his nightshirt, -and picking up the big raccoon-skin coat, had rushed out in pursuit of -his demented wife. A little later Josiah had followed, and then Dorinda; -and Rufus had brought sticks and paper from the kitchen and started a -fire, with shaking hands, in their mother's fireplace. When at last the -two men had led Mrs. Oakley into the house, she had, appeared so -bewildered and benumbed that she seemed scarcely, to know where she had -been. Once Dorinda had overheard Joshua whisper hoarsely to Josiah, "If -I hadn't come up with her in the nick of time, she would have done it"; -but what the thing was they, whispered about the child did not -understand till long afterwards All she knew at the time was that her -mother's "missionary" dream's had come back again; a dream of blue skies -and golden sands, of palm trees on a river's bank, and of black babies -thrown to crocodiles. "I am lost, lost, lost," Mrs. Oakley had murmured -over and over, while she stared straight before her, with a prophetic -gleam in her wide eyes, as if she were seeing unearthly visions. -</p> - -<p> -They ate to-night, after Joshua had asked grace, in a heavy silence, -which was broken only by the gurgling sounds Joshua and Josiah made over -their coffee-cups. Mrs. Oakley, who was decently if not delicately bred, -had become inured to the depressing tablet manners of her husband and -her elder son. After the first disillusionment of her marriage, she had -confined her efforts at improvement to the two younger children. They -had both, she felt with secret satisfaction, sprung from the finer -strain of the Abernethys; it was as if they had inherited from her that -rarer intellectual medium in which her forbears had attained their -spiritual being. There were hours when it seemed to her that the gulf -between the dominant Scotch-Irish stock of the Valley and the mongrel -breed of "poor white" which produced Joshua was as wide as the abyss -between alien races. Then the image of Joshua as she had first known him -would appear to her, and she would think, in the terms of theology which -were natural to her mind, "It must have been intended, or it wouldn't -have happened." -</p> - -<p> -While the others were still eating, Mrs. Oakley rose from the food she -had barely tasted, and began to clear the table. The nervous affection -from which she suffered made it impossible for her to sit in one spot -for more than a few minutes. Her nerves jerked her up and started her on -again independently of her will or even of any physical effort. Only -constant movement quieted the twitching which ran like electric wires -through her muscles. -</p> - -<p> -"Go and lie down, Ma. I'll clear off and wash up," Dorinda said. Her -pity for her mother was stronger to-night than it had ever been, for it -had become a part of the craving for happiness which was overflowing her -soul. Often this starved craving had made her bitter and self-centred -because of the ceaseless gnawing in her breast; but now it was wholly -kind and beneficent. "If you would only stop and rest," she added -tenderly, "your neuralgia would be better." -</p> - -<p> -"I can't stop," replied Mrs. Oakley, with wintry calm. "I can't see -things going to rack and ruin and not try to prevent it." After a -minute, still moving about, she continued hopelessly, "It rests me to -work." -</p> - -<p> -"I brought the butter for you," returned Dorinda, in hurt tones, "and -you didn't even touch it." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "I don't mind going without," she responded. -"You must keep it for the boys." -</p> - -<p> -It was always like that. The girl had sometimes felt that the greatest -cross in her life was her mother's morbid unselfishness. Even her -nagging—and she nagged at them continually—was -easier to bear. -</p> - -<p> -"I've got the water all ready," Mrs. Oakley said, piling dishes on the -tin tray. "I'll get right through the washing up, and then we can have -prayers." -</p> - -<p> -Family prayers in the evening provided the solitary emotional outlet in -her existence. Only then, while she read aloud one of the more -belligerent Psalms, and bent her rheumatic knees to the rag carpet in -her "chamber," were the frustrated instincts of her being etherealized -into spiritual passion. When the boys rebelled, as they sometimes did, -or Dorinda protested that she was "too busy for prayers," Mrs. Oakley -contended with the earnestness of a Covenanter: "If it wasn't for the -help of my religion, I could never keep going." -</p> - -<p> -Now, having finished their meal in silence, they gathered in the -chamber, as the big bedroom was called, and waited for evening prayers. -It was the only comfortable room in the house, except the kitchen, and -the family life after working hours was lived in front of the big -fireplace, in which chips, lightwood knots, and hickory logs were burned -from dawn until midnight. Before the flames there was a crooked brass -footman, and the big iron kettle it supported kept up an uninterrupted -hissing noise. In one corner of the room stood a tall rosewood bookcase, -which contained the romantic fiction Dorinda had gleaned from the heavy -theological library in the parlour across the hall. Between the front -windows, which looked out on a cluster of old lilac bushes, there was -the huge walnut bed, with four stout posts and no curtains, and facing -it between the windows, in the opposite walls, a small cabinet of -lacquer-ware which her great-grandfather had brought from the East. In -the morning and afternoon the sunlight fell in splinters over the -variegated design of the rag carpet and the patchwork quilt on the bed, -and picked out the yellow specks in the engravings of John Knox -admonishing Mary Stuart and Martyrs for the Covenant. -</p> - -<p> -"<i>The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his -handywork</i>," read Mrs. Oakley in her high thin voice, with her mystic -gaze passing over the open Bible to the whitewashed wall where the -shadows of the flames wavered. -</p> - -<p> -Motionless, in her broken splint-bottom chair, scarcely daring to -breathe, Dorinda felt as if she were floating out of the scene into some -world of intenser reality. The faces about her in the shifting firelight -were the faces in a dream, and a dream that was without vividness. She -saw Joshua bending forward, his pipe fallen from his mouth, his hands -clasped between his knees, and his eyes fixed in a pathetic groping -stare, as if he were trying to follow the words. The look was familiar -to her; she had seen it in the wistful expressions of Rambler and of Dan -and Beersheba, the horses; yet it still moved her more deeply than she -had ever been moved by anything except the patient look of her father's -hands. On opposite sides of the fireplace, Josiah and Rufus were dozing, -Josiah sucking his empty pipe as a child sucks a stick of candy, Rufus -playing with the knife he had used to whittle a piece of wood. At the -first words of the Psalm he had stopped work and closed his eyes, while -a pious vacancy washed like a tide over his handsome features. Curled on -the rag carpet, Rambler and Flossie watched each other with wary -intentness, Rambler contemplative and tolerant, Flossie suspicious and -superior. The glow and stillness of the room enclosed the group in a -circle that was like the shadow of a magic lantern. The flames -whispered; the kettle hummed on the brass footman; the sound of Joshua's -heavy breathing went on like a human undercurrent to the cadences of the -Psalm. Outside, in the fields, a dog barked, and Rambler raised his -long, serious head from the rug and listened. A log of wood, charred in -the middle, broke in two and scattered a shower of sparks. -</p> - -<p> -Prayers were over. Mrs. Oakley rose from her knees; Joshua prodded the -ashes in his pipe; Josiah drew a twist of home-cured tobacco from his -pocket, and cutting off a chew from the end of it, thrust it into his -cheek, where it bulged for the rest of the evening; Rufus picked up a -fishing pole and resumed his whittling. Until bedtime the three men -would sprawl there in the agreeable warmth between the fireplace and the -lamp on the table. Nobody talked; conversation was as alien to them as -music. Drugged with fatigue, they nodded in a vegetable somnolence. Even -in their hours of freedom they could not escape the relentless tyranny -of the soil. -</p> - -<p> -After putting away the Bible, Mrs. Oakley took out a dozen damask -towels, with Turkey red borders and fringed ends, from her top bureau -drawer and began to look over then. These towels were the possession she -prized most, after the furniture of her grandfather, and they were never -used except when the minister or a visiting elder came to spend the -night. -</p> - -<p> -"They're turning a little yellow," she remarked presently, when she had -straightened the long fringe and mended a few places. "I reckon I might -as well put them in soak to-night." -</p> - -<p> -Rufus yawned and laid down his fishing-rod. "There ain't anything for me -to do but go to bed." -</p> - -<p> -"We all might as well go, I reckon," Joshua agreed drowsily. "It's -gittin' on past eight o'clock, an' if the snow's off the ground, we've -got a hard day ahead of us." -</p> - -<p> -"I'll put these towels in soak first," his wife responded, "and I've got -a little ironing I want to get through with before I can rest." -</p> - -<p> -"Not to-night, Ma," Dorinda pleaded. While she spoke she began to yawn -like the others. It was queer the way it kept up as soon as one of them -started. Youth struggled for a time, but in the end it succumbed -inevitably to the narcotic of dullness. -</p> - -<p> -"I ain't sleepy," replied Mrs. Oakley, "and I like to have something to -do with my hands. I never was one to want to lie in bed unless I was -sleepy. The very minute my head touches the pillow, my eyes pop right -open." -</p> - -<p> -"But you get up so early." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, the first crack of light wakes your father, and after he begins -stirring, I am never able to get a wink more of sleep. He was out at the -barn feeding the horses before day this morning." Dorinda sighed. Was -this life? -</p> - -<p> -"I don't see how you keep it up, Ma," she said, with weary compassion. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I can get along without much sleep. It's different with the rest of -you. Your father is out in the air all day, and you and the boys are -young." -</p> - -<p> -She went back to the kitchen, with the towels in her hand, while Dorinda -took down one of the lamps from a shelf in the back hall, removed the -cracked chimney, and lighted the wick, which was too short to burn more -than an hour or two. -</p> - -<p> -The evening was over. It was like every one Dorinda had known in the -past. It was like every one she would know in the future unless—she -caught her breath sharply—unless the miracle happened! -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="V">V</a></h4> - -<p> -The faint grey light crept through the dormer-window and glimmered with -a diffused wanness over the small three-cornered room. Turning -restlessly, Dorinda listened, half awake, to the sound of her mother -moving about in the kitchen below. A cock in the henhouse crowed and was -answered by another. "It isn't day," she thought, and opening her eyes, -she gazed through the window at the big pine on the hill. The sun rose -over the pine; every morning she watched the twisted black boughs, -shaped like a harp, emerge from obscurity. First the vague ripple of -dawn, spreading in circles as if a stone had been cast into the -darkness; then a pearly glimmer in which objects borrowed exaggerated -dimensions; then a blade of light cutting sharply through the pine to -the old pear orchard, where the trees still blossomed profusely in -spring, though they bore only small green pears out of season. After the -edge of brightness, the round red sun would ride up into the heavens and -the day would begin. It was seldom that she saw the sunrise from her -window. Usually, unless she overslept herself and her mother got -breakfast without waking her, the men were in the fields and the two -women were attending to the chickens or cleaning the house before the -branches of the big pine were gilded with light. -</p> - -<p> -"Poor Ma," Dorinda said, "she wouldn't wake me." But she was not -thinking of her mother. Deep down in her being some blissful memory was -struggling into consciousness. She felt that it was floating there, just -beyond her reach, dim, elusive, enchantingly lovely. Almost she seized -it; then it slipped from her grasp and escaped her, only to return, -still veiled, a little farther off, while she groped after it. A new -happiness. Some precious possession which she had clasped to her heart -while she was falling asleep. Then suddenly the thing that she had half -forgotten came drifting, through unclouded light, into her mind. "<i>Don't -forget me. I shall see you soon.</i>" -</p> - -<p> -The sounds in the kitchen grew louder, and the whole house was saturated -with the aroma of coffee and frying bacon. Beyond these familiar scents -and sounds, it seemed to her that she smelt and heard the stirring of -spring in the fields and the woods, that the movement and rumour of life -were sweeping past her in waves of colour, fragrance, and music. -</p> - -<p> -Springing out of bed, she dressed hurriedly, and decided, while she -shivered at the splash of cold water, that she would clean her shoes -before she went back to the store. The day was just breaking, and the -corner where her pine dressing-table stood was so dark that she was -obliged to light the lamp, which burned with a dying flicker, while she -brushed and coiled her hair. Beneath the dark waving line on her -forehead, where her hair grew in a widow's peak, her eyes were starry -with happiness. Though she was not beautiful, she had her moments of -beauty, and looking at herself in the greenish mirror, which reminded -her of the water in the old mill pond, she realized that this was one of -her moments. Never again would she be twenty and in love for the first -time. -</p> - -<p> -"If only I had something pretty to wear," she thought, picking up her -skirt of purple calico and slipping it over her head. The longing for -lovely things, the decorative instinct of youth, became as sharp as a -pang. Parting the faded curtains over a row of shelves in one corner, -she took down a pasteboard box, and selected a collar of fine needlework -which had belonged to Eudora Abernethy when she was a girl. For a minute -Dorinda looked at it, strongly tempted. Then the character that showed -in her mouth and chin asserted itself, and she shook her head. "It would -be foolish to wear it to-day," she murmured, and putting it back among -the others, she closed the box and replaced it on the shelf. -</p> - -<p> -"I'll black my shoes, anyway," she thought, as she hurried downstairs to -breakfast. "Even if they do get muddy again as soon as I step in the -road." -</p> - -<p> -That was with the surface of her mind. In the depths beneath she was -thinking without words, "Now that he has come, life will never again be -what it was yesterday." -</p> - -<p> -In the kitchen the lamp had just been put out, and the room was flooded -with the ashen stream of daybreak. Mrs. Oakley was on her knees, putting -a stick of wood into the stove, and the scarlet glare of the flames -tinged her flesh with the colour of rusty iron. After a sleepless night -her neuralgia was worse, and there was a look of agony in the face she -lifted to her daughter. -</p> - -<p> -"Why didn't you wake me, Ma?" Dorinda asked a little impatiently. "You -aren't fit to get breakfast." -</p> - -<p> -"I thought you might as well have your sleep out," her mother replied in -a lifeless voice. "I'll have some cakes ready in a minute. I'm just -making a fresh batch for Rufus." -</p> - -<p> -"You oughtn't have made cakes, as bad as you feel," Dorinda protested. -"Rufus could have gone without just as well as the rest of us." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley struggled to her feet, and picking up the cake lifter, -turned back to the stove. While she stood there against the dull glow, -she appeared scarcely more substantial than a spiral of smoke. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, we don't have butter every day," she said. "And I can't lie in -bed as long as I've got the strength to be up and doing. Wherever I -turn, I see dirt gathering." -</p> - -<p> -"No matter how hard you work, the dirt will always be there," Dorinda -persisted. It was useless, she knew, to try to reason with her mother. -One could not reason with either a nervous malady or a moral principle; -but, even though experience had taught her the futility of remonstrance, -there were times when she found it impossible not to scold at a -martyrdom that seemed to her unnecessary. They might as well be living -in the house, she sometimes thought, with the doctrine of -predestination; and like the doctrine of predestination, there was -nothing to be done about it. -</p> - -<p> -With a sigh of resignation, she turned to her father, who stood at the -window, looking out over the old geraniums that had stopped blooming -years ago. Against the murky dawn his figure appeared as rudimentary as -some prehistoric image of man. -</p> - -<p> -"Do you think it is going to clear off, Pa?" she asked. -</p> - -<p> -He looked round at her, prodding the tobacco into his pipe with his -large blunt thumb. "I ain't thinkin', honey," he replied in his thick, -earthy drawl. "The wind's settin' right, but thar's a good-size bank of -clouds over toward the west." -</p> - -<p> -"You'd better make Rufus take a look at those planting beds up by Hoot -Owl Woods," said Josiah, pushing back his chair and rising from the -table. "One of Doctor Greylock's steers broke loose yesterday and was -tramplin' round up there on our side of the fence." -</p> - -<p> -Rufus looked up quickly. "Why can't you attend to it yourself?" he -demanded in the truculent tone he always used to his elder brother. -</p> - -<p> -Josiah, who had reached the door on his way out, stopped and looked back -with a surly expression. With his unshaven face, where the stubby growth -of a beard was just visible, and his short crooked legs, he bore still -some grotesque resemblance to his younger brother, as if the family -pattern had been tried first in caricature. -</p> - -<p> -"I've got as much as I can do over yonder in the east meadow," he -growled. "You or Pa will have to look after those planting beds." Rufus -frowned while he reached for the last scrap of butter. There would be -none for his mother and Dorinda; but if this fact had occurred to him, -and it probably had not, he would have dismissed it as an unpleasant -reflection. Since he was a small child he had never lacked the courage -of his appetite. -</p> - -<p> -"What's the use of my trying to do anything when you and Pa are so set -you won't let me have my way about it?" he asked. "I'd have moved those -tobacco beds long ago, if you'd let me." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, they've always been thar, son," Joshua observed in a peaceable -manner. He stood in the doorway, blowing clouds of smoke over his pipe, -while he scraped the caked mud from his boots. His humble, friendly eyes -looked up timidly, like the eyes of a dog that is uncertain whether he -is about to receive a pat or a blow. "Besides, we ain't got the manure -to waste on new ground," Josiah added, with his churlish frown. "We need -all the stable trash we can rake and scrape for the fields." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley, bringing a plate of fresh cakes as a peace offering, came -over to the table. "Don't you boys begin to fuss again," she pleaded -wearily. "It's just as much as I can do to keep going anyway, and when -you start quarrelling it makes me feel as if I'd be obliged to give up. -You'd just as well take all these cakes, Rufus. I can make some more for -Dorinda by the time she is ready." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda, who was eating dry bread with her coffee, made a gesture of -exasperated sympathy. "I don't want any cakes, Ma. I'm going to start -washing up just as soon as you sit down and eat your breakfast. If you'd -try to swallow something, whether you want it or not, your neuralgia -would be better." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley shook her head, while she dragged her body like an empty -garment back to the stove. From the way she moved she seemed to have -neither bone nor muscle, yet her physical flabbiness was sustained, -Dorinda knew, by a force that was indomitable. -</p> - -<p> -"I don't feel as if I could touch a morsel," she answered, pressing her -fingers over her drawn brow and eyes. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, Rufus can eat his head off, but he'll never work to earn his keep," -Josiah grumbled under his breath. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'm not a slave, anyway, like you and Pa," Rufus flared up. "I'd -let the farm rot before it would be my master." -</p> - -<p> -Josiah had pushed past his father in the doorway. A chill draught blew -in, and out of the draught his slow, growling voice floated back. -"Somebody's got to be a slave. If Ma didn't slave for you, you'd have -to, I reckon, or starve." -</p> - -<p> -He went out after his father, slamming the door behind him, and Dorinda, -hurriedly finishing her breakfast, rose and began to clear the table. -The sallow light at the window was growing stronger. Outside, there was -the sound of tramping as the horses were led by to the trough at the -well, and the crowing in the henhouse was loud and insistent. The day -had begun. It was like every other day in the past. It would be like -every other day in the future. Suddenly the feeling came over her that -she was caught like a mouse in the trap of life. No matter how -desperately she struggled, she could never escape; she could never be -free. She was held fast by circumstances as by invisible wires of steel. -</p> - -<p> -Several hours later, when she started to the store, the trapped -sensation vanished, and the gallant youth within her lifted its head. -There was moisture that did not fall in the air. A chain of sullen -clouds in the west soared like peaks through a fog. Straight before her -the red road dipped and rose and dipped again in the monotonous brown of -the landscape. A few ragged crows flapped by over the naked fields. -</p> - -<p> -Turning at the gate, which was never closed, she looked back at the -house huddled beneath its sloping shingled roof under the boughs of the -old locust trees. The narrow dormer-windows stared like small blinking -eyes, shy and furtive, down on the square Georgian porch, on the flagged -walk bordered by stunted boxwood, on the giant lilac bushes which had -thriven upon neglect, and on the ruined lawn with its dead branches and -its thicket of unmown weeds. In recent years the whitewashed walls had -turned yellow and dingy; the eaves were rotting away where birds nested; -and in June the empty chimneys became so alive with swallows that the -whole place was faintly murmurous, as if summer stirred in the dead wood -as well as in the living boughs. -</p> - -<p> -Whenever she looked back upon it from a distance, she was visited again -by the image of the house as a frightened thing that waited, shrinking -closer to the earth, for an inevitable disaster. It was, as if the place -had preserved unaltered a mood from which she herself had escaped, and -occasionally this mood awoke in her blood and nerves and flowed through -her again. Recollection. Association. It was morbid, she told herself -sternly, to cherish such fancies; and yet she had never been able -entirely to rid her memory of the fears and dreads of her childhood. -Worse than this even was the haunting thought that the solitude was -alive, that it skulked there in the distance, like a beast that is -waiting for the right moment to spring and devour. -</p> - -<p> -Bleak, raw, windswept, the morning had begun with a wintry chill. The -snow of yesterday was gone; only an iridescent vapour, as delicate as a -cobweb, was spun over the ground. Already, as she turned and went on -again, the light was changing, and more slowly, as if a veil fluttered -before it was lifted, the expression of the country changed with it. In -the east, an arrow of sunshine, too pallid to be called golden, shot -through the clouds and flashed over the big pine on the hill at the back -of the house. The landscape, which had worn a discouraged aspect, -appeared suddenly to glow under the surface. Veins of green and gold, -like tiny rivulets of spring, glistened in the winter woods and in the -mauve and brown of the fields. The world was familiar, and yet, in some -indescribable way, it was different, shot through with romance as with -the glimmer of phosphorescence. Life, which had drooped, flared up -again, burning clear and strong in Dorinda's heart. It had come back, -that luminous expectancy, that golden mist of sensation. "<i>Don't forget -me. I shall see you soon</i>," repeated an inner voice; and immediately she -was lost in an ecstasy without words and without form like the mystic -communion of religion. Love! That was the end of all striving for her -healthy nerves, her vigorous youth, the crown and the fulfilment of -life! At twenty, a future without love appeared to her as intolerable as -the slow martyrdom of her mother. -</p> - -<p> -Beyond the gate there was the Old Stage Road, and across the road, in -front of the house, ran the pasture, with its winding creek fringed by -willows. Though this stream was smaller than Gooseneck Creek on the -Greylocks' farm, the water never dried even in the severest drought, and -a multitude of silver minnows flashed in ripples over the deep places. -For a quarter of a mile the road divided the pasture from the wide band -of woods on the left, and farther on, though the woods continued, the -rich grass land was fenced off from several abandoned acres, which had -been once planted in corn, but were now overgrown with broomsedge as -high as Dorinda's waist. Sprinkled over the fields, a crop of scrub -pine, grown already to a fair height, stood immovable in the ceaseless -rise and fall of the straw. Though her eyes wandered over the waste -ground as she passed, Dorinda was blind to-day to the colour and the -beauty. What a pity you could never get rid of the broomsedge, she -thought. The more you burned it off and cut it down, the thicker it came -up again next year. -</p> - -<p> -For a quarter of a mile the road was deserted. Then she came up with a -covered wagon, which had stopped on the edge of the woods, while the -mules munched the few early weeds in the underbrush. She had seen these -vehicles before, for they were known in the neighbourhood as Gospel -wagons. Usually there was a solitary "Gospel rider," an aged man, -travelling alone, and wearing the dilapidated look of a retired -missionary; but to-day there were two of them, an elderly husband and -wife, and though they appeared meagre, chilled and famished, they were -proceeding briskly with their work of nailing texts to the trees by the -wayside. As Dorinda approached, the warning, "Prepare to Meet Thy God," -sprang out at her in thick charcoal. The road to the station was already -covered, she knew, and she wondered if the wagon had passed Jason at the -gate by the fork. -</p> - -<p> -Hearing her footsteps, one of the missionaries, a woman in a black poke -bonnet, turned and stared at her. -</p> - -<p> -"Good morning, sister. You are wearing a gay shawl." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda laughed. "Well, it is the only gay thing you will find about -here." -</p> - -<p> -With the hammer still in her hand, the woman, a lank, bedraggled figure -in a trailing skirt of dingy alpaca, scrambled over the ditch to the -road. "Yes, it's a solemn country," she replied. "Is there a place near -by where we can rest and water the mules?" -</p> - -<p> -"Old Farm is a little way on. I live there, and Ma will be glad to have -you stop." -</p> - -<p> -Such visitors, she knew, though they made extra work, were the only -diversion in her mother's existence. They came seldom now; only once or -twice in the last few years had the Gospel wagon driven along the Old -Stage Road; but the larger trees still bore a few of the almost -obliterated signs. -</p> - -<p> -"Then we'll stop and speak a word to her. We'd better be going on, -Brother Tyburn," observed the woman to her companion, who was crawling -over the underbrush. "This don't look as if it was a much travelled -road. Brother Tyburn is my husband," she explained an instant later. "We -met when we were both doing the Lord's work in foreign fields." -</p> - -<p> -Golden sands. Ancient rivers. Black babies thrown to crocodiles. Her -mother's missionary dream had come to life. -</p> - -<p> -"Were you ever in Africa?" asked Dorinda. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, in the Congo. But we were younger then. After Brother Tyburn lost -his health, we had to give up foreign work. Did you say your house was -just a piece up the road?" -</p> - -<p> -"A quarter of a mile. After that you won't find anything but a few negro -cabins till you come to the Garlicks' place, three miles farther on." -</p> - -<p> -The man had already climbed into the wagon and was gathering up the -reins; the mules reluctantly raised their heads from the weeds; and the -woman lifted her skirt and stepped nimbly up on the wheel. After she had -seated herself under the canvas, she leaned down, gesticulating with the -hammer which she still held. -</p> - -<p> -"Thank you, sister. Have you given a thought to your soul?" Wrapped in -her orange shawl, Dorinda lifted her head with a spirited gesture. -</p> - -<p> -"I joined the church when I was fifteen," she answered. -</p> - -<p> -While she spoke she remembered vividly the way grace had come to her, a -softly glowing ecstasy, which flooded her soul and made her feel that -she had entered into the permanent blessedness of the redeemed. It was -like the love she felt now, only more peaceful and far less subject to -pangs of doubt. For a few months this had lasted, while the prosaic -duties of life were infused with a beauty, a light. Then, suddenly, as -mysteriously as it had come, the illumination in her soul had waned and -flickered out like a lamp. Religion had not satisfied. -</p> - -<p> -The wagon joggled on its way, and floating back, above the rumble of the -wheels, there came presently the words of a hymn, at first clear and -loud, and then growing fainter and thinner as the distance widened. -Often Dorinda had sung the verses in Sunday School. The hymn was a -favourite one of her mother's, and the girl hummed it now under her -breath: -</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">"Res-cue the per-ish-ing, care for the dy-ing,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;</span><br /> -<span class="i0">Weep o'er the err-ing one, lift up the fall-en,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Tell them of Je-sus, the migh-ty to save.</span><br /> -<span class="i0">Res-cue the per-ish-ing, care for the dy-ing,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Je-sus is mer-ci-ful, Je-sus will save."</span> -</div></div> - -<p> -No, religion had not satisfied. -</p> - -<p> -She was still humming when she reached the fork of the road. Then, -glancing at the red gate of Five Oaks, she saw that Jason Greylock stood -there, with his hand on the bar. -</p> - -<p> -"I'd just got down to open the gate, when I looked up the road and saw -you coming," he said. "I knew there wasn't another woman about who was -wearing an orange shawl, and if there were, I'd wait for her just out of -curiosity." -</p> - -<p> -Though he spoke gaily, she felt, without knowing why, that the gaiety -was assumed. He looked as if he had not slept. His fresh colour had -faded; his clothes were rumpled as if he had lain down in them; and -while she walked toward him, she imagined fancifully that his face was -like a drowned thing in the solitude. If she had been older it might -have occurred to her that a nature so impressionable must be lacking in -stability; but, at the moment, joy in his presence drove every sober -reflection from her mind. -</p> - -<p> -"Is there anything the matter?" she asked, eager to help. -</p> - -<p> -He looked down while the gate swung back, and she saw a quiver of -disgust cross his mouth under the short moustache. Before replying, he -led his horse into the road and turned back to lower the bar. Then he -held out his hand to help her into the buggy. -</p> - -<p> -"Do I look as if I'd had no sleep?" he inquired. "Father had a bad -night, and I was up with him till daybreak." -</p> - -<p> -Then she understood. She had heard tales from Aunt Mehitable, whose -daughter worked at Five Oaks, of the old man's drunken frenzies, and the -way his mulatto brood ran shrieking about the place when he turned on -them with a horsewhip. Would Jason be able to rid the house of this -half-breed swarm and their mother, a handsome, slatternly yellow woman, -with a figure that had grown heavy and shapeless, and a smouldering -resentful gaze? Well, she was sorry for him if he had to put up with -things like that. -</p> - -<p> -"I am sorry," she responded, and could think of nothing to add to the -words, which sounded flat and empty. In front of her on the blasted oak -she saw the staring black letters of the Gospel riders, "After Death -Comes the Judgment." Depression crept like a fog into her mind. If only -she could think of something to say! While they drove on in silence she -became aware of her body, as if it were a weight which had been fastened -to her and over which she had no control. Her hands and feet felt like -logs. She was in the clutch, she knew, of forces which she did not -understand, which she could not even discern. And these forces had -deprived her of her will at the very moment when they were sweeping her -to a place she could not see by a road that was strange to her. -</p> - -<p> -"I suppose my nerves aren't what they ought to be," he said presently, -and she knew that he was miles away from her in his thoughts. "They've -always been jumpy ever since I was a child, and a night like that puts -them on edge. Then everything is discouraging around here. I thought -when I first came back that I might be able to wake up the farmers, but -it is uphill ploughing to try to get them out of their rut. Last night I -had planned a meeting in the schoolhouse. For a week I had had notices -up at the store, and I'd got at least a dozen men to promise to come and -listen to what I had to tell them about improved methods of farming. I -intended to begin with crops and sanitation, you know, and to lead off -gradually, as they caught on, to political conditions;—but when I -went over," he laughed bitterly, "there was nobody but Nathan Pedlar and -that idiot boy of John Appleseed's waiting to hear me." -</p> - -<p> -"I know." She was sympathetic but uncomprehending. "They are in a rut, -but they're satisfied; they don't want to change." He turned to look at -her and his face cleared. "You are the only cheerful sight I've seen -since I got here," he said. -</p> - -<p> -The light had changed again and her inner mood was changing with the -landscape. A feeling of intimate kinship with the country returned, and -it seemed to her that the colour of the broomsedge was overrunning the -desolate hidden field of her life. Something wild and strong and vivid -was covering the waste places. -</p> - -<p> -"I am glad," she answered softly. -</p> - -<p> -"It does me good just to look at you. I ought to be able to do without -companionship, but I can't, not for long. I am dependent upon some human -association, and I haven't had any, nothing that counts, since I came -here. In New York I lived with several men (I've never been much of a -woman's man), and I miss them like the devil. I was getting on well with -my work, too, though I never wanted to study medicine—that was -Father's idea. At first I hoped that I could distract myself by doing -some good while I was here," he concluded moodily; "but last night -taught me the folly of that." -</p> - -<p> -Though he seemed to her unreasonable, and his efforts at philanthropy as -futile as the usual unsettling processes of reform, she felt -passionately eager to comfort him in his failure. That she might turn -his disappointment to her own advantage had not occurred to her, and -would never occur to her. The instinct that directed her was an -unconscious one and innocent of design. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, you've just begun," she replied cheerfully. "You can't expect to -do everything in the beginning." -</p> - -<p> -He laughed. "I knew you'd say that. Even in New York they tell me I try -to hurry nature. I'm easily discouraged, and I take things too hard, I -suppose. Coming back here was a bitter pill, but I had to swallow it. If -I'd been a different sort of chap I might have gone on with my work in -New York, and let Father die alone there at Five Oaks. But when he sent -for me I hadn't the heart or the courage to refuse to come. The truth -is, I've never been able to go ahead. It seems to me, when I look back, -that I've always been balked or bullied out of having what I wanted in -life. I remember once, when I was a little child, I went out with Mother -to gather dewberries, and just as I found the finest briar, all heavy -with fruit, and reached down to pick it, a moccasin snake struck out at -my hand. I got a fit, hysterics or something, and ever since then the -sight of a snake has made me physically sick. Worse than that, whenever -I reach out for anything I particularly want, I have a jumping of the -nerves, just as if I expected a snake to strike. Queer, isn't it? I -wonder how much influence that snake has had on my life?" -</p> - -<p> -Though he laughed, his laugh was not a natural one and she asked herself -if he could be in earnest. She was still young enough to find it -difficult to distinguish between the ironically wise and the incredibly -foolish. -</p> - -<p> -"I wish I could help you. I'll do anything in the world I can to help -you," she murmured in a voice as soft as her glance. -</p> - -<p> -Their eyes met, and she watched the bitterness, the mingling of -disappointment and mortification, fade in the glow of pleasure—or -was it merely excitement?—that flamed in his face. -</p> - -<p> -"Then wear a blue dress the colour of your eyes," he rejoined with the -light-hearted audacity of the day before. -</p> - -<p> -The difference in his tone was so startling that she blushed and averted -her gaze. -</p> - -<p> -"I haven't a blue dress," she replied stiffly, while her troubled look -swept the old Haney place as they went past. In a little while they -would reach the station. Even now they were spinning up the long slope, -white as bone dust, that led to the store. -</p> - -<p> -The change in his tone sent the blood in quivering rushes to her cheeks. -She felt the sound beating in her ears as if it were music. -</p> - -<p> -"Then beg, borrow, or steal one," he said gaily, "before I see you -again." -</p> - -<p> -His smile died quickly, as if he were unable to sustain the high note of -merriment, and the inexplicable sadness stole into his look. Was it -substance or shadow, she wondered. Well, whatever it was, it stirred a -profound tenderness in her heart. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="VI">VI</a></h4> - -<p> -When they parted at the station there was a dreaming smile on her lips; -and though she tried to drive it away as she entered the store, she felt -that the smile was still there, hovering about her mouth. A physical -warmth, soft and penetrating, enveloped her like sunshine. And the -miracle (for it was a miracle) had changed her so utterly that she was a -stranger to the Dorinda of yesterday. Where that practical girl had -been, there was now a tremulous creature who felt that she was capable -of unimaginable adventures. How could she reflect upon the virtues of -the red cow she would buy from old Doctor Greylock when she could not -detach her mind from the disturbing image of Doctor Greylock's son? Over -and over, she repeated mechanically, "Thirty dollars for the red cow"; -yet the words might have been spoken by John Appleseed or his idiot boy, -who was lounging near the track, so remote were they from her -consciousness. Thirty dollars! She had saved the money for months. There -would be just that much after the interest on the mortgage was paid. She -had it put away safely in the best pickle-dish in the china press. Ten -dollars a month didn't go far, even if it was "ready money." <i>Then wear -a blue dress the colour of your eyes. Beg, borrow, or steal one before I -see you again.</i> From whom or where had the words come? Something within -herself, over which she had no control, was thinking aloud. And as if -her imagination had escaped from darkness into light, a crowd of -impressions revolved in her mind like the swiftly changing colours of a -kaleidoscope. His eyes, black at a distance, brown when you looked into -them. The healthy reddish tan of his skin. The white streak on his neck -under his collar. The way his hair grew in short close waves like a cap. -His straight red lips, with their look of vital and urgent youth. The -fascinating curve of his eyebrows, which bent down when he smiled or -frowned over his deep-set eyes. The way he smiled. The way he laughed. -The way he looked at her. -</p> - -<p> -Nathan had opened the store and was already sweeping the tracks of mud -from the platform. Somebody was in the store behind him. He talked while -he swept, jerking his scraggy shoulders with an awkward movement. Poor -Nathan, he had as many gestures as a puppet, and they all looked as if -they were worked by strings. -</p> - -<p> -Then, as she hastened up the steps of the store, there occurred one of -those trivial accidents which make history. Miss Seena Snead, attired -for travelling in her best navy blue lady's cloth and her small lace -bonnet with velvet strings, came out of the door. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm runnin' down to Richmond to buy some goods and notions," she said. -"Is there any errand I can do for you or yo' Ma?" -</p> - -<p> -Out of that golden mist, the strange Dorinda who had taken the place of -the real Dorinda, spoke eagerly: "I wonder—oh, I wonder, Miss Seena, -if you could get me a blue dress?" -</p> - -<p> -"A blue dress? Why, of course I can, honey. Do you want gingham or -calico? I reckon Nathan has got as good blue and white check as you can -find anywhere. I picked it out for him myself." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda shook her head. Her eyes were shining and her voice trembled; -but she went on recklessly, driven by this force which she obeyed but -could not understand. "No, not gingham or calico. I don't want anything -useful, Miss Seena. I want cashmere—or nun's veiling. And I don't -want dark blue. I want it exactly the colour of my eyes." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I declare!" Miss Seena looked as if she could not believe her -ears. "Whoever heard of matchin' material by yo' eyes?" Then turning -the girl round, she examined her intently. "I ain't never paid much -attention to yo' eyes," she continued, "though I always thought they had -a kind, pleasant look in 'em. But when I come to notice 'em, they're -jest exactly the shade of a blue jay's wing. That won't be hard to -match. I can carry a blue jay's wing in my mind without a particle of -trouble. You want a new dress for spring, I s'pose? It don't matter -whether a girl's a Methodist or an Episcopalian, she's mighty sure to -begin wantin' a new dress when Easter is comin'. Geneva Ellgood ordered -her figured challis yestiddy from one of them big stores in New York. -She picked the pattern out of a fashion paper, and when the goods come, -I'm goin' to spend a week at Green Acres, an' make it up for her. It is -a real pretty pattern, and it calls for yards and yards of stuff. They -say young Doctor Greylock was a beau of hers when she was in New York -last summer, an' I reckon that's why she's buyin' so much finery. -Courtin' is good for milliners, my Ma used to say, even if marriage is -bad for wives. She had a lot of dry fun in her, my Ma had. Geneva is -gettin' a mighty pretty hat too. She's bought a wreath of wheat and -poppies, an' I'm takin' it down to Richmond to put on one of them -stylish new hats with a high bandeau." -</p> - -<p> -For an instant Dorinda held her breath while a wave of dull sickness -swept over her. At that moment she realized that the innocence of her -girlhood, the ingenuous belief that love brought happiness, had departed -for ever. She was in the thick of life, and the thick of life meant not -peace but a sword in the heart. Though she scarcely knew Geneva Ellgood, -she felt that they were enemies. It was not fair, she told herself -passionately, that one girl should have everything and one nothing! A -primitive impulse struggled like some fierce invader in her mind, among -the orderly instincts and inherited habits of thought. She was startled; -she was frightened; but she was defiant. In a flash the knowledge came -to her that habit and duty and respectability are not the whole of life. -Beyond the beaten road in which her ideas and inclinations had moved, -she had discovered a virgin wilderness of mystery and terror. While she -stood there, listening to the gossip of the dressmaker, the passion that -abides at the heart of all desperation inflamed her mind. She had -learned that love casts its inevitable shadow of pain. -</p> - -<p> -"I want a hat too, Miss Seena," she said quickly. "A white straw hat -with a wreath of blue flowers round the crown." -</p> - -<p> -Miss Seena lifted her spectacles to her forehead, and gazed at the girl -inquiringly with her small far-sighted eyes. "I always thought you had -too much character to care about clothes, Dorinda," she said, "but that -jest proves, I reckon, that you never can tell. I s'pose youth is -obleeged to break out sooner or later. But it will cost a good deal, I'm -afraid. Wreaths are right expensive, now that they're so much worn. Yo' -Ma told me the last time I was over thar that you were savin' all you -made to help yo' Pa with the farm." -</p> - -<p> -Her glance was mild, for she was not unsympathetic (when was a -dressmaker, especially a dressmaker who was at the same time a -sentimental spinster, unsympathetic about clothes?) but she wished to -feel sure that Dorinda would not regret her extravagance after it was -too late. -</p> - -<p> -"You mustn't think that you can keep up with Geneva, honey," she added -kindly but indiscreetly. "You're prettier than she is, but her Pa's the -richest man anywhar about here, an' I reckon thar ain't much ugliness -that money ain't able to cure." -</p> - -<p> -The advice was wholesome, but Dorinda frowned and shook her head -stubbornly. The shawl had slipped to her shoulders, and the sunlight, -which was struggling through the clouds, brought out a bluish lustre on -her black hair. Miss Seena, watching her closely, reflected that hair -and eyes like those did not often go together. With this vivid contrast -and the high colour in her lips and cheeks the girl appeared almost too -conspicuous, the dressmaker decided. "It always seemed to me mo' refined -when yo' eyes and hair matched better," she thought, "but I s'pose most -men would call her handsome, even if her features ain't so small as they -ought to be." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm going to have one nice dress, I don't care what happens," Dorinda -was saying. "I don't care what happens," she repeated obstinately. "I've -got thirty dollars put away, and I want you to buy that dress and hat if -it takes every cent of it. I'm tired of doing without things." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I don't reckon they will cost that much," returned Miss Seena, -after a quick sum in mental arithmetic. "You can buy right nice, -double-width nun's veiling for seventy-five cents a yard, and I can get -you a dress, I reckon, by real careful cuttin', out of nine yards. The -fashion books call for ten, but them New York folks don't need to cut -careful. To be sure, these here bell skirts and balloon sleeves take a -heap of, goods, but I s'pose you'll want yours jest as stylish as -Geneva's?" Since the girl was determined to waste her money, it would be -a pity, Miss Seena reflected gently, to spoil the pleasure of her -improvidence. After all, you weren't young and good-looking but such a -little while! -</p> - -<p> -"I'll do the best I can, honey," she said briskly. "And they'll charge -it to me at Brandywine and Plummer's store, so you don't need to bring -the money till the first of the month. Thar's the train whistlin' now, -and Sister Texanna is waitin' at the track with my basket and things. -Don't you worry, I'll get you jest the very prettiest material I can -find." -</p> - -<p> -Turning away, the dressmaker hurried with birdlike fluttering steps to -the track, where Dorinda saw the stately figure of Miss Texanna standing -guard beside an indiscriminate collection of parcels. Miss Texanna, -unlike her sisters, had been pretty in her youth, and a dull glamour of -forgotten romance still surrounded her. Though she had never married, -she had had a lover killed in the war, which, as Miss Tabitha had once -remarked, was "almost as good." But Dorinda, while she watched the -approaching train, did not think of the three sisters. "I oughtn't to -have done it," she said to herself, with a feeling of panic, and then -desperately, "Well, I'm going to have one good dress, I don't care what -happens!" -</p> - -<p> -A few farmers were taking the early train to town, and Dorinda saw that -Geneva Ellgood had driven her father to the station in her little -dogcart with red wheels. She was a plain girl, with a long nose, eyes -the colour of Malaga grapes, and a sallow skin which had the greenish -tinge of anemia. Her flaxen hair, which she arranged elaborately, was -profuse and beautiful, and her smile, though it lacked brightness, was -singularly sweet and appealing. -</p> - -<p> -As the two girls looked at each other, they nodded carelessly; then -Geneva leaned forward and held out a slip of paper. -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder if you would mind fixing up this list for me?" she asked in a -friendly tone. "I don't like to leave Neddy, and Bob has gone in to see -if there are any letters." -</p> - -<p> -Running down the steps, Dorinda took the list from her and glanced over -it. "We haven't got the kind of coffee you want," she said. "It was -ordered two weeks ago, but it hasn't come yet." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, we'll have to make out with what you have. If you'll wrap up the -things, Bob will bring them out to me." -</p> - -<p> -She was a shy girl, gentle and amiable, yet there was a barely -perceptible note of condescension in her manner. "Just because she's -rich and I'm poor, she thinks she is better than I am," Dorinda thought -disdainfully, as she went up the steps. -</p> - -<p> -While she was weighing and measuring the groceries, Bob Ellgood came -from the post office (which consisted of a partition, with a window, in -one corner of the store) and stopped by the counter to speak to her. He -was a heavy, slow-witted young man, kind, temperate, and good-looking in -a robust, beefy fashion. Because he was the eldest son of James Ellgood, -he was regarded as desirable by the girls in the neighbourhood, and -Dorinda remembered that, only a few Sundays ago, she had looked at him -in church and asked herself, with a start of expectancy, "What if he -should be the right one after all?" She laughed softly over the pure -absurdity of the recollection, and a gleam of admiration flickered in -the round, marble-like eyes of the young man. -</p> - -<p> -"I hope the Greylocks' steer didn't harm your father's plant beds," he -said abruptly. -</p> - -<p> -"No," she shook her head. "I haven't heard that they suffered." -</p> - -<p> -Having weighed the sugar, she was pouring it into a paper bag, and his -eyes lingered on the competent way in which her fingers turned down the -opening, secured it firmly, and snipped off the end of the string with -an expert gesture. Only a week ago his attention would have flattered -her, but to-day she had other things to think of, and his admiring -oxlike stare made her impatient. Was that the way things always came, -after you had stopped wanting them? -</p> - -<p> -"Well, he ought to have a good crop after the work he's put on those -fields," he continued, as she placed the packages in a cracker box and -handed them to him over the counter. -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head. "No matter how hard you work it always comes back to -the elements in the end. You can't be sure of anything when you have to -depend upon the elements for a living." -</p> - -<p> -"That's what Father says." He accepted the fatalistic philosophy without -dispute. "After all, the rain and frost and drought, not the farmer, do -most of the farming." He had had a good education, and though his speech -was more provincial than Jason's, it lacked entirely the racy flavour of -Pedlar's Mill. -</p> - -<p> -With the box under one arm, he was still gazing at her, when the -impatient voice of Geneva rang out from the doorway, and the girl came -hurrying into the store. -</p> - -<p> -"What are you waiting for, Bob? I thought you were never coming." Then, -as her eyes fell on Dorinda, she added apologetically, "Of course I know -the things were ready, but Bob is always so slow. I've got to hurry back -because Neddy won't stand alone." -</p> - -<p> -She turned away and went out, while Bob followed with a crestfallen air. -</p> - -<p> -"As if I cared!" thought Dorinda proudly. "As if I wanted to talk to -him!" -</p> - -<p> -The train to the north had gone by at five o'clock, and the next one, -which Miss Seena had just taken to Richmond, was the last that would -stop before afternoon. The few farmers who had lounged about the track -were now waiting in the store, while Nathan weighed and measured or -counted small change into callous palms. Here and there a negro in blue -jeans overalls stood patiently, with an expression of wistful -resignation which was characteristic less of an individual than of a -race. There was little talk among the white farmers, and that little was -confined to the crops, or the weather. Rugged, gnarled, earth-stained, -these men were as impersonal as trees or as transcendental philosophers. -In their rustic pride they accepted silence as they accepted poverty or -bad weather, without embarrassment and without humility. If they had -nothing to say, they were capable of sitting for hours, dumb and -unabashed, over their pipes or their "plugs" of tobacco. They could tell -a tale, provided there was one worth the telling, with caustic wit and -robust realism; but the broad jest or the vulgar implication of the -small town was an alien product among them. Not a man of them would have -dared recite an anecdote in Pedlar's store that Dorinda should not have -heard. The transcendental point of view, the habit of thought bred by -communion with earth and sky, had refined the grain while it had -roughened the husk. -</p> - -<p> -"Do you want me to wait on Mr. Appleseed?" asked Dorinda, glancing past -Nathan to the genial, ruddy old farmer, who was standing near her, with -his idiot son close at his side. As she spoke she lifted the top from -one of the tall jars on the counter, and held out a stick of striped -peppermint candy. "Here's a stick of candy for you, Billy." -</p> - -<p> -The boy grinned at her with his sagging mouth, and made a snatch at the -candy. -</p> - -<p> -"Say thanky, son," prompted John Appleseed. -</p> - -<p> -"Thanky," muttered Billy obediently, slobbering over the candy. -</p> - -<p> -"No, I'll look after John as soon as I've fixed up this brown sugar," said -Nathan. "I wish you'd take those ducks from Aunt Mehitable Green. She's -been waitin' a long time, and she ain't so young as she used to be. Tell -her I'll allow her seventy-five cents for the pair, if they're good -size. She wants the money's worth in coffee and Jamaica ginger." -</p> - -<p> -"Why, I didn't know Aunt Mehitable was here!" Glancing quickly about, -she discovered the old woman sitting on a box at the far end of the -room, with the pair of ducks in her lap. "I didn't see you come in, or -I'd have spoken to you before," added the girl, hurrying to her. -</p> - -<p> -Aunt Mehitable Green had assisted at Dorinda's birth, which had been -unusually difficult, and there was a bond of affection, as well as a -sentimental association, between them. Mrs. Oakley, with her superior -point of view, had always been friendly with the negroes around her. -During Dorinda's childhood both mother and daughter had visited Aunt -Mehitable in her cabin at Whistling Spring, and the old midwife had -invariably returned their simple gifts of food or wine made from -scuppernong grapes, with slips of old-fashioned flowers or "physic" -brewed from the mysterious herbs in her garden. She still bore the -reputation, bestowed half in fear, half in derision, of "a conjure -woman," and not a negro in the county would have offended her. Though -there was a growing scepticism concerning her ability to "throw spells" -or work love charms, even Mrs. Oakley admitted her success in removing -moles and warts and in making cows go dry at the wrong season. She was a -tall, straight negress, with a dark wrinkled face, in which a brooding -look rippled like moonlight on still water, and hair as scant and grey -as lichen on an old stump. Her dress of purple calico was stiffly -starched, and she wore a decent bonnet of black straw which had once -belonged to Mrs. Oakley. The stock she came of was a good one, for, as a -slave, she had belonged to the Cumberlands, who had owned Honeycomb Farm -before it was divided. Though that prosperous family had "run to seed" -and finally disappeared, the slaves belonging to it had sprung up -thriftily, in freedom, on innumerable patches of rented ground. The -Greens, with the Moodys and Plumtrees, represented the coloured -aristocracy of Pedlar's Mill; and Micajah Green, Aunt Mehitable's eldest -son, had recently bought from Nathan Pedlar the farm he had worked, with -intelligence and industry, as a tenant. -</p> - -<p> -"I hope you didn't walk over here," said Dorinda, for Whistling Spring -was five miles away, on the other side of the Greylocks' farm, beyond -Whippernock River. -</p> - -<p> -The old woman shook her head, while she began unwrapping the strips of -red flannel on the legs of the ducks. "Naw'm, Micajah brung me over wid -de load er pine in de oxcyart. I ain' seen you en yo' Ma; fur a mont' er -Sundays, honey," she added. -</p> - -<p> -"I've wanted to get down all winter," answered Dorinda, "but the back -roads are so bad I thought I'd better wait until the mud dried. Are any -of your children living at home with you now?" -</p> - -<p> -Aunt Mehitable sighed. "De las oner dem is done lef' me, but I ain't -never seed de way yit dat de ole hen kin keep de fledglin's in de -chicken coop. Dey's all done moughty well, en dat's sump'n de Lawd's -erbleeged ter be praised fur. Caze He knows," she added fervently, "de -way I use'n ter torment de Th'one wid pray'r when dey wuz all little." -</p> - -<p> -"Pa says Micajah is one of the best farmers about here." -</p> - -<p> -"Dat's so. He sholy is," assented the old midwife. "En Micar he's -steddyin' 'bout horse sickness along wid Marse Kettledrum, de horse -doctah," she continued, "en Moses, he's gwineter wuck on de railroad -ontwel winter, en Abraham, he's helpin' Micajah, en Eliphalet, he's -leasin' a patch er ground f'om Marse Garlick over yonder by Whippernock, -en Jemima, de one I done name arter ole Miss, she's wuckin' at Five Oaks -fur ole Doctah Greylock——" -</p> - -<p> -"I thought she'd left there long ago," Dorinda broke in. -</p> - -<p> -"Naw'm, she ain' left dar yit. She wuz fixin' ter git away, caze hit's -been kinder skeery over dar sence de ole doctah's been gittin' so -rambunctious; en Jemima, she ain' gwineter teck er bit er sass f'om dat -ar yaller huzzy, needer. Yas'm, she wuz all fixin' ter leave twell de -young doctah come back, an he axed 'er ter stay on dar en wait on him. -Huh!" she exclaimed abruptly, after a pause, "I 'low dar's gwinter be -some loud bellowin's w'en de young en de ole steer is done lock dere -horns tergedder." With a gesture of supreme disdain, she thrust the two -ducks away from her into Dorinda's hands. "Dar, honey, you teck dese yer -ducks," she said. "I'se moughty glad to lay eyes on you agin, but I'se -erbleeged ter be gittin' erlong back wid Micajah. You tell yo' Ma I'se -comin' ter see 'er jes' ez soon ez de cole spell is done let up. I sholy -is gwineter do hit." -</p> - -<p> -When the old woman had gone, with the coffee and Jamaica ginger in her -basket, Dorinda hurried into the room at the back of the store, where -Rose Emily and the children were waiting for her. -</p> - -<p> -"I couldn't get here any sooner," she explained as she entered. "First -Miss Seena Snead and then Aunt Mehitable stopped me. Are you feeling -easier to-day, Rose Emily?" -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Pedlar, wrapped in a pink crocheted shawl, with her hectic colour -and her gleaming hair, reminded Dorinda of the big wax doll they had had -in the window of the store last Christmas. She was so brilliant that she -did not look real. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I feel like a different person this morning," she answered. It was -what she always said at the beginning of the day. "I'm sure I shall be -able to get up by evening." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm so glad," Dorinda responded, as she did every morning. "Wait and -see what the doctor says." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I thought I'd better stay in bed until he comes." She closed her -eyes from weakness, but a moment later, when she opened them, they shone -more brightly than ever. "He said he would stop by." -</p> - -<p> -For an instant Dorinda hesitated; then she answered in a hushed voice. -"I met him in the road, and he drove me over." -</p> - -<p> -Rose Emily's face was glowing. "Oh, did he? I'm so glad," she breathed. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm afraid things aren't going well at Five Oaks," Dorinda pursued in a -troubled voice. "He looked dreadfully worried. It's the old man, I -suppose. Everybody says he's drinking himself to death, and there's that -coloured girl with all those children." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, he can't live much longer," Rose Emily said hopefully, "and then, -of course, Jason will send them all packing." She reflected, as if she -were trying to recall something that had slipped her memory. "Somebody -was telling me the other day," she continued, "it must have been either -Miss Texanna or Miss Tabitha. Whoever it was thought Jason had made a -mistake to come back. Oh, I remember now! It was Miss Tabitha, and she -called Jason a fool to let his father manage his life. She said he had a -sweet nature, but that he was as light as a feather and a strong wind -could blow him away. Of course she didn't know him." -</p> - -<p> -"Of course not," Dorinda assented emphatically. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I haven't seen him often, but he didn't seem to me to lack -backbone. Anyhow, I'd rather be married to a sweet nature than to a -strong will," she added. Ever since Jason's return, she had hoped so -ardently that he might fall in love with Dorinda that already, according -to her optimistic habit of mind, she regarded the match as assured. -</p> - -<p> -They were still discussing young Doctor Greylock when Minnie May ran in -to say that Bud "would not mind what she told him," and Mrs. Pedlar -shifted her feverish animation in the direction of her daughter. -</p> - -<p> -"Tell him if he doesn't do what you say, I'll make his Pa whip him as -soon as the store is closed," she said sternly, for she was a -disciplinarian; and the capable little girl ran out again, wiping her -red and shrivelled hands on the towel she had pinned over her short -dress. -</p> - -<p> -"I declar that child's a born little mother," Rose Emily continued. "I -don't see how I could ever have pulled through without her." -</p> - -<p> -Trivial as the incident was, Dorinda never forgot it. Years afterwards -the scene would return to her memory, and she would see again the -sturdy, energetic little figure, with the two thick wheaten red braids -and the towel pinned about her waist, hurrying out of the room. A born -little mother, that was the way Minnie May always appeared to her. -</p> - -<p> -"Nathan needs me to help. I'd better go back," she said. "I'll look in -every now and then to see how you are." Smoothing her hair with her -hand, she hastened into the store. -</p> - -<p> -As the morning advanced a line of white and coloured farmers, assembled -by the counter, with the chickens, eggs, and pats of butter which they -had brought to exchange for coffee, molasses, sugar, or simple household -remedies such as Jamaica ginger and Sloan's liniment. Tea was used only -in case of illness, and the brown tin canister on the shelf sometimes -remained empty for weeks. -</p> - -<p> -Until yesterday Dorinda had regarded the monotonous routine of the store -as one of the dreary, though doubtless beneficial, designs of an -inscrutable Providence. A deep-rooted religious instinct persuaded her, -in spite of secret recoils, that dullness, not pleasure, was the -fundamental law of morality. The truth of the matter, she would probably -have said, was that one did the best one could in a world where duty was -invariably along the line of utmost resistance. But this morning, even -while she performed the empty mechanical gestures, she felt that her -mind had become detached from her body, and was whirling like a -butterfly in some ecstatic dream. Flightiness. That was how it would -have appeared to her mother. Yet, if this were flightiness, she thought, -who would ever choose to be sober? Beauty, colour, sweetness, all the -vital and radiant energy of the spring, vibrated through her. Her ears -were ringing as if she moved in a high wind. Sounds floated to her in -thin strains, from so great a distance that she was obliged to have -questions repeated before they reached her ears. And all the time, while -she weighed chickens and counted eggs and tasted butter, she was aware -that the faint, slow smile clung like an edge of light to her lips. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="VII">VII</a></h4> - -<p> -The morning was well over when Minnie May came running into the store to -ask Dorinda to come to her mother. -</p> - -<p> -"The doctor is with her," said the child, "and he wants to leave some -directions." -</p> - -<p> -"Hadn't your father better see him?" Dorinda inquired, longing yet -hesitating. -</p> - -<p> -"No, you go," answered Nathan before the child could reply. "You're so -much quicker at understanding," he explained, "and you can tell me what -he says after he's gone." -</p> - -<p> -He looked, for all his immense frame, more bent and colourless and -ineffectual, she thought, than she had ever seen him. What a mean life -he had had! And he was good. There wasn't a better husband and father in -the world than Nathan Pedlar, and for the matter of that, there wasn't a -more honest tradesman. Yet everybody, even his own children, pushed him -aside as if he were of no consequence. -</p> - -<p> -A few minutes later she was in Rose Emily's room, and her bright gaze -was on the clean-cut youthful figure leaning over her friend. Though she -had known that he would be there, her swift impression of him startled -her by its vividness. It was like this every time that she saw him. -There was an animation, a living quality in his face and smile which -made everything appear lifeless around him. Long afterwards, when she -had both remembered and forgotten, she decided that it was simply the -glamour of the unknown that she had felt in him. In those first months -after his return to Pedlar's Mill, he possessed for her the charm of -distant countries and picturesque enterprises. It was the flavour of -personality, she realized, even then, not of experience. He had -travelled little, yet his presence diffused the perilous thrill of -adventure. -</p> - -<p> -"This is Dorinda," Rose Emily said; and he looked up and nodded as -casually as if he had never seen her before, or had just parted from -her. Which impression, Dorinda wondered, did he mean to convey? -</p> - -<p> -"I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a hammock?" he inquired. -"What we need is to get her out on the porch. I've told her that every -time I've seen her." -</p> - -<p> -"There are several hammocks in the store." As she answered his question, -Dorinda glanced at him doubtfully. In the sickroom he appeared to have -shed his youth as a snake sheds its skin. He might have been any age. He -was brisk, firm, efficient, and as sexless as a machine. -</p> - -<p> -"Wouldn't it be safer to wait until the weather is milder?" Rose Emily -asked, with an anxious smile. "Cold is so bad for me." -</p> - -<p> -"Nonsense!" He shook his head with a laugh. "That's the whole trouble -with you. Your lungs are starving for air. If you'd kept out of doors -instead of shutting the windows, you wouldn't be where you are now." -</p> - -<p> -At this his patient made a timid protest. "Your father always -said——" -</p> - -<p> -He interrupted her brusquely. "My father was good in his generation, but -he belongs to the old school." -</p> - -<p> -After this he talked on cheerfully, flattering her, chaffing her, while -he made fun of her old-fashioned hygiene and asked innumerable -questions, in a careless manner, about her diet, her medicine, her -diversions, and the deformity of the baby, John Abner, who was born with -a clubfoot. Though it seemed a long time to Dorinda, it was in fact not -more than a quarter of an hour before he said good-bye and nodded to the -girl to follow him out on the porch. -</p> - -<p> -"I'll show you the very place to hang that hammock," he remarked as he -led the way out of doors. -</p> - -<p> -Rose Emily stretched out her thin arm to detain him. "Don't you think -I'm getting better every day, Doctor?" -</p> - -<p> -"Better? Of course you're better." He looked down at her with a smile. -"We'll have you up and out before summer." -</p> - -<p> -Then he opened the door, and Dorinda obediently followed him outside. -</p> - -<p> -"How on earth does she breathe in that oven?" he demanded moodily, while -he walked to the far end of the porch. "She'll be dead in three months, -if she doesn't get some fresh air into her lungs. And the children. It's -as bad as murder to keep them in that room." -</p> - -<p> -He frowned slightly, and with his troubled frown, Dorinda felt that he -receded from her and became a stranger. His face was graver, firmer, -harassed by perplexity. It seemed to her incredible that he had looked -at her that morning with the romantic pathos and the imperative needs of -youth in his eyes. -</p> - -<p> -"Will she really be up by summer?" she asked, breathless with hope and -surprise. -</p> - -<p> -"Up?" He lowered his voice and glanced apprehensively over his shoulder. -"Why, she's dying. Don't you know she is dying?" -</p> - -<p> -"I thought so," her voice broke. "But you told her——" -</p> - -<p> -"You didn't expect me to tell her the truth, did you? What kind of brute -do you take me for?" -</p> - -<p> -This new morality, for which neither religious doctrine nor experimental -philosophy had prepared her, stunned her into silence; and in that -silence he repeated, with a gesture of irritation, as if the admission -annoyed him excessively: "She'll be in her grave in six months, but you -couldn't expect me to tell her so." -</p> - -<p> -"You mean there is no hope?" -</p> - -<p> -"Not of a cure. Her lungs are too far gone. Of course, if she gets out -of doors, she may linger a little longer than we expect. Air and proper -nourishment work wonders sometimes." -</p> - -<p> -"But don't you think she ought to have time to prepare?" It was the -question her mother would have asked, and she uttered it regretfully but -firmly. -</p> - -<p> -"Prepare? You mean for her funeral?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I mean for eternity." -</p> - -<p> -If she had presented some prehistoric fossil for his inspection, he -might have examined it with the same curious interest. -</p> - -<p> -"For eternity?" he repeated. -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda wavered. Though honest doubt was not unknown at Pedlar's Mill, -it had seldom resisted successfully the onslaught of orthodox dogma. To -the girl, with her intelligence and independence, many of her mother's -convictions had become merely habits of speech; yet, after all, was not -habit rather than belief the ruling principle of conduct? -</p> - -<p> -"Will you let her die without time for repentance?" something moved her -to ask. -</p> - -<p> -"Repentance! Good Lord! What opportunity has she ever had to commit a -pleasure?" -</p> - -<p> -Then, as if the discussion irritated him, he picked up his medicine case -which he had laid on the railing of the porch. "I'll be passing again -about sundown," he remarked lightly, "and if you're ready to start home, -I'll pick you up as I go by." -</p> - -<p> -As casually as that! "I'll pick you up as I go by!" Just as if she were -a bag of flour, she told herself in resentful despair. As he went from -her down the path to the gate, she resolved that she would not let him -drive her home if it killed her. -</p> - -<p> -"I shan't be here at sundown," she called after him in the voice of a -Covenanter. -</p> - -<p> -He was almost at the gate. Her heart sank like a wounded bird, and then, -recovering its lightness, soared up into the clouds. "Well, I'll manage -to come a little earlier," he responded, with tender gaiety. "Don't -disappoint me." -</p> - -<p> -The small white gate between the two bare apple trees opened and closed -behind him. He untied the reins from the paling fence, and springing -into his buggy, drove off with a wave of his free hand. "God! What a -life!" he said, looking round while the buggy rolled down the slope in -the direction of the railway track. Standing there, she watched the -wheels rock slightly as they passed over the rails, and then spin on -easily along the road toward Green Acres. After the moving speck had -disappeared in the powder blue of the distance, it seemed to her that it -had left its vivid trail through the waste of the broomsedge. Her face -glowed; her bosom rose and fell quickly; her pulses were beating a -riotous tumult which shut out all other sounds. Suspense, heartache, -disappointment, all were forgotten. Why had no one told her that love -was such happiness? -</p> - -<p> -Then, suddenly, her mind reproached her for the tumultuous joy. Rose -Emily was dying; yet she could not attune her thoughts to the solemn -fact of mortality. Walking the length of the porch, she opened the door -and went back into the close room. -</p> - -<p> -"The doctor insists that you must open the windows," she said gravely, -subduing with an effort the blissful note in her voice. -</p> - -<p> -So far had she been from the actual scene that she was not prepared for -the eagerness in Rose Emily's look. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, Dorinda," cried the dying woman, "the doctor was so encouraging!" -</p> - -<p> -The girl turned her face to the window. "Yes, he was very encouraging." -</p> - -<p> -"What did he say to you on the porch?" -</p> - -<p> -"Only that he wanted to have you up before summer." After all, the big -lie was easier than the little one. -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Pedlar sighed happily. "I do wish summer would come!" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda bent down and straightened the pillow under the brilliant head. -It was hard to die, she thought, when the world was so beautiful. There -could be no drearier lot, she imagined, than marriage with Nathan for a -husband; better by far the drab freedom of the Snead sisters. Yet even -to Rose Emily, married to Nathan, life was not without sweetness. A -warm pity for her friend pervaded Dorinda's heart; pity for all that she -had missed and for the love that she had never known. -</p> - -<p> -"It won't be long now." What more could she say? -</p> - -<p> -"Dorinda!" Rose Emily's voice was quivering like the string of a harp. -"Miss Texanna came in for a minute, and she was so excited about the -dress Miss Seena is getting for you in town. Why didn't you tell me?" -</p> - -<p> -"I wanted to, dear, only I didn't have time." -</p> - -<p> -"I am so glad you are going to have a new dress. We can perfectly well -make it here, after Miss Seena has cut it out. Sometimes I get tired -crocheting." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda's eyes filled with tears. How kind Rose Emily was, how -unselfish, how generous! Always she was thinking of others; always she -was planning or working for the good of her children or Dorinda. Even as -a school teacher she had been like that, sweet, patient, generous to a -fault; and now, when she was dying, she grew nobler instead of peevish -and miserable like other hopelessly ill women. -</p> - -<p> -"I'd love it," she said, as soon as she could trust herself to reply, -and she added hastily, "I wonder if you could eat a piece of duck -to-morrow. Aunt Mehitable brought a pair of nice fat ones." -</p> - -<p> -Rose Emily nodded. "Yes, to-morrow. I'd like to see Aunt Mehitable the -next time she comes. She told me once she could conjure this mole off -the back of my neck." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, you might let her try when you're out again." Tears were beading -Dorinda's lashes, and making some trivial excuse, she ran out of the -room. To be worrying about a little mole when Rose Emily would be dead -before summer was over! -</p> - -<p> -A little before sunset, when the whistle of the train blew, Dorinda -picked up her shawl and hastened down to the track. Miss Texanna, having -nothing to do but knit in her box of a post office, had caught the -whistle as far away as Turkey Station, and was already waiting between -the big pump and the stranded freight car. "I reckon that's Sister Seena -on the platform," she remarked; and a few minutes later the train -stopped and the dressmaker was swung gallantly to the ground by the -conductor and the brakeman. -</p> - -<p> -"I've got everything," she said, after the swift descent. "I looked -everywhere, and I bought the prettiest nun's veiling I could find. It's -as near the colour of a blue jay's wing as I ever saw, and I've got some -passementerie that's a perfect match." She was puffing while she walked -up the short slope to the store, but they were the puffs of a victorious -general. "Let's take it right straight into Rose Emily's room," she -added. "She will be just crazy about it." -</p> - -<p> -When the three of them gathered about Rose Emily's bed, and the yards of -bright, clear blue unrolled on the counterpane, it seemed to Dorinda -that they banished the menacing thought of death. Though she pitied her -friend, she could not be unhappy. Her whole being was vibrating with -some secret, irrepressible hope. A blue dress, nothing more. The merest -trifle in the sum of experience; yet, when she looked back in later -years, it seemed to her that the future was packed into that single -moment as the kernel is packed into the nut. -</p> - -<p> -"May I leave it here?" she asked, glancing eagerly out of the window. -"The sun has gone down, and I must hurry." Would he wait for her or had -he already gone on without her? -</p> - -<p> -"We'll start cuttin' the first thing in the mornin'," said Miss Seena, -gloating over the nun's veiling. "Jest try the hat on, Dorinda, before -you go. I declar her own Ma wouldn't know her," she exclaimed, with the -pride of creation. "Nobody would ever have dreamed she was so -good-lookin', would they, Rose Emily? Ain't it jest wonderful what -clothes can do?" -</p> - -<p> -With that "wonderful" tingling in her blood, Dorinda threw the orange -shawl over her head, and hastened out of the house. She felt as if the -blue waves were bearing her up and sweeping her onward. In all her life -it was the only thing she had ever had that she wanted. Yesterday there -had been nothing, and to-day the world was so rich and full of beauty -that she was dizzy with happiness. It was like a first draught of wine; -it enraptured while it bewildered. -</p> - -<p> -"I was a little late, and I was afraid you would have gone," Jason said. -</p> - -<p> -What did he mean by that, she asked herself. Ought she not to have -waited? She had no experience, no training, to guide her. Nothing but -this blind instinct, and how could she tell whether instinct was right -or wrong? -</p> - -<p> -"Something kept me. I couldn't get away earlier," she answered. "Have -you worked all day?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, but it isn't steady work. For hours at a time the store is empty. -Then they all come together. Of course we have to tidy up in the off -hours," she added, "and when there's nothing else to do I read aloud to -Rose Emily." -</p> - -<p> -"Are you content? You look happy." -</p> - -<p> -He was gazing straight ahead of him, and it seemed to her that he was as -impersonal as the Shorter Catechism. She suffered under it, yet she was -powerless, in her innocence, to change it. -</p> - -<p> -"I don't know. There isn't any use thinking." Were there always these -fluctuations of hope and disappointment? Did nothing last? Was there no -stability in experience? -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I got caught too," he said presently, as if he had not heard her. -"That's the rotten part of a doctor's life, everything and everybody -catches him. Good Lord! Is there never any end to it? I'd give my head -to get away. I'm not made for the country. It depresses me and lets me -down too easily. I suppose I'm born lazy at bottom, and I need the -contact with other minds to prod me into energy. This is the critical -time too. If I can't get away, I'm doomed for good. Yet what can I do? -I'm tied hand and foot as long as Father is alive." -</p> - -<p> -"Couldn't you sell the farm?" Her voice sounded thin and colourless in -her ears. -</p> - -<p> -"How can I? Who would buy? And it isn't only the farm. I wouldn't let -that stand in my way. Father has got into a panic about dying, and he is -afraid to be left alone with the negroes. He made me promise, when I -thought he was on his death-bed, that I wouldn't leave him as long as he -lived. He's got a will of iron—that's the only thing that keeps him -alive—and he's always had his way with me. He broke my spirit, I -suppose, when I was little. And it was the same way with Mother. She -taught me to be afraid of him, and to dodge and parry before I was old -enough to know what I was doing. When a fear like that gets into the -nerves, it's like a disease." He broke off moodily, and then went on -again without waiting for her response. "There's medicine now. I never -wanted to study medicine. I knew I wasn't cut out for it. What I wanted -to do was something entirely different,—but Father had made up his -mind, and in the end he had his way with me. He always gets his way with -me. He's thwarted everything I ever wanted to do as far back as I can -remember. For my good of course. I understand that. But you can ruin -people's lives—especially young people's lives— -from the best motives." -</p> - -<p> -His bitterness welled out in a torrent. It seemed to Dorinda that he had -forgotten her; yet, even though he was unaware of her sympathy, she felt -that she longed to reach out her hand and comfort him. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm sorry," she said softly, "I'm sorry." -</p> - -<p> -He looked at her with a laugh. "I oughtn't to have let that out," he -returned. "Something happened to upset me. I'm easy-going enough -generally, but there are some things I can't stand." -</p> - -<p> -She was curious to know what had happened, what sort of things they were -that he couldn't stand; but after his brief outburst, he did not confide -in her. He was engrossed, she saw, in a recollection he did not divulge; -and, manlike, he made no effort to assume a cheerfulness he did not -feel. The drive was a disappointment to her; yet, in some inexplicable -way, the disappointment increased rather than diminished his power over -her. While she sat there, with her lips closed, she was, shedding her -allurement as prodigally as a flower sheds its fragrance. Gradually, the -afterglow thinned into dusk; the road darkened, and the broomsedge, -subdued by twilight, became impenetrable. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="VIII">VIII</a></h4> - -<p> -It was Easter Sunday, and Dorinda, wearing her new clothes with outward -confidence but a perturbed mind, stood on the front porch while she -waited for the horses to be harnessed to the spring wagon. -</p> - -<p> -Though she was far less handsome in her blue dress and her straw hat -with the wreath of cornflowers than she was in her old tan ulster and -orange shawl, neither she nor Almira Pride her father's niece, who was -going to church with them, was aware of the fact. Easter would not be -acknowledged in the austere service of the church at Pedlar's Mill; but -both women knew that spring would blossom on the head of every girl who -could afford a new hat. Joshua had gone to harness the horses; and while -Mrs. Oakley put on her bonnet and her broadcloth mantle trimmed with -bugles, which she had worn to church ever since Dorinda could remember, -Almira babbled on in a rapture of admiration. -</p> - -<p> -She was a pink, flabby, irresponsible person, adjusting comfortably the -physical burden of too much flesh to the spiritual repose of too little -mind. All the virtues and the vices of the "poor white" had come to -flower in her. Married at fifteen to a member of a family known as "the -low down Prides," she had been perfectly contented with her lot in a -two-room log cabin and with her husband, a common labourer, having a -taste for whiskey and a disinclination for work, who was looked upon by -his neighbours as "not all there." As the mother of children so numerous -that their father could not be trusted to remember their names, she -still welcomed the yearly addition to her family with the moral serenity -of a rabbit. -</p> - -<p> -"I declar, Dorrie, I don't see how you got such a stylish flare," she -exclaimed now, without envy and without ambition. "That bell skirt sets -jest perfect!" -</p> - -<p> -"I hope we got it right," said Dorinda, anxiously, as she turned slowly -round under Almira's gaze. "Is Ike staying with the children?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, we couldn't both leave 'em the same day. Is Uncle Josh hitching -up?" -</p> - -<p> -"He's coming round right now," said Mrs. Oakley, wafting a pungent, -odour of camphor before her as she appeared. "I'm glad you came over, -Almira. There's plenty of room in the wagon since we've put in the back -seat. Ain't you coming to church with us, Josiah?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I ain't," Josiah replied, stubbornly. "When I get a day's rest, I'm -goin' to take it. It don't rest me to be preached to." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, it ought to," rejoined his mother, with an air of exhausted -piety. "If going to church ain't a rest, I don't know what you call -one." -</p> - -<p> -But Josiah was in a stubborn and rebellious mood. He was suffering with -toothache, and though he was of the breed, he was not of the temper of -which martyrs are made. "I don't see that yo' religion has done so much -for you," he added irascibly, "or for Pa either." -</p> - -<p> -In her Sunday clothes, with her buckram-lined skirt spreading about her, -Mrs. Oakley stopped, as she was descending the steps of the porch, and -looked back at her son. "It is the only thing that has kept me going, -Josiah," she answered, and her lip trembled as she repeated the -solitary formula with which experience had provided her. -</p> - -<p> -"Poor Ma," Dorinda thought while she watched her. "He might a least -leave her the comfort of her religion." -</p> - -<p> -"There's Uncle Josh now!" exclaimed Almira, who was by instinct a -peacemaker. "Have you got yo' hymn book, Aunt Eudora? I forgot to bring -mine along." -</p> - -<p> -"It's in my reticule," Mrs. Oakley replied, producing a bag of beaded -black silk, which she had used every Sunday for twenty years. "You'll -get all muddied up, Dorinda, so I brought this old bedquilt for you to -spread over your lap. It's chilly enough, anyway, for your ulster, and -you can leave it with the quilt in the wagon. I can see you shivering -now in that thin nun's veiling." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm not cold," Dorinda answered valiantly; but she slipped her arms -into the sleeves of the ulster, and accepted obediently the bedquilt -her mother held out. Something, either Josiah's surliness or the slight -chill in the early April air, had dampened her spirits, and she was -realizing that the possession of a new dress does not confer happiness. -Going down the steps, she glanced up doubtfully at the changeable blue -of the sky. "I do hope it is going to stay clear," she murmured. -</p> - -<p> -Round the corner of the house, she could see Joshua harnessing the -horses, Dan and Beersheba. Dan, the leader, was still champing fodder as -he backed up to the ramshackle vehicle, and while he raised his heavy -hoofs, he turned his gentle, humid gaze on his master. He was a tall, -rawboned animal, slow but sure, as Joshua said proudly, with a flowing -tail, plaited now and tied up with red calico, and the doleful face of a -Presbyterian gone wrong. Beside him, Beersheba, his match in colour but -not in character, moved with a mincing step, and surveyed the Sabbath -prospect with a sportive epicurean eye. Unlike the Southern farmers -around him, and the unimaginative everywhere, who are without feeling -for animals, the better part of Joshua's life was spent with his two -horses; and Dorinda sometimes thought that they were nearer to him than -even his wife and his children. Certainly he was less humble and more at -home in their company. In the midst of his family he seldom spoke, never -unless a question was put to him; but coming upon him unawares in the -fields or by the watering trough, Dorinda had heard him talking to Dan -and Beersheba in the tone a man uses only to the creatures who speak and -understand the intimate language of his heart. -</p> - -<p> -Always at a disadvantage in his Sunday clothes, which obscured the -patriarchal dignity of his appearance, he looked more hairy and -earthbound than ever this morning. Though he had scrubbed his face -until it shone, the colour of clay and the smell of manure still clung -to him. Only his brown eyes, with their dumb wistfulness, were bright -and living. -</p> - -<p> -Wrapped in, the old bedquilt, Dorinda jogged sleepily over the familiar -road, which had become so recently the road of happiness. In a dream she -felt the jolting of the wagon; in a dream she heard the creaking of the -wheels, the trotting of the horses, the murmur of wind in the tree-tops, -the piping of birds in the meadows. In a dream she smelt the rich, vital -scents of the ploughed ground, the sharp tang of manure on the -tobacco fields, the stimulating whiff of camphor from her mother's -handkerchief. The trees were still bare in the deep band of woods, -except for the flaming points of the maple and the white and rosy foam -of, the dogwood and redbud; but beside the road patches of grass and -weeds were as vivid as emerald, and where the distance was webbed with -light and shadow, the landscape unrolled like a black and silver -brocade. While she drove on the vague depression drifted away from her -spirits, and she felt that joy mounted in her veins as the sap flowed -upward around her. In this dream, as in a remembered one of her -childhood, she was for ever approaching some magical occasion, and yet -never quite reaching it. She was for ever about to be satisfied, and yet -never satisfied in the end. The dream, like all her dreams, carried her -so far and no farther. At the very point where she needed it most, it -broke off and left her suspended in a world of gossamer unrealities. -</p> - -<p> -The mud spattered over the quilt in her lap, and she heard her Mother -say in her habitual tone of nervous nagging, "Drive carefully over that -bad place, Joshua. If Elder Pursley stays with us during the missionary -meetings, I'll have to ask Miss Texanna Snead to let us have some of her -milk and butter. They have some fresh cows coming on, and I don't reckon -she would miss it. Anyway, I'll try to pay her back with scuppernong -grapes next September." -</p> - -<p> -Again the prick in Dorinda's conscience! Though her mind rebelled, her -conscience was incurably Presbyterian, and while she wore the blue dress -gaily enough, she did not doubt that it was the symbol of selfishness. -Between the blue dress and the red cow, she knew, the choice was, in its -essence, one of abstract morality. Neither her father nor her mother had -reproached her; but their magnanimity had served only to sharpen the -sting of reflection. "Well, I reckon you won't be young but once, -daughter," her mother had observed with the dry tolerance of -disillusionment, "and the sooner you get over with it the better," while -her father had stretched out his toil-worn hand and fingered one of the -balloon sleeves. "That looks mighty pretty, honey, an' don't you worry -about not gittin' the red caw. It'll save yo' Ma the trouble of -churnin', an' you kind of lose the taste fur butter when you ain't had -it fur some while." -</p> - -<p> -"If Elder Pursley can't come, maybe one of the foreign missionaries -will," Dorinda remarked, hoping to cheer her mother and to distract her -mind from the mud holes. -</p> - -<p> -"Of course we ain't got much to offer them," replied Mrs. Oakley in a -tone of pious humility. "Though I don't reckon things of the flesh count -much with a missionary, and, anyway, I'm going to have a parcel of young -chickens to fry. Well, if we ain't most there! I declare Dan and -Beersheba are getting real sprightly again!" -</p> - -<p> -In the afternoon, sitting at the window of the spare chamber, to which, -she had been driven by the sultry calm of the Sabbath at Old Farm, -Dorinda asked herself, and could find no answer, why the day had been a -disappointment? She had expected nothing, and yet because nothing had -come, she was dissatisfied and unhappy. Was there no rest anywhere? she -asked without knowing that she asked it. Was love, like life, merely a -passing from shock to shock, with no permanent peace? -</p> - -<p> -Returning from church, the family had sat down, ill-humoured from -emptiness, to dinner at four o'clock. It was the custom to have dinner -in the middle of the afternoon, and no supper on Sunday; and the men -were expected to gorge themselves into a state of somnolence which -would, as Mrs. Oakley said, "tide them over until breakfast." When the -heavy meal had been dispatched but not digested by the others, Dorinda -(who had scarcely touched the apple dumplings her mother had -solicitously pressed on her) came into the unused bedroom to put away -her hat and dress in the big closet. The spare room, which was kept -scrupulously cleaned and whitewashed, was situated at the back of the -house adjoining Mrs. Oakley's chamber. All the possessions the family -regarded as sacred were preserved here in a faint greenish light and a -stale odour of sanctity. The windows were seldom opened; but Dorinda had -just flung back the shutters, and the view she gazed out upon was like -the coming of spring in an old tapestry. Though the land was not -beautiful, that also had its moments of beauty. -</p> - -<p> -Immediately in front of her, the pear orchard had flowered a little late -and scattered its frail bloom on the grass. As the sunlight streamed -through the trees, they appeared to float between earth and sky in some -ineffable medium, while the petals on the ground shone and quivered with -a fugitive loveliness, as if a stir or a breath would dissolve the white -fire to dew. Above the orchard, where a twisted path ran up to it, there -was the family graveyard, enclosed by a crumbling fence which had once -been of white palings, and in the centre of the graveyard the big -harp-shaped pine stood out, clear and black, on the low crest of the -hill. It was the tallest pine, people said, in the whole of Queen -Elizabeth County; its rocky base had protected it in its youth; and -later on no one had taken the trouble to uproot it from the primitive -graveyard. In spring the boughs were musical with the songs of birds; on -stormy days the tree rocked back and forth until Mrs. Oakley imagined, -in her bad spells, that she heard the creaking of a gallows; and on hot -summer evenings, when the moon rose round and orange-red above the hill, -the branches reminded Dorinda of the dark flying shape of a witch. -</p> - -<p> -While she sat there she lived over again the incidents of the morning; -but the vision in her mind was as different from the actual occurrences -as the image of her lover was different from the real Jason Greylock. -Nothing had happened to disappoint her. Absolutely nothing. There was no -reason why she should have been happy yesterday and miserable to-day; -there was no reason except the eternal unreasonableness of love! She had -tried to fix her mind on the sermon, which was a little shorter and no -duller than usual. Sitting on the hard bench which she called a pew, -bending her head over the bare back of the seat in front of her, she had -sought to win spiritual peace by driving a bargain with God. "Give me -happiness, and I——" -</p> - -<p> -Then before her prayer was completed, the congregation had stood up to -sing, and she had met the eyes of Jason Greylock over the row of humble -heads and proud voices. He was sitting in the Ellgood pew, and of course -it was natural that he should have gone home with the Ellgoods to -dinner. It was, she repeated sternly, perfectly natural. It was -perfectly natural also that he should have forgotten that he had told -her to beg, borrow, or steal a blue dress. In the few minutes when he -had stopped to shake hands with her father and mother in the porch of -the church, he had turned to her and asked, "How did you know that you -ought to wear blue?" Yes, that, like everything else that had happened, -was perfectly natural. For the last few weeks he had driven her to the -store and back every day; he had appeared to have no happiness except in -the hours that he spent with her; he had spoken to her, he had looked at -her, as if he loved her; yet, she repeated obstinately, it was natural -that he should be different on Sunday. Everything had always been -different on Sunday. Since her childhood it had seemed to her that the -movement of all laws, even natural ones, was either suspended or -accelerated on the Sabbath. -</p> - -<p> -She was thinking of this when the door opened, and Mrs. Oakley, who had -resumed her ordinary clothes without disturbing her consecrated -expression, thrust her head into the room. -</p> - -<p> -"I've looked everywhere for you, Dorinda. Are you sick?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I'm not sick." -</p> - -<p> -"Has Rufus been teasing you?" -</p> - -<p> -"No." -</p> - -<p> -"Has anybody said anything to hurt your feelings? Josiah is grouchy; but -you mustn't mind what he says." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, no. He hasn't been any worse than usual. There isn't anything the -matter, Ma." -</p> - -<p> -"I noticed you didn't half eat your dinner, and your father kind of -thought somebody had hurt your feelings." -</p> - -<p> -Closing the door behind her, Mrs. Oakley crossed the room and sat down -near her daughter in the best mahogany rocker. Then, observing -that she had disarranged the fall of the purple calico flounce, she rose -and adjusted the slip cover. While she was still on her feet, she went -over to the bed and shook the large feather pillows into shape. After -that, before sitting down again, she stood for a few moments with her -stern gaze wandering about the room, as if she were seeking more dirt to -conquer. But such things did not worry her. They drifted like straws on -the surface of her mind, while her immortal spirit was preoccupied with -a profound and incurable melancholy. -</p> - -<p> -"I hope you ain't upset in your mind, daughter," she said abruptly. -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda turned her lucid gaze on her mother. "Ma, whatever made you -marry Pa?" she asked bluntly. -</p> - -<p> -For an instant the frankness of the question stunned Mrs. Oakley. She -had inherited the impenetrable Scotch reserve on the subject of -sentiment, and it seemed to her, while she pondered the question, that -there were no words in which she could answer her daughter. Both her -vocabulary and her imagination were as innocent of terms of sex as if -she were still an infant learning her alphabet. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, your father's a mighty good man, Dorinda," she replied evasively. -</p> - -<p> -"I know he is, but what made you marry him?" -</p> - -<p> -"He's never given me a cross word in his life," Mrs. Oakley pursued, -working herself up, as she went on, until she sounded as if she were -reciting a Gospel hymn. "I've never heard a complaint from him. There -never was a better worker, and it isn't his fault if things have always -gone against him." -</p> - -<p> -"I know all that," said Dorinda, as implacable as truth, "but what made -you marry him? Were you ever in love with him?" -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley's eyes lost suddenly their look of mystic vision and became -opaque with memories. "I reckon I sort of took a fancy to him," she -responded. -</p> - -<p> -"Is there ever any reason why people marry?" -</p> - -<p> -A mild regret flickered into the face of the older woman. "I s'pose they -think they've got one." -</p> - -<p> -She must have been pretty once, Dorinda thought while she watched her. -She must have been educated to refinements of taste and niceties of -manner; yet marriage had been too strong for her, and had conquered her. -</p> - -<p> -"I don't see how you've stood it!" she exclaimed, with the indignant -pity of youth. -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley's bleak eyes, from which all inner glory had departed, -rested pensively on her daughter. "There ain't but one way to stand -things," she returned slowly. "There ain't but one thing that keeps you -going and keeps a farm going, and that is religion. If you ain't got -religion to lean back on, you'd just as well give up trying to live in -the country." -</p> - -<p> -"I don't feel that way about religion," Dorinda said obstinately. "I -want to be happy." -</p> - -<p> -"You're too young yet. Your great-grandfather used to say that most -people never came to God as long as there was anywhere else for them to -go." -</p> - -<p> -"Was that true of great-grandfather?" -</p> - -<p> -"It must have been. He told me once that he didn't come to Christ until -he had thirsted for blood." -</p> - -<p> -To Dorinda this seemed an indirect way to divine grace; but it made her -great-grandfather appear human to her for the only time in her life. -</p> - -<p> -"But he must have had something else first," she observed logically. -"People always seem to have had something else first, or they wouldn't -have found out how worthless it is. You must have been in love once, -even if you have forgotten it." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "I haven't forgotten it, daughter," she -answered. "It's time you were knowing things, I reckon, or you wouldn't -be asking." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it's time I was knowing things," repeated Dorinda. "You told me -once that great-grandfather tried to keep you from marrying. Then why -did you do it?" -</p> - -<p> -For a minute or two before she replied the muscles in Mrs. Oakley's face -and throat worked convulsively. "I was so set on your father that I -moped myself into a decline," she said in a voice that was half -strangled. "Those feelings have always gone hard in our family. There -was your great-aunt Dorinda, the one you were named after," she -continued, passing with obvious relief from her personal history. "When -she couldn't get the man she'd set her heart on, she threw herself into -the millstream; but after they fished her out and dried her off, she -sobered down and married somebody else and was as sensible as anybody -until the day of her death. She lived to be upwards of ninety, and your -great-grandfather used to say he prized her advice more than that of any -man he knew. Then there was another sister, Abigail, who went deranged -about some man she hadn't seen but a few times, and they had to put her -away in a room with barred windows. They didn't have good asylums then -to send anybody to. But she got over it too, and went as a missionary -overseas. That all happened in Ireland before your great-grandfather -came to this country. I never saw your great-aunt Dorinda, but she -corresponded regularly, till the day of her death, with your -great-grandfather. I remember his telling me that she used to say -anybody could be a fool once, but only a born fool was ever a fool -twice." -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder what it was?" said Dorinda wearily. -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley sighed. "It's nature, I reckon," she replied, without -reproach but without sympathy. "Grandfather used to say that when a -woman got ready to fall in love the man didn't matter, because she could -drape her feeling over a scarecrow and pretend he was handsome. But, -being a man, I s'pose he had his own way of looking at it; and if it's -woman's nature to take it too hard, it's just as much the nature of man -to take it too easy. The way I've worked it out is that with most women, -when it seems pure foolishness, it ain't really that. It's just the -struggle to get away from things as they are." -</p> - -<p> -To get away from things as they are! Was this all there was in her -feeling for Jason; the struggle to escape from the endless captivity of -things as they are? In the bleak dawn of reason her dreams withered like -flowers that are blighted by frost. -</p> - -<p> -"Whatever it is, you haven't a good word for it," she said, vaguely -resentful. -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley considered the question impartially. "Well, it ain't -catching and it ain't chronic," she remarked at last, with the temperate -judgment of one who has finished with love. "I've got nothing to say -against marriage, of course," she explained. "Marriage is the Lord's own -institution, and I s'pose it's a good thing as far as it goes. Only," -she added wisely, "it ain't ever going as far as most women try to make -it. You'll be all right married, daughter, if you just make up your mind -that whatever happens, you ain't going to let any man spoil your life." -</p> - -<p> -The brave words, striking deep under the surface, rang against the vein -of iron in Dorinda's nature. Clear and strong as a bell, she heard the -reverberations of character beneath the wild bloom of emotion. Yes, -whatever happened, she resolved passionately, no man was going to spoil -her life! She could live without Jason; she could live without any man. -The shadows of her great-aunts, Dorinda and Abigail, demented victims of -love, stretched, black and sinister, across the generations. In her -recoil from an inherited frailty, she revolted, with characteristic -energy, to the opposite extreme of frigid disdain. -</p> - -<p> -"Were all great-grandfather's sisters like that?" she asked hopefully, -remembering that he had had six. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, no." Her mother was vague but encouraging. "I don't recollect ever -hearing anything foolish about Rebekah and Priscilla, and even the -others were sensible enough when they had stopped running after men." -</p> - -<p> -Running after men! The phrase was burned with acid into her memory. Was -that what her mother, who did not know, would think of her? Was that -what Jason, who did know, thought of her now? Her love, which had been -as careless in its freedom as the flight of a bird, became suddenly shy -and self-conscious. She had promised that she would meet him at -Gooseneck Creek after sunset; but she knew now that she could not go, -that something stronger than her desire to be with him was holding her -back. -</p> - -<p> -After her mother had gone she sat there for hours, with her eyes on the -lengthening shadows over the pear orchard. This something stronger than -her desire was hardening into resolution within her. She would avoid him -in the future wherever she could; she would not look for him at the fork -of the road; she would go to work an hour earlier and return an hour -later in order that she might not appear to throw herself in his way. -Already the inevitable battle between the racial temperament and the -individual will was beginning, and before the evening was over she told -herself that she was victorious. Though her longing drew her like a cord -to Gooseneck Creek, and the quiver of her nerves was as sharp as the -pain of an aching tooth, she stayed in her mother's chamber until -bedtime, and tried unsuccessfully to fix her mind on her -great-grandfather's dry sermon on temperance. When the evening was over -at last, and she went upstairs to her room, she felt as if the blood had -turned back in her veins. In the first fight she had conquered, but it -was one of those victories, she knew without admitting the knowledge, -which are defeats. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="IX">IX</a></h4> - -<p> -In May and June, for a brief season between winter desolation and summer -drought, the starved land flushed into loveliness. Honey-coloured -sunlight. The notes of a hundred birds. A roving sweetness of wild grape -in the air. To Dorinda, whose happiness had come so suddenly that her -imagination was still spinning from the surprise of it, the flowerlike -blue of the sky, the songs of birds, and the elusive scent of the wild -grape, all seemed to be a part of that rich inner world, with its -passionate expectancy and its sense of life burning upward. -</p> - -<p> -They were to be married in the autumn. Even now, when she repeated the -words, they sounded so unreal that she could scarcely believe them; but -her prudent Scotch mind, which still distrusted ecstasy, had ceased long -ago to distrust Jason's love. The thing she wanted had come, at last, -and it had come, she realized, after she had deliberately turned her -back upon it. She had found happiness, not by seeking it, but by running -away from it. For two weeks she had persisted in her resolution; she had -drawn desperately upon the tough fibre of inherited strength. For two -weeks she had avoided Jason when it was possible, and in avoiding him, -she could not fail to perceive, she had won him. To her direct, -forward-springing nature there was a shock in the discovery that, where -the matter is one of love, honesty is at best a questionable policy. Was -truth, after all, in spite of the exhortations of preachers, a weaker -power than duplicity? Would evasion win in life where frankness would -fail? Then, as passion burned through her like the sunrise, doubt was -extinguished. Since her heart told her that he was securely hers, what -did it matter to her how she had won him? -</p> - -<p> -For the first time in her life she had ceased longing, ceased striving. -She was as satisfied as Almira to drift with the days toward some -definite haven of the future. Detached, passive, still as a golden lily -in a lily-pond, she surrendered herself to the light and the softness. -Her soul was asleep, and beyond this inner stillness, men and women were -as impersonal as trees walking. There was no vividness, no reality even, -except in this shining place where her mind brooded with folded leaves. -She was no longer afraid of life. The shadows of her great-aunts, -Dorinda and Abigail, were as harmless as witches that have been robbed -of their terror. -</p> - -<p> -In those months, while her eyes were full of dreams, her immature beauty -bloomed and ripened into its summer splendour. There was a richer gloss -on her hair, which was blue black in the shadow, a velvet softness to -her body, a warmer flush, like the colour of fruit, in her cheeks and -lips. Her artless look wavered and became shy and pensive. Some subtle -magic had transformed her; and if the natural Dorinda still survived -beneath this unreal Dorinda, she was visible only in momentary sparkles -of energy. When she was with Jason she talked little. Expression had -never been easy for her, and now, since silence was so much softer and -sweeter than speech, she sat in an ecstatic dumbness while she drank in -the sound of his voice. Feeling, which had drugged her until only half -of her being was awake, had excited him into an unusual mental activity. -He was animated, eager, weaving endless impracticable schemes, like a -man who is intoxicated but still in command of his faculties. -</p> - -<p> -"Are you happy?" she asked one August afternoon, while they sat in the -shade of the thin pines which edged the woods beyond Joshua's -tobacco field. It was the question she asked every day, and his answers, -though satisfying to her emotion, were unconvincing to her intelligence. -He loved her as ardently as she loved him; yet she was beginning to -realize that only to a woman are love and happiness interchangeable -terms. Some obscure anxiety working in his mind was stronger than all -her love, all her tenderness. She gave way before it, but never, except -in rare moments of ecstasy, did it yield place to her. -</p> - -<p> -He smiled. "Of course; but I'll be happier when we can get away. I can't -stand this country. My nerves begin to creep as soon as twilight comes -on." -</p> - -<p> -The woods behind them, known to the negroes in slavery days as "Hoot Owl -Woods," divided the front of Old Farm from the fallow meadows of Five -Oaks, and stretched westward to the Old Stage Road and the gate at the -fork. In front of the lovers, looking east, a web of blue air hung over -the tobacco field, where the huge plants were turning yellow in the -intense heat. Back and forth in the furrows Joshua and Josiah were -moving slowly, like giant insects, while they searched for the hidden -"suckers" along the thick juicy stalks. Beyond the tobacco field there -was a ragged vegetable garden, where the tomatoes were rotting to pulp -in the sun, and even the leaves of the corn looked wilted. The air was -so breathless that a few languid crows appeared to float like dead -things over the parched country. -</p> - -<p> -"You don't feel that when you are with me," she said. -</p> - -<p> -"The trouble is that I can't be with you but a part of the time. There's -this worthless practice. I can't give it up, if I'm to keep on in -medicine, and yet it means that I must spend half my life jogging over -these God-forsaken roads. Then the night!" He shivered with disgust. "If -you only knew, and I'm thankful you don't, what it means to be shut up -in that house. Some nights my father doesn't sleep at all unless he is -drugged into stupor. He wanders about with a horsewhip, looking in every -room and closet for something to flog." -</p> - -<p> -While he spoke she had a vision of the house, with its dust and cobwebs, -and of the drunken old man, in his nightshirt and bare feet, roaming up -and down the darkened staircase. She could see his bleared eyes, his -purple face, his skinny legs, like the legs of a turkey gobbler, and his -hands, as sharp as claws, lashing out with the horsewhip. The picture -was so vivid that, coming in the midst of her dreamy happiness, it -sickened her. Why did Jason have to stand horrors like that? -</p> - -<p> -"It can't last much longer," she said. Was it the right thing, she -wondered, or ought she to have kept up the pretence of loving the old -man and dreading his death? Life would be so much simpler, she -reflected, if people would only build on facts, not on shams. -</p> - -<p> -He shook his head. "Nobody can say. Sometimes I think he can't last but -a few weeks. Then he improves, without apparent reason, and his strength -is amazing. According to everything we know about his condition, he -ought to have died months ago; yet he appears to be getting better now -instead of worse. I believe it is simply a question of will. He is kept -alive by his terror of dying. It's brutal, I know," he added, "to look -forward to anybody's death, especially your own father's; but if you -only knew how my life is eaten away hour by hour." -</p> - -<p> -"You couldn't make some arrangement?" she asked. "Engage somebody to -stay with him, or—or send him away?" -</p> - -<p> -"I've thought of that. God knows I've thought of everything. But he -isn't mad, you see. He is as sane as I am except when his craving for -whiskey overcomes his fear of death, and he drinks himself into a -frenzy. He won't have anybody else with him. I am the only human being -who can do anything with him, and strange as it seems, I believe he has -some kind of crazy affection for me in his heart. That's why I've put up -with him so long. Several times I've been ready to leave, with my bags -packed and the buggy at the door, and then he's broken down and wept -like a child and begged me not to desert him. He reminds me then that he -is dying, and that I promised to stick by him until the end. It's -weakness in me to give in, but he broke my will when I was a child, he -and my mother between them, and I can't get over the habit of yielding. -I may be all wrong. Sometimes I know that I am. But, after all, it was a -good impulse that made me promise to stick to him." For an instant he -hesitated, and then added bitterly, "I can't tell you how often in life -I've seen men betrayed by their good impulses." -</p> - -<p> -"After it is over, you will be glad that you didn't leave him." -</p> - -<p> -"I don't know. The truth is I'm in an infernal muddle. After all my -medical training, there's a streak of darky superstition somewhere -inside of me. You'd think science would have knocked it out, but it -hasn't. The fact is that I never really cared a hang about science. I -was pushed into medicine, but the only aptitude I have for the -profession is one of personality, and the only interest I feel in it is -a sentimental pleasure in relieving pain. However, I've kept the -superstition all right, and I have a sneaking feeling that if I break my -word and desert the old man, it will come back at me in the end." -</p> - -<p> -"But you're a wonderful doctor," she murmured, with her face against his -shoulder. "Look at the people you've helped since you've been here." -</p> - -<p> -He laughed without merriment. "That reminds me of the way I used to -think I'd bring civilization to the natives. I imagined, when I first -came back, that all I had to do was to get people together and tell them -how benighted they were, and that they'd immediately want to see wisdom. -Do you remember the time I put up notices and opened the schoolhouse, -and got only Nathan Pedlar and an idiot boy for an audience? The hardest -thing to believe when you're young is that people will fight to stay in -a rut, but not to get out of it. Well, that was almost six months ago, -and those six months have taught me that any prejudice, even the -prejudice in favour of the one-crop system, is a sacred institution. -Look at the land!" He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the -sun-bleached soil. "Even generations of failure can't teach the farmers -about here that it is impossible to make bread out of straw." -</p> - -<p> -"Do you think it is really the way they have treated the land?" she -asked. "That's what Nathan is always saying, you know." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, the curse started with the tenant system, I'll admit. The tenants -used the land as a stingy man uses a horse he has hired by the month. -But the other farmers, even those who own their farms, are no better now -than the tenants. They've worked and starved the land to a skeleton. Yet -it's still alive, and it could be brought back to health, if they'd have -the sense to treat it as a doctor treats an undernourished human body. -Take Nathan Pedlar and James Ellgood. James Ellgood has made one of the -best stock farms in the state; and that, by the way, is what this -country is best suited for—stock or dairy farms. If I had a little -money I could make a first rate dairy farm out of Five Oaks or Old Farm. -You've got rich pasture land over the other side, and so have we, down -by Whippernock River. It could be made a fine place for cattle, with the -long grazing season and the months when cows could live in the open. Yet -to suggest anything but the antiquated crop system is pure heresy. The -same fields of tobacco that get eaten by worms or killed by frost. The -same fields of corn year in and year out—" he broke off impatiently -and bent his lips down to hers. "I'm talking you to sleep, Dorrie." -</p> - -<p> -"I like to listen to you," she said, when she had kissed him. "If you -tell them over and over, in time they may believe you." -</p> - -<p> -"After I'm dead, perhaps. Hasn't Nathan Pedlar told them again and -again? Hasn't he even proved it to them? He's been experimenting with -alfalfa, and he's getting four cuttings now off those fields of his; but -they think he's a fool because he isn't satisfied with one poor crop of -corn." -</p> - -<p> -"I know. Pa doesn't think anything of alfalfa," she answered. "He says -Nathan is wasting his time raising a weed that cattle won't touch when -it is dry." -</p> - -<p> -"They all talk that way. Half daft, that's what they call anybody who -wants to step out of the mud or try a new method. Ezra Flower told me -yesterday that Nathan was half daft. No, I want to get away, not to -spend my life as a missionary to the broomsedge. I feel already as if it -were growing over me and strangling the little energy I ever had. That's -the worst of it. If you stay here long enough, the broomsedge claims -you, and you get so lazy you cease to care what becomes of you. There's -failure in the air." -</p> - -<p> -She remembered what old Matthew had said to her that March afternoon. -"If he'd take the advice of eighty-odd years, he'd git away befo' the -broomsage ketches him." -</p> - -<p> -Was it true, what the old man believed, that the broomsedge was not only -wild stuff, but a kind of fate? Fear, not for herself, but for Jason, -stabbed through her. -</p> - -<p> -"You're so easily discouraged," she said tenderly. To her, whose inner -life was a part of the country, poverty had been an inevitable condition -of living, and to fight had seemed as natural as to suffer or to endure. -</p> - -<p> -"I suppose I am, but I'm made that way. I can't change my temperament," -he replied, with a touch of the fatalism he condemned but could not -resist. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll help you," she responded cheerfully. "After we are married, -everything will be different. I am not afraid of Five Oaks or of -anything else as long as I have you." -</p> - -<p> -He was gazing over her head into the bleached distance, and she felt the -tightened pressure of his arms about her. "I'd be all right here, even -at Five Oaks, if you were with me," he answered. "You put something in me -that I need. I don't know what it is—fibre, I suppose, the courage -of living." Suddenly his eyes left the landscape and looked down into -hers. "What I ought to do," he added impulsively, "is to marry you -to-day. We could get the last train to Washington, and be married -to-morrow morning before any one knew of it. Would you come if I asked -you?" -</p> - -<p> -Her look did not waver. "I'll go anywhere that you ask me to. I'll do -anything that will help you," she answered. Her body straightened as if -its soft curves were moulded by the vein of iron in her soul. -</p> - -<p> -But his impulse had spent its force in an imaginary flight. "That's what -I'd like to do," he said slowly, while his rosy visions were obliterated -by the first impact with reality. "But there are so many damned things -to consider. There are always so many damned things to consider. First -of all there's the money. I haven't got enough to take us away and keep -us a week. After Father stopped helping me, I started out on my own hook -in New York, and I was just making enough from the hospital to give me a -living. I didn't put by a cent, and, of course, since I've been here -I've made nothing. Down here the doctor gets paid after the undertaker, -or not at all." -</p> - -<p> -"I've got fifty dollars put away," she returned crisply, determined not -to be discouraged. "And I don't need money. I've never had any." (How -foolish she had been to buy the blue dress when clothes made so little -difference!) "After we're married, I can keep on in the store just the -same." -</p> - -<p> -He laughed. "Ten dollars a month will hardly keep the fox from the -henhouse." -</p> - -<p> -Bending his head he began to kiss her in quick light kisses; then, as -his ardour increased, in deeper and longer ones; and at last with a -hungry violence. Though her love was the only thing that was vivid to -her, she had even now, while she felt his arms about her and his lips -seeking hers, the old haunting sense of impermanence, as if the moment, -like the perfect hour of the afternoon, were too bright to endure. -However much she loved him, she could not sink the whole of herself into -emotion; something was left over, and this something watched as a -spectator. Ecstasy streamed through her with the swiftness of light; yet -she never lost completely the feeling that at any instant the glory -might vanish and she might drop back again into the dull grey of -existence. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="X">X</a></h4> - -<p> -When they parted, and she went home along the edge of the tobacco field, -the sun was beginning to go down, and from the meadows, veiled in -quivering heat, there rose the humming of innumerable insects. The long -drought had scorched the leaves of the trees, and even the needles on -the pines looked rusty against the metallic blue of the sky. In the -fields the summer flowers were dry and brittle, and over the moist -places near the spring, clusters of pale blue butterflies, as fragile as -flower petals, hung motionless. Only the broomsedge thrived in the -furnace of the earth, and sprang up in a running fire over the waste -places. -</p> - -<p> -As she went by the tobacco field, her father stopped work, for a moment, -and stooped to take a drink of water from the wooden bucket which stood -at the end of the furrow. Before she reached him the steaming odour of -his body, like that of an overheated ox, floated to her. His face, the -colour of red clay, was dripping with sweat, and his shirt of blue -jeans, which was open on his broad, hairy chest, was as wet as if he had -been swimming. There was nothing human about him, except his fine -prophet's head and the humble dignity of one who has kept in close -communion with earth and sky. He had known nothing but toil; he had no -language but the language of toil. -</p> - -<p> -"Has the drought done much harm, Pa?" she asked. -</p> - -<p> -With the gourd raised to his lips, Joshua looked round at her. -"Middlin'," he replied hoarsely because of his parched throat. He had -removed his hat while he worked, for fear that the wide brim might -bruise the tender leaves of the tobacco; but resting now for a minute, -he covered his head again from the bladelike rays of the sun. -</p> - -<p> -"You'll get sunstroke if you go bareheaded," she said anxiously. "The -minister was in the store this morning, and he told me that, if the -drought doesn't break by the end of the week, he's going to put up -prayers for rain in church next Sunday. I wonder if prayer ever brought -rain?" -</p> - -<p> -Joshua rolled his eyes toward the implacable sky. "Don't it say so in -the Bible, daughter?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda nodded, without pursuing the inquiry. "And what the dry weather -doesn't spoil, the tobacco-worms will. They were as thick as hops -yesterday. It's this way every year unless we have a cool summer; then -the tobacco ripens so late that the frost kills it. Why don't you give -up tobacco next year and sow this field in peas or corn? Jason says the -best method of farming is to change the crop whenever you can." -</p> - -<p> -Having drained the last drop of tepid water, Joshua tilted the gourd -bottom upward on the rim of the bucket. "I ain't one fur newfangled -ways, honey," he rejoined stubbornly. -</p> - -<p> -He turned back to his work, and Dorinda went on slowly along the dusty -path that skirted the field. "If I had my way," she was thinking, "I -would do everything differently. I'd try all the crops, one after -another, until I found out which was best." -</p> - -<p> -As she approached the house, the mingled scents of drying apples and -boiling tomatoes enveloped her; for her mother was working desperately -in an effort to save the ripening fruit and vegetables before the sun -spoiled them. Boards covered with sliced apples were spread on crude -props and decrepit tables, which had been brought out of doors. Above -them a crowd of wasps, hornets, flies, and gnats were whirling madly, -and every now and then Mrs. Oakley darted out from beneath the -scuppernong grapevine and dispersed the delirious swarms with the branch -of a locust tree. Though she insisted that the dry weather had "helped -her neuralgia," she was suffering now from a sun headache, and could -hope for no relief until evening. Her face, with its look of blended -physical pain and spiritual ecstasy, was as parched and ravaged as the -drought-stricken landscape. -</p> - -<p> -"You got home early to-day, daughter." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it was too hot to walk, and Jason came by sooner than usual." -</p> - -<p> -"How does Rose Emily stand the heat?" -</p> - -<p> -"I'm afraid she isn't getting any better," Dorinda's voice trembled. -"Jason says she can't last through another bad hæmorrhage." -</p> - -<p> -"And all those children," sighed Mrs. Oakley, pressing one hand over her -throbbing eyes and waving the locust branch energetically with the -other. "Well, the Lord's ways are past understanding. I wonder if they -will ever be able to do anything for that baby's clubfoot." -</p> - -<p> -"I don't know. Jason would like to operate, but Nathan and Rose Emily -won't let him. They are afraid it may make it worse. Poor Rose Emily. I -don't see how she can be so cheerful." -</p> - -<p> -"It's her faith," said Mrs. Oakley. "She feels she's saved, and she's -nothing more to worry about. I'm sorry for Nathan too," she concluded, -with the compassion of the redeemed for the heathen. "He's a good man, -but he hasn't seen the light like Rose Emily." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, he's a good man," Dorinda assented, "but I never understood how -she could marry him." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley dropped the branch, and then picking it up began a more -vigorous attack on the cloud of insects. "I declare, it seems to me -sometimes that the bugs are going to eat up this place. Did you see your -father as you came by?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes. He was working bareheaded. I told him he would have sunstroke. I -wish he would try a different crop next year, but he's so set in his -ways." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, it's being set in a rut, I reckon, that keeps him going. If he -weren't set, he'd have stopped long ago. You've a mighty high colour, -Dorinda. Have you been much in the sun?" -</p> - -<p> -"I walked across from the woods. When we turned in at the red gate I saw -Miss Tabitha Snead going up the road in her buggy. Did she stop by to -see you?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, she brought me a bucket of fresh buttermilk. I've got it in the -ice-house with the watermelons, so it will be cold for supper. She told -me Geneva Ellgood had gone away for the summer." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, she went the first of July. I saw her at the station." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley's gaze was riveted upon an enterprising hornet that had -started out from the crowd and was pursuing a separate investigation of -the tomato juice on her hands. While she watched it, she swallowed hard -as if her throat were too dry. "Miss Tabitha told me that her brother -William went up as far as Washington on the train with Geneva. He's just -back last week, and what do you reckon he said Geneva told him on the -way up?" She broke off and aimed a fatal blow at the hornet. "What with -wasps and bees and hornets and all the thousand and one things that bite -and sting," she observed philosophically, "it's hard to understand how -the Lord ever had time to think of a pest so small as a seed tick. Yet I -believe I'd rather have all the other biting things together. I got some -seed ticks on me when I went down to the old spring in the pasture -yesterday, and they've been eating me up ever since." -</p> - -<p> -"They are always worse in a drought," Dorinda said, and she asked -curiously: "What was it Geneva told Mr. William?" -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley swallowed again. "Of course I know there ain't a bit of -truth in it," she said slowly, as if the words hurt her as she uttered -them. "But William says Geneva told him she was engaged to marry Jason -Greylock. She said he courted her in New York a year ago." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda laughed. "Why, how absurd!" she exclaimed. "Miss Tabitha knows -we are to be married in October. Hasn't she watched Miss Seena helping -me with my sewing? I was spending the evening over there last week and -we talked about my marriage. She knows there isn't a word of truth in -it." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, she knows. She said she reckoned Geneva must be crazy. There ain't -any harm in it, but I thought maybe I'd better tell you." -</p> - -<p> -"I don't mind," replied Dorinda, and she laughed again, the exultant -laugh of youth undefeated. "Ma," she asked suddenly, "did you ever want -anything very much in your life?" -</p> - -<p> -Startled out of her stony resignation, Mrs. Oakley let fall the branch, -and the spinning swarms descended like a veil over the apples. "I'll -have to hang a piece of mosquito netting over these apples," she said. -"There's some we used for curtains in the spare room. Well, I told you -I'd kind of set my heart on your father," she added in a lifeless tone. -"But there's one thing I can tell you, daughter, mighty few folks in -this world ever get what they want." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I mean before you knew Pa, when you were a girl. Didn't you ever -feel that there was only one thing in the world that could make you -happy?" -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley pondered the question. "I reckon like most other people I -was afraid of the word happiness," she replied. "But when I was just a -girl, not more than sixteen or seventeen, I felt the call to be a -missionary, and I wanted it, I s'pose, more than I've ever wanted -anything in my life. I reckon it started with my favourite hymn, the -missionary one. Even as a little child I used to think and dream about -India's coral strand and Afric's sunny fountains. That was why I got -engaged to Gordon Kane. I wasn't what you'd call in love with him; but I -believed the Lord had intended me for work in foreign fields, and it -seemed, when Gordon asked me to marry him, that an opportunity had been -put in my way. I had my trunk all packed to go to the Congo to join him. -I was just folding up my wedding-dress of white organdie when they broke -the news to me of his death." She gasped and choked for a moment. "After -that I put the thought of the heathen out of my mind," she continued -when she had recovered her breath. "Your great-grandfather said I was -too young to decide whether I had a special vocation or not, and then -before I came out of mourning, I met your father, and we were married. -For a while I seemed to forget all about the missionary call; but it -came back just before Josiah was born, and I've had it ever since -whenever I'm worried and feel that I'll have to get away from things, or -go clean out of my mind. Then I begin to have that dream about coral -strands and palm trees and ancient rivers and naked black babies thrown -to crocodiles. When it first came I tried to drive it away by hard work, -and that was the way I got in the habit of working to rest my mind. I -was so afraid folks would begin to say I was unhinged." -</p> - -<p> -"Does it still come back?" asked the girl. -</p> - -<p> -"Sometimes in my sleep. When I'm awake I never think of it now, except -on missionary Sunday when we sing that hymn." -</p> - -<p> -"That's why you enjoy sermons about the Holy Land and far-off places." -</p> - -<p> -"I used to know all those pictures by heart in your great-grandfather's -books about Asia and Africa. It was a wild streak in me, I reckon," she -conceded humbly, "but with the Lord's help, I've managed to stamp it -out." -</p> - -<p> -A missionary, her mother! For more than forty years this dark and secret -river of her dream had flowed silently beneath the commonplace crust of -experience. "I wonder if there is any of that wildness in me?" thought -the girl, with a sensation of fear, as if the invisible flood were -rushing over her. -</p> - -<p> -"Did you ever tell Pa?" she asked. -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "I never told anybody when I was in my -right mind. I don't believe in telling men more than you're obliged to. -After all, it was nobody's fault the way things turned out," she added, -with scrupulous justice. "I'm going in now to get that mosquito netting. -There's your father coming. I reckon he'd like a drink of fresh water -from the well." -</p> - -<p> -Following her mother's glance, Dorinda saw her father's bowed figure -toiling along the path on the edge of the vegetable garden. Far beyond -him, where a field had been abandoned because it contained a gall, where -nothing would grow, she could just discern the scalloped reaches of the -broomsedge, rippling, in the lilac-coloured distance, like still water -at sunset. Yes, old Matthew was right. What the broomsedge caught, it -never relinquished. -</p> - -<p> -Lifting the wooden bucket from the shelf on the back porch, she poured -the stale water over a thin border of portulaca by the steps, and -started at a run for the well. By the time Joshua had reached the house, -she had brought the bucket of sparkling water, and had a gourd ready for -him. -</p> - -<p> -"You must be worn out, Pa. Don't you want a drink?" -</p> - -<p> -"That I do, honey." He took the gourd from her, and raised it to his -bearded lips where the sweat hung in drops. "Powerful hot, ain't it?" -</p> - -<p> -"It's scorching. And you've been up since before day. I'll hunt worms -for you to-morrow." She was thinking, while she spoke, that her father -was no longer young, and that he should try to spare himself. But she -knew that it was futile to remind him of this. He had never spared -himself in her memory, and he would not begin now just because he was -old. The pity of it was that, even if he wore himself out in the effort -to save his crop from the drought or the worms, there was still the -possibility that the first killing frost would come too soon and inflict -as heavy a damage. -</p> - -<p> -He shook his head with a chuckle of pride. "Thar's no use yo' spilin' -yo' hands. I've hired a parcel of Uncle Toby Moody's little niggers to -hunt 'em in the mornin'. If they kill worms every day till Sunday, I've -promised 'em the biggest watermelon I've got in the ice-house." -</p> - -<p> -Before going on to feed the horses, he stopped to wash his face in the -tin basin on the back porch. "I declar' I must be gittin' on," he -remarked cheerfully. "I've got shootin' pains through all my j'ints." -</p> - -<p> -This was nearer a complaint than any speech she had ever heard from him, -and she looked at him anxiously while he dried his face on the roller -towel. "You ought to take things more easily, Pa. The way you work is -enough to kill anybody." -</p> - -<p> -"Wall, I'll take my ease when the first snow falls," he responded -jocosely. -</p> - -<p> -"But you won't. You work just as hard in winter." -</p> - -<p> -"Is that so?" He appeared genuinely surprised. "I never calculated! The -truth is I've got the land on my back, an' it's drivin' me. Land is a -hard driver." -</p> - -<p> -"And a good steed, they say," she answered. "If you could only get the -better of it." -</p> - -<p> -He smiled wistfully, and she watched the clay-coloured skin above his -thick beard break into diverging fissures. "We've got to wait for that, -I reckon, till my ship comes in. It takes money to get money, daughter." -</p> - -<p> -While he trudged away to the stable, Dorinda went up to her room and -changed into a pink gingham dress which Rose Emily had given her a year -ago. The flower-like colour tinged her face when she came downstairs and -found her mother, who had dropped from exhaustion, in a rocking-chair on -the front porch. -</p> - -<p> -"I felt as if I couldn't stand the kitchen a minute longer." Mrs. Oakley -glanced wearily at her daughter over the palm leaf fan she was waving. -"You ain't going out before supper, Dorinda?" Her damp hair looked as if -it had been plastered over her skull, and in the diminishing light her -pallid features resembled a waxen mask. -</p> - -<p> -"I can't wait for supper," the girl replied. "I've promised to meet -Jason over by Gooseneck Creek." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, don't stay out too long after dark. The night air ain't healthy." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda laughed. "Jason says that's as much a superstition as the belief -that Aunt Mehitable can make cows go dry. But I shan't be late. Jason -can't stay out long at night, unless somebody is dying, and then he gets -one of the field hands to sleep in the house. It must be terrible over -at Five Oaks." -</p> - -<p> -"I ain't easy in my mind about your living there with that old man, -daughter. He's been a notorious sinner as far back as I can recollect, -though he was a good enough doctor till he went half crazy from drink. -But even before his wife died, he kept that bright yellow girl, -Idabella, living over there in the old wing of the house. And he's not -only as hard as nails," she concluded, with final condemnation, "he's -close-fisted as well." -</p> - -<p> -"Poor Jason can't help his father's sins," Dorinda rejoined loyally. -"After all, it's worse on him than it is on anybody else." As she turned -away from the flagged walk, she resolved that the dissolute old man -should not spoil her happiness. -</p> - -<p> -Her path led by the pear orchard, past the vegetable garden, which was -fenced off from the tobacco field, and continued in an almost -obliterated track through the feathery plumes of the broomsedge. At the -end of the barren acres the thin edge of Hoot Owl Woods began, and after -she had passed this, there would be only a stretch of sandy road between -her and the creek. By the willows she knew the air would be fresh and -moist, and she knew also that Jason was waiting for her in the tall -blue-eyed grasses. -</p> - -<p> -She went slowly along the path, in a mood so pensive that it might have -been merely a reflection of the summer trance. The vagrant breeze, which -had roamed for a few minutes at sunset, had died down again with the -afterglow. Heat melted like colour into the distance. Not a blade of -grass trembled; the curled leaves on the pear trees were limp and heavy; -even the white turkeys, roosting in a solitary oak near the orchard, -were as motionless as if they were under a spell. As far as she could -see there was not a stir or quiver in the landscape, and the only sounds -that jarred the leaden silence were the monotonous chirping of the -locusts, the discordant croak of a tree-frog, and the staccato shrieks -of the little negroes hunting tobacco-flies. -</p> - -<p> -The sun had gone down long ago, and the western sky was suffused with -the transparent yellow-green of August evenings. All the light on the -earth had vanished, except the faint glow that was still cast upwards by -the broomsedge. Wave by wave, that symbol of desolation encroached in a -glimmering tide on the darkened boundaries of Old Farm. It was the one -growth in the landscape that thrived on barrenness; the solitary life -that possessed an inexhaustible vitality. To fight it was like fighting -the wild, free principle of nature. Yet they had always fought it. They -had spent their force for generations in the futile endeavour to uproot -it from the soil, as they had striven to uproot all that was wild and -free in the spirit of man. -</p> - -<p> -At the edge of the woods she paused and looked back. There would be -light enough later, for the golden rim of a moon, paling as it ascended, -was visible through the topmost branches of the big pine in the -graveyard. While she stood there she was visited by a swift perception, -which was less a thought than a feeling, and less a feeling than an -intuitive recognition, that she and her parents were products of the -soil as surely as were the scant crops and the exuberant broomsedge. Had -not the land entered into their souls and shaped their moods into -permanent or impermanent forms? Less a thought than a feeling; but she -went on more rapidly toward the complete joy of the moment in which she -lived. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XI">XI</a></h4> - -<p> -On the first Sunday in October, Dorinda came out on the porch, with old -Rambler at her side, and looked over the road and the pasture to the -frowning sky. The range of clouds, which had huddled all the afternoon -above the western horizon, was growing darker, and there was a slow -pulsation, like the quiver of invisible wings, in the air. While she -stood there, she wondered if the storm would overtake her before she -reached Whistling Spring. -</p> - -<p> -"I think I'll risk it," she decided at last. "It's looked this way for -hours, and it won't hurt me to get wet." -</p> - -<p> -For days she had felt disturbed, and she told herself that her anxiety -had sprung from a definite cause, or, if not from a definite -cause,—well, at least from a plausible reason. Jason had been away -for two weeks, and she had had only one letter. He had promised to write -every day, and she had heard from him once. More than this, when he -left, against his father's wish, he had expected to stay only a week, -and the added days had dragged on without explanation. Of course there -were a dozen reasons why he should not have written. He had gone to -select surgical instruments, and it was probable that he had been kept -busy by professional matters. Her heart made excuses. She repeated -emphatically that there was no need for her to worry; but, in spite of -this insistence, it was useless, she found, to try to argue herself out -of a condition of mind. The only thing was to wait as patiently as she -could for his return. They were to be married in a week; and the hours -before and after her work at the store were spent happily over her -sewing. Mrs. Oakley had neglected her other work in order to help her -daughter with her wedding clothes, and the drawers in Dorinda's walnut -bureau were filled with white, lace-edged garments, made daintily, with -fine, even stitches, by her mother's rheumatic fingers. -</p> - -<p> -"I shouldn't be satisfied if you didn't have things to start with like -other girls," Mrs. Oakley had remarked, while she pinned a paper pattern -to a width of checked muslin. "I don't want that old doctor to say his -son is marrying a beggar." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, Jason won't say that," Dorinda had protested. "It would cost less -if I were married in my blue nun's veiling; but Miss Seena thinks a -figured challis would be more suitable." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I reckon Miss Seena knows," Mrs. Oakley had agreed. "It ain't -lucky not to have a new dress to be married in, and though I don't set a -bit of store by superstition, it won't do any harm not to run right up -against it." Glancing round at her daughter, she had continued in a tone -of anxiety: "Ain't you feeling well, daughter? You've been looking right -peaked the last day or two, and I noticed you didn't touch any -breakfast." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I'm all right," Dorinda had responded. "I've been worrying about -not hearing from Jason, that's all." As she answered, she had turned -away and dropped into a chair. "I've been bending over all day," she had -explained, "and the weather has been so sultry. It makes me feel kind of -faint." -</p> - -<p> -"Take a whiff of camphor," Mrs. Oakley had advised. "There's the bottle -right there on the bureau. I get a sinking every now and then myself, so -I like to have it handy. But there ain't a bit of use worrying yourself -sick about Jason. It ain't much more than two weeks since he went away." -</p> - -<p> -"Two weeks to-morrow, but I haven't heard since the day after he left. I -am worried for fear something has happened." -</p> - -<p> -"Your father could ask the old doctor?" -</p> - -<p> -Frowning over the bottle of camphor, Dorinda had pondered the -suggestion. "No, he doesn't like us," she had replied at last. "I doubt -if he'd tell us anything. Jason told me once he wanted him to marry -Geneva Ellgood." -</p> - -<p> -"You might send a telegram," Mrs. Oakley had offered as the final -resource of desperation. -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda had flushed through her pallor. "I did yesterday, but there -hasn't been any answer." After a minute's reflection, she had added, "If -it's a good day to-morrow, I think I'll walk down to Whistling Spring in -the evening and see Aunt Mehitable Green. Her daughter Jemima works over -at Five Oaks, and she may have heard something." -</p> - -<p> -"Then you'd better start right after dinner, and you can get back before -dark," Mrs. Oakley had returned. The word "afternoon" was never used at -Pedlar's Mill, and any hour between twelve o'clock and night was known -as "evening." -</p> - -<p> -That was yesterday, and standing now on the front porch, Dorinda -considered the prospect. Scorched and blackened by the long summer, the -country was as bare as a conquered province after the march of an -invader. "I'll start anyway," she repeated, and turning, she called out, -"Ma, is there anything I can take Aunt Mehitable?" -</p> - -<p> -"Doesn't it look as if it were getting ready to rain, Dorinda?" -</p> - -<p> -"I don't care. If it does, I'll stop somewhere until it is over." -</p> - -<p> -Entering the hall, the girl paused on the threshold of the room where -her mother sat reading her Bible. -</p> - -<p> -"Where would you stop?" Mrs. Oakley was nothing if not definite. "There -ain't anybody living on that back road between Five Oaks and Whistling -Spring. It makes me sort of nervous for you to walk down there by -yourself, Dorinda. Can't you get Rufus to go with you?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, he's gone over to see the Garlick girls, and I don't want him -anyway. I'd rather walk down by myself. Anybody I'd meet on the road -would know who I am. I see them all at the store. May I take a piece of -the molasses pudding we had for dinner?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, there's some left in the cupboard. I was saving it for Rufus, but -you might as well take it. Then there are the last scuppernong grapes on -the shelf. Aunt Mehitable was always mighty fond of scuppernong grapes." -</p> - -<p> -Going into the kitchen, Dorinda put the molasses pudding into the little -willow basket, and then, covering it with cool grape leaves, laid the -loose grapes on top. A slip of the vine had been given to her -great-grandfather by a missionary from Mexico, and had grown luxuriantly -at Old Farm, clambering over the back porch to the roof of the house. It -was a peculiarity of the scuppernong that the large, pale grapes were -not gathered in a bunch, but dropped grape by grape, as they ripened. -"Is there any message you want to send Aunt Mehitable?" she asked, -returning through the hall. -</p> - -<p> -On a rag carpet in the centre of her spotless floor, Mrs. Oakley rocked -slowly back and forth while she read aloud one of the Psalms. It was the -only time during the week that she let her body relax; and now that the -whip of nervous energy was suspended, her face looked old, grey, and -hopeless. The dreary afternoon light crept through the half-closed -shutters, and a large blue fly buzzed ceaselessly, with a droning sound, -against the ceiling. -</p> - -<p> -"Tell her my leg still keeps poorly," she said, "and if she's got any -more of that black liniment, I'd be glad of a bottle. You ain't so spry, -to-day yourself, daughter." -</p> - -<p> -"I got tired sitting in church," the girl answered, "but the walk will -make me feel better." -</p> - -<p> -"Be sure you come back if you hear thunder. I don't like your setting -out in the face of a storm. Can you take Rambler?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, he's old and rheumatic, and it's too far. But I'm all right." -Without waiting for more advice or remonstrance, Dorinda hastened -through the hall and out of the house. -</p> - -<p> -For the first quarter of a mile, before she reached the red gate at the -fork and turned into the sandy road leading to Five Oaks, her naturally -level spirits drooped under an unusual weight of depression. Then, as -she lifted the bar and passed through the gate, she felt that the -solitude, which had always possessed a mysterious sympathy with her -moods, reached out and received her into itself. Like a beneficent tide, -the loneliness washed over her, smoothing out, as it receded, the vague -apprehensions that had ruffled her thoughts. The austere horizon, flat -and impenetrable beneath the threatening look of the sky; the brown and -yellow splashes of woods in the October landscape; the furtive windings -and recoils of the sunken road; the perturbed murmur and movement of the -broomsedge, so like the restless inlets of an invisible sea,—all -these external objects lost their inanimate character and became as -personal, reserved, and inscrutable as her own mind. So sensitive were her -perceptions, while she walked there alone, that the wall dividing her -individual consciousness from the consciousness of nature vanished with -the thin drift of woodsmoke over the fields. -</p> - -<p> -The road sank gradually to Gooseneck Creek and then ascended as evenly -to the grounds of Five Oaks. To reach the back road by the short cut, -which saved her a good mile and a half, she was obliged to pass between -the house and the barn, where she caught a glimpse of the old doctor and -heard the sound of a gun fired at intervals. He was shooting, she -surmised, at a chicken hawk, which was hovering low over the barnyard. -Why, she wondered, with all the heavens and the earth around him, had he -placed the stoop-shouldered rustic barn within call of the dwelling -house? The ice-house, three-cornered and red, like all the buildings on -the place, was so near the front porch that one might almost have tossed -the lumps of ice into the hall. Though the red roof, chimneys, and -outbuildings produced, at a distance, an effect of gaiety, she felt that -the colour would become oppressive on hot summer afternoons. Dirt, -mildew, decay everywhere! White turkeys that were discoloured by mould. -Chips, trash, broken bottles littering the yard and the back steps, -which were rotting to pieces. Windows so darkened by dust and cobwebs -that they were like eyes blurred by cataract. Several mulatto babies -crawling, like small, sly animals, over the logs at the woodpile. "Poor -Jason," she thought. "No wonder his nerves are giving way under the -strain." -</p> - -<p> -She followed the path between the house and the barn, and then, crossing -an old cornfield, turned into the back road, which led, through thick -woods, to Whistling Spring and Whippernock River. After she had lost -sight of the house, she came up with old Matthew Fairlamb, who was -trudging sturdily along, with his hickory stick in his hand and a small -bundle, tied up in a bandanna handkerchief, swinging from his right arm. -</p> - -<p> -"Are you on your way to see William?" she inquired as she joined him, -for she knew that his son William lived a mile away, on one of the -branch roads that led through to the station. "You must have come quite -a distance out of your way." -</p> - -<p> -Old Matthew wagged his knowing head. "That's right, gal, I'm gittin' -along to William's now," he replied. "I took dinner over to John -Appleseed's, that's why you find me trampin' through Five Oaks. Ain't -you goin' too fur from home, honey? Thar's a storm brewin' over yonder -in the west, and it'll most likely ketch you." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm going down to Whistling Spring," Dorinda replied, falling into step -at his side. -</p> - -<p> -He smacked his old lips. "Then you'll sholy be caught," he rejoined, -with sour pleasure. "It's a matter of five miles or so, ain't it?" -</p> - -<p> -"That's by the long road. It isn't over four by the short cut through -Five Oaks." -</p> - -<p> -"Thar ain't nobody but the niggers livin' down by Whistling Spring." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm going down to see Aunt Mehitable Green. She nursed Ma when she was -sick." -</p> - -<p> -"I recollect her." Old Matthew wagged again. "She conjured some liver -spots off the face of my son's wife. They used to say she was the best -conjure woman anywhar round here." -</p> - -<p> -"I know the darkeys are still afraid of her," Dorinda returned. "But she -was good to me when I was little, and I don't believe anything bad about -her." -</p> - -<p> -"Mebbe not, mebbe not," old Matthew assented. "Anyhow, if she's got a -gift with moles an' warts, thar can't nobody blame her fur practisin' -it. How's yo' weddin' gittin' on, honey? By this time next week you'll -be an old married woman, won't you?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda blushed. "It's hard for me to realize it." -</p> - -<p> -"Jason's gone away, ain't he?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, he went to New York to buy some instruments." -</p> - -<p> -"It's a mortal wonder his Pa let him. I hear he keeps as tight a rein on -him as if he'd never growed up. Wall, wall, he didn't ax the advice of -eighty-odd years. But, mark my words, he'll live to regret the day he -come back to Five Oaks." -</p> - -<p> -"But what else could he do?" the girl protested loyally. "His father -needed him." -</p> - -<p> -Old Matthew broke into a sly cackle. "Oh, he'll larn, he'll larn. I -ain't contendin'. He's a pleasant-mannered youngster, an' I wish you all -the joy of him you desarve. You ain't heerd from Geneva Ellgood sence -she went away, have you?" -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, no. She never writes to me." -</p> - -<p> -"I kind of thought she might have. But to come back to Jason, he's got -everything you want in a man except the one quality that counts with the -land." -</p> - -<p> -"You speak as if Jason lacked character," she said resentfully. -</p> - -<p> -"Wall, if he's got it, you'll know it soon," rejoined the disagreeable -old man, "and if he ain't got it, you'll know it sooner. I ain't -contendin'. It don't pay to contend when you're upwards of eighty." He -rolled the words of ill omen like a delicate morsel on his tongue. "This -here is my turnout, honey. Look sharp that you don't git a drenchin'." -</p> - -<p> -They nodded in the curt fashion of country people, and the old man -tramped off, spitting tobacco juice in the road, while Dorinda hurried -on into the deepening gloom of the woods. She was glad to be free of old -Matthew. He was more like an owl than ever, she thought, with his -ominous <i>who-who-whoee</i>. -</p> - -<p> -Here alone in the woods, with the perpetually moist clay near the stream -underfoot, the thick tent of arching boughs overhead, the aromatic smell -of dampness and rotting leaves in her nostrils, she felt refreshed and -invigorated. After all, why was she anxious? She was securely happy. She -was to be married in a week. She knew beyond question, beyond distrust, -that Jason loved her. For three months she had lived in a state of bliss -so supreme that, like love, it had created the illusion of its own -immortality. Yes, for three months she had been perfectly happy. -</p> - -<p> -Above, the leaves rustled. Through the interlacing boughs she could see -the grey sky growing darker. The warm scents of the wood were as heavy -as perfumed smoke. -</p> - -<p> -Presently the trees ended as abruptly as they had begun, and she came -out into the broomsedge which surrounded the negro settlement of -Whistling Spring. A narrow path led between rows of log cabins, each -with its patchwork square of garden, and its clump of gaudy prince's -feather or cockscomb by the doorstep. Aunt Mehitable's cabin stood -withdrawn a little; and when Dorinda reached the door, there was a -mutter of thunder in the clouds, though the storm was still distant and -a silver light edged the horizon. On the stone step a tortoise-shell cat -lay dozing, and a little to one side of the cabin the smouldering embers -of a fire blinked like red eyes under an iron pot, which hung suspended -from a rustic crane made by crossing three sticks. -</p> - -<p> -In response to the girl's knock on the open door, the cat arched its -back in welcome, and the old negress came hurriedly out of the darkness -inside, wiping her hands on her blue gingham apron. She took Dorinda in -her arms, explaining, while she embraced her, that she had just heated -some water to make a brew of herbs from her garden. -</p> - -<p> -"Dar ain' no use kindlin' a fire inside er de cabin twell you're -obleeged ter," she remarked. "You ain' lookin' so peart, honey. I've got -a bottle of my brown bitters put away fur yo' Ma, en you ax 'er ter gin -you a dose de fust thing ev'y mawnin'. Yo' Ma knows about'n my brown -bitters daze she's done tuck hit, erlong wid my black liniment. Hit'll -take erway de blue rings unner yo' eyes jes' ez sho', en hit'll fill yo' -cheeks right full er roses agin." -</p> - -<p> -"I've been worrying," said the girl, sitting down in the chair the old -woman brought. "It's taken my appetite, and made me feel as if I dragged -myself to the store and back every day. Isn't it funny what worry can do -to you, Aunt Mehitable?" -</p> - -<p> -"Dat 'tis, honey, dat 'tis." -</p> - -<p> -"I get dizzy too, when I bend over. You haven't got any camphor about, -have you?" -</p> - -<p> -Aunt Mehitable hastened into the cabin, and brought out a bottle of -camphor. "Yo' Ma gun me dat' de ve'y las' time I wuz at Ole Farm," she -said, removing the stopper, and handing the bottle to Dorinda. "Hit's a -long walk on dis heah peevish sort of er day. You jes' set en res' wile -I git you a swallow uv my blackberry cord'al. Dar ain't nuttin' dat'll -pick you up quicker'n blackberry cord'al w'en it's made right." -</p> - -<p> -Going indoors again, she came out with the blackberry cordial in a ruby -wineglass which had once belonged to the Cumberlands. "Drink it down -quick, en you'll feel better right befo' you know hit. Huccome you been -worryin', chile, w'en yo is gwineter be mah'ed dis time nex' week?" she -inquired abruptly. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm afraid something has happened," Dorinda said. "Jason has been away -two weeks, and I haven't had a word since the day after he left. I -thought you might have heard something from Jemima." -</p> - -<p> -The old woman mumbled through toothless gums. She was wearing a bandanna -handkerchief wrapped tightly about her head, and beneath it a few -grey-green wisps of hair straggled down to meet the dried grass of her -eyebrows. Her face was so old that it looked as if the flesh had been -polished away, and her features shone like black lacquer where the light -struck them. -</p> - -<p> -"Naw'm, I ain't heerd nuttin'," she replied, "but I'se done been lookin' -fur you all de evelin'. Dar's a lil' bird done tole me you wuz comin'," -she muttered mysteriously. -</p> - -<p> -"I wasn't sure of it myself till just before I started." -</p> - -<p> -"I knowed, honey, I knowed," rejoined Aunt Mehitable, leaning against -the smoke-blackened pine by her doorstep, while she fixed her bleared, -witchlike gaze on the girl. There was the dignity in her demeanour that -is inherent in all simple, profound, and elemental forces. The pipe she -had taken out of the pocket of her apron was in her mouth, but the stem -was cold and she mumbled over it without smoking. With her psychic -powers, which were a natural endowment, she combined a dramatic gift -that was not uncommon among the earlier generations of negroes. In -another century Aunt Mehitable would have been either a mystic -philosopher or a religious healer. -</p> - -<p> -"Can you really see things, Aunt Mehitable?" Dorinda inquired, impressed -but not convinced. -</p> - -<p> -Aunt Mehitable grunted over her smokeless pipe. "Mebbe I kin en mebbe I -cyan't." -</p> - -<p> -"They say you can tell about the future?" -</p> - -<p> -"Hi!" the old negress exclaimed, and continued with assumed -indifference. "Dey sez I kin do a heap mo'n I kin do. But I ain' -steddyin' about'n dat, honey. I knows w'at I knows. I kin teck moles en -warts en liver spots off'n you twell you is jes' ez smooth ez de pa'm er -my han', en ern ennybody's done put a conjure ball ovah yo' do' er -th'owed a ring on de grass fur you to walk in, I kin tell you whar you -mus' go ter jump ovah runnin' water. Ern you is in enny trubble, honey, -hit's mos' likely I kin teck hit erway. Is you stuck full er pins an' -needles in yo' legs an' arms, jes' lak somebody done th'owed a spell on -you?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, it isn't that," answered Dorinda. "I came because I thought you -might have heard something from Jemima. I'd better be starting back now. -I want to get home, if I can, before the storm breaks——" -</p> - -<p> -She had risen to her feet, and was turning to look at the clouds in the -west, when the broomsedge plunged forward, like a raging sea, and -engulfed her. She felt the pain and dizziness of the blow; she heard the -thunder of the waves as they crashed together; and she saw the billows, -capped with spray-ike plumes, submerging the cabin, the fields, the -woods, and the silver crescent of the horizon. -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p> -When she came to herself, it was an hour, a day, or a year afterwards. -She was still on the bare ground, beneath the blackened pine, in front -of Aunt Mehitable's cabin. The tortoise-shell cat still dozed on the -step. The dying embers still blinked under the hanging pot. There was a -pungent smell in her nostrils, as the old woman splashed camphor over -her forehead. Her consciousness was struggling through the fumes which -saturated her brain. -</p> - -<p> -"Dar now, honey. Don't you worry. Hit's all right," crooned Aunt -Mehitable, bending above her. -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda sat up slowly, and looked round her. "I believe I fainted," she -said. "I never fainted before." The roar of far-off waters was still in -her ears. -</p> - -<p> -The old woman held out the ruby wineglass, which she had refilled. -"Hit's all right, honey, hit's all right." -</p> - -<p> -"It came on so suddenly." Dorinda pushed the glass away after she had -obediently swallowed a few sips. "It was exactly like dying; but I'm -well now. The walk must have been too long on a sultry day." -</p> - -<p> -"Don't you worry, caze hit's gwineter be all right," crooned Aunt -Mehitable. "I'se done axed de embers en hit's gwineter be all right." -The magnetic force emanating from the old negress enveloped the girl, -and she abandoned herself to it as to a mysterious and terrible current -of wisdom. How did Aunt Mehitable know things before other people? she -wondered. She shivered in the warm air, and laid her head on the wizened -shoulder. Of course no one believed in witches any longer; but there was -something queer in the way she could look ahead and tell fortunes. -</p> - -<p> -"Befo' de week's up you is gwineter be mah'ed," muttered the old woman, -"en dar ain't a livin' soul but Aunt Mehitable gwineter know dat de -chile wuz on de way sooner——" -</p> - -<p> -"I—" Dorinda began sharply. Rising quickly to her feet, she stood -looking about her like a person who has been dazzled by a flash of -lightning. She was bewildered, but she was less bewildered than she had -been for the last three months. In the illumination of that instant a -hundred mysteries were made plain; but her dominant feeling was one of -sharp awakening from a trance. Swift and savage, animal terror clutched -at her heart. Where was Jason? Suppose he was dead! Suppose he was lost -to her! The longing to see him, the urgent need of his look, of his -touch, of his voice, shuddered through her like a convulsion. It seemed -to her that she could not live unless she could feel the reassuring -pressure of his arms and hear the healing sound of her name on his lips. -</p> - -<p> -"I must go back," she said. "I'll come again, Aunt Mehitable, but I must -hurry before the storm." -</p> - -<p> -Breaking away from the old woman's arms, she walked rapidly, as if she -were flying before the approaching storm, through the acres of -broomsedge to the road by which she had come. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XII">XII</a></h4> - -<p> -On either side of the road the trees grew straight and tall, and overhead -the grey arch of sky looked as if it were hewn out of rock. The pines -were dark as night, but the oaks, the sweet gums, the beeches, and -hickories were turning slowly, and here and there the boughs were -brushed with wine-colour or crimson. Far away, she could hear the rumble -of the storm, and it seemed to her that the noise and burden of living -marched on there at an immeasurable distance. Within the woods there was -the profound silence of sleep. Nothing but the occasional flutter of a -bird or stir of a small animal in the underbrush disturbed the serenity. -The oppressive air stifled her, and she felt that her breath, like the -movement of the wind, was suspended. -</p> - -<p> -"If I don't hurry, I shall never get out of the woods," she thought. "I -ought not to have come." -</p> - -<p> -Forgetting the attack of faintness, she quickened her steps into a run, -and stumbled on over the wheel ruts in the road, which was scarcely -wider than a cart track. For a while this stillness was so intense that -she felt as if it were palpitating in smothered throbs like her heart. -The storm was gathering on another planet. So remote it was that the -slow reverberations were echoed across an immensity of silence. The -first mile was past. Then the second. With the ending of the third, she -knew that she should come out into the pasture and the old cornfield at -Five Oaks. -</p> - -<p> -Presently a few withered leaves fluttered past her, flying through the -narrow tunnel of the woods toward the clearer vista ahead. Immediately -round her the atmosphere was still motionless. Like an alley in a dream -the road, stretched, brown, dim, monotonous, between the tall trees; and -this alley seemed to her unutterably sad, strewn with dead leaves and -haunted by an autumnal taint of decay. The fear in her own mind had -fallen like a blight on her surroundings, as if the external world were -merely a shadow thrown by the subjective processes within her soul. -</p> - -<p> -Suddenly, without nearer warning, the storm broke. A streak of white -fire split the sky, and the tattered clouds darkened to an angry purple. -The wind, which had been chained at a distance, tore itself free with a -hurtling noise and crashed in gusts through the tree-tops. Overhead, she -heard the snapping of branches, and when she glanced back, it seemed to -her that the withered leaves had gathered violence in pursuit, and were -whirling after her like a bevy of witches. As she came out of the -shelter of the trees, the stream of wind and leaves swept her across the -cornfield, with the patter of rain on her shoulders. Where the road -turned, she saw the red barn and the brick dwelling of Five Oaks, and in -obedience to the wind rather than by the exercise of her own will, she -was driven over the field and the yard to the steps of the back porch. -Her first impression was that the place was deserted; and running up the -steps, she sank into one of the broken chairs on the porch, and shook -the water from her hat while she struggled for breath. On the roof of -the house the rain was beating in drops as hard as pebbles. She heard it -thundering on the shingles; she saw it scattering the chips and straws -by the woodpile, and churning the puddles in the walk until they foamed -with a yeasty scum. The sky was shrouded now in a crape-like pall, and -where the lightning ripped open the blackness, the only colour was that -jagged stain of dull purple. "I'm wet already," she thought. "In another -minute I'd have been soaked through to the skin." Turning her head, she -looked curiously at the home of her lover. -</p> - -<p> -The thought in her mind was, "You could tell no woman lived here. When I -get the chance, it won't take me long to make things look different." -With the certainty that this "chance" would one day be hers, she forgot -her anxiety and fatigue, and a thrill of joy eased her heart. Yes, -things would be different when she and Jason lived here together and -little children played under the great oaks in the grove. Her fingers -"itched," as she said to herself, to clean up the place and make it tidy -without and within. A rivulet of muddy water was pouring round the -corner of the house, wearing a channel in the gravelled walk, which was -littered with rubbish. Beside the porch there was a giant box-bush, -beneath which several bedraggled white turkeys had taken shelter. She -could see them through the damp twilight of the boughs, shaking drenched -feathers or scratching industriously in the rank mould among the roots. -</p> - -<p> -Leaning back in her wet clothes, against the splints of the chair, which -sagged on one rocker, she glanced about her at the refuse that -overflowed from the hall. The porch looked as if it had not been swept -for years. There was a pile of dusty bagging in one corner, and, -scattered over the floor, she saw a medley of oil cans, empty -cracker boxes and whiskey bottles, loose spokes of cart wheels, rolls of -barbed wire, and stray remnants of leather harness. "How can any one -live in such confusion?" she thought. Through the doorway, she could -distinguish merely a glimmer of light on the ceiling, from which the -plaster was dropping, and the vague shape of a staircase, which climbed, -steep and slender, to the upper story. It was a fairly good house of its -period, the brick dwelling, with ivy-encrusted wings, which was -preferred by the more prosperous class of Virginia farmers. The -foundation of stone had been well laid; the brick walls were stout and -solid, and though neglect and decay had overtaken it, the house still -preserved, beneath its general air of deterioration, an underlying -character of honesty and thrift. Turning away, she gazed through the -silver mesh of rain, past the barn and the stable, to the drenched -pasture, where a few trees rocked back and forth, and a flock of -frightened sheep huddled together. Where were the farm labourers, she -wondered? What had become of Jemima, who, Aunt Mehitable had said, was -still working here? Two men living alone must keep at least one woman -servant. Had the storm thrown a curse of stagnation over the place, and -made it incapable of movement or sound? She could barely see the sky for -the slanting rain, which drove faster every minute. Was she the only -living thing left, except the cowering sheep in the pasture and the -dripping white turkeys under the box-bush? -</p> - -<p> -While she was still asking the question, she heard a shuffling step in -the hall behind her, and looking hastily over her shoulder, saw the -figure of the old man blocking the doorway. For an instant his squat -outline, blurred between the dark hall and the sheets of rain, was all -that she distinguished. Then he lurched toward her, peering out of the -gloom. Yesterday, she would have run from him in terror. Before her -visit to Whistling Spring she would have faced the storm rather than the -brooding horror at Five Oaks. But the great fear had absorbed the small -fears as the night absorbs shadows. Nothing mattered to her if she could -only reach Jason. -</p> - -<p> -"Come in, come in," the old doctor was mumbling, with a dreary effort at -hospitality. -</p> - -<p> -He held out his palsied hand, and all the evil rumours she had heard -since he had given up his practice and buried himself at Five Oaks -rushed into her mind. It must be true that he had always been a secret -drinker, and that the habit had taken possession now of his faculties. -Though she had known him all her life, the change in him was so -startling that she would scarcely have recognized him. His once robust -figure was wasted and flabby, except for his bloated paunch, which hung -down like a sack of flour; his scraggy throat protruding from the -bristles of his beard reminded the girl of the neck of a buzzard; his -little fiery eyes, above inflamed pouches of skin, flickered and shone, -just as the smouldering embers had flickered and shone under Aunt -Mehitable's pot. And from these small bloodshot eyes something sly and -secretive and malignant looked out at her. Was this, she wondered, what -whiskey and his own evil nature could do to a man? -</p> - -<p> -"I am on my way back from Whistling Spring," she explained, while she -struggled against the repulsion he aroused in her. "The storm caught me -just as I reached here." -</p> - -<p> -He smirked with his bloodless old lips, which cracked under the strain. -"Eh? Eh?" he chuckled, cupping his ear in his hand. Then catching hold -of her sleeve, he pulled her persuasively toward the doors "Come in, -come in," he urged. "You're wet through. I've kindled a bit of fire to -dry my boots, and it's still burning. Come in, and dry yourself before -you take cold from the wetting." -</p> - -<p> -Still clutching her, he stumbled into the hall, glancing uneasily back, -as if he feared that she might slip out of his grasp. On the right a -door stood ajar, and a few knots of resinous pine blazed, with a thin -blue light, in the cavernous fireplace. As he led her over the -threshold, she noticed that the windows were all down, and that the only -shutters left open were those at the back window, against which the -giant box-bush had grown into the shape of a hunchback. There was a film -of dust or wood ashes over the floor and the furniture, and cobwebs were -spun in lacy patterns on the discoloured walls. A demijohn, still half -full of whiskey, stood on the crippled mahogany desk, and a pitcher of -water and several dirty glasses were on a tin tray beside it. Near the -sparkling blaze a leather chair, from which the stuffing protruded, -faced a shabby footstool upholstered in crewel work, and a pile of -hickory logs, chips, and pine knots, over which spiders were crawling. -While Dorinda sat down in the chair he pointed out, and looked nervously -over the dust and dirt that surrounded her, she thought that she had -never seen a room from which the spirit of hope was so irrevocably -banished. How cheerful the room at Pedlar's Mill, where Rose Emily lay -dying, appeared by contrast with this one! What a life Jason's mother -must have led in this place! How had Jason, with his charm, his -fastidiousness, his sensitive nerves, been able to stay here? Her gaze -wandered to the one unshuttered window, where the sheets of rain were -blown back and forth like a curtain. She saw the hunched shoulder of the -box-bush, crouching under the torrent of water which poured down from -the roof. Yet she longed to be out in the storm. Any weather was better -than this close, dark place, so musty in spite of its fire, and this -suffocating stench of whiskey and of things that were never aired. -</p> - -<p> -"Just a thimbleful of toddy to ward off a chill?" the old man urged, -with his doddering gestures. -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head, trying to smile. A drop of the stuff in one of those -fly-specked glasses would have sickened her. -</p> - -<p> -Darkness swept over her with the ebb and flow of the sea. She felt a -gnawing sensation within; there wag a quivering in her elbows; and it -seemed to her that she was dissolving into emptiness. The thin blue -light wavered and vanished and wavered again. When she opened her eyes -the room came out of the shadows in fragments, obscure, glimmering, -remote. On the shingled roof the rain was pattering like a multitude of -tiny feet, the restless bare feet of babies. Terror seized her. She -longed with all her will to escape; but how could she go back into the -storm without an excuse; and what excuse could she find? After all, -repulsive as he appeared, he was still Jason's father. -</p> - -<p> -"No, thank you," she answered, when he poured a measure of whiskey into -a glass and pushed it toward her. "Aunt Mehitable gave me some -blackberry cordial." After a silence she asked abruptly: "Where is -Jemima?" -</p> - -<p> -Lifting the glass she had refused, he added a stronger dash to the weak -mixture, and sipped it slowly. "There's nothing better when you're wet -than a little toddy," he muttered. "Jemima is off for the evening, but -she'll be back in time to get supper. I heard her say she was going over -to Plumtree." -</p> - -<p> -A peal of thunder broke so near that she started to her feet, expecting -to see the window-panes shattered. -</p> - -<p> -"There, there, don't be afraid," he said, nodding at her over his glass. -"The worst is over now. The rain will have held up before you're dry and -ready to go home." -</p> - -<p> -It was like a nightmare, the dark, glimmering room, with its dust and -cobwebs, the sinister old man before the blue flames of the pine knots, -the slanting rain over the box-bush, the pattering sound on the roof, -and the thunderbolts which crashed near by and died away in the -distance. Even her body felt numbed, as if she were asleep, and her -feet, when she rose and took a step forward, seemed to be walking on -nothing. It was just as if she knew it was not real, that it was all -visionary and incredible, and as if she stood there waiting until she -should awake. The dampness, too, was not a genuine dampness, but the -sodden atmosphere of a nightmare. -</p> - -<p> -"Why, it has stopped now!" she exclaimed suddenly. "The storm is over." -Then, because she did not wish to show fear of him, she came nearer and -held her wet dress to the flames. "You won't need a fire much longer," -she said. "It is warmer out of doors than it is inside." -</p> - -<p> -"That's why I keep the windows down." He looked so dry and brittle, in -spite of the dampness about him, that she thought he would break in -pieces if he moved too quickly. There was no life, no sap, left in his -veins. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm by myself now," he winked at her. "But it won't be for long. Jason -comes back to-night." -</p> - -<p> -"To-night!" Joy sang in her voice. But why hadn't he written? Was there -anything wrong? Or was he merely trying to surprise her by his return? -</p> - -<p> -"You hadn't heard? Well, that proves, I reckon, that I can keep a -secret." He lurched to his feet, balanced himself unsteadily for an -instant, and then stumbled to the window. Beyond him she saw the black -shape of the box-bush, with a flutter of white turkeys among its boughs, -and overhead a triangle of sky, where the grey was washed into a -delicate blue. Yes, the storm was over. -</p> - -<p> -"They ought to reach the station about now," he said. "When the windows -are open and the wind is in the right direction, you can hear the -whistle of the train." There was malignant pleasure in his tone. "You -didn't know, I s'pose, that he'd gone off to get married?" -</p> - -<p> -"Married?" She laughed feebly, imagining that he intended a joke. How -dreadful old men were when they tried to be funny! His pointed beard -jerked up and down when he talked, and his little red blinking eyes -stared between his puffed eyelids like a rat's eyes out of a hole. Then -something as black and cold as stale soot floated out from the chimney -and enveloped her. She could scarcely get her breath. If only he would -open the windows. -</p> - -<p> -"Hasn't he told you that we are to be married next week?" she asked. -</p> - -<p> -"No, he hasn't told me." He gloated over the words as if they were -whiskey, and she wondered what he was like when he was not drinking, if -that ever happened. He could be open-handed, she had heard, when the -humour struck him. Once, she knew, he had helped Miss Texanna Snead -raise the money for her taxes, and when Aunt Mehitable's cow died he had -given her another. "I had a notion that you and he were sweethearts," he -resumed presently, "and he'd have to look far, I reckon, before he could -pick out a finer girl. He's a pleasant-tempered boy, is Jason, but he -ain't dependable, even if he is my son, so I hope you haven't set too -much store by him. I never heard of him mixing up with girls, except you -and Geneva. That ain't his weakness. The trouble with him is that he was -born white-livered. Even as a child he would go into fits if you showed -him a snake or left him by himself in the dark——" -</p> - -<p> -"He loves me," she said stoutly, closing her ears and her mind to his -words. -</p> - -<p> -He nodded. "I don't doubt it, I don't doubt it. He loved you well -enough, I reckon, to want to jilt Geneva; but he found out, when he -tried, that she wasn't as easy to jilt as he thought. He'd courted her -way back yonder last year, when they were in New York together. Later on -he'd have been glad to wriggle out of it; but when Jim and Bob Ellgood -came after him, he turned white-livered again. They took him off and -married him while he was still shaking from fright. A good boy, a -pleasant boy," continued the old man, smacking his dry lips, "but he -ain't of my kidney." -</p> - -<p> -When he had finished, she gazed at him in a dumbness which had attacked -her like paralysis. She tried to cry out, to tell him that she knew he -lied; but her lips would not move in obedience to her will, and her -throat felt as if it were petrified. Was this the way people felt when -they had a stroke, she found herself thinking. On the surface she was -inanimate; but beneath, in the buried jungle of her consciousness, there -was the stirring of primitive impulses, and this stirring was agony. All -individual differences, all the acquired attributes of civilization, had -turned to wood or stone; yet the racial structure, the savage fibre of -instinct, remained alive in her. -</p> - -<p> -The room had grown darker. Only the hearth and the evil features of the -old man were picked out by the wavering blue light. She saw his face, -with its short wagging beard and its fiery points of eyes, as one sees -objects under running water. Everything was swimming round her, and -outside, where a cloud had drifted over the triangle of clear sky, the -box-bush and the white turkeys were swimming too. -</p> - -<p> -"You'll meet 'em on the road if you go by the fork," piped a voice -beneath that shifting surface. "They will be well on the way by the time -you have started." -</p> - -<p> -Stung awake at last, she thrust out her arm, warding him off. The one -thought in her mind now was to escape, to get out of the room before he -could stop her, to put the house and its terrors behind her. It couldn't -be true. He was drunk. He was lying. He was out of his head. She was -foolish even to listen, foolish to let the lie worry her for an instant. -</p> - -<p> -Turning quickly, she ran from him out of the room, out of the house, out -of the stagnant air of the place. -</p> - -<p> -At the beginning of the sandy road, where the water had hollowed a -basin, she met the coloured woman, Idabella, who said "good evening," -after the custom of the country, as she went by. She was a handsome -mulatto, tall, deep-bosomed, superb, and unscrupulous, with the regal -features that occasionally defy ethnology in the women of mixed blood. -Her glossy black hair was worn in a coronet, and she moved with the slow -and arrogant grace which springs from a profound immobility. -</p> - -<p> -"The dreadful old man," thought Dorinda, as she hurried in the direction -of Gooseneck Creek. "The dreadful, lying old man!" -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XIII">XIII</a></h4> - -<p> -The sun had riddled the clouds, and a watery light drenched the trees, -the shrubs, and the bruised weeds. This light, which bathed the external -world in a medium as fluid as rain, penetrated into her thoughts, and -enveloped the images in her mind with a transparent brilliance. -</p> - -<p> -"It isn't true," she repeated over and over, as she went down the sandy -slope to Gooseneck Creek, and over the bridge of logs in the willows. -When she reached the meadows, rain was still dripping from the -golden-rod and life-everlasting. A rabbit popped up from the briers and -scuttled ahead of her, with his little white tail bobbing jauntily. -</p> - -<p> -"How funny it looks," she thought, "just as if it were beckoning me to -come on and play. The rain is over, but I am soaked through. Even my -skin is wet. I'll have to dry all my clothes by the kitchen fire, if it -hasn't gone out. What a terrible old man!" Out of nowhere there flashed -into her mind the recollection of a day when she had gone to a dentist -at the County Courthouse to have an aching tooth drawn. All the -way, sitting beside her father, behind Dan and Beersheba, she had kept -repeating, "It won't hurt very much." Strange that she should have -thought of that now! She could see the way Dan and Beersheba had turned, -flopping their ears, and looked round, as if they were trying to show -sympathy; and how the bunches of indigo, fastened on their heads to keep -flies away, had danced fantastically like uprooted bushes. "It isn't -true;" she said now, seeking to fortify her courage as she had tried so -passionately on the drive to the dentist. "When Jason comes back, we -will laugh over it together. He will tell me that I was foolish to be -worried, that it proved I did not trust him. But, of course, I trust -him. When we are married, I will stand between him and the old man as -much as I can. I am not afraid of him. No, I am not afraid," she said -aloud, stopping suddenly in the road as if she had seen a snake in her -path. "When Jason comes back, everything will be right. Yes, everything -will be right," she repeated. "Perhaps the old man suspected something, -and was trying to frighten me. Doctors always know things sooner than -other people. . . . What a dirty place it is! Ma would call it a pig sty. -Well, I can clean it up, bit by bit. Even if the old man doesn't let -anybody touch his den, I can clean the rest of the house. I'll begin -with the porch, and some day, when he is out, I can make Jemima wash -that dreadful floor and the window-panes. The outside is almost as bad -too. The walk looks as if it had never been swept." In order to deaden -this fear, which was gnawing at her heart like a rat, she began to plan -how she would begin cleaning the place and gradually bring system out of -confusion. "A little at a time," she said aloud, as if she were reciting -a phrase in a foreign language. "A little at a time will not upset him." -</p> - -<p> -At the fork of the road, approaching the red gate, where the thick belt -of woods began, her legs gave way under her, and she knew that she could -go no farther. "I'll have to stop," she thought, "even if the ground is -so wet, I'll have to sit down." Then the unconscious motive, which had -guided her ever since she left Five Oaks, assumed a definite form. "If -he came on that train, he ought to be here in a few minutes," she said. -"The whistle blew a long time ago. Even if he waited for the mail, he -ought to be here in a little while." -</p> - -<p> -Stepping over the briers into the woods, she looked about for a place to -sit down. An old stump, sodden with water, pushed its way up from the -maze of creepers, and she dropped beside it, while she relapsed into the -suspense that oozed out of the ground and the trees. As long as her -response to this secret fear was merely physical, she was able to keep -her thoughts fixed on empty mechanical movements; but the instant she -admitted the obscure impulse into her mind, the power of determination -seemed to go out of her. She felt weak, unstrung, incapable of rational -effort. -</p> - -<p> -A thicket of dogwood and redbud trees made a close screen in front of -her, and through the dripping branches, she could see the red gate, and -beyond it the blasted oak and the burned cabin on the other side of the -road. Farther on, within range of her vision, there were the abandoned -acres of broomsedge, and opposite to them she imagined the Sneads' -pasture, with the white and red splotches of cows and the blurred -patches of huddled sheep. -</p> - -<p> -While she sat there the trembling passed out of her limbs, and the -strength that had forsaken her returned slowly. Removing her hat, she -let the branches play over her face, like the delicate touch of cool, -moist fingers. She felt drenched without and within. The very thoughts -that came and went in her mind were as limp as wet leaves, and blown -like leaves in the capricious stir of the breeze. For a few minutes she -sat there surrounded by a vacancy in which nothing moved but the leaves -and the wind. Without knowing what she thought, without knowing even -what she felt, she abandoned herself to the encompassing darkness. Then, -suddenly, without warning from her mind, this vacancy was flooded with -light and crowded with a multitude of impressions. -</p> - -<p> -Their first meeting in the road. The way he looked at her. His eyes when -he smiled. The red of his hair. His hand when he touched her. The -feeling of his arms, of his mouth on hers, of the rough surface of his -coat brushing her face. The first time he had kissed her. The last time -he had kissed her. No. It isn't true. It isn't true. Deep down in her -being some isolated point of consciousness, slow, rhythmic, monotonous, -like a swinging pendulum, was ticking over and over: It isn't true. It -isn't true. True. True. It isn't true. On the surface other thoughts -came and went. That horrible old man. A fire in summer. The stench of -drunkenness. Tobacco stains on his white beard. A rat watching her from -a hole. How she hated rats! Did he suspect something, and was he trying -to frighten her? Trying to frighten her. But she would let him see that -she was too strong for him. She was not afraid. . . . The thoughts went -on, coming and going like leaves blown in the wind, now rising, now -fluttering down again. But far away, in a blacker vacancy, the pendulum -still swung to and fro, and she heard the thin, faint ticking of the -solitary point of consciousness: <i>True. True. It isn't true. It isn't -true—true—true</i>— -</p> - -<p> -No, he couldn't frighten her. She was too sure of herself. Too sure of -Jason, too sure of her happiness. "Too sure of Jason," she repeated -aloud. -</p> - -<p> -The little sad, watery sun sputtered out like a lantern, and after a few -minutes of wan greyness, shone more clearly, as if it had been relighted -and hung up again in the sky. Colour flowed back into the landscape, -trickling in shallow streams of blue and violet through the nearer -fields and evaporating into dark fire where the broomsedge enkindled -the horizon. She started up quickly, and fell back. When she put her -hand on the slimy moss it felt like a toad. -</p> - -<p> -Far down the road, somewhere in the vague blur of the distance, there -was the approaching rumble of wheels. She heard the even rise and fall -of the hoofs, the metallic clink of horseshoes striking together, the -jolting over the rock by the Sneads' pasture, the splash of mud in the -bad hole near the burned cabin, and the slip and scramble of the mare as -she stumbled and then, recovering herself, broke into a trot. -</p> - -<p> -<i>It isn't true. It isn't true</i>, ticked the pin point of -consciousness. Her mind was still firm; but her limbs trembled so -violently that she slipped from the stump to the carpet of moss and -soaked creepers. Shutting her eyes, she held fast to the slimy branch of -a tree. "When he turns at the fork, I will look. I will not look until -he turns at the fork." -</p> - -<p> -The rumble was louder, was nearer. An instant of silence. The buggy was -approaching the fork. It was at the fork. She heard close at hand the -familiar clink of the steel shoes and the sharper squeak of a loosened -screw in the wheel. Rising on the sodden mould, she opened her eyes, -pushed aside the curtain of branches, and looked out through the leaves. -She saw Jason sitting erect, with the reins in his hands. She saw his -burnished red hair, his pale profile, his slightly stooping shoulders, -his mouth which was closed in a hard straight line. Clear and sharp, she -saw him with the vividness of a flash of lightning, and beside him, she -saw the prim, girlish figure and the flaxen head of Geneva Ellgood. -</p> - -<p> -<i>It isn't true. It isn't true.</i> The pendulum was swinging more -slowly; and suddenly the ticking stopped, and then went on in jerks like -a clock that is running down. <i>It isn't true. It isn't -true—true—true.</i> -</p> - -<p> -She felt cold and wet. Though she had not lost the faculty of -recollection, she was outside time and space, suspended in ultimate -darkness. There was an abyss around her, and through this abyss wind was -blowing, black wind, which made no sound because it was sweeping through -nothingness. She lay flat in this vacancy, yet she did not fall through -it because she also was nothing. Only her hands, which clutched -wood mould, were alive. There was mould under her finger nails, and the -smell of wet earth filled her nostrils. Everything within her had -stopped. The clock no longer ticked; it had run down. She could not -think, or, if she thought, her thoughts were beyond her consciousness, -skimming like shadows over a frozen lake. Only the surface of her could -feel, only her skin, and this felt as if it would never be warm again. -</p> - -<p> -"So it is true," she said aloud, and the words, spoken without a thought -behind them, startled her. The instant afterwards she began to come back -to existence; she could feel life passing through her by degrees, first -in her hands and feet, where needles were pricking, then in her limbs, -and at last in her mind and heart. And while life fought its way into -her, something else went out of her for ever—youth, hope, -love—and the going was agony. Her pain became so intolerable that -she sprang to her feet and started running through the woods, like a -person who is running away from a forest fire. Only she knew, while she -ran faster and faster, that the fire was within her breast, and she -could not escape it. No matter how far she ran and how fast, she could -not escape it. -</p> - -<p> -Presently the running shook her senses awake, and her thoughts became -conscious ones. In the silence the shuddering beats of her heart were -like the unsteady blows of a hammer—one, two, one, one, two, two. -Her breath came with a whistling sound, and for a minute she confused it -with the wind in the tree-tops. -</p> - -<p> -"So this is the end," she said aloud, and then very slowly, "I didn't -know I could feel like this. I didn't know anybody could feel like -this." A phrase of her mother's, coloured with the barbaric imagery of a -Hebrew prophet, was driven, as aimlessly as a wisp of straw, into her -mind: "Your great-grandfather said he never came to Christ till he had -thirsted for blood." Thirsted for blood! She had never known what that -meant. It had seemed to her a strange way to come to Christ, but now she -understood. -</p> - -<p> -The wet briers tore her legs through her stockings. Branches whipped her -face and bruised its delicate flesh. Once, when she came out of the -woods, she slipped and fell on her hands and knees. The splinters of the -fence pierced her skin when she climbed over the rails. But still she -ran on, trying to escape from the fire within her breast. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XIV">XIV</a></h4> - -<p> -On the front porch, with her hand shielding her eyes from the sunset, -her mother stood and looked out for her. -</p> - -<p> -"I was watching for you, Dorinda. You must have got caught in the -storm." -</p> - -<p> -"Just at the beginning. I stopped at Five Oaks." -</p> - -<p> -"Was anybody there?" -</p> - -<p> -"Nobody but the old doctor. Jemima was off." -</p> - -<p> -"Did he say when he expected Jason?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, he told me he might come back this evening." -</p> - -<p> -Once, long ago, she had heard a ventriloquist at a circus, and her voice -was like the voice that had come out of the chair, the table, or the wax -doll. As she stepped on the porch, her mother examined her closely. -"Well, you're as white as a sheet. Go up and take off your wet things as -quick as you can, and bring 'em down to the fire. Supper'll be ready in -a minute." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda tried to smile when she hurried by, but her muscles, she found, -eluded the control of her will, and the smile was twisted into a -smirking grimace. Without trusting herself to meet her mother's eyes, -she went upstairs to her room and took off her rain-soaked clothes, -hanging her skirt and shirtwaist in the closet, and putting her muddy -shoes side by side, as if they were standing at attention on the edge of -the rug. Pushing back the curtain over the row of hooks, she selected an -old blue gingham dress which she had discarded, and put it on, carefully -adjusting the belt, from which the hooks and eyes, were missing, with -the help of a safety pin. All the time, while she performed these -trivial acts, she felt that her intimate personal self had stepped -outside her body, and was watching her from a distance. When she went -downstairs, it was only a marionette, like one of the figures she had -seen as a child in a Punch and Judy show, that descended the stairs and -sat down at the table. She looked at her father and mother, her father -eating so noisily, her mother pouring buttermilk, without spilling a -drop, into the row of glasses, and wondered what she had to do with -these people? Why had she been born in this family and not in another? -Could she have been a changeling that they had picked up? -</p> - -<p> -"Dorinda stopped at Five Oaks until the storm was over," she heard her -mother say to the others; and suddenly, as if the sound had touched some -secret spring in her mind, she became alive again, and everything was -bathed in the thin blue light of that room at Five Oaks. The pain was -more than she could bear. It was more than anybody could be expected to -bear. In a flash of time it became so violent that she jumped up from -her chair, and began walking up and down as if she were in mortal agony. -</p> - -<p> -"What's the matter, daughter? Did you come down on your tooth?" inquired -Mrs. Oakley solicitously. -</p> - -<p> -"No, it isn't that. I don't want any supper," replied the girl, hurrying -out of the room and walking the length of the hall to the front door. "I -must do something," she thought. "If I don't do something, this pain -will go on for ever." -</p> - -<p> -She had crossed the threshold to the porch, when, wheeling abruptly, she -went back into the hall and from the hall into her mother's chamber, -where the family Bible lap open on the table and the big fly was still -knocking against the ceiling. She had not known that flies lived so -long! It seemed an eternity, not a few hours ago, when her mother had -sat there reading the Psalms and the fly had buzzed in the stillness. -The peaceful room, pervaded by the Sabbath lethargy, with the open Bible -waiting for family prayers, and the battered old furniture arranged in -changeless order, seemed to close over her like a trap. "I must do -something, or this misery will never end," she thought again. But there -was nothing that she could do. There would never be anything that she -could do in her life. It was over. Everything was over, and she might -live to be ninety. "And the child coming too." There also she could find -no escape. "No matter what I do, I can change nothing." Something had -caught her. Life had caught her. She could not get away, no matter how -hard she struggled. A drop of blood fell on her fingers, and glancing -into the mirror, she saw that she had bitten her lip until it bled, yet -she had not felt it. Nothing like that, nothing on the outside of -herself, could ever hurt her again. "If I could only do something," she -said in a whisper, and walked from the chamber to the spare room, and -from the spare room, which looked as if it were hiding something, out -into the hall. Suddenly, like a person moving in delirium, she walked -out of the house, and along the path between the pear orchard and the -vegetable garden. The green afterglow had faded; but a sallow moon was -riding high over the big pine, and gave light enough for her to see her -way. Like a wet sheet the twilight folded about her, clinging to her -arms and legs when she tried to shake herself free from it. She would -have moonlight in the woods, and besides she had nothing to fear. A dry -sob broke from her, hurting her throat. You had reached the worst, she -realized, when you had nothing to fear. -</p> - -<p> -She followed the path rapidly. By the pear orchard, by the big pine on -the hill, by the tobacco field, through the pasture, and into the dark -belt of woods. Here the smell of wet earth stifled her, and she lived -over again the moment when she had waited there, listening, in the -suspense which was more terrible than any certainty. "I didn't know what -it was when I went through with it," she thought. "I didn't know what it -was until afterwards." Memory, she felt, was gathering like an ulcer in -her mind. If she could not let out the pain, the sore would burst from -its own swelling. "If I don't do something, I shall die," she said -aloud, standing there, on the edge of the woods, among the wet leaves -and rotting mould. Then, swift as an inspiration, there came to her the -knowledge of what she must do. She must find Jason. Yes, she must find -Jason. This knowledge, which was as infallible as instinct, went no -further than the imperative necessity of seeing him. Beyond this, the -impulse gave way, like a bridge that breaks in the middle of a stream. -It left her there, without prop, without direction, hanging over the -black current of emptiness. -</p> - -<p> -As she hurried on, a bough struck her so sharply that it bruised her -cheek, but she did not feel it. With the act of decision her body had -become so airy and transparent that she was no longer conscious of it as -a drag on her spirit. Though she ought to have been tired, she felt -instead amazingly strong and fresh, amazingly full of vitality. Only now -and then, as she walked rapidly through the willows and over the log -bridge, lights flickered and vanished and flickered again before her -eyes. At first she thought that a million sparks glittered out there in -the moist purple twilight; then she realized that they were not there at -all but within her brain. And these lights, which flitted round her as -she went on, illumined the blind impulse that directed her movements. It -was as if she were harnessed to this impulse and driven by it toward -some end of which she was ignorant, but which she would presently -discern in the fog. -</p> - -<p> -She moved quickly, with her gaze fixed straight in front of her. The -dusk was gilded with fireflies, but she could not distinguish these -vagrant insects from the roving lights in her brain. The earth underfoot -gave out, when it was crushed, a strong, warm, vital odour. Very near -and loud, there was the hoot of an owl, followed presently by another; -but the cries seemed to be a part of the inner voice which was urging -her on. Her feet slipped on the logs. She recovered herself and went on -more quickly, more lightly, as if her body did not exist, or existed -merely as a cloud. Now she could see the lamps glimmering in the lower -windows of the house. There were lights in the hall, in the dining room, -in the old doctor's retreat; but all the upstairs windows were dark -except for the reflected rays of the moonbeams. Was the old man still -crouching over his fire, she wondered, with his rat eyes watching out of -a hole? -</p> - -<p> -Around the house there were puddles of water and the piles of trash that -she had seen in the afternoon. Like a fawn, she sped over them and -stopped, unaware of her panting breath, with her eyes on the back door, -which was open. She could see within the hall, where a kerosene lamp was -fastened in a bracket near the staircase. The same heaps of bagging and -boxes and empty bottles were scattered about; the same collection of -rusty guns and broken fishing-poles. For the first time she thought -clearly, while her gaze travelled over these ordinary objects, "Why did -I come? What is the meaning of it? Why am I waiting out here in the -night?" But there was no answer to her question. She could not remember -why she had come, why she was standing there alone, with her eyes on the -open door, watching. Vacancy was around her, was within her; she was -drowning in vacancy. Looking away from the house, she saw that there was -a light in the barn, and that the big musty place was deserted. The -buggy, from which the horse had been taken, was standing near the door, -and one of those formless thoughts which she could not distinguish from -feeling told her that Jason would come out to put it under the shed. "If -I wait here long enough, I shall see him." Though the words were spoken -outside her brain, she knew that she must wait there all night if he did -not come. -</p> - -<p> -Stepping over the loosened boards of the threshold of the barn, she -glanced about at the disorder, which was like the disorder of the house, -only it seemed to her cleaner because it was less human. Wheat, corn, -fodder. Farming implements. A reaping machine. Medicine for stock. A -jumble of odds and ends that had been thrown out of a tool house. -Against a barrel by the door there was the gun with which the old doctor -had shot the hawk in the afternoon. Her hands moved over it caressingly, -wonderingly. A good gun, not rusty, like everything else on the place. -Jason's probably. Far away over the fields a voice was speaking, and the -sound floated to her, thin and clear as distant chimes. "<i>He never came -to Christ till he had thirsted for blood.</i>" A strange way—but she -knew now, she understood. -</p> - -<p> -There was a noise at the house. A figure darkened the lamplight -on the porch; she heard a familiar step; she saw a shadow -approaching. It was Jason, she knew, and as he came toward her, she left -the barn and went out into the moonlight to meet him. She felt calm now, -fresh, strong, relentless; but the ulcer in her mind throbbed as if it -were bursting. Yes, it was Jason. He was coming down the steps. He was -coming along the path to the barn. In a minute he would see her standing -there, another shadow in the moonlight. In a minute he would speak to -her. -</p> - -<p> -Suddenly, while she stood there in silence, the gun went off in her -hands. She saw the flash; she heard the sound, as if the discharge were -miles away; she smelt the powder. The next instant she felt the tremor -of the shock as the weapon, recoiled in her hands; and she thought -quietly and steadily, "I tried to do it. I wanted to do it." -</p> - -<p> -"Dorinda," he called out, while the smoke drifted past him, and she saw -his face go as white as paper in the dimness. -</p> - -<p> -Then, as swiftly as it had come, her resolution went out of her. The gun -slipped from her hands to the ground, and lay there in the mud at her -feet. Her will, with all its throbbing violence, urged her to shoot him -and end the pain in her mind. But something stronger than her conscious -will, stronger than her agony, stronger than her hate, held her -motionless. Every nerve in her body, every drop of her blood, hated him; -yet because of this nameless force within the chaos of her being, she -could not compel her muscles to stoop and pick up the gun at her feet. -Like a dream, like a fantasy of delirium, her resolution vanished, and -she knew that it would not return. "Why am I here? What is the meaning -of it all?" she asked wildly of the emptiness within her soul. -</p> - -<p> -"Dorinda!" he said again. He had seen her; he had called her name. They -were alone together in the moonlight as they had been when she loved -him. If only she had the power to stoop and pick up the gun! If only she -had the power to make her muscles obey the wish in her heart! If only -she had the power to thrust him out of her life! It was not love, it was -not tenderness, it was not pity even, that held her back. Nothing but -this physical inability to bring her muscles beneath the control of her -will. -</p> - -<p> -"Dorinda!" he said again incoherently, as if he had been drinking. "So -you know. But you can't know all. Not what I've been through. Not what -I've suffered. Nobody could. It is hell. I tell you I've been through -hell since I left you. I never wanted to do it. You are the one I care -for. I never wanted to marry her. It was something I couldn't help. They -brought pressure on me that I couldn't bear. They made me do it. I was -engaged to her before I came back. It was in New York last summer. She -showed she liked me and it seemed a good thing. Then I met you. I didn't -want to marry her. Before God, Dorinda, I never meant to do it. But I -did it. You will never understand. I told you that I funked things. I -have ever since I can remember. It's the way my mother funked things -with my father. Well, I'm like that, so you oughtn't to blame me so -much. God knows I'd help it if I could. I never meant to throw you over. -It was their fault. They oughtn't to have brought that pressure to bear -on me. They oughtn't to have threatened me. They ought to have let me do -the best I could. Speak to me. Say something, Dorinda——" -</p> - -<p> -He went on endlessly, overcome by the facile volubility of a weak -nature. Was it in time or in eternity that he was speaking? She thought -that he would never stop; but his words made as little impression on her -as the drip, drip of rain from the eaves. Nothing that he said made any -difference to her. Nothing that he could ever say in the future would -make any difference. In that instant, with a piercing flash of insight, -she saw him as he was, false, vain, contemptible, a coward in bone and -marrow. He had wronged her; he had betrayed her; he had trampled her -pride in the dust; and he had done these things not from brutality, but -from weakness. If there had been strength in his violence, if there had -been one atom of genuine passion in his duplicity, she might have -despised him less even while she hated him more. But weak, vain, wholly -contemptible as she knew him to be, she had given him power over her. -She had placed her life in his hands, and he had ruined it. With the -fury of a strong nature toward a weak one that has triumphed over it, -she longed to destroy him and she knew that she was helpless. Nothing -that she could do would alter a single fact in his future. Even now he -excused himself. Even now he blamed others. -</p> - -<p> -"I swear I never meant to do it, Dorinda," he repeated more vehemently, -encouraged by her silence. "You won't give me up, will you?" -</p> - -<p> -Thoughts wheeled like a flight of bats in her mind, swift, vague, dark, -revolving in circles. They were pressing upon her from every side, but -she could distinguish nothing clearly in the thick palpitating darkness. -Impressions skimmed so swiftly over her consciousness that they left no -visible outline. Before she was aware of them they had wheeled away from -her into ultimate chaos. Bats, nothing more. And outside, against the -lighted door of the barn, other bats were revolving. -</p> - -<p> -While she stood there without thinking, her perceptions of external -objects became acutely alive. She saw Jason's face, chalk-white in the -moonlight; she saw the jerking of his muscles while he talked; she saw -his arm waving with a theatrical gesture, like the arm of an evangelist. -<i>Drip, drip</i>, like water from the eaves, she heard the fall of his -words, though the syllables were as meaningless as the rain or the wind. -</p> - -<p> -She had not spoken since he approached her; and she realized, standing -there in the mud, that she was silent because she could find no words to -utter. There was no vehicle strong enough to endure the storm of pain -and bitterness in her mind. Dumbness had seized her, and though she -struggled to pour out all that she suffered, when she opened her lips to -speak, she could make no audible sound. No, there was nothing that she -could say, there was nothing that she could do. -</p> - -<p> -"You won't give me up, will you, Dorinda?" he pleaded. -</p> - -<p> -Turning away, she started back again as rapidly as she had come. Though -he called after her in a whisper, though he followed her as far as the -end of the yard, she did not slacken her pace or look back at him. -Swiftly and steadily, like a woman walking in her sleep, she went down -the narrow sandy road to the creek and over the bridge of logs. There -was a stern beauty in her face and in her tall, straight figure, which -passed, swiftly and unearthly as a phantom, through the moonlight. An -impulse was driving her again, but it was the impulse to escape from his -presence. She was flying now from the vision she had seen of his naked -soul. -</p> - -<p> -She walked in the moonlight without seeing it; past the frogs in the -bulrushes without hearing them; through the moist woods without smelling -them. Time had stood still for her, space had vanished; there was no -beginning and no end to this solitary aching nerve of experience. She -was aware of nothing outside herself until she entered the house and saw -her mother's chamber, with the open Bible and the big blue fly, which -still buzzed against the ceiling. -</p> - -<p> -"We're waiting prayers for you, Dorinda. Ain't you coming?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I'm not coming. I've got a headache." -</p> - -<p> -"Why did you go out again?" -</p> - -<p> -"I thought I heard a coon or something in the henhouse." -</p> - -<p> -"It might make your head better to hear a chapter of the Bible." -</p> - -<p> -"No, it won't. I'm not coming. I'm never coming to prayers again." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XV">XV</a></h4> - -<p> -In the morning she awoke with the feeling that she was lying under a -stone. Something was pressing on her, holding her down when she -struggled to rise, and while she came slowly back to herself, she -realized that this weight was the confused memory of all that had -happened. Yes, it was life. She was caught under it and she couldn't -escape. -</p> - -<p> -So far only, her muscles had awakened. Sensation was returning by slow -degrees to her limbs; she could feel the quiver of despair in her knees -and elbows; but her mind was still drugged by the stupor of exhaustion. -Recollection was working its way upward to her brain. Deadened as she -was, it astonished her that her muscles should remember more accurately -than her mind, that they should record a separate impression. "Something -dreadful has happened," she found herself saying mechanically. "It will -all come back in a minute." -</p> - -<p> -While she dragged herself out of bed, she tried to fix her thoughts on -insignificant details. Her shoes were still damp, and she changed them -for a pair her mother had given her a few weeks ago because they drew -her ankles. There was a broken lace. She must remember to buy a new one -at the store. Beyond the window she could see the orchard and the -graveyard, with the big pine on the hill, and farther away the shallow -ripples of the broomsedge. All these things seemed to her fantastic and -meaningless, as if they were painted on air. She recalled now what had -happened last evening; but this also appeared meaningless and unreal, -and she felt that the whole flimsy situation would evaporate at the -first touch of an actual event. She could remember now; but it was a -recollection without accompanying sensation, as inanimate as the -flitting picture cast by a lantern. Some, terrible mistake seemed to -have occurred to her. Just as if she had stepped, for a few dreadful -moments, into a life that was not her own. And all the past, when she -looked back upon it, wore this aspect of unreality. The world in which -she had surrendered her being to love—that world of spring meadows -and pure skies—had receded from her so utterly that she could barely -remember its outlines. By no effort of the imagination could she -recapture the ecstasy. Colours, sounds, scents, she could recall; the -pattern of the horizon; evening skies the colour of mignonette; the -spangled twilight over the bulrushes; but she could not revive a single -wave, a single faint quiver, of emotion. Never would it come back again. -The area of feeling within her soul was parched and blackened, like an -abandoned field after the broomsedge is destroyed. Other things might -put forth; but never again that wild beauty. Around this barren region, -within the dim border of consciousness, there were innumerable surface -impressions, like the tiny tracks that birds make in the snow. She could -still think, she could even remember; but her thoughts, her memories, -were no deeper than the light tracks of birds. -</p> - -<p> -"Why did it happen? What was the meaning of it?" she asked dully, -sitting on the side of her bed, with her shoe in her hand. A few hours -ago she had loved Jason; now she loved him no longer. All that had drawn -her to him seemed now to drive her away; all that had been desire had -turned into loathing; all that was glowing with flame was now burned out -to cinders. There were women, she knew, who could love even when they -hated; but she was not one of these. The vein of iron in her nature -would never bend, would never break, would never melt completely in any -furnace. "He is weak and a coward," she thought. "How could I love a -coward?" Yes, how could she love a coward? And, strangely enough, when -she despised him most bitterly, she thought not of the wrong he had done -her, not of his treachery and his betrayal of her love, but of the way -he had looked in the moonlight, with his chalk-white face, his jerking -muscles, and his arm waving with the gestures of an evangelist. -</p> - -<p> -Well, it was all over now. Everything was over but the immediate trouble -that she must face. Memories, impressions, undeveloped sensations that -led to nothing, swarmed upon her from the hidden crevices of her being. -The Old Stage Road. The way it branched at the burned cabin. The blasted -oak with the Gospel sign on it. The clink of the mare's shoes. The -benign faces of Dan and Beersheba as they looked back at her under -bunches of indigo. Work. Never anything but work. Her mother's voice -nagging, always nagging. Coral strands and palm trees and naked black -babies. What was the meaning of it? Jason as he looked last night. Weak, -whining, apologetic, blaming everything and everybody except himself. -His hair plastered in damp streaks on his forehead. His eyes, red and -blinking, as if he had wept. His hands that were never still; nervous -hands, without a firm grip on anything. How she hated him. What had she -ever seen in him to love? Cinders. Nothing left of it but cinders. Not -so much as a spark. Life. That was what it meant. Then, suddenly, the -way he used to look. His eyes when he smiled, crinkling at the corners. -His straight eyebrows brooding like a storm over his brown-black eyes. -The feeling of his hand on her arm. His charm. Yes, his charm that she -had forgotten. Like a breath of air, or a subtle fragrance, she felt his -charm stealing back through her senses, as if minute waves of aromatic -incense were blowing over her nerves. Though she hated him, could so -slight a thing as the memory of his smile awake the familiar vibrations? -Though her mind had broken away from him, was her body still held a -prisoner? And would his power come back always, without warning of its -approach, like the aching of a tooth that one has touched in a sensitive -spot? A few minutes ago she was deadened into the emotional stupor she -called peace. Now, because of a single external image, because of so -trivial a recollection as the way his eyebrows drew down over his eyes, -all the agony of life was beginning again. -</p> - -<p> -She thrust her foot into the shoe and stood up, flinging back her head -as she went to the mirror to shake out her hair. The stubborn -resolution, which was the controlling motive in her character, shot -through her like a bolt. "Well, there's no use thinking," she said -aloud. "I've got to go through with it." While she combed her hair back -from her forehead, and twisted it into its usual compact knot on her -head, she gazed wonderingly at her face in the mirror. After all she had -suffered it seemed strange to her that her face had not withered and her -hair turned white in a night. But there was scarcely a perceptible -change in her appearance. The line of her hair was still dark and -waving; her eyes were still clear and blue; the velvety colour still -flowed beneath the few golden freckles on her cheeks. Only there was -something in her eyes that had not been there until yesterday. She knew -life now, she reflected, and that showed in her eyes. -</p> - -<p> -Fastening her dress as she left the room, she hurried downstairs and -into the kitchen where her mother was already busy about breakfast. -</p> - -<p> -"What do you want me to do, Ma?" -</p> - -<p> -"Everything's 'most ready. You can call your father and the boys and -then pour out the coffee." -</p> - -<p> -"Why didn't you wake me?" -</p> - -<p> -"You're always tired Monday morning, so I thought I'd let you sleep. I -don't see how it is. Sermons rest me. Why didn't you bring your wet -things down to the kitchen last night?" -</p> - -<p> -"I was so tired I forgot." Would her mother never stop nagging? Would -there never be any quiet? -</p> - -<p> -She called the men to breakfast, poured out their coffee, and helped her -mother serve the cornbread and bacon. Then she sat down and ate slowly -and deliberately, forcing herself to swallow, as she had forced herself -to take gruel when she had had measles. The agony had died down; she -felt bruised and sore as if she had been beaten; but the intensity of -the pain had settled into a hard substance like lead in her breast. -There was not a ripple of emotion surrounding this island of bitterness -into which her love had resolved; there was only a vast sea of -indifference. The torture would return, she supposed. She was accustomed -now to the fact that it came and went, without reason, like one of her -mother's attacks of neuralgia; but, for the moment, at least, her nerves -had ceased their intolerable vibration. -</p> - -<p> -After breakfast, when she walked along the road to the store, it seemed -to her that the landscape had lost colour, that the autumn glow had gone -out of the broomsedge. When she came to the fork she found herself -listening for the clink of the mare's shoes, and she resolved that she -would run into the woods or cower down in the brushwood if she heard the -buggy approaching. Never would she see him again, if she could prevent -it. Her mind played with absurd fancies. She imagined him dying, and she -saw herself looking on without pity, refusing to save him, standing -motionless while he drowned before her eyes, or was trampled to death by -steers. No, she would never see him again. -</p> - -<p> -There was no sound at the fork. She walked on past the burned cabin, -past the Sneads' farm, where the cows looked at her pensively, past the -second belt of woods, and up the bone-white slope to the station. Here -she found the usual sprinkling of passengers for the early train, and in -order to avoid them she went into the store and began arranging the -shelves. In a minute Minnie May came to fetch her, and following the -little girl into the bedroom, Dorinda found Mrs. Pedlar lying flat in -bed, with the pink sacque, which she was too weak to slip on, spread -over her breast. The summer had drained the last reserve of her -strength. She was growing worse every hour, and she was so fragile that -her flesh was like paper. Yet she still kept her vivacity and her eager -interest in details. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, Dorinda," she breathed. "It isn't true, is it?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda picked up the sacque and slipped it over the meagre shoulders. -"If you aren't careful, you'll take cold," she said quietly, and then, -after an imperceptible pause. "Yes, it is true." -</p> - -<p> -"You don't mean he has married Geneva?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, he has married Geneva." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, why? But, Dorinda——" -</p> - -<p> -While Rose Emily was still talking, the girl turned away and went back -into the store. If she didn't work and deaden thought, she couldn't -possibly go through with it. All this numbness was on the surface of her -being, like the insensibility that is produced by a narcotic. It didn't -lessen a single pang underneath, nor alter a solitary fact of -existence. At any minute, without premonition, the effects of the -narcotic might wear off, and she might come back to life again. Coming -back to life, with all that she had to face, would be terrible. Taking -the broom from the corner behind the door, she began sweeping the floor -in hard, long strokes, as if she were sweeping away a mountain of trash; -and into these strokes she put as much as she could of her misery. When -she had finished sweeping the store, she brushed the mud from the -platform and the steps to the pile of refuse which had accumulated at -the back of the house. Then she brought a basin of water and a cake of -soap, and scrubbed the counter and the shelves where the dry goods were -kept. She worked relentlessly, with rigid determination, as if to clean -the store were the one absorbing purpose of her life. -</p> - -<p> -"What's got into you, Dorinda?" asked Nathan, while he watched her. "You -look as if you'd gone dirt crazy." Dirt crazy! That was what the boys -said of her mother. -</p> - -<p> -"I get so tired looking at dust," she replied. -</p> - -<p> -"Dust? I didn't know there was a speck of dust anywhere around. Old -Jubilee swept and dusted this morning." -</p> - -<p> -With her dripping brush in her hand, Dorinda turned from the shelves she -was washing and looked at him over the counter. She wondered why he had -not spoken of Jason, and some dormant instinct, buried in the morass of -her consciousness, was grateful to him because he had avoided the -subject. He must know. Everybody knew by this time. Yet he had not -alluded by word or look to the wreck of her happiness. Though she did -not think of it at the moment, long afterwards she realized that this -was one of the occasions when Nathan had shown a tactfulness which she -had never imagined that he possessed. -</p> - -<p> -She finished the shelves, going scrupulously into each crack and corner. -Then, putting the basin and the cake of soap aside, she wiped the -dampness off with a cloth, and arranged the bolts of figured calico and -checked gingham in orderly rows. When this was over she attacked the -pasteboard boxes on the adjoining shelf, cleaning, dusting, reassorting -the contents of each separate box. It was amazing the way dust -collected. Old Jubilee had cleaned the store. Yet here was dirt poked -away in the corners. -</p> - -<p> -She had made herself cheap, that was the trouble. If you are going to -cheapen yourself, her mother had said, be sure first that the man is not -cheap also. Then, even if you are sure, it pays to be prudent. Prudence -builds no poorhouses—that was her mother again. Oh, if only she had -known when knowledge could have been useful! If only you could live your -life after experience and not before! She knew now how to face -things. . . . -</p> - -<p> -At that instant, with a stab of anguish, she became alive. Her pain, -which had been merely a dull ache, was suddenly as keen as if a blade -had been driven into her wound. She couldn't bear it. Nobody could bear -it. In a kind of daze she picked up the cloth, the dust pan, the cake of -soap, and carried them to the end of the room. Then, taking down her hat -from a peg behind the door, she put it on and went out of the store and -across the yard to the gate and the road. It seemed to her that if only -she could reach home quickly, she should find that it had all been a -mistake, that something had happened to make the situation less terrible -than it appeared from a distance. What this something was she tried to -imagine. Perhaps the old man had lied. Perhaps Jason was not really -married. Perhaps he hadn't meant her to understand that he was married. -There were so many possibilities, she told herself, that she could not -think of them all. A hundred accidents—anything might have -occurred. Only at the store she felt smothered and shut away, as if she -were left behind by the hours. A deep instinct, like the instinct that -drives a wounded animal to flight, was urging her to go -somewhere—anywhere—as long as it was to a different place. -She had made a mistake, she saw now, to come to the store. At home it -would be easier. At home she should be able to think of some way out of -her misery. -</p> - -<p> -She walked as fast as she could, panting for breath, hurrying over the -bad places in the road, as if the thing she feared were pursuing her. -Down the long slope; through the thin pines; over the mile of red clay -road, broken with mud holes; past the Sneads' pasture, where the sourish -smell of cattle hung perpetually in the air; by the burned cabin at the -fork; and on into the edge of Hoot Owl Woods at the beginning of Old -Farm. When, at last, she struggled over the sagging bridge and up the -rocky grade to the porch, she was almost surprised to find that the -house was not on fire. There was an unnatural aspect, she felt, in the -familiar scene, as of a place that had suffered beneath a tornado and -yet remained unchanged on the surface. And this smiling October serenity -appeared to her to be unendurable. Trembling like a blade of grass, she -stood hesitating on the threshold. "Why did I come?" she asked in -amazement. "What did I expect to find?" -</p> - -<p> -"Is that you, Dorinda?" called her mother from the kitchen, where she -was washing clothes. A kettle of "sour pickle" was simmering on the -stove, and the air was laden with the pungent aroma. "What on earth is -the matter?" -</p> - -<p> -"I forgot something." -</p> - -<p> -"It must have been mighty important. What was it you forgot?" -</p> - -<p> -The trembling had passed from Dorinda's limbs to her thoughts. She felt -as if she should drop. "I—I can't remember," she answered. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I never!" Mrs. Oakley appeared in the doorway, her bare arms -glazed with soapsuds and her face beaded with steam. "You ain't -sick, are you?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I remember now. It was a piece of embroidery Rose Emily was doing. -She asked me to bring it." -</p> - -<p> -"Embroidery? I should think she might have managed to wait till -to-morrow." -</p> - -<p> -"I didn't mind the walk. It is better than being in the store." -</p> - -<p> -"Anyway, you'd better rest a bit before you go back. You look real -peaked. Have you got a headache?" So her mother hadn't heard! Who would -be the first one to tell her? -</p> - -<p> -"A little. It was getting wet yesterday, I reckon." She must say -something. If she didn't, her mother would question her all day. -</p> - -<p> -"If you'd listened to what I told you," said Mrs. Oakley, "you wouldn't -have got caught in that storm. Before you go upstairs you'd better rub a -little camphor on your forehead." -</p> - -<p> -She lifted her arms, on which soapsuds had dried like seaweed, and went -back into the kitchen, while Dorinda, without stopping to look for the -camphor, toiled upstairs to her room. Here she flung herself on the bed -and lay staring straight up at the stained ceiling, where wasps were -crawling. One, two, three, she counted them idly. There was a pile of -apples on her mantelpiece. That must have brought them. But she couldn't -lie here. Springing up, she went over to the mirror and began nervously -changing things on her dressing-table. -</p> - -<p> -Yes, she was ashen about the eyes and her features were thin and drawn. -Her warm colour still held firm, but she was mottled about the mouth -like a person in a high fever. Even her full red lips looked parched and -unnatural. "I am losing my looks," she thought. "I am only twenty and I -look middle-aged." -</p> - -<p> -Why had she come back? It was worse here than it was at the store. Her -suffering was more intolerable, and she seemed farther away from relief -than she had been while she was cleaning the shelves. Perhaps if she -went back she should find that it was easier. Something might have -happened to change things. At least her mother wouldn't be at the store, -and she dreaded her mother more than anything that she had to face. Yes, -she had made a mistake to come home. -</p> - -<p> -Going over to the curtain, she pushed it aside and looked at her -dresses, taking them down from the hooks and hanging them back again, as -if she could not remember which one she wanted. Then, in a single flash, -just as it had returned at the store, all the horror rushed over her -afresh, and she turned away and ran out of the room. Any spot, she -realized, was more endurable than the place she was in. -</p> - -<p> -"You ain't going back already, Dorinda?" called her mother from the -kitchen. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I'm going back. I feel better." -</p> - -<p> -"It seems to me it wasn't worth your while walking all that way twice. -I'd take my time going back. There ain't a bit of use hurrying like -that. When you come home in the evening, I wish you'd remember to bring -me that box of allspice. You forgot it on Saturday. It seems to me -you're growing mighty forgetful." -</p> - -<p> -But Dorinda was far down the walk on her way to the gate, and she did -not stop to reply. She retraced her steps rapidly over the bridge and -along the edge of the woods, where the shadows lay thick and cool. -Behind her she heard the bumping of a wagon in the mud holes; but she -did not glance round, for she knew that it was only one of the farmers -on the way to the station. -</p> - -<p> -"Going to the store?" inquired the man, as he came up with her. "Can I -give you a lift?" -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head, smiling up at him. "I'm not going back yet awhile, -thank you. I'm out looking for one of our turkeys." -</p> - -<p> -Stepping out of the road, she waited until the wagon had bumped out of -sight, and then went on, in a bewildered way, as if she could not see -where she was walking. As she approached the fork, her legs refused to -carry her farther, and scrambling on her knees up the bank by the -roadside, she dropped to the ground and abandoned herself to despair. -She couldn't go on and she couldn't sit still. All she could do was to -cower there behind the thicket of brushwood, and let life have its way -with her. She had reached the end of endurance. That was what it meant, -she had reached the end of what she could bear. The trembling, which had -begun in her hands and feet, ran now in threads all over her body. For a -minute her mind was a blank; then fear leaped at her out of the -stillness. Springing to her feet, she looked wildly about, and sank down -again because her legs would not support her. -</p> - -<p> -"I've got to do something," she thought. "I've got to do something, or -I'll go out of my mind." Never once, in her fright and pain, did the -idea of an appeal to Jason enter her thoughts. No, she had finished with -him for ever. There was no help there, and if there were help in him, -she would die before she would seek it. -</p> - -<p> -Raising her head, she leaned against the bole of a tree and looked, with -dimmed eyes, at the October morning. Around her she heard the murmurous -rustle of leaves, the liquid notes of a wood robin, like the sprinkling -of rain on the air, the distant shrill chanting of insects; all the -natural country sounds which she would have called silence. Smooth as -silk the shadows lay on the red clay road. Over the sky there was a thin -haze, as if one looked at the sun through smoked glasses. "You've got to -do something," repeated a derisive voice in her brain. "You've got to do -something, or you'll go out of your mind." It seemed to her that the -whole landscape waited, inarticulate but alive, for her decision. -</p> - -<p> -Despair overwhelmed her; yet through all her misery there persisted a -dim, half conscious recognition that she was living with only a part of -her being. Deep down in her, beneath the rough texture of experience, -her essential self was still superior to her folly and ignorance, was -superior even to the conspiracy of circumstances that hemmed her in. And -she felt that in a little while this essential self would reassert its -power and triumph over disaster. Vague, transitory, comforting, this -premonition brooded above the wilderness of her thoughts. Yes, she was -not broken. She could never be broken while the vein of iron held in her -soul. -</p> - -<p> -For a long while she sat there by the roadside, with her eyes on the -pale sunshine and the transparent shadows. What would her mother say if -she knew? When would she know? Who would have the courage to tell her? -For twenty years they had lived in the house together, yet they were -still strangers. For twenty years they had not spent a night apart, and -all the time her mother had dreamed of coral strands and palm trees, -while she herself had grown into a thing as strange and far away as -Africa. Were people like this everywhere, all over the world, each one a -universe in one's self separate like the stars in a vast emptiness? -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XVI">XVI</a></h4> - -<p> -Far over the autumn fields, she heard the whistle of the train as it -rounded the long curve at the station. Before the sound had floated past -her she had come to one of those impetuous decisions which were -characteristic of her temperament. "I'll go away in the morning," she -resolved. "I'll go on the first train, the one that whistles at sunrise. -If I take that, I can leave the house before light." -</p> - -<p> -Immediately afterwards, as soon as the idea had taken possession of her, -she felt the renewal of courage in her thoughts. Once that was settled, -she told herself, and there was no turning back, everything would be -easier. Just to go away somewhere. It made no difference where the train -went. She would go to the very end, the farther the better, as long as -her money held out. "I can scrape together almost seventy dollars," she -thought. "Besides the fifty I made at the store, I've saved the twenty -dollars Nathan and Rose Emily gave me for a wedding present. That much -ought to take me somewhere and keep me until I can find something to -do." Her father, she realized with a pang, would have to manage without -her. Perhaps he would be obliged to mortgage the place again. She hoped -he wouldn't have to sell Dan and Beersheba, and she was confident in her -heart that he would never do this. He would sooner part with the roof -over his head. It would be hard on him; but he had Josiah and Rufus, and -after her marriage, it was doubtful if she could have continued to help -him. "Josiah may marry too," she reflected, "and of course Rufus is -always uncertain." Nobody could tell what Rufus might some day take it -into his head to do. Then, because weakness lay in that direction, she -turned her resolute gaze toward her own future. There was no help -outside herself. She knew that the situation, bad as it was now, would -be far worse before it was better. Romantic though she was, she was -endowed mentally with a stubborn aptitude for facing facts, for looking -at life fearlessly; and now that imagination had done its worst, she set -herself to the task of rebuilding her ruined world. All her trouble, she -felt, had come to her from trying to make life over into something it -was not. Dreams, that was the danger. Like her mother she had tried to -find a door in the wall, an escape from the tyranny of things as they -are; and like her mother, she had floundered among visions. Even though -she was miserable now, her misery was solid ground; her feet were firmly -planted among the ancient rocks of experience. She had finished with -romance, as she had finished with Jason, for ever. -</p> - -<p> -Twisting about on the earth, she pushed aside the branches, and looked -down on Old Farm, folded there so peacefully between the road and the -orchard. Wreathed in sunlight as pale as cowslips, she saw the house -under the yellowing locust trees. Over the roof a few swallows were -curving; from a single chimney smoke rose in a column; there was a -cascade of shadows down the rocky path to the gate. She saw these -blended details, not as she had seen them yesterday or the moment before -she had made her decision, but as one looks on a place which one has -loved and from which one is parting for ever. A bloom of sentiment and -regret coloured the stark outline; and so, she knew, it would remain -indelibly softened in her memory. -</p> - -<p> -Rising from the ground, she went back over the road to the bridge and up -the rocky grade to the porch. As she drew nearer she saw her mother come -out of the kitchen and go in the direction of the hog-pen, with a basin -of vegetable parings in her hand. For a few minutes at least the house -would be empty! Running indoors and up the two flights of stairs to the -attic, Dorinda brought down an old carpet bag which had belonged first -to her grandfather and then to her mother. Once, when she was a child, -her mother had used it when she had taken her to spend a night in -Richmond, with a distant relative, an old maid, who had died the next -year, and again Josiah and Rufus had carried the bag with them when they -went to the State fair one autumn. Now, while she dusted it inside and -out, and tossed the few papers it contained into a bureau drawer, she -decided that it would hold all the clothes she could take with her. "It -will be heavy, but I'll manage it," she thought, moving softly lest her -mother should return without stopping to gather the eggs in the -henhouse. "I'd just as well pack and get it over," she added. "Anything -is better than sitting down and waiting for something to happen." -</p> - -<p> -One by one, she smoothed and folded her wedding clothes. Six of -everything; nightgowns, chemises, corset covers, with frills across the -bosom, starched white petticoats, with wide tucked flounces. She looked -at each garment with swimming eyes and a lump like a rock in her throat, -before she laid it away in one of the bulging compartments of the -carpet bag. How fine the stitches were! It was a wonder what her mother -could do with her rheumatic joints. -</p> - -<p> -Stepping as lightly as she could, she brought her shoes from the closet -and packed them away. Then the dresses, one after another. Two blue -cotton dresses that she wore in the store. The pink gingham Rose Emily -had given her. Would she ever need that again, she wondered. Last of -all, the blue nun's veiling. "It would have been more sensible to have -got it darker," she thought grimly. There wasn't room for the hat; but, -after she had put in her stockings and handkerchiefs and collars, with -the bits of ribbon she sometimes wore at her neck, she folded the orange -shawl and spread it on top of everything else. "That may come in -useful," she added. "You never can tell what the weather will be." It -was October, and everybody said winter came earlier in the North. She -had decided prudently that she would wear her old blue merino, with the -tan ulster and the felt hat she had put away from moths in the spare -room. She could easily steal in and get them out of the closet while her -mother was looking after the pigs or the chickens. -</p> - -<p> -Well, that was over. After she had closed and strapped the bag, she -pushed it behind the curtain. There was no telling, she reminded -herself, when her mother would poke her nose into places. -</p> - -<p> -When she went downstairs it was twelve o'clock and the men had come in -from the fields. -</p> - -<p> -"Why, Dorinda, I didn't know you'd be here to dinner!" her mother -exclaimed. "Is your head bad again?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I wasn't feeling so well, and there wasn't much to do at the -store." -</p> - -<p> -"I thought Monday was the busiest day." How like her mother that was! -She could never let a thing drop. Some demon of contradiction impelled -her to find a point of offense everywhere. There was a glass pitcher of -buttermilk on the table. A little boy, the son of William Snead, had -brought it over early in the morning, as soon as Miss Tabitha had -churned. Lifting the pitcher, Dorinda filled the five glasses standing -in a circle at the end of the table. As she handed a glass to her -father, she looked at him with a grave impersonal sentiment, as if he -were a part of the farm that she was leaving. Nothing, not even her -mother's nervous nagging, could annoy her to-day. She felt only a -despairing tenderness, like a mist of tears, in her heart. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm sorry you ain't well, daughter," Joshua said, as he took the glass -from her hand; and she felt that he had put an incalculable affection -into the words. It was the only remark he made during the meal, and -ordinary as it was, it seemed to bring her closer to him than she had -ever been in her life. Or was it only because she was parting from him -so soon? Everything was precious to her now, precious and indescribably -sad and lovely. If she were to speak a word, she knew that she should -burst into tears. -</p> - -<p> -In the afternoon, when she had helped her mother hang out the clothes at -the back of the house, she came indoors and waited for an opportunity to -bring down the carpet bag. "Perhaps I've always tried too hard," she -thought wearily. "If I'd just give up and let things drift, it might be -that something would go right." She dropped on the bottom step of the -staircase; but she had no sooner decided to give up the struggle than -she heard her mother's voice telling her that she was going down into -the garden. -</p> - -<p> -"The last of those tomatoes will spoil if I don't pick them," she said. -</p> - -<p> -"Do you want me to help you?" Dorinda called back. -</p> - -<p> -"No, the sun is kind of sickening. You'd better keep out of it. There -ain't much left after the storm, but I might as well use the tomatoes." -</p> - -<p> -She went out, with the big splint-basket on her arm; and she was -scarcely out of sight before Dorinda had dragged down the carpet bag and -hidden it under the front porch behind one of the primitive rock pillars -of the foundation. It would be impossible, she knew, to bring down the -bag in the morning without waking her mother, who was a light sleeper. -Her father and the boys, drugged by toil in the open, could sleep -through thunder; but her mother would start up and call out at the -scratching of a mouse. After she had hidden the bag, she went back into -the spare room and unwrapped her tan ulster and brown felt hat from the -newspapers which protected them from moths. As she unpinned the parcels, -a smell of mingled camphor and lavender was released on the air, and she -hoped that her mother would not detect it. "If she says anything, I'll -tell her it's time to be wearing my winter clothes," she decided, while -she carried the ulster and hat upstairs to her room. Since she had clung -desperately to the thought of going away, her suffering had been more -endurable; the vehement pain had dulled into an apathetic despair which -deadened every cell of her body. She dreaded the moment when the stupor -would lift and she should think and feel clearly again. -</p> - -<p> -All night she slept only in restless waves of unconsciousness. The -darkness was broken up into false dawns, and at every deceptive glimmer -she would steal softly to the window and watch for the first splinter of -light. While it was still dark, she dressed herself in the clothes she -had laid by her bed, and then sat waiting for the sound of a crow in the -henhouse. In the early part of the night there was a vaporous moon; but -as the hours wore on, the sky clouded over, and when the day began to -break a fine, slow rain was falling. "I hate so terribly to go," she -thought, while she smoothed her hair and then wrapped up her brush and -comb and slipped them into the pocket of her ulster. "I don't believe -I'll go after all." But she knew, even while she lingered over the idea, -that there was no turning back. -</p> - -<p> -When she remembered it afterwards it seemed to her that the longest -journey of her life was the one down the dark staircase. In reality her -descent occupied only a few minutes; but the tumult of her emotions, the -startled vigilance of her nerves, crowded these vivid instants with -excitement. She lived years, not moments, while she hung there in the -darkness, expecting the sound of her mother's voice or the vision of a -grey head thrust out of the chamber doorway. What would her mother say -if she discovered her? What would she say when she went upstairs and -found her room empty? At the foot of the staircase Rambler poked his -nose into her hand, and padded after her to the front door. He would -have followed her outside, but stooping over him, she kissed his long -anxious face before she pushed him back into the hall. Her eyes were -heavy with tears as she hurried noiselessly across the porch, down the -steps, and round the angle of the house to the rock pillar where she had -hidden her bag. Not until she had passed through the gate and into the -shadow of the woods, did she rest the heavy bag on the ground and stop -to draw breath. Now, at last, she was safe from discovery. "If nobody -comes by, I'll have to take some of the things out of the bag and try to -carry it," she said aloud, in a desperate effort to cling to practical -details. But it was scarcely likely, she told herself presently, that -nobody would come by. Even on a rainy morning there were always a few -farmers who went out to the station at daybreak. -</p> - -<p> -While she waited there by the bridge, she seemed to be alone on the -earth. It was a solitude not of the body but of the spirit, vast, -impersonal, and yet burdened, in some strange way, with an -incommunicable regret. The night had released the wild scents of autumn, -and these were mingled with the formless terrors that overshadowed her -mind. She thought without words, enveloped in a despondency as shapeless -as night. -</p> - -<p> -Up the road there was the measured beat of a trot, followed by the light -rattle of a vehicle beyond the big honey-locust at the pasture bars. -While she watched, the rattle grew louder, accompanied by the jarring -turn of a screw, and a minute later a queer two-wheeled gig, with a hood -like a chicken coop, appeared on the slope by the gate. She knew the -vehicle well; it belonged to Mr. Kettledrum, the veterinarian, and she -had passed it frequently on the road to the station. -</p> - -<p> -"He will talk me to death," she thought, with dogged patience, "but I -can't help it." -</p> - -<p> -Lifting the carpet bag, which felt heavier than it had done at the -start, she stepped out into the road and waited until the nodding gig -drew up beside her. Mr. Kettledrum, a gaunt, grizzled man of middle age, -with a beaked nose and a drooping moustache, which was dyed henna-colour -from tobacco, looked down at her with his sharp twinkling eyes. -</p> - -<p> -"Thanky, Dorinda, I'm as well as common," he replied to her greeting. "I -declar', it looks for all the world as if you was settin' out on a -journey." -</p> - -<p> -"So I am." Dorinda smiled bravely. "I wonder if you'll give me a lift to -the station?" -</p> - -<p> -"To be sure, to be sure." In a minute he was out on the ground and had -swung the bag into the gig beside a peculiar kind of medicine case made -of sheepskin. "I'm on my way back from Sam Garlick's, and it'll be more -than a pleasure," he added gallantly, "to have you ride part of the way -with me. Sam sets a heap of store by that two-year-old bay of his, and -he had me over in the night to ease him with colic. Wall, wall, it ain't -an easy life to be either a horse or a horse doctor in this here -on certain world." -</p> - -<p> -It was easier to laugh than to speak, and his little joke, which was as -ancient and as trustworthy as his two-wheeled gig, started them well on -their way. After all, he was a kind man; her father had had him once or -twice to see Dan or Beersheba; and people said that, at a pinch, he had -been known to treat human beings as successfully as horses. He had a -large family of tow-headed children; and though she had heard recently -that his wife was "pining away," nobody blamed him, for he had been a -good provider, and wives were known occasionally to pine from other -causes than husbands. -</p> - -<p> -"It's a right good thing I came by when I did," he remarked genially. -"As it happened, I was goin' to stop by anyway for that early train. I -like to allow plenty of time, and I generally unhitch my mare befo' the -train blows. She ain't skittish. Naw, I ain't had no trouble with her; -but she's got what some folks might consider eccentric habits, an' I -ain't takin' no chances. So you say you're goin' off on a journey?" he -inquired, dropping his voice, and she knew by intuition that he was -wondering if he had better allude to Jason's marriage. He would blame -him of course; a man couldn't jilt a woman with impunity at Pedlar's -Mill; but what good would that, or anything else, do her now? -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I'm going away." She tried to make her voice steady. -</p> - -<p> -"On the up train or the down one?" he inquired, as he leaned out of the -gig to squirt a jet of tobacco juice in the road. Upon reflection, he -had abandoned his sympathetic manner and assumed one of facetious -pleasantry. -</p> - -<p> -"The earliest. The one that goes north. Shall we be in time for it?" -</p> - -<p> -He pursed his lips beneath the sweeping moustache. "Don't you worry. -We'll git you thar. Whar are you bound for?" -</p> - -<p> -She spoke quickly. "I'm going to New York." That was the farthest place -that came to her mind. -</p> - -<p> -"You don't say so?" He appeared astonished. "Then you'll be on the train -all day. You didn't neglect to bring along a snack, did you?" -</p> - -<p> -A snack? No, she had not thought of one, and she had eaten no breakfast. -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Kettledrum was regretful but reassuring. "It's always better to -provide something when you set out," he remarked. "An empty stomach -ain't a good travellin' companion; but it's likely enough that the -conductor can git you a bite at one of the stops. Along up the road, at -the junction, thar's generally some niggers with fried chicken legs; but -all the same it's safer to take along a snack when you're goin' to -travel far." -</p> - -<p> -They were passing the fork of the road. Over the big gate she could see -the ample sweep of the meadows, greenish-grey under the drizzle of rain; -and beyond Gooseneck Creek, the roof and chimneys of Five Oaks made a -red wound in the sky. Seen through the cleft of the trees, the whole -place wore a furtive and hostile air. How miserable the fields looked on -a wet day, miserable and yet as if they were trying to keep up an -appearance. Some natural melancholy in the scene drifted through her -mind and out again into the landscape. She felt anew her kinship with -the desolation and with the rain that fell, fine and soft as mist, over -it all. Even when she went away she would carry a part of it with her. -"That's what life is for most people, I reckon," she thought drearily. -"Just barren ground where they have to struggle to make anything grow." -</p> - -<p> -"Now, I've never been as far as New York," Mr. Kettledrum was saying in -a sprightly manner. "But from all accounts it must be a fine city. My -brother John's son Harry has lived there for fifteen years. He's got a -job with some wholesale grocers—Bartlett and Tribble. If you run -across him while you're there, be sure to tell him who you are. He'll be -glad of a word from his old uncle. Don't forget the name. Bartlett and -Tribble. They've stores all over the town, Harry says. You can't -possibly miss them." -</p> - -<p> -They had reached the Sneads' pasture, deserted at this early hour except -for a mare and her colt. A minute later they passed the square brick -house, where the cows were trailing slowly across the lawn in the -direction of the bars which a small coloured boy was lowering. Then came -the mile of bad road, broken by mud holes. On they spun into the thin -woods and out again to the long slope. At the farm her mother was -calling her. There was the smell of frying bacon in the kitchen. Her -father was coming in from the stable. Rufus was slouching into his chair -with a yawn. Steam was pouring from the spout of the big tin coffee-pot -on the table. The glint of light on the stove and the walls. Rambler. -Flossie. . . . She remembered that she had eaten nothing. Hunger seized -her, and worse than hunger, the longing to burst into tears. -</p> - -<p> -"Wall, here we are. The train's blowing now down at the next station. -You've plenty of time to take it easy while I unhitch the mare." He -helped her to alight, and then, picking up her bag, carried it down to -the track. "You jest stand here whar the train stops," he said. "I'll -take the mare out and be back in a jiffy. You've got your ticket ready, -I reckon?" -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head. No, she hadn't her ticket; but it didn't matter; she -would get one on the train. It occurred to her, while he stepped off -nimbly on his long legs, which reminded her of stilts, that if she had -not met him in the road, she would have missed the early train north and -have taken the later one that went to Richmond. So small an incident, -and yet the direction in which she was going, and perhaps her whole -future, was changed by it. Well, she knew what was ahead of her, she -thought miserably, while she stood there shivering in the wet. She was -chilled; she was empty; she was heartbroken; yet, in spite of her -wretchedness, hope could not be absent from her courageous heart. The -excitement of her journey was already stirring in her veins, and waiting -there beside the track, in the rain, she began presently to look, not -without confidence, to the future. After all, things might have been -worse. She was young; she was strong; she had seventy dollars pinned -securely inside the bosom of her dress. Dimly she felt that she was -meeting life, at this moment, on its own terms, stripped of illusion, -stripped even of idealism, except the idealism she could wring from the -solid facts of experience. The blow that had shattered her dreams had -let in the cloudless flood of reality. "You can't change the past by -thinking," she told herself stubbornly, "but there must be something -ahead. There must be something in life besides love." -</p> - -<p> -The train whistled by the mill; the smoke billowed upward and outward; -and the engine rushed toward her. Her knees were trembling so that she -could barely stand; but her eyes were bright with determination, and -there was a smile on her lips. Then, just as the wheels slackened and -stopped, she saw Nathan running down the gradual descent from the store. -Reaching her as she was about to step on the train, he thrust a shoe box -into her hand. -</p> - -<p> -"You couldn't go so far without a bite of food. I fixed you a little -snack." There was a queer look in his eyes. Absurd as it seemed, for a -minute he reminded her of her father. -</p> - -<p> -"So Mr. Kettledrum told you I was going away?" -</p> - -<p> -He nodded. "Take care of yourself. If you want any money, write back for -it. You know we're here, don't you?" -</p> - -<p> -She smiled up at him with drenched eyes. A moment more and she would -have broken down; but before she had time to reply she was pushed into -the train; and when she looked out of the window, Nathan was waving -cheerfully from the track. "I wonder how I could ever have thought him -so ugly?" she asked herself through her tears. -</p> - -<p> -The figures at the station wavered, receded, and melted at last into the -transparent screen of the distance. Then the track vanished also, the -deserted mill, the store, the old freight car, and the dim blue edge of -the horizon. All that she could see, when she raised the window and -looked out, was the dull glow of the broomsedge, smothered yet alive -under the sad autumn rain. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="chap02"></a></h4> - -<h4><i>PART<br /> -SECOND</i> -<br /><br /> -PINE</h4> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<p> -"<i>The big pine was like greenish bronze</i>. . . ." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="I_I">I</a></h4> - -<p> -The big pine was like greenish bronze against the October sky. . . . -</p> - -<p> -A statue in Central Park had brought it back to her, the pine and the -ruined graveyard and the autumn sunlight raking the meadows. It was a -fortnight since she had come to New York, and in that fortnight she felt -that she had turned into stone. Her shoes were worn thin; her feet -throbbed and ached from walking on hard pavements. There were times, -especially toward evening, when the soles of her feet were edged with -fire, and the pain brought stinging tears to her eyes. Yet she walked -on grimly because it was easier to walk than to wait. Up Fifth Avenue; -down one of the cross streets to the Park, which was, she thought, -merely an imitation of the country; back again to Sixth Avenue; and up -Sixth Avenue until she drifted again over the Park and into the -prison-like streets that ran toward the river. Occasionally she glanced -up to read the name of a street; but the signs told her nothing. Fifth -Avenue she had learned by name, and Broadway, and the dirty street where -she rented a hall room, for fifty cents a day, over a cheap restaurant. -Yesterday, she had asked for work on the other side of the city; but -nobody wanted help in a store, and her obstinate pride insisted that she -would rather starve than take a place as a servant. Twice she had waited -in the restaurant beneath her room; but the dirt and the close smells -had nauseated her, and by the end of the second day she had been too -sick to stand on her feet. After that the waitress whose place she had -taken had returned, and the woman in charge had not wanted her any -longer. "You'd better get used to smells before you try to make a living -in the city," she had said disagreeably. The advice was sound, as -Dorinda knew, and she had no just cause for resentment. Yet there were -moments when it seemed to her that New York would live in her -recollection not as a place but as an odour. -</p> - -<p> -All day she walked from one stony street to another, stopping to rest -now and then on a bench in one of the squares, where she would sit -motionless for hours, watching the sparrows. Her food, usually a tough -roll and a sausage of dubious tenderness, she bought at the cheapest -place she could find and carried, wrapped in newspaper, to the bench -where she rested. Her only hope, she felt, lay in the dogged instinct -which told her that when things got as bad as they could, they were -obliged, if they changed at all, to change for the better. There was no -self-pity in her thoughts. The unflinching Presbyterian in her blood -steeled her against sentimentality. She would meet life standing and she -would meet it with her eyes open; but she knew that the old buoyant -courage, the flowing outward of the spirit, was over for ever. -</p> - -<p> -What surprised her, when she was not too tired to think of it, was that -the ever-present sense of sin, which made the female mind in -mid-Victorian literature resemble a page of the more depressing -theology, was entirely absent from her reflections. She was sorry about -the blue dress; she felt remorse because of the cow her mother might -have had; but everything else that had happened was embraced in the -elastic doctrine of predestination. It had to be, she felt, and no -matter how hard she had struggled she could not have prevented it. -</p> - -<p> -At night, worn out with fatigue, she would go back to the room over the -restaurant. The brakeman on the train had given her the address, and he -had put her in the street car that brought her to the door in Sixth -Avenue. Here also the smells of beer and of the cooking below stairs had -attacked her like nausea. The paper on the walls was torn and stained; -all the trash in the room had been swept under the bed; and when she -started to wash her hands at the rickety washstand in one corner, she -had found a dead cockroach in the pitcher. Turning to the narrow window, -she had dropped into a chair and stared down on the crawling throng in -the street. Disgust, which was more irksome than pain, had rushed over -her. After all the fuss that had been made over it, she had asked in -bitter derision, was this Life? -</p> - -<p> -Walking up Sixth Avenue one afternoon, she asked this question again. -Something was trying to break her. Life or the will of God, it made no -difference, for one hurt as much as the other. She could not see any use -in the process, but she went on as blindly as a machine that has been -wound up and cannot stop until it has run down. Nothing was alive except -the burning sore of her memory. All the blood of her body had been drawn -into it. Every other emotion—affection, tenderness, sympathy, -sentiment—all these natural approaches to experience had shrivelled -up like nerves that are dead. She was consumed by a solitary anguish; and -beyond this anguish there was nothing but ashes. The taste of ashes was -in her mouth whenever she tried to look ahead or to pretend an interest -in what the future might bring. Though her mind saw Jason as he was, -weak, false, a coward and a hypocrite, he was so firmly knit into her -being that, even when she tore him from her thoughts, she still suffered -from the aching memory of him in her senses. Pedlar's Mill or New York, -what did it matter? The city might have been built of straw, so little -difference did it make to her inescapable pain. -</p> - -<p> -At first the noises and the strange faces had confused her. Then it -occurred to her that there might be temporary solace in the crowd, that -she might lose herself in the street and drift on wherever the throng -carried her. Her self-confidence returned when she found how easy it was -to pursue her individual life, to retain her secret identity, in the -midst of the city. She discovered presently that when nothing matters -the problem of existence becomes amazingly simple. Fear, which had been -perversely associated with happiness, faded from her mind when despair -entered it. From several unpleasant episodes she had learned to be on -the watch and to repulse advances that were disagreeable; but at such -moments her courage proved to be as vast as her wretchedness. Once an -elderly woman in deep mourning approached her while she sat on a bench -in the Park, and inquired solicitously if she needed employment. In the -beginning the stranger had appeared helpful; but a little conversation -revealed that, in spite of her mourning garb, she was in search of a -daughter of joy. After this several men had followed Dorinda on -different occasions. "Do I look like that kind?" she had asked herself -bitterly. But in each separate instance, when she glanced round at her -pursuer, he had vanished. In a city where joy may be had for a price, -there are few who turn and follow the footsteps of tragedy. Yes, she -could take care of herself. Poverty might prove to be a match for her -strength, but as far as men were concerned, she decided that she had -taken their measure and was no longer afraid of them. -</p> - -<p> -A surface car clanged threateningly in her ears, and stepping back on -the corner, she looked uncertainly over the block in front of her. While -she hesitated there, a man who had passed turned and stared at her, -arrested by the fresh colour in the face under the old felt hat. Her -cheeks were thinner; there were violet half-moons under her eyes; but -her eyes appeared by contrast larger and more radiantly blue. The -suffering of the last two weeks, fatigue, hunger, and unhappiness had -refined her features and imparted a luminous delicacy to her skin. -</p> - -<p> -Threading the traffic to the opposite pavement, she turned aimlessly, -without purpose and without conjecture, into one of the gloomy streets. -It was quieter here, and after the clamour and dirt of Sixth Avenue, the -quiet was soothing. Longer shadows stretched over the grey pavement, and -the rows of dingy houses, broken now and then by the battered front of -an inconspicuous shop, reminded her fantastically of acres of -broomsedge. When she had walked several blocks she found that the -character of the street changed slightly, and it occurred to her, as she -glanced indifferently round, that by an accident she had drifted into -the only old-fashioned neighbourhood in New York. Or were there others -and had she been unable to find them? She had stopped, without observing -it, in front of what had once been a flower garden, and had become, in -its forlorn and neglected condition, a refuge for friendless statues and -outcast objects of stone. For a few minutes the strangeness of the scene -attracted her. Then, as the pain in her feet mounted upward to her -knees, she moved on again and paused to look at a collection of battered -mahogany furniture, which had overflowed from a shop to the pavement. "I -wonder what they'll do with that old stuff," she thought idly. "Some of -it is good, too. There's a wardrobe exactly like the one -great-grandfather left." -</p> - -<p> -She was looking at the mahogany wardrobe, when the door of the shop -widened into a crack, and a grey and white cat, with a pleasant face, -squeezed herself through and came out to watch the sparrows in the -street. -</p> - -<p> -"She is the image of Flossie," thought Dorinda. Her eyes smarted with -tears, and stooping over, she stroked the cat's arching back, while she -remembered that her mother would be busy at this hour getting supper. -</p> - -<p> -"Anybody can see you like cats," said a voice behind her; and turning -her head, she saw that a stout middle-aged woman, wearing a black -knitted shawl over a white shirtwaist, was standing in the midst of the -old furniture. Like her cat she had a friendly face and wide-awake eyes -beneath sleek grey and white hair. -</p> - -<p> -"She is just like one we had at home," Dorinda answered, with her -ingenuous smile. -</p> - -<p> -"You don't live in New York, then?" remarked the woman, while she -glanced charitably at the girl's faded tan ulster. -</p> - -<p> -"No, I came from the country two weeks ago. I want to find something to -do." -</p> - -<p> -The woman folded her shawl tightly over her bosom and shook her head. -"Well, it's hard to get work these days. There are so many walking the -streets in search of it. The city is a bad place to be when you are out -of work." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda's heart trembled and sank. "I thought there was always plenty to -do in the city." -</p> - -<p> -"You did? Well, whoever told you that never tried it, I guess." -</p> - -<p> -"There are so many stores. I hoped I could find something to do in one -of them." -</p> - -<p> -"Have you ever worked in a store?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, at home. It was a country store where they kept everything." -</p> - -<p> -"I know that kind. My father used to keep one up the state." -</p> - -<p> -As she bent over the cat, Dorinda asked in a voice that she tried to -keep steady. "You don't need any help, do you?" -</p> - -<p> -The other shook her head sorrowfully. "I wish we did; but times are so -hard that we've had to give up the assistant we had. I'm just out of the -hospital, too, and that took up most of our savings for the last year." -Her large, kind face showed genuine sympathy. "I'd help you if I could," -she continued, "because you've got a look that reminds me of my sister -who went into a convent. She's dead now, but she had those straight -black eyebrows, jutting out just like yours over bright blue eyes. That -sort of colouring ain't so common as it used to be. Anyhow, it made me -think of her as soon as I looked at you. It gave me a start at first. -That's because I'm still weak after the operation, I guess." -</p> - -<p> -"Was it a bad operation?" -</p> - -<p> -"Gall stones. One of the worst, they say, when it has gone on as long as -my trouble. Have you ever been in a hospital?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda shook her head. "There wasn't any such thing where I lived. We -always nursed the sick at home. Great-grandfather was bedridden for -years before his death, and my mother nursed him and did all the work -too." -</p> - -<p> -The woman looked at her with interest. "Well, that's the way you do in -the country, of course," she replied, adding after a moment's -hesitation, "You look pretty tired out. Would you like to come in and -rest a few minutes? I was getting so low in my spirits a little while -ago that I looked out to see if I couldn't find somebody to speak a few -words to. When this sinking feeling comes on me in the afternoon, I -don't like to be by myself. I thought a cup of tea might help me. They -haven't let me touch beer since I went to the hospital, so I'd just put -the kettle on to boil. It ought to be ready about now, and a bite of -something might pick you up as well as me. My mother came from England -and she was always a great one for a cup of tea. 'Put the kettle on,' -she used to say, 'I'm feeling low in my spirits.' Day or night it didn't -make any difference. Whenever she felt herself getting low she used to -have her tea." -</p> - -<p> -She led the way, the cat following, through the shop to a corner at the -back, where she could still watch the door and the pavement. Here a -kettle was humming on a small gas stove; and a quaint little table, with -a red damask cloth over it, was laid for tea. There were cups and -saucers, a tea set, and a wooden caddy with a castle painted on the -side. "It looks old-fashioned, I know, but we are old-fashioned folks, -and my husband sometimes says that we haven't got any business in the -progressive 'nineties. Everything's too advanced for us now, even -religion. I guess it's living so much with old furniture and things that -were made in the last century." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda smiled at her gratefully and sat down beside the little red -cloth, with her smarting feet crossed under the table. If only she might -take off her shoes, she thought, she could begin to be comfortable. At -Pedlar's Mill tea was not used except in illness or bereavement, and she -was not prepared for the immediate consolation it afforded her. Strange -that a single cup of tea and a buttered muffin from a bakery should -revive her courage! After all, the city wasn't so stony and inhospitable -as she had believed. People were friendly here, if you found the right -ones, just as they were in the country. They liked cats too. She -remembered that she had seen a number of cats in New York, and they all -looked contented and prosperous. It was pleasant in the little room, -with its restful air of another period; but at last tea was over, and -she thanked the woman and rose to leave. "I can't tell you the good it's -done me," she said, and added plaintively, "Do you know of any place -where I might find work?" -</p> - -<p> -The woman—her name, she said, was Garvey—bent her head in -meditation over the tea-pot. "I do know a woman who wants a plain -seamstress for a few weeks," she said at last a trifle dubiously, for, -in spite of her kindness, she was a cautious body. "The girl she had -went to the hospital the day I came out, and she has never been suited -since then. Do you know how to sew?" -</p> - -<p> -"I've helped make children's dresses, and of course my own clothes," -Dorinda added apologetically. "You see, I never had much to make them -out of." -</p> - -<p> -"I see," Mrs. Garvey assented, without additional comment. After -pondering a minute or two, she continued cheerfully, "Well, you might -suit. I can't tell, but I'd like to help you. It's hard being without -friends in a big city, and the more I talk to you, the more you remind -me of my sister. I'll write down the address for you anyway. It's -somewhere in West Twenty-third Street. You know your way about, don't -you?" -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I'll find it. People are good about directing me, especially the -policemen." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, be sure you don't go until after six o'clock. Then the other -girls will be gone, and she will have more time to attend to you. But -you mustn't set your heart on this place. She may have taken on someone -since I talked with her." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda smiled. No, she wouldn't set her heart on it. "I'll go and sit -in a park while I'm waiting," she replied gratefully. "If I'm going to -be a dressmaker, I ought to notice what women are wearing." -</p> - -<p> -With the slip of paper in her purse, and her purse slipped into the -bosom of her dress, she left the shop and followed the street back to -Fifth Avenue. The hour spent with the stranger had restored her -confidence and there was no shadow of discouragement in her mind. -Something told her, she would have said, that her troubles were -beginning to mend. "I can sew well enough when I try, even if I don't -like it," she thought. "Ma taught me how to make neat buttonholes, and I -can run up a seam as well as any one." -</p> - -<p> -As she approached Fifth Avenue she began to observe the way the women -were dressed, and for the first time since she left Pedlar's Mill she -felt old-fashioned and provincial. The younger women who passed her were -all wearing enormous balloon sleeves and bell skirts, which were held up -with the newest twist by tightly gloved hands. Now and then, she -noticed, the sleeves were made of a different material from the dress, -but the gloves were invariably of white kid, and the small coquettish -hats were perched very high above crisply waved hair which was worn -close at the temples. -</p> - -<p> -In spite of her blistered feet, she walked on rapidly, lifting her face -to the wind, which blew strong and fresh over the lengthening shadows. -How high and smooth and round the sky looked over the steep brown -houses! Presently, from a hotel of grey stone, as gloomy as a prison, a -gaily dressed girl flitted out into a hansom cab which was waiting in -front of the door. There was a vision of prune-coloured velvet sleeves -in a dress of grey satin, of a skirt that rustled in eddying folds over -the pavement, and of a jingling gold chatelaine attached to the front of -a pointed basque. "How happy she must be," Dorinda thought, "dressed -like that, and with everything on earth that she wants!" -</p> - -<p> -She had turned to move on again, when a man carrying a basket of -evergreens brushed against her, and she saw that he was engaged in -replenishing the stone window boxes on the ground floor of the hotel. As -she passed, a whiff of wet earth penetrated her thoughts, and -immediately, in a miracle of recollection, she was back at Five Oaks in -the old doctor's retreat. Every detail of that stormy afternoon started -awake as if it had been released from a spell of enchantment. She saw -the darkened room, lighted by the thin blue flame from the resinous -pine; she saw the one unshuttered window, with the hunched box-bush and -the white turkeys beyond; she heard the melancholy patter of the rain on -the shingled roof; and she watched the old man's face, every line and -blotch distorted by the quivering light, while he wagged his drunken -head at her. A shudder jerked through her limbs. Her memory, which was -beginning to heal, was suddenly raw again. Would she never be free? Was -she doomed to bear that moment of all the moments in her life wherever -she went? Her courage faded now as if the sun had gone under a cloud. -She had been dragged back by the wind, by an odour, into the suffocating -atmosphere of the past. Though her body was walking the city street, in -her memory she was rushing out of that old house at Five Oaks. She was -running into the mist; she was hurrying down the sandy road through the -bulrushes; she was crouching by the old stump, with the wet leaves in -her face and that suspense more terrible than any certainty in her mind. -She listened again for the turn of the wheels, the clink of the mare's -shoes; the slip and scramble in the mud holes; the hollow sound of hoofs -striking on rock. . . . -</p> - -<p> -Never in her life had she been so tired. In an effort to shake her -thoughts free from despair, she quickened her pace, and looked about for -a bench where she could rest. On the opposite side of Fifth Avenue a row -of cab horses waited near a statue under some fine old trees. She had -never seen the name of the square, but it appeared restful in the -afternoon light; and crossing the street, she found a place in the shade -on a deserted bench. It was five o'clock now, and Mrs. Garvey had told -her not to go to see the dressmaker until six. Well, it was a relief to -sit down. Slipping off her shoes, she pushed them under the bench and -spread her wide skirt over her feet. The quiet was pleasant in the -moving shadows of the trees. From where and how far, she wondered, did -the people come who were lounging on the benches around her? So many -people in New York were always resting, but she concluded that they must -have money put by or they couldn't afford to spend so much time doing -nothing. -</p> - -<p> -Gradually, while she sat there, watching the sparrows fluttering round -the nose bags of the horses, hollow phrases, without meaning and without -sequence, swarmed into her mind. Five o'clock. At home her mother would -be getting ready for supper. That grey and white cat had made her think -of Flossie. They were alike as two peas. Remembering the old man had -upset her. She must put him out of her mind. You couldn't change things -by thinking. How could horses feed in those nose bags? What would Dan -and Beersheba think of them? There was another woman with velvet sleeves -in a silk dress. How Miss Seena would exclaim if you told her that so -many women were wearing sleeves of different material from their -dresses! That flaring collar of lace was pretty though. . . . The way -the old man had leered at her over the whiskey bottle. "He's coming back -this evening. He went away to be married." No, she must stop thinking -about it. If she could only blot it all out of her memory. The buildings -in New York were so high. She wondered people weren't afraid to go to -the top of them. There was a poor-looking old man on the bench by the -fountain. In rags and with the soles dropping away from his shoes. -People were rich in New York, but they were poor too. Nobody but Black -Tom, the county idiot, wore rags like that at Pedlar's Mill. How her -feet ached! Would they ever stop hurting? . . . "He went away to be -married. He went away to be married." How dark the room was growing, and -how black the box-bush looked in the slanting rain beyond the window. -Feet were pattering on the shingled roof, or was it only the rain? . . . -It was getting late. Almost time to go to the dressmaker's. Suppose the -dressmaker were to take a fancy to her. Such things happened in books. -"You are the very girl I am looking for. One who isn't afraid to work." -There was a fortune, she had heard, in dressmaking in New York. Miss -Seena knew of a dressmaker who kept her own carriage. . . . How funny -those lights were coming out in the street! They were winking at her, -one after another. It was time to be going; but she didn't feel as if -she could stir a step. Her knees and elbows were full of pins and -needles. It's resting that makes you know how tired you are, her mother -used to say. . . . -</p> - -<p> -Suddenly nausea washed over her like black water, rising from her body -to her exhausted brain. She could scarcely sit there, holding tight to -the bench, while this icy tide swept her out into an ocean of space. The -noises of the city grew fainter, receding from her into the grey fog -which muffled the sky, the lights, the tall buildings, the vehicles in -the street. It would be dreadful if she were sick here in the square, -with that ugly old man and all the cab drivers staring at her. . . . Then -the sickness passed as quickly as it had come; and leaning back against -the bench, she closed her eyes until she should be able to get up and -start on again. After a minute or two, she felt so much better that she -slipped her feet into her shoes, fastened the buttons with a hairpin, -and rising slowly and awkwardly, walked across the square to the nearest -corner. -</p> - -<p> -The noises, which had almost died away, became gradually louder. There -was a tumult of drums in the air, but she could not tell whether the -beating was in her ears or a parade was marching by somewhere in the -distance. Evidently it was a procession, though she could see nothing -except the moving line of vehicles in the street, which had left the -ground and were swimming in some opaque medium between earth and sky. -"How queer everything looks," she thought. "It must be the lights that -never stop winking." -</p> - -<p> -She put her foot cautiously down from the curb, imagining, though she -could not see it, that the street must be somewhere in front of her. As -she made a step forward into the traffic, the sickness swept over her -again, and an earthquake seemed to fling the pavement up against the -back of her head. She saw the lights splinter like glass when it is -smashed; she heard the drums of the invisible procession marching toward -her; she tried to struggle up, to call out, to move her arms, and with -the effort, she dropped into unconsciousness. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="II_I">II</a></h4> - -<p> -She opened her eyes and looked at the white walls, white beds, white -screens, white sunlight through the windows, and women in white caps and -dresses moving silently about with white vessels in their hands. -</p> - -<p> -"Why, this must be a hospital," she thought. "How on earth did I come -here?" -</p> - -<p> -Her arm, lying outside the sheet, looked blue and cold and felt as if it -did not belong to her. She could not turn her head because it was -bandaged, and when, after an eternity of effort, she succeeded in -lifting her hand, she discovered that her hair had been cut away on one -side. Closing her eyes again, she lay without thinking, without -stirring, without feeling, while she let life cover her slowly in a warm -flood. The blessed relief was that nothing mattered; nothing that had -happened or could ever happen mattered at all. After the months when she -had cared so intensely, it was like the peace of the Sabbath not to care -any longer, neither to worry nor to wonder about the future. -</p> - -<p> -"I must have hurt myself when I fell," she said. -</p> - -<p> -To her surprise a voice close by the bed answered, "Yes, you fainted in -the street and a cab struck you. You have been ill, but you're getting -all right now." -</p> - -<p> -A man was standing beside her, a large, ruddy, genial-looking man, with -a brown beard and the kindest eyes she had ever seen. He wore a red and -black tie and there was a square gold medal hanging from his -watch chain. -</p> - -<p> -"Have I been here long?" she asked, and her voice sounded so queer that -she couldn't believe it had come out of her lips. -</p> - -<p> -"A week to-day. It will be another week at least before you're strong -enough to be out." -</p> - -<p> -"Was I very ill?" -</p> - -<p> -"At first. We had to operate. That's why your head is shaved on one -side. But you came through splendidly," he added in his hearty manner. -"You have a superb constitution." -</p> - -<p> -For an instant she pondered this. "Are you the doctor?" she inquired -presently. -</p> - -<p> -"I am Doctor Faraday." His hand was on her wrist and he was smiling at -her as if he hadn't a care or a qualm. -</p> - -<p> -She wondered if he knew anything about her. He appeared so big and wise -and strong that he might have known all there was to know about -everybody. -</p> - -<p> -"Is there anything that worries you?" he asked gently, with his air of -taking the world and all it contained as an inexhaustible joke. She -shook her head as well as she could for the bandages, which made all her -movements seem clumsy and unnatural. "I was just thinking——" -</p> - -<p> -"Do you remember where you were going when you were knocked down?" -</p> - -<p> -She met his eyes candidly, yielding her will to the genial strength of -his personality. "I was looking for work. There was a dressmaker in West -Twenty-third Street. She will have filled the place by now." -</p> - -<p> -"You mustn't worry about that." She liked the way the wrinkles gathered -about his merry grey eyes. "Don't worry about anything. We'll see that -you have something to do as soon as you're strong enough. Meanwhile, -just lie still and get well. Keep a stiff upper lip," he concluded, with -a subdued laugh which would have boomed out if he hadn't suppressed it. -"That's the only way to meet life. Keep a stiff upper lip," he concluded -with a subdued laugh which would have boomed out if he hadn't suppressed -it. "That's the only way to meet life. Keep a stiff upper lip." -</p> - -<p> -"I can't help thinking,"—she glanced weakly about the room, where -the white iron beds—they were the smallest beds she had ever -seen—stood in a row. "Is this a charity place?" -</p> - -<p> -"Now, I told you not to worry. No, we don't call it charity, but there -is no charge for those who need treatment and cannot afford to pay for -it. We don't expect you to be one of the rich patients. Is there -anything else?" -</p> - -<p> -She tried again to shake her head. All at once she had forgotten what -she wanted to know. She was too weak to remember things, even important -things. There was a pain at the back of her head, and this pain was -shooting in wires down her neck and through her shoulders to her spine. -Nothing made any difference. -</p> - -<p> -"Don't make an effort. Don't try to talk," he said, and turned away to -one of the beds by the door. -</p> - -<p> -Hours later, when one of the nurses brought her a cup of broth, she -struggled to speak collectedly. "What did the doctor tell me his name -is? I don't seem to remember things." -</p> - -<p> -"That's because you're still weak. His name is Faraday. He is a -celebrated surgeon, and he operated on you because he brought you to the -hospital. He was driving by when you were struck. The operation saved -your life." -</p> - -<p> -"Does he come often?" -</p> - -<p> -"Not as a rule. He hasn't time to visit the patients. But he is -interested in your case. It is an unusual one, and he is very much -interested." -</p> - -<p> -"Does he know who I am?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, the woman you rented a room from read about the accident in the -papers, and came to identify you. Can you remember anything of this last -week?" -</p> - -<p> -"Only that my head hurt me. Yes, and figures passing to and fro against -white walls." -</p> - -<p> -"It was a wonder you weren't killed. But you're all right now. You'll be -as well as you ever were in a little while." -</p> - -<p> -"I feel so queer with my head shaved. I can feel it even with the -bandages." -</p> - -<p> -"That will soon be well, and the scar won't show at all under your hair. -You've everything to be thankful for," the nurse concluded in a brisk -professional tone. -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda was gazing up at her with a strange, groping expression. Her -eyes, large, blue, and wistful in the pallor of her face, appeared to -have drained all the vitality from her body. "There was something I -wanted to ask the doctor," she began. "I don't seem to be able to -remember what it was. . . ." -</p> - -<p> -"Don't remember," replied the nurse with authority. She hesitated an -instant, and stared down into the empty cup. Then, after reflection, she -continued clearly and firmly, "It won't hurt you to know that you have -been very ill, now that you are getting well again?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda's features, except for her appealing eyes, were without -expression. Yes, she remembered now; she knew what she had wished to -ask, "Oh, no, it won't hurt me," she answered. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I thought you'd take it sensibly." After waiting a moment to -watch the effect of her words, the nurse turned away and walked briskly -out of the ward. -</p> - -<p> -Lying there in her narrow bed, Dorinda repeated slowly, "I thought you -would feel that way about it." Words, like ideas, were dribbling back -into her mind; but she seemed to be learning them all over again. -Relief, in which there was a shade of inexplicable regret, tinged her -thoughts. She would have liked a child if it had been all hers, with -nothing to remind her of Jason. For a second she had a vision of it, -round, fair and rosy. Then, "it might have had red hair," she reminded -herself, "and I should have hated it." -</p> - -<p> -Relief and regret faded together. She closed her eyes and lay helpless, -while the stream of memory, now muddy, now clear, flowed through her -into darkness. At first this stream was mere swirling blackness, swift, -deep, torrential as a river in flood. Then gradually the rushing noise -passed away, and the stream became lighter and clearer, and bore -fragmentary, rapidly moving images on its surface. Some of these images -floated through her in obscurity; others shone out brightly and steadily -as long as they remained within range of her vision; but one and all, -they came in fragments and floated on before she could grasp the -complete outline. Nothing was whole. Nothing lasted. Nothing was related -to anything else. -</p> - -<p> -Thirst. Would they soon bring her something to drink? The old well -bucket at home. The mossy brim; the cool slippery feeling of the sides; -the turning of the rope as it went down; the dark greenish depths, when -one looked over, with the gleaming ripple, like a drowned star, at the -bottom. Cool places. Violets growing in hollows. A hollow at Whistling -Spring, where she had stepped on a snake in the tall weeds. What was it -she couldn't remember about snakes? Something important, but she had -forgotten it. "I've always funked things." Who said that? Why was that -woman moaning so behind the screen in the corner? . . . The snake had come -back now. Jason had put his hand on a snake, and that was why everything -else had happened. If Jason hadn't put his hand on a snake when he was a -child, he would never have deserted her, she would never have been -picked up in the street, she would not be lying now in a hospital with -half of her hair shaved away. How ridiculous that sounded when one -thought of it; yet it was true. What was it her mother said so often? -The ways of Providence are past finding out. . . . The nurse again. Oh, -yes, water. . . . -</p> - -<p> -The morning when she sat up for the first time, Doctor Faraday stayed -longer than usual and asked her a number of questions. She felt quite at -home with him. "When any one has saved your life, I suppose he feels -that you have a claim on him," she thought; and she replied as -accurately as she could to whatever he asked. Naturally reticent, she -found now that she suffered from a nervous inability to express any -emotion. She could talk freely of external objects, of the hospital, the -nurses, the other patients in the ward; but constraint sealed her lips -when she endeavoured to put feeling into words. -</p> - -<p> -"When you are discharged, I think we can find a place for you," said -Doctor Faraday. "My wife is coming to talk to you. We've been looking -for a girl to stay in my office in the morning and help with the -children in the afternoon. Not a nurse, you know. The office nurse has -other duties; but some one to receive the patients and make -appointments." -</p> - -<p> -She looked at him incredulously. "You aren't just making it up?" With a -laugh he ignored the question. "You haven't any plans?" -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, no. It will be too late to go to the dressmaker, and besides she -might not have wanted me." -</p> - -<p> -"You are sure you don't wish to go home?" -</p> - -<p> -She gazed at his firm fleshy face, over which the clean shining skin was -drawn so smoothly that it looked as if it were stretched; the thick -brown hair, just going grey and divided by a pink part in the centre; -the crisp beard, clipped close on the cheeks and rounding to a point at -the chin. Yes, she liked his face. It was a comfortable face to watch, -and she had never seen hands like his before, large, strong, -mysteriously beneficent hands. -</p> - -<p> -"No," she answered in her reserved voice, "I can't go back yet." -</p> - -<p> -If she went back, she should be obliged to face the red chimneys of Five -Oaks, the burned cabin, and the place where she had sat and waited for -Jason's return. These things were still there, perpetual and unchanged. -</p> - -<p> -"I've talked to my wife about you," Doctor Faraday said. "I believe you -are a good girl, and we both wish to help you to lead a good life." -</p> - -<p> -"You've been so kind," she responded. "I can't tell you what I feel, but -I do feel that. I want you to know." -</p> - -<p> -"My dear girl." He bent over and touched her hand. "I know it. If you'd -had as much experience with emotional women as I've had, you'd -understand the blessedness of reserve. Wait till you see my wife. You'll -find her easy to talk to. Every one does." -</p> - -<p> -A few mornings afterwards, as she was preparing to get up, Mrs. Faraday -came and sat by the little bed. She was a plump, maternal-looking woman, -with an ample figure, which did not conform to the wasp waist of the -period, and a round pink face, to which her tightly crimped hair and -small fashionable hat lent an air of astonishment, as if she were -thinking continually, "I didn't know I looked like this." Her mantle was -of claret-coloured broadcloth heavily garnished with passementerie, and -she wore very short white kid gloves, above which her plump wrists -bulged in infantile creases. While she sat there, panting a little from -her tight stays and her unnatural elegance, Dorinda gazed at her -sympathetically and thought it was a pity that she did her hair in a way -that made her temples look skinned. -</p> - -<p> -"Doctor Faraday is very much interested in your case," she began in a -voice that was as fresh and sweet as her complexion. "He has been so -kind to me." -</p> - -<p> -"We both wish to help you, and we think it might be good for you to take -the place in his office for a little while—a few weeks," she added -cautiously, "until you are able to find something else. In that way the -doctor can keep an eye on you until you are well again. Of course the -work will be light. He has a nurse and a secretary. However, you could -help with the children after the office hours are over. The nurse and -Miss Murray, the governess, take them to the Park every afternoon; but -there are six of them, and we can't have too much help. That's a large -family for New York," she finished gaily. -</p> - -<p> -"We have much larger ones at Pedlar's Mill. The Garlicks were twelve -until one died last year, and old Mrs. Flower, the Mother of the -auctioneer, had thirteen children." -</p> - -<p> -"You like children?" -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, yes, I like children." She couldn't put any enthusiasm into her -voice, and she hated herself for the lack of it. She was dead, turned -into stone or wood, and she didn't really care about anything. Did she -or did she not like children? She couldn't have answered the question -truthfully if her life had depended upon it. In her other existence she -had liked them; but that was so long ago and far away that it had no -connection with her now. -</p> - -<p> -"Then that is settled." What a happy manner Mrs. Faraday had! "The nurse -tells me you are leaving to-morrow. Will you come straight to us or -would you like a day to yourself?" -</p> - -<p> -"A day to myself, if you don't mind. I ought to get a dress, oughtn't -I?" -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, any plain simple dress will do. Navy blue poplin with white linen -collar and cuffs would be nice. But don't tire yourself or spend any -money you can't afford. Well arrange all that later." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Faraday had risen and was holding out one firmly gloved hand. As -she grasped it, Dorinda could feel the soft flesh beneath the deeply -embedded buttons. "Then I'll look for you day after to-morrow," said the -older woman in her sprightly tone. "Navy blue will look well on you with -your hair and eyes," she added encouragingly. "I always liked blue eyes -and black hair." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda smiled up at her. "And now half my hair is gone. I must look a -fright, and the scar isn't even hidden. I'll be marked all my life." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, but your hair will come back thicker than ever. Even now your scalp -is covered, and in a little while no one will know that there is a -scar." She beamed down on the bed. "Here is the address. Have you a -place you can put the card, so it won't slip away?" -</p> - -<p> -"I've got my purse under my pillow." As Dorinda drew out the little -leather bag, and slipped the card into it, she thought wearily, "How -funny it is that this should have happened to me." -</p> - -<p> -Since her illness, the whole of life, all she had gone through, all she -saw around her, all feeling everywhere, appeared less tragic than -ludicrous. Though her capacity for emotion was dead, some diabolical -sense of humour had sprung up like, fireweed from the ruins. She could -laugh at everything now, but it was ironic laughter. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="III_I">III</a></h4> - -<p> -Her first thought, when she opened her eyes the next morning, was that -she was free to leave the hospital as soon as she pleased. If only she -might have stayed there until she died, tranquil, indifferent, with -nothing left but this sardonic humour. A little later, as she glanced at -the other patients in the ward, at the woman who moaned incessantly and -at the young girl, with flaming red hair, who had lost her leg in an -accident, she told herself that there were people in the world who were -worse off than she was. Through the high window she could see that the -sky was clear, and that a strong breeze was blowing a flag on the top of -a grey tower. She was glad it was not raining. It would have been a pity -to go back into the world on a wet day. -</p> - -<p> -After she had had her breakfast, and a glib young doctor had given her -some directions, she got out of bed and a pupil nurse helped her to -dress. They had arranged, she discovered presently, that a friend -of one of the other patients—the moaning woman, it soon -appeared—should go with her as far as her lodging-house. That was -the stranger's way also, and she had promised to see that Dorinda -reached her room safely. -</p> - -<p> -"Do they know that you are coming?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, the nurse telephoned for me. I can get the sane room, and they've -put my bag in it." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll be glad to go with you," said the woman, a depressed-looking -person, in rusty mourning. "You must be careful about crossing the -street while you're so weak." -</p> - -<p> -"I don't feel as if I could walk a step," Dorinda answered, sinking into -a chair while she dressed. -</p> - -<p> -Her street clothes were so uncomfortable that she wondered how she could -ever have worn them. Her stockings were too large, and the feet of them -were drawn out of shape; her dress felt as if it weighed tons. But her -hair troubled her most. No matter how hard she tried, she could not make -it look neat. So much of it had been cut away on the right side that she -was obliged to wind what was left into a thin twist and fasten it like a -wreath round her head. Her face was thin and pallid, just the shape and -colour of an egg, she thought despondently, and "I'm all eyes," she -added, while she gazed at herself in the small mirror. -</p> - -<p> -It was late afternoon when she left the hospital, leaning on the arm of -the stranger, who remarked with every other step, "I hope you ain't -beginning to feel faint," or, "You'd better take it more slowly." The -bereaved woman was provided with a collection of gruesome anecdotes, -which she related with relish while they crept along the cross street in -the direction of Sixth Avenue. "There ain't much I don't know about -operations," she concluded at the end of her recital. -</p> - -<p> -As the air brushed her face, Dorinda's first sensation was a physical -response to the invigorating frostiness. Then it seemed to her that -whenever she took a step forward the pavement rose slightly and slid up -to meet her. In so short a time she had forgotten the way to walk, and -she felt troubled because in her case the law of gravitation appeared to -be arbitrarily suspended. When she put her foot out, she did not know, -she told herself, whether it would have the weight to come down or would -go floating up into the air. "Could anything have happened to my brain," -she wondered, "when I was struck on the head?" In a little while, -however, the sensation of lightness gave place to the more familiar one -of strained muscles. Though she could walk easily now, she was beginning -to feel very tired, and she could barely do more than crawl over the -long block. -</p> - -<p> -A high wind was blowing from the west, billowing the sleeves and skirts -of women's dresses, whipping the dust into waves, and tossing the gay -streamers in Fifth Avenue. The sunlight appeared to splinter as it -struck against the crystal blue of the sky and to scatter a shower of -sparkling drops on the city. Though it was all bright, gay, beautiful, -to Dorinda the scene might have been made of glass in the windy hollow -of the universe. "I'm dried up at the core," she thought, "and yet, I've -got to go on pretending that I'm alive, that I'm like other people." She -felt nothing; she expected nothing; she desired nothing; and this -insensibility, which was worse than pain, had attacked her body as well -as her heart and mind. "If somebody were to stick a pin in me, I -shouldn't feel it," she told herself. "I'm no better than a dead tree -walking." -</p> - -<p> -At the corner of Sixth Avenue, a gust of wind struck her sharply, and -still leaning on the arm of her companion, she drew back into the -shelter of a shop. -</p> - -<p> -"Let's stand here until the next car comes." -</p> - -<p> -"Do you feel any worse?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, not worse, only different." -</p> - -<p> -"I've known 'em to faint dead away the first time they left the -hospital." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I've no idea of fainting. Just tell me when you see the right car -coming." -</p> - -<p> -The thing that worried her most, and she had puzzled over this from the -minute she came down the steps of the hospital, was the curious -impression in her mind that she had seen everything and everybody -before. Every face was familiar to her. She seemed to have known each -person who passed her in some former time and place, which she dimly -remembered; and each reminded her, in some vague resemblance of contour, -feature, or shifting expression, of the way Jason had looked when she -first loved him. "Just as I was trying to forget him," she thought, with -irritation, "everybody begins to look like him." -</p> - -<p> -When the car came, and she got on and found a seat beside a fat German, -who was buried in his newspaper, this senseless irritation still -persisted. "Maybe if I stop looking at their faces and keep my eyes -fixed on their clothes, the resemblance will pass away," she told -herself resolutely. "What a funny hat, just like a cabbage, that woman -is wearing, and the man with her has on a tie like a little boy's. He -must be an artist. I read in some book that artists wore velvet coats -and flowing ties." Then, inadvertently, she raised her eyes to the face -of the stranger, and discovered that he was gazing at her with a look -that reminded her of Jason. Even the fat German wore a familiar -expression when he turned to touch the bell and glanced down at her as -he rose to go out of the car. -</p> - -<p> -At the lodging-house, where she had to explain her case all over again, -she was still haunted by this delusive resemblance. There might have -been a general disintegration and reassembling of personalities since -she had gone to the hospital, and she felt that she had seen them all -before in other circumstances and other periods. -</p> - -<p> -Alone, at last, in her little room, she dropped wearily on the hard bed, -which, like the wife of the proprietor, bulged in the wrong places, and -lay, without seeing or hearing, surrendered to the grey hollowness of -existence. Sheer physical weakness kept her motionless for an hour; and -when at the end of that time, she lifted her hands to take off her hat, -she felt as if she were recovering from the effects of an anæsthetic. -Gradually, as the stupor wore off, she became aware of the objects -around her; of the hissing gas jet, which burned in the daytime; of the -dirty carpet, with an ink splotch in the centre; of the unsteady -washstand that creaked under its own weight; of the stale ashes of a -cigar in the top of the soap dish; of the sharp ridge down the middle of -the bed on which she was lying. And she thought clearly, "No matter how -bad it is, I've got to go through with it." -</p> - -<p> -The hardest thing, she knew, that she had to face was not the wreck of -her happiness, but the loss of a vital interest in life. Even people who -were unhappy retained sometimes sufficient interest in the mere husk of -experience to make life not only endurable but even diverting. With her, -however, she felt that she had nothing to expect and nothing to lose. -One idea had possessed her so completely that now, when it had been torn -out from the roots like a dying nerve, there was no substitute for -happiness that she could put in its place. "I've finished with love," -she repeated over and over. "I've finished with love, and until I find -something else to fill my life, I shall be only an empty shell. . . ." -</p> - -<p> -Rising from the bed, she opened her bag and unfolded her dresses. None -of them would do for New York, she realized. All of them, she saw now, -were absurd and countrified. As she shook out the blue nun's veiling, -she said to herself, "If I hadn't bought this dress, perhaps he would -never have fallen in love with me, and than I should still be living at -Old Farm, and Ma would have her cow and nothing would have happened that -has happened." She laughed with the perverse humour that she had brought -back out of the depths of unconsciousness. If only one could get outside -of it and stand a little way off, how ridiculous almost any situation in -life would appear! Even those moments when she had waited in anguish at -the fork of the road were tinged with irony when they revived now in her -memory. "All the same I wouldn't go through them again for anything that -life could offer," she thought. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="IV_I">IV</a></h4> - -<p> -Dorinda stood in Doctor Faraday's office and looked out into East -Thirty-seventh Street. Beneath her there was a grey pavement swept by -wind and a few pale bars of sunshine. She saw the curved iron railing of -the porch and the steps of the area, where an ashcan, still unemptied, -awaited the call of the ashcart. A fourwheeler, driven by a stout, -red-faced driver, was passing in the street; at the corner an Italian -youth with a hunchback was selling shoe-strings; on the pavement in -front of the house, a maltese cat, wearing a bell on a red ribbon, -sunned himself lazily while he licked the fur on his stomach. Overhead, -the vault of the sky appeared remote, colourless, as impenetrable as -stone. -</p> - -<p> -When she turned into the house, she knew to weariness what she should -find awaiting her. A narrow oval room, with sand-coloured walls, -curtains of brown damask, and furniture of weathered oak, which was -carved and twisted out of all resemblance to her mother's cherished -pieces of mahogany. On the long tables piles of old magazines lay in -orderly rows. In the fireplace three neat gas logs shed a yellow flame -shot with blue sparkles. Very far apart, three patients were sitting, -with strained expectant eyes turned in the direction of the folding -doors which led into the inner office. In the last two years she had -learned to know the office and the street outside as if they were books -which she had studied at school. -</p> - -<p> -Standing there, she thought idly of her new dress of navy blue poplin. -She knew that she looked well in it, that the severe white linen collar -and cuffs suited the grave oval of her face. Though she had lost her -girlish softness and bloom, she had gained immeasurably in dignity and -distinction, and people, she noticed, turned to look at her now when she -went out alone in the street. The severe indifference of her expression -emphasized the richness of her lips and the vivid contrast of her -colouring. Her eyes had lost their springtime look, but they were still -deeply blue beneath the black, shadows of her lashes. Young as she was -she had acquired the ripe wisdom and the serene self-confidence of -maturity; she had attained the immunity from apprehension which comes to -those only who can never endure the worst again. Yet she was not -unhappy. In the security of her disenchantment there was the quiet that -follows a storm. -</p> - -<p> -While she waited there for the sound of the doctor's bell, she thought -dispassionately of what the last two years had meant in her life. -Everything and nothing! Her outward existence had been altered by them, -but to her deeper self they had been scarcely more than dust blowing -across her face. Dust blowing, that was all they had meant to her! -</p> - -<p> -She lived the period over again in her recollection, as she might have -lived over one of the plays she had seen. She thought of the Faradays; -of her diffidence, of their kindness; of the English governess and the -French teacher, neither of whose speech was intelligible to her. She -recalled the morning breakfasts; the walks in the Park in the afternoon; -her nervous dread of the office; her first mistakes; the patience of the -doctor and Mrs. Faraday; the way she had gradually become one of the -family circle; the six small children, and especially the little girl -Penelope, who had taken a fancy to her from the beginning; the two -summers when she had gone to Maine with the family; the bathing, and how -strange she had felt coming out on the beach with no shoes on and skirts -up to her knees. Then she thought of Penelope's illness; of the sudden -attack of pneumonia while Mrs. Faraday was in bed with influenza; of the -days and nights of nursing because Penelope cried for her and refused to -take her medicine from the trained nurse; of the night when they thought -the child was dying, and how she had sat by the bed until the crisis at -dawn. Then of the crisis when it came. The quieter breathing; the way -the tiny hand fluttered in hers; the band of steel that loosened about -her heart; and Mrs. Faraday crying from her bed, "Dorinda, we can never -forget what you have done! You must stay with us always!" After that she -had grown closer to them. Where else could she go? Nowhere, unless she -went back to Pedlar's Mill, and that, she felt, was still impossible. -Some day she might go back again. Not yet, but some day, when her hate -was as dead as her love. There were moments when she missed Old Farm, -vivid moments when she smelt growing things in the Park, when she longed -with all her heart for a sight of the April fields and the pear orchard -in bloom and the big pine where birds were singing. But the broomsedge -she tried to forget. The broomsedge was too much alive. She felt that -she hated it because it would make her suffer again. -</p> - -<p> -They missed her at home, she knew. Her father had not been well. He was -getting old. Every month she sent him half of her salary. They would not -have had that much if she had stayed at Pedlar's Mill; and then there -was the extra money at Christmas. Last Christmas the doctor had given -her a check for fifty dollars, and after Penelope's illness, they had -wished to give her more, but she had refused to let them pay her for -nursing the child. . . . There was a cow at home now, not the red one of -Doctor Greylock's, but a Jersey her father had bought from James -Ellgood. Her father's tobacco crop had done well last year, and he had -mended some of the fences. When the mortgage came due, she hoped he -would be able to meet it. She wondered if life had changed there at all. -Rose Emily was dead—that would make a difference to her. And Jason's -father, that horrible old man, was actually dying, her mother had -written. . . . -</p> - -<p> -The doctor's bell rang, and she turned, while the folding doors opened, -to usher the next patient into the private office. Two women went in -together, while the doctor's assistant, a young physician named Burch, -led the remaining patient away for examination. She had grown to know -the young doctor well, and since last summer, when he spent his vacation -in Maine, she had suspected that he was on the verge, of falling in love -with her. Cautious, deliberate, methodical, he was in no danger, she -felt, of plunging precipitately into marriage. Doctor Faraday approved, -she was aware, and his wife had done all in her power to make the match; -but Dorinda had felt nothing stronger than temperate liking. Richard -Burch was not ugly; he was even attractive looking after you got used to -his features. He had a short, rather stocky figure, and a square, not -uninteresting face, a good face, Mrs. Faraday called it. Almost any girl -who had the will to love might have argued herself into loving him. That -emotion was, in part at least, the result of a will to love, Dorinda had -learned in the last two years, since she had picked up more or less of -the patter of science; and the last thing she wished to do, she assured -herself, was ever to live through the destructive process again. With a -complete absence of self-deception, she could ask herself now if she had -been in love with love when she met Jason Greylock, and if any other -reasonably attractive man would have answered as well in his place. Was -it the moment, after all, and not the man, that really mattered? If Bob -Ellgood had shown that admiring interest in her the year before instead -of the day after she met Jason, would her life have been different? Did -the importunate necessity exist in the imagination, and were you -compelled to work it out into experience before you could settle down to -the serious business of life? -</p> - -<p> -She looked round as the door opened, and saw Doctor Burch coming out -with the two women patients. -</p> - -<p> -"At ten to-morrow," the elder woman said, as she slipped on her fur -coat. -</p> - -<p> -"Ten to-morrow," Dorinda repeated mechanically, while she went over to -the desk and wrote down the appointment in the office book. When she -turned away, the woman had gone, and Doctor Burch was gazing at her with -his twinkling, near-sighted eyes from behind rimless eyeglasses. -</p> - -<p> -"There's one more to come," she observed in a brisk, professional tone. -</p> - -<p> -"One more?" -</p> - -<p> -"Patient, I mean." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, yes. That will finish them till we go out. You ought to thank your -stars you don't have to make calls." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes. I get tired listening to complaints." -</p> - -<p> -He smiled. "You aren't sympathetic?" -</p> - -<p> -She thought of Rose Emily. "Well, I've seen so much real misery." -</p> - -<p> -"It's real enough everywhere." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I know. I suppose the truth is that life doesn't seem to me to be -worth all the fuss they make over it. The more they suffer, the harder -they appear to cling to living. I believe in facing what you have to -face and making as little fuss about it as possible." -</p> - -<p> -"I've noticed that. You hate fussiness." -</p> - -<p> -She assented gravely. "When you've been very poor, you realize that it -is the greatest extravagance." -</p> - -<p> -"You've been very poor, then?" -</p> - -<p> -"Almost everybody is poor at Pedlar's Mill. The Ellgoods are the only -people who have prospered. The rest of us have had to wring whatever -we've had out of barren ground. It was a struggle to make anything -grow." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, your face gives you away," he said thoughtfully. "Any nerve -specialist could tell you that you are made up of contradictions. You've -got the most romantic eyes I ever saw—they are as deep as an autumn -twilight—and the sternest mouth. Your eyes are gentle and your mouth -is hard—too hard, if you don't mind my saying so." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I don't mind. People say we make our mouths. I heard Doctor Faraday -tell a woman that a few days ago. But it isn't true. Life makes us and -breaks us. We don't make life. The best we can do is to bear it." -</p> - -<p> -"And you do that jolly well." -</p> - -<p> -She did not smile as she answered. "Oh, I'm satisfied. I'm not -unhappy—except in spots," she corrected herself. -</p> - -<p> -"Yet you have very little pleasure. You never go out." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I do—sometimes. Every now and then Mrs. Faraday takes me to -the theatre." -</p> - -<p> -"Do you ever go to hear music?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, Mrs. Faraday doesn't care for it." She laughed. "The best I've ever -heard was a band in the street." -</p> - -<p> -For an instant he hesitated, and she wondered what was coming. Then he -said persuasively: "There's a good concert to-morrow. Would you care to -come?" -</p> - -<p> -She glanced at him inquiringly. "Sunday afternoon?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, there's this new pianist, Krause. You aren't too pious, are you?" -</p> - -<p> -"I'm not pious at all." A satirical memory sifted through her mind, and -she heard her own voice saying, "Will you let her die without giving her -time to prepare?" -</p> - -<p> -"Then I'll come for you at half-past two. We'll hear the concert, and -then have tea somewhere, or a stroll in the Park." -</p> - -<p> -When he had gone, she put the office in order, and then waited until the -last patient should leave. After all, why shouldn't she try to find some -pleasure in life? Her hesitation had come, she felt, from a nervous -avoidance of crowds, a shrinking from any change in her secluded manner -of living. She hummed a line from one of the Gospel hymns. "Rescue the -perishing, care for the dying." -</p> - -<p> -"How ignorant he will think me when he discovers I have never heard any -music. I am ignorant, yet I am educated compared to what I was two years -ago. I know life now, and that is a great deal." -</p> - -<p> -The patient came out and left, and in a few minutes Doctor Faraday -passed through the room on his way to put on his overcoat. -</p> - -<p> -"Are you going out before lunch?" she asked, because she knew Mrs. -Faraday hated to have him miss his meals. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I can't wait, but I'll light a cigar." -</p> - -<p> -He took out one of the long slender cigars he preferred, and stopped in -front of her while she struck a match and held her hand by the flame. -</p> - -<p> -"That's a suitable young man, Dorinda," he remarked irrelevantly, with -his whimsical smile. -</p> - -<p> -"Young man?" She glanced up inquiringly. Though her sense of humour had -developed almost morbidly, she had discovered that it was of a wilder -variety than Doctor Faraday's. -</p> - -<p> -"I think, my dear girl," he explained, "that you could go farther and do -worse than take Richard. If I'm not mistaken, he has a future before -him." -</p> - -<p> -She laughed. "There wouldn't be much for me in that sort of future." -</p> - -<p> -"But there might be in the results." Then he grew serious. "He is -interested in you, and I hope something will come of it." -</p> - -<p> -A pricking sensation in her nerves made her start away from him. -</p> - -<p> -"Don't," she said sharply. "I've finished with all that sort of thing." -"Not for good. You are too young." - -"Yes, for good. I can't explain what I mean, but the very thought of -that makes me—well, sick all over." -</p> - -<p> -Her face had gone white, and struck by the change, he looked at her -closely. "Some women," he said, "are affected that way by a shock." -</p> - -<p> -"You mean by a blow on the head?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I don't mean a physical blow. I mean an emotional shock. Such a -thing may produce a nervous revulsion." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, that has happened to me." -</p> - -<p> -He laid his hand on her shoulder. "It will pass probably. You are -handsomer than ever. It is natural that you should need love." -</p> - -<p> -A wave of aversion swept over her face. "But 'I don't need it. I am -through with all that." -</p> - -<p> -He looked at her gravely. "And you will fill your life—with what?" -</p> - -<p> -She laughed derisively. How little men knew! "With something better than -broomsedge. That's the first thing that puts out on barren soil, just -broomsedge. Then that goes and pines come to stay—pines and -life-everlasting. You won't understand," she explained lightly. "I was -talking to Doctor Burch about Pedlar's Mill just before you came in, and -I told him we had to get our living from barren ground." -</p> - -<p> -He patted her shoulder. "Well, I hope that, too, will pass," he answered -as he turned to put on his overcoat. -</p> - -<p> -She remembered his words the next day while she sat in the concert -hall waiting for the music to begin. At first she had tried to -make out the names on the programme, desisting presently because -they confused her. Beethoven. Bach. Chopin. She went over the -others again, stumbling because she could make nothing of the syllables. -A-p-p-a-s-s-i-o-n-a-t-a. What did the strange word mean? -P-a-t-h-é-tique—that she could dimly grasp. Sonata? Nocturne? What -did the strange words mean? How could she be expected to know she had -never heard them before? -</p> - -<p> -Suddenly, while she struggled over the letters, the music floated toward -her from the cool twilight of the distance. This was not music, she -thought in surprise, but the sound of a storm coming up through the tall -pines at Old Farm. She had heard this singing melody a thousand times, -on autumn afternoons, in the woods. Then, as it drew nearer, the harmony -changed from sound into sensation; and from pure sensation, rippling in -wave after wave like a river, it was merged and lost in her -consciousness. -</p> - -<p> -In the beginning, while she sat there, rapt in startled apprehension, -she thought of innumerable things she had forgotten; detached incidents, -impressions which glittered sharply, edged with light, against the -mosaic of her recollections. Mellow sunshine, sparkling like new cider, -streamed over her. Music, which she had imagined to be sound only, was -changing into colour. She saw it first in delicate green and amber; then -in violent clashes of red and purple; but she saw it always as vividly -as if it reached her brain through her eyes. She thought first of the -evening sky over the bulrushes; of the grass after rain in the pasture; -of the pear trees breaking with the dawn from palest green into white. -Then the colours changed, and she remembered sunsets over the -broomsedge. The glow cast upward from the earth as if the wild grass -were burning. The bough of a black-gum tree emblazoned in scarlet on the -blue sky. The purple mist of autumn twilight, like the bloom on a grape. -The road home through the abandoned fields. The solitary star in a sky -which was stained the colour of ripe fruit. The white farm-house. The -shingled roof like a hood. Swallows flying. Swallows everywhere, a world -of swallows spinning like curved blades in the afterglow. -</p> - -<p> -With the flight of wings, ecstasy quivered over her, while sound and -colour were transformed into rhythms of feeling. Pure sensation held and -tortured her. She felt the music playing on her nerves as the wind plays -on a harp; she felt it shatter her nerves like broken string, and sweep -on crashing, ploughing through the labyrinth of her soul. Down there, in -the deep below the depths of her being, she felt it tearing her vitals. -Down there, in the buried jungle, where her thoughts had never -penetrated, she felt it destroying the hidden roots of her life. In this -darkness there was no colour; there was no glimmer of twilight; there -was only the maze of inarticulate agony. . . . -</p> - -<p> -Now it was dying away. Now it was returning. Something that she had -thought dead was coming to life again. Something that she had buried out -of sight under the earth was pushing upward in anguish. Something that -she had defeated was marching as a conqueror over her life. Suddenly she -was pierced by a thousand splinters of crystal sound. Little quivers of -light ran over her. Beads of pain broke out on her forehead and her -lips. She clenched her hands together, and forced her body back into her -chair. "I've got to stand it. No matter what it does to me, I've got to -stand it." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="V_I">V</a></h4> - -<p> -"I am afraid you found it difficult," Doctor Burch said, when it was -over. "It wasn't an easy programme. I wish there had been more of -Krause." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm not sure I liked it," she answered wearily. "I feel as if I had -ploughed a field. It made me savage, just the way moonlight used to when -I was growing up." -</p> - -<p> -"That is the pure essence of sensation. Now, I never get that response -to music. To me it is little more than an intellectual exercise. The -greatest musician I ever knew told me once that his knowledge of the -theory of music had, in a way, spoiled his complete enjoyment of a -concert." -</p> - -<p> -She had refused tea, and they had strolled in the direction of the Park. -As she left the concert hall, it had seemed to her that she was stifling -for air, and now, when they entered the Park, she threw back her head -and breathed quickly, with her gaze on the bright chain of sky threading -the tree-tops. -</p> - -<p> -"This smells like November at Old Farm," she said. "Whenever I smell the -country, I want to go home." -</p> - -<p> -"Yours is a large farm?" -</p> - -<p> -She laughed. "A thousand acres and we couldn't afford to buy a cow. Do -you know what it means to be land poor? After the war my father couldn't -hire labour, so he had to let all the land go bad, as we say, except the -little he could cultivate himself. The rest has run to old fields. -Everything is eaten up by the taxes and the mortgage. There are pines, -of course, and Nathan Pedlar tells us if we let the timber stand, it -will one day be valuable. Now we can't get a good price because the -roads are so bad it takes too many mules to haul it away. Once in a -while, we sell some trees to pay the taxes, but they bring so little. My -father cut down seven beautiful poplars at Poplar Spring; but when he -sold them he couldn't get but a dollar and a half for each one where it -fell. It doesn't seem worth while destroying trees for that." -</p> - -<p> -"What do you do with the abandoned fields?" -</p> - -<p> -"Nothing. Some people turn sheep into them, but my father says that -doesn't pay. The fields run to broomsedge and life-everlasting, and in -time pine and scrub oak get a good start." -</p> - -<p> -"But they can be reclaimed. The land can be brought back, if it is well -treated." -</p> - -<p> -"I know, but that takes labour; and Father and Josiah have as much work -as they can manage. There isn't any money to pay the wages of hands. -We've got some good pastures too. If only there was something to begin -with, we might have a dairy farm. Nathan Pedlar says, or a stock farm -like James Ellgood's. I wish I knew the science of farming," she -concluded earnestly. "Doctor Faraday says it is as much a science as -medicine." -</p> - -<p> -It was The first time he had seen her deeply interested. Strange, the -hold the country could get over one! -</p> - -<p> -"Is there any way I could learn farming from books?" Dorinda asked -before he could reply. "I mean learn the modern ways of getting the best -out of the soil?" -</p> - -<p> -He smiled. "It all comes back to chemistry, doesn't it? That, I imagine, -is what Doctor Faraday meant— -the chemistry of agriculture. Yes, there -are books you can study. I'll get you a list from a friend of mine who -is a professor in the University of Wisconsin. By the way, he is to give -a lecture on that very subject in New York next month. There is to be a -series of lectures. I'll find out about it and take you if you'll go -with me. You must remember, though, that practical experience is always -the best teacher." -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head. "We have the experience of generations, and it has -taught us nothing except to do things the way we've always done them. -Mother used to say that the only land she would ever cultivate, if she -had to choose over again, is the land of Canaan where -</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">'generous fruits that never fail,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">On trees immortal grow!'"</span> -</div></div> - -<p> -He laughed. "I think I'd like your mother." -</p> - -<p> -The casual remark arrested her. Would he really like her mother, she -wondered, with her caustic humour, her driven energy, her periodical -neuralgia, and her perpetual melancholy? Had he ever known any one who -resembled her? Had he ever known any woman whose life was so empty? -</p> - -<p> -"Poor Ma!"—She corrected herself: "Poor Mother, the farm has eaten -away her life. It caught her when she was young, and she was never able to -get free." -</p> - -<p> -"Doesn't she care for it?" -</p> - -<p> -"I don't know. I sometimes think she hates it, but I know it would kill -her to leave it. It is like a bad heart. You may suffer from it, but it -is your life, and it would kill you to lose it." She broke off, pondered -deeply for a few moments, and then added impulsively, "If I had the -money, I'd go back and start a dairy farm there." -</p> - -<p> -While she spoke a vision glimmered between the windy dusk in the Park -and the orange light of the afterglow. She saw it with an intensity, an -eagerness that was breathless;—the fields, the roads, the white -gate, the long low house, the lamp shining in the front window. For the -first time she could think of Old Farm without invoking the image of -Jason. For the first time since she had left home, she felt that earlier -and deeper associations were reaching out to her, that they were groping -after her, like the tendrils of vines, through the darkness and violence -of her later memories. Earlier and deeper associations, rooted there in -the earth, were drawing her back across time and space and -forgetfulness. Passion stirred again in her heart; but it was passion -transfigured, recoiling from the personal to the impersonal object. It -seemed to her, walking there in the blue twilight, that the music had -released some imprisoned force in the depths of her being, and that this -force was spreading out over the world, that it was growing wider and -thinner until it covered all the desolate country at Old Farm. With a -shock of joy, she realized that she was no longer benumbed, that she had -come to life again. She had come to life again, but how differently! -</p> - -<p> -"I feel as if the farm were calling to me to come back and help it," she -said. -</p> - -<p> -That night she dreamed of Pedlar's Mill. She dreamed that she was -ploughing one of the abandoned fields, where the ghostly scent of the -life-everlasting reminded her of the smell of her mother's flowered -bandbox when she took it out of the closet on Sunday mornings—the -aroma of countless dead and forgotten Sabbaths. Dan and Beersheba were -harnessed to the plough, and when they had finished one furrow, they -turned and looked back at her before they began another. "You'll never -get this done if you plough a hundred years," they said, "because there -is nothing here but thistles, and you can't plough thistles under." Then -she looked round her and saw that they were right. As far as she could -see, on every side, the field was filled with prickly purple thistles, -and every thistle was wearing the face of Jason. A million thistles, and -every thistle looked up at her with the eyes of Jason! She turned the -plough where they grew thickest, trampling them down, uprooting them, -ploughing them under with all her strength; but always when they went -into the soil, they cropped up again. Millions of purple flaunting -heads! Millions of faces! They sprang up everywhere; in the deep furrow -that the plough had cut; in the dun-coloured clods of the upturned -earth; under the feet of the horses; under her own feet, springing back, -as if they were set on wire stems, as soon as she had crushed them into -the ground. "I am going to plough them under, if it kills me," she said -aloud; and then she awoke. A chill wind was blowing the white curtains -at the window. Was it only her imagination, or did the wind, blowing -over the city, bring the fragrance of pine and life-everlasting? For an -instant, scarcely longer than a quick breath, she felt a sensation of -physical nearness, as if some one had touched her. Then it vanished, -leaving her in a shudder of memory. It was not love; of this she was -positive. Was it hate which had assumed, in the moment between sleep and -waking, the physical intensity of love? It was the first time she had -dreamed of Jason. Long after she had ceased to think of him, she told -herself resentfully. -</p> - -<p> -The next morning, when office hours were over, she went to the library -and asked for a list of books on dairy farming. She read with eagerness -every one that was given to her, patiently making notes, keeping in her -mind the peculiar situation at Old Farm. When Doctor Burch arranged for -the course of lectures, she attended them regularly, adding, with -diligence, whatever she could to her knowledge of methods; gleaning, -winnowing, storing away in her memory the facts which she thought might -some day be useful. Before her always were the neglected fields. She saw -the renewal of promise in the land; the sowing of the grain, the -springing up, the ripening, the immemorial celebration of the harvest. -She saw the yellowing waves of wheat, the poetic even swath falling -after the mower. "All that land," she thought, "all that land wasted!" -The possibility of the dairy farm haunted her mind. Enterprise, -industry, and a little capital with which to begin! That was all that -one needed. If she could start with a few cows, six perhaps, and do all -the work of the dairy herself, it might be managed. But Old Farm must be -made to pay, she decided emphatically. Old Farm with a thousand acres -could supply sufficient pasture and fodder for as many cows as she would -ever be likely to own. "If I could get the labour it wouldn't be so -hard," she thought one day, while she was sitting by the window in the -nursery. "If I could buy the cows and hire a little extra labour, it -wouldn't be impossible to make a success." Then her spirit drooped. "You -can't do anything without a little money," she thought, and laughed -aloud. "Not much, but a little makes all the difference." -</p> - -<p> -"What are you laughing at, Dorinda?" asked Mrs. Faraday, turning from -the crib, where she was bending over the baby. -</p> - -<p> -"I was thinking I'd give anything I've got for six—no, a dozen -cows." -</p> - -<p> -"Cows?" -</p> - -<p> -"At Old Farm. It hurts me to think of all that land wasted." -</p> - -<p> -"It is a pity. I suppose it was good land once?" -</p> - -<p> -"In great-grandfather's day it was one of the best farms in that part of -the country. Of course he never cultivated much of it. He let a lot of -it stand in timber. That's what we paid the taxes with right after the -war. Father and Josiah do the best they can," she added, "but everything -is always against them. Some people are like that, you know." -</p> - -<p> -"It's a bad way to be," commented Mrs. Faraday, and she asked presently, -"What would you like to do with the farm?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda's cheeks flushed as she answered. "First, if I had the money, -I'd try to bring up the fields. I'd sow cowpeas and turn them under -this year wherever I could. Then I'd add to the pasture. We can easily -do that, and in a little while we could get a good stand of grass. Then -I'd buy some cows from James Ellgood, some of his Jerseys, and try to -set up a dairy farm, a very little one, but I wouldn't let anybody touch -the milk and butter except Mother and myself. I wouldn't be satisfied -with anything that wasn't better than the best," she concluded, with an -energy that was characteristic of the earlier Dorinda. -</p> - -<p> -"And you'd sell your butter—where?" -</p> - -<p> -For an instant this dampened the girl's enthusiasm. How funny that she -had never once thought of that! -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, well, we're near enough to Richmond or Washington," she said. "The -road to the station is bad, but it is only two miles. We could churn one -day and send the butter out before sunrise the next morning." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Faraday looked at her sympathetically. "I could help you in -Washington," she said. "I've a friend there who owns one of the biggest -hotels. The manager would take your butter, I know, and eggs too, if -they are the very best that can be bought. And you'd ask a large price. -People are always willing to pay for the best." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda sighed. "It's just like a fairy tale," she said, "but, of -course, it is utterly out of the question." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I don't see why." Mrs. Faraday lifted the baby from the crib and -sat down to nurse it. "We would lend you the money you needed to start -with. After all you've done for Penelope, we'd be only too glad to do -that in return. But it would be drudgery, even if you succeeded, and you -ought not to look forward to that. You ought to marry, my dear." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda flinched. "Oh, I've finished with all that!" -</p> - -<p> -"But you haven't. You're too young to give up that side of life." -</p> - -<p> -"I don't care. I'm through with it," repeated Dorinda, and she meant it. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, just remember that we are ready to help you at any time. It would -mean nothing to us to invest a few thousand dollars in your farm. You -could pay us back when you succeeded." -</p> - -<p> -"And I could pay you interest all the time." -</p> - -<p> -"Of course—if it would make you feel easier. Only don't let your -foolish pride stand in the way of achieving something in the end." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda gazed thoughtfully out of the window. Her pride was foolish, she -supposed, but it was all that she had. With nothing else to fall back -on, she had taken refuge in an exaggerated sense of independence. -</p> - -<p> -"You are so capable," Mrs. Faraday was saying, "that I am sure you will -never fail in anything that you undertake. The doctor was telling me -only yesterday that, for a woman without special training, your -efficiency is really remarkable. It isn't often the girls of your age -are so practical." -</p> - -<p> -A laugh without merriment broke from Dorinda's lips. "That would please -my mother," she said. "They used to say at Old Farm that my head was -full of notions." -</p> - -<p> -"Most young girls' are. But you were fortunate to settle down as -soon as you did." -</p> - -<p> -Without replying, Dorinda stared at the baby in Mrs. Faraday's arms. It -was a fat, pink baby, with a round face in which the features were like -tiny flowers, and a bald head, as clear and smooth as an egg shell. When -it laughed back at her, the pink face crumpled up and it gurgled with -toothless gums. -</p> - -<p> -"If you've ever been poor, you can't get over the dread of having to -borrow," she answered after a pause. -</p> - -<p> -For the next few months, while she read books and attended lectures -without understanding them, the idea of the country worked like leaven -in Dorinda's imagination. Gradually, though she was unprepared for the -change in her attitude, some involuntary force was driving her back to -Old Farm. Problems that had appeared inexplicable became as simple as -arithmetic; obstacles that had looked like mountains evaporated into -mist as she approached them. "I couldn't let them do it," she would -declare, adding a minute later, with weakening obstinacy, "After all, it -isn't as if they were giving me the money. I can always pay them in the -end, even if I have to mortgage the farm." -</p> - -<p> -As the winter passed, she saw more and more of Burch. She liked him; she -enjoyed her walks with him; his friendship had become a substantial -interest in her life; but she realized now and then, when he -accidentally touched her hand, that every nerve in her body said, "So -far and no farther" to human intercourse. Her revulsion from the -physical aspect of love was a matter of the nerves, she knew, for more -than two years under the roof of a great surgeon had taught her -something deeper than the patter of science. Yet, though her shrinking -was of the nerves only, it was none the less real. One side of her was -still dead. The insensibility of the last two years, which had made her -tell herself at moments that she could not feel the prick of a pin in -her flesh, had worn off slowly from that area of her mind which was -superior to the emotions. But the thought of love, the faintest reminder -of its potency, filled her with aversion, with an inexpressible -weariness. She simply could not bear, she told herself bluntly, to be -touched. -</p> - -<p> -"There must be something in life besides love," she thought, in revolt -from the universal harping upon a single string. Watching the people in -the street, she would find herself thinking, "That woman looks as if she -lived without love, but she doesn't look unhappy. She must have found -something else." Then, with the vision of Old Farm in her mind, she -would reflect exultantly: "There is something else for me also. Love -isn't everything." -</p> - -<p> -"Do you know, I've almost decided to go home," she said to Doctor Burch -one day in April, when they were sitting in the Park. "Did you see those -lilacs in the florists' windows as we passed? It is lilac time at Old -Farm now, and the big bushes in the corner of the west wing are all in -bloom. They are so old that they reach to the roof, and the catbirds -build in them every year." She lifted her head and looked at the -delicate pattern of the elms against the pale sky. How cold and thin -spring was in the North! -</p> - -<p> -"You mean you'll go back and begin farming?" -</p> - -<p> -"I mean I can't stay away any longer. I'm part of it. I belong to the -abandoned fields." -</p> - -<p> -"Will you let me come?" he asked abruptly. -</p> - -<p> -Her hand lay, palm upward, in her lap, and as he asked the question, his -fingers closed caressingly over hers. Instantly the alarm began in her -nerves; she felt the warning quiver dart through them like the vibration -in a wire. Her nerves, not her heart, repulsed him. She might even love -him, she thought, if only he could keep at a distance; if he would never -touch her; if he would remain contented and aloof, neither giving nor -demanding the signs of emotion. But at the first gesture of approach -every cell in her body sprang on the defensive. -</p> - -<p> -"You wouldn't be comfortable," she said, while an expression that was -almost hostile crept over her full red mouth. "It is so different from -anything you have known." -</p> - -<p> -His smile was winning. "I shouldn't mind that if you wanted me." -</p> - -<p> -She looked over his head at the elm boughs arching against the sky. Yes, -it was lilac time in Virginia. She saw the rich clusters drooping beside -the whitewashed walls, under the grey eaves where wrens were building. -The door was open, and the fragrance swept the clean, bare hall, with -the open door at, the other end, beyond which the green slope swelled -upward to the pear orchard. Over all, there was the big pine on the -hill, brushing the quiet sky like a bird's outstretched wing. How -peaceful it seemed. After the storm through which she had passed, -tranquillity meant happiness. -</p> - -<p> -The silence had grown intimate, tender, provocative; and for a moment -she had a feeling of relaxation from tension, as if the iron in her soul -were dissolving. Then the pressure of his fingers tightened, and she -shivered and drew away her hand. -</p> - -<p> -"You don't like me to touch you?" he asked, and there was a hurt look in -his eyes. -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head. "I don't like anybody to touch me." -</p> - -<p> -"Are you as hard as that?" -</p> - -<p> -"I suppose I am hard, but I can't change." -</p> - -<p> -"Not if I wait? I can wait as long as you make me." -</p> - -<p> -"It wouldn't make any difference. Waiting wouldn't change me. I've -finished with all that." -</p> - -<p> -She rose because the thought of Jason had come to her out of the vision -of Old Farm; and though she no longer loved him, though she hated him, -this thought was so unexpected and yet so real that it was as if he had -actually walked into her presence. He was nothing to her, but his -influence still affected her life; he was buried somewhere in her -consciousness, like a secret enemy who could spring out of the -wilderness and strike when she was defenseless. -</p> - -<p> -On the hall table, when she entered the house, she found a letter, -addressed in the pale, repressed handwriting of her mother. As she went -upstairs she tore it open, and dropping into a chair by the window of -her room, she read the closely written sheets by the last gleam of -daylight. -</p> - -<blockquote><p> -<i>My dear Daughter</i>: -</p> - -<p> -I hate to have to send you bad news, but your father had a stroke last -Saturday while he was ploughing the tobacco field. He had not been well -for several days, but you know he never complains, and he did not stop -work till he dropped in the field. Josiah and Rufus had to pick him up -between them and bring him into the house. -</p> - -<p> -We sent straight for the doctor. Rufus saddled Beersheba and rode to -Pedlar's Mill, and Nathan sent word to Doctor Stout up near the -Courthouse. It was more than two hours before the doctor got here, but -your father had not come to himself. The doctor says he will never be up -again, and if you want to see him alive, you had better come as soon as -you can. We do everything that is possible, and Nathan has been the -greatest help in the world. I don't know what I should do without him. -Josiah spends the nights here. Since his marriage he has lived, as I -wrote you, in that place over beyond Plumtree, but he is real good about -helping, and so is Elvira. She has offered to help me nurse, but she is -so flighty that I had rather have Aunt Mehitable's granddaughter, -Fluvanna Moody. Fluvanna comes every day. She is a mighty good nurse and -your father likes to have her around, even if she is one of the new -order of darkeys. I believe she takes after Aunt Mehitable more than any -of the other grandchildren. Your father does not give any trouble, and -he has not spoken but twice since his fall. It is right hard to -understand what he says—he speaks so thickly—but -Fluvanna and I both think he was asking for you. -</p> - -<p> -The farm is going on just the same. Rufus hates the work here, and wants -to go to the city. A week before his stroke your father was offered a -thousand dollars for the timber between Poplar Spring and the back gate. -Nathan advised him to hold on a little longer, but I reckon we will have -to sell it now to pay for your father's sickness. The cow is a great -comfort. Your father cannot take any solid food. I give him a little -milk and a few swallows of chicken broth. Mrs. Garlick sent him some -chicken broth yesterday, and one of the Miss Sneads comes over with -something every day. -</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 50%;">Your affectionate mother,</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 55%;">EUDORA ABERNETHY OAKLEY. -</p></blockquote> - -<p> -So, after all, the decision had been taken out of her hands. Life was -treating her still as if she were a straw in the wind, a leaf on a -stream. The invisible processes which had swept her away were sweeping -her back again. While she sat there with the letter in her hand, she had -the feeling that she was caught in the whirlpool of universal anarchy, -and that she could not by any effort of her will bring order out of -chaos. -</p> - -<p> -"Poor Pa." This was her first thought, and she used instinctively the -name that had been on her lips as a child. So this was the end for him, -and what had he ever had? He had known nothing except toil. Suddenly, as -if the fact added an intolerable poignancy to her grief, she remembered -that he had never learned even to read and write. He could sign his -name, that was all. When he was a child the "poor white" was expected to -remain unlettered, and in later years the knowledge her mother had -taught him had not, as he used to say apologetically, "stuck by him." -</p> - -<p> -Rising quickly, she put the letter aside and began folding her clothes. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="VI_I">VI</a></h4> - -<p> -As the train rushed through the familiar country, Dorinda counted the -new patches of ploughed ground in the landscape. "James Ellgood must be -trying to reclaim all his old fields," she thought. -</p> - -<p> -The sun had not yet risen above the fretwork of trees on the -horizon, but the broomsedge had felt the approach of day and was -flying upward to meet it. Out of the east, she saw gradually emerge -the serpentine curves of Whippernock River; then the clouds of blown -smoke, the irregular pattern of the farms, and the buildings of the -station, which wore a startled and half-awake air in the dawn. -</p> - -<p> -After more than two years how strange it felt to be back again! -To be back again just as if nothing had happened! How small the -station looked, and how desolate, stranded like a wrecked ship -in the broomsedge. What isolation! What barrenness! In her memory -the horizon had been so much wider, the road so much longer, the band of -woods so much deeper. It seemed to her that the landscape must have -diminished in an incredible way since she had left it. Even the untidy -look of the station; the litter of shavings and tobacco stems; the -shabbiness and crudeness of the country people meeting the train; the -disreputable rags of Butcher, the lame negro, who lived in the freight -car; the very fowls scratching in the dust of the cleared space;—all -these characteristic details were uglier and more trivial than she had -remembered them. A sense of loneliness swept her thoughts, as if the -solitude had blown over her like smoke. She realized that the Pedlar's -Mill of her mind and the Pedlar's Mill of actuality were two different -places. She was returning home, and she felt as strange as she had felt -in New York. Well, at least she had not crawled back. She had returned -with her head held high, as she had resolved that she would. -</p> - -<p> -The whistle was sounding again, and the brakeman was hastily gathering -her bags. She followed him to the platform, where the conductor stood -waiting, the same conductor who had helped her into the train the -morning she had gone away. He did not recognize her, and for some -obscure reason, she felt flattered because he had forgotten her. -</p> - -<p> -The train was stopping slowly. The faces of the assembled farmers -started out so close to the track that they gave her a shock. There was -Jim Ellgood ready to leave for Richmond; there was Mr. Garlick meeting -somebody, his daughter probably; there was Mr. Kettledrum, looking as -stringy and run-to-seed, as if he had not moved out of his wheelrut -since the morning he had picked her up in the rain. In the little group -she saw Rufus, slender, handsome, sullen as ever. How black his eyes -were, and how becoming the dark red was in his cheeks! Then, as the -train reached the station, she saw Nathan Pedlar running down to the -track with the mail bag in his hand. Just at the last minute, but always -in time—how like Nathan that was! -</p> - -<p> -The conductor, with one foot on the step, was swinging his free leg -while he felt for the ground. She put up her hand, hurriedly arranging -her small blue hat with the flowing chiffon veil. Then she lifted the -folds of her skirt as the conductor, who was firmly planted now on the -earth, helped her to alight. Her heart was sad for her father, but -beneath the sadness her indomitable pride supported her. Yes, she had -come back unashamed. She might not return as a conqueror, but she had -returned undefeated. They were looking at her as she stepped to the -ground, and she felt, with a thrill of satisfaction, that, in her navy -blue poplin with the chiffon veil framing her face (hanging veils were -much worn in New York that year) she was worthy of the surprised glances -they cast at her. A little thinner, a little paler, less girlish but -more striking, than she had been when she went away. Her height gave her -dignity, and this dignity was reflected in her vivid blue eyes, with -their unflinching and slightly arrogant gaze. Romantic eyes, Burch had -called them, and she had wondered what he meant, for surely there was -little romance left now in her mind. If experience had taught her -nothing else, it had at least made her a realist. She had learned to -take things as they are, and that, as Burch had once remarked -whimsically, "in the long run fustian wears better than velvet." She had -learned, too, she told herself in the first moments of her homecoming, -that so long as she could rule her own mind she was not afraid of the -forces without. -</p> - -<p> -They had gathered round her. She was smiling and shaking the -outstretched hands. "Well, it looked as if we'd about lost you for -good." "You've been gone two years, ain't you?" "Hardly know Pedlar's -Mill, I reckon, since Nathan's painted the store red?" "I saw her -off," Mr. Kettledrum was saying over and over. "I saw her -off. A good long visit, warn't it?" -</p> - -<p> -Moving out of the throng, she kissed Rufus, who looked dejected and -resentful. -</p> - -<p> -"How is Pa, Rufus?" -</p> - -<p> -"There ain't any change. The doctor says he may drag on this way for -several weeks, or he may go suddenly at any time." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, we'd better start right on." Walking quickly up the slope to -where the old buggy was standing, she put her arms round Dan's neck and -laid her cheek against him. "He knows me," she said, "dear old Dan, he -hasn't forgotten me. Is there anything you want for Ma at the store?" -</p> - -<p> -"She gave me a list. I left it with Minnie May." -</p> - -<p> -"Minnie May doesn't work in the store, does she? Who looks after the -children?" -</p> - -<p> -"She does. She does everything." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, it's a shame. She oughtn't to, and only thirteen. I'll speak to -Nathan about it." -</p> - -<p> -At her commanding tone, Rufus grinned. "You've come back looking as if -you could run the world, Dorinda," he observed, with envy. "I wish I -could go away. I'd start to-morrow, if it wasn't for Pa." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, that's why I came back. We can't leave Pa and Ma now. But it's -hard on you, Rufus." -</p> - -<p> -"You bet it is! It's my turn to get away next." -</p> - -<p> -She assented. "I know it. If the time comes when Pa can do without you, -I'll help you to go. You'll never make much of a farmer." -</p> - -<p> -He stared moodily at the road, but she could see that her promise had -encouraged him. "There's nothing in it," he answered. "I believe it is -the meanest work ever made. You may slave till you drop, and there's -never anything to show for it. Look at Pa." -</p> - -<p> -"Pa never had a chance. He grew up at the wrong time. But all farming -isn't bad. Suppose we had a dairy farm?" -</p> - -<p> -He grinned again. "O Lord! with one cow! You're out of your head!" -</p> - -<p> -"Perhaps. Anyway, I've come back to see what I can do." -</p> - -<p> -Her glance wavered as Nathan, having dashed into the store with the mail -bag, came toward them with the kind of lope that he used when he was in -a hurry. "I didn't get a chance to speak to you at the train, Dorinda," -he said, "but all the same I'm glad you're home again. The children want -to get a peek at you in your city clothes. Minnie May's gone crazy about -your veil." -</p> - -<p> -In two years he had altered as little as the landscape. Lank, -sand-coloured, with his loping, stride, his hands that were all -knuckles, and his kindly clown's face under hair that was as short as -rubbed-off fur, he appeared to her, just as he used to do, as both -efficient and negligible. Poor Nathan, how unattractive he was, but how -good and faithful! Clean, too, notwithstanding the fact that he never -stopped working. His face and neck looked well scrubbed, and his blue -cotton shirt was still smelling of starch and ironing. The memory of the -lunch he had given her when she went away was in her mind as she held -out her hand to him and then stooped to kiss the children, one after -another. How they must miss their mother, these children! She must do -something for Minnie May, who had the stunted look of overworked -childhood. Nathan was well off for Pedlar's Mill, yet he let the little -girl work like a servant. It was simply that he did not know, and she -would make it her business, she told herself firmly, to instruct him. -Minnie May was a nice, earnest child, with the look of her mother. She -would be almost pretty, too, if she could get that driven expression out -of her pinched little face. Her hair was really lovely, wheaten red like -Rose Emily's, only it needed brushing, and she wore it dragged back from -her forehead where, at thirteen, wrinkles were already forming. Yes, -Dorinda decided, she would certainly speak to Nathan. -</p> - -<p> -"You look fine, Dorinda," he was saying while he stared at her. -</p> - -<p> -"She is like a paper doll in a book," Minnie May exclaimed. "One of -those fashion books Miss Seena Snead has." -</p> - -<p> -The three smaller children were staring with wide open eyes and mouths, -and John Abner, the baby, she remembered, with the clubfoot, was holding -a slice of bread and butter in both hands. He limped badly when he -walked, she noticed. What a job it must be keeping these children washed -and dressed. -</p> - -<p> -"Are you the nurse too, Minnie May?" she inquired. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I do everything," the little girl replied proudly, wrinkling her -forehead. "We had a coloured girl, but the children didn't like her and -wouldn't mind her." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda turned to Nathan. "It's too much, Nathan. You oughtn't to let -her do it." -</p> - -<p> -"I tell her not to slave so hard," he answered helplessly. "But it -doesn't do any good. She promised her mother that she would take care of -the children." -</p> - -<p> -"But Rose Emily never meant this. It is making an old woman of the child -before she grows up." -</p> - -<p> -"I can't help it. She's as stubborn as a mule about it. Maybe you can do -something." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda nodded with her capable air. "Well, I'll fix it." She looked -cool, composed, and competent, the picture of dignified self-reliance, -as she stepped between the muddy wheels of the dilapidated buggy. -</p> - -<p> -"I hope you'll find your father better," Nathan said. "I'll come over -later in the day and see if there is anything I can help about." She -smiled gratefully over her shoulder, and Rufus remarked, in his sullen, -suppressed voice, as they drove off, "He's been over every single -evening since Pa had his stroke." -</p> - -<p> -"Nobody ever had a kinder heart," Dorinda responded absently, for she -was not thinking of Nathan. -</p> - -<p> -As the buggy jolted down the slope to the pine woods, a dogcart passed -them on the way to the station, and she recognized Geneva Greylock. She -was driving the dogcart with red wheels which she had used before her -marriage; she was wearing the same jaunty clothes; but the change in her -appearance made Dorinda turn to glance back at her. Though she was still -in her early twenties, she looked like a middle-aged woman. Her sallow -cheeks had fallen in, her long nose was bony and reddened at the tip, -and her abundant flaxen hair was lustreless and untidy. -</p> - -<p> -"How soon blondes break," Dorinda said aloud, and she thought, "Two -years of marriage have made an old woman of her." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, she's lost what looks she ever had," returned Rufus. "She was -always delicate, they say, and now her health has gone entirely. It's -the life she leads, I reckon. Folks say he is beginning to follow in his -father's footsteps. That's why the new doctor up by the Courthouse is -getting all his practice." When he spoke of Jason he carefully refrained -from calling his name. -</p> - -<p> -"Are there any children?" Dorinda asked. Her spirits were drooping; but -this depression, as far as she was aware, had no connection with Jason. -Not her own regret, but the futility of things in general, oppressed her -with a feeling of gloom. -</p> - -<p> -"Not that I ever heard of," Rufus replied. "To tell the truth I never -hear anybody mention his name. You can ask Nathan. He knows everything -about everybody." He shut his sullen lips tight, and stared straight -ahead of him. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, it doesn't matter. I was merely wondering why her health had -failed." -</p> - -<p> -They had come out of the woods, and the wheels were creaking over the -dried mudholes. The sun had risen through a drift of cloud, and beneath -the violet rim an iridescent light rained over the abandoned fields. -While they drove on, it seemed to Dorinda that it was like moving within -the heart of an opal. Every young green leaf, every dew-drenched weed, -every silken cobweb, every brilliant bird, or gauzy insect,—all -these things were illuminated and bedizened with colour. Only the immense -black shadow of the horse and buggy raced sombrely over the broomsedge -by the roadside. -</p> - -<p> -"Nothing has changed," Dorinda thought. "Nothing has changed but -myself." -</p> - -<p> -Yes, it was all familiar, but it was different, and this difference -existed only within herself. All that she had suffered was still with -her. It was not an episode that she had left behind in the distance; it -was a living part of her nature. Even if she worked her unhappiness into -the soil; even if she cut down and burned it off with the broomsedge, -it would still spring up again in the place where it had been. Already, -before she had reached the house, the past was settling over her like -grey dust. -</p> - -<p> -They passed the Sneads' red brick house with white columns. The same -flowers bloomed in the borders; the same shrubs grew on the lawn; the -same clothes appeared to hang perpetually on the same clothes-line at -the corner of the back porch. In the pasture, the friendly faces of cows -looked at her over the rail fence, and she remembered that two years -ago, as she went by, she had seen them filing to the well trough. In a -few minutes she would pass the burned cabin and the oak with the fading -Gospel sign fastened to its bark. Her heart trembled. The racing shadow -by the road appeared to stretch over the sunrise. She felt again the -chill of despair, the involuntary shudder of her pulses. Then she lifted -her eyes with a resolute gesture and confronted remembrance. -</p> - -<p> -The place was unchanged. The deep wheelruts where the road forked; the -flat rock on which the mare slipped; the cluster of dogwood which -screened the spot where she had waited for Jason's return; the very -branch she had pushed aside,—not one of these things had altered. -Only the fire in her heart had gone out. The scene was different to her -because the eyes with which she looked on it had grown clearer. The -stone was merely a stone; the road was nothing more than a road to her -now. Over the gate, she could see the willows of Gooseneck Creek. Beyond -them the tall chimneys of Five Oaks lay like red smears on the -changeable blue of the sky. -</p> - -<p> -After they had left the fork, Dan quickened his pace. -</p> - -<p> -"The fence has been mended, I see, Rufus." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, we had so much trouble with the cow straying. Pa was trying to get -all the fences near the house patched before fall. We were using the -rails that were left over from the timber he sold." -</p> - -<p> -"Those weren't the woods Ma wrote me about?" She could never think of -living trees as timber. -</p> - -<p> -"No, he is holding on to that in hope of getting a better price." -</p> - -<p> -They travelled the last quarter of a mile without speaking, and not -until the buggy had turned in at the gate and driven up the rocky grade -to the porch, did Dorinda ask if her father expected her. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, Ma told him, but she wasn't sure that he understood. He was awake -before I left the place and Ma was seeing about breakfast." -</p> - -<p> -"Haven't you had any yet?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I had a bite before I started. I'm no friend to an empty stomach, -and I reckon I can manage a little something after I've turned Dan into -the pasture. Pa was ploughing the tobacco field when he had his stroke, -but he had decided not to plant tobacco there this year. We're going to -try corn." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm glad he's given up tobacco." -</p> - -<p> -"He hasn't. Not entirely. But it takes more manure than he can spare -this year. Well, we're here at last. Is that you, Ma?" he shouted, as -the wheel scraped against the "rockery" by the steps. -</p> - -<p> -At his second call, the door opened and Mrs. Oakley ran out on the -porch. -</p> - -<p> -"So you've come, daughter," she said, and stood wiping her hands on her -apron while she waited for Dorinda to alight. How old she had grown, -thought the girl, with a clutch at her heart. Only the visionary eyes -looked out of the ravaged face through a film of despair, as stars shine -through a fog. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="VII_I">VII</a></h4> - -<p> -Jumping out of the buggy, Dorinda took her mother into her arms; but -while she pressed her lips to the wrinkled cheek, it occurred to her -that it was like kissing a withered leaf. -</p> - -<p> -"How is Pa?" she asked in an effort to conceal the embarrassment they -both felt. -</p> - -<p> -"About the same. I don't see any change." -</p> - -<p> -"May I speak to him now?" -</p> - -<p> -"You'd better have your breakfast first. I've got breakfast ready for -you." -</p> - -<p> -"In a minute, but I'd like just to say a word to him. Oh, there's dear -old Rambler." She stooped to caress the hound. "I don't see Flossie." -</p> - -<p> -"I reckon she's up at the barn hunting mice. She had a new set of -kittens, but we had to drown all but one. We couldn't feed so many -cats." -</p> - -<p> -Embarrassment was passing away. How much had her mother known, she -wondered; how much had she suspected? -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I shan't be a minute," the girl said. "Is he in the chamber?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, he hasn't been out of bed since his stroke. Go right in. I don't -know whether he'll recognize you or not." -</p> - -<p> -Pushing the door open, Dorinda went in, followed by Rambler, walking -stiffly. The room was flooded with morning sunlight, for the green -outside shutters were open, and the window was raised that looked on the -pear orchard and the crooked path to the graveyard. It was all just as -she remembered it, except that in her recollection the big bed was -empty, and now her father lay supine on one side of it, with his head -resting upon the two feather pillows. There was a grotesque look in his -face, as if it had been pulled out of shape by some sudden twist, but -his inquiring brown eyes, with their wistful pathos, seemed to be -asking, "Why has it happened? What is the meaning of it all?" When she -bent over and touched his forehead with her lips, she saw that he could -not move himself, not even his head, not even his hand. Fallen and -helpless, he lay there like a pine tree that has been torn up by the -roots. -</p> - -<p> -"I've come back to help take care of you, Pa." -</p> - -<p> -His lips quivered, and she apprehended rather than heard what he said. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm glad to see you again, daughter." -</p> - -<p> -Dropping into the chair by the bedside, she laid her arms gently about -him. "You don't suffer, do you?" -</p> - -<p> -How immeasurably far away he seemed! How futile was any endeavour to -reach him! Then she remembered that he had always been far away, that he -had always stood just outside the circle in which they lived, as if he -were a member of some affectionate but inarticulate animal kingdom. -</p> - -<p> -He tried to smile, but the effort only accentuated the crooked line of -his mouth. -</p> - -<p> -"No, I don't suffer." For a moment he was silent; then he added in an -almost inaudible tone: "It's sort of restful." -</p> - -<p> -A leaden weight of tears fell on her heart. Not his death, but his life -seemed to her more than she could bear. What was her pain, her -wretchedness, compared to his monotony of toil? What was any pain, any -wretchedness, compared to the emptiness of his life? -</p> - -<p> -For a little while she talked on cheerfully, telling him of the lectures -she had heard and the books she had read, and of all the plans she had -made to help him with the farm. -</p> - -<p> -"I've borrowed some money to start with, and we'll make something of it -yet, Pa," she said brightly. -</p> - -<p> -His lips moved, but she could not understand what he said. Straining her -ears, she bent over him. For an instant it seemed to her that his tone -became clearer, and that he was on the point of speaking aloud; then the -struggle ceased, and he lay looking at her with his expression of mute -resignation. -</p> - -<p> -After this, though she tried to interest him in her plans, she saw that -his attention was beginning to wander. Every now and then he made an -effort to follow her, while a bewildered expression crept into his face; -but it was only for a minute at a time that he could fix his mind on -what she was saying, and when the strain became too great for him, his -gaze wandered to the open window and the harp-shaped pine, which -towered, dark as night, against the morning blue of the sky. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll go to breakfast now," she said, as carelessly as she could. -"Ma has it ready for me." -</p> - -<p> -Rising from her chair, she stood looking down on him with misty eyes. -After all, the pathos of life was worse than the tragedy. "Is the light -too strong?" she asked, as she turned away. "Shall I close one of the -shutters?" -</p> - -<p> -At first he did not follow her, his thoughts had roved so far away, and -she repeated her question in another form. "Does the sun hurt your -eyes?" -</p> - -<p> -A smile wrung his lips. "No, I like to see the big pine," he answered; -and stealing out noiselessly, she left him alone with the tree and the -sky. -</p> - -<p> -In the kitchen her mother stood over her while she ate, watching every -mouthful with the eyes of repressed and hungry devotion. -</p> - -<p> -"You ain't so plump as you were, Dorinda, but you've kept your high -colour." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I'm well enough, but you look worn out, Ma." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley hurried to the stove and back again. "Let me give you -another slice of bacon. You must be empty after that long trip. Well, of -course, I've had a good deal on me since your father got sick. Until -Fluvanna came, I didn't have anybody but Elvira to help me, and though -she was willing to do what she could, her fingers were all thumbs when -it came to making up a bed or moving things in a sickroom." -</p> - -<p> -"I can take most of the burden off you now. You know I learned a good -deal about illness when I was with Doctor Faraday." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, you'll be a comfort, I know, but you're going back again as soon -as your father begins to mend, ain't you?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda shook her head with a smile, which, she told herself, looked -braver than it felt. "No, I'm not going back. I'd sooner stay here and -try to make something out of the farm. A thousand acres of land ought -not to be allowed to run to broomsedge like an old field." -</p> - -<p> -"Heaven knows we've tried, daughter. Nobody ever worked harder than your -father, and whatever came of it?" -</p> - -<p> -"Poor Pa. I know, but he came after the war when there wasn't any money -or any labourers." -</p> - -<p> -She told of the money Doctor Faraday would lend her, and of the hotel in -Washington which would take all the butter she could make. "But it must -be as good as the best," she explained, with a laugh. "I'm going over to -Green Acres to buy seven Jersey cows. Seven is a lucky number for me, so -I am going to start with it." -</p> - -<p> -"You'll have to have some help, then." -</p> - -<p> -"Not at first. Of course I'll need a boy for the barnyard, but I am -going to do the milking and all the work of the dairy myself. You can -help me with the skimming until we get a separator, and when Fluvanna -isn't waiting on Pa, she can lend a hand at the churning." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley shook her head drearily. "You haven't tried it, Dorinda." -</p> - -<p> -"I know I haven't, but I'm going to. I learned a lot in the hospital, -and the chief thing was that it is slighting that has ruined us, white -and black alike, in the South. Hasn't Fluvanna got a brother Nimrod that -I could hire?" she asked more definitely. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, and he's a good boy too. Fluvanna had him over here one day last -week chopping wood when Rufus was out in the field ploughing. That's a -thrifty family, the Moodys. I never saw a darkey that had as much vim as -Fluvanna. And she belongs to the new order too. I always thought it -spoiled them to learn to read and write till I hired her. She's got all -the sense Aunt Mehitable had, and she's picked up some education -besides. I declare, she talks better than a lot of white people I know." -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder if she'd stay on and help me with the farm?" Dorinda asked. "I -mean," she added, while her face clouded, "after Pa is up again." Though -she knew that her father would never be up again, she united with her -mother in evading the fact. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I'm sure she will," Mrs. Oakley responded, with eagerness. "She has -been helping me with my white Leghorns. All the hens are laying well. I -am setting Eva and Ida now." -</p> - -<p> -"You didn't have them when I was here." -</p> - -<p> -"No, Juliet hatched them. You remember Juliet? She was the first white -Leghorn hen I ever had." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I remember her. Have you got her still?" -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley sighed. "No, a coon broke into the henhouse last winter and -killed her. She was a good hen, if I ever had one." It was amazing to -Dorinda the way her mother knew every fowl on the place by name. To be -sure, there were only a dozen or so; but these white Leghorns all looked -exactly alike to the girl, though Mrs. Oakley could tell each one at a -distance and was intimately acquainted with the peculiarities of every -rooster and hen that she owned. -</p> - -<p> -"I'd like to get a hundred and fifty white Leghorns, if we could look -after them," Dorinda said thoughtfully. "That's one good way to make -money." -</p> - -<p> -A ray of light, which was less a flush than a warmer pallor, flickered -across Mrs. Oakley's wan features. While her mother's interest was -awakening, Dorinda felt that her own was slowly drugged by the poverty -of her surroundings. The sunlight bathing the ragged lawn only -intensified the aspect of destitution. Colour, diversity, animation, all -these were a part of the world she had relinquished. Pushing her chair -away from the table, she went to the back door and stood gazing out over -the woodpile in the direction of the well-house. A few cultivated acres -in the midst of an encroaching waste land! From the broomsedge and the -flat horizon, loneliness rose and washed over her. Loneliness, nothing -more! The same loneliness that she had feared and hated as a child; the -same loneliness from which she had tried to escape in flights of -emotion. Food, work, sleep, that was life as her father and mother had -known it, and that life was to be hers in the future. For an instant it -seemed to her that she must break down. Then, lifting her head with a -characteristic gesture of defiance, she turned back into the room. "I'd -better start straight about it," she said aloud, smiling at Mrs. -Oakley's startled look. -</p> - -<p> -"Did you say anything, Dorinda? I believe I've got something wrong with -my ears." -</p> - -<p> -"I said I was going upstairs to change my dress. The same old room, I -suppose?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I fixed the same room for you." -</p> - -<p> -While she cleared off the table, Mrs. Oakley gazed after her daughter -with a perplexed and anxious expression. Dorinda in her flowing veil, -with her air of worldly knowledge and disillusioned experience, had awed -and impressed her. Was it possible that she had created this superior -intelligence, that she had actually brought this paragon of efficiency -into the world? "Well, I hope it will turn out the way you want it," she -remarked presently to her daughter's retreating back, "but, in my time, -I've watched many a big bloom that brought forth mighty small fruit." -</p> - -<p> -At sunset, when Nathan Pedlar came for his daily visit, Dorinda walked -over a part of the farm with him. He was wearing his Sunday suit of -clothes, and though this emphasized his grotesqueness, it increased also -the air of having been well scrubbed and brushed which had distinguished -him from the other farmers at the station. Since his wife's death he had -prospered, as widowers were so frequently known to do, Dorinda -reflected; and now that he was able to employ an assistant, he was not -closely confined to the store. Though his neighing laugh still irritated -the girl, she found herself regarding his deficiencies more leniently. -After all, he was not to blame for the way he looked; he was not even to -blame, she conceded less readily, for the things that he thought funny. -Since that fantastic humour had taken root in her mind, she had been -continually puzzled by the variety of obvious facts which people, and -especially men, found amusing. She could not, to save her life, laugh at -the spectacles they enjoyed, nor did the freakish destiny that provoked -her to merriment appear to divert them at all. From the cool and -detached point of view she had attained, life appeared to her to be -essentially comic; but comic acts, whether presented in the theatre or -in the waggish hilarity of Pedlar's Mill, seemed to her merely -depressing. She was not amused by the classic jokes of the period, which -were perpetually embodied in a married man who was too fat or an -unmarried woman who was too thin. Flesh or the lack of it, hats or the -pursuit of them, crockery or the breaking of it; none of these common -impediments to happiness possessed, for her, the genuine qualities of -mirth. But reprehensible though she knew it to be, she could not recall -the misguided earnestness of her girlhood without the pricking of -ridicule; and the image of mankind strutting with pompous solemnity into -the inevitable abyss impressed her as the very spirit of comedy. Tragic -but comic, too, as most tragedy was. Would it ever pass, she wondered, -this capricious and lonely laughter? -</p> - -<p> -"I can't help it," she thought, walking by Nathan's side, and listening -soberly to his story of a coloured woman who had tried to make him pay -an additional price for a chicken with three legs. "I can't help it if -they, not the things they laugh at, seem funny to me." -</p> - -<p> -It was a misty, lilac-scented afternoon in April. The sun shone softly -when it began to go down, as if it were caught in a silver scarf, and -the grass in the pear orchard was white with drifting blossoms. Those -old trees always bloomed late, she remembered, and the ground was still -snowy with fallen petals when the lilac bushes by the west wing were -breaking into flower. -</p> - -<p> -As she followed the beaten track by the orchard, her gaze swept the -ploughed fields, where the upturned earth was changing from chocolate to -purple as the light faded. Around her the farm spread out like an open -fan, ploughed ground melting into waste land, fields sinking into -neglected pasture, pasture rising gradually into the dark belt of the -pines. She knew that the place was more to her than soil to be -cultivated; that it was the birthplace and burial ground of hopes, -desires, and disappointments. The old feeling that the land thought and -felt, that it possessed a secret personal life of its own, brushed her -mood as it sped lightly by. -</p> - -<p> -"All this and just waste, waste, waste," she said slowly. -</p> - -<p> -Nathan glanced up at the big pine on the hill. "Ever think of cutting -that tree down for timber?" he inquired. -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head. "It's the only thing Pa likes to watch now. He loves -it." -</p> - -<p> -Nathan neighed under his breath, with the sound Dan gave when he saw -clover. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I kind of know how he feels. I like a big tree myself." -</p> - -<p> -"Sometimes in stormy weather that pine is like a rocky crag with the sea -beating against it," Dorinda said. "I used to remember it up in Maine. I -suppose that is why Pa likes to look at it. All the meaning of his life -has gone into it, and all the meaning of the country. Endurance, that's -what it is." -</p> - -<p> -"What a fancy you've got," Nathan answered admiringly, "and always had -even when you were a child. But you're right about endurance. This farm -looks to me as if it had endured about as much as it can stand." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I'm going to change all that." -</p> - -<p> -"Then you'd better get busy." -</p> - -<p> -"I'll begin to-morrow, if you'll send me some field hands." She stopped -and made a gesture, full of vital energy, in the direction of the road. -"I want to make a new pasture out of that eighteen-acre field next to -the old one." -</p> - -<p> -"It has run to broomsedge now, hasn't it?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, but it used to be a cornfield in great-grandfather's day. If you -can get me the hands, I'll start them clearing it off the first thing in -the morning." -</p> - -<p> -He chuckled with enjoyment. "Oh, I'll get you anything you want, but the -niggers won't work for nothing, you know." -</p> - -<p> -"I've borrowed two thousand dollars. That ought to help, oughtn't it?" -She wished he wouldn't say "niggers." That scornful label was already -archaic, except among the poorest of the "poor white class" at Pedlar's -Mill. -</p> - -<p> -"Two thousand dollars!" he ejaculated. "Well, that ought to go some -way." -</p> - -<p> -"I'll have to spend a good deal for cows," she explained. "How much will -they ask at Green Acres?" -</p> - -<p> -For a minute he hesitated. "That's a fine Jersey herd," he replied -presently. "I don't reckon they'll take less than a hundred dollars for -a good cow. You can get scrub cows cheaper, but you want good ones." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, yes. I want good ones." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, seeing it's you, Jim Ellgood may let you have them for less. I -don't know; but he got a hundred and fifty for those he sold at the -fair. One of his young bulls took the blue ribbon, you know." -</p> - -<p> -She nodded. "I'm going over to see him to-morrow, if Pa doesn't get -worse." -</p> - -<p> -"Jim's a first-rate land doctor. He'll tell you what to do with that old -field." -</p> - -<p> -"Why, everybody says you're as good a farmer as James Ellgood." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, no, I'm not. Not by a long way. He spends a lot of money on -phosphate and nitrate of soda; but in the end he gets it back again. He -reclaimed some bad land several years ago and made it yield forty -bushels an acre. For several years he kept sowing cowpeas and turning -them under. Then he sowed sweet clover with lime, and when it was in -full bloom, he turned that under too. Takes money, his method, but it -pays in the long run. He has just begun using alfalfa; but you watch and -he'll get five cuttings from it in no time. I get four, and Jim always -goes me one better." -</p> - -<p> -She was listening to him, for the first time in her life, with attention -and interest. It was surprising, she reflected, what a bond of sympathy -farming could make. He was as dull probably as he had ever been; but his -dullness had ceased now to bore her. "I'll find him useful, anyhow," she -thought; and usefulness, she was to discover presently, makes an even -firmer bond than an interest in farming. Her mind was filled with her -new vocation, and just as in that earlier period she had had ears for -any one who would speak to her of Jason, so she listened now to whoever -displayed the time and the inclination to talk of Old Farm. After all, -how much mental tolerance, she wondered, was based upon the devouring -egoism at the heart of all human nature? It was a question her -great-grandfather might have asked, for though she had burst the cocoon -of his theology, her mind was still entangled in the misty cobwebs of -his dialectics. Yes, she had always deluded herself with the belief that -the superior Rose Emily had made it possible for her to think tolerantly -of Nathan. Yet, deprived of that advantage, and left to flounder on -without intelligent guidance, he had become, Dorinda admitted -thoughtfully, more likable than ever. For the first time it occurred to -her that a marriage too much above one may become as great an obstacle -as a marriage too much below one. -</p> - -<p> -"How big is Green Acres?" she asked, keenly interested. -</p> - -<p> -Nathan's gaze sought the horizon. Before he replied he spat -a wad of tobacco from his mouth, while she looked vaguely over -the fields. -</p> - -<p> -"Counting the wasteland, it's near about fourteen hundred acres, -I reckon," he answered. "If Old Farm and Five Oaks were thrown -together, they'd more than balance Jim's land." -</p> - -<p> -"Are they doing anything over at Five Oaks?" -</p> - -<p> -"It don't look so, does it?" He waved his arm vaguely toward the blur of -spring foliage in the southeast. "I ain't heard any talk of it lately." -His tone had taken a sharper edge, and Dorinda knew he was thinking that -Jason had jilted her. People would always remember that whenever they -heard her name or Jason's. If they both lived to be old persons, and -never spoke to each other again, they could never dissolve that -intangible bond. In some subtle fashion, which she resented, she and -Jason were eternally joined together. -</p> - -<p> -"If they don't look sharp," Nathan concluded without glancing at her, -"the place will slip through their fingers. The old man has a big -mortgage on it. I took a share of it myself, and some day, if Jason -keeps going downhill, there'll be a foreclosure right over his head." -</p> - -<p> -A flame passed over Dorinda's face. So vivid was the sensation that she -felt as if they were encircled by burning grass. Ambition, which had -been formless and remote, became definite and immediate. -</p> - -<p> -"I'd give ten years of my life to own Five Oaks," she said. -</p> - -<p> -"You would?" The wish appeared to amuse him. "Looks as if you were -beginning to count your chickens before they're hatched." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it's absurd; but all the same I'd give ten years of my life to own -Five Oaks." -</p> - -<p> -The colour burned in her face and in her blue eyes which were looking -straight at the sunset. She appeared suddenly taller, stronger, more -imperious in her demands of life. -</p> - -<p> -"If we ever foreclose the mortgage, I'll bid in the farm for you," he -returned, with admiring facetiousness. A flush like the stain of -pokeberry juice was spreading over his leathery skin. -</p> - -<p> -She nodded gravely. "By that time I may be able to buy it. If hard work -can get you anywhere on a farm, I am going to be one of the best farmers -in this country." -</p> - -<p> -"Is Rufus to have any hand in it? You won't get far with Rufus." -</p> - -<p> -"No, he hates it. He is going to the city next winter. There won't be -anybody but Pa and me to manage." Her voice faltered from its dominant -note. Would there be her father? -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll help you," he promised, "all' I can. I've learned a little -by failing. That's as much as most farmers can say." When he dropped the -personal tone and began to talk of the things he knew, there was a -rustic dignity in his ugliness. After all, she could depend on him, and -that meant a good deal to her as a farmer. Rose Emily, she remembered, -used to say that you never realized Nathan's value until you tried -depending upon other people. The vision of Rose Emily illuminated her -thoughts like the last flare of the sunset. How brave she was, and how -brilliant! Though Nathan had loved her and been faithful to her while -she lived, after her death he had ceased to think of her with the mental -alacrity which appeared to overtake the emotions of the faithful and the -unfaithful alike. Already, she felt, Rose Emily was becoming nearer to -her than to Nathan. Nathan had lost a wife; but as the years passed her -friend would begin to live more vitally in her memory. -</p> - -<p> -They followed the band of pines and crossed an old hayfield, where a -flock of meadow-larks drifted up from the grass and scattered with a -flutter of white tail feathers. It was the thrushes' hour, and the -trees, reaching tall and straight up into the golden air, were as -musical as harps. She had forgotten Nathan now, and while she walked on -rapidly she was thinking that she would divide the farm into five -separate parts, leaving the larger part still abandoned. "I must go -slowly," she thought. "If I overdo it in the beginning, I'll spoil -everything." -</p> - -<p> -"You're up against something," Nathan was saying facetiously but firmly. -"This used to be good land in your great-grandfather's day, and some of -it ain't gone so bad but a thorough fertilizing would bring it back. -Your father did all he could, but one man ain't a team. He had to work -uphill with every darn thing, including the elements, against him." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, of course Pa did all he could." She had spoken the words so often -that they sounded now as hollow as a refrain. Yet they were true. Her -father had done all that one man could do on the farm. Yet the farm had -conquered him in the end and eaten away his strength. -</p> - -<p> -They were approaching Poplar Spring, where a silver vein of a stream -trickled over the flat grey rocks. The smell of wet leaves floated -toward her, and instantly the quiet moment snapped in two as if a blow -had divided it. Half of her mind was here, watching the meadow-larks -skimming over the fields, and the other half crouched under the dripping -boughs by the fork of the road. Only the imaginary half seemed more -real, more physical even, than the actual one. Not her mind, she felt -with horror, but her senses, her nerves, and the very corpuscles of her -blood, remembered the agony. -</p> - -<p> -"I think I'll go back," she said, turning quickly. "Ma might want me to -help her." -</p> - -<p> -"You look tired," he returned, with the consideration which Rose Emily -had disciplined into a habit. "Would you like to sit down and rest?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I'd better go back." -</p> - -<p> -They walked to the house in silence, and she scarcely heard him when he -said, "Good night," at the porch. -</p> - -<p> -"I hope you'll find your father better." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I hope I'll find him better." -</p> - -<p> -"If there's anything I can do, let me know." -</p> - -<p> -"If there is, I'll let you know." -</p> - -<p> -As he stepped into his buggy, he turned and called out, "I'll try to get -word to the hands to-night, and send them over the first thing in the -morning." -</p> - -<p> -What hands? What did they matter? What did anything matter? It seemed to -her suddenly that, not only her love for Jason, but everything, the -whole of life, was a mistake. Even her best endeavours, even her return -to the farm—"It might have been better if I'd decided differently," -she thought wearily; but when she tried to be definite, to imagine some -other decision she might have made, nothing occurred to her. Something? -But what? Where? She saw no other way, and she felt blindly that she -should never see one. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm tired," she thought, "and this makes me weak. Weakness doesn't help -anything." For an instant this thought held her; then it occurred to her -that, in the years to come, she would be continually tired; and that, -tired or not, she must fight against weakness. "I've got to go straight -ahead, no matter how I feel." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="VIII_I">VIII</a></h4> - -<p> -"Ebenezer Green?" -</p> - -<p> -"Dat's me." -</p> - -<p> -"Peter Plumtree?" -</p> - -<p> -"Dat's me." -</p> - -<p> -"Toby Jackson?" -</p> - -<p> -"Dat's me, Miss D'rindy." -</p> - -<p> -"Rapidan Finley?" -</p> - -<p> -"Dat's me." -</p> - -<p> -She was calling the names of the field hands, and while she went over -the list, her mind was busily assorting and grouping the faces before -her. Yes, she knew them all. Ever since she could remember they had been -a part of the country; she had passed them in the road every week, or -seen them in the vegetable patches in front of their cabins. Like her -mother, she was endowed with an intuitive understanding of the negroes; -she would always know how to keep on friendly terms with that immature -but not ungenerous race. Slavery in Queen Elizabeth County had rested -more lightly than elsewhere. The religion that made people hard to -themselves, her mother had often pointed out, made them impartially just -to their dependents; and like most generalizations, this one was elastic -enough to cover the particular instance. It was true that the coloured -people about Pedlar's Mill were as industrious and as prosperous as any -in the South, and that, within what their white neighbours called -reasonable bounds, there was, at the end of the nineteenth century, -little prejudice against them. Here and there a thriftless farmer, such -as Ike Pryde or Adam Snead, would display a fitful jealousy of Micajah -Green, who had turned a few barren acres into a flourishing farm; but -the better class of farmers preferred the intelligent coloured neighbour -to the ignorant white one. Both were social inferiors; but where the -matter was one solely of farming, the advantages would usually fall to -the more diligent. As for the negroes themselves, they lived contentedly -enough as inferiors though not dependents. In spite of the influence of -Aunt Mehitable Green, they had not yet learned to think as a race, and -the individual negro still attached himself instinctively to the -superior powers. -</p> - -<p> -"I remember you well, Ebenezer," she said; "you have a sister, Mary Joe. -I want her to help look after my henhouse." She laughed as she spoke -because she knew that the negroes would work twice as well for an -employer who laughed easily; but she wondered if they detected the -hollowness of the sound. It occurred to her, as she looked at the doomed -broomsedge across the road, that farming, like love, might prove -presently to be no laughing matter. -</p> - -<p> -Turning back toward the house, she met her mother, who was coming out -with a basin of cornmeal dough for the chickens. The sun had just risen, -and there was a sparkling freshness over the earth and in the luminous -globe of the sky. She had slept well, and with the morning weakness had -vanished. The wild part of her had perished like burned grass; out of -nothing, into nothing, that was the way of it. Now, armoured in reason, -she was ready to meet life on its own terms. -</p> - -<p> -"Do you know where Rufus is?" she asked. "I want him to see the hands -start work in the eighteen-acre field." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "I don't know. I thought he was going to -finish ploughing the tobacco field, but I saw him start off right after -breakfast with Ike Pryde. It seems they found honey in a big oak over by -Hoot Owl Woods, and they've set off with an axe to cut down the tree." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, the fool, the fool!" Dorinda exclaimed, and determined that she -would expect nothing more from Rufus. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, you know how men are," returned her mother, with unpolemical -wisdom. "They'll seize any excuse to stop work and cut down a tree." -</p> - -<p> -"I do know. But to cut down a big oak, and for honey!" -</p> - -<p> -The old woman scattered dough on the ground with an impartial hand. -"Rufus has got a mighty sweet tooth," she remarked. -</p> - -<p> -"So has Pa, but you never found him making an excuse to stop work." -</p> - -<p> -"I know. Your Pa always put his wishes aside. There ain't many men you -can say that of." Though she sighed over the fact, she accepted it as -one of the natural or acquired privileges of the male; and she felt that -these were too numerous to justify a special grievance against a -particular one. Even acquiescence with a sigh is easier than argument -when one is worn out with neuralgia and worse things. A frost had -blighted her impulse of opposition, and this seemed to Dorinda one of -the surest signs that her mother was failing. There were moments when it -would have been a relief to be contradicted. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll have to do it myself. Because I am a woman the hands will -expect me to shirk, and I must show them that I know what I am about." -</p> - -<p> -"I'll help you all I can, daughter." -</p> - -<p> -"I know you will." Dorinda's conscience reproached her for her -impatience. "You will be wonderful with the hens, and I'll get -Ebenezer's sister Mary Joe to help you. She must be fourteen or -fifteen." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, she's a real bright girl," Mrs. Oakley remarked, without -enthusiasm. She had scarcely closed her eyes all night, and bright -coloured girls, even when they helped in the henhouse, left her -indifferent. "I'm going down in the garden to see if I can find a mess -of turnip salad," she added after a pause, in which she scooped the last -remnant of dough out of the basin and flung it into the midst of the -brood of chickens. -</p> - -<p> -"Let me go while you sit with Pa. I was coming in to see about him -before I went down to the field where they are working." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "No, I can't keep still in the daytime. It's -hard enough having to do it at night. Fluvanna couldn't get over early -to-day; but she sent her little sister Ruby, and she is keeping the -flies off your father's face. That's all anybody can do for him now." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll speak to him anyway. Then I'll see after the hands." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley raised her eyes to her daughter's face. "You've brought back -a heap of vim, Dorinda," she said dispassionately, "but I reckon you've -been away from the farm too long to know what it's like." -</p> - -<p> -She put the basin down on a bench, picked up a blue gingham sunbonnet -she had laid there when she came out, and started, with her nervous -walk, to the garden at the end of the yard. -</p> - -<p> -In her father's room, Dorinda found a small coloured girl, in a pink -calico slip, perched on a high stool by the bedside. Her bare feet -clutched the round of the stool; her eyes, like black beads, roved -ceaselessly from the wall to the floor; and her thin monkey-like hand -waved a palm-leaf fan to and fro over Joshua's immovable features. -</p> - -<p> -"Good morning, Ruby. Has Pa moved since you've been here?" -</p> - -<p> -"Gwamawnin'. Naw'm, he ain' don ez much ez bat 'is eyelids." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda caught the fan away from her. "Don't you go to school in the -mornings?" she inquired, after a pause in which she tried to think of -something to say. -</p> - -<p> -"Dar ain' none." -</p> - -<p> -"Aren't you learning to read and write?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes'm. Fluvanna she knows, en she's larnin' me." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, run away now, and come back when I call you." -</p> - -<p> -The little girl ran out gladly, and Dorinda took her place on the stool -and brushed the flies away with slow, firm waves of the fan. -Immediately, as soon as she had settled herself, something of her -mother's restlessness rushed over her, and she felt a hysterical longing -to get up and move about or to go out into the air. "If I feel this -way," she thought, "what must it mean to poor Pa to lie there like -that?" -</p> - -<p> -Since the hour of her return he had not appeared to recognize her. He -was beyond reach of any help, of any voice, of any hand, lost in some -mental wilderness which was more impenetrable than the jungles of earth. -Though he was apparently not unconscious, he was beyond all awareness. -His eyes never left the great pine, and once when his wife had started -to close the shutters, a frown had gathered on his forehead and lingered -there until she had desisted and turned away from the window. Then his -face had cleared and the look of hard-earned rest had returned to his -features. -</p> - -<p> -While she sat there, Dorinda began counting imaginary chickens, a method -of collecting her thoughts which she had learned as a child from Aunt -Mehitable. She was still counting the fictitious flock when Joshua -opened his eyes and looked straight up at her with an expression of -startled wonder and surprise, as if he were on the point of speaking. -</p> - -<p> -"What is it?" she asked, bending nearer. -</p> - -<p> -His lips moved, and for an instant she was visited by an indescribable -sensation. He was so near to her that she seemed, in the same moment, -never to have known him before and yet to know him completely. She felt -that he was trying to speak some words that would make everything clear -and simple between them, that would explain away all the mistakes and -misunderstandings of life. -</p> - -<p> -"What is it?" she repeated, breathless with hope. -</p> - -<p> -Again his lips moved slightly; but no sound came, and the look of wonder -and surprise faded slowly out of his face. His eyes closed, and a minute -later his heavy breathing told her that he had relapsed into stupor. -</p> - -<p> -"I must ask him when he wakes," she thought. "I must ask him what he -wanted to tell me." -</p> - -<p> -After dinner she hunted for Rufus again, but he had not, it appeared, -returned to the farm. -</p> - -<p> -"I reckon he went home with Ike Pryde," his mother said. "He's been -seeing too much of Ike, and I'm afraid it ain't good for him. The last -time Almira was over here she told me Ike was drinking again." She was -worried and anxious, and the twitching was worse in her face. "I declare -I don't see how Almira can put up with him," she said. -</p> - -<p> -"Then I'll have to harness Dan myself," Dorinda replied. "I've got on my -best dress, so I hoped Rufus would drag out the buggy. I'm going over to -Green Acres." -</p> - -<p> -"I was wondering what you'd put on your blue poplin for," Mrs. Oakley -returned. "I'd think that hanging veil would get in your way; but if -you're going over to the Ellgoods', I'm glad you dressed up. Fluvanna, I -reckon, will hitch up the buggy for you." -</p> - -<p> -Fluvanna, emerging from the kitchen, offered eagerly to look for Dan in -the pasture. "He ain't got away," she said, "for I saw him at the bars -jest a minute ago." She had gone to school whenever there was one for -coloured children in the neighbourhood, and though her speech was still -picturesque, she had discarded the pure dialect of Aunt Mehitable and -her generation. "Don't you worry, Miss Dorinda," she added, hurrying -down the path to the pasture. -</p> - -<p> -"I tell Fluvanna that her sunny disposition is worth a fortune," Mrs. -Oakley remarked. "She never gets put out about anything." -</p> - -<p> -"I believe she'll be a great comfort to us," Dorinda returned -thoughtfully. She liked the girl's pleasant brown face, as glossy as a -chestnut, her shining black eyes, and her perfect teeth, which showed -always, for she never stopped smiling. "Just to have anybody look -intelligent is a relief." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, you'll find that Fluvanna has plenty of sense. Of course she -slights things when she can, but she is always willing and -good-humoured. You don't often find a hard worker, white or black, with -a sunny temper." -</p> - -<p> -They were still discussing her when Fluvanna drove up in the buggy and -descended to offer the dilapidated reins to Dorinda. -</p> - -<p> -"Thank you, Fluvanna. I declare this buggy looks as if it hadn't been -washed off for a year." -</p> - -<p> -Fluvanna, who had not observed the mud, turned her beaming eyes on the -buggy and perceived that it was dirty. -</p> - -<p> -"I'll come over the first thing in the mawnin' an' wash it for you," she -promised. "There ain't a bit of use dependin' on Mr. Rufus. He won't do -nothin'." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda gathered up the reins, settled herself on the bagging which -covered the seat, and turned Dan's head kindly but firmly away from the -pasture. -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder if things used to look as dilapidated, only I didn't notice -them so much," she thought. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="IX_I">IX</a></h4> - -<p> -Dan travelled slowly, and the Ellgoods lived three miles on the other -side of Pedlar's Mill. Green Acres was the largest stock farm in the -county; but what impressed Dorinda more than the size was the general -air of thrift which hovered over the pastures, the deep green meadows, -and the white buildings clustering about the red brick house. -</p> - -<p> -"I couldn't have anything like this in a hundred years," she thought -cheerlessly. Her scheme, which had appeared so promising when she -surveyed it from Central Park, presented, at a closer view, innumerable -obstacles. There was not one chance in a thousand, she told herself now, -that the venture would lead anywhere except into a bog. "But I'm in it -now, and I must see it through," she concluded, with less audacity than -determination. "I'll not give up as long as there is breath left in my -body." Rolling in mud-caked wheels up the neat drive to the house, she -resolved stubbornly that no one, least of all James Ellgood, should -suspect that she had lost heart in her enterprise. -</p> - -<p> -James Ellgood was at Queen Elizabeth Courthouse for the day; but Bob, -his son, who had recently brought home a dissatisfied and delicate wife -from a hospital in Baltimore, was on the front porch awaiting his -visitor. When she appeared in sight, he threw away the match he was -striking on his boot, and after thrusting his old brier pipe into his -pocket, descended the steps and came across the drive to the buggy. -Nathan would have smoked, or still worse have chewed, Dorinda knew, -while he received her; but inconsistently enough, she did not like him -the less for his boorishness. Utility, not punctilio, was what she -required of men at this turning point in her career. -</p> - -<p> -While Bob Ellgood held out his hand, she could see her reflection in his -large, placid eyes as clearly as if her features were mirrored in the -old mill pond. It gave her pleasure to feel that she was more -distinguished, if less desirable, than she had been two years ago; but -her pleasure was as impersonal as her errand. She had no wish to attract -this heavy, masterful farmer, who reminded her of a sleek, mild-mannered -Jersey bull; no wish, at least, to attract him beyond the point where -his admiration might help her to drive a bargain in cows. Gazing -critically at his handsome face, she remembered the Sunday mornings when -she had watched him in church and had wished with all her heart that he -would turn his eyes in her direction. Then he had not so much as glanced -at her over his hymn book, his slow mind was probably revolving round -his engagement; but now she felt instinctively that he was ready to -catch fire from a look or a word. The absurd twist of an idea jerked -into her mind. "He would have suited me better than Jason, and I should -have suited him better than the woman he married." Well, that was the -way the eternal purpose worked, she supposed, but it seemed to her a -cumbersome and blundering method. -</p> - -<p> -"Nathan told me you wanted to buy some cows," he was saying, for he was -as single-minded as other successful men, only more so. "I picked out -seven fine ones this morning and had them brought up to the small -pasture. They'll be at the bars now, and you can look them over. There -isn't a better breed than the Jersey, that's what we think, and these -young cows are as good as any you'll find." -</p> - -<p> -At the bars of the pasture, where a weeping willow dipped over the -watering trough, the Jerseys were standing in a row, satin-coated, -fawn-eyed, with breath like new-mown hay. What beauties they were, -thought Dorinda, swept away in spite of her determination to bargain. -When Bob told her the names she repeated them in blissful accents. -"Rose. Sweetbriar. Hollyhock. Pansy. Daisy. Violet. Verbena." To think -that she, who had never owned anything, should actually possess these -adorable creatures! Even the price, which seemed to her excessively -high, could not spoil her delight. A hundred dollars for each cow, Bob -explained, was a third less than they would bring at the fair next -autumn. -</p> - -<p> -"I am glad you are going into the dairy business," he proceeded. "I -always said this country would do for dairy farming, though it takes -more money, of course, to start a dairy farm than it does just to plant -crops. The cows ain't all of it, you know. You ought to raise your own -hay and the corn you need for silage. Borrow money, too, if you haven't -got it, to drain and tile your fields. It will pay you back in the long -run, for I doubt if you will get any good clover until you put ditches -in your land. All that takes money, of course," he continued, with -depressing accuracy, "but it is the only way to make anything out of a -farm. Father says there ain't but one way to learn to do anything, and -that's the right way." -</p> - -<p> -"I know," Dorinda assented. Her tone was confident, but it seemed to her -while she spoke that she was being buried under the impoverished acres -of Old Farm. -</p> - -<p> -"And there's machinery," he added. "Father borrowed money after the war -to buy new machinery. When he came home after Appomattox, all the farm -implements were either lost or good for nothing. He went in debt and -bought the newest inventions, and that was the beginning of his success. -The legacy from Uncle Mitchell came after he was well started, and he -always says he could have got on without it, though perhaps not on so -large a scale." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll borrow," said Dorinda defiantly. "We've always been afraid -of debt; but I've already borrowed two thousand dollars, and if I need -more, I'll try to get it. Nathan is going to pick up whatever machinery -he can at auction. That will be less than half the actual cost, he -says." -</p> - -<p> -He was looking at her now with keen, impersonal admiration. Just as if -she had been a man, she thought, with a glow of triumph. Though the -sensation was without the excitement of sex vanity, she found that it -was quite as gratifying, and, she suspected, more durable. Already he -had forgotten the momentary physical appeal she had made to him in the -beginning; and she felt that his respect for her was based upon what he -believed to be her character. "It isn't what I am really that matters," -she thought. "It is just the impression I make on his mind or senses. -Men are all like that, I suppose. They don't know you. They don't even -wish to know you. They are interested in nothing on earth but their own -reactions." And she remembered suddenly that Jason had once generalized -like this about women, and that she was merely copying what he had said. -How stupid generalizations were, and how deceptive! -</p> - -<p> -"I hope you'll make a success of it," Bob said. "I like women who take -hold of things and aren't afraid of work when they have to do it. That's -the right spirit." A moody frown contracted his fore head, and she knew -that he was thinking of his wife, though he added after a moment's -hesitation, "Look at my sister now. She's as young as you are and she -lies round all day like an old woman." -</p> - -<p> -"Perhaps it's her health," Dorinda suggested, moving away. -</p> - -<p> -"Why shouldn't she be healthy? We're all healthy enough, Heaven knows! -Not that I wonder at it," he continued thoughtlessly, "when I remember -that she was such a fool as to fall in love with Jason Greylock." The -next instant a purple flush dyed his face, and she could see his -thoughts rising like fish to the fluid surface of his mind. "Not that he -ill-treats her. He knows Father wouldn't stand for that," he added -hurriedly, caught in the net he had unconsciously spread. "But his -laziness is bred in the bone, and he's the sort that will let apples rot -on the ground rather than pick them up." -</p> - -<p> -"I know," Dorinda said, and she did. That was what her mother called the -mental malaria of the country. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, it's the blood, I reckon," he conceded more tolerantly. "There's -enough to work against without having to struggle to get the better of -your own blood. Come this way," he continued, leading her to a different -pasture, "I want you to have a look at our prize bull. Five blue ribbons -already; and we've a yearling that promises to be still finer. A beauty, -isn't he?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda gazed at the bull with admiration and envy, while he returned -her look with royal, inscrutable eyes. "I wonder if I shall ever own a -creature like that?" she thought. "He looks as if he owned everything -and yet despised it," she said aloud. -</p> - -<p> -Bob laughed. "Yes, he's got a high-and-mighty air, hasn't he? By the -way, those Jerseys have never been milked by a woman. I don't know how -they'll take to it. Will you hire a man?" -</p> - -<p> -"Not at first. Until I get started well, I'm going to do my own milking. -I can put on Rufus's overalls, and when I milk myself I can be sure of -the way the cows are handled. With negroes you can never tell. Nathan -says they let his cows go dry because they don't take the trouble to -milk them thoroughly. And they won't be clean, no matter how much you -talk to them. When I tell them I'm going to keep my cows washed and -brushed and the stalls free from a speck of dirt, they think it's a -joke." -</p> - -<p> -"That's the trouble. Cleanliness is a joke with most of the farmers -about here, but it's the first step to success in dairy farming. It -keeps down disease, especially contagious abortion, better than anything -else. Yes, you've got the right idea. It means hard work, of course, -though you'll find it's worth while in the end." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I don't mind work. What else is there in life?" -</p> - -<p> -His eyes were shining as he looked at her. "Well, I wish my wife had a -little of your spirit. It isn't only that she's delicate. I believe that -she's afraid of everything in the country from a grasshopper to an ox." -</p> - -<p> -"She didn't grow up on a farm. That makes a difference." He sighed. -"Yes, it does make a difference." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, it's a pity. I'm glad I don't have to struggle with fear." A -little later, as she drove across the railway tracks and down the long -slope in the direction of Old Farm, she reflected dispassionately upon -the crookedness of human affairs. Why had that honest farmer, robust, -handsome, without an idea above bulls and clover, mated with a woman who -was afraid of a grasshopper? And why had she, in whom life burned so -strong and bright, wasted her vital energy on the mere husk of a man? -Why, above all, should Nature move so unintelligently in the matter of -instinct? Did this circle of reasoning lead back inevitably, she -wondered, to the steadfast doctrine of original sin? "The truth is we -always want what is bad for us, I suppose," she concluded, and gave up -the riddle. -</p> - -<p> -Just beyond the station, in front of the "old Haney place," she met -William Fairlamb, and stopped to ask him about repairing the cow-barn -and the henhouse. He was a tall, stooped, old-looking young man, with -shaggy flaxen hair and round grey eyes as opaque as pebbles. Though his -expression was stupid, he had intelligence above the ordinary, and was -the best carpenter at Pedlar's Mill. -</p> - -<p> -"If you're going to keep cows, you'd better see that Doctor Greylock -mends his fences," he said, after he had promised to begin on the -cow-barn as soon as he had finished his contract with Ezra Flower. "That -old black steer of his is a public nuisance. I've had him wandering over -my wheat-fields all winter. It's a mortal shame the way the Greylocks -are letting that farm peter out." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it's a shame," she agreed, and drove on again. Wherever she -turned, it appeared that she was to be met by a reminder that Jason was -living so near her. "If only he were dead," she thought, as impersonally -as if she were thinking of the black steer that trampled the ploughed -fields. "I shall have to go on hearing about him now until the end of my -days." -</p> - -<p> -There was no regret, she told herself, left in her memory; yet whenever -she heard his name, or recalled his existence, her spirits flagged -beneath an overpowering sense of futility. At such moments, she was -obliged to spur her body into action. "It will be like this always, -until one of us is dead," she reflected. Though she neither loved nor -hated him now, the thought of him, which still lived on in some obscure -chamber of her mind, was sufficient to disturb and disarrange her whole -inner life. The part of her consciousness that she could control she had -released from his influence; but there were innate impulses which were -independent of her will or her emotions; and in these blind instincts of -her being there were even now occasional flashes of longing. While she -was awake she could escape him; but at night, when she slept, she would -live over again all the happiest hours she had spent with him. Never the -pain, never the cruelty of the past; only the beauty and the -unforgettable ecstasy came back to her in her dreams. -</p> - -<p> -As she drove out of the woods the sun was sinking beyond the cleft of -the road, and a slow procession of shadows was moving across the -broomsedge, where little waves of light quivered and disappeared and -quivered again like ripples in running water. While she passed on, the -expression of the landscape faded from tranquil brightness to the look -of unresisting fortitude which it had worn as far back as she could -remember. In her heart also she felt that the brightness quivered and -died. With her drooping energy, weariness had crept over her; but out of -weariness, she passed presently, like the country, into a mood of -endurance. She realized, without despair, that the general aspect of her -life would be one of unbroken monotony. Enthusiasm would not last. -Energy would not last. Cheerfulness, buoyancy, interest, not one of -these qualities would last as long as she needed it. Nothing would last -through to the end except courage. -</p> - -<p> -Her gaze was on the horizon. The reins, tied together with a bit of -rope, were held loosely in her hands. With every turn of the wheel, a -shower of dried mud was scattered over her clothes. So completely lost -was she in memory that at first she barely heard the noise of an -approaching rider, and the hollow sound of horseshoes striking on rock. -Even before her mind became aware of Jason's approach, her startled -senses leaped toward him. Her body bent for an instant, and then sprang -back like a steel wire. With an impassive face, and a torment of memory -in her heart, she sat staring far ahead, at the blur of road by the -cabin. She was back again within the prison of that moment which was -eternal; yet there was no sign of suffering in the blank look of her -eyes. Her hand did not tremble; the loosened reins did not waver; and -when a voice called her name, she did not reveal by the quiver of an -eyelash that she listened. -</p> - -<p> -"Dorinda! Dorinda, let me speak to you!" -</p> - -<p> -She raised her eyes from the road and looked beyond the waving -broomsedge to the topaz-coloured light on the western horizon. The -longing to look in his face, to turn and rend him with her scorn, was as -sharp as a blade; but some deep instinct told her that if she yielded to -the impulse, the struggle was lost. To recognize his existence was to -restore, in a measure, his power over her life. Only by keeping him -outside her waking moments could she win freedom. -</p> - -<p> -"Dorinda, you are hard. Dorinda——" -</p> - -<p> -They were side by side now in the road. If he had reached out his hand, -he could have touched her. If she had turned her head, she might have -looked into his eyes. But she did not turn; she did not withdraw her -gaze from the landscape; she did not relax in the weakest muscle from -her attitude of unyielding disdain. Though he were to ride all the way -home with her, she told herself, he could not force her to speak to him. -No matter what he did, he could never make her speak to him or look at -him again! -</p> - -<p> -The sunken places in the road retarded him, and when he reached her side -again, they were passing the burned cabin. For an instant, when they -approached the fork, he hesitated, as if he were tempted to follow her -still farther. Then, deciding abruptly, he wheeled about and alighted to -open the red gate of Five Oaks. -</p> - -<p> -"I'll see you again," he called back. -</p> - -<p> -For a few minutes after he had disappeared, she sat rigidly erect, as if -she had been frozen into her attitude of repulsion. Then, suddenly, she -gave way; a shudder seized her limbs, and the reins slipped from her -hands to the bottom of the buggy. She was like a person who has escaped -some fearful calamity, and who has not realized the danger until it is -over. When the trembling had passed, she stooped and picked up the -reins. "It will be easier next time," she said, and a moment later, "I -suppose I've got to get used to it. You can get used to anything if you -have to." A dull misery stupefied her thoughts, and she was without -clear perception of what the meeting had meant to her. "I can't -understand why I suffer so," she pondered. "I can't understand how a -person you despise can make you so unhappy." -</p> - -<p> -As she drew nearer home, Dan quickened his pace, and the buggy rattled -over the bridge and up the rocky slope to the stable. The glow had faded -from the west, and the long white house glimmered through the twilight, -which was settling like silver dust over the landscape. A banner of -smoke drooped low over a single chimney. Beyond the roof the budding -trees appeared as diaphanous as mist against the greenish-blue of the -sky. In the window of the west wing a lamp was shining. So she had seen -it on innumerable evenings in the past; so she would see it, if she -lived, on innumerable evenings in the future. -</p> - -<p> -Then, just as she was about to drive on to the stable, she observed that -shadows were moving to and fro beyond the single lighted window. Though -the outward aspect of the house was unchanged, there was, nevertheless, -a subtle alteration in its spirit. For an instant, while she hesitated, -there seemed to her an ominous message in these hurried shadows and this -absence of noise. Her throat tightened, and she sprang from the buggy as -the door opened and Rufus came out. -</p> - -<p> -"He died a few minutes ago," he said. -</p> - -<p> -A few minutes ago! "I'll never know now what he tried to tell me," she -thought. "No matter how long I live, I shall never know." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="X_I">X</a></h4> - -<p> -After the last prayer, the earth was shovelled back into the hollow -beneath the great pine in the graveyard, and the movement of the farm -began again with scarcely a break in its monotony. Joshua Oakley had -sacrificed his life to the land, and yet, or so it seemed to Dorinda, -his death made as little difference as if a tree had fallen and rotted -back into the soil. Even her own sorrow was a sense of pity rather than -a personal grief. -</p> - -<p> -When the neighbours had driven solemnly out of the gate, the family -assembled in Mrs. Oakley's chamber and gazed through the window to the -graveyard on the hill, as if they were waiting expectantly for the dead -man to rise and return to his work. The only change would be, they -acknowledged, that two hired labourers would grumble over a division of -the toil which Joshua had performed alone and without a complaint. The -farm had always belonged to Mrs. Oakley; but in order that her authority -might be assured, Joshua had made a will a few months before his death -and had left her the farm implements and the horses. Dissimilar as her -parents had appeared to be, there was a bond between them which Dorinda -felt without comprehending. This was the growth of habit, she supposed, -or the tenacious clinging of happy memories which had survived the frost -of experience. In his dumb way, Joshua had been proud of his wife, and -Eudora had depended upon her husband for more substantial qualities than -those of sentiment. He had been useful to her in the practical details -of living, and she was feeling his loss as one feels the loss of a -faculty. Here was another proof, Dorinda reflected, of the varied -texture of life, another reminder of her folly in attempting to weave -durable happiness out of a single thread of emotion. -</p> - -<p> -"I don't see how we'll manage to get on without him," said Mrs. Oakley, -who looked gaunt and bleached in the old mourning she had worn for her -dead children. -</p> - -<p> -"I reckon it means I'll have to stay on here," Rufus muttered in a tone -of sullen rebellion. "I'll have to give up that job Tom Garlick promised -me next winter in New York. It's darn luck, that's what I call it." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, no, you mustn't stay," Dorinda urged. "Ma and I can get on -perfectly by ourselves. It won't make any difference if you go in the -fall." -</p> - -<p> -"You'd better take Dorinda's advice and get away, Rufus." Though Mrs. -Oakley spoke in a quiet voice, her face had gone grey at the thought of -losing Rufus also. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'm afraid I can't help you now," said Josiah, glancing furtively -at his wife, who had proved to be a termagant with generous impulses -which were brief but explosive. -</p> - -<p> -"Of course your Ma could always come to live with us," suggested Elvira, -obeying the briefest of these impulses. "She'd find plenty to do looking -after the chickens, and the children would keep her from being -lonesome." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley's eyes filled with tears. The old hound, having outlived his -master, lay at her feet, and stooping over she stroked his head with a -trembling hand. "But what would become of the farm?" she asked in a -voice that quavered. "I want to die on the farm where I was born." -</p> - -<p> -"We'll stay here alone, Ma and I," Dorinda declared, with the stern -integrity she had won from transgression. "The farm belongs to Ma, and -she and I can take care of it. We don't need a man," she added crisply. -"If I couldn't do better than the men about here, I'd be a mighty poor -farmer." -</p> - -<p> -Elvira breathed more freely, and the wrinkles vanished from Josiah's -forehead. As for Rufus, he had lost interest in the discussion as soon -as it was decided that he might leave the farm in the autumn. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm sure none of us would want to take Ma against her will," Elvira -said, relieved and conciliatory because her generosity had been wasted. -"The place belongs to her anyway, so the rest of us haven't anything to -say about what she does with it." With a habitual jerk, which had -annoyed Dorinda the first moment she saw her, the girl adjusted the belt -of her skirt and rested her hands on her rapidly spreading hips. -</p> - -<p> -"You needn't worry about Ma," Dorinda rejoined firmly. "I am going to -take care of her." Her one wish, she felt, was to get Elvira and Josiah -out of the house. Even Rufus was less depressing. Rufus at least had -good looks; but Josiah and Elvira existed in her mind only as appalling -examples of inherent futility. While she looked at Josiah, it seemed to -her that failure oozed out of the very pores of his skin. Though he -worked from morning till night, he was hampered by a fumbling slowness -which reminded Dorinda of the efforts of a half-witted person. Yet her -father, in spite of his ignorance, had possessed an industry that was -tireless, while her mother was afflicted by a veritable mania of energy. -Was it a matter of circumstances, after all, not of heredity? Had the -more active strain succumbed at last to the climatic inertia? Well, if -the fight had narrowed down to one between herself and her surroundings, -she was determined to conquer. Beneath her sombre brows her eyes looked -out like caged bluebirds. She was wearing a black calico dress which had -once belonged to Miss Seena Snead, and the mourning brought out vividly -the dusk of her hair and the bright red of her lips. "There's no use -talking to me. I've made up my mind," she said. -</p> - -<p> -An hour later, when Josiah and Elvira had gone home, Dorinda helped her -mother to take off her mourning and straighten the chamber in which -Joshua had lain. -</p> - -<p> -"It's the smell of mourning I can't stand," said the girl, while she -folded the crape veil and laid it away in the bandbox. "Do you think -I'll have to wear it?" -</p> - -<p> -"It wouldn't be respectful not to," Mrs. Oakley replied, and she asked -after a minute: "What do you want with those overalls of Rufus's that -you took upstairs?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda turned from the wardrobe and looked at her. "They are old ones -I'm patching," she answered. "I am going to wear them when I'm milking. -Those Jerseys have never been milked by a woman." -</p> - -<p> -"I s'pose they'd get used to it." -</p> - -<p> -"They might, but it's easier for me to wear overalls than to break them. -You can't farm in skirts anyway." -</p> - -<p> -"You ain't going to wear them on the farm, are you?" -</p> - -<p> -"If I can farm better in them, I'm going to wear them." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley sighed. "Well, I hope nobody will see you." -</p> - -<p> -"I don't care," Dorinda replied stubbornly. "I'm going to milk my cows -my own way. I've got some common sense," she added sternly, "and I'm the -only person, man or woman, in the county who has." -</p> - -<p> -The old woman's face was as inanimate as a mask, but her eyes were -fixed, with their look of prophetic doom, on the great pine in the -graveyard. "I can't help thinking," she murmured, "how your father used -to lie here day after day and look at that big pine. It seems as if that -tree meant more to him than anything human." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda followed her gaze. "In a way it did," she said slowly, as if -some inscrutable mystery were dissolving in a flood of surprise. "In a -different way." -</p> - -<p> -With a band of crape in her hands, Mrs. Oakley stared up at the -harp-shaped boughs. "I reckon it's a heathenish way to think about -things," she observed presently, "but I can't help feeling there's a -heap of comfort in it." -</p> - -<p> -When the room had been cleaned and the mourning pinned up again in -newspapers, Dorinda begged her mother to rest before Rufus came back to -supper. -</p> - -<p> -"I couldn't, daughter, not with all I've got on my mind," Mrs. Oakley -replied firmly. "I remember when the doctor tried to get your father to -give up for a while, he'd shake his head and answer, 'Doctor, I don't -know how to stop.' That's the trouble with me, I reckon. I don't know -how to stop." -</p> - -<p> -"If you choose to kill yourself, I don't see how I can prevent it." -Dorinda's voice wavered with exasperation. If only her mother would -listen to reason, she felt, both of their lives would be so much easier. -But did mothers ever listen to reason? "I'm going to walk up to Poplar -Spring and look at the woods you wrote me about," she added. "I hope we -shan't have to sell them and put the money into the land." -</p> - -<p> -"Your father was holding on to that timber to bury us with. There are -all the funeral expenses to come." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I know." Dorinda regarded her thoughtfully. "Poor Pa, it was all -he had and he wanted to hold on to it. But, you see,"—her tone -sharpened to the bitter edge of desperation—"I am depending upon my -butter to bury us both, and who knows but your chickens may supply us -with tombstones." -</p> - -<p> -"I hope New York didn't turn you into a scoffer, Dorinda." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda laughed. "New York didn't get a chance, Ma. Pedlar's Mill had -done it first." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, there ain't anything too solemn for some folks to joke about. You -ain't goin' out in Seena Snead's black dress, are you?" -</p> - -<p> -"She's gone out of mourning, so she gave it to me." -</p> - -<p> -"I'd think you'd hate to take charity." -</p> - -<p> -There were times when it seemed to Dorinda that she could not breathe -within the stark limitations of her mother's point of view. As she ran -out of the room and the house, without heeding Mrs. Oakley's request -that she should wear a hat at least on the day of the funeral, she asked -herself if this aimless nagging was all that she could expect in the -future. She was fond of her mother; but fondness, strangely enough, did -not seem to make it easier for people to bear one another's tempers. -</p> - -<p> -The path to Poplar Spring ran beside the eighteen-acre field, and she -stopped amid the dusty fennel and ragweed to inspect the work of the -last two days. The broomsedge had been partly cut down and burned, and -the blackened ruins waited now for the final obliteration. "It will be -hard work to get good grass here," she thought, "but if I keep turning -cowpeas under, I may bring up the soil in time." In the pasture, beyond -a rail fence, the grass was rank and high, for only Dan and Beersheba -had grazed there for the last four or five years. The solitary cow, when -they were fortunate as to own one, lived on the lawn or what was called -"the home field," where Mrs. Oakley milked in summer. Across the road -she saw the scantily fenced west meadow, where her father had sown his -winter wheat, and her eyes filled with tears as she gazed on the -sprinkling of green over the earth. While she stood there she remembered -the look on his face when he lay in his coffin; a look which was -austere, inaccessible, with a reproachful wonder beneath its mask of -solemnity, as if he were still asking life why it had crushed him. -"Whatever I give, the farm will be always mine," she thought. "That was -the way he felt. The farm isn't human and it won't make you suffer. Only -human things break your heart." Everything appeared so simple when she -regarded it through the film of sentiment that obscured her judgment. -Kinship with the land was filtered through her blood into her brain; and -she knew that this transfigured instinct was blended of pity, memory, -and passion. Dimly, she felt that only through this fresh emotion could -she attain permanent liberation of spirit. -</p> - -<p> -Moving away, she followed the path which threaded the scrub pines on the -border of the broomsedge. Presently she distinguished the blur of Poplar -Spring in the distance, and toward the east the acres of fair timber -which had matured since her great-grandfather's death. In her new -reverence for her father she shrank from cutting down the tall trees. -"It would be slaughter," she said to herself. "I'll let the woods stand -as long as I can." -</p> - -<p> -Overhead, the pines were soughing in a light wind, and for a moment or -two the sound of footsteps behind her was scarcely louder than the -whispering trees. Then, with a start, she realized that she was -followed, and glancing round, she saw Jason walking over the scarred -field. -</p> - -<p> -"I know you didn't want me at the funeral, Dorinda," he said, "but it -was all I could do to show my respect for your father. He was one of the -best men who ever lived." -</p> - -<p> -Her breast quivered with pain, but she moved on without appearing to be -aware of his presence. -</p> - -<p> -"I was afraid you were angry because I came," he continued. -</p> - -<p> -At this her pride was swallowed up in bitterness, and she stopped and -looked back. "You had no right to come. You knew I did not want you -there." -</p> - -<p> -Without replying to her charge, he stared at her as if he were amazed by -the change in her face. "This is the first time you've looked at me -since you came home," he said. "You've treated me as if I were the dirt -under your feet." -</p> - -<p> -Her hand was on the slender bough of a pine, and stripping the needles -from the branch, she flung them out on the wind with a passionate -gesture. Over the chaos in her mind there darted the shadow of a regret. -"If only I had killed him that night!" -</p> - -<p> -"Even now, you won't let your eyes rest on me," he complained. "If you'd -given me a chance, I'd have done anything you wanted. But you never gave -me a chance. You never listened." -</p> - -<p> -Her gaze, which had been fixed on the horizon beyond him, swept back to -his face. "Your following me won't make me listen." -</p> - -<p> -"If only you knew what I've suffered." -</p> - -<p> -She was looking at him now with merciless eyes. For this thing she had -ruined her life! Then, before the thought had left her mind, she -realized that in his presence, with her eyes on his face, she was -farther away from him than she had been in New York. Yesterday, he had -had power over her senses; to-morrow, he might have power again over her -memory; but at this instant, while they stood there, so close together -that she could almost feel his breath on her face, her senses and her -memory alike were delivered from the old torment of love. -</p> - -<p> -"My nerve is going," he said weakly, attempting to soften her. "I've -started drinking like Father." -</p> - -<p> -Looking at him, she admitted that it was only her feeling for him, not -the man himself, that had changed. Superficially, in spite of excessive -drinking, he was as attractive as he had ever been; yet this appeal, -which she had found so irresistible two years ago, failed now to awaken -the faintest tremor in her heart. The contrast between his brown-black -eyes and his red hair seemed to her artificial: there was something -repellent to her in the gleam of his white teeth through his short red -moustache. These were the physical details that had once affected her so -deeply; these traits which she saw now, for the first time, in the -spectral light of disenchantment. -</p> - -<p> -"Can you never understand," she asked suddenly, "that I don't hate you -because you mean to me—just nothing." -</p> - -<p> -"You are sending me straight to the dogs." -</p> - -<p> -She laughed. How theatrical men were! Beneath her ridicule, she felt the -cruelty which gnaws like a worm at the heart of emotion in its decay. -</p> - -<p> -"Why should I care?" she demanded. -</p> - -<p> -"You mean you wouldn't care if I were to die a drunkard like my father?" -His voice trembled, and she saw that he was wrestling with man's -inability to believe that a woman's love can perish while his own still -survives. -</p> - -<p> -"No, I shouldn't care." -</p> - -<p> -"You're hard, Dorinda, as hard as a stone." -</p> - -<p> -Her smile was exultant. "Yes, I am hard. I'm through with soft things." -</p> - -<p> -Turning her back on him, she walked rapidly away over the ploughed -ground in the direction of the house. Oh, if the women who wanted love -could only know the infinite relief of having love over! -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XI_I">XI</a></h4> - -<p> -On an afternoon in October, Dorinda stood under the harp-shaped pine in -the graveyard and looked down on the farm. -</p> - -<p> -The drift of autumn was in the air; the shadows from the west were -growing longer; and in a little while Nimrod, the farm boy, would let -down the bars by the watering-trough, and the seven Jersey cows would -file sleepily across the road and the lawn to the cow-barn. At the first -glimpse of Nimrod she would run down and slip into her overalls. Ever -since the cows had come from Green Acres, she had milked them morning -and evening, and she was wondering now how many more she could handle -with only Fluvanna to help her. Only by doing the work herself and -keeping a relentless eye on every detail, could she hope to succeed in -the end. If she were once weak enough to compromise with the natural -carelessness of the negroes, she knew that the pails and pans would not -be properly scalded, and the milk would begin to lose its quality. -Fluvanna was the superior of most ignorant white women; but even -Fluvanna, though she was, as Dorinda said to herself, one in a thousand, -would slight her work as soon as she was given authority over others. -There were times when it seemed to Dorinda that this instinct to slight -was indigenous to the soil of the South. In the last six months she had -felt the temptation herself. There had been hours of weariness when it -had seemed to her that it was better to be swift and casual than to be -slow and thorough; but she had always suppressed the impulse before it -was translated into outward negligence. Would her power of resistance -survive, she wondered, or would it yield inevitably to the surrounding -drought of energy? -</p> - -<p> -Six months were gone now, and how hard she had worked! She thought of -the mornings when she had risen before day, eaten a hurried breakfast by -the crack of dawn, and milked the cows by the summer sunrise. From the -moment the warm milk frothed into the pails until the creamy butter was -patted into moulds and stamped with the name Old Farm beneath -the device of a harp-shaped pine, there was not a minute detail -of the work that was left to others. Even the scalding of the churns, -the straining and skimming of the milk in the old-fashioned way without a -separator,—all these simple tasks came under her watchful eyes. -When the first supply of butter was sent off, she waited with nervous -dread for the verdict. The price had seemed extravagant, for selling -directly to her customer she had asked thirty cents a pound, while -butter in Pedlar's store was never higher than ninepence in summer and a -shilling in winter, measured in the old English terms which were still -commonly used in Queen Elizabeth County. -</p> - -<p> -"It seems a mighty high price," her mother had objected. -</p> - -<p> -"I know, but Mrs. Faraday told me to ask more. She said the dairy would -get a dollar a pound for the very best. Some people are always ready to -pay a high price, and they value a thing more if they pay too much for -it. I found out all I could about butter making in New York, and I'm -sure nobody could have taken more trouble. It tasted like flowers." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, perhaps—" Mrs. Oakley had sounded dubious. "We'll wait and -see." -</p> - -<p> -When the letter and check came together, Dorinda's spirits had soared on -wings. The hotel and the dairy would take all that she could supply of -that quality; and though she had known that her success was less -fortuitous than appeared on the surface, she had not paused to inquire -whether it was owing to influence or to accident. "If everything goes -well, I'll have twenty-five cows by next fall," she said hopefully, "and -Ebenezer and Mary Joe Green to help Fluvanna." -</p> - -<p> -"You always jump so far ahead, Dorinda." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm made that way. I can't help it. If I didn't live in the future, I -couldn't stand things as they are." -</p> - -<p> -Now, in the soft afternoon light, she stretched her arms over her head -with a gesture of healthy fatigue. The aromatic scent of the pine was in -her nostrils. In the sun-steeped meadows below there was the murmurous -chanting of grasshoppers. At the hour she felt peaceful and pleasantly -drowsy, and all her troubles were lost in the sensation of physical -ease. She was thinner than ever; her muscles were hard and elastic; the -colour of her skin was burned to a pale amber; and the curves of her -rich mouth were firmer and less appealingly feminine. In a few years the -work of the farm would probably coarsen her features; but at -twenty-three she was still young enough to ripen to a maturer beauty. -Though her hands were roughened by work and the nails were stained and -broken, she wasted no regret upon the disfigurement of her body as long -as her senses remained benumbed by toil. She slept now without dreaming. -This alone seemed to her to be worth any sacrifice of external softness. -</p> - -<p> -Her glance travelled over the cornfield, where the shocks were gathered -in rows amid the stubble, and she reflected that the harvest had been -better than usual. Then her eyes passed along the orchard path to the -new cow-barn, and she watched the figure of William Fairlamb climbing -down from the roof. An agreeable sense of possession stole into her -mind, while she looked from the cow-barn to the back of the house, and -saw her mother moving along the path from the porch. There were a -hundred and fifty hens in the poultry yard now, and it seemed to Dorinda -that the old woman's happiness had simmered down into an enjoyment of -chickens. Though she still worshipped Rufus, he was only a -disappointment and an increasing anxiety. Of late he had done no work on -the farm; his days were spent in hunting with Ike Pryde or Adam Snead, -and it was evident to Dorinda that he was beginning to drink too much -bad whiskey. It would be a relief, she felt, when November came and he -went away for the winter. -</p> - -<p> -Turning her head, as she prepared to leave the graveyard, she glanced -beyond the many-coloured autumn scene to the distant chimneys of Five -Oaks. How far-off was the time when the sight of those red chimneys -against a blue or grey sky would not stab into her heart? Her love was -dead; and her regret clung less to the thought that love had ended in -disappointment than to the supreme tragedy that love ended at all. -Nothing endured. Everything perished of its own inner decay. That, after -all, was the gnawing worm at the heart of experience. If either her love -or her hatred had lasted, she would have found less bitterness in the -savour of life. -</p> - -<p> -For the first few weeks after her meeting with Jason on the edge of the -pines, she had been enveloped in profound peace. Then, gradually, it -seemed to her that the farther she moved away from him in reality, the -closer he approached to her hidden life. As the days went by, the -freedom she had won in his presence wore off like the effects of an -anodyne, and the bondage of the nerves and the senses began to tighten -again. Never, since she had looked into his face and had told herself -that she was indifferent, had she known complete disillusionment. The -trouble was, she discovered, that instead of remembering him as she had -last seen him, her imagination created images which her reason denied. -Not only her pain, but the very memory of pain that had once been, could -leave, she found, a physical soreness. -</p> - -<p> -Beyond the fields and the road the sun was sinking lower, and the -western sky was stained with the colour of autumn fruits. While she -watched the clouds, Dorinda remembered the heart of a pomegranate that -she had seen in a window in New York; and immediately she was swept by a -longing for the sights and sounds of the city. "There's no use thinking -of that now," she said to herself, as she left the brow of the hill and -walked down the path through the orchard. "Like so many other things, it -is only when you look back on it that you seem to want it. While I was -in New York I was longing to be away. There comes Nimrod with the cows, -and Fluvanna bringing the milk pails." -</p> - -<p> -On the back porch her mother was drying apples, for the apple crop had -been good, and the cellar was already stored with russets and winesaps. -</p> - -<p> -"We ought to have dried apples enough to last us till next year," Mrs. -Oakley remarked, while she wiped the discoloured blade of the knife on -her apron. "The whole time I was slicing these apples, I couldn't help -thinking how partial your father was to dried fruit, and last fall there -were hardly any apples fit to keep." Raising her hand to her eyes, she -squinted in the direction from which her daughter had come. "I can't -make out who that is running across the cornfield, but whoever it is, -he's in a mighty big hurry." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda followed her gaze. "It's Rufus. He looks as if something were -after him." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley's face was twisted into what was called her "neuralgic -look." "He promised me to mend that churn before night," she said in a -dissatisfied tone. "But I haven't laid eyes on him since dinner time. He -goes too much in bad company. I haven't got a particle of use for Ike -Pryde and those two Kittery boys over by Plumtree." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda nodded. "I'm glad he is going away. The sooner, the better." -</p> - -<p> -"I reckon he has just recollected the churn." Mrs. Oakley's tone was -without conviction, and she added presently, "He certainly does look -scared, doesn't he?" -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder what could have frightened him?" As the boy drew nearer, -Dorinda saw that he was panting for breath and that his usually florid -face was blanched to a leaden pallor. "What on earth has happened, -Rufus?" she called sharply. -</p> - -<p> -He waved angrily to her to be silent. His palmetto hat was in his hand, -and when he reached the porch, he hurled it through the open door into -the hall. Though his breath came in gasps as if he were stifling for -air, he picked up a hammer from one of the benches, and without stopping -to rest, bent over the broken churn at the side of the step. -</p> - -<p> -"What on earth has happened, Rufus?" Dorinda asked again. She saw that -her mother was trembling with apprehension, and the sight exasperated -her against Rufus. -</p> - -<p> -"You ought to have let me go away last spring," the boy replied in a -truculent tone. He lifted the hammer above his head and, still wheezing -from his race, drove a nail crookedly into the bottom of the churn. His -hand trembled, and Dorinda noticed that the swinging blow fell unevenly. -</p> - -<p> -"You haven't done anything you oughtn't to, have you, son?" his mother -inquired shrilly. -</p> - -<p> -Rufus turned his head and stared at her in moody silence. Though his -handsome face wore his usual sulky frown, Dorinda suspected that his -resentful manner was a veil that covered an inner disturbance. His dark -eyes held a smouldering fire, as if fear were waiting to leap out at a -sound, and the hand in which he clutched the hammer had never stopped -shaking. -</p> - -<p> -"Don't you let on I wasn't here, no matter who asks you," he said -doggedly. "It wasn't my fault anyway. There isn't anybody coming, is -there?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, that's Nimrod bringing up the cows," Dorinda rejoined impatiently. -"I must put on my overalls." -</p> - -<p> -Whatever happened, the cows must be milked, she reflected as she entered -the house. This morning and evening ritual of the farm had become as -inexorable as law. Hearts might be broken, men might live or die, but -the cows must be milked. -</p> - -<p> -When she came back from the dairy, Rufus had disappeared, but her -mother, who was preparing supper, beckoned her into the kitchen. "I -haven't found out yet what's the matter," whispered the old woman. "He -won't open his mouth, though I can see that he's terribly upset about -something. I'm worried right sick." -</p> - -<p> -"He's probably got into a quarrel with somebody. You know how -overbearing he is." -</p> - -<p> -"I reckon I spoiled him." Mrs. Oakley's lip trembled while she poured a -little coffee into a cup and then poured it back again into the -coffee-pot. "Your father used to tell me I made a difference because he -was the youngest. I s'pose I oughtn't to have done it, but it's hard to -see how I could have helped it. He was a mighty taking child, was -Rufus." -</p> - -<p> -"Where is he now?" -</p> - -<p> -"Up in his room. I've called him to supper. He's loaded his gun again, -but he didn't seem to want me to notice, and he's put it back in the -corner behind the door." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, well, try not to worry about it, Ma. Some fool's play most likely. -Can I help you get supper? I'll be straight back as soon as I've slipped -out of these overalls. There's a lot of work for me afterwards in the -dairy." -</p> - -<p> -She ran upstairs to her room, and on the way down, as she passed Rufus's -door, she called cheerfully, "Rufus, aren't you coming to supper?" -</p> - -<p> -To her surprise, his door opened immediately, as if he had been hiding -behind it, and he came out and followed her meekly downstairs into the -kitchen. His excitement had apparently left him, but his healthy colour -had not returned and his eyes looked strained and bloodshot. Bad -whiskey, she thought, though she said as amiably as she could, "If I -were you, I'd go to New York next week even if the job isn't ready." -</p> - -<p> -He looked at her gratefully. "I was just thinking I'd better do that." -</p> - -<p> -His manner was so conciliatory that it made her vaguely uneasy. Jason -had been like that, she remembered, in the weeks before he had jilted -her, and, unjustly or not, she had come to regard suavity in men with -suspicion. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Rufus if he had got -into a scrape; but she decided, as she brought his supper to the table, -that it was a situation which she had better ignore. No good had ever -come, she reflected with the ripe wisdom of experience, of putting -questions to a man. What men wished you to know, and occasionally what -they did not wish you to know, they would divulge in their own good -time. Her mother, she knew, had spent her life trying to make men over, -and what had come of her efforts except more trouble and stiffer -material to work on? -</p> - -<p> -When she sat down at the table, she expected her mother to begin her -usual interrogation; but the old woman allowed Rufus to finish his -supper undisturbed. Even when the last cake was lifted from the -gridiron, and Mrs. Oakley dropped into her chair behind the tin -coffee-pot, she was still silent. The cords in her throat twitched and -strained when she raised a cup to her lips, and after a vain effort to -swallow, she pushed her plate away with the food untasted. -</p> - -<p> -"Poor Ma," thought the girl, watching the drawn grey face, where the -veins in the temples bulged in knots of pain, "can she never have -peace?" A longing seized her to fold the spare frame in her young arms -and speak comforting words; but the habit of reserve was like an iron -mould from which she could not break away. Nothing but death was strong -enough to shatter that inherited restraint and resolve it into -tenderness. While words of affection struggled to her lips, all she said -was, "You look worn out. Is your neuralgia worse?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, it ain't worse. I've got a stabbing pain in my temple, that's all." -</p> - -<p> -Rising from her chair, she began to mix cornbread and gravy for Rambler -and Flossie. Though she tottered when she moved, she put aside Dorinda's -offer of help. "I'm used to doing things," she said, without stopping -for an instant. "You and Rufus had better go along about what you want -to do." -</p> - -<p> -The hound and the cat were at her skirts, and she had just put the tin -plates down for them and taken up the empty dish, when there was a sound -of wheels on the rocks outside, and Dorinda, who was watching Rufus, saw -him turn a muddy grey, like the discoloured whitewash on the walls. -</p> - -<p> -"Don't you let on that I was off this afternoon, Ma," he whispered -hoarsely. -</p> - -<p> -"I declare, Rufus, you talk as if you were crazy," snapped Mrs. Oakley, -flinching from a dart of neuralgia. Though her tone was merely one of -irritation, her hands trembled so violently that the china dish she was -holding dropped to the floor and crashed into bits. "This china never -was a particle of account!" she exclaimed, as she bent over to pick up -the pieces. -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder who it can be this time of night?" Dorinda said more lightly -than she would have believed possible. -</p> - -<p> -"Maybe I'd better go," Rufus jerked out. -</p> - -<p> -"You sit right down, son," his mother retorted tartly. -</p> - -<p> -Going into the hall, Dorinda opened the front door and stood waiting in -the square of lamplight on the threshold. It was a dark night, for the -moon had not yet risen, and all that she could distinguish was what -appeared to be the single shape of a horse and buggy. Only when the -vehicle had jogged up the slope among the trees, and the driver had -alighted and ascended the steps of the porch, did she recognize the -squat shape and flabby features of Amos Wigfall, the sheriff. She had -known him at the store in his political capacity as the familiar of -every voter; yet friendly as he had always appeared to be, she could not -repress a feeling of apprehension while she held out her hand. People, -especially farmers, she knew, did not venture out, except with good -reason, on bad roads after dark. -</p> - -<p> -"Why, it's you, Mr. Wigfall!" she exclaimed, with cheerful hospitality. -"Ma, Mr. Wigfall is here. I hope you've got some supper for him." And -all the time she was thinking, "I might have known Rufus had done -something foolish. Poor Ma!" -</p> - -<p> -The sheriff heaved his bulky figure into the house. "I ain't come to -supper, Dorinda," he said heartily. "Don't you go and get yo' Ma upset. -I don't reckon it's anything to worry about. I wouldn't have come if I -could have helped it." -</p> - -<p> -Still grasping the girl's hand, he stood blinking apologetically in the -glare of the lamp. His face was so bloated and so unctuous that it might -have been the living embodiment of the fee system upon which it had -fattened. He was chewing tobacco as he spoke, and wheeling abruptly he -spat a wad into the night before he followed Dorinda down the hall to -the kitchen. "The fact is I've come about Rufus," he explained, adding, -"I hope I ain't intrudin', mum," as he whipped off his old slouch hat -with an air of gallantry which reminded Dorinda of the burlesque of some -royal cavalier. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, no, you ain't intruding, Mr. Wigfall," Mrs. Oakley replied. "What -was it you said about Rufus?" -</p> - -<p> -"He said he was sure it wasn't anything to worry about," Dorinda -hastened to explain. She did not glance at Rufus while she spoke, yet -she was aware that he had risen and was scowling at their visitor. -</p> - -<p> -"Wall, as between friends," the sheriff remarked ingratiatingly, "I hope -thar ain't a particle of truth in the charge; but Peter Kittery was -found dead over by Whistling Spring this evening, and Jacob has got it -into his head that 'twas Rufus that shot him." -</p> - -<p> -"It's a lie!" Rufus shouted furiously. "I never went near Whistling -Spring this evening. Ma knows I was mending her churn for her from -dinner till supper time." -</p> - -<p> -"Wall, I'm downright glad of that, son," Mr. Wigfall returned, and he -looked as if he meant it, fee or no fee. "Yo' Pa was a good friend to me -when he got a chance, and I shouldn't like to see his son mixed up in a -bad business. Jacob says you and Peter had a fuss over cards last night -at the store. But if you ain't been near Whistling Spring," he -concluded, with triumphant logic, "it stands to reason that you couldn't -have done it. You jest let him come along with me, mum," he added after -a pause, as he turned to Mrs. Oakley. "I'll take good care of him, and -send him back to you as soon as the hearing is over to-morrow. Thar -ain't no need for you to worry a mite." -</p> - -<p> -"I never saw Peter after last night!" Rufus cried out in a storm of rage -and terror. "I never went near Whistling Spring. Ma knows I was working -over her old churn all the evening." -</p> - -<p> -His words and his tone struck with a chill against Dorinda's heart. Why -couldn't the boy be silent? Why was he obliged, through some obliquity -of nature, invariably to appear as a braggart and a bully? While she -stood there listening to his furious denial of guilt, she was as -positive that he had killed Peter Kittery as if she had been on the -spot. -</p> - -<p> -For a minute there was silence; then a new voice began to speak, a voice -so faint and yet so shrill that it was like the far-off whistle of a -train. At first the girl did not recognize her mother's tone, and she -glanced quickly at the door with the idea that a stranger might have -entered after the sheriff. -</p> - -<p> -"It couldn't have been Rufus," the old woman said, with that whistling -noise. "Rufus was here with me straight on from dinner time till supper. -I had him mending my old churn because I didn't want to use one of -Dorinda's new ones. Dorinda went off in the fields to watch the hands," -she continued firmly, "but Rufus was right here with me the whole -evening." -</p> - -<p> -When she had finished speaking, she reached for a chair and sat down -suddenly, as if her legs had failed her. Rufus broke into a nervous -laugh which had an indecent sound, Dorinda thought, and Mr. Wigfall -heaved a loud sigh of relief. -</p> - -<p> -"Wall, you jest come over to-morrow and tell that to the magistrate," he -said effusively. "I don't reckon there could be a better witness for -anybody. Thar ain't nobody round Pedlar's Mill that would be likely to -dispute yo' word." Slinging his arm, he gave Rufus a hearty slap on the -back. "I'm sorry I've got to take you along with me, son, but I hope you -won't bear me any grudge. It won't hurt you to spend a night away from -yo' Ma, and my wife, she'll be glad to have you sample her buckwheat -cakes. I hope you're having good luck with your chickens," he remarked -to Mrs. Oakley as an afterthought. "My wife has been meaning to get over -and look at yo' white leghorns." -</p> - -<p> -"Tell her I'll be real glad to see her whenever she can get over," Mrs. -Oakley replied, as she made an effort to struggle to her feet. "Ain't -you going to take any clean clothes to wear to-morrow, Rufus? That shirt -looks right mussed." -</p> - -<p> -Rufus shook his head. "No, I'm not. If they want me, they can take me as -I am." -</p> - -<p> -"Wall, he looks all right to me," the sheriff observed, with jovial -mirth. "I'll expect you about noon," he said, as he shook hands. "Don't -you lose a minute's sleep. Thar ain't nothing in the world for you to -worry about." -</p> - -<p> -Picking up the kerosene lamp from the table, Dorinda went out on the -porch to light the way to the gate. "There's a bad place near the -'rockery,'" she cautioned. -</p> - -<p> -He had climbed heavily into the buggy, and Rufus was in the act of -mounting between the wheels, when Mrs. Oakley came out of the house and -thrust a parcel wrapped in newspaper into the boy's hand. "There's a -clean collar and your comb," she said, drawing quickly back. "Be sure -not to forget them in the morning." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XII_I">XII</a></h4> - -<p> -Standing there on the porch, with the light from the lamp she held -flaring out against the silver black of the night sky, Dorinda watched -the buggy crawling down the dangerous road to the gate. Something dark -and cold had settled over her thoughts. She could not shake it off -though she told herself that it was unreasonable for her to feel so -despondent. As if despondency, she added, were the product of reason! -</p> - -<p> -Mother love was a wonderful thing, she reflected, a wonderful and a -ruinous thing! It was mother love that had helped to make Rufus the -mortal failure he was, and it was mother love that was now accepting, as -a sacrifice, the results of this failure. Mrs. Oakley was a pious and -God-fearing woman, whose daily life was lived beneath the ominous shadow -of the wrath to come; yet she had deliberately perjured herself in order -that a worthless boy might escape the punishment which she knew he -deserved. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm not like that," Dorinda thought. "I couldn't have done it." At the -bottom of her heart, in spite of her kinship to Rufus, there was an -outraged sense, not so much of justice as of economy. The lie appeared -to her less sinful than wasted. After all, why should not Rufus be held -responsible for his own wickedness? She was shocked; she was -unsympathetic; she was curiously exasperated. Her mother's attitude to -Rufus impressed her as sentimental rather than unselfish; and she saw in -this painful occurrence merely one of the first fruits of that long -weakness. Since she had been brought so close to reality she had had -less patience with evasive idealism. "I suppose I'm different from other -women," she meditated. "I may have lost feeling, or else it was left out -of me when I was born. Some women would have gone on loving Jason no -matter how he treated them; but I'm not made that way. There's something -deep down in me that I value more than love or happiness or anything -outside myself. It may be only pride, but it comes first of all." -</p> - -<p> -The buggy had disappeared into the night, and lowering the lamp, she -turned and entered the house. As she closed the door the mocking screech -of an owl floated in, and she felt that the frost was slipping over the -threshold. All the ancient superstitions of the country gathered in her -mind. It was foolish, she knew, to let herself remember these things at -such a time; but she had lost control of her imagination, which galloped -ahead dragging her reason after it. -</p> - -<p> -In the kitchen she found her mother bending over the dish-pan with her -arms plunged in soapsuds. -</p> - -<p> -"Come to bed, Ma. I'll finish the dishes." -</p> - -<p> -To her surprise, Mrs. Oakley did not resist. The spirit of opposition -was crushed out of her, and she tottered as she turned away to wipe her -hands on a cup towel. -</p> - -<p> -"I reckon I'd better," she answered meekly. "I don't feel as if I could -stand on my feet another minute." -</p> - -<p> -Putting her strong young arm about her, Dorinda led her across the hall -into her bedroom. While the girl struck a match and lighted the lamp on -the table, she saw that her mother was shaking as if she had been -stricken with palsy. -</p> - -<p> -"I'll help you undress, Ma." -</p> - -<p> -"I can manage everything but my shoes, daughter. My fingers are too -swollen to unbutton them." -</p> - -<p> -"Don't you worry. I'll put you to bed." As she turned down the bed and -smoothed out the coarse sheets and the patchwork quilt, it seemed to -Dorinda that the inanimate objects in the room had borrowed pathos from -their human companions. All the stitches that had gone into this quilt, -happy stitches, sad stitches, stitches that had ended in nothing! Her -eyes filled with tears, and she looked quickly away. What was it in -houses and furniture that made them come to life in hours of suspense -and tear at the heartstrings? -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley was undressing slowly, folding each worn, carefully mended -garment before she placed it on a chair near the foot of the bed. -</p> - -<p> -"Do you reckon they will do anything to Rufus?" she asked presently in a -quavering voice. -</p> - -<p> -She had released her hair from the tight coil at the back of her head, -and it hung now, combed and plaited by Dorinda, in a thin grey braid on -her shoulders. The childish arrangement gave a fantastic air to the -shadow on the whitewashed wall. -</p> - -<p> -"Not after what you said. Didn't you hear Mr. Wigfall tell you that he -was taking him just for the night?" -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley turned her head, and the shadow at her back turned with her. -"Yes, I heard him. Well, if the Lord will give me strength to go through -with it, I'll never ask for anything else." -</p> - -<p> -"He'll be more likely to help you if you get some sleep and stop -worrying. The Lord helps good sleepers." Though she spoke flippantly, -she was frightened by the look in her mother's face. -</p> - -<p> -"I don't feel as if I could close my eyes." Mrs. Oakley had climbed into -bed, and was lying, straight and stiff as an effigy, under the quilt. -"Don't you think it would be a comfort if we were to read a chapter in -the Bible?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda broke into a dry little laugh. "No, I don't. The only comforting -thing I can imagine is to get my head on a pillow. I've got seven cows -to milk by sunrise, and that is no easy job." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, you'd better go," her mother assented reluctantly, and she added -with a sigh, "I can't help feeling that something dreadful is going to -happen." -</p> - -<p> -"You won't prevent it by lying awake. Don't get up in the morning until -you're obliged to milk the cows before day and get Fluvanna to help -about breakfast as soon as she comes. It's a long way to Queen Elizabeth -Courthouse, and we'll have to allow plenty of time for the horses. Do -you want anything more?" She resisted an impulse to stoop and kiss the -wrinkled cheek because she knew that the unusual exhibition of -tenderness would embarrass them both. "Shall I put out the lamp for -you?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I like a little light. You can see so many things in the dark after -the fire goes out." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda moved away as noiselessly as she could; but she had barely -crossed the hall before she heard a muffled sound in the room, and knew -that her mother was out of bed and on her knees. "I can't do anything," -thought the girl desperately. "It is going to kill her, and I can't do -anything to prevent it." Every muscle in her body ached from the strain -of the day while she washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen for the -next morning. She realized that she should have to do most of her farm -work before sunrise, and she decided that, in case Fluvanna came late, -it would be well to put out whatever she needed for breakfast. After -that—well, even if Rufus had murdered somebody, she couldn't keep -awake any longer. -</p> - -<p> -In the morning, when she came back into the house after milking, she -found that her mother was already in the kitchen, and that a pot of -coffee was bubbling on the stove. Of course Fluvanna, on the day when -she was particularly needed, had contrived to be late. -</p> - -<p> -"I told you not to worry about breakfast, Ma," Dorinda said, provoked in -spite of her pity. -</p> - -<p> -"I know you did, but I couldn't lie in bed any longer. I was so afraid -you might oversleep yourself and not wake me in time." She was the -victim of a nervous apprehension lest they should be too late for the -magistrate, and it was futile to attempt to reason her out of her folly. -"You sit right down in your overalls and drink your coffee while it's -hot," she continued, stirring restlessly. "I've got some fried eggs and -bacon to keep up your strength." -</p> - -<p> -"My strength is all right." Dorinda washed her hands and then came over -to the table where breakfast was waiting for her. "The sun isn't up yet, -and we can't start before day." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I wanted to be ready in plenty of time. You'll have to be away -from the farm all day, won't you?" -</p> - -<p> -"I don't know," Dorinda rejoined briskly. "Fluvanna and Nimrod will have -to manage the best they can. I'm not going to worry about it. People can -always be spared easier than they think they can." -</p> - -<p> -Her animation, however, was wasted, for her mother was not following -her. Mrs. Oakley had grown so restless that she could not sit still at -the table, and she jumped up and ran to the stove or the safe whenever -she could find an excuse. She wore the strained expression of a person -who is listening for an expected sound and is afraid of missing it by a -moment of inadvertence. Already, before lighting the stove, she had put -on her Sunday dress of black alpaca, and had protected it in front by an -apron of checked blue and white gingham. If she had had the courage, -Dorinda suspected, she would have cooked breakfast in her widow's -bonnet, with the streamer of rusty crape at her back. -</p> - -<p> -"Is that somebody going along the road?" she inquired whenever Dorinda -looked up from her plate. -</p> - -<p> -"No, I don't hear anybody," the girl replied patiently. "Try to eat -something, or you'll be sick." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley obediently lifted a bit of egg on her fork, and then put it -down again before it had touched her lips. "I don't feel as if I could -swallow a morsel." -</p> - -<p> -"Drink a little coffee anyway," Dorinda pleaded. -</p> - -<p> -Again the old woman made a futile effort to swallow. "I don't know what -can be the matter with me," she said, "but my throat feels as if it were -paralyzed." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll fix up a snack for you, and you can nibble at it on the way. -Somebody will be sure to ask us to dinner. Now, I'll clear the table -before I get ready." -</p> - -<p> -But, after all, Dorinda was left at home for the day. Just as Nimrod, -animated by misfortune, was leading Dan and Beersheba out to the wagon, -a buggy drove briskly into the yard, and Nathan Pedlar alighted. -</p> - -<p> -"I kind of thought you'd want a man with your Ma, Dorinda," he -explained, "so I left Bob Shafer in charge of the store and came right -over. Rufus spoke to me as he was going by with the sheriff last night, -and I told him I'd take his Ma to the Courthouse." -</p> - -<p> -Though Dorinda was doubtful at first, Mrs. Oakley responded immediately. -In spite of her protracted experience with masculine helplessness, she -had not lost her confidence in the male as a strong prop in the hour of -adversity. "I can't tell you how thankful I am to have you, Nathan," she -replied eagerly. "Dorinda had just as well stay at home and look after -the farm." -</p> - -<p> -"Don't you think I'd better go too, Ma?" the girl asked, not without a -tinge of exasperation in her tone. It seemed absurd to her that her -mother should prefer to have Nathan Pedlar stand by her simply because -he happened to be a man. -</p> - -<p> -"I don't believe she'll need you, Dorinda," remarked Nathan, who, like -Nimrod, was inspired by adversity. "But if you feel you'd like to come, -I reckon we can all three squeeze into my buggy." -</p> - -<p> -"There ain't a bit of use in your going," Mrs. Oakley insisted. "You -just stay right here and take care of things." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I won't go." Dorinda gave way after a resistance that was only -half hearted. "Take care of her, Nathan, and make her eat something -before she gets there."' -</p> - -<p> -Running into the house, she wrapped two buttered rolls and boiled eggs -in a red and white napkin, and put them into a little basket. Then she -added a bottle of blackberry wine, and carried the basket out to the -buggy, while Mrs. Oakley tied on her bonnet with trembling hands. -</p> - -<p> -"Where's my bottle of camphor, Dorinda?" -</p> - -<p> -"Here it is, Ma, in your reticule. Be sure and take a little blackberry -wine if you feel faint." Not until she had watched the buggy drive -through the gate and out on the road, where the sun was coming up in a -ball of fire, did the girl understand what a relief it was not to go. "I -believe she'd rather have Nathan," she decided, as she went upstairs to -change into her old gingham dress, "because he doesn't know that she is -not telling the truth." -</p> - -<p> -When she thought of it afterwards, that day towered like a mountain in -the cloudy background of her life. Alone on the farm, for the first time -in her recollection, she felt forlorn and isolated. It was impossible -for her to keep her mind fixed on her tasks. Restlessness, like an -inarticulate longing, pricked at her nerves. When the morning work in -the dairy was over, she wandered about the farm, directing the work in -the fields, and stopping for a minute or two to talk with old Matthew -Fairlamb, who was handing up the shingles to his son William on the roof -of the new barn. At a little distance the old house of the overseer, -which had been used as a tobacco barn since her great-grandfather's -death, was being cleaned and repaired for Jonas Walsh (one of the "poor -Walshes") who had undertaken to work as a manager in return for a living -and a share of the crops. After Rufus went, Mrs. Oakley insisted, a -white man and his family would be required on the place, and though -Dorinda preferred loneliness to such company, she found it less wearing -to yield to her mother than to argue against her opinion. "Mrs. Walsh -will be company for Ma, anyway," she said to herself. "Even if she is -slatternly, they will still have chickens in common." -</p> - -<p> -"Do you think Jonas will be useful?" she inquired of old Matthew, while -she paused to watch the expert shingling of the roof. -</p> - -<p> -Old Matthew made a dubious gesture, "Mebbe he will, an' mebbe he won't. -I ain't prophesyin'." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, he can shoot anyhow," William observed cynically, as he stooped -down for the shingles his father held up. "He's got a gun and a coon -dog." -</p> - -<p> -"But I need him to work. How can you make a living out of the land -unless you work it?" -</p> - -<p> -Old Matthew chuckled. "The trouble with this here land is that tobaccy -has worn it out. I ain't never seen the land yit that it wouldn't wear -out if you gave it a chance. You take my advice, Dorindy, and don't have -nothin' more to do with tobaccy. As long as you don't smoke and don't -chaw, thar ain't no call for you to put up with it." -</p> - -<p> -"I won't," Dorinda replied with determination. "All the tobacco fields -are giving way to cowpeas." -</p> - -<p> -"I see you're making a new field alongside of the old one." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes. I sowed sweet clover with lime, and turned the clover under when -it was in bloom. I can't afford to do that again. It was an experiment, -but it improved the land." -</p> - -<p> -"You're right thar, honey. Put yo' heart in the land. The land is the -only thing that will stay by you." -</p> - -<p> -She smiled and passed on, stopping to say a few words to Mary Joe Green -at the door of the henhouse. Though she was aware that her aimless -movements accomplished nothing, she could not settle down to the steady -work which was awaiting her. The sound of a wagon in the road shook her -nerves into a quiver of fear, and she started whenever a bird flew -overhead or an acorn dropped on the dead leaves at her feet. At dinner -time she did not kindle a fire in the stove, but drank a glass of -buttermilk and ate a "pone" of cornbread while she stood on the front -porch and looked at the road. One moment she wished that she had gone -with her mother to the Courthouse, and the next she was glad that she -had waited at home. Whatever Rufus's fate might be, she felt that the -mental strain would be the end of her mother. Even if Rufus were to go -free, Mrs. Oakley's conscience would torment her to death. -</p> - -<p> -As the day declined the place became insupportable to her, and leaving -the house, she walked across the yard to the gate, with Rambler and -Flossie trailing at her heels. The road under the honey locust tree was -strewn with oblong brown pods, as glossy as satin, and treading over -them, she walked slowly past the bridge and up the shaded slope between -the pasture and the band of Hoot Owl Woods. In the pasture she could see -the Jerseys gathered by the stream under the willows, and now and then a -silver tinkle of cowbells floated over the trumpet vine on the fence. -</p> - -<p> -It was a rich October afternoon, with a sky of burnished blue and an air -of carnival in the wine-red and ashen-bronze of the woods. For an -instant the brightness hurt her eyes, and when she opened them it seemed -to her that the autumnal radiance fluttered like a blown shawl over the -changeless structure of the landscape. Beneath the fugitive beauty the -stern features of the country had not softened. -</p> - -<p> -She walked on, still followed by Rambler and Flossie, beyond the woods -to the fork of the road. Looking away from the gate of Five Oaks, she -kept her eyes on the acres of broomsedge belonging to Honeycomb Farm. -The stretch of road beyond the burned cabin was deserted, and the only -sound was the monotonous droning of insects and the dropping of -persimmons or acorns on the dead leaves under the trees. Far away, in -the direction of Old Farm, the shocked corn on the hill was swimming in -a rain of apricot-coloured lights. "If only it would last," she thought, -"things would not be so hard to bear. But it is like happiness. Before -you know that you have found it, it goes." -</p> - -<p> -Turning away, because beauty was like a knife in her heart, she called -Rambler back to her side. In the middle of the road, bathed in the -apricot-coloured glow, Flossie was sitting, and farther on, she saw the -figures of old Matthew and William Fairlamb on their way home from work. -When they reached her they spoke without stopping. -</p> - -<p> -"Good evening. We'll be over bright and early to-morrow." -</p> - -<p> -"Good evening to you both. There won't be a killing frost to-night, will -there?" -</p> - -<p> -"Not enough to hurt. Thar ain't nothin' but flowers left out by this -time, I reckon." -</p> - -<p> -Old Matthew's cheeks were as red as winter apples, and his eyes twinkled -like black haws in their sockets. "He! He! When thar ain't nothin' to -hurt, we've no need to worry!" -</p> - -<p> -As they trudged away, she turned and looked after them. She wanted to -ask what they had heard of the shooting; but she resisted the impulse -until they were too far away for her words to reach them. Standing -there, while the two figures dwindled gradually into the blue distance, -she was visited again by the feeling that the moment was significant, if -only she could discover the meaning of it before it eluded her. Strange -how often that sensation returned to her now! Everything at which she -gazed; the frosted brown and yellow and wine-red of the landscape; the -shocked corn against the sunset; the figures of the two men diminishing -in the vague smear of the road; all these images were steeped in an -illusion of mystery. "I've let myself get wrought up over nothing," she -thought, with an endeavour to be reasonable. -</p> - -<p> -By the time she came within sight of the house again the afterglow was -paling, and a chill had crept through the thick shawl that she wore. -Perhaps, in spite of old Matthew, there would be a heavy frost before -morning, and she was glad to reflect that only the few summer flowers in -her mother's rockery would be blighted. Smoke was rising from two of the -chimneys, and she knew that Mary Joe had kindled fires in the kitchen -and in her mother's chamber. Already Fluvanna would be well on with the -milking. It was the first time Dorinda had trusted it to the girl and -Nimrod, and she hoped that there would be nothing to find fault with -when she went out to the barn. -</p> - -<p> -Two hours later, when the milking and the straining were both over, she -hurried out of the dairy at the noise of wheels in the darkness. As the -buggy drew up to the steps, she saw that her mother was seated between -Rufus and Nathan; and even before she caught the words they shouted, she -understood that the boy had been discharged. It was what she had -expected; yet after the assurance reached her, her anxiety was still as -heavy as it had been all day. When her eyes fell on her mother's -shrunken figure she realized that the old woman must have paid a fearful -price for her son's freedom. "She looks bled," the girl thought -bitterly. "She looks as if she would crumble to a handful of dust if you -touched her." A hot anger against Rufus flamed in her heart. Then she -saw that the boy was shaking with emotion, and her anger was smothered -in pity. After all, who was to blame? Who was ever to blame in life? -</p> - -<p> -"It's all right, Dorinda," Nathan said, as he helped Mrs. Oakley to the -ground and up on the porch. "Your Ma held up splendidly, but it's been -too much for her. She's worn clean out, I reckon." -</p> - -<p> -"I wish you'd been there to see the way she did it," Rufus added. -"Nobody said a word after she got through." Had he actually forgotten, -Dorinda asked herself, that his mother had sworn to a lie in order to -save him? -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XIII_I">XIII</a></h4> - -<p> -For the second time in her life Mrs. Oakley allowed herself to be put to -bed without protest. She hung limp and cold when they placed her in a -chair, and watched her children with vacant eyes while Rufus piled fresh -logs on the fire and Dorinda brought bottles of hot water wrapped in her -orange shawl. When the grey flannelette nightgown was slipped over her -shoulders, the old woman spoke for the first time since she had entered -the house. -</p> - -<p> -"Dorinda, the Lord gave me strength." -</p> - -<p> -"They have killed her," the girl thought resentfully; but she said only, -"Now you must get to bed as quick as you can." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley stared up at her with eyes that were wind-swept in their -bleakness. Her face looked flattened and drawn to one side, as if some -tremendous pressure had just been removed. "I reckon I'd better," she -answered listlessly. -</p> - -<p> -"You must try to eat something. Fluvanna is making you some tea and -toast." -</p> - -<p> -"I ain't sick enough for tea." -</p> - -<p> -"Then I'll make you a cream toddy. There's some nice cream I saved for -you." -</p> - -<p> -While Dorinda was speaking she leaned over the bed and wrapped the -clammy feet in the orange shawl. "Can you feel the hot water bottles?" -she asked. The feet that she warmed so carefully were as stiff already, -she told herself in terror, as if they belonged to a corpse. Neither -the hot water nor the blazing fire could put any warmth into the -shivering body. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I feel them, but I'm sort of numbed." -</p> - -<p> -"Now I'll make the toddy. I've got some whiskey put away where Rufus -couldn't find it. If Fluvanna brings your supper, try to eat the egg -anyway." -</p> - -<p> -"I'll try, but I feel as if I couldn't keep it down," Mrs. Oakley -replied submissively. -</p> - -<p> -Flames were leaping up the chimney, and the shadows had melted into the -cheerful light. When Dorinda returned with the cream toddy, Mrs. Oakley -drank it eagerly, and with the stimulant of the whiskey in her veins, -she was able to sit up in bed and eat the supper Fluvanna had prepared. -It was long after the coloured girl's hour for going home, but the -excitement had braced her to self-sacrifice, and she had offered to stay -on for the night. "I can make up a pallet jest as easy as not in yo' -Ma's room," she said to Dorinda, "an' I'll fix Mr. Rufus' breakfast for -him, so he can catch the train befo' day." -</p> - -<p> -There were few negroes who did' not develop character, either good or -bad, in a crisis, Dorinda reflected a little later as she went out to -the dairy. Though there was no need for her to visit the dairy, since -Fluvanna and Nimrod had finished the work, she felt that she could not -sleep soundly until she had inspected the milk. Was this merely what -Rufus called "woman's fussiness," she wondered, or was it the kind of -nervous mania that afflicted even the most successful farmer? -</p> - -<p> -The brilliant autumn day had declined into a wan evening. From the dark -fields the wind brought the trail of woodsmoke mingled with the -effluvium of rotting leaves; and this scent invaded her thoughts like -the odour of melancholy. Not even the frosty air or the fragrant breath -of the cows in the barn could dispel the lethargy which had crept over -her. "I'm tired out," she reasoned. "I've been going too hard the last -six months, and I feel the strain as soon as I stop." Though she was -saddened by the haunting pathos of life, she did not feel the intimate -pang of grief. All that, it seemed to her, was over for ever. The power -to pity was still hers, for compassion is a detached impulse, but she -had lot beyond recall the gift of poignant emotion. Nothing had -penetrated that dead region around her heart. Not her father's death, -not her mother's illness—nothing. Drought had withered her, she told -herself cynically, and the locust had eaten away the green of her -spirit. -</p> - -<p> -In the morning, Rufus went off on the early train, and Dorinda drew a -breath of relief as she turned back to her work. The shock of the -tragedy appeared to have cleared the boy's temper, and he showed genuine -distress when he parted from his mother. "I feel as if I'd never see her -again," he said to Dorinda on the porch, while he was waiting for the -farmer who had promised to stop for him on the way to the station. -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda shook her head. Helplessness in the face of misery acted always -as an irritant on her nerves. "You never can tell," she replied. "But -remember all you have cost her and try to keep straight in the future." -</p> - -<p> -"I swear I'll never give her another minute's worry," he responded, -stuffing his handkerchief into his pocket. -</p> - -<p> -Perhaps he meant it; but it seemed to Dorinda that his repentance, like -his gift with tools, was too facile. "Whatever comes of this, it has -been the death of Ma," she thought, as she went into the house. -</p> - -<p> -When the day's churning was over, and she was in her mother's room, the -new doctor from the Courthouse arrived with his instruments and his -medicine case. He was a brisk, very ugly young man, with an awkward -raw-boned figure, and an honest face which was covered with unsightly -freckles. As different from Jason as any man could well be! He had risen -by sheer ability from the poorer class, and already, notwithstanding his -plain appearance and uncompromising honesty, he had built up a better -practice than the hereditary one of the Greylocks. For one thing, he -insisted upon having his fees paid, and it was natural, Dorinda had -discovered, to value advice more highly when it was not given away. -</p> - -<p> -As the doctor sat down beside Mrs. Oakley's bed, she opened her eyes and -looked at him without surprise and without welcome. Her bed was smooth -and spotlessly clean; the best quilt of log-cabin design lay over her -feet; and she was wearing a new nightgown which was buttoned closely -about her neck. Without her clothes, she had the look, in spite of her -ravaged face, of a very old child. -</p> - -<p> -"I've never spent a day in bed in my life, doctor," she said, "except -when my children were born." -</p> - -<p> -"I know," he rejoined, with dry sympathy. "That is the trouble." -</p> - -<p> -He did not waste words, but bent over immediately to begin his -examination; and when it was over, he merely patted the old woman's -shoulder before packing away his instruments. -</p> - -<p> -"You'll have to stay in bed a while now," he said, as he stood up with -his case in his hands. "I'll leave some medicine with your daughter; but -it isn't medicine you need; it is rest." -</p> - -<p> -Her groping gaze followed him with irrepressible weariness. "I don't -know what will become of the chickens," she said. "I reckon everything -will go to rack and ruin, but I can't help it. I've done all I could." -</p> - -<p> -He turned on the threshold. "My dear Mrs. Oakley, you couldn't get up if -you tried. Your strength has given out." -</p> - -<p> -She smiled indifferently. All the nervous energy upon which she had -lived for forty years was exhausted. There was nothing now but the -machine which was rapidly running down. "Yes, I reckon I'm worn out," -she responded, and turned her face to the wall. -</p> - -<p> -Not until they had left the porch and crossed the trodden ragweed to -where the buggy was waiting, did Dorinda summon the courage to ask a -question. -</p> - -<p> -"Is she seriously ill, doctor?" -</p> - -<p> -At her words he stopped and looked straight into her eyes, a look as -bare and keen as a blade. "She isn't ill at all in the strict sense of -the word," he answered. "She told the truth when she said that she was -worn out." -</p> - -<p> -"Then she will never be up again?" -</p> - -<p> -"One never knows. But I think this is the beginning of the end." He -hesitated, and added regretfully, "I ought not to put it so bluntly." -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head. "I'd rather know. Poor Ma! She is only sixty-two. It -has come so suddenly." -</p> - -<p> -"Suddenly." The word broke from him like an oath. "Why, the woman in -there has been dying for twenty years!" -</p> - -<p> -Her eyes were stony while she watched him mount into his buggy and turn -the horse's head toward the gate. The wheels spun over the rocks and out -into the road, as if they were revolving over the ice in her heart. -Would nothing thaw the frozen lake that enveloped her being? Would she -never again become living and human? The old sense of the hollowness of -reality had revived. Though she knew it was her mother of whom they had -been speaking, the words awoke only echoes in her thoughts. She longed -with all her soul to suffer acutely; yet she could feel nothing within -this colourless void in which she was imprisoned. -</p> - -<p> -When the buggy had disappeared, she retraced her steps to the house and -entered her mother's room with a smile on her lips. -</p> - -<p> -"You'll have to rest now, Ma, no matter how you hate it." -</p> - -<p> -At Dorinda's cheerful voice, the old woman turned over and looked at her -daughter as if she were a stranger. -</p> - -<p> -"I don't know how you'll manage," she answered; but her tone was -perfunctory. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, we'll manage all right. Don't you worry. Just try to get well, Ma." -</p> - -<p> -A change of expression rippled like a shadow over the grey features, and -passed without leaving a trace. "I was afraid maybe the doctor didn't -think I was sick enough to stay in bed. I know I ain't exactly sick, but -I seem to have given way. I reckon Mary Joe can look after the chickens -till I'm able to be up." -</p> - -<p> -After this she fell into a doze from which she did not awaken until -Dorinda brought her favourite dinner of jowl and turnip salad. -</p> - -<p> -"The doctor says you must eat, Ma, or you'll never get back your -strength." -</p> - -<p> -"I know I ought to, daughter, but I feel as if something was choking -me." -</p> - -<p> -Day after day, month after month. Nothing else all through the autumn -and winter. -</p> - -<p> -Though Mrs. Oakley lived more than a year longer, she was never able -again to leave her bed. For the greater part of the time she lay, silent -and inert, in a state between waking and sleeping, unconcerned after all -her fruitless endeavours. Rufus, she never asked for, and when his -letters were read to her, she would smile vaguely and turn away as if -she had ceased to be interested. Old Rambler spent his days on a mat at -the side of her bed, and Flossie lay curled up on the patchwork quilt -over her feet. If they were absent long, she would begin to move -restlessly, and beg presently that they should be brought back. At the -end, they were the only companions that she desired, for, as she said -once, they "did not bother her with questions." The tragedy to Dorinda -was not so much in her mother's slow dying as in her unconditional -surrender to decay. For more than forty years she had fought her -dauntless fight against the sordid actuality, and at the last she -appeared to become completely reconciled to her twin enemies, poverty -and dirt. Nothing made any difference to her now, and because nothing -made any difference to her, dying was the happiest part of her life. -</p> - -<p> -"There ain't any use struggling," she said once, while Dorinda was -cleaning her room, and after a long pause, "It doesn't seem just right -that we have to be born. It ain't worth all the trouble we go through." -</p> - -<p> -But there were other days when her inextinguishable energy would flare -up in sparks, and she would insist upon sitting up in bed while the -white Leghorns flocked by the window. Then she would recognize her -favourite hens and call them by name; and once she had Romeo, the prize -rooster, brought into her room, and kept him under her eyes, until he -began to strut and behave indelicately, when she "shooed" him out in her -old peremptory manner. Frequently, in the last few months, she asked to -have Dan and Beersheba led to her window. Tears would come into her eyes -while the long sad faces of the horses looked at her through the panes, -and she would murmur plaintively, "There's a heap of understanding in -animals. You'll never let those horses want, will you, daughter?" -</p> - -<p> -"Never, Ma. In a few years, if nothing happens, I'll turn them out to -pasture for the rest of their lives." -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Oakley would smile as if she had forgotten, and after a long -silence, she would begin talking in an animated voice of her girlhood -and her parents. As the weeks went by, all the years of her marriage and -motherhood vanished from her memory, and her mind returned to her early -youth when she was engaged to the young missionary. Her old tropical -dream came back to her; in her sleep she would ramble on about palm -trees and crocodiles and ebony babies. "I declare, it seems just as if -I'd been there," she said one morning. "It's queer how much more real -dreams can be than the things you're going through." -</p> - -<p> -At the end of the year, in the middle of the night before she died, she -awoke Dorinda, and talked for a long time about the heathen and the -sacrifices that Presbyterian missionaries had made to bring them to -Christ. "Your great-grandfather was a wonderful scholar," she said, "and -I reckon that's where you get most of your sense. I s'pose missionaries -have to be scholars. They need something besides religion to fall back -on in their old age." Never once did she allude to anything that had -occurred since her marriage, and she appeared to have forgotten that she -had ever known Joshua. -</p> - -<p> -The next afternoon she died in her sleep while Nathan was sitting beside -her bed. For a few minutes Dorinda broke down and wept, less from grief -than from the knowledge that grief was expected of her; and Nathan, who -was always at his best in the house of mourning, won her everlasting -gratitude by his behaviour. She found herself depending upon him as if -he had been some ideal elder brother such as she had never known. So -naturally that fate seemed to have arranged it on purpose, he assumed -authority over the household and the funeral. He thought of everything, -and everybody deferred to him. Funerals were the only occasions when he -had ever risen to dignity, and though he had sincerely liked Mrs. -Oakley, the few days before her burial were among the pleasantest that -he had ever spent in his life. -</p> - -<p> -"I shall never forget how good you have been," Dorinda said, when it was -over. "I don't know what I should have done without you." And though the -words were spoken impulsively, as a matter of fact she never, in the -future, forgot Nathan's kindness. It was a mark of her proud and -self-sufficient nature that she could not forget either gratitude or -resentment. -</p> - -<p> -When he had driven away, she turned to Fluvanna, who was picking up bits -of rusty crape from the floor of the porch. -</p> - -<p> -"I really don't know what we should have done without him," she remarked -over again. -</p> - -<p> -"If you ax me, Miss Dorinda, he is one handy man at a funeral," answered -Fluvanna, who relapsed into dialect on tragic or perilous occasions. "I -was thinkin' right along how pleased yo' Ma would have been if she could -have seen him, for she cert'n'y did like handy folks about her." -</p> - -<p> -"Poor Ma, I wish she could have had the chickens a few years earlier," -Dorinda sighed. "To think of the years she went without a cow." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, she enjoyed 'em while she had 'em," Fluvanna responded fervently. -"Have you thought yet what you're goin' to do, Miss Dorinda?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I've thought. The farm is mine. Ma left it to me, and I'm going to -stay on as we are." -</p> - -<p> -"Just you and me? Won't you get lonesome without some white folks?" -</p> - -<p> -"After Jonas Walsh moves out of the overseer's house, I'll engage Martin -Flower, who is a better farmer, and has a sensible wife. Mary Joe can -take care of the chickens, and I'm going to hire her brother Ebenezer to -help Nimrod with the cows. If everything goes well this winter, I'll be -ready to start a real dairy in the spring. Then I'll need more hands, so -we shan't be lonely." -</p> - -<p> -"Naw'm, I don't reckon we'll, get lonesome, not the way we work," -Fluvanna agreed. "I ain' never seen no man work as hard as you do, Miss -Dorinda. Yo' Ma told me befo' she passed away that you had stayin' power -and she reckoned that you was the only one of the family that had. -Sprightliness don't git you far, she said, unless you've got stayin' -power enough to keep you after you git thar. Well, it's all your'n now, -ain't it?" she inquired placidly, as Dorinda's eyes swept the horizon. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it's all mine." Walking over to the edge of the porch, Dorinda -looked across the vague, glimmering fields. Another autumn had gone. -Another sunset like the heart of a pomegranate was fading out in the -west. Again the wandering scents of wood smoke and rotting leaves came -and went on the wind. -</p> - -<p> -For an instant, the permanence of material things, the inexorable -triumph of fact over emotion, appeared to be the only reality. These -things had been ageless when her mother was young; they would be still -ageless when she herself had become an old woman. Over the immutable -landscape human lives drifted and vanished like shadows. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XIV_I">XIV</a></h4> - -<p> -When she looked back on the years that followed her mother's death, -Dorinda could remember nothing but work. Out of a fog of recollection -there protruded bare outlines which she recognized as the milestones of -her prosperity. She saw clearly the autumn she had turned the -eighteen-acre field into pasture; the failure of her first experiment -with ensilage; the building of the new dairy and cow-barns; the gradual -increase of her seven cows into a herd. Certain dates stood out in her -farm calendar. The year the blight had fallen on her cornfield and she -had had to buy fodder from James Ellgood; the year she had first planted -alfalfa; the year she had lost a number of her cows from contagious -abortion; the year she had reclaimed the fields beyond Poplar Spring; -the year her first prize bull had won three blue ribbons. With the slow -return of fertility to the soil, she had passed, by an unconscious -process, into mute acquiescence with the inevitable. The bitter irony of -her point of view had shaded into a cheerful cynicism which formed a -protective covering over her mind and heart. She had worked relentlessly -through the years; but it was work that she had enjoyed, and above all -it was work that had created anew the surroundings amid which she lived. -In a changed form her mother's frustrated passion to redeem the world -was finding concrete expression. -</p> - -<p> -At thirty-three, the perspective of the last ten years was incredibly -shortened. All the cold starry mornings when she had awakened before day -and crept out to the barn by lantern light to attend to the milking, -appeared to her now as a solitary frozen dawn. All the bleak winters, -all the scorching summers, were a single day; all the evenings, when she -had dreamed half asleep in the firelit dusk, were a single night. She -could not separate these years into seasons. In her long retrospect they -were crystallized into one flawless pattern. -</p> - -<p> -Through those ten years, while she struggled to free the farm from debt, -she had scrimped and saved like a miser; and this habit of saving, she -knew, would cling to her for the rest of her life. She went without -butter; she drank only buttermilk, in order that she might keep nothing -back from the market. Her clothes were patched and mended as long as -they held together, and she had stopped going to church because her -pride would not suffer her to appear there in overalls, or in the faded -calico dresses she wore in the house. Though she was obliged to hire -women to help her with the milking and in the dairy, she herself worked -harder than any of them. Nothing, she told herself grimly, could elude -her vigilance. In her passionate recoil from the thriftlessness of the -poor, she had developed a nervous dread of indolence which reminded her -of her mother. She went to bed, stupefied by fatigue, as soon as the -last pound of butter was wrapped for the early train; yet she was up -again before the break of day while the hands were still sleeping. And -only Fluvanna, who lived in the house with her now, knew the hours she -spent beside her lamp counting the pounds of butter and the number of -eggs she had sent to market. If only she could save enough to pay off -the mortgage and return the money she had borrowed from the Faradays, -she felt that she should begin to breathe freely for the first time in -her life. -</p> - -<p> -And there was more than hard work in her struggle; there was unflagging -enterprise as well. Her father had worked harder than she could ever do, -toiling summer and winter, day and night, over the crops, which always -failed because they were expected to thrive on so little. She remembered -him perpetually hauling manure or shredding fodder, until he loomed in -her memory as a titanic image of the labourer who labours without hope. -"The truth is, I would rather have failed at the start than have gone on -like that," she thought. "I was able to take risks because I was too -unhappy to be afraid." Yes, she had had the courage of desperation, and -that had saved her from failure. Without borrowed money, without the -courage to borrow money, she could never have made the farm even a -moderate success. This had required not only perseverance but audacity -as well; and it had required audacity again to permeate the methodical -science of farming with the spirit of adventure. Interest, excitement -even, must be instilled into the heartless routine. The hours of work -never varied. Chores were done by necessity, as in the old days without -system, but by the stroke of the clock. Each milker had her own place, -and milked always the same cows. After the first trial or two, Dorinda -had yielded to the reluctance of the cow when her accustomed milker was -changed. She had borrowed money again, "hiring money" they called it at -Pedlar's Mill, to buy her first Jersey bull; but the daughters of that -bull were still her best butter-making cows. -</p> - -<p> -Gradually, as the years passed, her human associations narrowed down to -Fluvanna's companionship and the Sunday afternoon visits of Nathan -Pedlar and his children. The best years of her youth, while her beauty -resisted hard work and sun and wind, were shared only with the coloured -woman with whom she lived. She had prophesied long ago that Fluvanna -would be a comfort to her, and the prophecy was completely fulfilled. -The affection between the two women had outgrown the slender tie of -mistress and maid, and had become as strong and elastic as the bond that -holds relatives together. They knew each other's daily lives; they -shared the one absorbing interest in the farm; they trusted each other -without discretion and without reserve. Fluvanna respected and adored -her mistress; and Dorinda, with an inherited feeling of condescension, -was sincerely attached to her servant. Though Dorinda still guarded the -reason of her flight to New York, she did this less from dread of -Fluvanna's suspecting the truth than from secret terror of the -enervating thought of the past. That was over and done with, and every -instinct of her nature warned her to let dead bones lie buried. -Sometimes on winter nights, when the snow was falling or the rain -blowing in gusts beyond the window, the two women would sit for an hour, -when work was over, in front of the log fire in Dorinda's room which had -once been her mother's chamber. Then they would talk sympathetically of -the cows and the hens, and occasionally they would speak of Fluvanna's -love affairs and of Dorinda's years in the city. The coloured girl would -ask eager questions in the improved grammar her mistress had taught her. -"I don't see how you could bear to come back to this poky place. But, of -course, when yo' Pap died somebody had to be here to look after things. -I don't reckon you'll ever go back, will you?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I shall never go back. I had enough of it when I was there." -</p> - -<p> -"Wouldn't you rather look at the sights up there than at cows and -chickens?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda would shake her head thoughtfully. "Not if they are my cows and -chickens." -</p> - -<p> -In this reply, which was as invariable as a formula, she touched -unerringly the keynote of her character. The farm belonged to her, and -the knowledge aroused a fierce sense of possession. To protect, to lift -up, rebuild and restore, these impulses formed the deepest obligation -her nature could feel. -</p> - -<p> -Though she talked frankly to Nathan about the farm and the debts which -had once encumbered it, she had never given him her confidence as -generously as she had bestowed it on Fluvanna. Kind as he had been, the -fact that he was a man and a widower made an impalpable, and she told -herself ridiculous, barrier between them. She had grown to depend upon -him, but it was a practical dependence, as devoid of sentiment as her -dependence upon the clock or the calendar. If he had dropped out of her -life, she would have missed him about the barn and the stable; and it -would have been difficult, she admitted, to manage the farm without his -advice. There were the children, too, particularly the younger boy, who -had been born with a clubfoot. The one human emotion left in Dorinda's -heart, she sometimes thought, was her affection for Rose Emily's boy, -John Abner. -</p> - -<p> -If he had been her own son he could not have been closer to her; and his -infirmity awakened the ardent compassion that love assumed in her strong -and rather arrogant nature. Though he was barely fourteen, he was more -congenial with her than any grown person at Pedlar's Mill. He devoured -books as she used to do when she was a girl, and he was already -developing into a capable farmer. Years ago she had given Nathan no -peace until he had taken the child to town and had had an operation -performed on his crippled foot; and when no improvement had resulted, -she had insisted that he should have John Abner's shoes made from -measurements. As a little girl, her mother had always said to her that -she preferred lame ducks to well ones; and John Abner was the only lame -duck that had ever come naturally into her life. Fortunately, he was a -boy of deep, though reserved, affections, and he returned in his -reticent way the tenderness Dorinda lavished upon him. Minnie May, who -had grown into a plain girl of much character, had been jealous at -first; but a little later, when she became engaged to be married, she -was prudently reconciled to the difference Dorinda made in her life. The -two other children, though they were both healthy and handsome, with a -dash of Rose Emily's fire and spirit, were received as lightly and -forgotten as quickly as warm days in winter or cool ones in summer. The -girl Lena, who had just turned seventeen, was a pretty, vain, and -flirtatious creature, with a head "as thick with beaux," Fluvanna -observed, "as a brier patch with briers"; and the boy, Bertie, -familiarly called "Bud," was earning a good salary in a wholesale -grocery store in the city. It was pleasant to have Nathan and the -children come over every week; but John Abner was the only one Dorinda -missed when accident or bad weather kept them away. In the beginning -they had visited her in the afternoons, and she had had nothing better -to offer them than popcorn or roasted apples and chestnuts; but as the -years passed and debts were paid, there was less need of rigid economy, -and she had drifted into the habit of having the family with her at -Sunday dinner. This had gradually become the one abundant meal of the -week, and she and Fluvanna both looked forward to it with the keen -anticipation of deferred appetite. -</p> - -<p> -The work was so exacting and her nerves so blessedly benumbed by toil, -that Dorinda seldom stopped to ask herself if she were satisfied with -her lot. Had the question been put to her, she would probably have -dismissed it with the retort that she "had no time to worry about things -like that." On the surface her days were crowded with more or less -interesting tasks; but in her buried life there were hours when the old -discontent awoke with the autumn wind in the broomsedge. At such moments -she would feel that life had cheated her, and she would long -passionately for something bright and beautiful that she had missed. Not -love again! No, never again the love that she had known! What she longed -for was the something different, the something indestructibly desirable -and satisfying. Then there would return the blind sense of a purpose in -existence which had evaded her search. The encompassing dullness would -melt like a cloud, and she would grasp a meaning beneath the deceptions -and the cruelties of the past. But this feeling was as fugitive as all -others, and when it vanished it left not the glorified horizon, but -simply the long day's work to be done. -</p> - -<p> -Years had passed now, and she had stopped thinking of Jason. Since she -never left the farm, she was spared the accident of a meeting, and she -had excluded him for so long from her consciousness that his memory had -appeared to acquiesce in the banishment. For the first two or three -years after her return, she had lived in dread of seeing him again in -the flesh, or of having his image awake to life in her mind. She had -been afraid to go to sleep, because in her dreams she was still -defenseless against him; and after her love for him had died, her fear -had remained embedded in hatred. But that had passed also, and she had -ceased to remember him, except when Nathan or one of the labourers on -the farm mentioned his name. -</p> - -<p> -"Doctor Stout is taking all Jason's practice," Nathan said one day. -"That comes, I reckon, of trying to please everybody." -</p> - -<p> -"I thought drink was his ruin," Dorinda rejoined indifferently. -</p> - -<p> -"Of course drink helped it along, though it began farther back with his -being so pleasant that you couldn't believe what he said. At first folks -liked it, but after a while they began to see through it. By the way, -his wife has been acting kind of queer. They say she's got a screw loose -somewhere in her brain." -</p> - -<p> -"I know," was all that Dorinda answered, but she thought, "And I once -wished I could be in her place!" -</p> - -<p> -She remembered the way Geneva had slipped up behind her one afternoon in -an old field where broomsedge was burning, and had talked in a rambling, -excited manner about her marriage and how blissfully happy they both -were. "Not that we shouldn't like a child," she had continued, with a -grimace which had begun as a smile, "but we can't expect to have -everything, and we are blissfully happy. Blissfully happy!" she had -screamed out suddenly in her high, cracked voice. At the time Dorinda -had been puzzled, but now she understood and was sorry. The staring -face, with its greenish skin and too prominent eyes, framed in the -beautiful flaxen hair, softened her heart. "At least Geneva was not to -blame, yet she is the one who is punished most," she thought; and this -seemed to her another proof of the remorseless injustice of destiny. "I -suppose the Lord knew what was best for me," she said to herself in the -pious idiom her mother had used; but, as the phrase soared in her mind, -it was as empty as a balloon. When she remembered her girlhood now, she -would think contemptuously, "How could I ever have had so little sense?" -Were all girls as foolish, she wondered, or was she exceptional in her -romantic ignorance of life? -</p> - -<p> -Without warning, after not thinking of Jason for years, she dreamed of -him one night. She dreamed of him, not as she knew that he was to-day, -but as she had once believed him to be. For a moment, through the -irresistible force of illusion, she was caught again, she was imprisoned -in the agony of that old passion. In her dream she saw herself fleeing -from some invisible pursuer through illimitable deserts of broomsedge. -Though she dared not look back, she could hear the rush of footsteps -behind her; she could almost feel the breath of the hunter on her neck. -For minutes that were an eternity the flight endured. Then as she -dropped to her knees, with her strength exhausted, she was caught up in -the arms of the pursuer, and looking up, felt Jason's lips pressed to -hers. -</p> - -<p> -There was thunder in her ears when she awoke. Springing out of bed, she -ran in her nightgown to the window and threw the shutters wide open. -Outside, beneath a dappled sky, she saw the frosted November fields and -the dark trees flung off sharply, like flying buttresses, between the -hill and the horizon. The wind cut through her gown; far away in the -moonlight an owl hooted. Gradually, while she stood shivering in the -frosty air, the terror of her dream faded and ice froze again over her -heart. -</p> - -<p> -Through ten years of hard work and self-denial the firm, clear surface -of her beauty remained unroughened. Then one October morning, Fluvanna, -looking at her in the sunlight, exclaimed, "Miss Dorindy, you're too -young to have crow's feet!" -</p> - -<p> -Crow's feet! She turned with a start from the brood of white turkeys she -was counting. Yes, she was too young, she was only thirty-three, but she -was already beginning to break. Youth was going! Youth was going, the -words echoed and reechoed through the emptiness of the future. Week by -week, month by month, year by year, youth was slipping away; and she had -never known the completeness, the fulfilment, that she had expected of -life. Even now, she could not tell herself, she did not know, what it -was that she had missed. It was not love, nor was it motherhood. No, the -need went deeper than nature. It lay so deep, so far down in her hidden -life, that the roots of it were lost in the rich darkness. Though she -felt these things vaguely, without thinking that she felt them, it -seemed to her, standing there with her gaze on the brood of white -turkeys, that all she had ever hoped for or believed in was eluding her -grasp. In a little while, with happiness still undiscovered, she would -be as wrinkled and grey as her mother. Only her mother's restless habit -of work would remain to fill the vacancy of her days. -</p> - -<p> -"I've been working too hard, Fluvanna," she said, "and what do I get out -of it?" -</p> - -<p> -"You oughtn't to let yo'self go, Miss Dorindy. There ain't any use in -the world for you to slave and stint the way you do. You ought to go -about mo' and begin to take notice." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda laughed. "You talk as if I were a widower." -</p> - -<p> -"Naw'm, I ain't. No widower ever lived the way you do." -</p> - -<p> -"It's true. I haven't bought a good dress or been anywhere for ten -years." -</p> - -<p> -"Thar ain't a particle of use in it. You'll be old and dried up soon -enough. What's the use of being young and proud if you don't strut?" -</p> - -<p> -Yes, Fluvanna was right. What was the use? She had made a success of her -undertaking; but it was inadequate because there were no spectators of -her triumph. She had kept so close to the farm that her neighbours knew -her only as a dim figure against the horizon, a moving shape among -corn shocks and hay ricks in the flat landscape, an image that vanished -with these inanimate objects in the lengthening perspective. Even in the -thin and isolated community in which she lived, she did not stand out, -clearly projected, like James Ellgood; perhaps, for the simple reason, -she told herself now, that she had drilled her energy down into the soil -instead of training it upward. -</p> - -<p> -"I believe you're right, Fluvanna," she said. "Now that we're out of -debt and things are going fairly well, I ought to try to get something -out of life while I'm still young." -</p> - -<p> -After the turkeys were counted, she left Fluvanna to turn them out into -the woods, and going into her bedroom, looked at herself in the mirror -which had once belonged to her mother. While she stared into the glass -it seemed to her that another face was watching her beyond her -reflection, a face that was drawn and pallid, with a corded neck and the -famished eyes of a disappointed dreamer. Well, she would never become -like that if she could prevent it. She would never let disappointment -eat away the heart in her bosom. -</p> - -<p> -She was still handsome. The grave oval of her face, the fine austerity -of its modelling, would remain noble even after she became an old woman -and the warm colour of the flesh was mottled and stained with yellow. It -was true that lines were forming about her eyes; but the eyes themselves -were as deeply blue as the autumn sky, and though her skin had coarsened -in the last ten years, the dark red of her cheeks and lips was as vivid -as ever. Her black hair was still abundant, though it had lost its gloss -in the sunshine. In spite of hard work, or because of it, her tall, -straight figure had kept the slender hips and the pointed breasts of a -goddess. She did not look young for her age; the sunny bloom, like the -down on a peach, had hardened to the glaze of maturity; but she had not -lost the April charm of her expression. "For all I've ever had, I might -as well have been born plain," she thought. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XV_I">XV</a></h4> - -<p> -That afternoon she harnessed Molly, the new mare, to the buggy, and -accompanied by Ranger, son of Rambler, drove over to Honeycomb Farm. -</p> - -<p> -"I want a dress to wear to church," she said to Miss Seena, "something -good that will last." -</p> - -<p> -"Then you're going to church again? I must say it is time." Rawboned, -wintry, rheumatic, the dressmaker was still an authority. -</p> - -<p> -"The roads were so bad." To her surprise, Dorinda found herself becoming -apologetic. "I couldn't take the teams out on Sundays, but I've bought a -chestnut mare for my own use, and I'll begin going again." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'm glad you ain't a confirmed backslider. What sort of material -had you thought of?" -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda reflected. "Something handsome. Silk—no, satin. That shines -more." -</p> - -<p> -"Why don't you order it out of a catalogue? My fingers have got so stiff -I've had to give up sewin' the last few months. They put everything in -catalogues now." Miss Seena selected one from the pile on the table and -opened it as she spoke. "You'll want blue, I reckon. You were always -partial to blue." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda frowned. "No, not blue. Any colour but blue." -</p> - -<p> -"I thought you favoured it. Do you recollect the dress I bought to match -yo' eyes one spring when you were a girl? My, but you did look well in -it!" -</p> - -<p> -"Isn't there any other colour worn?" -</p> - -<p> -"Well, there's brown. The fashion books speak highly of brown this year. -Black's real stylish too. With yo' bright complexion black ought to go -mighty well. You'd better order this model. It is the newest style." She -pointed to a picture which seemed to Dorinda to be the extreme of -fashion. "Them box pleats and pointed basques is the latest thing. I -reckon you'll have to get a new corset," she concluded sharply, looking -the girl up and down. "These styles don't set well unless they're worn -over a straight font." -</p> - -<p> -"Then I'll get one." Dorinda was prepared for any discomfort. "And I -need a coat—and a hat, a big one with a feather." -</p> - -<p> -"You want a willow plume. They're all the rage this season, and a long -coat of seal plush. There're some handsome ones in the front of that -catalogue. Seal plush is goin' to be mo' worn than fur, all the fashion -books say." -</p> - -<p> -After the choice was made and the letter written by the cramped fingers -of the dressmaker, Dorinda drove home consoled by the discovery that -crow's feet make, after all, less difference than clothes in one's -happiness, Strange how a little thing like a new dress could lift up -one's spirits! Her changed mood persisted until she approached the fork -of the road and saw a woman's figure against the dying flare of the sun. -As she reached the spot, the woman came down into the middle of the -road, and she recognized Geneva Greylock. -</p> - -<p> -"I want to talk to you, Dorinda," Geneva began, with a trill of -laughter. "Won't you stop and listen?" -</p> - -<p> -She was wearing a thin summer dress, though the air was sharp, and round -her waist she had tied a faded blue sash with streamers which blew out -in the wind. Her face, in its masklike immobility, resembled the face of -a dead woman. Only her gleaming flaxen hair was alive. -</p> - -<p> -"I'm afraid it's too late," Dorinda replied as pleasantly as she could. -"Supper will be waiting, and besides you ought not to be out in that -dress. You will catch your death of cold." -</p> - -<p> -Geneva shook her head, while that expressionless laughter trickled in a -stream from her lips. "I'm not cold," she answered. "I'm so happy that I -must talk to somebody. It is our wedding anniversary, and I'm obliged to -tell somebody how blissfully happy we are. Jason went to sleep right -after dinner, and he hasn't waked up yet, so I had to come out and find -somebody to talk to. I've got a secret that nobody knows, not even -Jason." -</p> - -<p> -So it was the same thing over again! Her eyes looked as if they would -leap out of her head, they were so staring and famished. "I'll tell you -what I'll do," Dorinda responded, her voice softened by pity. "If you'll -get into the buggy, I'll drive you down to Gooseneck Creek. That will be -halfway home." This was what marriage to Jason had brought, and yet -there had been a time when she would have given her life to have been -married to him for a single year. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, will you?" Geneva sprang up on the step and into the buggy. She was -so thin that her bones seemed to rattle as she moved, and there were -hollows in her chest and between her shoulder blades. "Then I can tell -you my secret." -</p> - -<p> -"I wouldn't if I were you. I've got to keep an eye on the road, so I -can't talk." -</p> - -<p> -For a few minutes Geneva rambled on in her strained voice as if she had -not heard her. Then pausing, she asked abruptly, "Why did you never like -me, Dorinda? I always wanted to be friends with you." -</p> - -<p> -"I like you. I do like you." -</p> - -<p> -Geneva shook her head. "You never liked me because you loved Jason. -Jason jilted you." She broke into her cracked laugh again. "You don't -know, but there are worse things than being jilted." -</p> - -<p> -Anger flamed up in Dorinda's heart, but it died down before she allowed -herself to reply. "I suppose there are," she said at last. "That was -long ago, anyhow. So long that it doesn't matter what happened." Poor -demented creature, she thought, how many months would it be before they -put her away? -</p> - -<p> -Suddenly Geneva leaned toward her and began to whisper so rapidly that -Dorinda could scarcely follow her words. "If I tell you my secret, will -you promise never to repeat it? When you hear it, you will know there -are worse things than being jilted. I had a baby, and Jason killed it. -He killed it as soon as it was born and buried it in the garden. He -doesn't know that I saw him. He thinks that I was asleep, but I found -the grave under the lilac bushes at the end of the garden path. Now, we -are going to have another baby, and I'm afraid he will kill this one -too. That's why I pretend to be so blissfully happy. Blissfully happy," -she cried out in a high voice as she jumped over the wheel before the -buggy came to a stop. Yes, they would probably have to send her away -very soon. "I wish I had been kinder to her when I had the chance," -Dorinda thought, as she turned the mare toward home. -</p> - -<p> -The next Sunday afternoon she asked Nathan for news of Geneva. It was -easy for her to speak of the Greylocks now since that dreadful encounter -had obliterated even the memory of jealousy. -</p> - -<p> -"Every six months or so she's taken like that," Nathan answered. "Then -she goes clean out of her head; but they say it isn't as bad as the -moping in between the attacks." -</p> - -<p> -"Is there nothing that can be done?" -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, they'll have to put her away, sooner or later. Her father has tried -his best to get her to leave Jason, but she won't hear of it when she's -in her right mind. Once he took her home while she was deranged and kept -her in a room with barred windows. It didn't last, however, and as soon -as she came to her senses, she insisted on going back to Jason. They -lead a cat-and-dog life together, and when she is out of her head she -runs about telling everybody that she had a child and he murdered it." -</p> - -<p> -"Poor thing," said Dorinda. "She told me too." -</p> - -<p> -"That's when she's crazy. As soon as she gets her senses again, you -can't make her leave him." -</p> - -<p> -For a few minutes Dorinda was silent. When she spoke it was to remark -irrelevantly, "How little human beings know what is best for them." -</p> - -<p> -"I didn't understand what you said, Dorinda." -</p> - -<p> -"No matter. I was only thinking aloud." -</p> - -<p> -It was a mellow October afternoon, and around them the fields were -resting after a fair harvest. As far as she could see, east, north, -west, the land belonged to her. Only toward the south there were the -pale green willows of Gooseneck Creek, and beyond the feathery edge she -saw the red chimneys of Five Oaks. But for those chimneys she would have -felt that the whole horizon was hers! -</p> - -<p> -"They say Five Oaks will come under the hammer before long." Nathan's -gaze also was on the red smears in the sky. "It's mortgaged now for as -much as it'll ever bring, and there's trouble about the taxes." -</p> - -<p> -A wild idea shot into her mind. "I suppose it will bring a good deal?" -</p> - -<p> -"If it is put up at a forced sale, it will probably go for a song. -Nobody is buying land now. Amos Wigfall bought the old Haney place five -years ago for a dollar an acre. Some day, if he looks out, it will be -worth a hundred." -</p> - -<p> -She looked at him with calculating eyes. "If I could buy Five Oaks, my -farm would be as big as Green Acres." -</p> - -<p> -His neighing laugh broke out. "Good Lord, Dorinda, what would you do -with it?" -</p> - -<p> -"I don't know what I'd do with it, but I want it. I'd give ten years of -my life for the chance of owning Five Oaks before I die." -</p> - -<p> -His laugh dropped to a chuckle. "Now, that's downright queer because -I've been studying about bidding on it myself. It looks to me as if that -would be the only way to save my money." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'd rather you'd own it than anybody else," she said grudgingly. -"But I'm going to the sale when it comes, and if I'm able to sell my -prize bull, I'm going to bid against you. I've got almost five thousand -dollars in bank." -</p> - -<p> -"You'd better leave it there for the present. I wouldn't bid a cent on -the place if it wasn't for the fact that I own most of it already. It's -going to be hard to make anybody buy it. Just you wait and see." -</p> - -<p> -"What will become of Jason?" she inquired abruptly. -</p> - -<p> -Nathan looked dubious. "He'll go to work for James Ellgood, I reckon, or -more likely drink himself out of the way. But he's been doing better of -late, I hear. He was at church last Sunday in the Ellgood pew, looking -all spruced up, as if he hadn't smelt whiskey for a month." -</p> - -<p> -Her next words came quickly, as if she were afraid of drawing them back -before they escaped. "Why didn't he ever go away after his father died?" -</p> - -<p> -"He'd lost the wish, I reckon. Things happen like that sometimes. The -old man hung on to him until all the sap was drained dry." -</p> - -<p> -"His father died years ago." -</p> - -<p> -"It must be going on nine years or so." He stopped to calculate as he -did when he was adding up an account in the store. "Well, I reckon he'd -used up all his energy in wishing to get away. When the chance came, he -didn't have enough spirit left to take advantage' of it." He sighed. -"I've seen that happen I can't tell you how many times." -</p> - -<p> -She looked away from him, and for a few minutes there was silence. Then -he made a sound between a gasp and a chuckle, and turning to glance at -him, she met an expression which she had never before seen in his face. -Her nerves shivered into repulsion, while she drew farther away. Why -were men so unaccountable? she asked herself in annoyance. -</p> - -<p> -"I was just thinking," he stammered. -</p> - -<p> -She regarded him with severity. After all, no one took Nathan seriously. -</p> - -<p> -"I was just thinking," he began again, "that if you could make up your -mind to marry me, we might throw the two farms into one." -</p> - -<p> -"To marry you?" She stared at him incredulously. "Are you out of your -head?" -</p> - -<p> -He broke into an embarrassed laugh. "I reckon it sounds like that at -first," he admitted, "but I hoped you might get used to the idea if you -thought it over. It ain't as if I were a poor man. I'm about as -well-to-do as anybody round Pedlar's Mill, if you leave out James -Ellgood, and he's got a wife already, besides being too old. I ain't so -young as you, I know; but I'm a long ways younger than James Ellgood. -There ain't more than ten years' difference between us, and I think all -the world of you. You might have things your own way just as you're -doing now. I wouldn't want to interfere with you." -</p> - -<p> -She was still gazing at him as if he were distraught. "I can't imagine," -she replied sternly, "how you ever came to think of such a thing.". It -was absurd; it was incredible; and yet she supposed that even stranger -things had happened! She had seen enough of the world to know that you -took your husband, as Fluvanna observed, where you found him, and she -was troubled by few illusions about marriage. -</p> - -<p> -His face turned the colour of beet juice while he looked at her with -humble, imploring eyes, like the eyes of young Ranger when they were -training him. "I was just thinking how useful I could be on the farm," -he said apologetically. "You seemed so set on owning Five Oaks, and then -you like to have the children about." -</p> - -<p> -The incredulity faded from her face. "I do like to have the children -about." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, you know I'd never put myself in your way. You could have both -the farms to manage just as you like. I'd buy Five Oaks whenever it was -sold." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, the two farms could be thrown together—or farmed separately." -Her mind was still working over Five Oaks, not over the question of -marriage. -</p> - -<p> -"Then couldn't you get used to the idea, Dorinda?" -</p> - -<p> -His tone rather than his words awoke her with a start, to his meaning. -"The idea! You mean marriage? No, I couldn't do it. There's no use -thinking about it." -</p> - -<p> -His face scarcely changed, so little had he dared hope for her consent. -"Well, I won't press you," he said after a minute, "but if the time ever -comes——" -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head emphatically. "The time will never come. Don't let -that thought get into your head." -</p> - -<p> -While she spoke her dispassionate gaze examined him, and she asked -herself, with a tinge of amusement, why the idea of marrying him did not -startle her more. He was ridiculous; he was uncouth; he was the last man -on earth, she told herself firmly, who could ever have inspired her with -the shadow of sentiment. Only after she had speculated upon these -decisive objections did she begin to realize that absence of emotion was -the only appeal any marriage could make to her. Her nerves or her senses -would have revolted from the first hint of passion. The only marriage -she could tolerate, she reflected grimly, was one which attempted no -swift excursions into emotion, no flights beyond the logical barriers of -the three dimensions. -</p> - -<p> -"Of course, I'm not your equal," Nathan said abruptly. "You're a scholar -like your great-grandfather, and you've read all his books. You know a -lot of things I never heard of." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda laughed. "Much good books ever did me!" Much good indeed, she -reflected. "There's no use thinking about it; I could never do it," she -repeated in a tone of harsh finality, as she turned to walk homeward. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XVI_I">XVI</a></h4> - -<p> -Two weeks later, one Saturday afternoon, Miss Seena brought over the new -clothes; and Dorinda sat up until midnight, taking up the belt and -letting down the hem of the black satin dress. When s put it on the next -morning and listened to Fluvanna's admiring, ejaculations, she -remembered the day she had first worn the blue nun's veiling and the -drive to church sitting beside Almira Pryde in the old carryall. -</p> - -<p> -"You look like a queen, Miss Dorinda," Fluvanna exclaimed. "Thar ain't -nothin'——" -</p> - -<p> -"Anything, Fluvanna." -</p> - -<p> -"There ain't anything that gives you such an air as one of them -willow plumes." -</p> - -<p> -"Those, Fluvanna. Yes, it does look nice," Dorinda assented, after the -correction. "I'm glad I got it black. It makes me look older, but there -isn't anything so distinguished." -</p> - -<p> -A few hours afterwards, while she walked slowly up the aisle in church, -she felt rather than saw that the congregation, forgetting to stand up -to sing, sat motionless and stared at her from the pews. For the first -time in her life she tasted the intoxicating flavour of power. On the -farm, success was translated into well-tilled acres or golden pounds of -butter; but here, with these astonished eyes on her, she discovered that -it contained a quality more satisfying than any material fact. What it -measured was the difference between the past which Jason had ruined and -the present which she had triumphantly built on the ruins he had left. -In spite of everything that had happened, in spite of his betrayal of -her faith and the black despair that had wiped love out of her heart, -she, not he, was to-day the victor over life! -</p> - -<p> -As she marched up the aisle, in her handsome, commonplace clothes, she -might have been a contented rustic beauty whose first youth was slowly -slipping away. A warm flush dyed her cheeks; her eyes were like blue -stars beneath the projecting shadow of her eyebrows; she carried the -willow plume high above the dusky cloud of her hair; and the luxurious -swish-swish of her satin skirt was as loud as the sound of wind in the -grass. Not until she reached the pew where she used to sit between her -father and mother, did she drop her eyes to the level of the -congregation and discover that Jason was sitting with the Ellgoods under -the high west window. She had not seen him face to face since the -afternoon of her father's funeral, more than ten years ago, and he -looked ages older, she thought, than she had remembered him. His skin -had lost the clear red-brown of health and acquired a leathery texture. -Though his hair was still red, there was a rusty edge where the light -fell on it. His moustache, which was too long, drooped in bedraggled -ends over his chin, as if he had fallen into the habit of chewing -tobacco—he who had always been so fastidious! He was dressed neatly -enough in his Sunday clothes; but sitting there in the broad band of -sunlight, he reminded Dorinda of a tree when the sap has dried, with the -brittle ashen brown leaves still clinging to the boughs. Even his hands, -which shook a little as they held the hymn book open in front of his -wife, were the hands of a man whose grasp had slackened. He was not yet -forty, but life had already used him up and flung him aside. -</p> - -<p> -Suddenly, he raised his eyes from the book and their glances met and -crossed before they fell away again to the printed lines. In that -instant, something passed between them which could never be uttered -because it was profounder than speech. Resolute, imperious, her gaze -swept him! While her eyes, as hard and cold as a frozen lake, gave back -his reflection, she felt, with a shiver of terror, that the past had -never died, that it existed eternally as a wave in the sea of her -consciousness. Memory was there, flowing on, strong, silent, resistless, -with no fresher tides of emotion to sweep over and engulf it in the -flood of experience. In her whole life there had been only that one man. -He had held her in his arms. He would remain always an inseparable part -of her being. . . . Resentment struggled within her. All the strength of -her spirit rebelled against the tyranny of the past, against the burden -of a physical fact, which she dragged after her like a dead fish in a -net. She saw him harshly as he was, and she despised herself because she -had ever imagined him tenderly as he was not. As she opened her mouth to -sing, it seemed to her that she was choked with the effluvium of the old -despair. She shut her eyes while her voice rose with the hymn. Rain on -the shingled roof; rain on the bare red earth; rain on the humped -box-bush; rain on the bedraggled feathers of white turkeys. The face of -the old man emerging from the blue light in the room, mottled, flabby, -repellent. Memories like that. He meant nothing more to her now. Only -the beauty that had turned into ugliness. Only the happiness of which -she had been cheated. . . . -</p> - -<p> -She was the last one to come out of church, and by the time she had -spoken to the minister and a few of the older members who stopped to -welcome her, the Ellgoods had driven away. She was glad that she did not -see Jason again; for the sight of him, though it no longer stirred her -heart, left that disagreeable pricking sensation in the nervous fibre of -her body. -</p> - -<p> -Nathan and the children were waiting for her at the gate of the -churchyard, and she drove home with John Abner, while the others -followed in Nathan's new surrey with the fringed top. -</p> - -<p> -"You look good enough to eat, Dorinda," the boy said admiringly. "You -ought to keep dressed up all the time." -</p> - -<p> -She smiled down on him. "Much work I'd do on the farm! Ten years ago -they almost turned me out of church because I milked in overalls; but -they forgot that this morning when I went back wearing a willow plume." -</p> - -<p> -There was no one in the world who adored her as uncritically as did this -boy with the clubfoot. He was a good boy, she knew, with a streak of -morbid melancholy which was curiously attractive to her adventurous -temperament. His face, with its bulging forehead and deep dark eyes, -hiding stars of light in them like gleams at the bottom of a well, was -an unusual one for a country boy, and made her wonder at times if there -could be more in him than any one suspected. In his childhood his -clubfoot had been a torment to him, and for this reason he had kept away -from the rough sports of other children. -</p> - -<p> -"You'd rather farm than do anything else, wouldn't you, John Abner?" she -asked abruptly. -</p> - -<p> -"Except read. I'm glad winter is coming, so I can stay in the house and -read." -</p> - -<p> -"You wouldn't like to go to boarding school in the city?" -</p> - -<p> -He shook his head, flinching as if from the cut of a whip. "Not with the -other boys. I'd rather stay in the country with Father and you and the -animals." His sympathetic understanding of animals was one of the -strongest bonds between them. From his birth he had known what it was to -suffer and endure. -</p> - -<p> -"I hoped that the new kind of shoe would make it easier for you," she -said presently. "Is it comfortable?" -</p> - -<p> -"If it weren't so heavy. They are all heavy." -</p> - -<p> -She sighed, for her heart was drooping with pity. John Abner had -penetrated the armour of her arrogance in its one weak spot, which was -her diffused maternal instinct. The longing to protect the helpless was -still alive in her. -</p> - -<p> -At home they found Fluvanna in a clean apron, with a blazing; fire and a -lavish Sunday dinner awaiting them. Roast duck with apple sauce, candied -sweet potatoes, tomatoes stewed with brown sugar, and plum pudding, -which was Nathan's favourite sweet. True, it was the one abundant meal -of the week; but while she sat at the head of her table listening to the -chatter of happy children, Dorinda remembered the frugal Sunday dinners -of her mother and father, and her eyes smarted with tears. That, she had -learned, was the hidden sting of success; it rubbed old sores with the -salt of regret until they were raw again. -</p> - -<p> -In the hall, after dinner, while Dorinda was fastening a worn blue cape -over her satin dress, Nathan stood gazing thoughtfully up the staircase. -</p> - -<p> -"Have you ever thought of putting a stove in the back hall, Dorinda?" he -asked. "It would make a lot of difference in the comfort of the house, -and it would help heat the bedrooms upstairs." -</p> - -<p> -She turned and gazed at him, surprised at this fresh proof of his -ingenuity. Yes, it was a good idea; she wondered why she had never -thought of it herself. Indeed, since he had mentioned it, it seemed to -her that it was what she had always intended to do. -</p> - -<p> -"If only we could have had it in Ma's lifetime," she said. "It would -have been such a help to her neuralgia." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, that's the trouble about getting comforts. We always remember that -other people went without them. I've got the carpets now that Rose Emily -wanted." After all, no one but Nathan had ever really understood her. -With the thought she asked herself incredulously if understanding had -anything whatever to do with love? Did people who loved ever understand? -Wasn't the misunderstanding even a part of love's divine madness? -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I ought to have done it long ago," she murmured inattentively. -</p> - -<p> -"I'll order one, if you want me to. There's a catalogue at the store, -and I can get it at a discount. There are all sorts of contrivances for -saving fuel, too, so it won't cost as much as you'd imagine. These -newfangled stoves give twice as much heat as an open fire, and don't -burn one fourth as much fuel. It's a close sort of heat. You wouldn't -like it in your chamber, but it would be the very thing for this hall." -</p> - -<p> -While they went out of doors together, she meditated upon the fact of -his usefulness. He was always thinking of ways and means to be -comfortable or economical before they occurred to her or to anyone else, -and he had what he called a knack for mending anything that was broken. -He was kind; he was honest in every fibre; he was neat in his appearance -for a farmer; and he was, she reflected cynically, almost emasculate in -his unselfishness. To be sure, he had habits which she disliked; but, as -she told herself with dispassionate realism, one couldn't have -everything. It never occurred to her that these habits might be broken -by marriage, for she was wise enough to perceive that a man's habits are -more firmly rooted than his emotions. What she felt was that in exchange -for his helpfulness she might learn to tolerate the things to which she -objected. What good ever came, she demanded impatiently, of trying to -make any one over? Hadn't her mother tried for forty years to make her -father stop chewing tobacco, and yet it was the last thing that he -relinquished. No, she had few illusions remaining. Though she still told -herself inflexibly that she could never make up her mind to marry -Nathan, she felt, in spite of her will, that the insidious force of -logic was gradually undermining her scruples. She had suffered too much -from love in the past ever to walk again with open eyes into the -furnace. Sex emotion, she repeated grimly, was as dead as a burned-out -cinder in her heart. But respect she could still feel, and a marriage -founded upon respect and expediency might offer an available refuge from -loneliness. As she grew older, the thing she feared most was not death, -not poverty even, but the lonely fireside. -</p> - -<p> -She walked on, disheartened by indecision, and Nathan was obliged to -repeat his question twice before she heard what he was saying. -</p> - -<p> -"Have you thought over what I asked you, Dorinda?" She shook her head. -"There's no use thinking." -</p> - -<p> -His only answer was a comical sigh, and after a long pause she repeated -more sharply, "There's no use thinking about that." -</p> - -<p> -Some hidden edge to her tone made him glance at her quickly. This was -another moment when the keenness of Nathan's perceptions surprised her. -</p> - -<p> -"You'd be just as free as you are now," he said discreetly but -hopefully. -</p> - -<p> -"I couldn't stand any love-making." Though the light bloomed on her lips -and cheeks, her eyes darkened with memory. -</p> - -<p> -He sighed again less hopefully. What a pity it was, she thought, that -everything about him grew in the wrong way; his hair like moth-eaten -fur, his flat clownish features; his long moustache which always -reminded her of bleached grass. Well, even so, you couldn't have -everything. If the outward man had been more attractive, the inward one, -she acknowledged, would have been less humble; and when all was said and -done, few virtues are more comfortable to live with than humility. -</p> - -<p> -"It doesn't do any good to keep thinking of that," she reiterated -firmly, but the firmness had oozed from her mind into her manner. The -fact that she needed Nathan on the farm was driven home to her every day -of her life. Without him, she would never become anything more than a -farmer who was extraordinary chiefly in being a woman as well; and this -provoking disadvantage was a continual annoyance. Her life, in spite of -the companionship of Fluvanna, was an empty one, and as the shadow of -middle age grew longer, she would become more and more solitary. -</p> - -<p> -They had reached the high ground by the graveyard, and over Gooseneck -Creek she saw the red chimneys of Five Oaks. At the sight a suffering -thought awoke and throbbed in her brain. -</p> - -<p> -"I'll never interfere with you, Dorinda," Nathan said in a husky tone. -</p> - -<p> -She turned suddenly and looked into his eyes. "It doesn't do any good to -keep thinking about it," she insisted in an expressionless voice as if -she were reciting a phrase she had learned by heart. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XVII_I">XVII</a></h4> - -<p> -The exact moment of her yielding was so vague that she could never -remember it; but three weeks later they drove over to the Presbyterian -church at Pedlar's Mill and were married. Until the evening before she -had told no one but Fluvanna; and only the pastor's wife, a farmer or -two, and Nathan's children, witnessed the marriage. As they stood -together before the old minister, a shadowy fear fluttered into -Dorinda's mind, and she longed to turn and run back to the safe -loneliness of Old Farm. "Can it be possible," she asked herself, "that I -am doing this thing?" She seemed to be standing apart as a spectator -while she watched some other woman married to Nathan. -</p> - -<p> -When it was over the few farmers came up to shake hands with her; but -their manner was repressed and unnatural, and even the children had -become bashful and constrained. -</p> - -<p> -"Wall, you was wise to git it over," John Appleseed said. "I don't -favour marryin' fur a woman as long as she's got a better means of -provision; but it's fortunate we don't all harbour the same opinions." -</p> - -<p> -He had attended with his idiot son, who was now a man of twenty-five, -but still retained his fondness for a crowd or a noise. While she looked -into his vacant face, Dorinda recalled Jason's ineffectual endeavours to -enlighten the natives, and the lecture on farming that he had delivered -to Nathan Pedlar and Billy. Appleseed, the idiot. Poor Jason! After -all, he had had his tragedy. -</p> - -<p> -"Nobody wants to hear croaking at a wedding, John," William Fairlamb -remarked genially. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I don't mind him." Dorinda laughed, but the laugh went no deeper -than her throat. Terror had seized her, the ancient panic quiver of the -hunted, and her face wore a strained and absent look as if she were -listening to some far-off music in the broomsedge. "How did I ever come -to do such a thing?" a voice like a song was asking over and over. -</p> - -<p> -On the drive home she could think of nothing to say. Her mind, which was -usually crowded with ideas, had become as blank as a wall, and she sat -gazing in silence over the head of the brisk young mare Nathan was -driving. So small a thing as the fact that Nathan was holding the reins -made her feel stiff and uncomfortable. -</p> - -<p> -As they passed the old mill, Geneva Greylock came running out of the -ruins and waved a blue scarf in the air. They could not see her face -clearly; but there was a distraught intensity in the lines of her thin -figure and in the violent gestures of her arms beneath the flying curves -of blue silk, which wound about her like a ribbon of autumn sky. -</p> - -<p> -"She's getting worse every day," Nathan said, glancing toward her as -they spun past. "It won't be long now before they have to send her to -the asylum. Last Sunday, when the minister was taking dinner with James -Ellgood, Geneva went round the table and poured molasses into every -soup plate. When they asked her why she had done it, she said she was -trying to make life sweeter." -</p> - -<p> -"Poor thing," Dorinda sighed. "She was always ailing." -</p> - -<p> -It was a brown afternoon in November, with a smoky sky and a strong, -clean wind which rushed in a droning measure through the broomsedge. All -the leaves had fallen and been swept in wind drifts under the rail -fences. The only animate shapes in the landscape were the buzzards -flocking toward a dead sheep in the pasture. -</p> - -<p> -"Did you tell the children to come straight over?" Nathan inquired -presently. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I've got their rooms ready. I had paper put on the walls instead -of whitewash, and they look very nice. The new stove heats them, -comfortably." -</p> - -<p> -"You mustn't let my children bother you, Dorinda." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, no. I'm glad to have them. They will be company for me. We can -begin reading again at night." -</p> - -<p> -The mare trotted briskly, and the edge of the wind felt like ice on -Dorinda's face. "It's turning much colder," she said after a long pause. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, there'll be a hard frost to-night if it clears." -</p> - -<p> -She turned away from him, lifting her gaze to the sky where broken -clouds were driven rapidly toward the south. A sword of light was thrust -suddenly through the greyness, and she said slowly, as if the words were -of profound significance, "The wind seems to be changing." Always -responsive to her surroundings, she told herself that the landscape -looked as if it were running away from the wind. "Does it really look -this way or is it only in my mind," she thought, as they went on past -the fork. Of course, if she had to go over it again, she could never -bring herself to be married; but since she had walked into the marriage -with open eyes, all she could do now was to endeavour to make the best -of her mistake. Nathan was a good man and—well, you couldn't have -everything! Youth, with its troubled rapture and its unsatisfied -craving, was well over. Green evening skies. The scent of wild grape. -The flutter of the heart like a caged bird. Feet flying toward -happiness. . . . Yes, he was a good man, and you couldn't have -everything. -</p> - -<p> -When she reached the farm she left Nathan to build up the fire in the -hall stove, and ran upstairs to put the finishing touches to the -bedrooms she had prepared for the children. Everything was in order. -There was nothing that she could find to do; yet she lingered to -straighten a picture or change the position of a chair until she heard -wheels approaching. Then, after she ran downstairs and exchanged -embarrassed greetings, she visited the henhouse and the barn before she -went into the kitchen to help Fluvanna with supper. All the work of the -farm, so heavy and engrossing on other days that it made her a slave to -routine, was suspended like a clock after the hour has struck. -</p> - -<p> -"Do you want me to make the hard sauce for the plum pudding, Fluvanna?" -</p> - -<p> -"Naw, Miss Dorindy, there ain't nothin' on earth for you to bother yo' -head with to-day. Miss Minnie May has made it, and she's helping me as -much as I want. You sit right down in the parlour and wait till supper -is ready. I don't see," she concluded in a faultfinding tone, "why -anybody wanted to have a poky wedding like this. There ain't even a -fiddle to make things lively." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda went out, but not into the parlour. As she passed through the -hall she caught a glimpse of Nathan, in his new suit of grey tweed, -sitting bolt upright in the best chair, while he slowly turned the -leaves of the family Bible. No, she had always disliked the parlour, in -spite of her great-grandfather's library which almost covered the walls. -Would it be possible, she wondered, to turn the room into a more -comfortable and cheerful place? Yet she shrank from making any definite -change. Though she hated the furniture and the air of chill repose in -which it had weathered the years, she could not banish the feeling that -it was dedicated to the ancestral spirits of her family. -</p> - -<p> -As she opened the back door, which admitted a gust of wind and a shower -of brown leaves, she heard Nimrod laughing with Fluvanna in the kitchen. -"Ef'n you ax me, it mought ez well be anybody's wedding ez hem. I lay she -ain' never so much as smelt dat ar wedding cake." Immediately, -Fluvanna's more educated accents responded, "I declare I couldn't help -feelin' all the time that I was baking a cake for a corpse." -</p> - -<p> -"How in the world did I ever do it?" Dorinda asked herself for the -hundredth time; and she pictured the years ahead as an interminable -desert of time in which Nathan would sit like a visitor in the parlour -and perpetually turn the leaves of the family Bible. Nothing but the -first day that she had had young Ranger as an untrained puppy on her -hands had ever seemed to her so endless. "I don't see how I'm going to -stand it for the rest of my life," she thought. A different wedding day -from the one of which she had dreamed long ago! But then, as she had -learned through hard experience, imagination is a creative principle and -depends little upon the raw material of life. Nothing, she supposed, -ever happened exactly as you hoped that it would. -</p> - -<p> -Supper was a dreary affair. The children were restless and awkward, and -even the wedding cake, which Fluvanna had baked in secret, and over -which she had lamented with Nimrod, was lumpy and heavy. Nathan -endeavoured to enliven the meal by a few foolish jokes badly told, and -when even Dorinda, who felt sorry for him, forgot to laugh, he stared at -her with humble, sheepish eyes while he relapsed into silence. It was a -relief when Bud, of Gargantuan appetite, refused a fifth slice of the -indigestible cake, and the last piece was wrapped in a napkin and put -away for Billy Appleseed. -</p> - -<p> -"Are you going to have suppers like this every night?" Bud, the -facetious, inquired, giving his stomach a comical pat. -</p> - -<p> -For the first time a laugh unforced and unafraid broke from Dorinda and -Nathan. After all, she concluded more hopefully, it was possible that -the children might make the house brighter. "I like it over here better -than I do at home," John Abner said. "It's farther away." -</p> - -<p> -"Farther away from what?" asked Nathan, who was trying to appear easy -and flippant. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I don't know. Farther away from school, I reckon." -</p> - -<p> -"I wouldn't want to go back to the city if we could have plum pudding -every night till Christmas," Bud persisted. -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda shook her head. "Oh, you greedy boy!" she exclaimed, smiling. -"When you are a little older you'll learn that you can't have -everything." -</p> - -<p> -When supper was over she put on her overalls and lighted her lantern, -for the short November day was already closing in. She knew that the -milkers were probably slighting their work, and it made her restless to -think that the cows might not have been handled properly. The negroes -were cheerful and willing workers, but ten years of patient discipline -on her part had failed to overcome their natural preference for the -easiest way. -</p> - -<p> -"You ain't going out again, are you, Dorinda?" Nathan asked anxiously, -while he watched her preparations. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, we had supper early so Fluvanna and Mary Joe could help with the -milking, but I'd better go out and see what they are doing. There's a -lot to do in the dairy and the darkeys are still a little afraid of the -new machinery." -</p> - -<p> -Nathan laughed good-humouredly. "I might as well help you. Dairy work is -the sort that won't keep." -</p> - -<p> -"No, it won't wait. The butter has to be packed for the early train." -</p> - -<p> -"That means you'll be up before daybreak?" -</p> - -<p> -She nodded impatiently. "Well, you're used to that. Don't you breakfast -by candlelight in winter?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I'm used to it. I'll come out now and help." -</p> - -<p> -"I don't want you. There's plenty of work for you in the fields, but I -don't want you meddling in my dairy." -</p> - -<p> -For the first time she understood what work had meant in her mother's -life; the flight of the mind from thought into action. To have Nathan -hanging round her in the dairy was the last thing, she said to herself, -that she had anticipated in marriage. -</p> - -<p> -"Of course, I didn't mean to interfere with you." He fell back into the -house, and with a sigh of relief she fled out to the new cow-barn, where -the last milkers still lingered and chatted over the wedding. As she -passed into the heavy atmosphere and inhaled the pasture-scented breath -of the cows, she felt that a soothing vapour had blown over her nerves. -</p> - -<p> -"I declar, Miss Dorindy, you mought jes' ez well not be mah'ed at all," -Nimrod remarked dolefully. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I won't let it interfere with my work. No man is going to do -that." -</p> - -<p> -Mary Joe bridled and giggled; for, being an engaging mulatto girl, she -knew all that could be told of the interference of men. "Naw'm, dat dey -ain't, nor breck yo' heart needer. Hit's a pity we ain't all ez -strong-minded ez you is." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda laughed. "Break my heart? I should think not," she replied. And -she meant what she said while she was saying it. One man had ruined her -life; but no other man should interfere with it. She was encased in -wounded pride as in defensive armour. -</p> - -<p> -One of the other milkers, a big black woman named Saphira, smiled -approvingly. "Hi! Dat's moughty sassy, Miss Dorindy," she exclaimed, -"but hit ain't natur!" -</p> - -<p> -After the milkers had gone home, Dorinda went into the dairy with -Fluvanna and Mary Joe and worked until nearly midnight. Usually, she had -finished by nine o'clock, at the latest, but to-night there were a dozen -extra tasks for her willing hands to perform. As the hours went on she -became so particular and so sharply critical that the two coloured women -were driven to tears. "Ef'n you ax me, hit's a good thing she cyarn't -git mah'd but oncet," muttered Mary Joe, as she was leaving. -</p> - -<p> -At midnight, when there was nothing else that she could find to do and -her limbs were aching from fatigue, Dorinda went back into the house and -locked the hall door which Nathan had left unfastened. The lamp on the -bracket by the staircase was flaring up, and she stopped to lower the -wick, while Ranger rose from his bed on a mat by the door and sidled up -to her. -</p> - -<p> -"Is that you, Dorinda?" whispered a voice from beyond the bend in the -staircase. "Do you work this late every night?" When she looked up, she -saw Minnie May blinking down on her. -</p> - -<p> -"No, not every night. We had put off the dairy work so that Fluvanna -could go to the—" Her tongue stumbled over the word "wedding," so -she said "church" instead. -</p> - -<p> -Holding her red flannel wrapper together over her flat girlish breast, -Minnie May stole noiselessly down the staircase. Her pale red hair hung -in a tight pigtail down her back, and the wrinkles of premature middle -age were visible in her young forehead. She was a girl who had, as -Fluvanna tartly observed, "run to character instead of looks." -</p> - -<p> -"I tried to wait up for you," she said, "but you were so long coming, -and Pa wouldn't let me go out to the dairy. Mr. Garlick stopped by long -enough to tell us about Geneva Greylock, and I thought you ought to know -it. She threw herself into the old millpond this evening and was -drowned." -</p> - -<p> -"Drowned?" Dorinda's voice was colourless. "Why, she waved to us as we -came by." While she spoke, it seemed to her that she could never stop -seeing the blue scarf flying round the distraught figure with its -violent gestures. -</p> - -<p> -"I know. John Appleseed saw her, but he didn't tell anybody, and when -they missed her they didn't know where to look. It was the Haneys' -little boy who saw the blue scarf floating on the pond when he was -playing by the mill-wheel. For months, they say, she had gone about -telling everybody that Jason had murdered her baby; but, of course, it -was just a delusion." -</p> - -<p> -"Poor thing." Dorinda turned away and went over to the wood stove where -the fire was quite dead. "There was something wrong with her. Even as a -girl she was always moping." Out of the fog of weariness there drifted a -vision of the red chimneys of Five Oaks. So, like an old wound that -begins to ache, the memory of Jason was thrust back into her life. -</p> - -<p> -"Haven't you been to sleep, Minnie May?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I was listening for you. You came in so softly I hardly heard you." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, you'd better go to bed. We have breakfast at five o'clock." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I don't mind. I wake early, and I'll get up and help you pack the -butter." -</p> - -<p> -As the girl went up the stairs, Dorinda opened the door of her room and -stepped over the threshold. The fire had been freshly made up and a -pleasant ruddiness suffused the large quaintly furnished chamber where -her parents had lived and died. Nathan had tried to keep the room warm -and to sit up for her; but overcome at last by the loneliness and the -firelight, he had fallen asleep on the big couch by the hearth. Having -removed only his coat, he lay stretched out on his back, snoring -slightly, with his jaw drooping above his magenta tie and his glazed -collar. His features wore the defenseless look which sleep brings to men -and women alike, and she felt, with a pang of sympathy, that he was at -her mercy because he cared while she was indifferent. She would be -always, she realized, the stronger of the two; for it seemed to her one -of the inconsistencies of human nature that strength should be measured -by indifference rather than by love. -</p> - -<p> -Picking up the old grey blanket from the foot of the bed, she spread it -over him so gently that he did not stir in his sleep. The honesty she -had felt in him from the beginning was the single attribute that -survived in unconsciousness. If only she could remember his goodness and -forget his absurdity, life would be so much easier. -</p> - -<p> -Too tired to do more than let down her hair and slip into a wrapper, she -dropped on the bed and drew the patchwork quilt up to her chin. As the -firelight flickered over her face, she remembered the night when Rufus -was arrested. Now, as then, she felt that the end of endurance was -reached. "Even if I am married to Nathan and Geneva has drowned herself, -I can't keep awake any longer." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XVIII_I">XVIII</a></h4> - -<p> -Up by the barn John Appleseed's threshing machine was droning like a -gigantic swarm of June beetles. After a rainy spring the sky had cleared -with the beginning of summer, and as the weeks went on, the weather -remained warm and dry for the wheat harvest. -</p> - -<p> -Standing on the porch, with her curved palm screening her eyes, Dorinda -watched for Nathan to leave the threshing and come home to dinner. All -the morning Fluvanna had been baking wheaten bread for the white men and -corn pone for the coloured hands, who had their midday meal out under -the locust trees at the back of the house. It was five years since the -night of her wedding day, when Nathan had fallen asleep by the fire, and -never in those five years had she known a season of such bountiful -crops. -</p> - -<p> -As she watched there in the sunlight, she looked exactly what she was in -reality, a handsome, still youthful woman of thirty-eight, who had been -hardened but not embittered by experience. Her tall straight figure had -thickened; there was a silver sheen on the hair over her temples, and -lines had gathered in the russet glow of her skin. Repose, dignity, -independence, these were the attributes with which she faced middle age, -for the lines in her face were marks of character, not of emotion. She -had long ago ceased to worry over wrinkles. Though she clung to youth, -it was youth of the arteries and the spirit. Her happiness was -independent, she felt, of the admiration of men, and her value as a -human being was founded upon a durable, if an intangible, basis. Since -she had proved that she could farm as well as a man there was less need -for her to endeavour to fascinate as a woman. Yet, as she occasionally -observed with surprise, in discouraging the sentimental advances of men, -she had employed the most successful means of holding their interest. -When all was said and done, was she not the only woman at Pedlar's Mill -who did not stoop habitually to falsehood and subterfuge to gain her -end? -</p> - -<p> -Looking back from the secure place where she stood, she could afford to -smile at the perturbation of spirit which had attended her wedding. -Marriage had made, after all, little difference in the orderly precision -of her days. She held the reins of her life too firmly grasped -ever to relinquish them to another; and as she had foreseen on her -wedding night, she possessed an incalculable advantage in merely liking -Nathan while he loved her. On her side at least marriage had begun where -it so often ends happily, in charity of mind. Though she could not love, -she had chosen the best substitute for love, which is tolerance. -</p> - -<p> -After five years of marriage, Nathan was scarcely more than a superior -hired man on the farm. Dorinda still smiled at his jokes; she still -considered his appetite; she still spoke of him respectfully to the -children as "your father"; but he had no part, he had never had any -part, in her life. It was his misfortune, perhaps, that by demanding -nothing, he existed as an individual through generosity alone. Yet -humble as he was in the house, his repressions fell away from him as -soon as he was out on the farm. The mechanical gesture of sowing or -reaping released his spiritual stature from the restraints that crippled -it in the flesh. Contact with the soil dissolved his humility, as -alcohol dissolved the inhibitions which had made Rufus when he was sober -colourless and ineffectual in comparison with Rufus when he was drunk. -Farming was Nathan's solitary outlet, for he did not drink and he had -observed scrupulously his promise not to encroach on Dorinda's freedom. -He left her at liberty, as he often reminded her, to have things her own -way, and nothing in his nature, except his habits, was strong enough to -resist her. Though she had been able to break him of chewing tobacco in -the house, he still drank his coffee from his saucer and sat with his -feet on the railing of the porch. Yet he was an easy man, she reflected, -to live with, and for a woman who was growing arrogant with prosperity, -an easy man was essential. At thirty-eight her philosophy had -crystallized into the axiom, "you can't have everything." -</p> - -<p> -In the midst of the abandoned acres the broad cultivated fields were -rich and smiling. Where the broomsedge had run wild a few years ago, the -young corn was waving, or the ragged furrows of the harvest wheat were -overflowing with feathery green. In the pasture, if she had looked from -the front porch instead of from the back one, she would have seen the -velvety flanks of the cattle standing knee deep in grass. At her feet, a -flock of white Leghorns, direct descendants of Romeo and Juliet, were -scratching busily in the sheepmint. -</p> - -<p> -Lifting her hand from her eyes, she brushed a lock of hair back from her -forehead and glanced down at the blue and white gingham dress she had -put on for dinner. Of late she had fallen into the habit of powdering -her face with her pink flannel starch bag and changing into a clean -dress before dinner. Her life, she knew, was becoming simplified into an -unbreakable chain of habits, a series of orderly actions at regular -hours. Vaguely, she thought of herself as a happy woman; yet she was -aware that this monotony of contentment had no relation to what she had -called happiness in her youth. It was better perhaps; it was certainly -as good; but it measured all the difference between youth and maturity. -She was not old. At thirty-eight, she was still young; and there were -moments in the spring when her tranquillity was shot through with arrows -of flame. Her romantic ardour lay buried under the years, but she -realized now and then that it was still living. -</p> - -<p> -"Dar dey is!" exclaimed Nimrod behind her, and immediately afterwards -she heard Fluvanna's voice inquiring if it "wasn't time to begin dishing -up dinner?" -</p> - -<p> -Across the fields the men were walking slowly, Nathan and John Appleseed -a little ahead, the others straggling behind them, with John Abner -limping alone at a distance. She would have recognized Nathan's loping -walk as far-off as she could distinguish his figure, and John Abner's -limp never failed to awaken a sympathetic feeling in her bosom. Of the -four children, he was the only one who had grown into her life. Minnie -May was married and the unselfish mother of an anæmic tow-headed brood; -Bud was working his way to the head of the wholesale grocery business; -and Lena had developed into a pretty, vain, empty-headed girl, who had -been engaged half a dozen times, but had always changed her mind before -it was too late. She attracted men as naturally as honey attracts flies, -and since she was troubled by neither religion nor morality, her -stepmother's only hope was "to get her safely married before anything -happened." For John Abner, Dorinda felt no anxiety beyond the maternal -one which arose from his lameness and his delicate health. He had been a -comfort to her ever since he had come to the farm; and yet, in spite of -John Abner and the knowledge that she had married from fear of a -solitary old age, she realized that she was still lonely. Evidently, -whatever else marriage might prevent, it was not a remedy for isolation -of spirit. -</p> - -<p> -As Nathan reached the porch he fumbled in the pocket of his overalls and -drew out a greasy paper. -</p> - -<p> -"John Appleseed brought me this notice about Five Oaks," he said. "Jason -has never paid his taxes, and the farm is to be sold on the tenth of -August. I saw the notice at the store yesterday, but I didn't stop long -enough to take it in." Though Nathan still owned the general store at -Pedlar's Mill, he had placed a manager in charge of it a few years ago. -</p> - -<p> -The tenth of August! It seemed a long time to wait. Though Dorinda had -expected the sale for the last five years, she told herself that it -seemed a long time to wait. There was not the slightest surprise for her -in Nathan's announcement. She had known for months that neither the -taxes nor the interest on the mortgage could be paid, and that the farm -would soon be sold at public auction. But with the inherent perversity -of human nature, she felt now that the bare statement of the foreclosure -had startled her out of a sleep. When the men had gone to wash their -hands at the well, she lingered on the porch and gazed over the -harvested fields and the low curve of the hill in the direction of Five -Oaks. Peace surrounded her; peace was within her mind and heart; yet the -past clung to her like an odour and she could not brush it away. -</p> - -<p> -"It looks mighty like we'll get Five Oaks at last," Nathan said that -night when they were alone. "To save my soul I can't see why you're so -set on it, but when a woman wants a thing as much as that, it looks as -if Providence couldn't hold out against her." -</p> - -<p> -"Is there any chance of James Ellgood bidding it in?" This had been her -secret dread ever since she had heard of the sale. Suppose James -Ellgood, who could go as high as he liked, should begin bidding against -her! -</p> - -<p> -"There ain't one chance in a million that Jim will lift a finger. He's -hated Jason ever since Geneva drowned herself—and before too." -</p> - -<p> -"When he loses his farm, do you know what he will do? Jason Greylock, I -mean." -</p> - -<p> -"He'll still own that little old house in the woods across Whippernock -River. Maybe he'll go down there to live. There ain't much land -belonging to it, but he's given up farming anyway same he's taken to -drink. The two things don't work together." -</p> - -<p> -"He's his father all over again," Dorinda said, with a shiver of -repulsion. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it looks like it." Nathan's tone was more compassionate. "John -Appleseed saw him a few days ago when he was over there with Tom Snead -looking for a foxhound puppy he'd lost. The dirt would have given you a -fit, Dorinda, he said. There was a slatternly looking coloured wench -getting dinner; but she had thrown all the vegetable peelings out into -the yard, and the front hall was stacked with kindling wood." -</p> - -<p> -"Did he see Jason?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, he came out when he heard the noise and asked what they wanted. -The old man is getting the best of him, John Appleseed said." -</p> - -<p> -"And while his father was alive, he hated him so." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, it's often like that, I reckon. Maybe he hated him all the more -because he felt he was like him." Nathan shook his head as if he were -dislodging a gnat. "I must say, for my part, I'd have picked the old man -of the two. At least he wasn't white-livered." -</p> - -<p> -White-livered! It seemed to Dorinda that the old man himself was -speaking to her out of his grave. Even he, steeped in iniquity, had -scorned Jason because he lacked the courage of his wickedness. -</p> - -<p> -Not for years had she heard directly of the Greylocks, and while she -listened she felt that the streak of cruelty in her own nature was -slowly appeased. -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder why he never went North again?" Nathan said, as he rose to -undress. "I remember he told me once years ago that all he wanted was a -quiet life. He didn't care a damn for the farm, he said, he'd always -hated it." -</p> - -<p> -Yes, it was true, he had always hated it. Through his whole life he had -been tied by his own nature to the thing that he hated. -</p> - -<p> -When the tenth of August came, Dorinda put on her best dress, a navy -blue and white foulard which Leona Prince, the new dressmaker, had cut -after the fashionable "Princesse style." She was waiting on the porch -when Nathan, who had just removed his overalls, looked out of the window -to ask if they were going to walk. -</p> - -<p> -"No, let's have the surrey." For a reason which she did not stop to -define she preferred the long way by the road to the short cut over the -fields. "Lena wants to go with us." -</p> - -<p> -Nathan whistled. "What on earth has she got up her sleeve now?" -</p> - -<p> -If she had spoken the thought in her mind, Dorinda would have replied -tartly, "She wants to go because she thinks men will be there"; but -instead she answered simply, "Oh, she's always ready to go anywhere." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, can't she walk? It ain't over a mile by the short cut." -</p> - -<p> -"She's afraid of seed ticks. Besides, she's putting on her flowered -organdie." -</p> - -<p> -"What on earth?" Nathan demanded a second time. Then, after a meditative -pause, he added logically, "I reckon she's got her eye open for young -Jim Ellgood, but she'll be disappointed." -</p> - -<p> -Lena had recently turned her seductions in a new direction; and Dorinda -was divided between pity for the victim, a nice boy of twenty, and the -fervent hope that Lena might be safely, if not permanently, settled. To -be sure, young Jim had given no sign as yet of responding to her -energetic advances; but the girl had never failed when she had gone -about her business in a whole-hearted fashion, and Dorinda remained -optimistic though vaguely uneasy about the results. Of course her -step-daughter was the last wife in the world for a farmer. Scheming, -capricious, dangerously oversexed, and underworked, she had revealed of -late a chronic habit of dissimulation, and it was impossible to decide -whether she was lying for diversion or speaking the truth from -necessity. Yet none of these moral imperfections appeared to detract an -iota from the advantage of a face like an infant Aphrodite, vacant but -perfect as the inside of a shell. A deplorable waste of any good man's -affection, thought Dorinda. However, she had ceased long ago to worry -over what she could not prevent, and she had observed that the strongest -desires are directed almost invariably toward the least desirable. -</p> - -<p> -"I am not sure that it is young Jim," she said, firm but indefinite. -"Anyhow, you'll have to hitch up the surrey. The weeds would tear that -dress to pieces." -</p> - -<p> -When she spoke in that tone, she knew that Nathan never waited to argue. -"All right. I turned the horses out to graze, but I'll see if I can find -them." He went off obediently enough, after protesting again that it -wasn't a mile by the short cut through the woods. Though Nathan always -gave in to her wishes, he seldom gave in without grumbling. -</p> - -<p> -It took him a quarter of an hour of hard hunting to catch the horses; -but by the time Lena was ready, he appeared at the dour with the surrey. -</p> - -<p> -"If you don't hurry up and come on, the sale will be over before we get -there," he remarked in the casual tone of a man who is not interested in -the result. -</p> - -<p> -"Why, I thought we had plenty of time," Dorinda replied; but she hurried -Lena down the steps and into the vehicle, in spite of the girl's -complaint that the ruffles on her skirt would be ruined if she did not -spread a robe over the seat. Not until they had started off at a brisk -pace and were well on the road, did Dorinda's heart stop its rapid -pulsation. Suppose her own stupid folly in withstanding Nathan should -cost her the possession of Five Oaks! -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XIX_I">XIX</a></h4> - -<p> -Up the long shady slope; into the branch road by the fork; between the -wastes of Joe-Pyeweed and life-everlasting; over the rotting bridge -across Gooseneck Creek, where the dragon-flies swarmed above the partly -dried stream; up the rutted track through last year's corn stubble; and -past the broken fences of the farmyard to the group of indifferent -farmers gathered on benches, chairs, and upturned cracker boxes, under -the fine old oaks. All through the drive something invisible was -whipping her on, as if the memory of wet branches stung her face in the -blue August weather. A question was beating unanswered at the back of -her brain. Why, since she neither loved nor hated Jason, should she long -so passionately to own the place where he lived? Was it merely that the -possession of Five Oaks would complete her victory and his degradation? -Or was it simply that feeling like hers never died, that it returned -again and again, in some changed form, to the place where it had first -taken root? -</p> - -<p> -When she reached the lawn, Ezra Flower, the auctioneer, was intoning -from the front porch to the gathering under the trees. He was a fat -little man, with a beard which stood out like ruffled grey feathers and -the impudent manner of a bedraggled sparrow. From his scolding tone, -Dorinda inferred that the bidding had been fainthearted. Nobody wanted -land, for land was the one thing that everybody owned and could not give -away. While Nathan drove on to the side of the house, Dorinda walked -quickly over to a chair a farmer was relinquishing. Only after she had -seated herself between John Appleseed and William Fairlamb, did she -glance round and observe that Lena had not followed her, but had stopped -among the younger men and boys who were sprawling over the grass. -Already the girl was rolling her eyes and giggling without modesty. -Well, what did it matter? Dorinda had tried, she felt sincerely, to do -her duty by Nathan and his children; but it was impossible for any -stepmother to be responsible for the character of a girl who possessed -none. A stern expression forced her lips together, and she looked away -to the twitching figure of Ezra Flower. -</p> - -<p> -Still the auctioneer droned on, eliciting now and then responses as curt -as oaths. Presently she heard Nathan's dry cough and his slow emphatic -voice rasping out the words, "Three thousand dollars!" The bidding was -about to begin in earnest, she saw, and a chill sensation ran over her -as she settled her flaring skirt in the rush-bottomed chair. -</p> - -<p> -While she sat there, listening to the rise and fall of the bidding, she -tried to keep her mind firmly fixed on the objects before her. Overhead, -the sky was of larkspur blue. Far away in the glittering fields, she -heard the shrill chorus of grasshoppers chiming in with the monotonous -hum of the auctioneer's voice. In the nearer meadow clouds of golden -pollen were drifting like swarms of devouring insects. Over the grass on -the lawn a flock of white turkeys moved in a sedate procession. -</p> - -<p> -Yes, what had happened had happened, she told herself, and was over. Her -affair was not with the past; it was not with the future. The only thing -that concerned her vitally was the moment in which she was living. Only -by keeping her mind close to the immediate present could she prevent her -thoughts from slipping back into the abyss. Even now there were hours -when memory seemed to be dragging her into the past; and when this -occurred, a sense of weakness, of futility, of distaste for living, -would sweep over her like a malady. To look back, she knew, meant the -frustration of effort. To go on, taking the moment as it came, -surmounting the obstacles, one by one, as they confronted her; to lavish -her vital energy on permanent, not fugitive, endeavours,—these were -the resolves which had carried her triumphantly over the years. -</p> - -<p> -"Six thousand dollars," sang the auctioneer. -"Going—going—going for six thousand dollars. Only six -thousand dollars. Will nobody bid more? Not a quarter of what it is -worth. Will nobody bid more for this fine old farm? -Going—going—what? Nobody bids more? -Going—going—gone for six thousand dollars!" -</p> - -<p> -She rose and went over to where Nathan stood surrounded by a few -farmers, who were trying in vain to pretend that they did not think him -a fool. "Should have thought you had as much land as you knew what to do -with," John Appleseed was saying, as she approached. "What are you going -to do with Five Oaks, now you've got it? Eat it, I reckon?" -</p> - -<p> -"It ain't mine. I bid on it for my wife," Nathan replied stubbornly. -"She was so set on it I couldn't hold out against her." -</p> - -<p> -Yes, Nathan was a good man, there was no denying it. Feeling nearer to -him than she had ever felt in her life, she moved over to his side and -slipped her hand through his arm. -</p> - -<p> -"Wall, she got it dirt cheap," the auctioneer declared. "Dirt cheap, if -I do say so." -</p> - -<p> -"I don't see what you want with two farms, ma'am," chuckled Mr. -Kettledrum, the veterinarian. "It looks as if you was goin' to live on -one an' let Nathan live by himself on the other." -</p> - -<p> -Then the faint-hearted bidders mounted their horses or stepped into -their buggies, while Ezra Flower invited the new owners into the house. -"Come right in an' clinch the sale with Doctor Greylock. He's settin' -right there now with the papers to draw up," he added persuasively, as -Dorinda hung back. -</p> - -<p> -Beckoning Lena to follow them, Dorinda went up the steps with Nathan and -entered the hall. Only once before had she been inside the house; but -every detail of the interior had bitten into her memory. She knew the -bend in the staircase down which the old man had roamed with his whip at -night. She had never forgotten the litter of dust in the corners; the -guns and fishing-poles crowded behind the door; the collection of hats -on the table and sofa; the empty whiskey bottles arranged in a row by -the wainscoting. Above all, she remembered the stale odour of -degeneration, of mingled whiskey and tobacco, which saturated the walls. -Eighteen years ago, and nothing, not even that odour, had changed! In -those eighteen years she had spent her youth and had restored dead land -to life; but this house in which Jason had lived was still sunk in -immovable sloth and decay. -</p> - -<p> -Ezra Flower passed, with his sprightly sparrow-like twitter, through the -hall, and flung open the door of a room on the right—the room in -which she had sat with the drunken old man while the storm broke outside. -Jason, she saw, was standing on the very spot in the rug where his -father had stood that afternoon in November. -</p> - -<p> -As she crossed the threshold, it seemed to her that the room shifted and -came forward to meet her. She heard Nathan's voice saying meaningless -words. Then Jason took her hand and dropped it so limply that it might -have been a dead leaf. -</p> - -<p> -"Won't you sit down?" he asked courteously, for he had evidently kept -sober until the sale could be concluded. "So you've bought Five Oaks," -he continued, as indifferently as if he were speaking of corn or wheat. -"Well, it's never been any use to me, and I'm not sorry to get rid of -it. But I don't see what you're going to do with it. Isn't one farm as -much as you're able to manage?" As he finished, he pushed a decanter of -whiskey in the direction of Nathan. "We might as well have a drink over -it anyway." -</p> - -<p> -Yes, nothing had altered. It might have been the same dust that lay in a -film over the floor, the furniture and the walls. It might have been the -same pile of old newspapers on the table. It might have been the same -spot of grease on the table cover; the same rattrap baited with a piece -of greenish cheese in one corner; the same light falling obliquely -through the speckled window-panes. She would not have been surprised, -when she turned her head, to see the sheets of rain blowing out like a -curtain over the hunched box-bush. -</p> - -<p> -Jason laughed, and the sound had a sardonic merriment. She had never -thought that he resembled the old man, and she told herself now, while -she watched him, that it was only the bad light or a trick of memory -which gave him the discouraged and desperate air of his father. In -looking at him she seemed not to brush aside, but to gather together all -the years that had gone. Why had she ever loved him? What was there in -this one man that was different from all other men whom she had known? -Once she had beheld him within a magic circle of wonder and delight, -divided and set apart from the surrounding dullness of existence. Now -the dullness had swept over him as the waste flows over the abandoned -fields. -</p> - -<p> -He leaned back in his chair, glancing from Nathan to Ezra Flower with -morose and weary eyes. His face, which had been charming in youth, was -now spiritless and inert. There were yellow blotches under his eyes; his -eyelids were puffed and heavy; his features were swollen and leaden in -colour; and even his hair, which had once been so alive, was as sandy -and brittle as straw. Yes, the broomsedge had grown over him. -</p> - -<p> -For a minute she scarcely heard what they were saying; then the details -of the sale were discussed, and she made an effort to follow the words. -When, presently, Nathan asked her to sign a paper, she turned -automatically and wrote her name in the race that Ezra Flower pointed -out to her. As she laid down the pen, she saw that Jason was smiling, -and for an instant a glimmer of his old bright charm shone in his -expression. She wished that he had not smiled. Then, with the wish still -in her mind, she saw that he was smiling, not at her, but at Lena. His -heavy gaze turned Lena as instinctively as the eyes turn to a flaring -lamp in a darkened room. His look was not amorous, for drink, Dorinda -knew, not sex, was his preoccupation; but, while she watched it, a -sensation of physical nausea attacked her. -</p> - -<p> -Rising from her chair, she stood waiting for Nathan to finish the -discussion. It was agreed, she understood vaguely, that Jason should -leave the farm the first day of October, and that Nathan should take over -the better part of the furniture. "I'll be glad to get rid of it," Jason -remarked agreeably enough, "and I hope that you will make more out of the -farm than I ever did. All I can say that it ruined me. If I had been -hard-hearted about it instead of soft, I'd be a different man from the -one I am to-day." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, you weren't cut out for a farmer," Nathan rejoined mildly, and he -added with one of his untimely jests, "Now, is you'd been as thrifty as -my wife, you'd have found a way to make two leaves of alfalfa grow where -there wasn't even one blade of grass before." -</p> - -<p> -At this, for the first time, Jason looked at her attentively, and she -knew from his gaze that his interest in her was as casual as his -interest in Nathan. With his look, she felt that the part of her that -was sex withered and died; but something more ancient than sex came to -her rescue, and this was the instinct of self-preservation which had -made her resolve in her youth that no man should spoil her rife. In the -matter of sex, he had won; matched merely as human beings, as man to -man, she knew that she was the stronger. Though she did not realize its -significance, the moment was a crisis in her experience; for when it had -passed she had discarded for ever the allurements of youth. She felt -securely middle-aged, but it was the middle age of triumphant -independence. -</p> - -<p> -Jason's glance had wandered from her to Nathan, and she detected the -flicker of ridicule in his smile. Anger seized her at the suspicion that -he was mocking them, and with the anger a passionate loyalty to Nathan -welled up in her heart. She saw Nathan as clearly as Jason saw him, but -she saw also something fine and magnanimous in his character which Jason -could never see because he was blind to nobility. "I don't care," she -thought indignantly, "he is worth twenty of Jason." Obeying a protective -impulse, she moved nearer to her husband and laid her hand on his arm. -It was the second time that afternoon that she had drawn closer to him -of her own accord. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I reckon we'd better be starting home," Nathan said, as he held -out his hand in simple good will. "I hope you'll make out all right -where you're going." -</p> - -<p> -"All I ask is a quiet life," Jason repeated. Then, as they were leaving -the room, his eyes roved back to Lena and clung to her face as if he -hated to see the last of her. "Take good care of that daughter of -yours," he advised. "She's the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, she ain't bad-looking," Nathan retorted with spirit, "but she -can't hold a candle to the way her mother and Dorinda looked when they -were her age." -</p> - -<p> -Without touching Jason's hand again, Dorinda walked quickly down the -hall and out of the house. Not until they were driving over Gooseneck -Creek, did it occur to her that she had not opened her lips at Five -Oaks. -</p> - -<p> -"I hope you're satisfied, Dorinda," Nathan remarked, with hilarity. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I'm satisfied." -</p> - -<p> -"I fancied you looked kind of down in the mouth while we were in the -room. You ain't changed your mind about wanting the farm, have you?" -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, no, I haven't changed my mind." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm glad of that. You never can tell about a woman. He seemed to think -that Lena was good to look at." -</p> - -<p> -Though she had believed that her anger was over, the embers grew red and -then grey again. Middle age as an attitude of mind might enjoy an -immunity from peril, but it suffered, she found, from the disadvantages -of an unstable equilibrium. -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder if he has forgotten Geneva," she observed irrelevantly. -</p> - -<p> -At the reminder of that tragic figure Nathan's hilarity died. "When a -thing like that has happened to a man," he responded, "he doesn't -usually keep the dry bones lying around to look at." -</p> - -<p> -The sun was beginning to go down and the sandy stretch of road, where -the shadow of the surrey glided ahead of them, glittered like silver. -After the intense heat of the day the fitful breeze was as torrid as the -air from an oven. -</p> - -<p> -"John Abner promised he would drive me over to the ice cream festival at -the church," Lena said hopefully. There were pearly beads on her -shell-like brow and Nathan's leathery face was streaming with -perspiration. -</p> - -<p> -"Poor John Abner! It is so hot and he will be tired!" protested Dorinda, -though she was aware that any protest was futile, for Lena possessed the -obstinacy peculiar to many weak-minded women. -</p> - -<p> -"He needn't stay," retorted the girl. "Somebody will be sure to bring me -home." She pressed her pink lips together and smiled with the secret -wisdom of instinct. -</p> - -<p> -As soon as they reached the house Dorinda slipped into her gingham dress -and hurried out to the barn. Milking had already begun, but she knew -that it would proceed with negligence if she were long absent. In -summer, as in winter, they had supper after dark, and for a little while -when the meal was over she liked to rest on the porch with Nathan and -John Abner. To-night, John Abner was away with Lena, and when Dorinda -came out into the air, she dropped, with a sigh of relief, into the -hammock beneath the climbing rose Nathan had planted. -</p> - -<p> -"I never felt anything like the heat," she said, "there's not a breath -anywhere." -</p> - -<p> -Nathan stirred in the darkness and removed his pipe from his mouth. -"Yes, if it don't break soon, the drought will go hard with the crops." -</p> - -<p> -"And with the dairy too. The ice melts so fast I can't keep the butter -firm." -</p> - -<p> -She leaned back, breathing in the scent of his pipe. The protective -feeling, so closely akin to tenderness, which had awakened in her heart -at Five Oaks, had not entirely vanished, and she felt nearer to her -husband, sitting there in the moonlight of her thoughts, than she had -felt since her marriage. Even that moment at Five Oaks when Jason had -laughed at him had not brought him so close. She longed to tell him this -because she knew how much the knowledge of it would mean to him; yet she -could find no words delicate enough to convey this new sense of his -importance in her life. The only words at her command were those that -had struggled in her mind over at Five Oaks: "He is worth twenty of -Jason," and these were not words that could be spoken aloud. -</p> - -<p> -"There goes a shooting star!" Nathan exclaimed suddenly out of the -stillness. -</p> - -<p> -"And another," she added, after a brief silence. -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder what becomes of them," he continued presently. "When you stop -to think of it, it's odd what becomes of everything. It makes the -universe seem like a scrap heap." -</p> - -<p> -She left the hammock and sat down on the step at his feet. "That reminds -me of all the trash over at Five Oaks. What in the world can we do with -it? Doesn't that screech owl sound as if he were close by us." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, we'll have to put a manager on that farm, I reckon. We can't look -after both farms and make anything of them. I never heard so many -tree frogs as we've had this summer. What with the locusts and the -katydids you can't hear yourself talk. But it's right pleasant sitting -here like this, ain't it?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it's pleasant." She tried to say something affectionate and gave -up the effort. "I like to think that Five Oaks belongs to us." Her -accent on the "us" was the best that she could do in the matter of -sentiment; yet she was sure that he understood her mood and was touched -by its gentleness. -</p> - -<p> -They talked until late, planning changes in the old farm and -improvements in the new one. It was an evening that she liked to -remember as long as she lived. Whenever she looked back on it -afterwards, it seemed to lie there like a fertile valley in the arid -monotony of her life. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="chap03"></a></h4> - -<h4><i>PART THIRD</i><br /> -<br /><br /> -LIFE-EVERLASTING</h4> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<p> -"<i>For the next few years</i>. . . ." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="I_II">I</a></h4> - -<p> -For the next few years she gave herself completely to Five Oaks. Only by -giving herself completely, only by enriching the land with her abundant -vitality, could she hope to restore the farm. Reclaiming the abandoned -fields had become less a reasonable purpose than a devouring passion in -her mind and heart. Old Farm was managed by Nathan now, and since he had -let his own place to a thrifty German tenant, he had, as Dorinda -frequently reminded him, "all the time in the world on his hands." The -dairy work, which had prospered when three trains a day were run between -Washington and the South, still remained under her supervision; but all -the hours that she could spare were spent on the freshly ploughed acres -of Five Oaks. Over these acres she toiled as resolutely as the pioneer -must have toiled when he snatched a home from the wilderness. Though she -had installed Martin Flower in the house, she had rejected Nathan's idea -of letting the farm "on shares" to the tenant. This was the only -disagreement she had ever had with Nathan, and he had yielded at last to -the habit of, command which had fastened upon her. As she grew older she -clung to authority as imperiously as a king who refuses to abdicate. -There were moments in these years when, arrested by some sudden check on -her arrogance, she stopped to wonder if any man less confirmed in -humility than Nathan could have stood her as a wife. But, immediately -afterwards, she would reflect, with the faint bitterness which still -flavoured her opinion of love, that if she had married another man, he -might not have found her overbearing. -</p> - -<p> -Though the gentleness of mood which had stolen over her that August -evening had not entirely departed, it lingered above the bare reason of -her mind as a tender flush might linger over the austere pattern of the -landscape. After that evening she had drawn no nearer to her husband, -yet she had felt no particular impulse to stand farther away. Their -association had touched its highest point in the soft darkness of that -night, and she knew that they could never again reach the peak of -consciousness together. But the quiet friendliness of their intercourse -was not disturbed by Dorinda's interest in Five Oaks; and when, after a -longer pursuit and a fiercer capture than usual, Lena finally married -young Jim Ellgood, the days at Old Farm assumed the aspect of bright -serenity which passes so often for happiness. Though Dorinda was not -happy in the old thrilling sense of the word, she drifted, as middle age -wore on, into a philosophy of acquiescence. John Abner was still her -favourite companion, and he shared her ardent interest in Five Oaks. In -time, she hoped he would marry some girl whom she herself should select, -and that they would live with their children at Old Farm. When she -suggested this to Nathan, he chuckled under his breath. -</p> - -<p> -"It wouldn't surprise me if he wanted his head when he comes to -marrying," he observed. -</p> - -<p> -"Of course you think I am high-handed," she rejoined. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, it don't make any difference to me what you are. And as long as -you can manage me," he added, "you needn't worry about not keeping your -hand in." -</p> - -<p> -"It's for your own good anyway," she retorted. "You're too easy-going -with everybody." -</p> - -<p> -"I know it, honey. I ain't complaining." -</p> - -<p> -He was refilling his pipe from his shabby old pouch of tobacco, and -while he prodded the bowl with his thumb, he lifted his eyes and looked -at her with his sheepish smile. -</p> - -<p> -"I heard 'em talking about Jason Greylock yesterday at the store," he -said. -</p> - -<p> -She made a gesture of aversion. "What did they say?" -</p> - -<p> -"Not much that I can recollect. Only that he is too lazy to come for his -mail. He has buried himself in that house in the woods across -Whippernock River, and he sometimes lets a whole month go by without -coming to the post office." -</p> - -<p> -"Perhaps he hasn't any way of getting over." -</p> - -<p> -"He's still got his horse and buggy. I doubt if he's really as poor as -he makes out. He hires Aunt Mehaley Plumtree to cook for him and look -after the poultry. She comes every morning and stays till dark." -</p> - -<p> -"To think of coming down to that after Five Oaks!" -</p> - -<p> -"Well, the country goes against you when you ain't cut out for a farmer. -Since the old man brought him back from the North, I reckon Jason has -had a hard row to hoe." -</p> - -<p> -"He wasn't obliged to stay here," she observed scornfully. -</p> - -<p> -"No, but he was always too easy-going. A pleasant enough fellow when he -was a boy; but soon ripe, soon rotten." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I give it up." Dorinda was untying her apron while she answered. -"He isn't worth all the time we've wasted talking about him." -</p> - -<p> -"Good Lord, Dorinda! You haven't been sitting here ten minutes." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, ten minutes will pick a bushel, as Ebenezer says. They are -waiting for me over at Five Oaks." -</p> - -<p> -This was the secret of her contentment, she knew, breathless activity. -If she was satisfied with her life, it was only because she never -stopped long enough in her work to imagine the kind of life she should -have preferred. While her health was good and her energy unimpaired, she -had no time for discontent. If she had looked for it, she sometimes told -herself, she could have found sufficient cause for unhappiness; but she -was careful not to look for it. -</p> - -<p> -In these years there were brief periods when her old dreams awakened. -Beauty that seemed too fugitive to be real was still more a torment than -a delight to her. The moon rising over the harp-shaped pine; the shocked -corn against the red sunsets of autumn; the mulberry-coloured twilights -of winter;—while she watched these things the past would glow again -with the fitful incandescence of memory. But the inner warmth died with -the external beauty, and she dismissed the longing as weakness. "You -know where that sort of thing leads you," she would tell herself -sternly. "Three months of love, and you pay for it with all the rest of -your life." -</p> - -<p> -Looking round at other women, she could not see that they were better -off in the matter of love than she was herself. Even the few who had -married the men they had chosen had paid for it—or so it appeared -to her—with a lifetime of physical drudgery or emotional -disappointment. She supposed they had compensations that she could not -discover—otherwise how could they have borne with their -lives?—but there was lot one among them with whom she would have -changed places. Those who had been most deeply in love appeared to her -to have become most bitterly disenchanted. -</p> - -<p> -"I've a lot to be thankful for," she would repeat, while she went out to -struggle against he scrub pine or broomsedge. -</p> - -<p> -At Five Oaks, during those first seasons, she converted her repressed -energy into the work of destruction. She would watch the reclaiming of -the waste places, the burning of the broomsedge, the grubbing up of the -pin and the sassafras, as if the fire and smoke were clearing her life -of its illusions. Her nightmare dream of ploughing under the thistles -was translated into the actual event. Perhaps, as the years went by, the -reality would follow the dream into oblivion. At thirty she had looked -forward to forty, as the time of her release from van expectation; but -when forty came, she pushed the horizon of her freedom still farther -away. "Perhaps at fifty I shall be rid of it for ever," she thought. -</p> - -<p> -The winter had begin with a heavy snowstorm in December, and the week -before Christmas Nathan went to bed with a cold which left him with at -abscess in one of his teeth. There was no dental surgeon nearer than -Richmond, and Doctor Stout had advised him to go to the city and have -the tooth out as quickly as possible. "You won't lave a minute's peace -until you do," the doctor added decisively. -</p> - -<p> -That was weeks ago, for Nathan had deferred the evil day until the -twentieth of January when he was required as a witness in a lawsuit Bob -Ellgood was bringing against the railroad. "As long as I've got to go to -Richmond anyway, I might as well wait and kill two birds with one -store," he said. -</p> - -<p> -A few days before the case was called his toothache began again with -violence, and for two nights he had walked the floor in agony. -</p> - -<p> -"You will be so thankful afterwards that it is over!" Dorinda assured -him encouragingly. -</p> - -<p> -She was busily seeding raisins for a plum pudding, and she paused long -enough in her task to glance out of the window and shake her head. -Though her forty-second birthday had just gone, the wintry flush in her -cheeks and the imperious carriage of her head still created, at a little -distance, the aspect of youth. There was a white lock on her forehead; -but the premature greyness appeared theatrical rather than elderly above -the intense blue of her eyes. "You look as good to me as you ever did," -Nathan had said to her on her birthday. -</p> - -<p> -As she turned from the window and put down the bowl of raisins, a frown -wrinkled her forehead. "I wonder if it will ever stop snowing?" she -said. -</p> - -<p> -For days the weather had been bitterly cold, and the bare country had -frozen under a leaden sky. Then at sunset the evening before a red fire -had streamed over the rim of the horizon, and in the night snow had -begun to fall. When Dorinda had gone out to the barn at five o'clock, -she had found the landscape covered with a white blanket and deep drifts -at the corners of the house and on the north side of the well and the -woodpile. The blackness had been so thick that she had been obliged to -walk in the flitting circle of light her lantern had cast on the ground. -She had already sent off the butter to meet the five o'clock train to -Washington; but Nimrod had overslept himself, and Nathan had hurried to -the cabin to wake him, while John Abner had harnessed the horses to the -wagon. Even then the coloured boy had had to take his breakfast with him -and eat it at the station. If the train had been delayed, the butter -would not have reached Washington until the day was well advanced. -</p> - -<p> -All the morning and afternoon the flakes were driven in the high wind. -Though Dorinda could see only a few feet in front of her, she knew that -the dim fleecy shapes huddled on the lawn were not sheep but lilac -bushes and flower-beds. The animals and the birds had long ago fled to -shelter. As soon as the snow stopped falling the crows would begin -flying over the fields; but now the world appeared as deserted as if it -were the dawn of creation. In the kitchen, where she stayed when she was -not obliged to be in the dairy, there was an ashen light which gave -everything, even the shining pots and pans, an air of surprise. -Fluvanna, who was stirring the mixture for the plum pudding, sat as -close to the stove as she could push her chair, and shivered beneath her -shawl of knitted grey wool. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I reckon I'll be glad to get it over," Nathan said in a mournful -voice. "I've stood it' about as long as I can." -</p> - -<p> -He had dropped disconsolately into a chair by the table, and sat with -his hands hanging helplessly between his knees. His face was tied up in -a white silk handkerchief which Dorinda had given him at Christmas, and -while she looked at him with sympathy, she could not repress a smile at -the comical figure he made. Like a sick sheep! That was the way he -always looked when anything hurt him. He was a good man; she was -sincerely attached to him; but there was no use denying that he looked -like a sick sheep. -</p> - -<p> -"Nimrod can drive you over with the butter in the morning," she -rejoined. "Then you can have your tooth pulled before you have to go to -court." -</p> - -<p> -Afterwards, when she recalled this conversation, the ashen light of the -kitchen flooded her mind. A small thing like that to decide all one's -future! Yet it seemed to her that it was always the little things, not -the big ones, that influenced destiny; the fortuitous occurrence instead -of the memorable occasion. The incident of his going was apparently as -trivial as her meeting with Jason in the road, as the failure of her aim -when the gun had gone off, as the particular place and moment when she -had fallen down in Fifth Avenue. These accidents had changed utterly the -course of her life. Yet none of them could she have foreseen and -prevented; and only once, she felt, in that hospital in New York, had -the accident or the device of fortune been in her favour. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I'll do it," Nathan repeated firmly. "Ebenezer or Nimrod can meet -the evening train. That ought to get me home in time for supper." -</p> - -<p> -"If this keeps up," Dorinda observed, "everything will be late." -</p> - -<p> -In the morning, as she had foreseen, everything was an hour later than -usual. "The train is obliged to be behindhand," she thought, "so it -won't really matter." Though it was still snowing, the wind had dropped -and the stainless white lay like swan's-down over the country. All that -Dorinda could see was the world within the moving circle of the lantern; -but imagination swept beyond to the desolate beauty of the scene. "I'd -like to go over with you," she said, when they had finished breakfast, -"only the roads will be so heavy I oughtn't to add anything on the -horses." -</p> - -<p> -"It will be pretty hard driving," Nathan returned. "I hope I shan't take -cold in my tooth." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I can wrap up your face in a shawl, and I've got out that old -sheepskin Pa used to use. You couldn't suffer more than you did last -night. Doctor Stout says the trouble isn't from cold but from -infection." -</p> - -<p> -He shook his head dolefully. "No, I couldn't stand another night as bad -as that. The train will be warm anyhow, and even the drive won't be much -worse than the barn was this morning. Jim Ellgood has his barn heated. I -wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea for us to heat ours next year. -Milking ain't much fun when your hands are frostbitten." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it would be a good idea," she conceded inattentively, while she -brought a pencil and a piece of paper and made a list of the things she -wished him to buy in town. "You may hear something about the war in -Europe," she added, in the hope of diverting his mind from the pain in -his tooth. Nathan was the only man at Pedlar's Mill who had taken the -trouble to study the battles in France, and even Dorinda, though she -made no comment, thought he was going too far when he brought home an -immense new map of Europe and spent his evenings following the march of -the German Army. Already lie had prophesied that we should be drawn into -the war before it was over; but like his other prophecies, this one was -too farsighted to be heeded by his neighbours. -</p> - -<p> -When it was time for him to start, and Nimrod had brought the wagon to -the door, she wrapped Nathan's face in her grey woollen scarf and tied -the ends in a knot at the back of his head. "You can get somebody to -undo you at the station." -</p> - -<p> -He smiled ruefully. "No, I don't reckon I'd better get on the train tied -up like this. I must look funny." -</p> - -<p> -"It doesn't matter how you look," she responded; but she could not keep -back a laugh. -</p> - -<p> -As the wagon ploughed through the snow, she stood there, with her shawl -wrapped tightly over her bosom and the lantern held out into the -blackness before dawn. The air was alive with a multitude of whirling -flakes, which descended swiftly and sped off into the space beyond the -glimmer of her lantern. After the wagon had disappeared the silence was -so profound that she could almost hear the breathless flight of the -snow-flakes from the veiled immensity of the sky. By the glow of the -lantern she could just distinguish the ghostly images of trees rising -abruptly out of the shrouded stillness of the landscape. While she -lingered there it seemed to her that the earth and air and her own being -were purified and exalted into some frigid zone of the spirit. Humanity, -with its irksome responsibilities and its unprofitable desires, dropped -away from her; but when she turned and entered the house, it was waiting -in the ashen light to retard her endeavours. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="II_II">II</a></h4> - -<p> -In the kitchen John Abner was lingering over his breakfast, and Fluvanna -was frying bacon and eggs, while she complained of the weather in a -cheerful voice. -</p> - -<p> -"Are the cows all right?" Dorinda inquired of her stepson. Until the -storm was over, the cows must be kept up, and John Abner, who was a -diligent farmer, had been out to feed and water them. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, but it's rough on them. It's still as black as pitch, but the -sooner we get the milking over the better. The hands are always late on -a morning like this." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda glanced at the tin clock on the shelf. "It isn't five o'clock -yet. We'll start as soon as you finish breakfast whether the other -milkers have come or not. The cows can't wait on the storm." -</p> - -<p> -"It's a pity Father had to go to town to-day." -</p> - -<p> -"It may be fortunate that something decided him. The doctor said he -wouldn't be any better until he had that tooth out. He walked the floor -all night with whiskey in his mouth." -</p> - -<p> -The smile that came into Dorinda's eyes when she looked at her stepson -made her face appear girlish, in spite of its roughened skin and the -lines which were deeper in winter. "I see the lanterns outside now," she -added. "The women must be on the way to the milking." Wrapping her shawl -over her head, she took down a coat of raccoon skins, which was hanging -behind the door, and slipped her arms into the shapeless sleeves. Then -going out on the back porch, she felt under a snow-laden bench for the -overshoes she had left there last evening. Dawn was still far away, and -in the opaque darkness she could see the lanterns crawling like frozen -glowworms through the whirling snow, which was blown and scattered in -the glimmering circles of light. -</p> - -<p> -In one of the long low buildings where the milk cows were sheltered, she -found a few grotesquely arrayed milkers. From the beginning she had -employed only women milkers, inspired by a firm, though illogical, -belief in their superior neatness. Yet she had supplemented faith with -incessant admonition, and this was, perhaps, the reason that the women -wore this morning neat caps and aprons above a motley of borrowed or -invented raiment. When she entered, stepping carefully over the mixture -of snow and manure on the threshold, they greeted her with grumbling -complaints of the weather; but before the work was well started they had -thawed in the contagious warmth of her personality, and were chattering -like a flock of blackbirds in a cherry tree. Since it is the law of -African nature to expand in the sunshine, she was particular never to -wear a dismal face over her work. -</p> - -<p> -For the first minute, while she hung the lantern on the nail over her -head, she felt that the meadow-scented breath of the cows was woven into -an impalpable vision of summer. Though she shivered outwardly in the -harsh glare of light, a window in her mind opened suddenly, and she saw -Jason coming toward her through the yellow-green of August evenings. As -with her mother's missionary dream, these visitations of the past -depended less upon her mood, she had discovered, than upon some fugitive -quality in time or place which evoked them from the shadows of memory. -Concealing a shiver of distaste, she turned away and bent over a -milk pail. -</p> - -<p> -"Your fingers are stiff, Jessie, let me try her a moment." -</p> - -<p> -Hours later, when light had come and the work of the dairy was over for -the morning, she went back into the house, and the ashen light went with -her over the threshold. Fluvanna was busy with dinner, and a pointer -puppy named Pat was fast asleep by the stove. Young Ranger, the son of -old Ranger, lay on a mat by the door, and though many Flossies had -passed away, there was always a grey and white cat bearing the name to -get under one's feet between the stove and the cupboard. The room, -Dorinda told herself, was more cheerful than it had ever been. She -remembered that her mother could never afford curtains for the windows, -and that Fluvanna had laughed at her when she had bought barred muslin -and edged it with ruffles. "Good Lord, Miss Dorinda, who ever heard -tell!" the girl exclaimed. Yet, in the end, the curtains, with other -innovations, had become a part of the established order of living. Why -was it so difficult, she wondered, to bring people to accept either a -new idea or a new object? Nathan was the only man at Pedlar's Mill who -lived in the future, and Nathan had always been ridiculed by his -neighbours. The telephone, the modern churn, and the separator, what a -protracted battle he had fought for each of these labour-saving -inventions! He was talking now of the time when they would have an -electric plant on the farm and all the cows would be milked and the -cream separated by electricity. Was this only the fancy of a visionary, -or, like so many of Nathan's imaginary devices, would it come true in -the end? -</p> - -<p> -At twelve o'clock John Abner came in for dinner, and, after a hurried -meal, went out to help clear away the snow from the outbuildings. As -there was no immediate work to be done, Dorinda sat down before the fire -in her bedroom and turning to her workbasket, slipped her darning-egg -into one of Nathan's socks. She disliked darning, and because she -disliked it she never permitted herself to neglect it. Her passionate -revolt from the inertia of the land had permeated the simplest details -of living. The qualities with which she had triumphed over the abandoned -fields were the virtues of the pioneers who had triumphed over life. -</p> - -<p> -The room was quiet except for the crackling of the flames and the -brushing of an old pear-tree against the window. In the warmth of the -firelight the glimpse of the snow-covered country produced a sensation -of physical comfort, which stole over her like the Sabbath peace for -which her mother had yearned. Lifting her eyes from her darning, she -glanced over the long wainscoted room, where the only changes were the -comforts that Nathan had added. The thick carpet, the soft blankets, the -easy chair in which she was rocking,—if only her mother had lived -long enough to enjoy these things! Then the thought came to her that, if -her parents had been denied material gifts, they had possessed a spiritual -luxury which she herself had never attained. She had inherited, she -realized, the religious habit of mind without the religious heart; for -the instinct of piety had worn too thin to cover the generations. -Conviction! That, at least, they had never surrendered. The glow of -religious certitude had never faded for them into the pallor of moral -necessity. For them, the hard, round words in her great-grandfather's -books were not as hollow as globes. Her gaze travelled slowly over the -rows of discoloured bindings in the bookcases, and she remembered the -rainy days in her childhood when, having exhausted the lighter treasures -of adventure, she had ploughed desperately in the dry and stubborn acres -of theology. After all, was the mental harvest as barren as she had -believed? Firmness of purpose, independence of character, courage of -living, these attributes, if they were not hers by inheritance, she had -gleaned from those heavy furrows of her great-grandfather's sowing. -"Once a Presbyterian, always a Presbyterian," her mother had said when -she was dying. -</p> - -<p> -As the afternoon wore on she grew restless from inaction, and the ruddy -firelight, which had been so pleasant after the cold morning, became -oppressive. Putting her work basket aside, she went out into the hall -and opened the back door, where Ebenezer, with a comforter of crimson -wool tied over his head and ears, was shovelling the snowdrifts away -from the angle of the porch. At a distance other men were digging out -the paths to the barn, and the narrow flagged walk to the dairy was -already hollowed into a gully between high white banks. -</p> - -<p> -Ebenezer, a big, very black negro, with an infinite capacity for rest -and the mournful gaze of an evangelist, wielded his shovel vigorously at -the sound of the opening door, while he hummed in a bass voice which was -like the drone of a tremendous beehive. He was subject to intervals of -dreaminess when he would stop work for ten minutes at a time; but the -only attention Dorinda had bestowed on his slackness was a mild wonder -if he could be thinking. -</p> - -<p> -"Try to get that snow away before dark, Ebenezer," she said, "and tell -Nimrod he must start earlier than usual to meet the evening train." -</p> - -<p> -Turning back into the empty hall, she was surprised to find that she had -begun to miss Nathan. It was the first time since her marriage that he -had spent a whole day away from the farm, and she realized that she -should be glad to have him in the house again. The discovery was so -unexpected that it startled her into gravity, and passing the kitchen, -where she saw Fluvanna poking wood into the open door of the stove, she -walked slowly into her room and stood looking about her as if a fresh -light had fallen across her surroundings. Yes, incredible as it was, she -really missed Nathan! Though she had never loved him, after nine years -of marriage she still liked him with a strong and durable liking. It was -a tribute, she realized, to her husband's character that this negative -attachment should have remained superior to the universal law of -diminishing returns. No woman, she told herself, could have lived for -nine years with so good a man as Nathan and not have grown fond of him. -She recognized his disadvantages as clearly as ever; yet recognizing -them made little difference in her affection. She liked him because, in -spite of his unattractiveness, he possessed a moral integrity which she -respected and a magnanimity which she admired. He had accepted her -austerity of demeanour as philosophically as he accepted a bad season; -and to love but to refrain from the demands of love, was the surest way -he could have taken to win her ungrudging esteem. -</p> - -<p> -When she went out to remind Nimrod that he must start earlier to meet -the six o'clock train, the snow was light and feathery on the surface, -and the air was growing gradually milder. At sunset the sky was -shattered by a spear of sunshine which pierced the wall of clouds in the -west. Between that golden lance and the solitary roof under which she -stood swept the monotonous fields of snow. -</p> - -<p> -"If it clears, there'll be a good moon to-night," she thought. -</p> - -<p> -When the milking hour came she yielded to the persuasions of John Abner -and did not go out to the barn. "It is time you learned that nobody is -indispensable," he said, half sternly, half jestingly. "There are mighty -few jobs that a full-grown man can't do as well as a woman, and loafing -round a cow-barn in wintertime isn't one of them." -</p> - -<p> -"The negroes get so careless," she urged, "if they aren't watched." -</p> - -<p> -He was standing in front of the fire, and while he held out his stout -boots, one by one, to the flames, the snow in the creases of the leather -melted and ran down on the hearth. The smell of country life in -winter—a mingled odour of leather, manure, harness oil, tobacco, -and burning leaves—was diffused by the heat and floated out with a -puff of smoke from the chimney. His features, seen in profile against -the firelight, reminded her of Jason. John Abner was not really like -him, she knew; but there were traits in every man, tricks of expression, -of gesture, of movement, which brought Jason to life again in her -thoughts. Twenty-two years ago she had known him! Twenty-two years -filled to overflowing with dominant interests; and yet she could see his -face as distinctly as she had seen it that first morning in the russet -glow of the broomsedge. Dust now, she told herself, nothing more. Her -memories of him were no better than deserted wasps' nests; but these dry -and brittle ruins still clung there amid the cobwebs, in some obscure -corner of her mind, and she could not brush them away. Neither regret -nor sentiment had preserved them, and yet they had outlasted both -sentiment and regret. -</p> - -<p> -With a start of exasperation, she tore her mind from the past and -glanced down at John Abner's clubfoot. "Are those boots comfortable?" -she asked gently. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, they do as well as any," he replied irritably. Though any reference -to his deformity annoyed him, there were times when she felt obliged to -allude to it as a factor in his career. For good or ill, that clubfoot, -like the mark of Jason in her life, had been his destiny. With his -unusual gifts and without the sensitive shrinking from crowds which his -lameness had developed into a disease, he might have achieved success in -any profession that he had chosen. "You stay by the fire," he added, -"while I take a turn at the bossing." -</p> - -<p> -She nodded. "Very well, I'll be in the dairy when you are ready for me." -</p> - -<p> -"I'll manage the whole business if you'll let me." -</p> - -<p> -"But I shan't let you." She was smiling as she answered, and she -perceived from his face that he was big enough to respect her for her -inflexible purpose. While authority was still hers she would cling to it -as stubbornly as she had toiled to attain it. -</p> - -<p> -He went out laughing, and she dropped back in her chair to wait until -the hour came for her work in the dairy. John Abner was right, of -course. One of the exasperating things about men, she reflected, was -that they were so often right. It was perfectly true that she could not -stay young for ever, and at forty-two, after twenty years of arduous -toil, she ought to think of the future and take the beginning of the -hill more gradually. Though she was as strong, as vital, as young, in -her arteries at least, as she had ever been, she could not, she -realized, defend herself from the inevitable wearing down of the years. -Her eyes wandered to the mirror in the bureau which had belonged to her -mother, and it seemed to her that, sitting there in the ruddy firelight, -the magic of youth enveloped her again with a springtime freshness. Her -eyes looked so young in the dimness that they bathed her greying hair, -her weatherbeaten skin, and her tall, strong figure, which was becoming -a little dry, a trifle inelastic, in the celestial blueness of a May -morning. -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder if it is because I've missed everything I really wanted that I -cannot grow old?" she asked herself with a start. -</p> - -<p> -It was seven o'clock when she returned from the dairy, and John Abner -was already in the kitchen demanding his supper. -</p> - -<p> -"The train is certain to be hours late," he said. "There's no use -waiting any longer for Father." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, we might as well have supper. I can cook something for him when he -comes." -</p> - -<p> -"I saw Mr. Garlick going over a few minutes ago. His daughter, Molly, -went down yesterday with young Mrs. Ellgood to a concert. Mrs. Ellgood -has always been crazy about music. Did you ever hear her play on the -violin?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I never went anywhere even before I was married. I'm glad she's -coming up with your father. He always liked her in spite of the fact -that she despises the country." -</p> - -<p> -When supper was over, and John Abner had eaten with an amazing appetite, -they went back into her bedroom and sat down to wait before the fire. -Though she had never been what Nathan called "an easy talker," she could -always find something to say to her stepson; and they talked now, not -only of the farm, the spring planting, the new tractor-plough they had -ordered, but of books and distant countries and the absurd illustrations -in the Lives of the Missionaries, which John Abner was reading for the -fourth time. -</p> - -<p> -"Alfalfa has been the making of Five Oaks," Dorinda said. "It's a shame -Pa never knew of it." -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder if Doctor Greylock ever comes back to his farm. If he does, he -must be sorry he lost it." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, he ruined the place, he and his father before him. It was no -better than waste land when we bought it." -</p> - -<p> -John Abner bent over to caress the head of the pointer. "I can't blame -anybody for wanting to quit," he said. "There's a lot to be said for -those missionary chaps. They were the real adventurers, I sometimes -think." -</p> - -<p> -He rose from his chair and shook himself. "Why, it's almost ten o'clock. -There's no use staying up any longer. If we've got to wake before five, -it is time we were both asleep." -</p> - -<p> -"I believe I hear the buggy now." Dorinda bent her ear listening. "Isn't -that a noise on the bridge? Or is it only another branch cracking?" -</p> - -<p> -"You can't hear wheels in this snow. But I'll go out and take a look -round. There's a fine moon coming up." -</p> - -<p> -When he had unbarred the front door, she slipped into her raccoon coat -and overshoes, and flung her knitted shawl over her head. After a minute -or two, she saw John Abner's figure moving among the shrouded trees to -the gate, and descending the steps as carefully as she could, she -followed slowly in the direction he had taken. By the time she was -midway down the walk, he had disappeared up the frozen road. Except for -the lighted house at her back she might have been alone in a stainless -world before the creation of life. A cold white moon was shedding a -silver lustre over the landscape, which appeared as transparent as glass -against the impenetrable horizon. Even the house, when she glanced round -at it, might have been only a shadow, so unreal, so visionary, it looked -in the unearthly light of the snow. While she lingered there it seemed -to her that the movement of the air, the earth, and the stars, was -suspended. Substance and shadow melted into each other and into the -vastness of space. Not a track blurred the ground, not a cloud trembled -in the sky, not a murmur of life broke the stillness. -</p> - -<p> -Presently, as she drew nearer the gate, a moving shape flitted in from -the trees by the road, and John Abner called to her that the buggy was -in sight. "I'll wait and bed down the mare," he said. "Nimrod will be -pretty hungry, I reckon, and he won't look after her properly." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll go right in and fix supper for both of them." -</p> - -<p> -Without waiting for the vehicle, she hurried into the house and -replenished the fire in the stove. Thin, while she broke the eggs and -put on water to boil for coffee, she told herself that Nathan's coffee -habit was as incurable as a taste for whiskey. The wood had caught and -the fire was burning well when John Abner appeared suddenly in the -doorway. He looked sleepy and a trifle disturbed. -</p> - -<p> -"That wasn't Father after all," he said. "They told Nimrod there wasn't -any use waiting longer. He was shaking with cold, so I sent him to bed. -As soon as I've made the mare comfortable, I'll come and tell you all -about it." -</p> - -<p> -"I was just scrambling some eggs. I wish you'd eat them. I hate to waste -things." -</p> - -<p> -"All right. I'll be back in a jiffy." -</p> - -<p> -He ran out as quickly as his lameness would permit, and she arranged the -supper on the table. After all, if Nathan wasn't coming home to-night, -John Abner might as well eat the eggs she had scrambled. There was no -sense in wasting good food. -</p> - -<p> -After attending to the mare the boy came in and began walking up and -down the floor of the kitchen. He did not sit down at the table, though -Dorinda was bringing the steaming skillet from the stove. "It's a -nuisance all the wires are down," he said presently. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, but for that we might telephone." -</p> - -<p> -"The telegraph wires have fallen too. Nimrod said they didn't know much -more at the store than we do." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, you'd better sit down and eat this while it's hot. It doesn't do -any good to worry about things." -</p> - -<p> -"One of the coloured men, Elisha Moody, told Nimrod he would be coming -home in an hour, and he would stop and tell us the news. Mr. Garlick is -going to wait at the station until his daughter comes." -</p> - -<p> -"The news?" she asked vaguely. For the first time the idea occurred to -her that John Abner was holding back what he had heard. "Doesn't Nimrod -know when the train is expected?" -</p> - -<p> -"Nobody knows. The wires are broken, but the train from Washington went -down and came up again with news of a wreck down the road. I don't know -whether it is Father's train or another, Nimrod was all mixed up about -it. He couldn't tell me anything except that something had happened. The -thing that impressed Nimrod most was that all the freight men carried -axes. He kept repeating that over and over." -</p> - -<p> -"Axes?" Dorinda's mind had stopped working. She stood there in the -middle of the kitchen floor, with the coffee-pot in her hand, and -repeated the word as if it were strange to her. Behind her the fire -crackled, and the pots of rose-geraniums she had brought away from the -window-sill stood in an orderly row on the brick hearth. -</p> - -<p> -"I suppose they had to cut the coaches away from the track," replied -John Abner indefinitely. "Elisha will tell us more when he stops by. -He's got more sense than Nimrod, who was scared out of his wits." -</p> - -<p> -"I would have given him some supper. Why didn't he come in?" -</p> - -<p> -"He said his wife was waiting for him and he wanted to get to his -cabin." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda poured out the coffee and carried the pot back to the stove. -"I'm afraid your father will catch his death of cold," she said -anxiously, "and with that tooth out!" -</p> - -<p> -She was fortified by a serene confidence in Nathan's ability to take -care of himself. The only uneasiness she felt was on account of the -abscess. With all his good judgment, when it came to toothache he was no -braver than a child. -</p> - -<p> -John Abner seemed glad to get the hot coffee. "You might as well keep -some for Elisha," he suggested. "It's almost time he was coming and I -know he'll be thankful for something hot." -</p> - -<p> -Though he ate and drank as if he were hungry, there was a worried look -in his face, and he kept turning his head in the direction of the road. -</p> - -<p> -"I don't suppose it's anything really serious," Dorinda remarked -reassuringly. "If it had been, we should certainly have heard it -sooner." -</p> - -<p> -Dropping into a chair beside him, she raised a cup of coffee and drank -it slowly in sips. Presently, notwithstanding her effort to minimize the -cause for alarm, she became aware that anxiety was stealing over her as -if it emanated from her surroundings. She felt it first in the creeping -sensation which ran like spiders over her flesh; then in an almost -imperceptible twitching of her muscles; and at last in a delicate -vibration of her nerves, as if a message were passing over electric -wires in her body. Then, suddenly, the fear mounted to her brain, and -she found herself listening like John Abner for the crunching of wheels -in the snow. -</p> - -<p> -"Do you hear anybody, John Abner?" -</p> - -<p> -"A branch snapped, that was all. I'll make up the fire in your chamber. -It's more comfortable in there." -</p> - -<p> -After he had gone into the bedroom, she fed the two dogs and the cat -before she washed the dishes and placed the coffee where it would keep -hot for Elisha. As she was leaving the kitchen she noticed the -rose-geraniums and moved the pots farther away from the heat. "If we are -going to keep up the fire, it will be too warm for them there," she -thought. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="III_II">III</a></h4> - -<p> -The log fire was blazing in her bedroom, and John Abner stood before the -window which looked on the gate and the road. -</p> - -<p> -"The panes are so frosted you can't see your hand before you," he said, -as she entered. -</p> - -<p> -Standing there beside him, she gazed through the leafless boughs of the -lilac bushes. "No, even the moonlight doesn't help you," she answered. -"It must be bitterly cold in the road. I hope the mare got warm again." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I covered her up. Nimrod had some whiskey and he was going to make -a hot toddy." John Abner shivered in the icy draught that crept in -through the loose window sashes. "Hadn't you better lie down?" he asked, -turning back to the fire. "It won't be long now." -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head. "That coffee will keep me awake. Lie down on the -couch, and I'll listen for Elisha. I drew up the shades, so he will know -we haven't gone to bed." -</p> - -<p> -For a few minutes he resisted her, his eyes blinking in the firelight -while he struggled to bite back a yawn. Then he gave up and flung -himself down on the big soft couch. "It would take something stronger -than coffee to keep me awake to-night," he said. "If I drop off, will -you wake me?" -</p> - -<p> -"If there is any news. But you will hear Elisha when he comes." He -laughed drowsily. "I believe I could sleep straight through Judgment -Day." -</p> - -<p> -Taking the quilt from the bed, she covered him carefully from head to -foot. As she tucked him in, she remembered her wedding night when she -had found Nathan asleep on the couch in front of the fire. "If he hadn't -been like that, I couldn't have stood him," she thought. -</p> - -<p> -Sinking into the easiest chair by the flames, she picked up the sock she -had partly darned in the afternoon. Then, observing that the lamp was -shining in John Abner's face, she lowered the wick and folding the sock, -replaced it in her work basket. The chair creaked gently as she rocked, -and fearing the noise might disturb him, she sat motionless, with her -eyes on the hickory logs and her foot touching the neck of the pointer. -</p> - -<p> -While she sat there she recalled, with one of the irresponsible flashes -of memory which revived only when she was inactive, the afternoon when -she had waited in the dripping woods to see Jason drive home with -Geneva. She was a girl then; now she was a woman and middle-aged; yet -there was an intolerable quality in all suspense which made it alike. -Compared to those moments, this waiting was as the dead to the living -agony. "Suppose I had married Jason and he was on that train, could I -sit here like this?" she asked herself. "Suppose I had married Jason -instead of Nathan, would marriage have been different?" -</p> - -<p> -Then, because the question was useless and she had no room for useless -things in her practical mind, she put it sternly away from her, and -rising, slipped into her coat and went out of the house. Closing the -door softly, she passed out on the porch and down the frozen steps to -the lawn. The snow was slippery in thin places, and she knew that Elisha -would try to keep to the road where the deep drifts were less dangerous. -Advancing cautiously, she moved in the direction of the gate, but she -had gone only a few steps when she saw Elisha's old spring wagon rolling -over the bridge. Quickening her steps dangerously, she ran over the -slippery ground. -</p> - -<p> -"I've kept some hot coffee for you, Uncle Elisha. Can't you come into -the kitchen and get something to eat?" -</p> - -<p> -"Naw'm, I reckon I'd better be gittin' erlong home. My ole grey mare, -she's had jes' about enuff er dis yeah wedder, en she's kinder hankerin' -fur de stable." -</p> - -<p> -"We can keep her here. There's plenty of room in the stable, and you can -spend the night with Ebenezer." -</p> - -<p> -"Thanky, Miss Dorindy, bofe un us sutney would be glad uv er spell er -res'. My son Jasper, he's on dat ar train dat's done been stalled down -de track, an' I'se gwine out agin about'n sunup." -</p> - -<p> -"Have they heard anything yet?" asked Dorinda, while the wagon crawled -over the snags of roots in the direction of the stable. -</p> - -<p> -Elisha shook his muffled head. "Dey don' know nuttin', Miss Dorindy, -dat's de Gospel trufe, dey don' know nuttin' 'tall. Dar's a train done -come down Pom de Norf, en hit's gwine on wid whatevah dey could git -abo'd hit. Hi! Dey's got axes erlong, en I 'low dar ain' nary a one un -um dat kin handle an axe like my Jasper." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm afraid it's a bad wreck," Dorinda said uneasily. -</p> - -<p> -"Yas'm, dar's a wreck somewhar, sho 'nuff, but dey don' know nuttin' -out dar at de station. All de wires is down, ev'y las' one un um, en dar -ain' nobody done come erlong back dat went down de road. Ef'n you'll -lemme res' de night heah, me en de mare'll go out agin befo' sunup." -</p> - -<p> -"There's all the room in the world, Uncle Elisha. Wait, and I'll give -you a lantern to take to the stable." She went indoors and returned in a -few minutes with a light swinging from her hand. "As soon as you've -attended to your mare, come in and I'll have something for you to eat." -</p> - -<p> -As she passed her bedroom on the way to the kitchen she saw that John -Abner was still sleeping, and she did not stop to arouse him. Why should -she disturb his slumber when there was nothing definite that she could -tell him? Instead, she hastened about her preparations for Elisha's -supper, and by the time the old negro came in from bedding the mare, the -bacon and eggs were on the table. Withdrawing to a safe distance from -the stove, he thawed his frostbitten hands and feet, while his grizzled -head emerged like some gigantic caterpillar from the chrysalis of shawls -he had wound about him. -</p> - -<p> -"Were there many people at the station?" she inquired presently. -</p> - -<p> -"Naw'm, hit was too fur fur mos' folks. Marse John Garlick, he wuz -spendin' de night in de sto', en so was Marse Jim Ellgood. Young Marse -Bob en his wife wuz bofe un um on de train." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, make a good supper. Then you can go up to Ebenezer's. I saw smoke -coming out of his chimney, so it will be warm there." -</p> - -<p> -Because she knew that he would enjoy his supper more if he were -permitted to eat it alone, she went back to the fire in her bedroom -where John Abner was still sleeping. She watched there in the silence -until she heard Elisha exclaim, "Good night, Miss Dorindy!" and go out, -shutting the back door behind him. Then she locked up the house, and -after lowering the wick of the hall lamp, touched John Abner on the -shoulder. -</p> - -<p> -"You'd better go to bed. In a little while you will have to be up -again." -</p> - -<p> -He opened his eyes and sat up, blinking at the firelight. "I could have -slept on into next week." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, don't wake up. Go straight upstairs." -</p> - -<p> -"Did Elisha ever come?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, he put his mare in the stable and went up to spend the night with -Ebenezer." -</p> - -<p> -"What did he tell you?" -</p> - -<p> -"Only that they haven't found out anything definite at the station. You -know how cut off everything is when the wires are down. Mr. Garlick and -James Ellgood are both waiting out there all night." -</p> - -<p> -"Then it was Father's train. It must have been a bad wreck." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm afraid so. This suspense is so baffling. Anything in the world -might happen, and we shouldn't know of it until the next day." -</p> - -<p> -Her face was pale and drawn, and while she spoke, she shivered, not from -cold but from anxiety. She saw John Abner glance quickly toward the -front window and she knew that he, like herself, was feeling all the -terror of primitive isolation. How did people stand it when they were -actually cut off by the desert or the frozen North from communication -with their kind? -</p> - -<p> -"You know now what it must have been like in the old days before we had -the telegraph and the telephone," she said. "Pedlar's Mill was scarcely -more than a stopping place in the wilderness, and my mother would be -shut in for days without a sign from the outer world." -</p> - -<p> -"I never thought of it before," said John Abner, "but it must have been -pretty rough on her. The roads were no better than frozen bogs, so she -couldn't get anywhere if she wanted to." -</p> - -<p> -"That was why she got her mania for work. The winter loneliness; she -said, was more than she could endure without losing her mind. She had to -move about to make company for herself. There were weeks at a time, she -told me once, when the roads were so bad that nobody went by, not even -Mr. Garlick, or an occasional negro. During the war the trains stopped -running on this branch road, and afterwards there were only two trains -passing a day." -</p> - -<p> -"I suppose it was always better on the other side of the railroad." -</p> - -<p> -"They're nearer the highway, of course, though that was bad enough when -Ma was first married. Over here the roads were never mended unless a few -of the farmers agreed to give so much labour, either of slaves or free -negroes. Then, after the contract was made, something invariably got in -the way and it fell through. Somebody died or fell ill or lost all his -crops. You know how indisposed tenant farmers are to doing their share -of work." -</p> - -<p> -"And there wasn't even a store at Pedlar's Mill until Father started -one?" -</p> - -<p> -"Nothing but the mill. That was there as far back as anybody could -remember, and there was always a Pedlar for a miller. The farmers from -this side took corn there to be ground, and sometimes they would trade -it for sugar or molasses. But the only store was far up at the -Courthouse. People bought their winter supplies when they went to town -to sell tobacco. All the tobacco money went for coffee and sugar and -clothes. That was why Pa raised a crop every year to the end of his -life." -</p> - -<p> -John Abner rose and stretched himself. "Well, I'm precious glad I live -in the days of the telephone and the telegraph, with the hope of owning -an automobile when they get cheaper." Going over to the window, he held -his hand over his eyes and peered out. "You can't see a thing but snow. -We might as well be dead and buried under it. Shall I take the butter -over in the morning?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I'd like to go myself. You'd better stay and look after the -milking." How inexorable were the trivial necessities of the farm! -Anxieties might come and go, but the milking would not wait upon life or -death. Not until John Abner had gone upstairs did she perceive that she -had been talking, as her mother would have said, "to make company for -herself." "I've almost lost my taste for books," she thought, "and I -used to be such a hungry reader." -</p> - -<p> -After putting a fresh log on the fire, she flung herself on the bed, -without undressing, and lay perfectly still while a nervous tremor, like -the suspension of a drawn breath, crept over her. Toward daybreak, when -the crashing of a dead branch on one of the locust trees sounded as if -it had fallen on the roof, she realized that she was straining every -sense for the noise of an approaching vehicle in the road. Then, rising -hurriedly, she threw open the window and leaned out into the night. -Nothing there. Only the lacquered darkness and the moon turning to a -faint yellow-green over the fields of snow! -</p> - -<p> -At four o'clock she went into the kitchen and began preparations for -breakfast. When the coffee was ground, the water poured over it in the -coffee-pot, and the butterbread mixed and put into the baking dish, she -returned to her room and finished her dressing. By the time John Abner -came down to go out to the cow-barn, she was waiting with her hat on and -a pile of sheepskin rugs at her feet. -</p> - -<p> -"I suppose we might as well send the butter out. Fluvanna has it ready," -she said, watching him while he lighted his lantern from the lamp on the -breakfast table. "If the trains have begun running again, they will -expect it in Washington." -</p> - -<p> -"It won't hurt anyway to take it along. I'll tell Nimrod to hitch up." -</p> - -<p> -They both spoke as if the wreck had been merely a temporary -inconvenience which was over. Vaguely, there swam through Dorinda's mind -the image of her mother cooking breakfast in her best dress before she -went to the Courthouse. The old woman had worn the same expression of -desperate hopefulness that Dorinda felt now spreading like a mask of -beeswax over her own features. Already, though it was still dark, the -life of the farm was stirring. As John Abner went out, she saw the stars -of lanterns swinging away into the night, and when he returned to -breakfast, Fluvanna was in the kitchen busily frying bacon and eggs. -Before they had finished the meal, Nimrod appeared to say that the wagon -was waiting, and rising hastily Dorinda slipped on her raccoon-skin -coat. -</p> - -<p> -"We'd better start," she said. "Give Uncle Elisha his breakfast, and -tell him we will bring Jasper back with us. Keep the kettle on, so you -can make coffee for Mr. Nathan as soon as he gets here." -</p> - -<p> -Hurrying out, she climbed into the heavy wagon, and they started -carefully down the slippery grade to the road. As they turned out of the -gate, the wheels slid over the embedded rocks to the frozen ruts in the -snow. Only a circle of road immediately in front of them was visible, -and while the wagon rolled on, this spot of ground appeared to travel -with them, never changing and never lingering in its passage. Into this -illuminated circle tiny tracks of birds drifted and vanished like magic -signs. -</p> - -<p> -Presently, as they drew nearer Pedlar's Mill, a glimmer, so faint that -it was scarcely more than a ripple on the surface of black waters, -quivered in the darkness around them. With this ripple, a formless -transparency floated up in the east, as a luminous mist swims up before -an approaching candle. Out of this brightness, the landscape dawned in -fragments, like dissolving views of the Arctic Circle. The sky was -muffled overhead, but just as they reached the station a pale glow -suffused the clouds beyond the ruined mill on the horizon. -</p> - -<p> -"If the train was on time, it must have gone by an hour ago," Dorinda -said, but she knew that there was no chance of its having gone by. -</p> - -<p> -"Hit's gwinter thaw, sho' nuff, befo' sundown," Nimrod rejoined, -speaking for the first time since they started. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it's getting milder." -</p> - -<p> -At that hour, in the bitter dawn, the station looked lonelier and more -forsaken than ever. Hemmed in by the level sea of ice, the old warehouse -and platform were flung there like dead driftwood. Even the red streak -in the sky made the winter desolation appear more desolate. -</p> - -<p> -At first she could distinguish no moving figures; but when they came -nearer, she saw a small group of men gathered round an object which she -had mistaken in the distance for one of the deserted freight cars. -</p> - -<p> -Now she saw that this object was a train of a single coach, with an -engine attached, and that the men were moving dark masses from the car -to crude stretchers laid out on the snow. -</p> - -<p> -"The trains are running again," Dorinda said hoarsely. "They must have -got the track cleared." -</p> - -<p> -"I hope dey's gwinter teck dis yeah budder," Nimrod returned. "Git up -heah, hosses! We ain' got no mo' time to poke." -</p> - -<p> -A chill passed down Dorinda's spine; but she was unaware of the cause -that produced it, and her mind was vacant of thought. Then, while the -wagon jolted up the slope, some empty words darted into her -consciousness. "Something has happened. I feel that something has -happened." -</p> - -<p> -"Do you see anybody that you know, Nimrod?" -</p> - -<p> -"Naw'm, I cyarn see nobody." Then he added excitedly, "But dar's -somebody a-comin'. Ain' he ole Marse Jim Ellgood?" -</p> - -<p> -The horses stopped by the fence and began nuzzling the snow, -while Nimrod dropped the reins and jumped down to lift out the -butter. Standing up in the wagon, Dorinda beat her chilled hands -together. Her limbs felt stiff with cold, and for a moment they -refused to obey her will. Then recovering control of herself, -she stepped down from the wagon and followed Nimrod in the -direction of the store. Immediately, she was aware of a bustle about the -track, and she thought, "How much human beings are like turkeys!" The -group of men had separated as she approached, and two figures came -forward to meet her across the snow. One was a stranger; the other, -though it took her an instant to recognize him, was Bob Ellgood. "Why, -he looks like an old man," she said to herself. "He looks as old as his -father." The ruddy, masterful features were scorched and smoke-stained, -and the curling fair hair was burned to the colour of singed broomsedge. -Even his eyes looked burned, and one of his hands was rolled in a -bandage. -</p> - -<p> -She stopped abruptly and stood motionless. Though she was without -definite fear, an obscure dread was beating against the wall of her -consciousness. "Something has happened. Something has happened. -Something has happened." Her mind seemed to have no relation to herself, -to her feelings, to her beliefs, to her affections. It was only an empty -shed; and the darkness of this shed was filled suddenly with the sound -of swallows fluttering. -</p> - -<p> -When Bob Ellgood reached her, he held out his unbandaged hand. "Father -and I were just going over to your place, Mrs. Pedlar," he said. "We -wanted to be the first to see you. We wanted you to hear of Nathan from -us——" -</p> - -<p> -"Then he is dead," she said quietly. It had never seemed possible to her -that Nathan could die. He had not mattered enough for that. But now he -was dead. -</p> - -<p> -"He died a hero," a stranger, whom she had never seen before, said -earnestly. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, he died a hero," Bob Ellgood snatched the words away from the -other. "That is what we wish you to know and to feel as long as you -live. He gave his life for others. He had got free, without a scratch, -and he went back into the wreck. The train had gone over the embankment. -It was burning and women were screaming. He went down because he was -strong. He went down and he never came back." -</p> - -<p> -"God! Those shrieks!" exclaimed the strange man. "I'll hear them all my -life. As long as I live, I'll never stop hearing them." -</p> - -<p> -"He got free?" she repeated stupidly. -</p> - -<p> -"But he went back. He got an axe from somebody, and he went back because -he was strong. He was cutting the car away to get a woman out. He did -get her out——" He broke off and added hastily, "When we found -him, he was quite dead. . . ." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda stared at him vacantly, seeing nothing but his blackened -features and the scorched place on his head. "Will they bring him to the -farm?" she asked. -</p> - -<p> -"If you wish it." Bob's voice was shaken. "But we feel that we should -like him to rest in the churchyard." -</p> - -<p> -Silently, scarcely knowing what he asked, she assented. So Nathan had -forced people to take him seriously, even though he had to die before -they would do it. Was it worth it? she wondered. Would it have pleased -him if he had known? -</p> - -<p> -"May I go to the church? Have they taken him there?" -</p> - -<p> -She saw that Bob hesitated before he answered. "I hope you won't see -him," he replied after a minute. "We believe he was killed instantly, -but——" He broke off and then went on desperately, "If you will -go home and leave the arrangements to us, we promise you that everything -shall be as he would have wished. We should like him to have the funeral -of a hero." -</p> - -<p> -"The funeral of a hero!" she echoed. She did not know, she could not -imagine what kind of funeral that would be; but she felt intuitively -that Nathan would have liked it, and that she had no right to deny him -the funeral that he would have liked. -</p> - -<p> -Without replying in words, she bent her head and turned back to the -wagon, where a completely demoralized Nimrod awaited her. A stunned -sensation held her emotions imprisoned, and a few minutes later, as she -drove homeward, it occurred to her that she was proving unequal again to -one of the supreme occasions of her life. Emotionally, would she always -prove unequal to the demands of life? She was not feeling what she knew -that she ought to feel; she was not feeling what she knew that they -expected of her. Her stern judgment told her that she was a hypocrite; -but it was hypocrisy against which she was inert and helpless. Though -she was overwhelmed by the general tragedy, she was without a keen sense -of widowhood. Something within her soul, that thin clear flame which was -herself, remained unshaken by her loss, as it had remained unshaken by -every tragedy but one in her life. She was leaving Nathan, with regret -but not with grief, to his belated popularity. How could she begrudge -him in death the thing that he had wanted most when he was alive? Yes, -beholding him as she did with compassion but without pretense, she knew -that he would have enjoyed the funeral of a hero. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="IV_II">IV</a></h4> - -<p> -Waking in the blackness before dawn, she heard John Abner come -downstairs and stop in the hall to light his lantern. -</p> - -<p> -"I ought to go out to the milking," she thought, and then more slowly, -"I can't believe that Nathan is dead." -</p> - -<p> -Would the idea ever grow familiar to her? Could she ever live with the -fact, acknowledged and yet unregarded, as she had lived with the fact of -her marriage? "There never was a better man in the world," she said -aloud. Here on the farm she found herself missing him with the first -vague sense of loss. The insensibility which had protected her at the -station disappeared when her mind dwelt on his good qualities,—his -kindness, his charity, his broad tolerance of her prejudices. She knew -that she should miss him more and more in all the details of the farm, -and that she should begin to sorrow for him as soon as she had time to -realize that she had lost him for ever. Yesterday was a void in her -mind. When she thought of the long day after her return from the -station, she could remember only the incredible tenderness of John -Abner, and the visit in the afternoon from James Ellgood, who had told -her that the news of the wreck had just travelled as far as the farms -beyond Whippernock River, and that the absent minister was returning at -midnight. -</p> - -<p> -On this, the second day after Nathan's death, the primitive ceremonies -of the funeral began. The earliest and one of the most depressing signs -of mourning was the loud demoralization of the negroes, who rose to the -funeral as fish to bait, and became immediately incapable of any work -except lamenting the dead. As long as there was hope left in tragedy, -they were able to brace themselves to Herculean exertions; but -superstition enslaved them as soon as death entered the house. The cows, -of course, had to be milked; but with the exception of the milking and -the necessary feeding of the stock, the place was like an abandoned farm -until the burial was over. Though Nathan's charred body remained at -Pedlar's Mill, the pall of mourning extended to Old Farm. John Abner had -even suggested sending a telegram to the hotel and the dairy in -Washington and letting the milk spoil; but the thought of all the good -cream that would be thrown away was too much for Dorinda's economical -instincts, and she had checked the impulse with the reminder that Nathan -had hated a waste. Yes, he had hated a waste, it is true, but he had -also loved a funeral. She remembered her mother's death, and the -completeness, the perfection, of his arrangements. -</p> - -<p> -"Am I too hard?" Dorinda asked herself. "Ought I not to see that -everything gets so upset? After all, as Fluvanna says, a person does not -die but once." The small ironic demon of her sagacity concluded, in -spite of her will: "It is a good thing, or there wouldn't be any room -left for life." -</p> - -<p> -Breakfast was no sooner over than she was engulfed in a continuous -deluge of sympathy. She was up in the attic with Fluvanna, going over -the black things which had been left from the mourning of her parents, -when the coloured woman glanced out of the dormer-window and gasped -breathlessly. "Thar they are, Miss Dorinda. You hurry up and get into -that black bombazine befo' they catch you out of mournin'." -</p> - -<p> -She held up a dingy dress which had once belonged to Mrs. Oakley, and -Dorinda slipped into it with the feeling that she was preparing for her -own coffin. As she was about to go down to meet her callers, Fluvanna -unfolded and shook out before her the crape veil which had been worn by -two generations of widows. Her grandmother had bought it in more -affluent circumstances, and after her death, for she had been one of the -perpetual widows of the South, it had lain packed away in camphor until -Mrs. Oakley was ready for it. Now it was Dorinda's turn, and a shiver -went through her heart as she inhaled the rusty smell of bereavement. -</p> - -<p> -"You'll have to get a new veil after the burial," Fluvanna observed, -"but I reckon you can make out with this crape until that is over. It -has turned real brown, but there won't many people notice it in church." -</p> - -<p> -Putting the proffered veil aside, Dorinda hastened downstairs, after -reminding Fluvanna that she must make coffee in case the visitors -expected something to eat. -</p> - -<p> -"If only they would leave the dignity and take away the sordidness of -death," she thought. -</p> - -<p> -At the foot of the staircase, Miss Seena Snead was waiting for her with -a black serge dress that she had borrowed from one of the neighbours. -</p> - -<p> -"What in the world have you got on, Dorinda?" she asked, while the tears -brimmed over her kind old eyes. "I declare it looks as if it was made -befo' the Flood. I no sooner heard of po' Nathan's death than I began to -study about where I could find a good black dress for you to wear to the -funeral. I wasn't a bit surprised that Nathan turned out to be such a -hero. I always knew there was a lot mo' in him than some folks -suspected. Then, while I was in the midst of trying to recollect who had -died last year, young Mrs. John Garlick drove into our yard with this -dress and a widow's bonnet in her arms. She told me she's stoutened so -she couldn't make the dress meet on her, and she'd be obliged if you'd -do her the favour to wear it. The bonnet she sent along because it's a -widow's bonnet anyway, and she can't wear it herself until she loses -John. That makes her sort of superstitious about keepin' it put away as -if she were saving it for a purpose. John bought it for her in New York -when she lost her mother. Wasn't that like a man all over again, to go -and buy his wife a bonnet with a widow's ruche when her mother died?" -</p> - -<p> -"I'm much obliged to her," Dorinda replied stiffly, taking the bonnet -out of the bandbox. -</p> - -<p> -"It'll be real becomin' to you," Miss Seena exclaimed consolingly. -Though her tears were still streaming for Nathan, her imagination had -already envisaged Dorinda as a widow in weeds. "It makes you look mo' -strikin' than colours. There ain't nothin' you can wear so conspicuous -as crape, my po' Ma used to say." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda put on the dress and stood straight and still in the middle of -her bedroom floor while the dressmaker let down the hem and took a pleat -in the belt. "I've never seen anybody keep her figger so well as you've -done," remarked Miss Seena. "It's stayin' out of doors an' movin' about -so much, I reckon. My Ma used to say that when you get on in life, you -have to choose between keepin' yo' face or yo' figger; but it looks as -if you had managed to preserve both of 'em mighty well. You get sort of -chapped and weatherbeaten in the winter time, an' the lines show mo' -than they ought to, but that high colour keeps 'em from bein' too -marked. You're forty now, ain't you, Dorinda?" -</p> - -<p> -"Forty-two. It's hard sometimes for me to believe it." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, you're the hard kind that don't wear away soon. Look at Geneva -Ellgood, poor thing. She broke almost as quick as she grew." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda sighed. "She needed love too much ever to find it," and she -thought, "The surest way of winning love is to look as if you didn't -need it." -</p> - -<p> -"Everybody knew that it was Jim Ellgood that made Jason marry her, and -folks about here were mighty mad with him for throwing you over. It was -that mo' than drink that ruined his practice because people didn't want -a man to doctor them who hadn't behaved honourable. He began to go -downhill right after that, and he and Geneva lived like cat and dog -befo' she drowned herself. Jason is about as bad off now as she was, -tho' men don't ever seem to get the craze that they're goin' to have a -baby. But he's got a screw loose, or he wouldn't live way back yonder in -the woods, with nobody but an old coloured woman to look after him." She -was kneeling on the floor pinning up Dorinda's skirt, with the help of -the red pincushion, shaped like a tomato, which she wore fastened to the -bosom of her dress. "It was fortunate for you that Geneva got him," she -concluded, "and that you waited and took Nathan instead. You must find a -heap of comfort in feeling that you're the widow of a hero." -</p> - -<p> -The widow of a hero! Already Nathan's spirit, disencumbered of the gross -impediment of the flesh, was an influence to be reckoned with. Alive, he -had been negligible, but once safely dead, he had acquired a tremendous -advantage. -</p> - -<p> -"I believe I'll drop if I have to stand a minute longer," Dorinda said -in a fainting voice. -</p> - -<p> -Miss Seena was immediately solicitous. "Poor child, I reckon the shock -must have unnerved you. You lie right down, and I'll have this dress -ready befo' the minister gets here." -</p> - -<p> -At last the dressmaker stopped talking and settled down to her work, and -in the afternoon, when the Ellgoods came with the minister to tell -Dorinda of the arrangements for the funeral, she received them in the -black serge dress with a bit of crape at her throat. A fire was burning -in the parlour beneath the two black basalt urns on the mantelpiece and -the speckled engraving on the wall above. While she was still shaking -hands with the Ellgoods, a stream of people, led by Minnie May and Bud, -poured into the hall. Minnie May had brought her six children with her, -and the smaller ones immediately began to play with their dolls behind -the rosewood sofa in the corner, while the eldest boy fingered the books -which ran halfway up the walls on three sides of the room. -</p> - -<p> -"Don't you think I ought to make them stop?" Minnie May asked presently. -"They'd be more at home, anyway, in the kitchen where Fluvanna is making -gingerbread for them." -</p> - -<p> -"Tell Fluvanna not to forget to bring in some blackberry wine and cake," -Dorinda whispered in reply. -</p> - -<p> -Before she had spoken to her first visitors, the parlour was crowded; -and John Abner was obliged to bring chairs from the spare room. "To -think of my having to wear a bonnet with a widow's ruche!" Dorinda found -herself thinking, while she was condoled with in husky accents by the -old minister. "If they'd go away and let me have time to think, I might -feel; but I can't feel anything as long as they're all talking to me." -Though most of the faces were familiar to her, and some of them she had -passed in the road ever since her childhood, there were several persons -whom she did not seem to remember. These, she discovered presently, were -strangers who had been on the wrecked train with Nathan. Two of them he -had rescued from the burning cars at the cost of his life. -</p> - -<p> -Bad as the roads were, only the tenant farmers who lived beyond -Whippernock River had been prevented from coming. The bridge had been -damaged by the storm, and the thawing ice had made the shallow stream -unfordable. Old Mr. Kettledrum, who had given up his practice and become -"the mail rider" for the new rural delivery had been almost swept away -when he had tried to cross at the ford. Even Willow Creek was so high -that the log bridge had been torn to pieces by the flood. Yet neither -flood nor snow had held the neighbouring farmers at home. White and -black, rich and poor, they had turned out to visit the widow of a hero -in her affliction. Even Mr. Kettledrum had sent word that, undaunted by -his narrow escape from drowning, he had driven round the circuit in -order to bring Dorinda the morning papers. -</p> - -<p> -"To think that all this should be about Nathan," Dorinda said to -herself, while she sat there with the newspaper James Ellgood had given -her in her lap. -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="center"> -"HERO ON WRECKED TRAIN GIVES HIS LIFE FOR OTHERS<br /> -DESCENDANT OF FIRST MILLER OF PEDLAR'S MILL DIES<br /> -AFTER SAVING WOMEN AND CHILDREN.<br /> -MONUMENT TO BE ERECTED IN CHURCHYARD AT PEDLAR'S<br /> -MILL." -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p> -After this there was a list of contributions for the monument, -beginning with one thousand dollars, which had been subscribed by -an anonymous stranger from the North. -</p> - -<p> -Yes, dreadful as it was, she couldn't get over the feeling that there -was something unreal and theatrical in the event. She might have been on -the stage at a school festival, listening to all these people declaiming -selections from Shakespeare. Nathan's heroism sounded to her as -unnatural as the way things happened in Shakespeare. She felt ashamed of -herself. Had she failed Nathan in his death because she could not -recognize him in what she thought of vaguely as his heroic part? Well, -ashamed or not, she simply could not take it in. If you could once take -it in, she said to herself stupidly, the whole of life would be -different; yet, for the moment, she was too stunned, too confused, to -credit the incredible. The tragedy appeared too magnificent to be true. -</p> - -<p> -The minister was an old man. He had known Dorinda's mother when they -were both young; he had known Nathan when he was a child; and he wheezed -now with distress when he talked of him. His face was as grey and -inflexible as a rock, Dorinda thought, though his voice reminded her of -a purling brook. Over his bulging forehead his limp white hair hung in -loose strands which curled at the ends. She had not seen him for years -outside the pulpit, and it embarrassed her that he should stand on a -level with her and wipe his eyes on the shreds of a silk handkerchief. -While he rambled on, she looked beyond him and saw all those persons, -some of whom were unknown to her, moving about the parlour, which was as -sacred to her as a tombstone. They were whispering, too, among -themselves, and she knew that they were speaking of Nathan in the -sanctimonious tone which they had consecrated to missionaries who had -died at their posts or to distinguished generals of the Confederacy. She -observed John Abner go out to help put up the horses, and glancing out -of the window, she saw Fluvanna coming from the henhouse with a bunch -of fowls in her hands. With her usual foresight, the girl, who had kept -her head better than the other negroes, was preparing supper for the -multitude. -</p> - -<p> -The old minister had finished once, but he was beginning again in a -florid oratorical style. How long would he go on, she wondered, and -would it be like this at the funeral? There was much to be said, she -conceded, for the Episcopal service which circumscribed the rhetoric of -clergymen. When at last he sat down, wiping his glasses, in the -cushioned rocking-chair close to the fire, Bob Ellgood stood up and -explained the funeral arrangements as if he wished her to understand -that they were to be worthy of Nathan. This was Wednesday, and the -public funeral, the funeral of a hero, would be held at three o'clock on -Friday afternoon. Then he handed her a list of the pallbearers, many of -them merely "honorary," Dorinda perceived, and among them there were -several names that she did not know. -</p> - -<p> -"They were on the wrecked train," Bob replied to her question, "and wish -to pay this last mark of respect." These were the men, he told her, who -had started the list of contributions. "It is our idea to build a -monument by public subscription," he concluded, "over his grave in the -churchyard. Then future generations will remember his heroism." -</p> - -<p> -"Poor Nathan," she thought, while her eyes filled with tears. "If only -he could hear what they are saying." There had never been a monument -erected by public subscription at Pedlar's Mill, and she could not help -thinking how pleased Nathan would have been if he could have taken an -active part in the plan. Well, some people had to wait until they were -dead to get the things that would have made them happy while they were -living. -</p> - -<p> -As soon as Bob Ellgood stopped speaking, a general droning began in the -room, and she grasped, after an instant of confusion, that everybody was -trying to tell her of some boyish act of generosity which was still -remembered. These recollections, beginning with a single anecdote -related in the cracked voice of the minister, gathered fulness of tone -as they multiplied, until the room resounded with a chorus of praise. -Was it possible that Nathan had done all these noble things and that she -had never heard of them? Was it possible that so many persons had seen -the greatness of his nature, and yet the community in which he lived had -continued to treat him as more or less of a clown? Over and over, she -heard the emphatic refrain, "I always thought there was a heap more in -Nathan Pedlar than people made out." -</p> - -<p> -Sitting there in the midst of the belated appreciation, it seemed to -Dorinda that the shape of an idea emerged gradually out of the fog of -words. All his life Nathan had been misunderstood. Though she was -unaware of the exact moment when the apotheosis occurred, she realized -presently that she had witnessed the transformation of a human being -into a legend. After to-day, it was impossible that she should ever -think of Nathan as unromantically as she thought of him while he was -alive. Death had not only ennobled, it had superbly exalted him. In this -chant of praise, there was no reminder of his insignificance. Could it -be that she alone had failed to recognize the beauty of his character -beneath his inappropriate surface? Had she alone misunderstood and -belittled him in her mind? Her heart swelled until it seemed to her that -she was choking. When she remembered her husband now, it was the inward, -not the outward, man that she recalled. -</p> - -<p> -"I reckon he warn't mo' than eight years old when he took that whipping -for stealing old man Haney's cherries rather than tell on Sandy Moody's -little boy Sam," Ezra Flower, the auctioneer, was reciting. "I can see -the way he stood up and took the lashing without a whimper, and the -other boys teasing him and calling him a clown on account of hid broken -nose. Yes, ma'am, I always knew thar was a heap mo' in Nathan Pedlar -than most folks made out." -</p> - -<p> -The warm room, the firelight, the humming voices, faded into a mist. -Beyond the window-panes, which flamed with a reflected glow, Dorinda saw -the white fields and against the fields there flickered a vision of the -room in which she was sitting. Out of this vision, the prayer of the -minister stole over her like some soporific influence. An inescapable -power of suggestion, as intense yet as diffused as firelight, was -reassembling her thoughts of the past. "Yes, there was more in Nathan -than anybody ever suspected," she found herself repeating. -</p> - -<p> -With one of those sudden changes that come in Virginia, the day of -Nathan's funeral brought a foretaste of spring. The snow had melted so -rapidly that the roads were flowing like brooks, and Whippernock River, -with its damaged bridge, was still impassable. But an April languor was -in the air, and the sky over the wintry fields was as soft as clouds of -blue and white hyacinths. Though a number of farmers who lived beyond -Whippernock River had been unable to come to the funeral, people had -arrived by train from the city and in every vehicle that could roll on -wheels from the near side of the railroad. The little church was crowded -to suffocation while the minister read his short text and preached his -long sermon on the beauty of self-sacrifice. When the last hymn was sung -with gasps of emotional tension, and the congregation flocked out into -the churchyard, with Nathan in his flower-banked coffin and Dorinda -hidden in her widow's weeds, a wave of grief spread like a contagious -affliction over the throng. With her head reverently bowed, Dorinda -tried to attend only to the words of the minister, to see only the open -grave at her feet, with the piles of red clay surrounding the oblong -hole. Yet her senses, according to their deplorable habit in a crisis, -became extraordinarily alive, and every trivial detail of the scene -glittered within her mind. She saw the blanched and harrowed face of the -minister, who prayed with closed eyes and violent gestures as if he were -wrestling with God; she saw the nodding black plumes of Miss Texanna -Snead, and remembered that Nathan had once called her "a plumed hearse." -She saw the gaping mouths of the children, whom their mothers, in the -excitement of the occasion, had neglected to wash; she saw even the -predatory brood of chickens which had invaded the graveyard and was -scratching upon the graves. The ground at her feet was heaped with -flowers, and among the floral crosses and wreaths and pillows, she -observed the design of a railway engine made of red and white -carnations, and tried to recall the names on the card. Long after she -had forgotten every word of the prayer, she could still see that -preposterous floral engine and smell the strong scent of fading -carnations. -</p> - -<p> -Standing there beside the open grave, recollections blew in and out of -her mind like chaff in the wind. Her first sermon. The old minister -praying with eyes so tightly shut that they looked like slits made by a -penknife. The way her feet could not reach the floor. Peppermints in a -paper bag to keep her quiet. Her mother smelling of soap and camphor. -Missionaries in the front pew. The saving of black babies. The way she -had yawned and stretched. Nathan was there then, a big boy who sang, -with a voice as shrill as a grasshopper, in the choir. Rose Emily too. -How pretty she was. Then Rose Emily as she lay dying with the happy -light in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks. Twenty-two years ago! -Well, she had done her best by Rose Emily's children. -</p> - -<p> -Afterwards, when she drove home with John Abner, she found that, though -they had buried the actual Nathan in the churchyard, the legendary -Nathan of prayer and sermon still accompanied them. -</p> - -<p> -"I wish Father could have heard what they said of him," John Abner -remarked, with detached reverence, as he might have spoken of one of the -public characters in the Bible. "It would please him to know what they -thought of him after he was gone." -</p> - -<p> -"Perhaps he does know," Dorinda responded. -</p> - -<p> -For a few moments they talked of this; of the way death so often makes -you understand people better than life; of the sermon and the flowers, -and the general mourning. -</p> - -<p> -"Did you see Jacob Moody there?" asked John Abner presently. "He used to -work for Father before we moved to Old Farm, and Jacob told me he swam -Whippernock River to come to the funeral." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda wiped her eyes. "Things like that would have touched Nathan. I -never saw any one get on better with the coloured people. It was because -he was so just, I suppose." -</p> - -<p> -"Those were Jacob's very words. 'Mr. Nathan was the justest white man I -ever saw,' he said. Put back that heavy veil, Dorinda. It is enough to -smother you. There now. That's better. Your face looks like the moon -when it comes out of a cloud." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda smiled. "Even that old German who has just moved into the Haney -place was there. I wonder what he thinks now of Germany? We shan't hear -anything about the war after this. I used to tell your father he -couldn't have felt more strongly if it had been fought at Old Farm." -</p> - -<p> -"I was beginning to get interested myself," John Abner returned. "I'll -try to follow it on the map just as he did in the evenings. Well, it -will be over before next winter, I reckon." -</p> - -<p> -"And all that waste so unnecessary!" Dorinda exclaimed. -</p> - -<p> -They were turning in at the gate by the bridge. Straight ahead, she saw -the house, with the smoke flying like banners from the chimneys. On the -hill beyond, the big pine was dark against the blue and white of the -sky. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="V_II">V</a></h4> - -<p> -Although Dorinda would have been astonished had she discovered it, the -years after Nathan's death were the richest and happiest of her life. -They were years of relentless endeavour, for a world war was fought and -won with the help of the farmers; but they were years which rushed over -her like weathered leaves in a storm. To the end, the war came no nearer -to her than a battle in history. There was none of the flame-like -vividness that suffused her mother's memories of the starving years and -the burning houses of the Confederacy. Only when she saw victory in -terms of crops, not battles, could she feel that she was part of it. -</p> - -<p> -In the beginning the Germans had seemed less a mortal enemy than an evil -spirit at large, and she had fought them as her great-grandfather might -have fought a heresy or a pestilence. That men should destroy one -another appeared to her less incredible than that they should -deliberately destroy the resources which made life endurable. That they -should destroy in a day, in an hour, the materials which she was -sacrificing her youth to provide! At night, lying in bed with limbs that -ached so she could not sleep, and a mind that was a blank from -exhaustion, she would hear the rotation of crops drumming deliriously in -her thoughts. Potatoes. Corn. Wheat. Cow-peas. Clover. Alfalfa. And back -again. Alfalfa. Cowpeas. Potatoes. Corn. Wheat. Clover. That was all the -seasons meant to her, one after one. Her youth was going, she knew; but -youth had brought so little that age could take away, why should she -regret it? The hair on her temples had turned from grey to white; her -skin, beneath its warm flush, was creased with lines and roughened from -exposure; but her eyes were still bright and clear, though the caged -look had gone out of them. -</p> - -<p> -What she felt most, as the struggle went on, was the failure of -elasticity. The tyranny of detail was more exacting, and she rebounded -less quickly from disappointment. Notwithstanding what Doctor Faraday -had called her "superb constitution," her health began to cause her -uneasiness. "The war has done this," she thought, "and if it has cost me -my youth, imagine what it has cost the men who are fighting." It was a -necessary folly, she supposed, but it was a folly against which she -rebelled. Had humanity been trying unwisely to hurry evolution, and had -the crust of civilization proved too thin to restrain the outbreak of -volcanic impulses? Her two years with Doctor Faraday had accustomed her -to the biological interpretation of history. "And the worst thing about -the war," she concluded grimly, "is not the fighting. It is not even the -murder and plunder of the weaker. The worst thing about it is the number -of people, both men and women, who enjoy it, who embark upon it as upon -a colossal adventure." -</p> - -<p> -If John Abner had gone to France, the war would have come closer to her; -but John Abner was tied by his clubfoot to the farm. The crowning -humiliation of his life came, she knew, when he watched the other boys -from Pedlar's Mill start off for the training camp. Her pity for him was -stronger than her relief that she could keep him, and she wished with -all her heart that he could have gone. "You will be more useful on the -farm," she said consolingly, as they turned away; but he only shook his -head and stared mutely after the receding train. What John Abner -desired, she saw, was not usefulness but glory. -</p> - -<p> -Of the boys they saw go, a few were killed; but they were boys whom she -knew only by sight. Two of Josiah's sons went, and one died of influenza -after he had been decorated three times; but this boy had lived away so -long that she did not feel close to him. Bob Ellgood's second son -returned a nervous wreck from shell shock, and whenever Dorinda saw him -on the porch at Green Acres, trying to make baskets of straw, she would -feel that her heart was melting in pity. But even then the war did not -actually touch her. Her nearest approach to the fighting was when -Fluvanna's son Jubal died in a French hospital, and she was obliged to -read the later aloud because Fluvanna was too distressed to spell out -the words. Dorinda had known Jubal from his babyhood. He had grows up on -the farm, and she had taught him to read. The day the news came the two -women worked until they were ready to drop from exhaustion. Work had -always been Dorinda's salvation. It was saving her now from the war as -it had once saved her from the memory of Jason. -</p> - -<p> -With the return of peace, she had hoped that the daily life on the farm -would slip back into orderly grooves; but before the end of the first year -she discovered that the demoralization of peace was more difficult to -combat than the madness of war. There was no longer an ecstatic patriotism -to inspire one to fabulous exploits. The world that had been organized for -destruction appeared to her to become as completely disorganized for -folly. Even at Pedlar's Mill there were ripples of the general -disintegration. What was left now, she demanded moodily, of that -hysterical war rapture, except an aversion from work and the high cost -of everything? The excessive wages paid for unskilled labour were -ruinous to the farmer; for the field hands who had earned six dollars a -day from the Government were not satisfied to drive a plough for the -small sum that had enabled her to reclaim the abandoned meadows of Five -Oaks. One by one, she watched the fields of the tenant farmers drop back -into broomsedge and sassafras. She was using two tractor-ploughs on the -farm; but the roads were almost impassable again because none of the -negroes could be persuaded to work on them. Even when she employed men -to repair the strip of corduroy road between the bridge and the fork, it -was impossible to keep the bad places firm enough for any car heavier -than a Ford to travel over them. Yet these years, which she had believed -would mean the end of her prosperity, passed over her also and were -gone. -</p> - -<p> -After all, the men farmers had suffered more. James Ellgood allowed his -outlying fields to run to waste again because he could not find -labourers to till them. Old John Appleseed gave up his market garden -after he had lost all his vegetables one spring when he was ill and -there was nobody to gather them. It was in such a difficulty that -Dorinda was aided by a gift she had never depended on in the past, and -this was her faculty for "getting on," as she would have called it, with -the negroes. Unlike James Ellgood, who was inclined to truculence, she -had preserved her mother's friendly relations with the established -coloured families at Pedlar's Mill. When the scarcity of labour came, -the clan of Moodys provided the field workers that she required. The -Moodys, the Plumtrees, and the Greens, were scattered on thrifty little -farms from the settlement of Plumtree to the land beyond Whippernock -River; yet, one and all, they were attached by ties of kindred to the -descendants of Aunt Mehitable. In a winter of frozen roads and a -disastrous epidemic of influenza, the relatives of Aunt Mehitable, who -had died long ago, sent pleading messages to Dorinda, and she gave -generously of the peach brandy and blackberry cordial she had inherited -from her mother. There was scarcely a cabin that the pestilence did not -enter, and wherever it passed, Dorinda followed on Snowbird, her big -white horse with the flowing mane and the plaited tail which had never -been docked. That was a ghastly winter. From November to March the -landscape wore the spectral and distraught aspect of one of the -engravings after Doré in her mother's Bible. Doctor Stout was still in -France, and there was no physician but Jason Greylock at Pedlar's Mill. -Dorinda met him sometimes going or returning on horseback from a -desperate case; but he appeared either not to recognize her or to have -forgotten her name. People said that he was still a good doctor when he -had his senses about him. The pity was that he was often too drunk to -know what he was doing. He looked an old man, for his skin was drawn and -wrinkled, the pouches under his eyes were inflamed with purple, and -there were clusters of congested veins in his cheeks. -</p> - -<p> -One afternoon, when the epidemic was at its worst, she rode up to the -door of one of the humbler cabins and met him coming away. -</p> - -<p> -"You ought not to go in there," he said shortly, for he was sober at -last. "Two children have just died of pneumonia, and the others are ill. -They are the worst cases I've seen." -</p> - -<p> -Mounted on her white horse, like some mature Joan of Arc, she glanced -down on him. Her face was expressionless but for its usual look of -dauntless fortitude. She was thinking, "At last I shall have to speak to -him, and it makes no difference to me whether I speak to him or not." It -was a quarter of a century since she had driven home with him that -February afternoon. A quarter of a century, and she had not forgotten! -Well, when you have only the solitude to distract you, your memory is -obliged to be long! -</p> - -<p> -"I am not afraid," she replied in level tones, after she had dismounted -and tethered Snowbird to the branch of a tree. "Are you?" -</p> - -<p> -While he could wrap himself in his professional manner, it occurred to -her that he was not without dignity. Even though there were only the -rags of it left, he was less at her mercy than he would have been in the -character of a remembered lover. For an instant it seemed to her that he -waited for her question to sink in. Then he answered with the sound of a -laugh that had been bitten back. -</p> - -<p> -"I? No. What have I to fear?" -</p> - -<p> -Her smile was as sharp as a blade. "There is always something, isn't -there, even if it is only the memory of fear?" -</p> - -<p> -"You think, then, that I was always a coward?" Yes, he was sober enough -now, restrained by those shreds of professional responsibility which was -the only responsibility he had ever acknowledged. -</p> - -<p> -She laughed. "I stopped thinking of you twenty-five years ago." -</p> - -<p> -"I know." He looked as if he were impressed by her words. "You took the -best man, after all. There was more in Nathan than anybody realized." -</p> - -<p> -"Every one says that now." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, it's true even if every one says it. You married a good man." -</p> - -<p> -It was her hour of triumph; and though it was her hour of triumph, she -knew that, like everything else in her life, it had come too late. A -quarter of a century outlasts expectancy. The old pang was dead now, and -with it the old bitterness. It made no difference any longer. Nothing -that he could say or do would make any difference. She had outlived both -love and hatred. She had outlived every emotion toward him except -disgust. That last scene at Five Oaks returned to her, and her lips -twisted with aversion. "Yes, I married a hero," she rejoined, and she -added to herself, "If only Nathan could hear me!" -</p> - -<p> -"You made your life in spite of me. I'm glad of that." -</p> - -<p> -She laughed again. How little men knew of women! Even Nathan, who had -loved her, had never seen her as she was. "Yes, I made my life in spite -of you." -</p> - -<p> -"It was too much, I suppose, to expect you to understand how I failed. I -never ran after women. That wasn't my weakness. I never wanted to do any -of the things I did. I never wanted to throw you over. I never wanted to -marry Geneva. I never wanted to ruin either of your lives. I never -wanted to stay in this God-forsaken solitude. I never wanted to let -drink get a hold on me. I did not want to do a single one of these -things; but I did them, every one. And you will never understand how -that could be." -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head. "It doesn't matter now. It isn't worth thinking -about." -</p> - -<p> -"All the same I wish you could understand that I was not the kind of man -to do the things that I did. I was a different sort of fellow entirely. -But what I was never seemed strong enough to withstand the pull of what -I was not. Of course, you'll never see that. You'll just go on thinking -I was born rotten inside. Perhaps you're right. I don't know. I can't -work it out." -</p> - -<p> -She looked through him and beyond him to the brown solitude of the -winter fields. The sunken roads were swimming in melted snow; the bushes -were like soaked rags; the trees were dripping with a fluid moisture -which was heavier than rain. From the sodden ground a vapour steamed up -and floated like a miasma on the motionless air. -</p> - -<p> -"Men like you ought to have been sent to the war," she said. "They -wouldn't take me. I was too old, and besides I've got the drink habit." -</p> - -<p> -"And you blame somebody else for that, I suppose?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I don't blame anybody. I don't blame anybody for anything. Least of -all myself. It was the way things turned out. Strange as it may seem to -you, I always did the best that I could. If Father had died sooner, it -might have been different. But everything happened too late. The -broomsedge grew over me before I could get away." -</p> - -<p> -Exultation flared up and then died down to ashes. "You ruined Five Oaks, -and I saved it," she said. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, you have done well with the farm." Twenty-five years of toil and -self-denial, and in the end only: "You have done well with the farm!" -</p> - -<p> -"That shows what you can do even with poor land when you put your heart -into it," he added. -</p> - -<p> -"Not the heart, but the head," she retorted sharply, as she went past -him into the cabin. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="VI_II">VI</a></h4> - -<p> -When the spring came and the epidemic was over, she had won the loyal -friendship of the poorer tenant farmers and the negro landowners; but -her energy and her resilience were less than they had ever been in her -life. -</p> - -<p> -Machinery could not work alone, and even tractor-ploughs were obliged to -be guided. She had installed an electric plant, and whenever it was -possible, she had replaced hand labour by electricity. In the beginning -she had dreaded the cost, but it was not long before she realized that -the mysterious agency had been her safest investment. The separator in -the dairy was run by electricity. With the touch of a button the skimmed -milk was carried by pipes to the calf-yard or the hog-pen. Pumping, -washing, churning, cooling the air in summer and warming it in winter, -all these back-breaking tasks were entrusted to the invisible power -which possessed the energy of human labour without the nerves that too -often impeded it, and made it so uncertain a force. -</p> - -<p> -"What would Pa say if he could see so many cows milked by machinery?" -she asked John Abner, after the first experiment with electricity in the -cow-barn. -</p> - -<p> -"Do you think it will help much in milking?" -</p> - -<p> -"In the end it may. The young cows don't mind it, but you'll never get -the old ones to put up with it." -</p> - -<p> -"Then until the young ones have turned into the old ones, we'll have to -take whatever milkers we can find. Cows must be milked twice a day, and -no darkey wants to work more than three times a week." -</p> - -<p> -"They're still living on their war wages. If I ran this farm the way men -manage the Government, we'd be over head and ears in debt. Perhaps," she -suggested hopefully, "when the negroes have spent all they've saved up, -they'll begin to feel like working." -</p> - -<p> -John Abner grinned. "Perhaps. But it takes a long time to starve a -darkey." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll see what Fluvanna can do about it," Dorinda retorted. She -did not smile at his jest because the problem, she felt, was a serious -one. The negro, who was by temperament a happiness hunter, could pursue -the small game of amusement, she was aware, with an unflagging pace. -Without labourers, the farms she had reclaimed with incalculable effort -would sink again into waste land. "Yes, I'll see what Fluvanna can do," -she repeated. -</p> - -<p> -In the end, it was Fluvanna who, with the assistance of the patriarchs -among the Moodys, the Greens, and the Plumtrees, drove the inveterate -pleasure-seekers back to the plough. Looking at the coloured woman, -generous, brisk, smiling, with her plump brown cheeks and her bright -slanting eyes, Dorinda would ask herself how she could have managed the -farm without Fluvanna. "Heaven knows what I should have done if I had -not had a pleasant disposition about me," she said. In return for -Fluvanna's sunny sympathy and her cheerful alacrity, which never -faltered, Dorinda had discreetly overlooked an occasional slackening of -industry. -</p> - -<p> -Though the years were hard ones, she was more contented than she had -ever been. The restless expectancy had ceased, and with it the -indefinite longing which had awakened with the scent of spring rains on -the grass, or the sound of the autumn wind in the broomsedge. Even the -vision of something different in the future, that illusion of -approaching happiness which she had believed as indestructible as hope -itself, had dissolved as the glimmer of swamp fires dissolves in the -twilight. She knew now that life would never be different. Experience, -like love, would always be inadequate to the living soul. What the -imperfect actuality was to-day, it would be to-morrow and the day after; -but there was rest now, not disquietude, in the knowledge. The strain -and the hard work of the war had tired her nerves, and she looked -forward to the ample leisure of the time when she could expect nothing. -Since Nathan's death she had lost the feeling that life had cheated her. -It was true that she had missed love; but at the first stir of regret -she would shake her head and remind herself that "you couldn't have -everything," and that, after all, it was something to have married a -hero. Nathan's victorious death had filled the aching void in her heart. -Where the human being had failed her, the heroic legend had satisfied. -</p> - -<p> -As she grew older, it seemed to her that men as husbands and lovers were -scarcely less inadequate than love. Only men as heroes, dedicated to the -service of an ideal, were worthy, she felt, of the injudicious -sentiments women lavished upon them. At twenty, seeking happiness, she -had been more unhappy, she told herself, than other women; but at fifty, -she knew that she was far happier. The difference was that at twenty her -happiness had depended upon love, and at fifty it depended upon nothing -but herself and the land. To the land, she had given her mind and heart -with the abandonment that she had found disastrous in any human -relation. "I may have missed something, but I've gained more," she -thought, "and what I've gained nobody can take away from me." -</p> - -<p> -Without John Abner, who was much to her, though not so much as she had -once believed he would be, and the indispensable memory of Nathan to -fall back upon, she sometimes wondered what her middle years would have -brought to her. John Abner, it is true, was subject to moods, and -recently he had been warped by a disappointment in love; but even if he -was not always easy to live with, she knew that, in his eccentric -fashion, he was attached to her. With Nathan, it was different. In the -years that had passed since his death, he had provided her with the -single verity which is essential to the happiness of a woman no longer -young, and that is a romantic background for her life. The power of -mental suggestion, which is stronger than all other influences in the -world of emotion, had cultivated around her this picturesque myth of -Nathan. No one spoke to her now of his ugliness, his crudeness, his -reputation as a laughing-stock; but whenever she went to church, she -beheld the imposing monument which public sentiment had placed over his -grave. Every soldier who went from Pedlar's Mill was reminded by -fire-breathing orators that the heroes of war must be worthy of the hero -of peace. Every appeal from the Red Cross in the county bore his name as -an ornament. As time went on this legend, which had sprung from simple -goodness, gathered a patina of tradition as a tombstone gathers moss. -Yes, it was something, Dorinda assured her rebellious heart, to have -been married to a hero. -</p> - -<p> -In these years she might have married again; but a distaste for physical -love, more than the rigid necessity of her lot, kept her a widow. When, -a year after his wife's death, Bob Ellgood began, according to the -custom of the country, to motor over to Old Farm on Sunday, she was at -first flattered, then disturbed, and at last frankly provoked. Walking -through the pasture with him one afternoon in April, she reflected, not -without chagrin, that this also was one of the blessings that had come -at the wrong time. "Thirty years ago, before I knew Jason, I could have -loved him," she thought; and she remembered the Sunday mornings in -church when she had gazed longingly at his profile and had asked -herself, "Can he be the right one, after all?" She had wanted him then -with some sudden cobweb of fancy, which had been spun by an insatiable -hunger for life. If he had turned to her at that moment, she would have -loved him instead of Jason, and the future, which was now the past, -would have been different. But he had not wanted her then; he had first -to make a disappointing marriage, and by the time he had discovered his -mistake, it was too late to begin over again. Well, that was the way -things happened in life! -</p> - -<p> -"Why won't you marry me, Dorinda?" he asked, wheeling abruptly round -from the pasture bars. -</p> - -<p> -Startled, she cast about for a reason which might appear plausible to -his masculine vanity. Was there a reason? Had she any reason behind her -resolve, or was aversion as physical a process as first love? Once he -had been handsome, a young blond giant, and now he was coarsened and -beefy, with a neck like a bull's and a rapidly spreading girth. There -was a purple flush in his face and puckers of flesh between his collar -and his slightly receding chin. This, also, was the way things happened, -she knew. Yet, after a moment's compassionate regard, she discerned that -he wore his unalluring age as easily as he had once worn his engaging -youth. He appeared unaware even that it might be a disadvantage in -courtship. -</p> - -<p> -"Suppose I looked like that?" she said to herself, and then, "Perhaps -women are more fastidious than they used to be, but men have not yet -found it out. Or is it simply because I am independent and don't have to -marry for support that I can pick and refuse?" -</p> - -<p> -"Have you decided why you won't marry me?" he inquired presently. -</p> - -<p> -He was smiling at her, and it seemed to her—or was it only her -imagination?—that a gleam, like the star in the eyes of her prize -bull, flickered and went out in his glance. His face was so close to her -that for an instant she believed he was going to kiss her. Not that look! -something cried in her heart. Oh, never that look again! -</p> - -<p> -"I can't tell," she answered, walking on again. "There isn't any reason. -I've finished with all that." -</p> - -<p> -He was undismayed. "I'll keep on. I'm not in a hurry." Actually at -fifty-five, he was not in a hurry. -</p> - -<p> -"It isn't any use," she replied as firmly as she could. "It isn't the -least use in the world." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll keep on anyway." -</p> - -<p> -In the end, though she had spoken with decision, she had failed to -convince him. That had been two years ago, and he still came in his big -car every Sunday afternoon. But as he had warned her, he was not in a -hurry, and his courtship was as deliberate as his general habit of body. -</p> - -<p> -Although it seemed to her that she had grown wiser with the years, she -had never entirely abandoned her futile effort to find a meaning in -life. Hours had come and gone when she had felt that there was no -permanent design beneath the fragile tissue of experience; but the moral -fibre that had stiffened the necks of martyrs lay deeply embedded in her -character if not in her opinions. She was saved from the aridness of -infidelity by that robust common sense which had preserved her from the -sloppiness of indiscriminate belief. After all, it was not religion; it -was not philosophy; it was nothing outside her own being that had -delivered her from evil. The vein of iron which had supported her -through adversity was merely the instinct older than herself, stronger -than circumstances, deeper than the shifting surface of emotion; the -instinct that had said, "I will not be broken." Though the words of the -covenant had altered, the ancient mettle still infused its spirit. -</p> - -<p> -There were winter nights, in front of her sinking fire, when she would -live over the romantic folly and the thwarted aims of her youth. Then, -through what appeared to be an endless vista, she would survey the -irreconcilable difference between character and conduct. In her own life -she could trace no logical connection between being and behaviour, -between the thing that she was in herself and the things she had done. -She thought of herself as a good woman (there were few better ones, she -would have said honestly) yet in her girlhood she had been betrayed by -love and saved by the simplest accident from murder. Surely these were -both flagrant transgressions according to every code of morality! They -were acts, she knew, which she would have condemned in another; but in -her memory they appeared as inevitable as the rest of her conduct, and -she could not unravel them from the frayed warp-and-woof of the past. And -she saw now that the strong impulses which had once wrecked her -happiness were the forces that had enabled her to rebuild her life out -of the ruins. The reckless courage that had started her on the dubious -enterprise of her life had hardened at last into the fortitude with -which she had triumphed over the unprofitable end Of her adventure. Good -and bad, right and wrong, they were all tangled together. "How can I -tell," she could ask, "what I should have done if I had not been -myself?" -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="VII_II">VII</a></h4> - -<p> -Riding slowly down the road from Five Oaks to Gooseneck Creek, Dorinda -watched the few sheep browsing among the lengthening shadows of the -October afternoon. Beyond them the life-everlasting broke in silver -waves against the dim blue horizon. Over the whole landscape, with its -flat meadows, its low rounded hill in the east, its crawling -rust-coloured roads, hung a faint, hazy drift, as inaudible as the dying -quiver of insects. Passing at a walk on her white horse against the rich -autumn sunset, she reached the log bridge at the creek and kept on -toward the fork of the road. She had taken the longer way home in order -that she might inspect the new gate which William Fairlamb had finished. -Round her, as evanescent as the last flare of day, there was this -quivering haze, which was half dreamlike and half the tremor of -perishing things. Nature drifting into rest; flowers drifting into dust; -grasshoppers drifting into death; faint sunshine drifting into darkness. -And in her own mind shadowy images or impressions drifting into -thoughts. -</p> - -<p> -It was five years now since the war had ended, and in those years she -had recovered both her inward confidence and her outward prosperity. The -misfortunes that had threatened the two farms had passed over her like -wild geese. Even the labour question had been lessened, if not solved, -by the application of electricity and gasoline. She had made a name that -was not unknown among the farmers of the state; she had reclaimed two -unproductive farms from the clutch of broomsedge and sassafras. In -shallow soil, where her father had ploughed only six inches deep, she -was now raising rich and abundant crops. Her dairy, she knew, was as -well managed, her butter as good, as any that could be found in the -country. The products of her dairy, with the name Old Farm stamped under -the device of the harp-shaped pine, were bringing the highest prices in -the market. She could smile now, with her butter selling in the -Washington dairy at a dollar a pound, over the timidity with which she -had, modestly asked thirty cents in the beginning. By that subtle -combination of prudence and imprudence which she called character, she -had turned disappointment into contentment and failure into success. -</p> - -<p> -Riding there in the silver gleams which flashed up from the -life-everlasting, she appeared, after the hard years, to have ripened -into the last mellowness of maturity. Though her figure in the -shirtwaist and knickerbockers of brown corduroy was no longer youthful, -it was still shapely. The texture of her skin was rough and hard like -the rind of winter fruit, but the dark red had not faded, and her eyes -beneath the whitened hair were still as blue as a jay bird's wing. -Though she did not look young for her fifty years, she looked as if the -years had been victorious ones. -</p> - -<p> -As she opened the new gate, and passing through, turned to close it -behind her, she heard the sound of approaching wheels, and saw the -piebald horse and peculiar gig of Mr. Kettledrum ascending from the dip -in the road. When he reached her they stopped to speak, after the manner -of the country, and the old "mail rider," who was just returning on his -circuit of twenty-six miles, described, with sprightliness, the -condition of the roads over which he had travelled. -</p> - -<p> -"Three big trees blew down on the Whippernock road the other night," he -said, "and I reckon they'll lie thar until they rot if the farmers down -that way don't cut them up for logs to burn. The Government sent an -inspector down last week and he rode over my circuit along with me." A -note of pride crept into his quavering voice. "He told me he'd never -seen any worse roads in the whole course of his recollection. No, ma'am, -not in the whole course of his recollection." -</p> - -<p> -"I hope he'll do something about them. After all, the Government is -responsible for the rural delivery." -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Kettledrum shook his head. "I ain't lookin' for nothin' to be done, -at least not in my time. It don't look as if the Government can afford -to inspect and improve too, particularly when they're inspectin' the -roads where mostly Democrats travel. But it was a real comfort to know -he thought it was the worst mail road he'd ever laid eyes on in the -whole course of his recollection." -</p> - -<p> -"I've been trying to get some of the negroes to mend this bad place -before winter. The only way is for the farmers to keep their own roads -in repair. The state started to improve the road between Pedlar's Mill -and Turkey Station, and all it did was to cut down every last one of the -trees. There isn't a patch of shade left there." -</p> - -<p> -"That's true. I know it, ma'am," assented Mr. Kettledrum, who liked to -talk of the road, as a man likes to talk of an affliction. "Don't I -travel that road between ten and two o'clock on hot August days?" Then -his face saddened to the look of stoical resignation with which men -survey the misfortunes of others. "When I come along thar this mornin' -they was bringin' Jason Greylock away from his house in the woods, and I -stopped for a word with him. He was too weak to speak out loud, but he -made a sign to say that he knew me. If thar ever was a wasted life, I -reckon it was Jason's, though he started out with such promise. Bad -blood, bad blood, and nothin' to counteract the taint of it." -</p> - -<p> -"Where were they taking him?" Dorinda inquired indifferently; and -turning, she glanced over the autumn fields to the red chimneys of Five -Oaks. The house was occupied now by Martin Flower, the manager, and -smoke was rising in a slender column from the roof. Mr. Kettledrum -cleared his throat. "I thought perhaps they'd sent word to you. Mr. -Wigfall told me they was comin' over to ask if you could make a place -for Jason at Five Oaks. They seemed to think you owed him a lodgin' on -the farm considerin' you bought it so cheap and made so much money out -of it." -</p> - -<p> -A flush of anger stained Dorinda's forehead and her eyes burned. "I owe -him nothing," she answered. "The place was sold at public auction after -he had let it run to seed, and my husband bought it fairly for what he -bid. If I did well, it is because I toiled like a field-hand to restore -what the Greylocks had ruined." She broke off with a gasp, as if she had -been running away from herself. The old "mail rider," she saw after a -moment, stared at her in surprise. -</p> - -<p> -"Yas'm, I'm sorry I spoke, ma'am," he replied mildly. "You've -earned the right to whatever you have, that thar ain't no disputin'. -I was just thinkin' as I come along what a pleasant surprise -it would be to your Pa if he could come back an' see all those -barns and dairy-houses, to say nothin' of that fine windmill an' -electric plant." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda sighed. "Poor Pa. My only regret is that he couldn't share in -the prosperity. He worked harder than I did, but he never saw any -results. It has taken me thirty years." Yes, she was fifty now, and it -had taken her thirty years. -</p> - -<p> -"You've kept the old house just as it was in his day. Wall, I favour a -shingled roof, myself, even if it does burn quicker when it ketches -fire. But thar's something unfeeling to me about one of these here slate -roofs. They ain't friendly to swallows, an' I like to see swallows -flyin' over my head at sunset." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, a slate roof is almost as ugly as a tin one." She regarded him -steadily for a minute while she bent over to stroke Snowbird's neck. The -light struck her face obliquely through the fiery branch of a black-gum -tree, and if Mr. Kettledrum had been gifted with imagination, he would -have seen the look of something winged yet caged flutter into her blue -eyes. -</p> - -<p> -"What is the matter with Doctor Greylock?" she asked. -</p> - -<p> -In Mr. Kettledrum, who was wafted off on waves of agreeable -retrospection, the sudden question produced mental confusion. He was -past the sportive period when one can think without effort of two things -at the same time. "Eh, ma'am?" he rejoined, cupping one gnarled hand -over his ear. -</p> - -<p> -"I asked you what was the matter with Doctor Greylock?" -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, Doctor Greylock! Thar's no disputin', ma'am, that you owe him -nothin' in the matter of Five Oaks." -</p> - -<p> -"I haven't seen him for five years," she said with deliberate slowness. -"I thought he was still living in that house by Whippernock River." -</p> - -<p> -"So he was till this morning; that's what they told me. But it seems -they've heard nothing of him since Aunt Mehaley Plumtree stopped doin' -for him six months ago because he told her he didn't have the money to -pay her wages. He'd put everything he had, which was mighty little, I -reckon, in some wild-cat scheme of oil wells in Mexico, and they'd -either burst or leaked, if they ever was thar in the beginnin', which I -doubt. Everybody knows he never paid his taxes, but that thar little old -place in the backwoods wasn't worth a cent, so nobody troubled about -tryin' to collect 'em. Anyhow, he had to do for himself ever since Aunt -Mehaley left him, an' he's been gittin' sicker an' sicker with -consumption all the time. When Ike Pryde was over that way squirrel -huntin' yesterday, he stopped in thar an' found Jason out of his head, -without a bite to eat in the house. The whole place, henhouse and all, -Ike said, was as bare as the pa'm of his hand. Wall, he ran home an' got -his wife to come over, and she did the best she could till they could -lay hands on the sheriff. Jason had just kept alive on whiskey and some -persimmons he'd managed to pick up from the ground. He must have been -that way for weeks." -</p> - -<p> -The colour had ebbed from Dorinda's cheeks and she looked as if she had -withered. There was no distress in her mind, only a cloud of horror -through which she could not see clearly. She lifted her hand and drew it -across her eyes, brushing away the mist that obscured them. There was -nothing there. Nothing but the drooping shadows over the road, the -shocked corn against the sunset, the blur of scarlet and gold and -wine-colour in the woods. There was no horror in these things; yet while -she looked at them they became alive and struck out at her like a -serpent. -</p> - -<p> -"I have no sympathy to waste on him," she said harshly, and then, "Won't -James Ellgood take care of him?" -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Kettledrum shook his head, vaguely apologetic. "Not James. He hates -him like poison. Maybe thar's something in the notion that Jason drove -his wife crazy. I ain't takin' sides. But like most soft-hearted men -James is like a rock when he gets set against a thing. Thar wa'n't no -place for Jason to go but the poorhouse. The old women thar can look -after him when he needs it." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, you can't blame James Ellgood," Dorinda replied. "As far as I can -see nobody owes Jason Greylock anything but trouble." -</p> - -<p> -She was determined not to make excuses for him simply because he was -dying. Everybody died sooner or later, and the vein of posthumous -sentiment was not, she told herself sharply now, her affliction. Nothing -was altered in the past because Jason had drunk himself into the -poorhouse or the grave. Nothing was altered, she repeated, and yet she -could not see the past any longer because of the present. Neither love -nor hate but the poorhouse was the reality. -</p> - -<p> -"It is a hard thing to have to die in the poorhouse," she said. -</p> - -<p> -"So 'tis, ma'am," assented Mr. Kettledrum, who had stinted himself all -his life in the hope of attaining an honourable old age. "But he's -light-headed most of the time and don't know it. Anyhow," he continued -astutely, "it ain't so hard on him as it would be on a man who had lived -more respectable. He wasted mo' on drink, I reckon, than it would cost -to bury him decently." -</p> - -<p> -"That's the dreadful part of it. It would be easier to help a man you -didn't despise." She rode on a few paces and then turned back to the -side of the gig. "If you see Mr. Wigfall at the station, tell him I'll -give him what he needs for Doctor Greylock, but I cannot have him at -Five Oaks." -</p> - -<p> -"I'll tell him," Mr. Kettledrum rejoined, and he added impulsively for -one of his unhurried observations, "You carry yo' years well, if you -don't mind my remarkin' on it." -</p> - -<p> -She smiled. "That's because I never think of them. Most women want their -youth back again; but I wouldn't have mine at any price. The worst years -of my life are behind me, and my best ones ahead." -</p> - -<p> -"You look it," the old man agreed, and then, without reason, he sighed. -"Ah, I recollect you thirty years ago, when they used to say you had a -face like a May mornin'. Not that you ain't a fine figure of a woman -now; but as we old men get on in years, our thoughts turn backward and -we like to dwell on young things. Thirty years ago you looked as if -sugar wouldn't melt in yo' mouth." -</p> - -<p> -He drove on regretfully, while Dorinda, on Snowbird, trotted homeward. -The light on the shocked corn was so faint that it waned to a shadow -while she looked at it. A flock of wild geese curved like blown smoke in -the afterglow. Immersed in this twilight as in the sadness of memory, -she gazed at the autumn scene, with the small gold leaves on the locust -trees, the windmill beyond the house, and the flickering of firelight in -the west wing. A prosperous farm to-day, a casual observer would have -remarked; but to Dorinda, who never forgot, the whole place wore the -look of wistful brooding which she remembered whenever she thought of -her father. -</p> - -<p> -Her exultation over Jason's ruinous end had diminished now into an -impersonal pity. She had longed to punish him for his treachery; she had -hated him for years, until she had discovered that hatred is energy -wasted; but in all her past dreams of retribution, she had never once -thought of the poorhouse. Even as a question of justice, it seemed to -her that the poorhouse was excessive. That terror of indigence which is -inherent in self-respecting poverty was deeply bred in her nature, and -she knew that her humbler neighbours were haunted by fear of charity as -one is haunted by fear of smallpox in a pestilence. Yes, whatever he -deserved, the poorhouse was too much. Though the horror of his fate did -not lessen the wrong he had done, by some curious alchemy of imagination -it reduced the sum of human passions to insignificance. What did -anything invisible matter at the gate of the poorhouse? -</p> - -<p> -Though her first impulse, derived from Presbyterian theology, was to -regard his downfall as a belated example of Divine vengeance, her -invincible common sense reminded her that Divine vengeance is seldom so -logical in its judgments. No, he had not ended in the poorhouse because -he had betrayed her. On the contrary, she saw that he had betrayed her -because of that intrinsic weakness in his nature which would have -brought him to disaster even if he had walked in the path of exemplary -virtue. "His betrayal of me was merely an incident," she thought. "Drink -was an incident. If he had been stronger, he might have done all these -things and yet have escaped punishment." For it was not sin that was -punished in this world or the next; it was failure. Good failure or bad -failure, it made no difference, for nature abhorred both. "Poor Jason," -she said to herself, with contemptuous pity. "He was neither good enough -nor bad enough, that was the trouble." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="VIII_II">VIII</a></h4> - -<p> -As she stepped on the porch, the door opened and John Abner came out, -accompanied by Amos Wigfall and one of the tenant farmers, Samuel Larch, -who lived on the far side of Pedlar's Mill. John Abner looked morose, -but this had become his habitual expression since he had been crossed in -love, and she was less disturbed by it than she was by the anxious -suavity on the face of the sheriff. -</p> - -<p> -"I was admirin' yo' improvements," Mr. Wigfall remarked. "Thar's been a -heap of changes since the old days when yo' Pa an' Ma lived here." -</p> - -<p> -She met his wandering glance and held it firmly. "I saw Mr. Kettledrum -and he gave me your message." -</p> - -<p> -The sheriff's flabby face stiffened. "My message, ma'am?" -</p> - -<p> -"About Doctor Greylock. I cannot have him at Five Oaks. He has no claim -on me." Hesitating an instant, she repeated slowly, weighing each -separate syllable, "He has no claim on me, but I will pay you whatever -you need to keep him out of the poorhouse." -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Wigfall uttered an obsequious noise which might have been either a -bray or a cough. "I don't reckon thar's a mo' charitable-minded lady in -the county, ma'am. It ain't often that you refuse to help an' when you -do, you're likely to have a good reason." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'm ready to help Doctor Greylock," Dorinda rejoined impatiently, -"but there's no sense in the notion that I owe him something because he -ruined Five Oaks and I saved it." -</p> - -<p> -"Naw'm, thar cert'n'y ain't no sense in that," Mr. Wigfall conceded with -suspicious alacrity. -</p> - -<p> -"He thinks we might let him live in one of the unused wings," John Abner -explained. "Of course that will mean we'll have to provide for him too, -and as you say he hasn't really the shadow of a claim on us. Poor -devil!" -</p> - -<p> -"The idea has got about that he's dangerous from drink," said Mr. -Wigfall, "and thar wouldn't nobody take him in, pay or no pay. The -choice was between the county gaol an' the poorhouse, an' considerin' -everything the poorhouse seemed mo' hospitable. Doctor Stout can look -after him thar, and a bunch of female paupers can take turns at the -nursing." -</p> - -<p> -"If he's still out of his head, you can hardly expect Martin Flower to -want him at Five Oaks," John Abner suggested. -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, he's come to himself now," Samuel Larch rejoined before the sheriff -could reply. "I was the first to git to him after Ike Pryde brought -word, an' when I first clapped eyes on him he was clean out of his -senses. But even then he was as weak as a baby an' he couldn't have -lifted a finger against you. Soon as he had a few swallows of soup and a -little brandy, he began to pick up, an' by the time he'd been fed -regular he could talk like himself again. Doctor Stout thinks he'll hang -on a few months longer if he gets plenty of milk an' fresh eggs." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I imagine he isn't likely to get them in the poorhouse," John -Abner observed, with his sarcastic smile. -</p> - -<p> -"Of course there isn't the slightest reason why we should help him," -Dorinda insisted, as if the deprecating sheriff had started an argument. -After a moment's silence she added in a sharper tone, "But you can't -possibly let him die in the poorhouse." -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Wigfall, who had occupied a position of authority long enough to -feel uncomfortable when he was displaced, shuffled his feet in the rocky -path while he fingered uneasily the brim of his hat. "Naw'm," he replied -with as much dignity as he could command, and a few minutes later, he -repeated in a louder voice, "Naw'm." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda looked over his head at John Abner. -</p> - -<p> -"It isn't human," she began, and, correcting herself, continued more -deliberately: "It isn't Christian to let a man die in the poorhouse -because he has lost all he had." -</p> - -<p> -The two men nodded vacantly, and only John Abner appeared unimpressed by -her piety. -</p> - -<p> -"Naw'm, it cert'n'y ain't Christian," Mr. Wigfall agreed, with a -promptness that was disconcerting. -</p> - -<p> -"He can't possibly be looked after there," Dorinda resumed, as if she -had not been interrupted. -</p> - -<p> -"Naw'm, he can't be looked after thar." -</p> - -<p> -For an instant she hesitated. Though she understood that her decision -was a vital one, she felt as remote and impersonal to it as if it were -one of those historic battles in France, which cost so much and yet were -so far away. It even occurred to her, as it had occurred so often during -the war, that men were never happy except when they were making trouble. -Of course Jason could not be left in the poorhouse. Having acknowledged -this much, she, to whom efficiency had become a second nature, was -irritated because these slow-witted country officials appeared helpless -to move in the matter. -</p> - -<p> -"There isn't any call to worry Martin Flower's wife," she said. "She's -ailing, anyway, and it would put her out to have a sick man, even if he -were sober, in the house. You'll have to bring him here until you can -make some other arrangement. It is true," she repeated harshly, "that he -hasn't the shadow of a claim on us; but we have plenty of milk and eggs, -and for a few weeks he may have the spare room on the first floor." -</p> - -<p> -Mr. Wigfall gasped before he could articulate. Though he had prayed -fervently to have the burden of an extra pauper, especially a pauper who -had known better days and acquired the habit of drink, removed from his -shoulders, he had never imagined, from his acquaintance with the -leisurely methods of Providence, that his prayer would be so speedily -answered. While he stared at Dorinda, his mute relief was as obvious as -if he had uttered it at the top of his voice. -</p> - -<p> -"He's glad to wash his hands of him," she thought, and then: "Who -wouldn't be?" -</p> - -<p> -"I don't reckon anybody will dispute yo' charity, Mrs. Pedlar," Samuel -Larch was wheezing out. "Thar ain't nobody stands any higher to-day in -this here community than you do. You're hard on the surface, as my wife -says, but you're human enough when you're whittled down to the core." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda smiled, but her eyes were tired and wrinkles showed in her ruddy -skin. If they knew! If only they knew! she reflected; and she wondered -if many other reputations were founded like hers upon a flattering -ignorance of fact. -</p> - -<p> -"Tell your wife it is hard things that wear well," she responded. "After -all, somebody has to bear the burden, and I am better able to do it than -any of the rest of you, except perhaps," she concluded indifferently, -"James Ellgood." -</p> - -<p> -"Yas'm. I'm downright glad you take that sensible view of it," the -sheriff replied, as soon as he was capable of speaking. "Everybody about -here knows that when they come to you, they'll get justice." -</p> - -<p> -Justice! That was Nathan's favourite word, she remembered. She could -hear him saying as plainly as if he were present, "Any man has a right, -Dorinda, to demand justice." Strange how often Nathan's words, which she -had scarcely heeded when he was alive, returned to her in moments of -difficulty or indecision. Only in the last few years had she begun to -realize her mental dependence upon Nathan. -</p> - -<p> -"I reckon we can manage to get him over here to-morrow evening," Samuel -Larch was saying. "Thar ain't no call for you to send all the way to the -poorhouse. Maybe Reuben Fain will let us have that auto-wagon of his." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, I'll come for him in the big car in the morning," Dorinda replied. -"It isn't my way to do things by halves." -</p> - -<p> -The sheriff nodded. "Naw'm, it ain't yo' way to do things by halves," he -echoed thankfully. -</p> - -<p> -After the two men were out of sight, she turned apologetically to John -Abner. Although he said little, for he was never a great talker, she had -observed that his face wore a look of severe disapprobation. -</p> - -<p> -"There wasn't anything else to do, was there, John Abner?" she asked, in -the deferential tone she reserved for a crisis. It was not often that -Dorinda deferred, and on the rare occasions when she did so, she was -able to administer a more piquant flattery than the naturally clinging -woman has at her command. -</p> - -<p> -"It looks to me as if they were letting you down," John Abner rejoined -moodily; but his face cleared under her persuasion. After all, what he -liked best was to be treated as an authority not only on farming, but on -human nature as well. The fact that he had lived as a recluse, and knew -nothing whatever of life, did not interfere with the sincerity of his -claim to profound wisdom. Men were so immature, she found herself -thinking; and they were never so immature as when they strutted most -with importance. Since the emotional disaster of her youth, she had been -incapable of either loving or hating without a caustic reservation; and -she felt that the hidden flaw in her relations with men was her -inability to treat a delusion of superiority as if it were a moral -principle. This was a small indulgence, she imagined, to a woman who -loved passionately; but to one who had safely finished with love and -attained the calm judgment of the disillusioned, it was an indulgence -which might prove to be particularly irksome. -</p> - -<p> -Slipping her arm through John Abner's, she walked with him into the -house. "Well, of course, in a way you're right; but after all, even if -they are imposing on us, we couldn't very well refuse to do anything." -</p> - -<p> -Though the two farms would go to John Abner at her death, there were -moments when, notwithstanding his affection for her, she suspected -uncomfortably that he would like complete authority while she was -living. Not that he was ever disagreeable or ungenerous about the way -she managed him. He was, she knew, honestly devoted to her, and he -admired her without the pity that had always tempered her admiration for -him. But he shared, she told herself, with all males who were not -milksops, the masculine instinct to domineer over the opposite sex. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, if it's anybody's business, it's James Ellgood's," he protested. -</p> - -<p> -She raised her straight grey eyebrows with a quizzical smile. "All the -same you can hardly blame James Ellgood for not making it his business. -Nothing will ever let him forget that Jason drove Geneva out of her -mind." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, perhaps he did, but there was no law to punish him." -</p> - -<p> -"That's what James Ellgood feels, of course, and I suppose he is right. -If it were simply a question of punishment——" -</p> - -<p> -"You mean it's more than that?" -</p> - -<p> -"Well, isn't it?" She had learned that she could always win him to her -point of view by disguising a naked fact in the paraphernalia of -philosophy. "From our side, I suppose it's one of humanity." Though she -despised sophistry as heartily as she despised indirectness, she could -bend both to her purpose when it was a matter of compulsion. -</p> - -<p> -"If you mean that our humanity is more important than his punishment?" -he returned in a mollified tone. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I do mean that. You have said it so often yourself." That would -finish his opposition, she knew, and without his opposition, life on the -farm would be easier for the next two or three weeks. -</p> - -<p> -"Won't it make a lot of trouble?" he inquired. -</p> - -<p> -She frowned. "I'm afraid it will. Of course, if he gets better, he can -move over to Five Oaks, and anyway the authorities ought to make some -kind of provision for him. We can't be expected to take over the -poor farm." Her tone was suddenly bitter with memory; but she concluded -hastily: "In the meantime, I'll warm the spare room and get it ready. If -the doctor says he must have fresh air, we can move his bed out on the -back porch." -</p> - -<p> -John Abner looked resentful. "I'm sorry for the poor devil, of course, -even if he did drive his wife crazy; but I don't see the sense in -turning the place upside down for somebody who hasn't the slightest -claim on you. He isn't even a poor relation." -</p> - -<p> -"He isn't anybody's poor relation, that's the trouble." -</p> - -<p> -"I'm not so sure." John Abner could be brutally candid at times. "There -are a lot of Idabella's mulatto children still hanging about Five Oaks." -</p> - -<p> -She shivered with disgust. "What the law doesn't acknowledge, I suppose -it doesn't bother about." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, it isn't any business of mine," John Abner said, after -deliberation. "If you choose to bring him here, of course you have the -right. But I hope you aren't going to wear yourself out waiting on him. -You've got no moderation in such things. After Snowbird's sickness last -winter, you didn't look like yourself." -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head. "I'd do much more for Snowbird. But I shan't wait on -him. I'll get Fluvanna's sister, Mirandy. She's an old woman, and a good -hand with sick people, even if she hasn't any sense in the dairy." As -she finished, she heard a voice in her mind asking distinctly, "Why am I -doing this? Why should I take the trouble?" And there wasn't any answer. -Even when she dragged her mind for an excuse or even an idea, she could -not unearth one. She had stopped loving Jason thirty years ago; she had -stopped hating him at an indefinite period; she had stopped even -remembering that he was alive; yet she could not, without doing violence -to her own nature, let him die in the poorhouse. After all, it was not -her feeling or lack of feeling for him, it was the poorhouse and her -horror of the poorhouse that decided his fate. -</p> - -<p> -"I'll have to go with you," John Abner was saying. "You can't manage it -by yourself." -</p> - -<p> -"No. I'd rather have you. If we start right after dinner, that ought to -bring us back before the milking is over. The road is rough, I'm afraid. -We'll have to take some pillows in the back of the car." -</p> - -<p> -"If he's bad off, perhaps Doctor Stout won't let him come," John Abner -suggested hopefully. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, we'll stop at the doctor's house on the way. That's why I want to -start early." -</p> - -<p> -That night, after the last of the day's work was over, they sat in front -of Dorinda's fire and talked as they used to talk when John Abner was a -boy and had not been warped by disappointment. Their thoughts were in -the future, not in the past, and Dorinda's visions were coloured by the -optimism which she had won more from perseverance than from any -convincing lesson of experience. Because of the very defects of his -qualities, John Abner suited her. It was true that his companionship had -its imperfections; but she would not have exchanged his sullen reticence -for the golden fluency of the new minister at Pedlar's Mill. Her -stepson's personality was attractive to her, for he gave an impression -of inexhaustible strength in reserve; and in the matter of disposition -he influenced her less as an example than as a warning, which, after -all, she reflected, was the kind of influence she needed. -</p> - -<p> -"When all is said, we are as contented as we could expect to be," she -remarked, when he rose to go upstairs. "If you don't marry, we'll have a -pleasant old age by the fireside." -</p> - -<p> -He laughed shortly, for he was in one of his gentler moods. There was a -charm, she thought, in his long thin features, his sallow skin with -bluish shadows about the mouth, his squinting eyes, and his straight -black hair which fell in stringy locks over his forehead. -</p> - -<p> -"You may marry again yourself," he said abruptly. "You aren't as -handsome as you used to be, but you're still better-looking than anybody -about here." -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head obstinately. "With white hair and wrinkles!" -</p> - -<p> -"Well, there's more than white hair and wrinkles. I don't know what it -is, but it's there," he answered, as he turned away and went out of the -room. -</p> - -<p> -In the morning she awoke with a feeling of despondency. Dread had come -over her while she slept, and she felt it dragging at her memory after -she had opened her eyes. Why had she yielded to that erratic impulse the -evening before? Why had she allowed those two men to impose on her? "If -is because I am a woman," she thought. "If I were a man, they would -never have dared." Yes, John Abner was right (here was another instance -of how right he so often was) and the county authorities had taken -advantage of her weakness. "Well, I've let myself in for it now, and -I'll have to go through with it," she said aloud, as she got out of bed -and began dressing. -</p> - -<p> -At breakfast, while she tried to eat and could not because of the lump -in her throat, she reminded herself of her mother on the day of her -journey to the Courthouse. "All I need is a crape veil and a -handkerchief scented with camphor," she said, with a laugh. -</p> - -<p> -"What are you talking about, Dorinda?" John Abner asked, with a frown. -</p> - -<p> -"I was thinking of my mother. Poor Ma! She'd be living now if she hadn't -worried so." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, she'd be nearly a hundred, I reckon. And don't you begin -worrying. Are you out of temper because you let those men put something -over on you?" -</p> - -<p> -"I don't know. It seems different this morning. I can't see why I did -it." -</p> - -<p> -"I heard the men talking about it in the barn. Somebody, the sheriff, I -reckon, had told Martin Flower, and he said you'd bitten off more than -you could chew." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda flushed angrily. "When I want Martin Flower's interference, I'll -ask for it." -</p> - -<p> -Already a message had gone to Mirandy, and the old negress was waiting -outside for directions when breakfast was over. The floor and the -woodwork of the spare room must be scrubbed; the bed thoroughly aired -before it was made up; a fire kindled in the big fireplace; and the -red-bordered towels, which her mother had reserved for the visiting -elder, must be hung on the towel-rack. Last of all, Mirandy must -remember to keep a kettle boiling day and night on the brass footman. -</p> - -<p> -"I wonder why I am doing all this?" Dorinda asked herself. Was it, as -she believed, from impersonal compassion? Or was it because her first -lover, merely because he had been the first, was impressed eternally on -the unconscious cells of her being? "No, I'm not doing it for Jason," -she answered. "Even if I had never loved him, I couldn't let the man who -had owned Five Oaks die in the poorhouse." -</p> - -<p> -"Before we bring him here," John Abner said, "you'd better warn Aunt -Mirandy that consumption is catching." He shook his head with a sardonic -smile. "I'm afraid he's going to be a nuisance; but I believe you would -have done the same thing if it had been smallpox." -</p> - -<p> -She looked at him with inscrutable eyes. "I was never afraid of taking -things." -</p> - -<p> -"But you don't even like Jason Greylock." -</p> - -<p> -"Like him? Who could? What has that to do with the poorhouse?" -</p> - -<p> -A look of rare tenderness, for he was not often tender, came into John -Abner's eyes while he squinted at her over the table. "Well, you're a -big woman, Dorinda, even if you're trying at times. There's an extra -dimension in you somewhere." -</p> - -<p> -Though praise from John Abner was one of the things that pleased her -most, she was incapable, she knew, of draining the sweetness of the -moment before it escaped her. When happiness came to her she had always -the feeling that she was too dull or too slow to realize it completely -until it was, over, when she responded to the memory as she had never -responded to the actual occurrence. -</p> - -<p> -"You're very good to me, John Abner," she answered. Her words were -insufficient, but the habit of reticence was, as usual, too strong for -her. -</p> - -<p> -For hours she went about her work with the thoroughness that she exacted -of herself on days of mental disturbance. Not until the car was waiting -at the door, and Fluvanna was hastening out with robes and pillows, did -Dorinda turn aside from her ordinary activities, and go into the room -she had selected for Jason. Yes, everything was in order. The floor and -walls were clean; the windows had been closed after an airing; and the -fire burned brightly on the sunken stones in the fireplace. Even the big -iron kettle steamed away on the footman. There was soap in the soap-dish -on the washstand; an abundance of soft warm blankets covered the bed; on -the candlestand stood a blue thermos bottle, and her mother's Bible lay -beside it, with the purple bookmarker she had embroidered marking a -favourite text. "It ought to seem pleasant," she thought, "after the -poorhouse." -</p> - -<p> -Outside, she found John Abner at the wheel of the car and Fluvanna -arranging the pillows on the back seat. -</p> - -<p> -"Would you like to drive, Dorinda?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, but I'll sit in front with you. When we come back, one of us will -have to sit with him, and I'd rather it would be you." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="IX_II">IX</a></h4> - -<p> -They talked little on the long drive. John Abner was intent on the -wheel, and Dorinda held her cape closely about her, and gazed straight -ahead at the twisted road and the hazy brightness of the October -landscape. A veil of glittering dust drifted up from the meadows of -life-everlasting; in the underbrush by the fences, sumach and sassafras -made splashes of crimson and wine-colour; farther away, the changing -woods were tossed in broken masses against the cloudless arch of the -sky. -</p> - -<p> -As they approached the Courthouse, the country was less thinly settled, -and throngs of barefooted children ran beside the car and offered -bunches of prince's feather and cockscomb. In some of the fields men -were ploughing, and among them Dorinda observed the phlegmatic faces of -Swedes or Germans. As the car sped by, they stopped in their ploughing -or cutting, and turned to stare curiously like slow-witted animals. Over -all was the blue haze of October and the drifting silver pollen of -life-everlasting. -</p> - -<p> -At Doctor Stout's, a new green and white cottage near the road, which -looked as trivial as a butterfly on the edge of the autumnal solitude, -they were told that the doctor had already gone to the poorhouse. -</p> - -<p> -"He was that upset he couldn't sleep last night," said Mrs. Stout, a -pretty, plump, deep-bosomed woman, in a pink and white gingham dress and -a starched apron. "It seemed to prey on him to think of Doctor Greylock, -who used to have the best practice around here, dying up yonder in the -poorhouse. He was so promising, too, they say, when he came back, and -his people owned that big place over near Pedlar's Mill. Drink was his -ruin, I reckon, and that made it so hard, for everybody was afraid to -take in a man that was out of his head. I couldn't have had him here on -account of the children and measles just broken out yesterday. But there -ought to be some way of caring for sick and crazy people without sending -them to the poorhouse. And now with all the poorhouses going, there soon -won't be any place for them but the gaol." She was a voluble person, but -at last the flow of words stopped, and they drove on between dusty -borders of sassafras. -</p> - -<p> -"Is it true that Doctor Stout was born in a poorhouse?" Dorinda asked -presently. -</p> - -<p> -"Nobody knows. It doesn't surprise me to hear that he was." -</p> - -<p> -"And now Jason is dying in one. Is that the result of character or -merely accident, I wonder?" -</p> - -<p> -"Of both probably," John Abner rejoined. "I've read of too many decent -human beings going on the rocks to believe the fable that virtue alone -will get you anywhere, unless it is to the poorhouse instead of the -gaol." -</p> - -<p> -"There it must be now," Dorinda exclaimed, pointing to the right of the -road. "Do we turn in over that ditch?" -</p> - -<p> -"It seems to be the only way. Hey! Get out of the road there!" shouted -John Abner to a skulking black and tan foxhound. -</p> - -<p> -Withdrawn from the road, behind the fallen planks which had once made a -fence, the poorhouse sprawled there, in the midst of the -life-everlasting, like the sun-bleached skeleton of an animal which -buzzards had picked clean of flesh. The walls and roof were covered with -whitewash; there was whitewash on the smooth, round stones that bordered -the path to the door; and the few starved cedar trees in the yard were -whitewashed to the thin foliage at their tops. At one side, a few coarse -garments were fluttering from clothes-lines, and several decrepit -paupers were spreading wet things on the bushes that grew by the back -porch. -</p> - -<p> -Like other relics of an abruptly changing era, the county poorhouse -possessed both the advantages and the disadvantages of desuetude. The -seven aged paupers and the one indigent young mother who now accepted -its charity were neglected, it is true, but they were neglected in -freedom. Where there was no system there was less room for interference. -If the coarse clothes were thin, they were as varied as the tempers or -the inclinations of the paupers. Though the fare was mean, the -complaints over it were bountiful. It is hard to be a pauper; it is -particularly hard to be an aged pauper; but if these nine inmates -(including the week-old infant) could have chosen between liberty and -fraternity, they would probably have preferred the scant food and the -rough clothes to the neat livery of dependence. Dorinda, however, -perceived none of the varied blessings attendant upon orderless -destitution. All she saw was the ramshackle building and the whitewashed -cedars, which reminded her vaguely of missionary stories of the fences -of dry bones surrounding the huts of Ethiopian kings. "It looks as bare -as the palm of my hand," she said aloud. -</p> - -<p> -The doctor's Ford car was standing in front of the door, with one wheel -in a mudhole and one in a pile of trash; and when they stopped, an old -woman, who was hanging the wash to dry on the bushes, put down the wet -clothes and came over to meet them. She was so old that her skin was -like bark; her mouth was closed as tight as a nutcracker over her -toothless gums; and her small red eyes flickered between eyelids which -looked as if they had worn away. As she mumbled at them, she wiped her -steaming wet hands on her skirt. -</p> - -<p> -"You ain't got any sweet stuff, is you, honey?" she whined, until the -doctor appeared at the door and beckoned them round the corner of the -house where the sunshine was falling. As usual he looked brisk, kind, -incurably sanguine. -</p> - -<p> -"There is no longer any question. These county poorhouses must go," he -said, as they followed the beaten track which wound by the side of the -building. "It costs the county not a cent under two thousand dollars a -year to keep this place open for these eight inmates. It would be -cheaper in the end to board them at the City Home where there is some -system about the way things are managed." Then he lowered his voice, -which had been high and peremptory, as if he wished to be overheard. "We -brought Doctor Greylock here because he couldn't be left alone, and none -of the negroes would go near him. There's a scare about him, though he's -perfectly harmless. A little out of his dead now and then, but too weak -to hurt anybody even if he tried." -</p> - -<p> -"Is he delirious now?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, he's in his senses this morning, and quiet—you'll find him as -quiet as you could wish. Is there anybody to look after him at Five -Oaks?" -</p> - -<p> -"We're not taking him to Five Oaks. There's no place for him there. But -I've got a nurse for him, Aunt Mirandy Moody. She knows how to take care -of the sick, and I believe the can manage him." -</p> - -<p> -"Oh, anybody can manage him now," Doctor Stout said reassuringly. -</p> - -<p> -A tremor of weakness passed over Dorinda. She felt that her knees and -elbows were shaking, and there was a meaningless noise in her ears. Was -it Jason of whom they were speaking? No, it was not Jason, for it seemed -to her that Jason had died long ago, so long ago that she couldn't -remember him. She was standing by the wall of the poorhouse, and an -obscure pauper, somebody who could be "easily managed," was dying -within. She dropped her eyelids to shut out the brown cloud, as thick as -the smoke of burning leaves, which rolled up from the meadows. When she -opened her eyes again the sunshine on the whitewashed wall dazzled her. -If only she had known! If only she could have looked ahead to this -moment! Those summer evenings thirty years ago, and this autumn day -beside the wall of the poorhouse! The whitewashed cedars, the sunken -road, the flat fields, the ridged earth where labourers moved slowly, -and over all the glittering dust of life-everlasting. -</p> - -<p> -"He ought to drink as much milk as he can," Doctor Stout was saying in -his professional voice. "And eggs when he will take them. Every two -hours he should have nourishment in some form, and an eggnog with -whiskey three or four times a day. You can't expect him to do without -whiskey. I've got a bottle for you to take back with you. He may need -some on the way if he seems to be losing strength." -</p> - -<p> -She nodded. "I learned a little when I was a girl in a doctor's office -in New York; but everything has changed since the war. You'll come over -to-morrow?" -</p> - -<p> -"I'll drop in whenever I am called that way. If he gets much worse, you -can telephone me. I feel that he has a professional claim on me." -</p> - -<p> -The weakness had gone now. She felt courageous and full of vitality, as -if the rich blood had surged up through her veins. With the return of -strength, her self-reliance, her calm efficiency, revived. She was -facing the present now, not the past, and she faced it imperiously. -</p> - -<p> -"You think he is able to be moved?" she asked. -</p> - -<p> -"Even if it is a risk,"—he met her gaze candidly,—"wouldn't -anything be better than to die in this place?" -</p> - -<p> -She acquiesced by a gesture. Then, threading her way between the stunted -rosebushes, she spoke in a smothered voice, "Is he ready to go with -us?" -</p> - -<p> -"He is waiting on the back porch. It's sunny there." -</p> - -<p> -"The car is open, you know, but John Abner is putting up the top." -</p> - -<p> -"Fresh air won't hurt him. You've plenty of rugs, I suppose, and he'll -need pillows." -</p> - -<p> -"I've thought of that. You can fix the back seat like a bed. Of course -we shall drive very slowly." Glancing up at the sun, she concluded in -her capable manner: "It's time we were starting. John Abner and I both -have work to do on the farm." -</p> - -<p> -Doctor Stout bent an admiring gaze on her, and she knew from his look -that he was thinking, "Sensible woman. No damned mushiness about her." -Aloud, he said, "He is ready to go. You'll find that he doesn't say -much. When a man has touched the bottom of things, there isn't much talk -left in him. But I think he'll be glad to get away." -</p> - -<p> -"Well, I'll see what I can do." Stepping in front of him, she turned the -sharp angle of the wall and saw Jason lying on a shuck mattress in the -sunshine. Beneath his head there was a pile of cotton bags stuffed with -feathers and tied at the ends. Several patchwork quilts were spread over -him, and one of the old women was covering his feet as Dorinda -approached. His eyes were closed, and if he heard her footsteps on the -ground, he made no sign. A chain of shadows cast by the drying clothes -on the line fell over him, and these intangible fetters seemed to her -the only bond linking him to existence. While she looked down on him, -all connection between him and the man she had once loved was severed as -completely as the chain of shadows when the wind moved the clothesline. -</p> - -<p> -He lay straight and stiff under the quilts, and above the variegated -pattern his features protruded, shrivelled, inanimate, expressionless, -like the face of a mummy that would crumble to dust at a touch. His eyes -beneath his closed lids were sunk in hollows from which the yellow -stains spilled over on his bluish cheeks. The chin under the short -stubble of beard was thrust out as if it would pierce the withered skin. -It was not the face of Jason Greylock. What she looked on was merely a -blank collection of features from which poverty and illness had drained -all human intelligence. Turning away, she saw through a mist the -doddering old woman who was fussing about the mattress and the decrepit -manager who was too ancient and incompetent for more serious employment. -</p> - -<p> -"They've come for you. We'll get you away," Doctor Stout said in his -cheerful tones which rang with an artificial resonance. Then he turned -to Dorinda. "The stimulant is wearing off. He'll need something stronger -before he is able to start." -</p> - -<p> -At the words, Jason opened his eyes and looked straight up at the sky. -"I am thirsty," he said, while his hand made an empty claw-like gesture. -If he were aware of their figures, she realized that they meant nothing -to him. He had withdrawn from the external world into the darkness of -some labyrinth where physical sensations were the only realities. While -she watched him it came over her with a shock that the last thing to die -in a human being is not thought, is not even spirit, but sensation. -</p> - -<p> -One of the old women, who appeared to be in authority, brought a glass -of blue milk, and taking a flask from his pocket the doctor added a -measure of whiskey. Then lifting Jason's head, he held the glass to his -lips. -</p> - -<p> -Suddenly, it seemed to Dorinda that her impressions of the actual scene -dissolved and slipped like quicksilver from her mind. She ceased to -look, ceased to think, overcome by an emotion which was not grief, -though it was the very essence of sadness. Closing her eyes, she waited -for some sound or touch that would restore the fading glow of her -reason. Why was she here? Where was it leading her? What was the meaning -of it all? -</p> - -<p> -She heard a strangled voice gasp, "You're hurting me," and looking round -she saw that the doctor and John Abner were carrying Jason to the car. -</p> - -<p> -"You'll feel better presently," the doctor said soothingly. "I'll give -you something for the pain." -</p> - -<p> -Like an automaton, she followed them; like an automaton, she stepped -into the car and took her place by Jason's side on the back seat. She -had intended to drive home, but she knew that she was incapable of -controlling the big car. "Some one had better be back here with him," -the doctor had insisted, and she had obeyed his directions in silence. -"I've put the whiskey under the rug. Give him an eggnog as soon as you -put him to bed." -</p> - -<p> -The car started slowly, and they had driven for some miles before she -found sufficient courage to turn and look at the figure beside her. -Dazed by the sedative, he was staring straight in front of him, -oblivious of the autumn sunshine, oblivious of the uninteresting -country, oblivious of her presence, lost beyond reach in that dark -labyrinth of sensation. His face was the face of one who had come to the -edge of the world and looked over. It expressed not pain, not despair -even, but nothingness. A grey woollen comforter was tied over his head, -and his features appeared to have fallen away beneath the mummy-like -covering. He was neither young nor old, she saw; he was over and done -with, a thing with which time had finished. And he was a stranger to -her! She had never loved him; she had never known him until to-day. The -weight on her heart was so heavy that it was suffocating her. Again she -thought: "Why am I here? What is the meaning of it all?" Again she felt -as she had felt at her father's death: "The pathos of life is worse than -the tragedy." -</p> - -<p> -They drove on in silence; but it was a silence that reverberated like -thunder in her brain. Nothing and everything was over. Ahead of her the -road sank between the autumn fields and the brilliant patches of woods. -The blue haze swam before her in the direction of the river. They passed -the same ragged white and black children, who held up the same withered -flowers. The same labourers were at work in the fields, bent in the same -gestures of ploughing. As they went by a house set far back from the -road, with a little crooked path leading up to a white wicket-gate, she -imagined herself walking up the path and through the wicket-gate into -another life. -</p> - -<p> -John Abner looked back. "Am I going too fast? He coughs as if he were -choking." -</p> - -<p> -She turned to Jason and replaced a pillow which had slipped from under -his head. His boots, with lumps of red clay still clinging to them, were -stretched out stiffly on the pile of rugs. And those worn boots with the -earth on the soles seemed to her so poignantly moving that her eyes -filled with tears. His cough stopped, and she spoke to him in a raised -voice as if he were at a distance, "Are you suffering now?" -</p> - -<p> -If he heard her, he made no response. It seemed to her while she looked -at him that he was in reality at a distance, that everything but the -shell of physical pain in which he was imprisoned had already perished. -She wondered if he remembered her, or if her image had dropped from him, -with other material objects, in that blind wilderness. From his apathy, -she might have been no more to him than one of the old women in the -poorhouse. A shiver ran over her, as if she had been touched by a dead -hand. Youth, beauty, victory, revenge,—what did any of these things -signify before the inevitable triumph of time? -</p> - -<p> -Yes, time had revenged her. If she had stood still, if she had not -lifted a finger to help, time would still have revenged her; for time, -she saw, always revenges one. She thought of the hot agony of that other -October afternoon. Of the patter of rain on the roof. Of the smell of -wet grass underfoot. Of the sodden sky. Of the branches whipping her -face. -</p> - -<p> -They passed the station, where a train had just gone by; they passed the -old Haney place, where the new German tenant was ploughing; they passed -Honeycomb Farm and the fork of the road, where the burned cabin and the -blasted oak used to be. The new gate stood there now, and beyond it, -there was the sandy road through the meadows of Joe-Pyeweed and -life-everlasting. Against the sky, she could still see unchanged the -chimneys of Five Oaks. Then they spun easily down the wooded slope, -crawled over the patch of corduroy road, and, turning in at the bridge, -rolled up to the front porch of Old Farm. -</p> - -<p> -"Well, we got him here," John Abner said, with a breath of relief. -</p> - -<p> -As they helped Jason to alight, it seemed to Dorinda that his bones were -crumbling beneath her touch. If she had awakened to find that the whole -afternoon had been a nightmare, she would have felt no surprise. Even -the quiet house, with its air of patient expectancy, startled her by its -strangeness. -</p> - -<p> -Mirandy, a big, strong, compassionate old negress, who was born for a -nurse but had missed her vocation until she was too old to profit by it, -came out to help, and among them they carried Jason into the spare room -and put him to bed. His clothes were so soiled and ragged that John -Abner went upstairs and brought down some woollen things of his own. A -fire blazed in the cavernous fireplace. Ripples of light and shadow -danced over the yellow walls. The whole room smelt of burning logs and -of the branches of pine on the mantelpiece. Warmth, peace, comfort, -enfolded them as they entered. -</p> - -<p> -When they had undressed Jason and covered him up warmly, Dorinda brought -the eggnog, and Mirandy slipped her arm under the pillow and raised his -head while he drank it. The tormented look had gone from his face. About -his mouth the outline of a smile flickered. -</p> - -<p> -"It feels good," he said, and closed his eyes as the glass was taken -away. -</p> - -<p> -"You'll eat some supper?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I'll eat some supper." -</p> - -<p> -"You're not in pain now?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, I'm not in pain now." -</p> - -<p> -He spoke in a dazed way, like a child that is repeating words it does -not understand. Had he forgotten that he had known her? Or had he -reached the depths from which all memories appear as frail as the bloom -on a tree? She did not know. She would never know probably. She had lost -even the wish to know. Whether he had loved her or not made no -difference. It made no difference whether or not he remembered. In that -instant beside the poorhouse wall, the old Jason had been submerged and -lost in this new Jason who was a stranger. Not in thirty years but in a -single minute, she had lost him. Stripped of associations, stripped of -sentiment, this new Jason was protected only by the intolerable pathos -of life. How futile, how unnecessary, it had all been,—her love, her -suffering, her bitterness. -</p> - -<p> -He opened his eyes and looked at her. -</p> - -<p> -"This isn't Five Oaks?" -</p> - -<p> -"No, it is Old Farm." -</p> - -<p> -"Old Farm? That is the Oakley place. Am I going to stay here?" -</p> - -<p> -"Until you are better." -</p> - -<p> -"Until I am better," he repeated. -</p> - -<p> -"Are you comfortable now?" -</p> - -<p> -He closed his eyes again. "Yes, it feels good." -</p> - -<p> -"In a little while I'll give you some veronal and you will sleep." -</p> - -<p> -A change passed over his face and he sighed, "I'd like to sleep." -</p> - -<p> -She drew back and turned to go out of the room. Yes, the connection -between youth and middle age was broken for ever. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="X_II">X</a></h4> - -<p> -In the night she heard him coughing, and slipping into her flannel -wrapper, she went into the kitchen and beat up an egg with milk and -brandy. When she took it into his room, he appeared feverish and asked -for veronal. "But the brandy will undo it," he added mechanically. His -face was flushed and when she touched his hand it was burning. "Is it -near day?" he inquired. -</p> - -<p> -"No, it is only one o'clock. I thought you were sleeping." -</p> - -<p> -"I was, but I wake up this way. I've done it every night for months." -</p> - -<p> -She gave him veronal, and then raised his head while he sipped the -eggnog. "An owl has been hooting so loud I thought it was at the -window," he said, looking up at her over the rim of the glass. -</p> - -<p> -"It's up in the big pine. You've been dreaming." -</p> - -<p> -The fire had burned down to a few embers, which flickered out when she -tried to stir them to life. A dim light from the screened lamp on the -floor behind the chintz-covered chair left the bed and his uncovered -face in shadow. -</p> - -<p> -"Do you feel better?" she asked, as she was turning away. -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I feel better." His eyes followed her from the shadow with a -glance of mute interrogation. -</p> - -<p> -"I'll put this stick by your bed." She went out into the hall and came -back with one of John Abner's hickory sticks. "If you want anything or -feel nervous, knock on the wall. I am a light sleeper, and Mirandy is in -the room off the kitchen." -</p> - -<p> -She waited, but he did not answer. Had he understood her, or was he -incapable of grasping the meaning of sounds? It was like the -inconsistency of life, she thought, that he, who once had been so -voluble, should have become almost inarticulate at the end. She knew -that he was trying to give as little trouble as possible, yet he seemed -unable to put his wish into words. -</p> - -<p> -Before going out, she made one last effort with the embers, but the wood -she threw into the fireplace did not catch. When she went over to the -bed again, Jason was lying with closed eyes. "He doesn't look as if he -could last much longer," she thought dispassionately. -</p> - -<p> -The still October days drifted by, hazy, mellow, declining into the rich -light of the sunsets. With the dry weather and sufficient food after -starvation, Jason appeared to improve. The old wheel-chair which had once -belonged to Rose Emily was brought down from the attic, and he sat out, -muffled in rugs, on bright afternoons. He liked his meals, though he -never asked for them. Sometimes, after a hard spell of coughing, he -would say, "How long is it before I have my eggnog?"; yet he never -attempted to hasten the hour. Twice, after a severe hæmorrhage, they -believed he was dying, but he recovered and was wheeled out again on the -lawn. Day after day, he sat there in the sunshine, passive, silent, -wrapped in a curious remoteness which was like the armour of an -inscrutable reserve. Yet it was not reserve, she felt instinctively. It -was something thinner; vaguer, something as impalpable as a shadow. It -was, she realized suddenly one day, an emptiness of spirit. He was -silent because there was nothing left in him to be uttered. He was -remote because he had lost all connection with his surroundings, with -events, with the material structure of living. Through the autumn days -he would sit there, propped on pillows, in his wheel-chair between the -half-bared lilac bushes and the "rockery," where Mrs. Oakley had planted -portulaca over an old stump. His head would sink down into the rugs, and -his unseeing eyes would gaze up the road to the starry fields of the -life-everlasting. Behind him there was the porch and the long grey roof -where swallows were wheeling. From the locust trees by the wings a rain -of small yellow leaves fell slowly and steadily in the windless air, -turning once as they left the stem, and drifting down to the flagged -walk and the borders of sheepmint and wire-grass. His figure, bowed -under the rugs, seemed to her to become merely another object in the -landscape. He was as inanimate as the fields or the trees; and yet he -made the solitude more lonely and the autumn dreaminess more pensive. -His features had the scarred and seared look that is left in the faces -of men who had fought their way out of a forest fire. Only the look that -Jason wore now had passed from struggle into defeat. He appeared to be -waiting, without fear and without hope, for whatever might happen. "I've -seen so many people die," she thought, and then, "In fifty years many -people must die." -</p> - -<p> -She had come home this afternoon a little earlier than usual, and, still -in riding breeches, she stood by the porch and looked down on the inert -figure in the wheel-chair. Jason's eyes were open, but she could not -tell whether he saw her or not. The mask of his features was as blank as -if an indestructible glaze were spread over his face; and he stared -straight before him, searching the road and the distant fields of -life-everlasting for something that was not there. Though his -helplessness was his only hold on her, she felt that it had become too -poignant for her to bear. If only he would speak! If only he would -complain! If only he would say what he was seeking! In the faint -sunshine, beneath the ceaseless rain of leaves, he gathered, a deeper -meaning, a fresher significance. A glamour of sadness enveloped him. For -an instant the memory of the Jason she had first known flickered over -him like a vanishing ray of sunlight. As the gleam faded, she felt that -he was passing with it into some unearthly medium where she could not -follow. It was, she told herself, only the endless riddle of mortality, -renewed again and yet again in each human being. It was the old baffling -sense of a secret meaning in the universe, of a reality beneath the -actuality, of a deep profounder than the deeps of experience. The -reserve of even one human being was impenetrable; the reserve of every -human being was impenetrable. Of what was he thinking? she wondered, and -knew that she could never discover. Had he loved her in the past, or had -his desire for her been merely a hunger? Would he have been faithful to -her if stronger forces had not swept him away? Which was the accident, -his love or his faithlessness? When it was over, had she dropped out of -his life, or had she continued to exist as a permanent influence? Was he -better or worse than she had believed him to be? She had never known, -and now she could never know. The truth would always elude her. She -could never wring his secret from this empty shell which was as -unfathomable as the sea. She felt that the mystery was killing her, and -she knew that it was a mystery which could never be solved. -</p> - -<p> -She tried to ask, "How much did I mean in your life?" an found herself -reciting, parrot-like, "Do you feel any pain?" -</p> - -<p> -He shook his head, without looking at her. His gaze was still on the -road where it dipped at the bridge and travelled upward into the dreamy -distance. -</p> - -<p> -"Are you ready for your eggnog?" The effort to make her voice sound -light and natural brought tears to her eyes. -</p> - -<p> -At last she had touched him. The quiver of appetite stole over his face, -and he turned his eyes, which were dark with pain, away from the road. -"Is it almost time?" This was what he lived for now, an egg with milk -and whiskey every four hours. -</p> - -<p> -"It must be nearly. I'll go and see." As she still lingered, the quiver -on his face deepened into a look of impatience, and he repeated eagerly, -"You will go and see?" -</p> - -<p> -"In a minute. Has the doctor been here?" -</p> - -<p> -"Nobody has been here. A few people went by in the road, but they did not -stop." -</p> - -<p> -"Something must have prevented the doctor. He will come to-morrow." -</p> - -<p> -"It makes no difference. I am a doctor." -</p> - -<p> -A thought occurred to her while she watched him. "Would you rather be at -Five Oaks? It might be managed." -</p> - -<p> -He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. You are good to me here. I don't -know why." He broke off with a rough, grating cough which sounded like -the blows of a hammer. A few minutes afterwards, when the spell of -coughing was over, he repeated, so mechanically that the words seemed to -reach no deeper than his lips, "I don't know why." -</p> - -<p> -He had not said as much as this since she had brought him to Old Farm, -and while she listened a piercing light flashed into her mind, as if a -lantern had been turned without warning on a dark road. In this light, -all the hidden cells of her memory were illuminated. Things she had -forgotten; things she had only dimly perceived when they were present; -swift impulses; unacknowledged desires; flitting impressions like the -shadow of a bird on still water,—all these indefinite longings -started out vividly from the penumbra of darkness. As this circle of -light widened, she saw Jason as she had first seen him more than thirty -years ago, on that morning in winter. She saw his dark red hair, his -brown-black eyes, his gay and charming smile with its indiscriminate -friendliness. Time appeared to stand still at that instant. Beyond this -enkindled vision there was only the fall of the locust leaves, spinning -like golden coins which grew dull and tarnished as soon as they reached -the ground. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the vision faded and the -light flickered out. There remained this stranger, huddled beneath the -rugs in the wheel-chair, and around him the melancholy stillness of the -October afternoon. -</p> - -<p> -"People have to be kind to each other sometimes," she answered. -</p> - -<p> -His brief animation had passed. He seemed to have forgotten his words as -soon as he had uttered them. The blank despair was in his eyes again as -he fixed them on the empty road, searching—searching. His face, so -scarred and burned out by an inner fire, wore a lost and abstracted -look, as if he were listening for some sound at a distance. -</p> - -<p> -"I'll bring the eggnog in a minute," she added hastily, and went into -the house. She felt embarrassed by her rugged health, and by her firm -and energetic figure when she contrasted it with his diminished frame. -Yet her pity, she knew, could make no impression on vacancy. -</p> - -<p> -As the weeks passed, she grew to look for his chair when she returned -from work in the fields. There was no eagerness, no anxiety even. There -was merely the wonder if she should still find him in the pale afternoon -sunshine, watching the road for something that never came. If he had -been absent, she would scarcely have missed him; yet, in a way, his -wheel-chair made the lawn, or the fireside on wet days, more homelike. -He was a poor thing, she felt, to look forward to, but at least he was -dependent upon her compassion. -</p> - -<p> -Then one afternoon in November, when she returned, riding her white -horse through the flame and dusk of the sunset, she saw that the -wheel-chair was not in its accustomed place between the porch and the -"rockery." When she had dismounted at the stable door and watched the -bedding down of Snowbird, she walked slowly back to the house. Even -before she met Mirandy running to look for her, she knew that Jason was -dead. -</p> - -<p> -"He 'uz settin' out dar de hull evelin'," began Mirandy, who being old -still spoke the vivid dialect of her ancestors. "He sot out dar jes' lak -he's done day in an' day out w'ile I wuz gittin' thoo wid de ironin'. -Den w'en de time come fuh his eggnog, I beat it up jes' ez light, en -tuck it out dar ter de cheer, en dar he wuz layin' back, stone daid, wid -de blood all ovah de rugs en de grass. He died jes' ez quick ez ern he -ain' nevah ketched on ter w'at wuz gwinter happen. 'Fo' de Lawd, hit -wa'n't my fault, Miss Dorindy. I 'uz jes' gittin' erlong thoo wid de -ironin', lak you done tole me." -</p> - -<p> -"No, it wasn't your fault, Mirandy. Have you telephoned for the doctor?" -</p> - -<p> -"Yas'm, Fluvanna, she done phone fuh 'im right straight away. We is done -laid 'im out on de baid. You'd 'low jes' ter look at 'im dat hit wuz a -moughty pleasant surprise ter find out dat he wuz sholy daid." -</p> - -<p> -Turning away from her, Dorinda went into the spare room, where the fire -was out, and in deference to one of Aunt Mehitable's superstitions, -Mirandy had draped white sheets over the furniture and the pictures. The -windows were wide open. In the graveyard on the curve of the hill, she -could see the great pine towering against the evening sky. A stray sheep -was bleating somewhere in the meadow, and it seemed to her that the -sound filled the universe. -</p> - -<p> -So at last he was dead. He was dead, and she could never know whether or -not he remembered. She could never know how much or how little she had -meant in his life. And more tragic than the mystery that surrounded him -at the end, was the fact that neither the mystery nor his end made any -difference. The passion that had ruined her life thirty years ago was -nothing, was less than nothing, to her to-day. She was not glad that he -was dead. She was not sorry that he had died alone. -</p> - -<p> -Turning back the end of the sheet, she looked down on his face. Despair -had passed out of it. The scarred and burned look of his features had -faded into serenity. Death had wiped out the marks of the years, and had -restored, for an instant, the bright illusion of youth. He wore, as he -lay there with closed eyes, an expression that was noble and generous, -as if he had been arrested in some magnanimous gesture. This was what -death could do to one. He had wasted his life, he had destroyed her -youth; yet, in a few hours, death had thrown over him an aspect of -magnanimity. -</p> - -<p> -She was standing there when John Abner came in from milking and joined -her. "Poor devil," he said. "I suppose it's the best thing that could -have happened." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, it's the best thing." -</p> - -<p> -"Is there anybody we'd better get a message to?" -</p> - -<p> -"No one I can remember. He had lost all his friends." -</p> - -<p> -"Has the doctor been here?" -</p> - -<p> -"Not yet, but Fluvanna telephoned for him." -</p> - -<p> -"Then we might as well have the funeral to-morrow. There is no reason to -postpone it. He's been dying for months." -</p> - -<p> -Yes, he had been dying for months; yet, she realized now, his death had -come to her with a shock. Though the moment had been approaching so -long, she felt that it had taken her by surprise, that she had not had -sufficient time to prepare. -</p> - -<p> -"Of course, it isn't as if we could be expected to feel it," John Abner -said, reasonably enough, and she repeated vacantly: "No, of course it -isn't." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="XI_II">XI</a></h4> - -<p> -The next afternoon, standing beneath an inclement sky in the overgrown -graveyard at Five Oaks, she wondered how, even after thirty years, she -could have become so insensible. -</p> - -<p> -There had been rain in the night, and the weather was raw and wintry, -with a savage wind which prowled at a distance in the fields and woods. -Over the graveyard, where the sunken graves were almost obliterated by -periwinkle, the dead leaves were piled in sodden drifts which gave like -moss underfoot. The paling fence had rotted away, and white turkeys were -scratching in the weeds that edged the enclosure. Dampness floated down -in a grey vapour from the boughs of the trees. When the new minister -opened his mouth to speak his breath clung like frost to his drooping -moustache. Yet, bad as the day was, either compassion or curiosity had -drawn the nearer farmers and their families to Five Oaks, and a little -gathering of men and women who remembered the Greylocks in their -prosperity watched the lowering of Jason's body into the earth. In the -freshly ploughed field beyond, Mirandy and Fluvanna stood among an -inquisitive crowd of white and coloured children. -</p> - -<p> -More than thirty years ago. More than thirty years of effort and -self-sacrifice—for what? Was there an unfulfilled purpose, or was it -only another delusion of life? The moaning wind plunged down on the dead -leaves and drove them in eddying gusts over the fields, over the road, -and into the open grave. It seemed to her that the sound of the autumn -wind, now rising, now sinking, now almost dying away, was sweeping her -also into the grave at her feet. She had no control over her memories; -she had no control over her thoughts. They stirred and scattered, as -aimless, as inanimate, as the dead leaves on the ground. Memories that -had outlived emotions, as empty as withered husks, were released from -their hidden graves, and tossed wildly to and fro in her mind. Little -things that she had forgotten. Little things that mean nothing when they -happen and break the heart when they are remembered. She felt no sorrow -for Jason. He was nothing to her; he had always been nothing; yet her -lost youth was everything. What she mourned was not the love that she -had had and lost, but the love that she had never had. Impressions -drifted through her thoughts, vague, swift, meaningless, without form or -substance. . . . -</p> - -<p> -Out of this whirling chaos in her mind, Jason's face emerged like the -face of a marionette. Then dissolving as quickly as it had formed, it -reappeared as the face of Nathan, and vanished again to assume the -features of Richard Burch, of Bob Ellgood, and of every man she had ever -known closely or remotely in her life. They meant nothing. They had no -significance, these dissolving faces; yet as thick and fast as dead -leaves they whirled and danced there, disappearing and reassembling in -the vacancy of her thoughts. Faces. Ghosts. Dreams. Regrets. Old -vibrations that were incomplete. Unconscious impulses which had never -quivered into being. All the things that she might have known and had -never known in her life. -</p> - -<p> -The minister's voice ceased at last. Since he had never seen Jason he -had trusted, perhaps imprudently, to his imagination, and Dorinda -wondered how he could have found so much to say of a life that was so -empty. She bent her head in prayer, and a few minutes afterwards, she -heard the thud of earth falling from the spade to the coffin. The red -clay fell in lumps, dark, firm, heavy, smelling of autumn. It fell -without breaking or scattering, and it fell with the sound of -inevitableness, of finality. For an eternity, she heard the thuds on the -coffin. Then the voice of the minister rose again in the benediction, -and she watched, as in a trance, John Abner bring the two flat stones -from the edge of the ploughed field and place them at the head and foot -of the grave. -</p> - -<p> -She turned away, and became aware presently that the clergyman had -followed her and was speaking. "It is a sad occasion, Mrs. Pedlar," he -said, and coughed because her blank face startled the end of his remark -out of his mind. "A sad occasion," he repeated, stammering. -</p> - -<p> -"All funerals are sad occasions," she responded, and then asked: "Will -you come to the house for a cup of coffee?" -</p> - -<p> -She hoped he would refuse, and he did refuse after a brief hesitation. -He had a sick call to make near by, and already the day was closing in. -While he held her hand he spoke with unction of her generosity. Wherever -he went, he said, he heard of her good works. This, he realized, was a -concrete example of her many virtues, and he reminded her hopefully that -the greatest of these is charity. Then he went off in his Ford car, and -Dorinda stood where he had left her and stared after him as if she were -rooted there in the damp periwinkle. -</p> - -<p> -"The wind is cutting. Come away," John Abner urged, taking her arm. -"Funerals are always depressing, but you did what you could." It was -true. She had done what she could, and she realized that this, also, -would not make any difference. -</p> - -<p> -She walked away very slowly because she found that her knees were stiff -when she attempted to move. It was while she was treading on the spongy -earth at the edge of the ploughed field that she saw life crumble like a -mountain of cinders and roll over her. She was suffocated, she was -buried alive beneath an emptiness, a negation of effort, beside which -the vital tragedy of her youth appeared almost happiness. Not pain, not -disappointment, but the futility of all things was crushing her spirit. -She knew now the passive despair of maturity which made her past -suffering seem enviable to her when she looked back on it after thirty -years. Youth can never know the worst, she understood, because the worst -that one can know is the end of expectancy. -</p> - -<p> -Smothered in this mountain of cinders, she walked to the old buggy and -stepped between the wheels to the front seat. A minute later they drove -past the barn where she would have killed Jason if her hand had not -wavered. Past the house where she had felt her heart crouching in animal -terror before the evil old man. Through the woods where the wet boughs -had stung her face. Rain. Rain. The sound of rain beating into her -memory. Rain on the shingled roof, pattering like the bare feet of -children. Rain on the hunched box-bush and the white turkeys. Rain on -the sandy road. Rain on the fork of the road, on the crushed leaves -smelling of autumn. Everything was before her then. There is no finality -when one is young. Though they had been unendurable while she had passed -through them, those years of her youth were edged now with a flame of -regret. She felt that she would give all the future if she could live -over the past again and live it differently. How small a thing her life -appeared when she looked back on it through the narrow vista of time! It -was too late now, she knew, for her youth was gone. Yet because it was -too late and her youth was gone, she felt that the only thing that made -life worth living was the love that she had never known and the -happiness that she had missed. -</p> - -<p> -When she reached the house she went to her room in silence, and sank on -a couch in front of the fire as if she were sinking out of existence. -Fluvanna, finding her there a little later, helped to undress her and -went to tell John Abner that she was ill enough to have the doctor -summoned. Hearing her from the hall, Dorinda did not take the trouble to -contradict. The doctor did not matter. Illness did not matter. Nothing -mattered but the things of which life had cheated her. -</p> - -<p> -Lying there in the shadowy firelight of the room, she heard the wind -wailing about the corners of the house and rustling in the old chimneys. -She saw the crooked shape of a bough etched on the window-panes, and she -listened for the soft thud of the branches beneath the sobbing violence -of the storm. Though the room was bright and warm, a chill was striking -through her flesh to the marrow of her bones. Shivering by the fire, she -drew the blankets close to her chin. -</p> - -<p> -The door opened and John Abner came in. "Can't you eat any supper, -Dorinda?" -</p> - -<p> -Behind him, in the glare of lamplight, she saw Fluvanna with a tray in -her hands. The blue and white china and the Rebekah-at-the-well tea-pot -lunged toward her. -</p> - -<p> -"No, I can't eat a mouthful." Then changing her mind, she sat up on the -couch and asked for tea. When they poured it out for her, she drank -three cups. -</p> - -<p> -"You got a chill, Dorinda. It was raw and wet out there." -</p> - -<p> -"Yes, I got a chill," she replied; but it was the chill of despair she -meant. -</p> - -<p> -"The wind is rising. We are going to have a bad storm. I suppose I'd -better go out again and take a look." -</p> - -<p> -After he had gone, she lay there still shivering beneath the blankets, -with her eyes on the low white ceiling, where the firelight made -shimmering patterns. Outside, the wind grew louder. She heard it now at -a distance, howling like a pack of wolves in the meadow. She heard it -whistling round the eaves of the house and whining at the sills of the -doors. All night the gusts shook the roof and the chimneys, and all -night she lay there staring up at the wavering shadows of the flames. -</p> - -<p> -And the youth that she had never had, the youth that might have been -hers and was not, came back, in delusive mockery, to torment her. It was -as if the sardonic powers of life assumed, before they vanished for -ever, all the enchanting shapes of her dreams. She remembered the past, -not as she had found it, but as she had once imagined that it might be. -She saw Jason, not as she had seen him yesterday or last year, but as he -was when she had first loved him. Though she tried to think of him as -broken, ruined, and repellent, through some perversity of recollection, -he returned to her in the radiance of that old summer. He returned to -her young, ardent, with the glow of happiness in his eyes and the smile -of his youth, that smile of mystery and pathos, on his lips. In that -hour of memory the work of thirty years was nothing. Time was nothing. -Reality was nothing. Success, achievement, victory over fate, all these -things were nothing beside that imperishable illusion. Love was the only -thing that made life desirable, and love was irrevocably lost to her. -</p> - -<p> -Toward morning she fell asleep, and when she awoke at dawn the wind had -lulled and a crystal light was flooding the room. Within herself also -the storm was over. Life had washed over her while she slept, and she -was caught again in the tide of material things. Rising from the couch, -she bathed and dressed and went out of doors into the clear flame of the -sunrise. -</p> - -<p> -Around her the earth smelt of dawn. After the stormy night the day was -breaking, crisp, fair, windless, with the frost of a mirage on the -distant horizon. The trees were bare overhead. Bronze, yellow, crimson -and wine-colour, the wet leaves strewed the flagged walk and the grass. -Against the eastern sky the boughs of the harp-shaped pine were -emblazoned in gold. -</p> - -<p> -Turning slowly, she moved down the walk to the gate, where, far up the -road, she could see the white fire of the life-everlasting. The storm -and the hag-ridden dreams of the night were over, and the land which she -had forgotten was waiting to take her back to its heart. Endurance. -Fortitude. The spirit of the land was flowing into her, and her own -spirit, strengthened and refreshed, was flowing out again toward life. -This was the permanent self, she knew. This was what remained to her -after the years had taken their bloom. She would find happiness again. -Not the happiness for which she had once longed, but the serenity of -mind which is above the conflict of frustrated desires. Old regrets -might awaken again, but as the years went on, they would come rarely and -they would grow weaker. "Put your heart in the land," old Matthew had -said to her. "The land is the only thing that will stay by you." Yes, -the land would stay by her. Her eyes wandered from far horizon to -horizon. Again she felt the quickening of that sympathy which was deeper -than all other emotions of her heart, which love had overcome only for -an hour and life had been powerless to conquer in the end, the living -communion with the earth under her feet. While the soil endured, while -the seasons bloomed and dropped, while the ancient, beneficent ritual of -sowing and reaping moved in the fields, she knew that she could never -despair of contentment. -</p> - -<p> -Strange, how her courage had revived with the sun! She saw now, as she -had seen in the night, that life is never what one dreamed, that it is -seldom what one desired; yet for the vital spirit and the eager mind, -the future will always hold the search for buried treasure and the -possibilities of high adventure. Though in a measure destiny had -defeated her, for it had given her none of the gifts she had asked of -it, still her failure was one of those defeats, she realized, which are -victories. At middle age, she faced the future without romantic glamour, -but she faced it with integrity of vision. The best of life, she told -herself with clear-eyed wisdom, was ahead of her. She saw other autumns -like this one, hazy, bountiful in harvests, mellowing through the blue -sheen of air into the red afterglow of winter; she saw the coral-tinted -buds of the spring opening into the profusion of summer; and she saw the -rim of the harvest moon shining orange-yellow through the boughs of the -harp-shaped pine. Though she remembered the time when loveliness was -like a sword in her heart, she knew now that where beauty exists the -understanding soul can never remain desolate. -</p> - -<p> -A call came from the house, and turning at the gate, she went back to -meet John Abner, who was limping toward her over the dead leaves in the -walk. His long black shadow ran ahead of him, and while he approached -her, he looked as if he were pursuing some transparent image of himself. -</p> - -<p> -"You are yourself again," he said, as he reached her. "Last night I was -disturbed about you. I was afraid you'd got a bad chill." -</p> - -<p> -"It went in the night. The storm wore on my nerves, but it was over by -morning." Then before he could reply, she added impulsively, "Bear with, -my fancies now, John Abner. When I am gone, both farms will be yours." -</p> - -<p> -"Mine?" John Abner laughed as he looked at her. "Why, you may marry -again. They are saying at Pedlar's Mill that you may have Bob Ellgood -for the lifting of a finger." -</p> - -<p> -Dorinda smiled, and her smile was pensive, ironic, and infinitely wise. -"Oh, I've finished with all that," she rejoined. "I am thankful to have -finished with all that." -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>THE END</h4> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARREN GROUND ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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